2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 evaluation of nematode pests and fungal diseases of ceratotheca sesamoides in ilorin n. b. izuogu (department of crop protection, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria) o. l. egberongbe (department of crop protection, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria) e. e. a. oyedunmade (department of crop protection, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria) to cite this article: n. b. izuogu, o. l. egberongbe and e. e. a. oyedunmade (2012). evaluation of nematode pests and fungal diseases of ceratotheca sesamoides in ilorin. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1), 103-106. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 103-106 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author (s) n. b. izuogu † department of crop protection, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria email: nkbetsyizuogu@yahoo.com o. l. egberongbe department of crop protection, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria e. e. a. oyedunmade department of crop protection, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria evaluation of nematode pests and fungal diseases of ceratotheca sesamoides in ilorin abstract field and laboratory experiments were conducted to find out the incidence of diseases caused by nematode pests and fungal pathogens associated with two cultivars (tall and short) of black sesame, ceratotheca sesamoides (l) endl. two cultivars of c. sesamoides were planted at random on the field in a completely randomized block design. rate of fungal infection significantly differed in the two varieties and the tall cultivar had higher rate of infection. the nematode genera found associated with the plant in were meloidogyne, pratylenchus, helicotylenchus, trichodorus, hemicricomoides, and scutellonema while fungal pathogens were septoria, fusarium, and penicillium. although not significantly different, there was appreciable difference in the nematode population of the soil at planting, one and two months after planting. the nematode counts in and around the root did not significantly differ. keywords: nematode pests, fungal pathogens, infection introduction vegetables are extremely important components of our daily diets as well as high value cash crops for small and large growers alike (schippers, 2000). vegetables, especially the leafy ones are rich in protein, vitamins, minerals and fiber. nigeria is naturally endowed with numerous vegetables, but most of them are indigenous, largely unknown and unexploited beyond traditional localities where they are found and eaten. false or black sesame, ceratotheca sesamoides fall into this group. there are two varieties – the tall and the dwarf varieties (fasakin, 1991). apart from the mucilaginous leaves which are harvested for mainly for soup, the seeds which contain 37% oil are also eaten to adulterate beniseed. in ghana, the leaves are used in preparation of shea butter. the leaves are mixed with chopped grass and hay to serve as adhesive agent for building purpose. the root peel can be used as beauty treatment for the eye and the foot in southern nigeria (fasakin, 1991). the kanuris in northern nigeria use the leaves in soap making (akinniyi et al., 1984). although very scanty documented works exist on the nematode and fungal diseases of this vegetable, nematode pests of vegetables cannot be underscored. presence of plant parasitic nematodes in the soil has contributed great loss to crops both in yield and quality. apart from the direct damage done by nematodes to crops, they also act as vectors of some diseases. the wound they create serve as entrance for virus, fungi and bacteria. the objective of this study therefore, is to identify the nematode pests and fungal diseases of ceratotheca sesamoides and compare the disease severity on the two cultivars of the vegetable. materials and methods the field experiment was carried out at the university of ilorin teaching and research farm while the laboratory trials were conducted at the department of crop protection laboratory. tillage was carried out on the field using a tractor. the land was ploughed, harrowed and made into ridges. the ridges were later flattened as this was suitable for vegetable cultivation. eight plots of 2m x 4m were laid out in a completely randomized block design with 1m spacing in between plots. the seeds of the two varieties were planted in four replicates. each plot consists of six rows having 30cm spacing in between rows. planting was done using drilling method and seed germination was observed on the 5th and 6th day after planting. weeding of the plots was done manually with hoe. application of npk fertilizer, 25:15:5 was done 28 days after planting. mailto:nkbetsyizuogu@yahoo.com evaluation of nematode pests and fungal..... 104 collection of soil samples from each plot for nematode assay was done at planting, first and second month after planting. root samples of c. sesamoides were collected at the end of the experiment and taken to the laboratory for nematode extraction. nematode populations in 200ml of soil in each plot were extracted using the modified baermann’s technique (whitehead and hemming, 1965). nematodes were identified and counted under the stereo – microscope. outbreak of fungal infection was observed 1 ½ months after planting. number of plants infected and number of leaves affected on each plot was scored. two (2) stands of plants were considered in each row in a plot and two leaves from each of the stand were scored for number of spots on the leaves. to identify the fungi present on the leaves, the infected leaves collected from both varieties were moistened with water and put in the incubator for 72 hours for adequate growth of micro-organism. the materials were then isolated on nutrient agar and later subcultured into potato agar at 200c for 72 hours. thereafter, it was observed under a stereomicroscope (x250 magnification) and counted using a doncaster counting dish. statistical analysis all data collected were subjected to analysis of variance and where necessary, the means were separated using duncan’s multiple range test (dmrt). results field infections the fungi that were isolated and identified after incubation on both cultivars were septoria and fusarium species while penucillim species were identified on the leaves of the tall variety only. there was significant difference to the disease incidence on the two varieties at p = 0.05 (table 1). the tall variety was infected more than the dwarf variety. about 92.28% of plants of the tall variety were infected by fungal attack while only about 26.28% of the plants of the dwarf variety were infected. however, the number of leaves infected per plant in the two varieties did not significantly differ. there was no significant difference in the number of spots observed per leaf for the two varieties. nematode species identified the nematodes encountered in the soil were meloidogne spp, pratylenchus spp. and helicotylechus spp. these were found in the soil at planting and first month after planting. in addition to these ones, at the end of two month after planting, trichodorus spp. hemicricomoides spp. and scutellonema spp. were also found. there was no statistical difference among the two cultivars in the populations of the nematodes at any of these times (table 2). meloidogyne spp and pratylenchus spp were the only parasitic nematodes identified in the root extracts of c. sesamoides and the population in the two cultivarss was not significantly different (table 3). discussion this study has shown that the two varieties of c. sesamoides are susceptible to both nematode and fungal attack. fungal disease outbreak on the field plots showed that the disease incidence was more prominent on the plots planted with the tall variety compared with the dwarf variety. this may not be unconnected with the better vegetative growth of the tall cultivar which resulted in more contact between the tall plants. the lack of significant difference in respect to the number of leaves infected per plant and number of spots observed per infected leaf for the two varieties of c. sesamoides suggests that the same amount of damage was done to them by the attack of fungi. it goes further to show that though both cultivars were equally susceptible to the attack of fungi, but the infection was more quickly spread on the plots planted with the tall variety because of close contact between the plants. although, nematode population encountered in the soil at planting, one and two months after planting showed no significant difference, there was appreciable increase in the populations of meloidogyne spp., pratylenchus spp. and helicotylenchus spp. at planting as compared to populations one month after planting (table 2). this shows that the two varieties of c. sesamoides are susceptible or potential hosts to these species of nematodes and any control measure should be aimed at them. on the other hand, non existence of trichodorus spp., hemicricomoides spp. and scutellonema spp. at planting and one month after planting may suggest the migration of these nematodes from adjacent plots to the ceratotheca plots, thus indicating suitability of this crop as a host for nematodes. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 103-106 105 the presence of different species of nematodes is not uncommon in field conditions due to poly specific nature of nematodes communities. like many other pathogens, nematodes seldom attack plant roots as pure populations, but constitute multipathogenic complexes in which the component species interact continuously under field conditions (nickle, 1991 and powell, 1971). from the present study, it is obvious that the transmission and etiology of an important group of soil-borne plant virus disease must not be taken for granted due to the appearance of trichodorus spp. later in the field. trichodorus spare vectors of tobra viruses (taylor and brown, 1997). though the acquisition time may be less than an hour to several days depending on the feeding characteristics of the nematode, they may retain the virus for up to one year. this suggests that the plants in that field stand the danger of viral infection which might possibly be carried over to the next cropping season if not properly checked. it is therefore pertinent that adequate control measures be adopted to manage the nematodes present, especially the trichodorus spp. with the view that nematode virus vectors in very low populations have the potential to cause significant damage to crops. some suggested management practices include; keeping the crops free of weed hosts (charlton, 2006), fallowing, use of resistant varieties and integrated pest management (i.p.m) among others. table 1: score of fungi attack on ceratotheca sesamoides tall variety dwarf variety percentage of plant affected 92.28a 26.28b average number of plants affected 1070.5a 214.3b average number of affected leaves per plant 7.3 6.8 n.s average number of spots observed per leaf 20.8 10.8 n.s scores in the same row followed by different letters are significantly different at p < 0.05 according to duncan’s multiple range test. n.s = not significant table 2: mean soil nematode population for c. sesamoides varieties period pratylenchus helicotylenchus meloidogyne trichodorus hemicricomoides scutellonema tall variety (tv) dwarf variety (sv) tv sv tv sv tv sv tv sv tv sv at planting 3.75 3.25 4.50 4.20 5.25 5.75 1st month after planting 15.25 12.50 26.25 19.25 52.75 39.00 2nd month after planting 24.25 20.25 15.50 20.75 24.50 22.25 13.25 13.75 0.5 1 2.5 2.5 table 3: mean root nematode population variety meloidogyne pratylenchus tall variety 0.75 1.25 dwarf variety 1.50 2.25 views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akinniyi, j. a., uvais, m., & sultanbawa, s. (1984). a glossary of kanuri names of plants. (with evaluation of nematode pests and fungal..... 106 botanical names, distribution and uses) unpublished. charlton, b. a. (2006). effects of oxamyl on suppression of the tobacco rattle virus vector paratrichodorous allius and corky ringspot disease of potatoes in the klamath basin of southcentral oregon. ms agronomy thesis, oregon state university fasakin, k. (1991). studies on the affect of sowing depth and planting density on vegetative growth and leaf yield of two local cultivars of c. sesamoides. edl. m. sc. project, university of ilorin. nickle, w. r. (1991). manual of agricultural nematology. (marcell dekker inc. new york) powell, n. t. (1971). interaction of plant parasitic nematodes with other disease causing agents. in: plant parasitic nematodes. (eds. b.m. zukerman, w.f. mai, r. a. rhode) pp119-136. academic press, new york schippers, r. r. (2000). african indigenous vegetables: an overview of the cultivated species. chatham, u. k, nri, cta, dfid. 214pp. taylor, c., & brown, d. (1997). nematodes, vectors of plant viruses. wallingford, uk, cabi. whitehead, a. g., & hemming, j. r. (1965). a comparison of some quantitative methods of extracting vermiform nematodes from soil. annual applied biology. 52, 25–28. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 283-289 283 current situation and future outlook of sorghum area and production in pakistan nusrat habib scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabadpakistan ayesha tahir scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabadpakistan qurat ul ain director, audio video communication, national agricultural research centre, islamabadpakistan abstract the present study was conducted to check the trend analysis of area and production for sorghum in pakistan. the findings of the study are based on sorghum area and production by using the data from 1990 to 2011. four models of trend analysis were applied but most appropriate model for trend analysis of the present study was quadratic trend model. forecasting was also done up to 2017 for checking the future outlook. forecast values are very close to actual values and have positive decreasing trend in pakistan. keywords: sorghum, area, production, quadratic trend model, pakistan introduction 1 sorghum (sorghum bicolor l. moench) is at fifth number among cereal crops with 60 million tons of annual production in the world. in pakistan, it is grown on the area 0.34 million hectare with annual production of 0.21 million ton and average yield 620 kg 1 corresponding author’s details: nusrat habib email: nusrat.habib@ymail.com ha-1 (anon, 2006) in addition to being important food, feed and forage crop, sorghum also plays an important role in providing raw material for the making of starch, fiber, dextrose syrup, biofuels, alcohol, and other goods. more than half of the world is growing sorghum in semi arid zones, where it is a staple food for millions of poor and hungry people (mehmood et al., 2008). in pakistan, sorghum known as jowar is an important kharif season crop which is grown for both the purpose of fodder and asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:nusrat.habib@ymail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 283-289 284 grains. sorghum as a fodder is considered as an essential feeds for the livestock, which can help in maintaining good health of cattle’s. sorghum fodder contains more than 50% digestible nutrients with 8% protein, 2.5% fat and 45% nitrogen-free extract. its dietary value is equivalent to that of corn that is why animals enjoy well due to its deliciousness and juicy character (wheeler, 1950). besides grain, sorghum stover is an important feed in the livestock sector for breeze and dairy animals particularly in the dry seasons when other feed possessions are in short supply. therefore, twin purpose types that produce both grain and stover are the favored types (kelley et al., 1993; kelley and rao, 1994; hall 2000). the production of ample amount of good quality forage is requirement for a wellorganized and fruitful livestock industry. at present 2.35 million hectares of land is under fodder crops which accounts for 12% of the total cropped area of pakistan (agricultural statistics of pakistan, 2005). the area under fodder crops cannot be increased at the cost of food crops. the fodder production in the country is mostly through prehistoric and traditional ways which does not meet fully the fodder necessity both in terms of quantity and quality with the effect that the animals are starving. there are many opportunities for increasing the fodder supply; amongst these mixed sowing of cereals with legumes is a reasonable option. generally cereals give high tonnage of yield but their protein inside is short as compared to legumes. it is a well recognized truth that livestock feed should contain sufficient protein to preserve their health and according to estimation the minimum protein content of 5-6% is necessary in the preservation ration and 1014% for prolific purposes (abdullah and chaudhry, 1996). keeping in view the importance of fodder crops for livestock as well as for food purpose, this study was designed to forecast sorghum area and production in pakistan by using the best fitted models. materials and methods the study was conducted by using the time series data comprising of twenty two years of sorghum area and production from 19902011. the data was collected from the various sources like agriculture statistics and economic surveys of pakistan, published by government of pakistan. data was analyzed by using minitab software. for forecasting purpose, we have applied the deterministic types of time series models which are often called growth models also. such models are linear, logarithmic, quadratic, cubic, exponential, compound, inverse, power, and s-shaped model which are very simple to understand (pindyck and ribinfeld, 1991). these models are extensively used to estimate the growth rates of time series data. in this study linear, exponential quadratic and s-curve trend models were applied. the best model was selected on the basis of three accuracy measures. these accuracy measures were mean absolute percentage error (mape), mean absolute deviation (mad) and mean squared deviation (msd). smaller values of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 283-289 285 all these measures indicate a good fitted model with minimum forecasting errors (karim et al., 2010). the best fitted model for this study was quadratic trend model and was applied for forecasting the area and production of sorghum in pakistan for the years 2012 to 2017 respectively. an important drawback of making forecasts is that the forecasting error increases as the period of forecast increases. for this reason, short-term forecast is more reliable compared to long run forecast (karim et al., 2010). results and discussion this section deals with time series data of area and production of sorghum in pakistan. the estimated trends in the form of tables and graphs regarding area and production are presented in this section. looking at the current situation in terms of area, the sorghum area in pakistan had a long-term upward and downward trend during the period from 1990 to 2011. the sorghum area swiftly falls in 1991 and grew more quickly to the end of 1992. in1990, the sorghum area was 490 thousand ha and after twenty two years in 2011; it was about 457 thousand ha. similarly, the sorghum production in pakistan had a long-term upward and downward trend during the period from 1990 to 2011. the sorghum production rapidly falls in 1991 and grew more rapidly to the end of 1992. in1990, the sorghum production was 195 thousand tons and after twenty two years in 2011; it was about 303 thousand tons. previous trends of area and production of sorghum in pakistan the estimated time series parameter of area and production under sorghum of pakistan during the year 1990 to 2011 has been presented in figure 1. figure 1 showed that production of sorghum has downward trend from the year 1991 to onwards but production under this crop has very slow increasing trend but from the 2004 onwards production under sorghum crop in pakistan has been continuously increasing. these previous trends depict that area of sorghum has not much increased as comparative to production. the reasons for slower growth of area can be climatic and economic such as cold weather and farmers earned more profit from major crops, so that the area under sorghum converted to major crops area. so this becomes the main reason for decrease in area of sorghum in pakistan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 283-289 286 figure 1: area (000, ha) and production (000, ton) of sorghum diagnostic measures for the selection of best forecasting method for area and production in pakistan this study applied quadratic model for trend analysis of sorghum area and production in pakistan on the basis of smaller values of accuracy measures (karim et al., 2010). table 1 revealed that all the values of accuracy measures for sorghum area in pakistan are smaller in quadratic model. so this model is best fitted to forecast the future values for sorghum area in pakistan for next six years. table 1: best fitted model selection criteria for sorghum area measures of accuracy criteria mape mad msd linear trend model 6.560 22.130 805.722 quadratic trend model 4.395 15.304 519.488 exponential trend model 7.63 26.06 1019.04 s-curve model 5.048 16.944 540.050 table 2 revealed that all the values of accuracy measures for sorghum production in pakistan are smaller in quadratic model. so this model is best fitted to forecast the future values for sorghum production in pakistan for next six years. table 2: best fitted model selection criteria for sorghum production measures of accuracy criteria mape mad msd linear trend model 7.268 14.910 349.759 quadratic trend model 4.785 9.841 220.908 exponential trend model 7.998 16.617 416.229 s-curve model 5.609 11.107 241.082 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 283-289 287 forecasted sorghum area the area growth rate has negative trend in pakistan. as figure 2 explained the trend analysis plot for sorghum area in pakistan by using quadratic trend model. the black line shows actual values, red fitted values and green line is for forecasted values of sorghum area at 95% prediction interval. table 3 showed that if the present growth rates of sorghum area remain the same then area of sorghum in pakistan would be 188.995,168.428,146.918,124.466,101.071 and76.733 thousand ha respectively for the years 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. forecasted values of area under sorghum in pakistan has slightly decreasing trend in coming six years in pakistan, but with downward slope as shown in figure 2, it can be due to ignorance of government and policy makers as a minor crop. farmers giving more importance to cash and major crops, as they earn more from other crops so they show less intention to this crop. similarly, table 3 is also explaining the same type of future trends of sorghum area in pakistan. 272421181512963 450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 index ar ea ( he ct ar e) mape 4.395 mad 15.304 msd 519.488 accuracy measures actual fits forecasts variable trend analysis plot for area (hectare) quadratic trend model yt = 401.8 + 1.59*t 0.471*t**2 figure 2: forecasted sorghum area forecasted sorghum production the production growth rate is relatively higher than the area growth rate of sorghum in pakistan. as figure 3 explained the trend analysis plot for production of sorghum in pakistan by using quadratic trend model. the black line shows actual values, red fitted values and green line is for forecasted values of sorghum production at 95% prediction interval. table 3 showed that if the present growth rates of sorghum remain the same then production of sorghum in pakistan would be 117.869, 105.287, 92.072, 78.224, 63.744 and 48.631 thousands ton respectively for the years 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. forecasted values of production under sorghum in pakistan have decreasing trend in coming six years in pakistan. decrease in production is due to availability of low yielding varieties, improper use of inputs and non availability of inputs for sorghum in pakistan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 283-289 288 272421181512963 250 200 150 100 50 index pr od uc ti on (t on ne s) mape 4.785 mad 9.841 msd 220.908 accuracy measures actual fits forecasts variable trend analysis plot for production(tonnes) quadratic trend model yt = 232.7 + 2.28*t 0.3163*t**2 figure 3: forecasted sorghum production table 3: six years forecasted area and production of sorghum forecast years area (000 hectares) production (000, ton) 2012 188.995 117.869 2013 168.428 105.287 2014 146.918 92.072 2015 124.466 78.224 2016 101.071 63.744 2017 76.733 48.631 table 3 is explaining the future trends of sorghum area and production in pakistan. the results clearly revealed that there is decreasing trend for area and production of sorghum in pakistan. among various factors responsible for low yield, lack of quality seed of sorghum is of prime importance (anonymous, 2004). conclusion and recommendations quadratic model provides good technique for predicting the magnitude of any variable. in this study developed model was quadratic trend model on the basis of best accuracy measures techniques. the results showed that from the forecast available by using the developed model, it can be seen that forecasted area and production has consistent decreasing trends for the coming six years from 20132017 respectively. the decrease in area is more as comparative to decrease in production of sorghum in pakistan. the model can be used by researchers for forecasting of sorghum yield as well in pakistan. however, it should be updated from time to time with inclusion of current data. references abdullah, m. and m. t. chaudhry (1996). improved fodder and seed production in central irrigated punjab. proc. of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 283-289 289 national conference on the improvement production and utilization of fodder crops in pakistan, march 2527 held at narc, islamabad, pakistan: 55-62. agricultural statistics of pakistan ( 2005). govt. of pakistan, ministry of food, agriculture and livestock division, islamabad, pakistan. anonymous (2004). traveling workshop on maize, sorghum and millet. in: chughtai, s. r. & j. fateh (eds.). narc, islamabad, pakistan. anonymous (2006). agricultural statistics of pakistan. statistical division, ministry of food agriculture & livestock, government of pakistan, islamabad. hall, a. j. (2000). sorghum utilization and the livelihoods of the poor in india: a review of findings and recommendations. page 41 in summary proceedings of a workshop, 4–5 february 1999, icrisat, patancheru, india (hall aj and yoganand b, eds.). patancheru 502 324, andhra pradesh, india: international crops research institute for the semi-arid tropics. karim, r., awala, a. and akhter, m. (2010). forecasting of wheat production in bangladesh. bangladesh j.agril. res. 35(1): 17-28. kelley, t. and parthasarathy rao p. (1994). yield and quality characteristics of improved and traditional sorghum cultivars: farmers’ perceptions and preferences. pages 133–145 in variation in the quantity and quality of fibrous crop residues: proceedings of a national seminar held at the baif development research foundation, pune, maharashtra, india (joshi al, doyle pt and oosting sj, eds.). pune, maharashtra, india: baif. kelley, t., parthasarathy rao p. and walker t. (1993).the relative value of cereal straw fodder in india: implications for cereal breeding programs at icrisat.pages 88–105 in social science research for agricultural technology development: spatial and temporal dimensions (dvorak k, ed.). london, uk: cabi. mehmood, s., bashir a., amad a. and akram z. (2008). molecular characterization of regional sorghum bicolor varieties from pakistan. pak. j. bot. 40: 2015-2021. pindyck, r. l. and d. l. ribinfeld (199l). econometric models and economic forecasts, third edition, mcgraw-hill inc., new york. pp: 230-236.wheeler, a. forage and pasture crops. dvan nostrand co. inc, 639, 1950. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 2 february 2013. † corresponding author acknowledgment: the financial support for this project from faculty of science and technology of the state islamic university, bandung funding is gratefully acknowledged. production of biodiesel and growth of staurastrum sp. in response to co2 induction mohamad agus salim† (biology departement, faculty of science & technology, state islamic university bandung, indonesia) yeni yuniarti (mathematic education departement, indonesia of educational university, indonesia) opik taufikurohman (biology departement, faculty of science & technology, state islamic university bandung, indonesia) citation: mohamad agus salim, yeni yuniarti and opik taufikurohman (2013) “production of biodiesel and growth of staurastrum sp. in response to co2 induction”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 6771. production of biodiesel and growth of staurastrum... 67 author(s) mohamad agus salim biology departement, faculty of science & technology, state islamic university bandung, indonesia yeni yuniarti mathematic education departement, indonesia of educational university, indonesia opik taufikurohman biology departement, faculty of science & technology, state islamic university bandung, indonesia production of biodiesel and growth of staurastrum sp. in response to co2 induction abstract the research has been conducted to know the influences of co2 induction to cell density and biodiesel production of staurastrum sp microalgae. the experiment design was completely randomized design with ten replications. the treatments comprising of 3 kinds: co2 induction, air induction and control (without treatment). at peak population, the highest density for co2 induction was 8,895,520 cell.ml -1 at the day of seven, for air induction 5,690,880 cell.ml -1 at the day of eight and control 2,578,045 cell.ml -1 at the day of ten. the highest fresh weight and dry weight was occurred in staurastrum sp culture with treatment co2 induction followed by air induction and control. the highest oil production was occurred in staurastrum sp culture with treatment co2 induction followed by air induction and control. the highest biodiesel production was occurred in staurastrum sp culture with treatment co2 induction at 31.95%-weight followed by air induction at 19.65%-weight and control at 16.52%-weight. keywords: biodiesel, co2, growth, staurastrum sp. introduction currently, more than 80% of the energy produced globally each year is generated through the combustion of fossil fuels (sayre, 2010). industries related to electricity generation, natural gas processing, cement, iron and steel manufacturing, combustion of municipal solid waste are the major contributor of atmospheric co2 because of their dependence on carbon sources like coal, oil, natural gas for fulfilling their energy requirement (kumar et al., 2011). the use of microalgae for co2 sequestration has several advantages: mitigating co2, the major source of global warming as well as producing biofuels and other interesting secondary metabolites (brennan and owende, 2010). because microalgal biomass is made up of about 50% carbon, this element is a major nutrient for microalgal biomass growth. under phototrophic growth conditions, microalgae utilize atmospheric co2 as carbon source to synthesize organic compounds (putt et al., 2011) microalgae are found to have higher photosynthetic efficiencies than most photoautotrophic organisms and have 10 – 50 times higher carbon removal efficiencies than other terrestrial plants (li et al., 2008). mass cultivation of microalgae has been employed in the production of valuable biochemicals such as astaxanthine, b-carotene, pigments, vitamins, and polyunsaturated fatty acid (das et al., 2011). microalgae typically have more than 30% oil yield and possess a great potential as a feedstock of renewable fuels such as biodiesel (ahmad et al., 2011). microalgal lipid most accumulated as triglycerides can be transformed to biodiesel (tang et al., 2011) the significant amount of fuel demand and the depletion of petroleum diesel, other sources of transportation fuel, such as microalgae are gaining recent attention. a microalga is considered an ideal biodiesel feedstock due to its high growth rate, productivity, and photosynthetic efficiency while its production consumes less energy compared with other feedstock (lehr and posten, 2009). the microalgal cultivation depends on major parameters such as nutrients, carbon dioxide asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 67-71 68 and light (soratana and landis, 2011). generally, microalgae use co2 as the carbon source and light as the energy source for metabolic activity. green microalgae (chlorophyta) such as species of staurastrum sp has a simple structure which is less than 2 mm in diameter but the high growth rate and contain oils that can be used as biodiesel. therefore in this study will be used induction gas carbon dioxide (co2) to the growth of staurastrum sp microalgae species can be maximized and expected to produce oil that will be converted into biodiesel in large amount. the aims of this research were to determine the biomass, biodiesel production from oil of microalgae staurastrum sp that influenced by carbon dioxide induction. materials and method the study was conducted from september to december 2010. microalgae staurastrum sp was derived from the collection of the laboratory department of biology, faculty of science and technology of the state islamic university sunan gunung djati bandung, was the result of isolation from the fresh water cibiru, bandung. in the experiments, strauratrum sp was cultivated in 500 ml erlenmeyer flask with 200 ml working volume of basal bold medium under 25 ±1 o c and 180 µmol m -2 s -2 light intensity was measured by a light meter. the initial density of cell in oculum was 10.000 cells.ml -1 and the initial ph was 6.5. a gas distributor provided with flow rates of co2 mixed with ambient air was used to prepare co2 concentrations of 0.03%. cultures were aerated continuously with filtered (0.22 µm) mixtures via bubbling from the above of erlenmeyer flask with an aeration rate of 200 ml.min -1 (i.e. 0.25 vvm, volume gas per volume media per minute). calculation of cell density was done periodicallyevery 24hours for14 days, using haemacyto meter. for the growth rate calculated by the following equation (chrismadha et al., 2006): ln (xt / xo) µ = ------------------- t description: µ = the rate of growth (cell division.day -1 ), xt= celldensityat time t, xo = initialcelldensity, t = time (days). the dry cell weight (g.l -1 ) was measured according to the method as described by chi et al. (2007). microalgal cells were harvested by centrifugation (5804r, eppendorf, germany) at 8000 rpm for 5 min and washed twice with distilled water. the microalgal pellet was lyophilized drying in a freeze drier (fd-1-50, boyikang, china) for dry weight measurement. the total lipids were extracted from microalgal cells using a modified method of zhu et al (2007). dry microalgal cells were pulverized in a mortar mixed with liquid nitrogen and extracted using ethanol 99.8%. about 5 ml solvents and 100 mg dry cell were used in each extraction step. the procedure was repeated three times until the total lipids were fully extracted. the solvent phase was transferred by pipette and evaporated in a rotary evaporator under vacuum at 60 o c. then the total lipids were weighed using analytical balance (bs 124s, sartorius, germany). data were analyzed first by one way analysis of variance (anova) and then duncan's multiple range test (dmrt) for pair wise comparison was used at the 5% significance level. (gomez and gomez, 1995). results and discussion table 1: average growth of staurastrum sp number of cells in single culture for 14 days days treatment control (t0) air induction (t1) co2 induction (t2) 1 10.000 10.000 10.000 2 122.000 267.000 545.820 3 505.452 809.785 1.045.930 4 1.020.665 1.200.450 2.455.332 5 1.225.200 2.675.433 4.875.525 production of biodiesel and growth of staurastrum... 69 6 1.554.445 3.102.344 6.905.572 7 1.690.035 4.470.650 8.895.520 *) 8 1.766.500 5.690.880*) 8.539.912 9 2.190.090 3.985.453 8.005.735 10 2.578.045*) 2.977.053 7.015.250 11 2.485.900 2.554.350 6.900.875 12 2.205.785 2.443.263 6.565.003 13 1.996.700 2.065.651 6.205.359 14 1.595.245 1.885.753 5.980.943 description: (*) = peak population table 1 illustrates the average number of microalgal cells in all treatments showed an increased growth. when compared with the culture of staurastrum sp without treatment (control) all the existing treatments of the air and co2 induction showed substantial growth in the number of cells. on the second day all treatments including the control showed a substantial increase. it shows that staurastrum sp cells do not require a longer adaptation to various environmental factors for its growth. beginning with that form graphs of exponential growth, the growth of staurastrum sp number of cells in single culture without treatment (control) reached the peak on the 10 th day with the number of cells as much as 2,578,045 cells.ml -1 . the growthof cells number in the treatment of air induction reached peak populationon the 8 th day by the cells number as much as 5,690,880 cells.ml -1 . while the number of cells in the treatment of co2 induction reached peak population on the 7 th day by the cells number of 8,895,520 cells.ml -1 . attainment of peak population more rapid in treatment of co2 induction allows cells carry out photosynthesis resulting in more biomass. nutrient availability in a medium does not support the growth of cells number. after reaching the peak population, the growth of cell number immediately decreased. table 2: average fresh and dry weight biomass of microalgal staurastrum sp. at peak population of mass culture treatment fresh weight (gram) dry weight (gram) t0 = control 130,72 (a) 12,65 (a) t1= air induction 182,67 (b) 18,04 (b) t2 = co2 induction 238,85 (c) 24,56 (c ) value in a column followed by a common letter are not significantly different at the 5% level by dmrt. after harvesting in mass culture both dry weight and fresh weight showed a marked improvement on the basis of statistical tests on the 95% confidence interval of the control. the largestof fresh weight achieved by co2 induction treatment followed by air induction and the lowest in control. moreover the highest dry weight achieved by co2 induction treatment. dry weight in all treatments showed more than 10% of fresh weight, except in control of less than 10%. biomass was greater in treatment, especially induction of co2 in line with the number of cells of staurastrum sp. carbon dioxide was induced into the medium has been exploited by staurastrum sp cells for growth and reproduction. table 3: average oil yield (%) and water content (%) from staurastrum sp. solvent extraction with ethanol (99.8%) treatment oil products (%-weight) water content (%) (hydroalcoholic phase) t0 (control) 20,72 (a) 29,34 (a) t1 (air induction) 24,55 (b) 32,15(b) t2 (co2 induction) 35,36 (c) 38,64 (c) value in a column followed by a common letter are not significantly different at the 5% level by dmrt. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 67-71 70 solvent extraction using ethanol 99.8% was very effective because it can produce high enough oil more than 20%. higher amount of oil obtained in the co2 induction treatment of 35.36%weight. oil extracted with ethanol 99.8% gives a bit of green colour. this suggests extracted staurastrum sp chlorophyll by ethanol. according to fajardo et al. (2007), the water content in hydro alcoholic phase by 40% of oil provides optimal results. the induction of the co2 content of the water treatment reached 38.64%, resulting in the highest oil that is 35.36%-weight. table 4: average biodiesel (%) and comparison of results of oil (%) treatment biodiesel (%-weight) comparison of results of oil (%) t0 (control) 16,52 (a) 79,73 t1 (air induction) 19,65 (b) 80,04 t2 (co2 induction) 31,95 (c) 90,36 value in a column followed by a common letter are not significantly different at the 5% level by dmrt. the resulting biodiesel is quite high with a value of more than 70% of oil produced. the production of biodiesel is the highest achieved by induction of the co2 treatment for 90.36% of oil revenues. the amount of biodiesel produced in the culture of staurastrum sp treated no different air induction control which is about 80% of the oil. conclusion the population peak in co2 induction treatment achieved on the 7 th day of 8,895,520 cells.ml -1 , air induction treatment achieved on the 8 th day of 5,690,880 cells.ml -1 . and control achieved on the 10 th day of 2,578,045 cells.ml -1 . dry weight in all treatments showed more than 10% of fresh weight, except in control. the induction of co2 treatment can produce the highest oil 35.36%weight meanwhile the highest production of biodiesel was achieved by induction of the co2 treatment for 90.36% from oil production. references ahmad, a. i., n. h. m. yasin, c. j. c. derek and j. k. lim (2011). microalgae as sustainable energy source for biodiesel production: a review. renewable and sustainable energy reviews, 15, 584 – 593. brennan, l. and p. owende (2010). biofuels from microalgae-a review of technologies for production, processing and extractions of biofuels and co-products. renew. sustain. energ. rev, 14, 557 – 577. chi, z., pyle, d., wen, z., frear, c., chen, s. (2007). a laboratory study of producing docosahexaenoic acid from biodiesel-waste glycerol by microalgalfermentation. process biochem, 42, 1537-1545. chrismadha,t., mardiati, y. and hadiansyah, d. (2006). phytoplankton response to increasing of air co2 concentration. limnotek, 13(1), 2632. das, p., w. lei, s. s. azis, j. p. obard (2011). enhance algae growth in both phtotrophic and mixotrophic culture under blue light. bioresources technology, 102, 3883 – 3887. fajardo, a. r, l. e. cerban, a. r. medina, f. g. a. fernandez, p. a. g. moreno and e. m. grima (2007). lipid extraction from the microalga phaeodactylum tricornutum. eur. j. lipid sci. technol,109, 120 – 126. gomez, k. a. and a. a. gomez (1995). statistical prosedures for agriculture research. university of indonesia (ui-press). jakarta. kumar, k., c. n. dasgupta, b. nayak, p. lindblad and d. das (2011). depolopmen of suitable photobioreactors fo co2 sequestration addressing global warming using green algae and cyanobacteria. bioresources technology, 102, 4945 – 4953. lehr, f. and c. posten (2009). closed photobioreactors as tools for biofuel production. current opinion in biotechnology, 20(3), 280 285. li, y., m. horsman., n. wu., c. q. lan., n. dubois-calero (2008). biofuels from microalgae. biotechnology progress, 24, 815 – 820. putt, r., m. singh, s. chinnasamy and k. c. das (2011). an efficient system for carbonation of high-rate algae pond water to enhance co2 production of biodiesel and growth of staurastrum... 71 mass transfer. bioresource technology, 102, 3240 – 3245. sayre, r. (2010). microalgae : the potential for carbon capture. bioscience, 60(9), 722 – 727. soratana, k. and a. e. landis (2011). evaluating industrial symbiosis and algae cultivation from a life cycle perspective. bioresource technology, 102, 6892 -6901. tang, d., w. han, p. li, x. miao and j. zhong (2011). co2 biofixation and fatty acid composition of scenedesmus obliquus and chlorella pyrenoidosa in response to defferent co2 levels. bioresources technology, 102, 3071 -3076. zhu, l., zhang, x., ji, l., song, x., kuang, c. (2007). changes of lipid content and fatty acid composition of schizochytrium limacinum in response to different temperatures and salinities. process biochem.42, 210-214. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. utilizing community through developing the center of community’s learning activity (ccla) in the rural area a. rusdiana (head lecturer ; faculty of science and technology, sunan gunungdjati state islamic university, bandung, nigeria) citation: a. rusdiana (2012) “utilizing community through developing the center of community’s learning activity (ccla) in the rural area”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 641 – 645. utilizing community through developing the center.... 641 author(s) a. rusdiana head lecturer; faculty of science and technology, sunan gunungdjati state islamic university, bandung, nigeria utilizing community through developing the center of community’s learning activity (ccla) in the rural area abstract utilizing community is an effort to raise their value and status, whose condition nowadays still cannot afford to avoid the trap of poorness and backwardness especially in rural area. in other words, utilizing community is to make them capable and independent, creating more effective and efficient change. the center of community’s learning activity (ccla) as one of non-formal education institutions grown and established by community’s initiative will develop when both the executor of the program and the stakeholders have similar perception in increasing the quality of community’s life in the condition of marginalization. therefore, this paper offers ideas of developing ccla toward independent ccla, so that ccla will be more powerful, and finally bring the change for better community. keywords: potency, developing, utilizing, centre of excellence introduction utilizing community is a very commonly discussed for the development and change of the nation from now on, especially the indonesian community’s skill viewed not good enough obstructs the development of its economy especially in rural area. the concept of utilizing community includes the definition of community development and community based development. the meaning of the utilizing community is firstly needed to be understood .utilizing in community context means the compounded individual capability in a society and build the utilization of that related community. a community which most of them posses healthy physic and mental, well educated and powerful innovative, absolutely they have high utilization while the development of society is something to be managed for the competence of the community itself. utilizing community is an effort to raise the value and status of community themselves, whose conditions nowadays is still not able to escape from the trap of poorness and backwardness, on the other words utilizing community is to make them capable and independent, until there appears the more effective and efficient change. even though the utilizing community is not merely an economy concept, from our point of view, implicitly, utilizing means to build the economic democracy where the activities of economy take place from the community by the community and for the community. this concept related to the mastery of technology, modal proprietary, and access to the market and into the sources of information, and management competency. in order to the economic democracy to run, so the accommodated inspirations of the community must be translated to become the real formulas. to formulate those realities, the state owns the bureaucracy. this bureaucracy has to run effectively, it means that it is able to perform and describe the formulas of public policies well to reach the desired goals. the concept of utilizing community and centre of excellent asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 641-645. 642 the concept of utilizing community: combining the growth and even distribution from the point of view of management, cook and maculay (arif, 2003), defines utilizing as an instrument that used to improve the performance of organization through the spreading of policy and responsibility making in that the involvement of the members in policy and responsibility making. based on those two definitions above, arif (2003) concludes that utilizing is an effort to make little people capable and develop so they can possess better competence in a role of social system through giving an authority to the community to take a part in decision making. utilizing community is a concept of economy building which encloses the value of social. this concept builds new paradigm in the development, it is “community-centered, participatory, empowering, and sustainable” (chambers, 1995). this concept is wider than just to influence (basic needs) merely or furthermore to provide a mechanism to prevent the process of poorness (safety net), which it’s thought is developed lately as an efforts to find out an alternative to the growths in the past. in order to increase the utilizing community it can be seen from three sides: first, creating an atmosphere and climate which enable the potency of community to be developed (enabling). the starting point is an introduction that everyone and every people have an improvable potency, it means that no one is powerless. utilizing is an effort to build the power itself by supporting, motivating, and rousing the awareness of possessed potency and do best to develop it. second, empowering the potency or power which is possessed by the community (empowering). it needs positive actions to conduct, besides to create the atmosphere and climate. this empowering also includes real actions, and deal with the supply of various inputs, and opening access into various opportunities that enable people to be more powerful. third, utilizing also means protecting, in a process of utilizing, the weak to be weaker is must be prevented because of the powerless to meet the powerful. therefore, protecting and maintaining to the weak is a very basic importance in the concept of utilizing community. protecting means not to isolate or cover up from interaction, because that only will understate the little and impoverish the weak. protecting must be seen from the effort to prevent the unbalanced competition and exploitation of the powerful to the powerless methodology in utilizing community toward a change the comprehension in utilizing community needs subjective posture within it’s research, this subjectivity starts from the basic posture that every research of a social problem is always conducted to improve current social situation, to align current partiality and not merely to draw and to explain current fact (buchori, 1993). utilizing community can be seen from point of view of deficit based and strength based. deficit-based approach centered on various problems and the way to solve them. its success depends on the explicit identification and diagnose to the problem. completing the proper problem solving and applying that problem solving. in the implementation, this approach can result something good, but it is possible to appear a situation of blaming each other on the problem occurred. on the other hand, strength based approach with a n appreciative inquiry method centered on potencies and competences which are owned individually or by organization to make better life. appreciative inquiry is a method that transforms the system capacity of people for positive change by focusing on positive experience and hopeful future (cooperrider and srivastva, 1987). the method of utilizing community also can be built based on many aspects, such as: (1) the competence of local community; (2) the use of facilitative and participator technique; (3) utilizing village community on its process. utilizing community through developing the center.... 643 mechanism of utilizing community as described above, utilizing community must involve whole potencies contained in the community. some aspects of them can be set forth as follow : (a) the role of the government is very importance. it means that the bureaucracy of the government has to accommodate to the mission and perspective; (b) social organizations outside the community itself. here who has a great role and function is a local community organization to help the role of the government; (c) social organization that grows from the society or commonly called as local community organization. this organization is semi or coalition, such as lkmd, pkk, or karang taruna, or which grow from the community itself, such as arisan group, group of artists, and so on; (c) cooperative enterprise is an umbrella for economy of the people which particularly stated in the constitution it is the most suitable organization to develop the economy of indonesia the centre of people learning activity as centre of excellence national education as mandated on the laws number 20 year of 2003, known in three lines, they are informal education, formal education, and non-formal education, where among those lines complete each other in developing human resource. non-formal education as contained in section 26 verse 4, it is described that the unit of nonformal education consists of course institution, training institution, and learning group, the centre of people learning activities, majelis taklim and a sort of this unit. non-formal education unit that develops rapidly nowadays is the centre of people learning activities, which on the first time of its establishing it was established in the level of sub district then spread to the village or district. at the beginning, ccla is a place of learning for people around ccla. ccla is established by people, from people, and for people. the main activity of ccla is teaching and learning of the community through various program services of outside classrooms education. the establishing of ccla is inspired by the idea of community learning centers which are located in various developing countries since sixties, and there was a policy of broad based learning. unesco (1993), defines ccla as an organized learning spot where people are able to learn. as an institution which is established by, from and for people. ccla has potency as an independent institution. although on the earlier, many ccla depended on help and block grant finance from the government, in long term, hopefully most of ccla will be independent later, and in this case, the primer role of the government becomes decreased and tends more on the role of facilitating will run along with the independence of ccla. ccla will exist sturdily on the support of the community. the potency of ccla some of ccla potencies can be improved: first, along with the position as an educational institution with community based education which in the actualization it is characterized by: (1) support from the community in various forms; (2) the involvement of the community in decision making; (3) partnership, where the community have an equal relationship with program executer; (4) proprietary, where the community involved in controlling all decisions related to outside classrooms educational, second, seen from the program service that can be implemented. second; ccla has a potency to conduct the whole programs of non-formal and informal education, which includes: the study of life skill, early age children education, youth education, woman study, alphabetic study, competency education, and job training, equivalent education, and others which are directed to improve the competence of the students; third, in implementing community learning activity, ccla may apply group learning principle, where the community learn how to conduct learning activity together with other community in a group learning, and also the potency of learning with integrative approach, where a process of learning not only emphasize on the certain learning aspect from various aspects of human life but a process which combine various aspect of community life asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 641-645. 644 in a learning program of outside classrooms education, forth, other possessed potency; forth; ccla as an institution of community learning is a competence in collaborative and synergic cooperation with various institutions existed among the community, both those who perform learning activity or other activity that aimed in line with ccla, it is rousing the community from various antiquated, fifth, in a process of learning ccla placed the objective of community learning as a subject learning who must be actively doing learning activity for himself and the community, ccla positions community learning as an individual who has a potency to meet his own needs, community and the institution of ccla itself, and sixth, ccla as an institution in the community and established with the purpose to force the community to learn, so the presence of ccla is potential to utilize the community entirely, it means to help marginal group to be able to have a balance competence with other groups whose economic life is more proper, by providing achievable educational service so that their status and level both socially or economically can be raised. problem and challenge met in developing ccla in developing potency of ccla as an organized place where community learning are able to learn all at once as a place of learning established by, from, and for the community in order to increase knowledge, competence, skill, and attitude, and to improve all potencies of the community learning and its society, have difference and development. different development of ccla caused by the different in the components, first, there is a different in it’s proprietary (there are personal/ private ccla, foundation, islamic boarding school, local social organization, country, etc.), second, different human resource of the organizer, third, different of financial, even though recently most of ccla gain the fund from the government, forth, different in supplying tools and infrastructure of education of each ccla and forth, different in numbers and kind of educational program service performed by ccla. based on its management characterization, ccla is classified into three shapes, they are: institution based ccla, it is ccla whose initiative of the establishing and management performed by governmental institution or non governmental institution. it’s main feature is all of tools and infrastructure includes the funds are provided by the government. comprehensive based ccla, it is the ccla whose the initiative of its establishing comes from institution however the management is done together with surrounding community, and community based ccla is whose initiative, management, and implementation are form and by the community, other element are as partners and facilitators. the difference of management or even other factors caused problems and challenges that met by each ccla are also different. according to the result of the research conducted by nurdjazifah er, and friends in (2005), there are internal problem met by ccla, seen from level of standard minimal quality achievement needed are: (1) lack of ccla ability to improve the programs of outside classrooms education that suit to local need, almost most of ccla perform learning programs offered by the government; (2) some provided manuals of implementation and organization of the outside classrooms education are often implemented as what must be done properly, resulted the problem appears on its implementation; (3) level of standard minimal quality achievement of ccla haven’t been reached properly both on the implementation of education and learning program, information service, spreading net of cooperation, or on the training of education officers. in the context of outside classrooms education, the term of utilizing community is firstly stated by kindervatter (1979) in her dissertation titled: nonformal education as empowering process. according to kindervatter (zainuddin arif, 2003), utilizing is an effort to make community obtain understanding and competence to control social powers, economy, politic, to raise their position among the society. group of community or individual whose position are raised is characterized by, (1) high access and opportunity, (2) high collective utilizing community through developing the center.... 645 bargain power, (3) capability of choosing many options, (4) the status of self image and positive thinking to his own identity, (5) critical ability and ability of using experience to appraise the potency that can gain the advantage, (6) legitimating in term of society needs considered as something logic and fair, (7) capable to decide work standard independently which is done together with other, and (8) having creative perception, it is more positive view to the relationship between himself and his environment. developing ccla toward community development and utilizing to create the perspective of ccla development as centre of excellence, in developing and utilizing community, will be more meaningful as an effort to improve the performance of ccla to reach the goal effectively and efficiently by utilizing outside classrooms education (oce) program which is organized by ccla, utilizing community learning and rousing the potency of target group or the community learning to have an ability to control the power of the environment. there for ccla is to be able to develop those things above, (zainuddin arif, 2003), suggests to have some moves to do to develop community learning, whose function is to utilize the community, consists of: (1) make small group as the planner; (2) make learning group; (3) selecting and training tutor; (4) activating learning group; (5) organizing facilitator/tutor meeting; (6) supporting and helping the activity of learning group; (7) creating relationship among the group (8) performing evaluation. conclusion utilizing community is something to be esteemed to increase social stability and mobility of the community and the growth of the economy if a nation, region and district especially in rural area. the growth and utilizing of the community depends very much on the competence of the community itself and must be supported by sufficiency tools and infrastructure. many potencies of ccla will become true or on the contrary keeps becomes a potency, is depended on the organization and developing performed by ccla organizer or depends on the educators and staff officers within, and the care from various elements includes the government. besides, to create ccla as centre of excellence above it needs the strategy of organizing and developing ccla to develop the potency. references buchori (1993) "transforming educatiomn", jakarta: pustaka sinar harapan chambers (1995) pembangunan desa mulai dari belakang. jakarta: lembaga penelitian, pendidikan, dan penerangan ekonomi dan sosial. cooperrider david, l. and suresh srivastva (1987) “appreciative inquiry organizational live. jai, inc. ermaya, suradinata (1994) teori dan praktek kebijakan negara , madani, bandung. kindervatter, s. (1979) "non formal education as an empowering process", published by univ of massachusetts, center for international education. nur djazifah er, dkk (2005) pemetaan tingkat pencapaian mutu pendidikan pada pusat kegiatan belajar masyarakat (ccla) di provinsi daerah 1stimewa yogyakarta. laporan penelitian kelompok, yogyakarta: jurusan pls fip uny. unesco (1996) “broad-based learning education: the treasure within. publishing”, the australian national. uu rr. no 20 tahun (2003) tentang sistem pendidikan nasional zainuddin arif (2003) pengelolaan dan pemberdayaan pusat kegiatan belajar masyarakat. makalah effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 4 april 2013. acknowledgement: the study was carried out with financial support from the turkish scientific and technological council (tubitak). technological innovation capacity: impact factors in national agricultural research organisations in nigeria rex uzonna ukaejiofo (visiting research fellow, department of agricultural economics, cukurova university, adana, turkey, phd candidate, department of rural development & management, china agricultural university, beijing, china) citation: ukaejiofo, r. u. (2013) “technological innovation capacity: impact factors in national agricultural research organisations in nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 163-168. technological innovation capacity: impact ... 163 author(s) rex uzonna ukaejiofo visiting research fellow, department of agricultural economics, cukurova university, adana, turkey, phd candidate, department of rural development & management, china agricultural university, beijing, china technological innovation capacity: impact factors in national agricultural research organisations in nigeria abstract this paper looks at the factors that may impact for technological innovations in national agricultural research institutes in nigeria. factors which existing literature show as influencing agricultural technological innovations were identified and selected. these were presented to research personnel in 12 research institutes who were requested to indicate their importance to technological innovations on a likert scale type instrument. their responses were analysed using descriptive statistics. the following factors were rated very highly autonomy on authority, technological development level, information sharing with external linkages, level of technological expertise by key research personnel, incentives and reward system and an enhanced formal and informal linkage system. these findings are discussed and their implications for innovations in agricultural practice in nigeria were examined. deriving from these discussions, are actions and measures capable of further enhancing innovation consciousness while improving technological innovativeness in public agricultural r&d systems in nigeria and in most developing countries facing same challenges were suggested. keywords: agricultural r&d, innovation, technological innovation introduction innovation capabilities can be understood as a firm’s technological learning process, translated into the technological and operational capabilities. this learning process can involve acquisition, imitation, adoption, modification and/or the development of a new set of knowledge and technical systems for internal as well as external use. in the agricultural research systems, such technologies are always in effect to combat hunger, and develop efficient farming methods and systems to grow more food. the integration of these capabilities effectively promotes innovation, which creates competitive advantages either for the organisation producing such technology or for the farmer adopting it to enrich his/her life. the process of technological innovation involves interactions among a wide range of actors in society, who engage in a system of mutually reinforcing learning activities. these interactions and the associated components constitute dynamic “innovation systems.” innovation systems can be understood by determining what within the institutional mixture is local and what is external. open systems are needed, in which new actors and institutions are constantly being created, changed, and adapted to suit the dynamics of scientific and technological creation. the innovation systems concept embraces not only the science suppliers but the totality and interaction of actors involved in innovation. it extends beyond the creation of knowledge to encompass the factors affecting demand for and use of knowledge in novel and useful ways. government, the private sector, universities, and research institutions are important parts of a larger system of knowledge and interactions that allow diverse actors with varied strengths to come together to pursue broad common goals in agricultural innovation. in many african countries, the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 163-168 164 state still plays a key role in directing productive activities. but the private sector is an increasingly important player in adapting existing knowledge and applying it to new areas. innovations are important. innovations involve processes, interaction, integration, institutions and people. innovations yield products and confer benefits. some organisations are more innovation prone than others. the difference lies in innovative capabilities (fagerberg, 2005; sumberg, 2005; hall et al., 2006). technological capability is what the firm does to change what it knows, in other words, internalize new knowledge. the firm’s development is based on this process of technological change, which can be seen in terms of new products, efficient manufacturing, cost reduction and higher standards of quality among others. it is the ability to employ, at a given time, a given productive capacity by using a changed set of routines embedded in knowledge, skills and technical systems. data collection and methodology according to literature on innovative capacities, a variety of factors were identified from internal to external workings of firm, organisational, individual level assessments that propel innovations. the following factors were highlighted for the purpose of the research: external linkages and interactions, formal and informal communications with stakeholders in value chain, autonomy on authority, conducive government policies or regulations, technological development level, incentives and reward system, internal cross functional communication system, technological level of key personnel, information sharing with linkages, investments in r&d over time, understanding organisational core values, monitoring testing and adoption, organisational strategy, co-ordination within firm. these factors summarise major indexes to scale impact factors on technological innovations in research organisations. respondents were also asked to highlight top five research management issues identified in their various organisations. the questionnaire included questions on the organization’s mission; research management issues and training needs; scientific and technical training needs; the availability of physical and human resources; research outputs; management systems and procedures; partnerships and linkages; and funding options. survey was done from june 2012july 2012. 150 questionnaires were distributed and 129 were received at the end of the survey. all completed accordingly. the effective rate was 90%. data analysis the survey requires that the respondents rank high given factors according to their influence degree, this method was adapted from gao & zhang (2011) in determining the drivers of innovation and determinants of capability performance; the one with the higher the scores the higher the scale. from practical observations, some individual in some organisation may rank multi options and equal several options. in order to reflect a more accurate results the total points on a factor (if investments in r&d over time is selected for an example by all 129 respondents in various organisation, its total point are the sum of the points evaluated from the 12 organisations) it’s then divided by the selected times, the average score is decided. the selected rate is then calculated by dividing the selected times by the sum of the organisations which is 12. average scores are then divided by the selected rates to determine the ultimate scores, the smaller the ultimate score the higher the impact of a factor. average score is used to reflect the occurrence of a selected factor selected rates reflects the acceptability of the factor by all respondents. which implies only the factor which is continually acceptable can reflect the key factor that influences technological innovative capacity. technological innovation capacity: impact ... 165 results and analysis table 1: technological innovation impact factors impact factors total score times selected average score selected rates final score rankin g external linkages and interactions 300 80 3,75 6,66 0,56 8 formal and informal external linkages 203 75 2,71 6,25 0,43 5 autonomy on authority 199 87 2,28 7,25 0,31 1 conducive government policies or regulations 220 60 3,66 5,00 0,73 12 technological development level 165 78 2,11 6,50 0,32 2 incentives and reward system 450 116 3,88 9,66 0,40 4 internal cross functional communication system 203 73 2,78 6,08 0,46 6 technological level of key personnel 224 87 2,57 7,25 0,35 3 information sharing with linkages 170 80 2,13 6,66 0,32 2 investments in r&d over time 227 69 3,29 5,75 0,57 9 understanding organisational core values 387 89 4,34 8,16 0,53 7 monitoring testing and adoption 296 72 4,11 6,00 0,69 11 organisational strategy co-ordination within firm. 320 79 4,05 6,58 0,62 10 n=12 the above illustration provides for a very clear understanding at the various factors that influence technological innovations in public research organisations in nigeria. autonomy on authority, technological development level, information sharing with linkages, the level of technological expertise by key research personnel, incentives and reward system and an enhanced formal and informal linkage system, rank among the first five of all options presented to respondents. options categorised under incentives and reward system, external linkages, organisational culture, technological level of personnel and sharing with linkages are also very important judging by the times they were selected. due to the bureaucratic top down approach of many research institutes, respondents are beginning to understand that if a research team lead vested with a sole authority to plan and execute programs with various sub teams, adequate program planning on learning for key research staff and a more efficient linkage with external actors would propel technological innovation. in contrast above, other researchers feel that a well planned organisation culture that plans for the quality of its human and physical resources, peer effects, may spur technological innovations. in the light of the above observations it’s important to know the role a well motivated staff morale, adequate provision of physical resources, an a constructive incentive system will do to boost innovation in all aspects of a research technological development and its sustainability in the whole. the resources for technological innovation are derived from institutions themselves while innovative activities are complemented by what core competence they build. in the process of innovation, research organisations have a problem of inadequate external links, either asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 163-168 166 they fail to harness this opportunity or they are not as organised as an entity to build on such ventures. there is a high linkage deficit between industry, universities and research institutes, which in itself is a combination of strength to propel innovative action. however, under the overall situation of weak capacity in these organisations, low funding and weak adoption of some produced technology in nigeria, research organisations may not be able to sustainably match the required productivity required to actualise sustainable agricultural productivity in the sector in the short run. most research organizations have diversified beyond their core task of technology development and give considerable attention to non-research tasks such as training, dissemination and the provision of public services. at the same time the services provided by the research organizations are often seen as not relevant to the needs of stakeholders and may be the major cause for the dwindling fortunes of what partnerships can help achieve together. when there are considerable linkages and all parties share information, gaps are immediately taken into consideration and adequate solutions are made for. measures and suggestions linkage the most important potential linkage partners for agricultural research organizations include: farmers, farmer organizations and farmer cooperatives; government extension services; other research organizations in the public sector; international and regional research organizations; ngos; private sector actors/ users in research and technology transfer (agribusiness, processing companies, research and input suppliers); donor and development agencies (external investors and stakeholders); and government policy and decision making bodies. for each of the different partner types there are specific reasons to establish and maintain effective linkages. for example, linkages between research and extension organizations are needed for making research outputs and results available on a timely basis, for training of extension staff in new research methods, for preparation of information materials and methods, for conducting field days, demonstrations and on-farm research activities. the functions of linkages with international research organizations include providing access to global technology, obtaining training, improving regional cooperation on shared research problems, and avoiding duplication of research efforts. capacity deficit & training needs there exists a high capacity and incentive deficit in most of the agricultural research organizations. the response presents an urgent situation requiring attention, inadequate and decaying infrastructure as these would hugely impact on innovation produced.. support is urgently needed to strengthen the abilities for fundraising, diversifying fund sources, and the advocacy and negotiation for agricultural policy change and increased investment in agriculture and research. training for scientific skills should be coupled with a better work environment and organizational culture, both of which have been proven to be important motivating factors for researchers and their organizations to perform better. training and learning support for enhancing both technical knowledge and organizational and management skills are paramount for an organisation willing to innovate technologically. modern techniques in breeding; genetics; biotechnology; disease control; plant, animal, and fish nutrition and health; aquaculture; processing, packaging, marketing, and storage techniques; biometrics and statistical analysis; gis; analysis of climate change; and soil and water management appear to be the most widely cited technical training requirements. there needs to be a strong emphasis on improved ability for agriculture economics, policy analysis, impact assessment, and extension research, support is required for new approaches in research design and methods, performance monitoring and evaluation, strategic planning, data and knowledge management, ipr policy, patent procedures for technologies, stress management, effective communication, and quality management for research. overall performance, incentives and physical resources overall, performance measures differ with different perspectives of research institutes. such differences can result from stronger organizational emphasis on programs and opportunity as an explicit organizational technological innovation capacity: impact ... 167 arrangements, vision and mission. this could stem from greater emphasis on research collaboration and or how individual performance indicators are framed. satisfaction with physical infrastructure and the work environment were significant in explaining variations in several performance measures analyzed. among the indicators of work environment, those most often significant were the perception of participatory leadership and or a degree of freedom for supervisors to exercise authority in their domain absolving external influences on chains of command, and the presence of wellqualified staff, transparency, and open information. research personnel are somewhat satisfied with the level of research facilities and physical infrastructure. optimal salary levels are to be looked into in recommending priority investments for increasing their productivity and output. conclusions technological innovation is seen to drive the development of agricultural research organisations in so many ways as it provides it with the tool to face the challenges of food sufficiency in nigeria. the understanding of the fact that concept development should come first in all of these should be a pre-condition for agricultural technological innovation. in the real situation, agricultural systems in nigeria are currently being transformed from the traditional methods to a more modern and sustainable future. it is pertinent that agricultural research institutes tries to improve upon the understanding of technological innovation in agricultural development and establish new concepts in agricultural technological innovation. there exists an urgent call to improve scientific and technological input from the study as majority of respondents’ share the belief that a more sound input in technological development of key research personnel is needed to build upon this; guide the organisation to be the main precursor of technological innovation, pivoting external linkages in building the desired structures needed to build innovation, integrating the process of innovation through its various departments and sub units after concept development, assimilation and absorption. consequent upon this, technological innovations in most public r&d organisations in nigeria rely greatly on talent cultivation and incentive measures. so it’s necessary to cultivate and retain high quality talents, especially interdisciplinary that are good in science & technology, management and research operations-which has come to be a great source for most innovation occurring in high-tech organisations.(gao & zhang, 2011).cultivation of innovation talents mainly needs improve the mechanism for measuring individual staff performance, an incentive to encourage and attract high level technological innovation talents to get engaged in research agendas of institutes in the country side, carrying out surveys to provide technological and intellectual support. barriers hindering an effective incentive mechanism should be given prompt attention at all levels. brilliant contributions to research agendas in area of technological innovations and commercialisation of research which create great economic benefits for the organisation should be rewarded accordingly. in strengthening these talent teams, efforts should be made to building a virile technological management back bone and high quality technological cadres at the basic levels. while, optimizing resource integration, improving service system for high technological innovation talents by making provisions for further training and effective technology information sharing system for these high level technological innovation talents. the role of government cannot be over looked; most public agricultural r&d organisations in nigeria receive majority of its funding from government sources and given its role as the prevalent policy maker. by this it makes it an important participant in agricultural research activities in the country. it roles includes guiding innovation governance through macro policies and working out related laws and regulations to provide for fair environment for agricultural research institutes technological innovation, protect new techniques, and patent rights. at the same time enhancing the scientific and technological information platform, improving service system for technological innovation, increase technological information dissemination by reviving the almost moribund agricultural development programs in various asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 163-168 168 states for extension activities, broaden channels of technological innovation by creating the environment that could accommodate the private sectors and enhancing the quality of dialogue to foster technological innovation in agricultural research and development systems. references burgelman, r. (1994). fading memories: a process theory of strategic business exit in dynamic environments. administrative science quarterly, 39(1), 24-56. christensen, j. f. (1995). asset profiles for technological innovation. research policy, 24(5), 727–745. fagerberg, j. (2005). introduction: a guide to the literature, in the oxford handbook of innovation, ed. j. fagerberg, d. mowery, and r. nelson. oxford: oxford university press, 1–26. gao, q. & zhang, c. (2011). analysis of innovation capability of high tech enterprises in china, innovation. management, policy & practice, 13, 278-290. sumberg, j. (2005). systems of innovation theory and the changing architecture of agricultural research in africa. food policy, 30(1), 21–41. hall, a., janssen, w., pehu, e. & rajalahti, r. (2006). enhancing agricultural innovation: how to go beyond strengthening research systems . washington, dc: world bank. ragasa, c., abdullahi, a. and essegbey, g. o. (2011). measuring r&d performance from an innovation systems perspective: an illustration from the nigeria and ghana agricultural research systems. asti/fara/ifpri conference working paper 14. accra. © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 agricultural use of untreated urban wastewater in pakistan samina khalil (senior research economist; applied economics research centre, university of karachi, pakistan) mehmood khan kakar (lecturer; government degree college loralai, pakistan) to cite this article: samina khalil and mehmood khan kakar (2011). agricultural use of untreated urban wastewater in pakistan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1), 21-26. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 21-26 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author(s) samina khalil senior research economist; applied economics research centre, university of karachi, pakistan e-mail: skhalilpk@yahoo.com mehmood khan kakar † lecturer; government degree college loralai, pakistan e-mail: mehka11@yahoo.com agricultural use of untreated urban wastewater in pakistan abstract untreated wastewater is used for irrigation in over 80% of all pakistani communities with a population of over 10,000 inhabitants. the absence of a suitable alternative water source, wastewater‟s high nutrient value, reliability, and its proximity to urban markets are the main reasons for its use. two case studies in pakistan studied the impact of untreated wastewater use on health, environment, and income. the results showed a high increase in hookworm infections among wastewater users and a clear over-application of nutrients through wastewater. heavy metal accumulation in soil over a period of 30 years was minimal in haroonabad, a small town with no industry, but showed initial signs of excess levels in soil and plant material in faisalabad, a city with largescale industry. the impact of wastewater irrigation on household income was considerable as wastewater farmers earned approximately us$300/annum more than farmers using freshwater. both case studies showed the importance of wastewater irrigation on local livelihoods. the lack of financial resources at municipal and provincial levels for wastewater treatment calls for other measures to reduce the negative impact of untreated wastewater use on health and environment, for example to manage groundwater, regular (canal) irrigation water, and wastewater conjunctively, and regular deworming treatment of those exposed to wastewater. keywords: untreated wastewater, hookworm infections, metal accumulation, ground water introduction water is the most valuable and precious natural resource, as is essential for all forms of life and constitutes the principle part of all living beings. water is used in different ways in human societies but the most frequent and regular use of water includes drinking, domestic use of water, and irrigation of agricultural crops. whenever good quality water is scarce „marginal quality‟ water is used for the purpose of irrigation. marginal quality water includes sewage water, industrial wastewater, and any water that is unfit for drinking purposes. water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource in many arid and semi-arid countries and planners have been forced to conceder any source of water, which might be used economically and effectively for the development purposes. at the same time population extended at a high rate, the need for food production is apparent. the potential for irrigation to raise both agricultural productivity and life standards of the rural poor has long been recognized. pakistan has a population of over 150 million and is one of the few countries that is almost completely dependent on a single river system for all its agricultural water demands. the indus river and its tributaries provide water to over 16 million hectares of land, situated in the mainly arid and semi-arid zones of the country. a rapidly growing population, saline groundwater, a poorly performing irrigation distribution system, and recurrent droughts have led to increased water shortages. under these conditions, the use of mailto:skhalilpk@yahoo.com agricultural use of untreated urban…. 22 untreated urban wastewater for agriculture has become a common and widespread practice. preliminary results from a country-wide survey in the four main provinces showed that untreated wastewater was used in 50 out of 60 visited cities. the three main reasons for the use of wastewater were the high salinity of groundwater, recent droughts that have led to a decline in groundwater tables, and the nutrient value of wastewater. other important reasons were the proximity of urban markets and the reliability of wastewater, which unlike regular irrigation water is not subjected to a rotational schedule. in more than half of the visited cities some sort of fee was paid by farmers to either the municipality or the local wastewater utility for the use of wastewater. for example, in the city of quetta, 212 farmers cultivating 800 ha collectively paid us$12,000/ annum for the right to use wastewater. this was 2.5 times more than the fee for regular irrigation water. land rent in all cities reflected the importance of wastewater with the rent for land that had access to wastewater being at least double and in some cases up to six times that of land without access to wastewater. in the city of quetta, the average annual rent for land with access to wastewater was us$940/ha, compared to us$170/ha for land irrigated by freshwater. description of area quetta valley in pakistan is an arid mountainous region receiving an average rain fall of 200 mm, the estimated population of quetta is 381,57 thousands and temperatures ranging from -15°c in january to 35°c in july. the area of the study is killi (village) shahozai a small peri-urban settlement located in south west of quetta city the province of balochistan distance is approximately 11 km, the village is connected through two roads namely sabzal and brewry road. the total area of the village is 2200 acre. the population of the village is estimated 2500 people and there are 175 houses some of which is mud “kacha” (local name) and some are single story rcc houses. irrigation in quetta almost the only source of perennial water in the valley is ground water traditionally this was tapped using karazes. these are near horizontal tunnels, which have one end intersecting the groundwater table, often near the valley sides where flows from the adjacent limestone formations .the tunnels then convey flow at a grade of less than the slope of the ground above, to a point where the tunnel intersects the surface and the and water flows into irrigation channels to use for agriculture. the shortage of the ground water for agriculture purposes, the farmers divert to use waste and pullulated water for cultivation. wastewater irrigated agriculture the irrigation system of the village is also the traditional but due to the shortage of fresh water for irrigation purposes the farmer now widely use wastewater for cultivation the total area is 26712 ha out of which 1500ha could be irrigated with wastewater alone. at an average farm sizes less than one acre, this could provide livelihood support for about 150 farmers in the peri-urban areas of quetta. wastewater flows from drains into streams, which are usually used for irrigation. main cropping pattern along the main quetta (shahozai) wastewater nallas two distinct cropping systems are apparent: vegetable production; field crops with vegetables; the spatial variation of the cropping systems results from a combination of factors which include labour availability, farm size, and market access. open-space vegetable farming a common picture in both urban and peri-urban areas of pakistan is the cultivation of such cereals as maize in the rainy seasons and of irrigated vegetables in the dry seasons. more than 10 kinds of vegetables are cultivated, all of which are sold. the most perishable (often non-traditional) vegetables, such as cabage, coriander, cucumber and salad locally known as ghobi, dhanya and khira are usually grown in the urban and peri urban and harvested 1 times during the year (with only supplementary irrigation during the rainy season). the use of polluted water for vegetable farming is more widespread in the more populated cities where safe water is scare and is used for domestic purposes. from a general survey among open-space farmers carried out in 2002, it was found that about 84% of nearly 100 farmers farming in and close to quetta city and almost all 100 farmers in quetta used polluted water for irrigation, at least during the dry seasons. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 21-26 23 typical urban farm sizes range from 0.1–0.2 ha and they increase in size along the urban–rural gradient. as production is market-oriented, farming is input and output-intensive, particularly in terms of the use of water and such other farm inputs as poultry manure, pesticides and fertilisers. in pakistan, most farmers use watering to irrigate, use water canal (nala) while only a few farmers with larger holdings in peri-urban areas use motor pumps. vegetable production a distinct features of the intensive vegetable production systems is the continuous all year production of vegetables and the absence of a fallow. the proximity to the urban areas – i.e. the source of wastewater – ensures a reliable irrigation supply during the dry season (may august). these production systems are predominantly found at shahozai quetta. the ease of access to local urban markets and high urban demand ensure a secure market for vegetable produce, particularly during the dry season when vegetable market prices increase three to five fold. the intensive vegetable production systems require considerably higher labour inputs than field crop. household members normally meet these labour inputs but during peak periods additional farm labourers may be hired. further examination of wastewater irrigation practices reveals a range of associated problems that threaten to outweigh the benefits. the improved crop yields are also offset by a problematic increase in the incidence of weeds and pests. a common picture in both urban and periurban areas of quetta the cultivation of such cereals as maize in the rainy seasons and of irrigated vegetables in the dry seasons. more than 10 kinds of vegetables are cultivated, such as spinach, salad leaves, qulfa, mustard leaves, maithee (local names), all of which are sold. the most perishable (often non-traditional) vegetables grown in the village and often harvested 11 times during the year (with only supplementary irrigation during the rainy season). methodology a farming systems survey was conducted in june 2004 using semi-structured interviews and participatory rural appraisal (pra) techniques. the first phase consisted of an orientation and familiarisation survey of the farming systems located along the main quetta wastewater nalla (open drains). this provided an opportunity to make initial contact with the farmers thereby introducing the research project and identifying some of their main concerns, issues and constraints, in addition, the geographical extent to which wastewater is used for irrigation was also gauged. the results of the preliminary survey was used to select the peri-urban village (shahozai) that would be targeted during the survey; consideration was given to ensuring that a wide geographical area was covered in an attempt to identify spatial patterns and trends. the second phase consisted of the main survey and incorporated semi-structured interviews; cropping calendars and on-farm transect walks. during the survey a total of 25 farmers and 25 non farmers were interviewed, consisting primarily of smallholders with plot sizes below one hectare (ha). in the peri-urban areas of quetta land ownership and occupations are the principle criteria used by the villages to describe characteristics of the poor (brook and dávila, 2000). indeed, many of the villagers themselves classify smallholders with plot sizes below two hectares as „poor‟, while the landless – often employed as agricultural labourers – are classified as the „very poor‟ (hillyer et al., 2002). the interviews were supported with cropping calendars and transect walks with the farmers through the areas that were irrigated with wastewater; most of the interviews took place in the farmers‟ fields. and test for soil, plants, wastewater, the samples are collected from different areas of plots, field, and nalla respectively. socio-economic benefits of wastewater irrigation individual benefits preliminary cost/benefit analyses have been carried out for urban and peri-urban vegetable farmers in and around the open-space urban farmers can achieve annual income levels of us$400–600/ha. these levels are achieved due to the intensive nature of farming made possible partly by the free and reliable supply of water. however, being successful in this way requires careful observations of market demand in the lean season in order to properly plan for the required inputs, particularly agricultural use of untreated urban…. 24 seed (danso and drechsel, 2003). also, dry season peri-urban vegetable farming is seen as a significant source for income generation, since during the wet season staple crops are also grown for household consumption. on average, farm income from all vegetables amounts to about us$1,200/ha but a more conservative estimate considering actual crop mix could be us$500/ha (cornish et al., 2001). most of the vegetable crops are grown in the dry months of november to february. the authors estimate the actual peri-urban area under informal irrigation within a 40-km radius of quetta as 11,500 ha. this is less than the total area reported under formal irrigation in the area. the annual value of this production has been estimated as us$5.7 million. a significant part of this is produced with wastewater. wastewater contains so much of the stuff that posses the fertilizing qualities so it save the cost of fertilizer and wastewater is comparatively cheaper than the fresh water therefore it save quit good amount of the irrigated water for the farmers. aggregate benefit to the city the value of wastewater irrigation should not only be seen from the perspective of livelihood support, employment, and income generation given that the actual (sometimes small) numbers of open-space farmers might not attract the attention of municipal authorities. the overall (aggregate) benefit to the city should also be highlighted. an example is the dependence of the city on irrigated urban vegetable production. due to the lack of refrigerated transport and storage, the supply of perishable vegetables to urban dwellers depends significantly on this kind of agriculture (nugent, 2000). in senegal, for example, about 60% of the vegetables consumed in dakar are produced within or close to the city (niang et al., 2002), mostly with wastewater. heavy metals results quetta the results for quetta indicate that because the ph of the soils analysed ranged from 7.72–8.30, the levels of copper (cu), nickel (ni), lead (pb), and chromium (cr) are within european economic community (eec) maximum permissible (mp) levels (table 8.3). no mp levels are established for cobalt (co) and manganese (mn). however, a significant accumulation of pb and cu can be observed within the top 0–15 cm of the 100% wastewater-irrigated soil profiles (table 8.3). in contrast, ni, co, cr and mn remained relatively uniform irrespective of depth with mean (n=6) concentrations of ni 30.2 (±0.4), co 11.3 (±0.5), cr 56.0 (±9.5) and mn 256.9 (±18.4) mg/ kg (table 8.3). as with the 100% wastewater-irrigated field, pb and cu levels were elevated at the soil surface (0–5 cm) of the conjunctively irrigated field (table 8.3). however, the surface accumulation of pb and cu was restricted to 0–5 cm soil depth compared to 0– 15 cm for the 100% wastewater-irrigated field. it is suggested that the elevated levels of pb could be attributable to deposition from petrol fumes as the 100% irrigated wastewater site is located next to the central bus station. other metal concentrations remain relatively uniform with depth with mean (n=6) concentrations of ni 26.9 (±1.1), co 12.3 (±0.9), cr 46.5 (±4.6) and mn 231.9 (±12.5) mg/kg. table 1: total nitrogen (tn) application, nitrogen ratios and total amount of wastewater applied to vegetables quetta, pakistan quetta tn/croping nitrogen ratio* total water applied (mm) 450 445 312 nitrogen ratio total n applied / recommended n×100 table 2: vertical distribution of heavy metal concentrations in soil (mg/kg) at varying soil depths in relation to type of irrigation water used at three sites in quetta concentration (mg/kg) at various soil depths* type of pb pb cu cu ni co mn cr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 21-26 25 irrigation water 100% wastewater (0-15cm)* 19.7 (2.3) (15-90cm) 8.2 (1.2) (0-15cm) 82.9 (1.4) (15-90cm) 70.1 (2.4) (0-90cm) 32.2 (0.4) (0-90cm) 11.3 (0.5) (0-90cm) 256.9 (18.4) (0-90cm) 56.0 (9.5) conjunctive use (0-5cm) 12.4 (5-90cm) 6.4 (0-5cm) 77.3 (5-90cm) 58.4 (2.0) (0-90cm) 26.9 (1.1) (0-90cm) 12.3 (0.9) (0-90cm) 231.9 (12.5) (0-90cm) 46.5 (4.6) freshwater (0-90cm) 7.9 (0-90cm) (0-90cm) 21.9 (0-90cm) (0-90cm) 22.5 (0-90cm) 11.2 (0-90cm) 185.7 (0-90cm) 64.2 eec mp levels 50-300 50-140 30-75 100-150 a sampling depth in parentheses. b standard deviation in parentheses and italicised. c the range of european economic community (eec) maximum permissible (mp) levels for pb, cu and ni given in table 8.3 correspond to soil ph. the lower value given corresponds to a soil ph < 5.5 and the higher value a soil ph >7.0. in contrast, both soil pb and cu in the hectare (freshwater-irrigated) fields were significantly lower than in the wastewater-irrigated plots (table 8.3). in addition, no surface accumulation of pb or cu was observed. in comparison to the wastewaterirrigated plots, levels of ni, co, mn and cr remained relatively uniform irrespective of soil depth. conclusion untreated wastewater irrigation poses serious health risks that cannot be ignored. while the risks to consumers may not be excessive, as most vegetables grown in land irrigated with wastewater are eaten cooked, the risks to farmers practicing flood irrigation cannot be ignored. the studies in quetta show a 5-fold increase in the risk of hookworm infection among wastewater farmers. however many of these farmers have no other option or do not want to use other water. this was illustrated by some farmers in quetta who had access to treated and untreated wastewater but opted for the untreated (black) wastewater as it was considered less saline and better for their crops. in the present situation there seem to be clear gains for both farmers and municipalities. farmers are willing to pay high water fees, which in turn are used by municipalities to finance the maintenance and operation costs of drinking water and sewerage services. however, the long-term sustainability is at risk as farmers are limited in their choice of crops and heavy metal uptake by wheat as measured in its grain is getting close to critical levels. groundwater contamination due to extensive irrigation with wastewater has not been an issue for quetta because the natural saline groundwater there means they have no alternative irrigation water source, but it would be an important issue in cities and towns in the fresh groundwater regions. although the use of wastewater is likely to become increasingly important for pakistan as a combined strategy for water conservation and pollution prevention, management of this resource is in the hands of local farmers and municipalities. there seems to be little awareness of the risks involved in the use of untreated wastewater among local municipalities where the opinion of many is that „the farmer knows best‟. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. agricultural use of untreated urban…. 26 references brook, r. m., & dávila, j. d. (eds.). (2000). the peri-urban interface: a tale of two cities. school of agricultural and forest sciences, university of wales. cornish, g. a., & aidoo, j. b. (2000) informal irrigation in the peri-urban zone of kumasi, ghana. report od/tn 97. hr wallingford ltd, wallingford, uk. danso, g., drechsel, p., & gyiele, l. (2003). urban household perception of urine-excreta and solid waste source separation in urban areas of ghana. in iwa 2nd international symposium on ecological sanitation (pp. 191-196). hillyer, k. j., paril, a., & hunshal, c. s. (2002). a study of the livelihood strategies of the poor and very poor in peri-urban areas of hublidharwad, and the impact of urbanisation upon them: annex b. in brook, r.m. (ed.) filling gaps in knowledge about the periurban interface around hublidharwad. department for international development project no. r7867. final technical report. university of wales, bangor, uk (natural resources systems programme, department for international development, (p. b1-f66). niang, a., amadalo, b. a., de wolf, j., gathumbi s. m. (2002). species screening for shortterm planted fallows in the highlands of western kenya. agroforestry systems, 56: 145–154. nugent, r., 2000. the impact of urban agriculture on the household and local economies. in bakker et al. (eds), growing cities, growing food (feldafing: dse), pp 6797. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 3 march 2013. † corresponding author acknowledgements: authors are grateful to the tobacco research board of zimbabwe who sponsored this study. the response of the red morph of the tobacco aphid, myzus persicae nicotianae, to insecticides applied under laboratory and field conditions masukwedza rhoda (plant health services department, kutsaga research station, tobacco research board, harare, zimbabwe) upenyu mazarura† and chinwada peter (university of zimbabwe, crop science department, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe) dimbi susan (plant health services department, kutsaga research station, tobacco research board, harare, zimbabwe) citation: masukwedza rhoda, mazarura upenyu, chinwada peter and dimbi susan (2013) “ the response of the red morph of the tobacco aphid, myzus persicae nicotianae, to insecticides applied under laboratory and field conditions”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 141-147. the response of the red morph of the ... 141 author(s) masukwedza rhoda plant health services department, kutsaga research station, tobacco research board, p. o. box 1909, harare, zimbabwe upenyu mazarura and chinwada peter university of zimbabwe, crop science department, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe dimbi susan plant health services department, kutsaga research station, tobacco research board, p. o. box 1909, harare, zimbabwe the response of the red morph of the tobacco aphid, myzus persicae nicotianae, to insecticides applied under laboratory and field conditions abstract the tobacco aphid, myzus persicae nicotianae is an economically important pest of tobacco, causing extensive yield losses especially as it is an important host of numerous viruses and the sudden shift from the green morph to the red morph is of concern as reports of insecticide resistance are common in this morph. the efficacy of several insecticides was studied, both in the laboratory and in the field, to establish the pest status of the red coloured morph of the tobacco aphid with respect to resistance build up. the laboratory tests confirmed that resistance could be of concern in monocrotophos only and the field work appeared to show some build up of resistance additionally in aldicarb. the results point at a need for continued monitoring as well as use of rotations in chemical use in order to reduce the chance of resistance build up. keywords: green morph, monocrotophos, red morph, aldicarb, laboratory tests introduction the cosmopolitan peach-potato aphid, m. persicae, is an economically important insect. it is a vector of many plant viruses and has developed resistance to a wide range of insecticides (devonshire et al., 1998). the tobacco (nicotiana tabacum l. solanaceae) adapted form is considered to be a distinct subspecies and is known as the tobacco aphid, m. persicae nicotianae (blackman), (margaritopoulos et al., 2003). the tobacco aphid causes significant losses in tobacco directly by feeding and honeydew deposition and indirectly by contamination and as a vector of a wide range of viruses. colour differences may be correlated with insecticide resistance (abdel-aal, 1992; lampert and dennis, 1987), reproductive performance (araya et al., 1996) and resistance to aphid parasitoids (tomiuk and wöhrmann, 1980). before 2002, the main colour form of the tobacco aphid in zimbabwe was green. however, during the 2003/04 tobacco season, red forms of the aphid were observed to be more prevalent than the green one at kutsaga research station. during the 2004/05 season, green forms could not be found in some areas and where they existed, only a few constituted this form. elsewhere in the world, the red form of the tobacco aphid was observed as far back as 1985 in north carolina, usa (harlow and lampert, 1990) and appeared to be a more serious pest than the green form. in the united states, where the tobacco aphid myzus p. nicotinae was previously described as a tobacco form of the green peach aphid (blackman, 1987), the red-coloured form was found to consistently express resistance to malathion and acephate. on the other hand, the resistance in the green form was inconsistent (harlow and lampert, 1990). in north america, red morphs present on tobacco plants were deemed to be more resistant to organophosphorus insecticides than the green form (harlow and lampert, 1990) and reports of control failure by some tobacco growers during the 2004-05 season in zimbabwe brought about awareness of the ever-present threat of insecticide resistance caused by unilateral reliance on pesticides. pesticide resistance is even more threatening where the tobacco aphid is concerned because asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 141-147 142 resistance, should it occur, is permanent. this is because there is no mechanism for crossing of gene pools as a result of the anholocyclic (devoid of sexual reproduction) nature of reproduction exhibited by this aphid in zimbabwe (blair, 1990). the occurrence and subsequent dominance of the red form of m. p. nicotianae brought about the need for a study of its biology as this is an important tool for the development of effective control strategies. results from a study on the biology of these red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid have shown that the red morph of the tobacco aphid has a greater reproductive potential and rate of population increase than the green morph (unpublished tobacco research board of zimbabwe annual report, 2011). the objective of this study was to determine the response of the red morph of the tobacco aphid myzus p. nicotianae, on flue-cured tobacco to insecticides already registered for the green morph in zimbabwe. materials and methods laboratory studies foliar insecticides were evaluated using the plant dip method (kerns et al., 1996) in three trials. tobacco plants were washed in distilled water and foliar portions of the tobacco plant dipped for five seconds into insecticide solutions (imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, aldicarb, monocrotophos, acephate, dimethoate and pirimicarb at the tobacco research board’s recommended rate of each insecticide (trb handbook, 2002). plants were removed and allowed to dry at room temperature for 30 minutes, and were then transferred to plastic pots. pots were prepared by drilling 1 cm diameter holes into the lids of the clear plastic small cup shaped containers (75 mm x 105 mm diameter). plants were placed into these holes with roots protruding from the holes into the pot and secured into place using sticky tape. approximately 400 ml of distilled water were added into each pot forming a hydroponic reservoir. twenty adult red tobacco aphids, from greenhouse tobacco plant cultures originally obtained from kutsaga fields, and reared in the entomology laboratory at kutsaga, were placed on each plant and the cups were put in a growth room at temperature of 24º c and 16 hours photoperiod. for systemic aphicides, plant roots were dipped in 500 ml hydroponic reservoirs treated with the respective insecticide rates at ambient temperature for 48 hours. this allowed the systemic movement of the insecticide from the roots to the leaves before aphids were introduced. after 24 hours, mortality was determined by gently probing the aphids with a fine brush. if the aphid moved or walked it was considered alive. if no movement was observed or if the aphid could not walk, it was considered dead. the experiment was a randomised complete block design with 8 treatments in 3 blocks and was repeated in 3 different years, 2007-2009. field experiments three experiments were carried out under field conditions at kutsaga research station in zimbabwe (17º 55' s, 31º 08', altitude 1480 m above sea level, average annual rainfall 882 mm), from 2008-2009. seedlings were sown in float beds as described by mazarura and asher (2011), in august and transplanted into the lands in november. planting-hole aphicides (imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, aldicarb and thiflu) were applied as per manufacturer’s recommendation (table 1) soon after planting, and artificial aphid infestation with 4 aphids plant-1 were done at 3 weeks after planting. curative sprays (dimethoate, acephate, monocrotophos and methamidophos) and aphid assessments were done at 6 weeks after planting, when infestation levels had reached a score of at least 1(1-10 aphids) in the untreated control plots. there-after, this was done on a weekly basis until topping at 9 weeks after planting. aphid infestation was assessed and scores from 0 to 4 assigned for each treatment. the scores were: 0 for no aphids, 1for 1-10 aphids, 2 for 11-100 aphids, 3 for 101-1000 aphids, and 4 for 1000 or more aphids. analysis of variance (with genstat 9th edition) was used to determine the response of the aphid to the insecticides and abott’s formula (abott, 1987) was used to correct for mortality in the untreated plots. the the response of the red morph of the ... 143 experiment was a randomised complete block design with 9 treatments in 3 blocks and was repeated in 3 different years (2007 to 2009). results laboratory experiments there were no significant differences (p > 0.05) in aphid mortality among the systemics, namely imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, aldicarb and pirimicarb in 2008 and 2009 (table 1); although in 2007 thiamethoxam gave significantly (p < 0.001) the least control. significant differences in aphid mortality among the contact aphicides though, were apparent with aphid mortality with monocrotophos being significantly (p <0.001) lower than for acephate and dimethoate; and the systemic aphicides from the three years (2007, 2008, 2009) of the study. a comparison of the insecticides in the field is given in tables 2 4. the field studies were done when pirimicarb had been banned for use due to its toxicity properties and it was replaced with thiflu which was a new product accepted to be good against aphids. table 1: percent mortality in currently registered aphicides of the tobacco aphid myzus p. nicotianae *** = p<0.001. dg =dispersible granule, ec = emulsifiable concentrate, sl =soluble liquid field experiments for the 2007 season, artificial aphid infestation was carried out at 5 weeks after planting (wap) and curative contact sprays were done after assessment at 6 weeks after planting. planting hole treatments with the neonicotinoid aphicides, imidacloprid, thiamethoxam and thiamethoxam + gave significantly better aphid control from planting, as compared to the untreated control (p < 0.001) (table 2), till 8 weeks after planting, a time when aphids ceased to become a problem. aldicarb gave similar control up to 6 weeks after planting. curative sprays of acephate, dimethoate, methamidophos and monocrotophos gave better control than the untreated control (see weeks 7 and 8). although better than the control, monocrotophos performed worse than all other aphicides (table 2). treatments active ingredients mode of action rate 100 l -1 water year of trial 2007 2008 2009 pirimicarb 50 dg pirimicarb systemic 125g 82.1 96.3 97.5 monocrotophos 40 ec monocrotophos contact 175g 33 71.3 69.1 dimethoate 40 ec dimethoate contact 375g 87.5 98.8 97.4 temik 15 g aldicarb systemic 0.7g plant-1 97.4 97.5 96.3 confidor 200 sl imidacloprid systemic 220 ml 76.3 93.8 98.8 actara thiamethoxam systemic 125 g 59.5 91.3 96.2 f-probability lsd (0.05) 17.28 7.76 4.39 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 141-147 144 table 2: aphid scores to currently registered aphicides of the tobacco aphid myzus p. nicotianae for 2007 *** = p <0.001 dg =dispersible granule, ec = emulsifiable concentrate, sl =soluble liquid table 3: aphid scores to currently registered aphicides of the tobacco aphid myzus p. nicotianae for 2008 *** p<0.001 dg =dispersible granule, ec = emulsifiable concentrate, sl =soluble liquid unlike in 2007 when aphid pressure was lower, in 2008 natural aphid infestation was very high but despite this, artificial aphid infestation was carried out at 6 wap, and curative contact sprays assessments at 7 wap. as was the case in 2007, preventative planting hole aphicides applied at plating, imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, thiamethoxam and aldicarb were significantly (p < 0.001) better than the control throughout the season (p < 0.05) (fig.1). the contact aphicides acephate, methamidophos and dimethoate were also very effective and were significantly different from the control (table 3). most of the aphicides showed as good or better control than the standard aphicides, dimethoate. curative contact aphicide sprays were done soon after assessments at 6 weeks after planting. preventative planting hole aphicides imidacloprid, thiamethoxam and thiflu were again the most effective throughout the season showing better control throughout the season(p < 0.0001) (table 2) than the control and comparable control relative to the standard aphicides, dimethoate. aldicarb, however, was effective only up to 7 wap. contact aphicides such as acephate, methamidophos and dimethoate were also very effective and were significantly better than the control (p < 0.001) (table 4). the control by monocrotophos was just better than the untreated control. treatments active ingredients mode of action weeks after planting 5 6 7 8 untreated control nil nil 0.6 1 3.83 0.49 thiflu 1.25 gr thiamethoxam+ systemic 0 1.29 0.16 0.07 confidor 200 sl imidacloprid systemic 0.02 0.01 0.26 0.18 lancer 75 wp acephate contact 0.79 1.24 0.75 0.13 temik 15 g aldicarb systemic 0.02 0.05 1.49 0.41 dimethoate 40 ec dimethoate systemic 0.35 0.97 1.07 0.27 monocrotophos 40 ec monocrotophos contact 0.47 0.99 1.87 0.18 tamaron 60 sl methamidophos contact 0.81 1.12 0.46 0.2 actara 25 wg thiamethoxam systemic 0 0 0.65 0.16 f-probability lsd 0.21 0.29 0.47 0.23 treatments active ingredients mode of action weeks after planting 6 7 8 9 untreated control nil nil 1.77 3.29 3.28 3.48 thiflu 1.25 gr thiamethoxam+ systemic 0.37 0.09 0.29 0.35 confidor 200 sl imidacloprid systemic 0.57 0.13 0.58 1.26 lancer 75 wp acephate contact 1.92 2.92 1.84 0.65 temik 15 g aldicarb systemic 0.35 0.23 0.51 0.91 dimethoate 40 ec dimethoate systemic 1.61 2.8 1.03 0.67 monocrotophos 40 ec monocrotophos contact 1.66 2.94 1.66 1.5 tamaron 60 sl methamidophos contact 1.57 3.04 0.84 0.28 actara 25 wg thiamethoxam systemic 0.05 0.16 0.32 0.51 f-probability lsd 0.8 0.72 0.78 0.86 the response of the red morph of the ... 145 table 4: aphid scores to currently registered aphicides of the tobacco aphid myzus p. nicotianae for 2009 treatments active ingredients mode of action weeks after planting 6 7 8 9 untreated control nil nil 1.98 1.85 2.56 2.56 thiflu 1.25 gr thiamethoxam+ systemic 0.41 0.48 1.52 1.52 confidor 200 sl imidacloprid systemic 0.09 0.01 0.18 0.18 lancer 75 wp acephate contact 1.02 0.27 0.18 0.18 temik 15 g aldicarb systemic 0.69 1.23 2.54 2.54 dimethoate 40 ec dimethoate systemic 1.51 0.42 1.26 1.26 monocrotophos 40 ec monocrotophos contact 1.64 1.17 1.74 1.74 tamaron 60 sl methamidophos contact 1.67 0.37 0.29 0.29 actara 25 wg thiamethoxam systemic 0.17 0.33 1.24 1.24 f-probability lsd 0.43 0.29 0.31 0.31 dg =dispersible granule, ec = emulsifiable concentrate, sl =soluble liquid discussion based on our data, we cannot be certain of insecticide resistance in the red morph infesting tobacco. however, it is certain that significant differences in insecticide response existed. tobacco growers and pest control advisors should avoid using monocrotophos as a curative treatment where red-coloured morphs are present and under high aphid pressure such as in late planted tobacco it is advisable for growers to use planting hole aphicides. these will give good aphid control and result in reduced levels of sooty-mould and virus diseases. where growers use curative aphicide sprays, it is advised that they rotate the aphicides used to minimise the development of pesticide resistance. the relationship between red colour and resistance to insecticides is common among several aphid species, including potato aphids. our results, however, failed to detect any consistent reduced efficacy relative to the control. insecticide resistance to organophosphates such as dimethoate, monocrotophos and methamidophos has already been documented for m. persicae in chile (unruh et al., 1996; fuentes-contreras et al., 2004). resistance to organophosphates, carbamates and pyrethroid insecticides has been attributed to increased levels of a single carboxylesterase (e4) which express activity towards a broad range of insecticides (devonshire and swicki, 1979). harlow and lampert (1990) classified tobacco aphids from north carolina into three resistant categories based on their colour and response to malathion. they reported that redcoloured tobacco aphids were consistently 3.3 to 4.3-fold more resistant than a susceptible population. in our case, however, the red morph was controlled effectively by most of the insecticides used in the study. studies done in yuma, arizona, with red and green-yellow colour forms showed that the red-coloured aphids were consistently more resistant to dimethoate and lambdacyhalothrin than the green-yellow ones (kerns et al., 1996), something we did not observe perhaps because the red morph is still a new pest in the country. elsewhere in the world, the red form of the tobacco aphid had been observed as far back as 1985 in north carolina, usa and appeared to be a more serious pest than the green morph as it was is more tolerant of higher temperatures and is also more prone to develop resistance to insecticides (harlow and lampert, 1990). results therefore are consistent with those from north america where red morphs present on tobacco plants were deemed to be more resistant to organophosphorus insecticides than the green form (harlow et al., 1991). our data found out that, for the time being, the red morph of the tobacco aphid myzus p. nicotianae, has not yet developed resistance to insecticides already registered for the green morph in zimbabwe. however, these studies were done on a population from one location and cannot represent the response of other populations from various parts of the country. of interest, nevertheless, is that monocrotophos and aldicarb which are known to be very asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 141-147 146 effective in controlling the green morph of the aphid, appeared to have reduced efficacy with regards to the red morph. conclusion and recommendations the results of this study showed that current aphicides were still effective in controlling the red morph of the tobacco aphid. the study also highlighted the need for further work to elucidate the nature of resistance to insecticides of both the red and green morphs using molecular methods and also to determine the spatial distribution of this red morph in zimbabwe. although these results showed that insecticide resistance in the red morph may not be prevalent in the population we studied, caution must be taken in the use of monocrotophos and aldicarb as there appears to be some reduced efficacy. aphicide rotations employing insecticides with different modes of action must, therefore, be encouraged in order to reduce the risk of insecticide resistance build up by varying the selection pressure. further work must be carried out to monitor for resistance build up in populations collected from other parts of the country. references abott, w. s. (1987). a method of computing the effectiveness of an insecticide. j am mosq control assoc, 3(2), 302-303. abdel-aal, y. a. i., lampert, e. p., roe, r. m. & semtner, p. j. (1992). diagnostic esterases and insecticide resistance in the tobacco aphid, myzus nicotianae blackman. pesticide biochemistry and physiology, 43, 123-133. araya, j. e., cambron, s. e. & ratcliffe, r. h. (1996). development and reproduction of two color forms of english grain aphid. environmental entomology, 25(2), 366-369. blackman, r. l. (1987). morphological discrimination of a tobacco feeding form from myzus persicae (sulzer) (hemiptera: aphididae), and a key to new world myzus (nectarosiphon) species. bulletin of entomological research, 77, 713–730. blair, b. w. (1990). insect and mite pests of tobacco in zimbabwe. technical bulletin no. 1. page 5. tobacco research board, harare, zimbabwe. devonshire, a. l., field, l. m., foster, s. p., moores, g. d., williamson, m. s., & r. l. blackman (1998). the evolution of insecticide resistance in the peach – potato aphid,myzus persicae. philosophical transactions royal society of london. b 353:1677–1684. devonshire, a. l. & sawicki, r. m. (1979). insecticide resistant myzus persicae as an example of evolution by gene duplication. nature(london), 280, 140-141. fuentes-contreras, e., figueroa, c. c., reyes, m., briones, l. m. & niemeyer, h. m. (2004). genetic diversity and insecticide resistance of myzus persicae (hemiptera: aphididae) populations from tobacco in chile: evidence for the existence of a single predominant clone. bulletin of entomological research, 94, 11–18. harlow, c. d. & lampert, e. p. (1990). resistance mechanisms in two colour forms of the tobacco aphid (homoptera: aphididae). journal of economic entomology, 83, 21302135. harlow c. d., southern p. s. & lambert e. r. (1991). geographic distribution of two colour forms, carboxylesterase activity, and chromosome configuration of the tobacco aphid (homoptera: aphididae) in north carolina. annals of the entomology society of america, 84, 1175–1179. kerns, d. l., palumbo, j. c. & bryne, d. n. (1996). relative susceptibility of red and green colour forms of the green peach aphid to insecticides. southwest entomology, 19, 339346. lampert, e. p. & dennis c. a. (1987). life history of the green peach aphid (homoptera: aphididae) on flue-cured tobacco. tobacco science, 31, 91-93. margaritopoulos, j. t., blackman, r. l., tsitsipis, j. a. & sannino, l. (2003). coexistence of different host-adapted forms of the myzus persicae group (hemiptera: aphididae) in southern italy. bulletin of entomological research, 93,131–135 mazarura, u. & asher, f. (2011). the floating tray system: theory, techniques and technology, sable printers, harare, zimbabwe. tobacco research board (trb) (2002). fluecured recommendations. section i. tomiuk, j. & wöhrmann, k. (1980). population growth and population structure of natural populations of macrosiphum rosae (l.). z. ang. entomologica, 90, 464-473. trb fc (2002). flue cured recommendations. published by the tobacco research board of zimbabwe. the response of the red morph of the ... 147 unruh, t., knight, a. & bush, m. r. (1996). green peach aphid (homoptera: aphididae) resistance to endosulfan in peach and nectarine orchards in washington state. journal of economic entomology, 89, 1067-1073. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 497-504 497 physiological pattern of leaf growth at various plucking cycles applied to newly released clones of tea plant (camellia sinensis l. o. kuntze) m. subandi dr. ir., mp, estate crops production lecturer at agrotechnology department. faculty of science and technology. the state islamic university of bandung (uin), indonesia dikayani sp., mp.assistant of estate crops production lecturer at agrotechnology department, faculty of science and technology of uin. indonesia diani nurjanah sp. assistant of estate crops production lecturer at agrotechnology department,faculty of science and technology of uin. indonesia abstract an experimental research to study the effect of plucking cycles on the physiological pattern of leaf growth of tea plant of newly-released tea cultivated varieties (clones) was conducted at plantation of the research centre for tea and quinine trees of gambung of bandung, indonesia from april 2012 to july 2012. the leaf growth of tea are dependent on several genetic and environmental/agronomic factors the location of the research centre for tea and quinine tree is 1300 m above sea level. the experiment was conducted by using split plot design to examine two factors, they are various of gambung clones as the main plot with three levels, they are c1 = gambung 4; c2 = gambung 7; c3 = gambung 9. and plucking cycles as the sub-plot factor with 5 levels, they are: 5 days; 7 days, 9 days; 11 days; and 13 days. so, there are 15 combinations with are repeated 3 times. the plant physiological factors as responses to the treatments measured in leaf growth consisting of: number and quantity of leaves measured in dry weight (g); number of pecco; pecco weight; number of burung/banjhi (dormant top) in g; weight of burung/banjhi in g; number of p+3 leaves; weight of p+3 leaves; number of p+2 leaves; and weight of p+2 leaves. result of the experiment showed that the 13 days cycle allowing the further growth of leaves causing increasing of wet weight of leaves, and the gambung 9 clone showed the best physiological growth of leaves. keywords: clones, dormant (burung/banjhi), pecco, physiological, plucking introduction 1 tea (camellia sinensis l. o.kuntze) plant needs constant temperature and humidity to grow well (burgess and carr, 1999; islam et al., 2005; de 1 corresponding author’s details: name: m. subandi email address: ms24454@yahoo.com costa et al., 2007). such the climatic conditionis found in tropical and subtropical regions. balamurugan and nandagopalan (2012) said that high land plantation produces better leaves quality, while medium and lowland plantations produce more in leave quantity. pruning is regularly conducted to maintain good physiological growth resulting to sound leave asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ms24454@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 497-504 498 production, and to keep the height of shrub canopy reachable by tea peckers, so it is an important practice of tea cultivation (mahes kulkarni, 2012; krisnaraj thirugnasambantham et al., 2013). pruning is the one important part of the development of the tea plant after plantation (ntri, 2010; rehman et al., 2012). tea plant grows in physiological condition to have the harvesting applied by plucking its sprout. tea plantharvest is conducted by plucking young leaves. this practice of cutting leaves will affect the pattern of leaf physiology. nisanka et al., (2004); wen-yan han et al., (2007) said that pecco or the active youngest leave is plucked for highest quality, while the normal quality production obtained by plucking the pecco plus two or three young leaves. tea plant has a periodicity of active growth and a dormant/retarded growth (called burung in indonesia or called banjhi in india) leaves. this periodicity is dependent on agronomic practices, climatic condition and genetic factors. agronomic practices among other are pruning management, fertilizer application, and plucking cycles applied as stated by ziyad and zoysa (2006). kamau et al. (2008) said that shoot extension rate was highest at the first year of the pruning cycle for both clones. climatic condition are determined with the plantation elevations and latitudes, and microclimatic is also determined by agronomic practices as the management of plant shading, weeding practicing, apllying fertilizer, and the building of warm air trap of holes or pattern of soil tillage. and the genetic is in accordance with the clonal factors (dalimoenthe, 1990; astika, 1997). applying fertilizer is a must in agronomic point of view, especially in soil with lest fertile and the removal of nutrient due to the harvest (subandi, 2012c). the growth of young leave will be affected by plucking cycle. astika et al. (2004) stated that period and pattern of growth (periodicity of tea growth) of a cultivated clone varies among clones.gambung research centre for quinine and tea has released several new cultivated varieties (clones), three of them are the clones of gambung 4, gambung 7 , gambung 9, andother clones. as an estate crop, tea has been contributing considerable amount of income for many nations including indonesia. china and india are two countries dominate the world production. in 2011 indonesia ranks the eighth of tea producing countries with its production as much as 142,400 metric tonnes. seven other big tea producing countries are; china (1,640,310 m tonnes), india (966,733 m tonnes), kenya (377,912 m tonnes), sri lanka (327,500 m tonnes), turkey (221,600 m tonnes), vietnam (206,600 m tonnes), and iran (162,517 m tonnes) (fao, 2012 quoted by van der schaar investment, 2013). estate crop is a subsector of agriculture had showed important fund collector for indonesian nation in time of national economic turmoil in 1997 and on. at that period indonesian government faced a serious difficult economic situation. the value of indonesian currency (idr) downed to minimum rate in its history. indonesian importers were not able to import any raw material or spare-parts for replacing the parts of machineries used in their factories and plants. textile industries were collapse due to the raw material (cotton fiber) have to be imported from abroad producing cotton countries (subandi, 2012c). electronics industries were unable to maintain their production activities. most electronic element were still imported, indonesian industries in this sector of economic were just the assembling process. no current currency were available to fund the imported material, and no industries were running in normal condition. many worker are homed for permanently. this economic turmoil ignited the succession of national indonesians leadership. no economic sectors were running well except the agricultural sector. for executing this economic sector of the agriculture, there are no exported raw material and components. unlike rice which has still to be imported to meet the national consumption requirement (subandi, 2012a), the tea production together with other commodities (rubber, coffee, palm oil, sugarcane, coconut, etc.) was able to contribute collecting fund in supporting the healing of economic crisis. without which indonesian monetary crisis would furlong unsettled. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 497-504 499 cycles of plucking or the activity to harvest tea plant may vary based on the external condition as the seasonal growth, rain intensity, elevation of plantation location, system of agronomy (fertilizer application/pruning policy /shading plant), quality of leaves wanted/ plucking formulae, the available of pickers, and of course the internal or genetic characteristic of clone of plant. the theories of plucking or picking of tea had been developed since the dutch colonial established the tea plantation in indonesia in 19 centuries. in line with the advanced finding in plant physiology theory, the theories and the practices of plucking have been experimenting by the researchers both in research centers and universities as said by subandi (2012b) as time goes and human culture developes, scientific theories as the product of human intelligence have change from time to time. indonesian tea plantation production is only at the most 1,006 kg ha -1 year -1 . this low production is due to the ageing of plants, that is why the management of plantation has to consider the replanting with new cultivated variety (astika, 1997). other effort to increase the production is by applying new agronomical practices among other is the plucking cycle of tea leaves. the interaction effects between plucking cycles and the clonal characteristic was searched in this experiment. method site of the experiment is the tea plantation cultivated in the experimental field of the research centre for tea and quinine plants. in ciwidey subdistrict of bandung regency around 20 km in southern bandung city of west java, indonesia. the site is on the elevation of 1,300 m above sea level with andisol soil classification, and soil acidity (ph.4.5 to 5.5). experimental design was split plot design, the main plot was gambung clones with three levels, they are c1 = gambung 4; c2 = gambung 7; c3 = gambung 9. and plucking cycles as the sub-plot factor with 5 levels, they are: 5 days; 7 days, 9 days; 11 days; and 13 days. there are 15 combinations with three replications. the plant physiology responses (growth) and yield consist of: dry weight of leave production (g); number of pecco; pecco weight (g); number of burung (dormant top); dry weight of burung(g); number of pecco+3 leaves; dry weight of pecco+3 leaves (g); number of pecco+2 leaves; and dry weight of pecco+2 leaves (g). environmental condition were monitored at the time of experiment as the elements of climate: rainfall, wind, the sun radiation, temperature and the atmospheric humidity. the health crop condition was also noted through the analysis of starch content of plant roots. and the soil fertility is noted based on the latest data of soil analysis of the garden block. shading system of high cover crops was in good condition filtering the sun shine (fig. 1 and 2). discussion on plantation environment analysis of climatic condition in the time of experiment (april 2012 to july 2012): in general, in all java island was dry season, april was the end of rainy season with a very little of rainfall. may-junejuly were dry season with very little rainfall.rainfall record during the experiment shows in april total rainfall was 8,147 mm and total rainy days was 15. in may total rainfall was 5,831 mm total rainy days were 12 rainy days. in june total rainfall 1,488 mm with 6 rainy days, in july up to days 12th there was no rainfall at all. daily temperature which was measured at climatology observation center of gambung research centre indicated a constant at the average 20 0 c, and the average night temperature was 15 0 c. minimum night temperatures occur usually in the months of august and september of the year. these months are the peak of dry season in most indonesian regions. and frost happening in the months sometimes destroys tea plant in high land plantations. in the months of the experiment the atmospheric temperature was higher than normal but it was normalized by the existence of shading trees (shown in fig. 1 and 2), and it was not reaching the minimum at night. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 497-504 500 fig 1: leaves is waiting for plucking fig 2: other main plot (growing under the shading plants fig 3: pecco leaves grows out of the previous plucking analysis of soil before the experiment was conducted. the soil is in good; texture sandy silt (23.72 % of clay; 62.71% of silt; 13.57% of sand). c/n ratio 9, and 75.1 ppm of available p2o5. agronomical record shows that the plantation is well maintained (weeding, applying fertilizer, trimming, and plant protection). discussion on physiological plant total leaf growth. result of analyses of variance showed that subplot (plucking cycles) affected the growth of tea resulting in significant effect, and there is significant interaction between plucking cycle and various clones as shown in the graphic 1. here is the table of dry-weigh of leaves plot -1 , dry weight is accumulation of weight of several leave grades and categories. tabel 1: dry weight of leaves per-plot at various plucking cycles and clones plucking cycles clones -----------------------------gram-------------------------- p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 c1 64,51 b 84,88 a 94,74 b 114,33 b 142,22 b a b c d e c2 56,95 a 96,33 b 87,92 a 97,18 a 110,86 a a c b c d c3 80,67 b 94,68 b 154,11c 150,81c 165,57 c a b c c d notes. figures indicated with the same capital at the same column, and figures indicated with the same italic of the same row, are not significantly difference based on duncan test at 5%. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 497-504 501 graph 1: graph of leaves weight (g) of somes clones of plucking cycles the longer plucking cycle the more leaves have period to physiological development of vegetative organ and in return will affect to tea quality in view of production. plucking cycle of 13 day gives the plant to develop fully its leaves compared to shorter cycles. the plant bear more leavess and leaves ofmore in morphological weight. at that period plants bear more young leaves, and these leaves develop gradually to maturity. older leaves weighs more. as shown in the graph, a significant interaction between plucking cycles and clones happened. maintenance leaves is mature in 13 days old in view of chlorophyll formation and development. the condition when a leaf is no more sink status or parasitic condition (measured comparatively between photosynthesis and respiration rates), because its function as a active photosynthetic organ. the leaf color is already full green and since then the texture is developing hard and rigid for further fiber formation, and in consequently decrease the leaf quality . the tea leaves plucked at 13 days cycle mostly has a pecco and two or three young leaves, the oldest leaf is 13 days old. this full developed leaf contributed to the weight of leaves. number of pecco and burung/banjhi tea plant growth is characterized with the presence of active leaves and dormant (retarded growth) in its plucking table (canopy). active leaves (pecco) and dormant leaves or retarded growth (burung/banjhi) growing in the plucking tableare harvested. influenced with genetic, health condition of plant, and the environment as the climate and the soil, plants bear active and dormant leaves in a certain proportion of period. a better condition of environment induces a cultivar or a clone of tea to grow more active leaves and less dormant leaves. scarce supply of rain-water in the experiment time caused the tea plant grow slower as a result of the plant lack of available nutrition (water as solvent), and eventually caused the less production of pecco. kigalu and mike carr (2006) noted differences in yield responces to density and irrigation and drought. graph 2 and 3 show the condition of more burung appear. longer period of dormant notes the graph of burung higher than of the pecco. graph 2: number of pecco (leaves) 0 50 100 150 200 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 gambng 7 gambng 9 gambng 4 0 20 40 60 80 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 gmbng 4 gambg 7 gmbng 9 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 497-504 502 graph 3: number of burung/banjhi (leaves) graph 4: number of pecco + 3 (leaves) graph 5: number of pecco + 2 (leaves) measuring number of pecco plus is to know the rate of growth at certain period. the graph 4 and 5 show their differences. pecco + 2 was more than pecco+ 3. leaves was low in its rate due to lack of water. pecco +3 is derived from pecco + 2. more time was required to bear one more leaf, that is why, in the canopy more pecco + 2 were in existence. balamurugan and nandagopalan (2012) said under continued plucking without pruning orskiffing , the plucking table become inconveniently high and growing apices gradually lose vigour. pruning at this stage becomes necessary, this important practice in tea cultivation which involves removal of certain amount of growth of the bush. 0 50 100 150 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 gmbng 4 gmbng 7 gambng 9 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 gmbng 4 gmbng 7 gambng 9 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 gmbng 4 gmbng 7 gmbng 9 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 497-504 503 the rate of apices growth to attain 2 leaves or 3 leaves before the top (pecco or burung/banjhi) were different among the treatments of plucking cycles and clones as shown in graph 4 and 5. the pattern of graph drawn by the number of pecco+2 leaves and pecco+3 leaves indicated there were interaction between the plucking cycles and the clones. different characteristic of growth rate of the clones and different plucking cycles yielded in different number of pecco and leaves. it means plucking as the action to cut the leaves can be considered as a minor/light pruning action to the tea bush, and it affects the growing rates.and it also means that the clones pattern of growth were different, and they were revealed in this experiment. conclusions plucking cycles affected significantly the physiological leavesgrowth as appeared in weight, number of pecco and burung/banjhi, and numberof pecco+2 leaves and pecco+3 leaves. plucking cycle of 13 days affected faster growth of leaf as measured with the leaves number and weight, more time allowing more time for leaves to develop. gambung 9 clone was the best physiological growing pattern showed the best growth of leaves in term of characteristic of harvest. there were interaction effects between the plucking cycles and the clones revealed in different growing characteristic of clones and also revealed in different effect of cultivation practices (plucking can be considered as minor or light prunning. also in this experiment report said that atmospheric condition as the effect of the timing (season) affected the temperature and in turn affected the physiological growth of tea, and shading plants growing in tea plantation can normalize the micro-climate. and pruning is important practice for tea cultivation as it will affect the physiology of plant, it related to the rate of growth. referenses astika, g.p.w. (1997). manual of tea and quininen cultivation. second edition. research centre for tea and quinine plant. gambung. 151pp. astika, g.p.w., muhtar, and sutrisno (2004). gambung 4, gambung 7 and gambung 9 cultivars. url: http://www.ipard.com/product/asp. accessed 21 september 2007. balamurugan, t. and nandagopalan, v. (2012). formation, growth and productivity of tea bush. journal of research in plant sciences, 1(2): 116-123. burgess, paul j. and m. k. v. carr. (1999). response of young tea (camellia sinensis) clones to drought and temperature. i. yield and yield distribution. experimental agriculture, 32(3): 357-372. dalimoenthe, salwa lubnan (1990). physiological aspect of plucking of tea (camellia sinensis (l). the fifth tea symphosium. bandung. february 1990. de costa, w. a. janendra., a. janahi mohotti and madawala a. wijeratne (2007). ecophysiology of tea. brazilian journal of plant physiology, 19(4): 299-332. islam, g. m. r., m. iqbal, k. g. quddus and m. y. ali (2005). present status and future needs of tea industry in bangladesh. proc. pakistan sci. review, 42(4): 305-314. kamau, d. m., j. h. j. spiertz, o. oenema, p. o. owuor (2008). productivity and nitrogen use of tea plantations in relation to age and genotype. elsevier. 108(1): 6070. kigalu, j. m. and m.k.v. carr. (2006). effect of planting density and drought on the productivity of tea (camellia sinensis (l) o. kuntze) clones; yield responses. gwp-sa sumposium. krisnaraj thirugnasambantham., gajjeraman prabu., senthilkumar palanisamy., suresh ramraj subhas chandrabose., and abul kalam azad mandal (2013). analysis of dorman bud (banjhi) specipic transcriptome of tea (camellia sinensis (l) o. kuntze) from cdna library revealed dormancy-related gennes. journal applied biochemistry and biotechnology, 169(4): 1405-1417. mahes kulkarni (2012). upasi’stea research foundation releases high-yielding clone. business standard 28 april 2013, tamil nadu, india. nisanka, sarath p., a. ananda coomaraswamy, and c. k, seneviratne (2004). change in growth and productivity from prunning and skiffing as a method to prolong pruning cycle. australian society of agronomy, regional institute, p. ltd http://www.ipard.com/product/asp.%20%09accessed%2021%20september%202007 http://www.ipard.com/product/asp.%20%09accessed%2021%20september%202007 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 497-504 504 ntri (2010). tea cultivation in pakistan. pakistan agric. rec. council (parc). islamabad. rehman, b., akmal, n., khan, m. a. and rani, s. (2012). economics of tea production in pakistan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3): 506-513. subandi, m. (2012a). developing islamic economic production. science, technology and development. pakistan council for science and technology, 31(4): 348-358. subandi, m. (2012b). some notes of islamic scientific educational development. international journal of asian social science, 2(7): 1005-1011. subandi, m. (2012c). the effect of fertilizers on the growth and the yield of ramie (boehmeria nivea l.gaud). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2): 126-135. tanul, john kipkorir, weiying feng, xinghul li, yuhua wang, and mary j. (2012). socio-economic constraints to adoption of yield improving tea farming technologies: a study of a small holder tea farmer affiliated to estated in nandi hill, kenya. african journal of agriculture research, 7(16): 2560-2568. van der schaar (2013). investment report. investment b.v. delft, the netherland. wen-yan han, yuan-zhi shi, li-peng ma, ziyad, m.m.t. and a.k.n. zoysa (2006). current status and future research focus of tea in srilanka. the journal of agriculture sciences, 3(2): 32-42. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 311-320 311 accounting for training effectiveness: the case of mida training in enterprise and commercial agriculture on behaviour and practices of rice farmer-based organisations osei, c. k., bakang, j. a. and nimoh f. department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi, ghana abstract this study was designed to determine the effectiveness of a farmer and enterprise training in commercial agriculture (fetca) programme on behaviour and practices of rice farmers in the sekyere east district of ashanti region of ghana. for this purpose, the study adopted the kirkpatrick framework as a guide in assessing training effectiveness and used the beforeand aftertests to assess change in behaviour. both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analysed through descriptive analytical statistics and the z-test. the results of the study revealed that the mida-farmer and enterprise training in commercial agriculture (fetca) programme significantly upgraded the technical know-how of members of farmer-based organisations (fbos) to adopt key recommended production practices and improved their organisational capacity building behaviours. there is evidence of shared knowledge and experiences in production-based rice activities, building capacity and developing financial skills with colleague farmers, farm family and farm workers, indicating a multiplier effect of the fetca programme. the results reinforces the view that focus on organisational capacity building modules, technical capacity and business development modules, are important in fbo training programmes in ghana. keywords: enterprise training, training effectiveness, farmer-based organisations introduction 1 the basic aim of any training intervention is to effect some form of change. farmer 1 corresponding author’s details: osei, c. k. email: ckosei@yahoo.com training is conducted with the view of changing behavior/improving performance through the acquisition of increased knowledge, improved skills and positive changes in attitudes and aspirations. according to fao (1992), agricultural training programmes generally aim to change farmer trainees’ behaviour through asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ckosei@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 311-320 312 improved skills, increased knowledge and changes in attitude. it is done using different kinds of techniques, which include lecturecum-discussion, case discussions, group discussions, and exercises/hands on sessions and field visits. sharing of learning experiences during training helps achieve a more effective performance in an activity or range of activities among the trainees. to provide an insight to the usefulness of a training programme, an evaluation is conducted to obtain information on the effects of the training programme (osei et al., 2005). according to kirkpatrick (1998), training evaluation may be conducted from four different perspectives: reaction (whether trainees appreciated the training), learning (whether trainees learned something new from training), performance (whether trainees applied what they learned) and results (impact on the institution/society). however, most training evaluations are conducted at the reaction or learning level to measure satisfaction within the training environment. newtron (1978) contends that there is over attention in training evaluation to reaction and learning, with under attention to behaviour and results. an approach to training evaluation, which looks at use of the past experience of the training programme (performance level), allows one to assess the extent to which training is useful in the work environment. according to marcotte et al. (2002), the kirkpatrick framework is increasingly being used by training organizations to understand the impact of the training programmes even where the results are not very tangible in nature. clements (1999) posits that impacts mean change in behavior to policymakers. barge (2007) indicated that educational programmes that are evaluated by conducting pre-and postknowledge/ behaviour tests engage in higher-level impact evaluations. in doing this assessment, this study adopted the modified kirkpatrick framework as a guide in evaluating training impact and used the beforeand after-tests to assess change in behaviour. the millennium development authority (mida) is a five-year programme which aims at reducing poverty by raising farmer incomes through private sector led, agribusiness development (ghana center for democratic development (cdd-ghana, 2006) in ghana. the agriculture component of the programme is designed to enhance the profitability of staple food and horticulture crops and to improve delivery of business and technical services to support the expansion of commercial agriculture among farmer-based organizations (fbos). a major activity of the mida agriculture project is the farmer and enterprise training in commercial agriculture (fetca) and the facilitation of credit services for on-farm and value chain investments (cdd-ghana, 2006). as part of the capacity building efforts of the mida agriculture project, the college of agriculture and natural resources (canr) of the kwame nkrumah university of science and technology (knust), kumasi-ghana as a technical asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 311-320 313 training services provider (ttsp), trained over 1,500 farmers from 29 fbos between 2008 and 2010 in the development of commercial skills and building capacity among fbos (table 1). table 1: canr fbo training from 2008-2010 year 2008 2009 2010 total no of fbo training 9 12 8 29 no of farmers trained 592 595 401 1588 source: authors compilation, 2010 the training sessions were conducted in the sekyere east district of the afram basin zone of the programme. they aimed at assisting fbos to further develop their organisations as businesses, upgrade their technical knowhow to adopt recommended yield-increasing production technologies and improved post harvest practises. the training sessions covered ten business development (bd) modules, five organisational capacity building (ocb) modules and four technical capacity (te) modules for a period of six weeks (table 2). members of fbos who had completed the mida training were assisted to access credit from rural banks. this was to facilitate the use of farming inputs such as seed, fertiliser and weedicides for increased productivity. table 2: summary of selected modules in fbo training week (wk) module number title wk 1 bd 1 bd 2 ocb 1/ocb 2 the mca ghana compact and course objectives fbos, rural development and commercialisation group formation and development /credit management wk 2 ocb 3 ocb 4 ocb 5 contracts and procurement business and technical communication methods for tracking fbo progress wk 3 bd 3 bd 4 bd 5 value chain thinking business vision through a value chain lens a primer on leadership, governance and management wk 4 bd 6 bd 7 developing business expansion strategies developing the action agenda wk 5 bd 8 bd 9 bd 10 driving organisational change forward completing the action business plan record keeping/farm budget financials of fbos business plans wk 6 te 1 te 2 te 3 te 4 crop production (maize, cassava, rice, vegetables) environmental and social issues safe handling and storage the problem a critical issue with the mida agricultural training programme is whether project effort spent on farmer training has produced change in fbo and farmers’ behaviour and practices. mcdonald (1991) contends that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 311-320 314 while support for training programmes is increasing, concern is also growing regarding the effectiveness and accountability of such activities. in many instances, the evaluation of mida-farmer and enterprise training in commercial agriculture has been limited to simple reactions and learning of participants. though these evaluations are found important in providing immediate feedback on the extent of achieving training objectives, they do not offer insight into the extent to which knowledge and skills (experiences) acquired during training are utilised after training. according to osei et al. (2005), training evaluation conducted after participants are back to their work place and using what they learned is a more meaningful benchmark against which effectiveness of training should be evaluated. the objective of the study was therefore to determine the effectiveness of the farmer and enterprise training in commercial agriculture (fetca) on behaviour and practices of rice farmers in the sekyere east of ashanti region. specifically, the study was aimed at answering four research questions: 1. have the fbos members’ behaviour and practises changed after the farmer and enterprise training in commercial agriculture (fetca)? 2. has the fetca programme impacted on the organisational performance of the rice-based fbos? 3. what is the multiplier effect of the fetca programme experience on proximate rice farmers? 4. what were the constraints to use of knowledge/experiences acquired during the fetca programme? methodology study area the study was undertaken in two communities, nkwankwanua and brofoyedu in the sekyere east district of ashanti region. the communities were purposively selected because farmers in the two communities belonged to fbos which received training under the fetca programme and received credit services for their on-farm rice production. the communities also represent typical rice growing areas in the district which receive extension services from the ministry of food and agriculture. sampling frame and sample the sampling frame for the study included all rice farmers/fbo members who participated in the nineteen modules of the fetca. the sampling frame was compiled from training reports submitted by canrknust to the adventist development and relief agency (adra), the regional implementation consultants (ric). a total of 66 farmers, 2 agricultural extension officers and 2 officers of a rural bank were selected to constitute the sample. according to philips (1996), the use of multiple data sources of information (farmers, extension officers and rural bank officials) or asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 311-320 315 triangulation improves upon the reliability and validity of information. data collection data was collected by administering selfassessment questionnaire to 66 rice farmers who were recipients of the mida-farmer and enterprise training and received credit services for on-farm rice production. interview guide sheets were developed and validated to provide in-depth information from a purposively selected six fbo executives, two agricultural extension officers and two bank officials. participatory tools such as focus group and key informant interviews were also used in data collection. data analysis the statistical package for social sciences (spss) version? was used to analyse the data. responses in the questionnaires were coded and subjected to descriptive statistics such as frequency counts and percentages. the z-test was utilized in determining statistical inferences of increased farmers’ knowledge/behaviour of the fetca programme. results and discussions extent of change in behaviour and practises to identify changes in technical and business development behaviours, fbo members were asked to assess their behaviour levels on a before-and after self reporting instrument provided. table 3 indicates 13 knowledge/skill indicators that represent types of behaviour to be maintained or changed as a result of the fetca programme. fbo members evaluation scores on before and after the fetca programme provided some evidence that there is ‘much’ behaviour change in four out of seven technical capacity components of the programme (table 3). these were planting in rows, use of appropriate spacing and application of fertiliser and herbicides. also, fbo members indicated ‘much’ behaviour change in two out of six business development skills (keeping farm records and accessing credit from the bank) components of the programme. the results indicate a positive change in fbo members’ behaviours on 6 of 13 behaviour indicators. however, fbo members indicated ‘little’ behaviour changes in bund construction for water management in rice production and use of storage chemicals. also they provided some evidence that there is ‘little’ behaviour change in pre-arrangement with traders in selling their produce and signing of contracts with their customers/buyers. the little or no change in fbo members’ behaviour was seen in the areas that needed group/cooperative effort indicating a lack of cooperative behaviour among the fbos. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 311-320 316 table 3: fbo members technical and business development knowledge/behaviours before and after fecta programme before training (%) did i? after training (%) do i? knowledge/behaviour: none 1 little 2 much 3 mean score none 1 little 2 much 3 mean score technical capacity (tc) plant improved variety 85.96 8.77 5.26 1.16 21.43 19.64 58.93 2.38 plant in rows 91.23 5.26 3.51 1.65 10.71 12.5 76.79 2.66 use appropriate spacing 87.72 8.77 3.51 1.19 7.14 10.71 82.14 2.75 apply fertiliser 87.5 8.93 3.57 1.11 7.14 12.5 80.36 2.73 apply herbicide 45.61 43.86 10.53 1.12 5.36 21.43 73.21 2.68 construct bunds for water management 85.96 8.77 5.26 1.4 60.38 13.21 26.42 1.66 use storage chemicals 92.98 3.51 3.51 1.21 50 21.43 28.57 1.79 business development (bd) keep farm records 89.47 8.77 1.75 1.7 7.14 21.43 71.43 2.64 have market linkages 66.67 26.32 7.02 1.21 26.79 33.93 39.29 2.13 sign a contract 84.21 10.53 5.26 1.24 48.15 31.48 20.37 1.72 add value to my harvested crop 54.39 21.05 24.56 2.38 19.64 17.86 62.5 2.43 access credit/loan 84.21 10.53 5.26 2.66 8.93 30.36 60.71 2.52 repay my loan 87.27 1.82 10.91 2.75 14.55 40 45.45 2.31 the findings were corroborated by agricultural extension officers in the two communities who indicated that the farmers applied inputs such as fertiliser and herbicide. however the lack of improved rice seeds in the area led to some farmers planting the local varieties. they also confirmed farmers’ efforts at row planting and using appropriate planting spacing. the rural bank servicing the two communities confirmed providing loans ranging from gh¢1000 (us$714) to gh¢7000 (us$5000) after the planting season. however, bank officials were not happy about the slow rate at which farmers were paying back their loans. the study has demonstrated a relationship between knowledge/experiences acquired in the fetca programme and changes in behaviour and practises of fbo members. several researchers (rubin et al, 1989; edmiston and gillett-fisher, 2006; palojoki, 2007) have reported on correlation between knowledge and behaviour change from different content areas. an examination of such relationships has a practical significance for agricultural trainers in predicting the direction of participants' behaviour changes based on the training they acquire. effect of fetca on the organisational capacity of the rice-based fbos table 4 provides evidence that fbo members' improved their organisational capacity building (ocb) behaviours significantly as a result of the fetca programme. after the fetca programme, fbo members' ocb knowledge/behaviour scores increased from 24.5% to 94.8% for attendance to group meetings and 24.5% to 92.9% for involvement in group activities. also, scores for members’ involvement in the election of executive members increased from 17.5% to 89.4% and from15.7% to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 311-320 317 87.12% for payment of dues. the z-test for differences between the before-and –after knowledge/behaviour indicators were all significant at the .05 level. table 4: fbo members organisational capacity building behaviour indicators before and after fetca programme before training (%) did i after training (%) do i knowledge/behaviour indicators: yes no yes no z p attend group meetings regularly 24.56 75.44 94.83 5.17 -8.23 0.000 get involve in group planned activities 24.56 75.44 92.98 7.02 -7.98 0.000 pay my dues 15.79 84.21 87.93 12.07 -8.29 0.000 help develop and use a constitution 14.04 85.96 93.10 6.90 -9.11 0.000 get involved in the election of executive members 17.54 82.46 89.47 10.53 -8.28 0.000 * note. significant at p<.05 (2-tailed) the results indicate that increases in knowledge provision during the fetca programme has resulted in positive effect on fbo members organisational capacity efforts. given the increasing importance of ocb practices in strengthening fbos in ghana, this result reinforces the view that continued focus on ocb activities will be important in fbo training programmes. results of the focus group discussions with key executive members indicated an increased attendance of fbo members to meetings. there was also a confirmation of increased involvement of fbo members in the activities of their fbos and increased payment of group dues. these results corroborated responses by the sampled members of the fbos. multiplier effect of the fetca programme table 5a shows, fbo members responses to what training experiences they shared with non-participants of the fetca programme. experiences shared most by members were the production-based factors; row planting, appropriate spacing, fertiliser and herbicide application. also, members rated high some shared experiences in financial management (proper record keeping and adding value to harvested crops) and organisational capacity building activities such as importance of group formation. table 5a: experiences shared with non-participants of the fecta programme (n=65) indicators of knowledge/skills shared *response percent plant improved variety 2 3.1 plant in rows 50 76.9 use appropriate spacing 55 84.6 fertiliser application 52 80 apply herbicide 45 68.4 construct bunds for water 2 3.1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 311-320 318 *multiple responses table 5b: summary of key fbo executives ranking of information/experiences from fecta programme (n=6) community ranking of knowledge/ experiences shared ranking of how it was shared ranking of whom it was shared with nkwakwanua 1. plant in rows 2. use appropriate spacing 3. fertiliser application 4. herbicide application 5. advantages in belonging to groups 1. demonstrated skills in my farm 2. discussed experience in social gatherings 3. visited farms of colleagues to demonstrate learned skills 1. colleague farmers 2. church members 3. other farmer groups 4. farm family brofoyedu 1. plant in rows 2. use appropriate spacing 3. herbicide application 4. fertiliser application 5. group formation experience 1. discussed experience in church/mosque 2. used my farm as a demonstration 3. discuss experiences during visits to farms of colleagues 1. colleague farmers 2. other farmer groups 3. farm workers farm family table 5b provides a summary of a focus group discussion with key executive members of the fbos on information/experience shared, how it was shared and with whom it was shared. results of the focus group discussions indicated that fbo executives shared information with colleague farmers, farm labourers, extension workers and farm family in that order of importance. findings in table 5b on knowledge shared corroborate the results in table 5a. by sharing knowledge and experiences with others (colleagues farmers, other farmer groups, farm family and farm workers), there is a multiplier effect of the fetca programme. constraints to use of fetca experience most fbo members (83.4%) indicated that there were constraints to use of acquired knowledge and skills. from table 6, delay in accessing credit was mentioned as the most management proper record keeping 50 76.9 safe handling of chemicals 10 15.4 market linkages 12 18.4 importance of group formation 25 38.4 timeliness of agricultural operations 8 12.3 adding value to harvested crops 15 23.7 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 311-320 319 common limiting factor to use of training experience followed by erratic rainfall. insufficiency of the loan facility and poor health of some farmers contributed to little use of training experience. during the focus group discussion, participants expressed worry about the late disbursement of loans to beneficiaries which affected its proper utilisation. the executives also commented on the unreliable rainfall in 2009, which led to replanting of seed rice after late rains leading to increasing cost of production. when asked about the use of innovations, about 80% of members in the focus group discussion indicated that row planting was easy to adopt but was labour intensive leading to higher initial cost of production. table 6: constraints to use of fecta experience constraints n=65 *responses percent delays in accessing credit 45 69.2 erratic rainfall 21 32.4 insufficiency of the loan facility 15 23.1 flooded fields 15 23.1 labour intensity of lining and pegging 3 4.6 high cost of labour 3 4.1 ill health 6 9.2 *multiple responses conclusion the mida-farmer and enterprise training in commercial agriculture (fetca) significantly upgraded fbo members’ technical knowhow to adopt some recommended practises and improved their organisational capacity building behaviours. given the increasing importance of organisational capacity building (ocb) activities, technical capacity (tc) and business development (bd) skills/practices in strengthening fbos in ghana, the results of the present study reinforces the view that continued focus on ocb, bd and tc modules will be important in fbo training programmes in ghana. references barge, g. a. (2007). preand post-testing with more impact. journal of extension, 45(6) article 6iaw1. available from: http://www.joe.org/joe/2007december/i w1.php (accessed 15th march 2013) ghana center for democratic development (cdd-ghana) (2006). the millennium challenge account: a new chance for ghana volume 8 number 1. clements, j. (1999). results? behavior change. journal of extension [on-line], 37(2) article 2com1. available from: http://www.joe.org/joe/1999april/comm 1.php (accessed 15th march 2013) edmiston, k. d. and gillett-fisher, m. c. (2006). financial education at the http://www.joe.org/joe/2007december/iw1.php http://www.joe.org/joe/2007december/iw1.php http://www.joe.org/joe/1999april/comm1.php http://www.joe.org/joe/1999april/comm1.php asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 311-320 320 workplace, part i: knowledge and behavior. community affairs working paper 06-02. available from: http://www.kansascityfed.org/comaffrs/ gillettfisher_edmiston_financial_educ ation_april_2006.pdf (accessed 20th march 2013) fao (1992). planning for effective training: a guide to curriculum development, fao, rome kirkpatrick, d. (1998). evaluating training programmes: the four levels. 2 nd edition san francisco; berrett-kochler. marcotte, p. l., bakker-dhaliwal, r. and bell, m. (2002). assessing training impact: irri’s new evaluation approach.paper no.10, occasional papers: issues in training, training center, irri, international rice research institute, january 2002 mcdonald, r. m. (1991). assessment of organisational context: a missing component in evaluations of training programmes. evaluation and programme planning 14, 273-279 newtron, j. m. (1978). catch 22: the problems of incomplete evaluation of training. training and evaluation journal, 32(11): 22-24. osei, c. k., berchie, j. n, ansah i. o. o., gyasi-boakye, s., asante, s. n., agyekum, a. a. and danso, s. (2005). accounting for training results: an evaluation of the training activities of the root and tuber improvement programme. agricultural and food science journal of ghana. vol. 4, 279290. philips, j. j. (1996). was it training? training and development, 50(3): 28. palojoki, p. (2007). the relationship between nutrition knowledge and food behavior among finnish homemakers. international journal of consumer studies, 20(4): 327-338. rubin, d. h., bauman, l. j., and lauby, j. l. (1989). the relationship between knowledge and reported behavior in childhood asthma. journal of developmental and behavioral practices, 10(6): 307-312. http://www.kansascityfed.org/comaffrs/gillettfisher_edmiston_financial_education_april_2006.pdf http://www.kansascityfed.org/comaffrs/gillettfisher_edmiston_financial_education_april_2006.pdf http://www.kansascityfed.org/comaffrs/gillettfisher_edmiston_financial_education_april_2006.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 3 march 2013. capacity building on food-crop farming to improve food production and food security in central java, indonesia waridin (faculty of economics and business, diponegoro university jl. erlangga tengah, semarang, indonesia) citation: waridin (2013) “capacity building on food-crop farming to improve food production and food security in central java, indonesia”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 108-114. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 108-114 108 author waridin faculty of economics and business, diponegoro university jl. erlangga tengah, semarang, indonesia capacity building on food-crop farming to improve food production and food security in central java, indonesia abstract this paper describes the capacity of food-crop production for improving regional food security in central java, indonesia. it is also identify crops which have high and prospective economic-values. the results of the study might help in formulating a proposed model to improve food crops production in supporting food security. the case study was conducted in districts which play the important roles on agriculture (rice) production in central java, indonesia. these are klaten and magelang districts. data were collected from farmers and officers from agriculture-related institutions. the results show that central java province has the capacity on food crop (rice) production for securing food availability, distribution, and accessibility for people in the region. it has a moderate on food security for the products, and surplus of production have distributed to other regions within the country. however, other food crops still facing shortage of supply since lack of productions. it requires a commitment from government and stakeholders for improving capacity building on agricultural development. keywords: crop production, food security, capacity building, indonesia introduction indonesia is an archipelago country with 240 million people and the world’s fourth most populous country. agriculture supports the livelihood of millions of indonesians. three out of five people still live in rural areas with the main occupation on farming. agricultural sector plays an important role in the economy in indonesia, and shared to gross domestic product (gdp) for about 15.31% in 2010 and 15.01% in 2012 (see, table 1). in 2012, agricultural sector avails raw materials (especially for industrial or manufacturing sector) and employment for about 41.20 million or 36.52% of labour force in the country. as an agro-based country, the development of agricultural-related sectors will lead the socioeconomic progress. these are not only producing economic-commodities, but also important to the basic functioning for the human life by providing food productions. with the population growth rate of 1.7%, indonesia will demand in a larger amount and varied food commodities. one of the main issues in indonesian agricultural development is related to food security, and as a foundation for development of other sectors (cbs, 2006; rachman et al. (2007). for the period of 20102012, average growth rate of agricultural sector is about 5% per year. manufacturing sector had a highest share to gdp (23.57%), followed by agricultural sector (15.01%), and trade sector (13.65%). however, agricultural sector provides a highest share in providing employment for the people. capacity building on food-crop farming to ... 109 table 1: contribution to gross domestic productfor the period of 2010 to 2012 (in percent) no sectors 2010 2011 2012 1 food-crops, veterinary, forestry, and fisheries 15.31 14.72 15.01 2 mines 11.16 11.93 12.47 3 manufacturing industry 24.79 24.28 23.57 4 electricity, gas, and water supply 0.76 0.75 0.75 5 constructions 10.27 10.19 10.18 6 trade, hotel, and restaurant 13.71 13.76 13.65 7 transportation and communication 6.57 6.61 6.53 8 finance, real estate, and other services 7.25 7.20 7.21 9 services 10.17 10.55 10.64 total 100.00 100.00 100.00 source: cbs indonesia, 2012 agricultural policy in indonesia has been primarily concerned with implementing production-based policies designed to pursue food self-sufficiency, especially rice. this goal was reached in 1984, when domestic rice production exceeded consumption. the current agricultural development policy in indonesia has been launched in 2005, called revitalization of agriculture, fisheries and forestry. the policy is considered as one of the triple-track strategies of economic development (suryana and sudaryanto, 2006) and to improve people’s welfare and to place strong base for economic development (subejo, 2007). from the point of view of agricultural revitalization, food security is unargueable step to encounter problems and to achieve the policy objectives. sustainable food security is defined as the ability to provide adequate food for population from time to time as such they will be able to live healthy life and can undertake their daily activities. adequate in this sense includes quantity, quality, and accessibility to food products for all (mustamin, 2000). according to suryana (2008), food security has three dimensions: (a) availability of sufficient quantities of food in appropriate quality, and supplied through domestic production or imports; (b) accessibility of households and individuals to appropriate foods for a nutritious diet; and (c) affordability of individuals to consume food according to their respective socio-economic conditions, cultural backgrounds, and preferences. in the operational sense, food security entails food availability, accessibility, and stable procurement. table 2: growth for agricultural sub-sectors in indonesia, 2008-2011 no sub-sectors 2008 2009 2010 2011 1 food-crops 6.06 4.97 1.64 1.26 2 plantation 3.67 1.73 3.41 3.94 3 livestock 3.52 3.45 4.27 4.49 4 forestry 0.03 1.82 2.41 0.65 5 fisheries 5.07 4.16 6.01 6.72 6 agriculture 6.01 4.63 6.20 6.46 source: cbs indonesia, 2012 in indonesia, one of the problems on agricultural sector related to the stagnancy of productivity. during the first five-year plan (year 1969), rice production was 2.2 ton per hectare and 30 years later became 4.5 ton. table 2 indicated food production in indonesia for the year 2007. while, data for rice supply and demand for the year 2005-2008 is described in table 3. agricultural development have reached food sufficiency might facilitate economic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 108-114 110 growth in rural areas (sajogyo, 2003). however, if there is no incentive system which benefited to small-scale farmers, therefore, the production system will benefited to large-scale farmers and food-traders. another problem related to the performance of food security which should be solved appropriately. in relation to indonesian agriculture and food productions, central java province is one of the “buffers” for agriculture productions at the national level. this province consists of 29 districts and 6 municipalities, with the total area of 3.25 million hectares (1.70% of indonesia). one-third of the area is utilized for agricultural activities, and most of them are irrigated land which can be cropped for paddy twice in a year (cbs, 2008). population of central java province at 2008 is more than 33 million with the growth rate for about 1.5% per year (cbs, 2008). there is increasing amount and pattern of food demand, hence, food security concept need to be socialized to all stakeholders. table 3: rice supply and demand in indonesia, 2005-2008 (million ton) no food balance 2005 2006 2007 2008 1 production (paddy) 54.15 54.45 57.16 60.28 2 production (rice) 30.67 30.84 32.37 34.14 3 consumption 30.59 30.00 31.50 31.70 4 import 0.19 0.44 1.30 5 ending stock 2.04 2.32 4.49 6.93 source: cbs indonesia, suryana, 2008 west, central and east java, the three most populous indonesian provinces with a combined population of over 100 million produce almost 30 million metric tons of rice annually, plus substantial other food crops. it is a remarkable statement of the basic productivity of the agricultural resource base of the island, and this is especially the case as the average land holding is about 0.3 hectares. total rice production on the whole of the island of java in 1965 was only 4.9 million tons, indicating more than a six-fold increase in production. over the same period per capita rice consumption rose from 85 to 140 kilograms per year, while the population increased 140 percent. substantial gains in rice production on java, indonesia’s most productive rice-farming zone were largely offset by population and per capita consumption increases. for supplying domestic demands, indonesia still import some agricultural products as indicated in table 4. table 4: indonesian food import dependency, 2007 no commodities production (million ton) % import to total supply 1 cpo 17.40 0.00 2 rice 32.37 4.00 3 maize 13.30 8.10 4 sugar 2.45 13.50 5 beef 0.36 28.00 6 soybean 0.59 61.80 7 wheat 0.00 100.00 source: moa indonesia, suryana, 2008 the development of food security system basically is development with focus on harmonizing a number of related systems, i.e. resources availability, food availability, distribution, consumption, diversification, and agribusiness (susilowati et al., 2005; 2006). one capacity building on food-crop farming to ... 111 of the main problems is that food security in central java province is still need to be improved. this is because food security in one of the important aspect and issue which need to be considered. food is a basic need which should be avails continuously, well-distributed, and can be accessed by people. on the other side, most of rural people is still facing poverty. therefore, a study for assessing the capacity development of food crops is necessary to be conducted. based on the previous description, research questions raised for this study are as follows: (1) what is the performance of food crop in central java? and (2) what are the management and strategy for increasing food product and food security in the region? in overall, this study is aimed at analyzing the performance and capacity of food crop for increasing food production and food security. capacity building and food security capacity building often refers to assistance that is provided to entities, usually societies in developing countries, which have a need to develop a certain skill or competence, or for general upgrading of performance ability. undp define it as “the creation of an enabling environment with appropriate policy and legal frameworks, institutional development, including community participation, human resources development, and strengthening of managerial systems. the needs for capacity building are always changing. there are no ready solutions, and any programme must be appropriate for the local situation and organization. local government, communities, and ngo are the main clients of capacity building, but central government and the private commercial sector also need support. capacity building encompasses human resource development as an essential part of development. it is based on the concept that education and training, and focuses on a series of actions directed at helping participants to increase their knowledge, skills and understandings and to develop the attitudes needed to bring about the desired developmental change. world food summit 1996 has come to a common agreement (rome declaration) that all countries should provide food security for all people and free the nations from hunger. the summit goal was to reduce the number of inaccessible people for food by 50 percent in 2015. the declaration has shown its strong commitment on the importance of agricultural and rural development as a key-role to achieve food security (suryana and sudaryanto, 2006). it is understandable that 70 percent of the world’s poor-people are living in rural area and depending on agricultural sector. this description is relevant with situation in indonesia. about two-third of poor people were dwelling in rural and remote areas. this fact leads to a conclusion that eradication from hunger and reduction of poor people would be achieved through sustainable agricultural and rural development. agricultural development is an integral part of the national development. with vision, mission, and objectives of agricultural development, the development program covers food security improvement, agribusiness development, and farmers’ welfare enhancement. food security is important to assure the availability and accessibility of food for all people. agribusiness development is also important to achieve productive and efficient activities in producing agricultural products. agricultural development is planned and designed to accommodate the dynamic of community problems and needs. local government will play significant role in agricultural development as consequences of decentralization. as the facilitator of agricultural development, local government role is focused on the development of local specific commodities, managing bottom-up approach and decentralizing the creation of people’s participation instead of top-down and centralize policies (suryana and sudaryanto, 2006). indonesian experience: central java administratively, central java province consists of 29 districts and 6 municipalities with the total area of 32,548 km². agriculture is the important sector which involved most of job employment of the people. central java province is one of the main buffer areas for national food production, especially rice, corn, soybean, cassava and vegetables. this study was conducted at a number of the centre of agricultural (rice) products in central java. these are the districts of klaten and magelang. primary and secondary data were collected through interview with farmers and key-persons, observation, documentation, and fgd with stakeholders. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 108-114 112 performance of production about 60% of selected farmers are on the agegroup of 40-50 year, and most of them have a tertiary education. the number of household member is on the average of 4-5 persons. farming especially for paddy, is the main occupation and source of family income. some of the farmers have additional activities from small-scale traders, livestock, and other informal occupations. in relation to production performance, elasticity coefficients for farm inputs are positive (i.e. land 0.739, labour 0.497, and seed 0.163). it implies that as larger the land size, the production will increase. fertilizer is the significant influential variable to the food-crop production (coefficient 0,084). farmers who utilized k fertilizers were able to have larger productions as compared to others. farmers who utilized organic fertilizers were able to have larger productions as compared to others. pesticide is not the significant influential variable to the food crop production (coefficient 0.018). this input did not used regularly by farmers at the study area. estimation result shows that farmer’s experience in farming did not influence significantly to the production. however, return to scale with the value of 1.15 indicated that farming is still possible to be extended. the average value of technical efficiency is 0.942, meaning that farming did not efficient. in addition, there is a possibility to increase the use of production inputs. at the individual level, the rate of technical efficiency is ranged from 0.73 to 0.99. developing strategy for food production it was indicated that input availability is the most important aspect for developing strategy of farming (score 0.511). it is followed by institution (score 0.209), post-harvest (score 0.128), marketing (score 0.85), and technical cultivation (score 0.67). performance of food crop farming is closely related to inputs availability and its distribution. the strategy for input supply might covers: providing subsidy, access of private sector to involved in, and avails farm inputs at suitable time, amount, and quality. another aspect to be developed is agricultural and rural institutions. the proposed strategy which can be done for example: extension services, providing incentive for agricultural institution, and revitalize extension institution (centres as well as officers). revitalizing institution for extension services will be the main priority for improving agricultural performance. the third aspect for building the agricultural performance is marketing. it might be implemented by designing partnership between farmers and traders, farmers and products’ users, and providing financial assistance. lastly, improving the technical assistance is still notified the important aspect for developing agricultural performance. the proposed strategy which can be done are: extension services, providing technical assistance for utilizing organic fertilizers and pesticide, as well as using branded seeds for obtaining higher production. low educational attainment as well as low capacity and less skill in production and management are among the counter-productive condition when talking about human resources in agricultural sector. learning activities through informal education, training, and extension should be prioritized to support agricultural development in the future. revitalization of extension workers, therefore, is a priority to accelerate agricultural development. certain farmers may move from farming to offfarming or non-farming in rural areas if the opportunities are offered. if the number of people involved in farming reduces substantially, the units of managed land by each farmer is expected to increase. this strategy will provide benefits and incentives for farmers to improve their productivity. farmers are also still facing difficulties in accessing high quality seeds. the high price of seeds caused by monopoly ownership has hampered this. water access is also a very crucial issue for farmers. performance of agricultural extension for increasing production program for increasing food-crops production is one of the important decisions in agricultural development in the province. it is because food productions have strategic and economic values. based on the study conducted in the selected area, food-crops farming were not efficient yet. one of the solutions is by improving the delivery of agricultural extension services. capacity building on food-crop farming to ... 113 agricultural extension services in central java were intensively implemented since 1970s, with the support for input supply, technical as well as financial assistance. the program was implemented through national-program called mass guidance. it is a major program which was implemented in indonesia to disseminate agricultural knowledge to farmers. at this scheme, farmers were instructed what to do and given incentives through the provision of cheapcredit to follow these instructions. a major contributor to the stabilization of selfsufficiency in the staple food (rice) has been the supra insus (super intensification) system, which was introduced in 1987 (resosudarmo and yamazaki in beckmann et al, 2010). the innovative experience in indonesia has demonstrated that self-sufficiency in rice can be achieved through a combination as such: political will, continual technological efforts, progressive rural structure, mass guidance, socioeconomic engineering, and wellcoordinated program. in supporting bimas to supra insus, the establishment of extension services was done through rural extension centres in each sub-district. the centre was serve in delivering information concerning to agricultural innovation, especially to farmers. revitalizing the agricultural sector is a key component of the government’s rural development strategy (world bank, 2007). indonesia faces a major challenge to develop an effective institutional mechanism for disseminating technology relevant for smallscale farmers. while there is less experience in new model of agricultural advisory services, there is growing evidence of significant benefits to decentralized extension systems that involve the private sector and civil society. educational qualification levels of public extension agents are being improved. poor linkages between agricultural research and extension has militated again ensuring focus on farmers’ problem. the new extension law (law no.16/2006) explicitly recognizes the multi-provider system for the delivery of agricultural services to increase the competitiveness of indonesian agricultural sector and improve farmer incomes. it is aimed at: (1) reorganizing extension and farmers’ institution, (2) improving number and qualification of extensions, (3) improving implementation of extension system, and (4) establishing networks for extension services and agribusiness. political will is a prerequisite for the success of a food production program, and is reflected by the commitment of the (central and local) governments and community leaders. at the same time, it was recognized that learning newtechnologies would give rise to the need among farmers for other farm inputs such as seed, fertilizers and pesticides, with working capital to finance them. post-harvest and marketing skills, procedures and facilities would have to be improved. these requirements created the need to ensure close integration with infrastructural improvement, such as irrigation systems and roads in order to support rice production and improve access to markets (anonimous, 2004). approaches for achieving effective extension might include all or a combination of strategies based on circumstances at national and local levels. rivera (2003) advocates important strategy recommendations to address the food security challenge. an example of good practice and lesson is decentralization of extension in indonesia. enacted by law in the 1990s, it shifted extension management from central to local (district) government, made extension works more agribusiness-oriented and established research-extension-farmer linkage mechanism at the local level. the goals aimed to ensure effectiveness, to be more responsive to clients and to be less-costly to the government. staffs training and upgrading were emphasized, including partnership development between the various components. conclusion food production is not an easy matter. success will only be attained if national and regional policies give high and proper priorities to agricultural development. there is a lot of work to do regarding policies on agricultural development, with fundamental issues such as farmer’s access to main farming inputs such as land, seeds and water. the potency of food production capabilities and the huge demand for food, either from national or global consumers, has become not only a challenge, but also an opportunity for national agriculture since indonesia have enough natural and human resources. the country definitely has an opportunity to produce enough food for the population. in the case of capacity building improvement, the release of new extension law asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 108-114 114 will make the delivery of agricultural services in indonesia increase productions as well as the competitiveness of agricultural sector and improve farmer incomes. references anonimous (2003). food security analysis at the global era and regional autonomy. food security agency and center for agricultural socio-economics and policy studies. ministry of agriculture. jakarta, indonesia. anonimous (2004). institution building to strengthen agricultural extension. 27 th fao regional conference for asia and the pacific. beijing, china: 17-21 may. ariani, m. (2007). improving regional food security to support national food security. monograph no. 26. agency for agricultural research and development. ministry of agriculture. jakarta. indonesia. cbs (2006). national survei for socioeconomics. central bureau of statistic. jakarta, indonesia. cbs (2008). central java in numbers. central bureau of statistic. semarang, indonesia. food security agency and fao (2005). general policy for food security. paper presented at meeting on formulating program for food security. jakarta, indonesia. 12 september. mustamin, i. h. (2000). indonesian agricultural policy toward asean free trade area. proceeding of the 5 th symposium on agri-bioche. pasandaran, e., m. rantatena & iqbal (2003). economic and agricultural policy development in indonesia: summary. paper presented for the roles of agriculture international conference. agricultural and development economics division fao of the united nations. rome, italy. 20-22 october. provincial agency of agriculture (2007). food statitstic of central java. www.jateng.go.id. rachman, h. p. s., m. ariani, & t. b. purwantini (2007). households’ food security at the provincial level. monograph no. 26. agency for agricultural research and development. ministry of agriculture. jakarta. indonesia. resosudarmo, b. p. & s. yamazaki (2010). training and visit (t&v) extension vs. farmer field school: the indonesian experience. v. beckmann, n.h. dung, x. shi, m. spoor and j. wesseler (eds.). economic transition and natural resource management in east and southeast asia. aachen: shaker verlag, 260298. rivera, w. m. (2003). a new extension vision for food security: challenge to change. fao of the united nations, rome. sajogyo (2003). kebijakan publik dalam pembangunan pertanian dan pedesaan. diskusi panel isu dan agenda kebijakan publik dalam pembangunan pertanian dan pedesaan. jakarta: united nations support facility for indonesia recovery dan pusat studi pembangunan, institut pertanian bogor. subejo (2007). comprehending and perceiving to agriculture development policy in indonesia. jurnal ilmu-ilmu pertanian, 3(1), juli. fakultas pertanian ugm, yogyakarta. suryana, a. (2008). sustainable food security development in indonesia: policies and its implementation. presented at high-level regional policy dialogue. organized by unescap and government of indonesia. bali, indonesia, 9-10 december. suryana, a. & t. sudaryanto (2006). response of indonesian agriculture to global trends and challenges. paper presented at the food industry international seminar: global trends and challenges of the food industry. seafast centre, 14 november. jakarta, indonesia. susilowati, i., t. w. agustini, & a. sudaryono (2005; 2006). pengembangan model pemberdayaan usaha mikro kecil, menengah dan koperasi dalam mendukung ketahanan pangan di kabupaten dan kota pekalongan. rukk kantor menneg ristek dan lipi. jakarta. timmer, c. p. (2004). food security in indonesia: current challenges and the long-run outlook. working paper number 48, november. centre for global development. world bank (2007). rural development & agriculture in indonesia, world development indicators 2006. in http://web.wordbank.org. retrieved 12 february, 2010. http://www.jateng.go.id/ http://web.wordbank.org/ summary report of thesis publisher: asian economic and social society issn: 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012 acknowledgement: the authors acknowledge the support of the bean/cowpea crsp project, university of ghana and university of georgia, usa consumer preference for processed cowpea products in selected communities of the coastal regions of ghana nimoh, f. (department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi, ghana) asuming-brempong, s. (department of agricultural economics & agribusiness, university of ghana, p. o. box lg 68, legon, accra, ghana) sarpong, d. b. (department of agricultural economics & agribusiness, university of ghana, p. o. box lg 68, legon, accra, ghana) citation: nimoh, f., asuming-brempong, s. and sarpong, d. b. (2012): “consumer preference for processed cowpea products in selected communities of the coastal regions of ghana”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 113-119. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 113-119 114 author(s) nimoh, f. department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi, ghana email: frediemoh@yahoo.com asuming brempong, s. department of agricultural economics & agribusiness, university of ghana, legon, accra, ghana sarpong, d. b. department of agricultural economics & agribusiness, university of ghana, legon, accra, ghana consumer preference for processed cowpea products in selected communities of the coastal regions of ghana abstract the nutritive value of cowpea as an essential source of protein to supplement carbohydrate diets has long been recognized. its role as a subsidiary crop to be relied on during the “hungry season” and during times of food shortages, drought, inflation and the subsequent erosion of the consumer’s purchasing power, particularly among the urban poor, makes it a crop of choice by housewives who look for nutritious but cheaper sources of food. this paper sought to investigate consumer preference for processed cowpea-based products, such as, boiled cowpea with cereals, fried cowpea paste, and cowpea fortified maize dough in selected communities of the coastal regions of ghana. using descriptive statistics, kendall’s coefficient of concordance, and logit model, it was found that there was high preference for processed cowpea-based products in all the communities studied; and that processing cowpea into various food types was relatively profitable. key socioeconomic factors and consumer characteristics that influence preference include gender, marital status, income, education, product taste, sustainability of products (satisfying) and product availability. the production of gas (flatulence) after consumption of the products was the most pressing factor that influences preference. unavailability of the products was identified as the least pressing factor. the researchers recommend that the production and utilization of cowpea in the study area and in other parts of ghana should be encouraged as it would help to both improve the nutritional status of consumers and also help generate income to producers and processors. there should also be further research into the disliking intrinsic characteristics of the products considered. keywords: consumer preference, cowpea products, coastal regions, ghana introduction among the most difficult problems confronting the world communities since the history of humankind have been those of food shortages and diet deficits. it is estimated that, more than 800 million people in developing countries, including ghana, are undernourished and the total gram of protein consumption per day is low in these countries as compared to the developed countries. for example, ghana consumes 49.6 g/day, as compared to the usa (112.5g/day), (fao, 1996). protein energy malnutrition as assessed by physical growth and body measurement is still widespread throughout ghana (nns, 1986). many consumers spend a greater proportion of their income on food, but they still remain malnourished, lacking in the required protein-calorie level needed for effective development and proper growth of the body. cowpeas have been identified as containing adequate levels of protein to help curb the problem of protein malnutrition. because of their nutritive value, cowpeas have been identified as good vehicles for combating protein calorie malnutrition in ghana (sefa-dedeh, 1993). it has been documented that over 80% of mothers in ghana use cowpea to prepare infant foods and family diets (mensa-wilmot et al., 2001). nevertheless, the preference for cowpeas is highly variable among consumers. amegatse (1995) identified some of the mitigating factors against increased utilization of cowpea as: the hard-to-cook defect, high fuel consumption, prolonged cooking time, and characteristics of beany flavor and indigestion. cowpeas can be processed into many local low-cost, but highly nutritious ready-to-eat or partially made foods such as: fried cowpea paste (akla / kosai); boiled cowpea with gari (bobo / yo’kε’ gari); boiled cowpea mailto:frediemoh@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 113-119 114 and rice (waakye); steamed cowpea paste (alele / tubani), and cowpea fortified maize dough (cfmd). such products if acceptable and affordable by a broader section of the population will be an important contribution to improving the lives and health of the people of ghana and elsewhere. the main objective of the study therefore was to investigate consumer preferences for cowpea-based products in selected communities of the coastal regions of ghana. the specific objectives of the study were to: determine the size, distribution, and level of preference for cowpea/cowpea-based products; identify the factors that influence the preference for these products; analyze the effect of the factors that influence the preference for the products; and evaluate the financial benefit of processing cowpeas in the study area. methodology study area six communities, namely; akatsi (volta region–v/r), nima and madina (greater accra region-gar), winneba (central region–c/r), and abuadze and takoradi (western region–w/r) of ghana were the study area. the choice of these locations was based primarily on the fact that, the bean/cowpea collaborative research support project (crsp), of which the study was part, undertook some preliminary studies at the locations and additional social-economic information was needed for further studies in those localities. the communities are densely populated and many inhabitants are migrants who are engaged in commercial activities. majority of the people have their daily meals outside the home (food-away-from-home). the importance of cowpea, with its high nutritive value, has therefore, made it possible for cowpea-based food processors/sellers to occupy a sizeable portion of the food market in the study area. type and source of data both primary and secondary data were used for the study. two types of questionnaires (for consumers and cowpea processors) were used to obtain data for the study. a total of 166 consumers and 135 cowpea processors were interviewed. the purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to select the respondents. analytical methods descriptive statistics such as frequency tables and percentages were used to analyze the size, distribution, and level of preferences for cowpea and cowpea-based products in the communities of the study area. kendall’s coefficient of concordance (w) analysis was used to rank the items identified as constraints/problems against the preference for the cowpea-based products into the most pressing to the least pressing (mattson, 1986). the degree of agreement of the rankings by the consumers was then measured. w ranges from 0 to 1. in deriving w, let t, represents the sum of ranks for each constraint/problem being ranked (socio-economic factors and product characteristics). the variance of the sum of ranks is given by:   n ntt vart    / 22 (1) the maximum variance of t is given by:   12/122 nm (2) where m is the number of consumers and n is the number of constraints/problems. the formula for (w) is then given by:     12/1 /)/( 22 22      nm nntt w (3) this simplifies to the computational formula for w as: w =     1 /12 22 22    nnm ntt (4) in this study, n includes elements like product taste, product scent, gas production (flatulence), product price, unavailability of the products, mode of presentation, and ignorance about nutritive value of products. hypothesis: h0: there is no agreement between the rankings of the influencing factors, and h1: there is agreement between the rankings of the influencing factors. w was tested for significance in terms of the f distribution, given by: ((m 1)*wc) / (1 – wc), with (n1) (2/m) degrees of freedom for the numerator and (m1)*((n-1)-(2/m)) degrees of freedom for the denominator (edwards 1964). the logit model, based on the cumulative logistic probability function was used to analyze the effect of factors that influence the consumer’s preference for the cowpea products (pindyck and rubinfeld, 1991). the dependent variable is dichotomous or binary choice, having two options of preference and non-preference for processed cowpea products. the logit model was specified as follows: pi = f (zi) = f ( + xi) = zie11 = )(11 xie  (5) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 113-119 115 where, e is the base of natural logarithms, which is approximately equal to 2.718. pi is the probability that the consumer will make a certain choice, given xi, the products characteristics and socio-economic characteris tics of the consumer. estimation of the logit model both sides of equation (5) are multiplied by zie1 to get:  zie1 pi = 1 (6) equation (6) is divided by pi, and then 1 subtracted from it to get: pi e zi 1  = 1 – pi / pi (7) by definition, however, zizi ee 1 so that: pi pi ezi   1 (8) by taking the natural logarithm of both sides we get: pi pi zi   1 log or xizi pi pi   1 log (from equation (5) (9) the dependent variable in the regression equation is the logarithm of the odds that, a particular choice would be made. since pi is the probability of consumer preference for processed cowpea-based products, (1-pi) is the probability of non-preference for processed cowpeabased products. pi / (1-pi) is the odds ratio in favor of preference for processed cowpea-based products. socioeconomic characteristics of the consumer (sex, age, household head, household size, income, educational level, marital status, and occupation) and product characteristics (scent, taste, nutritive and economic value, sanitary and health related issues) served as the explanatory variables. from equation (9), the logit model for this study is given by: log (pi/i-pi) = β0 + β1sexi + β2agei + β3hhhdi + β4hhszi + β5incomi + β6educi + β7msti + β8occui + β9ppi + β10nutri + β11susti + β12tastei + β13scenti + β14chpdti + β15gasi +ui (10) subscript i is the ith observation, pi is the probability that the ith consumer has a preference for the product given xi. sexi is gender of the ith consumer (male = 1, female = 0); agei is age in years; hhhdi is household head (head = 1, otherwise = 0); hhszi is household size; incomi is income level in ghanaian cedis/month; educi is educational level (dummy: primary = 1, otherwise = 0; j.s.s. = 1, otherwise = 0, etc.); msti is marital status (dummy: married = 1, otherwise = 0; single = 1, otherwise = 0; etc.); occui is occupation (dummy: self employed/businessperson = 1, otherwise = 0; etc); ppi is price of products in ghanaian cedis; nutri is nutritive value of product (nutritious (protein content) = 1, otherwise = 0); susti is sustainability of product (sustainable =1, otherwise =0); tastei is product taste (tasty/delicious = 1, otherwise = 0); scenti is product scent (like scent = 1, otherwise = 0); chpdti is affordability of product (cheap = 1, otherwise = 0); gasi is gas content/flatulence (gaseous = 1, otherwise = 0); βi = the vector of estimated coefficients; and ui = the error term. the a-prior expectations were: β1 > 0, β2 < 0 β3 < 0, β4 < 0, β5 < 0, β6 < 0, β7 > 0, β8 > 0, β9 < 0, β10 > 0, β11 > 0, β12 > 0, β13 > 0, β14 > 0, β15 < 0. the z statistics was used to measure the level of significance for each of the estimated coefficients. the goodness of fit statistics given is the mc-fadden rsquared. the likelihood-ratio (lr) test was computed to determine the joint significance of the independent variables in the model. the lr test statistics followed a standard chi-square (x 2 ) distribution with the degrees of freedom equal to the number of independent variables used in the model. the higher the percentage of the prediction, the greater is the predictive power of the model. the discussion results were based on the logodds ratio. the profitability of processing cowpea into various products was evaluated using profit margin analysis. the analysis, a financial ratio, was aimed at measuring how efficient the cowpea processors use their assets in their operations (ross et al. 2001). this is given by the net income divided by sales as follows: profit margin = net income / sales (11) the net income from processing cowpea was computed by finding the difference between the total revenue generated and the total cost of operation per olonka (bowl of cowpea of approximately 3kg) per day. mathematically, the net return was computed as follows: nr = tr – tc (12) iiqptr  and    n ixi xptc 01 , where tr = total revenue generated from sales per day, pi = the price of product, qi = quantity of product produced and sold in a day, tc = total cost of operation in a day, pxi = price of inputs, and xi = ith input. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 113-119 116 all other things being equal, a relatively high profit margin is desirable. this would imply a low expense. lowering sales price will not usually increase unit volume, but will normally cause profit margins to shrink. total profit (or more importantly, operating cash flow), may go up or down, so the fact that margins are smaller isn’t necessary bad, because, prices may be so low that there may be a loss on everything sold but this is recovered in volume. a positive margin, however, is an indication of profit whereas a negative margin indicates a loss. results and discussion results of the study showed that, of the 166 consumers interviewed, approximately 49%, prefer already processed cowpea (ready-to-eat or partial products) and 51% prefer unprocessed cowpea (make-at home products), (table 1). the preference for cowpea in the various communities showed that majority of consumers in akatsi (v/r), and abuadze and takoradi (w/r) prefer unprocessed cowpea to processed cowpea, but in nima and madina (gar) and winneba (c/r) the preference is processed cowpea to unprocessed cowpea (table 2). about the preference for the various cowpeabased products, the results of the study showed that there is a high consumer preference for akla/kosai, bobo/yo ke gari, and waakye compared to cfmd, alele/tubani (table 3). the frequency of consumption of the various cowpea-based products was found to be twice per week (table 4). table 1: preference for cowpea: processed and unprocessed (all communities) processed cowpea unprocessed cowpea total frequency 82 84 166 valid % 49.40 50.60 100 source: field survey, 2004 table 2: preference for cowpea: processed and unprocessed (separate communities) akatsi (vr) nima / madina (gar) winneba (cr) abuadze / takoradi (wr) pro unpr total pro unpr total pro unpr total pro unpr total freq. 16 23 39 23 19 42 24 16 40 19 26 45 v. % 41 59 100 55 45 100 60 40 100 42 58 100 note: pro. = processed, unpr. = unprocessed, v = valid. source: field survey, 2004 table 3: preference for cowpea-based products product frequency valid % cfmd 29 17.47 akla / kosai 137 82.53 bobo / yo’kε’ gari 161 96.99 waakye 161 96.99 alele/tubani 56 33.73 source: field survey, 2004 table 4: number of times of consumption of cowpea products per week one two three four five six seven total freq 30 39 35 23 16 3 14 160 valid % 18.75 24.38 21.88 14.38 10.0 1.88 8.75 100 source: field survey, 2004 table 5 presents the results of the rankings and the degrees of agreement of the rankings, w, of the factors that influence the consumer’s preference for cowpea and cowpea products. in akatsi (v/r), the most pressing factor was found to be the presence of foreign matter (such as stones) in the products, and the least pressing factor was testa color of the beans. at nima and madina (gar), the most pressing factor was the presence of foreign matter (such as stones) in the products, and the least pressing factor was ignorance about the nutritive value of the products. at winneba (c/r), the production of gas (flatulence) was the most pressing factor, and ignorance about the nutritive value of the products was the least pressing factor. at abuadze and takoradi (w/r), the most pressing factor was the production of gas (flatulence) and the least pressing factor was unavailability of the products. in aggregate (thus, for all the communities), the production of gas (flatulence) was the most pressing factor, and unavailability of the products was the least pressing factor. the tests of significance in terms of f distribution of the degree of agreement or concordance (w) between the rankings of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 113-119 117 the influencing factors showed fairly low (<50%) degrees of agreement between the rankings for the separate communities and also for the aggregate. table 5: identifying and ranking of factors that influence preference for products influencing factors (problem/constraint) ranking (separate communities) influencing factors (problem/constraint) ranking (all communities) akatsi (v/r) nima/ madina (gar) winneba (c/r) abuadzi/takoradi (w/r) foreign matter (stones) 1 1 2 2 gas (flatulence) 1 damage level (weevils) 4 3 3 3 foreign matter (stones) 2 gas (flatulence) 3 2 1 1 damage level (weevils) 3 lengthy cooking time 2 4 5 5 lengthy cooking time 4 mode of presentation 8 5 4 4 mode of presentation 5 price of products 5 6 6 6 price of products 6 products scent 6 7 7 7 products scent 7 products taste 7 9 11 8 products taste 8 size of beans 10 10 8 10 size of beans 9 testa color 12 8 9 9 testa color 10 ignorance about prodt 8 12 12 11 ignorance about product 11 unavail. of product 10 11 10 12 unavail of product 12 no. of consumers 39 42 40 45 no. of consumers 166 coefficient of concordance (w) 0.1375 13.75% 0.1868 18.68% 0.2035 20.35% 0.2880 28.80% coefficient of concordance (w) 0.1885 (18.85%) source: authors computations the result of the logit analysis showed that, among the various socio-economic factors of the consumer and products characteristics, sex (gender), income, education, marital status, sustainability (satisfying) of product and taste, influence the consumer’s preference for the cowpea products. sex (males), marital status (single bachelor/spinster), sustainability and taste exert positive influence on preference for the products, while income and education exert negative influence on the preference for the products (table 6). table 6: logit analysis on factors influencing the preference for cowpea products variable coefficient std. error z-statistic prob. c -1.109004 1.286893 -0.861769 0.3888 sex 1.203198*** 0.432085 2.784629 0.0054 income -6.44e-07* 3.63e-07 -1.772922 0.0762 essec -1.450965** 0.674059 -2.152579 0.0314 etert -2.593890*** 0.748859 -3.463791 0.0005 msing 1.908392*** 0.633784 3.011106 0.0026 sust 1.304174* 0.736504 1.770763 0.0766 taste 1.348201* 0.721530 1.868530 0.0617 mean dependent var = 0.475904 s.d. dependent var = 0.500930 lr statistic (15 df) = 66.21596 probability (lr stat) = 2.09e-08 mcfadden r-squared = 0.288222; obs. with dep=0: 87 obs. with dep=1: 79 total obs. = 166 note: *, **, ***, denotes significance at 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively. essec = education at secondary level, etert = education at tertiary level, msing = single for marital status, sust = sustainability (satisfying) of products. processing cowpea into the various food types was found to be relatively profitable in the study area. on the average, for every olonka of cowpea processed into kosai/akla, processors in all the communities generated ¢26.31 profit for every ¢100.00 sales in a day; ¢36.72 for yo ke gari processors; and ¢30.95 for waakye processors. however, there were disparities in profits among the various communities (table 7). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 113-119 118 table 7: financial benefit of processing cowpea akatsi (v/r) winneba (c/r) abuadze & takoradi (w/r) nima & madina (gar) average (all communities) akla / kosai tr/olonka/day tc/olonka/day nr/olonka/day amount (¢) 43,000.00 35,000.00 8,000.00 amount (¢) 54,049.30 41,725.35 12,323.95 amount (¢) 49,295.75 35,211.27 14,084.51 amount (¢) 43,173.96 27,716.98 15,456.98 amount(¢) 47,379.75 34,913.40 12,466.36 pm/olonka/day 0.1860 (18.60%) 0.2280 (22.80%) 0.2857 (28.57%) 0.3580 (35.80%) 0.2631 (26.31%) yo ke gari tr/ olonka/day tc/ olonka/day nr/olonka/day amount (¢) 52,971.00 36,374.93 16,596.08 amount (¢) 57,937.21 33,538.73 24,398.48 amount (¢) 72,237.88 47,370.89 24,866.99 amount (¢) 40,646.25 24,322.82 16,323.43 amount(¢) 55,948.09 35,401.84 20,546.25 pm/olonka/day 0.3133 (31.33%) 0.4211 (42.11%) 0.3442 (34.42%) 0.4016 (40.16%) 0.3672 (36.72%) waakye tr/ olonka/day tc/ olonka/day nr/ olonka/day amount (¢) 139,601.14 87,172.13 52,429.01 amount (¢) 79,086.54 60,010.52 19,076.02 amount (¢) 92,862.82 62,784.09 30,078.13 amount (¢) 63,090.91 48,705.05 14,385.86 amount(¢) 93,660.35 64,667.95 28,962.26 pm/olonka/day 0.3756 (37.56%) 0.2412 (24.12%) 0.3239 (32.39%) 0.2280 (22.80%) 0.3096 (30.96%) note: tr = total revenue, tc = total cost, nr = net return, pm = profit margin. olonka of cowpea weighs approximately 3kg. exchange rate: 1 us dollar = ¢8,775.40 ghanaian cedi. conclusion and recommendations based on the results of the study, it is concluded that consumers in the study area have different levels and forms of preference for cowpeas. the characteristics of the cowpea products and socio-economic features of consumers also have influence on the level of preference. key socio-economic factors and consumer characteristics that influence consumer preferences include gender, marital status, income, education, product taste and sustainability (satisfying) of products. the processing cowpea into various food types is also relatively profitable. recommendations drawn from the results of the study are that: (1) the production and utilization of cowpea in the study area and in other parts of ghana should be encouraged as it would help both improve the nutritional status of consumers and also help generate income to cowpea producers and processors; (2) there should also be more research into the disliking intrinsic characteristics of cowpea; and (3) to solve the problem of malnutrition, particularly protein malnutrition, and also improve the living standards of people in the study area and ghana at large and elsewhere, there is the need for structural development support such as the establishment of an effective producer-processor linkage and an efficient food research and standardization, instead of symptomatic nutrition intervention activities. references amegatse w. k. (1995) “assessment of cowpea (vigna unguiculata walp) production, consumption and nutritional evaluation of cowpea–fortified fermented maize in ga district”, m. phil thesis submitted to the dept. of nutrition and food science, university of ghana, legon. edwards a. l. (1964) “statistical methods for the behavioral sciences”, holt, rinehart and winston, new york, pp. 402, 410. fao paper (1996) “food and nutrition division and statistics division”, fao, rome, italy iita (1983) “research highlights”, ibadan, nigeria, iita. mattson d. e., (1986) “statistics–difficult concepts, understandable explanations”, bolchazy carducci publishers, inc. pp. 281-283, 361,423. mensa-willmot y., dixon, p. r. and sefa-dedeh, s. (2001) “acceptability of extrusion cooked cereal / legume weaning food supplements to ghanaian mothers”, international journal of food science & nutrition, vol. 52(1), pp. 83. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 113-119 119 nns (1986) report on nns by national food and nutrition board, accra, ghana. onwueme, i. c. and sinha, t. d. (1991) “field crop production in tropical africa”, technical centre for agric and rural co-operation (acp), pp. 289, 292, 298. pindyck, r. s. and rubinfeld, d. c. (1991) “econometric models and economic forecasts”, third edition, mcgraw hill inc. pp. 248. rachie k. o. (1985) “cowpea research, production and utilization, a wiley –inter science publication. ross, s. a., westerfield, r. w. and jordan, b. d. (2001) “essentials of corporate finance”, third edition, mcgraw-hill/irwin co. inc. pp. 59. sefa-dedeh s. (1993) “development of high protein energy foods from grain legumes”, proceedings of an international workshop, university of ghana, legon, ghana, feb. 5-7,1991, association of african universities, food and nutrition project, 1993. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 4 april 2013. † corresponding author effects of liquid organic fertilizer on time of tasselling, time of silking and grain yield of maize (zea mays) enujeke, e. c. † and ojeifo, i. m. (department of agronomy, delta state university, abraka campus, asaba, nigeria) nnaji, g. u. (department of soil science, university of nigeria, nsukka, nigeria) citation: enujeke, e. c., ojeifo, i. m. and nnaji, g. u. (2013) ―effects of liquid organic fertilizer on time of tasselling, time of silking and grain yield of maize (zea mays)‖, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 186-192. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4), pp. 186-192 176 author(s) enujeke, e. c. and ojeifo, i. m. department of agronomy, delta state university, abraka campus, asaba, nigeria nnaji, g. u. department of soil science, university of nigeria, nsukka, nigeria effects of liquid organic fertilizer on time of tasselling, time of silking and grain yield of maize (zea mays) abstract a study was carried out in the teaching and research farm of delta state university, asaba campus from august to december in 2005 and repeated between march and july, 2006 to evaluate the response of maize (zea mays) to liquid organic fertilizer. the study was conducted using a split plot fitted into randomized complete block design. liquid organic fertilizer was diluted at the rate of 60 ml of the product to 15 litres of water and applied to maize foliage, topsoil, foliage and topsoil at the rates of 5l/ha, 10l/ha, 151/ha, l8l/ha, 201/ha and 251/ha. the result obtained indicated a positive influence of liquid organic fertilizer on time of tasselling, time of silking and grain yield of maize. liquid organic fertilizer significantly reduced the times of tasselling and silking, and increased grain yield of maize. based on this study, it is recommended that 151/ha of liquid organic fertilizer which produced 5.6tha’ in 2005 and 6.1tha’ of dry grain yield 2006 be applied on the topsoil of maize plant with a view to maximally exploit the great economic potentials of the crop. keywords: liquid organic fertilizer, maize, tasselling, silking, grain yield, nigeria introduction maize (zea mays) is the third most important cereal crop after wheat and rice (faq, 2002). in nigeria, maize is consumed in a variety of ways (agbato, 2003). in advanced countries, it is an important source of industrial products such as corn sugar, corn oil, starch, glucose, syrup, alcohol and binders in tablet production (ihekoronve and ngoddy, 1985). oil obtained from the germ is used to make soaps, glycerine and vanishes. corn sugar is used for chemicals, leather preparation, dyes and explosives (purseglove, 1978). maize is a major component of livestock feeds and it is acceptable to poultry, cattle and pigs as it supplies them energy. the stalk, leaves, grain and immature ears are cherished by different species of livestock. maize is also used for silage and green fodder for feeding farm animals (rouanet, 1992). in spite of the increasing relevance of maize in nigeria, yield depressions abound in farmers’ fields due to declining soil fertility. ojeniyi (2000) noted that arabic soils of the tropics get degraded quickly in physical, chemical and biological qualities as a result of continuous cropping. this necessitates research into avenues for improving crop productivity through the application of liquid organic fertilizer, inorganic fertilizers or organic manure. organic manure is often bulky and may not be readily available for application where large hectarage of cropland is to be applied. it also possesses unpleasant odour, harbours reptiles, and mineralizes slowly over long period of time. inorganic fertilizers with the attendant problems of inaccessibility, difficulty in transportation and high cost of acquisition by resource poor farmers as well as the use of other chemicals lead to adverse environmental, agricultural and health consequences (saber, 1998). liquid organic fertilizers are environmentally friendly fertilizers obtained from plant and animal origin. they are formulated from botanical extracts into liquids that are readily absorbed in soluble state, and are usually fortified with nutrient elements that promote healthy plants growth and development (danbala and green planet, 2003). liquid organic fertilizer gives plants added nutrients in effects of liquid organic fertilizer on... 187 a faster-acting form than granular fertilizer. health-related benefits accrue from application of liquid organic fertilizer. bockrnan et al. (1990) reported that a desire for quality food is part of the market acceptance of organic produce which have little or no chemical residue. some advocates or organic farming believe that food produced with liquid organic fertilizers is more nutritious than food produced by conventional farming (schupan, 1974). liquid organic fertilizer is excellent for growth of many crops including maize, sorghum, rice, yam, cassava, potato, soybean, cowpea, mango, papaya and oil palm. this study was carried out to assess the response of maize to liquid organic fertilizer. the specific objectives of this study were to: (1) determine the best rate and location for the application of liquid organic fertilizer for maize production in order to achieve optimum yield. (2) determine the response of time of tasselling and silking to liquid organic fertilizer. methods site description: the experiment was carried out in the teaching and research farm of delta state university, asaba campus from august to december 2005 and repeated between march and july, 2006. asaba is located at 06°l4n of the equator. it lies in the tropical rainforest zone and is characterized by rainy season between april and october with annual mean rainfall of 1500 to 3000mm (fos, 1996). land preparation: land preparation — the site was cleared using cutlass and tillage was done using plough and harrow. soil samples were collected before the planting. the samples were analyzed in the laboratory for routine physical and chemical properties. pre—planting soil analysis: surface sols (10 — 15cm) were sampled with a tabular sampling auger. representative soil samples were taken and then bulked together from the replicate. the samples were air-dried at room temperature for 5 days and crushed to pass through a 2mm mesh tube. sub—samples from the bulked soil sample were further ground to pass through 100-mesh sieve for the determination of organic matter. the rest samples were then analyzed to determine the physical and chemical properties of the soil. the analysis was done at nigeria institute for oil palm research (nifor), benin city, edo state. particle size: the analysis was done by the hydrometer method of bouyoucos (1951) after destroying the organic matter with hydrogen peroxide and dispersing the soil with sodium hexarnetaphosphate. ph: this was determined in distilled water and in inkcl in a 1:1 soil-to-solution suspension using a ph meter. organic matter: this was determined from the result of organic carbon as follows: % organic mailer in the soil % organic carbon x 1.79. the total nitrogen (n) content of the soil then calculated from the result of the % organic matter as follows: total n = 5% of result organic matter content in the soil (i1ta, 1979). exchangeable bases: the soil was extracted with neutral nh.oac. k and na in the extracts were determined by flame photometry and mg by the atomic absorption spectrophotorneter. total exchangeable acidity: this was extracted with inkcl and estimated in the extracts by titration method (mcclean. 1965). effective cation exchange capacity (ecec): this was taken as the sum of the exchangeable bases and exchange acidity (e.a) (kamprath. 1970’). seed procurement and viability test: hybrid maize seed (oba super-2) was obtained from premier seed. viability test was carried out. experimental design: the experiment was carried out using split plot fitted into randomized complete block (rcb) design replicated three times. the main plot was occupied by method of application while the subplots were allotted the different level of liquid organic fertilizer. the main plot treatment and subplot treatments are: method of application of liquid organic fertilizer (1) foliar application (2) top soil application (3) foliar + top soil application, while sub plot — rate of liquid organic fertilizer application (1 ha-1) (1) 5 (2) 10 (3) 15 (4) 18 control (dambara and green planet international, 2003) (5) 20 (6) 25 dilution rate — the liquid organic fertilizer was diluted at the ratio of 60m i of liquid asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 186-192 188 organic fertilizer to 15 litres of water (1 ml of liquid organic fertilizer to 250ml of water) (danbara and green planet international, 2003) planting — sixty stands of maize were sown per subplot measuring 7.88m2 at standard spacing of 75cm x 25cm giving a plant population of 5.33 plants/in2. application of liquid organic fertilizer — liquid organic fertilizer was applied to maize foliage, topsoil, foliage and top soil at three weeks and six weeks after sowing using hand sprayer. weeding —weeding was done three times manually. data/sample collection twenty-six middle stands served as net plot and were used as sample population to check edge effect. days to 50% tasselling and silking were taken. after harvesting and shelling, dry weight of seeds was measured using a weighing scale. statistical analysis — data collected were subjected to analysis of variance using (sas, 1996) and means were separated using duncan multiple range test. results physico-chemical properties of the experimental site the phvsico-chemical properties of the study area is shown in table 1. the soil was predominantly sandy. the surface had more sand than the subsurface. texturally, the experimental site was classified as sandy clay. the soil is generally acidic with a ph of 5.7. the organic matter and total nitrogen content were low with values of 0.12 gkg’ and 0.o5gkg-1, respectively. the available p was equally low with a value of 9.3mgkg. the exchangeable cations were low in status with values of 1.86 cmol (kg for ca and 1.42 crnolkg’ for mg. the values obtained for k (0.07 cmolkg’) and ecec (8.45 cmolkg’) were low. this could be attributed to low activity clay of the study area while the low values obtained organic c, total nitrogen and p were as a result of erosion that is predominant in the area and subsequent leaching of the nutrient beyond the root zone. effect of liquid organic fertilizer on time of tasselling of maize number of days to tasselling is shown in table 2. the table showed that liquid organic fertilizer applied at the rate of 15 l/ha on topsoil tasseled earlier than other plants, including their control counterparts in both first and second trails. during the first trail (table 2), there were significant differences in time of tasselling. plants that received 15 l/ha of liquid organic fertilizer tasseled first, followed by plants that received 20 l/ha, and thereafter, the plants in the control plots. plants that received 5ljha tasselled last. plants that received liquid organic fertilizer on topsoil tasseled first, followed by foliar + topsoil before foliar. the trend was the same during the second trial (table 2). days to 50% tasselling significantly (p=0.05) differed from plants that received various rates of fertilizer. effect of liquid organic fertilizer on time of silking of maize the response of time of silking of maize to liquid organic fertilizer is shown in table 2. the table showed that liquid organic fertilizer significantly differed or influenced time of silking between various rates of application. during the first trail, plants that received liquid organic fertilizer at the rate of 15 (/ha produced silk earlier than other plants. including plants in the control subplot. plants that received loi..ha fertilizer developed silk lastly. plants that received fertilizer on topsoil attained 50% silking first, followed by foliar + topsoil before foliar. the second trial followed the same trend. there were significant differences in time of silking between plants that received the different rates of fertilizer. effect of liquid organic fertilizer on the dry grain yield of maize the response of dry grain yield to liquid organic fertilizer are shown in table 2. the table showed that maize plant which received liquid organic fertilizer at the rate of 15 litres/hectare on topsoil out-yielded other plants including their control counterparts. during the first trial, the yield of maize plants which received soil-applied fertilizer was superior to plants which received fertilizer through other locations. the performance of plants that effects of liquid organic fertilizer on... 189 obtained liquid organic fertilizer through foliar + topsoil was poorest. while 15 l/ha liquid organic fertilizer produced significant yield difference, other rates of application were statistically similar. the yield of plant that obtained 5 l/ha liquid organic fertilizer was smallest, followed by the control. the trend was the same during the second trial. table 1: physico-chemical properties of the experimental site soil properties value particles size distribution (%) sand 66.3 silt 26.3 clay 7.4 textural class sandy clay soil ph (h20) 5.7 org. c (g kg -1 ) 0.05 total n (gkg -1 ) 0.12 available p (mgkg -1 soil) 9.3 exchangeable cations (cmol kg -1 ) ca 1.86 mg 1.42 k 0.07 na 0.12 ecec (cmol kg -1 ) 8.45 base saturation (%) 41.1 legend: % = percentage, h20 = water, org. c = organic carbon, gkg-1 = gram per kilogram, n = nitrogen, p = phosphorus, mgkg-1 =milligram per kilogram, cmol kg-1 = centimole per kilogram, ca = calcium, mg = magnesium, k = potassium, na = sodium, ecec = exchangeable cation exchange capacity. table 2: effect of liquid organic fertilizer on days to 50% tasseling and silking, and dry grain yield (kg/ha) of maize location of application rate of lof (l/ha -1 ) tasseling 2005 2006 silking 2005 2006 dry grain yield 2005 2006 5 57.3 60.3 71.7 69.3 2.8 3.3 foliar 10 58.7 62.3 73.3 70.3 3.5 3.6 15 56.0 54.0 66.0 67.7 4.2 4.5 18 60.3 62.0 73.3 71.7 3.2 3.3 20 62.3 56.3 68.0 74.0 3.9 3.9 25 60.3 61.0 73.0 68.3 3.8 3.8 mean 59.3 59.3 71.0 70.3 3.5 3.7 5 61.7 62.0 73.3 73.0 3.4 3.8 top soil 10 58.0 60.3 72.0 70.0 3.5 3.7 15 57.3 53.0 65.0 68.0 5.0 5.4 18 58.3 56.3 67.7 70.0 4.2 4.4 20 58.0 53.3 66.0 69.0 3.6 3.8 25 58.0 60.7 72.3 69.3 4.0 4.3 mean 58.7 57.7 69.7 70.0 3.9 4.2 5 64.0 55.7 68.0 74.7 3.6 3.6 foliar + top soil 10 60.3 62.3 75.0 71.7 3.4 3.5 15 57.0 55.3 67.7 66.7 4.4 4.7 18 57.7 64.0 75.7 66.7 2.8 3.2 20 54.7 56.0 67.7 66.3 3.1 3.2 25 58.3 57.0 69.3 70.3 3.2 3.3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 186-192 190 mean 58.7 58.3 70.7 70.0 3.4 3.6 cv% 6.9 4.2 5.6 3.4 22.9 15.8 lsd location rate of lof 7.0 3.9 2.7 2.4 7.4 3.8 2.3 2.3 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.6 legend: lof = liquid organic fertilizer, cv% = coefficient of variability in percent, l/ha-1 = litres per hectare discussion soil physico-chemical properties of the experimental site the sandy texture of the experimental site may be attributed to the parent material (pm) from which the soil was formed and the climate of the area. the soil might be formed from sandstone and quartz parent materials. these impart sandy texture to the soils. the high sand content of the soil could be attributed to high content of quartz in the material (brady and weils, 1999). the acidic nature of the soil of the area may be traced to the marked leaching of exchangeable bases resulting from the high rainfall associated with the environment and the dissociation of strong and functional group in the organic matter. this is in harmony with the findings of esu (2001). the low organic matter status of the experimental site could be attributed to the rapid decomposition of organic matter due to high solar radiation and moisture, this favours optimum microbial activities in the soil, it could also be attributed to the annual seasonal bush burning which tend to deplete organic matter accumulation in the soil (landor, 199l). the low level of total nitrogen could be due to high temperature. it could also be attributed to leaching of’ nitrate by torrential rainfall prevalent in the environment (brady and weils, 1999). the high level of’ phosphorus may be attributed to either of these reasons: (i) history of land use and cultural practices associated with the land use (that is, cropping of crops that took much p nutrient from the soil and non application of p organic fertilizers (nnaji et al., 2002). (ii) the parent material from which the soil was formed may not be too rich in p minerals (brady and weils, 1999). (iii) the soil may not be highly acidic as to cause high level of fixation (brady and weils, 1999, isirimah et al., 2003). the low values of exchangeable cations may be attributed to the leaching of bases from the solum due to high rainfall characteristics of the area. the low cation exchange capacity could be attributed to the pm from which the soil was formed, and low organic matter (om) content of the soil. the pm from which the soil was formed may be poor in basic nutrients. fmanr (1990) noted that soils of the study area was dominated by fe oxide and kaolinites. these clay minerals are low in basic cations (brady and weils, 1999). the results, generally, are in harmony with the findings of nnaji et al., (2002) which reported that the history of land use and cultural practices affect soil conditions and crop productivity. effect of liquid organic fertilizer on days to 50% tasselling of maize plants that received 15 1/ha liquid organic fertilizer tasseled earliest followed by plants that received 20l/ha, then 51/ha before plants on the control subplot. plants that received 101/ha were last to tassel. the order of tasselling based on location of fertilizer was topsoil > foliar + topsoil > foliar. the earliness in time of tasselling resulting from application of liquid organic fertilizer on topsoil favours early maturity period and is similar to the report by microsoft corporation (2003) that liquid organic fertilizer acts as substrate for micro-organisms which help in biological stimulation of growth, improves vitality, plant vigour, and decreases crop maturity period. effect of liquid organic fertilizer on days to 50% silking of maize plants produced with 15 1/ha of liquid organic fertilizer developed silk earliest followed by plants that received i 81/ha fertilizer. plants that received 51/ha fertilizer produced silk lastly. based on location of fertilizer, plants that received fertilizer on topsoil produced silk first, followed by foliar + topsoil, before foliar (table 2). the earliness in time of silking of maize plants that received liquid organic fertilizer on effects of liquid organic fertilizer on... 191 topsoil at the rate of 151/ha is similar to the findings of galal et al. (2000) that liquid fertilizer promotes crop growth and healthy development. it is also in accordance with the findings of fisinin et al. (1999) and hedge et al. (1999) who reported positive responses of cereal crops to bio-fertilizer application. effect of liquid organic fertilizer on dry grain yield of maize the grain yield of plants that received 151/ha of organic fertilizer was highest; followed by plants that received 251/ha. plants that received 101/ha had the smallest grain yield. plants in the control treatment produced more than plants that received 51/ha and 201/ha of liquid organic fertilizer. soil-applied fertilizer produced better result than fertilizer applied on other locations (table 2). apart from plants that received 151/ha fertilizer, other rates of application were statistically the same. the enhanced growth and yield of maize due to application of liquids organic fertilizer is similar to the findings of chauhan et al. (1995); mehta et al, (1995): snehal et al, (1998) from brassica juncea plants when liquid organic fertilizer was used. also, ramazan et al, (1999) showed that barley seed yield increased more than their control counterparts. it is also in accordance with the report of buragohain (2000) who found that sugar cane cultivar cobln 9003 yield was significantly higher in the cultivated crops with liquid organic fertilizer than other crops. the increase in yield of plants that received liquid organic fertilizer could be attributed to influence of micro-and macro-elements, which promote yield increases, contained in the fertilizer (zodape, 2001). conclusion and recommendations the study was carried out to investigate the effects of liquid organic fertilizer on time of tasseling and silking of maize (zea mays). days to 50% tasseling and silking of maize was known by direct counting. based on the results of the study, the following major findings and conclusions were made: (1) time of tasseling and silking of maize was affected by different application rate of liquid organic fertilizer. (2) fifteen (15) litres per hectare of liquid organic fertilizer produced the best result in terms of time of tasseling and silking of maize which suggests or indicates most favourable rate of application for maize production. (3) soil applied fertilizer enhanced early tasseling, silking, maturity and yield of maize. in view of the results and findings from the study, it is recommended that farmers apply liquid organic fertilizer at 15 liters per hectare through the topsoil for early tasseling, silking and increased grain yield of maize. references agbato, s. o. (2003). principles and practices of crop production. odurnatt press publisher, oyo. pp57-62 bockman, o. c.. kaarstad. o. o, lie, o. h. and richards, i. (1990). agriculture and fertilizers. norsk hvdro a.s. pp 185—211. bouyoucos, g. h. (1951). a re-calibration of hydrometer for making mechanical analysis of soils. agronomy 43 :434 538 brady, c. and weils, r. r. (1999). nature and properties of soil twelfth edition, prentice hall, new delhi pp 74 –114. buragohain, s. k. (2000). efficacy of biofertilizers with varying levels of n on growth, yield and quality of sugarcane (saccharum officinanum l.) md. sugar,49, 847 850. chauhan, d. r., paroda. s. katria, o. p. and singh, k. p. (1995). response of inidan mustard (brassicajuncea) to biofertilizers and nitrogen. industrial journal of agronomy, 40, 86-90. danbara, a. k. and green planet international (2003). evaluation of power plant tm liquid fertilizer for potato production in plateau state, nigeria. national root crop research institute, jos. pp 1-4 esu, i. e. (2001). pedological characterization of soils of alluvial complex of nigeria. ibadan. pedological handbook 171-190 faq (2002) world agriculture: towards 20 15/2030. summary report. rome. federal office of statistics (fos) (1996). annual abstract of statistics (1996) ed. lagos, nigeria. fisinin, v. 1., l. a. arkhipchenko, e. v. popova and i. e. solntseva (1999). microbe fertilizer with polyfunctional propertiesproduction with the use of fowl manure. russ. agric. sci. 4, 20-25. fmanr (1990). literature review of soil fertility. investigation in nigeria (in five volume) 3(2) 102-106. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 186-192 192 galal. y. g. m., el-ghandour, l. a., mv. s. s., soliman s. and gadalla, a. (2000). nonisotopic method for the quantification of biological nitrogen fixation and wheat production under field conditions. biology and fertility of soils, 32, 47-51 hegde, d. m., dwivedi, b. a., and babu, s. n. s. (1999). bio-fertilizers for cereal production in india — a review. indian journal of science. 69,73-83. ihekoronve, a. i. and ngoddy, p. o. (1985). integrated food science and technology for the tropics macmillan, london. pp 243-248 iita (1979) selected methods for soil and plant analysis.international institute of tropical agriculture. manual series. no 1 isirimah, n. o., dickson, a. a. and igwe c. (2003). introductory soil chemistry and biology for agriculture and biotechnology. asia international publishers limited, portharcourt, nigeria. pp 103. kamprath. e. j. (1970). soil acidity and liming. in p.a. sanchoz (ed). a. review of soil research in tropical latin america. n. car. exptl st. technology bull. 219. landor, j. r. (1991). brooker tropical soil manual. a handbook for soil survey in the tropics and subtropics. longman group. england. 106-144. mcclean, e. o. (1965). alurninwni’ in c.a. black (ed). methods of soil analysis part 2: 986-994. agronomy no. 9. mehta, a. c. malavia, d. d., kaneria, b. b and khanpara, v. d. (1995). effect of phosphatic biofertilizers in conjunction with organic and inorganic fertilizers on growth and yield of groundnut (arachis hypogoea). indian journal of agronomy, 40, 709-710. microsoft corporation (2003). organic farming encarta encyclopedia 99 1-4. nnaji, g. u., asadu and mbagwu, j. s. c. (2002). evaluation of the physico-chemical properties of soils under selected agricultural land utilization types. journal of tropical agriculture, food, environment and extension, 3, 27-33. ojeniyi, . o. (2000). soil fertility management and plant nutrient sources in nigeria. paper presented at 30th annual conference of agricultural society of nigeria. bauchi abstracts p 35. power plant tm , green planet (2000). purseglove, j. w. (1978). tropical crops: monocotyledons. longman. london. pp 300334 rouanet, g. (1992). maize. macmillan. hong kong. pp. 1-95. saber, m. s. m. (1998). prospective of sustainable fanning through microbial biofertilization of plant rhizoshere 8th international symposium on microbial ecology. halifax, canada. schupan, w. (1974). nutritional value of corps ad influenced by organic and inorganic fertilizer treatments: quality of plant-plant foods. human nutrition, 23(4), 333-358. snehal, j., zende, n. a. and joshi, s. (1998). biofertilizers and organic manures in sugarcane spaced transplanting method (variety co. 7527). proceeding of 60th annual conference of the sugar technology. shemla. indian 19-21 september pp.105-113. statistical analytical system (sas). users guide statistics version. raleigh, zodape, s. t. (2001). seaweeds as biofertilizer. journal of scientific industrial research,. 60(56), 378 — 382. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 3 march 2013. acknowledgements: author thanks the tobacco research board for funding this project. exploring the influence of coal rubble and pine bark substrate mixes on germination, spiral rooting, substrate chemical and physical properties: using tobacco as test crop upenyu mazarura (department crop science, university of zimbabwe, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe) citation: upenyu mazarura (2013) “exploring the influence of coal rubble and pine bark substrate mixes on germination, spiral rooting, substrate chemical and physical properties: using tobacco as test crop”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 115-126. exploring the influence of coal rubble and ... 115 author upenyu mazarura department crop science, university of zimbabwe, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe exploring the influence of coal rubble and pine bark substrate mixes on germination, spiral rooting, substrate chemical and physical properties: using tobacco as test crop abstract a study was carried out under greenhouse conditions to establish the role of substrate physical and chemical properties. pine bark and coal rubble were mixed at 100, 75, 50, 25, and 0% by volume. a farmers’ standard practice (50% pine bark + 50% sand) was included as a control. the experiment was made up of three blocks and six treatments arranged in a randomized complete block design. the particle density of the substrates in this study was virtually the same. the bulk density, total porosity, and aeration porosity, however, were highest with 100% coal rubble and decreased with decreasing coal rubble proportion while water holding porosity increased with decreasing coal proportion. germination decreased with increasing coal rubble at 14 to 28 and at 35 days after sowing (das). a mix of between 0 to 50% coal rubble with pine bark seemed ideal for germination. aeration porosity, total porosity, and bulk density were negatively correlated to germination (14 to 28 das) while water holding porosity was positively correlated. overall, the best germination was for 0 to 50 % coal rubble with subsequent bulky density of 0.46 to 0.83, total porosity 71 to 63%, aeration porosity 21 to 35% and water holding porosity 49 to 31% respectively. however, the measured total porosity and water holding porosity of the standard substrate (50%s0%cr50%pb) used normally by farmers were below the expected range, while the aeration porosity was on the low end. this makes this mix prone to aeration problems. the ph of the float water decreased with increase in time from sowing and proportion of coal in the mix while ec was not affected. keywords: total porosity, aeration porosity, electrical conductivity, germination, ph introduction essentially, the profitability of soilless grown crops is higher than of those grown in soil mainly because soilless substrates are superior in physical and chemical properties, have a low infestation with pests and are easier to disinfest between growing cycles (raviv et al., 2002). although genetics plays a role, good plant development depends to a marked degree on the physical (bulk density, porosity, water-holding capacity and plasticity) and chemical (buffer capacity, fertility and acidity) properties of the growing substrate. a good root system will always mean that the plant will be able to withstand harsh growing conditions. a good substrate must be light, firm, retain enough moisture, be porous, aerated, be free from pests, be biostable, low in salinity, suitable ph, and be stable and not expand, shrink or crust over excessively. bulky density, a substrate’s dry mass per unit volume (in a moist state in g cm -3 ), affects stability in potted plants. in this case a high bulky density is important while greenhouse production requires low bulky density (raviv et asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 115-126 116 al., 2002). the floating system thus would require low bulky density substrates as high ones could mean the floating trays would sink too deep in the pond, leading to water logging. the 50% pine bark: 50 % sand mix which is the current farmer’s choice in zimbabwe is based on this reasoning (mazarura & asher, 2011). a substrate that can hold a large amount of water without water logging will need reduced irrigation frequency. the container also affects the water holding capacity of a substrate, with higher water holding capacity being associated with shallow containers than deep ones. thus water holding capacity is not likely to be a limiting factor under the floating tray (ft) system as the trays that are used are shallow (5 cm) and as long as a substrate with good wicking is chosen. the total porosity or total pore space is made up of the sum of the gaseous (air) and liquid (water) phase, technically termed water holding porosity and the air filled porosity (raviv et al., 2002). the size and size distribution, shape, and arrangement of a substrate’s particles will have a marked effect on total porosity. a good porosity means sufficient oxygen will be available to the roots, preventing rotting. carbon dioxide from respiration must be taken away from the root zone quickly. it is accepted that less than 12% oxygen in the root system would make plants fail to produce new roots and between 5 to 10% roots would stop growing and below 3% they would die. to maintain oxygen above 12% a porosity of 5080% by volume is ideal in container plants. in the float system, such high figures are not very common with pine bark because of the overriding effect of a shallow cell. shrinking and cracking when drying will almost certainly damage roots. such plasticity is seldom apparent in floating tray system substrates. a low bulk density is ideal under the ft system as this means a tray would float higher, thereby creating conditions for higher porosity. the normal ranges for total porosity are 5085%, aeration porosity 10-30%, water holding porosity (container capacity) 45-65% and bulky density 0.19 to 52 g/cc (breedlove et al. 1999). these factors have marked effect on germination and plant growth. masaka et al. (2007), however, could not clearly relate aeration and water holding porosity to the variation in germination they observed. masaka & ndidzano (2008) observed decreasing germination at 35das as the amount of coal rubble increased in a coal/pine bark substrate mix, presumably because of decreasing water holding porosity (masaka et al., 2007). chemically, the substrate must be able to release n, p, k and other macro and micronutrients to the growing plant. the ph must usually be between 5.5 and 6.5 for most plants, outside this range some nutrients would be immobile while others would exhibit toxicity. the cation exchange capacity (cec) or fertiliser storage capacity is a measure of how a substrate is able to adsorb charged ions. the common of such cations would be calcium, magnesium, potassium, ammonium listed with decreasing capacity to be adsorbed. the substrate will store these until they are made available to the growing plant. too strong adsorption would fix nutrients and make them unavailable to plants. some soil-less substrates have high cec but anions get lost easily requiring frequent replenishing. for pine bark the loss of p can be significant since the bark “micells’ are negatively charged while p is also negatively charged. soil less substrate is a convenient replacement for soil based substrates because materials used have, when mixed in the right quantities, optimal chemical and physical properties, contain no weed seeds, insects, pathogens and are biostable even under heat sterilisation. these materials are admixtures of inorganic (polystyrene, vermiculite, perlite, gravel, sand, pumice, and tuff) and organic (charcoal, peat, hardwood and softwood barks, rice hulls, compost, sawdust and other organic farm waste products) alone or in various combinations. exploring the influence of coal rubble and ... 117 successful seedling production in the floating tray system described by mazarura & asher (2011) or even nursery seedling production depends to a large extent on the physical and chemical properties of the substrate used. a good substrate must bring water and air to the plant, provide anchorage and maintain biostability during the important time course of the emergence and early or later establishment of a seedling. often, this cannot be achieved by a single substrate; hence, the practice of mixing various proportions of a number of substrates in order to achieve the necessary chemical and physical properties. when roots initially grow into the air instead of into the ground, the phenomenon is called spiral rooting. the exact cause of this is not known, but certainly many factors like crop variety and pellet type (fisher 2011), seed covering and priming (peek et al., 2011;smith et al., 2000), particle size distribution (masaka et al., 2007), too much water or too little air (peek et al., 2011), tray depth, shallower trays having higher spiralling (bailey et al., 2012) and many other factors. the aim of this study was to determine the physical and chemical properties of different substrate mixes and study the response of a model crop to various substrate mixes of pine bark, coal rubble and sand. materials and methods site and substrate preparation the experiment was carried out at the tobacco research board, zimbabwe (17 0 55` s, 31 0 08`, harare, about 1500 meters above sea level). coal rubble was crushed and passed through a 4mm sieve. finer particles were removed by passing through a 1mm sieve to remain with particle-sized between 1mm to 4mm, which were then thoroughly washed with tap water. the coal rubble and pine bark were mixed in the desired proportions. for the pine bark the particle size distribution was 20% for particles less than 1mm, 70% for particles greater than 1mm but less than 4mm and 10% for particles above 4mm but below 6mm in diameter. the six treatments derived from the constituent substrates were as follows (note codes in brackets): 1 0% sand +100% coal rubble + 0% pine bark (0%s100%cr0%pb) 2 0% sand + 75% coal rubble + 25% pine bark (0%s100%cr25%pb) 3 0% sand + 50% coal rubble + 50% pine bark (0%s50%cr50%pb) 4 0% sand + 25% coal rubble + 75% pine bark (0%s25%cr75%pb) 5 0% sand + 0% coal rubble + 100% pine bark (0%s0%cr100%pb) 6 50% sand + 0% coal rubble + 50% pine bark (50%s0%cr50%pb) measurement of physical and chemical properties from each treatment two composite samples were collected and one was chemically analysed while the physical characteristic of the other were determined. the physical characteristics which were determined included the bulk density, particle density, total porosity, aeration porosity and water holding porosity (masaka et al., 2007). the remainder of the substrate for each treatment was used to establish tobacco float seedlings according to mazarura & asher (2011). the initial ec and ph readings of the water in the float bed were taken before floating and thereafter at 7, 14, 21, 28 and 35 days after fertilizer application. basal fertilizer application was done at 4 day after sowing (das) with a soluble (20%n: 10% p2o5: 20% k20) fertilizer at 150mgn/l and top dressing was then done at 42 days after sowing (das) with ammonium nitrate (34.5% n: 0% p2o5: 0%k2o) at 150mgn/l. experimental design and experimental handling the experiment was a randomized complete block of three blocks each with six treatments. the variety krk26 was used for this study. the floating depth of trays at floating, germination and spiral root count at 14, 21, 28 and 35das were taken from the middle 50 cells of the centre of three trays per treatment. the experiment utilized 200 cell trays in greenhouse float beds. all data were subjected to anova asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 115-126 118 using genstat version 11.0. mean separation was conducted using fischer’s protected least significant difference (lsd) test at p<0.05. results substrate physical properties with regard to particle density the six substrate mixes were essentially the same. however, in terms of bulk density the substrate could be arranged in the order 0%s100%cr0%pb and 50%s0%cr50%pb > 0%s100%cr25%pb > 0%s50%cr50%pb > 0%s25%cr75%pb > 0%s0%cr100%pb (table 1). based on total porosity, the 100% coal rubble had the highest while the 50%s0%cr50%pb had significantly (p<0.05) the least (table 1). the other mixes with pine bark exhibited values in between these two extremes. the control treatment had the lowest total porosity and aeration porosity and one of the lowest water holding porosity. the 100% coal rubble also exhibited the highest aeration porosity while the various mixes showed the influence of coal ruble as it was reduced to 25% of the mix. water holding porosity was, however, largest with the 100% pine bark substrate and reduced with reducing amount of pine bark in subsequent mixes. water holding porosity was negatively correlated with bulk density (r= -0.953, p=0.049). in terms of height of floatation and wicking time the mixes were not different from each other (p>0.05) (table 2). table 1: the physical properties of sand, pine bark and coal rubble substrate mixes treatment particle density bulk density total porosity aeration porosity water holding porosity 0%s100%cr0%pb 0.98a 1.04e 75.6d 55.6f 19.9a 0%s75%cr25%pb 0.96a 0.92d 64.8b 40.7e 24.1ab 0%s50%cr50%pb 0.96a 0.83c 63.9b 32.5d 31.5b 0%s25%cr75%pb 0.98a 0.68b 69.9c 24.5c 45.4c 0%s0%cr100%pb 0.95a 0.46a 71.0c 21.1ac 49.8c 50%s0%cr50%pb 1.03a 1.01e 43.6a 16.1a 27.5a means followed by different letters are significantly different at p=0.001 table 2: the height of floatation and wicking time of sand, pine bark and coal rubble substrate mixes treatment height of floatation wicking time 0%s100%cr0%pb 330a 106.7a 0%s100%cr25%pb 563a 109.7a 0%s50%cr50%pb 236a 110.7a 0%s25%cr75%pb 462a 106.7a 0%s0%cr100%pb 286a 107.0a 50%s0%cr50%pb 350a 109.0a means followed by different letters are significantly different at p=0.001 a plot of bulk density against the proportion of coal rubble showed that the bulk density increased with increasing amount of coal rubble and the relationship was quadratic (fig. 1). aeration porosity was similarly related to increasing coal amount (fig. 2) while water exploring the influence of coal rubble and ... 119 holding porosity declined with increasing coal proportion (fig. 3) and total porosity declined initially as the proportion of coal ruble increased down to 60% after which it began to rise (fig 4). figure 1: the relationship between bulky density and the proportion of coal rubble (t) in a pine bark coal rubble mix in which the pine bark proportion is the inverse of the coal proportion. figure 2: the relationship between aeration porosity and the proportion of coal rubble (t) in a pine bark coal rubble mix in which the pine bark proportion is the inverse of the coal proportion asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 115-126 120 substrate chemical properties at the start of the experiment all testaments showed ph that ranged from neutral to basic but tended to acidify with time (fig. 5). fertilization at 7, 21 and 35 das appeared to increase ph somewhat but the decreasing trend was maintained throughout the period of the experiment. an analysis of the effect of coal figure 4: the relationship between total porosity and the proportion of coal rubble (t) in a pine bark coal rubble mix in which the pine bark proportion is the inverse of the coal proportion figure 3: the relationship between water holding porosity and the proportion of coal rubble (t) in a pine bark coal rubble mix in which the pine bark proportion is the inverse of the coal proportion exploring the influence of coal rubble and ... 121 rubble proportion for each sampling date showed an increasing acidity with decreasing coal proportion (fig. 6). there was no treatment difference with regard to ec at each measurement date but the ec fell with time to half its initial value at 7 das by 42 das (table 2). figure 6: the relationship between ph and the coal rubble proportion in a coal rubble pine bark mix figure 5: the relationship between ph and days after sowing of various coal rubble and pine bark mixes asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 115-126 122 table 2: the ec of substrate mixes from 7 to 42 days after sowing treatment time in days after sowing (das) 7 14 21 28 35 42 0%s100%cr0%pb 1.6a 1.3a 1.2a 1.2a 0.8a 0.8a 0%s75%cr25%pb 1.5a 1.3a 1.1a 1.0a 0.6a 0.7a 0%s50%cr50%pb 1.6a 1.3a 1.1a 1.0a 0.7a 0.6a 0%s25%cr75%pb 1.5a 1.2a 1.0a 1.0a 0.7a 0.7a 0%s0%cr100%pb 1.5a 1.2a 1.0a 0.9a 0.7a 0.7a 50%s0%cr50%pb 1.5a 1.2a 1.1a 1.1a 0.8a 0.7a means followed by different letters are significantly different at p=0.001 effect of substrate on germination at 14 days after sowing the substrates could be divided into two distinct groups, with substrates with 100% coal rubble showing lower germination while those with 100% to 50% pine bark showed improved germination (table 5). this trend is evident at 21 and 28 days after sowing too. at 35 days after sowing there were no differences between the various substrates with regard to germination. table 3: the germination count for each treatment from 14 to 35 days after sowing treatment time in days after sowing (das) 14 21 28 35 0%s100%cr0%pb 70.3a 55.0a 49.0a 95.0a 0%s75%cr25%pb 108.3b 93.7b 82.3b 125.0a 0%s50%cr50%pb 142.3bc 136.0c 130.3c 130.7a 0%s25%cr75%pb 143.7c 148.0c 128.7c 67.7a 0%s0%cr100%pb 144.0c 157.3c 135.0c 87.7a 50%s0%cr50%pb 120.3c 128.0c 126.3c 125.0a means followed by different letters are significantly different at p=0.001 the correlation coefficients of selected parameters (those significant) against date of measurement are given in table 4. total porosity, aeration porosity and bulk density showed significant (p<0.01) negative correlation with germination (table 4) while water holding porosity was positively correlated (table 4). table 4: the correlation coefficients between selected physical properties and germination parameter date correlation coefficient probability aeration porosity 14 -0.8193 0.001 21 -0.8746 0.001 28 -0.8637 0.001 exploring the influence of coal rubble and ... 123 bulky density 14 -0.6918 0.0043 21 -0.8234 0.001 28 -0.774 0.001 water holding porosity 14 0.6794 0.0053 21 0.7938 0.001 28 0.7528 0.0012 total porosity 14 -0.778 0.001 21 -0.8899 0.001 28 -0.8592 0.001 effect of substrate on spiral rooting spiral rooting was significantly affected by treatment from 14 to 28 das and not affected at 35das (table 5). from 14 to 28 das spiral rooting increased linearly with decreasing coal rubble. at 14das the relationship was explained by the equation, spiral rooting = 0.2547t + 26.4 (r² = 0.6554, p<0.001) while at 21das it was explained by the equation, spiral rooting = -0.2813t + 25.267 (r² = 0.5404, p<0.002) and by the equation, spiral rooting = -0.096t + 8.8667 (r² = 0.5098, p<0.003) for 28das. table 5: the spiral root for each treatment from 14 to 35 days after sowing treatment time in days after sowing (das) 14 21 28 35 0%s100%cr0%pb 2.0a 0.3a 0.0a 1.00a 0%s75%cr25%pb 4.7a 1.0a 0.0a 1.33a 0%s50%cr50%pb 9.0ab 4.7ab 1.67ab 0.00a 0%s25%cr75%pb 23.0c 18.0bc 3.33ab 1.33a 0%s0%cr100%pb 24.7c 27.0c 10.33c 1.67a 50%s0%cr50%pb 12.7b 14.7abc 7.67bc 2.00a means followed by different letters are significantly different at p=0.001 the correlation coefficients of selected parameters (those significant) against spiral rooting are given in table 6. aeration porosity and bulk density showed significant (p<0.01) negative correlation with spiral rooting (table 6) while water holding porosity was positively correlated (table 6). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 115-126 124 table 6: the correlation coefficients between selected physical properties and spiral rooting parameter date correlation coefficient probability aeration porosity 14 -0.7411 0.0016 21 -0.6415 0.0099 28 -0.585 0.022 bulky density 14 -0.814 0.001 21 -0.75 0.0012 28 -0.74 0.0014 water holding porosity 14 0.7967 0.001 21 0.7381 0.0017 28 0.6792 0.005 total porosity 14 -0.8096 0.001 21 -0.7351 0.0018 28 -0.714 0.0028 discussion germination and substrate physical and chemical properties in general a good substrate must be able to anchor plants firmly in place, hold enough moisture so that watering is not needed too frequently, be able to drain easily but hold enough air for the roots, have low salinity, have a ph around neutral and be bio-stable among other factors. the particle density of the substrates in this study were virtually the same perhaps because the mixes were all of plant origin or had a substantial amount of organic component in the case of the 50% sand + 50% pine bark mix. the bulk density, total porosity, and aeration porosity, however, were highest with 100% coal rubble and decreased with decreasing coal rubble proportion while water holding porosity increased with decreasing coal proportion. floating height and wicking time did not differ. germination decreased with increasing coal rubble at 14 to 28 das and responded similarly at 35das. this observation is corroborated by masaka & ndidzano 2008, whose work using trays showed a decrease in germination with increasing coal rubble proportion in a coal/pine bark mix. in this study a mix of between 0 to 50% coal rubble with pine bark seemed ideal for germination. aeration porosity, total porosity, and bulk density were negatively correlated to germination (14 to 28 das) while water holding porosity was positively correlated to germination. this observation implies a role for air porosity and water holding porosity in germination and the fact that water holding porosity decreased with increasing coal rubble proportion suggests that coal depressed germination, at least in part, by its negative effect on water holding porosity. naasz et al. (2009) also reported a correlation between air filled porosity and germination and suggested that most of the phytotoxicity associated with bark substrates could be related to insufficient substrate aeration. overall, the best germination exploring the influence of coal rubble and ... 125 was for 0 to 50 % coal rubble with subsequent bulky density of 0.46 to 0.83, total porosity 71 to 63%, aeration porosity 21 to 35% and water holding porosity 49 to 31% respectively. it is unlikely that water holding capacity would be an issue with the ft system since the technique is hydroponic. the values mentioned above appear adequate as the normal ranges for total porosity are 50-85%, aeration porosity 10-30%, container capacity 45-65% and bulky density 0.19 to 52 g/cc (breedlove, ivy & bilderback 1999). however, the measured total porosity and water holding porosity of the standard substrate (50%s0%cr50%pb) used normally by farmers were below the expected range while the aeration porosity was on the low end. this makes this mix prone to aeration problems. the ph of the float water decreased with increase in das and proportion of coal in the mix while ec was not affected. similar results were reported by jackson & wright 2009 with both pine bark and pine tree substrate although this was in 15 l containers. effect of substrate on spiral rooting an increase in coal rubble in the coal/pine bark mix drastically reduced spiral rooting. a 50 % coal rubble + 50% pine bark seemed ideal. spiralling was negatively correlated with aeration porosity, bulk density, and total porosity while it was positively correlated with water holding porosity. the factors that affect spiral rooting are not well understood and this work suggests that, apart from unknown substrate specific parameters, aeration limitations revealed by the above correlations may play a role in this phenomenon. certainly many factors like variety and pellet type (fisher, 2011), seed covering and priming (smith et al., 2000), particle size distribution (masaka et al., 2007) and many other factors are thought to be important. masaka et al. (2007) found as in the present study that increasing the proportion of pine bark resulted in higher spiral rooting. they attributed this increased spiralling to a reduction in aeration porosity. this is confirmed in the present study, were a positive correlation between total porosity and aeration porosity is revealed. indeed the present study also reveals that an increase in water holding porosity plays some role in increasing spiral roots. regardless, however, their results show, as those of the present study do, that an increase in coal rubble reduces spiral roots. summary, conclusions and recommendations essentially, the bulk density, total porosity, and aeration porosity, were highest with 100% coal rubble and decreased with decreasing coal rubble proportion while water holding porosity increased with decreasing coal proportion. floating height and wicking time did not differ. germination decreased with increasing coal rubble at 14 to 28 das and the same at 35das. the mix of between 0 to 50% coal rubble with pine bark seemed ideal for germination. aeration porosity, total porosity, and bulk density were negatively correlated to germination (14 to 28 das) while water holding porosity was positively correlated to germination. overall, the best germination was for 0 to 50 % coal rubble with subsequent bulky density of 0.46 to 0.83, total porosity 71 to 63%, aeration porosity 21 to 35% and water holding porosity 49 to 31% respectively. however, the measured total porosity and container capacity of the standard substrate (50%s0%cr50%pb) used normally by farmers were below the expected range while the aeration porosity was on the low end. this makes this mix prone to aeration problems. further work must find ways of decreasing the coal induced high ph, perhaps by using a suitable acid and then evaluating the effect of the mixes on germination once more. references bailey, a., bush, l., green, j. d., miller, b., schwab, g., powers, l., snell, w., townsend, l., purschwitz, m., wells, l., wilhoit, j., velandia, m., witcher, v., bost, b., burgess, g., hale, f., hensley, d., denton, p. & rhodes, n. (2012). 2011-2012 kentucky & tennessee tobacco production guide, university of tennessee extension & university of kentucky, usa, p. 66, viewed 14 march, 2012 <http://www.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/id/id160/id16 0.pdf>. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 115-126 126 breedlove, d., ivy, l. & bilderback, t. (1999). comparing potting substrates for growing “hershey red” azaleas, containergrown plant production, 71–75, viewed 4 january, 2013 <http://www.sna.org/resources/documents/99r esprocsec01.pdf>. fisher, l. (2011). cs 062-495 lecture 2 transplant production.ppt, viewed 1 february, 2013, <http://www.cropsci.ncsu.edu/personnel/fisher _loren/class/cs%20062495%20lecture%202 %20transplant%20production.ppt>. jackson, b. e. & wright, r. d. (2009). changes in chemical and physical properties of pine tree substrate and pine bark during long-term nursery crop production. hortscience, 44(3), 791–799. masaka, j., musundire, r. & gondongwe, l. (2007). the effect of float seedling growth media combination and particle size distribution on germination and biometric characteristics of tobacco seedlings (nicotina tabacum). international journal of agricultural research, 2(5), 459–467. masaka, j. & ndidzano, k. (2008) the effect of media combinations on nutrient laod in float trays and tobacco seedling survival counts. journal of plant sciences, 3(1), 33–42. mazarura, u. & asher, f. i. (2011). the floating tray system: theory, techniques and technology, sable printers, harare, zimbabwe. naasz, r., caron, j., legault, j. & pichette, a. (2009). efficiency factors for bark substrates: biostability, aeration, or phytotoxicity. soil science society of america journal, 73(3), 780–791. peek, d. r., reed, t. d., johnson, c. s., semtner, p. j. & wilkinson, c. a. (2011). burley tobacco production guide., virginia cooperative extension, viewed 1 february, 2013, <http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/436/436-05011/436-050_pdf.pdf>. raviv, m., wallach, r., silber, a. & bar-tal, a. (2002). substrates and their analysis’, in d savvas & h passarn (eds), hydroponic production of vegetables and ornamentals, embryo publications, athens, greece, pp. 25– 101, viewed 4 january, 2013 <http://www.fao.org/hortivar/scis/doc/publ/8.pd f>. smith, w. d., hartley, m. d., swetnam, l. & cui, m. (2000). evaluation of management practices to reduce the incidence of spiral rooting in tobacco float systems.’, coresta, lisbon, portugal, pp. 31–32, viewed 1 february, 2013 <http://www.coresta.org/meetings/past_abstrac ts/lisbon2000-agrophyto.pdf>. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 566-575 566 paclobutrazol application and shading levels effect to the growth and quality of begonia (begonia rex-cultorum) cultivar marmaduke yayat rochayat suradinata., ramadhani rahman., jajang s. hamdani agrotechnology department, faculty of agriculture universitas padjadjaran, jl. raya bandungsumedang, km 21 jatinangor 40600, indonesia abstract belonging to one of begonia leaf plants is begonia rex cultorum, this group belong to the class of rex begonians. an ornamental plant species are known for the leaf colour and pattern. the objective of research to study growth and quality of begonia rex-cultorum ’marmaduke’ caused by application of paclobutrazol and shading levels. this experiment was arranged in split plot design consisted of two factors with shading as main plot and paclobutrazol concentration as subplot. the mainplot consisted of three levels, ie., light shading; moderate shading; and heavy shading. the second factor was concentrations of paclobutrazol application consisted of four levels, i.e., without paclobutrazol, 1 ppm paclobutrazol, 2 ppm paclobutrazol and 3 ppm paclobutrazol. the experiment consisted of 12 treatments units with three replications. the result of this experiment showed that there was significant interaction between levels of shading and paclobutrazol concentrations on average leaf area. application of 3 ppm paclobutrazol with heavy shading gave the lowest average leaf area, whereas non paclobutrazol treatment with heavy shading gave highest average leaf area on 12 weeks after treatment. treatment of light shading decreased specific leaf area compared with heavy shading. however treatment of 3 ppm paclobutrazol decreased plant height, plant canopy diameter, petiole length, petiole diameter, and specific leaf area, but it increased number of bud tips and number of leaves compared without application of paclobutrazol. treatment of paclobutrazol (1 ppm, 2 ppm and 3 ppm) on all of shading levels (light, moderate, and heavy) gave higher consumers preference of shoot structure and leaf color compared with non treatment of paclobutrazol on all of shading levels. keywords: begonia, paclobutrazol, shading introduction 1 begonia rex-cultorum ornamental plant is one of begonia groups that has the beauty of leaves, patterns and color varieties (thompson & thompson, 1981). one interesting cultivar of begonia rex-cultorum is 'marmaduke'. its growth is fairly fast but it is less attractive and compact, it can be seen from the long petiole size and fewer bud tips. these problems are 1 corresponding author’s details: name: yayat rochayat suradinata email address: dryayat_effendi@yahoo.com expected to be resolved by application of plant growth regulators which are inhibiting (retardant). one of the growth regulators that can be used is paclobutrazol, it is a growth inhibitor material that works on sub meristems by inhibiting the biosynthesis of gibberellins through inhibition of oxidation kauren be kaurenic acid thus inhibiting cell elongation and enlargement (cremlyn, 1991; mahgoub et al., 2006; wang et al., 1986). paclobutrazol pgr application on ornamental plants will give growth responses in compact, robust, increasing green leaf plants, therefore the asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:dryayat_effendi@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 566-575 567 ornamental plants performance becomes more attractive, strengthen the flower stalk, and increases the leaves resistance to environmental stress (mansuroglu et al., 2009). beside that paclobutrazol application in the nursery can prevent hasty repotting, and reduces water and fertilizer use that will streamline labor and cost production, it also reduces pollution to environment (conover, 1994; poole & conover, 1992). but the most important for potted plants, the use of paclobutrazol can improve quality and selling value (milandri et al., 2008). the use of paclobutrazol is able to cover the shortage of bad consequences from low intensity of sunlight received by plants. on lower light intensity, paclobutrazol application is needed to suppress the etiolation adverse effects due to the increase of gibberellins synthesis. in the study of lantana camara l.subsp. camara ornamental plant, there was interaction between shading level and paclobutrazol concentration. growth index increased while the number of flowers per plant decreased in every increasing shading level 0% to 65% at all paclobutrazol concentration tested levels (0, 20, 40, 80 and 160 ppm) (matsoukis et al., 2001). the presence of interaction between paclobutrazol concentration application and various levels of shading indicates that the use of paclobutrazol can essentially improve the shortage due to the influence of shading, otherwise the use on certain concentration paclobutrazol will show better growth and quality preferred by consumers when using a particular shading level than other levels. the information about the use paclobutrazol on ornamental plants especially in begonia rexcultorum 'marmaduke' is limited, thus it is necessary to do a research on the application of paclobutrazol under different shading in order to acquire ornamental plants with better growth and quality, also preferred more by consumers. the objective of research is to get an information about begonia plants which have good growth and qualities and also preferred by consumers. materials and method the experiment was conducted in greenhouse at agriculture faculty, universitas padjadjaran jatinangor, with altitude + 740 m above sea level. the experiment was carried out from march until june 2011. the materials used in this experiment were seedlings of begonia rexcultorum 'marmaduke' 5-month-old from leaf cutting, media mix of burned husk and humus with ratio of 1:1, npk plus fertilizer 18:9:10, npk leaf fertilizer 30:10:10. pesticides used were deltametrin 25g/l, and mankozeb 80%. while the pgr used was an instant paclobutrazol (patrol) 100 ml with the active ingredients paclobutrazol 250 g / l and the solvent is distilled water. plastic pots ( 15 cm), and shading paranet 45% and paranet 75%. the experiment was arranged in split plot design, with two factors: shading levels as the main plots consisted of three levels namely: n1: light shading (greenhouse shading) with 34.15 in watt/m 2 light intensity, n2: moderate shading (greenhouse shading + paranett 45%) with 14.96 watt/m 2 light intensity, and n3: heavy shading (greenhouse shading + paranet 75%) with 6.82 watt/m 2 light intensity, the second factor was paclobutrazol treatment which was used as a subplot consisted of four concentrations namely: p0 = 0 ppm, p1 = 1 ppm, p2 = 2 ppm and p3 = 3 ppm. plants that had already had two to four leaves and same height were selected as many as 432 plants. planting media preparation included sterilization by steaming for about one hour. after sterilizing the planting media, then did the mixing between husk and humus with ratio of 1:1 (v / v). planting media was inserted into the pot about a half of the pot, prepared seedlings were planted into the media, then added more media up to neck pot limit or stem base. paclobutrazol watering was done one-time, which was applied at the age of 1 week after planting. it was carried out in the morning by drench evenly over the media surface with volume of 100 ml/ plant with appropriate concentrations of the treatment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 566-575 568 plants maintenance included watering, it was carried two to three days once in the morning as much as 200 ml/ pot. fertilization was done every two weeks used npk fertilizer with concentration 1 g/l water and npk 18:9:10 as much as 3 grams per pot mixed with planting media, pest prevention and control were done by spraying a contact insecticide deltametrin 25g/l, fungi was controlled using systemic fungicides mankozeb 80%. supporting parameters observed included electrical conductivity, plant water requirement, and environmental conditions during the experiment. the main parameter observed included plant height, number of leaves, canopy diameter, average petiole length, bud emerging age, average leaf area, number of buds, petiole diameter, and specific leaf area, and plant quality including leaf color measurement and consumer acceptance. data analysis based on duncan multiple test distance and friedman test at 5% level. results and discussion laboratory analysis results showed that the application of paclobutrazol did not affect the initial ph of planting media, but at the end of the observation of there was an increase in ph close to neutral ph, it’s because of planting media leaching caused by watering, this led to a decrease of organic acids in media due to leaching by watering. acidity tolerance range of planting media for begonia by tebbitt (2005) ranged from 5.5 to 7.0 therefore at the range, the begonia can still grow well, although at a slightly acidic media. measurement of electrical conductivity (ec) showed that total amount of dissolved nutrient solution in planting media, the higher the ec, the higher the content of dissolved nutrients in the media, but it did not indicate the proportion of certain type of nutrients. at the end of the study (12 wat) there was an increase of ec compared to the initial ec (1 wat) meant that the slow release fertilizer used had experienced a lot of dilution so that ec had greater value at the end of experiment. range from 0.3 0.6 ms / cm for initial observations and from 0.7 2.02 ms / cm for the final observation in accordance to handreck & black (1986) for very sensitive plants to salinity such as begonia, ec value range of media should not be more than 1.8 ms / cm. observation of water requirement of plants showed that increasing levels of shading would decreased plants water requirement. it is related with low level of evapotranspiration, on the heavy shading generally the humidity tended to be high so that the water content in plants was not rapidly lost from the plants also from planting media through evapo-transpiration. whereas with the increasing concentrations of paclobutrazol causing smaller leaf size and shorter stem, so the plants water requirement would be less. research result conducted by poole & conover (1992) showed that dieffenbachia 'camille' and 'china doll' plants which were given paclobutrazol, just required little water. measurement result of average intensity of sunlight in the greenhouse under light, moderate and heavy shading, respectively at 23.33, 10.24 and 4.67 klux (6.82 watt/m 2 ). on the light shading, the light intensity was still sufficient for begonia need, according to dole and wilkins (2005) stated the need of light intensity for begonia rex ranged of 2000 fc-2500 fc (31.50 to 39.37 watt/m 2 ). according to the result of measurement with increasing shading levels, the light intensity and temperature were decreased in contrast to increasing humidity. this is in line with what was said by prasetyo et al. (2006) that the higher level of shading, the lower air temperature and light under the shading, however the humidity is increased. result of gibberellins content analysis tended to decline, in line with the increasing application paclobutrazol in the same shading level. paclobutrazol treatments (1 ppm, 2 ppm and 3 ppm) contained higher gibberellins than without paclobutrazol (0 ppm) at each level of shading, the heavier shading levels, the more trend of gibberellins hormone content for every same paclobutrazol level. the content of chlorophyll in the leaves indicated that due to the increase of shading chlorophyll a, ratio a/b, total tended to decrease, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 566-575 569 while chlorophyll b increased. whereas with the increasing of paclobutrazol concentrations chlorophyll a, b, ratio a / b, total tended to decrease. ratio a/b turned to be down due to increasing level of shading, according sopandie et al. (2003) shading causes a light increase of chlorophyll a, while chlorophyll b rises sharply led to a decline of chlorophyll a/b ratio, especially on sensitive rice genotypes. besides a decline in total chlorophyll at each paclobutrazol concentration increase, allegedly is caused by the greater formation of carotenoid pigments than the chlorophyll. according to mahoney et al. (1998) paclobutrazol applications on plant can increase the carotene content of black spruce. there was no interaction between shading level and paklobutrzol concentration on plant height, number of leaves, canopy diameter, average petiole length and age of bud emerging. shading level independently did not affect on plant height, number of leaves, and average petiole length, unless on plant canopy diameter (gardner et al., 1991). on the longer and thinner petiole (etiolation) mainly on the mature leaves resulting a lack of petiole to support the weight of leaves which is getting broad, it causes the leaves tend to grow more horizontal so that the diameter of the plant will increase. paclobutrazol independent effect on 3 ppm paclobutrazol treatment was significantly different than without paclobutrazol on plant height, number of leaves, canopy diameter, average petiole length, and age of bud emerging at 12 weeks after treatment. the higher the concentration paclobutrazol, the lower the parameters value mentioned. this is assumed due paclobutrazol inhibits division and enlargement of plant cells. according to latimer (2009) the use of retardants as well as paclobutrazol can reduce plant height by inhibiting the production of gibberellins, as the hormone that plays an important role for cell enlargement and elongation. according to chaney (2004) when gibberellins production is inhibited, cell division still occurs, but the enlargement and elongation of new cells will be inhibited. average leaf area (table 1) shows the interaction between shading levels and paclobutrazol concentrations on 12 weeks after treatment. application of 3 ppm paclobutrazol had the smallest average leaf area and significantly different with 0 ppm, 1 ppm and 2 ppm paclobutrazol at heavy shading level, also significantly different with 3 ppm paclobutrazol in light shading, but not with 3 ppm paclobutrazol at moderate shading level. plants without paclobutrazol application (0 ppm) had larger average leaf area because gibberellins hormone synthesis in plants was not inhibited so that cell division and enlargement periclinally in plants could take place. the greater concentration paclobutrazol will suppress the biosynthesis of gibberellins hormone, resulting smaller leaf area. matsoukis et al. (2001) reported that increasing concentrations of paclobutrazol and triapenthenol generally led a vast reduction in leaf area of lantana camara on different shading levels. while the results of masyhudi research (1999) suggested on jasmine that the higher the concentration of paclobutrazol, the smaller the leaf area. table 1: observation result of the influence of shading levels and paclobutrazol concentrations on average of leaf area (cm 2 ) begonia rex-cultorum ‘marmaduke’ at 12 wat shading levels paclobutrazol concentrations (ppm) p0 (0 ppm) p1 (1 ppm) p2 (2 ppm) p3 (3 ppm) n1 (light) 68,05 a a 52,01 a b 48,66 a b 45,56 a b n2 (moderate) 73,88 a a 69,17 a a 71,62 b a 31,13 ab b asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 566-575 570 n3 (heavy) 82,58 a a 54,30 a b 43,26 a b 25,39 b c note: the average values followed by a same letter are not significantly different according to duncan multiple distance test at 5% level. lowercase letters indicate the average comparison in vertical while the upper indicates the average comparison in horizontal. applications of high paclobutrazol concentrations in plants will greatly reduce the overall growth of the plant including leaf area. at low light intensity, plant growth tends to be slower because of lesser assimilate. this caused pressure , resulting slender plant with smaller leaf area and thinner leaves. in table 2, there is no interaction between shading levels and paklobutrzol concentration on parameter number of shoots, petiole diameter, and specific leaf area at 12 weeks after treatment. independent effect could be shown in the number of shoots and petiole diameter, while it showed no significant difference between these two parameters, only specific leaf area that showed the enhance at each increasing shading level. in addition, if the shading was increasing sla value would be greater, it could be seen in sla heavy shading value of 554.55cm 2 .g -1 while moderate and light shading respectively at 506.23 cm 2 .g -1 and 466.06 cm 2 .g -1 . the greater sla value in low light intensity due to heavy shading can cause greater growth of leaf area, while the lower photosintate accumulation due to shading by the leaves itself also because of the heavy shading, therefore available light for photosynthesis is less, consequently photosintate formed is minimal the effort made by the plant in expanding its leaves is a shading avoidance mechanism in order to maximize the low exposure. this is the strategy of plant in facing environmental circumstances that may be intended to intercepting more light on low radiation quanta condition. at high radiation quanta, narrow but thick leaves are possibly to reduce the light absorption and transpiration (sitompul and guritno, 1995). paclobutrazol applications independently can increase the number of buds due to amount of cytokinin formed and allocation of photosintate utilization. the relationship of cytokinin on the formation of lateral buds is reinforced by the opinion of gardner et al. (1991) that the transport of cytokinin from the roots will stimulate growth in axillary buds, further explained by the exogenous application of cytokinin stimulate the growth of lateral buds because the buds are generally lack of cytokinin. the result of syahid (2007) regarding the application of paclobutrazol on in vitro culture of ginger (curcuma xanthorrhiza) indicated that the formation of new buds continued to raise until the seven-month-old, although in small amounts, presumably because of endogenous cytokinin content in the tissue is high enough, thus at the certain treatment level the new buds are still formed. table 2: observation result of the influence of shading levels and paclobutrazol concentrations on number of buds, petiole diameter and specific leaf area begonia rex '‘marmaduke’ treatments observation number of buds petiole diameter (cm) specific leaf area (cm 2 .g1 ) shading levels n1 (light) 2,2 a 5,4 a 466,0 b n2 (moderate) 2,0 a 4,9 a 506,2 ab n3 (heavy) 1,8 a 4,7 a 554,5 a paclobutrazol concentrations asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 566-575 571 p0 (0 ppm) 1,5 b 5,8 a 534,4 a p1 (1 ppm) 1,7 b 4,8 b 518,3 a p2 (2 ppm) 2,3 a 4,8 b 510,6 ab p3 (3 ppm) 2,5 a 4,6 b 472,3 b note: the average values followed by a same letter are not significantly different according to duncan multiple distance test at 5% level. paclobutrazol application will inhibit the petiole diameter enlargement, because paclobutrazol inhibits gibberellins formation required by petiole cells to segregate and enlarge, therefore the petiole growth is hampered. this thing is not occurred in plants that are not given paclobutrazol, the plants have greater petiole diameter because the plants grow normally. in addition, there was a relationship between petiole diameter and number of buds, the more number of buds on paclobutrazol treatment at concentration of 2 ppm and 3 ppm , the smaller petiole because photosintat division in lots formed buds. plants that were not given paclobutrazol with fewer number of buds will accumulate photosintat for further leaf growth, the growth generate larger petiole diameter. while, the measurement of specific leaf area (sla), from analysis perceptible sla of concentration application of 3 ppm paclobutrazol had higher value than without paclobutrazol application. it can be said that the use of paclobutrazol can strengthen a plant leaf. as research on tomato plants, application of paclobutrazol was found to increase the enlargement of palisade tissue cells in the tomato leaf mesophyll of 32.6% and 41.6% (tekalign, 2005 cited by nazarudin et al., 2007). plant quality, color units l*a*b* leaf (cielab) the more positive the value of a* so the color will tend to be red, while the more negative a* the color of the leaf color will be greener. for the more positive the value of b* means the leaf tend to yellow, whereas if the b* value negative the leaf tend to be colored blue. for leaf brightness level, the greater the l* value, the brighter the leaf. in table 3, it can be seen that the treatments of paclobutrazol 0 ppm, light shading, moderate shading and heavy shading indicated the color tends toward yellowish-green because it had a minus value of a * and positive b*. whereas for paclobutrazol concentration 1 ppm, 2 ppm and 3 ppm in light, moderate and heavy shading showed reddish-yellow (orange) with a little green and yellow color because it had positive value of a* and greater positive b*. the higher concentration of paclobutrazol leaf green color looked lesser toward the red. increasing levels of shading on the same level of paclobutrazol made leaf green color decreased toward the red. the use of paklobutazol can enhance the formation of carotenoids in the leaf and increases leaf color. according tekalign et al. (2005). paclobutrazol application can also increases the carotenoid pigments in the leaves of potato plants. reddish yellow color performance was very firmly on the plants treated with paclobutrazol compared with those not given paclobutrazol, it was presumably because the smaller leaf size resulting more concentrated pigments that generated older leaves appearance for each area of leaf. while in heavier shading, older red color was due to the formation of a smaller leaf area coupled with the application paclobutrazol (2 ppm and 3 ppm) extremely reduced leaf area. in table 3 on consumer acceptance based on canopy structure and leaf color of begonia rexcultorum 'marmaduke' noted that the shape of canopy structure preferred was the plant with compact form with lots of buds and shorter plant height. table 3 shows the plants applied with 2 ppm and 3 ppm paclobutrazol at all shading levels tended to be preferred as the compact performance led panelists to rank the highest value. while for the color, the panelists preferred the reddish-yellow leaf color (orange), in addition it was acquired by giving 2 ppm and 3 ppm paclobutrazol in moderate and heavy shading. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 566-575 572 based on consumer acceptance test results known that the most preferred begonia rexcultorum ’marmaduke’ plants were paclobutrazol treated plants, because the plants appeared more attractive and interesting with a compact form and tend to red color. plants without paclobutrazol application were not preferred even appeared in larger with greater height and leaf area. this was because the form structure is less compact, the petiole seemed too long and large leaves made the plants look less balanced. as for the color, plants which were not applied with paclobutrazol tended to be green with little orange-colored pigment. the use of retardants such as paclobutrazol is very important in ornamental industrial plants. paclobutrazol has been used to suppress stem elongation in many plant species such as chrysanthemum, geranium, and other ornamental plant varieties (foley and keever, 1991). paclobutrazol treated plants generally appear shorter and more compact, because it is more easily handled during the production and marketing period (karlsson et al., 1992). while a compact potted plant is necessary, because it is more attractive, easier handling and delivery with minimal damage, also has a long life display for selling without causing etiolation symptoms and quality decrease (banko & stefani, 1988). table 3: the analysis of color appearance and consumer acceptance of ornamental plants treatments analysis result consumers acceptance l* a* b* leaf color shoot structure shape n1p0 35,38 -12,41 23,87 1,94 i 2,56 f n1p1 25,37 -6,84 18,44 4,26 f 6,15 cd n1p2 23,36 -0,91 16,53 6,09 e 7,76 b n1p3 19,80 3,74 12,42 7,85 bc 9,74 a n2p0 28,41 -5,70 21,08 3,44 fg 3,71 ef n2p1 26,30 -1,49 19,42 6,50 de 7,00 bc n2p2 26,28 -3,26 20,41 9,24 a 9,62 a n2p3 22,86 3,25 15,23 9,03 ab 7,18 bc n3p0 34,99 -8,59 26,54 2,50 gi 2,44 f n3p1 29,84 -4,53 21,60 7,68 cd 5,06 de n3p2 23,11 3,92 12,35 9,12 ab 6,79 bc note: the average values followed by a same letter are not significantly different according to friedman test at 5% level. ranking value of a small sequence indicates the treatment is not preferable to the rank of major to the most preferred. (n1 = light shading, n2 = moderate shading, n3 = heavy shading; p0 = 0 ppm paclobutrazol; p1 = 1 ppm paclobutrazol; paclobutrazol p2 = 2 ppm, and p3 = 3 ppm paclobutrazol). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 566-575 573 figure 1: begonia rex-cultorum ‘marmaduke’ differences structure of plant canopy is due to treatment paklobutrazol at different level (a) paklobutrazol treatment at mild level (n1); (b) paklobutrazol treatment at moderate level (n2) ; (c) paklobutrazol treatment at advance level (n3) in the observation of 12 wat ( picture from left to right shows an increase of paklobutrazol concentration from 0 ppm, 1 ppm and 3 ppm ). conclusion and suggestions conclusion there was interaction between shading levels and paclobutrazol application concentration on average leaf area. application of paclobutrazol concentration of 3 ppm with heavy shading generated the smallest average leaf area, whereas treatment without paclobutrazol application with heavy shading level generated the widest average leaf area at 12 weeks after treatment. light shading treatment led to lower specific leaf area (sla) when compared to heavy shading. while giving paclobutrazol 3 ppm treatment could reduce plant height, canopy diameter, average petiole length, age of buds emerging, petiole diameter, and specific leaf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 566-575 574 area (sla), but could increase the number of buds and number of leaves when compared with treatment without paclobutrazol. paclobutrazol applications treatments (1 ppm, 2 ppm, and 3 ppm) on all shading levels (light, moderate, and heavy) generated plants with a form quality of canopy structure and leaf color that were most preferred by consumers compared to no paclobutrazol application (0 ppm) at all shading levels. suggestion based on the experimental results, it can be suggested that need further research on the use of paclobutrazol in application method, concentration and application dose of different begonia plants combined with other treatment factors such as frequency of watering, nutrient concentration and dosage, type of planting medium and various temperature. references banko, t. j. and m. a. stefani (1988). growth response of selected container-grown bedding plants to paclobutrazol, uniconizole, and daminozide1. j. environ. hort, 6(4): 124-129. chaney, w. r. (2004). growth retardants: a promising tool for managing urban trees. department of forestry and natural resources purdue university, west lafayette. available online at: http://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedi a/fnr/fnr-252-w.pdf (cited 18 november 2010). conover, c. a. (1994). angel-wing begonia growth and water requirements affected by paclobutrazol. available online at: http://mrec.ifas.ufl.edu/foliage/resrpts/rh _94_4.htm (cited 25 oktober 2010) cremlyn, r. j. 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(2009). selecting and using plant growth regulators on floricultural crops. college of agriculture and life sciences, virginia polytechnic institute and state university. available online at: http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/430/430-102/430102.pdf (cited 20 juni 2011). mahgoub, m. h., n. g. abd el aziz and a. a. youssef (2006). influence of foliar spray with paclobutrazol or glutathione on growth, flowering and chemical composition of calendula officinalis l. plant. j. app sci res. 2(11): 879-883. mahoney, s. r., s. ghosh, d. peirson and e. b. dumbroff (1998). paclobutrazol affects the resistance of black spruce to high light and thermal stress. tree physiology, 18: 121-127. mansuroglu, s., o. karaguzel, v. ortacesme and m. s. sayan (2009). effect of paclobutrazol on flowering, leaf and flower colour of consolida orientalis. pak. j. bot., 41(5): 2323-2332. masyhudi, m. f., debora herlina and kristina dwiatmini (1999). paclobutrazol sebagai bahan perangsang pembungaan tanaman melati (jasminum sambac). jurnal penelitian pertanian, 18(1): 61-68. matsoukis, a. s., a. c. sereli, i. d. dimopoulos and a. kamoutsis (2001). response of lantana camara l. subsp. camara to paclobutrazol and shading. department of general sciences, agricultural university of athens. athens, greece. availble online at: http://ginkgo.cisti.nrc.ca/rpas/rpv?hm= http://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/fnr/fnr-252-w.pdf http://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/fnr/fnr-252-w.pdf http://mrec.ifas.ufl.edu/foliage/resrpts/rh_94_4.htm http://mrec.ifas.ufl.edu/foliage/resrpts/rh_94_4.htm http://www.uaf.edu/files/snras/c90.pdf http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/430/430-102/430-102.pdf http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/430/430-102/430-102.pdf http://ginkgo.cisti.nrc.ca/rpas/rpv?hm=hinit&journal=cjps&volume=81&afpf=p00-140.pdf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 566-575 575 hinit&journal=cjps&volume=81&afpf=p 00-140.pdf (cited 18 november 2010). milandri, s. g., c. p. laubscher and p. a. ndakidemi (2008). hydroponic culture of gladiolus tristis: application of paclobutrazol for flowering and height control. af. j. biotech, 7 (3): 239-243. nazarudin, m. r. a., r. m. fauzi and f. y. tsan (2007). effects of paclobutrazol on the growth and anatomy of stem and leaves of syzygium campanulatum. j. tropic forest sci 19(2): 86–91. poole, r. t. and c. a. conover (1992). paclobutrazol and indoor light intensity influence water use of some foliage plants. proc. fla. state hort. soc. 105: 178-180. prasetyo, h., ulianna and b. gonggo m. (2006). pola pertumbuhan tanaman jahe merah dengan intensitas naungan dan dosis pupuk kcl pada sistem wanafarma di perkebunan karet. jurnal akta agrosia, 9(1): 19-24. sitompul, s. m. and b. guritno (1995). analisis pertumbuhan tanaman. gadjah mada university press. yogyakarta. hlm: 113115. sopandie, d., m. a. chozin, s. sastrosumarjo, t. juhaeti and sahardi (2003). toleransi padi gogo terhadap naungan. hayati, 10(2): 71-75. syahid, s. f. (2007). pengaruh retardan paclobutrazol terhadap pertumbuhan temu lawak (curcuma xanthorrhiza) selama konservasi in vitro. jurnal littri, 13(3): 93 – 97. tebbitt, m. c. (2005). begonias: cultivation, identification and natural history. timber press. inc. oregon, u.s.a. 272 pp. tekalign, t. (2005). response of potato to paclobutrazol and manipulation of reproductive growth under tropical conditions. phd thesis, university of pretoria. available online at: http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd02082006112218/unrestricted/11chapter1 1.pdf (cited 24 juli 2011). thompson, m. l. and e. j. thompson (1981). begonias: the complete reference guide. first edition. times books. new york. 356 pp. wang, s. y., t. sun and m. faust (1986). translocation of paclobutrazol, a gibberellin biosynthesis inhibitor, in apple seedlings. plant physiol, 82: 1114. http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-02082006112218/unrestricted/11chapter11.pdf http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-02082006112218/unrestricted/11chapter11.pdf http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-02082006112218/unrestricted/11chapter11.pdf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 346-359 346 spatial management to enhance tourism industrial ecology and natural resources conservation: a case study of kakas sub-district, lake tondano, north sulawesi steiva a. s. wowiling student; graduate scholl of science and environmental technology, brawijaya university, indonesia; and minaesa institute of technology, tomohon north sulawesi, indonesia mohammad bisri, faculty of engineering, brawijaya university brawijaya university, jl. veteran malang, 65145, east java, indonesia jailani husain faculty of agriculture, sam ratulangi university, manado, north sulawesi, indonesia luchman hakim department of biology, faculty of mathematics and natural sciences, brawijaya university brawijaya university; and graduate scholl of science and environmental technology, brawijaya university brawijaya university, jl. veteran malang, 65145, east java, indonesia abstract 1 lakes throughout the world recently are facing serious problem which lead to its extinction. integrating conservation and tourism in lakes and it surrounding area offer new opportunities for environment, development and economic growth in harmony. the aim of the research is to identify spatial composition of an area adjacent to lake tondano as a basic model of tourism industrial ecology. the study was set up at kakas as one of the villages which is located adjacent to lake tondano. the result of the study shows that the model area adjacent to lake tondano acting as a sustainable rural destination consists of several land uses, including shrubs, paddy field, orchards, traditional plantation, and settlement with a total area of c.a. 27.80 km 2 . based on its characteristic, tourism in the study site should be projected in a form of rural tourism. there are natural and cultural capitals found in the study area, and their existence principally represents the potential resources for tourism development. these potential attractions are spatially distributed in three corresponding author’s details: luchman hakim email: luchman@ub.ac.id asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:luchman@ub.ac.id asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 346-359 347 areas, which can be linked through a triangle diamond model to meet a sustainable and competitive tourism industrial area. the opportunities of such concept also come to the existence of a corridor which is able to link each point area to become a single and integrative tourism destination. challenges for the tourism industrial ecology in kakas, however, lie on its ability to optimize resources, while at the same time minimize potential negative impacts to the environment, especially lake tondano. keywords: spatial mapping, sustainable and competitive tourism, lake conservation, north sulawesi introduction lakes play an important role in hydrological processes and support numerous biodiversity. many lakes are harbor of endemic fish species and crucial sites for migratory birds (hairston and fussmann, 2002). socioeconomically, many people in developing countries depend on the lake ecosystem to generate small-scale fisheries which becomes an important source of income for local community. while lakes have been identified to play an important role on earth’s life, many studies report that lakes and their surrounding areas are one of the most threatened ecosystems on earth. according to scholars, many lakes ecosystem in the world are nowadays facing serious problems which lead to their degradation and extinction (zacharias and zamparas, 2010). rapid development in areas surrounding lakes contributes significantly to lake degradation. the strategy to enhance lake conservation, therefore, should take into account areas surrounding lakes as an integral part to be developed sustainably. the potential integration of tourism industry and lake conservation is widely promoted in the world (infield and namara, 2001; sah and heinen, 2001; solossa et al., 2013). these opportunities provide new scenarios for many lakes in indonesia, including lake tondano in north sulawesi. lake tondano is one of the natural resources in minahasa regency, north sulawesi, which is recently under serious threats. rapid sedimentation, invasion of exotic plant species and pollution has become the most crucial problems to lake tondano. from the perspective of tourism, however, lake tondano is one the interesting sites in north sulawesi which is commonly visited by domestic tourists (hakim et al., 2012). this phenomenon provides opportunities to uses tourism industry as a key to enhance lake conservation and local economic development. in the political context, using tourism issues to support lake tondano is relevant to the recent provincial government policy to promote north sulawesi to become one of the famous tourism destinations in the world. north sulawesi is one of the important nature-based tourism destinations in indonesia. north sulawesi has abundance natural resources for tourism attraction ranging from coastal areas to active volcanoes. as far, bunaken national park and its surrounding small islands, which are rich in coral reefs, have been visited by both national and international tourists. it is estimated that in the future tourism will grow significantly in many areas in north sulawesi asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 346-359 348 (hakim et al., 2012; pangemanan et al., 2012; andaria et al., 2013). developing areas surrounding lake tondano as a specific tourism industrial area will facilitate integration models of tourism and conservation. tourism industrial area, which is managed in sustainable principles, will allow lake conservation as well as local economic development. scholars point out that there are numerous approaches to meet destination sustainability, namely economical, sociological, political and ecological approach. in north sulawesi, pangemanan et al., (2012) argues that pricing policy could be a significant economical tool to ensure tourism sustainability in bunaken. in another study, andaria et al., (2013) confirms that community involvement is one of the important aspects in nature-based tourism in bangka island. the spatial model, however, is absent. in perspective of spatial planning, defining the spatial pattern of landscapes has been recognized as a success for land and space management. spatial planning to manage a region has been proposed by numerous authors and agency as a tool to achieve sustainable tourism industrial area (andrews, 2002; bao et al., 2002; papageorgiou and beriatos, 2011; dede and ayten, 2012). tourism as one of the fast growing industries recently is addressed to meet its sustainability which puts ecological, economical, and social aspect as its integral components to meet destination sustainability. in an industrial context, it is one of the manifestations of industrial ecology which recently revived intensive discussion (jelinski et al., 1992; lifset and graedel, 2002). recently, the principles of industrial ecology have been applied to tourism destination management (schendler, 2003). according to kuo et al. (2005), the industrial ecology approach in tourism industry is considered one of the crucial aspects in the future of tourism industry. spatial planning provides benefits to minimize environmental degradation and reversely increase the efficiency natural resource uses. in tourism destination systems, the spatial planning facilitates scenarios to protect biodiversity and environment from tourism pressures. spatial planning principally allows tourism attributes connectivity and, therefore, creates integrative destination. overall, spatial planning contributes to the spatial design to meet space carrying capacity in destination management systems. in north sulawesi, however, such research was absence. the aims of the research are, therefore, to identify spatial composition of a particular area in kakas as basic information to design and develop sustainable tourism industrial area. methods study site the research was done at kakas sub-district of minahasa regency, north sulawesi. the climate of the area is wet and humid with annual rainfall of c.a. 2,000-3,000 mm. daily temperature recorded was 21º to 23° c, with the humidity of c.a. 87 – 92%. according to schimidt and ferguson climate classification, kakas can be classified into a permanently humid area (whitten et al., 1987). this area asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 346-359 349 is located adjacent to lake tondano as one of the nature-based tourism destinations in north sulawesi. the recent status of lake tondano, however, is reported to be facing serious problems leading to its damage. such disturbance has been reported to be associated with the human activities in areas surrounding the lake. tourism has been growing in lake tondano, but there is a few comprehensive planning and evaluation on the practices and impacts of tourism (hakim et al., 2012). geographically, kakas is located at 500 – 700 m asl. these areas are rich in term of natural and cultural resources which are potential to be developed as a tourism attraction. local people are traditional farmers. some of them are developing small scale fisheries in lake tondano. methods the area mapping to define industrial ecological sites consists of four steps namely data acquisition, pre-processing, analysis and map-product generation. in this study, topographic map of minahasa district from bakosurtanal was used to generate the study area. the topographic map was scanned and imported to the computer system for a further analysis using gis software. in this study, tourism resources exploration was initiated with literature reviews and interviews with tourism stakeholders. official documents related to tourism development in minahasa regency was studied and the potential of tourism attractions, which were noted in the documents, were documented. tourism stakeholders in kakas (i.e. local governmental officials, restaurant and hotel owners) were interviewed in order to identify the potential tourism attractions in kakas. field survey was done to verify the study area and to check the boundaries of the study area. gps was used to collect geographical data of tourism destination components and attributes, including geographic position of potential tourism attractions. data were stored in a computer system and were processed using arcview. result and discussion ecological features of the model area the tourism industrial model area in this study occupies an area about 27.81 km 2 . compared to the total area of kakas subdistrict, the modeled tourism industrial area covers about 0.017% of the total area of kakas sub-district (total area is c.a. 162, 666 km 2 ). the majority of kakas sub-district is dominated by forest (bps kakas, 2011). it is a common phenomenon in eastern indonesia, including many parts of the districts and regencies in sulawesi island. physically, this study site consists of several land uses category, reflected that the area has been used intensively by humans (table 1 and fig.1). paddy field and family plantation, which are managed in traditional systems, are dominant; this indicates that the model area was a traditional rural area. according to whitten et al. (1987) the economic income of minahasa ethnic groups depend on the plantation and mixed agriculture practices. the comprehensive agroforestry system in minahasa was less reported, but it was estimated that minahasa regency is the home asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 346-359 350 of numerous agroforestry practices. in north sulawesi, typical agroforestry land was abundance with numerous trees and crops. among the trees and crops, aren palm-based agroforestry (arenga pinnata (wurmb) merr.) was the main traditional agriculture system. the species produces nira sap which can be processed into sugar (lay and heliyanto, 2011). fig 1: land uses of study site inside the model area, there are barren lands which occupy about 22% of the total area. this area was dominated by numerous shrubs, with imperata cylindrica (l.) p. beauv. as the main invasive species. another plant species found in the barren land including calliandra emarginata (humb. & bonpl. ex willd.) benth. and alpinia spp. in the area, gigantochloa apus grew patchy. this figure represents the past forest disturbance by human. in the past decades, forest concession is one of significant problems in many forest areas in indonesia, including north sulawesi (whitten et al., 1987). settlement area was home for numerous exotic plants species. most of the area introduced to the house for ornamental plant purposes. it included bougainvillea spectabilis willd., cordyline fruticosa (l.) a. chev., dracaena spp., and aglaonema spp. there are also numerous kinds of banana (musa ×paradisiaca l. and arecanut-palm areca catechu l. as far, there was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 346-359 351 no evidence on the garden intensifications to enhance economic income. in rural areas in java, many plants are planted in home garden as an additional income source. local houses with their garden are basically able to be developed into tourism homestay. it is principally important to generate local economic earning from tourism industry (zeppel, 2006). lake tondano (c.a. 4.680 ha) is one of the crucial components in this model tourism industrial area. covering 8% of the tondano’s watershed area, lake tondano is one of the important ecosystems in north sulawesi. about 35 rivers flow to lake tondano. among them, three rivers, namely panasen river, ranoweleng river, and leleko river, have been identified to contribute to lake sedimentation and eutrophication (kumurur, 2002). recently, invasion of water hyacinth (eichhornia crassipes (mart.) solms.) and pollution caused by human activities have been heavily damaged the lake. another exotic species in the lake are anodonta woodiana lea and pomacea canaliculata lam. in the perspective of tourism destination management, the conservation of lake as one of the crucial natural resources for tourism attraction is important. therefore, providing serious attention to the lake conservation is crucial. table 1: land uses classification in the model area no land uses category area (km 2 ) percentage to the total area (%) area description 1 shrubs 6.16 0.22 degraded land dominated by imperata cylindrica. there are no significant agricultural activities recorded in this area. hilly area with sharp slopes. 2 paddy field 17.49 0.63 paddy fields which are managed in traditional ways (called mapalus). flat area and few terrace systems. 3 traditional plantation 2.15 0.08 traditional plantation with numerous plant species, including aren palm, bamboo, coconut, cloves, vanilla and numerous fruit. 4 settlement 1.40 0.05 local settlement dominated by traditional tribes (minahasanese). many old and traditional minahasanese buildings are still found. 5 orchards 0.60 0.02 small orchards as a place to cultivate daily use vegetables such as corn, piper, cassava, tomatoes, onion and other crop species total area 27.81 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 346-359 352 the models development for tourism industrial ecology area the physical and ecological data which were presented above indicate that kakas is a rural area. consequently, a rural tourism approach should be promoted in sustainable sound with the objectives of increasing environmental conservation, generating new local economic activities and providing jobs for local people. in many parts of the world, tourism is one of the rational options for rural development (george et al., 2009). tourism is one of the important strategies to diversify agricultural product. from the point of spatial context, the rural capitals arrangement to meet sustainable development is important. it is particularly important as rural is home of numerous biodiversity. rural also provides a buffer function to minimize human negative impacts to forest ecosystem. from the point of socio-ecological context, rural is one of the most fragile sites in the worlds. these implies that spatial management of rural for any purposes and activities is crucial. gunn and var (2002) point out that spatially tourism destinations consist of basic elements namely gateway, community, corridor and attraction complex which should be managed in an integrative vision. kakas completely consist of such destination components. the weakness, however, is that such components is badly or even less managed. each component, both spatially and functionally, seems to occur as an independent aspect. since the component’s connectivity is an important factor in the integrative system, identifying component and linking each component to build a comprehensive and integrative system is crucial. according to scholars, one of the characteristic of industrial ecology is integrative network which is able to run stable systems (andrews 2002; gunn and var, 2002). this requirement implies that developing a triangle diamond in kakas development could be significant (fig. 2). a b c asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 346-359 353 fig 2: the distribution of tourism potentials in the triangle diamond perspective three gateways to access kakas, namely langowan (area a), remboken (area b) and eris (area c) were identified in this study (see fig.2.). there are small villages in the gateway point, namely passo (notation a in fig.2), tountimomor (notation b in fig.2) and kakas-stat (notation c in fig. 2). in those areas, the distribution of community settlement was patchy. the highest population density was found in passo (752 people/km 2 ), followed by kakas-stat (480 people/km 2 ), and tountimomor (159 people/km 2 ). the local dwellers in those villages were christian minahasanese (bps kakas, 2011). these villages were connected to each other by rural roads. there is as long as 8.2 km rural road from passo to tountimomor, 9 km rural road from passo to kakas-stat, and 5.7 km road from tountimomor to kakas-stat. these road infrastructures are basically constructed by hot mixed materials with regular maintenance by local government and society participations. according to baudbovy and lowson (2002), these infrastructures are meeting to the basic requirement standards of destination development. the literature survey, stakeholder interviews, and field survey confirm that kakas is the home of diverse tourism attractions. kakas is endowed by abundance tourism attractions, such as hot springs, lakes, agricultural landscapes, traditional settlement, plantations, and social-cultural events which are able to be developed as tourism attractions. the rural tourism essences come from several features of agricultural phenomena, both social and physical. for instance, kakas has huge traditional landscape attributes, such as old settlement and churches that are embedded in paddy field background. the typical landscapes of kakas represent minahasanese cultural landscapes which are able to be integrated as tourism destination planning and development. in bali island, the balinese cultural landscapes provide significant future to indigenous landscapes as a tourism attraction (hakim et al., 2009). in kakas, these attractions are distributed in several points and can spatially be clustered into three groups (fig. 2). these clusters can be drawn as follows:  cluster a: there are two hot springs and pools as a basic attraction. the additional potential attraction encompasses traditional settlement as well as local culture and tradition.  cluster b: in the past, this area was addressed to become a sport center, including horse races. recently, the horse race activities are absent, but several horse race infrastructure is still available. this area is also endowed by some spectacular landscapes which are potential to be promoted as tourism attractions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 346-359 354  cluster c: an area with abundance potential natural and cultural attractions. there are historical assets (i.e. old churches, old traditional houses), traditional markets, and home industries in the cluster. there is also a water-based tourism attraction in cluster c. the basic schema of the triangle diamond model addressed here is to connect the three points of attractions into a single destination. in the north west part, the hot springs can be the main attraction. as far, south west area has few attractions. many attractions and facility are located at the north east. these three spots can be joined by rural corridors (fig. 2). the development of each point should be balanced and meet its ecological aspect. as a consequence, the north west areas and south west areas should be developed by creating specific programs and tourism attractions, while in the north east; development should be controlled and addressed to meet ecological sustainability. these will be linier with the principles of destination sustainability (lee, 2001; gunn and var, 2002; kuo et al., 2005). the success of triangle diamond system depends on road availability and quality. in kakas, rural roads as tourism corridors so far are in good quality to facilitate visitors’ mobility and access to tourism attractions and accommodation. the corridor plays an important role not only to link attractions but also to distribute visitors equally. it becomes the fundamental strategy in carrying capacity management, particularly in small naturebased tourism area with limited resources. corridor establishment will help to enhance tourist flows in particular destination systems and, therefore, reduce potential impacts to particular sites. it is particularly important due to the fact that concentration of tourism in a single area lead to vegetation degradation, wildlife habituation, land deterioration, and pollution (gunn and var, 2002) . towards tourism industrial ecology an industrial ecologist argues that systems should be developed following ecological principles (kuo et al., 2005). lee (2001) points out that four approaches, namely implementing local agenda 21, environmental management system (ems), eco-labels, and cleaner production principles, are the fundamental aspect towards tourism industrial ecology in a particular area, including kakas. principally, the aim of such approaches is to provide guideline to meets sustainable uses of resources, including land management. it principally becomes important because spatial planning is quite often confused with numerous stakeholders and community motives. the spatial planning, therefore, comes to accommodate numerous aspects and interests into one strategy (turner et al., 2001). these perspectives should be introduced in kakas area with collective support from community, stakeholders, and local government. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 346-359 355 tourism development in kakas, however, potentially provides both positive and negative impacts (fig. 3) which are crucial in industrial ecology. as mentioned by scholars, tourism development is often followed by government political support as well as private investments (baud-bovy and lowson, 2002; gunn and var, 2002). government is often interested in and focuses on the community development programs, as well as establishing policy to meet industrial regional development in sustainable manner through environmental management system (ems) approach. in tourism sector, ems recently receives a lot of attention in order to meet tourists’ desire to good and healthy quality of destinations and attractions. in kakas, local government can adopt and promote the principles of ems in order to evaluate, reduce and manage the negative impacts of tourism operational business. this has been widely promoted in many regions and countries. it is particularly important as ems is the basis for sustainable development implementation (van der duim and van marwijk, 2006; deehul and khodabocus, 2010 ; utarasakul, 2012). the development of public and tourism infrastructure, however, is linier to problems of crowding and habitat degradation since land is converted into tourism infrastructure (nepal, 2007). chen et al., (2004) points out that area and region development is often complicated and become one of the spatial problems in many countries. political support often shows its orientation to support tourism growth, but less attention is paid to the basic needs of residents. according to nepal (2008), there are also increases of consumption and exploitation as the result of the development of destinations. local government and planner in kakas, therefore, should pay serious attention to the potential negative impacts. investment tourism industrial area attractiveness number of tourist promotion political support public and tourism infrastructure environ. manag. system crowding over consumption and exploitation habitat degradationcomn. dev. and involvement pro-tourism growth asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 346-359 356 fig 3: conceptual models of tourism impacts in kakas. arrow indicates positive impacts, and dot arrow indicates negative impacts minimize environmental impact must become the focus of industrial ecology. it is particularly relevant in kakas. based on field survey and interviews with tourism stakeholders in kakas, there are several important actions that should be implemented (table 2). in such management, however, the participation of tourism stakeholders and community should be facilitated. table 2: management approach of land uses no land uses category area (km 2 ) management approach 1 shrubs 6.16 improved and transformed into productive land to support tourism destination. 2 paddy field 17.49 minimizing pesticide use, introducing integrated pest management control, promoting organic agriculture, and enhancing sustainable practices traditional farming will contribute to the proposal of paddy field as a tourism attraction. 3 traditional plantation 2.18 improving plantation quality, promoting agro-forestry approach in plantation management, supporting traditional plantation as a tourism attraction (i.e. farm trip program) 4 settlement 1.40 preserving old traditional buildings, strengthening local cultures and traditions. improving settlement environment, including sanitation, home garden quality. 5 orchards 0.60 improving orchards productivity to support tourism industrial area as a sustainable ecological system, each landscape component of the tourism industrial area in kakas should be able to contribute positive impact to the whole systems. in kakas, it is particularly relevant due to rapid land degradation affecting lake existence in the future. the degradation that leads to ecosystem instability of a particular area will contribute to negative impacts to another area in the system. this is principally important in landscape ecology (turner et al., 2001). conclusion sustainable tourism nowadays becomes the important aspect in tourism industry. many approaches to develop such model have been implemented, but few are related to the application of spatial planning. in the perspective of lake tondano conservation, enhancing sustainable human economy and activity in the area adjacent to the lake ecosystem is crucial. spatially, the present structures of kakas’ areas for tourism development purposes consist of gateway, corridors, community, and complex attractions. the research confirms that typically spatial planning is able to accommodate the needs of tourism destination development, especially in order to meet tourism industrial ecology. spatial planning is able to map tourism attractions asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 346-359 357 and to model corridors systems which become the basic fundamental aspect in tourism destination planning. in kakas, potential tourism attractions can be linked through the triangle diamond model to meet a sustainable and competitive tourism industrial area. the existing corridors linking each point area basically support tourist 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(2006). indigenous ecotourism, sustainable development and management, oxfordshire, uk. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 2 february 2013. † corresponding author comparative studies of two nigerian ecotypes chicken kept in battery cages for laying performance and egg quality traits sola-ojo, f. e.† (department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria) ayorinde, k. l. (department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria) jatto, o. m. (department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria) toye, a. a. (department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria) citation: sola-ojo, f. e., ayorinde, k. l., toye, a. a. and jatto. o. m. (2013) “comparative studies of two nigerian ecotypes chicken kept in battery cages for reproductive performance and egg quality traits”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 38-45. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 38-45 38 author(s) sola-ojo, f. e. department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria ayorinde, k. l. department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria toye, a. a. department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria jatto, o. m. department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria comparative studies of two nigerian ecotypes chicken kept in battery cages for laying performance and egg quality traits abstract this study was conducted to evaluate and determine the effects of ecotype on laying performance and some egg quality traits of two indigenous chickens ecotype in kwara state nigeria {fulani ecotype chicken (fe) and yoruba ecotype chicken (ye)} kept in battery cage for a period of fifty two (52) weeks. it was observed that the ye matured earlier than fe with age at first egg (afe) of 20.56 (20 – 23weeks) compared to 26.73weeks (22-31wks) obtained for fe. significant difference (p<0.05) existed between their body weight at first egg, (bfe) with fe significantly bigger 1437.5g than the ye 1314.60g. the mean egg weight (ew), total egg number (ten), hen house production (hhp) in fe were 44.11g, 128 and 53.16%, and significantly (p<0.05) higher than 42.44g, 98, 45.50% obtained for ye, the differences between these parameters were significant (p<0.05). ye had a lower clutch size (cs) of 26 eggs per clutch and a longer pause length (pl) of 16 days while the fe had a larger clutch size of 3-9 eggs per clutch and a shorter pause length of 1-3 days. external and internal quality traits of eggs from both ecotypes were similar except shell thickness that was significantly (p<0.05) better in the ye and yolk height that was significantly (p<0.05) higher in fe. the results of this finding indicated a marked difference in laying performances of the two indigenous chickens, yolk height and shell thickness and no significant (p>0.05) differences in other egg quality traits measured. keywords: chicken, ecotypes, hen, egg production, egg quality traits introduction indigenous stocks, the world over, contribute significantly to animal protein intake, especially in developing countries. these countries are characterized by undeveloped poultry stocks named according to the tribe keeping them or geographical location where they are found (oluyemi, 1979). indigenous chicken with diverse uses and benefits are many and the origin of each strain or ecotype is the product of mutation, genetic drift, adaptation and evolution with differing selection pressures imposed by climate, endemic parasites and diseases, available nutrition and selection criteria imposed by man (barker, 1994). in nigeria, village poultry production is mostly based on scavenging indigenous fowl which are pools of heterogenous individuals that differs in adult body size, weight and plumage. peters et al. (1998) regarded local chicken populations as a pool of heterogeneous individuals which can be separated by geographical location and are referred to as ecotypes. indigenous chickens are variable in colour, none of which appears more prevalent than the others. mature indigenous chickens are smaller than the exotic breeds, yet they are among the local assets of poor people living in rural areas of sub – saharan africa. over 90% of rural households keep and rear chicken in small flocks of about 20 birds. every family in rural areas of nigeria keeps some local chickens as source of family egg and occasional meat (ayorinde, 1986, 1990). these indigenous chickens are one of the major comparative studies of two nigerian ecotypes ... 39 sources of protein in forms of eggs and meat for the rural populace but are poor in productivity, slow growing and low in egg production. the low productivity is also probably as a result of the birds’ exposure to extreme weather conditions, low standards of nutrition and dependence on scavenging feed resources, which partly account for their annual heavy mortality and lower production, seasonality in laying and broodiness. ndegwa et al. (1998) and musharaf et al. (1990) stated that several factors which contribute to low productivity of the indigenous chicken are manifested in terms of very high mortality, low growth rate, small mature weights and low egg production. gueye (2000) however opined that despite the low productivity of indigenous chickens, the birds play a significant role in poverty alleviation. nigeria indigenous chicken are lacking in uniformity, they possess a measure of within group uniformity that are peculiar. the variation in the phenotype of these birds according to oluyemi and roberts (2000), demonstrate the effect of natural selection and indicate the potential for improvements through genetic selection and /or cross breeding. the variations ranged from plumage, body size and this suggest that they have not been artificially selected and grouped. they differs from one localities to others, and in order to improve performance of chickens in nigeria a supply of the level of genetic diversity in different population should be the first step. in fact, fao (1992) initiated a program to conserve and develop the livestock and poultry resources of developing countries while cunningham (1992) stated that such understanding can lead to discovery of chicken ecotype with best productive performance that can be use in the breeding and genetic improvement of indigenous chickens for more egg or meat production in developing countries. there are two indigenous chicken ecotypes that are commonly found in kwara state nigeria, namely; the fulani ecotype (fe) and the yoruba ecotype (ye). the fulani ecotype are found to be native to the kraals where the fulani tribes are found, while the yoruba ecotype are found at the backyards of poultry keepers in villages, towns and cities. study on the performance of these chicken ecotypes under an intensive system of management will shed more light on the assumed genetic diversity and provide more information on their production capacity. materials and method sources of experimental animal one hundred and eighty three (183) fe, and one hundred and two (102) ye chicks obtained through incubation and hatching of fe and ye chickens egg collected from three different fulani kraals located in ilorin south local government of kwara state and backyard poultry keepers in the city of ilorin kwara state, respectively, were wing banded, weighed and randomly distributed to brooding pen according to the ecotype. they were fed standard diet recommended for chicken at different stages of development according to nrc (1994) throughout the experimental period, and raised under the same management conditions. at eight weeks, hens were separated from cocks using body development and features like appearances of comb, at eighteen weeks, seventy two (72) fe hen and fifty two (52) ye hen were transferred to individual battery cage, each unit in the cage was labeled according to the wing banded number assigned to the hen for proper identification. production and egg quality traits of the hen measured were recorded for a period of 52 weeks. data collection laying performance the age at which each hen started laying was recorded as age at first egg (afe), and each hen was weighed using a 10kg camry measuring scale to record their body weight at first egg (bfe). egg laid by each hen was labeled, recorded and weighed on daily basis using a scout ii electronic weighing balance (600g) capacity to obtain the weight of the egg (ew). addition of all eggs laid by each hen per ecotype over a period of 52 weeks was taken to be their total egg number (ten). the number of eggs laid by each hen before resting was recorded as the clutch size (cs), while the total number of days spent by each hen between clutches was recorded as the pause length (pl). hen–housed egg production for 52 weeks period was calculated from the formula: hhp (%) average daily number of eggs produced number of hen housed x 100 1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 38-45 40 internal and external egg quality traits a well labeled freshly laid egg was taken on weekly basis from each genotype, weighed, broken and content poured into a petri dish to determine the external and internal egg quality traits. the presence of blood and meat spot was noted and recorded for each of the broken eggs. albumen and yolk were carefully separated with the aid of a spatula and each weighed. yolk height and albumen height was measured using spherometer while yolk width, egg length and egg width were measured with the aid of vernier callipers. egg shape index (esi) was determined according to reddy et al. (1979) yolk index (yi) was taken as the ratio of yolk height (yh) to yolk width (ywd), while albumen ratio (ar), yolk ratio (yr) and egg shell ratio (esr) were determined using the method described by (olawumi and ogunlade, 2009). the haugh unit values were obtained using the formula: hu= 100log (h+ 7 .57, 1.7w 0.37 ). hu = haugh unit h = observed height of the albumen (mm) w= weight of the eggs in grams (neishem et al., 1979). the shells of the broken eggs were rinsed in warm water, air dried for 48 hours, weighed and recorded according to ecotypes to determine the shell weight. micrometer screw gauge was used to determine the shell thickness from the broad end, narrow end and the middle of the shell, the average of the three measurements was taken as shell thickness in millimetres. egg shape index was determined as width of the egg / length of egg x 100, and egg colour were observed and recorded as brown, tinted or white. statistical analysis mean of the data obtained were evaluated to represent the average performance of the population for a period of 52 weeks. least squares means and standard error values for each ecotype were determined by use of microsoft excel, and all data were further subjected to analysis of variance and significantly different means (p<0.05) were separated by use of the duncan’s multiple range procedure option in sas (2003). the model used was of the form: the following model was used: yij = µi + ai+ eij. where yij = measurements of parameters. µ= overall mean ai = effect of i th ecotype eij= random residual error. results and discussion the mean age at first egg (afe) for the fe was 26.73 weeks, while the mean body weight at first egg (bfe) was 1437g. average total egg number (ten) for 52 weeks was 128 while the mean egg weight (ew) was 44.11g. the clutch size (cs) was 3-9 eggs per clutch while the pause length (pl) ranged from 1-3 days. the hen house production (hhp) for fe was 53.10% (table 1). values obtained for ye was 20.56 weeks for average the afe, 1314g for bfe. an average of 98 eggs per annum was laid by the ye, and their average ew was 42.41. the cs ranged from 2-6 per clutch while the pl ranged from 1-6 days, hhp for the ye was 45.50%. from table 2, it was discovered that both fe and ye showed no significant differences in all internal egg quality traits except yolk height that was 9.81% significantly (p<0.05) higher in fe compared to ye. thirty eight percent (38%) of the total egg observed for fe had blood spot, while 18% of ye egg had blood spot. external egg quality traits observed also indicated the same trend as the internal egg quality traits with shell thickness only been significantly (p<0.05) different and 22% thicker in ye eggs than fe eggs as shown in table 3. occurrence of brown, tinted and white shell colour in fe was 20, 70 and 10%, respectively, ye laid no egg with brown shell colour, had 5% egg shell with tinted colour and 95% of their egg had white shell colour (table 3). the results of this study showed that the ye matured earlier, have smaller body weight at first egg, laid smaller and fewer eggs per clutch with longer pause length and 98% of their eggs had white egg shell colour, though no significant (p > 0.05) differences was observed in most of their internal and external egg quality traits except yolk height that was significantly (p < 0.05) smaller in ye and egg shell that was significantly (p < 0.05) thicker in ye, thickness of ye egg shell could be as a results of their egg size which is smaller, since chicken deposited the same amount of shell over an egg the smaller the egg the thicker the shell, because egg size is negatively correlated with egg shell thickness (north, 1984). the results of this findings also showed that fe matured late, have bigger body comparative studies of two nigerian ecotypes ... 41 weight at first egg, laid medium sized egg, more eggs per clutch, with shorter pause length than the ye chicken. fe had majority of their egg tinted (70%), it can also be said that fe requires heavier weight to induce egg laying and this was similar to observation made by rendel and mapple (1986) for the white leghorn chicken and that led to the conclusion that an egg type chicken must reach a minimum age and body weight before they commence laying of egg. the total egg number obtained per annum differed significantly (p<0.05), irrespective of age at sexual maturity. the average number of eggs (128) laid by fe in this study corresponds with the findings of nwosu (1979) which reported an average of 124 eggs per annum for local chicken kept in battery cages, and 128 eggs for those kept in deep liter. total egg production observed here (98 128) were more than 45 to 100 eggs per annum reported for extensively raised nigerian local chicken by sonaiya and olori (1990), nwosu (1979), omeje and nwosu (1983), adedokun and sonaiya (1999) for local chicken hens from three agro-ecological zones in nigeria, but more than 50 55eggs/ annum reported by yoshimura et al. (1997) for indigenous bangladesh chicken raised under improved condition. high variation observed in clutch sizes fe vs. ye (3 to 9 vs. 2 to 6) and pause length between the two ecotype chicken studied here corresponds with reports of mwalusanya et al. (2002) for tanzania local chicken and those of tadelle et al. (2003) and abdelqader et al. (2008) in ethiopian chicken. however the clutch size and egg number obtained for the two ecotypes chickens in this study were more than clutches sizes (2-3) and egg number (78) eggs reported for morroccan chicken by benabdeeljelil and arfaoui (2001). akinnokun (1975) reported that the indigenous chicken egg production increases substantially by caging, while gueye (1998) stated that their sexual maturity can be earlier through improvement in feeding and husbandry, improvement observed in this study is highly comparable to past work on nigerian local chicken especially with the system of management employed and closely related with the report of sall (1990) where 90 -100 eggs were reported for senagalese local chicken raised under improved feeding and husbandry services. body weight at first egg (bfe) of fe (1437.45g) is closely comparable to bfe for indigenous naked neck chicken as reported by huque et al. (2001), while bfe obtained for the ye corresponds with the findings of ibe and nwohu (1999) where the nigerian local chicken were categorized as light breed of chicken. age at sexual maturity obtained for the fe in this study corresponds with 2532 weeks reported by dessie and ogle (2001), sall (1990), katule (1992), oluyemi (1979), nwosu and asuquo (1984), sonaiya (1998) for age at sexual maturity for local chicken in senegal, tanzania and nigeria. the results obtained showed that the two chicken ecotype have a smaller egg weight (42.4444.11g) compared to their exotic counterpart with egg weight range of 55 60g as reported by olawumi and ogunlade (2009). the results obtained indicated that the value for the egg weight in the two indigenous chicken ecotypes studied here is also comparable to that of other breeds such as white leghorn (45.50g), fayoumi (42.2g) and rhode island red (43.4g) as reported by mekky et al. (2008).the egg weight for both indigenous chicken observed here fell within the range of 33.50-48.70g reported by fayeye et al. (2005) for fulani ecotype chicken, peters et al. (2007) for the normal feather nigeria local chicken, better than 30g obtained by oluyemi and oyenuga (1974) for indigenous fowl in nigeria, and lower than 49.72g reported for normal feathered chicken in kaduna state, nigeria. average albumen weight 21.34-22.42g observed showed the proportion of albumen that is contributed to the egg weight and correspond with 20.33g reported by zhang et al. (2005) for brown dwarf layer, but higher than 19.86g reported by adeolu and oleforuh–okoteh (2011) for south eastern nigeria local chicken , while the albumen height obtained for the two chicken ecotypes (6.10-6.45mm) here double 3.06mm reported by zhang et al. (2005) for brown dwarf layers but lower than 7.56mm reported for the south eastern chicken by adeolu and oleforuh okoteh (2011), however the yolk height for these chicken ecotypes (15.17 to 16.62) was highly comparable with the range (16.80mm) reported by the authors. the findings also showed that, these indigenous chicken had better albumen and yolk quality with haugh unit above 50% and yolk index above 60% (north, 1984). similarities on egg quality traits observed in this study corresponds with the findings of orunmuyi et al. (2010) where no significant differences asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 38-45 42 were reported for egg quality traits among nigerian local chickens in kaduna state nigeria predominant white and tinted egg shell colour observed among the ye and fe studied agreed with the findings of chaubal et al. (1994) where it was reported that the local egg shell pigmentation is predominantly white and tinted. conclusively, these groups of indigenous chicken are better adapted and are resistant to some prevailing environmental condition, thus there is need to utilize these indigenous chicken ecotype in development of egg line chicken for better production in the harsh tropical environment. efforts should be made through selection and cross breeding of the two indigenous local chickens with exotic breeds for better egg production. the highest value recorded for egg weight in fe was 52.50g, and that of ye was 50.61g, this is an indication that some of these chickens have potential to lay bigger eggs when kept under optimum management condition. high diversity in the phenotypes and egg traits obtained here compare with other past literature is a major evidence of high genetic variability on indigenous chicken in nigeria. further studies should focus on the genetic characterization based on molecular assessment within and between the local chicken types. table 1: egg production traits of two nigerian indigenous chicken ecotypes parameters fe range ye range afe (wks) 26.73 a ±4.06 22-31 20.56 b ±3.10 20-23 bfe (g) 1437.45± a 35.35 1350-1650 1314.60 b ± 28.34 1300-1440 ten 128 a ±1.18 78-174 98 b ± 1.37 58-128 ew (g) 44.11 a ±4.48 35.72-52.50 42.44 b ±2.71 35.36-50.61 cs 5.50 a ±2.15 3-9 4.50 b ±4.25 2-6 pl (days) 2.03 a ±0.33 1-3 3.50 b ±0.58 1-6 hhp (%) 53.10 nst 45.50 nst means on the same row followed by different superscripts (a-b) differs significantly (p<0.05). nst= not statistically tested. table 2: effects of ecotype on internal egg quality traits of two nigerian indigenous chickens parameters fe ye yolk height (mm) 16.82±1.13 a 15.17±0.93 b albumen height (mm) 6.45±1.10 a 6.10±0.41 a yolk width (mm) 3.81±0.68 a 3.78±0.21 a albumen width (mm) 5.54±0.68 a 5.27±0.79 a albumen weight (g) 22.42±1.91 a 21.34±2.71 a yolk weight (g) 20.12±1.56 a 19.10±1.44 a haugh unit (%) 83.00±2.10 a 84.40±1.70 a yolk index (%) 67.10±1.41 a 66.09±1.35 a blood spot (%) 38.00 nst 18.00 nst means on the same row followed by different superscripts are significantly different (p<0.05) nst= not statistically tested. table 3: effects of ecotypes on external egg quality traits of two nigerian indigenous chickens parameters fe ye egg length (cm) 2.84±0.18 a 2.78±0.15 a egg width (cm) 2.18±0.12 a 2.08±0.08 a shell weight (g) 4.89±0.08 a 5.12±0.06 a shell thickness(mm) 0.53±0.01 a 0.68±0.14 b egg shape index (%) 76.16±0.02 a 74.82±0.02 a egg shape ratio 3.58±0.13 b 4.14±0.15 a egg shell colour (%) nst brown tinted 20 70 0 5 comparative studies of two nigerian ecotypes ... 43 white 10 95 means on the same row followed by different superscripts different significantly (p<0.05) nst= not statistically tested. references abdelqader, a., wollny, c. b. a. and gauly, m. 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(2005). heritability, genetic and phenotypic correlation of egg quality traits in brown – egg dwarf layers. publisher: asian economic and social society issn: 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012 the effect of fertilizers on the growth and the yield of ramie (boehmeria nivea l. gaud) m. subandi (dean faculty of science and technology, the state islamic university of bandung, west java., lecturer in the agriculture study program of sciences and technology faculty, the state islamic university of sunan gunung djati, bandung, indonesia) citation: m. subandi (2012): “the effect of fertilizers on the growth and the yield of ramie (boehmeria nivea l. gaud)”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 126-135. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 126-135 126 author(s) m. subandi dean faculty of science and technology, the state islamic university of bandung, west java, indonesia. lecturer in the agriculture study program of sciences and technology, faculty the state islamic university of sunan gunung djati, bandung, email: ms24454@yahoo.com the effect of fertilizers on the growth and the yield of ramie (boehmeria nivea l. gaud) abstract ramie plant ((boehmeria nivea l. gaud) bears a volumeous biomass harvested every 60 days. much biomass is harvested and much nutriens are absorbed and removed from the soil make the nutrient scarse. to maintain the productivity of soil and to supply the requrement of plant to the level of enough nutrition, an experiment was conducted in tanjungsari subdistrict of sumedang regency in the month of july to oktober 2009. the experiment design used was randomized block design with four treatments of fertilization formula (dosages) i.e. 1)a 10 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k); 2) b 10 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k); 3) c 20 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k); d 20 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k). sheep dung was applied only once in the planting time and nitrogen and potassium ferilizer were applied after every harvest. each treatment was replicated 6 times. variables of growth and yield which were measured were: number of stalks; length of stalk; diameter of stalk; biomass weight; fresh stalk weight; china grass weight, and; degummed fiber weight. result showed that responses of ramie plant were significant, better growth and more yields. potassium fertilizer gave a good effect on quality of fiber. the dosages applied to the ramie plant did not reach the maximum rate. ramie plant requires much nutrition to support the rapid growth and the big volumeous biomass removed from soil. ramie plant is consider as a robust plant. keywords: 60 days, potassium, biomass, robust introduction research on application of fertilizer based on fertilization package was aimed to examine the consistence of fertilization influence on growth and development and yield of crops on long period of time. result of the experiment will give information to the farmer to make acurate prediction of fibre yield and ramie agronomist will be able to prepare more a good planting planning. ramie is perennial crop which is harvested every 60 days by cutting the mature shoot (stalks) without destructing root organ, so that the plant root system develop continuously inside the soil. the older plantation the more established the root systems is. the root system consists of storage roots (swollen and enlarge form of root), small fibrous roots (active part of root to absorb water and soil nutrition), and rhizomes (growing laterally containing buds or eyes as reproductive organ). applying fertilizer is a must in agronomic point of view, specially in soil with less fertile due to scarce nutrients or unbalanced nutrition. volumeous biomass harvested from ramie shrub has consumed a large amount of nutrients from soil. dempsey (1963) stated ramie plant is robust plant. annually, nutrients extracted at harvest per hectare out of 50 tons of biomass are 225.1 kg nitrogen, 21.8 kg mailto:ms24454@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 126-135 127 phosphorus, 109.7 kg potassium, 253.0 kg calsium and 55 kg magnesium, while (qiang et al. (1989) said ramie plant absorbed soil nutrients at harvest time per hectare annually about 375 kg nitrogen, 60 kg p2o5, 390 kg k2o, 450 kg ca, 75 kg mg, 1.5 kg fe, 3 kg mn, 0.41 kg zn, 0.41 kg b and 0.15 co. to reflenish the absorbed nutrients by plant, regular application of fertilizer with enough dosage is needed in order to maintain the rate land productivity and even be increased. research institute of fibre and tobacco (1997) recommended dosage of fertilizer with application of dung of 10-20 tons per ha per years supplemented every harvest with 100150 kg urea, 25-50 kg of tsp (triple super phosphate), and 50-100 kg kcl. the importance of experiment in indonesia, ramie has been grown since the era of japanese occupation and in 1985 there was a policy of the west java province government to regulate the ramie fibre trade. the price of fresh stalk and fibre (chine grass) were set by the provincial regulation. then, the cultivation of ramie plant and the trade of fibre took place just in short period of time. among the planters or the producers of fibre and the fibre processors (textile factories) faced some problems and obstacles. the spinning machine and and the equipments existing in the factories were prepared to process the cotton fiber only. they were not suitable and were not installed and designed for processing the long ramie fibre. the economic turmoils started in 1997 had affected indonesian textile industry and the textile product industries. many textile factories had sent their workers home due to their difficulty to import cotton fibre as raw material. textile industry is very susseptable to the imported raw material. domestic production of cotton fibre is just represent less than 4 % of the whole industry requirement, means that more than 96% cotton fibre must be imported. minister of trade and industry of the ri on february 2004 has officially opened a ramie processing plant in wonosobo of central java, and a privately owned and renovated ramie processing factory was opened in garut of west java. these events indicated that there is a growing attentions of the government and some private agents to ramie cultivation and processing. cooperatives and small and medium enterprices service office of west java province in 2003 released a statement of industrial notes stated that the requirement of textile raw material (cotton fibre) was 453,300 ton or 75% of the national requirement. the cotton fibre must be imported because indonesia produced only approximately 6,100 ton or just 1% of the total national fibre requirement. sastrosoeparno (2003) said that textile industry and the product of textile industry contributed to the national revenue second only the the revenue from gas and petroleum. detail of textile and product of textile export value in 1998-2002 is presented in tablel 1. table 1 shows that textile and product of textile export in the period of 1998 to 2002 reached 6,8 billions dollars. in the period of january to july 2002 reached 4,07 billions, while in the period 2002 reached 4,3 billions. cotton fibre is still imported, table 2 shows annual expend for the import of fibre. on the average one billion dollar is expended for cotton. value of textile and product of textile import in 1998-2002 is presented in tabel 2. most indonesian regions are not suitable for fibre cultivation in view of agromatical characteristics. only in some limited regions in eastern indonesia, for instance in the island of sulawesi cotton is cultivated with unsatisfactory yield. our experiments in 1999 and 2002 showed that in c type rainfall region (slighly wet), ramie plant can be cultivated commercially with some addition supply of irrigation water in several months of dryer period. the plantation in this region can be harvested 4 to 5 crops. ideally, ramie is cultivated in a or b rainfall type regions. by this criterion, ramie can be planted in almost throughout indonesian region. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 126-135 128 research institute for textile of bandung (2003) stated that ramie fibre posseses the same characteristic with cotton fibre and fulfils the condition for human clothes. the function of cotton can be substituted with this easily produced fibre. according to sastrosoeparno (2003), if textile industries in indonesia utilize ramie fibre as raw material, this will give more employment for people. based on calculation, if it is 10% reduction in cotton utilization it will require 65,000 ton of ramie fibre as substitution. to produce as much as 65,000 ton of ramie fibre will need 11,000 ha area of ramie plantation and will employ workers as many as 85,000 people working in postharvest processing and spinning and uncounted people dealing with clothings or garmen industries. however, ramie fibre industry is not stable yet. there are many obstacles both in the post harvest processing and in the fibre producing. so that, this experiment on fertilization application will give confirmed intention to promote production to achieve the goal of substitution of cotton import. this means the solution for the current economic turmoil. the success in agronomic technology to increase yield will innitiate the development of agroindustry. there will be no significant development in post harvest or in the sector of crop marketing when there is no sifnificant increase in the sector agronomy and vice versa. fertilization aji sastrosupadi,et al. (1993) said that the best result of fertilizer is a package of 10 ton sheep dung per ha annually supplemented with 45 kg n, 10 kg p2o5 and 30 kg k2o per every harvest. prior study conducted by subandi (2002) showed in inceptisol of jatinangor of c rainfal type based on schmidt and ferguson classification, the package of 20 ton sheep dung per ha per annum added with 45 kg n and 45 k per ha each crop (after harvest application) gave fibre yield with a trend to increase with linear pattern of encreament. that study showed that the crop utilized package of fertilization of higher dosage. wang chuntao, et al. (1989) stated that nitrogen and potash significantly effected the fiber quality as for phosphorus less effective for the quality and quantity as well. ramie plant fertilized with potash produces better quality (finer fibre) in contras with ramie plant fertilized with nitrogen fertilizer produce more fibre but with lower quality. multiseasons study on fertilizer packages application will give information of the effect of fertilization on semi-dormant period plant. semi-dormant is a condition of plant in dry season in the form of inactive corm (root system). there is no bud grows out of the corm. prior research on ramie plant in the region of c rainfall type concluded that rami plant will undergo stagnant growth under water-stressed state in mid dry season. in this period, ramie plant in the c rainfall type region give no yield and no crop is harvested. the study of growth and yield pattern in the region revealed that the application of fertilizers and the addition of water supply on the rate more than the rate of evapotranspiration (rainfall>2 mm per day) has maintainned a normal growth in the dry season. methodology research was conducted in tanjungsari subdistrict of sumedang regency from july till oktober 2007. randomized block design was used as environmental design with six replication. treatments of the research were based on fertilizing recommend by the prior research. the tretments were: 1. 10 ton of sheep dung per hectare per year supplemented with (25 kg +25 kg k) per hectar per harvest. 2. 10 ton of sheep dung per hectare per year supplemented with (45 kg +25 kg k) per hectar per harvest. 3. 20 ton of sheep dung per hectare per year supplemented with (25 kg +25 kg k) per hectar per harvest. 4. 20 ton of sheep dung per hectare per year supplemented with (45 kg +45 kg k) per hectar per harvest. each treatment was replicated 6 times, so there are 24 experimental plots. the size asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 126-135 129 experimental plot are 3.0 x 2.5 m and the planting space are 0.5 x 0.5 m, so for each plot are 30 plants a, response design in this research are observed several plant gowth and yield indicators, they are: 1. number of stalks 2. length of stalk 3. diameter of stalk 4. biomass weight 5. fresh stalk weight 6. china grass weight 7. degummed fiber weight the indicator of growth (number of stalk variable) is measured by counting the number of stalks growing out of the plant corm. the stalks which are counted those reaching the height more than 50 cm. when harvest is done too late, there are more sprouts or younger stakls grow under the mature ones. the lenght of stalk variable is measured from the root neck to the upperst part of the stalk by descarding decidous part of stalk peak. the measurement of stalk diameter is conducted by measuring diameter of stalk at the height 15 cm above soil surface. safe meter is used to measure it. biomass weight variable is measured by weighing all parts of vegetation comprising of stalks and leaves. the plant shoot is cut and weighed immediatelly. the fresh stalk weight is stated by weighing stalks of the plot after clearing up all of leaves and cut off the top part of the apec. china grass is crude fibre which is gained through the process of decortication. the product is then dried on the sun for 2 or 3 days and is weight to get the variable china grass weight. degumming fibre is china grass which is undergone the degumming process and and is beeing dried. dry weight degummed fiber is a varible of plant yield.. results and discussions 1. number of stalk the result of statistical analysis on this variable showed that fertilizer application consisting of sheep dung fertilizer which is supplemented with a package of nitrogen and potash has brought about significat effect on the growth of stalk. the number stalk is different as a result of different treatment, the highest dosage produced the most number stalk. as shown in table 3 below: 2. length of stalk analysis on the length of stalk variable results information that the the differences among the treatment are significance as shown in table 4 below. growth of stalk requires enough supply of soil nutrients. the more supply of sheep dung and nitrogen and potash (the more dosages) the better development tissues of plant apec forming the organ of stem. the maximum length of stalk promoted by the application of manure in the treatment is still presenting a trend of increasing growth. this is indicated by the length of stalk is still not achieving its maximum length. the response of plant to the a treatment or the package of 10 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) as measured in the length of stalk does not significantly differ from the response of plant to the b treatment fertilizer package of 10 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k), but the response of plant to the b treatment is significantly different from the plant response to the treatments of c and d. the apllication of different dosages of sheep dung give a significant difference of plant responses. and so do the treatments of nitrogen and potash, different plant responses are ditective. the aplication of nitrogen and potash of different dosages at the same level of sheep dung’s dosage (20 ton per ha) responsed by the plants with the different growth of stalk as shown with the figer in table 4. 3. the stalk diameter the result of variable analysis of stalk diameter indicates that the influence of fertilizer treatments on diameter of stalk are different. the result of analysis is presented on table 5. table 5 reads the respose of plant to the a treatment which is measured in stalk diameter is not different from the response of plant to the treatment b, and the response of ramie plant to b treatment is not different from the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 126-135 130 response of plant to the treatment c, too. however, the response of plant to d treatment is significantly different from the response of plant to the treatments b and c. the biggest increament in diameter is gained by the treatment d, it means that the application of sheep dung and the nitrogen and potassium nutrients affect the growth of ramie plant. the growth and development of stalk is depended on supply of photosynthetic product. accumulation of photosynthetic product is utilized for the longitudinal and radial growth of stalk. 4. biomass weight result of analysis on biomass weight variable indicates that the application of fertilizer at various dosages which are arranged in the treatment design affect the weight of biomass differently as shown in table 6. applying fertilizer is a must for good agronomy practice, especially for plant which is harvested its biomass. almost all the vegetative biomass is taken out the field that no part of the biomass is left in the soil. it is apperent in the table 6 that the of increasing rates of nitrogen and potash fertilizers at the dosage of 10 ton of sheep dung affect the yield (biomass weight) non significantly different. as for at the rate of 20 ton sheep dung, the increase of nitrogen and potassium dosages affects the weight of biomass significantly different. biomass weight is the sum or accumulation of vegetative componens of growth comprising of number of stalk, the length of stalk, and its diameter. biomass yield which is achieved with the rates applied is not yet its maximum yield. its trend to more increase is still apperent in the figure of biomass weight as the table 6. the yield of ramie depend on various factors, and fertilization is the dominan factor to replace the uptake nutrients during the growing of plant and then taken out at harvest. higher rates of nitrogen and potassium are required for nutrient deficient soil after harvest., and the application of sufficient organic matter is required. as the evident in the table 6, at the rate of sheep dung (organic manure) 20 ton (higher rate in this experiment), the yield of ramie plant in the form of biomass weight increases. the increament of the yield is synergistic with the presence of nitrogen and potassium element of nutrition. 5. fresh stalk weight the fresh stalk weight is measured by weighing stalks per plot. the stalk is cleared by detaching all leaves by running the hand along the stalk and cutting off the top part of the stem. the weighing is done on the same day of the cutting. harvest is done with a sharp sickle and the freshly cut stem is weighed. statistical analysis showed that the variable of fertilization treatments consisting of sheep dung (organic manure), nitrogen and potassium caused different responses of ramie plant as indicated with different fresh stalk weight. the variation of the plant response are significatly different, detail data in table 7. the pattern of increament of fresh stalk weight is linear and in accordance with the increament of ferilization dosages. ramie plant response to the a treatment as is measured in fresh stalk weight is different from that of b treatment, but it is not significant statistically, while the treatment c affect the weight of fresh stalk significantly different from that of treatment a and d and d. the treatment d noted the highest weight. the weight can be predicted to further increase when the dosage is increased. the fresh stalk weight is gained by weighing the biomass after detaching the leaves and topping the apec part of the stem. potassium promotes the development of fibrous tissues. fibrous development in the cortec is secondary process which takes place later to the development of younger stalk, and younger leaves (sprout) and newly developing flower. when these tissues are detached from the biomass to get the measurement of fresh stalk weight, the data taken will have the same pattern of variation with data of biomass weight. that is why, the result of statistical asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 126-135 131 analysis of fresh stalk weight has the same pattern with that of biomass weight. 6. china grass weight china grass is considered as the first markettable yield. the yield is obtained through the process of decortication. this process involves the removal of fibre from the stalk. in the ramie plant the individual fibres occur in the form of bast bundles with the ends overlapping so as to produce filaments throughout the length of the stalk. the individual fibres are held in place and to each other by gum, waxes and pectins. result of china grass weight variable analysis is presented in table 8. table 7 reads that fertilization treated to ramie plants affect the development of fibre inside the stem. fibre is a product of ramie. application of fertilizer changes the growth and development of the tissues and then consequently changes the development of organ. the increase of china grass product is in line with the increase of fertilizer dosages. although, in view of statistical analysis, they are not significantly different between the responses of plant to the treatment a from that to the treatment b as is measured in crude fiber (china grass) weight, absolutically by figures they are different. treatment b makes more yield than a. it means an increase in yield occured as response to the increase of fertilizer dosage. a significant difference between treatment c and d as a result of different dosage applied. ramie fibre is extraxiller fibre means fibre develops outside the xylem tissue. the fibre develops inside the secondary floem tissue. for developping or differentiation of cambium forming the secondary floem and then becoming fibre is needed suffecient energy from photosynthetic product. to execute the development process, the available of enough nutrients in the soil is unavoidable. this nutrient is supplied with fertilization. 7. degummed fibre fine and clean fibre is derived from further processing after decortication, the so called degumming process. degumming is an effort to separate the individual fibres and leave them in a soft, clean state, with their strength and other their characteristics intact. the degumming on a commercial scale requires expensive capital and equipment which is too costly for ramie planters. there for, degumming is usually done by milling factory which spin the fibre. degumming is a process to remove the gum, waxes and pectins. the amount of gum, waxes and pectins removed from the china grass at the average are the same in all of the variables. so that, the variable data of the degummed fibre weight are almost the same with the variable data of china grass weight. as the result, statistical analysis on the variable resulting the same conclusion as the table 8 above shows. conclusion the application of fertilizer (sheep dung, nitrogen and potassium) with various dosages affects the growth and yield of ramie plant. responses of ramie plant to the treatment were measured in plant growth and yield namely:1) number of stalks, 2) length of stalk, 3) diameter of stalk. 3) biomass weight. 4) fresh stalk weight 5) china grass weight, and 6) degummed fiber weight. the various dosages applied affect the plans differently, some of the plant responses are significantly different, but some other are non significant. growth and yield variable tend to increase linearly. ramie plant neeed more nutrients to maintain the capasity of the plant to grow well and to produce satisfactory yield, and ramie plant is a rabust plant. it absorbs much soil nutrients for supporting the rapid grow of biomass. so, applying fertilizer is crucial. the dosages of sheep dung, nitrogen and potassium at the rates treated to ramie plant showed a trend of ever increasing or the maximum rate was not yet reached. the effect of sheep dung is more evident to give a good environmental condition. sheep dung manure maintains the humidity of soil, while nitrogen affects the vegetative growth and potassium show a good effect on the quality of fibre. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 126-135 132 table 1: value of textile and products of textile export in 1998-2002 source: ministry of trade and industry (2003). (unit: million us dollar) table 2: value of textile and product of textile import in 1998-2002 source: ministry of trade and industry (2003) (unit: million us.dollar) table 3: effect of sheep dung supplemented with package of nitrogen and potassium fertilizer on stalk number note: the average figure preceded with the same word is not significantly different on duncan, test at =0.05 table 4: effect of sheep dung supplemented with package of nitrogen and potassium fertilizer on length of stalk note: the average figure preceded with the same word is not significantly different on duncan test at =0.05 table 5: effect of sheep dung supplemented with package of nitrogen and potassium fertilizer on diameter of stalk note: the average figure preceded with the same word is not significantly different on duncan no commodities 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 jan-jul 2002 jan-jul 2003 1 2 3 4 5 fibre yarn fabrics clothes other textiles 146. 889. 1,345. 2,405. 2,533. 97. 1,177. 1,614. 3,526. 740. 135. 1,326. 1,913. 4,281. 549. 122. 1,243. 1,664. 4,344. 304. 181. 29. 1,404. 3,805. 267. 333. 1,136. 126. 1,510. 966. 485. 1,153. 130. 1,626. 919. total 7,321. 7,157. 8,204. 7,675. 6,888. 4,074. 4,316. no commodities 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 1 2 3 4 5 fibre silk other nat.fib. synthetic yarn clothes fabrics other textiles 988.690 0.308 782.157 206.224 220.956 746.010 5.019 59.830 833.647 0.765 681.445 151.436 195.289 631.057 8.179 47.453 1,009.517 1.008 739.459 269.050 276.246 926.411 10.390 61.581 1,336.115 0.429 1,076.687 258.999 261.348 753.265 17.561 72.824 921.617 0.411 720.076 201.128 220.398 588.649 27.635 69.937 treatment average of stalk number per plot a 10 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) b 10 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) c 20 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) d 20 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) 148 a 153 a 166 b 174 c treatment average of stalk length (cm) a 10 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) b 10 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) c 20 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) d 20 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) 69 a 75 ab 82 b 98 a treatment average of stalk diameter (mm) a 10 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) b 10 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) c 20 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) d 20 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) 2.6 a 2.9 ab 3.1 b 4.0 c asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 126-135 133 table 6: effect of sheep dung supplemented with package of nitrogen and potassium fertilizer on biomass weight treatment average of biomass weight per plot (kg) a 10 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) b 10 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) c 20 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) d 20 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) 15,2 a 16,8 ab 21,9 b 26,5 c note: the average figure preceded with the same word is not significantly different on duncan table 7: effect of sheep dung supplemented with package of nitrogen and potassium fertilizer on fresh stalk weight treatment average of fresh stalk weight per plot (kg) a 10 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) b 10 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) c 20 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) d 20 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) 8.3 a 9.9 a 14.1 b 16.6 c note: the average figure preceded with the same word is not significantly different on duncan, test at =0.05 table 7: effect of sheep dung supplemented with package of nitrogen and potassium fertilizer on china grass fibre weight treatment average of china grass weight per plot (g) a 10 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) b 10 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) c 20 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) d 20 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) 414 a 493 a 710 b 825 c note: the average figure preceded with the same word is not significantly different on duncan test at =0.05 table 8: effect of sheep dung supplemented with package of nitrogen and potassium fertilizer on degummed fibre weight treatment average of degummed fibre weight per plot (g) a 10 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) b 10 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) c 20 ton sheep dung (25 kg n + 25 kg k) d 20 ton sheep dung (45 kg n + 45 kg k) 393 a 470 a 670 b 781 c note: the average figure preceded with the same word is not significantly different on duncan, test at =0.05 references adji, sastrosupadi., budi santoso and djumali (1993) “effect of n. p. k. cu, zu and lime on growth and ramie yield in organosol of bengkulu province at the harvests” vii-xi. proceeding of ramie national seminar. research centre for fiber plants, 11 february 1993, malang aslan, m., k. nielson, r. i. travis, and d. w. rains, (1997) “nitrate uptake, efflux, and invivo reduction by pima and acala cotton cultivars”, crop sci. vol. 37, pp. 1795-1801. below, f. e. 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hunan, china. xiaozipping (1989) “the effect of spraying gibberellin on the fibre yield ramie”, first int. sym. on ramie profession. changsa. hunan, china. xinminchun (1989) “on the principle object of ramie degumming”, first int. sym. on ramie profession. changsa. hunan, china. yi dungseng., dai hanjun., shi yuming, and li shujie (1989) “a study and use report in rare-earth element acting on ramie”, first int. sym. on ramie profession. changsa. hunan, china. zhaozhaode., li tiangui., qugang duosheng., wang chuntao, and li tsongdao (1989) “effect of fertilizers on ramie. first int. sym. on ramie profession. changsa. hunan, china. publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. evaluation of fadama ii road infrastructure among rural communities in adamawa state, nigeria umar adamu madu (phd candidate, faculty of social sciences, universiti malaysia sarawak, malaysia) john phoa cl, (senior lecturer, department of development studies, faculty of social sciences research fellow, centre of excellence in rural informatics (coeri) university of sarawak, malaysia (unimas) citation: umar adamu madu and john phoa cl (2012): ―evaluation of fadama ii road infrastructure among rural communities in adamawa state, nigeria‖, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 294-301. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 294-301 294 author(s) umar adamu madu phd candidate, faculty of social sciences, universiti malaysia sarawak, malaysia email: umaradamu24@yahoo.com john phoa cl, senior lecturer, department of development studies, faculty of social sciences research fellow, centre of excellence in rural informatics (coeri) university of sarawak, malaysia (unimas) email: jphoa@fss.unimas.my jphoacl@gmail.com evaluation of fadama ii road infrastructure among rural communities in adamawa state, nigeria abstract this study analyzed the role played by fadama ii on road development in adamawa state, nigeria. the data were obtained from 300 respondents who were randomly selected from fadama ii beneficiaries, non-beneficiaries within fadama ii communities and non-beneficiaries outside fadama ii communities. based on propensity score matching (psm) and double difference estimator (dd), the data were analyzed using frequencies, percentages and balancing test (t-test). the results showed that 30% of the roads were funded by fadama ii project. most of the roads were constructed and rehabilitated after the establishment of the project. fadama ii roads were found to be important for the beneficiaries’ activities. the analysis established that beneficiaries’ travel distance, travel time, waiting time and transport fares were reduced relative to non-beneficiaries. road development has boosted marketing services for both farm and non-farm economic activities. spill-over effect also manifests in the adjoining communities. keywords: fadama ii, road infrastructure, effect, propensity score matching, double-difference, community-driven development introduction rural infrastructures particularly roads are end product for any rural development program to succeed. the distribution, operation and maintenance are other fundamental prerequisites for a successful rural development. consequently rural infrastructures constitute the necessary components or ingredients for motivating rural residents to be more productive and achieve relative self-reliance (estache, 2006). they also aid and enhance the realization of improved rural life. it is quite noticeable that the distribution of rural infrastructures, over time, has not been equitable and spectacular. the gross disparities and total lack of infrastructures in the rural nigeria are not therefore uncommon features. many rural development policies and strategies have failed to achieve their stated objective largely due to the non-recognition and non-provision as well as non maintenance of the necessary or appropriate infrastructural facilities that need to be put in place overtime and space. without appropriate provision, operation and maintenance of basic infrastructures therefore, no rural development policy or strategy can stand the test of time. rural infrastructures are therefore the fundamental ingredients capable of preventing or at least reducing the phenomenal rural urban drift, which is always accompanied with swelling socio economic and political problems the importance of transportation for any society for instance, need not to be over emphasized as it is very crucial to the functioning of economic, political and socio-cultural life of people, particularly in a society where agriculture is the main source of livelihood like in adamawa state. transportation is pertinent for promotion of enhanced agricultural productivity, procurement and distribution of commodities for trade, and for enhancing labour and capital mobility (galtima, 2005). road development is an element of transport that is very crucial in the general process of rural development. it enhances prompt delivery of inputs to farmers and evacuation of produce from farm and to the markets. it links the farmers with the town thereby enhancing the infusion of new cultural traits into the rural areas (ekong, 2003 and iraj, 1986). road development also improves the performance of rural markets making them more competitive to direct benefit of farmers rather than the middlemen. road infrastructure investments in developing countries like nigeria is one of the main contributions of infrastructure development to economic growth operates through its capability to enhance market access and marketing of agricultural products, thus encouraging a structural departure from subsistence-based agriculture mailto:umaradamu24@yahoo.com mailto:jphoa@fss.unimas.my mailto:jphoacl@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 294-301 295 to increased commercialization (ifpri, 2007; iheanachu et al. 2007). in an area where these infrastructures are lacking or inefficient, productivity and marketing costs generally rise dramatically and significant decline in investments is experienced (guasch and kogan 2001; jensen 2007; straub 2007). expanding the road network could affect both agricultural productivity and agricultural income, as well as open up avenues to other activities for example, by facilitating access to employment opportunities outside the farm as well as establishing rural microenterprises. adamawa state fadama ii has constructed and rehabilitated many of such rural roads (nfdo, 2007). this study investigates the role played by fadama ii in road development and its impact on the beneficiaries. an overview of second national fadama development project (fadama ii) second national fadama development project (branded as fadama-ii) is a follow-up to the first national fadama development project (fadama-i), which was implemented during the period 1993-1999. fadama-i focused mainly on crop production and largely ignored support of postproduction activities such as commodity processing, storage and marketing (downstream agricultural sector). the emphasis was on providing boreholes and pumps to crop farmers through simple credit arrangements aimed at boosting cumulative crop output (nkonya et al. 2008). fadama i worked with fadama user associations, which the states used mainly to recover loans and to decide on water infrastructure locations. the design of fadama i did not support rural infrastructure development and did not consider other resource users such as livestock producers, fisher-folk, pastoralists, and hunters, among others. the focus on crop producers contributed to increased conflicts among the users of fadama resource. increased crop production, increased the surplus, but the project did not support post-harvest technology, contributing to reduced crop prices and increased storage losses. and most importantly, it adopted top-down development approach or strategy. fadama ii was first implemented in 2005 and seeks to address the shortcomings of fadama i by employing paradigm shift from a top-down and supply-driven public sector development program to the communitydriven development approach. fadama ii also includes other fadama resource users that the first project had ignored. fadama ii also supports activities and services other than production. community-driven development approach of fadama ii community-driven development (cdd) is a development approach that give power to local communities and local governments to participate in the decision making, control, and management of development programs (dasgupta and beard, 2007; dongier et al., 2001). the approach differs from programs and projects that treat beneficiaries as passive aid recipients (labonne et al., 2007). most cdd projects focusing on poverty reduction have five main features (dongier et al., 2001; dasgupta and beard, 2007; labonne et al. 2007): 1. empowerment of the local communities and local governments: community-driven development (cdd) projects are designed to empower local communities and local governments to participate in decision making and management of development programs, to negotiate with institutions and service providers on the planning and implementation of development programs, and to hold services providers accountable. 2. demand driven design: community-driven development (cdd) projects reflect the needs of local communities and governments, allowing them to determine what types of development activities and resource allocations the project should include to make it effective for them 3. social inclusion: not all cdd projects involve the poor, women, youth, and other vulnerable groups. for example, cdd projects that target commercially oriented farmers do not include poor subsistence farmers. however, cdd projects that focus on poverty reduction make deliberate efforts to include the poor and vulnerable because they are most prone to poverty. 4. collective action: because they are community based, cdd projects are designed to be implemented collectively through communities or local governments rather than individuals (binswanger and aiyar, 2003; dasgupta and beard, 2007). cdd beneficiaries collectively plan and implement project activities, budget, and other resource allocation decisions 5. support from external institutions and organizations: cdd projects receive support from governments and donors. this is one of the main characteristics that differentiate the cdd approach from the methods used by community-based organizations (cbos), which may not receive external support. the design of the fadama ii project meets all the key features of a cdd project. consistent with the cdd approach, project activities are centered on fadama asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 294-301 296 user groups (fugs) and fadama community associations (fcas). an fug comprises fadama users with a common economic interest. fcas are the associations of fugs operating in a given area. each fca designs and oversees the implementation of a local development plan, which is the blueprint of the fadama ii’s development project in that fca. the major productive sectors that fadama ii supports include crops, livestock, agro-forestry, fishing, and fish farming (fisher-folk). because the fadama ii uses the cdd approach, beneficiaries are given the chance to choose the kind of activities they want to pursue. however, there are some activities that the project does not support, such as activities that could lead to degradation of natural resources or large-scale changes in land use (nfdo, 2005). under the cdd approach of fadama ii, all users of fadama resources are encouraged to develop participatory and socially inclusive local development plans. the project set a target of 50 percent of male and female fadama resource users who benefit from the project-supported activities achieving an increase in average real income by at least 20 percent compared with the baseline. the project designed the following five components to achieve its targets: 1. rural infrastructure investment to support creation of economic infrastructure and local public goods that would improve the productivity of households using fadama resources. under this component, beneficiaries are required to pay 10 percent of the costs of constructing rural infrastructure, including rural roads, culverts, market stalls, cold storage, boreholes, and irrigation infrastructure, among others. 2. pilot productive asset acquisition support to enhance the improvements in the productivity and income fadama resource users by facilitating the acquisition of productive assets by individuals or fugs. under this component, fadama resource users are required to pay 30 percent of the cost of the productive assets acquired. 3. demand-responsive advisory services to support advisory services that will enable fadama resource users to adopt output-enhancing techniques and more profitable marketing practices in their enterprises 4. capacity building to increase the ability of its beneficiaries to assess their needs, participate in planning, and implement and manage economic activities, and to increase the capacity of the project coordinators to conduct monitoring and evaluation 5. conflict resolution to address the shortcoming of fadama i by increasing the capacity of fugs to manage conflicts, which were particularly serious and more frequent between pastoralists and crop farmers. more than 98 percent of conflicts among fadama resource users involved pastoralists and farmers (nfdo, 2005). the project set an objective of reducing the number of conflicts by 50 percent by 2010. methodology the study was conducted in adamawa state, nigeria. the population of adamawa according to npc (2006) was estimated at about 3,194,781. however, only the beneficiaries of fadama-ii in the state and the neighboring communities were used for this study. there are ten fadama-ii benefiting lgas out of the 21 local government areas that make-up the state namely: yola-south, yola-north, mubi-north, michika, gombi, song, fufore, ganye, guyuk and lamurde with the total number of the beneficiaries estimated at 52, 366. the study was conducted in five fadama-ii projects benefiting lgas randomly selected at 50 percent. the benefiting lgas selected include: ganye, mubi-north, gombi, guyuk and fufore. sampling procedure a multi-stage random sampling technique was used for selecting respondents for this study. in each of the randomly selected five lgas, 50 percent of the fcas were randomly selected and in each selected fcas, five households were also selected randomly. a total of 100 households were therefore selected for the entire beneficiaries in this study. similarly the same numbers of households were selected from non-beneficiaries within and outside fadama ii lgas. in all, a total number of 300 households that matched were then selected for the study. all the economic interest groups (eigs) such as crop farmers, fisher folks, pastoralists, hunters, widows, processors among others were represented in the sample. data collection a survey instrument in form of structured questions was employed in this study. the interview schedule was written in english and was interpreted to the respondents in hausa language at the point of interview. the data were collected on the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, source of funding for roads, importance of fadama roads, time dimension of roads, access to roads, transportation services, uses of fadama ii, road infrastructure and marketing, and nonfarm economic activities. to obtain data on the impact of the fadama ii project on beneficiaries, the sampling frame was divided into three strata: (1) direct project participants, (2) nonproject participants living in fadama ii communities (3) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 294-301 297 non-project participants living outside fadama ii lgas but with socioeconomic and biophysical characteristics comparable to the fadama ii communities. the design of this stratification will allow for estimation of the direct impact of fadama ii. comparing fadama ii beneficiaries to similar households in similar communities not included in the project provides a better estimate of the total impact of the project on beneficiaries, assuming that spillovers are not affecting households in the communities outside the project. baseline data for fadama ii were collected using recall information. the project was implemented in september 2005, only slightly above four years before the survey was conducted; therefore, it is expected that respondents would be able to remember the baseline data required for two years before the survey—that is, for the crop years october 2004 to september 2005 (2004–2005) and october 2009 to september 2010 (2009–2010). these marked the years before and after the end of the period of fadama ii project in the state. most households based their responses on memory recall because of the time lag, though not too long (iheanacho et al, 2007). data analysis the propensity score matching (psm) method, which matches project beneficiaries with comparable nonbeneficiaries using a propensity score (estimated probability of being included in the project) and the double-difference (dd) estimator, which compares changes in outcome measures (i.e., change from before to after the project) between project participants and non-participants, rather than simply comparing outcome levels at one point in time, was used in this study to estimate the impact of the project. the impact of fadama ii on road infrastructure was analyzed using matched samples. simple descriptive statistics including frequencies and percentages were used to estimate the effect of the project. further testing of the comparability of the selected groups was done using a ―balancing test‖ (dehejia and wahba, 2002).this tests for statistical differences in the means of the explanatory variables between the matched groups of fadama ii participants and non-participants. the study employed paired t-test statistics because of its suitability and applicability in assessing effects (impact) by comparing responses from beneficiaries and non beneficiaries of the programs. results and discussions sources of funding for roads majority of the roads as reported by the respondents are supported by state government funds, local governments and fadama ii project. for instance, figure 1 index that larger percentage (42%) of road investments is financed by state governments. fadama ii funded 30% of the road investments reported by respondents, with only 17% investments by local government authorities. figure 1: sources of funding for roads construction and rehabilitation importance of fadama ii roads there is a disproportionately high evidence of the importance of the fadama ii roads in the area under evaluation. for instance, the usefulness of the fadama ii roads is significant and large among the beneficiaries (58.6%) as presented in table 1. 30% of the respondents in this category did not acknowledge the importance of the fadama ii roads. an assessment of the three categories of respondents reporting a fadama ii road as useful for their economic activities reveals that there is a strong and immediate evidence of spillover from the infrastructure provision aspect of the project. table 1 show that a significant proportion of non-beneficiaries use fadama ii roads in carrying out income generation activities, especially non-beneficiaries in fadama ii lgas. table 1: respondents stating fadama ii road is important for their productive activities treatment type stating fadama ii road is important % beneficiaries 58.6 non-beneficiaries within fadama ii lgas 30.1 non-beneficiaries outside fadama ii lgas 9.4 source: field work, 2011 time dimension of roads construction and rehabilitation more than 40% of the roads were affirmed to have been constructed before the project began. this is for obvious reason that the authorities (federal and state governments) were providing infrastructures in the rural areas but particularly slow considering the period from 1960 through 2004. fadama ii roads had been accessible to the surveyed households only a year after the inception of the project, with most roads available in lga 17% sg 42% sfdo 30% fgn 7% others 4% lga sg sfdo fgn others asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 294-301 298 2006 and 2007, some years before the time for which the probable effects were measured. table 2: reported year in which fii roads were constructed or rehabilitated roads year number percent between 1960 and 2004 22 40.8 2005 1 1.6 2006 15 24.2 2007 11 21.3 2008 7 8.8 2009 2 3.2 2010 0 0.0 total 56 100.0 most of the roads were constructed and rehabilitated after the establishment of fadama ii project (table 1). although not all the achievement can be attributed to the operations of the project, it may perhaps be stated that the effort of fadama ii has gingered other service providers into action. this is particularly clear as no road construction and rehabilitation was recorded in 2010 just a year after life span of the project (table 1). access to roads the impact of the project on access to roads is assessed using three measures. as shown in table 3, in all three cases, the sign of the estimate suggests that access to road infrastructure improved as a result of the fadama ii project: the distance to the nearest all-weather road, the distance to town, and the time it takes to travel to the nearest road by motor vehicle was reduced. the comparability test for difference between the treated groups (beneficiaries) and the control groups (nonbeneficiaries) shows that the results are statistically significant at p= 0.05 for two of the three measures. the result is statistically significant except for the change in mean distance to road (table 3). table 3: project impact on access to road infrastructure outcome variable treated control t-test std.err p-value change in mean dist. to road (km) -0.597 -0.242 -0.559 0.635 0.5781 change in mean dist. to town (km) -0.774 0.500 -3.878 0.329 0.0002** change in mean travel time by motor vehicle (min) -22.823 1.919 -15.404 1.606 0.0000** source: field work, 2011 transportation services the average length of time individuals waits for motor vehicle and cost of transportation have significantly reduced as a result of the intervention. for example, table 4 shows that the waiting time for vehicle transportation fell by 54% on average, with the improvement in transportation availability more than twice as large in the local government areas (lgas) in which the fadama ii project was operating. it was further discovered that the percentage change in waiting time was also higher for non-beneficiaries in fadama ii local government (lgas) compared to nonbeneficiaries outside fadama ii lgas, suggesting spillover effects of road infrastructure investment on access to transportation services. these results provide tentative facts that by providing infrastructure, fadama ii may have contributed to reducing transportation costs (or more accurately, to mitigating their increase). table 4: average time waiting for motor vehicle transportation treatment type average wait time (minutes) % change 2004 2010 fii beneficiaries 51.61 23.63 -54.2% non-beneficiaries within 42.63 34.32 -19.5% non-beneficiaries outside 42.52 43.06 1.3% table 5 presents the matching estimation results for the impact of the project on transportation services. the result shows that the provision of roads resulted in improved access to transportation services, in terms of both quantity and costs. the statistical test for difference (balancing test) indicates that the result is significant for all the three indicators (waiting time, cost of transporting load and change in fare to nearest town) of transportation services at p = 0.05. table 5: the impact of fadama ii on transportation services outcome variable treated control t-test std.er pvalue change in mean time waiting for transportation (mins) -27.984 0.548 -9.519 2.9975 0.000** change in mean cost of transporting load on truck 305.242 573.709 -5.377 49.932 0.000** change in mean fare to nearest urban area 15.161 21.581 -2.414 2.659 0.017** asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 294-301 299 uses of road infrastructure figures 2 and 3 show the self-reported primary uses of roads that respondents accessed. in view of both projectsupported and other roads, figure 2 shows that, among the uses associated with productive activities, improved ability to access farmlands is the single largest use (24%), followed by the transport of agricultural inputs (20%), transportation of agricultural output (18%). a smaller proportion of the respondents reflect on being able to transport ―people‖ (e.g., to get themselves to places of employment) as the main use of the road. figure 2: use of all-weather roads the same analysis limited to fadama ii roads is offered in figure 3. the figure shows that the extent of use to access farmland and to transport people is similar to the overall average. what is remarkable however is the percentage of individuals using fadama ii roads for agricultural input and output transportation was much larger than was the case for all-weather roads. overall, the use of roads for productive purposes was larger by about 66% points. this is consistent with the project’s goal of improving access to public infrastructure and thereby improves production and marketing activities. an efficient rural road system ensures cheap and fast evacuation of agricultural produce from rural to urban areas for farmers to enjoy better price incentives. more so, it also facilitates easy access to farm and transportation of farm inputs and humans. galtima (2005) in his findings considers transportation as pertinent for promotion of enhanced agricultural productivity, procurement and distribution of commodity for trade, and for enhancing labor capital mobility figure 3: use of fadama ii roads road infrastructure and marketing table 6 show the share of agricultural production sold on the market in 2004 and 2010. the share of production sold on the market increased from 40 percent to 70% for fadama ii households, which represents a 30% change in this share. it is also observed that the marketed share increased over this period of fadama ii operations for all respondents. however, higher increase farm 18% inputs 28% output 20% people 3% others 31% farm inputs output people others farm 24% input 20% 0utput 18% people 8% others 30% farm input 0ut people others asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 294-301 300 is experienced more among the project beneficiaries than the non-beneficiaries alike. the non-beneficiaries within fadama ii lgas experienced increase from 40% to 55% which represent an increase of only 15% compared to the beneficiaries. the non-beneficiaries outside fadama ii communities had increase of only 2%, indicating that spill-over effect has occurred. table 6: share of total production marketed in 2004 and 2010 treatment type 2004 2010 fadama ii beneficiaries 40% 70% non beneficiaries within fadama ii lgas 40% 55% non beneficiaries outside fadama ii lgas 25% 27% in general, this findings suggests that current effort to promote community-driven development (cdd) projects through farmer groups are likely to increase access to infrastructure and marketing services (nkonya et al, 2010). nonfarm economic activities the matching estimation results for the impact of the project on nonfarm economic activities as shown in table 7 indicates that the provision of roads in the study area has enhanced and diversified microenterprises. table 7: impact of fadama ii on nonfarm economic activities treatment type mean t-test std. err p-value beneficiaries 59824.1(122018.56) all non-beneficiaries 49895.5(19138.94) 3.713 16161.75 0.008** the table 7 also shows an evidence of statistically significant effects of the fadama ii project on nonfarm activities, as measured by changes in the level of nonfarm income or participation in nonfarm activities. in contrast to all other outcome variables previously considered, expansion of nonfarm economic activities and diversification are changes that occur particularly remarkably significant at p = 0.05 statistical test for difference between the beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries of the project, after improved access to roads and transportation has been established. conclusion the findings suggest that reasonable number of roads were funded by fadama ii project. there is also evidence that most of the roads were constructed and rehabilitated after the establishment of fadama ii project. using propensity score matching and double difference methods to control for project placement and selfselection biases, the study established that fadama ii reduced beneficiaries’ distance and travel time to the nearest town and reduced the waiting time and fares for transportation services, relative to non – beneficiary households in fadama ii lgas due to road construction and rehabilitation. this implies that more time and funds were now available for farm production. overall, the finding suggests that there is significant positive impact of the fadama ii on the road rehabilitation and construction in participating communities. spill-over effects also manifests in the adjourning communities as the use of the infrastructure, were not limited to only the project participant. in general, this findings suggests that current effort to promote community-driven development (cdd) projects through farmer groups are likely to increase access to infrastructure and marketing services (nkonya et al, 2010). there is also some evidence that participatory projects create effective community infrastructure and improve welfare outcomes (mansuri and rao, 2004). fadama ii is all-embracing in its activities of empowering the communities to take charge of their development agenda (cdd approach) ranging from farm and nonfarm income generating activities (kudi et al. 2008; nfdp, 2003). references binswanger, h, and s aiyar (2003) ―scaling up community-driven development: theoretical underpinnings and programme design implications‖, world policy research working paper no. 3039 washington, dc. dasgupta, a., and v. beard (2007) ―communitydriven development, collective action an elite capture in indonesia‖, development and change, vol. 38(2), pp. 229–49. dehejia, r and s. wahba (2002) ―propensity score matching methods for non-experimental causal studies‖, review of economics and statistics vol. 84(1), pp. 151– 61. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 294-301 301 dongier, p., j. van domelen, e. ostrom, a. rizvi, w. wakeman, a. bebbington, s.alkire, t. esmail, and m.polski (2001) ―community-driven development‖, in j.klugman, eds., ―a sourcebook for poverty reduction strategies” vol. 1. washington, dc: world bank. estache a, (2006) ―infrastructure: a survey of recent and upcoming issues‖. the world bank, mimeo. infrastructure vice presidency, and poverty reduction and economic vice presidency, april, washington dc: the world bank. ekong e. e (2003) rural sociology: an introduction analysis of rural nigeria. dove education publishers, uyo, nigeria. galtima m. 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(2008) ―poverty reduction and increased productivity through empowerment‖ pcu – nfdo, fadama development projects, october, pp.4 labonne, j., d. biller, and r. chase (2007) ―inequality and relative wealth. do they matter for trust? evidence from poor communities in the philippines”, social development papers, communitydriven development, paperno. 103. washington, dc: world bank. mansuri g and v. rao, (2004) community-based and driven development: a critical review. world bank research observer, vol. 19(1), pp. 1 39. nfdo (national fadama development office) (2007) ―poverty reduction through increased productivity and empowerment‖ abuja, nigeria nfdp ii, (2003) ―fadama-ii poverty reduction through empowerment‖, a publication of pcu-nfdo, abuja, nigeria. nkonya, e, d.philip, t.mogues, j.pander, m. k.yahaya, g. adebowale, t. arokoyo and e. kato, (2008) ―community-driven development in nigeria‖ ifpri discussion paper 00756, ifpri washington. npc (national population commission) (2006) ―population and housing census of the federal republic of nigeria report‖ abuja, nigeria. nwanchukwu, i. n. and c. i. ezeh, (2008) ―impacts of selected rural development programmes on poverty alleviation in ikwuano, lga, abia, nigeria‖, african journal of food, agriculture, nutrition and development, vol. 7(5), pp. 35-48. straub s. (2007) ―infrastructure and development: a critical appraisal of the macro-level literature‖, paper commissioned by the world bank east asia and pacific infrastructure economics unit, december publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2, june 2012. phytochemicals in vegetables and health protective effects pradeep kumar singh (associate professor cum senior scientist division of vegetable science, sher-e-kashmir university of agricultural sciences and technology of kashmir shalimar main campus, srinagar (j&k)) k. mallikarjuna rao (research scholar, division of vegetable science, sher-ekashmir university of agricultural sciences and technology of kashmir shalimar main campus, srinagar (j&k)) citation: pradeep kumar singh and k. mallikarjuna rao (2012): “phytochemicals in vegetables and their health benefits”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 177-183. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 177-183 177 author(s) pradeep kumar singh associate professor cum senior scientist division of vegetable science, sher-ekashmir university of agricultural sciences and technology of kashmir shalimar main campus, srinagar (j&k) email: pradeepsingh584@gmail.com k. mallikarjuna rao research scholar division of vegetable science, sher-e-kashmir university of agricultural sciences and technology of kashmir shalimar main campus, srinagar email: vikky.mallik@gmail.com phytochemicals in vegetables and health protective effects introduction phytochemicals/ phytonutrients/ phytonutriceuticals are organic compounds derived from plants that have health protective effects. besides the common nutrients such as carbohydrates, amino acids and protein, there are certain nonnutrient phytochemicals in vegetables that have biological activity against chronic diseases. they are low in fat and like all plant products, contain no cholesterol. most phytochemicals are found in relatively small quantities in vegetable crops. however, when consumed in sufficient quantities, phytochemicals contribute significantly towards protecting living cells against chronic diseases. major phytochemicals have been classified in to ten different classes based on their biological activities including: (1) carotenoids (α and β carotene, β cryptoxanthin, lutein, lycopene, and zeaxanthin), (2) glucosinolates (sulforaphane, indole-3 carbinol), (3) phenols (flavanoids), (4) cyclic phenolics (chlorogenic acid, ellagic acid, and coumarins) (5) saponins, (6) phytosterols (campestrol, β sitsterol, and stigmasterol), (7), sulfides and thiols (8) phyto-estrogens (isotlavones, daidzenin, genistein, and lignans), (9) protease inhibitors, and (10) inositol phosphates (phytate, inositol tetra and penta phosphates). vegetables have been shown to protect against specific types of cancer for example, the crucifers (brassicaceae) including broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale and cabbage have been shown to protect against lung and chemically induced cancers. the alliums (liliaceae), including garlic, chive, and onion have been shown to protect against stomach cancer, the solanaceous vegetables (solanaceae) including tomatoes and pepper have been shown to protect against esophageal, gastric, and prostrate cancers. the chenopods (chenopodiaceae) including spinach and chard have been shown to inhibit dna synthesis in proliferating human gastric adenocarcinoma cells. there is increasing evidence for a link between antioxidant nutrients (e.g. vitamin c, vitamin e, β carotene and selenium) in fruits and vegetables and lower risk of cardiovascular disease. studies have found 35 per cent reduction in mortality due to cardiovascular disease among those who consumed vegetables rich in vitamin e and c. a 40-50 percent reduction in risk of colon cancer in populations with higher vegetable consumption, especially garlic and dietary fiber has also been reported. in addition to reducing cancer and cardiovascular diseases, a diet high in vegetables has also been linked to reducing rheumatoid arthritis, anemia, diabetes, macular degeneration and gastric ulcer. the carotenoids, vitamin e, and vitamin c arc now firmly established as protective dietary antioxidants with additional beneficial functions. polyphenols and flavonoids are also gaining prominence and the protective role of folate is above dispute. all of these components are uniquely found in fresh and cooked vegetables, which underline the importance of vegetables in healthy diets. the exact mechanism by which vegetable consumption reduces human diseases have not yet been fully understood, however research over the last 2 decades has provided a scientific basis to support the common wisdom mailto:pradeepsingh584@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 177-183 178 that fruit and vegetable-rich diets are beneficial to health. the protective role of aorich diets in disease progression and ageing are beyond doubt, and advances in medicine over the past half century have resulted in a significant increase in lifespan in the developed world. why are the components of vegetables so important for health protective effects? antioxidant nutrients: antioxidants protect the body from adverse biological reactions involving oxygen. this may 12, 2011 sound strange, because we know that oxygen is necessary for the body to function; without oxygen, our cells die within minutes. a great irony of nature is that the body's natural metabolism involving oxygen also generates a host of toxic compounds / reactive by products called "free radicals", which are highly unstable and destructive. left unchecked, these free radicals can attack lipids in cell membranes, destroy cellular enzymes and even damage the genetic material deoxyribonucleic acid (dna). if the injury to dna by free radicals is not immediately repaired, the damaged dna is replicated in new cells and deterioration occurs. it is this gradual deterioration that may be responsible for ageing and the development of heart disease, cancer and cataracts. fortunately the body has a natural defense system against cellular damage by free radicals, which comprise primarily of antioxidant nutrients (e.g., vitamin e, vitamin c, and certain carotenoids), which are assisted by a variety of phyto-chemicals from the diet. antioxidants counteract, or neutralize, the harmful effects of free radicals. these antioxidants act as scavengers for these tree radicals and reactive oxygen species, thereby preventing them from disrupting the chemical stability of the cells. a variety of external factors such as inflammation, cigarette smoke, air pollutants, radiation (xrays and ultra-violet rays), carcinogens and excessive tension and exercise can promote free radical formation in our body. consequently, individuals exposed to these sources of oxidants would require a greater supply of dietary antioxidants. orange and yellow fruits and vegetables, as well as green leafy vegetables, are rich sources of carotenoids. citrus fruits, strawberries, green peppers, tomatoes, and kiwi are examples of foods high in vitamin c. good sources of vitamin e include nuts and seeds, wheat germ, and vegetable oils. with the exception of vitamin e, these antioxidants are widely' distributed in fruits and vegetables. table 1: major antioxidants in vegetable crops major antioxidants sources β-carotene carrot, fennel, kale, mustard greens, pumpkin, red pepper, lettuce, spinach, sweet potatoes, swiss chard, winter squash vitamin c broccoli, brussels sprouts, watermelon, cauliflower, green pepper, red cabbage, red pepper, potatoes lutein/zeaxanthin kale, broccoli, spinach, winter squash, brussels sprouts, celery, leeks, mustard greens, peas, green onions, summer squash lycopene tomato, watermelon vitamin e dark green leafy vegetables, sweet potatoes lipoic acid dark leafy green vegetables, especially spinach and broccoli flavonoids onions and soybeans polyphenols grapes, nuts, oranges, strawberries, green tea, black tea, red wine carotenoids: carotenoids are yellow, red and orange pigments present in many fruits and vegetables. β carotene is probably the most familiar carotenoid, but it is only one of six hundred different carotenoids found in nature. however, only 40 are present in a typical human diet and only 20 have been identified in animal and blood tissue. the other abundant carotenoids in vegetables are α carotene, lycopene, lutein, zeaxanthin, and βcryptoxanthin. three of these carotenoids (α -carotene, β carotene and β-cryptoxanthln) can be converted into vitamin a, while lycopene, lutein, and zeaxanthin have no vitamin a activity. in the diet they act as powerful antioxidants and are believed to protect the body against free radical attack and hence reduce the incidence of cataracts, heart disease and certain cancers. it is not clear which specific carotenoids are most important in reducing the cancer risk. previously, scientists believed that β-carotene had important cancer prevention properties. in several recent studies, however, β -carotene supplements did not lower the risk of cancer. the antioxidant activity of carotenoids differs among the different compounds. studies have shown that the singlet oxygen quenching capacity of lycopene is twice that of β carotene and ten times that of tocopherol. several studies on the bioavailability of β -carotene from vegetables in the human diet have shown that in broccoli it ranges from 2224%, in carrots 19-34%, and in leafy vegetables it ranges from 3-6%. studies have also shown that combination of fatty foods with carotenoid rich vegetables enhanced carotenoids uptake. most recent studies have shown that the bio availability of lycopene from tomato has increased dramatically by heat treatment in the presence of oil. for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 177-183 179 example, lycopene was found to be more bio-available from tomato paste than from fresh tomato due to heat treatment and presence of oil content in the paste. it has also been shown that lutein, which has no vitamina activity is five times more readily available than βcarotene. carotenoids are powerful antioxidant that may reduce the incidence of age-related diseases such as cancer and coronary heart disease. vitamin c: vitamin c or ascorbic acid is an essential vitamin to humans and other mammals that lack the ability to synthesize this vitamin, as they are deficient in the enzyme l-gulonolactone oxidase, involved in the biosynthesis of vitamin c via the glucuronic acid pathway. the biological function of vitamin c is based on its ability to donate electrons. in mammalian cells, vitamin c serves as cofactor for reactions that require reduced iron and /or copper metallo-enzymes. another important indirect function of vitamin c is its ability to regenerate other biologically important antioxidants such as i glutathione and vitamin e into their reduced state. capsaicin (c18h27no3): it is the source of heat found in chili peppers. possible benefits include reduced risk of colon, gastric and rectal cancers; inhibits tumor growth. may significantly reduce chronic, debilitating nerve pain associated with a range of diseases when used in high doses. lycopene: it is a phytochemical that gives tomatoes their red color and appears to offer potential health benefits. lycopene is a carotenoid. it is a linear hydrocarbon containing 11 conjugated carbon-carbon double bonds; this particular chemical structure gives the molecule its physico-chemical properties. one of the most important properties is its lipophilicity, for lycopene is completely insoluble in water. because of this chromophore, lycopene possesses its characteristics red color and a specific uv-visible spectrum. another consequence is the instability of the molecule under various conditions. thus, when isolated, lycopene is very sensitive to oxygen and light. the main subsequent degradation products are cisisomers and cleavage compounds. lycopene is more stable when present in the food matrix, in which it is somehow protected by other bio molecules. the antioxidant property of lycopene refers to (l) its ability to quench singlet oxygen, even more efficiently than the other carotenoids and (2) its ability to quench free radicals. tomato lycopene is the most potent free radical scavenger of all the carotenoids. it is four times powerful than alphacarotene regarding its anti carcinogenic effect on endometrial cells. it is known to reduce prostate cancer risk significantly. lycopene also plays a role in other processes, like maintaining the cell's capacity to synthesise the cytoplasmic bridges that act as information exchanges allowing healthy cells to defend themselves against potential sources of cancer metastases. tocopherols: tocopherol general known as vitamin e consist of eight naturally occurring fat soluble tocols and tocotrienols. they are made up of four tocol structures consisting of a saturated phytyl c16 side chain (α, β, y, and 0-tocopherols) and four toco rienols bearing three double bonds in the phytyl side chain (α, β, y, and 0-tocotrienols). the most predominant and most active form of vitamin e is α -tocopherol. vitamin e is protective against several cellular abnormalities including cardiovascular disease, cancer, sterility, muscular dystrophy, changes in the central nervous system, and anaemia development. flavonols: flavonols include quercetin, kaempferol, fisetin, and myricetin. quercetin is the most important flavonoid in vegetables. it has been detected in onion, and to a lesser extent in tomato and bean. kaempferol, myricetin, and fisetin have been detected in onion, lettuce, and endive. many investigators have studied the effect of flavonols on carcinogenesis and cardiovascular diseases in human and laboratory animals. several mechanisms have been proposed for the mode of action of these compounds including inhibition of estrogen binding in mammalian cells, induction of the phase ii enzyme quinone reductase in murine hepatoma cells, antioxidant protection from oxygen radicals and induction of apoptosis. flavones: flavones include apigenin and luteolin. flavones have been detected in conjugated form in celery, tomato, brinjal, garlic and onion. the mechanism of action of flavones on chronic diseases is similar to that of other flavonoids. they were proposed to function primarily as antioxidants by conserving α -tocopherol content of lowdensity lipo-proteins and membrane lipids in the reduced state. isoflavonoids: isoflavonoids include diadzein and genistein and have limited distribution in vegetables. they exist mainly in legumes including soybean, lentil and chickpea. small quantities have been detected in vegetables such as broccoli, asparagus, alfalfa sprouts, okra and mushrooms. a health benefit of iso-flavonoids has been due to the phytestrogenic response of genistein. as a phytoestrogen, genistein is believed to block estrogen perception by actively competing for binding sites or by blocking estrogen synthesis. studies have confirmed the role of early exposure to estrogen in reducing hormone dependent and chemically induced cancers. studies have shown that asian women who consumed a diet rich in soy products had relatively low risk of breast cancer. polyphenols: polyphenolics are a diverse group of compounds (nearly 8000 structurally known polyphenolics) widely distributed in the plant kingdom. it asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 177-183 180 constitutes the largest ubiquitous group of phytochemicals in vegetables. polyphenolics have been divided into ten different classes based on their basic chemical structure. phenolics (mostly flavanoids) and terpenoids represent the most important classes of polyphenolics in vegetables. one group of polyphenols, called flavonoids, appears to be beneficial in lowering the risk of certain cancers. the health benefit of flavonoids is linked primarily to their antioxidant potential. as we already know, the induction of virtually all diseases occur as result of processes that generate highly reactive oxidative compounds (free radicals) or exposure to chemical toxicants that affect specific molecular targets such as cellular dna or low density lipoproteins. in animal models the flavonoids have been shown to regenerate vitamin c, which in turn regenerates vitamin e. to overcome the potential hazards from the oxidative damage in the body, consumption of diet rich in the antioxidant phenolics, including flavonoids, are considered the first time of defense against highly reactive toxicants. anthocyanins: anthocyanins give vegetable leaves and fruits their purple and or/red colour, such as in purple cabbage, purple broccoli, eggplant, purple sweet potato, rhubarb, purple radish and onion. anthocyanins have also been shown to protect mammalian cell lipoproteins from damage by free radicals. nasunin, an anthocyanin from brinjal has been shown to inhibit brain cell lipid peroxidation caused by hydroxyl free radicals. terpenoids: it is one of the most important groups of phyto-chemicals in vegetables of particular importance are the roles of tocopherols and carotenoids. the antioxidant activity of tocopherols and carotenoids have attracted significant scientific attention especially their in vitro and in vivo roles in reducing atherosclerosis, by inhibiting lowdensity lipo-protein oxidation. fiber: fiber, or roughage, is a group of substances chemically similar to carbohydrates. it is only found in foods derived from plants, and never occurs in animal products. fiber provides bulk in the diet, so foods rich in fiber satisfies hunger without contributing excessive calories: a diet high in fiber may help prevent colon cancer and other types of cancer. most health agencies recommend that adults should consume 20-35 grams of fiber daily. this is not difficult to do if you eat an average of five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, and regularly include whole grain breads, cereals, and legumes in your diet. some excellent sources of fiber are kidney beans, bran-rich breakfast cereals, and baked potatoes with skin, apples, oranges, pears, spinach, oatmeal, and popcorn. folic acid: several studies have suggested that folic acid, also called folate, may reduce the risk of colon and rectal cancer. in one study involving more than 25,000 adults, those who ate diets high in folate had fewer pre-cancerous polyps, which are associated with the eventual development of colorectal cancer. this benefit of folate did not occur among people who consumed more than two alcoholic drinks per day. there is also accumulating evidence that folate may lower the risk of pancreatic cancer and breast cancer. good sources of folate are dark green leafy vegetables, legumes, citrus fruits and juices, and fortified breakfast cereals and grain products. dietary supplements are a good way of obtaining this vitamin, since the body better absorbs the folic acid in supplements than the folate naturally occurring in foods. glucosinolates and chemoprevention of cancer glucosinolates or β-d-thioglucosides are a diverse class of sand n-containing secondary metabolites that are mainly found in members of the brassicaceae (cruciferae) and in 15 other families of dicotyledonous angiosperms. glucosinolates molecule comprises of a skeletal βthioglucose moiety, a sulfonated oxime moiety (glucone), and a variable aglucone r-group that defines the structure of each glucosinolate. the biosynthetic origin of glucosinolates is derived frorn a number of common amino acids. in crucifers, the dominant glucosinolates are derived from methionine, phenylalanine,tryptophan, valine and tyrosine. about 120 different glucosinolates have been identified so far, but only about 20 have been detected in vegetable crops. based on their r-group structure, glucosinolates have been classified into aliphatic, aromatic and indolyl. crucifer vegetables viz., broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, chinese cabbage, red cabbage, savoy cabbage are the main source of glucosinolates. broccoli has the maximum content of glucosinolate, in which it constitutes about 0.05-0.2% of the fresh weight of broccoli (0.05 to 1.0g/kg). several studies have suggested that intact glucosinolates have no biological activity against cancer, however the breakdown products have been shown to stimulate mixed function oxidases involved in the detoxification .of carcinogens. upon tissue disruption, glucosinolates are rapidly hydrolyzed by myrosinase (thioglucoside glucohydrolase; ec 3.2.3.1) to unstable intermediates that, as dictated by chemical conditions, spontaneously rearrange to isothiocyanates, thiocyanates, or nitriles. although the primary biological function of glucosinolates in plants is unknown, glucosinolate breakdown products are proposed to act as allelo-chemicals and to play a role in plant defenses against herbivores, pests, and pathogens. furthermore, indolyl glucosinolates can be converted into indoleacetic acid and may thus contribute to active auxin levels in cruciferous plants. as components of food for humans and feed for livestock, the biological activities of glucosinolate hydrolysis products have generated asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 177-183 181 considerable toxicological and pharmocological interest. depending on glucosinoiate composition and on the prevalence of hydrolysis products, consumption of glucosinolates by mammals has been linked with goitrogen ic effects (thiocyanates) or with a reduced risk of developing cancer (isothiocyanates) in experimental animals. studies have shown that rat fed on a diet containing intact glucosinolates from broccoli had no effect on the metabolism of the carcinogens viz., antipyrine and metronidazole, however, glucosinolate hydrolyzed by myrosinase prior to feeding, enhanced the detoxification of the two carcinogens by 67 and 200 percent respectively, suggesting, that glucosinolate breakdown product and not intact glucosinolate are biologically active against chemical toxicants. sulforaphane (4-methylsulfinylbutyl isothiocyanate) and indole-3-carbinol are the two most widely studied glucosinolate breakdown products exhibiting anti-carcinogenic properties. sulforaphane is the breakdown product of the aliphatic glucosinolate glucoraphanin, while indole-3-carbinol is the breakdown products of indolyl glucosinolate glucobrassi cin. other breakdown products of glucosinolates that have been shown to protect human and animal cells against carcinogenesis are phenyl isothiocynate, 1-cyano-2hydroxy-3-butene and breakdown products from sinigrin and glucoiberin that have yet to be characterized. studies on laboratory animals and human subjects have shown that induction of detoxification enzymes (phase ii enzymes) and inhibition of activation enzymes (phase i enzymes) are two major mechanism of cancer prevention by glucosinolate breakdown products. the exact mechanism has not yet been fully characterized, but it has been suggested that phase ii enzymes are capable of conjugating with activated carcinogens and converting them into inactive wateroluble compounds that can be easily cleared by the kidney. mechanistic studies have shown that isothiocynates such as sulforaphane, indole-3-carbinol and phenylethylisothi ocynates target mammalian phase ii drug-metabolizing enzymes, resulting in increased carcinogenic detoxify cation. for example, the methionine derived isothiocynate sulforaphone, have been shown to be potent inducers of the phase ii enzymes glutathione-s-transferase, quinone reductase, nadph reductase and glucouronyl transferase in hepatoma cells. sulforaphane is the most powerful natural inducer of chemo protective enzymes thus far reported and has become a metabolic target of breeding strategies to enhance the anti carcinogenic potency of cruciferous vegetables. a second mechanism for the glucosinolate breakdown products involves inhibition of enzymes involved in the induction of cancer. chemical carcinogens generally require metabolic activation in order to be able to bind to dna and contribute to cancer development. phase i enzymes are responsible for in vivo and in vitro metabolic activation of most carcinogens in human and animal cells. studies have shown that, under certain conditions, the products of phase i enzymes serve as substrates for phase ii enzymes, which convert them into electrophilic carcinogens that can easily be excreted through the urine. there is also ample evidence that some glucosinolate breakdown products inhibit the catalytic activity of phasei enzymes (cytochrome p450 enzymes). cytochrome p450 enzymes are a battery of phase i enzymes that have been shown to metabolically activate chemical carcinogens such as nitrosamines and aflatoxins. the glucosinolate break down products can be mono-or-bifunctional inducers based on their effect on phase i and phase ii enzymes. sulforaphane and phenylethyl isothiocyanates are mono-functional inducers that induce phase ii enzymes and either has no effect or inhibit phase i enzymes, while indol-3-carbinol and its parent glucosinolate glucobrasicin, and neo-glucobrassicin are bifunctional inducers that induce both phase i and phase ii enzymes. in addition to modulating the phase i and phase ii enzymes, the glucosinolates and their breakdown products have also been shown to have a direct effect on the cancer development by suppressing the promotion phase of cancer cell formation and reducing invasion and metastasis. recent evidences also suggest that isothiocyanates may regulate cancer cell development by promoting apoptosis. apoptosis, or programmed cell death, is genetically encoded active cell destruction. indol3-carbinol has been shown to promote apoptosis in rodent cell lines. glucosinolate breakdown products have also been shown to prevent and/or suppress estrogen dependent cancers, such as cervical and breast by blocking the estrogen receptor function. the chemo-protective properties of natural isothiocyanates have renewed interest in glucosinolate biosynthesis. while significant progress has been made in understanding the biochemistry and enzymology of glucosinolate synthesis, little is known about the structural and regulatory genes involved. thiosulfldes: these are organo sulfur compounds found in alliums including garlic, onions, leeks, chive and green onions. alliin (s(2-propenyl)-l-cysteine sulfoxide), yglutamylcysteine and methiin (s-methyl-l-cysteinesulfoxide) are the major thiosulfides in intact tissues of alliums. other minor thiosultides include s-propenyl-lcysteine sulfoxide and s-ethyl-l-cysteine, commonly known as ethiin. none of the thiosulfides found in alliums have been detected, in other vegetables, except methiin, which was recently detected in cabbage leaves. allicin, the most abundant thio-sulfide in intact garlic, is highly unstable. when the tissue is cut, chewed or dehydrated, cytosolic aliin is rapidly lysed by the vacuolar enzyme alliinase or alliin lyase (e.c. 4.4.1.4) into a highly unstable diallyl thiosulfinate transient intermediate called allicin. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 177-183 182 allicin then converts into several lipid soluble alkyl alkanethiosultinates, including allyl sulfide, diallyl disulfide, diallyl trisulfide, allylmethyl disulfide. these lipid soluble compounds form the odiferous and aromatic characteristic of garlic. consumption of alliums has been found to retard growth of several types of cancers. it has generally been accepted that the in vitro and in vivo anti proliferative effect of allium vegetables results from the breakdown of aliin into active organo sulfur compounds. several allyl sulfides have been found to inhibit human tumour growth including prostrate, colon, skin, breast, lung, lymphoma, erythroleukemia, and lymphocyte tumors. the cancer prevention by organo sulfur compounds is due to their function as blocking agents. they act during the initiation stage of carcinogenesis by either inhibiting the activation of procarcinogens, trapping reactive species, or by enhancing the activity of phase ii detoxification enzymes. studies have shown that dna adducts induced in animal cells during exposure to chemical carcinogens, such as di methyl benzene, anthracene and n-methyl nitrosourea, are suppressed by s-allyl cysteine supplement. in addition to enhancing the activity of phase ii detoxification enzymes, allyl sulfides also inhibit phase i enzymes, such as cytochrome 450, which has been shown to activate chemical carcinogens, and promote apoptosis. tomato antioxidants and biosynthesis many studies have demonstrated that the daily consumption of tomatoes decreases the cancer risk to the upper respiratory and digestive tracts, to the lungs and to the stomach. the same protective effect is conceivable for the mouth and the pharynx, and is presently being demonstrated against prostate cancer. the tomato fruit contains many antioxidants such as carotenoids, including lycopene and β-carotene, vitamin c, vitamin e and polyphenols such as kaempferol and quercetin. lycopene, β-carotene and polyphenols are primarily found in the skin and pericarp. vitamin c is largely present in the pulp and vitamin e is exclusively present in the seeds. the antioxidant levels in tomatoes can be influenced by environmental factors, like temperature, light and growing practices. a temperature range between 12 and 32°c is required for iycopene biosynthesis. outside of this range, the synthesis of iycopene precursors is inhibited and iycopene production is discontinued. the influence of temperature on vitamin c, vitamin e and phenols accumulation is not so clearly stated. at favourable temperatures (22-25°c), the biosynthesis rate of iycopene is increased by illumination. but lycopene accumulation can be hindered by excessive sunlight (ideal conditions are suitably high temperatures together with dense foliage that protects the fruit from direct exposure to sunlight). on the contrary, the vitamin c content as well as the phenolics content is positively influenced by light exposure. no information is available about the influence of light resources on vitamin e accumulation. few studies have been dedicated to the influence of water availability on iycopene content and results are contradictory. but, it seems fairly clear that water shortage tends to increase tomato fruit vitamin c content (as well as brix degree and acidity). no information about the influence of water availability has been found for vitamin e and phenolic compounds. the influence of fertilizers on the antioxidant content is complex and not very well documented. the influence of the nitrogen supply on the iycopene content has not been assessed. however, a number of studies over the last 50 years seem to demonstrate that increasing rates of nitrogen tend to decrease the vitamin c content (possibly because dense foliage decreases illumination) and probably the level of phenolic compounds. the effect of phosphorus fertilization on antioxidants has not been frequently studied. only the effect of potassium fertilization on the iycopene content has been the object of various studies. potassium deficiency may lower the iycopene content of the fruit. however, very high potassium supplies (>800 kg/ha) would be necessary for a noticeable decrease in colour uniformity disorders and this is not really fitted to modern agricultural practices. no reference was found about fertilization and vitamin e. the biosynthesis pathways of carotenoids and polyphenols are now well characterized and some of the specific genes are cloned. thus by classic breeding methods, it is possible to produce yellow, orange and red tomatoes. an alternative method consists in activating .specific genes to produce iycopenerich or kaemferol-rich tomatoes. in the first case, tomatoes produce more iycopene in the pericarp. in the second case, kaempferol may be produced throughout the fruit. toxic metabolites and anti-nutritional factors in vegetables trypsin inhibitors: these are proteins distributed widely in plant foods like legumes. they generally inhibit the activity of trypsin in the gut and interfere with the digestibility of dietary proteins and reduce their utilization. phytate: phytate is hexaphosphate of inositol. these phytates bind iron, zinc, calcium and magnesium. in presence of ca 2+ and mg 2+ it forms insoluble complexes with iron and thus reduces iron bioavailability. on germination of the grains, the phytate content reduces due to enzymatic break down of phytate that improves iron availability. oxalates: green leafy vegetables and some legumes are rich source of oxalates and are known to interfere with asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 177-183 183 calcium absorption by forming insoluble salts with calcium. complexation of calcium by oxalate may result in calcium deficiency. dietary oxalates can be absorbed and contribute to increased execration of oxalates in urine. high oxalate excretion may predispose to oxalate crystals leading to urinary stones. thus, stone patients are advised to avoid high oxalate containing foods. however, vegetables rich in' calcium e.g. fenugreek, colocasia, sweet potato, ridge gourd and snake gourd rich in insoluble calcium oxalate are not likely to be harmful. maximum oxalate concentration is found in amaranth and spinach leaf (44-157 g/kg dry wt.). a substantial portion of it (3948 percent) may be in water-soluble form. the most obvious method of reducing the risk of oxalate poisoning is to cook the leaves, which reduces the water-soluble oxalates. tannins: there are condensed polyphenolic compounds which are present in high amount in seed coat of most legumes and certain vegetables and fruits. tannins bind with iron irreversibly and interfere with iron absorption. glucosinolates: glucosinolates are thioglucosides, which are widely distributed in plants, particularly among members of cruciferae upon hydrolysis by plant microbial thioglucosidase (myrosinase) isothiocyanate and nitriles are released. the isothiocyanate residues are known to possess goitrogenic properties which inhibits iodine uptake by thyroid glands. nitrates: vegetables are the single largest source of nitrate in human diet. nitrate accumulation can have serious deleterious effects. within the gastrointestinal tract nitrate (no3) is reduced to nitrite (no2), which is absorbed into the blood stream where it binds with haemoglobin, oxidizing ferrous iron to ferric iron to form methaemoglobin. this form of haemoglobin complex is incapable of o2 transport. the result is anoxia, specifically referred to as methaemoglobinemia. references m. schreiner (2004) vegetable crop management strategies to increase the quality of phytochemicals. european journal of nutrition, vol. 44(2), pp. 85-94, doi: 10.1007/5 00394-004-0498 guillermo padilla., maría elena cartea., pablo velasco., antonio de haro and amando ordás (2007) variation of glucosinolates in vegetable crops of brassica rapa phytochemical, vol. 68 (4), pp. 536-45. peter hanson., ray yu yong., lien chung chang., lanee ledesma and dolores led esona (2011) “caroteroid, ascorbic acid, minerals and total glucosinolates in choysun (brassica rapa cug. parachinese) and kale (b. oleraceae alboglabra group) as affected by variety and wet and dry season”, journal of food composition and analysis, vol. 24(7), pp. 950-62. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 457-468 457 case studies of rural development and clean agriculture in lao pdr sachika hirokawa senior visiting researcher, keio research institute at sfc, kanagawa, japan abstract the study examines the kind of actors and resources that empower small-scale farmers to promote sustainable agriculture. it also analyzes the reasons given by farmers who changed their farming methods. in 2004, the department of agriculture launched a project for the promoting organic farming and marketing in lao pdr (profil). profil tried to develop market opportunities for lao’s organic products and supported the local organic farmers. i conducted field researches at nonte village in vientiane capital twice in 2008. the researches indicated that “clean agriculture” is one of the new challenges for farmers. thus, this research focuses on the observation of how local organic farmers adapt to a new method and cope with problems. information as knowledge from community groups and external actors such as local institutions and experts might help villagers to have choices in terms of farming methods, which gave them positive choices in terms of health and an agricultural environment. since the government has the recognition of comparative advantages of clean agriculture, farmers may have the opportunity to gain a large market of organic farm products if they can develop distribution channels. this study encourages the positive contributions of challenges of sustainable agriculture in lao pdr. keywords: clean agriculture, sustainable agriculture, small-scale farmers, empowerment, community groups introduction 1 agriculture is a significant social sector and a way of life for the majority of the population in lao people’s democratic republic (lao pdr). over 73 percent of the nation’s population lived in rural areas, and over 78 percent of the labor force population was engaged in the agricultural sector in 2005 (ccph 2006: 26, 93–94). the agricultural sector contributed 32.8 percent of the gdp in 2009 (asian development bank 2010: 160). according to the results of the land use survey in 2002, agricultural areas constituted 5 percent of the total land area of the nation. nearly 80 percent of the agricultural area was for rice paddies, while 20 percent of them was for plantations (vongsiharath 2009:77–78). the 1 corresponding author’s email address: sachika@sfc.keio.ac.jp majority of the agricultural production is based on subsistence agriculture in lao pdr. classified by the united nations as a least developed country (ldc), lao pdr is one of the poorest countries in the world. the introduction of the “new economic mechanism” in 1986 was aimed at transforming the centrally planned economy to a commercialized economy using a marketoriented approach. this was a significant milestone for the current policies, including the agriculture policy, because a number of reforms were carried out under the new economy mechanism. the agricultural sector has become the first priority for development and poverty reduction because the low level of commercialization in agriculture production is a significant cause of low income for farmers and poverty incidence (oraboune 2007:6). around asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:sachika@sfc.keio.ac.jp asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 457-468 458 1990, international organizations and donors increased the number of projects conducted in the agricultural sector. in september 1999, the government prepared the poverty reduction strategy paper through a participatory process involving the world bank staff and international monetary fund. in 2001, the 7 th party congress identified the general goals of the socioeconomic development strategy for a 10-year period from 2001 to 2010 as follows: “improve and establish the basis for the economy to progress strongly in firm steps, especially to strongly develop the agriculture sector” (cpi 2006:58). the aim of the government is to maintain rapid economic growth to improve living conditions, meet the millennium development goals (mdgs) by 2015, and graduate out of the ldc status by 2020 (undp 2004). there are eight mdgs in all: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and empowering women; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating hiv/aids, malaria, and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a global partnership for development. thus, lao pdr’s agricultural policies responded to the requests of poverty reduction and pro-environmental behavior from international organizations and donors. most other asian countries, such as india, pakistan, sri lanka, china, indonesia, bangladesh, vietnam, myanmar, thailand and the philippines, had adopted the “green revolution,” which used high yield varieties (hyv) to increase agricultural productivity in the 1960s and 1970s. in rural areas, it was observed that the absolute amounts of agricultural revenue increased, which provided cheap agricultural products to laborers in urban areas and accelerated the growth of the industry sector. however, several previous studies have highlighted problems caused by the green revolution, such as the environmental degradation of soil and water, health damages, debts, loss of biodiversity, and loss of food security for the poor. thus, the emergence of the concept of “sustainable agriculture” was due to the awareness of several problems with conventional modern agriculture. as interest in sustainable agriculture grew internationally, an expert of the food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao) mentioned at the world congress on conservation agriculture in 2009, “the world’s farmers must quickly switch to more sustainable and productive farming systems to grow the food needed by a swelling world population and respond to climate change” (fao 2009). comparing the process of introducing sustainable agriculture policy, the time difference between thailand and lao pdr can be observed. in thailand, modern agriculture with hyv was introduced in the 1960s. subsequently, the concept of “sustainable agriculture” appeared in the 8 th national economic and social development plan (1997– 2001). in contrast, lao pdr introduced modern agriculture in the 1990s, and the concept of “clean agriculture” appeared in 2004. thus, there were a few decades of lag between thailand and lao pdr (see figure 1). figure 1: the process of introducing a sustainable agriculture policy source: constructed on the basis of original research 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s thailand lao pdr modern agriculture policy with hyv since 1960s sustainable agriculture policy since 1997 (the 8th nesdp) modern agriculture policy with hyv since 1990s clean agriculture policy since 2004 (the 7th congress) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 457-468 459 it is noteworthy that both chemically-based farming and clean agriculture, currently in progress, have been encouraged by the government of lao pdr. the resolution of the 8 th session of the 7 th congress of lao people’s revolutionary party stated, “lao has the potential to produce clean agricultural products which would be free of chemicals and preferred by consumers.” to execute the clean agriculture policy, the ministry of agriculture and forestry has designated the department of agriculture to implement clean agriculture, including setting up the promoting organic farming and marketing in lao pdr (profil), the clean agriculture development center (cadc), and the laos certification body (see figure 2). figure 2: organization chart for clean agriculture policy source: based on an interview with the staff of the department of agriculture in laos, 2008 the department of agriculture launched profil in 2004. profil has sought to develop regional and international market opportunities for lao organic products and to support local organic farmers. according to chittanavanh, the co-manager of profil in the department of agriculture (chittanavanh 2007), the basic recognition of “comparative advantages” of lao agriculture was as follows: “first, the soil is still fertile in lao pdr. second, the water resources are still pure and uncontaminated. third, the use of agricultural chemical inputs is still low because the country neither produces active ingredients nor formulates any pesticides locally.” in the national plan from 2006 to 2010, there is a statement that mentions, “take advantage of the comparative advantages of natural resources and focus on high yield rice production and organic vegetables to meet the demands of domestic and foreign markets.” according to the explanation from profil, there are three types of clean agriculture in lao pdr so far: organic agriculture, pesticide-free production, and good agricultural practice (gap). gap includes the method of integrated pest management (ipm). this study encourages the positive contributions of sustainable agriculture in lao pdr. since the government of lao pdr recognizes the comparative advantages of clean agriculture, and the nation has an expanse of uncontaminated land, farmers may have the opportunity to gain a large market of organic farm products if they can develop distribution channels. in the case analyses presented in this paper, the focus is on the process of how the farmers followed the three steps of empowerment discussed in section 2, what kind of external actors affected them, and the how farmers were empowered. the central research question is what kind of actors and resources empower small-scale farmers to promote sustainable agriculture. this study considers observable cases and analyzes the implications from resource-flow diagrams. literature review before proceeding to the case analyses, i first explain the concept of empowerment. according to friedmann (1992:33), alternative development seeks the empowerment of the ministry of agriculture and forestry (maf) the department of agriculture (doa) the promotion of organic farming and marketing project (profil) the clean agriculture development center (cadc) the laos certification body (lcb) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 457-468 460 households in terms of three kinds of power: social, political, and psychological. social power is concerned with the access to “bases” of household production, such as information, knowledge and skills, participation in social organizations, and financial resources. political power concerns the access of individual household members to the process. it is not only the power to vote but also the power of voice and collective action. psychological power is described as an individual sense of potency. thus, it is important to recognize how farmers’ power is enhanced in actual and concrete contexts. to quote chambers (1997: 219), “empowerment can be weak and short-lived unless it is embodied in institutions.” he reported the importance of the role of community-level organization. he described that community-level organizations can have many functions, such as savings and credit, incomeearning activities, natural-resource management, maintaining group or community solidarity, preparing proposals and negotiating with outside agencies. thus, there is the strategic significance of the resource-flow diagrams which visually depict the material relationships and community groups around the households in order to observe the empowerment process. as sato (2005: 201–209) acutely pointed out, the process of empowerment consists of three steps. first, the actors become aware of problems they face. second, they build their capacity by obtaining knowledge and skills from external actors. third, by acquiring knowledge and skills, they change the social relationships around them to apply their knowledge to resolve their issues. it is worth noting that there are some difficulties of participatory development projects as have been pointed out from the past literature. olawepo (2012:27-38) mentioned, “despite the fact that the zimbabwe farm project supposedly affected the lives and production of the local farms positively, a substantial part of the local farmers saw the whole thing as a threat to their local production.” what the passage makes clear at once in that there is the gap of perception between local farmers who rely on a commercial part and a substantial part. akpan (2012: 381393) explained the top-down case which were implemented by public officials and development agents in bangladesh. akpan remarked, “massive public investments and spending should be directed at improving social opportunities such as education, healthcare and economic empowerment.” what is apparent in this extract is the importance of the basic capabilities which are related to social opportunities. on the basis of discussions above, this study focuses on what kind of actors and resources empowered farmers and why farmers introduced new farm methods. methodology the cases described in this paper are based on field data collected on two research trips to villages around vientiane capital in 2008. both statistical data and official statements are used to support the case analyses. in advance of the field research, an official approval from the department of agriculture was obtained. in addition, the study included visits to the villages with government officials. this paper focuses on cases of organic farming in nonte village, xaithani district in vientiane capital, lao pdr (see figure 3). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 457-468 461 figure 3: map of lao pdr and xaithani district semi-structured, in-depth interviews were used to gather information on the livelihood of the farmers. first, the author conducted interviews with the headman of nonte village and the leader of the organic vegetable group as key informants. then, they introduced 11 households in nonte village. most of the interviewees were farmers who belonged to the profil pilot projects. the interview questions for villagers mainly asked about their farming histories and management practices. each interview took approximately one hour per household. the author also conducted interviews with the co-manager of profil in the department of agriculture and an official of the cadc in the department of agriculture. the interview questions for government officials mainly asked about the process of projects and their plans for clean agriculture. in addition to individual interviews for villagers, this study uses “resource-flow diagram,” which visually depict the material relationships around the participants’ households. the resource-flow diagram is one of the tools of the rapid rural appraisal (rra) approach. 1 key persons such as the village headmen and community group leaders were interviewed to create the resourceflow diagram of nonte village. to compare the support system for farmers engaged in organic agriculture, the author also consider cases from nw village, phon district in khon kaen province in northeast thailand, which is one of the research sites. khon kaen province is a regional center for education, finance, and transport in northeast thailand. khon kaen is situated about 440 km northeast of bangkok. northeast region had long been regarded as the poorest region in thailand. therefore, this region became the center of attention from the rural development. many actors, such as the government and thai and foreign ngos, came to implement projects on sustainable agriculture in this region. field data were collected during 10 research trips to villages in the khon kaen province from 2004 to 2010 by the author. in nw village, many organizations actively promoted organic agriculture. thus, the resource-flow diagrams of nw village should reveal what elements were lacking in nonte village in vientiane capital. case analysis profil activities for the implementation of the clean agriculture policy, each institution had a clear role assignment: profil took on the roles of nonte village map of xaithani district vientiane capital asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 457-468 462 networking and marketing for farmers who engaged in organic agriculture. cadc adopted the roles of training and inspection. the laos certification body had the role of certification. profil developed a network of 65 organic vegetable farmers and 570 organic rice farmers that covered 10 villages near vientiane capital in 2008. it set up the weekly market for organic products in front of pha that luang, a large gold-covered buddhist stupa, in vientiane capital in 2007. one of the profil pilot projects was the organic vegetable group in nonte village in xaithani district. there were three kinds of support available to the farmers in nonte village during the transition period from conventional farming to organic farming: profil meetings and trainings, loans from the village saving group, and group trainings from the ipm project. further details are presented in the case of nonte village. general village conditions in 2008, there were 130 households in nonte village, and about 100 of them engaged in farming. the paddy area covered about 87 hectares, and the cultivation area covered 65 hectares. there were four groups: the saving money group, small-scale enterprise group, farmers’ group, and organic vegetable group (see figure 4). most farmers in nonte village ask middlemen to sell farm products in the market in town because they do not own cars. figure 4: resource-flow diagram of nonte village in vientiane capital source: based on a personal interview with community leaders, 2008 the activities of the organic project began in 2004, and the “nonte organic vegetable and fruit farmer group” was granted establishment from the department of agriculture on july 2, 2006. nineteen households in nonte village joined this group. from the end of 2006 until 2008, the organic vegetable group harvested about 48 tons of organic vegetables and 240 tons of organic fruits. it also produced about 130 liters of different kinds of organic fertilizers and 16 tons of compost. the average income of an organic vegetable group member was around 350,000 kip per week. the group has been supported in the areas of equipment and a certain amount of seeds to constitute the group revolving fund: seeds, cottages, bat dung, insect traps, light screens, green tanks, spray tubes, and other equipment from profil. according to a regional report by profil, the awareness of agricultural problems in nonte village before commencing the projects was as follows (profil 2008:1–2): (a) vegetable cultivation depended on chemical fertilizers and was performed in a non-unified manner. (b) there were results of effective production, but asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 457-468 463 the high cultivation costs resulted in low profit. (c) damaged soils and inappropriate plantation resulted from the extensive usage of chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and other chemical inputs. (d) vegetables deteriorated quickly at harvest time. (e) there were negative effects on the health of the villagers, animals, and environment. (f) households were experiencing financial hardship due to debts resulting from the purchase of chemical fertilizers and insecticides. (g) farmers lacked information, technical exchange, and guidance from the related organizations. (h) farmers in nonte village lacked a unified manner of cultivation. reason why farmers introduced clean agriculture it is important to note how the nonte villagers come to share a common awareness of the issues taken up by profil. the staff of profil came to nonte village and appealed to the villagers in 2004. then, profil set up monthly community meetings within the village for farmers to discuss their experiences with one another. it also provided trainings and information on organic agriculture. as a result of these activities, several villagers began to question the use of conventional farming methods. in 2006, nonte farmers formed an organic vegetable group, and by 2008, 19 households were engaged in organic farming. in the interviews, the farmers were asked about their reasons for introducing clean agriculture. the results of the open-response questions were as follows (see table 1): seven members of the group reported health concerns associated with the use of agrichemicals. seven had participated in the profil training and were inspired by profil’s activities. four members were concerned about degrading their soil, and four thought that chemicals were too expensive to purchase. three members witnessed their neighbors’ success with clean agriculture and wanted to follow their example. table 1: reasons for changing farming method reasons (open-response questions) number participant number health concerns 7 nt-1, nt-2, nt-3, nt-8, nt9, nt-10, nt-11 participation in profil’s trainings 7 nt-1, nt-2, nt-3, nt-8, nt9, nt-10, nt-11 concerns about the degraded soil 4 nt-1, nt-8, nt-10, nt-11 concerns about the high cost of chemicals 4 nt-6, nt-8, nt-9, nt-11 seeing neighbors’ success 3 nt-1, nt-6, nt-8 source: based on field research in nonte village, 2008 how did farmers make the decision to introduce clean agriculture? eight cases are described here: (1) farmer nt1 reported that organic farming was good for his health. he had learned how to make organic fertilizer on the profil study tour, where he had also seen successful farmers who engaged in organic farming in thailand. after returning home, he realized he did not have to buy expensive chemical fertilizer, and he noticed that the quality of his soil improved when he switched to organic fertilizer. (2) farmer nt2 introduced clean agriculture in 2006. he and his wife had previously suffered from headaches when they used insecticide on their farmland. after nt2 attended a profil community meeting, he decided to adopt clean agriculture to preserve his family’s health. (3) farmer nt3 switched to organic farming after he and his wife suffered health problems resulting from the use of agrichemicals. his case is described in further detail in section 4-3. (4) farmer nt6 wanted to change her farming method because her neighbor who introduced clean agriculture seemed to be successful. she said that she would like to follow this neighbor’s example. (5) farmer nt8 moved to nonte village in 2002 and farmed his relative’s land. he recognized chemical-based farming would damage the soil asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 457-468 464 by observing other farmers, and he was also concerned about his ailing wife’s health. therefore, he began to make his own compost using cow and buffalo dung. he learned about clean agriculture through the profil meetings and joined the organic vegetable group. (6) farmer nt9 was admitted to the hospital in 2006 for breathing problems. the doctor said that his health problem had been caused by the insecticide he often used. he had used insecticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizer on his farmland for 26 years, but had never questioned his farming methods; consequently, he was shocked by the doctor’s words. through profil, he learned that organic farming would be good for his health. in the interview, he said he would like to join the organic vegetable group. (7) farmer nt10 was interested in organic farming but was unable to change his current farming methods for practical reasons (see section 4-5). (8) a friend of nt11 was invited to one of the trainings from the department of agriculture in 2002, where he learned about the benefits of organic farming. he became concerned about the damage being caused to his soil and potentially to his health. therefore, he gradually began to reduce chemical inputs and increase his use of organic fertilizers. he stopped using chemical inputs in 2006 and joined in the organic vegetable group. the process of farmer empowerment by profil in nonte village the cases described in section 4-3 illustrate the importance of supportive actors in the transition from conventional to organic agriculture. this section offers a more in-depth look at the case of nt3, as an example of the process of farmer empowerment. farmer nt3, a 67-year-old farmer in nonte village, owned 4 hectares of land, where he lived with his wife and daughter. his two sons lived and worked in the city. at the time of the interview, nt3 and his wife engaged in organic agriculture, using 3 hectares of their land for sticky rice, 0.6 hectares for organic vegetables and fruits, and the rest of the land for the house and the garden. in the past, nt3 had used three kinds of pesticides and herbicides on his farmland. when he used these agrichemicals, he wore a mask, gloves, and boots. however, his wife and he became ill, and he developed a headache that lasted for a week. a doctor told nt3 that his illness was a result of the agrichemicals. (one of pesticides nt3 used was later banned as a health hazard.) nt3 recognized the risk of the agrichemicals at that time. then, the farmers in nonte village were given the opportunity to participate in a study tour provided by the department of agriculture. this study tour included trainings on organic agriculture and ipm, which were granted by fao. through the study tour, nt3 learned organic agricultural methods in saraburi province, thailand. in 2004, profil was officially founded by the department of agriculture, and it held a meeting in nonte village to discuss organic agriculture for interested farmers. profil explained three main points in the meeting: first, organic agriculture is good for the health of both farmers and consumers. second, the use of agrichemical and chemical fertilizers is costlier in the longterm if the farmers fall ill and need hospital treatment. third, the government would prepare a market for organic products. nt3 joined as a member of the pilot project of profil. the organic vegetable group was founded in 2006. inspectors from cadc came to the village and checked the farmers’ lands to give them permission for sales in the organic market in front of pha that luang. in addition, nt3 participated in the small-scale enterprise (sse) group founded by the department of agriculture. sse group members were almost the same as those in the organic vegetable group. sse group members could learn the accounting method, food-processing method, and market knowledge. nt3 reported appreciating these trainings, as he had never received formal education. now, nt3 can produce organic products. last year, his vegetables sales amounted to 15,000,000 kip, fruit sales to 1,000,000 kip, and fish sales (of fish in the rice paddy) to 4,000,000 kip. he was satisfied with his farming method asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 457-468 465 because his health was good and he could earn a value-added market for organic products. thus, nt3 successfully changed his way of farming. with reference to the empowerment process mentioned in section 3, in this case, the initial point of empowerment for nt3 began when he was informed of his health problem by a doctor. then, he obtained relevant knowledge and skills from profil to change his farming practices. he joined the organic vegetable group and formed relationships with the group members. in doing so, he changed his farming experiences as well as his method of farming. without the support of profil, it would have been difficult for him to change his farming methods. in this context, nt3 was empowered by profil and the organic group as the actors surrounding the households in nonte village. lack of information and knowledge the organic vegetable group presented a good opportunity for nonte farmers because the government supported the trainings and prepared the organic product market. however, only a limited number of villagers chose to join. those who did not join listed the following as their reasons. nt2 said, “many farmers in the village participated in the profil meeting, but they could not understand the explanation given by profil because the villagers thought the chemicals were convenient for farming, and it seemed difficult for them to try organic farming.” nt10 was interested in organic farming. he participated in the profil trainings and meetings. yet when the inspector visited his farmland, nt10 was told that the fallow period would take about 10 months due to the high level of chemical input already in the soil. as nt10 had no idea how he could survive during the fallow period, he changed his mind about switching to organic farming. he stated that he would like to try organic farming in the future, but he did not have a concrete plan for making the switch. implications of comparison of resourceflow diagrams the resource-flow diagrams of nonte village, xaithani district in lao pdr and nw village in khon kaen province in thailand are compared in figures 4 and 5. these resource-flow diagrams contain three frames representing the ranges of a household, a village community, and external actors. the ranges are divided by household and village boundaries. in the diagrams, actors and resources related to sustainable agriculture were marked in boldfaced type in figures 4 and 5. figures are based on personal interviews with key persons, such as the village headman and community group leaders. the resource-flow diagrams provide a visual representation of the material relationships around the household. figure 5: resource-flow diagram of nw village in thailand source: constructed on the basis of field research in nw village, 2008 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 457-468 466 figure 4 shows the organizations related to a farm family of organic agriculture, such as profil, the organic product market in front of the pha that luang, the small scale enterprise group, and an organic vegetable group in nonte village. all the organizations were affiliated with the government in this case. on the other hand, in figure 5, there are various actors related to the organic farmers, such as four kinds of community groups, non-government organizations (ngos), university activities, and the governmental officials in nw village in khon kaen province. there were various support systems surrounding households in thailand. however, in lao pdr there were limited actors, such as only community groups and government officials from the department of agriculture. in nonte village, the villagers had access to information and trainings from the government. even the organic vegetable group and sse group were founded by the government. thus, the sources of information concerning organic agriculture came from government sources. as nt2 pointed out, the villagers had no other options for receiving information on organic farming if they were not able to understand the government’s explanation. in contrast, there were various actors surrounding the farmers of nw village in thailand. farmers had the option to obtain a variety of information from these different actors as well as to choose information from the preferred actors. having various advisors from different organizations in the town was an advantage in the dissemination of information. concluding remarks this study presented cases demonstrating the kind of surrounding actors and resources that supported and empowered farmers to promote sustainable agriculture. there were some successful cases, such as that of nt3 in nonte village, but overall, the number of farmers engaging in organic farming was limited. comparison of the resource-flow diagrams for the two villages shows the feature of supportive actors and the weak points of the lao side. there were limited supportive actors because the clean agriculture policy was a new challenge for farmers in lao pdr. further, it was also in the initial step of diffusion. as with any change in livelihood, the process of introducing alternative farming methods must include one important point: any question on premise makes the farmers aware of the existing problems, and this is the initial point of empowerment. questions regarding conventional methods can arise out of a farmer’s experience of crisis or the availability of new information, such as a doctor’s advice or knowledge gained from lectures and trainings by a local association. information as knowledge from community groups and external actors such as local institutions and experts might help villagers to have choices in terms of the farming methods they use, which in turn, gives them positive choices in terms of health and the agricultural environment. if there is no information or knowledge and, perhaps more importantly, no low-risk alternatives to implement the knowledge, there are no choices available to the farmers. farmers choose their farming methods not only out of need but also in accordance with the regional contexts offered by the surrounding community. in 1997, the concept of sustainable agriculture was advocated in the 8 th national economic and social development plan in thailand. in the last decade, various supportive actors have emerged in thailand, including not only government organizations but also ngos, local universities, and community groups at the grass-roots level. there have also been suggestions that lao pdr can learn by observing the farming methods used in thailand, which preceded lao pdr in implementing sustainable agriculture. the government of lao pdr recognizes natural resources and uncontaminated land as a comparative advantage of the country. there is a great potential in the way the government chose sustainable development in the status of ldc. this is because the country may be able to avoid serious environmental problems that most developed countries have. to achieve mdgs, which the government set up with the un, international organizations and donors can help asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 457-468 467 empower farmers and promote sustainable agriculture. endnote 1: rra is a research method that enables social development practitioners and academics to understand the situation of a target effectively using a systematic method. chambers describes rra as a “fairly-quick and fairly-clean” methodology, as opposed to approaches that are fast but careless or slow and excessively accurate (chambers 1983). 2: the promoting organic farming and marketing in lao pdr (profil) project is an international cooperation project between the swiss association for international cooperation (helvetas) and the department of agriculture, part of the lao ministry of agriculture and forestry. references akpan n. s. (2012). rural development practice in nigeria: how participatory and what challenges? asian journal agriculture and rural development, 2(3), 381-393. asian development bank. (2010). key indicators for asia and the pacific 2010, available from http://www.adb.org/publications/keyindicators-asia-and-pacific-2010, 20/12/2010. chambers, r. (1983). rural development: putting the last first, harlow. england: longman scientific and technical. chambers, r. (1997). whose reality counts? london: intermediate technology. chittanavanh, p. (2007). regional conference on organic agriculture in asia, december 2007. available from http://www.intracen.org/organics/document s/lao_ppt.pdf, 20/12/2010. committee for census of population and housing (ccph) (2006). results from the population and housing census 2005. vientiane: committee for census of population and housing, lao pdr. committee for planning and investment (cpi). 2006. national socio-economic development plan (2006–2010). vientiane: committee for planning and investment. fao (2009). the news article on 4th february 2009: fao expert urges more sustainable approach. available from http://www.fao.org/news/story/0/item/9962/ icode/en/, 20/12/2010. friedmann, j. (1992). empowerment: the politics of alternative development. cambridge: blackwell. olawepo, r. a. (2012). commercial agriculture and rural development: evidence from the zimbabwe farm project in tsonga, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1): 27-38. oraboune, s. (2007). agricultural commercialization, national economic research institute lao pdr, economic review, vientiane: committee for planning and investment 12: 6–15. profil. (2008). project success report: nontair organic vegetable and fruit farmer group, an unpublished and internal document of the department of agriculture. sato, h. (2005). enjo to empowerment (development and empowerment). tokyo: ide-jetro. undp. (2004). millennium development goals progress report lao pdr, jointly prepared by the government of the lao pdr and the united nations. vientiane: office of the united nations resident coordinator. vongsiharath, v. (2009). forest cover and landuse changes in lao pdr according to the national forest reconnaissance survey. in proceedings of the regional land degradation assessment in dry lands (lada) workshop for southeast asia, edited by r. im-erb, y. niino, s. sombatpanit, & r. biancalani, 75–82. bangkok: regional office for asia and the pacific of food and agriculture organization of the united nations. available from http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/l1067e/l106 7e00.htm , acknowledgement the author would like to express profound gratitude to all those who cooperated in the completion of the present study as well as to prof. lynn thiesmeyer and prof. michio umegaki for their kind and helpful comments as advisors at keio university. this research was partially supported by the ministry of education, http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/l1067e/l1067e00.htm http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/l1067e/l1067e00.htm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 457-468 468 science, sports and culture, grant-in-aid for research fellows of japan society for the promotion of science (no. 8389, 2007-2008) and grants from shonan-fujisawa campus of keio university, which enabled the author to conduct the field research. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 313 morphological and physical characteristics of soils developed on a toposequence derived from coarse-grained pegmatites in a tropical region, delta state, nigeria egbuchua, c. n. department of agronomy, delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, delta state, nigeria abstract a study was conducted to evaluate the morphological and physical characteristics of a soil developed on a toposequence using fire slope positions. modal profile pits were dug in each of the slope positions and characterized. soil samples were collected from each of the pedogenetic horizons and analyzed routinely for particle size distribution of bulk/particle densities and total porosity. results showed that the landscape had a relative elevation of 0-24. 25 m with a slope gradient value from the crest to valley bottom as: 1.68, 1.55, 1.46, 1.42 and 1.22%. soil colour from the crest to the valley bottom varied significantly from dominant 5yr to 7.5 yr and 10yr respectively. soil depth, structure, consistence and rootlets varied significantly (p ≤ 0.05) across slope position. bulk and particle densities value were higher in the crest and upper-slope positions with mean values of 1.20 gcm -3 and 2.35 gcm -3 . there were no significant variations (p > 0.05) in particle size distribution across slope position. keywords: morphological, physical characteristics, toposequence, coarse-grained, pegmatites, tropical region introduction 1 many topical soils are derived from coarse grained pegmatites whose parent materials are resistant to weathering, and the fine earth fractions usually made up of coarse sand and are rarely clayey. these soils are known to be rich in feldspars and quartz primary minerals and, they are neither stable nor resistance to human induced activities (akinbola et al., 2010). the physical, morphological, chemical and mineralogical properties which are fundamentally related to their geological background, parent materials and the intensity of the different soil forming factors and processes varied considerably. most african soils are characterized by rolling landscape and soil properties are differ corresponding author’s email address: egbuchuacn@gmail.com ent due to the factor of topography which plays a vital role in bringing about changes in soil properties as one moves from inter fluves/crest position down to the valley bottom. these changes in soil properties led to the concept of catena (milne, 1935) or toposequence (king et al., 1983). in other words, where related soils differ in their characteristics due to the influence of topography, such a sequence of soils is known as a toposequence. according to juo and moorman (1981), toposequence refers to a succession of sites from crest to a valley bottom, which contains a range of soil profiles that are representative of the landscape and soils. the topographical features of a landscape are vital in understanding soil forming processes and modification of soil profile development. consequently, understanding the roles of topography in a landscape will help in assessing productive values of soils and most importantly, in developing strategies for its conservation. the influence of asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:egbuchuacn@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 313-323 314 soil morphological and physical properties on plant growth cannot be under-estimated. since most tropical soils are on a rolling terrain, agricultural crop production activities are bound to be affected negatively thereby resulting to low productivity. it is therefore the objective of this study to evaluate the morphological and physical properties of these soils and their management implications. materials and methods description of the study area the study was conducted in anwai-asaba in delta state, nigeria. anwai is located between latitude 06° 14¹n and longitude 06° 99¹e of the equator and lies significantly in a tropical rainforest zone with over 1,565mm of rainfall per annum. the rainfall characteristics are bimodal in nature with peaks in july and september. the mean annual temperature ranges between 27° – 28.6°c with an annual relative humidity of about 65.7%. the geology is made up of coarse grained pegmatites derived from a basement complex that gave rise to coarse-textured soils that are more acid than base (egbuchua, 2012). the landscape is generally undulating with pockets of rolling features scattered all over the places. land use is typically based on rain-fed agriculture and crops commonly cultivated include roots and tuber crops, cereals, pulses and different varieties of vegetables. an isohyperthermic temperature regime and an udic soil moisture regime typify the general area. field work a topographic survey of the study area was carried out using dumpy level and soil characteristics described in accordance with the guidelines provided by young, (1976), for topographic survey description and interpretations. based on the guidelines, five slope positions were created. these were crest, upper-slope, middle-slope, lower-slope and valley bottom positions (fig 1). fig 1: a cross section of the study area showing the various slope positions in each of the slope positions, a transect was selected and two profile pits dug to the required depth where possible. the profile pits were carefully examined; delineated and described using the guidelines as contained in the soil survey manual (soil survey staff, 2006). from each of the pedogenetic horizons, soil samples were collected, formally processed by air-drying, grinding and sieving through a 2 mm mesh and labelled properly for laboratory analysis. laboratory analysis the particle size distribution of the soil samples were analysed by hydrometer method as described by gee and bauder, (1986), and the textures were finally determined using the usda textural triangle. bulk density was determined by coremethod using a metal sampler as described by blake and hartge, (1986). particle density was determined by the pycometer method (blake and hartge, 1986). total porosity was calculated using the formular: tp = i – b d x 10 p d where, tp = total porosity upper-slope middle-slope lower-slope valley bottom 2000 m horizontal distance relative elevation 24.2 m asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 313-323 315 b d = bulk density p d = particle density statistical analysis descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variation were used according to the procedure outlined by steel and torrie (1980). results and discussion topographic features the results of the topographic survey showed a relative elevation of 0 24.25m (fig 1). this is an indication that the study area was a plain of low relief (young, 1976). slope gradients as determined from the crest, to the valley bottom positions were 1.46, 1.68, 1.28, 1.42 and 1.55% respectively (table 1). the slope gradient could be said emphatically to be very gentle at all positions. table 1: topographic characteristics of the study area landscape position gradient (%) distance from absolute crest at mid position (m) relative elevation at mid position (m) crest 1.68 222.34 22.30 upper slope 1.55 1425.47 19.47 middle slope 1.46 1223.2 14.27 lower slope 1.42 548.2 8.21 valley bottom 1.22 53.46 3.17 morphological characteristics the morphological features (table 2) were found to vary along toposequence. the soil colours differed from the crest, upper and middle-slope positions and are characterized by a hue of 5yr yellowish red. the lower and valley bottom slope positions have 7.5 yr and 10 yr reddish, yellow and grayish colour sequence as evidence of water saturation at some period of the year thereby signifying poor drainage conditions. the observed change in soil colour along the toposequence was as a result of the influence of topography on micro-climate. in times of rainfall, the crest and upper slope positions receive atmospheric precipitation only, while the lower and valley bottom slopes receive both precipitation and run off from the crest and upper slope positions. this phenomenon saturates the lower and valley bottom slope positions with water for an extended period than the crest and upper slopes. the implication of this, is the reddish, yellowish and greyish colour sequence in the lower slopes depicting mottling as observed in the study. soil depth or thickness of solum soil depth increased progressively along the slope positions. the crest and upper-slopes were deep up to 140 cm. the lower and valley bottom slopes were shallow (60-80 cm depth) because of high water table. the shallow depth observed in the lower/valley bottom slope positions could be attributed to water erosion effects along the slope as some materials could be eroded from the crest and upper slopes downward thereby decreasing the thickness of the solum. the implication is that land use will therefore vary between the lower/valley bottom and upper slope positions. the available moisture in the lower/valley bottom positions will therefore, guarantee dry season farming in them. the structure was found to improve down-slope. the crest, upper-slope and middle-slope positions were weakly structured due to the impact of run-off, while the lower slope/valley bottom positions were strongly structured, firm, sticky and plastic due to increased clay and organic mattercontents. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 313-323 316 table 2: morphological descriptions of the soils pedon 1 horizon design soil depth (cm) colour (moist) mottling structure consistence inclusions rootlets boundary a ap b bti c 0-15 15-45 45-75 75-115 115-140 5yr 2/3 5yr 4/8 5yr 5/8 7.5yr 5/8 7.5yr 4/8 1, c, gr 1, c, gr i, c, sbk i, c, abk i, c, abk lo, fr lo, fr lo, fr lo, fr lo, fr 1 1 1 cs cs cs d d pedon 2 a ap b bti c 0-15 15-45 45-75 75-115 115-140 5yr 2/3 5yr 2/3 5yr 5/8 5yr 5/8 7.5yr 5/8 1, c, gr 1, c, gr i, c, gr i, c, gr i, c, gr lo, fr lo, fr lo, fr lo, fr lo, fr 1 1 1 cs cs cs d d (upper slope position) pedon 3 a ap b bti c 0-25 25-60 60-75 75-95 95-140 5yr 2/3 5yr 2/3 2.5yr 7/6 2.5yr 7/6 2.5yr 7/6 1, c, gr 1, c, gr i, c, gr i, c, gr i, c, gr lo, fr lo, fr lo, fr lo, fr lo, fr 1 1 1 1 gs gs cs cs d pedon 4 a ap b bti c 0-25 25-60 60-75 75-95 90-140 5yr 2/3 5yr 2/3 2.5yr 7/6 2.5yr 7/6 2.5yr 7/6 1, c, gr 1, c, gr i, c, gr i, c, gr i, c, gr lo, fr lo, fr lo, fr lo, fr lo, fr 1 1 1 1 gs gs cs cs d (middle slope position) pedon 5 a ap b bti c 0-25 25-45 45-65 65-85 85-120 7.5yr 4/3 7.5yr 4/3 7.5yr 6/8 7.5yr 6/8 7.5yr 5/8 1, c, gr 1, c, gr i, c, gr i, c, gr i, c, gr lo, fr ns lo, fr ns lo, fr ns lo, fr ns lo, fr ns 2 2 2 gw gw gs gs gs pedon 6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 313-323 317 a ap b bti c 0-25 25-45 45-65 65-85 85-120 7.5yr 4/2 7.5yr 4/2 5yr 5/8 5yr 5/8 7.5yr 5/8 1, c, gr 1, c, gr i, c, gr i, c, gr i, c, gr lo, fr ns lo, fr ns lo, fr ns lo, fr ns lo, fr ns 2 2 2 gw gw gs gs gs (lower slope position) pedon 7 a ap b bti c 0-15 15-35 35-45 45-60 60-80 5yr 5/8 5yr 5/8 7.5yr 4/8 7.5yr 4/8 7.5yr 5/8 7.5yr 5/8 1, c, 1, c, 2, sbk 2, abk 2, abk sh, sst sh, sst sh, sst sh, sst sh, sst fe conc fe conc fe conc 3 3 3 f f gw gw ds gs gs pedon 8 a ap b bti c 0-15 15-35 35-45 45-60 60-80 5yr 5/8 5yr 5/8 7.5yr 5/8 5yr 5/4 5yr 5/8 7.5yr 5/8 1, c 1, c 1, sbk 2, abk 2, abk sh, sst sh, sst sh, sst sh, sst sh, sst fe conc fe conc fe conc 3 3 3 f f gw gw ds ds gs (valley bottom position) pedon 9 a ap b bti c 0-15 15-30 30-45 45-60 60-75 7.5yr 4/6 7.5yr 4/6 7.5yr 4/1 7.5yr 6/8 7.5yr 6/8 7.5yr 5/8 7.5yr 5/8 2, sbk 2, sbk 2, sbk 3, sbk 3, sbk fm, spl fm, spl fm, spl fm, spl fm, spl fe mn conc fe mn conc fe mn conc m m 2 2 2 cs cs gw gw gw pedon 10 a ap b bti c 0-15 15-30 30-45 45-60 60-75 7.5yr 6/2 7.5yr 6/2 7.5yr 6/2 7.5yr 6/8 7.5yr 6/8 7.5yr 5/8 7.5yr 5/8 2, sbk 2, sbk 2, sbk 3, sbk 3, sbk fm, spl fm, spl fm, spl fm, spl fm, spl fe mn conc fe mn conc fe mn conc m m 2 2 2 cs cs gw gw gw symbols as interpreted in the usda – scs (1998) special publications on soil profile description structure: 1 = weak, 2= moderate, 3 = strong, c= coarse, gr = gravelly, sbk = sub angular block, abk = angular blocky consistence: lo= loose, fr = friable, sh=slightly hard, h=hard, pl=plastic, st = sticky, sl st = slightly sticky inclusions: fe = iron concretion, mn = manganese concretion rootlets: 1 = common, 2 = few, 3 = many, m = many boundary: cs = clear smooth, d = diffuse, gs = gradual smooth, gw = gradual wavy, ds = diffuse smooth, gv = gradual wavy asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 313-323 318 the consistence also improved down-slope. at the upper slope positions, the consistence was loose, friable, non plastic and nonsticky due to erosion influence. at the lower slope position the consistence was however more compact, plastic, firm and sticky. rootlets were common, with few roots at the upper-slope position, to many, fine and medium in the lower slope position. the distinctness and outline of horizons within the horizons ranged from clear smooth to diffused at the crest and upper slope positions to gradual smooth at the middle slope and dominantly gradual and wavy at the lower/valley bottom slopes. particle size distribution the data for the particle size distribution is shown in (table 3) while the weighted means, standard deviation and coefficient of variations for the crest/upper-slope, middleslope and lower slope/valley bottom positions are shown in (table 4), respectively. in the crest, upper-slope and middle-slope positions, sand seemed to be the dominant soil fraction at the surface horizon and tend to decrease with depth. the cumulative weighted mean values for the crest/upperslope positions were 56.84% with a coefficient of variation of 21.49%. the middleslope position had a mean value of 67.52% and a coefficient of variation of 63.06%. the lower and valley bottom-slopes had a mean value of 38.82% sand and a coefficient of variation of 13.87% (table 4). the percentage clay content on the other hand, increased downward from the crest to middle slope positions while the lower and valley bottom slopes showed a contrasting trend in clay accumulation and an increasing trend in sand accumulation. the differences in clay accumulation along the toposequence could have resulted from lateral translocation of clay which were removed in suspension from the upper slopes due to surface wash and deposited in the lower slopes. the decrease and irregular accumulation of clay with depth and progressive increase as observed in some of the topographic positions could be due to differences in parent material or lithologic discontinuity. another observed feature was the presence of gravelly concretions in the lower horizons in the crest upper-slope and middle-slope positions. according to idoga and malgwi (2006), these minerals are mainly iron oxide nodules or dimitritus of lateritic ironstone and quartz which have been deposited to form the parent materials of the area. bulk density the mean bulk density for the crest/upper slopes, middle-slope and lower/valley bottom slopes were 1.20 gcm -3 , 0.79 gcm -3 and 0.47 gcm -3 and coefficient of variations of 19.30%, 11.47% and 14.65% in that order respectively (table 4). generally, in all the topographic positions, the bulk density was found to increase with depth of profiles. this could be attributed to decrease in organic matter accumulation with depth, less root penetration and compaction caused by the weight of the overlying layers (brady and weil, 2007). particle density the mean values of particle density (table 4), ranged from 2.35 gcm -3 with a coefficient of variation of 4.22% for the crest/upper slope position; 2.20 gcm -3 and a coefficient of variation of 8.49% for the middle-slope position and 1.19 gcm -3 and a coefficient of variation of 6.53% for the lower/valley bottom slope positions. the particle density has an inverse relationship with bulk density as it decreases with depth of profile. this could be vividly explained by the higher content of organic matter in the soil surface which weighs much less than an equal volume of mineral solids. therefore, its presence in large quantity in the soil will lower the soil’s particle density as reported by brady and weil (2007). the data obtained from this study was an indication that particle density of most mineral soils does not very much. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 313-323 319 table 3: some physical properties of the soils horizon design soil depth (cm) gravel sand silt % clay silt/clay ratio bulk density gcm -3 particle density gcm -3 total porosity % text class crest position pedon 1 a ap b bti c 0-15 15-45 45-75 75-115 115-140 58 52.26 50.23 46.24 34.32 40.18 28.28 28.28 19.74 18.24 15.36 19.46 21.49 34.02 47.44 44.46 1.45 1.32 0.58 0.38 0.35 0.95 0.98 1.35 1.46 1.55 2.54 2.52 2.32 2.25 2.18 63 61 42 35 29 sl scl cl c sc pedon 2 a ap b bti c 0-15 15-45 45-75 75-115 115-140 60 54.27 52.25 48.37 42.75 43.18 22.14 21.37 19.31 19.31 20.13 23.59 26.38 32.32 37.94 36.69 0.94 0.81 0.60 0.51 0.54 0.98 1.03 1.17 1.35 1.45 2.52 2.49 2.42 2.36 2.24 61 59 52 43 35 scl cl cl scl scl upper slope position pedon 3 a ap b bti c 0-25 25-60 60-75 75-95 95-140 62 72.34 69.21 65.34 62.10 59.38 22.74 20.85 19.75 19.20 17.35 5.92 9.94 14.91 18.70 23.27 3.67 2.09 1.32 1.03 0.75 0.86 0.95 1.13 1.24 1.54 2.39 2.35 2.30 2.27 2.22 64 60 51 45 31 ls sl ls sl scl pedon 4 a ap b bti c 0-20 20-45 45-75 75-90 90-140 64 75.45 72.10 69.85 65.25 63.75 13.45 11.75 10.24 10.75 10.10 11.10 16.15 19.91 24.0 26.15 1.21 0.73 0.51 0.45 0.39 0.91 0.98 1.24 1.34 1.47 2.42 2.38 2.32 2.28 2.23 62 59 47 41 34 ls ls sl scl scl middle slope position pedon 5 a ap b bti c 0-25 25-45 45-65 65-85 85-120 54 72.35 70.28 67.34 62.14 62.05 17.35 15.45 12.75 12.05 11.74 10.30 14.27 19.91 25.81 26.21 1.68 1.08 0.64 0.47 0.45 0.68 0.73 0.81 0.85 0.93 2.36 2.34 2.27 2.21 1.87 71 69 64 62 50 sl sl sl cl cl asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 313-323 320 pedon 6 a ap b bti c 0-25 25-45 45-65 65-85 85-120 60 73.25 71.28 69.11 65.24 63.14 19.24 16.34 14.35 14.15 13.28 7.51 12.38 18.54 20.61 23.58 2.56 1.32 0.77 0.69 0.56 0.67 0.72 0.78 0.85 0.90 2.34 2.30 2.24 2.18 1.85 71 69 65 61 51 sl sl sl scl scl lower slope position pedon 7 a ap b bti c 0-15 15-35 35-45 45-60 60-80 36.15 38.0 40.45 42.34 44.17 29.15 31.10 32.60 34.10 36.10 34.70 30.90 26.95 23.56 19.73 0.84 1.01 1.21 1.45 1.83 0.43 0.47 0.53 0.58 0.61 1.35 1.25 1.20 1.15 1.12 68 62 56 50 46 cl cl cl cl cl pedon 8 a ap b bti c 0-15 15-35 35-45 45-60 60-80 37.30 38.12 42.35 42.95 45.10 26.34 28.25 32.0 35.24 36.31 36.36 33.63 25.65 21.81 18.59 0.72 0.84 1.25 1.62 1.95 0.74 0.49 0.51 0.53 0.59 1.36 1.27 1.19 1.15 1.10 65 61 57 54 46 cl cl cl cl c valley bottom position pedon 9 a ap b bti c 0-15 15-30 30-45 45-60 60-75 28.35 30.15 35.45 42.28 45.30 31.34 35.24 32.14 32.13 38.35 40.31 34.61 32.41 25.11 16.35 0.78 1.02 0.99 1.28 2.35 0.37 0.38 0.41 0.43 0.45 1.25 1.21 1.18 1.12 1.10 70 69 65 62 59 cl cl cl cl c pedon 10 a ap b bti c 0-15 15-30 30-45 45-60 60-75 31.20 33.10 35.35 41.20 47.12 34.12 36.35 42.14 38.35 35.37 34.68 30.55 22.51 20.45 17.51 0.98 1.19 1.87 1.88 2.02 0.39 0.41 0.45 0.48 0.50 1.23 1.20 1.17 1.12 1.09 68 66 62 57 54 cc scg l l c asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 313-323 321 table 4: mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variation (cv %) of slope positions in the study area slope position soil properties sd cv% crest/upper slope sand silt clay silt/clay ratio b d p d tp 56.84 18.36 24.67 0.83 1.20 2.35 48.45 12.22 5.23 11.21 0.45 0.23 1.11 11.81 21.49 28.41 45.43 54.25 19.30 4.22 24.37 middle slope sand silt clay silt/clay ratio b d p d tp 67.52 14.47 17.91 10.22 0.79 2.20 63.30 4.26 2.26 6.54 0.67 0.09 0.19 7.62 63.06 15.59 36.52 65.68 11.47 8.49 12.83 lower slope/valley bottom sand silt clay silt/clay ratio b d p d tp 38.82 32.12 27.19 1.35 0.47 1.19 59.85 5.38 3.42 6.41 0.48 0.07 0.08 7.28 13.87 10.66 23.58 35.77 14.65 6.53 12.16 keys: x = mean, sd = standard deviation; cv% = coefficient of variation. pd = particle density, bd = bulk density, tp = total porosity this is because quartz, feldspars and colloidal silicate clays make up the major portions of mineral soils and impart their intrinsic characteristics of stability to the soil (brady and weil, 2007). total porosity the crest/upper slopes have lower total porosity with mean values of 48.45%, while the lower/valley bottom slopes have mean total porosity of 59.85% (table 4). total porosity was found to decrease with depth of profile and it is closely related to organic matter content, clay accumulation and the activities of earthworms and other macroanimals in the soil system. total porosity has also an inverse relationship with bulk density. silt/clay ratios the silt/clay ratio which is used to study the degree of pedogenetic weathering in soils sombroek and zonneveld (1971) showed that the crest/upper slope and lower/valley bottom slope positions had mean silt/clay ratios of 0.83 and 1.35 indicating moderate pedogenetic weathering processes. the middle-slope with a mean silt/clay ratio of 10.22 was an indication of recent pedogenetic process. according to sombroek and zonneveld (1971), any value of silt/clay ratio less than 0.75 indicates old age of the surface deposits while values between 0.75 and 1.5 indicate moderate pedogenetic weathering processes. higher values (>1.5) indicate recent pedogenetic processes. the findings in this study to some extent collaborate with earlier works on toposequence in the tropics by juo and moorman (1981), essoka et al. (2006) and idoga et al. (2006) respectively who affirmed some variations in soil properties on toposequence. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 313-323 322 conclusion the study was carried out to evaluate the morphological and physical characteristics of soils on a toposequence. the results showed the landscape as a plain of low relief with very gentle slope. the morphological properties showed variations in soil colour in relation to slope positions with a dominant 5yr at the crest and 7.5yr and 10yr in the lower slope positions. soil depth, structure, consistence, and rootlets varied across slopes. the texture especially the clay fraction was not statistically significant across slopes, while the silt/clay ratio revealed moderate pedogenetic weathering processes for the crest/upper slope and lower valley bottom positions. the middle slope position indicated recent pedogenetic processes. bulk, particle densities and total porosity were not statistically influenced (p > 0.01) across slope positions. the general results showed the role of topography in assessing the productive value of soils and the need to develop strategies for its conservations. because of the nature of rainfall with its attendant erosion effects, the crest, upper slope and middle slope positions should remain under vegetative cover. the establishment of vetiver grass stripes across slope positions will help to stabilize the soil and in effect, check erosion. the lower slope and valley bottom position can be cultivated with field crops under strict soil conservation practices. references akinbola, g. e., ojo u. a., & adigun, m. o. (2010). variability of properties of some pedons on basement complex of south western nigeria, proceedings of the 34 th annual conference of the soil science society of nigeria. march 22 nd -26 th , 2010 ibadan, nigeria. blake, g. r., & hartge, k. h. (1986). bulk density. in: klute (eds). methods of soil analysis, part 1: physical and mineralogical methods. sssa madison, w. i. pp. 377 382. brady, a. c., & weil, r. r. (2007). the nature and properties of soils. (13 th edition), prentice hall, new jersey. egbuchua, c. n. (2012). pedogenetic characteristics of some alluvial complex soils in delta state, nigeria. nigerian journal of soil and environmental research. 9, 65-70. essoka, p. a. jaiyeiba, i. a., & essoka, a. n. (2006). a toposequence study of soils developed on gnesis and grandoiorite on the cross river rainforest zone, proceedings of the 31 st annual conference of the soil science society of nigeria. 13 th -17 th november, abu, zaria, nigeria. gee g. w., & bauder j. w. (1986). particlesize analysis. in: klute, a. (ed) methods of soil analysis part 2: chemical and mineralogical properties. 2 nd (ed.) agronomy monograph 9 asa and sssa madison, wi, usa. idoga, s., ibanga, i. j., & malgwi, w. b. (2006). variation in soil morphological and physical properties and their management implications on a toposequence in samaru area, nigeria, proceedings of the 31 st annual conference of the soil science society of nigeria 13 th -17 th november, 2006 abu, zaria, nigeria. juo, a. s. r., & moorman, f. r. (1981). characteristics of two soil toposequences in south-eastern nigeria and their relation to potential agricultural land use. nigerian journal of soil science, 1, 47 61. king, g. j. acton, d. f., & arnaud, j. s. t. (1983). soil landscape analysis in relation to soil distribution and mapping. canadian journal of soil science, 63, 657–670. milne, g. (1935). some suggested units of classification and mapping particularly for east african soils. soil research, 4(3), 183 198. moorman, f. r. (1981). representative toposequene of soils in southern niasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 313-323 323 geria and their pedology, in greenland, d. j. (ed.) characteristics of soils in relation to their classification and management for crop production. clarendon press oxford pp. 10 29. soil survey staff (2006). keys to soil taxonomy. usda soil conservation service (10 th edition) n.r.c.s/washington, d.c. sombroek, w. g., & zonneveld, i. s. (1971). ancient dune fields and fluviatile deposits, soil survey paper no. 5 soil survey institute wageningen. the netherlands. pp. 109. steel, r. r., & torrie, j. h. (1980). principles and procedures of statistics with special reference to biological science, mcgraw hill book co. inc. new york, 481p. young, a. (1976). tropical soils and soil survey, cambridge university press, cambridge. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 387-399 387 characterization and dynamics of agrarian structures in bouna, northeast of côte d'ivoire seïdou coulibaly department of earth sciences and mineral resources (strm), university félix houphouët-boigny of cocody, 22 bp 582 abidjan 22, côte d'ivoire kouadio koffi patrice department of earth sciences and mineral resources (strm), university félix houphouët-boigny of cocody, 22 bp 582 abidjan 22, côte d'ivoire kwadjo koffi eric department sciences of nature, university nangui abrogoua, 02 bp 801 abidjan 02, côte d'ivoire biemi jean department of earth sciences and mineral resources (strm), university félix houphouët-boigny of cocody, 22 bp 582 abidjan 22, côte d'ivoire yao-kouame albert department of earth sciences and mineral resources (strm), university félix houphouët-boigny of cocody, 22 bp 582 abidjan 22, côte d'ivoire abstract 1 in order to better reproduction of the information that is as close as possible to reality, we have established a procedure for analyzing images based on visual interpretation and digital processing. in digital processing, supervised classification by maximum likelihood, based on a fieldwork allowed to discriminate elements of land. recovery of geometric shapes by scanning fallow and bare soil from panchromatic spot image yielded the map of agrarian structures. different queries and statistical operations performed were used to assess the areas of agrarian structures. the analysis of the dynamics of agrarian structures showed that the period 1986 2000 was marked by environmental degradation, while the period 2000 2004 has seen a regeneration of the natural environment. treatments applied to images and ensuing results indicate the feasibility of monitoring by remote sensing of agricultural structures in northeastern area of côte d'ivoire. this research shows that the geographic information system is an effective tool for the evaluation of agrarian structures. however, manual scanning of elements in the environment requires careful attention to avoid skewing the results. keywords: characterization, dynamic, agrarian structures, geographic information system, bouna, northeastern côte d'ivoire 1 corresponding author’s details: coulibaly seidou email: seidoucoulibaly@yahoo.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:seidoucoulibaly@yahoo.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 387-399 388 introduction in the northeastern côte d'ivoire, human occupation changes remarkably. this area has focused in recent years, to commercial agriculture centered on food production. in 2001, the agricultural population of this area was 490,463 inhabitants with a cultivated area of 149,038 hectares (ministère de l’agriculture, 2001). the report of the national agency for rural development support (anader), during the period from 1998 to 1999, reported 7,233 hectares of cultivated land in the south of bouna. changes in land use that result from complex interactions between social and environmental systems evolving over time; create an increasing pressure on space and an evolution of natural landscapes. if climatic and biophysical phenomena have long been the main drivers of terrestrial transformations, man is now at the origin of most of the transformations affecting terrestrial ecosystems (steffen et al., 2004). changes in land use will then appear as a key factor in sustainable development. to research, understand and characterize the functioning of agro-ecosystems to control and direct interactions between humans and the environment have become a priority, taking into account the state in which there are some natural resources. in this context, knowledge of the spatio-temporal variations of the land is of undeniable interest in a process of restoring the quality of life. the organization of space is under the double influence of the physical environment and human activity. in the absence of pioneering work on the dynamics of agrarian structures, this study is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the pressure of agrarian structures on the environment. it is to analyze the relationship between agrarian structures and space. several studies on changes in land use and their relationship with the biosphere (allain, 2000; gueye and ozer, 2000), show that they are a significant indicator, even major in the study of environmental change on a global scale (mather and stanyuk, 1991). in such a context, space management requires that it been analysed in order to understand its mechanisms. materials and methods presentation of the study site located in the sub-prefecture of bouna, the study area lies between latitudes 8°40' and 9°30' north and longitudes 2°45' and 3°30' west. it is bordered to the north by burkina faso and subprefectures of doropo, tehini, to the south by the sub-prefectures of nassian and bondoukou, to the east by ghana, to the west by the national park of comoé (figure 1). it extends over an area of 311,365 hectares (ha). the northeast of côte d'ivoire is characterized by the monsoon and harmattan is a source of heat. the vegetation of this area consists mainly of wooded savanna and/or shrub savanna and gallery forest. wooded savanna is scattered trees and shrubs. they are dense if recovery timber is between 30% and 60%, and clear if it is below 30% (poilecot et al., 1987). the relief of the northeast of côte d’ivoire is modest (atlas, 1988). the main elevations are between 190 and 440 m. this is an area of low undulating plateaus, which are installed on granite bedrock. the altitudes between 190 and 250 m are located along the black volta. south remains the area most rugged, with elevations of 400-440 m. the slopes are low (1-3%). the rest is composed of ridges and outcrops glaze and armor. the study area is located between the basins of the comoé and the black volta, but only west tributaries of black volta water the study area. regime of rivers is irregular and follows rainfall. different soil sketches (orstom, 1960; atlas de côte d'ivoire, 1979 and atlas du nord est de la côte d’ivoire, 1988) show the soil types in the area of study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 387-399 389 figure 1: location of the study area materials data analysis required the use of different types of equipment. the hardware consists of 1. excel for statistical processing of data; 2. paint for image editing; 3. envi (environment for visualizing image) 3.6, for processing satellite images; 4. arc view gis 3.2 for gis: it is a tool dedicated to the use of mapping and analysis of spatial data; 5. map info 9.0, for geo-referencing and digitizing different cards; 6. data mapping, photographic and satellite. field equipment consists of a digital camera to take pictures (habitat, vegetation and crop areas) main road secondary road secondary rivers localities departments study area asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 387-399 390 and gps (global positioning system) to record ground coordinates. methods analysis of the evolution of agrarian structures the analysis of the evolution of agrarian structures on physical media (soil and topography) can develop a geographic information system (gis), attached to two concepts: 1. the system: according to joel (1975), is a set of elements in dynamic interaction, organized according to purpose; 2. geographic information is information attached to a location on the earth. it is about information on space objects, natural phenomena, cultural resources, human or economic. design of the digital database geocoded the database is a data structure for receiving, storing and providing, on request, data to multiple independent users. the reality is complex; so gis will rely on a decomposition of the database into simple elements, simple themes, and simple geometric elements. to achieve our goal, we focus on the use of satellite data, the mapping of topographic classes, the design of the soil map, mapping volumes and population densities. use of satellite data the processing of satellite images provides maps of agrarian structures in 1986 and 2000 (table 1). table 1: description of satellite information topics entities semantic descriptors vegetation habitat surface fallow, culture point localities watercourse ligne main rivers secondary rivers road network ligne main road side road development of the topographical map classes data exist in analog form that is to say on traditional paper media and polyester. we used the northeast topographic map at scale 1/50000 (topographic base from the generalization of topographic maps at 1/200000) published in 1994 by centre de cartographie et de télédétection (c.c.t.) and the northeast pedology map (institut de géographie tropicale, 1988). the use of these data in a gis requires their transformation into digital data. the transition from analog to digital form is done by scanning. it is to recover the geometry of objects. this vectorization is achieved by automatic scanning (scanning electron). it involves the conversion of the topographic map in a coded digital file. the procedure was the setting for the card by the geo-referencing, which is to set the document digitized in a geographic coordinate system (wgs84). scanning is done on arc view 3.2. monitoring is carried, point to point, of characteristic lines of the relief, assigning an attribute to the contour lines. the attribute contains all the information for each point on the map. this is the latitude, longitude and altitude (x, y, z). digitizing provides a digital file containing scanned resolution 0.01mm curves. arc view 3.2 software allows to call the "poly line" program, whose role is to convert the digitized curves into a set of spot elevation. the model representation is raster. it is the representation by the nodes of a network. each node thus represents either a physical point or a certain area around the node. from scanning the contour lines, we establish by computer, the elevation (z) of each spot elevation. thus, we have the map of topographical regions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 387-399 391 design of the soil map by scanning the soil map on map info 9.0, we get the geometry of the forms of analog card that we converse in an exchange format (autocad) to retrieve the shapefile converted to vector file format, in the gis universe of arc view 3.2. mapping population densities territorial raster of each site enables to understanding cultural practices and spatial policies. it may explain the idea of competition or defense in the conquest of the land. population density is the measurement of time relative to the area population. it is expressed in people per square kilometer (inh/km²). so we have a relationship between the population and the spatial unit it occupies. the difficulty of delimitation of village lands has brought duchemin (1971) to develop a novel mapping technique that has been used in many works: filleron (1990) for the mapping of settlements in west and kangah (2006) in the square degree in katiola. we also use this technique to calculate the population densities of our study area. it revolves around two key elements: a manual phase and a digital phase. the manual phase includes the construction of the grid and the calculation of densities: 1. the construction of the grid (map squaring) and the circular target: various locations in the area are printed in scale 1/200, 000. each locality is assigned the value of the population in 1988 and 1998. a grid of 4 cm wide (8 km on the ground) is built on the printed along the lines of the utm (universal transverse mercator) coordinates. to calculate the density, we construct a circular target of 4 cm radius (8 km on the ground), covering an area of 200 km². the radius of the target is the communal territory, that is to say, the minimum space which carries the weight of the population of the village. 2. the calculation of densities: the center of the circular target is placed at each intersection of the map squaring. the sum of populations of all communities observed in the target is related to the surface of the target (200 km²). the density obtained is at the intersection of the grid. a grid with values is obtained at each intersection of the map squaring. digital design: the grid is scanned and georeferenced from the control points. the georeferencing can be overlaid with other maps. each point of a set of grid coordinates (x, y, z). (x, y) are the map coordinates and z represents the density value calculated on the grid. the density values of each grid intersection are entered. by interpolation, it generates the map densities. we have vector data that is integrated directly into the database. in the database, we standardized the different data (satellite, cartographic and alphanumeric) in the same map repository (wgs 84 zone 30 north) and converted to shapefile format of the arc view 3.2 software. data modeling it includes the identification, prioritization criteria and processing spatial data. identification and prioritization criteria it is to characterize the study area for the effective management of the natural environment. this involves the search for factors that influence the agrarian structures. thus, to better identify areas favorable to agrarian structures, we selected criteria. to be valid, these criteria must have data in close collaboration with the agrarian structure and the information available on our study area for the years 1986, 2000 and 2004. these data should be of high quality, that is to say they must be abundant and well distributed in our study area to avoid erroneous results during spatialisation or interpolation (jourda, 2005). from these conditions, the criteria are the topographical regions (altitudes) and soil types. 1. topographic criterion permits to determine altitudes classes or topographical regions. for our area, the topographic map generated on arc view 3.2 allows for the following classes: 190250 m, 250-300 m, 300-350 m and 350-440 m; 2. soil test identifies the types of soils used. treatment of spatial data the objective is to obtain a map of areas suitable for agricultural structures by defining multiple spatialized environmental parameters asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 387-399 392 (topography and soils) that would correlate well with areas of agricultural structures. thus, we need to combine different themes of the database to extract useful information. the crossing of themes on arc view 3.2 allows synthesizing spatial data. transactions are: 1. crossing agrarian structures map and topographic classes; 2. crossing agrarian structures map and the soil types. statistical calculations are performed to determine the overall evolution rate and the average annual change in the agricultural area depending on soil type and topography, during the periods 1986-2000 and 2000-2004. results characterization of agrarian structures the evolution of agrarian structures in time and space enables to locate and assess the surface of its components (land occupied by habitats, cultivated land and fallow). identification of land occupied by habitat the grouping of habitats in a given area forms a village or town. the habitat in the environment gives a particular landscape. his analysis is done from the habitat structure and spatial distribution of localities. structure of the habitat it reflects the vision of the people who live there. the enumeration of habitat type occurs depending on the actual households (figure 2). figure 2: distribution of habitat types by households in the sub-prefecture of bouna spatial distribution of localities the analysis of this distribution is done by contiguity. it is the expression ratios of distance between neighboring villages. to better appreciate the distance between two locations, the establishment of buffer (3000 m, 6000 m and 9000 m) is shown in figure 3. these groups can distinguish a big bow around bouna and along major communication routes, secondary nodes, consisting of two to six villages and isolated villages. overall, the north is characterized by a contiguity of villages within a radius of 3000 m and 6000 meters (m). the nearby villages of 9000 m are concentrated in the south. we note, however, that isolated villages are at the centre and south. the establishment of the buffer can be noted between two neighboring communities, we have 30% of distances less than 3000 m, 43% between 3000 and 6000 m, and 16% between 6000 and 9000 m. distances greater than 9000 6280; 49% 2426; 19% 1991; 16% 1384; 11% 333; 3% 8; 0% 33; 0% 218; 2% case trad, concession maison simple logemt en bande villa moderne appartement dans un immeuble baraque non defini traditional hut concession simple house accommodation strip modern villa apartment in building shack non defined asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 387-399 393 m are 11% of the distances between neighboring localities. the average distance of 6000 m indicates a near village to each other. figure 3: adjacency communities in the study area identification of cultivated soils in the study area, the area of crop covers an area of 1180 hectares (ha). in zone kolodio bineda, particular emphasis is given to food crops. thus, a survey conducted in 1986 in the area kolodio bineda provides information (table 2). overall, the association maize and sorghum occupying 39.67% of the cultivated area, is the most widely practiced in the region. as the association yam yam early and late, it ranks second crops grown. the combination of cultures is much practiced in the land in the north-eastern côte d'ivoire. main rivers secondary rivers contiguity of localities asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 387-399 394 table 2: areas and yields of some crops to kolodio bineda main cropping areas (ha) yields (kg/ha) main culture 1 st harvest main culture 2 nd harvest secondary culture total early yam 2.61 1489 9147 10636 early+late yam 79.50 5027 3806 817 9650 late yam 2.63 11303 11303 late+early yam 0.25 5133 3747 8808 maize + sorghum 93.70 793 580 1373 maize + mil 21.82 638 444 1082 sorghum 21.80 467 467 mil 13.86 479 475 the report of activities of agence nationale d’appui au développement rural (anader) on the bouna crops’ area in 1999 provides information on the cultivated soils of this region (table 3). in this region, there are a variety of industrial crops (cashew, mango) and food crops (yam, cassava, maize, rice, millet, sorghum, peanuts and beans.). the yam crop area (2705 ha) is the most important. they constitute 37.40% of the total area of crops. maize is one of the important crops and represents 20.54% of the total area. table 3: agricultural area in the sub-prefecture of bouna cultures pérennes cultures vivrières cashew nut mango yam cassava maize pluvial rice riz bas fond mil sorghum groundnut bean crops 284 1 2176 232 1215 32 132 637 620 581 377 areas (ha) 178 30 2705 156 1486 17 10 799 890 564 398 distribution of fallow the study area presents recent and old fallows. on old fallows, there are species selected by farmers when clearing fields: shea (vitellaria paradoxa), locust (parkia biglobosa) etc. fallows occupy an area of 67,432 ha, or 22% of the north-east. they can be observed along the axis bondoukou-bouna, around bouna and west of bouna. the fallow is decreasing due to a major transformation of the latter in natural vegetation. crossing themes bare soil and fallow allowed mapping the evolution of agrarian structures in figure 4. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 387-399 395 figure 4: map of agrarian structures main rivers secondary rivers localities agrarian structuressub-prefectures asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 387-399 396 dynamics of agrarian structures this dynamic is achieved by statistical analysis of data and the transition matrix. statistical analysis of data more detailed observations are made on bare soil and fallow to identify and understand changes over time (table iv). in our study area, agricultural structures have shown two phases in their evolution: 1. 1986-2000: this period has shown an average annual spatial increase of 4.54%. the components of agrarian structures evolve differently in space. the average annual expansion of bare soil (15.72%) remained significantly higher than fallow (4.05%). the dynamics of bare soil is the result of the practice of slash and burn agriculture. 2. 2000-2004: this period was marked by the decline of agrarian structures. the average annual rate of expansion space is -12.22%. the average decay rate of fallow (17.24%) is almost the same proportion as the average annual rate of growth of spatial expansion of bare soil (17.67%). however, relatively large areas of fallow land (129,665 ha) influence the strong decrease of the average annual rate of growth of agricultural structures (12.22%). if we consider the period 1986-2004, the average annual rate of spatial evolution is very low (0.01%). contrary to the bare soils that have shown a growth rate (16.15%), declining fallow is slow (-0.67%). table 4: average annual rate of change of the spatial land soil occupation average annual rate of spatial evolution (%) 1986 – 2000 2000 – 2004 1986 2004 fallows 4,05 -17,24 -0,67 bare soil 15,72 17,67 16,15 agrarian structures 4,54 -12,22 0,01 discussion the basic premise of the use of remote sensing for change detection boils down to what changes in land cover result in a change in the spectral values (hountondji et al., 2008). generally, agricultural structures include surfaces where ground reflectance is high. characterization of bouna’s agrarian structures takes place from landsat tm, etm+ and spot. the spatial resolution of 30 m for landsat and 5 m for panchromatic spot appears to be satisfactory. indeed, in the savannas burkinaké, mid sudanian defourny (1992) noted that the shape of the plots is identifiable up to 50 m spatial resolution. thus, the spatial heterogeneity of the natural vegetation in the sudanian region requires resolution landsat tm, etm+ and spot for a valid mapping (achard, 1989). plant communities will be identified by remote sensing if they have, to date, a particular spectral behavior, to separate them from other groups (girard, 1982). jensen (2000) states that the images taken during the dry season, has a very good contrast details in the middle. the observation of the seasonal cycle in rural sudan established by koli bi (1990) shows that the satellite images were taken during the dry season (november 1986, february 2000 and january 2004). although he finds good light conditions, with a decrease rate of aerosols and cloud cover lower than 15%, the presence of the harmattan creates a strong presence of dust, mist and haze. this has an impact on the canals. this explains the atmospheric correction performed on the image. based on the cycle of vegetation and crop calendar, spectral confusions are observed for agricultural areas are confused with bare soils. indeed, the harvest is completed and crop plots are mostly naked images in february 2000 and january 2004. however, in november 1986, we still have corn to second cycle, sorghum, groundnuts and rice flooded long cycle. under these conditions it is easy to associate the recent fallow bare soil. thus is explained the confusion observed during evaluation. this season promotes firing of herbaceous vegetation plots and ancient cultures. this practice, associated to water deficit plant influences the signal received by the sensor. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 387-399 397 critical analysis of the results shows some shortcomings. relatively coarse spatial resolution landsat (30 m) generates a margin of error inherent limits of the sensor. satellite images show a landscape without apparent order with areas of agrarian structures marked by splashes of color white to gray. according to monnier et al. (1973) the provision of plots is no pre-established order and their contours are not geometric. fields are rectangular in shape, open in the extension of one another. a network of trails connects the villages with areas of crops. the result on the landscape of this form of development is characteristic of traditional agriculture. limits of agrarian structures pose problems of interpretation. in addition to the irregular contours of the plots, it is mostly unclear boundaries between fields, recent fallow and savanna with peripheral degradation that poses serious problems (wilmet, 1996). for defourny (1992), this entanglement of transitional facies has resulted in an increase in border pixels. this leads to spectral overlap with neighboring taxa. the relationship between human pressure and the soil is influenced by population density and mode of development. we are in a traditional environment, the population centers are villages and town of bouna. the study of space, habitat through a weakness of human settlements (25% of localities have less than 50 people). the spatial distribution of habitat intrigues more than one observer due to scattered settlements (hauhouot et al., 1988). a distance of 200 to 300 m separates the various families. this often leads to ignorance of spatial reality of lobi’s villages by observers unwise. however, according fieloux (1980), the "ditil" which is a tutelary fetish is a reference to geographically delimit the village lands. this fetish is given to the first occupant of the place that would later become a village. the dispersion of houses, how to group in small villages, are characteristic of the lobi (hoffmann, 1983). therefore, it is often difficult to distinguish some hamlets on satellite images. however, field inspections in 2002, 2004 and 2005, helped to highlight the land on different dates. thus, the 1986 image shows an anthropisation of the environment much more expressive around bouna and along roads. it is the dense urban area of bouna where the bulk of the population of the study area. however, in 2000, we observe wide white to light gray ranges on the extent of the study area. indeed, the eradication of onchocerciasis plays an important role in the system of agrarian structures in the east. endemic disease causing blindness, it is a limiting factor in human settlement. according to o.m.s. (2000), the opening up of areas freed from onchocerciasis has opened opportunities for agricultural and pastoral products that accelerate the spontaneous migration. in 2004, we denote the thinning of these ranges. that area has been the scene of clashes between belligerents during the military and political crisis in côte d'ivoire 2002, emphasizing population migration and the abandonment of agricultural activity. characterization of agrarian structures highlights habitat, areas of crops and fallow. from 1986 to 2000, they grew, in relation to the growth of the population, which increased from 36,664 inhabitants in 1988 to 45,947 inhabitants in 1998. however, hauhouot et al. (1984), show that "the migratory flow does not occur randomly in time and space; it obeys a strategy implemented by the farm manager" to increase the population of his locality. population movements lead to an active spatial dynamics whose effects are reflected by changes in the environment and stable areas. then the space status changes under human pressure on the environment. this is why it is necessary to assess the spatio-temporal dynamic. it is about the transformations of bare soil areas (habitats and areas of crops) and fallows constituting agrarian structures. thus, the most important loss of employment to ground in 1986-2000 is attributed to the shrub savanna (90,491 ha). they constitute 84% of the total loss area. there is a trend of degradation of vegetation cover. during the 14 years, they have achieved a gain of 29,483 ha. this clearing is partly due to traditional farming techniques, based on shifting cultivation. such agriculture is characterized by the use of a large rural area (lebeau, 1991). for the period 1986-2000, shrub savanna lost 90,491 ha. the variation of the land is in favor of bare soil and fallows. it is the explication of the growth of agrarian structures in 2000. this result confirms the work of ouadba (1989): the interpretation of diachronic study from 1958 to 1979 on vegetation of the site of niaryarlé and burkina faso show a destruction (-73%) of the shrub savanna in favor of agricultural areas. mama (2002) found the same trend in towns asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 387-399 398 savè, tchaourous and ouessè of benin. the author notes that this dynamic affects the social cohesion of populations and induced to conquer new lands. kosaka (2005) believes that the fusion of panchromatic bands with color can significantly improve the accuracy of results. thus, we observe on the merged image of 20002004, an area dominated by instability of agrarian structures. they got 50,314 ha, including 31,046 ha of fallows and 19,268 ha of bare soils. the main areas of fallows (88% or 27,266 ha) are from the shrub savanna. gains of agrarian structures are estimated at 37,210 ha, against 90,491 ha in 1986-2000. agrarian structures lose 89,780 ha against a gain of 37,210 ha. koné (2004) showed a regeneration of woody cover in the korhogo region. similarly, coulibaly (2002) highlights the increase of natural areas in the region of bouna. inglanda (2001) shows that the satellite images are important tools to identify differences zone status by observing them at different times. references achard, f. 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(1996). télédétection aérospatiale: méthodes et applications, sides, 300 p. © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 toxicity of selected insecticides (spinosad, indoxacarb and abamectin) against the diamondback moth (plutella xylostella l.) on cabbage fauziah ismail (entomologist (associate professor); faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, malaysia) mohd norazam, m. t. (faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, malaysia) mohd rasdi z. (faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara pahang, malaysia) to cite this article: fauziah ismail, mohd norazam, m. t. and mohd rasdi z. (2012). toxicity of selected insecticides (spinosad, indoxacarb and abamectin) against the diamondback moth (plutella xylostella l.) on cabbage. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1), 17-26. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 17-26 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author (s) fauziah ismail † faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, malaysia e-mail: fauziah@salam.uitm.edu.my mohd norazam, m. t. faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, malaysia e-mail:azam_ucin@yahoo.com mohd rasdi z. faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, malaysia e-mail: dddpim@pahang.uitm.edu.my toxicity of selected insecticides (spinosad, indoxacarb and abamectin) against the diamondback moth (plutella xylostella l.) on cabbage abstract plutella xylostella l. is a most serious of insect pest for cruciferous or brassica crops throughout the world. the common name of this insect pest is the diamondback moth (dbm). plutella xylostella l. is an oligophagous insect which is feed on the group of botanically plants within the single plant family. this insect has become major serious problem to the crops because it easily and rapidly develops their resistance to insecticides. insecticides were used to kill plutella xylostella l. that contribute to minimize the level of infestation. toxicity levels were measured by lethal concentration (lc50) to estimate the effectiveness of selected insecticides. a total of three selected insecticides namely spinosad, indoxacab and abamectin had been tested against plutella xylostella l. the data of lc50 was analyzed using probit program. the result from this study had been used to estimate the effective dose or quantity of each insecticide need for controlling plutella xylostella l. besides that, the most effectiveness between the tested insecticides were selected for managing plutella xylostella l. results from this study shows that indoxacarb were most effective and toxic to control plutella xylostella l. compared with spinosad and abamectin because it gave lower lc50 value (1010.080). in term of concentration, indoxacarb (1125 µl/5000 ml) and spinosad (2750 µl/5000 ml) was the effective concentrations for controlling plutella xylostella l. by mortality rate more than 50%, 60% and 80% respectively. keywords: plutella xylostella, diamondback moth, insecticide, toxicity, and cabbage introduction the diamondback moth (plutella xylostella l.) is a most serious of insect pest for crucifers or brassica crops throughout the world. the control costs of plutella xylostella l. approximately us $ 1 billion annually (talekar, 1992). after several years, this insect pest has developed resistance to many types of insecticides and the population has been increasing from time to time (sun, 1992). the infestation level of plutella xylostella l. on the brassica crops especially cabbage varies according to the presence of natural enemies, locality and plant types. the management controlling of plutella xylostella l. must be taken with effectively to avoid severe damage cause by this insect pest. the damage cause by this insect pest can reach up to 100% (shelton et al., 1993). in india, plutella xylostella l. causes serious crop damage cole crops and the area wherever crucifers are grown. krishnamoorthy (2004) documented that the infestation of plutella xylostella l. causes 52% yield loss on cabbage plant. in malaysia, plutella xylostella l. is introduced through the development of the vegetable industry mainly the brassica crops and only one species of plutella has been recorded. plutella xylostella l. was first recorded in malaysia in 1925. the infestation of this insect pest was reported at the cameron highland in 1934 and until 1941, this insect pest does not seriously damage the crop growing at that particular area. however, plutella xylostella l. has become a serious pest to the crucifers growing in the highlands and the lowlands areas in malaysia after the mid 1940s (corbett and pagden, 1941). plutella xylostella l. was first recorded in 1746 and probably from european origin. nowadays, the distribution of this insect pest found throughout the americas and in europe, southeast asia, australia and new zealand. in 1854, plutella xylostella l. was observed in north america and now recorded everywhere the cabbage grown in that area. this insect pest had spread to florida and the rocky mountains by 1883. it is also can be found in canada areas where it cannot successfully overwinter condition (capinera, 2001). in 1939, the infestation of plutella xylostella l. was recorded in 19 countries of south america, europe and africa. about 128 countries or regions reported infestation by this insect pest in 1972. the level of infestation is vary from place to place for example the infestation is serious in south and southeast asian countries and moderate in other asian regions than the mediterranean region (harcourt, 1963). plutella xylostella l. is a foreign pest with few natural enemies in malaysia. thus, this insect has become a major pest of the crucifers growing in malaysia especially on the temperate crucifers in the mailto:fauziah@salam.uitm.edu.my mailto:azam_ucin@yahoo.com mailto:dddpim@pahang.uitm.edu.my asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 17-26 18 cameron highlands. in 1950s, the use of synthetic insecticides was eliminated the natural insecticides application. then, after several years, this insect pest became resistant to ddt and bhc (henderson, 1957). several new insecticides were recommended to control plutella xylostella l. but the observation showed that 60% of the farmers cannot control this pest with effectively (lim, 1974). in the 1980s, there have several new chemicals was introduced to control plutella xylostella l. such as cartap, methomyl, permethrin, triazophos and fenvalerate. but, all of these insecticides have become less effective after two to five years use by farmers. since these problems occur, the farmers have increases the recommended dosage, spraying frequency and mixed two or more chemicals to ensure the effective control. although these practices are successful, it can create the other problems such as high residues in harvested product and high cost of production. to solve these problems, the need for implementation of integrated pest management (ipm) programme where control measures are based on economic threshold, the right dosage or rate of insecticides application and use of botanical insecticides with effectively. the most important of study was to observe the initial indication of resistance level of plutella xylostella l. population on cabbage plants. specifically, to determine the lethal concentrations of lc50 and lc95 on each tested insecticides against plutella xylostella l. and to identify the most effective dosage between test insecticides concentrations for controlling the plutella xylostella l. materials and methods the study had been carried out in the crop protection laboratory, faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, uitm shah alam, selangor under controlled condition with small ranged of controlled room temperature of 24.33 ± 0.14°c with dark and light ratio of 1:1 (12 hours: 12 hours). host plant cabbage plant had been used as a food supply during the rearing process as well as toxicity testing. cabbage (serbajadi variety) seeds were sown in the seedling tray (size of 36 cm x 56 cm of 104 holes) at 1 cm depth for two weeks. the seedlings were watering daily, and after two weeks the seedlings were then transferred into a polystyrene cup (6.0 cm diam. x 9.5 cm). the planting mediums were mixed uniformly and filling up in the polybags with 3:2:1 ratio which consisted of top soil, organic soil and chicken dung, respectively had been used in this study to promote well growth. test insect (plutella xylostella) plutella xylostella l. had been used for this experiment. enough supply of 2nd instar larvae of plutella xylostella l. had been obtained from mardi serdang to supply enough insects for the experiments. besides that, the larvae were also collected from mardi cameron highlands reared in the laboratory under controlled temperature at 19ºc to 21ºc. stock culture of plutella xylostella l. the cabbage plants were prepared and placed into rearing cage. after that, the adults of plutella xylostella l. were prepared and released inside the rearing cage. the cabbage plant was acted as an ovipositor site for adults of plutella xylostella l. the cleaned rearing cages and the pest and diseases free of host plant had been used to maintain good stock culture. preparation of test insect prior experiments, 2-months-old of 30 cabbage plants were prepared and followed the procedure (fauziah, 1990). a total of three cages were prepared which each cage contains one cabbage plants. about 100 adults of plutella xylostella l. had been introduced individually to cabbage plants inside the oviposition cage (33 cm height x 31 cm wide) respectively. these plants had been left for 24 hours for oviposition. after 24 hours, the adults had been removed from oviposition cages. then, the eggs underside the leaves were left to hatch on the growing plants for two weeks. when the larvae had reached at the second-instar, they had been counted and used for the toxicity experiments using leaf-dip bioassay method. the second and third generations of plutella xylostella l. larvae had been used in the toxicity experiment, to avoid any parasitoids present inside the larvae. test insecticides three insecticides were tested in this study namely success, steward and agrimec. the active ingredient (a.i) of the insecticides tested is spinosad 2.5% w/w, indoxacarb 14.5% w/w and abamectin 1.9% w/w with different modes of action respectively. the selected insecticides used in this experiment were registered and the latest recommended insecticides in controlling plutella xylostella l. by pesticide control division, mardi cameron highland (doa, 2005 and abdul rahman et al., 2000). the summary of insecticides tested is in table 1. factors motivating beneficiaries’ participation in development programs as participation continues to remain a contextspecific concept, so also the factors that motivate beneficiaries’ participation varied from individuals, contexts and programs. the motivation to participate by and large depends on individual conceptions. although, the reasons for beneficiaries’ participation in development programs have not been consistent because the participatory literature is often vague as to what generally motivate people to participate toxicity of selected insecticides….. 19 (cleaver, 1999), empirical evidences abound. for instance, whereas, friedman (1992) places emphasis on economic rationality as the most influential factor table 1: specification of selected insecticides (spinosad, indoxacarb and abamectin) common name active ingredient (a.i) class mode of action success® 25 sc spinosad 2.5% w/w rate iv contact and stomach steward® indoxacarb 14.5% w/w rate ii contact and stomach agrimec® 1.9 ec abamectin 1.9% w/w rate ii contact and stomach treatments a total of 13 treatments were tested in this experiment. for each concentration number 2 is recommended rate (µl / 5000 ml of water) from mardi cameron highland. for each concentration 3 and 4 is the rate below recommended rate, and for each concentration 1 is the rate above recommended rate (table 2). table 2: treatments tested in the experiment treatment insecticides (a.i) concentration (µl/ml) treatment 0 control (dip with distilled water only) treatment 1 spinosad with concentration 1 (6875 µl / 5000 ml) treatment 2 spinosad with concentration 2 (5500 µl / 5000 ml) (mardi) treatment 3 spinosad with concentration 3 ( 4125 µl / 5000 ml) treatment 4 spinosad with concentration 4 (2750 µl / 5000 ml) treatment 5 indoxacarb with concentration 1 ( 1875 µl / 5000 ml) treatment 6 indoxacarb with concentration 2 (1500 µl / 5000 ml) (mardi) treatment 7 indoxacarb with concentration 3 (1125 µl / 5000 ml) treatment 8 indoxacarb with concentration 4 (750 µl / 5000 ml) treatment 9 abamectin with concentration 1 ( 6250 µl / 5000 ml) treatment 10 abamectin with concentration 2 ( 5000 µl / 5000 ml) (mardi) treatment 11 abamectin with concentration 3 ( 3750 µl / 5000 ml) treatment 12 abamectin with concentration 4 ( 2500 µl / 5000 ml) the treatments were assigned randomly (completely randomized design-crd) in each petri dish before ten larvae of dbm had been placed in each of them. thirteen treatments were randomly assigned in petri dish with four replications. leaf-disc of cabbage from stock culture was cut off with square shape (5 cm x 5 cm) and placed in petri dish by exposing their upper surface in a quadrilateral arrangement (hazmi et al., 2008). a moistened filter paper (diam. 9 cm) had been placed at the bottom of petri dish (diam. 9 cm) to maintain the moisture. the leaves were also dipped into distilled water and dry it for a few minute. then, the leaf-disc was immersed with the tested insecticides and dried it for a few seconds. subsequently, ten larvae of plutella xylostella l. from the stock culture were placed in each petri dish and allowed them to feed the leaf-disc for one week. each concentration for each insecticide had been tested using the tested insects. for the control, the leaf-disc was immersed with distilled water solely. prior experiment, all larvae are not given any food for three hours to give them the same level of starvation. data collection the numbers of larvae alive and dead were counted and recorded in a series of experiment of lc50 and lc95 values correspondingly. the data was collected at every 4 hours within two days. data analysis the toxicity data were analyzed by using a special probit program-single line analysis. the concentration was expected to produce mortality of 50% (lc50) and 95% (lc95). the data were also analyzed by using analysis of variance (anova) from minitab 16. normality test has been carried out and found that the data was normally distributed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 17-26 20 results and discussion figure 1: percentage mortality of plutella xylostella l. on different treatment (concentrations) of insecticides over time (hours) figure 1 shows the changes in percentage mortality of plutella xylostella l. larvae over time (hours). the graph was based on the means for four replications and each petri dish was placed with ten larvae of plutella xylostella l. from the beginning of the experiment, the percentage mortality for all treatments is equal to zero. after 4 hours, all treatment increases gradually except for abamectin (t12) with concentration 2500 µl/5000 ml and control treatment. spinosad (t1) with concentration 6875 µl/5000 ml showed a drastic increase in percentage of mortality at the 12th hour which reached up to 100%. spinosad (t2) with concentration 5500 µl/5000 ml and indoxacarb (t5) with concentration 1875 µl/5000 ml also caused 100% of mortality after the 16th hour of treatment. spinosad (t3) with concentration 4125 µl/5000 ml and spinosad (t4) with concentration 2750 µl/5000 ml increased gradually after 16 hours of being treated but only reached the 100% of mortality after the 28th hours. indoxacarb (t6) with concentration 1500 µl/5000 ml and indoxacarb (t7) with concentration 1125 µl/5000 ml also increased slowly after 16 hours of being treated and reached total percentage of mortality at the 28th hour and 40th hour respectively. however, indoxacarb (t8) with concentration 750 µl/5000 ml showed only a slight increase in percentage mortality within the first 16 hours and did not reach more than 50% mortality even after 24 hours of treatment. but, the graph shows that all concentrations of abamectin increased slowly after treatment especially for abamectin (t11) with concentration 3750 µl/5000 ml and abamectin (t12) with concentration 2500 µl/5000 ml. these two concentrations showed the lowest percentage of mortality which is less than 20% within 24 hours after treatment. figure 2: percentage mortality of plutella xylostella l. influenced by control over time (hours) 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 4 8 12 16 20 24 p er ce n ta ge m or ta li ty (% ) time (hours) treatment 1 (6875 µl/ml) treatment 2 (5500 µl/ml) treatment 3 (4125 µl/ml) treatment 4 (2750 µl/ml) treatment 5 (1875 µl/ml) treatment 6 (1500 µl/ml) treatment 7 (1125 µl/ml) treatment 8 (750 µl/ml) treatment 9 (6250 µl/ml) treatment 10 (5000 µl/ml) treatment 11 (3750 µl/ml) 0 20 40 60 80 100 0 12 24 36 48 60 72 84 96 p er cc en ta ge m or ta lit y (% ) time (hours) control (dip with distilled water only) toxicity of selected insecticides….. 21 our result showed that all treatments with insecticides have shown a higher mortality of plutella xylostella l. the control does not have any effect on the percentage of mortality of plutella xylostella l. until the 72nd hour. however, 72 hours after the treatment, the percentage mortality of plutella xylostella l. a minimum of 5% increase only reached the 10% mark after 96 hours. this means that the active ingredients (a.i) of insecticide itself is more toxic to the plutella xylostella l. because it produce a large number of mortality after only a short period of time compared to the control treatment. the result showed that distilled water is not toxic to the larvae of plutella xylostella l., since the result showed only 10% mortality even after three days after treatment. there is significant difference between the different concentrations and the effectiveness of spinosad, indoxacarb and abamectin on the mortality against plutella xylostella l. (f = 8.40; df = 12,39; p = 0.000). 1211109876543210 10 8 6 4 2 0 treatment figure 3: mean number of mortality for each treatment on plutella xylostella l. (12 hours after treatment) [values with a common letter are not significantly difference at p>0.05 by duncan multiple range test (dmrt)] figure 3 shows the mean number of mortality for plutella xylostella l. larva treated with the different levels of concentration of each test insecticide. the figure 3 indicates that the highest mean number of mortality was by using spinosad (t1) with concentration 6875 µl/5000 ml (number of mortality = 10) and the lowest was in the control treatment (t0) by using only distilled water(number of mortality = 0). the figure indicates that spinosad (t1) with concentration 6875 µl/5000 ml, spinosad (t2) with concentration 5500 µl/5000 ml, spinosad (t3) with concentration 4125 µl/5000 ml, spinosad (t4) with concentration 2750 µl/5000 ml, indoxacarb (t5) with concentration 1875 µl/5000 ml, indoxacarb (t6) with concentration 1500 µl/5000 ml and indoxacarb (t7) with concentration 1125 µl/5000 ml showed significant difference compared to the control treatment (t0) with distilled water only, indoxacarb (t8) with concentration 750 µl/5000 ml, abamectin (t9) with concentration 6250 µl/5000 ml, abamectin, (t11) with concentration 3750 µl/5000 ml and abamectin (t12) with concentration 2500 µl/5000 ml. besides that, abamectin (t10) with concentration 5000 µl/5000 ml also show significant difference than the control treatment (t0) with distilled water only. toxicity of three selected insecticides against plutella xylostella l. the study aimed to determine the toxicity of three insecticides tested namely success, steward and agrimec which are represented by spinosad, indoxacarb and abamectin respectively. tables 3 until 4 are the summarized result of these three insecticides tested against larvae of plutella xylostella l. and were analyzed by using special probit programe single line analysis. the table 3, 4 and 5 show the number of plutella xylostella l. larvae killed by different concentrations of insecticide together with percentage killed. this probit programme calculated the lethal concentrations of lc50, lc75, and lc95 and the highest and lowest range of each concentration. table 3: toxicity of spinosad against plutella xylostella l. (12 hours) con. concentration µl/5000 ml of water no of larvae no of dead mortality rate (%) 1 6875 40 40 100.00% 2 *5500 40 35 87.50% 3 4125 40 24 60.00% 4 2750 40 32 80.00% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 17-26 22 note: * recommended there was no significant difference on the mortality of plutella xylostella l. larvae among the four concentrations of spinosad used against these larvae. it was observed that concentration one (6875 µl/5000 ml of water) was significantly higher than the other three levels of concentration. the highest concentration of spinosad (6875 µl/5000 ml of water) gave 100.00% mortality and the lowest concentration (2750 µl/ 5000 ml of water) caused 80.00% mortality. however, the recommended rate of concentration is concentration number two, (5500 µl/5000 ml of water) since it could prevent the development of resistance population of plutella xylostella l. table 4: toxicity of indoxacarb against plutella xylostella l. (12 hours) con. concentration µl/5000 ml of water no of larvae no of dead mortality rate (%) 1 1875 40 34 85.00% 2 *1500 40 34 85.00% 3 1125 40 24 60.00% 4 750 40 10 25.00% 5 0 40 0 0.00% lethal concentration concentration min max lc50 1010.080 897.479 1136.809 lc75 1407.129 1246.573 1588.364 lc95 2267.229 1787.814 2875.203 slope : 4.685 +/0.777 chi square : 1.916 note: * recommended there were significant differences on the mortality of plutella xylostella l. larvae among the four concentrations of indoxacarb that were used against these larvae. it was observed that concentration one (1875 µl/5000 ml of water) was significantly higher than the other three levels of concentration. the highest concentration of indoxacarb (1875 µl/5000 ml of water) killed 85% of the tested insects and the lowest concentration (750 µl/ 5000 ml of water) killed 25.00% of the overall tested insects. however, the recommended rate of concentration is concentration number two, (1500 µl/5000 ml of water) since it will prevent the development of resistance of plutella xylostella l. table 5: toxicity of abamectin against plutella xylostella l. (12 hours) note: * recommended there were significant differences on the mortality of plutella xylostella l. larvae among the four concentrations of abamectin that were used against these larvae. it was observed that concentration one (6250 µl/5000 ml of water) was significantly higher than the other three levels of concentration. the highest concentration of abamectin (6250 µl/5000 ml of water) gave 30.00% mortality and the lowest concentration (2500 µl/ 5000 ml of water) gave 15.00% mortality. however, the recommended rate of concentration is concentration number two (5000 µl/5000 ml of water) since it will prevent the development of resistance of plutella xylostella l. lethal concentration 50% (lc50) lc50 is a lethal concentration where dosage of a chemical which is lethal to 50% of the tested insects, usually expressed in ml per liter of water. the level of toxicity is related to the lc50 value where the lower 5 0 40 0 0.00% lethal concentration concentration min max lc50 1763.055 577.613 5381.393 lc75 3410.994 1298.387 8961.027 lc95 8816.074 3003.873 25874.320 slope : 2.353 +/0.798 chi square : 17.502 con. concentration µl/5000 ml of water no of larvae no of dead mortality rate (%) 1 6250 40 12 30.00% 2 *5000 40 20 50.00% 3 3750 40 6 15.00% 4 2500 40 6 15.00% 5 0 40 0 0.00% lethal concentration concentration min max lc50 8461.838 3529.538 20286.707 lc75 18289.184 5081.711 65823.156 lc95 55439.317 7454.982 412277.04 slope : 2.015 +/0.756 chi square : 9.014 toxicity of selected insecticides….. 23 lc50 value, the more toxic the insecticides is. thus, the greater lc50 value can result in lower toxicit. table 6: the lc50 value of three insecticides against plutella xylostella l. insecticides active ingredient (a.i) lc50 (µl/ 5000 ml of water) relatives potency (rp) = highest lc50 individual lc50 spinosad 1763.055 (577.613 5381.393) 4.80 indoxacarb 1010.080 (897.479 1136.809) 8.38 abamectin 8461.838 (3529.538 20286.707) 1.00 table 6 summarizes results of the lc50 values and relative potencies of three selected insecticides that were tested against plutella xylostella l. all of these insecticides were effective against plutella xylostella l. larvae. when lc50 value of mortality was compared among three insecticides, it was found that abamectin gave the highest lc50 value (8461.838) compared to other insecticides. however, indoxacarb was found to have the lowest lc50 value (1010.080). indoxacarb attacked through contact and stomach is more toxic to plutella xylostella l. compared to other insecticides. then, abamectin is a less toxic insecticides compared to the others. from the studies, result of lc50 showed indoxacarb gave a smaller value (1010.080) followed by spinosad (1763.055) and lastly the highest value is abamectin (8461.838). the lower lc50 value, the more toxic the chemical is because only a small amount of active ingredient can give higher percentage of the insect mortality. thus, indoxacarb is highly toxic to larvae with significantly lower lc50 value than spinosad and abamectin. the relative potency of the three tested insecticides are in the following sequence; indoxacarb (8.38) > spinosad (4.80) > abamectin (1.00). thus, indoxacarb with 8.38 and 1.75 was more potent than abamectin and spinosad respectively. lethal concentration 95% (lc95) table 7: the lc95 value of three insecticides against plutella xylostella l. insecticides active ingredient (a.i) lc95 (µl/ 5000 ml of water) relatives potency (rp) = highest lc95 individual lc95 spinosad 8816.074 (3003.873 25874.320) 6.29 indoxacarb 2267.229 (1787.814 2875.203) 24.45 abamectin 55439.317 (7454.982 – 412277.04) 1.00 table 7 shows the lc95 value and relatives potency of three selected insecticides that were tested against plutella xylostella l. all of these insecticides were effective against plutella xylostella l. larvae. when lc95 value of mortality was compared among three insecticides, it was found that abamectin gave the highest lc95 value (55439.317) compared with other insecticides. however, indoxacarb was found to have the lowest lc95 value (2267.229). this can show that indoxacarb have more toxic to plutella xylostella l. compared to other insecticides. then, abamectin is a less toxic insecticide compared to the other insecticides. from these studies, result on lc95 showed indoxacarb gave smaller value (2267.229) followed by spinosad (8816.074) and the highest value is abamectin (55439.317). the lower lc95 value, the more toxic the chemical because only a small amount of active ingredient can give higher percentage of killings of the insects which is 95% from the 100% of total tested insect. thus, indoxacarb also were highly toxic to larvae of plutella xylostella l. with significantly lower lc95 value than spinosad and abamectin. the relative potency of the three tested insecticides is in the following sequence indoxacarb (24.45) > spinosad (6.29) > abamectin (1.00). thus, indoxacarb are 24.45 and 3.89 was more potent than abamectin and spinosad respectively. table 8: slope and standard error of three insecticides (spinosad, indoxacarb and abamectin) insecticides (a.i) slope ± s.e insecticides group spinosad 2.353 +/0.798 iv indoxacarb 4.685 +/0.777 ii abamectin 2.015 +/0.756 ii asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 17-26 24 the slope value in the table 8 shows the different toxicity levels among insecticides. the more gradient of linear graph, means the more toxic the insecticides. the less gradient of linear graphs the less toxic of insecticides due to the big change in dose (x-axis) but small number of kill insect changed in y-axis. table 8 shows the slope of six insecticides tested and can be divided into three groups namely (i) highly toxic, (ii) moderately toxic and (iii) slightly toxic and (iv) relatively non toxic. form the result, indoxacarb which is active ingredient (a.i) for steward® show the more gradient in their slopes and more toxic to plutella xylostella l. besides that, these insecticides belong to the group ii which is very toxic or moderately toxic to the plutella xylostella. thus, the result from the probit analysis shows the steward insecticide (indoxacarb) was the most effective on the mortality of larvae for plutella xylostella l. followed by success insecticide (spinosad) and lastly agrimec insecticide (abamectin). the sequence is steward > success > agrimec. discussion the result of this study indicates that the various insecticides concentration have difference effects on the mortality of plutella xylostella. it was obviously observed that the active ingredient of success insecticide (spinosad) for all the four levels of concentrations showed that mortality is more than 50%. similarly, the previous study reported by travis and rick, (2000) showed that in leaf-dip bioassay, larval mortality of plutella xylostella on leaves treated with spinosad and permethrin were considerably higher than other insecticides. besides that, in the leaf-dip and residual bioassays, spinosad caused 100% mortalities to plutella xylostella larvae and adults 72 hours after treatment. thus, because of the high selection pressure induced by permethrin and spinosad, it is important that the frequency of exposure of these two materials to plutella xylostella l. populations to be minimized to uphold the integrity of a resistance management program (travis and rick, 2000). therefore, it is important to realize the effect of these insecticides on plutella xylostella l. population dynamics rather than just larval mortality (hoy and hall 1993, lin et al., 1993). idris and grafius (1993) reported that synthetic insecticides are toxic to both the larval and adult stages of plutella xylostella l. which should dramatically reduce the populations. however, these materials are also highly toxic to its parasitoid diadegma insulare. besides that, spinosad has a unique mode of action and controls insect pest that are resistant to conventional insecticides. the active constituent was derived from fermentation of a naturally occurring micro-organism. it has low toxicity to mammals, birds and fish. spinosad is a broad-spectrum and organic insecticide. it means this insecticide is toxic to wide variety of insects especially for controlling lepidopterous insects (simon, 2009). success naturalyte insect control can be used in integrated pest management (ipm) programme and conventional insect control programme. exposed insects stop feeding almost immediately but may take up to two days to die (simon, 2009). the results from study also showed that the concentrations of indoxacarb were a very effective toxic to plutella xylostella which caused more than 50% mortality after 12 hours. besides that, exposed pests to this insecticide can stop feeding in zero to four hours, resulting in excellent crop protection (simon, 2009). at label rates, steward can provide 14 days residual protection of treated crops depending on the type of insect, population pressure and environmental conditions. basically, steward has a 12 hour re-entry interval and provides excellent rain fastness after two hours drying time (simon, 2009). the result was reported by srinivas et al. (2003), which both indoxacarb and fipronil could provide alternatives to unaffected by resistance because both represent unique modes of action. from our result, it was also observed that the active ingredient of agrimec insecticide which is abamectin for all the four levels of concentrations showed that mortality were below 50%. as we know, plutella xylostella l. had been developing their resistance towards many types of insecticides (miyata et al., 1986). the study reported by sun (1990) showed that plutella xylostella l. become resistance to abamectin, benzophenyl ureas and bacillus thuringiensis. therefore, in this study, there are enough evidence to say that the resistance had been developed to abamectin and since the higher concentration (6250 µl/5000 ml) showed that mortality less than 50% even though that concentration is above the recommended rate by malaysian agricultural research development institute (mardi). besides that, plutella xylostella l. has develop resistance to almost all groups of insecticides including organochlorines, organophosphates, carbamates, abamectins and bacillus thuringiensis (moham and gujar, 2003; qian et al., 2008). in recent years, no proper experiments was carried out to identify the most effective concentration rate of abamectin and also to determine whether this active ingredients were still being applied for controlling plutella xylostella l. conclusion there were significant difference between the different concentrations and the effectiveness of spinosad, indoxacarb and abamectin on the mortality of plutella xylostella l. the concentration of spinosad (2750 µl/5000 ml) and indoxacarb (1125 µl/5000 ml) were the best concentrations for controlling plutella xylostella l. with mortality of more than 50% which (80%) and (60%) respectively. of the three tested insecticides to control plutella xylostella l. in toxicity of selected insecticides….. 25 cabbage (brassica oleraceae), indoxacarb was found to be the most effective insecticide followed by spinosad while the least effective insecticide was abamectin. results from the study suggested rotating the insecticides used with different modes of action. besides that, other methods of bioassay such as vialdry method, leaf-spray and syringe should be explored. lastly, further research should be conducted by using different types of biopesticide such as garlic and chilli ethanol extract to test the mortality of plutella xylostella. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references capinera, j. l. (2001). handbook of vegetable pests. academic press, san diego. pp.729 cleaver, f. (1999). paradoxes of participation: questioning participatory approaches to development. journal of international development, 11(4), 597. corbett, g. h., & pagden, h. t. (1941). a review of some recent entomological investigations and observations. the malaysian agriculture journal, 29, 347-75. department of agriculture malaysia (2005). list of chemicals for major insect pest of major crops. pesticides board. crop protection branch, department of agriculture, kuala lumpur, unpublished report. pp. 6. fauziah, i. (1990). studies on resistance to acylurea compounds in plutella xylostella l. (lepidoptera: yponomeutidae). phd. thesis, university of london, pp. 259. friedman, m. (1992). do old fallacies ever die? journal of economic literature, 30(4), 21292132. harcourt, d. g. (1963). major mortality factors in the population dynamics of the diamondback moth, plutella maculipennis (curt.) (lepidoptera: plutellidae. memoirs of the entomological society of canada, 95(32), 5556. hazmi, a. d., fauziah i., low s. m., siti noor hajjar, m. l., mohd r. z., fairuz, k., & kamaruzaman, j. (2008). toxicity of selected insecticides against nymph of whitefly (bemisia tabaci gennadius). journal agriculture science & technology, david publishing co., chicago, usa . 10p. henderson, m. (1957). insecticidal control of diamondback moth on cabbage at cameron highlands. the malaysian agriculture journal, 40, 275-79. hoy, c. w., & hall, f. w. (1993). feeding behaviour of plutella xylostella and leptinotarsa decemlineata on leaves treated with bacillus thuringiensis and esfenvalerate. pesticide science, 38, 335-340. idris, a. b., & grafius, e. (1993). differential toxicity of pesticides to diadegma insulare (hymenoptera: ichneumonidae) and its host, the diamondback moth (lepidoptera: plutellidae). journal of economic entomology, 86, 529-36. krishnamoorthy, a. (2004). biological control of diamondback moth, indian scenario with reference to past and future strategies. in : kirk, a.a., bordat d. (eds.), proceedings of the international symposium, 21–24 october 2002,montpellier, france, cirad, 204-211. lim, g. s. (1974). integrated pest control in developing countries of asia. in: divorlein, d.h. (ed.). environment and development scope mis. publ., 47-76. lin, h., hoy, c. w., & head, g. (1993). olfactory response of larval diamondback moth (lepidoptera: plutellidae) to permethrin formulation. environ. entomol., 22, 1096– 1102. miyata, t., saito, t., & noppun, v., (1986). studies on the mechanism of diamondback moth resistance of insecticides. in (n.s. talekar ed.) diamondback moth management: proceedings of the first international workshop, avrd 347-357. moham, m., & gujar, g. t. (2003). local variation in susceptibility of the diamondback moth to insecticides and role of detoxification enzymes. crop protection, 22, 495-504. qian, l., cao, g., song, j., yin, q., & han, z. (2008). biochemical mechanism conferring cross resistance between tebufenozide and abamectin in plutella xylostell. pesticide biochemistry and physiology, 91, 175-179. shelton, a. m., wyman, j. a., cushing, n. l., apfelbeck, k., dennehy, t. j., mahr, s. e. r., & eigenbrode, s. d. (1993). insecticide resistance of diamondback moth (lepidoptera: plutellidae) in north america. journal of economic entomology, 86, 11–19. simon, j. y. (2009). the toxicology and biochemistry of insecticides. crc press, pp 25. srinivas, p., lance, j. m., & timothy, m. n., (2003). toxicity of insecticide-bait mixtures to insecticide resistant and susceptible western corn rootworms. crop protection, 22, 781786. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 17-26 26 sun, c. (1990). insecticide resistance in diamondback moth. in (n. s. talekar ed.) diamondback moth management. proceedings of the second international workshop, avrdc. 419-426. sun, c. n. (1992). insecticide resistance in diamondback moth. in: talekar, n.s. (ed.), management of diamondback moth and other crucifer pests. proceedings of the second international workshop, avrdc, taiwan, 419-426. syed abdul rahman, s. a. r., sivapragasam, a., loke, w. h., & roff, m. n. (2000). whiteflies infesting vegetables in malaysia. mardi research station, cameron highlands. strategic, environment and natural resources center, mardi serdang, cabi-searc, upm serdang, and mardi research station, jalan kebun. pp. 38-43. talekar, n. s. (1992). management of diamondback moth and other crucifer pest. preceedings of the second international workshop, avrdc, taiwan, 603pp. travis, a. h., & rick, e. f. (2000). effect of insecticides on the diamondback moth and its parasitoid diadegma insulare. department of entomology. pp. 763-68. diara land and cucurbit cultivation publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. cucurbits cultivation under diara-land pradeep kumar singh (assistant professor cum junior scientist, division of vegetable science, sher-e-kashmir university of agricultural sciences and technology of kashmir shalimar main campus, srinagar (j&k)) citation: pradeep kumar singh (2012): “cucurbits cultivation under diara-land”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 243-247. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 243-247 243 author(s) pradeep kumar singh assistant professor cum junior scientist, division of vegetable science, sher-ekashmir university of agricultural sciences and technology of kashmir shalimar main campus, srinagar (j&k) email: pradeepsingh584@gmail.com cucurbits cultivation under diara-land introduction diara land farming or riverbed cultivation is very old practice (possibly started during mughal period with various cucurbits) of growing vegetables on the bank or basin of river after when flood level receded. presently, in south asian countries, cucurbitaceous vegetables are extensively being grown in riverbeds (called diara land). these diara lands are formed and subjected to alluvion and diluvion action of perennial himalayan rivers and due to inundation caused by swollen rivers during southwest monsoon. fresh silt and clay deposits received every year, during the monsoons months, especially in himalayan rivers, makes these lands suitable for growing vegetables crops, literally on sand. even though upper layers of land seem unsuitable for growing crops, the subterranean moisture seeped from adjacent river streams, makes it possible to grow early crops. this system is unconnected with any other crop rotation and cucurbits are specially adapted to this system of growing due to their long tap root system. it can be treated as a kind of vegetables forcing where in the cucurbits are grown under subnormal conditions, literally on sand, during winter months from novemberfebruary, especially in north and north western india. about 65% of total cucurbit cropped area of the country falls under riverbeds. classification of diara land according to cultivation 1. main riverbed consisting sandcultivation is done during december to june. main crop is bitter gourd and bottle gourd. 2. main diara is located on beds of river. main crop is cucumber, luffa, muskmelon, watermelon and pointed gourd. 3. upland diara where continuous deposition occurs less flooded and not much different from non diara lands. main crop is pointed gourd. advantages of diara land cultivation there are several advantages of river bed cultivation, which includes: early yield, ease in irrigation, low cost, high net return per unit area and high yield, less mineral requirement due to high fertility, limited weed growth, easy in control of pest and disease by cultural, means, low cost labour facilities and additional crop. improved varieties for diara land cultivation diara land cultivation continues to be carried out with the traditional varieties and manner. many improved varieties of bottle gourd, bitter gourd, cucumber, luffa etc. have been developed by various research institutes but they yet to be evaluated and adopted in diara lands. pits or trench making and filling pits or trenches or channels are prepared after the cessation of the southwest monsoon and recession of flood during octobernovember. the trenches are dug in northwest direction to manage the availability of moisture and higher temperature. the channel should be 50-60 cm wide and 4590 cm deep depending on height of water table. generally, 60cm to 90cm is the height of water table in riverbeds. sometimes circular pits of about 35-45cm in diameter are prepared having a depth of 90cm. the pits/ trenches are filled manured with fym or any other organic decomposed waste or oil cakes. especially in northwestern india, where winter temperatures in decjan. go down to 1-2 o c, the protection is provided by planting of grass stubbles (probably of saccharam sp.) this protection is has three fold uses: (i) it checks the sand drifting on the dug-up trenches and covering the hills sown with seeds, (ii) it provides partial through insufficient protection against chilly winds and (iii) this grass is available for spreading over the sand when the vines, especially when “loo” or hot summer winds sweep these areas in may. manures and fertilizers earlier no practices of manures/ fertilizers were used for diara land cultivation but now day’s farmers are slightly using. since crop is taken only for one season, so organic manures and fertilizers are used. well-decomposed fym or compost, groundnut or caster cake is given in first application. river silt is generally used to enhance retentively of moisture in the feeding zone. these organic manures provide some kind of warmth to the germinating seeds or growing transplants. in some areas, single super phosphate urea or any standard fertilizer mixture is also given as a basal application but it is not known whether all mailto:pradeepsingh584@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 243-247 244 the nitrogen is fully available or some amount is leached away. application of 30-60 g urea per pit at the time of thinning will be useful. after 30-40 days of sowing, top dressing of 40 g urea is usually done in two split doses. seed rate, seed treatment and seedling/ transplanting time seed rates varies according crops i.e. cucumber 2-3 kg, bitter gourd and bottle gourd 4-5 kg, sponge gourd and ridge gourd 3 kg for one hectare area. the seed sowing is generally done for early crop in first and second week of november and some time by first week of december. late sowing is done in first week of january. the seeds are sown at a distance of 45-60 cm in the trench at a depth of 3 to 4 cm. two seeds are generally sown at one place. if the temperature is very low, pre sprouted seeds are sown for smooth germination. for this, seeds should be pre soaked for 24 hours and latter on moist seed should be kept in gunny bag or covered with cotton cloth and kept for a week in warm place to get sprouted. sometime growers wrap moisten seeds in gunny bags are caster leaves near the fiber burn for quick germination and in this way sprouting start after 5-6 days. as soon as sprouts are visible outside the seed coat they are planted. generally, 3-4 pregerminated seeds/hills in pits are sown. but in andhra pradesh oneweek-old seedling are planted in pits or trench. irrigation most of the cucurbits are having deep root system, which enable the plant to survive in diara land. irrigation is given through pitcher or left as usual. sprinkler or trickle irrigation system may be quite beneficial because most of the nutrients applied by the farmers are leached away because of sandy soil, unless water level is managed. thatch preparation in northwest india, when winter temperature goes down to 1-2 o c in decjan, young plants require protection in early stage against low temperature and frost. the protection is provided by thatch screen made of locally available materials like paddy straw, saccharum grass or sugarcane leaves. in the month of february, grass is spread over the sand as a mulch and bedding. this helps to protect the young and tender plants/ fruits from heat of scorching sand during summer and also avoids drifting of vines during strong winds. methods for using polyethylene cover as frost protection are yet to be developed. this will be economical and within the reach of ordinary growers. cropping pattern cropping pattern usually practiced in riverbeds are bottle gourd, bitter gourd, cucumber and sponge gourd in north india, ridge gourd in rajasthan, m.p. and u.p. and pointed gourd in bihar. weed management in diara land areas major weeds are polygonum sp., euphorbia hirta, eclipta prostrata, sida sp., and fimbristlylis dichotoma etc. these weeds can be eradicated manually or by pulling, since soil is quite loosened due to excess sands. no weedicide should be used because it may mix with running water of river and may prove hazardous to human animal and fishes etc. harvesting of fruits and yield in cucurbits harvesting should be done when fruits are quite tender and edible. kartoli, kakrol and pointed gourd start flowering after 50, 60 and 80 days of transplanting, respectively. generally, after 8-10 nodes, every nodes bear’s fruits 30-35, 28.35, 15-18 days after flowering. edible mature fruits should be harvested at 2-3 days interval, otherwise, quality deterioration start and fruits hardened due to seed maturity continuous harvesting can be done end of june to end of october. potential yield of various vegetables is given in table-1. table 1: crop duration and yield of cucurbitaceous vegetables in diara lands s.no. vegetables planting time harvesting time average yield (q/ha) 1 bottle gourd nov-dec march-july 200-350 2 bitter gourd feb-march may-july 100-150 3 pointed gourd nov-dec march-july 350-400 4 ridge gourd apr-may june-july 100-200 5 sponge gourd jan-feb april-may 100-200 6 cucumber jan-feb march-june 225-250 vegetables and varieties some of the important river-bed cultivated crops and their cultivars are described. bottle gourd (lagenaria siceraria) a large number of varieties are available for cultivation, i.ar.i. pusa new delhi has released two varieties. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 243-247 245 1. summer prolific long: long fruiting variety with yellow green colour, suitable for spring and summer planting. 2. summer prolific round: fruits are round and are of green colour. there are other promising varieties, developed long green, round summer season, poches long white, sutton long white etc. cucumber (cucumis sativus) cucumber cultivars are usually classified on the basis of how they are used, fresh market (slicer) and picklings. in general fruits of slicers are larger than picklings. cultivars and have a uniform cylindrical shape. 'balam khira' of saharanpur (u.p.) is akin to pickling types of the west. some of important cultivars are given here. 1. japanese long green a temperate cultivar, suited to lower hills, extra early with 45 days maturity fruits 30 to 40 cm long, flesh light green, crisp, released by i.a.r.i. regional station. katrain . (kulu valley). 2. straight eight early cultivar, suited to hills, white spined, fruit medium long, thick, straight with round end of medium green colour. released by i.a.r.i. regional station, katrain (kulu valley). 3. pusa sanjog (fl hybrid) early and high yielding hybrid, fruit 28 to 30 cm long cylindrical and dark green with yellow strips, crisp flesh, matures in 50 days. a hybrid between japanese gynoecious line and green long naples, released by jari, regional station, katrain (kulu valley). 4. poinsette an american introduction multiplied by national seed corporation, fruit dark green, 20 to 25 cm long originally develop at charleston (south carolina) usa carrying resistance for downy mildew, powdery mildew, anthracnose and angular leaf spot. musk melon (cucumis melo) the species cucumis melo is a large polymorphic type comprising a large number of botanical and horticultural varieties or groups. apart from these botanical and groups of varieties, one is more important and recognized namely cucumis melo var. mormordica, which is 'phoot' of north and eastern india or also called snap melon, whose fruit is burst or cracks on maturity. this classification of musk melon is no longer recognized, but nevertheless it shows the variability, available in the species. the most popular cultivars are described as follows. 1. arka rajhans it is a mid season variety, bearing large, oval fruits, weighing about lkg. the flesh is white and sweet and fruit has transportable qualities. released by i.i.h.r hessarghatta, for southern region. 2. arka jeet an early cultivar, very similar to 'lucknow safeda' of u.p. and a selection of bati strain of u.p. the fruits are small and flat weighing 300 to 500 gms, orange to orange brown skin. white flesh with big seed cavity and very sweet. released by i.i.h.r. hessarghatta. 3. pusa sharabati an early cultivar matures in 85 days with round fruits, moderately sweet a hybrid between kutana and resistant no. 6 of the u.s.a. released by i.a.r.i. new delhi. 4. pusa madhuras it is a mid-season selection from rajasthan collections with roundish flat fruit weighing 1 kg of pale colour. released by i.a.r.i. new delhi. water melon the important varieties of muskmelon are mentioned here. 1. sugar baby an early american introduction. the fruits are slightly smaller in size weighing 3 to 5 kg round in shape, having bluish black rind, and deep pink flesh with small seeds. the fruits matures in 85 days. released by i.a. r.i. new delhi. 2. improved shipper an introduction from u.s.a. big sized melon, weighing 8 to 9 kg. the fruit is dark green with moderate sweetness. released by punjab agricultural university ludhiana. 3. asahi yamato it is a mid season japanese introduction producing medium sized fruits averaging 6 to 8 kg. the rind colour is light green with deep pink flesh. the fruits matures after 95 days. released by 1ar!, new delhi. 4. durgapura meetha a late cultivar maturing in 125 days, fruits round with green rind, rind thick with good keeping qualities, flesh sweet, weighing 6 to 8 kg released by agricultural research station. there are several cultivars, locally grown which are named after the region in which they are grown, such as farukhabadi, moradabadi, faizabadi of uttar pradesh. most of them have fruits with dark green colour or pale green with black strips, moderately sweet with large seeds, weighing 8 to 10 kg, with thick rind. there is a local asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 243-247 246 cultivar of jamuna river-bed called as kalagolan, whose flesh is not sweet, but it keeps well for over 2 to 3 months at drastic temperature. other vegetables on the ridges other vegetables are also cultivated like bitter gourd, pointed gourd, sponge gourd, ridge gourd etc some general guidelines have been followed out according to the local and distance marketing in different crops is as follows in the table-2 table 2: important considerations for cucurbits harvesting/marketing sn crops harvesting test method stage of fruit remark 1 cucumber 60-70 days after sowing anthesis duration tender green fruit optimum length 20-25 cm (depending upon variety/ consumers demand) 2 bitter gourd 55-100 days after seed sowing (depending upon variety) anthesis duration tender green fruit optimum length 20-25 cm 3 pointed gourd 80-90 days after transplanting anthesis duration green fruits having tender seeds optimum length 20-25 cm 4 ivy gourd tender immature fruits anthesis duration green fruits having tender seeds optimum length 20-25 cm 5 ash gourd 75-125 days after sowing anthesis duration full mature stage white wax deposition on skin 6 bottle gourd 60-100 days after sowing 12-15 days after fruit setting pressing the skin and little pubescence persisting on the skin nail test light green colour seed should be soft, if examined in transverse section 7 luffa species 55-60 days after sowing, 6-7 days after anthesis anthesis duration fruit should not turn fibrous and picking should be done earlier picking at 4-5 days interval diseases and pests the mixed cropping has some advantages in that it gives river-bed farmer continuous income from march to june, and cushions the losses or failure of any crop. but diseases like mildew and viruses can spread from one cucurbit to other, and their control becomes difficult. the river-bed system is comparatively free from major disease epidemics. diseases a large number of fungal diseases affect the cucurbits. but in river-beds system, a few are important. powdery mildew this is a fungal disease which attacks all cucurbits. it is caused by sphaerotheca fulignea. it is often very severe in rain free growing region, symptoms of white fluffy, circular patches are observed on the undersurface of leaves. in severe cases it may spread to petioles and stems, at later stages brown surface with shriveled leaves appear and lastly defoliation occurs. the perfect stage of the fungus is identified as erisiphe cichoracearum. control the spray of diathane m,.45 (maneb) if given at an early stage and repeated 2 to 3 times can control the disease effectively. the disease is serious in musk melon in punjab and ridge gourd in w. bengal. fusarium wilt it is a common disease occurring in several cucurbits like water melon, musk melon, bottle gourd etc. the causal organism has been identified as f. oxysporium with sub species nivarum affecting water melon and sub species melons affecting musk melon. the disease is also related to the soil temperature. in young seedlings, cotyledons droop and wither. in older plants, leaves wilt suddenly. control the disease can be checked by dressing of soil by captan or hexocaptan or thiride 0.2 to 0.3% solution. anthracnose this disease is very serious in water melon, bottle, gourd, cucumber, snake gourd etc. caused by the fungus colletotrichum. in case of cucumber and musk melon, reddish brown dry leaf spots are formed which often coalesce and cause shriveling and death of leaf. lesions on petiole and stems are water soaked and yellowish. the leaf spots of water melon are black and foliage presents a scorched appearance. control the disease can be controlled by repeated spraying at 5 to 7 days interval of with dithane m -45 (maneb) 0.2% or diathane z-78 (zirab) 0.2% solutions. viral diseases there are a large number of viruses which cause much damage to different cucurbits allover india. identified asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 243-247 247 strains may be several, occurring singly or in mixtures especially in river-beds. the leaves show a molting, mosaic, crinkling and twisting and stunted internodes and flowering in adversely affected. exact transmission is yet to be verified, but, some have shown seed transmission. some transmitted through insect vectors e.g. aphids, but mostly mechanical transmission is most common. some of the important strains identified in i.a.r.i. are as follows. 1. cucumber mosaic virus (cucumis virus i) 2. water melon mosaic virus (poly virus group) 3. tobacco mosaic virus (sap transmission without vector) 4. non-classified consisting of kakari mosaic virus and toris (luffa) mosaic virus. in a survey of river-bed growing different cucurbits, cucumber green mosaic virus, seed-borne musk melon mosaic virus, melon mild mosaic, and melon rings spot virus have been reported. complete control of virus disease is not possible, but spread can be checked if 'precaution is taken in case of mechanical transmission. for controlling viruses, insecticide use may be helpful while for seed borne, seeds from the virus affected plants should be avoided. pests the pests like aphids and red pumpkin beetle are usually noted in early stages of crops. the fruit-fly incidence is more in pointed gourd and mite infestation increases in arid situations, when the day temperature rises above 40°c. for further details on diseases and pests of cucurbits. mineral deficiencies nonpathogenic diseases mostly caused by mineral deficiencies are also prevalent in some situations. this is a special problem in river-beds. absence of rich sub-soil, silt or alluvium beneath the sandy layer and leaching of nutrients due to sandy substrate sometimes cause deficiencies of macro and micro nutrients. references gangwar b. (1974) “diara land farming – an agricultural review 1974”, indian council of agriculture research p.71-80. chaudhary partha and chatterjee ranjit (2009) “off season cultivation of cucurbits in diara land”, a livelihood alternative. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. acknowledgement: author wish to express his thanks to federal atvet project (mr. gashaw geda) for financial support to conduct the study. my family (youdit, haben, habtamu and tamiru) deserve special thanks for their patience, love and encouragement to finalize the study. farmers’ evaluation of upland rice varieties in fogera district, south gondar, ethiopia yemane asmelash (college of agriculture and environmental sciences (caes), bahir dar university, p. o. box. 79, ethiopia) citation: yemane asmelash (2012) “farmers’ evaluation of upland rice varieties in fogera district, south gondar, ethiopia”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 604 – 608. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 604-608. 604 author(s) yemane asmelash college of agriculture and environmental sciences (caes), bahir dar university, p. o. box. 79, ethiopia farmers’ evaluation of upland rice varieties in fogera district, south gondar, ethiopia abstract the study was conducted in fogera district, south gondar zone, amhar national regional state. three kebeles among the 15 kebeles of upland rice growers of the district were selected purposively and a total of 60 selected households were interviewed to generate primary data. preference ranking technique was employed to identify farmers’ improved upland rice varieties evaluation criteria. the result of the preference ranking shows that market demand, grain yield, taste, drought resistance, and early maturity are the five most important traits required to adopt improved upland rice variety in the study area. therefore, attempts to promote transformation in agriculture through improved upland rice variety could be successful if these evaluation criteria are taken in consideration. keywords: upland rice, fogera, evaluation, nerica-3 & 4 introduction rice is among the most important cereals and root crops grown in different parts of ethiopia as food crop. it is reported that the potential rice production area in ethiopia is estimated to be about thirty million hectares (moard, 2010). the inability of farmers to achieve high yield levels has been blamed on many different sources. the researches lack of understanding of the farmer problems and the conditions under which they operate may result in the development of inappropriate technology (franzel and van houten, 1992) and the way they assess new technologies (van veldhuizen et al., 1997). in many countries, extension recommendations are developed by researchers on experiment stations whose work is aimed at maximizing the yields per unit of land area and researchers criteria for evaluation of new technologies are much different from those farmers, whereas the objectives of researchers is often to maximize yields or profit, farmers seek to maximize their welfare, which in addition to yield and profit may include minimizing risk and seasonal distribution of food supply. farmers may have different priorities depending on their socio-economic positions, or sex, or age, and their preferences may change over time, for example, due to change in household situation or market conditions. agricultural scientists on research stations were frequently successful in dramatically increasing yields per hectare under controlled, experimental conditions, but their technologies often were not adopted by farmers because of constraints farmers faced or because the technologies did not meet farmers needs. for example, in ethiopian high yielding sorghum varieties were rejected by farmers because they are susceptible to damage by birds; and farmers lacked the labour required to protect the varieties (franzel and van houten, 1992). farmers identify and select the types of crops most likely to do well in their areas. selection is normally preceded by extensive discussion both within the farm family and with neighbours. it is also mentioned farmers technology evaluation criteria such as growth habit, yield, and colour of grain, main uses in the diet, processing and storage qualities, marketability, cost ease of sale, desirability for home consumption, compatibility with existing practices, taste nutritional value, cooking farmers’ evaluation of upland rice varieties .... 605 quality and resistance to pests (van veldhuizen et al., 1997). research methodology the study area the district is located at an average altitude of 1820 above-sea-level in south gondar zone, amhara region, ethiopia. the study area has registered an average annual rainfall of 1284mm and temperature ranging from 10.327.5o c. a total of 220,421 people live in fogera. the number of households in the district amounts to 44,168, out of which 10% are female headed households. topography of the area is mainly characterized as a flat land (i.e. accounts for 76% of the total land in the district).soil texture of 65 % of the district is black soil (fwoard, 2010) sampling and data collection both primary and secondary data sources were used. discussion with farmers and agricultural extension staff was done to generate information. key informants were also used as information source from different actors. a two stage sampling procedure was used to select the kebeles and sample households. in the first stage, three kebeles were selected purposively from 15 kebeles were upland rice was producing, based on their potential of improved upland rice production and their relative access to past extension support. in the second stage, after lists of farmers were obtained from the district agriculture and rural development office, farmers who were cultivating upland rice in three kebeles that was all 60 sample household heads were taken as respondent using probability proportional to size (pps). analytical framework the analysis frame for farmers’ evaluation criteria of upland rice varieties were conducted through farmers’ group discussions (fgd) which is one of the techniques of participatory rural appraisal (pra) and analyzed using preference ranking method (prm). result and discussion introduction this study intended to examine the farmers’ evaluation criteria of improved upland rice varieties in the study area, fogera district. some issues on upland rice production in the study area the following information was collected from farmers’ group, the development a gents working in sampled kebeles and from district agricultural office technical staff. the common practice of upland rice production upland rice is grown in rain fed, naturally welldrained soils without surface water accumulation. in fogera district the cropping season for upland rice varieties begins in the month of end of may. in general, upland rice can grow in any environment with at least 15 to 20 mm of five days rainfall during the growing cycle. during germination and early growth stages, 15 mm per five days rainfall is sufficient. when dry nerica seeds are sown directly, it takes five days for the seedlings to emerge. farmers in fogera use broadcasting sowing method and the seed rate is 80100kg/ha. majority of the farmers use organic fertilizer in the form of manure, compost and crop residues. first weeding is done within 2 to 3 weeks after emergence, farmers practice the second weeding 6 to 7 weeks after emergence and the type of weeding they use is hand weeding. they also weed for a third time, if necessary. blast, brown spot, grain discoloration are among the diseases found in the upland rice growers and farmers control these diseases by using clean and healthy seeds. birds are damaging agents for the crop and farmers in this area use to erect scarecrows randomly in the field and discouraging birds from breeding by cutting nearby trees and destroying roosting sites. farmers harvest the crop when the grains are hard and turning yellow, this is about 30-40 days after flowering. they use sickles to cut the stems and lay the harvested crop in upright position for drying before threshing. they thresh using oxen power or human labor to avoid losses. the small holders’ rice farmers have not dehulling facilities; rather they bring to processors which are commonly located in production areas. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 604-608. 606 during the harvesting time both women and men are engaged. rice marketing after upland rice has been harvested, most farmers use storing as a marketing strategy and few of them sell immediately. post harvest losses are including threshing, proper storage facilities and make it impossible to produce high quality upland rice that does not contain gravel, uneven grains and a lot of broken grains which prevent which prevent upland rice cannot compete effectively with imported rice as the consumers preferred choice. there are few millers or processors which directly buy the products from the farmers in the area and these millers determine the market price acting as traders (wholesalers and retailers). the retailers are the petty shops found in the nearby town. the major constraints in the rice marketing in the area are: lack of knowledge in grading, price seasonality, and lack of group marketing options (cooperative unions) lack of access to market information. rice traders in the study area have three market outlets from woreta town. these are bahirdar 55km to south, gondar 120km in the north, and debretabor 45km to east of woreta town. farmers’ evaluation criteria of improved upland rice varieties to improve the upland rice varieties, national efforts have been made and recently rice strategic plan has been established under the moard. regional research centres like arari, non-governmental organizations, jica, sg-2000 are working collaboratively with woard to boost production and productivity of rice as well as upland rice. nerica (nerica-3& 4 and superica-1) varieties are released and farmers living in nonwater logging areas are benefiting from these varieties. however, among the released varieties nerica-4 is widely adopted in different hill areas of the district. despite the efforts of extension system and other stakeholders adoption of improved upland rice varieties in the study area is still low. farmers have their own preference criteria for adoption among the released varieties, which in most cases not considered by research and extension functionaries. the fair majority (90.0%) of sample farmers preferred nerica4 for its market demand, grain yield, taste and other favoured attributes. in the study area nerica-4 variety performed better yield in upland and non flooding zones whereas superica-1 showed better performance on excess moisture available flooding zones. the respondents mentioned that the better yield performance had an implication on the increase in income of the farmers through the market demand. now-a-days, the importance of understanding farmers' technology preference becomes an important issue by the research and extension system. many technologies disseminated to farmers are simply rejected by farmers due to inconsistence with preference criteria between technology generators and end users. the study results provided in table 5 below clearly indicate that the farmers consider 19 attributes in deciding their preference criteria (evaluation) for adoption of upland rice variety (nerica4). table 1: variety selection criteria ranking and variety preference by adopter sample rank given by respondents n total weight rank position 1 2 3 4 5 market demand 22 4 2 6 3 37 147 1 st grain yield 19 8 3 2 5 37 145 2nd taste 2 11 10 9 9 41 121 3rd drought resistance 6 13 7 2 28 105 4th early maturity 6 6 6 4 4 24 84 5th insect resistance 1 2 7 8 7 25 57 6th farmers’ evaluation of upland rice varieties .... 607 straw yield 4 4 9 7 24 53 7th easiness in harvesting 1 3 4 3 4 15 35 8th ease of threshing 1 6 4 3 14 33 9th swelling in cooking 3 3 4 4 14 33 9th grain size 1 2 3 6 17 10th cooking easiness 1 4 5 10 17 10th color of grain 1 1 5 7 10 11th disease resistance 1 0 1 1 0 3 10 11th lodging resistance 2 2 8 12th quality straw 1 2 1 4 8 12th human labor requirement 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13th high input requirement 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13th weed competition 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 13th source: own survey, 2010 key: the total weight is the sum of rank order frequencies multiplied respectively by 5 for the 1st position, by 4 for 2nd position, by 3 for the 3rd position, by 2 for 4th position and 1 for the 5th position in the five point continuum. in view of that, market demand, grain yield, taste, drought resistance, early maturity, straw yield, and easiness in harvesting were most preferred attributes of improved upland rice varieties in order as ranked by sample households (table 1). during group discussion, farmers mentioned that, market demand gives an opportunity to sell the production in a better price and improve their status of income and living condition. the second consideration to produce improved upland rice was its yield advantage as compared to other crops and taste is important attribute as per the market demand. drought resistance was also other preferred attribute which reduces crop loss during unconditional rainfall pattern. early maturity as preferred attribute, gives an opportunity to harvest earlier and solve their economical as well as social issues and also in some cases it helps them to plant the second crop on the same plot. in conclusion, the research and extension system of the country has to give more emphasis to participatory research which considers farmers’ technology preference. to compare and evaluate technological options, it is necessary to assess the importance of each of improved upland rice characteristics relative to each other (i.e., farmers’ demand for these characteristics). comparison of upland rice varieties was conducted through preference rating. based on scale: 1 = poor, 2 = good and 3 = very good with 60 farmers who adopted improved upland varieties. non-adopters were not able to rate traits of improved upland rice since most of them did not know their important traits. according to the woreda office of agriculture and rural development, the improved varieties that farmers currently use are nerica-4 and nerica-3. unfortunately, farmers do not use specific names for the different improved varieties; they call them collectively as “gobba” meaning “rice which is grown up hills”. hence, the improved varieties were handled as one variety and preference rating was conducted with two major local varieties, x-jiigna and gumara. the results of preference rating are shown in table 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 604-608. 608 table 2: average ratings of important characteristics of improved upland rice variety and local rice varieties characteristics improved ( n=60) rank x-jiigna n= 45 rank gumara n=15 rank market demand 2.67 1 2.34 2 1.20 5 grain yield 2.64 2 2.54 1 2.02 2 taste 2.20 3 1.45 4 2.19 1 draught resistance 1.96 4 1.86 3 1.54 3 early maturity 1.52 5 1.32 5 1.35 4 as indicated in table 2 most of sample households prefer improved variety as best variety with its important attributes of market demand, grain yield, taste, drought resistance and early maturity. the other point explained by the farmers in group discussion is that the major reasons why non-adopters are not cultivating improved upland rice varieties are: seed was not available on time, and not having typical soil type needed for upland rice production. conclusion and recommendation for the upland rice variety evaluation purpose, 19 different technology traits were identified through reconnaissance survey conducted with extension performers and farmers’ selection and evaluation criteria of improved upland rice varieties were revealed through interview and group discussions. in this respect, the ranking exercise shows market demand, grain yield, taste, drought resistance, early maturity are the five most important traits to adopt improved upland rice variety in the study area. evaluation of improved upland rice traits ranking revealed that, farmers’ technology choice is not based only on grain yield or profit but also on some of traits such as grain yield, fodder yield, taste, drought resistance, early maturity, and ease of threshing. this yieldoriented approach is not relevant for technology adoption by itself, because farmers need a technology that has multiple advantages. hence, in order to stimulate and gear up improved upland rice variety improvements in quality aspect of grain and fodder as well as resistance to environmental factors are utmost essential, and involving farmers in the process of technology development is also crucial. references franzel, steven and helen van houten, (1992) “research with farmers : lesson from ethiopia”, c.a.b. international, oxon; uk. fwoard (fogera woreda office of agriculture and rural development), 2010. progress report and information posted on office (unpublished). moard (ministry of agriculture and rural development), 2010. annual report. ethiopia, addis abeba. van veldhuizen, laurens van, ann watersbayer and henk de zeeuw (1997) “developing technology with farmers: a trainer’s guide for participatory learning”, zed books ltd, london. data envelopment analysis approach to resource – use efficiency among rice farmers in anambra state – nigeria publisher: asian economic and social society issn: 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012 efficiency of resource use by rice farmers in ebonyi state, south east nigeria: a data envelopment analysis ogisi o’raye d. (department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria) chukwuji, christopher, o. (department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria) okeke, daniel, c. (department of agricultural education, nwafor orizu college of education, nsugbe, anambra state, nigeria) citation: ogisi o’raye d., chukwuji, christopher, o. and okeke daniel, c. (2012): “efficiency of resource use by rice farmers in ebonyi state, south east nigeria: a data envelopment analysis”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 149-154. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 149-154 149 author(s) ogisi o’raye d. department of agricultural economics and extension delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria chukwuji christopher, o. department of agricultural economics and extension delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria okeke daniel, c. department of agricultural education, nwafor orizu college of education, nsugbe, pmb 1734, onitsha anambra state, nigeria email: olisdon@yahoo.com efficiency of resource use by rice farmers in ebonyi state, south east nigeria: a data envelopment analysis abstract this study investigated the technical and scale efficiencies in rice production by rice farmers in ebonyi state nigeria using the data envelopment analysis (dea). data was collected from a sample of 180 farmers using multi-stage sampling technique. data were analysed using descriptive statistics and data envelopment analysis (dae) approach. the result showed that majority of the rice farmers were operating with increasing returns to scale 77.2%, 18.99% decreasing returns to scale and only 3.9% with constant returns to scale. the result further indicated that only 5.56% of the farmers were 100% technically efficient in resource – utilization under variable returns to scale (vrs). result of the analysis also showed that education level, farmers experience and extension agents visit significantly influenced the efficiency level of the rice farmers. farm size was however negatively correlated and had no significant effect on resource use efficiency of the rice farmers. the variables having significant influences on technical and scale efficiencies of the farmers such as education and extension agents visit should be improved upon to enhance the farmers efficiency level and reduce resource wastage and increased cost of production. keywords: data envelopment analysis, resource use, efficiency, nigeria introduction agriculture contributes about 40% of the gross domestic product (gdp) and provides 88% non-oil earnings. the agricultural gdp is made up by crops (85%), livestock (10%, fisheries (4%) and forestry (1%). more than 90% of this agricultural output is provided by small-scale farmers with less than two (2) hectares under cultivation (fao, 1997, fma and wr (2008). agricultural sector has performed far below expectation in providing cheap and affordable food in the table of average nigerian despite all the productive potentials in terms of land, labour and capital resources that are available in abundance. rice is a staple food crops in nigeria and the ecological nature of the nigerian environment is aptly very much suitable for cultivation of different rice varieties. rice is not only a key source of food but a major employer of labour and source of income (warda, 2004). the potential land area for rice production is between 4.6million and 4.9million hectares. however, only 1.7 million or 35% of this is cropped to rice, (singh et al. 1997). local rice production has not kept pace with domestic consumption demand (irr, 1995). declining productivity is begin witnessed in many countries and farmers need new approaches and technologies to produ -ce more rice on existing or less land and water with limiting and or expensive inputs. minimizing the yield gap between what is currently harvested by farmers and the achievable highest yield is possible through efficient resource utilization (irri, 1995). efficiencies accounts for the effectiveness with which given resource inputs are used to produce outputs. it can be considered also in terms of the optimal combination of inputs to achieve a given level of outputs. according to alimi (2000), resources must be available and efficiently used in order to achieve optimum production level. helfand (2003) emphasized that the analysis of efficiency is generally associated with the possibility of farms producing a certain optimal level of output from a given bundle of resources, or certain level of output at least cost. the productivity of farmers has remained all time low leading to massive importation and depletion of the nations foreign reserve. the few available resources are not perfectly applied and utilized in the production process. this scenario is witnessed in the over application or under utilization of these resources with consequent effect on poor productivity – yield per hectare and income of farmers. it becomes necessary therefore for an in depth examination mailto:olisdon@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 149-154 150 of all factors of agricultural productivity especially as it concerns resource–use efficiency using data envelopment analysis with a view at improving farmers productivity level. hence, the specific objectives of this study are to: 1. examine the production characteristics of the rice farmers in the study area; 2. estimate the technical efficiency as well as ascertain the nature of returns to scale that exist in the rainfed rice production system. methodology the research was conducted in ebonyi state, southeast nigeria. the state is in tropical rain forest zone and the vegetation is a mixture of rich savannah and tropical rain forest (ebsmls, 2001). multi-stage random sampling technique was employed in this study. three local government areas (lgas) that produce rice in commercial quantity were purposively selected. the next stage was the random sampling of four communities per lga and, fifteen rice farmers from each community, given a total sample size of 180 respondents. data for the study was obtained through the use of well structured questionnaire. data were analysed using descriptive statistics – mean, percentages and frequency distribution. resource use efficiency was achieved using data envelopment analysis approach. model specification data envelopment analysis (dea) is a performance measurement technique which employs linear programming techniques to measure efficiency as the distance of each firm from a non-parametric production frontier constructed from convex combinations of observed input-output combinations. the dea frontier technology is formed as a non-parametric, piece-wise linear combination of observed “best-practice” activities. data points are enveloped with liner segments, and efficiency scores are calculated relative to the frontier (coelli et al. 1998). one of the limitations of the dea is that efficiency is measured relative to this frontier, where all deviations from the frontier are assumed to be inefficient (johanson, 2005). coelli (1996) reported that where all decision making units (dmus) are not operating at optimal scale, due to a number of constraints limiting their ability to do so, the use of variable returns to scale (vrs) to characterize the production process is ideal. the use of vrs specifications permits the calculation of technical efficiency devoid of scale efficiency effects. the input oriented model measures how much the ith dmu’s input can be proportionally reduced without any loss in output. in order to derive the economic efficiency (ee) of the ith firm following from coelli (1996), the following input-oriented dea model was applied: min xi * pi xi * subject to yi + y  0, xi* – x  0, n1 = 1   0 (0, 1) where pi represents a vector of input prices for the ith dmu and xi * which is calculated by the lp is the costminimizing input bundle faced by the firm. scale efficiency occurs when the firm is operating at constant returns to scale (crs). scale efficiency varies between zero and one in value. scale efficiency scare of one indicates that the firm is operating at an optimal scale that is crs. scale inefficiency is usually a result of increasing or decreasing returns to scale (sharma et al. (1999). the specification of non-increasing returns model is given as min  , st y1 + y  0, xi* – x  0, n  1   0 the specification of non-decreasing returns model is given as min  , st y1 + y  0, xi – x  0, n1  1   0 the influence of different factors on technical and scale inefficiencies of the rice farms was explained by employing tobit regression model. this involves the relation of efficiency measures to sets of explanatory variables presumed to account for differences in efficiencies. results and discussion the result of the frequency distribution on production characteristics are shown in table 1. the result indicates that greater percentage (50%) of the farmers had their personal farm land and, 22% cultivate rice on their family land. this implies that the farmers had no restrictions and engage in farm practice suitable to them. under the cropping system, sole cropping (90%) dominate in the study area. the prominent varieties grown are 306 (27%), iron (19%), bg (16%) and, r5 (14%). other varieties cultivated include 14.16, farrow and mass. the land preparation practice is mostly done manually or tractor and manual method. about 39% and 49% of the farmers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 149-154 151 use hired labour and, family and hired labour respectively in their farm operation. the high percentage of this category of labour is expected to have a positive effect on efficiency due to stronger incentives for technical efficiency in small subsistence farming (alamder and oren (2006). family labour alone does not provide adequate labour force sufficient for all the needed farm operations. also, the cost implication of hired labour and the farmer’s financial limitations makes it difficult for them to adequately finance all the labor requirements of their farm hence; they combine family and hired labour. the resource – use efficiency, measured in terms of returns to scale, classified into increasing, decreasing and constant returns to scale (irs, drs, crs) is shown in table 2 and figure 1. the percentage of farmers operating with irs, drs and crs were 77.2%, 18.9% and 3.9% respectively. this shows that majority of the rice farmers are operating with irs. the result implies that only 3.9% of the rice farmers were operating at their optimal scale, while 18.9% were operating above their optimal resource utilization. the result is consistent with orefi, (2011). the distributions of technical efficiency under variable returns to scale (vrs) is presented in table 3 and figure 2. about 32.78% of the farmers were 40-59% efficient in resource utilization, 21.67% between 60-79% and 11.10% 80 – 99% efficient. only 5.56% of the rice farmers were 100% technically efficient in resource utilization. since economies of scale is usually a consequence of better and more efficient use of production resources. (sharma et al, 1999), by operating with crs, these categories of farmers could be more competitive since their reduced costs would probably translate to increased profit. the explanatory variables presumed to affect the rice farmers efficiency include education, experience, farm size and expansion agent visit. education, experience and extension visit have significant impact on the resource use efficiency of the rice farmers in the study area. the positive sign on the coefficient of these variables indicates that they tend to increase efficiency. the coefficient of farm size was negative and not signed, showing that farm size did not significantly influence the farmers’ level of resource utilization. conclusion and recommendation the technical and scale efficiency estimates were made for the rice farmers in ebonyi state nigeria. the result showed low level of efficiency in resource utilization by the farmers. majority of the farmers were experiencing increasing returns to scale. by operating on an optimal scale (crs), input wastage could be reduced. there is need to improve the farmers education level as well as their contact with extension agents to enhance their productivity through adoption of improved production practices. table 1: production characteristics of the rice farmers variable frequency percentage source of farm land personal level family level communal land rent gift 90 39 24 27 0 50 22 13 15 0 total 180 100 cropping system sole cropping relay cropping inter cropping inter planting 162 16 1 1 90 9 0.5 0.5 total 180 100 varieties grown 14.16 farrow mass bg 306 iron r5 17 11 16 28 49 34 25 9 6 9 16 27 19 14 total 180 100 land preparation method use of tractor manual tillage 13 125 7 70 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 149-154 152 tractor and manual other methods 40 2 22 1 total 180 100 labour use family labour gang work hired labour family and hired labour 17 3 71 89 10 2 3.9 4.9 total 180 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 2: types of returns to scale types of returns frequency percentage increasing returns to scale decreasing returns to scale constant returns to scale 139 34 7 77.2 18.9 3.9 total 180 100 source: field survey 2011 figure 1: types of returns to scale table 3: variable returns technical efficiency technical efficiency frequency percentage less than 20% 20 – 39% 40 – 59% 60 – 79% 80 – 99% 100% 0 52 59 39 20 10 0.00 28.89 32.78 21.67 11.10 5.56 total 180 100 source: field survey 2011 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 increasing decreasing constant returns to scale returns to scale returns to scale 77.2 18.9 3.9 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 149-154 153 figure 2: technical efficiency of farmers table 4: determinants of technical efficiency variable coefficient std. error z-statistic probability education experience farm size extension visit 0.022221 0.004869 -0.075114 0.098749 0.001587 0.000815 0.014042 0.004401 13.99976 5.971015 -1.694103 11.07756 0.0000* 0.0000* 0.0000 0.0000* source: field survey data, 2011 references alamder, t. and oren, m. n. (2006) “determinants of technical efficiency of wheat farm in south eastern anatolia, turkey”, journal of applied sciences, vol. 6(4), pp. 821-30. alimi, t. (2000) “resource use efficiency in food crop production in oyo state of nigeria”, journal of agriculture and environment, vol. 1(1), pp.1-7. coelli, t. j. (1996) “a guide to deap version 2.1: data envelopment analysis (computer) program”, working paper 96/08, centre for efficiency and productivity analysis (cepa), department of econometrics, university of new england, nsw, 2351, australia. coelli, t. j., rao, p. d. s. and batese, g. e. (1998) “an introduction to efficiency and productivity analyses”, kluwer academic publishers. ebonyi state ministry of land and survey (ebsmls) (2001). annual report. ebonyi state government press. fao (1997). tele food fact sheets: fao activities and projects “special programme for food security” ebsmls. (2001) ebonyi state ministry of lands and survey. seeds p.4, f. m. a. and w. r. (2008) federal ministry of agriculture and water resources, national programme for food security. p.8, 11, 12 helfand, s. m. (2003) “farm size and the determinant of productive efficiency in the brazilian centre-west processing”, conference of agriculture economics. durban. south africa (16 th – 22 nd august, 2003) pp. 605 – 612. i.r.r.i (1995) “world rice statistics”, pp. 34-42. johanson, h. (2005) “technical, allocative and economic efficiency in swedish dairy farms: the data envelopment analysis versus the stochastic frontier approach”, poster background paper presented at the xi th international congress of the european association of agricultural economists (eaae), copenhagen, denmark august pp. 24-27, 2005. less than 20% 20-30% 40-59% 60-79% 80-99% 100% 11.10 21.67 5.56 32.78 28.89 0.0 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 149-154 154 orefi, a. (2011) “technical and scale efficiency of small and medium scale maize milling enterprises in south africa: a data envelopment analysis”, nigerian journal of farm management, njfaman. vol. 12(2). p. 57 sharma, k. r., laung, p. s. and zaleski, h. m. (1999) “technical, allocative and economic efficiencies in swine production in hawaii: a comparison of parametric and non parametric approaches”, agricultural economics, vol. 20, pp. 23-35. singh, b. n., fagade, s. ukwungwu, m. n., williams c., jaqtap, s. s. oladimeji, o., effisue, a., and okhidievbia, o. (1997) “rice growing environments and bio physical constraints in different agro-ecological zones in nigeria”, met. journal, vol. 2(1), pp. 35-40. warda (2004) “combining the best of two rice species. nerica – a technology from africa”, o1 bp 4029, abdijan o1, cote d’ivoire publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. acknowledgement: authors thank mr rodrigues, m.n.f. for providing the brazil nuts brown skin produced in the renmero factory brazil nut (bertholettia excelsa h.b.k.) selenium distribution and physical chemical characteristics of shell, brown skin and edible part from two amazon regions daniel manfio., manuel n. f. rodrigues., geovana d. savi and vildes m. scussel (food science and technology department, center of agricultural sciences, federal university of santa catarina, p.o. box 476, florianopolis – sc, cep 88034-001, brazil) citation: daniel manfio., manuel n. f. rodrigues., geovana d. savi and vildes m. scussel (2012): “brazil nut (bertholettia excelsa h.b.k.) selenium distribution and physical chemical characteristics of shell, brown skin and edible part from two amazon regions”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 287-293. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 287-293 287 keywords: amazon basin, brazil nut, brown skin, nut shell, selenium, waste introduction selenium (se) is an essential metabolism trace element that can be found under different forms (inorganic, metallic, oxyanions and organic). it can be present in soils at different levels being wide-spread in china, russia, south and north america which is derived from seleniferous matters (johnson et al. 2010; fordyce, 2005; broadley et al. 2006). the organic se forms is produced by its link to sulfur amino acids (cysteine-cys and methionine-met) forming selenocys (secis) and selenomet (semet) (suzuki, 2005). once the se compounds are recognized as se species, they are transformed to selenide, an intermediate metabolite, and then used for the se-proteins (enzymes) synthesis or excreted. the semet can be transformed to secys through trans-selenation, and be lysed by β-lyase or ylyase enzymes to selenide. it is important to emphasize that; the semet can be used for protein synthesis in the body without distinction between semet and met by the t-rna (suzuki, 2005; schrauzer, 2000). se intake through food varies worldwide due to the different levels found in different food diets. the se content in plants is affected by its concentration in the soil they are grown. similarly, its concentration in animal products depends upon the se content in the diet they eat (barclay et al. 1995; mcnaughton and marks, 2002; pacheco and scussel, 2007; 2011). the same is true for humans. however, in this case, they may also meet se needs by taking supplements and/or vitamin complexes that include minerals (fairweather-tait et al. 2011, manfio et al. 2012). se is known for its antioxidant activity and in the therapeutic aspect, for its chemo preventive and antiviral properties. appropriate amounts of this element are essential for the human body to have a balanced health. several physiological roles are assigned to the presence of se-proteins, such as dna synthesis, that depends upon the presence of se in the catalytic site of trxr (fairweather-tait et al. 2011; rayman, 2005). brazil nut (bertholettia excelsa h.b.k.) selenium distribution and physical chemical characteristics of shell, brown skin and edible part from two amazon regions abstract author(s) daniel manfio., manuel, n. f. rodrigues., geovana d. savi food science and technology department, center of agricultural sciences, federal university of santa catarina, p.o. box 476, florianopolis – sc, brazil vildes m. scussel food science and technology department, center of agricultural sciences, federal university of santa catarina, p.o. box 476, florianopolis – sc, brazil email: vildescussel_2000@yahoo.co.uk brazil nuts (bertholettia excelsa h.b.k.) shell, brown skin and edible part from eastern (e) and central-western (c-w) amazon regions were evaluated for their selenium (se) distribution, physical chemical characteristics regarding proximate composition, nut ratio and water availability (moisture content and water activity). nuts samples were collected from two factories located in manaus and cameta cities (c-w and e, respectively) to where they are delivered from each state (amazonas and para) for processing. se analysis was carried out by mass spectrometry with inductively coupled plasma, proximate composition by the aoac official methods and nut ration by gravimetry. se levels varied among nut parts from the shell to edible part as follows: shell<brown skin<edible part with 0.44/0.31<20.58/6.12<44.13/19.25 mg/kg for manaus/cameta. regarding lipid and protein content, they were low for shell and brown skin, however high in dietary fiber (57.17%). the shell/brown skin/edible part ratio was 4.2/3.8 g (1.2). brown skin weight was only 1.23.05 g of the whole nut. se is a powerful antioxidant for human metabolism balance being the highest concentration detected in the edible part. from the discarded nuts parts, the brown skin had the highest percentage of that element, especially those from c-w region which could be used as a source of se in different food applications. as expected the shell and brown skin showed low level of lipids and proteins, however quite high fiber content, especially the brown skin which is quite promising on the food fiber enrichment point of view. mailto:vildescussel_2000@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 287-293 288 certain types of nuts, especially those of tropical origin, have relatively high levels of se. in a study conducted with different tree nuts authors reported increasing levels of se in different nuts: hazelnuts (0.008 to 0.036 mg/kg); macadamia (from 0.034 to 0.087 mg/kg) and cashew (from 0.17 to 0.39 mg/kg) nuts. they reported that se levels of these nuts were far below the high levels found in the same study for brazil nuts (bertholettia excelsa h.b.k.) with 0.85 to 6.86 mg/kg (barclay et al. 1995). whereas the edible part of the brazil nut is known to contain high amounts of se, which varies with the level present in the amazon soil (pacheco and scussel, 2007), no information on the shelled nut factory wastes shell or brown skin are reported to date. therefore the aim of this study was to determine the se levels in the dry shelled brazil nut wastes for the possibility of further se utilization, thus adding value to the brazil nut producing chain. this is the first study describing the se distribution in brazil nuts different parts. material and methods samples: consisted of dry (processed) in-shell brazil nuts from two amazon regions, medium size type (4050 mm), individual weight average of 8.07 g (min 5.14; max 10.6 – de-mello and scussel, 2007). they were from the eastern (e) and central-western (c-w)* regions of the brazilian amazon basin kindly provided by the factories: renemero (cameta city, para statepa) and ciex (manaus city, amazonas state-ma), respectively. initial moisture content (mc) and water activity (aw) of 5.30/6.02% and 0.61/0.55 for e/c-w. no aflatoxin contamination (up to the method loq = 1.34 ng.g -1 sobolev, 2007). figure 1. a shows the location of the nut trees of the brazilian amazon region and figure 1. b the points of harvesting of each state. a total of 45 kg each were utilized for the study. *important to emphasize that manaus city-ma, although is considered located in the western region, it is very close to the eastern (e) region border, thus called here c-w (figure 1.b). we utilized and referred for this study to the official geographic location of the two main amazon regions as reported by pacheco and scussel (2007). figure 1: (a). brazil nut tree distribution in the south american amazon basin western (occidental) and eastern (oriental) regions. [---] delimited area of the brazil nut tree distribution. [  ] some of the major extractive areas of brazil nuts; (b). northern brazilian states comprising the amazon basin, and the regions of sample collection (central-western region: manaus city and eastern region: cameta city) where nuts collected from each region [--] converge to factories reception for selection and processing (dry in-shell or shelled brazil nut) (pacheco; scussel, 2007, modified by manfio & scussel) standards, reagents and solvents: se standard nist. hydrogen peroxide and nitric acid, supra pure grade were from veteco. citric acid, glacial acetic acid, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, trichloroacetic acid, ammonium acetate, sodium sulphate sodium hydroxide, potassium sulfate, copper sulfate, titanium dioxide, silver nitrate, anhydrous methyl red indicator, all analytical reagent grade from vetec. ferric chloride from crq and tartaric acid, analar from himed. the solvents acetone, ether, ethanol, petroleum ether, were all analar and fromvetec. easter n wester n a western eastern western eastern macapa ● castanhal ● ● tucurui ● oriximina cameta maraba ● ●santarem ● itatuba parauapeba ● (a) (b) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 287-293 289 equipament and apparatus: microwave digestion system, model ethos plus, from milestone, inductive coupled plasma spectrometer icp, d nexion 300, from perkin elmer. dissecator with  200 mm from diprolab, autoclave from fanen, microbiological oven from tecnal, analytical balance, ay220 from shimadzu and metal crucibles of  70 mm. peristaltic pump, model ms-reglo from ismatec, commercial brazil nuts cracker from ciex, blenders, 1 l of metvisa, pressure cooker, 7 l, panelux, microscope stereoscopic from carlzeiss jena. the scan electronic microscope sem, jsm, from jeol, gold coater, scd500 from leica, digestive kjeldahl system, model q327-26b, splabor, kjeldahl flasks, 800 ml from splabor, analytical balance, metla toledo, adventurer pro, water activity meter, aqualab, soxhlet extractor apparatus, model ma-491, splabor, microbiological oven, 315se, from fanem, spectrophotometer, model 8425a from hewlett-packard and vertical autoclave modelav50, phoenix. brazil nut samples preparation. (a) heating: nuts from each region were submitted to autoclavation/ (to facilitate the brown skin/shell detaching off the edible part as carried out in the factories) and left cooling to proceed for next step: (b) shelling. that was carried out utilizing a commercial nut cracker and (c) nut parts separation. each part was separated into different containing as brown skin, shell and edible part (figure 2), followed by weighing, grinding in a blender and portions separate for se, proximate composition, mc and aw analysis (n=5). figure 2: brazil nut (bertholettia excelsa h.b.k.) samples utilized for the se distribution study: [a] whole, [b) shell, [c] edible nut and [c] brown skin [a] microscope sterioscopic, x1; [b] scan electronic microscope (x50 10kv, 500 µm). selenium analysis: they were performed by icp (us epa, 1996). briefly, samples were digested (0.4g) with hno3 and hydrogen peroxide in microwave digestion system followed by icp analysis. the limit of quantification (loq) was 3.50 mg/kg, which was defined as the lowest point of the calibration curve with high repeatability. the recovery was 92 % (n=5). proximate composition of brazil-nut parts: the nuts shell, brown skin and edible part content of lipids, proteins, dietary fiber, carbohydrates and ash were analyzed according to the aoac official methods (aoac, 2005). temperature (60 and 121°c) and pressure effect on se levels: nut parts were submitted to 60°c (dehydrating temperature – similar to in-shell dry nut process) in a microbiological oven and to 121°c (sterilizing temperature – similar to shelled dry nut process) in an autoclave, both for 120 min. se levels and mc were determined prior and after heating application. mc and aw: were determined by gravimetry (aoac, 2005) and by applied the aqualab apparatus at 25°c, respectively. statistical analysis: they were performed by variance analysis (anova) and included the tukey´s test to evaluate significant differences among the means (p< 0.05). the results were expressed as the mean values and standard errors. [a] [b] whole (a) (b) shell (b) (dry nut) (c) edible part (c) (d) brown skin(d) amêndoa (desidratada) (b)testae (resíduo) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 287-293 290 results and discussion from the data obtained it was possible to observe that the se levels increased among the (a) nut parts and the (b) amazon nut site of collection: from nut shell to edible part and from cameta (e) to manaus (c-w) cities. tables 1 and 2 show the data on se levels, each part proximate composition, mc, aw and weight ratio of each brazil nut part evaluated. distribution of se in the brazil nut parts and its variations among site of collection levels of se for each nut part increased in the following order: shell < brown skin < edible part reaching 0.44 < 20.58 < 44.13 mg/kg and 0.31 < 6.12 < 19.25 mg/kg for the two amazon site of nut collection, respectively. thus being manaus’ (c-w) with the highest levels. shell, brown skin & edible part se distribution: the se level of the brazil nuts factories waste brown skin was 3.5 fold higher for c-w (22.58 mg/kg) than the e (6.12 mg/kg) city of collection. the values obtained for the shells, despite the nuts origin, were inferior to those of the other nuts components (c-w: 0.44 and e: 0.31 mg/kg), showing that shells do not add to the whole brazil nut se content, but the brown skin. therefore, the brown skin of manaus city, c-w region (20.58 mg/kg) could be consider a possibility of se extraction for use in food fortification and/or in supplements, followed by that of cameta city, eastern regions, however, with a lower concentration (6.12 mg/kg). as expected the edible part, already reported by several authors (barclay et al. 1995; pacheco and scussel, 2007; furr et al. 1979; secor and lisk, 1989; chang et al. 1995; vonderheide et al. 2002; coutinho et al. 2002; chunhieng et at., 2004; kannamkumarath et al. 2002) showed to be rich in se with its content detected more than 2 fold higher in the c-w (44.13 mg/kg) than the e (19.25 mg/kg) site of collection. central-western & eastern brazil nuts se variation: whole and/or edible part (despite if with or without brown skin on) brazil nuts se variation throughout the amazon region has been reported in the literature (barclay et al. 1995; pacheco and scussel, 2007; furr et al. 1979; secor and lisk, 1989; chang et al. 1995; vonderheide et al. 2002; coutinho et al. 2002; chunhieng et at., 2004). that variation is dependent of several factors as the soil se concentration; the chemical se form in different amazonian soil (acid or alkaline rivers); presence of heavy metal (hg, mining); rain intensity and the genetic characteristics of the plant on metabolizing the se absorbed from the soil and also the forms that se is present in the nut (semet and secys) (pacheco and scussel, 2007). it has been reported that the soil of eastern amazon is rich in se with concentrations ranging from 5.2 to 9.4 mg/kg which are much higher than the western region (1.0 to 2.4 mg/kg) (nogueira, 2002). in fact, the soil se concentrations of itacoatiara and autazes cities (which are located closer to the border between w and e regions) are higher with 9.4 and 8.1 mg/kg, respectively. fao in 1993 reported that the reason that brazil nut tree concentrates se is due to the fact that se is very similar chemically to sulfur, an essential nutrient for the nut seed amino acids (met and cys) and protein formation. sulfur is often deficient in amazon soils, especially after decades of brazil nut harvesting and export. if the soil contains significant amounts of se, it may be used by the plant instead of sulfur (fao, 1993). despite the amazon location and soil type, brazil nut trees also have special absorption capacity due to their long roots system which reaches dipper soil layers finding nutrients, different of the well-known sandy/rather poor surface amazon soil. effect of temperature on brazil nuts se levels: during this study, questions raised whether temperature would have some effect on brazil nuts se level, which was checked. the data on nuts submitted to 60°c and 121°c in oven (temperature) and autoclave (temperature + moist pressure), respectively are in table 1. temperature did not affect se levels, despite the method applied. in fact, it increased by 0.3%, due to moisture evaporation, leading to a false level increment, reaching at 60 and 121°c, levels of 20.65 and 6.13 mg/kg for c-w nut brown skin and 22.64 and 6.15 mg/kg for e, respectively. as se forms in brazil nuts are mainly water soluble (fairweather-tait et al. 2011), the inclusion of any water step probably would have interfered on its loss during processing. however that does not occur throughout the whole brazil nuts drying process in the factory. other food processing could lead to se loss though, such as boiling. in addition, the high lipid (6570%) content in nuts cells can play a role on reducing se extraction through moist. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 287-293 291 table 1: selenium distribution in the brazil nut (berthollethia excelsa h.b.k.) parts collected from the central-western and eastern brazilian amazon basin brazil nuta from amazon basin regions* name botany c-w (manaus)b e (cameta)b t°c effect on se (mg/kg) weight (g) se level (mg/kg)* weight (g) se level (mg/kg)* 40°c (cw/e) 121°c (cw/e) nut parts shell tegument 4.2±1.21 0.44±0.02 (0.71%) 4.0±3.13 0.31±0.03 (1.21%) na** na brown skin testae 1.2±3.05 20.58±0.32 (30.7%) 1.2±2.03 6.12±0.05 (23.8%) 20.65/6.13 20.64/6.15 edible endosperm 3.8±4.15 44.13±0.25 (68.6%) 3.6±3.21 19.25±0.11 (75.0%) 44.26/19.32 44.26/19.35 in-shell nut whole*** seed 8.033.01 32.65±0.07 8.1243.2 12.28±0.06 na na c-w: central-western e: eastern se: selenium a medium size type, weight average 8 g/width 19.9-26.3 for face abc, s/n ratio 1.2 (classif. by de mello; scussel (13) length 40-50 mm, bnuts collected from each region converging to the factory site c-w and e, respectively *standard deviation (n=5) t°c temperature ** not analysed *** analysed whole nut (shell+brown-skin+edible-part) all together brazil nuts parts proximate composition and nut ratio despite of the large amount of information regarding brazil nut edible part proximate composition, nothing has been published regarding the factories dry shelled nut discarded products: shell and brown skin. in this study we were able, apart from, se quantification, to determine their proximate composition (table 2). although the shell and brown skin showed low level of lipids (7.3/7.23 and 15.83/16.04%) and proteins (3.83/3.26 and 8.34/7.91%) for c-w/e sites of collection, respectively, the fiber content was quite high for those factory wastes especially the brown skin, reaching 57.17% of dietary fiber which is quite promising on the food fiber enrichment point of view. regarding the mc and aw of the brazil nut components of c-w/e amazon origin utilized in the current work, they were for edible nut, shell and brown skin of 4.20/4.21; 3.32/4.12; 4.81/3.48% and 0.65/0.65; 0.70/0.62; 0.32/0.45 for mc and aw, respectively. table 2: proximate composition of brazil nut (berthollethia excelsa h.b.k.) shell, brown skin and edible parts from different amazon regions brazil nut c-wa/eb amazon region lipid (%) protein (%) carbohydrates ash (%) mcc (%) aw d starch (%) dietary fiber (%) nut parts shell 7.30/7.23 3.82/3.26 3.34/.3.53 32.25/22.91 5.80/6.77 3.32/4.12 0.70/0.62 brown skin 15.83/16.04 8.34/7.91 3.80/3.902 57.13/60.02 4.25/4.32 4.81/3.48 0.32/0.45 edible part 68.00/66.43 15.90/16.34 2.41/2.37 5.91/4.05 3.59/3.70 4.20/4.21 0.65/0.65 in-shell nut whole 31.15/32.90 9.96/10.02 24.60/25.32 22.7/23.03 2.45/2.64 5.3/6.02 0.61/0.55 acentral-western beastern cmoisture content dwater activity brazil nut parts ratio the ratio of the three components (shell/brown skin/edible part) of the brazil nuts did not differ much from that established in the literature (de-mello and scussel, 2007) for shell/edible part of 4.2/3.8 or 53/47% for a medium size nut (8 g) with a shell/nut ratio of 1.2. the amount of brown skin obtained from each nut did not reach 2 g, i.e., average of 1.23.05 g thus not interfering to that ratio. conclusion se plays an important role in human’s metabolism and health. brazil nuts are se rich, mainly the edible part however; the brown skin holds a quite high portion of that element, apart from being rich in fiber. currently the factories that produce shelled dry brazil nuts consider brown skins as waste, thus discarding or sending them together with the nut shell residue for fuel. considering the importance of se and the need of human body se intake, brown skin could be consider a possibility of utilization either in supplements or to be added in food for se and fiber enrichment (shakes, ice creams, cheese) (pereira et al. 2010a; 2010b). for those use, brown skin should pass through quality and safety analyses, as currently is applied for the edible part of brazil nuts (either in-shell or shelled). other studies need to be carried out regarding differences on brazil asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 287-293 292 nuts varieties that growth in the soils of the amazon rain forest. references aoac official methods of analysis (2005) “nuts and nuts products”, 18 th ed, vol. ii, chap. 40. barclay, m. n. i., mcpherson, a., dixon, j. 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(2010a) “sensory evaluation of standard hard cheese minas type added with brazil nut a high antioxidant delicatessen”, icabe, quebec, abstract book, pp. 23-28. pereira, c., schmidt, c. a. p., ishihan, r.y., koelln, f. s., scussel, v. m. (2010b) “microbiological evaluation of standard hard cheese minas type added with high selenium brazil nut paste”, iufost, cape town, abstract book, pp. 109-118. rayman, m. p. (2005) “selenium in cancer prevention: a review of the evidence and mechanism of action”, proceedings of the nutrition society vol. 64, pp. 527-42. /auth:furr,ak /auth:macdaniels,lh /auth:st%20john,le /auth:gutenmann,wh /auth:pakkala,is /auth:lisk,dj /auth:lisk,dj /pmid:444731 http://lattes.cnpq.br/0309251615883979 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 287-293 293 schrauzer, g. n. (2000) “selenomethionine: a review of it nutritional significance, metabolism and toxicity”, journal of nutrition, vol. 130, pp. 1653-56. secor, c. l., lisk, d. j. (1989) “variation in the selenium content of individual brazil nuts”, journal of food safety, vol. 9, pp. 279-81. sobolev, v. s. (2007) “simple, rapid, and inexpensive cleanup method for quantitation of aflatoxins in important agricultural products by hplc”, journal of agriculture food chemistry, vol. 55, pp. 2136-41. suzuki, k. t. (2005) “metabolomics of selenium: selenium metabolites based on speciation studies”, journal of science, vol. 51, pp. 107-44. us epa united states environmental protection agency. inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (1996) “sw-846 test methods for evaluating solid wastes physical/chemical methods”, method 6010b. vonderheide, a. p., wrobel, k., kannamkumarath, s. s., b’hymer, c., montesbaýon, m., león, c.p., and caruso, j. a. (2002) “characterization of selenium species in brazil nuts by hplc-icp-ms and es-ms”, journal of agriculture food chemistry, vol. 50, pp. 5722-28. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 632 effects of continuous cultivation of soil on termites (isoptera) diversity and abundance in savannas of northern of côte d’ivoire coulibaly ténon, boga jean-pierre, yapi ahoua and kouassi kouassi philippe laboratory of zoology and animal biology, ufr-biosciences, university fhb, côte d'ivoire abstract to highlight the continuous cultivation of soil on biodiversity in savannas of korhogo in the north of côte d’ivoire, termites were studied with regard to their use as bio-indicators of habitat change in the tropics. using a standardized method, termites were sampled in five types of plots (pcr 1, pcr 2, pcr 3, pcr 10 and pcr 30) which age of continuous cultivation varies from 1 to 30 years in comparison with the primary savanna. the diversity of termites has differed statistically between the habitat types. the species richness highest in the primary savanna (24 species), decreases progressively with the continuous cultivation of soil to reach lowest in the elderly cultures plots prc 30 (9 species), either 64 % of reduction. continuous cultivation of soil causes a drastic reduction in soil-feeders group (75 % of reduction on pcr 2). but there was no significant change in termites’ diversity between the savanna and the recent culture pcr 1. the cultivation of soil would have, in the first years, a positive effect on the diversity and abundance of wood feeders. this study shows the impact inflicted by the continuous cultivation of soil on the communities of termites in korhogo region. keywords: soils, continuous cultivation, diversity, abundance, termites introduction1 termites are one of the major biotic components of tropical ecosystems where they are, with earthworms and ants, real ecosystem engineers (jones et al., 1994 lavelle et al., 1997; dangerfield et al., 1998; konaté, 1998). the ecological importance of termites is observed particularly through their role (1) in food webs where they act as main decomposers and are the prey of many other organisms, (2) in soil structure as well as the storage and the decomposition of plantderived organic matter (bignell et al., 1983; matsumoto and abe, 1979; konaté et al., 2003) and, finally, (3) as the leading agency bioturbator in some soils. corresponding author’s details: name: coulibaly ténon email address: tenondezana@yahoo.fr termites have long been presented as the guarantor of the monitoring of natural ecosystems and processed because of their hypersensitivity against environmental changes (lavelle et al., 1981; dibog et al., 1998; eggleton, 2000; donovan et al., 2002; konaté et al., 2005) and can be used as biological indicators to assess the state of degradation of ecosystems. thus, several studies have shown that heavy deforestation, urban sprawl and the cultivation of the land are nowadays the factors that affect the balance of ecosystems and hence that of biodiversity. termite habitat degradation has resulted in the extinction of certain species of invaluable ecological and economic importance (wilson, 1989). but, in côte d’ivoire studies on the biodiversity of termites in connection with asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:tenondezana@yahoo.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 633 the exploitation of the environment are very seldom, and most of the few studies, conducted concerned only forest zone located in the south of the country (josens, 1972; sangaré and bodot, 1980; konaté et al., 2005; tra bi et al., 2012). the state of biodiversity of termites in relation to their habitat degradation in the northern region of the country has not been done. yet, each year large areas are destroyed for the establishment of cash crops. korhogo region is no exception to this reality with the cotton growing development in recent decades. zagbaï (2005) recently found that this region is characterized by high population density and scarcity of undeveloped areas. according to him, this situation began since the 1970s. in fact, during the decade 1970 1980, development policy and economic rebalanceing in northern côte d’ivoire was taken by the authorities. thus, as of 1973 the ivorian company for textile development (cidt) encouraged farmers to increase cotton cultivation with the plow. to facilitate the use of the plow by farmers cidt therefore freely did the clearing and grubbing of large areas (blocks) by abusively removing trees (peltre-wurtz et al., 1991). this situation would be the origin of the scarcity of unexploited areas (natural savanna), therefore forcing farmers to operate continuously the same land for decades. the animal care and manure from domestic animals supported by chemical fertilizers ensure the maintenance of the fertility of the fields (fallow is rarely practiced). these practices have certainly affected the diversity of soil fauna and especially of termites in the area. faced with this situation, it is urgent to make an inventory to check the status of the diversity of termites in this area. it is in this context that this study was conducted with the general aim to show the effect of continuous cultivation of soil on the biodiversity of termites in the region of korhogo.thus, an estimate of the diversity of termites was realized, using the standard method of rapid assessment of biodiversity in crops including continuous operating range in age from 1 to 30 years in comparison with the savannah areas. study area korhogo region is between 8°30 and 10°30 north latitude and 4° and 7° east. it is mainly watered by numerous tributaries white bandama river. the climate is dry sudan tropical with two distinct seasons: the rainy season (monthly rainfall over 50 mm) stretches from aprilmay to october and the dry season from november to may.the average annual rainfall varies between 1000 and 1600 mm. rainfall is the major climatic factor (sinaly, 1978; cidt, 1990, 2000; diomandé, 2002 and hala, 2006). the hygrometry average is 65-70%. the annual average temperature varies between 24°c and 36°c (nannou, 2001).granite and shale are rocks substrate characteristics of the region. the soils are generally weak in humus and of moderate fertility. the sampled areas are the savannah and plots which ages of continuous culture varies from 1 to 30 years. savanna in the region, we have the savannah depending on the presence or absence of forests, called shrub lands and grassy savannas. they are unprotected and strongly influenced savannas by human activities such as bush fires and beef herds. due to the scarcity of natural habitats in the surrounding areas of the city of korhogo, sampling in this type of habitat was realized in guiembé, village at 30 km of korhogo. three transects were sampled. cultures in korhogo region, farmers practice traditional agriculture, which uses manual tools and modern tools (plows, tractors). two types of cultures are performed, food crops asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 634 and cotton farming. the transformation of a natural environment in crop field varies depending on the type of land use. food crops the establishment of a field is done in four major steps: (1) the clearing is to cut down all the undergrowth vegetation and gather it at the base of some trees. (2) the burning, method which consists to burn all plant debris grouped around trees that are killed on this occasion. (3) the plow is turning the soil. it is also to make mounds for yam. in this case, the maximum number of trees is spared to tutor (support) the yam plants. for rice cultivation, plowing is done either at the hoes or with oxen yoked. in this case, some of the trees are cut to prevent damage that would cause their fall on crops. (4) finally, the seeding is the planting of seeds and cuttings. in general, in these new plots of 1 year, farmers engage themselves in associating crop such as yam riceokra or rice maze. the pesticides are not used in this type of culture the first year of soils cultivation; pesticides were not used in this land use type; the ground was covered by woods and dead leaves and the residues of the cultivated crops. growing cotton the cotton is a heliophilous plant that requires a lot of light and heat, depending on the different stages of its cycle (parry, 1982), its culture requires an indispensable sunshine for a good boll opening (robertromuald, 1961).therefore the establishment of new plots of cotton requires. (1) that portion of the trees be uprooted or cut down and burned. (2) then, the soil is plowed with machines or yoked oxen before planting. (3) the massive use of chemical inputs: for a good harvest, is recommended to producers before seeding, spraying his plot with herbicides (roundup (11/ha) or cotodon (4.5 l/ha)). (4) then, 6 insecticides treatments are applied on cotton till the harvest with 2 weeks interval. (5) the use of chemical fertilizers as npkb 200 to 300 kg/ha, and then, urea 50 to 75 kg/ha). (6) the plots are then maintained by weeding and earthing up. materials and methods materials material of termites sampling a decameter and the colorful ribbon served to delimit the transect, a gps (of garmin mark 60 csxes) containing a compass of aim for the orientation of the transect, the trowels to search in the litter, the trays and the entomological clamps served to the sorting of the clods of earths, of the piluliers for the conservation of the termites, material of laboratory a binocular gnarls of zeiss type stereo discovery.v12, bound to a screen of computer and the version 4.6 of the software axiovision freight of carl zeiss to make the photos and the measures for the identification of the termites were used. methods sampling of termites has been realized in a natural savanna in food crops and cotton farming plots. the selected plots are cultivations of different durations of agricultural activities. the age and past of the plots are determined on the basis of a survey among the farmers. the owners of the plots refer to events (political, religious or social) local or national. the sampled plots have all for origin the primary savanna. the number of year of continuous cultivation of soils varies from 1 to 30 years. five types of plots have been sampled in comparison with the primary savanna. these are: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 635 pcr 1: plots regularly cultivated during 1 year (n = 3) pcr 2: plots regularly cultivated during 2 years (n = 3) pcr 3: plots regularly cultivated during 3 years (n = 3) pcr 10: plots regularly cultivated during 10 years (n = 3) pcr 30: plots regularly cultivated during more of 30 years (n = 3) termites sampling termites were sampled using a standardized method designed for rapid assessment of termite diversity by jones and eggleton (2000). one transect (100 m long and 2 m wide) was delimiting in each area. each transect was subdivided into 20 contiguous quadrats of 10 m2 (5 m x 2 m) each in order to standardize the sampling effort. the search is done in transect by successive sections in two steps. in all quadrats, microhabitats (logs, litter, stumps, twigs, nests, runways sheeting, fallen branches, etc.) were hand-searched up to a height of 2 m above ground level. as the method was designed for use in forests, modifications were made in the savanna by searching for termites between grass tufts or by uprooting grass tufts. all termites encountered were collected. twelve samples of surface soil (each about 12 cm x 12 cm to 10 cm depth) were dug out in the quadrat at random locations. the soil was hand-sorted in situ, and a representative sample of termites (around 10 individuals of each caste present) was sorted and put into 70% ethyl alcohol. termites collected were both of the soldier and worker castes. in order to sample all 20 quadrats in one day, four trained collectors were deployed, with two people at a time sampling 10 quadrats for 30 minutes per quadrat. samplings were based on the occurrence of individuals (presenceabsence) rather than their number, with respect to the social habit of termites. inventory termite’s nests using a tape measure, a square of 100 m x 100 m (1 ha) is delimited in different areas. arboreal termite’s nests (hanging to a tree trunk or branch) and epigeous nests termite’s nests (as individualized mounds on the soil) (living and dead) were identified and counted in each plot. the number of nest of each trophic group expressed in number of nest per hectare is presented in the results (tahiri et al., 2007). termite identification termite identification was conducted at the ecology and biologic evolution laboratory at the free university of brussels. this identification of termites is based on caste soldiers and the workers for groups of termites lacking the soldier castes. specimens of the same genus were determined to species using various classification documents or articles of revision of genus: hamad (1950), sands (1959), bouillon and mathot (1965), sands (1965, 1972, 1998), roy-noel (1966) and sjöstedt (1926). termites were observed under a dissecting microscope (zeiss stereo discovery.v12), connected to a computer screen. the 4.6 version of axiovision fret software from carl zeiss allowed performing morphometric measures necessary for identification. the identification of some specimens sometimes requires dissection of workers to observe the enteric valve. after the identification, each species was placed into one of the feeding groups (i.e., fungus growers, soil-feeders, wood-feeders, and grass-feeders) defined according to termite diet), mandible morphology and gut content in the worker caste. statistical analysis ecological indices were chosen to describe the communities of termites. we calculated for each area, specific richness (s) (total number of species sampled). using estimates software (version 7.0) the shannon index (h ') which incorporates both richness and equitability (e) was calculated. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 636 simpson index (si) was also calculated for each area. the β diversity or similarity index of jaccard (sj) was calculated using the following formula: sj = c / (a + b + c); c = species common to both plots, a = number of species found only on plot a, b = number of observed species only on plot b. this index varies from 0 (no similarity) to 1 (identical settings) according dajoz (1982). analysis of variance (anova) and the comparison test of test u de mann-whitney (p < 0.05) were performed with statistica software (version 7.0) (ihaka et gentleman, 1996). they permit to separately identify between certain variable relations (abundance, species richness, diversity index). the relative abundance of termites in transect is the average number of occurrences of a species collected in transect. it is based on the incidence (presence = 1 and absence = 0) of the species. results termite’s nest density on the studied plots are found both arboreal termite’s nest and termite’s nest built at the soil surface. savannah has a higher density of nest than in other areas. then, the density decreases later due to the number of continuous cultivation of soil (figure 1). the nest of soil-feeders termites (nest of cubitermes, procubitermes and mégagnathotermes) and wood-feeders (tree nest of microcerotermes fuscotibialis (sjöstedt) and shedorhinotermes lamanianus (sjöstedt) appear to be more sensitive to environmental disturbance. after only one year of cultivation, arboreal nest of these wood-feeders have completely disappeared and soil-feeders nest after 2 years of cultivation. contrary to these ones, the first years of areas exploitation seems to be beneficial for some wood-feeders as amitermes which nests were observed only in the recent crop of 1 and 2 years. only nest of grass-feeders seem less affected by the cultivation of the soil. on the plantations aged of more than 30 years, it has been observed living nest trivervitermes (2.33 living nests / ha). for fungus-growers termites most of the nest observed (78.10%) in cultures are dead. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 637 figure 1: density of the termites mounds observed in the different habitats (number of nest per hectare) species richness of termites on all plots, 27 species of termites were collected. they belong to 2 families (rhinotermitidae froggatt and termitidae latreille) divided into 7 subfamilies and 17 genera in the classification of krishna et al., 2013: the subfamily of rhinotermitinae froggat, coptotermitinae holmgren, nasutitermitinae hare, macrotermitinae kemner, apicotermitinea grasse and noiro, cubitermitinea weidner and termitinae kemner. the list of termites identified is presented in table 1. most of the species were encountered inside the savanna (24 species). 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 s o il -f e e d e r s fu n g u s -g r o w e r w o o d -f e e d e r s g r a s s -f e e d e r s s o il -f e e d e r s fu n g u s -g r o w e r w o o d -f e e d e r s g r a s s -f e e d e r s s o il -f e e d e r s fu n g u s -g r o w e r w o o d -f e e d e r s g r a s s -f e e d e r s s o il -f e e d e r s fu n g u s -g r o w e r w o o d -f e e d e r s g r a s s -f e e d e r s s o il -f e e d e r s fu n g u s -g r o w e r w o o d -f e e d e r s g r a s s -f e e d e r s s o il -f e e d e r s fu n g u s -g r o w e r w o o d -f e e d e r s g r a s s -f e e d e r s primary savanna pcr 1 pcr 2 pcr 3 pcr 10 pcr 30 d e n s it y habitat types living mound dead mound asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 638 table 1: list of termite species collected in the different habitats familly sub familly species pc r 1 pc r 2 pc r 3 pc r 10 pc r 30 ps f gr rhinoter mitidae froggatt coptotermi tinae holmgren coptotermes intermedius silvestri * * * x rhinotermi tinae froggat shedorhinoter mes lamanianus (sjöstedt) * x termitid ae latreille macrotermi tinae kemner ancistroterme s cavithorax (sjöstedt) * * * * * * c ancistroterme s crucifer silvestri * * * * * * c ancistroterme s guineensis silvestri * * c macrotermes bellicosus (smeathman) * * * c macrotermes subhyalinus (rambur) * * * * c microtermes sp1 * * * * c microtermes sp2 * * * * c odontotermes pauperans (silvestri) * * * * * * c pseudacantho termes militaris * * * * * * c astalotermes sp. * * * * * * h fulleritermes tenebricus silvestri * * * * f trinerviterme s oeconomus (trägardh) * f asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 639 the subfamily of macrotermitinae is the most diverse with 9 species. it followed that of termitinae and that of cubitermitinea (formerly part of termitinae group) with respectively 5 and 6 species. four (04) species were collected in the family of nasutitermitinae. the subfamilies of rhinotermitinae, apicotermitinae and coptotermitinae are the least represented with one species each. nb: c: fungus-growers; h: soil-feeders; x: wood-feeders, f: grass-feeders; pcrn: plantation and n: number of year of continuous cultivation, fgr: feeder group.six (06) species are present as well in trinerviterme s trinervius (rambur) * * * * * f trinerviterme s geminatus (wasmann) * * * * * * f cubitermes subcrenulatus silvestri * * * h cubitermes fungifaber * * h megagnathote rmes silvestri * * h procubiterme s jöstedti (vonrosen) * h basidentiterm es potens * * h amitermes guineencis * * x amitermes evuncifer silvestri * * * * * * x microceroter mes fuscotibialis (sjöstedt) * * * x microceroter mes sp * * * * * * x pericapriterm es urgens silvestri * * h promiroterme s holengrni * h total 7 27 22 18 14 10 9 24 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 640 the primary savanna as in cultures.three (03) species were sampled only in cultures plots and 4 species were collected only in the primary savanna. the species richness of termites has differed statistically between the habitat types. of 24 species in the primary savanna, the species richness decreases and passes to 9 species in pcr 30 (either 64% reduction). this reduction is 44 % and 56 % respectively in pcr 3 and pcr 10. species diversity and relative abundance of feeding groups the shannon index shows that diversity is significantly influenced by the habitats types (f = 188.6 and p = 000). this index, higher in savannah (h= 2.88) varies little between pcr 1, pcr2 and pcr3 with a mean index of 2.73. but it reached its lowest values in pcr 10 (h' = 2.01) and pcr 30 (h = 1.72) (table 2). table 2: variability of the diversity index in the habitats types primary savanna pcr1 pcr2 pcr3 pcr 10 pcr 30 relative abundance (n) 272 286 329 237 125 73 species richness (s) 24 22 18 14 10 9 shannon (h’) 2.88 2.91 2.77 2.52 2.01 1.72 simpson (1-d) 0.94 0.94 0.93 0.91 0.84 0.78 equitability ( e) 0.94 0.94 0.96 0.95 0.87 0.78 simpson index (si) following variations of species richness with values between 0, 78 and 0, 94. the highest values were observed in the savanna and pcr 1 (0.94). pcr 10 and pcr 30 recorded the lowest values with 0.84 and 0.78 respectively. the equitability (e') is highest in the savanna and recent cultures pcr1, pcr2 and pcr 3, but the highest value was recorded in pcr 2 (e = 0.96). pcr 30 registered the lowest equitability (0.75). the hierarchical clustering dendrogram based on shannon index distinguishes 4 groups (i, ii, iii and iv) (figure 2). group i is composed of savanna and pcr 1 and pcr2 with highest shannon index, the second group is composed of pcr 3. the group iii includes pcr 10 and the group vi, pcr 30 with lowest shannon index. figure 2: classification of habitat types based on the termite species composition using shannon index as the distance between groups tree diagram of 6 variables 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 dist. of agregation pcr 30 pcr 10 pcr 3 pcr 2 pcr 1 primary savanna in cr ea si ng n um be r of ye ar o f co nt in uo us cu lt iv at io n of s oi ls asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 641 the comparative analysis (kruskalwallis test) of habits by pairs shows that there was no significant difference (p = 0.071) between pcr 10 and pcr 30, although the dendrogram do not place them in the same group. similarity assessment between the different areas confirms these observations (table 3). pcr 1 and pcr2 have a positive effect on the diversity and relative abundance of wood-feeders termites. the number of species of this group passes from 4 (in the primary savanna) to 5 species in pcr1 to pcr 2. only shedorhinotermes lamanianus (sjöstedt) and microcerotermes fuscotibialis (sjöstedt) species disappeared respectively in pcr 1 and pcr3. two (2) other species, coptotermes intermedius silvestri and amitermes guineencis were collected in exploited plots. the number of species of wood-feeders is low in pcr 30 (2 species). the relative abundance of this group increases from 13% in the savanna to 28% in pcr 1 (figure 3), but relative abundance is lowers in pcr 10 and pcr 30. the fungus-growers group of termites was the least affected by the cultivation of the soil. only 3 species (out of 8) of fungusgrowers group disappeared in elderly field pcr 30. this group dominates the abundance of termites in the cultivated plots, with maximum abundance of 88% in pcr 30 (figure 3). the cultivation of the soil also has an effect on the group of grass-feeders termites. the number of species of this group decreases from 4 species in the savanna to 1 species in pcr 30. however, many individuals belonging to this group are collected in the cultivated plots. habitat 1 habitat 2 nb of total species nb of shared species similarity (β-diversity) primary savanna pcr 1 26 20 0.77 primary savanna pcr 2 27 15 0.56 primary savanna pcr 3 26 13 0.50 primary savanna pcr 10 25 9 0.36 primary savanna pcr 30 25 8 0.32 pcr 1 pcr 2 23 17 0.74 pcr 1 pcr 3 23 13 0.57 pcr 1 pcr 10 23 9 0.39 pcr 1 pcr 30 23 8 0.35 pcr 2 pcr 3 19 14 0.74 pcr 2 pcr 10 18 10 0.56 pcr 2 pcr 30 18 9 0.50 pcr 3 pcr 10 14 10 0.71 pcr 3 pcr 30 14 9 0.64 pcr 10 pcr 30 10 9 0.90 table 3: similarity of termite’s community in different habitats asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 642 figure 3: relative abundance of feeding groups of termites in the habitats types the species trinervitermes geminatus seems to resist the continuous cultivation of soil. this species has been harvested in pcr 30. the effect of soil cultivation is relatively lower in this group compared to the soilfeeders group. continuous cultivation soil causes a drastic reduction in soil-feeders species. indeed, from the second year of cultivation (pcr2), we observe a reduction of the soil-feeders diversity from 8 (in savanna) to 2 species. the relative abundance changes as well from 39% in the savanna to 15% in pcr 1 (figure 3). the species astalotermes sp seems to resist to the continuous cultivation of soil but it has been collected only once in pcr 30. discussion in total, 27 species of termites were collected in different habitat types. these results are very different from those obtained by tano (1993) in the natural savanna of booro borotou. this author has identified 42 species in the watershed of booro-borotou. this difference is linked to the particular nature of the savanna of booro-borotou. these studies have shown that this savanna has a great species diversity and major ecological groups, despite its small size (136 ha). compared to other african savannas, species diversity encountered would place this among the richest savanna sampled in africa. the low density of the termites’ nestin cultured plots and the high proportions of dead mounds are linked to their systematic destruction at the time of plot cultivation by farmers (tahiri et al., 2007). termites’ abundance is relatively high in all sampled plots. this is explained by the fact that sampling was conducted in october-november period marked by the end of the rainy season. sarr (1999), 39% 34% 13% 14% primary savanna 15% 48% 28% 9% pcr 1 2% 73% 15% 10% pcr 10 7% 53% 25% 15% pcr 3 9% 55% 22% 14% pcr 2 1% 88% 8% 3% pcr 30 fungus-growers grass-feeders wood-feeders soil asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 643 working in fallows in senegal showed that the densities of termites were higher at the end of the rainy season. this high density of termites could be explained by the fact that during the end of rains seasons, termite foraging activities are more because the termites consume imports dry plant matter ant preferentially residuals of culture in the upper soil horizons. the evident foraging activities enabled an easy collection of a great number of species. the species richness of termites is high in savanna (24 species) and decreases with the continuous cultivation of soil to reach its lowest values (9 species) in pcr 30. the effect of cultivation depends on the trophic group. the fungus growers’ groups are dominant in all areas and they are less affected by the continuous cultivation of soil. their ability to live in disturbed habitats is due to their remarkable adaptation favored by the symbiotic relationship they have with termitomyces fungus. this fungus degrades wood fragments that become digestive for termites (matoub, 1993 guedégbé et al., 2008). the relative abundance of wood-feeders varies depending on the habitat types. the abundance of this group almost doubles the first years of cultivation of the soil. although most soil disturbance resulting from the loss of the canopy have negative effects on soil fauna in general, it should be noted that the dead plant material lying on the ground after the destruction of the canopy may have opposite effects. the cut wood constitutes nutrient reserves, shelters or nesting sites for this group of termites as meant rameau et al. 2000. their effects on termites are much more quantitative and qualitative as some species of wood-feeders as shedorhinotermes silvestri were not collected in cultured plots. when the soil is continuously cultivated for so many years, this significant amount of food decreases considerably and affecting thus the populations of woodfeeders termites. the positive effect of soil cultivation on the abundance of termites could also be explained by increasing plant diversity. deconchat and balent (2001) showed that in short term, and especially locally, the destruction of the shrub will cause an increase in plant diversity which could be related to the effect of setting light to the ground. soil exploitation also affects grass-feeders termites. the species which seems most resistant is t. geminatus as was observed other authors (sands, 1965; lepage, 1974). these authors observed that t. geminatus was more resistant to precarious conditions compared to certain species such as t. trinervius. this could be explained by the fact that t. geminatus constitutes significant reserves of stubble or grass, while most of the other species of the same genus could not build only less or no reserves (lepage, 1974). unlike the first two groups, soil-feeders are strongly affected by the continuous cultivation of soil. several reasons justify this significant decline of the diversity and abundance of soil-feeders termites especially in the exploited areas. firstly, the massive use of chemical inputs. indeed, for some crops such as cotton, herbicides and insecticides is recommended to use for a good harvest. to this must be added the use of chemical fertilizers and a significant maintenance asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 644 plots with weeding and hilling work (ochou et al., 2007). all these practices are meant for reducing the biodiversity of soil macrofauna and particulary of the termites (kouassi, 1999). these results are similar to observations made in other areas (basu et al, 1996; dibog et al., 1999; jones et al., 2003; eggleton et al., 2002; donovan et al., 2007; black and okwakol, 1997). these authors showed that the use of land and a high anthropogenic activity related to the massive and often abusive use of inputs affects the trophic structure and species richness of termites. lavelle (1987) observed that soil cultivation can quickly lead to the disappearance or reduction of certain communities responsible for soil fertility. epigeous nests of soil-feeders termites are destroyed in the crops, and this contributes to the disappearance of these species (kooyman and onck, 1987 and wood et al., 1977). only termites that have nests and systems of deep underground galleries are less affected by disturbances (wood et johnson, 1978). this observation could explain the rapid disappearance of soil-feeders cubitermitinae while soil-feeders apicotermitinae are still observed in the plots cultivated continuously for 30 years (pcr 30). wood et al. (1977) reported the presence of termites apicotermitinae in plots cultivated continuously for 40 years, in nigeria. during the first 2 years of cultivation, it was found that the number of soil-feeders species decreases meaning a reduction of 75%. black and okwakol (1997) estimated that the disappearance of soilfeeders species is linked to a significant reduction of the rate of organic matter due to cultivation. more recent studies have shown that some insects such as ground beetles (carabus auratus), are influenced by agronomic practices as these insects are more abundant on soils where the work is reduced and in agricultural systems where the use of chemicals is reduced (nash et al., 2008). this idea is supported by several authors who have shown that the removal of trees and a higher frequency of increased weed control which support some tropical agricultural systems can increase the limit nesting site for many species (armbrecht and perfecto, 2003; philpott and armbrecht, 2006). however, this result is in disagreement with studies that have found no effect of the operating system (melnychuk et al., 2003; purtauf et al., 2005a) or agronomic practices (lalonde et al., 2008; ekroos et al., 2010) on the diversity and abundance of insects. recently, in the united states, werling and gratton (2008) have shown that increasing the diversity of beetles in the fields of potatoes, but this increase was related to the presence of non-cultivated areas around these fields. yeo et al. (in press) also in lamto, did not found significantly difference between the diversity and abundance of the ants observed in the natural area and those observed in the cultivated plots. they explained this by the fact that during the first year of land use, farmers usually planted the feet of banana plantain together with other crops. after harvesting the annual crops, bananas continue to grow and create shady undergrowth with a relatively large amount of litter (leaves of annual crops). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 632-649 645 these microclimate conditions are favorable for the establishment of ants. this author has not assessed the impact of the continuous cultivation of the soil on the ants’ diversity. the land affected by his studies were used for 1 or 2 years and then abandoned by the farmers to become fallow, unlike our study zone, farmers are forced to cultivate the same plots continuously for decades. conclusion this study allows highlighting the impact of the continuous cultivation of soils on termite’s diversity and abundance in the region of korhogo. the results show that the high diversity recorded in the primary savanna lowers progressively according to the number of year of continuous use of soil. the trophic composition of termites is also affected, especially the group of soilfeeders that disappears when soil is exploited in continually. however, this transformation of the habitat seems to have at first, a positive effect on the abundance of some woodfeeders as amitermes and coptotermes which abundance increased in the first years of soil cultivation. these results encourage the practices of sustainable land use, to allow natural recovery after a period of agricultural disturbance. this approach will contribute to the conservation of termites’ biodiversity. acknowledgments this work was carried out with the support of belgian national focal point to the global taxonomy initiative (cbdgti@naturalsciences.be). we sincerely thank dr. marie lucie susini manager of this program at the royal institute of natural sciences of belgium to finance my training in belgium. we also thank prof. jean deligne and prof. guy josens for their help in the determination of species. references armbrecht, i. and perfecto, i. 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(2005). evaluation de l’impact du coton sur le développement rural. cas de la région de korhogo, au nord de la côte d’ivoire. thèse de doctorat. fac. univ. sci. agron. gembloux, belgique, 243 p. publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. a study on relationship between demographic variable and branded milk s. franklin john (principal, nehru college of management, coimbatore, india) s. senith (ph. d scholar, nehru college of management, coimbatore, india) citation: s. franklin john and s. senith (2012): “a study on relationship between demographic variable and branded milk”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 213-219. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 213-219 213 author(s) s. franklin john principal, nehru college of management, coimbatore, india s. senith ph. d scholar, nehru college of management, coimbatore, india email: senith.seni@gmail.com a study on relationship between demographic variable and branded milk abstract the study was designed to investigate the influence of age level of respondents by different dimensions of milk brand. the study covers the population includes 325 consumers from tamil nadu, who are all using branded milk. the questionnaires were given to 500 consumers who are all using branded milk. out of 500 consumers contacted, 325 questionnaires were received with required coverage and details. the participants completed the two sets of self-reported questionnaires, including background characteristics and variables chosen for this study in order to measure the influence of branded milk are the salience, performance, imagery, judgment, feelings and resonance. the collected data were computed and analyzed via descriptive statistics and one way anova. the findings of the study were generalized as follows: statistically significant differences were found in the age level of the respondents by different brand dimensions like performance, imagery, feelings and there is no statistically significant difference in dimension salience and resonance by age level of the respondents. in the end of the study implications and conclusion were provided. introduction dairying has been inborn in indian culture for centuries. in terms of employment as well as income generation dairying is very important in the vast field of animal husbandary. dairying cooperatives have improved the standard of living and provided the steady source of income for farmers. due to the favorable income generation rural areas are transforming into urban areas. dairy sector in india has developed a lot and india has now become one of the largest producers of milk and value added products of the world. the current picture 2009 in important dairy region. india is by far single biggest milk producing country. the milk is partly produced by buffalo. india and brazil have shown a considerable growth in milk production in the last two years. new zealand also still shows a growth in total production. table: 1.2 milk production in important dairy regions (million tones; supply to processors) in 2008 compared with 2007 and 2006 countries milk prod.2008 (* million tones) 2008 comp. to 2007 (2007=100) 2007 comp. to 2006 (2006=100) eu27 134 101 100 india 102 106 104 usa 86 102 102 china 34 95 110 russia 32 101 103 brazil 30 108 106 new zealand 16 108 103 ukraine 12 96 92 australia 10 102 91 argentina 10 105 92 more than 2,445 million people economically active in agriculture in the world, probably 2/3 or even more ¾ of them are wholly or partly dependent on livestock farming .india is endowed with rich flora and fauna and continues to be vital avenue for employment and income generation, especially in rural areas india which has 66% of economically active population, engaged in agriculture derives 31% of gross domestic product gdp from agriculture. the share of livestock product is estimated at 21% of total agricultural sector. mailto:senith.seni@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 213-219 214 milk production in india 1950-17 million tones 1996-70.8 million tones 1997-74.3 million tones projected 2020-240 million tones expected to reach -220 to 250 million tones -2020. india contributes to world milk production rise from 12-15 % and it will increase up to 30 -35 %( year 2020).(dairy industry profile). according to technopak analysis there is a higher consumer acceptance and usage of branded milk in indian consumer market sahni (2006) branding can help create a distinct visual impression on the consumer that is instantly identifiable to the brand. branding will be an important means for product differentiation “50% of the purchases inside hypermarkets are impulse shoppers typically spend only a few seconds to actively compare different products”. shelf life of products can be increased as a result of new and innovative packaging techniques. e.g. in case of milk, aseptic packaging technology can increase the shelf life of milk by 6 months. branding will also help in utilizing the commodity, for better and efficient costing. new packaging technology can prove to be an effective tool in hedging the risk associated with uncertainties in demand and supply by having a longer holding period for perishable items. especially in the rural sector in india, the distribution channel is typically long, with the transit time being as high as 1-2 months .proper packaging can help avoid contamination, not only at the front end, but at every stage of the value chain-especially in case of perishables such as milk, oil, f&g. hence reducing wastage across the supply chain. while there is likely to be big opportunity in packaging as a result of organized retail growth. none-the less there are several challenges which need to be managed. review of literature blattberg et al. (1990) sales promotion increases the basic value of a product for a limited time and directly stimulates consumer purchasing, selling effectiveness, or the effort of the sales force. it can be used to inform, persuade and remind target customers about the business and its marketing mix, some common types of sales promotion include samples, coupons, sweepstakes, contests, rebates, premiums, discounts, trail offers, tradeshows. dominkowski & john (2001) however, this june found over 70,000 people trying to catch one grand prize. the june dairy month promotion, catch the june bug sponsored by wisconsin milk marketing board. the grand prize in the june dairy month sweepstakes. in addition, 50 cheese baskets chock full of premium cheeses produced by wisconsin master cheese makers were awarded at first prizes. the promotion funded by wisconsin’s dairy farm families’ .sweepstakes was a cornerstone of the project. consumers could obtain entry forms, in participating grocery stores at special events and through newspaper insert. promotion was such a resounding success. wisconsin milk marketing board said we were able to garner tremendous visibility for wisconsin dairy products and retailer participation was just great. brooks (1999) just in time for back –to –school, the generic milk promotion campaign rolls out “mug it up asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 213-219 215 with milk” to retail accounts nationwide mccracken brooks developed the promotion for the milk processor education program and dairy management inc. accounts qualify to hold their own local mug it up with milk sweepstakes by running milk feature ads. the more feature ads they run, the more prizes they are eligible to receive prizes consists of apple i mac computer dollar 1,000 scholarship, kodak advantix cameras and dollar 500 cash. consumers mail entries to each account’s specific box at the fulfillment house. accounts are also eligible to receive nickelodeon shipper displays, which contain 300 special edition nickelodeon magazine inside each issue is an ad announcing the sweepstakes including information on how consumers can enter to win their own milk mustache ad in an upcoming nickelodeon magazine and a dollar scholarship each account specific sweepstakes with no extra work by accounts .consumers receive a free copy of the special edition issue with the purchase of two gallons of milk. manafy & michelle (2009) the author explains that internet content providers should offer free services in order to entice new users to develop a liking for professional versions .she narrates as a bar tender during the 1980’s that taught her about human nature. she says that bar customers are always interested in free drinks(samples) and some customers are even willing to do things they would not normally do just to get free things such as t-shirts .she points out that these people who get free stuff use the same stuff later. research methodology objectives of the study 1. to study the influence of age level of the respondents on dimensions of branded milk. respondent sample the questionnaires were given to 500 consumers who are all using branded milk respondents of the samples where above 18 years using branded milk only. out of 500 consumers contacted, 325 questionnaires were received with required coverage and details. instrumentation the instruments of this study involved two parts: the first section of the instrument consisted of forced-choice questions about demographic characteristics: gender, marital status, age, occupation, monthly income level. the second section variables chosen for this study in order to measure the influence of branded milk in indian retail markets are taken from branding milk dimension contains of 60 items and characterized into six sub scales : (a) salience (items 1 to 7), (b) performance(items 8 to 13), (c) imagery (items 14 to 18) ,(d) judgment (items 19 to 36), (e) feelings (items 37 to 42), (f) resonance (items 43 to 60).the milk branding dimension 60 items are evaluated on a five-point likert scale ranging from 1 to 5 ,using the anchors “5=stronglyagree,4=agree, 3=neutral, 2=disagree,1= strongly disagree”. cronbach’s alpha is a coefficient (a number between 0 and 1) that is used to rate the internal consistency (homogeneity) or the correlation of items in a test. if the test has a strong internal consistency most measurement experts agree that it should show only moderate correlation among items (0.70 to 0.90).the reliability coefficients for the variables chosen for the study should have to be more than 0.70, to consider it as an acceptable value (nunally, 1978). in this study the reliability analysis shows that all the factors have shown alpha value greater than 0.7, indicating the evidence of reliability and the overall reliability of the instrument is 0.92. so, the items constituting each variable under study have reasonable internal consistency and shows that all the dimensions of branded milk have a positive reliability. the factors and dimensions included for analysis carry a good degree of reliability to support the objectives formulated. all dimensions have got significant relationship to make the real representation of the study. hence it is concluded that the data collected in this study is highly reliable. data analysis the statistical package for the social science (spss) for microsoft windows 16.0 was used to complete the analysis of the collected data. descriptive statistics , including means, standard deviations were implemented in order to investigate the demographic data, and the influence of branded milk-test, one-way analysis of variance (anova) were used to determine whether any significant relationships exist among respondents. in addition, the .05 level of statistical significance was set at all statistical tests in the present study. result of data analysis 1. to study the significant difference in various dimensions of branding by the age level of the respondents the descriptive table (see below) provides some very useful descriptive statistics the mean, standard deviation for the dependent variables for all the groups and when all groups are combined (total) and f-value, significance value. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 213-219 216 table: 1.1 descriptive statistics age level mean standard deviation n g1 g2 g3 total g1 g2 g3 total f sig salience 325 3.94 3.91 3.86 3.91 0.624 0.549 0.515 0.57 0.419 0.658 performance 325 3.72 3.51 3.54 3.6 0.618 0.518 0.478 0.556 4.49 0.012 imagery 325 3.36 3.15 3.19 3.24 0.767 0.603 0.641 0.683 3.2 0.043 judgment 325 3.71 3.6 3.67 3.66 0.539 0.495 0.472 0.508 1.45 0.236 feelings 325 3.68 3.49 3.55 3.58 0.614 0.572 0.58 0.594 3.34 0.037 resonance 325 3.53 3.41 3.45 3.47 0.504 0.414 0.489 0.469 2.06 0.129 note: g1-below 30 yrs, g2-31-50 yrs, g3-above 50 yrs, n –number of sample size from the above table we can see that the significance level of salience is 0.658 (p = .658), which is above 0.05 and, therefore, there is no statistically significant difference between salience of branding by age level of respondents, significance level of performance is 0.012(p=.012), which is below 0.05,therefore there is statistically significant difference between performance of branding by age level of the respondents, significance level of imagery 0.043(p=.043) which is below 0.05, therefore there is no statistically significant difference between imagery of branding by age level of the respondents. significance level of judgment is 0.236 (p=.236) which is above 0.05 and, therefore, there is no statistically significant difference between judgment of branding by age level of respondents, significance level of feelings is .037 (p=.037) which is below 0.05 and, therefore, there is statistically significant difference between feelings of branding by age level of respondents, significance level of resonance is .129 (p=.129) which is above 0.05 and, therefore, there is no statistically significant difference between resonance of branding by age level of respondents, homogeneity of variances test of homogeneity of variances shows the result of levene's test of homogeneity of variance, which tests for similar variances. if the significance value is greater than 0.05 then we have homogeneity of variances. we can see from this that levene'sf statistic has a significance value of salience is .421, judgment is .275, feelings is .853, resonance is .144 and, therefore, the assumption of homogeneity of variance is met. but for performance is 0.027 which is less than 0.05 this indicates that the variances are heterogeneous which violates a key assumption of the anova test. what if the levene's f statistic was significant? this would mean that you do not have similar variances and you will need to refer to the robust tests of equality of means table instead of the anova table. post hoc test since we rejected the null hypothesis in performance dimension (we found differences in the means), we should perform a turkey’s w multiple comparison to determine which means are different. using the previous output, here is how such an analysis might appear. multiple comparisons performance of the product turkey hsd (i) age of the respondent (j) age of the respondent mean difference (i-j) std. error sig. 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound below 30 yrs 31-50 yrs .209* 0.07 0.008 0.04 0.37 above 50 yrs 0.177 0.08 0.071 -0.01 0.37 31-50 yrs below 30 yrs -.209* 0.07 0.008 -0.37 -0.04 above 50 yrs -0.032 0.08 0.915 -0.22 0.16 above 50 yrs below 30 yrs -0.177 0.08 0.071 -0.37 0.01 31-50 yrs 0.032 0.08 0.915 -0.16 0.22 * the mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level the above table indicates that significant differences existed among performance dimension and age level of the respondents. according to the results of the turkey’s w multiple comparison analysis, significant differences existed among the groups of above 50 yrs and below 30 yrs with respect to the age level. this clearly shows that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 213-219 217 below 30 yrs are more satisfied with brand of milk because of the purified and the cholesterol content is removed. multiple comparisons for imagery dimension since we rejected the null hypothesis in imagery dimension (we found differences in the means), we should perform a turkey’s w multiple comparison to determine which means are different. using the previous output, here is how such an analysis might appear. multiple comparisons image of the product turkey hsd (i) age of the respondent (j) age of the respondent mean difference (ij) std. error sig. 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound below 30 yrs 31-50 yrs .218* 0.086 0.031 0.02 0.42 above 50 yrs 0.175 0.099 0.183 -0.06 0.41 31-50 yrs below 30 yrs -.218* 0.086 0.031 -0.42 -0.02 above 50 yrs -0.043 0.098 0.898 -0.28 0.19 above 50 yrs below 30 yrs -0.175 0.099 0.183 -0.41 0.06 31-50 yrs 0.043 0.098 0.898 -0.19 0.28 * the mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level multiple comparisons feelings of the customer towards the product turkey hsd (i) age of the respondent (j) age of the respondent mean difference (i-j) std. error sig. 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound below 30 yrs 31-50 yrs .191* 0.075 0.03 0.01 0.37 above 50 yrs 0 0.086 0.293 -0.07 0.33 31-50 yrs below 30 yrs -.191* 0.075 0.03 -0.37 -0.01 above 50 yrs -0 0.086 0.751 -0.26 0.14 above 50 yrs below 30 yrs -0 0.086 0.293 -0.33 0.07 31-50 yrs 0 0.086 0.751 -0.14 0.26 * the mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level the above table indicates that significant differences existed among imagery dimension and age level of the respondents. according to the results of the turkey’s w multiple comparison analysis, significant differences existed among the groups of 31-50 yrs and below 30 yrs with respect to the age level. this shows that below 30 yrs are highly attached with brand of milk among three groups. multiple comparisons for imagery dimension since we rejected the null hypothesis in feeling dimension (we found differences in the means), we should perform a turkey’s w multiple comparison to determine which means are different. using the previous output, here is how such an analysis might appear. the above table indicates that significant differences existed among feeling dimension and age level of the respondents. according to the results of the turkey’s w multiple comparison analysis, significant differences existed among the groups of 31-50 yrs and below 30 yrs with respect to the age level. this shows that below 30 yrs are more satisfied with quality of brand milk, high creditability towards producers and they consider their brand as more superior than other brand of milk among three groups. findings and discussions with reference to the objective in this study, the findings and discussions were summarized as follows: 1. statistically significant differences existed among performance dimension and age level of the respondents. according to the results of the turkey’s w multiple comparison analysis, significant differences existed among the groups of above 50 yrs and below 30 yrs with respect to the age level. this shows that below 30 yrs are more satisfied with brand of milk because of the purified and the cholesterol content is removed. 2. statistically significant differences existed among imagery dimension and age level of the respondents. according to the results of the turkey’s w multiple asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 213-219 218 comparison analysis, significant differences existed among the groups of 31-50 yrs and below 30 yrs with respect to the age level. this shows that below 30 yrs are highly attached with brand of milk among three groups. 3. significant differences existed among feeling dimension and age level of the respondents. according to the results of the turkey’s w multiple comparison analysis, significant differences existed among the groups of 31-50 yrs and below 30 yrs with respect to the age level. this shows that below 30 yrs are more satisfied with quality of brand milk, high creditability towards producers and they consider their brand as more superior than other brand of milk among three groups. conclusion the findings derived from the current study may suggest some pedagogical implications. after analysis we found that small differences exist in the age group that implies the different age groups prefer or opinion differs on purchase of branded milk. it created a curiosity to us to find out which age class really differing on the opinions. by the help of post hoc we found out that the age group less than 30 differ the opinion among other class. it may be cost due to the excess media influence on this age group. it strongly confirms in future also the value for brand in the milk segment will sustain. references armitt, claire (2004) case study, new media age. 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(1966) “the ada/usda milk promotion study”, journal of farm economics;aug (part1) vol. 48 (3), p756,3p. ramanathan (2009) “the new face of unorganized retailers in india, marketing mastermind”, reference#10m2009-05-08-01. sahni (2006) “the changing force of organized retail and its potential impact on packaging industry”, wechsler (1995) “the availability of low fat milk in an inner-city latino community: implication for nutrition education, american” journal of public health, vol. 85 (12), p1690-1690, 3p,1chart. wechsler (1998) “promoting the selection of lowfat milk in elementary school cafeterias in an inner city latino community”. evaluation of an intervention, american journal of public health,vol.88,issue 3,p427-433,7p,1chart 2 graphs. x. cleanthous and s. thuraisingam (2010) “whole milk vs. fatmodified milk in the current australian market comparison of nutritional content and market share food australia vol. 62 (7). © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 toxicity of copper (11) tetraoxo sulphate to african catfish (clarias gariepinus) fingerlings agbebi, f. o. (department of forestry, wildlife and fisheries management, university of ado, ekiti, nigeria) owoeye, o. (department of forestry, wildlife and fisheries management, university of ado, ekiti, nigeria) to cite this article: agbebi, f. o. and owoeye, o. (2012). toxicity of copper (11) tetraoxo sulphate to african catfish (clarias gariepinus) fingerlings. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1), 46-54. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 46-54 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author (s) agbebi, f. o. † department of forestry, wildlife and fisheries management, university of ado, ekiti, nigeria email funmiaquaconsult@gmail.com owoeye, o. department of forestry, wildlife and fisheries management, university of ado, ekiti, nigeria toxicity of copper (11) tetraoxo sulphate to african catfish (clarias gariepinus) fingerlings abstract this study was carried out to determine the toxicity of copper sulphate to african catfish (clarias gariepinus). the range – finding test was conducted twice in order to get reliable values that could be used for the definitive test. the toxicant (copper sulphate) was introduced at varying concentrations of 10g/l, 20g/l, 30g/l and 40g/l in the first rangefinding test, while it was introduced at concentrations of 2g/l, 4g/l, 6g/l and 8g/l in the second rangefinding test. however, in the definitive test, the toxicant was introduced at varying concentrations of 0.1g/l, 0.125g/l, 0.15g/l, and 0.175g/l. from the definitive test, the median lethal concentration of copper sulphate to clarias gariepinus was found to be 0.175g/l. the study showed that clarias gariepinus fingerling exhibited initial erratic movement, rapid opercular movement, skin discoloration and loss of reflex. also, histopathological alterations such as the degeneration of gill and liver tissues were observed in the fish that were exposed to the toxicant. the water quality data were analyzed by subjecting them to one – way analysis of variance (anova).thus, the study indicates that copper sulphate is toxic to clarias gariepinus fingerlings. keywords: toxicity, copper (11) tetraoxo sulphate, clarias garipenius introduction water pollution is any chemical, physical or biological change in the quality of water, that has a harmful effect on any living thing that drinks, uses or lives (in) it (lenntech, 1998). activities resulting from human population explosion as well as advancements in science and technology have led to the direct or indirect release of contaminants into surface water bodies and ground water deposits. although, natural phenomena such as volcanoes, algae blooms, storms and earthquakes also cause major changes in water quality and the ecological status of water, water is typically referred to as polluted when it is impaired by anthropogenic contaminants and either undergoes a marked shift in its ability to support its constituent biotic communities or does not support a human use like drinking (wikipedia, 2008, katryna, 2002). water pollution is a major problem in the global context. the primary sources of water pollution are grouped into two categories on the basis of their point of origin. the categories are; point and non-point sources (wikipedia, 2008). point sources discharge pollutants (substances or matter that cause pollution) at specific locations through pipelines or sewers into the surface water, while non-point sources are those ones that cannot be traced to a single site of discharge (lenntech, 1998, berka et al., 2001).examples of point sources include; factories and sewage treatment plants, while those of non-point sources include: runoff from farms and fuel discharge from motorized canoes. contaminants that pollute water include; pathogens, particulate (suspended) matter sewage and chemicals. chemical pollution is a common type of water pollution. it is the contamination of water by chemical substances. such activities include agricultural and industrial work which involve the use of chemicals that run-off into water and pollute it. in agriculture, pesticides are used to control weeds, insects and fungi. run-off of these pesticides poisons aquatic life. contamination of aquatic environment by heavy metals whether as a result of acute or chronic events constitutes additional source of stress to aquatic organisms (kori-siakpere and ubogu 2008, james and little 2003). when water ph falls, metal solubility increases and the metal particle becomes more mobile. that is the reason why metals are more toxic in soft water. both localized (point source) and dispersed (non-point source) metal pollution cause environmental damage because metals are non biodegradable (lenntech, 1998, adeniji and ovie 1981). copper is a common heavy metal pollutant in surface waters and its toxicity is largely attributable to its cupric (cu2+) form (olaifa et al., 2004). at low concentration, copper is an essential element for both plants and animal because it is an important component of enzymes. however, it can become harmful when large single or daily intake occurs mailto:funmiaquaconsult@gmail.com toxicity of copper (11) tetraoxo….. 47 (olaifa et al., 2004, okaeme, 1990). at present, high concentrations of copper have been introduced into the environment due to anthropogenic activities such as mining, electroplating, and release of effluent from paint and pigment industries as well as textile factories and the use of pesticides. copper occurs in form of several compounds. the cheapest and most commonly used form is copper sulphate (watson and yanong, 2006). it is a fungicide that is used to control bacterial and fungal diseases of fruits, vegetables and field crops; it is also used as an algaecide and herbicide and to kill snails and slugs in irrigation as well as municipal water treatment systems (atamanalp et al., 2008). the african catfish, clarias gariepinus is a fresh water fish that is widely distributed in africa and the middle east. it inhabits tropical swamps, lakes and rivers, apart from its importance in capture fisheries; it is also an important aquaculture species. nevertheless, like other aquatic animals, the existence and well-being of this species are being threatened as a result of the pollution of the aquatic environment by copper sulphate. hence, there is the need to study the effect of copper sulphate on clarias gariepinus fingerlings and determine the maximum concentration of the compound that they can tolerate. finally fingerlings have to be used in this study because their survival determines the future availability of tablesize clarias gariepinus. justification the african catfish, clarias gariepinus, is a common food fish which is of high commercial value in nigeria. apart from enhancing food security, its sales serve as a source of income for many families. however, the pollution of the aquatic environment can result in mass mortality of this fish. apart from that, chronic exposure of the fish to pollutants can impair their feeding, growth and reproductive performance. copper sulphate is a toxic substance that is discharged into aquatic systems through anthropogenic activities. consequently, there is the need to determine the degree of toxicity of the chemical to clarias gariepinus fingerlings. thus, it is hoped that this research work will help to determine the effects of copper sulphate on clarias gariepinus fingerlings. this will go a long way to help fisheries administrators in formulating policies that will control the use of the chemical. hence, the availability of this fish for consumption and commercial purpose will be sustained. in addition to that, aquaculturists will be able to know the concentration of copper sulphate that should be used for therapeutic and prophylactic purposes as the chemical is also used in the treatment of external ecto-parasites in fish. objectives of the study the specific objectives of the study are to: i. determine the median lethal concentration (lc50) of copper sulphate on clarias gariepinus fingerlings. ii. determine the effect of different concentrations of copper sulphate on the histo pathology of the gill and liver tissues of clarias gariepinus fingerlings. iii. determine the effect of different concentrations of copper sulphate on the behaviour (swimming and reflex) of clarias gariepinus fingerlings. methodology four hundred (400) life and healthy clarias gariepinus fingerlings were purchased from ondo state ministry of agriculture and fisheries, akure, ondo state, nigeria and were subsequently transferred in plastic containers to the fisheries and wildlife laboratory of the federal university of technology, akure, where they were acclimatized without food for 72 hours in plastic tanks measuring 24cmxl5cmxl2cm. the fingerlings were weighed with an electronic mettler toledo weighing balance (model pm 460) while the standard length was measured with a graduated ruler. the average weight of the fish was 5.84g + 0.5 while that of standard length was 6cm + 1.0. this was followed by the stocking of ten fingerlings of similar sizes into each plastic tank containing 10 liters of water. each tank represented one treatment. the experiment was conducted in five (5) treatments. four of the treatments contained varying concentrations of copper sulphate pentahydrate (cuso45h2o) the fifth treatment (control) had zero concentration of the chemical (toxicant). each treatment had two replicates. thus, there were ten tanks in all. fish mortality was monitored and recorded every 24 hours. the inability of fish to respond to external stimuli was used as an index of death. two range-finding tests were conducted in order to determine the actual concentration of the toxicant (copper sulphate) needed for the definitive test. in the first range-finding test, the toxicant was introduced at l0g/l, 20g/, 30g/l and 40g/l, while the control had zero concentration (0g/l). however, in the second range-finding-test, the toxicant was introduced at 2g/l, 4g/l, 6g/l, and 8g/l. the control had zero concentration (0g/l) of the toxicant. the results obtained from the range-finding test provided a guide for determining the concentration levels to be used in the definitive test. thus, the definitive test was conducted using copper sulphate concentration of 0.10g/l 0.125g/l, 0.15g/l and 0.175g/l. the control asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 46-54 48 had zero concentration (0.g/l) of the toxicant. the result obtained from this test was used in the graphical determination of the median lethal concentration (lc50). temperature, ph, conductivity and dissolved oxygen (d02) were determined and recorded at the beginning and at the end of the experiment. the number of dead and living test organisms in each tank was counted every 24 hours. behavioral and morphological changes were also observed. these included: erratic swimming, discoloration and loss of reflex. the lc50 which is the concentration of the toxicant, estimated to be lethal to 50% of test organisms after an exposure time of 96 hours was determined by graphical method. the histology of the vital organs of the test organisms was studied in order to determine the effect of copper sulphate on them. the organs that were studied include: gill and liver. the water quality data were analyzed by subjecting them to one – way analysis of variance (anova). results the range finding test was conducted twice in order to derive reliable values for the definitive test. some behavioral changes were displayed by the fingerlings during the two tests. these changes include: erratic swimming; (which occurred shortly after the introduction of the toxicant), discolouration and loss of reflex (which occurred before death). in the two tests, mortality did not occur in the control group. however, total mortality occurred in the remaining four treatments. mortality was directly proportional to the concentration of the toxicant and the length of exposure of the fish to the toxicant. the aforementioned total mortality occurred within the first 24 hours in the first range-findings test, while it occurred within the first 72 hours in the second range-finding test. the mortality data of the two range-finding tests are presented in tables 1.0 and 2.0 below. table 1: percentage cumulative mortality of the range findings test concentration of copper sulphate 24 hours %m 48 hours %m 72 hours %m 96 hours %m c (0g/l) 0 0 0 0 tl (l0g/l) 100 100 100 100 t2 (20g/l) 100 100 100 100 t3 (30g/l) 100 100 100 100 t4 (40g/l) 100 100 100 100 key: m = cumulative mortality table 2: percentages cumulative mortality of the range finding test ii concentration of copper sulphate 24 hours %m 48 hours %m 72 hours %m 96 hours %m c (0g/l) 0 0. 0 0 tl (2g/l) 75 90 100 100 t2 (4g/l) 100 100 100 100 t3 (6g/l) 100 100 100 100 t4 (8g/l) 100 100 100 100 key: m = cumulative mortality in the definitive test, the toxicity of the toxicant increased with its increasing concentration and length of exposure of the test organism to it. behavioural changes such as loss of reflex and skin discoloration were more noticeable in the treatment that had the highest concentration of toxicant. mortality only occurred in the two treatments with the highest concentrations of 0.15g/l and 0.175g/l respectively. the mortality data and the changes observed in each treatment are presented in tables 3.0 and 4.0 respectively. table 3: percentages cumulative mortality of the definitive test concentration of copper sulphate 24 hours %m 48 hours %m 72 hours %m 96 hours %m c (0g/l) 0 0 0 0 t1 (0.lg/l) 0 0 0 0 t2 (0.125g/l) 0 0 0 0 t3 (0.15g/l) 0 20 20 20 t4 (0.175g/l) 30 50 50 50 key: m = cumulative mortality toxicity of copper (11) tetraoxo….. 49 table: 4 observations during the definitive test 24 hours 48 hours 72 hours 96 hours c t1 t2 t3 t4 c t1 t2 t3 t4 c t1 t2 t3 t4 c t1 t2 t3 t4 erratic swimming + loss of reflex + + + + + rapid opercula movement + + + + + + discoloration + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + release of bubbles + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + death + + + key: = not present, + = present, t1= 0.1g/l, t2= 0.125g/l, t3= 0.15g/l, t4= 0.175g/l and c= control table 5: water quality measurements water temperature(0c) ph conductivity (mv) dissolved (mg/l) oxygen initial final initial final initial final initial final c (0.g/l) t1 (0.1g/l) t2 (0.125g/l) t3 (0.15g/l) t4 (0.175g/l) 27.5 + 0.000 30.55 + 0.500 27.5 + 0.000 30.55 + 0.500 27.5 + 0.000 30.55 + 0.500 27.5 + 0.000 30.55 + 0.500 27.5 + 0.000 30.55 + 0.500 7.30 + 0.000 7.075 + 0.050 7.31 + 0.000 7.055 + 0.050 7.00 + 0.000 7.055 + 0.000 7.00 + 0.000 7.060 + 0.000 6.99 + 0.000 7.065 + 0.050 34.0 + 0.000 34.0 + 0.000 36.0 + 0.000 34.0 + 0.000 36.0 + 0.000 34.5 + 0.000 36.0 + 0.000 35.0 + 0.000 36.5 + 0.500 34.5 + 0.000 6.96 +0.025 3.94 + 0.800 6.50 +0.000 3.73 + 0.800 6.20 +0.120 3.39 + 0.300 5.94 +0.000 3.270+0.150 5.61 +0.115 3.11 + 0.700 table 6: final water parameters and their significant different parameters control t1 t2 t3 t4 temperature ph conductivity dissolved oxygen 30.55 + 0.500a 7.075 + 0.050a 34.00 + 0.00a 3.94 + 0.800a 30.55 + 0.000a 7.055 + 0.050a 34.00 + 0.00a 3.743+ 0.800ab 30.55 + 0.000ab 7.055 + 0.050ab 34.50 + 0.50ab 3.39 + 0.300b 30.55 + 0.000b 7.075 + 0.050ab 35.00 + 0.00b 3.27 + 0.150c 30.55 + 0.00b 7.075 + 0.050b 34.50 + 0.00b 3.11 + 0.800c means and standard error on the same row with the same superscript are significantly different at p> 0.05 at the end of the experiment, there were changes in the water parameters. the most noticeable changes were, however, observed in the dissolved oxygen content, which reduced drastically. the results of the water quality measurements are shown in table 5.0. the gills and the liver of clarias gariepinus fingerlings were observed and examined to assess the histological effect of copper sulphate which was applied to the fish at different concentrations. the results on the slides shows that there was, no damage whatsoever on the liver and gills of the fish in the control experiment. on the contrary there were varying degrees of damages and degenerations to the gills and liver of the fish in other concentrations with increasing damages from the lowest concentrations to the highest concentration. the gills showed a slight vacuolation (vacuole formation) in the fish gills of fingerlings in o.lg/l and 0.l25g/l of copper sulphate solution. the liver of clarias gariepinus fingerlings exposed to o.lg/l and 0.125g/l. showed a slight cellular change with small space formations. at higher concentrations of o.15g/l and ().175g/l. of copper sulphate, there was pronounced damages to the gill filaments with fragmentation of the lamella in o.175g/l solution of the toxicant. also, the cellular changes within the liver cells were significant with large vacuole formation in the liver tissues and distortion in the cells. this experiment therefore indicates that copper sulphate has a direct and significant impact on effect on the internal organs of clarias gariepinus fingerlings particularly the liver and the gills. discussion contamination of the aquatic environment by heavy metals, whether as a consequence of chronic or toxic events constitutes additional sources of stress for aquatic organism. copper occurs naturally within the environment at low concentration, it is an essential element both for plants and -animals. however, large doses can be harmful. copper sulphate is used as a fungicide to control bacterial and fungal diseases of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 46-54 50 fruits vegetable, nut and field crops. it is highly toxic to fish. fish species are most sensitive to aquatic pollutants during their early life stages. consequently, it is necessary to monitor the impact of copper sulphate on different fish. in this study, the fish that were exposed to the highest concentration of copper sulphate displayed erratic swimming. this is similar to the result obtained by ayotunde and ofem (2008), where adult oreochromis niloticus exposed to pawpaw seed powder swam erratically. furthermore, it was discovered in this study that the clarias gariepinus fmgerlings eventually exhibited loss of reflex, skin discolouration and rapid opercular movement. this agrees with the work of ayotunde and ofem (2008), in which adult tilapia {oreochromis niloticus) were reported to have exhibited loss of reflex, molting discoloration and air gulping. thomas and rice (2005) suggested that increased opercular movement may be caused by decreased efficiency in oxygen uptake or transport; thus, the rapid opercular movement displayed by c; gariepinus fingerlings in this study is an indication of reduced oxygen uptake. the marked decrease that occurred in the dissolved oxygen levels of the treatments further buttresses the fact that therapid opercular movements resulted from reduced oxygen uptake. lloyd (1961) reported that the toxicity of several poisons to rainbow trout increased inversely to the concentration of water. therefore the decrease in the dissolved oxygen recorded in this study could have increased the toxicity of copper sulphate to clarias gariepinus fingerlings. conclusion this study was carried out by exposing clarias gariepinns fmgerlings to copper sulphate. the fmgerlings that were exposed to the toxicant (copper sulphate) exhibited loss of reflex, rapid opercular movement and discolouration. histopathological alterations were also observed in the gill and liver tissues. the toxicity of the test media could not have occurred as a result of the ph and temperature because their values obtained before and after the experiment were tolerate to the test organism. the dissolved oxygen, however, decreased tremendously. this could have increased the toxicity of the toxicant and consequently contributed to the mortalities that were recorded during this experiment. in conclusion, copper sulphate is highly toxic to clarias gariepinus fingerlings. recommendation although, copper sulphate is a useful chemical that serves many purposes, it has to be used with caution because of its potential as toxicant. it can have chronic and acute effects on fish. also, consumers may be exposed to hazards by consuming copper sulphatecontaminated fish. thus, there is the need to carry out further works in order to determine the maximum admissible toxicant concentration (matc) of copper sulphate to clarias gariepinus fingerlings views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adeniji, o. o., & ovei, a. o. (1981). study of the abundance and distribution of zooplankton in asa lake. klri report, 1981, pp. 19-22. atamanalp, d. o., sisman, c. o., geyikoglu, t. h., & topal, a. a. (2008). the histopathological effects of copper sulphate on rainbow trout (qnchorynchus mykiss). journal of fisheries and aquatic science, 5, 291-297. ayotunde, e. o., & ofem, a. a. (2008). acute and chronic toxicity of pawpaw (caricapapaya) seed powder to adult nile tilapia (oreochromis niloticus linne 1757). african journal of biotechnology, 7(13), 2265-2274 berka, c., schreir, h., & hall, k. (2001). linking water quality with agricultural intensification in a rural watershed. water, air and soil pollution, 127, 389-401. james, s. m., & little, e. e. (2003). division of biological sciences, university of columbia usa, the effects of chronic cadmium exposure on american toad (bufo americanus) tadpoles environ. toxicology chemistry, 22(2), 377-380. katryna, d. (2002). fish kill events and habitat loses. journal of coastal research, 8, 216-221. kori-siakpere, & ubogu, (2008). sublethal haematological effects of zinc on the freshwater fish, heteroclarias sp. african journal of biotechnology, 7(12), 2068-2073. okaeme, a. n. (1990). prospects and problems of fresh water ponds fertilization using animal droppings in subsistence fish framing. nigeria journal of agricultural extension, 5(1& 2), 58-64. olaifa, o. a., & onwude, c. a. (2004). lethal and sub-lethal effects of copper to african catfish toxicity of copper (11) tetraoxo….. 51 (clarias gariepinus) juveniles. african journal of biomedical research, 7(13), 2265–2274. lenntech, d. o. (1998). water pollution. www.lenntech.com/water pollution/ water pollutionfao.htm. lloyd, b. d. (1961). effects of dissolved oxygen concentration on the toxicity of several poisons to rainbow trout (salmogairdhnei nchardson). journal of experimental biology, 38, 447-455. thomas, a. a., & rice, b. a. (2005). increased opercular rates of pink salmon (onchorynchus gorbuscha) fry after exposure to the water soluble fraction of prudhoe bay crude oil. journal of fish resources board canada, 32, 2221-2224. watson, t. a., & yanong, w. (2006). use of copper in freshwater aquaculture and farm ponds. university of florida institute for food and agricultural science. http:/edis.ifas.ufl.edu. wikipedia, (2008). heavy metals. www.wikipedia.org. http://www.lenntech.com/water%20pollution/%20water%20pollution-%20fao.htm http://www.lenntech.com/water%20pollution/%20water%20pollution-%20fao.htm http://www.wikipedia.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 46-54 52 the gill of the fingerling in the control experiment showing no histopathological alteration. the gill of the fish in treatment 1 (0.10g/l of the toxicant) showing slight vacuolation. the gill of the fish in treatment 2 (0.125g/l of the toxicant) showing slight vacuolation. toxicity of copper (11) tetraoxo….. 53 the gill of the fish in treatment 3 (0.15g/l of the toxicant) showing extensive vacuolation. the liver tissue of the fish in the control experiment showing no histological alteration. the gill of the fish in treatment 4 (0.175g/l of the toxicant) showing extensive vacuolation of the tissue and the fragmentation of the lamella asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 46-54 54 the liver tissue of the fish in treatment 3 (0.15g/l of the toxicant) showing large vacuolation. the liver tissue of the fish in treatment 2 (0.125g/l of the toxicant) showing vacuole formation the liver tissue of the fish in treatment 1 (0.10g/l of the toxicant) showing small space formation effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 597-608 597 manufacturing process and various uses of savannah herbal tea (lippia multiflora) in côte d’ivoire ekissi alice christine laboratory of biochemistry and food sciences, faculty of biosciences, university felix houphouet boigny of cocody-abidjan, abidjan 22 (225) côte d’ivoire swiss center for scientific research in côte d’ivoire 01 po box 1303 abidjan 01, (225) côte d’ivoire yao-kouame albert faculty of earth sciences and mineral resources, university felix houphouet boigny of cocodyabidjan abidjan 06, côte d’ivoire konan amoin georgette laboratory of biochemistry and food sciences, faculty of biosciences, university felix houphouet boigny of cocody-abidjan, abidjan 22 (225) côte d’ivoire swiss center for scientific research in côte d’ivoire 01 po box 1303 abidjan 01, (225) côte d’ivoire alui konan alphonse faculty of earth sciences and mineral resources, university felix houphouet boigny of cocodyabidjan 06 abidjan 06, côte d’ivoire agbo n’zi georges laboratory of biochemistry and food sciences, faculty of biosciences, university felix houphouet boigny of cocody-abidjan, abidjan 22 (225) côte d’ivoire kati-coulibaly séraphin laboratory of nutrition and pharmacology, faculty of biosciences, university felix houphouet boigny of cocody-abidjan, abidjan, côte d’ivoire abstract 1 this study aims at determining the manufacturing process of tea from lippia multiflora collected in côte d’ivoire and describe its various uses. a survey was conducted among pickers, sellers and consumers in five cities (abidjan, yamoussoukro, toumodi, katiola and bondoukou). the results show that (92.11%) of the women harvesting tea, cut leafy stems at tea tree base, (80.65%) carry their harvests on the head and (60.95%) dry their harvest from 1 to 3 days or 7 days. the harvest period ranging from april to august is the most important one (80.15%). in abidjan, the use of lippia multiflora as food is 79.80 % and in other areas of the country, it is used for both food and medicine with the respective frequencies of 46.56 and 46.44 % and its insecticidal use represents only (6,16%). it appears from this survey that the leaves of lippia multiflora are most used by consumers; the manufacturing of this herbal tea is performed according to traditional process. the savannah tea has nutritional, insecticidal and medicinal values. it would be better to afford the opportunity to transform the leaves of lippia multiflora in tea in order to have a crop with a high added value. keywords: lippia multiflora, savannah tea, herbal tea, tea 1 corresponding author’s details: name: ekissi alice christine email address: ekissialicec@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ekissialicec@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 597-608 598 introduction lippia multiflora (verbenaceae) is a very fragrant perennial herb, which grows wild in savannah areas, on account of this; it holds the common name of savannah tea. it is almost found everywhere in the sudan savannah of west and central africa (jim et al., 2001). in côte d’ivoire, lippia multiflora (verbenaceae) is found in the central and northern part of the country. the leaves of savannah tea are generally consumed in the form of hot drink. they are used for the treatment blood pressure, malaria and diarrhea, in traditional and modern medicine etc. (ouedraogo, 1986; benoit-vical et al., 1996; oussou et al., 2008) and also have insecticidal activities on mosquitos and weevils (koumaglo et al., 1996). through its values and commercialization in côte d’ivoire (n'guessan and yao-kouamé 2010), the use of lippia multiflora it drunk from rural and urban areas. despite these multiple uses, savannah tea is a harvesting plant. the manufacturing process of the leaves in tea and practices linked to its consumption are not well-known. the present study aims at identifying all practices related to the consumption of lippia multiflora, its use and the manufacturing process of its leaves in herbal tea in order to better know and develop it. material and methods study areas and target the survey was carried out in the central, north-eastern and southern part of côte d’ivoire, sellers of lippia multiflora herbal tea, harvesters and consumers have been the main target. various investigations were conducted in five cities including: yamoussoukro, toumodi (central region), katiola (centralnorthern region), bondoukou (north-eastern) which are spontaneously the growing areas of lippia multiflora, and abidjan (southern region) which is not a growing area of this plant, is a center of consumption, particularly in the districts of yopougon, abobo, adjamé and cocody. 150 people were interviewed, including 50 (sellers and / or harvesters) and 100 consumers per city and in other districts of abidjan. about, 1200 people were interviewed. methods the information was obtained through interviews with natives or people who spent a better part of their life in the areas of natural production of lippia multiflora such as bondoukou, yamoussoukro, toumodi and katiola. for this first phase (stage), we conducted an exploratory investigation, with no formalized questionnaire in the purpose (order) to be familiar to the study area (town) and the local language. during meetings with residents, we have attempted to obtain general information about the plant, including its name in the local language, the method of collection and storage, transportation means, drying method, drying time, periods of harvesting, etc. the information obtained through this first phase (stage) allowed us to establish a survey sheet. the second phase (stage) was conducted in the cities of bondoukou, yamoussoukro, toumodi, katiola and abidjan and was based on a survey sheet submitted to individuals through interviews. that study lasted four months (june to september 2010). the time spent on each interview was approximately 10 to 20 minutes. the survey sheet was a questionnaire highlighting information related to the origin of interviewed people, the method of harvesting, storage, drying, drying time of savannah tea, harvest time; different uses, the local name and the acquiring method of herbal tea. statistical analyzes of data on a total of 1200 survey sheets, 180 with uncompleted answers had to be eliminated. thus, 1020 answer sheets collected were statistically analyzed. the information collected was included in an excel file and then transferred into a database, processed by the epi info 3.5.1 software for standardized data. these data were then analyzed using the statistica 7.1 software. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 597-608 599 results and discussion results methods of harvesting, storage, drying tea and savanna harvest periods the results in figure 1 show that cutting fresh leafy stems at the base of savanna tea tree is the most used collection method by harvesters (92.11 %). the method of collection leaves by leaves and roots stump are respectively very low, 4.64 % and 3.25 %. for storage during harvest, the most common method used is storage on the ground (ground storage) (45.87 %), followed by the storage in plastic bowls (29.42 %) and gunny bags (20.96 %). for the transportation of harvested leaves, the survey showed that the majority of harvesters (80.65%) carry their harvest on the head, and only 19.35 % use motors as transportation means. concerning the drying method, it should be noted that 38.23 % dry their harvest on cemented areas, 31.50 % on the sidewalks on the ground, 25.46 % harvesters dry leaves on plastic bag and only 4.69 % dry on roofs. as far as drying time is concerned, most women (60.95 %) dry their harvest for 1 to 3 days, 18.14 % do so for a week (7 days), 9.85 and 10.92 % respectively do it in 4 and 5 days. after drying, 60.39 % of women store the herbal tea in jute bags and 39.56 % in sheds. this information allowed us to establish the traditional manufacturing process of the savannah herbal tea (figure 2). this figure shows that the leaves (herbal tea) are the most widely used part and is used in three forms (whole leaves, cut and crushed leaves). analysis of the information collected (figure 3) shows that the period from april to august is the large harvests (80.15 %), followed by the period from september to december (16.68 %). january to march is the lowest harvesting activity period with a frequency of 3.17 %. figure 1: percentage of responses of harvesting, means of conveyance, storage and drying tea of lippia multiflora 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 fr es h le af y st em s le av es ro o ts o n b ag a t fl o o r in b o w l o n h ea d p u b lic m ea n s o f co n ve ya n ce ta rp au lin , s ac h et sp ac e ce m en t p av em en t ro o f 1 -3 d ay s 4 d ay s 5 d ay s 7 d ay s u n d er s h ed b ag o f d e ju it e picking storage means of conveyance drying fashion drying time storage of herbal tea 92.11 4.64 3.25 20.96 45.87 29.42 80.65 19.32 25.46 38.23 31.5 4.69 60.95 9.85 10.92 18.14 39.56 60.39 a n sw er % asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 597-608 600 figure 2: traditional manufacturing process of the savannah herbal tea of lippia multiflora figure 3: harvesting periods of savannah tea tree leaves the different uses of savannah tea tree figure 4 shows the different uses of savannah tea tree. the analysis of this figure outlines three main uses of this plant such as: medicinal, nutritional and insecticidal uses. it should be noted that in cities where savannah tea grows, it is used for food and medicine with identical frequencies of 46.56 and 46.44 %. the plant is used as an insecticide at a very low rate (6.16 %). in abidjan, the use of the plant as food is more common with a percentage of 79.80 %, followed by its medicinal use (20.19 %) and its insecticidal use (0.32 %). 3,17% 80,15% 16,68% january-march april -august september-december crushed leaves cut leaves whole leaves picking (fresh leafty stems) drying (during 1-3 days or 7 days) after drying, detachment of the sheets of the stems drying leaves (herbal tea) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 597-608 601 local name and various uses of (lippia multiflora) by ethnic group table i indicating the local name and the various uses of savannah tea tree (lippia multiflora) by ethnic group shows that, the vernacular name of the savannah tea tree depends on the ethnic group. savannah herbal tea is consumed as hot drink (tea). in bondoukou (north-eastern), apart from being used as hot drink (tea) the leaves are used to flavor sauces and are added in fresh meat during cooking. it arises from the information collected that this plant is used to treat several diseases (malaria, cough, bad cold, diarrhea, muscles relaxant, diuretic, headaches, and hypertension) and to drive out mosquitoes by some ethnic groups such as: gouros and a tribe (gôdè) of baoulé ethnic groups. figure 4: different use for lippia multiflora . 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 medicinal nutritional insecticide différent uses 20.19 79.8 0.32 46.56 46.44 6.96 city of abidjan cities where growth savannah tea tree su rv ey % asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 597-608 602 table 1: local names and various uses of savannah tea tree (lippia multiflora) by ethnic group cities ethnics local language nutritional use medicinal use insecticidal use yamoussoukro and toumodi baoulé blomangninin or catchènoumangninin or tchouanmangninin hot drink (tea) malaria, cough et bad cold (add lemon) healing and antiinfectious properties ( tummy sore after childbirth (add pepper)), diarrhea, digest, muscle relaxant, diuretic, headaches, stomachaches and hypertension. drive out mosquitoes katiola tagbana kpatrenou wêrê or kpatihi hot drink (tea) malaria, cough and bad cold (add lemon), healing and anti-infectious properties (tummy sore after childbirth (add pepper), diarrhea, digest, stimulates appetite, muscle relaxant, diuretic, headache, stomachaches and hypertension bondoukou lobi koulango dobè ankpayor or ankpayin hot drink (tea). used to flavor sauces and added in fresh meat during cooking malaria, cough and bad cold (add lemon), healing and anti-infectious properties (tummy sore after childbirth (add pepper), diarrhea, digest, muscle relaxant, diuretic, headaches, stomach aches, hypertension and stimulates the appetite. strangers of surveyed cities dioula gouro sénoufo kinkeliba or sougbanbrou or sougouligban fonhon ponzô hot drink (tea) cough and bad cold (add lemon), digest, muscle relaxant, diuretic, headaches, stomach aches, hypertension, facilitates digestion. drive out mosquitoes gouros asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 597-608 603 preparation method, frequency and period of consumption of savannah tea figure 5, shows the percentage of responses collected according to the preparation method, the frequency and the period of consumption of the savannah tea in the city of abidjan (center of non-settlement of the plant) and the leaves harvest center. the decoction is the most common method of preparation with percentages of 92.52 % and 86.19 % in abidjan and in cities where the savannah tea tree grows. 55.06 and 80.88 % of the surveyed people respectively consume the herbal tea once a day respectively in the cities where the plant grows and in abidjan. 37.98 % of questioned people in the cities where savannah tea grows have a frequency of two (2) times consumption a day compared with 16.04 % in abidjan. evening is the most frequent period of consumption, with rates of 71.35 and 80.04 % respectively in the cities where the savannah tea plant grows and in abidjan. this is followed by consumption in the morning, practiced by 19.17 % of the people surveyed in abidjan and 25.44 % in the cities where savannah tea plant grows. it should be noted that the consumption is mainly based on dry leaves (99 % in abidjan and 92.25 % in cities where savannah tea plant grows). the consumption of fresh leaves is only 7.75 % in the cities where savannah tea plant grows and 1 % in abidjan. acquisition of savannah herbal tea the acquisition of savannah herbal tea recorded in figure 6 shows that 88.83 % (cities where savannah tea grows) and 99.02 % (in abidjan) get herbal tea by purchasing it. in cities where the plant grows, 12.17 % of questioned consumers acquire herbal tea through harvesting. the rate of people carrying out this method of acquisition is very low in abidjan (0,98 %). concerning the purchasing place we have respectively, 98.92 and 100 % in the cities where it grows and in abidjan. all the interviewees purchase herbal tea in the market and only 2.08 % are in supermarket in abidjan. in all study areas, the price ranging from 25-50 f cfa (~ 20 g tea bag) is the most used with percentages of 94.91 and 83.14 %, then comes the 100 f cfa (~ 20-50g tea bag), with frequencies of 5.18 % in abidjan and 15.9 % in urban areas where and it grows and finally the price of 410 cfa (20 g tea bag) with a percentage of 1.54 % only in abidjan supermarket. according to surveyed people on the processing of savannah tea leaves in tea. it should be noted that 90.14 % and 95.24 % respectively in cities where savannah tea grow and abidjan, some among the surveyed people would like it to be the transformed in herbal tea. however, 8.86 and 3.86 % respectively in the cities where it grows and in abidjan did not want its transformation. 67.65 % of surveyed consumers in cities where savannah tea grows and 57.16 % in abidjan would like to buy it at the amount of 20 f cfa (2 g). then, 25.15 % (abidjan) and 20 % (cities where savannah tea grows) would like it at the amount of 25 f cfa (2 g), then 16 % and 10.02 % respectively would like to buy it at the amount of 50 fcfa (2 g). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 597-608 604 figure 5: percentage of responses according to the method of preparation, the frequency and the period of consumption of savannah tea 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 p u rc h a se p ic ki n g m ar ke t su p e rm a rk e t 2 5 -5 0 f 1 0 0 f 4 1 0 f o u i n o n 2 0 f 2 5 f 5 0 f o th er acquisition of herbal tea purchase place cost transformation cost of tea 30,44 20,75 49,92 0 43,91 6,25 0 45,02 5,42 28,61 13 4,72 2,59 47,81 0,00 47,83 2,08 43,14 5,19 1,51 46,24 2,86 17,16 23,15 9,94 1,55 cities where growth savannah tea tree city of abidjan r e sp o n se % figure 6: percentage of survey according to the acquisition, purchase place, transformation, cost of herbal tea and tea 0.0 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0 25.0 30.0 35.0 40.0 45.0 50.0 41.2 5.7 2.8 8.6 17.0 22.9 3.9 1.3 16.7 16.4 11.7 0.0 21.4 5.2 21.3 2.1 44.5 2.3 3.1 16.9 10.9 15.4 1.7 1.3 26.6 13.0 6.8 3.6 19.8 5.2 22.9 2.0 r es p o n se % 0.0 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0 25.0 30.0 35.0 40.0 45.0 50.0 d ec oc tio n so ak in g in fu si on 5 à 10 m n 1 0 à 20 m n 30 m n 1h ot he r on ce tw ic e th re e tim es ot he r m or ni ng m id da y ev en in g ot he r method of preparation cooking time frequency of consumption moment of consumption 41.2 5.7 2.8 8.6 17.0 22.9 3.9 1.3 16.7 16.4 11.7 0.0 21.4 5.2 21.3 2.1 44.5 2.3 3.1 16.9 10.9 15.4 1.7 1.3 26.6 13.0 6.8 3.6 19.8 5.2 22.9 2.0 cities where growth savannah tea tree city of abidjan r es p o n se % asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 597-608 605 discussion collection and transformation of savannah tea leaves in herbal tea and harvest period. the most harvesting method used, is to cut the fresh leafy stems at the shrub base. this practice can be explained by a desire to gain time for the actors of this field. however, the sustainability of such practice could entail in the short run, a threat to the survival of the savannah tea tree which is a wild plant. moreover, the abuse of this method of harvesting has led to the disappearance of large harvesting sites at toumodi and katiola. the transportation of harvests as bundles carried on head, the drying and outdoor storage conditions, practiced by the majority of women, showed that the transformation of savannah tea tree as a herbal tea remains a traditional activity. drying conditions on the ground and in the air, exposed leaves to contamination by microorganisms and other forms of food contaminants. this analysis is confirmed by the study of (hanson et al., 2011), who observed the presence of the genus bacillus in lippia multiflora herbal tea. the drying time is variable, as this step depends on sunlight, temperature and ambient humidity, the quantity of leaves to be dried and the drying surface. among the different parts of the plant, the leaves are most commonly used. this result is in agreement with those of (n'guessan et al., 2009). these authors have shown that the leaves are the main sought parts in plants. the peak harvest of leaves observed in the period from april to august could be explained by the fact that at that time the plant is growing, it has healthy leaves, less perforated by insects. this result also shows that this is the most conducive period for leaves collection. the period from september to january, represents a small harvesting activity, which could be justified by the flowering of plants, perforating leaves by insects, dried leaves by drought, as well as bushfires. the period from february to march, is the lowest harvesting period due to plant regrowth. different uses of savannah tea tree in the nutritional level, the information from the survey show that the savannah herbal tea is a hot drink consumed as tea, this result agrees with those of (n'guessan and yao-kouamé, 2010; kanko et al., 2004a) who reported that the infusion of lippia multiflora is used as tea. in bondoukou (north-eastern), in addition of being consumed like a hot drink, the leaves are used to flavor dishes namely sauces and fresh meat. this result demonstrates the flavoring properties of savannah tea leaves (kanko et al., 2004b), the author describes the leaves of lippia multiflora, as leaves with characteristic and pleasant flavoring, it could open the way for their use in food industry as additive. in the city of abidjan, this plant is used for its nutritional and medicinal properties. this is because the consumers of abidjan are more attracted by its pleasant flavoring they assimilate to citronella. however, in the harvesting cities of savannah tea, the use is as nutritional as medicinal, certainly due to the fact that, that plants are still a source of traditional medical care in these areas. this suggestion is in accordance with that of (bissangou and ouamba, 1997). according to these authors, in africa lippia multiflora moldenke plays a key role in traditional healing. people use this plant to treat malaria, diarrhea, as indicated by the results of (benoît-vical et al., 1996; oussou et al., 2008). moreover, apart from its ability to treat hypertension, indicated by (ameyaw, 2009; etou-ossibi et al., 2005), to fight against coughs, to allow muscle relaxation and its laxative nature (mwangui et al., 1993; abena et al., 1997). information from the survey also indicates that the savannah tea tree is used to treat other diseases, including urinary tract infections. this information also shows that the savannah herbal tea is also used for its anti-infective, healing and diuretic properties. besides the food and medicinal properties, the leaves of savannah tea are used to repel mosquitoes and perfume houses in gouros and baoule (gôdè) ethnic groups. this statement is in accordance with that of (kanko, 1995; koumaglo et al., 1996; tia et al. 2011). these authors, indeed, highlighted the pesticide properties of the essential oil of lippia multiflora. similarly (bissangou and ouamba, 1997) have emphasized that the extract of lippia multiflora was the object of a test of formulation like insecticide. which use, remains however limited or minor. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 597-608 606 preparation and consumption of savannah herbal tea savannah tea leaves are mostly prepared as decoction and are orally administered. this result is in accordance with those of (abena et al., 1997; kunle and al., 2003; ameyaw, 2009) indicating that savannah tea is often used in form of decoction and as a conventional tea in congo. the cooking time is 30 min, in places where savannah tea grows, while in abidjan, the highest time is 10-20 min. this difference could be explained by the fact that the majority of the population of the cities where savannah tea grows, cook food on charcoal. whereas, in abidjan, the cooking is done on gas fire or coal. the consumption frequency in abidjan is once a day, and the preferred time is evening, as it is usually used to fight against tiredness and to relax. in other cities, those morning and evening, have different functions. the two consumptions that of the morning and the evening have different functions. in fact, herbal tea is preferably consumed in the morning, in the form of tea for breakfast (georges, 1989; n'guessan and yao-kouamé 2010.). it is taken in the evening to remove tiredness (kunle et al., 2012) the stress of the day, and is also constitutes a means of gathering, sharing and exchange after evening meal (mamadou, 2008). the several use of savannah tea within the country (areas of regrowth) shows that this plant is widely used by local people than those of abidjan. this result is in accordance with those of valentin et al. (1995); pascual et al. (2001). for these authors, the gender lippia is widely used by local people. in all areas of the survey, the most commonly used forms are dry leaves. in abidjan, the purchase prices of these leaves are 25-50 and 100 cfa (~ 20g bag of herbal tea) with the sellers of the market. these results are in accordance with those of n'guessan and yaokouamé (2010). however, some inhabitants of the city of cocody (abidjan) buy them in supermarket. this form of acquisition of herbal tea is explained by the fact that these people of higher standard of living rather attend these modern markets. purchasing intentions of tea from savannah tea leaves the large majority of the surveyed people would like savannah tea leaves to be processed in form of tea, which shows the people great interest to this plant, the concern of upgrading it and prevent its extinction. the prices intended to the finished products (tea) are 20 f or 25 f (2g). these prices are the same charged for tea on markets. conclusion the investigations carried out in the five cities of the côte d’ivoire on savannah tea (lippia multiflora) have described the traditional process of manufacturing herbal tea. the vernacular name of savannah tea varies from one ethnic group to another. the period from april to august is the leaves large harvests, which are the most used parts by surveyed people. these leaves are sold in dried form and largely used for food. the savannah tea tree is used as medicine in areas where it wildly grows. it would be better to afford the opportunity to transform the leaves of lippia multiflora in tea in order to have a crop with a high added value, which could help the population to appeal to their needs. references abena, a. a., bioka, d., badila, samba, c., hondi-assah, t. & djatewa, m. (1997). propriété tranquillisante et antalgique du lippia multiflora. pharm. méd. trad. afr. 9: 94-107. ameyaw, y. (2009). a growth regulator for the propagation of lippia multiflora moldenke, a herbal for the management of mild hypertension. ghana journal of medicinal plants research, 3(9): 681685. benoît-vical, f., valentin, a., pelissier, y., marion, c., milhan, m., maillie, m., bastide, j. m., diafouka, f., kone, b. d., malan, a., kone, m., loukou, y., monet, d., ake, a. & yapo, a. (1996). confirmation in vitro de l'activité antimalarique de certaines plantes d'origine africaine utilisées en médecine traditionnelle. médecine d'afrique noire, 43(7): 393-400. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 597-608 607 bissangou, m. f., & ouamba, j. m. (1997). valorisation chimique de quelques espèces aromatiques et médicinales du congo (ageratum conyzoïdes l, chromolaena odorata king et robinson hyptis suaveolens poit et lippia multiflora moldenke). pharm. méd. trad. afr. 9: 70-84. etou-ossibi, w., nzonzi, j., mombouli, j. v., nsondéntandou, g. e., ouamba, j. m., & abena, a. a. (2005). screening chimique et effet de l’extrait aqueux de lippia multiflora moldenké sur le cœur isolé de crapaud. phytotherapie, 3(5): 193-199. georges, m. (1989). la ronde des thés. terrain, 13: 105-109. hanson a., cameron m., joubert e. & witthuhn r. c. (2011). identification of bacterial species on lippia multiflora herbal tea leaves and the influence of steam pasteurization. world j microbiol biotechnol, 27: 443-447. jim, s., wudeneh, l., mariana, s. & dan, a. (2001). agribusiness in sustainable natural african plant product: lippia tea. jim simon, ph.d: jesimonaesop.rutgers.edu. center for new use agriculture and natural plant products. kanko, c. (1995). contribution à l’étude phytochimique de lippia multiflora (verbenaceae). thèse de 3e cycle université de cocody–abidjan 233/95.1995. kanko, c., koukoua, g., n’guessan, y. t., fournier, j., pradère, j. p. & toupet, l. (2004a). contribution à l’étude phytochimique de lippia multiflora (verbenaceae). comptes rendus. chimie, 7: 1029–1032. kanko, c., sawaliho, b. e. h., kone, s., koukoua, g. & n’guessan, y. t. (2004b). étude des propriétés physicochimiques des huiles essentielles de lippia multiflora, cymbopogon citratus, cymbopogon.nardus, cymbopogon giganteus. comptes rendus chimie, 7: 1039–1042. koumaglo, k. h., akpagana, k., glitho, a. i., garneau, f. x., gagnon, h., jean, f. i., moudachirou, m. & addae-mensah, i. (1996). geranial and general major constituents of lippia multiflora moldenke leaf oil. journal essential oil research, 8: 237–240. kunle, o., okogun, j., egamana, e., emojevwe, e. & shok, m. (2003). antimicrobial activity of various extracts and carvacrol from lippia multiflora leaf extract. phytomedicine, 10:59–61 kunle, o. f. & egharevba, h. o. (2012). essential oil of lippia multiflora moldenke: a review. journal of applied pharmaceutical science, 2(1): 15-23. mamadou, l. d. (2008) contrôle de la qualité physicochimique et bactériologique des thés verts consommés au mali. thèse de doctorat en pharmacie, université de bamako, mali. p. 122. mwangui, j. m., addae-mensah, i., muriuki, g., munavu, r. & lwande, w. (1993). the potential for commercialization of three african lippia species as sources of essential oils for perfumery and medicinal purposes. actes du colloque de chicoutimi, 22 au 25 août 1993. 205-216 p. n’guessan, k., kadja, b., zirihi, g., n., traoré, d. & aké-assi, l. (2009). screening phytochimique de quelques plantes médicinales ivoiriennes utilisées en pays krobou (agboville, côte-d’ivoire). rev.sci. nat. 6(1): 1–15. n’guessan, k. a. & yao-kouamé, a. (2010). filière de commercialisation et usages des feuilles de lippia multiflora en côte d’ivoire. journal of applied biosciences, 29: 1743–1752. ouedraogo, o. g.(1986). plantes médicinales et pratiques médicales traditionnelles du burkina faso: cas du plateau central. thèse de l' université de ouagadougou, 261 p. 1996. oussou, k. r., yolou, s., boti, j.b., guessennd, k. n., kanko, c., ahibo, c. & casanova, j. (2008). etude chimique et activité antidiarrheique des huiles essentielles de deux plantes aromatiques de la pharmacopée ivoirienne. european journal of scientific research, 24(1): 94103. pascual, m. e., slowing, k., carretero, e., sánchez, d. m. & villar, a. (2001). lippia: traditional uses, chemistry and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 597-608 608 pharmacology: a review. journal of ethnopharmacology, 76: 201–214. tia v. e., adima, a. a., niamke l. s., gnago a. j., thibaud m., lozano p. & menut c. (2011). chemical composition and insecticidal activity of essential oils of two aromatic plants from ivory coast against bemisia tabaci g. (hemiptera: aleyrodidae). natural product communications, 6(0): 1-6. valentin, a., pelissier, y., benoit, f., marion, c., kone, d., mallie, m., bastide, j. m. & bessiere, j. m. (1995). composition and antimalaria activity in vitro of volatile components of lippia multiflora. phytochemistry, 40: 1439–1442. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. assessment of veterinary extension services rendered to poultry farmers by the agricultural development project, kwara state, nigeria matanmi b. m. and omotesho k. f. (department of agricultural extension and rural development, university of ilorin, nigeria) obaniyi k. s. (department of agricultural economics and extension, landmark university, omu-aran) adisa r. s. and ogunsola j. d. (department of agricultural extension and rural development, university of ilorin, nigeria) citation: matanmi b. m., omotesho k. f., obaniyi k. s., adisa r. s. and ogunsola j. d. (2012) “assessment of veterinary extension services rendered to poultry farmers by the agricultural development project, kwara state, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 473 -479. assessment of veterinary extension services..... 473 author(s) matanmi b. m. department of agricultural extension and rural development, university of ilorin omotesho k. f. department of agricultural extension and rural development, university of ilorin email: kfomotesho@yahoo.com obaniyi k. s. department of agricultural economics and extension, landmark university, omu-aran adisa r. s. and ogunsola j. d. department of agricultural extension and rural development, university of ilorin assessment of veterinary extension services rendered to poultry farmers by the agricultural development project, kwara state, nigeria abstract the study assessed the veterinary extension services rendered by the kwara state agricultural development project (kwadp) to poultry farmers in kwara state, nigeria. a two stage sampling procedure produced the sample size of 110 from five villages in the study area. a well structured interview schedule was administered to the respondents to produce data which was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistical tools. the study revealed that majority of the poultry farmers in the study area were male (73.3%), aged between 31 and 50 (70.9%) and had over 10 years experience in poultry farming (74.5%). only 17.3% of the farmers had secondary school education. almost all the respondents (97.35%) were aware of the veterinary services of the (kwadp). the frequency of extension contact was monthly for 59.1% of the respondents. the t-test at 1% level of significance revealed significant differences in the means of meat yield and egg yield before and after extension contact. the study concluded that though there was strong level of awareness of the veterinary services of the kwadp and there was evidence of positive impact of the extension contact on productivity, the extension service was not meeting the needs of the farmers in some aspects of poultry production such as facilitating credit facilities for expansion. the study recommended that the frequency of extension contact be improved upon. lastly, the study suggested that farmers should be encouraged to form or join cooperative societies to brighten their chances of securing rural credit. keywords: veterinary extension services, poultry farmers, likert-type scale, t-test, kwara state introduction livestock as a sub-sector of agriculture contributes significantly to the health and economy of rural communities and the nation as a whole. a large percentage of the rural people in nigeria satisfy their subsistence needs through livestock production involving rearing and marketing of livestock and its products (oladele 2004). while livestock includes cattle, goat, sheep, pigs and poultry, reports by rim (1992) revealed that poultry accounts for about 60% of the livestock production in nigeria. the enormous potential of poultry production to bring about rapid economic growth earned it a pivotal position among all livestock – based vocations (olagunju 2010). isika et al (2006) observed that poultry is important in addressing animal protein shortage in human nutrition because of its high fecundity, fast growth rate, short generation interval and unparalleled competence in nutrient transformation to high quality animal protein. in spite of the fact that about 10% of the nigerian population are engaged in poultry production (okonkwo and akubuo 2001), the industry has continued to fall short of its aim of mailto:kfomotesho@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 473-479. 474 self-sufficiency in animal protein consumption in the country which is put at 5gm/caput per day and which is a far cry from f.a.o recommended level of 35gm /caput per day. evidence had shown that the critical issue in poultry production in nigeria is the low production and inefficiency in resource allocation and utilization hence the need to provide farmers with useful information that will assist and sustain poultry industry in nigeria (ezeh et al. 2012) the abysmal report on the performance of the poultry industry in relation to the needs and expectation expressed calls to question the efficiency of extension services rendered to poultry farmers. emaikwu et al. (2011) reported that poultry production in nigeria is constrained by seasonal and irregular demand, high feed and chick cost, inadequate capital and poor extension services. the role that agricultural extension can play in enhancing overall productivity and livelihood of poultry farmers cannot be overemphasized. oladele (2004) confirmed from a study of southwestern nigeria that while 91% of respondents confirmed that extension enhanced their management of diseases, 80% confirmed same for treatment of livestock. agricultural extension in kwara state as in other parts of the country is administered by the agricultural development project (adp) under the supervision of the state ministry of agriculture. the kwara state agricultural development project (kwadp) maintains veterinary extension units that functions as outreach clinics for the purpose of providing advisory services to livestock farmers in the state. the level of awareness of extension services and the frequency of extension contact among other factors are important to the adoption and efficiency of extension service delivery. farmers’ understanding of the role of extension service providers and their perception of the benefits derived from participation in extension programs is important for the success of extension efforts. the suggestion of the poultry farmers (being the end users) on strategies to improve veterinary extension service delivery in the state will provide useful information for future decision making. therefore, the study carried out an assessment of the veterinary extension services provided by the kwadp. specific objectives of the study were to:  describe the socio-economic characteristics of poultry farmers in kwara state;  investigate the level of awareness and contact of the poultry farmers with the kwadp veterinary extension services; and  examine farmers perception of the veterinary extension services rendered by the kwadp hypotheses for the study ho1: there is no significant difference between farmers’ yield in egg production before and after their contact with veterinary extension services. ho2: there is no significant difference between farmers yield in meat production before and after their contact with veterinary extension services. materials and methods study area the study area is kwara state, nigeria. with a total of sixteen local government areas, the state has a land area of about 32,500 km 2 and a population of about 1.5m comprising of yoruba, nupe, fulani and baruba as the major tribes. the state is located between latitudes 7 0 45’n and 9 0 30’n and longitude 2 0 30’e & 6 0 25’e. the topography is mainly plain to slightly gentle rolling lands. the mean annual rainfall ranges between 1000mm and 1500mm. average temperature ranges between 30 0 c and 35 0 c. it also has an estimated figure of 203,833 farm families with the majority living in the rural areas. sampling procedure and sample size the study cantered on zone c of the kwadp which was identified as the dominant zone in livestock farming of the four agro-ecological zones that make up the state. zone c comprises of five local government areas namely; moro, asa, ilorin east, ilorin west and ilorin south a two-stage random sampling technique was then employed to obtain a sample of poultry farmers using the sampling frames provided by the kwadp. the first stage was the random selection of a village each from the five selected assessment of veterinary extension services..... 475 local government areas using the adp village listing, the following villages shao, alapa, magaji ajomu, oke-oyi and egbejila were picked. the second stage was the random selection of twenty two respondents from each of the five villages using the adp poultry farmers’ listing to give a total sample size of 110. data collection and analytical tools data was collected through the use of an interview schedule. descriptive statistics involving the use of frequencies, percentages, means were used in analyzing the socio economic characteristics of the respondents and also in presenting their level of extension awareness and contact. farmers’ perception of the extension services rendered by the kwadp was measured by means of a 4 point likert-type scale designated as follows; not adequate – 1, indifferent -2, fairly adequate3 and very adequate – 4. the t – test was employed in testing the hypothesis of the study. results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of respondents table 1 reveals that 70.9% of the respondents are aged between 31 and 50 years. this is significant as this age bracket represents the most active and productive years of most individuals because on the average people posses the most physical strength at this period of life. it is particularly of interest because of the tedious and physical nature of poultry farming. majority of the respondents are male (77.3%) and married (90%). the level of education among the poultry farmers is generally low with 30.9% of the farmers having no formal education and a further 51.9% possessing only primary school education. majority of the farmers (74.5%) have above 10years experience in poultry farming. the large percentage of experienced poultry farmers should impact positively on the quality of information supplied for this study. table 1: socioeconomic characteristics of respondents n=110 socio-economic variables frequency percentage age (years) <30 31-50 >50 7 78 25 6.4 70.9 22.7 gender male female 85 25 77.3 22.7 marital status single married widowed 8 99 3 7.3 90.0 2.7 highest educational level no formal education primary education secondary education tertiary education 34 57 10 9 30.9 51.9 9.1 8.2 poultry farming experience(years) ≤ 10 > 10 28 82 25.5 74.5 source: field survey 2011 level of awareness and contact of respondents with veterinary extension agents of the kwadp the level of awareness of veterinary extension services rendered by the kwadp and the level of extension contact is captured in table 2. almost all the respondents (97.3%) are aware of the veterinary extension services of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 473-479. 476 kwadp. this agrees with the findings of oladele (2004) which confirmed. 82% level of awareness about the veterinary extension services of the adp among livestock farmers in south-western nigeria similar study carried out in the fact that majority of the respondents first got wind of the existence of the kwadp veterinary services through the radio shows that the radio is a veritable means of communication among the respondents and this should be explored for the dissemination of agricultural and other extension information. the fact that over 91% of the respondents have had over 12 months of extension contact is favourable to the study as there must have been a minimum of two production cycles within this period and hence some benefits of the extension contacts would have been observed by the respondents. table 2: level of awareness and contact of respondents with veterinary extension agents of the kwadp variable frequency percentage awareness of kwadp veterinary extension services aware not aware 107 3 97.3 2.7 source(s) of information on kwadp veterinary extension services veterinary extension agents radio friends other poultry farmers others 15 59 13 20 30 13.6 53.6 11.8 18.2 2.7 no of years since veterinary extension service contact <1 ≥1 9 98 8.4 91.6 frequency of veterinary extension service contact no contact weekly fortnightly monthly occasionally 7 23 3 65 12 6.4 20.9 2.7 59.1 10.9 source: field survey 2011 about 60% of the respondents can boast of only one veterinary extension contact in a month. this is grossly inadequate and may have impli cations for the effectiveness of veterinary extension efforts among the respondents. farmers’ perception of veterinary extension services rendered by the kwadp table 3: respondents’ perception of veterinary extension services rendered by the kwadp perception of respondents on various veterinary extension services frequency percentage training and demonstration not adequate 11 10.0 assessment of veterinary extension services..... 477 indifferent fairly adequate very adequate 18 35 46 16.4 31.8 41.8 improved methods of poultry farming not adequate indifferent fairly adequate very adequate 5 24 27 54 4.6 21.8 24.5 49.1 improved breeds of poultry not adequate indifferent fairly adequate very adequate 2 64 34 10 1.8 58.2 30.9 9.1 access to credit facilities not adequate indifferent fairly adequate very adequate 29 56 15 10 26.4 50.9 13.6 9.1 poultry diseases, prevention & cure not adequate indifferent fairly adequate very adequate 17 31 41 21 15.5 28.2 37.3 19.1 source: field survey 2011 table 3 shows that majority of the farmers believe that the veterinary unit of kwadp at least has made an impact on their poultry activities in the areas of improved methods of poultry production, training and demonstration. this is because 73.6% of the farmers judged the effort of the unit as being at the least fairly adequate in meeting their extension needs. however, the reverse is the case with the introduction of improved breeds of poultry in which case about 60% of the farmers were either indifferent or considered the extension effort in this regards as being inadequate. only 9.1% of the farmers agreed that the unit was adequate in facilitating their access to credit facilities. the poor performance of extension in the area of facilitating rural credit has been criticized by authors as one of the bane of the desired transformation in agriculture. oboth (2003) confirmed that an increase in the level of finance of the poultry industry is necessary for the sub sector to meet the protein requirement of the population. about half of the farmers (56%) have felt the impact of the veterinary extension services in the prevention and cure of poultry diseases. farmers suggestions on how to improve extension service delivery in kwara state table 4: respondents’ suggestion on how to improve extension service delivery strategies frequency percentage an upward review of extension workers’ salaries 58 52.7 provision of infrastructural facilities 73 66.4 provision o transport facilities for extension agents 83 75.4 solution to the dearth of credit facilities required to expand and adopt new methods of poultry farming 50 45.5 source: field survey 2011 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 473-479. 478 the farmers were most passionate about the provision of transportation facilities for the extension agents. most of the farmers (75.6%) suggested that this will improve the extension service delivery. this may be a pointer to the inadequacy of the current frequency of extensi on contact with the farmers. an upward review of extension workers” salaries, provision of infrastructures and solution to dearth of credit facilities were also suggested by the farmers. hypothesis testing table 5: test of means of yield before and after contact with veterinary extension agents paired difference mean standard deviation standard error of mean t-value level of significance pair 1 meat yield before and after contact with veterinary extension agents 1.987 0.904 0.12 19.405 0.000 pair 2 egg yield before and after contact with veterinary extension agents 2.169 1.054 0.131 16.588 0.000 the result of the ttest carried out revealed that the difference in the means of meat yield before and after extension contact was significant at 1% with a tvalue of 19.405 thus the null hypothesis that there is no significant difference in meat before and after extension contact is rejected. a significant difference was also established in egg yield before and after extension contact at 1%, with a t-value of 16.588. conclusion the study concluded that there exists a strong awareness of the veterinary extension services of the kwadp among poultry farmers in the state. it was however established that the frequency of extension contact was inadequate and that the extension needs of the farmers were not being adequately met. the study also concluded the activities of the veterinary unit of the kwadp have positively impacted on the yield of the farmers. recommendations the study makes the following recommendations from its findings; 1. the kwadp should take advantage of the radio in disseminating agricultural information to farmers 2. the frequency of extension contact should be increased. the provision of means of transportation could assist in achieving this. 3. poultry farmers should be encouraged to form cooperative societies while existing ones should be strengthened to facilitate access to credit. references emaikwu, k. k., chikwendu, d. o., and sani, a. s. (2011) “determinants of flock size in broiler production in kaduna state of assessment of veterinary extension services..... 479 nigeria”, journal of agricultural extension and rural development, vol. 3(11), pp. 202-211. ezeh, c. i., anyiro, c. o., and chukwu, j. a. (2012) “technical efficiency in poultry broiler production in umuahia capital territory of abia state, nigeria”, greeener journal of agricultural sciences, vol. 2(1), pp. 1-7. isika, m. a., agiang, e. a. and okon, b. i. (2006) “dietary energy and crude protein requirements for chicks of nigeria local fowl and crossbreeeds”, international journal of poultry science. vol. 5, pp. 271-274. oboth, g. a. t. (2003) “financing poultry production in nigeria: the role of commercial banks”, a publication of poultry association of nigeria, ogun state chapter. pp 37 ojo, s. o. (2003) “productivity and technical efficiency of poultry egg production in nigeria”, international journal of poultry science, vol. 2, pp. 459-464 okonkwo, w. i. and akubuo, c. o. (2001) “thermal analysis and evaluation of heat requirement of passive solar energy poultry chick brooder in nigeria”, journal of renewal energy, vol. 9, pp. 1 oladele, o. i. (2004) “livestock farmers' awareness, access and benefits of veterinary extension services in southwestern, nigeria”, livestock research for rural development, vol. 16(6) art. #39. retrieved september 29, 2012,fromhttp://www.lrrd.org/lrrd16/6/olad16039.ht m olagunju, f. i. (2010) “impact of credit on poultry productivity in south-western nigeria”, world rural observations, vol. 2(4), pp 29-37 rim (1992) “nigerian livestock resources”: four volume report to the federal government of nigeria by resource inventory management limited urban reports and commercially managed livestock report. http://lrrd.org/lrrd16/6/cont1606.htm http://lrrd.org/lrrd16/6/cont1606.htm effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. management of the root knot nematode (meloidogyne javanica. treub) and sore shin (rhizoctonia solani. kuhn) using a nematicide and poor host crops in rotations u. mazarura (department of crop science, university of zimbabwe, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe) c. chisango (kutsaga research company, harare, zimbabwe) m. goss (department of crop science, university of zimbabwe, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe) citation: u. mazarura, c. chisango and m. goss (2012) “management of the root knot nematode (meloidogyne javanica. treub) and sore shin (rhizoctonia solani. kuhn) using a nematicide and poor host crops in rotations”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 668 – 675. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 668-675. 668 author(s) u. mazarura department of crop science, university of zimbabwe, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe c. chisango kutsaga research company, harare, zimbabwe m. goss department of crop science, university of zimbabwe, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe management of the root knot nematode (meloidogyne javanica. treub) and sore shin (rhizoctonia solani. kuhn) using a nematicide and poor host crops in rotations abstract in a long term study the effects of a nematicide and six rotations: root-knot-susceptible tobacco, nicotiana tabacum l. cv.„km10‟ grown continuously (contkm10), root-knotresistant tobacco cv. „rk8‟ grown continuously (contrk8), grass-grass-grass-km10 (g-g-g-km10), grass-grass-grassrk8 (g-g-g-rk8), km10-crotalaria juncea (km10-cr) and rk8-crotalaria juncea (rk8-cr), on root knot nematode, meloidogyne javanica and sore shin, rhizoctonia solani infection were studied. the nematicide used was ethylene dibromide (edb) and was applied to each tobacco crop, as is standard practice. chloris gayana cv. „rhodes katambora‟, presumably a poor host of nematodes, was the grass used in all the grass-grass-grass-tobacco rotations. the treatments were arranged in a randomized complete block design. contkm10, km10-cr, g-g-g-rk8, contirk8 and rk8-cr reduced root knot galling while g-g-g-km10 increased galling. sore shin increased with every year of rotation regardless of rotation, except in the case of g-g-g-km10 and g-g-g-rk8 which reduced infection relative to other rotations. with the exception of g-g-g-rk8, all rotations that included rk8 suppressed root knot infection but did not suppress sore shin infection. the rotations including km10 suppressed nematodes only with edb treatment yearly and did not suppress sore shin except the rotation g-g-g-km10. the role of crotolaria juncea was masked by either rk8 or edb. host plant resistance in the form of rk8 was effective in controlling nematodes but did not reduce sore shin except mildly when rotated with the grass. this work recommends the use of resistant cultivars with broad-spectrum resistances. keywords: nematodes, rotation, sore shin, tobacco introduction plant-parasitic nematodes like meloidogyne spp cause major economic losses in many crop plants (koenning et al., 1999). the reduction in yields maybe direct through cell destruction and transmission of viruses, or indirectly by providing infection sites for fungi and bacteria. overall losses are estimated to be above us $100 billion/year throughout the world including an up to 20% reduction in yield in many cash crops (koenning et al., 1999). the root knot nematodes, meloidogyne spp are a major tobacco pest (clayton et al., 1958; schweppenhauser, 1975) and are also a problem in underexploited indigenous vegetables like sesame, ceratotheca sesamoide (izuogu et al., 2012). in the late 1950s, the importance of this pest decreased because of the development of vertical resistance (clayton et al., 1958). in addition, such resistance was thought to lessen the effect of root knot in management of the root knot nematode.... 669 making the plant susceptible to soil borne pathogens (powel et al., 1971). rhizoctonia solani, which causes sore shin is a soil borne pathogen that can reduce yield by as much as 15 per cent (cole and zvenyika, 1982) or even 50 per cent in some fields (shew and main, 1985). fungicides can achieve good control of this pathogen, but a better approach is to use fungicides and a biological control agent such as trichoderma harzianum (t77) (cole and zvenyika, 1988) and/or rotations. cropping rotations are the oldest effective approach for controlling nematodes of annual crops (nusbaum and ferris, 1973; schmitt, 1991). many reports showed that soil microorganisms like nematodes could be reduced by rotations, thereby increasing yields of crops like soybean (howard et al., 1998; chen et al., 2001) and tobacco ( hiranslalee, et al., 1995). some significant antagonism to root knot nematodes in many crotalaria spp have been reported, justifying their inclusion in crop rotations in meloidogyne-infested soils (desaeger and rao 1999, 2001). robinson and cook, 2001 also showed that sunn hemp, crotalaria juncea was a poor host of some nematodes and played a role in their management. sunn hemp, which is a legume is increasingly receiving attention owing to its positive effect on soil organic matter as well as good green manure and nitrogen fixation properties (rotar and joy, 1983), and its ability to suppress plant-parasitic nematodes (wang et al., 2008). this study investigated the effects of long-term crop rotations and a nematicide on m. javanica and r. solani in irrigated tobacco. materials and methods experimental design and conditions this experiment was carried out under irrigation on a sandy loam soil (72.8% sand, 8.8% silt and 18.4% clay) at kutsaga research station (17º 55' s, 31º 08' ; altitude 1480m, average annual rainfall 882mm), zimbabwe from 1990 to 2000. tobacco was grown as a uniformity crop in 1990 and the year of first rotation (as per treatment) was 1991. this report covers the period 1994 to 2000 since in 1994 the longest rotation (grass-grass-grasstobacco) had completed a full cycle (4 yrs). the design was four randomized complete blocks (replicated four times) with the six rotations namely; i. continuous root-knot-susceptible tobacco cv. km10 (contkm10), ii. continuous root-knot-resistant tobacco cv. rk8 (contrk8), iii. km10 followed by crotalaria juncea (as a winter green manure), (km10-cr), iv. rk8 followed by crotalaria juncea (as a winter green manure), (rk8-cr), v. three years of the grass chloris gayana cv. katambora rhodes followed by km10, (g-gg-km10), and vi. three years of chloris gayana followed by rk8 (g-g-g-rk8). these symbols are used in all figures and tables throughout this paper. each tobacco crop was treated with the nematicide ethylene dibromide (edb), at 3ml edb/planting station at planting using an injector gun as is standard practice. the treatments were laid out in a randomized complete block design in such a way that every component of a rotation was included in each block in every year. this allowed direct effects of a treatment component to be revealed every year and cycle analyses to explain residual or cumulative effects. each plot was 4.8 m wide and 17.92 m long, giving 4 rows of 32 plants each. irrigation and cultural practice irrigation was applied by sprinkler at 50% moisture depletion, estimated using the evaporation pan method. the land was ploughed and diced as is standard practice. tobacco was grown on 0.2 m high ridges at a spacing of 1.2 m inter-row and 0.56 m intrarow. the katambora rhodes grass was seeded by broadcasting at 12 kg/ha and crotolaria juncea was similarly seeded at 50 kg/ha and incorporated just before flowering. c. juncea was established with irrigation, grown for three months and ploughed under as a green manure before each tobacco crop in the relevant rotation. the tobacco crop was kept weed-free by mechanical and chemical weed control methods. the herbicide, metolachlor 960 ec asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 668-675. 670 was applied at 2.3 l/ha within seven days of transplanting and settled in with 12 mm of irrigation. fertilisation the tobacco crop received a basic application of 600 kg ha-1 compound fertiliser (4-18-15) and was pre-irrigated before planting at the beginning of each september. topdressing applications of 100 kg n/ha and 10 kg n/ha as ammonium nitrate (34-0-0) were applied to rk8 at 3-4 weeks after planting and at topping, respectively, while km10 received just the initial topdressing at 3-4 weeks after planting as is standard practice. the fertiliser was applied by dollop placement 10 cm from the plant and 5 cm deep. lime was only applied as and when needed to correct ph to 5.5 (cacl2). root knot and sore shin rating at the end of each tobacco season, the tobacco was assessed for root knot nematode galling by using a scale of 0 to 8 (daulton and nusbaum, 1961). zero represented no galling and 8 extremely heavy galling and mass invasion without root development. for each treatment, 60 plants were dug and assessed for root knot nematode galling. for each treatment, a single row was used for sore shin assessments. in this row, seedlings were transplanted at 0.28 m within the row. at three weeks, each alternate seedling was removed, leaving the remainder spaced at 0.56 m, and assessed for sore shin. in all, 30 plants were thus assessed. this assessment was done using a scale of 0 to 5, where 0 signified no damage, 1 for 0-1% damage on plants with damage on stems, 2 for 1.1-10% damage for plants with up to two lesions on stems and slight root discoloration. a score of 3 was assigned for 11-25 % damage of plants with several lesions on stems and about one third of root discoloration, 4 for >26% damage of plants with extensive lesions on stem and root discoloured and, 5 for dead plants (cole and cole 1978). statistical analysis anova on tobacco yield, root knot galling scores and sore shin rating scores was done after each season and at the end of the two cycles using sas software version 6 in order to show treatment effects yearly and rotation effects after the complete cycle. selected treatments (see table 1) were further compared using orthogonal contrasts. results and discussion root knot nematode and yield responses the direct effects of each treatment for each year on galling index are in fig 1a and b. with regard to km10, the rotation g-g-g-km10 showed higher galling over years compared to contikm10 or km10-cr (fig 1a). the latter rotations though not different, except in year 8 when km10-cr > contikm10, showed galling decreasing with progressive year of rotation. in the case of rk8, galling was low and the same for all rotations over years (fig 1b) showing that the root knot resistance in this cultivar was effective in suppressing nematode damage. the cumulative rotation effect (table 1) confirmed the above trends showing significant high (p<0.001) galling in g-g-gkm10 compared to contkm10 or km10-cr while in rk8 the treatments were the same showing the dominance of the host plant resistance in rk8. all rotations that included rk8 showed reduced root knot galling. the continuous fall in galling with year of rotation in the rotations contkm10 and km-cr (fig 1a) possibly indicate the cumulative effect on the nematode population of yearly treatment with a nematicide and/or significant alterations of some soil properties that were detrimental to the pest. in the case of g-g-g-km10 this nematicide effect was not discernible presumably because the edb was only applied once in four years as opposed to yearly as was the case with the other rotations which had no grass in the sequence. pen-mouratov et al. (2004) reported negative correlation between nematodes and soil moisture and positive correlation between nematodes and soil organic matter. in this study, this could also have been the case since grass-grass-grass tobacco rotations had a higher soil organic matter (mazarura and chisango, 2012). soo 2005) confirmed that partial root zone drying significantly reduced m. javanica. indeed, in this trial the soil organic content fell in the contkm10 and km10-cr rotations and showed a strong positive correlation with galling. further, since the main growth of an irrigated crop in zimbabwe occurs during the hottest and driest months of the year, this must have management of the root knot nematode.... 671 compounded the effect on the nematodes. the role of crotolaria juncea in the suppression of nematodes seemed to have been masked by edb or that, since it was grown for only three months, its effect was minimal. the reduction in galling in contkm10 and km10-cr should have been accompanied by a rise in yield but, in fact, the opposite was true (table 1). this perhaps, is because galling was measured at season end, making measurements less precise since yields are known to respond to infestation only within a month of transplanting (brodie and dukes, 1972). in this study the high yield associated with the rotation g-g-gkm10 despite a higher galling and the lower yields in spite of lower galling in the rotations contkm10 and km10-cr (fig 2a, table 1) must indicate that factors other than nematode galling were limiting. indeed, a comparison of galling in contrk8, rk8-cr and g-g-g-rk8 (fig 2b) showed that galling was the same but yield was significantly higher (p<0.01) with the g-g-g-rk8 sequence relative to the rotations contrk8 and rk8-cr implying that other factors, perhaps, associated with an increased soil organic carbon were at play. in fact, the yield in km10 rotations was highly correlated with soil organic matter and soil nitrogen (mazarura and chisango, 2012). in the case of rk8, this study showed that host resistance had a major role to play in nematode management as all the rotations that included rk8, showed significant nematode suppression. sore shin response the direct effects of each treatment component for each year on sore shin infection shown in fig 1c and d indicated an increase in infection with year of rotation regardless of cropping sequence. the rotations g-g-g-km10 and gg-g-rk8 tended to be lower than the other rotations and this is confirmed by the cumulative data (table 1). reportedly, root knot resistance in rk8 ought to have conferred tolerance to rhizoctonia solani (batten and powell, 1971) but this was not the case. these results also showed clearly that although yields appeared acceptable as per industry standards (2500-3500 kg/ha), sore shin rating increased, creating a danger for any subsequent crop. conclusions the standard grass-grass-grass-tobacco rotation controlled nematodes only when the tobacco cultivar had inherent resistance to root knot. this host plant resistance in the form of rk8 was highly effective in controlling nematodes but did not reduce sore shin infection except mildly when rotated with the grass. it is likely that the combination of rk8 and a fumigant will protect this resistance from breaking down. the use of a susceptible cultivar even with a fumigant led to a yield reduction. this work also shows that the practice by zimbabwean farmers of growing irrigated tobacco continuously for even up to 15 years is only driven by economics as yields seem to remain economical but at the expense of disease buildup and hence sustainability. recommendations this work recommends the use of resistant cultivars with a broad spectrum of resistances. further work needs to be done to explore other rotation crops that would eliminate the use of the nematicide since chemical control is both expensive and carries an environmental risk with regard to ground water contamination. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 668-675. 672 figure 1: yearly treatment effect on root knot galling for sequences involving km10 (a), sequences involving rk8(b ) and sore shin rating for sequences involving km10 and sequences involving rk8. [contikm10 = root-knot-susceptible tobacco cv. km10 grown continuously; contrk8 = root-knot-resistant tobacco cv. rk8 grown continuously; g-g-gkm10 = grass-grass-grass-km10; g-g-g-rk8 = grass-garss-grass-rk8; km10-cr = km10-crotalaria juncea and rk8-cr = rk8-crotalaria juncea] management of the root knot nematode.... 673 table 1: cumulative effect of rotations, after two complete 4 year cycles, on tobacco yield rotation yield root knot sore shin (kg/ha) galling rating contkm10 3212 1.6 2.6 contrk8 3675 0.1 2.7 km10-cr 3310 1.8 2.7 rk8-cr 3748 0.1 2.7 g-g-g-km10 3708 3.2 2.5 g-g-g-rk8 3899 0.1 2.5 contrast p p p contkm10 vs. g-g-g-km10 *** *** ns km10-cr vs. g-g-g-km10 *** *** ** contkm10 vs. km10-cr ns ns ns contrk8 vs. g-g-g-rk8 *** ns *** rk8-cr vs. g-g-g-rk8 ** ns *** cont rk8, vs. rk8-cr ns ns ns *** p > 0.001, ** p > 0.01, *p>0.05, ns = not significant at p>0.05 contikm10 = root-knot-susceptible tobacco cv. km10 grown continuously; contrk8 = root-knot-resistant tobacco cv. rk8 grown continuously; g-g-g-km10 = grass-grass-grass-km10; g-g-g-rk8 = grass-garssgrass-rk8; km10-cr = km10-crotalaria juncea and rk8-cr = rk8-crotalaria juncea. figure 2: yield responses to various cropping sequences. bars are sed. [contikm10 = root-knot-susceptible tobacco cv. km10 grown continuously; contrk8 = root-knot-resistant tobacco cv. rk8 grown continuously; g-g-g-km10 = grass-grassgrass-km10; g-g-g-rk8 = grass-garss-grass-rk8; km10-cr = km10-crotalaria juncea and rk8-cr = rk8-crotalaria juncea] asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 668-675. 674 references brodie, b. b. and dukes, p. d. (1972) “the relationship between tobacco yield and time of infection with meloidogyne javanica”, j nematol. vol. 4(2), pp. 80-83. batten, c. k. and powell, n. t. (1971) “rhizoctonia-meloidogyne disease complex in flue-cured tobacco”, j. nematol. vol. 3, pp. 164-9. chen, s., porter, d. m., reese, c. d. and stienstra, w. c. (2001) “crop sequence effects on soybean cyst nematode and soybean and corn yields”, crop sci. vol. 41, pp. 1843-1849 http://dx.doi.org/10.2135/cropsci2001.1843 clayton, e. e., graham, t. w., todd, f. a., gaines, j. g. and clark, f. a. 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(2001) “root-knot and reniform nematode reproduction on kenaf and sunn hemp compared with that on nematode resistant and susceptible cotton”, industrial crops and products, vol. 13, pp. 249–264 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s09266690(00)00082-0 rotar, p. p. and joy r. j. (1983) “tropic sun”, sunn hemp; crotalaria juncea l. honolulu (hi): university of hawaii. 7 p. (research extension series; res-36). schmitt, d. p. (1991) “management of hererodera glycines by cropping and cultural practices”, j. nematol. vol. 23, pp. 348-352. schweppenhauser, m. a. (1975) “sources of nicotiana tabaccum resistance to meloidogyne javanica”, tob. int. vol. 177, pp. 40-42. shew, h. d. and main, c. e. 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(2011) “improving the status of sunn hemp as a cover crop for soil health and pest management”, http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/sustainag/news/art icles/v8-wang-sunnhemp.pdf. accessed on 3 september, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0926-6690%2800%2900082-0 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0926-6690%2800%2900082-0 http://dx.doi.org/10.1094/pd-69-901 http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156854108783476412 http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/sustainag/news/articles/v8-wang-sunnhemp.pdf http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/sustainag/news/articles/v8-wang-sunnhemp.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. economics of tea production in pakistan bushra rehman (assistant scientific officer, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabadpakistan) nadeem akmal (senior scientific officer, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabadpakistan) muhammad azeem khan (chief scientific officer, senior director, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabadpakistan) saima rani (scientific officer social sciences research institute, narc, islamabad-pakistan) citation: bushra rehman., nadeem akmal., muhammad azeem khan and saima rani (2012) “economics of tea production in pakistan”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 506 513. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 506-513. 506 author(s) bushra rehman scientific officer social sciences research institute, narc, islamabad-pakistan email: houri_bushra@yahoo.com nadeem akmal senior scientific officer, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabadpakistan muhammad azeem khan chief scientific officer, senior director, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabadpakistan saima rani scientific officer social sciences research institute, narc, islamabad-pakistan economics of tea production in pakistan abstract tea is one of the most important non-alcoholic beverage drinks worldwide and has been gaining further popularity as an important „health drink‟ in view of its purported medicinal value. pakistan has the potential of producing quality tea. national tea research institute ntri plays a very important role in the production and promotion of tea cultivation in pakistan. the study was conducted to identify the opportunities and constraints in shinkiari mansehra. primary data was collected from ntri and different farmers of shinkiari and evaluate the farmer‟s perceptions production processing and marketing of tea. results revealed that ntri processing unit was working at below its full capacity and 226.59 rs/kg extra costs bearing due to below capacity. tea is a high value crop of gross margin of 21340 rs/ acre and annually earned gross margin from other crops wheat and maize was 6675rs/acre and tea cultivation advantage was 14665 rs/acre but farmers was not interested to cultivate due to its high initial investment. internal rate of return (irr) and net present value (npv) were calculated for investment appraisal of the tea. hence, there is need to promote tea cultivation on grass land area which will increase their income and livelihood and create more employment opportunities for local people. keywords: tea, production, economic analysis, ntri, pakistan introduction tea (camellia sinensis, thea sinensis, or c. thea) is the world‟s most popular beverage after water due to its palatability, comparative cheapness and other beneficial effect. tea plant originated from south east china, gradually expanded to india and further into tropical and sub-tropical countries (schapiro, 1982). at present, china is the leading tea producer followed by kenya, sri lanka, turkey, and indonesia, sri lanka tea is produced at a large scale in the world. its cultivation is restricted to acidic soil (4.5-5.5 ph). rain plays an important role in its cultivation as for good production its water requirement is 1000-1500 ml per annum. temperature requirement is 0-35 0 c if temperature is from 16-20 0 c its producing potential will increase. for optimal production plant to plant distance is 2 feet and row to row distance is 4 feet. initial water requirement of tea is high. pruning is the one of important part of the development of the tea plant after plantation. generally tea plants take 3-4 years to mature with a long production life of 70-100 years (ntri, 2010). tea is a labor intensive parishable crops and creates employments and income generating opportunities and indrictly contribute in economic development. it requires a skilful labor in picking the leaves. the quality of tea also depends upon the picking of the leaves beacaus the growth of the tea leaves depends mailto:houri_bushra@yahoo.com economics of tea production in pakistan 507 upon the picking techenique.a skilled labor can pick 35-kg tea per day (alam,2010) background of tea in pakistan before 1971, east pakistan had established tea orchards and pakistan was the major exporter of tea. separation from east pakistan (modern-day bangladesh) in 1971 turned pakistan overnight from a tea exporter to an importer, a situation that continues today. however, a tepid relationship with india, concern about over-dependence on kenya, and the availability of large amounts of suitable land for tea cultivation within pakistan itself are motivating change in the subcontinent: pakistan has set its sights on self-sufficiency in tea production. the high import bill of tea for a developing country like pakistan became a great problem, therefore, soon after the separation of east pakistan in 1971 a cell of special crops was created in the ministry of food and agriculture, government of pakistan and a project titled “research and introduction of tea in pakistan” was initiated in 1973-74. later on, the project was handed over to pakistan agriculture research council (parc), islamabad. the national tea research station (ntrs) was established in 1986 at shinkiari, district mansehra, which was later on promoted to national tea research institute (ntri).a tea garden on 30acres of land was established with a sound infrastructure on 20acres land for tea nursery. an adequately equipped soil laboratory and an orthodox miniature tea-processing unit were installed (latif et al.2008) looking at the issues following objectives was defined to achieve the aim of the research study. i. to empirically analyze the cost and production management practices of tea. ii. to evaluate the economic feasibility of tea with other seasonal crops like wheat and maize. iii. to see the effect of tea cultivation on farmers income. iv. to identify the problem faced by the tea industry in pakistan regarding the production, processing and marketing of local shinkiari tea. v. to identify policy intervention, institutional changes needed to increase the tea production and improve the livelihood of the farmers. materials and methods the study was conducted in may, 2011 in district mansehra, shinkiari which had the potential of local tea production. a detailed data was collected on production, the post production issues, processing, marketing; brand choice issues related the tea. the cost of production was provided by the experts in ntri. the required information regarding the black and green tea processing machinery and equipment cost, labor charges involved in the installation, level of production and input costs involved etc were collected from the ntri processing plant. investment appraisal analysis was carried out to determine the extent of incentives for future investment in tea enterprise (shah et al. 2010). cash flow sheet was developed up 80 years to identify the feasibility of tea field. for cash flow sheet 30(1980-2006) year data was taken from agriculture statistics and economic survey of pakistan of various issues and then calculate the compound growth rate. this approach had been used by various authors such as nandi and bera (2011), prajneshul and chandran (2007) and rehman et al (2010).after calculating the growth rate future years data sheet was manipulated by multiplying the previous year figure with the calculated growth rate. if the feasibility study or business plan shows that project will bring direct tangible benefits, the classical methods of project evaluation can be applied (brzozowska, 2007). having data of projected capital expenditures, projections of turnover, income and cost statement projections and effect on expected cash flows the further evaluation can be lead through different stages. the one is the calculating of the payback period ratio, accounting rate of return and break-evenpoint (mishan, 1982). the second one, the most popular, is the assessment based on changes of value in time that is calculating of discounting ratios, like as npv or irr and others like sensitivity analysis, different scenarios or simulation game (myers, 1984).this approach asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 506-513. 508 had been used in many studies in different ways like lumby, 1991, shah etal,2010.the research team visited tea growers at different locations of the area to analyze the cost and benefits differential between the perennial crop and seasonal crops. at the end of field day concluding meeting was planned at ntri where the research team shared the concerns and problems at farmers‟ fields. results and discussion role of ntri ntri planted tea on 607 acres of land, unilever (pvt.) ltd on 1340 acres and agricultural department of kp on 20 acres. but due to the natural disaster of earth quake and terrorism the tea planted area decreased and reached up to 300 acre. now tea is planting at different area of sawat, battagram balakot and ajk. to fulfill the demand of country, now tea is being currently cultivated in mansehra, swat and dir on about 87 acres of land under the national tea research institute (ntri) and expected to rise. along with this tea-processing unit has already been established in shinkiari in mansehra district with a processing capacity of 5000 kilogram of black tea per day but it is working below its installed capacity as only 1200 kg/day tea is being processed mainly due to low production of fresh leaves. however this production cannot sufficient for growing population pakistan has a long tradition of tea consumption because its annual consumption is about 150 million kg, fluctuates at just less than 1 kg per person per year. this is the world‟s seventh highest consumption (government of pakistan, 2008). to fulfill the demand of tea government import the tea from different countries, its resultant position as 3rd largest importer of tea after england and russia and the consumption is increasing day by day with the increase in population. pakistan is importing black tea from nineteen different tea-producing countries of the world. consumption of green tea in pakistan is very small: it is imported from four different countries (hamid, 2002). presently, annul expenditure on the import of black tea and green tea was rs 227.58 and 114.29 respectively per kg. approximately, annual imports of 95.91 m tones of rs. 21724 million, which approximates to 95 thousand m tones of rs.21.62 billion of black tea and 0.91 thousand m tone of rs.104.0 million of green during the 2009-10, which is showed in table 1. approximately more than 42% percent of yearly consumption is being received by smuggling, which is a major loss in government revenues (national tea research institute, 2010) besides this, sizeable quantity of tea is also being smuggled to supplement the supply to satisfy the ever-growing demand. according to a moderate estimates about 50,000 to 65,000 tones of tea are making inroads into pakistan each year (hassan, 2003). to fulfill the national requirements, the country is spending valuable foreign exchange on tea import. besides continuous efforts farm level adoption is nominal and the processing plants are running much below the breakeven point. therefore there is need to develop integrated and coordinated approach for increasing area under tea cultivation and production, develop market linkages between producers and processors, resoling issues of plucking and post harvest management along with promotion of local tea consumption. farmers perceptions tea is high yielding crop, gives high return but sill farmers are stick to traditional cropping pattern in the area. most of the people of the area have very smallholdings of land, usually in kanals. the farmers, therefore, are reluctant to grow tea because it is a long duration and high cost crop in the first 4 years and takes 7 to 8 years to reach complete yielding stage. they prefer short duration crops like vegetables, maize, rice and wheat etc. that provide quick return to meet their daily life expenditures. most of the farmers are very poor while tea requires some investment for its cultural practices such as weeding, fertilization and irrigation etc. tea is usually cultivated on marginal lands as farmers think that tea cultivation is profitable in comparison to crops normally grown at marginal lands in the area. economics of tea production in pakistan 509 the table 2 indicates the cost of production of tea at shinkiari. in the 1 st and 4 th year the cost is higher. in the 1 st year the larger portion of cost goes to land preparation, seedling and transplanting cost and irrigation etc. in 2 nd and 3 rd year there is only maintenance cost. in the 4 th year the along with maintenance cost there is a transportation cost from field to processing plant which is 15000/plant. the total cost of tea production is rs 53660/acre while the profit from tea cultivation is rs 21340/acre. tea is a perennial crop and it gives production after 4 years. therefore for initial 3 years it can be intercropped with soybean, musters/canola, strawberry and vegetables like garlic onion and turnip so that 60-70 percent cost will be recovers from intercropping. the table 3 presents the comparison of the three crops i.e. wheat, maize and tea. stream water is the main irrigation source so there is no irrigation cost. the gross margin from wheat and maize cultivation is rs.6675/acre gross margin from tea cultivation is rs 21340/acre. the net advantage from tea cultivation is rs.14665/acre. it indicates that through tea cultivation farmers can earn higher profit as compared to wheat and maize cultivation. table 4 indicates a negative cash flow up to 4 years, because tea plant stats fruiting after four years and management expenses are added in care every year but gives return from intercropping. the cash flow turns positive at 5 th year. the cash flow remains higher from 6 th to 80 years. after that the cash flow decline or constant up to 80 years. keeping in view the current interest rate that is 16% (sbp, 2012) npv and irr is premeditated., the npv is positive and the irr was also very 24% .this provide a good justification that tea can be promote on the marginal land where a farmer doesn‟t get a beneficial returns from his land. the summary of the results of npv and irr are elaborated in table 3 constraint tea is a perishable and high cost crop. there are a number of constraints in tea cultivation like climate, frequency of rainfall, type of land, degree of slope of land, availability of inputs, seed and fertilizers and the untrained labor are important factors. tea cultivation is not possible in punjab and sindh to some extent due to these constraints. investment on tea and poverty of the farmers is one of the hurdles for tea cultivation in pakistan. the distance between the tea plants is too short that a farmer does not go for intercropping this factor also restricts the farmer. the little quantity of tea produced and processed in pakistan, because of unavailability of the processing units.3-5 hours tea leaves should reach to the processing units. but unfortunately pakistan has only 1 processing units black tea processing plant at ntri. along with other private agencies i.e. hazara uni, fata, sungi found, tepal and ajk are also planting tea. within 3-5 hours fresh tea leaves should reach to the processing plant. unfortunately the roads are narrow and under-constructed a lot of leaves reduce their moisture level while travelling. at last farmer suffered and get low price at farm gate. it cultivation requires proper training, new techniques and better management practices are required to improve the efficiency of the farmer and as well field. unfortunately, pakistan has a lack of research institutes and modern laboratories and equipment. some of the commercial bank like zarai taraqiati bank ltd. (ztbl) provides loans to facilitate the in three instalments bases, free of interest for the first four years, which is not enough to meet the requirements of this crop. the interest rate is very high i.e. 9 percent, which has to pay within 7-8 years when crop give maximum yield. this loan is not insufficient but also further increases the burden on the growers. the procedure to access loan facility is too difficult for poor and illiterate farmers. besides, that loan is provided to those farmers who has two acre of land. these requirements again creates problem for the small farmers. the long-term viability of tea production in pakistan will inevitably depend on its security situation; both baluchistan and the north-west frontier province in which mansehra falls have experienced ongoing instability as a side effect of the conflict in afghanistan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 506-513. 510 benefits tea is a labor intensive crop and creates employment and income generating opportunities and indirectly contribute in economic development. day by day increase in population as well as rise in inflation level house hold head is unable to fulfill the food requirement of a whole family. that‟s why the rate of migration level is high and people are forced to leave their homeland to earn livelihood. if better opportunities are provided to those migrants in rural areas who move in search of better jobs, poverty will be alleviated. it also has some other advantages like no disease infesation, erosion control, no effect of hail storm etc.tea crop gives good prices compared to other crops, and the risk of crop failure is fairly low. if its production will be increased by the utilization of waste land the processing unit of national tea research institute (ntri) will be work at economic level (full capacity). along with this increased local production of tea will help to reduce import bill. the processing expenditure regarding tea cultivation is presented in the table 5. the current/existing variable cost per kilogram of tea is rupees 118 while the variable cost can be considerably decreased to rupees 5 only when the plant operates at its full capacity. the total processed cost of the finished product is rs.386/kg at the current/ existing level while the total cost processing at the plant full capacity is only rs.160/kg only. hence, the extra costs to be beard due to below capacity of the plant are rs.226.in short the empirical results indicates that variable cost and processed cost are considerably low when the plant is at its full capacity. conclusion and recommendations pakistan has the potential of producing quality tea. most of the farmers are interested to cultivate tea at marginal lands and not agree to replace the traditional cropping pattern. land holdings in the area are small and resources are low. along with there are no proper marketing linkages and effective procedures to market tea in pakistan. therefore those constraints should be channelized properly and make the marketing procedure simpler and effective. as for as the expansion in area under tea cultivation is concerned, there is need to develop grass lands of the farming communities with special technological packages and proper persuasion. there is also need to popularize tea cultivation by the social mobilization and capacity building of the farmers through the training in other potential areas of pakistan through proper advertisement. one of the main problem is there is no record of tea production in pakistan. data should be properly organized and documented. government should introduce the home processing unit rather than the private or multinational companies so that our more employment opportunities are available. reference alam s. m. (2010) the indonesian embassy, islamabad pakistan joomla! is free software released under the gnu/gpl license. brzozowska, k. (2007) “cost-benefit analysis in public project appraisal”, engineering economics, no. 3 (53) urgent issues, pp. 78-83 chaudhry, m. i., tajammal, m. a. and hussain, a. (2002) “pulse varieties of pakistan, federal seed certification and registration department”, ministry of food, agriculture and livestock: islamabad; pakistan. government of pakistan (2008) economic survey of pakistan. govt. of pakistan finance division, economic advisors wing, islamabad. hamid f. s. (2002) “tea in pakistan”, national tea research institute, shinkiari, mansehra, nwfp, pakistan. hamid f. s. (2010) “production of tea in pakistan”, national tea research institute, shinkiari, mansehra. hasan u. s. (2003) “prospects of tea cultivation in pakistan”, unpublished research report of pakistan agric. rec. council (parc), islamabad schapiro. j et al. (1982) “the book of coffee and tea”, (rev. ed. 1982) the columbia electronic encyclopedia, 6th ed. columbia university press. latif a, jan. u. a, chishti. f. a, fayez. m, hamid. s. f. (2008) “assessing potential of local tea production in pakistan”, sarhad j. agric. vol. 24(2). pp. 339-343. http://www.joomla.org/ economics of tea production in pakistan 511 lumby, s. (1991) “investment appraisal and financing decisions”, fourth edition, london: chapman and hall. mishan, e. j. (1982) “cost-benefit analysis”, (3rd ed.) allen & unwin, london, 1982. myers, s. c. (1984) “financial theory and financial strategy”, interfaces, no. 1, pp. 126137. nandi, a. k. and bera, b. k. (2011) “variability in pulses production of west benga”, economic affairs, vol. 56, pp. 199204. ntri (2010) “tea cultivation in pakistan”, pakistan agric. rec. council (parc), islamabad. pervaiz. u, khan. a, khan. m. n, khan. z. m, ikramulhaq, khan. q, idrees. m, ahmad. s. and ahmad. i. (2009) “the role of national tea research institute in tea production”, sarhad j. agric. vol. 25(2), pp. 349-353. prajneshu and chandran, k. p. (2005) “computation of compound growth rates in agriculture”, agricultural economics research review, vol. 18, pp. 317-324. rehman, m. s., matin, m. a., hossain. s., karim, m. r, and salam, m. a. (2010) “an economic study of mango cultivation in chapainawabganj and dinajpur district of bangladesh”, bangladesh journal of agricultural research, vol. 35(4), pp. 621-630. shah. h, riaz. h, akmal. n, sharif.m and majid. a. (2010) “investment appraisal and evaluation of community based production of balance feed”, pak. j. of agric. res. vol. 23(12), pp. 70-77 sbp (2012) state bank of pakistan official web site. http://www.sbp.org.pk/ table 1: import situation of tea during last five years in pakistan year black tea green tea qty* value** rs/ kg cost qty* value*** rs/ kg cost 2005-06 104 11.60 111.54 1.5 84.96 56.64 2006-07 105 11.73 111.71 1.1 79.23 72.03 2007-08 102 13.73 134.61 1.3 104.00 80.00 2008-09 98 14.98 152.86 1.05 98.46 93.77 2009-10 95 21.62 227.58 0.91 104.00 114.29 note: * showed quantity in “000”m tones, ** shows value of black tea in billion rs, *** shows value of green tea in million rs source: national tea research institute, 2010 table 2: cost of production of tea initial investment unit 1 st year (2006) 2 nd year (2007) 3 rd year (2008) 4 th year (2009) 5 th year (2010) land preparation ploughing +leveling rs/acre 1200 − − − − seedlings cost rs/acre 40000 − − − − transplanting rs/acre 8580 − − − − irrigation rs/acre 463 505 550 600 654 fertilizers urea(2 bags) rs/acre 1054 1162 1502 1600 1712 dap(1bag) rs/acre 993 1931 2578 2267 2494 cleaning and pruning 20 days 3089 3367 3670 4000 4360 plucking cost 8 plucking − − − − 17440 transportation cost rs/acre − − − − 15000* total cost rs/acre 55379 6965 8300 8467 41660 land rent rs/acre 9774 10263 10830 11400 12000 total cost with land rs/acre 65153 17228 19130 19867 53660 http://www.sbp.org.pk/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 506-513. 512 rent yield kg/acre 2500 output rs/acre 75000 net profit rs/acre 21340 pervaiz, et al (2009) table 3: cost comparison of seasonal crop with tea 2010-11 items wheat maize rs/acre rs/acre seed 1000 550 fertilizer 3250 2000 cultivation 1800 1800 harvesting 2100 1550 threshing 1800 1350 total cost 9950 7250 price rs/40kg 950 1000 total yield/acre 23 17 total income/crop 21375 17500 total cost without land rent/year 17200 land rent(rs./acre) 15000 total cost with land rent/year 32200 total gross income/year 38875 gross margin/year 6675 tea cultivation advantage 21340-6675=14665 table 4: estimated annual costs and revenues of tea cultivation non-intercropped year cost(rs/acre) revenues(rs./acre) net benefits cash flow cumulative cash flow 1 65153 0 -65153 -65153 2 17228 0 -17228 -82380 3 19130 0 -19130 -36358 4 19867 0 -19867 -38997 5 53660 75000 21340 1473 6 68075 82620 14545 35886 7 59940 90979 31039 45584 8 63478 100147 36669 67708 9 67311 110200 42888 79557 10 71467 121220 49753 92641 11 to 20 103789 189654 85865 135618 21 to 30 212520 409449 196928 282793 31 to 40 465931 883969 418037 614966 41 to 50 1067073 1908422 841349 1259386 51 to 60 2514556 4120141 1605585 2446934 61 to 70 6045252 8895075 2849823 4455408 71 to 80 14757203 19203799 4446596 7296419 economics of tea production in pakistan 513 npv@16 3896.25 irr 24% table 5: processing expenditure items year 2010 / existing if full capacity maintenance cost rs/month 16666.67 16666.67 labor cost rs/month 69171.43 69171.43 electricity cost rs/month 50000.00 50000.00 coal cost rs/month 7500.00 7500.00 wood cost rs/month 4166.67 4166.67 diesel cost per season (april to october) rs/month 2812.50 2812.50 variable cost 150317.26 150317.26 quantity processed finished year 2010 kgs 8885 210000 if processing fresh kg/month 6347 150000 quantity processed finished per month kgs 1269.29 30000 variable cost per kg rs/kg 118.43 5.02 fixed cost rs/month 150000.00 150000.00 total cost (variable +fixed) rs/month 300317.26 300317.26 total processing cost finished rs/kg 236.60 10.01 total processed cost finished product including purchase price of fresh rs 150/5kg rs/kg 386.60 160.01 extra cost bear due to below capacity 226.59 *for finished 1 kg of tea requires 5 kg fresh effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 801 impact of agricultural extension services on technology adoption and crops yield: empirical evidence from pakistan akhter ali agricultural economist, cimmyt, pakistan dil bahadur rahut program manager; (socioeconomic program), cimmyt, ethiopia abstract the present study was carried out in the rice-wheat area of pakistani punjab. the data for the study was collected from three main districts of central punjab province i.e. gujranwala, sheikhupura and hafizabad. in total 234 farmers were interviewed. the impact of agricultural extension services was estimated on adoption of new improved technologies and crop yields. the propensity score matching approach for impact evaluation was employed in the current study to correct for potential sample selection biasedness that may arise due to systematic differences between the farmers having benefited from agricultural extension services and not benefited from agricultural extension services. the empirical results indicate that agricultural extension services play a significant role in adoption of improved agricultural technologies like laser leveling, rice and wheat varieties. the farmers having benefitted from agricultural extension services were also getting higher rice and wheat yields. the results also indicates that mostly the large farmers are getting benefits from agricultural extension services and small scale farmers have less access to agricultural extension services. keywords: agricultural extension, technology adoption, propensity score matching, punjab, pakistan introduction1 agricultural extension is a mode by which the latest information is communicated to the farming community. the effective extension services can help in the adoption of new agricultural technologies which can leads to higher crop yields and more household incomes (khan et al., 2006).in addition the agricultural extension services can help in reducing poverty levels and 1corresponding author’s: name: akhter ali email address: akhter.ali@cgiar.org ensure household food security especially among small and resource poor farmers. in pakistan since independence the extension work has been in progress but this is fact that in developing countries the farmers do not have access to sufficient agricultural information (luqman et al., 2005). the extension agents have mostly contact with large farmers and small and marginalized farmers normally receive less information (sofranko et al., 1988). however some researchers argue that this is due to fact that large farmers are more educated and have clear understanding asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:akhter.ali@cgiar.org asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 801-812 802 regarding adoption of new innovative techniques (owens et al., 2003). in pakistan the agricultural extension services can help the meet the food needs of increasing population. the purpose of the agricultural extension services are to support farmers in the good decision making regarding adoption of new agricultural technologies and also regarding adoption of improved management practices (subedi and garforth, 1996). the past researchers have mostly found that agricultural extension services were not quite adequate to educate the farmers effectively i.e. rogers 1987; prinsley et al., 1994. a recent study revealed that three fourth of the asian farmers have no contact with the agricultural extension services (maalouf et al., 1991). a number of reasons can be advocated for the poor agricultural extension services like few financial resource, lack of trained staff, inadequate planning etc. (antholt, 1994). mostly public extension services have consistently failed to deal with the sitespecific needs and problems of the farmers (ahmad, 1999). the same is true in the case of pakistan (ahmad et al., 2000; sofranko et al., 1988). the objective of the current paper is to study the impact of agricultural extension services on adoption of new agricultural technology like laser leveling and rice and wheat varieties and also on the rice and wheat crops yield. information regarding new technologies i.e. laser leveling, rice and wheat varieties and rice and wheat yields was collected from both categories of farmers having benefitted from agricultural extension services and not benefitted from agricultural extension services. the rest of the paper is organized as follows. in section 2 conceptual framework and empirical model is presented. in section 3 data and description of variables are described. in section 4 empirical results are discussed and paper finally concludes with some policy recommendations. conceptual framework in the current study it is assumed that farmers contact with extension agents for acquiring advice and information regarding adoption of new technologies and crop production technology etc. the information farmers acquire from the extension agents helps them in increasing crop yields which in turn can results in increased household income and reduced poverty levels. hence, farmers get information from the extension agents to have higher utility levels. the farmers’ utility function can be stated in the simple form as follows: ),,,(  xuu .............. (1) in the above equation u indicates the utility function, while  indicates the visit of the extension agents to the farmers and value of  is 0 in case of no extension staff visit and value increases as the frequency of visits increases,  indicates the wealth status of the household like number of acres owned by the farmer, x indicates the farmers personal characteristics and  indicates a binary relationship 1 if farmer himself visit extension office and 0 otherwise. it is assumed that farmers utility level is affected if there is problem in either way contact i.e. either extension staff do not visit the farmer or farmer himself do not visit the extension staff. based on this farmer utility level can be quantified as follows: the farmers’ utility level is maximum when the extension staff visit the farmers and farmer also visit the extension staff as presented in equation 2. ),,,(max  xuu ............ (2) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 801-812 803 the utility level is medium when one of the contact levels are missing i.e. either extension staff don’t visit the farmer as presented in equation 3 or farmer don’t visit the extension staff as presented in equation 4. ),,(  xuumed .................. (3) ),,( xuumed  .............. (4) the farmers utility level is minimum when both the contacts are missing i.e. extension staff do not visit the farmer and farmers also do not visit the extension staff as represented in equation 5. ),(min xuu  ................ (5) the empirical analysis was carried out by employing the propensity score matching approach to correct for potential sample selection biasedness that may arise due to systematic differences between the participants and non participants. propensity score matching approach the propensity score matching is new technique as defined by rosenbaum and rubin (1983) as the conditional probability of receiving a treatment given pretreatment characteristics:   }|{}|1pr{ zdezdzp  (6) where d={0,1} is the indicator of exposure to treatment and z is the vector of pretreatment characteristics. if the exposure to treatment is random within cells defined by z, it is also random within cells defined by the values of the mono-dimensional variable p (z). as a result, given a population of units denoted by i, if the propensity score )( izp is known the average effect of treatment on the treated (att), which is most prominent evaluation parameter and explicitly focuses on the effects on those for whom the programme is actually intended and can be given as }1|{ 01  iii dyye )}}(,1|{{ 01 iiii zpdyyee  }1|)}(,0 |{)}(,1|{{ 01   iii iiii dzpd yezpdyee (7) where the outer expectation is over the distribution of )1|)(( ii dzp and iy1 and iy0 are the potential outcomes in the two counterfactual situations of treatment and non treatment respectively. the expected outcome of the average treatment effect for the treated are defined as the difference in the expected outcome values with and without treatment. as pointed out by heckman (1997) that the average treatment effect for the treated (att) may not be of relevance for the policy makers because it includes the effect on persons for whom the programme was never intended. for example, if a programme is specifically targeted at individuals with low family income, there is little interest in the effect of such a programme for a millionaire. the propensity score matching rest on two assumptions i.e. unconfoundedness assumption and common support condition. the unconfoundedness assumption states that once the observable factors are controlled for technology adoption is random and uncorrelated with the outcome variables and the common support assumption states that matching can only be performed over the common support region. data and description of variables a detailed questionnaire was developed for data collection in rice-wheat area of pakistani punjab. the relevance of questionnaire with field level situation was observed and some deficiencies were identified. the questionnaire was finalized asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 801-812 804 after incorporating the comments. for impact assessment relevant socioeconomic, human, natural resource/ biological and institutional indicators were included in the study. a detailed survey was carried out during the month of december 2004 to determine the impact of different labour categories on rice-wheat crops yield and household income. the data and description of variables is presented in table 1. the data was collected from 3 important districts of rice wheat area like gujranwala, sheikhupura and hafizabad. about 46 percent farmers were interviewed from gujranwala district, 22 percent were interviewed from sheikhupura district and 32 percent were interviewed from hafizabad district. in total 234 farmers were interviewed. as the table 1 indicates only 27 percent farmers have benefited from agricultural extension services and vice versa. table 1: data and description of variables variable description mean std. dev extension contact 1 if farmer have contact with extension services, 0 otherwise 0.273 0.442 district1 gujranwala 1 if farmer belongs to gujranwala district, 0 otherwise 0.457 0.499 district 2 sheikhupura 1 if farmer belongs to sheikhupura district, 0 otherwise 0.222 0.416 district 3 hafizabad 1 if farmer belongs to hafizabad district, 0 otherwise 0.320 0.474 market distance distance of market in kilometers 6.897 5.417 bank distance distance of bank in kilometers 28.94 33.34 road distance distance of road in kilometers 1.786 5.797 age age of farmer in number of years 44.918 14.604 experience experience of farmer in number of years 24.008 13.408 education education of farmer in number of years 6.171 4.895 caste 1 if farmer belongs to scheduled caste, 0 otherwise 0.418 0.494 settler 1 if farmer is settler, 0 if migrant 0.598 0.491 family size total number of family members in the household 6.568 4.340 refrigerator 1 if household owns a refrigerator, 0 otherwise 0.482 0.500 tractor 1 if household owns a tractor, 0 otherwise 0.358 0.506 bicycle 1 if household owns a bicycle, 0 otherwise 0.615 0.487 motorcycle 1 if household owns a motorcycle, 0 otherwise 0.299 0.458 zt drill 1 if household owns a zt drill, 0 otherwise 0.081 0.273 car 1 if household owns a car, 0 otherwise 0.085 0.280 tube well 1 if household owns a tube well, 0 otherwise 0.282 0.478 radio 1 if household owns a radio, 0 otherwise 0.299 0.458 tv 1 if household owns a tv, 0 otherwise 0.619 0.486 washing machine 1 if household owns a washing machine, 0 otherwise 0.581 0.494 credit (dummy) 1 if household have access to credit facility, 0 otherwise 0.764 0.434 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 801-812 805 rice area (acres) area under rice in acres 18.36 25.205 rice yield (maunds) yield of rice in maunds 32.00 7.942 rice price (rupees) price of rice in rupees 465.62 97.858 wheat area (acres) area under wheat in acres 15.925 24.631 wheat yield (maunds) yield of wheat in maunds 27.384 12.60 wheat price (rupees) price of wheat in rupees 310.72 107.41 income income from nonfarm labour in rupees 18888 47491 source: authors’ own calculations the mean distance to the market was about 7 kilometres from the household. the mean distance to the bank was about 29 kilometres. the mean road distance was about 2 kilometres. the mean age of the farmers was about 45 year and the mean experience was about 24 years. the mean education level was about 6 years of schooling. as the caste system is also quite strong in the study area and information about caste was also collected. approximately 42 percent of the farmers belonged to scheduled caste and the rest belonged to non-scheduled caste. about 60 percent of the farmers were settlers and the rest were migrant. the average family size was about 7 persons per household. information regarding a number of household assets was also collected. about 48 percent of the households have own refrigerator and 36 percent of the households have own tractor. about 62 percent of the households have own bicycle. the 30 percent of the households have own motorcycle. only 8 percent of the households have own zero tillage drill. about 9 percent of the households have own car. about 28 percent of the households have own tube well. about 30 percent of the households have own radio. similarly 62 percent of the households have own tv. about 58 percent of the households have own washing machine. about 76 percent of the households have availed credit facility. the area under rice was about 18 acres and average rice yield was 32 maundsi. the mean rice price was 465 rupees. the area under wheat was about 16 acres per households. the average wheat yield was 27 maunds per household. the average wheat price was rupees 310. the average household income was about rupees 18888. empirical results the empirical results regarding determinants of farmers contact with agricultural extension services are presented in table 2. the dependent variable is dummy i.e. 1 if farmer have benefitted from extension services and 0 otherwise. the road access coefficient is positive and significant at 1 percent level of significance, indicating that more the road access, more the chances that farmers will be benefitted from extension services and vice versa. the age coefficient is positive, although non-significant indicating that mostly the experienced farmers are benefited from agricultural extension services. the caste system is also quite strong in the study area, the caste was included as dummy variable, 1 if farmer belonged to a scheduled caste and 0 otherwise. the caste coefficient indicates that scheduled caste farmers are more benefitted from extension services and vice versa. the education coefficient is positive and significant at 1 percent level of significance indicating that more the education levels of the farmers more are the chances that farmers will be benefited from extension services and vice versa. the family size coefficient is negative and nonsignificant. the land holding coefficient is positive and significant at 1 percent level of significance indicating that more the land holding more the chances that farmers will be benefitted from extension services. from this finding this can also be interpreted that extension personnel mostly asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 801-812 806 visit the large land holders. a number of household assets were also included in the model. the bicycle ownership is positive and significant at 10 percent level of significance. the tv ownership is positive and significant at 1 percent level of significance. the tube well ownership is positive and significant at 1 percent level of significance. the tractor ownership is positive and non-significant. the car ownership is negative and non-significant. the radio ownership is positive and nonsignificant. the credit ownership is negative and non-significant. the district dummies were also included in the model to capture the regional variation. the value of pseudo 2r is 0.300 indicating that 30 percent variation in the dependent variable is due to independent variables. the lr 2 is significant at 1 percent level of significance, indicating the robustness of the variables included in the model. table 2: propensity score matching estimates (probit estimates) variable coefficient t-values road access 0.403*** 3.10 age 0.0243 1.47 caste 0.322 1.18 education 0.073*** 2.47 family size -0.0002 -0.01 organization membership 0.436 1.48 landholding 0.016** 2.17 bicycle 0.468* 1.85 tv 0.032*** 2.94 tube well 0.541*** 1.99 tractor 0.260 1.32 car -0.314 -0.67 radio 0.063 0.25 credit -0.051 -0.18 district dummies gujranwala -1.167*** -3.38 sheikhupura -0.706 -1.63 constant -1.186 -0.86 number of observations 234 pseudo 2r 0.300 lr 2 82.41 prob> 2 0.000 note: the results are significantly different from zero at ***, **, * at 1, 5 and 10% levels respectively. the propensity score matching results for average treatment affect for the treated (att) are presented in table 3. a large number of different matching algorithms were employed for the empirical analysis i.e. nearest neighbour matching (nnm), mahalanobis metric matching (mmm), radius matching (rm) and kernel matching (km) were employed in the current analysisii. the outcome variables are new technologies like laser leveling, wheat and rice varieties and yields of rice and wheat crops. the laser leveler is a new technology introduced in the rice-wheat area of pakistani punjab. the laser leveler helps to improve the soil texture, structure and aeration of soil. in addition laser leveler also helps in water saving as the soil structure is improved. the rice and wheat varieties are the improved varieties adopted by the farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 801-812 807 table 3: att results for adoption of new technologies and rice and wheat crops yield category matching outcome att t-value caliper critical level number number algorithms of hidden bias of treated of control adoption of new technologies nnm laser leveler 1.32*** 3.15 1.25-1.30 80 144 mmm laser leveler 1.45*** 2.79 1.15-1.20 72 136 rm laser leveler 1.02*** 2.80 1.45-1.50 65 133 km laser leveler 1.61*** 2.42 1.05-1.10 63 149 nnm wheat varieties -0.67 -1.41 _ 67 110 mmm wheat varieties 0.32 0.86 _ 77 125 rm wheat varieties 0.82 1.37 _ 61 122 km wheat varieties -0.49 -1.21 _ 40 132 nnm rice varieties 0.62 1.09 _ 66 151 mmm rice varieties 0.58 1.03 _ 52 140 rm rice varieties 0.85* 1.72 1.25-1.30 57 149 km rice varieties 0.43 0.90 _ 52 170 impact on crop yields nnm rice yield 0.08 1.21 _ 48 155 mmm rice yield 0.23* 1.86 1.50-1.55 31 146 rm rice yield 0.11 1.23 _ 46 152 km rice yield 0.18* 1.69 1.25-1.30 43 167 nnm wheat yield 0.25* 1.73 1.15-1.20 52 142 mmm wheat yield 0.34** 2.24 1.40-1.45 39 131 rm wheat yield 0.22* 1.91 1.35-1.40 45 166 km wheat yield 0.16* 1.66 1.20-1.25 49 157 note: nnm stands for nearest neighbour matching, mmm stands for mahalanobis metric matching, rm stands for radius matching and km stands for kernel matching while att stands for average treatment affect for the treated. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 801-812 808 the impact of agricultural extension services on adoption of laser leveling technology is positive and significant at 1 percent level of significance in all the four matching algorithms i.e. nnm, mmm, rm and km. the empirical results for adoption of improved wheat varieties are nonsignificant in all the four matching algorithms indicating that agricultural extension services needs to be improved regarding adoption of improved wheat varieties. the results regarding extension role in adoption of improved rice varieties are positive although significant only in case of rm. the impact of agricultural extension services on rice yield are positive, although significant only in case of mmm and km. the extension services impact on wheat yields are positive and significant in all the four matching algorithms i.e. nnm, mmm, rm and km. the overall empirical results indicate that farmers having contact with agricultural extension services are more likely to adopt new improved agricultural technologies. the critical levels of hidden bias are also reported in table 3. the critical level of hidden bias are only reported for the significant results as the hidden bias for the non-significant results are meaningless. the critical level of hidden bias varies from lowest of 1.05 to a maximum of 1.50. the value of 1.50 indicates that farmers having extension contact and not having extension contact differs in their odds of technology adoption up to 50 percent level. the presence of hidden bias does not indicates that results are misleading, this only indicates the level up to which the farmers benefitting from extension services and not benefitting from extension services differs. the number of treated and number of control are also reported in the table. in case of applying propensity score matching approach the main objective is to balance the covariates before and after matching and for that a large number of balancing tests are employed like value of 2r before and after matching and the joint significance of covariates before and after matching. the critical level of hidden bias before and after matching. the results regarding covariates balancing are presented in table 4. the median absolute bias before matching is quite high in all the four different matching algorithms. before matching the median absolute bias is in the range of 18.21-26.41. after matching the median absolute bias is quite low and is in the range of 7.3013.72. the percentage bias reduction is in the range of 40.06 percent to 70.46 percent hence indicating that after matching considerable amount of bias has been reduced. the value of 2r is another indicator of covariate balancing. the value of 2r is quite high before matching and is quite low after matching indicating that after matching the participants and non-participants are very similar to each other. the p-value of joint significance of covariates is quite low before matching indicating that joint significance should always be accepted before matching. the p-value is quite high after matching indicating that joint significance should always be rejected after matching, that after matching the participants and nonparticipants are not systematically different from each other. the results regarding indicators of covariates balancing before and after matching are also presented in figure 1. the figure indicates that covariates have been balanced and there are no systematic differences after matching and also highlights the importance of imposition of common support conditioniii. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 801-812 809 table 4: indicators of covariates balancing before and after matching matching outcome median median % bias value value p-value p-value algorithm absolute bias absolute bias reduction of 2r of 2r of joint of joint before after before after significance significance matching matching matching matching of covariates of covariates % before after matching matching nnm laser leveler 23.63 12.10 48.793 0.310 0.002 0.013 0.981 mmm laser leveler 24.88 9.52 61.736 0.341 0.001 0.015 0.922 rm laser leveler 19.22 7.39 61.550 0.372 0.000 0.011 0.864 km laser leveler 20.43 11.86 41.948 0.339 0.003 0.017 0.714 nnm wheat varieties 22.54 13.51 40.062 0.412 0.004 0.018 0.651 mmm wheat varieties 25.22 12.67 49.760 0.431 0.006 0.014 0.712 rm wheat varieties 21.79 8.11 62.781 0.322 0.002 0.016 0.533 km wheat varieties 20.44 10.63 47.994 0.416 0.000 0.012 0.734 nnm rice varieties 21.58 11.54 46.524 0.371 0.001 0.013 0.668 mmm rice varieties 24.55 9.62 60.814 0.460 0.002 0.012 0.712 rm rice varieties 26.41 13.72 48.049 0.381 0.000 0.011 0.910 km rice varieties 20.50 11.65 43.170 0.353 0.000 0.017 0.814 nnm rice yield 23.92 12.85 46.279 0.442 0.000 0.015 0.477 mmm rice yield 22.53 10.62 52.862 0.536 0.002 0.016 0.365 rm rice yield 20.45 8.22 59.804 0.381 0.001 0.014 0.630 km rice yield 23.38 9.49 40.590 0.470 0.002 0.015 0.721 nnm wheat yield 22.66 7.41 67.299 0.333 0.003 0.017 0.462 mmm wheat yield 20.73 8.64 58.321 0.541 0.002 0.014 0.511 rm wheat yield 24.72 7.30 70.469 0.462 0.001 0.015 0.422 km wheat yield 18.21 10.37 43.053 0.382 0.002 0.013 0.569 note: nnm stands for nearest neighbour macthing, mmm stands for mahalanobis metric matching, rm stands for radius matching and km stands for kernel matching. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 801-812 810 impact on laser leveler impact on rice varieties impact on wheat varieties impact on rice yield impact on wheat yield figure 1: indicator of covariates balancing before and after matching note: treated on support indicates the individuals in the participation group who found a suitable match, while treated off support indicates the individual in the participation group who does not found a suitable matching. the untreated on support indicates the individuals in the control group who found a suitable match, while untreated off support indicates the individual in the participation group who were not able to found a suitable match. 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 propensity score untreated: off support untreated: on support treated 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 propensity score untreated treated 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 propensity score untreated treated: on support treated: off support 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 propensity score untreated treated: on support treated: off support 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 propensity score untreated treated: on support treated: off support asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 801-812 811 conclusion the current study has important policy implications. from the empirical results it can be clearly concluded that agricultural extension services in pakistan play an important role regarding laser leveling technology adoption. laser leveling being new technology is very important regarding water saving and increasing soil texture and structure. this beneficial aspects of laser leveling technology need to be further explored in future studies. however, the agriculture extension role regarding adoption of improved varieties is not much encouraging especially the wheat varieties. in this particular area the extension services needs to be improved. the most important and positive impact of agricultural extension services are on the yields of rice and wheat crops in pakistan. wheat is an important food crop while rice is an important cash crop in the study area. the increase in the yield of these crops directly can help in increasing the household income and reducing the much needed poverty levels in pakistan. overall the agricultural extension are playing important positive role but still a lot of improvement can be made. the probit estimates also indicates that mostly the large farmers currently benefited from agricultural extension services and the extension service to small farmers needs to be provided. references ahmad, m. (1999). a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of agricultural extension work by public and private sectors in punjab, pakistan. phd thesis. university of new england, armidale nsw. ahmad, m. davidson, a. p. and ali, t. (2000). effectiveness of public and private sectors extension: implications for pakistani farmers. paper presented at 16th annual conference of aiaee held at arlington va. antholt, c. h. (1994). getting ready for the twenty-first century: technical change and institutional modernization in agriculture. world bank technical paper no. 217. washington d. c.: wsorld bank. khan, m. z., n. khalid and khan m. a. (2006). weeds related professional competency of agricultural extension agents in nwfp, pakistan. pakistan journal of weed science research, 12(4): 331-337. heckman, j., lalonde, r. and smith, j. (1999). the economics and econometrics of active labour market programmes in ashenfelter, o. and card, d. handbook of labour economics col iii, amsterdam. heckman, j. (1997). instrumental variablesa study of the implicit behavioral assumption used in making program evaluations. the journal of human resources, 32(3), 441-462. heckman, j., ichimura, h. and todd, p. (1997). matching as an econometric evaluation estimator: evidence from evaluating a job training programme. review of economic studies, 64: 605-654. luqman, m., j. asif and a. nadeem (2005). impact of administrative changes on the working efficiency of extension staff after decentralization in the punjab, pakistan. maalouf, w. d., adhikarya, r. and contado, t. (1991). extension coverage and resource problems: the need for publicprivate co-operation; in w. m. rivera and d. j. gustafson (eds). agricultural extension: worldwide institutional evolution and forces for change. amsterdam: elsevier science. owens, t., hoddinott, j. and kinsey, b. (2003). the impact of agricultural extension on farm production in resettlement areas of zimbabwe. economic development and cultural change, 51: 337-357. prinsley, r., dore, j., marks, ni., mcgukian, n. and thompson, p. (1994). the role of private sector in extension: a working paper. rural industries research asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 801-812 812 and development corporation occasional paper no. 94(3). australia. rogers, w. l. (1987). the private sector: its extension systems and public/private coordination, in w. m. rivera and s. g. schram (eds). agricultural extension worldwide: issues practices and emerging priorities. london: croom helm. rosenbaum, p. and rubin, d (1983). the central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects. biometrica, 70: 41-50. sofranko, a. j., a. khan and g. morgan (1988). insight into farmer-extension contacts: evidence from pakistan. agricultural administration and extension, 30: 293-307. market policies. schweizerische zeitschrift fuer volkswirtschaft und statistik, 136(3): 1-22. http://www.bsos.umd.edu/econ/jsmith/pape rs.html. subedi, a. and c. garforth (1996). gender, information and communication network: implication for extension. journal of agricultural education, 4(2): 63-74. notes i. one maunds is equal to 40 kgs. ii. different matching algorithms were employed to check the robustness of the results. iii. matching can only be performed over the region of common support. http://www.bsos.umd.edu/econ/jsmith/papers.html http://www.bsos.umd.edu/econ/jsmith/papers.html publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. assessment of access to information and communication technology among agricultural extension officers in kwara state, nigeria omotesho, k. f. (department of agricultural extension and rural development, university of ilorin, nigeria) ogunlade, i. o. (department of agricultural extension and rural development, university of ilorin, nigeria) muhammad lawal (department of agricultural economics and farm management, university of ilorin, nigeria) citation: omotesho, k. f., ogunlade, i. o. and muhammad lawal (2012): “assessment of access to information and communication technology among agricultural extension officers in kwara state, nigeria”, asian journal agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 220-225. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 220-225 220 author(s) omotesho, k. f. department of agricultural extension and rural development, university of ilorin, nigeria email: kfomotesho@yahoo.com ogunlade, i. o. department of agricultural extension and rural development, university of ilorin, nigeria muhammad lawal department of agricultural economics and farm management, university of ilorin, nigeria assessment of access to information and communication technology among agricultural extension officers in kwara state, nigeria abstract the study examined the factors associated with the level of access of agricultural extension officers in kwara state to information and communication technology (ict). it also identified the constraints to the usage of ict for the purpose of sourcing agricultural information. data for the study were collected from the subject matter specialists (smss) and extension agents (eas) of the kwara state agricultural development project (kwadp) through the use of a structured questionnaire. descriptive and inferential statistical tools were employed for the data analysis. the study revealed that about 70% of the eas do not earn above n20, 000. only8.8% of the eas possessed university degrees and none had access to computer systems at work. all the smss had official computers, although none of the computers were connected to the internet. income of the respondents was found to be significant and positively related to access to ict. the numbers of years on the job and the age of the respondents had negative but significant relationship with access. apart from the general constraints to the use of ict such as, high cost of personal computer, inadequate electricity supply and poor internet access, poor training and technological knowhow were also identified as specific constraints faced by the eas. the study therefore recommended the need for easier access by all agricultural extension officers to ict. besides, training workshops should be organized for extension officers in the area of ict and computer appreciation. keywords: access to ict, extension officers, pearson moment correlation, likert-type scale, kwara state introduction improved agricultural production is the major weapon in the fight against world hunger, improving rural livelihood and increasing economic growth. the world development report of the world bank (2008) argued that the growth in the agricultural sector contributes proportionally more to poverty reduction than growth in any other economic sector. this argument is supported by the levels of commitment of various economies to agriculture world over. any effort towards a meaningful improvement of agriculture in nigeria must be targeted at the rural farmers who constitute the bulk of agricultural production in nigeria. information is a vital resource and has its application in rural, agricultural, social and industrial development (nwachukwu et al., 2009). a prime challenge of the typical nigerian rural farmer is the dearth of timely, up to date agricultural information in spite of several research findings lying in shelves in various research organizations. for instance, inadequate information may be responsible for the low level of yields among farmers in spite of availability of improved seed varieties (idachaba 2000). agricultural extension officers are the direct link bridging the communication gap between the agricultural researchers and the farmers in order to perform this role effectively and efficiently, agricultural extension personnel must have steady access to up to date agricultural information. this brings to fore the need for a comprehensive and wellarticulated agricultural extension program which ensures adequate and timely delivery of services to farmers if meaningful growth is to be achieved in the agricultural sector. the potentials of information and communication technology (ict) to make agricultural extension in developing countries more effective appear unassailable (omotayo,2005).ict is commonly used to embrace a multitude of media including telephone, television, video, telex, voice information systems, fax as well as those requiring the use of the personal computers fitted with a mailto:kfomotesho@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 220-225 221 modem or supply technologies that facilitate communication, processing and transmission of information by electronic means ranging from radio and television to telephone (fixed or mobile) and the internet (warren, 2001; cta, 2003; omotayo, 2005). nkwocha et al, 2009, reported that ict can promote access to and sharing of information in agriculture and allied industries. the inherent advantages in the pluralistic and seamless nature of information flow via ict, if properly explored, will have a significant positive effect on the productivity of extension service providers. the international network of computers in particular is a global information superhighway and a haven of sort for continuously updated information on all fields of study. in spite of the abundant agricultural information hoisted on the internet, farmers’ productivity has continued to be hindered by poor access to timely information. according to omotayo (2005), most nigerian farmers are illiterate, live in rural areas; hence have no knowledge on the use of information facilities like computer/internet. although it is expected that agricultural extension will rise up to this challenge, the fact that little or no change is noticeable in the farmers’ agricultural practices call to question the quality of agricultural extension officers who possibly are themselves not aware of agricultural information most of which are available on-line due probably to inadequate access to the ict. available statistics show that there is very little knowledge on the use of ict among extension officers across nigeria. for instance 57.14% and 55.71% of extension officers in the north-central and south-west nigeria respectively, do not have requisite knowledge in computer usage (ndag et al. 2008). while there has been several studies evaluating the use of ict in information dissemination to farmers, not much has been done on the use of ict in sourcing for agricultural information by extension service providers. in kwadp, smss and eas play important roles in extension service delivery. the smss are usually involved in giving training in specific areas of agriculture to the eas who in turn are required to pass the information to the farmers. very little information is available on the level of access and use of ict by these two categories of extension workers. this study therefore compares the socio-economic characteristics of the smss and eas and the relationship between such socio-economic characteristics and the extension officers’ access to ict. it also identified the constraints faced by extension officers’ in accessing ict for the purpose of sourcing agricultural information. objectives of the study the main objective of this study is to carry out an assessment of access to ict among extension officers in kwara state. the specific objectives are: i. to determine the socio-economic characteristics of smss and eas in kwara state; ii. to determine the relationship between selected socio-economic characteristics and access to ict among the extension officers; iii. to identify the major constraints to ict access among the extension officers. methodology the study area is kwara state, nigeria. complete enumeration technique was employed due to the small size of the entire population. hence, all seventy nine (79) extension agents (eas) and twenty (20) subject matter specialists (smss) of the kwara state agricultural development project (kwadp) constituted the respondents. data was collected with the use of a structured questionnaire. simple descriptive statistics involving the use of frequencies and percentages was used to compare the socio-economic characteristics of the two groups of extension officers. pearson product moment correlation (ppmc) was employed to examine the relationship between the following selected socioeconomic variables and respondents’ access to ict: x1 = monthly income in naira x2 = work experience in years x3 = dummy for educational level (1 for university graduates, 0 otherwise) x4 = household size x5 = age of respondent in years x6 = gender (1 for male, 0 for female) x7 = dummy for job designation (1 for sms, 0 otherwise) access to ict was scored 1 for availability of any form of access, 0 otherwise a five point likert type scale was employed in measuring the constraints faced by the agricultural extension officers as follows: strongly disagree = 1; disagree = 2; indifferent = 3; agree = 4; strongly agree = 5. the respondents were requested to rank a list of possible problems associated with their access to ict. the ranking was based on average score of the respondents ranking of the problems. results and discussion socio-economic characteristics this section presents the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents such as income, experience, education status, household size, age and job designation. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 220-225 222 distribution of the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents are as presented in table 1. table 1: selected socio-economic characteristics of agricultural extension officers variables extension agents matter specialists frequency % frequency % i. income ≤ n 10000 5 6.3 0 0 n 10001 – n 20000 50 63.3 4 20 n 20001 – n 30000 24 30.4 15 75 > n 30000 0 0 1 5 total 79 100 20 100 ii. experience < 10 years 36 45.6 5 25 ≥ 10 years 43 54.4 15 75 total 79 100 20 100 iii. highest education status school certificate 21 26.6 0 0 ond 27 34.2 0 0 nce 4 5.1 0 0 hnd 20 25.3 7 35 first degree 5 6.3 8 40 higher degree 2 2.5 5 25 total 79 100 20 100 iv. household size 1-6 31 39.2 6 30 >6 48 60.8 14 70 v. age ≤ 30 6 7.6 0 0 3150 59 74.7 18 90 >50 14 17.7 2 10 total 79 100 20 100 source: field survey, 2010 with mean incomes of n 17,555.30 and n 23,304.00 for eas and smss respectively, the average monthly income of the extension officers appear too low for them to afford the purchase of personal computers. the mean years of work experience given as 12.3 years for eas and 15 years for smss can be expected to have a positive effect on the extension officers’ disposition to ict. this is because length of time on the job could portend negative influence on attitude since ict is a new innovation. the fact that only 8.8% of the eas had university degrees is worrisome given the fact that the use of ict in sourcing information requires intellectual ability. 65% of the smss are university graduates and can be expected to have higher access. the modal household sizes stood at 7 for eas and 10 for smss. the larger the household size, the larger the negative financial impact on the respondents with implications for ict access. the study also revealed that about 70% of the agricultural extension officers were below the mean ages of 42.5 for eas and 43 for smss respectively .still being relatively young, it can be expected that they should be able to adapt to new innovation in agricultural development brought about by ict. access to ict this section examines the level and nature of extension officers’ access to ict. the nature and the level of extension officers’ access to ict is as presented in table 2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 220-225 223 table 2: respondents access to ict variables extension agents matter specialists frequency percentage frequency percentage iv. access to official p.c. yes 0 0 20 100 no 79 100 0 0 total 79 100 20 100 v. connectivity of official pc to the internet yes 0 0 no 20 100 not applicable 79 100 0 0 total 79 100 20 100 vi. private ownership of pc yes 9 11.4 13 65 no 70 88.6 7 35 total 79 100 20 100 vii. connectivity of private pc to the internet yes 2 2.5 4 20 no 7 8.9 9 45 not applicable 70 88.6 7 35 total 79 100 20 100 viii. mode of internet access personal 2 2.5 4* 20 handset 12 15.2 11* 55 cybercafé 17 21.5 20* 100 none 48 60.76 0 0 total 79 100 source: field survey, 2010 *multiple responses table two shows that none of the eas had computers in their offices. this is at variance with the smss, all of whom have access to official computers. while 11.4% of the eas had personal computers of their own, only 2.5% of these personal computers were connected to the internet with about one fifth of them paying visits to cyber cafes. this points to a very poor access level among the extension agents with its implications for their level of knowledge of agricultural information available on-line. the level of access recorded among subject matter specialists was observed to be much better with 65% of them owning personal computers. even though all smss have computers in their offices none of these computers was connected to the internet. this may explain the reason for all of them visiting cyber cafes. the difference in level of access between both groups may not be unconnected to the varied job designation. extension agents being the field officers are mostly on the road and hence may require a more mobile means of access. selected socio-economic characteristics and access to ict this subsection carried out an assessment of the relationship between selected socio-economic characteristics of the eas. as revealed earlier (table 2), all the smss had access to ict. since the analysis of the relationship between their socioeconomic characteristics and access to ict could not be carried out, the results of the relationship between the socio-economic characteristics and access to ict among the eas are as presented in table 3. table 3: result of partial correlation analysis between selected socio-economic characteristics and access to ict among eas selected socio-economic characteristics ppmc correlation coefficients income (x1) -0.157 experience (x2) -0.481** education (x3) 0.270** house hold size (x4) -0.482** age (x5) -0.555** gender (x6) 0.11 source: data analysis, 2010 nb **coefficient significant at 1% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 220-225 224 as shown in table 3, experience, education, household size and age were found to be related to the respondents’ access to ict. while education was positively related to access, all other related characteristics showed a negative correlation with the respondents’ access to ict. education plays a significant role in creating awareness and interest in innovations. it is also fundamental to the understanding of the usage, and functionalities of computer appliances. as shown in table 3, educational level of the eas was found to be significantly and positively related to their access. this therefore implies that the more educated the respondents were, the better their access to ict. it also explained about 27% of the relationship between socio-economic characteristics and access to ict. older people are likely to have put in more years of work experience and be more resistant to change and innovations. with age and experience having about 50% correlation with ict, it can be implied from this study that the older and or more experienced the respondents, the lower their access to ict. in view of the effect of household size on their per capita income, increase in household size reduced access to ict among the eas. this is as shown in table 3 where household size had about 50% relationship with access to ict among eas. therefore, the higher the household size, the lower the access. this is probably due to the negative effect of higher household size on the available income of the respondents. constraints to ict access among respondents this section examines the constraints to ict usage among the extension officers. the constraints to ict among the respondents are as presented in table 5 table 5: constraints to ict usage among respondents constraints extension agents matter specialists mean mean high cost of ict equipment. 4.48 4.3 inadequate electricity supply 4.34 5 weak communication 3.91 4.05 distant location of ict facility 4 2 low economic status 3.95 3.3 low educational level 2.32 1 poor technical know-how 3.82 1.75 poor training on ict 3.89 1.8 high cost of internet access 4.1 4.85 fear of ict usage 1.89 1 source: field survey, 2010 table 5 reveals that high cost of ict equipment, inadequate electricity supply, weak communication and high cost of internet access were major constraints common to both eas and smss in terms of their access to ict. furthermore, low economic status and distant location of ict facilities constituted additional constraints to the eas in acquiring access to ict. this may be as a result of the low income level of the eas and the field nature of the eas job.the fact that poor technological knowhow and poor training were also identified as constraints to ict access by the eas generally implies that there is generally low level of education among the eas. conclusion and recommendations this study was embarked upon with a view to assessing the level of access to ict among agricultural officers in kwara state. based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that agricultural extension officers particularly the eas have low level of access to ict. this is in spite of the importance of ict to effective agricultural extension service delivery. in order to improve on the situation, this study makes the following recommendations: there is the need for an upward review of the salary of extension officers. this is because an increased income would guarantee better chances of personal acquisition of ict equipment for the officers. in the interim, agricultural extension officers should be assisted to access ict at affordable prices such as through hire purchase arrangements with payment extended over a period of time. members are also encouraged to take advantage of cooperative societies common in most government establishments to acquire ict devices at reduced interest rates and convenient payment terms. government should make adequate provision for internet facilities for use by extension service providers particularly the smss in their various offices. in this regard, laptops equipped with modems are recommended for eas given the field nature of their job. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 220-225 225 while the problem of electricity is being addressed at the national level, alternate power sources such as generator sets should be provided in offices. the solar energy alternative which is not only cheaper but also environmental friendly is recommended. finally, training workshops on ict usage and computer appreciation should be organized for all extension officers. this would bring the extension officers irrespective of their educational status up to date on the use and application of ict for improved extension service delivery in kwara state. references cta (2003) “icts–transforming agricultural extension”, an e-discussion, 20 th august to september, 2003. idachaba, f. (2000) “a framework for agricultural policy networking: the way forward”, proceedings of a cta workshop, uganda, november 6-10, p-15. ndag, i, sanusi r. a. and aigbekaen e. o. (2008) “comparative analysis of information and communication technology (ict) use by agricultural extension workers in south-west and north-central nigeria”, proceeding of the 19 th annual international information management association. pp. 35-40. nwachukwu kenneth, c. n., olojede, a. o. and onyenobi, v.o (2009) “agricultural marketing network (agmarknet) for enhanced research, information dissemination and agricultural development”, proceedings of 43 rd annual conference of the agricultural society of nigeria, abuja, pp. 700-703. nkwocha, v. i., ibeawuchi, i. i., chukwueke, n. o., azubuike, n.o. and nwkwocha, g. a. (2009) “overview of the impact of ict on agricultural development in imo state, nigeria”, proceedings of 43 rd annual conference of the agricultural society of nigeria, abuja. pp. 711-14. omotayo, o. m. (2005) “ict and agricultural extension: emerging issues in transferring agricultural technology in developing countries”, adedoyin s.f (ed) agricultural extension in nigeria, aeson, pp. 145-58. warren, m. f. (2001) “adoption of ict in agriculture: intrinsic and instrumental roles in technology transfer”, 3 rd conference of the european federation of information technology in agriculture, food and the environment, montpellier agromontpellier, pp. 675-79. world bank (2008) world development report, world bank, washington. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 4 april 2013. † corresponding author acknowledgements: authors are grateful to the tobacco research board of zimbabwe who sponsored this study. the biology of the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid, myzus persicae nicotianae (blackman) on flue-cured tobacco masukwedza rhoda (plant health services department, kutsaga research station, tobacco research board, harare, zimbabwe) mazarura upenyu † and chinwada peter (university of zimbabwe, crop science department, mt. pleasant, harare, zimbabwe) dimbi susan (plant health services department, kutsaga research station, tobacco research board, harare, zimbabwe) citation: masukwedza rhoda, mazarura upenyu, chinwada peter and dimbi susan (2013) “the biology of the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid, myzus persicae nicotianae (blackman) on flue-cured tobacco”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 205-214. the biology of the red and green ... 205 author(s) masukwedza rhoda plant health services department, kutsaga research station, tobacco research board, harare, zimbabwe mazarura upenyu and chinwada peter university of zimbabwe, crop science department, mt. pleasant, harare, zimbabwe dimbi susan plant health services department, kutsaga research station, tobacco research board, harare, zimbabwe the biology of the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid, myzus persicae nicotianae (blackman) on flue-cured tobacco abstract the tobacco aphid, myzus persicae nicotianae is an economically important pest of tobacco. damage is through direct injury by sucking sap of infested plants as well as reduction of the quality of the leaf by leaving honey-dew which encourages the subsequent growth of sooty-mould. in addition to this, aphids also transmit economically important virus diseases such as the bushy-top virus, the alfalfa mosaic virus and the potato virus-y. before 2002, the main colour form of the tobacco aphid in zimbabwe was green. however, during the 2003/2004 tobacco season, concerns were raised where red forms of the tobacco aphid were observed to be more prevalent than the green form. during the 2004/2005 tobacco season, green forms of the tobacco aphid could only be found with difficulty. in intensive research spanning three years, the days to adulthood, days to 1 st nymph, nymphs/day, longevity, fecundity and survival of the red morph were compared to that of the green aphid. across all years, days to adulthood were the same for the two forms. the red morph produced more nymphs/day than the green morph. longevity was similar but fecundity was 1½ to 2 times higher for the red morph than the green aphid. the red morph survived longer than the green aphid. these parameters combined to give the red morph of the tobacco aphid a greater reproductive potential and rate of population increase over the green morph thereby partly explaining the sudden increase in this pest in the recent past. keywords: aphid, red morph, green morph, flue-cured tobacco introduction the green peach aphid, myzus persicae persicae (sulzer) (hemiptera: aphididae) has a world-wide distribution and is an important vector of plant viruses, spreading diseases among many crops (blackman & eastop 2000). it is assumed to be of asian origin because its primary host, peach (prunus persica l.), on which sexual reproduction occurs, originated in asia (blackman & eastop 2007). myzus persicae persicae is known to develop populations specifically adapted to certain host plants (margaritopoulos et al., 2000). the tobacco (nicotiana tabacum l. (solanaceae)) adapted form is considered to be a distinct subspecies and is known as the tobacco aphid, m. persicae nicotianae (blackman) (margaritopoulos et al., 2000). this aphid exhibits morphometric (blackman 1987; blackman & eastop 2007; margaritopoulos et al. 2000) and genetic differences with respect to m. p. persicae (blackman & spence 1992; margaritopoulos et al., 1998; margaritopoulos et al., 2007). relative preference for tobacco by m. p. nicotianae has been demonstrated experimentally (margaritopoulos et al., 2005; troncoso et al., 2005), suggesting that its capacity to detoxify and thus overcome allelochemicals from tobacco plants has been key during specialization (cabrera-brandt et al., 2010). the tobacco aphid causes significant losses on tobacco directly by feeding and honeydew deposition and indirectly by contamination and as a vector of a wide range of viruses (dixon, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 205-214 206 1998). in zimbabwe and other tropical regions, m. p. nicotianae has an anholocyclic lifecycle (not capable of producing sexual morphs or not producing viable eggs) and overwinters as active stages on crops and weeds such as nicandra spp. both winged and wingless forms can each produce about 80 offspring in a lifetime. embryonic development begins before the mother’s birth, in the body of the grandmother, whose food intake sustains three generations of about 6 000 individuals. this peculiar reproduction, together with a short life involves the telescoping of generations, providing high rates of population increase (blair, 1990). colour variation among individuals of the green peach aphid is common and appears to be interclonal and sympatric in occurrence (takada, 1981; miyazaki, 1987). two distinct colour forms are produced namely the greenyellow and red morphs. although the benefit of colour dimorphism in m. persicae nicotianae is not clearly understood, the red morph is thought to able to absorb solar radiation and warm itself better than the green form (markukula and rautapaa, 1967). the colouration of aphids may reflect genetic differences (muller, 1985, 1982) or be the result of environmental influences. colour differences may be correlated with certain biological and ecological features, such as host specificity (honek, 1982; weber, 1985), insecticide resistance (abdel-aal, 1992), reproductive performance (araya et al., 1996) and resistance to aphid parasitoids (tomiuk and wohrmann, 1980;). at times body colour serves as an indicator of a certain biotype or subspecies (muller, 1985). before 2002, the main colour form of the tobacco aphid in zimbabwe was green. however, during the 2003/04 tobacco season, red forms of the aphid were observed to be more prevalent than the green ones at kutsaga research station, zimbabwe. during the 2004/05 season, green forms could not be found and where they were found, constituted small numbers. elsewhere in the world, the red form of the tobacco aphid had been observed as far back as 1985 in north carolina, u.s.a. (harlow & lampert, 1990) and appeared to be a more serious pest than the green form. the occurrence and subsequent dominance of the red form of m. p. nicotianae has brought about the need for a study of its biology as this is an important tool for the development of effective control strategies. the objective of this study therefore, was to compare the fecundity, longevity and survival of the red and green forms of the tobacco aphid m. p. nicotianae on flue-cured tobacco in zimbabwe. materials and methods aphid culture the aphid culture was collected from the most commonly grown variety of flue-cured tobacco, kutsaga rootknot 26 (k rk26), grown at kutsaga research station. this culture was reared and maintained on k rk26 in the greenhouse until ready for use. determination of aphid fecundity, longevity and survival from the greenhouse culture, 45 apterous adults of each morph were collected, marked with nail varnish and placed on 80 mm diameter flue-cured tobacco leaf discs. after reproducing for one day, 100 one-day-old nymphs from each morph were collected with a fine brush and placed in marked individual petri-dishes (9.1 cm in diameter, 1.2 cm deep) containing moistened filter paper and one 30 mm leaf disc. containers were kept in a constant temperature room at 24 °c with 16:8 (day/night) h photoperiod. leaf discs were replaced three times a week (lampert & dennis 1987). colonies were observed on alternate days until the first nymph was produced, then daily thereafter. on each observation, the instar of each aphid as evidenced by exuviae and their condition was recorded. offspring present were counted and removed. from this data, days to adulthood, days to first nymph, longevity, mean nymphs per day and total nymphs per aphid and survival were calculated for both the red and green morph. the experiment was a factorial laid out in 4 randomised complete blocks with time (3 years) and aphid colour (red and green) as the main effects replicated 30 times. in addition a life table analysis was also performed. anova was done on the data using genstat version 11. the biology of the red and green ... 207 life tables were used to describe the biology of the morphs according to price, 1984 and birch 1948 using the following parameters: x = age of the insect in days lx = number of aphids alive at age x, out of 100 dx = number of deaths in the interval (x,x+1), out of 100, computed as lx – lx+1 qx = probability of dying at age x. also known as age specific risk of death, computed by dx / lx 100qx = mortality rate at the age interval x and calculated using the formula dx /lx x 100 lx = the number of aphids alive between age x and x+1, computed by: (lx + lx+1 )/2, out of 100 tx = the total number of living aphids at age x and beyond computed as tx = lx + lx + 1 +lx+2 + …+ lx + n finally, the average amount of time yet to be lived by members surviving to particular age/life expectancy: ex = tx/lx life expectancy, which is the mean number of age categories remaining until death for individuals surviving to the beginning of age category . mx= the average number of offspring produced by an individual in age category x while in that age category.. ro = ∑ . net reproductive rate represents the average lifetime number of offspring produced by an individual of maximum lifespan results days to adulthood there was no interaction between year and colour, (table 1) although the general trend was that the days to adulthood decreased from year 1 to year 3 (table 1). no significant differences (p> 0.05) between the two forms were observed in the days taken to reach adulthood over the three year period (table 1). however, significant differences were observed from the first to the third year where both forms took a significantly shorter time (p < 0.001) to reach adulthood (table 1). although the red morph tended to have a shorter time to adulthood, this was not significantly (p > 0.05) shorter than for the green morph (table 1). days to 1 st nymph, nymphs per day and total number of nymphs there was no interaction between year and colour for days to 1 st nymph, nymphs per day and total number of nymphs but consistently for 3 years the red morph, took a significantly shorter time (p < 0.001) to produce its first offspring, produced a significantly greater number (p < 0.001) of total nymphs (table 1) and nymphs per day (table 2) than the green morph. table 1: days to adulthood & to first nymph, fecundity, nymphs per morph, longevity and survival for the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid, myzus nicotianae year colour days to adulthood days to first nymph total nymphs/aphid (fecundity) 1 red 8.64 8.36 63.10 1 green 9.39 10.22 40.10 2 red 7.00 6.57 107.12 2 green 7.18 8.17 63.40 3 red 6.84 5.80 99.47 3 green 7.23 7.92 50.90 year * colour: f-probability 0.66 0.69 0.33 l.s.d 0.87 0.85 17.38 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 205-214 208 colour red 7.46 6.89 90.97 green 7.89 8.73 52.21 f-probability 0.10 <0.001 <0.001 l.s.d 0.51 0.50 14.35 year days to adulthood days to first nymph fecundity red green red green red green 8.64 9.39 8.36 10.22 63.10 40.10 7.00 7.18 6.57 8.17 107.13 63.39 6.84 7.23 5.80 7.92 99.47 50.90 fprobability <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 0.002 0.18 l.s.d 0.85 0.90 0.88 0.84 24.54 24.95 table 2: nymphs / day, longevity and survival for the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid, myzus nicotianae year colour nymphs/day survival longevity 1 red 70.00 57.92 25.43 1 green 46.70 50.57 22.13 2 red 117.50 66.91 23.30 2 green 79.20 56.58 22.50 3 red 120.20 66.90 20.77 3 green 87.50 56.38 18.67 year * colour: f-probability 0.903 0.92 0.79 l.s.d 47.10 8.62 50.9 colour red 100.20 63.60 23.17 green 69.30 54.30 21.10 f-probability 0.028 0.01 0.17 l.s.d 27.54 7.11 2.94 year nymphs/day survival longevity red green red green red green 1 2.76 2.29 57.95 50.57 25.43 22.13 2 5.34 4.20 66.91 56.58 23.30 22.50 3 5.54 4.71 66.90 56.38 20.77 18.67 fprobability 0.025 0.021 0.30 0.47 0.12 0.34 l.s.d 2.26 1.81 13.36 10.14 4.46 5.71 longevity and survival there was no interaction between year and colour but the red morph survived for a significantly longer time (p < 0.001) than the green morph while longevity was the same for the morphs (table 2). over the three years no significant year differences (p> 0.001) were observed in survival or longevity for each morph (table 2). life tables figures 1to 3 show the age-specific fecundity of the red and the green morph of the tobacco aphid myzus nicotianae from 2008 to 2010. the number of nymphs produced by the red morph reached two peaks on day 9 and 16 whilst that of that of the green morph reached peaks on day 12 and 20 for 2008 (fig 1). the first peak for both morps was always smaller than that of the second. in 2009 the red morph peaked at age 17 while the green morph peaked 3 days later (fig 2) while in 2010 the biology of the red and green ... 209 thered morph peaked at 18 days and the green morph at 22 days (fig 3). the general trend was that the red morph began to reproduce earlier than the green morph and reached peak reproduction earlier than the green morph (fig 1, 2,3). figures 4-6 show the age-specific survival of the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid myzus nicotianae. from 2008 to 2010 the red morph consistently had higher survival than the green morph up to about day 25. survival curves for both morphs fell similarly with time. fig 1: age-specific fecundity (mx) of the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid, myzus nicotianae in 2008 fig 2: age-specific fecundity (mx) of the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid, myzus nicotianae in 2009 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 a g esp ec if ic f ec u n d it y (m x ) age in days red green 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 red green age in days a g esp ec if ic fe cu n d it y( m x) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 205-214 210 fig 3: age-specific fecundity (mx) of the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid, myzus nicotianae in 2010 fig 4: age-specific survivorship (lx) of the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid, myzus nicotianae in 2008 fig 5: age-specific survivorship (lx) of the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid, myzus nicotianae in 2009 0 5 10 15 20 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 red green age in days a g esp ec if ic fe cu n d it y( m x) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 a g esp ec if ic s u rv iv al (l x ) age in days red green 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 red green aphid age in days a ge -s p ec if ic s u rv iv al ( lx ) the biology of the red and green ... 211 fig 6: age-specific survivorship (lx) of the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid, myzus nicotianae in 2010 analysis of the life table of green and red morphs of the tobacco aphid showed that the red morph consistently had a higher net reproductive rate (ro) over the three year study than the green morph. however, for both morphs net reproductive rate increased between 2008 and 2010 (table 3). the intrinsic rate (rm) of increase was also higher for the red morph than the green and results of the mean generation time (tc) showed that the red morph had a shorter mean generation time than the green morph (table 3). table 3: life-table parameters of the red and green morphs of the tobacco aphid, myzus nicotianae year parameters red morph green morph 2008 ro 95.73 63.57 rm 0.349 0.256 tc 13.06 16.19 2009 ro 129.3 87.40 rm 0.355 0.276 tc 13.71 16.21 2010 ro 128.73 88.00 rm 0.353 0.262 tc 13.76 17.09 r0 = net reproductive rate, rm = intrinsic rate of increase, tc = mean generation time discussion understanding the biology of an insect is crucial in the development of an effective integrated pest management programme. a shorter period to adulthood would make an insect more competitive, since this could mean a shorter life cycle. however, in this respect the red morph only tended to develop in a shorter period than the green morph, suggesting that this did not give the red morph any related advantage over the green morph. however, the period to 1 st nymph (to reproductive age) was shorter for the red morph than the green morph. this was also shown by the higher net reproductive rate and intrinsic rate of increase of the red morph. this would thus give the red morph a distinct advantage over the green morph in terms of capacity to quickly colonize a habitat. this could be one of the contributing factors to the success of the red morph as this may give the red aphids an advantage of early colony establishment. the present study agrees with findings by goundoudaki et al. (2003) who indicated a shorter developmental time in the red morph of the tobacco aphid relative to the green morph. araya et al. (1996) also showed that the pink english grain aphid, sitobion 0 20 40 60 80 100 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 red green aphid age in days a g esp ec if ic su rv iv al ( lx ) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 205-214 212 avenae had a shorter reproductive period compared to the green form. not only did the red morph reach reproductive age earlier, but it also produced more nymphs per day giving it advantage over the green morph. however, longevity was comparable to that of the green morph, giving it no distinct advantage over the green morph. higher longevity could mean an organism would produce more offspring in its lifetime and thus making it more competitive. goundoudaki et al. (2003), however, showed a significantly higher longevity in the red morph relative to the green morph. agespecific fecundity showed that the red morph reached its peak reproduction time earlier than the green morph and consistently had a higher survival than the green morph. in the present study, the red morph tended to have a greater longevity consistently but this was not significantly higher than for the green morph, perhaps showing that this “new” morph is still adapting to its new environment. that the fecundity of the red morph was 1½ to 2 times higher than that of the green morph suggests that it would out-compete the green morph. this coupled with a greater survival implies greater competitive advantage and may explain the predominance of the red morph, particularly in warm temperatures. reed & semtner (1991) showed that the red morph could develop, reproduce and survive better than the green morph at 25 °c or higher, confirming earlier findings by lampert & dennis (1987). summary polyphenism, the production of two or more alternative phenotypes by a single genotype, is a characteristic feature of aphids (dixon, 1998). aphids exhibit a wide range of phenotypic plasticity characteristics, whereby the same genotype can respond to different environments by producing alternate phenotypes in a way that maximizes its fitness (halkett et al. 2006). the predominance of the red morph in zimbabwe is a new phenomenon in the country but the success of the red morph has been a worldwide experience (blackman 1987; mcpherson and bass, 1990). this success could be linked to its ability to survive, reproduce and develop faster than the green morph (reed & semtner, 1991; lampert & dennis, 1987). our work agrees with these findings and we postulate that the red morph will be a “new” menace in the region. this red morph has been conclusively associated with insecticide resistance (blackman, 1987; harlow & lampert, 1990; mcpherson & bass, 1990). conclusions and recommendations the parameters studied in this study show that the red morph has competitive advantage in terms of days to 1 st nymph, number of nymphs/day, fecundity and survival. these factors suggest that the increases in populations observed over the short period may be partly explained by these advantages. this study would therefore be useful in obtaining data for later use in the development of population models of tobacco aphids and development of integrated pest management strategies. in addition, we recommend more judicious use of insecticides and a need for a holistic approach to aphid control, utilizing perhaps natural enemies and insecticides not harmful to such enemies. more work is required to establish which of the pesticides available in the region the pest has already developed resistance to. lastly, we recommend work in the area of biological control in order to augment insecticide usage. references abdel-aal, y. a. i., lampert, e. p., roe, r. m. & semtner p. j. 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(1980). population growth and population structure of natural populations of macrosiphum rosae (l.). zeitschrift für angewandte entomologie, 90, 464–473. troncoso, a. j., vargas, r. r., tapia, d. h., olivares-donoso, r. & niemeyer, h. m. (2005). host selection by the generalist aphid myzus persicae (hemiptera: aphididae) and its subspecies specialized on tobacco, after being reared on the same host. bulletin of entomological research, 95, 23–28. weber, g. (1985). on the ecological genetics of sitobion avenae (f.). zeitschrift für angewandte entomologie, 100, 100–110. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 449 economic rotation of sissoo tree plantations (strip) in bangladesh mohammad yunus associate professor; department of business administration, iiuc, bangladesh m. a. t. hossain research officer; bangladesh forest research institute, chittagong, bangladesh farzana yasmin research assistant; bangladesh forest research institute, chittagong, bangladesh md. milon field investigator, bangladesh forest research institute, chittagong, bangladesh abstract the paper elaborately discusses the various economic rotation methods of sissoo (dalbergia sissoo) plantations in bangladesh. under the present management system, mode of marketing, market mechanism and all the economic criteria for bangladesh as a whole, the economic rotation of sissoo tree may be fixed at 8 year for fuel wood and 12 or 13 year for timber. but if the mean annual increment (mai) is considered as rotation criterion, rotation age as 6 year for fuel wood and 11 to 13 year for timber may be suggested. the elimination rates varied from 10% to 72% depending on plantation year and location. it was found 10% in the area of jessore and more than 50% in rajshahi, jessore and dinajpur. for 6 th year plantation the irr was found highest (39%) in mymensingh. the 14 th year plantation of rajshahi and 13 th year plantation of jessore showed the highest npvs, irrs, b/c ratios, le, ei and eaenpv. from these, it can be inferred that the economic rotation may be fixed at 13 or 14 year for timber and 6 year for fuel wood. keywords: rotation, net present value, internal rate of return, land expectation value introduction 1 sissoo (dalbergia sissoo) is regarded as the most dependable ideal species for afforesting land along the banks of rivers, roads and highways, shade tree in tea gardens and rehabilitation of degraded woodland (gupta and karnik, 1983). it is a multipurpose tree and is extensively grown by farmers on agriculture field, homestead and community land for meeting their biomass and timber need (terwari 1994). in the report to terwari, at 10% discount rate net present value (npv), gross benefit cost ratio (gbcr) and internal rate of return (irr) corresponding author’s name: mohammad yunus email address: yunusiiuc48@gmail.com were found to be rs 2705/ha. 5.07 and 18.36% respectively. the measures of economic efficiency such as the internal rate of return (irr), benefit-cost ratio (b/c) and payback period (pb) of sissoo were found to be 20%. 2.90 and 10 years respectively (goswami, 1976). in the report of trivedi (1986) at 10 year rotation, the irr was found to be 22.57 and number of trees per hectare 2595 with an average diameter 5.1 cm and height 7.6 meter and at 20 year, the irr was found to be 20.06 having number of trees per hectare 865 with an average diameter 12.2 cm and height 13.7 meter. at rotation 20 year with intermediate thinning and without thinning the irrs were found to be 22.06 and 14.38 respectively (trivedi, 1986). in the report of asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:yunusiiuc48@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 449-457 450 gupta (1973), the average market prices (1986-91) were found tk. 3719/m3 for round timber and tk. 77/md for fuel wood (bangladesh tk. 1= india rs. 0.80). there is no information about the economic rotation of sissoo plantations in bangladesh. to find out the economic rotation of sissoo plantations various economic criterea namely; net present value (npv), internal rate of return (irr), benefit-cost ratio (b/c), efficiency index (ei), land expectation value (le) and equal annual equivalent (eae) were applied. materials and methods survey method the survey was conducted in the year 20062007. five forest divisions namely, rajshahi, mymenshingh, dinajpur, chittagong and jessore were selected subjectively. from each forest division, 3 to 8 plantation years, starting from 5 th year to onward plantations were selected subjectively. from each plantation year, 3 sample plots of 0.01 ha each (5m 20m, 3m33.3m, 2m  50m and 1m100m) randomly selected for collecting data on diameter at breast height (dbh) and total height. the costs of nursery raising, plantation establishment, weeding, thinning, vacancy filling and maintenance were collected from respective divisional forest office. the mode of marketing and market prices of sawn wood, round wood and fuel wood of sissoo were collected from nearest market places of selected areas in a designed questionnaire. the market prices of round wood and fuel wood were used in the analysis. the nature of plantations was wood lot. community forestry and strip plantations. the plantation areas were recorded in kilometers, acres and hectare. all the planted areas were converted into hectare. the sissoo planted areas were proportionately derived from the total planted seedlings of sissoo and other species. the yield per hectare was estimated by multiplying existing number of trees with volume per tree. as regard the planting methods different spacing ranges from (1.3m1.3m) to 3.3m3.3m) were found. in the report, the term ‘elimination’ means unauthorized felling. to estimate the elimination rate (er), the present stock (ps) of the standing trees, number of trees thinned (tt) and number of trees naturally disappeared (nd) were deducted from the initial planted number of seedlings (is) and expressed in percentage. analysis method to find out the economic rotation and economics of sissoo tree plantation the following formulae were used in the analyses: irr is the rete at which npv (net present value) (gittinger, 1974) where, irr = internal rate of return b/c =benefit cost ratio ei = efficienc y index rn = benefits at every n year cn = costs of every n year n = number of year i = interest rate (gunter, 1984) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 449-457 451 where, eae = equal annual equivalent npv = net present value i = interest rate t = rotation period (1 ……….n) (gunter, 1984) where, le =land expectation value y = net yield at rotation age t = net value of intermediate cuttings b = age at which revenue is received 1 = annual income c = net value of intermediate cost items c = age at which cost is incurred e = annual expenses r = rotation i = interest rate equation for estimating volume under bark (vub): log (vub) =-12.5189939+1.980535*log (d) +1.0775148*log (h) (latif, 1995) where, vub = volume under bark (m3) d = diameter (cm) h = total height (m) assumptions interest rate 10% cost of harvesting 10% of the total value cost of processing 5% of the total value number of trees per hectare 1000 (for mai) conversion factor 1 m3=7md 1 mile= 1.609 km= 0.8923 acres=0.35692 hectares (source: fd plantation journal) results and discussion two types of plantationsmixed and mono were considered. in mixed plantations, the number of planted sissoo seedlings varied from 10% to 85% of the total plants. the plantation age up to 9 year was considered as fuel wood and above 9 year as timber. table 1: market survey locations fuel wood (tk/md) timber price (tk/m3) round sawn rajshahi 55 9534 17302 chittagong 50 6797 14389 mymensingh 45 4061 11476 dinajpur 50 7062 15890 jessore 50 9534 13771 mean 50 7397 14565 sd 4 2277 2205 cv 7% 31% 15% market prices of timber and fuel wood of sissoo was shown in the table 1. the market survey was conducted in the year 2006-2007. the average market prices of sawn wood, round wood and fuel wood were found to be tk 14565/m3, tk 7397m3 and tk 50/md respectively. in the report of gupta (1973), the average market prices (1986-91) were found rs. 7319/m3 for round timber and rs.77/md for fuel wood (bangladeshi tk. 1= indian rs. 0.80). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 449-457 452 table 2: basic information of sissoo plantations in bangladesh variables rajshahi plantation year 1981-82 1982-83 1983-84 1984-85 1985-86 1986-87 1989-90 1990-91 1992-93 total seedling(nos) 1761 6300 11985 7671 11021 10560 1998 3996 22500 sissoo seedling 50% 38% 60% 65% 50% 60% 50% 50% 50% sissoo seedling(nos) 881 2394 7191 4986 5511 6336 999 1998 11250 total area (ha) 1.15 1.72 2.58 2.30 2.30 1.72 0.29 0.57 3.21 sissoo area (ha) 0.57 0.65 1.55 1.49 1.15 1.03 0.14 0.29 1.61 elimination 26% 72% 55% 28% 49% 39% 20% 20% 20% existing sissoo (nos) 652 670 3236 3590 2810 3865 799 1598 9000 existing sissoo (nos/ha) 1135 1024 2087 2404 2447 3739 5567 5567 5603 volume ub (m3/tree) 2.218 0.655 1.024 0.793 1.077 1.274 0.213 0.069 0.132 total yield(m3) 1445 439 3313 2847 3027 4926 171 110 1188 yield (m3/ha) 2517 670 2137 1907 2636 4765 1188 384 740 sissoo seedling (nos/ha) 1533 3657 4638 3339 4798 6129 6958 6958 7004 variables mymensingh dinajpur plantation year 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 1985-86 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 total seedling(nos) 5600 8800 5067 24750 4800 12400 4800 sissoo seedling 48% 40% 29% 85% 42% 43% 52% sissoo seedling (nos) 2688 3520 1469 21038 2016 5332 2496 total area (ha) 1.55 2.14 1.38 10.00 2.14 4.10 1.07 sissoo area (ha) 0.74 0.90 0.41 8.50 0.90 1.71 0.56 elimination 39% 27% 36% 49% 50% 35% 40% existing sissoo (nos) 1640 2570 940 10729 1008 3466 1498 existing sissoo (nos/ha) 2219 2861 2281 1262 1121 2023 2690 volume ub (m3/tree) 0.116 0.140 0.068 0.171 0.095 0.116 0.090 total yield(m3) 190 359 64 1835 96 402 135 yield (m3/ha) 257 400 154 216 106 235 243 sissoo seedling (nos/ha) 3638 3919 3565 2475 2241 3112 4483 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 449-457 453 variables chittagong jessore plantation year 1995-96 1995-96 1995-96 1985-86 1986-87 1992-93 1993-94 1994-95 total seedling(nos) 27350 82050 10940 10496 10660 6867 12800 10133 sissoo seedling 10% 10% 23% 36% 36% 62% 40% 26% sissoo seedling (nos) 2735 8205 2516 3779 3838 4257 5152 2635 total area (ha) 1.78 5.35 1.78 2.28 2.32 1.73 2.86 2.14 sissoo area (ha) 0.18 0.54 0.41 0.82 0.84 0.73 1.14 0.60 elimination 20% 20% 20% 19% 19% 54% 10% 66% existing sissoo (nos) 2188 6564 2013 3061 3108 1113 4608 724 existing sissoo (nos/ha) 12260 12260 4904 3722 3722 1515 4035 1213 volume ub (m3/tree) 0.054 0.028 0.054 0.39 0.73 0.14 0.11 0.07 total yield(m3) 117 182 108 1178 2282 158 486 48 yield (m3/ha) 657 339 263 1433 2732 215 426 81 sissoo seedling (nos/ha) 15326 15326 6130 4595 4595 5795 4483 4411 basic information of the different plantation years has been shown in the table-2. in the table, the planted seedlings per hectare was found maximum (15326) in chittagong and minimum (1533) in rajshahi. the variation of planted seedlings may be due to unequal number of rows. in chittagong coastal embankment, the number of rows in both the sides was found 10. the elimination rates varied from 10% to 72% depending on plantation year and location. the elimination rate was found 10% in the area of jessore (1993-94’s plantation). more than 50% elimination rates were found in rajshahi (1982-83’s and 1983-84’s plantation) and jessore (1992-93, 1994-95 plantation). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 449-457 454 table 3: mean annual increments location age gbh(cm) height (m) volume tree yield mai maxi mini mean maxi mini mean (m3/tree) (nos/ha) m3/ha) m3/ha) rajshahi 18 205.74 132.08 112.65 24.00 19.00 19.23 1.224 988 1209 68 17 124.46 72.39 112.42 20.00 13.50 19.22 0.655 1024 670 39 16 157.48 71.76 112.42 22.25 16.50 19.22 1.024 2087 2137 64 15 146.05 57.15 94.25 22.75 12.50 18.60 0.793 2404 1907 53 14 140.12 62.65 93.94 21.33 11.50 16.28 0.544 2477 1348 39 dinajpur, jessore, rajshahi 13 129.96 59.69 93.18 21.00 9.50 16.08 1.00 3730 3746 77 12 135.04 61.17 93.56 21.17 10.50 16.18 0.77 3104 2547 68 11 132.50 60.43 93.37 21.08 10.00 16.13 0.89 3417 3147 84 rajshahi 10 76.20 46.99 61.19 17.00 8.00 14.18 0.213 5567 1188 21 9 60.96 33.02 41.17 12.5 90.00 10.96 0.069 5567 384 8 8 68.58 40.005 51.18 14.75 8.50 12.57 0.14122 5567 786 18 mymensingh, jessore, rajshahi 7 71.87 35.56 53.00 17.00 8.09 11.51 0.121 2615 317 17 dinajpur, mymensingh, jessore, 6 73.24 36.62 54.13 13.17 6.50 10.07 0.120 2973 358 20 dinajpur, mymensingh, jessore, chittagong 5 60.89 31.28 43.62 11.72 5.95 8.78 0.075 2061 154 15 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 449-457 455 table 3 showed the height and girth at breast height (maximum and minimum), mean height and girth, volume yield and mean annual increment (mai). to find out the mai, the number of trees per hectare was assumed 1000. the mean height and girth were found to be 19.22m and 112.42 cm in the 16 th year plantation. the number of existing trees per hectare was recorded highest (5567) of 8 th , 9 th and 10 th year plantation and lowest (988) of 18 th year plantation in the area of rajshahi. this may be due to unauthorized felling, the spacing and conversion of kilometer into hectare. it was found that the highest mai (84m3/ha) was found at age 11 year and second highest (77m3/ha) at age 13 year plantation in dinajpur, jessore and rajshahi as fuel wood up to 9 year, the highest mai was found 20m3/ha at age 6. if the mai is considered as rotation criterion, rotation age as 6 year for fuel wood and 11 to 13 year for timber may be suggested. table 4: location wise economics of sissoo plantation locations plan.age npv irr b/c ei le eaele eaenpv rajshahi 18 2049992 49% 6.40 5.40 449568 54816 249956 17 1685020 53% 6.40 5.40 415596 51810 210062 16 3942540 65% 6.54 5.54 1096681 104174 503922 15 3608265 63% 6.41 5.41 1135657 149309 474392 14 10141503 78% 6.57 5.57 3625204 492108 1376671 10 953424 57% 2.34 1.34 598230 97359 155165 9 1697 10% 1.03 0.03 1249 217 295 8 63033 25% 1.90 0.90 55119 10332 11815 chittagong 7 -45601 1% 0.76 -0.24 -74693 -19704 -12029 6 -54618 9% 0.57 -0.43 -89462 -23600 -14408 5 -18183 1% 0.76 -0.24 29784 -7857 -4797 mymensingh 7 14170 21% 1.49 0.49 14936 3068 2911 6 47716 39% 2.16 1.16 61844 14200 10956 5 -1806 8% 0.95 -0.05 -2959 -781 -477 dinajpur 14 334191 51% 5.97 4.97 119461 16216 45365 7 -32662 12% 0.37 -0.63 -34427 -7072 -6709 6 -11449 3 0.80 -0.20 -14838 -3407 -2629 5 8417 17 1.19 0.19 13786 3637 2220 jessore 14 3036607 68 6.41 5.41 1085472 147349 412208 13 6395599 85 6.57 5.57 2608031 367155 900363 7 399 10 1.01 0.01 421 86 82 6 1226 11 1.03 0.03 1589 365 281 5 -23803 10 0.30 -0.07 -38989 -10285 -6279 the table 4 showed the plantation age and location wise net present value (npv), benefit-cost ratio (b/c), internal rate of return (irr), efficiency index (ei) land expectation value (le) and equal annual equivalents (eaes) of different plantations. almost in all areas, the npvs were found negative for the 5 th , 6 th and 7 year plantations. for 6 year plantation of mymensingh, the irr was found highest (39%). in the 14 th year plantation of rajshahi npv, irr, b/c ratio, le, el and eaenpv were found tk. 10141503, 78%, 6.57, tk. 3625204, tk. 5.57 and tk. 1376671 respectively and the second highest npv, irr, b/c ratio, le, el and eaenpv were found in the 16 th year plantation. in the 13 th year plantation of jessore, npv, irr, b/c ratio, le, el and eaenpv were found to be tk. 6395599, 85% 6.57, tk. 2068031, tk. 5.57 and tk. 900363 respectively and the second highest npv, irr, b/c ratio, le, el asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 449-457 456 and eaenpv were found in the 14 th year plantation. from these, it can be inferred that economic rotation may be fixed at 13 or 14 year for timber and 6 year for fuel wood. table 5: economics of sissoo plantation in bangladesh plantation age (year) npv irr b/c ei le eaele eaenpv 18 2049992 49% 6.40 5.40 449568 54816 249956 17 1685020 53% 6.40 5.40 415596 51810 210062 16 3942540 65% 6.54 5.54 1096681 140174 503922 15 3608265 63% 6.41 5.41 1135657 149309 474392 14 4504100 66% 6.32 5.32 1610046 218558 611415 13 6395599 85% 6.57 5.57 2608031 367155 900363 12 3674512 71% 4.45 3.45 1603130 232257 527764 11 1838104 41% 2.74 1.74 802190 116237 264029 10 953424 57% 2.34 1.34 598230 97359 155165 9 1697 10% 1.03 0.03 1249 217 295 8 63033 25% 1.90 0.90 55119 10332 11815 7 -6031 6% 0.96 -0.04 -6357 -1306 -1239 6 12498 18% 1.33 0.33 16198 3719 2870 5 -22599 1% 0.76 -0.24 -37017 -9765 -5962 the economic criterea and rotation age for bangladesh as a whole were shown in table 5. from the table, it is revealed that the highest npv (tk. 6395599), irr (85%), b/c ratio (6.57), ei (tk. 5.57) and le (tk. 2068031) come from the plantation age 13 th year. the second highest npv (tk. 3674512), irr (71%), b/c ratio (4.45), ei (3.45), ei (3.45) and le (tk. 1603130) were found at age 12 th year. at 8 th year plantation the highest npv, irr, b/c ration, ei and le as fuel wood were found to be tk. 63033, 25%, 1.90, tk. 0.90 and tk. 55119 respectively. among the economic criteria npv, irr and le are the important criteria for assessing the economic rotation. in this context, the economic rotations may be suggested at 13 or 12 year for timber and 8 year for fuel wood. conclusion the elimination rates varied from 10% to 72% depending on plantation years and locations. it was found 19% in the areas of jessore. more than 50% elimination rates were found in rajshahi, jessore and dinajpur. under the socio-economic condition, intensive research study may initiate to explore the real disguised dominating causes of elimination. the average number of seedlings planted per hectare was recorded highest 12260 and lowest 3078. the variation in number of seedlings may be due to the spacing and conversion of kilometer into hectare. if we consider the mai as rotation criterion, rotation ages 6 year for fuel wood and 11 to 13 years for timber may be suggested. considering the economic criterea for bangladesh as a whole, 12 or 13 year for timber and 8 year for fuel wood may be suggested as roation ages. it was cleared that no single method can be considered to meet the objectives. moreover, which criterion should be applied for fixation of rotation depends on the objectives? from these it was also revealed that under the present socioeconomic forestry management system, rotations might be based on economic and end-use criterea. reference gittinger, j. p. (1974). economic analysis of agricultural projects. the jhons hoskins university press baltimore and london. p. 98. goswami, k. v. (1976). cost benefits analysis of afforestation in deep asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 449-457 457 ravines of gujrat. indian agriculture economic, 31(1), 48-55. gunter, j. e. (1984). essentials of forestry investment analysis. library of congress catalog 83-063342. p. 6880. gupta, g. b. l. (1973). an economic evaluation in soil conservation measures in vranasi district, (u. p). indian agricultural economic, 28(4), 205-211. gupta, a. c., & karnik, m. g. (1983). dalbergia sisso: an annotated bibliography. winrock international -f/fred: bangkok, thailand. latif, m. a. (1995). volume tables for acacia auriculiformis, cassia siamia and pinus caribaea in bangladesh. bangladesh journal of forest science, 24(2), 22-30. tewari, d. n. (1994). a monograph on dalbergia sissoo roxb. international book distributors, dehra dun248001. india: pp. 192-201. trivedi, s. n. (1986). financial appraisal for some afforestation species in bihar (india) under the risk of illicit felling. forest ecology and management, 17, 261-277. © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 the relevance of a rules-based freshmilk price structure policy in east java : an evidence based assesment bambang ali nugroho (dept of socio economic fac of animal husbandry brawijaya university, malang, indonesia) to cite this article: bambang ali nugroho (2011). the relevance of a rules-based freshmilk price structure policy in east java: an evidence based assesment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2), 50-55. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 50-55 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author(s) bambang ali nugroho dept of socio economic fac of animal husbandry brawijaya university, malang, indonesia e-mail: bamalnug@yahoo.com the relevance of a rule-based freshmilk price structure policy in east java: an evidence based assesment abstract at present, indonesia is still lack of freshmilk supply, domestic freshmilk production is covered only 30% national freshmilk processing industry needed and is about 70% milk industry material should be imported, mainly from new zealand, australia, eu and usa. the following actors are active in the formal dairy supply chain in indonesia: (1) milk producers, (2) the primary dairy/ village cooperatives (kud), (3) the overall dairy cooperative (gksi), (4) the milk processors/ dairy industry, (5) based on that situation, and to improve the development of smallscale dairy farming activities in east java, this paper have an objective to examine the relevance of a rules-based freshmilk price structure policy in east java. east java dairy supply chain inefficiencies are reflected in a relatively large difference between farm gate milk price and consumer prices of milk products. factors like the dependency on imported milk powder and the strongly fluctuating world market prices, the lack of protection against world market fluctuations for the local milk producers, the scale and structure of dairy farming, and poor raw milk quality affect the development of east java dairy supply chain. keywords: price structure, dairy farming, dairy cooperative, dairy industry introduction strategic interaction between public and private actors is increasingly recognised as an important determinant of freshmilk market performance in east java. trust and consultation tends to positively affect private activity while uncertainty of government behaviour impedes it. encouragingly, a rules-based policy tend to promotes a much more stable market outcome thereby substantially reducing the risk of input output prices instability. these results underscore the importance of predictable and transparent rules for the government involvement in freshmilk markets. the local milk production in east java is mainly concentrated in the higher altitude areas of the island. there is an interest of the government and the private sector (dairy industry/nestle) to stimulate local milk production. competing claims for land and climatic conditions in the lower altitude areas limit expansion of milk production at east java. the trend to establish large scale dairy farms will contribute to the increase of milk production, but also in future the bulk of the milk will be produced by smallholders. increase of milk production per cow by improved farm management practices, increased efficiency of the dairy supply chain ( which should result in higher farm gate milk prices), and improved provision of services and inputs to farmers are key factors in increasing milk production on small scale farms. government policy is directed to increase selfsufficiency in milk products from the current 30% to 50% by 2015. small-scale dairy farming that leads to improved incomes and employment opportunities in the rural areas also meet important objectives of government policy. government policy directed at the primary producers aims at improvement of production levels per cow (milk production per cow per day to increase from the present 8-10 kg to 15 kg per cow per day), improvement of raw milk quality and a minimum farm gate milk price to be at least 80% of the world market price. main actors in the dairy supply chain in indonesia are the dairy farmers (mainly smallholders), primary and secondary dairy cooperatives (main activities: milk collection and transport, service and input supply), milk processors, the government, and private service and input suppliers. many of the managerial problems at the small scale farms are related to feeding. increased availability of land for forage production (growing of forage in forests, plantations), better utilization of available forage, better quality concentrate feeds, and improvement of farmer’s knowledge will provide better conditions for milk production (wouters 2009). dairy cooperatives owned by farmers assist dairy farmers by means of collection and sales of milk to the milk processing industry and by providing mailto:bamalnug@yahoo.com determinants of farmer's participation in off-farm... 51 feeds, credit (for feed, cows etc) and services to farmers. some cooperatives have engaged in small scale processing and marketing of dairy products. dairy cooperatives are a good entry point for improvement of dairy farming practices, because of their direct relation with farmers. management competences of many cooperatives however need to be strengthened. the overall dairy cooperative gksi offers an indirect platform for farmers to negotiate with the dairy industry. the dairy industry is dominated by a number of large players: frisian flag/foremost, indomilk/indolacto and ultrajaya (all with dairy plants at west java) and nestle (with a plant at east java). current government policy imposes limited levies on importation of dairy products. the poor raw milk quality is a major problem for the use of locally produced milk by the dairy industry. milk payment schemes according to quality (total solids and total plate count) stimulate cooperatives to improve milk quality, but as yet insufficiently at farm level. the dairy industry provides (technical) assistance to a number of cooperatives and their members to improve milk quality and milk production. dairy and/or village cooperatives assist dairy farmers by collecting and selling milk to the milk processing industry and/or by processing and marketing of milk. moreover, cooperatives provide inputs, credit in kind (feed and cows), and services to farmers. efficient collection schemes, effective chilling equipment, and high standards of hygiene at the collection centers are needed to keep collection costs low and to improve milk quality. at present there are about 90 primary dairy cooperatives in indonesia. these cooperatives collect milk from their members. many cooperatives have cooling facilities at collection centers and/or collection points, either on loan or pre-paid by the dairy industry, supplied from donor funds, or financed by the cooperative itself. the cooperatives without cooling facilities can take the milk to the cooling facilities of the overall cooperative gksi where milk is cooled and thereafter transported to the dairy plants. the role of the overall cooperative gksi in facilitating cooling and transport is declining. many primary cooperatives deal directly with the dairy industry. many cooperatives provide services for farmers as well. supply of concentrate feeds is the most important. a well-developed cooperative like kopsae in pujon, malang regency not only supplies concentrate feeds but also provides veterinary services and ai services to members. the services are paid collectively (through collective deduction from the milk price). kopsae employs extension staff, veterinarians and ai technicians. members pay a fixed fee per liter of milk. besides, this cooperative exploits a shop, processes part of the milk, and sells small quantities of pasteurized milk. most dairy cooperatives produce cheap concentrates (price setting is an important issue for the farmers) at the expense of the quality (too low protein levels while energy content is often also too low). a cooperative can negotiate for and facilitate services which are out of reach for individual small scale farmers like acquiring land to grow forage. the management of the cooperatives is crucial. the dairy cooperatives are a democratic institution and for organizational matters supported by the ministry of cooperatives and the overall dairy coop gksi. the dairy cooperatives have a small board of directors (chairman, secretary and treasurer) and a supervisory board. both boards are composed of member farmers. many cooperatives have difficulty in electing farmers who are competent for board positions. capacity building of management and members of cooperatives is an important issue. a number of cooperatives also employ extension workers. extension officers still concentrate on individual farm visits and seem to be more reactive (for example reacting to a problem with milk quality) than pro-active. the impression is that group approaches in extension, with application of participatory methodologies (for example farmer field school approaches) could make extension more efficient and more farmer directed. this requires more training of trainers. within the dairy cooperative there are often registered farmers groups in a village or neighborhood engaging in certain common activities like dairy farming, that could be a possible vehicle for extension. at present, indonesia is still lack of freshmilk supply, domestic freshmilk production is covered only 30% national freshmilk processing industry needed and is about 70% milk industry material should be imported, mainly from new zealand, australia, eu and usa. domestic milk industry demand is about 1.3 milion tons, whereas national freshmilk production is about 489 tons so real demand needed is about 810 tons. based on that situation, and to improve the development of smallscale dairy farming activities in east java, it is necessary to examine the relevance of a rules-based freshmilk price structure policy in east java. method and data information and data that have been used in this paper were collected from various secondary data sources and articles on rules-based freshmilk price asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 50-55 52 structure. method of information and data analyzes that have been used were descriptive analytical or an assesment based an evidence the implementation of rules-based freshmilk price structure in east java and its evolution. results and discussion since loi of imf was singed in 1997, government attention on dairy farming activities was very low. however, government role is highly needed especially on technical aspetc for increasing productivity of dairy farming business, i.e. to diminished the consequences of dairy cattle deseases (mastitis, brucelosis, etc.). the following actors are active in the formal dairy supply chain in indonesia: (1) milk producers, (2) the primary dairy/ village cooperatives (kud), (3) the overall dairy cooperative (gksi), (4) the milk processors/ dairy industry, (5) milk producers most dairy farmers practice zero-grazing (cut and carry or stall feeding) and lack of land to grow forage is a major limitation for farmers to expand their dairy enterprise and/or for new farmers to start with dairy farming. possible solutions are intensification of forage production (fertilization and cutting management) and expansion of forage production into public or private estates. in lembang, the dairy cooperative kpbsu has made a contract with the forest department so that members of the cooperative can grow forage on about 1000 acres in between young trees in the production forests. similar approaches are proposed in the blue print (toharmat et al., 2007), including growing of forage or grazing in plantations. inadequate feeding is another major problem, related to lack of forage. unbalanced feeding (often too much concentrate in relation to forage) and poor quality concentrate feeds lead to poor nutritional status and often also fertility problems of the cows. reproductive problems and low conception rates resulting in long calving intervals are often related to feeding (minerals, inadequate energy supply at beginning of lactation). health problems like metabolic diseases and displaced abomasums are caused by poor feeding practices. a number of simple innovations like growing more forage, chopping of forage, and better quality concentrates in combination with improving the farmers’ knowledge could improve the feeding practices. the dairy cooperatives dairy and/or village cooperatives assist dairy farmers by collecting and selling milk to the milk processing industry and/or by processing and marketing of milk. moreover, cooperatives provide inputs, credit in kind (feed and cows), and services to farmers. this “ cooperative model” (see figure 2) was introduced nationwide after 1983 (sulastri and marhajan 2002). at present there are about 90 primary dairy cooperatives in the country. these cooperatives collect milk from their members. many cooperatives have cooling facilities at collection centers and/or collection points, either on loan or pre-paid by the dairy industry, supplied from donor funds, or financed by the cooperative itself. the cooperatives without cooling facilities can take the milk to the cooling facilities of the overall cooperative gksi where milk is cooled and thereafter transported to the dairy plants. the role of the overall cooperative gksi in facilitating cooling and transport is declining. many primary cooperatives deal directly with the dairy industry. most dairy cooperatives produce cheap concentrates (price setting is an important issue for the farmers) at the expense of the quality (too low protein levels while energy content is often also too low). a cooperative can negotiate for and facilitate services which are out of reach for individual small scale farmers like acquiring land to grow forage. the dairy industry five dairies dominate the dairy market with frisian flag industries/foremost being the main producer of milk products and second regarding the processing of locally produced milk. nestlé dominates the market in east java (1 dairy plant). in west java, frisian flag/foremost and indomilk/inodolacto have both 2 factories, danone (previously numico) 1 and ultrajaya 1 (fabiosa, 2005). the indonesian consumer organization (suksmaningsih, 2005) mentions that at national level an oligopolistic market situation exists resulting in too low farm gate milk prices. from 1982-1998, government regulations required the milk processing industry to produce milk products from locally produced milk and recombined milk (from imported milk powder) at fixed ratios. this regulation was abolished in 1998 after the financial crisis, among others as part of conditions imposed by the imf readjustment program to lower consumer prices. current government policy imposes limited government restrictions on imports of dairy products, although bureaucratic import procedures may take long. for finished products an import tariff of 5% is in place. table 1. milk payment scheme (from july, 2007) according to composition and hygienic quality determinants of farmer's participation in off-farm... 53 (adapted from meylinah, 2008 based on information gksi). suksmaningsih (2005) mentioned also that milk prices in supermarkets were at equal levels with dairy products in australian supermarkets and that farmers received too little of the margin. a quick and dirty survey in the supermarket showed prices of uht milk per liter on average of about 12,000 idr/litre (about 80 euro cents, december 2008) while prices (including the extra bonus payment of the dairy industry) paid to farmers (kpbsu, lembang) are about 3200 idr/liter (about 20 euro cents, december 2008). the ratio producer/consumer price based on the available information is 3.75. this ratio is about 2 in the netherlands but comparable with turkey where the ratio producer/consumer price was about 3.5 in 2006 (cbat, 2007). several factors contribute to the large difference between producer and consumer prices but high collection and transportation costs are important factors. freshmilk price structure model was applied when global freshmilk price highly increased, it was between 2007 to 2008. through that model, freshmilk price of dairy producers in easr java for example, it was divided in several components. that components are pricebase, competitive, loyalty, transport and feed incentives. in central and west java provinces, even not exactly equal, freshmilk processing industry also introduced freshmilk price structure model. however, freshmilk price components were more simple, for example there exist feed price component and fuel component. in east java provice, pt nestle indonesia has fixed price-base freshmilk is about 2,700 idr per kg, with competitive incentive is about 700 idr per kg and since december 2008 has been decreased 200 idr became 500 idr per kg. others incentives are loyalty incentive 300 idr per kg, transport incentive 150 idr per kg and soya bean meal processing residue as a feed 200 idr per kg. an assesment based an evidence the implementation of rules-based freshmilk price structure model in east java and its evolution, it seem to be related with conflict of interest between government, industry/private sectors, dairy cooperatives and dairy farmers. government would to improve the development of dairy farming activities, so incentive schemes that promote business activities on each stakeholders must be take into account. industry/private sectors or freshmilk processing industry would have supply guarantee of freshmilk material, and tend to seek global freshmilk price fluctuation, when global freshmilk price fall below domestic freshmilk price, national milk industry tend increase milk material importation, and when global freshmilk price rise up to domestic freshmilk price, national milk industry tend to increase arbsorbtion of domestic freshmilk production. dairy cooperatives would to expand their business activities, they stand up between government, private sectors and dairy farmers. as a tool of government, internaly dairy cooperative tend to have a conflict of interest between social and business objectives. dairy farmers would to improve their incomes because their business in general is so small having only 2 – 3 dairy cattles, so improving their family incomes are the main ojectives. based on that situation, government roles on freshmilk price structure rules is seem to be not so clear, means that industry/private sectors are the main actors that determine domestic freshmilk price structure rules, surely depend on their interests. sometimes, that rules are not really business reasoning, for example when global freshmilk price fall below domestic freshmilk price means that industry used milk and milk product material importations, their not introduced domestic freshmilk price incentives. but if global freshmilk price rise up to domestic freshmilk price means that industry used more domestic fresh milk, their introduced subjectively price based, and competitive, loyalty, transport and dairy feed incentives. so, it is clear that domestic freshmilk pricedetermine by industry/private sectors closely depend on global freshmilk price fluctuation. conclusion east java dairy supply chain inefficiencies are reflected in a relatively large difference between farm gate milk price and consumer prices of milk products. factors like the dependency on imported milk powder and the strongly fluctuating world market prices, the lack of protection against world market fluctuations for the local milk producers, the scale and structure of dairy farming, and poor raw milk quality affect the development of east java dairy supply chain. alternative possible solutions to improve freshmilk price structure rules determination in east java should focus on improvement of an integrated approach in which government, dairy industry, dairy cooperatives and dairy farmers take part is required. the government could support improvement of profitability by means of subsidies, tax policies, improved services, and facilitating the availability of dairy inputs. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 50-55 54 table-1 milk payment scheme milk product milk price (idr) euro cents (rate 1-12-2008) grade 1 ts 12% tpc < 250,000 3047 18.80 grade 2 ts 12% tpc 250,000 – 500,000 2947 18.20 grade 3 ts 12% tpc >500,000 – 1,000,000 2847 17.60 source: meylinah (2008) rules-based freshmilk price structure policy in east java: table 2: freshmilk price criteria evolution year fat snf ts tpc antibiotic content price milk criteria 1978-1983 no no no no no based on volume (liters) 1984-1987 yes no no no no fat content standard 3% penalty 5 idr per kg each 1% < or > standard 1988-1997 yes yes no no no based on each gram fat and snf 1998-april 2004 yes yes yes yes no based on each gram fat and snf ts min 11% & bonus or penalty 5 idr per kg per +/0.1% tpc 20 – 30 millions, with bonus < 20 m. & penalty > 30 m. mei 2004 yes yes yes yes no based on each gram fat and snf ts < 11% rejected & bonus > 11% tpc 20 – 30 millions, with bonus < 20 m. & penalty > 30 m. june 2004 yes yes yes yes no based on each gram fat and snf ts < 11% rejected & penalty between 11% 11.2% & bonus >11.3% tpc 10 – 15 millions, with bonus < 10 m. & penalty > 15 m. august 2004 yes yes yes yes yes based on each gram fat and snf ts < 11% rejected & penalty between 11% 11.2% & bonus >11.3% tpc 10 – 15 millions, with bonus < 10 m. & penalty > 15 m. antibiotic penalty 200 idr per kg 2007/2008 yes yes yes yes yes based on each gram fat and snf ts < 11% rejected & penalty between 11% 11.2% & bonus >11.3% tpc 10 – 15 millions, with bonus < 10 m. & penalty > 15 m. antibiotic penalty rp 200,per kg note: in west java : bonus on feed & fuel energy in east java : price based 2,700 idr per kg, competivity incentive 700 idr per kg, loyality incentive 300 idr per kg, milk transport incencentive 150 idr per kg & soya bean residue/feed incentive 200 idr per kg. source: gksi (2009). note: snf (solid non fat), ts (total soild), tpc (total plate count) views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. determinants of farmer's participation in off-farm... 55 references cbat, (2007). turkish dairy cattle breeding bulletin. breeders association of turkey (cbat). fabiosa, j. f. (2005). growing demand for animal protein source products in indonesia: trade implications. center for agricultural and rural development, iowa state university (www.card.iastate.edu). meylinah, s. (2008). indonesia dairy and dairy products annual 2007, gain report no id 8028, usda foreign agricultural service. pp. 2-7. sulastri, e., & marhajan, k. l. (2002). role of dairy cooperative services on dairy development in indonesia. a case study of daerah ishimewat yogyakata province. journal of international development and cooperation, 9(1), 17-39. suksmaningsih, i. (2005). the impact of liberalization on the food chain of dairy sector indonesia. indonesian consumers organization. pp presentation during interim meeting, advocacy capacity building and competition policy and law in asia, hanoi, vietnam. toharmat, t., noor, r. r., nahrowi, r. r. a., maheswari, l., abdullah, d., evvyernie, c., sumantri, a. d., lubis, i. g., permana, burhanudin, a., setiana, a., atabany, i., komala, hamzah, f., luthan, t., setiawati, yulizar, d., wahyuni, g., santoso, n., tobing, l., & rahayu, d. (2007). review dairy agribusiness in indonesia. teamwork faculty of animal husbandry and the ministry of agriculture, jakart. wouters, a. p. (2009). dairy sector development indonesia options for cooperation with the netherlands. animal sciences group, wageningen. http://www.card.iastate.edu/ publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. effort of increasing production of livestock feed out of cassava waste by identifying the more suitable cellulotic degrading fungi yani suryani (department of biology, fst uin sunan gunung djati jl. a.h. nasution no.105 bandung, indonesia) poniah andayaningsih (department of biology, fmipa padjadjaran university jl. raya bandung-sumedang km. 21 jatinangor, indonesia) iman hernaman (department of animal husbandry, padjadjaran university jl. raya bandung-sumedang km. 21 jatinangor, indonesia) ulfanuri fajri muharromi (department of biology, fst uin sunan gunung djati jl. a.h. nasution no.105 bandung, indonesia) citation: yani suryani., poniah andayaningsih., iman hernaman and ulfanuri fajri muharromi (2012) “effort of increasing production of livestock feed out of cassava waste by identifying the more suitable cellulotic degrading fungi”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 329-336. effort of increasing production of….. 329 author(s) yani suryani department of biology, fst uin sunan gunung djati jl. a.h. nasution no. 105 bandung, indonesia email: yan_dikha@yahoo.com poniah andayaningsih department of biology, fmipa padjadjaran university jl. raya bandung-sumedang km. 21 jatinangor, indonesia iman hernaman department of animal husbandry, padjadjaran university jl. raya bandungsumedang km. 21, jatinangor, indonesia ulfanuri fajri muharromi department of biology, fst uin sunan gunung djati jl. a.h. nasution no. 105 bandung, indonesia effort of increasing production of livestock feed out of cassava waste by identifying the more suitable cellulotic degrading fungi abstract in the bioethanol production process, as much as 90% of waste was produced. the availability of waste production is very important since waste can be processed to become livestock feed. the solid bioethanol waste contains cyanide (hcn) 5.8177 mg/kg, water 95,21%, ash 0,39%, protein 8,16%, crude fiber 5,45%, crude fat 2.06%, and carbohydrates 83,94%. processing bioethanol solid waste into livestock feed can be done by utilizing the existing fungi on bioethanol solid waste. crude fiber (cellulose) and carbohydrates are a source of cellulolytic fungi. cellulolytic fungi can degrade the role of organic materials contained in bioethanol solid waste, so that it can be made as a source of highly nutritious livestock feed. this study aims to determine the types of cellulolytic fungal isolates contained in bioethanol solid waste which is potentially processed to become livestock woof. descriptive analysis was employed as a method of the study. furthermore, potato dextrose agar (pda) was used as a medium for culturing and isolating the fungus. dilution series and pour plate method were employed to isolate the fungus. and, moist chamber method was employed to identify it. in addition, carboxy methyl cellulose (cmc) was used as medium to identify cellulolytic fungi. the process was carried out up to the level of genus based on macroscopic and microscopic characterization. 10 fungal isolates from the genus of aspergillus sp 1, aspergillus sp 2, aspergillus sp 3, aspergillus niger, cladosporium sp, mucor sp, penicillium sp 1, penicillium sp 2, rhizopus sp and trichoderma viride were yielded in this study. the results of examining cellulose enzyme activity revealed that 9 of 10 isolates of the fungus were capable of degrading cellulose. isolates yielding the largest cellulose enzyme were trichoderma viride, penicillium sp 1, cladosporium sp and aspergillus niger. keywords: dilution series, cellulolytic fungi, moist chamber, bioethanol solid waste, pour plate introduction feed is the most important factor in livestock business. the success of livestock business heavily depends on the kind of woof provided. the effort to utilize waste may improve the availability of feed (agustini, 2010). in general waste quality for feed is very low. an effort to improve treatment of livestock feed, therefore, is required. by doing so, the content of nutrition and livestock productivity will increase. one kind of waste used to livestock woof is bioethanol waste utilized as fibrous woof substance. bioethanol is one of energy mailto:yan_dikha@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 329-336. 330 alternatives using plants as its primary substance and it generally needs fermenting. bioethanol can be made from cassava. cassava shares important economic value compared with other kind of tubers. in addition to that, cassava contains high starch which is approximately 25-30% and is suitable for alternative energy (rikana, heppy and adam risky, 2009). bioethanol is produced by fermentation which is then proceeding by distillation. this treatment produces waste which is equal to 90% of the fermentation solution. with a large amount of waste, the process of waste treatment becomes intensely important, because it is able to damage environment when it is not handled well (wira 2011). bioethanol solid waste can be utilized as livestock woof, but it previously needs to be fermented. fermentation is undertaken in order to improve nutritious content of woof substance with low quality and omit anti-nutrition material in the form of cyanide (hidayat 2010). enzyme is protein produced by any living organisms. in the fermentation industry, enzyme is produced by fungi or bacteria (uusima 2006). one kind of enzymes is cellulose enabling to crack cellulose chemically. it has been revealed that the enzyme of cellulose is one of the enzymes which play an important role in processing organic waste bioconversion to become glucose, one-cell protein, livestock woof ethanol and so on. in line with the advance of industry, the need to cellulose enzyme is getting more increasing recently. in indonesia the industry utilizing enzyme grows excessively; however, the need to enzyme is not yet met. the enzyme should be imported from other countries (soeka, yati s. and sastraatmajda dudi d, 1992). one of the possible solutions is to utilize a cellulolytic microorganism. it can produce cellulose enzyme that enable cellulose, produced from bioethanol, to degrade. microorganism capable of degrading cellulose is fungi. the bioethanol waste of cassava contains many cellulolytic fungi capable of degrading cellulose. the genus of fungi producing cellulose enzyme, among others, are aspergillus sp., bulgaria sp., chaetomium sp., helotium sp., myrothecium sp., paecilomyces sp., penicillium sp., phanerochaeta sp., poria sp., rhizopus sp., (irawan, 2008), schizophillium sp., serpua sp., and trichoderma sp. (ganjar and syamsuridzal, 2006). since fungi capably of degrading cellulose are important, the effort to isolate and identify cellulolytic fungi from bioethanol waste of cassava was carried out through this research. the research is expected to find out cellulose fungus isolate playing a role in processing bioethanol waste of cassava into livestock feed. material and procedure material and instruments the materials used in this research are bioethanol solid waste, pda (medium potatoes dextrose agar), cmc (carboxil methil cellulose), sterile water, aquades, physiologic nacl, vaseline, kongo red, alcohol 95%, alcohol 70%, and cloramfenicol. meanwhile, the instrument used in this research are autoclave, microwave, scale hot plate and stirrer, erlenmeyer retort, calibrated beaker, petri dish, reaction retort, spatula, ph universal indicator, thermometer, calibrated pipette, filler pipette (rubber bulb), ose needle, dropper pipette, filter paper, object glass and cover glass, pincers, cotton and muslin, microscope, sliding calipers, bunsen burner, reaction retort shelf, rubber, tissue, aluminum foil, plastic seal, board marker, label sheet, and scissors. procedure preparing bioethanol solid waste bioethanol solid waste that will be used as a microorganism isolate resource is gained by taking the solid waste, which is later, put into the bottle. in this case, the room temperature where the bottles are placed is maintained, so that the microorganism inside of the substance remains alive when it is examined. fungi isolation the sample of bioethanol solid waste is weighed as much as 1 gram. then, it is put into reaction retort containing 9 ml nacl. afterward, 1 ml of each diluted material got into petri dish and it is poured pda medium effort of increasing production of….. 331 (medium of potatoes dextrose agar). then, it is incubated at room temperature for 72 hours. fungal colony purification the colony with different characteristics is re isolated and re-inoculated repeatedly so that completely pure culture is produced. fungi identification identifying every colony of fungi microscopically is carried out using a morphological observation. fungal morphological observation includes color monitoring, colony surface, texture, margin or the edge of colony (ganjar, et.al., 1999). meanwhile, to observe microscopic cellulolytic fungal identification is conducted by using moist chamber method. identifying fungal character is synchronized with its character and morphology based on the identification book. cellulose degradation activity test fungal isolate is inoculated on pda medium and incubated by maintaining temperature for 24 hours. after fungal isolate has grown, medium surface is sprinkled by red kongo indicator. it is then flushed by nacl and observed by measuring the diameter of transparent zone composed around the colony. ratio between the diameter of transparent zone and that of fungal colony used to know the extent of cellulolytic fungal ability. result and discussion cellulolytic fungal isolate of bioethanol waste of cassava a number of cellulolytic fungi successfully isolated from bioethanol solid waste of cassava are equal to 10 isolates. the result of fungal isolates obtained can be seen on picture 1 . figure 1: fungal isolate from the result of identification based on microscopic appearance on moist chamber observation of each fungal isolate, it is obtained the display of fungal isolate as on picture 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 329-336. 332 figure 2: genus dan species from fungi isolate 1 isolate 1 is identified from genus of aspergillus sp 1. the characteristics of macroscopic aspergillus sp 1 isolated on medium of pda for 7 days with incubation temperature 30 0 c are dark green color, flat colony surface with crude and granulated texture caused by luxuriance of conidiophores shaped from mycelia on jelly, colorless colony, and inflated margin of colony. aspergillus sp 1 does not share concentric circle isolate 4 aspergillus niger isolate 5 cladosporium sp isolate 6 mucor sp isolate 7 penicillium sp 1 isolate 8 penicillium sp 2 isolate 9 rhizopus sp isolate 10 trichoderma viride isolate 1 aspergillus sp 1 isolate 2 aspergillus sp 2 isolate 3 aspergillus sp 3 effort of increasing production of….. 333 and cannot produce excaudate. microscopic feature gained is short and one-structuredconidiophores. outer surface of conidiophores is delicate and its color is hyaline. the tip of conidiophores has vesicular structure resembling wide bludgeon. upper vesicular surface immediately formed on vesicular is called fialid producing conidia. it shapes circlee and semicircle. isolate 2 isolate 2 is identified from genus aspergillus sp 2. the macroscopic features of aspergillus sp 2 isolated on pda medium on the seventh day with incubation temperature 30 0 c are yellowish-green color, flat colony surface with crude and granulated texture caused by luxuriant sporulation. by way of contrast, colony has yellow color and inflated texture of margin. aspergillus sp 2 does not have a concentric circle. it produces yellow excaudate. microscopic features gained are long conidiophores, crude surface of conidiophores with hyaline color, the tip of conidiophores shaping vesicular with semicircular structure, fialid structured on vesicular and conidiophores with circular and semicircular structure. isolate 3 isolate 3 is identified from genus aspergillus sp 3. the macroscopic features of aspergillus sp 3 isolated on pda medium on the seventh day with incubation temperature 30 0 c are sort of pale and yellowish-green color, flat colony surface with crude and granulated texture because of luxuriant sporulation. on the contrary, colony has yellow color and has inflated texture of margin. aspergillus sp 3 does not have concentric circle and it produces brownish-yellow excaudate. microscopic features gained are long conidiophores with hyaline color and crude surface and semicircular shaped vesicular. isolate 4 isolate 4 is identified from species aspergillus niger. the macroscopic features of aspergillus niger isolated on pda medium on the seventh day with incubation temperature 30 0 c are black color caused by luxuriance of structured conidiophores, flat colony surface with crude and granulated texture, and inflated margin of colony. on contrast, colony has black color and it does not produce excaudate. meanwhile, microscopic features obtained are long conidiophores with smooth outer surface and brownish-hyaline color, vesicular with circular shape, fialid structured on metula with brown color, and circular shaped conidiophores. isolate 5 isolate 5 is identified from genus cladosporium sp. the macroscopic features of cladosporium sp isolated on pda medium on the seventh day with incubation temperature 30 0 c are brownishdark-green color. on the contrary, colony has blackish-green color, surface resembling a mountain with velvety texture, flat colony margin, no concentric circle and it produces excaudate with hyaline color. in addition to that, microscopic features obtained have a partitioned hypha with multinucleate, conidiophores with lateral shape or terminal on the hypha, conidiophores with chain shape and delicate outer surface. ramoconodia lies on the basis from septa chain 1 to 2 and has cylindrical shape with delicate outer surface. conidiophores lie on branching chain with ellipse shape. isolate 6 isolate 6 is identified from genus mucor sp. the macroscopic features of mucor sp isolated on pda medium on the seventh day with incubation temperature 30 0 c are rather creamy white color, flat colony surface with smooth and granulated texture, and flat colony margin. by way of contrast, colony has white color, mucor sp processes no concentric circle, produces no excaudate. meanwhile, microscopic features acquired are sporangiospora with ellipse shape, calomel with circular shape. isolate 7 isolate 7 is identified from genus penicilium sp 1. the macroscopic features of penicilium sp 1 isolated on pda medium on the seventh day with incubation temperature 30 0 c are rather overcast dark blue color. on contrast, colony has creamy color, flat colony surface with velvety texture and flat colony margin. on the third day, when colony was planted by growing point method shaping like disk, it asserted that penicillium sp 1 owned concentric circle and when it was planted by streak method it had asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 329-336. 334 rather pale-bluish-green color. penicillium sp 1 does not produce excaudate. microscopic features gained are hyphae having no septa, conidiophores with delicate and transparent shape as well as having many brunches, fialid with cylindrical shape and thick surface, conidiophores with circular and semicircular shape as well as with hyaline color and smooth buttress. isolate 8 isolate 8 is identified from genus penicillium sp 2. the macroscopic features of penicillium sp 2 isolated on pda medium on the seventh day with incubation temperature 30 0 c are white color. on the contrary, colony has white color, crude colony surface, flat colony margin, no concentric circle and excaudate drops. meanwhile, microscopic features obtained are hyphae having no septa, conidiophores with transparent and delicate shape, fialid with cylindrical shape and thick buttress, conidiophores with circular and semicircular shape as well as with hyaline color and smooth buttress. isolate 9 isolate 9 is identified from genus rhizopus sp. the macroscopic features of rhizopus sp isolated on pda medium on the seventh day with incubation temperature 30 0 c are whitish color then becoming grayish brown caused by brown color from sporangiofor and blackish brown color from sporangia. the surface spreads because of possessing rhizoid and hairy surface. on the contrary, colony has white color. colony margin is undetermined because rhizopus sp has remarkably rapid growth. on the second day after being inoculated, the diameter reaches 2 cm. on the third day it reaches 7.1 cm and on the following day the petri dish was bursting with rhizopus. rhizopus does not have a concentric circle and it does not produce excaudate. in addition to that, microscopic features obtained are rhizoid, sporangia with circular and semicircular shape as well as with blackish-brown color, columela with circular shape, sporangiospora with disordered shape. there is one with circular and ellipse shape as well as with line on the surface. isolate 10 isolate 10 is identified from genus trichoderma viride. the macroscopic features of trichoderma viride isolated on pda medium on the seventh day with incubation temperature 30 0 c are dark green color, flat colony surface with delicate and granulated texture and flat colony margin. on the third day of when colony was planted by growing point method shaping like white, yellow, light green and dark green disk, it was conveyed that trichoderma viride had concentric circle and it did not produce excaudate. meanwhile, microscopic features acquired are flat, partitioned off and branching hyphae shaping braid called mycelium. conidiophores have branch structuring verticillate. on the tip of conidiophores, it grows cell with structure resembling bottle (fialida). test of cellulose enzyme activity (screening) based on the comparison between transparent zone diameter and colony diameter structured on each isolate, four of ten fungal isolates own huger cellulose degrading ability derived from genus of trichoderma viride, penicillium sp 1, cladosporium sp and aspergillus niger. while one of ten fungal isolates has no cellulose degrading capability. as the comparison between transparent zone diameter and colony diameter formed on each isolate, it can be seen on table 1. table 1: the result of testing cellulose productability (screening) no fungi dz (cm) dk (cm) is candidate number of fungal is 1 aspergillus sp 1 1.6 1.25 1.28 8 2 aspergillus sp 2 2.7 2.1 1.28 9 3 aspergillus sp 3 2.2 1.65 1.3 7 4 aspergillus niger 4.3 2 2.15 4 5 cladosporium sp 3 1.25 2.4 3 effort of increasing production of….. 335 6 mucor sp 2.175 1.15 1.89 5 7 penicillium sp 1 3 1 3 2 8 penicillium sp 2 2.15 1.35 1.59 6 9 rhizopus sp 0 7.1 0 10 10 trichoderma viride 3.25 1 3.25 1 aspergillus sp 1. aspergillus sp 2. aspergillus sp 3. aspergillus niger cladosporium sp mucor sp penicillium sp 1 penicillium sp 2 rhizopus sp figure 3: test of kongo red trichoderma viride fungi are able to degrade cellulose because they can produce cellulose enzyme. the more the production amount of cellulose enzyme on them is, the more rapid cellulose degradation will be (bagga and sandhu, 1987 in zumrotiningrum et al.., 2004). among four fungal isolatest are trichoderma viride, penicillium sp 1, cladosporium sp and aspergillus niger, two of them can be utilized for processing livestock woof from bioethanol asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 329-336. 336 solid waste that is trichoderma viride and aspergillus niger. because both of them have sufficient high cellulolytic power, it is expected that it can increase protein content, energy, dry material and enables to degrade crude fiber on bioethanol solid waste in order that the waste quality becomes better to consume. conclusion the research obtained ten fungal isolates growing on bioethanol solid waste. some of them belong the genus of aspergillus sp 1, aspergillus sp 2, aspergillus sp 3, aspergillus niger, cladosporium sp, mucor sp, penicillium sp 1, penicillium sp 2, rhizopus sp and trichoderma viride. trichoderma viride, penicillium sp 1, cladosporium sp and aspergillus niger are best candidate with the highest ability to degrade cellulose. trichoderma viride, and aspergillus niger can be utilized for processing livestock feed from bioethanol solid waste. references agustini, nurul (2010) “management of administration of agricultural waste for cow livestock feed”, practical hint. immense bereau of study and developing agriculture technology. the institution of research and developing agriculture, ntt. fauzana, noor a., ratu safitri and sukaya sastrawibawa. (2011) “isolation, identification and selection of cellulolitic fungi from banana waste (musa paradisiacal l.)”, available at: http://repository.unpad.ac.id ganjar, i., r. a. samson, k. van den tweel-vermeulen, a. oetari and i. santoso. (1999) “general introduction of mold tropics”, indonesia obor foundation. jakarta. gandjar, i., sjamsuridzal, w. and oetari, a. (2006) “basic and applied of mycology”, indonesia obor foundation. jakarta. hidayat, cecep (2010) “increase the digestibility of cassava”, trobos magazine. available on: http://.trobos.com/show_article.php?rid=19&ai d=2036. irawan, bambang (2008) “lipase and cellulose enzyme activities testing of micro fungi during the decomposition process of wastewater of oil palm using the pure culture test”, biology department, the faculty of mathematics and natural science, the university of lampung (unila). lampung. research journal rikana, heppy and adam risky (2009) “bioethanol production from fermentation of cassava using yeast of tape”, the department of technical chemistry, the faculty of engineering, the university of diponegoro. unpublished yet soeka, yati s. and sastraatmadja dudi d. (1992) “effect of addition of nitrogen sources of cellulose enzyme production by selected aspergillus niger of bran media”, research and development, biology-lipi. bogor. uusima, maria (2006) “mastering the fermentation process”, vaisala news article. volume 172/2006. finland. url: http://www.vaisala.com/files/mastering_thefer mentation_process.pdf. (april 30 2012). wira (2011) “bioethanol waste treatment and purification of bioethanol 99.5%”, available at: http://www.facebook.com/notes/wirakampung/bioethanol-2-penanganan-limbah bioethanoldanpemurnian-bioethanol995/257401214272027. (april 30 2012). zumrotiningrum, dewi b., ari susilowati and wiryanto (2004) “selection and identification of cellulolitic and lignocellulolitic fungi from organic waste of cajuput oil (melaleuca leucadendron l.) from kph gundih, regency of grobogan”, department of biology, fmipa uns, surakarta. http://repository.unpad.ac.id/ http://.trobos.com/show_article.php?rid=19&aid=2036 http://.trobos.com/show_article.php?rid=19&aid=2036 http://www.vaisala.com/files/mastering_thefermentation_process.pdf.%20( http://www.vaisala.com/files/mastering_thefermentation_process.pdf.%20( http://www.facebook.com/notes/wira-kampung/bioethanol-2-penanganan-limbahbioethanoldanpemurnian-bioethanol-995/257401214272027.%20( http://www.facebook.com/notes/wira-kampung/bioethanol-2-penanganan-limbahbioethanoldanpemurnian-bioethanol-995/257401214272027.%20( http://www.facebook.com/notes/wira-kampung/bioethanol-2-penanganan-limbahbioethanoldanpemurnian-bioethanol-995/257401214272027.%20( http://www.facebook.com/notes/wira-kampung/bioethanol-2-penanganan-limbahbioethanoldanpemurnian-bioethanol-995/257401214272027.%20( effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 378-386 377 characterization of plant-parasitic-nematode communities associated with three species used in hedges in western niger and their susceptibility to meloidogyne javanica haougui adamou institut national de la recherche national du niger (inran), bp 429, niamey, niger sarr etienne nematologist, agrhymet regional centre, niamey, niger balde hamidou assistant-nematologist, agrhymet regional centre, niamey, niger doumma ali entomologist, university of niamey, niger; adam toudou plant pathologist, university of niamey, niger abstract a study was undertaken in three important vegetable producing areas to determine the plant-parasitic nematodes associated with hedge trees and a pot experiment was conducted to assess hedge trees (acacia senegal, bauhinia rufescens and prosopis juliflora) behavior to the root-knot-nematode, meloidogyne javanica. soil and roots analysis revealed the presence of 10 genera of plant-parasitic nematodes, including m. javanica. the behavior test seems to indicate that all three plants were susceptible to meloidogyne javanica with root gall index ranging from 1 to 2.8, and nematode multiplication rate ranging from 2.78 to 5.70. keywords: nematodes, hedges, meloidogyne, vegetable, niger introduction 1 chronic drought of the decades 70 and 80, combined with high population pressure in some western countries of africa resulted in deforestation and overexploitation of natural resources. subsequently, fallowing decreased, soil fertility lost, and agricultural lands were lost due to erosion and degradation. to mitigate effects of the phenomenon, reforestation of the affected areas and setting up defense and land reclamation strategies were 1 corresponding author’s details: haougui adamou email: ahaougui@yahoo.com necessary measures to be taken (duponnois et al., 1997a). consequently, several range management techniques were tested including usage of hedges composed of one or more forest trees. legumes are the most commonly used species because they are able to grow on poor soils due to the capacity of their root system to fix atmospheric nitrogen (duponnois et al., 1999). in niger, most commonly used trees are acacia senegal, ziziphus mauritiana, bauhinia rufescens, prosopis juliflora and euphorbia balsamifera (balde, 2013). the latter species is more used in the eastern part of the country. these species are present in single or multispecies communities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ahaougui@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 378-386 378 hedges play several functions at once: (i) decrease the rate of runoff, soil erosion main factor, (ii) serve often as park of woods, firewood, and timber; (iii) serve as food for humans and livestock and game refuge; (iv) promote the recovery of the forest environment (dibloni et al., 2000). hedges are also used for the delineation of farms and prevent the damage caused by stray animals on crops (yossi et al., 2006). despite all their usefulness on farmers’ fields, trees hedges have shortcoming to be live relay hosts not only to pests such as insects, mites and rodents (garba, 2012) of cultivated plants in their immediate vicinity, but also to disease agents such as plant-parasitic nematodes, mainly root-knot-nematodes meloidogyne. these nematodes are limiting factor in vegetable crop production in the sahel (haougui and kollo, 2006). in niger, tomato producers can experience losses exceeding 57% as a result of nematode infestation (haougui et al., 2003). nematodes extend their attack to trees such acacia. however, only limited studies have been conducted so far as to establish these trees susceptibility to nematodes. well known work in this field was carried out on acacia spp by team of ird researchers based in dakar (senegal) since these species constitute the bulk of plants used in hedges (duponnois et al., 1995; duponnois et al., 1997a; duponnois et al., 1997b; cadet and sanogo, 2007). before this current research, no such study was undertaken in niger. objectives of this work were to characterize the parasitic nematodes associated with forest trees used in the hedges, and to test their susceptibility to meloidogyne javanica, the widespread root-knot nematode in niger. materials and methods faunistic study site characteristics three representative sites of areas using hedges to fence farms were chosen. ganguel (13 ° 50'n, 2 ° 40'e), karey gorou (13 ° 52'n, 2 ° 10 e) and yowaré (13 ° 47'n, 2 ° 10 ') all three were along road side to burkina faso. soil type at ganguel and karey gorou was sandy loam, and at yowaré, it was sandy clay loam. trees on the farms were mainly native fruit trees like mangifera indica, psidium guava, carica papaya, citrus and exotic trees like eucalyptus spp. and azadirachta indica. in addition to the above common trees, others specific to sites were present. ganguel had some edible shrubs (moringa oleifera) and inedible ones (ricinus communis), at karey gorou (leptadenia hastata) and at yowaré waltheria indica. herbaceous layer was dominated by cassia occidentalis, acanthospermum hispidum, sida cordifolia, cenchrus biflorus, panicum pedicillatum, comelina bengalensis and mitracarpus spp. ganguel and yowaré had mono-specific hedges made up with bauhinia rufescens and acacia senegal respectively. at karey-gorou, hedges were multispecies with b. rufescens, a. senegal and prosopis juliflora. sampling and nematode extraction sampling was conducted in mid august 2012 and for each tree species found in a hedge, fifteen samples were collected each at 5 m intervals on straight lines not including first three border plants as to avoid border effect. each sample (2 kg of soil) was composed of three sub-samples taken at 5-30 cm depth using a trowel and placed in a plastic bag and sent to the nematology laboratory of the agrhymet regional centre of niamey. nematodes were extracted from 250 cm 3 of soil taken from each sample using method described by seinhorst (1962). importance of each nematode genus or species established using fortuner and merny (1973) diagram of frequency / abundance. frequency (f) is percentage of samples containing given genus or species. this parameter was estimated on the basis of the following formula: 100 n e f e = total number of samples containing given genus/species of nematode n = total number of samples at given site abundance (a) of nematode genus/specie is the average density per samples in which nematode asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 378-386 379 was found. it was calculated using the following formula: e x a   i xi = number of nematodes per liter of soil e = number of samples in which the given nematode was present. calculated a values were then log transformed. a genus/specie was considered abundant if present minimally at about 300 individuals per liter of soil and it were considered frequent when present in at least 30% of the samples. study of the reaction of forest trees to meloidogyne javanica plant material tree species used in the test were: acacia senegal (obtained from baleyara and harvested in january 2012), bauhinia rufescens (collected in loga and harvested in january 2012), and prosopis juliflora (collected in niamey and harvested in october 2012). they were obtained from the regional forestry services of niamey. tomato (lycopersicon esculentum) cv roma vf purchased on local market was used as susceptibility control to meloidogyne spp. animal material animals were second stage juveniles (j2) of root-knot nematodes meloidogyne javanica. nematodes were reared on eggplants grown in greenhouse at arc of niamey. nematodes extraction from roots of eggplants was performed using seinhorst (1950) method. however, only 24 hours old juveniles were used. nematodes inoculation and data analysis a paired-treatment experiment was conducted in a screen house at the agrhymet regional centre of niamey niger. pots with 1.5 kg autoclaved soil were seeded with the three trees species and tomato. one half of pots containing 24 old seedlings were inoculated with 500 juveniles (j2) of m. javanica and the other half remained as control. ten weeks after inoculation, plants were carefully uprooted and roots washed under running tap water. nematode damage to plant was estimated using the scale of root gall index spread over six classes: 0 = no galls, 1 = 1-5 galls, 2 = 6-20 galls, 3 = more than 20 galls, 4 = galls coalescing throughout the root, 5 = root system completely decomposed (duponois et al., 1999). nematode reproduction efficiency or reproduction factor (rf) was calculated using the following formula: rf= pf/pi, where pf is final nematode number and pi, the initial nematode population (500 j2 inoculated to the plants). nematological data were processed with genstat 9 software using anova and completed by the student newman keurl test. dry weight of shoot and root biomass were measured on inoculated and inoculated plants and the comparison done using the "t-test" at the probability of 0.05. results faunistic study plant-parasitic nematodes extracted from rhizosphere of all selected tree sites (ganguel, karey gorou, yoware) showed for the three plant species (a. senegal, b. rufescens, and p. juliflora) the presence of 10 genera. two (2) of them were endoparasites (meloidogyne and pratylenchus), one (1) was semi-endoparasite (rotylenchulus) and others were ectoparasites (tablei). table i: nematodes parasites found on plants in different sites nematode genera sites ganguel karey-gorou yowaré b.rufescens b.rufescens p.juliflora a.senegal a.senegal melodoigyne + + + tylenchorhynchus + + + hoplolaimus + + + helicotylenchus + + + + rotylenchulus + asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 378-386 380 pratylenchus + criconemella + filenchus + longidorus + xiphinema + + + (+) presence of nematode (-) absence of nematode acacia senegal a. senegal rhizosphere showed 8 genera of plant-parasitic nematodes of which 5 are common but not abundant (figure 1). these were: hoplolaimus, longidorus, pratylenchus, xiphinema and helicotylenchus. tylenchorhynchus and rotylenchulus were frequent and rare while meloidogyne was abundant but infrequent. the majority of parasitic nematode community found on a. senegal was ectoparasites (figure 2). they represented 71% of the total and endoparasites such as meloidogyne and pratylenchus representing 21% of the community, and the remaining (8%) was representive of the semi-endoparasites, rotylenchulus (figure 2). figure 1: importance of plant-parasitic-nematode populations on acacia senegal figure 2: plant-parasitic-nematotodes community structure on a. senegal 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.03 0.04 0.04 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 a b u n d an ce ( lo g x+ 1 ) frequency %) meloidogyne tylenchorhynchus rotylenchulus hoplolaimus longidorus 8% 21% 21% 12% 13% 4% 13% 8% meloidogyne xiphinema helicotylenchus pratylenchus hoplolaimus tylenchorhynchus longidorus rotylenchulus pratylenchus xiphinema helicotylenchus asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 381 bauhinia rufescens five (5) different genera of phytonematodes were found in rhizosphere of bauhiniarufescens and out of these, only xiphinema was common but not abundant. the three (3) others genera made up of helicotylenchus, hoplolaimus and tylenchorhynchus were scarce, while meloidogyne was abundant but it was not frequent (figure 3). ectoparasites represented 80% of the nematode community on b. rufescens with greater presence of the genus xiphinema which solely made up 50% of the ectoparasite community and represented about 40% of the whole phytonematode community found in b. rufescens rhizosphere (figure 4). the genus meloidogyne accounted for 20% of densities (figure 4). figure 3: importance of plant-parasitic nematodes on bauhinia rufescens figure 4: plant-parasitic nematode community on bauhinia rufescens prosopis juliflora six (6) different genera were found in prosopis juliflora rhizosphere including three common but less abundant ones that were meloidogyne, xiphinema and tylenchorhynchus, and three genera were sporadic and comprised hoplolaimus, filenchus and criconemella (figure 5). 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.03 0.04 0.04 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 a b u n d an ce ( lo g x+ 1 ) frequency (%) tylenchorhynchus hoplolaimus helicotylenchus meloidogyne 10% 20% 20% 10% 40% hoplolaimus helicotylenchus meloidogyne tylenchorhynchus xyphinema xiphinema asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 378-386 382 figure 6 gives the relative frequency of different nematodes genera encountered associated with p. juliflora. while genus meloidogyne represented 33% of the community of parasitic nematodes, ectoparasites accounted for 67% with greatest presence of xiphinemaat, 33% of ectoparasites. figure 5: importance of plant-parasitic-nematodes on prosopis juliflora figure 6: plant-parasitic nematode community on prosopis juliflora response of forest species to m. javanica in greenhouse  nematological parameters root gall index gall index results are reported in table ii and indexes ranged from 1.2 on a. senegal to 2.8 on l. esculentum with mean index of 2 for the test. statistical analysis revealed three (3) distinct groups of sensitivity and a. senegal seemed less 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.03 0.04 0.04 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 a b u n d an ce ( lo g x+ 1 ) frequency (%) 7% 33% 33% 7% 13% 7% hoplolaimus meloidogyne xiphinema filenchus tylenchorhynchus criconemella criconemella filenchus hoplolaimus tylenchorhynchus xiphinema meloidogyne asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 378-386 383 susceptible to meloidogyne compare to l. esculentum the control plants while b. rufescens and p. juliflora were as susceptible as the control final populations table iii shows final population of meloidogyne javanica on the three tree species and on control plant (tomato). statistical analysis showed that the final populations on b. rufescens and p. juliflora are not significantly different from the control one. all plants had relatively a good multiplication rate of the nematode with rm ranging from 2.78 on a. senegal to 6.09 on tomato. table 2: root gall index and meloidogyne final population, 10 weeks after inoculation *pi = initial population (500 juveniles inoculated to seedlings) final populations were subjected to anova after log transformation (x +1). numbers followed by the same letter are not significantly different (p ≤ 0.05).  growth parameters shoot weight dry weight of aerial part was recorded in table iii. in general, while inoculation of meloidogyne on p. juliflora resulted in reduced dry weight of aerial parts, on the other two tree species and on tomato, difference between the two parameters was not significantly different. reduction rate varied from 4.12% in tomato to 52.38% in p. juliflora (figure 7). table 3: weight of above ground part of plants 10 weeks after inoculation with m. javanica plants shoot weight of inoculated plants shoot weight of uninoculated plants a.senegal 0,44 b 0,50 a b.rufescens 0,13 c 0,14 a p.juliflora 0,11 c 0,21 b tomato 0,93 a 0,97 a the numbers in the same row followed by the same letter are not significantly different (p ≤ 0.05) roots weights weights of dry roots were reported in table iv. in general, on all plant species used in the trial including tomato, inoculation with meloidogyne reduced dry root weight. the rate of reduction varied from 40% on a. senegal to 91% on p. juliflora (figure 7). table 4: dry roots biomass 10 weeks after inoculation with m. javanica plants shoot weight of inoculated plants shoot weight of uninoculated plants a.senegal 0,06a 0,05a b.rufescens 0,03b 0,08a p.juliflora 0,02b 0,22a tomate 0,03b 0,16a the numbers in the same row followed by the same letter are not significantly different (p ≤ 0.05) plants root gall index final population (pf) pf/pi* tomato 2,8 a 3045a 6,09 bauhinia rufescens 2,4 ab 2851a 5,70 prosopis juliflora 1,8 bc 2187ab 4,37 acacia senegal 1,2 c 1390b 2,78 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 378-386 384 figure 7: weights reduction rates in dry roots and above ground part of plants discussions faunistic study inherent to phytonematodes species associated with hedges was undertaken for the first time in niger. it enabled identification of 10 genera of plant-parasitic nematodes in three (3) surveyed plants (acacia senegal, bauhinia rufescens and prosopis juliflora). in senegal, cadet and sanogo (2007) found 7 genera associated with acacia spp used in hedges. in niger, several studies with the same objectives showed up to 10 genera on vegetable crops (haougui, 1999; zakari, 2008; djibey, 2012; nourh, 2012). presence of different plant-parasitic-nematodes in rhizosphere of the three (3) trees demonstrated potential for this nematode to act as reservoirs of parasitic phytonematodes. worrisome was that at maturity these plants did not exhibit symptoms that might alert of presence of harmful nematodes. this observation confirmed previous report by cadet and sanago (2007) who considered a. senegal and p. juliflora as infestation source of vegetable crops in senegal. use of above described species of trees in hedges could be threat to vegetable crops growers. it has been reported that p. juliflora promoted proliferation of root-knot-nematodes meloidogyne that swiftly devastated vegetable crops (prot, 1986). our results showed that this nematode, the most destructive on vegetable crops was present on all three (3) tree species used as hedges in niger. this is in accordance with the fact that root-knot nematodes can attack more than 200 plant species worldwide and thus colonize many habitats (nourh, 2012). widespread distribution of meloidogyne spp. on hedges might also be due to exchange of plant material from a site to another. indeed, in niamey’s region, seedlings of vegetable and tree crops are subject to intense trading. hence, very important passive dispersal of the nematodes was observed on these sites. in eastern niger at aguie, researchers found that several pepper growers bought seedlings produced in nurseries from neighborhood country of nigeria and observations of roots of several lots of seedlings for sale revealed presence of root galls induced by meloidogyne (haougui and bizo, 2009). meloidogyne was less abundant but present in up to 30% of samples on a. senegal and b. rufescens, and on p. juliflora, it was rather common but in less than 300 individuals per liter of soil. this result confirmed earlier report by oumar (2010) who worked in the same geographical region during the rainy season, but 0 20 40 60 80 100 a.senegal b.rufescens p.juliflora tomate r ed u ct io n r at e (% ) plants shoot weight root weight asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 378-386 385 on plants from solanaceae family. dry season surveys undertaken in the same region showed that meloidogyne was both frequent and abundant on many vegetable crops (haougui 1999; zakari, 2008; haougui and bizo, 2009; nourh, 2012). low frequency and abundance of root-knot-nematodes found in rainy season could be explained by the fact that all eggs laid at end of dry season were still in diapause, thus only few were able to hatch at that period (prot, 1980). furthermore, some juveniles might also migrate to depth with the humidity front. such juveniles escaped our sampling of upper 5-30 cm layers of soil. relative abundance of helicotylenchus was characteristic of long-term fallow or mature fallow where biological diversity tended to be high (villenave and cadet, 1998) and parasitic and non-parasitic nematodes density very high (serigne et al., 2003). susceptibility tests to meloidogyne of trees used in hedges showed that all trees in trial were vulnerable to root-knot nematodes. using 500 juveniles per pot produced gall indexes of 1.2 to 2.4 on the three trees. on control tomato plants cv roma vf, the same initial inoculum generated gall index of 2.8 (table 2). moreover, significant reduction in root biomasses of infected plants were observed (table 3). several authors have already reported these observations on acacia spp.(duponnois et al., 1997a. duponnois et al., 1997b; duponnois et al., 1999), and also on ziziphus mauritiana, bauhinia rufessens and acacia nilotica (cadet and sanogo, 2007). susceptibility of plants used in hedges to meloidogyne combined with the fact that they are healthy carriers thus displays no visible symptoms of attack make them great reservoir for vegetable crops contamination and reinfestation source. they can be compared to papaya (carica papaya) or moringa tree (moringa oleifera) which are well documented sources for proliferation and the spread of rootknot-nematodes belonging to the genus meloidogyne on vegetable production sites (prot, 1984; haougui, 1999). cadet and sanogo (2007) reported that the presence of hedges purportedly increase nematode population densities relative to neighboring fields without hedges (cadet and sanogo, 2007). hedges effect can radiate from 2 to 8 m around, and as deep as 40 cm depth. conclusion safe agricultural practice recommend that prior to using plant species in a hedge, they may be thoroughly assessed relative to parasitic phytonematodes, especially of the genus meloidogyne. this will minimize risk of spreading these important threats to cultivated plants. as cautionary measures, usage of a. senegal, b. rufescens and p. juliflora must be completely avoided in hedges around susceptible vegetable crops. acknowledgements the authors express their gratefulness to all the vegetable producers on the three sites used for their collaboration, and also to personal of nematology laboratory of the regional center of agrhymet for their assistance during this study. they also express their gratitude to dr abdourhamane alou who helped in manuscript edition. references baldé h. (2013). community structure of plant parasitic nematodes associated with three species of hedges in the urban community of niamey and study of their reaction to meloidogyne javanica in greenhouse. m. sc. thesis, agrymet regional centre, niger. cadet, p. and sanogo, d. (2007). rôle potentiel des haies vives pour la gestion des nématodes sur les bassins versants de la zone soudanosahélienne au sénégal. tropicultura 3: 153-160. dibloni, t. o., ouédraogo, s. i., dembélé, c. k.. and bationo, b. a. (2000). how to choose a space and technique for effective defensive hedge.inera-dpf working paper number 8. djibey, h. r. (2012). characterization of parasitic nematodes communities associated with pepper in diffa and dosso regions and reaction of two pepper ecotypes and pasteuria penetrans to meloidogyne sp in greenhouse. m. sc. thesis, agrymet regional centre, niger. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 378-386 386 duponnois, r., senghor, k. and mateille, t. (1995). pathogenicity of meloidogyne javanica (treub). chitw, to acacia holocericea (a cunn ex g. don) and a. seyal (del). nematologica 41: 480-486. duponnois, r., cadet, p., senghor, k. and sougoufara, b. (1997a). sensibilité de plusieurs acacias australiens aux nematode à galles meloidogyne javanica. ann. forest. sc. 54: 179-188. duponnois, r., tabula, t. k. and cadet, p. (1997b). etude des interactions entre trois espèces d’acacia (faidherbia albida del., acacia seyal del., a. holosericea a cunn. ex g. don) et meloidogyne mayaguensis au sénégal . can j. soil sci. 77: 359-365. duponnois, r., denghor, k., thioulouse, j. and bâ, a. m. (1999). susceptibility of several sahelian acacia to meloidogyne javanica (treub) chitw.. agroforest. syst. 46: 123130. fortuner, r. and merny, g. (1973). les nématodes parasites des racines associés au riz en bassecasamance (sénégal). et en gambie. cah. o.r.s.t.o.m., ser. biol. 21: 3-20. garba, m. (2012). urban rodents and biological invasions in the south-western niger: community ecology and population genetics. phd thesis, university of niamey, niger. haougui, a. (1999). the nematode parasites of vegetable crops in niger: importance and control methods using plants. phd thesis, university of dschang, cameroon. haougui, a. and bizo, n. m. (2009). characterization of plant parasitic nematode communities associated with pepper on the aguie project sites of maradi kkm project paper no. 1 haougui, a. sarr, e. and alzouma, i. (2003). effet de l’amendement du sol par des plantes nématicides sur le développement de meloidogyne javanica (treub, 1885 ; chitwood, 1949) et la croissance de la tomate. annales de l’université abdou m. 7: 25-29. haougui a., nouri m. k., basso a., doumma a. and adam t. (2013). plant parasitic nematode communities associated with pepper in aguie region (niger republic). botany research int. 6(1): 01-06. haougui, a. and kollo, a. i. (2006). les nématodes, des ennemis invisibles des maraîchers. l’irrigant 1: 18-19. nourh, y. g. (2012). prevalence and characterization of plant parasitic nematodes on eggplant, pepper, tomato and guava in the western part of niger. m. sc. thesis, university of gent, belgium. oumar, a. h. (2010). characterization of parasitic nematodes communities associated with solanaceae in the suburban area of niamey. m. sc. thesis, university of ougadougou, burkina faso. prot, j. c. (1980). migration of plant parasitic nematodes toward plant roots. review of nematol, 3: 305-318. prot, j.c. (1984). nematodes parasites of vegetable crops. dakar, senegal. prot, j. c. (1986). contribution to the study of migration in the soil of second stage juveniles of meloidogyne. phd thesis, university of paris-sud centre d’orsay. seinhorst, j. w. (1950). de beteckenis van de toestand van de grond voor het optreden van aan stasing door het stengelaaltje ditylenchus dipsaci (kuhn) tijidschr. pl ziekt. 56: 291-834. seinhorst, j. w. (1962). modifications of the elutriation method for extracting nematodes from soil. nematologica 8: 117-128. serigne, t. k., callistus, k. p. o. and albrecht, a. (2003). crop damage by nematodes in improved-fallow fields in western kenya. agroforestery syst. 57: 51-57. villenave, c. and cadet, p. (1998). interaction of helicotylenchus dihystera, pratylenchus pseudopratensis and tylenchorhynchus gladiolatus on two plants from the soudanosahelian zone of zest africa. nematologica 28: 31-39. yossi, h., kaya, b., traoré, c. o., niang a., butare, i., levasseur, v. and sanogo, d. (2006). the hedges in the sahel: state of knowledges and recommendations for research and development. icraf occasional paper no. 6. zakari, a. (2008). characterization of plant parasitic nematodes populations on vegetable crops in the periurban area of niamey. m. sc. thesis, university of bamako, mali. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 290-295 290 screening drought tolerance criteria in maize masoud kiani department of plant breeding, collage of agriculture, azad university, kermanshah branch, iran abstract six pure lines of maize were tested in a randomized complete block design with three replication under irrigated and rainfed conditions. genetic variation was found between the genotypes for yield potential (yp) stress yield (ys), tolerance index (tol), geometric mean productivity (gmp), harmonic mean (hm) and stress tolerance index (sti). stress tolerance index was corrected using a correction coefficient (ki) and thus a modified stress tolerance index (msti) was introduced as the optimal selection criterion for drought-tolerant genotypes. the results of three-d plotting indicated that the most desirable genotype for irrigated and rainfed conditions was the genotype k1515, for non-stressed conditions k18 and for stress conditions k104/3, k760/7 and k126/10. keywords: maize, drought tolerance, biplot, modified stress tolerance index introduction1 the improvement of drought tolerance has been defined as a desirable breeding objective in crops such as maize (clark et al., 1992). drought tolerance in native plant species is often defined as survival, but in crop species it should be defined in terms of productivity (passioura, 1983). the definition of drought tolerance as the ability of plants to grow satisfactorily when exposed to water deficits has little direct applicability 1 corresponding author’s email: m_kiani1359@yahoo.com to either quantifying or breeding for the character in crop species (clark et al., 1992). in the absence of an understanding of the special mechanisms of tolerance the quantification of drought tolerance should be based on the grain yield under dry conditions (fischer and maurer, 1978). it is worthwhile, therefore, to look at the methods that have been used to quantify tolerance. several selection criteria are proposed to select genotypes based on their performance in stress and non-stress environments (fernandez, 1992). rosielle and hamblin (1981) defined stress tolerance as the difference between grain yield in stress (ys), and non-stress (yp) environments, and mean asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:m_kiani1359@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 290-295 291 productivity (mp) as the average of yp and ys. fischer and maurer (1878) proposed a stress susceptibility index (ssi). fernandez (1992) defined a new stress tolerance index (sti). genotypes can be categorized into four groups based on their performance in stress and non-stress environments: genotypes which express uniform superiority in both stress and non-stress environments (group a); genotypes which perform favourably only in non-stress environments (group b); genotypes which yield relatively well only in stress environments (group c) and genotypes which perform poorly in both stress and non-stress environments (group d). the optimal selection criteria should distinguish group a from the other three groups (fernandez, 1992). the objectives of the current experiment, carried out in the agricultural research station of dezful, iran the year 2000, were (i) the screening of quantitative criteria of drought tolerance, (ii) the introduction of a new drought tolerance index and (iii) the identification of drought tolerant genotypes. materials and methods six pure lines of maize, namely k104/3(1), k760/7(2), k1515(3), k18(4), k19(5) and k126/1(6), were cultivated in a randomized complete block design with three replications under two different environments (irrigated and rainfed) in the agricultural research station of dezful, iran. from each pure line 50 seeds were selected and single seeds were sown in 5m rows with 20×75cm plant to pant and row to row distances, respectively. the minimum and maximum temperatures at the station were 5.6°c and 54.6°c, respectively. the average rainfall in 2000 was 250mm and the region was arid. the chemical properties of the soil in the experiment were reported as: value soil properties 0.04ds/m 7.87 0.48% 2.55ppm 6.7ppm 101ppm 1.31ppm 3.17ppm 0.32ppm e.c. ph o.c. mn p k cu fe zn each plot consisted of 4 rows, the two middle rows being planted with the tested genotypes and the two lateral rows with the genotype sc 704 to eliminate the border effect. ten competitive plants were randomly selected from each entry in both the irrigated and rainfed treatments and the yield potential (yp) and stress yield (ys) were recorded. using yp and ys the following quantitative indices of drought tolerance were calculated: tolerance index (tol) and mean productivity (mp) (rosielle and hamblin, 1981) :   2 sypy andmpsypytol   harmonic mean (hm) (zahravi, 1999): asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 290-295 292   sp sp yy yy hm    2 stress susceptibility index (ssi) (fischer and maurer, 1978): )/(1; )/(1 ps ps yysi si yy ssi    where si is stress intensity and ys and yp are the means of all genotypes under stress and irrigated conditions, respectively. geometric mean productivity (gmp) and stress tolerance index (sti) (fernandez, 1992; kristin et al., 1997): 2)( )()( ,))(( p ps sp y yy stiyygmp   modified stress tolerance index (msti): 2 2 22 2 1, s s p p i y y andk y y kstikmsti  where ki is the correction coefficient. analysis of variance mean comparison, correlation analysis and three-dimensional plotting were done using the mstat-c and spss statistical softwares. results and discussion the results of analysis of variance (table 1) for various quantitative criteria of drought tolerance showed highly significant differences for all the indices except ssi, indicating the presence of genetic variation and the possibility of selection for drought tolerant genotypes based on yp, ys, tol, gmp, hm and sti. genetic variation between maize genotypes was reported for yield by bolanos and edmeades (1996) and morris et al. (1991), for drought resistance by vasal et al. (1997) and banziger et al. (1997) and for yp, ys, tol, mp, gmp, ssi, hm and sti by ahmadzadeh (1997) and afarinesh (2000). the estimates of stress tolerance attributes (table 2) indicated that the identification of drought-tolerant genotypes based on a single criterion was contradictory. for example, according to tol, the desirable droughttolerant genotype was k104/3(1), while according to sti the most desirable droughttolerant line was k1515(3). moreover, mp failed to distinguish the group a and group b genotypes, while tol and ssi failed to distinguish between group c and group a (fernandez, 1992). to determine the most desirable drought tolerance criteria, the correlation coefficient between yp, ys and quantitative indices of drought tolerance was calculated (table 2). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 290-295 293 table 1: analysis of variance for different indices of drought tolerance irrigated and rainfed conditions mean square d.f. source of variation sti ssi hm gmp mp tol ys yp 0.83** 0.03 0.03 0.60 0.79 0.38 4262** 68.9 122.9 4145** 11.07 76.90 4232** 26.18 70.70 766** 1421* 415.4 3382** 631 418.8 5480** 534 127* 3 2 10 genotypes replication error *, ** significant at the 5% and 1% probability level, respectively table 2: estimates of stress tolerance attributes from potential yield and stress yield data for maize genotypes k2sti k1sti sti ssi hm gmp mp tol ys yp lines 11.8 12.3 22.6 0.29 3.91 1.83 9.4 9.9 34.7 2.5 10.2 1.5 0.19 0.19 0.30 0.05 0.14 0.07 0.27 0.31 1.32 1.09 1.9 0.65 50.1 50.8 62.8 22.1 44.4 32.6 50.2 50.8 64.1 26.7 44.8 32.5 50.2 50.9 65.5 32.7 46.5 32.8 3.6 3.9 25.7 20.9 29.8 6.2 48.4 48.9 42.9 14.2 31.6 31.2 51.9 52.9 78.4 50.3 61.5 33.9 k104/3 k760/7 k1515 k18 k19 k126 table 3 showed that mp and sti had a positive significant correlation with yp and ys; thus, mp and sti were better predictors of mean yp and mean ys than the other indices. however, mp fails to distinguish between group a and group b, while sti is estimated based on gmp; the rank correlation between sti and gmp is thus equal to 1 (rosielle and hamblin, 1981; fernandez, 1992). the higher the value of sti for a genotype, the higher its stress tolerance and yield potential. the stress intensity value is also incorporated in the estimation of sti. therefore, sti is expected to distinguish group a from group b and group c. this result was in close agreement with the findings of fernandez (1992), maroufi (1998), imamjomah (1999) and farshadfar et al. (2001). in the sti index, yp 2 is a constant value, while the square root of the multiplication of yp and ys is the geometric mean of a genotype under stress and non-stress condition. for this reason a pair of numbers with different natures may have the same geometric mean. for example, the geometric mean for the data pairs 1 and 12, 2 and 6, and 3 and 4 is 3.46, while these data, if related to the yield of the genotypes, have clearly different natures. this problem arises in the stress tolerance index (sti) and hence decreases its efficiency in distinguishing group a genotypes from the other group (naderi et al., 1999). to improve the efficiency of sti a modified stress tolerance index (msti) was calculated as ki sti, where ki is a correction coefficient which corrects the sti as a weight. therefore, k1 sti, k2 sti are the optimal selection indices for stress and non-stress condition, respectively. considering yp and ys as dependent and k1 sti, k2 sti and sti as independent variables, the contribution of k1 sti to yp in relation to sti was r2=0.817, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 290-295 294 while the contribution of sti to yp was r2=0.65. the contribution of k2 sti to ys was r2=0.78, while that of sti was r2=0.72. thus, k1 sti, and k2 sti are better predictors of yp and ys respectively, in non-stress environments. table 3: correction coefficients between yp , ys and drought tolerance index k2sti k1sti sti ssi hm gmp mp tol ys yp 0.74 0.88* 0.03 0.95** 0.95** 0.94** -0.12 0.97** 0.90* 1 0.90* 0.66 0.42 0.92* 0.87* 0.83* 0.28 0.92** 1 0.82* 0.88* 0.15 0.99** 0.99** 0.97** 0.034 1 0.50 -0.34 0.96** 0.086 0.014 -0.08 1 0.69 0.96** -0.07 0.97** 0.99 1 0.77 0.92* 0.10 0.99* 1 0.85* 0.86* 0.20 1 0.65 -0.29 1 0.46 1 1 yp ys tol mp gmp hm ssi sti k1sti k2sti *,** significant at the 5% and 1% levels of probability respectively using sti, k1 sti and, k2 sti as the optimal selection criteria the most desirable genotypes for irrigated and rainfed conditions was k1515 (sti = 0.30, and k1 sti = 34.7 and k2 sti = 22.6). a threedimensional plot between yp, ys and sti (fig.1) was used to distinguish the group a genotypes from the other three groups (b, c and d) (fernandez, 1992; farshadfar et al., 2001). in this case the most desirable genotype for irrigated and rainfed conditions was k1515, for non-stress conditions k18 and for stress conditions k760/7 and k126/1. fig 1: three-dimensional plot between yp, ys and sti asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 290-295 295 references ahmadzadeh, a. (1997). determination of the optimal drought tolerance index in maize. m.sc. thesis. tehran university, iran. afarinesh, a. (2000). genetic analysis of drought resistance in maize using diallel cross. m.sc thesis. razi university, kermanshah, iran. banziger, m., edmeades, g. o. and laffitte, h. r. (1997). selection for drought tolerance increases in maize yield over a range of n levels. crop sci. 38: 120-127. bolanos, j. and edmeades, g. o. (1996). the importance of the anthesis-silking interval in breeding for drought tolerance in tropical maize. field crop research, 48: 65-80. clark, j. m., ronald, m. d. and townleysmith, t. f. (1992). evaluation of methods for quantification of drought tolerance in wheat. crop sci. 32: 723-728. farshadfar, e., ghanadha., m., zahravi, m. and sutka, j. (2001). generation mean analysis of drought tolerance in wheat. acta agron. hung. 49: 59-66. fernandez, g. c. j. (1992). effective selection criteria for assessing plant stress tolerance. in proceedings of symposium. taiwan, 13-16 aug. 1991. pp. 257-270. fischer, r. a. and maurer, r. (1978). drought resistance in spring wheat cultivars: i. grain yiel responses. aus. j. agric. res. 29: 897912. imamjomah, a., (1999). determination of genetic distances by rapd-pcr, evaluation of drought tolerance and analysis of adaptation in chickpea. m.sc. thesis. razi university, kermanshah, iran. kristin, a. s., serna, r. r., perez, f. i., enriquez, b. c., , gallegos, j. a. a. vallejo, p. r., wassimi, n. and kelly, j. d. (1997). improving common bean performance under drought stress. crop sci. 37: 51–60. maroufi, a. (1998). chromosome localization of the genes controlling drought tolerance indices. m. sc. thesis. razi university, kermanshah, iran. morris, m. l., belaid, a. and byerlee, d. (1991). wheat and barley production in rainfed marginal environment of the developing world. cimmyt, mexico, d. f. naderi, a., majidi, i., dezfuli, a. h., rezai, a. m. and mohammad, g. n. (1999). efficiency analysis of indices for tolerance to environmental stresses in field crops and introduction of a new index. seed and plant, 4: 390–402. passioura, j. b. (1983). roots and drought resistance. agric.water manage. 7: 265280. rosielle, a. a. and hamblin, j. (1981). theoretical aspects of selection for yield in stress and non-stress environments. crop sci. 21: 943–946. vasal, d. k., cordona, h. s., beck, d. l. and edmeades, g. o. (1997). choices among breeding procedures and strategies for developing stress-tolerant maize germplasm. proceeding of a symposium. march 25-25. cimmyt, mexico. pp. 336347. zahravi, m. (1999). genetic analysis of drought tolerance in wheat. m.sc. thesis. razi university, kermanshah, iran. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 249 how well do needs and npird hang together? – an essay on policy coherence ihebuzor, a. noel unicef tanzania, oyster bay, po box 4076, oyster bay, dar es salaam, tanzania ukaejiofo, u. rex department of rural development & management, china agricultural university, beijing introduction 1 nigeria is awash with sector development policies. virtually every sector of national life – culture, arts, language, environment, education, agriculture, water and sanitation – has its own policy document. a rural development policy, the nigeria policy on integrated rural development (npird, for short) also exists. standing at the apex of all of these, is the national poverty reduction strategy paper (prsp), the national economic empowerment and development strategy (needs, for short), which ideally, should integrate the broad strategic thrusts and orientations of these policies into one coherent national development policy. this study seeks to examine the level of corresponding author details: r.u. ukaejiofo email: rukaejiofo@gmail.com coherence that exists between this apex policy needs and npird, nigeria rural development policy. the paper looks at how well these two policies (needs and npird) hang together. the specific study objectives are as follows: 1. to examine the areas and extent of coherence between needs and npird; 2. to identify those instances, if any, where needs and npird diverge and attempt to explain why this has happened; and 3. to draw out lessons for the policy coherence on the basis of the findings in 1 and 2 above. such a study into policy coherence is important since finding from it could lead to a better understanding of why and how policies align and the contributory factors to such a felicitous condition. in the case of divergence the study could also shed some light on the causes of such asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:rukaejiofo@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 250 misalignment/incoherence and thus provide ome basis for corrective measures for achieving greater harmony, consistency and coherence across development policies. the essay is predicated on the framework that coherence and alignment lead to synergies and policy effectiveness. the essay is structured as follows: section 1 gives an overall study, presenting its aims and objectives. section 2 presents a review of the relevant literature and will demonstrate theoretical support for policy coherence and a research 'gap' in the area. section 3 introduces needs and nirpd and highlights their contexts and features. section 4 then builds on this and reviews the two polices for coherence and alignment in the areas of goals, objectives, assumptions, strategies and implementation arrangements and discusses findings. section 5, the concluding section brings together all the observations from the study and ends with recommendations on ways to improve policy coherence literature review scholarship on the policy process is an area rich with debate and continues to grow given the centrality of public policy in shaping governance and affecting lives. the core elements of literature in this area centre on the following issues – how are policy decisions made (smith & may, 1980), what factors impinge on and dominate the policy making process(kingdom, 1984)., the role of constituencies and networks in policy formulation, the contexts in which policies are borrowed and/or adapted to fit new environments or time periods, the factors that determine the implementation of policies (mazmanian & sabatier, 1999) and finally criteria for evaluating policies (parsons, 1995; hudson & lowe, 2004). concepts such as incrementalism, rationalism, muddling through, models of policy formulation, agenda setting, policy implementation, policy coalition networks and constituencies, problem/policy and political streams continue to animate the debate and scholarship in this field. noticeable by its relative neglect is the issue of policy coherence, an issue that one would have expected to engage the attention policy scholars given the need for different policies within and across sectors to cohere in the interest of policy effectiveness and efficiency. it is instructive to note that policy coherence is not mentioned in any of parsons (1995), hudson & lowe (2004), dolowitz & marsh (2000), rose (2001) nor in sabatier (1991) where he sketches the essentials of a better understanding of the policy process. may et al. 2006 regret that this area of policy scholarship is under-theorized and has also received very little empirical attention. it may be useful to speculate why this is so. can one infer from this relative neglect that policy coherence is not seen as a veritable problem for policy scholars? or could this be due to conceptual and definitional difficulties that have delayed the take off of scholarship in this area? according to “may et al. (2006), policy coherence is an elusive concept that is easily understood but difficult to measure. in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 251 common parlance, coherence implies that various policies go together because they share a set of ideas or objectives. this commonality in provisions and goals illustrates a high degree of coherence”. they however observe that “policy coherence is a relative term for which there can be differing degrees of the attribute” p382. matters are not helped by the polysemy in the term “policy coherence”. as duraiappah & bhardwaj (2007) observe, policy coherence is often “synonymous with terms such as coherent policy-making, policy coordination, policy integration, holistic government and joined-up government coherence” pp2-3. however the definition below offers an initial opportunity for clarity. “policy coherence for development is a process whereby a government, in pursuing its domestic policy objectives, makes an effort to design policies that, at a minimum, avoid a negative spill over which would adversely affect the development prospects of poor countries and, more positively, seek to maximize synergies” (matthews and giblin, 2006, p3). the oecd offers a working definition of coherence as efforts „to ensure that the objectives and results of a government‟s development policies are not undermined by other policies of that same government which impact on the development countries, and that these other policies support development objectives, where feasible‟ (eu 2006, p15). these two definitions of policy coherence have tended to see it from the point of view of external development assistance targeted at developing countries. such a conception of coherence is too narrow. there is also the notion of coherence which focuses on how well policies within and across a sector are in harmony and are mutually reinforcing. forster and stokke (1999; 23) observe that “a coherent policy as one whose objectives, within a given policy framework, are internally consistent and attuned to objectives pursued in other policy frameworks of the system”. its objectives should also be in harmony with the goals, intentions or motives of other related policies. this definition of policy coherence stress synergies, mutual consistency, mutual reinforcement and minimization of negative spill-overs (gdi, 2002). may et al. (2006) underscores the important role of commonality of issues, interest and shared integrative properties in furthering policy coherence observing that it is weakened when the variety of interests and issues which make up a policy area are dissonant and acting in opposing directions. conversely coherence is more likely to occur when they act in harmonious fashions. as they also correctly note, consistency of policy goals can be a strong factor framing policy coherence at downstream levels. policy incoherence has the reverse effect and its sources are rooted in four related causes (gdi, 2002). these are divergent political interests, different areas of responsibility at national and international levels, deficiencies in the organization of decision-making on policy, information deficits, and complexity of the development process. sometimes too, policy incoherence is not always the product of a clash or divergence of interests. rather it could also reflect failures to link policies during the stage of formulation or failure to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 252 fully anticipate all potential policy outcomes at this stage (muskens et al. 2007). such a view suggests that incoherence could result from piece-meal incrementalism that did not have an eye on the larger societal and macro picture. the same document makes a distinction between intended incoherence and unintended incoherence. it observes that “unintentional incoherence is mainly an issue of imperfect management of the civil service or ignorance of other actors”. solutions for this would be largely technocratic and would involve putting in place measures to share information and incentives for cooperation within departments (muskens et al., 2007). they argue that intentional incoherence results basically from political decisions and solving problems of intentional policy incoherence would essentially involve political and not technocratic processes since the underlying political motives and interests of the various constituencies would need to recognized, carried on board and pragmatic trade-offs reached. even when this last bit has been achieved, it would also be critical to get buyin from civil servants to minimize principal agent problems (muskens et al. 2007). the interest of the present study is on unintentional coherence within national policies, that is, intra-governmental coherence, and is borne from the need to examine the degree of compatibility and consistency across policies within one country, given the beneficial effects of coherence which is now examined in the next paragraph. arguments for policy coherence essentially appeal to the need for efficiency, effectiveness, credibility, quality outcomes and good governance. at the international level, the eu document (eu 2006) on policy coherence associates coherence with effectiveness and quality in international action. it argues that coherence leads to effectiveness by creating the conditions for maximizing the impact of development funds. policy incoherence is associated with ineffectiveness (failure to achieve objectives), inefficiency (waste of scarce resources) and loss of policy credibility (gdi, 2002; eu, 2006; duraiappah & bhardwaj, 2007)). on this last issue, may et al. (2006) argue that lack of policy coherence sends confusing messages to potential policy targets and could therefore undermine policy politics and acceptability. it could also create tensions and provoke conflicts in beneficiary communities. the study on coherence between a peace building policy and anti-narcotics policies in one country by rubin & guaqueta (2007) brings out the tensions that policy incoherence could create. the researchers identify the divergence between the goals of the two policies as a potential source of incoherence and potential conflict in policy outcomes. they note divergences in the objectives, sanctions and incentives of two policies – a peace building policy and crop eradication anti-narcotics policy – which are being concurrently in the same polity and point out the conflict and tensions that ensue as result of these divergences. as they illustrate, antinarcotics crop eradication immediately affects livelihoods, which then alienates the peasants which then has a perverse effect on the peace building policy. so here we have asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 253 an example of policies producing contradictory effects because of incoherence. given the recognized beneficial effects of policy coherence, some suggestions have been put forward on ways to maximize this, even where it is recognized that total policy coherence is an ideal that is difficult to attain. the following have been identified as important for ensuring policy coherence – strong political commitment to coherence on the part of government(s), with leadership and clearly defined policy objectives, priorities and criteria for assessing progress. – institutional coordination, through an adequate institutional architecture, transparency and flexibility, including rapid adaptation to a changing environment, early warning of any incoherence, mechanisms for dialogue and resolving disputes and an administrative culture that promotes intersector cooperation and systematic dialogue among different political communities; and finally, – adequate analytical capacity and effective systems for generating, transmitting and processing relevant information. (eu, 2006:17). in summary, the literature reveals the following as being central to policy coherence consistency, complementarities, coordination, congruence, compatibility, alignment, improved focus, interdependence and reduction of waste. policy incoherence is associated with conflict, tensions, antagonisms, interference and contradictions which are subtractive and divisive in effect (eu, 2006; gdi, 2002). in the next sections, we shall be examining two policy documents in nigeria to see to what extent some of the issues raised in this section would apply to them. needs and npird: context and intentions needs, as stated earlier, is nigeria‟s prsp. standard orthodoxy on prsps has it that they are country driven; involve broad participation, results oriented, growth focused, pro-poor, and comprehensive in scope and addressing all the multiple ramifications and causes of poverty and long term in focus (bretton woods project, 2003). these stated qualities notwithstanding, it is now common knowledge that most prsps are driven by the need to meet one of the conditionality for accessing external funding assistance. the process of external validation and approval of any prsp by the world bank and international monetary fund (the joint staff assessment), and the insistence of juridical and macro-economic reforms reinforces the view of prsps as indeed more externally guided and outward looking in intended readership than internal. when closely examined most prsps, needs inclusive, betray a tendency towards macroeconomic reforms of a neo-liberal bent with the standard prescription for the progressive reduction of the role of the state, the supremacy of market principles, an enlargement of the leadership role for the private sector and trade liberalization. incidentally, recent developments on the global scene call sharply to question the continued soundness of these principles. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 254 needs was designed with extensive support and guidance by wb and imf even as it also involved a broad range of national stakeholders. needs was launched on may 29, 2004 (akpobasah, 2004). the objective of needs is to enable nigeria achieve a turn around and grow a broad based market oriented economy that is private sector led and in which people can be empowered so that they can, as a minimum, afford the basic needs of life. it is a pro-poor development strategy focusing on economic empowerment, gainful employment and the provision of social safety nets for vulnerable groups. the fixing of these objectives was influenced by an analysis of the obstacles to national development. the following obstacles were identified inequities in life chances and opportunities for prosperity, the overburdening role and hence inefficiencies of previous administrations, corruption in the public service and the hostility of the nigerian environment to private enterprise identified as the creator of wealth and job creation. needs represents a national reform agenda that seeks to eliminate poverty and inequality, revitalize the public service along the lines of new public management, address governance failures and midwife the emergence of sound economic management and the thriving of an internationally competitive private sector. the next paragraph looks at the rural economy with a view to pointing its salient features and how these influenced the design of the npird. the nigeria rural landscape is characterized by high levels of poverty, dominance of subsistence farming and vulnerability to economic shocks. nigeria ranks very low on most indicators of human development. about 70% of nigerians live below the poverty line, per capital gni is below $300, and urbanization is uncontrolled. geographic disparities exist in access to basic services with 85% of the extreme poor living in rural areas. the marginalization of rural areas, characterized by the absence of infrastructure, low skill labour force, absence of industries, absence of government, has had an inhibiting effect on national development with severe negative externalities on urban areas, a point that de janvry et al. 1999) underscore for rural areas in general. the progressive pauperization of the rural populace as a result of years of neglect has retarded holistic and inclusive national development. npird was conceived to address such imbalances and catalyze coordinated and sustainable development of rural areas. launched in 2001, npird represents an attempt to break away from earlier rural development initiatives that were mainly cantered around government structures either in the form of river basin authorities or government established parastatals such as the directorate of food, road and rural infrastructure (dfrri). it was written up with the support of the world bank, dfid and other development partners. the policy recognizes the underlying causes and dimensions of rural poverty and stresses the critical inter-connections between the social sector, infrastructure, governance, and the farm and non-farm economy. the overall objectives of the policy are: developing the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 255 rural areas, raising the quality of life of the rural people, alleviating rural poverty and using rural development to lay a solid foundation for national development. the intended outcomes include national food security, income generation and alleviation of rural poverty. it seeks to mainstream rural dwellers into national development and makes a special case for the right level of infrastructure investment to open rural areas (nigeria national report, 2006). the policy goes beyond a focus on agriculture and recognizes the need for some rural industrialization and other productive activities to transform the rural sector using a blend of private sector led initiatives, participatory approaches and community mobilization. the examination of context and assumptions allows an initial identification of some commonalities and convergence in assumptions and approaches between needs and npird. both seek to move away from a monoculture, (oil and mineral resources for needs: agriculture for npird). both recognize the critical role that the private sector can play in development. finally, both recognize participatory and broad based involvement as sine qua non for any sustainable development. the recommendation in the rural development sector strategy (rdss) the accompanying document to npird brings out these commonalities and convergence of philosophy and strategies when it lists the qualities of the rural development strategy as follows – non-interventionist, consistent, participatory, sustainable, equitable but with limited role for the state (fmard, 2001), qualities which also define needs. the next section carries the analysis further by looking at the goals and policy thrusts of needs and npird in more detail. objectives the goals of needs are wealth creation, employment generation, poverty reduction and value re-orientation. needs supports the following policy thrusts: sustain a rapid, broad-based gdp growth rate outside of the oil sector that is consistent with poverty reduction, employment generation, and a sustainable environment, diversify the production structure away from oil and mineral resources, make the productive sector internationally competitive, systematically reduce the role of government in the direct production of goods, and strengthen its facilitating and regulatory functions. the overall aims are sustained growth rates, employment generation, and wealth creation, diversification of the economy and poverty reduction. before needs, the nigerian economy had been excessively dependent on the oil industry with the attendant neglect of other sectors, especially agriculture. this neglect of agriculture led to its demise and the attendant pauperization and the underdevelopment of the rural economy. by thus arguing for a diversification of the economic base and recognizing the vital contribution of agriculture to national development, needs agrees with and reinforces provisions in the rural development policy. in line with the then dominant economic ideology, needs asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 256 emphasizes a systematic reduction in the role of government in the direct production of goods and services stressing rather its regulatory role. needs also stresses “macroeconomic viability and policy consistency”, the control of inflation, the stabilization of the exchange rate the adoption of a fiscal policy characterized by prudence and discipline (akpobasah, 2004). npird on the other hand focuses on poverty reduction, mobilization and empowerment of rural population to create wealth, expansion of productive base of rural economy, provision of support to extension services, establishment of network of cottage and rural industries , improvement of human resources, mass literacy , formation and management of cooperatives, strengthening of capacity for autonomous democratic development, improvement in the quality of life of rural dwellers, create network for rural marketing, facilitate power and social relations and establish worthy life. priority areas this section examines the priority areas for needs and npird. needs identifies some priority areas for intervention. these are job creation, provide affordable housing, improve health care, strengthen the skill base, protect the vulnerable, promote peace and security, improve infrastructure, promote industry, improve agriculture, rural communities (water, rural roads, electricity, health facilities and communication) instruments for targeting the vulnerable include access to credit, labour intensive public works, affirmative action for women as well as education and entrepreneurial development for youths. npird for its part focuses on four priority areas of intervention in rural development. these are promotion of rural productive activities, support human resources development, enhancement of enabling rural infrastructure, (too much government involvements), special programs for target groups and rural community organizations. a brief explanation of the intention of each of these four areas follows. enhancement of enabling rural infrastructure: this is an initiative designed to open rural areas and to create the necessary environments that could attract industries. focus is on building the much needed infrastructure such as access roads, rural water supply, housing, telecommunications infrastructure and electrification as ways to stimulate growth and also to make the rural areas more attractive to industries and to populations and thus tem the urban migration. the rural access and mobility project, with the overall objective of providing all season access to farming and fishing communities, is part of this initiative. a related component is the training of rural dwellers on the maintenance of the roads/riverine access and developing entrepreneurship of rural dwellers for income generation and poverty reduction. promotion of rural productive activities: here the policy plans to support micro finance and business development initiatives in the rural areas as way to promoting employment creation and wealth generation in rural areas. activities include agriculture, fisheries, animal husbandry and forestry; supportive human resource development: this activity area combines education, mass asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 257 literacy, awareness creation, sensitization and information sharing aimed at rural dwellers. it also covers interventions in the areas of culture and social development, health, communication and extension services. special programs for target groups: this last priority area appears to be designed to capture special populations who may have been missed out in development interventions spelt out under the first three first priority areas. it could thus be seen as an effective way to ensure that npird recognizes and makes provisions for inclusiveness in its developmental projects with a specific focus on rural populations with specific needs. included in this group are an unwieldy assemblage of women, youth, children, elderly retired, handicapped, emergencies and nature disaster (sic), disadvantaged area and border areas including beggars and destitute. the intention is to bring special interventions to respond to the special needs of the most marginalized and deprived of rural areas. each of these areas has its policy statement, objectives and strategies but this section of npird suffers from the weakness that not much effort is put to make more visible the organic coherence across these four priority areas. reference is made to extant policies (national health policy, national population policy, national cultural policy, social development policy) with the assurance that the npird will be in harmony with these extant policies. the interventions in these four priority areas strongly cohere with the activities suggested in the agriculture and rural development component of needs, unpacking these in more detail, and this is a plus for coherence. however, it needs to be indicated that most of the activities in npird „s four priority areas would involve a lot of government led initiatives, an observation that then raises questions on the degree of internal consistency and coherence of npird‟s verbalized strategic choice of private sector involvement in its implementation. by implication too, this strong role of government in the implementation of npird is going to have some wash-back effect on the coherence integrity of needs in the areas of private sector involvement in needs‟ roll out. perhaps this inconsistency reflects the constant trade-offs that development interventions involve. governments even when they subscribe to an increasing noninterventionist neo-liberal ideology in development may, for the purposes of equity, be obliged intervene in some sectors, rural development in particular to correct for market failures. given the paucity of infrastructure in rural areas and the high cost of investment in rural areas and thus the economic unattractiveness of rural settings for most private sector enterprises, some special measures to compensate for market failures may necessary in rural development strategies in the short and medium terms. it is these considerations that could justify the observed departure from private sector leadership in the recommended implementation measures in npird. as we shall demonstrate further in the write-up, this rhetoric for private sector market leadership asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 258 is not reflected in the implementation arrangements suggested for npird in rdss. strategies, implementation arrangements, approaches and tools needs proposes the following steps to achieve its goals i. privatize, deregulate, and liberalize key sectors of the economy. ii. coordinate national sectoral development strategies for agriculture, industry, (especially small and medium-size enterprises), and services (especially tourism). iii. develop infrastructure, especially electricity, transport, and water. iv. address the problems of financing the real sector, and mobilize longterm savings and investment. v. create effective regulatory regimes that include environmental standards. vi. target programs to promote private sector growth and development.” (needs, 2004, p16) needs also identifies opportunities, instruments and actions to meet the needs of the rural poor. these include access to credit and land; participation in decision making; agricultural extension services; improved seeds, farm inputs and implements. recognizing agriculture as a neglected source of national wealth since the discovery and exploitation of nigeria‟s vast oil resources, needs lays emphasis on the cultivation of improved, higher yielding crop varieties and the provision of extra support to agricultural research and training as a means to give fresh fillip to this sector so vital for rural development. schemes to encourage credit to rural farmers, strengthen traditional thrift and savings schemes and to supply and distribute agricultural inputs, such as seeds, improved yielding food varieties, fertilizers and machinery are also part of needs implementation arrangements. needs also envisages the provision of basic services such as water, rural roads, electricity, schools, health facilities and communications to rural communities and indicates that 4% of the national budget will be earmarked to the agriculture and rural development sector. the npird on the other hand suggests the following implementation arrangements – a community driven development approach and participatory rationalization and realignment of public sector rural development institutions, an emphasis on investments by the private sector, collaborative efforts between government and other stakeholders, promotion of even development. interesting areas of convergence and coherence are there to see. the first area of convergence and coherence is the fact that in needs, there is a clear policy provision to offer farmers improved irrigation, machinery, crop varieties all with the intention of implementing an integrated rural development program to stem the flow of migration from rural to urban areas. all of these are also in alignment with the provisions in the npird. one can then correctly say that needs and npird clearly converge and overlap a good example asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 259 of coherence and a felicitous condition for synergies in policy implementation. a joint wb/ima evaluation notes that needs has prompted several measures to improve the performance of the agricultural sector, launch community based rural development projects aimed at improving agricultural productivity and efforts to improve rural finance (ezekwesili et al., 2007). both also converge on the recognition of the role of the private sector, even though such a prescription may not too realistic for a rural policy given the realities of market failure. investments in rural areas are cost intensive and such costs may be disincentives to private sector operators except there are some government incentives and government financed investment infrastructure. (the question is the degree and compatibility of such incentives with a market led ethos.) yet ignoring rural development imposes negative externalities on national development and urban settings. incidentally, rdss identifies three key issue areas in npird – policy and institutional reform, investment at federal, state lga and community levels and investments at sub-sector levels and indicates focal points, actors and funding sources for each of these. one notes that the private sector gets scant mention and is assigned very minimal roles in this vital area of implementation. this also raises issues of internal coherence of npird itself by reference to the critical role it had earlier claimed to assign to the private sector and by implication on the mismatch between the implementation strategies and the preferred implementation modality for needs. one notices a stronger role for government than the private sector driver rhetoric would have suggested. here realism would appear to have triumphed over loyalty to a popular market ideology. recommendations & conclusions we have seen that coherence in policies can be at the level of objectives, targets, and strategies. it can also be seen in the degree of coherence which can be gauged by the extent to which one policy reinforces the other, unpacks its provisions, enhances and extends its orientations. we have seen in respect of needs and npird that there are interesting coherences between these two deriving from the fact that they are targeted at overlapping constituencies, and pursue mutually reinforcing goals and objectives. this is so since the rural is but a sub set of the larger national set. in a way therefore, npird is needs targeted at rural areas with the aim of promoting their development. (prsps are national and cut across all sectors. rural development policies are more focused but also inherently multi-sectoral, even where for reasons of competitive advantage, they tend to dwell more on reviving and revitalizing sustainable agriculture). the happy conditions of coherence we have noted in policy thrusts, goals and implementation arrangements mean that needs and npird create conditions for their reciprocal success. hanging together implies mutual reinforcement and we see that on the areas of objectives, policy thrusts and implementation arrangements needs tends to complement npird in inclusive and additive ways. the explanations for the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 260 observed coherence must be sought in the fact that both documents were written by persons drawn from broadly identical policy constituencies and networks and were also produced around the same time period, two conditions which make for coherence. these findings agree with the earlier views on shared objectives, interests as determinant of policy coherence (muskens et al., 2007; forster and stokke, 1999) by implication, we are saying that when there is a separation in time of formulation or when policies are drawn up by persons from different policy constituencies, policy incoherence may arise because issues and agendas may have evolved, or that perceptions of issues may be different or that different tools and instruments for policy analysis may have become available. it is also important to point out the role of dominant ideologies held by influential external players in ensuring policy coherence. we see this clearly in needs and npird which received considerable steer and guidance from the wb, cida, usaid and dfid, all of which agencies subscribe in the main to a neo-liberal economic philosophy and this economic view is reflected in both policies even where its market driven ideology may not exactly be the most appropriate for a rural development policy areas in the current context of nigeria. this observation also brings up the issue of external influence in policy formulation and the dangers of uncritical policy transfers. this last observation notwithstanding, the examinations of needs and npird have revealed interesting areas of coherence and some of the reasons for it. the observed coherences inspire hope and confidence that appropriate implementation structures will be put in place and that all stakeholders at the federal, state and local government levels will work harmoniously together to deliver the results envisaged in these policy instruments. the hope is therefore is that coherence and harmony at policy level will be matched by the same at the implementation level. references akpobasah, m. 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(2005). the search for coordination and coherence in public policy: return to the center?, pittsburgh, the university of pittsburgh department of political science, (mimeograph) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 249-262 262 richardson, j. (2000). government, interest groups and policy change. political studies, 48(5): 1006–1025. rose, r. (2001). ten steps in learning lessons from abroad, future governance: lessons from comparative public policy, esrc rubin, b. r. & guaqueta, a. (2007). fighting drugs and building peace – towards policy coherence between counter-narcotics and peace building, berlin, friedrich ebert stiftung sabatier, p. (1991). toward better theories of the policy process. political science and politics, 24(2): 144-147. smith, g. & may, d. (1980). the artificial debate between rationalist and incremental models of decision making. politics and policy, 8: 147-161 van der ploeg, j. d., h. renting, g., brunori, k., knickel, j., mannion, t., marsden, k. de roest, e., sevilla, g. & ventura, f. (2000). rural development: from practices and policies towards theory. sociologia ruralis, 40(4): 391-408. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intprs1/ resources/nigeria_prsp(dec2005).pdf http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intprs1/ resources/nigeria_apr2-jsan(june132007).pdf http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intprs1/ resources/nigeria-prspr(august2007).pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. rural dwellers’ perception of human trafficking and its implication for agricultural production in edo state, nigeria ofuoku, a. u. and uzokwe, u. n. (dept. of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, pmb 95074, asaba, delta state, nigeria) citation: ofuoku, a. u. and uzokwe, u. n. (2012) “rural dwellers’ perception of human trafficking and its implication for agricultural production in edo state, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 394-404. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 394-404. 394 author(s) ofuoku, a. u. dept. of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, pmb 95074, asaba, delta state, nigeria email: ofuoku@yahoo.com uzokwe, u. n. dept. of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, pmb 95074, asaba, delta state, nigeria email: ucheadauzokwe@yahoo.com rural dwellers’ perception of human trafficking and its implication for agricultural production in edo state, nigeria abstract this study was carried out to ascertain the perception of rural dwellers on human trafficking in relation to its effect on agricultural production in the three senatorial districts of edo state, nigeria. a sample size of 120 household heads was used for the study. structured questionnaire and interview schedule were used to collect data for the study. the data were analyzed using frequency counts, means and percentage while chisquare statistical model and tobit regression analytical model were used to test the hypotheses. it was discovered that the household members were trafficked as a result of push and pull factors. the trafficked members of household were actively involved in farming practices before being trafficked. there is significant relationship between human trafficking and agriculture production. shortage of farm labor, decreased farm size, reduced farm income, reduced farm output, extra expenditure on hired labor and storage of food supply by the community were perceived as effect of human trafficking on agriculture. age of the household head and the household size had significant effect on the number of household member trafficked. human trafficking has an adverse effect on agricultural production. extension department should therefore integrate anti-human trafficking campaigns with their services to the farming population. keywords: rural dwellers, human trafficking, push factors and pull factors introduction trafficking in human beings, especially women and girls is not new (unesco, 2006) and historically it has taken many forms but in the context of globalization has acquired shocking new dimensions. it is a complex multifaceted phenomenon involving multiple stake holders at the institutional and commercial level (unicef, 2004). it is a demand driven global business with a huge market for cheap labor and commercial sex confronting often insufficient or unexercised policy frame works or trained personnel to prevent it (undp, 2005). although nigeria has enormous natural and human resources (nigeria is still the 11 th largest producer of oil in the world), (unesco, 2006). nigeria is still rated as one of the poorest countries in the world with per capital gnp of us $280 for a population of about 133 million. nigeria is a country rich in resources but with wide spread poverty (world bank, 2005). nigeria especially the southern part has a reputation for being one of the leading african countries in human trafficking. trafficking involves the recruitment, transportation transfer, harboring or receipt of persons for the purpose of exploitation (uncato), (2000) as cited by unesco (2006). men, women, and children are trafficked for many purposes, such as sexual exploitation, begging, underpaid and exploited forced labor in the agricultural, manufacturing, mailto:ofuoku@yahoo.com mailto:ucheadauzokwe@yahoo.com rural dwellers’ perception of human..... 395 construction industries as well as in domestic services. about 92% of nigerians trafficked to european countries for prostitution and other hard labor come from edo and delta states of nigeria and are from rural areas (international police organization, 2000). studies have shown that those recruited for trafficking are mainly women and children from poor family backgrounds and rural communities. trafficking of potential farmers from the rural area however reduces the absolute number of the work force available within a family. the decline in both food and cash crop production has been attributed to so many factors such as shortage of extension personnel to educate the farmers on new innovation from research stations. this has also been linked to the insufficiency of agricultural production labor in nigeria. the class of people trafficked are the major producers of food in nigeria. beyond the abuse involved in the commercial trafficking of women and children, human trafficking also entails all form of forced labor, debt bondage, and coerced domestic labor (pugin 2009). nigeria ratified the un protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons especially women and children in 2001 and passed a national law against trafficking entitled “trafficking in persons (prohibition) law enforcement and administration act 2003”. nigeria is one of the few african countries that passed such a law. nigeria also passed the child right act in 2003, which deals comprehensively with the issue of child trafficking. economic empowerment and reintegration programmers have tried to address the problem of trafficking but they did not achieve the expected results. awareness-raising activities proved to be more vigorous. despite these initiatives, human trafficking remains a critical problem in nigeria. there is a continuing need for the further ratification and implementation of international legislation along with the use of national legal tools currently available for fight against trafficking in human beings. one of the major problems is that women and children who make up the vast majority of the trafficking chain get involved as a result of push factors that are rooted in poverty, inequality and discrimination, resulting in survival strategies that expose the most vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. it is ultimately poverty, high unemployment and lack of opportunity, the quest for a means of survival that are the engine driving human trafficking (unifem, 2002). schemes in the field of agriculture were introduced by past governments which were aimed at reducing the influx of rural dwellers into urban areas, as well as making our country nigeria a self sufficient nation in basic food production. scheme such as farm settlement scheme (1956), operation feed the nation (1976), green revolution (1979) and agricultural development programme (adp) still did not eradicate the problem of food shortage. in spite of all the efforts and money expended in these schemes, food shortage remains a fundamental problem and despite the initiatives of the government, human trafficking remains a critical problem. it is suspected that the movement of people from the farming communities by way of being trafficked is one of the causes of food shortage. considering this fact a study like this is considered worth carrying out. the number of people trafficked for exploitation has greatly increased overtime as a result of so many factors. the study will afford the researcher an opportunity to carry out extensive research on rural household or dwellers that have in one way or the other involved themselves in human trafficking and the effect it resulted into in terms of agricultural production in edo state. the study work serves as a document that would guide extension organizations and policy makers in the design of extension exercises and review of agricultural development policies and programmes. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 394-404. 396 objectives of the study the general objective of this study was to ascertain the perception of rural dwellers on human trafficking in relation to its effect on agricultural production in edo state. the specific objectives were to: i. determine the socio economic characteristics of the rural dwellers, ii. identify factors that make people get involved in human trafficking, iii. ascertain the effect of human trafficking on agricultural production. hypotheses two null hypotheses will be tested ho1: human trafficking has no significant effect on agricultural production in the study area. ho2: the socio-economic characteristics of traffic source household heads have no influence on human trafficking. methodology the study will be conducted in edo state. it is important to note that edo state is highly involved in human trafficking. the study will cover the three senatorial district of edo state. that is, edo north, edo central and edo south senatorial district. according to national census (1991), about 58 percent of the population of edo state is edo south while edo central and north is at 17 and 25 percent respectively. edo state has a total population of 3,218, 332 (national census nigeria, 2006) it is made up of 18 local government areas with various villages and communities, the state capital is benin city with a total population of 762,719 (national census nigeria 2006) the people of edo state are known for bronze casting and farming, but a few numbers of them are gainfully employed as school teachers, civil servant and owners of small scale business. a reconnaissance survey was conducted in the study area edo state. the sample size of the study was one hundred and twenty household randomly selected from the study area. the sampling procedure that was adopted in selecting the villages is purposive sampling techniques. that is, only the villages that have been practically involved in human trafficking in the past 10 years were selected systematically regardless of their socio-economic status or background. due to limited time for this work, fifteen (15) villages were purposely selected from the three (3) senatorial districts that make up the state. seven (7) from edo south senatorial district this include: ugbighoko, oregbeni, aduwawa, urhonigbe, iyekeogba, usen and ugbor. five (5) from edo north senatorial district this include: igarra, okpela, jattu, ibie and fugar. while three (3) villages from edo central senatorial district namely: ujoelen, ewoyi and eguare. seventy (70) household heads were interviewed in edo south, thirty (30) household heads in edo north and twenty (20) household heads in edo central senatorial district to give a total of one hundred and twenty (120) respondents. this was done using quota sampling technique base on population distribution of the state. the method that was employed in obtaining household heads for interview was by random sampling technique. that is, writing the number of houses in each of the villages in a piece of paper fold it and mixed together in a basket. in this study, structured questionnaire and direct personal interview schedule were used for data collection. discussion was held also in local languages in cases of personal interview to ensure that household heads had the opportunity to supply relevant information since some of them had no formal education. data collected from the household head were analyzed using descriptive and inferential rural dwellers’ perception of human..... 397 statistics. descriptive statistical tools used include frequency count; mean derived from 4-point likert type scale and percentage were used to analyze objective one, two and three. while the inferential statistics used include chi square and tobit regression analysis which were used to test hypothesis one and two respectively. the chi square formula is written as follows: [(fo-fe) 0.5] 2 x 2 = fe the regression model formula is written as follows: y = f(x1,x2,x3,x4,x5,x6,x7,x8) where: y = human trafficking (number of persons trafficked) x1 = age (years) x2 = gender (dummy: male=1, female=0) x3 = educational level (tertiary = 3, secondary = 2, primary =1, no formal education = 0) x4 = marital status (single = 1, married = 0) x5 = income level (very attractive = 2, attractive = 1, not attractive = o) x6 = farming experience (1-10 years = 2, 11-20 years = 1, more 20 years = 0) x7 = household size (number of persons) x8 = educational level of house hold trafficked (tertiary = 3, secondary = 2, primary =1, no formal education = 0) results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of household heads most (55.80%) of the household heads were females, while 44.20% of them were males. this agrees with national population census (2006), that female population is almost twice the population of male. the headship of most of the homes by females is capable of prompting human trafficking since the household responsibilities weigh much on these women, thereby prompting poverty. according to table 4.1, 17.5% of them were between the age brackets of 50-59, 20.8% of them were between the ages of 60-69 years, 13.3% of them were between the age bracket of 70-79 years and only 8% were above 80 years of age. the implication of this is that 82.5% of the respondents were above 60 years of age and they were old and cannot carryout farming activities as much as the younger ones. meanwhile, most of the younger ones have left farming activities to the older generation because of the erroneous thought that farming activities are meant for the old, poor and formally uneducated citizens. while 18.3% of household heads had tertiary education, 19.2% had primary education, 25% had no formal education and most (37.5%) of them had secondary education. this implies that 81.7% of the household head had one form of education or the other. this is expected to enhance their awareness on the ills associated with human trafficking. the highest proportion (62.5%) of household heads were married, 5% n were single 10.8% were divorced and 21.7% widow/widower. most (45.8%) of the households were of the sizes of 4 – 6 persons, while 8.3% had household sizes ranging from 10 -12 persons and 0.8% had household sizes of above 13 persons. this implies that most of the household were large in size .this can lubricate the wheel of poverty. poor people tend to have high propensity of having many children which they end up not taking care of. according to unesco, (2006) over population increases the risk that these children will be trafficked to live with other extended family members in wealthier or urban communities or seek employment outside the family network. most (68.5%) of the household members trafficked were females, while 31.5% were males. this confirms the findings of ofuoku (2010), unicef (2004) who suggested that most of the people trafficked are women and girls. among the respondents, 28.3% earned n50,000 n100,000; 10.8% earned n100,000 n150,000, 12.5% earned n150,000 n200,000, 35.8% earned n200,000 n250,000 and 12.5% earned asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 394-404. 398 above n250,000. this implies that the majority of the household heads lived on an estimated amount of n600 per day. this shows that they are relatively poor in the study area as this is below the required world standard of us $ 1.0 per day. as for the farming experience of the household heads, 27.5% of them had less than 10 years experience, 12.5% had farming experience of between 10-15 years, 21.7% of them had farming experience of about 1620 years, 27.5% had 21-25 years farming experience and 10.8% had farming experience of above 25 years. this simply implies that majority of the farmers have good experiences in their various field of farming. with respect to household heads’ farm size, 20% of them had farm land less than 2 hectares, 18.3% had 2 hectares of farm land, 14.2% had 3 hectares of farm land, 30% had 4 hectares of farm land and 17.5% had land above 5 hectares. this indicates that most household heads were small-holder farmers. this means that the farms cannot adequately cater for their household needs. this has implication for poverty and therefore, human trafficking. extension agents visited the respondent but the frequency of visit varies among the respondents. most (55%) of the household heads were visited twice in a year, 13.3% of them were visited quarterly in a year, 22.5% of them were visited once in a month, 25% of them were visited twice in a month, and 6.7% of them were visited at irregular number of time in a year. it was gathered that the household heads visited once and twice in a month by extension agents was based on personal relationship between them and the agents. population of members of households trafficked table 1 shows the distribution of household that have been trafficked. it is observed from the data collected that majority (55%) of the household heads had less than 3 of their household members trafficked, while 30% of them had household trafficked between 4 – 6 persons, 8.3% of them had trafficked household ranging from 7 – 9 persons and 6.7% of them had trafficked household ranging from 10 – 12 persons in the study area. this implies that majority of the respondent have trafficked at least one member their households. table 1: distribution based on number of members of households of household trafficked no.of trafficked household members frequency percentage (%) less than 3 66 55.0 4-6 36 30.0 7-9 10 8.3 10-12 8 6.7 educational status of trafficked members of households most (50.8%) of the trafficked members of the households (table 2) had secondary education, (17.5%) had tertiary education, 7.5% were university drop outs as a result of their inability to continue schooling because the household heads could not afford the fees. those who had secondary education and the university drop-outs were made to stop because their parents could not afford to sponsor furthering their education at the tertiary level. others (18.3%) had only primary education while 13.3% had no form of formal education. the level of formal education of most of those trafficked is an indices of the poverty level. according to unifem, (2002) woman and girls are more vulnerable to being trafficked because lack of access to education which limits their opportunity and lack of legitimate and fulfilling employment facility. rural dwellers’ perception of human..... 399 table 2: distribution of the educational level of trafficked household members education level frequency percentage (%) tertiary education 21 17.5 university dropout 9 7.5 secondary education 61 50.8 primary education 22 18.3 no formal education 7 5.8 factors contributing to trafficking of household members table 3 shows that poverty (mean =3.59) was the major reason why people involved themselves in human trafficking. this agrees with unesco (2006), which argued that the major cause of human trafficking is poverty. there is a strong desire to survive but poverty resulting from unemployment and lack of opportunities promotes human trafficking. according to unesco (2006), nigeria is rated as one of the sixth poorest country in the world with per capital gnp of about $280 dollars for a population of about 133 million. todaro (2000), stated that because members of female headed household are generally restricted to low productivity in formal sector employment and experience dependency burdens, they are more likely to be poor and malnourished, and less likely to obtain formal education, health care, clean water, and sanitation. this makes them vulnerable to traffickers. lack of proper information (mean = 3.16) is another cause of human trafficking, it was observed that most parents lacked proper information on the nature of jobs in which their children were engaged in their various destinations. traffickers promise lucrative job opportunities in the cities (yakubu, 2004). according to unaids et al (2004), traffickers promise potential marriage or guarantee jobs overseas, mostly in the informal and unregulated sectors such as hair dressing, nannies or domestics. the majority of trafficked persons are unaware of the form of labor to which they will be subjected. peer pressure from friends and relatives (mean = 3.04) also constitute a cause of human trafficking. household heads averred that they allowed their household members to be trafficked after listening to advice and pressure from friends and relatives that trafficking would help increase their living standard. they convinced them that after converting the foreign currency gotten by their trafficked household members into the domestic currency they would be rich. harmful cultural practices (mean = 3.04) such as female circumcision made some parents to traffic their children in order to prevent them from falling victims to such beliefs and cultural practices as argued by some parents, especially female single parents. this is more so as the extended families and community leaders consider it as a compulsory ritual that must be performed on every female transiting into womanhood. the need for low skilled labor (mean = 3.46). many parents had their household members trafficked because it was believed that the destination country could employ their household members regardless of academic specialization. in nigeria people are trafficked mainly for prostitution, to work as domestic servants, bus conductors and street traders (unicef, 2004). expectation of high income while working in destination (mean 3.29) and low risk involved in working in destination (mean = 2.79) were among the driving forces of human trafficking. household heads believed that working in rich countries like europe countries and americas would result in high income and raise their living standard. they also the risk in working is low when compared to home country. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 394-404. 400 table 3: distribution of the factors for human trafficking factors: (push and pull) score mean (x) poverty 431 3.59 lack of proper information 379 3.16 peer pressure from friends and relatives 365 3.04 harmful cultural practices 323 2.69 the need for low skilled labor 415 3.46 high income in working in destination 395 3.29 low risk involved in working in destination 335 3.29 cut off score = 2.50 (> 2.50 important reason < 2.50 not important reason) agricultural activities carried out by household members in the pre-trafficking periods. table 4, indicates that the household members trafficked participated actively in the farming activities of their households before being trafficked to seek greener pastu reas they assisted in planting/sowing (mean=3.71) , assisted in weeding of farm land (mean=2.92), assisted in harvesting of the farm produce (mean=3.41), assisted in selling the surplus in the market (mean=2.91) and assisted in processing and storage of farm produce (mean=2.84) prior to sales in off season period. table 4: agricultural assistance rendered by household members prior to trafficking nature of assistance score mean (x) planting/sowing 446 3.71 weeding of farm land 350 2.92 harvesting farm produce 409 3.41 selling the surplus 349 350 processing and storage 341 2.84 cut-off score = 2.50 (> 2.50 active participating >2.50 passive participation) effect of human trafficking on agricultural production as perceived by respondents shortage of farm labor seems (table 5) to be the most dominant effect (mean=3.48). decrease in farm size (mean=2.92), decrease in farm income (mean=3.15), reduction in farm output (mean=3.08), extra expenditure on hired labor (mean=3.18) and shortage of food supplied by the community (mean=2.84) were other effects pointed out by the respondents. an obvious consequence of human trafficking on farm labor is that the adult labor force or work force on the family will decline. also, the need for hired labor will be positively related to the size of a family’s agricultural holdings after trafficking of one or more family member. unesco, (2006), pointed out that women, girls and children who make up the work force are those mostly trafficked. ahmad and ismail (1998) stated that women are more involved in agricultural task than their husbands. these women engage in farming with the help of their children, they are the main source of agricultural labor. therefore, the trafficking of women and children will adversely affect food production in the study area. the sales of farm land to raise money for trafficking will result in drastic decrease in farm size. most of the buyers of this land do not use them for agricultural purposes, they end up erecting buildings on them this will in turn bring about reduction in farm size and consequently farm output. it should also be noted that shortage of farm labor as a result of human trafficking will bring about a corresponding reduction in farm output, decrease in farm income and shortage of food supply by the community. according to uzokwe and ofuoku, (2006) women have taken over most of the male rural dwellers’ perception of human..... 401 related traditional farm tasks so the position of women in food production is very important. if these rural women continue to be trafficked out of rural communities, the problem of food shortage will deteriorate to an extent where there will be food scarcity especially with the geometric growth rate of the population of nigeria. table 5: human trafficking effect on agriculture variables score mean (x) shortage of farm labor 418 3.48 decrease in farm size 3.5 2.92 decrease in farm income 378 3.15 farm output 370 3.08 extra expenditure on hired labor 382 3.18 shortage of food supply by the community 341 2.84 cut-off score = 2.50 (> 2.50 an effect, >2.50 not an effect) test of hypothesis ho1: human trafficking has no significant effect on agriculture in the study area. result the chi square statistical analysis indicates (table 6) that chi square calculated is greater than the chi square tabulated (x 2 cal = 30.16> x 2 tab =18.31). therefore, the null hypothesis that human trafficking has no significant effect on agricultural production is rejected and alternative hypothesis that human trafficking has effect on effect on agricultural production is accepted. this implies that the movement of the work force in the agricultural sector as a result of human trafficking has brought about a drastic decrease in agricultural production. this agrees with kabeer, (1994) who opined that women are the back bone of the agricultural sector accounting for 70% of agricultural labor and being responsible for 60% of agricultural production and 80% of food production. ahmad and ismail (1998) stated that women are more involved in agricultural task than their husbands. these women engage in farming with the help of their children. according to uzokwe and ofuoku (2006) women have taken over most of the male related traditional farm task so the position of women in food production is very important. if these rural women continue to be trafficked out rural communities (the homes of agricultural practices) the problem of food shortage will deteriorate to an extent where there will be food scarcity, especially with the geometric growth rate of the population of nigeria. this will translate into food production shortage. table 6: the effect of human trafficking on agriculture effect on agricultural production household heads perception of human trafficking total agree disagree undecided shortage of farm labor 88 22 10 120 decrease in farm size 59 37 24 120 decrease in farm income 64 31 25 120 reduction in farm output 69 27 24 120 extra expenditure on hired labor 73 24 23 120 shortage of food supply by the community 51 38 31 120 total 404 179 137 720 x2 cal = 30.16, x2 tab = 18.31, = significant at 5% level asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 394-404. 402 h02: the socio economic characteristics of traffic source household heads have no influence on human trafficking. result in testing this hypothesis the socio economic characteristics of house hold heads were subjected to multiple regression analysis using the tobit regression model is shown in table 7. table 7 shows that the r 2 value is 0.364 which indicates that 36.4% of the socio economic characteristics of the household heads entered into the model accounted for the number of persons trafficked in the study area. it is observed that only two variables out of eight variables were found to be statistically significant at 0.05level of significance. these variables are age(x1) and household size(x7). this implies that since 82.5% of the household heads were above 60 years of age and are old with very little farm income, they end up trafficking their young and productive children to supplement their income. according to unesco (2006) younger ones in age fall victim to human trafficking because of peer pressure and lack of alternative opportunities within their impoverished home countries. they often seek out traffickers on their own initiative and are thus recruited. unesco (2006) further observed that nigeria young women and children are the ones trafficked and thousands of young women and girls were trafficked into the sex industry especially in europe. older women are not trafficked because of their ages. household size (x7); this implies that the larger the household size the more the risk of being trafficked because of deprivations rooted in poverty nurtured by too large family to cater for.. this agrees with unesco (2006) which stated that over population increases the risk that children will be trafficked to live with others extended family members in wealthier or urban communities or seek employment outside the family network. according to truong (2006), men tend not to devote their earnings to the household, leaving the women responsible for the survival of their families especially families of large sizes. these women then seek to diversify their sources of income (chant, 2003) which increase their risk of being trafficked or offer their children for trafficking to other lands. table 7: the effect of socio-economic variables on the number of household trafficked variables co-efficient std. error t-value sig constant 0.286 1.952 0.053 age(x1) 0.257 0.038 2.956* 0.004 gender(x2) -0.039 0.082 -0.501 0.617 educational level(x3) -0.008 0.046 -0.08 0.933 marital status(x4) -0.076 0.057 0.967 0.336 income level(x5) -0.070 0.030 -0.849 0.398 farming experience (x6) -0.018 0.033 -0.210 0.834 household size(x7) 0.478 0.049 5.562* 0.000 educational level of household trafficked (x8) 0.055 0.042 0.642 0.522 human trafficking implication for agricultural production according to unesco (2006) as pointed out earlier, women girls and children in rural communities are those mostly trafficked, the major occupation of rural communities is farming. women are the backbone of the agricultural sector, accounting for 70% of agricultural labor and being responsible for 60% of agricultural production and 80% of food production (kabeer, 1994). ahmad and ismail (1998) stated that women are more rural dwellers’ perception of human..... 403 involved in agricultural tasks than their husbands. these women engage in farming with the help of their children. those women, young girls and children who do not own their own farm are the sources of agricultural production. food security which is the desire of every nation cannot be achieved without the machinery pushing the production of food. according to uzokwe and ofuoku (2006), women have taken over most of the male related traditional farm tasks, so the position of women in foods production is a very important one. if these rural women continue to be trafficked out of rural communities, the problem of food shortage will deteriorate to an extent where there will be foods scarcity, especially with the geometric growth rate of the population of nigeria. this will translate into food production shrinkage. conclusion most of the persons trafficked are women and girls. push and pull factors such as poverty, lack of proper information, peer pressure from friends and relatives, harmful cultural practices, the need for low skilled labor, high income in working in destination, and low risk involved in working in destination were the major causes of human trafficking. the trafficked members of households were actively involved in farming practices such as planting/sowing, weeding, harvesting, selling of produce, processing and storage, before being trafficked. shortage of farm labor, decreased farm size, reduced farm income, reduced farm output, extra expenditure on hired labor and storage of food supply by the community were perceived as effect of human trafficking on agriculture. age of the household head and the household size had significant effect on the number of household members trafficked. human trafficking has an adverse effect on agricultural production and if not checked may lead to food production shrinkage. recommendations having afore mentioned in mind it is therefore recommended that:  agricultural agencies should make serious effort through public sector, private sectors, governments and nongovernmental organizations to improve women access to productive resources such as land, credit and appropriate technologies to enhance food production.  extension agencies should hammer on the encouragement of capacity building for rural women. this should be done through grass roots mobilization, action programs, training and networking.  it is also important for agricultural agencies to develop and reinforce research and information gathering activities on the village and community level socio-cultural and financial conditions that affect rural women.  extension department should integrate anti human trafficking campaigns with their services to the farming population and use various ways of effective communication with and among rural women and parents using rural radio, posters, television, extension farmers meetings and others. this is the ways to guide and change the attitude of rural families and communities so as to arrest the wave of human trafficking which is always full of fake promises.  more educational opportunities should be accorded to women and girls in rural areas, the legal status of women should be enhanced. moves against trafficking in humans can only be effective if the source communities can be discourage from involvement in it. government and non-governmental organizations should increase investment in rural areas through concessional resources and debt relief investment programme.  extension department should therefore integrate anti-human trafficking campaigns with their services to the farming population. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 394-404. 404 references ahmad, a and ismail, n. 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(2006) “poverty, gender and human trafficking in sub-saharan africa: rethinking best practices in migration management”, paris: unesco. unaids, unicef and usaid (2004) “children on the brink: a joint report of new orphan estimate and a frame work for action”, www.unicef.org/ publication/ index22212 html. undp (2005) human development report. http://hdr.undp.org unesco (2006) “human trafficking in nigeria: root cause and recommendations”, policy paper no 14.2 (e) unicef (2003) “trafficking in human beings, especially women and children in africa”, geneva: unicef innocenti research centre. unifem asia (2002) “trafficking in persons”, a gender rights perspective, briefing kit. uzokwe, u. n. and a. u. ofuoku (2006) “changes in gender division of agricultural task in delta state, nigeria and implications for agricultural extension services”, extension farming systems journal, vol. 2 (1), pp. 91-96. world bank (2005) world development indicators http:// devdata. world bank. org /wdi2005/cover.html yakubu, z. (2004) “interview during the unesco research on human trafficking in west africa”, paris; unesco. http://www.unicef.org/ http://hdr.undp.org/ © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 effects of irrigation water quality on the recovery of 15nfertilizer by sorghum in field study mohamed naceur khelil and saloua rejeb (national research institute of rural engineering, water and forest. b.p. 10 ariana, tunisia) jean pierre destain (research center of agronomy, 4-rue bordia, gembloux, belgium) belgacem, henchi ( department of biology, faculty of science, university of tunis, tunisia) to cite this article: mohamed naceur khelil, saloua rejeb, jean pierre destain and belgacem henchi (2011). effects of irrigation water quality on the recovery of 15n-fertilizer by sorghum in field study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2), 90-97. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 90-97 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author(s) mohamed naceur khelil † national research institute of rural engineering, water and forest, ariana, tunisia emil: khelil_mn@yahoo.fr jean pierre destain research center of agronomy. 4rue bordia, 5030 gembloux, belgium saloua rejeb national research institute of rural engineering, water and forest. ariana, tunisia belgacem henchi department of biology, faculty of science, university of tunis, tunisia effects of irrigation water quality on the recovery of 15nfertilizer by sorghum in field study abstract 15n-labeled fertilizer was applied to sorghum at different rates (0, 100 kg n.ha -1 ) to 1m² microplots and with two kind of water (well water “ww” and treated wastewater “tww”) to sorghum grown in field during 1997 and 1999. increases in dm production, n uptake and 15 nrf were observed with tww. about 17% and 36% of the 15nfertilizer were recovered in the crop with tww in 1997 and 1999, respectively. residual effect was higher in tww (3% vs 5%). water irrigation quality had no effect on the 15n-labeled fertilizer remaining in the 0-60 cm layer at final harvest. for both water qualities, the major fraction of the residual 15n-fertilizer (about 60%) was recorded in the surface layer. losses of 15n-labaled fertilizer was unaffected by water irrigation quality being approximately 35% of the applied 15n-fertilizer. tww irrigation can efficiently substitute ww for irrigation of sorghum and, simultaneously save nitrogen fertilizer. keywords: 15n fertilizer, sorghum, irrigation introduction the use of 15 n labeled fertilizer has become increasingly important in field studies for drawing up the balance sheet of fertilizer n. in addition, nitrogen-15 allows to distinguish between fertilizer n and indigenous n, providing the possibility to measure both total amount of n deriving from fertilizer and taken up by crops or left in soil, and fertilizer n loss during crop growth. however, the high cost of 15 n labeled fertilizer limits its employment to a micro plot within a larger plot (reddy and reddy, 1993., destain et al., 1996). in tunisia, application of treated waste water to agricultural land continuing to gain public acceptance (bahri and brissaud, 1995; angelakis et al., 1999). however, because of the short period of the reuse, only 24% of the available treated waste water is used, the reuse of that water could be considered as fertiirrigation. as a result of its nitrogen content, irrigation with treated waste water can help to reduce the requirements for commercial fertilizer (vasquez-montiell et al., 1995 and 1996; hussain et al., 1996; geber, 2000). otherwise, to warrant a good yield farmers conceive bad to avoid application of nitrogen fertilizer. however, with the advantages of increased water supply and nitrogen fertilizer there are some hazards involving soil and ground-water pollution. moreover, the reuse of treated waste water may increase this potential either if the total amount on nitrogen application is higher than that needed by crop, or if the treated waste water still used late in the growing season when crop doesn’t need nitrogen. due to this, obtaining optimum crop yields and good nitrogen use efficiency requires careful management of n application. olsen et al. (1982) suggested that since about 60% of n used by the crop came from soil, total n uptake is not a good measure of waste water n removal. although fertilizer recovery by the crop can be determined by the use of both unlabeled and labeled n fertilizer (westerman and kurtz, 1974; harmsen and morghan, 1988; schindler and knighton, 1999), the measurement of the recovery of fertilizer in the soil, and the subsequent calculation of the n that is lost from the crop/soil system can only be made using 15 n-labelled fertilizer (limaux et al., 1998). bole et al. (1985), in their study concerning the fate of in the system irrigated with waste water, including the use of 15 n-labelled supplementary fertilizer, note that reed canarygrass recovered nearly 50% of applied fertilizer 15 n over 2 years with about 80% of total uptake in the first cutting after application. alfalfa only recovered 24% of applied 15 n at low irrigation rate and 14% at higher rate. about 25% of the fertilizer n was left in mailto:khelil_mn@yahoo.fr effects of irrigation water quality ….. 91 soil after two irrigation seasons with 60% of that n remained in the surface 15 cm independent of forage species or irrigation rate. in order to minimize nutrient seepage into the ground water, the fertilizer requirement of the crop should be precisely known. there is little data on the effect on treated waste water irrigation and fertilization management on the fertilizer nitrogen use efficiency and its effect on yields and on the balance sheet of the nitrogen fertilizer supplemented. a one year 15 n balance after three year of irrigation indicated uptake, soil no3-n, and unaccounted for n was for about 10, 19 and 71% for 15 n-labelled waste water and 15, 33 and 52% 15n-labeled fertilizer (bole and gould, 1985). the greater losses of waste water n compared with fertilizer n were attributed to enhanced denitrification due oxidizable c in the waste water. hence, the aims of this study were therefore to discuss the effect of water irrigation quality (ww vs tww) on (i) dry matter production (dm) and nitrogen uptake, (ii) the recovery of nitrogen fertilizer by the crop ( 15 nrf) and on (iii) the 15 nlabeled fertilizer left in the soil at harvest on the basis of a field experiment with sorghum irrigated with two kinds of water, tww and ww. materials and methods this field study was conducted in summer during 1997 and 1999, as part of a larger study, on a welldrained sandy soil of the experimental field of the rural, water and forest research institute "inrgref" of tunisia. the field had been for sudangrass production for at least 2 years prior to the experiment. some physical and chemical properties of the experimental soil are presented in table 1. table 1: some physical and chemical properties and water contents of the experimental soil whc: water holding capacity for 10 cm. wwp: water at wilting point. aw: available water calculated for 20 cm of soil (aw = 2[da (whc – wwp)] with da: apparent density of soil = 1.5) the treatments comprised (i) two irrigation water qualities, treated wastewater (tww) and well water (ww) and, (ii) different rates of nitrogen fertilizer, two nitrogen levels (0 and 100 kg n.ha -1 ) where applied with both water quality (table 2). the experiment was organized in a randomized complete block design (16 blocks) with four replications (figure 1). each treatment block was 15 by 4 m. in 1997, three harvesting time were prospected, but only two were done. for that reason, only two of the three fractions planned were applied, with a total rate of 0 and 66 kg n.ha -1 in ww and tww. in 1999, in order to apply the entire rate, two harvesting time were planned and done, with a total amount applied of 0 and 100 kg n.ha -1 in ww and tww. being given the high price of 15 n-labeled fertilizer, the labeled n was applied in microplots of land of 1 m² arranged within the blocks. on the way to determine the effect of application time, only one fraction was labeled. under these circumstances, for each n rate, eight microplots were established to receive labeled n. four microplots among them received labeled n at emergence and unlabeled n after the first harvest, whereas, the remaining four microplots received unlabeled n at emergence and labeled n after the first harvest. table 2: experimental protocol in the field for 1997 and 1999 [n water = volume of water brought (mm.m²) x average content on total n in water (mg n.l -1 ) year 1997 1999 n (water) †n (fertilizer) total (kg n. ha -1 ) n (water) ‡n (fertilizer) total ww0 155 00 155 ww0 148 00 148 ww100 ww100 microplot1 155 33 a + 33 b 221 microplot1 148 50 a + 50 b 248 microplot2 155 33 b + 33 a 221 microplot2 148 50 b + 50 a 248 tww0 320 00 320 tww0 303 303 tww100 tww100 microplot1 320 33 a + 33 b 386 microplot1 303 50 a + 50 b 403 microplot2 320 33 b + 33 a 386 microplot2 303 50 b + 50 a 403 † 15n labeled fertilizer at 9.861 at% abundance. ‡ 15n labeled fertilizer at 4.792 at% abundance. (a): labeled fertilizer. (b): unlabelled fertilizer. ww: well water. tww: treated waste water soil deep (cm) sand 20-2000μ % loam 2-20 % ec mmhos.cm -1 ph caco3 % om (%) total n (%) c/n whc (mm) wwp (mm) aw (mm) 0-20 83 5 0.7 7.8 0.2 0.3 0.059 3.4 1.79 6.67 14.64 20-40 92 5 0.7 7.3 0.1 0.2 0.047 2 1.28 4.45 9.5 40-60 94 5 0.9 7.3 00 00 0.036 00 1.12 3.28 6.48 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 90-97 92 sudangrass (sorghum sudanense, piper) was planted on monthly statement of may in 0.3 m row spacing at a population of 333000 plants ha -1 in both years. in the microplots population was double the density shortly after emergence. the 15 n-microplots were arranged to include four rows of sorghum with ten plants per row. water irrigation levels were designed to approximate the seasonal evapotranspiration (et) minus precipitation deficit. the crop et requirement is 630 mm per season from 15 mai to mid-september under local conditions. according to rebour and deloye (1971), water use efficiency was estimated at 70% in field experiment, so that an additional of 30% (equal to 190 mm) excess water was applied to meet 100% water use efficiency. irrigation was made from may through september, consisted of a total of 30 and 32 irrigations during 1997 and 1999 respectively. overall, the crop received a total of 870 and 820 mm of water in 1997 and 1999 respectively. ww from a mixture of wells was stored in a big pond, then water from a pond was pumped and conducted via plastic tube (ǿ 63) until the experimental plot. in the edge of each treatment block, water was applied by a siphon connected to 4m tubes that contain seven perforations (figure 1). figure 1: experimental plan effects of irrigation water quality ….. 93 tww was produced by a treatment plant situated at 7 km from the experimental field and conducted via pipe line and stored in a big pond. tww was then pumped and conducted via a plastic tube until the experimental plot. to control the distributed volume of water, we installed for each kind of water a manometer. overall, the crop received a total of 870 and 820 mm of water in 1997 and 1999, respectively. 15 n-microplots were irrigated at the same time as the main plots with a watering-can with a sprinkler head. the n composition of tww ranged from 19.2 to 40.3 mg.l -1 of total n, with an average of 37 mg n.l -1 in the main part as nh4 + (about 35 mg nnh4.l -1 ) and accounted less than 5 mg.l -1 of no3 n. well water used was a mixture from five wells situated on the experimental field and accounted about 18 mg.l -1 of no3-n. for both years, n were added as ammonium nitrate (nh4no3) applied in two fractions, at emergence and after the first harvest, with a corresponding 15 n excess of 9.495 and 4.426 atom % in 1997 and 1999, respectively. the isotope treatments were applied during irrigation. the soil surface were moistened with 15 liters irrigation water, after that 15 n-labeled fertilizer was uniformly applied with an watering-can with a sprinkler head in 2 liters of distilled water, then watering-can was rinsed immediately with 1 liter of distilled water and the rinse was also applied, followed by an additional 2 liters of distilled water to wash sudangrass foliage from deposit 15 n. plants of the surrounding plot received unlabelled-n fertilizer, applied by hand at the corresponding n rate within the same day with care to prevent any unlabeled n fertilizer from being applied to the 15 n-microplots. the sampling concerned only the microplot, no data was determined outside of the microplot. two harvests were made in each experiment. at each harvest, the plant material was harvested when the sudangrass was at the beginning of the flowering stage for yield measurement. twelve central sorghum plants were harvested to determine fertilizer n recovered as 15 n in the plant ( 15 nrf) according to the equation below: where np and nf are the nitrogen taken up by the plants in the n-fertilized plot and the amount of fertilizer n applied, respectively. and where yp and yf are the atom percent excess 15n in the plant and the applied fertilizer, respectively. in the first harvest, only the above-ground plants were cut, while in the finale harvest the hole plant were harvest. all plant portions were dried at 70°c, and weights were recorded. the plant tissue was ground and analyzed for total n using kjeldahl digestion method (bremner and mulvaney, 1982). at the second harvest, soil samples were collected with an auger at three depths (0-20, 20-40 and 40-60 cm) from six locations in each microplot and composited. analysis for total n in soil was carried out using kjeldahl method modified to include nitrate (olsen, 1980) cited by guiraud and fardeau (1977). the isotopic composition of n was determined by mass spectrometry (vg sira12. uk). the % 15 n abundance obtained by mass spectrometry was transformed into atom% 15 n excess by subtracting the natural abundance (0.3663 atom% 15 n) from the % n abundance of plant and soil samples. to avoid cross-contamination during the steam-distillation process, the distillation unit was flashed with ethanol for 3 minutes between samples. the data set was statistically analyzed using sas (1985) for significance of n application levels, and of the effect on confined and unconfined 15 n-microplots on 15 nrf. mean comparison were made by protected lsd tests at 0.05 level of probability. results plant production and nitrogen uptake the lowest dry matter production obtained was recorded when ww was used with no fertilizer added and was significantly higher with tww in 1997 and 1999. the assessment of irrigation water quality proves a significant effect of tww in increasing dry matter production and nitrogen uptake (table 3). table 3: labeled and unlabeled n used by the whole plant and retention in soil of labeled n as affected by microplot design, fertilizer application rates and water irrigation qualities year (treatment) 15 nlabeled no3nh4 total dry matter (dm) total plant n uptake labeled n remaining in soil n unaccoun ted for labeled n unlabelled n total 0-20 cm 2040 cm 4060 cm total (kg.ha -1 ) (%) 1997 ww0 0 7793 c 132† a 132 a ww100 66 11902ab 9 b 153† a 162ab tww0 0 9731 bc 175‡ a 175ab tww100 66 12656 a 11 a 181‡ a 192a lsd* 2366 1.1 38 39.6 15 nrf = np x yp nf x yf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 90-97 94 1999 ww0 0 3647 73† d 73 d ww100 100 7409 23 b 101† c 124 c 22 a 9 a 7 a 38 a 39 b tww0 0 6730 159‡ b 159 b tww100 100 9141 36 a 175‡ a 210 a 21 a 7 a 6 a 33 a 31 b lsd* 971 10.41 13.3 11 5.16 10.0 16.5 22.7 †n originating from soil. ‡ n originating from both soil and treated waste water (14n). * least significant difference at 0.05 level of probability moreover, dry matter production and plant n uptake were greatly affected by nitrogen rates either in ww or tww irrigation. the amount of unlabeled n originating from soil increased by 21 and 28 kg n.ha -1 in fertilized plots when ww was used in 1997 and 1999 respectively (table 3). although unlabeled n originating from both soil and tww increases by 6 and 16 kg n.ha -1 in the fertilized microplot in 1997 and 1999 respectively (table 3). the apparent increase in the uptake of soil n could be due to an increased mineralization from soil organic matter, pool substitution between 14n and 15n in the soil, or increased root development in the fertilized treatments. fertilizer nitrogen recovery the differences in fertilizer n use between the different treatments and irrigation water qualities become clear when they are expressed on the percent recovery basis. fertilizer nitrogen recovery ( 15 nrf) in sudangrass plants was higher in tww than in ww irrigation in 1997 and 1999. an average of 17 and 26% of 15 n-labelled fertilizer was recovered in the presence of ww and tww, respectively (table 4). table 4: fertilizer n recovery ( 15 nrf) in the whole plant as estimated by isotopic method year 15 n-labeled nh4no3 applied fertilizer n recovery ( 15 nrf) first harvest second harvest (%) residual effect total 1997 ww100 66 15 b 10a 1 b 13 b tww100 66 21 a 11 a 2 a 17 a lsd‡ 2.9 3.97 0.91 3.43 1999 ww100 100 26 a 16 a 3 b 23 b tww100 100 38 a 29 a 5 a 36 a lsd‡ 15.9 4.30 1.47 10.41 ‡ least significant difference at 0.05 level of probability comparing the residual effect, we note that fertilizer n recovery were very low in both years, with however, a more important residual effect when tww was used for irrigation. recovery of fertilizer n in soil distribution of fertilizer n in the soil profile as influenced by n rate and water qualities is presented in the table3 and figure 2. figure 2: 15 n-labeled fertilizer remaining in the soil as influenced by n rate and water quality tww 100 0-20 cm [58%] 40-60 cm [18%] 20-40 cm [24%] ww 100 0-20 cm [62%] 20-40 cm [21%] 40-60 cm [17%] effects of irrigation water quality ….. 95 neither fertilizer rate nor water quality had an effect on the 15 n-labeled fertilizer remaining in the 0-60 cm layer at final harvest (table 3). the 15 n-labeled fertilizer remained in the soil after harvest is then rather related to the characteristic and the capacity of the soil to retain n than to the rate of n applied or irrigation water quality. residual 15 n-labeled fertilizer in the soil fluctuates from 33 to 49% in the 0-60 cm layer for both water qualities. most of residual 15 n-labeled fertilizer remaining in the soil was located in the surface 0-20 cm layer, with an average of 22% despite n rate and water irrigation qualities (table 3). moreover, the proportion of total 15 n remaining in the top 20 cm of soil was unaffected by water qualities. about 60% of the residual 15n-fertilizer was retained in the top of the soil for ww and tww (figure 2). this better immobilization of nitrogen in the top layer was attributed by many authors to an important concentration of microflore biomass at the surface soil. discussion dry matter production was greatly affected by nitrogen rate, either in ww or tww irrigation. otherwise, as reported by others (campbell et al., 1982; bielorai et al., 1984; papadopoulos and stylianou, 1988), tww without fertilizer n addition significantly increased dm yield and total n recovered by plant when compared to ww. moreover, at the same rate of n fertilizer added, dm production was significantly higher with tww irrigation. hussain et al. (1996) suggest that this could be attributed to the presence of appreciable amount of n, p, k and some other micro-elements essential for plant growth compared to ww. total n removed by plants increased significantly when a smallest amount of fertilizer n was supplemented with treated wastewater irrigation. papadopolos and stylianou (1982), concluded that cotton yield, could be higher with the effluent particularly when supplemented with lower n rates. however, with the highest n level there was a reduction in yield obtained with the treated effluent. according to hussain et al. (1996) a higher wheat grain yield and n use efficiency could be achieved with low application rates if the crop is irrigated with tww containing n in the range of 20 mg.l -1 and above. however, vaisman et al. (1982), suggest that for good yield, rhodes grass grown under field condition required 250 kg n.ha -1 in addition to the 117.7 kg n.ha -1 added in the irrigation water. moreover, according to ferriera da fonseca et al. (2007), secondary-treated sewage effluent irrigation can efficiently substitute potable water for irrigation of tifton 85 bermudagrass pasture and, simultaneously, save 32,2-81% of the recommended n rate without loss of grass dm and protein content yield. fertilizer n recovery as estimated by the isotopic method was higher when tww was used. for the same amount of n applied in tww and ww, 15nrf was about 13 and 22% in ww irrigation and 17 to 36% in tww irrigation. values obtained with tww were similar to that reported in other investigations when confined microplot was used on sorghum (westerman and kurtz, 1974; harmsen and morghan, 1988) and on maize (tobert et al. 1992; reddy and reddy, 1993; schindler and knighton, 1999). this better use of n in tww irrigation could be a result of better growth of the plant and their roots in tww irrigation. while, the weak values of 15nrf noted in ww irrigation are to be related to the nature of the soil which is sandy with low organic matter content (om). therefore, we suppose that applications of fertilizer on similar nature of soil (with 0,5% of om) are, in effect, maintaining soil fertility rather than directly fertilizing the crop. residual effects measured at the second harvest were very low for both water qualities. from 1% to 5% of the n fertilizer previously applied at raising were taken by the crop in the second harvest. that labeled n expressed by the residual effect, couldn’t be originating from 15 n fertilizer stocked in the soil and found probably him origin in the 15 n fertilizer accumulated in the roots and at the bottom of the stem at the first harvest. at the same rate of n application, residual effect was higher with tww than ww (3 vs 5%). neither fertilizer rate nor water quality had an effect on the 15 n-labeled fertilizer remaining in the soil at final harvest. about 33 to 38% of the n fertilizer applied was left in the 0-60 cm layer at final harvest for water qualities, most of them were located in the surface 0-20 cm layer, with an average of 21,5% despite n rate and water irrigation qualities. studies reported in the literature (olsen, 1980; power and legg, 1984) have also concluded that most of the n remaining in the soil was in the surface layer. moreover, the proportion of total 15 n remaining in the top 20 cm of soil was comparable (58 vs 62%) for both water irrigation qualities with the same rate of 15 n-fertilier applied, which is in line with others studies (destain at al. 1996; khelil et al. 2005). this better immobilization of n in the top layer suggested that this n was in the organic forms as described by allen et al. (1973) and on large scale it was attributed by speir at al. (1999) to an important concentration of microflore biomass at the surface soil. according to crosier at al. (1998) and pilbeam et al. (1997), enrichment in the apparent immobilization of 15 n-labeled fertilizer would be the most likely explanation for the reduced crop recovery as the n fertilizer rate increased. a n balance for this study shows that recovery of 15 n-labelled fertilizer by sorghum was enhanced by tww. an average of 17 and 26% of 15n-labelled fertilizer was recovered in the presence of ww and tww, respectively. total recovery from soil and crop of 15n-fertilizer were deduced from year 1999, for the same amount of n applied (100 kgn.ha -1 ), total recovery of 15n-fertilizer was unaffected by water irrigation quality, being 61% and 69% for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 90-97 96 ww and tww, respectively. against total recovery of 15 n-labelled fertilizer, water irrigation had no effect on the proportion of 15n-fertilizer unaccounted for. approximately 35% of the applied n fertilizer was lost following the application of 100 kgn.ha -1 to sudangrass irrigated with either tww or ww. pertaining to the nature of our soil, the most likely mechanisms responsible for the loss of about one third of that applied is leaching of nitrate below the sampling depth. conclusion the results obtained in this study have provided information on the likely behavior on fertilizer n in plant/soil system under irrigation with two kind of water ww and tww in field experiment. for both years tww provided a substantial amount of n, consequently the efficiency of the fertilizer brought in complement is relatively low ( 15 nrf = 17-36%). this experiment carried over two years should be done during longer duration, so that long-term effects can be studied. moreover, attention should also be given to those waste water constituents behavior and particularly to n that if it is applied in amount exceeding crop needs may adversely affect crop growth and pollute groundwater acknowledgements the authors wish to express their appreciation to bernard and the all laboratory staff, agronomic research center, gembloux, belgium, for their assistance in 15 n analysis. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references allen, a. l., stevenson, f. j., & kurtz, l. t. 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(1999). fate of fertilizer nitrogen applied to corn as estimated by the isotopic and difference methods. soil sci. soc. am. j., 63, 17341740. speir, t. w., van, schaik, a. p., kettles, h. a., vincent, k. w., & campbell, d. j. (1999). soil and stream-water impacts of sewage effluent irrigation on to steeply sloping land. j. environ. qual. 28, 1105-1114. tobert, h. a., mulvaney, r. l., van den heuvel, r. m., & hoeft, r. g. (1992). soil type and moister regime effects on fertilizer efficiency calculation methods in nitrogen 15 tracer study. agron. j., 84, 66-70. vasquez-montiel, o., horan, n. j., mara, d. d. (1995). effects of nitrogen application rates using treated wastewaters, on nitrogen uptake and crop yield based on pot trials with maize and soyabean. water res, 29, 1945-1949. vaisman, i., shanlhevet, j., kipnis, t., & feigin, a. (1982). water regime and nitrogen fertilization for rhodes grass irrigated with municipal wastewater on sand dune soil. j. env. qual. 11, p 434-439. westerman, r. l., & kurtz, l. t. (1974). isotopic and nonisotopic estimations of fertilizer nitrogen uptake by sudangrass in field experiments. soil sci. soc. am. proc., 38. 107-109. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 924 ricecoconut yoghurt: preparation, nutritional and sensory qualities belewu, moshood adewale department of animal production, university of ilorin, nigeria abdulsalam, khadijat o. department of home economics and food science, university of ilorin, nigeria belewu, kafayat and belewu, nosimot department of agricultural economics and farm management, university of ilorin, nigeria abstract the efficacy of using rice milk and coconut milk in the preparation of yoghurt was evaluated in a completely randomized design model. commercial yoghurt was the control treatment (a) while other treatments were b (25% rice milk plus 75% coconut milk), c (50% rice milk plus 50% coconut milk) and d (75% rice milk plus 25% coconut milk) .the various yoghurt samples were analyzed for their proximate composition and sensory value. higher crude protein content and solids not fat were recorded for treatment c. the overall acceptability was greatest for treatment c, greater for treatment b, great for treatment d and least for treatment a (control). this type of yoghurt is recommended for weight watcher and lactose intolerance persons. keywords: rice milk, coconut milk, chemical analysis, sensory value, yoghurt introduction 1 there are about 925 million hungry people in the world in 2010 with 239 million from subsahara africa. children and the vulnerable groups are the most victims. protein-calorie malnutrition has been implicated as the deadly form of malnutrition/hunger. this deadly form of malnutrition could be solved if people could have least cost and balanced nutrition on their table. yoghurt which is a semi fermented milk food is likened and consumed by people all over the world. the food can be used to prevent / control diarrhea due to its therapeutic effect. it can help in modulating the inflammatory response 1 corresponding author’s name: belewu, moshood adewale email address: milkyinka@yahoo.com produced by carcinogen through increasing apoptosis. yoghurt protein is more digestible than cow milk. there are different types of yoghurt and variations may probably be due to the various types of live and active culture used , plain or fruit flavor and most importantly the different sources of milk (animal/plant) (belewu et al., 2005; belewu , 2006). rice milk is considered the best hypoallergenic form of milk. it is better to drink rice milk if allergic to soymilk and cow milk. those with lactose intolerance are advised to drink rice milk since it is cholesterol free with unsaturated fat. the milk enhances immune system and provides resistances to bacteria and viruses invading the body due to high content of selenium and magnesium. (http;//www.healthiro.com/diet.food/rice-milk). asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:milkyinka@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 924-928 925 coconut milk is rich in phosphorus; the milk supplies the body with nearly a quarter of daily value of iron thereby resulting in the prevention of anaemia. the milk helps to decrease the risk of joint inflammation due t o its high selenium content. the health of prostate gland could be promoted due to the presence of zinc in coconut milk (belewu et al., 2005). therefore, this study evaluates the preparation and nutritional qualities of yoghurt from cheap, locally and readily available materials-rice milk and coconut milk. materials and methods study area the study was carried out at the microbial biotechnology and dairy science laboratory, department of animal production, university of ilorin, nigeria. preparation of coconut milk coconut milk was prepared by shelling the nut and the meat was separated using a dull knife. the brown skin of the meat was removed with sharp knife while the meat was washed in clean water and later grated. the grated meat was kept in a bowl of warm water and left for 45 minutes so as to allow the extract of the oil and the aromatic compound. it was later filtered using a sieve of 0.18mm size and the chaff was discarded. the result obtained was a milkyopaque emulsion of about 17% fat and with a sweet coconut flavor. after a while, fat and water were separated and a thick coconut cream was obtained (belewu and belewu, 2007). preparation of rice milk the rice (one cup) was washed thoroughly and kept in a big pot. about eight cups of water was added and the whole content was placed on heating mantle. the temperature was lower and boiled for three hours and a soupy rice pudding was obtained. the content was later blended twice till a smooth content was obtained. the blended rice was sieved twice so as to have good texture. preparation and inoculation of rice –coconut milk rice -coconut yoghurt was prepared by mixing coconut milk and rice milk in ratios 25:50, 50:50, 75:25 representing treatments b and c . while the control treatment was the commercial yoghurt (a). the various mixtures of the coconut milk and rice milk were heated between 85 and 95 oc for 30 minutes. the milk was rapidly cooled to 40 oc and then inoculated with 2 % mixed culture of streptococcus thermophillus and lactobacillus bulgaricus (belewu, 2006) at ratio 1:1 , the mixture was thoroughly mixed and later incubated at between 43 o c and 45 o c for between 8 and 12 hours till the curd was formed. ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ flow chart of rice-coconut yoghurt chemical analysis the chemical composition of the treatments was determined according to the method of a.oa.c. (1990) while the energy was estimated washed cooked untill very soft blending (200g rice + 400ml water) filter using sieve coconut milk rice milk blends at different ratios (100%, 75:25, 50:50, 25:75) innoculation using the bacteria starter culture & incubate for 8 – 12hrs rice-coconut yoghurt rice asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 924-928 926 using the method of carpenter and clegg (1956). the major and minor mineral elements were determined using atomic absorption emission spectrophotometer (aas) model 200a. the sensory qualities of the yoghurt samples were determined using a 9 point hedonic scale (flavor, taste, consistency, colour and overall acceptability) with 9 indicating like extremely and 1 representing dislike extremely. statistically analysis all data collected were subjected to analysis of variance (anova) of a completely randomized design model while significant treatment means were separated using duncan (1955) multiple range test. results and discussion the proximate composition of the rice milk and coconut milk samples are shown in table 1. the crude protein, fiber, energy, lipid and carbohydrate contents of rice milk corroborates the result reported elsewhere http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/presma/ricebased. the crude protein content of rice milk was twice that of coconut milk, additionally, the carbohydrate was poorer in coconut milk (2.79g) compared to rice milk (57.3g). table 1: proximate composition of coconut milk and rice milk the calorie content of coconut milk noted in this study was in line with the report of usda nutrient database and national institute for health and welfare. the total fiber content was higher in rice milk (1.40) compared to 0.7 of coconut milk. it is interesting to note that the fat content of coconut milk was twenty times that of rice milk. the mineral content (calcium, potassium and sodium) was higher in coconut milk compared to rice milk. the result obtained concurs with the report of national institute for health and welfare (http://www.fineli.fi/food.php). table 2 revealed the proximate qualities of the experimental yoghurt. the protein content in treatment c (4.36%) was similar to treatment d (5.2%) while the least was recorded for treatment a (control). the poor crude protein in treatment a showed the poor nutritional content of commercial yoghurt. the solid non fat content was highest in treatment c compared to other treatments. the overall result showed increasing crude protein as the inclusion level of rice milk was increased in the treatments. composition (%) coconut milk rice milk moisture 85.60 18.75 protein 7.50 15.55 carbohydrate 2.75 57.30 lipid 24.00 0.79 fiber 0.70 1.45 total energy/100g (calories) 554 340 calorie 198 260 calcium (mg) 16.0 6.5 phosphorus (mg) 98.0 130.0 potassium (mg) 230.0 100.0 sodium (mg) 14.0 7.0 magnesium (mg) 47 70 http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/pre-sma/ricebased http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/pre-sma/ricebased http://www.fineli.fi/food.php asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 924-928 927 table 2: physico-chemical properties of the experimental yoghurt means with similar superscripts are not significantly different from each other (p>0.05) ns = not significant (p>0.05) the highest significant lipid content recorded for treatments b and c could be due to the inclusion level of coconut milk at 50 and 75% levels as the milk contains 24.00% lipid compared to between 2.89% and 3.00% found in cow milk. the least lipid content of treatments a and d could be due probably to the poor inclusion level of coconut milk in treatment d and non in treatment a. the importance of coconut based yoghurt could be related to the presence of lauric acid which helps boost immune system due to its antifungal, antibacterial, anti-viral and anti-microbial properties. there was no significant difference in the level of the crude fiber content for all treatments due to the fact that all the yoghurt samples are in a liquid form with only their soluble contents. the energy content of the yoghurt was highest for treatment d followed by c and b while the least was a. the carbohydrate content of the yoghurt samples supported the report of belewu et al. (2005). the highest carbohydrate recorded for coconut milk confirmed the assertion that zeatin and zeatriniboside are associated with coconut carbohydrate (van-staden and drewes, 1975). the ph and the lactic acid contents of the yoghurt samples were similar to the reports of zubeir et al. (2012) it is less acidic and could be tolerated by everybody. this confirmed the assertion that many fermented milk products are better than non fermented products. table 3 shows the sensory evaluation of the drink. the highest acceptability of the drink was noted in treatments b and c compared to a and d. the colour, consistency and flavour of treatments b and c were preferred to others. treatments with the inclusion of coconut milk were rated higher due probably to stimulating odour of coconut milk which was impacted into the coconut milk based yoghurt and this could have enhanced the mood of the panelists. it is worth noting that the linoleic acid and lactose of aliphatic hydro carboxylic acid found in coconut milk will help in boosting immune system and also useful for people who are lactose intolerant or allergic to animal milk. parameters (%) /treatments a (control) b {25%rice milk+75% coconut milk} c {50% rice milk +50% coconut milk} d {75% rice milk +25% coconut milk} protein 2.45 c 3.73 c 4.36 a 5.20 a fat 2.90 c 5.85 a 4.16 a 3.50 b carbohydrate 73.85 a 43.15 b 29.20 d 59.00 c fiber 0.20 0.20 0.20 0.20 energy(k.cal/kg) 202.0 d 213.5 b 269.0 a 500.30 c ph 6.30 6.40 6.20 6.15 ns lactose 3.15 3.10 2.98 2.95 solids not fat 4.15 5.79 a 5.90 a 4.35 b lactic acid 0.11 0.23 0.23 0.23 ash 0.48 0.56 0.55 0.55 carbohydrate 55.00 28.00 a 30.00 a 45.00 b density 15.78 18.70 18.71 18.69 temperature 20 oc 25 oc 25 oc 24 oc freezing point 0.33 oc 0.34 oc 0.35 oc 0.35 oc asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 924-928 928 table 3: sensory evaluation of the rice –coconut yoghurt conclusion and implications this study revealed that a combination of rice milk and coconut milk (50:50) could be used for the preparation of dairy free and cholesterol free yoghurt the high nutrient content makes it a perfect dairy free alternative food. references a. o. a. c. (1990). association of official analytical chemists. official methods of analysis. 15 th edition. washington d. c. belewu, m. a (2006). a functional approach to dairy science and technology. adlek publisher, ilorin, nigeria belewu, m. a., belewu, k. y. and olatunji, s. a. (2005). soy-coconut yoghurt. preparation, compositional and organoleptic qualities. bioscience research bulletin, 21(2): 129-137 belewu, m. a. and belewu, k. y. (2007). comparative physico chemical evaluation of tiger nut, soybeans and coconut milk sources. international j. agric. biology, 9(4): 785-788. carpenter, k. j. and cleggs, k. m. (1956). the metabolizable energy of poultry feedingstuffs in relation to their chemical composition. j. sc. food and agric. 7: 45-51. coconut milk. retrieved from http://www.fineli.fi/food.php on 7/9/12 duncan, d. b. (1955). multiple range and multiple f-test. a biometric approach, (11): 1-42. el-zubair, i. e. m., basher, m. a. e., alameen, m. h., mohammed, m. a. s and shuiep, e, s, (2012). the processing properties , chemical characteristics and acceptability of yoghurt made from non-bovine milk. livestock research for rural development, 24 (3): 1-10. health benefits of homemade rice milk. retrieved from http://www.healthiro.com/dietfood/ricemilk. rice–based diet. retrieved from http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/presma/rice based -diets usda nutrient data base. retrieved from http;//www.arsu.usda.gov/service van-staden, j and drewes, s. e. (1975). identification of zeatin and zeatrinriboside in coconut milk. physiologia plantarum, (34): 106-107. parameters (%) /treatments a b c d taste 4.10 6.12 6.10 5.19 flavor 3.74 5.29 5.10 4.12 consistency watery thick thick thick colour 5.15 whitish whitish whitish overall acceptability 5.23 7.91 8.90 6.10 http://www.fineli.fi/food.php http://www.healthiro.com/diet-food/ricemilk http://www.healthiro.com/diet-food/ricemilk http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/pre-sma/rice http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/pre-sma/rice effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 4 april 2013. † corresponding author farming mothers’ perceptions on exclusive breastfeeding in ori-ade area, osun state ashimolowo olubunmi r., aromolaran adetayo k. † and akinmoyede, omolola g. (department of agricultural extension and rural development federal university of agriculture, abeokuta, ogun state, nigeria) citation: ashimolowo olubunmi r., aromolaran adetayo k. and akinmoyede, omolola g. (2013) “farming mothers’ perceptions on exclusive breastfeeding in ori-ade area, osun state”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 176-185. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4), pp. 176-185 176 author(s) ashimolowo olubunmi r., aromolaran adetayo k. and akinmoyede, omolola g. department of agricultural extension and rural development federal university of agriculture, abeokuta, ogun state, nigeria farming mothers’ perceptions on exclusive breastfeeding in ori-ade area, osun state abstract the study focused on the perception of rural farming mothers on exclusive breastfeeding in ori-ade local government area of osun state. a purposive sampling technique was used to select 120 rural farming mothers. data was collected through the use of interview guide. data was analyzed using both descriptive statistical tools (frequency distribution and percentage) and inferential statistical tools (chi-square and pearson product moment correlation).the study revealed that most (77.5%) of the respondents were married, average household size was 8 persons and (45.0%) had secondary education. all (100 percent) of the respondents were aware that babies should be breastfed exclusively for at least six months while 61.70 percent practised the method. most (90%) of the respondents indicated that sensitization could be used to encourage farming mothers to adopt exclusive breastfeeding method and 86.70% sourced their information on exclusive breastfeeding from the hospital. the chi-square result shows that there was significant relationship between farming mothers’ marital status, education and their perception of exclusive breastfeeding practises (χ 2 = 0.038, 0.039 at p < 0.05).conclusively, farming mothers in the study were aware of exclusive breastfeeding but were not totally practising it. most of them were not well informed about exclusive breastfeeding. it is therefore recommended that rural farming mothers should be enlighten to enrich their knowledge of exclusive breast feeding. keywords: exclusive breastfeeding, farming mothers, methods of breast feeding, perception introduction breastfeeding is the feeding of an infant or young child (baby) with breast milk directly from female human breast (i.e. through lactation) rather than from a feeding bottle or other container. babies have a sucking reflex that enables them to suck and swallow milk. most mothers can breast feed for six months or more without the addition of infant formula or solid food. guidelines for infant feeding recommend exclusive breastfeeding until 4 to 6 months of age, and continuing breastfeeding throughout the period of complementary feeding (who 2001, kramer and kakuma 2002).the human breast milk is the healthiest form of milk for human babies (picciano, 2001) as it contains just the right amount of fat, sugar, water and protein, and other nutrients that are needed for a baby’s growth and development. the american academy of pediatrics (aap) recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life (gartner et al., 2005). furthermore, breastfeeding should be continued for at least the first year of life and beyond for as long as mutually desired by mother and child (gartner et al., 2005). exclusive breastfeeding involves the practice of feeding newly born infants for the first six months of life on breast milk only, without any other type of food (not even water). gartner et al. (2005) defines exclusive breastfeeding as an infant’s consumption of human milk with no supplementation of any type (no water, juice, non-human milk, and foods) except for vitamins, minerals, and medications. national and international guidelines recommend that all infants be breastfed exclusively for the first six months of farming mothers’ perceptions on exclusive... 177 life. the world health organization (who) recommends exclusive breastfeeding (ebf) for the first six months of life, after which, infants should receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods while breastfeeding continues for up to two years of age or beyond (who, 2003). exclusive breastfeeding has dramatically reduced infants death in developing and underdeveloped countries by reducing diarrhoea and infectious diseases, hiv transmission from mother to child compared to mixed feeding, reduces gastro-intestinal infection, does not impair growth, helps mother lose weight, and delays return of menstrual periods (kramer and kakuma, 2002). the decreasing numbers of breastfeeding women are attributed to many factors, such as insufficient knowledge about the beneficial effects of breast milk, widespread campaigns of formula milks and early return to work. in the first half hour after birth, the baby's suckling reflex is strongest, and the baby is more alert, so it is the ideal time to start breastfeeding (widstrom et al., 1990).farming mothers’ perception on exclusive breastfeeding should also be evaluated to determine how to properly advise them because anything that affect their infants will also affect their farming activities, this can directly or indirectly affect their agricultural productivity. in this view, the study was guided by the following research specific objective: 1. describe the socio-economics characteristics of the respondents. 2. verify the awareness of the respondents towards breastfeeding and its various types. 3. identify the source of information on breastfeeding practiced in the study area 4. evaluate farming mother’s perception towards exclusive breastfeeding. 5. identify the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding and how it can be further encouraged among the respondents. study hypotheses h01: there is no significant relationship between the socio-economic characteristics of the rural farming mothers and their perception towards exclusive breastfeeding. h02: there is no significant relationship between the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding to mother/child and their perception towards exclusive breastfeeding. materials and methods the study was conducted in ori-ade local government area in the northern parts of osun state. two agricultural zones namely ipetuijesha and ijebuijesha were randomly selected. six villages were selected from each zone making twelve villages. from each of the twelve villages selected, ten rural farming mothers were purposively selected. the selection was based on nursing and post nursing farming mothers only. the total sample size for the purpose of this research was 120 rural farming mothers. data collected from well structured interview guide was analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. percentage, mean, frequencies, were used to summarise and organise data while chi-square and simple correlation were used to test the hypotheses. results and discussion personal characteristics of respondents table 1 showed that 77.5% of the respondents were married with age range of 26 33 years. this implies that there were a higher proportion of married, middle-aged young women who were nursing or post nursing farming mothers in the study area than respondents that were of different marital status. also 45.0% of the respondents had secondary education while 20 percent had primary education. this implies that the respondents’ education could have contributed to their perception of exclusive breast feeding practises. most (66.7%) of the respondents were christians while 31.7% were muslims. the study further revealed that the farming mothers have spent an average of 8 years in farming with an average of 6 persons in their household. these findings are similar to agesa (2001) findings on the socio-economic and demographic characteristics (marital status, age, gender and educational status) of the rural migrants’ household. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 176-185 178 table 1: selected socio-economic characteristics of respondents variables mean mode age (in years) 30 years 42.4% 26-33 years sex 100% female education status 27.5% secondary education religion 66.7% christianity farming experience 8 years 83.4% 1-10 years marital status 77.5% married household size 6 person 5-8 person source: field survey, 2011 farming mothers’ awareness of various breastfeeding practises table 2a showed that 87.5% of the respondents were aware of modern breastfeeding practices, 98.3% of the respondents were familiar with exclusive breastfeeding practices (practice of feeding newly born infant for the first six months of life on breast milk only, without any other type of food, not even water). all (100% of) the respondents were aware that it is good for nursing mothers to breastfeed babies for at least the first six months of life as recommended by the ministry of health (who, 2001). also, 99.2% of the respondents were aware that attendance of ante-natal session is compulsory at modern hospital. nurses recounted how they had encouraged close associates and mothers who visit the health centre to practice exclusive breastfeeding. the nurses also confirmed that at the health facility, mothers are often educated on the need to see breastfeeding as an investment that would yield bountiful dividends. even though this is the usual practice at the health facility, all the nurses expressed dissatisfaction with the rate of exclusive breastfeeding among mothers in the locality. as an approach, a number of the nurses expressed the need for effective interventions at the hospital that could prompt breastfeeding beyond mere early initiation to sustainable exclusive breastfeeding (agunbiade and ogunleye, 2012).this is an indication that there is an increase in level of awareness which may be due to an increased attendance of ante-natal session in hospitals, sensitization on baby friendly programme or adoption of baby friendly facility. table 2a: awareness on exclusive breastfeeding (n=120) statement of awareness on exclusive breastfeeding aware not aware frequency percentage frequency percentage awareness on modern breastfeeding practices 105 87.5 15 12.5 familiar with expressed breastfeeding 80 66.7 40 33.3 familiar with pre-dominant/mixed feeding 116 96.7 4 3.3 familiar with tandem breastfeeding 71` 59.2 49 40.8 familiar with extended/shared breastfeeding 64 53.3 56 46.7 familiar with exclusive breastfeeding 118 98.3 2 1.7 cleaning of tips of breast before feeding 106 88.3 14 11.7 farming mothers’ perceptions on exclusive... 179 it is good for mothers to start breastfeeding baby on first day of delivery 104 86.7 16 13.3 it is good for nursing mothers to breastfeed babies exclusively for at least six months, as recommended by the ministry of health 120 100 0.00 0.00 attendance of ante-natal session is compulsory at modern hospital 119 99.2 1 0.8 source: field survey, 2011 table 2b showed that 61.70 percent of the rural farming mothers practiced exclusive breastfeeding. this could be an indication that majority of the respondents were informed about the practice of exclusive breastfeeding, while 25.00 percent of them practiced predominant/mixed feeding. this could be linked to antenatal training and information on exclusive breastfeeding which the rural farming mothers received during their antenatal sessions in the health centers. this negates davies adetugbo (1997) who opines that most of the rural farming mothers practiced mixed feeding than exclusive breastfeeding as it was believed by the respondents to provide higher level of nutritional needs to the infants. table 2b: breastfeeding method practiced by the respondents (n=120) breastfeeding method practiced frequency percent expressed breast milk 5 4.20 pre-dominant/mixed feeding 30 25.00 tandem breastfeeding 7 5.80 extended/shared breastfeeding 4 3.30 exclusive breastfeeding 74 61.70 source: field survey, 2011 farming mothers’ sources of information on breast feeding method practised table 3 revealed that majority (86.7%) of the respondents were informed about their adopted breastfeeding practices in the hospital, probably through attendance of ante-natal sessions while the rest of the respondents (13.3%) were informed either through friends, mother or relations. this is line with shirima et al. (2001) who established in a similar study that health personnel (doctor/nurse) and the maternal mother were the main sources of the mothers' information on infant feeding in both rural and urban areas although majority of the respondents got their information from hospital possibly for clarity and medical effect of the breastfeeding practises on their health so as not to affect their performance in their main occupation which is farming, some of the respondents still sourced information from their friends, relations especially their mother for explanation based on their past experiences on any of the breast feeding methods. furthermore, since the respondents sought most their information from the hospital, any information pertaining to this issue is best disseminate either through the hospital or rural health talk and campaign on the issue to the rural mothers. this is best done by rural health workers or extension agents who have information on rural farming mothers’ occupation while giving them information on their occupation they could teach them some health tip on exclusive breast feeding practises. antenatal classes are the best starting point for birth preparation of pregnant women, where they are offered advice and tips to help and support them every step of the way and to prepare for life with a newborn baby. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 176-185 180 table 3: sources of information on breast feeding method practiced sources of information frequency percentage friends 2 1.7 mother 5 4.2 relations 9 7.5 hospital 104 86.7 total 120 100.0 source: field survey, 2011 perception towards exclusive breastfeeding among farming mothers table 4 revealed that 95% of the respondents strongly disagreed with the perceptional statement that people that breastfeed their babies are exclusively poor while only 0.8% strongly agreed with the statement. this shows that the respondents were of the opinion that breast feeding their babies does not signify poverty and that the state of either being rich or poor should not affect breast feeding of infants because these babies require breast milk for proper nurturing and growth. also, 62.8% of the respondents strongly disagreed with the perception statement that feeding with pap exclusively makes baby very strong rather than the use of breast milk while 16.7% agreed with this statement (pap is a locally make custard from maize which is commonly called “ogi”in southwest nigeria.) normal physical development in infancy requires a nutritional and adequate diet among other things (thompson, 2009). most (87.5%) of the respondents strongly agreed with the perception statement that health conditions such hiv, aids, breast cancer can disrupt breastfeeding. this opinion of farming mothers could also help them to be watchful of their health state for the sake of their infants so as not to unknowingly infect them with their own diseases that could be transferred through breastfeeding. a larger percentage (80.0%) of the respondents also strongly disagreed with the assumption that most people do not breastfeed so as to avoid breast sagging. the sagging of breast could be due to different causes rather than exclusive breastfeeding practice. the mean of perception was 14.83 and standard deviation was 3.17. majority (66.9%) had positive perception while 33.1 percent had negative perception. respondents that scored above the mean score had a positive perception while those that scored below the mean score had a negative perception. the perception of rural farming mothers has influence on their decision and reaction to the issue of breast feeding as it could affect their health, babies, as well as their farming activities. table 4: perception of rural farming mothers towards exclusive breast feeding perception towards exclusive breastfeeding s a a ud d sd people that breastfeed their babies are exclusively poor 1(0.8) 2(1.7) 2(1.7) 1(0.8) 114(95) most people do not breastfeed their babies due to lack of time/ commitment to work 5(4.2) 24(20.0) 0(0.0) 5(4.2) 86(71.7) most people do not breastfeed to prevent breast from sagging 2(1.7) 9(7.5) 1(0.8) 11(9.2) 97(80.8) giving out pap exclusively makes baby very strong rather than the use of breast milk 11(9.2) 20(16.7) 3(2.5) 11(9.2) 75(62.5) health reasons (hiv, aids, cancer, etc) can disrupt breastfeeding 105(87.5) 8(6.7) 3(2.5) 2(1.7) 2(1.7) note: strongly agree= (sa), agree= (a), undecided= (ud), disagree= (d), strongly agree (sd). figure in parenthesis are percentages. source: field survey, 2011 farming mothers’ perceptions on exclusive... 181 benefits of exclusive breastfeeding to mother/children table 5 revealed that 92.5% of the respondents strongly agreed that exclusive breastfeeding paves way for greater immune health of child while 1.7% disagreed. more so, 86.7% strongly agreed that exclusive breastfeeding reduces symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection while 2.5% disagreed with this statement. this is in line with the findings of blair et al. (1999) which reported that breast milk contains valuable antibodies from the mother that may help the baby resist infections. furthermore, 83.3% strongly agreed that exclusive breastfeeding protects infants from sudden infant death syndrome (sids) while 1.7% disagreed with the statement. most (96.7%) of the respondents strongly agreed that exclusive breastfeeding fosters bonding between a mother and her child; this agrees with feldman ( 2000) who opines that maternal bond between a mother and her child (infant) can be strengthened through exclusive breastfeeding. also, 84.2% of the respondents strongly agreed that exclusive breastfeeding reduces the risk of breast, ovarian and endometrial cancer as well as sudden infant death while only 0.8% of the respondents strongly disagreed with the statement. this agrees with krama and kakuma (2002) who opined that exclusive breastfeeding has dramatically reduced infants death in developing and under-developing countries by reducing diarrhoea and infective diseases,hiv transmission to child compared to mixed feeding, reduces gastro-intestinal infection, does not impair growth, helps mother lose weight and delays return of menstrual periods. this also agrees with the study of kunz etal (1999), blaymore et al. (2002), horne et al. (2004), world health organization (2003), armstrong and reilly (2002) as well as piscane et al. (2005). exclusive breastfeeding has dramatically reduced infant deaths in developing countries by reducing diarrhoea and infectious diseases (iwinski, 2006). it has also been shown to reduce hiv transmission from mother to child, compared to mixed feeding (coutsoudis et al., 1999; coutsoudis et al., 2001; iliff et al., 2005; coovadia et al., 2007). the results reported earlier in study showed that majority of the respondents were well informed about the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding which could have affected their perception positively, and make them possible benefactors of these benefits. table 5: benefits of exclusive breastfeeding (n=120) benefits of exclusive breastfeeding sa a ud d sd exclusive breastfeeding paves way for greater immune health of child 111(92.5) 2(1.7) 2(1.7) 2(1.7) 1(0.8) reduces symptoms of upper respiratory trait infection and collection of injection 104(86.7) 12(10.0) 1(0.8) 2(1.7) 1(0.8) protects infants from sudden infant death syndrome (sids) 100(83.3) 4(3.3) 4(3.3) 2(1.7) 10(8.3) increases cognitive development in childhood (high intelligence) 113(94.2) 4(3.3) 1(0.8) 2(1.7) 0(0.00) fosters bonding between a mother and her child 98(81.7) 5(4.1) 7(5.8) 4(3.3) 6(5.0) fosters hormonal release oxytocine and prolactine hormone that relax the mother and make her feel more nurturing towards her baby 101(84.2) 9(7.5) 4(3.3) 5(4.1) 1(0.8) reduces the risk of breast, ovarian and endometrial cancer 101(84.2) 10(8.3) 8(6.7) 8(6.7) 1(0.8) source: field survey, 2011 encouraging farming mothers on exclusive breastfeeding table 6 revealed that majority (90%) of the respondents agreed that exclusive breastfeeding asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 176-185 182 practice can be further encouraged among fellow respondents through sensitization (by organizing extension and rural health development programmes), while 55.8% of them agreed with monitoring (by intensive follow-up) and 15.0% with acculturation (introduction of exclusive breastfeeding as a new cultural trait within the community). table 6: encouragement of exclusive breastfeeding among farming mothers (n=120) ways of encouraging exclusive breastfeeding frequency percentage sensitization 108 90.0 monitoring 67 55.8 acculturation 18 15.0 source: field survey, 2011 the entries in table 6 showed that asides from sensitization, monitoring programme such as follow-up visit could be carried out by health workers so as to ensure that rural mothers were practising exclusive breast feeding and they could be further encouraged to adopt exclusive breastfeeding practises. adequate information facilitates the achievement of most other developmental goals and increases the probability that progress will be sustained as regards the continuous practice of exclusive breastfeeding hypotheses testing ho1: there is no significant relationship between the socio-economic characteristics of the rural farming mothers and their perception towards exclusive breastfeeding. chi-square analysis result on table 7 showed that there is a significant relationship between the marital status of the respondents and their perception towards breast feeding (χ 2 = 48.783, p < 0.05). this indicates that the marital status of the respondents could affect their perception toward exclusive breast feeding which implies that married farming mother could have positive perception towards exclusive breast feeding. the association between the educational level of the respondents and their perception towards exclusive breast feeding was significant (χ 2 = 51.036, p < 0.05) which indicates that as the rural farming mother advances in education, they are likely to acquire more knowledge on the issue of exclusive breast feeding, indicating that the level of a person’s education has impact on their perception towards breast feeding. the religion of the rural farming mothers was not significantly related to their perception towards exclusive breast feeding. this could probably be because the religion belief of the respondents did not discourage exclusive breast feeding and regardless of religion they practice, breast feeding is perceived more a natural than religious issue. table 7: result of chi-square variables chi-square degree of freedom asymptotic significance decision marital status 48.783 33 0.038 s educational level 51.036 35 0.039 s agricultural occupation 65.111 44 0.021 s non-agricultural occupation 92.646 99 0.661 ns religion 13.037 22 0.932 ns p < 0.05, (2-sided) ns= not significant, s = significant. source: field survey, 2011 farming mothers’ perceptions on exclusive... 183 table 8: result of correlation variables pearson value (r) p(significant level) decision age 0.247 0.007 s farming experience 0.204 0.026 s household size -0.028 0.759 ns source: field survey, 2011 entries in table 8 showed that there was significant relationship between the age of the respondents and the perception of exclusive breast feeding. this indicates that the older farming mothers could have positive perception of exclusive breast feeding; this could be drawn from the experience of the older farming mothers on child bearing and raising them. likewise the relationship between the farming experience of the rural farming mother and perception towards exclusive breast feeding was significant in that the rural farming mothers that had more experiences in farming activities which are their major occupation could have derived a means of accommodating exclusive breast feeding of their infant. the experience these rural farming mothers have in farming has an effect on their perception of exclusive breast feeding. the household size, be it small or large, is not significantly related to the perception of the rural farming mothers towards exclusive breastfeeding. ho2: there is no significant relationship between the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding to mother/child and their perception towards exclusive breastfeeding. the correlation analysis result as presented in table 9 showed that there was no significant relationship between total benefits derived by mother/child and the mothers’ perception towards exclusive breastfeeding. correlation between total perception and benefit indicated a weak negative correlation r = -0.115 and the significant level was p < 0.05. table 9: results of correlation analysis variables pearson value(r) p (significant level) decision total perception and benefit 0.115 0.213 ns source: field survey, 2011 the result of this test reveals that the perception of the rural farming mother did not affect the benefit they perceived would be derived from the practice of exclusive breastfeeding. they know the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding even though they have negative or positive perception of exclusive breastfeeding it would not affect the derived benefits the accrued to exclusive breastfeeding by the rural farming mothers. conclusion and recommendations the study established that the major and nonagricultural occupations among farming mothers were farming and knitting respectively in the study area. it was found that many of the rural farming mothers practiced exclusive breastfeeding compared to other breastfeeding methods and that exclusive breastfeeding is the cheapest source of food, naturally and readily available for infants’ direct consumption. the study also revealed that rural farming mothers agreed that exclusive breast feeding has benefit on the growth, health and wellbeing of their infants but only a few of them believed that that is one of the reasons for the good health of their babies. religion of the farming mothers was also found not to influence their perception of exclusive breast feeding while their age, marital status and education had influence on their perception of exclusive breastfeeding practice. it is therefore recommended that rural farming mothers should be educated on the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding by both government and non-governmental organization and also encourage them on how they can carry out exclusive breastfeeding without affecting their asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 176-185 184 occupation and wellbeing. since majority of the rural farming mother in the study area get their information about exclusive breast feeding from hospitals, then the health workers could use the avenue to reach the mothers for enlightenment and sensitization. references agesa, r. u. (2001). migration and the urban to rural earnings difference: a sample selection approach. journal of economic development and cultural change, 49, 847865. agunbiade o. m. & ogunleye o. v. (2012). constraints to exclusive breastfeeding practice among breastfeeding mothers in southwest nigeria: implications for scaling up. international breastfeed journal, 7, 5. armstrong, j. & reilly, j. j. (2002). breastfeeding and lowering the risk of childhood obesity. lancet, 359(9322), 2003– 2004. blair, p. s., fleming, p. j. & smith, i. j. (1999). babies sleeping with parents: casecontrol study of factors influencing the risk of the sudden infant death syndrome. bmj. 319, 1457-1462. blaymore bier, j. a., oliver, t., ferguson, a. & vohr, b. r. (2002). human milk reduces outpatient upper respiratory symptoms in premature infants during their first year of life. j perinatol, 22(5), 354–359. coovadia, h. m., rollins, n. c., bland, r. m., little, k., coutsoudis, a., bennish, m. l. & newell, m. l. 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(2001). nutrient composition of human milk. pediatr clin north am, 48(1), 53– 67. pisacane, a., continisio, g. i., aldinucci, m., d'amora, s. & continisio, p. (2005). a controlled trial of the father's role in breastfeeding promotion. pediatrics, 116(4), 494–498. shirima r, greiner t, kylberg e. & gebre-medhin m. (2001). exclusive breast-feeding is rarely practised in rural and urban morogoro, tanzania. public health nutr, 4, 147-154. thompson, ross a. (2009). child development. microsoft encarta [dvd}. redmond, wa: microsoft corporation. widstrom, a. m., wahlberg, v., matthiesen, a. s., eneroth, p., uvnas-moberg, k. & werner, s. (1990). short-term effects of early suckling and touch of the nipple on maternal behavior. early hum dev. 21, 153-163 world health organization (2001) the optimal duration of exclusive breastfeeding. report of an expert consultation. geneva, switzerland: world health organization, 2001. farming mothers’ perceptions on exclusive... 185 world health organization (2003). global strategy for infant and young child feeding. geneva, switzerland: world health organization and unicef. © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 a need for paradigm shift to improve supply chain management of fruits & vegetables in india piali halder (assistant professor (marketing); asia-pacific institute of management, new delhi, india) simayan pati (pgdm student; asia-pacific institute of management, new delhi, india) to cite this article: piali halder and simayan pati (2012). a need for paradigm shift to improve supply chain management of fruits & vegetables in india. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1), 1-20. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 1-20 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author(s) piali halder † assistant professor; asia-pacific institute of management, new delhi, india e-mail: piali@asiapacific.edu simayan pati pgdm student; asia-pacific institute of management, new delhi, india e-mail: pati.simayan@gmail.com a need for paradigm shift to improve supply chain management of fruits & vegetables in india abstract as the indian population is increasing, the demand for fresh fruits and vegetables is also increasing. owing to the perishable nature and very short shelf life, these items require proper storage and transportation facilities in order to reach to the customer in fresh state. a lack of investment in agriculture makes the country vulnerable to international price shocks as well as exchange-rate volatility. the present study undertakes a thorough review of basic and contemporary literature available and tries to explain the challenges & opportunities in supply chain management to create a bridge between rural & urban market. it also brings out relevant research gaps and overlooked problems in the supply chain. the proposed research work is exploratory in nature using secondary sources. keywords: price shocks, exchange rate volatility, supply chain management. introduction the indian economic growth in the recent years has been propelled by the growth of the service and manufacturing sectors, while agriculture sector is still playing a significant role by contributing 17% of the gdp and providing employment to 60% of the population. with the increasing focus and investments from the large national and international players in the food retailing, the agriculture sector is bound to modernize much faster in the coming years. as this sector has a strong social implication, it has also been accorded a high priority status by the government, which is facilitating its growth by charting favourable initiatives at different policy levels. the changing consumption dynamics coupled with the growth of modern retail sector, like the growing demand for the processed food offers a tremendous opportunity for all stakeholders in the areas of production, processing, marketing, supply chain, infrastructure development, technology up gradation and education. since organized retail sector has started showing interest in fresh fruit and vegetable marketing and already some of them have entered into food retailing with huge investments, but the supply chain management i.e., from the farm to fork is still in a very pathetic state. there is a need to manage the whole show in transparent and participatory ways with proper coordination with the stakeholders so that whole agriculture sector in india can derive the benefit effectively. the present study is undertaken after a thorough review of basic and contemporary literature available and tries to identify the challenges & opportunities in supply chain management in creating a bridge between rural producers & urban consumers. it also brings out relevant research gaps and overlooked problems in the supply chain management in india. indian food supply chain is full of challenges and throws open several questions which has drawn attention of contemporary researchers. according to food corporation of india (fci) sources, an average of 20%-30% (bhardwaj and palaparthy, 2008) of harvested produce is lost during transport from farm to factory. it throws opportunities in the research areas of transportation, storage and logistics, which may concentrate on minimizing these losses. present trends of food sector demands innovative, competitive and sustainable supply chains in the food sector. mailto:piali@asiapacific.edu mailto:pati.simayan@gmail.com a need for paradigm shift to improve... 2 india is bestowed with one of the best natural resources in the world and several factors like globalization, information technology, and rise of organized retails are gearing up the indian food supply chains for a better future. if properly utilized, these natural resources can be converted to an advantage. however, the path is full of challenges and hurdles. there is a comprehensive requirement of research in the area not only to fully understand the challenges in supply chains management but to identify the opportunities for improvement and also to reduce several inefficiencies in the supply chains. there is a huge potential for the researchers to take the challenge and develop a body of knowledge, which will help the government, corporate and cooperatives in handling their responsibilities by running the supply chains effectively. a need for effective supply chain management natural resources for agro-based industry india is a developing country and the economic growth of the country was dependent on agriculture for several decades. unlike many nations, india has a large pool of natural resources, which can flourish into a large resource of food products for the evergrowing population. it is a known fact that, in india, although half of the total land is cultivable, but productivity per hectare is very low. the gangatic plain is one of the most fertile plains in the world. india has more than 40 varieties of soil and a regular system of rainfall—the monsoon phenomenon. the irrigation projects, which have come up over a period of several decades, now ensure regular supply of water for irrigation in states like rajasthan. states like punjab and haryana are pioneers in achieving one of highest per hectare production records. according to the ficci report of october 2004, india is • second largest fruit and vegetable producer in the world (approximately 135 million tonnes); • second largest producer of milk; • fifth largest producer of eggs; and • sixth largest producer of fish with harvesting volumes of 5.2 million tonnes. • the above statistics are encouraging and promise a greater future. population and demographic changes indian middle and upper middle class population is growing very rapidly and there is also increase in number of young working couples, resulted in increase in demand for semi-processed food, fast foods, packed foods, ready-to-eat foods. changing taste and preference towards consumption of basic foods items, which is driven by longer working hours, increase in double income families, more exposure to advertising, for comfort and convenience etc. especially people living in cities are become more health and hygiene conscious. in place of conventional wet markets, they prefer to buy vegetables, fruits and other agri-products from the super markets and modern retail stores, and this leads to the entry of more and more corporate into the agri-food marketing. integration of primary sector, secondary sector and tertiary sector agri-sectors (primary sector) of many developing countries are undergoing drastic change in their production process and selection of crops and how they are integrating different crops for better production and profit. however, it is a relatively recent phenomenon (hobbs and young, 2000). one of the reasons that can be cited for the phenomenon is the transaction cost economics. according to the theory, economic transactions form a considerable part of transactions in an open market wherein buyer and seller incur costs in conducting a transaction. these costs arise specially when there are a large number of small players resulting in information asymmetry, bounded rationality and opportunism (williamson, 1989; and eggertsson, 1990). however, these costs tend to be low when carried out in an environment of a strategic alliance through contracting, or within a vertically integrated firm (coase, 1937; and williamson, 1979). for many agricultural commodities in the us, the trend has been away from spot market transactions and towards closer vertical coordination along the supply chain (hobbs and young, 2000). in india, setup of retail chains like reliance fresh or food world has low overall transaction costs for a given volume of transactions asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 1-20 3 when compared to the same volume traded by a large number of small players. regulatory changes also play an important role in changing transaction characteristics. for example, the apparent negative consumer reaction in europe to products containing genetically modified organisms may lead to regulatory requirements concerning traceability of these products throughout the food chain. inevitably, this will lead to closer supply chain relationships (hobbs and young, 2000). some of the examples in india are reliance fresh, spencer's, which depict the phenomenon. emergence of organized retail the emergence of organized retail, which presents superstore as the primary outlet, goes together with new retail strategies demanding emphasis on the establishing retail brand as a source of competitive advantage (hughes, 1994; and leahy, 1994). the scale and complexity of the retail store operation, along with these retail branding strategies, requires highly refined operating and control procedures and centralized management structures (smith and sparks, 1993). from a supply chain perspective, the more important aspects of emergence of organized retail have resulted in a close focus on identification and exploitation of hidden supply chain costs and efficiencies. in india reliance fresh and spencer's are the pioneers in the organized retail sector. emergence of organized retail is leading to direct benefits to the farmers, by giving better price by lowing the cost and providing better quality products to the end consumers. local companies like dabur, mtr, itc, godrej, and amul are aggressively developing semi-process and ready-toeat foods. multiple restaurant chains such as mcdonald's, pizza hut, dominos, coffee day, qwiky's and saravana bhavan, and sagar chains are growing rapidly in fast food sector. (viswanadham, 2007). emergence of technologies one of the major benefits of electronic point of sale (epos) technology is that, in concurrence with delivery information and frequent stock counts, the sales data collected presents a very clear picture of market demand patterns. along with epos, salesbased ordering systems are becoming popular which enable orders to be generated automatically in response to customer demand. this provides retailers an opportunity to develop a seamless information flow, from the checkout to retail stock control and replenishment functions (stone, 1995; and collins et al., 1989). epos and enterprise resource planning (erp) are the technologies popular with indian food retailers like spencer's and reliance fresh. from the economics point of view, the costs associated with these technologies can be justified only in case of large organized and integrated players. in the us, the availability of epos data enhanced the attractiveness of centralized distribution (mckinnon et al., 1990), which was rapidly embraced by the major grocery retailers during the late 1980s and early 1990s through the establishment of composite distribution centres. efficient centralized distribution is dependent on flexible and advanced information systems (collins et al., 1989). in india, several companies like reliance fresh, spencer's, and mcdonald’s are utilizing it for their benefit. sachin and kuttayan (2003) conducted a descriptive case study on itc's (indian tobacco corporation) e-choupal initiative. this study delineates the effect of emerging technologies on indian food supply chain and describes the benefits of information technology to the supply chain partners (itc and farmers). it has been found that farmers get the benefits like faster processing time, prompt payment and access to a wide range of information, including accurate market price knowledge, and market trends, it also help them to make efficient selling decisions. the farmers selling directly to itc through an e-choupal receive a higher price for their crops than they would receive through the mandi (traditional) system, on an average they get about 2.5% higher. the overall benefits to farmers include lower prices for inputs and other goods, higher yields, and a sense of empowerment. e-choupal saves farmers from the dreaded agents, time wasting mandi system and transportation costs. at the same time, itc also gets the benefits like lowering of procurement costs (it saves the commission fee and part of the transport costs it would otherwise pay to traders who serve as its buying agents at the mandi). itc recovers its equipment costs from an e-choupal in the first year of operation and the venture as a whole becomes profitable. the system also provides direct access to information about conditions on the ground and weather which helps farmers in planning for the next crop. a need for paradigm shift to improve... 4 itc's it initiative has paved ways to educate and update the indian farmers with the latest happenings in the commodities world and other agricultural products. globalization many transnational companies have grown so large that their size exceeds that of some nation states. thus they could override, neutralize, or even counteract the political will of a nation state". economic globalization is due to capital movements and specifically foreign direct investment (fdi). julius (1990) described the flow of fdi in the 1980s between the three areas japan, the eu and north america. this was `marketdriven' trade in services as well as goods. cable (1999) identifies that the flow to non-oecd (organization for economic cooperation and development) countries has increased as a share of the total to: • asian countries including china, singapore, malaysia, thailand and indonesia; • latin america including mexico, chile, argentina and brazil; and • eastern europe. the major beneficiaries of food supply globalization are considered to be consumers who now have greater choice and lower food prices. the `chain captains'—those who control the supply chain—have also seen significant financial benefits. organizations, seeking to improve performance, shareholder dividends and share price, are constantly looking to new markets to lower operating costs. operating in a global rather than a national market will not only give rise to increased opportunities, i.e., a potential reduction in operating costs whilst increasing the size of the market the organization can potentially trade with, but also increased threats, i.e., increased competition in the individual national markets. gaining globally recognized quality standards such as iso9000 may mean they can access markets, which are otherwise unavailable to them. rapid demands of globalization have resulted in indian companies to gear their efforts to expand their horizons. no wonder the exports have shown a rising trend. they have increased from rs. 28,764 lakh in 2002-2003 to rs. 43,002 lakh in 2006-2007 (www.apeda.com). multinational companies have entered the food value chain in india; cargill and conagra, tropicana are few of the examples. these companies will generate competition among the indian counterparts thereby improving the processes and supply chain practices. role of the government food and agriculture are two important national activities and which affect the well being of its people of the country. in formulating the policies of farming, production, processing, distribution and retailing and also in financing these activities the governments should play a leading role. this becomes all the more important in view of the globalization of the food industry. allowing foreign operators for food production, distribution and retailing is a decision of national importance. the decisions need to be consistent all along the supply chain and mutually reinforcing and not contradictory. there are several regulatory measures handled by multitude of departments divided between state and central governments. while some of this is inevitable but streamlining them would be extremely productive. further, research should be initiated to develop indigenous packaging materials, machines, laboratories for developing new food products and more importantly protocols for storage and processing food raw materials. the government of india is also aware of the importance of the sector and has taken several steps to boost the sector. in the light of high perishability of the products in the sector, the government allows import of cold storage equipment or establishing cold storages in india without any restrictions. foreign companies are allowed to have a share of up to 51% in cold chain projects. there are several arrangements to provide subsidies in the sector, for example, national horticulture board (nhb) drives a subsidy scheme which provides 25% (maximum rs. 50 lakh) subsidies to the promoter in overall capital investments. there are about 60 agri-export zones (aez) in india promoted by agricultural and processed food products export development authority (apeda) which are geared to increase http://www.apeda.com/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 1-20 5 the exports of several agri-products. these zones not only channel proper exports but also tend to reduce inefficiency in the value chains of the agriproducts. according to the web sources of apeda, the following activities are carried to improve the level of various food sector-related processes:  development of database on products, markets and services;  publicity and information dissemination;  organization of product promotions abroad and visits of official and trade delegations abroad;  participation in international trade fairs in india and abroad;  organization of buyer-seller meets and other business interactions;  information dissemination through apeda's newsletter, feedback series and library;  distribution of annual apeda awards;  provides recommendatory, advisory and other support services to the trade and industry; and  problem solving in government agencies and organizations, rbi, customs, import/export procedures, problems with importers through indian missions abroad. furthermore, to handle the expected higher agricultural production during the tenth plan period, the inter ministerial task force on agricultural marketing reforms constituted by ministry of agriculture, government of india has recommended the creation of additional cold chain facilities at an investment cost of rs. 2500 crore of which rs. 625 crore are to be provided as subsidy and the rest has to come as private investment. they have also suggested modernization of existing facilities with an investment cost of rs. 2100 crore of which rs. 525 crore are to be subsidy and the balance to come as private investment. the state governments also have initiatives in the food processing and cold chain sectors. for example the gujarat government has accorded priority to agro processing and horticulture, in view of the high export potential for fruits like mango, banana and chikoo. the government supports the sector by providing assistance to farmers for agricultural inputs, developing systems like drip irrigation and encouraging development of infrastructure facilities like warehousing, cold chain, etc for better pre-harvest and post-harvest crop management. gujarat also has good logistical infrastructure such as airport, seaport and extensive road & railway network. other states such as maharashtra, andhra pradesh, kerala and punjab have similar schemes in place. agri export zones (aezs) the concept of the agri export zone attempts to take a comprehensive look at a particular produce/products located in a contiguous area for the purpose of developing and sourcing the raw materials, their processing and packaging, finally exporting them. thus, the entire effort is centered on a cluster approach of identifying the potential products, the geographical region in which these are grown and adopting an end to end approach of integrating the entire process, right from the stage of production till it reaches the market. the government helps in sourcing for raw materials, the setting up of processing facilities, providing finance at low interest rates and even matching with international buyers. the export zones mooted by the agricultural and processed food products export development authority (apeda) to increase international trade in agri-commodities are an attempt to take a holistic approach to encouraging trade in specific commodities located in contiguous areas. for instance, in tamil nadu, the aezs would focus on grapes, mangoes and chikoo, in kerala -vegetables, in punjab and haryana -kino, wheat and rice, karnataka - vegetables and flowers, maharashtra -mangoes, grapes and flower, gujarat -bananas, mango, castor and garlic, and in uttaranchal -litchi and medicinal plants. state governments have several schemes to boost the efficiency in the sector. for example, centre for development of advanced computing (cdac) & department of food processing industries and horticulture, west bengal has jointly submitted a project, "it-based horticultural extension education for agri-business in north bengal" to the ministry of communications and information technology, government of india. the project will be taken up on a pilot basis and will assist the a need for paradigm shift to improve... 6 pineapple growers in receiving timely and relevant information. the infrastructure would include vsat, interactive voice response service and agriinformation portal anchored in local language. cdac would act as the executing agency and would maintain an interactive multimedia-based educational material for this proposed information dissemination-cum-learning services. space application centre, ahmedabad has agreed to provide free transponder for this scheme. private sector initiatives there are several private sector initiatives in the food processing and service sector. a number of companies are actively working on integrating the agriculture supply chain. here we mention a few of them. these show the feasibility of operating efficient cold chains in the india scenario. they could be treated as pilots and other projects can be built emulating them. here we consider the following cases • mcdonalds-india, a fast food service operator growing its own ingredients such as lettuce, potatoes, etc; • amul which is a highly successful cooperative dairy in gujarat. • e-choupal which is an itc success story of procurement of produce from small farmers is an example of supply chain management indian style. there are other examples such as bombay dabbawallahs which is an excellent example of sixsigma forward and reverse logistics delivery. also, itc, mahindra and rallis together are creating a network of service providers who offer information on weather and prices, credit, transport and assured demand. according to financial express dated february 27, 2008 indian it major infosys technologies has developed an information and communication technology-enabled application to help small farmers integrate their business with large retailers and improve efficiencies in agro supply chain. infosys has developed the application in partnership with the us-based non-profit development organization acdi/ voca that would help in cutting down farm-to-market losses by 30% to 40%, the company said here on tuesday. the application will minimize inventory requirements, reduce wastes and allow retailers and farmers to be better integrated. ―maintaining ontime, programmed delivery of fresh produce from a large and scattered production base is a complex and critical operation. this solution gives the organized retail sector access to a reliable smallholder production base. it thereby decreases farm-to-market losses, currently estimated at 30% to 40% on certain products,‖ head of india business unit binod h r said. the application tackles supply chain management from profiling of farmer clusters to crop planning, scheduling, tracking and forecasting and allows farmers to access technical information including database searches for data and images, access to region-specific weather updates and market information daily sales volumes and average prices. scope of the study the proposed researched work is exploratory in nature using secondary sources. the data & information will be collected from various literature reviews, industry trends, newspapers, journals & websites. though india is the second highest fruit and vegetable producer in the world (134.5 million tonnes), cold storage facilities are available only for 10% of the produce. in spite of abundant agricultural produce, india ranks below 10 in the export of food products with processing levels in fruit and vegetable sectors at around 2% only (viswanadham, 2007). the food supply chain is complex with perishable goods and numerous small stakeholders. in india, infrastructure connecting numerous small stakeholders like farmers, wholesalers, food manufacturers, retailers is very weak. farmers bring whatever they produced to the market without any knowledge about the demand in the market. inadequate usage/improper management of cold chains are leading to loss in quality of the vegetables and fruits which in turn is leading to loss of profits and business opportunity. lot of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 1-20 7 investments need to made in cold chains in india. week alignment of supply chain strategy with business strategy is also another major problem with the indian vegetable and fruit sector. rapid entry of corporates into vegetables and fruit sectors is helping farmers as many corporates are going for direct tie-ups with farmers eliminating the middle men. the current challenge is to adopt best practices in supply chain like collaborative forecasting, data integration, increased usage of it, demand-based production, incorporating a pull system for fruit and vegetable production rather than a push system sharing risk and rewards by the supply chain partners, etc. in india, major partners still operate in silos which unnecessarily lead to information distortion and supply chain inefficiencies. another challenge is to keep abreast of globalization by constantly upgrading competencies which will ultimately lead to better supply chain practices in indian food industry. when compared to china or philippines, india lags far behind in terms of exporting food items. similarly, many asian countries like china have better storage capacities and well-coordinated supply chains in the food sector. the main aim is to understand supply chain management for perishable goods especially fruits and vegetables and explore the various challenges and opportunities evolving day by day. though rapid entry of corporate into vegetables and fruit sectors is helping farmers as they are going for direct tie-ups with farmers eliminating the middle men still the challenge is to adopt best practices in supply chain like collaborative forecasting, data integration, increased usage of it, demand-based production, incorporating a pull system for fruit and vegetable production rather than a push system sharing risk and rewards by the supply chain partners, etc. what should firms from established and mature economies are increasingly expanding into emerging markets. as indian economy is still based on agrarian economy proper supply chain management of perishable goods like foods, vegetables, fish, milk will play a crucial role in developing the economy & help india to emerge as a global leader in food sector. having a galore of opportunities & resources the hindrance/gap between rural & urban market of india should be collaborated through proper vendor management, warehousing & logistics management. although various models are emerging in supply chain management of fruits and vegetables, but still there are gaps in decision areas, strategic factors etc. there is a requirement for a model that will bridge the gaps between rural & urban market will be able to create win-win situation for both. objective of study to analyze the current scenario of indian supply chain & logistics models of fruits and vegetables to analyze the effectiveness of different supply chain & logistics models of fruits and vegetables. to analyze the challenges & opportunities in supply chain management to bridge the gaps between rural & urban market. major players in food and vegetable retailing in india in india the supply chain industry in the sector of food & vegetable, milk, fish are developing through the following emerging models co-operative (hopcoms, karnataka; mother dairy, delhi) exports with eurepgap certification (namdhari fresh, bharti airtel) farm to fork -complete chain (godrej, reliance, itc) wholesaling – (adani fresh, metro) front end – convenience stores (food bazaar, 3cs) economy stores (subhiksha) vegetable retail models distinct and primary routes adopted in the retail vegetable marketing have been revealed by this exploratory study. the study found three business models of vegetable retailing. traditional retailers follow ―traditional retail model‖ (trm) and organized retailers implement two different business models—―hub and spoke model‖ (hsm) and ―value chain model‖ (vcm). ―reliance fresh‖ (reliance retail ltd.) strategically deployed a need for paradigm shift to improve... 8 value chain model and rest of the organized players in the industry go with hub and spoke model with minor modifications to fit in to their marketing and logistical strategies. traditional retail model 'traditional retail model' is a complex route for the logistical flow of vegetables, which is predominantly followed currently in traditional retail marketing. the figure below outlines the logistical route of trm of vegetable retail marketing. players involved in this model are agents (commission agents), auctioneers, wholesalers, traditional retailer of all type of formats family run 'mom and pop' stores, roadside shops, pavement shops and cart vendors apart from farmers and customers. agents, auctioneers, and wholesalers are traders in vegetable marketing. farmers are the cultivators of produce and source of vegetable supply. they are small by land holding and yield volume of crop and are highly fragmented across geographical areas. in this traditional retail model, farmers sell their products to customers and to agents intermediately. agent and auctioneers are first level of middlemen in vegetable supply chain and transfer vegetable from producers to wholesalers. numbers of transfers of ownership as well as transshipments of vegetable depend upon the number of agents present in between farmers and wholesalers. an agent operates from shops of small space, works for one or more wholesalers and normally deals with a particular range of vegetables. most of the wholesalers at vegetable markets deal with specific vegetable(s) only and there are very few exceptions in the range of products. normally wholesalers do not get involved in transportation of vegetables, both inward and outward transportation. the traditional retailers buy vegetables from wholesalers and sell directly to customers. the families-run 'mom and pop' type stores sell staple products including vegetables. customers constitute small domestic customers who buy vegetables for household consumption from traditional retailers. hoteliers who buy for commercial consumption procure their vegetables form the wholesale market. vegetable logistics in trm have four phases, producers (farmers) to (commission) agents, agents to wholesalers, wholesalers to traditional retailers and traditional retailers to customers. in the first phase, vegetables are transported from farmland to agents. farmers are responsible to bring the vegetables to agent's premises. in case of contract, the auctioneers take care of the transportation of vegetables from farmland to his premises and transportation is seller's responsibility for the transaction of vegetable between the agents and auctioneers. agents arrange to pickup vegetables directly from farming locations to deliver at wholesaler's premises for huge volume of produce and cost of transport is on farmers account. the second phase of vegetable movement starts with outward transportation form agents to wholesalers. agents handle the transportation from agents to wholesalers. during the third phase, traditional retailers, cart vendors and commercial customers buy vegetables and make their own arrangement for transport from wholesale market to their destinations. the retailers jointly hire a truck to share the transportation cost. customers and retailers are the player in the fourth phase. domestic customers shop for their vegetables at traditional retailers stores that are conveniently located closer to their residence and walk down. vegetables are delivered at door steps of the customers by cart vendors who sell vegetables in push carts, tricycles, and bullock carts. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 1-20 9 cane baskets and jute or gunny bags are used in handling vegetables. loading and unloading are carried out manually. vegetables are not cleaned and washed most of the time they are soiled. sorting, grading and packaging of any kind is being done. no temperature controlled storage or warehousing is used across the trm route. information technology and advanced management techniques are not deployed. movement of vegetables in this traditional retail business model has four legs. leg 1: the first move in vegetable journey starts with the transportation of vegetables from farmland to agent. farmers are responsible for bringing the vegetables to agent's premises. in case of contract, the auctioneers take care of the transportation of vegetables from farmland to his premises and transportation is seller's responsibility for the transaction of vegetable between the agents and auctioneers. mode of transports are mini truck, farm tractor, bullock cart, bicycle, tricycle, motorcycle and head carrying. leg 2: mode of transport is unconditioned trucks and for shorter distance farm tractors are used. agents make arrangement to pickup vegetables directly from farming locations to deliver at wholesaler's premises for huge volume of produce. leg 3: buyers of wholesalers make their own arrangement for transport from wholesale market to their destinations. the regular modes of transport for them are mini truck, motorcycle, bicycle, tricycle, and push cart. leg 4: domestic customers who reach the vegetable retail shop by walk. hub and spoke model at present, organized retailers including prominent players like spencer's retail, more (trinethra super retail ltd.) & food bazaar (pantaloon retail (india) ltd) are adopting 'hub and spoke' business model of retail vegetables marketing. figure below illustrates the hub and spoke business model of retail vegetable marketing. fewer players are involved in this model compare to the traditional retailing model. farmers, organized retailers, wholesalers and customers form this chain. buying centres, hub and stores (retail outlets) are operational units of the organized retailers. small farmers and contract farmers who executed a trade contract with the organized retailers are the primary source of supply of vegetables to the organized retailers. the buying centres make the vegetable a need for paradigm shift to improve... 10 purchases directly from the farmers and transport to the hubs. a hub is served by one or more buying centre and a buying centre serves one or more hubs. hub infrequently buys small volume of vegetables from the local wholesale market to balance demand supply gap. hub in turn distributes vegetables to stores attached to it. a store is served by only one hub. store sells vegetable in retail quantity to the customers. vegetables travel in four phases, namely farmers to organized retailer's buying centers, buying centre to hubs, from hub to retail stores and retail outlet to customer. farmers transport vegetables from farming location to the buying centers. the transport of vegetables in the second phase from buying centers to hub is arranged by buying centre. mode of transport is unconditioned trucks. fresh vegetables are transported in the third phase from hub to stores and shelf life-expiring vegetables are returned from stores to hub. the shelf life-expired vegetables are sold to cart vendor. customers buy and pick up vegetables from the organized retail stores. the stores offer home delivery for a shorter coverage area and high value of purchases. vegetables are handled in stackable plastic crates and corrugated fiberboard boxes. the loading and unloading are carried out manually. vegetables are cleaned and washed at the hub on arrival. the sorting and grading is done at the hub without packaging. the space available for temperaturecontrolled storage is very less, but warehousing is used for it. information technology and advanced management techniques are deployed partially. connectivity between hub and corporate office is established. leg 1: farmers transport vegetables from farming location to the buying centres. modes of transport are mini truck, farm tractor, bullock cart, bicycle, tricycle, motor cycle and baskets. buying centers arrange to pick up vegetables in a truck from the farm gates of the contract farmers. leg 2: the transport of vegetables from buying centers to hub is arranged by buying centre and mode of transport is unconditioned trucks. leg 3: fresh vegetables are transported from hub to stores and shelf life-expiring vegetables are picked up from stores to hub. mode of transport is unconditioned small trucks asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 1-20 11 leg 4: customers buy and pick up vegetables from the organized retail stores. the modes of transport are motorcycle, car and public transport vehicles. value chain model currently, organized retailer reliance fresh (reliance retail ltd) follows a value chain business model (vcm). organized retailers who adopt vcm procure the produces directly from farmers and sell to customers by avoiding intermediaries. this model is based on its core growth strategy of backward integration and progressing towards building an entire value chain starting from the farmers to the end consumers. very fewer players are involved in this model compared to the traditional retailing model or organized retailer's hub and spoke model. farmers, organized retailers, and customers 00are the players who form this value chain. in this practice, farmers, organized retailer's operational units, consolidation centers, hub (distribution centers) and retail outlets stores, and customers are players. small farmers, contract farmers and lease farmers are the primary source of supply of vegetables to the organized retailers. contract farmers and lease farmers are farmers who execute a trade agreement with the organized retailers for sale of vegetables. figure below illustrates the vcm business model of vegetable retailing. vegetables move from farm locations to customers in four phases, farmers to consolidation centers, consolidation centers to hub, hub to retail outlets (stores) and stores to customers. independent farmers supply their produces to the consolidation centers; contract farmers and lease farmer's produces are picked up by consolidation centers. one consolidation centre supplies vegetables to multiple hubs, depending upon the product. hubs get direct delivery from the contract farming locations. a need for paradigm shift to improve... 12 stackable plastic crates, pallets and corrugated fiberboard boxes are used in handling vegetables. the loading and unloading are done with semiautomatic platform trolleys and hydraulic stackers. vegetables are cleaned and washed at the hub on arrival. preliminary sorting and grading are done at the consolidation center without packaging. the weight sorting and size sorting is done at the hub itself. wrapping machine and film packing machines are used at the hubs. every hub has warehouse and space is available for temperaturecontrolled storage. implementation of information technology and advanced management techniques are in progress. connectivity between stores (retail outlets), hub and back offices is established. leg 1: farmers transport vegetables from farming location to the consolidation centres. the modes of transports are mini truck, farm tractor, bullock cart, bicycle, tricycle, and motorcycle. consolidation centers arrange to pick up vegetables in a truck from the farm gates of the contract farmers and lease farmers. consolidation centers also arrange to pick up vegetables from farmers if the volume is considerably high. leg 2: the transport of vegetables from consolidation centers to hub is arranged by consolidation centers and both temperatureconditioned and unconditioned trucks are used. the hubs get direct delivery form the contract farming locations. leg 3: fresh vegetables are transported from hub to stores twice a day and collection stores return shelf life-expiring vegetables to hub for disposal once a day in unconditioned small trucks. leg 4: customers buy and pick up vegetables from the organized retail stores. the stores for a shorter coverage area and high value of purchase provide home delivery. analysis of the models presently, different business models of fresh vegetable marketing are tested by the organized retailers and they are rapidly evolving. they are likely to adopt practices that have inherent strength of local values and global practice advantages. compared to traditional retailers, modern retailers are evidently cutting themselves off from the clutches of middlemen in different ways. this study finds that organized retailers offer significantly higher prices for the vegetables than their traditional counterparts to the farmers and payments is faster or payment is on delivery. this is one of the benefits of selling to organized retailers. organized retailer's buying centers are closer to the farm locations. farmers save on travel time to the mandi (traditional wholesale market) and on the hours spent waiting for auctions. they do not have to pay for transport and offloading, which is borne by the retailer. the electronic scales of organized retailers are more reliable than the local mandi's mechanical scales. the middlemen tend to roundoff the weights, which organized retailers never do. in the traditional business model, wholesalers are intermediaries and a predominant link in the retail vegetable logistical chain. in general, all the retailers are inevitably dependent on the local wholesales market. currently, traditional retailers are protected from the competition from the global retail leaders either directly or indirectly by the government policy. the expanding retail markets require a parallel expansion of infrastructure and market related technologies at least to match their speed and economies of scale. the survey respondents, especially vegetable retailers presented their feedbacks on constraints, which are having adverse effect on the retail vegetable marketing. the major constraints are poor transport facilities, non-availability of large scale cold storage, no clear policy guidelines from the government, and fragmented and small farmers. this study being an early work in the area of food mileage of vegetable in indian context, there is no reference data available related to food mileage. the speed at which vegetable reaches its destination has not been studied as time taken between any two points was not observed. this is the limitation of this study and also scope for any further research. the research study does not find factors related to the food mileage. measuring food miles is a complex task. the distance food travels has a huge impact on economical, environmental and social issues associated with transportation cost, pollution, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 1-20 13 energy conservation and nutritional value of food products. organized retail trade has resulted in more and more vegetables travelling everincreasing distances from cultivation to ultimate consumption. there is a paradigm shift from local food system to the global food system. less food mileage refers to more of local and greater mileage refers to more of global foods in our dietary habits. one of the many factors that have contributed to higher 'food miles' for organized retailer is the result of wider sourcing of supplies closer to the vegetable harvest which are located far away from retail hubs. other reasons for increase in food miles are: greater product availability at the retail outlets, particularly for seasonal items which consumers now want to buy all year round and consumers are exposed to wider range and higher quality vegetables. the strategy of organized retailers is to reduce overall cost than distance travelled. food mileage is one of the factors along with value density (ratio of product value to weight), utilization of vehicle capacity, average payload weight to calculate the efficiency and profitability of the business. the present trend indicates 'food mileage' is traded off for better utilization of cheaper manpower available in the rural area where major cultivation of vegetables is located, continued business opportunity to marginal farm owners, persistent job availability to farm workers, indirect job creation for professions associated with transportation and agriculture. diverse agro-climatic regions, untapped huge rural resources, sharply rising food demand, wide market, growing modern market mechanisms, government's agricultural sector initiatives, expected investments in agribusiness and infrastructure are tilting factors of rural market integrating into global supply chain. a unified market and integration of rural and urban markets pave a way for free movement of goods across the boundaries. free movement induces longer travel of goods without restrictions. shorter food mile is an indicator of near sourcing or rural sourcing and longer food mile of vegetables is an indicator of agricultural outsourcing. it should be noted that the study concentrates on only one dimension, ―food mileage‖, which makes us conclude that more food mileage is an indication of agricultural outsourcing. agriculture was the backbone of the indian economy as nature had been very favourable to the country. of the land within its boundaries, 52% was cultivable, as against the global average of 11%. all the major 15 climate types existed in india and sunshine hours and day length were ideally suited for good cultivation round the year. also, india had great bio-diversity and accounted for 17% of animals, 12% of plants and 10% of fish genetic resources of the world. undoubtedly, this comparative advantage was one of the reasons for the advent of a number of retail majors into food retailing in the past few years. many were leading players in fmcgs, tobacco business, and agribusiness. with their fragile life cycles, fresh foods create unique supply chain challenges. foods such as fruits, vegetables, and meats need to be nurtured to ensure they remain intact and in good quality. this includes the time that this precious cargo spends moving through the links of the supply chain -the most critical time for all fresh foods. yet many companies fail to put enough focus on their fresh food supply chains, resulting in inferior products and frustrated customers. better understanding of today's challenges and implementing a supply chain transformation strategy is the solution. challenges in farm fresh business 1. quality of produce: due to untrained farmers, old agriculture techniques, tools and equipment, perception about their own way of cultivating crops, irrigation, applying pesticides depict a huge variation in quality of produce. 2. regulations on directly sourcing from farmer: own set of traders are present in every mandi. it has been found that license requirement for buying & selling at mandis ensures entry barrier & limited competition. uncontrolled profit-making among intermediaries create constraints for organized retailers. in addition to that apmc regulations, small land holdings a need for paradigm shift to improve... 14 complicate the procedure of dealing with multiple farmers. even contract farming not fully evolved on a large scale in india till date. 3. lack of standardization: india’s fresh produces supply chain lacks standardization in product, packaging, storage & transport infrastructure. standardization is important for building scales in any operation as supply chain becomes cost effective through scale. according to fci due to poor storage and transport infrastructure 10 lakh tonnes of food grain rotted in food corporation of india (fci) godowns over the past decade which could have fed over 1 crore people for a year. decentralized procurement & storage incurs high inventory cost. improper distribution of cold stores & planning has also enhanced challenges in collaborative agri supply chin approach. in india six states have 63% of all-india capacities & 82% of all-india capacity is used for a single commodity, i.e., potato whereas fruits & vegetables gets only 0.3% of total capacity & meat & fish get 0.9%. 4. logistics cost and non-reliability of delivery time: comparatively high logistics cost & non reliability of delivery time, proper fleet management has created a massive challenge in this issue. opportunities in farm fresh business in india, 52% of total land is cultivable as against 11% in the world. all 15 major climates of the world, snow bound himalayas to hot humid southern peninsula; thar desert to heavy rain areas all exist in india. there are 20 agro-climatic regions and nearly 46 out of 60 soil types in the country. sunshine hours and day length are ideally suited for round the year cultivation of crops. india is the centre for biodiversity in plants, animals, insects, micro-organism and accounts for 17% animal, 12% plants and 10% fish genetic resources of the globe. in the live stock sector, india has 16% of cattle, 57% of buffalo, 17% of goats and 5 % of sheep population of the world. agriculture contributes 24.2% to gdp, 15.2% of total exports and provides employment to 58.4% of country’s work force. as mentioned in the ficci report of october 2004 india is the second highest fruit and vegetable asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 1-20 15 producer in the world (134.5 million tons) with cold storage facilities available only for 10% of the produce. • second highest producer of milk with a cold storage capacity of 70,000 tones. • fifth largest producer of eggs. investments in cold chain required to store 20% of surplus of meat and poultry products during 10th plan requires rs 500 crores (us$100m) • sixth largest producer of fish with harvesting volumes of 5.2 million tones. investment required is estimated to be rs 350 crore (us$ 70m). in spite of the vast natural resources and abundant agricultural produce india ranks below 10th in the export of food products. conservative estimates put processing levels in the fruits and vegetables sector at 2%, meat and poultry at 2%, milk by way of modern dairies at 14%, fish at 4%, bulk meat deboning is to the tune of 21%. currently, the food processing sector, though in the nascent stage, constitutes 14% of manufacturing gdp amounting to products value of rs.2, 80,000 crores. it employs 130 lakhs persons and is supposed to increase at an annual rate of 7%. cold chain infrastructure investments in real estate and cold chain infrastructure are capital intensive and will yield slow returns. however, 100% foreign direct investment (fdi) is allowed in this sector. the infrastructure consists of coolers, warehouses, refrigerated trucks, carriers, shopping malls, etc. one needs to study of the potential risks and the roi for this activity? third party logistics the food supply chain is temperature sensitive and manual handling reduces the product quality and life. logistics providers with air conditioned trucks, automatic handling equipment and trained opportunities for development a need for paradigm shift to improve... 16 manpower will provide end to end support. they can also adapt state of the art techniques such as cross docking that will reduce the transit times and inventory. food processing industry the government of india allows 100% fdi in this sector. there are incentives for setting up processing plants either in agri–export zones or outside of them. sourcing of raw materials either fruits and vegetables or flowers or meat is easier with an aez since there are already participants with knowledge about the industry standards. there are opportunities to create in india a. halal hub (export to south-east asia, middle east) b. vegetarian hub (20% of indian population + overseas) c. organic food hub (europe and usa) d. sea food hub retail retail, one of the largest sectors in the global economy (usd 7 trillion), is going through a transition phase in india. one of the prime factors for non-competitiveness of the food processing industry is because of the cost and quality of marketing channels. globally more than 72% of food sales occur through super stores. in india there are 12 million outlets selling food and related items including push carts, wet markets and neighborhood kirana stores. the kirana stores are generally located in small space and have no cold storage facilities. they also have restricted capital resulting in lack of shopping variety. the indian retail sector is estimated to have a market size of about $ 180 billion; but the organized sector represents only 2% share of this market. a strong retail front-end can also provide the necessary fillip to agriculture and food processing, and other industries. currently100% fdi is not allowed for foreign companies. india presents a huge opportunity and is all set for a big retail revolution. india is the least saturated of global markets with a small organized retail and also the least competitive of all global markets. emerging new supply chain new agriculture supply chain is emerging in india removing non-value adding intermediaries • partnership with value adding intermediaries of the supply chain • technology transfer • streamline processes • maintain quality • to build warehouse in the grass root level as more than 1/3 of the food gets perished due to lack of storage system in the village which are to be sold in mandis and others. • identify & rectify the bottlenecks in supply chain by providing proper infrastructure & collaborative planning, forecasting & replenishment (cpfr). • remove intermediaries & apply contract farming in a larger scale with special reference to selling directly to indian government. • enable panchayats offices with ites to get weather updates, prices, other farming techniques to increase awareness & knowledge base of the farmers. • panchayat offices should be enabled with vsat & ites so that farmers get to know about the specific need or demand of a market & can directly sell to that market to get better price. • e.g.: suppose there is a demand of any certain vegetable in the markets of eastern india, farmers from uttar pradesh & maharashtra knowing this can end their surpluses to meet that certain demand. recommendations & conclusion development of agriculture in india needs some critical management inputs particularly that of supply chain managementcollaboration among various stake-holders along with efficient vertical and horizontal integration. the food and agriculture sector in particular has to prioritize development of research in the issues of genetics, biotechnology, integrated and sustainable production systems, post harvest handling, storage, marketing and consumer education. government should create a policy environment that will ensure a mutually beneficial relationship between farmers and organized sector. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 1-20 17 along with investment in infrastructure, development of extension activities and linkages with farmers is also important areas where government can play influential roles. after the successful trials of safal market in bangalore, many state governments have expressed their desire to establish similar markets after they have amended their state apmc acts (nddb, 2004-05). emerging f&v supply chain model a need for paradigm shift to improve... 18 the two golden rules for successful development of this sector are to ensure consistency in supply; and provide recorded and demonstrated traceability of products. thus, production and marketing strategies are the most crucial in strategy development. the development strategy should be based on innovation. production innovations initially focused on efficiency and effectiveness in order to increase yields and lower costs. though india is a land of small and marginal farmers, studies have being advocating the fact that small farmers are going to feed india, thus it is important to mobilize them and help them to diversify to meet the increasing domestic demand of agri products. small farmers are the key to initiate the green revolution and with technical change and increase in international competitiveness large scale operations and vertical integration takes place. linking small farmers with high value urban and export markets would lead to development and growth of the rural sector. diversification should be encouraged by interchanging the crops without creating any threat to the nation’s food security and biodiversity. this will yield more food, more income, and better soil health. there is a strong need to strengthen research on multiple cropping driven modern technologies by using improved variety, pest management, etc. these technologies should be quickly disseminated through government institutions, ngos and even private participants by encouraging farmers’ participation and upgrading their technical capabilities. the agricultural development requires a minimum set of basic production factors, and further requires an optimal crop management and developing a post-harvest infrastructure; entrepreneurial management and expertise; logistical infrastructure; and supporting financial infrastructure. thus the production strategy should target not only meeting domestic and export demand of fresh products but also of the processed products. improving post harvest operations related to handling, storage, and marketing of fresh and processed produce. volumes saved in post harvest losses are actually the surpluses generated, without additional cost. agriculture sector needs to be developed as an organized industry and has to be run collectively by all the stake holders with farmers as the entrepreneurs. the marketing cost of fruits and vegetables is almost 50 per cent of the total cost of production, thus, there is a need to set up institutional agencies that can advance credit to farmer and motive them to market the produce themselves. post harvest losses in crops range from 15-50 per cent. at micro level these looses increase the marketing cost of the product and at macro level they also reduce the per capita availability. thus there is need to develop technologies, methods and mechanics to reduce these losses. there is need to remove the distortions in the present supply chain, create more integration between the different links of the supply chain and reduce these losses. this will result in net gain to producers, consumers and to the nation. farmers usually procure inputs from the retail market and end up selling their produce in the wholesale market. buying at retail price and selling at wholesale price is the most uneconomic way of business. thus the involvement of an institutional structure in coordinating the demand of individual farmers of the village can reduce the total cost of inputs to them. the market needs to be demand driven rather than supply driven. the price of the produce should not be based on the prevailing whole sale price but on the basis of cost of cultivation of that produce. farmers should be their own price setters rather than price followers. there is also an immediate need to integrate the production, marketing and processing processes of the produce to get maximum benefits from fruits and vegetables cultivation. there are problem with price structure in the marketing, the price offered by them is not justifying the prevailing whole sale price or even the cost of production of the produce. further successful implementing of the core marketing strategies will help in future expansion of the domestic and international markets. but the exporters face certain tariff and non-tariff barriers too. to enhance exports there is a need to develop air transport cargo system specialized for fresh fruits and vegetables, along with the airports, road and rail connectivity with the area of procurements. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(1)2011: 1-20 19 countries’ capability to generate surpluses for exports depends on its ability to tab the potential of small farmers. for this assistance from apeda and exporters association as well as training to the farmers is necessary. quality control, longer shelf life is crucial for exports. organic production of fresh fruits and vegetable is important to capture markets in europe. several steps are required to improve the agricultural supply chain. farmers should start dealing with large corporate, which in-turn would reduce large mark-up due to the large number of intermediaries coming into picture. contract farming is likely to start by large retail players who will start dealing with the farmers, providing them with the right quantity and timely supply of inputs and ensuring the forward links upto the disposal front. as the private sector players increase due to competition, investment in logistics and infrastructure would also increase which would lead to an increase in the efficiency of complete agricultural chain. one important measure would be to bring more markets under regulation and supervision of a wellrepresented market committee. another measure would be the promotion and perhaps enforcement of open auctions in the markets. yet another measure could be efforts to bring more buyers and sellers into the markets, bringing them closer to perfect markets. the direct participation of farmers should be increased. market infrastructure should be improved through storage (go-down) facilities, cold storages, loading and weighing facilities. improvement in the road network, and cold-chain facilities are also of substantial importance. greater transparency of the operations through supervision and systems can also help substantially. the market integration and efficiency can also be improved by making up-to-date market information available to all participants through various means, including a good market information systems, internet and good telecommunications facilities at the markets. thus, efforts are needed in the direction to capitalize on our strengths and remove constrains to meet the goal of moving towards systematic supply chain & logistics management which will lead to agricultural growth and development in india. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references annamalai, k., & rao, s. (2003). what works: itc's e-choupal and profitable rural transformation: web-based information and procurement tools for indian farmers. world resources institute. bhardwaj, s. & palaparthy, i. (2008). factors influencing indian supply chains of fruits and vegetables: a literature review. the icfai university journal of supply chain management , 5(3), 59-68. bendat, j. s. (1990). nonlinear system analysis and identification from random data. wileyinterscience. cable, v. (1999). globalization and global governance. thomson learning. coase, r. h. (1937). the nature of the firm. economica, 4(16), 386-405. collins, m. d., phillips, b. a., & zanoni, p. (1989). deoxyribonucleic acid homology studies of lactobacillus casei, lactobacillus paracasei sp. nov., subsp. paracasei and subsp. tolerans, and lactobacillus rhamnosus sp. nov., comb. nov. int j syst bacteriol, 39, 105-108. eggertsson, p. (1990). economic behavior and institutions: principles of neoinstitutional economics. cambridge university press. hobbs, j. e., & young, l. m. (2000). closer vertical co-ordination in agri-food supply chains: a conceptual framework and some preliminary evidence. supply chain management: an international journal, 5(3), 131-143. hughes, t. p. (1994). catastrophes, phase shifts, and large-scale degradation of a caribbean coral reef. science, 265, 1547-1551. a need for paradigm shift to improve... 20 leahy, j. 1994, business as usual, market crashes, and wisdom after the fact, american economic review 84, 5488566. mckinnon, r. d., matsui, t., dubois-dalcq, m., & aaronsont, s. a. (1990). fgf modulates the pdgf-driven pathway of oligodendrocyte development. neuron, 5(5), 603-614. sparks, y., smith, p. k. (1993). bullying in schools and the issue of sex differences. in archer j (ed): "male violence." london: routledge. pp 70-83 stone, r. (1995). if the mercury soars, so may health hazards. science, 267(5200). viswanadham, n. (2010). can india be the food basket for the world? accessed on 22 nd october 2010, available on web link: http://www.isb.edu/faculty/working_papers _pdfs/can_india_be_the_food_basket_for_t he_world.pdf. williamson, o. e. 1979. transaction cost economics: the governance of contractual relations. journal of law and economics, 22, 233-261. williamson, s. d. (1987). financial intermediation, business failures, and real business cycles. the journal of political economy, 11961216. http://www.isb.edu/faculty/working_papers_pdfs/can_india_be_the_food_basket_for_the_world.pdf http://www.isb.edu/faculty/working_papers_pdfs/can_india_be_the_food_basket_for_the_world.pdf http://www.isb.edu/faculty/working_papers_pdfs/can_india_be_the_food_basket_for_the_world.pdf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 337345 337 analysis of child labour among rural household of oyo state, nigeria alao bashir idowu management development officer i, agricultural and rural management training institute, ilorin, kwara state nigeria olasore abiodun amos principal management development officer, agricultural and rural management training institute, ilorin, kwara state nigeria aremu adeola olabisi (mrs.) management development officer i, agricultural and rural management training institute, ilorin, kwara state nigeria abstract 1 this study is on analysis of child labour determinants among the farming households of oyo state, nigeria. data for the study were obtained from 120 respondents from the target group using a three-stage sampling procedure and analyzed using descriptive statistics and logistic model. results showed that 85% of the respondents are male. the mean age of the respondent is 58 years 74.16% of them are married. religions of the respondent are 40%, 53.33%, and 6.67% for christianity, islam and traditional religions respectively. 43.33% of the households have no formal education. the average household size is 11. the average farm size of the respondent is 9.12ha. the mean income per household is less than n150 ($1) per day. age of the household head and the farm size were significant at 5%. age of household head, household size and number of male child in the house respectively have positive coefficients. gender of household head, educational level, number of female child and household income has negative coefficients. this implies that as these variables increase child labour will reduce. keywords: analysis, child labour, rural, household, oyo state 1 corresponding author‟s details: olasore abiodun amos email: aaolasore@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:aaolasore@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 337345 338 introduction child labour is a widespread phenomenon in developing countries. in recent times, the issue of child labour has continued to attract attention among policy makers and researchers. child labour is a persistent problem found almost in all the developing countries and to a lesser extent in the developed countries. africa and asia together account for over 90 percent of the total child employment. this is especially prevalent in the rural areas where the capacity to enforce minimum age requirement for schooling and farming is lacking. according to international labour organization (ilo, 2002), there are approximately 186 million child labourers in the world, among which about 111.3 million children work in hazardous conditions. at least 120 million of the world‟s children between the ages of 5 and 14 years did fulltime, paid work. many of them worked under hazardous and unhygienic conditions and work for more than 10 hours a day” in nigeria, the most populous black nation with 140 million people, there exist high incidences of child labour (world bank, 2006). in the nigeria context, child labour is defined as work done by children under the age of fifteen that is mentally, physically, socially and morally dangerous and harmful to them. it refers to work that interferes with their schooling by depriving them the opportunity to attend school thereby obliging them to leave school prematurely or requiring them to attempt to combine schooling with working at times on the farm (olujide, 2007). while children have always worked in nigeria, the incidence has increased significantly over the years. the end of oil boom in the late 1970s coupled with the mounting poverty has driven millions of children into labour especially farm work. traditionally, children have worked with their families, learning skills they would need as adults but today they are forced to work on the family farm and even as labourers in some commercial farms. the situation in rural nigeria is worst as children are either not enrolled in school or drop out of school thereby constituting the pool of child labour (obasi, 1991). the global phenomenon of child labour is attributed to several factors. the rapid population growth of many less developed countries, high rates of unemployment, inflation and low wage rate have contributed to the occurrence and necessity for children to be engaged in economic activities (grootaert, 1999). child labour is found predominantly in the informal sectors in nigeria. in rural areas of the country, children are found working on farms and herding animals. they are mostly employed by state-owned commercial agriculture plantations, which are responsible for much of the agricultural production (aredo, 1995). in urban areas and towns, children work on the streets as vendors, shoe-shine boy, car washers, scavengers, beggars, head-load carriers, feet-washers and bus conductors (aderinto, 2000). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 337345 339 according to olujide (2007), the child welfare league reported that in lagos alone there are 100,000 boys and girls living and working on the streets. in northern nigeria, children, known as the almajirai are atimes employed in private farms and in commercial farms. some of the children are even trafficked and used as farm labourers. robinson (2004) stated that national child labour survey estimates that there are 15 million children engaged in child labour in nigeria. these children are also vulnerable to being forced to farm work and in many instances they are being deprived of access to education. methodology the target respondents for this study were the rural households in oyo state, nigeria. oyo state lies within latitudes 7 0◦ 5‟n and 9 0 10‟n of the equator and longitudes 2 0 30‟e and 4 0 35‟e of the greenwich meridian; the rural households were targeted because of low income status of the households that make it necessary for them to use children in their farming activities. shaki, ogbomoso, oyo and ibadan are four agricultural development zones in oyo state. two agricultural development zones namely ibadan and saki were randomly selected. with the guide of list of villages from ministry of local government, oyo state, ten villages each were selected from the two agricultural zones out of which a total of 120 farming households were selected for the study. the tools of analysis for this study were the descriptive statistics such as measure of central tendencies which involves the use of means, coefficient of variation and percentages. the logistic model was used to measure the determinants of child labour among the rural households. the model is expressed as yi = β0 + β1x1 + β2x2+ β3x3 +β4x4 +β5x5 +β6x6 +β7x7 +β8x8 +ui where yi = dummy variable which takes the value of unity “1” if the household engages in child labour and zero “0” if otherwise. the independent variables include: x1 = age of the household head (years), x2 = gender of the household head (1 for male, „0 if otherwise), x3 = household size (number) x4 = educational level of the household head (years), x5 = farm size (ha), x6 = household income (n), x7 = number of male children, x8 = number of female children, ui = error term, β 1 – β 8 =parameters. results and discussion socio economic characteristics of respondents table 1 shows the socio-economic characteristics of the target group. about 85% of the respondents are headed by male. the rural communities are mostly male headed so that they will be able to take full asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 337345 340 responsibility of the overall household members as well as providing for their basic needs. the age of the household head to a larger extent affect the rate at which child labour use is seen. the age distribution of the household head indicates that the modal age of the respondents fall between the age group of 56-65years which accounts for more than one-third. the mean age of the respondent is 58 years and the coefficient of variation is 11.32. this shows that as household-head gets older it becomes increasingly hard to sustain the household which force them to involve children in farm labour. household-head less than 35years are not involved in child labor practice in the area. the marital status of the respondent indicates that 74.16% of them are married. the implication of this is that more children are expected to be living in the households. this high number of married respondents will lead to more child labour. the results showed that 40%, 53.33%, and 6,67% respectively practice christianity, islam and traditional religions. islam and traditional religions support polygamy. this means 60% of the respondent can practice polygamy which enables them to have many wives and children. education is known to facilitate greater understanding about the menace of using child labour in farming activities. the educational level of the household indicates that about 43.33% of the households have no formal education at all and only 19.1% had above primary education. this percentage is too low to make appreciable impact in reducing child labour in the target area. the household size is an important factor that determines the number of children in the households. family size is an important source of labour in the rural areas. the average household size is 11 and the coefficient of variance is 3.72. the size of the household indicates that majority of the household members fall within the range of 11-15. these larger members and the number of dependents may be the more reason why the household head engages the children in farm work. the high average size of the household may be as a result of low literacy and religion practiced by the respondents that permit polygamy. the area of land cultivated by the respondents is very important as it determines to some extent the number of children engaged in farm work. the average farm size of the respondent is 9.12ha and the coefficient of variance is 5.87. the implication is, since farming is done manually children will be engaged to meet the farming labour needs. the income level of the household head indicates that about 31.67% earns between n110,000 to n 150,000 per annum. the mean income of the respondents is 184,820 and the coefficient of variance is 175,561,52. the mean income per household is less than $1 per day. the meager amount might be the reason why household use children on the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 337345 341 farm in order to augment the family income and reduce cost of labour. table 1: socio-economic characteristics of respondents characteristics frequency percentage % gender male 103 85.83 female 17 14.17 total 120 100 age  35 6 5 35-45 17 14.16 46-55 20 16.67 56-65 50 41.67  65 27 22.5 total 120 100 mean 58 co-efficient of variation 11.32 marital -status married 89 74.16 widowed 15 12.5 widower 15 12.5 single 1 0.83 total 120 100 religion christianity 48 40 islam 64 53.33 traditional 8 6.67 total 120 100 educational status no formal education 52 43.33 adult literacy training 20 16.67 primary education 25 20.83 secondary education 17 14.1 post secondary education 6 5 total 120 100 household size 1-5 21 17.5 6-10 35 29.16 11-15 48 40 16 16 13.33 total 120 100 mean 11 co-efficient of variation 3.72 farm size (ha) 1-5 29 24.18 6-10 55 45.83 11-15 13 10.83 16-20 13 10.83 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 337345 342  21 10 8.33 total 120 100 mean 9.12 co-efficient of variation 5.87 income (n)  25,000 13 10.83 26,000-50,000 18 15 51,000-100,000 10 8.33 110,000-150,000 38 31.67 160,000-200,000 14 11.67 250,000-300,000 12 10  300,000 15 12.5 total 120 100 mean income 184,820.10 co-efficient of variation 175,561,52 source: field survey, (2010) table 2 indicates that age of the household head x1 and farm size x7 were significant at 5% level, implying that these factors predispose the households in the study area to engage children in their farming activities. the age of the household head x1, has a positive coefficient. this means that as the household head becomes more aged, the higher will be the likelihood that the children will be used on the farm. this is probably, because of the fatigue that may be experienced by the aged household head. this is also expected because there is no social insurance that takes care of the aged in nigeria. the aged most often maintain their farm land especially the plantations until they die. since the aged cannot take care of their farms themselves, they depend on the children around (who many atimes are their grand children) that stay with them to take care of their farm lands. the household size x3 has a positive coefficient. this implies that as the household size become larger, there will be more number of dependents in the household; the more the likelihood that more children will be engaged in farm work. that is, the higher the number of dependents in the household, the greater will be the likelihood of them taking children to work on farm. in most rural communities, people in their old ages still give birth to children. it is not uncommon to see men in their 70s and 80s still giving birth through their younger wives since most men in the rural areas of the study area practice polygamy. this scenario gives rise to an increasing family size coupled with grand children who may be asked to live with their grandparents. the number of male child in the household x5, has a positive co-efficient, implying that the higher the number of male children, the easier it is for the household head to engage them to farm work and the more will be likelihood of engaging them on the farm. there is gender division of labour in farming activities in nigeria. in south-west nigeria asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 337345 343 in which the people of the study area belong, most tedious farm works which are carried out manually such as land preparation, weeding and harvesting are performed by men. these tedious farming activities require more man-days to do. in this case, more adult male and male children are engaged to do them. the farm size x7 co-efficient is also positive and significant because the larger the farm size, the more will be the form of different farming activities that would be required in the farm and this will predispose the household to use children on the farm in order to cultivate the large expanse of land. the children might be forced to engage in heavy farm work at the rate that will jeopardize their passion for learning. the gender of the household head x2 has a negative significance. the sex of the household head has no effect on the likelihood of using child labour on the farm because most of the sample households were male headed and female headed household are not prevalent especially in the study area and in nigeria at large. the educational level of the household head x4 is not significant at 5 percent and therefore will not predispose them to use children on the farm; this is because as the household head become more educated, the less will be the likelihood of using children on the farm. it is only the illiterate household heads that will put children to farm work not minding the benefit of education on human capital development of the child. the higher the literacy level of the household and the less will be the need to use children on the farm. this is so because educated families send their children to school very early. this situation makes such children escape being used as labour on the farm. the number of female child x6 in the households has a negative significance on the predisposing factors that determine household to use child labour on farm, the female children by nature are created weak and will not be able to do heavy farm work like their male counterpart. the higher the number of female children in the household, the lower the likelihood that such household head engage them on the farm. this is contrary to the result obtained for number of male child. as said, there is gender division of labour in farming activities of the study area in which female are less engaged in tedious farm works. the income level of the household head x8,is not significant at all because the higher the income earned by the household head from the farm output, the lower will be the likelihood of using child labour on the farm. instead of using children, the household head will prefer to employ hired labourers to work on the farm. the income level may also influence use of modern technology in farming activities. when farming households earn more income they may engage herbicides and sprayers in control of weeds and hire tractor for land preparation. these two activities will reduce use of human labour in farming activities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 337345 344 table 2: logistic regression estimates of factors determining household use of child labour factors coefficient standard error t –value age of household head x1 gender of household head x2 household size x3 educational level x4 no. of male child x5 no. of female child x6 farm size x7 household income x8 0.0236637 0.4821543 -0.0606467 -0.4217471 0.281733 -0.1755933 0.0638322 -0.3884857 0.0234575 0.7440525 0.0798968 0.1876571 0.168406 0.1669436 0.0510947 0.2332468 2.01* -0.65 1.76 -0.23 1.67 -1.05 1.75* -1.27 field survey; 2010 * coefficient significant at 5 percent conclusion and recommendation based on this study, the more the age of the household head and the farm size the higher the incidence of child labour. in view of this, the government could initiate social insurance for the aged to take care of them. family planning education should be promoted among the people of the rural areas to reduce household size. there may be special micro credit for the rural household which will help them acquire modern technology that will reduce use of human labour in carrying out farming activities. . example of such technology is use of sprayer and herbicides. also, it is concluded from the study that the higher the educational level, number of female children and household income the lesser the child labour. the target group should be educated on the menace of child labour. this could be done through informal education. there is evidence of poverty among the target group in which they spend less than n150 ($1) per day. income generation projects should be initiated for the target group. references aderinto, a. a. (2000). social correlates and coping measures of street children: a comparative studies of street and non-street children in southwestern nigeria. child abuse and neglect, 24(9):199-213. aredo d. (1995). labour utilization in peasant agriculture: private and comparative farms in an ethiopian village. issues in african rural development, 2: 33-42 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 337345 345 grootaert, c. (1999). child labor in cote d‟ivoire, incidence and determinants. pp. 2362 ilo (2002). international programme on the elimination of child labour international labor organization ilo. child labor surveys: results of methodological experiments in four countries, 1992-3. geneva: ilo. obasi, p.c. (1991). resource use efficiency in food crop production. a case study of owerri agricultural production of imo state, nigeria msc.thesis of university of ibadan olujide p. d. (2007). involvement of farmers‟ children in farming activities in lagos state. annual conference of children on agricultural programme pp153-157. robinson, e. (2004). children at work in rural northern nigeria: patterns of age, space and gender. journal of rural studies, 20: 193-210. world bank. (2006). nigeria: country brief. retrieve from the world bank websites http://web.worldbank.org/website/extern al/countries/africaext/nigeriaextn/0,men u pk:368906~pagepk:141107~thesitepk :368896,00. html. last assessed november 2009. http://web.worldbank.org/website/external/countries/africaext/nigeriaextn/0,menu http://web.worldbank.org/website/external/countries/africaext/nigeriaextn/0,menu http://web.worldbank.org/website/external/countries/africaext/nigeriaextn/0,menu effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants published by: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 5(1)2015, www.aessweb.com 13 a comparative study of distillery spent wash with npk (standard chemical fertilizers) at seedling stage of sorghum (sorghum bicolor l.) aijaz ahmed soomro department of agronomy, sindh agriculture university, tandojam, pakistan ayaz ahmed soomro department of chemistry, government (girls) degree college, jacobabad, pakistan abstract the price of commercial chemical fertilizers is beyond the purchasing power of farming community of world‟s developing countries. therefore, to find out the substitute of these commercial chemical fertilizers a comparative study was conducted at seedling stage of sorghum variety named sarokartuho in seed testing laboratory. the experiment was carried out in completely randomized design (crd) with three replications and three treatments, i.e. only drinking water (as check), recommended dose of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium (npk commercial fertilizer), 30%+70% of distillery spent wash + water, 50%+50% distillery spent wash + water respectively. the results for spent wash (t2) were at seed germination% (95.33%), shoot length (6.62 cm), root length (5.49 cm), shoot fresh weight (0.18 mg), root fresh weight (0.019 mg), shoot dry weight (0.017 mg) and root-dry weight (0.005 mg) of sorghum. however, the maximum values for these all traits of observations except seed germination were recorded at recommended dose of npk (chemical fertilizers). keywords: distillery spent wash, sorghum, root, shoot, npk 1. introduction 1 in south asia, africa, and central america sorghum is cultivated for grain purpose. it is a major food crop in that region of the world. in usa, australia and south america, sorghum is also cultivated mostly as a fodder crop. sorghum is adapted to warm and dry climate but the greatest area of the crop is cultivated in drought-prone areas of the world. in these areas, sorghum is usually grown with limited inputs in conditions of sparse rainfall and low soil fertility. therefore, it faces disease and pest problems, which results low yields (purnima, 2009). sugarcane is an important cash crop of pakistan. it is mainly grown for manufacturing the sugar and sugar-related products. it also produces essential items for industries like molasses, chipboard and paper. its shares in value added of agriculture and gdp are 3.4 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively (bayer crop science, 2014). apart from the sugar and alcohol, sugar mills generate many by-products and waste materials. distillery spent wash is the unwanted residual liquid waste generated during alcohol production (sarayu et al., 2009). the spent wash is acidic (ph 3.94 to corresponding author‟s name: aijaz ahmed soomro email address: professoraijazahmed@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:professoraijazahmed@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 13-20 14 4.30) and loaded with organic and inorganic salts, resulting in high ec (30-45 ds/m). as it is a plant originated, hence it also contains considerable amount of plant nutrients and organic matter (table 1). as spent wash contains essential plant-nutrients, so, it can effectively be used as a source of plant nutrients and as soil amendment. recently, the presence of appreciable amounts of plant growth promoter viz., gibberellic acid (ga) and indole acetic acid (iaa) have also been detected from spent wash which further enhances the nutrition value of spent wash. distillery spent wash contains some soluble salts and essential plant nutrients. among the plant nutrients, potassium (k) is found in higher amounts followed by nitrogen (n) and phosphorus (p). the presence of calcium (ca) in considerable amounts makes the spent wash a potential amendment for reclaiming the sodic soils. (murugaragavan, 2002). the high concentration of ca (2050 – 7000 mg/l) in spent wash may have the potential in reclaiming the sodic soils similar to that of gypsum„s function (santiago and nanthi, 2004). the effects could be ascribed to the nutrients and the growth promoters like gibberellic acid (ga) and indole acetic acid (iaa) present in the spent wash. the presence of appreciable amounts of plant growth promoter such as ga and iaa add an additional value to the spent wash. it was observed that the activity of enzymes and microbes was also enhanced in soils amended with the spent wash. (santiago and nanthi, 2004). sorghum (sorghum bicolor) ranks as a one of the major crop of the world next to wheat and rice. it is extensively cultivated in africa, argentina, australia, central and south america, china and india. it is tolerant crop to heat and drought. however, sorghum cannot tolerate low temperature. if it is exposed to temperature below 5 o c prussic acid accumulates in its vegetation and may reach levels that are toxic to livestock. however, in sindh this crop is harvested well before onset of low temperature (bhatti and atta, 1996). as far as spent wash is concerned, technologies based on scientific experimentation are needed for effectively utilizing this valuable resource in agriculture without any environmental hazards (santiago and nanthi, 2004). table 1: some important properties of spent wash are shown in the following table ph 3.9 – 4.3 ec (ds/m) 30.5 – 45.2 biological oxygen demand 46100 – 96000 chemical oxygen demand 104000 – 134400 total dissolved solids 79000 – 87990 nitrogen 1660 – 4200 phosphorous 225 – 3038 potassium 9600 – 17475 calcium 2050 – 7000 magnesium 1715 – 2100 sodium 492 – 670 sulphate 3240 – 3425 chloride 7238 – 42096 zinc 3.5 – 10.4 copper 0.4 – 2.1 manganese 4.6 – 5.1 gibberellic acid 3246 – 4943 indole acetic acid 25 – 61 (all values are in mg/l unless otherwise stated) sources: rajukkannu and manickam (1997); valliappan (1998); murugaragavan (2002) therefore a careful study has been conducted to examine the utilization of distillery spent wash (dsw) as an alternate source of fertilizer for crop plants in order to assess the impact of dsw on asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 13-20 15 germination and early growth stages of sorghum (sorghum bicolor l.) and to compare the efficiency of npk fertilizers with dsw as a source of plant nutrients. 2. materials and methods a pot experiment was conducted at “seed testing laboratory”, department of agronomy sindh agriculture university tandojam, pakistan. the seed of variety named sarokartuho of sorghum (sorghum bicolor l.) was received from agriculture research institute tandojam, pakistan and distillery spent wash was received from unicol ltd. at (mirpur khas sugar mills ltd.), sindh, pakistan. the seed was soaked with water for 24 hours before sowing. then ten good seeds with uniform size were sown in each sand-filled pot. ten pots were used for each replication. total three treatments were applied, which were, t1= the proposed dose of npk was applied at the rate of 12050-50 kg per acre respectively in npk treated pots, t2= spent wash with prepared concentrations of 30%+70% (distillery spent wash + water) and t3= 50%+50 (distillery spent wash + water) was applied in dsw treated pots respectively. the experiment was carried out in completely randomized design (crd) with three replications. then the data was collected for germination % 10 days after sowing (das) and other early growth traits were recorded 25 days after sowing (das) such as, shoot-root length (cm), shoot-root fresh weight (mg) and shoot-root dry weight (mg). 3. results 3.1. seed germination (%) the results for seed germination% of sorghum as affected by proposed dose of npk and different spent wash concentrations presented in table 2. the table showed maximum seed germination % 95.33 with application of t2 distillery spent wash + water followed by t1 at 92.67%. however, t3 spent + water (50+50) showed lowest germination% at 78.67. the non-fertilized (control as check) plants (control as check) produced better on seed germination at 83% which was better than t3. table 2: npk and spent wash effects on germination (%) of sorghum (sorghum bicolor l.) 10 days after seed sowing treatments germination % non fertilized plants (control as a check) 83.00 d t1 = npk treated plants 92.67 a t2 = spent wash + water = 30%+70% 95.33 b t3 = spent wash + water = 50% + 50% 78.67 c control as check = non-treated plants. t1 = traetment1, t2 = treatment 2 & t3 = treatment 3 a, b, c, d = ranking (grading) of seed germination according to its percentage 3.2. shoot length (cm) the results for shoot length (cm) of sorghum as affected by npk and different concentrations of spent wash are presented in table 3. the result showed that the maximum shoot length at 8.37 cm was obtained with npk application followed by distillery spent was + water (t2) at 6.62 cm was observed. while t3 produced 5.14 (cm) of shoot length. furthermore, results indicated that non-fertilized plants had adverse effects on shoot length which was found at 4.11 (cm). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 13-20 16 table 3: npk and spent wash effects on shoot length (cm) of sorghum (sorghum bicolor l.) 25 days after seed sowing: the minimum root length was recorded of the plants under control as check at 4.11 cm. table 3: npk and spent wash effects on shoot length (cm) of sorghum (sorghum bicolor l.) 25 days after seed sowing treatments shoot length (cm) (average) non fertilized plants (control as a check) 4.11 d t1 = npk treated plants 8.37 a t2 = spent wash + water = (30%+70%) 6.62 b t3 = spent wash + water = (50% + 50%) 5.14 c cm = centimeter full forms of other abbreviations are as same as for table 2 ranking is as same as for above tables 3.3. root length (cm) the results for root length (cm) of sorghum as affected by different seed priming sources presented in table 4. the table showed that t1 caused maximum root length at 6.25 (cm) followed by 5.49 cm which was observed by the application of t2. however, t3 showed 4.16 root lengths. whereas, further results indicated that control as a check produced minimum root length recorded at 3.19 cm. table 4: npk and spent wash effects on root length (cm) of sorghum (sorghum bicolor l.) 25 days after seed sowing treatments root length (cm) non fertilized plants (control as a check) 3.19 d t1 = npk treated plants 6.25 a t2 = spent wash + water = (30%+70%) 5.49 b t3 = spent wash + water = (50% + 50%) 4.16 c all abbreviations are as same as in table 3 3.4. shoot fresh weight (mg) the results for shoot fresh weight (mg) of sorghum as affected by npk and different spent wash concentrations are presented in table 5. the results showed that the maximum shoot fresh weight was recorded from plants under t1 at the average of 0.23 gm followed by t2 at 0.18 mg. however, t3 resulted higher shoot fresh weight at 0.12 mg than control as check which was at 0.10 mg. table 5: npk and spent wash effects on shoot fresh weight (mg) of sorghum (sorghum bicolor l.) 25 days after seed sowing treatments shoot fresh weight (mg) (average) non fertilized plants (control as a check) 0.10 d t1 = npk treated plants 0.23 a t2 = spent wash + water = (30%+70%) 0.18 b t3 = spent wash + water = (50% + 50%) 0.12 c mg = milligram all the data is presented as an average of all plants all other abbreviations are as same as in table 3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 13-20 17 3.5. root fresh weight (mg) the results for root fresh weight (mg) of sorghum as affected by npk and different spent wash concentrations are presented in table 6. the results showed that the t1 produced maximum root fresh weight at the average of 0.026 mg followed by t2 which resulted 0.19 mg. however, t3 showed the root fresh weight at 0.013 mg which was higher than control as check which was at 0.010 mg. table 6: npk and spent wash effects on root fresh weight (mg) of sorghum (sorghum bicolor l.) 25 days after seed sowing treatments root fresh weight (mg) (average) non fertilized plants (control as a check) 0.010 d t1 = npk treated plants 0.026 a t2 = spent wash + water = (30%+70%) 0.019 b t3 = spent wash + water = (50% + 50%) 0.013 c all abbreviations and rule for ranking are as same as for above table 3.6. shoot dry weight (mg) the results for shoot dry weight (mg) of sorghum as affected by npk and different spent wash concentrations are presented in table 7. the results showed that the maximum shoot dry weight was recorded from application of t3 which was at the average of 0.022 mg followed by t2 at 0.017 mg. the results for t3 application ranked 3 rd at 0.013mg. the minimum shoot dry weight was recorded from the control as check at 0.011 mg. table 7: npk and spent wash effects on shoot dry weight (mg) of sorghum (sorghum bicolor l.) 25 days after seed sowing treatments shoot dry weight (mg) (average) non fertilized plants (control as a check) 0.011 b t1 = npk treated plants 0.022 a t2 = spent wash + water = (30%+70%) 0.017 c t3 = spent wash + water = (50% + 50%) 0.013 d all abbreviations and ranking of data are based on same rule as for above tables 3.7. root dry weight (mg) the results for root dry weight (mg) of sorghum as affected by npk and different spent wash concentrations are presented in table 8. the maximum average root dry weight was recorded for the application of t1 at 0.005 mg followed by 0.003 mg from the t2. however, (as per mathematical rule of conversion of digits after decimal), the control as check and t3 showed ranking c at 0.001 mg. table 8: npk and spent wash effects on root dry weight (mg) of sorghum (sorghum bicolor l.) 25 days after seed sowing treatments root dry weight (mg) non fertilized plants (control as a check) 0.001 c t1 = npk treated plants 0.005 a t2 = spent wash + water = (30%+70%) 0.003 b t3 = spent wash + water = (50% + 50%) 0.001 c all the abbreviations used in this table and ranking of results are as same as in above table 02 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 13-20 18 4. discussion it is doubtless that day by day the prices of chemical fertilizers are increasing. as these chemical fertilizers are also used as the sources of major nutrients such as, npk which are essential for the crop growth and development. and the fertilizers which contain npk are widely used throughout the world of agriculture. so for this, a series of studies on comparative performance of different crop plants under proposed dose of npk and different concentrations of spent wash has been started. this study is one of them. the general performance of sorghum for all measured traits of evaluation except seed germination under proposed dose of npk is comparatively better than distillery spent wash. but it is very much important to note that when it was asked that “what were alcohol-mills doing with that spent wash?” the simple answer was “the alcohol manufacturing mills are discarding spent wash through drainage system of the areas and drain-out it to the nearest water-logged ponds”. as distillery spent wash contains about 13 essential elements (listed above in table 1) as well as gibberellic acids and indole acetic acid which play very much important and indispensable role in crop growth and development. in this study plants which received proposed dose of npk performed best of all other conditions except seed germination percentage. it could be assumed that as ph of distillery spent wash was acetic, so, the germination% under t2 was best of all other treatments and it was very poor at t3 might be because of some toxic effects of high concentration of distillery spent wash + water at (50% + 50%). however, controlled plants (zero application of both npk and distillery spent wash) showed predictably lowest values for all traits such as, germination%), shoot length, root length, shoot fresh weight, root fresh weight, shoot dry weight and root dry weight whereas, all other treated plants with npk or spent wash had higher trends for all traits of measurement. these findings are in agreement with those of mohamed hussein and ashok (2014), who also noted that the biomass of the plant which received npk was higher than the plants which were not given npk fertilizers. the crop growth and its attribute of sorghum improved under the positive impact of npk application (singh and balyan, 2000). not only in this study the performance of sorghum improved with proposed dose of npk, but sharma et al. (2000) also observed higher dry matter and more yield of wheat with the application of npk than control. this better performance of sorghum under npk application might be due to available forms of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, shepherd and withers (1999) has also agreed with this concept, which has extended the idea that sorghum is a heavy feeder of nutrients, particularly nitrogen uptake. our findings for role of npk in better performance of sorghum for all traits of measurement also resemble with that of hasnabade et al. (1990) who observed that npk application is beneficial for performance of soybean productivity. in case of distillery spent wash study, our recorded results were predictably higher than control as check and less than npk treated plants. radha (2011) has also recorded similar decreasing trends of traits under different concentrations of crude spent wash csw (10, 100 ml kg 1 soil) and distillery spent wash dsw (100 ml kg 1 soil). in another study by gahlot et al. (2011) observed that as the concentrations of spent wash increased from 2.5% to 20% so the root weight was decreased from 0.895 g plant 1 to 0.035 g plant 1 and at the same concentrations shoot dry weight also decreased from 0.668 g plant 1 to 0.441 g plant 1 . these all studies suggest that as concentrations of distillery spent wash increased so, the performance of sorghum was comparatively poorer than recommended dose of npk chemical fertilizers. therefore, some more studies will be conducted on reduced concentrations of spent wash. in these upcoming studies the concentration of distillery spent wash would be used less than 30% with more than 70% of water. there is a great hope that after conducting upcoming studies on reduced concentration of distillery spent wash; we will be able to recommend the proper concentration of the distillery spent wash to the farmers as it could be utilized as a productive as well as cheapest substitute of chemical fertilizers. 5. conclusion it is concluded that the overall performance of sorghum crop at its seedling stage was best at the recommended dose of npk while compared with all other treatments. however, the findings for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 13-20 19 response of sorghum to distillery spent wash + water at (30%+70%) has also opened a gate-way to utilize t2 concentration of distillery spent wash with water in the areas where spent wash is easily available as compared to npk chemical fertilizers. it was observed that as the concentration of dsw increased, so, the performance of crop decreased. therefore, dsw at lower concentrations is only useful for getting good results from the crops under dsw treatment. because of cost free availability of dsw, easiness and its convenience to bring this methodology in practice, the farmers can apply this novel strategy for acquiring food sustainability at lower input cost. acknowledgement the authors are highly thankful to agriculture research institute (ari) tandojam, pakistan for supply of required seed of sorghum and unicol ltd. at (mirpur khas sugar mills ltd.), sindh, pakistan for provision of distillery spent wash. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. reference bayer crop sciences (2014). bayer crop sciences pakistan. (accessed on 27/11/2014), www.bayercropscience.com.pk. bhatti, m., & atta, h. s. (1996). agricultural inputs and field crop production in sindh. jowar (sorghum), p. 175. gahlot, d. k., kukreja, k., suneja, s., & dudeja, s. s. (2011). effect of digested distillery spent wash on nodulation, nutrient uptake and photosynthetic activity in chickpea (cicer arietinum). acta agronomica hungarica, 59(1), 1-13. hasnabade, a. r., bharmbe, r. r., hudge, v. s., & cimanshette, t. g. (1990). response of soybean to n and p and irrigation application in vertisol soils. ann. plant physiol, 4, 205210. hussein, m., & ashok, k. a. (2014). growth, yield and water use efficiency of forage sorghum as affected by npk fertilizer and deficit irrigation. american journal of plant sciences, 5(13), 2134-2140. murugaragavan, r. (2002). distillery spent wash on crop production in dry land soils. m.sc. (environmental sciences) thesis, tamil nadu agricultural university, coimbatore, india. purnima (2009). importance of sorghum. http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/content/importance-sorghum. radha, j. s. s. (2011). nutrient composition of spent wash and its impact on sugarcane growth and biochemical attributes. physiol. mol. bio. plants, 18(1), 95-99. rajukkannu, k., & manickam, t. s. (1997). use of distillery and sugar industry waste in agriculture. in proceedings of the sixth national symposium on environment, tamil nadu agricultural university, coimbatore, india pp. 286-290 (tamil nadu agricultural university, coimbatore). santiago, m., & nanthi s. b. (2004). australian new zealand soils conference, 5-9 december 2004, university of sydney, australia. published on cdrom. website www.regional.org.au/au/asssi/. sarayu, m., bhavik, k. a., & datta, m. (2009). distillery spent wash: treatment technologies and potential applications. journal of hazardous materials, 163(1), 12-25. sharma, p. k., yadav, g. l., sharma, b. l., & kumar, s. (2000). response of wheat to nitrogen and zinc fertilization. indian j. agron, 45, 124-127. http://www.bayercropscience.com.pk/ http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/content/importance-sorghum http://www.regional.org.au/au/asssi/ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0304389408009746 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0304389408009746 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 13-20 20 shepherd, m. a., & withers, p. j. (1999). applications of poultry litter and triple superphosphate fertilizer to a sandy soil: effect on soil phosphorus status and profile distribution. nutr. cycl. agroecosyst, 54, 233-242. singh, k., & balyan, j. s. (2000). performance of sorghum-legume intercropping under different plant geometries and n levels. indian j. agron. 45, 64-69. valliappan, k. (1998). recycling of distillery spentwash and ecofriendly effective reclamation technology for soils. ph.d thesis, dept. of soil science and agricultural chemistry, tamil nadu agricultural university, coimbatore, india. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 3 march 2013. acknowledgements: the author thanks to international finance corporation/ifc on oral permission to use data surveys and farmer mentoring of coffee logbook project at north sumatra in 2010/2011. socioeconomic and ecological dimension of certified and conventional arabica coffee production in north sumatra, indonesia jef rudiantho saragih (department of agribusiness, simalungun university pematangsiantar, north sumatra, indonesia) citation: jef rudiantho saragih (2013) “socioeconomic and ecological dimension of certified and conventional arabica coffee production in north sumatra, indonesia”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 93-107. socioeconomic and ecological dimension of.... 93 author jef rudiantho saragih department of agribusiness, simalungun university pematangsiantar, north sumatra, indonesia socioeconomic and ecological dimension of certified and conventional arabica coffee production in north sumatra, indonesia abstract the study was conducted in six subdistricts of simalungun district, north sumatra, indonesia. the research objective is knowing the influence of socioeconomic and ecological factors on production of specialty arabica coffee. determination of the households sample was using probability proportional to size and simple random sampling for 79 units certified coffee farms and 210 units conventional coffee farms. farmer’s data was analyzed with multiple linear regression model. benefit of coffee certification compared to conventional coffee was analyzed by independen t-test. increased production of arabica coffee could be achieved by intensification strategy through: increased application of suitable fertilizer recommendations, facilitation of coffee farm credit, optimization of land use (intercropping or multistrata coffee), optimization of family labour used, and application of gaps (shade tree, organic fertilizer, coffee pruning, land conservation, and control of cbb). ecological dimensions have important role in the development of specialty arabica coffee in the simalungun highland; i.e. enhance productivity, improve coffee quality and support sustainability of coffee production. productivity of certified arabica coffee is lower (8%) than conventional coffee, meanwhile premium price of certified coffee is only slightly higher (3.57%) than conventional coffee. keywords: production, coffee, certification, conventional, socioeconomic, ecology introduction coffee is the second most important export commodities in global trade, after petroleum (gregory and featherstone, 2008; ico, 2010; amsalu and ludi, 2010). coffee is an agricultural commodity traded most widespread in the world, mostly managed by small scale farmers with the significant role of woman (itc, 2011). coffee produced by more than 70 countries where 45 developing countries are supply 97% of world coffee production. coffee is an important commodity as agent of development which gives income, because production process and harvest are much laborious, capable of being a source of important employment in rural areas, good labor opportunity to man and woman (ico, 2009; marsh, 2005; roldán-pérez et al., 2009). in 2010, indonesia became the third major coffee producer country in the world after brazil and vietnam, while the fourth position is colombia. the four countries produce 63,48% coffee production (ico, 2012). indonesia and vietnam's coffee production are still dominated by robusta coffee; while the largest producers (brazil) and fourth (colombia) more dominantly produce arabica coffee. coffee as one of main plantation commodities has real contributed in indonesian economy as a foreign exchange, source of farmer’s income, producer of raw materials to industry, job creation and regional development. the government has prioritized main agricultural commodities and one of them is coffee while four others are cocoa, rubber oil palm, and shrimp (soemarno et al., 2009). coffee is a national leading commodity (ministry of agriculture/moa, 2009) and indonesia has comparative and competitive advantages in coffee production which means had the potential to improve estate, production, and coffee export (susila, 1999). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 93-107 94 north sumatra province is the fourth position in the total production of arabica and robusta coffee in indonesia. total production of north sumatra in 2010 reached 55,000 ton. indonesia's largest coffee producers is the lampung province (145,000 ton), followed by south sumatra (138,000 ton), and bengkulu (55,000 ton). north sumatra with the average productivity 1,022 kg/ha/yr, is the second position after aceh with productivity 1,158 kg/ha/yr. north sumatra is being the largest arabica coffee producer. production in 2010 is 46,814 ton with growth 4.59%/yr in the period 2006-2010. the amount of this production contributes 33.20% in national arabica coffee production. second place is aceh province with the production 39,457 ton and with growth rate 9.79%/yr in the same period. the third until five positions are south sulawesi, west sumatra, and ntt respectively (directorate general of crop estate/dgce, 2012). other provinces: bali, east java, west sulawesi, central java, and papua, although giving a relatively small production however is also important arabica coffee-producing region because of the uniqueness of each region. main district of arabica coffee producers in north sumatra are dairi, north tapanuli simalungun, karo, humbang hasundutan, toba samosir, samosir, and pak-pak bharat district. arabica coffee from north sumatera has global reputation namely mandheling coffee and lintong coffee. arabica coffee from simalungun district contributed significantly for coffee production in north sumatra as the main specialty arabica coffee producing region in indonesia. arabica coffee from simalungun district belongs to mandheling coffee group (mawardi, 2008b), and mandheling coffee is specialty coffee (mawardi, 2007; mawardi, 2009; wahyudi and misnawi, 2007). arabica coffee variety of sigarar utang was grown widely in simalungun district since 15 years ago, and its development was an interesting phenomena to be examined. since developed, some problems and potential for the development of specialty arabica coffee requires serious analysis. the problems and the potential of this development require the importance of research on the production of arabica coffee with some rationale. first, the arabica coffee is a leading commodity in simalungun district but it’s productivity remains relatively low, amounting only 50-65% of the potential production. there is a gap between actual and potential production by 35-50%. diskin (1997) uses gap between actual production and potential production as one of performance indicator of agricultural productivity. gap indicator are used then in several empirical studies. in gayo highland (karim, 2012), arabica coffee productivity is still low than potential productivity of 1.50-2.00 ton/ha/yr. arabica coffee productivity can reach 60% only of potential production. according to atekan et al. (2005), productivity of coffee in papua is lower than potential, where one of the factors is still simple cultivation technique without fertilization. winarsih (1985) stated that, from some of the research results in various coffee producing countries, indicated that coffee productivity per unit of land area is lower than its potential value. second, initially extensive acreage and production of coffee from simalungun was dominated by robusta coffee, then during the last ten years production area of arabica coffee is increasing fast relatively. thirdly, the management of the coffee plantation in north sumatra is entirely in the people estates i.e. smallholder farmer, so the efforts to increase the production of arabica coffee would have direct impact for the region and community. fourth, agropedoclimate of simalungun district region is suitable for arabica coffee. agropedoclimate is the technical suitability of certain commodities to the physical, chemical nature of the land and the local climate, including temperature, precipitation, number of rainy days, light intensity, and other environmental factors (moa, 2010). fifth, the coffee commodities designated by the moa as a priority in the plantation revitalization program in indonesia starting in 2011. according to wahyudi et al. (2006), the extensification programme of arabica coffee has been prioritized to north sumatra province, then aceh, west sumatra, bengkulu, west java, west nusa tenggara, east nusa tenggara and papua. sixth, based on the potential of simalungun district in dry land, smallholder coffee plantation expansion opportunities are still very large. the recognition of the international market over the products of formal high-quality coffee is done through the certification program. coffee with a socioeconomic and ecological dimension of.... 95 specialty category is specified by certain standards. consumers will be assured that certification of coffee consumed has been produced in accordance with the principles of sustainable development, so that consumers are willing to pay more in order to care about the aspects of social, economic and ecology. certification program among coffee product is organic, fairtrade, utz certified, rainforest alliance, c.a.f.e. practices, common code for the coffee community (4c), bird friendly, and geographical indication (mawardi, 2008b). a small part of simalungun arabica coffee which earned certification. the farmers group of karya bakti in sidamanik and pamatang sidamanik subdistrict obtained the certificate c.a.f.e. practices (zaenudin, 9 june 2011, personal communication). from the aspect of coffee certification, the study was compared performance of certified and conventional arabica coffee. the goal knows whether farmer receiving benefits from coffee certification. the result of this study is expected to be beneficial to expanding the recommendation of farming specialty arabica coffee that needs to be included in the certification program through stakeholder partnership. comparative research between the socioeconomic performance of a specialty coffee organic and conventional coffee was conducted in nepal (poudel et al., 2010), the socioeconomic performance comparison between areas of coffee farming was done in vietnam (doutriaux et al., 2008), and a comparison between the growth and production of shade-coffee and sun-coffee was studied in ethiopia (bote and struik, 2011). from the description of that introduction above, this research aimed: (1) analyzing influence of socioeconomic and ecological factors on arabica coffee production, and (2) analyzing certified arabica coffee performance compared to conventional arabica coffee. research methodology survey of arabica coffee farm has been conducted in upland regions of simalungun district (north sumatera, indonesia) in 2011. partly of the coffee farm data are sourced from arabica coffee survey that conducted by international finance corporation (ifc) in 2010/2011. data from ifc was especially for all certified coffee (c.a.f.e. practices) in sidamanik and pamatang sidamanik subdistrict) with sample of 79 household from 320 household population. some data of conventional arabica coffee also obtained from ifc in sidamanik, pamatang sidamanik, dolok pardamean, and purba subdistrict. apart of farm data of conventional arabica coffee from sidamanik, silimakuta, pamatang silimahuta, and partly in purba subdistrict is done by using a questionnaire. sample size of conventional coffee is 210 household from 16,416 conventional farmers. samples size is determined by using a minimum number of samples based on the formula of cochran (1977): and where no is minimum sample size, n is definitive sample size, n is population size, t is the t value in the student t-table (1.96) for 95% confidence interval, r is the relative error of the average prediction among of 10%, s is standard deviation (predictor to population variance), and is predictor to average productivity of arabica coffee for population. the value of s and are 854,64 and 1,635 (certified coffee farm); 1,256.88 and 1,700 (conventional coffee farm). this statistics was obtained from a previous survey by the ifc in 2010/2011 in partnership with simalungun university. according to cochran’s formula and the statistics above, then the sample size was calculated as follows for certified coffee farm: = = = 384 * 0,2732 = 105 because there were only 320 household of population, then needed a finite populations correction (fpc) and n is calculated as follows: = = 79 for conventional coffee farm calculated as follows: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 93-107 96 = = = 384 * 0,5466 = 209,89 ≈ 210 the selection of the sample was conducted by multi-stage cluster sampling (mscs). determination of the sample of households was used probability proportional to size (pps) and simple random sampling/srs (nazir, 2009; magnani, 1997). farm data was analyzed by multiple linear regression model by relevant test such as: goodness of fit, f-test, and t-test. there were three models developed in this research, i.e. model of certified coffee production (model 1), model of conventional coffee production (model 2), and combined model (model 3). the model is formulated as follows: where = production of certified/conventional/all arabica coffee farm (kg/farm); = constant term; exp = farmer’s experience (year); wom = role of women (comparison of women labor with total labor [%]); size = farm size (ha); tree = number of coffee tree/farm; prod = productive period (year); lbr = total labor use (mandays/farm); cap = capital (idr/farm); luse = land use (1 if farmers apply one or combination of intercropping, shaded coffee, and multistrata coffee; 0 if monoculture coffee); liqu = farmer’s financial liquidity (1 if the farmer has liquid financial [has other fixed income outside coffee farming, such as civil servants, employees of state plantation, and others; 0 if otherwise); shade = number of shade tree/farm; org = proportion of organic fertilizer cost for total cost of fertilizer (%); prune = coffee pruning (1 if farmer is do one or more of coffee pruning types; 0 if otherwise); cons = land conservation (1 if farmer is do one or more of land conservation practices [mulching, rorak, individual or bench terrace]; 0 if otherwise); cbb = coffee berry borer control (1 if farmers do one or combination of farm sanitation, biological control, and traps; 0 if otherwise); = regression coefficient,  = error term. result performance of indonesian coffee in 2011, indonesia ranks third in volume of world coffee production, after brazil and vietnam. indonesia's production volume in 2011 reached 525,000 ton. brazil's coffee production, is the biggest of which reached 2,609,040 ton and vietnam 1,110,000 ton. while at the fourth position is colombia (510,000 ton), slightly below the indonesia production (ico, 2012). the performance of coffee production in major producer countries are shown in figure 1. figure 1: the development of coffee production in the major producer of the world source: ico (www.ico.org) 0 500,000 1,000,000 1,500,000 2,000,000 2,500,000 3,000,000 3,500,000 p ro d u ct io n ( to n ) indonesia vietnam colombia brazil http://www.ico.org/ socioeconomic and ecological dimension of.... 97 brazil with the largest production (33% of world production) showed very fluctuative production. a more relatively stable production occurred in indonesia and colombia. production trend has been very impressive experienced in vietnam. in 1998, vietnam were the fourth in position is now capable of occupying second position since 2000, only within two years. in 2011, four major producer countries were able to supply about 56% of world coffee production. the largest share was given by brazil (33%), followed by vietnam (14%), indonesia (7%), and colombia (6%). the rest (40%) were supplied by more than 80 other countries especially india, ethiopia, mexico, honduras, ivory coast, nicaragua, and costa rica (figure 2). world coffee total production in 2011 reached 7,944,420 ton. this production was shared by brazil (2,609,040 ton), vietnam (1,110,000 ton), indonesia (525,000 ton), and colombia (510,000 ton). indonesia is the country with the lowest average productivity (arabica plus robusta) among the four major coffee producer countries. in 2009, indonesia in the aggregate was only able to achieve the productivity of 510 kg/ha/yr. a very impressive productivity has achieved by vietnam, where in the same year has been able to achieve the productivity of 2,034 kg, followed by brazil (1,132 kg), and colombia (545 kg). figure 2. share of the world coffee production (2011) and productivity (2009) source: ico (www.ico.org) performance of north sumatra coffee north sumatra is the largest producer of arabica coffee in indonesia. production in 2010 reached 46,814 ton with growth of 4.59%/yr in period 2006-2010. the amount of this production contributes by 33.20% to the national production of arabica coffee. second place is occupied by the aceh province with the production of 39,457 and growth 9.79%/yr in the period 2006-2010. the third until fifth position are south sulawesi, west sumatra, and ntt. spesiaty arabica coffee producer district in the various provinces, among others, are dairi, simalungun, north tapanuli, humbahas, karo district (north sumatra); central aceh, bener meriah, gayo lues district (aceh); tana toraja, enrekang (south sulawesi), manggarai, ngada (ntt), and kintamani (bali). national level, arabica coffee production reached 140,512 ton in the 2010 with an average growth rate of 10.3 % during 2006-2010. the amount of production of arabica coffee is only 21% of national coffee production of 657,909 ton, where the rest 517,397 ton (79%) is robusta coffee. trend of national production of arabica coffee in 2006-2012 is presented in figure 3. indonesia colombia brazil vietnam 510 545 1,132 2,034 (kg/ha/yr) brazil 33% vietnam 14% indonesi a 7% colombi a 6% the rest (more than 80 countries ) 40% http://www.ico.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 93-107 98 figure 3. development of arabica coffee production per province in indonesia (2011: preliminary, 2012: estimation) source: dgce (2012) based on dgce data (2011), for the status of people plantation, north sumatra is the largest producer arabica coffee in indonesia with the total production 46,657 ton in 2010. the second position is nad (aceh) with total production 39,457 ton followed by south sulawesi (21,798 ton), west sumatra (14,788 ton), ntt (4,878 ton), bali (3,254 ton), east java (2,485 ton), papua (1,360 ton) and other provinces (455 ton). arabica coffee production from north sumatra dominates the total production of indonesia (33.2%), followed by nad (28.08%), south sulawesi (15.51%), and west sumatra (10,52%). despite top positions in north sumatra province in total production, but from the productivity side, the province is still less productive than nad. arabica coffee productivity in sumatra was 1,139 kg/ha/yr, at second position after nad with the highest productivity of 1,568 kg/ha/yr. productivity performance in nine other provinces still under 1,000 kg/ha/yr. even in papua and west sulawesi, arabica coffee productivity were under 500 kg/ha/yr. at national level, productivity of arabica coffee in indonesia year 2010 was 969 kg/ha/yr. production share and productivity of arabica coffee according to province was shown in figure 4. a b figure 4. production share (a) and productivity of arabica coffee (b) per province in indonesia source: dgce, 2012 0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 30,000 35,000 40,000 45,000 50,000 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 p ro d u ct io n ( to n ) north sumatra aceh south sulawesi west sumatra ntt bali east java north sumatra 33% nad 28% south sulawesi 16% west sumatra 11% ntt 3% bali 2% the rest 7% (kg/ha/yr) 462 471 500 546 548 567 589 737 747 860 1,139 1,568 west sulawesi papua central java the rest bali ntt east java bengkulu south sulawesi west sumatra north sumatra nad (kg/ha/yr) socioeconomic and ecological dimension of.... 99 model goodness of fit test of model suitability is measuring a model that was compiled can be used and continued estimation. statistics was used to see if some kind of model fit based on a coefficient of determination (r 2 ) tested with statistics f. regression model is said to be good if r 2 approaching the value of 1. statistics f was used as an instrument to test r 2 significancy (gujarati, 1988). according to pratisto (2009), the value of statistics f also can be used to determine whether a model may be accepted or not. if statistics f > f critical value or p-value < 0.05, then a model that was compiled can be used to estimate of regression coefficient. table 1 shows that coefficient of determination for three model is significant at level  = 1%. thus, three models are good models and usable to estimate of indenpendent variable that influences on production of arabica coffee. table 1: r 2 and statistic f for model goodness of fit model r r 2 statistic f p-value decision 1 0.947 0.896 39.332 0.000 model 1 fit 2 0.850 0.722 36.233 0.000 model 2 fit 3 0.798 0.637 34.363 0.000 model 3 fit coffee production: socioeconomic and ecological dimension comparison of three multiple regression model, especially between model 1 (certified coffee farm) and model 2 (conventional coffee farm) was done through regression coefficients estimation by spss 20. based on socioeconomic and ecological dimension, estimation summary of three regression models were presented in table 2. table 2: estimation result of three multiple linear regression model variable model 1 model 2 model 3 constant 0 360.045 (0.555) -252.377 (0.515) -334.271 (0.337) farmer’s experience 1 -52.194 (0.642) 64.042*** (0.004) 53.401*** (0.004) role of women 2 3.123 (0.864) -1.519 (0.733) 1.823 (0.625) farm size 3 205.462* ** (0.000) 927.022*** (0.000) 445.009** * (0.000) coffee tree 4 0.076*** (0.008) -0.162 (0.143) 0.068 (0.293) productive period 5 63.831 (0.572) 3.621 (0.853) 9.326 (0.605) labor 6 4.690*** (0.000) 0.261*** (0.000) 3.611*** (0.000) capital 7 0.006 (0.144) 0.261*** (0.000) 0.037*** (0.000) land use 8 24.975 (0.744) 124.396 (0.214) 214.318** * (0.010) farmer’s liquidity 9 119.116* (0.053) 316.147** (0.025) 384.864** * (0.001) shade tree 10 -0.162 (0.729) -2.846* (0.076) -2.070* (0.071) organic fertilizer 11 -0.358 (0.697) -2.538 (0.188) -2.813* (0.082) coffee pruning 12 67.855 (0.217) 188.129 (0.158) 352.613** * (0.001) land conservation 13 -63.155 (0.196) -53.791 (0.541) 30.024 (0.697) control of cbb 14 45.520 (0.196) 35.758 (0.789) 221.733** (0.017) note: p-value in parentheses. ***, **, and * indicates that independent variables significant influenced on coffee production at  = 1%, 5%, and 10% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 93-107 100 based on the result of the estimation with spss 20, regression equation for model 1 (certified coffee farm) can be written as follows: in model 1 (certified coffee farm), there are only four independent variables (farm size, number of coffee plant, labor, and farmer’s liquidity) that influence significantly on production of arabica coffee. while 10 independent variables (farmer’s experience, role of women, productive period, capital, land use, organic fertilizer, coffee pruning, shade tree, land conservation, and cbb control) indicates no significant influence on the production of arabica coffee. multiple regression equation for model 2 (conventional coffee farm) can be written as follows: in model 2 (conventional coffee farm), there are six independent variables (farmer’s experience, farm size, labor, capital, farmer’s liquidity, and shade tree) that influence significantly on coffee production. while eight independent variables (role of women, number of coffee plant, productive period, land use, organic fertilizer, coffee pruning, land conservation, and cbb control) indicates no significant influence on coffee production. for model 3 that is the combined coffee farming, the equation can be written as follows: in model 3 (combined coffee farm), there are 10 independent variables (farmer’s experience, farm size, labor, capital, land use, farmer’s liquidity, shade tree, organic fertilizer, coffee pruning, and cbb control) which influence significantly on coffee production. while four independent variables (role of women, number of coffee plant, productive period, and land conservation) indicates no significant influence on coffee production. farmers income of certified versus conventional coffee to find out if the performance of certified coffee is better than conventional coffee, different test of average with two independent t-test was done. the procedures was adopted wiley (2011) by using spss 20. the testing was conducted with the two stages: test in common variance by using levene’s test for equality of variance, and t-test for equality of mean. the results of difference test of two independent group shown in table 3. table 3: performance of certified and conventional arabica coffee farm variables all farms certified coffee farm conventional coffee farm productivity (kg/ha/yr) 1 2,299 (1,205.89 7) 2,163 (1,631.171) 2,350 (1.000,424) farmer’s experience (yr) 8.05 (2.463) 9.94*** (1.667) 7.34*** (2.339) role of women (%) 78.37 (10.218) 83.80*** (7.650) 76.33*** (10.330) liquid farmer’s financial (%) 35 (0.478) 46** (0.501) 31** (0.463) labor 164 (119.046) 235*** (146.519) 137*** (94.196) socioeconomic and ecological dimension of.... 101 (mandays/ha/yr) coffee tree/ha 2,194 (1,339.99 9) 2,867*** (2,376.146) 1,942*** (598.894) productive period (yr) 4.94 (2.146) 4.90 (1.667) 5.00 (2.304) farm size (ha) 0.74 (1.412) 0.88** (0.639) 0.69** (0.439) coffee price (idr/kg) 19,508 (1,364.82 6) 20,027** * (420.869) 19,313*** (1,526.790) revenue (idr million/ha/yr) 49.18 (5.225 x 10 7 ) 42.79 (3.242 x 10 7 ) 51.58 (5.787 x 10 7 ) total cost (idr million/ha/yr) 9.72 (9.643 x 10 5 ) 10.35 (6.737 x 10 6 ) 9.48 (1.053 x 10 7 capital (idr million/ha/yr) 0.83 (1.412 x 10 6 ) 2.51*** (1.837 x 10 6 ) 0.20*** (1.545 x 10 5 ) net income (idr million/ha/yr) 39.46 (4.334 x 10 7 ) 32.44 (2.621 x 10 7 ) 42.10 (4.802 x 10 7 ) control of cbb (%) 46 (0.499) 76*** (0.430) 34*** (0.476) doing land conservation (%) 60 (0.492) 70** (0.463) 56** (0.498) doing coffee pruning (%) 40 (0.492) 47 (0.502) 38 (0.487) organic fertlizer (%) 27 (23,576) 27 (24,684) 26 (23,201) land use (%) 65 (0,477) 58 (0,496) 68 (0,467) shade tree (tree/ha) 13 (46,394) 30*** (75,302) 7*** (26,665) note: standard deviations in parentheses; 1productivity in parchment *** and ** indicates means are significantly different in independent t-test at 1% and 5% test level table 3 indicates that by using terms of common variance (levene’s test), there are eight significantly different of socioeconomic variables between certified and conventional coffee. these variables are the farmer’s experience, role of women, liquid farmer’s financial, labor, number of coffee tree, farm size, coffee price, and capital; while the other variables (productivity, farmer’s education, revenue, total cost, and net income) do not significantly different. performance of ecological variables are also better for certified coffee. control of cbb, land conservation practices, and shade tree on certified coffee are better than conventional coffee. while variable of coffee pruning, organic fertilizer, and land use, there are not significantly different between the two types of farm. discussion socioeconomic dimension farmer’s experience showed significant effect on coffee production in conventional coffee farm (model 2) and combined farm (model 3), while in the certified coffee farm (model 1) showed a negative effect on coffee production. the results of this research are different than nchare (2007) research which found that the higher farmer’s experience gave an indication of increasing inefficiency of arabica coffee production. poudel et al. (2011) research in nepal showed that the effect of farmers experience was not significant on efficiency of coffee production. the role of women was not significantly effects on coffee production on three models. the role of women in this research was the percentage of labor of women from the total amount of labor employed asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 93-107 102 in management of arabica coffee farm. labor of women were dominantly applied in the maintenance of coffee farm, with a portion 78% of the total labor. farm size had positive and significant effect on coffee production. the results of this study in accordance with wollni and brümmer (2009) in costa rica, doutriaux et al. (2008) in vietnam, poudel et al. (2010) in nepal, and safa (2005) in yemen. the number of coffee plant had positive and significant effect on coffee production in certified coffee farm (model 1). these results indicated that more population of coffee plants, the higher production of arabica coffee. different result was found in combined farm (no significant effect), even a negative sign was found in conventional coffee farm. population average of arabica coffee in simalungun district is 2,194 tree/ha. with the number of this population, in general, farmers apply 2 m x 2.5 m planting distance. thus, farmers in the simalungun were advised to apply planting distance recommended for variety of sigarar utang, i.e. 2 m x 2.5 m or population of 2,000 plants per hectare. productive period is positive but not significantly effect on coffee production on all models. productive period is the length of productive coffee plant since the beginning of fruit setting, which is a modification of the variable of plant age which was used in some earlier researchers, such as wollni and brümmer (2009). labor has positive and highly significant effect on coffee production on all model. this is in accordance with the study of wollni and brümmer (2009), doutriaux et al. (2008), poudel et al. (2010), and safa (2005). to that end, recommendation of this study is to make optimal use of family labour; hence the use of hired labor as much as possible needs to be reduced. the goal is reducing of production cost, and increasing farmer’s income. capital has positive and highly significant effect on coffee production, except on the certificate coffee farm (model 1). capital of farming is the amount of expenditure to buy chemical and organic fertilizer. logical recommendation from this research is then to increase proportional allocation of cost for coffee fertilizer purchase. the use of organic fertilizers is still low about 10% of recommendation, while the use of chemical fertilizers is around 15% of recommended fertilization. thus, the recommendations of the research is necessary to increase organic and chemical fertilizer use for arabica coffee. gusli (2012) stated that fertilization of coffee plant according to recommendation and combined with other standard practices (pruning, sanitation, management of organic materials and integrated pest and disease control) can increase productivity of coffee more than 2 ton/ha/yr, even over 4 ton/ha/yr. land use system has positive and highly significant effect on coffee production (model 3). it means, intercropping, shaded-coffee, and multistrata system can increased coffee production. asten et al. (2011) found that intercropping of coffee and bananas is more profitable than monoculture coffee. farmer’s liquidity has positive and significant effect on coffee production on three model. it showed that fund availability to maintain and manage farm adequately is a substantial condition in order to able increasing coffee production. fund availability was measured by approach of fixed farmers revenue from outside of coffee farm, namely farmer individual formal job of state plantation, state official, teacher, army/police, and any other job that provides fixed income. this research result is in line with research of mauro (2010) in highlands of papua new guinea who concluded that farmer’s liquidity is an important factor in investing of small scale coffee farm. in contrast, limited access to formal credit became an obstacle in development of coffee so government should facilitate to encourage farmers in investing in new technology. other studies on farmer’s liquidity by nchare (2007), bolarinwa and fakoya (2011), poudel et al. (2011), and hermanto (2009) were also in line with this study result. ecological dimension ecological variables (shade tree, organic fertilizer, land conservation) were shown negative effect on coffee production. verbist et al. (2004) suggested that coffee monoculture cultivation would give more yield, but at the same time soil nutrient depleted quickly. therefore, if additional intake of nutrient from the outside in the form of chemical fertilizers is not available, then productive period will be shorter and production will be lower. bote and struik (2011) concluded that environmental socioeconomic and ecological dimension of.... 103 conditions of a shaded coffee were better than monoculture coffee. for the production and coffee quality, there is no significant difference between shaded and sun coffee. van der vossen (2005) stated negative impact of shade trees, namely, if the shade tree population increases then bean production will decrease due to process of flowering is reduced; water use competition between shade and coffee plant at the time of dry season; an increase in labor cost to shade pruning, potentially increasing pests and diseases, for example cbb. nevertheless, shade tree has positive role to improve quality of cup coffee. research of moreira et al. (2008) in the area of biggest arabica coffee producers in the world in the southern of minas gerais, brazil, concluded that there was a tendency for better quality coffee at a shaded coffee farming system. with regard to the role of organic fertilizer on coffee production, kadir and kanro (2006) found that organic fertilizer did not show a significant difference to the number of production branches when compared with the coffee plant without organic fertilizer. similar results were found by rubiyo et al. (2004). coffee pruning and control of cbb are positive and significant effect on coffee production, only in model 3. kadir et al. (2004) indicated that coffee pruning would give a role in improving growth of coffee plant (amount of productive branch, number of coffee flower). cbb is one of pest that reduces production and quality of coffee (sulistyowati, 1986). cbb control which is considered to be the most effective way is to disconnect life cycle of cbb through farm sanitary. beding and limbongan (2005) found that application of beauveria bassiana powder was able to reduce population of cbb about 25%, while b. bassiana solid was able to reduce of cbb about 14%. from the ecological dimension, application of coffee pruning, control of cbb, and land conservation, combined with a shade tree and application of organic fertilizers are important for improving coffee quality. thus, the increase in application of ecological variables at the farm level will play multiple role to enhance productivity, improve coffee quality and support sustainability of coffee production. certified vs conventional coffee farm based on lyngbæk et al. (2001) study about organic multistrata and conventional coffee farm, amount of labor used was higher on organic coffee farm than conventional coffee farm. meanwhile productivity of certified coffee farm is lower than conventional coffee farm. the lower productivity in certified coffee farm must be compensated with the minimum premium price of 38%. the interesting question is why much capital and labor at certified coffee farm do not generate better productivity and income? possibly the most logical answer is based on the field observation. first, certified coffee farm (sidamanik and pamatang sidamanik subdistrict) in general is located in sloping land with relatively low land quality that compared with location of most conventional coffee farm (dolok pardamean, purba, silimakuta, and pamatang silimahuta subdistrict). second, in conventional coffee farm, some 68% of farmers do intercropping system which allocated labor and fertilizer intensively for seasonal crops such as chili, potato, tomato, cabbage, carrot, or corn. fertilizer and labor usage for seasonal crop is a shared cost along with the arabica coffee plants. this farming practice was strongly contribute to higher productivity and income of conventional coffee farm. the four districts of location of conventional coffee farms (dolok pardamean, purba, silimakuta, and pamatang silimahuta subdistrict) are main region of horticulture producer in north sumatra province, even in indonesia. due to lower productivity and higher capital in certified arabica coffee farm, then its also lower revenues compared with conventional coffee farm. this is in line with the results of lyngbæk et al. (2001) study which stated that the income of organic certified farms in costa rica was lower than conventional coffee farm. coffee price in farmer level is showing that performance of certified coffee farm is better than conventional coffee. the certified coffee price is higher than conventional coffee price through year 2011. certified coffee farmers sell parchment at idr20,027/kg, while the price of conventional coffee is idr19,313/kg. the difference in the price is idr714/kg, and it was statistically asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 93-107 104 significant different i.e. premium prices for certified coffee 3.57%. in addition, the risk of price fluctuations of certified coffee is lower than conventional coffee, based on the value of variance. the lower of price variance, then the smaller of price fluctuation risk between the farmers. based on bacon (2008) who conducted empirical study regarding fair trade and organic certification in nicaragua, the price premium was the highest retrieved by farmers if their cooperatives are directly selling to the roasting companies. the second highest premium price was obtained when selling to fair trade cooperatives, then selling to organic cooperatives, conventional coffee cooperatives, exporters of agricultural enterprises, and the lowest when selling to local collecting traders. valkila (2009) found that farmers income depends on two major factor: market price and premium price in farmer level. if the market price is low but premium price is high (23%), then farmers income of organic coffee is higher than conventional coffee, although productivity of organic coffee lower than conventional coffee. otherwise, if the market price is high but premium prices is low (only 7%), then organic coffee farmer will receive lower income than conventional coffee farmer. in this condition, the lower productivity of organic coffee must be compensated with a higher premium prices. it means to increase farmers income and sustainability of specialty coffee production. conclusion and recommendation increased production of arabica coffee can be done with intensification strategy, through: increased application of suitable fertilizer recommendation, facilitation of arabica coffee farm credit, land use optimization (intercropping or multistrata system), optimizing of family labor used, application of good agricultural practices (gaps), i.e. shade tree, organic fertilizer, coffee pruning, land conservation, and biological control of cbb. the strategy of extensification should be conducted if efforts of intensification have been showing an increase in production. ecological factors have important role in development of arabica coffee in simalungun highland. ecological variables (coffee pruning, control of cbb, and land conservation) give positive and significant impact on coffee production. application of these three variables combined with shade tree and organic fertilizer are important factor to improve coffee quality. thus, the increase in application of ecological variables at farm level will play multiple role, i.e. to enhance productivity, to improve coffee quality and support sustainability of coffee production. productivity of certified arabica coffee is lower (8%) than conventional coffee. certified coffee price is only slightly higher (3.57%) than conventional coffee price. based on these results, certification of coffee has not provided any real benefits for the farmers. application of ecological variables need incentives for farmers i.e. an effort to raise the premium price to 26% higher than conventional coffee. with such a premium price, farmer’s income of certified coffee is higher by 25% compared to conventional coffee. in addition, to improve coffee quality through certification program as long as it is maintained by exporters, it must be managed by the farmerbased institution. the study recommends that farmers to increase application of gaps, while local governments should improve the facilitation for the farmers to take intensification strategy as a priority. strategy of extensification (increased acreage for planting) should preferably taken when intensification strategy have shown an increase of coffee production and productivity. references amsalu, a. & e. ludi, (2010). the effect of global coffee price changes on rural livelihoods and natural resource management in ethiopia: a case study from jimma area, nccr north-south dialogue no. 26. atekan n., d. wamaer & p. beding (2005). teknologi pemupukan organik dan introduksi ternak kambing pada usaha tani kopi bio di wamena kabupaten jayawijaya, papua, prosiding seminar nasional komunikasi hasil-hasil penelitian hortikultura dan perkebunan dalam sistem usahatani lahan kering, sikka, nusa tenggara timur, pse bogor, 530-535. bacon, c., v. e. méndez & m. e. f. gómez., d. stuart & s. r. d. flores (2008). are sustainable coffee certifications enough to secure farmer livelihoods? 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(2011). tutorial for independentsamples t test, department of psychology and counseling, valdosta state university. http://chiron.valdosta. edu/lwiley/writeresults/ tutorial%20t%20test%20interactive.pdf winarsih, s. (1985). kapasitas fotosintesis dan pengaruhnya pada pertumbuhan dan perkembangan tanaman kopi. menara perkebunan, 53(6), 207-213. wollni m. & b. brümmer (2009). productive efficiency of specialty and conventional coffee farmers in costa rica: accounting for technological heterogeneity and self-selection, discussion papers, courant research centre, georg-august-universitat gottingen. publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p) 2304-1455, issn (e) 2224-4433 volume 2, no 3, september, 2012 consumers’ use and understanding of food label information and effect on their purchasing decision in ghana; a case study of kumasi metropolis osei mensah j. (lecturer, department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi-ghana) lawer, d. r. (bsc. graduate, department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi-ghana) aidoo, r. (lecturer, department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi-ghana) citation: osei mensah j., lawer dede rose and aidoo, r. (2012) “consumers‟ use and understanding of food label information and effect on their purchasing decision in ghana; a case study of kumasi metropolis”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 351-365. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 351-365 351 author(s) osei mensah j. lecturer, department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi-ghana email:mojemmy@gmail.com lawer d. r. bsc. graduate, department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi-ghana email:rodelamichal@ymail.com aidoo r. lecturer, department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi-ghana consumers’ use and understanding of food label information and effect on their purchasing decision in ghana; a case study of kumasi metropolis abstract this study explored consumers‟ use and understanding of food label information and the effect on their purchasing decision in the kumasi metropolis. it also investigated the association between socio-demographic factors and the use of food label, the understanding of the information read as well as the type of information sought. the study surveyed 250 consumers who were conveniently selected from five different sub-metros in the metropolis. questionnaires were formulated to sample data and information from consumers on their use and understanding of food label information. results suggested that the sample was gender sensitive (57.6% male) with a modal aged group between 15-30 years (60.8%) who had never been married (54.0%), with a greater number who had tertiary education (36.4%) and earning low income between gh¢50499 (61.6%). about 79.6% (n=199) of the respondents, recounted accessing food label information before purchase and they read the information occasionally (29.6%) during initial purchase (37.2%). majority of the respondent said advertisement (31.6%) and price (31.2%) other than food label (10.0%) were the central stimuli to purchase a canned food product. highly-educated, male consumers 2( 17.602, , 0.007,df p    ) were those more likely to use various types of food label information than others. a positive relationship was observed between male, youthful (31-45) consumers and consumer who were never been married and their use and understanding of food label information. keywords: food, label, information, package, consumers, kumasi. introduction with the improvement of living standards, consumers have become increasingly concerned about their health and general well-being since natural food is increasingly being replaced with conventional foods. to make a product unique and distinctive, firms spend more money and time on packaging more than advertisement because packaging is mostly the utmost distinguished marketing element (dickson, 1994). according to héroux et al. (1988), marketers as well as manufacturers spend considerable time and substantial amount of money on packaging products in a manner that will attract consumer attention and enhance the product consumption. food label has now become a popular policy tool. at present, there are many reasons why foods are processed and packaged, some of which include, adding value to a food, improving visual appeal, and convenience. the act has now developed far beyond its initial purpose of mailto:mojemmy@gmail.com mailto:rodelamichal@ymail.com consumers’ use and understanding of food label ... 352 product protection. in ghana, the food and drugs board (fdb) regulates food product manufacturing, importation, exportation, advertisement and distribution. in pursuance of section 47(b) (ii) of the food and drugs law, 1992 (p.n.d.c.l 305b) guidelines are made to regulate the use of health claims in food labeling and advertisement in ghana. research on food label and consumers have gained much momentum in recent times. a survey by the american dietetic association, (1995) found that almost 50% of respondent found nutritional label confusing. in india, it was found out that consumers have an inability to understand food label information because of difficult terminology and small font sizes. therefore television, friends and magazines are commonly used for assessing the nutritional information, (manisha, 2008). a study conducted by allen et al. (2001) on patients understanding and use of snack and package nutrition labels, suggests majority of consumers (patients) do not understand snack food nutrition labels well enough to make informed dietary choices. study conducted in malawi by kasapila and shawa, (2011) showed that among all label users (n=60), 7.3% reported to understand well what they read on the nutrition panel, 18.9% understood it partly and the rest (73.8%) did not understand the numerical information and terminology used. moreover, the rural consumers were not familiar with the english language (64.3%) on food packages. food labels are of tremendous importance to the consumer (provide them a means of evaluating the food before purchase), the firm producing and selling the product (a means of communicating to the potential consumer the attributes and qualities of the product), and regulatory bodies (a means of ensuring that food produced and sold meet required standards and a means of protecting the interest of the general public). despite these benefits of food labels, there have been many reported instances where non-certified, expired, illegal or fake food products are sold to the public. cases in point are sale of uncertified sachet water, the sale of expired canned tomatoes and frozen chickens, and the sale of uncertified imported food products on the ghanaian market. from the above it can be confidently argued that these instances and their frequency of occurrence can be considerably alleviated if the needed attention is paid to the food label information by consumers, if the regulatory bodies had enforced their constitutionally mandated responsibilities, and had all the manufacturing companies complied with the act of ghana standards board (gsb) and food and drugs board (fdb) as stated above. in the event that manufacturing firms and regulatory bodies are unable to adequately carry out their mandate, it is incumbent on consumers to critically examine the food before purchase. an important means of assessing food product is through the labels. against the backdrop of alleged frequent sale of expired and uncertified food products it can be asserted that consumers either do not refer to food labels when buying or they do not understand what the information contained on food labels mean. this might either be due to ignorance or lack of awareness and also an attitude of indifference. an important issue worth addressing is whether consumers refer to food labels for product information before and during purchase and whether consumers really understand what these information mean. also, even if they do refer to food label information, little is known about the extent to which consumers‟ food purchasing decision is affected by food label information. knowing whether or not consumers understand food label information, the type of information consumers look out for and whether consumers‟ choice of food is affected by food label information will help manufacturers make informed decisions in this regard. improvement on the part of these manufacturing firms in turn will help consumers make well-informed choice, reduce the risk of food poisoning, buying fake products etc. the study therefore seeks to address the issue of how consumers use food label information and the effect it has on the purchasing decision of consumers. the rest of the paper is organized as follows; section two reviews literature relevant to this study whilst the research methodology is presented in section three. section four presents asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 351-365 353 and discusses the results/findings of the study whilst the conclusions and recommendations are presented in the last section, five. literature review hu et al. (2006) noted that consumers‟ behaviour in response to reading food labels will depend upon the reference points from which they came and the values that they bring to food purchasing. labels are one of the most important features of product packaging, and they are designed to communicate a message (héroux et al. 1988). but consumer behaviour is complex, very often difficult to understand and they differ across borders and also between and within regions, (dg sanco, 2005). decision to purchase a number of factors influence consumers‟ decision-making, but prathiraja and ariyawardana (2003) anticipated nutritional labelling to affect consumers‟ purchasing behaviour significantly. consumers‟ ability to choose their diets depends partly on the quantity as well as quality of information available through a variety of sources, including nutrition panel of food labels (caswell and padberg, 1999). underwood et al., (2001) and silayoi and speece (2004), found out that packaging elements act as a tool for differentiation. this helps consumers to choose the product from a wide range of similar products and stimulates customers buying behaviour. thus food package performs an important role in marketing communications and could be treated as one of the most important factors influencing consumer‟s purchasing decision. the research findings of rita (2009) show that the impact of package elements on consumers purchasing decisions can be stronger. she concludes that a package could be treated as one of most valuable tool in today‟s marketing communications, necessitating more detailed analysis of its elements. the impact of package and its elements on consumer‟s purchase decision can be revealed by analysing the importance of its separate elements for consumer‟s choice. the pre-purchase search of nutritional information could be measured in terms of label use (nayga, 2003). thus consumer‟s preference and decision to purchase can have some appreciable amount of link to the labels and therefore suggest having an impact on the choice behaviour. however, consumers‟ purchasing behaviour does not always reflect their stated preferences (henneberry and armbruster, 2003). unlike malawi where price is a major determinant of purchase (kasapila and shawa, 2001), in lesotho (mahgoub et al., 2007), it was clear that nutritional information was the major factor that affects the decision of participating in the studies to purchase the types of food they buy. consumer demographic characters and effect on purchasing decision there are a lot of factors that influence choice and decision to buy or not to buy. due to increasing self-service and changing consumers‟ lifestyle, the interest in package as a tool of sales promotion and stimulator of impulsive buying behaviour is growing increasingly. previous researches suggest that the acquisition of information, and consequently behaviour, are influenced by various demographic factors such as age (nayga, 1997; govindasamy and italia, 1999); sex (mintel, 2006; beus and dunlap, 1992); household size (nayga, 2003) and race (katona and mueller, 1995; putler and frazao, 1994); by the marketing environment, including urbanization and region (park et al., 1989); by education (schultz, 1975; hu et al., 2006); by factors that affect time constraints, such as employment (becker, 1977; beatty and smith, 1987); and by perception factors (guthrie et al., 1995). gellynck et al. (2006) also found that responsiveness of belgian consumers to information about food traceability was significantly associated with education, though not with gender and age. a study by the ministry of agriculture, fisheries and foods in the uk (maff, 1994) found that the educational level of uk consumers did not affect their interpretation and responses to the information provided on labels. grossman, (1972) found that the rate of appreciation for good health increases with age. consequently, older individuals might be more cautious about what they eat for health reasons. hence these consumers’ use and understanding of food label ... 354 factors may increase consumers desire to know more about the nutritional aspects of the food they eat. perception variables such as product safety, nutrition, price, and taste when food shopping, as well as perceptions on healthfulness of one‟s diet and degree of diet-disease belief are also factor that promote the use of food label information. the result of rodolfo, (1996) suggests that main meal planners who hold a stronger belief that discernment in what is consumed can help to reduce the risk of developing a major health disorder such as heart disease and cancer are more likely to use nutritional information related to fibre, fat, and sugar content on food packages. price can hide other aspects of the label, especially for lower income consumers. those with high income displayed different attitudes to those with lower income in terms of the perceived options available to them. also, main meal planners of higher-income households are more likely to use nutritional information concerning calories, sodium, fibre, fat, and cholesterol content than main meal planners of lower-income households, (rodolfo, 1996). in lesotho, majority (71.2%) of the participants claimed that they use a shopping list. and a positive relationship was seen between food label usage and age, income family size and education. less than half of the participants (40.5%) indicated that nutritional information on food labels, rather than price, taste, appearance, habit, convenience, or brand name, was their main motivator to purchase foods (mahgoub et al., 2007). some food label information consumers consider during purchase the level and extent of information required is often driven by specific dietary needs or underlying health conditions (mori, 2010). food safety the labels that help consumers determine whether food products are safe, hygienic and of high quality are country of origin traceability (of the origin, production process and product information of food), quality assurance, and use-by/best-before dates. the latter are seen as good indicators of freshness, shelf-life and general food safety, (philip et al., 2010). most consumers are willing to pay the most for food label. they believed the label denote food safety and quality (umberger et al., 2003). country of origin country of origin labelling is basically for the traceability of food products and also to fulfil the demand of mandatory labelling. there is generally the belief that one‟s own country or region produces safer and better food than other countries or regions (philip et al., 2010). this was echoed by wier et al. (2008), who found in their survey of consumers in britain and denmark that 72% of all respondents would prefer to buy conventional domestic fruits and vegetables rather than organic foreign produce. banterle and stranieri (2008) have found that country of origin is an important indicator for consumers of both the quality and safety of food. research by umberger et al. (2003) reveals that the surveyed consumers in chicago and denver were willing to pay a premium for country-of-origin labelling. this reflects a common belief that local, or near-local produce is not only safer, better tasting, and of superior quality, but that it is also easier to verify its quality, (philip et al., 2010). quality when consumers choose among competing products, they are faced with quality and product performance uncertainty. package is one of the main elements of the product appearance and as such is an important source of information since consumers rely heavily on labels for product information and also packaging is a significant marketing expenditure larger than advertising itself, (pires and ricardo, 2008). hoback (2008) found that, “consumers see organic products as purer, healthier and better tasting than conventional food and other products”. padel and foster (2005), however concluded that “price remains a barrier for many consumers, but it is possible that its significance could be diminished if consumers were made more aware of the reasons for the higher price, and convinced that organic food is a value for money choice despite the premium”. although consumers look for date labels, there is evidence that many misunderstood what terms like „best before‟ and „use by‟ actually represent (mori, 2010). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 351-365 355 health claims "health claim" means any claim that states, suggests or implies that a relationship exists between a food category, a food or one of its constituents and health, (fdb, 1992). nutrition and health information help consumers make informed choices about health risks and how to balance these risks. generally, participants tended to look out for reassurance of specific qualities such as no electronic numbers, no caffeine, and low fat (or most frequently „lite‟) (mori, 2010). some consumers also look at food label because of health consciousness (prathiraja and ariyawardana, 2003). price price is one of the most important labels for most consumers, and one that influences their food purchasing decisions. price ranks alongside country of origin and expiry/use-by dates as the most commonly sought information on food labels, (philip et al., 2010). price can eclipse other aspects of the label, especially for lower income consumers. those with high income displayed different attitudes to those with lower income in terms of the perceived options available to them. consumers in lower paid jobs paid more attention to special price offers, and thus respectively paid less attention to food labelling directly, (mori, 2010). charles, (2002) released in his study that 70% of purchasing decision is based on price, taste and expiry date alone. „„for the lowest income group, food price was the major determining factor of the types of foods they buy‟‟ (mahgoub et al., 2007). methods research area kumasi is ghana‟s second largest city and capital of the ashanti region found in southern ghana. kumasi covers approximately 299 square kilometre size of land and is located in the transitional forest zone and is about 270km (by road) north of the national capital, accra. sampling and data collection the research concentrated on consumers (from 15 years and above) of canned/tinned foods in the kumasi metropolis because of its highly concentrated cosmopolitan population. the metropolis is divided into ten sub-metros out of which five were selected by simple random sampling. fifty consumers were conveniently selected (after attempts to use probability sampling proved not feasible) from the five sub-metros. questionnaires were formulated and used to collect and sample data on consumers‟ use, understanding of food label and their demographics. this was administered through personal interviews with consumers in the selected areas. data were collected through the use of well-structured survey questionnaires. consumers, specifically individuals from 15 years and above were drawn based on convenience and asked if they purchased any form of canned foods and were enthusiastic to contribute to the study. these consumers were considered old enough to make informed purchasing decision. canned/tinned food was chosen because it is one of the arrays of food that fall under mandatory labelling. these food groups are required to provide a complete labelling on their packaging. consumers‟ buying behaviour was measured through self-reported use and understanding of food label information, when they read it and any impact on purchasing decision. the sociodemographic information of the respondents (age, sex, education, marital status and level of income) was also obtained. method of data analysis data entry and analysis was done using spss computer package version 19. descriptive and inferential statistics were created and used to define and explain the results. a chi square (x2) statistic was used to investigate whether distributions of categorical variables differ from one another. it shows a quantitative measure used to determine whether a relationship exists between two categorical variables. the pearson's chi-squared test was used to assess whether the two paired observations / variables were independent. results and discussions socio-demographic statistics of the sample as displayed in table 1below, results showed that the sample was gender sensitive (male = 57.6) with the modal age group being 15-30 consumers’ use and understanding of food label ... 356 years (60.8%) who had never been married (54.0%) and with a greater number who had tertiary education (36.4%) earning between gh¢50-499 (61.6%). table 1: socio-demographics of the sample variable frequency percentage sex: male female 144 106 57.6 42.4 age groups: 15-30 36-45 46-60 < 60 152 74 15 9 60.8 29.6 6.0 3.6 marital status: single married divorced/ separated widowed 135 86 15 14 54.0 34.4 6.0 5.6 level of education: none basic secondary tertiary 19 58 82 91 7.6 23.2 32.8 36.4 income levels: (50-499) (500-999) (1000 and above) 154 72 24 61.6 28.8 9.6 frequency and time of use of food label information from table 2, most consumers reported reading food labels occasionally (29.6%) with always (22.8%), often (19.6%) and rarely (7.6%) ranking 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively during initial purchase (37.2%). and 20.4% say that they never read food labels. table 2: when and how often consumers refer to food label information when consumers read label frequency percentage (%) initial purchase 93 37.2 when comparing products 43 17.2 when buying some particular product 63 25.2 how often they refer to label frequency percentage (%) rarely 19 7.6 occasionally 74 29.6 often 49 19.6 always 57 22.8 total 199 79.6 though the study indicated that, majority of the consumers use label information, they only do this occasionally on initial purchase. this is probable because consumers assumed they know the product to have reached minimum standard (mori, 2001) or the search cost is expensive as pointed out in the research done by gianfranco et al., (2006). a cross tabulation of frequency of use of food labels and when they are read revealed that, consumers who report reading food labels do that during initial purchases, always (n=31, 15.58%) these proportions are similar to the findings from mintel (2006) which suggest that approximately half of food consumers from uk read the labels on initial purchases, always‟ (32%) or usually (20%). consumers’ use and understanding of food labels results from table 3 show that about 79.6% (n=199) of the respondents, recounted to access asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 351-365 357 food label information before purchase with 54.8% understanding the information somehow. table 3: consumers’ use and understanding of food label information do you read food label? frequency percentage (%) yes 199 79.6 no 51 20.4 do you understand what you read? very well 77 38.7 somehow 109 54.8 don‟t understand 13 6.5 out of the 79.60% (n=199) respondent who claimed to use label information during purchasing any canned food, 93.3% said they understood the information they read while 6.5% don‟t understand what even they read being it the terminology or technical terms used or numerical gen. among the label users (n=186, 93.3%) who understand, 54.8% said they understood the information somehow while 38.7% understand it very well. this result was different from the answers of mahgoub et al., (2007) that found out that majority (59.0%) of consumers‟ in lesotho understand food label very well. the kind of information consumers look out for date label (99.5%) was found to be the information consumers most seek on any canned food. it recorded the highest score followed by ingredient (78.4%), health claim (66.8%) and nutritional information (65.3%) placing fourth. information like net weight (24.1%), producers or manufacturers (30.7%), country of origin (47.7%) and net weight (24.1%) were least considered. table 4: the kind of information consumers look out for multiple response food label information yes no freq. % freq. % nutritional information 130 65.3 69 34.7 health claims 133 66.8 66 33.2 ingredient 156 78.4 43 21.6 expiry date/ use before 198 99.5 1 0.4 country of origin 95 47.7 104 52.3 net weight 48 24.1 151 75.9 producers /manufacturers 61 30.7 138 69.3 instruction for use 99 49.7 100 50.3 from table 4 above, it was evident that consumer were more interested in date label than any other information on a labelled package. this is mostly used to determine the safety, freshness, wholesomeness and quality of food products. date label comes in the form of manufacturing date which signifies the product was made, use by which specifies beyond which food should not be consumed and best before/expiry date gives an indication of quality life span of the product. this result is similar to the finding of tessier et al, (2000) who reported that date labels were the most commonly sought information on food labels on a wide range of food products amongst scottish consumers. a research by mori 2010 also revealed that once consumers are at home the only information important to them is the date label. sabbe et al., (2009) found that expiry date is commonly used by consumers as an indication of freshness, shelf life and food safety across a range of foods. consumers’ use and understanding of food label ... 358 other sets of general food label information that consumers look out for during purchase are ingredient (78.4%), health claim (66.8%) and nutritional information (65.3%). results of rodolfo 1996 also indicate that consumers residing in non-metro areas are more likely to use nutritional information concerning ingredients, sodium, vitamins/ minerals, and fibre content on food packages than others in the sub-urban and urban areas. rather result from this study contrast his findings where consumers in sub-urban and urban areas are more concern with ingredient and nutrition information. net weight (24.1%) was least considered probable because similar product might have same weight or volume but at different prices. a research conducted by alice and michelle (2006) found out that size really does not matter to consumers. factors that influence consumers’ decision to purchase a canned product it was found out that advertisement (31.6%) and price (31.2%) were the major factors that influence most consumers decision to do purchase of canned food, with food label information ranking fourth (10.0%) after taste (12.0%) of the product. further details are presented in table 5. table 5: factors that influence sampled consumers decision to purchase a canned product determinants frequency percentage (%) price 78 31.2 food label 25 10.0 advertisement 79 31.6 packaging 21 8.4 taste 30 12.0 product name 11 4.4 convenience 6 2.4 food label information is not the key informant to consumer buying behaviour. factors like advertisement (31.6%) and price (31.2%) are keys among the factors that influence consumer decision. “advertisement is commonly used for judging the nutritional information”, manisha, (2008). though advertisement plays an important role in conveying product massages, labels do much influencing consumer-decision since labels provide concise information. this research finding has proved contrary to that. many consumers use television, screen and magazines as a means of escape, a source of information and as an intellectual stimulus (oced, 2000). majority of the respondent were low income earners. this could be the reason why price had concealed other aspects of the food product, especially food label. this however could not be directly related to income earned by consumers but could be different consumer perspectives and values. among the respondents (n=199, 79.6%) who use food label information when making purchasing, 37.2% were using it on initial purchase, 17.2% when comparing products and 25.2% when buying certain kind of products. this result suggests that food label information is an important source of new knowledge that aid consumers when doing some purchasing. this shows a great tendency of consumers‟ use of food label and thus influence or change their purchasing decision. prathiraja and ariyawardana (2003) noticed that 77.8% of their research respondent considered nutritional information on food items as vital instrument for purchasing decisions. consumer demographics and food label information it was hypothesized that male consumers were less likely to use food label information during shopping than women. the guess was precluded; since the result disclosed that male consumers were more concerned with the use of food label information 2( 39.754, 1, 0.000)df p    than their female asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 351-365 359 counterparts 2( 13.757, 1, 0.032)df p    (details in table 7 below). the mintel (2006) survey reports that women read food labels more than men but this difference is much less when women are compared with men who live by themselves. this has been confirmed by the results of the study since greater part of the male respondent were never married (39.6%) and were living on their own. results from table 7 also revealed that youthful (3145) consumers, ( 2 21.863, 6, 0.002df p    ) and consumer who were had never been married ( 2 20.238, 6, 0.006df p    ) were also apt to refer food label information before purchase. findings from nayga (2003), suggest that income and age are positively related to diet quality regardless of label use, and that people with at least some college education have a higher healthy eating index than people with no college education. contrarily, consumers‟ income levels has no significant influence on their use ( 2 4.566, 6, 0.601df p    ) or understanding of food label ( 2 2.710, 2, 0.258df p    ) neither does it have any influence on their purchasing decision ( 2 10.017, 4, 0.040df p    ) but level of formal education 2( 29.870, 6, 0.000)df p    ) has a positive association with making better choices (results presented in table 8). those with high income displayed different attitudes to those with lower income in terms of the perceived options available to them. consumers in lower paid jobs paid more attention to special price offers, and thus respectively paid less attention to food labeling directly‟‟, mori (2010). consumers with tertiary education ( 2 17.602, 6, 0.007df p    ) as well as basic education 2( 19.250, 6, 0.004)df p    ) were more disposed to turn to food label information before purchase, (refer to table 7 for more details). though highly educated consumers (34.0%) were likely to refer to food label 2( 17.602, , 0.007,df p    table 5.2.1) than those with secondary (26.8%), basic (18%) and no education (0.8), results has shown a negative correlation with consumers use (r2=0.418, p=0.000) and understanding of food label information (r2=0.308, p=0.000) as well as their purchasing decision (r2=0.275, p=0.000), table 7. the use and understanding of food label, effect on purchasing decision there a significant likelihood that when consumer read food label, it will influence their decision to purchase a canned food product ( 249.754, 3, 0.000lr df p   ). therefore consumers‟ use of label has a significant influence on purchasing decision 2( 249.754, 3, 0.000)df p    . also a positive relationship exist between understand and how well they understood what information they read (r2= 0.592, p = 0.000). again there is a positive relation between understanding and choosing among alternatives or making better choices (r2=0.215, p = 0.002). furthermore the level of understanding of food label has a significant influence on consumer purchasing decision ( 2 18.093, 4, 0.001df p    ) and positive correlation (r2=0.266, p = 0.000). details of results in table 7 and 8 at the appendix. association between consumers’ use of food label and their demographic variables and the type of information sought both males (59.3%) and female (38.1%) consumers aged between 31-45 years (47.2%) whether married (33.2%) or not (66.3), have high education (42.2%) or not (1.0%) earning between gh¢50-999 (71.2%) were most interested in date label. this contrast with those aged from 46 years (75.9%) who were more interest in the health claims on the label provided on any canned food. meanwhile those between 15-35 years (51.3%) were also concerned with instructions on how the product will be used. but those earning above gh¢1000 (21.6%) were much in involved in the origin of the product. consumers’ use and understanding of food label ... 360 table 6: consumers’ socio-demographics and the kind of information sought consumer demographics ni (%) hc (%) in (%) ed (%) co (%) mc (%) nw (%) p/m (%) iu (%) y n y n y n y n y n y n y n y n y n sex male female 44.7 20.6 18.1 17.1 42.2 24.6 13.6 19.6 46.7 31.7 6.5 15.1 59.3 38.1 0.5 29.1 18.6 32.7 21.1 16.1 8.0 45.7 30.1 19.6 11.1 42.2 27.1 34.7 15.1 27.1 23.1 48.2 31.6 13.6 6.0 age 15-30 31-45 46-60 > 60 7.5 32.7 6.0 1.0 34.4 12.5 27.2 0.5 12.6 22.6 33.7 42.2 14.4 19.1 12.1 11.1 7.0 46.2 23.7 22.6 38.6 20.0 19.1 16.1 2.5 47.2 5.5 2.0 0.5 17.0 30.6 2.5 0.5 17.1 11.1 1.0 30.2 18.1 0.5 15.6 12.1 12.0 11.1 28.1 27.1 14.1 1.5 14.6 12.1 8.0 11.6 7.0 9.0 22.6 30.6 18.6 4.5 51.3 12.6 30.4 26.1 1.5 24.6 16.1 9.0 ms single married 46.7 18.6 20.1 14.6 48.2 18.6 18.6 14.6 52.3 26.1 14.6 7.0 66.3 33.2 0.5 30.6 17.1 36.2 16.1 15.6 8.5 51.3 24.6 20.6 10.1 46.2 23.1 34.7 16.1 34.2 17.1 55.3 24.6 11.6 7.5 lfe none basic secondary tertiary 0.5 11.6 21.1 32.2 0.5 11.1 12.1 11.1 0.5 12.0 21.1 33.4 1.0 22.6 19.1 30.2 0.5 15.6 28.6 34.2 0.5 7.0 5.0 9.0 1.0 22.6 33.7 42.2 0.5 10.1 19.1 18.6 1.5 12.6 14.6 24.6 4.5 7.0 12.6 1.0 18.1 26.6 30.2 5.0 12.1 14.1 1.0 17.6 22.1 28.6 8.0 14.6 27.1 1.0 14.6 18.6 16.1 0.5 14.1 28.1 37.2 0.5 8.5 5.1 5.5 il: 50-499 500-999 >1000 30.4 20.0 9.8 16.8 12.4 2.4 31.6 14.0 6.0 14.4 10.8 0.8 36.4 21.6 6.4 9.6 4.4 2.4 46.8 24.4 8.8 0.5 5.2 14.5 21.6 24.4 13.2 4.6 10.0 4.8 4.8 36.8 20.0 4.8 12.4 8.0 2.4 6.4 15.6 32.3 23.2 12.0 5.6 28.8 14.0 2.8 36.4 17.6 8.0 7.2 6.8 0.8 lfe = level of formal education, il = income level, ni= nutritional information, y = yes hc = health claims, in = ingredient, ed = expiry date, co= country of origin, nw = net weight n = no, mc = minimum concentration, p/m = producers /manufacturers, iu = instruction for use though some relationships were observed on consumer demographics and their use of food label, it does not affect their buying behaviour. result from table showed that low income has a significant 2( 13.937, 4, 0.007)df p    relationship with purchasing decision, table 9. this could be as a result of majority of consumers within the youthful years with high education been in that category. studies have shown that aging consumers are more interested in their health and well-being. this could probable account for the result pointing out that consumers aged from 46 years (75.9%) were more interested in the health claims than the other information provided. research by umberger et al. (2003) reveals that the surveyed consumers in chicago and denver were willing to pay a premium for country-oforigin labelling. this could be revealed in why higher income earners would ascertain a product by its country of origin. „„price can eclipse other aspects of the label, especially for lower income consumers. those with high income displayed different attitudes to those with lower income in terms of the perceived options available to them. consumers in lower paid jobs paid more attention to special price offers, and thus respectively paid less attention to food labelling directly”, mori (2010). conclusions and recommendations the aims of the study were to find out the use and understanding of food label information and its impact on purchasing decision among consumers in the kumasi metropolis. the results showed there is some awareness food label usage among consumers. though they somehow understand what they read, it is not the main determinant of purchasing decision. advertisement and prices were seen to the key factors that influence purchasing decision. this might be as a result of majority of the respondent been among the low income earners. since firms spend considerable amount of money on product labels, it important for them to know the way labels influence purchasing decision especially for young consumers. they should therefore conduct research periodically to know how consumers perceive the label they read and those of keen interest in order to elaborate them. it was also found out that most consumers are not aware that information provided on food packages are renewed periodically therefore they only refer to labels occasionally during initial purchase. this could make consumers easily switch from one product to the other since they might not be aware that an old product might have received value addition. therefore educating consumers about the importance of food label. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 351-365 361 it would be very useful to determine the use of the label on a much wider scale among a bigger, more demonstrative section of the ashanti region that will compare the use of food label information among rural and urban consumers. individual features of food label information can be researched individually to find their influence and impact on consumer purchasing decision as well as how consumers the information they read. implications for this study are that it will manufacturers know what consumers are interested in and therefore focus that information to attract consumers. again regulatory bodies being government agencies can in turn inform the public on the importance of food label knowing the percentage of the population that read label information. furthermore, this study will prompt the awareness of food label information among consumers, thereby demanding more information on the products they consume. this will compel manufacturing firms to provide the right information to meet the demand of consumers as well as enhancing the work of regulatory bodies knowing that consumers are much interested in product information. this study will also add to knowledge by serving as secondary information to studies revolving around the same topic. references alice, l. and michelle, k. 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(2001)”packaging communication: attentional effects of product imagery”, the journal of product and brand management, vol. 10(7), pp. 1-19 wier, m., o'doherty jensen, k., andersen, l. and millock, k. (2008) “the character of demand in mature organic food markets: great britain and denmark compared”, food policy, vol. 33(5), pp. 406-421. http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11142/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 351-365 363 appendix chi-square estimate of variables table 7: chi-square estimate of variables measure of consumers’ understanding and demographics level of understanding sex age marital status level of formal education income level male female 15-30 31-45 4660 >60 not married married divorced widowed none basic sec. ter. 50-499 500-999 <1000 pearson chisquare (x 2 ) 123 76 132 56 118 66 9 6 45 67 85 115 62 significance 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.011 0.014 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** pearson correlation (r 2 ) 0.54 0.653 0.5 0.707 0.547 0.62 0.746 1 0.73 0.441 0.497 0.648 0.531 significance 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.021 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** degree of freedom (df) 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 frequency of use of food label information, level of understanding and consumer demographics pearson chisquare (x 2 ) 39.8 13.76 13 21.2 0.6 5 17.991 20.2 5.8 2.4 19.3 11.65 17.602 34.514 6.113 0.725 significance 0.000*** 0.032 0 0.002** 0.7 0.08 0.082 0.006* 0.215 0.212 0.004** 0.07 0.007** 0.000*** 0.411 0.696 pearson correlation (r 2 ) -0.27 -0.39 -0 -0.44 0 -0.2 -0.28 -0.4 -0.44 -0.63 -0.34 -0.26 -0.292 -0.393 -0.22 0.066 significance 0.002** 0.000*** 0.002** 0.001*** 1 0.72 0.002** 0.003*** 0.241 0.178 0.02 0.033 0.007** 0.000*** 0.089 0.77 degree of freedom (df) 1 1 6 6 2 2 6 6 4 1 6 6 6 6 6 2 consumers’ use and understanding of food label ... 364 table 8: chi-square estimate of variables consumer demographics and their frequency of use of food label information sex age ms lfe income pearson chi-square (x2) 8.157 13.152 19.024 11.225 4.566 significance 0.043 0.156 0.025 0.261 0.601 pearson correlation (r2) 0.000 0.068 0.079 0.132 0.129 significance 0.999 0.341 0.265 0.063 0.069 degree of freedom (df) 3 9 9 9 6 consumer demographics and their understanding of food label information pearson chi-square (x2) 1.444 4.888 1.841 34.660 2.710 significance 0.229 0.180 0.606 0.000*** 0.258 pearson correlation (r2) 0.085 0.048 0.094 -0.234 -0.116 significance 0.232 0.504 0.187 0.001** 0.102 degree of freedom (df) 1 3 3 3 2 consumer demographics and how well they understand food label information pearson chi-square (x2) 2.062 8.612 6.985 44.157 2.947 significance 0.357 0.197 0.322 0.000 0.567 pearson correlation (r 2 ) 0.095 0.0722 0.116 -0.308 0.049 significance 0.181 0.313 0.104 0.000*** 0.496 degree of freedom (df) 2 6 6 6 4 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 351-365 365 table 9: chi-square estimate of variables consumers’ level of understanding and their demographics; effect on purchasing decision sex age marital status level of formal education income levels (gh¢) male female 15-30 31-45 4660 >60 never married married divorced/ separated widowed none basic sec. ter. 50-499 500 999 >1000 pearson chi-square (x 2 ) 10.324 7.775 9.51 10.431 0.240 0.139 9.993 6.025 4.371 0.600 5.618 4.973 6.438 13.937 2.957 3.454 significance 0.035 0.100 0.060 0.034 0.624 0.709 0.041 0.197 0.112 0.439 0.230 0.290 0.169 0.007* 0.565 0.178 pearson correlation (r 2 ) 0.236 0.293 0.238 0.390 0.200 0.167 0.272 0.209 0.347 0.316 0.275 0.163 0.227 0.311 0.169 0.295 significance 0.009* 0.010 0.006* 0.003** 0.704 0.789 0.003** 0.092 0.360 0.541 0.068 0.187 0.036 0.001*** 0.189 0.183 likelihood ratio (lr) 12.476 10.382 11.267 13.030 0.403 0.138 12.236 8.109 4.531 0.908 7.876 5.691 7.427 17.820 4.087 4.541 significance 0.014 0.034 0.024 0.011 0.526 0.710 0.016 0.088 0.104 0.341 0.096 0.223 0.115 0.001*** 0.394 0.103 degree of freedom (df) 4 4 4 4 1 1 4 4 2 1 4 4 4 4 4 2 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 2 february 2013. spatial effects of cocoa production on rural economy in idanre-ifedore area, ondo state of nigeria j. o. adefila (senior lecturer department of geography ahmadu bello university, zaria, nigeria) citation: j. o. adefila (2013) “spatial effects of cocoa production on rural economy in idanreifedore area, ondo state of nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 56-66. spatial effects of cocoa production on ... 56 author(s) j. o. adefila senior lecturer department of geography ahmadu bello university, zaria, nigeria spatial effects of cocoa production on rural economy in idanre-ifedore area, ondo state of nigeria abstract agriculture has been the main-stay of nigeria’s economy of which cocoa production plays a significant role in the acceleration of the national gross domestic product (gdp), in terms of employment generation, feeding the local industries with raw materials and sustains the rural livelihood until about the mid-1970s that witnessed oil boom resulting in the neglect of the sector coupled with the introduction of structural adjustment programme (sap) in 1986 that killed the morale of cocoa producers. the cardinal objective of the study was to examine the effects of cocoa industry on the rural livelihoods in idanre-ifedore area, ondo state of nigeria. primary data were generated from 80 randomly sampled households in the study area. also, a focus group discussion was conducted among the communities that were involved in cocoa production. secondary data were collected from the ministry of agriculture and rural development, cocoa development units, cocoa research institute of nigeria (crin), official gazettes, federal office of statistics and documented materials. the study employed descriptive statistics namely mean, averages and percentages to summarize the data. also, inferential statistics such as analysis of variance (anova) and regression statistics were employed to analyse the data. it revealed f-test value of 3.85 and a critical value of 2.53 indicates a significant variation in cocoa output at 0.05 probability level among the farmers in the study area. the study examined the relationship between cocoa output and socio-economic traits of the farmers. the regression result showed that age of cocoa farmers (r = .825), annual income (r = .631), age of cocoa farms (r = .755) and cocoa farm size (r = .648) have strong positive correlation coefficients while family size (r = .385) and cocoa farming experience (r = .413) were found to be positive but weak correlation at 0.05 alpha value. on the basis of the findings, one recommends among other things a mass enlightenment campaign at community levels through cocoa research institutes and field extension workers persuading farmers to be planting hybrid disease-resistant cocoa trees to replace the moribund trees. moreover, government should increase producer price in order to encourage the potential cocoa farmers to put in their best and subsidize the agro-chemicals thereby making it affordable for peasant farmers. by doing so, the country can still assume her rightful position as one of the leading countries as exporter of cocoa in the world. keywords: cocoa production rural economy challenges spatial effects of cocoa production on ... 57 introduction cocoa is never a native of nigeria but introduced from the amazon forest, south america during the colonial administration. this industrial cash crop contributed in no small measure to the country’s economic growth and development. it represents a singlemost crop that has significant impact on the nigerian economy. agricultural sector plays significant role in developing economies (eicher and witt, 1994; gollin and rogerson, 2002; adefila, 2008) remarked that it served as source of basic raw materials for our light industries generates employment and contributes to the gross domestic product (gdp). nigeria was ranked among the highest cocoa producers in the world as observed by icco (2003) that in 1970s cocoa output peaked at 308,000 tonnes but this figure dropped sharply in 1980s to 155,000 tonnes and continually down to 110,000 tonnes by 1990 farming season. the problem persists till present. moreover, with the discovery of oil and gas, the contribution of agriculture to the overall economic growth has declined from 70 per cent at independence to about 25 per cent in the mid1970s (the oil boom period). in spite of this sharp decline, agricultural sector accounts for about 80 per cent of the active labour force (cbn, 2007). in like manner, cocoa industry began to deteriorate. it is obvious that increased productivity in the cocoa industry is paramount to improvement in rural standards of living. abayomi (2006) noted that it is capable of increasing not only per capita income; reduce spatial inequalities between rural and urban areas, but also to reduce the unprecedented mobility of rural-urban migration. obviously, this is a phenomenon that often resulted in the stagnation of the rural economy. going by memory lane, the colonial policy gave priority to the cultivation of industrial cash crops within the diversified ecological zones in nigeria. while the production of groundnut and cotton were encouraged in the northern zone, cocoa, palm-produce, rubber and timber were produced in the south. the colonial administration also put in place infrastructural facilities such as construction of roads and railways for easy evacuation of the agricultural produce from the interior down to the coast for onward shipment to europe (cateora and ghauri, 2000). the marketing of the products was encouraged by establishing the marketing boards for the products. in addition, the monetization of the economy in which industrial cash crops could be exchanged for british pounds has encouraged many enterprising farmers to migrate into the cash crop producing areas (adefila, 2011). this movement accounted for the initial rise in the exporting of agricultural produce. in addition, there emerged a pattern of regional specialization in export trade (bola, 2007). this true to a large extent, because grain crops are confined to the north, and tree crops to the forest belt in the south. the noticeable downward trend in the cocoa output generated serious concern among the stakeholders in the cocoa industry along with the federal government hence, the need to organize various forum for various stakeholders to look for a way of improving the productivity, competitiveness, market access to farmers with the purpose of enjoying better bargain for their products and stimulate interest groups within the chain of distribution (ayorinde, 1996; enoma, 2001). there was a growing concern for cocoa industry such that a technical committee was established to look into the remote and present causes of the poor cocoa production in the country. ajao (20060 identified factors such as the failure of the marketing boards to stabilize real income of the cocoa producers, the control measure of shielding the farmers from the fluctuating world prices was seen as disincentive rather than being protective, the destruction of the rubber and cocoa trees during the civil war, the sahelian drought, the ageing of the moribund cocoa trees and of recent, mass migration of young farmers from cocoa fields to the informal urban economic sector. idowu, et al. (2007) remarked that the ugly situation prompted the military administration to scrap the various marketing boards in 1986. however, many economists consider it as the genesis of jeopardizing the cocoa industry since it allowed illegal marketing of cocoa. the focus of the present study is on the cocoa production and attendant consequences on the rural economy in idanre-ifedore area of ondo state with the hope of exploring future prospects of this giant industry thus restoring its past glory asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 56-66 58 as a major contributor to rural socio-economic well-being. paradigm shift in rural economy going by sectoral approach, agriculture is the dominant economic activity and this explains the reason for most rural development policies and strategies focusing on the development of agriculture. it is around this economic activity (agriculture) that other enterprises such as artisan works, commerce, small-scale industries and tertiary services revolve and probably spring from it. in other words, agriculture is the nucleus, the nerve centre of the rural economies. it relates to various economic activities that rural people engage themselves as means of livelihood. essentially elements of rural economies involve the study and analysis of the development, expansion and modernization of agriculture within its rural setting as well as those elements stimulating growth and development (jibaro, 1992). in addition, rural economies cover cultivation of crops, livestock husbandry, forestry and fisheries. the roles of marketing in the chain of distribution and exchange of agricultural produce between the producer (farmer) and the final consumers (public) cannot be exempted from the rural economic activities. olayide and essang (2000) identified the problem of resource utilization with respect to land, labour, capital, water and their prudent management to be within the sphere of rural economies. it is important to include the role of research institutes and related scientific farming methods that influence the introduction and adoption of innovation within the armpit of the rural economies. further still, in recent times there are reversal flows of people, goods and services from the urban to rural communities. the rural has been considered as coincided with agriculture but there is spatial re-distribution of non-farm economic activities which can be explained in relation to the process of globalization of the economy (saraceno, 2005; adefila, 2011). the declining significance of the rural-urban dichotomy possibly has bearing with rural development policies. in addition, the maintenance of diversified economic activities in rural areas through small-holding farms, cooperative organizations among various enterprises and independent artisan works, the presence of non-agricultural rural population – all are playing key roles in the process of diversification of rural economy. the study area it is located between longitude 5º 00’ 5º 30’ east of the greenwich meridian and latitude 6º 20’ and 7º 50’ north of the equator. it lies wholly within the tropics. in the northwest, it shares boundaries with ekiti southwest local government area, in the east it is bounded by akure and owo local government areas. in the west, it is bounded by ondo and ifesowapo local government areas. in terms of spatial coverage, it occupies about 2,000 sq km. in area. the landscape of the study area in most cases is characterized by lowlands, undulating grounds and rugged hills with granitic rock outcrops in many places. the land rises from the coastal area to the rugged hills in the north, among the hills is the idanre hill upon which a tourist centre now being built. it is not uncommon to find isolated blocks of high standing but smoothened inselbergs thoroughly polished by agents of denudation in places like ijabe, oluji, igbaraoke and ilara areas. the inselbergs sometimes are found in groups. it enjoyed a tropical climate with distinct dry and wet seasons. the rainy season lasts for more than eight months in the year (april-october) and the annual rainfall total decreases from 2000 millimeters in the southern parts to about 1,150 millimeters in the northern parts. ayoade (2004) observed that there is variation in the distribution, duration and intensity of rainfall amount from the coastal area to the hinterland. adegeye (2006) had earlier stated that cocoa trees when attained a height of 37.5 centimeters to 62 centimeters require annual rainfall ranging from 1,125 millimeters to 1,500 millimeters and must spread over eight or nine months and followed a dry period of three or four months to enable the cocoa pods to ripe. this is to assert that the study area has the potentials for cocoa to flourish well. the period of dry season that is, novembermarch is very important for the fermentation and drying of cocoa seeds. the average temperature of about 35º c enables cocoa pods to ripe quickly and preparation of cocoa beans for sale becomes easier. spatial effects of cocoa production on ... 59 edaphically, the character of the soil profile in the study area is determined largely by the nature of the parent materials. most of the study area is composed of the great variety of basement complex rocks, giving rise to ferruginous soils that have high clay content and of good retentive capacity (udo, 2001). the determination of whether a particular soil is a product of the underlying or closest parent material is usually based on an inference. but it is obvious that the inselbergs in the area were subjected to various stages of disintegration by agents of denudation and weathering processes thus, the regolith and other weather able minerals were washed down the valley forming extensive layers of alluvial clayey type of soil suitable for the growing of cocoa trees. the people are mostly yorubas who traced their origin to oduduwa, ile-ife in osun state. however, there are many local dialects spoken such as the ekitis, akokos, owos, ondos, akures, ikales and the ilajes. other inhabitants in the study area include the arogbos, and edos who are not strictly yorubas but all the languages are understood by nearly all the inhabitants of the area (cdu, 2000). the people live in compact settlements with varying degree of population concentrations such as owenaondo, idanre, igbara-oke, ijare and ilara-mokin. a part from these compact settlements, there are numerous farm villages and hamlets with five to ten people living in them say a farmer, his wives and children. the farmsteads are found scattered over the place and their locations are far from the main compact settlement which use to be the farmer’s home town. it is usually during important occasions say a yam festival, christmas, new year, muslim sallah and launching occasions that farmers along with wives and children use to come home. the principal occupation of the people in the study area is farming. agriculture is the main stay of the economy and means of livelihood. the major industrial cash crops are cocoa, palm produce, kola-nut and timber. the subsistence food crops include yams, cocoa-yam, cassava, rice, plantain, beans, maize and variety of vegetables. studies in cocoa production the country is one of the leading producers and major exporters of cocoa ever before the discovery of oil and gas. adegeye (2006) remarked that nigeria ranked among the five largest producers in the world even though it was produced on a small-scale level and is mainly produced in ekiti, ondo, osun, oyo and ogun states. cocoa production in those areas accounts for about 70% of the country’s total production which in quantity amounts to approximately 400 tonnes of the total production in a year. ajao (2006) identified other cocoa producing states to include kwara, kogi, edo, delta, cross-river, akwa ibom, taraba and adamawa with a total planted areas of 640,000 hectares, and annual output ranging from 250,000 to 320,000 metric tonnes over the last five years. obatolu et al. (2003) had earlier remarked that cocoa produced well with minimal but sustained water availability through most of the year. the quantity of cocoa output is largely a function of the climate, soil, topography, diseases, insects and pests. ajao (2006) highlighted factors militating against cocoa production to include shortage of farm labour, non-availability of essential chemicals and poor access road to coca producing areas. nigeria has two major groups of farmers. adegeye (2006) identified large scale cocoa farmers and the small scale cocoa farmers. the large scale cocoa farmers devote a higher proportion of their production to generation of income. the farmers usually opt for the creation of large cocoa holding through mobilization of family labour. the major problem facing cocoa production in nigeria is the acquisition of land for cocoa farming. in their study (ajewole and sadiq, 2010) investigated the effects of climate change on cocoa yield within the cocoa research institute (crin) ibadan and discovered that an optimal temperature of 29º c coupled with a minimal of 900 – 1000 millimetres of annual rainfall are required for cocoa to flourish well. the correlation statistics showed a weak relationship of 0.2196 between temperature and cocoa yield. also, the study discovered a weak inverse relationship between rainfall and cocoa yield. the result shows that the higher the rainfall the less in cocoa yields. it is not gainsay that cocoa production is very critical to rural livelihood particularly where cocoa is being produced as it accounts for a high proportion of the household income. gilbert, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 56-66 60 (2000) observed that the real income of the cocoa producers is dependent of the vicissitudes of the world market price of which cocoa marketing board was given the mandate to regulate but failed in this connection and subsequently scrapped in 1986. the structural adjustment programme (sap) that was introduced by the military junta had serious effects on cocoa industry. idowu et al. (2007) examined the impact of market deregulation policies on cocoa production in the south western area of nigeria and observed that consistent economic downturn affected cocoa production on the aggregate between 1970s and 1980s. the economic recess culminated in the introduction of sap in 1986 to stem the trend. the study employed both descriptive and regression statistics and discovered that after two decades of sap coupled with economic liberalization policy, cocoa production confined to the hands of small-holder operators with little application of chemicals to increase annual output. alimi and awoyomi (2001) had earlier remarked that the scrap of the cocoa marketing board also encouraged illegal commercial activities which lowered the quality of cocoa standard thus, made nigeria to become backward in cocoa industry. in their reports (michael and uche, 2011) observed that cocoa problems in nigeria varies from ageing of farmers, cocoa trees are getting diminishing returns to high costs of chemicals. this is corroborated by (ajao, 2006) who identified factors limiting cocoa production to include rarity of chemicals, shortage of farm labour, climate change and poor access roads to cocoa producing areas. it is obvious that cocoa farmers and the trees are ageing coupled with the low producer’s price have combined effects on cocoa productivity. hypotheses (h0) there is no significant relationship between the socio-economic traits of the farmers and the cocoa output. there is no significant variation in the annual cocoa production in the study area. aims and objectives of the study the overall aim of the study is to assess the effects of cocoa production on the rural livelihoods in idanre-ifedore area of ondo state. however, the specific objectives of the study are to: assess the socio-economic characteristics of the cocoa farmers in the study area examine the relationship between cocoa output and the farmers’ socio-economic traits examine the spatial variations in cocoa production assess the challenges facing cocoa planters in the study area methodology in this section, the types and sources of data, sample size, sampling technique, and methods of data analysis are discussed. data selection a large amount of data is required for this study and they include the followings: data on socio-economic characteristics of the cocoa farmers data on the factors influencing cocoa production data in respect of cocoa output per annum data on the challenges facing the cocoa farmers data on measures to improve quality and quantity of cocoa production. sources of data the study made use of both primary and secondary sources of data. a lot of data were gathered through the administration of structured questionnaire in the study area. in order to check for reliability of the research instrument, it was presented to agricultural economists who went through and certified the instrument to be alright. the household constituted the unit of observation. in addition, focus group discussions were conducted among the communities whereupon useful information about the research problem were collected. besides, secondary data were gathered from the ministry of agriculture and rural development, cocoa development unit, akure, federal office of statistics (fos), national spatial effects of cocoa production on ... 61 bureau of statistics, abuja and cocoa research institute of nigeria (crin), ibadan sample size and sampling technique as regards sample size, the study drew a sample of 80 respondents by adopting a purposive random sampling technique. the study covered five major areas namely idanre, owena, igbaraoke, ilara-mokin and ajagbusi with sample size of (20), (16), (20), (14), and (10) respectively. the sample size is adjudged to be adequate to represent the entire population of each area. it is the households that specialize in the production of cocoa that were selected as part of the sample. the unit of observation is the household. the head of each household is chosen as part of the sample and where the head is absent, the most elderly person within the household is chosen as a sample. methods of data analysis the study adopted descriptive statistics such as measures of central tendencies to summarize the data into tabular forms of frequencies, averages, mean, and percentages. in addition, inferential statistics such as analysis of variance (anova) and multiple regression analysis were employed to test the null hypotheses. the regression model adopted is stated as: y = f (xi, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii and e ….…(i) where y = dependent variable x = independent variables and e error term from equation (i) above y = f (b1x1)+(b2x2)+(b3x3)+(b4x4) ……………..+ (b6x6) +(b7x7) + e……… (ii) y = cocoa output in bags (2005 – 2011) per annum xi = age of cocoa farmers xii = age of cocoa farms xiii= family size xiv= income from cocoa per annum xv = cocoa farming experience xvi= cocoa output in bags per annum xvii= size of cocoa farms b1 – b7 = coefficient of regression and e = error term data analysis and discussion in this section, the data collected from field are being analyzed in order to bring out the results clearly. socio-economic characteristics of the cocoa farmers the analysis of socio-economic traits of the respondents in the study area is presented in table 1. a cursory glance at the age-group of the cocoa farmers, the result shows that majority fell within the age-group of over 46 years and this constitutes 51.3% of the respondents. this result corroborates with michael and uche (2011) that the major problem of cocoa farmers is that they were 60 years old. in other words they are at the retiring age. table 1: socio-economic traits of the cocoa farmers s/no variables frequency % i age-group 0-15 5 6.2 16-30 12 15.0 31-45 22 27.5 over 46years 41 51.3 ii age of cocoa farms 0-10 13 16.2 11-20 11 13.8 21-30 35 43.8 over 31 years 21 26.2 iii family size 0-3 5 6.3 4-6 38 47.5 7-9 33 41.2 over 10 4 5.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 56-66 62 iv income from cocoa per annum #0-100,000 9 11.2 #101,000-200,000 8 10.0 #201,000-300,000 34 42.5 #301,000-400,000 6 7.5 over #400,000 23 28.8 v cocoa farming experience 0-10 years 7 8.8 11-20 20 25.0 21-30 43 53.7 over 31 10 12.5 vi cocoa output per annum (bags) 0-10 12 15.0 11-20 23 28.8 21-30 25 31.2 over 31 20 25.0 vii size of cocoa farms (hectares) 0-5 24 30 6-10 31 38.7 11-15 19 23.8 over 16 6 7.5 source: author the respondents that were within the age-group of 31-45 years are (27.5%) of the respondents. the age-group of 16-30 that could be regarded as able-bodied men constitute about (15.0%) of the sampled population in the study area. in comparison, this is smaller than the older aged group in the study area. considering the age of cocoa farms, the study shows that almost a half of the cocoa trees fell within the age-group of 21-30 and this is about (43.8%) of the respondents. this result also confirmed the findings of ajao (2006) that one of the factors limiting cocoa production is the ageing of cocoa trees and that farmers entertained fears of cutting down the moribund cocoa trees in favour of hybrid cocoa trees. this is strictly followed by over 31 years old with a percentage of (26.2%). if one has to combine the two older groups together it gives about (70%) of the respondents on the ageing of cocoa farms. the study investigated the family size of the cocoa farmers and it shows that majority are within 4-6 persons per family which is only (47.5%) of the respondents. it is closed to 7-9 family size constituting about (41.2%). if the two high ranking family sizes are put together, then it could give rise to about (88.7%). it is obvious that in cocoa industry, more labour is required for weeding, planting, spraying, harvesting and preparing cocoa beans for sale. it is labour intensive such that the members of the family often constitute the labour force. the annual income from cocoa was investigated and discovered that close to half of the respondents earned about #201,000-300,000 and this constitutes (42.5%) of the sampled population. the other level of earning is over #400,000 per annum with a percentage of (28.8%). the lowest earning recorded is below #100,000 which is about (11.2%). with the inflation situation in the country, one can adjudged that cocoa farmers in the study area are not earning enough from cocoa as one would expect. ettah et al. (2011) had earlier traced the problem to foreign exchange rate fluctuations coupled with government policies of structural adjustment programme (sap) and economic liberalization as observed by (idowu et al., 2007) had profound influence on the marketability of cocoa thereby having direct bearing on cocoa producers’ price. on cocoa farming experience, the respondents have varying degrees of experience in cocoa preparation but majority fell within a range of 21-30 and it constitutes about (53.7%) of the sampled population. the group with11-20 years of experience are about (25.0%). the farmers with over 31 years in cocoa business are (12.5%) while the least experienced constitutes about (8.8%). one could remark that cocoa farmers in spatial effects of cocoa production on ... 63 the study area possess a high degree of knowledge in cocoa practices thus; training and re-training should be allowed. the investigated the annual cocoa production in the study area and the result showed that the range of cocoa output also varies from individual households but majority produced 21-30 bags per annum and this is just (31.2%) of the respondents while 11-20 bags are produced by (28.8%) of the cocoa farmers. the farmers that produced the highest say, 31 bags and above are (25.0%) and the least is below 10 bags of cocoa representing (15.0%). the performance of cocoa planters in this regard is not a surprise because they are producing at relatively small-size land holdings that cannot encourage production at commercial quantities. idowu et al. (2007) had earlier remarked that government deregulation policy had influence on cocoa industry in that it made production to be confined to small-holder operators with little application of chemicals to increase cocoa output. the size of cocoa farms is investigated in the study area. the result shows that those farmers with 6-10 hectares of land are (38.7%) while those with less than 5 hectares are (30.0%). when the two categories are put together it gives rise to (68.7%). the farmers with over 16 hectares of land are (7.5%). this is rather too small and it suggests that cocoa production is still at subsistence level where majority of cocoa production is consumed within the domestic market. the country should aim at large-scale production. result of analysis of variance (anova) the study investigated the spatial variation in cocoa output within a period of 2005-2010 in the study area and it is discovered that the f-test of 3.85 was greater than the critical value of 2.53 at 0.05 probability level. the null hypothesis (hₒ) stated earlier is thereby rejected hence, there is a significant variation in annual cocoa output in the study area. result of regression analysis one examined the relationship between the annual cocoa output and farmers’ socioeconomic traits in the study area and discovered that all the variables are positively and significantly correlated with cocoa output at 0.05 significant levels. the age of cocoa farmers (xi) has a positive and strong correlation coefficient of (r =.825), age of cocoa farms (xii) with a coefficient of (r =.755), the annual income (xiv) has a coefficient of (r =.631) and size of farmland holdings (xvii) with a coefficient of (r = 648). however, family size (xiii) and farmers’ experience in cocoa production (xv) have positive but weak correlation coefficients of (r = .835) and (r = .413) respectively. challenges facing cocoa farmers there are varying degrees of challenges confronting the cocoa producers in the study area and this is examined. the result is presented in table 2. table 2: challenges of cocoa production constraints frequency % shortage of farm labour 18 22.5 rarity and high cost of agro-chemicals 12 15.0 low producers’ price 40 50.0 poor access to cocoa producing areas 2 2.5 government policies 8 10.0 a glance at table 2, it becomes obvious that major constraints to cocoa production in the study area is the low producers’ price which accounts for about (50.0%) of the sampled population. the deregulation policies coupled with the scrapping of the cocoa marketing board essentially compounds the problem of cocoa producers in that cocoa market was left entirely in the hands of illegal traders thereby confined the cocoa production into the hands of smallholdings (idowu et al., 2007). the ugly situation led to abandonment of cocoa farms. parallel to above is the problem of shortage of farm labour which accounts for about (22.5%) of the respondents. it is not a gain say that cocoa production in nigeria and in most developing countries is still labour intensive. the farmer and members of the family often constitutes the labour force which is grossly inadequate as asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 56-66 64 observed by (ajao, 2006) for cocoa farming operations. but the problem is compounded where the young able-bodied men and women particularly the school leavers at all educational levels are not interested in farming coupled with unattractive rural environment thereby resorting to migration in few urban centres in search of white-collar jobs that are not readily available. perhaps the most disturbing problem is the rarity and high cost of agro-chemicals such as fungicides, insecticides, fertilizers, herbicides and other farm inputs such as cocoa hybrid seedlings, and praying machines. the point is that the agro-chemicals are just too costly and sometimes beyond the reach of peasant cocoa farmers (akanji and ukeje, 2005). the cost from the factory is on the average bearable but due to many intermediaries before it gets to the final consumers that is, the farmers at the village level, the price has almost tripled thereby making it impossible for poor farmers to access the chemicals. the problem of government policies is identified by the respondents. some (10%) of the farmers expressed their feelings about government contribution to cocoa problem and it is centred on the inconsistency of policies following instability of government in power. essentially, successive governments before obasanjo’s regime did not give adequate attention to the problem facing cocoa industry in the country but largely focused on the development of oil and gas sector (ojo, 2004) and which has affected cocoa industry to a large extent. recommendations a reasonable amount of information are contained in this study which can be harnessed towards policy formulation with a view to enhancing cocoa industry to regain its past glory in this country. in the first place, there should be enlightenment campaign at the community levels through the cocoa research institute of nigeria (crin) along with the field extension workers to embark upon persuasion and encouraging the cocoa farmers to adopt new innovations such as planting the hybrid disease resistant cocoa trees and replacing them with the old moribund trees. although the exercise is painful, it will in the longrun assist in boosting cocoa productivity and increase the socio-economic status of the farmers. there is little one can do with the issue of climate change that usher in the global warming having devastating effects on the cocoa industry in recent years. however, the farmers should be prepared to meet the challenges by introducing coping and mitigating strategies towards combating the menace of the changes in weather and climate. the annual increase in rainfall resulting in decaying of cocoa pods called black pod disease can be addressed by spraying fungicides and insecticides on the cocoa pods early enough (agboola, 2009). this is where governments should subsidize agro-chemicals such that they could be made affordable and accessible to peasant cocoa farmers at the village level. the producers’ income in the study area could not justify the amount of efforts they put into the production of cocoa beans for sale. the situation is quite deplorable since the abject poverty is still ravaging on the rural people. since the cocoa marketing boards have scrapped, the federal government should come out with alternative approach rather than leaving the cocoa market into the hands of illegal marketers. the fixing of cocoa price each year should be high in favour of the cocoa farmers such that they could earn a substantial amount of money from their hard labour. by doing so, it will encourage youngsters to move into cocoa industry thereby increasing the supply of labour. it is important that we improve the infrastructural facilities particularly access road to the cocoa producing areas. this is generally in poor condition. the roads are dead-traps where they exist especially during the rainy season. in production process, transportation plays a vital role in the evacuation, distribution, and marketing of farm produce until they get to the final consumers. in this regard, road network is necessarily to be constructed to link production and collection centres. conclusion the cocoa industry has suffered a considerable setback over the years and failed to contribute significantly to foreign exchange earnings neither can it boost the socio-economic condition of the cocoa farmers at the rural community level. the principal causal factor is the shifting direction to the exploration of oil and gas which got to the apex four decades ago. of recent, there spatial effects of cocoa production on ... 65 emerged popular opinions on the danger of mono-economy as a nation and come to realise the need to diversify the economy with a view to explore the solid minerals as well as resuscitating the agricultural sector particularly the cocoa industry. obviously, the national cocoa development committee (ncdc) established by the immediate past administration in the country could be remarked as a giant stride forward towards achieving the desired goals of increasing cocoa production substantially, improve cocoa farmers’ income, and diversifying foreign exchange earnings (ajao, 2006). be as it may seem, there is danger in changing agricultural policies sequel to instability of government in power. in other words, there should be consistency in policies as they affect cocoa productivity. the technical committee in collaboration with the federal ministry of agriculture and rural development, the cocoa research institute of nigeria (crin) and the field extension workers should evolve workable institutional framework geared towards promoting the development of cocoa industry. it is strongly believed that if government is serious at boosting cocoa production and increase the condition of living of the cocoa planters, the physical, capital and human resources on ground can complement government efforts towards restoring the nation’s past glory as one of the leading producers and exporters of cocoa in the world. references adefila, j. o. (2008). the assessment of agricultural growth strategies and sustainable rural development in nigeria in proceedings of the national conference of society for gender in agriculture and rural development (sogard) held at the university of agriculture. makurdi. may, 26-28. adefila, j. o. (2011). changing patterns of migration and rural economic development in igbomina area, kwara state of nigeria. bayero journal of social and management studies, 14(1), 120-131. abayomi, f. (2006). an overview of nigerian agricultural sectors. journal of agricultural economic, 8(3), 7-16. adegeye, a. j. (2006). a comparative analysis of the costs of production and producer prices of a tonne of cocoa from matured trees in nigeria before and during the structural adjustment programme. ife journal of agriculture, 2, 14-18. agboola, m. o. (2009). field spray of fungicides for the control of phytophthora pod. in annual report. cocoa research institute of nigeria (crin). ibadan, 70-85 ajao, k. (2006). cocoa development in nigeria: the strategic role of national committee on development of cocoa. presidential reports. abuja ajewole, d. o. and sadiq, i. (2010). effects of climate change on cocoa yield: a case study of cocoa research institute (crin) farm oluyole area, ibadan. oyo state. journal of sustainable development in africa, 12(1), 350-381. akanji, o. and ukeje, e. (2005). a review and analysis of agricultural prices in nigeria. central bank of nigeria (cbn), 33(4), 30-65. alimi, t. and awoyomi, b. (2001). impact of structural adjustment programme on cocoa farming. ife journal of economics. finance, 2, 1-2. ayoade, j. o. (2004). introduction to climatology for the tropics. spectrum books. ibadan, 220-230. ayorinde, j. a. (1996). historical notes on the introduction and development of the cocoa industry in nigeria. agricultural journal, 3, 1823. bola, o. (2007). nigeria agricultural sector. oxford university press. ibadan central bank of nigeria. (2007). statistical bulletin, 18, 132-149. cateora, p. r. and ghauri, p. n. ( 2000). international marketing. european edition. mcgraw-hill. england. cdu, (2000). cocoa development unit. ministry of agriculture and rural development. bulletin. akure eicher, c. and witt, l. (1994). agricultural in economic development. new york. mcgraw hill. london. enoma, a. i. (2001). long-run agricultural growth in nigeria: an empirical analysis. journal of policy issues, 3(7), 10-25. ettah, b. e., akpan, o. d. and etim, r. s. (2011). effects of price and exchange rate fluctuations on agricultural exports in nigeria. international journal of economic development research and investment, 2(1), 2-10. gilbert, c. l. (2000). cocoa market liberation: its effects on quality, future trading and prices, the cocoa association of london. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 56-66 66 gollin, d. and rogerson, r. (2002). the role of agriculture in development. american economic review, 92(2), 160-170. icco (2003) international cocoa organization. in annual bulletin of cocoa statistics. idowu, e. o., oshuntogun, d. a. and oluwasola, o. (2007). effects of market deregulation on cocoa production in southwestern nigeria. african journal of agricultural research, 2, 429-434. jibaro, g. (1992) essentials of rural sociology. gbemi-sodipo press. abeokuta, 222-235. michael, d. and uche, n. (2011). nigerian cocoa production. in usda foreign agricultural science gain report. no. 111018. global agricultural information network. lagos, 1-7. obatolu, c. r., fashina, a. b. and olaiya, a. o. (2003). effects of climate change on cocoa production in nigeria. proceedings of african crop science conference. lagos. nigeria, 5, 952957. ojo, m. o. (2004) non-oils exports in nigeria’s changing policy dispensation. in central band of nigeria (cbn). annual bulletin, 18, 2. olayide, s. o. and essang, s. m. (2000) intermediate economic analysis. aromolaran publishing house. ibadan, 227-228. saraceno, e. (2005). recent trends in rural development and their conceptualization. journal of rural studies. elsevies science. great britain, 10(4), 321-335. udo, r. k. (2001). geographical regions of nigeria. oxford university press. ibadan. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 4 april 2013. effects of variety and fertilizers on number of grains/cob of maize in asaba area of delta state enujeke e. c. (department of agronomy, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria) citation: enujeke e. c. (2013) “effects of variety and fertilizers on number of grains/cob of maize in asaba area of delta state”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 215-225. effects of variety and fertilizer on ... 215 author(s) enujeke e. c. department of agronomy, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria effects of variety and fertilizers on number of grains/cob of maize in asaba area of delta state abstract this study carried out in the teaching and research farm of delta state university, asaba campus from march 2008 to june, 2010 to evaluate the effects of variety, organic manure and inorganic fertilizer on number of grain/cob of maize. the experiment was carried out in a randomized complete block design (rcbd) replicated three times in a factorial layout. four different rates of poultry manure, cattle dung and npk 20:10:10 fertilizer were applied to three different maize varieties sown at 75cm x 15 cm and evaluated for number of grains/cob. the result obtained indicated that hybrid variety, 9022-13, which had 5090, was superior. also, plants that received inorganic fertilizer were outstanding in number of grains/cob with values of 441.5 in 2008 and 506.0 in 2009 followed by the plants received poultry manure (444.0 in 2008 and 468.0 in 2009). based on the rates of application of manure/inorganic fertilizer, plants that received 450kgha -1 of npk 20:10:10 fertilizer were outstanding in numbers of grains/cob of maize with values of 532.8 in 2008 and 570.8 in 2009. the results of interaction showed that variety, manure type and rates of application were significantly (p<0.05) different. based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that (i) hybrid variety 9022-13 should be grown in asaba area. (ii) npk 20: 10:10 mineral fertilizers should be applied at the rate of 450kgha -1 to enhance maize yield. keywords: organic manure, inorganic fertilizer, number of grains/cob, asaba, delta state introduction maize (zea mays l) is one of the major cereal crops grown in the humid tropics and subsaharan africa. it is a versatile crop and ranks third following wheat and rice in world production as reported by food and agriculture organization (fao, 2002). maize crop is a key source of food and livelihood for millions of people in many countries of the world. it is produced extensively in nigeria, where it is consumed roasted, baked, fried, pounded or fermented (agbato, 2003). in advanced countries, it is an important source of many industrial products such as corn sugar, corn oil, corn flour, starch, syrup, brewer’s grit and alcohol (dutt, 2005). corn oil is used for salad, soap-making and lubrication. maize is a major component of livestock feed and it is palatable to poultry, cattle and pigs as it supplies them energy (iken et al. 2001). the stalk, leaves, grain and immature ears are cherished by different species of livestock (dutt, 2005). in spite of the increasing relevance and high demand for maize in nigeria, yield across the country continues to decrease with an average of about 1 t/ha which is the lowest african yield recorded (fayenisin, 1993). the steady decline in maize yield can be attributed to: 1. rapid reduction in soil fertility caused by intensive use of land and reduction of fallow period as reported by directorate of information and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 215-225 216 publications of agriculture (dipa, 2006). 2. failure to identify and plant high yielding varieties most suited or adapted to each agro-ecological zone (kim, 1997; olakojo et al., 1998). 3. use of inappropriate plant spacing which determines plant population and final yield (zeidan et al., 2006). 4. negligence for soil amendment materials such as organic manure and inorganic fertilizers which improve soil condition and enhance crop yield. sonetra (2002) suggested that subsistence farmers should apply organic manure directly to the soil as a natural means of recycling nutrients in order to improve soil fertility and yield of crops. manures and fertilizers are the life wire of improved technology contributing about 50 to 60% increase in productivity of food grains in many parts of the world, irrespective of soil and agro-ecological zone (dipa, 2006). reijnties et al. (1992) and adepetu (1997) remarked that the downward trend in food production should prompt farmers to amend the soil with different materials in order to enhance growth and yield of crops. several organic materials such as cattle dung, poultry dropping, pig dung and refuse compost have been recommended to subsistence farmers in west africa as soil amendments for increasing crop yield (sobulo and babalola, 1992; ismail et al., 1990; olayinka, 1996 and olayinka et al., 1998). municipal wastes were reported to have reduced soil temperature, increased soil water, nutrient status and the yield of maize in temperate soils (movahedi et al., 2000). cattle dung has been reported to contain 0.3 – 0.4 % n, 0.1 – 0.2 % p and 0.1 – 0.3 % k (subedi and gurung, 1991). according to adekunle et al. (2005) cattle dung applied at the rate of 10 t/ha to cowpea resulted to increased plant height, leaf area, pod number, pod weight as well as improved soil structure in a mixed farming system. stefan (2003) indicated that fresh poultry dropping contain 70% water, 1.4% n, 1.1% p2o5 and 0.5% k2o while dried poultry manure contains 13% water, 3.6% n, 3.5% p2o5 and 1.6% k2o. ayodele (1993) reported that inorganic fertilizers are known to influence the quantity and yield of maize. iken and anusa (2004) recommended an optimum plant population of 53,333 plants/ha for maximum yield of maize. their report indicated that this is obtainable using a spacing of 75cm x 25cm at 1 plant per stand or 75cm x 50cm at 2 plants per stand. azam et al. (2007) reported that spacing of 75cm x 35cm resulted in increased grain yield of maize while 75cm x 15cm gave maximum cob weight. similar report by allessi and power (2004) revealed that maize cob weight decreased with increased plant population. at present, there are no recommended standards taking into consideration the different combinations of such cultural practices as varietal selection, rates of appropriate organic manure and mineral fertilizer which interplay to influence yield and optimal performance of maize in asaba area of delta state. against this background, the broad objective of this study, therefore, was to: identify variety of maize most suited or adapted to asaba area and the appropriate fertilizer types and rates for the variety. the specific objectives were to: (i) identify the best variety for asaba area. (ii) determine the effects of npk (20:10:10) mineral fertilizer, poultry manure, cow dung on number of grains/cobs maize. materials and methods site description the study was carried out in the teaching and research farm of delta state university, asaba campus from march to december 2008 and repeated between march and december, 2009. asaba is located at latitude 06 o 14’n and longitude 06 o 49’n of the equator. it lies in the tropical rainforest zone dominated by mangrove, fresh water, swamps, humid forests and secondary vegetation (nest, 1991). its climate is influenced by the movement of the inter-tropical discontinuity (itd). the idt is made up of two wind systems namely the moisture-laden south-west monsoon from the atlantic ocean and the dry cold north-east trade wind from the sahara desert. the southwest trade wind most significantly determines the climate condition of asaba area of delta state. asaba is characterized by raining season between april and october, effects of variety and fertilizer on ... 217 with annual mean-rainfall of 1500mm and 2000mm maximum. the distribution is bimodal with peak in july and september, coupled with a period of low precipitation in august. mean temperature is 23.8 o c with 37.3 o c as maximum. relative humidity is 77.2%, the mean monthly soil temperature at 100m depth is 20.3 o c, while sunshine stands at 4.8 bars (meteorological office, asaba, 2003). pre-planting soil analysis representative surface soils (0-20cm) were sampled with a tubular sampling auger. these soil samples were air-dried at room temperature for 5 days and crushed to pass through a 2mm mesh sieve. sub-samples from the bulked soil sample were further grounded to pieces to pass through 100mm-mesh sieve for the determination of organic matter. the rest samples were then analyzed to determine the physical and chemical properties of the soil. the analysis was done at delta state university, asaba campus. analytical procedure physical properties particle size distribution: particle size distribution was analyzed using the bouyoucos hydrometer method in which 0.5 n sodium hexameta-phosphate was used as dispersant (landor, 1991). bulk density: the bulk density (bd) was determined by core-method. particle density: this was determined by pycometer or specific gravity bottle method as described by bowles (1992). chemical properties soil ph: this was determined in soil: water suspension (1:1) using glass electrode phmeter as described by mclean (1982). organic carbon: this was determined using the wet oxidation method of walkley and black (walkley and black, 1945). total nitrogen: this was determined using the modified k. jeldah distillation method as described by landor (1991). exchangeable cations (ec) and effective cation exchange capacity (ecec): exchangeable cations were determined by extracting the cations with in ammonium acetate (in, nhoac) as displacing solution, buffered at ph7 as described by brady and weils (1999). the extract was then determined electrochemically using atomic absorption spectrophometry. the effective cation exchange capacity (ecec) was calculated as the sum of exchangeable bases (ca, mg, k and na) and exchangeable a1 and h expressed in cmo1/kg -1 of soil. exchangeable acidity: this was determined by titration method as described by juo (1981). the exchangeable h + and a1 ++ were then expressed in cmo/kg -1 of soil aim of the experiment the experiment was aimed at testing the response of three selected maize varieties to different rates of organic manure and inorganic fertilizer (npk 20:10:10) experimental design the study was carried out in randomized complete block design (rcbd), replicated three times in a factorial layout. the factors were three sources of nutrients:poultry manure (pm), cattle dung (cd), inorganic fertilizer (npk 20:10:10). the different rates of pm were 0, 10, 20, 30t/ha, cd were 0, 10, 20, 30t/ha and npk 20:10:10 were 0, 150, 300, 450kg/ha. agronomic practices among the agronomic practices carried out were land preparation/plot layout, planting, application of treatments, weeding. land preparation and plot layouts the land was ploughed and harrowed using tractor. three blocks (or replicates) consisting of 36 blocks each were layout, each block will measure 2.6m x 2.25m and was separated from one another with a space of 0.5m. alley pathways of 1m separated one block from another, and the total number of plots laid out in the entire experiment was108. planting maize seeds were sown on the plots at the rate of 1 seed per hole at a depth of 2-3cm, using 75cm x 15cm spacing as indicated by the first experiment. procurement and application of organic manure and npk 20:10:10 fertilizer asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 215-225 218 well-decomposed cattle dung was collected from cattle pen area, while poultry droppings were obtained from the battery cage system of poultry management of delta state university, asaba campus. this organic manure was analyzed to determine their nutrient contents. npk 20:10:10 fertilizer was obtained from delta agricultural procurement agency (dapa), ibusa.these amendment materials were incorporated into the plots according to the treatment as suggested by olanikan (2006). weeding: weeding was done three times using hoe. data collection: fourteen middle stands were used as sample population for data collection. data collected was number of grains/cob of maize. this was done by direct counting after harvesting and shelling at the end of the sixteenth week from sowing. analysis of soil sample: soil samples were collected from each experimental plot and analyzed for their content of n p and k. statistical analysis: data collected were subjected to analysis of variance (anova) and means were separated with duncan multiple range test (dmrt) according to wahua (1999). results soil physico-chemical properties of the experimental site: the pre-physico-chemical properties of the experimental site are shown in table 1. the result showed predominantly sand at the surface and this tends to decrease with depth of profile. texturally, the soil of the experimental site is classified as sandy loam. the soil is acidic with ph of 6.2 in h2o and 5.6 in cacl. the organic matter content and total nitrogen were low with values of 1.22 gkg -1 and 0.113 gkg -1 . the available p was high with value of 26.5 mgkg -1 . the exchangeable cations (ca, mg, na and k) were equally low in status with values of 2.6cmolkg -1 for ca 2+ and 0.9 cmolkg -1 for mg 2+ . the value obtained for na + was 0.57 cmolkg -1 , which was moderate while that for k + was 0.08cmolkg -1 , which was low. the cec was 4.15, while ecec was 5.6cmolkg -1 , which were generally low. the exchangeable acidity was only trace for al 3+ and characteristically low for h + with a value of 1.4 cmolkg -1 . nutrient content (%) of organic manure used in the study the nutrient content of organic manure (poultry manure and cattle dung) used in the study is shown in table 31. the values of n, p and k in poultry manure were significantly (p<0.05) higher than their values in cattle dung. with respect to n, poultry manure had 1.6% against cattle dung which was 0.4%. also, poultry manure had 0.6% p while cattle dung had 0.2% p. the values for k were 0.8% in poultry manure, while it was 0.3% in cattle dung. table 1: physico-chemical properties of experimental site soil property value interpretation particle size distribution (%) coarse sand 38 fine sand 41 silt 9 clay 12 texture sandy loam ph h2o 6.2 acidic cacl 5.6 acidic organic carbon gkg -1 0.71 organic matter gkg -1 1.22 very low total nitrogen gkg -1 0.113 low available p (ppm) 26.5 exchangeable bases (cmol/kg -1 ) na + 0.57 moderate effects of variety and fertilizer on ... 219 k + 0.08 very low ca 2+ 2.60 low mg 2+ 0.90 low cation exchange capacity 4.15 exchangeable acidity (cmol/kg -1 ) al 3+ trace h + 1.4 effective cation exchangeable capacity (cmol/kg -1 ) 5.6 table 2: nutrient (%) of organic manure used ion the study nutrient content (%) parameter n p k pm 1.6a 0.6a 0.8a cd 0.4b 0.2b 0.3b legend: pm = poultry manure, cd = cattle dung, n = nitrogen, p = phosphorus effect of variety, organic manure and inorganic fertilizer on number of grains/cob of maize the response of number of grains/cob of maize to variety, organic manure and inorganic fertilizer is shown in table 3. there were significant differences in the number of grains/cob of maize. with respect to varietal performance in 2008, hybrid variety 9022-13 had the highest number of grains/cob (526.6), followed by open-pollinated variety br9922dmrsrf2 (474.0) agbor local variety had the lowest number of grains/cob (340.0). the order of highest number of grains/cob with respect to the varieties sown was 9022-13 > br9922-dmrsrf2 > agbor local. this was also the trend in 2009. plants that received inorganic fertilizer npk 20:10:10 had the highest number of grains/cob (506.0) followed by plants that received poultry manure (468.0). plants that received cattle dung had the lowest number of grains/cob. the order of superio0rity in the number of grains/cob based on source of nutrient was inorganic fertilizer npk 20:10:10 > poultry manure > cattle dung. plants that received higher rates of fertilizer or manure had higher number of grains/cob than plants that received lower rates. the order of highest number of grains/cob based on rate of manure in tons/hectare was 30 > 20 > 10 > 0 while that of fertilizer in kg/ha was 450 > 300 > 150 > 0. similar results were also obtained in 2009. the result of interaction (table 4) showed that variety, manure type, rate, variety * rate were significantly (p<0.05) different and affected changes in number of grains/cob of maize in 2008 and 2009, while type * rate were not significantly (p>0.05) different and could not have affected changes in number of grains/cob of maize in both years of evaluation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 215-225 220 table 3: effects of variety, organic manure and inorganic fertilizer on number of grains per cob of maize in 2008 and 2009 no. of grains/cob 2008 2009 mean variety 9022 – 13 509.0a 526.6a 517.8a br9922-dmrsf2 410.0b 474.0b 242.0b agbor local 343.3c 430.0c 386.6c nutrient source pm 440.0a 468.0b 454.0a cd 380.7b 458.0b 419.3b if 441.5a 506.0a 473.7a rates of application (tons or kg/ha) 0 332.6g 394.0d 363.3e 10 382.6f 423.0c 407.3d 20 434.6d 482.0b 458.3c 30 494.8b 542.0a 518.4b 150 409.1e 496.6b 402.8d 300 473.3c 558.0a 515.6b 450 532.8a 570.8a 551.8a means with the same letter(s) under the same column are not significantly different (p  0.05) using duncan multiple range test (dmrt). table 4: effects of variety, manure and inorganic fertilizer on number of grains per cob of maize in 2008 and 2009 variety nutrient source rate no. of grain/cob no. of grain/cob 9022-13 pm 0 408.0 416.0 10 476.0 509.3 2 0 544.0 554.6 30 612.0 662.6 mean 535.6 cd 0 384.0 396.0 10 448.0 466.0 20 512.0 528.0 30 569.3 588.0 mean 494.5 if 0 432.0 412.0 150 504.0 492.6 300 576.0 642.3 450 642.6 651.6 mean 549.6 br9922dmrsrf2 pm 0 336.0 400.0 10 392.0 416.0 20 448.0 484.0 30 504.0 528.0 mean 457.0 cd 0 288.0 404.6 10 336.0 418.6 20 384.0 465.3 manure (tha-1) if (kgha-1) effects of variety and fertilizer on ... 221 30 432.0 526.0 mean 453.6 if 0 360.0 412.0 150 420.0 492.6 300 480.0 642.3 450 540.0 651.6 mean 549.6 agbor local pm 0 312.0 356.6 10 364.0 375.3 20 416.0 428.0 30 468.0 476.6 mean 409.1 cd 0 248.0 380.6 10 280.0 402.6 20 304.0 439.3 30 384.0 471.3 mean 423.5 if 0 260.0 376.0 150 303.0 474.6 300 364.0 480.0 450 116.0 500.0 mean 457.7 variety * * manure type * * rate * * variety x manure type ns * variety x rate * * manure type x rate ns ns variety x manure type x rate ns ns legend: * = significant at 0.05 level of probability, ns = not significant discussion soil physico-chemical properties of the experimental site the sandy loam texture of the experimental site may be attributed to the parent material (pm) from which the soil was formed and the climate of the area. the soil might be formed from sandstone and quartz parent materials. these impart sandy texture to the soils. the high sand content of the soil could be attributed to high content of quartz in the material (brady and weils, 1999). the weak acid nature of the soil of the area may be traced to the marked leaching of exchangeable bases resulting from the high rainfall associated with the environment and the dissociation of strong and functional group in the organic matter. this is in harmony with the findings of omokri et al. (2007). the low organic matter status of the experimental site could be attributed to the rapid decomposition of organic matter due to high solar radiation and moisture,this favours optimum microbial activities in the soil, it could also be attributed to the annual seasonal bush burning which tend to deplete organic matter accumulation in the soil (landor, 199l). the low level of total nitrogen could be due to high temperature. it could also be attributed to leaching of’ nitrate by torrential rainfall prevalent in the environment (olatunji et al., 2007). the high level of’ phosphorus may be attributed to either of these reasons: (i) history of land use and cultural practices associated with the land use (that is, cropping of crops that do asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 215-225 222 not take much p nutrient from the soil and the application of p organic fertilizers (nnaji et al., 2002, nnaji, 2008). (ii) the parent material from which the soil was formed may be rich in p minerals (brady and weils, 1999). (iii) the soil may not be highly acidic as to cause high level of fixation (brady and weils, 1999, isirimah et al., 2003 and omokri et al., 2007). the low values of exchangeable cations may be attributed to the leaching of bases from the solum due to high rainfall characteristics of the area. the low action exchange capacity could be attributed to the pm from which the soil was formed, and low organic matter (om) content of the soil. the pm from which the soil was formed may be poor in basic nutrients. nnaji et al. (2002) noted that soils of the study area were dominated by fe oxide and kaolinites. these clay minerals are low in basic cations (brady and weils, 1999). the exchangeable acidity was low possibly because of the cultural practices associated with the land use (that is, previous use of amendments to improve soil condition and enhance crop yield. the results, generally, are in harmony with the findings of olatunji et al. (2007) and the results of soil fertility evaluation in the region. it is also consistent with the findings of nnaji et al. (2002), nnaji, 2008) which reported that the history of land use and cultural practices affect soil conditions and crop productivity. nutrient content (% dry matter) of organic manure used in the study the values of n, p and k were higher in poultry manure than in cattle dung used in the study possibly because poultry manure, especially those produced in deep litter or battery cage house, have more concentrated nutrient content compared with other types of animal manure. this is similar to the findings of sharpley and smith (1995) and brady and weils (1999) who reported that among the different sources of organic manure which have been used in crop production, poultry manure was found to be the most concentrated in terms of nutrient content. it is also in harmony with the findings of subedi and gerung (1991) and d1pa (2006) who reported that poultry manure has higher levels of n. p and k than cattle dung. it is also consistent with the findings if ibeawuchi et al. (2007) who reported higher levels of n. p and k in plots treated with poultry manure than in plots treated with other nutrient sources. effect of variety, organic manure and inorganic fertilizer on number of grains/cob of maize hybrid variety 9022-13 had higher number of grains/cob than open-pollinated variety br9022dmrsrf2 and agbor local possibly because hybrid maize varieties possess outstanding quality with respect of high grain yield. this is consistent with the findings of odeleye and odeleye (2001) and sajjan et al. (2002) who reported that fruit production, grain yield and other yield components are usually influenced by genetic quality of individual variety. it is also in consonance with the findings of olakojo et al. (1998) who reported that hybrid maize varieties have yield advantage of 25 to 50% over the best open-pollinated variety in nigeria. plants that received poultry manure had higher number of grains/cob than plants that received cattle dung probably because poultry manure must have increased the carbon content, water holding capacity, aggregation of soil, and decreased the bulk density of the soil. this is similar to the findings of egerszegi (1990) who reported that poultry manure increased the carbon content, water holding capacity, aggregation of soil and decreased bulk density of soil where it was applied. poultry manure could have also increased the water soluble and exchangeable potassium and magnesium, which enhanced yield as reported by jackson et al. (1999). the superiority of plants that received inorganic fertilizer over other plants with respect to higher number of grain/cob could be attributed to better yield enhancement credited to inorganic fertilizers over other nutrient sources. this is similar to the findings of ayodele (1993) and giller (2003) who reported that inorganic fertilizers influenced crop quality and improved yield over 50% than their unfertilized counterparts. it is also consistent with the findings and report of akintoye and olufolaji (2005) on cayene pepper. higher rates of inorganic fertilizers or organic manure produced better response with respect to higher number of grains/cob possibly because higher rates satisfied the crop’s requirement. this is similar to the findings of olarewaju and isma (1990) and ayodele (1993) who suggested that accurate rate and type of fertilizer should be applied using the best method at the most appropriate time. effects of variety and fertilizer on ... 223 conclusion and recommendations this study was carried out to evaluate the effects of variety and fertilizers on number of grains/cob of maize in asaba area of delta state. it was a factorial experiment carried out in a randomized complete block design (rcbd) with three replicates. four different rates of poultry manure, cattle dung and inorganic fertilizer npk 20:10:10 were applied to three maize varieties sown at 75 cm x 15 cm plant spacing. the results obtained indicated that hybrid variety 9022-13 was superior in number of grains/cob of maize and that plants which received inorganic fertilizer application rate of 450 kgha -1 had the highest number of grains/cob. based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that (i) hybrid maize variety 9022-13 be grown in the study area (ii) farmers who prefer mineral fertilizer should apply 450 kgha -1 to enhance number of grains/cob of maize in asaba area of delta state. references adekunle, i. o., akirinade, o. e. and azeaz, j. o. 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(1995). nitrogent and phosphorus forms in soil receiving manure. soil science, 159, 253-258. sobulo, r. a. and babalola (1992). improved organic fertilizer and soil condition. in toward efficiency fertilizer use in nigeria. federal ministry of agriculture, water resources and rural development. lagos pp. 90-110. sonetra, s., borin, k. and preston, t. r. (2002). waste water from rubber processing as fertilizer for water spinach and forage cassava. www.utafoundation.org/utacanbod/msc99thes/so nintro.htm. stefan, t. (2003). organic agriculture: sustainability market policies. cab organization for economic co-operation and development p. 95. subedi, k. d. and gurung, g. (1991). soil fertilizer thrust towards sustainable agriculture: experience of lumile regional agricultural research centre. in: soil fertility and erosion issues in the middle mountains of nepal pp. 8182 idrc, otawa, canada. wahua, t. a. t (1999). applied statistics for scientific studies. afrika-link books, nigeria, pp. 250 -287. walkely, a. and black, i. a. (1945). an examination of detrigrareff methods for determining soil organic matter and proposed modification of the chronic and titration methods. soil science, 37, 29-38. zeidan, m. s., amany, a. and balor elkramany, m. f. (2006). effect of n-fertilizer and lant density on yield and quality of maize in sandy soil. research journal of agriculture and biological sciences, 2(4), 156-161. http://www.utafoundation.org/utacanbod/msc99thes/sonintro.htm http://www.utafoundation.org/utacanbod/msc99thes/sonintro.htm effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 1 january 2013. acknowledgements: i thank the tobacco research board of zimbabwe for funding all aspects of this work. effect of sulfentrazone application method and time, on weed control and phytotoxicity in fluecured tobacco upenyu mazarura (crop science department, university of zimbabwe, harare, zimbabwe) citation: upenyu mazarura (2013) “effect of sulfentrazone application method and time, on weed control and phytotoxicity in flue-cured tobacco”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 30-37. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 30-37 30 author(s) upenyu mazarura crop science department, university of zimbabwe, harare, zimbabwe effect of sulfentrazone application method and time, on weed control and phytotoxicity in fluecured tobacco abstract over a period of three years sulfentrazone, alone and in combination with other herbicides, was evaluated for weed control efficacy under various methods application. the trials were done in granite sandy soils after three years of chloris gayana cv katambora at kutsaga research station, zimbabwe. the chemicals were sprayed using a knapsack or a tractor mounted boom. incorporation after ridging was done with a gang tiller set for shallow incorporation while that before ridging was done using a disk also set for shallow incorporation. comparisons were made between directed and broadcast sprays, incorporation and no incorporation, timing from before planting to 4 weeks after planting (wap). application before holing out (bho) and after holing out (aho) was also evaluated. in most cases sulfentrazone gave good to excellent control of all weeds and was comparable to metolachlor in efficacy. in some cases grass control was somewhat variable but acceptable. with regard to time of application, sulfentrazone gave better control of broadleaf and grass weeds when applied from 1 to 4 wap. yellow nutsedge control was excellent and unaffected by time of application. weed dry matter was reduced significantly relative to the untreated control for the 1 to 4 wap applications. there was no significant difference between incorporation and surface or between directed and broadcast applications. the over top (ot) and aho consistently gave better control than bho application. keywords: sulfentrazone, nutsedge, broadleaf introduction the options for nutsedge control in the farming and even landscape sectors are very limited. in the tobacco sector s-metolachlor or metolachlor and halosulfuron (servian) are, at best, the only options. s-metolachlor has good pre-emergent efficacy but its persistence is questionable. it also has no effect once the nutsedge has germinated and is not known to affect the nuts buried in the ground. halosulfuron application can only be directed as it is phytotoxic to tobacco although it has an excellent post emergent activity on nutsedge and is known to be translocated to the buried nuts. sulfentrazone provides excellent control of yellow and purple nutsedge, most broad-leafed weeds, and some grass weeds. it's efficacy on grasses, however, is very variable (mazarura, 1999; fisher et al., 2003) but it extends the arsenal against nutsedge in both tobacco and soya beans. it is also effective at high rates (0.55 kg /ha) under landscape environments (collins et al., 2001). sulfentrazone acts in the chlorophyll biosynthetic pathway by inhibiting protoporphyrinogen oxidase. as a result a phytodynamic toxicant (protoporphyrin ix) effect of sulfentrazone application method and.... 31 accumulates and leads to membrane disruption. absorption is through roots and shoots. plants that take up sulfentrazone in this manner turn necrotic and die soon after light exposure (collins et al., 2001). crop injury from sulfentrazone has been reported (fisher & smith, 2003) especially with pre plant incorporation and less so with surface pre plant applications before transplanting (fisher et al., 2002). grey et al. (2004) did not find yield limiting phytotoxicity in peanut cultivars with the pre plant application. in potato, application at emergence caused severe injury while acceptable injury occurred when sulfentrazone was applied pre-emergence (bailey et al., 2002). in tobacco, fisher et al. (2003) concluded that injury was almost guaranteed if concentrated zones of the sulfentrazone were found in the root zone at transplanting. this could be as a result of poor incorporation (fisher et al., 2003), leaching caused by rainfall(ritter et al., 2005) or any other cause. applied post transplanting over the top, pre planting incorporated and post transplanting directed, sulfentrazone gave good control of smallflower momingglory (jacquemontia tamnifolia (l.) griseb) (94%) and yellow nutsedge (≈90%) at 0.14 to 0.28 kg a.i./ha across all application methods. efficacy was not affected by method of application but injury was severe (63%) when sulfentrazone was applied post transplanting over the top (johnson & mullinix, 2005). in zimbabwe, farmers apply herbicides in various ways. application after ridging but before holing out (bho), although not widespread, is practiced. this was the case with after holing out (aho) but before transplanting. the over the top (ot) application after transplanting is the most widespread as it guarantees least traffic on the treated soil surfaces. such traffic is associated with poor efficacy, perhaps, due to the uneven distribution of herbicide that can result. the present experiments were carried out to establish the effect of various application methods and times on weed control efficacy and tobacco injury. materials and methods treatments and design in all the three year trials the experiments were arranged in a complete randomized design of four blocks. in year two a factorial experiment was used. the treatments for each year and the treatment descriptions are given below: year 1 year 2 year 3 1. sulfentrazone before holing-out (bho) 2. sulfentrazone after holing-out (aho) 3. sulfentrazone after holing-out (hole soil mixed thoroughly with sprayed soil) (aho-m) 4. sulfentrazone after holing-out (sprayed soil layer removed from hole) (aho-r) 5. sulfentrazone (over top) 0-3 days after planting (no incorporation) (ot) 6. untreated control 1. pre–ridge application and incorporated by disc set for shallow incorporation (preridge incorporated.) 2. post-ridge application and incorporated by gang tiller set for shallow incorporation before holing out (post-ridge incorporated, bho.) 3. application immediately after planting over the top (iap surface) 4. application over the top at 1 week after planting (1 wap) 5. application over the top at 2 weeks after planting (2 wap) 6. application over the top at 3 weeks after planting (3 wap) 7. application over the top at factor 1 levels 1. sulfentrazone post-ridge incorporated (before holingout and incorporated with a gang tiller) (post-bho) 2.sulfentrazone immediately after planting (no incorporation) (iap) 3. sulfentrazone 1 week after planting (wap) 4. sulfentrazone 2 weeks after planting (wap) 5. metolachlor applied immediately after transplanting @ 1.44 kg a.i./ha (iap) factor 2 levels: 1.directed spray (d) 2. broadcasted spray (b) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 30-37 32 4 week after planting (4 wap) varietal and cultural activity considerations the variety k rk26, a nematode resistant cultivar, was transplanted into late ploughed granite sands after 3 years of a nematode resistant grass, chloris gayana cv rhodes katambora. regardless, edb 98% was applied at 125 ml /100 m run. gross plots measuring 4.8 m x 17.92 m (four rows) were used and the harvested/assessed plots measured 2.4 m x 16.80 m (2 rows). plants were 0.56m apart on ridges 0.2m high and 1.2m apart. in all the trials sulfentrazone was either applied by calibrated knapsack boom at 0.25 kg a.i./ha (year 1) or tractor mounted boom (year 2). incorporation before holing out (bho) was done by a disc harrow set for shallow incorporation (10 cm) while incorporation after ridging was done using a gang tiller. measurements and statistical considerations two rows of a local control plot were included so that any two treatments had this plot in the middle. the local plot was used for scoring for weed control. weed counts and dry matter measurements were done on it after 2-3 reapings of the untreated control plot. these measurements (on the local untreated control) were used as a covariate in statistical analyses. weeds were counted using 7 (0.3 x 0.3m) quadrants at 3 positions in each subplot. in year 1 stalk height was assessed 51dap while visual assessment of phytotoxicity was done 7 weeks after planting (mazarura, 2001), and finally weeds assessment (visual assessment, count and dry mass) and yield. in year 1 and 3 all weed count data were square root transformed (bartlett, 1936) before anova was done and mean separation was done using fischer‟s protected least significant difference (lsd) test at 5%. in year 2 the logarithmic transformation was appropriately used (bartlett, 1936). sas software was used for all analyses. although all statistics was carried out using transformed data, were necessary, all data was back transformed in order to aid understanding and, were appropriate, all tables have been presented using back transformed data. results during the 1 st year of testing sulfentrazone, the herbicide was applied after ridging but before holing out (bho), after holing out (aho), after holing out and the soil in the hole mixed (ahom), after holing out and the sprayed hole soil removed (aho-r) and sprayed over the top of the transplanted tobacco seedlings (ot). although all treatments at 34 days after planting (dap) were better than the untreated control, all the herbicide treatments except the over the top (ot) treatment were the same. by145 dap the broad leaf control had virtually vanished with all herbicide treatments essentially undistinguishable (p > 0.05) from the untreated control although there were significant treatment effects (p < 0.05) (table 1). in this regard, the bho and aho treatments outperformed the other herbicide treatments (table 1). nutsedge control was not different between herbicide treatments at 34 dap but better (p < 0.05) than the untreated control (table 1). nutsedge control persisted to 145 dap for all treatments except the aho-m (table 1). grass control was better with the herbicide treatments than without and showed significant (p < 0.05) effects. in this regard, the ot and aho-m treatments stood out. at 145 dap some grass activity was still evident. when all weeds were considered at 34 dap the ot and aho-m treatments were significantly (p < 0.05) better than the rest of the herbicide treatments. generally, the above efficacy also persisted to 145 dap (table 1). a complimentary visual weed control score showed that overall weed control was good at 32 and 48 dap, but phytotoxicity was evident at the both dates in most treatments (table 2). at 32 dap, with regards to phytotoxicity, the treatments could be arranged as aho, aho-m > bho > aho – r > ot. at 48 dap the ot treatment did not show any phytotoxicity while the other treatments were similar. stalk height measurements confirmed this observation and showed that the ot treatment was safest while the aho treatments were the most risky. essentially, however, the aho-r and aho-m, bho and ot where the same as the untreated control (table 2). crop injury was severe with the aho and aho-m treatments. however, none of the phytotoxicity caused significant effect of sulfentrazone application method and.... 33 yield reduction (compare weeded clean column, table 3). a comparison of the weeded and weedy plots showed that only with the ot treatment was the herbicide as effective as a weed free situation. in the second year the study investigated the effect of a pre-ridging and post ridging incorporation with a gang tiller set for shallow incorporation, the iap over top application and a series of overtop applications from 1 to 4 wap. nutsedge control was not affected by time or method of herbicide application. however, broadleaf and grasses showed such responses. with regards to broadleaf weeds, control could be arranged in order of decreasing control as 4 wap > 3 wap, 2 wap, 1 wap, iap surface > pre or post ridge incorporation. similarly for grasses the control was 4 wap > 3 wap, 2 wap, 1 wap > iap surface, pre and post incorporation. there was no yield response to the time and method of herbicide application. in the third year two methods of application (directed and broadcasted) and four application times were tested. in addition a positive control, metolachlor, was included. no effect of method of application on weed efficacy and no method by time interaction were observed. time of application within each method of application did not affect nutsedge, grasses and all weeds but affected broadleaf weeds control. across application methods the application 1wap, 2wap and metolachlor gave better efficacy than the iap and post ridge applications. yield was not affected by method or time of application (table 6). table 1: weed counts/m 2 at 34 dap and 145 dap, and dry mass at harvest (year 1) 34 dap 145 dap dry mass (g/m 2 ) b/l s gr all b/l s gr all application method bho 3.9b 3.8a 14.0bc 21.8b 3.2a 0.5a 10.4c 14.2a 312.66b aho 3.8b 1.2a 13.0b 17.9a 4.4a 0.7a 9.7bc 14.7a 393.45c aho mixed 2.5ab 0.8a 8.7ab 12.0a 5.3ab 0.9ab 8.2b 14.4a 386.65c aho removed 4.0b 1.3a 18.1c 23.4b 6.0ab 0.5a 7.8b 14.3a 241.80b ot 1.6a 2.8a 6.4a 10.8a 9.0b 0.7a 4.8a 14.4a 78.76a none 20.8c 23.4b 48.4d 92.7c 5.8a 1.7b 22.2d 29.8c 530.06d *means showing the same letter are not significantly different according fischer‟s protected least significant difference (lsd) test at 5%. dap = days after planting, b/l = broadleaf weeds, s = nutsedge, gr = grasses, all = (broadleaf + nutsedges + grasses), bho = before holing out, aho = after holing out, aho mixed = sprayed after holing and chemical mixed with the soil in the hole, aho remove sprayed after holing and a layer of the sprayed soil removed from the planting hole, ot = sprayed over the top. table 2: weed control score (0-10), phytotoxicity score (1-10) at 32 and 48 dap, and stalk height at 51 dap (year 1) 32 days after planting 48 days after planting stkht51 bl gr sg phyto bl gr sg all phyto applicatio n method bho 8.8 8.5 9.0 4.3 9 7.8 10 8.8 3.3 51.2 aho 9.0 8.5 9.0 5.0 8.8 8.3 10 8.8 4.8 44.5 aho mixed 8.8 8.5 9.0 5.0 9.3 8.3 10 8.3 4.8 46.2 aho removed 8.5 8.5 9.0 4.0 8.5 7.5 10 7.8 4.0 49.9 ot 9.5 9.3 9.0 1.0 9.3 8.5 9.3 8.8 0.0 58.8 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 30-37 34 none 54.5 lsd ns ns ns 0.34 ns ns ns ns 1.9 9.38 b/l = broadleaf weeds, s = nutsedge gr = grasses all = (broadleaf + nutsedges + grasses), stkht51 = stalk height at 51 d.a.p, phyto = phytotoxicity, bho = before holing out, aho = after holing out, aho mixed = sprayed after holing and chemical mixed with the soil in the hole, aho remove sprayed after holing and a layer of the sprayed soil removed from the planting hole, ot = sprayed over the top. table 3: saleable yield (kg/ha) (year 1) not weeded clean weeded mean application method bho 3434 3945 3689 aho 3146 3623 3385 aho mixed 3051 3913 3482 aho removed 3352 3701 3527 ot 3860 3929 3895 none 1930 3726 2828 lsd: herbicide 451.56, weedy vs. weeded 229.22, interaction 726.88 b/l = broadleaf weeds, s = nutsedge gr = grasses all = (broadleaf + nutsedge + grasses) bho = before holing out, aho = after holing out, aho mixed = sprayed after holing and chemical mixed with the soil in the hole, aho remove sprayed after holing and a layer of the sprayed soil removed from the planting hole, ot = sprayed over the top. table 4: weed counts/m 2 and yield (year 2) sedges broadleaf grasses yield application method or time pre-ridge inco. 7.78a 9.81d 335.9e 2702a post-ridge inco. (bho) 0.93a 6.48cd 233.7de 2542a iap surface 0.19a 5.93bcd 216.5de 2824a 1 wap 0.56a 1.48bc 99.1c 2750a 2 wap 0.19a 2.78b 149.3cd 2785a 3 wap 1.11a 4.81bcd 139.4cd 2785a 4 wap 0 0.93a 10.7a 2532a *means showing the same letter are not significantly different according fischer‟s protected least significant difference (lsd) test at 5%. s = nutsedge, bl = broadleaf, gr = grasses, wap weeks after planting, inco. = incorporated, bho. = before holing out, iap= immediately after planting. table 5: weed counts/m 2 for broadleaf, sedges and grasses (year 3) broadleaf nutsedge grasses all weeds application method d b d b d b d b time of application sulfentrazone post-ridge 9.5b 7.8c 1.6a 2.4a 4.1a 8.2a 20.2a 18.4a sulfentrazone immediate 7.5ab 11.8c 5.2a 5.0a 3.4a 3.7a 16.1a 20.5a sulfentrazone 1 wap 5.6a 5.2ab 1.2a 8.5a 6.6a 2.4a 13.4a 16.0a sulfentrazone 2 wap 6.0a 5.4ab 1.7a 7.4a 3.8a 4.2a 11.5a 17.1a metolachlor immediate 6.3ab 4.81a 26.7a 4.4a 0.9a 0.9a 34.0a 10.1a effect of sulfentrazone application method and.... 35 *means showing the same letter are not significantly different according fischer‟s protected least significant difference (lsd) test at 5%. d = directed spray, b = broadcasted spray, ave. = mean, ns = not significant table 6: saleable yield (kg/ha) (year 3) application method directed broadcast mean time of application sulfentrazone postridge 2722 2771 2747 sulfentrazone immediate 2585 2716 2650 sulfentrazone 1 wap 2856 2676 2766 sulfentrazone 2 wap 3072 2825 2948 metolachlor immediate 2759 2810 2785 lsd: application time ns application method ns interaction ns discussion during the first year, the results showed early season (34dap) good broadleaf weeds control across application methods but the ot and „aho mixed‟ treatments gave the best control. late season control (145 dap) was not evident. early season nutsedge control was also good across all methods and all treatments. late season (145 dap) control was only evident with the treatments bho and aho-r. grey et al. 2009a reported good control of yellow nutsedge at all rates (112 to 280 g a.i. /ha) with a pre-plant incorporated and pre-emergence (similar to ot in the current trials), thus agreeing with the current findings. post emergent control of purple nutsedge is documented and so is the effect on buried nuts (rahnavard et al., 2010; brecke et al., 2005). early season grass control was good except the aho-r treatment. control persisted only with the ot treatment. overall control was good for all treatments but did not persist to 145 dap. since grass control is known to be variable (fisher et al., 2003; mazarura, 1999) it was conceivable that grass control would not be persistent. overall injury was worst with aho and aho-m treatments at 32 and 48 dap, followed by the bho and aho-r treatments. that the aho and aho-m treatment caused more injury was likely because these treatments placed chemical in the root zone. these findings corroborate the findings by (fisher et al., 2003) that transplanting seedlings in any soil that had sulfentrazone would cause some injury in tobacco more than when the roots grew in such soil. this explains why injury was least with the ot treatment at 32 dap and 48dap. the stalk heights measurement further confirmed the data from scores and showed that the ot treatment would be less risky. however, it is likely that this treatment would injure plants somewhat if there are excessive rains that would leach the chemical into the root zone just after transplanting. however, contrary to the findings by the current work, in cantaloupe, the post-ott treatment (similar to ot in the present study) was more injurious than the pre plant incorporated treatment (johnson & mullinix, 2005). this injury was reported for a higher rate (0.28 kg a.i. /ha) than used in the current work and further, perhaps their test crop was more sensitive. the current studies showed no reduction in yield in all years of study and this is corroborated by many reports that show that observed injury rarely cause yield reduction (ritter, menbere & momen, 2005; bailey, wilson & hines, 2002b; grey, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 30-37 36 bridges & brecke, 2000; wilson et al., 2002; grey et al., 2009b; fisher & smith, 2001) in the second year, generally, efficacy improved with application after planting and was best at 4wap and was lower with incorporation while yield was the same for all treatments. the findings that efficacy improved with time from transplanting are consistent with findings from the first year of this trail and that sulfentrazone has a good post emergent activity (ellis et al., 2001). further, in the third year it was evident that, were treatments differences were detected, better control was associated with application after transplanting. in addition incorporation and application iap reduced efficacy, perhaps because the contribution of post weed emergent activity is significant in the control of this weed. conclusions and recommendations in summary, the herbicide controlled better after transplanting and more so with delay in this application. this, however, is not good because of the risk of residues in tobacco leaf since by 4 weeks after planting some tobacco varieties would be ready for their first harvest. it is there, not advisable, for farmers to utilize the improved efficacy with delay in application. further, applications that leave the herbicide in the root zone must be avoided. this work showed three definite things: first that transplanting into soil which has sulfentrazone may cause injury; second that nutsedge control was good in the granite sand with soil organic carbon of about 4% as was the case in this study; third that broadleaf control with sulfentrazone was satisfactory to very good; fourth that grass control was somewhat variable and; finally that persistence of control was good only with nutsedge. this work points at the need for more work in finding out why persistence is poor with grass and broadleaf control as well as the impact on residues on spraying tobacco late after planting. references bailey, w. a., wilson, h. p. & hines, t. e. (2002). response of potato (solanum tuberosum) and selected weeds to sulfentrazone. weed technology, 16, 651– 658. bartlett, m. s. (1936). the square root transformation in analysis of variance. supplement to the journal of the royal statistical society, 3(1), 68–78. brecke, b. j., stephenson, d. o. & unruh, j. b. (2005). control of purple nutsedge (cyperus rotundus) with herbicides and mowing. weed technology, 19(4), 809–814. collins, k. b., mcniel, r. e. & weston, l. a. (2001). evaluation of sulfentrazone for weed control and phytotoxicity in fieldgrown landscape plants. journal of environmental horticulture, 19(4), 189–194. ellis, r. l., morgan, g. d., rhodes jr. g. n. & mueller, t. c. (2001). cover crop management in no-till tobacco. tobacco science, 45, 44–48. fisher, l. r. & smith, w. d. (2001). effect of sulfentrazone application and combination with clomazone or pendimethalin on weed control and phytotoxicity in flue-cured tobacco. tobacco science, 45, 30–34. fisher, l. r. & smith, w. d. (2003). weed management, north carolina cooperative extension service. north carolina state university., raleigh, nc, pp. 51–69. fisher, l. r., smith, w. d. & wilcut, j. w. (2002). effect of sulfentrazone rate and application method on weed control and stunting in fluecured tobacco. tobacco science, 46, 5–8. fisher, l. r., smith, w. d. & wilcut, j. w. (2003). effects of incorporation equipment, application method, and soil placement of sulfentrazone on injury to flue-cured tobacco. tobacco science, 46, 1–4. grey, t. l., bridges, d. c., hancock, h. g. & davis, j. w. (2004). influence of sulfentrazone rate and application method on peanut weed control. weed technology, 18(3), 619–625. johnson, iii, c. j. & mullinix jr. b. g. (2005). effect of herbicide application method on weed management and crop injury intransplanted cantaloupe production. weed technology, 19(1), 108–112. mazarura, u. (1999). a new herbicide for nutsedge and some broadleaf weeds. zimbabwe tobacco, 8(11), 41–43. mazarura, u. (2001). phytotoxicity of sulfentrazone in flue-cured tobacco. coresta meet. agro-phyto groups, 2001, cape town, abstr. a13, p. 17. effect of sulfentrazone application method and.... 37 rahnavard, a, ashrafi, z. y., rahbari, a. & sadeghi, s. (2010). effect of different herbicides on control of purple nutsedge (cyperus rotundus l.). pak. j. weed sci. res, 16(1), 57–66. ritter, r. l., menbere, h. & momen, b. (2005). tolerance of maryland-type tobacco (nicotiana tabacum) to sulfentrazone. weed technology, 19, 885–890. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 4 april 2013. acknowledgements: with the completion of this scientific article, the author would like to thank profusely to institution of research and community services universitas padjadjaran that had provided research funding through research program ppm productive unpad 2012. optimization of cassava waste from bioethanol post-production through bioactivity process consortium of saccharomyces cerevisiae, trichoderma viride and aspergillus niger yani suryani (department of biology, faculty of mathematics and science magister program, universitas padjadjaran jl. raya jatinangor, sumedang, west java, indonesia) citation: yani suryani (2013) “optimization of cassava waste from bioethanol post-production through bioactivity process consortium of saccharomyces cerevisiae, trichoderma viride and aspergillus niger”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 154162. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 154-162 154 author(s) yani suryani department of biology, faculty of mathematics and science magister program, universitas padjadjaran jl. raya jatinangor, sumedang, west java, indonesia optimization of cassava waste from bioethanol postproduction through bioactivity process consortium of saccharomyces cerevisiae, trichoderma viride and aspergillus niger abstract the result of laboratory analysis on bioethanol waste shows nutritional and anti-nutritional content (hcn). based on it, in order to prevent environment damage then performed a bioconversion of bioethanol waste for base material of sheep forage by fermented previously using consortium of saccharomyces cerevisiae, trichoderma viride, and aspergillus niger to eliminate the waste anti-nutritional content and increase nutritional content. this research used completely randomized design (crd) factorial pattern with two factors and three replications. the first factor was inoculum dose (d) and the second factor was variation of tested microorganisms (m). the variables measured were hcn content and nutrient content of fermented products, that were water content, protein content and crude fiber content by proximate analysis. furthermore, the data was statistically analyzed by analysis of variance (anova), and was there significant difference analyzed further by duncan's multiple range test of 5% level. nutritional compositions of bioethanol waste from cassava that had been fermented by consortium of saccharomyces cerevisiae, trichoderma viride, and aspergillus niger experienced changes compared to before fermentation. the results showed an increase in protein level, while fiber content, water content, and hcn content were decrease. bioethanol waste from cassava fermented by aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisiae (k3) with 2% inoculum dose had the highest protein content increase from 11.79% to 25.41% and had the lowest crude fiber content decrease from 16.4% to 12.84 %. the highest hcn decrease obtained from the fermentation of consortium aspergillus niger and trichoderma viride. keywords: aspergillus niger, bioactivity, bioethanol waste, consortium, optimization, saccharomyces cerevisae, trichoderma viride introduction bioethanol is a petroleum alternative energy that is produced in the world thus far (anindyawati, 2009). the results of the purification and separation on bioethanolmanufacturing process are ethanol, bioethanol solid waste and liquid waste (endah et al., 2007). in 2012, it is projected that 15 million kiloliters of premium will be replaced about 20% by the be-10 gasohol. if the yield produced from 1 ton of cassava biomass can be converted to 166.6 liters bioethanol, the waste that will be produced from bioethanol production is about 15 million tons of waste per year. until now, cassava waste from bioethanol post-production is untapped well, and even tends to be left. if this is allowed to prolong, it will have a negative impact on the environment, one of the worst impacts is water quality decrease (sukmaji, 2008). optimization of cassava waste from ... 155 one of potential utilization is converting waste into sheep forage, by previously improving nutrient and eliminating hcn contained in waste through fermentation process. it is useful to overcome the problems due to the disruption of sheep productivity for limited forage availability (tarmidi, 1999). fungal groups which are potential to be used as inoculums in waste bioconversion process of bioethanol from cassava are saccharomyces cerevisiae, trichodema viride, aspergillus niger, and its consortium. the fermentation process can improve nutritional value, harmless, does not cause pollution and relatively low cost (doyle et al., 1986). through the fermentation process, it is possible to derive benefits on reducing antinutrients and toxins contained in foodstuffs. based on research conducted by abdulah (2009), hcn content contained in cassava peel decreased from 0.024% to 0.009% after 5 days fermentation. fermentation is also one of the numerous ways to lower crude fiber content and reduce toxic content contained in forage material, also has more value in improving the nutrient quality and livestock palatability improvement. in the implementation of fermentation, potential fungi are essential, such aspergillus niger, trichoderma viride, saccharomyces cerevisiae (soeka, 1992). utilization of saccharomyces cereviseae in fermentation is based on ability of the microbe to produce vitamins, enzymes, nutrients, and other cofactors (dawson & alison, 1993). saccharomyces cereviseae contains glutamic acid which can reform forage palatability, assimilate protein and secrete essential amino acids, also contains vitamin b complex (fardiaz, 1992). trichoderma viride is saprophyte, aerobic, grow at temperature of 30oc and ph 5. this fungus is a cellulase enzymes producing microbe that can degrade cellulose. cellulase enzymes produced by trichoderma viride can break down starch or non-polysaccharides starch into monomeric sugars which are more easily metabolized (iyayi and aderolu, 2004). aspergillus niger is a mold type microbe that can grow rapidly and harmless because it does not produce mycotoxins. in addition, it use is easy because many are used commercially in the production of citric acid, gluconic acid and some enzymes such as amylase, pectinase, amilo-glucosidase and cellulase. aspergillus niger has good amylolytic and proteolytic capacities, and it can produce the extra-cellular phytase enzyme. the result of fermentation can be used as a source of single cell protein (scp) and the culture media as potential energy source. this research aimed to obtain the best inoculum type and optimum dose from fungi types used to improve nutritional content and able to reduce hcn antinutrient contained in cassava waste from bioethanol postproduction. results from this research are expected to overcome two important social issues, namely issues of bioethanol post-production cassava waste which disturbs and threatens environment health, it can also undertake the problem of declining sheep productivity as the consequence of minimal and limited forage availability. materials and methods the research method used was experimental method using completely randomized design (crd) 3x3 factorial pattern with three replications (gaspersz, 1989). the first factor was microorganism consortium (m) and the second factor was inoculum dose (d). microorganism consortium consisted in three levels, namely: consortium 1 (m1): trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae consortium 2 (m2): aspergillus niger and trichoderma viride consortium 3 (m3): aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisiae inoculum dose (d), respectively: d1 = 2g, d2 = 3g and d3 = 4g. parameters measured were crude protein content, crude fiber content and moisture content of fermentation products through proximate analysis, also hcn content of fermentation products. data were analyzed by analysis of variance and continued with duncan’s multiple range test (gaspersz, 1989). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 154-162 156 stages in this research were: (1) inoculums preparation; (2) microbial inoculums production; (3) bioethanol waste fermentation. inoculums preparation of pure culture of aspergillus niger, trichoderma viride and saccharamyces cerevisiae was inoculated on slant agar media, then incubated at 30oc for 3 days. producing of microbial inoculums used about 900 grams of rice added with 100 grams of bioethanol waste flour and mixed with 1 liter distillated water, then steamed for 1 hour. after that, it was cooled (temperature 3035oc), then put into a plastic bag. every 1000 grams of substrate was inoculated with 100 ml of suspension, then stirred until homogeneous, and perforated using a needle and then incubated at 30-35oc (gandjar, 1999) for 72 hours in incubator (shang, 1987). after the substrate was fulfilled with the mold, then it was dried using light oven at 45-45oc and milled into powder, then used as inoculants. furthermore, fermentation of bioethanol waste was 400 grams of bioethanol waste put into heat-resistant plastic bag and added 400 ml water, then sterilized at temperature of 121oc, 2 atm for 15 minutes. after the bioethanol waste got cold, it was inoculated with previously produced inoculums as much as 2%, 3%, and 4% (w/v) bioethanol waste dry matter. then the material was stirred until homogeneous. after that, the plastic bags were perforated to get aerobic conditions. each plastic bag incubated at 30oc for 3 days. if fermentation time had been completed, then did the proximate analysis which included the calculation of crude protein content, crude fiber content, water content, and hcn content. results and discussion effect of microbial consortium type and inoculum dose on water content of bioethanol waste from cassava fermentation result water content averages of cassava bioethanol waste resulted from fermentation through proximate analysis are presented in table 1.1., while the decrease in water content chart is presented in figure 1.1. table 1.1: water content (%) of bioethanol waste from cassava fermentation result based on microbial consortium type and inoculum dose consortium types inoculum doses (%) average 2 3 4 trichoderma viridae and saccharomyces cerevisiae 34.48 28.12 27.04 29.88 aspergillus niger and trichoderma viridae 32.55 29.41 27.74 29.9 aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisiae 34.17 28.94 26.51 30.21 average 33.74 28.82 26.09 from the data listed in table 1.1., it shows that the water content of cassava bioethanol waste resulted from fermentation decreased during the fermentation appropriate with inoculum dose on all treatments. analysis of variance showed that only inoculum dose gave significant effect on water content decrease, while consortium type did not perform significant difference at 5% confidence level. this meant that the effect of consortium type on water content decrease during fermentation was same for each treatment. to determine the further difference of each inoculum dose treatments, duncan’s multiple range test was carried out which results are presented in table 1.2. table 1.2: duncan’s multiple range test of inoculum dose effect on water content inoculum doses (%) water content (%) significance (α = 5%) 2 33.74 c 3 28.82 b 4 26.09 a exp: numbers followed by the same letters are not significantly different on α = 5% dmrt optimization of cassava waste from ... 157 the data in table 1.2 show that every different inoculum dose produced different water content in bioethanol waste from cassava fermentation result, with the highest decrease of water content obtained at 4% inoculum dose. the decrease of water content in fermentation substrate simultaneously with the increase dose of inoculum associated to water utilization by microbes for growth and due to evaporation during the fermentation process. water is necessary for microbial growth. microbes will grow well if the need for water and nutrients are met. water acts as a solvent in metabolic activity in the microorganism cells and serves as a catalyst directly involved in some enzymatic reactions (sastramihardja, 1989). fardiaz (1988) stated that water besides functioning as a reactant in hydrolysis reaction also as product of oxygen reduction in electron transfer system. in line with the growth of microbes during fermentation, water demand will increase, consequently the water content in substrate will decrease. the decrease in water content of cassava bioethanol waste resulted from fermentation was also associated with evaporation during fermentation process. the longer the fermentation, the more water was evaporated, consequently water content of cassava bioethanol waste resulted from fermentation was lowered. sastramihardja (1989) stated that during aerobic fermentation process, it will produce carbon dioxide and water vapor which causes water content decrease in fermentation media. similarly, according to sofyan (2003) stated that the energy generated during the fermentation process is in heat form. the heat generated causes the substrate temperature rises and the water produced during fermentation process will evaporate which results water content decrease in the substrate. the water content in cassava bioethanol waste resulted from fermentation was still higher than the water content should be contained in forage material maximum 12%. effect of microbial consortium type and inoculum dose on crude protein content of bioethanol waste from cassava fermentation result after the fermentation, it was identified that crude protein content of bioethanol waste from cassava had increased for all treatments compared with crude protein content in bioethanol waste from cassava before fermentation. it was also identified that crude protein content in cassava bioethanol waste resulted from fermentation decreased with fermentation time accretion. analysis of variance result showed that both consortium type and inoculum dose gave significantly different effect on crude protein content of cassava bioethanol waste resulted from fermentation, but there was no interaction between inoculum dose and consortium type on crude protein content increase. this meant that the effect of inoculum dose factor was same for every type of consortium, and consortium type effect was same for each inoculum dose on crude protein content change of cassava bioethanol waste from fermentation result. further, duncan’s multiple range test was carried out to determine treatment differences among inoculum doses on crude protein content change presented in table 2.1. while duncan’s multiple range test result to determine treatment differences in consortium type on crude protein content change, it can be seen in table 2.2. table 2.1: duncan’s multiple range test of inoculum dose effect on crude protein content inoculum doses (%) crude protein content (%) significance (α = 5%) 2 22.64 c 3 21.25 b 4 19.14 a exp: numbers followed by the same letters are not significantly different on α = 5% dmrt table 2.2: duncan’s multiple range test of consortium type effect on crude protein content consortium types crude protein content (%) significance (α = 5%) trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae 16.71 a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 154-162 158 aspergillus niger and trichoderma viride 22.48 b aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisiae 23.85 c exp: numbers followed by the same letters are not significantly different on α = 5% dmrt data in table 2.1 show that each inoculum dose produced different crude protein content with the highest average increase in crude protein content obtained at 2% inoculums dose. the increase in crude protein content of cassava bioethanol waste resulted from fermentation associated with the increase of microbial cell number and enzymes released during fermentation. increasing of microbial cells number during fermentation causes an increase in nucleic acids and protein contents. brock et al. (1994) stated that the higher the growth rate, the larger the cell size and the higher the amount of nucleic acid in cell. in addition, microbe itself is a single cell protein that can increase protein content in the substrate. pederson (1971) stated that every microbial cell contains many proteins which levels are varied, depend to the species. oboh et al. (2002) stated that the growth of microbes during fermentation can increase protein content in the fermented substrate. data in table 2.1 show that microbial consortium aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisiae (k3) gave the highest average in protein content increase than other consortiums. higher increase of protein by microbial consortium aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisiae (k3) showed that consortium 3 had higher potential to increase crude protein on cassava bioethanol waste substrate than other consortiums. from fermented yield of cassava bioethanol waste by three types of microbes with different inoculum doses in this research, it can be concluded that the consortium of aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisiae (k3) with 2% inoculum dose gave the highest effect on crude protein content increase of cassava bioethanol waste. effect of microbial consortium type and inoculum dose on crude fiber content of bioethanol waste from cassava fermentation result crude fiber content of cassava bioethanol waste fermentation result at 2% inoculum dose for all treatments experienced varied decrease if compared to crude fiber content of cassava bioethanol waste before fermentation. along with the fermentation, crude fiber content experienced re-increase. variance analysis showed that both consortium type and inoculum dose gave significantly different effect on fiber content of cassava bioethanol waste from fermentation result, although there was no interaction between inoculum dose and consortium type on fiber content change. this meant that inoculum dose and consortium type respectively influenced on crude fiber content change from cassava bioethanol waste resulted from fermentation, and also meant that the effect of inoculum dose factor was same for every consortium type, and consortium type effect was same for each inoculum dose on fiber content change. further, duncan’s multiple range test was done to find out treatment differences among inoculum doses on crude fiber content change presented in table 3.1. while, duncan’s multiple range test result to determine treatment differences in consortium type on crude fiber content change can be seen in table 3.2. table 3.1: duncan’s multiple range test of inoculum dose effect on crude fiber content inoculum doses (%) crude fiber content (%) significance (α = 5%) 2 13.99 a 3 15.51 b 4 16.87 c exp: numbers followed by the same letters are not significantly different on α = 5% dmrt optimization of cassava waste from ... 159 table 3.2. duncan’s multiple range test of consortium type effect on crude fiber content consortium types crude protein content (%) significance (α = 5%) trichoderma viride dan saccharomyces cerevisiae 15.91 b aspergillus niger dan trichoderma viride 16.19 b aspergillus niger dan saccharomyces cerevisiae 14.27 a exp: numbers followed by the same letters are not significantly different on α = 5% dmrt data in table 3.1 show that 2% inoculum dose could lower the crude fiber as the highest compared to other inoculum doses. change in fiber content in cassava bioethanol waste fermentation result was influenced by mold mycelia growth intensity and mold ability to break down crude fiber to fulfill energy need with cellulase enzyme help (mirwandhono and siregar, 2004). decrease in crude fiber content of cassava bioethanol waste resulted from fermentation was influenced by cellulase enzyme activity produced by aspergillus oryzae and trichoderma viridae (tortora et al. 2001; yu-ichi et al. 2002). cellulase enzyme plays role in degrading cellulose on fermentation substrates into simple carbohydrate (glucose), which can be utilized by microbes as an energy source for growth. the highest cellulase enzyme activity was assessed in 2% inoculum dose. crude fiber content increase at 3% and 4% inoculum doses associated with increase in microbes amount. the increase in crude fiber content was mainly due to mold mycelia growth in fermentation substrate. moorelandecker (1990) stated that main components of cell wall of mold mycelium and spores are chitin and cellulose which have same function with cellulose in plants. the components are polysaccharide commonly classified as crude fiber component (anggorodi, 1990). similarly with winarno opinion (1983) explained that fungi cell wall chemically consists of carbohydrates, such as cellulose, hemicellulose, pectin, and noncarbohydrates part. the increase in crude fiber content after fermentation can be seen on soybean fermentation into tempeh. crude fiber content in tempeh is higher than in pre-fermented soybean. this is caused by rhizopus oligosporus mold mycelium growth in tempeh (hidayat et al. 2006). from the data listed in table 3.2, it can be seen that microbial consortium of aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisiae could decrease a highest crude fiber content compared with other microbial consortiums. higher decline of crude fiber by microbial consortium aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisiae (k3) than other microbial consortiums indicated that consortium 3 (k3) had higher potential to lower crude fiber on substrate of bioethanol waste from cassava. this meant that the microbes in consortium 3 could cooperate well in reducing crude fiber in cassava bioethanol waste. another study which showed crude fiber content decrease was iyayi and aderolu research (2004), they reported that crude fiber content of hay, rice bran, corn cobs, and palm kernel flour fermented by trichoderma viride for 14 days decreased by 35%, 40 %, 36%, and 37.50%. another study showing crude fiber contenr increase was tjakradidjaja et al. (2007) reported that jatropha seed residue fermented by rhizopus oligosporus and trichoderma viride had increase in fiber content from 38.49% to 47.45% after fermented by rhizopus oligosporus and became 45.72% after fermented by trichoderma viridae. from fermentation result of cassava bioethanol waste by three microbe types with three different doses in this research, it could be concluded that consortium of aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisiae (k3) at 2% inoculum dose gave the highest influence on crude fiber content decrease of cassava bioethanol waste resulted from fermentation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 154-162 160 effect of microbial consortium type and inoculum dose on hcn content of bioethanol waste from cassava fermentation result the average hcn content of bioethanol waste from cassava fermentation result is presented in table 4.1. table 4.1: hcn content (%) of bioethanol waste from cassava fermentation result based on microbe consortium type and inoculum dose consortium types inoculum doses (%) average 2 3 4 trichoderma viridae dan saccharomyces cerevisiae 4.28 3.52 3.31 3.7 aspergillus niger dan trichoderma viridae 2.59 1.89 1.43 1.97 aspergillus niger dan saccharomyces cerevisiae 2.90 2.20 1.18 2.09 average 3.25 2.53 1.97 data in table 4.1. show decreasing in hcn content of bioethanol waste from cassava fermentation result along with inoculum doses. analysis of variance result showed that both consortium type and inoculum dose gave significant effect on hcn content decrease of cassava bioethanol waste resulted from fermentation, but there was no interaction between inoculum dose and consortium type on hcn content decrease. this meant that effect of inoculum dose factor was same for every type of consortium, and consortium type effect was same for each dose inoculum on hcn content decrease. to find out the treatment differences among inoculum doses on hcn content decrease, conducted duncan’s multiple range test which result can be seen in table 4.2, while the duncan’s multiple range test to identify the treatment difference among consortium types on hcn content decrease can be seen in table 4.3. table 4.2: duncan’s multiple range test of inoculum dose effect on hcn content inoculum doses (%) hcn content (%) significance (α = 5%) 2 3.25 c 3 2.53 b 4 1.97 a exp: numbers followed by the same letters are not significantly different on α = 5% dmrt table 4.3: duncan’s multiple range test of consortium type effect on hcn content consortium types hcn content (%) significance (α = 5%) trichoderma viridae dan saccharomyces cerevisiae 3.7 b aspergillus niger dan trichoderma viridae 1.97 a aspergillus niger dan saccharomyces cerevisiae 2.09 a exp: numbers followed by the same letters are not significantly different on α = 5% dmrt data in table 4.2 show that hcn decrease at 4% inoculum dose was higher compared to other inoculum doses. hcn decrease was assumed that hcn was degraded by enzymes produced by aspergillus niger and trichoderma viride. rusdi (1992) stated that fermentation process can reduce material containing toxins contained in fermented material. data listed in table 4.3 show that the microbial consortium of trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae (k1) gave different effect on hcn decrease of cassava bioethanol waste fermentation result compared with microbe consortium of aspergillus niger and trichoderma viridae (k2) and microbe consortium of aspergillus niger and optimization of cassava waste from ... 161 saccharomyces cerevisiae (k3). the difference effect among consortiums was assumed to be related to the difference amount of microbes among consortium of trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae (k1), aspergillus niger and trichoderma viridae (k2), also aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisiae (k3) which caused different hcn decrease amount. conclusions and recommendations conclusions nutritional composition of bioethanol waste from cassava that had been fermented by aspergillus niger, trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae experienced changes compared to before fermentation. the result showed increase in protein content, while the fiber content, water content, and hcn content were decrease. waste of bioethanol from cassava fermented by aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisiae (k3) with 2% inoculum dose had the highest protein content increase from 21.79% to 35.41% and the lowest crude fiber content decrease from 16.4% to 12.84 %. the most hcn content decrease obtained from fermentation of consortium aspergillus niger and trichoderma viride. suggestions further research should be conducted to determine the effect of single microbe consortium used in fermenting waste of biethanol from cassava to increase nutrient and decrease hcn of cassava bioethanol waste. if the results of this research will be used, it should be taken microbial consortium aspergillus niger and saccharomyces cerevisae with 2% inoculum dose. 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(1999). pengaruh proses biokonversi ampas tebu oleh jamur tiram putih (pleurotus ostreatus) terhadap nilai nutrisi dan pemanfaatan sebagai campuran ransum domba priangan. tjakradidjaja, a. s., suharyadi, adriani (2007). fermentasi bungkil biji jarak pagar (jatropha curcas,l.) dengan berbagai kapang sebagai upaya penurunan kadar serat kasar dan zat antinutrisi. prosiding konferensi jarak pagar menuju bisnis jarak pagar yang feasible. ipb bogor. p. 382 – 391. tortora, g. j., funki, b. r. & case, c. l. (2001). microbiology an introduction. san fransisco: addison wesley longma inc. winarno, f. g., s. fardiaz, & d. fardiaz (1983). pengantar teknologi pangan. jakarta: gramedia. yu-ichi yamane, jin fujita, shinya uziwa, kaoru fukuchi, rhiu-ichi shimizu, akira hiyoshi, hisashi fykuda, shigeaki mikami, yasuzo kizaki, saburo wakabashi (2002). properties of cellulose-degradating enzymes from aspergillus oryzae and their contribution to material utilization and alcohol yield in sake mesh concentration. journal of bioscience and bioengineering, 93(5), 479-484. melalui http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jbb/93/5/47/ pdf http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jbb/93/5/47/pdf http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jbb/93/5/47/pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. effects of long term cropping systems on soil chemical properties u. mazarura (crop science department, university of zimbabwe, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe) c. chisango (kutsaga research company, harare, zimbabwe) citation: u. mazarura and c. chisango (2012) “effects of long term cropping systems on soil chemical properties”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 632 – 640. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 632-640. 632 author(s) u. mazarura crop science department, university of zimbabwe, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe c. chisango kutsaga research company, harare, zimbabwe effects of long term cropping systems on soil chemical properties abstract in this study we examined the impact on soil c, total soil n and available p of six rotations namely: long season tobacco cultivar „km10‟ grown continuously (contkm10), medium season tobacco cultivar „rk8‟ grown continuously (contrk8), grass-grass-grass-km10 (g-g-g-km10), grass-grass-grassrk8 (g-g-g-rk8), km10-crotalaria juncea (km10-cr) and rk8-crotalaria juncea (rk8-cr). the experiment was established in 1990 under irrigation on a sandy loam soil at kutsaga research station, zimbabwe. soil samples were taken from 0to 15-cm deep, after each season. after 9 years, tobacco-grass rotations showed higher soil c than monocropping, regardless of variety. the monocropping systems, contkm10 and contrk8, did not differ from km10cr and rk8-cr respectively showing that when crop intensity is maintained soil c will be reduced regardless of a winter c. juncea green manure in a sandy loam soil. after 9 years, soil n was greatest in the g-g-g-km10 rotation. available p was lower in the grass (g-g-g-km10, g-g-g-rk8) relative to the other rotations regardless of variety. available p accumulated in monocropping systems (contrk8, contkm10) and was consistently lower in the grass-tobacco rotations. this indicated an accumulation of p in the case of monocropping systems because of continuous inorganic fertiliser input. the results reaffirmed the deleterious effect of monocropping and suggested the need for diverse rotations. keywords: crotalaria, soil carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, rotations, grass introduction crop sequencing is widely known to have a major influence on such soil chemical properties as organic c content, ph, available p, k, ca and mg as well as n supply and transformations (wilson et al., 1982). generally, crop rotations increase soil c (varvel, 1994; drury et al., 1998) and n (varvel, 1994) more than a monoculture or fallow. for example, aref and wander (1998) reported that organic matter content was least in a maize (zea mays l.) monoculture, intermediate in a maize-oat (avena sativa l.) rotation and largest in a maize-oat-hay rotation. in the very long term, however, tillage, intensive cropping or continuous monocropping (drury et al.,1998; varvel, 1994; kätterer, et al. 2008; salvo et al. 2010) decrease soil organic c compared to natural untilled areas. no-till (alkaisi et al., 2005) and organic systems (nautiyal et al. 2010) have been shown to increase soil c and n content compared to conventional farming. green manures (alkaisi et al., 2005) and grasses (salvo et al. 2010; eriksen et al. 2008) can increase soil c and/or n. soil n can be high in crop rotations, especially when legumes are included (bruulsema and cristie, 1987; harris and hesterman, 1990; arshad et al., 1998) and leaching is reduced. the contribution of a legume as a source of n could be as much as 120 kg n/ha (ebelhar et al. 1984; hargrove, 1986). leaching of no3-n is effect of long term cropping system on.... 633 usually lower in crop rotations than in continuous cropping (anderson et al. 1997; arshad et al. 1998; simmelsgaard, 1998). legumes can also have a positive influence on available p by altering the rhizosphere (wilson et al. 1982). the three-year grass-tobacco (nicotina tabacum l.) rotation (g-g-g-t) is a standard cropping system in most tobacco farms in southern africa. however, despite that this rotation is accepted as sustainable, particularly with regard to its effect on nematodes and soil chemical properties, farmers find it uneconomical especially when they have invested in a very costly irrigation system. such farmers resort to growing continuous tobacco (contkm10 or contrk8) for even more than 20 years. hence, the overall objective of this study was to find the long term effects of growing irrigated tobacco continuously with or without a green manure crop on soil chemical properties compared to tobacco rotated with a grass ley. these effects were compared using two varieties that differed significantly in growth habits: a high leaf numbered variety, km10 and a moderate leaf numbered variety, rk8. materials and methods site description and experimental design this experiment was carried out under irrigation on a sandy loam soil (72.8% sand, 8.8% silt and 18.4% clay) at kutsaga research station (17º 55' s, 31º 08'e ; altitude 1480m above sea level, average annual rainfall 882 mm, and distribution given in table 1), zimbabwe from 1990. before 1990 the research area had been planted to tobacco followed by five years of chloris gayana cv. katambora rhodes grass. tobacco variety km10 was grown as a uniformity crop in the plots in 1990 and the actual year of first rotation was 1991. this paper is confined to the period 1994 to 2000 (4th year of rotation to the 10th year of rotation respectively). after the year 2000, the rotation was changed and those changes and their effects are the subject of another publication. the experiment was laid out as four randomized complete blocks consisting of six treatments, replicated once in each block, namely: continuous long season tobacco variety kutsaga mammoth 10 (contkm10), km10 followed by crotalaria juncea (km10cr), continuous short season tobacco variety rk8 (contrk8), rk8 followed by crotalaria juncea (rk8-cr), km10 after three years of chloris gayana cv. katambora rhodes grass (g-g-g-km10), and rk8 after three years of chloris gayana cv. katambora rhodes grass (g-g-g-rk8). km10 is a high yielding, high leaf numbered (23) variety, while rk8 is moderately yielding and moderate leaf numbered (18-19) variety. the treatment layout was such that every component of a rotation was included in each block in every year. this enabled yearly analysis of variance (anova) to explain direct effects of a treatment or component in every year and cycle analyses to explain residual or cumulative effects after the end of a complete cycle of the rotation (4 y and 9 y for the longest g-g-gkm10 or rk8 rotations). analyses after several complete cycles would reveal limiting effects; rotational effects after cycles have stabilized. our best estimate of this was at the end of the 1998/99 season and contrasts at this point might reveal interesting patterns in addition to the trends. each plot was 4.8 m wide and 17.92 m long. the main comparison was on the continuous tobacco after grass rotations and the respective continuous rotations. after the year 2000 the continuous tobacco rotation with c. juncea was changed to continuous tobacco with winter wheat and data from 2001 will be reported elsewhere. table 1: monthly and seasonal rainfall totals in mm from 1990 to 2000 year sept oct nov dec jan feb mar apr total 1990/91 0.4 0.7 68 128.2 183.3 79.7 46 0 506.3 1991/92 6.2 29.8 96.4 171.3 42.6 12.2 142.8 79.7 581.0 1992/93 0.0 7.6 80.2 186.2 212.1 195.4 61.7 89.6 832-8 1993/94 6.6 15.2 92.9 178.2 222.7 167.2 45 1.6 729.4 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 632-640. 634 1994/95 0.0 87.7 46.5 129.3 156.8 52.2 5.4 9.4 487.3 1995/96 0.0 20.8 40.5 217.4 300.3 146.4 98.9 5.9 830.2 1996/97 0.5 5.1 79.1 149.9 254.9 172.6 102.3 34.9 799.3 1997/98 70.2 43.6 104.4 53.3 326.5 41.8 214.2 1 855.0 1998/99 0.0 13.2 117.6 268.6 415.9 217.3 261.1 10.5 1304.2 1999/00 0.0 57.0 83.3 119 334.2 145.8 220.7 77.6 1037.6 irrigation and cultural practice irrigation water was applied by sprinkler at 50% available soil moisture depletion, estimated using the evaporation pan method. the land was ploughed and disced according to standard practice. tobacco was grown on 0.2 m high ridges, 1.2 m apart in the inter-row, and 0.56 m apart in the intra-row. the c. juncea was seeded at 50 kg/ ha with rainfall or irrigation and was incorporated just before flowering which was approximately 3 months after seeding. chloris gayana cv. katambora rhodes grass was seeded at 12 kg/ha and also incorporated early (april-may) during the year preceding the tobacco crop. fertilisation the tobacco crop received a basic application of 600 kg/ha compound fertiliser (36 kg n; 102 kg p2o5;80 kg k2o) and the land was preirrigated before planting at the beginning of september each year. mechanical and chemical weed control methods were employed to keep the tobacco crop weed-free. the herbicide metolachlor 960 ec was applied at 2.3 l/ha product within 7 days of transplanting and settled in with 12 mm of irrigation. topdressing applications of 100 kg n/ha and 10 kg n/ha as ammonium nitrate (an, 0-34-0) were applied to rk8 at 3-4 weeks after planting and at topping, respectively, while km10 received just the initial topdressing at 3-4 weeks after planting as is standard practice. the fertiliser was applied by dollop placement 10 cm from the plant and 5 cm deep. lime was only applied as and when needed to correct ph to 5.5 (cacl2). soil sampling and analyses soil sampling was done at the end of each growing season. the soil samples were collected from the top 15 cm from each plot. soil ph was measured in a supernatant suspension of 1: 5 soil: 0.01 m cacl2) solution using a glass electrode (page et al., 1982). soil organic c was determined using the walkley and black wet digestion method (walkley and black, 1934). total soil n was determined using the standard kjeldahl digestion and distillation technique. the soil was digested with sulphuric acid and selenium catalyst, and distilled with zinc and sodium hydroxide. after distillation total n was determined by titration with hydrochloric acid using tashiro indicator (chemistry and soil research institute of zimbabwe, unpublished). available soil p was extracted using an anion-exchange resin method which utilizes dowex 21k in the chloride form and involves leaching of phosphate with naoh followed by hcl. available p in solution was determined calorimetrically by the ammonium molybdate stannous chloride method (sparling et al., 1985). statistical analysis anova was done after each season and at the end of the two cycles using sas software version 6. selected treatments were further compared using orthogonal contrasts of the following; contkm10 vs. g-g-g-km10, km10-cr vs. g-g-g-km10, contkm10 vs. km10-cr, contrk8 vs. g-g-rk8, rk8-cr vs. g-g-g-rk8, and cont rk8 vs. rk8-cr. results and discussion soil carbon the direct effects of each treatment component for each year shown by a plot of the soil c over time indicated that g-g-g-km10 and g-g-grk8 consistently had higher soil c relative to contrk8, contkm10, rk8-cr and km10-cr (fig 1). in essence contrk8 and contkm10 did not differ from rk8-cr and km10-cr respectively. the cumulative rotation effect (table 2) confirmed the above trends showing that at 9 y tobacco-grass rotations, g-g-geffect of long term cropping system on.... 635 km10 and g-g-g-rk8, had significantly (p<0.0001) higher soil c than the continuous monocultures, contkm10 and contrk8, regardless of variety. the respective continuous rotations, contkm10 and contirk8, did not differ from km10 cr and rk8-cr, respectively howing that when crop intensity is maintained, soil c will be reduced regardless of a winter c. juncea green manure. km10-cr was significantly lower than g-g-g km10 (p<0.0002) while rk8-cr was significantly lower than g-g-g-rk8 (p<0.004). a change in soil c from the initial values taken in 1990 relative to values at 9 yr indicated a decreasing trend with continuous tobacco and virtually unchanged values for the grass rotations (table 2). regardless of the variety, the grass rotation, in general, improved soil c or maintained it above the continuous rotation with or without c. juncea. this result from the grass rotation was anticipated since the grass ley was incorporated into the soil. similar results have been reported by other workers (drury et al. 1998; kätterer et al. 2008; al-kaisi et al., 2005; salvo et al. 2010). kätterer et al. (2008) consistently showed that conversion of grassland to arable land was associated with a drop in soil c stock while conversion from arable to grassland always improved soil c stock. the contribution of the green manure was below anticipated levels. it is possible that since the green manure was incorporated after only 3 months it was easily mineralised because of a low c: n ratio leading to higher loss of soil c. daimon et al. (1995) showed that the c: n ratio of c. juncea even after 120 days after sowing was only 23:5. silva et al. (2007) and mtambanengwe and mapfumo (2006) reported a quick mineralization of c. juncea with the onset of rains. in a long term trial, gerzabek et al. (1997) showed that the green manure was able only to maintain soil c over a long period, showing no significant rise with time. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 632-640. 636 fig. 1: total c response to rotation treatments contkm10, km10-cr and g-g-g-km10 (a); and treatments contrk8, rk8-cr and g-g-g-rk8 (b). vertical bars are standard errors of the difference between means table 2: overall means over eight years and contrasts comparing soil c and total n amongst the rotations rotation soil c initial g/kg soil c 9-yr g/kg ∆soil c total n initial μg/g total n 9-yr μg/g ∆total n contkm10 3.8 3.4 -0.4 440.3 343.3 -97.0 contrk8 4.1 3.4 -0.7 457.0 391.7 -65.3 km10-cr 3.9 3.5 -0.4 424.3 383.3 -41.0 rk8-cr 4.1 3.7 -0.4 441.0 404.2 -36.8 g-g-g-km10 3.7 4.0 0.3 423.0 430.8 7.8 g-g-g-rk8 3.9 4.1 0.2 456.0 430.0 -26.0 contrasts contkm10 vs. g-g-gkm10 *** *** km10-cr vs. g-g-gkm10 *** *** contkm10 vs. km10cr ns ** contrk8 vs. g-g-grk8 *** ** rk8-cr vs. g-g-grk8 ** ns cont rk8, vs. rk8-cr ns ns ***p < 0.001, **p<0.01, *p<0.05, ns=not significant total soil nitrogen the direct effects of each treatment component for each year shown by a plot of total soil n over time showed significant higher values for g-g-g-km10 relative to contkm10 and were only higher than km10-cr in year 4, 5, 8 and 10 while km10-cr was higher than contkm10 in years 4, 6, 9 and 10 but tended to be higher consistently (fig 2). similarly, g-g-g-rk8 had consistently higher soil n than contrk8 but only higher than rk8-cr in yr 5, 8 and lower in yr 10. rk8-cr was significantly higher than contrk8 in years 6 and 10 but consistently tended to be higher. the cumulative rotation effect at the 9th year (table 2) showed differences in the order g-g-g-km10>km10cr>contkm10 (p<0.01). with regard to rk8, g-g-g-rk8 was greater than contrk8 (p<0.0087) but marginally greater than rk8-cr (p<0.076) while rk8-cr was equal to contrk8. a change in total n from the initial value at the start of the rotation compared with values at 9 yr indicated a decreasing trend greatest in the continuous rotations and least with g-g-g-rk8 and virtually unchanged values with g-g-g-km10 (table 2). the initial values themselves were not significantly different between treatments. an increase in soil n due to grass rotations relative to continuous cropping was also reported by al kaisi et al. (2005). the increased soil n (contkm10 vs. km10-cr) as a result of the green manure was anticipated as also reported by other workers (silva et al. 2007 and mtambanengwe and mapfumo, 2006). in this experiment continuous fertilization slightly masked the deleterious effect of monocultures on soil chemical properties. the grass was better than the green manure perhaps because it had a higher soil c and reduced leaching. reduced leaching under pasture periods relative to soil after disturbance by ploughing were found by berntsen et al. (2006). mtambanengwe and mapfumo, (2006) also observed high leaching loses with c. juncea in sand soils. effect of long term cropping system on.... 637 fig. 2: total n response to rotation treatments contkm10, km10-cr and g-g-g-km10 (a); and treatments contrk8, rk8-cr and g-g-g-rk8 (b). vertical bars are standard errors of the difference between means available phosphorus the direct effects of each treatment component on available p for each year shown by a plot of available p over the years was consistently higher for the contrk8, contkm10, km10-cr, and rk8-cr rotations than the g-g-g km10 or g-g-g-rk8 rotations (fig 3). the cumulative rotation effect at 9 y (table 3) showed significantly (p<0.0001) lower soil available p in the grass (g-g-g-km10, g-g-g-rk8) relative to the other rotations regardless of variety. generally, the continuous rotation (contikm10) did not differ from the rotations with c. juncea (km19-cr) while rk8-cr was lower than contrk8. in general, the results showed available p accumulation in continuous monoculture (contrk8, contkm10) and consistently lower values in the g-g-g-rk8 and g-g-g-km10 rotations. a change in available p relative to the initial value at the start of the rotation indicated an accumulationof p greater in the case of the monocultures and least with the grass rotations (table 3). the initial values themselves were not significantly different between treatments. the fact that the continuous rotations received 102kgp/ha annually must largely account for the observed higher p in these monocultures relative to the grass rotations which received asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 632-640. 638 the p only once in four years. other workers have shown such accumulation under long term continuous inorganic p fertilization (dodd and mallarino, 2005; bowman and halvoson, 1997; bunemann et al. 2006). the role of the green manure in supplying p was not evident in this work although wilson et al. (1982) reported an increase in available p linked to legumes. silva et al. (2007) also found crotalaria juncea to have no effect on p in a six year trial. fig. 3: available p response to rotation treatments contkm10, km10-cr and g-g-g-km10 (a); and treatments contrk8, rk8-cr and g-g-g-rk8 (b). vertical bars are standard errors of the difference between means table 3: overall means over eight years and contrasts comparing soil available p2o5 (ug/g) amongst the rotations rotation available p2o5 initial μg/g available p2o5 9-yr μg/g ∆ p2o5 contkm10 21.2 39.4 18.2 contrk8 21.7 42.3 20.6 km10-cr 21.3 37.4 16.1 rk8-cr 21.8 38.2 16.4 g-g-g-km10 20.0 22.7 2.7 effect of long term cropping system on.... 639 g-g-g-rk8 21.0 21.8 0.8 contrasts contkm10 vs. g-g-g-km10 *** km10-cr vs. g-g-g-km10 *** contkm10 vs. km10-cr ns contrk8 vs. g-g-g-rk8 *** rk8-cr vs. g-g-g-rk8 *** cont rk8, vs. rk8-cr * ***p < 0.0001, **p<0.001, *p<0.05, ns=not significant conclusions in general, this experiment shows that despite the need by farmers to maximise returns from installation of an irrigation system, monocultures are soil degrading, particularly so in sandy soils and it is imperative that a more economical and sustainable rotation be sought as an alternative. additionally, although the traditional grass rotation seemed to, at best, maintain soil c and n, a more diverse rotation should, perhaps, be considered so as to optimise the availability of these nutrients. further study inclusive of more diverse cropping systems as well as monitoring such parameters as green house gas emission, soil microbial activity, nutrient leaching, soil physical properties would allow us to evaluate soil quality as well as effects on the environment. references al-kaisi, m. m., yin, x., and licht, m. 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(2006) “effects of organic resource quality on soil profile n dynamics and maize yields on sandy soils in zimbabwe”, biomedical and life sciences, vol. 281(12), pp. 173-191. nautiyal, c. s., chauhan, p. s. and bhatia, c. r. (2010) “changes in soil physicochemical properties and microbial functional diversity due to 14 years of conversion of grassland to organic agriculture in semi-arid agroecosystem”, soil & tillage research, vol. 109, pp. 55–60 page, a. l., miller, r. h. and keeney, d. r. (1982) “methods of soil analysis, chemical and microbiological propertiesagronomy monograph no. 9: american society of agronomy, madison. wiconsin, usa. salvo l., hernández, j. and ernst, o. (2010) “distribution of soil organic carbon in different size fractions, under pasture and crop rotations with conventional tillage and no-till systems”, soil and tillage research, vol. 109, pp. 116122. silva, t. o. da, menezes, r. s. c., tiessen, h., sampiao, e. v. s. b., salcedo, i. h. and silveira, l. m. (2007) “organic fertilization of potato with manure and, or, crotalaria juncea: i long term plant productivity and soil nutrient stock”, rev. bras. cienc. solo, vol. 31(1), pp. 39-49. simmelsgaard, s. e. (1998) “the effect of crop, soil type and drainage on nitrate leaching from danish soil”, soil use management, vol. 14, pp. 30-36. sparling, g. p. (1985) “quantifying the contribution from the soil microbial biomass to the extractable p levels of fresh and air-dried soils”, australian journal soil research, vol. 23, pp. 613–621. varvel, g. e. (1994) “rotation and nitrogen fertilization effects on changes in soil carbon and nitrogen”, agronomy journal, vol. 86, pp. 319-325. walkley, a. and black, i. a. (1934) “an examination of the degtjarell method for determining soil organic matter and a proposed modification of the chromic acid titration method”, soil science, vol. 37, pp. 29-38 wilson, g. f., lal, r. and okigbo, b. n. (1982) “effects of cover crops on soil structure and on yield of subsequent arable crops grown under strip tillage on eroded alfisol”, soil tillage research, vol. 2, pp. 233-250. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 1 january 2013. † corresponding author improvement tests on the germination in lippia multiflora: influence of some factors related to soil on germination and seedling development alui konan alphonse† (university félix houphouët boigny, ufr of earth sciences and mineral resources) ballo koffi célestin (national center for agricultural research (cnra) yapi ahoua (university félix houphouët boigny, ufr biosciences) kouadio konan-kan hypolite (university félix houphouët boigny, ufr of earth sciences and mineral resources) kouadio koffi patrice, touré nantarie and n’guessan kouamé antoine (university félix houphouët boigny, ufr of earth sciences and mineral resources) kwadjo koffi eric (university nangui abrogoua, ufr of natural sciences) yao-kouamé albert (department of soil sciences, university félix houphouët boigny, ufr of earth sciences and mineral resources) citation: alui konan alphonse, ballo koffi célestin, yapi ahoua, kouadio konan-kan hypolite, kouadio koffi patrice, touré nantarie, n’guessan kouamé antoine, kwadjo koffi eric and yaokouamé albert (2013) “improvement tests on the germination in lippia multiflora: influence of some factors related to soil on germination and seedling development”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 18 29. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 18-29 18 author(s) alui konan alphonse, ballo koffi célestin, yapi ahoua, kouadio konan-kan hypolite, kouadio koffi patrice, touré nantarie, n’guessan kouamé antoine, kwadjo koffi eric yao-kouamé albert improvement tests on the germination in lippia multiflora: influence of some factors related to soil on germination and seedling development abstract studies on the germination and growth of seedlings of lippia multiflora were conducted on several types of substrates. they consisted of germination tests and monitoring of seedling growth. the results showed that the best germination rates were recorded with the batch of seeds germinated on substrates made of a mixture of soil and manure (s2 = 82.67% and s3 = 65.33%). after 60 days of culture, the most significant heights of the plants of lippia multiflora were recorded in culture media s2 (7.48 cm) and s3 (5.46 cm), with an average number of leaves 7; 12 and 6, respectively for the circles s1, s2 and s3. the root elongation is more important in substrates s2 (6.3 cm) and s3 (4.74 cm). the pearson correlation tests carried out indicate that the contribution of organic matter in the substrates improves seedling development in lippia multiflora. keywords: lippia multiflora, germination and substrates introduction savannah tea (lippia multiflora), aromatic species belonging to the family verbenaceae, is found naturally in côte d'ivoire, from the forest-savanna contact area (baoulé v) to the north (yao-kouamé et al., 2009). the plant enters into the composition of some improved traditional medicines in africa (malarial ® in mali and tetra ® in congo). it is used for the treatment of various diseases, such as hyperthermia and blood pressure disorder (abena et al., 2003; etou-ossibi et al., 2005). numerous studies indicate that the aqueous extract or essential oil of the plant have pharmacological (hondi-assah et al, 2003), pesticides (oladimeji et al., 2000; ossou et al., 2008) and cosmetics properties (kanko et al., 2004). today, this species is commercially available and is an export crop in côte d'ivoire (yao-kouamé et al., 2009; n'guessan et al., 2010). however, like the savannas of subsaharan africa, agro-ecological areas, where lippia multiflora grows, belong to fragile ecosystems based on coexistence between herbaceous and woody stratum. they are dynamic systems whose evolution depends on the intensity of environmental factors (such as drought, fires, farming, and culture). the plant is sometimes destroyed during fires and clearing for crops (yao-kouamé et al., 2009). in addition, leaves-picking practices are very destructive. in fact, when the leaves are higher to be cut, the stems are often broken (alui et al, 2011). to avoid the loss of this plant, it is appropriate to think of his protection. that’s why it is necessary to try to understand the techniques of multiplication in the case sexual germination. these studies once made will lead to the development of a new agricultural export produce for côte d'ivoire. the objective of this work is to identify opportunities to promote seed germination and seedling development of lippia miltiflora using different substrates that are within the reach of people. in fact, this study was conducted in order to obtain a high and uniform germination, and good seedling development. for that, we compared the effect of substrates ensuring a better germination rate, good growth and healthy development of seedlings. improvement tests on the germination in lippia .... 19 materials and methods materials plant material lippia multiflora is a plant belonging to the family verbenaceae that are plants consist of grasses and shrubs, often flavored with strong smell. the plant is biennial and is about 2-4 meters high (eyog et al., 2000). the flowers are small, whitish (watson and dallwitz, 1992; ameyaw, 2009), 5 to 7 mm width and 5 mm to 2 cm length (eyog et al., 2000). at maturity, the ears bear seeds and have in this case, usually a spherical shape (alui et al, 2011). lippia multiflora seeds are small and dry. their observation to the microscope shows a spheroid shape, slightly flattened on the hilum side (figure 1). source of lippia multiflora seeds seeds used in the germination tests (lippia multiflora seeds) were collected at their optimum morphological and physiological maturity during the year 2011, at the experimental site of tiébissou, in the context of research activities conducted on lippia multiflora by the department of soil science, faculty of strm, university felix houphouet boigny. integrity seeds were selected and stored on cardboard in a well ventilated area until planting time. sources of soil and manure soils used were from the village of bofia in the department of tiébissou, in middle of côte d'ivoire. droppings were collected in the coco services business located in abobo and tertiary sand in port-bouet, in abidjan district. figure 1: general aspect of lippia multiflora asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 18-29 20 a = long thin leaves and light green, b = broad leaves and long green sailor, c = cob formation, d = flower formation, e = end of flower development, f = cob maturity, g = seeds flattened side of the hilum (magnification × 3) and h = seed without its envelope (magnification x 3) methods obtaining manure, soil and soil-manure mixtures manure manure noted m in the experiment is composed of manure and litter of wood shavings, from breeding ground for broilers. the manure was collected and stored in the open air for 43 days because it cannot be incorporated in fresh state into the soil, because it contains pathogens (aba et al, 2011). soil soil samples used for germination tests were collected in two distinct areas (abidjan and tiébissou). in abidjan, samples were taken in areas intended for vegetable crops in the district of port-bouet. it is essentially tertiary sand noted soil 1 in our experiment. at tiébissou, ferralsols samples were collected from an area of natural population of lippia multiflora (soil 1) and another area where the plant was not observed (soil 2). all these samples were carried out on a horizon band from 0 to 60 cm and packed in a plastic bag secured with a rubber band and labeled with references to the date and place of collection. to minimize the risk of tearing during transport, the bags containing the samples were systematically doubled. soil-manure mixture the different samples obtained were from the mixture: manure + soil1 (50% of m + 50% of soil1), weighing 92.5 grams each for a total weight of 185 g; manure + soil2 (50% of m + 50% of soil2), weighing 92.5 grams each for a total weight of 185 g; manure + soil3 (50% of m + 50% of soil3), weighing 92.5 grams each for a total weight of 185 g; analyzes of samples (manure, soil and soilmanure) a set of 7 samples underwent standard laboratory soil analyzes in esa (agronomy high school), located at inp-hb of yamoussoukro. these analyzes concern the water ph (phe), organic carbon (c), exchangeable bases (ca 2+ , mg 2+ and k + ), the cation exchange capacity (cec), total nitrogen (n), total phosphorus (p2o5t) and assimilable (p2o5ass), the particle size (a, lf, lg, sf and sg), iron (fe) and manganese (mn). the index of crusting (ic) was calculated (table 1). table 1: physico-chemical characteristics of manure, soil and substrates physico-chemical characteristics treatments manure soils substrates m soil1 soil2 soil3 s1 s2 s3 particule size (g.kg -1 ) a 7,5 13,7 14,11 7,11 15,2 13,88 lf 2,11 4,73 3,3 2,14 4,25 3,22 lg 3,8 4,8 4,64 3,72 4,15 4,67 sf 14,2 23,38 22,54 14 22,24 22,11 sg 72,2 53,38 55,41 72,89 54 55,32 index of crusting (ic) 0,46 0,49 0,55 0,44 0,57 0,55 organic matter (g.kg -1 ), nitrogen (g.kg -1 ) et phosphorus c 35,4 0,62 1,37 1,05 15,06 25,81 17,31 mo 60,88 1,06 2,35 1,80 25,9 44,39 29,77 n 1,56 0,04 0,22 0,25 0,45 0,67 0,81 c/n 22,69 15,5 6,22 4,20 33,46 38,52 21,37 improvement tests on the germination in lippia .... 21 (mg.kg -1 ) p2o5t 16,32 132,4 288,66 319 143,1 295,87 321 p2o5ass 1,4 11,75 29,33 22,58 14,5 30,11 23,62 acidity and cation complexe (cmol.kg 1 )exchange pheau 7,9 5,3 5,7 6,2 6,1 6,5 6,3 phkcl 7,7 5 5,4 6 5,8 6,3 6,1 ca 2+ 7,42 0,02 0,07 0,04 0,45 0,87 0,62 k + 2,77 0,03 0,06 0,09 0,11 0,15 0,17 mg 2+ 2,51 0,11 0,31 0,83 0,47 0,97 0,84 cec 18 7,88 13,66 13,87 10,6 21,22 23,45 filling, weighing, device and sowing manure, soil and substrates were deposited each in aluminum tins (radius = 6 cm, height = 6 cm and weight = 10 g), carefully perforated to allow passage of water (figure 2a, 2b and 2c). a sample of substrate weighting 195 g has been randomly chosen to conduct the experiment. total of 7 substrates repeated 3 times (21 tins) were obtained and arranged in blocks of fischer in a space provided. the seeds were sown at a rate of 25 per container in an upright position, because of their small size. seeds were then gently covered with a thin layer of each substrate (figure 2d). figure 2: experimental device a = aluminum cans perforated at the base, b = weight of the box (10 g) c = weight of the substrate made and d = indications of different treatments and complete block of fischer. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 18-29 22 methods expressing the results and analyzes formulas germination percentage the counting of germinated seeds and the cumulative percentages of germination were performed every 3 days for 10 days. a seed is considered germinated when the radicle becomes visible (mbaye et al., 2002). thus, the rate of germination (% g) at a given time is expressed by the ratio of the number of germinated seeds on the total number of seeds sown. % g = 𝑛 𝑁 𝑥 100 n = number of germinated seeds and n = total number of seeds sown speed of germination the germination rate can be expressed by the median germination (scott et al., 1984) or by the average time of germination (the time at which it reaches 50% of the seeds germinated) (como, 1970). in our study, we used the mean germination time (tmg), which is calculated as follows: tmg = nitii = 10 i =1 𝑁 with ni = number of seeds germinated at time ti (i ranging from 1 to 10) and n = number of seeds germinated at the end of the test. seedling growth the study of seedling growth is to characterize the speed of morphological development allowing the seedling to adapt to the actual conditions of the environment. the parameters studied are height growth, morphology and health status. thus, using a carpenter tape measure, seedlings height (evolution of the stem) was monitored for 60 days. also, simultaneously, a count of the number of functional leaves was it made. regarding the morphological study, three randomly selected seedlings were extracted by treatment every 10 days for observations to assess the evolution of the root system. statistical analyzes of data the results were statistically analyzed using the software statistica 7.1 through analysis of variance (anova). whenever a significant difference was found, anova is complemented by tukey test, which allows identify the variables significantly different of others. the averages of the variables were separated at the probability threshold p <0.005 and p <0.001. correlations test between variables were performed using the software tanagra. correlation measures the relationship between two or more variables. the correlation coefficient used is the pearson r, also called linear correlation coefficient. the correlation coefficients were in the range from -1.00 to 1.00. values -1.00 and +1.00 respectively represent a perfect negative or positive correlation and value of 0.00 represents a lack of correlation or independence between variables. results rate and speed of germination considering the criteria and germination parameters defined above, we find that 10 days after the sowing, germination rate (% g) of lippia multiflora seeds differs statistical analysis, according to the type of treatment (fcal = 25.72; ** pc = 0.00). thus, the rate is 0% for manure (f), 18.67% 46.67% and 21.33% respectively for soil 1, soil 2 and soil 3. for substrates s1, s2, s3, germination rates are respectively 22.67%, 82.67% and 65.33%. the substrate s2 has the highest rate of germination. the germination rate is maximum at the 6 th day for treatments soil3, s1 and s3; 7 th day for soil1 and s1; 8 th day for s2 (figure 3). the mean germination time (tmg) registered shows a different of one day according to the culture medium. it is 7 days for seeds germinated in soil and 6 for those germinated in the substrates. the best results were recorded at the soil-manure treatments (s2 and s3) and soil 2. improvement tests on the germination in lippia .... 23 figure 3: evolution of germination rate in different treatments (the same letters on different curves indicate that there is no significant different at the 1% level) growth rate of seedlings height of stem the data in table 2 show the effect of treatment on the evolution of aerial growth of seedlings of lippia multiflora. examination of these data reveals that plants of lippia multiflora, grow best on the mixture (s2). in fact, the length of the stem (7.48 cm) was significantly greater than those recorded with the other treatments tested (figure 4). number of leaves analysis of the results summarized in table 2 shows that the number of leaves produced by seedlings was significantly affected by the type of treatment (figure 4). indeed, the best results were obtained in medium s1 (7 leaves) and s2 (12 leaves). root growth the average length of the primary root measured after 60 days of culture on the different treatments is given in table 2. the most important root elongation (figure 5) were recorded in plants grown on substrates s2 (6.3 cm) and soil 2 (5.14 cm). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 18-29 24 figure 4: young seedlings of lippia multiflora after 60 days of sowing figure 5: root system of lippia multiflora seedlings 60 days after sowing table 2: change in height, the average number of leaves and the average length of the main root of lippia multiflora seedlings after 60 days of culture on different treatments treatments seedling height (cm) number of leaves root mean lenght (cm) manure m 0 ± 0.00 e 0 ± 0.00 e 0 ± 0.00 e soils soil 1 1 ± 0.15 d 2 ± 0.13 c 2.34 ± 0.15 c soil 2 2.76 ± 0.11 c 5 ± 0.17 b 5.14 ± 0.11 b soil 3 2.1 ± 0.15 c 4 ± 0.12 b 2.22 ± 0.08 c improvement tests on the germination in lippia .... 25 substrates s1 2.5 ± 0.15 c 7 ± 0.2 b 2.68 ± 0.08 c s2 7.48 ± 0.23 a 12 ± 0.18 a 6.3 ± 0.15 a s3 5.46 ± 0.11 b 6 ± 0.27 b 4.74 ± 0.15 b fcal 148.16** 205.95** 165.17* pcal 0.00 0.00 0.021 pthéor ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.05 means followed by the same letter in the same column are not significantly different at   0.05, according to the method of tukey. ns = not significant, * = significant, ** = highly significant. relationship between physico-chemical parameters of different treatments and the growth rate of lippia multiflora seedlings it is to make a connection (correlation) in a first time between physico-chemical parameters of substrates and evidence indicating the rate of growth of lippia multiflora seedlings. the correlation is then sought between agronomic characteristics of seedlings. the syntheses of different correlation matrices were summarized in table 3. thus, at the soil 1, the statistical analyzes show some strong correlations between: the height (h) plants and sf (r = 0.95, pr (> |t|) = 0.048), h c (r = 0.98, pr (> |t|) = 0.0113) and h c/n (r = 0.98, pr (> |t|) = 0.01). agronomic parameter that interacts most with the characteristics of the soil was the height of the stems. regarding the soil 2, pairs of variables that give the strongest correlations are: h c (r = 0.99) h n (r = 0.99), h nf (r = 0.99) and h l root (r = 0.99). the lowest among significant correlations was observed in the pair of variable % g mo (0.95). stem height is the parameter agronomic which interacts most with soil parameters. pearson correlation test performed between the rate of seedling growth and elements of soil 3 was used to select two pairs of variables that are statistically significant: nf p2o5ass (r = 0.99) and root l n (r = 0.98). for different substrates, significant correlations obtained are governed at s1 through the pairs of variable % g c (r = 0.97) and root l c (r = 0.97). a significant and negative correlation h sg (r = 0.96), has been observed in this treatment. as for treatments s2 and s3, the strongest correlations are respectively located at the root pair of variables l c (r = 0.97) and nf c (r = 0.97). the stem length and the number of leaves respectively at treatments s2 and s3 are the agronomic characteristics which interact most with the physico-chemical parameters of the treatment. table 3: correlation between the parameters of different treatments and the rate of growth of lippia multiflora seedlings treatments pair of variables r r² t pr (>|t|) prtheor significativit y soil 1 h sf 0.956 0.9143 4.6188 0.0438 ≤ 0.05 * h c/n 0.9899 0.98 9.8995 0.0101 ≤ 0.05 * soil 2 h c 0.99 0.98 9.9046 0.01 ≤ 0.05 * h n 0.99 0.98 9.9029 0.01 ≤ 0.05 * h l root 0.99 0.98 9.9028 0.01 ≤ 0.05 * % g mo 0.958 0.9178 4.7261 0.042 ≤ 0.05 * soil 3 nf p2o5ass 0.9969 0.9938 17.8494 0.0031 ≤ 0.01 ** l root n 0.9827 0.9657 7.5041 0.0173 ≤ 0.05 * s1 h sg -0.9642 0.9297 -5.1433 0.0358 ≤ 0.05 * % g c 0.9759 0.9525 6.3294 0.0241 ≤ 0.05 * h mg 2+ 0.9513 0.905 4.3643 0.0487 ≤ 0.05 * l root c 0.9759 0.9524 6.3246 0.0241 ≤ 0.05 * % g sf 0.9526 0.9074 4.4272 0.0474 ≤ 0.05 * asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 18-29 26 * = significant, ** = highly significant, respectively prtheor ≤ 0.05 and ≤ 0.05 prtheor discussion testing and the results we have presented on the germination of lippia multiflora seeds reveal that the germination rate obtained in substrates s2 (82.67%) and s3 (65.33%) are the highest. establishing a relationship between the rate of seed germination in the soil and planted those sown in mixtures (soil + manure), we obtain a variation exceeding 1 that is said from 1.26 to 3.014, which shows that the highest rates of germination are obtained in mixtures. correlation tests performed on the overall results show that the rate of germination (% g) is correlated with sand (sf), organic matter (om) and the index of crusting (ic). thus, the contents of sf substrates s1 and s2, correlated with the rate of germination provide correlation coefficients in the range of r = 0.95. regarding the relationship between organic matter and the rate of germination, we have at soil 2, r = 0.95 and s1, r = 0.97. the pair of variable % g-ib at s2 gives a correlation coefficient in the range of r = 0.99. indeed, the germination capacity of the seeds depends on factors s2 h mg 2+ 0.9513 0.905 4.3643 0.0487 ≤ 0.05 * l root c 0.9759 0.9524 6.3246 0.0241 ≤ 0.05 * l root p2o5ass 0.9694 0.9397 5.5814 0.0306 ≤ 0.05 * % g ib 0.997 0.994 17.8591 0.0032 ≤ 0.01 ** % g sf 0.9526 0.9074 4.4272 0.0474 ≤ 0.05 * s3 h mo 0.9926 0.9852 11.5471 0.0074 ≤ 0.01 * nf c 0.9728 0.9464 5.9428 0.0272 ≤ 0.05 * nf – phwater 0.9599 0.9215 4.8449 0.0401 ≤ 0.05 * nf ca 2+ 0.9897 0.9795 9.7678 0.0103 ≤ 0.05 * l root k + 0.9518 0.906 4.3894 0.0482 ≤ 0.05 * treatments pair of variables r r² t pr (>|t|) prtheor significativity soil 1 h sf 0.956 0.9143 4.6188 0.0438 ≤ 0.05 * h c/n 0.9899 0.98 9.8995 0.0101 ≤ 0.05 * soil 2 h c 0.99 0.98 9.9046 0.01 ≤ 0.05 * h n 0.99 0.98 9.9029 0.01 ≤ 0.05 * h l root 0.99 0.98 9.9028 0.01 ≤ 0.05 * % g mo 0.958 0.9178 4.7261 0.042 ≤ 0.05 * soil 3 nf p2o5ass 0.9969 0.9938 17.8494 0.0031 ≤ 0.01 ** l root n 0.9827 0.9657 7.5041 0.0173 ≤ 0.05 * s1 h sg -0.9642 0.9297 -5.1433 0.0358 ≤ 0.05 * % g c 0.9759 0.9525 6.3294 0.0241 ≤ 0.05 * h mg 2+ 0.9513 0.905 4.3643 0.0487 ≤ 0.05 * l root c 0.9759 0.9524 6.3246 0.0241 ≤ 0.05 * % g sf 0.9526 0.9074 4.4272 0.0474 ≤ 0.05 * s2 h mg 2+ 0.9513 0.905 4.3643 0.0487 ≤ 0.05 * l root c 0.9759 0.9524 6.3246 0.0241 ≤ 0.05 * l root p2o5ass 0.9694 0.9397 5.5814 0.0306 ≤ 0.05 * % g ib 0.997 0.994 17.8591 0.0032 ≤ 0.01 ** % g sf 0.9526 0.9074 4.4272 0.0474 ≤ 0.05 * s3 h mo 0.9926 0.9852 11.5471 0.0074 ≤ 0.01 * nf c 0.9728 0.9464 5.9428 0.0272 ≤ 0.05 * nf – phwater 0.9599 0.9215 4.8449 0.0401 ≤ 0.05 * nf ca 2+ 0.9897 0.9795 9.7678 0.0103 ≤ 0.05 * l root k + 0.9518 0.906 4.3894 0.0482 ≤ 0.05 * improvement tests on the germination in lippia .... 27 intrinsic and extrinsic to it (ahoton et al, 2009). but, assuming that lippia multiflora seeds sown have practically the same intrinsic factors, as coming from the same area of production, changes in the germination capacity of seeds is due to extrinsic factors such as humidity, ventilation and some chemical characteristics of the substrates. however, the particle size of soil 2, s2 and s3 is dominated by a relatively average sand content, characterized by a lack of hardpan allowing permeability resulting ventilation. thus, the retention of water in the substrate allows the infiltration and increases the moisture necessary for germination (benseighir-boukari and arillier, 2006). the germination capacity increases with increasing soil moisture. but extended moisture causes decay of some seeds, this is the case observed at soil 3 which have a low rate of germination and could not confirm the natural settlement of lippia multiflora in that soil. also, the temperature variation in treatment, which increases and decreases the day and the night, added to the humidity, causes cracking of the skin (removal of inhibition of the skin) and then the softening of the shell, allowing and the infiltration of water inside the seed. all these factors listed promote the absorption of water in sufficient quantities by living tissues; follows then removal of the inhibition of germination by the diffusion of oxygen to the embryo and consequently trigger the germination process (come, 1970). the lowest rate of germination recorded on soil 1 is due to the dominance of the latter coarse sand, characteristic of highly permeable soils, filtering and therefore lacking water at the sow horizon (ahoton et al, 2009). the germination rate correlated with organic matter could mean the action of humic acid on seed tissues. indeed, in the early stages of development, humic acid increases the rate of germination with the increase of the enzymatic activity of seed tissues (hartwigsen and evans, 2000). the statistical analyzes applied to the data of seedling development, indicating an influence of treatments on the growth rate. indeed, seedlings grown on the soil and two different substrates perform best, especially the substrate s2. crossing data (growth rate and physico-chemical treatments), indicates a strong correlation between root length and organic matter. thus, we have pairs of variables for soil 1, h c (r = 0.98), for sol 2, h c (r = 0.99), for s1 and s2, l root c (r = 0.97); for s3 the pair of variables obtained is h mo (r = 0.99). indeed, the level of organic matter in the soil is one of the criteria for determining whether or not degradation. aggregation and stability of soil structure increases with the carbon content of the soil. consequences are direct on the dynamics of water (kribaa et al., 2001) and the oxygen in the substrate, both of which play a role in root growth of woody plants. also, humic substances contained in organic matter, binding soil particles form aggregates that improve the structural stability. in these aggregates, the presence of micro-pores keeps an airy structure where water and air can circulate. in addition to aeration, surface gas exchange between the soil, the atmosphere and its water retention capacity is increased. there is thus improved biological activity by providing a substrate heterotrophic microorganisms energy and carbon (balesdent, 1996). the activity of these organisms has a positive effect because it affects soil mineral reserves and improves the bioavailability of elements to plants by limiting their precipitation. mineral nutrition of plants is thus facilitated. the lack of ventilation of certain substrates often leads to root mortality (benseighir-boukari and arillier, 2006), or the development of the root system is a key factor in the difference in seedling survival, because it allows store reserves feeder. correlations between root length and carbon could be under the influence of humic acid, because when present in growth medium, the responses result in an increase in the number and length of roots (hartwigsen and evans, 2000). works of groffman et al (2001) demonstrated that humic substances promote the removal of minerals by plants. the absorption of macronutrients (n, p, k, mg, ca) and micronutrients (cu, fe, zn.) increases in the presence of humic acids (garcia-gil et al., 2000). the presence of humic substances in the soil affects fertility and mineral reserves by promoting the release and dissolution of macronutrients contained in the mineral components of soil. the transport of ions and their positioning in the form of complex asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 18-29 28 around the rhizosphere condition the absorption of minerals. the slowdown in the growth of seedlings in the soil, especially in the sand, could be explained by the relatively low content of organic matter. the contribution of organic matter in the substrate causes a resurgence of biological activities that affect the mineralization of organic matter provided, allowing an improvement of the soil structure (sawadogo et al., 2008). hence the value of a contribution of organic matter if one wants to maintain the physico-chemical and biological soil that promotes rapid development of the root system of crops. slow growth observed in seedling for treatment soil 1 is influenced by the development of the root system. conclusion comparison of the rate of germination, seedling height, average number of leaves and the average length of the taproot, on different substrates, shows very highly significant differences. manure had a significant effect on the physical and chemical properties of soils where it has been introduced. therefore, the soil-manure mixture favored the growth rate of seedlings. the best germination was obtained on mixtures s2 (82.67%) and s3 (65.33%). 60 days of culture, the measurement of the height of plants of lippia multiflora, the most significant were recorded in culture media s2 (7.48 cm) and s3 (5.46 cm), with an average number of 7, 12 and 6 leaves, respectively for s1, s2 and s3. the root elongation is more important in substrates s2 (6.3 cm) and s3 (4.74 cm). these experiences should be pursued by testing advanced stages of plant development to confirm the results found at germination and seedling stages. references aba, s. c., baiyeri, k. p. & tenkouano, a. 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(2008). etude chimique et activité antidiarrhéique des huiles essentielles de deux plantes aromatiques de la pharmacopée ivoirienne. european journal of scientific research. 24(1), 94-103. perucci, p. (2000). effects of organic amendment and herbicide treatment on soil microbial biomass. biol. fertil. soils, 32, 1723. sawadogo, h., bock, l., lacroix, d. & zombré, n. p. (2008). restauration des potentialités de sols dégradés à l’aide du zaï et du compost dans le yatenga (burkina faso). in biotechnol. agron soc environ, 12(3), 279290. scott, s. j., jones, r. a., williams, w. a. (1984). review of data analysis methods for seed germination. crop science,24(6): pp. 1192-1199. wang, w.j., dalal, r.c., moody, p.w. & smith, c.j. 2003. relationships of respiration to microbial biomass, substrate availability and clay content. soil biol. biochem., 35, 273-284. watson, l. & dallwitz, m. j. (1992). les feuilles des usines fleurissantes: descriptions, illutrations, identification, et recherche documentaire, 14 ème version, 127-133. yélémou, b., yaméogo, g., millogo, j. & hien, r. v. (2007). germination sexuée et dynamique de développement de piliostigma recticulatum (d.c.) hochst, une espèce agroforestière du burkina faso. sécheresse, 18 (3), 185-192. yao – kouame, a., nangah, k. y., alui, k. a., n’guessan, k. a., yao, g. f. & assa, a. (2009). pedo-landscape and development of lippia multiflora in the southern côte d’ivoire. journal of environnemental science and technology, 2 (1), 56-62. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/16310748 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/16310748 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/16310748 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=publicationurl&_tockey=%23toc%237236%232004%23999929989%23522946%23fla%23&_cdi=7236&_pubtype=j&view=c&_auth=y&_acct=c000050221&_version=1&_urlversion=0&_userid=10&md5=5e822111a150bb4a09707d48c4b2f9e4 publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. impact assessment of the causes and prevention of farm accidents on mechanized farms of north central zone/states of nigeria j. k. yohanna., u. a. fulani., s. ode and h. k. ali (agricultural engineering department, college of agriculture, p. m. b. 33, lafia nasarawa state, nigeria) citation: j. k. yohanna., u. a. fulani., s. ode and h. k. ali (2012): “impact assessment of the causes and prevention of farm accidents on mechanized farms of north central zone/states of nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 171-176. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 171-176 171 author(s) j. k. yohanna agricultural engineering department, college of agriculture, p. m. b. 33, lafia nasarawa state, nigeria email: engrkuje@yahoo.com u. a. fulani., s. ode and h. k. ali agricultural engineering department, college of agriculture, p.m.b. 33, lafia nasarawa state, nigeria impact assessment of the causes and prevention of farm accidents on mechanized farms of north central zone/states of nigeria abstract accidents occurring on mechanized farms have been a thing of concern to farmers and researchers both within and outside nigeria. an investigation into the causes and prevention of farm accidents on mechanized farm was carried out in benue, federal capital territory, kwara, nasarawa, niger and plateau states that constitute the north central zone/states of nigeria. the data collection instrument was a questionnaire designed and distributed to all the states mentioned. the questionnaire addressed demographic variables and issues linked directly with the types, causes and prevention of farm accidents. a total of 2283 tractors were available in the mechanized farms surveyed, while a total of 1014 constituted other farm machinery/equipment. results show that 81.7% of accidents victims are male. about 45.5% of the accident victims were aged between 40years and above. about 33.96% of the minor accidents resulted in slight damage to equipment and machinery. similarly 43.4% of accidents resulted in substantial loss in time, while about 22.64% of accidents resulted in medical attention. there was no attempt made to quantify the monetary terms of the cost of each accidents, as there was dearth of information. the results obtained in this work are in agreement with the previous studies both outside and inside nigeria. also, from this survey work, there was a problem of good record keeping in most of the establishment surveyed. it is therefore, recommended among other things that adequate training and retraining of tractors/machinery operators should be carried out periodically, to intimate operators on recent use of farm equipment due to environmental and human factors keywords: impact assessment, causes, prevention, accident, mechanized, farm and nigeria introduction farm accident is defined as any thing unpleasant or damaging which happens unexpectedly or by chance that result in injury, loss of life, property damaged, time loss and tangible loss as a result of operating farm machinery (yisa 2001, yohanna 2004 and adamade 2007). they further stated that farm accident can be referred to as all incidental occurrence related to agricultural activities such as snake bite, bee invasion, fire outbreak, chemical explosion on the farm or workshop, drowning in a farm dam, falls, recreational, immunological disease etc. land communal crises resulting to agricultural land resource damage could be referred also to as farm accidents (yohanna 2006). in recent times accidents occurring in the farm have been a major concern to farmers and researchers in the developed world (yisa and terao, 1995; yisa, 1996 and adamade 2007). to buttress the importance of farm accidents several studies were carried out to determine the sources of frequent injuries in farming communities. it is also noted that there are more accident deaths on agriculture than in any other major industry, and farm mechanization activities are the source of the majority of accident in farming (jain and rai 1992). agriculture is the mainstream of any developing nations. in most areas of the developing world especially the subsahara africa, agriculture remains the africa largest sector and dominates the economics of most of the rural areas of the countries. in nigeria, in order to bring these areas into an economically fit condition for crops and livestock production, varieties of mechanical operation have been performed. it is through this occupational hazard of farm operations that accidents come to exist. this development has brought about an increase in the cases of accidents through the use of farm tools, tractor and other machinery. it is a well known fact that the bulk of agricultural production in the developing countries is in the hands of the small holder farmers whose depend very much on hand tools with mailto:engrkuje@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 171-176 172 very low mechanical advantages. these peasant farmers with limited capital resources are important clients for new technological development for the purpose of increasing basic food crops. these give rise to the need to survey the extent of farm accidents and their prevention in various means of farm operations (yohanna 2006, 2007 and 2011). anyone who operates mechanized farm equipment must make many decisions and perform many functions to ensure that the machine performs properly. the demand for more decisions may result in mistakes that lead to serious accidents (kepper et al., 1980). in a typical nigeria farm, a wide range of accidents is possible as a result of the poor state of infrastructures supporting mechanized farming and the absence of requisite skills in some instances. the accidents range from snake bites, fire disaster, field and workshop accidents (involving machinery), bees attack and poisoning attack from agro-chemicals etc. the objectives sought in writing this paper are as outlined as follows: i) survey and assess the various forms/source of farm accidents in nigeria using the north central zone/states as a case study; ii) identify the causes of farm accidents in mechanized farms and iii) to suggest the safety measures and prevention of farm accidents and its contribution to farming in nigeria. methodology (materials and methods) due to the enormity of work and resources required to conduct a research to cover all spheres of farm accidents in nigeria, this research was limited mainly to accidents occurring on mechanized farms. similarly due to the size of the country, the research was conducted in the north central zone/states of the country. this zone represents a major agricultural region of the country. the study area comprises of federal capital territory, benue, kwara, nasarawa, niger and plateau states. the method of obtaining information was through oral interview and questionnaire made of seventeen (17) questions. one hundred and fifty (150) questionnaires were distributed randomly to the study area but one hundred and twenty (120) representing 80% were retrieved for analysis. the oral interview was mainly for those who are not educated. the questions were being read to the respondents, if necessary additional explanation of the questions was given in the local language. where the physical evidences of accidents exist, they were noted for further analysis. the data were obtained through the general characteristic of respondents by demographic properties. these socioeconomic data include inventory of tractors, genders age and description of farm accidents such as causes, types and costs of accidents. it was analyzed by simple descriptive statistical means, percentages and tables were obtained accordingly. results presentation and discussion the results obtained from oral interview and the questionnaire is presented in tables 1 to 7. the data were analyzed through the general characteristics of respondents by demographic properties of interest were the inventory of tractors, gender, age and description of accidents. these include causes, types, cost and prevention of accident and analysis of the extent of damage from 120 questionnaires from the six (6) states. table 1: inventory of tractors and other machinery in the study area items benue nasarawa plateau fct kwara niger total tractors 474 504 405 324 216 360 2283 other equipment 276 108 72 216 123 219 1014 no. of accidents with tractor 18 06 12 08 10 54 total no of accidents 48 48 42 42 24 31 235 source: field survey 2007 – 2011 table2: sex distribution of accident victims in percentage source: field survey 2007 – 2011 sex benue nasarawa plateau fct kwara niger total no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % male 38 79 48 100 28 58 38 91 36 75 40 87 228 81.7 female 10 21 20 42 4 9 12 25 6 13 52 18.3 total 48 100 48 100 48 100 42 100 48 100 46 100 280 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 171-176 173 table3: age distribution of accident victims in percentage source: field survey 2007 – 2011 table 4: distribution of cost of accidents source: field survey 2007 – 2011 table5: causes of farm accidents causes of accidents benue nasarawa plateau fct kwara niger total no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % tractor failure 18 37.5 24 50 18 37.5 18 37.5 20 46.5 98 34.83 implement failure 6 12.5 24 50 24 50 20 45.5 12 25 4 9.3 90 32.05 others (environmental, human factors, improper operation of equipment) 24 50 6 12.5 24 54.5 18 37.5 19 44.2 91.5 33.12 total 48 100 48 100 48 100 44 100 48 100 43 100 219.5 100 source: field survey 2007 – 2011 table 6: farm accident types accident type benue nasarawa plateau fct kwara niger total no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % tractor failure 18 30 6 14.3 12 18.2 18 37.5 12 19.36 66 21.83 tractor implement system failure 6 14.3 30 45.5 6 25 10 20.83 8 12.9 60 19.84 implement failure 6 10 24 36.3 6 25 2 4.7 16 25.81 54 17.86 tools failure 18 30 6 14.3 4 6.45 28 9.33 environmental failure 18 30 24 57.1 12 50 18 37.5 22 35.48 94 31.15 total 60 100 42 100 66 100 24 100 48 100 62 100 302 100 source: field survey 2007 – 2011 table 7: types of farming type of farming benue nasarawa plateau fct kwara niger total no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % commercial 72 60 36 30 48 40 84 70 56 46.7 76 63.3 372 51.67 subsistence 36 30 24 20 48 40 24 20 34 28.3 32 26.7 198 27.50 peasant 12 10 60 50 24 20 12 10 30 25 12 10 150 20.83 total 120 100 120 100 120 100 120 100 120 100 120 100 720 100 source: field survey 2007 – 2011 table 1 shows the inventory of tractors and equipment and accidents in the studied area. a total of 2283 tractors were available in the mechanized forms surveyed. other machinery including ploughs, harrows, ridgers, trailers, incl uding planters/drills etc were 1014 from the six (6) states surveyed. of the 235 farm related accidents recorded for the study area, 54 involved tractors showing that tractor age of victim benue nasarawa plateau fct kwara niger total no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % 15 – 29 18 37 19 40 18 37.5 15 35.7 14 29.2 24 55.8 126 39.2 30 – 39 6 13 4 8 7 14.6 3 7.2 9 18.8 13 30.2 42 15.3 40 and above 24 50 25 52 23 47.9 24 57.1 25 52 6 14 127 45.5 total 48 100 48 100 48 100 42 100 48 100 43 100 295 100 effects of accidents benue nasarawa plateau fct kwara niger total no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % no. % time loss 30 71.4 36 50 30 62.5 6 25 16 33.33 20 32.26 138 43.4 property damage 30 41.7 12 25 12 50 30 62.50 26 41.94 110 33.96 medical attention 12 28.6 6 8.3 6 12.5 30 35 2 4.17 16 25.8 72 22.64 total 42 100 72 100 48 100 48 100 48 100 62 100 320 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 171-176 174 utilization is more pronounced than other equipment (yisa, 2001 and yohanna, 2004). table 2 shows the sex distribution of victims of farm accidents. apart from plateau state, there were more males victims than their female counterpart. on the whole 81.7% of the victims of farm accidents in the study area were male workers which the females workers constituted 18.3%, this agrees with the work of yisa 2001, that more men are involved in the operation of farm machinery than the women. percentage of age distribution of accidents victims are as indicated in table 3. 45% accident victims were aged between 40 years and above which may be due to year and psychological weakness from aged, tireless farming, and about 39.2% of the victims were aged between 15 – 29. this may be from lack of safety consciences and careless handling of farm machinery and tools by the young aged farmers. the 15.3% accident victims were aged between 3039 years. the low percentage here indicates that this aged group of farmers is self-consciences of accidents while working on the farms. the table 3 clearly shows that majority of the farmers involved in accidents are aged at 40years and above followed by the young early age at the onset of introducing themselves with farming activities. as shown in table 4, it was discovered that the establishments under study never kept records of the cost of accidents in monetary terms. there were problems of how to document this vital aspect of the study. it was then decided that accidents be classified in terms of those resulting in time loss, property damage, medical attention and intangible loss (deaths). based on this classification, the highest number of accidents (45.75%) resulted in time loss followed by property damage with 33.96% and medical attention with 22.64% in this order as there was no case of death reported. the percentages of the causes of farm accident by the various farm implements and other factors as outlined in table 5. 38.83% of the accidents were from tractors failure, 32.05% were from implement failure. 33.12% were from other factors such as environmental, human factors, improper operation of equipment due to ignorance or lack of resources to keep the equipment technically fit for operation. environmental factors include immunological diseases such as rhinopharyngitis, a typical asthma resulting from inhaling agricultural dust. there are negligible traces of tractor failure in federal capital territory which is in agreement with the work of yisa 2001 though he stated that this is rather high and unparalled. an overview of the nature of the accidents recorded with area under study is as shown in table 6. environmental condition related accidents were present in increasing order of benue state 30%, niger state 35.48%, kwara state 37.5%, fct 50% and nasarawa state 57.1% being highest, accounting for 94 (31%) of the 302 accidents recorded. there were negligible environmental related accidents in plateau state. 22% and 20% of the accidents were due to tractor failure and tractor implement system failure respectively while 18% and 9% were due to implement and tools failures respectively. the type of farming performed by the farmers on the study area is shown in table 7. a total of 51.67% of the farmers in the surveyed areas engaged in commercial farming, 27.5% in subsistence farming and 20.83% are peasant farmers. this shows that nigerians have greatly in farm mechanization as well as use of farm machinery. this also implies that nigerians famers have been relieved of about 50% from drudgery of using crude tools for farming. again the nigeria farmers are not only faming for their immediate family alone but to earn income and supply the entire nation with agricultural products, raw materials for our industries and possibly for export. causes of farm accidents in mechanized farms in the course of this survey, it was discovered that accidents on the farm arise from different factors such as absence and lack of safety consciousness by operation, environmental factors, in adequate training and education and mechanical failures. absences and lack of safety consciousness by operators some operators are not safety conscious in handling mechanized equipment, this manifesting in their careless attitude, improper operation of the equipment and exceeding the capability of the equipment. farm accidents resulting from mechanical failures and environmental conditions may be prevented by the development of safety habits and following the general safety precautions. operating and equipment or tractor without proper maintenance is yet another explanation of the inadequacy of safety consciousness by operators. research findings showed 80% of tractor operators experienced hot water scalding on their faces as a result of cooling system problem from sudden opening of an overheated radiator cap while the system is hot (atanda, 2004). according to the same source, 48% experienced dangerous turning leading to head on collision with incoming vehicle on high ways. driving a tractor at night without light on is a typical example of how carelessness leads to accidents. also driving a tractor on 3 wheels even when the front is punctures without vulcanization can lead to accident (yohanna 2010). yisa (2001) found that 50% of operators exceed the capability of equipment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 171-176 175 environmental factors these factors are topography, rainfall, fire, snake bites etc. and are not directly controlled by man. about 82% accidents are caused by snakes, bees and other harmful insects attack while moving inside the bush for operation, while 88% were reported to have experienced deep cuts on their body (atanda, 2005). lack of training and education this caused as a result of inadequate training of operators due to low level of education attained. this problem affects most of the tractor operators. skills, knowledge and attitude must be developed and inculcated on regular basis so that the capacity of the operators does not fall behind requirements or they do not forget safety requirement as the need arise. regular assessment of the competence level of the operators to perform the tasks involved in making effective use of equipment would bring to the fore gaps that need to be bridged through training,. there is also need for quality education in the universities, polytechnics and other institutions so that adequate manpower is developed for the replacement of those who are aged and exiting employment as operators. mechanical factors in machine brake failure is a common cause of this type of accident and other mechanical faults occur at times when machine have exceeded their recommended span. this also may occur due to shortage of fund to buy spare parts or replace the entire faulty systems. hydraulic lift failure in tractors moving on the highways with implement attached could create collision with vehicle among at the rear such as other tractor thereby causing serious accidents. mechanical failure in machine can be due to ignorance or lack of resources to keep the equipment technically fit for operation. impacts of accidents on mechanized farms injuries sustained by field workers have adverse effects on the productivity of the entire agricultural industry (atanda, 2005). this impact is realized through the curtailment of the injured workers activities, even when slight injuries occurred. in course of this survey, it was discovered that establishments never kept proper records of the impact of accidents in monetary terms, which is a vital aspect that needs to be looked into as it is through collecting and analyzing such information that future occurrence can be prevented. impacts caused by accidents either on the operators, establishment or on the equipment or tractor are classified in terms of accidents resulting in time loss, property damage medical attention and entangle loss. entangle loss cannot be quantified as it results into deaths of the person causing damages to the establishment. it is noted that most accidents occurrences involved males between the ages of 15 – 29 years, which is the prime age for the development of critical mass of the need work force in the agricultural sector (yisa, 2001). the same source added that about 45% of accidents result in property damage, 30% resulted in time loss, 21% resulted in medical attention and 2.67% deaths. prevention of farm accidents in mechanized farm accidents can be minimized and/or prevented in mechanized farms by applying the following recommendations. safety and occupational hazards education should be included in the curriculum of primary, secondary and tertiary institutions where agriculture is taught as a subject. proper inventory and record keeping of tractors, other farm machinery accident cases use of lubricant, hour of walk, tools, spare parts, fuels etc. should be kept by farm managers. adequate budgetary allocation for maintenance and purchasing of spare parts, provision of all necessary safety apparels for operators during field operation should be ensured by the farm machinery managers. electronic and printed media should create awareness among the public on the immediate and remote benefits of safety and occupational hazard in the farm and accomplish by agricultural extension agents. medical insurance scheme at a very high subsidized rate should be introduced in nigeria to cater for medical treatment of the farmers occupational hazard. adequate training, retraining and education of tractors/machinery operators and mechanics should be carried out periodically, to intimate operators on recent use of farm equipment which in turn would reduce the occurrence of accidents on the farms. conclusion farm accidents are caused and are costly due to inadequacy of training and retraining of operators and mechanics, inadequate knowledge in the use of the equipment, low literacy level, lack of proper maintenance of tractors/implements. if the above prevention measures are duly followed then there will be a drastic reduction in accidents cases on mechanized farms. safety cannot be compromised for the vain pursuit of economic gains. the management of mechanized farms and the workers therefore must not because of the quest to earn more money from the use of this equipment ignore the requirements as demanded by makers for safety. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 171-176 176 references adamade, c. a. (2007) “causes, impacts and prevention of farm accidents on mechanized farms” proceedings of the 8 th international conference of the nigeria institution of agricultural engineers at yola. vol. 29, pp. 14 – 16. anzodo, u. g. n. (1975) “system approach to farm mechanization in nigeria”, nigeria j. of technology (nijotech), obafemi awolowo university, ile ife nigeria. vol. 1(1), pp. 7–10. atanda, e. o. (2004) “farm tractor and incidence of iccidents in the field of operation in ondo state: causes and remedies”, journal of science, engineering and technology, vol. 11(3), pp. 5681–91. atanda, e.o. (2005) “investigation into different types of accidents experienced by farm tractor operators in ondo state, nigeria”, proceedings of the nigeria institution of agricultural engineers. vol. 27, pp. 87 – 94. hunter, a. g. m. and owen, g. m. (1985) “tractor over turning accidents on slopes”, journal of occupational accidents, elsevier source publishers b.v. amsterdam. vol. 5, pp. 195–210. jain, s. c. and rai, c. r. (1992) “farm tractors maintenance and repairs”, tata mcgraw-hill publishing co. ltd. new delhi. kepper, r. a. bainer, r. and barger, e. l. (1980) “principles of farm machinery”, 3 rd edition avi publishing company inc. westport, usa yisa, m. g. and terao, h. (1995) “dynamic of tractorimplement combination on slopes (part5). stateof –the art review”, j. fac. of agric. hokkaido university, japan vol. 66, pp. 240–60. yisa, m. g. (1996) “dynamics of tractor-implements combinations in slopes”, unpublished phd thesis graduate school of agriculture hokkaido university sapporo, japan. vol. 67, pp. 3-30. yisa, m. g. (2001) “investigation of farm accidents in nigeria part 1. fct kaduna, kwara and niger states”, journal of agricultural engineering and technology, vol. 9, pp. 46–52. yohanna, j. k. (2004) “a survey of tractors and implements utilization for crop production in nasarawa state”, proceedings of 5 th international conference of niae, ilorin. vol. 26, pp. 53–58. yohanna, j. k. (2006) “an appraisal of farm power and equipment operation and management in nasarawa state of nigeria”, journal of engineering science and technology, vol. 1(1), pp. 58–61. yohanna, j. k. (2007) “farm machinery utilization for sustainable agricultural production in nasarawa state of nigeria”, journal of food and agricultural research, vol. (1 & 2), pp. 192–199. yohanna, j. k; u. a. fulani and w. w. aka’ama (2011) “a survey of mechanization problems of the small scale (peasant) farmers in the middle belt of nigeria”, journal of agricultural science (jas) by canadian centre of science and education (ccse) vol. 3(2), pp. 262–66. yohanna, j. k. (2012) personal communication. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. vertical price transmission in local rice markets in côte d’ivoire: are consumers really right? yaya keho (national school of statistics and applied economics (ensea), 08 po box 03 abidjan 08, côte d'ivoire) aïssata sobia camara (ivorian centre for economic and social research (cires), university of abidjan, 08 po box 1295 abidjan 08, côte d'ivoire) citation: yaya keho and aïssata sobia camara (2012) “vertical price transmission in local rice markets in côte d’ivoire: are consumers really right?”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 552 564. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 552-564 552 author(s) yaya keho national school of statistics and applied economics (ensea), 08 po box 03 abidjan 08, côte d'ivoire aïssata sobia camara ivorian centre for economic and social research (cires), university of abidjan, 08 po box 1295 abidjan 08, côte d'ivoire vertical price transmission in local rice markets in côte d’ivoire: are consumers really right? abstract this paper analyses vertical relationships between wholesale and retail prices in three local rice markets in côte d’ivoire. the aim of the paper is to ascertain whether the popular complaint of consumers about the asymmetric price transmission holds true. our empirical analysis makes use of threshold cointegration and error correction models and monthly data for the period 19901999. we found that wholesale and retail prices are cointegrated and increases in wholesale prices are passed on to retail prices more quickly than decreases. keywords: asymmetric price transmission; threshold cointegration; rice; côte d’ivoire introduction prices play an important role in explaining economic behaviours and well-being. they are central in reducing poverty. with different food products, marketing channels can geographical ly be long or may consist of many vertically integrated levels involving several agents such as producers, wholesalers and retailers. many studies conducted by agricultural economists have analysed price transmission at various stage in the production and distribution chain. one strand of these studies investigated spatial price linkages focusing on two issues. are markets integrated? are prices dominated by a central market? another strand of studies considered the vertical price transmission at different stages in the distribution chain and analysed the farm-wholesale and wholesaleretail price relationships. the relationship between wholesale and retail food prices has important economic and political implications. it is commonly felt that price transmission in the marketing chain is not always symmetric. asymmetric price transmission refers to the phenomenon that downstream prices respond to upstream price increases and decreases at different rates. usually, consumers complain that retailers quickly increase food prices as wholesale prices rise, but do not reduce retail prices as quickly when prices drop. the extent of increase in retail prices is sometime deemed excessive. this view is strongly supported by the extensive study of peltzman (2000). a good example of asymmetry is where retail prices remain sticky although farm or wholesale prices have fallen due to increase in primary production. asymmetry is often perceived by some economists and politicians as the outcome of non-competitive food markets or market power of traders requiring government intervention. in an asymmetric price transmission context, consumers do not benefit from reduction in input and wholesale prices as a consequence of agricultural policy reform. recently, a growing body of studies has emerged aiming at testing the asymmetry in upstream and downstream prices relationship for several products and assessing the market power exercised by wholesaler or retailers. results from this empirical literature are inconclusive. studies generally differ in terms of the goods analysed, countries and model specification. consequently, it is difficult to draw conclusions on which to base policy decisions. in this study, we examine the wholesale-retail local rice price relationships for côte d’ivoire in order to determine how wholesale price changes are passed on to retail prices. more precisely, we look at whether we vertical price transmission in local rice markets .... 553 can find some empirical evidence supporting the consumers’ complaint that retail prices rise faster than they fall. the empirical investigation makes use of the threshold cointegration approach proposed by enders and granger (1998) and enders and siklos (2001). the appealing aspect of this approach is that it allows one to test for cointegration taking into account the asymmetric nature of the adjustment mechanism, which varies according to the size and sign of the equilibrium error. even though this econometric approach is widely used in the empirical literature, its application for analyzing vertical price transmission has been very limited. the present study is the first attempt of its kind for cote d’ivoire. we consider three regional markets located at the south, centre and north. to ensure comparability of the findings, we use monthly data and similar econometric model specifications for all markets. the rest of the article is organized as follows. section 2 reviews the related economic literature. in section 3, the main characteristics of the ivorian rice market are described along with some preliminary analysis of nonlinearities. section 4 describes the econometric methodology used in the study. section 5 reports and discusses the empirical results. finally, section 6 provides summary of the main findings and concluding remarks. literature review in a competitive market, price changes between wholesale and retail levels are expected to be symmetric. nonetheless, many studies report that the wholesale-retail price transmission process might be asymmetric. the economic literature identifies several plausible reasons for asymmetric price transmission 1 . some of the more prominent explanations include imperfect competition (boyd and brorsen, 1988; bettendorf and verboven 2000; meyer and von cramon-taubadel 2004), adjustment costs at the retail level (ball and mankiw 1994), input 1 see meyer and von cramon-taubadel (2004) and frey and manera (2007) for a comprehensive review of the literature dealing with potential causes of asymmetries in vertical price transmission. substitution at the processing level (bettendorf and verboven 2000), stocks at both the production and retail level (reagan and weitzman 1982), search costs (bénabou and gertner 1993), and public intervention in terms of price regulation or subventions (kinnucan and forker 1987). in many african countries, inadequate transport and communication infrastructures can hinder the transmission of price signals and prevent arbitrages (rapsomanikis et al. 2003). wholesale prices may fall but retail prices remain unchanged because transportation costs are high. the role of market power associated with the organization of wholesalers has been put forward to explain the asymmetric relationship between wholesale and retail prices (griffith and piggott 1994; meyer and von cramontaubadel 2004; gohin and guyomard 2000; vindel 2005). this is particularly true for areas where asymmetric information prevails and search costs associated with that asymmetry are high. in general, consumers have not full information about the prices of products at the relevant markets. consequently, sellers take advantage of this asymmetry and retain their old retail price when the wholesale price decreases. gohin and guyomard (2000) showed that over 20% and 17% of the margins between wholesale and retail prices of dairy products and meat in france can be attributed to oligopolistic behaviour of wholesalers. in a study on price transmission in benin, kuiper et al. (2003) highlighted the influence of whole salers in the formation of maize prices in local markets. fiamohé and de frahan (2008) found that the main cause of asymmetric price transmission in the food markets in benin is the presence of associations of traders who behave like oligopolies or cartels. the key point to note from this theoretical literature is that there are several potential causes of asymmetric price transmission. economists have conducted hypothesis tests for asymmetric price transmission in several agricultural product markets using different methods and data, and they have generally reached different conclusions depending on the goods analysed, countries, time frequencies and model specification (frey and manera 2007). peltzman (2000) conducted a wide-ranging vertical price transmission analysis utilizing a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 552-564 554 large data set consisting of prices from over two hundred product markets. his empirical evidence indicates that asymmetric adjustment is prevalent with retail prices rising faster, as compared to falling, whilst this asymmetry is not related to inventory costs, menu costs and imperfect competition. such findings not only suggest that asymmetry is the rule rather than the exception in market price adjustment but raise a number of questions related to the suitability of empirical price-based tests and the conventional theory of prices. kinnucan and forker (1987) examined farm–retail price transmission in the dairy sector and found significant evidence of asymmetric pricing. ward (1982) showed that wholesale fresh vegetable price decreases are reflected at the retail level more quickly than wholesale price increases, and wholesale price decreases are more fully transmitted to the shipping point farm level relative to wholesale price increases. more recently, ben-kaabia and gil (2007) investigated the non-linear adjustment between farm and retail prices in the lamb sector in spain, using a three-regime threshold autoregressive model. the results indicate that, in the long run, price transmission is perfect and any supply or demand shocks are fully transmitted along the marketing chain. in the short run, price adjustments between the farm and the retail levels are asymmetric and reveal a demand-pull transmission mechanism. researchers have examined other product markets for asymmetric price transmission. given the considerable importance of beef and pork in the us food marketing system, much research effort has been devoted to under standing price transmission across levels of those markets. for example, boyd and brorsen (1988) find that wholesale pork prices respond similarly to farm pork price decreases and increases, and pork retailers respond to wholesale pork price increases and decreases in ways that are not significantly different. schroeder (1988) investigated price trans mission for specific pork cuts between wholesale and retail markets. although there is some evidence that retailers respond more quickly to increasing wholesale prices than decreasing wholesale prices, the cumulative effects are very similar. evidence of asymmetric price transmission have been found by von cramon-taubadel (1998), goodwin and holt (1999), goodwin and harper (2000), abdulai (2002), and miller and hayenga (2001). other studies providing evidence for asymmetric price transmission in non– agricultural product markets include borenstein et al. (1997), balke et al. (2002) and al-gudhea et al. (2007). local rice market in cote d’ivoire and potential sources of asymmetries local rice is produced mainly for domestic consumption and is one of the staple food crops grown throughout the country. rice production has increased from 634 228 tons in 2001 to 703 931 tons in 2005. its consumption is around 36 kg per capita per year. it constituted 49% of cereal production and 48% of cereal demand in the country (minagr, 2007). major producing areas are located in the south, the west and the centre. although rice was traditionally marketed by a private commercial system, the government intervened in the distribution of staple food crops to help reduce price variability among regions. in practice, however, government failed to achieve this objective and prices varied across regions and time. since the 1990s government has embarked on economic reforms that include dismantling of price and wage controls and reducing its role in domestic and external food marketing with the goal to create a competitive environment for private agents including farmers and traders. such market liberalization reforms are consistent with economic theory, which postulates that the proper functioning of markets and marketing channels is essential for the optimal allocation of resources. today the rice market has been completely liberalized. however, government still intervenes through the aid office to the marketing of food products (ocpv) to facilitate and promote food marketing throughout the country. food trade is largely organized through networks of traders linked by personal and ethnic ties. two actors dominated the local rice marketing system in côte d’ivoire: wholesalers and retailers. wholesalers obtain rice either directly from farmers with whom they have long-standing relationships or through resident assemblers. the local wholesalers then sell to long-distance traders serving the urban markets vertical price transmission in local rice markets .... 555 throughout the country. the abidjan markets are supplied from internal areas because abidjan is not a production area like bouaké and korhogo. asymmetries in these three markets may arise due to the retailers’ use of market power to transmit price increases faster than price decreases. retailers try to maintain their ‘normal’ profit margin when prices rise, but they try to capture the larger margins that arise, at least temporarily, when downstream prices fall. the situation lasts as long as consumer search costs are present. figure 1 shows the evolution of monthly wholesale and retail prices over the period 1990–1999 for each of the three markets under study. an overall look at this figure shows that wholesale and retail prices move in parallel. this gives an indication that the two series are cointegrated in the long run. however, this visual inspection does not give the nature of this relationship. figure 1: evolution of wholesale and retail prices over the period 1990-1999 therefore, we divided the sample period into two sub-periods depending on whether the wholesale price was increasing or decreasing. then, we calculated the monthly average percentage change in wholesale and retail prices in each sub-sample to obtain, although very 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 rp wp price (fcfa/kg) abidjan 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 rp wp price (fcfa/kg) bouaké 120 160 200 240 280 320 360 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 rp wp price (fcfa/kg) korhogo asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 552-564 556 roughly, some indication about potential asymmetric relationship. as can be seen from figure 2, on average, positive changes in wholesale and retail prices seem to be larger than negative changes. in the abidjan market, wholesale price has increased by 8.84% while retail price has increased by 3.51%. if the wholesale-retail price relationship was symmetric the 6.73% decrease in wholesale price would lead to a 2.67% decrease in retail price instead of a decrease of 2.72%. thus decrease in retail price is greater than that is required. similarly, increases in wholesale price are transmitted moderately to retail price. in the other two markets, retail prices rise faster than they fall. for example, if symmetric price transmission holds in the bouaké market retail price should decrease by 2.65% instead of 2.3% and increase by 2.75% instead of 3.18%. the price transmission mechanism in abidjan market seems different from that of the other markets in the sense that changes in retail prices are moderate in the abidjan market. however, the retail-marketing margin in abidjan market is greater (37 fcfa/kg) than that of the bouaké (33 fcfa/kg) and korhogo (20 fcfa/kg) markets. figure 2: average monthly changes in wholesale and retail prices when wholesale price is increasing or decreasing 8.84% -6.73% 3.51% -2.72% -10 -5 0 5 10 wholesale price increases wholesale price decreases wholesale price retail price abidjan market 4.77% -3.98% 3.18% -2.30% -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 wholesale price increases wholesale price decreases wholesale price retail price bouaké market 5.38% -3.93% 3.12% -2.04% -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 wholesale price increases wholesale price decreases wholesale price retail price korhogo market vertical price transmission in local rice markets .... 557 overall, these figures provide some kind of asymmetric price transmission in the local rice market. however, the issue has to be further explored with appropriate methodological tools, which will be the aim of the following section. econometric methodology this paper employs the enders and siklos (2001) test for threshold cointegration to examine the temporal relationship between wholesale price )( tw and retail price )( tr . this approach extends the engle and granger’s (1987) cointegration procedure to encompass possible asymmetric adjustment to disequil ibrium. the cointegration approach is based on the fact that deviations from equilibrium conditions for two non-stationary variables should be stationary. a significant implication is that, while individual price series may wander extensively, they should not diverge from one another in the long run. assuming both variables are i(1) process, the englegranger two-step procedure considers first the retail-wholesale price relationship among the variables in levels: ttt wr   10 (1) where i are parameters to be estimated, and t is a disturbance term which may be serially correlated. the existence of long-run relationship involves stationary t . the augmented dickey-fuller (adf) statistic is used to ascertain whether the residuals t are stationary. to accept stationarity of t , we have to obtain 02   in the regression given by: t p i ititt      1 1 (2) where t is a white-noise process. however, a crucial limitation of eq. (2) is that it does not capture the asymmetric nature of the responses of retail prices to wholesale prices. it assumes the short-run adjustment towards longrun equilibrium to be always present and time invariant. nevertheless, according to balke and fomby (1997), the movements towards equilibrium value do not always appear or at least do not have the same intensity. eq. (2) is particularly inappropriate if prices are sticky in the downward direction, but not in the upward direction. in addition, pippenger and goering (1993), balke and fomby (1997) and enders and granger (1998) showed that standard tests for unit root and cointegration have low power in the presence of non-linear adjustment towards the long-run relationship. the key point of our study is that if we presume the presence of asymmetric behavior in wholesale and retail prices, then these tests must be modified to account for such asymmetry. as in enders and granger (1998) and enders and siklos (2001), we introduce asymmetric adjustment to the model by letting the deviation from the long-run equilibrium t behave as a two regimes momentum threshold autoregressive (mtar) process. thus, we replace eq. (2) with:   t p i itittttt ii      1 1211 1 (3) where ti is the indicator function such that:           1 1 0 1 t t t if if i (4) and the value of the threshold. it is also possible to allow the adjustment to depend on the level of 1t rather than on the change in 1t . in this case, the indicator of equation (4) becomes:           1 1 0 1 t t t if if i (5) asymmetric adjustment is implied by different values of 1 and 2 . the sufficient and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 552-564 558 necessary conditions for t to be stationarity are 0i , for i = 1, 2, and 1)1)(1( 21   (petrucelli and woolford 1984). if the threshold parameter enters the model unrestrictedly, the problem of how to consistently estimate it along with the values of 1 and 2 emerges here 2 . to obtain a consistent estimate of the threshold, we follow the grid search procedure suggested by chan (1993). typically, the residuals 1t and 1 t are sorted into an increasing order and the central 70% of observations are then considered as potential thresholds. for each possible threshold, the underlying model is estimated by ols and the consistent threshold value̂ is found by selecting the value that minimizes the sum of squared residuals. once̂ is obtained the next step is to perform testing for threshold cointegration. the null hypothesis of no cointegration is 0: 210  h . this restriction can be tested through the f-statistic called the statistic. notice, however, that the distribution of  is not standard and appropriate critical values have been tabulated by enders and siklos (2001). if the null hypothesis of no cointegration is rejected, it is worthwhile to further test for symmetric adjustment ( 21   ). this can be done through a standard f-test because the least squares estimates of 1 and 2 converge to multi variate normal distributions and the system is stationary (tong, 1983; enders and siklos, 2001). rejecting both the null hypotheses of 021   and 21   implies the exis tence of threshold cointegration and asymmetric adjustment. the short-run dynamics of the price series can be examined with asymmetric error correction models to obtain additional confirmation of the 2 some studies use a threshold value of zero. however there is no a priori reason to expect the threshold to be zero. threshold cointegration findings. these models can be represented as follows:   tttt n i itiit n i iit n i it ei rwwr 11111 1 1 0 2 0 110 ˆ1ˆ                   (6)   tttt n i iti it n i iit n i it eiw rrw 21212 1 2 0 2 0 220 ˆ1ˆ                    (7) where 1 ˆ t is the one-period lagged error term for the cointegrating eq. (1), tw is decomposed as ),0max( tt ww   and ),0min( tt ww   ;  tr and  tr are similarly defined. the estimates of  and  determine the rate at which positive and negative deviations from the long-run equilibrium are eliminated. if   11  , tr exhibits asymmetry in long-run adjustment. we can also test for short-run asymmetric price transmission based on the coefficients on  tw and  tw . an asymmetric impact for w upon r is possible if coefficients are not the same. this implies that retail prices are differently affected by positive and negative changes in wholesale prices. empirical results data and unit root tests the study uses monthly data from january 1990 to may 1999, giving a total of 113 observations. the end date of the sample is dictated by the political crisis of december 1999 that made difficult data collection across regions. the main variables under study are nominal retail and wholesale prices. three local rice markets are concerned with the empirical analysis: abidjan, bouaké and korhogo. these cities are located in the south, centre and north, respectively. all data are compiled from the aid office to the marketing of food products (ocpv) and are expressed in f cfa per kg. vertical price transmission in local rice markets .... 559 for the empirical analysis, variables are expressed in natural logarithms. from an economic point of view, this transformation also allows the estimated coefficients to be interpreted as constant elasticities. the empirical estimation strategy involves the following steps. before performing cointe gration analysis, we first test for unit root in individual price variables. second, we examine whether a long-run relation exists between the two price series. third, if cointegration is found, we determine whether the relationship exhibits a threshold-type non-linearity. four, we estimate the short-run dynamic behavior of the system. table 1: unit root test results level first difference market/series adf pp df-gls adf pp df-gls abidjan retail price -2.779 (-3.450) -3.313 (-3.450) -2.441 (-3.019) -13.509 * (-2.887) -15.367 * (-2.887) -1.081 (-1.944) wholesale price -3.500 * (-3.450) -5.179 * (-3.450) -3.330 * (-3.019) -3.767 * (-2.890) -26.888 * (-2.887) -3.789 * (-1.944) bouaké retail price -2.753 (-3.450) -2.714 (-3.450) -2.637 (-3.018) -12.568 * (-2.887) -12.553 * (-2.887) -0.822 (-1.944) wholesale price -3.172 (-3.450) -3.172 (-3.450) -2.962 (-3.018) -12.439 * (-2.887) -12.456 * (-2.887) -4.492 * (-1.943) korhogo retail price -2.999 (-3.450) -2.999 (-3.450) -2.892 (-3.018) -5.588 * (-2.889) -11.236 * (-2.887) -10.608 * (-1.943) wholesale price -3.018 (-3.450) -3.124 (-3.450) -2.788 (-3.018) -11.886 * (-2.887) -11.848 * (-2.887) -11.940 * (-1.943) notes: the numbers in parenthesis are 5% critical values. * indicates the rejection of the null hypothesis at the 5% level of significance. to ascertain the orders of integration of the two price series, we apply the unit root tests of dickey-fuller (1979), phillips-perron (1988) and elliott et al. (1996). these tests are denoted as adf, pp and df-gls respectively. the test results reported in table 1 show that both wholesale as well as retail prices have unit root. however the first differenced price series are stationary. this integration property readily lends itself to cointegration analysis. threshold cointegration test results table 2 presents the cointegration test results assuming threshold adjustment. the table reports value of the adjustment coefficients 1 and 2 , their t-values and the  and * statistic for the null hypothesis of a unit root in t against the alternative of cointegration with asymmetric adjustment. the lag length is selected such that the akaike information criterion (aic) is minimized. the f-statistic for symmetric adjustment 21   , the underlying long-run equations and the consistent estimate of the threshold are also reported in the table. as can be seen from the statistics, the estimates of 1 and 2 satisfy the stationary conditions. more importantly, the null of no cointegration ( 021   ) can be rejected for both the tar and the mtar models for all markets, indicating that retail price and wholesale price are cointegrated. given this finding, the null hypothesis of symmetric adjustments is tested using the standard f-statistic. the f-statistic rejects the null hypothesis of symmetric adjustment ( 21   ) for abidjan and bouaké under the mtar model at the 10% significance level. the evidence for korhogo favours symmetric adjustment. as measured by the aic and the sc, both tar and mtar models exhibit similar goodness of fit and, therefore, the one asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 552-564 560 modelling framework is not significantly superior over the other. in what follows our discussion focus on mtar models. table 2: results of threshold cointegration tests abidjan bouaké korhogo tar m-tar tar m-tar tar m-tar 1 a -0.861 (-7.608) -0.970 (-8.708) -0.255 (-2.121) -0.378 (-3.611) -0.486 (-3.816) -0.609 (-3.695) 2 a -0.503 (-3.373) -0.343 (-2.431) -0.368 (-2.835) -0.058 (-0.335) -0.394 (-3.988) -0.376 (-4.255) 021   (  b or * ) 34.630 * 40.870 * 5.251 * 6.556 * 15.238 * 15.885 * 21   (ftest c ) (sig.) 3.644 ** (0.058) 12.118 * (0.000) 0.516 (0.473) 2.902 ** (0.091) 0.321 (0.572) 1.545 (0.217) estimated threshold ̂ 0.072 0.078 0.046 -0.034 -0.036 0.026 number of lags 0 0 2 2 0 0 cointegrating relationship d constant 1.180 (5.948) 0.308 (2.520) 1.519 (13.703) wholesale price 0.809 (21.899) 0.969 (42.307) 0.732 (34.850) aic -2.214 -2.278 -3.550 -3.573 -3.440 -3.444 sc -2.166 -2.229 -3.452 -3.474 -3.391 -3.396 notes: a coefficients and t-statistics for ρ1 and ρ2. b ф denotes the f-test for the null hypothesis ρ1=ρ2=0. critical values are from enders and siklos (2001). c f shows the sample f-statistic for the null hypothesis tests for symmetry ρ1=ρ2. p-values are in parenthesis below. d the numbers in parenthesis are t-statistics. * and ** denote significance at the 5% and 10% levels, respectively. given that 21   in the mtar model, the speed of adjustment is faster for positive deviations (above threshold) from the long-run relationship than for negative deviations (below threshold). hence, positive deviations from the long-term equilibrium resulting from increases in retail price or decreases in wholesale price are eliminated much faster than deviations resulting from decreases in retail price or increases in wholesale price. for example, the point estimate of 1 for abidjan market indicates that approximately 97% of a positive deviation from the long-run equilibrium relationship is eliminated within a month. on the other hand, the point estimate of 2 indicates that 34% of a negative deviation from the long-run relationship is eliminated within a month. similarly, the estimates for the bouaké market indicate that the adjustment toward the long-run relationship tends to persist more when wholesale prices are increasing and reverts more quickly when they are decreasing. the evidence provided here indicates that the transmission of prices in the abidjan and bouaké markets displays some asymmetry. short-run dynamics since cointegration exists among the variables, their short-run dynamics can be modelled within error correction models (engle and granger 1987). however, the positive finding of threshold cointegration implies that it is incorrect to estimate a symmetric error correction model. such a model would not vertical price transmission in local rice markets .... 561 reveal differential adjustment under the two regimes. hence, an asymmetric version of the error correction model is estimated for abidjan and bouaké markets to allow for asymmetric adjustment in response to positive and negative price changes. using the long-run relations reported in table 2, the results of the fitted error-correction models are presented in table 3 along with test statistics regarding long and short-run symmetry. an important finding is the statistical significance of the error correction terms in the asymmetric error correction model. while wholesale prices adjust in the wrong direction, retail prices adjust in the right direction by acting to eliminate deviations from long run equilibrium. the t-statistics show that the coefficients on the positive and negative error correction terms (i.e.  t̂ and  t̂ ) are significant and noticeably different in abidjan market. this indicates that retail prices respond differently to positive and negative discrepancies in the long-run price relationship between retail and wholesale prices. retail price growth is faster when there is a positive deviation from long-run equilibrium than when there is a negative deviation. the point estimates show that retail prices in abidjan adjust so as to eliminate more than 84% of a unit positive change, but about 53% of a negative change in the deviation from the equilibrium relationship created by changes in wholesale prices. similarly, retail prices in bouaké adjust so as to eliminate approximately 45% of a unit positive deviation and 29% of a unit negative deviation from the long run relationship created changes in wholesale prices. for korhogo, retail prices adjust so as to eliminate 43% of disequilibrium from long-run relationship. table 3: estimates of the error correction models and symmetry testing results abidjan bouaké korhogo tr tw tr tw tr tw constant -0.011 * (-2.039) -0.004 (-0.405) -0.006 (-1.376) -0.008 (-1.488) -0.005 (-1.085) -0.006 (-1.031)  tw 0.750 * (5.990) 0.876 * (8.786) 0.725 * (8.650)  tw 0.142 ** (1.809) 0.455 * (4.551) 0.457 * (4.819)  tr 0.401 (1.723) ** 1.008 * (7.931) 1.048 * (8.194)  tr 0.919 * (4.964) 0.607* (4.697) 0.681 * (5.169)  1 ˆ t -0.844 * (-6.122) 1.188 * (9.002) -0.452 * (-5.521) 0.526 * (5.834) -0.429 * (-5.651) 0.417 * (4.276)  1 ˆ t -0.524 * (-4.363) -0.012 (-0.066) -0.288 ** (-1.895) 0.179 (1.034) symmetry testing long-run a (    ) 3.350 ** [0.067] 26.300 * [0.000] 0.887 [0.346] 3.255 ** [0.071] short-run b (   ) 13.132 * [0.000] 2.298 [0.129] 6.667 * [0.009] 3.557 ** [0.059] 3.577 ** [0.058] 3.137 ** [0.076] r 2 0.413 0.497 0.587 0.582 0.588 0.539 aic -2.827 -2.012 -3.766 -3.542 -3.482 -3.116 sc -2.704 -1.890 -3.644 -3.420 -3.385 -3.019 note: t-statistics are in parentheses. asymmetric error correction models are based on the mtar. a wald test for the null hypothesis that the adjustment coefficients are equal. significance levels are in brackets. b wald test for the null hypothesis that positive and negative changes in wholesale prices are the same effect on retail prices. significance levels are in brackets below. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 552-564 562 considering the individual coefficients on price change variables, the coefficients of positive and negative price change are all significantly positive. this implies that wholesale price increases (decreases) lead to retail price increases (decreases). the size of the short-run coefficients indicates a relatively high response of retail price to a positive change in wholesale price in all markets. thus, increases in wholesale prices are transmitted faster to retail prices than decreases. overall, these results indicate that price transmission asymmetries do exist in ivorian local rice markets. this implies greater costs for consumers than would occur with symmetric adjustment. conclusion this paper investigated the vertical price transmission in three important local rice markets in côte d’ivoire in order to ascertain whether the complaint of consumers about the asymmetric price transmission holds true. to this end, the concept of price transmission was decomposed into co-movement, dynamics and speed of adjustment within threshold cointe gration and asymmetric error correction model framework. using monthly data over the 1990– 1999, we found evidence supporting the asymmetric price responses hypothesis in two markets: increases in wholesale prices are passed on to retail prices more rapidly than decreases. the results also show that speed and magnitude of retail prices response to changes in wholesale prices are much higher for abidjan market than bouaké market. this is consistent with the fact that the abidjan market is mainly a market for consumption and exhibits a higher trading intensity than the bouaké market, which is both a consumption and production area. however, these findings do not imply either market power or supernormal profits among traders in the abidjan and bouaké markets. some of the hypotheses discussed in the literature do suggest that temporary market power could explain the asymmetry. the explanation for the underlying price trans mission asymmetries is an issue worthy of further research. we are preparing a survey to investigate this issue. meantime, our findings suggest government intervention in abidjan and bouaké markets in order to control price variations and preserve 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(1982), “asymmetry in retail, wholesale and shipping point pricing for fresh vegetables”, american journal of agricultural economics vol. 64, pp. 205–212. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 446456 446 impact of credit access on charcoal productivity: implication for sustainable development, oyostate olagunju, f. i., ojedokun, i. k., ogunwole–olapade, f. department of agricultural economics, ladoke akintola university of technology, ogbomoso, nigeria abstract the impact of credit on charcoal productivity was assessed in oyo state of southwestern nigeria. multi-stage sampling method was used to select 140 respondents. data used in this study were gathered from traditional charcoal producers that have access and no access to credit with the aid of interview schedule; the analytical techniques used were descriptive statistics, logit and multiple regression models. it was revealed that about 20% of the charcoal producers used loans from cooperative societies while 55% sourced their funds from personal savings. the model has a sigma square (σ 2 ) value of 42.741 p<0.01which is an indication of a good fit and a normal distribution of the error term. about 50% of the charcoal farmers had limited access to formal funds due to insufficient collateral securities and this had negative effect on their business hence they recorded low level of farm income. the coefficient of these variables, years of experience in charcoal production, level of education, sources of credit, sources of log and their quantities were positively significant at 5% level. the multiple regression analysis revealed that frequency of extension visit, household size, amount and source of credit had a significant direct relationship with charcoal productivity. the study therefore concludes that credit acquisition by the charcoal producers had a significant impact on the charcoal productivity which brings about a sustainable development in the study area. keywords: charcoal productivity, credit, logit regression, log of wood introduction 1 background of the study it is without doubt that the peasant farmers have very little land on which they sustain their rapid growing family, lack basic inputs and sometimes, they experience decline growth in their agricultural production and yield. the most obvious way of making a change in the welfare of these farmers is the intensification of agricultural production. this will be enhanced if 1 corresponding author’s details: name: olagunju, f. i. email address: olagfunk@yahoo.com they are able to have access to credit facilities. economic growth can be accelerated if we focus attention on issues of integrated rural development with respects to farm production agro-industries, facilitative services and marketing of inputs and outputs (olagunju and adeyemo, 2007). food crop production constitutes the major source of food for the rural population. most of the problems of small scale farmers stem from poor accessibility to credit and finance. the low output which characterizes nigerian agriculture stems from the state of poverty of the rural farmers. to break this poverty cycle, credit is asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:olagfunk@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 446456 447 needed among other things (ng’eno vincent et. al., 2011). the main aim of government all over the world is to break the vicious cycle of poverty among the farmers. this vicious cycle is due to low level of income, low level of output, low level of savings and low level of investment which results in low level of output again. despite all the efforts of the government in breaking the vicious cycle by providing credit to rural farming households through various agricultural credit sources, most rural farmers still have difficulties in having access to credit or don't have the access at times. ike and uzokwe (2012) opinned that government should mobilize adequate donor support on behalf of the micro credit institutions since it was found to be effective in improving the livelihood of the low income house-holds and thus encourage borrowers to undertake small scale production activities through subcontracting arrangements with large-scale business enterprises who could benefit from the low opportunity cost of labour for the borrower households. this would help increase absorptive capacity of capital and reduce the time needed by borrowers to achieve financial viability. natural forest in nigeria, as in most other african countries is endowed with so many resources that are highly beneficial to human race, but the most significant and most widely used product is the wood. woods can be used locally in their raw forms without any further processing and they can be made to undergo several different treatments for more advanced utilization. smith, et. al., 2000 opined that however, in nigeria and most other developing countries, the most important utilization of wood is as fuel, principally in form of firewood and charcoal. in studying the overall energy situations in today's world, the dependence of the greater part of the population in the third world countries on traditional fuels, foremost among them being fuel wood has long been recognized. tunde et al (2013) defined fuel wood as wood and pulp materials obtained from the trunks, branches and other parts of trees and shrub, to be used as fuel for cooking, heating or generating energy through direct combustion, not only in the households but also in rural industries (for curing, smoking e.tc). it was pointed out that nigeria is endowed with a wide spectrum of energy sources, which are vital for the national, and international economies, yet about 80% of nigeria population who are mostly rural dwellers depend solely on traditional fuel wood supply for their energy requirements. obviously, this percentage must have increased now because of the erratic supply of electricity in the cities and mostly lack of access to electricity supply in the rural areas. (kalu and izekor (2007). to substantiate this fact broadhead et al. 2001, highlights the projection of consumption of charcoal to 2030 in developing regions table 1. in africa, consumption of charcoal is estimated to increase to 46.1 million tons by the year 2030. it should be noted that the urban population is increasing on daily basis than the rural areas to the extent that getting fuel energy to feed this population is a problem since most of these people are poor and cannot afford modern cooking fuel. one major means of domestic energy that this population relies on is charcoal. charcoal is usually produced in the rural areas and transported to the urban areas for consumption. in the developed countries like us, they usually desire charcoal due to the flavours it imparts on the grilled food. in addition it has excellent cooking properties such as easy and even burning, burn for a long time, and can be easily extinguished and reheated. table 1: projections of charcoal consumption to 2030 in developing regions (million tons) country 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 south asia 1.3 1.6 1.9 2.1 2.2 2.4 2.5 southeast asia 0.8 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.9 2.1 2.3 east asia 2.1 2.3 2.3 2.2 2.1 2.0 1.8 africa 8.1 11.0 16.1 23 .0 30.2 38.4 46.1 south america 7.2 9.0 12.1 14.4 16.7 18.6 20.0 source: fao (broadhead et al. 2001) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 446456 448 high demand for charcoal in the urban areas of the country motivated a lot of people especially men both young and old in the rural areas into the business of charcoal production. however, in spite of its benefits, charcoal production has its adverse effects such as desertification, environmental degradation, global warming and climate change. the processes involved in the production of charcoal include; felling trees such as acacia and burning them. in the process of burning trees in an unsustainable way, green house gases are emitted. also, high increase of carbon-dioxide is experienced in the atmosphere where these trees are being felled thereby causing global warming. furthermore, at each stage of the life cycle of charcoal there are effect on both the human and environment health. there should be a balance in the needs of society, the economy and the environment through sustainable development. sustainable development is the ability to improve the quality of human life while living and maintain ecological balance of an area. it is not a gainsaying that in many developing countries, charcoal is usually produced at a subsistence level. in defining the future of this sector of the industry, economic analysis can be used to reveal its negative and positive features, and its long-term viability. production of charcoal with adequate provision of credit is therefore an area to be looked into, not only because it provides necessary energy supply and alleviates the problem of fuel supply but also because it tends to improve the producer and nigeria's economy. one of the perceived effective strategies for improving the agricultural productivity is to ensure adequate supply of credit. agricultural credit plays an essential role in the process of improving agriculture and changes of the rural economy and this enhances booting of agricultural production. it is usually deliberated that the agricultural sector depends more on credit than any other sector of the economy because of the seasonal variations in the farmers’ returns and credit requirement in the transformation of subsistence to commercial farming. generally, the study determined the impact of credit use on charcoal productivity in the study area and the specific objectives are to: 1. describe the personal characteristics of charcoal producers; 2. 3. determine the factors affecting access to credit charcoal producers; 4. 5. examine the effects of credit on charcoal producers with and without credit access. 6. analyze the perception of the respondents on the effect of charcoal production on the environment research methodology study area the study area is iseyin local government area, located in the transitional zone, between forest and savanna belts in oke ogun region of oyo state. the local government comprises of eleven political wards, made up of various towns and villages, among the towns and villages under the local government are iseyin, ado awaye, osoogun, odo-ogun, waasinmi, agelu (jerusalem), ikere, alayin, apenpe, igboro and alibaba e.t.c. the area is mainly an agrarian society, where most of the people are engaged in agricultural production or agricultural related occupations. the local government area is known for production of food crops such as yam, maize and cassava, but as far back as 1964, the area has been identified as one of the charcoal producing areas in oyo state (adeyoju, 1975). sampling procedure and sampling size method of data collection primary data were collected from small scale commercial charcoal farmers in the study area with the aid of structured questionnaire. the respondents were selected through multi stage sampling technique. in the first stage, random sampling method was used to select five wards out of the eleven existing political wards in the local government. the wards did not have the same number of villages, 40 percent of the villages located in each ward was further selected using a simple random technique. the total number of villages chosen from each ward was 20 (table 2). list of the charcoal producers from each village was obtained. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 446456 449 the village head made available a list of the charcoal farmers from which a proportional numbers of charcoal farmers were drawn. the farmers were segregated into two groups of farmers that took loans for charcoal production and the farmers that did not. data were collected based on the socioeconomic characteristics of the charcoal farmers such as educational background, farm size, gender, age, log, chemicals used, experience, output and household size of the farmer among others, their sources and level of access to credit etc. data used in this study were collected from charcoal producers located in the study area. a sample of eighty (140) charcoal producers was selected based on the sampling procedure. primary data were gathered through interview schedule, with each of the selected charcoal producer. such information on demographic characteristics cost of labour incurred per production cycle, cost of log, output per production and selling price among others were collected. table-2 shows the distribution of explanatory variables used in modeling the factors that influence the charcoal productivity. the socio-economic characteristics of the charcoal farmers’ were analysed by using descriptive statistical method such as frequency, tables and percentages. the effect of credit on charcoal productivity was analysed with logit regression while effect of the farmer’s socioeconomic and institutional factors on the charcoal productivity were analyzed with multiple regressions. model specification logit regression quasi-experiments were used to assess the impact of credit on charcoal productivity in this study. this involved selection of respondents that had access to credit and those who did not obtain any form of loan for charcoal production. the two sets of group have similar observable biophysical and socio-economic characteristics. the dependent variable is an ordinal logit model that is, with credit or no credit access. y i * = β' x i + ε i -----------------------------------(1) where y i * is the underlying latent variable that indexes the credit access that a charcoal farmer experiences, x i is a vector of explanatory variables, β is a column vector of parameters to be estimated, and β i is the stochastic error term. the latent variable exhibits itself in ordinal categories, which could be coded as 1, 2, 3 ......j. the probability for each of the observed ordinal response, which in our case had only two categories (1, 2) for credit access; no credit access will be given as; p(y=1) = p(y* ≤1) = p(β’ x + ε≤1) =f(-β’x) p(y=2) = f (δ 2 β’x)-f (-β’x) --------------(2) where f is the cumulative distribution function (cdf) for the stochastic error term ε. it is assumed that the functional form of f will determine whether a logit (logistic cdf), probit (standard normal cdf) or other model is used. the study borrow leaf from occam’s razor, where it used the logistic specification although it is expected that the predicted probabilities to should be similar to those of a probit model within the broad range of the data except at the end (see maddala, 1983). multiple regression analysis the effect of the farmer’s socioeconomic characteristics and institutional factors on charcoal productivity, were analysed with multiple regression model. the difference in the average net income of the farmers from the charcoal sources before and after credit use was used as a proxy for charcoal productivity for farmers that had access to loan,: cp = π a π b ………………………...….... (3) where a and b represent after and before, respectively. this implies that the effect of the credit variable on productivity is already captured by the charcoal productivity proxy in equation (3). four functional forms of the specified model were tried: simple linear, semi-logarithmic, double-logarithmic, and exponential. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 446456 450 simple linear form: cp = β 0 +β 1 x 1 +β 2 x 2 +β 3 x 3 +β 4 x 4 +β 5 x5+β 6 x 6 + β 7 x 7 +β 8 x 8 +β 9 x 9 + β 10 x 10 + β 11 x 11 μ 1 .............. (4) semi-logarithmic form: cp=logβ 0 +β 1 logx 1 +β 2 logx 2 +β 3 logx 3 +β 4 log x 4 +β 5 logx 5 +β 6 logx 6 +β 7 logx 7 +β 8 logx 8 +β 9 l ogx 9 +β 10 logx 10 + β 11 logx 11 μ 1 ............... (5) double-logarithmic form: log cp = β 0 +β 1 x 1 +β 2 x 2 +β 3 x 3 +β 4 x 4 +β 5 x5+ β 6 x 6 + β 7 x 7 +β 8 x 8 +β 9 x 9 + β 10 x 10 + β 11 x 11 μ 1 .....(6) exponential form: log cp =logβ 0 +β 1 logx 1 +β 2 logx 2 +β 3 logx 3 + β 4 logx 4 +β 5 logx5+β 6 logx 6 +β 7 logx 7 + β 8 logx 8 +β 9 logx 9 + β 10 logx 10 + β 11 logx 11 μ 1 ...... (7) the lead equation was chosen on the basis of correct sign of the explanatory variables, the significance of the regression coefficient and the value of the coefficient of multiple determinations. where cp = charcoal productivity β = is the vector of parameters to be estimated x’s = is the matrix of the explanatory variables (table 2). table 2: description of explanatory variables used in modeling the factors influencing charcoal productivity variable name description productivity (cp) increment in charcoal sales in terms of money value. age (x 1 ) the age of the farmer (years). gender (x 2 ) dummy: male=2. female=1. household size (x 3 ) household members (no) education level (x 4 ) number of years spent in school. experience (x 5 ) number of years a farmer has been in charcoal production. extension (x 6 ) extension visit to disseminate production technology. logs (x 7 ) this is the monetary value of log of wood. chemicals (x 8 ) this is the monetary value of chemical used in processing charcoal. source of credit (x 9 ) the value is 1 if friends and relatives, 2 if money lenders, 3 if banks, 4 if cooperatives and 5 if personal. amount borrowed (x 10 ) this is the monetary value of credit. source of supply of log wood(x11) natural forest is 1, plantations is 2, farmland is 3, government reserves is 4 source: field survey, 2012 results and discussions the results of the analysis showed that 95% of the farmers were below and equal 60 years of age (table 3) while the average age was 46 years. this implication of this is that the charcoal farmers are in their active working age bracket. from the results, 41 % of the charcoal producers were 40 years of age and under.. this indicates that in the study area, there are young people who could take up the challenge of looking for logs of wood in the bush not minding the attached risk of life. about 68.0 percent of the charcoal producers had up to 10year charcoal producing experience. at average, the period of charcoal producing experience was 8 years. an increase in the number of years of experience, improves the ability of the producers in mastering and managing capacity. when production resources are handled carefully, it is usually compensated with higher level of production in the industry. this literally asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 446456 451 translates to an increased income level for the producers. considering the educational status of the charcoal producers, it was found out that about 15.0 percent of the charcoal farmers had no formal education. table 3 further shows that 60 percent of the producers had up to secondary school education indicating that charcoal farmers should have good education on tree crop management so that they are able to properly gather and use all available resources to their advantage to improve production process and protect the environment by replanting the necessary trees. this will bring about an increase in the level of charcoal production. the charcoal producers that had 9 household members accounted for ninety-six (95.7) percent with an average size of 7 in the study area. the implication of this is that charcoal producers in in south western nigeria are characterized with a large family size. this creates an opportunity for the producers to have access to cheap family labour. on the contrary, family might incur high expenses on consumption hence have negative effect on the business which can bring about abruption in the business if the producer could no longer provide the required funds for the smooth running of the business. table-3 showed that charcoal producers that sourced their finance internally from personal savings accounted for fifty-five (55) percent while 20% obtained loans from cooperative societies. about 10.7 percent of the charcoal producers were able to obtain bank loans as due to their lack or limited possession of collateral securities. meanwhile, some of the charcoal producing farmers were able to secure loan from a combination of bank loans, personal savings and co-operative societies' loans. due to a weak financial base, most of the charcoal producing farm operators is constrained in obtaining internal source of finance from owners’ equity (personal saving). in other to solidify their financial base with assured increased output level additional sources of funds are therefore required for the charcoal producers. table 3: percentage distribution of socio-economic characteristics of the respondents characteristics frequency percentage (%) age of charcoal farmer (years) 20 30 23 16.7 31 40 34 24.3 41 50 58 41.4 51 60 18 12.9 > 60 7 5.0 mean age = 46 source of credit personal savings 77 55.0 cooperatives 28 20.0 banks 15 10.7 friends and relatives 14 10.0 money lenders 6 4.29 household size 1 4 32 22.9 5 9 94 67.1 10 14 19 13.6 ≥ 15 5 3.6 marital status married 124 88.6 single 16 11.4 educational status (years) no formal education 21 15.0 1 6 29 20.7 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 446456 452 7 9 84 60.0 10 12 4 2.9 ≥ 13 2 1.4 mean = 7 experience (years) 1 – 5 14 10.0 6 – 10 81 57.9 11 – 15 36 25.7 ≥ 15 9 6.79 source: field survey, (2012) factors of credit use on charcoal productivity the effect of credit used by the charcoal producers was analysed by the logit regression model. it was used to determine the parameters of the conditional probability of those that have access to the required level of loans and the marginal changes in explanatory variables on the financial status of the charcoal units. the charcoal producers were classified into to groups of those with loan and those without loan. table 4 presents the distribution of the estimated regression parameters and diagnostic statistics by using the maximum likelihood estimation (mle) technique. from the results, it was shown that coefficients of seven variable had significant influence on the charcoal productivity. the value for the sigma square (σ2) was 53.384, with a p-value of less than 0.01 and log likelihood function of -47.384. the model displays a good fit and the test link correctly specified since the sigma square was statistically significant. in addition, the model was suitable for parallelism assumption since the parameters in the subsequent equations are the same. table 4: factors that determine credit access on charcoal productivity: logit model variables marginal probability coefficients standard error age (x 1 ) 0.068 0.718 gender (x 2 ) 6.281* 0.054 household size (x 3 ) 7.164*** 0.006 educational level (x 4 ) 3.423** 0.031 experience (x 5 ) 1.065 0.437 extension visit (x 6 ) 2.327 0.054 sources of credit (x 7 ) 6.317** 0.077 amount borrowed (x 8 ) 5.473* 0.063 source: field survey (2012) chi square value σ 2 = 42.741 p<0.01 log likelihood value = -53.384. ***sig. at 1%, **sig. at 5%, *sig. at 10% the following variables with significant coefficient are household size (x 3 ), gender (x 2 ), educational level (x 4 ), amount borrowed (x 8 ) and sources of credit (x 7 ). when a parameter has a positive sign, this indicates that an increase value of the variable coefficient tend to increase the likelihood of credit impact on charcoal productivity. likewise, a negative value of a variable co-efficient implied a reduction in the probability of credit impact on the charcoal productivity. the coefficient of variable household size (7.164) exhibited a high probability of credit impact on charcoal productivity while the least was shown by the coefficient of variable farmers’ age (0.058). the implication of this is that the producers were able to make good use of the cheap family asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 446456 453 labour that eventually led to an increase in charcoal productivity. the coefficient of the variable sex of household head showed a significant relationship to the credit impact on charcoal productivity. the probability of 6.281 indicated that all things being equal, the probability of that the charcoal productivity of a particular household will be above any given level, is 6.0 times higher for a male headed household than for a female headed household. culturally, men have access to land and farm resources than women not only in the study area but applicable to other west african country like ghana (agudugu, 2012). regression analysis table 5 shows the estimates of the multiple regression models. from the model, six of the included variable had significant coefficients for the charcoal producers that have access to credit. for the charcoal producers without credit, only three of the included variables had significant coefficients. the coefficients of the variables experience, gender and age were not significant for both groups of charcoal producers. the non credit charcoal producers results was very poor, this indicates an inefficient use of the available resource. in addition, they were unable to acquire additional capital production improvement. charcoal producers with credit had good results which is an indication of efficient utilization of resources. this result is a good pointer to the positive impact of credit on charcoal productivity. this was also corroborated with the study carried out on agricultural gross domestic product (gdp) by nadeem et al (2012). however, the coefficient of education and extension variables had significant inverse relationships with charcoal productivity; source of log, source of credit, household sizes, quantity of log used and gender variables show direct relationships with charcoal productivity. it was revealed during the course of field survey that some extension agents did not measure up to expectation in discharging their duties hence, the negative relationship with the charcoal productivity. when men have good education, they tend to migrate to the cities and look for white collar jobs, in essence, the higher the level of education, the lower the charcoal productivity. credit availability plays a significant role in charcoal production since it is required to purchase chemicals, purchase of personal sawing machine, pay for standing trees, and, cutlass, hoe, slicing machine, rubber hose and provision for store. table 5: multiple regressions estimate of factors affecting charcoal productivity factors respondents with credit (n = 70) respondent without credit (n = 70) age 0.299 (1.86) 0.276 (1.34) household size 0.556* (2.23) 0.582* (2.42) educational level -0.389** (2.88) -0.360* (2.98) experience 0.137 (1.37) 0.263 (0.98) extension -0.521* (2.19) -0.662* (2.74) source of credit 0.731** (3.60) 0.068 (1.02) source of log 0.842** (3.76) 0.042 (1.95) quantity of log used per month 0.643** (2.65) 0.086 (1.08) gender 0.011 (0.21) 0.025 (0.31) adjusted r 2 78.17 71.63 fratio 58.5272 43.42178 source: field survey, (2012) ***sig. at 1%; **sig. at 5%; *sig. at 10%. values in the bracket are the t-values. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 446456 454 constraints of credit access to charcoal production the charcoal producers that lack access to credit are faced with constraints that can be evaluated in four ways. these are causes related to (i) loan utilization (ii) borrowing (iii) lending and (iv) extraneous causes. it was discovered from the study that some respondents recorded low sales due to low or poor yield from poor trees, fall in product prices; low product prices; low demand for product and weather condition (especially too much rainfall). most of the respondents are faced with high interest rate and late disbursement of loans by the credit institutions. in terms of the borrowers’ problems, the respondents are faced with some sickness such as infections, family debt and problems, burden from relations and so on. other critical but extraneous factors is government policy, poor transportation and communication system, fuel scarcity and high cost of transportation. table 6 indicated that the inclement weather condition (especially too much rainfall) system is a major obstacle to charcoal production was considered by 92 percent of the respondents as the reason of their inability to make use of the accessed loan sensibly. they agreed that the unsatisfactory weather condition (especially too much rainfall) is the most crucial production related problems facing their charcoal production. other problems that are marketing related need to be taken into consideration to fully understand the effects of credit access on effectiveness of charcoal farmers in the study area. table 6: distribution of problems associated with credit repayment among respondents s/n related-problems % of respondents 1. borrowing illhealth 32 burden of some other debt 12 family problems 18 2. lending high interest rate 22 late disbursement lag 36 3. loan utilization low sales 85 fall in product prices 74 poor yield (poor trees) 67 low product prices 65 weather condition (too much rain) 92 government policy (laying embargo on tree felling) 68 4. extraneous issues fuel scarcity 64 poor transportation 74 high transportation cost 86 source: field survey, 2012 *multiple responses perception on the effect of charcoal production on the environment table 7 shows the perception of the respondents on the effect of charcoal production on the environment. it was discovered that 120 (85.7%) of the respondents agreed that the weather of the area in which charcoal is produced is getting drier each day. about 110 (78.8%) of the respondents agreed that tree felling is affecting their environment negatively. the implication of this is that there will be high concentration of carbon in the atmosphere because trees that would absorb these carbons are chopped down; hence, this leads to global warming. deforestation without afforestation is an important aspect of climate change. when trees are cut down and not replanted there will be high concentration of carbon dioxide in the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 446456 455 atmosphere since the plants that are supposed to take in carbon dioxide have been cut down, hence, there will be global warming another effect is increase in the erosion process in the area because trees that are supposed to curb the washing away of the topmost soils had been removed. sustainability of our environment is however crucial while finding cheaper means of cooking. about 86 (61%) of the respondents are in support of this. furthermore, 115 (82%) of the respondents indicated that during the process of burning trees a lot of smoke in form of carbon monoxide is being released into the atmosphere hence, there will be increase in temperature which is a potential consequence of green house effect causing climate change. burning releases into the atmosphere carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide which reduce the ozone layer and act as blanket escape of ultraviolent rays from the atmosphere. this increases ambient temperature, reduces rate of vegetation, increases water loss and ultimately the tendency for desertification. also, 132 (94%) of the respondents agreed that there are no animals in the bush where they use to fetch the trees for charcoal as a result of tree felling. the implication of this is food insecurity. only 25(17%) indicated that there was no effect on the environment. table 7: perception on the effect of charcoal production on the environment perception *frequency percentage weather is getting drier 120 85.7 tree felling is affecting the environment 110 78.6 increase in erosion process 86 61.4 increase in temperature 115 82.1 no animals in the bush again 132 94.2 no effect 25 17.9 source: field survey, 2012 *multiple responses conclusion and recommendations insufficient funding of charcoal production has often caused low level of production output in the industry. the study therefore, investigated the impact of credit on charcoal productivity. this study shows that credit is very important in charcoal productivity and the credit source cannot be overlooked. farmers shy away from formal lending and depend on personal savings, relatives and friends. multistage sampling technique was used to select one hundred and forty (140) charcoal farmers from which data were collected. the study revealed that there is need to improve on the charcoal farmers’ level of education, years of experience, frequent visitation and training services by the extension agent on establishment of plantations of desired species of wood. a forestation is highly essential since massive and continuous charcoal production would lead to environmental hazard and the potential of its production as an instrument of economic development may not be fully realized. the bottlenecks that hinder formal lending to charcoal farmers should be addressed and solved by the policy makers. the policymakers and operators of credit institutions such as cooperative societies and banks should take up the challenge in making credit available to charcoal producers in the rural areas. with the establishment of plantations and a forestation, charcoal industry could absorb the unemployed and untrained rural labour thereby assisting to check the migration process of rural labour to the cities. finally, as more funds were made available and accessible to the small scale charcoal farmers at minimal costs, the level of output in industry will improve. references adamolekun, t. j. (1994). production, distribution and marketing of charcoal in oyo state, nigeria. unpublished b.sc project, department of forest resources mangement. university of ibadan, nigeria. adeyoju, o. s. (1975). forestry and nigerian economy. ibadan university press. pp. 170172 broadhead, j., bahdon, j. and whiteman, a. (2001). wood fuel consumption modeling and results annex 2. in past trends and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 446456 456 future prospects for the utilization of wood for energy. global forest products outlook study. rome: fao. enabor, e. e. (1981). wood consumption in nigeria. a reassessment. the nigerian journal of economic and social studies, 18(1): 121-145. hassan, o.c. 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(2007). determinants of repayment decision among small holder farmers in southwestern nigeria. pakistan journal of social sciences, 4(5): 677-686. phillip d., nkonya e., pender j., oni o. a. (2008). constraints to increasing agricultural productivity in nigeria. international food policy research institute, brief no. 4. p. c. ike and u. n. uzokwe (2012). alleviating rural farmers poverty through effective micro credit: evaluation of undp intervention in delta state. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3): 465-472. popoola, o. e. (2002). dynamics of markets and marketing of charcoal in oyo state, nigeria. unpublished m.sc thesis department of forest resources management. university of ibadan. ribot, j. (1993). forest policy and charcoal production in senegal. energy policy, 21: 559-585. saeed q., nabi i. and faruqee r. (1996). rural finance for growth and poverty alleviation. international food policy research institute (ifpri). policy research working paper no. 1593. washington dc, usa shaw, s. a. (1986). marketing the products of agriculture f.a.o fish tech. pp 106. smith, k. r. and thorne, s. a. (1992). household fuels in developing countries: global warming, health and energy implications, u.s. epa working paper. smith, k. r., j. m. samet., i. romieu and n. bruce (2000). indoor air pollution in developing countries and acute lower respiratory infections in children. thorax, 55: 518-532. tunde, a. m., adeleke, e. a. and adeniyi, e. e. (2013). impact of charcoal production on the sustainable development of asa local government area, kwara state, nigeria. an international multidisciplinary journal, 7(2): 1-15 world health organisation (who) (1997). health and environment in sustainable development. who/ ehg/97.8. geneva: world health organisation. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 3 march 2013. † corresponding author acknowledgements: this work was sponsored by the tobacco research board (trb) of zimbabwe. the effect of two formulations of sulfentrazone on soil and leaf residues and phytotoxicity in tobacco (nicotiana tabacum l.) bertha k. mashayamombe (department of agricultural technical and extension services, mutare, zimbabwe) upenyu mazarura† (university of zimbabwe, crop science department, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe) albert chiteka (africa university, mutare, zimbabwe) citation: bertha k. mashayamombe, upenyu mazarura and albert chiteka (2013) “the effect of two formulations of sulfentrazone on soil and leaf residues and phytotoxicity in tobacco (nicotiana tabacum l.)”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 135-140. the effect of two formulations of ... 135 author(s) bertha k. mashayamombe department of agricultural technical and extension services, mutare, zimbabwe upenyu mazarura university of zimbabwe, crop science department, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe albert chiteka africa university, mutare, zimbabwe the effect of two formulations of sulfentrazone on soil and leaf residues and phytotoxicity in tobacco (nicotiana tabacum l.) abstract field studies were done to compare a wettable granular formulation (authority 75 wg) and a suspension concentrate formulation (authority 48 sc) of the herbicide sulfentrazone. a 6 x 2 factorial experiment was laid out in a split plot design to evaluate the effect of herbicide levels on phytotoxicity and residues in both leaves and the soil. one rate of the wettable granular formulation (0.225 kg/ha), four different rates of the suspension concentrate formulation (0.165 kg/ha, 0.205 kg/ha, 0.185 kg/ha, 0.225 kg/ha) and the control (0.00 kg/ha) were tested. tobacco phytotoxicity at 27 days after transplanting (dat) and soil residues at 12 wat was measured. there was significantly higher (p<0.05) phytotoxicity in all treatments where herbicides were applied compared to the control. the wg formulation showed significantly higher phytotoxicity than the sc formulation. residues in both the soil and leaves were significantly higher in the herbicide applied plots as compared to the control for both formulations. the sc formulation of sulfentrazone at a rate of 0.225 kg/ha was significantly less phytotoxic than the same rate of the wg formulation at 27 dat. the sc formulation of sulfentrazone can replace the wg formulation for broad spectrum weed control in tobacco in zimbabwe at a recommended rate of 0.225 kg/ha. keywords: broadleaf weeds, grass weeds, sedges, efficacy, phytotoxicity, residues introduction one of the most effective strategies for early weed control in tobacco is to use chemicals. the benefits resulting from using herbicides include increased yields and improved crop quality. chemical weed control, if properly managed, is efficient and can enable the farmer to create a weed free crop environment for the whole season. according to chivinge (1984), herbicides are very effective in controlling early season weeds particularly in wet weather and this has enabled farmers to increase the area under crops. selection of a herbicide for use depends on three factors namely; efficacy, phytotoxicity and residues. a desirable herbicide is one that has a high efficacy against weeds, causes little phytotoxicity to the crop, and leaves no or low residues in the soil and the crop. this is particularly important for tobacco where any damage to the leaf due to phytotoxicity would cause a reduction in leaf quality, consequently reducing saleable yield. a build up of agrochemicals in the leaf could also be detrimental to the health of the smoker when residues remaining on the leaf are inhaled in cigarette smoke. sulfentrazone has been evaluated for control of weeds in tobacco and is registered for directed post planting application. although an overtop application has shown better or comparable efficacy the directed application is meant to address concerns about phytotoxicity. sulfentrazone phytotoxicity can be in the form of stunted growth, leaf discolouration and necrosis, leaf or stand loss and in some cases death of the plant (mazarura, 1999) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 135-140 136 sulfentrazone is a member of the aryl triazolinone herbicides and its mode of action is similar to that of diphenyl ether herbicides in that it inhibits protoporphyrinogen oxidase (ppo), an enzyme involved in chlorophyll biosynthesis. recent studies have reported differences in phytotoxicity levels of 28 soybean cultivars caused by soil applied sulfentrazone on seedling growth parameters such as the hypocotyl and root length (dayan et al., 1997). studies by grey et al. (1997) showed that crop tolerance of sulfentrazone was dependent on soil type and ph. peanut (arachis hypogaea l.) was found to be tolerant to sulfentrazone on sandy loamy soils but severe injury in loamy sand soils in a separate trial was recorded. studies to examine the effects of soil properties on sulfentrazone phytotoxicity and soil dissipation were conducted in saskatchewan. the phytotoxicity of sulfentrazone to sugar beets (beta vulgaris l.) determined using a shoot length bioassay, was reduced when soil ph was lowered and was greater when soil ph was increased, demonstrating a relationship between soil ph and phytotoxicity. the present study sought to compare the phytotoxicity and the soil and leaf residue levels associated with the use of two different formulations of sulfentrazone. materials and methods site description this experiment was done on a sandy loam soil (72.8% sand, 8.8% silt and 18.4% clay) at kutsaga research station (17 0 55` s, 31 0 08`; altitude 1480m, average annual rainfall 882mm, zimbabwe) from 2007 to 2008. the area has light, well drained sandy soils of granite origin and resembles those found in most tobacco growing areas in zimbabwe. these soils are very low in clay content and have low water-holding capacity. land preparation and fertilization the land was ploughed, disked and treated with a nematicide as is standard practice. the nematicide ethyl di-bromide (edb) was applied at 3l/ha. tobacco was grown as a dry land crop on ridges 0.2m high, 1.2 m apart and the plants were 0.56 m apart in the row. the tobacco variety used was t66; a slow ripening cultivar with a yield potential of more than 3500kg/ha of cured leaf. the fertilizer management was as described by mashayamombe et al. (2013). treatment description, design and herbicide applied the experiment was a split plot of two main factors and six subplots. the treatments consisted of six levels of sulfentrazone and two levels of weeding to give a 6 x 2 factorial experiment. two plots, one weeded and the other left weedy, were the main plots. the sulfetrazone treatments were: 1. 0.000kg/ha sulfentrazone 2. 0.225 kg/ha wg formulation 3. 0,165 kg/ha sc formulation 4. 0.205 kg/ha sc formulation 5. 0.185 kg/ha sc formulation 6. 0.225 kg/ha sc formulation the treatments were arranged in a split plot design replicated four times with the weeding as the main plot and the herbicide the sub-plot. herbicide application was done by calibrated knapsack a day after transplanting of the t66 variety. weeding was done every fortnight for the weeded plots, starting two week after transplanting. all phytotoxicity was measured from the weed free plots. phytotoxicity assessments 27 days after spray application to assess the level of phytotoxicity caused by each herbicide level. rating was done using a rating scale suggested by camper (1986). at 4 and 8 weeks after transplanting (wat) a sample of ten plants per plot (3 rows) was selected randomly and the stalk height was measured. at 12 wat tobacco leaves were removed from the plants in each plot and placed in labelled bags. these were oven dried at 85°c for 72 hours and weighed. soil samples were taken at 12 weeks after transplanting at a depth of 40 cm in each plot. a soil and leaf residue analysis was done using the high performance liquid chromatography (hplc) method as described by ohmes and mueller (1999) all data were subjected to anova using genstat version 9.2. mean separation was the effect of two formulations of ... 137 conducted using fischer’s protected least significant difference (lsd) test at p<0.05. results phytotoxicity scores (dry weights and stalk heights) there were no significant differences among treatments for phytotoxicity of tobacco at three dat (data not shown). there were significant differences (p<0.05) among herbicide treatments in phytotoxicity at 27 dat (table 1). the highest rate (0.225 kg/ha) of the wettable granular (wg) formulation gave phytotoxicity that was significantly higher (p<0.05) than the control. this phytotoxicity score was also significantly higher (p<0.05) than that for the suspension concentrate (sc) formulation at the same rate. reduced rates of the sc formulation also gave phytotoxicity scores that were not significantly different from each other but different from the control (see 0.205 kg/ha sc formulation) (table 1). table 1: mean phytotoxicity scores, dry mass, stalk height, soil and leaf residues herbicide level phyto. 27dat dry-mass (g) 12wat stalk height (cm) 4wap stalk height (cm) 8wap soil residues (ppm) leaf residues (ppm) kg/ha of sulfentrazone 0.00(control) 1.02 54.0 29.7 75.70 0.83 0.59 0.225(wg formulation) 2.29 115.2 34.1 100.20 2.72 0.89 0.165(sc formulation) 1.39 140.5 47.8 100.60 3.04 0.91 0.205(sc formulation) 1.52 145.5 46.2 95.70 2.97 0.83 0.185(sc formulation) 1.40 167.8 46.7 100.50 3.14 1.02 0.225(sc formulation) 1.75 135.0 46.0 102.10 2.76 0.85 lsd0.05 0.40 36.85 7.3 7.7 0.89 0.25 * denotes significant differences at p<0.05, wg-wettable granular, sc-suspension concentrate, wapweeks after planting, phyto.phytototxicity there were significant differences (p<0.05) among herbicide treatments in tobacco leaf drymass at 12 wat. the highest rate of the sc formulation (0.225 kg/ha) gave tobacco leaf dry-mass that was significantly higher (p<0.05) than the control. however this was not significantly different from that for the wg formulation at the same rate. the reduced rate of the sc formulation at 0.165 kg/ha, 0.185 kg/ha and 0.205 kg/ha gave tobacco leaf drymass that was significantly higher (p<0.05) than the control but not significantly different from each other or from the highest rates (table 1). there were significant differences (p<0.05) among herbicide treatments with regards to tobacco stalk height at 4 wat. the highest rate (0.225 kg/ha) of the sc formulation gave tobacco stalk height that was significantly higher than the control. this was also significantly higher (p<0.05) than that for the wg formulation at the same rate. reduced rates of the sc formulation also gave a tobacco stalk height that was significantly higher (p<0.05) than the control but these were not significantly different from each other. the highest rate (0.225) of the wg formulation gave a tobacco stalk height that was not significantly different (p>0.05) from the control (table 1). there were significant differences (p<0.05) among herbicide levels in tobacco stalk height at 8 wat. the highest rate (0.225 kg/ha) of the sc formulation gave tobacco stalk height that was significantly higher (p<0.05) than the control. however, this was not significantly different (p>0.05) from that for the wg formulation at the same rate. all herbicide rates gave tobacco stalk heights that were significantly different (p<0.05) from the control but none of them significantly differed from each other. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 135-140 138 leaf and soil residues there were significant differences (p<0.05) among herbicide treatments in soil residues at 12 wat (table 1). the highest rate (0.225 kg/ha) of the sc formulation gave soil residues that were significantly higher (p<0.05) than the control. however, these were not significantly different (p>0.05) from that for the wg formulation at the same rate. all the reduced herbicide rates were significantly different (p<0.05) from the control for soil residues but none of them significantly differed from the other. there were significant differences (p<0.05) among herbicide treatments for leaf residues at 12 wat (table 1). the highest rate (0.225 kg/ha) of the sc formulation gave leaf residues that were significantly higher (p<0.05) than the control. however, these were not significantly different (p>0.05) from that for the wg formulation at the same rate. all the herbicide rates except the sc formulation at 0.205 kg/ha were significantly different (p<0.05) from the control for leaf residues but none of them significantly differed from the other. discussion phytotoxicity scores, dry weights and stalk heights at 3 dat there were no significant differences in tobacco phytotoxicity among herbicide treatments. perhaps these readings were done before the transplants had developed any new roots and were too early to show such a response as krausz, et al. (1998) revealed that sulfentrazone was primarily taken up by the roots of the plants. at 27 dat, the wettable granular (wg) formulation showed significantly more (p<0.05) phytotoxicity than the suspension concentrate (sc) formulation. this difference in phytotoxicity could have been as a result of the change in formulation that resulted in differential uptake or the inclusion of solvents that made the material unsafe or both. knox (1986) discovered that a change in formulation of the herbicide oxadiazon from a granular to a wettable powder reduced phytotoxicity while maintaining efficacy. different phytotoxicity levels of the two herbicide formulations could also have been as a result of different rates of uptake and metabolism by the tobacco plants. morner (2008) stated that herbicide metabolism rates influenced the phytotoxic action of herbicides rendering them less or more phytotoxic. thomas, et al., (2005) discovered that different plants had different uptake, translocation and metabolism rates of root-absorbed sulfentrazone. this translated to the different tolerance or susceptibility levels of the plants to the herbicide. in a similar investigation moseley, et al., (1993) observed that differences in uptake and initial metabolism could explain the level of tolerance or susceptibility of soybean to the herbicides chlorimuron. the sc formulation could have a higher initial uptake and metabolism rate than the wg formulation, explaining why plants developed less severe phytotoxic symptoms. the differences in herbicide uptake and metabolism rates can be influenced by herbicide chemical make-up, the nature of active ingredient and the inert ingredient composition of the formulation (hulting, et al., 1997). we must point out that although herbicides showed differences in phytotoxicity amongst each other, they actually had a stimulatory effect on stalk height relative to the control. this could be a result of improved weed control, since despite that such measurements were done on the weeded plots the weeding frequency allowed for some build up of weeds between successive weeding events. leaf and soil residues results from this study show that both formulations of sulfentrazone left residues in the soil that were significantly higher than those detected in the control. this verifies the suggestion by mazarura (1999) that sulfentrazone was the most persistent of the nutsedge herbicides that were on the market at that time. similarly in the current study both formulations left high residues although this was after only 12 wat. hatzios (1998) attributed high residues to the fact that sulfentrazone is relatively non-volatile (1 x 10 -9 mm hg at 25 o c). reddy and locke (1998) also discovered that sulfentrazone was not susceptible to photo-decomposition having a half life of 110 280 days. the fact that sulfentrazone is highly mobile and can move to depths where microbial activity is low can also contributes to its high persistence. ohmes, et al. the effect of two formulations of ... 139 (2000) reported that sulfentrazone in the soil at a depth of 2030 cm was highly susceptible to microbial degradation and that at greater depth degradation was slow. this, perhaps, partly explains the higher residues that were picked in this trial from samples taken 40 cm deep. in this study, residues were not influenced by rate of application of the herbicides. this implies that perhaps even the lowest rate of sulfentrazone was not safe from an environmental point of view. in fact some residues were picked up even in the control, showing, perhaps that sulfentrazone has high soil mobility or that some chemical drift could have occurred at spraying or both. miller (1997) reported that sulfentrazone is high in solubility (7.8 x 10 2 ppm) and mobility and therefore has a strong potential to migrate off-site. considering the high mobility of sulfentrazone the heavy rains (876.3 mm) that were received during the trial period could have moved the sulfentrazone from the higher rate plots to the plots that received reduced rates. the leaf residues levels were within the acceptable range of the standard for sulfentrazone residues set by coresta which is 1 ppm (brinson, 2008). leaf residues ranged from 0.60 to 1.04 ppm. these leaf residue levels for sulfentrazone are said to be safe for flue-cured tobacco as they will be further reduced during curing of the leaf (porterfield, et al., 2005). summary, conclusions and recommendations this study established that the sc formulation of sulfentrazone was less phytotoxic than the wg formulation. leaf and soil residues were not affected by rate of application or formulation. reduced doses did not reduce soil and leaf residues while leaf residues were acceptable according to international standards. these results mean that the use of sulfentrazone must be monitored in terms of soil residues and perhaps soil samples should be taken over a long period of time in order to establish the impact that the herbicide could have on the environment. perhaps, water samples from the water table may need to be taken to find out how much of the chemical and its breakdown products end up in drinking water. further research could explore the use of lower rates especially with consideration of mixing sulfentrazone with other herbicides. references brinson, b. (2008). eliminating endosulfan. http: // www.tobaccofarmquarterly.com camper, n. d. (1986). research methods in weed science, 3 rd ed. southern weed science society. pp 37 chivinge, o. a. (1984). the role of herbicide technology in the small scale farms of zimbabwe. zimbabwe agricultural journal, 81(3), 97-102. dayan, f. e. & duke, s. o. (1997). porphyrin generating herbicides, pesticide outlook, 7, 2227. grey, t. l., walker, r. h., wehtje, g. r. & hancock, h. g. (1997). sulfentrazone adsorption and mobility as affected by soil and ph. weed science, 45, 733-738. hatzios, k. k. (1998). supplement to the herbicide handbook. 7 th edition,weed science society of america, 67-69. hulting, a. g., wax, l. m. & simmons, f. w. (1997). tolerance levels of soybean cultivars to sulfentrazone. weed science, 52, 37-38. knox, g. w. (1986). efficacy of a wettable powder formulation of a pre-emergent herbicide , oxadiozine, and phytotoxicity on woody ornaments. proceedings of the florida state horticulture society, 99, 270-272. krausz, r. f., kaputsa, g. & matthews, j. l. (1998). sulfentrazone for weed control in soybean (glycine max). weed technology, 12, 684-689. mazarura, u. (1999). a new herbicide for nutsedge and some broadleaf weeds. zimbabwe tobacco, 8, 41-43. miller, j. i. (1997). sulfentrazone pesticide fact sheet, environmental protection agency moseley, c., hatsios, k. k. & hagood, e. s. (1993). uptake, translocation and metabolism of chlorimuron in soybean (glycine max) and morningglory (ipomoea spp), weed technology, 7, 343-348. morner, p. ( 2008). metabolism of herbicides or xenobiotics in plants, http;//plantandsoil.unl.edu. ohmes, g. a., r. m. hayes, & t. c. mueller (2000). sulfentrazone dissipation in a tennessee soil. weed technol, 14,100-106. porterfield, d., fisher, l. r., wilcut, j. w. & smith, w. d. (2005). tobacco response to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 135-140 140 residual and in-season treatments of cga362622. weed technology, 19, 1-5. reddy, k. n. & locke, m. a. (1998). sulfentrazone sorption, desorption and mineralization in soils from two tillage systems. weed science, 46, 494-500 thomas, w. e., troxler, s. c., smith, w. d., fisher, l. r. & wilcut, j. w. (2005). uptake, translocation, and metabolism of sulfentrazone in peanuts (arachis hypogea), prickly sida (sida spinosa) and pitted morning glory (ipomoea lacunose). weed science, 53, 446-450. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 424-429 424 analysis of impact of microfinance services on business performance of small scale women entrepreneurs in enugu state, nigeria p. c. ike department of agricultural economics, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria abstract this study analyzed access to microfinance services and its impact on performance of small scale women business entrepreneurs in enugu state, nigeria between january and december 2012. 71 beneficiaries and 50 non beneficiaries of microfinance services operating different business enterprises were randomly selected from nine local government areas in the state. data were collected through the use of structured questionnaire and analyzed by the use of descriptive statistical tools such as means and percentages. the double-difference (dd) estimator is used to estimate changes in income from before to after benefiting from services between microfinance beneficiaries and non beneficiaries. results show that the respondents were aged 37.4 years on the average while over 66% of them were married and about 95% had one form of formal education or the other. all the microfinance service beneficiaries accessed credit and deposit services while none received insurance services. the average income of beneficiaries and non beneficiaries before the study (baseline) were n162,480.00 and n163,572.00 respectively. the income of beneficiaries grew by about 46.67% (from n162,480.00 to n238,480.42 as against that of non beneficiaries which grew by only 11.6% from n163,572.00 to n182,546.35. there was a significant difference between the growth in incomes of the two groups at the 0.05 level. it is recommended that training as one of the core services of microfinance institutions should be vigorously implemented so as to improve the performance of the client entrepreneurs. keywords: microfinance services, business enterprises, women, entrepreneurs introduction 1 the poor performance of the conventional finance sectors such as commercial banks and insurance led to advocating for micro-financing as a tool for poverty reduction by policy makers and international organizations. according to mohammed and hassan, 2008; the number of microfinance institutions has increased tremendously since its emergence in the 1980s and that as at 2008, there were over 7000 microfinance institutions (mfis) provided loans to more than 25 million resource poor individuals all over the world. 1 corresponding author’s email address: ikepeecee@yahoo.com according to cbn 2011, 820 microfinance banks (mfbs) have been registered in nigeria as at the end of 2011 as against 160 mfis that existed in 2001. this quantum increase was due to the result of the introduction of microfinance policy framework by central bank of nigeria in december 2005. this policy was meant to enhance the access of small scale entrepreneurs to financial services required to boost, expand and/or modernize their operations. nigerian government over the years has encouraged the free flow of financial services to her rural areas. this has been through the establishment of micro/rural credit programmes and policies targeted at the poor. these programmes among others were the rural asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ikepeecee@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 424-429 425 banking schemes, agricultural credit guarantee scheme (acgs), nigerian agricultural and cooperative bank (nacb) and nigerian agricultural insurance cooperation (naic). others were defunct peoples bank of nigeria (pbn), community banks (cbs) and family economic advancement programme (feap) (cbn, 2005). nacb, pbn and feap were latter merged to form nigeria agricultural cooperative and rural development bank (nacrdb) in year 2000 with the aim of enhancing the provision of finance to the microentrepreneurial sector. community banks were also transformed to microfinance banks (mfbs). in spite of the roles of government and private sector in micro-financing activities, more ground needs to be covered. according to cbn 2005, the existing microfinance institutions (mfis) serve less than a million out of the over 40 million people who need their services in nigeria. it also noted that aggregate microcredit facilities account for 0.2 percent of the gdp and less than one percent of the total credit in the economy. akanji, 2002 observed that in spite of the crucial role of women entrepreneurs in the economic development of their families and countries; it is, however, discovered that women entrepreneurs have low business performance compared to their male counterparts. she further observed that factors which inhibit entrepreneurial performance were lack of credit, poor savings, poor education and/or inadequate training. these assertions were supported by ibru, 2009; as well as iganiga, 2008, who variously remarked that women entrepreneurs do not have easy access to credit for their entrepreneurial activities particularly in developing countries like nigeria. lack of capital to start or run business do lead women to request for credits from institutional and non institutional financial sources. hence, establishing the extent to which microfinance institutions in enugu state have been able to perform the roles of providing credit services, deposit and insurance services as well as training services to small scale women business entrepreneurs is the challenge of this study. methodology study area enugu state, the study area is located in southeast of nigeria. the state is situated on the highlands of nsukka, udi and awgu hills and the rolling low lands of the idodo river basin to the east and the oji river basin to the west. the state is bounded by six other states with which it shares common boundaries. it is composed of seventeen local government areas (lgas) divided into three agricultural zones of nsukka, enugu and awgu zones. it has a population of 3.25million made up of 1.62 and 1.63 million males and females respectively (npc, 2006). the activities of microfinance institutions are well pronounced in the area. study population and sampling techniques nine local government areas (lgas) were randomly selected, three from each of the agricultural zones. these lgas were awgu, aninri, ezeagu, nkanu west, nkanu east, enugu east, igboeze south, nsukka and udenu. the list of small scale women business entrepreneurs engaged in different business enterprises ranging from vegetable farming, poultry farming, honey trading, rental services and palm oil processing were compiled for this study. these categories of entrepreneurs operating within the nine selected lgas in the state formed the sampling frame. to analyze the impact of microfinance services, the sampling frame was divided into two strata. these are: 1) direct beneficiaries of microfinance services, and 2) non beneficiaries of microfinance services. eight small scale women business entrepreneurs who benefited from microfinance services during the study period i.e. 2012 were randomly sampled from each of the nine selected lgas. this gave a total of 72 beneficiary respondents sampled. in the same vein, six women business entrepreneurs who did not access any microfinance services in 2012 were randomly sampled from each of the selected lgas and this gave a total of 54 non beneficiary respondents. however, at the end of data collection, 71 beneficiary respondents and 50 non beneficiary respondents were utilized for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 424-429 426 analysis. this brought the total sample respondents to 121. data collection/analysis the study made use of structured questionnaire to collect data from respondents through the use of enumerators who speak both english and local languages. descriptive as well as inferential statistical tools were used to analyze the data. the major descriptive statistical tools applied were means and percentages while the double-difference (dd) estimator as applied by ike, 2012 was used to establish if changes occurred in the income of micro finance beneficiaries and non beneficiaries. the doubledifference method, which is also known as difference-in-difference method (duflo et al, 2004) has the formula: )()( 01 01 pypyyy nnpp dd  where: y p 1 = average income of beneficiaries after access to services; y p 0 = average income of beneficiaries before access to services; py n 1 = average income of non beneficiaries after the period of study; py n 0 = average income of non beneficiaries prior to the study. the percentage change in the income of non beneficiaries prior to and after intervention was calculated using the formula: y yy np npnp 0 01  . the symbols are as defined above. according to ravallion, 2005, the doubledifference estimator is used in establishing impact of interventions because it has the advantage of netting the effects of any additive factors (whether observable or unobservable) that have fixed (time-invariant) impacts on the outcome indicator (such as the abilities of women entrepreneurs or the inherent quality of their different resources used), or that reflect common trends affecting the beneficiaries and non beneficiaries equally such as changes in prices or weather. results and discussion the socioeconomic indicators of the respondents show that small scale women entrepreneurs are aged between 25 and 58 years with an average age of 37 years (table 1). this indicates that most of the female business entrepreneurs are within their youthful age and hence can pursue business activities aggressively. also about 81 of them (66.90%) are married while majority are educated as 22% of them completed primary education and about 51% (61) attained secondary education. only 4% of them did not have formal education. the implication of high literacy among the sampled women entrepreneurs is an indication of active participation of women in various business activities in the area. this is because according to akanji, 2002 and kuzilwa, 2005, education enhances the skills and experience needed for business. twenty five (20.66%) of the respondents have a household size of 1 to 3 members while majority, about 74.38% have household sizes ranging from 4 to 10 members. the implication of large household sizes as noted by ike and uzokwe, 2011 is that it has a high correlation with food insecurity and poverty especially when the household head is engaged in agriculture as the main source of livelihood and income. table 1: socioeconomic characteristics of respondents variable frequency percentage cumulative percentage age 21 – 30 18 14.88 14.88 31 – 40 61 50.41 65.29 41 – 50 27 22.31 87.60 51 – 60 15 12.40 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 424-429 427 61 – above marital status married 81 66.90 66.90 widowed 29 24.00 90.90 divorced 4 3.31 94.20 single 7 5.79 100.00 educational attainment no formal education 5 4.13 4.13 primary education 28 23.14 27.27 secondary education 61 50.41 77.68 post secondary educa. 27 22.32 100.0 household size 1 – 3 25 20.66 20.66 4 – 6 50 41.32 61.98 7 – 10 40 33.06 95.04 11 and above 6 4.96 100.0 access of small scale women business entrepreneurs to microfinance services as earlier defined, microfinance services refer to loans, deposits, insurance, fund transfer training etc which are targeted at low income clients. a study of these services that were accessed by the respondent beneficiaries from the microfinance institutions which they patronized show that loans (credit) and deposits were the predominant microfinance services extended to the clients (respondents) by the practitioners (mfis). all the beneficiaries attest to having received credit and deposit services. however, none of the microfinance institutions provided insurance services to their clients as no beneficiary agreed to have ever received such service. on the other hand, only a few of the respondent beneficiaries (27%) were given formal training on the use of accessed credit for improvement of their businesses activities. the importance of training as a microfinance service cannot be overemphasized. this is in support of the findings of akanji (2002) and kuzilwa (2005) that training is a very important microfinance service for women entrepreneurs; it provides the skills and experience needed for business. classification of beneficiary and nonbeneficiary entrepreneurs according to type of business the different types of business that the respondents are engaged in are as presented in table 2. the result shows that as a percentage of the whole respondents, poultry farmers ranked the highest among both beneficiary and non beneficiary groups with 21.49% and 16.53% respectively. this is followed by women entrepreneurs engaged in honey trading which constituted 20.66% of the entire respondents. others were vegetable farmers, rental service providers and palm oil processors. table 2: distribution of respondent beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries by enterprise groups enterprise category microfinance beneficiaries (no. = 71) non beneficiaries (no. =50) frequency percentage frequency percentage vegetable farmers 12 9.92 9 7.44 poultry farmers 26 21.49 20 16.53 honey trading 15 12.40 10 8.26 rental services 12 9.92 8 6.61 palm oil processing 6 4.96 3 2.45 total 71 58.68 50 41.32 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 424-429 428 level of income of beneficiary and nonbeneficiary entrepreneurs prior to access of services the result indicates that the average income of the women microfinance beneficiary in the study area before the conduct of the study was n162,480.00 while that of the non beneficiaries was n163,572.00 in the same period. the range of income of different business groups before the study is as shown in table 3. table 3: income level of respondent entrepreneurs before benefiting from mfis beneficiaries non beneficiaries income level (n) frequency % frequency % n1.00 – n50,000 1 0.83 2 1.65 n51,000 – n100,000 9 7.44 11 9.09 n101,000 – n150,000 20 16.53 17 14.05 n151,000 – n200,000 31 25.62 13 10.74 n201,000 – n250,000 7 5.79 6 4.96 n251,000 – n300,000 3 2.48 1 0.83 total 71 58.68 50 41.32 the findings indicate that over 81 of the sampled women entrepreneurs representing 66.94% of the entire respondents have an average income of between n101,000.00 and n200,000.00 while only 3.31% had between n251,000.00 to n300, 000.00 as average income. level of income of beneficiary and nonbeneficiary entrepreneurs before access to services disaggregated on basis of business groups the average level of income of the microfinance beneficiaries and non beneficiaries prior to the study as already indicated were n162, 480.00 and n163,572.00 respectively. the poultry business enterprise group had the highest average income of n197,782.00 for the beneficiaries and n184,271.00 for the nonbeneficiary groups. women engaged in trading on honey had an average income of n178,557.00 and n168,790.00 for beneficiaries and non beneficiaries respectively (table, 4). table 4: distribution of beneficiary groups and non beneficiary groups according to income level by december 2010 beneficiaries non beneficiaries enterprise category income level (n) income level (n) vegetable farmers 145,543.00 142,600.00 poultry farmers 197,782.00 184,271.00 honey trading 178,557.00 178,557.00 rental services 138,380.00 140,250.00 palm oil processing 126,560.00 128,600.00 impact of microfinance services on entrepreneurial performance findings indicate that the range of average household income during the time of the study (january 2012 – december 2012) was n152,893.00 to n337,658.00. the real income of beneficiaries of microfinance services increased by about 46.67 percent (i.e. from n162,480.00 to n238,480.42) on the average. this increase is as a result of benefiting from services rendered by the microfinance institutions, particularly savings and loan. this income increase has been due to increase in size (economies of scale) and also improvement in input productivity. by contrast however, average real income of non beneficiaries increased only by 11.6 percent from n163,572.00 to n182,546.35. the difference between increase asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 424-429 429 in income of microfinance service beneficiaries and that of non beneficiaries was statistically significant at the 0.05 level. also without taking cognizance of other factors that could bring about changes in their income, it was established that about 65.43 percent of the microfinance service beneficiaries had their incomes increased by at least 47 percent. on the contrary, only about 25 percent of non beneficiaries of microfinance services could increase their incomes by 18.4 percent during the study period. although the percentage increase included the effect of other variables that exert influence on changes in income over time, it is clear that microfinance services have achieved some level of success among the beneficiaries within the time of study in the area. conclusions it has been established that the services provided by microfinance institutions have improved the income level of small scale women business entrepreneurs in the study area. the study has also been able to determine the proportion of increase in income as a result of the benefit from microfinance services. over 65 percent of the beneficiaries had their income grow by over 46 percent as a result of utilization of microfinance services. this is against 11.6% growth in income of non beneficiaries during the same period of study. this study recommends that as education has been proved to be the key factor in development of entrepreneurial potentials, introduction of formal education in all nooks and corners of the country should be the priority of the government. it is also recommended that training as one of the core services of microfinance institutions should be vigorously implemented by the mfis so as to improve the performance of their client entrepreneurs. references akanji, o. o. (2002). microfinance as a strategy for poverty reduction. cbn economic and financial review, 39(4) central bank of nigeria (2005). microfinance policy, regulatory and supervisory framework for nigeria central bank of nigeria (2011). revised microfinance policy framework for nigeria. duflo, e., s. mullainathan and m. bertrand (2004). how much should we trust difference-in-difference estimates. quarterly journal of economics, 119 (1): 249 -275. ibru, c. (2009). growing microfinance through new technologies federal university of technology, akure, nigeria iganiga, b. o. (2008). much ado about nothing: the case of the nigerian microfinance policy measures, institutions and operations. journal of social sciences, 17(2): 89-101 ike, p. c. (2012). an analysis of the impact of fadama iii project on poverty alleviation in delta state, nigeria. asian journal of agricultural sciences, 4(2): 158 – 164. ike, p.c. and u.n. uzokwe (2011). estimation of poverty among rural farming households in delta state, nigeria. international journal of agriculture and food science technology, 2 (1): 11-21. kuzilwa, j. (2005). the role of credit for small business success: a study of the national entrepreneurship development fund in tanzania. the journal of entrepreneurship, 14(2): 131-161. mohammed, a. d. and z. hassan (2008). microfinance in nigeria and the prospects of introducing islamic there in the light of selected muslim countries” experience, munich personal repec archive (mpra) mpra paper no. 8287:1-19 national population commission (2006). estimated population figures. abuja: national population commission of nigeria. ravallion, m. (2005). evaluating anti poverty programmes. policy research working paper no. 3625, washington d.c. world bank effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 505513 505 effects of variety and spacing on percentage (%) emergence and grain weight of maize in asaba area of delta state enujeke e. c. department of agronomy, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria abstract this study was carried out in the teaching and research farm of delta state university, asaba campus from march 2008 to december 2009 to evaluate the response of maize varieties to three different plant spacings. it was a factorial experiment carried out in a randomized complete block design (rcbd) replicated three times. ten maize varieties were evaluated under three different plant spacings for their percentage emergence and grain weight. the results of percentage emergence showed that open-pollinated variety br9922-dmrsf2 which had 93.2% in 2008 and 93.8% in 2009 had highest percentage emergence. the results obtained from the grain weights indicated that hybrid variety 9022-13 that was sown at 75cm x 15cm which yielded 6.3 tha -1 in 2008 and 6.4 tha -1 in 2009 was superior, followed by open-pollinated variety br9922-dmrsf2 which yielded 4.7tha -1 in 2008 and 4.9tha -1 in 2009. the effects of interaction showed that variety and space were significantly (p<0.05) different and positively affected maize grain weight. based on the study, it is recommended that (i) hybrid maize variety 9022-13 which was outstanding in grain weight be grown in the study area. alternatively, farmers who prefer open-pollinated varieties could grow br9922-dmrsf2. (ii) spacing of 75cm x 15cm which resulted in better percentage emergence and highest grain weight be adopted in maize production. keywords: maize variety, spacing, percentage emergence, grain weight, asaba delta state introduction 1 grown in the humid tropics and sub-saharan africa, maize (zea mays l) is the third most important cereal crop after wheat and rice in world production (fao, 2002). it serves for food and livelihood for millions of people in the world. in nigeria, it is consumed roasted, fermented, boiled, fried or baked (agbato, 2003). in developed countries, it provides such industrial products as corn oil, flour, syrup, brewers’ grit and alcohol (dutt, 2005). maize is cherished by several livestock species, including cattle, pigs, goats, sheep and rabbits as it supplies them energy (iken et al., 2001). 1 corresponding author’s email address: enujeke@yahoo.com irrespective of the numerous uses and high demand for maize in nigeria, yield across the country has declined to as low as 1t/ha due to rapid reduction in soil fertility, failure to identify high yielding varieties adapted to each agroecological zone, use of inappropriate plant spacing, and negligence of soil amendment materials (fayenisin, 1993, kim, 1997; zeidan, et al., 2006). tolera et al. (1999) suggested that breeders should select maize varieties that combine high grain yield and desirable stover characteristics because of large differences that exist between cultivars. odeleye and odeleye (2001) reported that maize varieties differ in their growth characters, yield and its components, and therefore suggested that breeders must select asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:enujeke@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 505513 506 most promising combiners in their breeding programmes. iken and anusa (2004) recommended an optimum plant population of 53,333 plants/ha for maximum yield of maize. their report indicated that this is obtainable using a spacing of 75cm x 25cm at 1 plant per stand or 75cm x 50cm at 2 plants per stand. other research works done by enujeke (2013) showed that (i) dry grain yield of maize could be increased by applying 15 l/ha of liquid organic fertilizer. (ii) number of grains/cob and grain weight of maize increases by applying 450 kg/ha of n p k 20 : 10 :10. ( iii ) choice of appropriate variety and spacing for any agro – ecological zone positively increases grain yield of maize. azam et al, (2007) reported that spacing of 75cm x 35cm resulted in increased grain yield of maize while 75cm x 15cm gave maximum cob weight. similar report by allessi and power (2004) revealed that maize cob weight decreased with increased plant population. at present, there are no recommended standards taking into consideration the different combinations of such cultural practices as varietal selection and spacing, which interplay to influence yield and optimal performance of maize in asaba area of delta state. the broad objective of this study, therefore, was to identify variety of maize most suited or adapted to asaba area and the appropriate spacing for the variety, and their effects on percentage emergence, and grain weight of maize. the specific objectives were to: (i) identify the best variety and spacing for the crop. (ii) determine the effects of variety and spacing on percentage emergence and grain weight of maize. materials and methods site description the study was carried out in the teaching and research farm of delta state university, asaba campus from march to december 2008 and repeated between march and december, 2009. asaba is located at latitude 06 o 14’n and longitude 06 o 49’n of the equator. it lies in the tropical rainforest zone dominated by mangrove, fresh water, swamps, humid forests and secondary vegetation (nest, 1991). its climate is influenced by the movement of the intertropical discontinuity (itd). the itd is made up of two wind systems namely the moistureladen south-west monsoon from the atlantic ocean and the dry cold north-east trade wind from the sahara desert. the south-west trade wind most significantly determine the climate condition of asaba area of delta state. asaba is characterized by raining season between april and october, with annual mean-rainfall of 1500mm and 2000mm maximum. the distribution is bimodal with peak in july and september, coupled with a period of low precipitation in august. mean temperature is 23.8 o c with 37.3 o c as maximum. relative humidity is 77.2%, the mean monthly soil temperature at 100m depth is 20.3 o c, while sunshine stands at 4.8 bars (meteorological office, asaba, 2003). pre-planting soil analysis representative surface soils (0-20cm) were sampled with a tubular sampling auger. these soil samples were air-dried at room temperature for 5 days and crushed to pass through a 2mm mesh sieve. sub-samples from the bulked soil sample were further grounded to pieces to pass through 100mm-mesh sieve for the determination of organic matter. the rest samples were then analyzed to determine the physical and chemical properties of the soil. the analysis was done at delta state university, asaba campus. analytical procedure physical properties particle size distribution: particle size distribution was analyzed using the bouyoucos hydrometer method in which 0.5 n sodium hexameta-phosphate was used as dispersant (landor, 1991). bulk density: the bulk density (bd) was determined by core-method. particle density: this was determined by pycometer or specific gravity bottle method as described by bowles (1992). chemical properties soil ph: this was determined in soil: water suspension (1:1) using glass electrode ph-meter as described by mclean (1982). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 505513 507 organic carbon: this was determined using the wet oxidation method of walkley and black (walkley and black, 1945). total nitrogen: this was determined using the modified k. jeldah distillation method as described by landor (1991). exchangeable cations (ec) and effective cation exchange capacity (ecec): exchangeable cations were determined by extracting the cations with in ammonium acetate (in, nhoac) as displacing solution, buffered at ph7 as described by brady and weils (1999). the extract was then determined electrochemically using atomic absorption spectrophometry. the effective cation exchange capacity (ecec) was calculated as the sum of exchangeable bases (ca, mg, k and na) and exchangeable a1 and h expressed in cmo1/kg -1 of soil. exchangeable acidity: this was determined by titration method as described by juo (1981). the exchangeable h + and a1 ++ were then expressed in cmo/kg -1 of soil. available phosphorus: this was determined by bray no.1 method as described by landor (1991). cation exchangeable capacity: this was determined by neutral nh4acetate placement method using the procedure of anderson and ingram (1996). selection of maize varieties, planting and cultural practices ten varieties of maize were obtained from international institute of tropical agriculture (iita), ibadan and delta agricultural procurement agency (dapa), ibusa. these varieties were selected from the following three broad groups: 1. hybrids (oba super 2, oba 98, 902213) 2. open-pollinated (suwan-1-sr, acr 97, br 9922-dmrsrf2, amatzbrc2 wb 3. local varieties (asaba local, agbor local, kwale local) maize seeds were sown at depth of 23cm in plots measuring 2.6m x 2.25m at the rate of one seed per stand using three different spacings: 1. 75cm x 35cm which gave a population density of 38000 plants/ha. 2. 75cm x 25cm which gave a population density of 53, 333 plants/ha. 3. 75cm x 15cm which gave a population density of 88,888 plants/ha. weeding was done three times manually as necessary. experimental design the study was conducted in a factorial layout using a randomized complete block design (rcbd), and replicated three times. data collection and statistical analysis fourteen (14) middle maize stands were used as sample in plots evaluated under 75cm x 15cm, 75cm x 25cm and 75cm x 35cm, respectively. data collected were percentage emergence after 7 days from date of sowing and grain weight of maize after harvesting and sherling at the end of the 16 th week. data collected was subjected to analysis of variance (anova) according to wahua, (1999) and treatment means were separated using duncan multiple range test (dmrt). results soil physico-chemical properties of the experimental site: the pre-physico-chemical properties of the experimental site is shown in table 1. the result showed predominantly sand at the surface and this tends to decrease with depth of profile. texturally, the soil of the experimental site is classified as sandy loam. the soil is acidic with ph of 6.2 in h2o and 5.6 in cacl. the organic matter content and total nitrogen were low with values of 1.22 gkg -1 and 0.113 gkg -1 . the available p was high with value of 26.5 mgkg -1 . the exchangeable cations (ca, mg, na and k) were equally low in status with values of 2.6cmolkg -1 for ca 2+ and 0.9 cmolkg -1 for mg 2+ . the value obtained for na + was 0.57 cmolkg -1 , which was moderate while that for k + was 0.08cmolkg -1 , which was low. the cec was 4.15, while ecec was 5.6cmolkg -1 , which were generally low. the exchangeable acidity was only trace for al 3+ and characteristically low for h + with a value of 1.4 cmolkg -1 . asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 505513 508 table 1: physico-chemical properties of experimental site soil property value interpretation particle size distribution (%) coarse sand 38 fine sand 41 silt 9 clay 12 texture sandy loam ph h2o 6.2 acidic cacl 5.6 acidic organic carbon gkg -1 0.71 organic matter gkg -1 1.22 very low total nitrogen gkg -1 0.113 low available p (ppm) 26.5 exchangeable bases (cmol/kg -1 ) na + 0.57 moderate k + 0.08 very low ca 2+ 2.60 low mg 2+ 0.90 low cation exchange capacity 4.15 exchangeable acidity (cmol/kg -1 ) al 3+ trace h + 1.4 effective cation exchangeable capacity (cmol/kg -1 ) 5.6 effects of variety and spacing on % emergence of maize the response of percentage emergence of maize varieties to different plant spacings is shown in table 2. there were significant differences in percentage emergence of maize varieties studied. open-pollinated variety br 9922 – dmrsf2 had the highest % emergence of (93.2) in 2008 and 93.8 in 2009, followed by hybrid variety 9022-13 (91.7) in 2008 and 91.9 in 2009 and amatzbrc2wb variety had the lowest % emergence of 60.2 in 2008 and 62.5 in 2009. this trend was observed in 2009 experimental year in which open-pollinated variety br9922dmrsf2 also obtained the highest % emergence of 93.8, followed by hybrid variety 9022-13 (91.9). amatzbrc2wb had the lowest % emergence of 6.25 among the varieties investigated. with respect to spacing, 15cmspaced plants had the highest % emergence of 86.8 in 2008 and 86.4% in 2009, followed by plants sown on 25cm intra row spaces (84.0) in 2008 and (84.2) in 2009 and 35cm-spaced plants had the lowest % emergence (77.9) in 2008 and 78.5 in 2009. the order of superiority in % emergence based on plant spacing (cm) was 15 > 25 > 35. the trend was the same in 2008 and 2009. the interaction effect (table 3) indicated that apart from variety x space interaction in 2008, other parameters (variety and space) were significantly (p < 0.05) different in both years of evaluation. effects of variety and spacing on grain weight of maize the effects of variety and spacing on grain weight of maize is shown in table 2. there were significant differences in grain weight of maize. in 2008, hybrid variety 9022–13 had the highest grain weight of 6.3 t/ha among the varieties tested, followed by open-pollinated variety br9922-dmrsrf2 (4.7 t/ha). kwale local and asaba local varieties had the lowest grain weights of 2.8 t/ha and 2.5 t/ha, respectively. with respect to spacing, maize plants sown on 15cm spacing had the highest grain weight in 2008 (4.7 t/ha ) and 2009 (4.8 t/ha), followed by plants sown on 25cm spacing (3.8 t/ha and 4.0 t/ha, respectively). maize plants sown at 35cm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 505513 509 spacing had the lowest grain weights of 2.9 t/ha in 2008 and 3.2 t/ha in 2009. the superiority in grain weight based on spacing was 75cm x 15cm > 75cm x 25cm > 75cm x 35cm. grain weight followed the same trend in 2009. the effects of interaction of variety and spacing on grain weight of maize (table 3) showed that except variety * space interaction other parameters, such as variety, space were significantly (p < 0.05) different and affected changes in grain weight of maize in 2008 and 2009. table 2: effects of variety and spacing on % emergence and grain weight of maize in 2008 and 2009 -----------% emergence----------grain weight of maize (t/ha) 2008 2009 mean 2008 2009 mean variety oba super 2 81.8c 79.4d 80.6d 3.2f 3.8e 3.5e oba 98 81.5c 79.6d 80.6d 3.0f 3.1ef 3.1f 9022-13 91.7a 91.9a 91.8a 6.3a 6.4a 6.4a suwan-1-sr 87.2b 85.6c 86.4c 4.2bc 4.3bc 4.2bc acr 97 89.3b 88.5b 88.9b 3.7c 4.1c 3.9c br9922dmrsf2 93.2a 93.8a 93.5a 4.7b 4.9b 4.8b amatzbrc2 wb 60.2d 62.5e 61.4e 3.5d 3.7d 3.6d asaba local 81.8c 83.8c 82.8d 2.5g 2.7f 2.6g agbor local 81.4c 82.9c 82.2c 4.2bc 4.4bc 4.3bc kwale local 80.5c 83.5c 82.0c 2.8g 2.9f 2.9g spacing (cm) 75 x 15 86.8a 86.4a 86.6a 4.7a 4.8a 4.8a 75 x 25 84.0b 84.2b 84.1b 3.8b 4.0b 3.9b 75 x 35 77.9c 78.5c 78.2c 2.9c 3.2c 3.1c means with the same letters under the same column are not significantly (p>0.05) different using duncan multiple range test (dmrt). table 3: effects of interaction of variety and spacing on % emergence and grain weight of maize in 2008 and 2009 % emergence grain weight (tha 1 ) grain weight (tha 1 ) 2008 2009 mean 2008 2009 mean variety spacing (cm) 75 x 15 86.0 83.3 84.7 4.3 4.6 4.45 oba super 2 75 x 25 83.0 80.3 81.7 2.9 4.1 3.50 75 x 35 76.6 74.6 75.6 2.4 2.6 2.50 mean 81.8 79.4 80.6 3.2 3.8 3.50 75 x 15 87.6 86.0 86.8 3.8 3.9 3.85 oba 98 75 x 25 81.6 80.0 80.8 3.1 3.2 3.15 75 x 35 75.3 73.0 74.2 2.1 2.3 2.3 mean 81.5 79.6 80.6 3.0 3.1 3.1 75 x 15 95.6 94.3 94.9 7.1 7.2 7.2 9022-13 75 x 25 93.3 92.6 92.9 6.5 6.6 6.6 75 x 35 86.3 89.0 87.7 5.2 5.4 5.4 mean 91.7 91.9 91.8 6.3 6.4 6.4 75 x 15 94.3 91.6 92.9 5.1 5.1 5.1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 505513 510 suwan-1-sr 75 x 25 87.6 87.0 87.3 4.6 4.7 4.7 75 x 35 79.6 78.3 78.9 2.9 3.0 3.0 mean 87.2b 85.6 86.4 4.2 4.3 4.3 75 x 15 62.3 64.6 63.4 4.7 4.8 4.8 amatzbr c2wb 75 x 25 60.0 64.3 62.2 3.6 3.7 3.7 75 x 35 58.3 58.6 58.5 2.8 2.6 2.6 mean 60.2 62.5 61.4 3.7 3.7 3.7 75 x 15 97.3 97.6 97.5 5.7 5.9 5.9 br9922dmrsf2 75 x 25 95.0 95.3 95.2 4.8 4.9 4.9 75 x 35 87.3 88.6 87.9 3.7 3.8 3.8 mean 93.2 93.8 93.5 4.7 4.9 4.9 75 x 15 94.0 91.6 92.8 4.6 5.1 5.1 acr 97 75 x 25 92.0 91.0 91.5 3.6 3.8 3.8 75 x 35 82.0 83.0 82.5 2.4 3.4 3.4 mean 89.3 88.5 88.9 3.5 4.1 4.1 75 x 15 85.0 84.0 84.5 2.8 2.9 2.9 asaba local 75 x 25 85.0 84.0 84.5 2.5 2.7 2.7 75 x 35 75.3 76.3 75.8 2.2 2.5 2.5 mean 81.8 83.8 82.8 2.5 2.7 2.7 75 x 15 83.0 84.3 83.7 5.3 5.4 5.4 agbor local 75 x 25 81.0 83.0 82.0 4.1 4.3 4.3 75 x 35 80.3 81.6 80.9 3.2 3.5 3.5 mean 81.4 82.9 82.2 4.2 4.4 4.4 75 x 15 82.3 85.0 83.7 3.4 3.5 3.5 kwale local 75 x 25 81.3 84.0 82.7 2.6 3.0 3.0 75 x 35 78.0 81.6 79.8 2.3 2.4 2.4 mean 80.5 83.5 82.0 2.8 2.9 2.9 variety * * * * * * space * * * * * * variety x space * ns * ns ns ns legend: * = significant at 0.05 level of probability, ns = not significant discussion physico-chemical properties of the experimental site the sandy loam texture of the experimental site may be attributed to the parent material (pm) from which the soil was formed and the climate of the area. the soil might be formed from sandstone and quartz parent materials. these impart sandy texture to the soils. the high sand content of the soil could be attributed to high content of quartz in the parent material (brady and weils, 1999). the weakly acid nature of the soil of the area may be traced to the marked leaching of exchangeable bases resulting from the high rainfall associated with the environment and the dissociation of strong and functional group in the organic matter. this is in harmony with the findings of esu (2001). the low organic matter status of the experimental site could be attributed to the rapid decomposition of organic matter due to high solar radiation and moisture, this favour optimum microbial activities in the soil. it could also be attributed to the annual seasonal bush burning which tend to deplete organic matter accumulation in the soil (landor, 1991). the low level of total nitrogen could be possibly due to low organic matter content of the soil which contributes about 90-95% of soil nitrogen (amalu, 2001). it could also be attributed to leaching of nitrate by torrential rainfall prevalent in the environment (olatunji et asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 505513 511 al., 2007). the high level of phosphorus may be attributed to either of these reasons: (i) history of land use and cultural practices associated with the land use (that is, cropping of crops that do not take much p nutrient from the soil and the application of p organic or inorganic fertilizers (nnaji et al., 2002 and nnaji, 2008). (ii) the parent material from which the soil was formed may be rich in p minerals (brady, and weils, 1999, nnaji, et al., 2002). (iii) the soil may not be highly acidic as to cause high level of p fixation (isirimah et al 2003 and omokri et al., 2007). the low values of exchangeable cation may be attributed to the leaching of bases from the solum due to the high rainfall characteristics of the area. the low cation exchange capacity could be attributed to the pm from which the soil was formed, and low organic matter (om) content of the soil. the pm from which the soil was formed may be poor in basic nutrients. fmanr (1990) noted that soils of the study area was dominated by fe oxide and kaolinites. these clay minerals are low in basic cations (brady and weils., 1999). the exchangeable acidity was low possibly because of leaching of basic cations by torrential rainfall. the results generally are in harmony with the findings of osaretin et al. (2006), olatunji et al. (2007) and the results of soil fertility evaluation in the region. it is also consistent with the findings of fmanr (1990), and nnaji et al. (2002) and nnaji (2008), who reported that most soils of the southern nigeria are poor in nutrients due to intense rainfall, soil erosion, nutrient depletion through leaching and continuous cultivation of land without adequate application of fertilizer or other amendments. effects of variety and spacing on % emergence of maize open-pollinated variety br9922-dmrsf2 had the highest % emergence among the maize varieties studied possibly because asaba ecological zone where the study was made and optimum management of resources provided favoured its genetic potential for expression of high % emergence. this is similar to the findings of sukanya et al. (1998); iken and anusa (2004) who reported that because of the differences in yield potential of ecological zones, high yielding maize varieties can only express their full genetic potentials when offered optimum management resources, which starts with the right choice of site through timely and appropriate establishment, nutrition, disease and pest control to proper harvesting procedure, and produce disposal and/or storage. plants sown on 75cm x 15cm spacing obtained highest % emergence compared to other plants sown on wider spacings. this could be attributed to increased competition for soil nutrients and other natural resources. this is similar to the findings of olufajo (1992); muoneke et al. (2007) and enujeke (2013) who reported increased number of cobs and higher grain yield obtained from higher plant density due to narrow spacing. effects of variety and spacing on grain weight of maize hybrid maize variety 9022-13 was superior or highest in grain weight over other varieties tested. this may be attributed to special qualities associated with hybrid varieties such as high yield, disease resistance, adaptability to environmental stresses, and early maturity. this is similar to the findings of kim (1997) and udoh (2005) who attributed the high yield of hybrid varieties of maize to their special qualities, including disease resistance, early maturity, adaptation to environmental conditions, uniformity in flowering and ear placement and ease of harvesting by combined harvester. grain weight of maize obtained from plants sown at 75cm x 15cm spacing was higher than those sown at wider spacing possibly because more number of cobs were obtained from the increased plant population. this is similar to the findings of olufajo (1992) and muoneke et al. (2007) who reported increased number of cobs and higher grain yield obtained from higher plant density due to narrow spacing. it is also consistent with the findings of alford et al. (2008) who reported that growing crops in narrow rows reduces weed biomass and increases the interception of light which could lead to increase in yield. it is also similar to the findings of azam et al. (2007) and enujeke ( 2013) who reported that spacing of 75cm x 15cm resulted in maximum cob weight of maize. conclusion and recommendations the study was carried out to evaluate the effects of variety and spacing and percentage emergence and grain weight of maize in asaba asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 505513 512 area of delta state. ten varieties were sown in three different plant spacings. the results showed that though open-pollinated variety br9922-dmrsf2 had the highest percentage emergence, hybrid variety 9022-13 sown at 75cm x 15 cm was superior in grain weight while asaba local variety had the lowest percentage emergence and grain weight. based on this study, it is recommended that hybrid maize variety 9022-13 which was outstanding in grain weight be grown in the study area. also, spacing of 75 cm x 15 cm which resulted in higher percentage emergence and grain weight be adopted in maize production. references agbato, s. o. (2003). principles and practices of crop production. odumatt press publisher, oyo, pp. 57-62. alford, c. m., miller, s. d. and cecil, j. t. (2008). using row spacing to increase crop competition with weeds. a paper presented at 5 th international crop science congress 10-15. home regional institute limited, u.s.a, pp 10-15. allessi, j. and power, j. f. (2004). effect of plant population, row spacing and relative maturity on dry land corn in the northern plans. agronomy journal, 66(2): 316-319. amalu, u. c., esu, i. e. and nwulu, m. n. (2001). fertility management of luvisols and alfisols of south-east nigeria. in proceedings of the 27 th annual conference of the soil service society of nigeria,. 5 th – 9 th november, calabar, nigeria anderson, j. m. and ingram, j. s. 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(2006). fertility status and classification of some tropical soil cateria. tropical soils, 31(24): 38-52. sukanya, t. s., nanjappa, h. v. and ramachandrappa, b. k. (1998). growth parameters and yield of babycorn as influenced by varieties and spacing. mysore journal of agricultural science, 32(4): 264268. tolera, a., berg, t. and sundsto, l. f. (1999). the effect of variety on maize grain and crop residue yield and nutritive value of the stover. journal of animal feed science and technology, 79(3):165-177. udoh, j. (2005). crop production techniques for the tropics concept publications limited, munshin, lagos nigeria. pp. 101106. wahua, t. a. t (1999). applied statistics for scientific studies. afrika-link books, nigeria, pp. 250 -287. walkely, a. and black, i. a. (1945). an examination of detrigrareff methods for determining soil organic matter and proposed modification of the chronic and titration methods. soil science, 37: 29-38 zeidan, m. s., amany, a. and balor elkramany, m. f. (2006). effect of nfertilizer and plant density on yield and quality of maize in sandy soil. research journal of agriculture and biological sciences, 2(4): 156-161. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 360-370 360 cocoa farmers performance at highland area in south sulawesi, indonesia imam mujahidin fahmid department of socio-economic of agriculture, hasanuddin university, makassar, indonesia abstract this study aims to: (1) discover the performance of cocoa farmers in highland areas in south sulawesi province of indonesia, using a approach of four typologies: (2) determine the factors causing the level of cocoa production per hectare per year on each typology. this study uses cluster approach; descriptive-qualitative, purposive cluster sampling and snow ball sampling used in determined the respondent, in-depth interviews and desk study employed in data collection techniques. the results showed that the quantity and quality of input on the stage in the production (on farm) affects the quality and quantity of output in the production phase, processing to marketing. it proved in the very real relationship between the extents of land owned by farmers with the seriousness of the production management by farmers. farmers belonging to the typology llop and llyp show seriousness in production management. instead of farmers on typology slop and slyp who did not give optimal treatment to production management. the impact of different management actions in production, at the llop and llyp typology has much higher productivity. in contrast, the typology slop and slyp and its productivity level is only half of the productivity of llop and llyp typology. keywords: performance, cocoa, highland, typology introduction 1 cocoa is one of the important commodities for indonesian economy, especially as a provider for employment, income and foreign exchange. same cases also apply in cocoa-producing countries such as ivory coast and ghana (brempong and apraku, 1987). in addition, cocoa also play a role in encouraging the development of the region and the development of agro-industry. in the last five years, indonesia produced an average of 782 000 tonnes of cocoa beans (faostat, 2011). with the amount of production, indonesia accounted for 13% of 1 corresponding author email: imf@scientist.com cocoa in the world, and became the world's third-largest cocoa producer after the ivory coast (34%) and ghana (15%). indonesian cocoa exports value in 2010 has reached nearly $ 1.2 billion per year (faostat, 2011), and is able to provide jobs for more than 400,000 families of small farmers. in the world, there are an estimated 4.5 million cocoa farmers, especially in ivory coast and ghana. cocoa in ghana even accounted for 64% of total export (the european chocolate and cocoa industry (ed); brempong and apraku, 1987). indonesia cocoa has experienced tremendous growth since 1988, in the last 25 years, farmers with the scale below one hectare experiencing rapid expansion. along with quality improvement and rehabilitation of the cocoa plant program that caused increased in total area of cocoa plantation in indonesia in the last 10 asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:imf@scientist.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 360-370 361 years, has reached 1, 76 million hectares in 2011 with average productivity per hectare of 645 kg (fao stat, 2011). the indonesian government projected, in the future average production per hectare exceed 1 ton. quality cocoa beans are also expected to be fermented by farmers and free from the contamination of mycotoxins, excessive pesticides and other substance. however, the government effort to improve cocoa productivity is not accompanied by a growth conscious strategy and sustainable environment. use of fertilizer and pesticide to increase productivity spawned environmental problems, such as degradation of soil fertility, pests and diseases in more resistance against cocoa (slomkowski, 2005; bentley et al., 2004; rice and greenburg, 2000). data from the ministry of industry republic of indonesia (2009); fao (2011), indonesia's cocoa-producing areas in order are as follows: south sulawesi 31.9%, central sulawesi 23.7%, southeast sulawesi 19.2%, , west sulawesi 13.8%, north sulawesi 3.6%, lampung 2.9%, east kalimantan 2.6% and other areas 16.3%. according to scale of business the indonesian cocoa plantation business types are grouped into three (3) groups; smallholders (farmers) (87%), state owned estates (8%) and private estates (5%). based on the above data, the island of sulawesi is the largest producer (78%) of indonesian cocoa beans. south sulawesi province is the largest contributor of cocoa bean (31.9%) in indonesia. in general, the productivity of cocoa in indonesia is still very low, ranging from 645 kg per hectare per year. actual potential of cocoa production could reach 1.5 tons per hectare per year. in 1998, indonesian cocoa farmers have managed to reach production of 1.2 tons per hectare per year. the causes of declining productivity of the cocoa plant are pest attack, mainly cocoa fruit borer disease (phytophthora pod rot) and vascular streak dieback (vsd) disease, as well as poor quality of seeds and limited fertilizer, pesticide and herbicides to eradicate pests and diseases. in addition, limited access to credit from financial institutions, and the producer level, price is quite low. (aikpokpodion and adeogun, 2011; dormon et al., 2004) resulting in decreased productivity into 645 kg/ha/year or 46.3% of the productivity has been achieved (1200 kg/ha/yr). this resulted in loss of 660.000 tones/year, equivalent to 7.9 trillion rupiah per year or usd 806 million (fao 2011). besides lowering productivity, pest attack causes cocoa quality continues to decline, so the cocoa bean exports to united states experienced a price cut of u.s. $ 301.5/ton. the low quality of indonesian cocoa, damaged the image of indonesian cocoa in the international market. based on this research and lawrence and ogheneruemu (2012) in idanre lga of ondo state, nigeria, every increase of 10% on one of the production means such as fertilizers, seeds, pesticide, or herbicides, will be able to increase the cocoa beans out-put of 9.6%. the second caused of not optimum cocoa trees productivity in indonesia, particularly in the province of south sulawesi is total cocoa land owned by farmers on average of less than 1 hectare per farmer’s household. with a very limited land and does not meet the household economies scale, farmers do not willing to fully maintain and give production inputs (fertilizer and pest extermination) according to standards for the cocoa plant. this is also experienced by cocoa farmers in nigeria (lawrence and ogheneruemu, 2012; onumah, et. al., 2013; azhar and lee, 2004; oluyole, 2013). cocoa plantations become a side income for most farmers, therefore, an attempt to find the typology of cocoa farmers is important to understand the factors that affect the level of productivity of cocoa per hectare per year. the third cause for the low productivity of cocoa in south sulawesi is the age of the plant that is quite old or too young. most of the cocoa crop in the province aged over 20 years, while others are still under the age of 5 years (onumah et al., 2013; morales et al., 2012) this study aims to: (1) discover the performance of cocoa farmers in highland areas in south sulawesi province of indonesia, using a approach of four typologies: (i) the typology of the vast land area with old plants (llop), (ii) the vast land area with young plants (llyp), (iii) small land with old plants ( slop), and (iv) small land with young plants (slyp); (2) determine the factors causing the level of cocoa asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 360-370 362 production per hectare per year on each typology. this study started from the stage of land preparation, planting, crop maintenance, harvesting, post-harvest and marketing. method data collection method used is in-depth interviews. sampling technique (respondent) in this study there was; purposive sampling with cluster sampling method and snowball sampling methods. purposive cluster sampling method used to determine and locate the sample / respondents in the cocoa farm level based on typology that refers to; topography (cocoa farms located at the highest village above sea level), the land size and the age of the cocoa plant. determination of resources (respondent) refers to a typology which is determined by; typology large estates and old plants (llop) is a cocoa farm land with an area of 1-3 hectares and plant age above 20 years. typology large estates and young plants (llyp) is a cocoa farm land with an area of 1-3 hectares and cocoa plant aged under 20 years; typology of small land and old plants (slop) is a cocoa farm land with an area of between 0.5 to 1 hectare and aged of cocoa trees over 20 years old, and the typology of small land and young plants (slyp) is a cocoa farm land with an area of between 0.5 to 1 hectare and cocoa treed aged under 20 years. this study selected four districts, from about 10 major cocoa producing districts in south sulawesi province. the four selected districts are districts that have long tradition of cocoa farming with high productivity and production compared with six other districts. other considerations in the study are geographic and ethnic factors, the 4 districts can represent geographical and ethnic characteristics of cocoa farmers in south sulawesi. in each selected district 2 cocoa producing villages were selected where the location is at the highest above sea level. in each village, eight farmers were chosen, consisting of: four farmers who own cocoa plantations between 1-3 hectares, and four others are farmers who have land between 0.5-1 hectares. four farmers, who have land 1-3 hectare, are classified into two typologies; 2 farmers whose plant aged over 20 years old, and two other farmers whose cocoa plants age less than 20 years. same as in the location where farmers have land between 0.5-1 hectare are also classified into two typologies; 2 cocoa farmers whose cocoa plant age less than 20 years and 2 other farmers have cocoa plant age over 20 years. eight farmers chosen in each village at the highland in each district as the purpose of finding; (1) differences in farm management, (2) the seriousness of the cocoa farmers of the plantation business, and (3) the influence of the land size or scale of business, experience and knowledge of farmers on their productivity. total farmer respondents at 4 selected districts of study locations is as much as 64 farmers. to find these farmers, this study used a snowball sampling method that starts from the information farmers to find other farmers who fit the criteria based on the typology above. the next step is to validate and classify all in-depth interviews result of all respondents, based on predetermined typology. result and discussion increase in cocoa production is strongly influenced by the upstream-downstream process from the selection / procurement of seeds until marketing of cocoa. production inputs and production processes will greatly affect the outcome of production, especially on the income of farmers. performance in typology of large land and old plants (llop) and large land and young plants (llyp) means of production land typology of farmers on land llop have an average of 1, 8 the number of acres of cocoa trees averaged about 850 trees per hectare. the land owned by farmers generally with the average condition of land fertile and friable. physiologically cocoa plant do not required excessive water for growth, therefore, irrigation area were not found in llyp and llop typology. rain is the source of water for the cocoa plant on this typology, when rainfall is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 360-370 363 high, cocoa leaves will change color to yellowish and become rotten. while on the typology of llyp, average size of farmer owned land is 3 hectare with average of 900 trees per hectare. besides cocoa trees, plantations on the typology of llop and llyp also planted with durian, rambutan and banana. durian and rambutan is usually planted on the outskirts of boundary of land. seed the type seeds planted and side grafted by farmers on typology of llop is local hybrid such as br 25, 4511 and 01. there are 3 ways to obtain seeds; (i) farmers purchased it from surrounding areas; (ii) make seed from their own crops, (iii) the government assistance. cocoa farmers in the typology of llop performed traditional and manuals seeding by put the cocoa beans in the soil mixed with compost (organic fertilizer), then put the mixture in the zak and cover it with sand, when it sprout the seed moved to the poly bag. another way is by take out the cocoa beans from the healthy and best fruit and dry them out for 1-2 days then put them in polybag. traditional breeding/seeding is used to obtain new plant while side grfting is used to rejuvenate the cocoa plant. a cost for cocoa seedling is approximately rp. 250.000 / usd 3 (see table 1). farmers in llop the typology also rejuvenating cocoa crops by side-grafting. side grafting is done first put fertilizer on the old trunk as a stimulus to increase mucus, after 1 month then mounted new entries by rinding 2 cm of the tree which had been cut slanted then tie it with plastic. while on llyp typologies the varieties of cocoa planted are hybrids and br. these varities has large fruit and good quality, seedlings is done with mini grafting technique. fertilizer urea is the most widely used fertilizer by farmers on llop typology, whereas other types of fertilizer namely; za, poska, kcl and tsp and only a fraction of those who use organic fertilizers. farmers in the typology of llop and llyp buy these types of fertilizers the dealer near their residence area. in one year, the typology of llop spent on fertilizers is around rp. 865.834/ usd 90 (see table 1). on llop typology fertilization usually done when the plant aged over one year, then continued every 6 months, 4 months or 3 months. fertilization usually done by farmers on llop and llyp typology is by sowing fertilizer around the trees or make holes around the cocoa tree then spread the fertilizer into the hole. in every hole they put as much as 0.5 kg of fertilizer mixed with organic fertilizer. farmers on llyp typology used the same type of fertilizer that is used in typology llop; urea, za, tsp, poska and sp36. on average, farmer in this typology spent about 10 bags of fertilizer for each fertilization. fertilization is done twice a year with the total cost to buy fertilizer of rp. 1.122.5000 (usd110) per hectare per year (see table 2) pesticides / herbicides pesticides / herbicides used by farmers to deal with pests and plant diseases on cocoa, the type of pesticides used by farmers vary, among others; brand name cristalon, nurel, sevin, matador and 505. the farmers acquired pesticides by buying at the dealer, store or market around their farm. knowledge of pest and disease eradication learnt from family, friends, fellow farmers and usage direction stated on product packaging. treatment for pests and diseases, both in typology of llyp and llop quite similar the difference are on the dosage used. for farmers in the llop typology, spraying is usually done by mixing 50 cc of pesticide into a tank containing 15 liters of water, and then sprayed on crops of cocoa or by mixing pesticides powder as much as 1-2 tablespoons into a tank containing 15 liters of water and then sprayed onto the cocoa plants attacked by pests and diseases. for liquid pesticide the dosage usually used 2 bottle caps per 15 liters of water and then sprayed on crops. spraying usually done when the cocoa fruit is still small and the flowers not yet blooming, spraying is done 6 times in 3 months or twice a month, at the harvest time. however, there are some farmers who do not often spray their crops asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 360-370 364 due to lack of fund. for every hectare cocoa plantation in highland with llop typology, on average farmer purchased of pesticide and herbicides around rp. 1,920,000 (usd 210) per year (see table 1). eradication of pests and diseases on the llyp and llop typology usually done by spraying the infected plant or by cutting off the infected branches and stems. those farmers who do not want or cannot afford to buy pecticide usually smearing powder of used batteries on the stems and stalks of infected plants. the type pests and diseases that often attack the cocoa crops, namely: conopomorpha cramerella snell, phytophthora palmivora butl, phyophthora palmivora but, corticium salmoncolor, vascular streak dieback, zeuzera. the type of pesticide and herbicides used on llyp typology is very diverse; brand name nordox, aim to eradicate conopomorpha cramerella snell and pesticide with brands name tuntas to eradicate ants that attack cocoa trees. other brands such as supremo,ramoxone and round up are also widely used. dosage for nordox pesticde is 50 cc per 15 liters of water. spraying is done 3 times a month. as for the brand name tuntas 1 bottle caps mixed with 15 liters of water to spray as much as once a month. as for the pesticides brand name round up and gramaxon, used each as much as 5 liters per hectare. total costs spent to buy pesticides / herbicides for farmers in llyp typology is rp. 574.167 (usd 60) per year per hectare (see table 2). production process land preparation and shade tillage on llop typology done long before planting or side grafting, land clearing usually done using chain saw, crowbars and machetes. majority of farmers spray their land prior to side grafting. the time lapses between land preparation and planting or side graft usually 2-4 months. costs for land preparation for the llop typology around rp. 200.000/ha (usd 22) (see table 1). for shade plants, farmers use plants that are easy to grow with minimal maintenance such as gliricidia sepium. the shade plants planted long before planting the cocoa trees so the shade plant will be able to provide shade for the new cocoa trees. distance shade plants with cocoa plants ranged from 1.5 to 2 meters with alternating patterns. while the llyp typology tillage begins with land clearing. on this typology, farmer cleared the land by cut grass and bushes; some farmer sprayed the poison grass to let the grass dry for few days and then burned. the time lapse between the preparation of land and the planting about 1 month, for total land area of 3 hectares usually take 2 months. after land clearing, continued with planting of seeds, spacing of 3 to 4 meters between hole, with total employment ranges from 1-3 people. costs required for planting and shade plants of rp. 166 667 (usd 18) per hectare per year (see table 2 ). types of shade plants are grown by farmers in the llyp and llop typology is gliricidia sepium. there are also other types of plants that serve as intercropping as well as shade plants, namely durian, lanzones and coconut. these crops generate additional income for the farmers. the most distance between shade plants and cocoa plants about 4-5 meters. pruning, harvesting and post-harvest pruning done with the intention of dispose unproductive leaves or branches. pruning is done by trimming the branches of five branched trees, usually done 1-2 times a year. firstly done on plant aged over 1 year then twice a month or once a month thereafter. for llop typology, trimming or maintenance costs per hectare per year is rp. 250.000 (usd 25) (see table 1). as for typology of llyp, costs for trimming or maintenance per hectare per year is rp. 254.000 (usd 26) (see table 2). cocoa is ready for harvest when the color of cocoa fruit is transformed into yellowish until dark red. farmers at llyp and llop typology harvest almost every month and grand harvest is done 2 times a year around the month of april to october or harvesting is only done once a year around the month of june-july. harvesting generally use large scissors or machete for cocoa that within asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 360-370 365 reached, while for the cocoa pods that are hard to reach, farmer use a long stick tied with a net. drying of cocoa beans after harvest, beans with higher level of dryness have better price. the beans are dried cocoa beans on the net or sack at the yard around the home of farmers. in the dry season with high intensity of sunlight, drying was only takes 4 days, during the rainy season, drying can take up to one week. weight of wet cocoa beans around 50 kg per sack will shrink to only 30 kg after drying. indicators of dried cocoa beans are ready for sale is by break the cocoa beans and if the center is no longer wet means beans are dried. farmers on llop and llyp typology do not ferment the cocoa beans because no extra incentive or premium for fermented beans. costs of harvest and postharvest for llop typology ranges from rp. 225,000 (usd 24) per hectare per year (see table 1). while in the typology of llyp farmers spent about rp.209, 000 (usd 21) per hectare per year (see table 2). production (performance analysis) there are two systems of sales; farmers brought goods directly to the merchant or merchants visit the farmers. determination of cocoa prices used by traders is measured from the level of dryness or moisture content of cocoa beans. in this case trader is the price setter. farmers usually sell dried cocoa beans with moisture level between 15-7 percent. the lower the moisture level, the higher the selling price. price negotiations can only be done by farmers when farmers have high quantity of cocoa with low moisture level. price fluctuations may occur when the demand for cocoa from wholesalers in the city (palopo or makassar) increases, so that the village trader will try to collect large quantity of cocoa and willing to buy at more expensive price. in the llyp and llop typology, cocoa beans with 15 percent moisture content purchased by collectors at a price of rp. 7,000/kg, while the cocoa beans with moisture content 10 percent is sold at rp. 13,000/kg. cocoa beans with the lowest water content (7 percent) were sold at a price of rp.19,000/kg. with direct sales to traders, farmers' position in the transaction and pricing is very weak, because farmers do not have access to alternative information about the price of cocoa beans in the world market. to find understand the performance analysis of farmers on the llyp and llop typology see table 1 and 2. farmer’s performance on the typology of llop, only able to earn gross earnings of rp. 18,600,000 (usd 1850). the total expenditure of farmers around rp. 2,945, 000 (usd 320), which consists of labor cost of rp. 775,000 (usd 80) and the cost of production of rp.2,170,000 (usd 222). on llop typology net income is around rp.15,655,000 (usd 1600). productivity of cocoa in this typology is 1,200 kg per hectare per year, with an average selling price per kg of rp. 15,500 (usd 2) (see table 1). when compared to the performance of llyp typology, showed that the production or productivity per hectare per year is 1.307 kg, 107 kg higher productivity than llop typology, the price is the same, the average of rp.15. 500. total expenses for the farmer on llyp typology is rp. 2,821,667 (usd 30), per hectare per year, with details of rp. 750,000 for labor cost and rp. 2,066,667 cost of production facilities consisting of; seeds, pesticide/herbicides and fertilizers. expenditure of llyp typology is rp. 123.333 (usd 13) per hectare per year lower than the of llop typology. farmers' net income on llyp typology is rp. 17, 445, 000 (usd 1780) (see table 2). one of the important factors that cause performance typology llop lower than llyp typology is lower productivity by 107 kg. this influenced by the age of the cocoa plants at llop typology are old when compared with plants on llyp typology, although the cost of care and the means of production is higher at llop in comparison to the llyp typology. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 360-370 366 table 1: performance of cocoa farmers with large land and old plant typology performance analysis of cocoa farmers llop typology per hectare per year labor land preparation planting maintenance harvest post-harvest production costs/ha (rp.) 20 0,000 125,000 2 50,000 1 25, 000 1 00, 000 total labor costs 775,000 means of production fertilizer pesticide/ herbicide seed cost/ha (rp.) 820,000 1,100,000 250,000 total cost of production facilities 2, 170, 000 total expenditure 2, 945, 000 production / ha (kg) 1,200 rata-rata/kg selling price (usd) 15,500 total selling price (usd) 18,600,000 net income of farmers / yr 15.65 5,000 source: field study table 2: performance of cocoa farmers with large land and young plant typology performance analysis of cocoa farmers llyp typology per hectare per year labor land preparation planting maintenance harvest post-harvest production costs/ha (rp.) 125,000 166 667 254,000 100. 000 109. 333 total labor costs 755 000 means of production seed pesticide / herbicide fertilizer seed cost / ha (rp.) 120,000 574 167 1.1225 250,000 total cost of production facilities 2,066,667 total expenditure 2,821,667 production / ha (kg) 1,307 rata-rata/kg selling price (usd) 15,500 total selling price (usd) 20,266,667 net income of farmers / yr 17,445,000 source: field study performance in typology small land and old plant (slop) and small land and young plant (slyp) input production land total land area in the typology of slop and slyp is 0.5 to 1 hectare, with the cocoa plant age over 20 years for farm with old plant and age less than 20 years for farm with young plants, and sandy loose soil conditions. farmers’ knowledge of land management and treatment for cocoa by the self-taught, due to lack of training or counseling either by the government, private sector and csos (civil society organizations). seed and fertilizer types of seeds / entries used by farmers in the typology slop and slyp are br. side grafting of br type began on the typology of slypabout three years ago. this variety was originally imported from other regions. but now br varieties are propagated using mini grafting by farmers on this typology. according to farmers, br considered as superior varieties asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 360-370 367 because of the fast growing and fast harvesting, in addition to easy maintenance and good quality of cocoa. generally, farmers in slyp typology have been doing multiplication of br varieties by mini grafting around 850 trees per hectare. initial cost for the purchase of seeds on slyp and slop typology around rp.150, 000 (usd 16) (see table 3 and 4.) types of fertilizers used on slop and slyp typology is; urea, sp36, za, kcl, tsp and ponska. farmers at slop typology spent about rp.338 834 (usd 35) per hectare per year, to buy fertilizer (see table 3) while rp. 457,167 (usd 47) spent on slyp typology (see table 4). these cost is only able to cover 30-35 percent of the cost needed to buy fertilizer required on both typologies. functions of four widely used fertilizer, namely: (i) urea and za serves to multiply the leaves and stems; (ii) npk serves to multiply the cocoa pods (iii) sp 36 serves to enrich the soil. pesticides / herbicides types of pesticides used by farmers in the typology of slop include nordox, tuntas and polado. while farmers on slyp typology choose the brand of pesticide and herbicides; tuntas, supretox, sunup, supremo nokson, gramoson, decis and nordoks. process and usage of pesticide and herbicides for pest eradication is relatively similar on llyp or llop typology, i.e. mix 50 cc of pesticides / herbicides into the tank containing 15 liters of water and then sprayed on crops. typology of slop spent at least rp.180 834 (usd 19) on pesticide and herbicide per hectare per year (see table 3). as for the slyp typology required rp. 466 500 (usd 47) per hectare per year (see table 4). production process land preparation and shade the process of land preparation made by farmers at slyp and slop typology is similar to that done on the typology of llyp and llop. at the stage of determining shade plants, typology slop and slyp to choose plants that can provide additional short-term income such as bananas, prior to planting cocoa the land planted with corn. as happened in other typologies, shade plants can provide additional income such as durian, rambutan and lanzones also available on slop typology and slyp. costs incurred in the slop typology for land preparation and shade plants ranging from rp. 41.667 (usd 5) and rp.35,000 (usd 4) per hectare per years (see table 3). while slyp typology spent up to rp. 48.333 (usd 5) and rp. 35,000 (4) for land preparation and shade plants. tillage on slop and slyp typology done by farmers during the land clearing, long before planting the cocoa seed. land clearing process only used simple tools such as machetes, sickles, hoes and axes. the time lapses between land preparation and the planting of about 2 months to 1 year. planting, fertilization and pruning cultivation techniques of farmers in slyp and slop typology have no differences with other typology. the same was found in the fertilization system. fertilization occurs in a way that other typologies, have similarities that occur on premises of slop typology. differences only on the number of doses used and the age of the plant to be maintain. the typology of slop, fertilization started during the plant age of 19 months and regularly twice a year thereafter. costs for fertilization in slop typology of rp. 338,834 (usd 34) (see table 3). technique of fertilization by farmers in the typology of slyp is by spreading fertilizer around the cocoa plant. specific to the type of sp 36 fertilizer, fertilization done by sowing it the around the cocoa tree. use of urea, npk, za three times a year, while for sp 36 used twice a year. farmers on this typology used as much as 200 kg of fertilizer to an area of 1 ha. total fertilizer expenditure per hectare per year for slyp typology around rp. 457 167 (usd 46) (see table 4). pruning on slop typology done by trim unproductive branches and leaves. costs required to pruning or maintenance can be seen in table 3, the amount; rp. 35,000 per hectare per year. pruning at slyp typology started when the age of plant at least one year after that routinely performed once a month. pruning done using machetes and large scissors, with a cost of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 360-370 368 approximately rp. 40,000 per month per hectare (see table 4). harvesting and post-harvest cocoa harvesting patterns at slop and slyp typology showed the same pattern to other typologies, both to determine the harvest time, frequency of harvest and how to harvest. postharvest process also shows the same way between slop and slyp typology with the other typologies. the striking difference between slop and slyp typology others is the total expenditure that is used to harvest and postharvest handling is very small; rp. 32,000 (usd 3) and rp. 33,000 (usd 3) per hectare per year (see table 3). while the cost of harvesting and post-harvest on slyp typology rp. 30,000 (see table 4). at slyp and slop typology the beans are not fermented because it does not have added value (extra premium). production (performance) performance of the cocoa farmers in the typology slop indicate that the results achieved or the gross income of rp. 9,789,439 farmers per hectare per year. while the farmers' production costs per hectare per year is rp. 849,668 (usd 85) consisting of cost of labor and means of production, respectively rp. 180,000 (usd 19) and rp. 669.668 (usd 68). thus, the net income of farmers in this typology is rp. 8,939,711 (usd 908). while productivity per hectare per year on this typology is 683 kg, with an average selling price per kg of rp.14.333 (usd 1.5). total selling price is rp.9,789,439 (usd 999) (see table 3). when compared the performance of the cocoa farmer slop with slyp typology, found differences in performance among others; productivity of cocoa trees on slyp typology of 650 kg per hectare per year. slop typology has higher productivity by 33 kg per hectare per year. however, the average selling price of cocoa beans per kilogram rp. 1,000 (usd 0.1) higher or rp.15.333 (usd 16) on the slyp typology (see table 4). total gross income of farmers on slyp typology is rp. 9.966.450 (usd 1000) while the cost of production per hectare per year is rp. 1,268,667 (usd 130), the net income of cocoa farmers in this typology is rp. 8,687,783 (usd 887). net income of farmers in the typology of slop higher rp.251.928 (usd 26) compared with net income of cocoa farmers in the typology of slyp. income differences between typology slop with slyp, as influenced by the different cocoa crop productivity and cost of production of cocoa farmers in the typology slyp higher rp. 418.999 (usd 42). the most striking difference in the cost of production is the cost for the purchase of pesticide and herbicides (see tables 3 and 4). table 3: performance of cocoa farmers with small land and old plants (slop) typology performance analysis of cocoa farmers slop typology per hectare per year labor land preparation planting maintenance harvest post-harvest production costs / ha (rp.) 41 667 38 333 35,000 32,000 33,000 total labor costs 180, 000 means of production fertilizer pesticide / herbicide seed cost / ha (rp.) 338 834 180 834 150,000 total cost of production facilities 669.668 total expenditure 849.668 production / ha (kg) 683 average selling price/kg (rp.) 14 333 total selling price (rp.) 9789439 net income of farmers / yr 8.939771 source: field study asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 360-370 369 table 4: performance of cocoa farmers with small land and young plant (slyp) typology performance analysis of cocoa farmers slyp typology per hectare per year labor land preparation planting maintenance harvest post-harvest production costs / ha (rp.) 48 333 46 667 40.00 0 30.00 0 30.00 0 total labor costs 1 95,000 means of production fertilizer pesticide / herbicide seed cost / ha (rp.) 457 167 466 500 150,000 total cost of production facilities 1,073 .667 total expenditure 1. 268 .667 production / ha (kg) 650 average selling price/kg (rp.) 15 333 total selling price (rp.) 9966450 net income of farmers / yr 8. 68 7783 source: field study conclusion the best performance is achieved by the cocoa farmers at llyp typology, with a productivity rate of 1.307 kg per hectare per year. the productivity of farmers' net income is rp.17,445,000 (usd 1780) per hectare per year. while the worst performance showed by cocoa farmers at slyp typology, with the level of productivity of 650 kg per hectare per year, equivalent to net income of farmers amounted to rp. 8,687,783 (usd 887). llop typology performance ranks second with 1,200 kg of productivity levels per hectare per year, or parallel to the farmers' net income of rp.15,655,000 (usd 1570). while the typology slop performance in the position of number 3, with the level of productivity of 683 kg per hectare per year, or equal to the farmers' net income of rp.8,939,771 (usd 912). the best performance is achieved by farmers at llyp typology affected by the hard work in land management, planting, maintenance, harvesting, post-harvest and production inputs. typology of llyp of rp. 2,821,667 (usd 288) per hectare per year for production management. while the typology slyp (as the worst performing typology) only spent rp.1,268,667 (usd 129) per hectare per year. size of land owned has heavy influence on the seriousness of farmers to manage their farm. in the llyp and llop typology showed clearly farmer production costs are much greater than the typology slop and slyp. this difference in production costs come an impact on the level of productivity of cocoa farm. the average productivity of cocoa in the typology llyp and llop is 1,118 kg per hectare per year, with an average production cost of rp. 2,883,335 (usd 294). while the average level of productivity in the typology slop and slyp is 666 kg per hectare per year, with an average production cost only rp. 1,059,167 (usd 108). other factors that influence the productivity of cocoa in all typologies are cocoa plant age, experience, skills and knowledge of cocoa farmers. cocoa plants over the age of 20 years tend to decrease in productivity. farmers who have the experience, skills and knowledge to manage cocoa plants have innovations to resolve problems they encounter. references abekoe, m. k., obeng-ofori d. and egyir, i. s. (2002). technography of cocoa in the forest zone of ghana. unpublished technical report, convergence of sciences project. university of ghana, legon, p. 51. adegbola, m.o.k. and abe, j. o. (1983). cocoa development programme, nigeria. research bulletin no 9. cocoa research institute of nigeria printing unit, pp. 3-5. aikpokpodion, p. a. and adeogun, s. o. (2011). a diagnostic study of constraints to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 360-370 370 achieving yield potentials of cocoa (theobroma cocoa l.) varieties and farm productivity in nigeria. journal of agricultural science, 3(4), 68-76 aneani, f., anchirinah, v. m., asamoah, m. and owusu-ansah, f. (2011). analysis of economic efficiency in cocoa production in ghana. africa. j. food, agric., nutr. dev. 11(1): 4507-4526 azhar, i. and m. t. lee (2004). perspective for cocoa cultivation in malaysia: re-look at the economic indicators. malaysian cocoa journal, 6(1): 1-18. bentley, j. w., boa, e. and stonehouse, j. (2004). neighbor trees: shade, intercropping and cocoa in ecuador. human ecology, 32(2): 241-270. binam, j. n., gockowski, j. and nkamleu, g. b. (2008). technical efficiency and productivity potential of cocoa farmers in west african countries. dev. econ. 46(3): 242-263. bisseleua, d. h. b., missoup, a.d. and vidal, s. (2009). biodiversity conservation, ecosystem functioning, and economic incentives under cocoa agroforestry intensification. conservation biology, 23(5): 1176-1184. dzene, r. (2010). what drives efficiency on the ghanaian cocoa farm? working paper, ghana institute of management and public administration, accra, ghana. economics 20:325-332. e. n. a. dormon., a. van huis, c. leeuwis, d. obeng-ofori and o. sakyi-dawson (2004). causes of low productivity of cocoa in ghana: farmers' perspectives and insights from research and the socio-political establishment, wageningen journal of life sciences 52(3–4): 237–259 faostat (2011). food and agriculture organization of united nations, statistic division available at http://faostat.fao.org gyimah-brempong, k. and konadu apraku, k. (1987). structural change in supply response of ghanaian cocoa production: 1933-1983. the journal of developing areas, 22(1): 59-70. kassim adekunle akanni and alfred olayinka dada (2012). analysis of labour-use patterns among small-holder cocoa farmers in south western nigeria. journal of agricultural science and technology, 2: 107-113 lawrence, balogun olubunmi and ogheneruemu, obi-egbedi, (2012) resource use efficiency and productivity of cocoa farmers in idanre lga of ondo state, nigeria. american journal of social and management sciences, 2(2): 208-216. ministry of industry republic of indonesia (2009). roadmap pengembangan industri kakao di indonesia http://agro.kemenperin.go.id/eklaster/file/roadmap/kiksulsel_1.pdf morales, f. l., carrillo, m. d. and ferreira, j. a. (2012). situation cocoa producers in the province of los ríos, ecuador. journal of rural development, 3(3): 77-88 nkamleu, g. b., nyemeck j. and gockowski, j. (2010). technology gap and efficiency in cocoa production in west and central africa: implications for cocoa sector development, working papers series no. 104, african development bank, tunis, tunisia oluyole, k., usman, j., oni, o. and oduwole, o. (2013). input use efficiency of cocoa farmers in ondo state, nigeria. journal of finance and economics, 1(1): 8-10. onumah, justina adwoa, al-hassan , ramatu mahama and onumah, edward ebo (2013): productivity and technical efficiency of cocoa production in eastern ghana. journal of economics and sustainable development, 4(4): 106-117 rice, r. a. and greenburg, r. (2000). cocoa cultivation and the conservation of biological diversity. ambio, 29(3): 167173. slomkowski, k. (2005). chocolate’s dark side. the environmental magazine, 16(6): 33342. the european chocolate and cocoa industry. (ed). cocoa farming: an overview http://www.cocoafarming.org.uk/cocoa_far ming_bw_v8_uk.pdf http://www.cocoafarming.org.uk/cocoa_farming_bw_v8_uk.pdf http://www.cocoafarming.org.uk/cocoa_farming_bw_v8_uk.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 523-531 523 economic threshold density of multi species weed for direct seeded rice md. abdullah al mamun senior scientific officer; agronomy division, bangladesh rice research institute, bangladesh rakiba shultana, md. masud rana, abdul jalil mridha bangladesh rice research institute, bangladesh abstract we conducted two experiments in 2009 and 2010 at central part of bangladesh to examine the effects of multispecies weeds on grain yield and to determine the economic threshold (et) of weeds in direct seeded rice (dsr). the treatments consisted of 0, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160 weeds m -2 and control (unweeded). scirpus maritimus l. and cyperus difformis l. were the most dominant weed species in year 1 and 2, respectively. grain yield losses due to weed interference increased with weed population density increase. panicle m -2 , grains panicle -1 , 1000-garin weight and grain yield varied significantly due to different weed density in both years of the study. estimated et were 5 and 7 weeds m -2 in year 1 and 2, respectively, assuming a weed free rice grain yield 5 ton ha -1 , a crop price $ 210 ton -1 , and weed control cost $ 30 ha -1 . keywords: economic thresholds, direct seeded rice, yield loss, weeds introduction 1 irrigated rice cultivation depends on water supply but scarcity of water threatens the sustainability of the irrigated rice production system and food security (turmuktini et al., 2012). direct seeded rice (dsr) is water and labor saving technique of cultivation (mahajan et al., 2006). it eliminates the need of seedling rising, maintaining and subsequent transplanting. weeds are considered as a serious problem in dsr (johnson et al., 1998) because they emerge before or at the same time as the rice (oerke et al., 1994; johnson et al., 1998; mallik, 2001). due to presence of weeds, yield losses occur in lowlands situation whatever it is rainfed or irrigated systems. this situation is more severe in direct seeded systems where weed management is hampered by labour shortages, 1 corresponding author’s details: name: md. abdullah al mamun email address: aamamunbrri@yahoo.com limited water control, scarce resources and inadequate management practices. rice yields were reduced by 63% in a transplanted system and 70-76% in dsr (singh et al. 2005). weeds cause rice yield losses by 30-40% in bangladesh (brri, 2006; mamun, 1990), 36 to 56% in the philippines (rao and moody, 1994) and 40 to 100% in south korea (kim and ha, 2005). thus weed must be controlled in economic means. in recent time, use of herbicides is one of the most promising and cost effective farmer-initiated weed control method in bangladesh. mazarura (2013) reported that herbicides controlled weeds well after transplanting and more so with delay in the application. the economics of herbicide use must be determined by a combination of yield loss, crop price, crop yield productivity, and herbicide and application costs. these factors must be considered in order to apply weed yield loss models in bangladeshi agriculture. weeds compete for water, nutrients and light and cause the reduction in both asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:aamamunbrri@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 523-531 524 quantity and quality of rice yield. effective weed control is therefore important especially during the critical weed free period, which is the first 46 weeks of the crop’s production cycle (bertha et al., 2013). concentrated efforts must be made to achieve food security by increasing food grain production (mahendran, 2013). again, weed density is one of the most important factors in competition with the crop. determination of weed economic damage threshold is an important component for dynamic decision of integrated weed management. the weed economic threshold is the weed population at which the cost of control is equal to the crop value increase of the present weeds control (weaver and ivany, 1998; pester, 2000). in germany, weed management is done successfully through threshold approach (gerowitt and heitefuss, 1990). the threshold values in cereal crops were 20-30 plants m -2 for grass weeds and 40-50 plants m -2 for broadleaved weeds [excluding galium aparine l. and fallopia convolvulus (l.) a. love]. the economic threshold of wild oat (avena fatua l.) in wheat was estimated between 3 to 30 and 8 to 12 plants m -2 in usa and uk, respectively (cousens, 1987). we have hypothesized that a complementary economic simulation including the crop grain prices and cost of weed control. furthermore, most of the studies evaluate the interference between a single weed species and the crop. but, there are several weed species that could reduce crop yield in the field situation. therefore, most of these studies have not had an important role in control decision-making (swinton et al., 1994). therefore, the objectives of this study were: i) to evaluate the effect of multispecies weeds on rice yield and its components, and ii) to determine the economic threshold of weeds in dsr using regression equations. materials and methods experimental site we executed two field experiments at agronomy field of bangladesh rice research institute fields in the gazipur district of bangladesh during aman season (june to november) in 2009 and 2010. same field was used in both years (90 0 33´ e longitude and 23 0 77´ n latitude). the field was infested by natural weed species. soil of the experimental field belongs to the shallow red brown terrace soils. the experiential soil characters in the two seasons are shown in table 1. the region belongs to sub-tropical humid climate. weather conditions during experimental periods are presented in fig. 1. table 1: soil description of experimental site in year 1 and 2 year soil texture organic matter sand (%) silt (%) clay (%) ph y-1 loamy 1.4 47 35 18 6.2 y-2 loamy 1.5 45 38 17 6.3 figure 1: weekly rainfall distribution and temperature during growing seasons 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 7 14 21 28 35 42 49 56 63 70 77 84 91 98 105 112 119 126 133 140 147 154 161 168 days after seeding (das) r ai n fa ll (m m ) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 a ir te m pe ra tu re ( 0c ) rainfall ( year 1) rainfall (year 2) temperature ( year 1) temperature (year 2) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 514 experimental setup rice (cv. rrri dhan49, popular variety of bangladesh, was sown on 05 and 07 july in year 1(2009), year 2 (2010), respectively. unit plot size was 1m × 1m and total twenty four plots were used for the experiment in both years. before sowing, the plot was kept weed-free by hand weeding. basal application of fertilizer at a rate of 90 kg n ha -1 as urea, phosphorus of 20 kg p ha -1 as triple superphosphate and 35 kg k ha -1 as muriate of potash were broadcast uniformly and incorporated into the soil of all plots. except urea all other fertilizers were applied before rice sowing and urea were top dressed in three installments at 15, 30 and 45 days after sowing (das). pesticides and herbicides were not applied during crop growth. a randomized complete block design with three replicates was used. rice seeds at a rate of 40 kg ha -1 were sown by hand broad-casting. treatments consisted of 0, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160 weeds m -2 and control (unweeded). weeds of different species were maintained from 10 to 50 das at 10 days interval. newly emerged weeds were uprooted ton maintain desired weed number m -2 . biological measurement weed height and rice plant height were taken at 10 days interval from 30 to 60 (das). then relative weed height (rwh) was calculated. weed sample were collected at 60 das. weeds samples were classified by species, counted, dried and the dry weight of each species was recorded. absolute number and dry weight of each species were used for computing the community characters. the contribution of an individual weed species to the weed community was determined by its two-factor summed dominance ratio (sdr) (janiya and moody, 1989). this was calculated using relative weed density (rd) and relative dry weight (rdw), as follows: rd (%) = 010 community in the species weedall ofdensity total community in the species weedindividual ofdensity  ….........…… [1] rdw (%) = 010 species weeddriedoven all of dry weight species weeddriedoven given a of dry weight  ………….............. [2] sdr = 2 rd rdw …………………………..…….............. [3] rwh = heightplant height weed ………………………….............................. [4] estimation of yield loss the percentage of yield loss (yl) of each infested plot was calculated by following equation: yl (%) = 010 ywf y-ywf  ……......… [5] where, ywf is the grain yield in weed-free plots and y is the grain yield from each infested plot. the relationship between yield loss and weed density for each year was described using the rectangular hyperbolic model proposed by cousens (1985). the model is as follows: y = ywf [ id/a)(1 100 id 1   ] ......…… [6] where, y is the predicted crop yield, ywf in the estimated weed-free crop yield, i is the initial slop, d is the weed density (no. m -2 ) and a is the asymptote. estimation of economic threshold weeds density as the response of crop yield to weed density was nonlinear, single-season threshold was calculated by extending eq. [6] as described by o'donovan (1991) as e = [ h)/cp}-s{(cps)-(r h)/cp-(cp-1  ] ...….......… [7] asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 523-531 526 where, e is the economic threshold weed density (weeds m -2 ), c is the expected weed-free crop yield (ton ha -1 ), p is the crop market price ($ ton -1 ), h is the cost of the herbicide and its application ($ ton -1 ), and r is i/100 and s is i/a. statistical analysis the data on yield and yield parameters were recorded. grain yield was adjusted at 14% moisture content. constant straw weight was recorded after repeated sun drying. collected data were analyzed for analysis of variance following mstat-c and means were compared by dmrt (gomez and gomez, 1984). results vegetative growth of rice and weed relative weed height (rwh) at 40, 50 and 60 das significantly affected by different weed densities in year 1 but not in year 2 (table 2). during both years, rwh more or less increased with the increases of weed densities and advances of crop growing period (from 30 to 60 das). relative weed height was increased by 19 and 25 % at 30 das, 18 and 42 % at 40 das, 23 and 11% 50 das and 16 and 6 % at 60 das in control over 5 weeds m -2 in year 1 and 2, respectively. except 30 das, comparatively higher rwh was recorded in year 1 than that of year 2 with the advance of growing period. numerically higher rwh was recorded from control plot whereas lower from 10 and 20 weeds m -2 in year 1 and 5, 20, 40 weed m -2 in year 2 at 30 das. significantly maximum rwh was obtained from control plot which was identical with that of 80 weeds m -2 at 40 das in year 1. relative weed height obtained from 5, 20, 40 and 160 weeds m -2 was statistically similar whereas minimum from 10 weeds m -2 in year 1 at 40 das. in year 2, higher rwh was found in control plot whereas lower in 5 weeds m -2 plot at 40 das. at 50 das, the highest rwh was recorded from control plots which was statistically similar with that of 20, 40, 80 and 160 weeds m -2 whereas lowest from 5 weeds m -2 that was statistically similar with that of 10 weeds m -2 in year 1. in year 2, higher rwh was found in control plot whereas lower in 10 weeds m -2 plot at 50 das. at 60 das, the highest rwh was found in 80 weeds m -2 plots which was statistically similar with that of 10, 20, 40, 160 weeds m -2 and control plot whereas lowest from 5 weeds m -2 in year 1. in year 2, numerically higher rwh was found in control plot whereas lower in 5 weeds m -2 plot at 60 das. table 2: relative weed height at 30, 40, 50 and 60 days after sowing (das) in year 1 and 2 weeds (no.m -2 ) relative weed height 30 das 40 das 50 das 60 das year-1 year-2 year-1 year-2 year-1 year-2 year-1 year-2 5 0.62 0.38 0.71ab 0.76 0.75b 1.12 0.95b 1.21 10 0.60 0.39 0.69b 0.90 0.78b 1.10 1.02ab 1.25 20 0.60 0.38 0.78ab 0.85 0.83ab 1.12 1.09ab 1.27 40 0.64 0.38 0.77ab 0.90 0.85ab 1.18 1.06ab 1.27 80 0.70 0.40 0.87a 0.97 0.84ab 1.22 1.12a 1.24 160 0.67 0.49 0.79ab 1.10 0.86ab 1.25 1.04ab 1.27 control 0.74 0.51 0.87a 1.08 0.92a 1.24 1.10ab 1.29 values of a column followed by same letter are statistically similar at 5% probability weed vegetation twelve weed species inhabited control plot of direct seeded rice field. the infesting weed species were belonging to 6 families and 11 genera. this weed flora was ecologically categorized into 4 broadleaf species, 4 sedges and 4 grasses. the number of weed species was higher in year 2 (10 species) than in year 1 (9 species) (table 3). the weed density and biomass was higher in year 1 than that of year 2. the sedges were scirpus maritimus l., cyperus diffornis l., fimbristylis miliacea l. and cyperus iria l. echinochloa crus-galli l., leersia hexandra sw., cynodon dactylon l. pers. and leptochloa chinensis l. ness. were grass and monochoria vaginalis burm. f., marsilea minuta l. ludwigia octovalvis jacq. and sphenoclea zeylanica gaertn were broad asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 523-531 527 leaf weed. the monocot weed species were scirpus maritimus l., cyperus difformis l., echinochloa crus-galli l., monochoria vaginalis burm. f., fimbristylis miliacea l., leersia hexandra sw., cynodon dactylon l. pers., marsilea minuta l., cyperus iria l. and leptochloa chinensis l. ness. whereas dicot were ludwigia octovalvis jacq. raven. and sphenoclea zeylanica gaertn. table 3: weed density, dry weight and population composition in the weedy treatment weeds (no.m -2 ) biomass (g m -2 ) species family category relative density (%) relative biomass (%) year 1 220 161.79 scirpus maritimus l. cyperaceae sedge 44.40 45.01 cyperus diffornis l. cyperaceae sedge 40.31 13.09 echinochloa crus-galli l. poaceae grass 10.15 39.66 monochoria vaginalis burm. f. pontederiaceae broad leaf 2.42 0.97 ludwigia octovalvis jacq. onagraceae broad leaf 0.60 0.46 fimbristylis miliacea l. cyperaceae sedge 0.76 0.20 sphenoclea zeylanica gaertn. sphenocleaceae broad leaf 0.76 0.17 leersia hexandra sw. poaceae grass 0.30 0.30 cynodon dactylon l. poaceae grass 0.30 0.14 year 2 180 57.74 cyperus diffornis l. cyperaceae sedge 63.15 50.55 echinochloa crus-galli l. poaceae grass 15.19 20.83 scirpus maritimus l. cyperaceae sedge 13.89 21.22 monochoria vaginalis burm.f. pontederiaceae broad leaf 4.26 3.15 marsilea minuta l. marsiliaceae broadleaf 1.11 1.12 ludwigia octovalvis jacq. onagraceae broad leaf 0.92 1.28 sphenoclea zeylanica gaertn. sphenocleaceae broad leaf 0.74 0.73 cynodon dactylon l. poaceae grass 0.37 0.79 cyperus iria l. cyperaceae sedge 0.19 0.28 leptochloa chinensis l. poaceae grass 0.18 0.05 weed ranking in year 2, number of weed species was higher (10 species), in comparison with year 1 (9 species) (figs. 1 and 2). sedges were dominant weeds (0.22– 45 % sdr in year 1 and 0.25-57 % sdr in year 2) followed by grasses (0.3 – 25 % sdr in year 1 and 0.2-18% sdr in year 2) and broadleaf weeds (0.5 – 2 % sdr in year 1 and 0.75-4 % sdr in year 2). three most dominant weeds in year 1 were scirpus maritimus l., cyperus difformis l., and echinochloa crus-galli l. dominant was scirpus maritimus l. in year 1. in year 2, cyperus diffornis l., echinochloa crus-galli l. and scirpus maritimus l. were the most dominant weeds. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 523-531 529 figure 2: weed ranking in weedy plot (year 1) figure 3: weed ranking in weedy plot (year 2) sm= scirpus maritimus l., cdi= cyperus difformis l., ec= echinochloa crus-galli l., mv= monochoria vaginalis burm. f., lo= ludwigia octovalvis jacq., fm= fimbristylis miliacea l., sz= sphenoclea zeylanica gaertn., lh= leersia hexandra sw., mm= marsilea minuta l., cda= cynodon dactylon l. ci= cyperus iria l. and lc= leptochloa chinensis l. yield components and grain production number of panicles m -2 gradually decreased with the weed density in both seasons. the lowest number of panicles m -2 was recorded in the control plots for both years (121 in year 1 and 123 in year 2). the numbers of grains panicle -1 were significantly affected by the weed density in both years (table 4). significantly highest number of grains panicle -1 was recorded from weed free plots in both years (106 in year 1 and 114 in year 2). the number of grains panicle -1 gradually decreased with the weed density in both seasons. the lowest number of grains panicle -1 was recorded from control for both years. weed density exerted significant influence on 1000-grain weight in both years (table 4). the highest 1000-grain weight was recorded from weed free, while the lowest 1000grain weight was recorded from control in both years. similar 1000-grain weight was obtained from 5, 10, 20, 40, 80 and 160 weed m -2 in both years. the rice grain yield was significantly affected by the weed number m -2 in both years (table 4). rice grain yield decreased with the weed number m -2 in both years. significantly the highest rice grain yields of 4.63 and 4.75 ton ha 1 were recorded from weed free plots which were 50 and 47 % higher than that of control in year 1 and 2, respectively. grain yield obtained from weed free was similar with that of 5 weed m -2 in year 1 but higher in year 2. more than 3 ton ha -1 grain yield was found upto 40 and 160 weed m -2 in year 1 and 2, respectively. the lowest grain yield was recorded from control in both seasons. the numbers of panicles m -2 were significantly affected by the weed density in both years (table 4). table 4: grain yield and yield contributing characters of rice at harvest weeds (no.m-2) grain yield (ton ha-1) panicles (no. m-2) grains (no. panicle-1) 1000-grain weight (g) year 1 year 2 year 1 year 2 year 1 year 2 year 1 year 2 0 4.63a 4.75a 227a 211a 106.00a 114.00abc 20.20a 18.87a 5 4.22ab 4.30b 194b 194b 103.00ab 120.00ab 18.93b 18.17ab 10 3.83bc 4.12c 184bc 182bc 102.00ab 123.33a 18.40bc 18.37ab 20 3.48cd 3.88d 166bcd 172c 99.00ab 114.00abc 18.42bc 18.28ab 40 3.12de 3.68e 156cd 174c 96.67ab 108.00bc 18.53b 18.55a 80 2.87def 3.45f 152d 173c 92.33ab 120.00ab 18.22bc 18.21ab 160 2.59ef 3.10g 141de 168c 89.00bc 103.67c 18.39bc 18.36ab control 2.31f 2.54h 121e 123d 76.33c 102.33c 17.51c 17.47b values of a column followed by same letter are statistically similar at 5% probability (p = 0.05) 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 sm cdi ec mv lo fm sz lh cda name of weeds s d r ( % ) 0 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 60 cdi ec sm mv mm lo sz cda ci lc name of weeds s d r ( % ) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 529 as weed density increased, rice grain yield decreased hyperbolically. the relation between grain yield m -2 and weed density was represented by a rectangular hyperbola in both years. significant yield reduction was noticed due to competition from different densities of weeds in year 1 and 2. the highest reduction (47.7% in year 1 and 34.9 % in year 2) was occurred when 119 and 130 weeds present m -2 in year 1 and 2, respectively. the percent reduction increased progressively with the weed density upto 119 and 130 weeds m -2 in year 1 and 2, respectively. weed economic threshold density the equation described by o'donovan (1991) was used to determine economic threshold of weed density. the estimated economic threshold of multispecies weed was 5 and 7 weeds m -2 in years 1 and 2, respectively, assuming a weed free rice grain yield 5 ton ha -1 , a crop price $ 210 ton -1 , and weed control cost $ 30 ha -1 (table 5). table 5: economic threshold weed density of direct seeded rice years economic threshold weed density (no.m -2 ) year 1 5 year 2 7 discussion yield of direct seeded rice (dsr) was greatly affected by weeds. determination of economic threshold (et) of weed density consisted of the number of weeds in dsr is one possible way to improve farming methods. obtained results from both seasons have clearly showed the effects of weed density on yield reduction of dsr. rice grew faster than weeds at early stage in both years. rice plants grew rapidly upto 40 das than weeds. this offers an apparent advantage to the rice plants in terms of light interception. after 40 das weeds grew rapidly than rice plants. in dsr, the rice seeds are sown in saturated soil moisture. tanaka (1976) found that sedges and grasses accounted for more than 90% of the total dry weight in saturated condition. in addition, bhagat et al. (1999) also reported that the dominance of echinochloa crus-galli and lepthocloa chinensis was favoured by the saturated condition. mamun et al. (2011) reported that paspalum disticum and echinochloa crusgalli was the dominant weed species in translated rice. in our field trial sedges were observed as main weeds in both years followed by broadleaves. this succession was due to ability of the weeds to produce more seeds which contribute to additional soil seed bank. increasing weed density reduced the number of panicle m -2 of rice plants in both years. sultana (2000) observed about 52% reduction in tillers due to competition from weeds. fazlul et al. (2003) also observed significantly highest number of total tillers produced in weed-free treatments. begum et al. (2009) found that significantly higher percentage of fertile grains per panicle was produced in weed free plots and weed density of 250 m -2 compared with the rest of weed density treatments. similar result was observed for other species e.g., red rice density of 5 plants m -2 were not effective to reduce fertile rice grain, but weed densities to 108 and 215 plants m -2 reduced fertile rice grain (diarra et al., 1985). the 1000-grain weight is a genetic character widely used in yield estimation and varietal selection in rice (iqbal et al., 2008). the highest 1000-grain weight was obtained in weed-free, while 1000-grain weights were significantly lowered in the treatments with higher weed densities. islam et al. (1980) also reported variation in 1000grain weight due to weed infestation, while rao and moody (1992) reported that weed competition did not affect the grain index of the rice. it is now generally acknowledged that at low weed population densities the yield loss response tends towards linearity. as density increases, weeds begin to compete intraspecifically, and yield loss approaches an asymptote (cousens 1985). the wisdom of continuing to conduct labor-intensive weed interference experiments, for the sole purpose of reinforcing this well-established conclusion, has been questioned (cousens 1987; norris 1992). the rice plants produced the highest grain yield m -2 when grown in the absences of weeds. grain yield was reduced due to competition from weeds. after a certain weed density the magnitude of yield reduction was reduced; in other words the yield m -2 was increased slightly. in this concept the determination of economic threshold is a basic requirement for integrated weed management system. again, technologies of rice cultivation with biological crop management and organic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 523-531 530 based fertilizers are required that can increase rice production and sustainable agriculture (turmuktini et al., 2012). conclusion scirpus maritimus l. and cyperus difformis l. were the most dominant weed species in year 1 and 2, respectively. the density of 40 or more weeds per m 2 is competitive to rice. the weed infestation levels 40 or more weeds per m 2 offered higher competition and affected rice yield. estimated economic threshold of multispecies weed was 5 and 7 weeds m -2 in years 1 and 2, respectively, assuming a weed free rice grain yield 5 ton ha -1 , a crop price $ 210 ton -1 , and weed control cost $ 30 ha -1 . reference begum, m., juraimi, a. s., rajan, a., omar, s. r. s. and azmi, m. 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(1976). climatic influence on photosynthesis and respiration of rice plants. climate and rice, international rice research institute, los banos, laguna, philippines. tien turmuktini, endang kantikowati, betty natalie, mieke setiawati, yuyun yuwariah, benny joy and tualar simarmata (2012). restoring the health of paddy soil by using straw compost and biofertilizers to increase fertilizer efficiency and rice production with sobari (system of organic based aerobic rice intensification) technology. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4): 519 526. tien turmuktini, tualar simarmata, benny joy and ania citra resmini (2012). management of water saving and organic based fertilizers technology for remediation and maintaining the health of paddy soils and to increase the sustainability of rice productivity in indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 536 – 551 upenyu mazarura (2013). effect of sulfentrazone application method and time, on weed control and phytotoxicity in flue-cured tobacco. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1): 30-37. weaver, s. e. and ivany, j. a. (1998). economic threshold for wild radish, wild oat, hemp nettle, and corn spurry in spring barley. canadian j. plant sci., 78(2): 357-361. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 554-565 554 screening green manure cover crops for their allelopathic effects on some important weeds found in zimbabwe runzika, m., rugare, j. t., mabasa, s. crop science department, faculty of agriculture, university of zimbabwe, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe abstract weed control is a serious problem in smallholder conservation agriculture farming areas in zimbabwe. green manure cover crops (gmccs), which improve soil fertility and reduce weeds through allelopathy, are likely to reduce the cost of weed control in these areas. a laboratory study was conducted at the university of zimbabwe to investigate the effect of extracts of eleven gmccs on the germination percentage, radicle and plumule length of bidens pilosa, eleusine indica and pennisatum glaucum (pearl millet). a green house experiment was also done to determine the allelopathic potential of these gmcc extracts applied as soil incorporated residues on the emergence and dry matter production of e. indica, b. pilosa and acanthospermum hispidum. gmcc extracts significantly reduced germination, radicle and plumule length of pennisatum glaucum (p < 0.05) except for crotalaria grahamiana and raphanus sativas which had no effect on germination of pearl millet. the emergence and dry matter of b. pilosa, e. indica and a. hispidum were significantly reduced by these legumes (p < 0.05) with the exception of common vetch (vicia sativa) which stimulated the emergence of a. hispidum. most of the legumes that were used in this study have allelopathic effects on b. pilosa, e. indica and a. hispidum. keywords: allelopathy, green manure cover crops, conservation agriculture introduction 1 conservation agriculture (ca) is a broad concept involving minimal soil disturbance, maintenance of a permanent soil cover and a rational use of crop rotations (fao, 2007; harrington and erenstein, 2005; hobbs, 2007). minimum soil disturbance under ca is being achieved by the use of planting basins and the use of implements such a as the jab planter and the direct seeder, which are used to plant into untilled soil, and also through the use of ripper tines that only open a furrow where the seed is placed. permanent soil cover is being achieved by retaining crop residues from the previous 1 corresponding author’s details: name: rugare, j. t. email address: rugarejoy@yahoo.co.uk season and also through relay intercropping with green manure cover crops (gmccs). gmccs, mostly legumes, are crops that are grown as soon as possible after harvest of the previous crop (derpsch, 2008), alternatively leguminous crops such as sunnhemp (crotalaria juncea l) are planted in between maize as live mulch. in some instances, the new crop may be drilled directly into the gmcc. there is enough scientific evidence that no-tillage without permanent soil cover results in poor yields (ashburner, 1984; wall, 1999; sayre et al., 2006). permanent soil cover with a thick layer of mulch has been a key factor for success in ca systems in south america. derpsch (2008) reported that a farmer should aim at having at least six and if possible more than 10 tonne per hectare of dry matter from crop residues and or asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:rugarejoy@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 554-565 555 green manure cover crops every year. this way, a farmer can achieve good weed suppression, positive effects of mulch on soil moisture and soil temperature, and improve the chemical, physical and biological soil properties. the shift from tillage systems that include extensive annual soil disturbance to ca systems that minimize soil disturbance causes major changes in weed population dynamics. these changes often reduce the effectiveness of weed control practices. while results have varied among experiments, some general trends in weed population dynamics have arisen as tillage is reduced. these include increased populations of perennial, summer annual grass, biennial, and winter annual species (buhler et al., 1995). densities of large-seeded dicot species often decrease. the ecological and management aspects of these changes are varied and complex. generally ca is believed to worsen weed problems, through higher weed emergence by concentration of seeds in surface soil layers, and shift of the weed community towards increased abundance of troublesome species, e.g. grasses and perennials (spandl, et al., 1999; barberi and lo cascio, 2001). research by ball and miller (1993) showed that ca systems increased total weeds by about five times compared to a mould board system after five years. other research has indicated a weed species shift, most commonly to more perennial weeds with reduced or no-till systems (miller and nalewaja, 1985; mulugeta et al., 2001; derksen et al., 1995). under ca, weed seeds may still be protected from predation by insects, animals and birds because of self-burial as soils expand and crack with changes in moisture (somody et al., 1985), thus allowing weeds to grow from seeds without tillage. moreover, ca and no-till maintain a crop residue on the surface that keeps the soil cooler and moister, increasing survival of germinating small seeded weeds as compared to conventional tillage. all of these conditions will greatly influence the number and type of weed species. as a result, labour demands for weeding under ca increase due to increased weed pressure while the source of labour is declining due to several factors including the spread of hiv/aids and the urbanisation in the farming communities in zimbabwe. labour constraints during peak periods of land preparation and weeding limit the area that small scale farmers can manage and often negatively impact on crop yields (mmbaga, 1994). although most farmers weed maize (zea mays l) twice, some 21 % of farmers abandon up to 20 % of their cropped area each year as a result of poor crop establishment and weed competition (ellis-jones et al., 2001). according to sibanda et al. (2001) less than 1 % of the resource poor farmers use herbicides because they do not afford to buy herbicides and equipment that is used to apply herbicides. moreover lack of knowledge on how to use herbicides has also hindered uptake of chemical control in the smallholder sector. effective, economical, and environmentally sound weed management in conservation agriculture systems will require integration of new information with established principles of weed management. new management systems and control technologies are needed to develop integrated weed management systems for the altered ecosystems created by ca production systems (buhler et al., 1995). ca adoption rate and production improvements can be achieved by exploiting the use of gmccs for weed management. gmccs grow very fast and can cover the soil thereby preventing the germination of photoblastic weed seeds as well as growth of weeds by preventing the penetration of photosynthetic active radiation (par) to weeds growing below the canopy of gmccs. most of the gmccs are planted as relay intercrops such that their shading effect on weeds alone would not help in the management of early season weeds that germinate together with the crop. it is therefore necessary to screen the common gmccs for efficacy in suppressing the germination and emergence of the common arable weeds so that they can be used to achieve control of weeds during the critical weed free periods through functional allelopathy. functional allelopathy is the release of chemicals that are toxic (allelochemicals) to other plants as a result of transformation by microorganisms during decomposition of plant residues (bezuidenhout, 2005). the use of allelopathic residues has been demonstrated to be an effective and environmentally friendly cultural weed control method. it has been reported that farmers in the united states of america have long recognized the difficulty of establishing crops in land previously infested asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 554-565 556 with quackgrass (agropyron repens [l.] beauv.) because this weed produces allelochemicals in its rhizomes and leaves that alter the growth of small grains and maize (ross and lembi, 1985). this phenomenon has been reported occasionally for weedy species but it has also been demonstrated in crop plants such as rice, rye and sorghum. mashayamombe et al. (2013) reported that upright starbur (acanthospermum hispidum), black jack (bidens pilosa) and rapoko grass (eleusine indica) are some of the dominant annual weeds of arable lands in zimbabwe. there is therefore scope in identifying gmccs that have allelopathic effects on common arable weeds in zimbabwe. in this experiment, it was hypothesized that extracts of gmccs have allelopathic effects on the germination, root and shoot length as well as emergence and dry matter accumulation of bidens pilosa, eleusine indica and acanthospermum hispidum. . materials and methods study site the study was done in the laboratory and green house at the university of zimbabwe’s crop science department in harare, zimbabwe (17.78 0 s, 31.05 0 e, 1523 meters above sea level). the university of zimbabwe is in natural region ii with an annual rainfall of 6001000mm and average temperature of 20-30 0 c. laboratory experiment the laboratory experiment was laid out as a randomised complete block design (rcbd) with three blocks and different shelves were used as blocks. eleven gmccs and water were used as treatments and each treatment was replicated three times. the gmccs that were used are lab lab (dolicos bean), tephrosia (tephrosia vogelli), raphanus (raphanus sativa), black bean (phasiolus vulgaris), grahamiana (crotalaria grahamiana), jack bean (canarvalia ensiformis), sunhemp (crotalaria ochraleuca), sunhemp (crotalaria juncea), velvet bean (mucuna pruriens), common vetch (vicia sativa), cowpea (vigna unguiculata) and distilled water was used as the control. each of the gmccs was planted in the greenhouse in large pots of 39 cm diameter and 40 cm height. the legumes were watered after every other day using a watering cane fitted with a fine rose. the plants were harvested just before flowering at about three weeks after planting (wap). the roots and shoot of each legume were harvested and mixed in the same envelope before drying in the shed for three weeks. after drying the plant material was ground into fine powder using a hummer mill grinder. twenty grams of each powder were dissolved in 300 ml of distilled water and left for 24 hours at room temperature. the extract was then filtered to remove the residues using a muslin cloth. the extracts were put in labeled 500 ml beakers and kept in a refrigerator for later use. a 9 cm diameter of whatman filter paper was laid at the bottom of the petri dishes and 20 weed seeds were placed in each petri dish. the seeds of b. pilosa, e. indica and a local landrace of pearl millet (pennisatum glaucum) were treated separately in separate petri dishes with 5 millilitres of each gmcc extract and the petri dishes were properly closed using the lid to avoid moisture escape. the weed seeds were treated regularly with the same amount of each extract when the filter papers were about to dry. the petri dishes were placed in an incubator and the temperature was set at 30 o c until germination was noticed. germination was defined as emergence of the radical or the hypocotyls to a length equal to the longest dimension of the seed. data on germination percentage, root length and plumule length were measured using a 30 centimeter ruler after 14 days. germination was expressed as a percentage. and percentage reduction was also calculated using the formula: where c = number of seeds that emerged in the control and t = number of emerged seeds in the gmcc treatment. greenhouse experiment the green house experiment was laid out as a randomised complete block design (rcbd). the same treatments that were used in the laboratory experiment were used in this experiment. the twelve treatments (eleven gmccs + control) were arranged in three blocks with each treatment appearing once in each block. blocking in the greenhouse was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 554-565 557 according to the position of rows from the windows. the allelopathic potential of the legumes was evaluated using the method modified from shiling et al. (1992) and bewick et al., (1994). the ground powder of each of the gmccs from the first experiment was used in this experiment. pots of 20 cm diameter and 18 cm height were filled with red clay soil (texture) soil and 30 grams of each powder were thoroughly mixed with the soil in the top five centimeters of the pot and in the control no powder was applied. the assay species were b. pilosa, e. indica and a. hispidum. 100 seeds of e. indica, 30 seeds of b. pilosa and 30 a. hispidum were planted in each pot. the soil in the pots was watered to field capacity using a watering cane fitted with a fine rose. weed counts per species were taken from each pot starting at 6, 8, 13, 20, 23 and 28 days after planting (dap). on the same day when the final weed count was taken, the weeds were harvested putting each weed species in its envelope. the harvested weeds were oven dried for 48 hours and weighed to obtain the dry matter. germination percentage for each weed species was calculated by dividing the number of seeds that had germinated over the total seeds that were sown. data analysis data which were obtained in the laboratory and greenhouse were entered into excel and were subjected to analysis of variance (anova) using genstat version 14 at p < 0. 05. mean separation was done using the protected least significance difference (lsd) at 5 % significance level. results laboratory experiments effect of gmcc extracts on the germination, radicle length and plumule length of pearl millet (pennisatum glaucum) gmcc extracts had a significant effect (p< 0.05) on germination percentage of pearl millet (table 1). gmcc extracts significantly reduced the germination of pearl millet except for raphanus (r. sativas) and grahamania (c. grahamiana) with both having the highest germination percentage. the percentage germination of pearl millet (p. glaucum) ranged from 9 % to 91 % including the control. cowpea was significantly (p < 0.05) more efficous in reducing the germination of pearl millet than all the other gmccs. gmcc extracts had a significant (p < 0.05) effect on radical length of pearl millet. most of the gmcc extracts significantly (p < 0.05) reduced the radical length except for grahamiana which was not significantly (p < 0.05) different from the control and had the lowest percentage reduction. extracts of all the gmccs significantly (p < 0.05) reduced plumule length of pearl millet. the percentage reduction for all the legumes ranged from 18 % to 98 %. table 1: effect of gmcc extracts on the germination, radicle length and plumule length of pearl millet (pennisatum glaucum) plant name scientific name % germination ± se radicle plumule length (cm) ± se % reduction length (cm) ± se % reduction tephrosia tephrosia vogelli 50 ±5.40 c 0.36 ±0.21 a 96 1.4 ±0.21 d 86 sunnhemp crotalaria ochraleuca 33 ±5.95 b 0.07 ±0.07 a 99 0.67 ±0.36 abc 93 raphanus raphanus sativas 79 ±4.73 d 6.53 ±1.3 a 35 3.72 ±0.24 e 62 black bean phasoilus vulgaris 29 ±4.27 b 0.01 ±0.01 a 99.99 0.79 ±0.19 bcd 92 jack bean canarvalia ensiformis 36 ±5.15 bc 0.94 ± 0.12 a 90 1.10 ±0.11 cd 89 sunnhemp crotalaria 26 ±4.47 b 0.16 ±0.06 a 98 0.66 ±0.32 abc 93 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 554-565 558 juncea common vetch vicia sativa 25 ±4.56 b 0.04 ±0.02 a 99.6 0.16 ±0.05 a 98 cowpea vigna unguiculata 9 ±5.15 a 0.01 ±0.01 a 99.99 0.21 ±0.18 ab 98 velvet bean mucuna pruriens 31 ±4.73 b 0.02 ±0.03 a 98 0.77 ±0.21 abc 92 grahamania crotalaria grahamiana 79 ±4.27 d 8.62 ±0.21 b 15 8.00 ±0.09 f 18 lab lab dolicos bean 38 ±6.07 bc 0.01 ±0.01 a 99.99 1.20 ±0.07 cd 88 distilled water h2o 91 ±2.39 d 10.08 ±1.84 b 0 9.68 ±0.26 g 0 p value p< 0.001 p< 0.001 p< 0.001 lsd (0.05) 14.04 1.828 0.618 means bearing the same letters are not significantly different at p < 0.05. effect of gmcc extracts on the germination of b. pilosa and e. indica. b. pilosa did not germinate in the incubator. however, e. indica had low germination in the control (distilled water) and grahamiana with germination percentage of 25.0 ± 2.04 and 6.25 ± 1.25, respectively. e. indica only germinated where grahamiana extracts were used. germination percentage of e. indica seeds was significantly (p < 0.05) lower than the germination percentage of e. indica in the control. greenhouse experiments effect of gmcc biomass on the emergence of b. pilosa. table 2 shows that the gmcc biomass significantly (p < 0.05) reduced b. pilosa emergence. the percentage reduction of b. pilosa ranged from 54 % to 83 %. table 2: effect of gmcc biomass on the final emergence of b. pilosa plant name scientific name number of emerged weeds ± se % reduction tephrosia tephrosia vogelli 7 ± 0.6 ab 70 sunnhemp clotalaria ochraleuca 4 ±0.6 a 83 raphanus raphanus sativas 5 ±0.7 ab 77 black bean phasiolus vulgaris 10 ±0.9 b 55 jack bean canarvalia ensiformis 4 ±0.3 a 81 sunnhemp crotalaria juncea 6 ±1.3 ab 75 common vetch vicia sativa 7 ±1.2 ab 70 cowpea vigna unguiculata 8 ±2.7 ab 65 velvet bean mucuna pruriens 8 ±1.7 ab 65 grahamania crotalaria grahamiana 6 ±1.7 ab 73 lab lab dolicos bean 11 ±4.2 b 54 control (soil) 23 ±3.1 c 0 p value p < 0.001 lsd (0.05) 13.75 means bearing the same letters are not significantly different at p< 0.05. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 554-565 559 tephrosia w ee d co un ts / p ot 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 ocronica raphanus black bean 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 jack bean sunnhemp common vetch fig 1 . effect of leguminous cover crops on the emergence of bidens pilosa from first day of counting upto last day of counting. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 cowpea velvet bean days from bidens pilosa planting grahamania 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 lab lab 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 control legume 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 figure 1 shows that b. pilosa counts were significantly reduced by all the gmccs that were used in this experiment from 6 dap to 28 dap. effect of gmcc biomass on the emergence of e. indica. all gmccs significantly reduced (p < 0.05) the emergence of e. indica (table 3). the reduction of e. indica ranged from 28 % to 67 % as compared to the control. the greatest reduction was seen where raphanus and jack bean were used. table 3: effect of gmccs on the final emergence of e. indica plant name scientific name number of emerged weeds ± se % reduction tephrosia tephrosia vogelli 59 ±8.2 d 28 sunnhemp crotalaria ochroleuca 42 ±2.9 bc 48 raphanus raphanus sativas 31 ±3.0 ab 62 black bean phasiolus vulgaris 42 ±3.3 bc 48 jack bean canarvalia ensiformis 27 ±3.5 a 67 sunnhemp crotalaria juncea 53 ±5.2 cd 35 common vetch vicia sativa 48 ±1.2 cd 41 cowpea vigna unguiculata 49 ±7.4 cd 40 velvet bean mucuna pruriens 51 ±2.5 cd 37 grahamania crotalaria grahamiana 49 ±5.9 cd 40 lab lab dolicos bean 46 ±3.2 cd 43 control (soil) 81 ±7.3 e 0 p value p < 0.001 lsd (0.05) 13.75 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 554-565 560 means showing the same letters are not significantly different at p< 0.05. tephrosia w ee d co un ts /p ot 0 20 40 60 80 100 ocronica raphanus black bean 0 20 40 60 80 100 jack bean sunnhemp common vetch 0 20 40 60 80 100 cowpea velvet bean days from eleusine indica planting grahamiana fig 2 shows the effect of leguminous cover crops on the emergence of eleusine indica from day of planting up to last count. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 20 40 60 80 100 lab lab 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 control legume 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 the density of e. indica was significantly (p < 0.05) reduced from 6 dap up to 28 dap where the biomass of tephrosia, ocronica, raphanus, jack bean, sunnhemp, cowpea, grahamiana and lab lab were used (figure 2). biomass of common vetch, black bean and velvet bean only started to cause a significant reduction on e. indica emergence after the fourth weed count. effect of gmcc biomass on the emergence of a. hispidum. the effect of gmccs on the emergence of a. hispidum was significant (p < 0.001). all the gmccs did not significantly reduce the emergence of a. hispidum except for common vetch which stimulated the emergence of a. hispidum (table 4). table 4: effect of gmcc biomass on the emergence a. hispidum plant name scientific name number of emerged weeds ± se % reduction tephrosia tephrosia vogelli 4 ±1.2 a 14 sunnhemp crotalaria ochraleuca 4 ±1.2 a 14 raphanus raphanus sativas 5 ±0.7 a 6 black bean phasiolus vulgaris 5 ±1.2 a 0 jack bean canarvalia ensiformis 7 ±0.3 a 0 sunnhemp crotalaria juncea 4 ±0.7 a 14 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 554-565 561 common vetch vicia sativa 14 ±1.2 b 0 cowpea vigna unguiculata 5 ±0.9 a 0 velvet bean mucuna pruriens 5 ±0.9 a 0 grahamania crotalaria grahamiana 5 ±1.5 a 0 lab lab dolicos bean 7 ±2.3 a 0 control (soil) 5 ±0.0 a 0 p value p < 0.001 lsd (0.05) 3.5 means bearing the same letters are not significantly different at p < 0.05. tephrosia 0 5 10 15 20 control legume ocronica raphanus black bean 0 5 10 15 20 jack bean sunnhemp common vetch days from acanthospermum hispidum planting 0 5 10 15 20 cowpea velvet grahamiana 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 5 10 15 20 lab lab fig 3. effect of leguminous cover crops on the emergence of acanthospermum hispidum from first day of counting upto last day counting. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 w ee d co un ts /p ot 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 figure 3 shows that residues of common vetch had a stimulatory effect on the emergence of a. hispidum from 13 dap to 28 dap. all the other gmcc had no significant effect on the germination of a. hispidum throughout the duration of the experiment. effects of gmcc biomass on the dry matter of b. pilosa, e. indica and a. hispidum. biomass of all the gmccs significantly (p < 0.05) reduced b. pilosa and e. indica dry matter (table 5). dry matter of a. hispidum was significantly (p < 0.046) reduced by all the other gmccs except common vetch and cowpea. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 554-565 562 table 5: effect of gmcc biomass on the dry matter of b. pilosa, e. indica and a. hispidum plant name scientific name b. pilosa e. indica a. hispidum dry matter (g) ± se % reducti on dry matter (g) ± se % reducti on dry matter (g) ± se % reduct ion tephrosia tephrosia vogelli 0.59 ±0.1 ab 75 4.44 ±0.7 cd 36 0.14 ±0.1 abc 67 sunnhemp crotalaria ochraleuca 0.72 ±0.2 ab 70 2.54 ±0.3 ab 64 0.18 ±0.1 abc 57 raphanus raphanus sativas 0.12 ±0.0 a 95 1.65 ±0.4 a 76 0.10 ±0.0 a 76 black bean phasoilus vulgaris 0.52 ±0.3 ab 78 2.22 ±0.5 ab 68 0.17 ±0.1 abc 60 jack bean canarvalia ensiformis 0.19 ±0.0 a 92 2.41 ±0.1 ab 65 0.23 ±0.0 abc 45 sunnhemp crotalaria juncea 0.47 ±0.1 ab 80 3.27 ±0.5 bc 53 0.11 ±0.1 ab 74 common vetch vicia sativa 0.13 ±0.3 a 95 2.54 ±0.3 ab 64 0.32 ±0.0 cd 24 cowpea vigna unguiculata 1.12 ±0.5 ab 53 3.93 ±0.7 c 44 0.29 ±0.1 bcd 31 velvet bean mucuna pruriens 0.83 ±0.6 ab 65 5.28 ±0.7 d 24 0.12 ±0.0 ab 71 grahamania crotalaria grahamiana 0.59 ±0.2 ab 75 3.98 ±0.6 cd 43 0.19 ±0.0 abc 55 lab lab dolicos bean 1.31 ±0.6 b 45 3.34 ±0.5 bc 52 0.23 ±0.1 abc 45 control (soil) 2.36 ±0.8 e 0 6.97 ±0.2 e 0 0.42 ±0.1 d 0 p value p < 0.009 p < 0.001 p < 0.046 lsd (0.05) 1.025 1.350 0.189 means bearing the same letters are no significantly different at p< 0.05. discussion extracts of all the gmccs had a negative impact on the germination of pearl millet (p. glaucum), except for raphanus (r. sativas) and grahamiana (c. grahamania) which were seen to have no impact on the germination of pearl millet. this suggests that the residues of most of these gmccs have allelochemicals that have a detrimental effect on pearl millet germination. these results concur with finding by machado (2007) who reported that meadow foam (limnanthes alba) was able to reduce the growth of downy brome (bromus tectorum), a weed in wheat (triticum aestivum) but at the same time it was toxic to wheat itself. this implies that intercropping or growing pearl millet where residues of these gmccs have been incorporated in the soil might have a negative effect on the emergence of pearl millet. these findings clearly demonstrate that allelochemicals are not suppressive to weeds only but can also be harmful to other crops. all the legumes were able to reduce the radicle and plumule length of pearl millet except for grahamania and raphanus which showed the least potential in reducing the plumule length of pearl millet. this may indicate that, extracts that allowed rapid germination also allowed more time for radicle and plumule growth compared to extracts that delayed germination. reduction in the plumule and radicle length may be a reflection of delayed germination rather than direct effect of the allelochemicals. seeds that were used in both the laboratory and the green house experiments were taken from the same lot. however, b. pilosa seeds did not germinate in the incubator at 30 o c but germinated in the greenhouse. this shows that failure of b. pilosa seeds to germinate in the incubator was a result of dormancy and not loss of viability. information on the photoperiodic requirements of b. pilosa is not available. however the failure of seed to germinate under continuous darkness in the incubator suggests that the seeds of this weed may require exposure to alternating light and darkness other than continuous darkness for it to germinate as suggested by egley (1999) who reported that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 554-565 563 some seeds require an alternation of darkness and light so that they can germinate. the results clearly show that most of the legumes which were screened in this study have an effect on the emergence and dry matter production of b. pilosa, e. indica and a. hispidum. these findings concur with findings by hill et al. (2006) who reported that crotalaria juncea had some inhibitory effect on a. hypochondriacus and a. retroflexus. similar results were also obtained by adler and chase, (2007) who reported that biomass of sunnhemp (c. juncea), cowpea (v. unguiculata) and velvet bean (m. pruriens) had an inhibitory effect on amaranthus species. allelochemicals such as l-3-(3, 4 dihydroxyphenylalamine) produced by the leaves of mucuna pruriens (fujii, 1999), a non protein amino acid deltahydroxynorleucine (5hydroxyl 1-2 aminohexanoic acid) produced by crotalaria species (pilbeam and bell, 1979) and quinolizidine alkaloids produced by legumes of phasiolus vulgaris could be some of the compounds that are responsible for suppression of germination in these weed species. although some gmccs used in this study have not shown outstanding potential of inhibiting the emergence of b. pilosa, they delayed the emergence of this weed. gmccs such as lab lab (dolicos bean) and black bean (phasiolus vulgaris) resulted in a delay in the emergence of b. pilosa over time. this delay might have an effect on the critical weed control period. a delay in weed emergence may give enough time to the crop to grow before it is harmed by the weeds (hartzler, 2003). when the weeds emerge late this will give the crop a competitive advantage and it might not be economic to control these late weeds afterwards using other weed control methods (knezevic et al., 2002). biomass of b. pilosa, raphanus (r. sativas), jack bean (c. ensiformis), common vetch (v. sativas) and sunnhemp (c. juncea) showed an outstanding reduction in the dry matter of black jack (b. pilosa). the ability of these legumes to reduce the dry matter might indicate that these legumes might have post emergence herbicidal properties (adler and chase, 2007). common vetch (vicia sativas) did not reduce the emergence of b. pilosa, but had an impact on the dry matter, which suggests that the type of allelochemicals that are found in this gmcc have an inhibitory effect on other physiological processes other than germination and emergence. the gmccs had an inhibitory effect on the emergence of e. indica. similar results were obtained by adler and chase (2007) who reported that raphanus (r. sativas) and jack been (c. ensiformis) have the highest potential in suppressing the emergence of e. indica. the fact that these two gmccs also have an effect on b. pilosa suggests that they have broad spectrum activity. the trend of emergence of e. indica from day of planting up to the day of harvesting shows that these gmccs apart from inhibiting emergence and dry matter are also capable of delaying the emergence of weeds. generally results from this study have demonstrated that the gmccs that are commonly used in rotations under ca systems also have a suppressive effect on weeds, both as a result of allelochemicals that they produce and also as a result of the smothering effect that they have on weeds because they produce a lot of biomass. conclusion and recommendations most plant species screened in this study, in particular jack bean (canarvalia ensiformis), sunnhemp (crotalaria juncea), sunnhemp (crotalaria ochraleuca), grahamania (crotalaria grahamania), velvet bean (mucuna pruriens) and raphanus (raphanus sativas) have shown the highest inhibitory effect on the three weeds under this study. these legumes have a great potential of controlling b. pilosa, e. indica and a. hispidum in cropping systems. additional work is needed to test the efficacy of residues and extracts from these plants on weed control under field conditions and to test them on different weed species. there is also a need to isolate and identify the actual allelochemicals that are produced by these gmccs. references adler, j. m. and chase, a. c. 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(1999). foxtail (setaria spp) seedling dynamics in spring wheat (triticum aestivum) are influenced by seeding date and tillage regime. weed science, 47: 156-160. wall, p. (1999). experiences with crop residue cover and direct seeding in the bolivian highlands. mountain research and development, 19(4): 313-317. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. stochastic profit efficiency of homestead based cassava farmers in southern nigeria sunday brownson akpan., inimfon vincent patrick and samuel james udoka (department of agricultural economics and resources management, akwa ibom state university, obioakpa campus, akwa ibom state, nigeria) citation: sunday brownson akpan., inimfon vincent patrick and samuel james udoka (2012) “stochastic profit efficiency of homestead based cassava farmers in southern nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 498 505. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 498-505. 498 author(s) sunday brownson akpan. department of agricultural economics and resources management, akwa ibom state university, obioakpa campus, akwa ibom state, nigeria email: sundayakpan10@yahoo.com inimfon vincent patrick and samuel james udoka department of agricultural economics and resources management, akwa ibom state university, obioakpa campus, akwa ibom state, nigeria stochastic profit efficiency of homestead based cassava farmers in southern nigeria abstract the study used cobb-douglas stochastic profit function to estimate farm-level profit function, economic efficiency and it determinants among homestead based cassava farmers in the south-south region of nigeria. two-stage random sampling method was used to select 300 homestead based cassava farmers in the study area. maximum likelihood estimates of the specified models reveal an average economic efficiency of 61.22%. the study also found that farmer’s education, experience, household size, level of farming involvement, extension agent visit, soil management method adopted by farmers and farm size are significant factors affecting farmlevel economic or profit efficiency in resource use among homestead based cassava farmers. farm-level policies aimed at promoting farmer’s education, extension services and family planning among farmers as well as reduction in production constraints was recommended. keywords: cassava; homestead farming; efficiency; farmer; production introduction the current increase in demand for staple food produce mostly attributed to the rapid population growth and increase in alternative land uses has prompted many urban and semiurban households in nigeria to cultivate vacant land areas around their homes (etim et al., 2005, akpan and aya, 2009 and akpan et al, 2012) ). crops produced in the homestead farms are usually used to augment family food supply and income. with the population of over 140 million (npc, 2006); there is an overwhelming need to increase agricultural production in the country. given the current level of land use intensification in the country especially in the highly populated south–south region and the corresponding soil deterioration; homestead farming offered an alternative source of agricultural production especially among urban and semi-urban dwellers (oyekale, 2007). cassava (manihot spp) is one of the most popular food crops grown in the southern part of nigeria, specifically in the niger delta region (oil rich region of nigeria). it is one of the widely consumed root crops in the country. cassava root can be processed into granulated substance called “garri” that is consumed by almost every nigerians. cassava and its derivatives also has excellent potentials in livestock feed formulation, textile industry, plywood, paper, brewing, chemicals, pharmaceutical and bakery industries (sanni et al., 2008; adebowale et al., 2008). the leaves are edible while the root is a good source of ethanol and is rich in minerals, vitamins, starch and protein (adegbola et al., 1978; iita, 1990; smith, 1992; ravindran, 1992). the crop is propagated by stem and usually planted in flat land, ridges or moulds (okeke, 1989). cassava is used to prepare tapioca which is a special delicacy that is widely consumed among the efik’s and ibibio’s tribes in the south-south zone of nigeria (oyewole et al., 2003; adebowale et al., 2008). following the important of cassava to the nigerian economy, the presidential initiative on cassava production in nigeria was inaugurated in 1999 with the aim of achieving on annual basis five billion dollars from export of cassava (presidential initiative on cassava reports, mailto:sundayakpan10@yahoo.com stochastic profit efficiency of homestead based..... 499 2003). thus, with these, cassava production capacity needs to be increased such that rising demand will be met. one of the ways by which this could be achieved is to improve the profits accruing to the producers (awoyinka, 2009). cassava production in the southern region of nigeria is characterized by the use of less productive tools and is affected by uncertainties of rain as well as other endogenous constraints inherent in arable crop production. many aspects of cassava production activities like clearing, planting, weeding and harvesting are not mechanized thus labour intensive (akpan and essien, 2011). with the increasing rural – urban migration among young nigerians (wosu and anele, 2010 and afolabi, 2007), the relative scarcity of rural labour posed a serious restraint to cassava production in the area (afolabi, 2007). the extent an individual farmer is able to cope with economic constraints in production in addition to the level of resource endowment and technology determined the level of investment in cassava production (udoh and sunday, 2007). homestead based cassava production arose as a complementary farming system especially for the urban and peri-urban dwellers and involves planting cassava around residential homes. the advantage of the farming system lies on easy accessed to farm products at convenience as well as complementing family food supply and income. this practiced has been going on for ages among dwellers in the southern region of nigeria. since production is basically the process of allocating scare farm resources subject to production constraints to achieve economic goal like profit maximization; then it is right to assume that homestead based cassava farmers in the southern nigeria are constantly faced with the problem of farm resource allocation and usage. this implies that homestead based cassava farmers have being achieving various levels of economic efficiencies, which is presumed to be one of the major reasons for continuous cultivation of cassava around homes in the region. in an environment of highly unstable factors and output price of staple crops, couple with price elasticity of demand of crop outputs; some factors might influence homestead based cassava farm level objective of profit maximization given scare farm resources available to farmers in the region. what are these factors and the magnitude of their effect on farm level profit constitute the fundamental questions this study sought to answer. empirical analysis of the profit efficiency among homestead based cassava farmers is imperative owing to the issue of food security and land use efficiency. therefore, the study specifically estimates the normalized cobbdouglas stochastic profit function and economic efficiency function of homestead based cassava farmers in the southern nigeria. stochastic profit function the study is based on the analysis of economic efficiency of farms derived from production frontier proposed by farrel (1957). economic or profit efficiency shows success of a given farm enterprise, as it indicates the ability of a farm to obtain a maximum profit given a level of input and output prices including the level of fixed factors of production in the farm. from farrel analysis, a farm is economically efficient in resource use when it operates on the economic efficiency frontier. on the other hand, economic inefficient farms operate below the efficiency frontier. the profit function model for the economic efficiency analysis was described as follows (nwachukwu and onyenweaku, 2007): 𝜋 = 𝜋 𝜌 = ƒ 𝑞𝑖 , 𝑍 𝑒𝑥𝑝 𝑉𝑖 − 𝑈𝐼 ……… (1) where 𝜋 = normalized profit of ith farmer 𝑞𝑖 = vector of variable inputs z = vector of fixed inputs 𝜌 = output price 𝑒𝑥𝑝 𝑉𝑖 − 𝑈𝐼 = composite error term the stochastic error term consist of two independent elements “v” and “u”. the element v account for random variations in profit attributed to factors outside the farmer’s control. a one sided component u ≤ 0 reflects economic efficiency relatives to the frontier. thus, when u = 0, it implies that farm profit lies on the efficiency frontier (i.e. 100% economic efficiency) and when u < 0, it implies that the farm profit lies below the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 498-505. 500 efficiency frontier. both v and u are assumed to be independently and normally distributed with zero means and constant variances. thus economic efficiency of an individual farmer is derived in terms of the ratio of the observed profit to the corresponding frontier profit given the price of variable inputs and the level of fixed factors of production of farmers. 𝐸𝐸 = 𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑎𝑟𝑚 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑓𝑎𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑟𝑚 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑓𝑎𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑟 = ƒ 𝑞𝑖 ; 𝑍 exp 𝑉𝑖 − 𝑈𝑖 ƒ 𝑞𝑖 ;𝑍 exp⁡ vi …………………… . (2) 𝐸𝐸 = exp 𝑉𝑖 − 𝑈𝑖 exp⁡ vi = 𝑒𝑥𝑝 −𝑈𝑖 ……… . (3) pius and inoni, (2006) used cobb-douglas stochastic revenue function to estimate economic efficiency of yam farmers in south eastern nigeria. an average economic efficiency of 41% was discovered. the study also shows that farmer’s experience and accessed to credit are factors significantly affecting economic inefficiency of yam farmers. ogundari, (2006) estimated cobb-douglas stochastic profit function for small scale rice farmers in nigeria. his results reveal that farm size, price of labour, fertilizer price, price of agrochemical and farm tools are production inputs that is significantly affecting farm level profit. an average economic efficiency of 0.601 was discovered in the study. also, farmer’s experience was identified as a major determinant of profit inefficiency of farmers. awoniyi and bolarin, 2007) study production efficiency of upland and wetland yam based enterprises in ekiti state, nigeria. the result shows an average economic efficiency of 0.80 for wetland farmers, while farm size and planting material significantly affected wetland farmer’s profit. ogundari and ojo, (2007) estimated cobb-douglas stochastic cost function of small scale food crop production in ondo state. they found an average economic efficiency of 68.38%. in addition, the results reveal that year of schooling, and accessed to credit significantly affected economic inefficiency of farmers. nwachukwu et al., (2007) applied translog stochastic profit function to measure efficiency of fadama telfairia production in imo state, nigeria. their empirical results reveal that age, farming experience, farm size, membership of cooperative society and house hold size are significant determinants of economic efficiency of the farmers. an average economic efficiency of 0.57 was discovered for the sample farmers. ogunniyi, (2008) used translog stochastic profit function to examine profit efficiency of cocoyam production in osun state, western nigeria. he used 120 cocoyam farmers for data collection, and the result of the analysis revealed an average profit efficiency of 12%. the results further reveal accessibility to credit, family size, farm size and mulching as significant determinants of profit efficiency of cocoyam farmers in the region. awoyinka, (2009) examined the effect of presidential initiatives on cassava (pic) on productivity of cassava and technical efficiency in oyo state, nigeria. a stratified random sampling was used to collect primary data from 290 farmers under pic (rtep and adp) and non-pic farmers; and analyzed with stochastic frontier function model. farmers under pic are more technically efficient than non-pic farmers, which confirm that pic programme positively enhances cassava productivity and technical efficiency. oladeebo and oluwaranti, (2012) examined the profit efficiency in cassava production in southwestern nigeria. results showed the mean level of profit efficiency of 79% which suggested that an estimated 21% loss in profit was due to a combination of both technical and allocative inefficiencies. the study further showed that household size and farm size were the major significant factors which influenced profit efficiency positively. materials and methods study area sampling technique: the study was conducted in calabar municipality and odukpani local government areas of cross river state. these areas are located in the southern part of nigeria and fall within the humid tropics region; and have two distinct seasons (i.e. the dry and wet season). in this study, we defined homestead based cassava farmers as those farmers that cultivate cassava around their residential houses, either as sole or stochastic profit efficiency of homestead based..... 501 mixed cropping. two-stage random sampling method was adopted and a total of 300 homestead cassava farmers were used for the data collection. data were collected with the aid of well structured questionnaires. data collected include, price of production inputs, output price and area of cultivated land. empirical model: a linearized stochastic cobb-douglas profit function was used to estimate the economic efficiency of farmers. the choice of the model was based on the assumption of relatively constant elasticity of substitution among factors of production. this is based on the fact that the sizes of land available to homestead based cassava farmers are small and relatively constant over time. hence factor shares are assumed to remain relatively unchanged irrespective of changes in factor prices. following syed and kalirajan, (2000), udoh and sunday, (2007) and udoh, (2005) we specify a log-linear functional model of the stochastic frontier profit function as follows. 𝐿𝑛𝜋∗ = 𝑎0 + 𝑎1𝐿𝑛𝑞 ∗1 + 𝑎2𝐿𝑛𝑞 ∗2 + 𝑎3𝐿𝑛𝑞 ∗3 + 𝑎4𝐿𝑛𝑞 ∗4 + 𝑎5𝐿𝑛𝑞5 + 𝑉𝑖 − 𝑈𝑖 ………… . (4) where 𝜋𝑖 ∗= normalized profit of 𝑖𝑡ℎ farm 𝑞∗1= normalized average price of cassava bundle (n/kg) 𝛿𝜋 𝛿 𝑞∗1 < 0 𝑞∗2= normalized average price of fertilizer (n/kg) 𝛿𝜋 𝛿 𝑞∗2 < 0 𝑞∗3 = normalized average price of labour (n/manday) 𝛿𝜋 𝛿 𝑞∗3 < 0 𝑞∗4 = normalized average price of manure (n/kg) ∂𝛿𝜋 𝛿 𝑞∗4 < 0 𝑞5 = area of land cultivated (ha) note: output price was used to normalize variables in the analysis. the determinant of economic efficiency of homestead based cassava farmers was specified as follows: 𝜇 = 𝛾0 + 𝛾1𝐴𝐺𝐸 + 𝛾2𝐺𝐸𝑁 + 𝛾3𝐼𝑁𝑉𝑂𝐿 +𝛾4𝐸𝐷𝑈 + 𝛾5𝐶𝑅𝐸𝐷 + 𝛾6𝑅𝐴𝐼𝑁𝐹 + 𝛾7𝐸𝑋𝑃 + 𝛾8𝐻𝐻𝑆 + 𝛾9𝑆𝑀𝐺𝑇 + 𝛾10𝐸𝑋𝑇𝐸 +𝛾11𝐹𝑆𝐼𝑍𝐸 + 𝑉𝑖 …………… (5) where µ = efficiency of 𝑖𝑡ℎ farmer age = farmer’s age (year) gen = farmer’s sex (1 for male and 0 for female) inv = level of involvement in farming (0 for part time, 1 for full-time) edu = level of education (year) cre = credit accessibility (1 for accessed and 0 for non-accessed) rai = ability to predict rainfall (1 for yes, 0 for no) exp = farming experience (year) hhs = household size (number) smg = soil management technique (1 for mould, 0 for zero mould) ext = extension agents visit (number of times) fsi = farm size (ha) 𝑉𝑖 = stochastic error term equation (4) and (5) were jointly estimated by maximizing the likelihood function using the computer program frontier version 4.1mle (coelli, 1994) results and discussion maximum likelihood estimates: maximum likelihood estimates of the specified cobbdouglas stochastic profit function (table i) revealed a sigma square coefficient of 0.1204 that is statistically significant at 1% level. this indicates a good fit and correctness of the specified distribution assumption of the composite error term for the model. the variance ratio (λ) of 0.9167 is significant at 1% level. this means that about 91.67% of disturbance in the system is due to economic inefficiently while 8.33% is due to normal stochastic error. the value of the generalized likelihood ratio (lr) of 70.3268 is highly significant. this confirms the presence of one sided error term in the specified model (yao and liu, 1998 udoh et al., 2001). thus this further validates the appropriateness of the specified stochastic model and the choice of maximum likelihood estimation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 498-505. 502 table 1: ml estimates of cobb-douglas stochastic profit function of home stead cassava farmers in cross river state variable parameter coefficient std. error t-value constant 𝛼0 0.2772 0.1779 1.558 price of cassava bundle 𝛼1 -0.1544 0.0473 -3.264*** price of fertilizer 𝛼2 -0.1718 0.0899 -1.911* price if manure 𝛼3 -0.3091 0.0677 -4.566*** price of labour 𝛼4 -0.2039 0.0675 -3.021*** area of land 𝛼5 0.5947 0.0622 9.561*** diagnostic statistics sigma square ∂ 2 0.1204 0.0429 2.807*** gamma λ 0.9167 0.0360 25.464*** log-likelihood 0.5128 lr test 70.3268 note: asterisk *, ** and *** represent 10%, 5% and 1% significance levels respectively. variables are as defined in equations (4). coefficient of variables in the estimated profit function exhibited expected signs. the results corroborate the findings of the previous works on similar issues done by ogundari (2006); nwachukwu et al., (2007); ogunniy, (2008) and oladeebo and oluwaranti, (2012) in other parts of nigeria. the estimated function reveals that price of fertilizer, price of manure; wage rate and farm area significantly affected the farm level profit of homestead cassava farmers in the study area. the coefficient of fertilizer price (-0.1718), manure price (-0.3091) and wage rate (-0.2039) has negative significant relationship with farm profit. ten percent or ten naira increase in these factor prices will bring about a marginal decrease in farm profit of 1.72, 3.10 and 2.04 naira respectively. the slope coefficient of farm size (0.5947) shows that the variable has a positive significant relationship with the farm profit. this implies that a unit increase in farm size will also increase farm-level profit by n0.5947. efficiency model the estimated coefficients of efficiency model are presented in table 2. the result reveals that the slope coefficient of the level of farmer’s involvement in cassava production (0.2409), farmer’s education (0.8532), farmer’s experience (0.6069), soil management technique (0.6031), extension agent visit (0.1499) and farm size (0.9713) are positive and statistically significant. this means that, these variables are positive determinants of economic or profit efficiency of homestead based cassava farmers in the southern cross river state. the implication is that, increase in these aforementioned variables will result to increase in profit efficiency of homestead based cassava farmers. ogundari, (2007) obtained similar results for farming experience; awoniyi et al., (2007) for farm size; ogundari and ojo, (2007) for education; nwachukwu et al., (2007) for experience and farm size and ogunniyi, (2008) for farm size, soil management practice and oladeebo and oluwaranti, (2012) for farm size. table 2: efficiency model of homestead based cassava farmers in southern cross river state variable parameter coefficient std. error t-value constant γ0 0.6469 0.1286 5.030*** age γ1 0.2157 0.6041 0.357 sex γ2 0.1081 0.8626 0.125 level of farming involvement γ3 0.2409 0.1012 2.380** education γ4 0.8532 0.2881 2.961*** credit γ5 -0.4164 0.9357 -0.445 ability to predict rainfall γ6 -0.5847 0.9389 -0.623 farming experience γ7 0.6069 0.2820 2.152** household size γ8 -0.9112 0.4137 -2.203** stochastic profit efficiency of homestead based..... 503 soil management technique γ9 0.6031 0.3564 1.692* extension agent visit γ10 0.1499 0.0902 1.661* farm size γ11 0.9713 0.2392 4.061*** note: asterisk *, ** and ** represent 10%, 5% and 1% significance levels respectively. variables are as defined in equations (5). on the other hand, the coefficient of household size (-0.9112) has a negative significant impact on economic efficiency of homestead based cassava farmers. an increase in the farmer’s household size could exert considerable pressure on the relatively finite land area meant for cassava cultivation, as part or whole might be converted to alternative land uses (ogunniyi, 2008). this would reduce available land for cassava cultivation. hence economic efficiency of the farmer will be reduced as good proportion of revenue will be lost. also, increased family size could increase the quantity of farm produce consume by the family in addition to increase family consumption expenditure. all these factors tend to reduce farmer’s income, farm investment and eventually economic efficiency in farm resource utilization. from the analysis of economic efficiency model, it could be infer that increase in household size, ability to predict rainfall pattern, and credit accessibility increase economic inefficiency among homestead based cassava farmers in the study area; while increase in other variables in the model reduce economic inefficiency. economic efficiency distribution the distribution of respondents according to efficiency class interval, frequency and percentage of each class interval is described in table 3. table 3: frequency distribution of economic efficiency indices of homestead cassava farmers in cross river state efficiency class frequency percentage 0.001 – 0.10 10 3.33 0.101 – 0.20 20 6.67 0.201 – 0.30 15 5.00 0.301 – 0.40 20 6.67 0.401 – 0.50 15 5.00 0.501 – 0.60 30 10.00 0.601 – 0.70 55 18.33 0.701 – 0.80 55 18.33 0.801 – 0.90 60 20.00 0.901 – 1.00 20 6.67 total 300 100.00 minimum economic efficiency 0.0429 maximum economic efficiency 0.9380 mean economic efficiency 0.6122 source: computed from output generated from frontier 4.1 mle. table 3, reports the frequency distribution of economic efficiency indices of homestead cassava farmers in southern cross river state. homestead based cassava farmers showed varied economic efficiencies ranging from the lowest 0.0429 to the highest 0.9380 with an average of 0.6122. the extent of variation in economic efficiency among farmers shows that a significant proportion of cassava is not produced by the farmers because of economic inefficiency in the used of the specified farm resources. about 3.33% of farmers were very far from the efficiency frontier, while 6.67% of farmers were much closed o the efficiency frontier. however, the least economic efficient homestead based cassava farmer needs an efficiency gain of 95.43% (i.e., 1.00 – 0.0429/0.9380)100 in the use of specified farm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 498-505. 504 resources if such farmer is to attain the economic efficiency of the best farmer in the region. likewise for an average efficient farmer, he will need an efficiency gain of 34.73% (i.e., 1.00 – 0.6122/0.9380)100 to attain the level of the most efficient farmer. also, the most economic efficient farmer in the study area needs about 6.20% gains in economic efficiency to be on the frontier efficiency. conclusion the study estimated economic efficiency and it determinants among homestead based cassava farmers in southsouth region of nigeria. maximum likelihood estimates of the specify cobbdouglas profit function and economic efficiency model reveal that individual farmer’s efficiency varied from 0.0429 to 0.9380 with an average of 0.6122. the results further revealed that farmer’s economic efficiency has not reached the efficiency frontier. therefore, homestead cassava farmers’ economic efficiency can still be increased by 38.8% using the best technology available to them. significant factors affecting economic efficiency of homestead based cassava farmers in the south-south region are farmer’s education, experience, household size, soil management technique adopted, extension agent visit, level of farming involvement and farm size. the findings call for relevant farm-level policies aims at promoting rural education through effective extension delivery program. this could be achieved by imposing free and compulsory education to the citizenry. the policy, if well implemented might increase agricultural innovation adoption among farmers in the region. on the other hand, increase household size reduced profit efficiency of homestead cassava farmers in the region; as such there is need to increase public awareness on the, on-going family planning programme in the country and also incorporates into school curriculum, the basic techniques of birth control. the long term benefit of such policy might be positively related to farm level profit efficiency. the findings also indicate the need to intensify research on appropriate soil improvement techniques suitable for less productive land in the region; as such strategy will push the farmer’s efficiency nearer to the frontier efficiency. finally, the review of the land use act of 1990 may be imperative to ease difficulties associated with land acquisition for agricultural production in the area. if farmers have more accessed to agriculture land, their efficiencies would increase as well as the productivity which is the major objective of the federal government agricultural policy. references adebowale, a. a., o. l. sanni and m. o. onitilo (2008) “chemical composition and pasting properties of tapioca gifts from different cassava varieties and roasting methods”, african j. food sci, vol. 2, pp. 77– 82. adegbola, a. a., l. a. ave, t. l. ashaye and m. f. komolate (1978) “agricultural science for west african schools and colleges”, great britain cox and wyman ltd, london. afolabi, m. o. (2007) “rural-urban migration and productivity in the nigerian agricultural sector”, msc thesis (unpublished). akpan, s. b., and aya e. a. (2009) determinants of fertilizer use among small – holder farmers in wetland region of cross river state, global j. agric. sci., vol. 8, pp. 195-201. akpan, s. b., and u. a. essien (2011) “productivity of homestead based yam farmers: empirical evidence from southern cross river state”, j. of sustainable development in agriculture & environment vol. 6(1). akpan, s. b., edet j. udoh and veronica s. nkanta (2012) “factors influencing fertilizer use intensity among small holder crop farmers in abak agricultural zone in akwa ibom state, nigeria”, journal of biology, agriculture and healthcare, vol. 2(1), pp. 54-65. awoniyi, o. a. and bolarin t. o. (2007) “production efficiency in yam based enterprise in ekiti state, nigeria”, j. central european agric. vol. 4, pp. 626 – 635. awoyinka, y. a. 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(2008) “profit efficiency among cocoyam producers in osun state, nigeria”, int. j. agric. econ. rural dev. vol. 1, pp. 38 – 46. okeke, j. e. (1989) “cassava production in nigeria, food crops production, utilization and nutrition”, proceedings of a course held at university of nigeria, nsuka. oladeebo, j. o., and oluwaranti, a. s. (2012) “profit efficiency among cassava producers: empirical evidence from south western nigeria”, journal of agricultural economics and development, vol. 1(2), pp. 46-52. oyekale, a. s. (2007) “intensive land use and efficiency of food production in south western nigeria”, agric. j. vol. 2, pp. 172-179. oyewole, o. b., sanni l. o., dipeolu o. a., adebayo k. and ayinde i. a. (2003) “development of small and medium scale enterprise sector reducing cassava based products to meet emerging urban demand in west africa. annual report submitted to eu/nri, dec. 2003. pius c. i. and o. e. inoni (2006) “determinants of yam production and economic efficiency among small-holder farmers in south eastern nigeria”, j. central european agric., vol. 7, pp. 337 – 342. ravindran, v. (1992) “preparation of cassava leaf products and their use as animal feed. roots, tubers, plantain and banana in animal feeding”, fao. anim. prod. health paper, vol. 95: pp. 111 – 125. sanni, l. o., a. a. adebowale, b. maziya – dixon and a. g. dixon (2008) “chemical composition and pasting properties of cmd resistant cassava clones planted at different locations”, j. food agric. environ., vol. 6, pp. 97104. smith, o. b. (1992) “a review of ruminant response to cassava based diets”, in hahn s. k. reynolds l., egbunike g.n: cassava as livestock feed in africa, vol. 5, pp 39 – 53. syed, a. and k. kalirajan (2000) “benchmarking tax compliance efficiency (risk) at the business entity level”, benchmarking: an international journal, vol. 7(3), pp. 206-222. udoh, e. j. and akintola, j. o. (2001) “measurement of technical efficiency of crop farms in southeastern region of nigeria”, nigerian j. of econ. soc. stud., vol. 43: pp. 93-104. udoh, e. j. and sunday b. a., (2007) “measuring technical efficiency of waterleaf (talinum triangulare) production in akwa ibom state, nigeria”, american – eurasian j. agric. environ. sci., vol. 2, pp. 518 – 522. udoh, e. j. (2005) “technical inefficiency in vegetable farms of humid region. an analysis of dry season farming by urban women in south south zone, nigeria”, j. agric. soc. sci., vol. 1, pp. 80 – 85. wosu, e., and a. kinikanwo anele (2010) “rural-urban migration of young persons from selected conflict ridden communities in rivers state: a sociological approach”, african journal of political science and international relations, vol. 4(6), pp. 209-214. yao, s. and liu, z. (1998) “determinants of grain production and technical efficiency in china”. j. agric. econ., vol. 49, pp. 171-184. http://www.mistowa.org/files/cafston/presidential%20initiative.pdf http://www.mistowa.org/files/cafston/presidential%20initiative.pdf publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. assessment of the perception of benefits of organic gardening in maiduguri metropolis, nigeria mustapha, s. b., undiandeye, u. c. and idrisa y. l. (department of agricultural extension services, university of maiduguri, maiduguri, nigeria) citation: mustapha, s. b., undiandeye, u. c. and idrisa y. l. (2012): “assessment of the perception of benefits of organic gardening in maiduguri metropolis, nigeria”, asian journal agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 238-242. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 238-242 238 author(s) mustapha, s. b. department of agricultural extension services, university of maiduguri, maiduguri, nigeria email: shettimabulama@yahoo.com undiandeye, u. c. and idrisa, y. l. department of agricultural extension services, university of maiduguri, maiduguri, nigeria assessment of the perception of benefits of organic gardening in maiduguri metropolis, nigeria abstract the study examined the perception of benefits of organic gardening in maiduguri metropolis, nigeria. structured questionnaires were administered to obtain information from 166 respondents through multi-stage random and purposive sampling techniques. data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics (frequency distribution, percentage and mean scores). the study indicates that the respondents had perceived a relatively neutral (mean score = 2.87) socio-economic benefits of organic gardening. nevertheless, they agreed (mean score = 3.84) with the ecological benefits or organic farming. the result, equally reports that the intension of conversion to organic farming was relatively neutral (mean score = 3.49). the most important constraint to organic gardening conversion was lack of knowledge and skills regarding organic gardening. policy recommendations were made to include: the creation of awareness on the consequences of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides among others, and adequate government support for organic gardening in the study area. keywords: assessment, perception of benefits. organic gardening, maiduguri metropolis introduction background to the study modern high-input agriculture has produced great increase in crop yield, but social and environmental costs have been high. over the past decades sustainability becomes a more guiding principle in agriculture. organic agriculture was one of the several approaches to sustainable agriculture and its importance in the agricultural sector is increasing. organic farming is an integrated system of farming based on ecological principles (mohammed et al., 2007; burton, 1999). organic farming is based on various laws and certification programmes, which prohibit the use of almost all synthetic inputs, and health of the soil recognized as the central theme of the method. adverse effects of modern agricultural practices, not only on the farm but also on the health of all living things and thus on the environment. application of technology, particularly in terms of the use of chemicals fertilizers and pesticides has persuaded farmers to think aloud. their negative effects on the environment are manifested through soil erosion, salination, genetic erosion etc. bello (2008) defined organic farming as agricultural production without the use of synthetic chemicals (fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics, etc.). for crop production, organic materials such as compost and manure are used to maintain soil organic matter and as sources of nutrients. organic farming is also about animal’s welfare and the regulations governing organic farming contain detailed guidelines as to how specific livestock should be bred and fed. farmers who practice organic farming use natural system to control pests and disease in crops and livestock’s and avoid synthetic pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, growth hormones, antibiotics or genetic modifications (de cock, 2005). the growing evidence of organic farming indicates that the practice results in a lot of environmental, social and financial benefits. the growth of organic farming in each country is based on the cumulative impact of individual farmer’s willingness regarding conversion in a same institutional environment (de cock, 2005; burton, 1999). this willingness to convert was low in nigeria and at the moment, as each year, less conventional farmers make a choice (age et al., 2010). in this context conversion to organic farming is seen as an individual decision where the individual farmer decides to change his existing farming practices and accept the organic production standards. the conversion to organic farming was in this way compared to the concept of how choices were made by people (ajzen, 1989). therefore, it was found imperative to investigate the perception of benefits of organic gardening in maiduguri metropolis, nigeria. mailto:shettimabulama@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 238-242 239 statement of the problem many scientists and farmers were fully aware of the environmental problems created by conventional farming. but many of them believe that yields are lower in organic cultivation during the initial period and also the cost of labour tends to increase therein. in spite of the ridicule poured out on organic farming, it has come to stay and is spreading steadily but slowly in nigeria. however, the adoption has been very slow, but it has made in-wards into the conventional farming system. furthermore, options in finding out an alternative method to the conventional farming were limited. nevertheless, sensing the importance had the supports of governments and non-governmental organizations to take several initiatives to promote organic farming in nigeria. however, there has not been any empirical study into the assessment of perception of benefits of organic gardening in maiduguri metropolis, nigeria. thus, the study was conducted to fulfill the gap of scientific information in the study area. objectives of the study the main objective of the study was to examine the perception of benefits of organic gardening in maiduguri metropolis, nigeria. the specific objectives were to: (i) investigate the perception of socio-economic benefits of organic gardening among respondents, (ii) determine the perception of ecological benefits of organic gardening among respondents, (iii) examine the feasibility of organic production standards on gardens among respondents, (iv) assess the intention for information search on organic gardening among respondents, (v) assess the intention of conversion to organic gardening among respondents, and (vi) identify the constraints of conversion to organic gardening among the respondents. methodology the study was carried out in maiduguri metropolis of borno state, nigeria. maiduguri metropolis constitutes the state capital as well as its environs. it has a land area of 300 km 2 with a population of 732, 696 and lies within latitude 11 0 to 14 0 n and longitude 10 0 to 14 0 e (npc, 2006). primary data were mainly used for the study. the primary data were generated through the use of a structured questionnaires administered among the respondents. purposive sampling procedure was used in the study. thus, all the respondents whose qualification was higher national diploma (hnd) and above were purposively selected for the study. this was informed by the assumption that respondents, who had higher educational levels could understand the meaning of organic gardening better than the less educated ones. in all, 166 respondents served as the total sample size for the study. the list of the garden farmers was obtained from the agricultural department of maiduguri metropolitan council, borno state. descriptive (frequency distribution, percentages and mean scores) were used to analyse the data. likert type rating scale of 1 to 5 points were used to compute the mean scores as used by de dock (2005); gillespie (2001). the mean scores were computed as follows: x = v1f1+ v2f2+ v3f3+ v4f4+v5f5 ……….. (i) f1+f2+f3+f4+f5 where, x = mean score v1 = scale value of column 1 v2 = scale value of column 2 v3 = scale value of column 3 v4 = scale value of column 4 v5 = scale value of column 5 f1 = frequency of respondents in column 1 f2 = frequency of respondents in column 2 f3 = frequency of respondents in column 3 f4 = frequency of respondents in column 4 f5 = frequency of respondents in column 5 the mean scores were interpreted as follows: mean score objectives 1 & 2 objective 3 objective 4 & 5 ≤ 1.55 sd snf vl 1.56 – 2.55 d nf l 2.56 – 3.55 u u u 3.56 – 4.55 a f h ≥ 4.56 sa sf vh where; sa = strongly agreed sf = strongly feasible vh = very high a = agreed f = feasible h = high u = undecided u = undecided u = undecided d = disagreed nf = not feasible l = low sd = strongly disagreed snf = strongly not feasible vl = very low asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 238-242 240 results and discussion socio-economic benefits of organic gardening by respondents table 1 shows the average sample score for perceived socio-economic benefits of organic gardening by respondents. the results indicated an average mean score of 2.87, indicating relatively neutral benefits of organic gardening. this could be due to the relatively neutral score they gave to the different organic gardening statements and this means the respondents did not want to express themselves in favour of organic gardening. the find is in agreement to de cock (2005), which found that conventional farmers had a neutral attitude towards organic farming in belgium. table 1: perceived socio-economic benefits of organic gardening by respondents statement mean score decision organic gardeners’ lives more in harmony with nature 4.38 a organic products are healthier 2.41 d organic gardening increases food production 3.84 a organic gardening assures the future of a garden 1.58 d organic gardening improves income 2.16 d average mean score 2.87 u source: field survey, 2009 the results indicated that the respondents agreed on the perception that organic gardeners live more in harmony with nature and increases food production; mean score = 4.38 and 3.84 respectively. on the other hand, respondents disagreed on the perception that organic products are healthier, assures the future of garden and improved incomes; mean score = 2.41, 1.58 and 2.16 respectively. ecological benefits of organic gardening by respondents table 2 shows the results of the perceived ecological benefits. the respondents agreed that the use of chemical inputs is negative for health of people (mean score = 3.87) and, also agreed that organic gardening improves soil fertility (mean score = 4.10). but, the respondents remained undecided (mean score = 3.54) that the use of chemical input is negative to the environment. table 2: perceived ecological benefits of organic gardening by respondents statement mean score decision the use of chemical input is negative for health of people 3.87 a the use of chemical input is negative to the environment 3.54 u organic gardening improves soil fertility 4.10 a average mean score 3.84 a source: field survey, 2009 table 2 shows that the respondents agreed (mean score = 3.84) with ecological benefits or organic gardening. the implication could be that they had an experience of low external input agriculture. the result supports the finding of burton et al (1999) who reports that conventional farmers had some experience which makes them to seek for the ecological benefits of organic farming. feasibility of organic production standards by respondents table 3 shows that the feasibility of organic production standards on respondents gardens were scored relatively low (mean score = 1.81), indicating low feasibility among the respondents. this implies that it was not easy for respondents to garden without the use of synthetic fertilizers, or pesticides. the results support that of de cock (2005) and age et al (2010) that those conventional farmers cannot easily do without the use of synthetic products. table 3: feasibility of organic production standards by respondents organic production standard mean score decision working without use of synthetic fertilizer 2.36 nf working without use of synthetic pesticides 1.26 snf average mean score 1.81 nf source: field survey, 2009 information search on organic farming by respondents table 4 indicates the level of information search on organic gardening by respondents. the study reveals that the respondents’ average level of search for information on organic gardening was relatively neutral (mean score = 3.38), implying that the respondents are indifferent in terms of search for organic information. the finding agrees with that of de cock (2005) and gillespie (2001) that, in general, conventional farmers hardly seek for information about organic farming. table 4: intention of information search on organic gardening by respondents level of intension frequency very low 24 low 25 undecided 25 high 57 very high 35 mean score 3.33 decision u source: field survey, 2009 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 238-242 241 conversion to organic gardening by respondents the level of conversion to organic gardening by respondents was presented in table 5. the study indicated that the respondents’ average intention of conversion was found relatively neutral (mean score = 3.49). this implies that they have not decided to convert to organic gardening at the time of the study. this could be attributed to their neutrality for information search on organic gardening. this supports the findings of padel (2001) and burton et al (1999) that, the more the conventional farmers seeks for information about organic farming the higher his intension to convert and vice versa. table 5: intension of conversion to organic gardening by respondents level of intension frequency very low 23 low 26 undecided 24 high 60 very high 33 mean score 3.31 decision u source: field survey, 2009 constraints of conversion to organic gardening by respondents as shown in table 6, lack of knowledge & skill and limited government support were the most important constraints to organic gardening among the respondents, 42.13% and 41.20% respectively. this implies that organic information and government incentives are critical elements in conversion to organic gardening. the finding was in agreement with mohammed et al (2007) that lack of knowledge & skill, as well as lack of government incentives are very important reasons for not converting to organic farming in canada. table 6: respondents constraints of conversion to organic gardening constraints frequency* percentage* reduced yield and income for a time 76 35.18 limited government support 89 41.20 lack of knowledge and skill accessing organic information is difficult 92 64 42.13 29.63 source: field survey, 2009 *multiple response exists; hence > 100% conclusion and recommendations the study reports that the respondents had perceived a relatively neutral perception towards organic gardening. nevertheless, they agreed with the ecological benefits of organic gardening. the feasibility of production standards was relatively low. both the intention for information seeking and conversion to organic gardening were found to be neutral among the respondents. the most important constraint was lack of knowledge and skill on organic gardening. based on the findings of the study, the following policy recommendations were made:  creation of awareness on the consequences of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides should be pursued with vigor. this promotes organic gardening conversion.  governments and non-governmental organizations should provide adequate information on organic gardening as this increase the level of conversion for organic gardening by conventional gardeners.  organic cooperative societies should be formed by respondents. this provides easy access to loans and organic information flow in the study area with a view to facilitating the conversion process. references age, a. i., unongo, e. a. and sha akaa, c. k. (2010) “an assessment of organic farming practice among rural farmers in benue state, nigeria”, proceedings of the 24 th annual conference of farm management association of nigeria, pp. 105–09. ajzen, i. (1989) “attitudes, traits and actions: dispositional prediction of behaviour in personality and social psychology”, advances in psychology, no. 20: 1 – 63 bello, w. b. (2008) “problems and prospects of organic farming in developing countries”, ethiopian journal of environmental studies and management, vol. 1(1), pp. 36 – 43. burton, m. d. and young, t. (1999) “analysis of the determination of adoption of organic horticultural techniques in the uk”, journal of agricultural economics, vol. 50(1), pp. 47–63. de cock l. (2005) “determination of organic farming conversion in belgium”, proceeding of 11th international congress of the european association of agricultural economics, pp. 1–13. gillespie, b. (2010) “trends in organic agriculture and implication for extension”, sociology of extension, pp. 9 macrae, r. j., hill, s. b., mehuys, g. r. and henning, j. (1990) “farm scale agronomic and economic conversion from conventional to sustainable asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 238-242 242 agriculture”, advances in agro forestry. no. 43, pp. 155– 98. mohammed, k., gray, r., weseen, s. and sawyer, e. (2007) “assessing the barriers to conversion to organic farming: an institutional analysis”, a final report submitted to advancing canadian agriculture and agrifood saskatchewan. department of agricultural economics, university of saskatchewan, pp 1–58. npc (2006) “provisional population census, national population commission, abuja, nigeria padel, s. (2001) “conversion to organic farming: a typical example of the diffusion of innovation?”, society ruralites, vol. 41(1), pp. 42–62. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. management of water saving and organic based fertilizers technology for remediation and maintaining the health of paddy soils and to increase the sustainability of rice productivity in indonesia tien turmuktini (departement of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, winaya mukti university-jl. raya tanjungsari, bandung sumedang, km 29) tualar simarmata and benny joy (departement of agrotechnology faculty of agriculture, padjadjaran university. jl. raya bandung sumedang, km 21, bandung 40900) ania citra resmini (centre for application of radiation and isotope technology, national nuclear energy agency, jakarta) citation: tien turmuktini, tualar simarmata, benny joy and ania citra resmini (2012) “management of water saving and organic based fertilizers technology for remediation and maintaining the health of paddy soils and to increase the sustainability of rice productivity in indonesia”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 536 551. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 536-551 536 author(s) tien turmuktini departement of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, winaya mukti universityjl. raya tanjungsari, bandung sumedang km 29. tualar simarmata departement of agrotechnology faculty of agriculture, adjadjaran university, jl. raya bandung sumedang km 21, bandung 40900. benny joy departement of agrotechnology faculty of agriculture, padjadjaran university. jl. raya bandung sumedang km 21, bandung 40900 ania citra resmini centre for application of radiation and isotope technology, national nuclear energy agency, jakarta management of water saving and organic based fertilizers technology for remediation and maintaining the health of paddy soils and to increase the sustainability of rice productivity in indonesia abstract the rice production in indonesia is dominated by permanent flooding or inundation system. intensification of permanent flooding of paddy soils not only reduces the soil biological power significantly, but also restricts the roots growth. various field studies indicated mostly of paddy soils in indonesia has a low organic content (< 2%). management of paddy soil health is urgently required to restore, improve and maintain the soils organic matter as heart of soil ecosystem. sobari (system of organic based aerobic rice intensification) as water saving technology combined with straw compost based fertilizers technology has two main goals: (1) to remediate or restore, improve and maintain the health and quality of paddy soils, and (2) to enhance rice productivity in sustainable ways (efficient water and fertilizer use). the field results using several rice varieties in indonesia revealed that the water saving technology combined with organic fertilizers (straw compost) can produce grain yield about 8 – 12 t/ha (average of an increasing about 50 – 150% compared to anaerobic rice cultivation) and the water irrigation was reduced by at least 30 50% and as well as inorganic fertilizers was reduced at least by 25% this high rice yield is highly correlated with the increasing of roots zone about 4 – 10 times, number of productive tillers about 60 – 80 tillers, number of panicles, length of panicles and number of grain/panicle, and as well as due to the increase of soil biodiversity. the reuse of straw or straw compost into soils within three years is expected to be able to remediate and improve the health of degraded paddy soils significantly. keywords: water saving, soil health, paddy soils, organic fertilizers, straw compost, remediation, sobari introduction rice is one of the most important grains in indonesia since this crop is the staple food for majority of the people. increasing rice production to meet the population demand is one of the major issues in indonesia’s development program. indonesia is the world’s fourth largest populous country with 237 million people in the year of 2010, after china, india and united states, respectively. despite the population growth has declined from 2.4% per annum during the late 1960s, by early 1970s to 1.3%, and in near future expected to decline to less than 0,9%, population size is increasing continuously and it is expected to be double size by 2050 (population closely is to 480 million). the rate of rice consumption is about 139 kg rice per capita per annum belong to the highest in the world compared with japan, malaysia and thailand is only about 45 kg, 80 kg and 90 kg per capita per year, respectively. the currently rice consumption is about 33 million ton per annum and expected to increase to 38.5 million ton by year of 2025 (suryana, 2008; simarmata, 2008; apryantono, 2008: management of water saving and organic based .... 537 mcculloch, 2008. consequently, the rice production must be increased by at least 4 – 5 % per annum to ensure the sustainability of food security. rice cultivation covered a total of around 10 million hectares throughout the archipelago consisted of about 7,9 million ha paddy soils (lowland rice) and the rest is belong to upland rice. paddy rice growing in indonesia has changed dramatically during the last five decades. either rice production or rice productivity had increased significantly from 9 million ton rice (productivity about 2,5 ton per hectare) in early 1970 to 29 million tons in 1989 (4.23 ton per hectare) to 60 million ton in 2009 (4,6 ton per hectare). the increasing of rice production was highly correlated with the adoption of new technologies, mechanization, chemical use (fertilizers, plant protection agents) and luxurious use of valuable water irrigation (isb, 2004; isb, 2009; simarmata, 2009; fao, 2004). the challenge for agriculture is to increase the production to meet demand for food in a sustainable way. declining soil health and soil quality, scarcity of water and mismanagement of plant nutrients have made this task more difficult. can agriculture provide enough food for indonesia and how is the sustainability of the rice productivity and food security?. the recent data revealed that the highly intensive of fertilizer use that has been introduced over the past five decades probably has reached a point of diminishing returns or levelling off (simarmata and joy, 2011; abdullah et al. 2006; anthofer, 2004). the rapid growing of population in indonesia not only led to an intensive agricultural practices, but also accelerate land conversion of agricultural land to non-agricultural use and to sped land degradation and environment hazard. the intensive uses of inorganic fertilizers and agrochemical products during the green revolution (at beginning year of 1960) have given a great impact on the decline of soil health and soil quality. based on recently research, the soil organic content of agricultural soils has been decreased within 30 years sharply. it is estimated about 70% of paddy soils in indonesia have a low organic content (< 2 % of org-c) and low nutrients availability. this paddy soil is belong to degraded soil and can be categorized as unhealthy soils or sick soils and fatigue soils (simarmata and joy, 2011). the extent of sick paddy soils is increasing continually due to inefficient use of inorganic fertilizers, especially nitrogen and mismanagement of soil organic matter. the excessive use of nitrogen has accelerated the decomposition of soil organic matter (ingham, 2001: simarmata, 2009: abbott and murphy, 2004: gupta and rog, 2004; sullivan, 2004). a lot of attempt has been done to anticipate and to solve this problems. the adoption of environmentally friendly agriculture (organic based agricultural and good agricultural practices) becomes more important and growing rapidly. an effort to remediate or restore the health and quality of degraded agricultural soils has been done since the last 10 years by using organic fertilizers and soil ameliorant. the success key of soil remediation (restoring) and maintain of paddy soils health is highly correlated with soil organic matter management and good agricultural practices in sustainable ways. organic based fertilizers by using the rice straw or straw compost as a main source of organic fertilizers for paddy soils not only restore and improve the soils health, but also reduce inorganic fertilizers significantly. the use of straw compost not only remediates and increases the soils health, but also can reduce application inorganic fertilizers by at least 25% 50%. particularly, the supply of silica nutrient and potassium can rely on straw compost application. every 5 ton straw contain about 70 – 100 kg urea, 50 – 60 kg super phosphate and 100 – 150 kg kcl (dobermann and fairhurst 2002; husnain et al. 2008; simarmata, 2009; turmuktini et al. 2010). paddy rice cultivation (irrigated rice fields) largely depends on the water supply (irrigation) and it consumes about 3000 – 5000 l of water to produce 1 kg of grain rice. the increasing scarcity of water threatens the sustainability of the irrigated rice production system and hence the food security and livelihood of rice producers and consumers. the task becomes more difficult due to global climate change. therefore, a more efficient use of water is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 536-551 538 needed in rice production. several strategies and management are being pursued to reduce rice water requirement, such as alternate wetting and drying, ground cover systems, system of rice intensification (sri), aerobic rice and raised beds (uphoff 2004, yuan et al. 2004, yang et al. 2004; wikipedia 2009; namara et al. 2004; ho 2004; simarmata and yuwariah, 2009). since 2006 we have developed system of organic based aerobic rice intensification (sobari) to promote the soil biological activity (biodiversity) and to provide a favourable condition for rice roots growth and to increase the growth and yield of paddy rice (simarmata 2008). this technology is a holistic rice production system by using and integrating the soil biological power, plant, fertilizers and water management according to the plan and design. the main goals of sobari as a water saving and organic based fertilizers technology are (1) to remediate, improve and maintain the health and quality of paddy soils and (2) to increase the productivity of paddy rice in sustainable ways, (3) to promote efficient and eco-friendly paddy soil cultivation and (4) to reduce the inorganic fertilizers application by at least 25%. the implementation of sobari now is beginning widely adopted in several provinces of indonesia (west java, banten, east java, central java, north sumatera, south sulawesi, and north sulawesi, east nusa tenggara, bali and etc.) and it shown a promising and higher rice yield about 50 – 100% compared with traditional methods of continuous flooding (permanent anaerobic) and able to save the water irrigation significantly. this high rice yield is highly correlated with the increasing of roots zone about 4 – 10 times, number of productive tillers about 60 – 80 tillers, number of panicles, length of panicles and number of grain/panicle, and as well as due to the increase of soil biodiversity (beneficial organism) under aerobic condition. experience with sobari technology combined with the recycling of straw as organic fertilizers or straw compost was able to reduce inorganic fertilizers up to 25 50%, to reduce water irrigation to 30 – 50%, to enhance the soil biodiversity and nutrient availability and to increase the rice yield by at least 25 % compared to conventional methods or resulted about 6 – 11 ton grain yield of rice per hectare (simarmata 2008; simarmata 2009). this paper is a review of sobari as a water saving and straw compost based technology for restoring or remediation, improving and maintaining of the health of paddy soils to increase rice productivity and ensure food security in sustainable ways system of organic based aerobic rice intensification definition system of organic based aerobic rice intensification (sobari) is a holistic rice production system by integrating the soil biological power, plant, fertilizers (organic, biofertilizers and inorganic) and water management to achieve targeted main goal (by design). the main goals sobar are to achieve and to sustain high rice productivity, promotes and enhances agro-ecosystem health (soil quality & soil health), including biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. therefore, the maximize of local input, especially organic fertilizers (straw compost, cow dung or others) and biofertilizers becomes the main priority and called as low external inputs for sustainable rice cultivation (leisrc) (simarmata 2008). the management of local inputs is designed to optimize the biological processes in achieving the desired rice productivity (outputs) and environmental quality. system of organic based aerobic rice intensification is working with the nature by optimize of organicand biofertilizers application, water and culture of management to promote soil biological power and minimized the use of inorganic fertilizers. pillars of sobari the key success of system of organic based aerobic rice intensification (sobari) in increasing rice growth and soil biological activity (soil biological power) in soils are highly depend on the four basic concepts or pillars of sobari, as follows: (1) the of paddy soil ecosystem, (2) living soil as natural fertilizers factory (biofertilizers plant) or management of water saving and organic based .... 539 bioreactor, and (3) biological power of rice and (4) integrated nutrients management paddy ecosystem change traditionally paddy rice ecosystem is characterized by permanent flooding or inundation. consequently, all aerobic organisms cannot life in soils due to oxygen depletion, which is required for aerobic respiration. depletion oxygen leads to anaerobic conditions (anoxic conditions) and give a significant negative effect on the beneficial organisms activity and roots growth. by changing the rice ecosystem from anaerobic (permanent flooding) to aerobic conditions resulted a dramatically change in soils, especially on soil biological activity and the roots growth. the moist soils up to muddy condition provide oxygen for the respiration of soil organism. mesoand micro fauna play an important role to create and to build a tunnels system, which is very important for air and oxygen supply under muddy condition. it seems, these tunnels support the biological activity in soil and it produced a lot of cast on soil surface. this cast is containing either macroor micronutrients and as well as essential growth substances, like vitamins. in contrast under inundation or permanent flooding, there is no activity of aerobic and produced no cast on paddy soil surface (uphoff 2004; hengsdijk, and bindraban 2001; simarmata 2008; bouman et al. 2002). in addition, the roots growth and microbial activity was increased significantly under aerobic to muddy condition (figure 2.1) the population of beneficial microbe (nonsymbiotic nitrogen fixers such as azotobacter sp & azospillum sp and phosphate solubilizing bacteria) and roots growth were increased highly significantly compared with anaerobic conditions (simarmata 2008). the rice roots system under aerobic to muddy condition was about 5 – 10 times greater than flooding ecosystem. it has been revealed only about 30% of rice roots growing well. consequently, the potential obtained yield of various rice varieties is the work of only 30% rice roots. if roots system growing optimally in step with the rice production, the potential yield of various rice variety may increase by at least 2 three times. therefore to change permanent flooding rice ecosystem to aerobic conditions (field capacity to muddy) is absolutely necessary to increase the rice production and to save water irrigation significantly. figure 2.1: roots system and tiller number of sobari rice under muddy condition (aerobic) is about 3 – 5 greater than permanent flooding rice (anaerobic) (simarmata, 2007) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 536-551 540 living soil as natural biofertilizers factory paddy soil ecosystem under aerobic to muddy condition is living system and highly complex system characterized by several of biological, chemical and physical processes, which markedly influenced by environmental factors. microorganisms inhabit the soil and together with exocellular enzymes and the soil meso fauna and macro fauna conduct all known metabolic reactions. a hectare of fertile healthy topsoil contains approximately 1200 kg of bacteria, 1200 kg of actinomycetes, 2400 kg of molds, 120 kg of algae, 240 kg of protozoa, 51 kg of nematodes, 120 kg of insects, 1200 kg of worms and 2400 kg of plant roots one per gram moist soil in rhizosphere contains approximately 1,200 x 10 6 of bacteria, 46 x 10 6 of actinomycetes, 12 x 10 5 of fungi and 5 x 10 3 of algae (sullivan 2001; ingham 2001). all these organisms from tiny bacteria up to the large earthworms and insects will eat, grow and interact in the soil ecosystem to form food web that influence paddy soil ecosystem significantly. food web is the community of organisms living all or part of their lives in the soil and it named as the living component of soil. therefore under aerobic to muddy condition, paddy soil is life and act as natural fertilizers factory or biofertilizers plant. contribution of soil beneficial organisms for nutrient availability was well known. the nonsymbiotic nitrogen fixers may contribute up to 50 – 100 kg n per hectare, phosphate solubilize microbes may increase the availability of p up to 50%. in addition, the mineralization rate of added straw was faster and provided more nutrient and energy for biological activity to support the rice growth. flooding permanently or under anaerobic condition will lead to close of natural valuable fertilizers factory, mean while the farmer spend a lot of money to buy in organic fertilizers (uphoff 2004; simarmata 2008). paddy soil as natural fertilizers factory (bioreactor) need a sufficient energy sources to allow the machine working properly. energy source for biological machine is mainly depends on organic availability. organic material is entry point of chemical energy to paddy soil ecosystem. consequently, the activity of heterotrophic microbes, like bacteria, fungi and actimycetes are relying on organic supply. the present of microbe as first trophic level allow the energy flow to next trophic level in soil food web. as organisms decompose complex material, or consume other organisms, nutrients are converted from one form to another form, and are made available to plants and to other soil organisms. soil-dwelling organisms release bound-up minerals, converting them into plant available forms that are taken up by the plants growing on the site. organisms which are not directly involved in decomposing plants wastes may feed on each other or others wastes products or the other substances they release. among the substances released by the various microbes are vitamin, amino acids, sugars, antibiotics, gums, and waxes, which are very important to sustain the soils remain alive and healthy. it is not surprisingly that aerobic to muddy condition of paddy soils are tilled and fertilized by soil organisms (ingham 2001; sullivan 2004). the performance of natural fertilizers factory (biofertilires plant) is highly depending on water management and organic supply (organic fertilizers). the water management or irrigation supply is aimed to maintain the paddy soil condition under field capacity to muddy conditions and to meet the water requirement of rice. water conditions or water level is regulated through water canal. the distance between of water canal may range from 5 – 10 m depend on the level of paddy soils. the rice straw is used as a main source organic material to supply chemical energy the soil ecosystem and essential nutrient (macro and microelements) for rice plant. the application of composted straw or other organic fertilizers play an important role to stimulate the growth of beneficial microbes (n-fixers, phosphate solubilizing and phytohormone producing bacteria) and to secure the of organic matter supply for soil fauna, which are act as soil engineers. the application of improved organic fertilizers (high content of humic substances, relative high of nutrition contents and other bioactive substances such amino acid, sugar and vitamins are highly recommended. the benefits of this products includes easily handling and application, relative lower in application rate (dosage), the standardized quality, relative free from contaminants (weed management of water saving and organic based .... 541 seeds and soil born diseases) and lasted longer in soils. biological power of rice since long time ago, people and scientist believe that rice is an aquatic plant and grows best in standing water. but recently was known that rice is not an aquatic plant. although rice can survive when its roots are continuously submerged under water but does not thrive under hypoxic conditions. rice does not grow as well in standing water as when its roots are able to get oxygen from direct contact with air. under submerged conditions the roots grow is limited and rice plants spend lot of its energy and some of the roots' cortex disintegrates to form air pockets (aerenchyma tissue pockets (aerenchyma) so that oxygen can reach root tissues. in addition, under flooded conditions up to 3/4 of roots may die by the time of flowering (panicle initiation) (uphoff 2004; simarmata 2008). field results revealed that wider space combined with good water and nutrient management increased the tiller number and growth significantly (figure 2.2). figure 2.2: the tiller number about 60 – 80 per clumps and growth performance of sobari rice (varierty of ciherang), wihile the flooding rice produced only 20 -30 tillers (doc. simarmata, 2006 – 2007). water management is focusing to maintain an aerobic to muddy condition in paddy rice ecosystem. young seedling 8 – 12 days old are planted twin (two of singly seedling are planted in line with 5 cm distance) combined with wider plan space (30 cm x 30 cm or 30 cm x 35 cm is highly recommended) to allow the roots of singly seedling grow independently at the beginning stage. output oriented of organic based fertilizers is aimed to secure the supply of nutrient sufficiently and to maintain the optimum biological activity in soil ecosystem nutrients management the intensive rice practices lead to the excessive nutrients removing from the paddy soils ecosystem. fertilizers application of traditionally rice cultivation is focused only on primary nutrients such as n, p, and k, especially nitrogen (very cheap due to subsidized price). consequently lead to nutrients depletion in soils. in addition, the excessive of nitrogen application will accelerate the decomposition of soil organic matter and harm the environment (soil quality, water and air pollution). at least sixteen and possibly nineteen elements are known to be essential for plant growth. all nutrients have to be present in adequate amounts according to plant development or stage of growth to ensure the high rice productivity. therefore, the management nutrition or fertilization of sobari is based on outputs oriented (figure 2.3). the amount nutrients supplied into agroecosystem as inputs are calculated according to the plants requirement for supporting plant development and growth to achieve the targeted productivity (outputs by design). the plants needs of nutrients as raw materials based on the plant development. the nutrients availability in soils and agro-ecosystem (soil properties, landscape and climate) condition and as well as asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 536-551 542 on the characteristic of applied fertilizers (solubility, salt index, reaction, etc.) must be integrated in designing of inputs management (raw materials management). it is necessary to keep the balance between inputs and outputs in order to avoid either nutrients depletion or excessive of nutrients supply, nutrients disorder in soils and to maintain the sustainability of natural resources. in the long run, it is possible to obtain high yield on sustained basis only when the nutrients balance is positive (when the input is larger than removal). thus all removed nutrients from the soil by plants must be replaced in an ecologically responsible away. -15 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100-110 transplanting acive tillering initiantion early flowringl dat = days after planting harvest early growth i = 014 ii = 21 -28 iii = 35 45 iv= 55 65 urea 100 kg kcl 25 kg sp-36 50 kg straw compost 2 – 6 t/ha biofertliz ers 400 gram bwd fertilizer (kg/ha)  3-4 50 100 kg urea  4 no basic fertilizers first fertilkisation lcc fertilizers (kg/ha)  3-4 150 – 200 kg urea + 50 – 100 kg kcl per hectare  4 100 -150 kg urea + 50 100 kg kcl per hectare second fertilisation targeted yield 8 – 12 t/ha the design of integrated nutrients management of sobari to produce 8 – 12 ton grain yiled/ha based on leaf color chart (lcc) figure 2.3: design of integrated nutrients management output oriented of sobari based on leaf color chart (lcc) in sobari is recommended the use of a balance application of organic and mineral fertilizers. the widely used of fertilization methods in sobari to produce about 8 – 12 ton rice grain yield (targeted production) are as follow; (1) the incorporation of rice straw or straw compost is done during the land preparation, (2) one day or before transplanting about 50 kg of urea, 25 kg kcl and 50 kg sp36 (as alternative is 50 kg urea and 100 kg npk) were applied into soil, (3) application of about 50 100 kg urea is done at 18 – 21 days after transplanting or after the first weeding (leaf colour chart can be used as indicator to determine the nitrogen rate), (4) 50 100 kg urea and 25 50 kg kcl or 50 kg urea and 100 – 150 kg npk (16:16:16) is applied 35 – 38 days after transplanting. in addition, enriched organic liquid fertilizers or multinutrition solution is sprayed to plant at 15, 15, 25, 35, 45 and 55 days after transplanting (figure 2.3). summary of sobari field results sobari is now widely adopted by incorporating the rice straw during land the foliar application of multinutrients solution at 15, 25, 35, 45 and 55 dat is recommended to boost the growth and filling of rice stage management of water saving and organic based .... 543 preparation. young singly seedling is transplanted at 8 – 12 days old with wider spacing (30 cm x 30 cm or 30 cm x 35 cm) in square pattern. seedling is planted at the marked intersection of planting space (25 x 30 cm, or 30 x 30 cm or 30 x 35 cm). a single seedling is planted in twin methods (two single seedling is planted in line about 5 cm distance from each others at point of planting cross section, called as twin seedling method : “sobari-ts” ) to allow the roots system of seedling growing properly at the beginning stage. the seedling is planted by slipping in sideways rather than plunging it into the soil vertically and it makes the shape of the transplanted seedling more like an l than like a j. with an l shape, it is easier for the tip of the root to resume its growth downward into the soil. water applications or irrigation is required to regulate the soil moisture under field capacity to muddy conditions until the beginning of grain ripening stage. the water regulation is necessary to allow rice roots growing properly and to stimulate the growing of soil organisms and as well as its biodiversity. one or two days before weeding (manually or mechanically), the rice field is irrigated with 12 cm depth or a thin layer to allow the removing of weeds the easily and to improve the soil aeration. usually, weeding is done 3 times (2, 4 and 6 weeks after transplantation). the field results of sobari from several provinces or districts in indonesia are summarized in table 1. as shown in table 1, adoption of sobari with various rice varieties under different planting season in several provinces of indonesia are fairly easily to achieve 40 – 60 fertile tiller plant and contains about 150 – 250 grains per panicle. the average yield was ranged from 8 to 10 ton grain yield per hectare (about 50 – 100% higher than traditional flooded paddy rice). the highest yield about 12 ton per hectare in 2008 was obtained in sobari experimental research station of sobari of agriculture faculty of padjadajaran university, bandung. sobari method raises not only the yield of paddy (kg of unmilled rice harvested per hectare) without relying on improved varieties, but also to increase the outturn of milled rice by 5 – 10%. this „bonus‟ on top of higher paddy yields is due to having fewer unfilled grains and fewer broken grains. in addition, based on field results and report of farmers groups and extension services have verified that sobari crops are more resistant to pests and diseases than and as well as more resistance to abiotic or climatic stress (drought). the length of the crop cycle (time to maturity) is also reduced by 5 – 10 days. the earlier harvested time is highly correlated with no seedling stress during transplantation and after planting the roots can grow optimally without lag phase. the key success of sobari depends on water irrigation and fertilizers management. the water supply by irrigation is focusing to maintain the soils under moist to muddy conditions to allow the roots system and soil biota growing optimally. based on field experiences, the sobari method may reduce the water irrigation use by at least 30 % 50 %. output oriented integrated fertilizers application of sobari is aimed to provide a sufficient nutrient to meet the plant requirement based on targeted yield by design and to improve the soil quality and soil health. therefore, the application of organic fertilizers and biofertilizers are need to increase nutrients availability and biological activity in soils. sobari is focusing on the application of rice straw as a main source of organic fertilizers. actually, organic fertilizers in the form of rice straw are the main product of paddy rice cultivation. it well known that ratio between straw and grain yield ranged from 1.0 – 1.5 times. straw is the only organic material available in significant quantities to most rice farmers. about 40 percent of the nitrogen (n), 30 to 35 percent of the phosphorus (p), 80 to 85 percent of the potassium (k), and 40 to 50 percent of the sulfur (s) taken up by rice remains in vegetative plant parts at crop maturity (dobermann and fairhurst 2002). nutrient content of every 5 ton rice straw is equal to 50 kg n, 10 kg p2o5 and 120 kg k20. straw is also an important source of nutrients such as zinc (zn) and silicon (si). by incorporating the rice straw during land asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 536-551 544 preparation combined with biofertilizers may reduce the application inorganic fertilizers significantly. based on field report, the application of 2 – 6 ton/ha of compost straw combined with the application biofertilizers and enriched organic liquid fertilizers as multinutrition solution (nazarudin et al. 2010; simarmata 2009) reduce the usage of inorganic fertilizers by 50%. sobari recommends the inoculation of piled straw with decomposer (sellulolitic and lignolitic combined with trichoderma, sp) about 2 – 3 weeks before spreading in the rice field and incorporation during the land preparation to accelerate decomposition of straw and to suppress the pathogenic microbes in straw. table 1: unmilled rice yield summary of the system of organic based aerobic rice intensification (sobari) in different province/district in indonesia (planting season 2007 – 2009) location yield (t/ha control (t/ha) increment (%) sobari experimental fields and demo plot (faculty of agriculture of padjadjaran univ. bandung), planted rice (ciherang, dyahsuci, ir 64, mekongga) 6 – 12 4 – 7 50 –150% demo plot in research institute for rice of indonesia, harvested on july 2008 (ciherang, mekongga and sintanur 7 – 10 west java (bandung, garut, sumedang, bogor, bekasih, subang, etc.) with various rice variety 6 11 4 – 6 50 –100 % banten (serang) 6 – 10 4 – 6 50 –100 % east java (tulung agung, jombang, madiun, blitar, mojokerto, nganjuk, etc.) 6 – 10 4 6 50 –100 % central java (sragen, sukoharjo, wonogiri, karang anyar, purworejo, magelang, semarang, etc. ) 6 10 4 6 50 –80% nort sumatera (sergei, tebing tinggi, tapanuli, etc) 5 – 10 3 7 50 –100 % south sulawesi (gowa, luwu, etc.) conducted by famer groups in 16 subdistrict (various rice variety) 6 – 10 3 – 6 50-200% north sulawesi (minsel, minut, etc. ) conducted by famer groups with various rice variety 6 – 10 3 – 7 50 –200 % nusa tenggara (kupang, ende, bajawa, nagekeo, rote ndao) conducted by famer groups with various rice variety 6 10 2 – 6 50 –300 % west kalimantan (2 ha) 8,9 ton 100% sources: agricultural services agency of bogor (2008), agricultural services agency of south sulawesi (2009), agricultural services agency of bajawa and ende (2008), agricultural services agency of south minahasa (2008), rice institute for rice of indonesia, 2008, pt. sms, 2008-2009 management for remediation the health of paddy soils basic concept the concept of restoring or remediation of soils health is based on basic function of healthy soils under natural ecosystems, such as (1) to provide an excellence growth media for roots system and soil organisms (2) regulating and partitioning water and solute flow; (3) filtering and buffering, degrading, immobilizing, and detoxifying organic and inorganic materials, including industrial and municipal by-products and atmospheric deposition; (4) storing and cycling nutrients and other elements within the earth’s biosphere (5) to sustain and maintain a management of water saving and organic based .... 545 diverse community of soil organisms (soil biodiversity) which are important to control plant disease, insect and weed pests, to form beneficial symbiotic associations with plant roots, (6) to improve soil quality, water and nutrients holding capacity, (7) improve crop production (seybold et al, 1998 and ingham, 2001). straw compost for restoring health of paddy soils briefly, the main function of organic fertilizers like compost straw in soils will act as: (1) a revolving nutrient bank account. rice straw is derived from plant residues and it contains all essential plant nutrients (macro and micronutrients) and chemical energy resulted from photosynthesis. therefore, biomass of straw as organic matter is the storehouse for nutrients and chemical energy. either nutrients or energy are released by microbial process (mineralization or decomposition and oxidation of organic substances). the released nutrients are highly to plant (plant-available form) and the stable organic fraction (humus) adsorbs and holds nutrients in a plant-available form, (2) entry point of energy flow (supply) into soils ecosystem, (3) an agent to activate and regulate the biological system in soils .and (4). an agent to improve soil healt and soil,quality (simarmata et al. 2011). consequently, organic fertilizers in form straw compost plays an important and has a vital role in soils and it may categorized as heart of paddy soil ecosystem. in addition, straw compost which is rich organic carbon (30 – 40 %) contain about 1.5% n, 0,3 – 0,5 % p2o5, 2 – 4% k2o, 3 – 5 % sio2) and micro nutrients, such as cu, zn, mn, fe, cl, mo. actually, the main product rice cultivation is not grain yield itself but the organic fertilizers in form rice straw. in general the straw production is about 1.5 x rice grain yield. if productivity of rice is about 6 – 8 ton grain yield/ha, than the production of straw is about 9 – 12 ton/ha. the nutrients contain of ice straw and it potential to substitute the inorganic fertilizers is presented in table 2. table 2: nutrients content of straw, economical value (idr) and it potential to substitute the main inorganic fertilizers (simarmata and joy, 2011) as shown in table 2, the reuse of straw as an organic fertilizers can substitute the inorganic fertilizers up to 50% of major nutrients, such n, p and k., while other nutrients (ca, mg, si, s) and micro nutrients (cu, b, zn, fe) could be fully substitute. the application of straw is also nutrients contain kg/ton (%) straw c-org 40 400 n 0,65 6,5 urea p 0,1 1 sp-36 k 1,45 14,5 kcl ca 0,6 6 mg 0,2 2 si 5,5 55 s 0,10 1 1.299,60 mt urea 250,20 mt sp-36 2.174,40 mt kcl the price urea rp 3600 (rp 1200, sp-36 rp 4000 (rp 1850) dan kcl rp 6000 equivalent in 5 t straw 4.678.560.000.000 900.720.000.000 7.827.840.000.000 idr rice production in 2010 = about 60 million ton or 90 million ton of straw equiavlent : kg/ha 2000,0 72,2 13,9 161,1 30,0 10,0 275,0 5,0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 536-551 546 act refilling or recharging of the fuel or energy into soil ecosystem, every 5 ton straw will supply about 2000 kg organic carbon into soils. thus, the activity of soil organisms is highly correlated with the supply of straw which act as energy source (fuel). the composting of straw with appropriate technology will increase not only nutrient contents, beneficial organisms and but also important to control the pathogen microbes which has been existed in the straw. the increasing population of organisms in straw compost (bacteria, fungi, animal and others) will improve the quality of straw compost significantly (figure 2.4). in general, the straw compost content about 30 – 40 % of total carbon (rich in humus and organic acids), 1 – 1,5 %, 0,5 % p205, n, 2 – 3 % k2o, 3 – 5% of sio2 and other essential nutrients. in situ composting of straw has been developed (simarmata and joy 2010) for the remediation of paddy soils in indonesia (figure 2.4). figure 2.2: in situ direct composting of straw (a = preparation of decomposer inoculant, b = compost box, pilling of straw and inoculation, c= straw pile, d= covering straw pile g & h = mycelium of fungi is growing well on straw compost and i = mature straw compost (simarmata & joy, 2011). application methods briefly, the application of composted straw can be applied or incorporated (1) before land preparation and (2) after transplanting for remediating or restoring the soil health of paddy soils. before land preparation: shortly before land cultivation with tractor, the composted straw (normally 2 – 3 weeks has a c/n ration to 30 40 after 2 – 3 weeks composting process) and it can be applied on the surface of paddy field homogenously. subsequently, the land is cultivated using tractor or others equipment to management of water saving and organic based .... 547 incorporate the straw compost into the soils (figure 2.3). in general one week after incorporation, the c/n ratio of soil will be decreased to below < 20 and the rice seedling or rice seed can be planted. figure 2.4: spreading and incorporation of straw compost and following with land cultivation or preparation (simarmata and joy, 2011) after transplanting: the application of mature straw compost (c/n ratio about 20 or less) is applied about 2-3 weeks after transplanting. the incorporation or placement of compost straw within plant row is done after the first weeding (figure 2.5). during this activity, the weeds that still exist and growth closely to the rice clumps can be eliminated manually. subsequently, it is recommended applying of inorganic fertilizers to boost the plant growth. figure 2.5: application of straw compost within plant row after the first weeding (about 2 – 3 weeks after transplanting). the straw is placed or incorporated into soils by stepping (simarmata and joy 2011) field results and close remarks the application of compost straw or straw has shown a great impact on the improving the soil quality and soil health. the content of organic carbon, availability of nutrients and on biodiversity of organisms in soils was increased significantly. the application of 2 – 6 ton/ha of compost straw increase the rice yield and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 536-551 548 reduce the rate of inorganic fertilizers significantly (table 3). table 2: effect of straw compost the rice grain yield under different rate of potassium fertilizers (nazarudin et al., 2010). straw compost (ton ha -1 ) rate of kcl (kg ha -1 ) 0 50 100 150 0 2,90 a a 3,80 b a 6,20 c a 6,44 c a 2 4,20 a b 5,48 b b 8,49 c b 8,54 c b 4 7,21 a c 9,28 c c 9,49 c d 8,76 b c 6 8,84 a d 9,20 b c 9,20 b c 9,10 b d note: value number within row or column followed by the same letter (capital for vertical in column) is not different significantly according to the lsd 0.95 test it is estimated that application of 2 – 4 ton straw compost within 3 years (about 6 planting season) will be able to restore and improving the health of paddy soils. as indicator of the soil health recovery can be seen on the main indicator such as the biological, chemical and physical indicator. briefly, the content of organic carbon must be much more than 2% and availability of major nutrients is at least belonging to medium category. subsequently, it is need the management of soil organic matter by using the straw as` main source of organic fertilizers. the habit to burn of straw must avoid or forbidden strictly. the straw burning not only polluted the environment but also led to the loss of major nutrients significantly. about 91% c, 91% n, 45 % p, 70 % k, 50 % ca, 20 % mg and others nutrients were loss due to the straw burning (husnain et al. 2008). the success key of restoring and maintaining of soils health for sustainable rice cultivation to ensure the food security in indonesia is highly depend on management of soil organic matter. the use of straw as the main source of organic fertilizers is absolutely correct. it has been ready available on site. therefore it belong the low cost and effective agent that can be used as agent for re-healing and to maintain the health of the soils ecosystem. thus, the sobari combined with management of rice straw can be implemented to speed the paddy soil remediation and to increase the rice productivity in indonesia in sustainable ways. conclusions and suggestions the conclusions and suggestions can be summarized as follows: 1. system of organic based aerobic rice intensification (sobari) is a holistic of water saving and inorganic fertilizers reducing technology focusing on soil biological and rice power management and as well as integrated fertilizers management to increase rice production and to improve the soil quality significantly. it can reduce the water irrigation by at least 30 50%, seed rate about 75%, and inorganic fertilizers by at least 25%, and increase the rice yield about 50% 100% compared with traditionally flooding rice cultivation. 2. the main goals of sobari as water saving and organic based fertilizers technology are (1) to remediate, improve and maintain the health and quality of paddy soils and (2) to increase the productivity of paddy rice in sustainable ways, (3) to promote efficient and eco-friendly paddy soil cultivation and (4) to reduce the inorganic fertilizers application significantly. 3. adopting the sobari as water saving and environmentally friendly cost reducing technology combined with management of water saving and organic based .... 549 straw and integrated nutrients managements will promote and speed the remediation or restoring and improving of paddy soils health and increase the sustainability of rice production 4. furtherer research are need, especially on; (1) a comprehensive water requirements, (2) soil biological activity (macroand microorganisms) and roots system under different water conditions, (3) the application organic and biofertlizers to substitute or reduce the inorganic fertilizers (5) the performance of roots system, growth and yield various rice variety under different planting season references abbott, l. and d. murphy (2004) “overview of ‘soil biology’ tests”, soil biology in agriculture. proceedings of a workshop on current research into soil biology in agriculture tamworth sustainable farming training centre 11-12 august 2004 (ed. r. l. kelly). nsw department of primary industries. abdullah, a. b., shoichi ito and kelali adhana. “estimate of rice consumption in asian countries and the world towards 2050”, tottori 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(2004) “the system of rice intensification (sri): capitalizing on existing yield potentials by changing management practices to increase rice productivity with fewer inputs and more profitability”, cornell international institute for food, agriculture and development (ciifad) http://www.pdf-search-engine.com/profil-indonesia-pdf.html http://www.pdf-search-engine.com/profil-indonesia-pdf.html http://www.usindo.org/ http://www.aares.info/files/2003_fuglie.pdf http://www.ers.usda.gov/ http://www.attra.ncat.org/ management of water saving and organic based .... 551 wikipedia (2009) “rice production in indonesia” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/indonesia yang, c., yang, l., yang, y. and ouyang, z. (2004) “rice root growth and nutrient uptake as influenced by organic manure in continuously and alternately flooded paddy soils”, agricultural water management 70: 67-81 http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat yuan l. p., peng j., rafaralahy, s. and rabenandrasana, j. eds., “assessments of the system of rice intensification”, proceedings of an international conference, sanya, china, april 1-4, 2002, pp. 00-00. ithaca, ny: cornell international institute for food, agriculture and development. fairhurst t., a. dobermann, c. quijano-guerta, and v.balasubramanian. 2007. mineral deficiencies and toxicities. in: fairhurst t., c. witt, r.j. buresh, and a. dobermann. 2007. rice: a practical guide to nutrient management (2nd edition). international rice research institute, international plant nutrition institute, and international potash institute, the philippine. pp: 46-89. http://ciifad.cornell.edu/sri/proceedings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/indonesia http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat http://ciifad.cornell.edu/sri/proceedings introduction publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. socio-economic factors affecting adoption of soya bean production technologies in takum local government area of taraba state, nigeria mustapha, s. b. (department of agricultural extension services, university of maiduguri, nigeria) makinta, a. a. (department of agricultural economics, university of maiduguri, nigeria) zongoma, b. a. (department of agricultural economics, university of maiduguri, nigeria) iwan, a. s. (department of agricultural extension services, university of maiduguri, nigeria) citation: mustapha, s. b., makinta, a. a., zongoma, b. a. and iwan, a. s. (2012): “socio-economic factors affecting adoption of soya bean production technologies in takum local government area of taraba state, nigeria”, asian journal agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 271-276. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 271-276 271 author(s) mustapha, s. b. department of agricultural extension services, university of maiduguri, nigeria email: shettimabulama@yahoo.com makinta, a. a. department of agricultural economics, university of maiduguri, nigeria zongoma, b. a. department of agricultural economics, university of maiduguri, nigeria iwan, a. s. department of agricultural extension services, university of maiduguri, nigeria socio-economic factors affecting adoption of soya bean production technologies in takum local government area of taraba state, nigeria abstract the study examined socio-economic factors affecting the adoption of soya bean production technologies in takum local government area of taraba state, nigeria. interview schedules were administered to 180 respondents which were analyzed by the use of descriptive (frequencies and percentages) and inferential (multiple regression analysis) statistics. the study revealed that majority of the respondents adopted the recommended technologies with respect to improved seeds, planting time and harvesting time representing 52.20%, 50.70% and 68.90% respectively. while on the other hand, majority of the respondents did not adopt the recommended technologies with regards to fertilizer application, spacing, weeding frequency and the use of chemicals with 52.20%, 53.30%, 61.10% and 67.80% respectively. the regression analysis revealed that educational level, farming experience and sources of information had significantly and positively influenced the adoption of improved soya bean production technologies by respondents. the major constraints to adoption of soya bean production technologies by respondents were poor extension services (75.60%) and lack of credit facilities (72.20%. the study recommends that agricultural extension services should adequately be provided with input support services in the form of credit facilities among others. keywords: adoption, factors, taraba state, technologies, soya bean introduction background to the study soya bean (glycine max l.) is a leguminous crop that grows in tropical, sub-tropical and temperate climates (adeniyan and ayoola, 2006). it is originated from the peoples republic of china, other major producing countries include; u.s.a, brazil and argentina (misari and idowu, 1995). it was introduced to nigeria in 1908 (misari and idowu, 1995). the world experienced shortage of oil seeds immediately after the world war ii which accelerated the drive for increased soya bean production in nigeria (dugje et al, 2006). furthermore, soya bean cultivation in nigeria has expanded as a result of its nutritive, economic and diverse domestic usage. the crop can be grown successfully in many states of nigeria using low agricultural inputs (idrisa, 2009). in the traditional soya bean growing areas, it is most commonly intercropped with cereal crops like maize, sorghum and millet (adeniyan and ayoola, 2006). soya bean is consumed as food (milk), used for production of edible oil, animal feeds, edible protein and for industrial purposes (abdullahi, 2004). research efforts to improve the existing soya bean varieties, to expand and increase production in nigeria were initiated in different research institutes from the mid 1970’s (misari and idowu, 1995). notably among the various research institutes was the international institute for tropical agriculture (iita) by initiating research work on soya bean in the 1970’s and has made substantial effort to improve the output of the crop (abdullahi, 2004). the good varieties of soyabean produced in nigeria includes: tgx1448-2e, tgx1904-6f, tgx1830-2e; and tg x 1485-2e-id (adeniyan and ayoola, 2006). idrisa (2009) reported that, with the development of improved varieties, commercial production of soyabean has expanded beyond its “traditional home” (benue, kaduna, niger and plateau) states. it is now produced in other states, such as bauchi, borno, jigawa, kano, kebbi, kwara, lagos, nasarswa, oyo, sokoto, taraba, zamfara and federal capital territory. improved technology is the systematic application of collective resources to solution of problems through the assertion of control over nature and all kinds of human processes (roggers, 1993). this underlies the reason for the use of improved technology in the development of agricultural resources to make a better living. dugje et al, (2006) reported the agronomic practices which are recommended for soyabean production in nigeria to mailto:shettimabulama@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 271-276 272 include; site selection, land preparation, planting time, spacing and seed rate, fertilizer application, weed control, pest and disease control, harvest and storage. yet the adoption of the recommended practices for production and management technologies for soyabean production is relatively low (ani and undiandeye, 2001). therefore, it was found imperative to analyze the socio-economic factors affecting the adoption of improved farm technologies among soya bean farmers in takum local government area of taraba state. statement of the problem nigeria as a developing nation had long sought for the application of improved agricultural technologies through the launching of numerous projects and programmes. notable ones are the green revolution (gr), agricultural development programme (adps), and national accelerated food production projects (nafpp), but with limited success. despite all these efforts made by the nigerian government to boast agricultural production with a view to improving the living standard of the rural farm families, the effort have not been fairly reflected in the productivity of farmers, which remain at downtown of return to scale. this could be as a result of many constraints faced by farmers and thus, making it very difficult for improved agricultural technologies to be employed. some attempts have been made to study the adoption of farm technologies among soyabean farmers in nigeria (ani and undiandeye, 2001; idrisa, 2009). however, such studies did not address the factors affecting the adoption of improved farm technologies among soyabean farmers implied in takun local government area of taraba state. the study was therefore conducted to fill this vacuum. objective of the study the broad objective of the study was to examine the socioeconomic factors affecting the adoption of improved farm technologies among soyabean farmers in takum local government area of taraba state. the specific objectives were to: i. identify the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, ii. examine the extent of adoption improved farm technologies among respondents, iii. analyze the effects of socio-economic factors in adoption of improved farm technologies among respondents, and iv. determine the constraints against adoption of improved farm technologies among respondents in the study area. methodology the study area the study was carried out in takum local government area (lga) of taraba state, nigeria. the lga is located between latitudes 7 0 3 1 e and longitudes 10 0 01 1 e of the equator; therefore, it lies on the southern part of the guinea savana zone of the state (taraba state agricultural development programme, 2009). the study area covers a land area of 600, 915km 2 with a population of 247, 657 (national population commission, 2006). the study area has dominant features of the middle belt of nigeria with two main seasons: the wet and the dry season. the wet season usually starts from april and ends in november with an annual rainfall varying from 1250mm in the north to 2500mm in the southern part of the state per annum with an annual average temperature of 26.70 0 c to 27.80 0 c lowering towards the south (tsadp, 2009). the area is inhabited by a number of ethnic groups: tiv, kuteb, chamba and jukun who are predominantly farmers and engaged in different types of activities such as local craft, hunting, fishing and tailoring among others. sources of data and sampling procedure primary source was mainly used for the study. these were generated from the respondents through the use of structured and pre-tested interview schedules which were administered by enumerators trained for the purpose under the supervision of the researchers. secondary information sourced from textbooks, journal publications and records from taraba state agricultural development programme (tsadp) were used to complement the primary data. the sampling procedure was based on multi-stage random sampling techniques which give individuals of sampling unit equal chances of being selected. among the five districts of the study area (kwambai, takum i, takum ii, chanchangi and amadu), three districts were randomly selected (amadu, takum ii and chanchangi) at the first stage. at the second stage, four villages were randomly selected from each of the three districts, making a total of 12 villages sampled. at the third stage, 15 respondents were selected from each of the villages, thereby giving a total of 180 respondents as the sample size for the study. data analysis the analytical techniques employed for this study include the descriptive and inferential statistics. the descriptive statistics that were used to summarize the data were percentages and frequencies to measure objectives (i), (ii) and (iv).the inferential statistical tool used was multiple regression analysis to examine the effects of socioeconomic characteristics on adoption of improved soyabean farm technologies among respondents (objective iii). the explicit form of the model was expressed as: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 271-276 273 y = f (x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, x7) where; y = adoption of improved soya bean production technologies x1 = age of household held (years) x2 = sex of household head (male = 1, female = 0) x3 = household size (numbers) x4 = sources of information of household head. x5 = farm size (hectare) x6 = farming experience of household head (years) x7 = educational level of household head results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of respondents the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents were examined with respect to their gender, marital status, age, farm size, household size and level of education as presented in table 1. the study shows that majority (62.20%) were male, while female constitutes only 37.80% of the respondents. this implies that gender was a significant factor in agriculture, because of its vital role in determining farming activities in the study area. in addition, 68.90% of the respondents were married and were in their economically active and productive age (3049years) representing 71.10% in the study area. this confirms with the report of amaza et al. (2007) that most of the nigerian farmers were between 30 and 50 years of age. table 1 also shows that 57.80% of the respondents cultivated less than one hectare of farmland, while 37.80% cultivated between 1 and 2 ha of farmland and only 4.40% cultivated above 2 ha of farmland. this was in agreement with that of oriole (2009) who indicated that most of the soyabean farmers in nigeria were small scale farmers, who cultivate less than 3 ha of farmland. the result further shows that most (24.20%) of the respondents had household size of 5-9 members. the implication could that provision of farm labour could not be a problem among the respondents. on the level of education, the result shows that most (41.10%) of the respondents had formal education. this implies that the respondents could apprehend the improved technologies being disseminated to them. the findings was not in agreement with that of apata et al. (2010) and tiwari (2010) who asserts that most of the nigerian farmers have no formal education. extent of adoption of improved farm technologies by respondents respondent’s extent of adoption of improved farm technologies was presented in table 2. the result shows that majority of the respondents; 52.20%, 56.70% and 68.90% adopted the recommended technologies with respect to improved seeds, planting time and harvesting time respectively. while on the other hand, majority of the respondents; 52.20%, 53.30%, 61.10% and 67.80% did not adopt the recommended technologies with respect to fertilizer application, spacing, mulching frequency and use of chemicals respectively. the study implies that the high level of adoption of the improved soyabean seed could be as a result of its availability which might aid the planting of the same at the time decided by the respondents. the adoption of harvesting time might not be unconnected to avoid post harvest losses. the study further implies that the non-adoption of fertilizer application, weeding frequency and use of chemical could be as a result of the high cost associated with these technologies, while that of the spacing could as a result of the technicalities involved in the recommended technology. effect of socio-economic characteristics on adoption of improved farm production technologies by respondents multiple regression analysis was conducted in order to determine the specific contribution of each independent variable and the total variance explained by all the variables on adoption of improved soya bean production technologies (table 3). the result shows that the adjusted r 2 had a value of 0.819. this implies that the independent variables were able to explain the independent variables by about 82%. the f-value of 5.720 was significant at 5% level, indicating that the model fits. the study showed that the educational level, farming experience and sources of information had significantly and positively influenced the adoption of improved soya bean production technologies by respondents. while age and farm size had significant but negative influence among the respondents. the negative influence of age could be expected as a result of the fact that as a farmers grow old, there is tendency to reduce level of adoption as their ability to cope with various farm operation diminishes. the result indicated that sex and household size had no significant influence at 1%, 5% or 10% level of significance. the implication of the positive sign could be that an increase in each of this level would lead to an increase in the adoption level of respondents on the soya bean production technologies. respondent’s constraints to adoption of improved farm production technologies table 4 shows the constraints against adoption of improved soya bean production technologies by respondents. the result indicated that the majority (54.40% and above) of the respondents agreed that all the variables were constraints to adoption of improved soya bean production technologies with the exception of unavailability of market for produce with 24 respondents representing 35.60%. notable among the constraints were poor extension services (75.60%), lack of credit facilities (71.10%), and high cost of fertilizer (72.20%). poor extension services confirm the report by tiwari (2010) that one of the major constraints of farmers was poor access to extension services. this implies that adoption level of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 271-276 274 respondents could be affected negatively. constraints of credit facilities were also one of the major factors affecting the respondents. this was in agreement with that of oriole (2004) who stressed that unless credit facilities are provided to small scale farmers, otherwise majority of them are seriously handicapped in adopting new and profitable farm technologies. the high cost of fertilizer among others was also a major constraint. the implication could that the respondents were unable to purchase the input as a result of the high price associated with the commodity (64.40%). however, the result reveals that majority (64.40%) of the respondents disagreed that unavailability of market for produce was a constraint. this could be as a result of the fact that market for soya bean was readily available in the study area. conclusion and recommendations the study indicated that the adoption level of soya bean production technology was on the average in the study area. the socio-economic factors which positively affect the adoption of soya bean production technology were sources of information, farming experience and educational level of the respondents. however, the major constraint against the adoption of the technologies include poor extension services, lack of credit facilities and high cost of inputs such as fertilizer, chemicals etc. based on the findings of the study, the following recommendations were made: 1. agricultural extension services should adequately be provided to respondents on soya bean production technologies in the study area. 2. input support services in the form of credit facilities, fertilizer and chemicals should be provided with a view to enhancing adoption of soya bean production technologies. 3. encouragement should be made to form soya bean cooperative societies by respondents in order to take advantage of government policies and programmes. references abdullahi, a. (2004) “soya bean production”, meidan edition, raw materials research and development council, (rmrdc), nigeria, pp. 17 adeniyan, o. n. and ayoola, o. t. (2006) “growth and yield performance of some improved soyabean varieties as influenced by intercropping with maize and cassava in two contrasting locations in south-west nigeria”, journal of biotechnology, vol. 5(20), pp. 1882-89. amaza, p. s., olayemi j. k., adiobi, a. o., bila, y. and iheanacho, a. (2007) “baseline socio-economic survey report: agriculture in borno state”, nigeria international institute of tropical agriculture, ibadan, nigeria. pp. 6272 ani, a. o. and undiandeye, u. c. (2001) “assessment of farmer’s adoption of improved agricultural technologies in soya bean production in michika local governement area of adamawa state”, nigeria journal of arid agriculture, vol. 1, pp. 107-11. apata, t. g., apata, o. m., igbalajobi, o. a., and awoniyi, s. m. o. (2010) “determinants of rural poverty in nigeria. evidence from small holder farmers in south western nigeria”, journal of science and technology education research, vol. 1(4), pp. 85-91. dugje, i. y., omoigui, l. o., ekeleme, f., brandyopadhyay, r., kumar, p. r. and kamara, a. y. (2006) “farmers guide to soya bean production in northern nigeria”, international institute of tropical agriculture, ibadan, nigeria, pp. 1-16. idrisa, y. l. (2009) “analysis of determinants of soya bean production technology adoption by farmers in southern borno, nigeria”, phd thesis submitted to the department of agricultural economics and extension services, university of maiduguri, nigeria. pp1-4. misari, s. m. and idowu a. a. (1995) “soya bean in nigerian agriculture and strategies for sustainable production”, a paper presented at the 16 th annual conference of nigeria soya bean association. npc (2006) national population commission (npc); provisional census figure; abuja, nigeria. oriole, e. c. (2009) “a framework for food security and poverty reduction in nigeria”, european journal of social sciences, vol. 8(1), pp. 37-43 rogers, e. m. (1993) “diffusion of innovation”, (third edition), new york, the free press. taraba state agricultural development programme (tsadp) (2009) annual report, taraba state, nigeria. tiwari, n. (2010) “economic and technological constraints facing farm women”, international journal of rural studies, vol. 17(1), pp. 1-5. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 271-276 275 table 1: distribution of respondents by socio-economic characteristics (n=180) socio-economics variable frequency (no.) percentage (%) gender male 112 62.20 female 32 37.80 age (years) 30 and below 22 12.20 30-39 52 28.80 40-49 76 42.30 49 and above 30 16.70 marital status married 124 68.09 single 46 25.06 widow 10 5.50 farming size below 1 104 57.80 1-2 68 37.80 above 2 8 4.40 educational status primary education 44 34.00 waec/ssce/tc 16 35.00 tertiary education 34 10.00 adult education 24 13.30 none 64 35.50 household size (number) less than 5 74 41.10 5-9 76 42.20 10-15 24 13.30 16-20 4 2.20 above 20 2 1.00 source: field survey, 2010 table 2: extent of adoption of improved technologies by respondents (n=180 adopted not adopted technologies frequency (no.) percentage (%) frequency (no.) percentage (%) improved seeds 94 52.20 86 47.80 planting time 102 56.70 78 43.30 fertilizer application 86 47.80 94 52.20 spacing 84 46.80 96 53.30 weeding frequency 70 38.90 110 61.10 use of chemicals 58 32.20 122 67.80 harvesting time 124 68.90 56 31.10 source: field survey, 2010 * multiple responses exist, hence % > 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 271-276 276 table 3: multiple regression results of the effect of socio-economic characteristics on adoption of soya bean farm technologies by respondents variable co-efficient std error t-value significance age (x1) 0.0047 1.137 2.037** 0.045 sex (x2) 0.0990 0.021 4.309ns 0.000 household size (x3) 0.023 0.068 0.965ns 0.337 sources of information (x4) 0.0-132 0.057 2.024** 0.023 farm size (x5) 0.083 0.047 -3.543*** 0.001 farming experience (x6) 0.046 0.214 0.036** 0.051 educational level (x7) 0.40 0.010 1.758* 0.082 r2 0.846 adjusted r2 0.819 f – value 5.720** source: field survey, 2010 *** significant at 1% level ** significant at 5% level * significant at 10% level ns statistically insignificant table 4: constraints against adoption of improved soya bean production technologies by respondents (n=180) agreed disagreed constraints frequency (no.) percentage (%) frequency (no.) percentage (%) lack of credit facilities 128 71.10 52 28.90 unavailability of market for produce 64 35.60 116 64.40 unavailability of improved seeds 98 54.40 82 45.60 poor extension services 136 75.60 44 24.40 insufficient land for farming 134 74.40 46 25.50 constraints of labour 122 67.80 58 32.20 poor transportation system 98 54.40 82 45.60 high cost of chemicals 122 67.80 58 32.20 high cost of fertilizer 130 72.20 50 27.80 source: field survey, 2010 *multiple responses exist; hence % > 100 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 371-377 371 aquaculture, a component of the farming systems among the fishing communities in oil producing areas of delta, nigeria chukwuji, christopher okeleke department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria abstract the study focused on ascertaining the relative importance of aquaculture in the farming systems of oil producing areas delta state, nigeria. a stratified random sample of 598 households from 47 communities was used. primary data collected between the months of may 2009 and february 2011 by means of structured questionnaire, complemented by oral were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. the results show that 69% of the respondents were into fishing/fish farming either as sole enterprise or in combination with other farming activities while 31% were into non-fish farming activities only. among those involved in fishing activities, 37% were into capture fisheries, while about 32% were involved in aquaculture either as sole enterprise or in combination with other farming enterprises. the average size of fish pond was about 51 m 2 . the mean household net income from aquaculture per annum was about n91, 542, giving the highest returns on investment of about 45%. the study also found that households practicing aquaculture together with arable cropping generated significantly (p ≤ 0.05) highest net farm income (n127342) than the rest groups of households. the major constraints to aquaculture development were inadequate finance, high cost of feeds and water pollution problems. it was recommended that the current government efforts at boosting investment in aquaculture through microcredit should be stepped up. local sourcing of feeds by the farmers is also encouraged. keywords: aquaculture, farming systems, profitability, delta state, niger delta, nigeria introduction 1 in the niger delta areas of nigeria is made up of six states, of which delta state is one. prior to oil exploration and exploitation activities, niger deltans were predominantly farmers and fishers due to the rich-alluvial farm lands and copious surface water-web that characterizes the basin. among such farming activities capture fisheries formed one of the major components. this was 1 corresponding author’s email address: chukwujichris@yahoo.com chukwujichris@gmail.com made possible by virtue of the abundance of mangrove, creeks, rivers and rivulets which are the common features of the river niger as it empties into the atlantic ocean. the mangrove area of nigeria is estimated at 10, 515 km 2 significant chunks of which are concentrated in the niger delta. however, the capture fisheries, an all important aspect of farming systems of the area is fast disappearing and no longer sustainable due mainly to increasing population pressure and pollution of the inland waterways by crude oil toxicity following frequent spillages (spalding et al., 1997). other threat to mangroves in nigeria are over logging, clearance for the passage of oil pipes and asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:chukwujichris@yahoo.com mailto:chukwujichris@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 371-377 372 seismic lines, swamp reclamation for urban development and settlement, the spread of nypa palm, etc. the implication is that the means of livelihood of the bulk of the rural dwellers in this area has been eroded. as an alternative to this, many of the farmers now take to aquaculture in order to sustain the fish producing, marketing and consuming populations of the area. on the average, fish consumption accounts for about 40% of animal protein intake in nigeria (central bank of nigeria, 2004), with the percentage being generally higher for residents of the niger delta region than for the other parts of the country. a decline in fish availability will simultaneously have serious economic, social and health consequences on the nutritional status of the people, especially children who require adequate fish intake for their brain development. adamu (2007) gave the total domestic fish production in 2005 as 579,500 tonnes, while production from aquaculture was 56,300 tonnes in the same year. the total annual domestic fish supply in nigeria is about 400,000 tones after accounting for losses. this figure, according to (food and agriculture organisation, 1997) represents about 42% of total annual domestic fish demand. to make up for the supply gap, nigeria imports about 560,000 tones of fish estimated at about $500 million annually (ayinla, 2010). this makes nigeria one of the largest importers of fish in the developing world. the total domestic output is composed of 96% from capture fisheries and only 4% from aquaculture (federal ministry of agriculture and water resources, 2008). a solution to the country’s high demand for fish cannot be sustained by reliance on capture fisheries especially in the niger delta areas principally due to oil pollution of the inland and fresh water ways. the emerging and sustainable solution lies in aquaculture. although, expansion of output via aquaculture has been a slow process as private sector fish farmers have faced major constraints including lack of coordinated policy for the sector development (akolisa and okonji, 2005), aquaculture sector has made some achievements in term of production level through private sector driven production (ajani, 2009). part of the reasons for the slow pace of development in the sector is the common view on rural poverty reduction among the rural households in nigeria which has been that of a sector driven and almost entirely by production of crops and livestock. studies by several authors (matsumoto et al., 2006; haggblade et al., 2007) have shown that diversification of income help in minimizing household income variability by providing an additional source of income and employment which have implications for rural poverty reduction and enhancement of households’ welfare. aquaculture (fish farming) is the art and science of controlled rearing of fish in ponds, farms and in some instances natural water bodies from hatchlings (freshly hatched” fishes) to matured size (ahmadu bello university, 2000; offem et al., 2010). although a relatively new practice in nigeria, aquaculture contributes in no small measure towards food production in many countries in employment generation, poverty reduction, overall rural development and environmental sustainability. in the face of the never-ending water and land pollution problems in oil producing areas of delta state, nigeria and the consequential erosion of the traditional capture fisheries occupation of majority of the farming communities as well as the awareness on the potentials of aquaculture to contribute to domestic fish production in the state, the questions that are pertinent are; i) to what extent has aquaculture technologies been adopted as an alternative means of livelihood among the rural households? ii) what is the place of aquaculture in the farming systems of the people? iii) how profitable is aquaculture in comparison to capture fisheries and other farm enterprises? iv) what are the constraints to aquaculture as an occupation in the area? in addressing these questions, the study sought to; asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 371-377 373 i) ascertain the extent to which aquaculture technologies has been adopted as an alternative means of livelihood among the fishing households, ii) describe the aquaculture management systems adopted by the farmers, iii) estimate and compare the income and profitability of aquaculture with other farm enterprises in the area, iv) estimate the proportionate contribution of aquaculture to income of the fishing households. v) determine the constraints to aquaculture development in the fish producing communities areas of delta state of nigeria. methodology of the study the study was carried out in the fish producing areas of delta state of nigeria. the state, named after the delta region of the river niger shares common boundaries with edo and ondo states to the north west, imo and anambra to the north east, rivers and bayelsa states to the south east. in the south west and south it has approximately 122 kilometres of coastline bounded by the bight of benin on the atlantic ocean. the state has an estimated population of 4,098,391 (national population census, 2006). delta state is major oil producing state and ranks second to rivers state. the state supplies about 35% of nigeria's crude oil and some considerable amount of natural gas. the oil producing local government areas are warri north and south, burutu, isoko north and south, ughelli north and south, okpe, ethiope east and west, sapele and ndokwa east and west (galleria media limited, (2004-to-date). the non-oil economy of the state is divided into land based and water based. the traditional economic activities of the land based type of economy (those on the drier parts at the northern end of the state) includes farming, fishing, collecting and processing palm fruits, as well as hunting, while the water based type of economy (those on the southern parts of the state with a less diversified economic activities) are mainly fishing and trading. the state government in an effort to diversify the state's revenue base from being solely oil, accords various forms of assistance to farmers in the areas of fisheries, agriculture, forestry, veterinary services, produce planning and research. in particular, the state government has invested adequately in fisheries due to the fact that fresh fish, crabs, shrimps and dried fish abound in almost all the local government areas of the state. besides oil production, delta state is also rich in major tubers and root crops such as cassava, coco yams, yam and potatoes and assorted livestock. a stratified random sample of 598 households from 47 fishing communities from the oil producing areas of the state was used. primary data collected between the months of may 2009 and february 2011 by means of structured questionnaire, complemented by oral interview where necessary were used. data were summarised using descriptive statistics. net income analysis was employed to estimate profitability of aquaculture, fishing and other farm enterprises. comparison of means of relevant production and income statistics was by use of analysis of variance (anova). results and discussion households in the fishing communities of delta state engage in a wide array of economic activities, farm and non–farm alike. besides the traditional fishing, many of the households were engaged in crop and livestock farming. table 1 presents the distribution of respondents according to the nature of their primary enterprises. the results show that 69% of the respondents were into fishing/fish farming either as sole enterprise or in combination with other farming activities while 31% were into non-fish farming activities only. among those involved in fishing activities, 37% were into capture fisheries, while about 32% were involved in aquaculture either as sole enterprise or in combination with other farming enterprises. only about 11% practiced only aquaculture. this finding shows that aquaculture is assuming a position of eminence among households in the fishing communities of the state. http://www.galleriamedialimited.com/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 374 table 1: enterprise combinations among the households fishing communities farm enterprises no of respondents percentage aquaculture only 66 11.04 aquaculture and capture fisheries 67 11.20 aquaculture and livestock 30 5.02 aquaculture and crop production 28 4.68 capture fisheries only 169 28.26 capture fisheries and other farm activities 53 8.86 crop and livestock production 185 30.94 total 598 100.00 aquaculture production in delta state is still traditional. this is because, as presented in table 2, about 45% of the operators still rely on earthen pond, with its attendant poor water retention and high susceptibility to erosion. whilst the farmer acknowledged being aware of the availability of modern types of pond, finance limited many of them from adopting them. to enable them key into the improved pond systems, the farmers have to be financially empowered. table 2: distribution of aquaculture operators by types of ponds used types of pond no of respondents percentage earthen 85 44.55 concrete 25 12.87 plastic/polythene 17 8.91 earthen and concrete 28 14.85 earthen and polythene 19 9.90 concrete and polythene 13 6.93 all three types 4 1.98 total 191 100.00 table 3 gives the distribution of respondents according to the size (m 2 ) of their fish ponds. the table shows that about 75% of the fish farmers have mean pond size of 60 m 2 or less. only about 7% had more than 100m 2 . the mean pond size was about 51 m 2. it is obvious therefore that the scale of operation is small. while finance and managerial skills could partly be responsible for this uneconomic scale of operation, the fact the farmers are just transiting from wholesome capture fisheries into aquacultures partly explains the situation. table 3: pond size distribution of respondents involved in aquaculture pond size (m 2 ) no of respondents percentage less than 20 51 26.73 20 – 40 66 34.65 41 – 60 26 13.86 61 – 80 17 8.91 81 – 100 17 8.91 more than 100 13 6.93 total 191 100 the mean annual farm income and returns on investment in the different enterprise combinations among the households are presented in table 4. the table shows that household who combined aquaculture with crop production enterprises generated significantly (p asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 371-377 375 ≤ 0.05) a highest annual farm income of about n127342, followed by those who combined aquaculture with livestock production (n103450). although the net farm income of households who engage only in aquaculture (n91542)was significantly lower than those of households who were engaged in aquaculture and livestock and aquaculture and crop production, aquaculture as a sole enterprise generated significantly (p ≤ 0.05) the highest returns on investment than any other enterprise combination groups. investment in aquaculture alone generated as much as 45% returns in investment compared to capture fisheries which generated only 9%. the returns on investment in aquaculture recorded in this study compares well with 55% as obtained by (adewuyi, phillip, ayinde and akerele, 2010). it however fell short of that obtained by erih, (2010), who reported returns on investment of over 100 %. since total net farm income is of more interest to the farmer than returns to investment in terms of contribution to welfare, they would fare better under their present income limitations to combine aquaculture with other farm enterprises, particularly crop production. however, considering the overwhelming potentials of aquaculture, in terms returns per naira invested as well as welfare statuses of the households, efforts should be made to increase cost efficiency of the farmers. table 4: mean household net farm income and returns on investment by type of enterprise farm enterprises net farm income per household returns on investment aquaculture only 91542 c 45.00 a aquaculture and capture fisheries 78441 c 26.00 b aquaculture and livestock 103450 b 34.00 b aquaculture and crop production 127342 a 25.00 b capture fisheries only 68169 d 9.00 d capture fisheries and other farm activities 72336 d 18.00 c crop and livestock production 88185 c 21.00 c mean 91863 34.31 the distribution of income by source and the proportionate contribution of aquaculture to total annual income of households of the fishing communities are presented in table 5. it could be seen from the table that although aquaculture alone does not guarantee highest possible annual income, it boost the annual income of the households among the fishing communities. the small scale size of holding made it impossible for the households involved in only aquaculture to generate the highest possible annual income out of the possible rural enterprise combinations. the result however indicates that it contributed between about 30% and 43% to the income of household involved in aquaculture and when considered across the entire fishing communities, irrespective the enterprise involved in, aquaculture contributed about 11% to total annual income. the foregoing makes it obvious that boosting aquaculture would enhance the annual income of households in the fishing communities of the state. this could be achieved through expanded effort at credit extension to the farmers targeted at aquaculture enterprises. also, extension education would make more households to adopt aquaculture as a viable complementary enterprise. a number of factors constrain aquaculture production among members of the fishing communities. among these as presented in table 6, lack of finance, high input costs and lack of storage and preservative facilities were the most severe. the respondents indicated that their inability to access adequate external funds made it impossible to expand their scope and size of operations as well as carry out all seasons stocking. problem of finance was compounded by high cost of inputs, particularly feeds. the result is that the farmers resort to feed rationing, with negative impact of low weight at maturity. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 376 table 5: proportionate contribution of aquaculture to household annual income farm enterprises number of respondents annual income from aquaculture total annual income from other farm enterprises non farm annual income household total annual income contribution from aquaculture (%) aquaculture only 66 91542 0 123679 215221 42.53 aquaculture and capture fisheries 67 58349 20092 117429 195870 29.79 aquaculture and livestock 30 66301 37149 101236 204686 32.39 aquaculture and crop production 28 75527 51815 126668 254010 29.73 capture fisheries only 169 0 68169 104212 172381 0.00 capture fisheries and other farm activities 53 0 72336 71223 143559 0.00 crop and livestock production 185 0 88185 74669 162854 0.00 mean 598 23503 59498 96680 179682 11.05 table 6: constraints to aquaculture production constraints item no of respondents percentage finance 67 35.08 storage and preservative difficulties 27 9.42 low returns on investment 11 5.76 high cost of inputs 56 12.04 low output prices 13 6.81 seasonality of demand 9 8.9 small weights at maturity 8 4.19 total 191 100.00 storage and preservative problems arose because at maturity, not all the fishes are immediately sold out. prolonged delay before sales attracts additional cost of feeding unless the fishes were harvested, preserved and stored in such forms as to attract patronage later. the inability of the farmers to undertake these additional costs force them to sell off their fishes immediately at maturity at low prices. summary and conclusion the study was carried out among the fishing communities in the oil producing areas of delta state, nigeria with a focus of ascertaining the relative importance of aquaculture in the farming systems of the area. the study shows that aquaculture is assuming a position of prominence among households in the fishing asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 371-377 377 communities of the state because about 32% were involved in aquaculture either as sole enterprise or in combination with other farming enterprises. the average size of fish pond was about 51 m 2 . the mean net income from aquaculture per household per annum was about n91, 542, giving the highest returns on investment of about 45%. the study also found that households practicing aquaculture together with arable cropping generated significantly (p ≤ 0.05) highest income (n127342) than the rest groups of households. involvement in aquaculture contributed between about 30% and 43% to annual income of the operators. the major constraints to aquaculture development were inadequate finance, high cost of inputs and preservation and storage problems. it was recommended that the current government efforts at boosting investment in aquaculture through microcredit should be stepped up. also, extension education would make more households to adopt aquaculture as a viable complementary enterprise. references adamu, b. (2007). trade and investment opportunity in agriculture. a paper presented at the india africa agric. food submits in new delhi, 7 – 8 th march 2007. adewuyi, s. a., phillip, b. b., ayinde, i. a. and akerele, d. (2010). analysis of profitability of fish farming in ogun state, nigeria. journal of human ecology, 31(3): 179-184. ahmadu bello university (2000). economics of aquaculture production. extension bulletin no 107, fisheries series no. 5, national agricultural extension and research liaison services ahmadu bello university zaria. ajani, e. k. (2009). climate change and aquaculture development in nigeria: experiences and adaptation strategies. earth and environmental science, 6: 412-413. akolisa, o. and okonji, v. a. (2005). increasing fish supply through genetically modified fish stocks: need for caution in nigeria. proceedings of the 39 th annual conference of the agricultural society of nigeria, university of benin. october 9 th 13 th , pp: 64-66. ayinla, a. o. (2010). aquaculture notes. http://allafrica.com/stories/201001080498.h tml (consulted on january 19, 2011). central bank of niegria (2004). statistical bulletin, abuja, 264 – 267. erih, e. a. (2010). resource utilization and profitability in catfish production in egbeidimu l.g.a. of lagos state. unpublished b. agric thesis, department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria.178pp. food and agriculture organisation (fao)(1997). report of the expert consultation on small-scale rural aquaculture. fao fish. rep. no. 548. fao, rome. federal ministry of agriculture and water resources (2008). the national programme for food security, federal ministry of agriculture and the 39 th annual conference of the agricultural water resources, federal republic o f nigeria, pp: 4. galleria media limited, (2004-to-date). delta state of nigeria: nigeria information & guide. haggblade, s., hazell, p. and reardon, t. (2007). transforming the rural non-farm economy baltimore: johns hopkins university press. matsumoto, t., kijima, y. and yamano, t. (2006). the role of local non-farm activities and migration in reducing poverty: evidence from ethiopia, kenya, and uganda. agricultural economics, 35(3): 449–458. national population census (2006). population figures for nigeria, npc, abuja. offem, b. o., ikpi, g. u. and ada, f. (2010). fish culture technologies in south-eastern nigeria. african journal of agricultural research, 5(18): 2521-2528. spalding, m., blasco, f. and field, c. d. (1997). world mangrove atlas. the international society for mangroves ecosystems. okinawa, japan, 178 pp http://aquaculture-notes.blogspot.com/ http://allafrica.com/stories/201001080498.html http://allafrica.com/stories/201001080498.html http://www.galleriamedialimited.com/ http://uk.wrs.yahoo.com/_ylt=a7x9qbx4hz5okwua0ttlbqx.;_ylu=x3odmtbybwdtbzz2bhnlywnzcgrwb3mdnarjb2xva2lyzar2dglkaw--/sig=12q8qkmk2/exp=1312722936/**http%3a/www.nigeriagalleria.com/nigeria/states_nigeria/delta_state.html http://uk.wrs.yahoo.com/_ylt=a7x9qbx4hz5okwua0ttlbqx.;_ylu=x3odmtbybwdtbzz2bhnlywnzcgrwb3mdnarjb2xva2lyzar2dglkaw--/sig=12q8qkmk2/exp=1312722936/**http%3a/www.nigeriagalleria.com/nigeria/states_nigeria/delta_state.html http://uk.wrs.yahoo.com/_ylt=a7x9qbx4hz5okwua0ttlbqx.;_ylu=x3odmtbybwdtbzz2bhnlywnzcgrwb3mdnarjb2xva2lyzar2dglkaw--/sig=12q8qkmk2/exp=1312722936/**http%3a/www.nigeriagalleria.com/nigeria/states_nigeria/delta_state.html effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. the concept of withholding period and pesticide residue in grain storage adegbola, j. a., anugwom, u. d., awagu, f. and adu, e. a. (nigerian stored products research institute, pmb 3032, kano, nigeria) citation: adegbola, j. a., anugwom, u. d., awagu, f. and adu, e. a (2012) “the concept of withholding period and pesticide residue in grain storage”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 598 603. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 598-603. 598 author(s) adegbola, j. a., anugwom, u. d., awagu, f. and adu, e. a. nigerian stored products research institute, pmb 3032, kano, nigeria the concept of withholding period and pesticide residue in grain storage abstract this review focuses on pesticides, their unquantifiable benefits to agriculture, pesticide residue, maximum pesticide residue limit, and withholding period in grain storage. it delved into the origin of synthetic pesticide and its introduction to nigeria in the 1950s, it maintained that pesticide have posed major health and social challenges, and have had negative, unintended, catastrophic, fatal consequences to man, animals, and even the environment especially when instructions on their labels are not adhered to. again, it maintained that withholding periods are often stipulated on the labels of genuine pesticides, it reiterated that not adhering to the stipulated withholding period can have catastrophic consequences on consumers of grain and grain products. furthermore, it dwelt on the activities of nigerian stored products research institute (nspri) and national food drug administration and control (nafdac), their mandates and quest to nip pesticide poisoning in the bud. finally, recommendations were put forward to check the seeming ignorance and dearth of information about pesticide residue limit and withholding period, and dangers that are concomitants of not adhering to these. keywords: agrochemicals, storage, agriculture, residue limits, postharvest introduction pesticides are poisons; they are produced because they are toxic to one pests or the other. they are chemical substances that derived their name from the french word “peste” which means to pest or plague, and latin word “caedere” which means to kill (akunyili and ivbijaro, 2006). pesticides are an important management tool in agricultural enterprise; they increase yields and increase protection against insects at post-harvest and storage, and it has continued to be the bedrock of agriculture in modern times because of its unquantifiable benefits one of which include enhancement of shelf life of stored agricultural products (olabode et al., 2011). cooper and dobson (2007) maintained that for every dollar spent on pesticide for crop yield and storage four dollars in crops is saved; since 10 billion dollars worth of agro-chemicals is used for crops globally annually then 40 billion worth of crops is saved annually. yet according to paulsen (1998), between harvest and consumption over 20% of food harvested in the most technologically advanced country in the world (usa) is lost to pests and the case is worst in developing countries where the loss is as high as 80%. despite timely harvest, proper drying, and the best hygienic conditions pest still infest harvested grains at one stage or another at postharvest stage and insect pests are the main culprit for this. it is against this backdrop that man have devised agrochemicals in the form of pesticide (natural occurring and synthetic) to reverse this trend, however, pesticide and its concomitants have posed major health and social challenges, and have had negative, unintended, catastrophic, fatal consequences to man, animals, and even the environment. the concept of withholding period and pesticide .... 599 a glance at pesticide and its introduction to nigeria according to rao et al. (2007) pesticides have for long been used to protect crops; poisonous plants, smoky fire, and mud have been used as far back as 400 years ago as pests control for crops. the first types of modern pesticides were highly toxic compounds such as arsenic and hydrogen cyanide after this came synthetic pesticides. the first synthetic pesticide was dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (ddt) which was discovered in 1939. the production of synthetic pesticides took another dimension after the second world war(1945), this period witnessed an increase production of these chemicals and their by products, however, the incidence of diseases and pest on cocoa farms can be rightly said to be the prelude of the long history of pesticides in nigeria. according to ogunjimi and farinde (2012) pesticides use in nigeria has been on the increase after it was introduced in the early 1950s and particularly in 1957 when lindane was introduced and recommended for use in nigeria. in the face of a growing human population, and increased urbanization in nigeria, the demand for pesticide increased in the early 1960s after her independence and the risk of pesticide whether real or perceived forced changes in the ways these chemicals are used. banjo et al (2p010) corroborate ogunjimi and farinde (2012) position when he posits that the growth of synthetic pesticides took a foot hold in the 1940s with the discovery and introduction of ddt, bhc, adrin, chlorodane, and parathion. kemabonta and odebiyi (2005) alluded to these positions when they mentioned that since the 1940s, insect pest control has majorly relied on the use of synthetic insecticides. in the 21st century however, there has been rigorous campaigns for pesticides to be made in such away for it to persist for shorter periods in the environment and to be less dangerous than those of the early days of arsenic and ddt. withholding period, maximum residue levels, and food pesticide contamination nigeria`s insectrelated post-harvest food losses are estimated at around 30%, and from the 1950s onwards insects control have been by the use of synthetic insecticides which have adverse effects on human health (otitodun et al., 2012). the undesirable consequences of pesticides use on human health have become more evident from the 1950s onward (morner et al., 2002). recently, concern about the health effects of pesticides have increased over the past years considering the rates at which scholars have put into the study of the phenomenon. most often than not scholars have written so much on the use of dangerous chemicals, banned pesticides, pesticide overdose, safe practices, and the like but little has been written on or said about withholding period also known as waiting period as the case may be. this dearth of scholarly information is inexcusable; scarce resources and time have often been channelled to investigate other causes of pesticide contamination in stored grains, and the silence on withholding period though pertinent leaves much to be desired, since this silence has had catastrophic consequences. for example, it was reported that 116 students of a school in doma, gombe state fell ill and were hospitalised after eating cowpea contaminated by pesticide. also, shaibu (2008) reported that two children died and 112 people were hospitalised after eating cowpea treated with pesticide in cross rivers state. again, in 2010 it was reported that 20 fast food outlets were closed in nigeria because of fatalities traced to pesticide residue in their products (chikwe, 2010). this is not surprising because grain is most often than not the base of majority of the food on the menu of these outlets. udoh (1998) summed all that needs to be said thus: “it is possible that many do not know the concept of „waiting period‟, (which is) highly dangerous”. the withholding period is the maximum length of time that must elapse or a person must wait after applying pesticide on food crop before it is safe for consumption. it is the minimum length of time either days, weeks, or months stated on the chemical product label that must elapse between the last application of pesticide and consumption of agricultural products. according to shirestha et al. (2010), waiting period is the duration after which grains treated with pesticide can be consumed or used. storage withholding periods are calculated on the basis of residue decline trials, and this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 598-603. 600 represents the time after which a merchant can be sure that residue levels in their crop will have declined to a level well below the maximum residue limits, thereby allowing their crop to be sold or consumed, in this case grains treated with pesticide. generally, waiting period for bio-pesticides are shorter compared with synthetic pesticides. waiting period for grains treated with pesticide (liquid or dust applied to newly harvested grains intended for short or long term storage) usually have a 90 days waiting period. every standard pesticide have the withholding period written on their labels but failure to abide by the stipulated withholding period on pesticide label may result in high residue in your produce and a breach in maximum residue limits which sometimes vary from one country to the other, and from state to state for country like the united states of america. everybody in the modern world no matter where they live or what they eat have pesticide residues in their bodies (paulsen, 1998). recently, attention has been focused on pesticide residues in food crops; this refers to the pesticides that may remain on or in foods after they are applied to food crops, the accepted level of these residues is often stipulated by a regulatory body in most countries. pesticide residues in nigeria are analysed and monitored in an iaea accredited dedicated laboratory at national food directorate and control (keri, 2009). however, it should be noted that pesticide residue results when pesticide is deliberately applied to a crop, and this differentiates residue from pesticide contamination which is always unintentional. many of these pesticide residues build up to harmful levels in the body as well as in the environment, the world health organization (who) sees pesticide residue as any substance or mixture of substances in food for man or animals resulting from the use of a pesticide and includes any specified derivatives, such as degradation and conversion products and impurities that are considered to be of toxicological significance; pesticide residue definitions are established for maximum residue limits enforcement purposes and for products exposure assessment. maximum residue limits (mrls) is the maximum concentration of a pesticide residue on commodity, recommended or permitted by a national authority (it is the maximum concentration of pesticide on stored agricultural products which is healthy and legally permitted). the concentration is expressed in milligrams of pesticide residue per kilogram of commodity. thus the residue of legally registered pesticides found in food should not exceed the maximum residue limits as established by a country. the mrl set for each pesticidecrop combination are set at levels well below the amount that could pose a health risk. fundamentally, an mrl applies to the identified raw agricultural food commodity as well as to processed food product that contains it. as part of the assessment process, before the registration of a pesticide in nigeria, the national agency for food and drug administration and control (nafdac) must determine whether the consumption of the maximum amount of residues that are expected to remain on the food products when the pesticide is used according to label direction will not be a risk to human health. nafdac, however, does not set mrls but adapt the codex limits and when necessary that of the importing country, before allowing the use of a pesticide on food crops, nafdac will check for the tolerance or the maximum residue limit of the pesticide allowed remaining in or on each treated crop. the tolerance level or maximum residue limit is the limit that calls for enforcement action i.e. if residues are found above the level, the commodity is not deemed fit or safe for consumption. according to the united states environmental protection agency the following factors are put into consideration when setting the maximum residue limits:  the toxicity of the pesticide and its breakdown products.  how much of the pesticide is applied and how often.  how much of the pesticide residue remains in or on food by the time it is marketed or consumed. halliday et al. (1988) maintained that the most likely source of significant levels of pesticide residue in food grains in post-harvest application is contact pesticides i.e. contact pesticides are applied at levels designed to protect the commodity from attack over much the concept of withholding period and pesticide .... 601 of storage period as much as possible. though there is a paucity of data in nigeria regarding pesticide residue in grains, the united states department of agriculture‟s pesticide data program (2004) gives the following as pesticide residue found in wheat in the united states of america in 2004/2005: propanil 1.5%, cyfluthrin 1.2%, cyhalothrin 1.1%, chloropyrifos 0.6%, trifurain 0.3%, carbofuran 0.1%, difenoconazole 0.1%, imazalil 0.1%, melathion 63%, chlorpyrifos methyl 16.7%, methoxychlor p.p 4.2%, methoprene 2.7%, piperonylbutoxide 2.3%, atrazane 1.9%, and primiphos methyl 1.6%. nspri the arbiter, nafdac the enforcer the nigerian stored products research institute (nspri) was set up in 1954 to conduct research in all aspects of post-harvest handling of agricultural crops and their products. most importantly, it was tasked with pesticide residue analysis and mycotoxins surveys on food throughout nigeria. nspri in the quest to carrying out these duties have developed biopesticides for food storage (otitodun et al., 2012). it has also developed pesticidal waxes, it has from time to time when asked for providing consultancy in areas of pest control, and tested for efficiency and efficacy of pesticides. it has carried out studies on insecticides that can be used to control insect infestation; it starts with trials of insecticide and when such is found to be promising, big time trials are done on large fields, stores, and silos (adesuiyi, 1978). it liaises with other research bodies on detection of pesticide residue; it carries out related surveys of mycotoxin and concomitants. also, nspri carry out large scale trials of pesticide which is followed by search to know the rate of breakdown of such pesticide and also to know its permissible residue level. furthermore, studies are carried out to know the effect of pesticide on conditions of storage on food constituents, and other parameters and after this gives recommendations on insect pest control measures and best practices in pesticide application and management. the institute in tandem with its extension department, apart from holding seminars, workshop, trainings, symposium and the likes have for long and as a matter of duty carried mass enlightenment campaigns on issues related to pesticide, pesticide residue, maximum residue limit, misuse and abuse of pesticide, withholding period, safe handling and disposal of pesticide, and other related salient concomitant topics. the national agency for food and drug administration and control (nafdac) established in 1993 is the nigerian government regulatory body that oversees the regulation and control of food products in nigeria, no food item may be imported, manufactured, advertised, sold, or distributed in nigeria unless it has been registered by the agency. the nafdac`s formation was spurred by a 1988 world health assembly resolution that sought for countries help in arresting the threat posed by fake and counterfeit pharmaceuticals, it replaced a hitherto body known as the directorate of food and drug administration and control which was seen as being ineffective. according to the requirement of its enabling decree the agency has the function among many others to conduct appropriate test and ensure compliance with standard specifications designated and approved by the council for the effective control of chemical pesticides inclusive, it deals with pesticide and contaminant, residue limits and mycotoxin. agricultural produce imported into the country must meet nafdac assessment of food safety and such must be free from radioactive contents and meet the maximum residue limit for approval of pesticide. it also gives a comprehensive list of approved pesticide, its mandate also includes the registration, coordination, and evaluations of pesticides to ensure that safe and effective pesticide are available to the public among others. the laboratory service directorate deals with quality and safety of agro-chemicals, there is the chemical import unit, and chemical monitoring unit and also the directorate responsible for the control of agricultural chemicals and pesticides. it also has a duty to enlighten farmers on good agricultural practices (keri, 2009). in summary, nafdac regulates and controls the importation and exportation of pesticide formulations and chemicals, it undertakes the registration of pesticide formulations, it runs the general purpose “technical committee of the national codex committee, it sees to the issues of pesticide residues and it has a dedicated pesticide formulation and pesticide residue asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 598-603. 602 laboratory. there is interplay between the activities of nspri, nafdac, and other regulatory bodies, however, while nafdac has the power to enforce and prosecute those who have ran afoul of its stipulations nspri does not. conclusion from the foregoing it is imperative for stakeholders in the agrochemical sector, farmers, merchants, the general public, and government agencies to synergise and act to bring to the know these salient factors/concepts that are brought to the fore in this review and which are often downplayed. there should be drive for enforcement, enlightenment, campaigns, and awareness in changing the heart and minds of stakeholders especially grain handlers and merchants to use pesticide in a manner that is consistent with the label or as define by regulatory bodies e.g. nafdac. furthermore, there should be a study on these phenomena, data, and information generated from such research should be considered with a view to disseminating such, and awareness should be heightened on the negative impact of pesticide residue and not heeding to withholding period on pesticide, such studies also should look into solutions to causes of the phenomenon. extension should play an important role in educating merchants and handlers about chemical residue, maximum residue limits, and withholding period in grain storage. lastly, awareness and training activities should be done regularly and systematically on these phenomena in order to consolidate gains gotten from such awareness, campaigns, and trainings. references adesuyi, s. a. (1978) “the role of the nigerian stored products research institute in storage and protection of tropical products”, proceedings of the second international working conference on stored products. entomology, 10-16 september 1978, ibadan, nigeria. savannah, georgia. akunyili, d. and ivbijaro, m.f.a (2006) “pesticide regulations and their implementation in nigeria”, in ivbijaro, mfa, f. akintola; environmental management in nigeria. mattivi production ibadan. pp. 187210. banjo, a. d., aina, s. a., and rije, o. i. (2010) “farmers` knowledge and perception towards herbicides and pesticides usage in fadama area of okun-owa, ogun state of nigeria”, african journal of basic and applied science, vol. 2(5-6), pp. 188-194. chikwe, a. (2010) nafdac axes 20 fast food outlets. task operators on good hygienic practices. tuesday, july 6, 2010. www.nigerianbestforum.com cooper, j. and dobson, h. (2007) “the benefits of pesticide mankind and the environment”, crop protection, vol. 26, pp. 1337-1348. halliday, d. (1998) “occurrence, sources and toxicological significance of pesticide residues in food grains”, www.fao.org. kemabonta, k. a. and odebiyi (2005) “susceptibility of the life stages of callosobruchus maculatus tab. (coleoptera: bruchidae) to diflubenzaron in cowpea seeds”, journal of plant diseases and protection vol. 112(2), pp. 193-999. keri, h. j. (2009) nigeria`s status on pesticide registration and maximum residue levels (mrls) held in alexandra egypt. 30th march 2nd april 2009. morner, j, bos, r. and fedrix, m. (2002) “pesticide guidance on alternative strategies for sustainable pest vector management”, (fao – un – unep – who, 2002). geneva 2002. www.bvsde.paho.org. ogunjimi, s. i. and farinde, a. s. (2012) “farmers` knowledge level of precautionary measures in agro-chemical usage on cocoa production in osun and edo states, nigeria”, international journal of agriculture and forestry, vol. 2(4), pp. 186-194. olabode, o. s., adeshina, g. o. and olapeju, t. r. (2011) “a survey of agricultural chemicals available to farmers in south western nigeria”, international journal of agricultural economic and rural development, vol. 4(1). otitodun, g. o. opit, g. and okonkwo, e. o. (2012) “efficacy of nigeria – derived diatomaceous earth, botanical insecticides, and riverbed sand against sitophilus oryzea (coleoptera: curculionide) and rhyzopertha dominica (coleoptera: bostrichdea) on wheat”, http://www.nigerianbestforum.com/ http://www.fao.org/ http://www.bvsde.paho.org/ the concept of withholding period and pesticide .... 603 entomological society of america, esa annual meetings online. www.esa.confex.com. paulsen, e. r. (1998) “stored products pests”, www.survivalistbroks.com. rao, g. v. r., rupela, o. p., rao, v. r. and reddy, y. v. r. (2007) “role of bio-pesticide in crop protection: present status and future prospects”, indian journal of plant protection, vol. 35(1), pp. 1-9. shaibu, i. (2008) nafdac bans 30 agrochemical products. vanguard, may 14, 2008. www.allafrica.com. shrestha, p., koirala, p. and tamraka, a. s. (2010) “knowledge, practice and use of pesticide among commercial vegetable growers of dhading district, nepal”, the journal of agriculture and environment, vol. 11, pp. 95 100. udoh, a. j. (1998) safety research study – nigerian farm household hazards”, pesticide news, no. 40, june 1998, page 8. united states department of agriculture. pesticide data program, annual summary calendar year 2004 www.ams.usda.gov/science/pdp http://www.esa.confex.com/ http://www.survivalistbroks.com/ http://www.allafrica.com/ http://www.ams.usda.gov/science/pdp © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(7), 158-166 158 farmers’ attitudes toward risks in paddy production of north west selangor integrated agricultural development area (iada), malaysia amin mahir abdullah and abdullahi auwal gindi faculty of agriculture, universiti putra malaysia, malaysia suryani darham institute of agricultural and food policy studies, universiti putra malaysia, malaysia alias radam faculty of economics and management, universiti putra malaysia, malaysia abstract1 the main objective of this research is to determine the reliability of the new developed instruments of farmers’ attitudes toward types of risks in paddy production. the different income level groups farmers’ attitude were compared. the data were collected from 286 paddy farmers at selangor integrated agricultural development area (iada), malaysia. the cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.894 was obtained, which is above the minimum acceptable value of 0.70. one way analysis of variance (anova) test was conducted to determine whether significant difference on the attitude toward risk exist among different income level groups farmers. the anova result shows significant differences in their attitudes toward risks with respect to three categories of risks: production risk f (2, 282) = 21.477, p = 0.001, financial risk f (2, 283) =21. 506, p= 0.001, and environmental risk f (2, 283) = 27.245, p = 0.001. keywords: risk, attitude, income & reliability 1. introduction 1.1. background of the study agricultural sector, as worldwide phenomena, is exposed to variety of risks which include climate variability, weather related hazards of cyclone and flood, pest and diseases, commodity price fluctuation, change in consumer demand among others (okezie & amin, 2012).these results in variability in production and yield and unpredictability of the output. as in the rest of the world, climate change affects malaysian agricultural sector in terms of production, this will also have socio-economic impact on the people in the sector and nation as a whole (najim et al., 2007). the decision in environment for production activities are characterized by uncertainty or the absence of perfect or complete information or knowledge. farmers usually make decisions now, which will affect their outputs or yield later. farmers are not sure of the changes of some of the factors such as changes in weather, government policies, as well as the changes of new technologies which will be difficult for them to predict future with certainty. corresponding author’s name: abdullahi auwal gindi email address: gindiauwal@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:gindiauwal@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 158-166 159 climate change will affect production as well as socio economic condition of farmers and economic of the nation at large. changing in climatic factors, results in a year to year variability of crop production, physical damage, loss of harvest, and drop in productivity. the report of the damages of the 2006 to 2007 floods in johor displaced 110,000 people, damaging an estimated rm0.35 billion worth of infrastructure and causing rm2.4 billion in economic losses and an estimated rm84 million worth of agricultural produce was damage or lost affecting about 7,000 farmers (okezie & amin, 2012). despite continuous increase of government subsidy for paddy farmers, the paddy planting area is decreasing as the farmers often experience adverse impacts of climate variation (alam et al., 2010). paddy like any other crops faces with similar uncertainties like adverse weather conditions such as drought and floods as well as pest and disease infestations. to the best of our knowledge, documented attitude of malaysian paddy farmers toward different categories of risks associated with the paddy production is limited or unavailable, based on this assertion, the objective of this study is to identify and characterize different types of risks associated with paddy production and to evaluate the attitude of malaysian paddy farmers toward different categories of risks. this study was carried out in the north west selangor integrated agriculture development area (iada) where paddy is the main crop of cultivation. the granary area was selected for it is one of the important paddy production areas. the iada in north west selangor consist of eight areassawah sempadan, sungai burung, sekinchan, sungai leman, pasir panjang, sungai nipah, panchang bedena and baganterap. the total paddy planting area is 18,980 ha. there are total of 10,300 paddy farmers (producers) in the area. in 2011 the average yield was 5.5 tons/ ha. in attempt to maximize rice production in malaysia, and also to minimize or mitigate risk factors associated with production, different management strategies were adopted by both farmers and government, ranging from informal practices such as avoidance of highly risky crops and crops and incomes diversifications to formal measures such as insurance (dadzie & acquah, 2012). they pointed out that households whose consumption levels are close to subsistence devote a large share of land to safer, traditional varieties of rice and other cereals than riskier, high-yielding varieties. another research conducted by jain & parshad (2006) point out that subsistence household spatially diversify their plots reduce the impact of weather shocks that vary by location. 2. literature review farmers’ attitudes to risks are the major determinants of the rate of diffusion of new technologies among them and of the outcome of rural development programs (dadzie & acquah, 2012). to make any technology or program successful or efficient, there is need to understand the farmers’ decision process, to have knowledge and understanding of risk and uncertainty associated with their decision making as well as the attitude of the various farmers’ groups toward risk. the degree to which farmers are willing to accept risk in production is related to their level of production technology as well as their demographic compositions of their households and hence the attitude of farmers toward risk was used as a measure of their investment behavior. several approaches have been used by different researchers in measuring attitude toward risk as cited by dadzie and acquah (2012) whose ranges from direct and indirect approaches, economic anthropology, farmer risk programming, expected utility and safetyfirst theory approach, an interview method eliciting certainty equivalents and experimental gambling approach among others. dadzie and acquah (2012) used equally likely certainty equivalent with pure hypothetical risky prospective (elceph) model in measuring attitude of "agona duakwa" farmers towards risk in crop production. ellis (2000) used income variance approach in measuring attitude of farmers toward risk in production. he characterizes the farmers based on their degree of taking decision involving risk as either riskpreferring/loving/taking, risk neutral and risk averse. others researchers such as mauro et al. (2009) used eleven independent variables in their research on farmers knowledge and priori risk analysis across canadian farmers in explaining their attitudes asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 158-166 160 regarding benefits and risks of roundup ready wheat (rrw). the variables include, among others, age of respondents, trust in corporations, formal education of the respondents, financial wellbeing and trust of government policies. another study hindi & mahmoud (2011) measures attitudes toward risks of jordan valley vegetable farmers. he used utility function model in measuring their attitudes toward risks and also examine the relationship between their demographic characteristics and their attitudes toward risks. this study and development of the likert scale was based on bard & berry (2000), and also carlsson et al. (2005) was referred, this differentiate our work from many researchers conducted in this area. 3. methodology the aim of this research study is to determine the reliability of the instruments intended to measure attitudes of farmers toward various risk categories and compare the attitude of difference farmers’ income level groups toward the various categories of risk associated with paddy production in the area. an instrument consisting of 47 statements or items referring to four different categories of risks designed for the study are as follows: production risk (pr) with 15 items, financial risk (fr) with 16 items, social risk (sr) with 10 items and environmental risk (enr) with 6 items. data were collected through an in depth survey of farmers in the area of integrated agricultural development area (iada), north-west selangor, malaysia. the target group of the survey was the paddy farmers. the survey sampling technique was based on proportionate/simple random sampling procedure, with each farmer having the same opportunity (probability) of being selected. respondents were then presented with these 47 statements which sought to measure their attitudes toward risks in rice production. a five point likert scale was used where the respondents were requested to indicate the extent of agreement or disagreement with the statements, where 1 was "strongly disagree" to 5 "strongly agree". 3.1. evaluation of reliability reliability is the extent of how reliable is the said measurement model in measuring the intended constructs. is the items measured what it supposed to be measured? internal consistency is possible by cronbach’s alpha, which is the most important reliability index being used in measuring reliability of the questionnaire where the values greater than 0.7 was considered acceptable (field, 2009). the computation of alpha (α) is based on the reliability of a test relative to other test, and it estimates the proportion of variance that is systematic or consistent with a set of test scores. the value of alpha ranges from 0 (if no variance is consistent) to 1 (if all variance is consistent) and its formula is given as α = 𝑛 𝑛−1 [1 − 𝑛𝛴vi 𝑉𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑡 ] where: ‘n’ is the number of questions, ‘vi’ is the variance of scores on each question and ‘vtest’ is the total variance of overall scores on the entire test. one way analysis of variance (anova) technique was used to test the claims that there is no difference among farmers’ income level groups in their attitudes toward risks in paddy production. based on the data obtained from respondents’ net income (yield value), ranges from low of rm 1106 to high rm of 69631, farmers were categorized into three categories; low income, middle income and higher income level farmers (hindi & mahmoud, 2011). the assumptions of the use of anova for the analysis was checked and fulfilled which include the dependent variable to be normally distributed and measured at least at the interval/ratio scale (field, 2009) homogeneity/equality of variance (howell, 2007) and the cases represent random samples from the population and scores on the test variables are independent of each other. 4. result and discussion table 1 shows the median age of survey respondents is about 48 years (58%), more than ninety percent (90%) of the respondents are male while only less than 5% are female. about eighty seven percent (87%) of the respondents are married with the mean number of dependents of five (5) children and maximum number of eleven (11) children per respondent. in terms of different ethnic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 158-166 161 groups that are involved in paddy production from table 1, it shows that about ninety three percent (93%) of the respondents belong to a malay ethnic group while the remaining 5.6% and 0.7% of the two ethnic groups are chinese and india respectively. educational level of the respondents also is portrayed in table1. from the table, only 3.1% of the respondents reported having never been to school. the majority of respondents (57%) attended secondary school level of education while 35.5% and 5.9% attended primary and tertiary levels of education respectively. from table 1, on average, each respondent had 6.22 hectares of the total farmland area. the median years of experience by the respondents in the paddy production was about 21 years, and maximum of 63 years of experience. the net income of the respondents from paddy produce was also reported in table 1. the mean net income (yield value) was rm 17, 2726.8 per season; with range of yield values from rm 1106.65 to rm 69,631.00 per season. table 1: descriptive statistics of paddy farmers (n = 286) variable mean percent (%) st. deviation minimum maximum age 48.34 58.40 11.74 20 75 gender male 95.5 female 4.5 marital status single 10.1 married 86.7 widow/widower 3.2 number of dependents 5.00 1 11 years of experience 21.79 13.58 0 63 ethnic group1 malay 93.7 chinese 5.6 india 0.7 educational level2 no school 3.1 primary school 35.5 secondary school 57.5 tertiary schools 5.9 farm size 6.22 4.5 0.5 24 total yield value 17276.80 13217.67 1106.65 69631 1 ethnic group: 1 (malay) 2 (chinese) 3 (india) 2education categories: 1 (none), 2 (primary school), 3 (secondary school) 4 (collage/ university) 4.1. reliability the following tables of reliability and statistics (table 2) give us the value of the coefficient of cronbach’s alpha value (0.894) which is above the minimum acceptable value of 0.70. the values indicate that about 90% variance is consistent or in other words, only 10% variances are not consistent or reliable in measuring the intended constructs. also in table 2, score statistics give the score that is related to the scale entity that is the summary statistics for the 47 items. the summated scale ranges from a low of 47 to a high of 235 with the mean of 173.28 and standard deviation of 20.94. table 3 is the item total statistics, comprises with ‘scale means if item deleted’ which present mean of the summated remaining items by excluding individual item from the list i.e. if pr1 is deleted, the mean of the sum of the remaining items will be 169.5455 units. ‘scale variance if item deleted’ is the third column of the table 3; it gives the variance for the remaining summated items by excluding a particular individual item from the list. ‘correlated total item correlation’ is the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 158-166 162 correlation of the item in questioned with the summated score for all other items. the rule of thumbs is that these values should be at least 0.40 (anastasiadou, 2011). ‘alpha if item deleted’ this is probably the most important column in the table. this represents the scale’s cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient for internal consistency if the individual item is removed from the scale. in table 3, the scale’s cronbach’s alpha would be 0.895 if item pr1 were removed from the scale. this value is then compared to the alpha coefficient value of table 2 (0.894) to see if one wants to delete the item in order to increase alpha value to 0.895. gliem & gliem (2003) provide the following rule of thumb: alpha value > 0.9 is excellent, > 0.8 is good, > 0.6 is questionable, > 0.5 is poor and < 0.5 is unacceptable. table 2: reliability and scale statistics cronbach’s alpha mean variance std no. of item 0.894 173.28 438.83 20.74 47 table 3: item-total statistics item scale mean if item deleted scale variance if item deleted corrected itemtotal correlation cronbach's alpha if item deleted pr1 169.545 431.821 .148 .895 pr2 169.758 426.394 .224 .894 pr3 170.010 416.053 .440 .891 pr4 169.709 415.245 .474 .890 pr5 169.209 427.114 .355 .892 pr6 169.786 419.270 .378 .892 pr7 169.804 414.762 .461 .890 pr8 169.174 422.699 .476 .891 pr9 169.055 423.821 .528 .891 pr10 169.213 420.947 .447 .891 pr11 169.377 426.495 .289 .893 pr12 169.318 422.716 .428 .891 pr13 169.153 430.362 .251 .893 pr14 169.440 419.412 .447 .891 pr15 170.244 413.568 .338 .893 fr1 169.727 423.869 .310 .893 fr2 170.132 421.989 .278 .893 fr3 169.909 424.651 .253 .894 fr4 169.874 424.103 .265 .893 fr5 170.178 412.793 .424 .891 fr6 169.912 419.561 .321 .893 fr7 170.286 413.096 .427 .891 fr8 169.954 419.356 .344 .892 fr9 169.933 416.118 .415 .891 fr10 170.080 421.071 .305 .893 fr11 169.318 424.211 .369 .892 fr12 169.307 425.028 .353 .892 fr13 170.087 417.343 .381 .892 fr14 169.559 418.184 .443 .891 fr15 170.136 414.034 .402 .891 fr16 169.835 425.134 .256 .893 sr1 169.538 420.902 .413 .891 sr2 169.580 415.957 .518 .890 sr3 169.230 420.262 .518 .890 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 158-166 163 sr4 169.395 422.921 .391 .892 sr5 169.451 417.694 .482 .890 sr6 169.639 418.526 .375 .892 sr7 169.139 423.840 .452 .891 sr8 169.055 422.544 .471 .891 sr9 168.965 426.062 .406 .892 sr10 169.461 417.927 .478 .890 enr1 169.115 422.320 .526 .891 enr2 169.087 422.768 .477 .891 enr3 169.538 424.137 .331 .892 enr4 169.195 426.411 .364 .892 enr5 169.458 425.898 .315 .892 enr6 169.975 423.042 .254 .894 one way analysis of variance (anova) test was conducted to determine the significance difference between farmers’ income level groups in their attitudes toward risks categories associated with paddy production. the anova result in table (4) shows that there were significant difference between farmers’ income level groups in their attitudes toward risks with respect to three categories of risks: production risk f (2, 282) = 21.477, p = 0.001, financial risk f (2, 283) = 21.506, p= 0.001, and environmental risk f (2, 283) = 27.245, p = 0.001. only social risk category shows statistically no difference between farmers’ income level groups. from the anova result (table 4), the attitude of farmers’ level income groups toward production, financial and environmental risks differs between low income level, middle income and high income level farmers, but there is no difference in their attitude toward social risk. table 4: one way anova results of categories of risk associated with paddy production anova sum of squares df mean square f sig.(p) production risk between groups 18.842 2 9.421 21.477 .000 within groups 123.706 282 0.439 total 142.549 284 financial risk between groups 15.561 2 7.781 21.506 .000 within groups 102.385 283 0.362 total 117.947 285 social risk between groups .362 2 0.181 0.554 0.575 within groups 92.419 283 0.327 total 92.781 285 environmental risk between groups 19.124 2 9.562 27.245 .000 within groups 99.326 283 0.351 total 118.450 285 having confirmed from the anova test, that there is a significant difference among farmers’ income level in their attitudes toward risks associated with paddy production except one category, yet anova test only provides us with the information that difference exists between the groups, but there is no information about which among the groups differ from the others? to solve this problem, fisher’s lsd (least significant different) post hoc pair wise multiple comparisons were used to determine which mean differs from another. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 158-166 164 from multiple comparison table (5) of the three groups of farmers’ income level, it shows that there is difference between all the three income level groups in their attitudes toward production risk with low income level (m = 3.34, sd = 0.736), middle income level (m = 3.692, sd = 0.613) and high income level farmers (m = 2.34, sd = 0.236). in respect of their attitudes toward financial risk, there is a significant difference between low income level (m = 3.647, sd = 0.615), middle income level (m = 3.20, sd = 0.52) and high income level farmers (m = 2.95, sd = 0.44), but statistically there is no difference in the attitude of farmers toward financial risk between middle income level farmers and high income level farmers. likewise the comparisons of the attitude of farmers’ income level groups toward environmental risk shows statistical significant difference between low income (m = 3.34, sd = 0.528), middle (m = 3.84, sd = 0.624) and high (m = 4.08, sd = 0.84), but no significant difference between middle income and high income level farmers in their attitude toward environmental risk. table 5: lsd post hoc pairwise multiple comparisons of farmers’ level of income groups multiple comparisons (i) income category (j) income category mean difference (i-j) std. error sig.(p) 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound production risk low income middle income -.23968* .080 .003 -.3976 -.081 higher income 1.11299* .217 .000 .6845 1.541 middle income higher income 1.35267* .216 .000 .9269 1.778 financial risk low income middle income .44490* .072 .000 .3018 .588 higher income .69782* .197 .000 .3088 1.086 environmental risk middle income -.49915* .071 .000 -.6401 -.358 low income higher income -.73360* .194 .000 -1.1167 -.350 *. the mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level the effect size was calculated from the anova result, in order to identify the strength or magnitude of the existing differences among the farmers’ income level groups in their attitudes toward different types of risks associated with paddy production. the eta square (ƞ2) formula was used in estimating the effect size. the formula is ƞ2 = dfbetf/dfbetf + dfwt or ƞ2 = ssbet/sstot where: dfbet is degree of freedom between the group, dfwt is degree of freedom within the group, f is f value, ssbet is sum of square between the group and sstot is sum of square total (cohen et al., 2003). the eta square (ƞ2) values of production, financial and environmental risk are 0.129, 0.13 and 0.161 respectively. as it was indicated from the calculated eta square (ƞ2) values, based on cohen (1988) criteria (<= 0.01 to 0.05 is small effect size, 0.06 to 0.13 is medium or moderate effect size, and >= 0.14 is large effect size), it shows that the strength or magnitude of the differences in their attitude toward production and financial risks are moderate (0.13) while on the environmental risk the difference is large (0.16). 5. summary and conclusion the main objective of this research is to determine the reliability of the new developed instruments intended to measure attitudes of farmers toward various categories or types of risks associated with paddy production. also the study aims to compare the attitudes of different farmers’ income level groups toward the various types of risks. the data used for the analysis were collected through an in depth survey from 286 farmers in the area of integrated agricultural development area (iada), north-west selangor, malaysia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 158-166 165 reliability test was conducted on the 47 items of the questionnaire to measure internal consistency and reliability of the measurement model in measuring the intended constructs. the value of the coefficient of cronbach’s alpha of 0.894 was obtained which is greater than the minimum acceptable value of 0.70. one way analysis of variance (anova) test was used to determine whether a significant difference exists between farmers’ income level groups in their attitudes toward different types of risks associated with paddy production. out of four types, only one (social risk) shows no significant difference between farmers’ income level groups on their attitudes toward risks. fisher’s lsd post hoc pairwise comparison was also conducted to determine which mean group among three groups of farmers differ from another. from the result of the analysis, it shows that there is difference between all the income level groups in their attitudes toward production and financial risks. the magnitude or effect size was computed using eta square (ƞ2) and the difference in their attitude toward production and financial risks are moderate while the difference in their attitude toward environmental risk is large. 5.1. implication research on attitude toward risk is very important in any decision making process. attitude is considered the major constraint on adoption rate of any new technology or innovations by farmers, and consequently, paddy production is affected by this attitude. therefore, there is a need for policy makers to consider and investigate the attitude of farmers (as a priority) towards any new technology or innovations in farming practices in order to bridge the gap of rejection and hence improve acceptance rate. acknowledgement we would like to express our appreciation and gratitude to universiti putra malaysia for providing the research grant under research universiti grant vote no: 91662 to support this study. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. reference alam, m., 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(2007). the treatment of missing data. the sage handbook of social science methodology. jain, r. c. a., & parshad, m. (2006). working group on risk management in agriculture for xi five year plan (2007-2012). mauro, i. j., mclachlan, s. m., & van acker, r. c. (2009). farmer knowledge and a priori risk analysis: pre-release evaluation of genetically modified roundup ready wheat across the canadian prairies. environmental science and pollution research international, 16(6), 689701. doi: 10.1007/s11356-009-0177-6. najim, a., lee, m. t. s., haque, m. a., & esham, m. (2007). sustainability of rice production: a malaysian perspective. journal of agricultural science, 3(1), 1-12. okezie, c. a., & amin, h. b. (2012). risk in malaysian agriculture: the need for a strategic approach and a policy refocus. kajian malaysia, 30(1), 21-50. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. alleviating rural farmers poverty through effective micro credit: evaluation of undp intervention in delta state p. c. ike and u. n. uzokwe (department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria) citation: p. c. ike and u. n. uzokwe (2012) “alleviating rural farmers poverty through effective micro credit: evaluation of undp intervention in delta state”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 465-472. alleviating rural farmers poverty through..... 465 author(s) p. c. ike department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria email: ikepeecee@yahoo.com u. n. uzokwe department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria email: ucheadauzokwe@yahoo.com alleviating rural farmers poverty through effective micro credit: evaluation of undp intervention in delta state abstract the united nations development programme (undp) introduced a micro credit scheme of n9milllion as one of the projects in the integrated community development programme (icdp) in delta state in 2000. undp appointed lift above poverty organization (lapo) a micro finance institution (mfi) in nigeria which has developed a successful model of reaching credit to resource poor households that are generally bypassed by government financial institutions as consultants to implement the scheme in the state. this work sought to determine the return to the different economic activities funded with the loan by the beneficiaries, and ascertain the repayment/default rate of the credit programme. analysis of data collected from 103 beneficiaries of the scheme spread across the three agricultural zones of the state suggests that the productivity of labour was higher than the estimated wage rate and the rate of return was higher than the interest charged on the loan. it is recommended that since the micro credit has been effective in improving the livelihood of the low income house-holds, the government should mobilize adequate donor support on behalf of the micro credit institutions. keywords: micro credit, livelihood, labour productivity, return on capital introduction providing credit and organizational support to the poor who do not have assets to use as collateral to formal financial institutions have been the key elements of nongovernment organization‟s (ngo) approach to alleviation of poverty and improving livelihood in many developing countries (hossain and diaz, 1999). although governments realize that resourcepoor rural households need affordable credit to enhance household incomes, the formal financial institutions failed to reach the poor because they adhere to stringent collateral requirements, and the credit disbursement and recovery procedures are not suitable for their economic environment (ike, 2010). the history of successful model of reaching credit to the resource poor households that are generally bypassed by government financial institutions has its origin in the grameen bank in bangladesh (khandaker 1996). in spite of the roles of government and private sector in micro-financing activities, more ground needs to be covered. the existing microfinance institutions (mfis) serve less than a million out of the over 40 million people who need their services in nigeria (cbn, 2005). also, aggregate microcredit facilities account for 0.2 percent of the gdp and less than one percent of the total credit in the economy (cbn, 2005). the latent entrepreneurial capacity of the poor, it is believed, would be significantly enhanced through the provision of microfinance services to enable them engage in economic activities and be more self-reliant; increase employment opportunities, enhance household income and create wealth. mailto:ikepeecee@yahoo.com mailto:ucheadauzokwe@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 465-472. 466 microfinance services refer to loans, deposits, insurance, fund transfer services and other ancillary non-financial products such as training and development of social capital targeted at low income clients. three features distinguish microfinance from other formal financial products: (i) smallness of loans and savings, (ii) absence or reduced emphasis on collateral, and (iii) simplicity of operations (ike, 2010). in its bid to assist the delta state government in her poverty alleviation efforts, particularly at the grass-roots, the united nations development programme (undp) introduced a microcredit scheme as one of the projects in the integrated community development programme (icdp). in 2000, the undp embarked on a community based microcredit scheme in collaboration with lift above poverty organization (lapo) as both the microfinance institution (mfi) and consultants to implement the scheme in the state. the lift above poverty organization (lapo), a non-government organization has been implementing a replication of the grameen bank model in nigeria. lapo was established in 1987 and has it‟s headquarter in benin-city, edo state, nigeria. the main objective of lapo is to extend credit facilities to resource poor households for creating opportunities for productive selfemployment for the vast underutilized human resource (ehigiamusoe, 2000). the credit scheme targets community based organizations (cbos) with a view to increasing their access to credit for micro economic activities. for takeoff of the undp microcredit intervention in delta state, the scheme conducted identification of groups and need assessments in various communities in delta state, trained them on capacity building and disbursed loans to the viable groups. this formed the basis of this study which sought to evaluate the intervention programme through investigating the extent to which the credit has reached the target group and the impact of credit on employment generation and improvement in the level of living of the borrower households. specifically it sought to: (i) determine the return to the different economic activities funded with the loan by the beneficiaries, and (ii) ascertain the repayment/default rate of the credit programme methodology the study utilizes secondary data on financial operations provided by the lift above poverty organization (lapo) which is the microfinance institution (mfi). the report is on undp-delta state assisted microcredit scheme for targeted communities as at september 30, 2004. the report provides information on the local governments/communities including groups or associations that benefited from the micro credit programme. the number of individual members of these groups including their gender representations and the type of economic activity embarked were also given. the details of the volume of the loan, interest, date of disbursement, repay date and amount repaid were all included in the report. the total number of beneficiaries was 955. primary data were collected through a survey of 103 randomly selected borrower households representing 10.79% of the entire beneficiaries. the sample has proper representation from the benefiting local government areas/communities and the various business enterprise groups. of the 25 local government areas in delta state, 12 were covered by undp microcredit intervention scheme. these local government areas/communities are classified into three agricultural zones as follows: delta north comprising oshimili north (akwukwu igbo), ukwuani (umuebu), oshimili south (oko-ogbelle), ika north east (ute-okpu) and ndokwa west (emu obiogor currently called emu anioma); delta central which include ughelli north (ughelli), ethiope east (okpara island), ethiope west (jesse and ijemi-oghara), and ughelli south (otu-jeremi); and delta south, comprising isoko north (emevor), patani (agoloma), and isoko south (ivrogboirri and olomoro). the data were collected by interviewing respondents with a pre-tested structured alleviating rural farmers poverty through..... 467 questionnaire. information were sought on credit history of borrowers, their socioeconomic background and asset holding, cost and returns on enterprises financed with the loan, employment and incomes generated from undp-lapo financed and other economic activities of the household. in the absence of benchmark information on economic conditions of the borrowers, assessment of the economic impact of the credit programme was done by comparing situations of the old and new borrowers. thus the study required that the sample have representations of different number of loans taken. to assess the financial viability of the credit programme at the member level, it is necessary to estimate the rate of return on investment in enterprises financed with the loan. in the same vein, the rate of recovery of credit and the demand for repeat loans are indirect indicators of the financial viability at the borrower level. if the member incurs loss in the business enterprise, he/she would not have capacity to repay the loan. if he/she has been forced to repay from incomes of other household enterprises, he/she would not demand a repeat loan and would drop from the scheme. a direct indicator of the financial viability is obviously the rate of return on investment. it is difficult however to estimate the rate of return on investment fairly accurately for the informal activities financed with micro credit for a number of reasons (hossain, 1984). first is the problem of identification of labour associated with the activity. it is usual to find a farmer in a rural area to be engaged in more than one activity, often on the same day. to get an accurate estimate of employment, it is necessary to generate data on the allocation of labour to these various activities. collection of information on time allocation needs weekly surveys throughout the year, which is costly and time consuming. the problem is compounded by the fact that a household would often have more than one working members who are engaged in multi enterprises. money is fungible. the full amount of loan may not be used for the activity for which the loan is taken. it is very likely that household members would pool the available resources (from whatever source they are obtained) for operating them on the household basis. the activities financed by micro credit are run mostly with family labour (hossain and diaz, 1999). there is the need to deduct the cost of family labour from household income to estimate the „profits‟ and the rate of return on capital. an important conceptual problem here is how to impute the cost of family labour. since labour market hardly exists for most of these activities, it is difficult to get information on the wage rate that could be used to impute the opportunity cost of family labour. even if available, it may not approximate the opportunity cost, as the family labour utilized in these activities might not get equal employment at that wage in alternative occupations. the wage rate would have been depressed if the labour market had to absorb all the surplus labour available in the locality. in view of these problems the findings on rate of return as reported bellow have to be interpreted carefully. information was collected from the respondents on the number of months different household members worked for undp-lapo financed and other economic activities, the number of days employed in a month, and the average number of hours employed in a day. the respondents also reported average weekly income accruing to the household from undplapo financed and other economic activities, which was blown up (multiplied by 52) to get yearly income. the income from land and livestock holding was estimated from input data collected on a seasonal basis. three alternative measures of the return from investment has been estimated, (a) net household income, i, (b) net income per unit of labour, ie, labour productivity, rl, and (c) rate of return on capital, rk these have been estimated as follows: i = y – rk – l….…………………………. (1) rl = i/n…..……………………………….. (2) rk = (y – wn)/k………………………….. (3) where, y = annual gross household income from the activity. n = number of standard eight-hour days of employment in the activity for all household members. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 465-472. 468 l = the amount of financial loan obtained from lapo. k = own and borrowed capital used in the enterprise. r = the rate of interest on the loan (3% on reducing balance principal). w = wage rate or the opportunity cost of labour (estimated to be n800.00) the net income of the household would be the most appropriate measure of the return on micro credit if the labour employed in the activity would have remained idle in the absence of the access to credit. at the other end, (i – wn) is the most appropriate measure of net income, if all the labour employed in the micro credit financed enterprises could be alternatively employed in other economic activities at the market wage rate. the actual position regarding the operation of informal enterprises is somewhere in the range depending on the economic situation in the locality. for this reason, the net return per labour has been estimated so that one can compare it with one‟s notion of the opportunity cost of labour to make judgment about the desirability of the investment. the rate of return on capital would have been the most appropriate indicator for the viability of investment with microcredit when the entrepreneur runs the activity with hired labour (a capitalist enterprise). if the rate of return were higher than the cost of investment (the rate of interest plus a risk premium), it would be profitable to make that investment. but the target group for microcredit run the activities mostly with family labour that face inadequate and uncertain employment opportunities in the market. hence, the rate of return on capital should not be used as an appropriate guide for the borrower‟s investment decision and the latent demand for credit. also, since the amount of investment is very small, rk would be highly sensitive to the assumption of the wage rate and the error of measurement on employment of labour, for which accurate information is difficult to collect. results and discussion lapo report indicates that the sum of n9million released by undp for the micro credit programme was disbursed to 82 groups in 15 targeted communities from the 12 local government areas that benefited from the scheme. the total number of benefiting group members were 955 composed of 522 males and 433 females (table 1.) these loans were disbursed in 3 tranches of n3 million each. tranche 1 was between february and may 2001, tranche 2 between november and december 2001, while the tranche 3 was between february and may 2003. estimates of the returns from micro credit the estimates of the returns from micro credit for the sample respondent, as well as for different agricultural zones are reported in table 2. as claimed by the respondents nearly 97% of the loans got from micro credit scheme were invested in business enterprises and this generated 167 days of employment on the average during the year for each of the beneficiary and another 72 days on the average for other members of the household, generating averagely a yearly gross income of n148,540.00 (n12,378.33 per month). the contribution of the credit-financed activity to net household income is estimated at n123,680.00 per annum. the labour productivity is n513.33 per day, about 28% higher than the stated wage rate estimated to be prevailing in the informal market. the rate of return on investment is estimated at 142%. thus, the enterprise financed with microcredit is highly financially viable whatever indicator is used. the rate of return varies across the zones under study with the estimate for labour productivity being the lowest in delta south. the labour productivity estimated for the zone is n485.00 which is lower than the state average of n513.33. this could be because many of the beneficiaries in the zone came on stream to benefit from the loan scheme only in tranche 3. some of the beneficiaries in this zone could therefore be regarded as new entrants into the use of the loan. in spite of this low return compared to other zones, the beneficiaries value the undp-lapo disbursed credit highly, because it helps them increase household income by reducing underemployment of family workers. in the course of investigation, beneficiaries of this zone were found to be alleviating rural farmers poverty through..... 469 highly motivated and interested in participating in the credit programme. the rate of return is found to be the highest for delta north zone. the size of financial loan is the highest for the zone, and the borrowers have put up large amount of their own fund in the enterprises financed with undp-lapo disbursed credit. an average enterprise generated 249 days of employment for the borrower, and another 91 days of employment for other family members, and contributed n180,200.00 additional income for the household. the labour productivity is almost 33% higher than the wage rate. obviously the borrowers in this zone should have no difficulty in repaying the loan. the estimate of rate of return for borrowers classified on the basis of number of loans taken in the scheme is as presented in table3. the findings show that in general the financial viability of the enterprises gets stronger with longer association of members with the credit programme. the labour productivity in enterprises run by new borrowers (n396 per day) is, in fact, lower than the average wage rate, and the rate of return on capital is negative when the cost of family labour is imputed by the market wage rate. the beneficiaries who have received more than two loans have had substantially higher levels of income and employment from the undp-lapo financed activity. the rate of return on capital is 196% for members who took two loans and 217% for those with three loans. table 4 reports estimates of the return from investment in specific activities undertaken with the loan. the most common activities financed with the credit are butchering/meat vending, pig keeping, soap making, clothe sales/sowing, food stuff, arable farming, petty trading welding/fabrication, fish farming, cassava processing, wood work, palm oil milling, poultry and boat transportation. among the economic activities sampled, agricultural activities such as piggery, food stuff/petty trading, arable farming and palm oil processing have the highest labour productivity and returns on capital. loan repayment/default in the undplapo micro credit scheme the findings presented above amply demonstrate that if the microcredit is properly utilized, the financial viability of the enterprise poses no problem. the challenge is how to ensure proper utilization of the loan and recovering the credit from the additional income accruing to the borrowers. available records from lapo show that in the first, second and third segments, the sum of n3million were each disbursed to the beneficiaries. the repayment performance report by the beneficiaries is as presented in table 5. the report shows that more than 60% of the loan amount was repaid in each of the loan segment. on the average the scheme recorded 64.8% repayment rate. the success in repayment performance can be attributed to measures taken by lapo towards achieving efficient credit repayment. the lapo model of intensive interactions of her workers with the borrowers and developing group solidarity and exerting peer pressure through informal organization of the members are appropriate institutional innovations in this context. the group functions as an institution to ensure mutual accountability. the credibility of the group and future benefits in terms of new loans are in jeopardy if one member breaks the credit discipline, does not properly utilize the loan and defaults on loan repayments. so, the individual is kept in line by a considerable amount of pressure from other members of the group. the existence of a well functioning organization thus acts as the collateral for loan in the scheme. the recovery of the loan is facilitated by another institutional innovation of lapo, the procedure of collecting the repayments in large numbers of small regular installments. in a poor household there is always a compulsion of utilizing whatever additional income is generated to satisfy the unmet basic needs. it is difficult for such households to accumulate savings for repaying the loan at large-size installments. the key to ensuring high percentage recovery rate of the loan lies in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 465-472. 470 collecting repayments in weekly installments. as the loan is repaid in small installments every week, it is easy for a borrower to pay the installment from the income leaving the capital intact. with repeat loans, it is possible for the borrower to divert some creditor incremental income for making medium and long term investments, such as purchase of furniture or acquisition of machinery, tools and equipment. the accumulation of these assets will contribute to increasing productivity of enterprises other than those financed with the lapo loan. summary and conclusions the united nations development programme (undp) has introduced microcredit scheme as one of the projects in her integrated community development programme with the lift above poverty organization (lapo) as both the microfinance institution (mfi) and consultants to implement the scheme in the state. lapo has been implementing a slightly modified grameen approach to delivery of microcredit for alleviation of poverty. it adopts the essential features of grameen such as targeting the poor as the clientele; organizing borrowers in small homogeneous groups to develop group solidarity and peer pressure to ensure effective utilization and recovery of loans; collecting the principal in small regular weekly installments so that the repayment does not put pressure on low-income households; developing collective funds for compulsory savings from borrowers for their mutual benefit to cope with financial crises and saving them from the clutches of usurious money lenders at times of emergency; and promoting social development of members using credit as an entry point. a survey of 103 borrowers selected from three agricultural zones, conducted for this evaluation, shows that undp has largely succeeded in reaching low-income households with credit. the average size of loan taken by a borrower was n10,000.00 of which was used for running enterprises on a self-employed basis. the economic activities financed with the credit are butchering/meat vending, pig keeping, soap making, clothes sales/sowing, food stuff, arable farming, petty trading welding/fabrication, fish farming, cassava processing, wood work, palm oil milling, poultry and boat transportation. the average labour productivity in enterprises financed with the loan is n525.00 per day, 28% higher than the estimated market rate. since the micro credit has been effective in improving the livelihood of the low income house-holds, the government should mobilize adequate donor support on behalf of the micro credit institutions. the micro credit institutions should encourage borrowers to undertake small scale production activities through subcontracting arrangements with large-scale business enterprises who could benefit from the low opportunity cost of labour for the borrower households. this would help increase absorptive capacity of capital and reduce the time needed by borrowers to achieve financial viability. references central bank of nigeria (2005) microfinance policy regulatory and supervisory framework for nigeria, abuja ehigiamusoe, g. (1995) “women credit and empowerment” a paper presented at 2 nd lapo development forum: benin city. ehigiamusoe, g. (2000) “poverty and microfinance in nigeria”, benin city: ob-zed publishers fuglesang, a. and d. chandler (1988) “participation as process: what we can learn from grameen bank bangladesh”, norad, oslo. fuglesang, a. and d. chandler (1993) “participation as process: what we can learn from grameen bank, bangladesh”, dhaka (bangladesh): grameen trust. hossain, m. (1984) “credit for alleviation of rural poverty: the grameen bank in bangladesh”, ifpri research report 65. washington, d.c. international food policy research institute hossain, m. and c. p. diaz (1999) “reaching the poor with effective micro credit: evaluation of a grameen bank replication in the philippines”, paper presented during the international workshop on assessing the impact of agricultural research on poverty alleviation, september 14-16, 1999, international center for tropical agriculture, ciat, cali, columbia. alleviating rural farmers poverty through..... 471 ike, p. c. (2010) “access and loan repayment in delta state agricultural loan scheme, nigeria”, faman journal vol. 11(1), pp. 53 – 61, farm management association of nigeria (faman), c/o department of agricultural economics and farm management, university of agriculture, abeokuta, nigeria khandaker, s. (1996) “grameen bank: impact, costs and programme sustainability”, asian development review vol. 14(1), pp. 97130 lift above poverty organization (1993) lift above poverty organization (2006), reports on undp-delta state assisted micro credit scheme for targeted communities at september 30, 2004; benin-city. yunus, m. (1986) the grameen bank as i see it. international labour organization, geneva (mimeo) yunus m. (1995) “towards creating a poverty-free world”, paper presented at the annual meeting of the u.s. committee for world food day. washington d.c. table 1: number of loan beneficiaries in the local government areas by gender local govt. tranch 1 tranch 2 tranch 3 total m f m f m f m f oshimili north 25 25 5 5 25 35 ukwani 40 11 17 11 57 22 ughelli north 43 22 43 22 isoko north 22 17 26 22 14 30 62 69 oshimili south 16 19 42 45 48 56 106 110 ethiope east 25 20 10 10 2 3 37 33 patani 18 8 8 5 26 13 ethiope west 20 5 33 23 12 8 65 36 ika south west 33 21 10 33 31 ndokwa 16 14 16 14 isoko south 47 43 47 43 ughelli south 5 5 5 5 total 209 117 161 137 152 179 522 433 grand total 955 percentage 64.1 35.9 54 46 46 54 54.7 45.3 source: lift above poverty organization table 2: rate of return on labour and capital: by agricultural zones items delta north delta central delta south no. of cases 39 29 35 gross income (n/annum) 198,200 125,440 121,980 total capital (n) 27,400 28,200 21,820 equity 12,400 13,300 10,500 loan 15,000 14,900 11,320 employment (days/year) 340 212 164 beneficiary 249 144 107 other members of family 91 68 57 household income (n/annum) 180,200 111,300 79,540 labour productivity (n/day) 530 525 485 return on capital (%) 210 162 260 source: computed from survey data asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 465-472. 472 table 3: rate of return on labour and capital: by number of loans taken items number of loans taken once twice thrice number of cases 40 39 24 gross income (n/annum) 123,820 238,307 360,341 total capital (n) 22,138 37,508 112,691 equity capital 12,138 17,508 67,691 borrowed capital 10,000 20,000 45,000 employment (days/year) 170 250 324 beneficiary 112 175 263 other household members 58 75 81 household income (n/annum) 67,320 131,750 174,960 labour productivity (n /day) 396 527 540 capital productivity (%) -76 196 217 table 4: rate of return on labour and capital by activity activity number of cases total capital invested net household income labour productiv ity return on capital piggery 11 8100 53468 195 383 clothes sales/sowing 4 5000 17000 93 87 food stuff/petty trade 25 3000 11040 197 113 arable farming 25 9000 43746 160 260 welding/fabrication 5 6000 16042 88 26 fish farming/processing 15 6000 25238 184 248 palm oil milling 2 10000 17528 162 104 poultry 7 5400 18483 128 137 boat transportation 3 34000 30400 83 3 source: computed from survey data table 5: repayment performance of undp micro credit in delta state (feb. 2001feb. 2003) loan repayment time disbursed amount repaid percentage n3,000,000.00 feb. – may 2001 n1,824,915.00 61.4 n3,000,000.00 nov. – dec. 2001 n2,105,880.00 70.0 n3,000,000.00 feb. may 2003 n1,873,070.00 63.0 total cumulative repayment from the scheme source: lift above poverty organization © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 resource use efficiency for cowpea production in akatsi district of ghana nimoh, f. (department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi, ghana) asuming-brempong, s. (department of agricultural economics and agribusiness, university of ghana, accra, ghana) to cite this article: nimoh, f. and asuming-brempong, s. (2012). resource use efficiency for cowpea production in akatsi district of ghana. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1), 55-61. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 55-61 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author (s) nimoh, f. † department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi, ghana email: frediemoh@yahoo.com asuming-brempong, s. department of agricultural economics and agribusiness, university of ghana, accra, ghana resource use efficiency for cowpea production in akatsi district of ghana abstract cowpeas have been identified as one of the crops with the highest and cheapest source of protein which can be relied on to help curb malnutrition problem in most developing countries. farmers in most farming communities in ghana, such as akatsi in the volta region, still practice the „tradition bound‟ agriculture. the returns from such production system are estimated to be below potential levels. assessment of the productivity of major inputs employed in the production of cowpeas in the study area indicates that outputs are below maximum potentials. the level of inputs such as farm size, labour, pesticide, and ploughing (land preparation) were found to be positively related to output, while quantity of seed was negatively related to output. the marginal value products (mvps) of the inputs were lower than their unit costs. it is anticipated that farmers could increase production beyond current levels, if the resources employed are utilized efficiently. among the problems identified to affecting the production of cowpeas in the study area include: unfavorable climate, incidence of pests and diseases, land tenure problem, lack of credit for operation, lack of storage facility, transportation and lack of ready market for the produce. to help improve the production, and hence farmers‟ income and their living standards, there is the need for an accelerated education programme to provide information on the appropriate methods of production, especially on how inputs could be allocated by the resource-poor farmers. keywords: cowpeas, resource use, allocative efficiency introduction cowpeas have been identified as containing adequate levels of protein to help curb protein malnutrition. cowpeas are the second most important food grain legume crops in tropical africa (onwueme and sinha, 1991). the protein content of cowpeas is estimated to be 23.4% when dry and 3.4% when green or fresh. in developing countries, such as ghana, the cultivation of cowpea is envisaged to be the best and quickest way to augment the production of food protein. because of the high levels of protein and calories, cowpeas have been identified as good vehicle for combating protein calorie malnutrition in ghana (sefa-dedeh, 1993). the ability of cowpeas to produce a few 100kg of grain when pearl millet and peanut have failed to produce any grain has earned the crop the name “crop of security” for farmers in northern senegal (menyonga et al., 1987). the production of cowpeas provides a major source of income for farmers in most farming communities. it is also a major and cheapest source of protein for many consumers. in the study area and other parts of ghana, the production of cowpeas is mainly on small-scale and many farmers use rudimentary production methods. the output of the smallholder farmer has been found to be seasonally variable, not much because of variation in climatic, but mainly because of how the various inputs are combined in the production of cowpeas. inappropriate use of the available resources leads to low returns to farmers. efficient production, and hence high output and maximum profit, is what every farmer expects to achieve. efficiency in general refers to a ratio of what is produced to input used (makehalm and malcom, 1986). the concept of efficiency may either relate to economic efficiency (thus, allocative or price efficiency) and technical efficiency. technical efficiency refers to the ability to obtain the highest amount of output with given amount of factor inputs, and allocative efficiency is the concept of efficiency in which resources are allocated in the “pareto” sense (optimum output) so that marginal value product (mvp) of resources are equal to their amount prices (onyenweaku, 1991). according to henderson and poole (1991), technical efficiency refers to the ability to produce a given level of output with a minimum quantity of inputs under certain technology. technical efficiency is an operating characteristic of the firm for any combination of inputs where maximal output results. mailto:frediemoh@yahoo.com resource use efficiency for cowpea……. 56 optimizing output results in economic efficiency. the efficiency use and productivity of any single resource depends on the equity of other resources it combines with (heady and jensen, 1954). with the increasing cost of agricultural inputs, such as labour, improved seeds, pesticides, fertilizer, etc., it is important that small-scale farmers use the available resources at their disposal efficiently in a way that will ensure increased output. efficient use of resources will help increase production, hence food security. this will also help improve and increase farmers' income, diets of the people and ultimately raise their standard of living. following the principles of production economics exemplified in the theory of the firm, maximizing profit has been regarded as the primary objective of farm management to arrive at the particular output that gives greater profit than any other level of output. similarly, drucker (1968) stated that management must, in every decision and action, always put economic performance first. the above statements are in line with the theory of the firm, which implies that a farm is performing well if it organizes resources in such a way that it maximizes profit. to help increase the production of cowpeas to meet the nutritional needs of the growing population, as well as to provide adequate and compensatory returns to farmers, it is imperative to assess the production practices used by farmers, and then make appropriate policy recommendations on measures that will ensure maximum output from economically combined inputs. this study therefore sought to look at the ways in which resources for cowpeas production could be efficiently utilized to ensure maximum output at reduced costs. the main objective of the study was to evaluate resource use efficiency for cowpeas production in the akatsi district in the volta region of ghana. the specific objectives were to: examine the demographic features of cowpeas farmers in the study area, evaluate the profitability of cowpeas production in the study area, evaluate the productivity of key production factors the farmer use in the production of cowpeas, and identify the major production and marketing problems faced by farmers in the study area. methodology study area the study was conducted in the akatsi district, located in the south-eastern part in the volta region of ghana. the choice of the study area was based primarily on the fact that, the bean/cowpea collaborative research support project (crsp), of which the study was part, undertook some preliminary area, and additional economic information was needed for further studies in the area. the district is located between latitudes 6°s and 7°n and longitude 0°w and 1°e. it is a low-lying coastal plain with flatland in the south and rolling plain to the north. the topography of the district is generally a gentle undulating land averaging 10-50 meters above sea level. the vegetation is of the coastal savanna in the south and savanna woodland to the north. the district falls within the coastal savanna equatorial climate regime, and it is characterized by high temperatures (min. 21°c and max. 34.5°c), high relative humidity (85%) and moderately low regime rainfall (1,084mm) with wet and dry seasons of about equal lengths. the rainfall pattern is bimodal. the economy is a rural one. agriculture, on subsistence basis, is the leading employer of the district's workforce, and it accounts for about 75.5% of the labour force. the district has a vast cultivatable land area but less than 40% is cultivated. type and source of data the main data that was used for the study was primary data. this was obtained by using a structured questionnaire. using the simple random sampling technique, a total of 152 cowpea farmers from nine (9) communities/villages were interviewed. the communities/villages are atidzive, agoveme, avenopedo, monome, tsakpe, anyidzim, tsifakofe, tsiati, and akatsi. analytical methods descriptive statistics such as frequency tables and percentages were used to present information on the demographic features of the farmers interviewed. the profitability of cowpea farming was evaluated using economic analysis to estimate farmers‟ net returns from production. the net return from operation per farmer per production season was computed as follows: nr = tr – tc ………………… (1) iipqtr  and  xiipxtc ,where, tr, is total revenue per season; qi, is total output (in olonka = bowl of cowpea of approximately 3kg weight) per season; pi, is price of an olonka of cowpea received by the ith farmer; tc, is total cost of production; xi, quantity of the ith input used for production per season; pxi, the price of the ith input; and nr, is the net return. the debate regarding the best method to measure farm performance and resource-use efficiency predates the subjects of farm management and agricultural economics as it is known today (phiri, 1991). in measuring technical and allocative inefficiencies, previous studies by kalirajan (1981), and adesina and djato (1996) used the dual approaches involving the use of profit or cost functions. other approach based on the profit maximizing assumption used extensively to determine resource use efficiency is the unit profit function approach. lau and yotopoulos (1972), sidhu (1974) and yotopoulos and lan (1976) have used the unit profit function approach in assessing resource use asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 55-61 57 efficiency. the use of the unit profit function to determine resource use efficiency has its limitations. the unit profit function is most appropriate for determining relative efficiencies of large and small farms of different technologies and of different scales of operation. where the profit maximizing and household objectives approaches have been applied to small-scale agriculture, the results have almost been at odds with others (phiri, 1991). despite criticisms leveled against the profit maximizing approach of assessing resource use efficiency, many studies have used the approach. with resource-use efficiency, the farmer is considered to be a rational producer and that s/he allocates resources in a way to maximize profit. a rigorous comparison of the allocative efficiencies of any groups of farms requires that the farms be; (i) characterized by constant returns to scale, (ii) that the farms be represented by the same production function, and (iii) that the farms face the same configuration of input and output prices (onyenweaku, 1991). to determine the allocative efficiency, a production function is estimated, which is assumed to satisfy the condition that the marginal physical product of any input is positive and should be declining. it is also assumed that all inputs can be divided into two categories, fixed and variable, where in the shortrun the inputs are fixed and in the long-run they are variable. in this study, four different production functions, namely; linear, semi-log, double log (cobb douglas) and translog were employed to evaluate the productivity of key production factors for cowpeas production in the study area, and the one produced the best fit was chosen. the doublelog function (cobb-douglas) provided the best fit and was therefore chosen for the study (hopper, 1965; olomla, 1991; mbata and matewa, 1983; sankhayan, 1983). using the ordinary least square (ols) estimator, the production response function model was expressed implicitly as: y = f ( x 1, x 2, x 3, x 4, x 5, ui) ……………… (2) where y = value of output (cowpea) in cedi, x 1 = land (farm size in acres), x 2 = labour (person-days), x 3 = value of chemical pesticide in cedi, x 4 = value of seed, x 5 = value of ploughing (land preparation) in cedi, and ui = error term. the functional form of the double-log function was expressed as follows: einxbinxbinxbbiny  5522110 ........... ……. (3) the marginal physical product (mpp) and elasticity were given by: mpp = b * y/x ………………… (4) elasticity = b ………………… (5) where y is the mean output and x is the mean of factor inputs, and bo and bi are the constant and regression coefficients, respectively. the marginal physical product (mpp) for the factor inputs was computed as follows: ijijiij exympp * __  ………………….. (6) where, _ y and _ x represent the means (log) of crop (cowpea) output of the ith farm and the jth input for the jth farm, respectively, and the eij is the factor elasticity of the ith output of jth input. using the above specifications and the output and input prices, the marginal value products (mvps) and allocative efficiency ratios (f) were computed as follows: yiji pmppmvp * ……………………. (7) x ij i p mvp f  ……………………. (9) where, py and px are the unit prices of output and factor input (mfc), respectively. the decision of whether a resource is used efficiently or not, thus allocative efficiency, is based on the value of fi. if fi is equal to one (fi = 1), then the factor input is efficiently utilized, hence the farmer is considered allocative efficient (hopper, 1965). the factor input is over-utilized if fi is less than 1 (fi <1) and underutilized if fi is greater than unity (fi > 1). the significance of each explanatory variable was determined using the t-test. the overall significance was determined by the f-ratio. results and discussion table 1 presents information on the demographic characteristics of cowpea farmers in the study area. of the total number of farmers interviewed, about 68% were males and 32% were females. most of the farmers were aged between 26 and 45 years, and majority of them (87.4%) were married. information gathered indicated that some of the male farmers were in polygamous marriage. it was also mentioned that the status as a married farmer was very important, as spouses contributed significantly to the production of cowpea in the study area. majority (44.8%) of the farmers had family size between 5 and 7 individuals. most of the farmers (43%) had junior/middle school education, and their major occupation was farming. resource use efficiency for cowpea……. 58 table 1: demographic characteristics of cowpea farmers in akatsi district gender distribution male female total freq. 103 49 152 valid % 67.8 32.2 100.0 age (years) distribution 15-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56-65 66 and above total freq. 8 37 50 30 18 9 152 valid % 5.3 24.3 32.9 19.7 11.8 5.9 100.0 marital status married single widowed separated total freq. 132 11 5 3 151 valid % 87.4 7.3 3.3 2.0 100.0 household size 1-4 5-7 8-10 11-17 total freq. 44 68 32 8 152 valid % 29.0 44.8 21.1 5.4 100.0 education jss/ middle no educ. primary sec. / sss non-formal tertiary total freq. 64 33 26 15 7 5 150 valid % 42.7 22.0 17.3 10.0 4.7 3.3 100.0 principal occupation farmer self employed trader wage employee food processor student total freq. 130 9 7 3 2 1 152 valid % 85.5 6.0 4.6 2.0 1.3 0.7 100.0 source: field survey, 2004 table 2 presents the information on farm size, variety of cowpea cultivated, and the farmer‟s experience in cowpea farming. the farm (cowpea) size of majority (29.6%) of the farmers was between 1 and 2.9 acres. the main cowpea variety cultivated was tsenabawo. this variety was found to be high yielding, had high demand and better priced, and over 61% of the farmers were cultivating it. the farm experience (cowpea farming) of the farmers ranged between 1 and 50 years. however, majority (34%) of them was found to be in cowpea farming for a period of 6 to 10 years. table 2: farm size, variety of cowpea cultivated and farm experience farm size (acres) < 1 1-1.9 2-2.9 3-3.9 4-4.9 5 6-9 > 10 total freq. 7 45 45 24 16 6 4 5 152 valid % 4.6 29.6 29.6 15.8 10.6 3.9 2.6 3.4 100.0 variety of cowpea cultivated tsenabawo vakle japango tsenabawo & japango tsenabawo & vakle tsenabawo, japango & vakle asetenapa total freq. 92 27 15 11 4 2 1 152 valid% 60.5 17.8 9.9 7.3 2.6 1.3 0.7 100.0 experience in cowpea farming (number of years in farming) 1-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 21-25 26-30 31-35 36-40 46-50 total freq. 47 51 19 11 7 10 1 1 3 150 valid % 31.3 34.0 12.7 7.3 4.7 6.7 0.7 0.7 2.0 100.0 source: field survey, 2004 the results of the assessment of the profitability of cowpea production in the district showed that all the cowpea farmers in the various communities/villages obtained positive margins in the previous year‟s (2003) production (table 3). the average net return for farmers in the season was about ¢1,158,398.00. there were however variations in the margins for farmers in the different communities. this was due to differences in farm sizes and management practices used by the farmers. it was mentioned that the margins for the past years‟ production were not all that variable. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 55-61 59 table 3: profitability of cowpea farming (per season) village tr (¢) tc (¢) nr (¢) avenorpedo 3,252,144 948,435 2,303,708 monome 2,872,136 1,182,091 1,690,045 tsiati 2,699,000 1,240,800 1,458,200 tsifakofe 2,475,000 1,286,000 1,189,000 tsakpe 2,197,429 1,107,964 1,089,464 akatsi 1,700,000 833,750 866,250 atidzive 2,180,576 1,369,852 810,724 agoveme-abor 1,887,850 1,149,662 738,187 anyidzim 600,000 320,000 280,000 source: field survey, 2004 note: tr = total revenue, tc = total cost, nr = net returns exchange rate: 1 us dollar = 9,225.00 ghanaian cedi using the cobb douglas production function to evaluate the productivity of key production factors for cowpea production in the study area, results of the ordinary least square (ols) estimates of the parameters for the sampled farms showed that output (cowpea) was positively related to land (farm size), labour, chemical pesticide, and ploughing (land preparation), but was negatively related to quantity of seed sowed (table 4). this implies that output increased with quantities of land (farm size), labour, chemical pesticide, and ploughing, but decreased with increased quantity of seed. the result of the estimate showed that land was significant at 1%, and labour and ploughing were both significant at 5%, at r² of 42.34% and f-ratio of 23.18. table 4: ols estimates of coefficients: cobb-douglas (double log) input estimated coefficients standard error constant land labour chemical pesticide seed ploughing 1.36 0.43*** 0.21** 0.09 -0.02 0.22** (1.034665) (0.116392) (0.100490) (0.082422) (0.100002) (0.084946) r² 42.34 f-ratio 23.18 n 152 note: ***, ** and * represent levels of significance at 1%, 5% and 10 %, respectively the effect of changes in output with respect to changes in the factor inputs was determined by evaluating the marginal physical products (mpps) and elasticities (є) of the various factor inputs (table 5). the results of the evaluation showed that the marginal productivities (mps) of land, labour, chemical pesticide and ploughing were positive, while that for seed was negative. thus, a unit increase in any of the inputs, holding the others constant, caused a change (increase or decrease) in output by an amount corresponding to the respective values of the individual factor inputs. land and chemical pesticide were more productive than the other inputs. the production elasticity of each input was found to be less than unity, indicating that the relationship between the inputs and output was inelastic. also the coefficient of returns to scale was 0.93, indicating decreasing returns. thus, the farmers were operating at the region of the production function where output was increasing less than proportionate with the increase in the factor inputs. table 5: marginal physical products (mpps) and elasticity (є) input mp є land labor chemical pesticide seed ploughing 3.34*** 0.44** 2.21 -0.05 0.09* 0.43 0.21 0.09 -0.02 0.22 note: mean of land (farm size) = 0.63, mean of labour = 2.35, mean of chem. pesticide = 0.20, mean of seed = 1.82, mean of ploughing = 12.64. ***, **, and * represent levels of significance at 1%, 5% and 10%, respectively resource use efficiency for cowpea……. 60 to assess the efficient use of resources, the allocative efficiencies (fi) of the various factor inputs were computed using their marginal value products (mvps) and marginal factor costs (mfcs). the results of the computation showed that, with the exception of seed input, a unit increase in any of the other inputs, holding the others constant, positively changed the monetary returns by a value corresponding to the marginal value product of that input. the marginal value products (mvps) of all the inputs were lower than their unit costs (table 6). the relative allocative efficiency of the cowpea farmers was based on the non-classical requirement that each factor be paid equal to its marginal value product. in the sense, the ratios of marginal value products (mvps) to marginal factor costs (mfc or unit acquisition cost) were computed and the values obtained were: 0.90, 0.10, 0.27, -0.02 and 0.01 for land, labour, chemical pesticide, seed and ploughing, respectively (table 6). studies have shown that maximum or absolute allocative efficiency for a particular resource is confirmed if efficiency ratio (f) is equal to unity (i.e. f = 1). but if efficiency ratio is greater than unity (f > 1), it means less than the profit maximizing level of the input is in used, and if f < 1, it means more than the profit maximizing level of that particular resource is in used (onyenweaku and fabiyi, 1991). from the results of the study, it is evident that the efficiency ratios of the inputs were less than unity (f < 1) for all the factor inputs, indicating that more than the profit maximizing level of all the resources were employed by the farmers in the akatsi district. thus, all the resources were inefficiently allocated and were over utilized above their economic optimum levels (sankhayan, 1983; mbata and matewa, 1983). table 6: marginal value products (mvps), marginal factor costs (mfcs) and allocative efficiency (f) of factor inputs input mvp (¢) mfc (¢) f = mvp / mfc land labor chemical pesticide seed ploughing 43,086.87 5,676.11 28,509.57 -645.01 1,161.02 47,985.58 56,799.18 104,973.30 27,850.96 201,646.50 0.90 0.10 0.27 -0.02 0.01 source: field survey, 2004. exchange rate: 1 us dollar = 9,225.00 ghanaian cedit cowpea farmers in the akatsi district face various production constraints/problems in their operation. among the constraints/problems identified include: unfavorable climate, incidence of pests and diseases, land tenure problem, lack of credit for operation, lack of storage facility, transportation and lack of ready market for the produce. conclusion and recommendations based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that cowpeas production in the akatsi district of ghana is basically subsistence. however, production in the various communities are relatively profitable. nevertheless, the farmers are operating at the region of the production function where output is increasing less than proportionate with the increase in the factor inputs used. more than the profit maximizing levels of resources are employed by the farmers in the district. thus, all the resources are over utilized above their economic optimum levels, and hence inefficiently allocated. key problems affecting production include both field/farm and post production factors, such as pests and diseases, land tenure problem, lack of credit for operation, lack of storage facilities, transportation and lack of ready market for the produce. the findings from the study have vital policy implications for enhancing, revitalizing and improving the production of cowpeas in the study area. to help improve the production, and hence farmers‟ income and their living standards, there is the need for an accelerated education programme to provide information on the appropriate methods of production, especially on how inputs could be allocated by the resource-poor farmers. this information could be made available to the farmers through extension officers. during the survey, it was also observed that many farmers hardly get information from the extension officers due to the high extension to farmer ratio in the district. efforts by the government through the ministry of food and agriculture (mofa) should be made to increase and improve extension delivery to the district, and in other parts of the country. a response to this would help increase the production of the cowpeas and crop production in general to help meet the food deficit (quality and quantity) gap in the country. it can also help address the food insecurity problem. acknowledgements the authors acknowledge the support of the bean/cowpea crsp project, university of ghana and university of georgia, usa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 55-61 61 views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adesina, a. a., & djato, k. k. (1996). farm size, relative efficiency and agrarian policy. cote d’ivoire economics, 14, 93-102. drucker, p. f. (1968). the practice of management. pan books ltd, london england. heady, e. o., & jensen, r. (1954). farm management economics. prentice hall, usa. henderson, j. y., & poole, w. (1991). principles of microeconomics. d. c. health and company. hopper, d. w. (1965). allocative efficiency in a traditional india agriculture. journal of farm management economics, 47(3), 611-617. kalirajan, k. (1981). an econometric analysis of yield variability in paddy production”, canadian journal of agricultural economics, no. 29. lau, l. j. & yotopoulos, p. a. (1972). profit supply and factor demand functions. american journal of agricultural economics. 54, 11-18. makehalm, j. p., & malcom, l. r. (1986). the economic of tropical farm management. cambridge university press, cambridge, london. mbata, j. n., & matewa, j. c. (1983). resource use efficiency among small-scale farmers in selected areas of western kenya. trpenlandwirt, (germany), 94 (2), 119-134 menyonga, j. m., bezuneh, t. & youdeowei, a. (1987). food grain production in semi-arid africa. oau / strc-safgrad publication. olomla, a. (1991). capture fisheries and aquaculture in nigeria: a comparative economic analysis. issues in african rural development, winrock institute for agricultural development. 1, 343-359. onwueme, i. c., & sinha, t. d. (1991). field crop production in tropical africa. technical centre for agriculture and rural co-operation (acp). onyenweaku, c. e. (1991). economics of irrigation in crop production in nigeria. issues in african development, 2, 132-133. onyenweaku, c. e., & fabiyi, y. (1991). relative efficiency of cooperative and individual farmers in imo state. amse transaction, 8(4), 23-32. phiri, c. d. (1991). an economic evaluation of small holders farming systems in chinguluwe settlement scheme, malawi. issues in african rural development, 1, 92-93. winrock international institute for agricultural development. sankhayan, p. l. (1983). resource productivity and allocative efficiency in traditional agriculture study in zambia. journal of research (india), 20 (2), 174-180. sefa-dedeh, s. (1993). development of high protein energy foods from grain legumes. proceedings of an international workshop, university of ghana, legon, ghana, february 5-7, 1991, association of african universities, food and nutrition project, 1993. sidhu, s. s. (1974). economies of technological change in wheat production in the indian punjab. american journal of agricultural economics, 56, 217-226. yotopoulos, p., & lan, l. (1976). microeconomic output supply and factor de-mand functions in the agriculture of the province of taiwan. american journal of agricultural economics, 58, 333-340. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 657 assessment of the adoption rate of technologies among fadama iii farmers in adamawa state, nigeria umar, adamumadu department of agricultural economics and extension, adamawa state university mubi, nigeria abstract the study was conducted in adamawa state, nigeria. the major thrust of this study is to assess the adoption rate of technology in fadama iii. in its four years of operation, fadama iii project has realized significant impact on household access to new and proven technologies. adoption rate of technologies among beneficiaries has increased from 43.75% before the inception of the project to 96.255% after the project intervention. this indicates 50% increase against only 20% increase among the non-beneficiaries. adoption rate of off-farm technologies (agricultural marketing and financial management) was also large. the adoption rate for the all the technologies was significant at p = 0.05, except for fish feed formulation, cold storage, marketing and fish smoking. yields among respondents have increased significantly due to adoption of proven technologies. the increase was higher among crop farmers (59.38%) followed by livestock farmers (48.75%). the increase in yields across all the enterprises has exceeded the set target of 20% increase except for fish production (11.25%) and agro-forestry (6.88%). the increase was more among the beneficiaries compared to nonbeneficiaries. it can be concluded that project did not only influence the beneficiaries to adopt technologies for the purpose of improving their socio-economic status but it has also influenced the non-beneficiaries living in fadama iii communities to adopt technologies. fadama iii needs to harmonize existing approaches and need to use complementary systems rather than conflicting ones. keywords:fadama iii, adoption, improved, technology introduction 1 background information improved agricultural production is the major weapon in the fight against world hunger. it aims at improving rural livelihood and increasing economic growth. the world development report of the world bank (2008) argued that corresponding author’s details: name: umaradamumadu email address:umaradamu24@yahoo.com growth in agricultural sector contributes more to poverty reduction than any other economic sector. within the last decades, serious efforts have been made to make the ordinary nigerian self-sufficient in food production. one of such efforts was the establishment of fadama ii. the successful implementation and achievement recorded in fadama ii has led to the establishment of the third national asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:umaradamu24@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9)2013: 657-666 658 fadama development project (fadama iii). fadama iii has been considered as a major approach in the realization of agricultural transformation agenda (bakari, 2012). transforming agriculture is dependent on the adoption of improved technologies. the transfer of technology and the subsequent adoption of same by the predominantly traditional farming communities is one of the challenges facing agricultural scientists and extensionists (okoro, 2004). fadama iii over its period of implementation has introduced improved technologies, through advisory services and on-farm adaptive research. the assessment of the performance and rate of adoption of technologies among beneficiaries of fadama iii and its spill over effect in the adjoining communities forms the major focus of this study. overview of fadama iii project the establishment of fadama iii is based on the success and benefits of the implementation of fadama ii, which was also a follow-up to the first national fadama development project (nfdp-i). the project which was conceived by the federal ministry of agriculture and water resources (nigeria) is designed to run for five years (bakari, 2012). like fadama ii, the project has employed demanddriven approach to: (1) address productive infrastructure (2) improve livelihood opportunities (3) empower rural poor (4) promote socially inclusive and community-based approaches, and (5) accord adequate attention to technical quality assurance. fadama iii is instrumental in driving the current effort of the government to transform the nigerian agriculture. the major thrust of the project is to increase the income of users of rural land and water on a sustainable basis. this is to reduce rural poverty, increase food security and contribute to the realization of key millennium development goals (mdgs). according to bakari (2012), these laudable objectives of fadama iii are to be achieved through the successful implementation of the activities of welldesigned and comprehensive activities of the following components: 1. capacity building, communication and information support. 2. small scale infrastructural development for participating communities. 3. delivery of advisory services and input support. 4. support to adps and promotion of adaptive research. 5. asset acquisition for fugs and eigs. 6. project management, monitoring and evaluation. the project has set target to achieve the following outcomes at the end of its five year period: 1. 75% of participants will increase their incomes by 40% at the end of the project life. 2. at least 10% of net earnings from income generating activities of the participants to be saved annually. 3. 75% of the beneficiaries will be satisfied with operation, maintenance and utilization of community owned infrastructures and capital assets acquired through the project at mid-term and close of the intervention. 4. yield of primary agricultural products should increase by at least 20% among the beneficiaries. 5. by mid-term and close of the project, there should be a physical verification of operation, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9)2013: 657-666 659 maintenance and utilization of assets acquired through the project. methodological framework study area this study was conducted in adamawa state. the state is located in the moist agro-ecological zone of nigeria and lies between latitude 7 28ʹʹn and 10 of the equator and longitude 11 30ʹʹ e and 13 45" e of the greenwich meridian. the state has a land mass of 39, 743.12 sq. km. with a population of 3,194,781 (npc, 2006). subsistence agriculture forms the major source of livelihood for a majority of the population. the project was implemented in 20 out of 21 local government areas that form the state. this study was conducted in 10 participating local government areas and one non-participating lga. the participating lgas includes: ganye, song, jada, yola-north, fufore, and lamurde. others include madagali, hong, mayo-belwa and maiha. while numan is the only non-participating lga. sample selection to analyze the adoption rate of new technologies among fadama iii beneficiaries, its impact on the participants and the spill-over benefit on the nonparticipants living in fadama iii communities, the respondents were classified into three categories. these categories are: (1) direct fadama iii participants (2) non-fadama iii participants living in fadama iii lgas (3) non-fadama iii participants living outside fadama iii lgas. the non-participants have comparable socio-economic characteristics to the fadama iii communities. this categorization is to allow for determination of the direct and indirect benefits of fadama iii in relation to technology transfer. it is expected that non-participants living in the same communities with project participants will benefit from spill-over effects of some of the technologies introduced. the sampling procedure involved purposive selection of 10 out of 11 lgas that received new technologies from the project. in each of the 10 sampled lgas, 160 households were randomly selected from across all the fcas that received technologies. in other words a total of 160 households made up each respondent type. a total sample size of 480 respondents was therefore used for this study. the sampling frame was designed to cover all fcas that received technology; this method was to ensure that all the fugs that had received technologies were included in the list. the sampling frame of household was also stratified by gender and vulnerable groups. this choice is to ensure that not less than 25% of respondents from each fca are female. survey instruments and data collection tocollect a reliable data, a structured survey instrument was used to collect the required information from households. structured questions were used to determine the adoption rate of technologies among the project participants and non-participants. the survey instrument was administered by trained enumerators under the supervision of the researchers. baseline data collection double difference analysis (explained later in the text) employed in this study requires baseline data. the baseline data was collected using recall information, one year before the inception of fadama iii – that is for the cropping year 2008. the recall information includes data on technologies adopted, and yield of crops per annum. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9)2013: 657-666 660 data analysis an experimental approach was used to construct an estimate of the counterfactual situation by randomly assigning households to treatment and control groups. random assignment ensures that both groups are statistically similar in observable and unobservable characteristics, thus avoiding project placement and self-selection biases. propensity score matching (psm) and double-difference (dd) were used in this study to address the challenges faced by impact studies of this kind as outlined above. the psm method matches project beneficiaries and comparable nonbeneficiaries using propensity score; which is the estimated probability of being included in the project. in this study, only beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries with comparable propensity scores are used to determine the effect of the project. double–difference on the other hand, compares changes in outcome from before and after the project between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, instead of just comparing outcome levels at one point in time. to determine the adoption rate of technologies (among the beneficiaries and corresponding non-beneficiaries), percentages and standard deviation were used. statistical test for difference between the project participants and non-project participants was also used to determine statistical significance. major findings agricultural extension has been a major instrument of emphasis in agricultural development processes. it has been noted that every aspect of agriculture requires adequate extension services for it to succeed and be sustained (ani, 2007). the importance of agricultural extension lies in teaching of farmers methods of raising their own standard of living by adopting improved technologies in their farming practices. this focus on farming will largely increase the income of the beneficiaries which will consequently improve their well-being. agricultural extension covers all areas of agriculture and beyond including techniques of production, farm decisionmaking, marketing, processing, storage, and other socio-economic as well as cooperative matters (van den ban and hawkins, 1999). the source of technologies available to farmers before the advent of fadama development project was largely adp sponsored extension system. in its effort to contribute to the government’s agricultural transformation agenda, fadama iii has provided support to adp and promotion of adaptive research as well as pluralistic advisory services that are demand-driven, based on the felt needs of the farmers. the spread of farm information and subsequent adoption of same by farmers is the primary responsibility of advisory and extension services. adoption rate of technologies in fadama iii transfer of improved technologies is one of the responsibilities of fadama iii project. in an attempt to fulfil this responsibility, the project has demonstrated commitment to encourage the participating farmers through on-farm adaptive research and advisory services to adopt one or more improved technologies. according to olayide (1980) as reported by ajayi and ajala (2008), agricultural technology is the application of technology for the promotion and the development of agriculture. improved technologies employed in agriculture asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9)2013: 657-666 661 generally increase productivity and income of the farmers (bennett, 1990). as noted by oyenwaku and mbuba (1991), cited in ajayi and ajala (2008), adoption is a mental process whereby an individual decides to use a new technology (innovation). the rate of adoption of technology among farmers in a project is the most important measure of success of the project and effectiveness of the service (okoro, 2004). there are serious debates in literature about difference in rate of adoption among farmers within a social system (monu&omole, 1983; ona, 1991; ajayi&ajala, 2008). greater proportion of the beneficiaries of fadama iii project has adopted new technologies from inception of the project to date. as the result shows, the adoption rate is over 50% among the project participants compared to only 20% among the non-participants. this has surpassed the set target of 20% by fadama iii (table 1). this huge achievement is what is expected since some of the beneficiaries have adopted some of these technologies from fadama ii project, considering the adoption rate of almost 44% before the inception of fadama iii. table 1: percentage of farmers adopting technology before and after fadama iii intervention type of respondents before after % change fiii beneficiaries 43.75(3.449) 96.25(7.512) 50.50 non beneficiaries within 45.63(3.594) 74.38(5.819) 28.75 non beneficiaries outside 33.75(2.675) 53.75(4.223) 20.00 note: number in parentheses are standard deviations, fii = fadanma iii, within = fadama iii lgas, outside = nonfadama iii lgas it is also interesting to note that spill over effect has manifested among nonbeneficiaries living in the same community with the project participants. the level of adoption among this category of respondents is almost 30% as against 20% for non-beneficiaries outside fadama iii lgas (table 1). the reason for this is not far-fetched. it may be attributed to the fact that this group of non-beneficiaries might have benefited from some of the technologies introduced to the beneficiaries. moreover, a good number of this group has also benefited from advisory services from the concluded fadama ii project. technology adoption disaggregated by types of technology as earlier noted, fadama iii has in its efforts to transform agriculture in the rural communities in adamawa state, introduced technologies in four areas of agriculture. this includes crop, livestock, fisheries and agro-forestry. however, the beneficiaries have benefited from agroprocessing and off-farm technologies from fadama iii and probably during fadama ii project. technologies adopted by majority of farmers were plant spacing, improved breeds and improved seeds, at 43.75%, 40.63% and 38.13% respectively (table 2). similarly, agricultural marketing and financial management were also adopted by a greater number of both the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9)2013: 657-666 662 table 2: percentage of farmers adopting new technologies disaggregated by types of technology technology beneficiaries non beneficiaries within non beneficiaries outside n = 160 n=160 n=160 improved seeds 38.13(0.48723) 34.37(0.47645) 11.87(0.32451) plant spacing 43.75(0.49767) 32.5(0.46985) 13.13(0.33874) fertilizer application 31.87(0.46745) 28.13(0.45102) 7.50(0.26422) improved breeds 40.63(0.4926) 17.50(0.38116) 3.13(0.17454) artificial insemination 11.88(0.32451) 5.00(0.21863) 3.75(0.19058) livestock feed formulation 22.50(0.41889) 4.37(0.20518) 2.50(0.156615) improved fingerlings 12.50(0.33175) 7.50(0.26423) 6.25(0.24282) hatchery 8.13(0.27407) 4.37(0.20518) 3.75(0.19058) fish feed formulation 7.50(0.26423) 1.87(0.13607) 3.13(0.17454) improved seedling 10.00(0.30094) 3.75(0.19058) 0.23(0.11145) budding 11.87(0.32451) 8.75(0.28345) 5.63(1.25000) grafting 6.87(0.25383) 7.50(0.26423) 1.05(0.00125) grinding/hulling 21.87(0.41469) 11.25(0.31697) 9.37(0.29239) cold storage 6.25(0.24282) 11.88(0.32451) 4.37(0.20518) fish smoking 5.00(0.21863) 3.13(0.17454) 2.50(0.15662) packaging 3.75(0.19058) 1.25(0.11145) 9.37(0.29239) sorting/grading 7.50(0.26423) 10.63(0.30913) 1.25(0.11145) agricultural marketing 36.13(0.40122) 34.37(0.49838) 35.25(0.40015) record keeping 22.50(0.42078) 19.37(0.39647) 11.25(0.31697) financial management 30.63(0.49365) 20.63(0.40588) 10.00(0.30094) note: numbers in parentheses are standard deviation the use of packaging, fish smoking, cold storage and grafting technologies were very low for both the project participants and non-participants. however, the level of adoption is disproportionately higher for the beneficiaries than for the corresponding non-beneficiaries of all the technologies (table 2). it is interesting to note here that marketing and financial management were used more than most of the technologies. this is a clear manifestation that all enterprises require knowledge of marketing and financial management. as stated earlier, adoption of improved crop practices recorded the highest among the technologies introduced. this may be attributed to the importance placed on crop production basically to ensure selfsufficiency in line with transformation agenda (ta) of the present administration. low rate of adoption for processing and agro-forestry technologies has been noted. however, the project may have a much bigger impact on those technologies among beneficiaries in the future because of lagged effects of technology adopted. considering the fact these are new technologies, it has been noted that farmer’s decision about whether or not to adopt a technology is recognized to occur over a period of time rather than being instantaneous (ani, 2007). the reason for lower rate may also mean that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9)2013: 657-666 663 those areas are not widely practiced in the study area. spill-over effects have also cropped up among the non-fadama iii beneficiaries within fadama iii lgas as the adoption rate for all the technologies was higher compared to non-beneficiaries outside fadama iii lgas. this may not be unconnected with the fact that this category of the respondents may have taken advantage of living in fadama iii communities. there is also likelihood that this group of respondents have benefited those technologies from fadama ii. further analysis was conducted to determine the level of significance of the adoption rate of new technologies among the beneficiaries of fadama iii project. comparability test for difference between the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries was conducted using t-test analysis. as table 3 depicts, the adoption rate for all the technologies was significant at p = 0.05. however, the results were not significant for marketing, fish hatchery; fish feed formulation, cold storage and fish smoking technologies. from the foregoing, it can be concluded that the project has performed creditably in introducing new technologies to benefiting communities of adamawa state. fadama iii has implemented its component iv(on-farm adaptive research) and advisory services. (these components charged with the responsibilities of providing information to farmers on improved and proven technologies). the ultimate aim of this is to increase productivity and income, and consequently improve well-being of the beneficiaries. table 3: t-test analysis of rate of adoption of technologies among beneficiaries technology beneficiaries non beneficiaries t-test (p value) n=160 n=160 improved seeds 0.3812(0.03852) 0.1188(0.02565) 0.00** plant spacing 0.4375(0.03934) 0.1312(0.02678) 0.00** fertilizer application 0.3188(0.03696) 0.0750(0.02089) 0.00** improved breeds 0.4062(0.03895) 0.0312(0.01380) 0.00** artificial insemination 0.1188(0.02565) 0.0375(0.01507) 0.007** livestock feed formulation 0.2250(0.03312) 0.0250(0.01238) 0.00** improved fingerling 0.1250(0.02623) 0.0625(0.01920) 0.055 fish hatchery 0.0812(0.02167) 0.0375(0.01507) 0.098 fish feed formulation 0.0750(0.02089) 0.0312(0.01380) 0.081 improved seedling 0.1000(0.02379) 0.0125(0.00881) 0.001** grafting 0.1188(0.02565) 0.0562(0.01827) 0.048** budding 0.0688(0.02007) 0.0188(0.01076) 0.029** grinding/hulling 0.2188(0.03278) 0.0938(0.02312) 0.002** cold storage 0.0625(0.01920) 0.0438(0.01622) 0.456 smoking 0.0500(0.01728) 0.0250(0.01238) 0.241 package 0.0375(0.01507) 0.0938(0.02312) 0.032** sorting/grading 0.0750(0.02089) 0.0125(0.00881) 0.006** asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9)2013: 657-666 664 agricultural marketing 0.4812(0.03962) 0.4625(0.03954) 0.738 record keeping 0.2278(0.03348) 0.1125(0.02506) 0.006** financial management 0.4114(0.03927) 0.1000(0.02379) 0.00** note: number in parentheses are standard error, **= significant at 5% level impact of technology adoption on the yield of participating farmers agricultural technology is the use of technology for the promotion and development of agriculture (olayide, 1980). according to bunnett (1990) improved technologies are employed in agriculture to increase productivity and subsequently farmers’ income. due to the importance given to increase in agricultural productivity, fadama iii project has set target of 20% increase in productivity of the participating farmers by the close of the project. this is in line with the transformation agenda of increasing agricultural productivity by the present administration through promotion of efficient agricultural production (fgn, 2012). table 4: percentage of farmers whose yield increase as a result of adopting new technologies note: number in parentheses is standard deviation yields among beneficiaries have increased significantly due to adoption of proven technologies introduced to them. this is particularly higher among crop farmers (59.38%) followed by livestock farmers (48.75%) as indicated in table 4. the increase in yields across all the enterprises has exceeded the set target of 20% increase except for fish production (11.25%) and agro-forestry (6.88%). the increase was however, more among beneficiaries compared to nonbeneficiaries. this result suggests that fadama project may have given the beneficiaries incentives to use new technologies and may have contributed to higher yields anticipated by beneficiaries. another interesting phenomenon also manifested. the increase among nonbeneficiaries within fadama iii lgas was higher than for non-beneficiaries living outside fadama iii lgas (see table 4). this suggests spill-over effect among this category of respondents. this category of non-beneficiaries may have taken the advantages of using technologies introduced to beneficiaries and translated it into higher productivity. in summary, fadama iii has caused the beneficiaries to realize significant increases in yield. these results can be attributed to participation in the project by the beneficiaries. conclusion and policy implications fadama iii project has realized significant impact on household’s access to new and beneficiary (n=160) non beneficiary within (n=160) non beneficiary outside (n=160) crop farmers 59.38(0.49267) 34.38(0.47645) 1.88(0.13607) livestock farmers 48.75(0.50141) 16.25(0.37007) 7.50(0.26422) fish farmers 11.25(0.31697) 6.25(0.24282) 2.50(0.15662) agro forestry farmers 6.88(0.25382) 5.63(0.23113) 3.75(0.19058) agro processors 30.00(0.45970) 21.88(0.41470) 1.88(0.13607) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9)2013: 657-666 665 proven technologies. the adoption rate of technologies among its beneficiaries has from 43.75% before the inception of the project to 96.255% after the project intervention. this indicates a 50% increase against only 20% increase among the nonbeneficiaries outside fadama iii lgas. this increase is far above the set target of 20% by fadama iii. plant spacing, improved breeds and improved seeds were the most widely adopted technologies for both the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. interestingly, the adoption rate of off-farm technologies (agricultural marketing and financial management) was also large. the rate of adoption for all the technologies adopted was higher for the beneficiaries than for the two control groups (non-beneficiaries within and outside fadama iii lgas). the adoption rate for all the technologies was significant at p = 0.05, except for fisheries and agroprocessing. level of adoption was higher among the youth. about 50% of the respondents who are beneficiaries and below the age of 40 have adopted new technologies for the beneficiaries. similarly farmers with small farm sizes adopted technologies more for both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. 65.69% and 67.44% of the respondents who are beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries respectively have farm sizes of less than 5 hectares. however, the rate is higher among the beneficiaries than the non-beneficiaries; i.e. for respondents having farm sizes from 5 8 hectares. fadama iii has supported the vulnerable groups to adopt new technologies. rate of adoption was higher among the unemployed youth (22.20%), followed by the widows 20.00%. although, level of adoption was low, the project has demonstrated commitment in reaching out to the poor and vulnerable groups. greater number (67.80%) of male beneficiaries adopted new technologies as against 32.20% for female beneficiaries. however, the level of adoption for female beneficiaries (32.20%) was more than for female non-beneficiaries (22.12%). yields among respondents have increased significantly due to adoption of proven technologies introduced to them. this is particularly higher among crop farmers (59.38%) followed by livestock farmers (48.75%). the increase in yields across all the enterprises has exceeded the set target of 20% increase except for fish production (11.25%) and agro-forestry (6.88%). the increase was more among the beneficiaries compared to non-beneficiaries. from the foregoing, the project did not only influence the beneficiaries to adopt technologies for the purpose of improving their socio-economic status but it has also influenced the non-beneficiaries living in fadama iii communities to adopt technologies. the adoption rate for fisheries and agroforestry technologies was low. this raises the need for sensitization on the importance of these technologies that are necessary to their activities. most farmers were oblivious of the existence of these innovations, let alone their importance to their activities. it is important for fadama iii to strengthen support for adp because the latter has limited funding to effectively provide its primary role, which is transfer of technology. as it strives to reform its extension systems toward more pluralistic systems, there is the need to harmonize existing approaches and to seek the use of complementary systems rather than conflicting ones. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9)2013: 657-666 666 references ajayi, a. r. and ajala, a. a. (2008). rural farmers’ participation in agricultural development project and the effect on their adoption of innovations: a case study of ekiti state, nigeria. ghana journal of science,3(9): 83-90. anderson, j.r and feder, g. (2003).rural extension services world bank policy research working paper 2976, world bank, washington d. c. ani, s. o (2007).rural community leadership. agricultural extension: a pathway for sustainable agricultural development in nigeria. auto-century publishers: enugu nigeria. bennett, c. f. (1990).cooperative extension roles and relation for a new era.(washington d.c, national technical information services).p. 28 – 32. bakari, u. (2012).assessment of the impact of fadama iii in adamawa state. mid-line evaluation report 2012. dehejia, r &wahba, s. (2002). propensity score matching methods for nonexperimental causal studies. review of economics and statistics,84(1): 151–161. faye, i. &deininger, k. (2000). do new delivery systems improve extension access? evidence from rural uganda, selected paper presented at the american agricultural economics association annual meeting, providence, rhode island, july 24-27, 2005 monu, j. &omole, d. (1983).current issues in agricultural extension systems.copycraft publication inc. abakaliki, nigeria. npc. (2006). population and housing census of the federal republic of nigeria report: abuja, nigeria. okoro, m (2004). self-help projects in rural development in nigeria’ journal of tropical agriculture and sustainable developmentl, 3(4):104-110 oladele, o. (1991).the challenges of nigeria economic reforms. ibadan nigeria, fountain publications, nigeria. olayide s.o. (1980). rural development processes: village development: food basket management strategy; centre for agriculture and rural development, university of ibadan press. ona, s. (1991).community farm extension model in nigeria. journal of sustainable agriculture, 3(2): 87-91. oyenwaku t. &mbuba m.(1991).agricultural extension for women farmers in nigeria.world bank discussion paper 102. world bank, washington, d.c. tadaro, m. p. (1999).economics for developing world. london, longman group limited. van den ban, a. w. and hawkins h. s. (1999). agricultural extension: second edition. published by blackwell science world bank, (2008).world development report. washington d. c, world bank. a critical analysis of climate change factors and its projected future values in delta state, nigeria publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. a critical analysis of climate change factors and its projected future values in delta state, nigeria emaziye, p. o., r. n. okoh and p. c. ike (department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, nigeria) citation: emaziye, p. o., r. n. okoh and p. c. ike (2012): “a critical analysis of climate change factors and its projected future values in delta state, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 206-212. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 206-212 206 author(s) emaziye, p. o. department of agricultural economics and extension delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, nigeria email: pemaziye@yahoo.com r. n. okoh and p. c. ike department of agricultural economics and extension delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, nigeria a critical analysis of climate change factors and its projected future values in delta state, nigeria abstract the study focused on the critical analysis of climate change factors (temperature and rainfall) and its projected future values in the state. the main objective was to determine the trends of climate change factors (temperature and rainfall). and the specific objective was to determine the projected future trends of climate change factors in the state. multistage sampling procedure was used in the random selection of states, local government, communities and rural households for the research study. annual mean time series data of temperature and rainfall were collected from nigerian meteorological agency (nimet). data were also obtained from structure questionnaire survey. the collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, trend analysis and growth model. the study reveals that there were increasing trends of temperature values and decreasing rainfall values in the state. but their projected future values witnessed an increasing trend. the increasing trends in temperature values may lead to a situation were crops will be smothered by excessive heat thereby reducing food production in the state. the study therefore recommends that meteorological station units should be established in the rural farming households in the state where accessibility is extremely difficult. this will make available meteorological data (information) to the reach of the poor rural farming household for the attainment of food production. keywords: climate change, trend, climatic change factors, delta state, nigeria introduction climate change has become more threatening to the sustainable development globally. the “mean global temperatures have been increasing in line with precipitation increases since 1850, mainly due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” (fao, 2007). exposure to climate change, most particularly flooding poses substantial risks to food production in the rural household resulting in food insecurity. greater rainfall variability and more severe droughts in semi-arid africa will hinder efforts to enhance food security and combat malnourishment (schmidhuber and tubiello, 2007). given the pronouncement of climatologist on the evidence of global warming, there is concern that climatic impacts on food crop production will be exacerbated in developing countries (molua and lambi, 2007). this is in line with the report of adejuwon, (2004) that nigerian agriculture depend highly on climate because temperature, sunlight, water, relative humidity are the main drivers of crop growth and yield. a variety of crops such as maize, yam and cassava produced in delta state depend on rainfall for their optimum performance. but in line with ipcc (2007a) reported that precipitation levels are on the downward trend. the decrease and irregular rainfall pattern pose a problem that need to be addressed to avoid food shortage in the state. hence this study will provide an insight to the trends of climate change factors (temperature and rainfall) in the state. the study also addressed the following research questions: 1) what is the trend of temperature values in the state? 2) what is the trend of rainfall values in the state? 3) what are the projected future values of climate change factors in the state? methodology the study area delta state, located in the south south geopolitical region of nigeria was created on the 27 th of august 1991 out of the former bendel state. at inception, delta state was made up of twelve political divisions called local government areas (lga’s), later increased to 19 in 1996. presently there are 25 local government areas in delta state.(delta state govt., n.d). the state occupy a land mass of about 17,163 square kilometer with a population of about 4,098,398 persons (npc, 2006). geographically located within longitudes 5 ◦ and 6.4 ◦ e and 5 ◦ 00 and 6.30’, the state is bounded northwards by edo state, on the east by anambra state, on the south east by mailto:pemaziye@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 206-212 207 bayelsa state and on the south west by the bight of benin which covers approximately 160km of the states coastline, (delta state govt. n.d). southern parts of the state which is transverse by numerous flat floored rivers that drain into the atlantic ocean is generally low lying without remarkable hills, consisting of unconsolidated sediments of quaternary age. some hills can be found northwards within the lga’s of ika and aniocha. the major rivers include the niger river, ethiope, warri, kiagbodo (aweto, 2002). drainage is done in the eastern flank by the niger river via its several distributaries such as the forcados, escravos, and the warri rivers and creeks such as the bomadi creek. rivers jamieson and ethiope rise from the north and northeast respectively subsequently join and form the benin river which eventually drains into the sea in the west (online nigeria, 2003). delta state shares similar climatic features with other states in the niger-delta. the general climate is characterized by a long rainy season from march/april through october. the climate in delta state shows latitudinal fluctuation in humidity ranging from the humid tropical in the south to the subhumid in the north east. lessening humidity towards the north is accompanied by an increasingly marked dry season (online nigeria, 2003) method of sampling / sampling size multistage sampling procedure was used in random selection of local government areas, communities and rural households for the research study. firstly, three local government areas each were selected from each of the three agricultural zones in the state making up to nine (9) local government areas from the twenty-five (25) local government areas. secondly, two communities from each of the local government areas were selected, making it up to 18 communities. finally, twenty five rural households were randomly selected from each of the sampled communities making it up to four hundred and fifty (450) rural households. only four hundred and ten (410) respondents were utilized for this research study. method of data collection annual mean time series data from nigerian meteorological agency that include the following; temperature, and rainfall from january, 1971 to december, 2009 were collected for the study. data for this study were also obtained using personal interview and structured questionnaire survey method of data analysis descriptive statistics descriptive statistic was used to summarize the respondents’ socio-economic characteristics of rural farming households in the state. trend analysis line graph was used to determine the trend of the climatic change factors (temperature, and rainfall) in delta state. growth model growth model was used to predict the future values of climate change factors (temperature, and rainfall). this model was specified as linear, quadratic and cubic equations. the equations are as follows: chf = a(1+i) t +e (linear) ………. i chf = a(1+i) t +b (1+i) 2t +e (quadratic)….….ii chf = a(1+i) t +b (1+i) 2t + c(1+i) 3t +e (cubic)…………iii where chf = climate change factors (temperature and rainfall) i = rate of growth t = time horizon (integer values starting from 1 to 38 years) e = error term a, b, c and d = coefficients of the model the cubic functional form that fits the data best fitted was selected. results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of respondents in delta state, nigeria primary school level of education dominated the state with large household size of 9 persons. the mean age of respondents in the state is 48 years engaging in farming activities and dominated by male headed households. most rural farming households were married confirming that they were matured and conscious on the level of climate change factors (temperature and rainfall) in the state. the mean annual income of the rural farming households in the state was n54,702 ($353) revealing a low annual income level due to impacts of climate change in the state. socioeconomics characteristics is shown in table 1 trend analysis of temperature in delta state, nigeria temperature data from delta state, nigeria between 1971 and 2009 shows an increasing trend with a trend coefficient of 0.57 0 c per year (table 2) and is statistically significant. the minimum value of temperature (30.09 0 c) was recorded in 1976 while the maximum value of temperature (32.60 0 c) was recorded in the year 1976. the standard deviation and mean values of temperature over the period (1971 – 2009) are 0.53 0 c and 31.49 0 c respectively. the trend line had a positive slope of 0.56 indicating that over the time period 1971 to 2009 annual mean temperature in delta state rose by 0.56 0 c per unit change in time (figure 1). the trend analysis results revealed an increasing trend in mean annual temperature in the state. the increasing trend may lead to a situation were crops will be smothered by excessive heat thereby reducing food production in the state. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 206-212 208 trend analysis of rainfall in delta state, nigeria rainfall record from the delta state, nigeria between 1971 – 2009 shows a decreasing trend with the minimum value for the period (189.02mm) recorded in 1977 and maximum value for the period (283.05mm) recorded in 1999 (table 3). the mean and standard deviation values of rainfall from 1971 – 2009 are 231.41mm and 27.31mm respectively. the trend line had a negatives slope of – 0.38 indicating that over the time period 1971 to 2009 annual mean rainfall in delta state fell by 0.38mm per unit change in time (figure 2). this reveals a decreasing trend with the negative value of the trend coefficient of rainfall in the state. crops needs water for optimum development but with the decreasing nature of rainfall in the state will lead to crop failure thereby resulting in hunger and food insecurity situation in the state if prompt action is not taking. predicted future values of climate change factors in delta state, nigeria the future projected values of temperature are; 32.25 0 c, 32.40 0 c, 32.56 0 c, 32.71 0 c, 32.87 0 c, 33.03 0 c, 33.18 0 c and 33.34 0 c for the year 2015, 2020, 2025, 2030, 2035, 2040, 2045 and 2050 respectively (table 4). there was an increasing trend in temperature in the state. rainfall projected future values also witnessed an increasing trend. the values of the projected future values of rainfall in the state are: 234.38mm, 246.19mm, 249.02mm, 251.89mm, 254.79mm, 257.72mm, 260.69mm and 263.69mm for the year 2015, 2020, 2025, 2030, 2035, 2040, 2045 and 2050 respectively. figure 3and 4 shows the projected future upward trend. conclusion and recommendation primary school level of education dominated the state with large household size of 9 persons and a mean age of 48 years. most respondents were married with a low annual income of n54,702 ($353). the trend line had a positive slope of 0.56 indicating that over the time period 1971 to 2009 annual mean temperature in delta state rose by 0.56 0 c per unit change in time. the trend line had a negatives slope of – 0.38 indicating that over the time period 1971 to 2009 annual mean rainfall in delta state fell by 0.38mm per unit change in time. the trend analysis results revealed an increasing trend in mean annual temperature and a decreasing trend in mean annual rainfall in the state. there were increasing trend in projected future values of temperature and rainfall in the state. the increasing trend may lead to a situation were crops will be smothered by excessive heat thereby reducing food production in the state. the study therefore recommends that meteorological station units should be established in the rural farming households in the state where accessibility is extremely difficult. this will make available meteorological data (information) to the reach of the poor rural farming household for the attainment of food production. reference adejuwon, s. a. (2004) “impacts of climate variability and climate change on crop yield in nigeria”, lead paper presented at the stakeholders workshop on assessment of impacts and adaptation to climate change, conference center, obafemi awolowo university, ile-ife 20-21 september, 2004. aweto, a. (2002) “outline geography of urhoboland”, retrieved from http://www.waado.org/geography/urhobogeographyaweto.htm delta state government (n. d) about delta state, retrieved from www.deltastate.gov.ng fao (2007) “national programmes for food security: fao’s vision of a world without hunger. rome ipcc (2007a) “summary for policymakers in: climate change 2007: impacts and adaptation and vulnerability”, contribution of working group 11 to the forth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change: m.l. parry et al (eds) cambridge university press, cambridge, u.k. and new york, u.s.a. pp 7 – 22. molua, e. l. and c. m. lambi (2007) “the economic impact of climate change on agriculture in cameroon”, world bank development research group (sustainable rural and urban development team) policy research working paper 4364 washington d. c. national population census (npc) (2006) federal republic of nigeria, federal ministry of women and social development, 2006. online nigeria (2003) physical setting, retrieved from http://www.onlinenigeria.com/links/bayelsaadv.asp schmidhuber j. and f. n. tubiello (2007) “global food security under climate change”, proceedings of the national academy of science, vol. 104(50), pp. 19703 – 08. http://www.onlinenigeria.com/links/bayelsaadv.asp asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 206-212 209 table 1: socio-economic characteristics of respondents source: field survey data, 2011 table 2: analysis of temperature record from 1971 – 2009 in delta state variable coefficient std. error t-statistic prob. c 13.72317 4.721015 2.906826 0.0062 dt (-1) 0.564891 0.150065 3.764305 0.0006 temperature value mean (0c) 31.49 standard deviation (0c) 0.53 maximum temperature (0c) 32.60 minimum temperature (0c) 30.09 trend coefficient (0c/year) 0.57 coefficient of variability (cv) 1.68 source: nimet and author computed result, 2011 variables delta (n=410) percentages (%) age (years) 30 – 39 91 22.2 40 – 49 163 39.8 50 – 59 132 32.2 60 – 69 24 5.8 70 – 79 0 mean 48 years gender female 195 47.6 male 215 52.4 mode male marital status single 29 7.1 married 267 65.1 widow 60 14.6 widower 6 13.2 divorced 48 educational level informal 126 30.7 primary 157 38.3 secondary 87 21.2 tertiary 40 9.8 mode primary household size 2 – 4 17 4.1 5 – 7 85 20.7 8 – 10 155 37.8 11 – 13 97 23.6 14 – 16 56 13.8 mean (persons) 9 annual income(n) 21,000-60,000 304 74.1 61,000-100,000 100 24.4 101,000-140,000 6 1.5 141,000-180,000 0 181,000-220,000 0 221,000-260,000 0 mean (n) 54,702 ($353) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 206-212 210 table 3: analysis of rainfall data from 1971 – 2009 in delta state variable coefficient std. error t-statistic prob. c 37.41685 8.522643 0.0000 dr (-1) 0.376412 0.159985 2.352793 0.0242 rainfall value mean (mm) 231.41 standard deviation (mm) 27.31 maximum rainfall (mm) 283.05 minimum rainfall (mm) 189.02 trend coefficient (mm/ year) 0.38 coefficient of variability (cv) 11.80 sources: nimet and author computed result, 2011 table 4: predicted future values of climate change factors in delta state year 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 temperature (0c) 32.25 32.40 32.56 32.71 32.87 32.03 33.18 33.34 rainfall (mm) 243.38 246.19 249.02 257.89 254.79 257.72 260.69 263.69 source: author computed projected values, 2011 30.0 30.5 31.0 31.5 32.0 32.5 33.0 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 dt figure 1: trend of temperature data for delta state (1971 – 2009) figure 1 reveals an increasing trend of temperature in delta state dt = 13.72 + 0.56t asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 206-212 211 180 200 220 240 260 280 300 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 dr figure 2: trend of rainfall data for delta state (1971 – 2009) actual fits forecasts actual fits forecasts 205020402030202020102000199019801971 33 32 31 30 t e m p e ra tu re ( 0 f ) year yt = 30.8847*(1.00096**t) msd: mad: mape: 0.154162 0.272218 0.868231 delta temperature growth curve model figure 3: predicted future values of temperature (delta state) dr = 318.89 – 0.376412t asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 206-212 212 actual fits forecasts actual fits forecasts 205020402030202020102000199019801971 280 260 240 220 200 (m m ) r a in fa ll year yt = 219.552*(1.00229**t) msd: mad: mape: 668.403 21.939 9.595 delta rainfall growth curve model figure 4: predicted future values of rainfall in delta state effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. rural development in bangladesh since independence: a study on progress and performance mohammad ismail hossain (ph.d candidate, department of agricultural economics, school of agriculture, aristotle university of thessaloniki thessaloniki, greece) mst. esmat ara begum (ph.d candidate, department of agricultural economics, school of agriculture, aristotle university of thessaloniki, thessaloniki, greece) eleni papadopoulou (assistant professor, department of spatial planning and development, school of engineering, aristotle university of thessaloniki, greece) anastasios semos (professor, department of agricultural economics, school of agriculture, aristotle university of thessaloniki, greece) citation: mohammad ismail hossain., mst. esmat ara begum., eleni papadopoulou and anastasios semos (2012) “rural development in bangladesh since independence: a study on progress and performance”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 452-464. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 452-464. 452 author(s) mohammad ismail hossain ph. d candidate, department of agricultural economics, school of agriculture, aristotle university of thessaloniki thessaloniki, greece email: mhossain@agro.auth.gr mst. esmat ara begum ph. d candidate, department of agricultural economics, school of agriculture, aristotle university of thessaloniki, thessaloniki, greece eleni papadopoulou assistant professor, department of spatial planning and development, school of engineering, aristotle university of thessaloniki, greece anastasios semos, professor, department of agricultural economics, school of agriculture, aristotle university of thessaloniki, greece rural development in bangladesh since independence: a study on progress and performance abstract rural development has been the core focus of the bangladesh economic policies since her independence. the rural sector is pivotal to the country‟s economic, social and political development. this paper examines the bangladesh rural development policies, strategies and programs since independence in 1971. secondary data were used and collected from various sources especially from bbs and hies. data were analyzed using descriptive statistical tools such as mean and percentage to reach the objectives. results of this study show that the share of agricultural sector in the country‟s gdp has declined which is an indicator of a country‟s progress from an agriculture-based to an export-oriented economy. the success of the agricultural and rural programs in bangladesh is reflected in the reduction in the poverty incidence in the rural sector from almost 54 percent in the 1983-84 to about 35 percent in 2009-10. development efforts of bangladesh are governed by the twin objectives of achieving growth with equity and reducing poverty. the government policy has to some extent achieved the intended results but poverty and inequality are still significant and apparent. hence, rural development continues to be an important agenda to the country‟s development effort. keywords: rural development, progress, performance, poverty reduction, bangladesh introduction one of the major thrusts of the economic development of bangladesh since her independence in 1971 has been and continues to be the rural development programs and policies. the rural sector plays a pivotal role in the country‟s economic growth, social and political development. the economy of bangladesh largely depended on the rural sector performance in the early development stage for agricultural input and output hence the country‟s export earnings and growth in the 1970s and 1980s. the rural sector before the 2000s was almost synonymous with agriculture as more than 70% of her population was engaged in agricultural activities including livestock and fishing. taking agriculture as a proxy for the rural sector, its importance as the engine for growth was 30.89 percent in 1980-81 and it went down to about 18.59 percent in 2009-2010 (bbs, 2010). like any other developing economies, the growing economic importance of the manufacturing sector (as the contribution of this sector increased from 13.37 to 17.89 percent of the respective years) implies that the role of rural sector is as the supplier of labour, land and capital required for industrial development. despite the declining trend of agricultural share in the gdp, it will remain an important sector to the country in terms of export earning, employment and food security. mailto:mhossain@agro.auth.gr rural development in bangladesh since..... 453 one of the major social problems of the rural sector of the country is rural poverty. although poverty is a universal problem and its higher occurrence and incidence in the rural sector makes it predominantly rural phenomenon (hossain and sen, 1992). the incidence of poverty in the country was very high in the 1990s, that is, more than half of the populations (56.70 percent in 1991-92) lived in poverty, with the rural sector suffered the highest which was 58.80 percent compared to the urban (42.80 percent) (hies, 2010). the problem is further aggravated with the predominance of the north and ethnic groups in the rural areas and hence creating an economic imbalance of the country. this inequity was perceived as a potential seedbed for social unrest and political stability which might hinder the country‟s progress and development. with the above premise, the bangladesh government since her independence has focused on various social and economic programs and strategies targeting to develop the rural people mainly through the agricultural policies. the success has been remarkable as reflected by the reduction of poverty incidence to 31.5 percent in 2010. nevertheless, the benefits of the development strategies have not been equitable between the rural and urban sector as the former recorded 35.2 percent incidence of poverty compared to the latter which was about 21.3 percent in 2010 (hies, 2010). hence, the struggle to improve the rural sector is still an important agenda to the government in the next century. this paper attempts to examine the evolution of the rural development policies in bangladesh since her independence that was responsible in improving somewhat the quality of life in the rural sector. the review would provide some understanding of the philosophies, rationales as wells as the lessons that can be learned from the bangladesh rural development experience. this paper is organized as follows. the following section provides an overview of the progress made so far in agricultural, rural development and poverty reduction. this is followed by discusses of the role of agriculture in poverty reduction in the bangladesh context. a chronological review of the development planning and policy since 1971 is reviewed in the consequent paragraphs. the paper ends with conclusion and policy implication. progress and performance in agriculture, rural development and poverty reduction agriculture and rural development agriculture performed relatively well in the 2000s. the growth of agricultural incomes is estimated at 3.9 percent per year during 200001 to 2010-11 compared to 3.5 percent during 1989-90 to 2000-01. the acceleration of agricultural growth has contributed substantially to improved performance of the overall economy. the national income grew at 5.9 percent in the 2000s compared to 5.3 percent during the previous decade (table 1). the acceleration in the growth of agricultural incomes was on account of crop and non-crop agricultural sectors particularly from livestock and fisheries. livestock and fisheries subsectors experienced substantial increase in physical output, as well as favorable prices compared to the crop sector in 1990s. the fisheries income grew by 7.8 percent per year in the 1990s and reached pick, substantial declined was observed in consequent year and was 3.1 percent during the 2000s. the income from livestock activities picked up in the 1980s and continued to grow at a robust rate of 7.3 percent in the 1990s and then fall in 2000s. only the forestry sub-sector grew at a moderate rate of 4.0 percent per year. thus, agriculture has become much more diversified than it was at the time of independence (mandal, 2000; ahmed and chowdhury, 2000). the share of livestock, fisheries and forestry in agricultural incomes was only 20 percent during 1973-74; by 2009-10 they contributed more than 67 percent to agricultural incomes. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 452-464. 454 table 1: long-term growth (percent) of agriculture and economy, 1973-74 to 2010-11 sector 1973-74 to 1989-90 1989-90 to 2000-01 2000-01 to 2010-11 1973-74 to 2010-11 agriculture 2.6 3.5 3.9 3.3 crop 1.7 2.5 3.7 2.6 forestry 3.8 3.8 4.3 4.0 livestock 5.2 7.3 5.1 5.9 fisheries 2.3 7.8 3.1 4.4 non-agriculture 6.0 6.2 7.6 6.6 gross domestic product 4.1 5.3 5.9 5.1 source: gob (2011) however, the crop sector is still dominated by the production of rice. although the area under rice increased marginally from 9.28 to 11.27 million ha, rice production increased from 9.77 million tons in 1971-72 to 32.36 million tons in 2009-10 (table 2). it implies a rate of growth 2.78% per year, much faster than the growth of population. development and diffusion of highyielding rice varieties supported by the development of minor irrigation through shallow tubewells and power pumps was the main driving force behind this growth (hossain, 1988; hossain et al. 1994). more than 62 percent of the land is now irrigated, and over 91 percent of the rice area has been brought under the cultivation of the high yielding modern rice varieties. table 2: technological progress and its effect on the growth in rice production indicator 1971-72 1981-82 1991-92 2001-02 2009-10 rice harvested area (million ha) 9.28 10.46 10.24 10.66 11.27 coverage of modern varieties (%) 6.73 22.22 47.41 64.57 79.77 rice yield (ton/ha) 1.92 1.71 1.70 1.98 2.45 rice production (million tons) 9.77 13.63 18.26 24.30 32.36 population (million persons) 62.8 87.12 111.46 124.36 142.32 rice production per capita (kg of milled rice) 155.57 156.45 163.83 195.40 227.37 source: bbs (2010), has (2007) the long-term trend in rice production however shows a cyclical pattern with a few years of rapid growth followed by a few years of stagnation. this pattern is partly due to depression in prices in seasons following consecutive good harvests that provides disincentives to farmers to further increase production, and partly due to occasional natural disasters – floods, droughts and cyclone. bangladesh has also experienced respectable growth in the production of wheat which turned it from a minor to a major crop during 1976-84. wheat production increased from 0.14 million tons in 1976 to 1.4 million tons in 1984, but remained stagnant at that level during the next decade. the growth resumed again in the late 1990s in response to favorable prices, reaching a production level of nearly 2.0 million tons but in 2000s falls again and reaching 0.9 million tons. the rapid expansion of wheat in 1990s and the dry season boro rice was however achieved partly through reduction in the area under jute, sugarcane, pulses, oilseeds and other minor crops. as a result bangladesh has to spend scarce foreign exchange for import of noncereal food products in increasing amounts. the reduction in the availability of pulses, which are important sources of protein and micronutrients, has adversely affected balanced nutrition, particularly for the poor (jahan and hossain, 1998). among other food crops, the growth was respectable only for potatoes and vegetables. bangladesh has comparative advantage in the rural development in bangladesh since..... 455 production of these crops (shahabuddin, 2000), and production can increase substantially if foreign markets can be tapped. because of limitations of market, the prices of these high value crops collapse at harvest time, which is main constraint to the expansion of production. the growth of agricultural productivity has however promoted a healthy development in the rural non-farm sector by triggering what economists call “backward and forward linkages”. agricultural growth has generated opportunities for employment and income in the rural non-farm sector through its effects on a) the demand for irrigation equipment and chemical fertilizers produced and transacted in the non-farm sectors, b) the demand for services for processing, storage and marketing of additional agricultural produce, and c) the demand for trade, transport, construction, education and health care services, as farm households spend a larger proportion of additional incomes for purchasing non-farm goods and services. poverty reduction an accurate assessment of the trend in reduction of income poverty is difficult, in spite of a large number of studies conducted for bangladesh on the subject (muqtada 1986; hossain and sen 1992; ravallion and sen 1996; sen 2003). the household income expenditure surveys (hies) conducted by the bangladesh bureau of statistics that report the incidence of poverty and income inequality through periodic generation of household level data changed over time the method of data collection and the measurement of poverty line. thus, while making a judgment about poverty trend one needs to be cautious about the interpretation of the information. according to the world bank estimate based on the hies data, nearly 40 percent of the rural population in bangladesh lived below the poverty line in 1995-96. a study by ahmad and hossain (1983) estimated that the number of poor households in rural bangladesh remained almost stagnant at 75 percent during 1963-64 to 1973-74, but increased to 84 percent in 197677, after the famine in 1974-75. according to the bureau of statistics the poverty ratio for rural areas declined from 74 percent in 1981-82 to 48 percent in 1988-89. the dramatic improvement in the poverty situation in the 1980s, as shown by the official figures, was however highly debated in the literature and was partly attributed to the change in the data collection method in the 1983-84. during 198384 to 1989-90 there was a decline in poverty ratio from 54% to 50% for rural areas and from 40 to 36% for urban areas. and during 1991-92 to 2010-11, the nation level poverty was declined from 56.7 to 31.5 percent but rural poverty is much dipper than urban poverty. it is now widely recognized that the poverty ratio has been declining by one percent per year which is very slow considering that over 35.2 percent of the rural population are still poor. the slow progress in poverty reduction in spite of the acceleration of economic growth in the 1990s and 2000s are attributed to growing inequality in the distribution of income for both rural and urban areas (sen, 2003). there are indications that bangladesh has made moderate progress in other dimensions of poverty. the primary school enrolment ratio has improved from 43 to 89 percent, and the infant mortality rate declined from 99 to 38 per thousand live births during the 1990-2010. the access of the population to safe drinking water has increased from 78 to 98.1 percent, and to improved sanitation from 26 to 53 percent. the most impressive progress has been made in population control. the number of births per woman has declined from 6.1 to 2.2. the preliminary findings from the 2011 population census show a decline in population growth from 2.2 percent in the 1980s to 1.3 percent in the 2000s (table 3). table 3: progress in non-economic indicators of well-being indicator 1990 2010 infant mortality rate (per 1000) 99 38 under five mortality rate (per 1000) 143 48 maternal mortality rate (per 1000) 4.78 2.6 adult literacy rate (%) 37 56 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 452-464. 456 children enrolled in primary school (%) 43 89 primary school enrolment rate (%) 60 108.8 fertility rate 6.1 2.2 population growth rate 2.2 1.3 access to an improved water sources (% of population) 78 98.1 life expectancy at birth (years) 59.15 69 population using improved sanitation facilities (%) 26 53 source: bbs (2010) the extent of vulnerability to external shocks has also been reduced. people have become more resilience to natural disasters because of the change in the seasonal composition of food production. the area under pre-monsoon aus rice which was highly susceptible to droughts has been reduced from 3.0 to 0.98 million ha from 1971-72 to 2009-10; the land has been diverted to growing dry season high-yielding and relatively safe boro rice or the highly profitable vegetables and fruits. the risk of the loss of aman rice from droughts has also been reduced due to large scale expansion of the shallow tubewells that could be used for supplementary irrigation. the percentage area under deep water broadcast aman of total rice area has been reduced from 19 to 4 percent, substantially reducing the loss in rice output from abnormal floods. in the deeply flooded area farmers now keep the land fallow during the monsoon season and grow boro rice with irrigation during the dry season (table 4). the boro area has expanded from 0.9 to 4.71 million ha over the last four decades, which together with wheat brings nearly 55 percent of the cereal harvest during the mayjune period. so the losses in the rice output from floods or droughts could be recovered within a few months. earlier, farmers had to wait for the next aman harvest to recover the loss. with the year round production of rice, the seasonality in employment and income for the landless workers is now much less pronounced than it was earlier. needless to point out, the insecurity and vulnerability due to violence, lawlessness and lack of justice have substantially increased. table 4: the changes in rice cropping pattern in bangladesh, 1971-72 to 2009-10 type of rice cultivation 1971-72 2009-10 area (million ha) % of rice area area (million ha) % of rice area aus 3.0 32.22 0.98 8.67 deepwater aman 1.77 19.01 0.47 4.19 transplanted aman 3.64 39.10 5.19 45.69 boro 0.9 9.67 4.71 41.46 total 9.31 100.00 11.35 100.00 source: bbs (2010), has (2007) in bangladesh poverty is concentrated mostly in households who do not have assets. manual labor is the only resource available to poor households. a self-assessment of poverty estimated by participatory rural appraisal method by the bids-irri survey revealed that 43 percent of the rural households considered themselves as poor. almost the same as estimated by the world bank for 1995-96 (hossain, 2004). this result also supported through the bangladesh land distribution data. according to the agricultural census of 2008, the most recent national level statistics on landlessness (table 5), more than 10 percent of the rural households own no land whatsoever, neither homestead nor arable. about one-third only owns homesteads but no arable land. according to a commonly used definition by rahman (1996), holding upto 0.2 ha is considered as functionally landless. if this definition is approved, the total landlessness in rural areas of the country stands at 39 percent. the incidence of poverty was 81 percent among household with no cultivated land, 33 percent among those holding upto 0.5 ha (table 6). rural development in bangladesh since..... 457 table 5: farm holdings and ownership of land (percent) and average farm size (acre) 1996 and 2005 size of farm (ha) % of farms % of land occupied average farm size (ha) 1996 2005 1996 2005 1996 2005 marginal (0.02-0.2) 28.45 38.62 4.48 11.20 0.11 0.17 small (0.21-1.0) 51.42 49.88 36.69 48.48 0.49 0.58 0.21-0.40 20.66 23.55 8.51 15.49 0.28 0.39 0.41-0.60 14.89 13.99 10.31 14.22 0.47 0.61 0.61-1.0 15.87 12.31 17.88 18.79 0.77 0.91 medium (1.01-3.0) 17.61 10.34 41.50 30.20 1.62 1.75 large (3.01 & above) 2.52 1.17 17.32 10.10 4.70 5.16 source: bbs (2010) table 6: percentage of population below poverty line land ownership (ha) 2010 2005 rural urban national rural urban national no cultivated land 47.5 26.9 35.4 66.6 40.1 46.3 <0.02 53.1 29.9 45.1 65.7 39.7 56.4 marginal (0.02-0.2) 38.8 17.4 33.3 50.7 25.7 44.9 small (0.21-1.0) 43.4 18.7 39.7 62.7 26.2 57.2 0.2-0.60 27.7 12.1 25.3 37.1 17.4 34.3 0.61-1.0 15.7 6.6 14.4 25.6 8.8 22.9 medium (1.01-3.0) 11.6 5.5 10.8 17.4 4.2 15.4 large (3.01 & above) 7.1 14.6 8.0 3.6 0.0 3.1 all size 35.2 21.3 31.5 43.8 28.4 40.0 source: hies (2010) role of agriculture in poverty reduction agriculture is an economic activity based on land. agricultural development aims to increase the productivity of land resources. in bangladesh more than one-third of the households do not own any cultivable land (table 5). so how can agriculture improve the livelihood of the people of these households who do not own any land and constitute the vast majority of the poor. one can argue that agriculture generates wage employment for the landless households, as medium and large farmers hire labor for conducting farm operations. but since the proportion of medium and large farmers is very small, the agricultural labor market can generate employment for only a small number of the vast landless and marginal land owning households in the country. when the modern high yielding rice varieties were introduced the demand for hired labor increased substantially. but overtime the labor use in rice cultivation has declined with the spread of agricultural mechanization in land preparation, irrigation and post harvest processing. even full employment in agricultural labor market cannot provide a poverty escaping income at the prevailing agricultural wage of about one and half dollar per day. it is the expansion of the non-farm sector that has been contributing to the increase in incomes of the households who are poorly endowed with assets. many landless households have migrated to rural towns and cities and found jobs as transport operators or construction laborers. the impressive development in the rural road network in the 1990s coupled with the increase in marketed surplus rice and vegetables and fruits have created employment opportunities in transport operation and petty trading. this is the main reason why the supply of agricultural labor has declined in recent years and farmers have been complaining regarding the scarcity of agricultural labor. the increase in the number of shallow tube wells, pumps, power tillers and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 452-464. 458 rickshaw and rickshaw vans has created jobs as in the operation and repair and maintenance. last but not the least, many marginal landowning households with some skills for utilizing capital have been able to generate selfemployment in livestock and poultry raising, petty trading, and various kinds of personal services with the vast increase in micro-credit supplied by the ngos. agricultural development has contributed to poverty reduction in an indirect way. agriculture produces food for the people. the increase in the supply of food faster than demand has helped keep food prices within affordable limits of the low-income people, and thereby has contributed to achieving food security. the amount of food the poor can access from the market with their limited income depends on the price of food. an analysis of the 2010 household income and expenditure surveys (hies) conducted by the bbs reveals that rural landless and the urban laboring class spend 59 percent of their income on food and 35 percent on rice alone, compared to 44 percent and 10 percent respectively for the top 10 percent in the income scale. so a reduction in the price of food grains relative to the industrial products benefits the poor relatively more than the non-poor households. in bangladesh the poverty situation deteriorated in the early 1970s due mainly to the decline in the per capita availability of rice. the soaring price of rice caused tremendous hardship to the landless, marginal farmers and artisans in the rural areas, and industrial laborers and transport and construction workers in urban areas. since the mid-1980s the food grain prices have increased at a much slower rate than the general price index, due to favorable growth in agriculture in general and the rice production in particular. the large farmers have been hurt by the decline in the real rice price, but the landless have gained. an agricultural wage-laborer could buy 2.4 kg of rice with their daily wage in 1980-81. the rice-equivalent wage was 5.4 kg in 2009-10, an increase of 4.16 percent per year during 1980-81-2009-10 (table 7). so, agriculture‟s main role in poverty reduction lies in maintaining the supply of food at least at a rate at which the demand has been growing, thereby keeping the food prices stable and within affordable limits of low-income households. table 7: changes in the real wage for agricultural workers, 1980-80 and 2009-10 indicators 1980-81 2009-10 change (%/yr) wage rate (tk/day) 13.97 179.83 40.94 rice price (tk/kg) 5.74 33.48 16.66 real wage (kg of rice) 2.43 5.37 4.16 consumer price index (general 1995-96 = 100) 32.62 221.53 19.97 real wage adjusted by cost of living 42.83 81.18 3.09 source: bbs (2010) review of development plans of bangladesh at the time of independence, the economic conditions in the war-ravaged country were deplorable. after a devastating war, the newly born country was preoccupied with a series of national problems that needed to be solved immediately, such as care and rehabilitation for the war victims, particularly the wounded and disabled, the windows and orphans, and restoration of law and order, including establishment of civil government in the country. during the independence period, there was no national rural development (rd) program in bangladesh. the village agricultural and industrial development program and rural works program lunched the late 1960s fallen into disrepute as viable models of rd after independence of the country. both programs failed due to stringent central control and absence of people's participation in developmental activities at the grass roots (khan, 1985). in 1972, the comilla model of rd was accepted by the new government as the basis of an integrated approach to rd on a nationwide rural development in bangladesh since..... 459 scale. a project-oriented organization-styled integrated rural development program (irdp) was established to implement the policies of the government. in addition to the two-tier cooperatives, a comprehensive multidimension al program was launched to develop over 1,500 thanas (the lowest administrative unit at that time) in four districts. the other important segment of irdp was a program for the underprivileged and the disadvantaged. irdp was extended in 1974 to include an intensive area-based program funded by the world bank. rural works, small-scale irrigation, rural credit, strengthened cooperatives, increased agricultural inputs, improvement of extension services and livestock and fisheries development were incorporated into rd project i coordinated and monitored by irdp from the capital. however, as with most government-sponsored programs elsewhere, irdp failed to bring about significant changes in the pattern of rural life insofar as per capita income, employment and productivity were concerned. this was largely due to the investment and industry oriented strategy pursued in a “distorted market” economy that depended on foreign aid without mobilizing domestic resources and where many industries were heavily subsidized by the state. the first five year plan (ffyp, 1973-78) was formulated in 1973 within a socialistic economic framework according to the principles of the state policies (hasnath, 1987). the plan was aimed at economic rehabilitation of the war damaged economy and accelerated economic growth public sector investment programs. the first fyp, was designed, among other things, to build a “sound institutional base” in the development process, the target being the rural population, that is, small farmers and the landless. this was to involve the restructuring of existing rural institutions, effective organization of the people, utilization of available resources and improvement of the local level planning process. local institutions were to be utilized as the mechanism for effective plan formulation and implementation, coordination of the multitude of activities, and popular participation. the role of the existing two-tier cooperatives was to be broadened to serve the “interests” of the rural poor. land reform along with the rural works program (rwp) was to be a major way to improve the conditions of the rural poor (gob, 1973). as a country of mixed economy with high dependence on foreign aid, most of the capital investment was made in the public sector, and the activity of the private sector was limited to agriculture, small and medium industrial enterprises and services only. due to political upset and changeover of the government through the military coup in 1975, the first fyp was not implemented as originally planned. the number of projects was too many to finance. only 50 percent of the necessary funds were realised (table 8) and they were not completed. nevertheless, the achieved annual growth of gdp was 4.0 percent. however, an upshot of this strategy of “development from the top” was a realization among some people that it was futile to remain dependent on the government in the struggle towards alleviating poverty and in improving the conditions of the rural population. a new movement based on the idea of swanirvar or self-reliance and active and voluntary participation of the people in rd efforts gained momentum. its goal was optimum utilization of local resources through programs initiated, designed and implemented by the spontaneous participation of the local people with the cooperation of political representatives and agents of the central government (khan, 1985). as early as 1973, swanirvar projects came to be organized in many parts of the country without significant governmental support. these isolated projects soon proved worthwhile and gradually self-reinforcing to the extent that they were within a couple of years integrated into regional development programs. in 1978, a two year plan (typ, 1978-80) was formulated to complete the unfinished projects of the first fyp. the main objective of this plan was to attain higher economic growth of the country‟s gdp (5.6 percent), by increasing agricultural productivity, reducing population. due to unfavourable weather condition and rise of oil prices in the international market, the typ resulted in considerable shortfall in realization of its set target (ahmed, 1986). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 452-464. 460 the nineteen-point program of the government, inter alia, proposed to build the country into a “self-reliant” nation by strengthening the rural economy by giving top priority to agriculture. this program provided the basis of a two year plan, 1978-80 (typ) of the government and had as its target attainment of a higher rate of economic growth and development of the rural economy. increasing productivity and creating employment opportunities were considered important ways to attack poverty, to distribute income equitably and promote social justice (gob, 1978). the effective utilization of local resources and mass mobilization through institutional arrangements and revitalization of local government bodies with “wider power and responsibilities” were considered important strategies in rd. the objectives of the typ could not be fulfilled given the time constraints. however, by 1980 the idea of “self-reliance” had become a symbol of the time. the swanirvar movement had, by then, made inroads into almost every union in the country where functional groups found representation in local administration with villagers playing a vital role in formulating and implementing developmental plans and programs for their own areas. the administrative arrangements of this movement were provided by a micro-governmental institution gram sarker (village government). its declared intent was to mobilize development initiatives effectively at the grass roots through optimum utilization of existing resources (khan and zafarullah, 1986). keeping this in the mind the second five year plan (sfyp, 1980-85) was formulated with the major objectives of providing basic needs for the people, such as food, shelter, clothing and education, reducing population growth and expanding employment opportunities in rural areas (gob, 1980). the targets of sfyp were not achieved due to natural calamities and resource constraints. the development impact of the public sector investment was diluted as the limited resources were spread over large number of development projects (ahmed, 1986). a growth of 3.8 percent against the estimated target of 5.4 percent was achieved at the end of this plan (table 8). however, the second fyp, recognized gram sarkers as a viable institutional arrangement to promote rd. several far-reaching policy decisions were taken to integrate horizontal and vertical linkages between the centre and the periphery through local institutions and people's participation in planning and implementing development programs (gob, 1980). an important measure was to enhance the skills and expertise of both elected representatives and public servants through a re-oriented structure of developmental training within the existing format of the training and development centre at the thanas. the idea sent into oblivion when the abolished gram sarkers which had already gone into operation in many parts of the country. although the time was not ripe to make a rational evaluation of its success or failure, indicators were already conspicuous about domination of rural elites in their affairs to serve their own interests as well as undue utilization of this institution to further the interests of the ruling political party. the third five year plan (tfyp, 1985-90) was launched with the emphasis on reduction of population growth, expansion of productive employment, development of infrastructure, particularly in the rural sector, and inducement of private investment in both agriculture and industry (gob, 1985). alleviation of rural poverty being its principal target, the tfyp strived to: (1) prevent further deepen the poverty of people and to bring at least another 10 percent of the rural poor above the poverty line by means of increasing gainful employment and income opportunities on a sustained basis through expansion of the productive sectors; (2) ensure better access for the rural poor to means of production, farm and non-farm, through their organization for productive activities; (3) enable the rural poor to share local resources through their participation in the development process; and (4) improve the quality of the life of the rural people in respect of basic physical infrastructures and social service needs (gob, 1985 ). despite a considerable progress in decentralisation of administration achieved during this plan period, mobilization of domestic resources greatly suffered due to natural calamities like the devastating flood in rural development in bangladesh since..... 461 1988 and socio-political unrests during the late years of the tfyp period. the fourth five year plan (ffyp, 1990-95) was formulated within the framework of perspective plan (1995-2010). the main objectives of the plan were accelerating economic growth, poverty alleviation and employment generation through human resource development and increased selfreliance. the average annual growth rate during the fourth fyp period was 4.15 percent against the planned target of 5 percent (table 8). the low growth was due to almost stagnant agricultural production. the growth of the agriculture sector was only 0.98 percent compared with the plan‟s target of 3.42 percent. agricultural growth suffered due to problem with distribution/marketing of fertilizer, hyv seeds and lack of adequate price support for produced food grain at the local market. the manufacturing sector showed a modest growth of 7.05 percent against the planned target of 9.02 percent (bbs, 2001). table 8: summary of gdp growth during the past plans (at respective base year prices) plan plan execution plan size (million taka) fund realised (million taka) plan growth rate % actual growth rate first fyp 1973-78 44,550 20,740 5.50 4.00 two year plan 1978-80 38,600 33,590 5.60 3.50 second fyp 1980-85 172,000 152,970 5.40 3.80 third fyp 1985-90 386,000 270,110 5.40 3.80 fourth fyp 1990-95 620,000 598,480 5.00 4.15 fifth fyp 1997-2002 1959,521 1720,321 7.00 5.50 sixth fyp 2010-15 1,3469,000 8.00 6.4* source: gob (2011), * two years average, „-„ data not found after the expiry of the fourth fyp (1990-95), no medium term development plan was formulated during 1995-97. in june 1997, the fifth five year plan (ffyp, 1997-2002) was launched. the targeted aims of fifth fyp was to alleviate rural poverty through accelerated economic growth, employment generation, improvement in the quality of life of the rural population through mobilization of the rural masses and resources, transformation of the rural socio-economic structure into a more equitable, just and productive one and empowerment of the rural poor through ensuring their increased access to resources and putting in place effective local government institutions, at the union, thana and zilla levels, and vesting on them the power and responsibilities for design, formulation and implementation of local level development programs and projects, with active participation of people belonging to all strata of the rural society as well as through effective cooperation between the local government institutions and non-government organizations (gob, 1998). the plan was also designed in view the changing structure of the global economy, and prepared within a flexible framework. in the context of increasing globalisation of the economy, the plan placed markets at the centre but, at the same time, attaches due importance to the appropriate role of the government and the public sector, for raising the standards of living of all citizens of the country. in recognition of inevitable imperfections in information, competition and play of market forces in a developing country like bangladesh, the plan envisaged appropriate and effective interventions in the market to remedy wellidentified problems emanating from these imperfections. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 452-464. 462 the fifth fyp was another added dimension by recognizing departs from the concept of central planning. in tune with the government's thrust on strengthening local government institutions at all tiers and their developmental role, a major focus of the fifth fyp was local level participatory planning and integration of the local level development programs/projects with those at the national level. further, it envisaged an active coalition of the government and the ngos on the development front so that the full potential of the ngos in complementing the development efforts of the government can be tapped in a cost effective manner. the fifth fyp was unable to reached its targeted as achieved growth rate was 5.50 percent against 7 percent mainly due to shortfall of agricultural contribution. but a noticeable change in the structure of the bangladesh economy occurred during the third, fourth and fifth plan period (table 9). the share of all the major sectors increased except that of agriculture. the share of the industry went up more than in any other sector of the economy, from 9.86 percent in 1984-85 to 15.76 percent in 2001-02. trade and services rose from 19.82 percent to 25.16 percent respectively. only the share of agriculture went from 41.77 percent in 1984-85 to 23.98 percent in 2001-02. table 9: structural change in bangladesh economy (1984-2002) sector contribution to gdp in present (at 1984-85 prices) 1984-85 1989-90 1994-95 2001-2002 agriculture 41.44 38.27 32.77 23.98 construction 5.53 5.98 6.33 8.41 energy 0.56 1.12 1.86 1.51 housing 7.97 7.64 7.45 8.63 industry 9.86 9.91 11.36 15.76 public services 3.25 4.09 5.08 6.93 trade and services 19.82 21.13 22.98 25.16 transport and communication 11.22 11.86 12.17 9.62 total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 source: bbs (2003) after the fifth fyp, there was no plan during the period of 2005-2007 and worked as plan holiday. during this period, poverty was the main target by diversifying agriculture and increasing people participation in the local government institutions. the interior period of 2007-2009, the caretaker government did not formulate long term and medium term plan and worked as short term one year plan. the sixth five year plan was launched, (sfyp, 2010-2015) by targeting economic growth, employment, poverty reduction, human resources development, gender balance and environmental protection. if the targets are achieved, the socioeconomic environment of the country will transform it from a low-income economy to the first stages of middleincome country. along with higher per capita income, a development scenario that is mentioned in the draft of the plan, where citizens will have a higher standard of living, better education, having social justice with more equitable socioeconomic environment and the sustainability of development will be ensured through better protection from climate change and natural disasters. it aims to promote diversification in agriculture by emphasising incentives, research and extension, rural infrastructure and rural finance and to focus on promoting rural and urban manufacturing production based on domestic and export markets. the formulation of development plans and implementation of projects in bangladesh are traditionally a „top-down‟ process. participation of the local institutions and/or communities in project planning and management had not been rural development in bangladesh since..... 463 practised or felt necessary by development planners and policy makers in the past. for the first time of development planning history of the country, the fifth fyp took development of the community and social groups as a development strategy. participation of the local community, particularly in rural areas of the country has been felt necessary for the protection and preservation of the environment. the fifth fyp for the first time recognised the need for a regulatory system with effective institutional infrastructure for regeneration, recycling and optimum exploitation of natural resources in consistence with the concept of sustainable development. conclusion rural development has been the core focus of the government policy, strategy and programs after independence of bangladesh. the rural sector was strategic to the country‟s economic growth, social and political development. the sector was crucial in providing the agricultural labour and output to the country; while the high incidence of poverty that characterised the sector posed a major threat to the social and political stability of the nation. the multifaceted significance of this sector provides the underlying rationales for all the development of bangladesh and economic policies since 1971. all the past agricultural and rural development programs failed to uplifted the condition of rural poor although contribution of agricultural sector to the economic development and wellbeing of the nation is highly satisfactory. in fact it can be said that the sector not only provide the engine for economic growth of the country and but also laid the foundation for the country‟s drive towards industrialisation in the 1990s and 2000s. the share of agricultural sector in the country‟s gdp has declined from its peak at 30 percent in 1980-81 to about 19 percent in 2009-10. the reduction of agricultural sector contribution to the economy is seen as an indicator of a country‟s progress from an agriculture-based to an export-oriented economy. although the contribution of agriculture to the country‟s economy is declining but its absolute value is expected to increase and its economic and socio-political significance in terms of export earning, employment and food security will remain strong. the success of the agricultural and rural programs in bangladesh is reflected in the reduction in the poverty incidence in the rural sector from almost 54 percent in the 1983-84 to about 35 percent in 2009-10. however, despite various policies and programs to improve the life in the rural sector, poverty and income inequality still remain grave concerns when the economic being of this sector is compared to the non-agricultural or non-rural sectors. it cannot be denied that some progress have been achieved in poverty reduction along with improvements in socio-economic indicators such as population growth, life expectancy, infant mortality rates, literacy rate, proportion of population supplied with safe drinking water and improved sanitation facilities. but the fact remains that there exists a disparity of income between the sectors and poverty incidence is still high in the rural sector. hence, rural development is still an important agenda to the country‟s future development plan. references ahmad, q. k. and m. hossain (1983) “alleviation of rural poverty in bangladesh: an overview of strategies and policies”, a report prepared for fao. dhaka: bangladesh institute of development studies. ahmed r. and t.e. chowdhury (ed.) (2000) “out of shadow of famine: evolving food markets and food policy in bangladesh”, baltimore usa: johns hopkins university press. ahmed, s. (1986) “implementation of second five year plan and an outline of third plan of bangladesh”, ministry of planning, government of bangladesh, dhaka. bangladesh bureau of statistics (bbs) (2001) “statistical yearbook of bangladesh”, statistics division, dhaka: ministry of planning. bangladesh bureau of statistics (bbs) (2003) “statistical yearbook of bangladesh”, statistics division, dhaka: ministry of planning. bangladesh bureau of statistics (bbs) (2010) “statistical yearbook of bangladesh”, statistics division, dhaka: ministry of planning. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 452-464. 464 government of the peoples' republic of bangladesh (gob) (1973) “first five year plan, 1973-78”, p. 226, ministry of planning, dhaka. government of the peoples' republic of bangladesh (gob) (1978) “two year plan, 1978-80”, p. 29, ministry of planning, dhaka. government of the peoples' republic of bangladesh (gob) (1980) “second five year plan, 1980-85”, chapter vii, p. 6, ministry of planning, dhaka. government of the peoples' republic of bangladesh (gob) (1985) “third five year plan l 985-90”, page, 216, ministry of planning, dhaka. government of the peoples' republic of bangladesh (gob) (1998) “the fifth five year plan, 1997-02”, ministry of planning, dhaka. government of the peoples' republic of bangladesh (gob) (2011) “the sixth five year plan, 2011-15”, part-3, ministry of planning, dhaka. handbook of agriculture statistics (2007) ministry of agriculture http://www.moa.gov.bd/statistics/statistics.htm hasnath, s. a. (1987) “the practice and effect of development planning in bangladesh”, public administration and development, vol. 7(1), pp. 59-75. hossain, m. (1988) “nature and impact of green revolution in bangladesh”, research report no. 67. washington dc: international food policy research institute. hossain, m. (2004) “poverty alleviation through agriculture and rural development in bangladesh”, research report no. 39, centre for policy dialogue, dhaka. hossain, m. and b. sen (1992) “rural poverty in bangladesh: trends and determinants”, vol. asian development review, vol. 10(1), pp. 134. hossain, m., m. a. quasem, m. a. jabbar and m. m. akash (1994) “production environments, modern variety adoption and income distribution in bangladesh”, in. c.c. david and k. otsuka (eds.) modern rice technology and income distribution in asia. boulder and london: lynne rienner publishers. household income and expenditure survey (hies) (2010) bangladesh bureau of statistics, statistics division, dhaka: ministry of planning. jahan, k. and m. hossain (1998) “nature and extent of malnutrition in bangladesh: bangladesh national nutrition survey 199596”, institute of food and nutrition science, university of dhaka. khan, m. m. (1985) “rural development programs in bangladesh” in j.c. garcia-zamor, ed., public participation in development planning and management, boulder, colorado: westview press, pp.188-89. khan, m. m. and h. m. zafarullah (1986) “the 1978 presidential election”, a review in s.r. chakravarty and v. narain, eds., bangladesh: domestic politics. p. l09, south asia, new delhi. mandal m. a. s. (ed.) (2000) “changing rural economy of bangladesh”, dhaka: bangladesh economic association. muqtada, m. (1986) “poverty and inequality: trends and causes”, in. r. islam (ed.) bangladesh selected issues in employment and development. new delhi: international labor organization. rahman, s. (1996) “energy demand forecast in bangladesh”, grassroots, pp. 5-16., vol. apriljune 1996. ravallion m. and b. sen (1996) “when methods matter: monitoring poverty in bangladesh”, economic development and cultural change, vol. 44, pp. 761-792. sen, b. (2003) “drivers of escape and descent: changing household fortunes in rural bangladesh”, world development, vol. 31(3), pp. 513-534. shahabuddin, q. (2000) “assessment of comparative advantage in bangladesh agriculture in bangladesh”, the bangladesh development studies, vol. 26(1), pp. 39-75. http://www.moa.gov.bd/statistics/statistics.htm effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 584 the climate change dynamics and its impact on the wheat productivity in pakistan: a var approach naveed mehmood m. phil student; applied economics research centre, university of karachi, karachi, pakistan samina khalil senior research economist; applied economics research centre, university of karachi, karachi, pakistan abstract the protracted change in climatic conditions because of the natural or anthropogenic activities is termed as climate change. it is mainly caused by human induced emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide co2, methane ch4, nitrous oxide no2. these gases trap the sunlight, rising the earth’s temperature and altering the pattern of precipitation, humidity across countries and causing some sever damages to the economies. yearly data (from 1971 to 2009) published by the metrological department of pakistan and agriculture statistics of pakistan is being used. vector autoregressive modeling is applied to study the impact of the climate change on wheat productivity. the result of the model shows that the rising temperature leads to reduction in output as the variation in the wheat productivity has been brought mainly by the variation in the temperature that is 25 percent in the tenth period as shown by the variance decomposition. keywords: anthropogenic activities; variance decomposition; impulse response function; climatic and nonclimatic variables introduction 1 global warming will trigger severe changes in the global climate in near future and will have significant impacts on economies round the globe. this potential threat to our existence has been steadily growing as a major concern of scientists and economists. it is therefore imperative to understand the impacts on the world economies that changes in climate might cause. this threat is a result of anthropogenic emissions of certain gases, most notably co2, ch4, cfc, no2 and water vapors into the atmosphere, contributing to a general process known as the greenhouse effect. the term 1 corresponding author’s details: name: samina khalil email address: samina.khalil@gmail.com greenhouse gas has been applied to atmospheric gases that are relatively transparent to incoming short wave solar radiation but which absorb the long wave radiation from the surface of the earth and remit it downward, warming the surface of the earth and the lower atmosphere. climate change refers to ‘changes in climate due to natural or anthropogenic activities and this change remains for a long period of time’, (ipcc, 2007). to understand the whole picture of impacts of climate change, all sectors of the economy need to be examined. although agriculture may be less sensitive to these changes but it is necessary to capture the impact that has significant impact on agriculture sector in the long run. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:samina.khalil@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 585 climate change is a dynamic process and has multifaceted impacts on regular natural resources. even though pakistan has a very limited role in causing global warming and climate change but its geographical location makes it vulnerable to these changes and there worsening impacts. the climate change is mainly caused by the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (co2), methane (ch4), nitrous oxide (no2) through anthropogenic activities. these gases trap the sunlight and do not let it return, rising the earth’s temperature and altering the pattern of precipitation, humidity across countries and causing some sever damages to the economies. the primary concern to date is with co2 which is released from the burning of coal and other carbon-based fuels and the burning of decayed forests. while methane is mainly produced during the mining of coal, gas and oil, industrial chimneys and waste are the main source of nitrous oxide (no2). human beings themselves are solely responsible for this newly co2 enriched atmosphere as co2 has significantly increased from 280 parts per million square to 380 parts per million square due to heavy deforestation and greater usage of the fossil fuel in post industrial era (stern, 2006). the contribution of different sectors of the economy in atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases are 63 percent from energy sector, 13percent from agriculture, 3percent from industrial sector, 18percent from land use and forestation and 3percent from waste (rosegrant et al., 2008). the high concentration of these gases is likely to affect the climate, causing a change in climate. however analysts have already determined that changes will affect different areas to different extent. decker and achutuni (1990), suggest that climate change could alter the way the agriculture sectors are managed but it does not necessarily mean that these changes in climate would have a negative impact on agriculture causing a reduction in the productivity level and productivity. but there is no surety that these changes would not lead to a significant reduction in agriculture output in yield in the long run. in the long run changes in the climate may distress land productivity by affecting water levels, the pattern of rain falls and leads to changes in cropping pattern which may further exacerbates the output. the impact on agriculture is many folds, including the decreased level of output in shortening the growth periods. countries laying in the tropical and sub tropical regions would face severe results and consequences and those in temperate zone may be on the beneficial side. one of the driving factors of climate change is co2, but co2 itself has a positive effect on plants. the co2 affect can be elaborated as; first, co2 increases the photosynthesis process in plants which is known as co2 fertilization effect. this is more prominent in c3 plants. c3 plants are characterized as those plants which exhibit positive response to enhance co2 such as wheat, rice, soybean, cotton, oats and barley. the high level of co2 increases the rate of fixed carbon and also photorespiration (i.e. the displacement of fixed carbon). co2 also decreases the loss of water by closing the stomata partially. it enhances the water use efficiency of plants causing increased growth. in pakistan wheat is sown in winter season. wheat is cultivated in 9045 thousand hectares approximately and per hectare wheat productivity is 2657 kg. per head consumption of wheat in pakistan is about 120 kg which shows how much the crop is important for the country. the water available for wheat cultivation is 26 million acre feet which is still 28.6 percent lower than the normal requirement for wheat productivity (rosegrant et al., 2008). the economic assessment of climate change and its impact on the wheat productivity in pakistan, as expected, shows that the rising temperatures and the unusual pattern of rainfall will severely affect the productivity. it is clearly indicated by the reduction in yield in the past several years. punjab and sindh are the major wheat producing states and have a greater share in the total productivity of the crop, have encountered temperature hypes which in turn are expected to reduce the wheat production in the region causing the farmers to bare the losses. retrospectively pakistan has faced many droughts periods like in 1951, 1974, 1991, and 2002. the recent drought periods have especially clearly reduced the crop yield in the most vulnerable regions, such as baluchistan asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 586 and sindh as reported by mirza and schmitz (2011). the rising temperatures in turn leads to melting of the glaciers accompanied by unusual pattern of the rainfall which has devastating effect on the agriculture sector. the recent flood has ruined almost all the crops and has caused negative growth in the agriculture sector i.e. -3.4 percent as stated by the economic survey of pakistan (2005). pakistan is ranked 12 among those countries that are most vulnerable to the climate change devastating effects by the vulnerability index. according to the lead climate change action program, lead pakistan, pakistan is facing 4.5 billion dollars losses annually where as increase of 10 °c in temperature would result in net reduction of the wheat yield from 6 to 9 percent, gross land productivity up to 40 percent, and the per capita surface water availability would reduce from 5000m 3 to 1100m 3 . the simple production function approach is as follows: wp = a (t) f (k, l) where wp is wheat productivity which is some function of k capital, l labor, and a captures the impact of the climate change on wheat productivity. var econometric technique is applied as it is simple and involves the ols dynamics to each equation where the variables are treated as endogenous and are believed to interact with each other. the temperature as expected is the continuous trend of the temperature hype that results in reduction of the wheat yield that has significant negative impact on that of wheat productivity. co2 as mentioned above has positive impact for a midterm long period due to its inner co2 fertilization impact and is expected to have positive impact on the growth of plant. the changing pattern of the rainfall may have both positive and negative impacts on wheat productivity, like for example, the rainfall just before the pre-harvesting period would lead to bonus crop and has a positive impact on that of productivity. it may have negative impact just as recent impacts of the devastating floods in the country have resulted in the negative growth of the agriculture sector. literature review world bank (2007) study of the climate change and its impact on agriculture in developing countries specially india, concludes that these changes in climate and temperature hypes have significant and adverse affects on agriculture. india has suffered losses of 30 percent to 40 percent agriculture production depending upon the high level of co2 which gives a significant fertilization effect. the study further extends its scope to all the neighboring countries of india that is near to the equator where temperatures are higher. further hype in temperature will surpass the crops tolerance level. the study of the world bank concludes that there has been slow down in the green revolution and globally, the pace of technological change in yield productivity per hectare has been slower in the past two decades to that of 60’s and 70’s. world bank study recommends that the special emphasis on developing new varieties that are resistant to drought and are resistant to heat is highly desirable. adams et al. (1990), study while discussing the economic consequences of climatic change, concludes that climatic change reduces productivity in the united states where consumers face severe consequences as they are suppose to pay higher prices and receive relatively low quantities. the study further elaborates that as the demand for most of the crops are inelastic, further reduction in the quantity will result in even greater percentage hype in prices. they conclude that producers are going to gain more as the average revenue for them goes on increasing. rao and sinha (1994), study the impact of climate change on wheat productivity and show that wheat productivity could decrease between 28 percent to 68 percent excluding the co2 fertilization effect and would range between +4.0 percent to -34 percent if the co2 fertilization effect is included. mathauda et al. (2000), analyze the impact of projected climate change on rice production in indian punjab. the ceres rice model is used where six input files were created to run the model. their results asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 587 show that in case of moderate warming, the average temperature rise of 1°c is expected around the year. in 2010, this will reduce the crop duration by three days and might have a negative impact on yield. under extreme warming condition, maximum reduction of 12.4 percent will be observed in the coming years as predicted. indian metrological department presented a study on climate change and food security in india in an international symposium on climate change and food security in south asia (2008), held in dhaka. the results depict the fact that as temperature goes on increasing in different parts of india; the yields of different crops will go on decreasing i.e. a 2°c increase in mean air temperature, rice yields could decrease by about 0.75 tons / hectare in high yield areas and by 0.6 tons / hectare in low yield coastal regions. the study concludes that the temperature hype from 2 to 3.5°c would result in the loss of farm level net revenue between 9 percent to 25 percent. hussain and mudasser (2007), investigate the impact of the climate change on wheat productivity in the upper region of chitral and swat. they specifically studied the swat and chitral regions by applying ols method. their result indicates that an increase in temperature create positive impacts on chitral district as its location is on high altitude and negative impact on swat because of its low altitude position. increase in temperature up to 1.5°c would create positive impacts on chitral thus enhancing the yield by 14 percent and has a negative impact on the yield of swat by decreasing its yield by 7 percent. a further hype in temperature up to 3°c would decrease the wheat yield on swat by 24 percent and increase in chitral district by 23 percent. anwar et al. (2007), investigate global atmospheric models fewer than three climatic change scenarios i.e. low, mid and high for the south eastern australian location. their study concludes that for all the three scenarios, medium wheat yield declines by about 29 percent. however presence of elevated co2 affect reduced the decline in production from 25 percent to 29 percent. co2 fertilization affect offset a very small level of low rain fall and higher temperature. their study suggest that higher wheat productivity could be obtained through agronomic strategies and breads of wheat. hanif (2009) studies the economic impacts of climate change on agriculture sector in punjab pakistan. their study shows that the climate change will affect the land prices in punjab which is the long run variable for net revenue. fgls panel regression estimation method is being applied in order to check for the influence of the average precipitation and maximum & minimum temperature, on the land prices in the eleven representative districts of punjab. their results show that in kharif season the mean minimum temperature and mean precipitation has a significant positive impact on the land prices. an increase in one mm in precipitation leads to the increase in land price, on an average by 166.57 rs/acre, in kharif season. while in rabi season the precipitation and mean minimum temperature has significant negative relationship with the land prices that is a decrease in rabi precipitation along with an increase in maximum rabi temperature would raise the land prices. the study concludes that climate changes has a significant impact on land prices in the punjab region which is a long run variable for the net revenue. janjua et al. (2010) investigate the impact of climate change on wheat production. they use simulations models for the expected impact of the climate change on wheat productivity accompanied by the var technique. climate variables are represented by the average annual temperatures and precipitation. the result of the var model indicates that up till now there is no significant negative impact of climate change on wheat production in pakistan but through simulation techniques they showed an increase in the temperature by 2 to 3°c in 2050 and 2060 will definitely lower the productivity across the country. they conclude that the policy makers should take care of the issue of rising temperature which is being a long run consequence for wheat productivity in pakistan. mirza and schmitz (2011) study the economic assessment of the impact of climate change on the agriculture of pakistan. they developed a panel model for modeling climate change and its impact on agriculture in pakistan. their study shows, how changes in climate affects the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 588 agriculture productivity in pakistan measured as weighted food crop wheat, maize and rice. they conclude that areas with greater climatic pressures will be affected and hence lower level of productivity in the arid zone. the proposed hypothesis is that changing climatic variables have reduced and are reducing the agricultural productivity and posing a threat to long term food security. data sources and variables annual data from 1971 to 2009 for the variables in the model have been obtained from the agriculture statistics of pakistan, the metrological department of pakistan and the data for co2 emissions is from the united nations data base. the variables are divided further into two categories. 1) climatic variables 2) non-climatic variables where the definitions for different variables included in the model are as under. to capture the impact of climatic change, the annual mean temperature (lntemp), precipitation (lnperc), humidity (lnhum) and co2 emissions (lnperc) have been taken as explanatory variables in the model. the annual mean temperature, precipitation and humidity of those districts which have greater share in the wheat production are taken as proxy variable to estimate the climate change impact on wheat productivity in the country. the data for non-climatic variables comes directly from the agriculture statistics of pakistan which are the fertilizer off-take (lnfertk), water availability (lnwatav), land under wheat cultivation (lnlandwht), agriculture credit disbursed by different agencies and the support price (lnsuppr) for wheat. they are included in the model to check the impact of these variables on wheat production in pakistan. theoretically, the climatic variables other than co2 are expected to impact negatively on wheat productivity in the long run where as the co2 as explained above has the fertilizing affects which results in positive significant impact on wheat production. methodology the vector auto regressive technique is applied to capture the impact of all these variables in the model. as the var method provides detailed results and also decomposes the individual effect which in turn gives us the individual impact of these climate change variable on the wheat production in the country. the impulse response function is to check for the shocks in the variables and their impact on the explanatory variable. the general var model with only one lag in each variable if the constants are held suppressed are given as: y1t = α11y1, t-1 + α22y2, t-1 + ε1t y2t = α21y1, t-1 + α22y2,t-1 + ε2t as the aic and sic suggest to include two lags in the model, general var model can be written as under; y1t = α1y1, t-1 + ∑ 2 j=1 αjy1, t-j + ∑ 2 j=1 βj y2, t-j + ε1t results for the var model lag selection criteria for var model: most of the criteria suggest 2 lag model as shown in the following table. we therefore use 2 lag var model to estimate the long run dynamics of wheat productivity. table 1: 2 lag model for long run dynamics of wheat productivity: lag logl lr fpe aic sc hq 0 380.8824 na 1.51e-20 -20.10175 -19.70991 -19.96361 1 618.1109 346.2253 3.66e-24 -28.54653 -24.62808* -27.1651 2 745.7849 124.2234* 6.86e-25* -31.06946* -23.6244 -28.44473* asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 589 table 2: results for var equation lnwhtpro lnwatav lntemp lnsuppr lnperc lnlandw ht lnhum lnwhtpro(-1) -0.4768 0.2078 0.2343 0.3681 0.7097 0.1354 0.0714 lnwhtpro(-2) -0.3824 0.1657 0.6221 1.2191 0.3970 -0.0969 0.0865 lnwatav(-1) -0.2875 0.1338 0.5830 -0.5578 0.9557 0.4926 0.2870 lnwatav(-2) 0.0949 0.4277 1.0390 0.7697 0.8450 0.1000 0.4877 lntemp(-1) 0.0249 0.1079 0.2475 0.2071 -1.8709 -0.0764 -0.4622 lntemp(-2) 0.0989 -0.0894 -0.2568 -2.0916 -1.0941 -0.2736 0.8313 lnsuppr(-1) 0.2330 -0.0223 -0.0650 0.4457 -0.4285 0.0038 0.0269 lnsuppr(-2) 0.0146 -0.0921 -0.1649 -0.0783 -0.1806 -0.0236 -0.2875 lnperc(-1) -0.0980 0.0262 0.0551 0.0647 0.1478 0.0092 0.0524 lnperc(-2) 0.0316 0.0357 0.0435 0.3417 0.3498 0.0472 0.0210 lnlandwht(-1) 0.5580 -0.0515 -1.2700 0.0516 -5.6519 0.0536 -1.0637 lnlandwht(-2) -0.2007 -0.0725 -0.7137 -3.1737 1.1502 -0.1712 -0.4213 lnhum(-1) 0.4906 0.0716 -0.3393 -0.2025 -0.5339 -0.0401 -0.3110 lnhum(-2) 0.3588 -0.1643 -0.6070 -1.5125 -0.9259 -0.1838 0.0476 lnfertk(-1) 0.0093 -0.0432 0.1474 -0.4031 1.4065 0.0800 0.2620 lnfertk(-2) 0.3720 0.0342 -0.0500 0.1652 -1.1902 0.0871 -0.0795 lnco2kt(-1) 0.1103 0.0649 -0.3403 0.9539 0.6143 -0.0709 0.1605 lnco2kt(-2) 0.0837 0.0383 -0.0282 -0.1999 -0.3243 -0.0767 -0.0586 c 6.3079 -0.9684 12.2523 17.9618 36.5799 8.8493 9.8641 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 590 dynamics: impulse response functions of the wheat productivity from the impulse response function of the temperature and wheat productivity it is clear that a unit shock in the temperature will die out in the fourth period i.e. any increase or decrease in the temperature will affect the wheat productivity and this effect will die out in the fourth period. the impulse response functions of the precipitation and wheat productivity it is clearly evident from the following table that it will die out in the second period. from the impulse response function of the humidity and the wheat productivity it is clearly evident that it will die out in the third period. a one unit shock in the co2 will die out in the ninth period. the non-climatic variables that are support prices for wheat, land available for wheat cultivation will die out in the eighth and fourth period respectively. a one unit shock in the water availability and fertilizer off-take is persistent and will never die out as clear from the table. the co2 has a persistent effect and will remain for long that is as expected per theory that co2 fertilization effect will lead to growth in the plant that is good for the cereal crops. the above results of the impulse response function are presented in figure 1 (see appendix a) depicting the corresponding figures graphically. variance decomposition the variance decomposition results explain 23 percent variation in the tenth period in wheat productivity which is due to itself. as clearly evident from the table below (table 4), most of the variation in the wheat productivity is due to the temperature which is the core climatic variable. this indicates that in the long run the rising temperature will have a significant reduction in the wheat productivity. the variation in the wheat productivity due to variation in temperature is 25 percent in the ninth period. other climatic variables like humidity, precipitation and co2, will have a variation of 4 percent, 4 percent and 1.5 percent in wheat productivity, respectively. the nonclimatic variables that are the core variables of the traditional wheat production function also show considerable variation in the wheat productivity. that is variation in water availability will bring about 18 percent variation, support prices will create 6 percent variation, land available for wheat cultivation may cause 5 percent and fertilizer off-take tend get 14 percent variation in the wheat production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 591 table 3: results of impulse response function period lnwhtpro lnwatav lntemp lnsuppr lnperc lnlandwht lnhum lnfertk 1 0.0637 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 2 -0.0097 0.0075 0.0085 0.0183 -0.0072 0.0056 0.0082 0.0020 3 0.0033 0.0113 0.0092 0.0105 0.0149 0.0073 -0.0057 0.0207 4 0.0104 0.0118 -0.0008 0.0151 -0.0030 -0.0143 -0.0187 0.0284 5 -0.0113 0.0013 0.0022 0.0102 -0.0017 -0.0037 -0.0001 0.0190 6 0.0112 0.0162 0.0278 0.0170 -0.0022 0.0137 0.0092 0.0219 7 0.0186 0.0251 0.0366 0.0170 -0.0066 -0.0057 -0.0104 0.0237 8 0.0007 0.0295 0.0311 -0.0016 -0.009 -0.0219 -0.0138 0.0182 9 0.0004 0.0307 0.0276 -0.0061 -0.0117 -0.0066 -0.0000 0.0157 10 0.0211 0.0370 0.0434 -0.0056 -0.0168 0.0056 0.0032 0.0139 table 4: variance decomposition of wheat productivity period s.e. lnwhtpro lnwatav lntemp lnsuppr lnperc lnlandwht lnhum lnfertk lnco2kt 1 0.0637 100.00 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 2 0.0692 86.8179 1.1774 1.5260 7.0415 1.1056 0.6739 1.4309 0.0875 0.1389 3 0.0768 70.6272 3.1365 2.6719 7.5879 4.6606 1.4735 1.7259 7.3421 0.7740 4 0.0884 54.7289 4.1585 2.0269 8.6494 3.6410 3.7528 5.8221 15.9180 1.3019 5 0.0924 51.5223 3.8219 1.9105 9.1345 3.3660 3.5947 5.3234 18.8110 2.5152 6 0.1042 41.6677 5.4269 8.6484 9.8658 2.6924 4.5649 4.9702 19.2282 2.9350 7 0.1194 34.1788 8.5604 15.9837 9.5477 2.3600 3.7096 4.5504 18.6033 2.5056 8 0.1311 28.3535 12.1900 18.8841 7.9356 2.4278 5.8731 4.8920 17.3627 2.0808 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 592 economic assessment of the impact of the climate change on wheat productivity for economic assessment of the impact of the climate change on wheat production, yield kg/hectare of wheat is regressed on the climatic variable and some of the non-climatic variables. yield kg/hectare is a proxy for the net revenue. this is an appropriate variable to examine the economic assessment in the light of the climatic change in the country. the lin-log model is applied so that we can have the elasticites of the variables directly. the model is stated as follows: yield kg/hectare = β• +β1 lntemperature hike + β2 lnhumidity+ β2 lnco2+ β3 lnprecipitation+ β4 lnfertilizer off-take+ β5 lnwheat land+ εt table 5: impact of climate change on wheat productivity variable coefficient std. error t-statistic prob. lntemphike -0.063989 0.304458 -0.210174 0.0349 lnperc -0.024257 0.057183 -0.4242 0.0743 lnhum -0.156827 0.232374 -0.674893 0.5046 lnco2kt 0.232141 0.071762 3.234882 0.0028 lnfertk 0.152947 0.100818 1.517066 0.1391 lnlandwht -0.227528 0.389707 -0.583843 0.5634 c 6.801065 3.661037 1.857688 0.0724 r-squared 0.948551 mean dependent var 7.53017 adjusted r-squared 0.938904 s.d. dependent var 0.24080 s.e. of regression 0.059522 akaike info criterion -2.6437 sum squared resid 0.113372 schwarz criterion -2.3452 log likelihood 58.55392 f-statistic 98.3285 durbin-watson stat 1.896962 prob (f-statistic) 0 yield kg/hectare = 6.801065 -0.063989 temperature hike -0.156827 humidity+ 0.232141 co2 -0.024257 precipitation+ 0.152947 fertilizer off-take -0.227528 wheat land+ εt an increase in the temperature of 1 degree celsius results in a 0.6 kg/hectare reduction in the wheat production. a one unit increase in the humidity and precipitation would result in the 0.16 and 0.02 kg/hectare reduction in the yield respectively. whereas co2 was expected to show positive impact on the production of wheat i.e. an increase in the co2 emission of 1 kt that would lead to increase in the yield by 0.23 kg/hectare. though some of the variables are insignificant but as the f-statistics is highly significant, it indicates that the regression is a valid one. the r 2 and the adjusted r 2 values are high, indicating the model is good fitted. the economic consequences due to the climatic change are most likely to be influenced by the adaptation made by the agents associated with the agriculture sector in the country i.e. farmers and government agencies. the farmers can adapt by altering the plantation dates, high temperature resistant hybrid seeds and changing the irrigation practices etc. while the consumers can adapt by substituting the low priced products for that of high priced products due to changes in the climate. conclusion and recommendations the impact of climate change on wheat productivity is being quantified here by taking two different sets of variables that is the climatic variables and the non-climatic variables. co2 emission, annual mean temperature, humidity and annual mean precipitation has been taken as climatic variables to capture the impact of these variables on wheat productivity. non-climatic variables are the core variables included in the production function of wheat that are fertilizer off-take, land available for wheat cultivation, available water and support prices for wheat. var technique has been applied where the impulse response function and variance decomposition gives us the detailed results of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 593 the examination. the variation in the wheat productivity has been largely brought by the variation in temperature which is almost 25 percent in the tenth period which indicates that the change in climate is most likely to have a significant impact on wheat productivity. co2 emission which as expected has significant positive impact on wheat production where variation in co2 can bring about 1.5 percent variations in the wheat productivity. the economic assessment is measured by regressing the yield (kg/hectare) on climatic and non-climatic variables which is taken as a proxy variable for the net revenue. the yield kg/hectare will reduce quite significantly as the temperature goes on increasing. as the farmers across the country are mostly illiterate, they need to know that changes in climate will lead to reduction in the output so need to have in time knowledge as in the long run these changes will affect the farmers throughout the country. the temperature may shorten the growth periods; hence the cultivation should be adjusted accordingly. the government has to take initiative to introduce the high temperature resistant seeds as the increase in temperature in future will affect the productivity. climate change also alters the rain fall pattern across the country; therefore it is necessary for researchers to introduce the drought resistant seeds. the recent floods in the country have destroyed almost all major crops, the government need to store the excess water by constructing more dams as the floods leave the soil more fertile after it ruin all the land once. references adams, r. m., c. 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(2007). prospects for wheat production under changing climate in mountain areas of pakistan – an econometric analysis. agricultural systems 94. ipcc third assessment report 2001: climate change (2001) (ar3). http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/ ?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/ ipcc fourth assessment report: climate change (2007) (ar4). http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publi cations_and_data_reports.shtml iqbal, m., ahmad, m., abbas, k. (2003). the impact of institutional credit on agricultural production in pakistan. pakistan development review, 42(4): 469-485. janjua, s., thomas, i., mcevoy, d. (2010). framing climate change adaptation learning and action: the case of lahore, pakistan. international journal of climate change strategies and management, 2(3): 281 – 296. kar, j. and kar, m. (2008). environment and changing agricultural practices: evidence from orissa, india. indus journal of management and social sciences, 2(2): 119-128. kumar, k. s. kavi and parikh, j. (2001). indian agriculture and climate sensitivity. global environmental change, 11(2): 147-154. http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/ http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/ http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 594 mirza, n. a. and schmitz, m. (2011). economic assessment of the impact of climate change on the agriculture of pakistan, justus-liebig-university of giessen. mathauda, s. s., mavi, h. s., bhangoo, b. s. and dhaliwal, b. k. (2000). the impact of projected climate change on rice production in indian punjab, international society for tropical ecology. rao, d. and s. k. sinha (1994). impact of climate change on simulated wheat production in india. in: c. rosenzweig and a. iglesias (eds.) implications of climate change for international agriculture: crop modelling study. us environmental protection agency. epa 230-b-94-003, washington dc. rosenzweig, c. and m. l. parry (1994). potential impact of climate change on world food supply. nature, 367: 133138. rosegrant, m. w., s. msangi, c. ringler, t. b. sulser, t. zhu and s. a. cline (2008). international model for policy analysis of agricultural commodities and trade (impact): model description. washington, d.c.: international food policy research institute. stern, n. (2006). stern review on the economics of climate change. hm treasury, london. usaid (2009). pakistan food and agriculture report, march. usda (2009). pakistan: crop progress report, january . wei-hua fang, zhi-qiang wang, fei he, hong xu, pei-jun shi (2007). academy of disaster reduction and emergency management, ministry of civil affairs & ministry of education, beijing normal university 100875, china. modeling the effect of the climate change on wheat yield in china by spatial epic model. zhai, f. and zhuang, j. (2009). agriculture impact of climate change: a general equilibrium analysis with special reference to southeast asia. asian development bank institute, working paper 131. adbi. http://www.webcitation.org/5nceyeyjr http://www.webcitation.org/5nceyeyjr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 595 appendix a: figure 1: graphs of impulse response function -.8 -.4 .0 .4 .8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 response of lnwhtpro to lnwhtpro -.8 -.4 .0 .4 .8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 response of lnwhtpro to lnwatav -.8 -.4 .0 .4 .8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 response of lnwhtpro to lntemp -.8 -.4 .0 .4 .8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 response of lnwhtpro to lnsuppr -.8 -.4 .0 .4 .8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 response of lnwhtpro to lnperc -.8 -.4 .0 .4 .8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 response of lnwhtpro to lnlandwht -.8 -.4 .0 .4 .8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 response of lnwhtpro to lnhum -.8 -.4 .0 .4 .8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 response of lnwhtpro to lnfertk -.8 -.4 .0 .4 .8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 response of lnwhtpro to lnco2kt response to cholesky one s.d. innovations ± 2 s.e. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 584-596 596 appendix b: figure 2: graphs of variance decomposition -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 percent lnwhtpro variance due to lnwhtpro -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 percent lnwhtpro variance due to lnwatav -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 percent lnwhtpro variance due to lntemp -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 percent lnwhtpro variance due to lnsuppr -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 percent lnwhtpro variance due to lnperc -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 percent lnwhtpro variance due to lnlandwht -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 percent lnwhtpro variance due to lnhum -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 percent lnwhtpro variance due to lnfertk -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 percent lnwhtpro variance due to lnco2kt variance decomposition ± 2 s.e. publisher: asian economic and social society issn: 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012 determinants of export-led cassava production intensification among small-holder farmers in delta state, nigeria achoja, f. o. (department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria) idoge, d. e. (department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria) ukwuaba, s. i. (department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria) esowhode, a. e. (department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria) citation: achoja, f. o., idoge, d. e., ukwuaba, s. i. and esowhode, a. e. (2012): “determinants of export-led cassava production intensification among small-holder farmers in delta state, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 142-148. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 142-148 142 author(s) achoja, f. o. department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria email: lixmero40@yahoo.com idoge, d. e. department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria ukwuaba, s. i. department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria esowhode, a. e. department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria determinants of export-led cassava production intensification among small-holder farmers in delta state, nigeria abstract determinants of export-led cassava production intensification among small-holder farmers were investigated. primary data collected with structured questionnaire from randomly selected 60 respondents, were analysed using appropriate statistics. the result showed a slow increasing trend in response to export opportunities. farm size, credit availability, cassava product domestic prices, labour and frequency of extension contact had positive effect on cassava output while existence of efficient marketing system has negative effect on cassava output. inadequate finance and high cost of labour were the problems facing cassava production intensification. policy instrument on cassava production intensification should capture the significant determinants identified in the study. keywords: cassava, export, production, intensification, smallholder, farmers, delta state, nigeria introduction besides the need to meet the food demands of the ever increasing nigeria population, industrial requirements such as for the production of laundry starch and livestock feeds have made the establishment of large-scale cassava farm holding desirable outfits to which any farmer and industrialist have opted and will opt for. nigeria’s output of cassava is by far the largest in the world, a third more than production in brazil and double the production in indonesia and thailand. by the year 2000, estimate of cassava output was put at about 34 million tones, but by 2002 the output rose to about 37 million tones (cbn, 2002; fao, 2004). fao (2004) also reported that nigeria is ranked low in terms of yield of cassava production (kilogram per hectare) relative to such countries as brazil, thailand and indonesia who are major producers of cassava after nigeria with yield per hectare at 10.8, 13.43, 16.84 and 12.02 tonnes for nigeria, brazil, thailand and indonesia respectively. according to fao,. (2004) global cassava production is expected to rise with increasing demand for cassava based industrial products. in nigeria alone, in order to actualize the president’s initiative of us$5 billion a year by 2007, 150 million tonnes of cassava would be needed by the end of 2006. with production being a function of area and yield, this target requires an expansion from 2 million hectares (ha) of land to 3 to 5 million ha and an average yield of 30 tonnes per ha. however in nigeria, according to iita (2004) report, at national lend, benue and kogi states in the north central zone are the largest producers of cassava, while edo, cross river, akwa-ibom, rivers and delta states dominate cassava production the south –south zone. in nigeria, the bulk of cassava output is produced by semisubsistence and small holder family farms that generally use traditional farming methods (okuneye, 1997; upton, 1997; nweke, 1997). before presidential cassava initiative, cassava was domestic-market dependent as a result, producers earn very little for their effort. government is of the opinion that if cassava can gain entrance into international market in the right form, producers will earn more returns and cassava sub-sector will contribute more to gross domestic product (gdp). in this study, it was assumed that cassava sub-sector in nigeria has assumed a new challenge of satisfying both domestic and international markets. there is therefore the need for cassava production intensification in nigeria. it is assumed that cassava production intensification will depend on some variables. before now, the determinants of export-led cassava production intensification have not been investigated to the best our knowledge. identifying mailto:lixmero40@yahoo.com mailto:lixmero40@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 142-148 143 these variables is critical in handling the new challenges facing the cassava sub-sector in nigeria. this is the research gap that this investigation was designed to fill. specifically, the study described the demographic characteristics of the cassava producers in the study area; describe the cassava production system adopted by the farmers, examine cassava production intensification trend in the study area; identify the socio-economic determinants of cassava production among the small holder farmers, identify the major problems facing cassava production intensification among the small holder farmers. research hypothesis: h0: the selected factors have no joint significant effect on cassava production intensification in the study area. materials and methods study area and sampling techniques the study was carried out in delta state, nigeria. it has an estimated population of 4112445 (npc, 2006). it lies approximately between longitude 5º 00 e and 6º45' e of the greenwich meridian and latitude 5 º00' n and 6º30' in the n of the equator. the vegetation of the area ranges from mangrove swamps along the coast to freshwater swamp forest and a derived savannah in the northern extremities with annual rainfall ranging from 1750 – 2000mm and land area of 17,698 km2 (delta state meteorological station, asaba). data used for this study were mainly primary and were obtained from small holder cassava farmers using well-structured questionnaire and interview schedule. specifically, a two-stage sampling procedure was used in randomly selecting 60 cassava farmers from three villages and was purposely selected for their well known in cassava production. data analysis techniques data were analysed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression models. specifically, the demographic characteristics of the small holder cassava farmers, production system adopted by the farmer, cassava production intensification in the study area and major problems challenging cassava production intensification were achieved using descriptive statistics such as frequency counts and percentage while multiple regression model was used in achieving the socioeconomic determinants of export-led cassava production intensification among small holder farmers in the study area. the model is implicitly specified thus: y = f (x1, x2, x3, x4,x5, x6, x7, x8, x9, u) …………. (1) where: y = output of cassava (kg/ha) bo: constant term. bs = vector of exogenous variables. x1 = farm size (ha) x2 = credit (naira) x3 = cassava product domestic prices (naira) x4 = labour used (man day/hr) x5 = use of agro-chemicals x6 = educational attainments x7 = frequency of extension contact x8 = existence of efficient marketing system x9 = years of experience u = stochastic disturbance term. the regression was fitted for small holder cassava output using the linear, semi-logarithm and double logarithm functions. the lead equation from the three functional forms was chosen based on the value of multiple coefficients at determination (r2) as well as sign and significance of the regression parameters. the prior expectation of the regression parameters is given as b1>0, b2 >0 …… b9>0 and that of null hypothesis is ho: b1 =0. results demographic characteristics of smallholder cassava farmers various demographic variables of cassava farmers which could be relevant in influencing output were described in table 1. the result indicates that 11.7, 18.3, 43.4, 21.6 and 5.0% of the respondents fall within the age ranges of less than 30, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59 and 60 years and above respectively. this implies that majority of cassava producers in the study area fall within the work force which is also a reflection of the population distribution in the study area. more than fifty six (56.7) percent were females while 43.3% were males. this shows the dominance of female cassava farmers over males in the study area. majority (46.7%) of the respondents were married which could be responsible for the additional supply of labour to complement their personal efforts. majority (47%) of the respondents received formal education. this therefore could be due to the closeness of the study area to an urban centre. table 1 also indicates that 66.7% of the respondents have been farming up to ten years while 33.3% have been into cassava farming for up to 20 years. since the level of farming experience is an index of efficiency, it could be adduced that cassava farmers in the study area were experienced. this could translate to production intensification in terms of acreage cultivated. cassava production system the result of cassava production system in the study area is presented in table 2. it shows that 85% of the respondents practiced mixed production system while 15% practiced solo cropping system. this finding is in line with the findings of ezumah and okigbo (1980) who reported that intercropping acts as insurance against crop asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 142-148 144 failures, provides better and more efficient use of labour and land resources. also, karikari (1981) reported that intercropping of cassava guarantee a higher land equivalent ratio (ler) especially with species of highly different habit. cassava production intensification trend table 3 shows cassava production intensification trend in the study area. in general observation from table 3, cassava output in delta state increased from 1994 with an output of 738.46 metric tones to 1995 then decreasing from 1996-1997. then from 1998 it increased slowly with an output of 795.38 metric tones to 2004 with output of 961.46m.mt. this increase in cassava output in delta state in the 2000s could be attributed to the presidential initiative on cassava in the year 2000 which seeks to earn 5 billion us dollars from value added cassava exports by 2007. determinants of cassava production intensification among smallholder farmers table 4 presents the result of multiple regression analysis. the double log functional form was chosen as the lead equation given the value of coefficient of multiple determination (r2) of 0.87 its adjusted value (r2) of 0.85, f statistics of 39.295 and the significance of the regression parameters. the estimated regression equation is given as: log ŷ = 10.805 log + 40.793 log x1 + 1.854 log x2 + 1.732 log (59.92)* (7.98)* (2.90)* (2.53)* x3 + 0.160 log x4 + 3.942 log x5 – 1.16 log x6 + 2.183 log x7 (2.56)* (0.56) (0.17) (3.16)* – 2.929 log x8 +7.50 log x9 + u (0.48) (1.23) where the variables are as defined in equation (1) and the figures in parenthesis are tratios. the coefficient of multiple determination (r2) of 0.87 indicates that 87% variations in cassava output were explained by the explanatory variables captured in the model and f-ratio of 39.295 measures the joint impact of the regressors on the regressand thus testing the joint significance of the model. the estimates showed that farm size, credit, cassava product domestic prices, labour used and frequency of extension contact had positive relationship with cassava output. the significance (p<0.01) and positive relationship between farm size and cassava output intensification implies that cassava outputs in the study area are more likely to increase if the farm size increases on hectare basis. this is in conformity with rational economic principles which states that “the larger the farm size, the more the output. the coefficient of credit accessibility is positive, significant (p<0.01) and in conformity with a priori expectation that cassava output per hectare would increase as the credit accessibility of the farmers increases. credit accessibility would enable the farmers acquire more productive resources such as land, fertilizers labour, etc. which would translate to increase in cassava output. a positive and significant (p<0.01) relationship exist between cassava product domestic prices and cassava output per hectare. this is evident based on the fact that as prices of cassava products increase, the small holder cassava farmers would generate more revenue which encourages farmers to intensify cassava production in the study area. labour use intensification influenced cassava output intensification positively and significantly (p<0.01) in the study area. this could be because as the labour used per man day increases, the available needs in the farm plots that hinder output will be reduced and output increases. educational attainment had a negative effect on the output of cassava farmers which implies that educational attainment does not necessarily determine the output of cassava farmers in the study area. however, it is possible to hypothesize that when a farmer becomes highly educated he/she may pull out of farming to pick up a government job. frequency of extension contact had a positive and significant (p<0.01) relationship with cassava output. this implies that output of cassava per hectare of small holder farmers in the study area would depend on the volume and frequency of information they got from the extension agents. existence of efficient marketing system though not significant had a negative relationship with cassava output. this could be due to lack of access feeder roads and the distance of the farm locations from the market. also the inefficient marketing system for cassava products (gari, fufu, starch) at present does not encourage cassava producers to intensify production in the study area. cassava producers do not get value for their production efforts. this is quite a disturbing situation and does not stimulate the growth of cassava industry on the aggregate. the solution to the problem in our opinion, is for nigerian cassava to secure an alternative market outlets in the form of exports. hypothesis testing the regression anova result presented in table 5, indicates that using a one-tail test at 1% level of significance, the f-calculated is 39.29 while f-tabulated is 2.82. since the value of f-calculated is greater than the corresponding value of f-tabulated, we reject the null hypothesis (h0: bs = 0, e p<0.01) which states that the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 142-148 145 selected determinants have no joint significant effect on cassava production intensification by small holder cassava farmers and accepted the alternative hypothesis. the implication of this finding is that cassava production intensification will depend the collective relationship between the significant variables in the model but not individual variables. therefore an intensification policy should ordinarily encapsulate these variables. major problems facing cassava production intensification among smallholder farm table 6 presents the major constraining factors facing cassava production intensification in the study area. it shows that majority of the farmers indicated that inadequate finance (35%), land fragmentation (27%), and high cost of labour (15%) were the major problems challenging export-led cassava production intensification in delta state, nigeria. it is this lack of access to finance that could be the possible reason that limits the scale of cassava production in the study area to small scale. discussion the result showed that cassava output over the period increased but slowly. this result could be due to the fact that cassava producers are now aware of the opportunities that exist in the global market for cassava products and they are responding by adjusting their production pattern accordingly. but it seems that the adjustment is slow. they must be facing some adjustment challenges which require policy instrument and government attention. this finding collaborates with esowhode, (2006) earlier report that cassava producers are responding slowly to export opportunities. from the result of the study it is clear that cassava production intensification is a function of farm size, credit accessibility, labour use, cassava product domestic price and frequency of extension contact. there is the need for intensification of these factors by way of more cassava acreage and cheap credit. because the farmer will cultivate more plots of cassava to satisfy export demand, more capital will be required to finance land acquisition and to acquire purchased inputs such as labour and agrochemicals. chukwuji (2006) has earlier reported that cassava output per hectare will respond more to increase in farm size other than increase in the productivity of factors of production. cassava product domestic price positively affected cassava output in this study. this is in line with a priori expectation and economic theory that higher price will stimulate more supply of the product at a given point in time. another important factor that will stimulate cassava production intensification as shown in the result is the frequency of extension contact with cassava producers. more contact is expected to encourage cassava producers to benefit from export-led cassava intensification. inadequate finance turned out to be the major constraint confronting export-led cassava production intensification. this is because majority of cassava producers are resource-poor farmers and finance is a major challenge. export-led cassava production intensification is capital intensive in the sense that producers need to acquire more processing equipment that will enable the quality of their products to harmonize with international standard. conclusion and recommendations export-led cassava production intensification was investigated in delta state, nigeria. for cassava production to satisfy the export demand, some determining factors must be put into consideration. these factors include farm size, credit accessibility, cassava product domestic price, labour use and frequency of extension contact. intensification of these factors will translate to intensified cassava supply and export. it is therefore recommended that those factors that positively affected cassava output should attract policy instrument that can stimulate export-led cassava regime. government should design special credit scheme for cassava producers to enhance their output. references central bank of nigeria (2002) annual report and statement of accounts, central bank of nigeria, abuja chukwuji, c. o. (2006) “resource use efficiency in cassava production in delta state of nigeria”, ph. d thesis, department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus. esowhode a. e. (2006) “determinant of cassava production intensification among smallholder farmers in ika north east local government area of delta state. unpublished b. agric project ezumah, h. c. and p. n. okigbo (1980) “cropping system and related research in africa”, aasa occasional publication series. food and agriculture organization (2004) “food and agriculture organization online statistical data base”, rome, italy: food and agriculture organization of united nations. www.fao.org international institute for tropical agriculture (2004) “nigeria’s cassava industry: statistical handbook” http://www.fao.org/ http://www.fao.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 142-148 146 karikari, s. k. (1981) “intercropping of plantain, cocoyam and cassava”, national population commission (2006) nigeria population census figures, abuja national population commission publication nweke, f. i. (1997) “cassava is a cash crop in africa: a viewpoint”. iita research, s/no. 14/15:pp. 26-27. okuneye, p. a. (1997) poverty eradication and the role of family economic advancement programme (feap) paper presented at the workshop on feap and poverty alleviation, may, (1997) abeokuta, ogun state, nigeria. phillips t.p., d. s. taylor, l. sanniand m. o. akoroda (2004) “a cassava industrial revolution in nigeria: the potential for a new industrial crop”, international institute of tropical agriculture, ibadan, nigeria. international fund for agricultural development, food and agriculture organization of the united nations, rome, italy. upton, m (1997) “the economics of tropical farming systems”, cambridge university press new york, usa appendix table 1: socio-economic characteristics of the respondents characteristics frequency (n=60) percentage (100%) age less than 30 7 11.7 30-39 11 18.3 40-49 26 43.4 50-59 13 21.6 60 and above 3 5.0 gender male 26 43.3 female 34 56.7 educational level no formal education 13 21.7 primary education 14 23.3 secondary education 25 41.7 tertiary education 8 13.3 marital status single 17 28.3 married 28 46.7 others 15 25.0 farming experience 1-5 7 11.7 6-10 33 55.0 11-15 17 28.3 16-20 3 5.0 20 and above source: authors’ computation table 2: cassava production system type of farming frequency (n=60) percentage (100%) mono cropping 9 15 mixed cropping 51 85 total 60 100 source: authors’ computation table 3: trend of total output of cassava by smallholder farmers in delta state1994-2004 (‘000mt) year output (‘000mt) percentage intensification (100%) 1994 738.46 1995 855.11 15.8 1996 802.25 -6.2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 142-148 147 1997 755.60 -5.2 1998 794.82 5.2 1999 795.38 0.1 2000 818.01 2.8 2001 872.14 6.6 2002 902.59 3.5 2003 902.00 -0.1 2004 961.46 6.6 source: authors’ computation table 5: analysis of variance (anova) result sources df sum of square ms f.cal f.tab sig. regression 9 6.875 0.764 39.295 2.82 0.001 residual 50 0.972 1.944e-02 total 59 7.847 source: authors’ computation table 6: major problems facing cassava production intensification in the study area problems percentage (100%) inadequate finance 35 high cost of labour 15 land fragmentation 27 losses experienced 10 other production constraints 13 total 100 source: authors’ computation asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 142-148 148 table 4: multiple regression analysis of cassava output linear semi-logarithm double logarithm parameters coefficient std error t-value sig. coefficient std error t-value sig. coefficient std error t-value sig. constant 5473.078 5202.152 1.052 0.298 58462.385 11039.843 5.296 .000 10.805 0.180 59.921 .000 farm size 21615.780 2905.376 7.440 .000 40911.736 6081.417 6.727 .000 .793 .099 7.979 .000 credit 6305.957 2375.989 2.654 .011 1157.286 390.970 2.960 .005 1.854e-02 0.006 2.904 .005 domestic price 3823.852 2657.101 1.439 .156 945.872 418.861 2.258 .028 1.732e-02 0.007 2.532 0.015 labour 375.850 255.410 1.472 .147 10603.79 3813.261 2.781 .008 0.160 0.062 2.564 0.013 agrochemical 1563.709 2418.181 0.647 .521 -35.852 432.699 -.083 .934 3.942e-03 0.007 -0.167 0.868 education -213.394 1181.279 -.181 .857 -306.452 424.817 -.721 .474 -1.161e-03 0.007 -0.167 0.868 extension 5581.110 1446.494 3.858 .000 1582.4599 423.230 3.739 .000 2.183e-02 0.007 3.158 0.003 eems -588.702 2222.988 -.265 .792 -315.115 377.124 -.836 .407 -2.929e-03 0.006 -0.476 0.636 experience 263.674 344.556 .765 .448 4385.910 3614.615 1.213 .213 7.250e-02 0.059 1.228 0.228 r2 0.883 0.848 0.876 r2 (adj) 0.862 0.820 0.854 source: authors’ computation publisher: asian economic and social society issn: 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012 growth, instability and price flexibility of major pulses in pakistan saima rani (scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agricultural research center, islamabad, pakistan) hassnain shah (senior scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agricultural research center, islamabad, pakistan) akhter ali (scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agricultural research center, islamabad, pakistan) bushra rehman (assistant scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agricultural research center, islamabad, pakistan) citation: saima rani, hassnain shah, akhter ali and bushra rehman (2012): “growth, instability and price flexibility of major pulses in pakistan”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 107-112. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 107-112 107 author(s) saima rani scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agriculture research center, islamabad, pakistan email: saima_chudhary211@yahoo.com hassnain shah senior scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agriculture research center, islamabad, pakistan akhter ali scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agriculture research center, islamabad, pakistan bushra rehman assistant scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national growth, instability and price flexibility of major pulses in pakistan abstract in the present paper time series data from 1976 to 2010 on the price, area, yield and production of major pulses (gram, masoor, mung and mash) is analyzed to estimate the compound growth rate, instability index and annual fluctuation of area, yield, production and prices. own price flexibility and cross price flexibility between gram, masoor (winter pulses) and mash and mung (summer pulses) was analyzed to measure the impact of production on cross prices. growth rate of prices for all these pulses was positive throughout the study period. price of masoor was highly instable as compared other pulses. high fluctuation in area of mung was found throughout the study period. the analysis of own price flexibility reveals that gram and mung are less risky pulses. keeping in view the quantity imported due to fulfill the demand supply gap, government should provide incentives to farmers for national food security. agriculture research centre, islamabad, pakistan keywords: pulses, growth, instability, price flexibility, pakistan introduction pulses are the most important source of vegetable protein in pakistan. they are cultivated on 5% of the total cropped area. their use ranges from baby food to delicacies of the rich and the poor (parc, 2012). normally the area under pulses in the country is around 1395.20 thousand hectares out of which major pulses contributed 1298.30 thousand hectares with a production of 701.80 thousand tones in the year of 2009-2010 which was declining over the year. among major pulses, gram is the major winter food legume and mung is the major summer legume, gram occupies 76 percent of the total pulses area with 74 percent contribution to the total production, whereas mung bean occupies 13 percent of total area devoted to pulses contributing 16 percent to the total pulses production. the mash and masoor, each were cultivated on 2 percent of the total pulses area both were contributed 1.4 percent to the total pulses production (gop, 2010). due to low production of pulses, pakistan imports large quantities of pulses to meet the ever increasing gap between the domestic production and requirements. considerably a large acreage estimated to be over 7 percent of the total cropped area is occupied by pulses (chaudhry et al. 2002). the country's dependence on the import of pulses to satisfy the local demand has swallowed up $139.096 million of national exchequer during the fiscal year 2010-11, as the commodity's trade stood at 53 percent up during the period. the country imported 628.508 tons of pulses during the fiscal year 2010-11 as compared to the import of the commodity of 444.976 tons during the fiscal year 2009-10, showing a rise of 183.532 tons or 41.25 percent (khan, 2012). along with this prices of pulses jumped as compared to other food items such as wheat. this has serious implications for the supply of protein to the poor population who do not have resources to buy expensive livestock-based protein-rich food (ali et al. 1998). many attempts have been made to measure the instabilities in prices to identify the risk of selected crops in relation to the other crop but little work done for the pulses. therefore in this study the changes in prices of major pulses have been analyzed along with the growth of area, production and yield. in this paper the degree of instabilities in prices has been measured and tried to identify the risky pulses to help the farmers to allocate their limited resources in more profitable pulse, which is less risky. a considerable body of literature is available on supply response analysis. however the efforts made in analyzing the causes of price flexibility are scanty. the analysis of price flexibility enables us to understand in quantitative form the effect of present production on the harvest prices in the market. the storage facilities are mailto:saima_chudhary211@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 107-112 108 limited and expansive also which is difficult to manage the small farmers therefore the current market price of these are mainly determined by the current supply. the analysis of price flexibility will help the farmers to understand the extent of seasonality in prices. this will help in designing strategies in major pulses. in this study coefficient of price flexibility of pulse has been estimated to see the influence of current supply of a pulse on its market. cross price flexibility of substitution is also calculated because cross flexibility co-efficient reveals the impact of supply of one pulse on the price of other substitution pulse in the same production season. there is also measuring the annul fluctuation of the selected pulses to see the trend of the major pulses materials and methods the pulses which have been selected for this study were gram, masoor, mung and mash. these pulses were the major pulses in the pulses sector in term of area. major importance to gram (chickpea) improvement was attributed because it contributes 73% to the total pulses area. masoor (lentil) is the second major winter season pulse crop after gram in pakistan. gram and masoor are the major rabi (winter) pulses in pakistan so that they are substitute for each other. mung and mash are the important kharif (summer) pulses of pakistan hence that farmers are substituted these pulses with each other. for the analysis wholesale prices of selected pulses have been used. these were the prices on which farmers are selling their crop in the market. study has been based secondary data. time series data from 1975-76 to 200910 (34 years) was collected from the various issues of agriculture statistics of pakistan, published by ministry of food and agriculture, islamabad. the period is in these decades government cannot take any measure to increase the production of these pulses and their productivity was decrease year to year. analytical technique compound growth rate estimation compound growth rates have been computed to see the increase and decrease in the price, area, production and yield of selected crop. hence for measuring the growth rates of area, production, yield and price. this approach has been used by various authors such as nandi and bera (2001), prajneshu and chandran (2007) and rehman et al (2010). yt = y0 (1 + r) t --------------(1) where yt = price/area/production/yield of selected pulses in year t y0 = initial (i.e., 1976/77) price/area/production/yield of selected pulses r = the compound (i.e., over time) rate of growth of yt, where stands for the year t. for growth estimation the annual compound growth rates are largely used. the significance of growth estimates is tested using the t-test. instability estimation instability index capture both explained and unexplained variations of the concerned variable and should better reflect the true instability situation. the index is used to measure instability for price, area, production and yield it is defined as follows by karim, 2007. i = c.v. x √ 1r 2 -----------------(2) where i = instability index c.v. = coefficient of variation r 2 = adjusted coefficient of determination annual fluctuation estimation the changes in price over time essentially mean price fluctuation. the changes can be in either direction. the inter year fluctuation in prices, area, production and yield was estimated by the simplest method year by year. it is estimated following by javed, 2003. δxt = [(xt – x t-1) / xt-1] x 100 --------------(3) where x = price/area/production/yield in year t δxt = percentage changes of price/area/production/yield in year t over the last period (year) xt = current year’s price/area/production/yield in year t xt-1 = previous year’s price/area/production/yield in year t -1 price flexibility and cross flexibility estimation price flexibility coefficient implies that price is a function of the quantity of the supply of a particular crop. estimates of price flexibility help us to know the degree of fluctuations in price caused by the production variations. on the other hand, the cross price flexibility is the percentage change in the price of i pulse in the response to a percentage change in the quantity of crop j while other factors remaining constant. the cross price flexibility of a pulse will be estimated with other pulse, which has substituted relationship between each other (e.g gram and masoor). to measure flexibility and cross price flexibility, the following equation was used by javed, 2002. pit = f (qit) --------------------own price flexibility pit = f (qit, qjt) ----------------cross price flexibility asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 107-112 109 ln pit = lnβ0 + β1lnqit + β2lnqjt + ut ------------(4) where pit = price of pulse i in one year qit = production of pulse i in year t qjt = production of pulse j in year t ut = error term results and discussion compound growth rates of selected pulses compound growth rates of price, area, production and yield of major pulses for 34 years (1976-2010) in pakistan shows in table 1. it was found that all the growth rates of price, area, yield and production of selected pulses are highly significant because of their tvalues except the area of gram and yield of mash. table 1: compound growth rates of price, area, yield and production of pulses pulses growth rates (%) price area yield production gram 9.87 (14.43)*** -0.08 (0.47) -0.36 (2.55)** -0.44 (2.42)** masoor 11.09 (7.14)*** -3.56 (8.77)*** 0.50 (5.10)*** -3.08 (3.71)*** mung 9.26 (14.29)*** 3.21 (15.35)*** 1.05 (4.64)*** 4.49 (16.28)*** mash 9.89 (9.47)*** -2.16 (4.99)*** -0.30 (0.44) -2.53 (5.25)*** note: *** and ** indicate significant at 1% and 5% level the growth rate of prices of major pulses is found positive. if comparing the growth rates of prices of major pulses it can be noticed that masoor was at the top by having growth rate 11.09 percent, mash was on the second by having growth rate of 9.89 percent while gram and mung were at the third and fourth position with their growth rate 9.87 and 9.26 percent respectively. in case of gram during the study period the area, production and yield were decreasing over the year by having a growth rate of -0.08, -0.44 and -0.36 percent respectively and it was very low rate among all the pulses. the reason behind this low growth rate was old practice of intercropping gram with wheat has been discontinued; because farmers did not wanted to put their relatively high value wheat crop at risk. another reason behind the negative growth was the return to farmers is far less compared to the major crops. hence farmers were shifted their cropping pattern toward major crops. the results showed that area and production of masoor was highly significant but decreasing over the year by having the growth rate of -3.56 and -3.08 percent respectively. the main reason for decreasing output was desired attention and care, lack of new verities which may promise higher production, diseases attack (blight, rust, root rot-wilt complex), weeds, cold drought for high lands and drought for low lands. the area as well as its production has been decreased gradually mainly due to shift of main masoor (lentil) area to other crops, weed and disease problems, and non-availability of certified and quality seed of improved varieties. it was found that area, yield and production of mung were highly significant at one percent and increasing over the year during the study period. the growth rate for the area, yield and production was 3.21, 1.05 and 4.49 percent and these were higher among all the pulses. it was also observed that overall situation is better among all the pulses. it can be noticed that growth rate of area, yield and production of mash were -2.16, -0.30 and -2.53 respectively. it shows that they were decreasing over the year. the area of mash was decreasing because the return to farmers is far less compared to the major crops. the yield of mash was decreasing due to ineffective weed and pest control. prices increased more than fivefold from 1971 to 1989, but production did not respond, as this crop has not experienced any technological breakthrough in the last thirty year. instability index of selected pulses instability index capture both explained and unexplained variations of the concerned variable and should better reflect the true instability situation of the selected pulses which is showed in table 2. instability in price of masoor was at the highest level and followed by the mash, gram and mung during the year of 19762010. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 107-112 110 table 2: instability index of price, area, yield and production of pulses pulses instability index (i)* price area yield production gram 27.99 8.69 21.21 24.38 masoor 61.45 16.77 12.54 19.83 mung 26.98 14.63 12.88 17.73 mash 36.46 22.88 10.05 22.49 in case of area it was mash at the top level masoor was on the second number while measuring the instability and gram was having low instability in area among all the pulses. while analyzing the yield and production gram was at highest level and mash was at lowest level in yield instability and in the production instability mung is at lowest level during the study period. price instability was the highest than the area yield and production in case of all the pulses. the instability in the production of these pulses was higher than that of area and yield. the instability in price was deeply influenced by the production instability in all the selected pulses. the area instability was minimum it means that the instability in the production was due to yield instability. annual fluctuations of selected pulses a farmer cultivated a crop on his farm keeping in mind its price of previous year profitability a farmer will allocated his limited resources for that crop which is stable and less risky. annul fluctuation of major pulses of price, area, yield and production was showed in the table 3. it was noticed that among all the pulses the fluctuation in the price of gram was high. the fluctuation in the price of gram was not a consistent during study period. the fluctuation highly increased in 1981-82 and 198889 and the yearly fluctuation was very high during the nineties but in twenties the fluctuation was more consistent. it was high in 1981-82 and highest in 198889 and lowest in 1990-91 table 3: annual fluctuations of lagged price, area, yield and production of pulses pulses annual fluctuation price area yield production gram -25.62 to 114.73 -25.31 to 19.35 -46.14 to 80.83 -44.77 to 86.47 masoor -32.94 to 125.88 -40.70 to 40.77 -26.24 to 22.40 -30.89 to 23.51 mung -20.00 to 56.06 -17.60 to 48.86 -9.55 to 16.41 -24.59 to 38.69 mash -19.89 to 86.21 -23.00 to 31.62 -34.91 to 19.82 -25.20 to 35.92 there was big uncertainty during the study period that will create problem for the farmers so that the area and production of gram during the study period was not consistent. area fluctuation was highest during the year 1988-89 and lowest in 1980-8. production and yield of the gram is high in 2006-07 and highest in 2002-03. it was also observed that among all the study period the fluctuation in production is high during the twenties. the annual fluctuation in the price of mash was consistence during the study period. it was high during the year 1981-82 and highest in 1994-95 and lowest in 2002-03. the area and production was highly fluctuated during the year 1979-80 and lowest in 2004-05. there is too much uncertainty in the area of mash during the study period. that will create problems for the farmers and they can’t predict the future trend of the crop. the yield of the mash was also showed that there was not a specific pattern of increasing and decreasing. the fluctuation was high in 1983-84 but the highest in 198586 and it was lowest during the year 1986-87. that shows that there are frequent changes in the consecutive year. the price of masoor was not consistent during the study period like the other pulses. it was noticed that among all the pulses the price of masoor was highest. the fluctuation in the price was extremely high in the 2008-09 and lowest in 1983-84 during the study period. area of masoor could not have a specific pattern it was highest in 1986-87 and production was highest in 199495 and lowest in 2005-06 and yield of the masoor was highest in the 1983-84. the fluctuation in the price of mung was highest during the 1981-82 and the fluctuation was lowest in 2003-04. it was noticed that the price of mung is lowest among all the pulses. area was highly fluctuated in 1989-90 and lowest in 2009-10 and yield was also lowest in 2009-10 and highest in 2006-07. price and cross price flexibilities of selected pulses when the farmer decided to allocated area for the cultivation of crop, either he speculated its future price or depends upon his past experience. it is the fact that current supply of the crop deeply influences its price. price of the crop is mainly determined by its supply. in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 107-112 111 agriculture the demand for any crop does not play important role in determining the price. the demand for any crop remains inelastic while supply is highly elastic. that is why high variations in the supply of the crop will create variability in its price. the own price flexibility analysis reveals that the relation of price ad production of gram and mung was positive while of masoor and mash it was negative (table 4). table 4: price and cross price flexibilities of selected pulses dependent variable price constant quantities coefficient gram masoor mung mash r2 gram 0.58 0.98 (1.95)* -1.38 (-2.90)*** 29.60% masoor 1.91 1.03 (2.22)** -1.77 (-4.04)*** 42.10% mung -1.91 1.24 (11.78)*** -0.26 (-1.54)* 90.20% mash -1.00 1.22 (11.56)*** -0.49 (2.85)*** 91.20% note: ***, ** and * indicate significant at 1%, 5% and 10% level the price flexibility analysis reveals that the relation of price ad production of gram and mung was positive it may be because these are that major pulses of their respective season also having the high demand. while of masoor and mash it was negative. the supply (production) of gram increases its current year’s price was also increases. a 10 percent increase in the production of gram increase the price of gram the 9.8 percent in the same production season (table 4). hence price response elasticity in case of gram was elastic closed to unitary elastic. in case of own price elasticity of masoor is highly elastic. a 10 percent increase in the in the production of masoor decrease will cause a decline of 17.7 percent in its price. in case of mung the own price elasticity is highly elastic because due to 10 percent increase in the production in mung that will bring increase in its price by 12.4 percent. price response elasticity in case of mash is inelastic. a 10 percent increase in the supply of mash will cause a decline of 4.9 percent in its price. cross price flexibility of substitution is very important to calculated because cross flexibility co-efficient reveals the impact of supply of one pulse on the price of other substitution pulse in the same production season. the coefficient shows that the increase in the production of masoor has deep influence on the price of gram. the response of price of gram with the production (supply) of the masoor is highly elastic. with an increase of 10 percent in the production of masoor the price of gram will decline by 13.8 percent. the analysis shows that the effect of supply of gram on masoor price is positive and their response is elastic. the price of masoor will increase by 10.3 percent with the increase in production of gram by 10 percent. the substitution effect of supply of mash on the price of mung is low the coefficient shows that with an increase of 10 percent in the supply of mash increase by 10 percent then price of mung decline by 2.6 percent. the supply of mung increases by the 10 percent the price of mash increasing by the 12.2 percent so that the price response is high elastic. mung and gram are the pulses which show that whenever the production is increases the price of both pulses will be increasing in the study period. cross price flexibility between gram and masoor was negatively related because whenever the production of gram increase than it was cause an increase in the price of masoor. it means large area under gram means increase in the price of masoor. the results show that production of mung also having positive relationship with the price of mash because whenever the production of mung increase than it means that mash price also increases. hence the production of one crop has interrelationship with the price increase/decrease of other competing crop. technologies achievement for one crop will also affect the price of other crop prevailing in the market. therefore, policy measures taken may not be only for a single crop in the crop sub sector the effect of any policy should be considered on the other crops too. conclusion and recommendation this study shows that there was no specific trend in price of all the selected pulses. the growth rates of prices of selected pulses were positive and growth rates of area and production were negative except the mung. among of all the pulses masoor was having higher instability in price. in case of all the major pulses price fluctuation was higher than that area, production and yield. the reason of these fluctuations is that price is not in the control of farmers. the government should provide incentives for pulses producing farmers. they provide incentive to the gram production instead of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 107-112 112 masoor, which are substitution pulses to each other in term of area allocation because it is more instable pulse as compared to the gram. similarly more incentive should be given for mung instead of mash. if the price of masoor will be lower, the farmers allocate more area for gram. similar will be the situation in case of mung and mash. if the area instability will reduce, there will be reduction in the productivity instability. if there will be liberty in market modern factor inputs will be available the surplus produce will easily move to deficit areas. it helps the policy makers to stabilize the price. easy availability of modern factor inputs and sustained supply will reduce area instability largely. hence procurement and storing selected crops are the effective instruments to control the area instability of the selected pulses. technological advancement is one of the best methods to control in the area instability of the pulses. due to the research efforts of the scientists and breeders if appropriated production technologies and technological advancement is adopted not only in marginal areas but also for different farming systems and cropping patters there will be control in the area instability of the pulses also reducing the per unit cost of the pulses. there will be an urgent need to promote these pulses because these crops perhaps stand among those crops, which although ignored rather neglected for research and development yet have succeeded in having their nutritional value recognized in majority of countries and stressed marginal growing conditions. they have proved their significance in a variety of ways may it be for human or animal consumption along with this government should chalk out effective strategy to improve annual yield of all locally grown pulses and decrease dependence on imported pulses. reference ali, m. and abedulla (1998) “supply, demand, and policy environment for pulses in pakistan”, the pakistan development review, vol. 37(1), pp. 35–52. chaudhry, m. i., tajammal, m. a. and hussain, a. (2002) “pulse varieties of pakistan, federal seed certification and registration department”, ministry of food, agriculture and livestock: islamabad; pakistan. gop (government of pakistan) (1975-2010) agriculture statistics of pakistan (various issues), ministry of food and agriculture, economic wing: islamabad; pakistan. javed, m. a. sharif, m. and masood, m. a. (2004) “instability and flexibility of major crops in pakistan”, socioeconomic research studies, social science institute. national agriculture research center: islamabad; pakistan, pp. 145-154. kannaiy, s. (2000) “perspectives of increasing pulse productivity in tamil nadu”, centre for plant breeding and genetics. tamil nadu agricultural university coimbatore – 641 003: coimbatore. karim, i. e. e. a and ismail, i. s. (2007) “potential for agricultural trade in comesa region: a comparative study of sudan, egypt and kenya”, african journal of agricultural research, vol. 2(10), pp. 48187. khan, a. (2012) “pulses import increases by 53 percent”, news on website, www.pakissan.com maskus, h. (2010) “pulses processing, functionality and application literature review”, winnipeg; manitoba. nandi, a. k. and bera, b. k. (2011) “variability in pulses production of west bengal”, economic affairs: vol. 56, pp. 199-204. prajneshu1 and chandran, k. p. (2005) “computation of compound growth rates in agriculture”, agricultural economics research review, vol. 18, pp. 317-24. parc (pakistan agriculture research council) (2012) national coordinated pulses programme, news on the website of http://www.parc.gov.pk/1subdivisions/narccsi/csi/ pulses.html. rehman, m. s., matin, m. a., hossain. s., karim, m. r, and salam, m. a. (2010) “an economic study of mango cultivation in chapainawabganj and dinajpur district of bangladesh”, bangladesh journal of agricultural research, vol. 35(4), pp. 621-30. http://www.pakissan.com/ http://www.parc.gov.pk/1subdivisions/narccsi/csi/pulses.html http://www.parc.gov.pk/1subdivisions/narccsi/csi/pulses.html effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. rural development practice in nigeria: how participatory and what challenges? nseabasi s. akpan (department of sociology and anthropology, university of uyo, akwa ibom state, nigeria) citation: nseabasi s. akpan (2012) “rural development practice in nigeria: how participatory and what challenges?” asian journal agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 381393. rural development practice in nigeria..... 381 author(s) nseabasi s. akpan department of sociology and anthropology, university of uyo, akwa ibom state, nigeria email:akpan.nseabasi@ymail.co m rural development practice in nigeria: how participatory and what challenges? abstract participatory rural development has evolved in the past 60 years as a development process and discourse that should encapsulate a wide range of views, voices and stakeholder contributions. how has this approach been followed in nigeria‟s rural development practice? this paper reviews the practices and challenges of participatory rural development in nigeria from a historical perspective emphasizing on the colonial system and post-colonial military and civilian governance. the paper observes that participatory development has not been practiced in the real sense of the concept in rural development in nigeria. while highly centralized and topdown exploitative rural development practice dominated the colonial system up to the period of post-independence military dictatorship, not much significant difference have been observed within the current civilian democratic experiment. the paper argues that while long years of military rule in nigeria have made it impossible for the development of effective institutional arrangements that could sustain true participatory democratic culture, a lack of citizens‟ capacity to participate in development intended for their benefit has posed the greatest challenge in achieving sustainable participatory rural development. keywords: participatory rural development, pre-and post-independence practice, challenges, nigeria, review introduction participatory rural development has evolved in the past 60 years as a development process and discourse that should encapsulate a wide range of views, voices and stakeholder contributions. this can be seen in the various definitions from scholars and international organizations (see escap, 2009: 5-6). cohen and uphof (1977) see participation within the framework of rural development as entailing people‟s involvement in decision-making processes, in implementing programmes, their sharing in the benefits of development programmes and their involvement in efforts to evaluate such programmes. this definition, more or less, places the people at the core of rural development practice. pearse and stiefel (1979) framed their definition of participation as the organized efforts to increase control over resources and regulative institutions in given social situations on the part of groups and movements of those hitherto excluded from such control. pearse and stifel‟s definition attempt to make a case for scaling-up of people‟s involvement in development projects affecting them. the import of this definition seems to be advocating partial empowerment of the people in development process that affect them. ghai‟s (1988) definition of participation as a process of empowerment of the deprived and the excluded seems quite in agreement with pearse and stifel‟s position. ghai‟s view is based on the recognition of differences in political and economic power among different social groups and classes. in this sense, participation necessitates the creation of organizations of the poor which are democratic, independent and self-reliant. mailto:akpan.nseabasi@ymail.com mailto:akpan.nseabasi@ymail.com mailto:akpan.nseabasi@ymail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 381-393 382 much more liberal and broad-based definition of participatory rural development is associated with some international organizations namely, the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) and the world bank. the oecd (1994) sees participatory development as partnership which is built upon the basis of dialogue among the various actors, during which agenda is jointly set, and local views and indigenous knowledge are deliberately sought and respected. this entails negotiation rather than the dominance of an externally set project agenda, and ultimately places the people as actors instead of being beneficiaries. in the same vein, the world bank (1994) sees participation as a process through which stakeholders influence and share control over development initiatives and the decisions and resources which affect them. a more fundamental theoretical explanation of participation was provided by arnstein (1969: 216) who defined participation as the redistribution of power that enables the havenot citizens, presently excluded from the political and economic process to be deliberately included in the future. it is the strategy by which they can induce significant social reform which enables them to share in the benefits of the affluent society. participatory development has evolved as a norm of development practice in the early 1950s mostly embedded within the context of community development in most developing countries. however, its relevance as a peoplecentered development approach was rediscovered in the 1970s in response to the rising awareness that previous approaches and practices of rural development did less to incorporate and empower local voices as well as placing them at the centre of local development initiatives. the world conference on agrarian reform and rural development (wcarrd-rome, 1979) fundamentally contributed in pushing participatory rural development to the frontline of development practice in the 1980s and 1990s when it declared participation by rural people in the institutions that govern their lives as a basic human right: „if rural development was to realize its potential, disadvantaged rural people had to be organized and actively involved in designing policies and programmes and in controlling social and economic institutions. wcarrd saw a close link between participation and voluntary, autonomous and democratic organizations representing the poor. it called on development agencies to work in close cooperation with organizations of intended beneficiaries, and proposed that assistance be channeled through small farmer and peasant groups‟ (iwg, no date: cited in escap, 2009: 5). participatory rural development has become deeply entrenched as rural development norm among governments, donors and international organizations, but how does this approach work in nigeria‟s rural development practice? what are the challenges of fostering participatory rural development practice in nigeria? this paper addresses this important question by reviewing the practice, challenges and opportunities of participatory rural development in nigeria from a historical perspective which will attempt to compare successive regime rural development plans. following this introductory section, the second section discusses nigeria‟s rural areas as a way of capturing the various development challenges that provide the basis for development practices. the third section reviews the trend of rural development practice in nigeria from a historical perspective. this is to capture the various policies and programmes of successive regimes from colonial and postcolonial periods. the fourth section takes analytical insights into the contents of the various development plans to understand the extent of participatory practices of associated regimes. the fifth section discusses the general challenges of evolving and sustaining a participatory approach in rural development in nigeria, with concluding remarks. nigeria’s rural areas and development challenges a great majority of nigeria‟s population resides in the rural areas. for instance, the 1963 census recorded 80.7% of the national population as rural residents. by 1985, the proportion had slightly gone down to 70.13% and was estimated that a further drop to 69% in the proportion was expected in the 1990s (muoghalu, 1992). in 2005, it was estimated that 53% of the nigerian populace resides in the rural development practice in nigeria..... 383 rural areas (world development reports, 2005) and in 2011, the world bank reports recorded 51.6% of nigeria‟s rural population. the general consensus seems to be that the rural areas in nigeria are very heavily populated. agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, contributing about 45 per cent of gdp. the agriculture sector employs about two-thirds of the country‟s total labour force and provides a livelihood for about 90 per cent of the rural population. nigeria is the world‟s largest producer of cassava, yam and cowpea – all staple foods in sub-saharan africa. it is also a major producer of fish. yet it is a food-deficit nation and imports large amounts of grain, livestock products and fish. apart from serving as the agricultural base for the country, the rural areas constitute the major sources of capital formation as well as huge market areas for domestic manufactures (olatunbosun, 1975; abdu and marshall, 1990; olayiwola and adeleye, 2005). indeed, the rural areas are involved in a whole lot of primary economic activities that are important in sustaining the entire nigerian economic system. despite nigeria‟s plentiful agricultural resources and oil wealth, poverty is widespread in the country and has increased since the late 1990s. over 70 per cent of nigerians are now classified as poor, and 35 per cent of them live in absolute poverty (ifad, 2011). poverty is especially severe in rural areas, where up to 80 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line and social services and infrastructure are limited. the country‟s poor rural women and men depend on agriculture for food and income. about 90 per cent of nigeria‟s food is produced by small-scale farmers who cultivate small plots of land and depend on rainfall rather than irrigation systems. surveys show that 44 per cent of male farmers and 72 per cent of female farmers across the country cultivate less than 1 hectare of land per household (ifad, 2011). this implies that women play a major role in the production, processing and marketing of food crops. rural infrastructure in nigeria has long been neglected. investments in health, education and water supply have been focused largely on the cities. as a result, the rural population has extremely limited access to services such as schools and health centres, and about half of the population lacks access to safe drinking water. the productivity of the rural population is also hindered by ill health, particularly hiv/aids, tuberculosis and malaria. neglect of rural infrastructure affects the profitability of agricultural production. despite the fundamental contributions to the national economy, the rural areas are not attractive to live in given the general absence of basic infrastructure (potable water, roads, electricity, healthcare systems, and financial institutions, among several others) and poor quality of life occasioned by persistent poverty. attempts at solving the rural problems had been the concern of the governments over the years. several programmes such as operation feed the nation (ofn); the national accelerated food production programme (nafpp) and the directorate for food, roads and rural infrastructure (dfrri), national economic empowerment and development strategy (needs), among others, have been witnessed most especially at post-independence era. what were the contents of such programmes and how did they respond to the diverse needs and development challenges in the rural areas? the next section takes a historical look at the various public commitments to rural development in nigeria from colonial period to the present period. rural development practice in nigeria: a historical perspective nigeria as a geo-political entity has existed for close to ten decades beginning from 1914 when the northern and southern nigeria was formally amalgamated by the british colonial masters. although no clear quantitative data is available, several scholarly literatures suggest that nigeria at pre-independence was dominantly rural which depended on agricultural practices for subsistence and exchanges. blench (2003) captured the real state of nigeria‟s rural areas in colonial times as follows: „in colonial times access was so problematic and information systems so underdeveloped that rural citizens were hardly able to articulate even major issues….‟ (p.7). british colonial interest in rural nigeria was characterized by two-prong asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 381-393 384 exploitation. in the first place, the rural areas were available only as primary resource areas for export of raw materials. the second level of exploitation saw the rural areas as food productive centres for the few urban centers which eventually were to serve the basic food needs of the colonial inhabitants. the colonial government township ordinance act promulgated in 1917 dictated the developmental course of the rural areas when it classified settlements into first, second and third class for the purpose of infrastructural provision. the first class settlements were mostly foreignized by the whites europeans and their workers. consequently, such settlements were the focus of heavy infrastructural concentration, and lagos represented the classic example of such discriminatory infrastructural concentration. on the other hand, the second and the third class settlements were not given adequate policy attention in infrastructural provision. the establishment of local government councils in western nigeria which were initially seen as avenues for expanding infrastructural facilities to the rural areas could not answer the question of coverage because of insufficient fund allocations (olayiwola and adeleye, 2005). what later passed as rural development initiatives in nigeria‟s colonial period could be located in 1945 during which the colonial development and welfare act was introduced. this, according to iwuagwu (2006) came with a „ten year plan of development and welfare‟, with the idea being to develop all avenues that could facilitate colonial exploitation of local resources. consequently, research institutes and marketing boards were established to improve production of crops as well as handle storage and marketing of export crops respectively. the nigerian cocoa marketing board was established in 1947 while other marketing boards for cotton, groundnuts and oil palm were set up in 1949. as it turned out, these marketing boards were more at the service of the colonial interest of local resource exploitation, which ended up impoverishing the rural sources of economic capital through commodity price distortion and excessive taxation. the 1946-1956 development plan was regionalized in 1954 when the littleton constitution was proclaimed. such regionalization paved way for decentralized planning in which the various regional political entities were consequently empowered to evolve and implement appropriate development plans within their respective jurisdictional areas. as an outcome, a new development plan period that was to run between 1955 and 1960 was evolved. one common trend of rural development plans at pre-independence period was a single emphasis on agricultural development and productivity. in contemporary times, it is commonly known fact that while the rural areas are still described as synonymous with peasant and subsistent agriculture (onokerhoraye, 1978; udeh, 1989; abdu and marshall, 1990; filani, 1993; iwuagwu, 2006; saheed, 2010), it is equally seen as synonymous with absence of basic infrastructural facilities such as sanitation, electricity, pipe-born water, good roads and health care services. post-independence rural development strategies in nigeria were articulated under the various national development plans namely, the first national development plan (1962-1968); second national development plan (1970-1974); the third national development plan (1975-1980); the fourth national development plan (19851990). the major objective of nigeria‟s first national development plan was to maintain and, if possible, to surpass the average rate of growth of 4% per year of its gross domestic product at constant prices. to realize the aim, government planned a yearly investment of approximately 15% of nigeria‟s gross national product. given that agriculture was the major strength of nigeria‟s economy, and which was largely identified with the rural areas, policy attention and governmental investment in it were seen as direct and indirect avenues of developing the rural areas. using agriculture to develop the rural areas was, therefore, at the top of nigeria‟s first national development plan agenda. according to saheed (2010), interest in rural development owed much to a number of events which had their origin in the colonial heritage and the unanticipated oil boom of the seventies. the author classified such driving rural development practice in nigeria..... 385 factors to include massive rural-urban drift of able-bodied young men and women, declining productivity in agriculture, increasing food imports, growing unemployment and the widening gap in welfare terms between the urban and rural areas. despite this policy effort at developing agriculture, and by implication the rural areas, the first national plan was more of an extended colonial policy and practice of exploitation. abass (1993) argues that under the first national development plan period, peasant farmers were further squeezed to produce cash crops, at the expense of the subsistence crops, for export. the plan itself did not articulate any clear statement or policy on rural infrastructural development. rather, emphasis was placed on encouraging the assemblage of agricultural produce for export purpose, without strengthening the real agricultural base of the country by providing necessary infrastructures such as good road network, electricity, agricultural processing facilities, and water, among several others. the second national development plan (19701974) came as post-civil war development initiatives. it was also during this plan period that nigeria had the „phenomenon of oil resource boom‟. fundamentally, the plan was aimed at: a) building a united, strong and selfreliant nation; b) building a great and dynamic economy; c) building a just and egalitarian society; d) building a land of bright and full opportunities and; e) building a free and democratic society. the plan placed high priority on reducing the level of inequality among the social classes and between urban and rural areas. one important feature of the second national development plan as observed by marcellus (2009) was its democratic content, having emerged from a participatory process that involved stakeholders at every level of governance. although its primary focus was not about rural development, the plan‟s intention of building a just and egalitarian society suggested holistic development whereby every segment of the nigerian space and population were to be covered. these ideals were not realized principally owing to the phenomenon of „oil boom‟, which ended up diluting every attention and commitment at mobilizing material and human resources for the achievement of the primal objective of building an egalitarian and self-reliant society. „oil boom‟ soon translated into struggle for „oil rents‟ which led to massive corruption at every levels of governance. huge spending and import of food characterized the state activity while agriculture that served as the mainstay of the economy was relegated to the background. given the consistent synonymity of agriculture with rural development in nigeria, government massive dependence on oil revenue during this period meant that all policies on rural development could no longer be on the agenda of government. olayiwola and adeleye (2005) argued that although it was stated in the plan that government was committed to spending #500,000 for village regrouping, such projection was perhaps to reduce the cost of providing economic and social infrastructure such as health, electricity, water and educational facilities for the rural areas. in the third national development plan (19751980), rural development was revisited based on government conviction that such investment will contribute in closing the yawning gap between the demand for food and the supply capacity of the home-based industries. consequently, government developed interest in modernizing agriculture and introducing new initiatives to strengthen the agricultural and food base of the nation. although the objectives of the plan looked similar to those of the second national development plan, there was a significant and radical approach as the plan emphasized the need to reduce regional disparities in order to foster national unity through the adoption of integrated rural development. increased budgetary allocations was provided to fund diverse and interrelated rural development sectors as the provision for nationwide rural electrification scheme; the establishment of agricultural development projects (adps); the establishment of nine river basin development authority‟s (rbdas); the construction of small dams and boreholes for rural water supply and the clearing of feeder roads for the evacuation of agricultural produce; the supply of electricity to rural areas from large irrigation dams; commitment of resources to large scale mechanized state farming enterprises; the introduction of operation feed the nation (ofn) campaign and the green asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 381-393 386 revolution and; public efforts at land reforms through the land use act of 1978. from the first to the third national development plans, there was observable progressive budgetary improvement to enhance agricultural productivity. olorunfemi and adesina (1998) reported increasing financial allocation for agricultural development as follows: first national development plan had a total financial allocation of #30,835,000; second national development plan was allocated a total amount of #71,447,000; while the third national development plan had the highest allocation of #2,201,373,000 for agricultural development. investment in rural agricultural sector is one component that could catalyze substantive improvement in individual capabilities. however, such lopsided development interest was not enough for transforming rural areas without corresponding investment in rural infrastructures such as roads, electricity, health care, among several others. the fourth national development plan (19801985) came with several distinguishing features. first, it was formulated by a civilian government under a new constitution based on the presidential system of government. second, it was the first plan in which the local government tier was allowed to participate fully in its own right (fgn, 1981). the plan emphasized among other things the need for balanced development of the different sectors of the economy as well as the various geographical areas of the country. it emphasized the importance of rural infrastructural development as a vehicle for enhancing the quality of rural life. the period saw improved budgeting to the eleven river basin development authorities whose functions include among other things, the construction of boreholes, dams, feeder roads and jetties. in this case the rbdas was, to a large extent, empowered to develop the rural areas by opening up feeder roads, drilling boreholes and wells, building farm service centres and earth dams, among several others. this period saw increasing participation of all tiers and levels of governments in rural development activities especially in the areas of roads construction, health care services, and electricity provision, water supply etc. according to filani (1993), „the 1981-1985 national development plan marked a turning point in rural development efforts in nigeria because it was the first to recognize the rural sector as a priority area. it made provisions for integrated packages such as the infrastructure, institutional and administrative apparatus to facilitate rapid development of the country‟s agricultural potential‟ (p. 250). the author observed that increase of 12% specific allocation to agriculture and rural development over 5% in the 1962-1968 plan represented significant political commitment to rural development practice. the post-fourth plan period (1986-1998) did not feature articulated development plan. however, key programmes and policies such the structural adjustment programme (sap) and the vision 2010 were prominent. the structural adjustment programme, for instance, witnessed the establishment of the directorate for food, roads and rural infrastructure (dfrri) in 1985 for the purpose of providing rural infrastructures in the country side. the laws establishing the directorate was promulgated under decree number four of 1987. the core of the directorate‟s programme was to promote productive activities. besides, the directorate recognized the provision of rural infrastructure such as feeder roads, water, electricity and housing as essential for the enhancement of the quality of life in the rural areas. the programme of the directorate included: a. the organization and mobilization of the local people to enhance or facilitate closer interaction between the government and the people. in addition the local communities were asked to form unions or associations for the purpose of providing common facilities for themselves; b. the provision of rural infrastructures such as rural feeder roads, rural water and sanitation, rural housing and electrification; c. the promotion of productive activities such as food and agriculture, rural industrialization and technology; d. the promotion of other extracurricular activities such as socio-cultural and recreational programmes, intra and inter community cohesion activities. rural development practice in nigeria..... 387 the plan for the implementation of dfrri programme was organized into two phases. in phase one, the target was to provide water for 250 communities in each of the states of the federation, to construct 90,000 km of feeder roads, and to promote rural housing, health and agriculture. to facilitate industrial growth, and improve the attractiveness of the rural environment, the directorate planned to commence its rural electrification programme in the second phase starting in june 1987. in pursuit of its objectives, dfrri also planned to co-operate with organizations like nigerian building and road research institute (nbrri) as well as rural water supply and sanitation programme (ruwatsan). the directorate of food, roads and rural infrastructures (dfrri) was not to be involved in direct implementation of the programmes. rather, for the purpose of the programme implementation, the directorate used as its main agents, the states and the local governments, to execute its programmes. the funds for the programme of the directorate were made available directly to each state government who then saw to the disbursement of such fund to the local governments. the local governments in the federation were constituted into rural development committees. these committees comprised of the local government officials and the rural communities. the vision 2010 which came around 1997 and 1998 could not survive following the death of the then general sani abacha. on the whole, this period witnessed radical and more holistic intentions towards the development of rural areas. subsequent efforts at rural development came in the light of nigeria‟s democratic dispensation (1999-to date). a four-year development plan was initially articulated (1999-2003) with the objective of pursuing a strong, virile and broadbased economy that is highly competitive, responsive to incentives, private sector-led, diversified, market-oriented and open, but based on internal momentum for its growth (marcellus, 2009 cites donli, 2004). emphasis on private sector-led growth did not carry sufficient message for rural development. as the prospect of achieving the intended objective of the plan did not materialize, a re-think was therefore necessary. when the ruling party (the people‟s democratic party-pdp) got re-elected in 2003, they came up with a new programme namely, the national economic empowerment and development strategy (needs: 20032007). needs was quite comprehensive and ambitious, as it was not only duplicated at all levels of governments (state economic empowerment and development strategyseeds; and local economic empowerment and development strategy-leeds), it incorporated the private sector, nongovernmental organization and the general public in pursuits of its developmental goals. by attempting to empower the rural populace, needs had a substantive vision of eliminating rural poverty and promoting the development of the rural space. if the goal of rural development practice is premised on improving the quality of life of the rural populace, it means relevant policies and development plans should clearly have the benefit of involving the intended beneficiaries by giving them the chance to articulate their problems and interest at every level of activity. according to javan (1998), involving people in decisions that affect their lives has the empowering effect of self-confidence, selfesteem and knowledge as well as helping in developing new skills among the participants. such active involvement opportunities entail not only a process, it is also the end of development (see chambers, 1997; moser, 1989; asnarulkhadi, 1996). to what extent was the rural populace involved in the various rural development plans? the next section addresses this issue by discussing some depth and insights into the various regime practices and the associated development plans in nigeria. participatory rural development in nigeria: insights into development plans and regime practices rural development practice in nigeria often aims to, first, improve the quality of life of all members of the local community, and second, to involve all members of the community in the development process. to what extent has the second aim of participatory development been practiced in nigeria? based on conyers‟ (1986) „top-down‟, „bottom-up‟ and „partnership‟ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 381-393 388 approaches 1 , rural development practice in nigeria beginning from the colonial to postindependence has evolved at various levels as measured in the various rural development plans. the colonial rural development approach exhibited very high degree of centralized and top-down practice characterized by excessive economic exploitation than the aim of improving the standard of living of the rural populace. rural development in nigeria under the british colonial system (1914-1960) did not carry clear specific plans. however, their interest in the rural areas was furthered by the need for material and human exploitation in the form of primary agricultural products and cheap labour to sustain their commercial interest and advance the economic and livelihood wellbeing of the colonial masters. consequently, rural development was synonymous with highly centralized and well-organized system of disempowering and exploiting the rural populace and its resources. abdu and marshall (1990) described such system as follows: „under colonial rule, nigeria was an outlier of britain‟s economic space and the essentially exploitative relationship was based upon export commodity production e.g., cocoa, palm oil produce, groundnuts and cotton. agriculture was, therefore, the mainstay of the colonial economic system although the extraction of tin, using foreign capital, was of some importance‟ (p.313). similarly, iwuagwu (2006) saw such practice as being in consonance with the british colonial policy, which emphasized the search for less expensive human and material resources to develop and sustain the british colonial empire. this was absolutely a case of using the resources of the rural areas in developing the cities; just as available high tax 1 in a top-down approach to rural development, main activity of development is centrally initiated and managed by the government or authority while the community assumes a passive position. the bottom-up approach to rural development is actively initiated and managed by the intended beneficiary community while government and service providers merely play supportive role as facilitators and consultants. when the development attempt is combined or initiated by both the government and the community, it implies partnership between the people and government (see finger, 1994; nikkah and redzuan, 2009). revenue accruing from the rural communities did not match or correspond with the very low expenditures devoted for its development (iwuagwu, 2006). the nature of social relations was unambiguously hierarchical with the colonial masters in london, their representatives in urban nigeria, as well as the commoners settling in the rural areas. while the colonial masters and their representatives were interested in excessive dispossession and accumulation through directives, the commoners in the rural areas were responsible for local labour with low wages and without knowledge about how decisions affecting them were taken. the „parasitic‟ character of social relations in rural development practice did not end with the british rule, post-independence nigeria inherited such mode of rural development practice but to a certain extent. frequent military intervention in nigeria‟s postindependence governance, meant longer years of military rule (1966 to 1999 with a brief democratic interlude between 1979 and 1982) than civilian democracy (1999 to date). under the military rule, various rural development plans came up as: a) the first national development plan (1962-1968); b) the second national development plan (1970-1974); c) the third national development plan (1975-1980); d) the fourth national development plan (1980-1985); e.) the postfourth national development plan (1986-1998). quite like the colonial arrangement, rural development practice under the post-independence military system was equally highly centralized and „topdown‟ often conceived, legitimized and implemented by few individuals or groups who had access to public offices. although the military used the state and local government systems to hand down development packages, the rural populace hardly got involved in the processes of development given that the local administrative leaders were military appointees who only acted for and on behalf of their masters. consequently, every rural development programmes for nigeria during this period carried uniform mandates and mostly were agriculturally-based programmes. the river basin development authority initiated and consolidated by the military and inherited by the civilian governments, still retain its uniform rural development practice in nigeria..... 389 mandate and objectives of rural development in total disregard of the huge environmental, socio-economic and physical diversities of the various regions of nigeria. akpabio (2010), in this particular case of the river basin development authorities, had argued that most public policies and programmes in nigeria hardly succeed because of utter disregard for local socio-ecological circumstances of operation. this argument applies to all other agricultural and rural development policies and programmes under the military regime except the second development plan (1970-1974). the uniqueness and participatory character of the second development plan could be appreciated against the backdrop of the circumstances of the post-civil war where the need for rehabilitation, and building a united and egalitarian society necessitated interest and subsequent engagement of relevant stakeholders. such context of participatory governance and development soon could not be sustained given subsequent military intervention. in this case, all other subsequent development plans claimed participation, though falsely, at intergovernmental levels, which in reality amounted to mere directives and communication of what to implement at the state and local government levels. the emergence of democratic governance beginning from 1999 was to offer the best opportunity for participatory rural development at every level. for one, the constitution of nigeria guarantees, in principle, some levels of autonomy to state and local authorities. second, the power of democratic election and political informational debates offer remarkable political incentives of participatory development at every levels of governance. however, these standards have not yet been internalized in the nigerian political space. every known rural development programme beginning from 1999 hardly reflect the true perspectives of the diverse stakeholders and voices. nigeria‟s democratic governance still remains relatively young. most rural development efforts revolve around the national economic empowerment and development strategy (needs) which are all duplicated at state levels as state economic empowerment and development strategy (seeds) and local economic empowerment and development strategy (leeds). the needs was formally launched in may 2004, and was designed to serve as a home-grown economic empowerment and development programme. although the needs and its local wings preach stakeholder participation, the entire planning process is in total negation of the principle of participatory development. the formulation of terms of reference, appointment and composition of facilitators as well as problem identification are often pre-determined at the top. local stakeholders are only co-opted as members of project implementation committee whose role nominally revolves around site identification for project implementation. the entire process that even result in the composition of the „so-called‟ stakeholder implementation committee members is often fraught with excessive politicization as opportunity to reward and patronize the local members of the ruling political party. participation in this context is selective, sectional and elitist, with the implication that real development benefits do not really get to the intended beneficiaries. if participation is to give voice to local populace to define their problem and proffer solutions in a way that will improve their wellbeing, it is argued here that nigeria‟s democratic governance has not fared well in participatory rural development. at the institutional level, rural development programmes and policies are still driven by individuals and select few in public offices as was common practice during the military dictatorship. just as in the military era, the survival of every rural development programme is often closely tied to regime longevity and individual influence in a given regime and department of government, rather than the relevant institutional structures. taking example of the vision 2010 of the sani abacha regime, aluko (2006) observed that inspite of the best ideas and intentions encapsulated in the reform agenda, the subsequent regime led by olusegun obasanjo terminated the plan because of sheer hatred for abacha. he went on to observe that obasanjo‟s tenure elongation programme was explicitly premised on guaranteeing the survival of his vision 2020 plan. in the case of needs, osagie (2007: 29) particularly observed a lack of institutional coordination and absence of effective asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 381-393 390 leadership as most important problems that limit efforts at guaranteeing sustainable and long-term rural development programme. the participatory contents of every rural development programme under the current democratic arrangements often assumes rhetorical public statements while actual practice, at best, is narrowed to administrative decentralization. this is when states and local government areas duplicate such federal initiatives at their respective domain. while nigeria assumes a constitutional federal structure, real autonomy is still lacking in practice as the states and local authorities still depend on the federal government for funding. states and local level authorities hardly take independent rural developmental initiatives as they practically depend on the federal authorities. challenges and concluding remarks participatory rural development in nigeria has not recorded any remarkable impact in practice. the greater part of efforts to develop the rural areas was packaged around agricultural development. this dominated the colonial and post-colonial periods up to the late 1980s when some elements of broad conceptualization of rural development were witnessed through investment in physical and social infrastructures. emphasis on agriculture alone reflects the single handedness or unilateral approach to rural development where government alone conceptualizes the problem of the rural areas and consequently decides on what it perceives as best for every rural areas and its people. this equally gives some insights into the exploitative nature of most public rural development programmes as agricultural development is often targeted, not in the true sense of developing the rural areas and its people but as a means of guaranteeing stable food supply for the leaders and urban elites. given that nigeria‟s economy is agrarianbased, the rural areas were perceived to be important productive centers to service the foreign exchange earnings of the country. as rural people‟s livelihoods do not entirely depend on agriculture, its overemphasis functions much to the detriment and neglect of many other productive sectors of the rural economy which could place some areas at a relative comparative advantage. thus, other key sectors of rural development including rural small scale craft industries and human capital development through investments in wide range of social opportunities including education, healthcare etc. were ignored. this is an indication that the people‟s voices were hardly engaged in discussing the best developmental options for them. long years of military rule have been seen to be one factor contributing to the absence of institutionalized participatory rural development. the military were not able to create enabling institutional environment for participatory governance given that power revolved around individuals and groups within the military hierarchy. every rural development package including dffri, operation feed the nation (ofn) and green revolution, etc. had no record of evidence to the fact that the people were consulted. the development plans were framed at the seat of power by one or few individuals and handed down for implementation without recognition of the variation in local environmental and socioeconomic circumstances of the people. when nigeria started experiencing democratic governance, the needed institutional foundation for democratic and participatory governance was already not nurtured. this has affected the functioning of nigeria‟s current democratic experiment as individuals and leaders still cultivate enormous power and influence over the machinery of government, to the extent that corruption, nepotism and poor leadership have combined not only to corrupt public development processes, but also serve to inhibit the proper functioning of public policies and plans that are meant for rural development. citizenship participation and input in any policy formulation and programme implementation processes is very crucial since the outcome of such arrangements is bound up with popular views and inputs and is useful in empowering local level development actors and intended beneficiaries as well as strengthening the sustainability of development project. current challenge in nigeria‟s participatory governance space border on: a) citizens capacity to participate in development intended for their benefit and; b) transparency guarantees in the rural development practice in nigeria..... 391 intended processes of participation. given that over 70% of nigerians are classified as poor (ifad, 2011), it means the basic human and socio-economic capabilities that would guarantee substantive participation in development practice is absent (see sen, 1999). while some public rural development programmes boast of participatory contents, actual practices are often narrowed to unilateral top-down package as those in the policy and administrative leadership still dominate every rural development spaces. communities are often handed water facility where either there are many natural sources of supplies or the cost of access marginalizes the greatest number of the people. given a lack of basic citizen capabilities and capacity to participate in public rural development programmes, the transparency in the processes of delivering such public development benefits becomes increasingly diminished. policy officials and implementers often manipulate development programmes to the dictates of ethnicity, clan affiliation, financial gratification and undue favoritism, among several other corrupt practices. in conclusion, it is argued that rural development practice in nigeria over the years has been a one-way practice still centrally packaged by public officials and development agents, and handed down to the people who become passive recipients of such public development benefits. such top-down rural development perspectives are still very much common even in the current democratic experiment. this is explained with reference to a lack of basic capability on the part of the citizens to participate and negotiate in the processes that are intended for their own development benefits. to make rural development practice participatory, the paper recommends that massive public investments and spending should be directed at improving social opportunities such as education, healthcare and economic empowerment. such investments in social and economic opportunities will contribute in improving the basic capabilities of the rural populace and will contribute in guaranteeing effective participation in any development process. references abass, i. m. (1993) “the challenge of rural development strategies in a deregulated economy”, paper prepared for a national seminar on rural development-doing more less developing rural resources in a deregulated economy-organized by new nigerian newspapers limited in collaboration with arthur green consultants held at shiroro hotel minna, niger state from 10th-12th february. abdu, m. s. and r. marshall (1990) “agriculture and development policy: a critical review of nigerian experience in the period upto 1985”, journal of rural studies, vol. 6(3), pp. 311-323. akpabio, e. m. (2010) “integrated water resources management in nigeria: local factors and institutional challenges”, lap lambert academic publishing, germany. aluko, s. (2006) “abacha‟s vision 2010 blueprint reviewed”, airaland forum. tuesday may 09, 2006. arnstein, s. (1969) “a ladder of citizen participation”, journal of the american institute of planners, vol. 35(4), pp. 216-224. asnarulkhadi, a. (1996) “people‟s participation in community development and community work activities: a case study in a planned village settlement in malaysia”, university of nottingham. cited in nikkhah, h. a. and ma‟rof redzuan (2009) participation as a medium of empowerment in community development. european journal of social sciences. vol. 11(1), pp. 170-176. blench, r. (2003) “position paper: the rural dimension (nigeria: drivers of change)”, paper prepared for dfid. cambridge 22 october. http://www.rogerblench.info/rbop.htm chambers, r. (1997) “whose reality counts? putting the first last”, london: itdg publications. cohen, j. and n. uphoff (1977) “rural development participation: concepts and measures for project design, implementation and evaluation”, ithaka, cornel university. conyers, d. (1986) “decentralization and development: a framework for analysis”, community development journal, vol. 21(2), pp. 88-100. donli, j. g. (2004) “an overview of nigeria‟s economic reforms”, ndic quarterly, vol. 1 (4), pp. 62-82. http://www.rogerblench.info/rbop.htm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 381-393 392 escap (2009) “participatory approaches to rural development and rural poverty alleviation”, working paper. prepared by j. p. de campos guimaraes for the workshop on „emerging issues in rural poverty reduction: the role of participatory approaches held in bangkok. united nations economic and social commission for asia and the pacific. fgn (1981) fourth national development plan (1981-85) federal republic of nigeria, lagos. filani, m. o. (1993) “transport and rural development in nigeria”, journal of transport geography. vol. 1(4), pp. 248-254 finger, m. (1994) “ngos and transformation: beyond social movement theory. environmental ngos in world politics: linking the local and the global”, t. princen and m. finger. london, routledge: 48-66. ghai, d. (1988) “participatory development: some perspectives from grassroots experiences”, discussion paper no. 5, geneva: unrisd: ifad (2011) “rural poverty in nigeria”, http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/web/guest/co untry/home/tags/nigeria. international fund for agricultural development iwg (no date) “fao informal working group on participatory approaches and methods: course of participatory project formulation”, http://www.fao.org/participation/english_web_n ew/content_en/history.html, accessed 23 may 2012. iwuagwu, o. (2006) “rural development in eastern nigeria: an assessment of colonial and post colonial development plans in the former owerri province, 1946-1976”, lagos historical review, vol. 6, pp. 118-132. javan, j. (1998) “empowerment for community development: a multivariate framework for assessing empowerment at the community level”, department of psychology, north carolina state university marcellus, i. o. (2009) “development planning in nigeria: reflections on the national economic empowerment and development strategy (needs), 2003-2007”, j. soc sci, vol. 20(3), pp. 197-210. moser, c. o. n. (1989) “community participation in urban projects in the third world”, progress in planning, vol. 32(2), pp. 71-133. muoghalu, l. n. (1992) “rural development in nigeria: a review of previous initiatives”, in olisa, m. s. o. and obiukwu, j. i. (eds) rural development in nigeria: dynamics and strategies. mekslink publishers, awka nikkhah, h. a. and ma’rof redzuan (2009) “participation as a medium of empowerment in community development”, european journal of social sciences, vol. 11(1), pp. 170-176. oecd (1994) cited in escap (2009) participatory approaches to rural development and rural poverty alleviation. working paper. prepared by j. p. de campos guimaraes for the workshop on „emerging issues in rural poverty reduction: the role of participatory approaches held in bangkok. united nations economic and social commission for asia and the pacific. olatunbosun, d. (1975) “nigerian neglected rural majority”, ibadan: oxford university press. olayiwola, l. m. and o. a. adeleye (2005) “rural infrastructural development in nigeria: between 1960 and 1990-problems and challenges”, journal of social science, vol. 11 (2), pp. 91-96. olorunfemi, a. and o. c. adesina (1998) “politics and nigerian agriculture in the first decade of the oil boom, 1970-1980: a preliminary assessment”, njeh, no. 1, pp. 5769. onokerhoraye, a. e. (1978) “planning for rural development in nigeria: a spatial approach”, community development journal, vol. 13(1), pp. 29-34. osagie, e. (2007) “the new nigerian economy: from poverty to prosperity”, benin city: afbsn publications. pearse a and stiefel m (1979) “inquiry into participation: a research approach”, unrisd, geneva. saheed, a. b. (2010) “poverty situation in nigeria. an overview of rural development institutions”. pakistan journal of social sciences, vol. 7(5), pp. 351-356. sen, a. (1999) “development as freedom”, oxford university press. oxford. udeh, c. a. (1989) “rural development in nigeria”, habitat international, vol. 13(3), pp. 95-100. world bank (1994) cited in escap (2009) “participatory approaches to rural development and rural poverty alleviation”, working paper. prepared by j. p. de campos guimaraes for the workshop on „emerging issues in rural poverty reduction: the role of participatory approaches http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/web/guest/country/home/tags/nigeria http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/web/guest/country/home/tags/nigeria rural development practice in nigeria..... 393 held in bangkok. united nations economic and social commission for asia and the pacific. publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2, no 3, september, 2012 assessment of women’s participation in cooperative societies and its determinants in yewa north local government area of ogun state, nigeria awotide, diran olawale (department of agricultural economics and farm management, olabisi onabanjo university, yewa campus, ayetoro, ogun state, nigeria) citation: awotide, diran olawale (2012) “assessment of women‟s participation in cooperative societies and its determinants in yewa north local government area of ogun state, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 344-350. assessment of women’s participation in cooperative… 344 author(s) awotide, diran olawale (department of agricultural economics and farm management, olabisi onabanjo university, yewa campus, ayetoro, ogun state, nigeria) email: w_awotide@yahoo.com assessment of women’s participation in cooperative societies and its determinants in yewa north local government area of ogun state, nigeria abstract cooperatives have been regarded as one of the main institutional machineries for empowering the economically weak members of the society. despite the availability of cooperative societies, it appears that a significant proportion of rural women are either unaware of the existence of such cooperative societies or are lacking in the basic socioeconomic characteristics that form the prerequisite for participation in such activities. the study therefore examined the level of participation of women in cooperative organization and its determinants in the study area. the study was conducted in yewa north local government area of ogun state, south-west rainforest zone of nigeria in 2011 using two stage sampling techniques to select 180 respondents. descriptive statistics and logit regression analysis were used to analyze the data generated. the results showed that pressure from household head, insufficient fund and low membership were found to be the major problems militating against women participation in cooperatives. logit regression analysis revealed positive and significant relationships between variables such as education, years of business experience and forms of cooperative (producers and credit and thrift) and these variables were the major determinants of participation in cooperative society. based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that any policy that will further increase the level of education of women would increase their participation in cooperative society. keywords: women, cooperative societies, participation, logit, ogun state, nigeria introduction women form the majority in the rural areas, and are involved at all stages of agricultural enterprises, responsible for about 80% of all food items produced (njar, 1990; mgbada 2002; rahman, 2004) and 70 percent of food production and 50 percent of the domestic food storage in the country (ritche, 1977). in addition, they form an active and reserve labour force but they rarely own the means of productions (rahman 2004) suggesting that the position of women in agricultural development cannot be over emphasized. cooperatives have been regarded as one of the main institutional machineries for empowering the economically weak members of the society. cooperatives are able to promote economic and social development because they are commercial organizations that follow a broader set of values than those associated purely with the profit motive. cooperatives play an important role in job creation by directly providing selfemployment to members and service provision for non-members. enterprise development and particularly the promotion of small and medium enterprises, has been adopted as a prerequisite and a strategy for job creation and economic growth in a large number of countries (essien, 2000). despite the availability of cooperative mailto:w_awotide@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 344-350 345 societies and efforts of government at all levels, it appears that a significant proportion of rural women are either unaware of the existence of such co-operative societies or are lacking in the basic socioeconomic characteristics that form the prerequisite for participation in such activities (idrisa et al., 2007). in some cultures, women are restricted from conducting business independently or without their husband„s consent. this poses a serious challenge to participation in cooperative activities. even though in some cases women„s legal rights may be stipulated in a cooperative they may not necessarily be enforced or they may be superseded by customary law. it is in line with this view that ashanti (1993) observed that lack of social, economic and legal rights explains women's low participation in cooperative decision-making and leadership positions. besides cultural issues, women, especially in developing countries, are confronted by formidable constraints that block their active participation in cooperatives most especially, the traditional role of women in society and the prevalent misconception that women's reproductive and domestic responsibilities constitute their main role. however, eboh (1988), recognized that despite women‟s major responsibilities in the household health and nutrition, women‟s role in agriculture cover all facts of agribusiness including food production, livestock production, fishery as well as farm management. literature is replete on the effect of cooperative scheme on women‟s livelihood leading to poverty reduction, through asset creation associated with a series of loan financed investments, higher income that will help women to better perform their reproductive role as brokers of health, nutritional, and educational status of other household members (cheng and nguyen (2000); gurgand et al., (1994); shane, (2004); holocomb and xu, (1997). cooperatives have been regarded as one of the main institutional machineries for empowering the economically weak members of the society. despite the availability of cooperative societies and efforts of government at all levels, it appears that a significant proportion of rural women are either unaware of the existence of such co-operative societies or are lacking in the basic socioeconomic characteristics that form the prerequisite for participation in such activities. it is based on this that the study examined the level of participation of women in cooperative organization and major problems militating against the participation of women in cooperative activities in the study area. methodology the study was conducted in yewa north local government area of ogun state, nigeria. ogun state is in the south-west rainforest zone of nigeria. the state was created on the third of february, 1976 under the military government. it has human population of about 2,236,609 as at the 1991 census (cbn 2002).the average rainfall in the state ranges between 1250mm and 1800mm with a slight bimodal rainfall distribution which peak in june and october while the dry season stretches from mid november to mid march. temperature ranges from 24 0 c to 32 0 c and average relative humidity of 80% to 90%. ogun state covers about 16,409.26 square kilometers (ogun state government 1989). yewa north local government area is bounded in the west by the republic of benin, in the north by imeko afon local government, in the south by yewa south local government, in the east, by abeokuta north local government area. the inhabitants are predominantly farmers, while the communities are noted for production of arable crops like cassava, maize, cocoyam, yam, melon, tomatoes, palm oil and many others. data source, sampling techniques and method of data analysis the study used primary data collected from women respondents in the study area. a two stage sampling techniques was employed in selecting respondents from the study. in the first stage six towns were randomly selected from the list of towns in the lga. the second stage involved randomly selection of 30 women in each town. in all, a total of one hundred and eighty (180) were selected. however, 175 respondents were used for data analysis because five questionnaires were rejected for inadequacy in information provided. of the 175 respondents, 120 women were members of cooperative societies while 65 were not. descriptive statistics and logit regression analysis were used to analyze the data assessment of women’s participation in cooperative… 346 generated. the descriptive statistic involves simple relative frequency table and mean. the logit model was used to elicit the determinants of cooperative membership. the logit model assumes the underlying stimulus index (ii) is a random variable, which predicts the probability of being a member of cooperative societies. therefore, for the ith observation (an individual respondent):      n j jijoi xbb p p ini 11 (1) the relative effect of each explanatory variable (xji) on the probability of being a member of cooperative societies is measured by differentiating with respect to xji. using the quotient rule,                     ji i i i ji i x i e e dx dp i i 2 1 (2) where, pi = the probability of ith respondent being a member of cooperative societies or not. xi = vector of explanatory variables which are x1 = age in years x2 = marital status (married = 1, otherwise = 0) x3 = level of education (years) x4 = household size (number) x5 = type of cooperative (producers‟ = 1, otherwise = 0) x6 = type of cooperative (credit and thrift = 1, otherwise = 0) x7 = type of cooperative (multipurpose = 1, otherwise = 0) x8 = total monthly income (naira) x9 = experience in business (years) results and discussion women’s participation in cooperative activities women are represented in various forms and in various types of cooperatives in the study area. table 1 revealed that majority of the women cooperators (26.7%) belonged to credit and thrift cooperative society, 18.3% were in producer cooperative while the remaining 21.7% were member of multipurpose cooperative society. in the study area, no discriminatory provisions preventing women‟s participation in cooperative societies are in place. despite this, 36.1% of the respondents were not member of any cooperative societies. table 1: distribution of respondents by type of cooperative societies type frequency relative frequency (%) none 65 36.1 producers‟ cooperative 33 18.3 credit and thrift cooperative 48 26.7 multipurpose cooperative 39 21.7 total 180 100.0 source: field survey, 2011 table 2 revealed that 30.8% of the respondent‟s experience in cooperative activities fell between the ranges of 1-5 years, 2.5% had experience of 20 years and above, 15% had between 11-15 years while majority of the respondents (45.8%) had between 6-10 years. table 2: distribution of respondents by years of experience in cooperative activities experience (years) frequency relative frequency (%) 1-5 37 30.8 6-10 55 45.8 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 344-350 347 11-15 18 15.0 16-20 7 5.8 above 20 3 2.5 total 120 100.0 source: field survey, 2011 table 3 revealed that 96.7% of the respondents attend meetings while the remaining 3.35 failed to attend meetings where issues regarding the cooperative societies are discussed. table 2 also revealed that meetings are held at different intervals. majority (53.3%) reported that meetings were held on weekly basis. this result shows that majority of the cooperative societies hold meetings on weekly basis. table 3: frequency of holding and attending meetings holding meetings attendance frequency/period frequency relative frequency (%) frequency relative frequency (%) weekly 64 53.3 51 42.5 monthly 46 38.3 58 48.3 quarterly 8 6.7 11 9.2 yearly 2 1.7 0 0.0 total 120 100.0 120 100.0 source: field survey, 2011 table 4 presents benefits enjoyed in participating in cooperative society. majority of the women (54.2%) had easy access to loan, while 15.8% said the cooperative provided input for production purpose and 11.7% joined the society to gain high social status. table 4: benefit enjoyed as a member of cooperative society benefits frequency relative percentage (%) accessibility to loan 65 54.2 provision of input for production 19 15.8 marketing of products 22 18.3 gaining higher social status 14 11.7 total 120 100.0 source: field survey, 2011 assessment of cooperative societies’ performance by respondents table 5 presents the assessment of the cooperative societies by the cooperators. the table revealed that majority of the respondents (70%) reported that the performance was satisfactory while, 25.8% rated the performance as average and 4.2% rated the performance as poor. table 5: rating of the performance of the cooperative societies rating frequency relative frequency (%) very satisfactory 25 20.8 satisfactory 59 49.2 average 20 16.7 fair 11 9.2 poor 5 4.2 total 120 100.0 source: field survey, 2011 assessment of women’s participation in cooperative… 348 problems faced by women participating in cooperative societies evidently there are serious constraints which militate against the promotion of an effective role for women in development in those societies which were bound by age-old traditions and beliefs. resulting from these situations, women‟s contribution to agriculture and other sectors in the economy remain hampered. table 6 revealed that majority(53.%) were of the opinion that pressure is from their husbands (household head) was the major problem they faced in participating actively in cooperative societies while 5% complained of misappropriation and embezzlement of fund and the remaining 4.2% complained of low income realized from their occupation. table 6: problems faced women in participating in cooperative societies problems frequency relative frequency pressure from household head 64 53.3 insufficient fund and low membership 37 30.8 lack of understanding 8 6.7 misappropriation of fund 6 5.0 low income 5 4.2 total 120 100.0 source: field survey, 2011 factors influencing women’s participation in cooperative societies the results of the logistic model (table 7) on the factors affecting the probability of being a member of any cooperative society or not show that the model fits. the partial derivative of the logistic model best fit the model and gives a direct estimate of the probabilities of the factors considered. the chi-square value of 23.42 obtained was significant at five percent level (p<0.05). table 7 revealed that form of cooperative, years of business experience, and educational level attained were statistically significant in relation to women‟s participation in cooperative societies. years of business experience is statistically significant at 10% and positive which shows a direct relationship with participation in cooperative societies as a woman. this implies that as years spent in business increases, women increase their participation in cooperative activities. educational level is statistically significant at 10% and positively related with women‟s participation in cooperative societies. form of cooperative societies especially producers and credit and thrift were statistically significant and positively related with women‟s participation in cooperative societies. the result shows that the activities, benefits and roles played by the various cooperative societies give room for more interest in cooperative. table 7: regression results of the logistic model for determinants of membership association regression component dependent variable yi member = 1 120 (63.9%) non-member = 0 65 (36.1%) total 180 explanatory variable (xj) coefficient t-value constant 0.1067 4.112 age in years 0.0145 0.885 marital status (married = 1, otherwise =0) -0.050 0.035 household size (number) -0.023 -0.155 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 344-350 349 level of education (years) 0.223*** 1.659 type of cooperative (producers‟ = 1, otherwise = 0) 0.7394** 2.199 type of cooperative (credit and thrift = 1, otherwise = 0) 0.7418* 2.386 type of cooperative (multipurpose = 1, otherwise = 0) 0.055 0.098 total monthly income (naira) -0.002 -0.821 experience in business (years) 0.621*** 1.867 log likelihood function 25.486 chi=square 23.42** source: computer printout of binary logistic model significant at 1 percent *, significant at 5 percent **, significant at 10 percent *** concluding remarks evidence provided in this paper has shown that women participated in cooperative societies. women are represented in various forms and in various types of cooperatives in the study area. majority of the women cooperators belonged to credit and thrift cooperative society while others belonged to producer cooperative and multipurpose cooperative society. in the study area, no discriminatory provisions preventing women‟s participation in cooperative societies were in place. however, their participation is limited by pressure from household head. this was the main barriers to women‟s participation in co-operative activities in the study area. level of education, years of experience in business, forms of cooperative society (producers and credit and thrift) were the major determinants of participation in cooperative society. based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that any policy that will further increase the level of education of women would increase their participation in cooperative society. references ashanti, i. (1993) “boosting agricultural productivity through cooperatives”, journal on agriculture today, vol. 1, pp. 1114. central bank of nigeria (cbn) (2002) “population figure, several reports”, central bank of nigeria, abuja, nigeria cheng, e. and t. nguyen, (2000) “a critical assessment of microfinance as a new paradigm for poverty alleviation in the light of new evidence from qinghai, china”, department of economics, university of adelaide, adelaide. eboh e. c. (1988) “sustainable employment of rural women, some new industries for the better life programme”, enugu, auto century publishing company limited. nigeria. essien, u. d. (2000) “poverty alleviation programme. a positive step toward the development of human resources”, african journal of business and economic research, vol. 1(19), pp. 13-20. gurgand, m., pederson g. and yaron j. (1994) “outreach and sustainability of six rural financial institutions in sub-saharan africa”, discussion paper 248, the world bank, washington dc. holcombe, s. and xu, x. (1997) “microfinance and poverty alleviation: un collaboration with chinese experiments”, in: rural microfinance in china,' edited by du. x., liu w., zhang b & sun r., pp. 20-96, beijing: china economics publishing house. idrisa, y. l., sulumbe, i. m. and mohammed, s. t. (2007) “socio-economic factors affecting the participation of women in agricultural co-operatives in gwoza local government, borno state, nigeria”, journal of agriculture, food, environment and extension vol. 6(2), pp. 73 – 78. mgbada j. u. (2002) “production of staple crops by rural women in enugu and ebonyi states: -lessons for enhancing poverty alleviation programmes”. in: olowu t a (editor) agricultural extension and poverty alleviation in nigeria, proceeding of the agricultural extension society of nigeria, pp. 10-12. njar, a. s. (1990) “salute to rural women”, in the nigerian chronicle (ed.), nigerian food assessment of women’s participation in cooperative… 350 production. early child development and care, pp. 15. rahman s. a. (2004) “gender differential in labour contribution and productivity in farm production empirical evidence from kaduna state of nigeria”, paper presented at the national conference on family held at new theatre complex. benue state university, makurdi, nigeria. 1 st -5 th march. ritche, j. a. (1977) “impact of changing food production processing and marketing systems on the role of women”, ames, iowa: the iowa state university press. shane, n. (2004) “a case study analysis of the impacts of microfinance upon the lives of the poor in rural china”, unpublished m. soc. sc. thesis, school of social science and planning rmit university melbourne, australia asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 263 factors associated with dynamic changes in japanese agriculture: farm discontinuation and entry using the individual 2005 and 2010 census of agriculture shinichi kurihara associate professor; graduate school of horticulture, chiba university, japan shimpei shimoura assistant professor; graduate school of horticulture, chiba university, japan atsushi maruyama associate professor; graduate school of horticulture, chiba university, japan a. e. luloff professor; college of agricultural sciences, pennsylvania state university, usa abstract 1 using descriptive and quantitative analyses of farming households drawn from the 2005 and 2010 censuses of agriculture, this study provides reference material for future efforts to support agriculture and agricultural communities. despite some data limitations for a few municipalities, several significant trends were identified. discontinued farm households (those that ceased commercial activities between the two censuses) tended to be in the hokuriku region. these farms were characterized by aging populations, lack of successors, and a decline in operation size. further, they tended to rent their farmland and had low rates of environmental conservation practices – both signal indicators of diminished capacity as operators in regional agriculture. moreover, although no clear trends were identified among entrant farm households (those that corresponding author’s details shinichi kurihara email: kuri@faculty.chiba-u.jp asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kuri@faculty.chiba-u.jp asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 264 began commercial agricultural operations during the same period), it is notable that they shared characteristics with discontinued farm households, such as being small scale operations and lacking successors. the current shortage of fiscal budget allocated to agriculture necessitates a narrowing and/or prioritization of support efforts. in this context, these results may enable the development of efficient measures to prevent farm discontinuation and to assist the emergence of entrant farm households. keywords: census of agriculture, farm discontinuation, entry to agriculture, logistic model introduction according to the “synthesis report of the 2010 world census of agriculture and forestry” published by the ministry of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries in japan (hereafter: maff), as of 1 february 2010, there were 1,631,000 commercial farm households in japan. further, demographic aging is a grave situation, as the mean age of major farm workers has now exceeded 65, having risen by 1.9 years since 2005, to 66.1 years. over 60% of the total farm worker population is 65 or older, and more than half of this group are the so-called old-old elderly (75 or above). the decline in farm households and their aging contributed to the abandonment of cultivation. since 2005 this has increased by 2.6% (or 10 thousand ha) to 396 thousand hectares. the increased rate of decline in japanese agricultural production coupled to agrowing apprehension about the stability of the nation’s food supply and the various functions of rural agricultural areas have spurred governmental action. specifically, from since 2012, budgets are have been allocated for “comprehensive support service for entrant farmers (shinki syuunou sougou shien jigyou)” (136 billion yen) with a goal of establishing to establish 20, 000 entrant farmers per year under the age of 40. the core of this program is to ensure benefits for beginning farmers. other programs include “support service for management establishments (keieitai ikusei shien jigyou)” (6.3 billion yen) that subsidize purchases of agricultural equipment by entrant farmers and community farming organizations, as well as a “support fund for entrant farmers (syuunou shien shikin)” that continued loaning reserves (700 million yen) to approved farmers from the previous year. additional measures to support both entrant farmers and those central to the region include anew “direct payment program ofhousehold income compensation for management stabilization (kobetsu shotoku hoshou keiei antei suishin jigyou)” (7.2 billion yen). however, a review of these measures reveals the small budget relative to industrial standards and the lack of specific targeting (as with previous policies); both of these issues raise questions about their effectiveness. regardless of size of budget, the lack of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 265 specific targeting is particularly serious; an effective measure cannot be realized without first understanding something about the structure of japanese farm households, especially those discontinuing and entering this profession. the objective of this research is to address this gap by providing information designed to be useful for developing a sustainable and robust agriculture within the extant restricted budget. the first step in this process is to identify the major characteristics of discontinued and entrant farm households. doing so provides insights into the factors associated with both farm household groups. we link individual data drawn from the 2005 and 2010 censuses to classify farm households into three categories: discontinued, continuing, and entrant. through descriptive and quantitative analyses, we identify the relative trends of discontinued and entrant farm households. these findings should be of use in future endeavors designed to prevent further farm discontinuation while assisting entrant farm households. overview of the analysis literature review despite the recent decline in studies utilizing the census of agriculture, one of the few collaborative achievements is odagiri’s edited volume (2008) analyzing the 2005 census. other analyses of the 2010 census include a magazine feature article (editorial board of agriculture and economics 2011) and internal publications of maff (2012). however, both of the latter are framed as reports on structural dynamics with posttabulation result tables and do not provide detailed analysis of farm discontinuation and entry. the publication most relevant to ours is sawada’s (1999) study of factors of farm discontinuation from the 1990 and 1995 censuses. sawada, using procedures similar to ours, generated a dataset and found many households discontinued farming at a time of generational change. however, his analysis excluded the hokkaido region and failed to consider management factors beyond family structure. while differing in approach with this study, a research effort on farm discontinuation using the census of agriculture was presented at the first sectional meeting of the 2012 farm management society of japan competition (miyazaki, september 2012). we use four reports from that meeting (sawada 2012a, yasutake & senda 2012, hosoyama 2012, watanabe et al. 2012) to help us identify those factors that increased the rate of farm discontinuation: (1) lack of successor; (2) agingfarm operators; (3) small-scale operation; (4) single-generation households; and (5) paddy-field operations. while the current study drew valuable insights from this earlier work to aid in determining our measurement model, its findings are limited in geographic region and crop diversity, as well as being limited to descriptive, aggregate analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 266 analyses of the census of agriculture on farming entry are scarce. there are a few studies that do not use the census, including egawa’s (2000) that analyzed the relationship between entry and support policies, hara’s (2009)that focused on women’s social networking power, inamoto’s (1992)that sorted obstacles to entry, and sawada’s (2011, 2012b)that recommended measures to support franchise-style farm management. yamashita and hoshino’s study (2012) can also be highlighted as one of few quantitative analyses. however, as these studies are focused on ordinary businesses and individuals (households) that have entered from non-agricultural sectors, the nature of the analyses relies heavily on case studies. this is illustrated by the “report on the findings of the2011 entrant farm worker survey” published by the maff in august 2012, that found of the 58,120 farmers who began in 2011, only 2,100 (3.6%) were “newly starting farmers”(who began farming with independently acquired lands and funding). much of the existing literature on japanese farm discontinuation and entry issues are descriptive. though some draw data from the census of agriculture, the results are limited in region, crop, or attributes of management and lack versatility as a resource for policy design. thus, the potential policy insights to be gained from our analysis are significant. object of analysis this study used individual data from the survey of agricultural and forestry management entities in the 2005 and 2010 censuses. six previous surveys (survey of farm households, non-household agricultural entities, agricultural service entities, forestry households, nonhousehold forestry entities, and forestry service entities) were consolidated, and the survey target was generalized to “agricultural and forestry management entities.” though the reason for this consolidation was a reduction in staffing and budget size, there was the benefit of facilitated understanding and analysis at the operational unit size that was difficult when farm households and farming entities were separately surveyed. of the 2.01 million farm operation units (excluding forestry) 98.6%, or 1.98 million, were family operations, and organizational operations, such as community-based agriculture, accounted for the remaining 1.4% (1.8% in the 2010 census). moreover, households in possession of multiple operational units constituted only 0.01% (290 households), even when including forestry. thus, despite the shift in survey target from households to operational units, agricultural households operated by families (i.e., farm households) remain the basis of japanese agriculture. our analytical unit is, therefore, the household; we exclude organizational operations, and do not distinguish between multiple operations held by a single household (a household was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 267 represented by the primary operation), and exclude forestry since there were only 200 operational units in 2005 and 140 in 2010. defining the discontinuation and entry of farm households this study uses three terms (discontinued farm households, entrant farm households, and continuing farm households) to characterize the status of farm households. our operational definitions differ from previous uses (e.g., maff) in the following ways. first, discontinued farm households are defined as “farm households that were commercial for the 2005 census and no longer commercial for the 2010 census” (fig. 1). while discontinued households would normally only include households that completely disengaged from agriculture or that became noncommercial homesteads by scaling down or transferring their selling rights to community-based operations, information to differentiate these from farm households that moved outside the survey district and could not be tracked and commercial farm households that did not participate in the 2010 census was unavailable. hence, here, discontinued farm households include all entities that ceased being commercial (noncommercial farm households) between the two censuses. commercial farm households were farm households that managed30a or more of cultivated land or realized at least one half million yen in agricultural product sales. sawada (1999) limited his analysis of farm discontinuation to those farm households with at least 2 million yen in sales. however, as we also focus on entrant farm households, the sales threshold was set to secure the maximal number of entrant farm households in the analysis while using a known commercial farm household standard. entrant farm householdsare defined as “households that were not commercial farm households for the 2005 census but that had become commercial farm households for the 2010 census.” though the term “(newly) starting” is generally used for entries from non-agricultural sectors including new college graduates, we believe non-commercial farm households should also be included among the non-farm household grouping to capture agriculture as an industry and to better facilitate a more complete analysis of its structure. thus, the use of the term entrant farm households implies new commercial farm households in this study. this includes farm households entering from non-agricultural sectors as well as households that expanded from non-commercial farm households to commercial farm households. as with the discontinued farm households, this includes farm households that withdrew from community-based operations and regained selling rights, farm households whose location before a move into the census district was unknown, and those that began participating in censuses in 2010. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 268 continuing farm households were “households that were commercial farm households for the 2005 and 2010 censuses.” households that moved out or in from the census district for which continued farming could be confirmed are included in this group. linking the data the individual data from the 2005 and 2010 censuses can be linked using identification numbers unique to each farm household (referred to as the operation unit number for the 2005 census and the reference number for the 2010 census). unfortunately, some municipalities allocated new numbers from those numbers used in the 2005 census for their2010 census farm households. this led to the inability to link farm households across these two time points. while the cause of this is unclear, it is suspected to be related to the succession issues of people in charge at the municipality merger movement, or theso-called great merger of the heisei era. there were 39 such municipalities for the 2005 census and 29 for the 2010 census which experienced these shifts; most occurred in hokkaido, gunma, and fukuoka prefectures. while it would be ideal to verify each farm household from these municipalities using the farm operators’ name, phone number, or address, and to then classify them as discontinued, continuing, or entrant, it is difficult for census users to gain access to personal/proprietary information. in addition, since those ratios were very low (less than 3%), we believed they could be disregarded in this analysis. as a result, all farm households from these municipalities were omitted from the analysis as unknown farm households. as a result of this decision rule, 50,102 unknown farm households(those whose data could not be linked) were omitted from the 1,963,424 commercial farm households in the 2005 census, resulting in 1,913,322 households (of which discontinued farm households were 392,532 households and continuing farm households 1,520,790 households). as for the analysis of entrant farm households, 23,815 unknown farm households and 2 households lacking information on the household members were omitted from the 1,631,206 commercial farm households in the 2010 census, resulting in 1,607,389 households (of which entrant farm households were 86,599 households and continuing farm households amounted 1,520,790 households). analytical procedures beyond heightened concern about protecting personal information, the public sector reformation to cut labor costs induced a drastic cut (from 4,132 to 2,228) in office staff committed to statistical work in the maff. such effects led to a simplification of the survey, from 391 questions in the 2005 census to 206 questions in the 2010 survey. the process of elimination and consolidation of questions also compromised the continuity of data over asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 269 time. while it is possible to link the majority of farm households’ individual data over two points in time, such reductions creates serious limitations to variable selection and use in panel studies. further, even if panel data analysis were to be conducted, it is only possible to compute differences between two time points for those continuing farm households for which the relevant variables are accessible at both time periods. it is not possible to capture the factors of change in the nation’s agriculture based solely on this data. for these reason, with the exception of these specific cases, this analysis uses only the 2005 census for the analysis of discontinued farm households and the 2010 census for the analysis of entrant farm households and treats each as crosssectional data. we gained maff’s permission to use the data in the “(notice) on the provision of survey data regarding the census of agriculture” (maff july 25, 2011, toukei 23 no.365). a cross tabulation was first conducted with data points of discontinued and entrant farm households identified in the data linking process and those of continuing farm households from the respective years in order to capture their operational characteristics. next, a variable was created labeling discontinued and entrant farm households with 1, and continuing farm households with 0. the factors of discontinuation and entrance to agriculture were identified through a logistic regression model with this newly created indicator as the dependent variable. in principal, the use of statistics is not necessary for analysis of data from a complete census, i.e., the population. however, there is meaning in conducting such an analysis when taking into account the omission of farm households for which data could not be linked (as well as the presence of human data entry-related errors). thus, while we did not run statistical tests for the initial comparison of the two groups in the cross-tabulation, a statistical investigation, using a logistic regression model, was conducted to review its agreement with the descriptive analysis. aggregate analysis characteristics of discontinued farm households using data from the 2005 census, 393,000 discontinued farm households were compared with 1,521,000 continuing farm households (table 1).to accommodate paper length limitations, we focus on significant differences between these groups and other major factors. our objective is to identify the household structure and operational conditions of farm households that discontinued farming within the five year period between censuses. first, geographically, the areas where the ratio of discontinued farm households to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 270 the region’s commercial farm households was highest was the hokuriku region (29.7%), and lowest were the kanto (17.7%) and kinki regions (18.0%). although not shown in the table, by prefecture, the ratios in saga (42.4%) and toyama (32.6%) were high. further when focusing on type of farm household, fulltime farm households had a higher rate of discontinued farm households than continuing farm households (27.0% and 21.1%, respectively); conversely, a lower rate of type 1 part-time farm households generating the majority of their income through agriculture (8.4%, 17.4%). this was ironic in that non-farming income supported the continuation of farming operations. an analysis of the sociodemographic characteristics of the farm operators indicated the mean age among discontinued farms was 64.8, 3.4 years older than for continuing farm households (61.4 years). additionally, the proportion of women was 8.8% for discontinued farm households, nearly twice the rate for continuing farm households (4.6%). the mean days of agricultural work for discontinued and continuing farm households were 103 and 142 days, respectively. while 17.0% of farm operators from discontinued farm households selected as their living condition for most of a year that they “normally don’t do anything (due to illness or old age),” this was true for only half as many (8.0%) farm operators from continuing farm households. on the basis of these results, for many discontinued farm households it can be speculated that the farm operator may have been practically retired due to age. discontinued farm households averaged 3.8 members, 0.6 fewer than continuing farm households (4.4 members). the difference in number of farm workers was small, but the mean age of household members aged 15 or older was 58.6 years for discontinued farm households and 55.4 for continuing farm households. further, the ratio of households with children (under 14 years old) was 20.9% for discontinued and 26.5% for continuing farm households, indicating demographic aging among discontinued farm households. farm households with a successor present in the residence was 38.2% of discontinued farm households, a large difference from that associated with continuing farm households (46.1%). in contrast, similar differences in the age of resident successors, whether they had a spouse or the presence of successors living elsewhere did not exist. an examination of management characteristics revealed other differences. first, as a distinguishing management approach, few among either the discontinued or continuing farm households had incorporated (0.4%, 0.2%). the ratio of farm households that operated based on contracts with consumers or produce distributors was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 271 9.1% for discontinued farm households, about 2/3 the rate of continuing farm households at 13.7%. additionally, for each of the three items dealing with environmental conservation practices (reduction of chemical fertilizers, reduction of agricultural chemicals, and use of compost in soil maintenance), discontinued farm households were about 1/3 less likely to indicate they had made such reductions. of the three key management factors(land, sales, and labor), the area of cultivated land under management (aggregate of paddy fields, orchards, and upland fields) for discontinued farm households averaged 112.7a, roughly 40% less than the continuing farm households’ 185.2a. the portion of large-scale farm household operations of 5 hectares or more was 2.1%, less than half (4.7%) that of continuing farm households. however, discontinued farm households rented out more cultivated land (average of 11.6a) than continuing farm households (7.3a). for both groups, land owned as a portion of land the households were cultivating exceeded 100% (indicating they were renting out their land). discontinued farm households had a higher ratio (129%) than continuing farm households (108.1%). in essence, the issue of surplus cultivated land under possession of nonfarm households (including noncommercial farm households), a structural problem for japan’s agriculture, was more pronounced among discontinued farm households. the trend for annual produce sales was similar to that of cultivated land area. sales were lower for discontinued farm households (2,008,000 yen) than for continuing farm households (3,556,000 yen); large-scale commercial farm households (10 million yen or more) constituted only 2.1% of discontinued farm households but 6.9% of continuing farm households. finally, we investigated hiring practices. regardless of permanence, discontinued farm households (regular 0.7%, temporary 5.6%) employed farm workers at a lower rate than continuing farm households (1.1%, 11.2%). this indicated the labor force of the family sufficed, or was redundant to farm work in many discontinued farm households. in reviewing these results, the relative tendencies among discontinued farm households that terminated commercial agricultural work within 5 years included demographic aging, lack of successors, and a diminishing scale of operation. moreover, discontinued farm households may rent out cultivated land or have low rates of environmental conservation practices, therefore waning in their role as a vital part of regional agriculture. characteristics of entrant farm households and changes in continuing farm households over time next, using data from the 2010 census, we examined the characteristics of the 87,000entrant farm households in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 272 comparison to the 1,521,000 continuing farm households (table 2). while not directly related to our study objective, we also attempted a descriptive time-series analysis for entrant farm households wherever a comparison with the 2005 census was possible. again, we began with the regional characteristics, and found the portion of entrant farm households were highest in okinawa (14.8%), hokkaido (10.0%), kyushu (8.6%), and kanto (6.0%) and lowest in the tohoku region (3.0%). while there were no notable differences in the proportionality of operation types for entrant and continuing farms, the ratio of full-time farm households had risen 6.2% (21.1% to 27.3%) for continuing farm households over the span of 5 years (see table 1). no differences emerged between entrant and continuing farm households’ operator and household situations. the demographic aging of continuing farm households was in fact notable (increase in mean age by 3.2 years, and 5.1% decrease in portion of households with children). however, there was a relatively large difference in the procurement of successors living in the household, with the portion of entrant farm households with successors (32.6%) roughly 10% lower than of continuing farm households (42.1%). in terms of distinguishing management features, five times as many entrant farm households had incorporated (1.1%) than continuing farm households (0.2%). this may be an influence of the presence of farm households that made use of institutional funds in entering agriculture or expanding the operation, as corporations often have higher credit lines. however, the rate of environmental conservation practices was slightly lower for entrant farm households than for continuing farm households. in examining key management factors (land, sales, and labor), we found cultivated land area under management averaged 160.7a for entrant farm households, 31a (16%) smaller than the 191.6a of continuing farm households. the difference was particularly marked for paddy fields, which for entrant farm households were about 20% smaller. in contrast, the trend reversed for sales of agricultural produce – 4,581,000 yen for entrant farm households, or roughly 30% more than continuing farm households (3,580,000 yen). this was influenced by the fact farm households with the nation’s two top sales positions (2.5 billion and 1.5 billion yen) were included in the entrant farm households, as the medians (not in the tables) of entrant farm households (668,000 yen) and continuing farm households (991,000 yen) had the opposite trend. additionally, rice farm households (those households for which rice were the biggest sale) constituted 37.2% of all entrant farm households including those without sales, about 2/3 of continuing farm households (55.2%). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 273 the increase in the ratio of large-scale, continuing farm households from 5 years earlier was 0.6% (8,588 households) for those 5 ha or larger, and 0.3% (4,098 households) for those with 10 million yen or more, indicating little expansion in either case despite high expectations they would play a central role as agricultural operations. hiring practices also did not differ greatly, with entrant farm households hiring slightly more regular employees than continuing farm households (2.6%vs. 1.9%, respectively). in general, entrant farm households held many characteristics in common with continuing farm households, including their small-scale and absence of a successor in the residence. as discussed, such farm households were not necessarily completely new entrants from non-agricultural sectors; these results may reflect the prevalence of cases in which the retired generation accomplishes the expansion of their family’s operational scale, fulfilling the outward standards of a commercial farm household. this section described the characteristics of farm households that discontinued or began farming based on survey items found in the census of agriculture. in the following section, we attempt to capture the overall factors of discontinuation and entrance to agriculture by constructing a measurement model based on these results. quantitative analysis discontinuation model in our discontinuation model, we use as a discrete dependent variable the 2005 census data with a one (1)indicating discontinued farm households and zero (0)continuing farm households to estimate a logistic regression model (logit analysis). generally, the selection of independent variables follows from a theoretical model and is then based on the employment of a stepwise procedure based on likelihood or the wald statistic. however, with a sample as large as the one used in this study, nearly all independent variables emerge as significant. to address this issue, we selected variables for inclusion on the basis of a series of models developed with the aggregate data set that reflected the findings of the previous section and, at the same time, provided good classification and had high goodness of fit. additionally, through the use of regression diagnostics, we adjusted some measures by using their log (land area, value of sales) to eliminate issues related to heteroscedasticity and eliminated others that demonstrated high levels of multicollinearity. estimated results from the model classifying and predicting discontinued and continuing farm households (hereafter: discontinuation model) are shown in the second column of table 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 274 first, one of the model’s goodness of fit indices, nagelkerke’s pseudo r 2 coefficient of determination, was only 0.11. however, the classification accuracy rate averaged 79.6% over all. nonetheless, the accuracy rate drops to 6.1% for the essential classification of discontinued farm households (98.6% for continuing farm households). we address this issue at the end of this section by creating subsamples. here, the coefficient indicates the size and direction of the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable, and the odds ratio, the change in the ratio (probability of becoming a discontinued farm household ÷ probability of becoming a continuing farm household) of the probability of change in the dependent variable resulting from a unit of change in the independent variable. however, as the odds ratio requires an index of the coefficient, there is essentially no problem with an interpretation based only on the coefficient. first, the coefficients on geography is consistent with the results of the aggregate analysis, as the hokuriku dummy is positive (i.e., there is a tendency for increases in discontinued farm households in the hokuriku region), and the kanto and kinki dummies are negative. when substituted with the fulltime farm household dummy due to an absence of items directly inquiring about non-agricultural income, the coefficient was positive. next, the variables used for the farm operator were the female dummy and retirement dummy, both of which were positive. while the number of days of agricultural work was thought to be an important variable, it was not used due to its high correlation with the retirement dummy, which had more impact, and strengthened the model’s goodness of fit and classification accuracy rate. additionally, no household variables, including age, were significant. the only variable on succession used was the dummy for the presence of a successor in the residence, for which the coefficient was negative. as for farm management, after combining the three variables on environmental conservation practices to avoid multicollinearity (4-point scale; not at all engaged=0, engaged in all=3), the coefficient was negative. the sales amount (log) and temporary employment dummies were used and were both negative. while the measurement model for the classification of discontinued farm households was not robust in terms of explanatory power, the coefficient directionality for 10 independent variables, including the three dummies on geography, were consistent with the aggregate analysis. because of this, the characteristics of households that discontinued farming within 5 years (i.e., asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 275 factors of discontinuation) were, in part, successfully captured. furthermore, as mentioned at the beginning of this section, it is likely that the low classification accuracy rate for discontinued farm households may be due have reflected more to the skew in the distribution of the dependent variable (number of discontinued: continuing farm households = 1:4) more than reflect on to the adequacy sufficiency of the independent variable. to assess this we created a subsample for the dependent variable (after computing the subsample size from a power analysis), and investigated the overall validity of this model. running the model described in this section with a random selection of 500 discontinued farm households and 500 continuing farm households (total of 1,000 households) from the population, greatly improved the classification accuracy rate for discontinued farm households (to 65.6%). however, the classification accuracy rate for continuing farm households fell to 66.6% (overall mean of 66.1%). entrance model next, we constructed a model (hereafter: entrance model) to classify and predict entrant and continuing farm households based on the 2010 census (third column in table 3). like the discontinuation model, this was a logistic regression model with a dependent variable coded one (1) for entrant farm households and zero (0) for continuing farm households. as before, results from the aggregate analysis and the model’s goodness of fit, accuracy rate of classification, and correlation coefficients were considered in the process. due to the large sample size, the coefficients for all nine independent variables were used in the model were statistically significant. however, as the skew of the dependent variables was even greater than for the discontinued model (number of entrant: continuing farm households =1:18), the resulting goodness of fit and accuracy rate of the classification were lower. specifically, the nagelkerke’s pseudo coefficient of determination (r 2 ) was 0.07, and the overall accuracy of classification was 94.6% (0.5% for entrant farm households). we also created a subsample (500 entrant:500 continuing farm households) for this model to examine its overall validity, and found that the classification accuracy rate for entrant farm households improved drastically to 65.6% (continuing farm households 66.2%, overall mean 64.0%). first, we reviewed the estimation results of the geographic variables. of the five regional dummy coefficients, hokkaido, kanto, kyushu, and okinawa’s were positive, and tohoku’s negative. this indicates that, for instance, in hokkaido, which has a high coefficient and odds ratio, there was a tendency for an increase in entrant farm households. in contrast, none of the items on full-time or farm operator contributed to the model. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 276 coefficient for the dummy of the presence of a resident successor was negative, as with the discontinued model. within the management approaches measures, only the incorporation dummy contributed, but with negative value and relatively high odds ratio of 4.11. finally, for operation scale, the (log of the) cultivated land area under management was used and it had a negative coefficient. further, since the dummy variable for rice farm households was also negative, it can be deduced that entrant farm households tended to have smaller areas of cultivated land and produced crops other than rice (such as open culture vegetables). not surprisingly, rice may be avoided by entrant farmers reflecting its drastically lower returns on investment. the entrance model resulted in a weaker goodness of fit and accuracy rate of classification than the discontinued model. however, the accuracy rate was improved with the model using a subsample. as with the discontinued model, the coefficients and directionality of the nine variables used were consistent with the aggregate results. overall, the model successfully captured the characteristics of the households that began commercial farming (factors of entry). we have estimated and interpreted two classification models on discontinuation and entry to agriculture. both models indicated that while regional factors were a large influence, many common household and management characteristics, including lack of successors and small scales of operation were also important. such factors may indicate that the entrant farm households have the potential of discontinuation. conclusion the prolonged economic stagnation and recent globalization of the market increased downward pressure on the price of agricultural produce. in addition, the results of the 2010 census of world agriculture highlight trends such as demographic aging and an insufficient workforce. taken together, these facts reaffirm the accelerating deterioration of the structure of agriculture in japan. with the objective of facilitating policy design for the regeneration of rural agricultural communities in the nation, this study identified factors associated with discontinuation and entrance to agriculture. we classified farm households using the 2005 and 2010 census of agriculture into discontinued, continuing, and entrant farm households and then comparatively analyzed them descriptively and quantitatively. the quantitative analysis compared discontinued to continuing farm households and identified the following factors associated with discontinuation: 1. high frequency in the hokuriku region, and low frequency in the kanto and kinki regions; 2. have become full-time farm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 277 households because the farm operator died or retired but had no non-agricultural sources of income; 3. demographic aging in the household, therefore lacking a successor for farm management; 4. diminished scale of management scale, leaving little space for efforts such as environmental conservation; and. 5. surplus of cultivated land area under possession or labor force in the family. in contrast, entrant farm households that newly became commercial farm households had the following relative trends: 1. high frequency in okinawa and hokkaido, and low frequency in the tohoku region; 2. though there were no outstanding trends of the farm operator and household, many farm households had not yet procured a successor; 3. many were small-scaled managements but rate of incorporation was high; and 4. few were rice farmers, and many lacked familial labor force. measurement models were constructed for both the discontinuation and entrance farm households based on these findings. in both cases the variables used and the directionality of the estimated coefficients were consistent with the aggregate analysis and successfully captured the overall factors affiliated with discontinuation and entrance. in viewing the overall analysis results, it can be said that factors associated with discontinuation of farming, such as the demographic aging of farm operators and the household themselves, were consistent with our expectations and with previous studies. however, factors associated with entrance to agriculture, such as the lack of successors and small scale of operation had an uncanny resemblance to those of discontinuation. this may, in part, be due to the definition of entrant farm households in this study, but also may be indicative of the reality that the majority of entrant farm households in japan stem from farm households. this study has identified the factors associated with discontinuation and entry to farming based on the census of agriculture. the limitation of fiscal budgets allocated to agriculture today requires policy measures with a narrow target or clear prioritization. given this context, the use of these findings –such as a focused effort to prevent discontinuation in the hokuriku region – will enable the design of efficient measures to prevent discontinuation and to facilitate entrance to agriculture. funding this works was supported by jsps kakenhi grant no. 24580314, 24380119. references editorial board of agriculture and economics (2011). agriculture and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 278 economics’ (in japanese). showado, kyoto, 77(6): 5-81. egawa, a. 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(2012b). current situations and issues of new farmers: from the viewpoint of farm establishments. kanto tokai journal of farm management (in japanese), 87: 1-11. watanabe, h., t. yasutake, and m. senda (2012). factors and numbers of discontinuing farm households, future predictions of decline in cultivated land area: on the kinki, chugoku, and shikoku regions (in japanese), report on the first sectional meeting of the 2012 farm management society of japan competition, 19-26. yamashita, r. and s. hoshino (2012). analyses of the retention factor of agricultural market entrants by multiagent simulation (in japanese). journal of rural problems, 14(4): 403-414. yasutake, t. and senda, m. (2012). analysis of usage factors in rice farm households and a structural overview of paddy-field cultivation – from a regrouped individual tabulation of the census of agriculture and forestry (in japanese). report on the first sectional asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 279 meeting of the 2012 farm management society of japan competition, 13-17. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 280 h o u se h o ld s r atio h o u se h o ld s r atio h o u se h o ld s r atio h o u se h o ld s r atio r e g io n h o k k aid o 9 ,2 2 5 2 1 .6 3 3 ,4 3 9 7 8 .4 d istin g u ish in g e n g a g e m e n ts (c o lu m n r a tio ) t o h o k u 7 4 ,6 6 1 2 0 .2 2 9 5 ,7 6 3 7 9 .8 in c o rp o rate d 1 ,7 3 8 0 .4 3 ,0 6 3 0 .2 k an to 5 4 ,3 0 7 1 7 .7 2 5 3 ,0 8 0 8 2 .3 c o n trac t-b ase d p ro d u c tio n 3 5 ,7 8 9 9 .1 2 0 8 ,7 9 5 1 3 .7 k o sh in e tsu 3 6 ,8 5 2 2 0 .6 1 4 2 ,2 2 4 7 9 .4 c o n se rvatio n 1 (r e d u c tio n o f c h e m ic al fe rtilize rs) 8 7 ,8 2 2 2 2 .4 4 6 6 ,0 5 7 3 0 .6 h o k u rik u 2 3 ,7 1 2 2 9 .7 5 6 ,0 5 4 7 0 .3 c o n se rvatio n 2 (re d u c tio n o f ag ric u ltu ral c h e m ic als) 1 1 2 ,6 4 4 2 8 .7 5 9 1 ,6 1 2 3 8 .9 t o k ai 3 7 ,2 2 7 2 0 .5 1 4 4 ,4 9 9 7 9 .5 c o n se rvatio n 3 (c o m p o st u se ) 8 2 ,2 2 4 2 0 .9 4 7 7 ,5 8 0 3 1 .4 k in k i 3 1 ,6 1 9 1 8 .0 1 4 3 ,5 6 8 8 2 .0 l a n d (a ) c h u g o k u 3 6 ,9 1 3 2 0 .5 1 4 3 ,4 4 3 7 9 .5 c u ltivate d lan d u n d e r m an ag e m e n t （ m e an） s h ik o k u 2 2 ,3 2 8 1 9 .6 9 1 ,4 0 0 8 0 .4 → p ad d y -fie ld (m e an ) k y u sh u 6 1 ,4 2 4 2 3 .1 2 0 4 ,4 3 5 7 6 .9 → o rc h ard (m e an ) o k in aw a 4 ,2 6 4 2 4 .9 1 2 ,8 8 5 7 5 .1 → u p lan d fie ld (m e an ) o p e r a tio n ty p e 5 h a o r g re ate r 8 ,2 5 9 2 .1 7 2 ,1 2 2 4 .7 f u ll-tim e farm h o u se h o ld s 1 0 6 ,1 4 9 2 7 .0 3 2 1 ,3 5 2 2 1 .1 n o c u ltivate d lan d u n d e r m an ag e m e n t (0 a) 1 ,4 1 9 0 .4 2 ,3 3 5 0 .2 t y p e 1 p art-tim e farm h o u se h o ld s 3 2 ,9 4 6 8 .4 2 6 4 ,4 4 7 1 7 .4 r e n ts o u t c u ltivate d lan d (m e an ) (m a jo rity o f in c o m e fro m a g ric u ltu re ) a b an d o n e d c u ltivate d lan d (m e an ) t y p e 2 p art-tim e farm h o u se h o ld s 2 5 3 ,4 3 7 6 4 .6 9 3 4 ,9 9 1 6 1 .5 r atio o f c u ltivate d lan d o w n e d (% ) (a g ric u ltu ra l in c o m e su p p le m e n ta ry ) s a le s o f a g r ic u ltu r a l p r o d u c e f a r m o p e r a to r a g e (m e an ) (1 0 th o u sa n d y e n /y e a r ) s ale s (m e an ) f e m ale farm o p e rato r 3 4 ,5 3 4 8 .8 7 0 ,7 1 2 4 .6 → r ic e as g re ate st p o rtio n 2 1 3 ,4 2 7 5 4 .4 8 2 4 ,4 8 5 5 4 .2 d ay s o f ag ric u ltu ral w o rk (m e an ) → f ru its　 〃 2 4 ,3 4 5 6 .2 1 5 0 ,5 4 4 9 .9 u su ally d o e s n o t d o an y th in g 6 6 ,8 6 5 1 7 .0 1 2 1 ,7 5 0 8 .0 → o u td o o r ve g e tab le s 〃 2 1 ,2 6 2 5 .4 1 2 0 ,6 2 8 7 .9 h o u se h o ld → in d o o r ve g e tab le s 〃 8 ,7 5 7 2 .2 7 9 ,0 8 9 5 .2 t o tal h o u se h o ld m e m b e rs (m e an ) → o th e r c ro p〃 3 1 ,0 7 5 7 .9 1 3 6 ,6 8 5 9 .0 f arm e m p lo y e e s (m e an ) → l ive sto c k　 〃 1 0 ,5 6 7 2 .7 7 0 ,8 5 2 4 .7 m e an ag e o f m e m b e rs 1 5 o r o ld e r 1 0 m illio n y e n o r m o re 8 ,1 5 3 2 .1 1 0 4 ,9 8 4 6 .9 p re se n c e o f m e m b e rs 1 4 o r y o u n g e r 8 2 ,0 2 5 2 0 .9 4 0 3 ,7 4 2 2 6 .5 n o sale s (0 y e n ) 8 3 ,0 9 9 2 1 .2 1 3 8 ,5 0 7 9 .1 s u c c e sso r f a r m la b o r fo r c e (p e o p le /y e a r ) r e sid e n t su c c e sso r p re se n t 1 4 9 ,9 3 8 3 8 .2 7 0 0 ,6 6 7 4 6 .1 p re se n c e o f p e rm an e n t e m p lo y m e n t 2 ,8 3 8 0 .7 1 7 ,1 5 3 1 .1 → a g e (m e an ) → to tal (m e an） → s p o u se p re se n t 6 2 ,1 5 2 4 1 .5 2 9 2 ,3 6 7 4 1 .7 p re se n c e o f te m p o rary e m p lo y m e n t 2 1 ,8 4 8 5 .6 1 7 0 ,0 0 6 1 1 .2 n o n re sid e n t su c c e sso r p re se n t 4 1 ,9 4 5 1 0 .7 1 5 7 ,8 3 4 1 0 .4 → to tal (m e an） → a g e (m e an ) m e an s w e re c alc u late d w ith ze ro s as m issin g (i.e . valu e s e x c lu d e farm h o u se h o ld s w ith ze ro ). m e an s o f d ay s o f ag ric u ltu ral w o rk w e re ap p ro x im ate d fro m a fre q u e n c y d istrib u tio n tab le . （ 3 9 2 ,5 3 2 h o u se h o ld s） （ 1 ,5 2 0 ,7 9 0 h o u se h o ld s） （ 3 9 2 ,5 3 2 h o u se h o ld s） （ 1 ,5 2 0 ,7 9 0 h o u se h o ld s） t a b le 1 a g g re g a te d r e su lts (d isc o n tin u e d /c o n tin u in g , 2 0 0 5 c e n su s) d isc o n tin u e d farm h o u se h o ld s c o n tin u in g farm h o u se h o ld s d isc o n tin u e d farm h o u se h o ld s c o n tin u in g farm h o u se h o ld s 1 1 2 .7 1 8 5 .2 8 5 .9 1 2 1 .3 3 5 .7 6 3 .3 5 2 .7 9 9 .5 2 7 .2 2 7 .7 1 2 9 .2 1 0 8 .1 1 1 .6 7 .3 2 0 0 .8 3 5 5 .6 6 4 .8 6 1 .4 1 0 3 .0 1 4 2 .3 3 .8 4 .4 2 .5 2 .9 5 8 .6 5 5 .4 3 .8 2 .7 3 7 .5 3 5 .4 4 0 .3 3 5 .9 4 .7 5 .3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 281 h o u se h o ld s r atio h o u se h o ld s r atio h o u se h o ld s r atio h o u se h o ld s r atio r e g io n h o k k aid o 3 ,7 0 4 1 0 .0 3 3 ,4 3 9 9 0 .0 d istin g u ish in g e n g a g e m e n ts (c o lu m n r a tio ) t o h o k u 9 ,2 1 2 3 .0 2 9 5 ,7 6 3 9 7 .0 in c o rp o rate d 9 8 0 1 .1 3 ,2 4 9 0 .2 k an to 1 6 ,0 3 0 6 .0 2 5 3 ,0 8 0 9 4 .0 c o n trac t-b ase d p ro d u c tio n k o sh in e tsu 6 ,4 9 6 4 .4 1 4 2 ,2 2 4 9 5 .6 c o n se rvatio n 1 (r e d u c tio n o f c h e m ic al fe rtilize rs) 2 5 ,3 3 9 2 9 .3 5 3 8 ,1 7 5 3 5 .4 h o k u rik u 2 ,2 2 9 3 .8 5 6 ,0 5 4 9 6 .2 c o n se rvatio n 2 (re d u c tio n o f ag ric u ltu ral c h e m ic als) 2 9 ,5 5 8 3 4 .1 6 1 8 ,4 8 7 4 0 .7 t o k ai 6 ,9 2 7 4 .6 1 4 4 ,4 9 9 9 5 .4 c o n se rvatio n 3 (c o m p o st u se ) 2 1 ,9 0 3 2 5 .3 4 2 5 ,2 7 1 2 8 .0 k in k i 7 ,9 6 4 5 .3 1 4 3 ,5 6 8 9 4 .7 l a n d (a ) c h u g o k u 7 ,3 0 5 4 .8 1 4 3 ,4 4 3 9 5 .2 c u ltivate d lan d u n d e r m an ag e m e n t （ m e an） s h ik o k u 5 ,3 1 3 5 .5 9 1 ,4 0 0 9 4 .5 → p ad d y -fie ld (m e an ) k y u sh u 1 9 ,1 8 6 8 .6 2 0 4 ,4 3 5 9 1 .4 → o rc h ard (m e an ) o k in aw a 2 ,2 3 3 1 4 .8 1 2 ,8 8 5 8 5 .2 → u p lan d fie ld (m e an ) o p e r a tio n ty p e 5 h a o r g re ate r 4 ,2 2 5 4 .9 8 0 ,7 1 0 5 .3 f u ll-tim e farm h o u se h o ld s 2 6 ,3 5 3 3 0 .4 4 1 5 ,7 1 5 2 7 .3 n o c u ltivate d lan d u n d e r m an ag e m e n t (0 a) 7 7 3 0 .9 3 ,0 5 5 0 .2 t y p e 1 p art-tim e farm h o u se h o ld s 9 ,0 8 6 1 0 .5 2 1 1 ,3 0 1 1 3 .9 r e n ts o u t c u ltivate d lan d (m e an ) (m a jo rity o f in c o m e fro m a g ric u ltu re ) a b an d o n e d c u ltivate d lan d (m e an ) t y p e 2 p art-tim e farm h o u se h o ld s 5 1 ,1 6 0 5 9 .1 8 9 3 ,7 7 4 5 8 .8 r atio o f c u ltivate d lan d o w n e d (% ) (a g ric u ltu ra l in c o m e su p p le m e n ta ry ) s a le s o f a g r ic u ltu r a l p r o d u c e f a r m o p e r a to r a g e (m e an ) (1 0 th o u sa n d y e n /y e a r ) s ale s (m e an ) f e m ale farm o p e rato r 6 ,7 9 5 7 .8 9 1 ,1 5 0 6 .0 → r ic e as g re ate st p o rtio n 3 2 ,1 8 8 3 7 .2 8 3 9 ,0 9 6 5 5 .2 d ay s o f ag ric u ltu ral w o rk (m e an ) → f ru its　 〃 8 ,6 9 3 1 0 .0 1 5 2 ,4 1 9 1 0 .0 u su ally d o e s n o t d o an y th in g 7 ,3 9 4 8 .5 1 0 6 ,4 6 5 7 .0 → o u td o o r ve g e tab le s 〃 1 0 ,0 0 2 1 1 .5 1 3 0 ,6 2 1 8 .6 h o u se h o ld → in d o o r ve g e tab le s 〃 4 ,2 7 6 4 .9 7 5 ,0 7 7 4 .9 t o tal h o u se h o ld m e m b e rs (m e an ) → o th e r c ro p〃 1 0 ,1 4 9 1 1 .7 1 2 2 ,9 9 3 8 .1 f arm e m p lo y e e s (m e an ) → l ive sto c k　 〃 3 ,5 1 4 4 .1 6 3 ,0 6 0 4 .1 m e an ag e o f m e m b e rs 1 5 o r o ld e r 1 0 m illio n y e n o r m o re 6 ,1 8 1 7 .1 1 0 9 ,0 8 2 7 .2 p re se n c e o f m e m b e rs 1 4 o r y o u n g e r 1 6 ,6 0 6 1 9 .2 3 2 4 ,8 4 7 2 1 .4 n o sale s (0 y e n ) 1 7 ,7 7 7 2 0 .5 1 3 7 ,5 2 4 9 .0 s u c c e sso r f a r m la b o r fo r c e (p e o p le /y e a r ) r e sid e n t su c c e sso r p re se n t 2 8 ,2 4 8 3 2 .6 6 3 9 ,5 7 2 4 2 .1 p re se n c e o f p e rm an e n t e m p lo y m e n t 2 ,2 9 4 2 .6 2 8 ,3 5 2 1 .9 → a g e (m e an ) → to tal (m e an） → s p o u se p re se n t 1 0 ,6 4 2 3 7 .7 2 6 6 ,9 7 5 4 1 .7 p re se n c e o f te m p o rary e m p lo y m e n t 2 0 ,2 0 7 2 3 .3 3 8 4 ,3 5 1 2 5 .3 n o n re sid e n t su c c e sso r p re se n t 1 5 ,4 2 4 1 7 .8 2 7 6 ,5 4 2 1 8 .2 → to tal (m e an） → a g e (m e an ) 2 .2 5 2 .6 6 3 .7 t a b le 2 a g g re g a te d r e su lts (e n tra n t/c o n tin u in g , 2 0 1 0 c e n su s) e n tran t farm h o u se h o ld s c o n tin u in g farm h o u se h o ld s e n tran t farm h o u se h o ld s c o n tin u in g farm h o u se h o ld s (8 6 ,5 9 9 h o u se h o ld s) (1 5 2 0 ,7 9 0 h o u se h o ld s) (8 6 ,5 9 9 h o u se h o ld s) (1 5 2 0 ,7 9 0 h o u se h o ld s) n o ap p lic ab le ite m 1 6 0 .7 1 9 1 .5 9 1 0 0 .8 1 2 6 .2 1 2 7 .8 1 1 6 .5 4 5 8 .1 3 5 8 .0 1 0 7 .6 1 0 4 .6 4 3 .8 4 5 .1 3 0 .9 2 9 .7 4 .7 4 .9 n o ap p lic ab le ite m 6 3 .6 6 4 .6 1 4 2 .9 1 5 3 .5 3 .1 3 .6 4 .0 2 .4 2 .8 5 8 .0 5 8 .5 3 7 .4 3 7 .9 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 263-282 282 in d e p e n d e n t v ariab le c o e ffic ie n t s tan d ard e rro r o d d s ratio c o e ffic ie n ts tan d ard e rro r o d d s ratio r e g io n al d u m m y 1 (h o k k aid o = 1 ) ― ― ― 1 .7 2 0 .0 2 5 .5 8 r e g io n al d u m m y 2 (t o h o k u = 1 ) ― ― ― -0 .2 4 0 .0 1 0 .7 9 r e g io n al d u m m y 3 (k an to = 1 ) -0 .1 9 0 .0 1 0 .8 3 0 .3 3 0 .0 1 1 .3 8 r e g io n al d u m m y 4 (h o k u rik u = 1 ) 0 .5 4 0 .0 1 1 .7 2 ― ― ― r e g io n al d u m m y 5 (k in k i= 1 ) -0 .3 8 0 .0 1 0 .6 8 ― ― ― r e g io n al d u m m y 6 (k y u sh u = 1 ) ― ― ― 0 .5 9 0 .0 1 1 .8 1 r e g io n al d u m m y 7 (o k in aw a= 1 ) ― ― ― 1 .0 3 0 .0 2 2 .8 1 f u ll-tim e farm h o u se h o ld d u m m y (fu ll-tim e = 1 ) 0 .3 9 0 .0 1 1 .4 7 ― ― ― f e m ale farm m an ag e r d u m m y (fe m ale = 1 ) 0 .4 4 0 .0 1 1 .5 5 ― ― ― r e tire d farm m an ag e r d u m m y (d o n 't u su ally d o an y th in g = 1 ) 0 .5 1 0 .0 1 1 .6 6 ― ― ― r e sid e n t su c c e sso r d u m m y (p re se n t= 1 ) -0 .2 3 0 .0 0 0 .7 9 -0 .2 4 0 .0 1 0 .7 9 in c o rp o ratio n d u m m y (in c o rp o rate d = 1 ) ― ― ― 1 .4 1 0 .0 4 4 .1 1 d e g re e o f e n g ag e m e n t in su stain ab le ag ric u ltu re (4 -p o in t, 0 -3 ) -0 .1 1 0 .0 0 0 .9 0 ― ― ― l o g o f c u ltiavte d lan d are a u n d e r m an ag e m e n t (a) ― ― ― -0 .5 1 0 .0 0 0 .6 0 r ic e farm h o u se h o ld d u m m y (r ic e as larg e st sale = 1 ) ― ― ― -0 .4 9 0 .0 1 0 .6 1 l o g o f ag ric u ltu ral c ro p sale s (1 0 ,0 0 0 y e n ) -0 .2 5 0 .0 0 0 .7 8 ― ― ― t e m p o rary e m p lo y m e n t d u m m y (p re se n t= 1 ) -0 .2 6 0 .0 1 0 .7 7 ― ― ― c o n stan t -0 .3 6 0 .0 1 0 .7 0 -0 .4 6 0 .0 2 0 .6 3 s am p le size h ig h e st c o e ffic ie n t o f c o rre latio n p se u d o c o e ffic ie n t o f d e te rm in atio n （ n ag e lk e rk e r 2） a k aik e 's in fo rm atio n c rite ria（ a ic ） 0 .3 3 0 .3 9 t a b le 3 l o g istic r e g re ssio n m o d e l d isc o n tin u e d m o d e l (d isc o n tin u e d = 1 ) e n tran c e m o d e l (n e w = 1 ) 1 ,9 1 3 ,3 2 2 1 ,6 0 7 ,3 8 9 d ue to the large sam p le size, statistical tests fo r all co efficients w ere significant at 0 .1 % . f o r the sam e reaso n, the null hyp o theses o f the h o sm er and l em esho w go o d ness o f fit tests are rejected and canno t b e used to d eterm ine a m o d el. 0 .1 1 0 .0 7 1 5 4 9 1 7 .5 3 5 9 4 1 7 .4 5 （ d isc o n tin u e d 6 .1 % ， c o n tin u in g 9 8 .6 % ） （ e n tran ts 0 .5 % ， c o n tin u in g 9 9 .9 % ） 7 9 .6 % 9 4 .6 % c lassific atio n ac c u rac y rate (d isc rim in an t p ro b ab ility ) © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 market power of the japanese non-gm soybean import market: the u.s. exporters vs. japanese importers koichi yamaura (graduate research assistant; department of agricultural economics, kansas state university, usa) to cite this article: koichi yamaura (2011). market power of the japanese non-gm soybean import market: the u.s. exporters vs. japanese importers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2), 80-89. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 80-89 © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author koichi yamaura graduate research assistant; department of agricultural economics, kansas state university, usa e-mail: kyamaura@ksu.edu market power of the japanese non-gm soybean import market: the u.s. exporters vs. japanese importers abstract genetically modified (gm) soybean acreage has rapidly increased in the world in the past decade and globally the majority of countries now use gm soybeans to produce oil and meal for livestock and human consumption. japan, however, uses only nongm soybeans as widely recognized high quality goods in vertically differentiated import soybeans in japan, for direct human consumption of which more than 80% are imported from the u.s., canada, and china. this research used the inverse residual demand model to estimate a u.s.-japan partial equilibrium trade model to test the existence of market power in the japanese non-gm soybean import market. the u.s.-japan partial equilibrium trade model incorporated the u.s. residual non-gm soybean supply for japan, the japanese residual demand for u.s. non-gm soybeans, and the equilibrium condition, where the u.s. residual non-gm soybean supply equals the japanese residual non-gm soybean demand. monthly data from january 2003 to december 2007 were used for the analysis. empirical results indicated that u.s. non-gm soybean exporters have stronger market power than japanese non-gm soybean importers. the results are different from other countries empirical studies and indicate that japanese consumers are willing to pay higher prices for soybeans, tofu, natto, miso, and other all soy food products using non-gm soybeans. keywords: market power, non-gmo, industrial organization, soybeans introduction in the past 100 years, japan has changed from being a self-sufficient country to an industriallyadvanced country that relies heavily on trade. as a result, japanese citizens enjoy a high standard of living. but except for rice, japan must import food commodities from all over the world. at present, the country’s food self-sufficiency ratio is 39% (calorie base), which means that japan depends on imports for 61% of its food supply. the self-sufficiency ratio in grains is 27% (maff, 2003). for food grade soybeans, the self-sufficiency ratio, which has declined year by year, was only 15 percent in 2004. some studies suggest that the decreasing japanese selfsufficiency ratio may result in future problems (maff, 2006a). the united states is the leading soybean producer in the world. in the past decade, genetically modified (gm) soybean acreage has rapidly increased. most of the major soybean importing countries, including china, mexico, and south korea, reading accept imports of gm soybeans for all uses. on the other hand, japan, the world’s third largest soybean importer, has insisted on importing only non-gm soybeans for direct human consumption. japan’s major suppliers are the u.s., canada, and china. japan will likely continue to be the world’s largest importer of non-gm soybeans. figure 1 shows the u.s. non-gm soybeans share of the total u.s. soybean acreage. in 1997, u.s. non-gm soybeans were planted on over 95% of the total u.s. soybean acres. but gm soybean technology has been adopted rapidly by mailto:kyamaura@ksu.edu market power of the japanese non-gm…… 81 u.s. soybean farmers. as a result, non-gm soybeans share decreased to less than 50% of the total soybean acreage by 1999. non-gm soybean share has continued to fill in the new century to only 9% of total u.s. soybean acreage. japanese soy-foods there are many food soybean products consumed around the world. for instance, tofu, soy milk, and soy sauce are popular in many countries. consumption of other soybean foods, however, tend to be limited primarily to specific regions. for example, soy cheese, soy yogurt, and soy ice cream are popular products in the u.s., but only specialty soybean stores sell these soybean foods in eastern asia. in the 1930’s, japan was self-sufficient in foodgrade soybean production. japan started to import soybeans, primarily for oil in the 1940’s. by the 1950’s, the amount of soybeans produced in japan was approximately equal to soybean imports. during the 1960’s, the amount of imported soybeans surpassed the amount of domestically produced soybeans. in 1972, the tariff on soybean imports was eliminated. in a short time, approximately eighty percent of all soybeans consumed in japan were imported. united states produced soybeans made up 90% of soybeans imported into japan. in the 1990’s, consumption of gm soybeans became an increasingly important issue in japan. japanese consumers drove the debate by increasingly choosing to purchase non-gmo products. in 2000, all soy products manufacturers fully shifted to non-gm soybeans for tofu and natto production in japan. tofu has a long history in the eastern asian countries including in china, japan, north and south korea, and taiwan. tofu has been accepted as a health food in the u.s. and european union (eu). natto is an ethnic japanese food of fermented whole soybeans. natto soybeans are characterized by small seed size, which can be a maximum of only 5.5 mm diameter. natto soybeans must also have a clear hilum, thin seedcoat, and high carbohydrate content. for centuries, natto has been popular in parts of japan as a flavoring, especially as topping on rice for breakfast (norris, 2006). natto is packaged in small white plastic packages with soy sauce and mustard. miso is fermented and salted soybean paste. although it is used primarily as a seasoning, miso soup is one of the most popular foods made from miso. it is usually served with rice at breakfast and supper meals in japan. given the above facts, the japanese non-gm soybean import market can be characterized as a monopsony if all japanese non-gm soybean importers are viewed as one buyer. if all exporters in each country are aggregated, u.s., canada, and china can be viewed as an oligopoly. the question then becomes who has more market power: the monopsony or the oligopoly? the party to a trade negotiation with the strongest market power can negotiate a more favorable price or other terms of trade than a trading partner with relatively weak market power. estimating who has stronger market power should be of interest to both non-gm soybean exporting countries and a non-gm soybean importing country. there are u.s., canadian, and chinese non-gm soybean exporters in the japanese non-gm soybean market but u.s. non-gm soybeans share over 70% in the japanese non-gm soybean market. thus it is important to know the market power relationship of the united states compared to japan: japanese buyer vs. u.s. seller. u.s. policymakers would be in better position trade policies that could expand the u.s. market share in the japanese non-gm soybean import market. japanese policy makers may be able to change trade policies to forestall future problems of relying on a powerful trade partner, such as the united states. to determine relative non-gm soybean market power relationships, this research will employ a two-country partial equilibrium trade model to test market power relationships for the japanese non-gm soybean import market between japanese non-gm soybean importers and u.s. non-gm soybean exporters. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 80-89 82 literature review and overview of the food soybean trade between the u.s. and japan konduru et al. (2009) focused on “separation of gm and non-gm crops is generally difficult within a commodity system that has been built for scale, speed and efficiency achieved through aggregation.” identity preserved (ip) systems are used to separate gm and non-gm crops through relevant supply chains and export markets. analysis of gmo testing is widely used for significant adjustments in supply chain operations which are required for ip systems analysis. gmo testing is used in the field to detect the presence or confirm the absence of certain gm crops (konduru et al., 2009). the authors examined the implications of measurement uncertainty in gmo testing on the behavior of importers and exporters in ip nongm and in commodity markets using a game theoretic framework. they conclude direct impacts on the behavior of importers and exporters from 1) relative size of ip costs, testing and rejection costs, 2) premium prices offered in the non-gm markets, and 3) measurement uncertainty. goldberg and knetter (1999) measured market power of german beer and u.s. linearboard in specific destination markets based on baker and bresnahan (1988). they estimated residual demand elasticity as a measure of market power of german beer exporters and u.s. linearboard exporters in each destination country without collecting firm specific data. they approached to measure a market power using exchange rate as an ideal cost shifter that one can investigate the market power of an exporting country in a specific foreign market without detailed cost shifters of competitors. although one cannot recover structural parameters, it is easy to estimate the degree of market power in a specific destination market. carter et al. (1999) estimated the world wheat market by using the residual-demand model based on goldberg and knetter (1999) model. carter et al. (1999) assumed that each country was a single firm, and those parameters could be interpreted as the share-weighted industry averages for all firms within one country. using the double-log form of inverse residual demand function, carter et al. (1999) estimated the price flexibility for the u.s. wheat exports to japan directly. they applied the likelihood ratio (lr) tests for model selection. there were three alternative market structure models: the competitive model, the monopsony model and the u.s. price leadership model, based on love and murniningtyas (1992) cournot or bertrand competition in international wheat markets. carter et al. (1999) find that the japanese wheat market is imperfectly competition for the exporters by the first approach and the lr tests suggest that they could not rule out the competitive model in the japanese wheat market. song (2006) examined the chinese soybean market using two-country partial equilibrium trade model which was developed of residualdemand model and residual-supply model, and compared who has more market power: us exporters versus chinese importers, in the chinese soybean import market. this approach measures the market profits of both soybean importers and exporters in the chinese soybean market and has more restricted comparing with the inverse residual models because it includes an equilibrium condition. song (2006) shows there are complement relationship between u.s. and south american countries (argentina and brazil) through their monthly stock and export data. song (2006) focused on oligopoly (u.s., brazil and argentina) verses monopsony (china). however, song (2006) did not cover south american soybean imports which are approximately 40% of total chinese soybean imports. u.s. soybean imports in china are approximately 56% of total chinese soybean imports. thus, this is not enough to mention chinese importer market power. the author examines only u.s-china case and finds that “the market power of chinese soybean importers is stronger than that of u.s. soybean exporters.” the non-gm soybean trade japanese trading companies import non-gm soybeans into japan. japanese trading companies do not deal exclusively in one specific product or product group, but rather deal in many products. a typical leading trading company will buy or sell almost anything, including industrial goods, market power of the japanese non-gm…… 83 textile goods, raw materials including agricultural products and mineral resources among other products. there are eight japanese trading companies in that import food soybeans. on the other side of the trades are u.s. grain exporters that sell the soybeans to japanese trading companies. there are two principle ways to ship u.s. soybeans to japan. one is bulk shipment, and the other is container shipment. bulk shipment is typically used for large-volume sales of commodity soybeans. the most common bulk shipment size is 40000 metric tons. not all soybean trading companies can finance the large quantity required to fill a vessel of that size. only the four largest japanese trading companies have the capability to charter vessels (fukunaga, 2003). there are many advantages of using containers, such as to reduce shipping risks, theft, handling damage, adverse temperatures, or risk of accidental mixing. specialty soybeans may even be purchased directly from a farmer. u.s. soybeans shipped in containers usually maintain in high quality because there is less damage to the soybeans in transit and foreign material levels are lower. also demurrage on containers is much lower than for vessels, thus there is less financial risk (ussec). model estimation as shown by most previous research in international agricultural trade, people believe that importers have more market power than exporters, both in competitive and non-perfect competitive markets. this research is focused on the food soybean market in japan. as discussed in chapter 2, japan has a unique food soybean market. japanese people consume only non-gm soybeans, therefore japan imports only non-gm soybeans from the u.s., canada, and china. in order to use the two-country partial equilibrium trade model, japan is considered a monopsony by aggregating all japanese non-gm soybean importers. on the other side are the u.s., canada, and china which makes up a threecountry oligopoly of soybean sellers. if japan as a country is a monopsonistic non-gm soybean importer, it may have more market power than any one of the non-gm soybean exporting countries. this research seeks to test who has the stronger market power in the japanese non-gm soybean import, buyer or seller. to measure the market power of japan as a nongm soybean buyer, the inverse residual nongm soybean demand and the inverse residual non-gm soybean supply were estimated. in the two-country partial equilibrium non-gm soybean trade model, the inverse residual nongm soybean demand and the inverse residual non-gm supply were combined to estimate relative market power. this research focuses on the u.s.-japan partial equilibrium non-gm soybean trade model since over seventy percent of the non-gm soybeans consumed in japan come from the u.s. other non-gm soybean exporting countries, canada and china, are treated as other non-gm soybean exporters to japan, oth jpnimp . likewise, some european countries that import non-gm soybeans from the u.s. are treated as other nongm soybean importers from the u.s., oth usexp . based on song (2006) model, the u.s.-japan partial equilibrium non-gm soybean trade model is written as eq 1 to 4. where, impus jpnp , is japanese non-gm soybean import price from u.s. (￥/mt); us jpnrd is japanese residual demand for u.s. non-gm soybean (mt); jpninc is japanese personal disposable income ($); oth jpnimp is japanese non-gm soybean imports from countries other than u.s. (mt); ft is the food time trend variable, measuring americanization of japanese dishes; jpn is the error term, assumed identically and independently distributed. exp usp is u.s. non-gm soybean export price to japan ($/mt); jpn usrs is u.s. residual non-gm soybean supply for japan (mt); usinc is u.s. personal disposable income ($); oth usexp is non-gm soybean exports from u.s. to countries other than japan (mt); usstk is the u.s. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 80-89 84 beginning non-gm soybean stocks (mt); and us is the error term. data description for estimating the u.s.-japan partial equilibrium non-gm soybean trade model, monthly data from january 2003 to december 2007, 60 observations in all, were used. see table 3.1 for all variables used in this analysis and sources. data for the japanese inverse residual non-gm soybean demand, us jpnrd , and the u.s. inverse residual non-gm soybean supply, jpn usrs , were obtained from the ministry of finance japan (2008) and daily soybean and oil seeds published by shokuhin sangyou shinbunsha co., ltd. (food industry newsweek co., ltd.). the amount of monthly non-gm soybean in japan imported from the u.s. for each month, ngmus mjpnsb , , , is the amount of monthly soybean imported by japan from the u.s., us mjpnsb , , divided by the amount of soybeans japan imported yearly from the u.s., us yjpnsb , , multiplied by the non-gm soybeans imported by japan yearly from the u.s., ngmus yjpnsb , , . it can be written as: ngmus yjpnus yjpn us mjpnngmus mjpn sb sb sb sb , , , ,, , * ……. (5) japanese personal disposable income, jpninc , is from the u.s. department of agriculture, economics research service (usda-ers) international macroeconomic data set (usdaers, 2008b). according to song (2006), the u.s. personal disposable income and japanese personal disposable income are annual data. in this research, however, monthly data is required. personal disposable income for the u.s. and japan were transformed into monthly format, as described below. first, the annual growth rate of japanese personal disposable income was calculated. second, the initial value was set as the january disposable income. then, the calculated annual growth rate and the initial value were used to estimate disposable income for the remaining months of the year. the last step was to use the trial-and-error method to adjust the january income so that the sum of the estimated monthly disposable incomes equaled the actual annual disposable income. the estimated monthly income was used to approximate the actual monthly disposable income in the empirical estimation (song, 2006).                )4( )3( )2( )1( 10 , 3210 3210 , exp us impus jpn jpn us us jpn ususi oth usus jpn us jpn us exp us jpn oth jpnjpn us jpn us jpn impus jpn lnplnp lnrslnrd lnstklnexplnincrslnp ftlnimplninclnrdlnp    the variable, japanese non-gm soybean imports from other countries, oth jpnimp , was calculated from data obtained from the ministry of finance japan (2008) and daily soybean and oil seeds, published by shokuhin sangyou shinbunsha co., ltd. the variable oth jpnimp is the sum of the monthly japanese soybean imports from canada and china multiplied by the amount of yearly japanese non-gm soybean imports from canada and china, ngmoth yjpnsb , , . the amount of monthly japanese soybean imports from canada where the sum of the amount of japanese soybean imports from canada and china equals 100, is the amount of monthly japanese soybean imports from canada, ca mjpnsb , ; divided by the amount of yearly japanese soybean imports from canada, market power of the japanese non-gm…… 85 ca yjpnsb , ; multiplied by the yearly canada to china soybean import to japan ratio,          100* ,, , ch yjpn ca yjpn ca yjpn sbsb sb . the monthly japanese soybean imports from canada can be written as:          100** ,, , , , ch yjpn ca yjpn ca yjpn ca yjpn ca mjpn sbsb sb sb sb … (6) similarly, the amount of monthly japanese soybean imports from china when the sum of the amount of japanese soybean imports from canada and china equals 100, is the amount of monthly japanese soybean imports from china, ch mjpnsb , ; divided by the amount of yearly japanese soybean imports from china, ch yjpnsb , ; multiplied by the yearly chinese soybean ratio in japan, which is 100 minus the yearly canada to china soybean import to japan ratio. the monthly japanese soybean imports from china can be written as:                   100*100* ,, , , , ch yjpn ca yjpn ca yjpn ch yjpn ch mjpn sbsb sb sb sb … (7) thus, japanese non-gm soybean imports from canada and china can be written as:                       100** ,, , , , ch yjpn ca yjpn ca yjpn ca yjpn ca mjpnoth jpn sbsb sb sb sb imp ngmoth yjpn ch yjpn ca yjpn ca yjpn ch yjpn ch mjpn sb sbsb sb sb sb , , ,, , , , * 100*100*                               … (8) for the u.s. inverse residual non-gm soybean supply to japan model, the u.s. non-gm soybean export price to japan, exp usp , is the fob price reported by the u.s. department of agriculture, foreign agriculture service (usda-fas, 2008). the u.s. personal disposable income, usinc , is from usda-ers, international macroeconomic data set (usdaers, 2008c). similar to the japanese personal disposable income, the reported data for u.s. personal disposable income is annual data. using the same method as used for the japanese personal disposable income, u.s. monthly personal disposable income is estimated from the actual annual income. the variable u.s. nongm soybean beginning stocks, usstk , was obtained from the usda-ers, oil crops yearbook (usda-ers, 2008d). the variable u.s. non-gm soybean exports to countries other than japan, oth usexp , is calculated using data obtained from usda-fas. the variable oth usexp , is the amount of monthly u.s. nongm soybean exports, ngm usexp ; minus the amount of monthly u.s. non-gm soybean exports to japan, jpn usexp . the amount of monthly u.s. non-gm soybean exports, ngm usexp ; is the amount of monthly u.s. soybean exports, musexp , ; multiplied by the non-gm soybean to gm soybean cropping ratio in the u.s. which is 1 minus the percentage of gm soybean cropping ratio in the u.s.,  gm areasb%1 ; divided by twelve. jpn us ngm us oth us expexpexp  …….. (9)  gm area musngm us sb exp exp %1* 12 ,  ..… (10) before estimation, a heteroscedasticity test and an autocorrelation test were conducted for the model. test results indicate that the null hypothesis for equation (1) and (2) fail to reject for either model. these test results imply that neither the japanese inverse residual demand function nor the u.s. inverse residual supply function have a heteroscedasticity problem and an autocorrelation problem. estimation the non-gm soybean trade model was simultaneously estimated by using three-stage least squares (3sls) method. table 2 is estimated results that for equation (1), japanese residual non-gm soybean demand is statistically asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 80-89 86 significant at the 1% level. the sign of the estimated coefficient is negative as expected that indicates a downward sloping japanese residual demand curve for u.s. non-gm soybeans. by equation (1), the estimated coefficient is also the price flexibility of the japanese residual demand function for u.s. non-gm soybeans as shown by appendix equation (a3). the estimated price flexibility of the japanese inverse residual demand for the u.s. non-gm soybeans is -0.219 and the market profits of the u.s. non-gm soybean exporters are about 22% of the export price. for equation 2, the u.s. residual non-gm soybean supply is statistically significant at the 1% level and the sign is positive as expected, indicating an upward sloping u.s. residual nongm soybean supply curve. by equation (2), the estimated coefficient is the price flexibility of the u.s. inverse residual non-gm soybean supply function for japan as shown by appendix equation (a4). the estimated price flexibility of the u.s. inverse residual non-gm soybean supply to japan is 0.04 and the market profits of japanese non-gm soybean importers are about 4% of the non-gm soybean import price. comparing these two coefficients, u.s. non-gm soybean exporters have greater market power than japanese non-gm soybean importers. conclusion the japanese people have long been concerned about healthy food. one of the most popular japanese health foods is tofu produced from soybeans. however, japan grows only about 10% of the soybeans consumed in the country each year. japan imports about 70% of its food soybean needs from the u.s. in recent years, the u.s. soybean farmers have switched from producing all non-gm soybeans to producing almost all gm soybeans. at present, only nine percent of the u.s. soybean crop remains nongm soybeans. soybean producers in other countries are following the u.s. example and are switching to gm soybeans. gm soybeans have lowered production costs while raising yields for soybean producers. in the future, differential incentives for farmers to grow non-gm soybeans will have to increase to offset lower yields, higher production costs, and the costs associated with segregating non-gm soybeans from gm soybeans. by the late 1990’s, japanese people had developed widespread apprehension about the safety of consuming gm soybeans. since then, they have insisted on eating only non-gm soybeans. in response to consumer desires, japanese soybean importers only import non-gm soybeans for food soybeans in japan. this makes the japanese food soybean market unique in the world. with the decline in non-gm soybean production in the u.s. canada, and china, it appears that market power in the japanese food soybean market has shifted to the sellers of non-gm soybeans. a two-country partial equilibrium trade model was constructed to test the hypothesis that market power has shifted to the sellers of non-gm soybeans. the results showed that u.s. non-gm soybean exporters have relatively stronger market power than japanese non-gm soybean importers. the market margin for u.s. non-gm soybean exporters was estimated at 22% of the export price while the market margin for the japanese non-gm soybean importers was only about 4% of the non-gm soybean import price. these results are different from other countries previous studies which showed importers have more market power, and show that the japanese importers may have to pay a higher price to purchase nongm soybeans in the future. it also indicates that japanese consumers will have to pay higher prices for tofu, natto, miso, and other soy foods using non-gm soybeans. eventually, japanese consumers will have to make a decision to keep paying a higher price for non-gm soybeans or accept lower priced gm soybeans. market power of the japanese non-gm…… 87 figure 1: non-gm soybean share in the total soybean acreage of the u.s. (1997-2007) source: usda-ers, 2008a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 80-89 88 table 1: the u.s.-japan partial equilibrium non-gm soybean trade model’s variables and sources table 2: estimated results of the u.s.-japan partial equilibrium trade model note: * 1% significant level, ** 10% significant level views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. market power of the japanese non-gm…… 89 references baker, j. b., & bresnahan, t. f. (1988). estimating the residual demand curve facing a single firm. international journal of industrial organization, 6, 283-300. carter, c. a., maclarean, d., & yilmaz, a. (1999). how competitive is the world wheat market. working paper no. 99002, department of agricultural and resource economics, university of california, davis. fukunaga, k. (2003). the role of trust in usjapanese food-grade soybean transactions. master’s thesis, iowa state university goldberg, p. k., & knetter m. m. (1999). measuring the intensity of competition in export markets. journal of international economics, 47(2), 27-60. konduru, n. v., tyurina, y. y., feng, w., basova, l. v., belikova, n. a., bayir, h., clark, k., rubin, m., stolz, d., vallov, h., scheynius, a., witasp, e., fadeel, b., kichambare, p. d., star, a., kisin, e. r., murrey, a. r., shovedova, a. a., & kagan, v. e. (2009). phosphatidy lserine targetrs single-walled carbon nanotubes to professional phagocytes in vitro and in vivo. plos one 4:e4398. maff (2003). agricultural production environment report report. tokyo, maff (in japanese). maff (2006a). data: self-sufficiency by items of major industrial countries, 2006. website: http://www.toukei.maff.go.jp/world/in dex.html. ministry of finance japan (2008). japan customs, trade statistics of japan, online statistics databases. website: http://www.customs.go.jp/toukei/info/ tsdl.htm. norris, g. (2007). soy demand rising with concern about health issues, environment. published government information office, republic of china. website: http://publish.gio.gov.tw/fcj/past/060 10681.html. song, b. (2006). market power and competitive analysis of china’s soybean import market. dissertation, university of kentucky. u. s. department of agriculture, economic research service (usda-ers), (2008a). briefing rooms: soybeans and oil crops: data tables. website: http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/soy beansoilcrops/data.htm. u. s. department of agriculture, foreign agriculture service (usda-fas), (2008). u.s. trade internet system. washington, dc. website: http://www.fas.usda.gov/ustrade/. usda-ers (2008b). briefing rooms: soybeans and oil crops: soybeans and oil crops: recommended readings. website: http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/soy beansoilcrops/recommendedreadings. htm#outlook. usda-ers (2008c). data: international macroeconomic data set (online), 2008. website: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/macroe conomics/. usda-ers (2008d). publications: oil crops yearbook from 2002-2007, washington, dc. website: http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/mann usda/viewdocumentinfo.do?documen tid=1290. http://www.toukei.maff.go.jp/world/index.html http://www.toukei.maff.go.jp/world/index.html http://www.customs.go.jp/toukei/info/tsdl.htm http://www.customs.go.jp/toukei/info/tsdl.htm http://publish.gio.gov.tw/fcj/past/06010681.html http://publish.gio.gov.tw/fcj/past/06010681.html http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/soybeansoilcrops/data.htm http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/soybeansoilcrops/data.htm http://www.fas.usda.gov/ustrade/ http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/soybeansoilcrops/recommendedreadings.htm#outlook http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/soybeansoilcrops/recommendedreadings.htm#outlook http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/soybeansoilcrops/recommendedreadings.htm#outlook http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/macroeconomics/ http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/macroeconomics/ http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/mannusda/viewdocumentinfo.do?documentid=1290 http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/mannusda/viewdocumentinfo.do?documentid=1290 http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/mannusda/viewdocumentinfo.do?documentid=1290 © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 promoting community-based extension agents as an alternative approach to formal agricultural extension service delivery in northern ghana samuel z. bonye (department of community development, faculty of planning and land management, university for development studies, tamale, ghana) kpieta b. alfred (department of environment and resource studies, faculty for integrated development studies, university for development studies, tamale, ghana) godfred seidu jasaw (department of community development, faculty of planning and land management, university for development studies, tamale, ghana) to cite this article: samuel, z. b., kpieta, b. a., and godfred, s. j. (2012). promoting community-based extension agents as an alternative approach to formal agricultural extension service delivery in northern ghana. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1), 76-95. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 76-95 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author(s) samuel z. bonye † department of community development faculty of planning and land management university for development studies, tamale, ghana email: sbonye@yahoo.com kpieta b. alfred department of environment and resource studies, faculty for integrated development studies, university for development studies, tamale, ghana email: kpientafred@yahoo.com godfred seidu jasaw ghana department of community development, faculty of planning and land management, university for development studies, tamale, ghana promoting community-based extension agents as an alternative approach to formal agricultural extension service delivery in northern ghana abstract the cbea concept is an alternative to community-based extension intervention aimed at addressing the inadequacy of formal extension services provision to rural poor farmers of the northern regions of ghana. the study sought to find out the extent to which the community-based extension agent has improved access to extension services to rural farmers. the study used qualitative and quantitative methods such as, focus group discussions, key informants, in-depth interviews, household and institutional questionnaires to collect and analyses data. the findings are that: there are vibrant community based extension agents established providing extension services in crop, livestock and environmental issues in the study district; farmers groups are linked to external agents and other stakeholders for access to credit facilities; the cbeas were found to be the main link between the community and external agents; the most dominant extension services delivery carried out by the cbeas in the entire study district were in crop production, livestock production and bushfire management; there are well established criteria for selecting community based extension agents, and community based extension agents were least motivated. the study recommends among others that: motivation packages such as bicycles would facilitate the movement cbeas to reach out to majority of the farmers. there is also the need to link cbeas to relevant institutions/organizations for support and establishment of mechanisms to generate funds to support activities. finally, stakeholders and organization need to intensify community sensitization and awareness creation on activities of cbeas. keywords: agricultural extension, community –based, extension agents, extension service delivery introduction in ghana, agriculture remains the backbone of the economy, accounting for the largest portion of gross domestic product (gdp), 50-60 percent of government revenue and 70 percent of a labour force (fao, 2008). agricultural extension which is one of the pillars for development plays an important catalytic role in agricultural and rural development efforts in ghana. it serves as the source of information on new technologies for farming communities which when adopted can improve production, incomes and standards of living. moreover, agricultural extension provides a channel through which farmers' problems could be identified for research and formulation of agricultural policies to the benefit of rural communities. the extension system constitutes a framework through which farmers are organized into functional groups in order to gain access to production resources such as credit, inputs, marketing services and information on government development programmes (dfid, 2001). several organizations are involved in extension service provision in ghana. these include publicfunded institutions such as the ministry of food and agriculture; agricultural related commercial companies or marketing boards such as cotton company ltd, a variety of non-governmental mailto:sbonye@yahoo.com mailto:kpientafred@yahoo.com promoting community-based extension……. 77 organizations (ngos), farmers' associations, and private agro-chemical input suppliers. the main approach used by the formal sector (ministry of food and agriculture) in agricultural extension service delivery is: training and visit (t&v), contact farmer or farmer-to-farmer and transfer of technology approach to extension service delivery to ensure that farmers adequately access information for enhanced production. however, these approaches have not been effective in terms of making available the appropriate technologies or the necessary agricultural information to the poor rural farmers. in the northern part of ghana, many developmental agencies such as church based ngos like the presbyterian agriculture stations (pas), catholic agriculture projects, adventist relief agency (adra), assemblies of god relief and development services (agreds) and care international are promoting alternative extension service delivery to augment the efforts of agricultural extension offered by ministry of food and agriculture through community based extension agents. the community-based extension agents (cbeas) as an intervention to agricultural delivery has been piloted by care international, ghana, and other organizations in selected communities in northern ghana to address the inadequacy of extension services provision to the rural poor farmers of the three regions in northern ghana. the cbeas concept builds on the mechanisms for extension acquisition at the community level and evolve around persons who are „experts‟ on different aspects of indigenous knowledge in farming, communitybased institutions and systems that exist for training and skills acquisition, knowledge and information sharing as well as conflict prevention, management and resolution in the farming system. this study is to identify role(s) played by major stakeholders in the promotion and provision of agricultural extension services and technologies through the communitybased extension agents, examine the nature and structures of operations of the community based extension agents, explore farmers‟ perception of the community based extension agents on agricultural production literature review introduction this paper reviews concepts and theories relevant to the study. arguments are made on key concepts and theories that provided the framework as perceived differently by different scholars. major concepts and theories such as agricultural extension, communitybased extension agents, farmers‟ indigenous knowledge in extension service delivery, extension approaches, policy on agricultural extension, roles of major stakeholders in agricultural extension services and farmers‟ perceptions of agricultural extension services are reviewed. agricultural extension as an intervention to rural development agricultural extension is an approach to agricultural development and an instrument for achieving rural development policy goals. although there are many different goals for extension programmes, most programmes are designed as systems of communication to change the behaviour of rural people or as systems of communication to change the knowledge of rural people (roling, 1990). according to leeuwis (2004), extension which originally came from the academia during the 1840s and the early 1900s in the west connotes teacher/student relationship, depicts a top-down approach to problem-solving and inducing change in voluntary behaviours. thus, extension agent having been trained assumes the position of an expert who transmits information to the farmer who listens, receives and responds accordingly. if farmers and other rural people direct the extension towards their own needs, then the purpose of extension is changing knowledge. this knowledge helps rural people make their own decisions regarding farming practices. often, farmers pretend to think and act in line with the interventionist, whereas in reality and to a large extent, follow their own internal logic; maintain their cosmo vision and have their own values. farmers in many parts of the world are always seeking ways to improve their farming systems and to adapt their practices to changing agro-ecological and socioeconomic conditions. technological transfer is an integral part of the extension process, involving the transfer and spread of farming information from the researcher via subject matter specialist and the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 76-95 78 extension worker to the farmers. farmers adopt, adapt and formulate new ideas and innovations, that are tried out in different settings, evaluated and assessed the results on which decisions are made for improving farming. these factors, with the exception of population growth have made traditional adaptation and adjustment mechanisms unfeasible and ineffective (jodha, 1990). agricultural development programmes underestimated the expertise of farmers. this could be attributed to lack of process-thinking and this has contributed to poor technology utilization (ison, 1990). process-thinking has the potential of drawing on the experiences of farmers (spore, 2004) as well as easing the overlap of interests. extension as a service is a process for sharing information, through in-service training joint programming and maximizing the human resource potential within its own structure thus enabling farmers to gain experiences in farm business management and thus empowering them to demonstrate to other farmers the business approach to farming. extension as a service recognizes the interconnectedness of all elements involved and coordinates them for better benefits. farmers’ indigenous knowledge in extension service delivery as a mainstay of developing and even developed economies, agriculture has been a well-researched area. its contribution to various countries remains very substantial. studies have been conducted on agricultural production and related services provision. farmers‟ indigenous knowledge (fik), however, is a relatively new area of study. in recent time, major critical and substantial research has been focused on fik (rajasekaran, 1993). such studies were targeted at revitalizing fik and advocating for its incorporation into development efforts since it is a resource that can enhance (agricultural) production. however, very little studies or research, if any at all, connects agricultural extension to fik (hounkonnou, 2001). this is indicative that local initiatives are still by-passed; relevant support resources are not linked to or supportive of grassroots efforts. the agricultural extension services department under the ministry of food and agriculture and cocobod are the official public institution responsible for the provision of agricultural information, technologies and innovations to farmers in ghana. the private sector, which provides extension services for the agriculture sector include commodity-based organizations such as the cotton companies and input dealers that have a profit motive and so do not look at the whole farming system of the poor rural farmer but focuses on a particular sub sector that is of interest to them. thus, agricultural extension is best termed knowledge-generation and exchange. as knowledge-generation and exchange (rethinking and reflecting on the interactive process), both the end and the process are relevant and should be emphasized. agricultural development through extension started a long time ago and took different forms or approaches; from the centralized top-down to that of participation (spore, 2003). there have been public and private sector efforts to improve the lot of farmers and attain national food self-sufficiency (warren, 1991). farmers were not involved in this extension development process until the 1980s even though farmers know a great deal about their farming situation and needs than anyone else (spore, 2003; warren, 1991). these extension approaches or modes include the scheme, technical change, target category, functional group and institution building. the delivery mechanisms are the training and visit (t&v), contract farming, farmer-field-school (ffs) and farmer-to-farmer extension (hanyani-mlambo, 1995). extension approaches there are many approaches to extension and these are; the scheme approach, technical change approach, target category approach, functional group approach, institution building approach, training and visit approach, farmer-field-school approach, and farmer-to-farmer extension approach. functional group approach the functional approach is another extension approach which uses groups. it strengthens farmers‟ capacity to demand services and resources appropriate to their needs through the countervailing power. it empowers or supports small-scale farmers to exercise some real control of development efforts such that they respond to their own definition of development or of their own interests (jiggins & rolings, 1982). this is not very prominent except lately where cotton farmers in the sissala area teamed up and demanded fair prices and treatment among promoting community-based extension……. 79 others from the cotton company and these were granted them. in burkina faso and mali, such functional groups as union nationale des producteurs de cotton du burkina-unpcd and association des organizations professionelles paysannes-aopp respectively exist which intercede with government to protect farmers‟ interest (spore, 2004). this approach seeks to promote better relationship between internal (smallscale farmers or smallholders) and external supporters of development which is a shift from the traditional development trend where there exists power imbalance. the ability of a group to perform cannot be underestimated and this is why most projects advocate working with groups. unfortunately, these groups had never originated from traditional or indigenous groupings and hence the poor performance of these groups. according to hounkonnou (2001), indigenous groupings have the potential of growing to a status that meet the productivity, well-being and empowerment concern of the rural people. it requires some conscious efforts to deal with or arrive at groups that are grounded by the indigenous knowledge systems of the location. it is only such groups that are creditable and can greatly influence development. training and visit (t&v) approach the training and visit (t&v) system is an extension management system that was developed for the world bank by daniel benor (benor & harrison, 1977). it was aimed at upgrading the technical content of field extension activities, while making agents' activities more predictable and thus more accessible to farmers. the idea was to increase the effectiveness of agricultural extension services through comprehensively structured training, delivery and administrative systems. in the approach, "proven agricultural practices", usually from international and national research centers, are translated into packages of practice recommendations. these are then passed down the extension organization's hierarchy from subject matter specialists to agricultural extension officers, who adapt recommendations to their specific areas before passing them on to village-level extension workers. extension workers then pass the recommendations to contact farmers, who diffuse them to other farmers. t&v is thus a delivery mechanism via which technical information on agriculture is impacted or given to farmers. the technical information or technology is usually generated through scientific means at the agricultural research stations and this technology is transferred to farmers who are perceived as recipients and should be taught relevant technical advice through the extension agents who have been empowered with this technology. thus, it creates an information-flow between the research stations, subject matter specialists, extension agents, contact farmers and followers. t&v has been widely adopted due to its impressive results (benor & baxter, 1984). in ghana, t&v was intensively practiced in the days of the farmers‟ services company (fascom) and upper region agriculture development programme (uradep) but very limited successes were chalked due to the unilateral analysis of farmers‟ situation (millar, 1992). as an extension delivery tool, it is designed to achieve rapid results and attracts as little cost as possible. t&v proved to be an excellent extension management system in irrigation projects like the tono, vea and bontanga irrigation areas, which followed strict timetables, but had only limited success in dry land farming. it contributed to increased cash crop production by smallholder farmers. farmers are generalists in their activities and the biophysical environment makes it impossible to follow a strict timetable (hanyani-mlambo, 1995). this technology generation process never involves the farmer who is an active participant in the farming process. limited farmer participation causes it to follow a top-down orientation, resulting in inappropriate and irrelevant technologies; the flow of information frequently stopped at the contact farmer/group level; and only a small proportion of farming families benefited, leading to inequalities the indigenous knowledge system of the smallholder was never considered or given a value and hence the limited successes. the rural poor who really need help were not being reached. the system has been criticized for being too mechanical in its implementation and for lacking the flexibility to make it more relevant to the needs and environment of smallholder farmers (pazvakavambwa, 1994). under such circumstance, the technology which is meant for the farmer may be resisted or rejected after the farmer has taken it through a „process‟. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 76-95 80 „transfer‟ which also depicts giver and receiver scenario falls short of the real life situation of the farmer. farmer-field-school (ffs) approach it is another form of extension delivery mechanism through which technical information or technology is passed on or imparted to farmers. it originated from asia in the late 1980s stemming from the fact that inputs were grossly abused and an informed decision needed to be taken in this regards. it is a school without walls situation organized by/for farmers in a field where farmers meet regularly to:  learn and share experiences;  learn and develop agro-skills and farm management tools; and  implement the 4 key principles of ffs i.e. growing a healthy crop season-long, monitoring the field regularly, conserving benefits and farmers becoming experts in their own fields (gallagher, 2003). the farmers and the agricultural officials learn together during the process. it deals with groups that have a common interest who meet regularly to study or learn a particular topic. the learning is based on experiential, participatory and hands-on-work (ingevall et al., (2003). according to pimbert and wakeford (2003), ffs is a form of social learning, negotiation and effective collective action by and for farmers and their communities, focusing on society‟s relationship with nature and assuming that all rural people, even the poor, have assets. it is a platform for both learning and empowerment (cip-upward, 2003). learning is a consequence of experience and people only become responsible when they have assumed responsibility and experience success (pretty, 2002). farmer-field-school is composite since it promotes technology generation or development, adoption and diffusion. it does meet the real needs or life situations of farmers especially those with limited access to external inputs for increased production. it draws on farmers‟ own knowledge and innovativeness and has the potential of bringing farmers and outsiders together in a common research process, building on farmers‟ own capacity to generate technologies and modify practices and complementing conventional scientific forms of experimentation (coleman, 1990). it has been proven to be an effective tool/mechanism for cultivating farmer learning and empowerment since farmers are encouraged to develop their critical thinking leading to greater self-sufficiency. it could also facilitate the formation of community-based organizations. notwithstanding, maintaining the quality in their implementation and ensuring that the core principles of the approach are sustained, continue to be challenging (ingevall et al., 2003). in the experience of ghana, the interest of farmers has been high and evaluation indicated that participants (farmers and agricultural officers) learnt a lot. however, this failed to reflect in the results, no scaling up of the successful experiences. this is a reflection of inappropriateness or its not being grounded in the indigenous knowledge system of the smallholder and hence the non-adoption (kipo, 1990). in ffs, the involvement of the farmer is supposed to be quite high and accords him or her, the position to deliver his or her skills as in farmer-tofarmer extension. farmer-to-farmer extension approach the farmer-to-farmer approach is another extension delivery mechanism but between farmers (in the context of a farmer-environment). the farmers who are village extensionists usually do the extension of technologies. no one else could ever display as much enthusiasm for the technology as a farmer who has just tripled his or her yields by using it. one will never know a village farmer‟s way of thinking, or his or her priorities and value system, quite like a neighbouring farmer. in addition, one from the outside cannot understand what will motivate a farmer to change better than a neighbouring farmer who has just made some major changes will. nor will any professional ever have as much credibility with poor farmers as a neighbour who can show them his or her fields with their greatly improved yields (bunch, 1990). this delivery mechanism, very frequently requires absolutely no cash expense and development agencies are using village agricultural extensionists (bunch, 1990). mofa recruited farmers as village extensionists, provided them with bicycles and their performance is not impressive. as much as the proximity of these recruited extensionists to the targets is quite high, the performance will also be promoting community-based extension……. 81 influenced by their status in the community. thus the recruitment has to be influenced by the indigenous knowledge system of the area for an enhanced performance. the flow of farmers‟ findings tends to be slow, especially when there are limited means to bring farmers together even though the more appropriate the innovation for a wider spectrum of farmers, the quicker the news of it seems to spread from farmer to farmer (muleme, 1994). building of the facilitation skills is imperative since it greatly influences the outcome of the delivery mechanism as well as individuals‟ relationships. the next is the consideration of policy on agricultural extension. policy on agricultural extension the agricultural policy pursued during the colonial period was aimed at advising and assisting farmers to produce larger and better crops for export to the neglect of food crops or non-export crops. according to millar (2004), sufficient revenue was generated which addressed basic food requirements in the urban and cash crops production areas through the importation of staples from external markets. the foreign earnings from the export-crops could have been used for something either than importation of staples if equal attention was given to the home agricultural sector for the production of staples. the policy of convention people party had a different focus. it was directed at promoting rapid agricultural development through the establishment of state farms, which used mechanized agricultural systems and agricultural development corporations (millar, 2004). this policy demonstrated the power of government since urban unemployment was mitigated and the department of agriculture was abolished. the abolition of the extension service denied smallholders the service, which could have promoted or augmented the production of food crops to sustain the country. between the 1961 and1982, the directions of policy pursued was also different. it was in favour of large-scale production and industrial based on imported raw materials rather than industrialization based on agricultural surpluses (home-agriculture). this direction promoted production and marketing of agricultural commodities but to the neglect of the smallholder, who form the majority in the agricultural sector. (millar, 2004). not all the policies discussed so far favoured the smallholder except the one between 1981 and 1992 even though not completely. this policy sought to build a conducive and enabling environment which promotes agricultural growth and development in terms of promoting national food security, creating rural employment opportunities where the smallholder dominates, providing agriculturalindustrial linkages and a balanced regional agricultural development with emphasis on indigenous practices and resources. sustainability and indigenous practices were especially focused by the research and the extension department (millar, 2004). even with this, very limited practical demonstrations or opportunities existed for the smallholders to realize their potentials, which is crucial. the goal of the ministry of food and agriculture (mofa) has been to create an environment for sustainable growth and development in the sector. in line with this goal, policies and programmes since the 1990s have been formulated and guided rigidly by the medium term agricultural development programme (mtadp), which was geared towards institutional reforms. it aims at shifting attention to smallholder with emphasis on indigenous practices and resources. based on the mtadp, the accelerated agricultural growth and development strategy (aagds) were formulated. the aagds has, however been silent on the indigenous knowledge of farmers (government of ghana/mofa, 2002). the food and agricultural sector development policy (fasdep) in all recognizes donor conditionalities and the dwindling nature of external funding for agricultural programmes/projects and thus advocate for the effective and efficient utilization of available resources. it failed, however, to explicitly capture ik as a resource, which is abundant in the smallholder. ik has not been captured in areas of intervention identified in fasdep. technology development is quite vivid in mofa‟s mission statement and the appropriateness of this developed technology should be vigorously pursued since it is key. warren & rajasekaran (1993) acknowledge this in their assertion that “indigenous knowledge in third world agriculture is considerable and too often overlooked”. the development efforts of governments (of ghana) especially in the agricultural sector have been asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 76-95 82 tremendous (fasdep, 2002) but without much success (millar, 1992). effective and efficient utilization of available resources has been advocated. this calls for efficient collaboration of all stakeholders (policy makers, implementers and farmers). the potential (resourcefulness) of each of these stakeholders should not be underestimated. the developed technology would be appropriate and well-fitting to the local conditions if it is grounded on indigenous knowledge systems. according to the world forum on food sovereignty (spore, 2004) “people have the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agricultural systems”. this is with particular reference to the smallholders who are endowed with indigenous knowledge. community-based extension agents in ghana, farmers learn how to do farming from childhood, as children constitute an important part of the family‟s work force. throughout life, they consult elders and more experienced farmers when they face problems in farming. this transfer of farm knowledge from one farmer to another takes place in many ways including informal conversations in everyday life, through farmer group discussions, during cooperative farming and while visiting other farmers. farmers have their own vocabulary, tools and processes for learning and sharing and they easily accept things learnt in their own context. the indigenous farming practices have been developed, practiced and transferred over several generations. few changes have taken place in these practices to meet the ever changing and challenging socio economic conditions. the general awareness and efforts to achieve consistent and sustainable farming practices have been piloted in diverse ways. mofa has been the main body facilitating the process of eradicating the gaps of farm knowledge and transferring appropriate technology to farmers. mofa employs extension officers to spread new technologies to farmers. the ratio is currently one extension officer to 1500 farmers, which is too high to provide sufficient service to the farmers. lack of access to appropriate and affordable extension services is one of the serious constraints to increasing production and productivity by the rural farmer in the northern region. agricultural extension in the north is mainly provided by the ministry of food and agriculture through the extension service department. attempts are being made to improve extension delivery by mofa through the implementation of the new extension policy. care international and its partners have been implementing the cbes in selected districts in the northern part of ghana. the system which is built on indigenous knowledge systems has helped communities and some poor farmers to respond to some of the underlying causes of the livelihood insecurity by developing on an extension approach that promotes self-reliance and problem solving among the poor farmers, thus empowering rural communities and their farm families. the establishment of a functional and self-sustaining community based extension system with community members serving as extension agents was seen by care international to be a possible option to complementing the efforts of government in providing relevant extension education and service to farmers. the system also supports communities to revitalize the knowledge systems and by linking them to up to the formal extension system for support thus helping poor farmers to build systems that can be sustainable, appropriate and responsive to their needs. the cbes seeks to strengthen the capacity of some experienced farmers in the communities by facilitating them to share and transfer the indigenous farming knowledge in the community. cbes groups in the communities helped them to identify gaps in the farming knowledge and find solutions, and providing training, which strengthens the groups such as team building leadership. the fase project is implemented in 6 places in ghana through partner organisations in these areas, and in the northern region, the presbyterian agricultural station at lanbgensi in the east mamprusi district is the partner that has been partnering care international to implement the cbes. roles of major stakeholders in agricultural extension services a major role of agricultural extension in developing countries has been to disseminate technologies generated by public sector research organizations through appropriate dissemination strategies such as promoting community-based extension……. 83 demonstrations, field visits, farmers‟ meetings, use of media etc. the theory behind this approach had been the „diffusion of innovation‟ model suggested by rogers (1962). this kind of extension models are usually top-down structures, often located within the ministry of agriculture. one of the examples is the training and visit (t&v) system promoted by the world bank in (1998). this system had been established as public sector service extension services and became a major model for providing and managing extension in many developing countries. new approaches such as farmer field schools (ffs) and the agricultural knowledge and information system (akis) have been developed. direct farm level links were stressed between researchers and farmers. more recently, the notion of extension as part of a wider system has emerged. for example, the „interdependence model‟ (bennett, 1992) and the „innovation systems framework‟ (lundvall, 1992) offer more inclusive ways of thinking about the actors and the institutional context in which the generation, diffusion and use of new knowledge takes place. the system of actors and process not only includes research and extension, but also technology users, private companies, ngos and supportive structures such as markets and credit (sulaiman et al., 2006). farmers’ perception of agricultural extension services agricultural development implies a shift from traditional methods of production to new, science based methods of production that include new technological components, such as new varieties, cultural practices, commercial fertilizers and pesticides as well as new crops and new farming systems (madukwe and erie, 1999). consequently, a wide range of policies and approaches have been formulated in most of most developing countries to reverse the worsening food and agricultural trends towards sustained agricultural growth. this has necessitated putting in place a combination of factors comprising the right technology, effective extension, access to physical inputs, adequate market support services and some infrastructures to improve agricultural productivity and raise the standard of living of rural dwellers. however, a common feature of these strategies according to poole et al. (1994) is that government runs agricultural extension services devoted to augment small holder productivity by promoting the adoption of new scientific farming practices through educational procedures. the agricultural extension service operates from the backdrop belief that increased agricultural productivity depends primarily upon the acceptance of improved cultural and technological change at the rural farm level and that peasant farmers can achieve higher farm yields only if they adopt recommended scientific farming techniques in place of their traditional practices. but asiabaka and mwangi (2001) have expressed the view "'that for farmers of different agricultural zones to adopt a new technology, they must be aware of the technology, have a valid and up-to-date information on the technology, the applicability of the technology to their farming system and receive the technical assistance necessary for the technology". thus, obinne and anyanwu (1991) and rogers (1995), have posited that successful adoption of improved farming techniques is predicated upon rural farmers acquiring the required knowledge and understanding of these technologies, a process most effectively accomplished by the agricultural extension service. challenges of the extension system in many of the sub-saharan african countries, smallholders are characterized by poor adoption of technologies. according to lipton (1988), this is partly explained by the absence of „smallholderfriendly‟ research findings to some extent. another argument is that research stations in africa have tended to develop ideas with too little attention to smallholder labour supplies, to the riskiness of the innovations, to the likely availability of inputs, or to the presence of markets and to the economic attractiveness of recommendations. arokoyo (1998) pointed out that for a variety of reasons, the performance and output of national agricultural research and extension system in west and central africa has not been commensurate with the size, scope and level of investment in the system, as evidenced by farmers‟ poor productivity, incessant and intractable food shortage and the accompanying high food prices. more recently, the low performance of the agricultural sector is rather viewed as a system problem, which is prevalent within the research – extension – farmer – input system. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 76-95 84 there has been evidence of failures of the public and private sectors in agricultural extension. public extension services are under pressure for their own poor performance. they are often criticized for being: inefficient and ineffective; lacking clear objectives, motivation, and incentives; being poorly managed and not accountable to clients; and lacking relevant technologies (haug, 1999). accountability to clients is lacking in top-down bureaucracies and prevents farmers from influencing extension agendas, which lack relevance to clients. another problem is financial sustainability, especially if cost recovery is not pursued. after donor-funded programs end, extension agencies are left with an increased number of agents, which often leads to budget reduction, and ultimately ineffective extension services. one important strategy to address these failures in agricultural extension is to involve ngos, farmer based organisations, and private sector agencies in the management and execution of extension services. to make extension more demand driven, the following strategies can be considered: 1) decentralisation, to make public agency more responsive to local needs; 2) contracting, to overcome some of the state failures such as bureaucracy and generate incentive; 3) cost recovery, to improve financial sustainability and demand orientation; 4) participatory extension approaches, to encourage farmer participation. methodology data collection the study employed both qualitative and quantitative research design approaches in data collection. two classifications of interviews (unstructured and structured) were used in the study. in using the unstructured interview approach, also known as the in-depth interview, a framework (focus group discussion guide) was developed to direct the interview process. the rationale for using this approach was to enable us collectively engage with group of respondents within which questions can be formulated and asked spontaneously as the interview progress. this approach also allowed the respondents to freely express their opinion. hence, this approach was intended to solicit in-depth information on values, believes and practices, norms and historical events in relation to community based extension farming practices. other methods include the use of semi structured questionnaires and key informant interviews to capture a wide range of information/data especially on the issues of sources of resources, motivational issues, criteria for selection of cbeas among others. the questionnaire (structured) approach was also adopted and use on both the formal and non-formal institutions. the choice of using the questionnaire is based on the fact that: the target respondents are literate and scattered over the geographical area. hence, self-administered questionnaires were used to elicit information from heads of formal institutions including ngos promoting community based extension system delivery. on the other hand questionnaires were also administered to the nonliterate respondents. major sources of secondary data included documentary review. documents here are used to mean information on magazines, books, journals, and the internet among others on the subject. aside, information was also sort from government agencies and non-governmental organizations that are linked to the subject matter. these triangulatory data collection approach proved useful in the unravelling of critical issues that could never have been obtained through the use of any one data collection instrument. sampling and sample size purposive sampling technique was used to identify „expert‟ farmers‟/cbeas (indigenous specialist in livestock, crop farming etc) in agriculture service delivery in the district. the district under study is composed of two traditional areas or zones-lawra and nandom. randomly, ten communities were sampled, at least five from each traditional areas or zones. one hundred (100) expert farmers/cbeas and fifty (50) key informants were purposively identified and interviewed. information was also collected from agencies such as forestry services division (fsd), ministry of food and agriculture, district assembly as well as other ngos operating in the district pertaining to their relationship with the communitybased extension agents. a sample of 30 staff of governmental and non-governmental agencies was interviewed. data processing and analysis the data analysis employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches to examine key issues at stake. in the data collection process, qualitative field promoting community-based extension……. 85 notes captured on daily basis on events, conversations, interviews and stories on traditional coping mechanisms and strategies during group discussions and interactions with specialized groups were analysed after each day‟s work. in quantitative analysis, simple quantitative operations from questionnaires were tabulated and processed. the use of graphs, frequencies, percentiles, and averages attracted statistical considerations. charts, frequencies, percentages and averages were generated using spss (leech et al., 2005). results and discussion introduction the chapter presents the results and discussions of the study. the results are presented in the form of tables and charts according to the objectives of the study. characteristics of respondents this section presents results of the sociodemographic characteristics of the traditional authorities in terms of age, sex, status of respondents and occupation. age of respondents table 1 depicts the age groups of the respondents ranging from less than 19 years to 60 years and above. table 1: distribution of age of farmers age frequency percent less than 19 2 2.6 20-29 20 26 30-39 25 32.5 40-49 19 24.6 50-59 8 10.4 above 60 3 3.9 total 77 100 source: field data, 2011 only 3.9 percent and 2.6 percent of the respondents were more than 60 years or below 19 years respectively. more than one-third (32.5%) were within 30-39 age grouping. observation revealed that the aged is a receptor of knowledge, hence, in the traditional area, the aged is often respected and seen as authorities in their various fields of endeavors while the younger ones learn from them, as such, they occupy relevant leadership positions in the community either by succession, inheritance or parents vocation. occupation of farmers the nature of occupation of farmers may affect negatively or positively cbe system delivery in the district. apart from farming which almost represents 60 percent (59. 7%) of respondents, 4.8 percent were into shea-butter processing, while 2.4 percent were engaged in charcoal production. the remaining 33.1 percent were cbeas. 59.7 4.8 2.4 33.1 0 15 30 45 60 farming shea-butter processing charcoal production and fuel wood hewing cbeas p e rc e n ta ge figure 1: occupational distribution of farmers farming shea-butter processing charcoal production and fuel wood hewing cbeas source: field data, 2011 promoting community-based extension……. 86 forms of extension services the most dominant extension services delivery that run through the entire study district were in crop production, livestock production and bushfire management. in crop production, specific activities engaged by the cbeas include; manure harvesting, composting, striga management, refuse dump management for manure, bonding and agro-forestry. in livestock production activities identified include de-worming, animal traction, housing, feed storage and preparation of local salt leak and medication of livestock. bushfire management practices were the main environmental issues address by the cbeas. table 2: forms of extension services provided by care international forms of extension services frequency percent crop production 38 38 animal production 32 32 bushfire management 20 30. total 100 100 source: field data, 2011 the study revealed that, the nature of community based extension services provided involved the provision of knowledge, skills and information on crop production, animal production and bush fire management. crop production recorded the highest (38%) of the total responses, followed by animal production (33.3%), while bush fire management recorded the lowest of (30%). these findings are consistent with the livelihood sources of a typical community in northern ghana like those in the lawra/nandom district where majority of the population live on subsistence crop and animal production (care international, 2006). modes of operation the flow diagram illustrated in figure 2, revealed that community based extension agents use group meetings, sensitization and cash mobilization to propagate/ disseminate its activities. dissemination of information, sensitization and cash mobilization the cbeas serve as the main channel of dissemination of information on new farming and animal husbandry practices, group meeting, sensitization, and cash mobilization for their communities. the community based extension agents (cbeas) organize meetings to plan and implement their activities. this is to ensure that community extension agents have common understanding of new farming practices and implement similar extension models in the communities. these are usually done through community fora. house –to – house sensitization and education of farmers on new and improved ways of farming was also identified as the mode of sensitization. finally, cbeas also help mobilize credit from ngos, rural banks and other lenders for farmers to purchase farm inputs and other implements. figure 2: dissemination of mode and operations of cbes source: field data, 2011 membership composition and criteria for selecting members of cbeas the respondents indicated that the members of the cbeas are mainly local community farmers who are perceived to have some expert knowledge in livestock and crop production. in some few cases traditional leaders were also said to be selected to function as a community based extension agent. the criteria for selecting members are shown in table 3. table 3: criteria for selecting members of the cbea criteria frequency percent must be a resident of the community 38 23.5 prepared to offer voluntary 52 32.0 cash mobilization dissemination sensitization group meetings asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 76-95 87 services to farmers proven expert in crop and livestock production 50 30.9 ability to work with other members 22 13.6 total 162 100.0 source: field data, 2011 from table 3, 32.0 percent of the farmers indicated they were prepared to offer voluntary services to farmers as the criteria for selecting community based-extension agents. this is followed by proven expert in crop and livestock production (30.9%). the rest, must be a resident of the community and ability to work with other members, attracted percentages of 23.5percent and 13.6 percent respectively. based on the above criteria, individuals at the community level voluntarily offered themselves to provide community services. it was observed in all the communities in the district that, the cbeas were built on existing community groups; hence, their activities are often confused with other activities. for example, the same cbea group is been used by adra in the communities to disseminate and educate communities on health related issues. cbeas and linkages with stakeholders cbeas also facilitate and link communities to external agents and partners for other technical and agronomic practices that are beyond their capacities. the cbea groups acknowledged that there were very strong linkages between them and the community as well as other stakeholder. however, they seem to have weak relationship with stakeholders such as, mofa, fsd in the district. very strong weak very weak figure 3: cbeas and linkages with stakeholders source: field data, 2011 the groups of cbeas visited acknowledged that there is a very strong linkage between them, the community, and the nandom agricultural project (nap). community institutions such as the chiefs, sub-chiefs, and the „magazia‟ and youth leaders are very supportive of the cbeas and facilitate their work by mobilizing people for the dissemination and sharing of information. they have weak links with district assembly and ngos. these weak relationships were manifested during an interview with the director of mofa. even though mofa acknowledged the laudable idea of the cbes they think they have not been involved adequately in their activities. interview with the mofa director indicates that apart from few meetings attended at the presbyterian agricultural station, at no stage in the formation process of the cbeas were they involved. in support of this, the mofa district assembly community fsd cbeas ngos nap promoting community-based extension……. 88 director said “we do not know of the operation of cbeas providing extension services, if we were aware, my boys would have been providing backstopping.” engagement with the da also shows that they are broadly aware of the partnership between care and nap in the activities of the cbeas but are not knowledgeable of the existence and the functioning of the cbeas. they indicated strong links with nap as reported by the district coordinating director, “they invite as for workshops, we also consider them as one of our decentralized departments, therefore our links with them are very strong”. even though communities reported association of church development projects (acdep) providing services to them, they seem to have very weak linkages with the cbeas. their strategy has been direct engagement with the community. institutional structures for the functioning of cbeas figure 4 shows the structural relationship for the functioning of the cbeas in the study district. in the structure, the spiritual world is seen as the driving force that regulates their performances as well as other institutions they work with. the chief, placed at the highest level of the structure, is the traditional political figure who performs administration and judiciary functions in relation to the cbes. according to millar (2003) the power position of the chief is mitigated by several parallel institutional structures. the spiritual world has a strong link with the tindana and institutions such as the rain makers, soothsayers, diviners, fetish priest and sorcerers that has a spiritual role to play in the cbes delivery but a weak link with the chief. the study shows that, tindanas are the descendants of the pioneer settlers and the ultimate authority regarding land and its resources in the district. they are therefore the only ones who are supposed to know and are known to the spirits of the land. figure 4: structure supporting the functioning of cbeas source: field survey, 2011 spiritual world: founders of the village/ancestral spirits, gods/spirits of the dead the chief tindana (land owners) rain makers, soothsayers, diviners, fetish priest, sorcerers etc. magaziacbeas sectional heads-cbeas clan headscbeas government institutions, ngo, intervention packages household/family heads-cbeas asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 76-95 89 the clan and sectional heads who are also members of the cbeas described in focus group discussions in the above structure as performing sacrifices, managing sacred grove, allocating household lands to individuals and families and hold land and its resources in trust at the household level. the family/household heads are empowered by the support of their family members. the families/individuals from the land holding groups hold the customary free hold interests in land (kasanga, 1994). a stranger, not-subject of a clan, tribe or, „skin‟, who wishes to acquire land must first seek the permission of a chief to settle in the area. if permission is granted, the stranger may contact any land holder or, most frequently, a family head for land as a gift or on some contractual basis. these same structures, according to respondents are also used for conflict prevention, resolution and management that borders on the operations of cbeas in the district. down the structure are service providers, both from governmental and non-governmental organizations who were disclosed as collaborating with the above institutions in the area of advocacy, policy influencing and formulation in relation to the functioning of the cbeas role of major stakeholders in the promotion of the cbes the study identified various stakeholders in the study area who are seen performing various roles in the district for effective functioning of the cbes which are summed in table 4. table 4: stakeholders and roles under the cbes stakeholders roles community institutions  identify cbes in the community  join and cooperate with cbeas for the effective execution of the cbes  identification of expects farmers to provide cbes  provide incentive support for cbeas. presbyterian agricultural station  provide necessary training in record keeping, communication skills, and field demonstration for cbeas  link cbeas with other stakeholders.  monitor the performance of the cbeas and provide refresher training. mofa  provide technical support in the area of crop and livestock production. forestry commission  provide training in tree management and nursery raising  guide cbeas to source seedlings from relevant institutions  supply cbeas with poly bags  give cbeas training in mixing soils and bagging seedlings district assembly  provide incentive support for cbeas  provide credit and input support to cbeas and the wider community. adra  support cbeas with mango seedlings source: field data, 2011 motivation to cbeas table 5 illustrates some of the things respondents mentioned motivates the cbeas to undertake their duties in order to ensure that the community based extension systems functions well. table 5: motivators to cbeas motivation frequency percent labour support in farming and building 39 31.2 sharing of seeds and other farm inputs with members 11 8.8 members are recognized and respected in the community 36 28.8 small payment for services offered to farmers e.g. de-worming 11 8.8 financial support from credit unions – loans 17 13.6 promoting community-based extension……. 90 unity among members 11 8.8 total 125 100.0 source: field data, 2011 from table 5, it can be seen that 31.2 percent of the respondents indicated that labour support in farming and building are the most motivational factors mentioned by the cbeas. other forms of motivation mentioned includes; sharing of seeds and other farm inputs with members (8.8%); members recognized and respected in the community (28.8%), small payments for services offered to farmers (8.8%), financial support from credit union-loans(13.6%) and unity among members (8.8%). cbeas indicated that they were not motivated in the form of cash but their enthusiasm to work for the development of their communities was paramount. to support this, one participant (cbea) in tempiela, alhassan quotes this from a beneficiary during one of their community sessions: “at first we used to say that we are going to buy an animal and rear and leave it to fend on its own in our houses. this did not connote any care for the animals that we were raising. livestock management was generally poor. but now, there is a business mind to it and animals stocks are better taken care of”. this statement according to the cbeas inspires them to work hard. other issues of motivation that came up are as follows; security in belonging to the group, in bad times other group members come to help, individual members benefits from training (personal development), reduced outbreak of livestock mortality, cooperation and encouragement from the chief, reduced livestock theft cases, and the ability to share and solve own problems. perception about community-based extension agents (cbeas) from the research it was revealed that 92.2percent of respondents indicated that their expectations upon hearing about the cbeas for the first time in the community have been met. it was revealed however, that those who indicated that their expectation has not been met (7.8%) did not actually understand the concept of the cbeas properly. some of the things respondents mentioned as their expectations upon hearing about the cbeas for the first time in the community include; improvement in livestock health, increased in crop yield, financial and inputs support to farmers such as fertilizer, improved seeds, build capacity of farmers to improve on their farming and animal production practices. some of the reasons respondents stated to buttress their claim whether their expectations have been met or not are shown in table 6. table 6: reasons why respondent’s expectations have been met or not reasons frequency percent animal health has improved in the community 25 21.2 crop yield has increased 18 15.3 support has been given to farmer groups such as small ruminants, bullocks and donkey cats 24 20.3 farmers have been trained on livestock management skills 26 22.1 farmer groups have been linked to stakeholders/agencies for financial support 11 9.3 food aid was provided as expected to farmers 11 9.3 cbeas are not paid as i expected 3 2.5 total 118 100.0 source: field data, 2011 from table 6, only 2.5 percent of respondents stated that the cbeas are not paid as they expected. this reflects the opinion of the 7.8 percent who said their expectation was not met. as noted, such people did not understand the concept of the cbes and therefore expected that the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 76-95 91 cbeas would to be employed by the implementing organization and paid as full time workers. the findings have also confirmed that the community-based extension system (cbes) piloted by care as an alternative to formal extension service delivery has been found to be appropriate in achieving its objective of increasing access to extension services for poor rural farmers. clearly, farmers were able to share their opinions on some of the benefits of the cbes as against the formal system of extension as presented in table 7. table 7: benefits of cbeas against the formal system of extension benefits frequency percent cbeas are always in the community and easy to reach for their services thereby reaching out to many farmers 36 38.3 the use of local resources 8 8.5 the use of indigenous knowledge and methods 21 22.3 free or low cost for paying for services 5 5.3 groups are linked to stakeholders and agencies for help in various forms such as loans, seeds, fertilizer 12 12.8 strong and caring relationship with stakeholders and partners e.g. care, pas-l 6 6.4 many farmers now know how to identify and treat common diseases of animals due to continuous training 6 6.4 total 94 100.0 source: field data, 2011 from the table 7, one can say 38.3 percent of the respondents acknowledged that the cbeas reach out to more farmers than the formal system of extension service delivery. this confirms the argument put forward in the problem statement of this dissertation that, one of the reasons care international piloted the cbes was due to the fact that the formal system of extension service delivery (i.e. mofa) has not been able to reach out to many farmers resulting in high extension agent to farmer ratio estimated at 1:1500. another significant point worth noting is the fact that, 22.3 percent of respondents noted that the cbes uses indigenous knowledge and methods in the delivery of extension services. this is an important factor in determining the acceptability of technologies and improved farming methods in communities. indeed, in recent times the use of local resource and indigenous knowledge is topical in major development dialogues. summary, conclusions and recommendations the main findings of the study are;  the modal age group of the farmers is the elderly within age group 30-39. reasons were attributed to gerontocracy in the traditional leadership system which allows for the elderly in succession as a result of their experiential knowledge in various fields of authority.  the predominantly cultural practice is subsistence farming. majority of respondents (59.7%) are into farming as the main occupation. shea-butter processing (4.8%) constitutes the third most important occupation in the district. charcoal production constitutes a small proportion (2.4%) of the occupation of the farmers. the remaining 33.1percent of the respondent were cbeas.  the most dominant extension services delivery carried out by the cbeas in the entire study area were in crop production, livestock production and bushfire management.  in crop production, specific activities engaged by farmers include; manure harvesting, composting, striga management, refuse dump management for manure, bonding and agroforestry.  in livestock production activities identified include; de-worming, animal traction, housing, feed storage and preparation of local salt leak promoting community-based extension……. 92 and medication of livestock and environmental management practices been the main concerns for bushfire management.  membership of the cbeas is mainly residents of the community who offer voluntary services. the criteria for selecting members among others include; being a members of the community, preparedness to offer voluntary services, proven expertise in crop and livestock production and ability to work with other members outside the group.  the cbeas reach out to community members on new farming and animal husbandry practices through information dissemination, sensitization at group meetings in their communities.  the cbeas were found to be the main link between the community and external agents. it was however, reported that they have strong links with the community and ngos (pas-l) but weak links with da, mofa and fsd.  the study identified institutions such as traditional authorities, the district assembly, ministry of food and agriculture, the forestry services commission and the presbytarian agricultural station among others as performing various roles in the district to enhance effective implementation of the cbes.  some motivations for work in the district by the cbeas were enumerated as follows; the desire to make a change in the lives of their community members was a key motivation for their work, the praises they also receive from the traditional authorities and the community for the good things they are doing gives boost their moral to work harder, community members are very co-operative and willing to give their support to enhance their performance the fact that they have been recognized by the district assembly, pas-s and mofa as partners in development is a motivation for work, immediate response of community members when call upon to assist cbeas on their farms;  the study found that 92.2percent of respondents indicated that their expectations about the cbeas in the district have been met to a large extent. reason for saying their expectations have been met among includes; improvement in livestock health, increased crop and livestock yields, financial and inputs support to farmers such as fertilizer, improved seeds, link between crop cultivation and animal production clearer now build capacity of farmers to improve on their farming and animal production practices. the following conclusions were drawn from the study:  there are vibrant community based extension agents established providing extension services in crop, livestock and environmental issues in the study district. traditional institutions and beneficiaries are supportive and effectively involved in the implementation of the cbes. farmers groups are linked to external agents and other stakeholders for access to credit facilities. these credits are used in the purchase of farm inputs and improved variety of planting seeds.  the most dominant extension services delivery carried out by the cbeas in the study area were in crop production, livestock production and bushfire management; and  the cbeas were found to be the main link between the community and external agents based on the findings, the following recommendations are made;  to ensure sustainability and also provide the necessary motivation for cbeas to be interested in delivering efficient services, there is the need to link cbeas to relevant institutions/organizations for support or facilitate pilot communities to put in place mechanisms of generating the necessary funds to support their activities;  the need to strengthen the capacity of the cbeas to provide holistic extension services through dialogue with mofa;  roles of cbeas are confused with other roles. other ngos using the same cbea group in their service delivery and providing incentives subsume their roles as cbe service providers. the need to separate cbeas from existing groups in communities;  the need to forge functional collaboration with coordinating units of the district assembly as well as the decentralized departments (mofa asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 76-95 93 and fc) such that they can have the motivation to offer the necessary support services to cbeas. they seem not to be properly involved in implementation of the cbes. partnership with other organizations (mofa and fc) will work better when the relationship transcends beyond informal relationship; and  that stakeholders should intensify community sensitization and awareness creation. as noted above some communities still cling to the old unproductive farming practices. hence continuous training and education of communities would help create their awareness to abandon unproductive ways of farming and adopt new and improved farming technologies. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references arokoyo, t. 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(1991). strengthening indigenous nigerian organizations and associations for rural development. occasional paper no 1. roskilde university, denmark. warren, d. m., & rajasekaran, b. (1993). networking for indigenous knowledge. indigenous knowledge and development monitor, 1(1), 2-4. world bank (1998). taking action to reduce poverty in sub-saharan africa. world bank publication. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 4 april 2013. † corresponding author acknowledgements: authors thank to rector of universitas padjadjaran that had provided research funding through the scheme of doctoral dissertation grant, alsoahmad chandra nugraha and saeful bachriwho had supported the implementation of this study. rhizobacteria selection to enhance spore germination and hyphal length of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in vitro cecep hidayat † (agrotechnology department, faculty of science and technology, state islamic university sunan gunung djati bandung, indonesia) dedeh h. arief, ane nurbaity and jajang sauman (faculty of agriculture universitas padjadjaran, indinesia) citation: cecep hidayat, dedeh h. arief, ane nurbaity and jajang sauman (2013) “rhizobacteria selection to enhance spore germination and hyphal length of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in vitro”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 199-204. rhizobacteria selection to enhance spore ... 199 author(s) cecep hidayat agrotechnology department, faculty of science and technology, state islamic university sunan gunung djati bandung, indonesia dedeh h. arief, ane nurbaity and jajang sauman faculty of agriculture universitas padjadjaran, indonesia rhizobacteria selection to enhance spore germination and hyphal length of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in vitro abstract in natural condition, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (amf) are surrounded by bacteria that help fungi symbiosis. the research aimed to get rhizobacteria that can act as mycorrhiza helper bacteria (mhb) had been held at soil biology and biotechnology laboratory faculty of agriculture unpad from february to march 2012. the experimental design used was completely randomized design with 11 treatments (bo= without rhizobacteria, b1= pseudomonas diminuta, b2 = bacillus alvei, b3 = b. mycoides, b4 = p. malei, b5= p. diminuta + b. alvei, b6 = p. diminuta + b. mycoides, b7 = p. diminuta + p. malei, b8 = b. alvei + b. mycoides, b9 = b. alvei + p. malei, b10= b. mycoides + p. malei) with 3 replications. parameters evaluated were spore germination percentage and hyphal length of glomus sp at 7, 14, 21, and 28 day after planting. the result showed that p. diminuta enhanced spore germination percentage and hyphal length of glomus spas much as 224 % and 330%respectively than control. so, p. diminuta can be used as mhb. keywords: amf, glomus sp, hyphal length, mhb, spore germination introduction almost all tropical plants can be infected by arbuskula mycorrhiza fungi (amf) and many of them are very responsive to the amf. only a few families and genera of plants that cannot form the structure of amf, such brassicaceae(root exudates are toxic to the amf), caryophyllaceae, cyperaceae, juncaceae, chenopodiaceae, and amaranthaceae (cardoso and kuyper, 2006). amf increases absorption of nutrients, especially the immobile ones (p, cu, and zn), and increases absorption of required water for plant through extra-radical hyphae tissue. in addition, amf increases plant resistance to pathogen attack, improve soil aggregation and form symbiosis with other soil microbes. when amf forms symbiotic associations with plant roots, the microbes will directly interact with other organisms in the soil, or indirectly affect the physiology of host plants such change root morphology and exudation patterns into the mycorrhizo sphere. one important organ for amf to perform its function is external hyphae. the existence of external hyphae, besides increased nutrient uptake from the root zone of host plant, also expands area to interact with other microorganisms and as assimilate translocation pathway from the host plant to the soil. according to frey-klett et al. (2007), under natural condition, mycorrhizal fungi are surrounded by complex bacterial community that help symbiotic fungi. these bacteria communities are found most in glomus. artursson et al. (2006) stated that there are two groups of bacteria that interact with amf in mycorrhizosphere, i.e. saprophyte and symbionts, both of which can be neutral, harmful, or beneficial. furthermore, hildebrandt et al. (2005) noted only grampositive bacteria (generally paenibacillus ssp and bacillusssp) that associate with fungal hyphae. garbaye (1994) stated that bacteria with ability to enhance root colonization or promote hyphae growth, called mycorrhiza helper bacteria (mhb). this mhb plays role in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 199-204 200 ectomycorrhiza and endomycorrhiza. xavier and germida (2003) obtained several bacteria which stimulate spore germination. according to barea et al. (2005) rhizobacteria produce compounds that can increase root exudation rate, which in turn will stimulate the mycelia of amf on rhizo sphere or facilitate root penetration by fungi. several rhizobacteria collection of soil biology and biotechnology laboratory faculty of agriculture unpad isolated from various plants and different ecosystems belonging to genus pseudomonas and bacillus need to be tested for their ability to enhance germination and hyphal length as part of phase on generating bacterial inoculum and amf consortium in order to improve soil physical character and plant growth. methods experiment conducted in soil biology and biotechnology laboratory faculty of agriculture unpad and laboratory of food crops protection and horticulture institute west java from february to march 2012. the experiment used completely randomized design consisted of 11 treatments and 3 replications, as follows: bo = without rhizobacteria,b1= pseudomonas diminuta, b2= bacillus alvei, b3= b. mycoides, b4= p.malei, b5= p. diminuta + b. alvei, b6 = p. diminuta + b. mycoides, b7 = p. diminuta + p. malei, b8 = b. alvei +b. mycoides, b9 = b.alvei+ p. malei , b10= b. mycoides + p. malei surface of fresh spores of glomus sp was sterilized in solution of 20 g chloramines t per liter, 200 mg streptomycin per liter and 1 liter of tween 80 per liter for 20 minutes and then washed five times in sterile water. bacteria strains were grown on nutrient agar (na) medium at temperature of 28 o c for 48 hours. moreover, bacteria suspension apt with treatment as much as 100 ml equivalent with 10 -8 cfu ml -1 was spread on petri dish surface (diameter 9) which containedagar liquid (0.8% bacto agar difco) with ph 7. six spores of amf that had been sterilized next transferred individually to petri dish which had been inoculated with rhizo bacteri isolates, and placed at hexagonal points with each side length of 3.5 cm. petri dish taped with plastic wrap and incubated at temperature 24°c in dark condition for 28 days. parameter observations, spore germination percentage and length of external hyphae at 7, 14, 21, and 28 days after inoculation, were observed using an inverted microscope zeis prima vert with magnification 100 times. hyphae length was measured using axio vision software. data were analyzed using daastat version 7. results and discussion percentage of spore germination in vitro percentage of spore germination without rhizobacteria and inoculated with rhizobacteria either single or double showed different patterns. spore germination percent age for without rhizobacteria treatment indicated fixed value since the beginning until the end of observation. meanwhile, the percentage of spore germination inoculated with rhizo bacteria showed improvement for each observation time (table 1). table 1: effect of rhizobacteria on spore germination percentage of amf in vitro at 7, 14, 21, 28 dap rhizobacteria spore germination percentage (%) 7 dap 14 dap 21 dap 28 dap without rhizobacteria 15,89 a 15,89 a 15,89 a 15,89 a b. alvei 15,89 a 24,12 b 27,83 a 35,25 b p. diminuta + b. mycoides 15,89 a 15,89 a 27,83 a 27,83 b p. malei 20,01 a 31,54 b 31,54 b 38,49 c b. alvei + b. mycoides 20.01 a 27,83 b 31,54 b 31,54 b b.mycoides 24,12 b 27,83 b 27,83 a 31,55 b b.alvei +p. malei 27,83 b 27,83 b 27,83 a 27,83 b rhizobacteria selection to enhance spore ... 201 p. diminuta + p.malei 27,83 b 27,83 b 31,54 b 35,25 b p. diminuta+ b. alvei 27.83 b 27,83 b 31,54 b 31,54 b b. mycoides +p. malei 27,83 b 27,83 b 38,49 b 38,49 c p. diminuta 35,25 b 45,00 c 45,00 c 51,51 d explanation: numbers followed by same letter are not significantly different based on scot-knott at real level 5 %. single and double rhizobacteria inoculation increased the percentage of spore germination about 51.79% to 121.77% compared with no inoculation of rhizobacteria at 7 dap. at 14 dap observation, both single and double inoculation of rhizobacteri increased the percentage of spore germination about 75.14% to 183.20% compared to the control, except for b. malei and p. diminuta + b. malei. on observation at 21 dap, two treatments of single rhizobacteria and four treatments of double rhizobacteria increased the percentage of spore germination about 98.49% to 183.20% compared with no rhizobacteria inoculation. rhizobacteria inoculation either single or double increased percentage of spores germination at the end of observation (28 dap). the increase in percentage of spore germination ranged from 75% to 224%. p. diminuta increased the percentage spores germination as the highest. rhizobacteria influence on spore germination percentage in vitro at 7,14,21, and 28 days after planting entirely can be seen in figure 1. figure 1: the influence of rhizobacteria on spore germination percentage inoculation of single or double rhizobacteria increased spore germination of glomus sp. at 7 dap observation; the highest increase was generated by p. diminuta. this type of rhizobacteria consistently increases spore germination at 14, 21 and 28 days after planting observations. other rhizobacteria given either single or double promoted spore germination at 14 and 21 days after planting. finally, all rhizobacteria increased spore germination at 28 dap with increase ranged from 75% to 224% compared with no microbe inoculation. 35.24 45 45 51 27.82 38.49 38.49 27.82 27.82 24.12 31.54 20 31.53 31.53 38.49 15.89 15.89 27.82 27.82 15.89 23.71 34.78 15.89 15.89 15.89 15.89 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 7 hst 14 hst 21 hst 28 hst pseudomonas diminuta bacillus mycoides +psedomonas malei pseudomonas diminuta+ bacillus alvei pseudomonas diminuta + pseudomonas malei bacillus alvei +psedomonas malei bacillus mycoides bacillus alvei + bacillus mycoides pseudomonas malei asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 199-204 202 figure 2 shows glomus sp spore without rhizobacteria inoculation that has not germinated (left) and has germinated because of p.diminuta inoculation (right) figure 2: spore without inoculation (left) and with inoculation of p. diminuta (right) at 28 days after planting amf hyphae length in vitro inoculation of rhizobacteria either single or double succeeded to increase the length of hyphae at 7, 14, 21, and 28 days after planting observations by 86.67% to 300% compared to controls (table 2). table 2: influence of rhizobacteria on amf hyphae length in vitroat 7, 14, 21, and 28 dap rhizobacteria hyphae length (mm) 7 dap 14 dap 21 dap 28 dap withoutrhizobacteria 0,015 a 0,028 a 0,041 a 0,057 a b. alvei 0,028 b 0,046 b 0,065 b 0,079 b b. mycoides 0,028 b 0,037 a 0,079 b 0,011 d p. diminuta + b. mycoides 0,036 c 0,053 b 0,080 b 0,098 c p. diminuta + p. malei 0,051 d 0,058 b 0,074 b 0,095 c b. mycoides +p. malei 0,061 e 0.096 c 0,117 c 0,126 e b. alvei + p. malei 0,068 f 0,096 c 0,110 c 0,152 g b. alvei + b.mycoides 0,068 f 0,104 c 0,127 d 0,141 f p. diminuta 0,071 f 0,129 d 0,159 f 0,228 i p. diminuta +b. alvei 0,092 g 0,099 c 0,141 e 0,179 h p. malei 0,093 g 0,110 c 0,133 d 0,149 g explanation: numbers followed by same letter are not significantly different based on scot-knott at real level 5 %. inoculation of rhizobacteria either single or double increased hyphae length of glomus sp grown in vitro at 7 dap. the increase occurred between 87% and 520% compared with no inoculation. the highest increase was due to inoculation of p. malei. rhizobacteria inoculation both single and double increased hyphae length of glomus sp grown in vitro at 14 dap, except for b. mycoides. the increase of hyphae length ranged from 64.29% to 360%. p. diminuta promoted the increase hyphae length at most. single or double rhizobacteria inoculation increased hyphae length of glomus sp grown in vitro at 21 dap between 59% until 288% compared to without inoculation. p. diminuta demonstrated as the best rhizobacteria species on triggering hyphae length. at the last observation (28 dap) single and double rhizobacteria inoculation increased the hyphae length of glomus sp grown in vitro. isolates of rhizobacteria could increase the hyphae length of glomus sp between 38.60% and 300% each because of b. alvei and p. diminuta inoculation compared to without inoculation. the hyphae length of glomus sp given either single or double rhizobacteria was higher than rhizobacteria selection to enhance spore ... 203 that without rhizobacteriaat7, 14, 21, and 28 days after planting observations. among the tested rhizobacteria, p. diminuta increased the hyphae length of glomus sp as the highest of 300% compared with no inoculation. the rhizobacteria influence on hyphae length of glomus sp in vitro 7, 14, 21, and 28 dap entirely can be seen in figure 3. figure 3: rhizobacteria influence on hyphae length of glomus sp. rhizobacteria inoculation can increase the percentage of spore germination and hyphae length of glomus sp in vitro, this is along with research result of pivato et al. (2009) that found without bacteria inoculation, spore germination isonly1.04% and hyphae length is 57 mm, and when inoculated with bacteria strains included to oxalobacteraceae and comamonadaceae family, it obtains spore germination of glomusmosseae between 12.93% to 44.12% and hyphae length 7.66 to 17.62 mm. the bacteria strains, which are able to manage increase on spores germination and hyphae length, belong to family oxalo bacteraceae that are isolated from mycorrhizal plant roots. the effectiveness of bacteria strains in improving spore growth depends on the species; it is proved that the same bacteria strains produce not significantly different spore germination and hyphae length of gigasporaroseae. in this experiment, the increase in spore germination and hyphae length by rhizobacteria could be seen from the differences in auxin (iaa) level produced by rhizobacteria. p. diminuta produced the lowest iaa (80.33 ppm) compared to other rhizobacteria either single or double (table 3). table 3: analysis of iaa released by rhizobacteria rhizobacteria iaa -ppm p.diminuta 80.33 b. alvei 191.27 b. mycoides 100.44 p. malei 98.22 p.diminuta+ b.alvei 165.58 p.diminuta + b. mycoides 191.27 p.diminuta +p.malei 176.78 0 0.0005 0.001 0.0015 0.002 0.0025 7 hst 14 hst 21 hst 28 hst tanpa rhizobakteri bacillus alvei bacillus mycoides pseudomonas diminuta + bacillus mycoides pseudomonas diminuta + pseudomonas malei bacillus mycoides +pseudomonas malei bacillus alvei + pseudomonas malei asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 199-204 204 b.alvei+b.mycoides 209.02 b.alvei + p.malei 160.95 b.mycoides+p. malei 132.25 hormone can stimulate in low concentration and inhibit in high concentration. this is in line with research of kaneko and tanimoto (2009) who obtained iaa at nanomolar concentration of 10 -9 m given to in vitro agar medium to stimulate hyphal length of gigaspora margarita and vice versa at micromolar concentrations (10 -7 10 -3 m) which inhibits. hyphae length on application of 10 -9 m iaa is 5.5 cm after 10 days incubation and decreased with increasing concentrations up to 10 -4 m iaa, which is 0.3 cm. likewise, spore germination experience improvement by the presence of iaa at nanomolar doses but at micromolardoses inhibit germination of g. fistulosum. based on the percentage of spore germination and hyphal length at four time observations, it was obtained that p. diminuta succeeded in increasing the two parameters as the highest compared to other rhizobacteriawhich was given either single or double, so it can be concluded that p. diminutacan act as mhb. conclusion and recommendations conclusion p. diminuta succeeded in increasing the percentage of spore germination and hyphae extension of glomus sp planted in vitro thus categorized as mhb. recommendations p. diminuta should be examined by inoculating it together with glomus sp in vivo condition to see its effect on improvement of soil characteristics (physical, chemical and biology), also on growth and yield of plant. references artursson, veronica, roger, d., finlay & janet, k. janssons (2006). interaction between arbuscularmycorrhizal fungi and bacteria and their potential for stimulating plant growth. environmental microbiology, 8(1), 1-10. barea, jose-miguel., marı a jose pozo, rosario azco & concepcio azco n-aguilar (2005). microbial co-operation in the rhizosphere. journal of experimental botany, 56(417), 1761–1778. cardoso, irene m. & thomas w. kuyper (2006). mycorrhizas and tropical soil fertility. agriculture, ecosystem and environment, 116, 72 – 84. frey-klett, p., j. garbaye, & tarkka (2007). the mycorrhiza helper bacteria revisited. new phytologist, 176, 22-36. garbaye, j. (1994). helper bacteria – a new dimension to the mycorrhizal symbiosis. new phytologist, 128, 197–210. hildebrandt, ulrich, fouad ouziad, franzjosef manner & hermann bothe (2005). the bacterium paenibacillusvalidus stimulates growth of the arbuscularmycorrhizal fungus glomusintrardices up to the formation of fertile spores. fems microbiollett, 254, 258267. kaneko, michiyodan eiichi tanimoto (2009). auxin-regulation of hyphal elongation and spore germination in arbuscularmycorrhizal fungus, gigaspora margarita. international symposium “root research and applications” root rap, 2-4 september 2009, boku-vienna, austria. pivato, barbara., piere offre, sara marchelli, bruno barbonaglia, christophe mougel, philippe lemanceau & graziella berta (2009). bacterail effects on arbuscullarmycorrhizal fungi and mycorrhiza development as influenced by bacteria, fungi, and host plant. mycorrhiza, 19, 81-90. xavier, l. j. c. & germida, j. j. (2003). selective interactions between arbuscularmycorrhizal fungi and rhizobium leguminosarumbv.viceae enhance pea yield and nutrition. biolfertil soils, 37, 261-267. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 622 the effect of nitrogen and sulfur addition on bioethanol solid waste fermented by the consortium of trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae towards dry materials, organic materials, crude protein and non nitrogen protein yani suryani department of biology, faculty of science and technology, the state islamic university of sunan gunung djati of bandung. indonesia iman hernaman, ana rochana, ayu setiawati and gilang dayinta paramarta department of animal husbandry, padjadjaran university, jl. raya bandung-sumedang km.21, jatinangor, indonesia poniah andayaningsih department of biology, padjadjaran university, jl.raya bandung-sumedang km.21, jatinangor, indonesia abstract the aim of this study is to determine the effect of supplementation of nitrogen and sulfur in bioethanol solid waste fermentation by a consortium of trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae to dry matter, organic matter, crude protein and non-protein nitrogen. experimental design used was a complete-random design factorial 3x3 patterns. the treatment consists of; first factor (n1 = 0%, n2 = 1.5%, n3 = 3%) and the second factor (s1 = 0%, s2 = 0.02%, s3 = 0.04%) in which each treatment was repeated three times. the results showed that there was an interaction in the bioethanol solid waste which was fermented by a mixture of trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae on dry matter and organic matter. the addition of nitrogen at a dose of 3% produced dry matter and organic matter within the average value of 65.56% and 63.81%. the addition of sulfur at a dose of 0.04% produced dry matter and organic matter within the average value of 59.67 and 57.58%. the addition of 1.50% nitrogen without giving sulfur can increase the crude protein content of the substrate (p <0.05) significantly, whereas the non-protein nitrogen content of each treatment have different effects and not real. the results showed 1.5% urea to provide optimal results. keywords: nitrogen, sulfur, trichoderma viride, saccharomyces cerevisiae, dry matter, organic matter, crude protein, non-nitrogen protein introduction 1 according to abdoil (subandi, 2012b) biotechnologists have been succeeding in developing bio-fuel production. it is suggested not to convert edible vegetative to bioethanol. 1 corresponding author’s details: name: yani suryani email address: yan_dikha@yahoo.com all of these vegetative are food for human consumption. even the waste product of bioethanol must be further processed for animal feed. bioethanol process produces solid waste and liquid waste. solid waste which still has a fairly high potential for biomass can be used as animal feed. based on the analysis in ruminant nutrition laboratory of food chemistry and faculty of animal husbandry, padjadjaran university, solid waste for bioethanol asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:yan_dikha@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 622-631 623 production process still contains protein 2.47%, and 83.94% betn which is potentially used as a concentrate (suryani et al., 2013). however, if the waste is fed singly addition to ruminants is still lack of protein; therefore, it needs to be done to improve the quality of fermentation process. the great potential of microorganisms in improving the quality of the organic waste into food has been known for a long time, due to the aim of solving the feed shortage and preventing the environmental pollution (apandi et al., 1984). environmental care is in line with the objective of scientific development for moslem as said by subandi (2012a) when they fail to find verse or sunnah for the source of their pursuit of knowledge ontologically or axiological islamic, their academic works should axiologically islamic. saccharomyces cerevisiae is a mold which is often used to feed bioconversion process. this utilization of saccharomyces cerevisiae is based on the ability of the microbes to produce vitamins, enzymes, and nutrients (dawson and alison, 1993), those contain a glutamic acid that can improve feed palatability, assimilate and secrete proteins essential amino acids and contains vitamin b complex (fardiaz, 1992). trichoderma viride is sometimes regarded as microorganisms which capable to break down the cellulose and has the ability to synthesize some essential factors to dissolve the cellulose that tied up by hydrogen bonds. trichoderma viride is a potential fungus which potentially produces cellulose in large amounts to degrade cellulose (mandels, 1970). the benefit of fungus in producing cellulose enzymes just because it can produce a complete cellulose which was required to hydrolyze crystalline cellulose and can produce fairly high protein (volk, 2004). most of microbes that are used in the fermentation can use either inorganic compound or organic compound as a nitrogen source. urea is one of the nitrogen non-protein sources which contain 45% nitrogen (parakkasi, 1995). this compound has the function in forming microorganism protein that is part of the protein, nucleic acids and enzymes (fardiaz, 1992). sulfur is a substance for the synthesis of amino acids (hendrick, 1961). the addition of sulfur to the substrate plays a role in metabolic sulfur and nitrogen. nitrogen retention would be optimal if the sulfur content is also optimal. the low level sulfur content will make use of nitrogen became also in a low level. during the fermentation process, the increasing water content of organic matter overhaul by enzymes produced microbes (winarno et al., 1980). changes in organic matter followed by change or loss / depreciation of the dry ingredients for the dry ingredients a food ingredient consisting of organic and inorganic materials (mcdonald et al., 1981). the utilization of nitrogen and sulfur by any type of mold will be in a different metabolism. consortium by the two types of fungi (saccharomyces cerevisiae and trichoderma viride) is expected to have competition. this utilization will conduct an interaction in the utilization of the nutrients that will lead to optimal proportions in certain doses. thus this will effect on the fermentation process and will changes dry matter, organic matter, crude protein and nitrogen non-protein substrates. materials and methods materials used in this study consist of solid waste, urea, sulfur, a consortium of trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae (4% of the substrate). this study was conducted with an experimental method and experimental design. it used a complete randomized design (crd) 3 x 3 factorial with three replications (gaspersz, 1995). the second factor is the level of urea supplementation with doses 0%, 1.5%, 3% and a sulfur level of supplementation with doses 0%, 0.02%, 0.04%. the process of making inoculums trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae can be described as follows: add 90 g rice flour, 10 g bioethanol solid waste and 100 ml of water into a plastic bag. then tie up and steam for 1 hour, then store it to a temperature of 27-30 ° c. then each of the fungus material put into different plastic as much as 1 ml and put into the steamed materials. stir it until smooth; the plastic perforated using a needle. the inoculums were asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 622-631 624 incubated for 7 days in a temperature of 3035 ° c. after that the inoculum was dried at a temperature of 40-50 ° c and milled. the process of bioethanol solid waste fermentation can be described as follows: put 100 g of bioethanol solid waste and 100 ml of distilled water into a plastic bag. then tie up the plastic and steam for 15 minutes, store it for 30 minutes until the moisture out and the waste is cold. next, the source of nitrogen (urea) and sulfur (na sulfate) was added according to treatment and then stir until smooth, a consortium of trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae added to the substrate, then stir until it all well blended and put them into plastic. the substrate is kept at room temperature for 7 days (oboh, 2006). finally, the fermentation products were dried in the oven, milled for analysis of crude protein and nitrogen non-protein by using kjedahl method. data analysis techniques this research was conducted with the experimental method that is the experiment using complete randomized design (crd) factorial 3 x 3 patterns with three replications (steel and torrie, 1980, gaspersz, 1995). the treatment consists of the addition of urea (n1 = 0%, n2 = 1.5%, n3 = 3%) and the addition of sulfur (s1 = 0%, s2 = 0.02%, s3 = 0.04%). then performed a print-variance analysis, which was followed by duncan’s multiple range test. results and discussion the average value of measured dry of bioethanol solid waste from each treatment and its repetition are presented in table 1. table 1: mean ingredients fermentation product dried solid waste bioethanol manufacturing nitrogen replay sulfur ((%) average (%) s1 s2 s3 n1 1 57.11 62.15 64.28 2 47.38 64.77 65.50 3 59.85 62.56 65.31 average 54.78 63.16 65.03 60.99 n2 1 67.58 79.72 55.76 2 64.24 75.25 59.86 3 61.02 78.35 51.57 average 64.28 77.77 55.73 65.93 n3 1 75.69 68.03 60.73 2 74.49 57.62 59.21 3 78.95 60.45 54.89 average 76.38 62.03 58.28 65.56 notes: n1: supplementation level of 0%, n2: supplementation level of 1.5%, n3: supplementation level of 3%, s1: supplementation level of 0%, s2: supplementation level of 0.02%, s3: supplementation level of 0.04%. based on table1 showed that the lowest dry matter content is obtained at 0% nitrogen addition treatment (n1) and sulfur 0% (s1) that is 54.78%, while the highest value obtained in 1,5% nitrogen addition treatment (n2) and sulfur 0.02 % (s2) with a mean value of 77.77%. based on print-variance analysis, showed the interaction between nitrogen and sulfur. both nitrogen and sulfur treatments provide significant differences (p <0.05) on a dry matter content. the interaction between nitrogen and sulfur occurred because the two molds were competed each other in using nitrogen and sulfur for their growth. these will effect on the substrate dry matter fermentation. the dry matter changes may occur due to mold growth, substrate asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 622-631 625 decomposition and moisture changes. the changes in water levels are caused by evaporation, substrate hydrolysis or metabolic water production (gervais, 2008). the duncan's multiple range tests is carried out to know the differences between each treatment. the addition of nitrogen treatment is presented in table 2. the table shows that the n1 treatment (nitrogen 0%) markedly lower (p <0.05) than n3 (nitrogen 3%) and n2 (nitrogen 1.5%). while n3 and n2 treatments showed no significant differences (p <0,05). table 2: duncan's multiple range test of treatment effect of nitrogen on dry ingredients. treatment mean (%) significance (0.05) n1 60.99 a n3 65.56 b n2 65.93 b description: the same letter in significance column indicates no significant difference (p> .05). n1: the level of supplementation of 0%, n2: supplementation level of 1,5%, n3: supplementation level of 3%. the increasing of dry matter content in the solid waste is thought utilized by the body molds for the synthesis of proteins that are part of the dry, so that the increasing protein content substrates can change the dry ingredients. increased protein occurs during the process of fermentation is caused by the presence of microbial activity due to the addition of proteins and the origin of mass due to growth of microbial cells (tangendjaja and pattyusra, 1993). based on the research dhalika, et al. (2003), nitrogen supplementation with a dose of 1.50% and 0.04% sulfur on the substrate of onggok fermentation by yeast has increased crude protein up to 6.44%. based on previous research, bioethanol solid waste which was fermented by a mixture of saccharomyces cerevisiae and trichoderma viride at doses 2%, for 8 days can increase the crude protein from 2.8% to 3.8 without giving minerals. the addition of sulfur also causes changes in dry ingredients, but the results are inversely related to treatment with the addition of nitrogen where high sulfur produces a low dry matter compared with no addition of sulfur (p <0.05), as shown in table 3. table 3: duncan's multiple range test of treatment effect of sulfur on dry ingredients treatment mean (%) significance (0.05) s3 59.67 a s1 65.14 b s2 67.65 b description: the same letter in column indicates no significance significantly different (p> 0.05) s1: supplementation level of 0%, s2: supplementation level of 0.02%, s3: supplementation level of 0.04% as a result, a lot of dry ingredients are converted into fermented products such as co2 and water, thus there is a decline in water levels of dry matter. energy metabolism which affected on the substrate utilization had changed the dry matter content. the mold growth is strongly influenced by the availability of sources of energy, sources of several minerals, n source, especially s and p. in its activity, the mold used carbohydrates as a source of carbon. the breakdown of carbohydrates will be followed by the release of energy, carbon dioxide and water. the heat released causes the substrate temperature increases. the more sulfur (0,04%), the more energy is used for mold’s growth so that the resulting of dry material would be lower. the average value of the measurement result of bioethanol organic solid waste materials are presented in table 4. based on the table it can be seen that the average organic matter content has a fluctuating change, the average content of organic matter derived from the lowest nitrogen asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 622-631 626 treatment with the addition of 0% (n1) and sulfur 0% (s1), whereas the mean value of the highest content of organic matter is derived from treatment with the addition of 1.5% nitrogen (n2) and 0.02% sulfur (s2). the result of the organic matter in the analysis of using print-variance shows the interaction on a combination of nitrogen and sulfur treatments and each treatment gave significant differences (p <0,05). duncan's multiple range tests was conducted to determine each treatment presented in tables 5 and 6. table 5 shows that the addition of nitrogen increases the organic matter content where n2 and n3 was significantly higher (p <0.05) than n1, while table 6 shows the provision of a higher sulfur (s3) at a dose of 0.04% produces the decline of organic materials. table 4: mean ingredients of organic content on bioethanol solid waste fermentation nitrogen replay sulfur (%) average s1 s2 s3 n1 1 55.87 60.87 61.47 2 44.41 61.21 62.33 3 58.71 59.68 63.92 average 53.00 60.59 62.57 58.72 n2 1 64.81 78.88 53.89 2 63.17 72.52 57.05 3 58.9 0 75.86 50.26 average 62.29 75.75 53.73 63.93 n3 1 74.76 66.71 58.42 2 72.76 55.37 58.09 3 77.35 58, 00 52.84 average 74.96 60.03 56.45 63.81 notes: n1: supplementation level of 0%, n2: supplementation level of 1.5%, n3: supplementation level of 3%, s1: supplementation level of 0%, s2: supplementation level of 0.02%, s3: supplementation level of 0.04%. similar with dry ingredients, the addition of nitrogen and sulfur treatments produced the same pattern on organic matter, because organic materials are part of the dry matter which was reduced by mineral. based on the analysis, minerals contained in bioethanol solid waste has a small value, so it does not have a major impact on overhaul of organic matter compared to the dry ingredients. therefore, the interaction is the same as the data of dry matter from the compet -etion due to the fungus in the use of both nitrogen and sulfur and organic matter substrates for their growth. the same case occurs in the addition of nitrogen in increasing the organic matter content (table 5). this is due to the nitrogen that is used by both the fungus to be a body protein, while the protein is part of the organic material. therefore, an increasing of protein will also increase the organic matter content. table 5: duncan's multiple range test of treatment effect of nitrogen on organic ingredients treatment mean (%) significance (0.05) n1 58.72 a n3 63.81 b n2 63.92 b description: the same letter significance column indicates no significant difference (p> 0.05) n1: the level of supplementation of 0%, n2: supplementation level of 1.5%, n3: supplementation level of 3% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 622-631 627 the analysis of sulfur also the same with the data on dry matter. the addition of sulfur can decrease the organic matter content. as explained in the dry ingredients, sulfur is used in the process of energy metabolism, so the addition of it can improve substrate fermentation which will effect on the decreasing of organic matter. table 6: duncan's multiple range test of treatment effect of sulfur on organic ingredients treatment mean (%) significance (0.05) s3 57.58 a s1 63.41 b s2 65.45 b description: the same letter in significance column indicates no significant difference (p> 0.05) s1: supplementation level of 0%, s2: supplementation level of 0.02%, s3: supplementation level of 0.04%. the average value of the analysis of the crude protein content of bioethanol solid waste fermented by a consortium of saccharomyces cerevisiae and trichoderma viride and its repetition are presented in table 7. table 7: mean protein content of coarse bioethanol solid waste fermentation factor n replay factor s average s1 s2 s3 n1 1 4.97 3.36 4.73 4.35 2 4.82 4.67 4.64 4.71 3 3.96 4.96 4.27 4.40 average 4.58 4.33 4.55 4.49 n2 1 12.97 7.93 7.04 9.31 2 13.14 12.39 13.79 13.11 3 12.97 11.27 9.08 11.11 average 13.11 10.53 9.97 11.18 n3 1 7.89 11.74 10.77 10.13 2 7.81 7.81 10.74 8.79 3 8.31 11.78 12.19 10.76 average 8.00 10.44 11.23 9.89 total flats 8.54 8.43 8.58 description: n1: 0% supplementation level s1: 0% supplementation level, n2: 1.5% supplementation level s2: 0.02% supplementation level, n3: 3% supplementation level s3: 0.04% supplementation level based on table 7, it can be seen that the average of crude protein content of bioethanol processing solid waste by a consortium of trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae is 4.33% 13.11%. the lowest crude protein content is obtained fr) of 4.33% while increasing om the treatment without the addition of nitrogen (n1) and 0.02% sulfur (s2 the value of the crude protein content is obtained from the treatment of 1.5% addition of nitrogen (n2) and sulfur 0% (s1) amounted to 13.11%. based on the calculation of print-variance, there is an interaction between nitrogen and sulfur (p <0.05) as well as the influence of nitrogen dose (p <0.05) crude protein content, but the sulfur dose had no significant effect (p> .05). the interaction between nitrogen and sulfur indicates that in a certain level, both of the two components affect the growth of the two fungi (trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae). these interactions occurred in the form of a combination between sulfur and nitrogen which produce a fluctuated crude protein values. the highest crude protein is obtained from treatment of n2s1 (1.5% urea and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 622-631 628 0% sulfur). this condition happened because nitrogen gave more affects the growth of fungi (trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae) than sulfur did, whereas sulfur produces a not significantly crude protein or it may that sulfur which is in the substrate have enough content for the both mold’s growth, so the addition of sulfur did not needed anymore. the difference between treatments was showed by duncan test (table 8). based on the test, it pointed that the higher the addition of urea, the higher the content of the crude protein. the increasing of the crude protein content value of bioethanol solid waste fermented by trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae is caused by the conversion of the adding urea into protein by the fungus. table 8: duncan's multiple range test of treatment effect of nitrogen on the crude protein content treatment mean protein content of coarse 0.05 significance n1 4.49 a n3 9.89 b n2 11.18 b note: different letters in signify column towards addressing significantly different (p <0.05) the process of starch bioconversion as the carbon source and the presence of non-protein nitrogen sources such as urea which is added to the media causing mold metabolic processes go hand in hand in supporting the growth of fungi that increase the substrate crude protein content. the presence of nitrogen supplementation on the substrate also affects the crude protein content of bioethanol solid waste fermented by trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae. the growth and the development of fungi required the element carbon and also nitrogen. nitrogen can be obtained from the degradation of nitrogen-containing compounds in the substrate (nuswantara et al., 2001). trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae can grow well because of the availability of the materials needed by the fungus, as proposed by pratitis (2010) that the growth of mold greatly influenced by the availability of energy sources, source n and some minerals, especially s and p. the increase of the crude protein content value of bioethanol solid waste by trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae occurs as a result of cooperation between trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae in solid waste bioethanol fermentation. trichoderma viride was able to increase the crude protein (phillipe, 2001) and saccharomyces cerevisiae can produce single cell protein content of crude protein in the range of 47-53% (suriawiria, 1985). the raising starch content in bioethanol solid waste and the presence of inorganic nitrogen sources urea which is added to the substrates caused the conversion of starch into cell protein lasts balanced in improving the quality of bioethanol solid waste. the amount of starch utilization for protein synthesis is affected by a process of fermentation that takes place in the system itself, i.e., the decomposition of starch into simple sugar monomers, the decomposition of urea into nh3 as the nitrogen source of readymade and the process of formation of the protein through a carbon-ammonia (r-nh3). the above three processes must occur simultaneously in order to obtain synergy and maximum results (wang et al., 1979). the average value of the analysis of non-protein nitrogen content of bioethanol solid waste fermentation along with the repetition presented in table 9. based on table 9, it can be seen that the average of nitrogen non-protein content of bioethanol solid waste fermentation product by trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae varies, ranging from 0.16% -0.58%. the optimal nitrogen non-protein content of bioethanol solid waste fermentation by trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae is about 0.16%. it is obtained from the addition of nitrogen treatments 0% (n1) and 0.04% sulfur (s3), while the value of nitrogen asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 622-631 629 non protein content of the highest of 0.58% is obtained from the addition of nitrogen treatment 3% (n3) and sulfur 0% (s1). the presence of non-protein nitrogen values came from bioethanol solid waste and the addition of urea. table 9: non-protein nitrogen content mean of bioethanol solid waste fermentation factor n replay factor s (%) average s1 s2 s3 n1 1 0.13 0.48 0.16 0.26 2 0.27 0.67 0.16 0.37 3 0.63 16 0.15 0.31 average 0.34 0.44 0.16 0.31 n2 1 0.38 0.53 0.08 0.33 2 0.62 0.70 0.60 0.64 3 0.16 0.39 0.41 0.32 average 0.39 0.54 0.36 0.43 n3 1 0.51 0.56 0.39 0.49 2 0.72 0.28 0.33 0.44 3 0.51 0.31 0.33 0.38 average 0.58 0.38 0.35 0.44 total flats 0.36 0.45 0.29 description: n1: 0% supplementation level s1: 0% supplementation level, n2: 1.5% supplementation level s2: 0.02% supplementation level, n3: 3% supplementation level s3: 0.04% supplementation level based on the results of print-variance, there is no interaction between nitrogen and sulfur (p > 0.05) or the dose of nitrogen and sulfur. the lack of effect of the addition of sulfur and nitrogen content of non-protein nitrogen urea is added allegedly utilized by fungi or partially lost during the process of fermentation, because urea is dissolved easily lost this was confirmed by the results of average content of non-protein nitrogen in the nitrogen addition treatment in below 1% and the same as the solid waste that is not given nitrogen. at the optimal fermentation process on the substrate nitrogen is converted by the fungus (combination between trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae) into proteins and little is left to be non-protein nitrogen, otherwise if urea is not optimally utilized by the fungus, so it will be many remaining nitrogen in the form of nonprotein nitrogen. the higher the level of nitrogen addition, the higher the content of pure protein. nitrogen which is derived from urea is used by microorganisms in the fermentation process is then broken down into ammonia compounds during the fermentation process. microorganisms combine with ammonia to form the products of carbohydrate metabolism and amino acid form of pure protein (stanton and whittier, 2010). microbes in the fermentation process can produce enzymes that can degrade complex compounds into simpler and synthesize proteins which are protein enrichment process (darmawan, 2006). based on this, it can be seen that most of nitrogen non-protein compounds in the form of pure nitrogen is converted into proteins in the form of microbial protein (dhalika et al., 2003). conclusion the addition of nitrogen and sulfur in bioethanol solid waste fermented by trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae generate the interaction on the content of dry matter and organic matter. the addition of nitrogen in bioethanol solid waste fermented by trichoderma viride and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 622-631 630 saccharomyces cerevisiae gave significant differences (p <0.05), the level of 3% produced dry matter and the highest organic matter, that is 65.56% and 63.81%. the addition of sulfur into bioethanol solid waste fermented by trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae produce dry matter and real organic (p <0,05). the decreasing of dry matter and organic matter are obtained from s3 treatment (0.04%) that is each of the mean value 59.67% and 57.58%. there is an interaction between nitrogen and sulfur supplementation on crude protein but not in the nitrogen non-protein. the supplementation of nitrogen at the level of 1.50% without the addition of sulfur in the fermentation of bioethanol solid waste by a consortium of trichoderma viride and saccharomyces cerevisiae can produce optimal crude protein for about 13.03%. the supplementation of sulfur up to 0.04% had no significant effect on the results of crude protein and nitrogen non-protein. references [aoac] association of official agricultural chemists. (1998). official methods of analysis of aoac international, 16th ed. aoac international. gaithersburg. apandi, m., ibrahim, s., ahmad, a., rini, b., purwo, s., sefina, r. j. t, angela, h., leni, m. and otto, n. (1984). bioconversion waste cassava being protein sources for livestock feed. directorate of research and development of the community. directorate general of higher education ministry of education and culture.18-23. darmawan (2006). effect of fermented cassava tuber skin against peanut goat view males. scientific journals sciences ranch, 9(2): 115-112. dawson, k. a. and m. j. alison. (1993). digestive disorders and nutritional toxicity. in the rumen microbial ecosystem. edited by p. n hobson and c. s. stewart, elsivier applied science. london. dhalika, t., b. ayuningsih and a. budiman (2003). composition nutrition products fermentation of onggok by yeast saccharomyces cerevisiae with nitrogen and sulfur supplementation. reports study of research department of university of padjadjaran, bandung. fardiaz, s. (1992). microbiology. department of education higher education directorate general of food and nutrition. pau. yogyakarta. gaspersz, v. (1995). mechanical analysis in experiment research. tarsito. bandung. gervais, p. (2008). water relations in solid state fermentation. in: pandey a, cr soccol, c. larroche, editor. current developments in solid-state fermentation. asia tech publisher inc. new delhi. hendrick, h. (1961). the incorporation of sulphate in the ruminal protein. arch. internal physiol., biochem. 64: 449-545. mandels, m. (1970). cellulases. in. g. t. tsao (ed) annual report on fermentation processes. 5. academic press. new york. mcdonald, p., r. a. edwards and j. f. d. greenhalgh (1981). animal nutrition. third ed. longman, new york. nuswantara, l. k., e. pangestu, m. christiyanto, s. and a. subrata (2001). the effect of fermentation using saccharomyces cereviceae to increase nutrient value of sorghum grain. j. indon. trop. anim. agric. dev. 26(1): 20 -26. oboh, g. (2006). nutrient enrichment of cassava peels using a mixed culture of saccharomyces cerevisiae and lactobacillus sp solid fermentation media techniques. electron. j. bioethanol 9(1): 46-49. parakkasi, a. (1995). sciences ruminant nutrition and food. publisher university of indonesia.jakarta. pratitis, w. s. s. (2010). inkorporasi sulfur dalam protein onggok melalui teknologi fermentasi menggunakan saccharomyces cerevisiae. universitas sebelas maret. pratitis, w. s. s. (2010). incorporation of sulfur in protein of onggok through fermentation technology with saccharomyces cerevisiae. university of sebelas maret. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 622-631 631 phillippe blanc (2001). biotechnology of fungi. published bio inep series. through http://nbimcc.org/bioinep/book/m% 201% 202.pdf [24/02/2007] stanton, t. l. and j. whittier. (2010). urea and npn. colorado state university. steel, r. g. d, and j. h. torrie (1980). principles and procedures analysis a biometrics approach. second edition. publisher pt. galamedia. subandi, m. (2012a). developing islamic economic production. science, technology and development, a quarterly journal, pakistan council for science & technology, 31(4): 348-358. subandi, m. (2012b). some notes of islamic scientific education development. international journal of asian social science, 2(7): 1005-1011. suriawiria, u. (1985). introduction to general microbiology. publisher space, bandung. suryani, yani., sumiyati sa’adah and ai fitriyani (2013). effect of using trichoderma viride to changes nutrients in the fermentation process solid waste cassava (manihot esculenta) postproduction of bioetanol. biodjati journal, 2(1): 56-65. tangendjaja, b. and p. pattyusra (1993). meal kernel oil and wheat pollard the fermented with rhizopus oligosporus for broiler. sciences and animal husbandry, 6(2): 30-33. volk, t. j. (2004). trichoderma viride, the dark green mold and parasitic jeans maker of fungal digested. http:// botit.botany. wisc. edu /toms fungi [25/01/2012]. wang, d. l. c., c. l. coney, a. l. demain, p. dunnil, a. f. rumherey, clan m. d. lily. (1979). fermentation and enzymes technology. john wiley and sons. new york. winarno, f. g., s. fardiaz, and d. fardiaz. (1980). introduction to food technology. pt. gramedia, jakarta. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&prev=_t&sl=id&tl=en&u=http://nbimcc.org/bioinep/book/m%2525201%2525202.pdf%255b24/02/2007 http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&prev=_t&sl=id&tl=en&u=http://nbimcc.org/bioinep/book/m%2525201%2525202.pdf%255b24/02/2007 publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2, no 3, september, 2012 motivations for women involvement in urban agriculture in nigeria adedayo adebisi (department of geography & environmental management, university of ilorin, nigeria) tunde afolabi monisola (department of geography & environmental management, university of ilorin, nigeria) citation: adedayo adebisi and tunde afolabi monisola (2012) “motivations for women involvement in urban agriculture in nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 337-343. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 337-343 337 author(s) adedayo adebisi department of geography & environmental management, university of ilorin, nigeria tunde afolabi monisola department of geography & environmental management, university of ilorin, nigeria email: afolabi@unilorin.edu.ng motivations for women involvement in urban agriculture in nigeria abstract poverty and food insecurity are some of the problems facing nigerian population and governments at various levels today. urban agriculture holds promise at solving these intractable problems. urban agriculture is a practice that takes place in all urban centres, but existing studies have not succinctly examined the involvement of women in agriculture in small urban centres of nigeria. the aim of this paper therefore, is to examine the motives behind involvement of women in urban agriculture in small agro-towns of kwara state, nigeria. a total of 1,801 women farmers were selected from 13 settlements cutting across 8 lgas. simple percentages, graphic illustrations, charts, tabulation and cross tabulation and stepwise multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the generated data. the study identifies three factors: food security, income supplement and accessibility to land, accounting for 98.6% as the best predictors of women involvement in urban agriculture. the study recommends that urban agriculture should be given official recognition by advocating for its support while women should be provided with financial resources to expand their farm plots. keywords: poverty, food security, urban agriculture and women farmers introduction introduction poverty and food insecurity are some of the challenges facing nigeria’s population and governments at various levels today. these problems are more serious in the urban than rural areas. this is because food expenditures can be as much as 60–80% of the total income of low income households in the urban areas (ruel et al., 1998). upon this, the urban poor still need to pay for other services and basic necessity of life that the income received cannot take care of. successive governments in the country have launched various programmes that were meant to curb food insecurity and alleviate poverty. some of the programmes could not withstand the test of time while some failed totally and this aggravates poverty and food insecurity. agricultural production holds promise at solving these problems. initially, agriculture contributes tremendously to economic development and food security of nigeria. in the early 1960s, agriculture employed over 80percent of the working population and contributed significantly to gross domestic product in nigeria. however, since the early 1970s the oil sector displaced agriculture while the able bodied men and youths moved from rural to urban areas in search of paid employment leaving very few people especially women in the rural areas to produce food for the nation. women have now become the main labour force in the rural areas due to the absence of men who seek jobs in urban areas (european commission, 1996). these women still perform agricultural operations with simple implements which cannot sustain their subsistence production let alone producing for the whole country. meanwhile, increasing population in the urban centers as a result of rural-urban migration and natural growth rate necessitated the need to feed more mouths. hence, there is the need to increase productivity since food produced in the rural areas cannot sustain the growing population. so in order to at least solve the food insecurity problem, women became the mailto:afolabi@unilorin.edu.ng motivations for women involvement…. 338 backbone of urban agriculture just like the rural areas. urban women went into farming so as to maintain livelihoods and contribute to household incomes through subsistence production and they even sell surplus for cash (hovorka, 2003). they are important in the translation of the products of a vibrant agriculture sector into food and nutritional security for their households. this background information provides an insight into the rationale for the involvement of women in urban agriculture in small towns of nigeria. for the purpose of this study, urban agriculture is defined as the “production of food and nonfood plant and tree crops and animal husbandry including livestock, fowl, fish, and snails both within (intra-) and fringe (peri-) built-up urban areas” (mougeot, 1994, p. 1). study area: small urban centres the growth of small urban areas in nigeria has been linked with urbanization process. this is as a result of movement of people from rural to urban areas for various reasons. for instance the fastest urbanization growth period in the world was experienced in nigeria after the creation of more states in 1967 and during the oil boom eras of 1970. a lot of people migrated from the rural to urban areas which led to the growth of larger, medium-sized and small towns in nigeria. while stressing the roles of mediumsized and small towns, okafor (1985) emphasized that these towns serve as a relief to big cities by absorbing population that are often experienced in the big cities. in an attempt to compare medium and small towns with larger towns, okafor also discovered that small and medium-sized towns blend both the urban and rural features sharing similar physical economic and social traits, except that the level and magnitude of economic and social activities differ. small urban areas evolved as a result of increasing population in the large urban centres. these are interface between large urban centres and rural areas. furthermore, small urban areas provide services to the rural areas and such include diffusion of information and ideas, distribution of imported consumer goods, supply of social services, provision of employment as well as food crop production and marketing of agricultural products among others, all which focus on urban development. however, for the purpose of this study small urban areas are towns with a population of between 5,000 and 20,000 people. in kwara state, the 1991 population census projected to 2001 revealed that there are forty-one (41) settlements with a population of between 5,000 and 20,000 people from thirteen (13) local government areas. this study therefore focuses on these settlements. it is also interesting to know that there are few large urban centres in kwara state and a large proportion of the urban settlements in the state are small towns where most agricultural production occur. it is therefore necessary to examine in details, agricultural production within small towns, as most past studies laid emphasis on large towns. methods of study the study employed a multistage sampling technique to sample respondents. the first stage involved using the thirteen (13) local government areas as the sampling frame, then all the small towns with a population of between 10,000 and 20,000 people were selected. in all, thirteen (13) small towns (fig1) from eight (8) local government areas were sampled. in the second stage, five percent (5%) of the households in the selected towns was chosen for the questionnaire administration using random sampling procedure. based on the national average of five persons per household reported by national bureau of statistics (nbs), in 2006, there are 36,014 estimated numbers of household in the study area and 5% of this gave 1,801 sampled respondents. systematic sampling technique was used in the third stage. in this context the first building on all the major roads and foot paths in each town were randomly selected to examine a household while the second was skipped. (i.e. all odd numbered houses with women farmers were surveyed while the even numbers were skipped). in each of such households surveyed, only one woman was sampled until the last woman to make a total of 1,801 women farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 337-343 339 figure 1: kwara state showing the sampled small towns (inset: nigeria showing kwara) source: kwara state ministry of lands and housing, ilorin, 2010 the study employed simple percentages, tabulation and cross tabulation to analyze the socio-economic characteristics of urban women farmers. stepwise multiple regression analysis was also used to analyze the most important factors that motivate women into urban agriculture. this was used because of its advantage of being able to isolate the most important variables determining involvement of women in urban agriculture in the study area. this method was used by adebayo (1998) and adedayo and yusuf (2004:129). in order to assess the most significant motives behind women involvement in urban agriculture, the regression equation is written thus: y1 = a +b1x1 + b2x2 + b3x3 ……….. bn xn + e y1 = % of women practicing urban agriculture a = intercept e = error terms bx1-bxn = regression coefficients x1 xn = reasons why women engage in urban agriculture summarized as respondents ranking in order of importance are: x1 = income supplement; x2 = food security; x3 = unemployment; x4 = increase in prices of goods; x5 = interest/hobby; x6 = skills/experience; x7 = educational status of women x8 = accessibility to land; x9 = types of farm activities; x10 = accessibility to capital; and x11 = culture results and discussions general characteristics of respondents age distribution survey of the respondents reveals that almost 95% of the respondents fell within the age range of 18 to 59 years. this shows that most of the respondents are in economically active age and hence can actively practice agricultural production of any form. furthermore, 72.6% of the respondents are married, implying that there is possibility of getting cheaper labour from their children. educational status of women farmers revealed that 51.9% had no formal education. the implication of this is that large proportions of urban women farmers are public officers in the middle and low income levels who do not have enough education. they however engage in urban agriculture to supplement their low odo -ow a# ba cita# # os i # ba balo m a # ig baja oro -a go r# # otun-oro # ka iam a # ilo fa # ija gbo pa tig i# sh are# # aja se -ipo 100 0 100 200 kilometers n ew s 5° 1' 01 " 5°1'01" 6° 2' 02 " 6°2'0 2" 3°1'01" 3°1'01" 4°2'02" 4°2'02" 5°3'03" 5°3'03" legend baruten isin patigi ekiti ifelodun edu oke-ero kaiama moro asa oyun offa ilorin-east ilorin-south irepodun river niger small tow ns ilorin-west # source: kwara state ministry of lands and housing, ilorin, 2010. figure 3.1: kwara state showing the sampled small towns source: kwara state ministry of lands and housing, ilorin, 2010. motivations for women involvement…. 340 income. it was further revealed that 49.6% are civil servants and only 27.0% are not employed. this shows that majority of the respondents have primary occupation and that urban farming is largely a supplementary activity. this is in support of dennery (1997) who observed that urban dwellers who work and own farms are far better than their counterparts who relied only on their daily income and salaries. women involvement in urban farming when women’s involvement in urban agriculture was considered, the study indicates that 93.1% of the respondents earn less than n50, 000 annually from their main occupation. this is generally low when considered in the context of the national minimum income of one dollar per day as estimated by the united nations. this amount is inadequate to sustain a family on food purchase in addition to other services that they have to pay for, such as child education, health, electricity, water, rent, etc, hence the need to be involved in urban agriculture. as regards the farming status of the respondents, 73% of the urban women are parttime farmers while only 27% are full-time farmers. this is expected since most of the respondents claimed that they are involved in urban agricultural activity so as to supplement income, for food security and employment purposes among others. motives of urban women involvement in agriculture in order to measure the motives behind women’s involvement in urban agricultural production in the study area, eleven variables revealed by the sampled women farmers were subjected to stepwise multiple regression analysis. table 1 gives a matrix of simple correlation obtained between the input variables, that is, the eleven (11) motivating factors for women’s involvement in agricultural activity in the thirteen (13) sampled settlements. the highest correlation matrix (0.965) exists between variables x1 and x8 i.e. income supplements and restricted accessibility of women farmers to land. this relationship explains that the more income accruing from urban farming, the more the ability of women farmers to procure land for agricultural production especially where land rights for women are readily accessible. this implies production can be increased as a result of this. apart from this, variable x1 (income supplement) is highly correlated with variables x2 (food security) 0.928. this implies that urban agriculture ensures food security as well as supplementary income. the second equally high level of relationship was found between variable x5 (interest) and x6 (skills) 0.941. this suggests that the more a woman farmer has skills/experience in agricultural occupation the more is her interest in urban farming participation. other variables that are highly correlated include x2 (food security) relating to both x4 (increase in price of goods) 0.880, and x8 (accessibility to land) 0.911. this implies that women farmers are involved in urban agriculture for food security and because of increase in the prices of goods in nigeria. furthermore, accessibility to land for agriculture has enhanced food security and this in turn has contributed to a healthy living in the study area. table 1: correlation matrix of motivation for women in urban agriculture x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 x6 x7 x8 x9 x10 x11 x1 1 x2 0.928 1 x3 0.668 0.84 1 x4 0.87 0.88 0.704 1 x5 0.74 0.877 0.841 0.736 1 x6 0.729 0.89 0.947 0.692 0.941 1 x7 0.653 0.689 0.579 0.735 0.774 0.632 1 x8 0.965 0.911 0.704 0.917 0.712 0.702 0.687 1 x9 0.452 0.72 0.873 0.503 0.796 0.866 0.57 0.473 1 x10 0.712 0.507 0.172 0.445 0.341 0.24 0.549 0.694 0.042 1 x11 0.62 0.307 0.051 0.499 -0.002 -0.045 0.291 0.631 -0.249 0.77 1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 337-343 341 note: correlations that exceeding 0.6000 are significant at the 1% confidence level source: computer output the respondents were asked to rank the emerging motivating factors in order of importance which were then subjected to stepwise multiple regression analysis in order to measure the contribution of each factor to women involvement in urban agriculture. the dependent variable (y1) represents percentage of women involved in urban agriculture while the independent variables are the eleven (11) selected factors earlier highlighted. the result of the multiple regression suggests some interesting findings. only three of the eleven (11) independent variables, were found to be significant at the specified tolerant level of 0.50 entries into the model. these are food security (x2), income supplement (x1) and accessibility to land (x8). as revealed in table 2, food security (x2) is perhaps the most important determinant of women’s involvement in agricultural production in small towns surveyed. this variable with a correlation coefficient of 0.972 and a coefficient determination of 0.945 indicates that about 94.5% of its variance is associated with variation in women’s involvement in agricultural production in the study area. this is expected because there are more mouths to be fed in the increasingly expanding urban communities with limited food supply. in addition, urban women farmers enhance the food supply within and around the urban environment. there are several ways in which urban agriculture contributes to food security. it increases the amount of food available and enhances the freshness of perishable foods reaching urban consumers when needed. table 2: stepwise multiple regression on women involvement in urban agriculture variables parameter estimates standard error r r 2 cumulative percentage percentage contribution intercept 2.447 1.082 x2 15.493 0.4717 0.972 .0945 94.5 94.5 x1 8.842 0.3431 0.987 .0974 97.4 2.9 x8 3.015 0.2672 0.993 0.986 98.6 1.2 source: computer output similarly, income supplement (x1) also appears to be another very important motive for women’s involvement in agricultural production in the study area. it has a joint correlation coefficient of 0.987 and a coefficient of determination of 0.974. this means that about 97.4% of the variance of women involvement in urban agricultural production is jointly explained by two variables x2 and x1. income supplement however added about 2.9% of the joint explanation. one can infer that women are involved in urban agricultural production in order to supplement their income as well as that of their husbands from other sources. this is expected since most of the respondents are low and middle income earners and majority of them earn less than n50, 000 annually from their main occupations. also, the irregularity in the payment of salaries, pensions and increasing inflation rates make it unwise for them to depend on salaries alone but had to venture into urban agriculture to generate income. this buttresses the earlier work of olawepo (2008) which states that the conditions of rising food prices and decreasing real wage have forced many nigerian wage earners into part-time farming in order to supplement their income. accessibility to land (x8) happens to be another motivating factor for women participation in urban agriculture. the coefficient of correlation of this variable is 0.993 with a coefficient of determination of 0.986. this indicates that about 98.6% of the variation in the participation of women in agriculture is jointly explained by food security, income supplement and difference in accessibility to land. this variable x8 however has an additional 1.2% contribution suggesting that accessibility to land is a motivations for women involvement…. 342 motivating factor of women involvement in urban agriculture because land is very critical in agricultural production and can be used as collateral to obtain agricultural loan from banks. land is an important resource to which farmers must have access in order to be able to increase food production. this study also revealed that most of the women farmers cultivate small plots of land because they do not have enough access to land among other reasons. in all, the three variables together accounted for about 98.6% of the total variance of urban women’s involvement in agricultural production in the small towns under investigation. the remaining factors are either not significant in women motivation for agricultural production or that their values are too low to offer any meaningful explanation in this study. this however does not mean that there are no other factors which are not explained by this study. the explanatory regression equation can thus be written as: y1= 2.447 + 15.493x2 + 8.842 x1 + 3.015 x8 res = 98.6% s.e = 1.082 the implication of this is that an increase in the motivation of women farmers to produce more food will lead to a higher level of food security within small towns. also, more income will be accrued as an additional income to other nonfarm incomes. the same could be said of an increase in accessibility to land either through a policy change or a favourable land right acquisition by women. this will ensure a sort of sustainable urban food production. this is because the three variables x2, x1 and x8 correlate positively in order of importance to the variations in the proportion of women involvement in agriculture among the sampled urban towns. implications of the study for planning based on the foregoing, this study thus recommends the following measures towards improving agriculture in small urban areas of kwara state, nigeria: urban agriculture should be included in urban planning by the planners. urban agriculture should also be established as a legitimate and viable urban economic activity. furthermore, since it has been identified that women participate in urban agriculture, they should be provided with production resources especially land. this is because if women have greater control over land, the incentive for them to increase production may be greater.. the practice of urban agriculture as a coping mechanism in dealing with poverty and economic hardship which are prevalent in urban areas can be adopted in similar communities. this would therefore lead to increased production, better income and improved standard of living for urban dwellers. innovations and policy needs of urban farmers which this study did not cover should be embarked upon by future researchers. conclusion the major factors identified in this study as attraction of women into urban agricultural activity include food security, income supplement and accessibility to land. in order words, once these factors are considered, urban agriculture will be promoted and income realized from urban farming can be used to satisfy other necessities of life. this implies that women are involved in urban agriculture as a result of high cost of living in the urban areas. hence, given the noted effects of urban agriculture on poverty reduction and its significant impact on the social and economic life of its practitioners, it should be encouraged based on its potentials in both small and big towns in nigeria as well as other developing world countries. references adebayo, e. f. (1998) “gender differences in resource utilization in oyo state, nigeria. studies in humanities”, journal of the usman danfodiyo university, sokoto, vol. 5, pp. 60 67. adedayo, a. and yusuf o. r. (2004) “cooperatives and poverty alleviation in rural settlements of kwara state, nigeria. savanna”, a journal of the environmental and social sciences, vol. 19(2), pp. 123-131. dennery, p. (1997) “urban agriculture in informal settlements: how can it contribute to poverty alleviation?” agriculture and rural development, vol. 4(2), pp. 46-48. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 337-343 343 european commission (1996) commissioned paper on relations between eu and acp countries on the events of 21st century, brussels, european commission. hovorka, a. j. (2003) “gender, commercial urban agriculture and urban food supply in greater gaborone, botswana”, ph. d. dissertation, school of geography, clark university worcester, m.a idrc publication. mougeot, l. j. a. (1994) “african city farming from a world perspective”, in: egziabher, a. g., lee smith, d., maxwell, d.g., memon, p.a., mougeot, l.j.a., sawio, c.j. (eds.). cities feeding people: an examination of urban agriculture in east africa. international development research center, ottawa, canada, pp. 1-24. national bureau of statistics (nbs) (2006) socio-economic survey on nigeria, abuja. okafor, f. c. (1985) “the functional role of medium-sized towns in regional development: the case of south-eastern nigeria”, third world planning review, vol. 7(2), pp. 143-157. olawepo, r. a. (2008) “the household logic of urban agriculture and food production in ilorin, nigeria”, european journal of social sciences, rome, italy, vol. 6(2), pp. 288296. ruel, m. t., garret j. l., morris s. s., maxwell d., oshaug a., engle p., memon p., slack a. and haddad l. (1998) “urban challenges to food and nutrition security: a review of food security, health and care giving in the cities”, fcnd discussion paper no. 51 international food policy research institute. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 3 march 2013. evaluation of income and employment generation from cassava value chain in the nigerian agricultural sector oni timothy olukunle (senior research fellow; nigerian institute of social and economic research, niser, p.m.b. 5, u. i. p. o. oyo road, ojoo, ibadan, nigeria ) citation: oni timothy olukunle (2013) “evaluation of income and employment generation from cassava value chain in the nigerian agricultural sector”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 79-92. evaluation of income and employment generation... 79 author oni timothy olukunle senior research fellow; nigerian institute of social and economic research, niser, p.m.b. 5, u. i. p. o. oyo road, ojoo, ibadan, nigeria evaluation of income and employment generation from cassava value chain in the nigerian agricultural sector abstract population in poverty and related statistics such as unemployment and income inequality in nigeria is quite unacceptably high. in 2012, the country has unemployment of 23.9 per cent broken down to 17.1 per cent in the rural areas and 25.6 per cent in the urban centres. cassava is now one of the priority crops to be used as a springboard to wriggle out of the menace of unemployment in the country. while cassava production is increasing at 3per cent every year, the country continues to import various industrial products that can be made from the crop. therefore the paper analyzed the capacity of cassava value chain to create new jobs and generate increased income and employment in the economy. framework of analysis of collected primary data was based on the concept of value chain. descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution, percentages and measures of central tendency were employed in the analysis and presentation of results. results showed that in the cassava value chain, increased income and employment can be generated through development of the chain especially at the stages of production, processing and industrial utilization. the implication is that increased generation of employment which is required for growth lies with increased industrial processing and utilisation of cassava for expanded production of non-food and nontraditional industrial products of cassava that are competitive to penetrate export markets. in this way, opportunities to generate increased income and employment will be enormous and diversified. policy recommendations towards development of the cassava chain included efficient investment in infrastructure in the rural sector. keywords: cassava, valuechain, income, employment, labour, actors introduction over the past one decade, nigerian government had initiated a plethora of policies and programmes which was intended to reposition agriculture to its pride of place. however, various efforts for promoting investment and generating employment in the agricultural sector have not yielded appreciable dividends. population in poverty and related statistics such as unemployment and income inequality in nigeria is quite unacceptably high. according to national bureau of statistics (nbs), in 2012, nigeria has unemployment of 23.9 per cent broken down to 17.1 per cent in the rural areas and 25.6 per cent in the urban centres. cassava production in nigeria is increasing at 3per cent every year but nigeria continues to import starch, flour, sweeteners that can be made from cassava. in nigeria, the demand for industrial cassava based products such as glucose and dextrose and starch is rising. for instance, about 121,000 metric tonnes of glucose and dextrose was imported in 2008, which was about three times more than imports in 2002 (ayodele et al., 2011). the bulk of this demand was met by importation arising from inadequate local production of starch and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 79-92 80 glucose syrup. this paradox is due to inadequacy in cassava production, processing and marketing. cassava is produced largely in a subsistence level in the country. to fully exploit cassava’s immense potential, especially as a replacement for imported raw materials and as an export commodity, there is a need to change the production technology and trading pattern in the country using a value-chain development approach. nigerian cassava-based industrial products are just a fraction of imports, and the growth potential is huge. productivity and income of various participants in the cassava value chain are inadequate for them to generate increased employment. the sub-sector is characterized by long chains of pre-modern intermediate processes which have generated successions of low value additions. in the presence of near substitutes, this adversely affects the market for final goods that are derived from the value chain with the result of weak demand for the product and low capacity to generate employment. this feeds back adversely on farm production. in addition, high input prices in post-farm production process due to market imperfections or infrastructural deficiencies have led to increase in the price of the final product thereby rendering the product non-competitive. there are three channels by which cassava and its byproducts reach the end markets. these included small scale production for traditional food; medium scale production for improved food products and large scale production for industrial products. the first channel dominates the industry, at least 80 per cent going for traditional food, nationally, with only 10per cent passing through the third channel into the industrially processed products (ayodele et al., 2011). opportunities exist for increased production of the non traditional non-food industrial products of cassava provided they are cheaper than imports. agricultural transformation agenda (ata) of the present civilian administration is seen as a major tool to unlock the employment potentials for generating higher growth that have remained unexploited in the agriculture commodity value chains. according to federal ministry of agriculture and rural develop ment, the transformation action plan of the government of nigeria, in 2012, focused on key aspects of value chains which included provision of improved inputs like seed and fertilizer, increased productivity as well as establishment of staple crop processing zones. regarding cassava, the transformation seeks to create a new generation of cassava farmers, oriented towards commercial production and farming as a business, and to link them up to reliable demand, either from processors or a guaranteed minimum price scheme of the government. the overarching strategy of the cassava transformation is to turn the cassava sector in nigeria into a major player in local and international starch, sweeteners, ethanol, high quality cassava flour, and dried chips industries by adopting improved production and processing technologies, and organizing producers and processors into efficient valueadded chains. it is expected to address reduction in post-harvest losses, improve linkages with industries as well as access to financial services and markets. expected impacts of cassava transformation agenda included strong value added chains of starch, high quality cassava flour, sweeteners, dried chips, high quality garri, and fuel ethanol in nigeria, a doubling of average cassava productivity from 12 to 25 tonnes per hectare in target clusters by 2014, generation of one million jobs in the rural areas of nigeria over the next four years of the programme, an increase in income of 1.8 million participating farm families by us$450 every year and establishing strong market institutions for long term sustainability of the cassava sub-sector. more importantly, the ata targets rural communities particularly women, youth and farmers associations, as well as improving rural institutions and infrastructure. it sets out to create over 3.5 million jobs from rice, cassava, sorghum, cocoa and cotton value chains, with many more jobs from other value chains. the programme aims to provide over n300 billion of additional income for farmers. over n60 billion is expected to be injected into the economy from the substitution of 20 per cent of bread wheat flour with cassava flour. the initiative is expected to enhance production of key food staples by 20 million tonnes. these consist of two metric tonnes for rice, 17metric tonnes for cassava and one metric tonnes for sorghum respectively. the ata action plan focuses on some priority agricultural commodities namely; rice, cassava, sorghum, cocoa, cotton, maize, oil palm, dairy, beef, leather, poultry and fisheries. the operations of the agricultural transformation agenda are based capacity building on food-crop farming to improve... 81 on prioritisation of commodity value chains along comparative advantage in the six geo political zones of the country. also, it entails reform in the input supply sector in which direct government involvement in the procurement, supply and distribution of fertilizer and seeds to farmers will be stopped. admittedly, the employment and income effects of the transformation agenda and many other reform initiatives implemented in the agricultural sector in the past can be a major factor for promoting value chain improvement for development and nutritional improvement. evidently, government is less able to act as employer of last resort than in the past, thus increasing productive employment through increased private sector participation is fundamental to the achievement of individual and national goals such as satisfaction of basic needs, taming of poverty and realisation of transformation agenda. moreover, the informal sector is known to have a high labour absorptive capacity as well as the potential to contribute to alleviation of poverty and unemployment in developing countries (akintoye, 2008). the purpose of the paper is to analyze the income and employment distribution across the cassava value chain actors from farm producers to marketers and processors. the research questions that constituted the major challenge being resolved here included how can the income and employment effects be stimulated? how can the capacity of chain actors be improved so as to follow and assimilate technology and market developments towards generating increased employment? the remaining sections of the paper are organized as follows. section two presented theoretical issue and review of literature. section three discussed research methodology. section four presented empirical results, while section five presented policy implications and conclusions. theoretical framework and review of literature value chain analysis and development approach has been widely applied to pro-poor economic development and is well suitable for addressing employment for two reasons. first, it has economic viability and sustainability at its core because along efficient value chains, the rate and the scope of industrial growth can increase significantly (ayodele et al., 2011). second, it is a strong qualitative diagnostic tool that is capable of identifying critical issues and blockages for specific targets groups and then generating robust and effective policies and development strategies. value chain, then, is the theoretical framework applied to conceptualize the differential interaction of the poor small farmers with agricultural markets. value chain concept provides the frame for capturing and theoretically link key issues in this paper. according to united nations industrial development orgganization (unido, 2009), the concept of value chain is defined as the full range of activities which are required to bring a product or a service from conception through the intermediary phases of production (involving a combination of physical transformation and the input of various producer services), and delivery to final consumers and final disposal after use. a value chain exists when all of the actors in the chain operate in a way that maximises the generation of value along the chain. it can also be described as a series of sequential activities where at each step in the process, the product passing through this chain of activities gains some value. the farm and all the intermediary processes constitute the agricultural sector. by definition, agricultural income is the farmer’s value added plus value added at all the nodes of the post-harvest activity until reaching the last intermediary who interfaces with the consumer. value chains develop rural-urban linkages through which agricultural production in the rural areas provide the growing cities with affordable and quality food and raw materials for the industry (adrien, 2008). value chain also provides potential benefits for both rural producers and urban consumers. value chain promotion is an effective way of fostering ruralurban linkages for several reasons. the concept provides a useful analytical framework for market and sub-sector analysis and describes productive processes around a product from the provision of inputs to production, transportation, transformation, processing, marketing, trading, and retailing to final consumption (international relief and development, 2009) secondly, value chain emphasises that most goods are produced by a sequence of interlinked actors and activities. the approach asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 79-92 82 focuses on the analysis of the institutional arrangements that link the various economic players (vertical and horizontal integration, organisation and contracts). thirdly, it highlights the importance of private sector development. it provides a holistic framework which can encompass a number of different development activities for the purpose of fostering agricultural growth (unido, 2009). hence, agricultural value chains link urban consumption with rural production. urbandriven demand, emergence of modern consumption patterns or new trends in international trade, impacts on rural areas along value chains and spills over to marketing and production systems. these rural-urban linkages bear challenges but also mutual benefits for producers and consumers and can be entry points for development through income and employment generation and poverty reduction. when high rates of agricultural growth through development of agricultural value chain lead to sustained increase in productive capacity, employment opportunities and rising productivity are generated (ponsian, 2012). these in turn allow for a progressive absorption and integration of the unemployed and the underemployed into expanding economic activities with higher levels of productivity. in the process, the poor may be able to achieve higher productivity and increase their incomes in their existing occupations, or shift to new occupations involving higher skills or better technology. empirically, literatures on employment generation from agricultural commodity value chain for nigeria have been very scarce. however references can be made on the few that could be accessed. one of such is a study on cassava by oluwemimo (2010) in which he analyzed the economics of cassava processing by rural farm households in oyo state of nigeria. using descriptive statistics, budgetary analysis and the cobb douglas regression technique, the study established the socioeconomic and policy strategies required to stimulate rural enterprise. regression analyses showed that age, experience and size of enterprise were significant determinants of the profitability of cassava processing enterprises while age, experience, level of education and initial capital outlay were significant determinants of the size of enterprise. the study suggested that policy efforts should be geared towards accessing processors with locally fabricated machines while policy, research and extension regarding food processing at the rural farm-gate should be tailored to meet the needs and constraints of women. awoyinka (2009) investigated effectiveness of cassava marketing policy and its contribution to agriculture sector development in nigeria. the study observed that policy design have potential contributions to agricultural development in nigeria but the policy framework failed to incorporate strategies for combating perennial constraints to effective and efficient cassava marketing in nigeria. hence, sustainable policy issues and options for cassava marketing require different strategies for both domestic and international markets and different strategies for minimizing the problems confronting cassava marketing in nigeria. the author concluded that considerable scope lies in the establishment and operation of collective storage and marketing facilities through cooperative. this would enable farmers take advantage of improved technology possible at the larger collective bargaining position in the market through the professional traders. also, extension approach can make very useful contribution to marketing in which dissemination of regular, accurate and detailed market information by the extension services will be of immense help to the farmer in planning his marketing. the authot thus suggested that the extension staffs first have to be trained in the whole field of the scientific collection and assessment of agricultural data while it is necessary to make government institutions more professional in their marketoriented functions. in vietnam, nguven (2005) carried out a study in which about 80 per cent of cassava produced was meant for starch production and 70 per cent of which were exported. value chain approach was used in the research with the aim of having clear picture of the value chain, relative position of different actors, institutions governing their operations and benefits. the study examined governance, transaction and transportation costs and profit margin in the cassava value chain. it also examined the participation of the poor in the cassava value chain in the country. constraints observed in the value chain were presence of many players of actors in the value chain which resulted from small size of cassava production and starch processing. other constraints included environmental problems capacity building on food-crop farming to improve... 83 such as soil erosion, difficulties in securing land title and waste management. in the face of these constraints, value chain in the country was characterized by low level of upgrading in both production and processing. efficiency was not achieved and farmers received lower prices than market price. other problems were high cost of labour which made many producers to shift from cassava to the production of higher valued crops. farmers got small share of the profit where there were many players in the market chain while traders received the largest share of the profit. the study observed that cassava value chain in the country was characterized by high participation of the poor, created employment opportunities through development of the value chain, and has benefitted the livestock sector through emergence of by-product value chain. governance mechanisms in cassava value chain were still underdeveloped. this is seen from the fact that value chain participants operated in an uncoordinated and unorganized manner. from the above review, previous studies have neither characterized nor analyzed the distribution of employment generation across the various levels of cassava value chain in nigeria with a view to identify areas of high employment potentials along the value chain for further exploitation. this is imperative toward contributing to policy measures that would fast-track achievement of the goals of the agricultural transformation agenda of the present civilian administration in the country. this is a major gap that the research paper has filled up. methodology the scope given the strategic importance of cassava in the attainment of food security in nigeria and the renewed focus on the crop in the transformation agenda of the current administration, the scope of this study was limited to this crop. this is because cassava is an important food and cash crop in nigeria and also one of the strategic crops in the agricultural transformation agenda in view of its roles in achieving food and nutrition security in the country. the relative tolerance of the crop to poor soil condition and other climatic challenges make it to be widely grown in all the agro-ecological zones though its cultivation in commercial quantities is concentrated in the southern and middle belt regions. it is against this backdrop that the data collection for this study was limited to four geopolitical zones where the crop is currently been cultivated in commercial quantities. these are; the south-east, south-west, south –south and the north-central geo-political zones. the data collection covered the various actors along the value chain i.e. from producer (farmers) to the end users covering their activities up till the last production season before the year of survey (2012). nature and sources of data the study adopted the multi-stage stratified random sampling procedure. the first stage was the purposive selection of the four geo-political zones as stated above. the second stage was a random selection of two states from each of the geo-political zone. from each state, a random selection of one local government was made from each of the three senatorial districts while two communities were again randomly chosen from each local government area. a random selection of 10 cassava farmers was made from the list of farmers in these communities. the list of farmers was obtained from the respective state agricultural development programme (adp). thus, a total of 240 representative farmers were drawn across the selected states in the four geo-political zones. in addition to farmers’ survey, at least a sample of 5 cassava tuber traders, 5 cassava processors and 5 cassava products sellers were drawn from each local government in each state, while at least two case studies of industrial users of cassava products was made from each state. the distribution of samples of actors selected per stage in the value chain is shown by table 3.2.1. structured questionnaires were used to collect primary data from the selected samples. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 79-92 84 table 3.2.1: sample of actors selected per stage in the value chain geopolitical zone no. of states sampled per zone total no. of famers sampled per state no. of wholesalers /assemblers per state no. of processor s per state no. product retailers per state no. of industrial end users per state north central 2 60 5 5 5 2 south east 2 60 5 5 5 2 south west 2 60 5 5 5 2 south south 2 60 5 5 5 2 total 8 240 20 20 20 8 source: field survey, 2012 method of analysis in this study, return to entrepreneurship in cassava industry was measured from the point of view of the enterprise profitability. in order words, the analysis was limited to investment profitability. this is because profitability ratios are crucial to all investment analysis. profitability ratios are typically based on earnings that accrued to participants. the estimated ratio is mathematically expressed as: gross profit = π =    n i i tcpiq 1 where π is gross profit in naira per enterprise pi = price per unit of output in naira qi = output of individual enterprise in kg tc = total cost of production in naira value added analysis value added is an economic term that defines the difference between the value of goods and the cost of materials or supplies that are used in producing them. it is a measure of economic activity which eliminates the duplication inherent in the sales value figure which results from the use of products of some establishments as materials or services by others. value added is thus defined as the gross receipts of a firm minus the cost of goods and services purchased from other firms. it is measured as the difference between the value of all goods and services produced and the value of those purchased non-labour inputs which have been used in the production process. this type of measure avoids double counting, since what each establishment has purchased from other establishments is deducted from the value of its own production. inputs to be considered may include materials and supplies, fuel, electricity, contract work, repairs, maintenance and transportation as well as other industrial services. the value at which these inputs were purchased is deducted from total revenue from production in order to obtain the establishment’s value added. hence, value added represents the value a particular agent has added during the accounting period. it represents the income earned from the sale of a commodity minus the cost of intermediate inputs. the value added at each stage of the value chain was determined by removing the cost of raw materials and intermediate goods from the gross value of the output. mathematically, value added = value of output-value of intermediate inputs. intermediate inputs refer to the factors of production that are completely consumed during the accounting period. value added is expressed as: va = i n i ii xrpiq    1 i where pq =value of output rx = cost of raw materials and intermediate goods. the above equations were estimated for farmers, processors as well traders including the exporters in the cassava value chain. the quantitative analysis was extended to cover the costs and returns that accrue to each of the value chain participant. thus, the main analytical templates are designed to calculate total variable costs, investment costs, g r o s s m a r g i n a n d gross profit on per a c t o r b a s i s . http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/profitability-ratios-for-investment-analysis.html http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/profitability-ratios-for-investment-analysis.html capacity building on food-crop farming to improve... 85 empirical results and discussion producers (farmers) table 4.1.1 showed the status of the cassava farmers by employment status and income. arising from the table, a total of 66 farmers were self-employed and engaged table 4.1.1: percentage distribution of farmers by employment status and income items decreased, less than n200/day little above n300/day increased well above n400/day total employment status freq. % freq. % freq. % freq % employer farmer (all inclusive) 4 12.9 32 37.2 10 11.6 46 22.7 self-employed (farmercassava only) 2 6.5 24 27.9 40 46.5 66 32.5 self-employed tree crop plus cassava 14 45.2 22 25.6 32 37.2 68 33.5 self-employed (others) 10 32.3 4 4.7 14 6.9 employee wages & salaries (farm level permanent) 1 3.2 2 2.3 3 3.5 6 3.0 employee wages & salaries (farm level temporary) 1 1.2 1 0.5 employee wages & salaries (agro industry) 1 1.2 1 1.2 2 1.0 total 31 100.0 86 100.0 86 100.0 203 100 source: field survey, 2012 in sole cropping of cassava. this represented about 33 per cent of the total farm enterprise that responded. in the last one year, 40 out of this same class of farmers, representing 47 per cent, had their income increased well above n400 per day. in the same vein, the table showed that there were 68 self-employed mixed croppers who were planting tree crops and cassava. out of the total, in this class of farmers, about 32 representing 37 percent had their income in the last one year increased well above n400/day. the implication of this scenario is that increment in hectrage of the cassava and agro forestry farming in the states covered, all things being equal, would bring more income to the farmers. this would in turn generate employment opportunities on the farm through hiring of more labour to complement the household family labour. processors value addition at the processors level involves converting raw cassava to end products. processors used both locally fabricated and imported machines to effect the product transformation. table 4.2.1 showed the employment generation profile of the processors by sex during a one year period. total employment generated was 633, made up of 464 male and 169 female workers of various occupational categories. the females had about 27 percent of the total employment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 79-92 86 table 4.2.1: distribution of processors by category of workers engaged and by sex s/no employment type number of male workers number of female workers total % of female to total 1 casual factory workers 144 34 178 19.1 2 administrative workers 45 2 47 4.3 3 technical workers 26 4 management 50 5 skilled production workers 61 25 86 29.1 6 unskilled production workers 72 58 130 44.6 7 casual production workers 66 50 116 43.1 total 464 169 633 26.7 source: field survey, 2012 exporters the number of workers engaged by the exporting firms is presented in table 4.3.1. from the table, a total number of 781 jobs made up of 410 male and 371 female workers were generated across board by the exporters. the female gender had a share of about 48 per cent of the total employment. table 4.3.1: distribution of exporters by the type of employment and sex s/no employment type number of male workers number of female workers total % of female to total 1 seasonal/temporary 80 95 175 54.3 2 permanent workers 97 50 147 34.0 3 part-time workers 53 58 111 52.3 4 totals for workers 180 168 348 48.3 total 410 371 781 47.5 source: field survey, 2012 wholesalers most wholesalers of cassava and its products buy their stock in bulk and sell to the retailers in small quantities. hence, their scale of operations is expected to generate more job opportunities compared to the retailers. in the process, a total of 144 jobs of various categories of workers were generated. a total of 54 female workers were employed, representing about 38 per cent of the overall employment (table 4.4.1). the bulk of this employment was seasonal and unsustainable because of unfavourable economic environment in the country. table 4.4.1: distribution of wholesalers by type of employment and by sex s/no employment type number of male workers number of female workers total % of female to total 1 seasonal/temporary 61 42 103 40.8 2 permanent workers 20 12 32 37.5 3 part-time workers 9 total 90 54 144 37.5 source: field survey, 2012 retailers table 4.5.1 showed the activities of the retailers in the cassava value-chain. owing to the scale of their business operation as mostly road side traders, the cassava retailers were able to generate a total of 90 jobs during the period. seventy-two (72) females were engaged during the period as against eighteen (18) for the males. the female folk represented about 80 per cent of the total employment generated. capacity building on food-crop farming to improve... 87 table 4.5.1: distribution of retailers by type of employment and by sex s/no employment type number of female workers number of male workers total % of male to total 1 seasonal/temporary 50 12 62 19.4 2 permanent workers 8 3 11 27.3 3 part-time workers 8 4 others 6 3 8 33.3 total 72 18 90 20.0 source: field survey, 2012 employment generation at the various levels of cassava value chain understanding how employment is distributed along cassava value chain provides the necessary start to determining opportunities for employment generation. the distribution of employment and access to employment by different classes can be a pointer to identifying employment opportunities. the distribution of employment should recognise that individual actor participated in a number of different value chains at the same time. for example, a cassava farmer may be involved in several agricultural crops and several handicraft activities as a means of income diversification. in the same way, a trader might be involved in trading multiple agricultural products at the same time or at different times depending on the season. consequently, the results in table 4.6.1 and 4.6.2 summarized the distribution of labour employment at the various levels of the cassava value chain. importantly, table 4.6.1 showed that an average medium scale exporter was the highest employer of labour in the value chain. mandays of labour employed by this category of actors represented about 22 percent of total mandays employed per actor across the various stages of the value chain. the next important employer of labour was small scale exporter. mandays of labour employed by an average small scale exporter represented about 16 per cent of total mandays employed per actor across the different levels of the chain. table 4.6.1: percentage distribution of labour employment per actor across the various stages of the cassava value chain actor at various stages of cassava value chain mandays of labour employed per actor at each stage % of total mandays of labour employed per actor across the stages of the value chain. ranking of employment generating capacity farmer 47.57 0.18 15 large scale processor 240 0.91 14 medium scale processor 314.2 1.20 12 small scale processor 275 1.05 13 large scale industrial users 648 2.47 10 medium scale industrial users 2664 10.13 4 small scale industrial users 384 1.46 11 wholesale 1632.4 6.21 8 retail 2203.1 8.38 6 large scale exporter 2190 8.33 7 medium scale exporter 5716.9 21.75 1 small scale exporter 4032 15.34 2 large scale importers 2430 9.24 5 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 79-92 88 of inputs medium scale importer of inputs 2739.4 10.42 3 small scale importer of inputs 770 2.93 9 aggregate 26,286.57 100.00 source: field survey, 2012 this was followed by an average medium scale importer of inputs (10.42 per cent), medium scale industrial user (10.13) while an average farmer was the lowest employer of labour (0.18per cent). these results indicated that labour employment in the value chain was more intense at the distributive trade stage than at the production, processing and industrial utilization stages. the results imply that new employment opportunities can be generated through development of the chain at the production, processing and industrial utilization stages. table 4.6.2: total man days of labour employed by all actors at each stage of the cassava value chain different stages in the value chain total mandays of labour employed production stage: farmers 11,417 processing stage: processors 11,159.8 large scale processor 240 medium scale processor 5969.8 small scale processor 4950 industrial utilization stage: industrial users 22,128 large scale 1944 medium scale 18648 small scale 1536 trading stage 167,113 domestic wholesale trading 29,383.2 domestic retail trading 48,468.2 foreign market: export stage 68,085.2 large scale 2,190 medium scale 45,735.2 small scale 20,160 import of inputs stage 21,176.4 large scale 2,430 medium scale 16,436.4 small scale 2,310 total 211,818 source: field survey, 2012. effectiveness of actors at the various levels of the value chain in the cassava value chain, as expected, the total cost was on the increase in the value chain from the farm production stage to the export stage as demonstrated by table 4.7.1. at the farm production stage, the costs consisted largely of variable cost that represented about 95 percent of total production costs. after the production stage, total costs are inclusive of the price paid for cassava products by the processor, industrial users, and the traders who are categorised into wholesalers, retailers and foreign export traders. the analysis keeps track of the build-up of financial costs at every stage of the value chain and this revealed the contribution of the various cost items. at the production stage, transport cost was the single largest component (26.40 percent of the variable cost and this was followed by tractor use (19.88 per cent), planting materials (10.56 per cent), storage (9.01 per cent), labour (8.87 per cent), pesticides (7.71 per cent) and fertilizer (6.7 per cent). capacity building on food-crop farming to improve... 89 table 4.7.1: annual total cost of production and annual gross profit across the various actors in the cassava value chain actors in the chain annual total cost of operation per actor in naira annual gross profits per actor in naira value added per actor in naira percentage share of income that accrued per actor farmers 3,878,157.7 148,240.35 327,171.45 0.03 large scale processor 7,136,433 111,996,900 112,536,233.33 21.40 medium scale processor 8,524,114.1 217,369,727 218,504,825.53 41.53 small scale processor 11,946,116 -724,581 3,612,593.73 -0.14 medium scale industrial user 19,713,697.4 57,566,915 58,281,086.5 11.0 small scale industrial user 8,107,194.3 28,281,694.60 28,693,708.9 5.40 wholesale domestic trader 23,580,499.20 86,554,489.4 86,897,768.2 16.54 retail domestic trader 8,375,028.39 5,431,940.81 5,862,252.51 1.04 foreign trade exporter 24,866,733.7 16,802,023.4 18,479,190.1 3.21 source: field survey, 2012 at the processing stage, for the large scale processor, the bulk of the cost (92 percent) was variable cost. for this category of processor, the most important component of the variable cost was labour (94 per cent of variable cost). at the medium scale processing stage, the single most important cost component was also hired labour, with the cost representing 80 percent of the variable cost. at the small scale processing stage, the single most important cost component was also hired labour, representing 80.26 per cent of total variable cost. the total variable cost represented about 64 per cent of total cost. the next important total cost component at the small scale processing stage was interest paid on loans representing about 24 per cent followed by depreciation representing about 12 per cent. at the stage of industrial use, there were two scale of operation for which the data were sufficient enough to track the total cost of operation. these are the medium scale and small scale industrial users. at the medium scale industrial consumption stage, variable cost constituted the bulk of the total cost which represented about 96 per cent. the most important single component of the variable cost was the purchase of raw materials representing about 54 per cent, followed by labour which represented about 33 per cent. at the small scale industrial consumption stage, variable cost also constituted the bulk of total cost which was about 95 per cent. of the variable cost, raw material purchase was the most important component representing about 36 per cent, followed by hired labour at 32 per cent. moreover, duty taxes are an important component of total cost to the small scale industrial user. at the wholesale trading stage, variable costs constituted about 99 per cent of the financial costs. the single most important cost component was purchase of cassava products with the cost representing 71 percent of the variable cost. the cost of goods and services was the next important variable cost component and it represented about 21per cent of variable cost. furthermore, labour cost was the next important to goods and services representing about 8 per cent of the variable cost. at the retail trading stage, variable cost also constituted the bulk of the total cost representing 95 per cent. the most important component of the variable cost was purchase of cassava products which represented about 61per cent followed by cost of goods and services (27 per cent) and cost of labour (12 per cent). at the export stage, total variable cost was the most asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 79-92 90 important component of total cost representing 93 per cent. purchase of cassava products(cassava pellets) constituted the single most important component of total cost representing 53 percent of total cost followed by labour representing 33 per cent of total cost. profitability of operation of the actors at the different levels of the cassava value chain is a measure of efficiency as shown in table4.7.1. with regard to profitability of the cassava enterprises, the results showed that gross profit was positive at all the stages with the exception of the small scale processor. in the value chain, gross profit was the highest for medium scale processor. more importantly, the gross profit was the lowest for farmers (production stage) when compared with all other actors. the results showed that the actors who were actively engaged in the cassava value chain were numerous with the increasing awareness of the good prospects of cassava sales. as earlier stated, cassava products were marketed through an intricate network of producers, traders, and consumers. traders operated at wholesale or retail levels as well as at the foreign export trade and tend to be linked to consumers and companies for industrial uses. furthermore, the percentage share of total income generated in the value chain reveal the stage in which the actor received the peanut in which further development could lead to new employment generation. concerning distribution of the total income generated in the value chain, the medium scale processor had the lion share that represented 42 percent of total income generated at the various levels of the value chain. this was followed by the large scale processor with 21.4 percent. the domestic wholesale trader followed behind them with 16.54 percent of total income generated. medium scale industrial user was the next important income earner with 11 per cent of total income. the farmer who originated the process of the value chain trailed behind all the actors with just only 0.03 percent of the income generated in the value chain. the retailer came closely behind the exporter, but both have a low share of 1.04 percent and 3.21 percent respectively. the results revealed the earning of the farmer was very low if we take into consideration the type of life and family system they practice with more than one wife with so many children around him. hence to bail the farmer out from being perpetually trapped in low income level a lot needs to be done to enhance their poor earning on the farm. policy implications and conclusion results of the survey analysis showed that employment distributions in the value chain were more intense at the level of the distributive trade than at the levels of production, processing and industrial utilization. the results, therefore, confirmed that increased employment and income could be generated at the stages of production, processing and industrial utilization through development of the chain. the implication is that increased employment and income lies in the development of the chain through expanded and competitive production of non-food and nontraditional industrial products of cassava. the expansion of the non-traditional industrial products of cassava through improved processing and industrial exploitation of cassava will foster growth in the cassava production, processing and industrial utilization. this would lead to provision of diversified alternative products and sales outlets in the medium to long-term which in turn would ensure import substitution for industrial products of cassava such as starch and glucose on which huge amount of money are being spent for importation. continued import substitution for industrial products of cassava coupled with the effective implementation of the 20 per cent substitution of wheat flour with cassava flour in bread making will open up opportunities for expansion in domestic production and markets for cassava tubers. if only there are effective linkages of farm production with the industrial processors and the cassava-based industry, the expansion in production at the farmers’ level will necessarily be absorbed by the new expanded industry for the production of the non-traditional and non-food industrial products of cassava. in this way, new jobs would be created thereby leading to increased employment generation for the actors throughout the various stages of the cassava value chain. recommendations on the basis of the findings that emerged from the study, the following recommendations are being offered towards development of the capacity building on food-crop farming to improve... 91 cassava value chain for increased employment generation in nigeria. efficient investment in infrastructure infrastructure plays a critical role in ensuring efficient operations in the cassava value chain. at the production, processing and trading logistics stage in particular, transportation costs represented important cost component and it constituted the single most important cost at the farm production stage. the high cost of transportation is due mainly to incessant increases in the prices of petroleum products and poor conditions of the road in the country. there is need for the government to expedite action on the rehabilitation of the railway system, improve the conditions of existing roads, ensure regular maintenance of the roads and put a stop to the arbitrary and incessant increase in fuel prices. these initiatives will lead to improved physical access to markets and reduction in transaction costs in the value chain. thus there are potentials for increased profitability of the cassava enterprises through efficient delivery of infrastructure in the rural areas. this is the major drive for improved private investment in the chain. particularly, there are opportunities for developing the processing and the industrial utilization stages through making infrastructures available and efficient. adequate generation and flow of information the government can engender output expansion through better flow of information and access to market, which would in turn, lead to increased private investment, increased income, and increased employment generation. small scale actors in the chain should organize themselves into effective and commercialized cooperative groups the small scale operators should be organized into cooperatives because small scale operation has a deleterious effect on the cassava chain in view of the uneconomic collection of products in small shipments from numerous and dispersed growers. invariably, small scale actors frequently reap the least in the income distribution. on this basis, the unit cost of transporting small shipments to the destination is naturally higher than that of large shipments which could only materialize through higher output farming and medium scale processing. in addition, performance of the chain is also negatively affected by the poor road infrastructure. most of the small farms are not served by paved roads and consequently road freight vehicles cannot provide service on a door-to-door basis, especially during the rainy season. in the process, the transit time is longer than it should have been, thus jeopardizing the short shelf life of the root. observed high cost of transportation jeopardizes the commercial viability at the production stage as well as at the processing operation and extension of the cassava chain to greater value added particularly by the small scale processor. further, the chain is impeded by a host of factors such as high interest rate, poor and costly public utilities, and random disruption of utility supply that leads to temporary stoppages in plant operation with the consequence of lost output and product spoilage and high labour cost. promoting value added enterprises through public private partnership in view of the limited financial capacity of the nigerian private sector and reluctance to invest in agribusiness, the public sector, especially at the state and local government level, should work out a partnership arrangement in which processing plants for cassava will be established by the state and local government while the private-sector partner would be involved at the beginning, and expected to operate and manage the plants on the basis of agreed concession. credit delivery to smallholder farmers, small scale processors and small scale industrial users the federal government has worked out a single digit interest rate at 8 percent for agricultural loans as a matter of policy. the gap between this rate and the lending rate by commercial banks should be bridged by the government under an arrangement involving the central bank of nigerian. nigeria cassava growers association should be provided with large contiguous land per local government area (lga) local authorities could assist corporate bodies and cooperatives in acquiring large parcels of agricultural land for cassava-industrial development. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 79-92 92 references adrien, s. (2008). improving value chains in agribusiness by facilitating production of affordable raw materials locally in desired quantities, burundi position paper on the case of palm oil. federation of chambers of commerce and industry of burundi. akintoye, r. i. (2008). reducing unemployment through the informal sector: a case study of nigeria, european journal of economics, finance and administrative sciences, 11, 97-106. awoyinka, y. a. (2009). cassava marketing: option for sustainable agricultural development in nigeria, ozean journal of applied science, 2(2), 175-183. ayodele d, u. andrew, e. nnennaya, o. chijioke, t. ganiat and s. lateef (2011). a report on cassava value chain analysis in niger delta, foundation for partnership initiatives in the niger delta (pind) 1st floor st. james building, 167 ademola adetokunbo crescent, wuse ii, abuja, nigeria. federal ministry of agriculture and rural development, nigeria (2012). agricultural transformation agenda: we will grow nigeria’s agricultural sector, federal ministry of agriculture and rural development, abuja, nigeria, draft for discussion. international relief and development (2009). agricultural value chains, international relief and development, arlington, va 22209. national bureau of statistics (2012). employment survey report for 2010, abuja nigeria. national bureau of statistics (2010). statistical news: labour force statistics, no. 476. abuja: the nbs publication. nguven, d. a. t. (2005). the participation of the poor in agricultural value chain: a case study of cassava. making markets work better for the poor, discussion paper prepared for the asian development bank. oluwemimo oluwasola (2010). stimulating rural employment and income for cassava processing farming households in oyo state, nigeria through policy initiatives, journal of development and agricultural economics, 2(2), 18-25. ponsian, t. s. (2012). urban markets-linked cassava value chain in morogoro rural district, tanzania, journal of sustainable development in africa, 14(3), 283-300. unido (2009). agro-value chain analysis and development. the unido approach, a staff working paper. united nations industrial development organization vienna. © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 restoration of fertility of gleyic fluvisols to increase rice yields using shellfish products in toumbokro, côte d'ivoire kouadio koffi patrice (department of earth sciences and mineral resources, university of cocody, côte d’ivoire) yao-kouame albert (department of earth sciences and mineral resources, university of cocody, côte d’ivoire) alui konan alphonse (department of earth sciences and mineral resources, university of cocody, côte d’ivoire) kwadjo koffi eric (department of sciences of nature, abidjan, university of abobo-adjamé, côte d’ivoire) to cite this article: kouadio koffi patrice, yao-kouame albert, alui konan alphonse and kwadjo koffi eric (2011). restoration of fertility of gleyic fluvisols to increase rice yields using shellfish products in toumbokro, côte d'ivoire. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2), 38-49. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 38-49 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author(s) kouadio koffi patrice † department of earth sciences, university of cocody, côte d’ivoire e-mail: k.koffipatrice@yahoo.fr yao-kouame albert department of earth sciences, university of cocody, côte d’ivoire alui konan alphonse university of cocody, department of earth sciences, university of cocody, côte d’ivoire kwadjo koffi eric department of sciences of nature, university of aboboadjamé, côte d’ivoire restoration of fertility of gleyic fluvisols to increase rice yields using shellfish products in toumbokro, côte d'ivoire abstract a study designed to characterize the effects of shellfish products on the chemical properties of fluvisols gleyic and yield of rice was carried out in toumbokro, yamoussoukro’s region, côte d'ivoire. the work has been focused on soil amendment by three types of shells (achatina spp donax spp and ostrea spp). three doses of shellfish products (500, 1000 and 1500 kg.ha-1) and npk fertilizer were tested in a split-plot design with three repetitions. at ground level, the study showed that the shellfish products have positive effects very marked on all the physical and chemical characteristics. the effects of these shellfish products on the richness of the soil occur gradually. the increase of ph, due to the products made, creates a condition favorable to microorganisms that become active and mineralize sufficient organic substances. the study indicates that shellfish products induce high levels of production of rice cultivation. the average of yield of the experiments carried out is set at 5.41 t.ha-1 in toumbokro. these performances, never recorded in subsistence agriculture, are explained by the effective correction of mineral deficiencies unsuspected soil by the flow of shellfish products. all the variables studied define the contribution of 1000 kg.ha-1 shredded shells of achatina spp, as the optimum for soil amendment. keywords: amendments, shells products, gleyic fluvisols, yields, rice, toumbokro, yamoussoukro, côte d'ivoire introduction in côte d'ivoire, soils are subjected to an increasingly intensive farm due to the growing needs generated by rapid population growth and lack of arable land (n'goran et al ., 1997). the consequence of this pressure is the reduction in the fallow leading to the impoverishment of the soil and poor yield of the cultures (yemefack et al., 2000). the fall of the outputs constitutes a major concern for farmers. the use of chemical fertilizers, by their immediate beneficial effect on the productivity of food crops is one solution, but their high cost and availability make them almost inaccessible to small farmers (n'goran, 1995). in addition to ecological and environmental problems caused by chemical fertilizers, mineral fertilizers alone cannot maintain soil fertility (bado, 2002). its exclusive use leads to an increase in acidity, a deterioration of physical status and a decline in soil organic matter (boli and roose, 2000). in this context, the amendment basic mineral calcium should be an appropriate solution for improving soil fertility and crop yields. many studies have shown that the amendments are important on various soil properties, thereby justifying their use (lompo et al., 1995). ayanlaja and sanwo (1991) showed that the decomposition of plant residues can significantly improve the level of nutrients and organic matter in soil. but the use of amendments such as shell products has not been particularly studied (moyin-jesu, 2007), yet they constitute an optimal source of calcium (kouadio et al., 2010). given their availability in côte d'ivoire, the use of shells products in agriculture could be a solution to the problems of soil fertility and food insecurity. the study was performed on fluvisols gleyic to assess interest in the use of shell products with a view to improving the mailto:k.koffipatrice@yahoo.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 38-49 39 chemical properties of soil and yield of rice in toumbokro. materials and methods materials site description the various experiments were carried in toumbokro, yamoussoukro’s region, on the road of yamoussoukro-bouaflé. the climate of the region of yamoussoukro is the equatorial regime transition attenuated (baoulean climate of guinean mesophilic domain). it is characterized by four seasons (brou, 2001, 2005): the first rainy season from march to june, a slowdown of precipitation in july and august, a second rainy season in september and october, more irregular than the first; a very marked dry season, november to february, however, with some isolated rainfall. the rainfall is about 1200 mm per year, relative humidity around 80% (amani et al., 2010). the average temperature of the area is 27.7 °c. but during periods of december to january and july to september, the average temperature drops to 25.4 °c, reaching its highest value during the period from february to march, where there has been an average temperature of 28.7 °c. the site is limited: in south by the village of bozi 2, belonging to the prefecture of yamoussoukro; in east, the village of yobouékro, in the prefecture of yamoussoukro; in north by the village of bocabo, as part of the prefecture kossou; in west, the village of yowrè-bozi, prefecture of bouaflé. amendment material fertilizer material used consists of shredded shells of achatina spp., donax spp. and ostrea spp, rich in calcium (figure 2) and complex fertilizer npk 10 18 18. plant material rice is one of the foodstuffs used in the basic food of ivorian populations. that speculation constitutes, with maize, yam and cassava, the four main food crops cultivated everywhere in côte d’ivoire (akanza, 2010). methods experimental design experiments were carried out with a "split-plot" design with three repetitions. the experimental rice field consists of 9 blocks. each block consists of 9 plots with 7 treatments shredded shells, a witness npk, and an absolute indicator. each plot is a square of side 3 m and 9 m2 as surface. the distance between two plots was 3 m. shredded shells are applied at doses of 500, 1000 and 1500 kg.ha-1. doses of 200 kg.ha-1 of npk 10 18 18 and 100 kg.ha-1 of urea were applied to rice (figure 3). restoration of fertility of gleyic fluvisols ... 40 figure 1: location of the experimental site figure 2: shells used for soil (kouadio et al., 2010) figure 3: experimental design asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 38-49 41 statistical analysis a statistical study was conducted to compare the theoretical and practical knowledge accumulated during the processing of data and observations. with the anova (analysis of variance), fischer, based on the null hypothesis for significance levels α = 0.05 and 0.01, we verified the possible changes at each site the effect of different fertilizers on soil physical properties, the content of various chemical elements and different agronomic parameters. whenever the calculated probability is significant, the tukey hsd test for a significance level α = 0.05 and 0.01, is performed to compare means and appreciate the significant differences between them. the data met the assumptions of the analysis of anova, including normality and homogeneity. characteristics of farming systems and environment (year of cultivation, varieties of rice and soybean, previous crop, soil type ...) and biological variables measured are used to explain variations in yield and its components. it first checks the relationship between variables (rather than qualitative) of the system of culture and environment. for biological variables (quantitative), as the height and grain yields, the means and variances are calculated for all individuals (plots of measurement) of the sample. data processing was done with the software statistica 7.1 for windows. analyses of variance were conducted with the glm (general linear model: analysis of variance of the tukey test at 5%). figures and graphs were performed with excel (microsoft). results the results concern the chemical composition of shells used for soil amendment, the induced effects of shellfish products on the physicochemical characteristics fluvisols gleyic and induced effects of shredded shells on agronomic parameters of rice. chemical composition of the shells used in soil amendments the chemical composition of shredded shells was determined (table 1). they are rich in calcium (ca2+ = 20.88 cmol.kg-1 for the shredded shells achatina spp ca2+ = 19.98 cmol.kg-1 for homogenates shell donax spp and ca2 + = 27.48 cmol.kg-1 for the shredded shells ostrea spp). the values of c / n ratios are above 10, and indicate that the shredded shells used are genuine products of amendments. the fertilizing potential of these products is assessed using the potential of hydrogen above the neutral (ph = 8 for e homogenates, ph = 8.3 for d homogenates and ph = 8.4 for homogenates h) and values the sum of exchangeable bases (21.84 cmol.kg-1 for homogenates e; 20.58 cmol.kg-1 for homogenates and 28.42 d cmol.kg-1 for homogenates h). induced effects of shellfish products on the physicochemical characteristics fluvisols gleyic effects on acidity and organic matter content of soil  ph water, ph kcl et al3+ the addition of shredded shells influenced the soil ph. water ph increases from 5.6 to 6, after the provision of fertilizers. similarly, the kcl ph increased from 5.3 to 6.4. the levels of exchangeable aluminum (al3+) were also changed after the addition of fertilizers to the soil. these levels declined from 1.7 to 0.01 cmol.kg-1 after soil amendment (table 2).  nitrogen, organic matter and c/n examination of data analysis shows that the contribution of shredded shells on the soil influenced the levels of nitrogen and organic matter. the nitrogen contents increased, except for the soils that received fertilizers e and e * h, at doses of 500, 1000 and 1500 kg.ha-1, which showed a decrease. this increase in content rose from 0.20 to 0.31 g.kg-1. the organic matter content was increased following the application of the shellfish products. this increase in levels of mo is more pronounced with the addition of fertilizers e, in doses of 500 kg ha-1 (5.01 g.kg-1). restoration of fertility of gleyic fluvisols ... 42 the c / n ratio has changed after the soil amendment. it reached 13.55 at the rate of 1000 kg.ha-1, with fertilizers e*h (table 2). effect on the adsorption complex and the cation exchange capacity (cec) adsorption complex and cec examination of the data analysis indicates that the adsorption complex and the cec have been influenced by the addition of fertilizers to the soil. levels of ca2+ have increased after the addition of shellfish fertilizers. this increased level of calcium in the soil increased from 5.66 to 8.45 cmol.kg-1. only fertilizers e, at a dose of 1000 kg.ha-1, lowered the calcium content. the levels of mg2+ were increased after the input of shredded shells, with the exception of soils amended with fertilizers h, at a dose of 500 kg.ha-1, where they decreased slightly. increased levels of mg2+ varied from 2.99 to 3.89 cmol.kg1. k+ contents also increased after the input of shellfish fertilizers. however, the products e, h and e*d*e*h, at doses of 500, 1000 and 1500 kg.ha-1, lowered the levels of k+ in the soil. the levels of na+ declined after the addition of fertilizers. this decline has increased from 0.38 to 0.013 cmol.kg-1. the levels of cec increased after the appendage of shredded shells in the soil. the cec increased with the addition of shredded shells e, in doses of 500 kg.ha-1 (88.25 cmol.kg-1) (table 3). effects of phosphorus and trace elements phosphorus the results of data analysis point out that the contribution of the ground shells shredded increased the levels of phosphorus. this increase in levels of available p was done at all amended soils. it went from 33 to 126.66 mg.kg-1. total phosphorus levels also increased in amended soils. table 1: chemical composition of shredded shells chemical elements shells acidity nitrogen, organic matter (g.kg-1) et phosphorus (mg.kg-1) absorption complex (cmol.kg-1) trace elements (g.kg-1) ph c n c/n p ca2+ mg2+ k+ na+ fe mn cu zn donax spp (d) 8.3 1.42 0.11 12.91 0.14 19.98 0.06 0.50 0.04 200 10 19 0 achatina spp (e) 8.0 2.89 0.25 11.56 0.05 20.88 0.06 0.89 0.01 52 6 18 0 ostrea spp (h) 8.4 1.52 0.16 9.50 0.06 27.48 0.14 0.71 0.09 42 7 21 0 table 2: changes in acidity and organic matter content in gleyic fluvisols exchange acidity nitrogen and organic matter (g.kg-1) treatments ph water ph kcl al3+ (cmol.kg-1) mo n c/n tap 5.6 ± 0.01 b 5.3 ± 0.01 b 1.2 ± 0.0008 a 2.64 ± 0.007 b 0.21 ± 0.015 b 6.35 ± 0.41 c e1 6.6 ± 0.1 a 6.4 ± 0.05 a 0.02 ± 0.0001 b 5.01 ± 0.03 a 0.15 ± 0.01 b 8.32 ± 0.25 c e2 6.3 ± 0.1 a 5.7± 0.04 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 2.81 ± 0.006 b 0.13 ± 0.01 b 12.59 ± 1.05 b e3 6.1 0.01 a 5.8 ± 0.04 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 2.61 ± 0.007 b 0.13 ± 0.01 b 11.97 ± 1 bc h1 6.2 ± 0.01 a 5.7 ± 0.04 a 0.01 ± 4.00 ± 0.004 a 0.22 ± 0.01 a 10.6 ± 0.53 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 38-49 43 0.0004 b bc h2 6.5 ± 0.01 a 5.9 ± 0.03 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 4.33 ± 0.004 a 0.21 ± 0.015 a 11.8 ± 0.86 bc h3 6.2 ± 0.01 a 5.8 ± 0.03 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 2.79 ± 0.09 b 0.27 ± 0.01.a 9.59 ± 0.48 c d1 6.5 ± 0.01 a 5.2 ± 0.01 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 3.97 ± 0.004 b 0.25 ± 0.01 a 9.25 ± 0.33 c d2 6.4 ± 0.01 a 5.9 ± 0.02 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 3.57 ± 0.05 b 0.23 ± 0.01 a 9.05 ± 0.38 c d3 6.2 ± 0.01 a 5.8 ± 0.02 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 2.23 ± 0.08 b 0.22 ± 0.01 a 10.8 ± 0.99 bc e*h 1 6.2 ± 0.02 a 5.8 ± 0.02 a 0.02 ± 0.0001 b 3.91 ± 0.002 a 0.19 ± 0.015 b 11.8 ± 0.89 bc e*h 2 6.1 ± 0.01 a 5.6 ± 0.02 a 0.02 ± 0.0001 b 3.88 ± 0.003 a 0.16 ± 0.06 b 13.55 ± 0.5 a e*h 3 6.2 ± 0.01 a 5.8 ± 0.02 a 0.02 ± 0.0001 b 3.89 ± 0.009 a 0.18 ± 0.017 b 12.66 ± 1.33 b d*e 1 6.4 ± 0.01 a 5.8 ± 0.02 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 4.08 ± 0.009 a 0.28 ± 0.01 a 8.48 ± 0.25 c d*e 2 6.3 ± 0.01 a 5.8 ± 0.02 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 4.04 ± 0.009 a 0.27 ± 0.06 a 8.2 ± 0.2 c d*e 3 6.4 ± 0.01 a 5.7 ± 0.04 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 4.05 ± 0.02 a 0.27 ± 0.003 a 8.02 ± 0.11 c d*h 1 6.5 ± 0.01 a 6.1 ± 0.03 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 3.55 ± 0007 b 0.24 ± 0.015 a 8.52 ± 0.59 c d*h 2 6.6 ± 0.01 a 6.1 ± 0.03 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 3.56 ± 0.007 b 0.28 ± 0.011 a 7.4 ± 0.33 c d*h 3 6.6 ± 0.01 a 6.2 ± 0.03 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 3.58 ± 0.003 b 0.31 ± 0.012 a 6.6 ± 0.25 c d*e*h 1 6.6 ± 0.01 a 5.8 ± 0.02 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 4.58 ± 0.011 a 0.28 ± 0.01 a 9.77 ± 0.34 c d*e*h 2 6.5 ± 0.01 a 6.2 ± 0.03 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 4.53 ± 0.01 a 0.27 ± 0.01 a 9.52 ± 0.43 c *e*h 3 6.3 ± 0.01 a 5.9 ± 0.02 a 0.01 ± 0.0004 b 4.58 ± 0.006 a 0.27 ± 0.015 a 9.66 ± 0.54 c f 147.61** 12.77** 457.54** 253.44** 80.47** 29.02** p cal 0 0 0 0 0 0 p theor ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 means with the same letter in the same column are not significantly different at the level   0,05 and  =0,01 according to tuckey’s test. ns = non significant; * = significant; ** = high significant and *** = very high significant, cal = calculate, theor = theoretical. 1 = dose1 = 500 kg.ha-1 ; 2 = dose 2 = 1000 kg.ha-1; et 3 = dose 3 = 1500 kg.ha-1 table 3: evolution of phosphorus and trace elements of fluvisols gleyic treatments phosphorus (mg.kg-1) trace elements (g.kg-1) p2o5t p2o5ass mn fe tav 306.33 ± 1.53 b 30.67 ± 3.79 b 49.67± 1.53 a 27.33 ± 2.65 a tap 310 ± 1 b 33 ± 8.19 b 48.67± 0.58 a 28.5 ± 1 a e1 785.33 ± 1.53 a 126.66 ± 1.53 b 15 ± 1 c 11 ± 1 c e2 573.67 ± 1 ab 57 ± 2.08 b 44 ± 1 a 23 ± 1 ab e3 607.33 ± 1.53 ab 54.33 ± 1.53 b 33 ± 1 ab 19 ± 1 b restoration of fertility of gleyic fluvisols ... 44 h1 658 ± 1ab 56 ± 1 b 41 ± 1 a 20 ± 1 b h2 668 ± 1.53 ab 55.67 ± 1 b 25 ± 1 b 14 ± 1 c h3 715.33 ± 1 ab 66 ± 3.21 b 45.67 ± 2.08 a 16 ± 1 c d1 303.33 ± 2.08 b 57.33 ± 4.93 b 18 ± 1 c 16 ± 1 c d2 286.67 ± 1.53 b 82.33 ± 2.52 b 27 ± 1b 25.33 ± 1.53 a d3 455.67 ± 1 b 56 ± 2.08 b 8 ± 1 c 27 ± 1 a e*h 1 764.33 ± 1.53 ab 67.67 ± 1.53 b 45.69 ± 1.53 a 26.33± 1.15 a e*h 2 761 ± 2.08 ab 64.67 ± 1 b 47 ± 2 a 24.66 ± 3.79 ab e*h 3 758 ± 1ab 66 ± 1 b 46.33 ± 1.53 a 26.33± 1.53 ab d*e 1 337.33 ± 1.53 b 63.33 ± 1.53 b 36 ± 1 ab 24.2 ± 1 ab d*e 2 332.33 ± 1.53 b 62.67 ± 1.53 b 37.33 ± 1 ab 24.66 ± ab d*e 3 333.67 ± 1.53 b 65.67 ± 2.08 b 37.67± 0.58ab 23.66 ± ab d*h 1 573 ± 2.65 ab 64 ± 1 b 38 ± 1 ab 19 ± 1 b d*h 2 576 ± 1 ab 65 ± 1 b 34 ± 2.08 ab 16 ± 2 c d*h 3 579 ± 2.08 ab 65.33 ± 1 b 37.33 ± ab 16.66 ± 1.53 c d*e*h 1 471 ± 1 b 34.67 ± 1 b 28 ± 1 b 21 ± 1 ab d*e*h 2 472 ± 2.08 b 35 ± 1 b 26 ± 1.73 b 22 ± 1.73 ab d*e*h 3 468 ± 3.79 b 33.67 ± 1 b 27.33 ± 1.53 b 24 ± 1.73 ab f 400.10** 201.69** 831.41** 65.27** p cal 0 0 0 0 p théor ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 means with the same letter in the same column are not significantly different at the level   0,05 and  =0,01 according to tuckey’s test. ns = non significant; * = significant; ** = high significant and *** = very high significant, cal = calculate, theor = theoretical. 1 = dose1 = 500 kg.ha-1 ; 2 = dose 2 = 1000 kg.ha-1; et 3 = dose 3 = 1500 kg.ha-1 this change in total p content ranged between 306.33 and 785.33 mg.kg-1 (table 3). trace elements levels of trace elements were influenced by the addition of shellfish fertilizers. the levels of mn2+ declined from 49.67 ± 1.53 to 8 g. kg-1. as for the contents of fe2+, they decreased in amended soils (table 3). induced effects of shredded shells on agronomic parameters of rice to better assess the effects of shredded shells on rice cultivation, the following agronomic parameters were measured in our investigations:  rate followed;  plant height;  yield. effect on survival figure 4 reflects changes in average survival rate for the different treatments and doses. the results of anova indicate no significant difference between treatments. the addition of shredded shells did not influence survival rate of upland rice grown on fluvisols gleyic. effect on the average height of plants figure 5 shows the evolution of the average height of rice plants according to the different treatments and doses. analysis of the results shows that the shredded shells have influenced the average height of plants, which ranged from 111.69 to 141.82 cm. the results of analysis of variance show that there are highly significant differences between the means of this variable, related to shellfish fertilizing (fcal = 2.93**; p cal = 0.000020) (table 4). effect on average seed yield the addition of shredded shells to soil has increased the yield of rice grains from 2.06 to 5.41 t.ha-1 according to the treatments. the best yields were obtained by the addition of fertilizer e, at a dose of 1000 kg.ha-1 and h at 1000 and 1500 kg.ha-1. beyond 1000 kg.ha-1 of e and h, a significant reduction in grain yield is observed. the addition of increasing doses of fertilizers d increased the grain yield of rice. this observation is similar to the combination of doses of products asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 38-49 45 coquillère d * e, h and e * d * h. by cons, with the triple combination d * h * e, the rice yield decreases as as one increases the dose of fertilizers (figure 6). analysis of variance showed highly significant differences between means due to shredded shells (fcal = 112.27 **; pc = 0.000000) (table 4). figure 4: evolution of the average survival rate figure 5: evolution of the average plant height discussion the various tests on shell products show that ph values obtained are in the range 8 to 8.4, indicating that the hydrogen potential is basic in nature (kouadio et al., 2010). ca2+ is the dominant component of all the constituents of the adsorbent complex, because the estimates are in the range of 19.98 cmol.kg-1 (achatina spp), 20.88 cmol.kg-1 (donax spp) and 27.48 cmol.kg-1 (ostrea spp) (kouadio et al., 2010). this is an amendment necessary to the recovery of soil ph. shell products are limestone products. then, they bring on the soil elements such as calcium (ca) and magnesium (mg). these two cations (ca 2+ and mg 2+ ) contribute, on the level of the adsorbent complex, to reduce the acidity of the ground. the values of c / n ratio, estimated from the test results are above 10. the use of these shell products is justified because the ph, the calcium, the c / n ratio and cec obtained show that these products could be a source of regulatory factors in the productivity of soil (assa, 2005). addition of shell products on soil has helped to raise the ph values, especially the products e and h rich in ca2+. to neutralize the acidity of a soil, the incorporation of ca 2+ is a current practice. ca 2+ and mg 2+ are fixed on colloids, and o2combine with the ions h + forming basic ions oh (powell et al., 1998). the relatively high level of organic matter can be explained by the fact that the humidity and acidity prevents the degradation of organic matter resulting from the accumulation of detritus from the gallery forests or areas more upstream (yemefack et al. 2004; duguet, 2005). continuous cultivation of the area, coupled with the non return of crop residues, contributed to the depletion of soil organic matter, very much like the finding of naman et al. (2002). the results confirm absolutely the works of mbonigaba et al. (2009) who showed that the quantity and especially the one of organic matter in tropical soils are insufficient, because of the acidification and aluminum toxicity. improving the availability of organic matter for microorganisms by the ca2+ in the soil, allows an increase in the amount of nitrogen mineralized (peltier, 2001). the ph of moderately acidic soils studied would have favored the rapid mineralization of organic matter by stimulating biological activity (elberling et al., 2003; duguet, 2005). 95.50 96.00 96.50 97.00 97.50 98.00 98.50 su rv iv al r at e ( % ) treatment and dose (kg.ha-1) 0.00 20.00 40.00 60.00 80.00 100.00 120.00 140.00 160.00 le n gt h o f p la n ts ( cm ) treatment and dose (kg.ha-1) restoration of fertility of gleyic fluvisols ... 46 table 4: agronomic parameters measured on upland rice grown on gleyic fluvisols treatments agronomic parameters of upland rice survival rate (p.c.) tillering average heigh of plants (cm) yield (t/ha) h1 97.82 ± 6.21 a 9 ± 1.13 b 122.48 ± 8.21 b 2.89 ± 0.40 c h2 97.27 ± 6.25 a 12 ± 1.31 a 140.97 ± 9.66 a 5.41 ± 1.02 a h3 97.47 ± 6.24 a 11 ± 1.29 b 140.38 ± 9.27 a 5.21 ± 0.98 a d1 97.27 ± 6.20 a 9 ± 1.13 c 118.3 ± 7.37 c 2.85 ± 0.21 c d2 96.66 ± 6.19 a 11 ± 1.29 b 127.88 ± 8.34 c 3.43 ± 0.41 c d3 97.63 ± 6.11 a 11 ± 1.29 b 135.69 ± 8.66 a 4.23 ± 0.65 b e1 97.55 ± 6.20 a 8 ± 1.09 c 125.74 ± 8.29 c 3.01 ± 0.31 c e2 97.69 ± 6.30 a 12 ± 1.31 a 141.82 ± 9.28 a 5.4 ± 1.02 a e3 98.19 ± 6.18 a 11 ± 1.29 b 139.66 ± 8.71 a 3.78 ± 0.41 c d*e1 97.13 ± 6.27 a 7 ± 0.81 c 120.71 ± 8.02 c 2.8 ± 0.39 c d*e2 97.88 ± 6.29 a 7 ± 0.81 c 137.35 ± 8.67 a 4.09 ± 0.54 b d*e3 97.3 ± 6.25 a 10 ± 1.32 b 139.21 ± 8.72 a 4.13 ± 0.59 b e*h1 97.24 ± 6.27 a 10 ± 1.32 b 124.66 ± 8.24 b 3 ± 0.31 c e*h2 97.38 ± 6.28 a 9 ± 1.13 b 136.85 ± 8.55 a 4.18 ± 0.63 b e*h3 97.4 ± 6.21 a 11 ± 0.57 b 140.24 ± 9.16 a 4.25 ± 0.67 b d*h1 97.24 ± 6.22 a 12 ± 0.33 a 122.02 ± 8.07 b 2.94 ± 0.45 c d*h2 97.19 ± 6.21 a 11 ± 1.29 b 137.57 ± 8.69 a 4.25 ± 0.66 b d*h3 97.71 ± 6.27 a 11 ± 1.29 b 139.6 ± 8.70 a 4.01 ± 0.53 b d*h*e3 97.58 ± 6.23 a 11 ± 1.29 b 138.69 ± 8.71 a 4.01 ± 0.53 b d*h*e1 97.08 ± 6.28 a 11 ± 1.29 b 123.63 ± 8.21 b 2.58 ± 0.28 c d*h*e2 97.41 ± 6.18 a 10 ± 1.32 b 126.3 ± 8.33 b 2.14 ± 0.59 c t 97.62 ± 6.26 a 11 ± 1.29 b 111.69 ± 7.22 c 2.06 ±0.21 c npk 97.49 ± 6.25 a 8 ± 1.09 c 125.44 ± 8.29 b 2.75 ± 0.44 c f cal 1.71 ns 11.14** 2.93** 112.27** cv (%) 6.40 11.69 6.48 14.01 p cal 0.02 0.000000 0.000020 0.000000 p theor ≥ 0.05 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 means with the same letter in the same column are not significantly different at the level   0,05 and  =0,01 according to tuckey’s test. ns = non significant; * = significant; ** = high significant and *** = very high significant, cal = calculate, theor = theoretical. 1 = dose1 = 500 kg.ha-1 ; 2 = dose 2 = 1000 kg.ha-1; et 3 = dose 3 = 1500 kg.ha-1 figure 6: average yield grain 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 h ( 5 0 0 ) h ( 1 0 0 0 ) h ( 1 5 0 0 ) d ( 5 0 0 ) d ( 1 0 0 0 ) d ( 1 5 0 0 ) e (5 0 0 ) e (1 0 0 0 ) e (1 5 0 0 ) d *e ( 5 0 0 ) d *e ( 1 0 0 0 ) d *e ( 1 5 0 0 ) e* h ( 5 0 0 ) e* h ( 1 0 0 0 ) e* h ( 1 5 0 0 ) d *h ( 5 0 0 ) d *h ( 1 0 0 0 ) d *h ( 1 5 0 0 ) d *h *e ( 5 0 0 ) d *h *e ( 1 0 0 0 ) d *h *e ( 1 5 0 0 ) t n p k y ie ld ( t. h a1 ) treatment and dose (kg.ha-1) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 38-49 47 according to bado (2002), nitrogen and carbon are moving towards a steady state, regardless of cultural practices and thus, c / n ratio would be characteristic of a given ecosystem. indeed, higher levels of organic matter and a higher cec, prevent leaching of cations, reduce or eliminate the exchangeable aluminum through complexation, and increase soil ph (bado, 2002). the quality of the amendments and their ability to provide nitrogen are usually evaluated by c / n ratio (stevenson, 1994). ca2+ content was increased after addition of shredded shells. this increase is more pronounced with the shredded shells of achatina spp. calcium plays a major role on soil physical properties. it changes the physical properties of soils. these results confirm those of peltier (2001) and show that aeration and water retention in the soil are significantly improved following the calcium intake of a culture in acidic soil. calcium is also under strong attraction by the charged sites on the scale of the clay particles (tessier, 2002). desaturation of the adsorbent complex major cations ca2+ and mg2+ is one of the causes of the decline in soil fertility (akanza, 2010). increases in ph and stimulation of the mineralization observed after the addition of shredded shells to the soil promote a possible increase in cec (andré, 1976). the results of studies show that the levels of phosphorus increased in fluvisols gleyic. this increase in the bioavailability of phosphorus is due to the increase of ph (kockmann and fabre, 2006). the availability of phosphorus is thus partly dependent on ph. the observed high ph promotes the precipitation of p by iron, aluminum, calcium and clays. according to truong (1989), ph is a very important factor for the availability of phosphorus in the soil solution, and also for the solubilization and effectiveness of rock phosphates. characterization of the adsorption complex (cec) of unamended soils showed a low cec, dominated mainly by iron and aluminum, and deficient in other cations. this deficiency can lead cations nutritional imbalance in the rice plant as reported in some works of akanza (2010), who believe that multiple nutritional deficiencies may be a cause of iron toxicity observed in plants rice. the similarity of development observed in rice can be easily explained by the fact that the experimental sites are almost in the same climate zone and are on sandy clay soil, moderately acidic. yet it is established that rice needs for growth, an optimum temperature of 26-28°c and a ph of about 6 to 6.8 (hassan et al., 2003). the stimulation of growth could be interpreted as a nutritional response to the calcium amendment, which allows the availability of other nutrients. in the qualitative plan, the differences due to the amounts of shredded shells are very clear. they demonstrate that the variability of the mineral status of soil under cultivation is linked to calcium. in comparison with our results, the best yields of crops grown on fluvisols gleyic were obtained at a dose of 1000 kg.ha-1 shredded shells of ostrea spp. this is conform to the works of bielders et al. (2002), who found yield increases of various crops such as sorghum and rice, by increasing organic matter. in addition, ca2+ acts well on nitrogen mineralization and its availability for plants. this effect on improving nitrogen nutrition is due to ca2+ than ph (peltier, 2001). these effects of ca2+ on crops have already been described by fabre and kockmann (2006), in particular the increased presence of good grasses and legumes. the results obtained with absolute control confirm the works of bado (2002), who observed that on west africa soils, the cultivation resulted in a steady decrease in soil organic matter and lower yields. during all the study, shredded shells affected rice yields. they also significantly increased maize yields. soil original poverty in nutrients explains the effectiveness of the amendments on crop yields (bado, 2002). the effectiveness of the basic inorganic soil amendment is related to the double role of the organic matter. the shredded shells improve physical and chemical properties and the availability of elements such as phosphorus (bado, 2002), while providing nutrients through mineralization. neutralizing soil acidity and providing nutrients to plants, shredded shells improve mineral nutrition, resulting in increased crop yields of rice and maize. the effectiveness of calcium on yield and nitrogen fixation suggest that the soil was very poor in ca and mg. bationo and ntare (2000), made the same observations and concluded that p, ca, and mg are the major nutrients limiting crop productivity in the tropical semi-arid west africa area. the effectiveness of ca can be explained by its dual role on of the nutrient, restoration of fertility of gleyic fluvisols ... 48 the increase in the availability of p and the neutralization of soil acidity (gerke, 1993). conclusion this study, carried out on the gleyic fluvisols of the zone of toumbokro, showed that the use of the shell products as calcic amendment, accessible to ivorian farmers, is a way in the resolution of the problems of soil fertility and the improvement of the cultures. in terms of fertility, the chemical properties of the soil were improved after amendment by shell products. the ph of the soil was adjusted in the interval of 6.1to 7.5,very favourable with the availability of the nutritive elements to cultures. cec, exchangeable bases, rates of saturation in bases and ph of the amended soils were increased compared to the not amended soils. rice yields increased thanks to amendment by the shell products. indeed, for the agronomic tests set up on the gleyic fluvisols, the best yields obtained are of 5.41 t.ha -1 of rice. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akanza, k. p. 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(2000). soil dynamics and optimal duration of agricultural fallows in southern cameroon. in:. floret ch & pontanier r., eds. fallow in tropical africa. paris: john libbey eurotext, pp. 135-141. yemefack, m., nounamo, l., rosaline, n., & bilong, p. (2004). influence of agricultural practices on clay content and other agronomic properties of a ferrallitic soil south cameroon. tropicultura, 22(1), 3-10. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. rural women in livestock and fisheries production activities: an empirical study on some selected coastal villages in bangladesh md. mamun-ur-rashid (assistant professor, agricultural extension and rural development, patuakhali science and technology university, bangladesh) qijie gao (professor, rural development and management china agricultural university, china) citation: md. mamun-ur-rashid and qijie gao (2012) “rural women in livestock and fisheries production activities: an empirical study on some selected coastal villages in bangladesh”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 658–667. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 658-667. 658 author(s) md. mamun-ur-rashid assistant professor, agricultural extension and rural development, patuakhali science and technology university, bangladesh qijie gao professor, rural development and management china agricultural university, china rural women in livestock and fisheries production activities: an empirical study on some selected coastal villages in bangladesh abstract progressive participation of women in agriculture is evident throughout the globe. their participation in fisheries and livestock sector is well recognized but less perceived due to paucity of sufficient data. considering this fact the present study had been designed to examine women‟s participation in fisheries and livestock activities as well as influence of selected socio-economic factors on their participation in some selected coastal villages of bangladesh. for achieving research objectives a well structured interview schedule was administered on 70 randomly selected rural women during the period of september, 2010. descriptive statistics exhibit that almost three quarter of the respondents had moderate to high level participation in fisheries and livestock activities. among the fisheries related activities women had highest participation in feed application (m=1.528) while cleaning cattle shed (m=2.914) and giving feed to poultry birds (m=4.571) occupied the top ranks for cattle and poultry related activities. according to correlation estimates agricultural knowledge and family size had strong positive correlation with women‟s participation where as education and family income had negative significant correlation with women‟s participation in fisheries and livestock activities. stepwise multiple regression mirrored that family size, agricultural knowledge and education jointly contribute to 25.6% variance in women‟s participation in fisheries and livestock activities. keywords: rural women, participation, fisheries and livestock activates introduction women are playing an increasingly important role in agriculture and rural development both at national and international levels. due to potential contribution to the reduction of poverty, increased food security and enhancement of environmental sustainability female economic activity in agriculture has snatched special attention (muller, 1989). over half of the world‟s food is produced by women (johnson, 1998) and they contribute to half of the total labor force in agriculture (das, 1995; food and agriculture organization, 1995). women are involved exclusively in agricultural operation all over the world. a convincing body of research literature documented that participation in various agricultural activities having complementary roles, sharing activities related to crop production, livestock production and management, fish farming and forest management with her male counterpart (franzel and helen, 1992; saito and spurling, 1992; sharma et al., 1997; ahmad and ismail, 1998; lovenbalk et al., 2003; oladeji, 2004; oyesola, 2004). in some parts of the world their involvement in agricultural activities is even higher than that of man (prakash, 2003; tacio, 2003). bangladesh is an agro-based over-populated country. development of socio-economic rural women in livestock and fisheries.... 659 condition of bangladesh mostly depends upon the development of the village. women in rural bangladesh are major but largely unrecognized contributors to agricultural and economic productivity. various studies show that 43% of rural women are contributing to agriculture and fisheries-related activities besides performing their household responsibilities (shelly and d,costa, 2001). women in bangladesh are responsible for grain processing and storage. they grow most of the family's fruits and vegetables and participate in post harvest activities. they care for poultry and livestock (kabir et al 1977). feeding livestock, cleaning sheds, securing them properly for the night and health care are activities performed by women (food and agriculture organization, 2012). women in bangladesh have diversified roles in fisheries, with substantial involvement in smallscale fisheries. they, to a large extent, carry out drying, curing, and marketing of fish as hawkers, stall keepers in permanent market place and weekly bazaars. women are also predominantly involved in net-making, the main income generating occupation in many families, and fresh water fish farming (food and agriculture organization, 1980). in fact it is well documented that women alone or jointly with men, participate in nearly all dimensions of agricultural activities (rothschild and mahmud, 1989). despite the fact women role in agricultural production grab less recognition because they do many other quasi-economic activities which are not valued in national income accounting (hossain, 2004; kabir et al., 1977). bangladesh in recent years has been experiencing a scarcity of rural agricultural labor force and farm technologies have not yet been properly updated to cope with this labor shortage. therefore, women participation, particularly in agriculture as entrepreneurs is increasing day by day (hossain and jaim 2011; birner et al., 2010). women participation in agriculture has increased from 58 percent in 2000 to 66 percent in 2008. the allocation of time in agricultural activities has also climbed up to 1.28 hours per day from 1.11 hours each day (jaim and hossain, 2011). in the absence of male members, women‟s role is changing from unpaid family worker to farm managers, a phenomenon termed as “feminization of agriculture”. this study seeks to explore participation of women in the southern coastal part of bangladesh where agriculture land use is very poor, roughly 50% of the countries average (peterson and shireen, 2001). due to shrinkage of employment opportunity in agriculture sector a large segment of agrarian population move to big cities for their job. this male migration can probably be identified as one of the major causes of “feminization of agriculture” in the coastal region. despite the fact the overall agricultural production in this region is often hampered due to occurrence of frequent events of natural disaster (ferdousi, 2007; world bank, 2005; kalequzzaman, 1988). a good number of literature concluded that small scale aquaculture and livestock have prospective potential in improving livelihood of poor including women (ali, 2011; kabir et al.,2012; ahmed et al., 2012). this study strongly believes that to become successful with such interventions women participation in both of these sectors need to be underpinned properly. however the study was preceded with the following three specific objectives: 1. to describe some selected socioeconomic characteristics of women in selected coastal villages. 2. examine the involvement of women farmers in livestock and fisheries activities in some selected coastal villages. 3. analyze influence of selected socioeconomic factors on women‟s role in livestock and fisheries production. women in livestock and fisheries activates women participation in agricultural activities has gained momentum since last few decades almost all over the world. in canada, 25 per cent of the farm owners are women, and 47 per cent of females comprise the enumerated farm population. in the said study population, half of the rural women are homemakers yet are also involved in farm activities (dimich-ward et al., 2004). the female contribution to the overall economy, particularly in agriculture is high throughout asia (food and agriculture organization, 2003). in china, women asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 658-667. 660 constitute about 70 per cent of the agricultural labor force and perform more than 70 percent of farm labor .in india, 75 per cent of all women workers are in agriculture (kelkar, 2009). even in comparison with other business segments, women‟s participation in agriculture is relatively increasing (meeker et al., 2002). several literature mirrored that women‟s involvement in agricultural operation varies from country to country even from region to region due to country and reason specific change in social setup (javed et al., 2006). however, it is so far widely acknowledged that women perform most of the activities related to livestock production and management (tulachan and karki, 2000). reviewing literature on the household labor issues in west asia and north africa tully (1990) concluded that female labor is important in most livestock production activities except shearing, slaughtering and transporting water and fodder. women were involved in lighter work that does not demand heavy physical effort, but care and practice (saito and spurling, 1992). rangnekar, et al. (1991) in india also expressed similar opinion. several studies focused the role of women in agriculture in jordan have disclose the high contribution of women in livestock production (brandenburg, 1993; himour, 1994; brockhaus, 1996). even it is also reported that women work in livestock in a better way than their male counterpart. in fact in every household woman spend 2.2 h/day for animal care activities (agarwal et al., 1999). in reference to another survey finding women often devote more times from 16-18 h against 8-10 h by man in a day to these tasks (food and agriculture organization, 2012). a report of united nations development program mirrored that rural women‟s participation in crop and livestock production activities is about 79.4% which is 19.4% higher than that of man. in pakistan a rural women works 15.5 h a day, spending 5.50 h in caring livestock but provides only 50 min for caring her children (economic and social commission for asia and the pacific, 1997). in bangladesh, being a traditional muslim society, women hardly participate in agricultural activities outside home (hossain and bayes, 2009; abdullah and zeidenstein, 1982). women‟s agricultural activities were confined to homestead production and post-harvest operations; however, in recent years they are mostly involved in livestock and poultry rearing activities besides crop (jaim and hossain, 2011). in a study to determine the contribution of women in raising livestock for generating family income and employment in rural bangladesh on 600 households from 6 districts jahangir, et al., (2003) revealed that participation of women were 37.34%, 44.48%, 46.70% and 55.80% for large, medium, small and landless farms, respectively . women are actively involved in forestry, fisheries and livestock production. in general women in bangladesh are responsible for livestock and poultry rearing (food and agriculture organization, 2012). however, we are not aware about any study concerning coastal women participation in livestock activities bangladesh. reviews concerning most of the asian countries except middle east exhibit that women are actively involved in many aspects of fisheries (siason, et al., undated). for example, in cambodia, higher yields are obtained from fish ponds managed mainly by women. in thailand and china, they often bear the sole responsibility of farm and aquaculture production because of male migration to cities (ahmed et al., 2012) last decade has witnessed a dramatic progress in inland fresh water aquaculture production in bangladesh, growing at an annual average rate of nearly 20% (muir, 2003). around 400000 ha of freshwater ponds and ditches are used for aquaculture and more than 900000 household are involved in aquaculture activities (asian development bank, 2005)) they are directly involvement of women in activities like making fishing nets, gears, repair and maintenance of the gears, sorting of fingerlings (especially in coastal areas), fish processing, transportation, marketing etc (ahmed et al.,2012) by undertaking pond fisheries activities, women can contribute considerably to family income, ensure constant, supply of much needed nutrition, generate self-employment, uplift overall socio-economic condition and become more skilled (shelly and d‟costa, 2001). rural women in livestock and fisheries.... 661 materials and methods this study was conducted in some selected villages of a coastal district in bangladesh known as patuakhali. this district found its position in the south-western part of the county where main occupation for living is agriculture and fishing. small scale homestead based rearing of livestock and poultry is also common. primary data were collected using a structured interview schedule from a sample of 70 female farmers during the period september, 2010. simple descriptive statistics such as mean, median, standard deviation and range were used to achieve objective 1. women involvement in livestock and fisheries activities was measured by a six point scale on 21 selected items. to be precise about the participation of women we also consider whether they do the selected activities alone or with other male and/or female companion. the response categories on the scale were solely(regular) =5, solely(irregular) =4, with other (female) =3, with other (male) =2 and with others (both male and female) =1 and no participation= 0. hence, score of women‟s participation in 21 selected items could range from 0-105. to have a deeper understanding about women involvement in the selected activities and reach objective 2, a ranking was done on the basis of mean value of each item (javed et al., 2006).„pearson‟s correlation test‟ and stepwise multiple regression analysis was used to achieve objective 3. all the analysis of data was done by spss 11.5 software. results in this section before having correlation and regression estimates descriptive analysis is presented in table1. basic statistical concepts like mean, median, standard deviation, minimum and maximum are used as basis for descriptive analysis. in the third column results show that average women‟s participation score in livestock and fisheries activities is 44.8. values in the following columns show median, standard deviation, minimum and maximum. according to the results minimum participation value is o while the maximum value is 87. a compete detail of the rest of the variables can be observed from table 1. table1: descriptive statistics of some selected characteristics of coastal women (n=70) selected characteristics scoring method mean media n std. dev. min. max. age year 35.92 35.00 9.19 21.00 57.00 education year of schooling 5.47 5.00 3.79 0.00 16.00 family size number of members 6.12 6.00 2.14 2.00 12.00 farm size hectare 0.787 0.410 1.04 0.01 5.81 annual income thousand taka*/year 81.35 56.85 74.92 10.00 410.70 agricultural knowledge score 16.32 17.00 4.38 4.00 25.00 decision making role score 21.6 23.00 6.57 4.00 30.00 non-localite behavior score 6.85 4.00 11.70 0.00 90.00 training exposure no. of days 13.70 0.00 54.05 0.00 365.0 fatalism score 7.45 8.00 5.05 0.00 22.00 media exposure score 5.01 5.00 4.71 0.00 23.00 participation in livestock and fisheries activities score 44.8 40 17.40 0.00 87.00 *83 taka = 1 usd overall scores of women‟s participation in selected livestock and fisheries activities represented that a little more than half (52.8%) of the women had medium level participation while almost one fourth (24.3%) had low participation and the rest 22.9 % women had high participation in selected livestock and fisheries activities with standard deviation 17.40. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 658-667. 662 data presented in table 2 depicts that among fisheries activities women‟s participation in food application ranks at the top (m=1.528) followed by taking care (m=1.20), catching fish (m=0.842), collection of fish fry (m=0.714), selling of fish (m=0.671) and pond preparation (m=0.571). table 2: participation of coastal women in selected fisheries activities activities mean score rank pond preparation 0.571 6 collection of fish fry 0.714 4 food application 1.528 1 taking care 1.20 2 catching fish 0.842 3 selling of fish 0.671 5 scale: solely (regular) =5, solely (irregular) =4, with other female=3, with other male=2, with other male and female=1, no participation =0 women‟s participation in livestock sector was estimated in two basic sectors such as cattle and poultry. in cattle sector top three activities having increased women participation in rank order were cleaning livestock shed (m=2.914), taking care of livestock (m=2.742) and giving food (m=2.557). in case of participation in poultry related activities women had highest participation in giving feed (m=4.571) followed by cleaning poultry shed (m=4.342), egg collection and selling (m=4.157), collection of poultry birds (m= 3.542), treatment of poultry birds (m=3.40) and selling of poultry birds (m=2.70). table 3: participation of coastal women in selected livestock activities activities mean score rank cattle grazing of livestock 1.671 4 purchase of livestock 0.728 7 taking care of livestock 2.742 2 cleaning livestock shed 2.914 1 treatment of livestock 1.457 6 giving feed 2.557 3 milking 1.642 5 selling of animal 0.557 8 marketing of milk 0.542 9 poultry 24.3 52.8 22.9 0 20 40 60 low particip. (0-30) medium particip. (31-55) high particip. (>55) fig 1. graph showing percetage distribution of respondents on the basis of participation level rural women in livestock and fisheries.... 663 collection of poultry birds 3.542 4 giving feed 4.571 1 cleaning of shed 4.342 2 treatment 3.40 5 egg collection and selling 4.157 3 poultry selling 2.70 6 scale: solely (regular) =5, solely (irregular) =4, with other female=3, with other male=2, with other male and female=1, no participation =0 the independent variables of the study were age, education, family size, farm size, annual income, agricultural knowledge, decisionmaking role, non-localite behavior, training exposure, fatalism and media exposure. correlation test revealed that among the selected variable family size and agricultural knowledge had strong positive significant relationship with women‟s participation while education and annual income had negative significant relationship with women‟s participation in fisheries and livestock activities. table 4: correlation of different selected variables with rural women’s participation in fisheries and livestock activities independent variable participation in fisheries and livestock activities age 0.79ns education -0.245* family size 0.323** farm size 0.029ns annual income -0.247* agricultural knowledge 0.307** decision making role 0.116ns non-localite behavior 0.55ns training exposure -0.95ns fatalism 0.181ns media exposure -0.090ns * significant at 0.05 level of probability ** significant at 0.01 level of probability, ns= non significant variables significantly correlated with participation of women in livestock and fisheries activities were entered in the regression equation. the results show that participation of women in livestock and fisheries activities is the function of family size (beta=2.134, ρ=0.006), agricultural knowledge (beta=1.408, ρ =.001) and education (beta=1.179, ρ <0.0001). the estimates revealed that family size has the strongest contribution to the 10.5% variance of women‟s participation in livestock and fisheries activities, while agricultural knowledge and education contribute 9.1% and 6% consecutively, to the variance of women‟s participation in livestock and fisheries activities. indeed all these variables jointly contribute 25.6% variance in women‟s participation in livestock and fisheries activities. table 5: predicting women’s participation in livestock and fisheries activities variables r 2 adj.r 2 β se t p f ρ family size 0.105 0.091 2.134 0.892 2.239 0.020 7.940 0.006 agricultural knowledge 0.196 0.172 1.408 0.430 3.272 0.002 8.186 0.001 education 0.256 0.223 -1.179 0.511 -2.306 0.024 7.583 0.000 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 658-667. 664 discussion the mean scores of the selected activities in table 2 represented that women's participation in fisheries sector is very low. the possible explanation could be that modern fish cultivation is still not very popular in the study area. although most of the families have pond but they do not cultivate fish for commercial purpose rather they manage it in traditional way to meet family consumption only. it is so far well-known that traditional fish culture required less care and nursing. mean scores depicted in table 3 documented that women participation in cattle sector was reasonably low compared to their participation in poultry sector. nonetheless from the average score in poultry related activities it can be claimed that poultry related activities are predominantly done by women. in addition it is clear that women had very limited participation in the activities dealing with direct monetary benefits. in line with our findings other national and international (javed et al., 2006) studies on women's participation in livestock and agricultural activities concluded that among all the activities women have least participation in selling and marketing. feedback from a gender analysis workshop also posit that man manage the sale of livestock and income from the sale as well (gencap, 2011). among the four significantly correlated ( see table 4) variables family size and agricultural knowledge showed positive relationship while family income and education showed negative relationship with women's participation in fisheries and livestock production activities. rokonuzzaman and islam (2009) had almost similar findings in their study in bangladesh on women's participation in goat rearing. despite a convincing body of research done in home and abroad had finding those echoes our findings. farid, et al., (2009) in bangladesh found that level of education in negatively associated with women's participation. khan, et al., (2012) in their study in peshawar, pakistan disclosed that income of family and level of education had significant negative effects on women's participation in crop and livestock production. analyzing women's participation in cassava production in nigeria onyemauwa (2012) identified family income and level of education as important factors influencing women's participation. it has been a common observation that even a slight improvement in economic status of a family reduces pressure on women to engage in agricultural work. wealthier families consider women's participation in agricultural activities as symbol of low social status. for instance, in rural bangladesh women from wellto-do families generally do not engage in outside work, rather they devoted more time in childcare and domestic chores (goldin, 1995). chandy (undated) in his case studies in india documented that in general rural women remain more involved in household work since only low economic group of rural women take part in farming operations. in general regardless rural or urban when women become education they look for salaried job. nevertheless social tradition does not encourage educated women to participate in agriculture related activities. stepwise multiple regression revealed family size as the strongest contributor to explain 10.5% variance of women's participation in fisheries and livestock production activities. in analyzing women labor participation in agriculture production in jaffna, sri lanka abira and sireeranhan (2012) also support our findings. damira et al., (2007) noted that an increase in family size increased the probability of women's participation in agricultural production. this probability means that younger members of the household are not participating activity in agricultural production, because youth of modern days like white-collar job. in general more family members mean s need of more food and more income. in rural coastal region of bangladesh opportunity for women involvement in non-farm income generating activates are very limited. the only way to cope with this increased demand it to work more in agriculture related sectors. however, contrasting our findings oladejo et al., (2011) negate that household size is negatively associated with women's participation in agriculture. conclusion and recommendations from the findings it was concluded that almost 75% women had moderate to high level participation in selected fisheries and livestock activities. according to mean values top ranked activities related to fisheries, cattle and poultry rural women in livestock and fisheries.... 665 sector were feed application (m=1.528), cleaning cattle shed (m=2.914) and giving feed to poultry birds (m=4.71). correlation coefficient revealed that agricultural knowledge and family size had strong significant relationship while education level and family income had significant negative relationship with women‟s participation in fisheries and livestock activities. the estimated of stepwise multiple regression exhibit that three variables namely family size, agricultural knowledge and education jointly contribute 25.6% variance in women‟s participation in livestock and fisheries activities. based on findings, the study come up with the following recommendations: 1. women‟s 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(2000) “gender and livestock management in mixed farming systems”, icimod newsletter, no. 37. world bank. (2005) “natural disaster hotspots: a global risk analysis”, disaster risk management series, no. 5, world bank, washington, dc. http://www.agnet.org/library.php?func=view&id=20110725164020 http://www.agnet.org/library.php?func=view&id=20110725164020 http://www.worldfishcenter.org/pubs/wif/wifglobal/wifg_asia.pdf http://www.worldfishcenter.org/pubs/wif/wifglobal/wifg_asia.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. the impact of agriculture credit on growth in pakistan nadeem akmal (senior scientific officer, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabadpakistan) bushra rehman (assistant scientific officer, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabadpakistan) akhtar ali (senior scientific officer, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabadpakistan) hassnain shah (principal scientific officer, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabad-pakistan) citation: nadeem akmal, bushra rehman, akhtar ali and hassnain shah (2012) “the impact of agriculture credit on growth in pakistan”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 579 583. the impact of agriculture credit on .... 579 author(s) nadeem akmal senior scientific officer, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabadpakistan bushra rehman assistant scientific officer, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabad pakistan akhtar ali senior scientific officer, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabadpakistan hassnain shah principal scientific officer, social sciences research institute, narc, islamabadpakistan the impact of agriculture credit on growth in pakistan abstract agriculture took place on land, where crops, rising and rearing animals for the production of food for man and industries. but to run all the activities credit is the main stream. in most of the developing countries credit played a very important role in economic growth. this study is designed to analyze the impact of agriculture credit on growth. this type of work was done in 2003 by iqbal et al. and the same methodology is followed in this paper. secondary data was taken from 1970-2010.water availability; labour availability and crop intensity are the important determinants of agriculture gdp. keywords: agriculture, credit, growth, pakistan introduction credit is the essential items for any activity of life and more over for the agriculture activates because it is directly related to our eating habits and purchasing power parity. in economic term credit is the mean stream to run the lively hood of the people of a country. in agriculture sector credit is the back bone to run any business activity. agricultural credit is an essential part of the progression of modernization of agriculture and commercialization of the rural economy. the availability of easy and cheap credit is the quickest way for boosting agricultural production. therefore, it was the prime policy of all the successive governments to meet the credit requirements of the farming community of pakistan (vogt, 1978). in pakistan the concept of credit and agriculture credit is not new it was there before the independence of pakistan but those credit systems was noninstitutional and large no of farmers were heavily dependent on them. in 1958 under agriculturists loan act (ala), credit was provided for the purchase of inputs like seed, fertilizers, cattle and implements to relief poor farmers (yusuf, 1984). a lot of work has been done on credit like effect of higher input expenditures is presumably associated with higher productivity growth (saeed et al., 1996). the impact of institutional credit on agricultural production in pakistan has been found to be positive and significant (iqbal et al., 2003). considerable efforts have been made to improve the quality of credit disbursement in different eras. in the early seventies, all private commercial banks were nationalized and all these banks were mandated to provide agriculture loan (akram et al., 2008). this paper is the extension of iqbal et al., work 2003.this paper will also explains the impact of institutional credit from 1970-2010. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 579-583. 580 material and methods credit is the main stream in agriculture production. different credit indicator was analyzing to see the impact on agriculture gross domestic product. to analyze this agricultural gross domestic product (agdp) was used which act like dependent variable and other variable like agricultural water availability, agricultural labour force, cropped area, and agricultural credit act as independent variables. other variable like tractors, fertilizer, biocides, and improved seeds etc. which may impact the credit were not used in the model. the secondary data collected from agriculture statistics and economic survey of pakistan various issues. researcher included credit as an explanatory variable in the production function based on the argument of carter (1989). in order to avoid the problem of multicolinearity, the dependent and all the explanatory variables were transformed to per cultivated hectare. the cobb-douglas type production function given by following equation was estimated followed by iqbal et al., 2003. lgpdcult = β0 + β1 lcrpcult + β2 llbpcult + β3 lwapcult + β4 cropinte + β5 dummy + u where lgdpcult = natural logarithm of agricultural gross domestic product per cultivated hectare. lcrpcult = natural logarithm of institutional credit per cultivated hectare. llbpcult = natural logarithm of agricultural labour force per cultivated hectare. lwapcult= natural logarithm of farm gate availability of water per cultivated hectare. cropinte = cropping intensity (ratio of total cropped area to cultivated area). dummy = dummy variable for bad years (dummy=1 for years 1974-75, 1983-84, 199293, and 2000-2001; else=0). u = random error term independently and identically distributed with zero mean and constant variance. results and discussion the disbursement of institutional credit (nominal) ranged from 128 million rupees in 1971-72 to about 248120.47 million rupees in 2009-10. the growth of nominal credit remained highest during the period 1971-72 to 1975-76 when it grew at the compound growth rate of 79.97 percent due mainly to banking reforms of 1972 and the smaller credit base (iqbal et al., 2003). the growth of nominal credit slowed down between mid 1970s to mid 1980s but still was above 20 percent per annum. the growth of nominal credit was relatively low during the late 1980s to early 1990s. with the passage of time it grew at a higher rate and now again showed decreasing trend. in real terms also the institutional credit showed a similar pattern but with a much smaller growth rate. the growth of real credit after mid 1980s to mid 1990s and 2005-10 showed a negative trend (table 1). the ratio of institutional credit as percentage to agricultural gdp for the period 1971-72 to 2009-2010 is shown in figure 1.in 1971-72 the institutional credit grew higher from 0.71 percent to a 11.56 percent during 1986-87 as the percentage of agricultural gdp. afterwards, the credit as a percentage gdp continuously declined to 6.42 percent during 1990-91 and fluctuated below 6 percent during the period 1991-92 to 2000-01with a lowest of 3.29 percent occurring in 1996-97. institutional credit data reflects that a very small proportion of agriculture gdp in the mid of 1980 to mid of mid 1990. in 2001-2010 time period the institution credit again contributing in agriculture gdp. during the period 2007-08 it reaches to 10.49 percent. the availability of nominal and real institutional credit on per cropped hectare basis increased continuously till after the mid 1980s and stood at rupees 800.49and 2305.10 per cropped hectare respectively in 1987-88 and 1986-87. in 1988-89 the nominal credit per cropped hectare shower the decreasing trends and fluctuated around 650 rupees per cropped hectare between the years 1988-89 to 1991-92. after that it showed increases trend except few years. after 1986-87, the availability of real credit per cropped hectare showed decreasing the impact of agriculture credit on .... 581 trend up to 1995-96 after which it recovered slowly now it reaches above the level of mid 1980’s as shown in figure 2. this declined availability of institutional credit in real terms after mid 1980s and increasing per hectare costs of production due to increasing prices of inputs, withdrawal of input subsidies, and levy of sales tax on inputs like fertilizer and pesticides may have adverse implications for agricultural growth (iqbal et al., 2003). regression analysis the cobb-douglas type production function was estimated using the ordinary least squares (ols) method. all the variables transformed by taking the natural log to overcome the problem of multicollinearity among the independent variables. the final estimates of the equation are presented in the following table 2. the first variable of table 2 lcrpcult showing positive and significant relationship with agriculture gross domestic product. theoretical the credit disbursement plays significant impact on the farmer’s livelihood. the variable agriculture labour forces per cultivated shows a positive and significant relationship with agriculture gross domestic product. according to the literature in most developing countries, agriculture provides employment for over seventy percent (70%) of the entire population (longe, 2008). the coefficient shows that 10% increase in agriculture labour forces per cultivated will bring 1.18 percent increase in agriculture gross domestic product per cultivated hectors. lwapcult shows a significant and positive impact on agdp. theoretically irrigation water supply improves with the passage of time. coefficient shows that 1 percent increase in lwapcult will bring 3.29 percent change in lgpdcult. crop intensity and dummy variable shows a positive but insignificant relationship with agriculture gross domestic product. the r 2 shows that 0.96 percent variation in lgdpcult is explained by the independent variables. adjusted r 2 value is 0.957. ftest is applied on the model to test the overall significance of the model. this shows that overall model is good fit and significant at 1.0 percent level. the second equation was estimated by taking the ma (1) which is a moving average error specification which was used to adjust the residuals. the results were shown in the table 3. the r 2 shows that 0.98 percent variation in lgdpcult is explained by the independent variables. adjusted r 2 value is 0.98. ftest is applied on the model to test the overall significance of the model. this shows that overall model is good fit and significant at 1.0 percent level. the coefficient for agricultural credit is positive and significant at 1 percent level and suggests that institutional credit affect agricultural production positively. a 1 percent increase in the disbursement of institutional credit would induce an increase of about 0.54 percent in agricultural gdp. similarly, labour also has a positive and statistically significant impact on agricultural production. the coefficient for the cropping intensity variable is also positive and significant at 5 percent. it shows that increase in cropping intensity increases agricultural gdp. conclusions during last decades the credit expands a lot and has a positive impact on the growth. in the decade of 1980’s to mid 1990’s the nominal credit increases at a slower rate. but the real credit didn’t show such fluctuation. availability of irrigation water and agricultural labor per cultivated hectare, and cropping intensity are the other important determinants of agricultural gdp. there are a lot of changes in agriculture credit disbursement schemes there is need to provide loans to the small farmers at easy pay backs terms and conditions. there is also need to introduce the agriculture insurance schemes in which farmers loss risk can be reduced in case of drought, pest attacks, hailstorm, thunderstorm, heavy rains, and other natural hazards. credit distributions should be in such manner that it covers all the aspects of agriculture activities like major crops, minor crops, horticultural and livestock’s. there is also need to do more work on the impact of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 579-583. 582 credit of food grain items, exportable primary items like cotton etc. references agricultural development bank of pakistan (various issues) agricultural credit indicators. islamabad: central information department, mis division. akram, w. zakir, h. hazoor, m. s. ijaz, h. (2008) “impact of agriculture credit on growth and poverty in pakistan (time series analysis through error correction model)”, european journal of scientific research, vol. 23(2), pp. 243-251. carter, m. r. (1989) “the impact of credit on peasant productivity and differentiation in nicaragua”, journal of development economics, vol. 31, pp. 13–36. government of pakistan (2011) agricultural statistics of pakistan 2009-2010. islamabad: economic wing, ministry of food, agriculture and livestock. government of pakistan (2011) economic survey 2010-2011. islamabad: economic advisor’s wing, finance division. iqbal, m., a. munir and k. abbas (2003) “the impact of institutional credit on agricultural production in pakistan”, the pakistan development review, vol. 42(4), pp. 469–485. longe j. b. (2008) “economics of agricultural production in nigeria”, journal of policy issues, vol. 1(2), pp. 2-10. saeed, q., i. nabi and r. faruqee (1996) “rural finance for growth and poverty alleviation. international food policy research institute (ifpri)”, policy research working paper no. 1593. washington dc, usa. vogt, d. (1978) “broadening to access credit”, development digest, vol. 16, pp. 25-32. yusuf, muhammad (1984) “in farm credit situation in asia”, tokyo: asian productivity organization, pp. 455– 494. zuberi, habib a. (1989) “production function, institutional credit and agricultural development in pakistan”, the pakistan development review, vol. 28(1), pp. 43–56. table 1: growth of nominal and real institutional agricultural credit in pakistan compound growth rate (percent) period nominal credit real credit 1971-72 to 1975-76 79.97 48.49 1975-76 to 1980-81 21.93 12.04 1980-81 to 1985-86 19.07 17.71 1985-86 to 1990-91 0.40 -10.55 1990-91 to 1995-96 6.24 -4.52 1995-96 to 2000-01 23.98 16.90 2001-02 to 2005-06 25.90 17.23 2005-06 to 2009-10 13.51 -2.13 table 2: the ols estimates of cobb-douglas production function variables coefficient estimates t-values significance constant 2.422* 1.857 0.072 lcrpcult 0.429*** 5.272 0.000 llbpcult 1.182* 1.701 0.098 lwapcult 3.299*** 3.979 0.000 cropinte 0.462 0.428 0.671 dummy 0.055 0.360 0.720 r 2 =0.963 adjusted r 2 =0.957 f= 173.935 durbin watson=0.834 ***=significant 1% **= significant 5% *= significant 10% the impact of agriculture credit on .... 583 table 3: the ols estimates of cobb-douglas production function variables coefficient estimates t-values significance constant 4.648*** 6.641 0.000 lcrpcult 0.548*** 6.455 0.000 llbpcult 1.507*** 2.787 0.008 lwapcult 0.664 1.113 0.273 cropinte 0.847** 1.983 0.055 dummy 0.004 0.080 0.936 ma(1) 0.999*** 195600.8 0.000 r 2 =0.983 adjusted r 2 =0.980 f= 311.84 durbin watson=1.137 ***=significant 1% **= significant 5% *= significant 10% fig. 2: institutional credit as percentage to agriculture gdp fig. 2: nominal and real credit per cropped hectare fig1. instituational credit as percentage to agriculture gdp 0.000 2.000 4.000 6.000 8.000 10.000 12.000 14.000 19 71 -7 2 19 74 -7 5 19 77 -7 8 19 80 -8 1 19 83 -8 4 19 86 -8 7 19 89 -9 0 19 92 -9 3 19 95 -9 6 19 98 -9 9 20 01 -0 2 20 04 -0 5 20 07 -0 8 years p e rc e n t fig.2. nominal and real credit per cropped hectare 0.00 2000.00 4000.00 6000.00 8000.00 10000.00 12000.00 14000.00 19 71 -7 2 19 74 -7 5 19 77 -7 8 19 80 -8 1 19 83 -8 4 19 86 -8 7 19 89 -9 0 19 92 -9 3 19 95 -9 6 19 98 -9 9 20 01 -0 2 20 04 -0 5 20 07 -0 8 year r u p e e s nominal credit per cropped hectare real credit per cropped hectare effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 488-496 488 entrepreneurial traits and the distribution of poultry farm entrepreneurs in delta state, nigeria r. a. isiorhovoja, o. e. inoni, o. d. ogisi department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, p. m. b. 95074, asaba, delta state, nigeria abstract the authors attempted to ascertain the entrepreneurial potential of poultry farmers in delta state using farmers’ scores in six entrepreneurial traits measured on a five-point likert scale. the study covered the population of 275 poultry farmers in the state. the objectives were to ascertain the level of entrepreneurial traits of poultry farmers and to determine the distribution of poultry farm entrepreneurs by category, namely; low, average and high potential, across the three agricultural zones. the hypotheses tested were that entrepreneurial traits of poultry farmers were not above average and that there was no significant variation in poultry farmers’ entrepreneurial potentials across the three agricultural zones. primary data were collected using copies of a structured questionnaire. by using analysis of variance and test of differences between a test value of 3.4, major findings were that poultry farmers were above average in three entrepreneurial traits but with significant variation across the zones; that entrepreneurial potential was generally below average, finally, that the three categories of poultry farm entrepreneurs were randomly distributed across the zones. the authors concluded that while there may not be any inherent biases in drawing sample of poultry farmers across the state for development projects purposes, there may be differences in cost implications for farmers’ entrepreneurial development. keywords: entrepreneurial trait, entrepreneurial potential, agricultural zones introduction1 the entrepreneur is the mechanism through which society converts technical information into the goods and services that are produced and offered to the society. with the embodied quality of efficiency in resource utilization, the entrepreneur is increasingly becoming a confidence-eliciting factor that financiers and change agents look for in individuals who they would want to cooperate with to complement their efforts towards desired goals. furthermore, the entrepreneur has become the basis for 1 corresponding author’s details: name: r. a. isiorhhovoja email address: straakpo@yahoo.com assessing temporal and spatial inefficiencies in any economy and therefore a window for providing solution towards mitigating identified inefficiencies. notwithstanding these recommending qualities, low et al. (2005) opined that policy makers are at a loss in promoting economic growth through entrepreneurial development due to the lack of appropriate entrepreneurial cognitive tools with which to select the right people to participate in such projects. this has the implication that whereas the importance of the entrepreneur is recognized and desired, the methodology for identifying him/her remains unclear. the prolonged delay in designing an appropriate tool for identifying the entrepreneur is not without cost to the society. in addition to the statement asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:straakpo@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 488-496 489 credited to low et al. (2005) above, galor and michalopoulos (2006) demonstrated that the delay in the selection of growth promoting traits in developing economies has contributed to the persistence of poverty. obviously such growth promoting traits may not have to do with only lead sectors in the economy but also key growth factors in the economy of which the entrepreneur is recognized as one. conscious effort towards a scientific approach to identifying the entrepreneur therefore, will be an effort in the right direction. a number of tools have been put forward for identifying the entrepreneur in the literature and have been applied empirically in many economies. foremost among these is the trait approach. the traits include: need for achievement (n ach), internal locus of control, and risk taking. others are need for autonomy, need for power, tolerance of ambiguity, need for affiliation and endurance (driessen and zwart, 2002). johnston et al. (2009) modified the traits to include innovativeness, proactiveness, risk taking, autonomy, a need to achieve, opportunity drive, self-reliance and commitment. driessen and zwart (2002) were of the opinion that the three most common traits among entrepreneurs were need for achievement (n ach), internal locus of control and risk taking. scales have been constructed over the years to measure these traits in individuals and the entrepreneur has been found to score above average in them. the objectives of this paper therefore are to; ascertain the level of entrepreneurial traits of poultry farmers in delta state and to determine the distribution of poultry farm entrepreneurs across the three agricultural zones in the state. we hypothesize that entrepreneurial traits of poultry farmers in the study area are not above average and, that there is no significant variation in poultry farmers’ entrepreneurial potential across agricultural zones in delta state. materials and methods the study covered the three agricultural zones in the state, namely; delta north, delta central and delta south agricultural zones. primary data were collected from a population of 275 poultry farmers in the state. the list was obtained from records of the livestock department, delta state ministry of agriculture, asaba, by an interview schedule using copies of a structured questionnaire. by the interview schedule method, the 275 copies of the questionnaire (39 to delta north, 177 to delta central and 59 to delta south) administered were all retrieved. there were two parts to the questionnaire. the first part contained the personal characteristics of the farmers’ (age, education, and family background), while the second section was concerned with the personal opinion of the poultry farmers on their entrepreneurial traits. the items were phrased as statements with a possible response continuum of a 5-point likert scale (strongly disagree =1, disagree =2, uncertain =3, agree =4, or strongly agree =5). this measurement scale has been used in several previous entrepreneurial researches with acceptable levels of reliability (covin et al., 1997). each entrepreneurial trait was measured by multiple items in order to minimize inaccuracies in concept measurement. there were 30 entrepreneurial trait items in the questionnaire, five items for each of the six traits studied, namely: need for achievement, tolerance of ambiguity, internal locus of control, risk taking propensity, need for affiliation and need autonomy. copies of the questionnaire were administered to poultry farm owner-managers, poultry farm owner non-managers and poultry farm nonowner-managers and supervisors. field officers of the livestock department of the delta state ministry of agriculture assisted in administering the questionnaire. the questionnaire was pretested to ensure clarity. reliability of the scales, though established previously, was retested given the different context of the study. the six entrepreneurial trait subscales gave an overall cronbach alpha 0.76. likert scale is widely used to measure entrepreneurial traits/orientation (van eeden, 2004; and smith et al., 2006; and johnston et al., 2009). it is never an individual item; it is always a set of several items, with specific format features, the responses to which are added or averaged to produce an overall score or measurement (uebersax, 2006; abreu et al., 2008). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 488-496 490 entrepreneurial trait (et) was assessed by asking respondents to indicate the intensity of their agreement or disagreement with each of the 30 likert scale items that measure entrepreneurial traits. the final score for each subscale (construct variable) was calculated using the formula:    n i n aet i 1 1 ------------1 where: eti is average score in the ith trait, ai is the actual score in ith trait items, ni is the number of items constituting the ith trait respondents’ trait ratings were classified as low or average or high using the cut off mark of less than 2.6 for low, 2.6 to 3.4 for average and above 3.4 as high (van eeden, 2004 and smith et al., 2006). dawis (1987); diochon et al., (2002), hmieleski and corbett (2006), and the bdc group (2007) however, aggregated the raw scores to categorize respondents. persons with higher level properties in the variable being measured are expected to get higher scores than those persons from lower properties (clason and dormody, 1994). analysis of variance (anova) was used to test the hypothesis that there is no significant variation in poultry farmer’s entrepreneurial traits among agricultural zones. chitest was used to determine if there were any significant differences in the distribution of the three categories of entrepreneurs, namely; low, average and high potential entrepreneurs, across the three agricultural zones. results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of poultry farmers table1 shows the age distribution of poultry farmers in delta state by agricultural zone. the figures in bracket are the percentage of the column total, that is, of the population of poultry farmers in the respective zones. the ages of the respondents ranged from 18 to 68 years with a mean of 43.91 years and a standard deviation of 9.29 years. the mean age varies among the agricultural zones. it was 45.89 years with a standard deviation of 9.47 for delta north agricultural zone, 42.74 years with a standard deviation of 8.94 for delta central agricultural zone and, 45.02 years with a standard deviation of 10.28 for delta south agricultural zone. the age distribution of poultry farmers’ therefore has a wider spread in delta south agricultural table1: demographic characteristics of poultry farmers in delta state age distribution of farmers age distribution of farmers age group 18 – 27 28 – 37 38 – 47 48 – 57 58 – 67 68 – 77 total gender female male total marital status single married single again total delta north 2(5.10) 4 (10.30) 22 (56.40) 6 (15.40) 4 (10.30) 1 (2.60) 39 (100.00) 17 (43.60) 22 (56.40) 39(100.00) 2(5.13) 37(94.87) 0(0.00) 39(100.00) delta central 12 (6.80) 30 (16.90) 69 (39.00) 60 (33.90) 5 (2.80) 1 (0.60) 177 (100.00) 106 (59.90) 71(40.10) 177(100.00) 39(22.03 132(74.58) 6(3.39) 177(100.00) delta south 6 (10.20) 3 (5.10) 18 (30.50) 28 (47.50) 4 (6.80) 0 (0.00) 59 (100.00) 37 (62.70) 22 (37.30) 59(100.00) 14(23.73) 44(74.58) 1(1.69) 59(100.00) total 20 (7.30) 37 (13.50) 109 (39.60) 94 (34.20) 13 (4.70) 2 (0.70) 275 (100.00) 160 (58.18) 115 (41.82) 275(100.00) 55(20.00 213(77.45) 7(2.55) 275(100.00) source: field survey 2010 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 491 zone. the anova test of differences between means however revealed that there was no significant difference among the mean age of poultry farmers across agricultural zones. the age group 38 47 years has the highest frequency of poultry farm entrepreneurs in the state. in delta south agricultural zone, however, the age group 48 – 57 years predominates (47.50%). the age group 48 – 57 (34.20%) came closely behind. again, for delta south the age group 38 – 47 years was in the second position. it can safely be said that over 70% of poultry farm entrepreneurs were in the age groups38 – 47 years and 47 – 58 years. table 1 also shows female entrepreneurs predominate the subsector (58.18 state-wide) except in delta north agricultural zone where the male were in majority (56.40%). finally for table 1, the information on the marital characteristics of the respondents indicates that about 77.45% of the respondents were married and 20% single and 2.55% were single again, that is, once married. poultry production is apparently not popular with the singles and single again in delta north agricultural zone. human capital characteristics the distribution of poultry farmers by qualification is shown in table 2. middle level manpower that is, national diploma (nd) and national certificate of education (nce) holders constitute a simple majority (42.18%) of the farmers’ population state wide and indeed for each of the three zones, though to varying degrees. an appreciable percentage of poultry farmers in delta north (37.78%) and delta central (24.30%) had at least a university degree. on the importance of formal education to successful entrepreneurship ferrante and sabatini (2007) were of the opinion that the higher the level of sophistication in technological innovation the higher the level of education necessary to enable both the adaptation and advancement in technology in the particular industry. furthermore, that the motive for entrepreneurship tend to include need to apply ones excess capacity profitably for the highly educated, whereas for the less educated it will tend to be for reasons like ‘no other job’. holcombe (2003) is of the view that learning or education is central to creating insight and alertness and the capability of responding to changes in the business environment. these are fundamental requisite qualities for entrepreneurial firm survival and growth. while the poultry subsector may not be using that sophisticated technology presently, the prevalence of not highly educated operators in the subsector may have implications for the technological development and growth of the sector. the number of years of experience prior to setting up the poultry farm is also shown in table 2. about 65.45% of the respondents indicated that they had experience in poultry farm management prior to being in the present farm. table 2: human capital characteristics of poultry farmers formal educational qualification qualification delta north delta central delta south total no formal edu. pslc sssce/equiv. nd/nce first deg/equiv. higher degree total 1((2.60) 0(0.00) 11(28.20) 12(30.08) 12(30.08) 3(7.70) 39(100) 9(5.10) 6(3.40) 37(20.90) 82(46.30) 37(20.90) 6(3.40) 177(100) 2(3.40) 6(10.20) 10 (16.90) 22(28.80) 17(6.18) 2(3.40) 59(100) 12(4.36) 12(4.36) 58(21.09) 116(42.18 66(24.00) 11(4.00) 275(100) prior experience yes no total 32(82.10) 7(17.90) 39(100.00) 109(61.60) 68(38.40) 177(100.00) 40(67.80) 19(32.20) 59(100.00) 180(65.45) 95(34.55) 275(100.00) source: field survey 2010 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 488-496 492 it is deductible, given the high percentage of poultry farmers who have prior experience before moving to the present farm in the three agricultural zones, that apprenticeship was an important means of human capital development in poultry production. levels of entrepreneurial traits of poultry farmers in delta state mean scores of farmers on entrepreneurial traits scale table 3 shows the mean score of respondents on entrepreneurial traits on a five point likert scale. the hypothesis tested here was: h01: the entrepreneurial traits of poultry farmers in delta state are not above average. by using t-test, the findings as contained in table 3, were that scores in need for achievement, risk taking and need for autonomy were significantly higher than average while mean scores for tolerance of ambiguity, internal locus of control and need for affiliation were lower than average (3.4 test value) at 5% significant level. table 3: test statistic of the hypothesis that entrepreneurial traits of poultry farmers in delta state is not above average entrepreneurial traits mean d.f mean diff t-stat sig (1tailed) need achievement tolerance of ambiguity internl locus of control risk taking need affiliation need autonomy epot 3.67 3.14 3.16 3.61 3.18 3.54 3.38 274 274 274 274 274 274 274 0.27 -0.26 -0.24 0.21 -0.22 0.14 -0.17 5.09 -7.38 -7.32 4.80 -7.85 3.73 -1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.31 source: field survey 2010 low ratings in tolerance for ambiguity and internal locus of control impact negatively on the resilience of the entrepreneur to take up challenges or to face uncertainty. this can lead to poor performance and eventually, high rate of business fold ups. browning (2004) opined that entrepreneurs are resilient people and that high motivation for tolerance of ambiguity and internal locus of control were two traits that can make for this. traits may not be additive. but it is the gestalt of these traits that constitute the entrepreneurial potential (endsley and carland, 1998). furthermore, the above average display in these qualities makes the individual to be entrepreneurial (shane et al, 2003). it was on this basis that a mean score of all six traits was determined to serve as a proxy to entrepreneurial potential (epot). caliendo and kritikos (2007) determined the average of scores for need for achievement, internal locus of control, problem solving orientation and assertiveness and they labelled the new variable “entrepreneurial skill”. epot, in this circumstance, has a mean score of 3.38. this is less than the test value of 3.4 but not significantly so (t-statistic = -1.00, df = 274 and p = 0.31). hence we cannot reject the null hypothesis that the entrepreneurial potential of poultry farmers in delta state is not above average. we therefore accept the hypothesis.. this finding therefore tends to confirm the fears of development agencies and policy makers in promoting economic growth. if, therefore, there is any invariable positive relationship between entrepreneurial potential and farm performance, the implication of the finding that the entrepreneurial potential of poultry farmers in delta state is below average may explain the short fall in domestic supply of poultry products and, probably, the inability of the operators in the sector to respond appropriately to policy changes or to exercise the unending adaptation to the ever changing environment required in order to speed up the growth of the sector. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 488-496 493 levels of entrepreneurial traits of poultry farmers scores on entrepreneurial traits were aggregated by agricultural zone to enable the determination of the the levels of entrepreneurial traits of poultry farmers by agricultural zones. the hypothesis tested was: h02: there is no significant variation in poultry farmers’ entrepreneurial traits across agricultural zones in delta state. table 4 shows the result of the analysis of variance (anova) of mean scores in entrepreneurial traits among the three agricultural zones. this hypothesis was modified slightly to read “there is no significant variation in poultry farmers’ xi trait among agricultural zones in delta state” where xi stands for a trait type out of the six traits under study. the anova result shows that there was significant variation, at 5% critical level, in the three traits of need for achievement, tolerance of ambiguity and need for affiliation. the null hypothesis that there is no significant variation in these three entrepreneurial traits among poultry farmers’ across the three agricultural zones was therefore rejected and the alternative hypothesis that there is significant variation in poultry farmers’ entrepreneurial traits in namely; need for achievement motivation, tolerance of ambiguity and need for affiliation among agricultural zones was therefore accepted. this being the case, further analysis was carried out to determine which zone has a trait significantly higher than those of other zones in each of the three traits using the scheffe’s test of unequal population/sample sizes. the result, contained in table 5, shows that delta north agricultural zone mean score of 4.29 in need for achievement was significantly higher, at 5% critical level, than the 3.52 and 3.70 of delta central and delta south agricultural zones, respectively. there was no significant difference in mean scores between delta central and delta south agricultural zones in need for achievement. the mean scores in the three agricultural zones were however significantly above average. table 4: anova result of no significant variation in poultry farmers’ entrepreneurial traits among agricultural zones ss d.f ms f sig. need ach between groups within groups total 18.602 194.629 213.231 2 272 274 9.301 0.716 12.999 0.00 t. ambiguity between groups within groups total 3.206 90.632 93.838 2 272 274 1.603 0.333 4.811 0.009 ilc between groups within groups total 0.830 82.224 83.054 2 272 274 0.415 0.302 1.373 0.255 n. affiliation between groups within groups total 2.542 55.727 58.269 2 272 1.271 0.205 6.204 0.002 n. autonomy between groups within groups total 0.483 109.529 110.012 2 272 0.241 0.403 0.600 0.550 risk taking between groups within groups total 1.760 136.791 138.551 2 272 0.880 0.503 1.750 0.176 epot between groups within groups total 0.518 21.438 21.956 2 272 0.259 0.079 3.289 0.039 source: field survey 2010 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 494 the mean score for tolerance of ambiguity for delta north agricultural zone of 3.41 was significantly (at 5% significant level) higher than those of delta central (3.09) and delta south (3.10) agricultural zones. the mean scores for these two latter traits were significantly below average. need for affiliation was significantly higher for delta central agricultural zone than in delta north agricultural but not for delta south agricultural zone. the mean score in tolerance of ambiguity for the three zones were significantly below average. the entrepreneurial potential proxy variable, epot, varies significantly (table 5) across the three agricultural zones (p < 0.05). the scheffe’s test of differences among means shows that farmers in delta central agricultural zone were significantly lower (3.35) in epot than farmers in delta north (3.48). the mean score of farmers in delta south (3.39) cannot, however, be separated from those of delta central nor from those of delta north. thus we reject the null hypothesis that there is no significant variation in poultry farmers’ entrepreneurial potential among agricultural zones in delta and accept the alternative hypothesis that there is a significant variation in entrepreneurial potential across the state. it should, however, be noted that while score in epot of delta north agricultural zone (3.48) is significantly above average (3.4), the mean score in entrepreneurial potential of the remaining two zones were less than average. table 5: scheffe’s test result of differences between means in entrepreneurial traits subset for alpha = 0.05 need achievement agric zone delta central delta south delta north sig. tolerance of ambiguity agric zone delta central delta south delta north sig. need affiliation agric zone delta central delta south delta north sig. entrepreneurial potential agric zone delta central delta south delta north sig. n 177 59 39 n 177 59 39 n 39 59 177 n 177 59 39 1 3.5254 3.6983 0.523 1 3.0938 3.1017 0.997 1 3.0051 3.0915 0.568 1 3.35 3.39 0.7 2 4.2872 1.00 2 3.4051 1.00 2 3.0915 3.2508 0.148 2 3.39 3.48 0.2 means for groups in homogeneous subsets are displayed source: field survey 2010 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 488-496 495 table 6: distribution of poultry farm entrepreneurs by entrepreneurial potential category by agricultural zone agricultural zones entrepreneurial potential category delta north delta central delta south total low average high total 0(0.00) 18(46.15) 21(53.85) 39(100.00) 0(0.00) 114(64.41) 63(35.59) 177(100.00) 0(0.00) 37(62.71) 22(37.29 59(100.00) 0(0.00) 169(61.45) 106(38.55) 275(100.00) figures in bracket are column percentages of total source: field survey 2010 distribution of entrepreneurs by category of potential by agricultural zone following the above finding, farmers were categorized on the basis of low, average and high potential farm poultry entrepreneurs using the cut off mark of less than 2.6 for low, 2.6 to 3.4 for average and above 3.4 as high (van eeden, 2004 and smith, okhmina, and mosley, 2006). the result is presented in table 6. the entrepreneurial potential proxy variable, epot, indicates that over 61% of poultry farmers in the state had “average” entrepreneurial potential. no farmer had low entrepreneurial potential. over 60% of poultry farm entrepreneurs in delta central and delta south agricultural zones had “average” entrepreneurial potential. about 46% of the farmers in delta north agricultural zone had “average” and 53.85% had “high” entrepreneurial potential. the percentage of farmers that had high entrepreneurial potential were 35.59 and 38.55 for delta central and delta south agricultural zones, respectively. the chi-square test for equality of proportion in the distribution was carried out. the null hypothesis was that the proportion of farmers falling into each category across the agricultural zones was the same since the result of the test was not significant (χ 2 = 4.545, df= 2 and p= .10). this finding therefore suggests that poultry farm entrepreneurs were randomly distributed across the state in terms of potential. conclusion delta state poultry farmers have above average need for achievement, risk taking and need for autonomy, among six entrepreneurial traits studied. although poultry farmers in delta north agricultural zone have significantly higher entrepreneurial potentials than their counterparts in delta south agricultural zone, poultry farmers’ entrepreneurial potentials are generally below average in the state, though not significantly so and randomly distributed among the three agricultural zones. hence while there may not be inherent bias in drawing sample of poultry farmers across the state for the purpose of development projects, there may be differences in cost implications for developing poultry farmers entrepreneurially in the state. references abreu, m. n. s., siqueira, a. l., cardoso, c. s. and caiaffa, w. t. 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(2006). likert scales: dispelling the confusion. statistical methods for rater agreement http://john uebersax.com/stat/likert.htm assessed august 18 th 2009 van eeden, shelley (2004). entrepreneurial traits of undergraduate commerce students: an international comparison. www.sbaer.uca.edu/research/usb/2004. assessed 29th july 2008 http://www.fsa.ulaval.ca/cepme/articles&documents/asac_2002.pdf http://www.fsa.ulaval.ca/cepme/articles&documents/asac_2002.pdf http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/2451/mpra%20paper%20no.%20%20%20%202451 http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/2451/mpra%20paper%20no.%20%20%20%202451 http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/2451/mpra%20paper%20no.%20%20%20%202451 http://www.brown.edu/department/economics/papers http://www.brown.edu/department/economics/papers http://www.kc.frb.org/publication/econrev/pdf/3q05/on.%20assessed%20october%2025th%202007 http://www.kc.frb.org/publication/econrev/pdf/3q05/on.%20assessed%20october%2025th%202007 http://www.hkadesigns.co.uk/websites/msc/reme/likert.htm http://www.hkadesigns.co.uk/websites/msc/reme/likert.htm http://www.sbaer.uca.edu/research/usb/2004 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. acknowledgment: the authors are grateful to the doclinks/common wealth and association of common wealth for universities for the financial support and the privilege of allowing this paper to be presented at the last doclinks/commonwealth african european residential school in univeristy of botswana: “post cop 17: climate change and livelihoods in africa” (9th – 15th august 2012) by anthony o. onoja. econometric analysis of food crops’ response to climate variability and macroeconomic policies’ reforms in nigeria (1978-2009) onoja, anthony o. (department of agricultural economics and extension, university of port harcourt, nigeria) ajie, e. n. (dept. of agricultural and applied economics/extension, faculty of agriculture, rivers state university of science and technology, nkpolu-omorukwu, port harcourt) citation: onoja, anthony o. and ajie, e. n. (2012) “econometric analysis of food crops‟ response to climate variability and macroeconomic policies‟ reforms in nigeria (1978-2009)”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 487 497. econometric analysis of food crops response..... 487 author(s) onoja, anthony o. department of agricultural economics and extension, university of port harcourt, nigeria email: tonyojonimi@gmail.com ajie, e. n. dept. of agricultural and applied economics/extension, faculty of agriculture, rivers state university of science and technology, nkpolu-omorukwu, port harcourt econometric analysis of food crops’ response to climate variability and macroeconomic policies’ reforms in nigeria (1978-2009) abstract this study investigated the extent to which climate variability (proxied by rainfall variability) and macroeconomic policies influenced food crop output in nigeria. it used time series data obtained from central bank of nigeria and national bureau of statistics (1978-2009). four functional forms of ols models were tried. the cobb-douglas function was finally adopted based on standard econometric model selection criteria and diagnosis. chow test was used to test the hypotheses of the study. it was found that rainfall variability influenced crop output negatively. climatic factor, loans guaranteed by agricultural credit guarantee scheme fund and lending rate were all statistically significant drivers of crop output in the economy at p<0.05, p<0.01 and p<0.05 respectively. their elasticities were respectively 4.01%, 0.52% and 0.98%. no structural difference between the economic reform era and the preceding era‟s regression coefficients was found. programmes to stem corruption and loan diversion; subsidization of agricultural credit and climate change adaptation capacity building programmes were recommended to bring about sustainable food security in the country. keywords: food security, macroeconomics, agricultural finance, environmental economics, climate change, econometrics introduction in 2008 the world saw food prices explode, causing havoc in developed and developing countries alike. poor people were hit especially hard and many more became poor (christiansen, 2009). malnutrition among preschoolers rose and children dropped out of school early, rendering the damage long lasting. christiansen noted that world food prices have come down since, and the attention has shifted to staving off worldwide depression. in effect, the world can consider itself fortunate in not having experienced even higher price peaks. given the 2008 record low cereal stock-to-use ratios (second lowest in 30 years), prices may have gone up much further if aggregate harvests had been even a few per cent lower. and, domestic food prices have remained high in many developing countries (fao, 2009). in nigeria, the largest african country in terms of population (with over 157,000,000 people), food production and malnutrition remains a problem in the agricultural sector (ajieroh, 2010). the roots of the current food crisis in nigeria can be traced to her long-term agricultural policies at the macro level (kwanashie, et al, 1998). additionally, studies have shown clearly that numerous factors including climate variability, research and basic rural infrastructure influence food production and farm profits (kwanashie, et al, 1998, christiansen, 2009 & fao, 2009). in addition to the above identified problems, there are signals that individual crops and sub-sectoral aggregates were not responding significantly to macroeconomic reform policies especially the aspect of capital expenditure on agriculture in nigeria (kwanashie, et al, 1998). wrong priorities in agricultural policies could have also led to poor response of food crop to agricultural investment in nigeria. for instance, it was noted that early research on commodities focused primarily on cash crops because these crops served colonial interests (okigbo, 1982). mailto:tonyojonimi@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 487-497. 488 the need for a balance between food and cash crops was taken for granted until the collapse of cash exports in the 1970s. this problem was, however, addressed in the first long-range plan for agricultural development in nigeria. yet during the second national development plan (1970–1974), 63% of total allocation for agricultural research went to export crops, compared with the 33% for food crops (idachaba, 1980). it was therefore not surprising to observe that nigerian economy which had come to be dominated by crude oil relegated agricultural sector to the background over time (mogues et al, 2008). the decline was precipitous during the first two decades after independence, when the gdp share of agricultural value added dropped from 60 percent to 20 percent.. since 1980, the gdp share of agricultural value added had fluctuated around a flat trend line, ranging between 20 and 35 percent for much of that period. more recently it had started to rise again as a result of growth in the sector, combined with a contraction in oil revenues. consequently the share of the labor force employed in agriculture, and the share of the nation‟s export earning derived from agricultural commodity exports also retarded. interestingly, the relative importance of agriculture declined even though private investment in the sector increased as a share of overall private investment in the country (mogues et al, 2008). between 1981 and 2000, aggregate domestic capital investment in agriculture, measured by gross fixed capital formation in the sector, steadily increased as a share of domestic capital investment across all sectors, rising from around 5% early in the period to around 14% during the later years (manyong et al. 2005). during the same period, foreign private investment in the sector increased as a share of overall foreign private investment in the nigerian economy. kwanashie, et al, 1998 stressed that long-term growth in agriculture requires investment and capital accumulation in that sector and increasing utilization of the relatively abundant labour in the economy. investment in the agricultural sector is also required to stem the continuous migration of rural workers into urban areas. unfortunately only a very small proportion of public sector investment spending goes to agriculture. although the share of agriculture in total public sector investment is relatively low, the actual expenditure has been on the increase (kwanashie, et al, 1998; & mogues, et al, 2008). in fact, a huge amount of resources has been pumped into the agricultural sector, on paper, in nigeria within the last decades. the issue is the extent to which these expenditures actually go for what they are meant. the leakages in the sector, as with nearly all government expenditures, could be very high, accounting for the low response of the sector to increased expenditures. the improved performance of nigerian agriculture is certainly encouraging, but the sustainability of current high growth rates is subject to question (mogues et al, 2008). word bank (2006), mogues et al (2008) and ajieroh (2010) added that the recent upsurge in agricultural gdp growth in nigeria had been driven mainly by production increases resulting from the expansion in land area planted to staple crops. productivity has remained flat, and yields of most crops have actually declined over the past two decades. arable land being a finite resource, area expansion is not a sustainable source of agricultural growth. this suggests that public investments in agriculture must be reoriented to spur productivity gains (mogues et al, 2008). unfortunately empirical evidence to give the current state of the relationship between national investment in agriculture and food crops output or growth are scant in nigeria. more worrisome is the relative dearth of research at macro level in nigeria exploring the influence of climate change and climate variability on crop production in nigeria. the above background and the need to respond to this yawning knowledge gap underlie the need for this research. findings from this study are expected to guide nigerian government and other sub-saharan african countries in formulating and implementing major policy elements that relevant for making agriculture regain its rightful place in their economies especially as they struggle to meet up with comprehensive africa agriculture development programme (caadp) target by 2020 especially the cardinal pillar of “increasing food supply and reducing hunger” in africa. econometric analysis of food crops response..... 489 objectives of the study: given the above background this study was therefore designed to find out the effect of public spending and other macroeconomic policies implemented to reform the nigerian economy on food crops output in nigeria. specifically the study‟s objectives were to: 1) ascertain the influence of public and private agricultural expenditures on food crop output in nigeria during the pre-deregulation and post deregulation/economic reform eras in nigeria; 2.) find out the differences in influence of public and private expenditures in crop output in nigeria during the pre-economic reform era (during the earlier civilian and military regime era, i.e. 1978 to 1986 through ), and the current economic reform era of the civilian administration which started in 1999). theoretical framework the nigerian economic reform depicts a paradigm shift from the keynesian to more or less neoclassical theories promoted by the world bank under the aegis of economic deregulation. following kwanashie, ajimil and garba (1998) the literature discussing these ideological premises may be generally classified into three arguments: 1) that economic agents are responsive entirely to price variables; 2.) that because of the structural rigidities that are dominant characteristics of less developed economies, price mechanisms are less capable of inducing significant response among economic agents.; and 3.) that economic agents respond simultaneously to price and nonprice variables. the world bank (1981), kuester et al. (1990) and krueger et al. (1990) as cited in kwanashie, ajimili & garba (1998) belong to the first group, whose propositions are classified as the neo-classical counterrevolutionary paradigm. the group is neoclassical because its propositions are neoclassical and it is counter-revolutionary because it represents a negation of the revolution of keynes. though market failures and externalities justify government intervention, especially in less-developed countries, the world bank justification of structural adjustment programme (sap) was anchored on the grounds that state intervention had distortionary effects in three key areas: resources use, domestic absorption and use of scare foreign exchange. the economic crisis of nigeria in the 1980s, which had been well documented in the central bank of nigeria (cbn) annual reports 1981–1989, appears at face value to vindicate the world bank‟s position that poor domestic policies are the causal factors. however, killick (1990a/b) and yagci et al. (1985) as cited in kwanashie, et al (1998) suggested the need for caution in ascribing the crisis of less-developed economies entirely to domestic policies. at least two sets of factors could be identified. the first, referred to as external factors, are linked to the asymmetrical relationship that exists between less developed and developed capitalist countries. these factors include dependence on a few primary exports and on capital goods imports, low income elasticities for primary products, competing synthetics, terms of trade deterioration, weak infrastructure of international trade, and so on. the second set consists of internal factors, which include policies, climatic vagaries, population growth, political instability, wars, etc. some amount of consensus on the importance of both price and non-price factors is shared by an increasing number of economists. phillips (1987), and barau and isitor (1988) are among several studies that have provided econometric evidence to show that some nigerian crops respond significantly to price incentives. eyo (2008) found that several macroeconomic policies have been used in nigeria, which have directly and indirectly influenced agricultural output growth. the study found that the country‟s exchange rate regime did not encourage agricultural export lately. although credit to the sector had no significant effect on agricultural output growth, its availability greatly depends on how high the nominal interest rates are. on the whole, macroeconomic policies that reduce inflation, increase foreign private investment in agriculture, introduce favorable exchange rates, make agricultural credit to have significant effect on agricultural output growth would be invaluable in fortifying government expenditure in the sector and ensure agricultural output growth in nigeria, the study concluded. kwanashie, ajimili and garba (1998) found that food crops are less sensitive to external factors but more responsive to domestic prices and policy than are tradeable crops. this, according to them suggests that the emphasis of sap on tradeables would not raise aggregate agricultural productivity or output, or asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 487-497. 490 put the economy on the path of structural transformation. in addition, discrimination in favour of tradeable crops violates the requirement for optimal social use of resources if it is less responsive to prices and policy than food. they suggested that more research should be undertaken to test the robustness of their estimates so that if their results are found to be robust, food should be the core of a socially optimal nigerian agriculture policy, which should aim at creating the best enabling environment for food production and farmers‟ incomes. this study builds on this premise. research methods the study area: the study area, nigeria has land area of 923,769 square kilometers and a population of about 157 million people. it is bounded on the west by the republic of benin and the republic of niger; on the east by the republic of cameroon; on the north by niger and chad republics and on the south by the gulf of guinea (manyong et al , 2005).. the climate is equatorial and semi-equatorial. there are two seasons; the wet and the dry season and agriculture is a major employer of labour. cereals, roots and tubers dominate nigerian crop production and nigeria is the world‟s leading producer of cassava, yam and cowpea (ajieroh, 2010). source of data and data analysis: this study uses principally secondary data obtained from the central bank of nigeria the nigerian national planning commission. existing literature indicate that prices, government expenditure in agriculture, volume of credit to the agricultural sector, nominal interest rate and exchange rate which are indicators of monetary, exchange rate and price policies determine activities in the agricultural sector [garba, 2000 & akpokodge, 2000]. consequently, in this study, data on exchange rate, nominal interest rate, world prices, credit to the agricultural sector and government expenditure on the agricultural sector, inflation rate and foreign private investment in agriculture were obtained between 1978 and 2009 and used as indicators of the macroeconomic environment. the method of data analysis is the multiple regression analytical technique (ordinary least square procedure). the problem of violation of assumption of normality of residuals in ols, autocorrelation, multicollinearity and heteroscedasticity were forestalled by conducting the relevant econometric tests; namely the durbin watson test, lm tests , vif test, and white‟s tests respectively besides selecting the best model aout of the three tried. the selection of the lead equation was based on the model selection criteria in econometric parlance which includes the akaike information criterion, schwarz criterion, f-raio tests and rsquare besides evaluation of the conformation of the slopes‟ coefficients of the explanatory variables with theoretical expectations. the model used was similar to the structural response function used by fosu (1992), amin (1996), kwanashie et al. (1997) and umoh (2003) with a slight modification which involves trying different functional forms and selecting models based on the earlier mentioned model selection criteria. the model in explicit form was stipulated thus: ycrp = f (acgsfcr, agricexp, forex, intrate, rainfall, agrinvst, wpiagric + µ) in explicit forms, the models are presented thus: ycrp i = β o + β1acgsfcri + β2 agricexp i + β3forex i + β4intrate i + β5 rainfall i + β6 agrinvst i + β7wpiagric i + µ ……….. linear model loglog(ycrp) i = β o + β1acgsfcr i + β2 agricexp i + β3forex i + β4intrate i + β5rainfall i + β6 agrinvst i + β7wpiagric i + µ ……semi-log model logycrp i = β o + β1 log(acgsfcr) i + β2log(agricexp) i + β3log(forex) i + β4log(intrate) i + β5log( rainfall) i + β6 log(agrinvst) i + β7log(wpiagric) i + µ ...... double log model where , ycrp = crop output (share of gdp) in millions of naira; acgsfcr = amount of loans (farm credit) guaranteed to the agricultural sector by agricultural credit guarantee scheme fund (of the central bank of nigeria), acgsf, in millions of naira each year; agricexp = recurrent expenditure on agricultural sector in millions of naira over time period; forex = average nominal foreign econometric analysis of food crops response..... 491 exchange (ratio of n to $us1); intrate = nominal interest rate in percentage; rainfall = mean annual rainfall across nigeria in mm/annum; privinvagr = annual private investment in agricultural sector in millions of naira; wpiagrcrps = index of world price of crops produced in nigeria; µ = stochastic error term; β o = intercept of the model. β1 – β8 = respective coefficients of the various variables‟ slopes ; i = time (year); and log = log to base 10 of respective variable. the chow test was also conducted to test the hypotheses about the presence or absence of structural changes (breaks) in the slope coefficients of the pooled regression during the sap period and the post sap era (economic reforms era started during the civilian administration in 1999 to date). the formula for the chow test, according to koutsoyiannis (2001) is given by: where, n = number of observation (sample size); (∑e1 2 +∑e2 2 ) = total unexplained variation, ∑ep 2 = pooled residual variance of the regression based on the two samples (n1 + n2) (i.e.ỹ= ἀ0 + ἀ1x) = ∑yp 2 ∑ ỹ p 2 , with (n1+ n2 – k) degrees of freedom. (p stands for „pooled‟ and k = total number of coefficients including βo). the first null hypothesis, ho, is that there is no difference in the coefficients obtained from the two samples (before sap and after sap in nigeria i.e βi = βj,). ho1, which held that: “there is no significant difference in the estimated slope coefficients of crop output determinants of farmers under pre-sap and post-sap era in the study area” was tested using this model. to test whether there was a difference in the sub-sample of post sap era (1999-2009), from the pre_sap (1978-1985) to sap era (1986-1998), we also tested another hypothesis which held that “there is no significant difference in the estimated slope coefficients of crop output determinants of farmers under pre-sap to post-sap era and the economic reforms era (of the civilian government) in nigeria” was tested using this model. results and discussion diagnosis; the econometric tests for normality of the residuals and the tests for multicollinearity indicated that the series was normally distributed with a jarque-bera statistics of 2.811, a value that was not statistically significant, which implies that the null hypothesis of the series not having a skewed distribution remained accepted even at above 10 percent significance level. the mean variance inflation factor (vif) recorded was slightly above 10 (11.64) and so was not considered too severe a threat to warrant dropping the explanatory variables of the models. we had to tolerate it. 0 2 4 6 8 10 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 series: residuals sample 1978 2009 observations 32 mean -1.75e-15 median -0.029272 maximum 0.993836 minimum -1.261746 std. dev. 0.453917 skewness -0.474485 kurtosis 4.099043 jarque-bera 2.811251 probability 0.245214 figure 1: results of jarque-bera test to ascertain the normality of the residuals asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 487-497. 492 the test for heteroskedasticity using the breusch-pagan-godfrey test gave an f-statistics of 3.7187, a figure statistically significant at 1 percent. it was therefore confirmed that the model in the form it was without transformation was fraught with heteroscedasticity. so the ols that was later estimated with the lead model was based on white heteroskedasticityconsistent standard errors & covariance (see appendix 1). this ensures that heteroscedasticity was no longer present in the model following gujarati and sangeetha (2007) and greene (2008). the f-statistics estimated (1.68096) to test for autocorrelation using breusch-godfrey serial correlation lm test was not significant even at above 10 percent statistical significance level. this implies that the series was devoid of 1 st order serial correlation in the residuals of the model used. (see appendix 1b). the test for model fitness before selecting the best of the three models was done by considering the estimates of the akaike criterion and with the schwarz criterion of the model which both indicated that the double log model was the best model considering that it had the lowest estimates of these statistics. in addition the double log model had high f-statistics which is significant at 1 percent. table 1.0 ols parameter estimates of the three functional forms used in estimating the influence of macroeconomic policies and government expenditures on crop output in nigeria (1978-2009) linear model semi-log model double log model variable coefficient tstatistic coefficient tstatistic coefficient tstatistic intercept 86660.65ns 1.5346 15.63728*** 7.9801 25.6514*** 2.8964 acgsfcr i 0.021503*** 6.9328 1.92e-07* 1.7795 0.5195*** 4.1102 agricexp i 0.044385ns 0.1692 3.28e-06ns 0.3608 -0.027889ns -0.2718 forex i 7.537197ns 0.0614 -0.006542ns -1.5349 -0.078851ns -1.3119 intrate 2294.977** 2.8937 0.048440* 1.7601 0.978735** 2.7563 rainfall i -221.4996ns -1.5319 -0.016561*** -3.3007 -4.017202** -2.6212 privinvagr i -12.96072ns -1.0380 -5.46e-05ns -0.1261 0.254822ns 1.6171 wpiagrcrp i 10.15295*** 5.3893 0.000162** 2.4792 -0.178527ns -1.0370 r-squared 0.95973 0.77483 0.82459 adjusted r 2 0.94798 0.70915 0.77342 f-statistic 81.7006*** 11.7979*** 16.1169*** prob(f-statistic) 0.0000 0.0000 0,0000 akaike info criterion 22.51367 1.9761 1.726447 schwarz criterion 22.8801 2.3425 2.0928 durbin-watson stat 1.7111 1.6052 1.6294 source: econometric analysis output using e views programme by author. nb: coefficients with („***‟) have t-ratios significant at 1% alpha level; („**”) = figures are statistically significant at 5%; while (“*”) = figures are coefficients whose t ratios are significant at 10 %. ns = “not significant at any of the three levels specified. alpha level indicating that the model was fit and that at 1 percent statistical significance level the hypothesis of joint effects of the slope coefficients of the explanatory variables in the model was not equal to zero (see table 1.0). the high adjusted r-square of the model which was 0.82 implies that 82 percent of the variation in crop output as share of nigerian agricultural econometric analysis of food crops response..... 493 gdp was explained by the independent variables (or factors) used in the double log model. only 18 percent of the variation of the crop output was not accounted for by the variables in the model. besides, it was observed that some of the variables had slope coefficients which returned expected signs that are in tandem with a priori expectations. these all attest to the fitness of the double model. given the foregoing we therefore justify the use of the double log model in our economic analysis. the slope coefficients of the variables estimated in the double log models usually represent elasticities (see gujarati and sangeetha, 2007 and greene, 2008). the signs of the intercept and acgsf were positive which are in tandem with our a priori expectations. credit supply is necessary to build capital formation in the agricultural sector, a development that can bring about improved crop output or agricultural productivity (mogues, et al, 2008). the findings imply that the state of technology and amount of credit guaranteed by the acgsf (loans guaranteed to farmers in the economy) were positively contributing to the crop output in nigerian economy during the period in review. in terms of elasticity, the slope coefficient of acgsf indicated a 1.78 elasticity, which stated in another form means that for every unit of loan guaranteed by acgsf in nigeria over the period in review, an increase in share of crop output in nigerian gdp of 1.78 percent was recorded. this goes to emphasize the role credit can play in boosting crop output in nigerian farms. the findings contrasts with that of eyo (2008) who noted that credit supply to nigerian economy had no significant influence on agricultural production but agree with kwanishie, ajimili and garba (1998) who found that all tradeable crops responded negatively to agricultural loans, while most food crops responded positively. increase in interest rate is expected to influence the output of crops negatively. however, the reverse is the case in the results of this analysis. the relationship between cost of borrowing and credit demand pattern could have influenced the result noticed here. the negative sign could be attributed to non-response of demand of farmers to rise in cost of capital since farm credit is always required by farmers for their farm expansion regardless of the cost of capital prevailing in the market. the negative sign may equally be explained by the availability of credit guarantee fund scheme (a programme of cbn) which has been shielding the farmers from risks inherent in loan utilization by paying up loans not paid back due to defaults arising from loan diversion to other personal or farm household problems and farm uncertainties (e.g. disease outbreak or poor yield). this variable (interest rate) had a very low elasticity of 0.98 percent implying that for every percent rise in nominal interest rate in nigerian financial market, crop output was rising slightly by about 1 percent. the variable‟s slope coefficient was statistically significant at 5 percent. the nonsignificance of slope coefficients of public agricultural expenditure in nigerian economy recorded in the study‟s results is not a surprising outcome. it could be recalled that kwanashie, et al (1998) and mogues et al (2008) noted that public expenditure in nigerian agriculture had made no significant impact on agricultural productivity or output in nigeria owing to corruption and diversion of fund from the intended targets. the findings of this study also corroborate the earlier findings of other scholars in the past with respect to government agricultural spending in nigeria. world bank (2008) reported that the level of public spending on agriculture in nigeria was exceptionally low. agricultural spending averaged only 1.7 percent of total federal spending from 2001-2005, lagging behind spending in other key sectors such as education, health, and water. world bank also noted that while agricultural spending expressed as a share of total spending is generally low in african countries compared to countries in other developing regions, nigeria fared unfavourably even within the african context. in 2000, agricultural spending in nigeria expressed as a share of total public spending was the lowest among all 17 sub-saharan african countries for which data were available, and in other years it was among the lowest. it is even more worrisome to observe that private investment in agriculture was not also significant in determining the output of crops in nigeria over the review period. this could be as a result of poor infrastructure, policy incentives and poor productivity of farms in nigeria. nigerian agriculture is noted to be characterized by low productivity and poor policy environments asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 487-497. 494 especially with respect to implementation of well intended policies (idachaba, 1982; kwanashies, et al, 1998; manyong et al 2005 & mogues et al, 2008). the influence of weather symbolized by mean annual rainfall over the period in review indicates that the influence of physical environment cannot be underrated in production decisions of crop farming. this factor or variable slope coefficient had a t ratio that was statistically significant at 5 percent. the negative sign cannot be categorically said to be a deviation from a priori expectations because sometimes too much rainfall can bring about poor crop yield in some food crops. the influence of climate change which is under hot discourse at the moment globally now may be gleaned from this result. the negative effects could have resulted from flooding (one of the signs of global warming) and the consequence of leaving food crop productions to the vagaries of weather (without irrigation). the elasticity of this variable (mean annual rainfall), 4.017, implies that for every percent rise in annual mean rainfall in the country during the period in review, a 4.02 percent drop in crop output in agricultural gdp was recorded. the findings agree with the keynesian theory which asserted that the presence of externalities in production environment or systems and market imperfections make it rather risky to completely depend on pricing mechanism in growing the economy but rather calls for government intervention to bring the economy to equilibrium through some incentives or policies that boost aggregate demand. the results of chow tests (see appendices 2a, 2b and 2c) aimed at testing the research‟s hypotheses indicated that there was a significant structural break (i.e. difference ) in the slope coefficients of the pre-sap (civilian/military leadership 1978-1995) era, post-sap era (military leadership 1996-1999) and the economic reform era (of the civilian governments from 1999-2009) with a fstatistics (107.96) significant at 1 percent statistical level thus enabling us to reject the hypothesis of no structural break in these subsample regressions‟ slope coefficients. however, further test indicated that when the two eras before the economic reform era of the civilian leadership in nigeria (1999 to 2009) was compared with the other two eras as one period (i.e. 1978-1999 made up of tow era, presap and post-sap) there was no structural break in the regressions‟ slope coefficients (with f-statistic of 0.387 ) which was not significant even above 10 percent (p value = 0.9120).the implication of this is that there is no significant difference in the effects of agricultural expenditures and other macroeconomic policies on crop output during the pre-reform and economic reform eras despite claims of the current civilian regime and others after 1999 who claimed they were transforming the agricultural sector by their various presidential initiatives on food crop production and the seven point agenda (i.e. the government of olusegun s. obasanjo and umaru yardua respectively). the initial difference observed in the first hypothesis test must have resulted from difference in policy and environmental effects of the pre-sap and post sap regimes. conclusion against the backdrop of continuous announcements of budgetary allocations to agriculture and launching of several agricultural programmes, some sponsored by world bank and international development agencies others in collaboration with nigerian federal and state governments, and all, in a bid to address the problem of food scarcity, food insecurity or food importation in nigeria, this study was designed to find out to what extent such funds and various eras of government reform programmes (deregulation in the shades of sap and economic reforms of both military and civilian regimes) fared in changing the level of food crop output in nigeria. the study applied econometric approaches to conduct the investigation which spanned across 32 years (1978-2009) and found that all the public recurrent expenditures claimed against agriculture (crop production in this case) were of little or no effect in boosting food production in nigeria over the review period. it was even more disappointing to note that there was no significant difference in the way agricultural programmes of the pre economic reform era (1978 through 1999) and that of the post economic reform era (1999 – 2009) influenced food crop production in the country. the effectiveness of the policy environment and econometric analysis of food crops response..... 495 implementations of government agricultural policies over the years are hereby questioned. the issue of strengthening agencies involved in tackling corruption or opacity in government implementation of agricultural programmes especially administration of credit to the agricultural sector requires urgent actions by the present federal and state governments in order to bring about positive changes in addressing low food output in nigerian economy. the fact that acgsf is having a significant influence on food crop output in nigeria over the years in review despite the fact that nominal interest rate exerted a decreasing effect on food crop output bears witness to the urgent need to increase credit supply to nigerian farmers at less than 10 percent interest rate. subsidy of agricultural credit is therefore a welcome policy in increasing food crop output or solving problem of food insecurity in nigeria. finally, the study also indicated that climate change (or weather variability) which was proxied by negative influence of annual mean rainfall on food crop output in nigeria over the period in review calls for proactive programmes to be set up by nigerian government to address the issue of adaptation to climate change and variability in the country by crop farmers. the time to start that is now otherwise even the gains from the controversial petroleum subsidy removal which the federal government claimed will be used in partially addressing the problem of poor food output in nigeria will be a journey in futility. references ajieroh, v. (2010) “a quantitative analysis of determinants of child and maternal nutrition in nigeria”, international food policy research institute/nigerian strategy support programme brief no. 11. akpokodje, g. (2000) “the effect of export earnings fluctuations on capital formation in nigeria”, african economic research consortium. research paper rp103 october 2000, nairobi, kenya. amin, a. a. (1996) “the effect of exchange rate policy on cameroon‟s agricultural competitiveness”, aerc research paper 42. initiative publishers, nairobi. barau, a. d. & isitor, s. u. (1988) “estimating a short-run cotton supply response in zaria area”, unpublished paper, department of agricultural economics, ahmadu bello university, zaria. braverman, a. (1989) “comment on „the policy response of agriculture‟ by binswanger”, in world bank, proceedings of the world bank annual conference on development economics, washington, d.c. christiaensen, l. (2009) “revisiting the global food architecture: lessons from the 2008 food crisis”, united nations university, unu-wider and world institute for development economics. discussion paper no. 2009/04. eyo, e. o. (2008) “macroeconomic environment and agricultural sector growth in nigeria”, world journal of agricultural sciences vol. 4(6), pp. 781-786. fosu, k. f. (1992) “the real exchange rate and ghana”, agricultural export aerc research paper 9. kenya, nairobi. garba, p. k. (2000) “an analysis of the implementation and stability of nigerian agricultural policies. 1970-1993”, african economic research consortium. greene, w. h. (2008) econometric analysis, fifth edition prentice hall: new jersey. gujarati d. n. and sangeetha (2007) “basic econometrics”, 4th edition. tata mcgraw-hill: new delhi. idachaba, f. s. (1980) “agricultural research policy in nigeria”, research report no. 17. washington, d.c.: international food policy research institute. koutsoyiannis, a. (2001) “theory of econometrics (2nd ed.). palgrave: new york. kwanashie, m., garba, a. & ajilima, i, (1997) “policy modelling in agriculture: testing the response of agriculture to adjustment policies in nigeria”, aerc research paper rp 57. kwanashie, m; ajilima, i & garba a (1998) “the nigerian economy: response of agriculture to adjustment policies”, aerc research paper 78 african economic research consortium, nairobi march. manyong, v. m., a. ikpi, j.k. olayemi, s. a. yusuf, b. t. omonona, v. okoruwa, & f. s. idachaba (2005) “agriculture in nigeria: identifying opportunities for increased commercialization and investment”, international institute of tropical agriculture, ibadan, nigeria. mogues, t., morris, m., freinkman, l., adubi, a., ehui, s., nwoko, c., taiwo, o., asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 487-497. 496 nege, c., okonji, p. & chete, l. (2008) “agricultural public spending in nigeria”, washington d. c. l international food policy research institute. ifpri discussion paper 00789 september. okigbo, p. n. (1982) “nigeria‟s experience with programs at expanding small-darm agricultural production”, scrimshaw , n, s, and wallerstein, m, b, eds., nutrition policy implementation: issue and experience. new york: plenum press. phillip, o. a. (1987) “a general overview of sap” in a.o. phillips and e.c. ndekwu eds., structural adjustment programme in a development economy: the case of nigeria. ibadan: niser. umoh, g. s. (2003) “nigeria: macroeconomic environment and the perennial crops”, global j. agricul. sci., vol. 2(1), 53-61. world bank (2006) “nigeria: competitiveness and growth. poverty reduction and economic management, africa region”, world bank, washington, d.c. world bank (2008) “nigeria agriculture public expenditure review.” world bank report no. 44000-ng apendix 1 a heteroskedasticity test: breusch-pagan-godfrey f-statistic 3.718694 prob. f(7,24) 0.0073 obs*r-squared 16.64947 prob. chi-square(7) 0.0198 scaled explained ss 14.51178 prob. chi-square(7) 0.0428 appendix 1b breusch-godfrey serial correlation lm test: f-statistic 1.680961 prob. f(2,22) 0.2092 obs*r-squared 4.241851 prob. chi-square(2) 0.1199 appendix 2 a chow breakpoint test: 1986 null hypothesis: no breaks at specified breakpoints varying regressors: all equation variables equation sample: 1978 2009 f-statistic 84.37858 prob. f(8,16) 0.0000 log likelihood ratio 120.4990 prob. chi-square(8) 0.0000 wald statistic 3.11e+09 prob. chi-square(8) 0.0000 econometric analysis of food crops response..... 497 appendix 2 b chow breakpoint test: 1986 1999 null hypothesis: no breaks at specified breakpoints varying regressors: all equation variables equation sample: 1978 2009 f-statistic 107.9602 prob. f(16,8) 0.0000 log likelihood ratio 172.1450 prob. chi-square(16) 0.0000 wald statistic 5.54e+09 prob. chi-square(16) 0.0000 appendix 2 c chow breakpoint test: 1999 null hypothesis: no breaks at specified breakpoints varying regressors: all equation variables equation sample: 1978 2009 f-statistic 0.386928 prob. f(8,16) 0.9120 log likelihood ratio 5.659526 prob. chi-square(8) 0.6853 wald statistic 26.31951 prob. chi-square(8) 0.0009 appendix 3 dependent variable: log(yfdcr) method: least squares date: 01/07/12 time: 14:30 sample: 1978 2009 included observations: 32 white heteroskedasticity-consistent standard errors & covariance variable coefficient std. error t-statistic prob. c 25.65144*** 8.856447 2.896358 0.0079 log(acgsfcr) 0.519496*** 0.126391 4.110224 0.0004 log(agricexp) -0.027889ns 0.102626 -0.271757 0.7881 log(forex) -0.078851ns 0.060104 -1.311894 0.2020 log(intrate) 0.978735** 0.355094 2.756269 0.0110 log(rainfall) -4.017202** 1.532594 -2.621178 0.0150 log(privinvagr) 0.254822ns 0.157580 1.617102 0.1189 log(wpiagrcrp -0.178527ns 0.172158 -1.036997 0.3101 r-squared 0.824585 mean dependent var 11.14714 adjusted r-squared 0.773423 s.d. dependent var 1.083787 s.e. of regression 0.515884 akaike info criterion 1.726447 sum squared resid 6.387263 schwarz criterion 2.092881 log likelihood -19.62315 hannan-quinn criter. 1.847910 f-statistic 16.11696 durbin-watson stat 1.629449 prob(f-statistic) 0.000000 the average uncentred vif was slightly above 10 (11.64529), so we tolerate the minor level of multicollinearity in the model. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. economic analysis of floricultural plants production in kwara state, north central nigeria muhammad-lawal, a., adenuga, a. h., olatinwo, k. b. and saadu, t. a. (department of agricultural economics and farm management, university of ilorin, p.m.b.1515, ilorin, nigeria) citation: muhammad-lawal, a., adenuga, a. h., olatinwo, k. b. and saadu, t. a. (2012) “economic analysis of floricultural plants production in kwara state, north central nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 373-380. economic analysis of floricultural plants... 373 author(s) muhammad-lawal, a., department of agricultural economics and farm management, university of ilorin, p.m.b. 1515, ilorin, nigeria email:lawaz71@yahoo.com, lawalazeez@unilorin.edu.ng adenuga, a. h., olatinwo, k. b. and saadu, t. a. department of agricultural economics and farm management, university of ilorin, p.m.b. 1515, ilorin, nigeria economic analysis of floricultural plants production in kwara state, north central nigeria abstract in spite of the substantial contribution of floriculture to the nigerian economy, there is still a low level of awareness on the potential of the horticultural subsector of the nigerian agricultural sector to generate employment and reduce poverty. this study therefore carried out an assessment of the economics of floricultural plants production in kwara state, nigeria. the study specifically estimated the returns to farmer’s labour and management. it also assessed the determinants of returns to floricultural plant production in the state. data used for the study were collected from the forty one registered floricultural plant producers in the study area using structured questionnaire. the farm budget and regression analyses were used for data analyses. the study revealed that returns to farmer’s labour and management was n174, 974.7/ha on the average. use of manure, labour, farm size, experience, educational level and age of the farmer were found to have significant influence on farmer’s revenue. inadequate capital to expand the scale of production was identified as the major constraints to floricultural plant production in the study area. the study therefore recommends that farmers be supported by making credit facilities available to them and that people be enlightened on the profitability potential of the enterprise. keywords: floriculture, farm budget analysis, returns to labour and management introduction despite nigeria’s huge agricultural resources and oil wealth, unemployment and poverty still remain a major challenge. in nigeria, the rate of unemployment has been on the increase. the national unemployment rate increased to 23.9% in 2011 compared to 21.1% in 2010 and 19.7% in 2009 (nbs, 2011). the case is getting worse by the day especially in the cities considering the continued migration of people to urban centres from rural areas in search of gainful employment. okonkwo (2005) in his study of unemployment in africa identified three causes of unemployment as the educational system, the choice of technology which can either be labour intensive or capital intensive and thirdly inadequate attention to agriculture. there is an increasing trend of disinterest in agriculture by the emerging younger generation preferring white collar jobs, resulting in many of them remaining in the labour market rather than take up jobs in the agricultural sector. this may however be connected to the fact that very little is known about the profitability potentials of some of the agricultural enterprises including floriculture that can be embarked upon in the cities. floriculture is a class of horticulture that deals with the science and practice of cultivating and arranging of ornamental flowering plants for aesthetic purpose (acquaah, 2004). it is the science and practice of growing, harvesting, storing, designing and marketing of ornamental plants. it also involves the intensive production of flowers and ornamental shrubs (muthoka and muriithi, 2008). hence floricultural plants are classified by the use of cut flowers, potted plants, foliage plants and bedding plants grown in a controlled environment (barden et al, mailto:lawaz71@yahoo.com mailto:lawalazeez@unilorin.edu.ng asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 373-380. 374 1987). as a unit of the agricultural sector, it plays a very important role in income generation to the farmers (nigeria economic summit group, 2009). the industry has potentials for generating employment for both rural and urban dwellers directly or indirectly (usman et al, 2002). the direct jobs include those for skilled labour like researchers, teachers, greenhouse managers and nursery managers among others, while the indirect jobs include those of factories that produce chemicals and machineries for the production and processing of floricultural produce (acquaah, 2004). the aesthetic value of floriculture could be noticed in public places such as botanical gardens, aboreteum, and parks for public admiration (hessayon, 1984). socially, the pionsettias flowers are associated with yule-tide period, rose are associated with valentine period and lillies are associated with easter period (acquaah, 2004). its role in food and nutrition cannot be overemphasised. this is because floricultural plant such as cauliflower serves as food (hacket, 1982). in view of the increasing number of personal houses and corporate organisations’ buildings in nigeria, the investment in floricultural enterprisee has become quite relevant in today’s business environment (fagbayide and jolasun, 2002). this is because floricultural plants have great role in enhancing the beauty and attractiveness of such buildings (chukwuma, 2010). floriculture has however remained a lowly recognized enterprise in nigeria in spite of the inherent unique potentials of the industry in transforming a nation’s economy. the industry has received very little attention in the nation’s plan for agricultural development (oseni, 2004). this may however be attributed to inadequate awareness of the profitability potential of the enterprise as well as insufficient knowledge of the most important issues that affect returns to floricultural plant production. this study was therefore undertaken to examine the economics of floricultural plant production and assess the determinants of returns to floricultural plant production in the study area. methodology the study was conducted in kwara state, nigeria. according to the 2006 census reports, the population of kwara state stood at 2.37million consisting mainly of yoruba, nupe, and baruba ethnic groups(npc, 2007). more than 90% of the rural populace are involved in farming (kwara state diary, 2004). the state has a land area of about 32,300 square kilometers extending from latitude 7 0 15 0 n on its southern hemisphere and longitude 6 0 18 0 e on the southern eastern reach. the state has two climatic seasons, the wet and dry season. the natural vegetation of the state comprises wooded and rainforest savanna. major land forms in the state are plains, undulating hills, and valleys with annual rainfall ranging between 900mm to 1600mm while the average temperature lies between 30 0 c and 35 0 c. agriculture is the main productive economic activity in kwara state. production of varieties of cash and food crops as well as floricultural plants especially in the urban areas constitutes the major agricultural activities in the state. sampling techniques the target population were the farm household operating floricultural plant nursery in the metropolitan areas of kwara state, nigeria. due to the fact that floricultural plants production are restricted to the urban centers (abegunde et al 2009). the sampling technique involved the selection of the forty one registered floricultural plants nursery operators data analysis descriptive statistics such as frequency counts mean and percentages were employed to describe socio-economic characteristic of the floricultural nursery farm households and marketing strategies used by the floricultural plant producers. farm budget and the ordinary least square (ols) regression analyses were used to assess the costs and returns to floricultural plant production and the determinants of returns to the enterprise respectively. farm budget analysis the farm budget analysis was used to assess the costs and returns to floricultural plants production in the study area. the returns to farmer’s labour and management is expressed in naira per hectare (n/ha). costs comprise both fixed and variable cost. economic analysis of floricultural plants... 375 fixed cost (fc) includes cost of land rent, labour and depreciation charges on simple farm tools and production. variable cost (vc) include: cost of fertilizer, seed, agro-chemical, hiring cost, repair, maintenance and transportation. returns are revenue that accrue from the sale of produce gm = tr – tvc gm – tfc = nfi nfi =r lm = gm – tfc where tr = total revenue tvc = total variable cost (n) tfc = total fixed cost (n) gm = gross margin (n/plot) nfi = net farm income (n) rlm = return to farmer labour and management [n] regression analysis this tool was used to measure the amount of variability of the dependent variable that can be explained by the independent variables. the variable regression co-efficient indicate the amount of change that will be observed in the value of dependent variable when the independent variables are altered. the explicit form of the model is given as: y = a+b1x1+ b2x2+b3x3+b4x4+b5x5+b6x6+b7x7 +b8x8+u where y = total revenue (n) a = constant bi where i =1,2...8 are the regression coefficient x1 = age (years) x2 = experience ( years) x3 = household size x4 = farm size (ha) x5 = fertilizer used (kg) x6 = manure used (kg) x7 = labour employed (man day) x8 = educational level (number of years spent in school) u = factors that are not adequately accounted for but contributes to total revenue i.e. random term. ordinary least square regression, semi-log, exponential log and double log regression were separately estimated. results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of the respondents the socio-economic characteristics of the floricultural plant producers are shown in table 1. table 1: socio economic characteristics of the respondents (n=41) characteristics frequency percentage age (in years) ≥ 25 2 4.9 26 – 40 20 48.8 41 – 60 16 39 above 60 3 7.3 household size 1 – 6 23 56.1 7 12 18 43.9 years of experience 1 – 5 8 19.5 6 – 10 17 41.5 11 – 20 5 12.2 above 20 5 12.2 educational level tertiary 35 85.4 secondary 5 12.2 quranic education 1 2.1 management practices use of organic manure 41 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 373-380. 376 use chemical fertilizer 23 56.1 type of labour hired and family 32 78.1 family 12 29.3 communal 3 7.3 land acquisition rented 21 51.3 purchased 12 29.3 communal 2 4.9 lease 6 14.5 field survey, 2011 from table 1, it can be observed that most of the respondents were within the age range of 26-40,which implies that floricultural plant production in the study area are mainly in the hands of youth. the table also revealed that majority of the respondents had family size of between 1-6 members. almost all the respondents had tertiary education indicating that floricultural plant producers in the study area are educated. the average years of experience of the respondents was found to be 11.1 years. majority of the respondents acquire their land through rent and all the respondents made use of organic manure in their production process. the use of compost, animal dung, and poultry droppings dominates. also, some of the respondents used chemical fertilizer in addition to organic manure. most of the floricultural plant producers made use of hired and family labour. type of floricultural plants table 2: types of floricultural plants produced in the study area common botanical name frequency percentage hedges yellow bush duranta repens 41 100 green bush dranta green 41 100 croton cadiacum veriegatus 41 100 ixora ixora spp 41 100 trees masquerade siracca longifera 38 92.7 ficus ficus spp 41 100 yellow ficus ficus benjamia 41 100 christmass tree thuja 23 56.1 queen of night cestrum noctrunum 28 68.3 palms royal palms roystonea regia 41 100 kings palms archonthphonix spp 41 100 grasses bahama 24 58.5 sources: field survey, 2011 table 2 showed that hedges, trees, palms, grasses are the predominant type of floricultural plants produce in the study area. the cultivation of these plants is possible due to the nature of the plants which are resistance to drought, easy germination as well as their popular demands for boundary demarcation and source of shade. economic analysis of floricultural plants... 377 table 3: marketing of floricultural plants marketing channel frequency percentage direct sales 14 34.2 contract and direct sale 27 65.8 total 41 100 source: field survey, 2011 the table reveals that the gardeners either sell to consumer directly or on contract basis. this is an indication that there is a ready market for floriculture products. cost and returns analysis this analysis was conducted to determine the contribution of floriculture to the livelihood of the respondents. the total revenue was determined from the annual volume sales, while the total variable cost (tvc) was determined by summing up the cost of all purchased inputs and hired labour. the gross margin (gm) less rent on land, depreciation on mechanical tools and imputed cost of family labour gave the returns to farmers labour and management. table 4: summary of cost and returns to floricultural plant production items average/ha(n) gross revenue (gr) 312,887.2 less total variable cost (tvc) 93,291.9 (seeding seeds, fertilizer, hired labour, herbicide and others) equals gross margin (gm) 219,595.4 less rent on land 21,312.5 less depreciation on tools and equipment 12,633.2 less imputed cost of family labour 10,675 returns to farmers’ labour and management (rlm) 174,974.7 source: field survey, 2011 table 4 reveals the cost and returns to floricultural plant production in the study area. the estimated average variable costs of production incurred by all respondents was n 93, 291.9, overall, the average gross revenue recorded in the study area was n312,887.2, while the average gross margin was n 219,595.4. hence the returns to farmers labour and management was estimated to be n174,974.7/ha which means that on the average, floricultural plant production is profitable in the study area. regression estimate regression estimate was carried out to determine the factors influencing revenue generation in floricultural plant production in the study area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 373-380. 378 table 5: summary of regression of analysis determinants beta standard error t-value r 2 f-value constants 9684557.003 24253867 3.993* 0.916 21.372 age -1.068 0.126 -4.936* experience 0.905 0.153 4.841* household size 0.096 1.426 0.627 farm size 0.524 0.136 3.858* fertilizer used -0.434 0.126 -3.446* manure used 0.860 0.118 7.284* labour man-day 0.211 0.059 3.591* education level 0.311 0.0906 3.431* significant at 5% level of significance computer printout, 2011 the result in table 8 shows the level of variation in the total revenue explained by the eight explanatory variables as earlier stated. the semi-log function was chosen as the lead equation as it has the highest adjusted r 2 – value and all the variables were significant except for the household size. this result shows that as the farmer gets older the total revenue decrease. this could be due to the fact that as the farmer grow in age, their ability to do more farm work reduces and consequently the total also, as the amount of the fertilizer usage increases, the total revenue drops. this may be due to the fact that excess fertilizer application becomes toxic to plant (acquaah, 2004) and thus reduces productivity of the plant and consequently the total revenue. however these factors accounted for about 91.66% of the total variation in the total revenue that is other factors contributes less than 10% to the variation in total revenue. table 6: problems facing floriculture problem frequency percentage inadequate capital 32 78.1 water shortage 12 29.3 low demand 10 24.4 pest and diseases 5 12.2 field survey, 2011 the table revealed that the major striking problem confronting floriculture is inadequate capital to expand scale of production. conclusion and recommendations floriculture is a very lucrative and profitable enterprise hence, offers great opportunity for people to be gainfully employed in the face of rising unemployment challenges. in order to improve the state of production, there is a need to address the major issues affecting the industry as such would go a long way in improving the nation’s economy. based on the findings in this study, it is recommended that, loan be made available to farmers by financial institutions to enable the floriculturist increases their scale of production. people should be enlightened on the profitability potential of the enterprise in order to encourage young school leavers to go into the business and consequently contribute to reduction in youth unemployment currently experienced in the country. the populace should also be stimulated to increase their economic analysis of floricultural plants... 379 flower consumption pattern through proper awareness. references abegunde, a. a emmanuel, o. o, damal, o, olufunmilayo j. o. 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(2004) “integrated horticultural crop production and extension service”, a paper presented at the proceeding of annual conference of horticultural society of nigeria http://www.academicjournals.org/ajar/pdf/---/abegunde.t%2021pdf http://www.academicjournals.org/ajar/pdf/---/abegunde.t%2021pdf http://www.tribune.comng/st/index.php/businesssense/1443-ornamental.plants-beautiful-enrichingh.lml http://www.tribune.comng/st/index.php/businesssense/1443-ornamental.plants-beautiful-enrichingh.lml http://www.tribune.comng/st/index.php/businesssense/1443-ornamental.plants-beautiful-enrichingh.lml http://www.unilorin.edu.ng/unilorin/publication/fakayode/viability%20and%20resources%20use%20in20ornamental%20plant%20nursery%20businpdf http://www.unilorin.edu.ng/unilorin/publication/fakayode/viability%20and%20resources%20use%20in20ornamental%20plant%20nursery%20businpdf http://www.unilorin.edu.ng/unilorin/publication/fakayode/viability%20and%20resources%20use%20in20ornamental%20plant%20nursery%20businpdf http://www.unilorin.edu.ng/unilorin/publication/fakayode/viability%20and%20resources%20use%20in20ornamental%20plant%20nursery%20businpdf http://www.marketmagazine.com/index.php?option=com-content/task=viewed=1186itemid http://www.marketmagazine.com/index.php?option=com-content/task=viewed=1186itemid http://www.jodae.com/papers/aevoi202pdf http://www.infomaworld.com/snpp/content/=ab=allcontent=a758713389 http://www.infomaworld.com/snpp/content/=ab=allcontent=a758713389 http://www.actahort.org/books/766/766_29.htm http://www.actahort.org/books/766/766_29.htm http://www.negroup.org/programmes%20download/agric%20summit/ppt http://www.negroup.org/programmes%20download/agric%20summit/ppt asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 373-380. 380 science teacher association of nigeria (2004) “agricultural science for senior secondary school”, aniomo press ltd, akiode ojodu lagos. tuma. d. 2009 “uganda floriculture industry grow but worried about effects of global financial crisis” retrieved on 20/08/10 from: www.africanagricultureblog.com/2009/on/ugan da. floricultureindustry.growsbut usman, j. m., abiola, i. o., adesope, a. a. a. and adeoye, o. (2002) “floricultural business; panacea to poverty eradication”, a paper presented at the preceeding of annual conference of horiticultural society of nigeria. http://www.africanagricultureblog.com/2009/on/uganda.%20floricultureindustry.growsbut http://www.africanagricultureblog.com/2009/on/uganda.%20floricultureindustry.growsbut effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. acknowledgements: this article is based on research supported by a grant award from the national research foundation of south africa (nrf) with funds supplied by the south africa national department of science and technology (dst). the impact of climate change on livestock production amongst the resource-poor farmers of third world countries: a review l. musemwa (risk and vulnerability assessment centre, university of fort hare, alice 5700, rsa) v. muchenje (department of livestock and pasture science, university of fort hare, alice 5700, rsa) a. mushunje (department of agricultural economics and extension, university of fort hare, alice 5700, rsa) l. zhou (risk and vulnerability assessment centre, university of fort hare, alice 5700, rsa) citation: l. musemwa, v. muchenje, a. mushunje and l. zhou (2012) “the impact of climate change on livestock production amongst the resource-poor farmers of third world countries: a review”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 621 – 631. the impact of climate change on livestock.... 621 author(s) l. musemwa risk and vulnerability assessment centre, university of fort hare, alice 5700, rsa v. muchenje department of livestock and pasture science, university of fort hare, alice 5700, rsa a. mushunje department of agricultural economics and extension, university of fort hare, alice 5700, rsa l. zhou risk and vulnerability assessment centre, university of fort hare, alice 5700, rsa the impact of climate change on livestock production amongst the resource-poor farmers of third world countries: a review abstract the world is currently experiencing average high temperatures and low precipitation, frequent droughts and scarcity of both ground and surface water. the damaging effects of global climate change are increasing and most damages are predicted to occur in developing countries due to their over-reliance on low-input rain-fed agricultural production and their low adaptive capacity. due to the erratic rainfall and high incidence of droughts which make crop production not feasible, the majority of the rural population in third world countries depends on livestock production for their livelihoods. the livestock sector is, however, considered very vulnerable to climate variability and change. floods, droughts, diseases and poor grazing conditions are some of the factors currently causing significant livestock losses. the problems being encountered by the livestock farmers in most of the third world countries are expected to worsen in future due to the effects of climate change. this therefore makes the study of impact of climate change on livestock production a vital concern in the world, particularly in developing countries where many rural households depend on livestock production for their livelihoods. this article therefore looks at both the direct and indirect effects of climate change on livestock production. strategies to curtail the effect of climate change on livestock production are also recommended in the paper. keywords: erratic rainfall, developing countries, diseases, floods, local breeds, temperature variability introduction past land policies resulted in the majority of the resource-poor households in developing countries residing on marginal land, not suitable for crop production. the erratic rainfall and high incidence of droughts and low employment opportunities in these marginal areas, therefore, make a large majority of the population depend on livestock for their livelihoods (isrds, 2004; coetzee et al., 2004; musemwa et al., 2010). livestock meet the multiple objectives that are desired by resourcepoor people which include the provision of draught power, manure, cash sales, among other socio-economic functions (chimonyo et al., 2000). therefore, livestock production has a great potential for generating income for many rural households in marginal areas of many developing countries, thereby alleviating poverty and improving the livelihoods of the rural poor (dovie et al., 2006; simela et al., 2006). however, production of livestock is still a challenge in the third world countries due to poor management practices, high prevalence of pests and diseases, poor state of the grazing land and overgrazing (muchenje et al., 2008). natural grazing lands constitute the main feed resource for domestic livestock in most developing countries. there is over-reliance on low input rain fed livestock production in developing countries (ipcc, 1996; kabubo-mariara, 2008). the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 621-631. 622 problems facing resource-poor livestock farmers in most of the third world countries are going to be worse in the future due to the effects of climate change resulting in huge economic impacts (midgley et al., 2011). this vulnerability is exacerbated by existing developmental challenges such as endemic poverty, complex governance and institutional dimensions; limited access to capital, including markets, infrastructure and technology; ecosystem degradation; and complex disasters and conflicts. climate change is now therefore, recognised as one of the most serious challenge facing the world, its people, the environment and its economies (ecard, 2008). farming, particularly livestock production in marginal areas is thus in the front-line of the battle against climate change impacts. ipcc (2001) reported that the damaging effects of global temperature is increasing and most damages are predicted to occur in developing countries especially in africa, where the region already faces average high temperatures and low precipitation, frequent droughts and scarcity of both ground and surface water. developing countries have warmed by almost 1 °c in the past century, faster than the global average (ipcc, 2001). climatic conditions have become more variable. rainfall has fallen considerably and droughts are more frequently experienced. temperatures have become more extreme and floods more common (midgley et al., 2011). very little research has been conducted on the impacts of climate change on livestock, pests and diseases. the livestock sector is very important in many developing countries and is considered very vulnerable to climate variability and change. this therefore makes the study of impact of climate change to livestock production a vital concern in the world particularly in developing countries where many rural households depend on livestock for their livelihoods. this paper therefore looks at both the direct and indirect effects of climate change to livestock production. adjustments will be necessary in order to counterbalance any negative impacts of a changing climate. farmers must have the ability to adjust to changes by adapting farming practices. while there has been considerable international experience of various climate change-related activities aimed at livestock production, drawing adoption strategies from this experience is difficult. this paper will therefore, also attempt to elucidate some of the impact of climate change on livestock production reduction strategies that can be adopted by resource-poor farmers. main effects of climate change to livestock production the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc, 2001) highlighted that drought, floods and cyclones and extreme temperature conditions will severely affect agriculture, especially in developing countries due to less adaption capacity of these countries to climatic conditions. this sub-section therefore looks at both the direct and indirect impact of these factors to livestock production in developing countries. impact of drought a drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply whether surface or underground water (nepstad, 2007). drought is not simply low rainfall, it occurs when there is an extended period of deficiency in precipitation (relative to what is considered normal), which is then insufficient to meet economic, social and environmental demands. according to nepstad (2007), drought is a recurrent phenomenon in the world especially in dry land areas. herders and farmers must continually adjust their practices in order to cope with variability. during droughts those on the land feel it most. subsistence farming, which provides most people of the region with their food, depends on sufficient rainfall (simela et al., 2006). agriculture suffers first and most severely yet eventually everyone feels the impact. trees and grasses wilt and die and animals perish from hunger and thirst. during a drought, overgrazing leads to further degradation of pastures and arable areas in livestock farming areas. the deterioration of grazing capacity further reduces livestock numbers. in drier areas, scanty rainfall for a few years can kill vegetation permanently and poor land-practices only make it worse. for instance, the 1991-1992 droughts which ravaged most of southern africa killed more than one million cattle in zimbabwe (sardc, the impact of climate change on livestock.... 623 iucn and sadc, 1994). during a drought period household herd sizes become smaller. in a study conducted by scoones (1992) in zimbabwe, a general shift toward smaller herd sizes resulting from mortality and loaning out was observed during drought periods. stocklessness doubled as a result of the 198284 droughts in zimbabwe. the birth rate of livestock was also heavily affected by the drought. high rates of distortion also occurred during the drought period in zimbabwe. birth rates only began to decline well in the drought period, decreased to zero at the drought peak. on the contrary, livestock sales were highest during the drought period. the effect of drought on livestock varies across ecological zones (scoones, 1992). the time required for drought injury to occur on livestock depends on the water-holding capacity of the soil, environmental conditions, stage of plant growth, and plant species. plants growing in clay soils are more susceptible to drought stress than plants growing in sandy soils. the availability of key resource grazing patches, notably dambos, is more extensive in the sandy soil zone. this therefore results in the deterioration of veld condition in clay soils earlier than in sandy zones hence livestock in clay zones being affected first. impact of floods and cyclones floods and cyclone pose both a direct and indirect effect on livestock production in developing countries. they result in a direct loss of livestock and indirectly affect livestock by destroying infrastructure such as dip tanks and paddocks. for instance, during the 2009/2010 agricultural season, floods and cyclones damaged substantial areas of agricultural production in southern and central mozambique, resulting in loss of livestock, livestock infrastructure and crops needed in livestock production (fao, 2000). preliminary estimates suggest that losses reached almost $8 million in the livestock sector. livestock losses have been estimated at 20,000 cattle; 4,000 goats, sheep and pigs; and 180,000 chickens, but it must be noted that these numbers were at the low end of a range (with the high end approximately doubling these numbers) (world bank, 2000). as livestock play an essential social and economic role in most developing countries, livestock loss will also deeply affect regional development. smaller species which include poultry have virtually disappeared in the flooded areas, removing another source of revenue and nutrition from the resource-poor households. in pakistan during the 2010/2011 agricultural season, 158,412 animals perished due to floods; cattle heads worth 106 million dollars were lost in the north-western province only. after the floods, at least 2.3 million dollars was needed for treatment of sick animals and 1.3 million livestock faced severe feed shortages. other than the losses of livestock, infrastructure for livestock production was also severely damaged and also disputes on ownership to livestock among farmers were triggered (xinhua news agency, 2010). another important factor of livestock production which can be affected by floods is labour. labour is needed for livestock rearing, vaccination, treating sick animals as well as feeding the livestock. as a result of a flood event, people involved in livestock production may perish in extreme cases or may be affected health wise to the extent that they will not be fit to perform the duties required in livestock production. this results in the deterioration of livestock condition or death of livestock in some extreme cases. according to the world bank (2000), the floods that occurred in mozambique for instance forced at least 250,000 people, or approximately 50,000 families, to abandon their homes and their possessions which include livestock. impact of extreme temperatures there is a range of temperature where livestock are neither too hot nor too cold and their performance is optimal. this temperature range is called the thermo neutral zone. it is the temperature range where the fewest nutrients are needed to maintain bodily functions (kadzere et al., 2002; boyles, 2008). increase in atmospheric temperatures tend to have adverse impacts on livestock production (e.g. low milk production) through both declining forage quality and increased ambient temperature (hanson et al., 1993, ipcc 1996). in pigs for instance, the general effects of high asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 621-631. 624 temperature are easily observed. the animals become lazy and tend to lie flat on the ground or floor (myer and bucklin 2001; kerr et al., 2005). a rise in the ambient-environmental temperature above a certain point, results in the average daily weight gain dropping more rapidly than the daily feed consumption (kouba et al., 2001; collin et al., 2001; myer et al., 1998). in a study by kerr et al. (2005) on pigs, body temperature increased with the rising ambient temperature, but the increase was relatively small until the higher temperatures were reached. as the temperature increased, the pulse rate declined. the rapid and immediate rise in respiration is notable and precedes any body temperature change. an increase in ambient temperature resulted in a decline in feed consumption. according to adams et al. (1998) and berman (2005) warmer temperatures are estimated to have a suppressing effect on livestock appetite, which leads to lower weight gain. adams et al. (1998) observed that under a 5.0°c increase in temperature, livestock yields fell by 10% for cow/calf and dairy for a 1.5°c warming, yield loss was estimated at 1%. increase in temperature results in the spatial distribution and intensity of existing pests, and diseases which in turn affect livestock productivity or may cause death of livestock in some extreme instances. diseases are a major constraint to both livestock production and marketing in the tropics (devendra et al., 2000). animal health issues are barriers to trade in livestock and their products, whilst specific diseases decrease production and increase morbidity and mortality (düvel and stephanus, 2000). according to ecard (2008), most diseases are transmitted by vectors such as ticks and flies, the development stages of which are often heavily dependent on temperature. cattle, goats, horses and sheep are also vulnerable to an extensive range of nematode worm infections, most of which have their development stages influenced by climatic conditions more particular temperature. slenning (2010) highlighted that generalized warming will allow vectors to survive at higher elevations, allowing them to cross mountain ranges that currently limit their distribution. changes in rain patterns and intensity, combined with shifts in temperature ranges, will change local environments allowing vectors to survive and migrate across areas that previously were barriers. farmers will face the challenge of dealing with increased pest problems, or new pest challenges, within the constraints of what science can provide and within the world’s pesticide authorisation regulatory framework (ecard, 2008). in contradiction, disease incidences could in fact dwindle in certain areas and for different populations as a result of climate change. for instance, randolph (2008) found that as ambient temperatures rise, some ticks (ixodes ricinus) are beginning questing behavior earlier in the year, before their mammalian host numbers rise via spring birthing. this increases tick mortality and decreases overall tick-borne disease incidence in those hosts. climate change will decrease biodiversity, and pathogens, vectors, or hosts could be early victims (lafferty, 2009). more mixed impacts are predicted for cooler regions. if the intensity and length of cold periods in temperate areas are reduced by warming, feed requirements may be reduced, survival of young animals enhanced and energy costs for heating of animal quarters reduced (aydinalp and cresser, 2008). extreme low temperatures in other parts of countries are also likely to have an impact on livestock production. the metabolic response to the stimulus of cold involves practically all the systems of the body. the striated muscles shiver, the heart beats faster, breathing becomes deeper, urine flow is increased and the sympathetic and pituitary controlled systems are activated so to elevate biological oxidations (energy expenditure or heat production) in all tissues. the result is an increase in the cow's requirements for energy (kabuga, 1992). according to boyles (2008, it is estimated that for every one degree below the critical temperature a cow's energy requirement (tdn) increases by 1 percent and for every ten degrees below the critical temperature the digestibility of the ration decreases by 1 percent. this means that when the temperature drops below the critical temperature the cattle need to be fed better. it may be that more or better hay needs to be fed. the impact of climate change on livestock.... 625 extreme low temperatures being experienced in other developing countries due to climate change also results in the protein content of grasses declining and the lignin content rising. livestock lose condition when the quality of the natural pasture can no longer provide the nutritional needs of their bodies, partly because they ingest less grass due to the high lignin content and partly because the protein content of the grass they ingest is relatively low. for dairy cows for instance, the poor quality of the feeds during extreme colds render the dairy cows’ deficient in protein, and therefore do not meet maintenance and production requirements (smith and akinbamijo, 2000; shem, 1996). research has also indicated that cattle tend to lose mass once the protein content of the veld they are grazing declines below 6% on a dry matter basis (jayasuriya, 2000). the fall in crude protein content is also accompanied by an increase in fibre content. thus, the animal is faced with insufficient amounts of a low quality and relatively indigestible feed. the situation can also be intensified by drought. feeds, when temperatures are low also, have a high content of dietary fibre ranging from 35 to 48%, which has a limiting effect on intake and digestibility of feeds (dixon and egan, 1987). associated with dietary fibre are the antinutritive factors such as lignin and silica, which are known to inhibit microbial fermentation in the rumen (deventra, 1993). inadequate nutrition in the dry-season usually results in reduced body weight and condition scores in adult animals, poor milk yields and long calving intervals in nursing cows, retarded growth and increased mortality rates in calves. also associated with poor nutrition is the increased susceptibility of animals to stress and disease challenges, which result in these animals performing below their expected genetic potential (nadaraja, 1978). all these factors result in heavy economic losses to the farmer. adaptation strategies approaches to climate change management in the livestock sector depend very heavily on the level of resources that national governments or donors or both are able and willing to commit (morton et al., 2002). this level of resources is determined by a country’s per capita income, its size, and the priority it enjoys among donors, but also by historical, political and cultural factors. improve access to weather focus information none or poor provision of agricultural information is a key factor that has greatly limited agricultural development in developing countries (bailey et al., 1999). information delivery is critical in the process of enhancing the adaptive capacities of the rural areas to climate change. the lack of timorous and reliable information on weather or new technologies is severe in most communal areas of developing countries. improved early warning systems and their application may also reduce vulnerability to future risks associated with climate variability and change. using such climate information it may be possible to give outlooks with lead times of between 2 and 6 months before the onset of an event (thomson et al., 2006). such lead times provide opportunities for putting interventions in place. if information is made available resource-poor farmers would be able to obtain livestock movement permits or sell their livestock on time. although considerable progress has been observed in the provision of communication systems such as telephone and cellular phone network facilities, communal farmers in developed countries still remain uninformed in terms of new weather focus information in advance as they use outdated equipment that make the probability of correct prediction very low resulting in farmers not even trusting the information in most instances. radio and other media such as churches and gatherings like traditional beer drinking ceremonies are still used as main source of weather focus information (musemwa et al., 2008; montshwe, 2006). however, access by smallholder livestock farmers to radios, televisions and internet is still limited. in most cases, information is broadcasted and written in english. this makes the information irrelevant to the majority of communal farmers who in most cases understand their local languages only (montshwe, 2006). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 621-631. 626 use of local breeds livestock pests and diseases form a major threat to livestock production in developing countries and climate change may aggravate the situation since a warmer climate could shorten the developmental cycle of many pests and disease agents. an integrated management approach combining biological and nonbiological methods will be the best option to deal with an increased pest and disease pressure. policies and development efforts to improve livestock production in the communal areas in developed countries such as south africa for instance have been based on the use of fast growing imported breeds (collinsluswet, 2000; musemwa et al., 2010). these are perceived to be superior to native breeds because of their large body size (bester et al., 2005). contrary to this presumption, exotic breeds are failing to cope with the harsh climatic conditions being experienced in these areas (muchenje et al., 2008). consequently, farmers raising these imported breeds are incurring more production costs as a result of climate change. use of local breeds such as the nguni cattle in south africa and the mashona in zimbabwe which are well adapted to the environment because they have evolved in those surroundings for thousands of years could lower the impact of climate change on livestock production in developing countries. local breeds are known by their fertility and excellent resistance to ticks and immunity to tick borne diseases (ferreira, 2008). disease incidence and mortality are low in local breeds (mapiye et al., 2007, muchenje et al., 2008). for instance the south african local cattle breed (nguni cattle) has survived without any dipping or dosing in areas where other cattle died within months. bonsma (1980) and muchenje et al. (2008) found that the nguni carried the lowest tick numbers regardless of the species or season of the year however muchenje et al. (2008) further noted that productivity of the nguni cattle was not significantly influenced by whether they were dipped or not but bonsmara and angus steers showed significant drops in growth rate, liveweight and carcass characteristics as shown in table 1. table 1: least square means of daily gain and carcass characteristics of dipped nguni, bonsmara and angus steers breed tick control n average daily gain (g/day) slaughter weight warm carcass weight (kg) dressing percentage eye muscle area (mm2) ngumi not dipped dipped 25 13 197±11.9 210±12.3 220±8.0a 227±10.7 a 111±4.5 a 116±6.1ab 50.3±0.84 a 51.0±1.13 ab 3648±105bc 3858±151.4bcd bonsmara not dipped dipped 15 14 241±11.2 220±16.9 265±9.6 c 254±10.7 bc 142±5.4 d 135±6.1 cd 53.8±1.01 d 53.4±1.13 cd 3996±120.8 d 3988±141.5 cd angus not dipped dipped 6 8 205±29 178±33.7 240±11.1 ab 235±12.9 ab 129±6.3 bcd 123±7.7 bc 53.7±1.17cd 52.3±1.43 bc 3291±210.6 a 3491±170.9 ab level of significance ns * * * * means in the same column with different superscripts are different (*p<0.05), ns-not significant source: muchenje et al. (2008) besides their resistance to tropical diseases and parasites, the local livestock breeds are highly adaptable to poor quality grazing and conditions of excessive heat and humidity (ndlovu et al., 2009; musemwa et al., 2010). they also have adaptive traits such as walking ability, which enables it them to walk long distances in search of grazing and water (ferreira, 2008; muchenje et al., 2008). they are excellent foragers and can graze and browse on steep slopes and in thick bushes alike (mapiye et al., 2007). according to ndlovu et al. (2009), higher levels of blood urea have been recorded in the nguni cattle than in other breeds (most significant during winter months) and although this finding is subject to ongoing research certain facts have been identified as possible catalysts: the impact of climate change on livestock.... 627  nguni have a system of recycling urea through controlled kidney function and even drinking the urine of other animals in the herd during times of nutritional stress.  nguni are capable of selecting diet efficiently through higher intake of browse for increased protein ingestion  the digestive system of the nguni is more efficient in terms of cellulose break-down, release of nutrients and digestion of micro-organisms present in the system, millions of which are carried into the small intestines. apart from these adaptability features, local breed also are more profitable to farm with. vorster (1964) compared the amount of beef produced by afrikaner, hereford and nguni and he found that nguni produced more beef per cow (kg of beef) than the other two breeds in zimbabwe under commercial farming conditions. barnard and venter (1983) compared the net income of 5 breeds (afrikaner, hereford, sanga, santa gertrudis and simmentaler) in namibia, marketing at 18 months of age directly offveld with no concentrate feeding. the nguni (sanga) generated the highest net income. apart from using local breeds farmers can change enterprises. for instance, during drought periods, pastoralists and agro-pastoralists change from cattle to sheep and goat husbandry, as the feed requirements of the latter are lower (seo and mendelsohn, 2006). biotechnology research could also yield tremendous benefits if it leads to drought and disease resistant livestock specie (eca, 2002). the use of emergency fodder, culling of weak livestock for food, and multi-species composition of herds to survive climate extremes is also another adaptation strategy that can be used by the resource-poor farmers during times of drought. enhanced resilience to future periods of drought stress may also be supported by improvements in existing rain-fed livestock farming systems (rockström, 2003), such as water-harvesting systems to supplement livestock during periods of low rainfall. shades and ventilation during times of high temperatures resourcepoor farmers cannot afford to purchase materials to build either artificial or permanent shades. this therefore means poor resource livestock farmers can use trees as natural shade. in an experiment by valtorta et al. (1997) the artificial shade structure did not differ from tree shades in terms of the effects on animal wellbeing. trees are an excellent natural source of shade on the pasture. trees are not effective blockers of solar radiation but the evaporation of moisture from leaf surface cools the surrounding air. a simple shade can reduce the animals’ radiant heat load by 30% or more (bond et al., 1967). according valtorta et al. (1996;1997) shades are efficient in reducing heat stress in livestock. they found that protected dairy cows presented lower afternoon rectal temperature and respiration rate, and yielded more milk and protein. in beef cattle with access to shade, mitlo¨ ehner et al. (2001; 2002), observed a reduction in core body temperature and respiration rate. stock movement movement of livestock from regions affected by climate change i.e. droughts, for example, to alternative grazing areas is one of the strategies that can be adopted by resource-poor farmers. according to scoones (1992), the movement of stock in drought affected regions can be done in two ways depending on the severity of the climate change impact. for instance if the drought is not too severe, movement of stock can be done locally away from the clay soil zone to the edge zone and on to the sandy soil zone areas. this is because drought has a lesser impact on grass production in the sandy soil zone. in addition the availability of key resource grazing patches, notably dambos, is more extensive in the sandy soil zone. if the drought is severe, movement of livestock is done across regions (movement outside the boundaries of a communal area). in this process livestock can be loaned to both relatives and friends and often at some distance from the owner's home where climate change impact is less. in some instances, grazing can be hired from private land owners which is however a resource-poor farmer. however, resource-poor farmers can exchange grazing asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 621-631. 628 with some of their livestock. movement of livestock outside the boundaries of communal areas is however difficult. to begin with, movement of animals outside their dip area is illegal without a permit from the veterinary department. such permits are quite complex to acquire, requiring a series of visits to official offices and the signing of a number of forms. movement is further restricted by specific veterinary regulations related to the control of foot and mouth disease and required by the most developing countries (coetzee et al., 2004; montshwe, 2006; musemwa et al., 2010). policy restrictions on movement thus hamper flexible climate change response through stock movement. conclusion the impact of climate change in developing countries to resource-poor livestock farmers is increasing significantly due to the fact that the farmers have limited adaption strategies. if policies which include allowing free movement of stock during periods of harsh climatic conditions could be put in place, the impact of climate change could be reduced quite significantly. the use of local breeds which are well adapted to harsh climatic conditions could also play an important role in minimizing the effect of climate change to livestock production. an integrated tree-livestock farming system could play a role in minimizing the impact of extreme temperature on livestock. the trees act as shades during times of high temperature reducing heat stress on livestock hence promoting livestock productivity. the provision of reliable weather focus information in developing countries in a user friendly manner could also provide livestock farmers with opportunities for putting interventions strategies in place before a bad event happens hence reducing the impact of climate change to livestock. references adams, r. m., mccarl, b. a., segerson, k., rosenzweig, c., bryant, k. j., dixon, b. l., conner, r., evenson, r. e. and ojima, d. 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(1964) “factors influencing the growth, production and reproduction of different breeds of beef cattle under range conditions in southern rhodesia”, research bulletin 1, pp. 133. southern rhodesia department of agriculture, salisbury, rhodesia. world bank (2000) “republic of mozambique: a preliminary assessment of damage from the flood and cyclone emergency of february-march 2000”, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intdismg mt/resources/wb_flood_damages_moz.pdf xinhua news agency (2010) “floods cause immense damage to pakistani agriculture”, http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/9085 1/7113046.htm http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intdismgmt/resources/wb_flood_damages_moz.pdf http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intdismgmt/resources/wb_flood_damages_moz.pdf http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/7113046.htm http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/7113046.htm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 621-631. 632 © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 gender participation in economic activities and decision making in keffi area of nigeria hassan ishaq ibrahim (department of agricultural economics and extension, nasarawa state university keffi, pmb 135 shabu-lafia campus, nasarawa state, nigeria) napoleon danbeki saingbe (department of agricultural extension and management college of agriculture, lafia nasarawa state, nigeria) zubairu ajiya abdulkadir (department of agricultural economics and extension, nasarawa state university keffi, pmb 135 shabu-lafia campus, nasarawa state, nigeria) to cite this article: hassan ishaq ibrahim, napoleon danbeki saingbe and zubairu ajiya abdulkadir (2012). gender participation in economic activities and decision making in keffi area of nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1), 10-16. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 10-16 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author (s) hassan ishaq ibrahim † department of agricultural economics and extension, nasarawa state university keffi, nigeria email: hassibrahim@yahoo.com napoleon danbeki saingbe department of agricultural extension and management college of agriculture, lafia nasarawa state, nigeria zubairu ajiya abdulkadir department of agricultural economics and extension, nasarawa state university keffi, nigeria gender participation in economic activities and decision making in keffi area of nigeria abstract the study assessed gender participation and decision making role in economic activities using data collected from 120 respondents. the results revealed that female participation was frequent in crop postharvest activities and poultry management while male participation was frequent in crop pre-harvest operations only. female respondents participated occasionally in home gardening, goat rearing, hair dressing and food processing. educational level, years of experience, personal income and credit obtained significantly influenced the level of gender participation in economic activities. the males always made decisions on selection of crop variety, spending money, saving money, buying of necessities, and children’s education, while females always made decision on types of food for home consumption only. age and income of respondents were the significant factors that influenced the level of gender involvement in decision making. provision of credit facilities, sensitization on the importance of women involvement in decision making and mobilization of farmers to form co-operative societies are necessary impetus for improving women participation in economic activities and decision making. keywords: gender, participation, economic activities, decision making, likert scale, keffi introduction there are at least three different but interrelated schools of thought as to why gender matters can be identified in current development studies. these are equity approach, the developmental approach and the efficiency approach (malena, 1994). the equity approach argues that any meaningful development strategy must actively attempt to correct gender inequalities between men and women. the developmental approach merely asserts that if development is aimed at helping the poor, and if a majority of the poor are women, then development means helping women. the efficiency approach focuses on the need for improving the labour productivity of both men and women in any economic system (malena, 1994). gabriel (1991) reported a 16 hour working day for african farming women, while whatmore (1991) pointed out that no matter what the extent of women’s agricultural activities, there is little variation in the extent to which domestic labour is shared by other members of the household. however, women still face formidable obstacle to their potential role as a major economic and social force in the development of the agricultural sector (rahman and haruna, 1999). women participation in management and production decisions varies according to geographical location, culture and religion. in northern nigeria, women predominate crop processing and storage, fulani women are famous for the rearing of sheep, fowls, cattle and processing of milk. middle-belt women are generally involved in land clearing, preparation and marketing of farm produce. in south eastern nigeria, women are engaged in land preparation down to weeding and harvesting. in the reverie areas, women gather and process fish caught by men (audu and onoja, 2005). the feature of women’s status in developing countries like nigeria is essentially that of marginalization which is best explained within the context of productive relations. women in nigeria form an active and reserved labour force but they rarely own means of production (rahman et al., 2004). they make a significant contribution to food production and to the processing of food stuff. they also provide about 60-80 per cent of agricultural labour and are responsible for 80 percent of food production (ingawa, l999; mgbada, 2000). women across the developing world are disadvantaged relative to men. under male-dominated social structures and political systems, women are denied equal access to land, technology, education and resources, as a result, rates of poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition and premature death are significantly higher among women and girls than they are among men and boys (horenstein, 1989). in nigeria, the division of labour in rural agricultural activities is gender specific. there are variations among different social groups in their participatory roles in agricultural production. it is commonly believed that in the muslim dominated community in northern nigeria, mailto:hassibrahim@yahoo.com gender participation in economic activities….. 11 the obligations of men and women are clearly defined. the men provide food, water, firewood, house-keeping money and shelter for the family while secluded muslim women do no farm work (jackson, 1986). statement of the problem despite the important role women play in farm and household production, they have not been given due recognition in the agricultural sector. there has been a great disparity between women and men in the size of land holdings (quisumbing, 1994). women interest and involvement in economic activities are limited. the limitation has a lot of implications for women access to and control over resources of their own (morna, 1990; rahman and alamu, 2003). though women are playing very important roles within and outside the home, disparities still exists between men and women in education, health, employment, income opportunities, control over assets, personal security and participation in the political process (food and agricultural organization, 2002). according to the united nation’s gender-related development index (gdi), women are under privileged and less empowered and this undeniably restricts the ability to achieve full potentials of developing countries (united nations development programme, 2006). there is also lack of quantitative and qualitative data on gender involvement in economic activities in terms of participation and decision making in nasarawa state and keffi area in particular. based on the foregoing, the objectives of the study was to; describe the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, compare the level of gender participation in economic activities, identify the factors influencing the level of gender participation in economic activities, determine the level of gender participation in decision making and identify the factors influencing the level of gender involvement in decision making. justification for the study in nigeria, women are often marginalized in their access to economic, political and social resources compared to men rendering them relatively poorer than their male counterparts (oseni, 2003). this study will provide information on the involvement of women and men in economic activities and decision making process. it will also provide recommendations that will lead to improvement and equalization of gender participation in economic activities. the study will also assist government and policy makers in designing subsequent programmes that will improve gender participation in economic activities. methodology the study was conducted in keffi area of nasarawa state, nigeria. it lies between latitude 70 and 90 north and longitude 70 and 100 east. the area has a mean temperature ranging between 250c in october to about 360c in march with mean annual rainfall of about 1500mm. the major occupation of the population of the area is farming and the dominant tribes are hausa/fulani, gwandara, gbagyi and afo. keffi has one extension block with six cells namely; angwan jaba, bagaji, gauta, keffi, kafin shanu and yarkadde. ten men and ten women farmers were randomly selected from each cell, making a total of l20 respondents for the study. primary data was used for the study and were collected with the aid of structured questionnaire that was administered to the respondents by trained enumerators. data were collected on socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, economic activities and decision making roles. data were collected over a period of two weeks. a four-point likert scale was used to measure the level of participation in economic activities by gender. the respondents were asked whether the frequency of their participations was frequently, occasionally, rarely or never. points were awarded for each response with scoring of ‘frequently’ to ‘never’ having scores of three, two, one and zero. ranges for responses of the respondents in different economic activities were specified as follows; 0.00–0.75 = never, 0.76 –1.50 = rarely, 1.51–2.25 = occasionally and > 2.25 = frequently. two separate regression models were used to identify the factors influencing the level of gender participation in economic activities and involvement in decision making respectively. the models were specified as follows: regression model for gender participation in economic activities y = a + b1x1 + b2x2 + b3x3 + b4x4 + b5x5 + b6x6 + b7x7 + u ………………………… (1) where: y = participation index of respondent x1 = age of respondents (years) x2 = level of education (no. of years in school) x3 = years of experience x4 = extension visit (so. of contacts in a year) x5 co-operative participation (years) x6 = personal income (n) x7 amount of credit obtained (n) b1-b7 = regression coefficients a = constant term u = error term regression model for gender involvement in decision making: d = a + b1x1 b2x2 + b3x3 + u ……………. (2) where: d = number of activities respondent is involved in decision making x1 = age (years) x2 education (years) x3 = personal income (n) b1b3 = regression coefficients a = constant term u = error term asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 10-16 12 results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of respondents a close look at the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents (see table 1) revealed that majority of the respondents (33 per cent) were within the age of 39-40 years. the mean age of the respondents was 34 years. majority (86.7 per cent) of the respondents were married while. this implies that married men and women were more involved in various economic activities in the study area. the respondents had one form of education or the other implying that a significant proportion of the respondents were literate. the table further revealed that majority of the respondents do not belonged to any co-operative society. the respondents had different years experience in various economic activities. majority also had between 0.5-1.5 hectares of implying that majority of the respondents cultivated small plots of land. respondents’ level of participation in various economics activities the respondents participated to some extent in various economic activities (see table 2). the participation by women was frequent in post-harvest activities (mean = 2.88) and poultry management (mean = 2.48). women participation was occasional in home gardening (mean 1.58), local food processing (mean = 2.06), goat rearing (mean = 1.86), trading (mean = 1.97) and hair dressing (mean = 1.72). the above finding agrees with that of mahmuda and yoshihito (2008) that women’s participation is higher in livestock management related activities than in crop production. rahman (2008) also reported that women handled processing activities such as threshing, winnowing, grinding, smoking, salting and drying. okitoi et al. (2007) also reported that ownership of poultry is shared among the different categories but is predominantly owned by women and children. the table also showed that the men frequently participated in preharvest operations (mean = 2.95). this may be due to the labour intensive nature of activities such as ploughing, harrowing, ridging and weeding. this finding agrees with that of rahman et al. (2007) that men do much of the land clearing, ridging and weeding in various farming operations. the men occasionally participated in poultry management (mean =2.18), and goat rearing (mean = 1.88). the table further revealed that both men and women never participated in aquaculture activities, tailoring and cattle rearing. men never participated in activities such as local food processing, food hawking and hair dressing while women on the other hand never participated in activities such as commercial motorcycle riding and vehicle driving. factors influencing gender participation in various economic activities several factors influenced gender participation in various economic activities in the study area (see table 3). the table revealed that 62.4 per cent of the variation in the respondents’ participation in various economic activities was explained by the independent variables included in the model. educational level, years of experience in various economic activities, personal income and credit obtained positively and significantly influenced gender participation in various economic activities. the age of respondents and extension visits had a negative but significant relationship with participation in various economic activities. the negative sign for age implies that the older the respondent, the lesser the tendency to participate in economic activities. this finding agrees with that of mahmuda and yoshihito (2008) who reported that age is negatively related with extent of participation in economic activities. the significant coefficient for educational level means that participation in economic activities increases with education. this finding disagrees with the view of mahmuda and yoshihito (2008) that highly educated persons are not likely to participate in hard physical work. the positive sign of the coefficient for credit implies that access to credit enhances the respondents’ participation in economic activities. the positive sign of the coefficients for years of experience and personal income also implies that increasing either of the two, will lead to greater participation in various economic activities. respondents’ level of participation in decision making the respondents’ level of participation in decision making varies across gender (see table 4). activities such as selection of crop variety (93.3 per cent), saving money (95 per cent), crop, cattle, goat and poultry selling (60 per cent), spending money (93.3 per cent), buying of necessities (9l.7 per cent), children’s education (85 per cent) and family budgeting (65 per cent) were mostly decided by men. this finding agrees with that of farhana et al. (2009) that husbands were the main decision makers in family matters and education of children. also, supporting this view is okorji (1991) who observed that on crop enterprise to be produced, men take major decisions although women decide on what crops to grow on own their fields. the table further revealed that women sometimes make decision on selection of crops (26.7 per cent), home gardening (36.7 per cent), crop, cattle, goat and poultry selling (28.3 per cent), buying of necessities (30 per cent) and family budgeting (40 per cent). the implication of these findings can be seen in the report by rahman et al. (2007) ‘that women had below 50 per cent involvement rate for selection of enterprise, input procurement, input allocation and selling of produce’. factors influencing the level of gender involvement in decision making the factors that were hypothesized to influence the level of gender involvement in decision making (see table 5) explained 94 per cent of variation in the dependent variable. age and income level of respondents were positive and significant. this implies that the older the respondents, the higher the tendency to participate gender participation in economic activities….. 13 more in decision making process. ogunlela and mukhtar (2009) posited that older respondents participated more in decision making than their younger counterparts. in the same vein, the higher the income of respondents, the more they tend to participate in decision making process. the implication is that the richer the respondents, the more they get involved in decision making process compared to their poor counterparts. this is obviously due to their stronger economic position. education of respondents was positive but not significant. this finding disagrees with several studies such as gage (1995); meekers and oladosu (1996); oyediran (1998) that decision making is influenced by education, place of residence, employment status among others. conclusion the study has shown that women participated more in economic activities while men were more involved in decision making. educational level, credit obtained, years of experience and personal income were the significant factors that influenced gender participation in various economic activities. the level of gender involvement in decision making was influenced by age and income level of respondents. table 1: socio-economic characteristics of respondents variables frequency percentage age (years) 17-27 30 25 28-38 39 32.5 39-49 40 33.3 50-60 11 9.2 total 120 100 marital status single 7 5.8 married 104 86.7 divorced 4 3.3 widowed 5 4.2 total 120 100 educational status (yrs) primary 36 30 secondary 34 28.3 tertiary 5 4.2 no formal education 45 37.5 total 120 100 membership of co-operative society yes 29 24.2 no 91 75.8 total 120 100 years of experience (yrs) 10-mar 51 42.5 18-nov 34 28.3 19-26 24 20 27-34 8 6.7 35-42 3 2.5 total 120 100 farm size (ha) 0.5-1.5 96 80.7 1.6-2.6 21 7.5 2.7-3.7 3 2.5 total 120 100 personal income (n) 5000 – 23000 69 57.5 24000 – 42000 38 31.7 43000 – 61000 7 5.8 62000 – 80000 5 4.2 81000 and above 1 0.8 total 120 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 10-16 14 table 2: respondents’ level of participation in various economic activities activities mean (male) mean (female) crop production (pre-harvest activities) 2.95 1.36 crop production (post-harvest activities) 0.23 2.88 home gardening 0.68 1.58 poultry management 2.18 2.48 goat rearing 1.88 1.86 cattle rearing 0.45 0.12 aquaculture activities 0.28 0.3 local food processing 0 2.06 food hawking 0 0.99 marketing activities 0.98 0.95 wage labour 0.88 0.15 trading 0.86 1.97 hair dressing 0 1.72 commercial motorcycle riding 0.92 0 commercial vehicle driving 0.72 0 tailoring 0.41 0.45 table 3: factors influencing the level of gender participation in various economic activities variable coefficients standard error t-value constant 1.436 0.305 4.702*** age (yrs) -0.011 0.004 2.487* education (yrs) 0.043 0.024 1.782* years of experience (yrs) 0.022 0.006 3.932*** extension visit (no. of contacts) -0.287 0.973 1.957* co-operative participation (yrs) 0.006 0.019 0.300ns personal income (n) 0.065 0.172 3.772** credit facilities 1.89e-05 0 5.650*** r2 = 0.624, *, **, *** = significant at 10, 5 and 1 per cent levels respectively table 4: respondents’ level of participation in decision making activities always sometimes not involved male female male female male female f % f % f % f % f % f % selection of crop variety 56 93.3 9 15 3 5 16 26.7 1 1.7 35 58.3 home gardening 0 0 23 38.3 23 38.3 22 36.7 32 53.3 15 25 cattle, goat and poultry rearing 33 55 28 46.7 13 21.7 18 30 14 23.3 15 25 crop, cattle, goat and poultry selling 36 60 22 36.7 11 18.3 17 28.3 13 21.7 21 35 spending money 56 93.3 14 23.3 1 1.7 19 31.7 3 5 27 45 saving money 57 95 15 25 1 1.7 13 21.7 2 3.3 30 50 buying of necessities 55 91.7 18 30 5 8.3 18 30 0 0 25 41.7 children’s education 51 85 13 21.7 0 0 19 31.7 8 13.3 28 46.7 family budgeting 39 65 22 36.7 17 28.3 24 40 4 6.7 14 23.3 types of food for home consumption 14 23.3 54 90 14 23.3 4 6.7 32 53.3 2 3.3 gender participation in economic activities….. 15 table 5: factors influencing the level of gender involvement in decision making variable coefficients standard error t-value constant 1.643 0.208 7.893** age (yrs) 0.008 0.005 1.669* education (yrs) 0.031 0.055 0.892ns personal income (n) 9.59e-06 0.208 3.405** r2 = 0.624 *, ** = significant at 10 and 5% levels respectively recommendations based on the findings of the study, the followings are recommended;  the federal and state governments should provide adequate credit facilities to individuals in order to encourage their participation in different economic activities.  sensitization for individuals should be regularly conducted on the importance of women involvement in decision making.  individuals should also be mobilized to form co-operative societies that will also facilitate the provision of credits and relevant information to them.  government at all levels must invest more in the area of farmer education and employment creation in order to increase participation in different economic activities. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references audu, s. i., & onoja, a. o. 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(1990). women farmers emerge from shadows. african farmers, pp. 2-6. ogunlela, y. i., & mukhtar a. a. (2009). gender issues in agriculture and rural development in nigeria: the role of women. humanity and social science journal, 4(1), 19-30. okitoi, l. o., ondwasy, h. o., obali, m. p., & murekefu, f. (2007). gender issues in poultry production in rural households of western kenya. livestock research for rural development, 19(17). retrieved march 28th, 2009, from http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd19/2/okit19017. okorji, e. c. (1991). a comparative study of the role of women in traditional and modern organization in nigeria. in m.o. ijere (ed) women in nigerian economy. acena publishers: enugu, nigeria. oseni, j. o. (2003). gender roles in resource use efficiency and food security behaviour of farming households in ondo state. being a paper presented at the national conference of environment and behaviourial association of nigeria, 8-10 august. oyediran, a. k. 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(2003). estimating the level of women’s interest in agriculture: the application of logit regression model. nigerian journal of scientific research, 4(1), 45-49. rahman, s. a., gabriel, j., & marcus, n. d. (2004). gender differentials in labour contribution and productivity in farm production in kaduna state of nigeria. the journal of family development, 1(12), 1221. rahman, s. a., ibrahim, h., & ibrahim, h. (2007). socio-economic study of gender role in farm production in nasarawa state of nigeria. asia pacific journal of rural development, 17(1), 57-65. united nations development programme (undp). (2006). human development reports, washington dc. available at: www.undp.org. assessed 21st may, 2009. whatmore, s. (1991). farming women. macmillan: london. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 1 january 2013. acknowledgements: the authors express their gratitude to amhara regional bearou of agriculture and regional ministry of water resource and gondar soil and water laboratory, for their permission to use laboratory facilities and regents. very special thanks go to ato semagnew who helped me in collecting samples on the field. assessment of irrigation land suitability and development of map for the fogera catchment using gis, south gondar dagnenet sultan (department of water resources & irrigation management, faculty of agriculture & environmental science, bahir dar university, bahir dar, east africa, ethiopia) citation: dagnenet sultan (2013) “assessment of irrigation land suitability and development of map for the fogera catchment using gis, south gondar”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 7-17. assessment of irrigation land suitability and.... 7 author(s) dagnenet sultan department of water resources & irrigation management, faculty of agriculture & environmental science, bahir dar university, bahir dar, east africa, ethiopia assessment of irrigation land suitability and development of map for the fogera catchment using gis, south gondar abstract irrigation land suitability assessment and mapping play an imperative role for sustainable utilization of scarce physical land resources. the objectives of this study were to prepare spatial data base of physical land resources for irrigated agriculture and to assess land suitability for irrigation and developing suitable area map for the study area. the study was conducted at fogera catchment, south gondar. soil and water sampling spots were selected based on free and grid survey techniques and their locations were taken using global positioning system (gps). geographical information system (gis) techniques were used to develop irrigation land suitability map of the study area. attributes of parameters were collected and used for suitability assessment. attributes used as criteria for irrigation suitability analysis were ece, esp, soil depth, texture, ph, top and sub soil stoniness, water table depth, flood hazard, ground water quality (sar and ec) and slope. point data with their attribute were arranged and proximity analysis of arc-gis was made this resulted into twelve mapping units. the final irrigation suitability map of the project area was derived after overlay analysis. on the basis of stoniness, soil salinity, soil alkalinity, soil depth and groundwater quality it was concluded that 72 percent of the study area is potentially suitable for irrigation and 28 percent was classified as unsuitable (n) due to drainage limitation, flood hazard, texture and slope factors. of the potentially suitable land, 1 percent was highly suitable (s1), 28 percent was moderately suitable (s2), and 43 percent is marginally suitable (s3). keywords: parameters, gis, land suitability, soil mapping unit. introduction agriculture is the basis for the economy of ethiopia. it accounts for the employment of 90 percent of its population, over 50 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (gdp) and over 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings (ecacc, 2002). irrespective of this fact, production system is dominated by small-scale subsistence farming system largely based on low-input and lowoutput rain fed agriculture. as the result farm output lags behind the food requirement of the fast growing population. the high dependency on rain fed farming in the dry lands of ethiopia and the erratic rainfall require alternative ways of improving agricultural production. considering the available water and land resources of the country, ethiopia has immense potential in expanding irrigated agriculture. despite its irrigation potential which is estimated to be about 3.7 million hectare, only about 190,000 hectare (5.3 percent of the potential) is currently under asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 7-17 8 irrigation, which plays insignificant role in the country’s agricultural production (negash and seleshi 2004). use of land and water resources for the development of irrigation facilities could lead to substantial increase in food production in many parts of the world. proper use of land depends on the suitability or capability of land for specific purposes (fasina, et al, 2008). thus, to bring food security at national as well as household level, improvement and expansion of irrigated agriculture must be seriously considered. there is limited land and water resources based investigation of irrigation potential in ethiopia (negash and seleshi, 2004). small scale studies fell short in adequately providing basic soil information that can help to make appropriate decision on proper utilization of the land resources. the soil data used in such studies are based on the regional and basin wide soil studies, geomorphology and soil map of ethiopia at 1:1000,000 scale (fao, 1984a) and soil association map at 1:2000,000 scale (fao, 1984b). moreover, other site specific studies including the preliminary survey of soils in the study area failed to show detailed physical and chemical suitability of the land for irrigation. previous works provide insufficient information to implement micro-watershed management in general and farm level irrigation planning in particular. thus, the existing small scale irrigation system being carried out in the fogera catchment have no adequate soil and land resource information. this calls for a need to conduct detailed to semi-detailed soil and land studies at farm levels for use in irrigation suitability analysis. detailed and accurate data on the soil and land resources is the first requirement in evaluating land for irrigation suitability (jafarzadeh et al, 2005). land evaluation is related with the selection of suitable land, and suitable cropping, irrigation and management alternatives that are physically and financially practicable and economically viable (fao, 1985). the specific objectives of the study were to prepare spatial database of physical land resources for irrigated agriculture, assess land suitability area for irrigation in fogera catchment, and to develop irrigation suitability map of the catchment using gis tools. study area fogera plain is a vast agricultural land located at 11050'42" n and 370 39' 45" e (figure 1). the plain is adjacent to lake tana (source of blue nile) with an altitude of about 1800 m.a.s.l. the dominant soil type in the area is clay soil and the soils within the command area have moderately deep to deep effective soil depth. these soils have poor drainage and workability character. some parts of the command area, specially the lower parts, are (flooded) with the rainwater in the rainy season for about 3-4 months. the temperature of the area ranges between 6.3 0c to 33 0c. the area is characterized by uni-modal rainfall pattern with annual average rainfall of 1259 mm. the land use of the selected study area is 74.76 percent cultivated, 1.74 percent grazing land, 23.06 percent forest and 0.44 percent degraded. topography includes 76 percent plain, 13 percent gentle slope and 11 percent mountainous (wolelaw, 2005). the sources of water for irrigation in the catchment include ground water wells on farmer’s field, and a local river (gwanta river) which has an average base flow of 263 liter/sec. small scale irrigations are managed by local farmers. major irrigated crops grown include onion, rice, tomato and maize. assessment of irrigation land suitability.... figure 1 location of the study area data and methods topographic map (1:50,000) and aerial photograph (1:250,000) of the study area are collected from the ethiopian mapping agency (ema). the project area was selected based on topography and access to irrigation water supply. general information about the study area on climate, soil and vegetation were also collected from available document. interpretation and identification of features were made using the existing 1:250,000 and 1:50,000 scale aerial photograph and topographical maps respectively. to delineate the watershed, traverse survey was made using gps. this data was then down loaded to a gis environment and used to develop the boundary of study area. digital elevation model (dem) from the srtm is used for topographic analysis. soil and water sampling locations and elevations were captured as a point. these digital data sets were imported to a gis environment. soil, water, slope data based on a preliminary soil and water survey, soil samples are collected from three profile and nine auger holes. the spots are selected using both grid survey and free survey techniques. being a medium intensity soil survey one observation per 50 ha was taken as per the recommendations of fao (1979). observation sites were located according to the requirements and complexity of the soil patterns and composite soil samples were used for soil analysis. profile explorations were made at three suitable sites based on the soil color, drainage property of the specific location, source of irrigation water and relative position in the slope of the study area. drainage characteristics, water logging risk, internal drainage of the profile and visible soil saturated condition are determined using auger hole where the water table depth were also measured (dennis et al., 2005). depth and duration of flood inundation were measured on areas where water logging occurs during the cropping season. these measurements were used to assess flood hazard. in characterizing the topsoil and subsoil, three profile and nine auger holes (sampling points) were collected at 20 cm and 80 cm depth and their geographic location recorded using hand held gps. the samples were analyzed for texture, salinity, esp, ph and soil stoniness. the soil samples were first air-dried, grounded and passed through 2 mm sieve to undertake the physical and chemical analysis. the soil samples were analyzed for top soil texture, stoniness, soil salinity, ph and soil alkalinity. texture analysis of a soil sample was made using hydrometric method as described by gupta (2004). stoniness was assessed by sieving. in order to assess the salinity hazard of a soil, electrical conductivity (ece) measurements were asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 7-17 10 carried out. for this, the saturation paste extract was prepared (gupta, 2004), and ece was determined by conductivity meter and expressed in millimose per centimeter (mmhos/cm). soil ph was read simultaneously using ph meter from saturation paste extract. esp was determined after analyzing sodium concentration and cations exchange capacity of the soil. sodium concentration was determined using flame photometer; while cec measurement was made by ammonium acetate method. the exchangeable sodium percentage was calculated, by dividing exchangeable sodium to cation exchange capacity. salinity of the groundwater was measured using electrical conductivity meter and the ph of the groundwater sample was measured with ph meter. sodium adsorption ratio were determined after analyzing sodium with flame photometer, calcium and magnesium were determined using atomic absorption spectrophotometer. sodium adsorption ratio was calculated by dividing sodium concentration to the squares root of the average of sodium and magnesium concentrations. water was sampled from wells, which were used at house hold irrigation water sources. high spot areas were visited from selected wells located at upper, middle and lower part of the catchment area and thereafter, water was sampled. total study area was classified based on elevation source which helps as mapping unit for water quality assessment. the sampling took place during dry season. two samples per month were collected during irrigation period from nine locations. samples from wells were collected after withdrawal of water for some hours. at the time of collection, a label bearing a short identifying description was attached to the bottle. name of the farmer, location, irrigated crops, farmers observation on the source of the irrigation water were also recorded. topographic map (1:50,000) of the study area available from ethiopian mapping agency are too sparse and hence are not suitable. hence slope of the study area is derived from srtm–dem. spatial data analysis suitability criteria used the framework followed in this land suitability evaluation study is one given by dent and anthony (1981) and fao (1976). in addition, land evaluation standards for land resource mapping given by dennis et al (2005) were also used for evaluation with little adjustments according to local conditions. as such field survey data and laboratory results were rated based on land evaluations method for irrigated agriculture. the evaluation is made on the basis of different land characteristics and their appraisal for irrigation purpose such as the soil, topographic, water quality and drainage situation as recommended by fao. the suitability classification was grouped at the first level of the land development units in six classes; class i – iii: suitable for irrigated agriculture, class iv: not irrigable, except under special conditions, class v: undetermined suitability for irrigation; and class vi: non-irrigable. the second level of the classification is based on four factors: soil limitations, salinity, topography and drainage situation. separate land suitability classifications were made for the investigated land area with respect to each land use. in essence, suitability ranges were defined separately for each of the qualities and three suitability classes (s1, s2 and s3) were used within the order of suitable and one as class (n) within the order of not suitable. proximity analysis the aerial extent of measured parameters is determined using the thiessen polygon interpolation. hence texture, salinity, esp, ph and soil stoniness raster maps are generated from the measured data and assigned to each mapping unit resulted from the thiessen polygon boundaries. proximity analysis of arc-gis spatial analysis generated twelve mapping units (figure 2). assessment of irrigation land suitability.... figure 2: mapping units developed using proximity analysis irrigation land suitability analysis based on the suitability criteria assigned, layer of the criteria were developed, an overlay analysis was done to generate one suitability map which have the attribute of all land qualities with their theme attribute table. an overlay analysis in gis was operated by boolean operator (burrough, 1989). results physico-chemical properties of soil based on geographic location of sampling point taken at the study area, raster map units are generated as shown the above (figure 1) and the parameters were distributed through the thiessen polygons and values were extracted from study area boundary. according to different properties of soils, relative proportion of soil separates; effective soil depth, the ph, saturation extract electrical conductivity values, esp and stoniness are presented in table 1. table 1: soil physico-chemical analysis map unit soil descriptions soil depth (cm) depth (cm) sand (%) silt (%) clay (%) ph ece (ds/m) esp (%) stoniness (%) textural class 1 >150 0-20 20-80 11 14 31 29 58 57 5.4 5.7 0.06 0.128 4.0 4.9 4 10 clay clay 2 >150 0-20 20-80 14 14 24 29 62 57 5.0 5.1 0.06 0.129 3.8 3.7 4 5 heavy clay clay 3 >150 0-20 20-80 14 14 41 41 45 45 5.1 5.2 0.06 0.129 3.82 3.7 2 4 clay clay 4 >150 0-20 20-80 20 20 40 50 40 30 6.74 6.99 0.129 0.256 2.12 1.95 3 4 clay clay loam 5 >150 0-20 20-80 14 23 26 51 60 26 5.45 6.43 0.704 0.32 3.66 6.53 3 3 clay silty loam 6 >150 0-20 20-80 21 16 36 38 43 46 5.81 5.81 0.06 0.07 2.17 2.94 3 3 clay clay 7 >150 0-20 20-80 16 18 31 33 53 49 7.29 6.82 0.128 0.128 2.04 1.69 3 4 clay clay 8 >150 0-20 20-80 14 14 24 41 62 45 5.0 5.3 0.06 0.128 4.34 2.63 4 13 heavy clay clay 9 >150 0-20 20-80 14 14 29 29 60 60 5.0 5.6 0.38 0.32 3.1 5.8 2 3 clay clay asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 7-17 12 10 >150 0-20 20-80 16 17 24 25 60 58 5.5 5.8 0.704 0.256 4.0 6.01 2 3 clay clay 11 >150 0-20 20-80 16 17 31 30 53 53 5.4 6.4 0.128 0.129 4.0 4.3 2 3 clay clay 12 >150 0-20 20-80 17 17 25 25 58 58 5.1 5.6 0.192 0.193 2.12 2 .0 4 5 clay clay depth, texture and stoniness as it was seen from auger-hole observation and profile description of soils, the soil depths at all sampling points were greater than 150 cm. hence the soil in the study area could be considered as very deep soil. the soil texture sample was dominantly clay. it ranges from clay to heavy clay for top soil and clay to silty loam for sub-soil. the soil color was varied from dark reddish brown to reddish brown and dark reddish gray. the maximum percentage of clay in the surface soil was observed as 62 percent on mapping units 2 and 8, and the minimum percentage of clay was recorded as 26 percent in the subsoil on mapping unit 5. in all sampling units, proportion of silt to sand ratio was generally high. in all mapping units, the ratios were greater than one and the sand proportions were below 20 percent. this might be attributed to the deposition of clay and silt particles which were flooded from uplands to outside of the study area. no rock out crop was observed in the study area; however, there was a negligible coarse fragment. as shown in table 2, all mapping units showed that top soil stoniness and subsoil stoniness were less than 5 percent and 15 percent respectively. there was no significant variation of stoniness in volume percentage for all mapping units, but there was slight increase in volume percentage with regard to depth. ph, salinity and sodicity the soil ph (h2o) values were found in the ranges of 5 to 7.29. according to dennis etal. (2005) ph classification, soil ph has shown strongly acidic to moderately acidic. the highest ph value as 7.29 was observed on mapping unit-7 and the lowest as 5.0 were recorded. majority of mapping units have shown an increasing trend of soil ph with depth. this may be due to the higher buffering capacity attributed to the relatively higher organic matter content of the areas or it may be indicating a presence of vertical movement of exchangeable bases. the salinity of soil measured as saturated extract ranged from 0.06 to 0.704 ds/m. the highest surface ece reading was obtained on mapping units five and ten, which were both less than one. due to the moderately acidic nature of the soils of the study area, the ece values were negligible. moreover, there was no significant difference in ece values. this indicates that there would not be any actual and potential salinity hazard in the soils of the study area. in terms of na+ hazard or sodicity of the soil, esp differed from a minimum of 1.6 percent in mapping unit-7 to a maximum of 6.53 percent in mapping unit-5. according to charles and gathiru (2003) soil classification as, majority of soil was found non–sodic, as carried on esp value was less than 6 percent. exchangeable na were found in very low concentration in all mapping units and did not show significant variation as compared to the critical level that caused deterioration of soil structure and na toxicity when the esp was greater than 15 percent as indicated in dent and anthony (1981). apparently, this is due to the high amount of annual rainfall at the study area which causes excessive leaching of basic cations and finally which results in soil acidity. chemical properties of irrigation water table 2 shows water quality of wells measured in terms of ph, salinity and sodicity in the laboratory. the water quality characterized by ph value varied from 6.86 to 7.69. in all catchments the ph of water was neutral. however, the upper catchment (w1 and w2) showed lower ph value 6.86 and assessment of irrigation land suitability.... 7.08 when compared to lower catchments 7.69, 7.48 and 7.62 (w7, w8 and w9) respectively. all electrical conductivity values measured were low; the maximum value was less than 250 µm/cm. the dominant soluble cation in the irrigation water was ca2+. the sodium adsorption ratio was very small for all sampling point. this low salinity water, can be used for irrigation with most crops and most of the soils with little likelihood that salinity problem will develop. the water was also non-sodic, and it could be used for irrigation on almost all soils with little danger for development of harmful levels of exchangeable sodium. table 2: groundwater quality of kuar catchment map unit well ca (meq/l) mg (meq/l) na (meq/l) sar ecw ph upper catchments w1 w2 1.44 0.96 1.2 0.96 0.36 0.17 0.31 0.17 0.21 0.16 6.86 7.08 middle catchment w3 w4 w5 w6 0.96 0.96 2.16 1.44 0.48 1.2 0.72 0.72 0.22 0.17 0.17 0.23 0.26 0.16 0.14 0.22 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.23 7.69 7.13 7.14 6.89 lower catchments w7 w8 w9 1.2 0.48 0.72 1.44 1.2 0.72 0.39 0.14 0.14 0.34 0.15 0.16 0.19 0.09 0.08 7.69 7.48 7.62 flood hazard and drainage investigation field investigation also showed a moderate flood hazard for majority of mapping units on the basis of flood depth measurements with duration and information from soil landscape or geomorphic/landform. result obtained from field measurements, it is evident that less than 25 cm depth of flood appeared less than month flood duration for all mapping units except mapping units 2, 3 and 4 which did not have any flood risk because of their elevation as result the flood limitation was considered slight. on close observation of internal site drainage potential from a profile, soil with auger hole and wells depth of water table were measured for drainage criteria. mapping units 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 12 had a depth in the range of 150-200 cm. this showed a slight limitation of drainage hazard. however, the rest of mapping units were having moderate limitation since it had a range of 100-120 cm water table depth for mapping units-1, 5, 7, and 8. this might be as a result of heavy textured soil and relatively flat topography of the study area. rating of land mapping unit land evaluations ratings based on the description results in the table below are shown in table 3 all mapping units were rated as class one (i) for effective soil depth, top soil stoniness, sub soil stoniness, soil salinity, soil alkalinity, water salinity and sodicity for all catchments (upper, middle and lower). in addition, the texture of the soil was found to be under class ii for all mapping unit except mapping unit-2 and 8, as they fell in class i. the water table depth rating was found to be class ii for mapping units-2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 12 while the others fell in class iii. moreover, flood hazards for all mapping unit were found to be class ii except mapping units-2, 3 and 4 which were found in class i. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 7-17 14 table 3: land evaluation classes suitability class for land qualities map units soil depth (cm) effective soil depth texture stoniness salinity alkalinity flood hazard water table depth 1 0-20 i ii i i i ii iii 20-80 i i i 2 0-20 i i i i i i ii 20-80 i i i 3 0-20 i ii i i i i ii 20-80 i i i 4 0-20 i ii i i i i ii 20-80 i i i 5 0-20 i ii i i i ii iii 20-80 i i i 6 0-20 i ii i i i ii ii 20-80 i i i 7 0-20 i ii i i i ii iii 20-80 i i i 8 0-20 i i i i i ii iii 20-80 i i i 9 0-20 i ii i i i ii ii 20-80 i i i 10 0-20 i ii i i i ii ii 20-80 i i i 11 0-20 i ii i i i ii ii 20-80 i i i 12 0-20 i ii i i i ii ii 20-80 i i i overall evaluation the final objective of the study was to develop irrigation land suitability map of the study area. to reach on one final irrigation suitable map, a cartographic model for each suitability criteria was developed. based on this cartographic model, an overlay analysis was done and one overall irrigation suitable map was developed. irrigation suitable map was derived by overlaying all parameter maps. the total area was found to be highly suitable with regard to stoniness, soil salinity, soil alkalinity, soil depth, water electrical conductivity and water alkalinity. the spatial suitability assessment for irrigation based on overlaid maps of parameters shows that about 72 percent of the study area were potentially suitable for irrigation. of the potential suitable land, one percent was highly suitable, 28 percent was moderately suitable, and 43 percent was marginally suitable as shown in figure 3. assessment of irrigation land suitability.... figure 3: overall irrigation suitability map of the study area based on area delineated, percentage and area coverage were determined. from texture map, 11 percent (76.7 ha) and 89 percent (625.5 ha) were found to be heavy clay and clay which implies highly suitable and moderately suitable, respectively. water table depth map shows that 120-150 cm depth were found 35 percent (244.86 ha) area coverage whereas water table depth of 150-200 cm were found 65 percent (457.43ha). from flood hazard map had resulted into 76.7 percent (538.65 ha) and 23.3 percent (163.64 ha) moderately suitable and high suitable respectively. on the dem different types of colors were observed. the area with the same color means that those areas have the same surface elevation. the abrupt change of color indicates that there was a difference in elevation within short distance. from the dem using gis command (surface) the surface slope of the area was developed. this surface slope then grouped and a slope category was developed. the surface slope was categorized into six slope range, viz, zero to five percent, 5 to 10 percent, 10 to 15 percent, 15 to 20 percent, 20 to 25 percent, and >25 percent and this slope categories had an area of 606.54 ha, 53 ha, 17.52 ha, 6.59 ha, 0.000081 ha and 12.9 ha, respectively. based on fao suitability classification for surface irrigation, slopes were reclassified in the range of 0-2 percent, 2-5 percent, 5-8 percent, and >8 percent and the corresponding areas were found to be 107.34 ha, 499.2 ha, 9.63 ha and 86.12 ha respectively. discussion sound information on soils, water and other land characteristics provide a basis for decision making on proper utilization and management of natural resources. the importance of land evaluation points to opportunities for influencing future developments of soils in the region using management techniques that are tailored to the characteristics of the landscape elements. the total area was found highly suitable with regard to stoniness, soil salinity, soil alkalinity, soil depth, water electrical conductivity and water alkalinity. mapping units-2, 3 and 4 were suitable with regard to flood hazard. all mapping units had limitations with regard to drainage limitation and flood hazards. conclusion the land resource data, that have been generated, could be integrated through gis techniques for effective irrigation planning in catchments. most of the study area is suitable for irrigation (72 percent of the total area) and future irrigation development is feasible. the project area is especially suitable with respect to soil depth, soil salinity, soil alkalinity, stoniness and ground water quality which was class one (s1). based on the finding of this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 7-17 16 study, it was clear that the main limiting factor for irrigation suitability in the area is drainage limitation for mapping units. by a way of recommendation, in order to sustainably develop the area for irrigation development, the following points should be considered. • due to shallow water table depth and fine textured soil of the study area, the area has poor drainage and workability problems under excessive moisture regimes. these soils could be made more suitable by adopting improved drainage system, soil and crop management practices. hence an appropriate drainage provision should be taken into consideration in further development. • for the area which have slope above 8%, land leveling operation or soil conservation work have to be incorporated to break surface slope and to make it suitable for surface irrigation. • in order to protect the flooding of lower catchment, watershed management activities including the construction of flood protection ditches on eastern boundary of the study area is recommended. • local interpolation for constructing thiessen polygon had edge effect. to fully cover the surface of an interpolated area, some unknown points around the edges of the dataset would have to be extrapolated to exactly delineate the mapping units. • the slope generated from srtmdem does not represent the exact slope derivatives for the study area since it had low resolution. precision could be improved if high resolution dem is generated. future work should take into consideration in using finer resolution image data. • the validity of the spatial analysis depends on the database. had more criteria and constraints, which affect irrigation suitability would have been considered in the analysis, the prediction would be more valid. the layers as indicated in the text were generated based on few factors. references burrough, p. a. (1989). fuzzy mathematical methods for soil survey and land evaluation. journal of soil science, 40, 477-479. charles, k. k. and gathiru, k. (2003). soil fertility and land productivity: a guide for extension workers in eastern africa region. regional land management unit (relma) technical report hand book no.30. dennis van, g., peter, t. and geoff, m. (2005). land evaluation standards for land resource mapping. resource management technical report 298. 3th edition. australia dent, d. and anthony, y. (1981). soil survey and land evaluation. university of east anglia. norwich: george allen and unwin ltd. ethiopian central agricultural census commission (ecacc) (2002). a report on preliminary results of area, production and yield of temporary crops (meher season private peasant holding), part ii, on ethiopian agricultural sample enumeration, addis ababa, ethiopia. fasina, a. s., awe, g. o. and aruleba, j. o. (2008). irrigation suitability evaluation and crop yield–an example with amaranthus cruentus in southwestern nigeria. ekiti state, nigeria: http://www.academicjournals.org/ajps fao (food and agricultural organization) (1976). a frame work for land evaluation, soil bulletin. no. 32. fao, rome. fao (food and agricultural organization) (1979). soil survey investigation for irrigation. soil resources management and conservation service. land and water development division. rome. fao (food and agricultural organization) (1983). guidelines: land evaluation for rainfed agriculture. soil bulletin 52, fao, rome fao (food and agricultural organization) (1984a). ethiopia geomorphology and soils (1:1,000, 000 scale). assistance to land use planning. addis ababa. 29p. fao (food and agricultural organization) (1984b). provisional soils association of ethiopia (1:2, 000, 000 scale). assistance to land use planning. addis ababa. 246p. http://www.academicjournals.org/ajps assessment of irrigation land suitability.... fao (food and agricultural organization) (1985). guideline for land evaluation for irrigated agriculture. soils bulletin, 55. fao, rome. fao (food and agricultural organization) (1992). ninth meeting of the east and southern african sub-committee for soil conservation and land evaluation. soil bulletin no. 70. fao, rome. fao (food and agriculture organization) (2005). bio-physical, socio-economic and environmental impacts of degradation. http://www.fao.org/ag/agl/agll/madssea/topic3.htm gupta, p. k. ( 2004). soil, plant, water and fertilizer analysis. agrobios, india. jafarzadeh, a. a., shahabi, m. and aliasgharzadeh, n. (2005). azarbaijan university region qualitative land suitability evaluation for onion, potato, maize, tomato and chickpea. tabriz. http://147.213.145.2/biohydrology/abstracts/ jafarzadeh_s3.doc land use planning and regulatory department (luprd) (1984). the development of irrigation in the highlands. ethiopian highland reclamation study. ministry of agriculture, addis ababa. negash, w. and seleshi, b. (2004). gis based irrigation suitability analysis. journal of water science and technology, 8, 55-61. wolelaw, s. (2005). factors determining supply of rice: a study in fogera district, m.sc thesis, alemaya university. young, a. (1976). tropicalsoils and soil survey. cambridge: cambridge university press. http://www.fao.org/ag/agl/agll/madssea/topic3.htm http://147.213.145.2/biohydrology/abstracts/jafarzadeh_s3.doc http://147.213.145.2/biohydrology/abstracts/jafarzadeh_s3.doc publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september, 2012. acknowledgements: we were grateful to the research management institute (rmi), uitm shah alam and uitm pahang for providing facilities during study. this project was supported by the fundamental research grant scheme (frgs: 600-rmi/st/frgs 5/3/fst (36/2009). thanks to anonymous referees. diversity of aquatic insects in keniam river, national park, pahang, malaysia mohd rasdi, z. (entomologist/senior lecturer, faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara pahang (uitm), pahang, malaysia) fauziah i. (entomologist/associate professor), ismail r., mohd hafezan s., fairuz k., and hazmi a. d. (faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara malaysia (uitm), shah alam, malaysia) che salmah m. r. (entomologist/professor, school of biological sciences, universiti sains malaysia, penang, malaysia) citation: mohd rasdi z., fauziah, i., ismail r., mohd hafezan s., fairuz k., hazmi, a. d. and che salmah m. r. (2012) “diversity of aquatic insects in keniam river, national park, pahang, malaysia”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 312-328. diversity of aquatic insects in..... 312 author(s) mohd rasdi, z. faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara pahang (uitm), pahang, malaysia email: dddpim@pahang.uitm.edu.my email: dddpim@yahoo.com fauziah, i. faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara malaysia (uitm), shah alam, selangor, malaysia email: fauziah@salam.uitm.edu.my ismail r., mohd hafezan s., fairuz k. and hazmi a. d. faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara malaysia (uitm), shah alam, selangor, malaysia che salmah m. r. school of biological sciences, universiti sains malaysia, penang, malaysia email: csalmah@usm.my diversity of aquatic insects in keniam river, national park, pahang, malaysia abstract the study on biodiversity of aquatic insects was carried out covering the area of kuala keniam to kuala perkai river, national park, pahang, malaysia. the macro invertebrate community was found in the different types of micro-habitat and various flowing speed levels in good quality of water of keniam rivers consisted mainly of aquatic insects. there are large numbers and wide species of aquatic insects in aquatic habitats make them of great ecological importance. there are three divided strata with total of nine sampling location were carried out within several varieties of microhabitats such as sandy, cobble, gravel, leaf and the pool area. the aquatic insects were collected and sampled by using a d-framed aquatic kick net. there was a wide variety of aquatic insects belonging to at least 8 orders in the study area. the orders of insect were odonata, coleoptera, diptera, trichoptera, thysanura, orthopthera, hemiptera and ephemeroptera. throughout the study period, there is range from total of 140 to 604 individuals of aquatic insect trapped monthly and collected in keniam river from september 2009 to december 2010. some group of aquatic insects were found significant (χ 2 <0.05) different abundance between strata and sampling dates as well as habitat on the diversity of aquatic insects in keniam river. the abundance and distribution of aquatic insects‟ species were varied and not constant from one month to another during the study period due to biotic and abiotic factors. species diversity of aquatic insects varied in different strata of the keniam river. this indicates the richness and diverse groups of aquatic insects in the study area. it adds to the fact that the undisturbed habitat quality is most suitable for insects to breed and multiply under the natural ecosystem with abundant food supply. moving upstream from kuala perkai to lower stream to kuala keniam, one can observe various types of habitats for aquatic insects to live. keywords: aquatic insect, biodiversity, habitat quality, keniam river introduction national park pahang is the largest protected area located in the central regions of the peninsula malaysia. the establishment of taman negara was initially to nurture and conserve the fauna and flora that are of interest to entomologist, geologist, archaeologist, historian, ethnology and others. it functions as protection of wild life, conservation of nature, conservation of the ecology system as well as recreation and ecotourism activities (hayati et al., 2010). this study is one of the crucial parts to identify the species diversity and distribution of aquatic insects which given emphasizes on biotic and abiotic factors. national park at kuala keniam, pahang was chosen as a study area because it has the undisturbed rainforest mailto:dddpim@pahang.uitm.edu.my mailto:dddpim@yahoo.com mailto:fauziah@salam.uitm.edu.my mailto:csalmah@usm.my asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 312-328. 313 which gave more chances to study on population and distribution of aquatic insects species. aquatic insect is an important invertebrate organism both economically and ecologically. there are several orders of aquatic insects found in stream of kuala keniam, national park, pahang. large numbers and wide variety of aquatic insects in the aquatic habitats make them of great ecological importance (yule and yong, 2004). midges and other aquatic flies are of general importance to freshwater ecosystems, often being a major fish food and an important part of bottom-dwelling communities. aquatic insect can be found almost in every type of aquatic habitat throughout the world including lakes, torrential streams, highly saline pools, phytotelmata, coastal waters and estuaries, acid peat swamps, groundwater, hot springs and even pools of crude oil seeping from the ground (yule and yong, 2004). the warm, wet climate of the malaysia region is ideal for the life cycles of many aquatic insects which are usually dependent on moist habitat. the presence of a wide variety of environments, particularly in tropical rainforest, provides an enormous number of ecological niches. unfortunately habitat destruction is causing the extinction of many aquatic insects (yule and yong, 2004). some of them, especially diptera adults are of medical importance, for example mosquitoes and house flies are the major vectors of a wide range of diseases of humans and other animals. game fishes feed on many kinds of diptera that live in and on the water (mccafferty, 1983). the extinction of aquatic insect may affect the entire population in the ecological system because they act as an important source of food for many invertebrate. for instance, if some species particularly the diptera larvae become extinct, their absence will decrease the invertebrate animal, thus may decrease the fish population. because of their position in food web, aquatic insects including the dipterans are excellent organism to sample and analyzed for the present of contaminants (cushing and allan, 2001). some species of aquatic insects particularly diptera larvae are saprophagous or scavengers on decaying or dead plants and animal matter (peterson, 1960). without them decaying organic materials such as dead plants and animal, the water will become more polluted, and consequently other animal will affect due to severe pollution. for instance, diptera larvae namely chironomus plumosus from family chironomidae is important as fish food. additionally, the larvae have a potential to be as farm fish diet (bogut et al., 2007). some of diptera may prefer highland and prefer lowland streams habitat such as chironomidae (polypedilum breviantennatum and stictochironomus sp.) that prefer lowland streams (tolkamp and both, 1978). example of diptera larvae that prefer highland habitat and inhabitants of flowing water are simuliidae and blephariceridae. the larvae of simuliidae are often found in the submerged rock because of their modified posterior prolegs anchored to silk secretion by the larva. blephariceridae have an extreme morphological modification which made them adhere to smooth rock (merritt and cummins 1984). some species of aquatic insects such as stonefly, mayfly, and caddis fly are very sensitive to pollution and live in high quality environment with good water quality. the absence of species that are sensitive to pollution and high number of dipteran chironomidae that can tolerate with pollution is a good sign of pollution that happens at that place. the existences of certain organism in the water indicate the quality of the water and provide an overall view about physical and chemical properties of the water (che salmah, 2000). in this study further investigation of ecological importance of aquatic insects in keniam river was initialized. the understanding of biology and ecological importance would contribute to future use of some orders of aquatic insect such as diptera as a bioindicator. this is because some of them are well adapted to live in clean water. this study was carried out with the following objectives firstly to identify diversity of aquatic insects along keniam river according to different strata, to assess the distribution and relationship of aquatic insect in relation to environmental parameters and water quality keniam river. the information would be documented as a baseline data to help in the future study and conservation works. diversity of aquatic insects in..... 314 kuala keniam kuala perkaisungai perkai sungai keniam sungai tem beling n kuala keniam kuala perkaisungai perkai sungai keniam sungai tem beling n upper middle lower = 9 sampling sites upper middle lower = 9 sampling sites kuala keniam kuala perkaisungai perkai sungai keniam sungai tem beling n kuala keniam kuala perkaisungai perkai sungai keniam sungai tem beling n upper middle lower = 9 sampling sites upper middle lower = 9 sampling sites kuala keniam kuala perkaisungai perkai sungai keniam sungai tem beling n kuala keniam kuala perkaisungai perkai sungai keniam sungai tem beling n upper middle lower = 9 sampling sites upper middle lower = 9 sampling sites materials and methods a) study area the study was conducted along the keniam river (figure 1), located in the north-western portion (102º2813‟ n, 4º3142‟ e) from kuala tahan jetty of national park, at kuala keniam, pahang. habitat and elevation might be influenced the distribution of aquatic insects at different elevation. national park at kuala keniam, pahang was chosen as a study area because it has the undisturbed rainforest which can give more chances to study on population and distribution of insects‟ species. figure 1: sampling site of aquatic insects b) sampling layout, methods and techniques there are nine sampling sites at the sampling layout (figure 1). aquatic insects were collected according to different strata namely upper, middle and lower which each stratum had three sampling point. the distance measured of each sampling points was 50 meter interval between sampling point and range 800 meter to 1000 meter interval between strata using global positioning system (gps). habitat and elevation of strata might be influenced the distribution and abundance of aquatic insects. samplings of aquatic insects are the collection of the specimens. the main purposes of sampling are to provide specimen of aquatic insects, provide numerical estimates, detect environment change over space or time, and to determine relationship between variables (nurulain 2008). the streams were monitored for 6 sampling dates (equivalent to 10 months duration period), from november 2009 until september 2010. insects and water samples were collected in all three strata of keniam river bimonthly. for distribution and abundance of aquatic insects, aquatic insects were catch using hand net and about three times for every sampling site were observed. all samples were brought back to the laboratory for counting and preservation purposes. the abundance of aquatic insects according to the orders was distinguished according to sampling sites. for sorting and classification of aquatic insects, specimens with common features were initially placed under different broad groups called order, further into sub-categories and placed in different families and genus, until it is ultimately identified up to species level. for systematic sampling according to different strata, aquatic insects were collected systematically according to different strata which lower, middle and upper strata. each asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 312-328. 315 stratum had different habitats which each habitat had different species of aquatic insects. c) sampling of aquatic insects, measuring water and other parameters the relative distribution of aquatic insects was collected along the keniam river according to sampling point, water quality and abiotic factor such as temperature, water ph, water velocity and water depth. aquatic insects were catch using hand net about three times for every sampling site was observed. the abundance of aquatic insects according to the orders was distinguished according to sampling sites. aquatic insects were collected systematically according to different strata which lower, middle and upper strata. each stratum had different habitats which each habitat had different species of aquatic insects. for sampling of aquatic insects, nine samples were collected from each stratum within three group of microhabitats namely s1 (sandy + leaf litter), s2 (under shed + pool area + gravel + cobble), and s3 (open area + pool area + gravel + cobble). the aquatic insects were sampled by using a d-framed net which giving total of 27 samples every two months. the d-framed net was placed and dragged about a meter on river submerge vegetations. the sampling area was disturbed gently by rolling and rubbing the substratum surfaces approximately 1 meter in front of the net, and also by sweeping through sediment. the samples were placed into a labelled bottle containing small amount of water. the samples were brought back to the laboratory for sorting and identification. for water parameters, the water parameters were measured to evaluate their effect on diversity and abundance of aquatic insects. the measurement of water parameters were done and the sampling process simultaneously. the dissolved oxygen (do) and water temperature were recorded using dissolved oxygen probe to determine the concentration of oxygen in aqueous solutions in the field. the ph of water was measured by using ph meter (ysi ph100). the water velocity (ms -1 ) was measured by using a velocity auto-flow watch (jdc instrument). the depth of the streams was measured manually by using measuring tape. water samples were also used to assess and correlate the quality of water from the streams with aquatic insect abundance. d) laboratory analysis in the laboratory, the samples were immediately sorted to avoid deterioration and death of organisms. the movement of living micro invertebrates was easier to spot and pick. then the specimens were stored in a labelled universal bottle filled with 75% ethyl alcohol. this bottle is the permanent storage container that is sealed tightly to prevent evaporation of the alcohol. all the specimens were identified to order and selected species generic level by using taxonomical key of yule and yong (2004) and merritt and cummins (1984). two water samples were collected for chemical analysis. the biochemical oxygen demand (bod), chemical oxygen demand (cod), ammonium-nitrogen (nh3-n) and total suspended solid (tss) were all determined according to the standard method procedures. e) data analysis data was analysed using appropriate statistical tools. prior further analysis, the normality test of the distribution was carried out on the abundance of aquatic insect using kolmogorovsmirnov test. this test was carried out by using the spss software (version 14.0). the populations sampled of aquatic insects are not normally distributed (data not shown). therefore, non-parametric kruskal wallis test (p<0.05) was used to test the difference in the means of aquatic insects among the various levels of strata, locations and occasions. for ecological indices reflecting the population features were calculated by using richness indices to calculate number of species present in order to estimate the species richness. diversity indices incorporate both species richness and evenness into a single value (magurran, 2004). margalef‟s and menhinick‟s index were used to determine the richness of a genus or species in a community. for diversity index, the shannon index is the probability that second drawn at random from a population belongs to the same species. shannon index was to determine what species on individual drawn from a population will belong to. pielou‟s eveness index (1975, 1977) was used to observe the equal abundance of species present during the sampling period. all data analysis of the ecological indices using following formula: diversity of aquatic insects in..... 316 margalef‟s (1958) richness index r1 = s – 1 / ln (n) whereby r1 = margalef‟s index; s = total number of species sampled; n= total number of individual menhinick‟s (1964) richness index r2 = s / √n whereby r2 = menhinick‟s index; s= total number of species sampled; n= total number of individuals observed simpsom‟s diversity index d = 1-∑ [ ni (ni-1)] / n(n-1) whereby d = simpson‟s index; ni = number of species; n = total number of individual shannon – wiener diversity index h’ = ∑ [ (ni / n) ln (ni / n) ] whereby h‟ = shannon‟s index; ni = number of species; n = total number of s = species richness (total # of species present); pi = proportion of total sample belonging to the ith species; ln = natural log pielou‟s evenness index e = h‟ / ln (s) whereby e = evenness index; h‟= shannon index; s = total number of species the effects and influences of water parameters and environmental parameters on the abundance of aquatic insects‟ order and specifically diptera larvae population were examined using the pearson correlation. r value more than 0.3 were considered as high enough to exert some influence in the population. canonical correlation analysis test (cca test) was carried out to determine how much the species is related to environmental parameters and water parameters. to calculate the water quality indices (wqi) (department of environment, 2002) to classify them into classes, all the chemical parameters should be considered. they are ph, do (mg/l), ammonia-nitrogen, cod (mg/l), bod (mg/l), and tss (mg/l). wqi = 0.22 * sido + 0.19 * sibod + 0.16 * sicod + 0.15 * sian + 0.16 * siss + 0.12 * siph whereby, si = sub index for each parameter; do = dissolved oxygen; bod = biological oxygen demand; cod = chemical oxygen demand; an = ammonia nitrogen; tss = total suspended solid; ph = acidity/ alkalinity results relationship of abundance of aquatic insects on the types of habitat, different strata and seasonal impact significant differences were detected for several abundances of orders of aquatic insect at different strata of keniam river as well as time of samplings. for kruskal-wallis test on insects‟ order of the aquatic insects, the calculated value of kruskal-wallis obtained is significant difference for order coleoptera (χ 2 = 9.218, df = 2, p < 0.05), diptera (χ 2 = 12.957, df = 2, p < 0.05), tricoptera (χ 2 = 8.934, df = 2, p < 0.05) and hymenoptera (χ 2 = 6.018, df = 2, p < 0.05) (table 1) at different strata. in table 2, the result shows that kruskal-wallis test on sampling dates, the value obtained found that there were significant difference for odonata (χ 2 = 40.367, df = 5, p < 0.05), coleoptera (χ 2 = 18.033, df = 5, p < 0.05), diptera (χ 2 = 17.735, df = 5, p < 0.05), hemiptera (χ 2 = 39.391, df = 5, p < 0.05) and lepidoptera (χ 2 = 11.262, df = 5, p < 0.05) at different sampling dates. in the aspect of habitat effect to abundances of orders of aquatic insects, three types of habitats were selected and defined in this study namely s1 (sandy area + leaf litter), s2 (undershed area + pool + gravel + cobble) and s3 (open area + pool + gravel + cobble) in the kuala keniam river. the chi square-value order of aquatic insects was found that coleoptera (χ 2 = 15.882, df = 2, p < 0.05), diptera (χ 2 = 8.341, df = 2, p < 0.05), hymenoptera (χ 2 = 12.561, df = 2, p < 0.05) and lepidoptera (χ 2 = 13.636, df = 2, p < 0.05) were significant different in number at different habitat in keniam river (table 3). for reason, the aquatic insects probably varies and not constant in one habitat. its depends on the location is either have a lot of food supply, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 312-328. 317 no disruption from natural enemies and abiotic factors such as water depth, water speed, temperature and water ph. table 1: non parametric (kruskal wallis) test on differences between abundance of orders of aquatic insects and strata of the keniam river odonata coleopter a diptera hemipter a hymenop tera lepidopter a ephemerop tera tricopte ra chisquare 4.705 9.218 12.957 2.620 6.018 .760 1.734 8.934 df 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 asymp . sig. .095 .010 .002 .270 .049 .684 .420 .011 a kruskal wallis test; b grouping variable: river strata table 2: non parametric test (kruskal wallis) on differences between abundance of orders of aquatic insects and sampling dates along keniam river odonata coleopter a diptera hemipter a hymenop tera lepidopter a ephemerop tera tricopte ra chisquare 40.367 18.033 17.735 39.391 3.910 11.262 7.988 6.880 df 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 asymp. sig. .000 .003 .003 .000 .562 .046 .157 .230 a kruskal wallis test; b grouping variable: sampling date table 3: non parametric (kruskal wallis) test on differences between abundance of orders of aquatic insects and habitat types along keniam river odonata coleopter a diptera hemipter a hymenop tera lepidopter a ephemerop tera tricopte ra chisquare 4.835 15.882 8.341 1.188 12.561 13.636 2.143 3.697 df 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 asymp. sig. .089 .000 .015 .552 .002 .001 .343 .157 a kruskal wallis test b grouping variable: types of habitat figure 2: population dynamic of aquatic inscet (order) in keniam river from november 2009 to september 2010 figure 2 shows that the population of insects order were fluctuated throughout the year. however, most of the orders of aquatic insects were found decreased in their numbers tremen dously from march to may 2010. the highest 0 20 40 60 80 odonata coleoptera diptera hemiptera hymenoptera lepidoptera diversity of aquatic insects in..... 318 population was recorded for hemiptera (71) followed by odonata and the lowest was tricoptera and ephemeroptera in november 2009. subsequently, the population of coleoptera increased to be the highest (68) and the least was recorded for ephemeroptera and tricoptera in january 2010. inerestingly, diptera was found to be the highest (72) order found, followed by coleoptera (66) in july 2010. the trend of population changes in the keniam river due to several factors such as biotic and abiotic factors specifically respond to the environmental factor including availability of trophic resources, changes in their habitat, and to physical and chemical variation of water (salman et al., 2011). additionally, the abundance and population dynamic also influenced by current speed, water depth, light intensity and temperature regimes and water quality (hellawell, 1986; che salmah et al., 1999). diversity of aquatic insect (analysis using ecological indices) the result of ecological indices (simpson‟s (d) index, margalef‟s (r1) index, menhenick‟s (r2) index, and pielou‟s index) were summarized and shown in table 5. the table shows the shannon‟s (h‟) index for three strata of keniam river including upper, middle, and lower stream were ranged between 1.26 and 1.85 for the entire sampling period. species richness was higher in middle stream river compare to other strata supported by margalef‟s (r1) index, with the highest 2.13 recorded (mean=1.59) and menhinick‟s (r2) index was the highest 1.37 (mean=0.89). both the indices show that the species richness was highest in middle stream river. upper stratum of keniam river has the highest value of diversity indices with shannon‟s (h‟) value was 2.28 and simpson‟s (d) value was 5.25 particularly in november 2009. middle stratum of keniam river has the lowest diversity index with shannon‟s (h‟) value was ranged 1.16 to 1.85 and simpson‟s (d) value was ranged between 2.30 and 5.68. both indices show that species diversity varied in different strata of the keniam river. the highest value for evenness (j‟) index was recorded in middle stratum with 0.68. the lowest value was recorded in middle stratum with 0.46 in july 2010. this is due to high abundance of coleoptera, diptera and hemiptera that was collected in this river compare to other orders. the diversity of orders of aquatic insects were found very high variation in h' values (metcalfe, 1989). based on this index, the correlation of aquatic insect and environmental parameters, it can describe the quality of the river (metcalfe, 1989; salman, et al., 2011) is very good. table 5: mean of ecological indices for aquatic insects (orders) in three strata of keniam river from november 2009 to september 2010 strata of rivers month diversity index richness index evenness shannon’s simpson’s margalef’s menhinick’s pielou’s middle stream nov 2009 1.44 3.54 1.76 1.28 0.53 jan 2010 1.38 2.96 1.70 0.85 0.51 march 2010 1.85 5.68 2.13 1.37 0.68 may 2010 1.59 3.10 2.10 1.17 0.59 july 2010 1.16 2.30 1.30 0.69 0.43 sept 2010 1.59 3.87 1.68 0.84 0.59 upper stream nov 2009 2.28 5.25 1.54 1.51 0.47 jan 2010 1.26 2.38 1.27 0.66 0.47 march 2010 1.56 4.45 1.13 0.65 0.58 may 2010 1.70 4.58 1.68 0.99 0.63 july 2010 1.29 2.65 1.31 0.70 0.48 sept 2010 1.68 4.69 1.65 0.96 0.62 lower stream nov 2009 1.39 3.30 1.61 1.08 0.51 jan 2010 1.73 4.93 1.94 1.32 0.64 march 2010 1.47 4.27 0.92 0.57 0.54 may 2010 1.44 4.36 1.14 0.87 0.53 july 2010 1.29 3.15 0.97 0.63 0.48 sept 2010 1.27 2.96 1.32 0.90 0.47 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 312-328. 319 aquatic insects composition according to types of habitats the sampling process was done for six sampling dates which is from november 2009 until september 2010. sampling could not be done as planned because of the bad weather during december 2009 and october 2010. therefore, the aquatic insects cannot be sampled from the streams. during the 6 months sampling period, total of 1287 individuals of aquatic insect were sampled from three strata of keniam river. they consist of eight orders which are odonata, coleoptera, diptera, trichoptera, thysanura, orthopthera, hemiptera and ephemeroptera (table 6). for specific order of diptera, there was several families were found such as athericidae, simuliidae, chironomidae, ceratopogonidae, tipulidae, tabanidae, cullicidae and blephariceridae and then were further identified (table 7). in all three strata (upper, middle and lower strata), coleoptera was the dominant family. this followed by order hemiptera, odonata and hemiptera. the highest percentage composition of aquatic inscets in upper stream and lower stream was the order coleoptera and there are no coleoptera in middle strata (location 4, location 5 and location 6) of the keniam river. table 6: composition of aquatic insect from november 2009 to september 2010 insect order keniam river lower stream middle stream upper stream sandy + leaf litter (s1) under shed (s2) open area (s3) sandy+ leaf litter (s1) under shed (s2) open area (s3) sandy+ leaf litter (s1) under shed (s2) open area(s3) odona ta 11.00 (17.46 %) 15.67 (22.38 ) 14.67 (22.56% ) 14.33 (18.53% ) 5.33 (11.27 %) 12.00 (16.82 %) 10.00 (10.45 %) 6.67 (17.09 %) 10.33 (21.38% ) coleop tera 13.67 (21.69 %) 21.00 (30.00 %) 10.33 (15.90% ) 9.00 (11.64% ) 13.00 (27.46 %) 2.33 (3.27%) 48.67 (50.87 %) 9.33 (23.93 %) 4.00 (8.28%) dipter a 6.67 (10.58 %) 9.33 (13.33 %) 14.00 (21.54% ) 11.00 (14.22% ) 19.33 (40.85 %) 22.67 (31.78 %) 5.00 (5.23%) 3.33 (8.55% ) 12.33 (25.52% ) hemip tera 15.67 (24.87 %) 16.67 (23.81 %) 18.00 (27.69% ) 23.00 (29.74% ) 5.67 (11.97 %) 19.00 (26.64 %) 12.00 (12.54 %) 11.67 (29.91 %) 13.33 (27.59% ) hymen optera 1.67 (2.65 %) 0.67 (0.95 %) 2.67 (4.10%) 5.33 (6.90%) 0.67 (1.41%) 6.67 (9.35%) 6.00 (6.27%) 1.00 (2.56% ) 3.33 (6.90%) lepido ptera 8.33 (13.23 %) 3.00 (4.29 %) 3.67 (5.64%) 13.00 (16.81% ) 2.33 (4.93%) 4.67 (6.54%) 9.33 (9.76%) 3.67 (9.40% ) 1.67 (3.45%) epheme roptera 1.33 (2.12 %) 1.33 (1.90 %) 0.33 (0.51%) 0.67 (0.86%) 1.00 (2.11%) 3.67 (2.14%) 3.00 (3.14%) 0.33 (0.85% ) 2.00 (4.14%) tricho ptera 4.67 (7.41 %) 2.33 (3.33 %) 1.33 (2.05%) 1.00 (1.29%) 0.00 (20.00 %) 0.33 (0.47%) 1.67 (1.74%) 3.00 (7.69% ) 1.33 (2.67%) total 63.00 70.00 65.00 77.33 47.33 71.33 95.67 39.00 48.33 table 6 shows the lists of aquatic insect‟ order (mean + percentage) that were identified according to the river strata and types of area. for overall total mean number of individual in every stratum, lower stratum river consists of the highest number of aquatic insects with mean diversity of aquatic insects in..... 320 number 198 individuals per m 2 . this followed by middle stratum with 195.99 individuals, and upper with only 182.987 individuals. nevertheless, the area of s1 (sandy + leaf litter) at upper stratum were noted that coleoptera to be the highest in mean number and the least at open area in middle stratum. mean of aquatic insects collected between three selected strata (9 locations) of stream is different with another. mean for the selected strata from november 2009 until september 2010 show a consistant value. mean number of aquatic insect for keniam was the lowest during march and may 2010 with 119 and 105 number of individuals per m 2 respectively. during july 2010, the mean of aquatic inscets starting to increase in all strata including upper, middle, and lower stratum of the river. however, mean in upper stream during november 2009 increase drastically to 46.0 number of individuals per m 2 and it was the highest mean recorded. mean for the selected strata from november 2009 until september 2010 show a consistant value. mean for upper stream was the highest in total mean number of aquatic insects for sandy + leaf litter during november with 46 number of individuals per m 2 and the least was found in may 2010. similarly, during novembert 2009, the mean of aquatic inscets highest for undershed area in the middle stratum. however, mean in lower stream during july increased drastically to 14 number of individuals per m 2 for sandy + leaf litter area. meanwhile, table 7 shows the composition of species of diptera at different strata throughout the sampling dates. the highest number of species in order of diptera is simulium species which belong to family simulidae with 183 individual at upper strata. however, the hexatoma, chironomus and asuragina were more abundant in lower strata compare to others. table 7: composition of species of diptera at different strata in kuala keniam river order family genus keniam river upper strata middle strata lower strata total % total % total % diptera ceratopogonidae dasyhelea 37.00 6.32 21.00 4.21 6.00 1.28 diptera blephariceridae blepharicera 2.00 0.34 5.00 1.00 3.00 0.64 diptera simuliidae simulium 183.00 48.38 117.00 33.47 34.00 24.26 diptera athericidae asuragina 55.00 9.40 74.00 14.83 82.00 17.45 atrichops 9.00 1.54 3.00 0.60 2.00 0.43 diptera chironomidae polypedilum 11.00 3.59 4.00 0.80 9.00 1.91 clinotanypus 6.00 2.74 18.00 4.61 14.00 2.98 chironomus 4.00 5.81 15.00 13.03 78.00 16.60 diptera tipulidae antocha 15.00 2.56 35.00 7.01 19.00 4.04 hexatoma 88.00 15.04 93.00 18.64 106.00 28.94 ormosia 9.00 1.54 2.00 0.40 3.00 0.64 pseudolimnophila 12.00 2.05 4.00 0.80 3.00 0.64 tipula 3.00 0.68 3.00 0.60 1.00 0.21 diptera tabanidae tabanus 7.00 1.03 1.00 0.20 4.00 0.64 grand total 441.00 100 395.00 100 364.00 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 312-328. 321 relationship of aquatic insects with environmental, abiotic (rainfall) and water quality parameters the values of environmental parameters are depth, current of stream (water speed) and rainfall that were recorded during the sampling period. the depth during six sampling periods range from 0.50 m to 1.41 m in november 2009, 0.43 m to 1.42 m in january 2010, 0.40 m to 1.25 m in march 2010, 0.33 m to 1.5 m in may, 0.50 m to 1.30 m in july, and 0.7 m to 1.7 m in september 2010. the water speed of keniam river during sampling is range from 0.62 m/s to 2.50 m/s november 2009, 0.4 m/s to 1.23 cm in january 2010, 0.5 m/s to 2.0 m/s in march 2010, 0.45 m/s to 2.1 m/s in may 2010, 0.45 m/s to 3.0 m/s in july 2010, and 0.8 m/s to 4.0 m/s. rainfall volume recorded for each sampling dates is different with sampling dates in september 2010 has the highest number with 302 mm, followed by may 2010 with 227.5 mm, and the least was recorded in march 2010 with only 92.5 mm. based on the figure, some of orders have closed relationship with rainfall such as coleoptera and hemiptera. table 8 shows the output of correlation test between the abundance of aquatic insects and the parameters. only the order of the insect that has correlation with the parameters was shown in the table. from this correlation test, odonata was strongly related to the parameters such as depth of water, velocity of water, ph, salinity, cod, and ammonia. it is also strongly correlated inversely with salinity and bod. the results of correlation test between the density of diptera larvae and the parameters. strong positive correlations were observed between the diptera larvae density and depth of river (p = 0.337). it indicates that diptera larvae density will increase when the depth of river increase. additionally, diptera larvae density were negatively influenced by water velocity (p = 0.498), cod and ammonia. table 9 shows that some negative correlation were observed between the diptera larvae density and biological oxygen demand (bod) of the water (p = -0.285), salinity (p= -0.306) and total suspended solid (tss) (p = -0.341) in lower stratum of the river. it indicates that diptera larvae density will increase when the bod, salinity and tss of river decrease. in middle stream, diptera larvae density were more negatively influenced by depth of water (p = 0.332) and salinity (p = -0.332). but strong positive correlations were observed between the diptera larvae density and velocity (p = 0.318) and highly correlated with do (0.183). it indicates that certain diptera larvae can adapt to current speed of the river due to their preference to live and hide on the cobble and gravel. in upper stratum of the river, diptera larvae density were strong positively influenced by biological oxygen demand (p = 0.420). negative correlations were observed between the diptera larvae density and ammonia (p = 0.276) and depth of water (p = -2.72) of keniam river. it indicates that diptera larvae density will increase when the bod of river increase. table 10 shows that the order of aquatic insects are positively correlated with total suspended solid (tss) with (r = 0.6444) and biochemical oxygen demand (bod) with (r = 0.3285). they are negatively correlated with dissolved oxygen (do) with (r = -0.2766), ammonia (r = -0.2718), depth (r = -0.3416), temperature (r = -0.0092), conductivity (r = 0.0646), velocity (r = -0.2462) and ph (r = 0.1952). the orders environment correlation values are 0.619, 0.521, 0.397 and 0.385. sum of all eigenvalues is 1.348 and sum of all canonical eigenvalues is 0.291. test of significant of all canonical axes is 0.291 with fratio = 3.027 and p<0.01. the water quality index (wqi) was categorized into class based on the national quality standards as shown in table 11. the value for wqi calculated for keniam river is shown in a table 12. its mean that middle stream river, upper stream, lower stream river and middle strata of keniam river have good water quality. diversity of aquatic insects in..... 322 table 8: correlations of odonata, diptera and lepidotera with water quality and for the whole sampling periods odonata diptera lepidoptera depth 0.211(**)0.007 0.337(**)0 -.081.312 velocity 0.174(*)0.011 -0.498(**)0.010 .157(*).046 temperature -0.0310.651 0.150(*)0.05 .064416 ph 0.357(**)0 .042.594 -.146.063 do 0.1150.089 .106.181 -.181(*).021 salinity -0.149(*)0.027 .212(**).007 -.254(**).001 conductivity .132.095 -.092.245 .262(**).001 cod 0.396(**)0.008 -0.177(**)0.009 -.082.301 ammonia -.177(*).024 -0.160(*)0.017 -0.1290.057 bod -0.360(**)0.015 .120.129 .155(*).049 tss .069.340 -.139.077 .261(**).001 table 9: relationship of the abundance of diptera with environmental and water parameters according to strata of the keniam river abundance lower stratum abundance middle stratum abundance upper stratum temperature .042 (.763) .202 (.142) .048 (.733) do .040.772 0.183(**)0.007 -.211.126 conductivity -.146.293 -.034.809 .184.183 velocity .109.431 0.318(*).019 .156.259 depth -.018.903 -.332(*).014 -.272(*).047 ph .193.162 .233.089 -.033.812 ammonia .302(*).026 -.093.505 -.276(*).043 salinity -.306(*).024 -.332(*).014 .123.376 bod -.285(*).037 -.010.941 0.420(**)0.012 cod .148.284 -.103.459 -.228.097 tss -.341(*).012 .002.989 .124.373 table 10: output of cca test salinity -0.2766 1.000 do -0.5824 0.6154 ph -0.1952 -0.2561 cod -0.1565 0.1953 bod 0.3285 -0.4841 ammonia -0.2718 0.3658 total suspended solid (tss) 0.6444 -0.6205 temperature -0.0092 -0.1008 conductivity -0.0646 0.0846 velocity (speed) -0.2462 -0.0521 width -0.4513 0.3303 depth -0.3416 0.2304 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 312-328. 323 figure 3: the ordination diagram (cca) for the first two canonical axes of the aquatic insects (orders) and physical and water quality parameters in the keniam river table 11: national water quality standards (department of environment, 2002) water chemical parameter class i ii iii iv v very good good moderate bad worst ph (mg/l) >7 6-7 5-6 <5 >5 do (mg/l) >7 5-7 3-5 1-3 <1 ammonia (mg/l) <0.1 0.1-0.3 0.3-0.9 0.9-2.7 >2.7 cod (mg/l) <10 10-25 25-50 50-100 >100 bod (mg/l) <1 1-3 3-6 6-12 >12 tss (mg/l) <25 25-50 50-150 150-300 >300 wqi >92.5 76.5-92.7 51.9-76.5 31.0-51.9 <31.0 table 12: water quality analysis (in-situ reading ) parameter/ location n 04 o 32.534' e 102 o 27.135' n 04 o 32.051' e 102 o 27.963' n 04 o 31.125' e 102 o 27.135' temperature ( o c) 26.241 26.63 27.03 conductivity (µs/cm) 52 42 45 total dissolve solid 0.033 0.027 0.028 salinity 0.02 0.02 0.02 dissolve oxygen (%) 97.0 106.4 100.9 dissolve oxygen (mg/l) 7.84 8.43 7.95 -0.8 0.6 -0 .6 0. 8 coleopte diptera hemipter hymenopt lepidopt ephemero tricopte tds salinitydo dissolve phw bod cod an tss depth speed ph temperat diversity of aquatic insects in..... 324 ph 9.38 8.84 8.29 biological oxygen demand (mg/l) 2.30 3.50 2.80 chemical oxygen demand (mg/l) 1.33 3.00 5.00 ammonia-nitrogen (mg/l) 0.199 0.178 0.187 total suspended solid (mg/l) 97.35 97.29 97.29 water quality index i i i discussion distribution, abundance and diversity of aquatic insects in keniam river, national park, pahang there are three sampling sites selected at each of stratum of keniam river namely s1 (s1=sandy area + leaf litter), (s2=under shed area + pool area + gravel + marvel) and (s3=open area + pool area + gravel + marvel) respectively. the result showed that there was high diversity of insects-orders in the keniam river at every stratum of the keniam river. however, the diversity varied and changed over the time (bimonthly sampling) at every stratum of the keniam river. this study demonstrated that diversity was much relies to environmental parameters and water quality that changed over the time. at upper stratum result showed that the greater diversity of aquatic insects was found at s1 area of keniam river. it is because, s1 (s1=sandy area + leaf litter) have leaf litter that act as a habitat to numerous aquatic insects compared at the s2 (s2=under shed area + pool area + gravel + marvel) and s3 areas (s3=open area + pool area + gravel + marvel). in the middle stratum of keniam river, results showed that the greater diversity of aquatic insects was found at s1 area at keniam river. it is probably due to microhabitat‟s effect which influences the diversity at middle stratum such as water depth and the presence of several aquatic plants in this area. plants act as habitat to numerous aquatic insects that live along keniam river. results showed that the greater diversity of aquatic insects was also found at s2 area of keniam river. it is because, s2 area has a lot of plants that probably act as a habitat and favourable to numerous aquatic insects compared to s1 and s3 areas in this stratum. besides the natural changes, several environmental parameters‟ factors obviously lead to the abundance of aquatic insects such as water quality (che salmah, 2000), water depth, current (water speed) of stream, temperature, water ph, and types of habitat. significant differences were detected for several abundances of orders of aquatic insect at different strata of keniam river as well as time of samplings. shannon and simpson index were higher in lower stream river. coleoptera, diptera, tricoptera and hymenoptera were found that significantly different among three selected strata of keniam river. this indicated that these orders are very selective to their habitats. each habitat is unique and has their own chances for exploitation and the environmental parameters the stability of water depth and speed, temperature, light, and water quality (hellawell, 1986; che salmah, 2000). basically, the diversity and evenness indices were higher at upper stream and decreased at downstream (salman et al, 2011) followed the same trend as that of the river water quality. all strata of keniam river have greater aquatic insect diversity compared to other. the reason could be due to environment and suitability of the habitat that they live in. in this study, the difference between diversity indices among the stratum probably due to the sampling site in a short distance did not give significant in diversity and insect species but it significantly difference in term of time which due to the abiotic especially rainfall. rainfall will influence the water depth and speed as well as water quality to the insect abundance and diversity in the extreme conditions. middle stream river has the highest species richness with higher value of margalef and menhinick index particularly during march 2010. however, the lowest species richness indicated from margalef and menhinick index was middle stratum of keniam river during july 2010. for evenness index, middle stratum of keniam river has the highest value in march 2010 and the lowest during july 2010. this is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 312-328. 325 because the orders of insect collected in this stratum are mostly equal in number compared to other strata which has higher number. the density of orders of aquatic insects for each river has few different for each sampling dates. however, the density of insect collected in each stratum of the river is nearly same and not much different throughout the year except dry season. this may be due to the environmental parameters of keniam river which are not easily affected by weather or other parameters. differences in insect-density only happen between dry season (march 2010 to may 2010) and wet season (september to january 2010). that is the reason why sampling cannot be done during december 2009. when raining, the water flowing will swept the most of the insect particularly larvae stages away from its habitat. that is why less number of diptera larvae has been collected in this study. this is not a surprising, as according to hernandez et al., (2009), diptera especially family simuliidae is often extremely abundant with approximately 2072 described species worldwide and can play an important role in the diet of other aquatic organisms such as fish. this show that keniam river has very clean water and are not polluted because simuliidae cannot tolerate with polluted water. another family was tipulidae as second dominant family in this river. according to stehr 1991, tipulidae inhabit extremely wide geographic habitat and distribution of the family. other family of diptera larvae that was very important is chironomidae. the genus identified was the polypedilum, clinotanypus and chironomus. the other families of diptera larvae which can be categorized as „minor‟ family present in the river. this is due to the number of individuals collected in the selected rivers. some diptera species was not detected in the study due to rapid current and cool water are unfavourable for the development of diptera larvae (medvedev and panyukova, 2005). distribution of aquatic insects in relation to environmental parameters, water parameters and water quality. in streams, biological condition is strongly influenced by water chemistry and habitat quality. the combination of water analysis, diversity indices and water quality indices were satisfactorily applied to investigate the river health (salman et al., 2011) particularly in keniam river. low dissolved oxygen, high bacterial, nitrate or phosphorous concentrations, and low ph can cause reduced water quality. good habitat quality is generally characterized by a heterogeneous habitat with both slow and fast moving water, woody debris, substrate variety, and well-vegetated, stable banks. impairment of habitat and water chemistry can lead to reduce the diversity of aquatic macro invertebrates (resh and betts, 2007). pearson correlation was carried out to investigate the effects of environmental parameters and water parameters towards orders of aquatic insects‟ density. the test also carried out to know the relationship of the aquatic insects such as diptera larvae with environmental and water parameters. based on calculation of water quality index, the value of wqi for lower stream river is the highest. this indicates that water quality in lower stream river is cleaner compared to other rivers. consequently, the species of aquatic insects such as ischnura elegans from order odonata and diptera that act as bioindicator to the vicinity was identified. based on the analysis, several species of odonata such as ischnura elegans, diptera such as chironomid were detected in keniam river. this species is exhibited a strong ability on accumulation of cadmium in water (zhou et al., 2008). the diversity of orders of aquatic insects were found very high variation in h' values (metcalfe, 1989). based on this index, the correlation of aquatic insect and environmental parameters, it can describe the quality of the river (metcalfe, 1989; salman, et al., 2011) is very good. overall, the result demonstrated that even though the diversity of aquatic insects in keniam river were varied on the strata and time, the undisturbed habitat quality in this river is most likely suitable for insects to breed and multiply under the natural ecosystem which is abundant food supply for the insects. conclusion from our results throughout the study period, there are total of 1287 individuals of aquatic diversity of aquatic insects in..... 326 insects collected in all nine locations from february 2009 to january 2010. there is no significant different between strata and but different in term of habitat on the diversity of aquatic insects in keniam river, national park, pahang. various types of habitat for aquatic insects live starting from upstream from kuala perkai to lower stream at kuala keniam of keniam river species diversity of aquatic insects varied in different strata of the keniam river. there were 8 orders identified. for selected order specifically diptera, there was 7 families and 15 genus were identified. simuliidae was the dominant family and followed by tipulidae. since the most abundance diptera larvae found in most of the stratum keniam river is simulium, the river is considered very well because simulium cannot tolerate to polluted water. this led them as a good indicator of clean water. the abundance and distribution of aquatic insects species varies and not constant from one to another month during the study period. their distribution was not constant from one sampling date (bimonthly) to another. the abundance of the aquatic insect recorded as the highest number during july and september 2010 in keniam river. this indicates the richness and diverse group of aquatic insects in the study area. it adds to the fact that the habitat quality is most suitable for insects to breed and multiply under the natural ecosystem. there is abundance food supply for the insects too. our results can conclude that aquatic insects were diverse and some species from diptera are good bioindicator to know the quality of water. the findings of this study also demonstrated that some species of aquatic insects (order) are able to adapt to their habitat and variety of environmental parameters. this is indicated and proven by the different correlation value for different type of habitats although there are same orders of aquatic insect. the pollution tolerant family such as chironomidae present very low in number in all three strata of the river, but it is not a dominant family. further study in keniam river must be carried out because some species did not only important as bioindicator insects, but it also have it role in pollination, food sources (food chain), medical importance and also to stabilize the streams ecosystem. the information gathered from this study will hopefully help for further study by researchers, students and officers who have given responsibility in conservation of flora and fauna, especially the aquatic insects in 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(2000) “phylogenetic system and zoogeography of the plecoptera”, annual rev. entomol, vol. 45, pp.709-746. © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 indian agricultural marketinga review shakeel-ul-rehman (ph.d. research scholar; anna university of technology, coimbatore, department of management studies, tamil nadu, india) m. selvaraj (professor; department of management studies, sona college of technology, salem-636005. tamil nadu, india) m. syed ibrahim (assistant professor; government arts college (autonomous), salem636 007, tamil nadu, india) to cite this article: shakeel-ul-rehman, m. selvaraj and m. syed ibrahim (2012). indian agricultural marketinga review. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1), 69-75. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 69-75 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author (s) shakeel-ul-rehman † anna university of technology, coimbatore, department of management studies, tamil nadu, india. email: srehman275@gmail.com m. selvaraj department of management studies, sona college of technology, salem636005. tamil nadu, india m. syed ibrahim government arts college (autonomous), salem-636 007, tamil nadu, india indian agricultural marketinga review abstract agriculture in india has directly or indirectly continued to be the source of livelihood to majority of the population. indian agriculture has seen a lot of changes in its structure. india, predominantly an agricultural economy, has healthy signs of transformation in agriculture and allied activities. india has seen agriculture as a precious tool of economic development as other sectors of production depend on it. efficient backward and forward integration with agriculture has led to globally competitive production system in terms of cost and quality. cooperatives seem to be well positioned to coordinate product differentiation at the farm level and to integrate forward into value added processing activities.. indian agriculture can be balanced and made efficient through proper and better management practices. the present study brings out past and present scenario of agricultural marketing prevailing in india, its challenges and future recommendations. moreover the opportunities provide by agricultural marketing should be tapped effectively by the marketers. keywords: agricultural marketing, marketing cooperatives, contract farming, commercialization, foreign direct investment (fdi) introduction agricultural marketing can be defined as the commercial functions involved in transferring agricultural products consisting of farm, horticultural and other allied products from producer to consumer. agricultural marketing includes all activities involved in moving agricultural produce from producer to consumers through time (storage), space (transport), form (processing) and transferring ownership at various levels of marketing channels. agriculture is the backbone of indian economy. out of 320 million workforce, 170 million are employed in agriculture. it not only provides food requirements to such a huge population of india but also earns successful returns. post independence saw a major and rapid growth in indian agriculture at the rate of 2.6% per annum. india ranks the 1st in the world in terms of milk production. india ranks the 2nd in terms of rice, wheat, groundnut and tobacco production and 3rd in coffee production. india also ranks 2nd in the most arable land in the world, but a problem of low productivity, the yield is only 30% for each crop compared to world standards. india has adequate technology, but it is not fully implemented as our producers lack awareness.. producers expect better returns as they work hard day and night in their fields but doesn’t get. agricultural marketing should be planned and well prepared. in developing countries like india, agricultural markets comprise of poor infrastructure, poor transport and communication, limited rule of law, limited access to finance etc. this result leads to market failure. the emphasis on market failure gave a way to the market orientated liberalization to get “prices and institutes right”. with this, there is emergence of state run marketing boards, producer marketing chains ranging from credit unions through farmer cooperatives to wholesale cooperatives. the producer should have accessed to competitive market prices which can only happen when the state inputs all its efforts in strengthening the competitive marketing system. in the mean time the marketing institutions need to maximize efficiency and transparency in transactions with the producers and also of retail/consumers price accruing to the farmers. the agricultural transition towards commercialization is natural though some external forces may slow down its pace like agricultural policies frame work, extent of market imperfections, overall standard of living etc. indian agriculture planners must pay attention towards the demand for agricultural produce by consumers. the agricultural sector should now attempt to achieve greater market orientation nationally as well as internationally compared to its current focus on production orientation. mailto:srehman275@gmail.com indian agricultural marketing….. 70 review of literature a considerable amount of research has been done on the working and performance of agricultural marketing in india, by the academicians and researchers. the literature obtained by the investigator, in the form of reports and research studies, is briefly reviewed in this part. johnston and mellor (1961) in their paper stated that commercial demand for agricultural produce increases due to income and population growth, urbanization, and trade liberalization. marketed supply simultaneously rises due to productivity improvements in production, postharvest processing, and distribution systems. hoff et al. (1993) in their research paper documented that in response to the de-institutionalization of rural areas that followed state compression, the reconstruction of new agrarian institutions complementary to the market and the state is thus a fundamental element of rural development .this has taken the form of either private or cooperative organizations. grosh (1994) believed that since the turn of the millennium, attention has shifted toward more microlevel and institutional policies. in particular, contractual arrangements with downstream processors, agro exporters and retailers, often orchestrated through farmer groups, are increasingly seen as a means of overcoming the market imperfections that led to the failure of macroeconomic and sectoral adjustment policies. reardon and barret (2000) in their study suggest that when market reforms the commodity prices raise, stimulating an increase in production, especially of the export crops. the rise in price facilitates the establishment of super market chains, cooperatives, export oriented schemes, processing zones and general stimulation of agro industrialization in developing countries sivanappan (2000) in his study stated that with modernization of existing post-harvest processing, establishment of suitable infrastructural facilities, huge amount of countries exchequer can be saved and further helps in feeding the teeming population in the country . hota et al. (2002) in their study viewed that cooperatives occupy an important part in india’s economy in terms of their coverage of rural producers, business turnover and contribution to economic welfare of their members as well as to rural economy of india. reardon et al. (2003) in their study documented that private firms now play a dominant role in countries such as china, india, south africa in developing of improved seed varieties producing and distributing inputs, post harvest operations and retailing through super markets. royce (2004) reported, even though state agencies continue to be the main buyers of output and suppliers of input limiting cooperatives management authority within. there is much greater member participation and on-farm decision making. ramkishen (2004) in his research paper argued that because of the lack of food processing and storage, the grower is deprived of a good price for his produce during the peak marketing season while the consumer needlessly pay a higher price during lean season. godara (2006) in his study described that the positive trend of economic liberalization and associated opening up of indian economy have significantly reduced the structural rigidities in the system, this trend should be premise of india’s future agricultural reform. agricultural business has come under strong and direct influence of international market. indian farmers have to produce quality goods to meet the international standards. kashyap and raut (2006) in their paper suggested that, marketers need to design creative solutions like emarketing to overcome challenges typical of the rural environment such as physical distribution, channel management promotion and communication. the “anytime-anywhere” advantage of e-marketing leads to efficient price discovery, offers economy of transaction for trading and more transparent and competitive setting. brithal et al. (2007) in their study suggested that by building efficient and effective supply chain using state of the art techniques it is possible to serve the population with value added food, while simultaneously ensuring remunerative prices to farmers. tripathi and prasad (2009) in their paper reported that indian agriculture has progressed not only in out-put and yield terms but the structural changes have also contributed pathak (2009) in his research paper stated that the contribution of agriculture in growth of a nation is constituted by the growth of the products within the sector itself as well as the agricultural development permits the other sectors to develop by the goods produced in the domestic and international market. traditional methods of sale prevailing in india india has a long tradition of periodic markets, most of these are held in rural areas. rural primary markets (rpm) include mainly periodic markets like haats, shandies, mandis, painths and fairs, which are estimated asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 69-75 71 between 20,000-45,000 in the country, mostly for small and marginal farmers for marketing their farm produce and purchasing inputs also. agricultural produce is sold in these markets by the following methods. hatha system prevailed in india before decades and is even now practiced in most of the agricultural producing states of india, where prices of the produce are settled by the buyer and the commission agent of the seller. codes are used in it to fix the price of the produce. private negotiations are buyers coming to the shops of the commission agent at the time convenient to the latter and after inspecting the sample product, price is offered. in villages private negotiations take place even now between buyer and seller. under quotations on the sample the commission agent takes a sample to the buyers shop and price is offered by the buyer. the produce is sold to the highest bidder. dara sale method is another form of selling agricultural produce where the produce is mixed and then sold as one lot. in moghum sale method the produce is sold on the basis of verbal understanding between the buyer and the seller without any pre-settled price. prospective buyers gather at a commission agents shop, where a heap of agricultural produce is assembled, examined and shout out their bids the produce is sold to the higher bidder. in closed tender system the produce is displayed at the shop of commission agent with lot size. buyers can inspect the produce after visiting the shop and offer price on a slip of paper and deposit the slip in a sealed box for buying at the shop of commission agent then the highest bidder is informed and product is sold. jalap sale is another method where traders try to buy the standing crop at a cheaper rate, a farmer earns without undertaking any further risk and expenses, state trading plays a major role in purchasing agricultural produce from farmers at a fixed procurement prices. the government undertakes this to enable centralized and equal distribution of the produce and assumes better returns to producers. cooperative movement in india cooperatives came into existence as people have common needs, the producers, the consumers, the workers, the borrowers, the suppliers/distributers felt that they could themselves fulfill through their joint effort and investment. the ultimate aim of the cooperatives is to earn for the welfare of its members, who uses its services has an equal say in its affairs, members of the cooperative share profit and loss in proportion to utilization of services. in india cooperative marketing was one of the efforts to fetch better prices for the produce. reserve bank of india gave an institutional definition of cooperative marketing and defined a cooperative marketing society as “an association of cultivators formed primarily for the purpose of helping the members to market their produce more profitably than possible through private trade. national agricultural cooperative marketing federation of india limited set up in 1958 promotes cooperative marketing of agricultural produce for the benefit of farmers through its own branches and the cooperative marketing network. it collects agro products directly from farmers in regulated markets eliminating middleman. in india, ongoing initiatives in coordination have resulted in simultaneous action in three areas-evolutions of commodity and industry, evolution of supply chain integrated technology models and promotion regulation of these mechanisms. anand pattern cooperatives (apc) is one such model which achieved success in development of india’s dairy industry. the chicory contract farming coordination which started in 1956 in jamnagar gujarat is also a successful result. kerala horticulture development program (khdp) is also one of the successful agricultural development projects in the country. it has helped 41,000 vegetable and fruit farmers through 1886 self-help-groups (shg’s). the national agricultural co-operative marketing federation of india (nafed) is the apex body of the cooperative marketing system at the national level. one of oldest and successful association/cooperation of farmers was grape growers association of maharashtra (maharashtra rajya draksha bagitdar sang -mrdbs). the other public intervention promoting coordination is small farmers agriculture consortium (sfac), operating from 1994-1995. it was declared a financial institution by rbi under rbi act, 1934 and was registered as public-private joint venture society. it provides both forward as well as backward linkage to farmers. cargill india provides farmers not only an assured marketing outlet but also eliminates them from fee, commission, brokerage etc. it is a private sector initiative aiming to squeeze out inefficiencies and intermediaries from agricultural marketing. khadi gramodyog board of madhya pradesh and hindustan lever limited has entered in public-private sector partnership. the joint venture was launched for umbrella brand “vindhya valley” under which hindustan lever limited will market the boards’ product in the country. indian agricultural marketing….. 72 a milk cooperative society called warna bazaar in kolhapur district of maharashtra opened its first departmental store in 1978, more than 40 retail stores are running at present. it is a one stop shop for consumers to purchase agricultural products and other fast moving consumer goods (fmcg’s). flourished in 20th century in developing countries, marketing boards have declined in number from the year 1980. these are state owned and controlled marketing boards of monopolistic and monopolistic type. these provide guaranteed market for the farmers, absorbing all marketed surplus and maintaining storage facilities. but these marketing boards are not competitive and believed to induce inefficiency in marketing and sluggishness in price discovery. the indian parliament act, 61 of 1981 approved the setting of national bank for agriculture and rural development (nabard). national bank for agriculture and rural development is the apex body looking for the financial needs of agriculture and rural development. this bank is working since 5 november 1982, for the welfare of farmers. government of india is also working with the state government to amend the agriculture produce marketing act (apma) by which farmers sell their produce directly to the potential processors. the number of regulated markets in andhra pradesh, madhya pradesh, bihar, maharashtra, uttar pradesh and west bengal constitute 53% of total regulated markets. punjab and haryana constitute the 9.5% of the total regulated markets in the country. these regulated markets are operating throughout the country. non-governmental organizations (ngo’s) have also participated in development initiatives for agriculture. these are bhartiya agro industries foundation (baif) 1967, professional association for development action (pradan) 1987 and action for food production (afpro) 1966, working for agricultural welfare. in india, agriculture has remained as supply driven the producer has remained declined from the market. indian agriculture will have to focus and respond on many concerns as we entered in 21st century to create new opportunities for producers, processors and consumers. the ideal situation should be to gradually move the current supply driven production system to a demand driven system. it is necessary to link agricultural production system with the preference of consumers, processors, manufacturers to achieve market orientation. it has been observed that better information flow on market price along with easy market access can bring in much desired market orientation of the production system. recent trends with the emergence of new inputs and new technologies in the market. agriculture has changed from deficit oriented to surplus oriented sector. new methods of marketing like contract farming are visible, providing farmers with better returns. contract farming is more practiced now a days. the tata’s, the birla’s, the mahindra’s and other corporate houses are entering and expanding agricultural business. with 68,000 plus branches, commercial banks and regional banks have phenomenal strength in financing agri-business ventures. with the newer and newer areas emerging, there is a scope for agri-business for profitable operations not only to individuals but to institutions as well. the administrators of public and private/corporate have taken the responsibility of translating the research findings and discoveries to concrete programmes and policies of action. the cooperatives, the panchayat’s, the ngo’s and the media must also join hands in the process of transmission of knowledge and information and to provide better market connectivity. bilateral, regional and trade agreement have provided way in reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers to cross boarder flows of agricultural output and increased openness of financial markets, leading to enhanced capital flow into developing countries especially in the form of foreign direct investment (fdi). moreover, fdi liberalizations have paved many opportunities for making investments in post-harvesting process and agricultural retailing in developing countries since 1990’s , this also fostered improved market efficiencies and competitiveness, integration of fragmented markets providing product diversification through differentiation, value additions and technology transfer. these market liberalizations and globalizations have provided opportunities in transforming agro-food markets in india. food procurement and distribution system is also witnessing the institutional innovations like contract farming, producer associations and super markets. out of 7310 wholesale markets in the country 7161 are covered under agriculture produce marketing committee (apmc). as per rule in apmc market, commodity brought by farmer for sale should be kept open on auction floor, where buyers in presence of apmc officials and commission agents bid price and highest bidders are entitled the produce. national spot exchange limited (nsel) is another type of nationalized transparent electronic spot exchange established in 2005 headquartered in mumbai. it is a state of art market place providing customized solutions to various problems faced by agricultural producers, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 69-75 73 processors, exporters, importers, investors and general commodity stakeholders. indian public distribution system (pds) though old, but has a wider coverage than any other system prevailing in the country. it is estimated that out of 11.2 crore households, 4 crore utilize services of pds. pds distributes essential commodities like wheat, rice, sugar, edible oils etc. food corporation of india (fci) transport bulk quantity to its godowns and then uses pds to distribute the commodities through its 4.76 lakh fair price shops, is the largest of its type in the world. grameen sanchar society (grasso), the e-seva kendra provides agri-related services like access to market, price for agricultural products, availability of cold storage facilities, availability of labor and work opportunities. it is a bulk franchisee of bharat sanchar nigam limited in west bengal, odisha and jharkhand. agmarknet-the internet based information system aims at providing “single window” service catering to diversified demands of information with the development of information and data infrastructure market prices will perform role of information service providers, online marketing information will connect distant marketers and promote the efficient marketing in near future. there are several other areas of agricultural marketing with which the user get awareness like adopting best market practices for improving price realization and knowledge is imparted in areas as market driven production programs, post harvest management, market finance, facilities for quality assurance and standards, packaging and labeling storing and transporting, contract farming, direct marketing, alternative markets, commodity exchange etc. agricultural and processed food products export development authority an autonomous organization to the ministry of commerce, government of india. it functions as a link between indian producers and the global markets and also provides financial assistance under various schemes to promote and develop agricultural exports. it has extensive data base of indian exporters of agri produce from all major cities and large towns. indian tobacco company’s e-choupal (itc’s e-choupal) also achieved considerable success in agricultural marketing, itc has set up a small internet kiosk at the village level to provide farmers real time market and pricing related information and highlighting arbitrage opportunities in sales between various mandis. it also provides information related to availability of inputs, weather, market conditions etc. itc believes that their intervention in this chain has increased their realization on crops between 10%-15% than earlier. indian leading tractor manufacturing company mahindra and mahindra limited has entered the private sector extension scene through forming subsidiary mahindra shublabh services limited (mssl), that runs centre as mahindra krishi vihar (mkv) first operated in madurai district of tamil nadu in october 2000. it provides agriculture extension services and buyers a lot of agricultural produce from the farmers krushak bazaars in the state of odisha fetch 4-41% of higher prices than wholesale market price. government of odisha established 40 krushak bazaars in the state in 200-01. the price fixation policy in these bazaars involve the farmers decision making. hadaspar vegetable market in pune city is a model for direct marketing of vegetables, there are no commission agents and middle man the purchaser makes payment direct to the farmer. commodity future trading came into existence in 2003 trading for 54 agricultural commodities. the national horticulture mission was launched in may 2005 as a major initiative to bring about diversification in agriculture marketing the other initiatives include dcm shiram consolidated haryali kisan bazaars. the godrej group runs a chain of agri-stores named adhaar in maharashtra and gujarat. these serve as one stop shop for farmers selling agricultural products. more over websites like ikisan.com, krishivihar.com, agriwatch.com and commodityindia.com provide information to farmers on production and marketing of agricultural commodities. problems and challenges there are several problems and challenges involved in marketing of agricultural produce. limited access to the market information, low level of literacy among the farmers. there are also many imperfections in the marketing system of agricultural commodities in india. so much has been done to improve the agriculture sector of india, but still it is facing a lot of problems. some of these can be listed as below.  fiscal and political instability is threatening agricultural policies, as there is political disagreement and fiscal comprehension in agriculture.  rising domestic demand for food due to rise in population, restricting our exports.  developing people and developing markets.  private market intermediation.  multi languages and dialects.  natural calamities, drought and uneven rainfall in the country. indian agricultural marketing….. 74  subsistence farming to commercial farming.  supply driven technology to demand driven.  minimization of land holdings.  lack of proper physical communication.  infrastructural weakness.  less media coverage.  lack of professionalism in management.  lack of market and marketing information.  lack of agricultural education.  inadequacy of institutional markets.  multiplicity of market changes and malpractices.  lack of technical training.etc. recommendations below are the certain measures that can be implemented to bring out the reforms in agricultural marketing so as to ensure just and fair deal for farming community.  establish physical communication.  develop agricultural infrastructure.  establishment of regulated markets.  storage and warehouse facilities must be established up to the most remote areas.  education of agriculture to masses.  information technology must reach all over the country.  there must be proper road connectivity and good all weather roads.  enhance control and coordination over the agricultural markets.  extent of financial support to farmers and agroprocessing units.  training of new marketing techniques should be implemented.  enhancement and support for public-private cooperation.  standardization of contract.  enhancement for more cooperative marketing. opportunities india is the third largest producer of fruits [27.83 mt] and 2nd largest producer of vegetables [54 mt]. at present our floriculture contribution to total world export is 0.31%, it can be improved by green house technology, timely transportation, storage facilities and good marketing policies. india’s existing post-harvest processing capacity can handle only 0.5% of total annual production. but it can be increased by providing industry processing centers with infrastructural establishments. every year the loss of fruits and vegetables due to lack of post-harvest processing is worth rs 300 crores. the country must not therefore fitter away the opportunity to diversify and commercialize agriculture, add value to produce, generate employment and income, and export processed food. there is also much scope to promote agriculture through information and communication technology. conclusion there is an eminent need for the agri-marketing initiatives to be large and organized. the present market must cover two aspects of marketing network and actual regulation of the conduct of market. the need to strength the regulated market system arises from changing nature of linkages between agriculture and markets. it has been observed that better and easy market access and efficient information flow can bring much desired market orientation of the production system. indian agriculture, moving from commoditization to commercialization drives it towards market orientation. india can claim to have largest network of agri-business cooperatives in the world, engaging in performing manufacturing, procurement and marketing of agricultural produce. these have proven to occupy important place in our economy. the government must examine its policies and regulations with view to strength the marketing network and ensure that prices are being determined on competitive basis and markets are being manipulated. using modern ict can bring out better solutions as it can facilitate agricultural marketing functions and processes include buying and selling, payment, grading, standardization, transportation in an efficient manner. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 69-75 75 references brithal, p. s., jha, a. k., & singh, h. (2007). linking farmers to market for high value agricultural commodities. agricultural economics research review, 20(conference issue), 425-439. godara, r. (2006). rural job opportunities agribusiness centres – some realities. kurukshetra, march, 1417. grosh, b. (1994). contract farming in africa: an application of the new institutional economics. journal of african economies, 3(2), 231-261. hoff, k., braverman, a., & stiglitz, j. (1993). the economics of rural organization: theory, practice, and policy. oxford: oxford university press. hota, s. k., kishor, b., & sharma, v. (2002). agribusiness cooperatives in 21st century-challenges and opportunities. agricultural marketing-a national level quarterly journal of agricultural marketing july-sep., 65(2), pp. 33-38. johnston, b. f., & mellor, j. w. (1961). the role of agriculture in economic development. american economic review, 51(3), 566-593. kashyap, p., & raut, s. (2006). the rural marketing book. biztantra, new delhi, india. pathak, n. (2009). contribution of agriculture to the development of indian economy. the journal of indian management and strategy, 14(1), 52-57. ramkishen, y. (2004). new perspectives in rural and agricultural marketing. 2nd ed., jaico publications, mumbai, india. reardon, t., & barret, c. b. (2000). agro industrialization, globalization and international development: an overview of issues, patterns and determinants. agricultural economics, 23(3), 195-205. reardon, t., timmer, p. c., barret, c., & berdegue, j. (2003). the rise of super market chains in africa, asia and latin america. american journal of agricultural economics, 85, 1140-1146. royce, f. (2004). agricultural production cooperatives: the future of cuban agriculture?. transnational law and contemporary problems, 14, 19-53. sivanappan, r. k. (2000). agri-business development in india. kisan world, 27(5), 55-57. tripathi, a., & prasad, a. r. (2009). agricultural development in india since in determinants: a study on progress, progress, performance and determinants. journal of emerging knowledge on emerging markets, 1(1), 63-92. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 514-522 514 herbicides use by smallholder farmers in the federal capital territory, nigeria mutambara jackqeline lecturer; faculty of agriculture, department of agricultural economics and extension, university of zimbabwe, zimbabwe abstract this study was carried out to investigate the use of herbicides by smallholder farmers in crop production and determine the socio-economic factors that influence adoption of herbicides in the federal capital territory of nigeria. a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 451 smallholder farmers randomly selected. descriptive statistics, factor analysis and regression analysis were used in analyzing the data. results showed that farmers used manual (50%) and chemical (50%) weed control options. factor analysis revealed that 10 socio-economic factors related to weed control could represent the initial set of 20 factors without much compromise on quality of data. the extracted factors together with their communalities were; sex (0.69), household size (0.82), education (0.68), distance to extension ((0.86), distance to input supply (0.84), land (0.79), agricultural courses (0.75), farming objective (0.59), knowledge (0.8) and livestock units (0.69). regressing these extracted factors with use of herbicides revealed that the coefficients of variables representing household size (-0.023), education (0.042), farming objective (-0.008), livestock (0.598) and knowledge (0.037) factors were significant determinants of herbicide use. the study concluded that to induce adoption of herbicides, policy efforts should be directed towards reducing family sizes, knowledge, education, livestock ownership, and commercialization of crop farming by farmers. however there is a need for further analysis to ascertain the social and economic worth of herbicides as an option in weed control. keywords: weed, adoption, regression, chemical, manual introduction 1 the world’s population is expected to increase over time, the past 100 years have seen the world’s human population increasing by nearly fourfold (un population division, 2007); and it is projected to increase from 6.7 billion (2006) to 9.2 billion by 2050. this will put pressure on food demand as food production is not growing at the same pace, it is estimated that up to 25% of the world food production maybe lost as a result of climate change, water scarcity, invasive pests and land degradation among other factors. fao projections in food demand suggest that 1 corresponding author’s email address: email address: jmuzenda@yahoo.co.uk cereal demand will increase by almost 50% towards 2050 (fao, 2003). to increase crop production in line with increasing demand for food, three primary factors should be considered and these are; increased cropland and rangeland area (15% contribution in 1961–1999); increased yield per unit area (78% contribution); and greater cropping intensity (7% percent contribution) (fao, 2006). thus for food production to keep pace with population demand, there is a need to invest in more efforts to increase yields, continued expansion of cropland by conversion of natural habitats, or by optimizing food or feed energy efficiency from production to consumption. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:jmuzenda@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 514-522 515 one serious challenge to productivity increases in both crops and livestock is the threat imposed by pests and diseases. worldwide 67,000 pest species attack crops: 9,000 insects and mites, 50,000 pathogens and 8,000 weeds. up to 70% of the pests are introduced, with major impacts on global food production. across africa, a weed species of the genus striga have a direct impact on local livelihoods, it affects more than 100 million people and as much as 40% of arable and in the savannahs. these invasive species stunt maize plant growth by attacking the roots and sucking nutrients and water, and thus in addition to the direct financial costs, have implications for food security (chenje and aterere, 2006). invasive alien species such as pests and diseases have been estimated to cause an annual loss of us$12.8 billion in yield of eight of africa’s principal crops and may reduce yields in developing countries overall by around 50% (nellemann et al, 2009). rossman, 2009 estimated that alien invasive weeds and pathogens are estimated to be responsible for about 8.5% and 7.5% in yield reduction, respectively, equivalent to us$24 billion and us$21 billion of a crop value of us$267 billion. different estimates range from us$1.1–us$55 billion in losses every year, corresponding to annual losses of 0.4% (ota, 1993) to 17% (rossman, 2009). this does not include increased expenses for more mechanical or pesticide weed control or losses from invasive insects (about 5%) or diseases of livestock. weed management is thus an important operation in crop production that should be effectively and efficiently carried out to ensure desired productivity increases for improved livelihoods and welfare. aadoption of advanced weed control techniques is crucial in improving crop productivity and welfare in agriculture. knowledge and understanding of the factor that influences the choice of weed control options by farmers is essential in providing direction for policy actions aimed at promoting good agricultural practices in weed control. the strategy for effective weed management in nigeria has been to develop new technologies and facilitate transfer and adoption through extension services (ayichi, 1995). the evolution of weed control options has been from traditional (manual) to modern (herbicides) methods. other supplementary methods include crop rotation and intercropping. parker and vernon (1982) reported that herbicides could save up to 80% of the labour normally used in manual weeding. ayoola and adedzwa (2006) encouraged use of integrated approach (manual, herbicides and intercropping) which resulted in higher yields, least cost and high margins in cassava and soybean than any other methods. herbicides and other pesticides contribute as modern inputs to the achievements of green revolution objectives in many parts of the world (ayoola, 2001). promoting use of herbicides has thus been one of the key strategies for improving crop production in nigeria. it is believed that there is reluctance by farmers to utilize new techniques and this is one of the reasons why they are poor and have problem of food insecurity. according to cimmyt, 1980, socio-economic circumstances of farmers are crucial in determining decisions on the farm. according to damen, 2000 decisions by farmer to adopt particular techniques such as improved options to weed control are guided by the need for such practices, enabling and predisposing factors. this paper was designed to establish determinants of herbicides use by smallholder farmers in fct, nigeria in order to provide policy makers and development agents with focus and direction for promoting herbicides use by farmers for improved crop productivity that will go a long way towards addressing weed challenges and food shortages. materials and methods study area the study was carried out in federal capital territory (fct) of nigeria with a total human population of 1,405,201. out of this population size, the farming population is 446, 506 and the total farming households is about 93,092 distributed in 6 council areas (fctfdp, 2007). sampling random sampling technique was used to draw a proportionate sample from each council area to build up a total sample of 451 households. a structured questionnaire was used to collect data on crop production, socio-economic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 514-522 516 environment and weed control practices from farmers with the assistance of fadama project enumerators. data analysis data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis and regression analysis. factor analysis was used to extract key socioeconomic factors linked to weed control by farmers from the initial 20 socio-economic variables considered. the factor analysis model was presented as follows-: original data set: x1, x2, x3, ...x20 .........(1) the 20 original xi variables can be written as a linear combination of a smaller set of m common factors and a unique component for each variable are-: x1 = b11f1 +b12f2 +............+b1mfm +u1 x2 = b21f1 +b22f2 +............+b2mfm +u2 x3= b31f1 +b32f2 +............+b3mfm +u3 . x20 = b201f1 +b202f2 +...+b20mfm +u20 ............(2) the fj, j = 1,……,m are the common factors. each ui, i = 1,……20 is the unique component of variable xi. the coefficients bij are called factor loading. regression analysis was used to determine the relationship between the representative socioeconomic factors and choice of weed control option in crops between traditional methods (manual) and modern methods (herbicides). the regression model was specified as follows: y = f(xi,i=1-10) ………….…(1) the dependent variable (y) was the amount of herbicides used in crop production as an indicator of the level of adoption of modern control methods. the independent variables (xi) are the 10 summarized factors extracted from factor analysis. different forms of regression namely linear, cobb douglas, exponential and semi -log were fitted on the data as given in 2,3,4 and 5 respectively. y = a0 + a1 x1 + a2 x2 + …… + a10x10 +u ………..….…(2) log y =a0+a1logx1+a2logx2+……..+a10logx10 +logu …………………..…… (3) log y = a0 + a1 x1 + a2 x2 +………… + a10x10 +u .…..…………(4) y = a0 + a1 log x1 + a2 log x2 +……+a6 logx6 + logu ................................................(5) where a0….a10 = unknown parameters. u = error term the best fitting equation was chosen on the basis of the magnitude of the coefficient of multiple determination (r 2 ), significance of coefficients, significance of overall production function as given by f value, and the appropriateness of signs of the regression coefficients based on a priori expectations. the t-test was used to determine the significance of variables in the model. results socio-economic characteristics of respondents the farmers were predominantly male headed consisting of 96.7 percent male and only 3.3 percent female. most (93.3%) of the farmers were married and 6.7 percent were either divorced or widowed or single. the mean age distribution of all respondents was 44 years. this indicated that farmers in fct, nigeria are fairly old and that the young farmers are few. the average size of farm households was 10 members per household from which the average size of family labour was 5 people per household (table 1). the mean years in education for all farmers were 4.4 years which indicated a low level of education dominated by primary level. there was a low level of attendance to agricultural courses with a mean of 0 indicating the lack of training of farmers in agricultural production. the mean number of interactions with weed scientists was 1 and average membership to farmer group per household was also 1. on average, percentage knowledge about weed management issues was 56.90 percent indicating asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 514-522 517 that farmers were fairly knowledgeable about weed management. the average percentage attitude to weed management score farmers was 94.40 percent indicating a high positive attitude. the average rating of weed as a problem in farming systems was 51.5 percent (table 1), which indicated the relatively high importance of weeds among other problems. farmers were asked to indicate the percentage value attached to subsistence and commercial farming. the mean percentage rate of subsistence farming was 51.24 percent (table 1). this indicated that more farmers are still subsistence oriented than commercial farming. the level of extension services delivery was good with farmers meeting extension workers for advice at an average rate of 5 times in the season. the mean distances from extension and input supply services to farmers’ villages were 9.3 and 8 kilometres respectively (table 1). this indicated that there was a distance gap between farmers and agricultural services which could cause concern in terms of access and transactions costs associated with obtaining the goods and services. the average farm size was 2.1 hectares per household. about 91.1 percent of farmers own dry land and about 54.4 percent of farmers had wetland. the livestock units were on average 0.33 indicating a low level of ownership of livestock by farmers. ownership of knapsacks was very low with a mean ownership of 0.30 and this was a limitation to use of herbicides as a knapsack is a useful tool in applying herbicides. the mean income received by households was 164,734 naira (usd1229.36) per year (table 1) indicating a fair availability of some cash that could be used to purchase inputs by farmers. table 1 is a summary of the general socioeconomic variables considered in this analysis. table 1: general socio-economic characteristics of farmers in fct, nigeria variable (n=451). mean/value variable mean/value age (years) 44.00 weed science education (meetings) 1.00 household size 10.00 land (hectares) 2.1 size of family labour 5.00 livestock units 0.33 education (years) 4.40 agricultural assets 0.30 agriculture courses attended 0 income (usd) 1229.36 group/s membership 1.00 weeds problem (%) 51.50 farming objective (%) 51.20 knowledge (%) 56.90 extension services (meetings) 5.00 attitude (%) 94.40 distance to extension services (kilometers) 9.30 sex of household head male (%) female (%) 97 3 distance to input supplier (kilometers) 7.90 marital status of household head married (%) others (%) 93.3 6.7 source: survey, 2008 factor analysis results in the orthogonal method of rotation (table 2), the first extracted factor was mostly correlated with distance to extension (r = 0.924) and was designated distance to extension factor. the second factor was most correlated with farming objective (r = 0.720) and was designated farming objective factor. the third factor was strongly linked to land (r = 0.828) and was designated land factor. the fourth factor was highly correlated with education (r = 0.785) and was designated education factor. factor five was strongly linked to agricultural courses attended (r = 0.842) and designated agricultural courses asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 514-522 518 factor. factor six was highly linked to sex of head of household (r = 0.815) and was designated sex factor. factor seven was highly linked to livestock units (r = 0.790) and the factor was designated livestock factor. in the oblique method of rotation (table 2), the first extracted factor was mostly correlated with distance to input supply (r = 0.912) and was designated input supply factor. the second factor was highly correlated with knowledge (r = 0.794) and was designated knowledge factor. the third factor was strongly linked to land (r = 0.863) and was designated land factor. the fourth factor was most correlated with household size (r = 0.751) and was designated household size factor. factor five was strongly linked to agricultural course (r = 0.801) and designated agricultural courses factor. factor six was highly linked to livestock units (r = 0.785) and the factor was designated livestock factor. factor seven was highly linked to sex of head of household (r = 0.793) and was designated sex factor. based on orthogonal and oblique rotation outcomes, factor analysis thus produced 10 factors namely sex, household size, education, distance to extension, distance to input supply, land, agricultural courses, farming objective, knowledge and livestock factors. these are the summarized factors that represent the original 20 factors while containing 69% of the value of data in the original set. table 2: summary results of factor analysis variable communality factor rotation factor designation orthogonal oblique sex 0.691 0.815 (6 th ) 0.793 (7 th ) sex marital status 0.438 household size 0.821 0.752(4 th ) household size age 0.659 education 0.682 0.781 (4 th ) education family labour 0.812 distance to extension 0.860 0.924 (1 st ) distance to extension distance to input supply 0.842 0.912 (1 st ) distance to input supply extension services 0.583 land 0.787 0.828 (3 rd ) 0.863(3 rd ) land income 0.761 agricultural asset 0.461 agricultural courses 0.751 0.842 (5 th ) 0.801 (5 th ) agricultural courses group membership 0.539 weed science education 0.645 farming objective 0.587 0.728 (2 nd ) farming objective weed problem 0.694 knowledge 0.800 0.794(2 nd ) knowledge attitude 0.690 livestock units 0.684 0.790(7 th ) 0.785 (6 th ) livestock source: survey, 2008 weed control practices by farmers most farmers used manual weed control in all crops than chemical weed control except in rice production where a higher percentage (62.5%) of farmers used herbicides for weed control and 47.5 percent used traditional weed control (table 3). most farmers who cropped sorghum (50%), groundnuts (55%), okra (65%) and millet asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 514-522 519 (57%) practice intercropping while fewer farmers who cropped maize (46%), yam (35%), cassava (14%) and pepper (20%) practiced intercropping. there was no intercropping practice in rice and sesame (table 3). there were almost equal numbers of users and non users of crop rotation in maize, sorghum, cassava and millet. however there were fewer farmers who practiced crop rotation in yam (37%), groundnuts (40%), rice (6%), okra (40%), pepper (35%) and sesame (28%) (table 3). in general, the proportion of farmers who used manual weed control option only was 49.4 percent while those using some chemical were 50.6 percent. however users of chemical control options were integrating it with manual control. about 52.1 percent of the farmers intercropped some of their crops while 54.3 percent practiced crop rotation in their fields (table 3). for simplicity the two major methods of weed control (traditional and modern) were considered in this analysis. table 3: weed control practice by crops in the fct, nigeria crop weed control practice intercropping (%) crop rotation (%) manual (%) chemical (%) maize 72 28 46 50 yam 54 46 35 37 sorghum 65 35 50 50 groundnuts 70 20 55 40 rice 47.5 62.5 0 6 cassava 54 56 14 50 okra 60 40 65 40 millet 65 35 57 55 pepper 100 0 20 35 sesame 60 40 0 28 all crops 49.4 50.6 52.1 54.3 proximate determinants of herbicides use by smallholder farmers in fct, nigeria based on the criteria mentioned in the methodology, the exponential regression form was the lead equation and was chosen in this analysis (table 4). regression results showed that the coefficients of variables representing household size (-0.023), education (0.042), farming objective (-0.008), livestock (0.598) and knowledge (0.037) factors were the only factors significant at 5 percent level. the coefficient of determination (r 2 ) was low (0.24) indicating that all the explanatory variables accounted for 24 percent of the variation in the dependent variable while 76 percent was accounted for by other factors excluded in the model and the error term (table 4). the implications of the these results are that to induce herbicides use in weed control, the dependant variables will have to be decreased/increased by greater margins. the overall model was significant, given the value of f statistic of 12.4. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 514-522 520 table 4: determinants of herbicides use by smallholder in fct, nigeria coefficients linear cobb douglas exponential semi log constant -2.29 (-1.21) -1.91 (-2.21) * -0.12 (-0.32) -7.07 (-1.32) xsex -0.28 (-0.14) 0.516 -1.05 0.12 -0.36 2.92 -0.94 xhousehold size -0.15 (-2.19) * -0.12 (-1.14) -0.02 (-2.07) * -0.79 (-1.23) xeducation 0.28 (-3.57) ** 0.1 (-2.20) * 0.04 (-3.02) ** 0.72 (-2.68) ** xagricultural course 0.46 -0.91 0.03 -0.17 0.01 -0.15 0.83 -0.8 xfarming objective -0.051 (-2.56) -0.47 (-3.23) ** -0.01 (-2.38) * -3.51 (-3.94) ** xdistance to extension -0.04 (-0.69) 0.13 -1.05 -0.01 (-0.32) 0.9 -1.14 xdistance to input supply -0.05 (-0.69) -0.3 (-2.32) * -0.02 (-1.47) -1.6 (-1.93) x land -0.07 -1.02 -0.24 (-1.91) -0.01 (-0.73) 0.12 -0.16 xlivestock 4.55 (5.69)) ** 0.21 (3.85) ** 0.6 (4.51) ** 1.42 (4.31) ** xknowledge 0.22 (8.58) ** 1.46 (7.93) ** 0.04 (8.85) ** 7.29 (6.30) ** r 2 0.23 0.22 0.24 0.21 f 13.40 ** 10.39 ** 12.39 ** 10.06 ** **t value was significant at 1 percent, *t value was significant at 5 percent discussion regression results indicated that out of ten factors extracted, only five were significant determinants of use of herbicides by smallholder farmers in the fct at 5 percent level. these factors were household size, formal education, agriculture objective, livestock and weed knowledge. the negative association between household size and use of herbicides implied that as household size increases, the level of adoption of herbicides decreases. this can be explained by the fact the bigger the household size, the greater the supply of family labour for farming operations by small-scale farmers and the less likely farmers feel the need to use labour saving techniques like herbicides. olayide and earl (1982) described peasant farming as labour intensive farmers with low investment and expenditure on farm inputs and, apply simple structures, crude tools and other labour demanding equipments. increasing family size provides labour base for farming operations and decreases the need for labour saving technologies like herbicides by farmers. furthermore as the family size increases, the demand for financial resources on household upkeep increases and this demand compete with the demand for financial resources to purchase modern inputs like herbicides thus challenging farmers’ effective demand for herbicides. the positive association between formal education and use of modern weed control option indicates that an increase in education will induce adoption of modern weed control methods. this is in agreement with theory which states that education empowers farmers with skills and abilities which enable them to make effective use of modern techniques and technologies in their work (olaitan, 1995). the role of formal education services in providing asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 514-522 521 education is crucial in improving the quality of farmers. the weed knowledge factor was found to be positively associated with use of chemical weed control option. weed knowledge empowers farmers with knowledge and skills about weed management. according to icar, 2006, weed knowledge is important for effective weed management. in a study by ayoola et al., 2006, farmers indicated that they were constrained in their use of chemical herbicides by relatively poor access to chemicals and lack of know-how. the positive relationship between the livestock factor and use of modern weed control option was expected as livestock are assets that farmers can sell to enable them purchase improved inputs like herbicides. in agricultural extension systems and strategies in nigeria’s rural development, madukwe, 1995 emphasized the need to better integrate animal and crop husbandry practices. ownership of livestock broadens the resource base of farmers that can be supportive in cropping activities. agricultural objective was negatively associated with use of herbicides. this implied that farmers who were more subsistence oriented were less likely to use modern weed control options than farmers who are commercially oriented. the objective of agriculture helps in directing decisions on the farm. commercialization of agriculture thus motivates farmers to employ effective and efficient operations like use of herbicides in order to achieve their commercial objectives. the paper concludes by recommending that agricultural policy directed towards promoting use of herbicides in weed control by farmers should target farmers with smaller household sizes and pay special attention to improving formal education, educating farmers on agriculture and weed science, livestock rearing among crop producing farmers and promote commercialized farming. however there is a need for further analysis to determine the social and economic implications of using herbicides as a weed control option. acknowledgement the authors of this paper are grateful to the following: i. fct, agricultural development projects and fadama staff for technical assistance provided during data collection. ii. university of agriculture, makurdi, benue state, nigeria especially the college of agricultural economics, extension and management technology, department of agricultural economics for the guidance and assistance during the three years of phd studies by the first author. references ayichi, d. (1995). rural development: some conceptual perspectives. models of rural development in nigeria: with special focus on adps in rural development in nigeria. concepts, processes and prospects eboh, e. c, okoye, c. u and ayichi, d, eds., enugu, auto-centory publishing company, pp. 13-30. ayoola, j. b. and adedzwa, d. k. (2006). a partial budget analysis for evaluating economic viability of integrated management options for imperata cylindrical in small holder farms of benue state, nigeria. pat. international journal of agriculture research, 2(1): 1-8. ayoola, g. b. (2001). essays on the agricultural economy 1”: a book of readings on agricultural development policy and administration in nigeria. 1 st edition, ibadan, t.m.a. publishers, p.24. chenje, m. and katerere, j. 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(1995). ‘agricultural extension systems and strategies in nigeria rural development’ in rural development in nigeria, concepts, processes and prospects. eboh e.c., okoye c.u., and ayichi d. enugu auto-century publishing company. inc. pp. 265-274. nellemann, c., macdevette, m., manders, t., eickhout, b., svihus, b., prins, a. g., kaltenborn, b. p. (eds). (2009). the environmental food crisis – the environment’s role in averting future food crises. a unep rapid response assessment. united nations environment programme, grid-arendal, www.grida.no olaitan s. o. (1995). ‘promoting skills development and productivity through vocational education in rural nigeria’ in rural development in nigeria, concepts, processes and prospects. eboh e.c., okoye c.u., and ayichi d. enugu autocentury publishing company. inc. pp. 171-182. olayide, o. s. and earl, o. h. (1982). introduction to agricultural production economics. ibadan university. ota (1993).“harmful non-indigenous species in the united states. office of technology assessment, united states congress, washington d.c. parker, j. m. h. and vernon, r. (1982). maize herbicides for smallholder farming sector zambia. tropical pest management, 28 (3): 259-265. rossman, a. (2009). the impact of invasive fungi on agricultural ecosystems in the united states. biological invasions, 11 (1): 97-107. un population division (2007). un 2006 population revision. un, new york. available online at: http://esa.un.org/unpp/ usbc (2001). statistical abstract of the united states. us bureau of the census, us government printing office, washington d.c. http://www.grida.no/ http://esa.un.org/unpp/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 3 march 2013. † corresponding author relative efficiency of small and medium scale agribusiness enterprises in imo state, nigeria. emesowum, charles emeka † (department of agricultural economics and extension federal university wukari pmb, wukari, taraba state, nigeria) mbanasor, jude. a. (department of agribusiness and management michael okpara university of agriculture, umudike, umuahia abia state, nigeria) citation: emesowum, charles emeka and mbanasor, jude. a. (2013) “relative efficiency of small and medium scale agribusiness enterprises in imo state, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 127-134. relative efficiency of small and medium ... 127 author(s) emesowum, charles emeka department of agricultural economics and extension federal university wukari pmb, wukari, taraba state, nigeria mbanasor, jude. a. department of agribusiness and management michael okpara university of agriculture, umudike, umuahia abia state, nigeria relative efficiency of small and medium scale agribusiness enterprises in imo state, nigeria abstract the study examined the relative efficiency of small and medium scale agribusiness enterprises in imo state, nigeria using the stochastic translog profit function approach. a multi-stage and simple random sampling technique were used in selecting four hundred eighty enterprises (240 each from small and medium scale) from two agricultural zones of the state namely orlu and owerri zones. economic efficiency was analysed using the stochastic translog profit function and maximum likelihood estimation (mle) technique was employed to estimate the function. full economic efficiency was tested using generalized likelihood ratio (lr) and t-test statistic was employed to compare the small and medium scale enterprises in the area. the result depicted that both enterprises were not efficient but small scale enterprise was more efficient than medium scale enterprise. there was no significant difference in mean efficiency between the small and medium scale enterprises. the economic efficiencies of the enterprises varied widely between 0.09 and 0.93 and 0.08 and 0.91 respectively for small and medium scale enterprises with a mean of 0.57 and 0.54. access to credit and business experience was found influencing economic efficiency in both small scale and medium scale enterprises. the study observed that there was an opportunity for increase in enterprises’ efficiency and small and medium scale enterprises should focus more on ways of accessing credit facilities. keywords: relative efficiency, economic efficiency, small and medium scale enterprise, agribusiness, profit function, translog introduction in nigeria, agriculture has always played a vital role in economic development over the past several decades which accounted for 88% of non-oil foreign exchange earnings and 70% of the active labour force of the population (cbn, 2000). despite the enormous contribution of the sector to the nigerian economy over the years, the sector has slipped into a system decline; particularly in the past three decades since the petroleum industry assume greater importance with poor agricultural development in the country (opara, 2008). although, overall agricultural enterprise productivity rose by 28% during the 1990’s, per capita output rose by only 8.5% during the same period (library of congress, 2006). but reports from fao (2003) revealed that food supply has not kept the pace with demand. achieving efficiency in agribusiness production has been the priority goals of many african governments. but the agribusiness enterprise have not performed efficiently as a result of so many socio – economic, political constraint and other problems militating against performances such as; food security and food self reliance are serious challenges facing some of these economies. world bank survey (1981) showed that inefficiency of agribusiness enterprises in most nations like nigeria was as a result of the public policy structure that did not provide the right incentive for growth. according to ifc, (2003) the small and medium enterprise employ four to fifty workers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 127-134 128 research has received minimal attention on efficiency with respect to agribusiness enterprises. the problem of economic efficiency in the utilization of resources has been the greatest concern of agribusiness entrepreneurs (awoke and okorji, 2003). this, study aims at analyzing and compares the economic efficiency of small and medium scale agribusiness enterprises in imo state. methodology study area the study was conducted in imo state, specifically, orlu and owerri agricultural zones. the area lies between latitude of 5.2 o n and 6.08 0 n and longitude of 6.6 0 e and 7.5 0 e. the area has tropical climate characterized by high rainfall and temperature range of 1500mm2000mm and 34 0c -37 0c respectively. agriculture is the major occupation of people and the major arable crops cultivated in this area include cassava, yam, cocoyam, maize, pepper, and other vegetables. the plantation crops such as oil palms, coconuts, rubber, cocoa, plantain and bananas. livestock reared in imo state include poultry, goat and sheep. two out of three agricultural zones were purposively selected for the study. they are orlu and owerri zones. a multistage sampling technique was adopted for the study. four local government areas were purposively selected from two zones and ten small and medium scale agribusiness enterprises were purposively selected per lga. the enterprises considered in the study in include cassava, feed and palm oil processing enterprises. 240 each of small and medium scale enterprises were selected for the study, making a total 480 enterprises. data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, means and t-test. model specification the normalized translog profit function model was used to estimate the economic efficiency in small and medium scale enterprises. this can be specified as follows п* = п/p = f*i (k1; z) (1) where п= normalized profit of the ith enterprise k1 = vector of variable input prices z = vector of fixed input prices alternatively, the above equation can be written in transcendental logarithmic form as stated below inпe = βo + β1ink1 + β2ink2 + β3ink3 + β4ink4 + β5ink5+ 0.5β6ink1 2 + 0.5β7ink2 2 + 0.5β8ink3 2 + 0.5β9ink4 2 + 0.5β10ink5 2 + 0.5β11ink1ink2 +0.5β12ink1ink3+ 0.5β13ink1ink4 + 0.5β14ink1ink5+ 0.5β15ink2ink3 + 0.5β16ink2ink4 + 0.5β17ink2ink5+ 0.5β18ink3ink4 + 0.5β19ink3ink5 + 0.5β20ink4ink5 +vi-ui (2) where ∏e = normalized profit in naira per enterprise k1 = wage rate normalized by the price of output per enterprise k2 = price of other inputs normalized by the price of output per enterprise k3 = price of petroleum/fuel used normalized by the price of output per enterprise k4 = unit cost of transportation normalized by the price of output per enterprise k5 = capita inputs (interest rate) naira. u1=error term under the control of the enterprise v1 =error term not under the control of the enterprises β0=intercept β1-β20= estimated coefficients the determinants of economic efficiency, ui is defined by exp (-ui)] = bo+b1z1 + b2z2 + b3z3 + b4z4 + b5z5 + b6z6 + b7z7 + ε (3) where exp (-ui)] =efficiency of the ith enterprise zi = age of the enterprise (in years) z2 = labour (in man-days) z3 = credit status (access = 1, no access = 0) z4 = business experience (in years) z5 = membership of cooperative society (member = 1, non = 0) z6 = number of employees z7 = extension visit (number of times) ε = error terms β and bs are scalar parameters that were estimated. to estimate the model and separate inefficiency (ui) some assumption i.e. n (0, σ 2 v) while ui has a half normal distribution i.e. ui = (0, σ 2 v). the estimates for all the parameters of the stochastic frontier function and the inefficiency were simultaneously obtained, relative efficiency of small and medium ... 129 using the computer program frontier version 4.1(coelli, 1996). tests of null hypothesis on efficiency was carried out using the generalized likelihood ratio (lr) test statistic which is defined by λ = -2 ln [l(ho)/2(h1)] where l(ho) is the value of the likelihood function for the frontier model, which the parameter restrictions specified by the null hypothesis, ho, are imposed; and h1 is the value of the likelihood function for the general frontier model. the test statistic lr (λ) has a chi-square (χ 2 ) distribution which has a degree of freedom equal to q+1, where q is equal to the number of parameters involved in ho and h1 (spilaimen and lansink, 2005). if the null hypothesis is true then λ has approximately chisquare (or mixed square) distribution with degrees of freedom equal to the difference between the parameters under hi and ho, respectively. the efficiency indices were compared using a t-test as stated below tcal = x1 – x2 √ s 2 1 + s2 2 n1 n2 where x1 = the mean economic efficiency indices of small scale enterprises x2 = the mean economic efficiency indices of medium scale enterprises s1 2 = the variance economic efficiency indices of small scale enterprises s2 2 = the variance of economic efficiency indices of medium scale enterprises n1 = the number of sampled small scale enterprises n2 = the number of sampled medium scale enterprises results and discussion estimation economic efficiency table 1 depicts the maximum likelihood estimates of the profit frontier function of small scale agribusiness enterprises in imo state. the sigma square (δ 2 ) indicate the goodness of fit and correctness of the specified assumption of the composite error terms distribution (idiong, 2005 and okoye, 2006). the variance ratio (γ = 0.98) indicating that 98% of variation in the total profit is due to inefficiency that 98% of variation in the total profit is due to inefficiency. the result shows that all the variables are significant except capital inputs (interest) rate that is not significant even at 10% level of probability. coefficient of wage rate is positively signed and significant at 1% probability level. this implies that wage is increasing with profit; this explains the positive impact of wage on the profit structure of small scale enterprises which agrees with ajibefun and daramola, (2003). price of other inputs, petrol and unit cost of transportation showed negative relationship with profit of the enterprise. this indicates that every 1% increase in price of other inputs, petrol and unit cost of transportation would lead to 1.459, 3.401 and 11.498percent reduction in profitability of the enterprise. the result of medium scale enterprise in table 2 revealed that coefficients of wage rate, price of other inputs, petrol and cost of transportation are statistically significant but wage rate is positively signed while price of other inputs, petrol and transportation cost are negatively signed which agreed with the a priori expectations. this implies that price of other inputs, petrol and transportation costs are decreasing with profit while wage rate is increasing with profit with the tune of 15.521%. the diagnostic statistics have coefficients that are highly significant at 1% level of probability. the coefficient for total variance (δ 2 ) is 0.107 indicating good fit while variance ratio of 0.963. this would mean that 96.3% of the variation in profit among the medium scale enterprise is due to economic inefficiency. comparing the two enterprises, small scale profit function result, revealed that the coefficient of wage rate (positive) price of other inputs, and petrol were statistically significant at 1% while transportation cost is significant at 5% level of probability. the variance parameter had a value of 0.45 and log-likelihood function of -233.090 whereas the medium scale enterprise showed that wage rate was positive and significant at 5% probability level, price of other inputs, transportation cost and petrol were negative, and significant at 1% level except transportation cost that is significant at 10% level. the variance ratio was 0.107 while the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 127-134 130 log-likelihood stood at -333.083. based on a high value of the log-likelihood ratio and the variance parameter, the small scale enterprise was more efficient than medium scale enterprises in imo state. this result is consistent with findings of sanusi, (2003), amaechi, (2007) and owualah, (1999) which admitted that small scale enterprises are more efficient, and enjoy a competitive advantage over medium and large scale enterprises. economic efficiency analysis although economic efficiency estimates presented in table 3 indicated a range of 0.98 to 0.09 for small scale enterprises and 0.91 and 0.08 for medium scale respectively; the mean economic efficiency was 0.57 and 0.54 for small and medium scale enterprises respectively. the estimates show that for the average small and medium scale agribusiness enterprise to attain the level of the most economical efficient farmer in the sample, the enterprise would maximize a profit if 38.71% (1-0.57/0.93) for small scale and 40.66% (10.54/0.91) for medium scale enterprises. the least economically efficient enterprise will have an efficiency gain of 90.32% (1-0.09/0.93) for small scale and 91.21% (1-0.08/0.91) for medium scale enterprise respectively, if the enterprise is to attain the efficiency level of most economically efficient agro-processing enterprise in the study area. this result further suggests that there are still opportunities to increase profitability through increased efficiency in resource utilization by both levels of enterprises in imo state. a comparative analysis was equally carried out to ascertain the difference in economic efficiency between small and medium scale agribusiness enterprises. the result showed that there was no significant difference in the mean of economic efficiency between the two enterprises in the state. the t-calculated for economic efficiency was 0.838 respectively and where less than the t-critical value of 10% (tα0.1 = 1.282). this implies that the smes share similar features and use almost the same kind production. the only difference might be the amount of capital employed. determinant of economic efficiency the coefficient (table 4) of labour, credit status, business experience and number of employees are statistically significant which agreed with the a priori expectation. however, labour and number of employee are significant at 1%negatively signed. the result implies that the addition of labour and number of employees, lower the profit of the enterprise. the coefficient of business experience and credit status are positively signed, implying that the more experienced and access to credit an enterprise has, the high the level of economic efficiency and profit. this is consistent with bravo and pinheiro (2005) who identified positive impact of experience on efficiency. from the result, the seven efficiency factors are contained in table 5, credit status and business experience were significant and are evidenced to be related to economic efficiency. labour and number of employee are negatively signed and significant at 1% probability level. the implication is that labour and number of employee are decreasing with efficiency. conclusion the study observed that economic efficiency of small and medium scale enterprises varied due to the presence of economic inefficiency effects in production with small scale enterprise been more efficient than medium scale enterprise in the area. this shows that there is a great opportunity for the enterprises to increase their level of efficiency in agribusiness production. there was no significant difference in mean efficiency between the small and medium scale agribusiness enterprises in the area. access to credit and business experience was found influencing economic efficiency in both small scale and medium scale enterprises. the entrepreneurs are encouraged to adopt cost reducing strategy called vertical integration and government and private sectors should encourage the processors with more credit facilities. references amaechi, e. c. c. (2007). capitalization and efficiency of smallholder palm oil processing mills in imo state, nigeria. phd. dissertation, department of agricultural economics, michael okpara university of agriculture, umudike relative efficiency of small and medium ... 131 ajibefun, i. a & a. g. daramola. (2003). determinants of technical and allocative efficiency of microenterprises: firm-level evidence from nigeria. bulletin of african development bank, 4, 353-395. awokem. u. & okorji, e. c. (2003). analyses of constraint in resource use efficiency in multiple cropping systems by small holder farmers in ebonyi state, nigeria. global journal of agric science, 2(2), 132 – 136. bravo-ureta & a. e. pinheiro (2005). technical, economic and allocative efficiency in peasant farming: evidence from the dominican republic. the developing economics, xxxv(i), 48-57 cbn (2000). central bank of nigeria statistical bulletin, 2(2), december 2000 coelli, t. j. (1996). a guide to frontier 4.1 computer program for stochastic frontier productive and cost function estimation. mimeo, development of econometrics university of new england, arimidate, australia. idiong, i. c. (2005). evaluation of technical, allocative and economic efficiencies in rice production system in cross river state, nigeria. a ph. d thesis, submitted to the department of agricultural economics, michael okpara university of agriculture, umudike ifc (2003). annual review of small business activities. international finance corporation (ifc), small and medium enterprise development. library of congress (2006). federal research division country profile; nigeria p.12. nwachukwu, i. n. (2006). economic efficiency of vegetable production in imo state, nigeria. unpublished msc dissertation department of agricultural economics, michael okpara university of agriculture, umudike. nci (2001). annual review of small and medium industries in nigeria. national council on industries. okoye, e. (2006). efficiency of small holder cocoyam production in anambra state. an msc thesis, department of agricultural economics, michael okpara university of agriculture, umudike. opara, t. c. (2008). efficiency and productivity growth among food crop farmers in imo state, nigeria. an m.sc thesis department of agricultural economics, michael okpara university of agriculture, umudike owualah, s. i. (1999). entrepreneurship in small business firms. gmag investments ltd. (educational publishers) ikeja, lagos spilaimen, i. & a. o. lansink (2005). learning inorganic farming – an application finishing dairy farms. paper presented at the xith congress of european association of agricultural economics, copenhagen, denmark. aug. 24-27. sanusi, j. o. (2003). overview of government’s efforts in the development of smes and the emergence of small and medium industries equity investment scheme (smieis). paper presented at a national summit on smieis organized by the banker’s committee and lagos chambers of commerce and industry (lcci), lagos on 15 th june, 2003. world bank survey (1981). agricultural and the environmental perspective for sustainable rural development. ernst cutz (ed) john hopkins university press for the world bank. tables table 1: maximum likelihood estimates of the stochastic profit function model (translog) for small scale agribusiness enterprises in imo state production factors parameters coefficient standard error t-value constant term β0 31.750 6.160 5.154*** wage rate β1 4.904 0.493 9.954*** price of other inputs β2 -1.459 0.322 -4.528*** price of petrol β3 -3.401 0.298 -11.415*** unit of transportation β4 -11.498 4.835 -2.378*** interest rate β5 -0.270 0.442 -0.612 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 127-134 132 wage rate 2 β6 0.271 0.139 1.955** price of other inputs 2 β7 0.067 0.221 0.301 price of petrol 2 β8 0.391 0.359 1.089 unit cost of transportation 2 β9 -0.043 0.236 -1.81 interest rate 2 β10 0.062 0.015 4.692*** wage rate x price of other inputs β11 -1.292 0.916 -1.410 wage rate x price of petrol β12 -0.792 0.363 -2.179** wage cost x unit cost of transport β13 0.560 0.425 1.318 wage rate x interest rate β14 0.107 0.034 3.123*** price of other inputs x price of petrol β15 -2.867 0.504 -0.569 price of other inputs x unit cost of transport β16 1.664 0.700 2.378** price of other inputs x interest rate β17 -0.074 0.062 -1.194 price of petrol x unit cost of trans β18 0.071 0.134 0.528 price of petrol x interest rate β19 -0.009 0.013 -0.709 unit cost of transport x interest rate β20 -0.053 0.017 -3.128*** diagnostic statistics log-likelihood function -233.090 total variance δ 2 0.451 0.044 10.359*** variance ratio γ 0.983 0.016 60.945*** lr test 49.998 ***,**,* are significant levels at 1.0%, 5% and 10% respectively. table 2: maximum likelihood estimates of the stochastic profit function model (translog) for medium scale agribusiness enterprises in imo state production factors parameters coefficient standard error t-value constant term β0 91.066 13.562 6.715*** wage rate β1 15.521 6.548 2.370*** price of other inputs β2 -8.592 0.617 13.927*** price of petrol β3 -2.958 0.750 -3.942*** unit cost of transportation β4 -1.295 0.666 -1.953* interest rate β5 -0.221 0.735 -0.301 wage rate 2 β6 3.298 0.197 1.670* price of other inputs 2 β7 2.357 0.390 2.534** price of petrol 2 β8 -1.082 0.475 2.280** unit cost of transportation 2 β9 -0.229 0.213 -1.072 interest rate 2 β10 0.074 0.019 3.783*** wage rate x price of other inputs β11 -2.015 2.106 -0.951 wage rate x price of petrol β12 -1.332 0.992 -1.343 wage cost x unit cost of transport β13 1.462 0.726 2.013** wage rate x interest rate β14 -0.097 0.065 -1.505 price of other inputs x price of petrol β15 3.998 1.206 3.314*** relative efficiency of small and medium ... 133 price of other inputs x unit cost of transport β16 -1.785 1.435 -1.244 price of other inputs x interest rate β17 0.059 0.107 0.555 price of petrol x unit cost of trans β18 -0.091 0.442 -0.204 price of petrol x interest rate β19 0.061 0.038 1.619 unit cost of transport interest rate β20 -0.030 0.024 -1.235 diagnostic statistics log-likelihood function -333.083 total variance δ 2 0.107 0.015 9.343*** variance ratio γ 0.963 0.041 2.328*** lr test 21.59 table 3: maximum likelihood estimates of the determinants of economic efficiency of small scale agribusiness enterprise variable parameter coefficient standard error t-value constant z0 -2.021 3.996 -0.506 age of enterprise z1 0.081 0.101 0.745 labour z2 -0.000 0.000 -7.537*** credit status z3 0.315 0.120 2.619*** business experience z4 0.072 0.079 8.867*** membership to cooperative organization z5 -2.062 2.116 -0.975 number of employees z6 -0.124 0.016 -7.676*** extension visit z7 -0.004 0.023 -0.185 ***,**,* are significant levels at 1.0%, 5% and 10% respectively. table 4: maximum likelihood estimates of the determinants of economic efficiency of medium scale agribusiness enterprise variable parameter coefficient standard error t-value constant z0 -6.066 9.084 -0.668 age of enterprise z1 -0.004 0.023 -0.019 labour z2 -0.000 0.000 -3.706*** credit status z3 0.660 0.197 3.358*** business experience z4 0.048 0.006 7.578*** membership to cooperative organization z5 1.509 1.951 0.773 number of employees z6 -0.143 0.002 -6.568*** extension visit z7 -0.014 -0.033 -0.428 ***,**,* are significant levels at 1.0%, 5% and 10% respectively. table 5: frequency distribution of economic efficiency indices of small and medium scale agribusiness enterprises in imo state small medium economic efficiency index freq % freq % 0.00-0.50 72 30.00 77 32.08 0.51-0.60 36 15.00 45 18.75 0.61-0.70 53 22.00 57 23.75 0.71-0.80 51 21.25 51 21.75 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 127-134 134 0.81-0.90 23 9.58 7 2.92 0.91-0.99 5 2.08 3 1.25 total 240 100 240 100 maximum economic efficiency 0.93 0.91 minimum economic efficiency 0.09 0.08 mean economic efficiency 0.57 0.54 source: computed from output of computer programme frontier 4.1. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 674 factors affecting agricultural sustainability–a case study of hail region, kingdom of saudi arabia khalid a. asiry department of biology, faculty of science, university of hail, kingdom of saudi arabia sami saeed m. hassan department of biology, faculty of science, university of hail, kingdom of saudi arabia, and department of zoology, faculty of science, university of khartoum, sudan monif m. alrashidi department of biology, faculty of science, university of hail, kingdom of saudi arabia abstract availability of data on agricultural activities and production are essential for an appropriate socioeconomic planning and sustainability. this study was conducted using a questionnaire that was randomly distributed to farmers to identify some features of the agricultural activities in hail region and to serve as baseline data on agricultural practices. the questionnaire was divided into main topics including socio-economic status of farms, farm area, main crops, production systems, agricultural practices, financial support, and use of wind breaks, water conservation, animal husbandry and marketing. some of the results showed that date palms and alfalfa fodder were found to be the main grown crops in addition to citrus, grapes, vegetables, wheat and rye. in most cases, all these crops were cultivated in open fields, compared to only 18% grown in green houses. about half of the farmers adopted the monoculture system and only 44.9% of them applied the crop rotation. more than 70% of farmers raise animals and the most commonly reared animal are sheep (53.6%) followed by goats (23%), camels (18%) and poultry (4.5%). the study revealed that hail region is an important agricultural area in ksa and some agricultural practices need to be revised and directed towards sustainability through extension programmes. keywords: agriculture, sustainability, crop rotation, multiple cropping, animal productions, hail region, kingdom of saudi arabia introduction 1 the depletion of natural resources has become a major issue in many parts around the world, particularly the parts which are known as drylands. drylands, including hyper-arid, arid, and semi-arid and dry lands, can be defined as a land with low amounts of water in soil (walton, corresponding author’s details: name: khalid a. asiry email address: prof_1974@hotmail.com 1969; laity, 2008). more than 40% of the global terrestrial area is drylands with 2 billion people use it for grazing and cropping (stroosnijder et al., 2012). ecosystem services in drylands including the production of crops, forage and wood, however, are limited by water supply. as a result, crop production in drylands seems to be low resulting in the reduction of the food security, although it depends on other factors such as socio-economics and political factors (stroosnijder et al., 2012). asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:prof_1974@hotmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 674-687 675 the kingdom of saudi arabia (ksa) lies within the arid zone, with the desert covering an area of about 2250,000 sq. km (allaby, 2008; laity, 2008). the hot, harsh weather and limited water supply of ksa, resulted in the climate not being suitable for agriculture leading to 2% only of the land is being cultivated (al-zahrani, 2009). however, in the 80's, the saudi government has started to upgrade the country’s agricultural sector to a development priority in order to reduce dependency on imported food, as well as a means of diversifying the economy income in addition to its strong reliance on the oil and gas sector (al-subaiee et al., 2005). the kingdom of saudi arabia has experienced rapid and successful agricultural development since the mid-1980s (al-zahrani, 2009). as a result of this development, saudi arabia has succeeded in achieving self-sufficiency in some crops and animal commodities, such as wheat, eggs, dates, milk, and some fruits and vegetables (al-subaiee et al., 2005). wheat, for instance, was extensively cultivated in ksa in order to guarantee self-sufficient levels of food production, and was exported to many countries, including china in 1984 (alzahrani, 2009). however, shortage of water, lack of experienced technical personnel, soil and water salinity, and the rising cost of desalination, marketing problems, and low prices for products; pests and diseases are constraints facing the agriculture sector in ksa (al-zeir, 2009). this, in turn, led the saudi government to review all agricultural policies and apply the sustainable agriculture programmes for conserving the natural resources (al-subaiee et al., 2005). in this case, saudi government has established a new plan on the cultivation of crops that require high water consumption resources (al-subaiee et al., 2005). the new policy, for example, has been made for discouraging farmers to grow less wheat and to promote the idea of diversification of crops in order to protect water resources and accomplish their sustainability resources (alzahrani, 2009). in addition, extension agents have been trained and introduced in ksa, who had a positive effect toward sustainable agriculture, and farming practices and concepts (al-subaiee et al., 2005). in general trend, sustainable agriculture indicates an agricultural system adopted in a particular area in which crop and animal production do not decline over time and are reasonably stable over normal fluctuations of weather (edeoghon et al., 2008). sustainable agriculture also refers to the agricultural practices that guarantee human needs for food and fibers, and at the same time protect natural resources and the quality of the environment (edeoghon et al., 2008). some of these agricultural practices can be summarized as: multiple cropping, cover cropping, crop rotation, integrated pest management, alley cropping, organic manure application, improved plants varieties, green manure, minimum tillage system and mulching (edeoghon et al., 2008). availability of reliable data on agricultural activities and practices is of paramount importance for development planning and a sustainable agriculture in ksa. this paper provides the detailed account on the practises and activities associated with the agricultural sector in hail region of ksa. the purpose of this paper is to set baseline data about agricultural farms including area, main crops, production systems, cultural practices, financial support, wind breaks use, animal rising, and agricultural residues disposal. in addition to that, this paper aims to investigate the agricultural practices practiced by farmers in the region and to determine the main problems facing them. methodology the study was conducted in hail region, which is located in the north-western of the kingdom of saudi arabia (27° 31′ 0″ n, 41° 41′ 0″ e) (figure 1). hail region is considered as an agricultural and pastoral area characterized by rich water resources and fertile soil, even though asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 674-687 676 the climate in this region is an arid and extra arid (ai-turki and ai-olayan, 2003). figure1: location of the study area this has resulted in agricultural development based on agricultural products such as grains, dates, vegetables, forage crops, and fruit production. in the recent history, large percentage of the ksa's wheat production came from hail province, as the area to the north east of hail, 60 km to 100 km away, predominantly consists of irrigated gardens (al-zahrani, 2009). nowadays, different crops and fruit trees are cultivated in hail, including barley, corn, vine trees, date palms, citrus, and other economical crops. hail region is divided into three provinces. the structured questionnaire was distributed to 210 randomly-selected farms, 70 from each of the three provinces, in the spring of 2012. however, 207 copies were filled correctly and thus were the ones used in the analysis. the questionnaire was divided into main topics including the socio-economic status of farms, general information about the farms (area, main crops, production systems, cultural practices, financial support, and use of wind breaks, water conservation, animal rising, and agricultural residues disposal). the data were then analyzed using the statistical package spss ® 14.0 for windows. results were presented in tables and graphs. results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of farmers the results showed that all farm managers are males (table 1). this finding is mainly attributed to the structure of the saudi society, in which women in rural areas are responsible only for household duties, and are not involved in practicing agricultural operations with men, although sometimes saudi women were involved in rearing of small numbers of animal in their homes, particularly goats, sheep and poultry (ai-mana, 1982; ai-saad, 1982; aldehailan, 2007). the results showed that only 12.1% of farm managers are not saudi (table 1). this could be due to the appreciation of saudis to the value of agriculture and agriculture-related practices, oath socially and economically (wu and sardo, 2010). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 674-687 677 table 1: some socio-economic parameters of the surveyed farmers parameter no. of farmers % sex male 207 100 female 0 0 nationality saudi 199 96.1 foreigner 8 3.9 age (years) 20-30 23 11.1 31-40 66 31.9 41-50 65 31.4 >50 53 25.6 marital status married 182 87.9 single 25 12.1 education level illiterate 34 16.3 primary 37 17.9 elementary 24 11.6 secondary 56 27.1 university 56 27.1 experience (years) 0-10 77 37.2 11-20 71 34.3 21-30 38 18.4 31-40 14 6.8 41-50 7 3.3 the majority of farmers (74.1%) were within the active productive age (20-50 years) (table 1). this makes the farmers more able to accommodate and adopt new approaches in agriculture. in terms of their educational level, only 16.5% of the farmers were illiterate and only 18.1% of them have had primary education (table 1). the majority of the farmers (65.4%) have had elementary, secondary or university education. thus, more educated farmers are expected to understand and adopt new agricultural techniques and successfully adopt innovations and programmes better than illiterate or less educated farmers (weir, 1999; khisa and heinemann, 2004; asadulla and rahman, 2005; oladeebo and masuku, 2013). moreover, the managerial abilities of farmers are greatly influenced by their level of education, age, experience, number of contact with extension agents, in addition to their personal traits and ability (kalaitzandonakes and dunn, 1995). eighty-eight point three per cent of the farmers in this study are married (table 1). this is expected to make these farmers more “stable” in their personal lives, which could make the farmer more dedicated to his farm, which is the main source of income for him and his family. more than half of the farmers (62.4%) have long experience in agriculture (more than 10 years of experience), with the majority (87.9%) of farm workers being non-saudi (table 1). of the nonsaudi workers, the indians were dominant, as in 67 farms, all the workers were indians. while in another 58 farms, workers were indians mixed with other nationalities that included egyptians, bangladeshi, sudanese and pakistani. there were workers from other countries such as ethiopia, nepal and yemen, but in very few numbers. the lack of saudi workers could be attributed to the lack of incentives to work as farmers, and thus we recommend the introduction of particular incentives to encourage saudis to work in the farms. farm areas farm areas ranged between 0.5 – 600 hectares with 54.95% of the farms having an average area of less than 20 hectares. main crops date palms and alfalfa are the main crops grown in the study area in the two forms, pure stands or in combination with other crops (multicropping) (figure 2). as pure stands, dates and alfalfa represented 48.3% and 20.7%, and in multi-crops 26.4% and 21.8%, respectively (figure 2). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 674-687 678 fruits such as citruses and grapes occupied minor importance as pure stands (1.7% and 3.4%, respectively) in those farms (figure 2). however, in multi-cropping systems, the frequency increased to approximately 10% for both fruits (figure 2). farmers also grew vegetables, wheat and rye. the selection of cultivated crops seems to be according to the farmer’s choice and is governed by experience, the market’s demand and the available facilities for production. figure 2: percentage of main crops grown by the surveyed farmers as pure or mixed stands farmers may be used multiple-cropping for protect their crops against insect and daises pests as a cultural control (altieri, 1991). this regime is a form of polyculture and can take the form of double-cropping, in which a second crop is planted after the first has been harvested, or relay cropping, in which the second crop is started amidst the first crop before it has been harvested. it is clear from the results of the questionnaire that farmers are not familiar with green house systems. only 18% of the farmers reported that they use green houses. green houses are used mainly for vegetable crops or crops of high value due to its high initial cost. due to its advantage in saving irrigation water and good control of the environment, farmers should be encouraged to use green houses. greenhouses are usually adopted by farmers to have greater control over the growing environment of their crops. alf, mixed with other crops, 21.8 alf, pure stand crop, 20.7 wheat, mixed with other crops, 7.7 wheat, pure stand crop, 8.6 rye, mixed with other crops, 9.3 rye, pure stand crop, 5.2 vegetable, mixed with other crops, 15.5 vegetable, pure stand crop, 12.1 citrus, mixed with other crops, 9.3 citrus, pure stand crop, 1.7 grape, mixed with other crops, 10.0 grape, pure stand crop, 3.4 date, mixed with other crops, 26.4 date, pure stand crop, 48.3 alf wheat rye vegetable citrus grape asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 674-687 679 main factors that could be controlled within a greenhouse setup include levels of light and shade, temperature, amount of irrigation, fertilizers use, and atmospheric humidity. generally, it is shown that greenhouses could be used to counteract the shortcomings expected in the growing qualities of a certain area of land, and thus they could improve the quality of food production in agricultural areas (mao et al., 2003). multiple cropping crop diversification was not commonly adopted inside green houses. only 10% of farmers grew more than one crop in their green houses and as shown above, only a small percentage of the farmers use green houses. about 37% of the farmers grew different crops in their farms, outside greenhouses (figure 3). figure 3: multiple cropping use and knowledge about its importance among the surveyed farmers about half of the farmers grew mono culture system in their fields. diversification of crops helps farmers to sustain their production and save them from fluctuations in prices, as agroecosystem managements that involve multiple cropping are generally characterized by a stable and constant productivity in the long term (gliessman and amador, 1979; gliessman et al., 1981). moreover, using multi-cropping helps to reduce the incidence of crop failure as a result of insect’s pest’s attacks and diseases (liebman, 1987; krupinsky et al., 2002; kumar and nair, 2004). also, diversification of crops restores soil nutrients and fertility, due to the increased microbial activity in the soil, the reduction of water evaporation from soil surfaces, in addition to the reduction of soil surface erosion (blancocanqui and lal, 2010). about 60% of the farmers have knowledge about the importance of multiple crops (figure 3). this knowledge ranges from comprehensive to limited one. moreover, 75% of the farmers expressed their willingness and ability to adopt the package of multiple crops. the adoption of polyculture management systems reduces the amount of agricultural waste as well as reducing fossil fuel consumption (parrish and fike, 2005; tilman et al., 2006; groom et al., 2008). crop rotation about 55.1% of farmers do not practice crop rotation, but 44.9% of them grow crops in rotation. out of all interviewed farmers, only 43.4% had previous knowledge about the importance of crop rotation as an agricultural system of production. on the other hand, 36% of them did not know about crop rotation and 20.6% had limited knowledge. moreover, only 43.6% of the farmers who did not practice crop rotation had the ability to practice it, while 28.2% did not have that ability and 28.2% had only limited ability to practice yes, multiple crops knoweldge, 35.5 yes, multiple crops use, 47.0 no, multiple crops knoweldge, 38.4 no, multiple crops use, 24.5 limited, multiple crops knoweldge, 26.1 limited, multiple crops use, 28.5 yes no limited asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 674-687 680 crop rotation in their farms. crop rotation confers various benefits to agricultural soil. the use of green manure in sequence with cereals and other crops is a traditional factor of crop rotation to replenish nitrogen in the soil (kurtz et al., 1984; bationo and ntare, 2000). moreover, crop rotation prevents the outbreak of pathogens and pests in addition to that it can improve the quality of soil structure and fertility by alternating deep-rooted and shallow-rooted plants (campbell and zentner, 1993; portz and nonnecke, 2011). crop rotation can also lead to an increase in production costs as the total yield is increased significantly (von fragstein et al., 2006). moreover, overall financial risks are more widely distributed over more diverse production of crops and/or livestock. crop rotation requires additional planning and management skills, increasing the complexity of farming (zollinger, 1998; ambrosano et al., 2010) and that is why extension programmes should be set and implemented in the area. financial support (subsidies) a small portion (31.7%) of the farmers gets annual allowances from the government. date palms receive the largest part of the allowances (80%), followed by vegetables (9.2%). windbreaks in desert and desertified areas, windbreaks play a great role in protecting the soil from wind erosion and the crops from wind hazards. from the results of the questionnaire, it was found that more than 50% of farmers established windbreaks around their farms. moreover, about 80% had previous knowledge about their importance. sixty four point three percent of the farmers expressed their capability to establish windbreaks while 21.4% had no capability and 14.3% had only limited capability. this necessitates that the portion of farmers who do not use windbreaks (40%) need to be informed about the importance of windbreaks and encouraged to establish them. windbreaks should be established to protect the whole area. protection of one farm is not enough if the neighbouring farms are not protected. windbreaks protect crops, livestock, wildlife or people from wind’s harmful consequences. crop net yields can be increased by 10 to 20% in fields with windbreaks (usda, 2012). livestock experience improved weight gains resulting in lower feed costs. cooling costs for the farmstead can also be reduced. in addition, income producing plants such as fruit trees, nut trees and woody florals can be incorporated into a windbreak without reducing the beneficial functions (mukhopadhyay, 2009; usda, 2012). animal production more than 70% of the farmers practiced mixed farming (animals rearing and crops cultivation). the most commonly reared animals are sheep (53.6%) followed by goats (23%) and camels (18%). poultry production was practiced only by 4.5% of the farmers. animals offer a range of services to farmers, with the most important benefits mentioned by farmers being: source of income (46%), meat (8.8%) and manure (23%). about 75% of the farmers mentioned that they have good idea about the importance of farm manure as source of nutrients for agricultural soil. other benefits such as weed control, source of milk, and as hoppy, were also mentioned by the farmers. this reflects the awareness of farmers of the importance of maintaining a good source of nutrients to the soil, whereas feeding the soil to feed people. programmes of composting animal and plant residues should be set and adopted to ensure provision of highly safe nutritive fertilizers to the soil, which in turn will also improve the soil physical properties (morel and guillemain, 2004). use of fertilizers only 12.3% of the farms did not apply fertilizers to their crops neither organic nor chemical. the rest of farms (87.7%) use one or more types of fertilizers. out of all the farms that use fertilizers, 44.2% use only chemical fertilizers, 37.4% use only organic fertilizers and 18.4% use both types of fertilizers. this makes the farms that apply organic fertilizers alone or with chemical fertilizers more than half of the farms (55.8%). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 674-687 681 two major types of chemical fertilizers are commonly used, urea and foliar. among the farms that use chemical fertilizers, 73.2% use urea only and 15.2% use both urea and foliar. chemical fertilizers are not only becoming more expensive but their availability at the right time and right quantity is a common problem. biofertilizers are generally utilized to improve the fertility of soils as they include biological wastes and beneficial microbes. they have several advantages such as being easy to be prepared by farmers with low technology and locally available raw materials and they are environmentally friendly and conserve the environment (soumare et al., 2003; naureen et al., 2005; jilani et al., 2007). fruits stabilizers farmers are not familiar with fruit stabilizers since only 20% of them use them. some chemicals have been extensively commercialized for some fruits as a postharvest application to control ripening (sisler and serek, 2003). potential benefits of fruit stabilizers, such as delaying maturation, expanding the harvest window, and slowing postharvest ripening rates, have been shown in some fruits (villalobosacun et al., 2010). they also play an important role in fruit abscission and might also produce a beneficial impact on postharvest fruit quality, delaying ripening for long-distance transport, and slowing the appearance of physiological disorders in storage. pests, diseases and pesticides use according to the results of the questionnaire, 33.9% of the farmers complained only from insect pests, 24.6% complained from weeds and 7.7% complained from worms. moreover, 17.5% of farmers suffer from both insect and worm pests, 3.3% suffer from insects and worms and 12.6% suffer from insects, worms and weeds. the results showed that most of the farmers do not differentiate between the pests and the diseases caused by these pests, or other causes of diseases. most of their answers to the question on which diseases crops suffer from were answered by mentioning insects or worms and in some cases they mentioned the names of these insects and worms. only few of the farmers (12.4%) pointed to the problem of fungal and bacterial diseases, which appear on alfalfa, dates and some vegetables. a large percentage of the farmers (77.1%) used one or more types of chemical pesticides. out of these farmers, 67.3% of them buy the pesticides from the local market, 14.2% get them from the ministry of agriculture and the rest (18.5%) buy part of their needs from the local market and get the other part from the ministry of agriculture. since insects are the main source of trouble to farmers, 57.1% of the farmers use insecticides, followed by 27.3% that use both insecticides and herbicides and 10.6% use only herbicides. the high percentage of insecticide use is due to the fact that 60.1% of the farmers had no knowledge about how to control insects without insecticides, even farmers who have some knowledge about insect control without insecticide (39.9%), 63% of them answered that they do not have ability to control insect pests without insecticide. it is clear that insects and weeds are the main problems affecting agricultural production in the study area. moreover, the farmers are not aware about integrated pest management (ipm) techniques. therefore, there is need for introduction of ipm such as natural predators and cultural practices and cultivars resistance to pest and disease (chandler et al., 2011). the increases in productivity of crops through management of pests could be achieved without increasing, and possibly by decreasing the amount of fertilizer and water used to grow them (cook et al., 1995; rost et al., 2009; ghorbani et al., 2010; ratnadass et al., 2012). irrigation and water conservation all farms are irrigated by artesian wells. the depth of artesian wells ranged between 10-900 meters, with the highest percentage within less than 100 meters in depth (figure 4). aquifers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 674-687 682 are a major source of water in ksa. in the 1970s, the government undertook a major effort to locate and map such aquifers and estimate their capacity. figure 4: range of artesian wells depth (in meters) in the study area as a result, it was able to drill tens of thousands of deep tube wells in the most promising areas for both urban and agricultural use (al-zahrani, 2009). in order to meet the rising water needs, evaluation of water quality is important for allocation to various uses (al-hasawi and hussein, 2012). the wells’ pipes diameter in the study area ranged between 1-30 inches with 73.2% of them in the range of 1-10” and only 2% with diameter greater than 20”. according to the farmers, 18% of them considered irrigation water they use as “salty” and 78.6% considered it as either “fresh” or “medium salty”. out of all the studied farms, 5% had no water tanks while 76% of them had 1 or 2 water tanks.the rest of the farms had 3-10 water tanks depending on the farm area. farms in the study area apply different methods of irrigation. the methods most extensively used are sprinklers (36.9%), pipes network (19.2%) and drip irrigation (15.3%). combinations of more than one method of irrigation are also practiced. a high percentage of the farmers know about water conservation methods (figure 5). 71.1% are willing to apply these methods properly. this entails that extension programmes aiming at application of ideal water conservation methods should be set and practiced in the area. no of wells, 0-100, 99 no of wells, 101-200, 11 no of wells, 301-300, 15 no of wells, 301-400, 33 no of wells, 401-500, 10 no of wells, 501-600, 10 no of wells, 601-700, 12 no of wells, 701-800, 7 no of wells, 801-900, 8 0-100 101-200 301-300 301-400 401-500 501-600 601-700 701-800 801-900 683 figure 5: knowledge about water conservation methods and the ability to apply those methods among the surveyed farmers it was found that irrigation programming was practiced only in 59.5% of the farms. recent studies have made several recommendations for management strategies for efficient utilization of the available water resources in saudi arabia (hussain et al., 2010). soil and soil properties the description of the soil given by the farmers is descriptive identification and cannot give clear picture about the soil types. however, 86% farmers described their farms’ soil as being clay. soil analysis is not performed by 68.6% of the farmers. on the other hand, 46.5% of the farmers have knowledge about the importance of performing soil analysis in which about 40% of the farmers analyze their farms soil every 2 years. however, 14% do soil analysis every 10 years. it is important to carry soil analysis at least every 5 years. it is clear from the results of the questionnaire that soil salinity constitutes about 63% of the farms, according to the farmers’ answers. however, only half of them consult a specialist. due to irrigation with saline water, salinity is expected to develop gradually in the fields. therefore, for sustainable production suitable reclamation programmes should be considered, especially that soil resources are one of the main critical components of sustainable agriculture (maqsood et al., 2013). the farmers seem to have access only to engineering agriculturists since about 54.8% of the farmers consult an engineering agriculturist . only 9.6% of the farmers report this problem to an institution or to the ministry of agriculture. agricultural waste according to the questionnaire results, the most important water pollutant is chemical fertilizers (39.1%), while in the soil, pesticides are the most frequent hazard (63.1%). other sources of contamination include sewage water (21.7%) and pesticides (27%) in water. in the soil, petroleum (17%) and garbage (30%) were mentioned as sources of pollution. the majority of the farmers (85%) remove waste materials by burning. other methods like burying and ploughing in the field are not practiced by most farmers. there should be clear distinction between useful wastes, which can be recycled in the field, and soil pollutants. a great effort is needed in this area for how to treat the waste and pollutant for environmental safety. marketing of agricultural products the main market for selling farmer products (77.3%) is hail area (local marketing). the second choice is selling farm products within ksa. exporting farm product to outside ksa is not a choice for farmers. dates, alfalfa and yes, knoweldge about water conservation, 67.2 yes, ability to conserve water, 71.1 no , knoweldge about water conservation, 17.6 no , ability to conserve water, 7.5 limited, knoweldge about water conservation, 15.2 limited, ability to conserve water, 21.4 yes no limited asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 674-687 684 vegetables are the easiest products for farmers to sell. they attribute this to high demands and low cost of production. the number of farmers who answered that wheat and barley are easy to sell is less than ten. although the farmers reported that vegetables are easy to sell, some of them (53 farmers) mentioned that they are marketed with difficulties. the main mentioned reasons are competition with imported products, short storage ability and fluctuating demand. about 62% of the farmers market their products by themselves, and 90% of them prefer marketing centres for sorting and packing of their products before sale. the farmers attributed the marketing problems to transportation, lack of demand and high costs. fodder has high market, which may be due to the presence of animal production farms. moreover, the farmers have limited access to the markets within or outside ksa, since most of the farmers sell their product in hail area. therefore, improving transportation and post harvest operations will be a good solution for marketing. there is also an urgent need to determine exact consumption and demands in the area, in order to control supply and price, so as to make agriculture profitable to the farmers. mechanization mechanization in agriculture and land preparation procedures is utilized by 77.7% of the farmers. however, only 49% of the farmers harvest their products mechanically. the farmers are not aware about the agricultural mechanization techniques. about 50% of the farmers harvest their products manually. there is a need to introduce others agriculture machine and train farmers about their use. setting and execution of agricultural extension programmes are also very crucial. other agriculture problems most farmers (67.7%) who mentioned that they have other problems, stated that they required support either through funds or extension programmes. other problems included shortage in agricultural labour, marketing, high cost of production inputs, lack of machinery, harsh weather and shortage of irrigation water. conclusion and recommendations the study revealed that hail region is an important agricultural area in the kingdom of saudi arabia since there is a large number of farms recruiting a large number of personnel and producing agricultural products (of crop and animal source) for the local market and markets outside hail area. it is also clear from the study that some agricultural practices need to be revised and directed towards sustainability to ensure maximum utilization of resources with the least adverse effects on the environment and highest possible production for the welfare of the community. it is recommended that extension programmes should be intensified and directed towards training the farmers about the best environmentally-sound agricultural practices, which will ensure least cost with highest production. establishment of marketing institutions from within the farmers is of vital importance to ensure best marketing opportunities and highest revenues. acknowledgements authors would like to thank the al-jomaiah’s chair of sustainable development in agricultural communities at the university of hail for providing financial support. we are also grateful to dr. adel abdalmaged, mr. mohand abdalgader, mr. abrihim alkorgi, mr. hamdan al-shamri and mr. taher eid for their help during 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(1998). north dakota weed guide. ndsu circular w-253. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 296-310 296 effects of variety and spacing on growth characters of hybrid maize enujeke e. c. 1 department of agronomy, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria abstract this study was carried out in teaching and research farm of delta state university, asaba campus from march, 2008 to june, 2010 to evaluate the effects of variety and spacing on growth characters of hybrid maize. it was a factorial experiment carried out in a randomized complete block design (rcbd) with three replicates. three hybrid maize varieties were evaluated under three different plant spacing for such growth characters as plant height, number of leaves, leaf area and stem girth. the results obtained during the 8 th week after sowing indicated that hybrid variety 9022-13 which had mean plant height of 170.0cm number of leaves of 13.2, leaf area of 673.2cm 2 and stem girth of 99.4mm was superior to other varieties investigated. with respect to spacing, plants sown on 75 cm x 15 cm had higher mean height and number of leaves of 176.7 cm and 13.8, respectively while plants sown on spacing of 75 cm x 35 cm had higher mean leaf area of 713.7 cm 2 and stem girth of 99.4mm, respectively. results of interaction showed that variety and spacing were significantly (p<0.05) different in 2008 and 2009. based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that (i) hybrid variety 9022-13 be grown in the study area of enhanced growth characters which interplay to improve grain yield of maize (ii) spacing of 75 cm x 35 cm be used to enhance increased stem girth and leaf area whose photosynthetic activities could positively influence maize yield. keywords: variety and spacing, growth characters, hybrid maize, asaba, nigeria corresponding author email: enujeke@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:enujeke@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 296-310 297 introduction maize (zea mays l) is one of the major cereal crops grown in the humid tropics and sub-saharan africa. it is a versatile crop and ranks third following wheat and rice in world production as reported by food and agriculture organization (fao, 2002). maize crop is a key source of food and livelihood for millions of people in many countries of the world. it is produced extensively in nigeria, where it is consumed roasted, baked, fried, pounded or fermented (agbato, 2003). in advanced countries, it is an important source of many industrial products such as corn sugar, corn oil, corn flour, starch, syrup, brewer’s grit and alcohol (dutt, 2005). corn oil is used for salad, soapmaking and lubrication. maize is a major component of livestock feed and it is palatable to poultry, cattle and pigs as it supplies them energy (iken et al., 2001). the stalk, leaves, grain and immature ears are cherished by different species of livestock (dutt, 2005). in spite of the increasing relevance and high demand for maize in nigeria, yield across the country continues to decrease with an average of about 1 t/ha which is the lowest african yield recorded (fayenisin, 1993). the steady decline in maize yield can be attributed to: 1. rapid reduction in soil fertility caused by intensive use of land and reduction of fallow period as reported by directorate of information and publications of agriculture (dipa, 2006). 2. failure to identify and plant high yielding varieties most suited or adapted to each agro-ecological zone (kim, 1997). 3. use of inappropriate plant spacing which determines plant population and final yield (zeidan et al., 2006). tolera et al., (1999) suggested that breeders should select maize varieties that combine high grain yield and desirable stover characteristics because of large differences that exist between cultivars. odeleye and odeleye (2001) reported that maize varieties differ in their growth characters, yield and its components, and therefore suggested that breeders must select most promising combiners in their breeding programmes. iken and anusa (2004) recommended an optimum plant population of 53,333 plants/ha for maximum yield of maize. their report indicated that this is obtainable using a spacing of 75cm x 25cm at 1 plant per stand or 75cm x 50cm at 2 plants per stand. azam et al., (2007) reported that spacing of 75cm x 35cm resulted in increased grain yield of maize while 75cm x 15cm gave maximum cob weight. similar report by allessi and power (2004) revealed that maize cob weight decreased with increased plant population. at present, some farmers in asaba area sow any maize variety of their choice at such spacings as 90 cm x 30 cm, 90 x 20 cm or 75 cm x 50 cm which do not translate into expected high yield in the study area. hence, there are no recommended standards taking asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 296-310 298 into consideration the different combinations of such cultural practices as varietal selection and appropriate plant spacing which interplay to influence yield and optimal performance of maize in asaba area of delta state. against this background, the broad objective of this study, therefore, was to: identify variety of maize most suited or adapted to asaba area and the appropriate spacing for the variety. the specific objectives were to: (i) identify the best hybrid maize variety for asaba area, and spacing for the crop. (ii) determine the responses of growth characters of hybrid maize to variety and spacing. materials and methods site description the study was carried out in the teaching and research farm of delta state university, asaba campus from march to december 2008 and repeated between march and december, 2009. asaba is located at latitude 06 o 14’n and longitude 06 o 49’n of the equator. it lies in the tropical rainforest zone dominated by mangrove, fresh water, swamps, humid forests and secondary vegetation (nest, 1991). its climate is influenced by the movement of the intertropical discontinuity (itd). the idt is made up of two wind systems namely the moisture-laden south-west monsoon from the atlantic ocean and the dry cold northeast trade wind from the sahara desert. the south-west trade wind most significantly determines the climate condition of asaba area of delta state. asaba is characterized by raining season between april and october, with annual mean-rainfall of 1500mm and 2000mm maximum. the distribution is bimodal with peak in july and september, coupled with a period of low precipitation in august. mean temperature is 23.8 o c with 37.3 o c as maximum. relative humidity is 77.2%, the mean monthly soil temperature at 100m depth is 20.3 o c, while sunshine stands at 4.8 bars (meteorological office, asaba, 2003). pre-planting soil analysis representative surface soils (0-20cm) were sampled with a tubular sampling auger. these soil samples were air-dried at room temperature for 5 days and crushed to pass through a 2mm mesh sieve. sub-samples from the bulked soil sample were further grounded to pieces to pass through 100mmmesh sieve for the determination of organic matter. the rest samples were then analyzed to determine the physical and chemical properties of the soil. the analysis was done at delta state university, asaba campus. analytical procedure physical properties particle size distribution: particle size distribution was analyzed using the bouyoucos hydrometer method in which 0.5 n sodium hexameta-phosphate was used as dispersant (landor, 1991). bulk density: the bulk density (bd) was determined by core-method. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 296-310 299 particle density: this was determined by pycometer or specific gravity bottle method as described by bowles (1992). chemical properties soil ph: this was determined in soil: water suspension (1:1) using glass electrode phmeter as described by mclean (1982). organic carbon: this was determined using the wet oxidation method of walkley and black (walkley and black, 1945). total nitrogen: this was determined using the modified k. jeldah distillation method as described by landor (1991). exchangeable cations (ec) and effective cation exchange capacity (ecec): exchangeable cations were determined by extracting the cations with in ammonium acetate (in, nhoac) as displacing solution, buffered at ph7 as described by brady and weils (1999). the extract was then determined electrochemically using atomic absorption spectrophometry. the effective cation exchange capacity (ecec) was calculated as the sum of exchangeable bases (ca, mg, k and na) and exchangeable a1 and h expressed in cmo1/kg -1 of soil. exchangeable acidity: this was determined by titration method as described by juo (1981). the exchangeable h + and a1 ++ were then expressed in cmo/kg -1 of soil available phosphorus: this was determined by bray no.1 method as described by landor (1991). cation exchangeable capacity: this was determined by neutral nh4acetate placement method using the procedure of anderson and ingram (1996). land preparation and plot layout the land was plouged and harrowed using tractor. three blocks (replicates) consisting of 9 plots each were layed out. each plot measured 2.6 m x 2.25 m, and was separated from one another with a space of 0.5 m. allay pathways of 1 m separated one block from the other. the total number of plots layed out in the entire experiment was 27. experimental design the experiment was a factorial experiment carried out in a randomized complete block design (rcbd) with three replicates. selection of maize varieties, planting and cultural practices three hybrid varieties of maize were obtained from international institute of tropical agriculture (iita), ibadan. maize seeds were sown at depth of 2-3cm in plots measuring 2.6m x 2.25m at the rate of one seed per stand using three different spacings: 1. 75cm x 35cm which gave a population density of 38000 plants/ha. 2. 75cm x 25cm which gave a population density of 53, 333 plants/ha. 3. 75cm x 15cm which gave a population density of 88,888 plants/ha. weeding: weeding was done three times using hoe. experimental design the study was conducted in a factorial layout using a randomized complete block design (rcbd), and replicated three times. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 296-310 300 data collection and statistical analysis fourteen (14) middle maize stands were used as sample in plots evaluated under 75cm x 15cm, 75cm x 25cm and 75cm x 35cm, respectively. data collected at fortnight intervals starting from the 4th week after sowing included plant height, number of leaves, stem girth, leaf area. plant height was measured with tape from the base of the plant to the first tassel, leaf area was measured also with tape using nondestructive analysis method (length x breath by correction factor 0.75, duke and duleliar (1993); number of leaves, was obtained by direct counting; stem girth was measured using tape; data collected was subjected to analysis of variance (anova) and treatment means were separated by duncan multiple range test (dmrt), using sas (1996). results soil physico-chemical properties of the experimental site: the pre-physico-chemical properties of the experimental site is shown in table 1. the result showed predominantly sand at the surface and this tends to decrease with depth of profile. texturally, the soil of the experimental site is classified as sandy loam. the soil is acidic with ph of 6.2 in h2o and 5.6 in cacl. the organic matter content and total nitrogen were low with values of 1.22 gkg -1 and 0.113 gkg -1 . the available p was high with value of 26.5 mgkg -1 . the exchangeable cations (ca, mg, na and k) were equally low in status with values of 2.6cmolkg -1 for ca 2+ and 0.9 cmolkg -1 for mg 2+ . the value obtained for na + was 0.57 cmolkg -1 , which was moderate while that for k + was 0.08cmolkg -1 , which was low. the cec was 4.15, while ecec was 5.6cmolkg 1 , which were generally low. the exchangeable acidity was only trace for al 3+ and characteristically low for h + with a value of 1.4 cmolkg -1 . table 1: physico-chemical properties of experimental site soil property value interpretation particle size distribution (%) coarse sand 38 fine sand 41 silt 9 clay 12 texture ____ sandy loam ph h2o 6.2 acidic cacl 5.6 acidic organic carbon gkg -1 0.71 organic matter gkg -1 1.22 very low total nitrogen gkg -1 0.113 low available p (ppm) 26.5 exchangeable bases (cmol/kg -1 ) na + 0.57 moderate asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 296-310 301 k + 0.08 very low ca 2+ 2.60 low mg 2+ 0.90 low cation exchange capacity 4.15 exchangeable acidity (cmol/kg -1 ) al 3+ trace h + 1.4 effective cation exchangeable capacity (cmol/kg -1 ) 5.6 effects of variety and spacing on plant height of hybrid maize the effects of variety and spacing on plant height of hybrid in 2008 and 2009 maize is shown in table 2. there were gradual increases in plant height of maize from the 4 th to the 8 th week after sowing. there were significant differences also in the plant height of the maize varieties investigated. in 2008, hybrid variety 9022-13 had the highest plant height of 35.1 cm at 4 weeks after sowing, followed by oba 98 with height of 33.4cm. among the varieties integrated, oba super 2 had the lowest plant height (31.9cm) among the varieties evaluated. this trend did not change during the 6 th and 8 th week of sowing. in 2009, hybrid 9022-13 was superior in plant height during the 6 th week (82.6 cm) and 8 th week (171.8 cm), followed by oba 98 which grew up to 73.3 cm at the 6 th week and 163.5 cm during the 8 week after sowing. there was however, little deviation only in week 4 of 2009 when oba super with height of 36.6 cm and oba 98 with height of 36.6 cm grew taller than 9022-13 with height of 35.1 cm. generally, the superiority in plant height based on variety was 9022-13 >oba 98 > oba super 2. with respect to spacing, maize plants sown at 75 cm x 15 cm in 2008 grew taller than other plants during the 4 th week their height was 36.2 cm, at the 6 th week their height was 67.7 cm and during the 8 th week they grew up to 172.5 cm. these were followed by plants sown at 75 cm x 25 cm which grew up to 65.3 cm at the 6 th week and 58.2 cm at the 8 th week after sowing. plants sown at 75 cm x 35 cm had the lowest plant height in 2008. the trend in plant height of maize as affected by spacing remained the same in 2009 as shown: plants sown at 75 cm x 15 cm > plants sown at 75 cm x 25 cm >, plants sown at 75 cm x 35 cm. the results of interaction (table 6) showed that variety and space were significantly (p< 0.05) different throughout the period of the evaluation and positively affected plant height. effects of variety and spacing on number of leaves of hybrid maize the response of number of leaves of hybrid maize to variety and spacing in 2008 and 2009 is shown in table 3. number of leaves of maize gradually increased from the 4 th to the 8 th week after sowing. there were significant differences in the number of leaves of the hybrid varieties investigated. hybrid variety 9022-13 had the highest number of leaves of 8.3 at 4 weeks after sowing, followed by oba super 2 which had asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 296-310 302 7.4. oba 98 had the lowest number of leaves (7.2). during the 6 th and 8 th week of the same year, hybrid variety 9022-13 was also outstanding in the number of leaves with values of 12.3 and 13.8, respectively. oba super 2 plants had the lowest number of leaves with values of 10.1 and 11.6 in the 6 th and 8 th weeks of 2008, respectively. in 2009, the mean number of leaves of hybrid variety 9022-13 from the 6 th to the 8 th week (13.2) indicated that the trend in the number of leaves did not change. the superiority in number of leaves at the end of the 8 th week, with respect to variety was 9022-13 > oba 98 > oba super 2. based on spacing, plants sown at 75 cm x 15 cm had the highest number of leaves from the 4 th to 8 th week after sowing in both years of evaluation. there were no significant differences in number of leaves of plants sown at both 75 cm x 25 cm and 75 cm x 35 cm. the results of interaction indicated that variety and spacing were significantly (p < 0.05) different and positively affected number of leaves of maize. effects of variety and spacing on leaf area of hybrid maize the response of leaf area of hybrid maize to variety and spacing in 2008 and 2009 is shown in table 4. leaf area of maize gradually increased from the 4 th to the 8 th week after sowing. there were significant differences in leaf area of the hybrid maize varieties evaluated. in the 4 th week of 2008, hybrid variety 9022-13 had the highest leaf area (149.0 cm 2 ), followed by oba 98 which had 361.7 cm 2 . oba super plants had the smallest leaf area (331.3 cm 2 ). the mean value with respect to leaf area of hybrid variety 9022-13 (673.2 cm 2 ) indicated that the variety was superior to other varieties tested by the end of the 8 th week after sowing. in 2009, hybrid variety 9022-13 was also outstanding in leaf area with values of 161.8 cm 2 in the 4 th week while the mean value of oba super 2 plants was least (578.5cm2). the order of superiority with respect to leaf area was 9022-13 > oba 98 > oba super 2. based on spacing, plants sown at 75 cm x 35 cm in 2008 were superior in leaf area with values of 140.3 cm 2 at week 4, 455.4 cm 2 at week 6, and 703.5 cm 2 during week 8. the trend did not change in 2009. the superiority in leaf area based in spacing was 75 cm x 35 cm > 75 cm x 25 cm > 75 cm x 15 cm. the interactions results showed that variety and spacing were significantly (p < 0.05) and positively affected leaf area of maize. effects of variety and spacing on stem girth of hybrid maize the effects of variety and spacing in stem girth of hybrid maize in 2008 and 2009 are shown in table 5. stem girth of the different varieties investigated gradually increased from 4 th – 8 th weeks after sowing. there were significant differences in stem girth of the varieties evaluated. in 2008, hybrid variety 9022-13 had the highest stem girth of 50.0 mm, at the 4 th week after sowing, followed by oba 98 which had 38.4 mm. oba super 2 had the lowest stem girth (36.4 mm). during the 6 th week after sowing, variety 9022-13 was also superior with stem asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 296-310 303 girth of 70-0 mm, followed by oba 98 with stem girth of 64.4 mm. oba super 2 plants had the smallest stem girth (63.5mm). at 8 weeks after sowing, variety 9022-13 was also outstanding in stem girth (83.3mm) while oba super 2 had the lowest stem girth (73.3mm). in 2009, the trend in superiority of stem girth did not change. hybrid variety 9022-13 plants had the highest stem girth at 4, 6 and 6 weeks after sowing (51.3 mm, 105.6 mm and 115.5 mm, respectively). oba super 2 plants had the smallest stem girth of 37.1 mm at the 4 th week, 77.8 mm at 6 th week and 89.8 mm at the 8 th weeks after sowing. based on spacing, maize plants sown at 75 cm x 35 cm in 2008 had the highest stem girth of 46.0 mm at the 4 th week, 75.7 mm at the 6 th week, and 87.7 at the 8 th week. in 2008 also, plants sown at spacing of 75 cm x 15 cm had the smallest stem girth of 34.8 mm at the 4 th week, 55.5 mm at the 6 th week, and 67.7 mm at the 8 th week after sowing. stem girth followed similar trend in 2009. plants sown at spacing of 75 cm x 35 cm were superior in stem girth while plants sown at spacing of 75 cm x 15 cm had the smallest stem girths. the interaction results showed that variety and spacing were significantly (p < 0.05) different and positively affected stem girth of maize. table 2: effects of variety and spacing on plant height of maize in 2008 and 2009 weeks after sowing 4 6 8 plant height (cm) 2008 2009 mean 2008 2009 mean 2008 2009 mean variety oba super 2 31.9c 36.6a 34.3b 58.8c 69.3c 64.1c 146.5c 166.1b 156.3c oba 98 33.4b 36.6a 35.0a 60.4b 73.3b 66.9b 163.5b 163.5c 163.5b 9022-13 35.1a 35.1b 35.1a 68.3a 82.6a 75.5a 168.2a 171.8a 170.0a spacing (cm) 75 x 15 36.2a 43.1a 39.7a 67.7a 87.3a 77.5a 172.5a 180.9a 176.7a 75 x 25 31.5b 32.9b 32.2b 65.3b 72.9b 69.1b 158.2b 154.8c 156.5c 75 x 35 32.6b 32.3b 32.5b 59.7c 65.1c 62.4c 147.5c 157.9b 152.7c means with the same letter(s) under the same column are not significantly (p > 0.05) different using duncan multiple range test (dmrt) table 3: effects of variety and spacing on number of leaves of maize in 2008 and 2009 weeks after sowing 4 6 8 number of leaves 2008 2009 mean 2008 2009 mean 2008 2009 mean variety oba super 2 7.4b 7.5a 7.5b 10.1c 11.1c 10.6c 11.6c 12.8a 12.2c oba 98 7.2c 7.3b 7.3c 10.5b 11.3b 10.9b 13.0b 12.7b 12.9b 9022-13 8.3a 7.3b 7.8a 12.3a 11.4a 11.9a 13.8a 12.6c 13.2a spacing (cm 2 ) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 296-310 304 75 x 15 7.8a 8.2a 8.0a 11.3a 12.0a 11.7a 13.4a 14.2a 13.8a 75 x 25 7.9a 7.2b 7.6b 10.7b 10.9b 10.8b 12.4b 12.0b 12.2b 75 x 35 7.7a 7.0b 7.4b 10.9b 10.9b 10.9b 12.5b 11.9b 12.2b means with the same letter(s) under the same column are not significantly (p > 0.05) different using duncan multiple range test (dmrt) table 4: effects of variety and spacing on leaf area of maize in 2008 and 2009 weeks after sowing 4 6 8 leaf area ( cm 2 ) 2008 2009 mean 2008 2009 mean 2008 2009 mean variety oba super 2 108.8b 121.2b 115.0b 331.3c 314.1b 322.7c 563.5b 589.4c 576.5c oba 98 98.6c 117.6c 108.1c 361.7b 287.9c 324.8b 596.2a 626.4b 611.3b 9022-13 149.0a 161.8a 155.4a 483.5a 500.5a 492.0a 559.3c 787.1a 673.2a spacing (cm 2 ) 75 x 15 110.7b 112.1c 111.4c 290.2c 288.0c 289.1c 567.7c 606.8c 587.3c 75 x 25 105.4c 130.8b 118.1b 389.9b 377.6b 383.8b 656.2b 675.8b 666.0b 75 x 35 140.3a 157.6a 148.9a 455.4a 436.9a 446.2a 703.5a 723.8a 713.7a means with the same letter(s) under the same column are not significantly (p > 0.05) different using duncan multiple range test (dmrt) table 5: effects of variety and spacing on stem girth of maize in 2008 and 2009 weeks after sowing 4 6 8 stem girth ( mm ) 2008 2009 mean 2008 2009 mean 2008 2009 mean variety oba super 2 36.4c 37.1c 36.8c 63.5c 77.8c 79.8b 73.3c 89.8b 81.6c oba 98 38.4b 37.7b 38.1b 64.4b 78.8b 71.6c 76.6b 88.9c 82.8b 9022-13 50.0a 51.3a 50.6a 70.0a 105.6a 87.8a 83.3a 115.5a 99.4a spacing (cm 2 ) 75 x 15 34.8c 33.9c 34.4c 55.5c 74.2c 64.9c 67.7c 85.5c 76.6c 75 x 25 43.8b 44.4b 44.1b 66.6b 131.6b 98.9b 77.7cb 97.5b 87.6b 75 x 35 46.0a 46.4a 46.2a 75.7a 180.0a 127.9a 87.7a 111.1a 99.4a means with the same letter(s) under the same column are not significantly (p > 0.05) different using duncan multiple range test (dmrt). discussion physico-chemical properties of the experimental site the sandy loam texture of the experimental site may be attributed to the parent material (pm) from which the soil was formed and the climate of the area. the soil might be formed from sandstone and quartz parent materials. these impart sandy texture to the soils. the high sand content of the soil could be attributed to high content of quartz in the parent material (brady and weils, 1999). the weakly acid nature of the soil of the area may be traced to the marked leaching of exchangeable bases resulting from the high rainfall associated with the environment and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 296-310 305 the dissociation of strong and functional group in the organic matter. this is in harmony with the findings of esu (2001). the low organic matter status of the experimental site could be attributed to the rapid decomposition of organic matter due to high solar radiation and moisture, these favour optimum microbial activities in the soil. it could also be attributed to the annual seasonal bush burning which tend to deplete organic matter accumulation in the soil (landor, 1991). the low level of total nitrogen could be possibly due to low organic matter content of the soil which contributes about 90-95% of soil nitrogen (nnaji et al., 2002). it could also be attributed to leaching of nitrate by torrential rainfall prevalent in the environment (olatunji et al., 2007). the high level of phosphorus may be attributed to either of these reasons: (i) history of land use and cultural practices associated with the land use (that is, cropping of crops that do not take much p nutrient from the soil and the application of p organic or inorganic fertilizers (nnaji et al, 2002 and nnaji, 2008). (ii) the parent material from which the soil was formed may be rich in p minerals (brady and weils, 1999). (iii) the soil may not be highly acidic as to cause high level of p fixation (brady and weils, 1999; omokri et al., 2007). the low values of exchangeable cation may be attributed to the leaching of bases from the solum due to the high rainfall characteristics of the area. the low cation exchange capacity could be attributed to the pm from which the soil was formed, and low organic matter (om) content of the soil. the pm from which the soil was formed may be poor in basic nutrients. fmanr (1990) noted that soils of the study area were dominated by fe oxide and kaolinites. these clay minerals are low in basic cations (esu, 2001). the exchangeable acidity was low possibly because of leaching of basic cations by torrential rainfall. the results generally are in harmony with the findings of osaretin et al., (2006), olatunji et al., (2007) and the results of soil fertility evaluation in the region. it is also consistent with the findings of nnaji et al. (2002 and 2008) which reported that the history of landuse and cultural practices affect soil conditions and crop productivity. effect of variety and spacing on plant height of maize the differential growth with respect to plant height observed among the varieties may be attributed to differences in genetic characteristics of the individual varieties, including rapid growth rates, tallness or shortness of species. this is similar to the findings of majambu et al., (1996) and ibrahim et al, (2000) that attributed the differences in growth indices of crops to genetic constitution. maize plants spaced 15cm grew taller than other plants possibly because of increased competition for space, sunlight and available nutrients. this is similar to the findings of teasdale (1995), widdicombe and thelen (2002), and dalley et al. (2006) who attributed the increased growth rates and earlier canopy closure of narrow row spaced crops to quest for increased light interception as well as increased availability of soil moisture asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 296-310 306 because of equidistant distribution of crop plants. it is also consistent with the reports of al-rudha and al-youmis (1998) that maize sown at 15cm had maximum plant height compared with their counterparts sown at wider intra-row spacing. effect of variety and spacing on number of leaves of maize the differences observed in the number of leaves of maize may be attributed to differences in growth characters which are being influenced by genetic make-up of the plants. this is similar to the findings of sajjan et al., (2002) who reported that growth characters of crops varied because of differences in their genetic make-up. maize plant sown on 15cm spacing had higher number of leaves than their counterparts which were sown at wider spacing possibly because of increased growth rate in search for space, sunlight and other environmental resources. this is consistent with the findings of al-rudha and al-youmis (1998) and ali et al. (2003) that made similar reports on 15cm-spaced maize plants. effect of variety and spacing on leaf area of maize the differences observed in leaf area of the varieties of maize sown could be attributed to the differences in leaf arrangement, photosynthetic activities of leaves, differences in chlorophyll content and activity of photosynthetic enzymes. this is similar to the findings of gwizdek (1989) who attributed the differences between the leaf area and other growth characters of maize genotypes to differences in photosynthetic activity of leaves, leaf arrangement, chlorophyll content, stomatal conductance value and activity of photosynthetic enzymes. the differences observed in leaf area is also similar to the findings of akinfoesoye et al., (1997); odeleye and odeleye (2001) who suggested that since maize varieties differ in leaf area, other growth characters as well as in yield and its components, breeders must select most promising combiners in their breeding programmes. increased intra-row spacing resulted in larger leaf area possibly because there was a reduction in competition for space, sunlight and nutrients within the wider spaced plants. this is similar to the findings of ali et al., (2003) who reported that competition between maize plants for light, soil fertility and other environmental factors were markedly increased with highest population but decreased with lower plant population. effect of variety and spacing on stem girth (mm) of maize the superiority of hybrid variety 9022-13 over other varieties with respect to stem girth may be attributed to the special qualities credited to hybrids, including disease resistance, early maturity, uniformity in flowering and ear-placement, and very high yield. this is similar to the findings of obi (1999), kim (1997), olakojo et al. (1998) and udoh (2005) who reported that some hybrid maize varieties have yield advantage over other maize varieties because they possess such special qualities as high yield, disease resistance, and early maturity, uniformity in flowering and ear placement, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 296-310 307 and ease of harvesting using combined harvester. maize plants sown at spacing of 35cm were superior in stem girth over those sown at narrower or smaller spacing possibly because the plants obtained more soil moisture and nutrients than narrower-spaced plants. this is similar to the findings of barbier et al. (2000); hamayan (2003); dalley et al. (2006) and azam et al. (2007) who reported that wider-spaced maize plants obtained more soil moisture and nutrients than narrower plants. conclusion and recommendations the study was carried out to evaluate the effects of variety and spacing on growth characters of hybrid maize. three hybrid maize varieties were evaluated under three different plant spacings for such growth characters as plants height, number of leaves, leaf area and stem girth. it was a factorial experiment carried out in a randomized complete block design (rbcd) with three replicates. results obtained indicated that hybrid variety 9022-13 was outstanding in growth characters while spacing of 75 cm x 35 cm had highest leaf area and stem girth. based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that hybrid variety 9022-13 be grown in the study area for enhanced growth characters. also, spacing of 75 cm x 35 cm is recommended to enhance increased stem girth and leaf area since their photosynthetic activities could positively improve maize yield. references adekunle, i. o., akirinade, o. e. and azeaz, j. o. 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(2006). effect of nfertilizer and plant density on yield and quality of maize in sandy soil. research journal of agriculture and biological sciences, 2(4): 156-161. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 2 february 2013. † corresponding author acknowledgements: we would like to thank the center for north american studies, the national institute for food and agriculture, and the louisiana agricultural experiment station for their support of this work. this manuscript was approved by the lsu agcenter as publication 2013-227-7873. an examination of the crop acreage allocation decision process under uncertainty young-jae lee (adjunct assistant professor; lsu agcenter; baton rouge, louisiana, usa) p. lynn kennedy† (crescent city tigers alumni professor; lsu agcenter; baton rouge, louisiana, usa) citation: young-jae lee and p. lynn kennedy (2013) “an examination of the crop acreage allocation decision process under uncertainty”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 46-55. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3): 46-55 46 author(s) young-jae lee adjunct assistant professor; lsu agcenter; baton rouge, louisiana, usa p. lynn kennedy crescent city tigers alumni professor; lsu agcenter; baton rouge, louisiana, usa an examination of the crop acreage allocation decision process under uncertainty abstract this study seeks to determine the workings of a system of acreage allocation given price and yield uncertainty so as to identify the role that uncertainty in market output has in acreage allocation decisions. this study adapts expected utility as developed by chavas and holt. the major findings of this study are as follows: 1) the effect of wealth in acreage decisions depends not only on the risk preference of the farm but also on the risk in and the structure of the output market, 2) violation of symmetry can come from (i) differing expectations regarding yield and price, (ii) risk differences in the price and yield for each crop, and/or (iii) different risk preferences among farm households, 3) the non-negativity of own compensated acreage effects would be satisfied if proposition 1 or 2 holds, 4) production decisions would be affected by price and yield risk even when all input and output prices change proportionally, in which case homogeneity would not be satisfied without proposition 1, and 5) symmetry of expected price and yield requires additional restrictions on the ratio of expected yields and prices and responsiveness of acreage to cross yield and price. keywords: acreage allocation, uncertainty, price, yield, risk preference introduction the acreage allocation decision is related to fixed input information and quasi-fixed output information. at planting time, a farm household allocates acreage under the premise of relating certain production factors (e.g., input costs) in some sort of relationship with assumptions regarding what market conditions will be at the time of harvest (e.g., market price given certain quantities). uncertainty is directly related to price and yield in the output market. the randomness of price is represented by iii epp  where  ,xhei  ,   0iee and   ii ppe  . the variable x represents a set of infinite demand shifting variables and  represents a set of passive parameters of the variables. therefore, price will deviate from expected price  ipe if 0i i in a crop year. one example of price deviation could come from changes in consumer tastes and/or population diversity. similarly, the randomness of yield is represented by iii yy  where   ,zfi  ,   0ie  and   ii yye  . the variable z represents a set of input factors uncontrolled by the farm household and  represents a set of passive parameters of the variables. therefore, yield will deviate from expected yield  iye if 0i i in a crop year. one example of yield deviation could come from unusual and uncontrollable events of nature in a crop year (e.g., drought, pestilence, etc.). related to uncertainty, there are numerous studies that provide evidence showing that risk and risk preference are important factors in agricultural production decisions (behrman, 1968; just, 1974; lin, 1977). chavas and pope (1985) examined expected utility maximizing conditions in allocating input factors under output price uncertainty for any risk preference and probability structure. in their study, they indicated that risk responsive behavior under uncertainty influences output supply and input factor demand and that acreage allocation decision under uncertainty… 47 those effects are critical if firms are not riskneutral. chavas and holt (1990) developed an acreage supply response model using a specified expected utility function. in their study, they indicated that risk and wealth play an important role in determining acreage allocations. using these previous studies as a starting point, this study develops a system of acreage allocation under price and yield uncertainty to identify acreage response to changes in wealth and risk. as previous studies have indicated, wealth and risk effects on acreage response will depend on the risk preference of a particular farm household. therefore, any such system should show how wealth and risk effects on acreage response depend on the farm household’s risk preference. in addition, a system derived from expected utility maximizing procedure will be examined under the auspices of fundamental postulates of classical microeconomic theory. these include symmetry, positive semi-definiteness, and homogeneity. in order to achieve these objectives, this study will discuss model development in section two, properties of the acreage equations in section three, elasticities of net profit, price, and yield in section four, and present implications and concluding remarks in the final section. model development this analysis starts by defining a percentage (or share) for arable crop acreage. the total acreage of a farm household is defined as    n i ial 1 where ia is the number of acres devoted to crop i and l is the total acreage available for producing n crops. individual farm size typically differs across farms so that the value of l is different depending upon the specifications for each individual farm household. to eliminate this difference among farm households, the acreage constraint can be modified into percentage (or share) form and expressed as 1 1   n i ia where ia is acreage share of crop i  laa ii / . the sum of share acreage allocated to n crops will be equal to one regardless of differences in individual farm households. also, the acreage share allows for the acreage constraint be defined as (1) 1 1         kn i ia . consider a farm household producing n crops where iy is yield of the ith crop per acre and ip is the corresponding market price, i = 1, . . .,n, then the share of acreage revenue is given as (2) i n i ii aypr    1 . denoting the cost of production per acre of the ith crop as ic , the total share acreage cost of agricultural production is expressed as (3)    n i iiacc 1 . since output prices  nppp ,...,1 and crop yields  nyyy ,...,1 are not observed by a farm household when production decisions are made, share of acreage revenue (r) is a variable which we associate as being ‘risky’. in contrast, total cost is fixed because input prices are known at the time crop acreages are allocated. now, let the budget constraint of a farm household be represented by: (4)    n i iiawg 1  , where g represents all goods purchased by the farm household, w denotes exogenous income (or wealth), and iiii cyp  is net profit of crop i. g, w, and i ( ip and ic ) are assumed to be numéraire normalized by a consumer price index, q. therefore, g also denotes the farm household’s consumption expenditures. equation (4) states that wealth (w) plus farm profit (π) is equal to consumption expenditures (g).1 if a farm household recognizes that the expected net profit for crop i is greater than that for crop j     jjii ee   at planting, then a profit maximizing farm household will allocate all arable acreage to crop i. therefore, we need an assumption in order to identify the effects of the random components of price and yield on acreage decisions that the expected net profit of crops are equal to each other, ji   . however, as has been alluded to, real net profit is different ( asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3): 46-55 48 ji   ) because of the random nature of the components of price  e and yield   . in addition, let us assume that a farm household’s preferences are represented by a von neumannmorgenstern utility function (denoted  gu ) satisfying the necessary condition of concavity. if a farm household maximizes expected utility under competition, then the decision model is then expressed as (5)                    kn i iaeul 1 1 , where e is the expectation operator over the random variables and    n i iiaw 1  represents wealth. this formulation illustrates that an acreage decision is made under uncertainty because of the random nature attributed to the variables of yield and price with given probability distributions. consequently, the expectation, e, in (5) is taken over the uncertain variables p and y and is based on the information available to a farm household at the time of planting. the utility function  u is assumed to be monotonically increasing in wealth at a decreasing rate. also, under the assumption of competitiveness, the decision variable (a) does not influence the probability distributions of p and y. the economic optimization problem (5) for the acreage allocation decision explains (i) risk and the attitude to risk as having a tangible effect on the acreage allocation process, and (ii) it examines the system of acreage allocation equations under the postulates of classical microeconomic theory which include symmetry, positive semidefiniteness, and homogeneity. in brief, we let *a denote the optimal acreage choice in (5), such a choice depends on the expected wealth and the distribution of expected profit. in other words, the optimal acreage decision can be expressed as   ;;* wa . from equation (5), the n first-order conditions to a farm household expected utility maximization problem are given by (6.1)   0 1 1              nn i iia i a akaue a l l ii  , and (6.2) 01 1             kn i ia l l   . then, n optimal acreage equations are defined as follows: (7)                  n j a a i j i ue ue a 1 * , ni ,...,1 . properties of the system of acreage share equations wealth effect sandmo (1971) and chavas and holt (1990) have examined the relationship between wealth effects, wa  /* , and the nature of risk preference. their studies indicate that a wealth effect of zero implies constant absolute risk aversion, while a non-zero wealth effect corresponds to non-constant absolute risk aversion. in order to examine their findings, equation (7) can be differentiated in terms of wealth (w), (8)   2 1 *                          n j a n ij awa i j ji ue ueue dw da , where  wai ue        uuepeyucyp iiiiiiiii  see appendix i. u represents an expected change in the marginal utility of wealth (π) when w changes and u represents a real change in the marginal utility of wealth (π) when w changes. the probability of w having a specific value in  is   10  h and   1 0  h dww . the properties of wealth’s effect on the acreage allocation decision can be summarized in the following propositions. acreage allocation decision under uncertainty… 49 proposition 1. a zero wealth effect will be satisfied if a farm household is constantly absolute risk averse. proposition 2. a zero wealth effect will be satisfied under non-constant absolute risk averse if disturbances of price and yield are zero. conversely, a zero effect of wealth will not be satisfied under non-constant absolute risk aversion if disturbances of price and yield are not zero. proof if a farm household is constant absolute risk averse, then   iaue  will be zero regardless of risk of price, yield, and market condition. thus, 0// **  wawa ji in equation (8). also, when e and ε are zero with cpy  in the competitive market,  wai ue  will be zero regardless of whether a farm household is constant or non-constant absolute risk averse. that is, 0// **  wawa ji in equation (8). as a result, a zero effect of wealth (w) on acreage decisions will depend on that farm household’s risk preference, risk preference with respect to the output market, and risk preference with respect to output market structure. farm effect in equation (7),   iaue        ii iiiii euu eyuupuuu       see appendix i. u represents the expected marginal utility of wealth, (π), which is expressed as  dwwuu h   0  . u represents the real marginal utility of wealth (π) as w changes from h0 to h1. therefore, n differential acreage allocation equations can be obtained from differentiating equation (7) in terms of  , e ,  , and e . this is illustrated mathematically as (9)       n j jjij n j jij n j jij n j jiji ded dedda 11 11 *   . the ownand cross-parameters of  in equation (9) are (10.1) 2 1 1                         n j j n j ij ii uu   , and (10.2) 2 1               n j j i ij uu   , where       jjjj jjjj euueyuu puuu       . the parameters of  ,  , and  are presented in appendix ii. symmetry and positive semi-definite restrictions with respect to optimization for equation (5) are related to the compensated wealth acreage effect, assuming that one holds utility constant. the compensated wealth acreage effect takes the form (11) * ** i i j i j c i a dw da d da d da   , nji ,...,1,  . where j c ia  / is the wealth compensated acreage effect of crop j on crop i maintaining constant utility of a farm household. the matrix of compensated effects is symmetric and positive semi-definite (chavas, 1987). as chavas and holt (1990) indicated, equation (11) also implies that the slope of the uncompensated function jia  /* can be decomposed into the sum of two terms: the compensated slope (or substitution effect) j c ia  / which maintains a given level of utility and the wealth effect  ** / ii awa  . symmetry the cross compensated acreage effects are derived using equations (7), (8), and (10.2) as follows: (12) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3): 46-55 50    3 1 2 1                                       n j j i n ij jiiiiii n j j i j c i uuepey uu d da    . equation (12) indicates that cross-compensated acreage effects will depend upon the level of uncertainty and the expected values for price and yield. therefore, the general condition of symmetry under uncertainty cannot be satisfied because disturbances are different for price and yield. however, if proposition 1 or 2 holds, then the symmetry condition will be satisfied. proof since the expected net profit of crop i is equal to the expected net profit of crop j, ji n i i j n i i i ij uuuu                            2 1 2 1 given condition, i c j j c i d da d da   because  iiiiii epey   will be zero when proportion 1 holds or i will be zero when proportion 2 holds. therefore, any violation of the symmetry condition related to uncertain output market at planting time stems from 1) a farm household that has a different expectation with respect to crop yield and price, 2) price and yield risk for each crop is different, and/or 3) an individual farm household has a different/unique risk preference. positive semi-definite own compensated acreage effects are derived by using equations (7), (8), and (10.1) as (13)      3 1 2 1                                                 n j j i n ij jiiiiii n j j n ij iiiiiij i c i uuepey epeyu d da    . therefore, the general condition of positive semidefiniteness under uncertainty indicates that the non-negativity of own-compensated acreage effects will depend upon 1) price and yield risk (direction and magnitude), 2) expected values of price and yield, and 3) the relative strength between u and u . regardless of a farm household’s risk preference, violation of the nonnegativity condition implies that the acreage allocated for crop i can decrease even when the expected net profit for crop i increases. this occurs because price and yield risks are high (in absolute terms) and a change in the real marginal utility of wealth of a farm household is relatively small compared to a change in expected marginal utility of wealth. however, if proposition 1 or 2 holds, then the non-negativity condition of the own-compensated acreage effect will be satisfied. proof under proposition 1 or 2, the own compensated acreage effects will be reduced into the form 2 1                        n j j n ij j i c i u uu d da    . we know that expected marginal utility is positive          0 0 h ii duu  . also, allocation of acreage to crop j requires that expected revenue in producing crop j be greater than or equal to the total cost of producing crop j, implying 0j . therefore, 0 i c i d da  when proposition 1 or 2 holds. acreage allocation decision under uncertainty… 51 homogeneity regardless of a farm household’s risk preference, the homogeneity condition is defined as: (14)                      n j n j j n j jjjjjj j c i epeyu d da 1 2 1 1 0   . the general condition of homogeneity depends, therefore on je , j , and jje  . this implies that production decisions can be affected by risks associated with price and yield even when all input and output prices change proportionally. in this case, homogeneity would not be satisfied without proposition 1. acreage elasticities to study the relation between acreage elasticity of expected net profit and acreage elasticity of expected price and yield under uncertainty, this study will consider the shift in i brought about by changes in ip and iy . such a change in i is defined as follows: (15) iiiii ydppdyd  . substituting (15) into (7), we obtain n differential acreage equations defined in terms of p and y as follows: (16)       n j jjij n j jij n j jij n j jij n j jiji ded deydpdda 11 111 *   . the ownand cross-coefficients of expected price elasticity   in equation (16) are (17.1)    2 1                 n j j n ij jii ii uuyu   , (17.2)    2 1               n j j jii ij uuyu   . the ownand cross-coefficients of expected yield elasticity   in equation (16) are expressed as (18.1)    2 1                 n j j n ij jii ii euupu  , (18.2)    2 1               n j j jii ij uuyu   . since the coefficients of expected price   and yield   elasticity are weighted by expected yield  iy and price  ip , respectively, symmetry conditions do not hold even when propositions 1 and 2 hold because the expected yield of crop i could be different from the expected yield of crop j ( ji yy  ) and the expected price of crop i could be different from the expected price of crop j( ji pp  ). however, this relationship can identify the cross-effects of expected price and yield on acreage allocation when the condition i j j i d da d da  **  is satisfied in which case propositions 1 or 2 hold. the cross effects of expected price and yield on acreage allocation can then be expressed by the following equations, (19.1) j i j j i j i j i j i j j i yd da p y yd da p y pd da y y pd da ****  and (19.2) j i j j i j i j i j i j j i pd da y p pd da y p yd da p p yd da ****  . the mathematical procedure to derive equations (19.1) and (19.2) is discussed in appendix iii. as seen in the above equations, the symmetry conditions of expected price and yield would not be satisfied without additional restrictions with respect to the ratios of expected yield and prices of crops i and j as well as cross-responsiveness of acreage to changes in expected yield and price. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3): 46-55 52 for example, the cross-effect of expected price of crop j on acreage of crop i would be equal to the cross-effect of expected price of crop i on the acreage of crop j only when the expected yield of crop i is equal to the expected yield of crop j and the cross effects of expected yields of crops i and j on the acreage allocations of crops j and i are zero. conclusions this study developed a system of acreage allocation under price and yield uncertainty to identify the role that output market uncertainty plays in acreage allocation. the major findings of this study are as follows. first, a zero effect of wealth in acreage decisions would be satisfied regardless of uncertainty with regards to price, yield and market condition, if a farm household is constant absolute risk averse. undoubtedly, when price and yield are determined in a competitive market (i.e., e and ε are zero with cpy  ), a zero effect of wealth in acreage decisions would be satisfied regardless whether a farm household is constant or non-constant absolute risk averse. these results imply that a zero effect of wealth on acreage decisions would depend on 1) risk preference and/or 2) the degree of uncertainty and structure of the output market. the pre-requisite symmetric condition of the hessian matrix of expected utility would not be satisfied because disturbances of price and yield are different. however, the symmetric condition would be satisfied if proposition 1 or 2 holds. this implies that a violation of symmetry might come from 1) different expectation of a farm household on yield and price, 2) different acceptable risk levels of yield and price for each crop, and 3) different risk preference of individual farm households. the non-negativity of the diagonal elements of the hessian matrix of expected utility would depend on 1) risk of price and yield (direction and magnitude), 2) expected values of price and yield, and 3) relative strength of changes in real and expected marginal utility  u and u . regardless of a farm household’s risk preference, the violation of the non-negativity constraint under uncertainty implies that acreage of crop i can decrease even when the expected net profit of crop i increases. this is because price and yield risks are disproportionately skewed in a negative direction if it happens and thus a change in the real marginal utility of wealth of a farm household is relatively small (in magnitude) as compared to a change in the expected marginal utility of wealth. if propositions 1 or 2 hold however, the non-negativity condition of the diagonal elements of the hessian matrix of expected utility would be satisfied. homogeneity under uncertainty would depend upon the variation (individually) and co-variation of both price and yield. this implies that production decisions would be affected by risk associated with the variability of price and yield even when all input and output prices change proportionally. in this case, homogeneity would not be satisfied without proposition 1. unlike the conditions needed to achieve symmetry for expected profit, the symmetric conditions of expected price and yield will not be satisfied without imposing additional restrictions regarding the ratios of expected prices and yields of crops i and j as well as the cross responsiveness of acreage to changes in expected price and yield because the cross effects of expected price and yield on acreage allocation would depend upon the ratio of values of expected yields and prices as well as cross-responsiveness of acreage on changes in expected price and yield. footnote 1. see chavas and holt (1990) references arnade, c. and d. kelch (2007). estimation of area elasticities from a standard profit function. american journal of agricultural economics, 89(3). 727-737. arrow, k. j. (1965). aspects of the theory of risk bearing, helsinki: johnsonin saaatie. behrman, j. r. (1968). supply response in underdeveloped agriculture, new york: northholland publishing co. berndt, r. e. and n. e. savin. (1975). estimation and hypothesis testing in singular equation systems with autoregressive disturbances. econometrica, 43(5/6). 937-958. chambers, g. r. and r. e. just (1989). estimating multioutput technologies. american acreage allocation decision under uncertainty… 53 journal of agricultural economics, 71(4). 980995. chavas, jean-paul (1987). constrained choices under risk. southern economic journal, 53(3). 662-676. chavas, jean-paul and m. t. holt (1990). acreage decisions under risk: the case of corn and soybeans. american journal of agricultural economics, 72(3). 529-538. chavas, jean-paul and r. d. pope (1985). price uncertainty and competitive firm behavior: testable hypotheses from expected utility maximization. journal of economics and business, 37(3). 223235. christopher, ackello-ogutu, q. paris. and w. a. williams (1985). testing a von liebig crop response function against polynomial specifications. american journal of agricultural economics, 67(4). 873-880. coyle, b. (1999). risk aversion and yield uncertainty in duality models of production: a mean-variance approach. american journal of agricultural economics, 81(3). 553-567. just, e. r. (1974). an investigation of the importance of risk in farmer’s decisions. american journal of agricultural economics, 56(1). 14-25. just, r. and r. d. pope (1978). stochastic specification of production functions and economics implications. journal of econometrics, 7. 67-86. lin, w. (1977). measuring aggregate supply response under instability. american journal of agricultural economics, 59(5). 903-907. lin, w. and r. dismukes (2006). supply response under risk: implications for countercyclical payments’ production impact. review of agricultural economics, 29(1). 64-86. shumway, c. r. (1983). supply, demand, and technology in a multiproduct industry: texas field crops. american journal of agricultural economics, 65(4). 748-760. sandmo, a. (1971). on the theory of the competitive firm under price uncertainty. american economic review, 61, 65-73. appendix i: expected value of first and second derivative utility functions expected value of first derivative utility function   iaue    iiiii cyepue   ))((    iiiiiii eeypue           iiiiiii eueeueyuepue             ueeeuueeyeuyuepupue iiiiiiiiiiii          ueeypueeeyp iiiiiiiiiiiii        ueeypueeyp iiiiiiiiiiiii  where      h ii daauueu 0  .       iiiiiii euueyuupuuu    . expected values of second derivative utility function  wai ue    iaue   because of 1   dw d w .   iiiii cyepue   ))((   )( iiiiiiiii epeycypue    asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3): 46-55 54          iiiiiiiii eueuepeueyuecyp                 ueeeuueupueeeuyuecyp iiiiiiiiiiiii             ueeueuepupueeyueyuecyp iiiiiiiiiiiiiii          uepeyueepeycyp iiiiiiiiiiiiiii             ueepeyuepeyuecyp iiiiiiiiiiiiiii            ueuepeyuecyp iiiiiiiii        uuepeyucyp iiiiiiiii  where     i h i daauueu   0  . appendix ii: the parameters of  ,  , and  in equation (11) in equation (9),                    n j jjjjjjj iiiiiii i euueyuupuuu euueyuupuuu a 1 *   .     2 1 1 *                          n j j ii n j ji ii i i puupuu de da   .   2 1 *               n j j j ij j i puu de da  .     2 1 1 *                          n j j ii n j ji ii i i eyuuyuu d da   .   2 1 *               n j j j ij j i yuu d da   .     2 1 1 *                          n j j ii n j j ii ii i euuuu de da    . acreage allocation decision under uncertainty… 55   2 1 *               n j j ij jj i uu de da   . appendix iii: price and yield effects on acreage if i j j i d da d da  **  given proposition 1 or 2, then j i jj i jj i yd da ppd da yd da *** 11   and i j i j ii j ij i jj i jj i d da yd da ppd da yyd da ppd da yd da  ****** 1111  . therefore, price effect of crop j on acreage of crop i is j i j j i j i j i j i j j i yd da p y yd da p y pd da y y pd da ****  , and yield effect of crop j on acreage of crop i is effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. trends and variability of rice, maize, and wheat yields in south asian countries: a challenge for food security mahadeb prasad poudel (department of tropical agriculture and international cooperation, national pingtung university of science and technology, taiwan) shwu-en chen (department of agribusiness management, national pingtung university of science and technology, neipu, pingtung, taiwan) citation: mahadeb prasad poudel and shwu-en chen (2012) “trends and variability of rice, maize, and wheat yields in south asian countries: a challenge for food security”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 584 597. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 584-597. 584 author(s) mahadeb prasad poudel department of tropical agriculture and international cooperation, national pingtung university of science and technology taiwan shwu-en chen department of agribusiness management, national pingtung university of science and technology, neipu, pingtung taiwan trends and variability of rice, maize, and wheat yields in south asian countries: a challenge for food security abstract during the last six decades, the yield and production of rice, maize, and wheat grew remarkably in south asian region. as these cereals are staple foods, the growth and fluctuation of yields greatly impacts on food security. this study aims to examine the growth patterns and variability of rice, wheat, and maize yields in south asian countries namely bangladesh, india, nepal, pakistan, and sri lanka. utilizing the yield data during 1961-2010, we applied the linear and quadratic regressions for yield trends and variability analyses. quadratic model was fitted well in all data sets except wheat yield in pakistan. a clear indication of slowing growth rates was observed for wheat yield in bangladesh and india, as well as a significant increase in maize yield variability was realized in bangladesh, india, pakistan, and sri lank. the factors influencing for slowing yield growth rates are considered as comparative disadvantage of wheat to boro rice in case of bangladesh, whereas depletion of soil nutrient contents in the rice-wheat production areas and negative impact of climate change in india. the slowing yield growths exerted a challenge for food security in bangladesh and india. thus, policy implementations are urgent to improve the wheat yield growth and maize yield stabilization in the concerning countries. keywords: yield trend, growth pattern, yield variability, south asia introduction over the years, production and productivity of some crops increased remarkably at global, regional, and national levels. improved technology, agricultural practices, high-yielding varieties, plant protection measures, chemical fertilizers, and mechanization have been the drivers of increased production per unit area of farm land (hobbs and morris, 1996). by this, a desired quantity of food-grain is produced, thereby, meeting the demand for growing populations in one hand, whereas, a more instable production is realized on the other hand (larson et al, 2004). apparently, demand for food is continuously rising as the global population is projected to reach 9.1 billion in 2050 (united nations population division, 2000). thus, an understanding of yield growth visa'vis production growth and inter annual fluctuation is necessary for short term and long term planning of food requirement at national and global level. accordingly, recent literatures have paid attention to study the pattern of crop yield growths and its fluctuations. recent literatures presented evidences of slow growth of yields of different crops in different countries. hafner (2003) reveals declining yield trends in the rice-wheat system. supporting this, tirol-padre and ladha (2006) state negative trend of rice yield with a varying magnitudes in a field experiment based study. likewise, two comprehensive studies by hafner (2003) and calderini and slafer (1998) found evidence of slow yield growth in some countries. to justify trends and variability of rice, maize and wheat .... 585 these slow growth evidences, ecologists assume the yield trend will go negative due to biophysical constrain as it will meet the saturation level. south asia is a good example that achieved tremendous progress in cereal production through green revolution in the last decades (alauddin and quiggin, 2008). however, these past progresses need to be sustained in order to continue to feed its rapidly growing population. some studies indicated rapid yield growth of the past has slowed down in some crops, particularly wheat (hobbs and morris, 1996). accordingly, hobbs and morris (1996) show a projection of negative balance of rice and wheat for food requirements in india, bangladesh, pakistan, and nepal in 2020. moreover, in the case of yield instability, there are conflicting results as to whether the green revolution increased yield instability in this region. alauddin and tisdel (1988) reported increased stability for yield in bangladesh; however, larson et al. (2004) presented contradictory evidence of increasing yield instability in the case of india. therefore, there is the need to rightly understand the issue of yield instability in these regions. considering the issue of slowing growth and instability, this study takes an example of rice, maize, and wheat yields in bangladesh, india, nepal, pakistan, and sri lanka in south asian region. rice, wheat, and maize are sources of staple food in these regions and were taken as priority commodities during the green revolution period. moreover, the yields and productions change and fluctuation of these crops greatly impacts for food security. thus, research and development programs are in the top priority for these crops as they are considered the supplier of staple foods. the objective of the study is to examine the growth patterns and variability of rice, wheat, and maize yields in south asian countries namely bangladesh, india, nepal, pakistan, and sri lanka. the next section of this paper discusses the data and analysis models. in the third section, we discuss the results following the discussion in the fourth section. the final section is on the concluding results of the study along with some policy implications. materials and methods models for yield trend analysis we followed the models of finger (2010) and hafner (2003) for yield growth trend analysis. for this, annual yield data were fitted in two ordinary least square models i.e. linear and quadratic. the linear model is where denotes the predicted yields of crop k in country j and is linearly conditional on time t. in the linear model, β0 is an intercept and β1 is a coefficient of annual yield change. annual yield change is assumed to be constant over the time. additionally, the yield series might get the saturation point. if the saturation point is evident, the series might fit a quadratic model. the quadratic model is where is squared time index. , , and are intercept, linear trend, and quadratic term, respectively. following the quadratic model, yield series assumed to be nonlinear. the quadratic model is considered better fitting over linear model if and only if is significant at .05 level with a better fitted value. even though, different forms of regression are applied in literature, for the sake of conciseness, we applied linear and quadratic yield growth modelling, in this study. as hafner (2003) suggested, average annual yield growth was categorized in five categories i.e. substantial growth, moderate growth, slowing growth, decline growth, and no trend. for this, our alternative hypotheses were adopted as β > 33.1 kg per hectare for substantial growth, β >0 for moderate growth, β >0 and β <0 for slowing growth, and β <0 for decline. one tailed ttest was applied to test the hypotheses. the outliers in the time series data may greatly influence the results. one outlier might be asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 584-597. 586 sufficient to depart the results apparently from the actual one. thus, we employed re-weighed least square (rls) regression to minimize the effect of outliers. re-weighed least square (rls) is considered a robust technique compared to the ols. two steps are followed in rsl technique. in the first step, the outliers are detected in the data series by using least trimmed squares (lts). the basic idea of lts is to identify the outliers with the leverage effect which notably deviate the results that may come from the majority of data. in the next step, the recognized outliers from the first step are trimmed to estimate the regression coefficients. the lts fitting criteria explained by hafner (2003) is are the ascending order squared residuals estimated from robust model, and h is a trimming constant 1 . the lts is only applied for the outlier identification because it is considered a low efficiency estimator as compared to rls. therefore, rls regression is applied in the second step as a weighted least square (wls) regression, which gives the zero weight to the outlier observations. moreover, rls estimator is robust and efficient in both conditions either presence or absence of the outliers. models for yield variability the residuals are applied for the yield variability estimation because the results from the non de-trended yield will be biased as the yields tend to grow upward due to technological evolution over the period. we followed the regression model to estimate the yield variability as explained by finger (2010) and alauddin and tisdel (1988). according to finger (2010) yield variability is the absolute residual of the yield growth trend estimation i.e. absolute difference between observed and predicted yield | =| |. the linear regression model is fitted to the absolute 1 h = [(3n+p+1)/4], where n is number of observations, residuals that are estimated based on the linear rls regression. the linear regression model is where and are the intercepts and the coefficients of annual change. over the time, a significantly positive indicates increasing absolute yield variability and vice versa. additionally, we also estimated relative yield variability in this study. relative yield variability is defined as the ratio of the absolute regression residuals to the predicted yield (finger 2010). basically, relative yield variability is appropriate for the yield series that show upward trend of growth. the relative yield variability is closely related to the coefficient of variation. the relative residuals are fitted to the linear model is where and are the intercepts and the coefficients of annual change. by the definition, significantly positive indicates increasing relative yield variability, and vice versa. data the study utilized 50 years time series yield data of rice, wheat, and maize in bangladesh, india, nepal, pakistan, and sri lanka from 1961 to 2010 . however, in sri lanka, yield data for wheat were not recorded. the yield data are taken from the website of the united nation’s food and agricultural organization (fao) and converted to kilograms per hectare. in literature, studies have been using fao data considering it as a reliable source. therefore, we utilized fao data for our study. the selected cereals are sources of staple food grains in the studied countries. as a production value, rice is ranked as the first crop in all study countries. similarly, wheat is the second major crop in bangladesh, india, and pakistan. maize is the second major crop in nepal and sri lanka (fao, 2012). moreover, productions of these crops in those studied countries are ranked in a good position in the world production ranking. therefore, rice, maize, and wheat are the major crops in south asia from an economic point of view. as long term farm level yield data are not available, we applied national level aggregate data for the study. however, we are trends and variability of rice, maize and wheat .... 587 aware that there is a chance to under-estimate yield variability by using aggregate data. results yield trend the changes of median yields of rice, maize, and wheat in the study countries were varied across crop in country from 1961-1965 to 20062010. wheat yields in nepal increased about 9 percent from 1961-1965 to 2006-2010, which showed the lowest among data sets in this region. in contrast, maize yield in bangladesh increased tremendously about 675 percent during the same period. out of 14 data sets, one third sets were increased by more than 200 percent; one third with more than 100 percent, and the remaining 4 sets increased less than 100 percent during the study period. the scatter plot and yield trends of rice, maize, and wheat are shown in figure 1. a. bangladeshrice b. indiarice c. nepalrice d. pakistanrice e. sri lanka-rice f. bangladeshmaize g. indiamaize h. nepalmaize i. pakistan maize j. sri lankamaize k. bangladeshwheat l. indiawheat 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 y ie ld ( k g /h e c ta re ) year asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 584-597. 588 m. nepalwheat n. pakistan-wheat figure 1: yields of rice, maize, and wheat in bangladesh, india, nepal, pakistan, and sri lanka (19612010). note: note: rice, and maize in all countries and wheat in bangladesh, india, and nepal are fitted quadratic model (equation (2)) and wheat in pakistan is fitted linear model (equation (1)). source: fao (2012). results of linear and quadratic regression models are presented in panel a and b of table 1, 3, and 4, respectively. linear regression results in table 1 show a significantly positive growth in rice yield in all countries with about 42 kg per hectare annual yield increment in bangladesh, india, and sri lanka, respectively. in addition, quadratic regression results show a significantly positive polynomial coefficient and it outperforms the linear regression to account the yield growth in all countries. therefore, we selected the quadratic model for rice. table 1: robust regression estimates for linear and quadratic model of rice panel a: linear model countries 0 1 r 2 bangladesh 1291.383(60.791)*** 42.348(2.447)*** .89 india 1209.252(44.425)*** 42.607(1.516)*** .97 nepal 1668.215(49.384)*** 21.065(1.678)*** .78 pakistan 1592.222(65.097)*** 34.278(2.222)*** .77 sri lanka 1721.566(58.449)*** 42.634(1.995)*** .95 panel b: quadratic model countries 2 3 4 r 2 bangladesh 1702.159(45.374)*** -13.803(4.104)*** 1.315(.078)*** .98 india 1282.164(58.262)*** 35.271(5.301)*** .152(.101)*** .97 nepal 1924.278(58.080)*** -8.829(5.298)*** .587(.101)*** .90 pakistan 2332.420(137.140)*** -13.465(10.504) .694(.177)*** .82 sri lanka 1750.272(90.720)*** 39.321(8.206)*** .065(.156)*** .95 note: values in parentheses are standard errors and ‘***’ indicates significant at the 0.01 level. for maize, results from linear and quadratic model are presented in table 2. annual growth of the yield from linear model is ranged about 2 to 25 kg per hectare in the studied countries. in all countries, the results of the polynomial coefficient of the quadratic model are positively significant at least at .05 level. therefore, we selected quadratic model for all countries. table 2: robust regression estimates for linear and quadratic model of maize panel a: linear model countries 0 1 r 2 bangladesh 758.641(33.201)*** 5.694(1.447)*** .24 india 765.225(44.208)*** 24.979(1.535)*** .86 nepal 1689.838(61.123)*** 2.097(2.086) .21 pakistan 946.015(26.721)*** 17.302(1.083)*** .87 sri lanka 678.728(44.020)*** 12.601(1.631)*** .67 trends and variability of rice, maize and wheat .... 589 panel b: quadratic model countries 2 3 4 r 2 bangladesh 857.603(41.966)*** -9.956(4.921)** .424(.122)*** .37 india 1007.588(55.917)*** -5.334(5.264) .645(.104)*** .93 nepal 2138.781(36.909) -48.867(3.358)*** .996(.064)*** .88 pakistan 1065.705(30.232)*** -1.274(3.120) .456(.068)*** .94 sri lanka 780.034(67.737)*** -.773(6.510) .300(.132)** .66 note: values in parentheses are standard errors and ‘***’, and ‘**’ indicate significant at the 0.01 and 0.05 level, respectively. in sri lanka, yield data for wheat were not recorded; therefore, we analyzed data from four countries only. results from linear and quadratic models are shown in table 3. the linear model reveals yield increment for wheat at about 47, 39, 34 and 22 kg per hectare in india, pakistan, bangladesh, and nepal, respectively. in addition, yields in bangladesh, india, and nepal showed significant results for second order polynomials and better goodness of fit in three countries compared to the linear model. however, the coefficient for second order polynomials is insignificant for wheat in pakistan. therefore, we select the quadratic model in bangladesh, india, and nepal, whereas the linear model for wheat in pakistan. for wheat, quadratic model shows interesting results with negative and significant coefficient for second order polynomials in bangladesh and india. table 3: robust regression estimates of linear and quadratic model for wheat panel a: linear model countries 0 1 r 2 bangladesh 726.484(92.011)*** 33.620(3.140)*** .80 india 700.994(35.818)*** 46.640(1.223)*** .98 nepal 870.974(55.255)*** 21.688(1.867)*** .51 pakistan 700.458(26.927)*** 39.001(.919)*** .97 panel b: quadratic model countries 2 3 4 r 2 bangladesh 253.108(110.528)** 88.240(9.998)*** -1.071(.190)*** .85 india 594.473(51.809)*** 58.931(4.686)*** -.241(.089)*** .98 nepal 1308.053(33.207)*** -26.065(3.117)*** .943(.062)*** .92 pakistan 707.698(41.848)*** 38.175(3.785)*** .016(.072) .97 note: values in parentheses are standard errors and ‘***’ and ‘**’ indicate significant at the 0.01, 0.05 level, respectively. the t statistics results showed the growth of rice yields in bangladesh, india, pakistan, and sri lanka were substantial because coefficients of β1 in those countries are significantly greater than 33.1 kg per hectare at .05 level. however, rice yield growth in nepal was moderate because coefficient of β1 is significantly positive. in case of maize, annual yield growths were only moderate in bangladesh, india, pakistan, and sri lanka because coefficients of β1 are significantly positive (greater than 0 kg per hectare) at .01 level. in contrast, yield growths of maize in nepal showed no trends because coefficient of β1 is not significantly positive (no difference with 0) at 0.05 level. similarly, yields growths of wheat in bangladesh and india showed a slowing growth because coefficients of β3 and β4 are significantly positive and significantly negative at 0.01 level respectively. however, yield growths in nepal and pakistan were moderate and substantial because β1 in those countries are significantly positive and greater than 33.1 kg per hectare at 0.01 level respectively 2 . 2 the estimated t values are not presented here; it will be available upon request. the d.f considered for significant tests are 47 for linear model’s coefficients and 46 for quadratic model’s coefficients because d.f equal n-k-1 in the ols regression analysis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 584-597. 590 yield variability the selected linear or quadratic models were used to estimate the absolute and relative residuals in all data sets. applying equation (4), we estimated absolute yield variability. absolute yield variability indicates that the higher the absolute residual, the higher the yield variability, and vice versa. therefore, a positive and significant time trend indicates the increasing yield variability for the crop. the results of rice, maize, and wheat yield variability are presented in table 4, panel a, b, and c, respectively. in case of rice, none of the countries show a positively significant coefficient with time trend; however, negatively significant coefficients in pakistan and sri lanka were observed. for maize, results show positively significant results in all countries but nepal. similarly, positive but insignificant results are found in case of wheat in all countries. table 4: results of absolute yield variability panel a: rice countries α0 α1 r 2 bangladesh 57.414 (16.933)*** .888 (.578) .05 india 116.997 (27.874)*** -.084(.951) .00 a nepal 77.262 (29.850)** 1.190 (1.019) .03 pakistan 476.352 (65.869)*** -9.762(2.248)*** .28 sri lanka 232.077( 34.679)*** -3.067(1.184)** .12 panel b: maize bangladesh -1051.091 (314.94)*** 73.612 (10.749)*** .49 india -23.135 (33.592) 8.651 (1.146)*** .54 nepal 90.414 (16.163)*** -.970 (.552) .06 pakistan -224.898 (99.048)** 17.260 (3.380)*** .35 sri lanka -30.441( 73.470) 8.618.(.507)*** .20 panel c: wheat bangladesh 195.43740.544)*** .148(1.383) .00 a india 95.176(17.870)*** .030(.601) .00 a nepal 52.663(21.907)** .777(.748) .02 pakistan 59.328(15.619)*** .590(.533) .02 note: values in parentheses are standard errors. ‘***’, ‘**’, and ‘*’ indicate significant at the .01, .05, and .1 levels, respectively and ‘a’ represents value less than .001. additionally, we applied equation (5) to estimate the relative yield variability. relative yield variability in this study indicates the trend of yield variability with simultaneous consideration of yield growth. we estimated the relative residuals by dividing residual with respective predicted yield. by doing this, increasing residual variability can be offset by increasing the yield level. results of relative yield variability are presented in panel a, b, and c of table 6 for rice, maize, and wheat, respectively. as a result, rice yield shows a negatively significant outcome in bangladesh, india, pakistan, and sri lanka, whereas positive but insignificant in nepal. in contrast, positively significant results were estimated for maize in bangladesh, india, pakistan, and sri lanka. however, negative but insignificant results at 0.1 level were seen in nepal. likewise, for wheat, results show negative and significant coefficient in bangladesh, india, and pakistan. trends and variability of rice, maize and wheat .... 591 table 5: results of relative yield variability panel a: rice countries α2 α3 r 2 bangladesh .040 (.007)*** -.000 a ( .000) a .03 india .081(.014)*** -.001 ( .000)** , a .10 nepal .045( .014)*** .000 a ( .000) a .00 a pakistan . 213(.028)*** -.005( .001)*** .34 sri lanka .112(.014)*** -.002( .000)*** ,a .27 panel b: maize bangladesh -.752(.239)*** .055 (.008)*** .49 india .021(.025) .005( .001)*** .41 nepal .053 (.010)*** -.001 (.000) a .06 pakistan -.083(.049)* .008 (.002)*** .31 sri lanka .039( .060) .005 (.002)*** .13 panel c: wheat bangladesh .253(.036)*** -.004 (.001)*** .19 india .111 (.014)*** -.002(.000)** * ,a .26 nepal .059(.015)*** -.000 a ( .001) .01 pakistan .068(.011)*** -.001( .000)** ,a .09 note: values in parentheses are standard errors. ‘***’, ‘**’, and ‘*’ indicate significant at the 0.01, .05, and .1 level, respectively and ‘a’ represents value less than .001. discussion yield trend we considered the linear model for yield growth estimation in this study. our results show annual yield growth of rice was about 42, 43, 21, 34, and 43 kg per hectare in bangladesh, india, nepal, pakistan, and sri lanka, respectively. the estimated yield growth of rice in south asian countries is considerably low compared to the global average of 57 kg per hectare (hafner, 2003). comparing hafner (2003) criteria, bangladesh, india, pakistan, and sri lanka achieved substantial yield growth, whereas only a moderate growth was found in nepal during the sample period. in case of maize, yields growth in bangladesh, india, nepal, pakistan, and sri lanka are about 6, 25, 2, 17, and 13 kg per hectare, which is much lower than the average global growth of 62 kg per hectare (hafner, 2003). likewise, bangladesh, india, pakistan, and sri lanka achieved only moderate growth, whereas nepal showed no trend. in case of wheat, quite better results were observed compared to the maize yield. our estimation results show both better and lower yield performance compared to global yield estimates. in india, the yield grew 47 kg per hectare annually and showed a better performance, whereas in pakistan (39 kg per hectare), nepal (22 kg per hectare), and bangladesh (34 kg per hectare) showed lower performance compared to the global average (43 per hectare) (hafner, 2003). moreover, our estimates were substantially lower if compared with switzerland (75 kg per hectare) (finger, 2010). the yield growth in nepal and pakistan showed moderate and substantial growth, respectively. importantly, our estimation revealed the interesting outcome from the quadratic model. out of 14 data sets, 13 revealed significant results at 0.05 or lesser level. wheat in bangladesh and india showed a negatively significant result of β4 and positively significant result of β3 at .01 level indicating an evidence of slowing growth of yield during the sample period. the results of slowing yield growth can also be clearly seen in the scatter plot diagram (figure 1). this result is constant with that of hafner (2003) and finger (2010), who found the some results of slowing growth in their studies. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 584-597. 592 recent literatures depict the evidence of slowing growth or even negative growth of cereal yields in some countries. calderini and slafer (1998) presented evidence of leveling off of wheat yields in mexico. the leveling off of yield in mexico was started during the 80s by showing the significant results in favor of non increasing yield. in the 90s, some countries in europe and in the developed world such as usa, japan, and canada showed non increasing trends of wheat yield. moreover, yields in the ussr and spain showed a negative yield growth. the stated explanation for levelling off yields in those countries was due to the attainment of saturation level. hafner (2003) analyzed the rice, maize, and wheat yields in 188 countries and revealed 16% data sets with slowing yield growth and decline in some cases. he indicated that two characteristics mostly linked with slowing yield growth are low per capita gross domestic product (gdp) and latitude of the country. similarly, finger (2010) analyzed the trends of six cereal yields in switzerland that showed a slowing growth rate in oat, triticale, and barley. he explained the slowing growth as a cause of policy reform in 1992 in switzerland. brisson et al. (2010) explained the climatic and agronomic factors responsible for slowing yield growth of cereals in france. in our study, slow growth of wheat yield in bangladesh and india cannot be justified by the same explanation. the most probable influencing factor for slow yield growth of wheat yield in bangladesh is the comparative disadvantage of wheat with boro rice. this rice is grown in bangladesh during the winter season that also coincides with the wheat growing season. both crops are grown in irrigated and fertile land, thus, are competing each other. however, boro rice is more profitable compared to wheat but lacks the required investment that is needed for more inputs (morris et al., 1996; morris et al.,1997; bari, 2010). farmers with less investment capacity do tradeoff between wheat and bororice production. therefore, farmers allocate more fertile land to boro rice. as a result, naturally, the productivity of wheat gradually decreased over time. however, government focal programs i.e. in the early 70s and mid 90s showed good achievements towards area coverage and yield of wheat (bari, 2010). the program of mid 90s continued its momentum till late 90s but could not sustain the achievement for a longer period and yields started to decline after 2000. the highest cropped area for wheat (882224 hectares) was attained in 1999, after that, it started to decline and it reached to 376256 hectares in 2010. the estimation showed the flat region of wheat yield in 2000, after that the yield stated to decline 3 . however, this study characterized the different reasons for slowing yield growth in case of india. this study considered the two possible reasons for slowing wheat yield growth in india. the first one is wheat farming in india is predominated by the rice-wheat system for many years, which depletes the nutrient contents in soils (ladha et al., 2003). due to nutrient depletion in soils in the wheat farming area in india, the yield showed the slowing yield growth trends. the second and most important reason is the climate change. the changing trends of temperature and precipitation impacted to decline wheat yield in india (lobell et al., 2011). yield variability some important results have been seen for yield variability analysis of rice, maize, and wheat in south asian countries. negatively significant outcomes were observed from absolute yield variation models for rice yields in pakistan and sri lanka indicated decreasing yield variability in those countries. additionally, relative yield variation results also supported the results of absolute yield variability of rice in pakistan and sri lanka that strongly suggests yield variability in those countries is decreasing over the years. besides, a significantly negative result of relative yield variability at .05 percent level in india depicts the evidence of rice yield variation is decreasing in india. thus, by combining both yield variability results, it provides the evidence of rice yield variability is decreasing in india, pakistan, and sri lanka over the years. our result of decreasing yield variability of rice in india is comparable with the result of larson et al. (2004) and ghosh (2010), who suggested the decreasing yield 3 the trend break was seen in 2000. it shows a negative coefficient with time variable but it is insignificant at .1 level. trends and variability of rice, maize and wheat .... 593 variability of rice in india. the reason for decreasing yield variation of rice in india, pakistan, and sri lanka during 1961 -2010 was because of increasing use of modern verities and fertilizer coupled with an increasing rice area under irrigation. irrigation is a risk reducing input in farming. about 60 percent rice area was under irrigation in india in 20072008 (doac, 2012), whereas about 76 percent in sri lanka in 1009-2010 (dcs, 2012). in contrast, results are different in case of maize. positively significant results are found in absolute yield variability model in bangladesh, india, pakistan, and sri lanka. similarly, relative yield variability results also support the outcome of the absolute yield variability model that provides a strong indication of increasing yield variability of maize yields for four south asian countries during 1961-2010. however, in case of nepal, variability shows negative and insignificant results. larson et al. (2004) found similar results of yield variability of maize in india, which is consistent with our result. past studies indicated that irrigation is a major factor for maize yield variability (kucharik and ramankutty, 2005; rashid and rasul, 2011). maize farming is mostly characterized in nonirrigated land in south asian countries. therefore, we assumed the maize yields as well as productions are highly influenced by weather shocks in bangladesh, india, pakistan, and sri lanka. we find the results of decreasing yield variability in case of wheat in bangladesh, india, and pakistan. although, absolute variability results are negative but insignificant, relative yield variability estimates are highly significant at .01 and .05 level which suggests yield variability is decreasing during the sample period. our results are consistent with the result of larson et al. (2004), who presented a result of decreasing wheat yield variability in india. our results contrast with the results of finger (2010), who revealed no trends of yield variability for wheat in switzerland during 1961 to 2006. about 91 percent wheat area in india in 2007-2008 (doac, 2012), about 72 percent in bangladesh in 2005-2006 (badc, 2012), about 86.5 percent in pakistan in 2010 (pbs, 2010) was under irrigation. therefore we characterize the influencing factors for deceasing variation are due to application of improved varieties and better inputs coupled with good irrigation, which may reduce inter annual yield variability in wheat. slow yield growth, yield variability and food security concern area expansion for major cereals is almost saturated in south asian countries; therefore, increment of production is highly dependent on the yield increment. consequently, per capita production 4 of particular cereal is dependent on the yield level and growth of population. as we found the slowing growth of wheat yield in two south asian countries, the study examined the correlation between yield level and per capita wheat supply. all four wheat growing countries show a high correlation i.e. above .8, whereas bangladesh and india with slowing yield growth of wheat, show the higher correlation of .87 and .95, respectively. in addition, the relation of wheat yield level and per capita production of wheat is shown in figure 3. in all countries, as the yield level increases, the per capita food production increases and vice versa. from the previous result, we found the slowing yield growth in bangladesh and india and it also shows a clear indication of decreasing per capita wheat production in those countries. per capita wheat production in bangladesh, india, nepal, and pakistan was about 15, 69, 46, and 126 kg in 1999 and it changed to 6, 66, 52, and 134 kg, respectively, in 2010. the changes of per capita wheat yield production were about 63, -4, +13, and +5 percent in bangladesh, india, nepal, and pakistan, respectively, from 1999 to 2010. the results show slowing growth of yield influence in the per capita wheat production as it decreased 63 percent in bangladesh and 4 percent in india. consequently, it shows that slow yield growth effects on countries’ food 4 per capita wheat production is estimated by dividing the total wheat production by the total population of the respective country in the particular year. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 584-597. 594 security because wheat importing countries like bangladesh needs to import more wheat to fulfill country’s wheat demand and sufficient quantity producing countries like india depicts a lesser volume of per capita wheat availability. a. nepal b. bangladesh c. india d. pakistan figure 2: yields and per capita production of wheat in bangladesh, india, nepal, pakistan and sri lanka (1961-2010) source: fao (2012) furthermore, we also examined whether the per capita wheat production decreased significantly in those countries after yield started to decline or slowing growth. based on the quadratic regression results which showed wheat yield in bangladesh started to decline from 2001, we split study period in two parts-the first period (1961 to 2000) and the second period (2001 to 2010). we applied the linear regression model and the results are presented in table 6. the results in table 6 indicated that per capita wheat production was increased significantly at .01 level in all countries during 1961 to 2000. moreover, per capita wheat production was increased significantly at 0.1 level in pakistan during 2001 to 2010. however, it was decreased significantly in bangladesh at .01 and increased but insignificant in india and nepal during 2001 to 2010. the results are as expected because the wheat yield started to decline in bangladesh since 2001. the yield declining results were severe, therefore, it also significantly influenced to per capita wheat production in bangladesh. in contrast, the slowing yield growth was not influenced for per capita wheat production in india because the yield growth was only slowed down in this country, which may not impact as greatly as yield decline. trends and variability of rice, maize and wheat .... 595 table 6: linear regression results of the per capita wheat production countries 1961 -2000 2001-2010 0 1 r2 0 1 r2 bangladesh -1.190(.824) .398(.035)*** .78 12.711(1.003)*** -.86(.16)*** .78 india 21.643(1.325)*** 1.283(.056)*** .93 62.540 (2.038)*** .247(.328) .06 nepal 10.219(.982)*** .980(.042)*** .94 49.324 (2.031)*** .254(.327) .07 pakistan 91.021(3.784)*** 1.295(.161)*** .63 123.340(4.123)*** 1.402(.665)* .35 since cereals are the sources of staple food, fluctuating production of cereals is highly sensitive to price variation. yield variation is a major cause of production variation of cereals (larson et al., 2004). past studies revealed that price variation is highly influenced by the production fluctuations of the agricultural commodities particularly to the cereals (shively, 1996). high price level and its variations are one of the challenging factors for food securities specifically to the developing world. as the results revealed increasing yield variability of maize in four countries namely bangladesh, india, pakistan and sri lanka, which could be quite important for unstable maize price in this region. therefore, increasing maize yield variability is a challenge for food security in this region. conclusions and policy implications south asia is the most populous and also the highest population growth rate region in the world. rice, wheat, and maize are the sources of staple food in this region. during the last 60 years, the yields and production of these crops grew tremendously and met the demand for food. however, the past trends should continue to meet the region’s future food requirements. accordingly, the study has examined the yield trends and variability of rice, wheat, and maize, in five south asian countries. rice yield shows a substantial yield growth with more than 33.1 kg per hectare per annum in bangladesh, india, pakistan, and sri lanka, whereas only moderate growth was found in nepal. in case of maize, the yield growth was moderate in all 4 countries, but no trend in nepal. a substantial annual yield growth rate was found in case of wheat in bangladesh, india, and pakistan, but a moderate yield growth in nepal during the study period. significant and negative coefficients of polynomial in the quadratic model strongly indicate the slowing growth rate of wheat yield in bangladesh and india. we characterize the explanation for negative yield growth of wheat in bangladesh as a comparative disadvantage of wheat with boro rice, which is grown in the same season. in case of india, the dominance of rice-wheat farming system for many years depletes the nutrient content in soil, thereby, slowing down wheat yield growth rate. in addition, a negative impact of climate change was observed on wheat yield growth in india. for more explanation, more studies need to be carried out in sub-national levels considering some possible explaining factors. a strong decreasing trend of rice yield variability was observed in india, pakistan, and sri lanka. yield variability in rice depicts that the rice crop benefited from the green revolution technology as well as irrigation over the years. most importantly, maize yield variation was found positively significant in bangladesh, india, pakistan, and sri lanka. low growth but the increasing variability of yield in four major growing countries indicates green revolution technology did not promote maize in this region. indeed, the main influencing factor of maize yield variation is the domination of rain-fed farming in those countries. increasing variability along with the low annual yield growth of maize suggests a future problem for food security in this region. likewise, negative and significant results of wheat present clear indication of decreasing variability of yield in india, bangladesh, and pakistan over the years. the main driving factor is the predominance of irrigated land under wheat farming. indeed, the slowing growth rate of wheat yield and unstable maize yield can play a significant impact on food security in the respective countries as well as in the region. the analysis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 584-597. 596 indicated the per capita wheat production reduced drastically in bangladesh while a small reduction was observed in india. therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a program that can help to revive the yield growth of wheat, particularly in case of bangladesh. the observed decline in production in bangladesh was due to decline in both yield and area under cultivation. consequently, importing countries like bangladesh need to import additional quantities of wheat grains imported. thus, provision of high yielding variety seeds along with subsidized inputs can be a good policy to make wheat crop more competitive with boro rice. this may attract farmers to allocate more land under wheat farming. in case of india, diversification in the cropping systems with the inclusion of legume can be a possible solution. besides, provision of the special extension program to train farmers to use a balance dose of nutrient could be added advantage. for yield variability of maize, the release of more drought resistant varieties could help to reduce the variability. effective implementation of a crop insurance based on weather index can be a helpful tool for farmers to protect them from income fluctuation. references alauddin, m. and c. tisdel (1988) “has the green revolution destibilized food production?: some evidence from bangladesh”, the developing economics, vol. 26, pp. 141-160. alauddin, m. and j. quiggin (2008) “agricultural intensification, irrigation and the environment in south asia: issues 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(1996) “food price variability and economic reform: an arch approach for ghana”, american journal of agricultural economic, vol. 78, pp. 126-136. tirol-padre, a. and j. k. ladha (2006) “integrating rice and wheat productivity trends using the sas mixed-procedure and metaanalysis”, field crops research, vol. 95, pp. 75–88. united nations population division (2000) “world population prospects the 2000 revision highlights”, population division, department of economic and social affairs, united nations, new york, ny. © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 perspective on beneficiaries’ experiences of participation in community-based agriculture and rural development program in guba, northern nigeria sule ahmadu (department of social and development sciences, faculty of human ecology, putra university, malaysia) nobaya ahmad (department of social and development sciences, faculty of human ecology, putra university, malaysia) hanina h. hamsan (department of social and development sciences, faculty of human ecology, putra university, malaysia) to cite this article: sule ahmadu, nobaya ahmad and hanina h. hamsan (2012). perspective on beneficiaries‟ experiences of participation in community-based agriculture and rural development program in guba, northern nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1), 39-45. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 39-45 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author (s) sule ahmadu † department of social and development sciences, faculty of human ecology, putra university, malaysia email: sulangu24@yahoo.com nobaya ahmad department of social and development sciences, faculty of human ecology, putra university, malaysia email: nobaya@putra.edu.my hanina h. hamsan department of social and development sciences, faculty of human ecology, putra university, malaysia email: hanina3282@gmail.com perspective on beneficiaries’ experiences of participation in community-based agriculture and rural development program in guba, northern nigeria abstract the objective of this paper is to explore beneficiaries‟ experiences on participation in the on-going international fund for agriculture development / community-based agriculture and rural development program (ifad/cbardp) among farmers in guba community in northern nigeria. the paper illustrates beneficiaries‟ experiences on how they are participating and the factors that motivated their participation in the program using qualitative research methods of data collection and analysis. data for the study was collected from eight key informants purposely selected as being participants of the program. although, theoretically, participation entails the full involvement of beneficiaries in all the stages of the development process, findings of the study revealed that beneficiaries‟ participation in the program was only evident in some stages of the development cycle. several factors were found to have motivated beneficiaries‟ participation in the program but the desire for meeting tangible material benefits featured above all other considerations. however, group leadership style, workshops and seminars, the approach adopted in the program, the officials / beneficiaries relationship and the publicity accorded to the program were found to have motivated beneficiaries‟ participation as well. at the end, the paper recommended the active and full involvement of beneficiaries in future development initiatives in order to achieve sustainable rural development programs. keywords: experiences, beneficiaries‟ participation, motivations, community-based agriculture, rural development introduction beneficiaries‟ participation in the development process had in recent years became increasingly popular especially within development programs that are geared towards poverty reduction. in the words of parfitt, “it is clear that [participation] has become one of the central influences in mainstream development thinking” (2004, p.737). similarly, michener (1998) also notes that “today the concept [of participation] has taken on the characteristic of a panacea; academic studies and policy lauding the benefits of participation has made it one of the most widely used concepts in development (1998, p.2105). this became necessary as a result of failure of the conventional „blue-print‟ or „top-down‟ approach that placed emphasis on the transfer of science and technology, urbanization and industrialization as development strategies (dichter, 2003) to adequately address rural developmental challenges due to non-involvement of beneficiaries in the development process. in such development approaches beneficiaries are often seen as „objects‟ as opposed to being „subjects‟ in the development process (mansuri & rao, 2004). as such, participation of beneficiaries was passive and prescriptive, aimed for the achievement of predetermined objectives. in contrast, the people centered or the bottom-up approach places emphasis on peoples‟ participation in the development process with a view to empowering them for future selfdevelopment initiatives. in spite of its abundant human and natural resources and being the most populous nation in sub-sahara africa, 70 percent of nigerias‟ 150 million people are living on less than one (1) u.s dollar per day (odion, 2009). this is an indication of wide spread poverty. according to the federal office of statistics, as at the time nigeria got independence in 1960 only 15 percent was recorded as the rate of poverty. however, this figure gradually increased to 28.6 percent in 1980 and by 1999 the figure had jumped to 66 percent. the current poverty level of poverty in nigeria stood at 70 percent (cia, 2010). the 2009 united nations human development index (hdi) ranked nigeria as the 142nd out of 169 countries surveyed. as noted by the united nations;…poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, violation of dignity. it means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. it means not having enough to feed and clothe the family, not having a school or clinic to go to; not having the land on which to grow one‟s food or a job to earn one‟s living, not having access to credit. it means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. it means susceptibility to violence and it often implies living mailto:sulangu24@yahoo.com mailto:nobaya@putra.edu.my mailto:hanina3282@gmail.com mailto:hanina3282@gmail.com perspective on beneficiaries’ experiences of participation…. 40 in marginal and fragile environment, without access to clean water or sanitation (un, 1998). various reasons have been identified as the causes of increasing poverty trends in nigeria. for instance, ucha (2010) noted high unemployment rates, corruption among public officials, nondiversification of nigeria‟s monolithic economy, poor educational system and laziness among people as some of the causes of rising poverty rates. similarly, aliyu (2003) had identified the effects of globalization, corruption, bad governance and debt burden as contributors of high incidences of poverty in nigeria. before the discovery of oil in the early 70s, agriculture was the mainstay of the economy with impressive contributions of 60 percent to the gross domestic product (gdp). however, by 2010 agriculture was contributing only 26.8 percent to the gdp (cia, 2010). in recognition of the fact that more than 70 percent of the total populations living in the rural areas are predominantly farmers, government felt the need to revamp agriculture with the aim of empowering rural communities thereby alleviating poverty. from 1977 1999 no fewer than 5 national poverty reduction programs were implemented to improve the living conditions of majority poor. among these were; operation feed the nation (ofn) of 1970; the green revolution program (grp) in 1980 and the directorate of foods roads and rural infrastructure (dfrri) in 1986. others were the peoples‟ bank of nigeria (1989) and the community banking system (cbs) in 1999. in spite huge expenditure and laudable objectives of these programs, the poverty situations in the country have not changed significantly. lack of beneficiaries‟ participation in the development process has been identified as the cause of failure of these programs (ogwumike, 2002; cbn, 1998). the world bank defines participation as a “process through which stakeholders influence and share control over development initiatives and the decisions and resources which affect them” (world bank, 1994). moreover, beneficiary participation in rural development programs is an important pillar in people-centered development approach. it is acknowledged as a process that improves efficiency and sustainability through the incorporation of local knowledge and resources. in like manner, participation in the development process is said to bring about empowerment of beneficiaries. being „buzzword‟ participation has continued to remain a hotly contested concept, meaning different things to different people depending on the orientation of its users. the on-going ifad/cbardp in nigeria that came into being in 2003 is a partnership program that sought the participation of beneficiaries in the development process in order to empower them thereby moving out of poverty. relying on statistical and econometric designs, the mid-term review of the program carried out in 2006 reported the success of the program in empowering beneficiaries as a result of participation in the program. however, the forms of beneficiary participation in the program and factors that motivated beneficiaries into participation still remained elusive. authors on participation have argued that in order to fully understand and appreciate participation, the need to know „how‟ and „why‟ beneficiaries participated in a particular program is therefore imperative to conclude whether beneficiaries have been empowered or not (uphoff, 1997). it is against this background this paper aimed at exploring the experiences of guba farmers on how they are participating and what motivated them into participation in ifad/cbardp. typologies of participation different types of participation exist in literature as a practice. the types and levels of peoples‟ participation in development depend on the objectives of the program. arising out of a study of both successful and unsuccessful development projects, pretty (1995) presented participation in a form continuum depicting eight (8) types from the highest to the lowest characteristically. the lower levels in the continuum represented by manipulative participation, passive participation, participation by consultation, participation by material incentives and functional participation are characteristically described as a means of achieving some predetermined objectives due to non involvement of beneficiaries in all development phases. this form of participation is seen as static, passive and absolutely controllable (hedayat & ma‟rof, 2009). participation in this sense, is essentially perceived as a means of achieving some predetermined goals by using social and economic resources of the community for the attainment of specific and overall improvements of the community on one hand, and on the other, to achieve effective, efficient and cheap development programs (oakley, 1991) moreover, it has been observed that when participation is considered as a means, does not lead to alteration of existing power structure within community, the existing top-down power structure prevails (parfitt, 2004). the higher levels of pretty‟s‟ participation continuum is depicted by interactive participation and self-mobilization. here, rather than seeing participation as a means, participation appears as an end where beneficiaries take control over local decisions and determine how available resources are used, so they have a stake in maintaining structures or practices. at this level, beneficiaries‟ participation is seen as a process in which beneficiaries are directly involved in shaping, deciding and taking part in the development process from the bottom-up perspective (asnarulkhadi, 1996). the goals of development here is considered less important, emphasis is placed on building the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 39-45 41 confidence and competence of people to fully partake in their own development initiatives without recourse to seeking assistance from outside the community. factors motivating beneficiaries’ participation in development programs as participation continues to remain a contextspecific concept, so also the factors that motivate beneficiaries‟ participation varied from individuals, contexts and programs. the motivation to participate by and large depends on individual conceptions. although, the reasons for beneficiaries‟ participation in development programs have not been consistent because the participatory literature is often vague as to what generally motivate people to participate (cleaver, 1999), empirical evidences abound. for instance, whereas, friedman (1992) places emphasis on economic rationality as the most influential factor motivating beneficiaries‟ participation, cleaver (1999) on the other hand suggested the consideration of social factors. the social factors according to him are the intangible benefits such as the need for self-respect and recognition. similarly, in a study of stakeholder‟s participation in rural development project in northern ghana, boakye-agyei (2009) found that one of the most important factors motivating people to participate in development projects is the desire to get tangible material benefits. hildyard et al, (2001) maintains that if stakeholders involved in development processes are really concerned with issue of sustainability and poverty reduction, it is imperative to prioritize the development of the oppressed and marginalized groups. this involves a careful examination of their training techniques and internal hierarchies, which are crucial for respect of other peoples‟ opinions. friere (1972) observed that if authoritarianism and rigid conditions dominates development programs, exclusionism ultimately sets in – a situation in which participation of the targeted groups cannot be achieved. . furthermore, in a study on peoples‟ participation in mongolia, berends (2009) found that the publicity given to the program and the cordial relationship that existed between beneficiaries and program officials have motivated beneficiaries participation. methodology being one of the participating village areas in ifad/cbardp, guba community is situated 14.1km south-west of baoimari along gashuabaoimari federal highway. baiomari is 132 km north of damaturu, capital of yobe state, nigeria. lying within the semi-arid sahel savannah zone with annual rainfall of less than 250mm (ifad, 2001), the area experiences two main seasons – the rainy and dry seasons. the rainy season usually starts around july – november with the rest 7 months of the year experiencing dry season. the resultant effect of rainfall shortage according to the village head of guba is low agricultural productivity and land degradation due to desertification. according to interview with the village head of guba the cumulative effects of this contributed to widespread poverty in the area as majority are subsistent farmers. guba community has an estimated population of 4,000 people out of which 70 percent are predominantly farmers. the ifad/cbardp refers to a partnership program funded by the international fund for agriculture development (ifad), the federal government of nigeria (fgn), seven participating states (sps) drawn from semi-arid zone of northern nigeria, participating local governments and communities aimed at alleviating poverty particularly in rural areas where the majority poor and predominantly subsistent farmers live. the largest share of funding came from ifad with 40-50 percent of the total program‟s costs. the federal government followed with 12-15 percent. the seven participating states and local government‟s share stood at 3-4 percent, while the remaining share is borne by participating local institutions, co-financing and beneficiaries (adb, 2003). coming into operation in 2003, the program has a ten year gestation period. the main objective of the program is to empower rural communities through capacity building and provision of infrastructure to enable rural communities initiate and manage their own future developmental challenges. the program ensures the participation of beneficiaries in the development process in order to realize this objective. a total of 408 beneficiaries out of the 4,000 estimated populations are participating in the various intervention areas of the program as in table 1. table 1: distribution of beneficiaries in ifad/cbarp type of intervention number of beneficiaries poultry development 96 cattle upgrading 50 fisheries development 70 nurseries development 87 fadama development 105 total 408 source: sso (ifad, damaturu) while employing qualitative approach in the exploration of beneficiaries‟ experiences of participation in ifad/cbardp, in-depth interview and focus group discussion based on semi-structured questions was used in collecting data for the study. qualitative approach of inquiry was considered in this study because of its strengths in capturing expressive information about beliefs, values, perspective on beneficiaries’ experiences of participation…. 42 motivations and feelings underlying behavior which cannot be determined by quantitative data (lincoln & guba, 1985). the context specific nature of the concept under investigation-participation that requires understanding within particular setting not only informed the purposive selection of guba community and the study informants with a focus on irrigation farmers being beneficiaries of the program as a single case study but more importantly, the distinctive need for case study [arises] out of the desire to understand the experiences of beneficiaries on participation which is a complex social phenomena (yin, 2003). primary data for the study was collected through indepth interviews and triangulated through focus group discussion with 8 purposely selected key informants. sample size is one of the contested issues in qualitative studies. contrary to selecting samples representative enough to make generalization of findings as is the case with quantitative studies, in qualitative studies the number is not important but rather emphasis is placed in selecting informants knowledgeable enough to provide answers to research inquiry. thus, the criteria used in selecting informants for this study was guided by the following; informants must have participated in the program for at least 4 years based on the records of the farmers association in the community, must have been registered in the program and has participated in the activities of the program for at least 70 percent based on the records of the association, must have benefited as a result of his participation in the program e.g. ownership of fish pond, poultry or evidence of improved agricultural productivity as result of knowledge gained through workshops and seminars organized as part of the programs‟ activities. in addition, informants must be willing to volunteer as informants in the study the focus group discussion was conducted in two (2) sessions consisting of 4 participants each with the researcher presiding throughout the sessions assisted by interview assistant. interview guide prepared with questions bordering on how beneficiaries are participating and what motivates their participation in the programs was used in conducting interviews with informants. the use of interview guide significantly helped in maintaining consistency and accuracy during interviews and analysis. apart from the 8 key informants that provided information to research questions, the village head of guba was interviewed to obtain some basic information about the community. other sources of information were the state support office (sso) of ifad in damaturu, review of relevant documents from ifad website and other related literature in the internet. where to stop gathering data is one of the challenges being faced by qualitative researchers. suggesting to possible solution in this respect, guba (1978) provided guidelines which included; lack of resources, repetition or emergence of regularities of data, and divergence within the confines of the research. in this study, data collection was called-off at the point of „saturation‟ having interviewed eight (8) informants as indicated by the interview excerpts in findings section. this is the point when no new information was emerging from interviews. as an explorative study, findings are descriptive and interpretative based on the accounts of information gathered from the field. results and discussion as the study used qualitative research approach, findings of the study are presented thematically while describing and narrating beneficiaries‟ experiences on their forms of participation and the factors that motivated their participation in the program. all informants that provided primary data for the study were males and their ages ranged from 45 to 70 years and had experiences of participation in the program for at least four (4) years. while participation theoretically implies the active and full involvement of beneficiaries in all the program cycle from design to evaluation, evidences from interviews with informants indicated that beneficiaries‟ participation in the program is only traceable at the lower levels and does not transcend beyond participating through labor contribution and by consultation. several factors were mentioned by informants to have motivated them to participate, but the desire by to meet tangible material benefits in the program turns out as the most influential factor that motivated beneficiaries. forms of beneficiaries’ participation in ifad/ cbardp participation through consultation consultation between beneficiaries and the development experts (ifad) particularly during needs identification stages has been identified by informants as a form of their participation in ifad/cbardp. as beneficiaries understood their participation as that of consultation to gather information about the community for the purposes of designing interventions, implies that the responsibility of designing and management of the program lies with the officials of the development agency as observed by informants that; when they (officials) come to the community, they ask questions about the community and they tell us about the activities of the program. we tell them what we want and in some cases, they do as we said (informant 3). although, consultation has been mentioned as a form of beneficiary participation, it has been observed that the kind of consultation in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 39-45 43 practice appears unidirectional or simply an information gathering exercise by development officials. smith (1998) argued that for consultation to be regarded as participation, it must go beyond information gathering and has to be reciprocal and continuous, meaning that consultation between beneficiaries and development experts should occur in all the stages of the development process as opposed to the implementation stages being observed. arguing further, he maintained that if information flow appears reciprocal between beneficiaries and development experts, it will not only be a source of power to the beneficiaries but will in the long run succeeds in raising the level of consciousness of beneficiaries. this kind of participation resembled pretty‟s (1995) participation as consultation in which beneficiaries ratify decisions already taken by development officials. participation through contribution an individual and community contribution towards the development program was another form in which beneficiaries viewed participation. this notion of participation was expressed by informants in terms of physical and monetary contributions being made to the program. while describing participation in this sense, most informants said; when ifad want to construct say a clinic, a community water tap or a community hall, i contribute money or fetch water (informant 2), i provide sand (informant 4), feeding the chicks in the poultry (informant 7) and watering the seedlings (informant 5). while another informant simply adds; i don’t have the money to contribute. my strength is the only thing that i can afford (informant 8) smith (1998) observed that it is very common to find in rural development programs where beneficiaries‟ contributions in form of cash and labor are considered as a form of participation. international donor agencies and ngos have been placing emphasis on the use of local resources as way of transforming communities to be self-reliant. however, this notion of resource contribution as a measure of transforming communities have been questioned particularly with regards to poverty endemic areas where the predominant issue is that of survival, communities and individuals may find it increasingly difficult to make such contributions towards the development process. like the previous form of participation observed above, participation by contribution is also a lower form of participation that does not ensure sustained empowerment of beneficiaries. factors that motivated beneficiaries’ participation in ifad/cbardp desire for tangible benefits farmers in guba community have for long being faced by serious desertification problem and coupled with inadequate rainfall led to devastating consequences on the income of farmers. this situation according to farmers have forced them in search of other alternative sources of income as explained during interview thus; the situation in the community is getting worse every day. agricultural activity had seriously declined and therefore, the need for other sources of income became imperative. ifad has now come with the opportunity to us and we cannot afford to miss it (informant 5). all informants stated that they have realized the benefits to be derived from participation outweighed the cost and hence their conviction to participate in the program in order to meet tangible benefits associated with participation. this finding is consistent with friedman‟s (1992) that the most important factor motivating beneficiaries‟ participation is economic rationality. group leadership style: it was also found that apart from leadership provided by group leaders as beneficiaries‟ representatives with the development agency, other extra-program activities such as attendance to informal adult education activities were encouraged as stated thus; apart from program activities, group leaders usually organize education sessions to members, share important information that will improve our worth as farmers (informant 7). furthermore, informants stated that the entrenchment of democratic procedures in the activities of community groups such as the opportunity given to group members to elect their own officials have provided the avenue where they elected responsible and committed officials that have the interest of the program. the exemplary leadership provided by these officials has significantly motivated community members not only to join but to remain with commitment as beneficiaries in the program as explained by informant in the following words; group leaders have always been fair to members. for example, they [leaders] adhere to rules of first come, first served in the disbursement of revolving loans (informant 1). this is consistent with the findings of boakye-agyei (2009) that good and democratic leadership of community groups motivated beneficiaries‟ participation in rural development program in northern ghana. workshops and seminars as part of the activities of the program, workshops and seminars were organized by the development agency (ifad) to sensitize and train beneficiaries in order to acquire skills necessary for the effective management of various intervention programs within the community. the conduct of the workshops and seminars according to informants has greatly endeared them towards the activities of the program as explained by informants thus; the perspective on beneficiaries’ experiences of participation…. 44 sessions were lively and speakers were so demonstrative in such a way that we understood what they were teaching us (informant 4) and another stated that; the workshops were not only educative but also encouraging towards improving our capacities. the knowledge gained through the workshops had encouraged us towards participation (informant 7). this finding concurred with hildyard et al. (2001) who maintained that a careful consideration of beneficiaries‟ training techniques is imperative when it comes to issue of sustainability and poverty reduction. program’s approach as a community-based development program, community-driven development trainers were employed by the development agency to train various stakeholders in community-driven development strategies. informants stated that the cooption of indigenous people as community-driven development trainers and the conscious efforts at consulting them on the types of intervention areas preferred most in the community had fostered a sense of belonging between the community and ifad. an informant explained that this is the first time when people in the community were consulted on the kind of project intervention that is most preferred by the people. we felt recognized and we accepted the program too (informant 5) and another informant said; we like how ifad is using indigenous people as our trainers in the program. this has certainly attracted a lot of us to the program (informant 3) officials/beneficiaries relationship the cordial relationship between program officials and beneficiaries was also found to have motivated beneficiaries‟ participation. while describing these relationships informants stated that; they are honest, helpful and accommodating. apart from the program activities, they usually attend community functions such as wedding and naming ceremonies (informant 8) and yet another informant said; you can hardly differentiate them [officials] from beneficiaries unless being told because they have identified very well with beneficiaries, we go to the field together in their official car, at times they come with food from the cities and we eat together and in most occasions they eat the food that was prepared in the community (informant 7). publicity it was found from interviews with informants that the publicity given to the program at the onset using information vans especially on market days, posters and jingles has attracted the attention of the farmers towards participation in the program as explained by informants that; the logo of the program portraying a farmer gradually moving out of poverty was so appealing and convincing (informant 6), the publicity given to the program caught my attention to develop interest in the program (informant 3) while another informant observed that; the melodious jingles attracted me to join the program (informant 1). berends (2009) had also reported a similar finding in a study of peoples‟ participation in mongolia. conclusion the study illustrated beneficiaries‟ experiences of participation in ifad/cbardp focusing on how beneficiaries are participating in the program and the factors that motivated them to participate. findings of the study revealed that beneficiaries‟ participation was only evident at the lower levels of participation in the forms of beneficiaries‟ contribution of labor and other resources and through consultations. several factors have been mentioned by beneficiaries to have motivated their participation but the desire to get tangible material benefits was the prominent factor featured in the data collected. it is noteworthy to mention that being a case study; the findings are meant to highlight existing challenges and opportunities within the context of the study. however, the findings may be generalized to other areas sharing similar contexts. the study recommends the active and full involvement of beneficiaries while designing future developmental programs in order to achieve sustainable development programs capable of empowering beneficiaries to manage their own development. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references african development bank (2003). communitybased agriculture and rural development program: appraisal report nigeria. agriculture and rural development. central and west regions (ocar) july, 2003. aliyu, a. 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(3rd ed.). london: sage publications. publisher: asian economic and social society issn: 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012 acknowledgement: the authors are grateful to s and d farms ltd. aderupoko, abeokuta ogun state for the provision of dominant black strains parent stock day-old used for this study. a comparative study of growth performance and feed efficiency in dominant black strain, fulani ecotype chicken and progeny from their reciprocal crosses sola-ojo, f. e. ( department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria) ayorinde, k. l. ( department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria) toye, a. a. ( department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria) citation: ayorinde, k. l., sola-ojo, f. e. and toye, a. a. (2012): “a comparative study of growth performance and feed efficiency in dominant black strain, fulani ecotype chicken and progeny from their reciprocal crosses”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 120-125. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 120-125 120 author(s) sola-ojo, f. e. department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria email: mofesola1@yahoo.com ayorinde, k. l. department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria toye, a. a. department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria email: ayo.toye@btinternet.com a comparative study of growth performance and feed efficiency in dominant black strain, fulani ecotype chicken and progeny from their reciprocal crosses abstract a study of the relative performance of a local chicken (fulani ecotype or fexfe), an exotic chicken (dominant black or dbxdb), and their reciprocal crosses (dbxfe and fexdb) was undertaken. a total of three hundred and thirty (330) chickens comprising 100 dbxdb, 80 dbxfe, 80 fexdb and 70 fexfe were studied. all animals were raised from day old to 21 weeks age contemporaneously under identical housing, feeding and management procedures during which growth parameters were measured. significant (p<0.05) differences in weight gain were observed between groups (fexdb 1365.10±2.47, fexfe 1367.00±2.98 > dbxfe 1346.80±3.05 > dbxdb 1314.40±3.61) over the 21 week experimental period. fexfe had significantly (p<0.05) lower feed efficiency than all other groups (fexdb 69.18±0.03, dbxdb 68.78±0.03, dbxfe 68.50±0.02 > fexfe 67.50±0.02) over the same period. low mortality (≤ 2%) occurred across genotypes with fexfe having the least mortality. the results indicated that reciprocal crossing of pure local fulani ecotype with exotic dominant black strain produces chickens with indistinguishable feed efficiency from the highly improved dominant black, and superior to the pure fulani. cross breeding of the type reported here may therefore serve as a tool for improving efficiency of fulani ecotype local poultry whilst retaining elements of their valued characteristics which include meat value. further studies will evaluate the hybrids (f1) of fe and db for retention of desirable characteristics of local breeds. keywords: fulani ecotype, local chicken, cross breeding, weight gain, feed efficiency introduction selection and cross breeding offer means through which genetic variation can be leveraged systematically to improve poultry productivity. the use of first filial generation (f1) cross-breeds in production agriculture particularly offers a means through which rapid improvement can be achieved in ways that combine desirable characteristics (appearance, productivity and fitness) of each of the crossed breeds, to create an animal that exhibits a more-desirable mixture of traits than is possible with either alone. unlike the case with pure breeds, segregation which occurs during further breeding of f1 animals can markedly destroy favourable combinations of genes contributed by the original parents, thereby increasing variation within and between desirable traits, and reducing overall productivity of subsequent generations if unselected, there is therefore a need for recurrent cross-breeding to create f1 animals for production. the direct use of f1 cross-breeds in production agriculture is particularly desirable where the economics of breeding are favourable i.e. the additional cost of production imposed by the requirement for recurrent breeding of f1 is outweighed by potential economic gain from superior productivity of the f1. in nigeria, local chicken production constitutes a significant portion of the chicken industry which is a major contributor of animal protein in the national diet (ayorinde, 1986). neither local, nor exotic chickens possess clear-cut superiority in the combination of productivity, adaptability, and resistance to local diseases which is desirable. the nigerian local chicken (nlc) exhibits higher fertility and hatchability under natural incubation, and better adaptation to the prevailing diseases, physical conditions and local management practices than exotic chickens. in addition, its meat is perceived to have superior gustatory mailto:mofesola1@yahoo.com mailto:ayo.toye@btinternet.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 120-125 121 qualities. it is however less productive (meat and eggs) than its exotic counterparts. the indigenous chicken exhibit high genetic variance in their performance, and therefore have great potential for genetic improvement through cross breeding and/or selection in breeding and improvement programmes (omeje and nwosu, 1983; nwosu et al., 1985; ikeobi et al., 1996; adebambo et al., 1999, 2009; peters, 2000; adedeji et al., 2008 ). cross breeding of local chicken with exotic commercial chicken will combine the advantage of the legacy of objective systematic scientific selection for productivity in the exotic birds and subjective selection by local farmers coupled with natural selection for hardiness in the indigenous birds, to produce a chicken that has the combined advantages of both parents. it is often impossible to predict a priori how a hybrid between two lineages will perform in comparison with either of its parent types when assessed on a single trait or combination of traits of interest. indeed, performance of a hybrid may also differ according to the direction of crossing. there is therefore need to cross-evaluate performance of hybrids reciprocal crosses derived from each possible direction of crossing (reciprocal crosses), and also to compare hybrids with each of the original parental types, so as to assess whether and to what extent their performance exhibits any merit beyond what is possible from either parent-type alone. the nigerian fulani ecotype (fe) chicken has been reported to have great potential for genetic improvement in growth and reproductive performance (atteh, 1990; tiamiyu, 1999; olori, 1992; fayeye et al., 2005; odetunde, 2007; sola-ojo and ayorinde, 2009). improving productivity of this chicken ecotype through cross breeding will not only yield economic benefit for the local farmer, it should also reduce overall national expenditure on importation of day old chicks and breeder stock which are costly to manage. the present study determined, the relative performance of dual purpose (meat and egg type) fulani ecotype nlc, egg-type dominant black (db) exotic strain, and their reciprocal crosses (first filial generation fexdb and dbxfe), with a view to assessing whether and to what extent cross breeding can improve performance of the fe nlc, and whether there is merit in specifying the direction of crossing. specifically, birds were assessed on performance characteristics which included growth from hatch to 21 weeks of age, and feed intake and efficiency. materials and methods experimental birds and mating design one hundred and forty three dominant black strain, db (130 female and 13 male) and 99 fulani ecotype chicken, fe (90 females and 9 males) were mated in pens at 10:1 female: male ratio in the following combinations (mating types): 80 db females and 8 db males (dbxdb); 50 db females and 5 fe males (dbxfe); 50 fe females and 5 db males (fexdb), and; 40 fe females and 4 fe males (fexfe). fertile eggs collected weekly were labelled by mating group type and taken to a commercial hatchery for incubation and hatching. a total of 100 chicks (male plus female) were obtained from dbxdb, 80 from dbxfe, 80 from fexdb and 70 from fexfe for data collection. all the chicks obtained for each genotype were wing banded, weighed, and housed in pens according to their genotype. all birds were fed a diet (nrc, 1994) designed for egg strains from day-old to 21 weeks of age. the birds were weighed weekly. feed intake and body weight gain were also measured weekly. all data were subjected to statistical analysis by use of the mixed model analysis procedure of sas (2003), and significantly different means were separated by use of the duncans multiple range post hoc test procedure of the same software package. the following model was used: yij = µi + ai+ eij where yij = body weight measurements µ= overall mean ai = effect of i th genotype eij= random residual error results and discussions the means of body weight of fe, db, and their reciprocal crosses (dbxfe and fexdb) from week 1 to weeks are presented in table 1. there were significant (p<0.05) differences in body weight of the two pure bred parental lines (db vs fe) from day old. the dbxdb had significantly higher body weight than fexfe from day old to 9 weeks, and between 13 and 19 weeks, while fexfe had higher body weight at 19 weeks, there were no significant differences in their body weight at weeks 11, 15 and 17. body weight increased in dbxdb by 31.95%, 63.64%, 43.68%, 45.92% and 23.83%, from day old to week 1, weeks 1 to 3, 3 to 5, 5 to 7 and 7 to 9, respectively, while fexfe bodyweight increased by 8.61%, 67.05%, 36.91%, 52.93% and 14.98% in the same successive periods. the percentage increases in bodyweight of dbxdb were higher than those of fe except from asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 120-125 122 week 1 to week 3 where fexfe was 3.41% higher than dbxdb. the crossbreds (dbxfe, fexdb) had significantly higher body weight than the purebred dbxdb from day old to 3 weeks, and at 21 weeks of age, were not significantly different from dbxdb in body weigh at ages 5, 9, 15 and 17 weeks. at the 7th week of age there were no significant differences in body weight of dbxdb and dbxfe, and also, no significant differences existed in body weight between dbxdb and fexdb at 19 weeks of age. the results also indicated that the cross breds have significantly higher body weight than the pure bred fulani ecotype chicken at day old and weeks, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 13, while no significant differences in body weight were observed at 15 and 17. the body weight of dbxfe was significantly greater than that of fexfe from day old to age 13 weeks, while fexdb had significantly higher body weight than fexfe from day old to 9, 13, 19 and 21 weeks of age. in body weight comparisons between the crossbreds, no significant differences were observed at 3, 5, 9, 13, 15 and 17 weeks of age, while significant differences existed in their body weight with dbxfe bigger at day old and weeks 1, 3, 5,9,11 and 19, fexdb had significantly higher body weight than dbxfe at 21 weeks. the growth patterns of the crossbreds and the pure bred db were similar from day old to seven weeks of age and from 11 to 17 weeks there is no clear distinction in the growth patterns of all the four genotypes. however, the rate of growth of the crossbreds tended towards the pure bred db than the pure bred fe (table 1). different rates of increase in body weight were observed in the purebreds and crossbreds at different ages. nevertheless, the rates of increase in body weight of dbxfe and fexdb were not different at weeks 1 to 5 (table 2). the dbxdb had a rate of growth that was not different from that of dbxfe and fexdb between weeks 1 and 3, and not different from dbxfe between weeks 5 and 11. rates of increase in body weight of fexfe were significantly higher than those of other genotypes from weeks 3 to 7, 9 to 11, 13 to 15 and weeks 17 to 19. the higher rates of increase in body weight of fexfe relative to other genotypes examined at 13 to 15 weeks age. all the genotypes had a sharp reduction in their rate of growth from 17th to 21 weeks of age. growth performance of fe, db, and their reciprocal crosses (dbxfe and fexdb) from 0 – 21 weeks is presented in table 3. there were significant (p<0.05) differences in the total weight gained by the pure bred (dbxdb and fexfe). weight gained by the cross bred dbxfe and fexdb were also significantly (p<0.05) different, while the total weight gained by fexdb was not significantly different from total weight gained by the purebred fulani ecotype chicken (fexfe). significant (p<0.05) differences also existed in total feed intake of all the genotypes. the cross bred (dbxdb and fexdb) had feed efficiencies that were not significantly (p>0.05) different form that of the pure bred dominant black strain (table 2). it was also noted that fexfe consumed more feed and gained more weight during the experimental period while fexdb had the highest feed efficiency followed by dbxdb, dbxfe and fexfe accordingly. the results of this findings indicated that the crossbred utilize their feed efficiently like the pure bred dominant black strain. mortality rate was less than 2% across the genotype and this is an indication that all the genotypes adapt favourably to the study environment. the rate of increase in body weight of all the genotypes dropped at the onset of puberty when the chickens are approaching 21 weeks of age, this corresponds with the findings of nwosu (1979), which stated that the rate of growth in chicken reduce at the onset of puberty. however, the body weight of the crossbred at 21 weeks of age in this study fell within the range of body weight at first egg (1.3-1.5kg) reported by payne and smith (1975), oni et al. (1991), olawumi and ogunlade (2009) for most exotic egg laying strains of chicken at the stated weeks. body weight is regarded as a function of framework or size of the animal and its condition (phillip, 1970) and one of the main factors influencing egg size and feed intake is body size (ayorinde and sado, 1988). significant difference in body weight between the crossbreds obtained is attributable to genetic factor because they have no recent history of cross breeding and were managed under the same environmental conditions and experimental procedures in the current study. these are in keeping with ayorinde (1995) who stated that variation in body weight within a flock can be attributed to genetic variation and environmental factors that impinge on individuals. fexfe examined in this study can be regarded as a heavier breed compared to dbxdb, and they also consumed more feed with lesser feed efficiency while the dbxdb strains are a light breed with higher feed efficiency, this corresponds with the findings of rendel and mapple (1986) which stated that heavy breed and large birds consume more feed, have lower feed conversion ratio, require more space and are therefore less economical during egg production, while small and light bodied hens are reported to produce small sized eggs because of the skeletal size, and have a relatively lower carcass value though they have higher feed conversion ratio. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 120-125 123 conclusion these results showcase the value of contemporaneous comparative evaluation of pure breeds and their reciprocal crosses in the determination of the value of first filial generation (f1) poultry for production agriculture. collectively they show that chickens with superior live weight than possible in either fe or db result from crossing of both breeds, and that the superior live weight of the fexdb is also accomplished with superior feed efficiency over fe, and equivalent feed efficiency to the db breed. the fexdb cross is therefore superior to the dbxfe for efficient production of animals with superior live weight, and should be encouraged in preference. cross breeding of the type reported here will serve as a tool for improving efficiency of fulani ecotype local chickens whilst retaining elements of their prized characteristics which include meat value. further studies will evaluate the reciprocal crosses (fexdb and dbxfe) against the purebred fe and db in terms of other desirable characteristic which include egg production in which db is superior to fe, and hardiness and disease resistance in which fe is superior to db. references adebambo, o. a., ikeobi, c. o. n., ozoje, m. o. and adenowo, j. a., (1999) “colour variation and performance characteristics of the indigenous chicken of south western nigeria”, nig. journal of animal production, vol. 26, pp. 1522. adebambo, o. a., ikeobi, c. o. n. ozoje m. o. and adebambo, o.a., (2009) “variation in growth performance of pure and crossbred meat type chickens”, nig. journal of animal production, vol. 36(2), pp. 211-27. adedeji, t. a., ojedapo, a. o. ige, s. a. ameen, akinwunmi, a. o. and amao, s. r., (2008) “genetic evaluation of growth performance of pure and crossbred chicken progenies in a derived savannah environment”, proc. of the 13 th annual conference of the animal science association of nigeria, (asan) sept. 15 -19 . abu zaria. :pp. 8-12. atteh, j. o., (1990) “rural poultry production in western middle belt region of nigeria”, in: proceedings of international workshop on rural poultry in africa”. (ed, sonaiya, e.b), nov 13-16, 1989, ile ife, nigeria: pp. 211-20. ayorinde, k. l., (1986) “poultry for protein”, african farming and food processing, sept/ oct. 1986: pp. 1718. ayorinde, k. l. and sado, c. (1988) “repeatability estimates for some egg traits in a commercial laying strain”, nig. journal of animal production, vol. 15, pp. 119-25. ayorinde, k. l. (1995) “the influence of genetic increase in body weight on conformational and carcass characteristics of pearl guinea fowl”, archive geflugelk, vol. 60(3), pp. 99-102. fayeye, t. r., adeshiyan a. b and olugbami, a. a. (2005) “egg traits, hatchability and early growth performance of the fulani – ecotype chicken”, http:// www.lrrd. org/lrrd17/8faye17094.htm.lrrd. vol. 17(8) ikeobi, c. o. n., ozoje, m. o, adebambo, o. a., adenowo, j. a. and osinowo, o. a. (1996) “genetic differences in the performance of the local chicken in south western nigeria”, nig. journal of genetics, vol. 11, pp. 5560. nrc, (1994) national research council (1994), nutrient requirement table of poultry. 9 th edn. washington, d.c . national academy press. nwosu, c. c. (1979) “characterization of the local chickens of nigeria and its potential for egg and meat production, poultry production in nigeria”, proceeding 1 st national seminar on poultry production ahmadu bello university, zaria, : pp. 187-210. nwosu, c. c. gowen , f. a. obioha, f. c. akpan, i. a. and onuora, g. i., (1985) “biometrical study of the conformation of the native chicken”, nig. journal of animal production, vol. 12, pp. 141-46. odetunde, r. b., (2007) “comparative studies of two indigenous chicken in kwara state”, b. agric thesis department of animal production university of ilorin. olori, v. e. (1992) “evaluation of two –ecotype of the nigerian chicken”, m.sc thesis, oau, ileife, nigeria. omeje, s. s. i. and nwosu, c. c., (1983) “egg production patterns in local chickens and their crosses in short term”, nig. journal of anim. prod. vol. 10, pp. 91-96. oni, o. o., abubakar, b. y. and ogundipe, s. o. (1991) “genetic and phenotypic association of http://www.lrrd/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 120-125 124 juvenile body weight and egg production traits in two strains of rhode island chickens”, nigerian journal of animal production, vol. 18, pp. 66-70. olawumi, s. o. and ogunlade, j. t. (2009) “the effects of genotype and age of layer breeders on egg quality traits”, nigerian journal of animal production, vol. 36(2), pp. 228-36. payne, w. j. a. and smith, a. j. (1975) “factors limiting the production of animal products in the tropics with particular reference to animal feeds”, proc. of the conference on animal feeds of tropical and subtropical origin, tropical products institute, london school of pharmacy. 15 april 1974, vol. 23 peters, s. o. (2000) “genetic variation in the reproductive performance of indigenous chicken and the growth rates of its pure and half bred progeny”, m.sc. thesis dept. of animal breeding and genetics, univ. of agric. abeokuta: 120. phillip, j. s. (1970) “poultry feeds and nutrition”, the avi publishing co inc. west port connection, u.s.a. rendel, j. a. and mapple, j. (1986) “body composition and physical parameters as determinant of age at sexual maturity and performance efficiency in dwarf hen divergently selected for body weight”, poultry science journal, vol. 65(8), pp. 1429-36. sas (2003) “statistical analysis system”, users guide, statistical analysis institute inc. cary, north carolina sola-ojo, f. e. and ayorinde, k. l. (2009) “comparative performance of two indigenous chickens in kwara state”, in: global food challenges (umoh, b.i, solomon, i.p udedibe a,b.i , obasi, o.l okon, b.i and udoh e.j eds).proc. 34 th annual conf. of nigerian society for animal production”. (nsap) university of uyo, akwa ibom 15 th 18 th march (2009), pp. 463-65. tiamiyu. a. k. (1999) “morphological features of fulani ecotype chicken”, proceeding of the 26 th annual nsap conf”. march 17 th – 23 rd ilorin kwara state nigeria. 1999: pp. 21-25. table 1: means of body weight of fe and db progenies from week 1 to 21 weeks age (wks) dbxdb dbxfe fexdb fexfe 0 36.20±0.9d 43.42±0.1a 41.24±0.1b 38.00±0.1c 1 53.20±0.2c 56.00±0.1a 55.00±0.8b 41.58±0.1d 3 146.30±0.1b 150.50±0.1a 149.40±0.1a 126.20±0.1c 5 259.80±0.6a 261.80±0.12a 258.10±0.2a 200.05±0.6b 7 480.40±1.2b 478.40±0.3b 490.00±0.1a 425.08±0.7c 9 630.70±0.3a 632.70±0.3a 635.81±0.3a 500.03±1.0b 11 760.30±0.1b 780.12±0.1a 765.50±0.2b 760.80±0.9b 13 865.00±1.1a 860.82±1.3b 859.29±1.1b 828.50±1.1c 15 967.60±1.7 968.15.0±1.2 968.85±1.2 967.60±1.1 17 1148.70±2.8 1150.07±1.6 1147.51±0.5 1150.01±0.5 19 21 1289.60±4.1b 1350.60±4.5c 1295.02±3.7a 1388.60±3.2b 1289.00±3.7b 1408.50±3.5a 1298.01±3.5a 1375.00±3.2b means on the same row followed by the same superscripts were not significantly different. (p<0.05). dbxdb =dominant black male and female dbxfe = dominant black male and fulani ecotype female fexdb = fulani ecotype male and dominant black female fexfe = fulani ecotype male and female table 2: rate of increase in body weight of dominant black and fulani ecotype chicken progenies age (weeks) genotypes dbxdb dbxfe fexdb fexfe 0-1 31.95a 22.46c 25.01b 8.61d 1-3 63.63a 62.79a 63.19a 56.78b 3-5 43.69b 42.51c 42.12c 51.91a 5-7 45.92c 45.27c 47.32b 52.94a 7-9 23.83a 24.39a 22.93b 14.99c 9-11 17.05b 18.89b 15.09c 34.28a 11-13 12.10a 9.37b 10.91a 8.17b 13-15 10.60b 11.08c 9.55d 14.37a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 120-125 125 15-17 15.76b 25.15a 15.57b 15.86b 17-19 10.93a 8.88b 10.97a 11.40a 19-21 4.52d 6.73b 8.48a 5.59c means on the same row followed by different superscripts (a-d) differ significantly (p<0.05) dbxdb =dominant black male and female dbxfe = dominant black male and fulani ecotype chicken female fexdb = fulani ecotype chicken male and dominant black female fexfe = fulani ecotype chicken male and female table 3: growth performance of dominant black strain and fulani ecotype chicken cross bred from 0 – 21 weeks parameters dbxdb dbxfe fexdb fexfe total weight gain (g/chicken) 1314.40±3.61c 1346.80± 3.05b 1365.10± 2.47a 1367.00±2.98 a total feed intake (g /chicken) 1911.0±0.12d 1965±0.11c 1973±0.12b 2025±0.18a feed efficiency (%) 68.78±0.03a 68.50±0.02a 69.18±0.03a 67.50±0.02b mortality (%) 2±0.01 2±0.01 2±0.01 1±0.01 means on the same row followed by different superscripts were significantly different (p<0.05). dbxdb =dominant black male and female dbxfe = dominant black male and fulani ecotype female fexdb = fulani ecotype and dominant black female fexfe = fulani ecotype male and female effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. restoring the health of paddy soil by using straw compost and biofertilizers to increase fertilizer efficiency and rice production with sobari (system of organic based aerobic rice intensification) technology tien turmuktini (departement of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, winaya mukti universityjl. raya tanjungsari, bandung sumedang km 29) endang kantikowati (departement of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, bale bandung university) betty natalie, mieke setiawati, yuyun yuwariah and benny joy (departement of agrotechnology faculty of agriculture, padjadjaran university. jl. raya bandung sumedang km 21, bandung 40900) tualar simarmata (departement of agrotechnology faculty of agriculture, padjadjaran university. jl. raya bandung sumedang km 21, bandung 40900) citation: tien turmuktini, endang kantikowati, betty natalie, mieke setiawati, yuyun yuwariah, benny joy and tualar simarmata (2012) “restoring the health of paddy soil by using straw compost and biofertilizers to increase fertilizer efficiency and rice production with sobari (system of organic based aerobic rice intensification) technology”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 519 526. restoring the health of paddy soil by using.... 519 author(s) tien turmuktini departement of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, winaya mukti universityjl. raya tanjungsari, bandung sumedang km 29. endang kantikowati departement of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, bale bandung university. betty natalie, mieke setiawati, yuyun yuwariah and benny joy departement of agrotechnology faculty of agriculture, padjadjaran university. jl. raya bandung sumedang km 21, bandung 40900) tualar simarmata departement of agrotechnology faculty of agriculture, adjadjaran university. jl. raya bandung sumedang km 21, bandung 40900. restoring the health of paddy soil by using straw compost and biofertilizers to increase fertilizer efficiency and rice production with sobari (system of organic based aerobic rice intensification) technology abstract current conditions indicate that about 70% of paddy fields in indonesia has been experiencing severe degradation of land and can be categorized as an illness (sick soils), therefore, efforts to restore health and increase the productivity of paddy soil in a sustainable manner can be done by integrating fertilizer-based integrated management organic and biological fertilizers (biofertilizers) with sobari (system of organic based aerobic rice intensification )technology. the experiment was conducted from march to august 2011 in the fields eksperiment faculty of agriculture padjadjaran university, bandung with the aim of testing the use of straw compost + biofertilizer for efficientcy inorganic fertilizer (n, p, k) and increase rice production by sobari technology. experiments was using a split plot design. the main plot consists of 8 standard combination of organic fertilizer (compost straw 0: 2.5: 5.0 and 7.5 t ha -1 , with no biological fertilizers and biological fertilizers 400 g ha -1 . sub plots consisted of 5 standard: organic fertilizer n, p and k (100%, 90%, 80%, 70% and 60% of recommended dosage). the results are: interaction occur between the provision of straw compost + biofertilizer, to the yield per plot. dosage of 5.0 t ha -1 of compost straw + 400 g ha -1 biological fertilizer by accompanied n, p, k 80% of the recommended, may show the highest yields and increase the yield of 13.3% compared to controls is 7.29 kg plot -1 (6.654 t ha -1 ) and gained efficienciy fertilizer n, p, k 20%, of the recommendation. keywords: wetland restoration, fertilizer efficiency, straw compost, biofertilizer, sobari technology introduction sustainability of food security (rice) is highly dependent on the quality of wetland health and water availability. current conditions indicate that about 70% of paddy fields in indonesia has been degraded can be categorized as an illness (sick soils). these problems can lead to food crises and humanitarian issues, and therefore efforts to increase rice production will not be successful without being accompanied by restoring wetland health, because the land has been levelling off. in wetland restructure the efficient use of inputs necessary for farming can compete with other commodities. a technology of rice cultivation with integrated organic wetland management, water-saving technology, power biological crop management, organic based fertilizers and bio fertilizers (biofertilizers) is breakthrough technology that can increase rice production and a sustainable agriculture. rice cultivation techniques ipat-bo (intensifikasi padi aerob terkendali berbasis organik in indonesian language) or sobari asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 519-526 520 (system of organic based aerobic rice intensification ) is one of the new technology of rice cultivation in indonesia that can be used to overcome the degraded irrigated lands, marginal paddy soils, reduced irrigation water, high prices of chemical fertilizers and mitigation for the solution of green house effect that cause global warming which is already happening in the present. this technique was conceived and researched by prof. dr. ir. tualar simarmata ms, a professor of faculty of agriculture, university padjadajaran since 2006 and is constantly being researched and developed to get the best method as an alternative solution, especially for irrigated rice crops in indonesia. sobari is a controlled aerobic intensification technologybased organic material which focuses on the strength of soil biological power, restore the function of the food web and soil as natural fertilizer factory (simarmata 2007 and simarmata et al. 2008). the investigation conducted in 2002, showed that eight provisions in indonesia already had low c -organic levels, example 17% of land contain <1%, 26% of land contain 1 1.5% and 20% of land contain 1.2 2%, especially in agricultural production center like java island has already in a critical condition characterized by c-organic content of < 2% (kasno et al. 2003). water application for agriculture is large enough about 70%, but in developing countries it can reach 80% 90%. (koenhuan 2003). in reality, farmers are still wasteful using water. estimated loss of water by 60%, which is lost while in the plot, 40% lost due to evaporation, seepage, leaks in the irrigation channel, and because of operational errors (palioptro 1991). global warming affecting the climate, planting periode, and soil water availability becomes the limiting factor of the sustainability of food availability. similarly, efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, especially methane, in order to obtain rice cultivation techniques that are friendly environmental. simarmata et al. (2011), mentions techniques sobari is expected to be a solution to overcome agriculture issues in indonesia, because it has four advantages, namely 1. saving water; efficient using water, where water level is 1 cm above the soil surface to -5 cm below the surface of the soil / aerobic controlled; 2. efficient fertilization because it adds organic matter (compost + biofertilizer), 3.saving seed; using twin seedling system, it has 2 seed at one planting hole with 5 cm distance, and 14-day-old plants after the seedlings, 3.efficient fertilizer because added organic matter as rice straw compost, biological fertilizers expected to reduce the use of inorganic fertilizers which is highly expensive ; and 4.soil utilization as biological power which is sources of organic matter, biological fertilizers and biological agents, or as an bioreactor to functioning of natural fertilizer factory and increase the resistance of plants against soil-borne diseases. (turmuktini and simarmata, 2010, simarmata and benny joy 2011). rice straw can easily found at paddy fields, when returned to the land is expected to be a cheap source of organic material, as controlling the natural balance of land, restoration of chemical, biological and physical soil quality which damaged due to land degradation . the occurrence of soil degradation can be caused by excessive use of inorganic fertilizers: affect the soil to be levelling off, using of herbicides and insecticides continuously. decreasing in soil quality will directly affect reduction in rice production, besides addition the use of immature rice straw compost can cause disease contamination, conttribute as source of greenhouse gas emissions and slow release agent; therefore it has to be composted. rice straw compost contains 1.5 2% n, 1524% c-organic, 1.5 2%. k, and 2-3% p. the principle of composting is to lower c / n compost until near the c / n soil, which is 1215. compost is considered indispensable because of the need for organic materials for fertilizers have not been met despite the available manure or green manure. there are several factors driving the need compost include difficulty obtaining mature manure in large quantities, the constraints in the use of green manure because of time and soil for planting green manure crops. whereas, rice straw compost prices are relatively inexpensive because it can be easily found. restoring the health of paddy soil by using.... 521 giving the compost has beneficial properties that include: 1) improve soil structure 2) increase the holding capacity of soil nutrients, 3) increase in soil water holding capacity, 4) improve the drainage and air circulation in the soil, and 5) contains a complete nutrient ,althought in small amounts (diah setyorini et al. 2006). according simanungkalit et al. (2006) azotobacter and azospirillum are non symbiotic bacteria as nitrogen fixing, while bacillus sp., and pseudomonas sp. identified capable of dissolving insoluble forms of p into p form available to plants. thus the availability of soil microorganisms are able to increase the availability of plant nutrient elements, especially n and p. bio fertilizers are used in this study contains a microbe fastening n non symbiotic (azotobacter and azospirillum) and phosphate solubilizing bacteria (pseudomonas sp. and bacillus sp.) is able to provide nutrients in a non-symbiotic with plants, such as n and p nutrients so that soil fertility is increasing (fitriatin et al. 2007). the purpose of this study was to assess the effect of application of organic fertilizer (straw compost+bio fertilizer), on growth, crop yield rice varieties ciherang and efficiency of synthetic fertilizer (n, p, k) with sobarimethod materials and methods experiments carried out in filed experiments of faculty of agriculture district ciparai in bandung from february 2011 until august 2011. materials used biofertilizer bacillus sp, azospirillum, azotobacter, pseudomonas sp (soil microbiology lab collection faculty of agriculture unpad), bolotong bagasse, rice straw compost (the incubation period of 3 weeks), urea (45% n), sp-36 (36% p2o5), kcl (60% k2o), insecticide decis 25 ec.experiment was using a split plot design which consists of two factors and three replications. main plot: organic fertilizer dosage (j) (straw compost and bio fertilizer) with eight standard treatment, namely: j0: straw compost 0 t ha1 + bio fertilizer 0 g ha -1 (control) -j1: straw compost 0 t ha -1 + bio fertilizer 400 g ha -1 j2: straw compost 2.5 t ha -1 + bio fertilizer 0 g ha -1 j3: straw compost 2.5 t ha -1 + bio fertilizer 400 g ha -1 j4: straw compost 5.0 t ha -1 + bio fertilizer 0 g ha -1 j5: straw compost 5.0 t ha -1 + bio fertilizer 400 g ha -1 j6: straw compost 7.5 t ha -1 + bio fertilizer 0 g ha -1 j7: straw compost 7.5 t ha -1 + bio fertilizer 400 g ha -1 sub plots: percentage of npk dosage (of the standard dosage) (p): p1 = 100% (of the standard dosage per hectare: 300 kg urea, sp 36 100 kg, 100 kg kcl) p2 = 90%, p3 = 80%, p4 = 70% and –p5 = 60% implementation of cultivation techniques using sobari. method number of plots in this experiment is 120 each with an area of 3 m x 3.5 m. spacing (30 cm x 35 cm), the population of 100 clumps of plants per plot and using twin seedling planting, where one planting hole consist of 2 seeds plant with 5 cm distance . provision of compost made one week after planting (wap) along with tillage, seeds used was 14 das (days after seedling), bio fertilizer is given a day before planting (with a ratio of 100 grams of bio fertilizers: 10 kg blotong), fertilizer n, p and k were given respectively individual: for urea 3 times, 1/3 dosat planting, 1/3 dosage at the age of 15 dap (days after planting) and 1/3 dosagee at the age of 30 dap (days after planting). sp-36 one time, at the time of planting and kcl are given two times, at planting time and the age of 30 dap (days after planting). after planting, water management conducted, using water-saving technology (sobari), the water is maintained in a condition where water level is 1 cm above the soil surface to -5 cm below the surface of the soil, except for 2 days just before weed control and at the end of vegetative age 50 to 60 dap (days after planting) performed inundation 5 cm above the ground, that serves to suppress the growth of rice tillers and then performed the provision of water where water level is 1 cm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 519-526 522 above the soil surface to -5 cm below the surface of the soil back until 2 weeks before harvest. the data were statistically tested using anova and the duncan mutiple range test at α 5% (gomez and gomez. 1995). for more details, provision of straw compost, planting systems twin (twin seedling) with a distance of 35 cm x 30 cm, and the appearance of vegetative and generative phase of the experiment the plants can be seen in figure below. figure 1: incorporation of compost a week before planting and display the twin plant system (ts: twin seedling) figure 2: display water-saving techniques sobari (controlled aerobic) in the vegetative phase and display in generative of plants in field trials (documentation: tien turmuktini, 2010.) results and discussion the interaction occured between organic fertilizers (compost manure + bio) to rice production per plot in various doses. table 1. independent test on plant growth showed that administration of compost and bio fertilizer has no influence on plant height, number of tillers and number of productive tillers. table 1: average of plant height, number of tillers and productive tillers treatment dosage of straw compost + bio fertilizer plant height (cm) the number of tillers (pcs) the number of productive tillers (pcs) 5 wap 7 wap 5 wap 7 wap 0 t/ha + 0 g/ha 53.547a 67.040 a 30.333 a 39.173 a 22.867 a 0 t/ha + 400 g/ha 51.707 a 64.973 a 29.293 a 34.747 a 23.253 a 2,5 t/ha + 0 g/ha 51.853 a 66.080 a 28.587 a 33.733 a 24.347 a 2,5 t/ha + 400 g/ha 52.227 a 65.867 a 26.867 a 33.373 a 23.227 a 5,0 t/ha + 0 g/ha 52.307 a 66.427 a 27.813 a 33.627 a 24.320 a 5,0 t/ha + 400 g/ha 50.867 a 65.587 a 25.573 a 35.427 a 23.960 a restoring the health of paddy soil by using.... 523 7,5 t/ha + 0 g/ha 52.813 a 66.133 a 26.987 a 35.160 a 24.693 a 7,5 t/ha + 400 g/ha 52.973 a 66.440 a 27.093 a 36.293 a 25.640 a fertilizer npk (p) 100% 53.817 c 67.800 c 30.125 c 36.525 b 25.850 c 90% 52.800 bc 66.667 bc 29.117 bc 36.258 b 24.567 bc 80% 51.842 ab 65.742 b 26.833 ab 34.650 ab 23.492 ab 70% 52.167 b 65.617 ab 27.208 ab 34.550 ab 23.250 ab 60% 50.808 a 64.517 a 25.808 a 33.975 a 23.033 a description: the average number of the same letters in the column as indicated are not significantly different according to duncans multiple range test at level 5% table 2. average of rice production as a result of organic fertilizers (straw compost+bio fertilizers) and inorganic fertilizers (n, p and k) application description: the average number of letters indicated in the brackets on the same horizontal direction and the same letters without the brackets indicates the vertical direction are not significantly different according to duncans multiple range test at the level of 5% the utilization of fertilizer n, p, k gives significant effect on plant height, number of tillers and number of productive tillers, higher dosage of n, p, k, more than 60% showed the dosage of fertilizer straw compost and bio fertilizers rice production (kg plot -1 ) npk fertilizer (p) 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 0 t/ha + 0 g/ha 6,59 b (e) 6,48 d (d) 6,35 c (c) 6,07 b (b) 5,99 b (a) 0 t/ha + 400 g/ha 6,77 d (e) 6,44 c (d) 5,87 a (b) 6,21 c (c) 5,59 a (a) 2,5 t/ha + 0 g/ha 6,82 e (e) 6,18 a (c) 6,40 d (d) 5,91 a (b) 5,57 a (a) 2,5 t/ha + 400 g/ha 6,66 c (d) 6,24 b (b) 6,17 b (a) 6,49 g (c) 6,17 d (a) 5,0 t/ha + 0 g/ha 6,29 a (c) 6,63 e (e) 6,48 e (d) 6,24 d (b) 6,12 c (a) 5,0 t/ha + 400 g/ha 6,83 e (c) 6,62 e (b) 7,20 g (d) 6,36 e (a) 6,63 f (b) 7,5 t/ha + 0 g/ha 6,88 f (e) 6,61 e (d) 6,32 c (a) 6,45 f (c) 6,41 e (b) 7,5 t/ha + 400 g/ha 6,88 f (c) 6,90 f (c) 6,99 f (d) 6,56 h (b) 5,99 b (a) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 519-526 524 improved results, but the same dosage 90% has the same results with 100%. fertilization is one aspect to consider in the rice crop intensification program. utilization synthetic fertilizer is the most preferred action for this, because it has a nutrient's available for plants and immediately visible effect on plants. compost contains micro and macro elements, each of them has a function to enhance growth and yield of crop needs (maschner 1986), but the provision of intensive chemical fertilizers in rice cultivation has led to impaired fertility (gunarto et al. 2002) and stimulate mineralization of soil organic matter resulting in decreased levels of c-organic in soils, soil health and quality of rice is low (arafah and sirappa 2003; simarmata 2007). decreasing in the effectiveness of synthetic fertilizer has an impact on soil and plants can be balanced by the provision of organic fertilizer. the aplication of organic matter in addition to increase nutrients in the soil also can improve crop biophysical environment, among others, can improve soil productivity and efficiency of synthetic fertilizers (arafat and sirappa 2003). this is why that the organic fertilizer in the form of straw and manure compost has no influence, while provision of synthetic has significant on plant growth (plant height, number of tillers and number of productive tillers). fastening bio fertilizer free-living n2, nonsymbiotic, such as azospirillum and azotobacter and pseudomonas spp are found in the rhizosphere and in plant tissues have been able to increase significantly mooring n2 (james and olivares, 1997). azotobacter is an n2 anchor bacteria capable of producing gibberellins, cytokinins and indole acetic acid, the substance of plant growth regulators that stimulate root development. mooring of n2 from the air into ammonia assisted by the enzyme nitrogenase which depends on the physical, chemical and biological soil. availability of energy resources in the form of organic matter rhizosfer environment is a major factor that determines the amount of n2 produced (alexander, 1997), phosphate solubilizing bacteria (pseudomonas sp. and bacillus sp.) is able to provide the nutrients that increase soil fertility. (fitriatin, et al. 2008). dissolution of phosphate occurs biologically because the microbes that produce enzymes phosphatase excreted by plant roots and by the dominant microorganism (joner et al. 2003). in addition it also produced phytase enzyme (alexander 1977). phosphatase enzyme known to play a role in the mineralization process of organic phosphate compound that is described in the form of organic phosphate into inorganic phosphate in the form provided. activity of microorganisms is influenced by soil ph and substrart (alexander 1977). the addition of straw compost as a source of carbon to the soil accelerate the development of nitrogen solubulizing bacteria and phosphate solubulizing bacteria. this indicate why the number n2 is moored or dissolved p in bacteria varies in each place, it is dependent on energy availability and the ability of bacteria to compete with another bacteria which is given from outside or exogenous (in the form of bio fertilizers or bacteria found in compost) or the local bacteria (indogenous) living and breeding depends on the same energy source. microbial activity depends on their ability to compete with abiotic factors such as environment, temperature, ph, substrate and biotic factors, namely competition with similar microbes and various other types of microbes. the success of microbial tolerance will generate the necessary nutrient such as n, p, k are as many and quickly so as to substitute the need for inorganic fertilizers. application of straw compost and bio fertilazer affect each other. the highest result is obtained with treatment compost 5 t ha -1 + 400 g ha -1 bio fertilizer with 80% standard dosage of inorganic fertilizer n, p and k, with rice production 7.20 kg plot -1 is equivalent to 6.65 t ha -1 , this treatment led to occur 13.3% yield increase compared to controls. provision of compost 2.5 t ha -1 and 5 t ha -1 + 400 g ha -1 of bio fertilizers with organic fertilizers 70% and 60% of the standard dosage can produce grain each 6.49 kg plot -1 and 6.63 g plot -1 equivalent to each of 6.18 t ha -1 and 6.31 t ha -1 , this treatment led to an increase in the 6.18% respectively and 10, 8% compared with respective controls. improved results show that with the contribution of organic fertilizer bio fertilizer and straw compost could substitute inorganic restoring the health of paddy soil by using.... 525 fertilizer 20% to 40%. this is supported by plant nutrient uptake of nutrients and the chemical state of the land has increased to fit the needs of plants. according to the description of ciherang varieties showed that the number of productive tillers rod is 14 -17, 1000 grain weight was 28 g, the average result is 6 t ha -1 and 8.5 t ha -1 rice production. compared to the rice experimental results, it turns out the number of tillers increased to 33 up to 36.293 pieces, the average increase of 125% and the number of productive tillers increased to 23 to 25.64 pieces per cluster, an increase of 54% compared to the number of tillers description. an increasing number of tillers and number of productive tillers is the success of the technique in which sobaricropping systems using ts (twin seedling) planting method. the main focus in savings synthetic fertilizers is to use n,p, k fertilizer more efficiently by giving n bacteria and phosphate solubilizing bacteria. utilization of these bacteria are applied directly or with the addition of compost, to increase the efficiency of fertilizer n, p and k around 20%. according to the description ciherang rice varieties showed that the number of productive tillers rod is 14 -17, 1000 grain weight was 28 g, the average result is 6 t ha 1 yield potential and 8.5 t ha -1 rice production. compered to the rice experimental results, it turns out the number of tillers increased to 33 up to 36.293 pieces, the average increase of 125% and the number of productive tillers increased to 23 to 25.64 pieces per cluster, an increase of 54% compared to the number of tillers description. an increasing number of tillers and number of productive tillers is the success of the technique in which sobari using ts (twin seedling) planting system. improvement in crop production is closely related to the ability of plants to tolerate environmental and genetic nature itself (salisbury and ross 1995). availability of nutrients in the soil will improve crop production, but the utilization of nutrients is limited to the adequacy of the needs and capabilities of the plant itself is carried genetically. (gardner et al. 1991). in achieving the ultimate goal of long-term strategy, the use of rice straw compost and bio fertilizers is to increase production and improve the efficiency of fertilizer n, p, k is expected to be positively correlated to the increasing productivity land and farm income. conclusion the results are: interaction occurs between the provision of straw compost + biofertilizer, to yield per plot. dosage of 5.0 t ha -1 of compost straw and 400 g ha -1 dosage biological fertilizer by accompanied n, p, k 80% of the recommended, indicate the increase of yield about 13.3% compared to controls is 7.29 kg plot -1 (6.654 t ha -1 ) and gained efficienciy fertilizer n, p, k 20%, of the recommendation. references alexander, m. (1977) “introduction to soil mycrobiology”, 2 nd ed. john wiley and sons. new york. 476 p. arafah, and m. p. sirappa (2003) “study of use of straw and fertilizer n, p, and k on irrigated land”, journal of soil science and environmental, vol. 4(1), pp. 15-24. diah setyorini , r. saraswati, r. k. anwar (2006) kompos .in simanungkalit, d. a. suriadikarta. rasti saraswati, d. setyorini and w. hartatik. 2006. organic fertilizer and bio fertilizer. agency foragricultural research and development, 313 p fitriatin, joy, b. and subroto, t. (2007) “phosphatase activity characterization, catalyst soil microbia and resources on organic p mineralization”, research report. based intensif research program kmnrt. gardner, f. p., r. b. pearce, and r. l. mitchell. (1991) “plant physiology translation: h. susilo, university of indonesia press, jakarta. gomez, a. k., and a. a. gomez. (1995) “statistic procedures for agricultural research. translation”, e. sjamsuddin and j. s. baharsjah. ui press, jakarta. gunarto, l., p. lestari, h. supadmo, and a. r. marzuki (2002) “statistical procedures for agricultural research”, translation rice straw decomposition, azospirillum inoculation and its effect on fertilizer n use efficiency in rice. agriculture research, vol. 21(1), pp. 1-10. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 519-526 526 joner, e. j., i. m. aerle and m. vosatka. (2003) “phosphatase activity of extra radical arbuscular mychoriza hyphae. a review”, plant soil, vol. 226, pp. 199-210. james, e. and olivares, (1997) “infection on colonization of sugarcane and other gramineous plant by endophytic dizotropic”, plant science, vol. 17, pp. 77-119. kasno a., dyah s., nurjaman, (2003) “organic status of the c-land rice in indonesia”, proceedings. set of soil science (hiti). padang koenhuan, j.e. (2003) “analysis of utilization and management of water in irrigation systems kalibawang kulonprogo district”, visi, psisdalp universitas andalas maschner, h. (1986) “mineral nutrition in higher plants”, academic press, toronto. palioptro, martinez (1991) “efficient use of irrigation water”, international seminar of efficient water use . mexico in october 21-25. http//www.unesco.org.uy. salisbury, f. b. and c. w. ross (1995) “plant physiology”, itb press, bandung. simarmata, t. (2007) “increased productivity through technology paddy rice intensification in aerobic controlled”, scientific discussion paper on may 21, 2007, faculty of agriculture, university of padjadjaran, jatinangor. simarmata, t. (2008) “technology rice intensification in aerobic controlled (sobari method) to double rice production and accelerate the achievement of food sovereignty in indonesia”, professor oration.paper in soil science at the faculty of agriculture, padjadjaran university (unpad) simarmata, t. and benny joy (2011) “increasing rice production technology and wetland restoration of land health with sobari”, seminar on implementation of national crop cultivation technology for food nasional towards independence. april 2, 2011, umm. purwokerto,1-21. simarmata, t., benny joy and tien turmuktini (2011) “water saving and organic fertilizers based technology to remediate the health of paddy soils and to increase rice productivity”, conference on international research on food security, natural resource management and rural development indonesia tropentag, university of bonn, october 5 7, 2011. simarmata, t., benny joy and ten turmuktini (2011) “management of water saving and organic based fertilizers technology for remediation and maintaining the health of paddy soils and to increase the sustainability of rice productivity in indonesia”, call paper on sustainable agriculture and food security: challenge and opportunities, 27 – 28 september 2011, university of padjadjaran bandung – indonesia. simanungkalit, r. saraswati, ratih. d, h. e. husen. (2006) nitrogen-fixing bacteria in simanungkalit, d. a. suriadikarta. rasti saraswati, d. setyorini and w hartatik. , 2006. organic fertilizer and bio fertilizer. agency foragricultural research and development agriculture, 313 p. turmuktini t. and simarmata, t. (2010) ipat-bo role in irrigation water conservation and improvement of productivity of rice fields. proceedings of national seminar on biodiversity and biotechnology aquatic resources. faculty of biology unsoed. purwokerto 26 juni 2010: 1-9. turmuktin, t. endang kantikowati, betty natalie, yuyun yuwariah and simarmata, t. (2010) “application of water used efficiency technology and straw compost sobari method (system organic based aerobic rice intensification) to accelerate paddy soils health remediation and to increase rice”, productivity international seminar biotechnology for enhancement the tropical biodiversity .padjadjaran university, bandunng 19-20 october 2010. publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. factors associated with performance of farmer field school as extension approach to cocoa production in osun state, nigeria b. o. adisa (department of agricultural extension and rural development obafemi awolowo university ile-ife, nigeria) adeloye, k. a. (department of agricultural extension and rural development obafemi awolowo university ile-ife, nigeria) citation: b. o. adisa and adeloye k. a. (2012) “factors associated with performance of farmer field school as extension approach to cocoa production in osun state, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 162-170. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 162-170 162 keywords: performance, field school, extension approach, management practices, farmers, cocoa production introduction the term extension was first used to describe adult education programmes in england in the second half of the 19th century; these programmes helped to expand/ extend the work of universities beyond the campus to the neighbouring communities. the term was later adopted in the united states of america, while in britain; it was replaced with "advisory service" in the 20th century. maunder (1973) opined that agricultural extension is a service or system which assists farm people, through educational procedures, in improving farming methods and techniques, increasing production efficiency and income, bettering their levels of living and lifting social and educational standards. a plethora of extension approaches have been used to increase agricultural production (like cocoa) such as commodity extension approach, university based extension approach, ministry-based extension approach, visit and training approach with little success. these extension approaches were diffused, non-focused, combining advocacy and advisory roles with input and credit distribution, and regulatory functions. some extension scholars rivera et al. (2001) and feder et al. (2001) commented on the frequent manifestations of unsatisfactory extension performance observed in this extension approach which tends to be generic and could be applicable to any sector/subsector. these manifestations were due to: the cost of reaching large, geographically dispersed and remote smallholder farmers was high, which reduce the potential of farmer-tofarmer diffusion; competition for budget between extension and research system which created tensions and militates against an effective two-way communication; the use of extension agent for nonextension duties such as collection of statistics, distribution of subsidized inputs, assisting and collecting loan applications, and election campaign factors associated with performance of farmer field school as extension approach to cocoa production in osun state, nigeria abstract author(s) b. o. adisa department of agricultural extension and rural development obafemi awolowo university ile-ife, nigeria email: banjiolalere@yahoo.com adeloye k. a. department of agricultural extension and rural development obafemi awolowo university ile-ife, nigeria the study focused on factors associated with performance of farmer field school (ffs) as extension approach to cocoa production in osun state, nigeria. data were gathered through structured interview schedule from 248 cocoa farmers participating in ffs. data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistical tools such as frequency counts, percentage, mean and standard deviation while inferential statistics such as correlation and chi square were used to test the hypothesis set. results of the study show that the mean age of cocoa farmers participating in ffs in the study area was 53.3 years with standard deviation of 9.0; majority (79.4%) of them were males, they spent an average of 10.9 years in formal school, the mean of years of experience in cocoa production was 7.5 with standard deviation of 4.8 and they had progressive increase in cocoa output from 2007 to 2009. furthermore, there was high compliance with the organizational structure and operational strategies recommended by food and agriculture organization (fao). there were positive and significant relationship between improvement in cocoa management practices and respondents’ age (r = 0.322; p ≤ 0.05); years of formal education(r = 0.153; p ≤ 0.05); cocoa land size(r = 0.501; p ≤ 0.01); years of experience in cocoa production (r = 0.503; p ≤ 0.01). the study also identified five crucial factors associated with performance of ffs as extension approach, which were social factor (λ = 1.0706); economic factor (λ = 1.2549); facilitators-related factor (λ = 1.6744); ffs operational strategies factor (λ = 0.9973); and community-related factor (λ = 0.4767). the factors indentified explained 83.50 percent of the variation in the performance of ffs as extension approach to cocoa production in osun state. mailto:banjiolalere@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 162-170 163 work on behalf of local or national ruling parties; among many others. it was against this backdrop that national cocoa development committee (ncdc) was set up in 1999. the committee, domiciled in the federal ministry of agriculture and natural resources, was given the mandate to promote cocoa production through the design and implementation of sustainable tree crops programme (stcp) involving new plantings and rehabilitation (rebirth) of old plantations. in effort to fulfill its mandate, ncdc collaborated with international institute of tropical agriculture (iita) and cocoa research institute of nigeria (crin) in 2003 to find a blueprint for reviving the cocoa economy in nigeria making use of farmer field school (ffs) as an extension approach. the term “farmer field school” originated from indonesia expression sekolah lapangan meaning just field school. it was conceptualized between 1970s and 1980s and first implemented in indonesia in 1989 by the food and agriculture organization (fao) of the united nations (un) to deal with the wide spread of pest out-breaks in rice that threatened the security of indonesia’s basic food supplies (pontius, 2002). in his own contribution, gallagher (2003) posited that ffs is a non-formal training programme that grew out of the t&v system. it is a participatory training approach, group extension method and a form of adult education whereby farmers of similar interest (2530 in number) who meet regularly during the course of a growing season to experiment as a group with new production management options are given opportunity to make a choice in the methods of production through discovery based approach. farmer field school curriculum is dictated by the specific production system, priority problems and local condition of the farmer groups. it may cover the entire crop/ livestock cycle and collection of group dynamic exercises, there were also inclusion of social messages like child labour and human immuno-deficiency virus (hiv)/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (aids) integrated into the capacity building activities of ffs (davis 2005; adeniyi and adeogun 2005). due to remarkable success achieved with the use of ffs in other countries, cocoa rehabilitation programme (crp) that is domiciled in federal ministry of agriculture and natural resources also used ffs as its extension approach in the 14 cocoa producing states in nigeria (abia, adamawa, akwa-ibom, cross river, delta, edo, ekiti, kogi, kwara, ogun, ondo, osun, oyo and taraba) as part of cocoa rebirth strategies. the collaboration between the crp committee and the international institute of tropical agriculture (iita)/ sustainable tree crops program (stcp) made use of ondo state (being the highest cocoa producing state in nigeria) as pilot phase for 3 years (2003 2006). the positive results of the impact assessment study of the 3year pilot phase in ondo state informed the plan to replicate the use of ffs in the rest 13 cocoa producing states (federal ministry of agriculture and natural resources, 2007). ffs for cocoa farmers started in osun state in 2007, there were 30 schools as at the time of conducting this research. the cocoa ffs metamorphosis to "kokodowo" cooperative farmers' union, a replica of "tonikoko" cooperative farmers union of ileoluji in ondo state (osun state ministry of agriculture and natural resources, 2009). there is need to assess factors associated with performance of the approach in enhancing cocoa production. objective of the study the main objective of the study was to assess factors associated with performance of ffs as an extension approach to cocoa production in osun state, while the specific objectives were to i. determine the socio-economic characteristics of cocoa farmers participating in ffs in osun state; ii. investigate the operational strategies of the ffs; and iii. assess the factors influencing the performance of ffs in the study area. research hypotheses three null hypotheses were evaluated in the study, these are: i. there is no significant relationship between selected socio-economic characteristics of ffs participants and improvement in cocoa management practices. research methodology osun state was purposively selected for the study, being one of the states with largest cocoa hecterage in nigeria (crin, 2008). the study was carried out in all 30 ffs in the four cocoa circles of osun state, namely: ede, osogbo, ilesa, and ife. twothird of the ffs in each circle was randomly selected; 6 from ilesa, 4 from ede, 4 from osogbo, and 6 from ife. the selected ffs with their numerical strength were; imoro (24), iyere (26), temidire (26), igbagiri (28), ibala (26), araromierinmo (28), mokoore (22), obansola (24), ayetoro (20), abeere (26), oba-ile (22), ajaba-ila asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 162-170 164 (26), dagbolu (24), eleesun (24), obalaayan (28), famia (24), koola (26), akala-oyan (22), abiri (26), wanikin (24). finally, a systematic random sampling technique with a random start at an interval of two using farmers’ register as sampling frame was used to select fifty per cent of farmers from each ffs. a total of 248 respondents were interviewed for the study. validated and pre-tested interview schedule was used to elicit information on socio-economic characteristics. the data were summarized using descriptive statistics; factor analysis was used to identify the crucial factors associated with performance of ffs while chisquare and correlation analyses were used to make inferences from the hypotheses. measurement of variable the dependent variable was conceptualized as cocoa ffs participants’ improvement in management practices as a result of their participation in ffs. there were 19 cocoa management practices emphasized during the ffs. the dependent variable was measured by calculating the total improvement score of each respondent from indicators arising from cocoa management practices emphasized during the ffs. the reaction was against a 4-point scale of improvement ranging from large extent (4 points), some extent (3 points), little extent (2 points), and no extent (1 point) as used by mustapha (2003). the possible minimum/maximum score that a respondent had was calculated by multiplying the number of indicators considered (19) by the least or highest point scored by each of the respondent; that is, maximum score of 76 and minimum score of 19. the total score per respondent was further classified into three categories of improvement as follows: low, moderate and high improvement using mean of total improvement score plus/minus standard deviation. results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of cocoa farmers participating in ffs this section presents information on the socioeconomic characteristics of cocoa farmers participating in ffs such as age, gender, years of formal education, status in the community, cocoa farm size, sources of cocoa farmland, and years of experience in cocoa production, reasons for cocoa cultivation, cocoa breed planted and cocoa output. table 1: distribution of cocoa farmers participating in ffs by selected personal characteristics n=248 variables frequency percentage mean std. dev. variables frequency percentage mean std. dev. age (years) *sources of farmland <31 4 1.6 rent/lease 11 4.4 31-60 199 80.2 53.3 inheritance 207 83.5 >60 45 18.1 outright purchase 79 31.9 gender years of experience in cocoa production male 197 79.4 <11 216 87.1 female 51 20.6 11-20 25 10.1 7.5 4.8 years of formal education >20 7 2.8 <7 69 27.8 cocoa breed planted 7-12 99 39.9 local 42 18.5 >12 80 32.3 improved 55 22.2 cocoa farm size (hectares) both 193 77.6 <2.8 127 51.2 2.8-4.8 108 43.5 7.1 3.1 >4.8 13 5.2 source: field survey, 2010, * multiple responses table 1 revealed that the age of cocoa farmers participating in ffs in osun state was between 30 and 72 years, their mean age was 53.3 years with standard deviation of 9.0. it was evident that few asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 162-170 165 youth participated, which might be connected with the fact that young people were very much involved in rural-urban migration in search of greener pasture. furthermore, it was also revealed that majority (79.4%) of the cocoa farmers were males, this implies that male dominated cocoa farming in the study area. the table also showed that the mean of years spent in formal schools was 11 with standard deviation of 4.5; this revealed that majority could read and write which would help them understand extension recommendations better. many (51.6%) of them were indigenes, this revealed that difference in number between the indigenes and non-indigenes was marginal. the mean cocoa farm size was 2.84 hectares with standard deviation of 3.1; this might be connected with the land fragmentation caused by inheritance. the table shows that majority (83.5%) of cocoa farmers participating in ffs inherited their cocoa farmland, 31.9 percent purchased their cocoa farmland, while only 4.4 percent rent/lease their cocoa farmland. this may be a very good thing for the farmers as they do not need to be bordered about incurring some production cost like capital to purchase land, rentage cost and royalty annually. the mean of years of experience in cocoa production was 26.9 years with standard deviation of 11.5; these relatively long years of experience in cocoa production is likely to have exposed the cocoa farmers in terms of experience in cocoa production and related information. about 18.6 percent of the cocoa farmers still stick to the local breed while the good news was that majority (77.8 %) are combining the two breeds which is an indication of shift towards the adoption of improved variety. fig. 1: distribution of respondents according to their cocoa output source: field survey, 2010 the result in figure 1 revealed that cocoa output mean for 2007, 2008 and 2009 were 154.2, 165.1, and179.3, respectively also the standard deviation for 2007, 2008 and 2009 were 9.3, 9.1 and 9.1, respectively. this finding shows that there was a progressive increase in cocoa output of the respondents from 2007 to 2009. this might be connected with the relative advantage of ffs over other extension approaches used in the study area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 162-170 166 table 2: distribution of the respondents by operational strategies of cocoa ffs n =248 variables frequency percentage locality of ffs participants same locality 235 94.8 not same locality 13 5.2 accessibility of ffs location very accessible 202 81.5 accessibility 32 12.9 fairly accessible 10 4 not accessible 4 1.6 meeting in a month fortnightly 248 100 emergence of executives selection 204 82.3 appointment 34 13.7 imposition 10 4 *methods of learning exchange/sharing of experience 214 73.4 teaching from facilities 62 19.4 technology transfer 23 7.2 who decide ffs curriculum facilitators only 72 28.6 government 33 13.3 participants and facilities 133 58.1 source: field survey, 2010 * multiple responses as revealed from the registers of the school, the average numerical strengths of ffs in the study area was 24.80 with standard deviation of 2.06. this falls in line with the recommendation of soniia et al. (2006) of 20-30 participants per ffs. this range of number enhances manageability and maximizes participation in the group. the result in table 2 revealed that: majority (94.8%) of the respondents were from the same locality, the very few (5.2%) respondents that were from distant locality may be connected with absentee farmers and those that keep dual residency; majority (81.5%) of the respondents indicated that ffs location was very accessible, only a few participants (1.6%) indicated otherwise; the respondents meet fortnightly at the ffs location, this enhances free flow of relevant information and interaction among the participants which is very important to acquiring appropriate management practices for better production, there is also informal visitation between the fortnight meetings among the farmers with or without the presence of facilitator. it also revealed that: majority of the executive members emerge through selection which was in agreement with the principle of ffs (soniia et al. 2006; asare and david, 2009) which recommended that ffs executives should emerge through selection by the participants themselves, this implies that there was internal democracy in the school. this type of leadership emergence helps the farmers to develop a better sense of worth and depict that they are in control of the situation in the group; also, it is tenure-based and could be impeached for lack of performance. the situation is different in t and v, because the contact farmer are been chosen by the extension agent and the post is permanent so far as the contact farmer collude with the extension agent even at the detriment of other farmers. in addition, table 2 revealed that: the main method of learning in the ffs were exchange/sharing of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 162-170 167 experience, this method is advantageous in the sense that there is no need for materials, they are very lively and easy for participants to relate it to the real situation; they allow participation by all, can lead to change of attitudes and collection of many ideas in a short time is made possible. the method used in t&v is mainly teaching in which the target audience do not have the opportunity to participate fully in learning situation; that 58.1 percent of cocoa farmers participating in ffs indicated that ffs curriculum was decided by the participants themselves and facilitators, 28.6 percent of the respondents indicated that ffs curriculum was decided by the facilitators only, while only 13.3 percent of the respondents indicated that ffs curriculum was decided by the government. this is in agreement with the report of sones and duveskog (2003); and gallagher (2003) that indicated that ffs curriculum in kenya were dictated by participating farmers themselves and their facilitators. table 3: distribution of the respondents by improvement in cocoa management practices n = 248 variables lite (f(%)) se (f(%)) lage (f(%)) mean rank appropriate soil selection 20(8.1) 137(55.2) 89(35.9) 3.26 13th appropriate land tillage 33(13.3) 160(64.5) 55(22.2) 3.08 16th appropriate choice of planting materials 4(1.6) 98(39.5) 146(58.9) 3.57 10th appropriate spacing during 16(6.5) 121(48.8) 111(44.8) 3.38 11th planting of cocoa seedling nursery establishment 10(4.0) 45(18.1) 193(77.8) 3.74 9th weed control 0(0.0) 34(13.7) 214(86.3) 3.86 7th removal of moss and epiphytes 0(0.0) 20(8.1) 228(91.1) 3.91 6th fertilizer application 105(42.3) 130(52.4) 13(5.2) 2.64 19th pruning 0(0.0) 6(2.4) 242(97.6) 3.98 3rd proper shade management 0(0.0) 14(5.6) 234(94.4) 3.94 5th sanitary harvesting (removal of sick pods) 0(0.0) 11(4.4) 237(95.6) 3.96 4th pest control (insecticides spraying) 0(0.0) 8(3.2) 240(96.8) 3.83 8th disease control (fungicides spraying) 0(0.0) 46(18.5) 240(96.8) 4.02 1st appropriate cocoa pod harvesting techniques 3(12.5) 175(70.6) 42(16.9) 3.04 18th appropriate cocoa pod breaking techniques 31(12.5) 169(68.1) 48(19.4) 3.07 17th appropriate cocoa beans fermentation techniques 4(1.6) 4(1.6) 240(96.8) 4 2nd appropriate cocoa beans drying techniques 13(5.2) 162 (65.3) 73(29.4) 3.24 14th appropriate cocoa beans bagging techniques 0(0.0) 193(77.8) 55(22.2) 3.22 15th appropriate cocoa beans weighing/selling techniques 2(0.8) 152(61.3) 94(37.9) 3.37 12th source: field survey, 2010 large extent= lage, some extent = se, little extent= lite * source: soniia et al. (2006) a guide for conducting farmer field schools on cocoa integrated crop and pest management, international institute of tropical agriculture. accra, ghana. the result in table 3 revealed that cocoa farmers participating in ffs had recorded increase in improvement in their cocoa management practices as a result of their participation in ffs except very few (0.8%) that had recorded no increase in improvement in appropriate soil selection for cocoa production. it was revealed further that the highest improvement (4.02) in cocoa management practices was in disease control (fungicides spraying), followed by appropriate cocoa beans fermentation techniques (4.00), pruning (3.98), sanitary harvesting (3.96), and shade management (3.94) in that order. the improvements mean score was 66.9 with standard deviation of 4.1. this finding revealed that majority (82.26%) of the respondents had commendable improvement in their cocoa management practices as a result of participation in ffs. this finding implied that these (disease control, cocoa beans fermentation techniques, pruning, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 162-170 168 sanitary harvesting, and shade management) were the major management practices the respondents needed improvement on which represent part of the problems identified to be addressed by ffs in the study area. this finding was in consonance with previous studies on cocoa production (cocoa research institute of nigeria (crin) (2008); food and agriculture organization statistics (faostat), 2009; nkang, et, al. 2009) which reported that, there were great improvement in activities (management practices) of farmers due to participation in ffs extension approach. table 5: correlation analysis showing the relationship between improvement in cocoa management practices and socio-economic characteristics of the cocoa farmers variables correlation coefficient (r) coefficient of determination (r2) age 0.322* 0.1037 years of formal education 0.153* 0.0234 cocoa land size 0.501** 0.251 year of experience in cocoa production 0.503** 0.253 source: field survey, 2010 ** and * significant at the 0.01 and 0.05 level respectively result in table 5 revealed that at 0.01 level of significance, cocoa land size (r=0.501); and years of experience in cocoa production (r=0.503) of the cocoa farmers had significant and positive relationship with improvement in cocoa management practices due to their participation in ffs. thus the higher the size of cocoa land size and years of experience in cocoa production of the respondents, the higher their improvement in cocoa management practices. also at 0.05 level of significance, the respondents age (r=0.322) and years of formal education (r=0.153) had significant and positive relationship with improvement in cocoa management practices due to their participation in ffs. thus, the higher the age and years of formal education of the respondents, the higher their improvement in cocoa management practices. table 6: results of chi-square analysis of the relationship between socio economic characteristics of respondents and improvement in their cocoa management practices variables χ2-value c df gender 110.79 0.556 14 source of farmland 23.01 0.461 28 cocoa breed planted 161.48 628 28 source: field survey, 2010, c= coefficient of contingency * significant at p < 0.05, df= degree of freedom the results in table 6 show that at 0.05 level of significant, there was no significant association between source of farmland (χ 2 =23.01) of the respondents and improvement in their cocoa management practices. this implies that improvement in management practices of the cocoa farmers was not a function of source of farmland. that is, irrespective of the source of farmland, improvement in management practices among all the respondents was not different, while gender (χ 2 =110.79) and cocoa breed planted (χ 2 =161.48) were significantly associated with improvement in cocoa management practices. the contingency coefficient revealed a strong association between gender (c=0.556) and cocoa breed planted (c=0.628) and improvement in management practices. table 7: factor analysis showing variables influencing the operation of ffs factors and contributing variables l l2 λ 1. economic factor cocoa output 0.503 0.253 cocoa land size 0.68 0.4624 1.0706 years of experience in cocoa production 0.596 0.3552 2. social factor participants’ age 0.44 0.1936 participants’ sex 0.618 0.3819 social group membership 0.417 0.1739 1.2549 external orientation 0.711 0.5055 3. facilitators’ factor integrity 0.582 0.3387 commitment 0.393 0.1544 desired technical skills 0.602 0.3624 communication skills 0.44o 0.1936 1.6744 facilitation skills 0.543 0.2947 organization skills 575 0.3306 4. ffs operational strategies factor accessibility of ffs location 0.545 0.297 emergence of ffs executives 0.561 0.3147 0.9973 membership of ffs 0.621 0.3654 5. community factor community attitude towards ffs 0.551 0.3036 0.4767 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 162-170 169 presence/ absence of conflict 0.416 0.1731 source: field survey, 2010 significantly contributing at 0.05 percent l= loading for factor, l2= the square of loading factor λ= latent root for the factor (∑l2) table 8: factors’ names and percentage variation accounted for by each factor associated with performance of ffs as an extension approach factors name %variance cumm.%var 1 economic 21.8 21.8 2 social 20.2 42 3 facilitators 19.2 61.2 4 ffs organizational structure 12 73.2 5 community 10.3 83.5 6 others 16.5 100 source: field survey, 2010 the factor analysis carried out as revealed in table 7 indicated that factors that contributed mostly to performance of ffs as extension approach to cocoa production in osun state were economic (λ= 1.0706 ); social (λ= 1.2549); facilitators’ (λ=1.6744); ffs operational strategies (0.9973) and community (0.4767) among others. result in table 8 revealed that factors indentified explained 83.50 percent of the variation in the performance of ffs as extension approach to cocoa production in osun state. conclusion performance of extension approach to cocoa production must be seen as a major concern for the nation as it affect it production both in quantity and quality. it was established that the factors that contributed mostly to performance of ffs as extension approach to cocoa production in osun state were economic factor; social factor; facilitators’ factor; ffs operational strategies factor and community factor among others. references adeniyi, s. and adeogun, o. (2005) “global research on cocoa-working with and for farmers”, cocoa research institute of nigeria (crin). grow cocoa newsletter, issue 7. asare, r. and david, s. (2009) “planting, replanting and tree diversification in cocoa systems. learning about sustainable cocoa production: a guide for participatory farmer training” manual no. 2. development and environment series 13-2009. forest & landscape denmark. cocoa research institute of nigeria (crin) (2008) report of the cocoa production scientific survey of nigeria submitted to the national cocoa development committee (ncdc), pp. 100. davis, s. (2005) “a curriculum for training cocoa ffs facilitators”, sustainable tree crops program, international institute of tropical agriculture, yaounde, cameron. faostat, (2009) “production of cocoa beans”, retrieved on 04 september 2009 from http://www.faostat.org/ feder, g., a. willett, and w. zijp (2001) “agricultural extension: generic challenges and the ingredients for solutions” in s. wolf and d. zilberman, eds., knowledge generation and technical change: institutional innovation in agriculture. boston, mass: kluwer. federal ministry of agriculture and natural resources (2007) “mainstreaming farmer field school approach into extension services in nigeria”, a national cocoa development committee bulletin, october. gallagher, k., (2003) “fundamental elements of farmer field school”, leisa magazine, vol. 19(1), pp. 5-6. maunder, a. (1973) “agricultural extension”, a reference manual (1st edition), fao mustapha i.o (2003): effectiveness of extension methods used in disseminating information on improved nutrition programme in oyo state. an unpublished m.sc. thesis, obafemi awolowo university, ile-ife. pp. 75-76. mwagi, g. and murgai, r. (2003) “do farmer field school graduates retain what they learn?” philippines journal of international agricultural and extension education, vol. 9(1), pp. 65-76. nkang, n. m., ajah, e. a., abang, s. o. & edet, e. o. (2009) “investment in cocoa production in nigeria: a cost and return analysis of three cocoa production management systems in the cross river state cocoa belt, (report), african journal of food agriculture, nutrition and development, vol. 9(2), pp. 713-27. osun state ministry of agriculture and natural resources (2009) “metamorphosis of cocoa farmer field school in osun state”, tree crop unit bulletin http://www.faostat.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 162-170 170 pontius, j. c. (2002) “ten years of ipm training in asia – from farmer field school to community”, ipm. bangkok: fao. rivera, w. m., m. kalim qamar, and l. van crowder (2001) “agricultural and rural extension worldwide: options for institutional reform in developing countries”, rome: food and agricultural organization. sones, k, r., duveskog, d (2003) “farmer field schools: the kenyan experience”, report of the farmer field schools stakeholders forum held 27 th march 2003 at ilri, nairobi kenya. soniia david., s. agordorku., s. bassanaga., j. y. couloud., m. a. kumi., i. okuku and d. wandji (2006) “a guide for conducting farmer field schools on cocoa integrated crop and pest management”, international institute of tropical agriculture. accra, ghana. pp. 23-25, 37, 103-10 publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. contributed paper prepared for presentation at the 86th annual conference of the agricultural economics society, university of warwick, united kingdom 16 18 april 2012. regional differences and dynamic changes in rural china: the study of 1996 and 2006 national agricultural census peng bin (ph. d student in agricultural economics and statistics, department of statistical science, university of bologna, italy) roberto fanfani (professor of economics policy and agriculture economics, department of statistical science, university of bologna, italy) cristina brasili (professor of department of statistical science, university of bologna, italy) citation: peng bin., roberto fanfani and cristina brasili (2012): “regional differences and dynamic changes in rural china: the study of 1996 and 2006 national agricultural census”, asian journal agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 260-270. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 260-270 260 keywords: dynamic changes, cluster, regional differences, rural china jel code: q01, q1 introduction: recent changes in rural china the agriculture-based reforms greatly promote socioeconomic conditions in china. the liberalization of agriculture, started with the “open doors” policy and “household responsibility system” in 1978 and improved with the following-up reforms in recent years (such as abolishment of agricultural taxation and direct subsidies for grain producers), has changed rural china dramatically. there has been, on one hand, a decrease of the proportion of rural population, and on the other, a tendency of urbanization. however, many consequential aspects along with changes are still less well-known, not only because of the sheer size of china, but also the lack of comprehensive information on the enormously large and varied rural areas, where, even now, more than 50% of the chinese population still lives. demographic changes and migration china’s socioeconomic development comes along with demographic changes. the urban population has grown from 172 million to 665 million from 1978 to 2010, increasing at an average rate of 4.2% a year. today 49.7% of the chinese population is living in cities and towns, compared with just 17.9% thirty years ago 1 . for another, the rural population fell from 790 million (82.1% of the population in 1978) to 674 million (50.3% of the population), whereas still has a relatively higher natural birth rate compared with urban area. the enormous number of immigrant workers should be considered when explicating migration: there is 131 million of labour immigration from rural to urban areas, but most are still rural residents in the “hukou” 2 system even though they work for long periods in the industry, construction and service sectors in urban areas. if we take a look at the three sectors in china, it is an obvious trend of the transformation from the first sector (agriculture) to the second and third sectors 1 quoted from 2010 gazette published by china national bureau of statistics 2 “hukou” is used in mainland china for the household registration to control the migration. the rural hukou, even if migrant in urban areas, cannot take advantages of social security, medical care, school which reserved to urban hukou. according to the “prc regulations of the registered permanent residence”, hukou is defined as the people registered as permanent residences in the local authority, including registered foreigners and stateless. but it is different with the permanent residence in statistic criteria: usually the latter is larger in developed areas, and vice versa. regional differences and dynamic changes in rural china: the study of 1996 and 2006 national agricultural census abstract author(s) peng bin ph. d student in agricultural economics and statistics, department of statistical science, university of bologna, italy email: peng.bin@unibo.it roberto fanfani professor of economics policy and agriculture economics, department of statistical science, university of bologna, italy email: robeto.fanfani@unibo.it cristina brasili professor of department of statistical science, university of bologna, italy this paper is a further study of rural china based on the study of the first national agricultural census in 1996 (fanfani and brasili, 2003). the main emphasis is regionalization of rural china according to the second national agricultural census in 2006, utilizing the same or at least similar indicators applied in the previous analysis. the main data include the households and non-households, employment, education and agricultural production of total 30 indicators for 31 provinces and municipalities. the methodology applied here is principal component analysis and cluster analysis. hence we compare the two regionalization maps and get a visual perception about the changes in rural china. mailto:peng.bin@unibo.it mailto:robeto.fanfani@unibo.it asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 260-270 261 (industry and service). the proportion of employment in primary sector declines dramatically from 70.5% in 1978 to 36.7% in 2010, while the proportions of employment in secondary industry and tertiary sectors increase from 17.3% and 12.2% in 1978 to 28.7% and 34.6% in 2010 respectively. on the other hand, the gdp composition has also changed: even though the secondary industry has always been taking the main part in total (all over 40% from 1978 to 2010, 46.8% in 2010), the tertiary sector has increased its part significantly (from 23.9% in 1978 to 43.1% in 2010), while there is a decrease of agricultural proportion (from the highest 33.4% in 1982 to 10.1% in 2010). urbanization and inequalities the increase of urban population is a clear indication of urbanization. as in figure 1, it shows that each employed person in secondary industry and tertiary sector create more wealth than primary sector, and the secondary industry occupies the largest part. secondary industry tertiary sector primary sector 0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 90000 100000 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 year g d p pe r e m pl oy ed p er so n (y ua n pe r c ap ita ) secondary industry tertiary sector primary sector fig 1: the distribution of gdp per employed person in three sectors during 1978-2010 source: national statistic yearbook of china, 2011 if we take a look at another direct indicator of urbanization—the building construction, the floor space of buildings under construction of urban area in 2010 is more than 7, 063 million square meters, whereas rural area is just more than 1,066 million square meters, only 15% of urban; the buildings completed of urban area in 2010 is 1,754 million square meters, whereas rural area is 941 million. also, the construction area increases fast in urban areas, compared with 2009, the floor space of buildings under construction is 22% and of completed is 7%, whereas there are decreases of both in rural areas, -8% and 11% respectively. the restructuring in three sectors expand the gap among different regions in different levels, and causes the inequalities not only between costal area and inner land, urban and rural, but also inside them, even at family level. it is complicated to clearly explain why the deep differences existing and how they have increased in the past decades. normally, we consider geographic factors and urbanization or suburbanization, which could be ascribed to the rural-urban migration, accompanied by double-edged influences. the discrepancies show in many aspects: household income and consumption, basic infrastructures, public education and medication and etc. take, the gini coefficient, as an example, which has been persistently kept around 0.5 in china during the latest years3, way higher than the official alert line is 0.4, indicates the large income disparity. the discrepancies between rural and urban areas show in many aspects: household income and consumption, basic infrastructures, public education and medication, etc. as we can see in figure 2, the annual disposable income evidently signified the disparity between urban and rural areas. the gap of disposable income has been escalating since 1990s. according to the national yearbook, the annual disposable income per capita of urban households is 19109.44 yuan in 2010, more than 3 times of the annual net income per capita of rural households, which is 5919.01 yuan; the ratio has basically been keeping falling down since 1985, whereas 2010 is a breaking point of pullback 4 . 3 to calculate the gini coefficient, there is a common methodology “income of five groups” (china national yearbook) created by hu zg (2004) and widely applied in china. based on this method, the gini coefficient has exceeded 0.5 from 2004, and fell down to 0.47 in 2007, but then bounced back again. in the reports of undp (the united nations development program) and world bank, the gini coefficient of 2010 in china might even exceed 0.5. 4 quoted from the national statistic yearbook, the annual disposable income of urban households is 4838.9 yuan, of rural is 1926.1 yuan in 1996; and of urban is 739.1 yuan, of rural is 397.6 yuan in 1985. the ratio of urban-rural income is 3.33 in 2009 (of urban households is 17174.7 yuan, of rural households is 5153.2 yuan). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 260-270 262 urban households (disposable income) rural households (net income) 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000 18000 20000 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 year a n n u al i n co m p er c ap it a (y u an ) urban households (disposable income) rural households (net income) fig 2: annual income of urban household and rural household source: national statistic yearbook of china, 2000, 2011 the differences exist not only between urban and rural areas, but also inside themselves. here we focus on the income and consumption in rural areas. in table 1, we can see a dramatic gap among the five groups classified by the income level: the per capita annual net income of the highest group is 7.5 times of the lowest, and the gap of engel’s coefficient between them is 14%. if we focus on the geographic differences among rural areas, as we can see in figure 3, obviously the eastern region takes the highest level of disposable income and living expenditure, while the western region takes the lowest of disposable income and the central region takes of living expenditure. the highest-lowest ratio of income is 1.47, and of expenditure is 1.44. table 1: per capita annual net income and engel’s coefficients of rural households (2010) items per capita annual net income (yuan) engel's coefficient (%) low income households 1870 48.78 lower & middle income 3621 45.49 middle income 5222 43.34 upper middle income 7441 40.74 high income 14050 34.53 source: national statistic yearbook of china, 2011. 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 per capita annual disposable income (yuan) 23273 15962 15806 15941 per capita annual living expenditure (yuan) 15973 11101 11780 12075 eastern central western northeast fig. 3: per capita annual expenditures and incomes of rural households (2010) source: national statistic yearbook of china, 2011 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 260-270 263 data source: snapshot of national agricultural census in rural china there have been two times of national agricultural census in rural china carried out by chinese national bureau of statistics: the first one in 1996 (data published in 1997) and the second one in 2006 (data published in 2008). these censuses are aimed at improving the comprehension of socioeconomic conditions in the vast rural china. the data covered rural households and non-households, villages and towns, referring to agricultural production and activities, land use, agricultural labor and employment, rural infrastructure and social services, rural livelihoods, and general conditions of village/town committees, etc. the data compilation of 2006 census is more specific, including four parts: the composite, agriculture, rural residents and rural areas. the permanent residents in rural areas have shrunk from 873.77 million (1996) to 745.76 million (2006), decreased 14.7%; the employments in rural areas have declined from 561.48 million (2006) to 478.52 million (1996), decreased 14.8%, while the employments in the second and third sectors in rural areas have increased 2.9% and 2.0% respectively. the sown land reduces 6.4%, with a decrease of cultivated land for grain (6.8%), while an increase in cotton (23.2%). the infrastructure conditions has been improved dramatically, there are increases in number of villages with electricity (2.7%), telephone (49.9%), tv signals (4.1%), trafficways (8.1%), and purified water (7.1%); number of town and townships with primary schools (22.2%); and nubmer of hospitals (32.1%). in this paper we use the data from the second census (2006) and compare with the result obtained from the first census (1996). objective and methodology our main focus will be on mapping rural china by the territorial disparities, and comparing two cluster results obtained from the two national agricultural censuses. we selected 30 original indicators from 2006 national agricultural census, same or similar with the ones that fanfani and brasili (2003) applied in their study of rural china based on 1996 national agricultural census 5 (the complete list of the indicators applied in the 1996 and 2006 censuses is reported in annex 1). principal component analysis is applied to better explain the variability of the indicators among the chinese 5 some variables are not exactly the same with the ones applied in the study of fanfani and brasili for the first census of 1996, because there are some inconsistency of statistical indicators and standards between the two agricultural censuses. provinces, and 6 principle components are extracted from the initial 30 indicators and applied for clustering. q-mode cluster analysis is applied to group the 31 provinces and municipalities in the rural areas of china mainland, and a hierarchical method is used since the sample size is not large enough. our objective is to get a new map that could be compared with the traditional and official administrative division, hence to provide further information for researchers and policy makers. regionalization of rural china (on 2006 national agricultural census) according to the official geographic divisions of china, there are four main groups of provinces in china: eastern coastal area, central area, western area and north-east area. interestingly, these areas basically rank from developed to undeveloped in socioeconomics as moving from the eastern to the western. there is also a more specific and detailed regionalization which divides china into seven zones: northern, central, eastern, southern, northeast, southwest area, and northwest. though these official divisions of china mainland are based on the geographical locations, they still have a lot in common in socioeconomic terms. component extraction by pca here 6 components are extracted according to guttman-kaiser’s criterion 6 , being able to explain more than 86% of the initial variances. the first 3 components have higher values of variances, explaining nearly 70% together (1 st is 37%, 2 nd is 18%, 3 rd is 15%). therefore, the first three components are very significant to represent the original indicators. 6 guttman-kaiser’s criterion: considering the components with eigenvalues greater than or equal to 1. a lower level would explain less than the standardized variance (=1). since some original data are with high skewness, here we applied box-cox transformation to normalized first. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 260-270 264 fig. 4: the scree plot of principal components the first component (37%) can be characterized as high-qualified labor and non-agriculture, with higher positive values in indicators of labor force in nonagricultural activities and with superior education level, and negative values in indicators of crop planting and illiterate and semi-illiterate labors. the second component (18%) can be characterized as animal husbandry, with positive values in indicators of employment in husbandry in households and all holdings, and number of large animals; and negative values in cultivated land. the third component (13%) can be characterized as arable land utilization, with positive values in indicators of arable land per household and sown area for grain and negative values in employment of non-agricultural activities. the fourth component (9%) can be characterized as mechanization, with positive values in the cultivated area of tractor ploughed, electro-mechanized irrigated and harvest, and number of large/medium and mini tractors per capita. the fifth component (6%) can be characterized as agricultural activities, with positive values in indicators of employment in crop planting and agricultural activities over 6 months. the sixth component (4%) can be characterized as working outside, with a dramatic high positive value in indicator of employment in urban areas, and also higher values in superior education level. mapping: regional differences of rural china the final cluster result of 31 provinces is four main rural groups, which can be defined as: the east-costal developed, main rural area, peripheral belt, and mountain area. in figure 5, we can clearly see how the four clusters group together. the clusters of costal developed and peripheral belt are like two belts located in the east and north part of china, respectively. the inner land starts to converge together and becomes the cluster of main rural area. tibet and qinghai, located in mountain area, form the fourth cluster. the first cluster (costal developed) is composed by 7 provinces and municipalities, which all belong to the most developed region in east-coast, and the three municipalities beijing, tianjin and shanghai have the highest gdp per capita in china. this group has been in the head of urbanization and the transformation from agriculture to industry and service, which contribute more to economic growth rather than the primary sector. also, they can be defined as the core area of high-tech and labor input region. it demonstrated the highest level of engagement in non-agricultural activities in rural areas (61%), which indicates that this cluster is developing an internal system to occupy the surplus rural labors, such as township business. it shows the lowest proportion of persons in agriculture activities (33%): crop planting (35%), animal husbandry (2%), which indicates that agricultural production is no longer the main force of economic growth to rely on in this cluster, and urbanization is speeding up. also, the percentage of population with superior education level is the largest (16%), and even for the female (10%). the level mechanization of cultivated land is the highest as in tractor ploughed (62%), mechanized irrigation (49%) and harvest (28%). compared the mean value with other clusters, cluster 1 performs better in high quality labor force, mechanization and employment in non-agricultural, which exactly prove the high developed level and urbanization of this cluster. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 260-270 265 fig. 5: mapping: regional differences of rural china (2006) cluster provinces and municipalities 1. costal developed beijing, tianjin, shanghai, jiangsu, zhejiang, fujian, guangdong 2. main rural area hebei, shanxi, liaoning, anhui, jiangxi, shandong, henan, hubei, hunan, chongqing, sichuan, shaanxi, ningxia, guangxi, hainan, guizhou, yunnan, gansu 3. peripheral belt nei mongol (inner mongolia), jilin, heilongjiang, xinjiang 4. mountain area xizang (tibet), qinghai note: the processing is based on the second national agricultural census (2006) the second cluster (main rural area) has the largest group member, 18 provinces and municipalities. most of them are inland regions; expect liaoning, hebei and shandong. this cluster is certainly not developed as the first one, with all its members have just started or been in the process of urbanization, so agriculture still composed as a great percent in the local economic developments. also, some of them are main export regions of labor force (i. e. anhui, henan, hubei, hunan, sichuan, etc.) because of the agricultural labor surplus and shortage of land resources, which could be confirmed by a high level of employments in nonagricultural activities in urban areas (29%). this cluster shares a higher proportion of labor forces in crop planting (76%), also with largest part of employments in cultivated land (95%). the characteristic of laborintensive agriculture is more obvious in this cluster. if compared with other clusters, this cluster can be described as above-average level in superior education and mechanization, since the mean values are near to cluster 1. but still, the gap between cluster 2 and cluster 1 are not slight in many aspects. the third cluster (perpherial belt) is composed by 4 provinces and municipalities (inner mongolia, jilin, heilongjiang, xinjiang), basically belonging to the north peripheral region. this cluster possesses unique advantages in natural resources, especially the vast arable land, which can be confirmed by the largest average area of sown land per capita (0.5 ha). it owns the highest ratio in employments in agricultural activities over economic activities (88%), the highest in crop planting (80%) and higher level in sown area for grain (72%). however, the labor mobility is lower, with only 8% of labor force engaged in nonagricultural activities in urban area. most of the indicators referring to the general conditions are close to but slightly smaller than cluster 2, such as education and mechanization. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 260-270 266 the fourth cluster (mountain area) contains just 2 members (tibet and qinghai), which is the least in the four clusters, yet these two regions occupy nearly 20% of the territory land 7 . this cluster is somewhat isolated from other regions, not only because its remote location, but also for its particular socioeconomic background and developing patterns. it shows the lowest level in education and mechanization. the population ratio of agricultural households to nonagricultural households is the highest (66%). its main agricultural sector is animal husbandry, with the largest proportion of labor distribution (28%) and number of large animals per 100 persons (0.2). comparison study of rural china: the 1996 and 2006 national agricultural census introduction of cluster results in the 1996 national agricultural census in the study of the first national agricultural census in rural china (r. fanfani, c. brasili, 2001), four clusters are obtained through five principal components as in figure 6: cluster of urban area includes 4 provinces and municipalities (beijing, jiangsu, shanghai, tianjin); principal agricultural area includes the highest number of provinces (16), all located in the east-southern and middle and south part of china; peripheral area includes 9 provinces from the northern part of china and also from south (yunnan and guizhou); mountain area is composed by only 2 provinces (qinghai and tibet) but they have a very large area, mainly mountainous. the comparison of cluster results between 1996 and 2006 national agricultural census the main results of the pca and cluster analysis are represented in the maps (figure 5 and figure 6), where we can get a visual image about the changes in the two clustering results of 1996 and 2006. here we also should pay attention that the differences, in some degree, might also be caused by the inconsistency of the indicators applied in principal component analysis. also, there are 31 samples in the second map, whereas 30 in the first. (chongqing 8 is added in.) the cluster of costal developed, which represented the most developed group, is clearly expanded during the decade 1996 to 2006. three provinces (zhejiang, fujian, and guangdong) are added in the 2006 research, 7 tibet is around 1.2 million square km, occupies 12.5%; qinghai is 0.7 million square km, occupies 7.5%. 8 chongqing is designated as a single municipality in june, 1997 from sichuan province, so the information is not included in the first census. indicating the expansion of urbanization and economic growth in coastal provinces. it has already developed as a belt locating in the east coast, compared with just the several isolated spots in the 1996 census. the changes in the clusters of main rural area and peripheral area are more complicated to explain. five provinces (gansu, ningxia, henan, yunnan and guizhou) moves from peripheral cluster of 1996 to main rural area of 2006. as far as we concerned, it could be interpreted as an expanding of the relevance of agriculture in the inner region of rural china. the cluster of main rural area shows more rural characteristics in socioeconomic conditions, whereas the cluster of peripheral area shares a traditional history and unique advantage in agricultural resources, its cultivated land per capita (0.5 ha) is more than four times of the green cluster (0.12 ha). also, the cluster of main rural area mainly are the labor exporting areas, and labor-intensive in agricultural production. both of them have lower developing level than the cluster of coastal developed, and this situation still remains in the result of 2006 census. the cluster of mountain area remains the same, composed by tibet and qinghai, but clearly there are changes in the indicators. the proportion of persons engaged in agricultural activities increase from 80% (1996) to 86% (2006). it still remains its characteristic of animal husbandry, the employment in this sector even increased from 25% (1996) to 28% (2006). the education level improved, such as the proportion of illiterate and semi-illiterate decreased from 61% (1996) to 38% (2006), even though it is still the highest among the four clusters. conclusion above all, we can conclude that the new zoning based on our analysis of clustering rural china is significantly different from the traditional and official geographic classifications. the study of 1996 and 2006 national agricultural census in rural china not only demonstrate the improvements of rural china in the last ten years, but also reflect the necessities of targeted policies and projects to develop rural areas, hence to narrow down the social-economic inequalities existing within the rural and especially between rural and urban areas. these differences and the disparities in socioeconomic conditions cause many problems other than economic inequality, such as migration, aging of rural population and gender unbalance, and also social instability and cohesion. what would be necessary is some financial and policy support from the central government in order to improve living basic facilities, to enhance rural local development, intensive production and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 260-270 267 sustainability and to reform the land tenure and farm household development. what we should also focus on is how to expand the positive impacts to the inside areas from the rich belt. fig. 6: mapping: regional differences of rural china (1996) source: “regional differences in chinese agriculture: results from 1997 first agricultural census” (r. fanfani and c. brasili, 2001) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 260-270 268 annex 1. indicators of agricultural and socioeconomic conditions in rural china indicators in 2006 census indicators in 1996 census 1-same persons in agricultural households / persons in non-agricultural households 2-similar rh: % of persons aged 10-24 rh: % of persons aged 7-25 3-similar rh: % of persons aged 35-59 rh: % of persons aged 36-61 4-similar rh: % of labor in crop planting rh: % persons aged>7 in crop planting 5-similar rh: % of labor in animal husbandry rh: % persons aged>7 in husbandry 6similar rh: % of labor in non-agri in rural rh: % of aged>7 in non-agri in rural 7-similar rh: % of labor in non-agri in urban rh: % of aged>7 in non-agri in rural 8-similar rh: % of labor in eco-act. in hometown rh: % aged>7 in eco-act. in hometown 9-same ah: persons engaged in economic activities, female/male 10-same ah: persons engaged in non-agriculture / persons engaged in agriculture 11-same rh: % of persons illiterate and semi-illiterate 12-same rh: % of persons with educational level of primary school and middle school 13-same rh: % of persons with superior educational level 14-same rh: % of male with superior educational level 15-same rh: % of female with superior educational level 16-same rh: male/female with superior educational level 17-same rh: % of persons engaged in agricultural activities 6 months and over 18-same ah: hectare/number of persons in rural households 19-similar ah: % employment in crop planting % agricultural land for cultivated 20-similar ah: % employment in forestry % agricultural land for woodland 21-similar ah: % employment in husbandry % agricultural land for herbage grassland 22-similar ah: % employment in fishery % agricultural land for fishery 23-same ah: % distribution of sown area for grain 24-same ah: % among cultivated land tractor ploughed 25-same ah: % among cultivated land electro-machine irrigated area 26-same ah: % among cultivated land machine harvested area 27-same ah: number of large animals for 100 persons engaged in agricultural activities 28-same large and medium tractors / persons engaged in agricultural activities 29-same mini tractors / persons engaged in agricultural activities 30-same ah: persons engaged in agriculture / persons engaged in economic activities note: ru is rural households, ah is all holdings. the inconsistency of indicators is because of the different statistic measures applied in the two censuses and the divergences are controllable. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 260-270 269 annex 2. the mean and variance of 4 clusters indicators cluster 1 cluster 2 cluster 3 cluster 4 mean st.dev mean st.dev mean st.dev mean st.dev 1 10.63 6.39 34.49 16.03 15.92 1.9 65.88 38.11 2 0.22 0.05 0.25 0.03 0.25 0.05 0.3 0.03 3 0.41 0.04 0.37 0.04 0.39 0.07 0.28 0.03 4 0.35 0.15 0.76 0.08 0.8 0.02 0.63 0.05 5 0.02 0.01 0.03 0.02 0.07 0.02 0.25 0.05 6 0.61 0.16 0.2 0.08 0.12 0.01 0.12 0.09 7 0.25 0.11 0.29 0.13 0.08 0.03 0.18 0.11 8 0.6 0.03 0.63 0.03 0.69 0.03 0.59 0 9 0.87 0.11 0.96 0.06 0.89 0.02 1.01 0.04 10 2.83 2.45 0.27 0.14 0.14 0.01 0.16 0.11 11 0.04 0.02 0.08 0.05 0.05 0.02 0.38 0.11 12 0.8 0.05 0.82 0.05 0.87 0.04 0.56 0.08 13 0.16 0.05 0.1 0.02 0.09 0.02 0.05 0.03 14 0.14 0.04 0.08 0.02 0.07 0.01 0.04 0.03 15 0.1 0.06 0.04 0.01 0.05 0.01 0.02 0.01 16 1.74 0.34 2.21 0.57 1.73 0.29 1.84 0.05 17 0.38 0.18 0.6 0.21 0.43 0.34 0.6 0.28 18 0.05 0.02 0.12 0.06 0.49 0.18 0.14 0.01 19 0.87 0.07 0.95 0.03 0.92 0.02 0.72 0.02 20 0.03 0.05 0.01 0.01 0 0 0 0 21 0.05 0.03 0.04 0.03 0.08 0.02 0.28 0.02 22 0.03 0.02 0.01 0.01 0 0 0 0 23 0.58 0.11 0.69 0.08 0.72 0.25 0.66 0.11 24 0.62 0.27 0.4 0.29 0.78 0.15 0.31 0.21 25 0.49 0.3 0.24 0.22 0.21 0.12 0.03 0.02 26 0.28 0.19 0.16 0.15 0.23 0.17 0.15 0.1 27 0.02 0.01 0.02 0.01 0.05 0.03 0.17 0.05 28 0 0 0 0 0.02 0.01 0 0 29 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.06 0.13 0.03 0.12 0.07 30 0.33 0.15 0.8 0.08 0.88 0.01 0.86 0.08 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 265-275 270 references ho p. (2005) “developmental dilemmas: land reform and institutional change in china”, london & new york: routledge curzon. fanfani r., brasili c. (2003) “regional differences in chinese agriculture: results from the 1997 first national agricultural census”, journal of peasant studies, vol. 30(3/4), pp. 18-44. hotelling h. (1993) “analysis of a complex of statistical variables into principal components”, journal of educational psychology, vol. 24, pp. 41741. lohmar b. (2009) “china’s ongoing agricultural modernization, challenges remain after 30 years of reform”, washington dc: u. s. department of agriculture, economic research service, technical bulletin no. 51. mazzocchi m. (2008) “statistics of marketing and consumer research”, london: sage. national agricultural census office of china and fao statistics centre (1999) “abstract of the first national agricultural census in china”. beijing: china statistics press. national agricultural census office of china and fao statistics centre (2009) “abstract of the second national agricultural census in china”, beijing: china statistics press. chen x. h. (2009) “agricultural and rural development in china: achievements and challenges”, euro choices, vol. 8(2), pp. 6-9. world bank (2008) “world development report 2008: agriculture for development”, washington dc: the world bank. zhang x., yang j., wang s. (2010) “china has reached the lewis turning point”, ifpri discussion paper number 000977 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. acknowledgements: the authors sincerely thank the regional university forum for capacity building in agriculture (ruforum) for funding the project. our appreciation also goes to the participating farmers for their welcoming nature and genuine responses. we are also grateful to our field supervisors and enumerators during data collection process. climate change and variability: farmers’ perception, experience and adaptation strategies in makueni county, kenya kirina t. kitinya (department of land resource management and agricultural technology, university of nairobi, p.o. box 29053 – 00625 nairobi) richard n. onwonga (department of land resource management and agricultural technology, university of nairobi, p.o. box 29053 – 00625 nairobi) cecilia onyango (department of plant science and crop protection, university of nairobi, p.o. box 29053 – 00625 nairobi) joseph p. mbuvi (department of land resource management and agricultural technology, university of nairobi, p.o. box 29053 – 00625 nairobi) geoffrey kironchi (department of land resource management and agricultural technology, university of nairobi, p.o. box 29053 – 00625 nairobi) citation: kirina t. kitinya richard n. onwonga cecilia onyango joseph p. mbuvi and geoffrey kironchi (2012) ―climate change and variability: farmers’ perception, experience and adaptation strategies in makueni county, kenya‖, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 411-421. climate change and variability..... 411 author(s) kirina t. kitinya department of land resource management and agricultural technology, university of nairobi, p.o. box 29053 – 00625 nairobi richard n. onwonga department of land resource management and agricultural technology, university of nairobi, p.o. box 29053 – 00625 nairobi email: onwongarichard@yahoo.com cecilia onyango department of plant science and crop protection, university of nairobi, p.o. box 29053 – 00625 nairobi joseph p. mbuvi department of land resource management and agricultural technology, university of nairobi, p.o. box 29053 – 00625 nairobi geoffrey kironchi department of land resource management and agricultural technology, university of nairobi, p.o. box 29053 – 00625 nairobi climate change and variability: farmers’ perception, experience and adaptation strategies in makueni county, kenya abstract a better understanding of climate change and variability (ccv) from the farmer’s perspective is a key to prioritizing measures to address and prepare for its consequences. a survey involving 150 farmers was thus conducted in makueni county, kenya to document farmers’; perception, experience and adaptation strategies to ccv. about 86% of farmers perceived ccv as a major challenge with 53% indicating that significant changes in climate would manifest in 10-20 years. significant changes in rainfall amounts and distribution had occurred over the years and were rated by 60% of farmers as the frequently experienced aspect of ccv. about 33% of farmers had heard of but not used decision support tools (dst) to inform their agricultural activities. workshops and seminars were reported by 67% of farmers as principal sources of information on ccv. additionally, 50% of farmers relied on traditional knowledge for weather prediction. only 20% of farmers had alternative strategies; agroforestry and growing drought tolerant crops particularly sorghum and cowpea, to minimize effects of ccv. another 67% of farmers prioritized; terracing, ridging and water harvesting as adaptation strategies to minimize negative effects of ccv. the farmers were thus aware of ccv and through experience, backed with traditional technical knowledge, had gained prerequisite skills for addressing its negative effects. nevertheless farmers’ agricultural practices could be improved by use of forecasted weather data and application of dst. consequently enhancing farmers’ preparedness to tackle challenges posed by ccv. keywords: arid and semiarid lands; climate change and variability; decision support tools, traditional technical knowledge introduction climate change and variability and its impacts have been reported in various research studies carried out across the world (ipcc 2001, hulme et al., 2002, titus et al., 2009). the anticipated impacts of climate change will manifest in the form of; floods, storms, prolonged droughts and increased atmospheric temperature (ipcc 2007). the consequences will have far reaching adverse impacts on human health, food security, economic activities, physical infrastructure, natural resources, and the environment (undp 2007). climatic change and variability will especially be pronounced and important in the dry land regions, roughly two-thirds, of the african continent with a population of approximately 50 million people (world bank, 2000). it is further mailto:onwongarichard@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 411-421. 412 projected that under a range of climatic scenarios, there will be an increase of 5-8 percent of arid and semiarid land (ipcc 2007). these scenarios coupled with the relatively warmer climate (unesco 2007, galvin et al., 2001), low per capita incomes, inadequate preparedness by most african governments and poor current information and slow technology change (mendelsohn 2000), widespread poverty, recurrent droughts, inequitable land distribution and over dependence on rain-fed agriculture (ipcc, 1998; hulme 1996) makes africa the most vulnerable in terms of mitigation and adaptation to climate change. forecasts suggest that, by the end of the 21 st century, climate change will have had substantial impact on agricultural production (slater et al, 2007) with pronounced consequences in the dryland regions of africa, typically dependant on rain-fed agriculture and its human population far poorer than those in higher rainfall areas (world bank, 2000; galvin et al. 2001; mahindra et al., 2008). studies in most of the semi-arid economies show that agriculture’s gdp and farmers’ incomes closely mirror rainfall variation (world bank, 2008; gok 2005) and that yields from rain fed agriculture is estimated to reduce by 50% by the year 2020 (ipcc, 2007). the advancement of research on climate change and variability (ccv) and its impacts on agriculture particularly in dry land areas has played a key role in development of both tactical and strategic means to buffering the impacts associated ccv. however less emphasis has been laid on farmer’s perception, experience and adaptation strategies as a basis for informing development of sustainable approaches to minimize the risks imposed by climate change and variability (suri 2009). this study thus tended to assess farmers’ perceptions, experiences, and adaptation strategies with a view of enhancing and prioritizing the farmers’ preparedness to minimize the effects of climate change and variability. materials and methods site description the survey was carried out in five administrative locations of makueni county, eastern kenya. makueni county (1 o 50’s, 37 o 40’e, elevation 1,155 m above sea level) is located about 200km south of nairobi and lies within agro ecological zone 5 (aez 5) in the semi-arid region of eastern kenya (jaetzold and schmidt, 1983). the main soils are highly weathered (ferralsols), light textured, permeable and relatively less erodible (icra, 1996; jaetzold and schmidt 1983). the average rainfall ranges (bimodal in distribution) between 800-1200 mm per year for upper zones and 200-900 mm per year for the lower zones. the area receives mean annual rainfall of 231 mm and 361 mm during long and short rain seasons, respectively. the short rains are evenly distributed, reliable and thus more effective than the long rains. average annual temperature is 22.5 o c and the ratio of precipitation to potential evapotranspiration is 35%. most of the farmers are small-holder practicing both livestock and crop (maize, beans, pigeon pea and cowpea) production with the latter mainly rainfed. farmer selection and questionnaire administration a stratified random sampling procedure was used to select 150 farmers (30 per location) for questionnaire administration, with locations forming the stratum. the questionnaire was designed to captured information on [i] perception; rating of climate change effects, timescale of anticipated changes, occurrence and value attached to understanding these changes, [ii] experiences; awareness of incidences of extreme weather events, source of information on ccv, traditional technical knowledge (ttk) on weather events, and use of decision support tools (dsts) and [iii] adaptation strategies i.e. changes in farming techniques in response to ccv. the information collected was verified through focus group discussions (fgds) and key informants interviews. climate change and variability..... 413 data analysis the data collected was analyzed using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss version 16). appropriate statistical procedures for description of frequencies, percent and means were used. results and discussion challenges faced by farmers in crop production the challenges faced by the farmers with respect to crop production were low soil fertility, low quality seeds and seedlings, labour scarcity and lack of or inadequate inputs (figure 1). ccv in the form of erratic and inadequate rains constituted 58% of the challenges the farmers encountered (figure 1) making it the most important figure 1: challenges encountered by farmers in crop production according to kibet (2011), kenya’s agriculture is mainly rain-fed and is entirely dependent on the bimodal rainfall in most parts of the country. a large proportion (80%) of the country is semi-arid and arid with frequent droughts and crops failures in one out of every three seasons. he further cited; climate change, extension services, use of outdated technology, pest and diseases, use of inputs, soil nutrient deterioration and poor infrastructure as the challenges facing the kenya agricultural sector. challenges that, generally mirrors those cited by the farmers in the study area (figure 1). perception and experience on climate change and variability perceptions on climate change and variability: the perception of farmers on ccv was found to be influenced by their social economic status as depicted from their source of income (figure 1). the effects of climate change on agricultural production were rated high (15%) to very high (78%) by the farmers (figure 2) and are reflective of the sources of income. the farmers who rated climate change and variability effects as very high were those whose main source of income was farming, whereas those with alternative income sources were not much concerned with ccv. lack of inputscrop pests & diseaseslow soil fertilitylack of rainsunpredictable/inadequate rainfall what challenges do you/have you experienced in crop production? 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0% pe rc en t asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 411-421. 414 figure 2: source of income and rating of climate change these observations imply that the more dependent a person is on agriculture as a source of income the greater the sensitivity to climate related changes. this observation is also in agreement with grothmann and patt (2005) who noted that the more one is likely to be affected by a given factor, the higher the attention given to it. the high rating of climate change by farmers who depended on farming solely as their source of income is therefore attributable to the fact that any factor, in this case climate change, that lowered crop production posed a threat to their livelihood and hence considered a serious risk. about 60% of farmers predicted that pronounced changes in ccv would be felt in 10-20 years’ time (figure 3). the prediction was based on the current weather unpredictability that in the recent years had shown a significant incremental cumulative effect. these estimates were mostly based on the rainfall amounts and distribution, also considered the major impediment to agricultural production. figure 3: timeframe for the anticipated changes noyes is farming your main source of income? 80.0% 60.0% 40.0% 20.0% 0.0% pe rc en t 80.0% 60.0% 40.0% 20.0% 0.0% rated high rated very high how do you rate climate change as an issue? 0ver 30 years10-20 years5-10 years0-5 years what time scale do you expect the changes 60.0% 40.0% 20.0% 0.0% pe rce nt climate change and variability..... 415 when asked further on the causes of ccv, about 95% of the farmers attributed the same to deforestation which nonetheless they partly contributed to. inconceivably though, the key responsibilities of curtailing this practice was largely seen as a government duty by the same farmers. this fact is also reinforced by gardner and stern (1996) assertion that people’s perceptions of environmental risks suggest that people perceive little personal control over global and regional environmental problems. farmers’ experience and sources of information on ccv: nearly all the farmers had experienced ccv in one form or the other. majority of the farmers (75%) though were experiencing declining crops yields and were congruent on the fact that ccv, especially onset and offset of rain seasonally or annually contributed greatly to their decline. close to 95% of the farmers experienced ccv majorly in terms of prolonged droughts and infrequent rainfall, other aspect like change in wind direction or rising temperatures were less mentioned. it was evident that personal experience and information from different sources was critical and informed decision making in farmers’ agricultural activities. agricultural extension workers (75%) and friends/neighbours (17%) were the main sources of information (figure 4) cited by the farmers. the high rating of the agricultural extension workers as their main source of information is partly due close and regular interaction, a position also supported by other workers (luseno 2003; goddard et al., 2010). print and digital broadcasting medium were less used by farmers due to claims of accessibility, cost with some requiring sources of power to run. figure 4: sources of information for farm decision making the other sources of information on ccv were radios and non governmental organizations (ngos). these findings are in agreement with those of recha et al. (2008) whose study findings in tharaka and machakos, districts of kenya, showed that farmers depended more on radios besides a agricultural extension workers for ccv information. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 411-421. 416 traditional weather forecasting vs. ccv: the respondents had an elaborate means of weather forecasting. about 35% of the farmers preferred using frogs as a means of predicting weather. the migration of croaking frogs into dry fields was an indication that rain was nearby. other prominent techniques involved observation of the sky for either clouds or stars with 20% preferring this method. an anchor ring surrounding a certain cluster of stars in galaxy was a pre indication of good rains. farmers would start conserving livestock feed when the stars were dull as that was a sign of poor rains. a swarm of bees towards the northern direction was also synonymous with onset of rains. use of plants was the most favoured method as reported by 50% of the farmers. tuber plants were commonly used for example shooting of ngalatumia (cyphostemma orondo photo 1) and malamwaka, (acalypha fruticosa photo 2) plants meant rains were just about. photo 1: ngalatumia (cyphostemma orondo) photo 2: malamwaka (acalypha fruticosa) the survey findings shows that about 50% percent of the farmers favoured predictions made through monitoring of these tuber plant’s phenology followed by observation of frog’s behavior (figure 5). it is worth noting that these techniques are unique to this particular region and sometimes they could be used either singly or in combination with other techniques qualitative in nature (rengalakshmi, 2005). figure 5: indigenous techniques used in predicting weather 23.68% 50.0% 15.79% 10.53% others e.g rain makers shooting of some tree tubers e.g malamwaka croaking of frogs observing the sky climate change and variability..... 417 luseno et al (2003) reported that, though traditional technical knowledge (ttk) are common for most communities in east africa, the type employed by a particular group depends on the objective and locality for example pastoralist in northern kenya, an area also classified as arid and semiarid lands prefer predictions based on sky observation as reported by 30% of the respondents. the use of plants was not favoured in northern kenya and was reported by just 11% converse to the findings of the current study where about 50% of the farmers preferred plant based predictions. these techniques though simple required a lot of skills for accurate predictions. their application was however reported to be on the decline particularly in the study region. the decline in use of ttk may be attributed to the fact that it has become increasingly difficult for the local experts to anticipate weather patterns, a situation some linked to ccv. the same trend was reported by luseno et al. (2003) who studied various ttk used by pastoralists in northern kenya. the current ccv has in a way interfered with the patterns of behavior/ phenology among predictors/indicators used particularly in plants and animals. frequency of use and reliability of traditional weather forecasting methods: to figure out the reliability and use of traditional techniques of weather forecasting, the farmers were required to indicate whether they had heard of and/or relied on the traditional weather forecasting techniques. close to 98% of the respondents had heard of and/or used traditional weather forecasting technique. about 60% of the farmers reported that they accurately predicted weather patterns through these indigenous techniques. however, on reliability, half of the respondents exhibited considerable confidence in traditional methods and relied on them in making decisions regarding their agricultural activities, the remaining half opted for modern methods (figure 6). figure 6: reliability and accuracy of traditional vs. modern weather forecasting the reasons for more and more reliance on modern weather forecasting techniques were variously reported. about 30% of the farmers reported that, environmental degradation induced by the current ccv has made unroutine and complexed, the specific behavior aspects of the frogs and bees that were relied upon for weather forecasting. consequently importantmoderatelyslightly importantlow rating the accuracy of scientific weather forecasting 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0% pe rc en t o f r es po nd en ts 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0% traditional scientific m ethod relied on m ost asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 411-421. 418 credibility of these methods was suspect as they are subject to seasonal and/or yearly variation. notwithstanding, the 50% of respondents who would rather continue relying on indigenous techniques mentioned dissemination and communication of weather forecast products as the key barrier, quite often the scientific forecast are presented by meteorologist in a language not easily understood by most of the farmers. knowledge on important aspect of weather especially onset of rains was said (by 95% of the farmers) to be critical to inform decision making in carrying out their agricultural activities particularly sowing (wafula 1995). decision support tools (dsts): in contrast to other aspects of ccv that farmers were required to provide, information on dsts was not easily provided but nonetheless helped raise the curiosity of their application. about 40% of the farmers showed some zeal and willingness to utilize them if more information and demonstrations on their working were conducted. notwithstanding most farmers were however skeptical about the application of dst as a source of information for informed decision making regarding their agricultural activities. a parity 8% of the farmers felt the best way to boost adoption of dst was through participatory research which would offer active learning experience on their working. this is an area that needs further exploring given the inadequacy of agronomic experiments to provide the much needed solutions to boosting agricultural productivity in the midst of ccv (k.p.c. rao, personal communication) adaptation strategies to climate change and variability most of the farmers interviewed had a lot of experience in farming, over 70% claimed to have practiced farming for more than 20 years. close to 90% of the farmers had experienced declining yields attributed to either erratic or rain failure. to counter the observed and anticipated effects of ccv, the farmers were found to be using various strategies (table 1). table 1: current adaptation strategies to climate change and variability adaptation approximate % of farmers using the technique agroforestry 72% drought tolerant crops 81 rain water harvesting 25 soil and water conservation 80 fertilizer 3 manure 95 short maturing crops varieties 90 other strategies that farmers reported to be using or in the offing were the introduction of the green grams crop. this although, was more from economic point of view as the farmers claimed, green grams fetches higher price in the market as compared to other legumes. on agricultural productivity, the farmers were willing to change farming systems for various reasons (figure 7). climate change and variability..... 419 figure 7: reasons for changing farming systems income was placed third as the reason behind wanting to shift farming practices, as it was only a priority to just 10% of the farmers. majority of the farmers were small scale farmers most of whom were food insecure. it thus looks normal for farmers to seek for technologies to improve their productivity ensuring food security before thinking of commercial aspects of farming (suri 2009). the aftermath of this process is that with time it is expected that even those who employed strategies that are aimed at boosting incomes may not be favoured by the changing climatic conditions. the situation may lead to a sustained condition of poverty and thus an increasing farmers’ vulnerability. conclusion the farmers were aware and conscious of ccv and viewed it as a real risk to their livelihood more so to those who depend solely on farming. further changes in ccv were predicted in the short and long term. farmers employed various traditional techniques to predict weather patterns although on the decline due to changes in phenology of common predictor elements. the need for modern weather forecasting techniques aided by dsts will thus provide a better alternative. training of farmers on important aspect of weather especially onset of rains is critical to inform decision making in their agricultural production. introduction of dst to farmers through participatory research would also offer active learning experience on their working. agro-forestry, drought tolerant and short maturing crop varieties were the commonly preferred adaptation strategies to ccv. these strategies are central in developing tactical and strategic measures to cushion farmers against the potential impact of climate change and variability. references galvin, k. a., boone, r. b., smith, n. m., & lynn, s. j. 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(1995) ―applications of crop simulation in agricultural extension and research in kenya‖, .j. agricultural systems vol. 49, pp. 399-412. world bank (2000) entering the 21st century: world development report 1999/2000. oxford university press: new york. world bank (2008) world development report 2008: agriculture for development, washington dc. http://www.climatescience.gov/library/sap/sap4-1/final-report/ http://www.climatescience.gov/library/sap/sap4-1/final-report/ http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/%20global/hrdr%202007-2008 http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/%20global/hrdr%202007-2008 publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. an analysis of improving energy use with data envelopment analysis in apple orchard raheleh fadavi., naeimeh samavatean., alireza keyhani and seyyed saied mohtasebi (department of agricultural machinery engineering, faculty of agricultural engineering and technology, university of tehran, karaj, iran) citation: raheleh fadavi., naeimeh samavatean., alireza keyhani and seyyed saied mohtasebi (2012): “an analysis of improving energy use with data envelopment analysis in apple orchard”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 277-286. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 277-286 277 author(s) raheleh fadavi department of agricultural machinery engineering, faculty of agricultural engineering and technology, university of tehran, karaj, iran email:fadavi.raheleh@gmail.com na.samavatean@gmail.com naiemeh samavatean., alireza keyhani and seyyed saied mohtasebi department of agricultural machinery engineering, faculty of agricultural engineering and technology, university of tehran, karaj, iran an analysis of improving energy use with data envelopment analysis in apple orchard abstract in this paper, data envelopment analysis (dea) technique was applied for apple (red and golden delicious varieties) producers in west azarbaijan province, iran (2008-2009). results showed that the highest share of energy consumption belongs to packaging (57%) and irrigation (16%). highest share of expenses were found to be 34% and 30% for labor and packaging, respectively. the total energy input for apple production, energy productivity, net energy and output-input energy value were estimated as 101,505 mj.ha-1, 0.23 kg.mj-1, 56.320 mj.ha-1 and 0.44, respectively. also, the study has helped to segregate efficient farmers from inefficient ones, identify wasteful uses of energy by inefficient producers and suggest reasonable savings in energy uses from effective sources while it describes the process of benchmarking energy inputs and apple yield. technical, pure technical and scale efficiencies were calculated (by using ccr and bcc models) for all orchards. inquiries on 80 orchards were conducted in a face-to-face interviewing. the vrs analysis showed that only 41 out of 80 dmus were efficient. the te of the inefficient dmus was calculated as 87.8%. this implies that 12.2% of overall resources could be saved by raising the performance of these dmus to the highest level. results showed that the maximum share to the total energy saving is from diesel (39.7%) followed by packaging and about (28.1%). the results of analysis showed that dea is an effective tool to analyze and benchmark productive efficiency of farms. keyword: apple, dea, energy ratio, benchmarking, technical efficiency introduction in 2005, apple orchards‟ area was summed up to 201,000 ha with total production of 2.66 mt in iran (anonymous 2006a). the west azarbaijan province is the leading apple (delicious and golden varieties with long legged, 277 trees per hectare) producer in iran, with approximately 27.1% share of total apple orchard area and 29.8% share of total apple production in iran (anonymous 2006a). also, about half of this province‟s apple production and apple orchard area is allocated to oromieh township (anonymous 2005). energy use in agriculture has been developed in response to increasing populations, limited supply of arable land and a desire for higher standards of living. more intensive energy use of fossil fuel, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, machinery and electricity has brought some important human health and environmental problems. thus, efficient use of energy inputs is of prompt importance in terms of sustainable farming. an input–output energy analysis provides farm planners and policy makers an opportunity to evaluate economic intersection of energy use (ozkan et al. 2004a), in addition, technical efficiency (weighted output energy to weighted input energy ratio) is another way to explain the efficiency of farmers (chauhan et al. 2006). there are several parametric and non-parametric techniques to measure productive efficiency, data envelopment analysis (dea) is a non-parametric method for evaluating the relative efficiency of decision-making units (dmus) on the basis of multiple inputs and outputs, therefore data envelopment analysis (dea) models such as ccr and bbc models (banker, charnes, & cooper, 1984; charnes, cooper, & rhodes, 1978 require input and output data. dea is an established and well-known methodology for non-parametrically estimating the relative efficiency of a number of homogeneous units, commonly designated as decision making units (dmu) (cooper et al., 2004b; zhu, 2002). this method has been conducted for benchmarking energy sectors in many countries, non-parametric estimation means that it does not rely on assumptions that the data come from any specific production function. from the observed data and making a minimum of assumptions, dea determines a production possibility set which contains those operating points that are deemed feasible. then, dea formulates and solves, for each dmu, mailto:na.samavatean@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 277-286 278 an optimization model (usually a linear program, lp) producing an efficiency score and a target operating point. the efficiency score is a measure of the relative improvements in inputs and outputs between the dmu and its assigned target. considerable research studies have been conducted on energy use and dea in agriculture, however, relatively little attention has been paid to apple production. nassiri and singh (2009), analyzed energy use efficiency, in this paper (dea) technique was subjected to data of paddy producers in punjab state (india), technical, pure technical and scale efficiencies were calculated (by using ccr and bcc models) for farmers category-wise and zone-wise. reigmartinez and picazo-tadeo (2004), identified the efficient production units in citrus farming in spain that determine the technological or best practice frontier, and they compared their characteristics with those of the average farm. chauhan et al. (2006) studied improving energy productivity in paddy production through benchmarking. in their study, a dea approach has been used to determine the efficiencies of farmers with regard to energy use in rice production activities in the alluvial zone in the state of west bengal in india. omid et al. (2011) studied benchmarking productive efficiency of selected greenhouses in iran using dea based on eight inputs: human labor, diesel, machinery, fertilizers, chemicals, water for irrigation, seeds and electricity, and output yield values of cucumber, the results of analysis show that dea is an effective tool for analysis and benchmarking productive efficiency of agricultural units. this paper presents an application of data envelopment analysis (dea) to discriminate efficient farmers from inefficient ones, pinpoint best operating practices of energy usage, recognize wasteful uses of energy inputs by inefficient farmers and suggest necessary quantities of different inputs to be used by each inefficient farmer from every energy source, in other words, the aim of this paper is to benchmark productive efficiency of apple orchards in oromieh township in iran to illustrate the need to include more than one resource involved in the productive process. materials and methods the west azarbaijan province is located in the northwestern of iran, the average annual rainfall is 300-400 mm (anonymous 2007a) and altitude above sea level is 1,313 m with average high and low annual temperatures of 19.4°c and 6.7°c, respectively (aryanpour et al. 2007). data were collected from 80 apple orchard in the oromieh township by using a face to face questionnaire in 2008. sample orchards were randomly selected from the villages in the study area by using a stratified random sampling technique. based on the energy equivalents of the inputs and outputs (table 1), the metabolisable energy was calculated. energy ratio (energy use efficiency) and energy productivity were calculated as eq. (1) and eq. (2) (mandal et al. 2002): output input ratio (er) = energy output (mj.ha-1) / energy input (mj.ha-1) (1) energy productivity (ep) = total output (kg.ha-1) / energy input (mj.ha-1) (2) table 1: energy equivalents of inputs and output in agricultural production inputs (unit) energy equivalent (mj.unit-1) reference 1. chemical fertilizers (kg) (a) nitrogen 78.1 mj.kg-1 kitani 1999 (b) phosphate (p2o5) 17.4 mj.kg-1 kitani 1999 (c) potassium (k2o) 13.7 mj.kg-1 kitani 1999 (d) superior chemical 120 mj.kg-1 singh, mittal 1992 2. farmyard manure (kg) 0.0303 mj.kg-1 singh, mittal 1992 3. chemical biocides (l) (a) insecticides 199 mj.l-1 helsel 1992 (b) fungicides 92 mj.l-1 helsel 1992 4. diesel fuel (l) 47.8 mj.l-1 kitani 1999 5. electricity (kwh) 12 mj.kwh-1 kitani 1999 6. wood (packaging) (kg dry mass) 18 mj.kg-1 singh, mittal 1992 7. transportation (t.km) 2.6 mj.(t.km)-1 kitani 1999 8. tractor (kg) 138 mj.kg-1 kitani 1999 9. sprayer (fertilizer) (kg) 129 mj.kg-1 kitani 1999 10. disk harrow (kg) 149 mj.kg-1 kitani 1999 11. human labor (h) 0.27 mj.h-1 kitani 1999 12. apple (kg) 1.9 mj.kg-1 singh, mittal 1992 13. refrigerating (t.day) 1.15 mj.(t.day)-1 anonymous 2007b asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 277-286 279 dea is a non-parametric technique that computes efficiency scores in a described data set, therefore, dea does not require any assumption about the functional form. the first time, farrell conducted non-parametric method in 1957, then charnes et al. (1978) introduced dea techniques in a paper that used mathematical programming to pursue farrell ُ s approach to technical efficiency measurement (see farrell, 1957). their approach involved an important improvement: instead of a single-output and single-input measure, they developed a method which appraising the relative efficiency of homogeneous units by considering multiple inputs and outputs production systems to be benchmarked, by constructing a piece-wise linear surface over the data points. this goal was achieved by computing a maximal performance measure for each production unit (dmu) relative to all other units (dmu) in the sample with the sole requirement that each farmer lies on or below an external frontier. dea determines efficiency in three different forms by using energy inputs (mj/ha) and yield (kg/ha) as an output: technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency. technical efficiency is principally a measure by which dmus are evaluated for their performance relative to other dmus. its value is, however, influenced by scale efficiency, which quantifies the effect of the presence of variable returns to scale in the dmus. pure technical efficiency is, thus, technical efficiency that has the effect of scale efficiency removed. the relationship among these forms of efficiency is given as eq. (3) technical efficiency= (pure technical efficiency) × (scale efficiency) (3) it may be noted here that the technical efficiency combines the effects of both pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency. determining these efficiencies of dmus facilitates planners pinpointing the sources of inefficiencies. the technical efficiency can be explained as eq. (4) [cooper et al 2004a]: efficiency = weighted sum of outputs/ weighted sum of inputs. (4) or mathematically as eq. (5) tej (θ) = mjm2j21j1 njn2j21j1 x v+.…+ x v+ xv yu +.…+ yu + yu =     m s sjs rj n r r xv yu 1 1 (5) where tej or θ is the technical efficiency of the dmu under consideration; n the total number of outputs; m the total number of inputs; „x‟ and „y‟ are input and output; ur the coefficient of the nth output (r = 1,. . . ,n); vs the coefficient of the mth input (s = 1,. . . ,m), „and „j‟ represents jth of dmus (j = 1,2,. . .,k). the value of technical efficiency varies between zero and one. to solve eq. (5), following linear program (lp) was developed by charnes et al. (1978) which was called ccr model, ccr is the first dea model, the ccr dea model becomes nonlinear as apart from the weights, ccr optimizes model and exhibits under constant returns to scale (crs) condition, this condition usually does not exist in most real life problems. ccr model is structured as follows eq. (6): maxu,v : θ = u1y1j + u2y2j +……….+ uryrj(6) subjected to v1x1j + v2x2j +……….+vsxsj = 1 (7) u1y1j + u2y2j +…….+uryrj≤ v1x1j + v2x2j +…….+ vsxsj(8) u1, u2,…,ur≥ 0 (9) v1 , v2,….., vs ≥ 0 and (i and j = 1, 2, 3,…..,k) i represents ith dmu, in this study inputs were pesticides, chemical fertilizers, manure, packaging, machinery, transportation, irrigation, refrigerating, labor and diesel, and output was yield (main and secondary (decayed apples) yields). the value of inputs and output weights would be calculated during the solving of lp, so that, the value of technical efficiency approaches to the maximum value. in 1984, banker, charnes and cooper introduced a model in dea, which was called bcc model to draw out the technical efficiency of dmus. this model would permit the existence of variant returns to scale (vrs) and the ccr model becomes the bcc model. with dea, we can identify which units present crs or vrs. the vrs is more flexible and envelops the data in a tighter way than the crs, the score or pure te (θvrs) is equal to or greater than the crs or overall te score (θcrs). with respect to technical efficiency (in ccr model), technical efficiency of bcc model, which is called pure technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency is, thus, technical efficiency that has the effect of scale efficiency removed and could separate both technical and scale efficiencies. it can be expressed by dual linear program (dlp) eq. (10): maximize z = uyi ui (10) subjected to vxi = 1 (11) _ vx + uy _ uoe ≤ 0 (12) v ≥0 , u ≥0 and u0 free in sign (13) where „z‟ and „u0‟ are scalar and free in sign. „u‟ and „v‟ are output and inputs weight matrixes, and „y‟ and „x‟ are corresponding output and input matrixes, respectively. the letters xi and yi represent the inputs and output of ith dmu. the particular dmu is scale inefficient, which can be determined by running the crs (constant returns to scale) and the vrs (variable returns to scale) models on the same data; a difference between the two te scores indicates a scale-inefficient unit. hence, scale efficiency (se) is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 277-286 280 tecrs/tevrs. although critical, the degree of scale inefficiency is not very useful from a managerial point of view, unless one can determine whether a dmu is operating in a region where drs (decreasing returns to scale) or irs (increasing returns to scale) returns to scale exist. a shortcoming of the se (tecrs/tevrs) score is that it does not indicate if a dmu is operating under irs or drs. this is resolvable by simply imposing a non-increasing return of scale (nirs) condition in the dea model (coelli, 1996; scheel, 2000). if the two te scores (tevrs and tenirs) are equal then drs apply; else irs prevail. the data analysis was carried out using excel 2007 spreadsheet, spss 16.0 software and deafrontier professional release 4.0. the frontier software was used to calculate technical efficiency and pure technical efficiency with radial distances to the efficient frontier and to rank dmus using the benchmark method, also determine the amount of energy loss and energy saving of inefficient dmus. results and discussion the average size in the surveyed orchards has been found to be 1.2 ha with a range from 0.1 up to 5 ha. machine power was used for only sprayer (in all orchards), fertilizing and plotting (in few orchards) due to the fact that most apple orchards are designed in a conventional way in which machineries traffic is really limited. the source of labor in the surveyed orchards is from either family members or mainly from hired (seasonal) labors and most of the machineries are mainly provided by rent. total physical energy input consists of diesel, fertilizer, chemical biocides, human power, machinery, irrigation, packaging, refrigerating and transportation. apples are packaged with wood because owners of apple orchards are believed that wooden boxes that store more power box than plastics or other types of packing boxes. irrigation methods were conventional or semi-mechanized (mostly with electric pump and conventional), an apple orchard is irrigated 8 to 10 times a year. the most frequently used fertilizer is farmyard manure and even in some orchards chemical fertilizers is not used because of soil structure and soil nutrients preservation. the diesel energy was mainly utilized for operating tractors; (mostly messy ferguson (mf) & goldoni in the surveyed apple orchards). analysis of input–output energy use in apple production the energy consumption and its sources for apple production are presented in table 2. as can be seen from table 2, the total energy used in various farm inputs is 101505 mj.ha-1. the last column in table 2 gives the percentage share of each input from the total energy inputs. of all the inputs, wood packaging has the largest share (57%), packaging energy is followed by the irrigation energy (16%), based on duration of irrigation (5-24h for one ha); energy for diesel is ranked third (10%). diesel energy was accounted for 10% of total energy inputs. the total energy equivalent of chemical fertilizers consumption placed fourth among the energy inputs and constituted (9%) of the total energy input, and nitrogen (7%) was in the first place followed by phosphate (1%), potassium (0.7%) and superior chemical (0.3%).the contribution of transportation, farmyard manure and machinery energies remained at low level of 1% (in total) as indirect energy inputs. hasanzadeh & rahbar (2005) reported that the most energy consuming input for apple production in west azarbaijan province was that for irrigation, nitrogen chemical fertilizing and chemical biocides, respectively. according to kizilaslan (2009), percentage shares for fertilizers (42%), electricity (22%) and fuel (21%) showed highest from total energy used in cherry production in turkey. strapatsa et al. (2006), calculated that the most energy inputs for orchard apple production in greece were fuel (33%), machinery (25%) and fertilizers (15%), mainly n (where orchards were irrigated 1-2 times a year), respectively, in all studies sited, post-harvest operation were not included. table2: amounts of inputs and output energy in apple production inputs (unit) total energy equivalent (mj.ha-1) (%) a. inputs nitrogen (kg) 7105 7 phosphate (p2o5) (kg) 1015 1 potassium (k2o) (kg) 710 0.7 superior chemical (kg) 305 0.3 water for irrigation (m3) 16241 16 chemical biocides (l) 2030 2 wood packaging (kg) 57858 57 refrigerating (ton.day) 2030 2 diesel (l) 10151 10 human labor (h) 3045 3 transportation farmyard manure machinery (ton.km) (kg) (h) 1015 1 total energy input (mj) 101505 100 b. outputs asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 277-286 281 yield (main) (kg) 19447 yield (secondary) (kg) 4335 yield (main & secondary) (kg) 23782 output energy (main) (mj) 36949 total energy output (main & secondary) (mj) 45185 output–input ratio is one of the essential indicators that provide an understanding of the efficiency of orchard holdings. the energy use efficiency, energy productivity and net energy of apple production in the oromieh township are tabulated in table 3. energy use efficiency (energy ratio) was calculated as 0.36 and varied from 0.23 to 0.52 in the sampled orchard holdings, showing the inefficient use of energy in the orchard apple production. it is noteworthy that the ratio can be increased by increasing the crop yield (energy equivalent of apple is low relatively) and/or by decreasing energy inputs consumption (input management). similar results have been reported for different orchard plants such as 0.96 for cherry (kizilaslan, 2009) and 0.97 for apple (hasanzadeh & rahbar, 2005) (postharvest operation were not included), some higher energy ratios have been reported such as 1.00 for apple (strapatsa et al., 2006) and 3.37 for apricot (gezer et al. 2003) in the literature. the results indicate that energy productivity and net energy were 0.19 kg.mj1and -64556 mj.ha1-, respectively. this means that 0.19 units output was obtained per unit energy. calculation of energy productivity is well documented in the literature for different crops such as soybean (0.18) (de et al., 2001), potato (0.35) (mohammadi et al. 2008) and cherry (0.51) (kizilaslan, 2009). the calculated net energy is negative (less than zero) implying that in apple production, energy has been lost. table 3: energy input–output ratio in apple production items unit apple energy use efficiency (main) 0.36 energy productivity (main) (kg.mj-1) 0.19 net energy (main) (mj.ha-1) -64556 energy use efficiency (main & secondary) 0.44 energy productivity (main & secondary) (kg.mj-1) 0.23 net energy (main & secondary) (mj.ha-1) -56320 direct, indirect, renewable and non-renewable energy forms used in apple orchard production are also investigated and the results are shown in table 4. it is clear that the share of direct input energy (29%) was much lower compared to that of indirect energy (71%). also, non-renewable and renewable energies contributed to 96.7% and 3.3% of the total energy input, respectively (this is a serious threat for environment). the proportion of non-renewable energy use in surveyed orchard holdings is very high. several researchers found that the ratio of direct energy was higher (lower) than that of indirect energy, and the rate of nonrenewable energy was greater than that of renewable energy consumption in cropping systems (esengun et al. 2007; ozkan et al. 2007; kizilaslan, 2009). results revealed that orchard operations is carried out mostly by human energy and its share is insignificant (almost zero) in energy consumption compared to other energy inputs. human energy is highly consumed in pruning and harvesting operations (pruning operation requires technical labor). table 4: total energy input in the form of direct, indirect, renewable and non-renewable for apple production (mj ha1) form of energy (mj ha-1) apple %e direct energya (mj.ha-1) 29437 29 indirect energyb (mj.ha-1) 72068 71 renewable energyc (mj.ha-1) 3350 3.3 non-renewable energyd (mj.ha-1) 98155 96.7 a includes human labor, diesel, water for irrigation. b includes seeds, fertilizers, manure, chemicals, machinery. c includes human labor, seeds, manure, water for irrigation. d includes diesel, electricity, chemical, fertilizers, machinery. e indicates percentage of total energy input. identifying efficient and inefficient farmers the anova test revealed that packaging, machinery, farmyard manure and chemical fertilizers are significant and effective inputs in apple orchards. accordingly, inputoriented dea analysis was performed with mentioned inputs and single output (yield). fig. 1 shows the results of technical efficiency analysis for 80 apples orchards unit (dmus). the vrs analysis shows that of the total 80 apples orchards considered for the analysis, 41 orchards have efficiency score of unity (fig.1). thus, they are efficient. on the other hand, the remaining 39 orchards which secured efficiency scores less than one were in the efficiency range of 0.41-0.99. however, the technical efficiency estimation indicates that only 34 producers were efficient under the ccr model. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 277-286 282 fig.1: efficiency score distribution of farmers use of dea results to study inefficiency on individual farms the performance assessment may be carried out by comparing a particular system with key competitors having best performance within the same group or another group performing similar functions. this process is called benchmarking (jebaraj & iniyan, 2006). efficient dmus can be selected by inefficient dmus as best practice of dmus, making them a composite dmu instead of using a single dmu as a benchmark. a composite dmu is formed by multiplying the intensity vector λ in the inputs and outputs of the respective efficient dmus. bcc is modeled by setting the convexity constraint (the summation of all intensity vectors in a benchmark dmu must be equal to 1. (omid et al. 2011)). table 5 shows the worst inefficient dmus (ao51 and ao45) and the best inefficient dmus (ao24 and ao46). for example, in the case of ao51 the composite dmu that represents the best practice or reference composite benchmark dmu is formed by the combination of ao06, ao10 and ao28. this means ao51 is close to the efficient frontier segment formed by these efficient dmus, represented in the composite dmu. the selection of these efficient dmus is made on the basis of their comparable level of inputs and output yield to ao51. in table 5, the benchmark dmu for ao51 is expressed as 6(0.42) 10(0.37) 28(0.21), where 6, 10 and 28 are the dmu numbers while the values between brackets are the intensity vector λ for the respective dmus. the higher value of the intensity vector λ for ao09 (0.515) indicates that its level of inputs and output is closer to ao45 compared to the other dmus. table 5: results of technical efficiency analysis dmu pte score (%) benchmarks dmu51 59.3 6(0.42) 10(0.37) 28(0.21) dmu45 71.8 9(0.515) 16(0.222) 66(0.007) 72(0.198) 75(0.058) dmu24 97.5 7(0.131) 9(0.012) 57( 0.44) 75(0.417) dmu46 98.3 6(0.298) 7(0.095) 9(0.143) 10(0.098) 28(0.366) efficiency estimation the average te (resource use) provides information about the potential resource savings that could be achieved while maintaining the same output level. the average values of the pure technical efficiency, scale efficiency and technical efficiency are summarized in table 6. the average values (for all 80 orchards considered) of pure technical efficiency, technical efficiency and scale efficiency were found to be 0.932, 0.951 and 0.98, respectively. researchers in previous studies calculated average pure te calculated for asparagus 0.8 and for tomato 0.89 (iraizoz et al. 2003), mean levels of technical efficiency were 77%, 73% and 75%, respectively, for groundnut monocrop, maize monocrop and maizegroundnut farming systems suggesting existence of substantial gains in output and/or decreases in cost with available technology and resources (binam et al. 2004) and mean pure technical efficiency of commercial pig farming in greece was 0.83, indicating that there is ample potential for more efficient input utilization in domestic pig farming (galanopoulos et al. 2006). the average values of pure 1 1 3 5 13 21 2219 41 34 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 number of dmu 0_ 10 11 _2 0 21 _3 0 31 _4 0 41 _5 0 51 _6 0 61 _7 0 71 _8 0 81 _9 0 90 _9 9.9 effi cie nt efficiency score bcc ccr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 277-286 283 technical efficiency, technical efficiency and scale efficiency for 18 cucumber greenhouses were found to be 0.972, 0.879 and 0.9, respectively (omid et al., 2011). table 6: technical, pure technical and scale efficiencies dmu technical efficiency scale efficiency (crs/vrs) crs vrs average 0.932 0.951 0.980 sd 0.091 0.077 0.004 the average te of the inefficient dmus at the orchard unit was calculated as 0.878. this implies that the same level of output could be produced with 87.8% of the resources if these units were performed on the frontier. another interpretation of this result is that 12.2% of overall resources could be saved by raising the performance of these dmus to the highest level. some ccr-inefficient farmers moved toward the bcc-efficient frontier. the rts indicated that all efficient units (based on pure technical efficiency) were operating at crs, whereas 40% inefficient ones were at drs and 60% inefficient units were at irs, which indicates that for considerable changes in yield, technological change is required. optimization of energy use for inefficient producers the pure te score of a producer being less than one indicates that, at present, farmer is using more energy than required from different sources. therefore, it is desirable to suggest input energy levels for the inefficient farmers that provide viable benchmarks for inefficient farmers. the bcc model, when solved, gives the pure te of a farmer. this can be done by using the value of slacks. according to coelli (1996) slacks are related to allocative inefficiency. allocative efficiency indicates a dmu‟s capacity to use inputs in optimal proportions. the slack values indicate that apart from reducing inputs by the amount of (1 – te), the inefficient dmus have to reduce their inputs by the amounts indicated by the respective slacks in order to become allocatively efficient.. for each inefficient producer, there have been calculated the actual energy use, the recommended target energy use for each input and the percent saving in total energy use. table 7 summarizes the energy saving (mj.ha-1) from different sources. using the information of table 5, it is possible to advise a producer to apply the better operating practices followed by his/her peers in order to reduce the input energy levels to the target values indicated in the analysis while achieving the output level presently achieved by him. it gives the average energy spent and targeted (mj.ha-1), possible energy savings and percentage contribution of each energy source in the total energy savings. the sources of allocative inefficiency at the unit farms are identified as the overuse of diesel fuel, packaging, irrigation and chemical fertilizer. table 7: energy saving (mj ha-1) from different sources if recommendation of study are followed input present use (mj ha-1) target use (mj ha-1) energy saving (mj ha-1) contribution input to saving water for irrigation 14614.45 10645.24 3969.2 13.18 diesel fuel 14110.31 2165.46 11944.8 39.70 machinery 399.04 287.92 111.1 0.37 chemicals 2491.67 1733.51 758.15 2.51 packaging 65550.76 57104.82 8445.9 28.1 human labour 858.52 294.12 564.4 1.9 chemical fertilizers 7997.95 4033.03 3964.9 13.14 farmyard manure 1451.76 1118.33 333.4 1.1 total input energy 107474.5 77382.5 30092 100 fig. 2 shows the share of the various sources in the total input energy saving. it is evident that the maximum contribution to the total energy savings is from fuel (39.7) followed by packaging (28.1%), irrigation (13.2%) and chemicals fertilizer (13.1%). a study to determine the efficiencies of farmers regarding energy use in rice production in the state of west bengal in india showed that on an average, about 11.6% of the total input energy could be saved if the farmers followed the input package recommended by the study (chauhan et al. 2006). results of omid et al. (2011) showed that in cucumber greenhouses highest saving energy belongs to diesel and electricity about 76.7% and 10.3%, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 277-286 284 fig. 2: total potential improvement summary the study suggests that better use of fuel and packaging, apple producer consume high energy specially fuel and packaging in response to inattention and low energy prices in iran, however, it should be noted that low productive dmus may not become efficient by simply reducing the level of inputs. instead a detailed analysis might be required to determine other underlying causes of inefficiencies, including environmental factors and agricultural practices. conclusion data used in this study were collected from 80 farmers located in the oromieh township of west azerbaijan province in iran. orchard production consumed a total of 101.505 mj.ha-1 energy and energy output was calculated as 45.185 mj.ha-1. the results revealed that wooden packaging (57%), irrigation (16%), fuel (10%) and chemical fertilizer (9%) were the major contributors of total energy use in apple orchards. energy productivity, net energy gain and output–input energy were calculated 0.23kg.mj-1, 56,320mj.ha-1 and o.44 respectively. it was concluded that the direct and indirect energy inputs were 29% and 71% of the total energy inputs, respectively. renewable energy sources among the inputs had a share of 3.3% of the total energy input, which was smaller than that of non-renewable energy sources (packaging is considered as non-renewable and indirect energy). in this paper, also we have explored the usefulness of nonparametric efficiency analysis – data envelopment analysis – for the study for improving the energy use efficiency apple orchards. more specifically, an input-oriented dea model is used for estimating technical efficiencies in the apple production. based on the results, the following conclusions may be drawn: the vrs analysis shows that 41 orchards have efficiency score of unity. ccr model estimation indicates that only 34 producers were efficient. the biggest share of energy saving appertain to diesel fuel (11944.8 mj.ha-1), fuel energy is followed by packaging (8445.9 mj.ha-1). the dea results are much easier to interpret and to utilize for investigating avenues for improvements in technology and resource use efficiency on orchards. dea has helped in segregating efficient agricultural units from inefficient agricultural units. it has also helped in finding the wasteful uses of energy by inefficient units and ranking energy sources by using the distribution of virtual inputs. the effects of uncontrollable exogenous variables, such as rainfall, climatic condition and soil fertility can be incorporated in future studies. references anonymous (2005) agricultural census of 2003 in azarbaijane gharbi province (the statistics center of iran). the office of publication and information. 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(2002) quantitative models for performance evaluation and benchmarking: data envelopment analysis with spreadsheets and dea excel solver. springer; effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 236 farmer cards: model, database, accuracy, and improvement in goverment quality service dani ramdani haruna sony heru priyantob liely suhartic aphd student of satya wacana christian university, indonesia. bentrepreneurship program of agung podomoro university, indonesia. cfaculty of economics and business, satya wacana christian university, indonesia. sony.priyanto@podomorouniversity.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 4 june 2021 revised: 8 july 2021 accepted: 10 august 2021 published: 6 september 2021 keywords farmer card information technology model database accuracy government initiation. this study aims to test the model adoption of farmer card innovation by farmers. data were collected through the use of the survey technique. the respondents were obtained through cluster sampling from six districts that included the greatest numbers of farmer card users in central java. data analysis was done through the sem technique. as a result, from the five variables included, reconstruction and merging of the independent variables were then carried out so that three important antecedent variables appeared regarding influencing the adoption of farmer cards, namely leadership, facility conditions, and the role of government mediated by perceptions of card technology. the application of farmer cards produced such a farmer database, accuracy improvement, and government service to farmers. future research needs to be directed toward carrying out development research related to increasing the capacity of information technology regarding farmer cards; hence it will bring better welfare to farmers. no previous research has explained how small farmers adopt information technology provided by the government. many events have transpired, but these dynamics have not been revealed in previous research. this research resulted in an adoption model that enriches the previous rogers’ innovation adoption theory, especially how leadership factors play an important role in the adoption of information technology innovations contribution/originality: this study is one of very few to have investigated the model adoption of farmer card innovation by farmers in which the application produced such a farmer database, accuracy improvement, and government service to farmers. this study contributes to the existing literature on the adoption of rogers’ innovation. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.113.236.244 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: dani ramdani harun --sony heru priyanto --liely suharti (2021). farmer cards: model, database, accuracy, and improvement in goverment quality service. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3), 236-244. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.113.236.244 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the development of information technology has helped accelerate the growth of the agricultural sector as one that supports economic growth. information technology has changed the distribution pattern of ideas and/or products to become faster, more precise, broader, and controllable. for example, an agricultural product from a asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 3 (2021): 236-244 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5861-8282 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5016-1748 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4538-9569 mailto:sony.priyanto@podomorouniversity.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 236-244 237 remote village will be informed and even sold to urban areas; another example is that the findings of an agriculturebased technological innovation require a relatively short time to get to the user (farmers). thus, the existence of innovative technologies in agriculture supported by information technology has created a phenomenon that requires prerequisites for agriculture-based innovative technologies to be adopted and implemented at the farmers’ level. the prerequisites for the technologies to be adopted include the role of the government in adopting the technologies, the perception of individual farmers in adopting the innovative technologies of agriculture, and the implications of the innovative technologies of agriculture on farmers’ performance measured by yield productivity. from these three aspects, the perception of individual farmers in adopting agricultural-based innovative technologies is the central point although the level of farmers’ adoption varies. to bridge this, an information technology innovation called farmer card was introduced. thus, the goal of creating agricultural-based innovative technologies (adoption) is strengthened by the function of the farmer card. one aspect supported by the existence of information technology is the acceleration of agricultural technology dissemination from sources (research institutions) to users (farmers). even though the transformation of national development is in progress, the agricultural sector is considering becoming the strategic sector in sustaining economies such as in indonesia, because the use of information technology is positively correlated with income per capita in developing countries in the asiapacific region (kim, 2002). the use of information technology is also positively correlated with productivity, both at the micro-level (brynjolfsson & hitt, 2000) and at the macro-level (dedrick, kraemer, & shih, 2013). accordingly, fagerberg and srholec (2008) argued that countries having succeeded in developing and maintaining capabilities and managing innovation systems and supported by government systems, will positively benefit from the sales of technologies. technology adoption is influenced by factors of the production process, changes in knowledge, and attitudes of farmers (mwangi & kariuki, 2015). technology adoption has a significant influence on control variables (moderating variables) such as age, gender, and experience (sun & zhang, 2006). besides, motivation influences the level of technology adoption with a high level of significance in the behavioral aspects of usage (lai, 2017). several studies related to the perception of innovative technologies have been carried out by, among others, rahman, uddin, and khan (2018), who identified factors influencing one's perception of technology, namely farmers’ characteristics and their communication behavior. perceptions of usefulness is a measure in which the use of technology is believed to bring benefits to those who use it, from the perspective of how individuals interpret the usefulness or benefits of using a system (adams, nelson, hall, & todd, 1992). meanwhile, wang, yu-min, hsin-hui, and tzung-i (2003) stated that perception of the use of technological innovation has a significant positive effect on behavioral interest, and gardner and amoroso (2004) also confirmed that the use of technology is the most important factor influencing user acceptance. the results of previous studies indicated that several technology adoptions have been studied and tested for their role even though they have not been categorized based on the level of individuals, groups, and the role of government in various research models, with results that are not yet conclusive in terms of the application of new technological innovations. in other words, research on innovative technologies needs to be further studied in more depth so that the opportunity to develop technology adoption models, by either individuals or groups, might be advanced (ismail & yusof, 2010). an innovative technology intended to exchange ideas, knowledge, and technology during the innovation process will be increasingly developed and beneficial to human resources (brambor, clark, & golder, 2006). several studies have also been widely carried out, such as the research conducted by kapoor, dwivedi, and williams (2014), who stated that the antecedent and descendent factors of technology adoption can be measured based on a variable, instrument, measure, innovation, and adoption of the unit approach. mccarthy and schurmann (2015) argued that sociological and psychological factors have a relationship to rejection of technology adoption, while krizaj, brodnik, and bukovec (2014) examined the level of each adoption at the adopter level. ayhan, öztemel, aydin, and yue (2013) examined every stage of the innovation process, namely the labor component and costs incurred. furthermore, lemos et al. (2016) stated that external factors in the adoption process in rural areas have a positive contribution to agriculture development. pannell et al. (2006) also argued that understanding and principles in the process of technology adoption are needed by the adopter. partala and saari (2015) proposed that emotion and attention influence the process of technology adoption. besides, nambisan, lyytinen, majchrzak, and song (2017) identified an interrelated phenomenon, agent innovation, as a central part of the process of adoption and efforts to change. the development of technology adoption theories is quite dynamic and is marked by the emergence of various theories and models. these models include (1) theory of reasoned action (tra), (2) theory of acceptance model (tam), (3) theory of planned behavior (tpb), (4) motivational model (mm), (5) personal computer utilization model (mpcu), (6) social cognitive theory (sct), (7) combined theory of acceptance and use (unified theory acceptance or utaut), and (8) innovation diffusion theory (idt) (dillon & morris, 1996; tarhini, arachchilage, & abbasi, 2015). given the description above, the objective of this study is to explain the independent variables, such as individual aspects, the dynamics of farmer groups, social support, infrastructure conditions, and the role of the government, and also the effect of mediation variables on farmers’ perceptions towards farmer card technology on the adoption of farmer cards. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 236-244 238 table-1. samples obtained from this research. no. district subdictrict samples )no.) 1 temanggung ngadirejo 60 2 purbalingga kutasari 60 3 banyumas sumbang 60 4 wonogiri girimarto 60 5 karanganyar mojogedang 60 total 300 table-2.summary of operational definitions and measurement of research variables. variable conceptual definitions indicators sources individual individual characteristics include several basic characteristics pertaining to certain individuals: perception, attitude, personality, learning, motivation, and technology. the scope of these characteristics forms a certain environmental nuance that marks the basic characteristics for an organization. attitude (x1) motivation (x2) enterpreneurship (x3) lumpkin and dess (2001); rahman et al. (2018); schiffman and kanuk (2007); touré‐ tillery and fishbach (2014) group dynamic a group is a party that influences a person's attitude or behavior that is constantly interacting. the influence itself can be done in either direct or indirect ways. cohesiveness (x4) leadership (x5) balachandra, briggs, eddleston, and brush (2019); buckner (1988); social support social influence is defined as the extent to which an individual perceives that the interests that are trusted by others will influence them using a new system. level of family support (x6) village administration support (x7) davis (1989); moore and benbasat (1991) conditions of the facility defined as the extent to which a person believes that organizational and technical infrastructure is available to support the system. the supporting facility(x8) the availability of information (x9) the availability of the instuction manuals (x10) compeau, higgins, and huff (1999); davis (1989); moore and benbasat (1991); thompson, higgins, and howell (1991) government the idea of government is explained thus: “this term comes from the word command, which means someone is told to do something and that matter must be done. government is a person, institution, or the one giving an order to society.” extention (x11) training (x12) socialization (x13) kousar, sabri, zafar, and akhtar (2017) perceived technology individual perception is related to the ease of use of the technology by which individuals believe that using a particular system will be errorfree. this perception will then have an impact on the individual’s behavior, i.e. the higher a person's perception about the ease of use of the system, the greater the utilization of the information technology is increased. relative advantages (x14) suitability (x15) ease of use (x16) result visibility (x17) possible trial (x18) visibility (x19) anandarajan, igbaria, and anakwe (2000) farmer card adoption farmer cards are used as a transaction instrument in the form of debit cards, is similar to atm cards, which can be used to buy subsidized fertilizer. from the farmers’ perspective, this card will make it easier for them to acquire subsidized fertilizer outlets and various other business credit facilities. quality (x20) references (x21) sustainability (x22) djamaludin (2018) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 236-244 239 2. research methods this study used a quantitative-explanatory design, which means research that explains the relationship between variables through hypothesis testing (edoun & gama, 2020). the population of this study is farmers who have adopted farmer cards in 35 districts/cities in the redemption of subsidized fertilizer with the transactions >30% in 2019 (source: simpi.bri.co.id). the research area is the region with the highest use of cards in central java, which was the first province in indonesia to implement farmer cards. those cards were implemented in the districts of temanggung, karanganyar, wonogiri, purbalingga, and banyumas (table 1). in this research there were 26 indicators, according to hair, black, babin, anderson, and tatham (2006), and the sample total was 5–10 indicators. concerning this matter, the number of samples was 300 respondents. to acquire the sample, this study used a probability sampling approach with cluster sampling technique (area sampling), with the following details are (table 1). table 1 details the districts and subdistricts with the highest applicability to farmer cards; each subdistrict consists of 60 samples, while table 2 details the variables included. data collection techniques utilized a survey with interview techniques using a questionnaire. the measurement scale used was the 5-point likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). the likert scale was chosen because it is commonly used for opinions and behavior (sekaran & bougie, 2016), which follows the characteristics of this study. the data analysis was done through the structural equation modelling technique, with amos application. the research instrument testing was done before the analysis. this testing includes validity testing, which was done by looking at the total correlated item, and also includes reliability testing, using the reliability of extract and content. figure-1. operational research model. figure 1 shows a research model that will be examined for goodness of fit. individual latent variables, group dynamics, social support, facilitation conditions, and governmental role all affect the perceived farmer card technology and adoption of farmer cards. 3. results and discussion after application for almost 5 years, only about 20% of the total number of distributed cards had been used for fertilizer redemption and banking transactions. many farmers are reluctant to use those cards since their benefits are not sufficiently clear, it is difficult for them to redeem the subsidized fertilizer, some are not connected to the internet and they also are not accustomed to using farmer cards. the aims of this research were to test the adoption model of farmer cards. confirmatory analysis of all factors showed that all indicators had a standardized regression weight >0.5 at significance <0.05. thus, measurement of these variables was carried out using predetermined indicators. the indicators observed reflected that the factors analysed, and in combination, reflected the presence of unidimensionality. after analyzing the level of unidimensionality of the dimensions/indicators forming latent variables tested by confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) to obtain results, a structural equal modeling (sem) analysis was performed in the full model. to test the accuracy of the model, the model fit index is used as presented in table 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 236-244 240 table-3. model fit index. goodness of fit index cutoff value result conclusion chi-square (df = 165) < 195.973 194.900 fit probability  0.05 0.056 fit cmin/df  2.00 1.181 fit gfi  0.90 0.922 fit agfi  0.90 0.900 fit tli  0.95 0.881 marginal cfi  0.95 0.897 marginal rmsea  0.08 0.027 fit source: primary data 2019, processed. model fit index indicated that, overall, the testing criteria were in good categories and met assessment criteria that had been required or determined, because the chi-square value was 245.799 and the critical value/chi-square table with df = 144 was 387.4. as the calculated value of the chi-square was loweer than the value given in the table, the research model was not different from the estimated population/model and therefore was accepted. furthermore, the results of sem regression estimation show that all pathways are positive and significant variables (table 4.. in other words, all hypotheses in this study were accepted. table-4. hypothesis testing. hypothesis cr p note facilitating condition→perceived technology 2.855 0.004 accepted government role→perceived technology 3.183 0.001 accepted leadership→ perceived technology 3.674 *** accepted perceived technology→ farmer card adoption 10.144 *** accepted farmer card adoption→performance of human resource 15.488 *** accepted note: *** = 0.000, significant at the 1% confidence level. 3.1. hypothesis testing after evaluating the assumptions in sem, hypothesis testing was performed. testing of the four hypotheses proposed in this study was carried out by analyzing the value of the critical ratio (cr) and the probability of a causal relationship. hypothesis 1 (h1): effect of facilitating conditions on perceived technology. the estimated parameter for testing the effect of conditions that facilitate the perceived technology (table 4) showed that the cr value of regression weights was 2.855 with a probability of 0.004, which was <0.05. therefore, h0 was rejected and h1 was accepted. thus, the variables of condition that facilitate significantly and positively affected the existence of perceived technology.this finding suggested that the availability of technical and organizational infrastructure supports systemic perception and organization of sensory information about people or social situations (oskamp & schultz, 2005). perception, according to umstot (1988), is the process of filtering, organizing, and interpreting information from the environment. the higher the perception of a person about the ease of using the system, the higher the level of information technology utilization (anandarajan et al., 2000). thus, the conditional variables facilitating perceived technology having indicators received facilities and information availability, as well as facilities and infrastructure availability, indicated the individual's readiness for change due to the existence of innovative technology. in other words, adequate facilitation, individual readiness to change, and level of adopter confidence that the organizational and technical infrastructure available were intended to support the use of technology would increase the use of technological innovation–in this case, technology of the farm card. on the other hand, venkatesh, morris, davis, and davis (2003) stated that facilitation of conditional variables significantly influences the use of information technology only if it is moderated by age and experience. facilitated conditions do not affect personal computer. in this case, thompson examined respondents among highly educated employees in national companies (thompson et al., 1991) meanwhile, the educational background of most of the respondent farmers in this study did not involve graduation or completion of elementary school. hypothesis 2 (h2): effect of the government's role on perceived technology. the estimated parameter for testing the role of government on perceived technology (table 4) showed that the cr value of regression weights was 3.183 with a probability of 0.001, which was <0.05. therefore, h0 was rejected and h2 was accepted. thus, the role of government variables proved to have a significant effect on perceived technology. this finding suggested a significant role of the government in relation to the farmers’ adoption in utilizing the farmer card. the significance of this role was essential, as according to rogers, medina, rivera, and wiley (2005), adoption of technology gives freedom to the adopter to determine whether a technology will be adopted or not; this entirely depends on the decision of the adopters. the findings of this study followed up on the suggestions proposed (kousar et al., 2017) that the role of government is an independent variable that needs to be examined. furthermore, oskamp and schultz (2005) proposed that although there are many factors influencing adoption, the formation of attitudes requires experiences, especially direct personal experiences with attitude objects. moreover, according to gibson (1997), the existence of the power of legitimacy is one's ability to influence others asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 236-244 241 because of its position; in this case the government and its policy instruments. the existence of the legitimacy power, in a positive way, accelerates the process of readiness for change so as to create perceptions and interpretations that are based on attitudes, feelings, and behavior. holt, armenakis, feild, and harris (2007) argued that readiness for change is a comprehensive attitude that is simultaneously influenced by the content, process, context, and individuals involved in a change. collective readiness reflects the extent to which individual tendencies approve, accept, and adopt innovative technologies and specific plans aimed at changing current conditions. meanwhile, lemos et al. (2016) stated that external factors in the adoption process in rural areas have a positive contribution to agricultural development, while larrasquet, pilnière, and jayaratna (2016) stated that understanding and principles in the process of technology adoption are urgently needed by adopters. thus, the dimension of the role of the government, consisting of socialization, training and counselling, was able to provide a change to the perceived farmer card technology. hypothesis 3 (h3): effect of leadership on perceived technology. the estimated parameter for testing the influence of leadership on perceived technology (table 4) shows that the cr value of regression weights was 3.674 with a probability of 0.000, which was <0.05. therefore, h0 was rejected and h3 was accepted. thus, the leadership variable proved to have a significant effect on perceived technology. there are two factors that influence the diffusion of innovation: external (wright, upritchard, & lewis, 1997) and internal (rogers et al., 2005). the influence of external factors, also called innovation factors, reflects the power of innovation in achieving responses of early adopters or innovators; meanwhile, the internal factors, called imitators, are the power generated from the interaction of prospective adopters with previous adopters. innovators always existed throughout the period of adoption although their number decreased; in this case, leadership variable was categorized as internal factors or imitators. leadership in farmer groups is carried out by contact farmers who function as organizing activities, teachers, mentors, mobilizers, self-help instructors, and role models for members of the farming community. northouse (2019) stated that transformational leadership is a process in which people engage with others and create relationships that increase the motivation and morality of leaders and followers. meanwhile, greenberg and baron (2003) defined transformational leadership as a leadership behavior whereby a leader uses his/her charisma to transform and revitalize an organization. some research results showed that transformational leadership significantly and positively influences readiness for change (abbasi, 2017). thus, the better the transformational leadership applied to an organization, the better the readiness for change. in relation to the adoption of innovative technology (the farm card) with the hypothesis that there was a significant influence between the leadership variable and perceived technology, it was concluded that leadership in farmer groups in adopting farmer card technology was needed in perceived technology to form readiness for change attitudes on other members of farmer groups to implement innovative technology of farmer cards and disseminating technology that had been practiced naturally, authoritative, and influential on its environment. the results of research conducted on farmer groups revealed that leadership in groups affects the level of farmer participation in various group activities related to efforts to increase farm productivity. the strong leadership dimension is reflected in the respective indicators, namely group leader and village administrator. furthermore, the type of leadership in the farmer group belongs to the type of paternalistic leadership, as agrarian societies that still hold traditional perspectives (dedahanov, bozorov, & sung, 2019). gary (2005) identified that the popularity of paternalistic leaders in an agrarian society is due to the strength of primordial ties, extended family systems of communalistic community life and strong customs in social life. therefore, the leadership dimension significantly influenced perceived technology with indicators of village leadership. as village administrators, powerful officials who were also supervisors of farmer groups, their presence was always considered as social facility for group member farmers. whenever village administrators attended in a group meeting, they gave more guidance so that farmer groups could be advanced, especially in agriculture even though they did not convey agricultural innovation because it was not their expertise. hypothesis 4 (h4): effect of perceived technology on adoption of the use of farmer cards. the estimated parameter for testing the effect of perceived technology on adoption of the use of farmer cards showed that the cr value of regression weights was 10.144 with a probability of 0.000, which was <0.05. therefore, h0 was rejected and h4 was accepted. thus, the perceived technological variable was proven to have a significant effect on the adoption of farmer cards. the significance of h4 indicated that the perceived technology variables and the adoption of the use of farmer cards with significant influence could be explained by the adoption of the use of farmer card technology in that individuals interpreted certain objects in different ways using their senses and then tried to interpret them. in this case, jahangir and begum (2008) argued that the perception of usefulness is defined as how individuals interpret the usefulness or benefits of system usage. wang et al. (2003) and satrio, priyanto, and nugraha (2020) found that the perception of the usefulness of innovative technologies has a significant positive effect on behavioral interest. sun and zhang (2006) and gardner and amoroso (2004) also confirmed that the use of technology is the most important factor in influencing user acceptance. furthermore, the combined variables obtained are related to the technology acceptance and use models. the variables are perceived behavioral control (ajzen, 1991) and compatibility (moore & benbasat, 1991). the results of this study are in line with the theory of perception that individuals are related to the ease of using technology (perceived ease of use), where individuals believe that using a particular system will be free from errors. perceived technology has an impact on behaviour – that is, the higher a person's perception of the ease of using the system, the higher the level of information technology utilization (anandarajan et al., 2000). this finding is also in line with the that of wang et al. (2003); sun and zhang (2006); gardner and amoroso (2004) and oskamp and schultz (2005), who examined perceptions, namely reception and organization of sensory asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 236-244 242 information about people or social situations, showing that the perceived influence of technology on the adoption of the use of farmer cards is based on their interpretation of information technology on farmer cards used in agricultural sector. 3.2. impacts of the use of farmer cards before there were farmer cards, farmers relied on the data given by central statistical bureaux and other sources that often provide contradictory information and are not up to date. starting in 2016, the central java provincial government developed a farmer card program, which initially aimed to facilitate the distribution of subsidized fertilizers so that it could provide accuracy in terms of quantity, type, time, place, and target. according to the use of farmer cards, these turned out to be able to function as a database for farmers (shaofen & guoqing, 2003). as a result, the cards benefited farmers since they give empowerment and protection. all farmers have been recorded and every month the data will be updated so that farmers’ data collection is dynamic and based on their conditions. farmer cards seem to be able to act as a farmer and agricultural information center (kiplang'at, 1999). aside from being a database, farmer cards also guarantee the accuracy of farmer data in real time, which makes it easy for decision makers to identify, design, and implement agricultural development programs. previously it was very difficult to acquire accurate data, which means that government assistance was often not on target, fertilizer was often misused, and farmers often did not get fertilizer according to their needs. accuracy of government subsidies to farmers can be achieved by the use of farmer cards based on rfid information technology (liu, zang, & li, 2011), including reducing the problems that arise from the distribution of subsidized fertilizers (djamaludin, 2018). with the existence of farmer cards, government services for farmers can be improved, not only for the distribution of subsidized fertilizer, but also for educational programs. farmer cards can be used for agricultural extension activities (picciotto & anderson, 1997; tavernier, adelaja, hartley, & schilling, 1996). extension agents can provide farmers with 'data and business conditions through the cards so that it is easier to provide the agricultural extension according to the farmers' needs. with these cards, the government can provide facilitation on technology, seeds, compensation, price subsidies, and income subsidies for them. as a result, services could more likely be on target so that farmers can increase production and access such welfare. moreover, the existence of farmer cards will ensure both the identity of the farming profession and the legal identity of farmers. before those cards existed, there were no legal rights in the farmer profession, and these became inferior to even those of factory workers. farmers do not act as entrepreneurs, as msmes, or as employees. the farming profession in the eyes of the law does not have any standing. socially, it does not have adequate status, most farms being poor and underdeveloped. with the existence of farmer cards, the government can determine who has the right to be entitled to call themselves a farmer, which was not previously clear. 4. conclusions and recommendations several conclusions can be drawn from the research of the model testing, related not only to the model testing but also to other findings. the results showed that the model adoption of farmer cards was influenced by leadership, facilitation of information technology condition, and the role of the government mediated by farmers' perceptions on farmer card technology. from the five large variables, based on data testing, leadership variables were increased as a result of the merger of the social support measuring variable and the dynamics of farmer groups. individual factors eliminated because they were not statistically significant affected the adoption. the latent variable of leadership was manifested by the group leaders’ and village government support. farmer cards can function as a farmer database, making it easy for the empowerment and protection of farmers, guaranteeing the accuracy of farmers’ data in real time, and also making it easy for decision makers to identify, design, and implement agricultural development programs. with farmer cards, government services for farmers can be improved, not only for the distribution of subsidized fertilizers but also for educational programs, facilitation of technology, seeds, compensation and price subsidies, and income for farmers. farmer cards can even ensure the identity of a farmer's profession and their legal identity. the application of farmer card information technology still has many weaknesses. farmers are still reluctant to use it since there are not many benefits that are deemed to be except for the redemption of subsidized fertilizer. future research needs to be directed toward carrying out development research related to the increasing capacity of farmer information technology to make farmers more prosperous, such as information technology infrastructure, so that each village can access the internet; farmer cards can be developed with virtual account technology, not physical cards, and thus farmers would not need to carry cards into the fields. furthermore, farmer cards can be integrated with computer vision technology (zhao, zhang, feng, & guo, 2010), smart warehouse, and the e-marketplace to achieve precision agriculture (maohua, 1999; zhao et al., 2010), from cultivation to market. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: all authors contributed in an equal manner in designing the present research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 236-244 243 references abbasi, b. 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(2003). determinants of user acceptance of internet banking: an empirical study. international journal of service industry management, 14(5), 501-519. available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/09564230310500192. wright, m., upritchard, c., & lewis, t. (1997). a validation of the bass new product diffusion model in new zealand. marketing bulletin-department of marketing massey university, 8, 15-29. zhao, j.-c., zhang, j.-f., feng, y., & guo, j.-x. (2010). the study and application of the iot technology in agriculture. paper presented at the 2010 3rd international conference on computer science and information technology. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. effect of temperatures, air velocity and flow rate on quality attributes of dried cassava chips ajala, a. s., babarinde, g. o. and olatunde, s. j. (department of food science and engineering, ladoke akintola university of technology, p.m.b. 4000, ogbomoso, nigeria) citation: ajala, a. s., babarinde, g. o. and olatunde, s. j. (2012) “effect of temperatures, air velocity and flow rate on quality attributes of dried cassava chips”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2 no. 4, pp. 527 535. effect of tempratures, air velocity and flow .... 527 author(s) ajala, a. s. department of food science and engineering, ladoke akintola university of technology, p.m.b. 4000, ogbomoso, nigeria babarinde, g. o. and olatunde, s. j. department of food science and engineering, ladoke akintola university of technology, p.m.b. 4000, ogbomoso, nigeria effect of temperatures, air velocity and flow rate on quality attributes of dried cassava chips abstract in this work, cassava chips were dried in a tunnel dryer at temperature 60 0 c, 70 0 c and 80 0 c using velocity 3.0m/s, 3.2m/s and 3.4m/s and load capacity of 7.5kg/m 2 , 10.0kg/m 2 and 12.50kg/m 2 as the drying variables. from the drying of experiments, data were generated to open up insights for the study and understanding of the physical parameters of the dryer as they affected the chips. the physical parameters studied in the dryer were air velocity, tray load capacity and air temperature. the effect of these drying parameters were evaluated on the quality attributes of the chips such as moisture content, bulk density, water absorption capacity, swelling capacity, residual cyanide content and colour. the results showed that drying temperatures and load rates had great effect on the quality attributes of the chips. keywords: tunnel dryer, cassava chips, temperature, tray capacity and air velocity introduction cassava is the fourth most important energy staple in the tropics and the sixth global source of calories in human diets apart from rice, maize and wheat (fao, 1999) and its utilization for industrial purpose such as starch, alcohol, adhesives and livestock feed is yet to be maximally used in nigeria. there is need to develop preservation technology to convert the product into stable form for industrial and export purposes. the vast potential of cassava should be developed and improved in terms of processing efficiency, hence there is need to pursue a good drying mechanism which is hygienic, cost effective and deliver standard product internationally which the traditional drying method fails to establish. effective design and optimizing the drying mechanism for industrial/ commercial production of cassava chips and flour will be of great economic importance to food, paper, and pharmaceutical industries; hence there is need to study. various factors can be responsible for the quality of the chips being dried, paul et al. (2009) suggested the influence of temperatures on food products being dried, heldman and hartel (1997) reported influence of humidity on drying rate of food products and kudra and ratti (2006) reported on energy utilization in food drying. the present study aims to investigate the effect of some drying parameters on quality attributes of dried chips material and methods (a) drying experiments mature cassava roots (manihot esculenta crantz) tms 421425 variety that were free from physical defects were used. they were obtained from the ladoke akintola university of technology teaching and research farm ogbomoso, nigeria. all reagents and solvents that were used in this work were of analytical grade. the drying experiment was performed in a tunnel dryer built in the department of food science and engineering, ladoke akintola university of technology, ogbomoso nigeria. the dryer was installed in an environmental condition of 51% relative humidity and 29 0 c ambient temperature. the drying experiments were done both in concurrent and countercurrent mode. in operation, the trucks were loaded manually into the tunnel at the loading asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 527-535 528 end and removed manually at the exit end after the chips have been dried. drying of chips were done at temperatures 60 0 c, 70 0 c and 80 0 c as reported by aghbashlo et al. (2009), air velocity used were 3.0 m/s, 3.2 m/s and 3.4 m/s as recommended by bulent et al. (2007), load rate used were 7.5 kg/m 2 , 10 kg/m 2 and 12.5 kg/m 2 as recommended by ospina and wheatly, (2007). after the chips were dried to 12% moisture content or below, the chips were packaged and subjected to further analysis. the physical and chemical analysis performed were moisture content, bulk density, water absorption capacity, swelling capacity, residual cyanide content and colour. moisture contents, bulk density, water absorption capacity, swelling capacity and residual cyanide were determined using official method of aoac (1999), while colour of dried samples was measured using a colourimeter (colour tech pcm, made in us, patent 5137364) to obtain l (lightness), a (redness) and b (yellowness) values, (ali et al., 2008). the colourimeter was standardized with white a4 paper measured as blank. the total colour difference was calculated using the equation 1 where subscript “0” referred to the colour reading of fresh chips 2 0 2 0 2 0 )()()( bbaalle  (b) statistical analysis of the samples the (2009) spss 15.0 version, a software package was used for statistical analysis. analysis of variance (anova) was carried out on the data obtained from the physical and chemical analysis of the samples. duncan test was used to separate the means. results and discussions (a) moisture content moisture content analysis of the chips is as shown in table 1 for the co-current mode. the values of the moisture content ranged between 7.81 and 12.91% (wet basis). the moisture content of the chips dried at 60 0 c and velocity of 3.2m/s was found to be 12.91% (wet basis) which is the highest value and the chips dried at 80 0 c and velocity of 3m/s had the lowest value of moisture content of 7.81% (wet basis). however, there was significant difference among the samples at p˂ 0.05. considering table 2 for counter-current mode, the moisture content ranged between 8.2% and 12.80% (wet basis). in this case, the moisture content of the chips dried at 60 0 c and velocity of 3m/s was 12.80% (wet basis) which also was the highest value while chips dried at 80 0 c and velocity of 3m/s was 8.20% (wet basis) which was the lowest. at 7.5 kg/m 2 loading capacity, chips dried at 60 and 70 0 c at 3.4 m/s and 60 0 c at 3.2 m/s were not significantly different. the values of moisture content of the chips dried in both co-current and counter-current modes were comparable to the moisture content reported by other authors who worked on cassava chips. lower moisture values of 7.81% and 8.20% (wet basis) for co-current and counter-current drying modes respectively were an indication of longer shelflife stability of the chips. it has been reported by franklin et al. (2009) that low moisture content confers higher shelf-life to the chips where microbial attack is minimum. by comparing the maximum moisture content recommended for cassava chips by previous authors such as fao/who (1991), these values appear to be similar to the recommended maximum value of 14% and hence both chips dried in co-current and counter-current modes had good microbial safety due to lower water activity which lowered the risk of growth of pathogenic microorganism. another important characteristic exhibited by the chips was that as drying temperature increased from 60 0 c to 80 0 c, the moisture content of the chips decreased for all treatments in both co-current and countercurrent modes (table1 and 2). the same observation was reported by paul et al. (2009). effect of tempratures, air velocity and flow .... 529 table 1: quality analysis of chips dried in co-current mode velocity (m/s) temperature ( 0 c) 7.5 kg/m 2 10.0 kg/m 2 12.5 kg/m 2 moisture content (%) 3.0 60 9.50±0.02 d 10.20±0.02 d 9.20±0.05 c 70 9.15±0.02 c 10.10±0.06 d 8.90±0.10 b 80 7.81±0.02 a 9.71±0.09 c 8.41±0.02 a 3.2 60 12.91±0.01 i 10.50±0.02 e 10.60±0.03 f 70 11.92±0.03 g 9.90±0.03 c 10.30±0.04 e 80 8.61±0.01 b 9.51±0.29 b 9.87±0.25 d 3.4 60 12.70±0.59 h 11.70±0.03 f 11.21±0.01 g 70 11.61±0.01 f 9.60±0.03 b 9.11±0.01 c 80 10.52±0.02 e 8.40±0.09 a 8.93±0.03 b bulk density (g/cm 3 ) 3.0 60 0.51±0.02 d 0.55±0.12 c 0.50±0.04 b 70 0.49±0.01 d 0.53±0.02 c 0.48±0.03 b 80 0.39±0.03 a 0.52±0.02 c 0.44±0.03 b 3.2 60 0.54±0.02 d 0.46±0.03 c 0.46±0.02 b 70 0.46±0.02 d 0.44±0.04 b 0.46±0.01 b 80 0.42±0.01 b 0.43±0.05 b 0.44±0.03 b 3.4 60 0.49±0.04 d 0.47±0.03 c 0.45±0.05 b 70 0.46±0.04 d 0.43±0.03 b 0.43±0.05 b 80 0.44±0.04 c 0.41±0.07 a 0.40±0.07 a this suggests that drying at higher temperatures could be good obtaining lower moisture contents at good times but at temperature above 80 0 c, sidibe et al. (2009) had earlier reported the incidence of gelatinization of cassava starch which was an unwelcome attribute of the chips in the market. (b) bulk density the bulk density of cassava chips is recorded in tables 1 and 2 for both co-current and countercurrent drying, respectively. it ranged from 0.37g/cm 3 to 0.55g/cm 3 in co-current mode and from 0.35g/cm 3 to 0.49 g/cm 3 in counter-current drying. in co-current drying, values were not significantly different at the 12.5 kg /m 2 load except at 3.4 m/s, temperature 80 0 c. however, there was significant difference between the samples for 7.5 kg/m 2 and 10 kg/m 2 loading rates. table 2 showed the level of significant difference of chips dried in counter-current form; it was shown that there was no significant difference among samples for 10 kg/m 2 and 12.5 kg/ m 2 loading rate whereas there was a significant difference among the samples for 7.5 kg/m 2 . bulk densities of the chips were similar to the values reported by audu and ikhuomoregbe (1982) which ranged from 0.17g/cm 3 to 0.55g/cm 3 and iyang et al. (2006) which ranged from 0.29 to 0.56g/cm 3 but were lower than the values reported by sanni et al. (2005) which ranged from 0.85g/cm 3 to 0.97g/cm 3 and that of udensi et al. (2006) which ranged from 0.64 to 0.76 g/cm 3 . the values recorded in this study are generally lower than those reported and therefore can be considered as a good quality derived flour because lower bulk density enhances material handling especially packaging and transportation. also from table 1 and 2, it was observed that moisture content affected bulk density in such a pattern that as moisture content increased, bulk density also increased and vice versa. the same observation had been reported by nwabanne (2009) to the effect that increases in moisture content increased bulk density of cassava chips. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 527-535 530 table 2: quality analysis of chips dried in counter-current mode velocity (m/s) temperature ( 0 c) 7.5 kg/m 2 10.0 kg/m 2 12.5 kg/m 2 moisture content (%) 3.0 60 10.00±0.50 c 11.41±0.19 c 12.80±0.10 g 70 9.50±0.22 ab 11.20±0.05 c 12.60±0.30 g 80 8.90±0.20 a 8.20±0.13 a 9.60±0.47 b 3.2 60 10.80±0.13 d 11.10±0.12 c 10.91±0.11 e 70 10.00±0.45 c 10.90±0.83 c 9.20±0.20 a 80 8.80±0.13 a 9.60±0.56 b 8.81±0.08 a 3.4 60 11.60±0.46 d 11.50±0.03 c 11.3±0.16 f 70 11.10±0.06 d 9.30±0.17 b 10.50±0.48 de 80 9.00±1.3 a 9.10±1.02 b 10.10±0.88 cd bulk density (g/cm 3 ) 3.0 60 0.48±0.08 c 0.47±0.11 a 0.49±0.01 a 70 0.42±0.02 c 0.44±0.06 a 0.44±0.03 a 80 0.37±0.05 b 0.36±0.05 a 0.39±0.02 a 3.2 60 0.45±0.02 c 0.49±0.04 a 0.48±0.08 a 70 0.40±0.04 c 0.46±0.08 a 0.45±0.05 a 80 0.35±0.07 a 0.42±0.09 a 0.41±0.19 a 3.4 60 0.49±0.08 c 0.45±0.08 a 0.43±0.08 a 70 0.43±0.17 c 0.40±0.06 a 0.41±0.07 a 80 0.37±0.02 b 0.38±0.05 a 0.40±0.04 a (c) water absorption capacity measurement of water absorption capacity of the chips at both treatments (co-current and counter-current) is as presented in tables 3 and 4. the water absorption capacity ranged from 1.4 ml/g to 4.32 ml/g for co-current drying. there were significant differences among the samples. in counter-current drying, the values ranged from 2.21 ml/g to 3.66 ml/g. there was significant difference among the samples. water absorption in this study is less than the values reported by eke et al. (2007) which ranged from 3.52 ml/g to 10.5g/ml but comparable to the values reported by tilahun (2009) which ranged from 1.9ml/g to 2.62 ml/g. it was observed from table 3 and 4 that temperature affected water absorption capacity because as drying temperature increased, water absorption capacity increased. it has been reported that increase in temperature induced a decrease in moisture content of the chips. decrease in moisture content of the chips would suggest a corresponding increase in solid content of the chips which encompasses all nutrients for instance the starch content. water absorption capacity involves the ability of flour particles and water to associate under limited water supply. although, kinsella (1976) attributed water absorption capacity to protein and fat interaction in food samples but it is obvious from the literature that cassava flour is a poor source of protein and fat. hence the water absorption capacity of cassava flour has been observed to be dependent on the starch content of the flour. water absorption capacity is a useful index applied in the baking industries. the higher the water absorption capacity, the more opportunity to manipulate the functional properties of the gel to form different products which may include snacks and other bakery products. effect of tempratures, air velocity and flow .... 531 table 3: quality analysis of chips dried in co-current mode velocity (m/s) temperature ( 0 c) 7.5 kg/m 2 10.0 kg/m 2 12.5 kg/m 2 water absorption capacity (cm 3 /g sample) 3.0 60 2.80±0.03 d 1.40±0.2 a 2.83±0.02 b 70 2.83±0.04 d 2.62±0.01 b 2.88±0.11 b 80 4.32±0.20 e 2.68±0.18 b 4.18±0.05 e 3.2 60 2.42±0.06 c 2.97±0.01 b 2.86±0.02 b 70 2.61±0.04 d 2.95±0.6 b 3.22±0.03 cd 80 4.19±0.05 e 4.17±0.05 d 3.24±0.04 d 3.4 60 1.60±0.12 a 1.61±0.01 a 2.20±0.05 a 70 1.80±0.29 b 2.74±0.04 b 2.85±0.19 b 80 2.74±0.09 d 3.30±0.55 c 3.04±0.04 c swelling capacity (g water/g sample) 3.0 60 1.14±0.09 a 1.13±0.09 a 1.14±0.06 a 70 1.15±0.03 a 1.16±0.08 a 1.17±0.13 a 80 1.17±0.02 a 1.18±0.05 a 1.19±0.04 a 3.2 60 1.10±0.10 a 1.15±0.25 a 1.18±0.21 a 70 1.13±0.01 a 1.17±0.04 a 1.20±0.03 a 80 1.16±0.08 a 1.18±0.03 a 1.22±0.04 a 3.4 60 1.21±0.10 a 1.18±0.09 a 1.22±0.16 a 70 1.23±0.24 a 1.20±0.09 a 1.25±0.04 a 80 2.26±0.20 b 1.24±0.02 a 1.31±0.20 a (d) swelling capacity the swelling capacity of samples measured are as presented in table 3 and 4 for the co-current and counter-current modes respectively. values recorded ranged from 1.10 to 1.31 g water/g sample for the co-current mode and from 1.12 to1.27 g water/g sample for the counter-current mode. in co-current drying (table 3), there was no significant difference among the samples for all temperatures, load rates and air velocities tested except at 3.4 m/s, 80 0 c and 7.5kg/m 2 . also, there was no significant difference among the samples for all temperatures, load rates and air velocities tested as seen in table 4. the results obtained in this study were greater than the values reported by inyang et al. (2006) which is 0.24 to 0.26; the results obtained in this work were also greater than the values reported by ikegwu et al. (2009) which is 0.05 to 0.6 g water/g sample but are comparable to the values reported by sidibe et al. (2009) which ranged from 1.0 to 5.0 g water/g sample. the swelling power of cassava flour studied fell within this range. swelling power is important in determining flour quality, the higher the swelling capacity the greater is its suitability in the formulation of products. rakshit and solomon (2003) defined swelling power as the swollen sediment weight per gram of dry flour and franklin et al. (2009) reported that swelling capacity of a food sample is influenced by its starch content while ayernor (1979) reported that swelling capacity indicated the ability of starch to swell which depends on weak internal bounding of amylase and amylopectin contents of the starch. tilahun (2009) suggested that swelling power of flour depended on the capacity of flour to hold water through hydrogen bonding. however, eke et al. (2007) reported that increase in lipid content may inhibit the swelling power of flour as lipids are hydrophobic in nature. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 527-535 532 table 4: quality analysis of chips dried in counter-current mode velocity (m/s) temperature ( 0 c) 7.5 kg/m 2 10.0 kg/m 2 12.5 kg/m 2 water absorption capacity (cm 3 /g sample) 3.0 60 2.77±0.06 b 2.70±0.17 b 2.30±0.25 a 70 2.86±0.44 b 2.74±0.07 b 2.43±0.04 b 80 2.90±0.09 b 2.92±0.11 c 2.79±0.45 c 3.2 60 2.76±0.04 b 2.60±0.13 b 2.74±0.04 c 70 2.87±0.05 b 2.74±0.03 b 3.00±0.47 d 80 3.12±0.01 c 2.94±0.08 c 3.06±0.06 d 3.4 60 2.21±0.01 a 2.24±0.03 a 2.72±0.05 c 70 3.15±0.12 c 3.38±0.05 d 3.18±0.07 d 80 3.66±0.22 d 3.48±0.08 d 3.33±0.11 d swelling capacity (g water/g sample) 3.0 60 1.13±0.02 a 1.12±0.04 a 1.17±0.08 a 70 1.14±0.03 a 1.13±0.06 a 1.19±0.05 a 80 1.18±0.07 a 1.15±0.06 a 1.23±0.06 a 3.2 60 1.12±0.11 a 1.14±0.13 a 1.15±0.11 a 70 1.15±0.09 a 1.19±0.11 a 1.17±0.01 a 80 1.17±0.05 a 1.23±0.09 a 1.18±0.02 a 3.4 60 1.18±0.03 a 1.12±0.11 a 1.21±0.16 a 70 1.20±0.17 a 1.13±0.02 a 1.24±0,02 a 80 1.23±0.19 a 1.16±0.04 a 1.27±0.18 a (e) cyanide level the effect of three drying temperatures 60 0 c, 70 0 c and 80 0 c on cyanide removal from cassava chips are as recorded in tables 5 and 6 for co-current and counter-current drying of chips. values of residual cyanide content of the samples ranged from 3.78 to 11.41 mghcn/kg solid for co-current drying in table 5 while the values ranged from 4.32 to 11.91 mghcn/kg solid in countercurrent drying in table 6. in table 5, there was significant difference among the values at different treatments. in table 6, the same trend occurred in which the values also differed significantly. values of cyanide levels recorded in this study were less than corresponding values reported by enidiox et al. (2008) which is 2.76 mghcn/kg solid. the values were also less than those reported by iyang et al. (2006) and eze (2010) which were 13.8 mghcn/100g solid and 20.6 mghcn/kg solid respectively. however, the values are comparable with those reported by franklin et al. (2009) which ranged from 11.6 to16.6 mghcn/kg solid. almost all the values of cyanide reported in this study with few exceptions fell within the safe cyanide level recommended and approved by fao/who (1991) which is 10mghcn/kg solid. therefore, the drying technique used in this study produced safe chips in relation to cyanide toxicity and can serve as a potential method for improving food security in the country in this respect. also from the tables 5 and 6, it was observed that cyanide reduction level was affected by temperature. the higher the temperature of drying, the higher the cyanide content of the chips. the reason for this must be that higher temperature induced faster rates of drying and generally less loss of cyanide. this observation was reported by jansz et al. (1974). also, at drying velocity of 3.4 m/s, the rate of cyanide removal was not only affected by temperature but also by loading rate. as the loading capacity increased, the level of cyanide content decreased. the reason for this may be that higher loading rates took longer drying time during which most of the cyanide was removed. the same observation has been reported by enidiox et al. (2008). (f) colour the results of total colour difference (δe) of the chips for the co-current and counter-current modes are as presented in tables 5 and 6. from table 5, the values ranged from 0.24 to 21.04 for the co-current mode while the values ranged from 2.61 to 21.04 for the counter-current mode in table 6. there was significant difference effect of tempratures, air velocity and flow .... 533 among the samples in table 5. the same trend occurred in samples from counter-current drying in table 6. as a whole, the total colour change (δe) of the chips increased as the hot air temperature increased. this would mean that with increase in air temperature, the degradation rate of colour inducing compound in cassava became faster as a result of high heat transfer into the inside of the chips and this made the colour of the chips brown. several authors have worked on total colour difference of food material in hot air drying. table 5: quality analysis of chips dried in co-current mode velocity (m/s) temperature ( 0 c) 7.5 kg/m 2 10.0 kg/m 2 12.5 kg/m 2 free cyanide (mghcn/kg) 3.0 60 7.10±0.07 b 6.48±0.02 a 7.12±0.08 b 70 8.10±0.02 c 8.12±0.08 c 10.81±0.26 e 80 10.80±0.45 g 9.18±0.10 e 11.41±0.02 f 3.2 60 3.78±0.38 a 6.48±0.03 a 6.34±0.12 a 70 7.02±0.10 b 8.10±0.08 c 6.47±0.03 a 80 8.64±0.40 d 10.30±0.11 g 7.22±0.19 b 3.4 60 8.64±0.18 d 7.56±0.05 b 7.12±0.08 b 70 9.18±0.03 e 8.60±0.10 d 8.10±0.04 c 80 9.72±0.20 f 9.70±0.81 f 9.52±0.02 d colour: δe (total colour difference) 3.0 60 2.44±0.16 cb 2.59±0.04 a 4.88±0.08 b 70 4.28±0.12 c 4.62±0.07 c 5.86±0.09 c 80 4.52±0.02 c 6.17±0.05 e 8.38±0.07 e 3.2 60 0.24±05a 5.63±0.08 d 6.27±0.09 c 70 4.93±0.03 c 7.22±0.21 g 10.70±0.10 f 80 21.04±1.02 d 13.20±0.20 i 14.84±0.17 g 3.4 60 2.83±0.03 b 3.35±0.18 b 4.26±0.32 a 70 4.82±0.29 c 6.77±0.07 f 4.68±0.08 b 80 4.89±0.07 c 7.97±0.52 h 7.02±0.85 d for instance, velic et al. (2007) studied colour change of granny smith apple in tray drying, ali et al. (2008) studied the colour change of kiwifruit slices in hot air and el-amin et al. (2006) studied the colour change of mango slices in hot air drying. results from these indicated that a higher temperature produced greater colour difference; hence drying at lower temperatures (60-80 0 c) was recommended for the drying of fruits. table 6: quality analysis of chips dried in counter-current mode velocity (m/s) temperature ( 0 c) 7.5 kg/m 2 10.0 kg/m 2 12.5 kg/m 2 free cyanide (mghcn/kg) 3.0 60 5.40±0.10 a 7.02±0.06 c 4.31±0.01 a 70 9.18±0.08 e 7.56±0.11 d 6.48±0.01 b 80 10.80±0.10 g 8.10±0.09 e 8.10±0.07 d 3.2 60 5.94±0.17 b 4.32±0.31 a 8.10±0.10 d 70 9.18±0.17 e 5.40±0.37 b 8.64±0.57 e 80 10.26±0.2 f 7.56±0.44 d 10.15±0.09 f 3.4 60 8.30±0.20 c 7.02±0.01 c 7.00±0.05 c 70 8.64±0.01 d 8.10±0.06 e 7.56±0.16 d 80 11.91±0.2 h 9.72±0.02 f 8.64±0.29 e colour: δe (total colour difference) 3.0 60 4.40±0.20 b 4.73±0.03 a 5.06±0.85 b 70 8.18±0.05 f 6.52±0.43 cd 6.99±0.92 e asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 527-535 534 80 8.69±0.19 g 6.77±0.59 d 7.23±0.27 f 3.2 60 2.61±0.08 a 4.92±0.28 a 4.31±0.05 a 70 6.78±0.15 d 7.19±0.02 e 7.58±0.87 f 80 21.04±0.08 h 7.56±0.02 e 8.25±0.05 f 3.4 60 2.64±0.04 a 5.94±0.04 b 5.26±0.32 c 70 6.41±0.04 c 6.46±0.08 c 5.76±0.26 d 80 7.42±0.02 e 15.63±0.92 f 19.96±0.13 h the value of colour difference recorded in this study is comparable with the values for cassava flour reported by franklin et al. (2009) on five cultivars in which the values ranged from 9.2 to 12.1. consumers of cassava chips generally look for white colour in the product. hence they prefer cassava chips dried at lower temperatures (60-80 0 c) which is white in colour to that dried at higher temperature which may have noticeable browning effect (non-enzymatic). conclusion from the study, it was concluded that drying temperatures had effect on moisture content of the chips in such a way as temperature increased, moisture content decreased in the samples. moisture content affected bulk density directly; as moisture content increased, bulk density increased. water absorption capacity was influenced by temperature in such pattern that increases in temperature increased water absorption capacity of the chips. all drying variables had no significant effect on swelling capacity of the chips. cyanide content was affected by drying temperature; higher temperature of drying produced higher content of cyanide level while loading capacity affected cyanide content inversely; the higher the loading capacity the lower the cyanide content. colour was temperature dependent; the higher the temperature of drying, the higher the total colour difference and hence the poorer the quality of the chips references aghbashlo m., kianmehr, m.h., khani, s. and ghasemi m. (2009) “mathematical modeling of thin-layer drying of carrot”, int. agrophysics, vol. 23, pp. 313-317. ali, m., shahin, r., zahra, e. and alireza, k. (2008) “kinetic models for colour changes in kiwifruit slices during hot air drying”, world journal of agricultural science, vol. 4(3), pp. 376-383. aoac (1999) “official methods of analysis of the association of official analytical chemists”, 16th edition (william ed.) virginia. pp. 834 841. audu t.o. and ikhu-omoregbe k. (1982) “drying characteristic of fermented ground cassava”, njet, vol. 5(1), pp. 31-40. in: j.t nwabanne (2009)drying characteristics and engineering properties of fermented ground cassava. africa journal of biotechnology. vol. 8(5), pp. 873-877 ayernor, g. s. (1979) “particlulate properties and technology of pre-geeled yam”, j. food sci., vol. 41, pp. 91-96. bulent, k., murat, t., ibrahim, h. and hassan, v. (2007) “solar drying of red peppers: effect of air velocity and product size”, journal of applied sciences, vol. 7(11), pp. 1490-1496. eke, j., achinewhu, s. c., sanni, l., barimalaa, i. s. and dixon, m. b. (2007) “seasonal variation in chemical and functional properties of starches from local and improved varieties in high rainfall of nigeria”, journal of food, agriculture and environment, vol. 5(3), pp. 36-42. el-amin, o. m. a., mohammed, a. i., elfadil, a. a. and luece, w. (2006) “design and construction of a solar dryer for mango slices”, paper presented at denstscher tropentag conference, university of bonn. pp 1-7 enidiox, s. e., attah, l. e. and otuechere, c. a. (2008) “evaluation of moisture, total cyanide and fiber content of gari produced from cassava varieties”, pakistan journal of nutrition, vol. 7(5), pp. 625-629. eze, j. i. (2010) “evaluation of the efficacy of a family sized solar dryer cabinet dryer in food preservation”, american journal of scientific and industrial research vol. 1(3), pp. 610-617. fao/who (1991) joint fao/who food effect of tempratures, air velocity and flow .... 535 standard programme. codex alimentarius commission xii (suppl.4) fao, rome. pp1-2 fao (1999) on line statistical database rome, italy food and agriculture organization of the united nations ( www.fao.org) franklin, b. a, ibok, o., william o. e. and osei s. k. (2009) “principal component analysis and age at harvest effect on quality on gari from four elite cassava varieties in ghana”, african journal of biotechnology, vol. 8(9), pp. 1943-1949. heldman, d. and hartel, r. (1997) “principles of food processing”, new york: international thomson publishing, p6 ikegwu, o. j., nwobassi, v. n., odoh, o. m. and oledinma, n. u. (2009) “evaluation of the pasting and some functional properties of starch isolated from some improved cassava varieties in nigeria”, african journal of biotechnology, vol. 8(10), pp. 2310-2315. iyang, c. u., tsav-wua, j. a. and akpapunam, m. a. (2006) “impact of traditional processing methods on some physicochemical and sensory qualities of fermented cassava flour “kpor umilin”, african journal of biotechnology, vol. 5(20), pp. 19851988. jansz, e. r., nirmala, p., jeyaraj, e. e. and abbeyratne (1974) “cyanogenic content of manioc”, journal of national sci. coun. sri lanka, vol. 2(2), pp. 129-134. kinsella, j. e. (1976) “functional properties of proteins in foods: a survey of critical review”, food science and nutrition, vol. 7, pp. 219280. kudra, t. and ratti, c. (2006) “foam-mat drying: energy and cost analyses”, canadian biosystems engineering journal /le génie des biosystèmes au canada, vol. 48(3), pp. 27-32. nwabanne, j.t. (2009) “drying characteristics and engineering properties of fermented ground cassava”, african journal of biotechnology, vol. 8(5), pp. 873-876. ospina and wheatly (2007) “processing of cassava meals and chips”, fao corporate documentary in www.fao.org/docrep/003/to554e04.htm . pp 8-10 paul m., carine m., claude d., thaddée m,, françois, b. (2009) “influence of drying temperature on functional properties of wetmilled starch granules”, carbohydrate polymers, vol. 75, pp. 299–306. rakshit and solomon (2003) “comparison of physicochemical and functional properties of cassava starch extracted from fresh roots and dry chips and dry chips”, journal of food processing technology, vol. 55, pp. 287-296. sanni l., maziya d. b., akanya j., okoro c. i., alaya y., egwuonwu c. v., okechukwu r., ezedinma c., akoroda m., lemchi j., okoro e. and dixon a. (2005) “standards for cassava products and guidelines for export”, iita, ibadan, nigeria, p. 93. sidibe, d., sako a., dally, l., ezoua p. and chatigre, k. (2009) “thermal effect on granules and direct determination of swelling capacity of starch from a cassava cultivar (attieke mossi) cultivated in cote d’ivore”, african journal of biotechnology, vol. 15, pp. 3615-3622. tilahun, a. (2009) “effect of processing on some physicochemical composition and antinutritional factors of locally grown cassava varieties”, an msc thesis in food science and nutrition department, addis ababa university. pp 60-67. udensi, e. a., osemele, h.o., iweala, o.o. (2006) “effect of fermentation and germination on the physicochemical properties of mucuna cochinchinens protein isolate”, african journal of biotech, vol. 5, pp. 896-900. velić, d., bilić, m., tomas, s., planinić, m., bucić-kojić, a. and aladić, k. (2007) “study of the drying kinetics of “granny smith” apple in tray drier”, agric. conspec. sci., vol. 72(4), p. 326. http://www.fao.org/ http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/to554e04.htm effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 4 april 2013. a case on problems in quality and reasons in rice under the scheme of upds in tamil nadu mahendran, a. (assistant professor; department of economics, tkm institute of management, kerala university, kollam, kerala, india) citation: mahendran, a. (2013) “a case on problems in quality and reasons in rice -under the scheme of upds in tamil nadu”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 169-175 a case on problems in quality and reasons ... 169 author(s) mahendran, a. assistant professor; department of economics, tkm institute of management, kerala university, kollam, kerala, india a case on problems in quality and reasons in rice under the scheme of upds in tamil nadu abstract the annual subsidy for the universal pds in tamil nadu was around 5,000crore, and adding that there was a strong administrative monitoring, vigilance and grievance redresses mechanism operating in the state in respect of upds. but the quality of rice distributed through the universal pubic distribution system under the free of cost as on 01 june 2011 scheme was of poor quality and unfit for consumption by the public in the state. also the price of essential commodities such as pulses, groceries such as cooking oil and chili powder and vegetables had gone up. as the rice bags were stored by the tncsc in open granaries, they were exposed to the elements. according to public assessment, the quality of pds rice was not satisfactory, but it was fair quality rice, as per the food corporation of india‟s standard. but this case focuses on why rice is poor quality and processing paddy to rice methods, value added rice, and some other issues in universal pds in the state. keywords: universal pds, rice processing methods, poor quality, rice consumption, smuggled introduction food is basic need for all human beings and animals. food security is access to enough food by all people at all time for an active and healthy life. in the past concentrated efforts were made to achieve food security by increasing food grain production. thanks to the impact of green revolution in india. nutrition and food security involving physical, economic and social access to balanced diet, clean drinking water, sanitation and primary healthcare for every child, woman and man is fundamental law in our citizens. but india ranks 94th in the global hunger index of 119 countries in the world, more than 27% of the world‟s under nutrition population lives in india while 43% of children (under 5 years) in the country are underweight. the proportion of anaemic children has actually increased by 6% in the past six years with 11 out of 19 states having more than 80% of its children suffering from anaemia. some developing countries like in china and brazil have been successful through the progress they have achieved in providing access to food for their people and reducing poverty and improving healthy lives. a case study of amartya sen in his groundbreaking work poverty and famines, in which he showed that famine was rarely the result of a lack of food, but rather the result of intervening economic factors, such as unemployment, declining wages, and poor food distribution systems and quality of products etc,. the current problem in india is of that nature, it‟s not so much a lack of nutrient-rich food, but rather a weakness in the food supply chain and low quality of food distributed in india‟s states. public distribution system in india public distribution system is considered as principal instrument in the hands of government for providing safety net to the poor and the downtrodden. the system serves triple objectives namely protecting the poor, enhancing the nutritional status and generates a moderate influence on market prices. the focus and coverage of pds have changed widely over the years. fps was opened to distribute the items of mass consumption in urban areas. thereafter, it was extended to rural areas. from asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 169-175 170 the year 1992 revamped pds was introduced in those areas where drought prone area programme and dessert development programme were in operation. under this system people were allowed to purchase essential items from the fps at relatively much lower subsidized rates. after, the chief ministers conference held in july 1996, a revised scheme known as targeted pds was introduced countrywide with a network of 4.74 lakh fps. the targeted public distribution system (tpds) was introduced with effect from june 1997 and recently opined, “there has been an impressive revival in the tpds across the country that the estimates in the economic survey for 2010-11. upds in tamil nadu the government of tamil nadu is implementing pds since the year 1964. the scheme village shop programme was introduced by the state with the intention to have one shop for one village in order to feed essential articles to rural public. subsequently the scheme was converted into pds with the intention of providing essential commodities to the public both in rural and urban areas at concession rate. since the introduction of tpds from 1 st june1997 the universal pds is in operation in tamil nadu with the antyodaya anna yojana and the expanded antyodaya anna yojana schemes. under the universal pds there is no discrimination of families on apl and bpl lines based on income. the total family cards under the universal pds in tamil nadu are 1.97 crores as on 31march 2011. there are 30432 (full time 22879) fps run by co-operatives. more than 96 per cent of the fair price shops of tamil nadu are managed by co-operatives. it shows the extensive involvement of the co-operative societies in serving the rural people by taking steps to supply essential commodities in the right time at affordable prices. in addition to the regular and fulltime fps and department of cooperation has established (part time 7553shops) run by fps in villages. it helps the villagers to purchase the essential commodities in the nearby places. there are 1370(part time123 and fulltime 1247) tncsc, 529 women shops and 11 mobile fps and others 141 shops functioning in tamil nadu (statistical hand book of tamil nadu 2012). the goal of the public distribution system in tamil nadu is to ensure food security to all citizens, particularly poor people, by making available essential commodities of good quality at affordable prices for every month, through fair price shops. the important objective of the upds in elimination of chronic hunger and starvation in tamil nadu, and ensure availability of essential commodities at the right time, good quality of rice, and other welfare schemes, for every month and years distributed in the state. the annual subsidy for the upds in tamil nadu was around 5,000crore, and adding that there was a strong administrative monitoring, vigilance and grievance redresses mechanism operating in the state in respect of upds. the quality of rice distributed through the universal pubic distribution system under the free of cost as on 01 st june2011 scheme was of poor quality and unfit for consumption by the public in the state. also the price of essential commodities such as dal, groceries such as cooking oil and chili powder and vegetables had gone up. as the rice bags were stored by the tncsc in open granaries, they were exposed to the elements. according to public assessment, the quality of pds rice was not satisfactory, but it was fair quality rice, as per the food corporation of india‟s standard (the hindu chennai 2011). but this case focuses on why rice is poor quality and reasons in upds in the state of tamil nadu. rice production and distribution rice, (arisi in tamil) also known as paddy, a raw crop (nel in tamil) is a pre-dominant food for half of the population in the world. it constitutes the staple diet of many of the asian and african countries. rice is the most important crop of india and second most important one in the world. world area under rice cultivation is around 152 million hectares. with an average per hectare productivity of 3.88 metric tons, the global rice production is 628 million metric tons. india and china are the biggest rice producers in the world with a share of 32.12 per cent and 29.68 per capacity building on food-crop farming to ... 171 cent of world production in 2011 respectively (world rice production report 2011). total rice production in tamil nadu during the year 2010-11 is 57, 92,415 tonnes. production of rice has reduced to 5792 tonnes during 201011 from 6611 tonnes in 2009-10. thanjavur district is at the top with production of 166209 tonnes followed by thiruvarur district is 160237, tonnes as on 2010-11 (statistical hand book of tamil nadu 2012). rice is being distributed to the family card holders who have exercised option for rice and to the anthyodaya anna yojana card holders. rice is supplied free of cost with effect from 01.06.2011. the present month of march 2011 allotment of rice is anthyodaya anna yojana scheme 65,262 tonnes, bpl: 1, 04,936 tonnes, apl: 1, 26,255tonnes, annapoorna scheme 454 tonnes, and the rice allotted from the central pool through food corporation of india. rice consumption in upds according to a latest report of the national sample survey office (nsso), the incidence of pds purchase of rice was highest for tamil nadu 91percent of households, followed by andhra pradesh 84percent, karnataka 75percent, chhattisgarh 67percent, kerala and odisha 51 and54percent and maharashtra 47 percent in rural pockets. for the urban sector, this incidence was again highest for tamil nadu 67 percent households, followed by andhra pradesh and kerala about 43 percent, chhattisgarh 35 percent, and karnataka 25 percent. interestingly, in all four southern states, less than 10 percent of rice consumption in the rural sector was home produced. tamil nadu scored the highest rank as upds here offered greater cost advantage than the market rates. tamil nadu ranked highest in terms of both incidence of universal pds use and share of universal pds in consumption, the ratio of unit values (market unit cost to pds unit cost) was 19.7 in the rural sector and 25.6 in the urban sector. the pds share in total rice consumption in 2010-11 was about 23.5 percent in the rural sector and about 18 percent in the urban areas, a sharp increase from 13 percent in the rural sector and 11 percent in the urban during the year 2009-10. universal pds is more effective in the state. problems in paddy to rice direct purchasing centre of paddy in tamil nadu should be a user friendly to the farmers during the raining season. but the humidity of paddy should be 17 to 20 percent as per the government order at the time of purchasing. it is meaningless because raining session it‟s not possible why? because the humidity of paddy will be 20 to 24percent during the raining season and farmer‟s side do not have adequate place to dry the paddy, and storage, need more manpower of farmers. to maintain all those things during the heavy rain period it‟s not possible. the purchasing centres are not accepting above 20 percent humidity paddy. so paddy packs are immersed in the water and started sprouting in the agriculture land areas. farmers are pushed to sale the paddy with minimum price because of their loan problems and poorness. the purchased paddy is not go to the direct rice mill, because it is storage to keeping the paddy for long period will be spoiling the quality of paddy, because the rice is bad smell, colour, taste, etc. it is main problems in long period storage. something it was issued the consumers by ration shop they are not using the less quality of rice. so some persons and block dealers buying the low price of rice and (some mortgage their ration cards for money) to smuggling the ration rice products from the place to another place particular in tamil nadu to kerala, andhra pradesh, karnataka neighbouring states. due to hilly terrain, paddy cultivation is less in kerala, leading to shortage and „boiled rice is sold at rs 2 through the pds in the state, but the people seem to like our variety in kerala. in andhra pradesh, raw rice was the main crop. but, people in the coastal areas prefer the boiled variety. a “big fish” owns mills in places like bangarpet in karnataka, where the pds rice is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 169-175 172 taken for polishing to get rid of the brown stains on the grain. once polished, this rice is brought sold in the open market in bangalore cites (the new indian express and dinamalar tamil daily news papers 26 july 2011). what lures black marketers to tamil nadu is the abundance of rice in the state and low cost, as well as free of cost in rice. for instance, a total of 3.5 lakh tonnes of rice were made available to all the ration shops in every month. “over the decades, the loopholes in the system have led to a flourishing black market, which in turn made ordinary men into millionaires” (dinamalar tamil daily news paper 2012). the another reasons the paddy go to grinder section in rice mills, rice is damaged too small and rice to spoil the total rice production. at this rice mills is also very old machines, shortage of power problems, need more labour work, and no proper way of processing. in tamil nadu warehousing centres owned 55 and hired 3 and then the storage capacity total is 638686mts as on 31.3.2011. this is very low level warehousing centres and capacity of storage in the state. how to secure the paddy to rice above 100 ton purchasing centre should have machine to remove the dust, straw, mate, stone, and other inside, must to clean the proper way of paddy. the centre those who are doing less than 100 ton, they should send the paddy to the big centre with is 18 hours. they should not keep more than 18 hours. because immediate start with processing. paddy (rough rice) must be milled after harvesting and drying. in milling process uneatable hulls and bran are removed from paddy and white rice is produced. paddy to rice milling process consists of five main operations: it is cleaning, shelling, parboiling, drying, and grinding systems. cleaning paddy comes to the milling system it may contain some traditional indian materials such as stones, stalk, dust, soil particles, and weed seeds; therefore, it is necessary to pass the paddy though a cleaning system. this cleaning system can be a simple sieve or a progressive system. shelling in this stage, the most outer rough shell of paddy is removed. rubber roll sheller is the most common machine that is used for paddy shelling; however friction type whitener is sometimes used as a sheller. paddy goes between two rubber rollers that are rotating in opposite direction with different velocities. there is a small clearance between the rollers so that when paddy passes through, it is subjected to some shear forces. parboiling in this stage, streaming section, there is no standard technique of parboiling in relation to water temperature and length of time of the process. parboiling originated in the indian sub continent about 2,000 years ago and the technique was carried out by indian migrants and communities wherever they went. techniques in which the paddy rice is steeped in hot water for a long time impart a strong flavor and yellow color to the product. in other areas where these characters are not required, the paddy rise is simply boiled until the husks burst, after which the product is dried. this technique only partly gelatinizes starch in the rice grains so that the grains are not fully hardened. parboiled rice offers a number of advantages over and above untreated milled rice. parboiling hardens grain and thereby decreases susceptibility to breakage during the de-husking process and damage by insect pests in store. in addition, it enhances the nutritional quality and value of rice by promoting movement of nutrients from the outer coverings (bran) and into the grain, so they are not removed in the bran during de-husking. on the other hand, oil inside the grain moves out. the reduced oil content lowers the risk of rancidity and improves storage life. drying drying was carried out in two passes using a cross-flow dryer. the drying experiment in thin layer was conducted as per a central composite rotatable design in response surface methodology with 3 factors (drying air temperature, tempering time and moisture capacity building on food-crop farming to ... 173 reduction in first drying pass) at 5 levels. the variables chosen for the experiment were drying air temperature (40–70 °c), tempering time (60–240 min) and moisture reduction percentage (3–10%) in the first pass of drying. optimization of drying variables was done through the use of a desirability function by combining all responses into one measurement. the desirability functions were minimum drying time, maximum brown rice yield and head rice yield. total drying time ranged from 35 to 132 min in two stages of drying, while in continuous drying it varied from 41 to 204 min. head rice yield ranged from 39.77 to 71.56%. optimum conditions for drying of paddy grains were found to be temperature of 58.3 °c, 7.13% moisture reduction and 148 min tempering time. at optimized conditions, total drying time and head rice yield were calculated at 53.1 min and 54.53%, respectively. grinding and final grinding section (rice mills) the machine will remove stone, soil then it goes to dust removing machine. there are machine will separate the head rice and broken rice and dust, then it send to another machine to separate rice and paddy dust. the unpolished rice will be packed and kept whenever necessary; the rice will be polished and used to any time as old rice. this rice is good quality and reliability to all customers. advantages the purchasing centre should accept farmers above 20 percent of humidity paddy, it will be solve the problems of poor farmers and start with immediate processing. because this processing method to more increasing rice production and quality of rice distributing in rations shops. the quality rice will be issued by ration shop. the consumer uses the price less rice without waste and they are ready to buy the rice at fixed price so the smuggling will be prevented through this method. it will reduce the economical crisis of government of tamil nadu. drawbacks the purchased paddy is not send for grinding section soon; instead they kept it for long time in godowns. the paddy packed kept one by one for a height. this is will increase the pressure over the packs, its leads to change in colour, taste, block colour of paddy, etc. it affects the quality of paddy and also the rice. usage of polythene covers to pack the paddy with no ventilation in godowns also affects the paddy quality and reduction in rice weights. because of above said the reasons, rice will be broken, and useless, during the grinding and it affects the rice production and customers are not like in ration products of rice. godowns will not have adequate place to store the paddy packs. if any problems in rice mills like shortage of power and repair of machines etc, during grinding which affects monthly and yearly targeted rice production. do not continue periodic checks of paddy stored in godowns to prevent pest attack. they should not be careful while procuring paddy as rice. guidelines for food grain storage keep storage areas clean. this means sweeping the floor, removing cobwebs and dust, and collecting and removing any grain spills. clean storage rooms after they are emptied and this may include spraying walls, crevices and wooden pallets with an insecticide before using them again. placing rat-traps and barriers in drying and storage areas. cats deter and help control rats and mice. inspect storage room regularly to keep it vermin proof. inspect the stored seeds once a week for signs of insect infestation. when necessary and only under the direction of a trained pest control technician, the storage room or the seed stock may be sealed with tarpaulin and treated with fumigants. solution to the problems purchased paddy should send for cleaning, streaming, drying, grinding, and production of rice soon. it prevents economical loss. modern rice mills will be opened in remote villages. so the unemployment problem will be solving in villages. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 169-175 174 many workshops will be developed for maintenance in modern rice mills. by doing all these measures the transportations and road facilities also increased in rural areas. rice delivery mechanism in tamil nadu the department of civil supplies involved in the implementation of universal pds in tamil nadu. in additional two systems run in the tamil nadu civil supplies corporation (tncsc) and the registrar of cooperatives implemented by the state. tncsc plays an active role by procuring, storing and processing the paddy required in addition to the fci allotment of food grains. the universal pds channel is unique in a couple of respects. first, private parties are not allowed to run fpss and 96 percent of operate in the co-operative sector and most of the rest are tncsc run. in the second unique feature is the extension of cash credit facility through district central cooperative banks to the lead societies. this cash credit system limit to fix at rs 140/per card to lead societies. the everyday sale proceeds of fpss are remitted by the link to their cash credit account with district central cooperative banks. third method also introduced in the state it is „option card system‟. under this system the cardholders who do not require rice would get additional qualities of sugar or kerosene. the sugar option cardholders would be entitled to 3kgs of sugar in addition to their regular quota and foregoing their rice quota and kerosene option cardholders would get 5liters of additional kerosene in lieu of rice. value-added rice products rice is an important of value added product because waste products can be put to a huge variety of uses. usually broken rice grains is convert in to biscuits, snacks, breakfast-cereals, beers, wine and distilled spirit in to by product of rice. a wasted rice meal is used for animal feed. rice hulls with their high silica content have been used in a wide variety of situations including cement tiles and cement breeze blocks and glass industry. rice straw is used to straw-board of building industry. conclusion the success of the scheme in universal pds in the state relies heavily on groundwork. consumers‟ expectations were rising day by day, as their living standard had improved. the basic quality norms should be increased to meet their expectations. rice is reaching 317,000 tonnes more than 1.97 crore cardholders and 31,439 outlets in 33 districts in the state. paddy to rice went through several layers of processing after it reached the universal public distribution system as rice. quality experts from central institutions explained the measures to be taken to maintain the quality of food grains in india. references ahluwalia, d. (1993). public distribution of food in india: coverage, targeting and leakages, food policy, 8(1), 33-54. amrutha, c. p. (1994). economics of processing paddy into rice, poha, murmura and popped rice. m.sc. (agri.) thesis, univ. agric. sci, bangalore (india). bhatt, m. s. (ed.). poverty and food security in india, jamamilliaislamia, new delhi, 2004. clement, g. and j. l. seguy (1994). behaviour of rice during processing. agriculture and development, 16, 38-46. department of economics and statisticshand book of tamil nadu 2012. gupta, s. p. (2002). report of the committee on india vision 2020, planning commission, new delhi. gupta, v. k. and george, p. s. (1974). modernization in the rice milling industry in punjab. indian j. agric. econ., 29, 215-217. sanjaya s. gaur and abdul waheed k. (2002). study of buying behaviour of branded rice. indian j. mkting, 2(2), 33-38. sadegh afzalinia, mohammad shaker, ebrahim zare (2002). comparisonof different rice milling methods. the society of engineering in agricultural, food and biological system. an asae/csae meeting. paper no mbsk 02-214. matthews, j. and j. j. spadaro (1975). rice breakage during combine harvesting. rice journal, 78(7), 59-63. niir research consultancy & services “hand book of rice cultivation and processing” 2007 new delhi. capacity building on food-crop farming to ... 175 peuty, m. a., a. themelin, c. bonazzi, g. arnaud, v. m. salokhe and g. singh (1994). paddy drying quality improvement by process optimization. in proceeding i international agricultural engineering conference, 298-304. bangkok, thailand, 6-9 dec. the hindu and dinamalar edition – 5 may, chennai tamil nadu 2011. the new indian express edition january 25, 2013, 26 july2011, 4 june 2011, new delhi. vinay rao, b. r. (1992). an economic analysis of rice milling in shimoga district of karnataka, msc agri thesis, university of agricultural sciences, bangalore. wfp (2006). food and nutritional security” lancer publishers and distributors, new delhi. publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. goats rearing under islamic teachings and its profitable impact on agricultural economics abad-ur-rahman (assistant professor, agriculture university peshawar, pakistan) syed naeem badshah (assistant professor islamia college university peshawar, pakistan) janas khan (assistant professor govt. college mathra peshawar, pakistan) muhammad ayaz (teacher govt. ms mardan-pakistan) citation: abad-ur-rahman., syed naeem badshah., janas khan and muhammad ayaz (2012): “goats rearing under islamic teachings and its profitable impact on agricultural economics”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 235-237. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 235-237 235 author(s) abad-ur-rahman assistant professor, agriculture university peshawar, pakistan email: abbad_r@yahoo.com syed naeem badshah assistant professor islamia college university peshawar, pakistan email: syenbs@yahoo.com janas khan assistant professor govt. college mathra peshwar, pakistan email: janas9911@yahoo.com muhammad ayaz teacher govt. ms mardan, pakistan goats rearing under islamic teachings and its profitable impact on agricultural economics abstract this article is written on goat rearing animal based agricultural economy, goats rearing has been given preferences and admitted as source of to end poverty and assorted blessing as mentioned in hadith. because blessing barakat means increase. therefore goat has got such characteristic to give enhance breeding. for example, goat has the potential to give birth one to three offspring twice a year. it has been examined that goat breeds one to three offsprings twice a year; in this way a goat breeds at average of four offsprings per year. goat meat has low quantity of fats and considered as quality meat, and the milk of goat is considered as best and the substitute of mothers milk for the infants, on this account, it is suggested that philanthropists, government and non-governmental organizations should focus on goat farming and should provide the goat to the low income rural population so that their income may be increased. capitalists (rich persons) can start goat farming not only to establish profitable business and to improve the personal and national economy but also to provide meat and milk for society. keywords: halal (permissible to use in islam) barakah (blessing) goats rearing (foaming) introduction islam is heavenly religion which based on revelation and muhammad (s.a.w) is the prophet of the allah almighty. hadith are the saying of muhammad (s.a.w) which has been revealed on the heart of him by allah almighty and which is commonly known as “shareat”. the teachings of muhammad (s.aw) are the sources of success for the ummah in this world and world after i.e. the day of judgment as well. as he has led the ummah in religious affairs, similarly he has done so in social affairs too. economy is one of these social affairs. shareat has led us regarding economy very perfectly. then there are several fields of economy, one of them is agriculture. agriculture is one of the major fields of economy which provides the public nutrition and garments. animals are considered very important components of the agriculture economy and used as the source of meat and milk supply to mankind. here in agricultural economy perspective the persuasion of goat rearing is discussed. in hadith goats are mentioned as (blessing) barakah. in this research work it has been substantiated that its breeding, meat and milk are the sources of that particular barakah. moreover, goat is the source of increase in the farm income and is the best source to widen the national economy and according to the teachings of islam, it is a rewardable and sacred profession. objectives animal rearing was known as the symbol of richness in ancient times where the economy of people was mostly based on agricultural. even today new ways are adopted to improve the agricultural economy. as in the early days the utility of animals was admitted and now when the population of the world is increasing, animals are the source of milk and meat supply. goat is the one sort of halal meat among the pet animals, which meat has low quantity of fats and its milk is very much meritorious. in this research work it has been presented that in hadith goat has been declared as the increasing of barakah. moreover, this barakah has the effect on national and individual economy in addition meat and milk to provide. because of these facts animals rearing is the source of family income and improvement of national agricultural economy at the same time. it is the source of best meat and milk supply which is reward mailto:abbad_r@yahoo.com mailto:syenbs@yahoo.com mailto:janas9911@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 235-237 236 able. similarly this research work elaborates that muhammad (s.a.w) has declared the goat rearing is the better source to increase family income. thus goat farming may be adopted not only to increase the family income but also to provide the society some sort of good quality meat and milk. hypotheses goat rearing islamic teachings and agricultural economy data in respect of agricultural economy, goat rearing is the best source of income as compared to all types of halal pet animals. goat rearing is prophetic profession. musa (a.s) has grazed goats. every prophet including the prophet of islam has grazed the goats as mentioned in the hadith i . umme hani says the prophet of islam said do rear goats because it is barakah blessing ii . ayesha say that the prophet of islam (s.a.w) asked a person how much of barakah is in your home, means one or two goats iii . umme hani daughter of abu talib says the, prophet of islam came to my home and said why i don’t find barakah in your house; i asked which barakah you don’t find in my house. he said i don’t see any goad in your house iv . goat is the sources to eliminate the poverty. anas bin malik says, goat blocks seventy doors of poverty in house v . goat is the animal of paradise. abdullah bin omar says the prophet of islam said goat is the animal of paradise vi . it seems from the hadith about goats that it is an able and blessing animal. moreover, the prophets have grazed the goats which increase the importance of goat rearing as in hadith. abu horara says the prophet (s.a.w) said that all the prophets sent by allah have grazed the goats. suhaba (the companions of the prophet of islam) asked you too? he said yes, i used to graze goats for makah peoples for some wages vii . analysis: in the light of hadith goat is a source of blessing which is analyzed below. numbers of kids: goats in normal condition may give birth 1to3 kids twice a year it means that goat may give 4to 6 kids in one year viii . table: 1 average composition comparison goat’s milk with other mammals (in per cent)ix species water fat protein total solids human 87.43 3.75 1.63 12.57 goat 87.00 4.25 3.52 13.00 cow 86.61 4.14 3.58 13.19 buffalo 82.76 7.38 3.60 17.24 table: 2 comparison of goat meat to other meats x cooked (roasted) calories (gm) fat (gm) sat'd fat (gm) protein (gm) iron(gm) goat 122 2.58 0.79 23 3.2 beef 245 16.00 6.80 23 2.9 lamb 235 16.00 7.30 22 1.4 chicken 120 3.50 1.10 21 1.5 1. goat is more suitable for meat as compared to other pet animals, because it became adult soon and thus its meat becomes edible in short time. 2. goat meat has low quantity of fats as compared to others pet animals. 3. goat is fertile in the terms of breeding and becomes adult in short time that’s why it generates many offspring and thus becomes the source of more income. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 235-237 237 4. in the terms of milk some kinds of goat give milk from two to five kilogram per day for eight months duration. 5. goat milk is considered easily digestible and meritorious that’s why it is used as the substitute of mother’s milk for infants. in hadith goat has been declared as blessing animal which means that every respect goat is a blessing animal and has business and personal uses. animal experts think that goat is an animal which has quality to produce more offspring similarly its meat is good and milk is substitute of mother’s milk for the infants because of its good qualities conclusion so it can be conclude on the basis of these hadith and other sources that 1. goat grazing is easy and economical compared to others pet animals. it requires short place to dwell and the food required for it is quite simple like leftover edible foodstuff. 2. goat is more suitable for meat as compared to other pet animals, because it becomes adult quickly and thus its meat becomes edible in short time. 3. goat meat has low quantity of fats as compared to other pet animals. 4. goat is fertile in terms of breading and becomes adult in short time that’s why it generates many off springs and thus becomes the sources of more income. 5. in terms of milk some kinds of goat give milk from two to five kg/day for eight months. 6. goat milk is considered easily digestible and meritorious that’s why it is the substitute of mother’s milk for infants. in hadith goat has been declared as blessing animals and has business and personal uses. animal experts think that goat is an animal which has the quality to produce more off springs, similarly its meats is good and milk is the substitute of mother’s milk for infants because of its good qualities. on account of this to exploit the prophetical formula goat farming could be adopted not only to provide the people good quality milk and meat but also to increase national and family income. i al quran 20/18 ii altabrani sulaiman ben ahmad almuajam ul kabir, published maktbtul elam walhekam 24/426. iii attyalisi abu dawood sulaiman ben dawood (1999) musnad abi dawod, publ. darul hijrah mesr, vol. 3 p. 154. iv altabrani sulaiman ben ahmad (1415hi) almuajam ul aosat, published darul haramain qahera, vol. 3 pp.126. v aldalami shirwaih ben sheherdad, (1995) alferdus be masorel khetab, publ. darul kutabel elmia biroot vol. 2 pp. 364 no 3623. vi al qazwini muhammad ben yzid, (1996) sunan ben maja, publ. daru ihyael ktbul arabiia halb, vol. 2 pp. 773, no 2306. vii albukhari muhammad bin ismaeil (1422 hi) sahih bukhari published in daru tureqennjat vol. 3 pp. 88, no2262. viii sources: a text book of animal husbandry (sixth edition) by g. c. banerjee oxford & ibh publishing. co. (pvt) ltd. new delhi calcutta ix sources: a text book of animal husbandry sixth edition, by g. c. banerjee oxford & ibh publishing. co. (pvt) ltd. new delhi calcutta x nutritive value of foods. home and garden bulletin number 72, u. s. dept. of agriculture, washington, d.c., u. s. government printing office, 1981. use of goat milk and goat meat as therapeutic aids in cardiovascular, diseases, dr. john r. addrizzo, m.d. staten island medical center 11 ralph place staten island, n.y. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/issn(e):2224-4433 volume 6(2), 36-40 36 children involvement in artisanal fishing: a case study of lagos lagoon, nigeria fakayode, o. s., adeogun, o. a., unah, l. r., and bolaji, d. a. nigerian institute for oceanography and marine research, victoria island, lagos, nigeria abstract 1 children involvement in artisanal fishing was investigated between 2013 and 2014 to assess the percentage number of children involved in fishing on lagos lagoon, their roles, contribution and the effects of the activities on their livelihood. structured and unstructured questionnaires were conducted by the researchers. data collected were collated and analyzed using frequency distribution and percentages. the average number of boats fishing was 70 boats while average number of people counted was 168 and 55% were children between 3 – 17 years. during the study, we recorded a female which accounted for 0.2% while male was 99.8%, 6% of which were going to school and the roles played were paddling, operating engine, bailing water, sorting fish, casting net, setting gear. enforcing law on the fisher folks to stop involving their children may jeopardize the effort of government on fish production, therefore the best way to reduce child labour in artisanal fishing is that government should intensify the right support in terms of aids and infrastructures to fisher folks on the ways of improving fishing methods for sustainable management of the fishery to support their children education. keyword: children, fishing, lagos lagoon and government 1. introduction fish is an important source of both food and income to many people in developing countries. in africa, as much as 5% of the population, some 35million people depends wholly or partly on the fisheries sector for their livelihood (fao, 1996). quite a sizeable proportion of the nigerian population depends on fishing as a source of income (tobor, 1984). apart from being an income earner to many nigerians especially people in coastal, riverine and lake areas of the country, some people earn their living from fish processing and marketing while others engaged in fisheries research (akeredolu, 1990). the capacity of artisanal fisheries to play its triple role of a food supplier, employment provider and income earner in the nigerian economy depends on the number of people involved in the activities. fishing has become a way of life and the primary occupation of the coastal dwellers that depend on it for their livelihood and subsistence. a gradual decline in capture fisheries production has rapidly widened the gap between the demand and supply of fish, especially coupled with a continually growing population (nwabueze, 2010). this has resulted in various activities which women have been active participants both in fishing and post – harvest activities, like processing, preservation and marketing (ajayi et al., 1989; wakoma, 1991; alamu, 2000; shalesha & stanley, 2000). nwabueze (2010) reported 11.5% of fish farmers in delta state to be women. corresponding author’s name: fakayode, o. s. email address: sofakfemi@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:sofakfemi@yahoo.com mailto:sofakfemi@yahoo.com mailto:sofakfemi@yahoo.com mailto:sofakfemi@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 36-40 37 children in nigeria are known to be engaged in the worst forms of child labour, particularly in dangerous activities in agriculture and domestic services (adeokoya & fashina, 2007; ilo, 2011; ituc, 2011; u.s department of labor’s bureau of international labor affairs, 2011). in rural areas, most children work in agriculture, producing crops such as cassava, cocoa and tobacco (adeokoya & fashina, 2007; nwabueze, 2010). activities of men and women have been identified in artisanal fisheries, despite the facts that lagos state government disclosed that the state government will no longer tolerate any form of abuse on children in the state yet we do see some children on nigerian waters especially on lagos lagoon every day, therefore there is need to study the activities, percentage number of children involved, age distribution, the roles played by these children, their contribution to fish production, percentage attending school and the effects on their livelihood. 2. materials and methods this study covered all the part of lagos lagoon. primary data for the study were collected between the hour of 09.00 and 14.00 gmt on working days for six months (i.e. september, 2013 – february, 2014) from a cross section of fishers using structured and unstructured questionnaires. the questionnaires were conducted by the researchers, with the assistance of enumerators. data collected were collated and analyzed using frequency distribution and percentages. factors considered were total number of boats fishing, total number of people in the boat, total number of children in the boat, age and educational background of the children in the boat, their dialects and the children’s roles in the boats and the people targeted were fishermen. 3. results and discussion the total number of boats counted, number of people in the boats counted, number of boats with children, number of children in the boat, crew size of the children sitting in a boat are shown in table 1. the average number of boats fishing counted during the study period was 70 boats and the average number of children was 92 per month which were 55% of the population fishing during the study, 241 children were interviewed during the period, 194 children answered by themselves while parents answered for 47 children. table 1: children involved in artisanal fishing months number of boats counted total number of people in all the boats number of boat with children total number of children in the boat crew size of the people sitting in a boat crew size of the children sitting in a boat september,2013 60 144 56 74 3 2 october, 2013 113 270 97 152 3 2 november, 2013 46 120 41 70 3 2 december,2013 60 152 50 84 3 2 january,2014 74 172 69 88 3 2 february,2014 65 154 55 86 3 2 average size 70 169 61 92 3 2 during the study, we recorded a female which accounted for 0.2% while male was 99.8%. girls were assisting their mothers in fish processing and marketing, sometimes the female children stay at home to take care the younger ones. iversen (2006) reported 86.0%, 87.2%, 86.1% and 91.3% of all children working in fishing in el salvador, ghana, bangladesh and philippines respectively to be male. the outdoor fishing jobs oblige women to leave their children alone, or put their eldest daughters, often still girls, in charge of the household. the consequences are not only economic and physical, but also emotional and psychological (sumudra, 1995). figure 1 shows the total number asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 36-40 38 per age, children at the age of 12 years were more in numbers followed by 9years and 10 years while 3 – 5years and 16 – 17years were not many. table 2 shows the age range of the children counted and table 3 shows the role played in the boats, their local and the percentage number of children involved in each activity during the period of study. it was shown that the children were more involved in paddling and operating engine than casting net during this study. the age ranges of the children were 317 (years). the age ranges are early stage of human life. table 2: the age range of the children counted during the study month sept., 2013 oct, 2013 nov., 2013 dec., 2013 jan., 2014 feb., 2014 age range (year) 3 14 5 -17 3-15 4 -14 4-13 2 – 14 figure 1: total number of children at a particular age most of these fishermen involved their children in order to be able to meet up with their daily responsibility, while some parents that have 4 to 6 children send 1 or 2 to school and involved others that are boys in fishing to cater for the ones that are schooling because of school fees and other amenities. some of these children on their own sometimes with or without the permission of their parents followed their neighbour to fish and collect their share while some go on their own to fish use hook and line. the 87% of the children interviewed during the study were assisting their parents to meet home needs while 9% with neighbour and 4% with friends. the children reported fishing with their parents during the study period believed they were assisting the family so they are not collecting share from the catches while the children reported fishing with their neighbour and friends do collect compensation and share from the catches but they did not disclose the percentage and what they do with the share table 3: the role played by the children and their age role paddling operating engine bailing water sorting fish fishing with hook and line sitting down doing nothing casting net fishing crab setting gear (arranging net) children age range (year) 8 17 10 – 15 3 17 4 – 14 5 – 12 3 – 4 15 12 15 7 14 % 26 16 11 19 3 1 6 7 11 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 n u m b er o f th e ch il d re n age (years old) frequency asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 36-40 39 table 4 shows the percentage of the children attending school at the period of this study and level of education was primary school. the major local dialect of 86% were egun while the remained 14% were ilaje and unidentified yorubas; majority of these fishermen lives at makoko while others came from bayeiku, ikate–elegunshi, langbasa, shogunro (very close to makoko), bariga, oworonsoki etc. 55% of these fishermen were targeted fish only, 25% fish and shrimps and 20% crabs. table 4: percentage of children attending school month september, 2013 october, 2013 november, 2013 december, 2013 january, 2014 february, 2014 children attending school (%) 10.7 8.2 9.8 16 2.9 10.9 the types of gear recorded during the study were casting nets, drift nets, hook and line, and crab traps which are part of over 50 different types of fishing gears that nigeria, fishers use (udolisa et al., 1994). 30% of the fishermen were using motorized while others were using non – motorized but they all paddle at the point of catching. the size of the fishes caught are very small, which may be as a result of over exploitation of the area, bravo-ureta & evenson (1994) noted that where there were no local alternatives to fishing, fisher folks were either forced to over-exploit fishery resources above the level that would occur if alternative livelihoods and income sources were available to them or to migrate to urban areas. 4. conclusion the artisanal fishery of the lagos lagoon, lagos state holds great potentiality in terms of natural yield which could support the government strides towards employment generation, poverty alleviation, food security and supply of animal protein to the teeming nigerian living in lagos. it is recommended that government should intensify the right support in terms of aids and infrastructures to fisher folks on the ways of improving fishing methods for sustainable management of the fishery also to support their children education. enforcement of law on the fisher folks to stop involving their children in fishing may jeopardize the effort of government on fish production, therefore the best way to reduce child labour in artisanal fishing is to orientate and assist the parents involved by providing education whereby parents will not spend much or need to involve a child to sponsor the other. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adeokoya, a. e., & fasina, o. o. (2007).occupational safety needs of farm children in south west nigeria. pakistan journal of social sciences, 4(1), 18-22. ajayi, t. o., ajinle, a. o., omolise, r. e. k., bolade, e. o., & omotoyo, n. o. (1989). diagnostic survey of small scale capture and culture fisheries in lagos state, nigeria. niomr, tech. paper, no: 158. akeredolu, m. o., (1990). constraints to technology transfer in artisanal fisheries. unpublished ph.d thesis, department of agricultural extension, university of ibadan, nigeria. pp: 4748. alamu, s. o. (2000). women in artisanal fish production around kanji lake area nigeria. nifrr newsletter. may-august, 14(2), 3-6. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 36-40 40 bravo-ureta, b. e., & evenson, r. e. (1994). efficiency in agricultural production: the case of peasant farmers in eastern paraguay. american journal of agricultural economics, 10(1994), 27-37. fao (1996). food for all poorissued on the occasion of the world food summit in rome. fao rome, pp. 64. international labour office (2011).children in hazardous work: what we know, what we need to do. geneva, international labour organization. international trade union confederation (ituc) (2011). report for the wto general council review of the trade policies of nigeria. geneva, june 30.http://www.ituc-csi.org/reportfor-the-wto-general-council,9354.html. iversen, v. (2006).children’s work in fisheries: a cause for alarm. sustainable fisheries livelihoods program. school of development studies, university of east anglia, norwich, nr47tj, u.k. nwabueze, a. a. (2010). the role of women in sustainable aquacultural development in delta state. journal of sustainable development in africa, 12, 5,284-293. shalesha, a., & stanley, v. a. (2000). involvement of rural women in agriculture: an innovation approach naga. the iclarm quarterly, 23(3), 13–17. sumudra. (1995). no woman, no sustainable fishing. gender, globalisation and fisheries workshop. 6-12 may 2000, st. john's nf. tobor, j. g., (1984). fishing industry in nigeria, status of fish preservation methods and future growth prerequisite to cope with anticipated increased production. niomr technical paper, 11(5), 11-18. udolisa, r. e. k., solarin, b. b., lebo, p., & ambrose, e. e. (1994). a catalogue of small scale fishing gear in nigeria. rafr publication rafr/041/f1/94/02: 142pp. wakoma, b. (1991). role of women in fishing communities. proceedings of fish development extensions training course. 11th nov. 6th dec. 1991. uyo, akwaibom state, nigeria. 218 – 221. http://www.ituc-csi.org/report-for-the-wto-general-council,9354.html http://www.ituc-csi.org/report-for-the-wto-general-council,9354.html effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 650 gender resource accessibility and profitability among groundnut producers in hong local government area of adamawa state, nigeria ojo, c. o., ghide, a. a. and phanuel, e. department of agricultural economics, faculty of agriculture university of maiduguri, borno state, nigeria abstract the study aimed to examine gender resource accessibility and profitability among groundnut producers in hong local government area of adamawa state, nigeria. multistage sampling technique was used to sample 54 respondents (27 male and 27 female) by the use of a structured questionnaire. the data from the survey were analysed using frequency distribution and gross margin analysis. the results showed that the men were generally older and more experienced than the women with 77.8% and 55.5% of men and women respectively being over 40 years of age and 51.9% and 37.1% of men and women respectively having farming experience of over 20 years. the perception of the respondents was that men had more access to resources and opportunities that enhance productivity (land, labour, chemicals, market and education) than women (fertilizer, seeds, and cooperatives). gross margin per hectare of men was n62, 693 while that of women was n37, 732. it was recommended that credit provision in cash and kind to women by government and other relevant organisations be encouraged in order to give women improved access to production resources to increase women’s productivity and profitability. keywords: profitability, accessibility, resources, gender, groundnut introduction 1 gender studies have often been misunderstood as being about the promotion of women only. gender studies however focus on the relationship between men and women, their roles, access to resources. gender affects the distribution of resources, wealth, work, decision – making, political power as well as the enjoyment of rights and entitlements within the family and in public life (welch et al., 2000). in agriculture, men are generally presumed to be the chief actors and, as such, are often the main participants and/ or recipients of programme – related supports. women are more constrained than their male counterparts in terms of access to resources of corresponding author’s details: name: ojo, c. o. email address: nickatie2003@yahoo.com agricultural production (world bank, 2001; odame et al., 2002 and welch et al., 2000). some crops are even classified as men’s crop while others are regarded as women’s crop, a division which has an effect on food production (mohammed and abdulquadri, 2012). the need to focus on women farmers' productivity, which can be an effective engine for social change, has become increasingly clear in sub-saharan africa. women have a significant role in farming and post-harvest activities in most countries in the region. in subsaharan africa, women contribute between 60 and 80percent of the labour for food production, both for household consumption and for sale (fao, 1994). moreover, agriculture is becoming a predominantly female sector as a consequence of faster male out-migration (fao, 1998). asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:nickatie2003@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 650-656 651 women now constitute the majority of smallholder farmers, providing most of the labour and managing a large part of the farming activities on a daily basis (saito et al., 1994). often, but not always, findings indicate that women farmers have lower productivity for reasons of poor access to resources. although women are less productive in farming, the general consensus is that they are no less efficient than men in their use of resources (moock, 1976; udry et al., 1995; udry, 1996), rather, a lack of complementary inputs leads to lower labour productivity for female farmers. access to and control of land and other natural resources is crucial for sustainable livelihoods, resource management and overall rural development. yet, major social, political, and institutional challenges prevent women in agriculture from gaining equal access to agricultural production resources. unequal access to land, seeds, fertiliser, and credit constrain women's productivity (ojo, 2011). in addition, women are also faced with limited decision-making powers and depend on men for use rights-which are easily lost if they are widowed or divorced (damisa and yohannah, 2007). women’s disadvantaged access to resources compared to men impinges on their ability to respond to new economic opportunities. ojo et al. (2012) found that women farmers in borno state, nigeria had generally low access to productive resources, a situation which resulted in both technical and palliative inefficiency among the women. considering that women are important contributors to household economy (haddad, 1999; glick, 2002; ojo and wurani, 2013) improving their access to resources of production will increase their productive efficiency and subsequent income generation. such an occurrence will improve household economy and reduce poverty among rural households. there are many crops that men and women get their livelihood from among which is groundnut (arachis hypogaea) also referred to as peanuts, earthnuts, monkey-nuts or chine nuts (higgins, 1951). nigeria is the fourth largest producer of groundnut worldwide producing 1.55 million metric tonnes annually. nigeria produces 41 percent of the total groundnut production in west africa (echekwu and emeka, 2005). groundnut contains 25% protein and more than 40% oil (echekwu and emeka, 2005). it is mainly grown by small scale farmers for both food and income. groundnut is usually produced for its seed though its leaves and shells are also used as organic mulch and livestock feed. the seeds are eaten raw, boiled, or roasted. the seed paste is used for soup while its cake is used as a snack and a component of livestock feed. groundnut is also an industrial crop mainly used as a source of cooking and industrial oil (elegbede, 1998). hong l. g. a. of adamawa state is a major groundnut producing area in nigeria where women as well as men grow the crop. the extent to which gender resource accessibility affects productivity among male and female groundnut farmers is not well known and needs to be examined to ensure efficient production of the crop among male and female farmers. to this end, this study will analyse gender accessibility to and productivity of resources among groundnut farmers in hong l.g.a. of adamawa state. methodology the study was conducted in hong local government area of adamawa state. primary data was used for the study. the primary data were collected directly from the farmers using structured questionnaire as the instrument of data collection. a multistage sampling technique was used to select the respondents. in the first stage, three districts were randomly selected from the six districts of hong namely; hildi, gaya and garaha. in the second stage two villages were randomly selected from each district making a total of six villages. in the third stage, 27 male and 27 female respondents were purposively selected because there was no sampling frame of groundnut farmers, giving a sample size of 54 respondents. data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics and gross margin analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 650-656 652 results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of male and female groundnut farmers the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents were examined with respect to their age, family size, farming experience, land ownership pattern and educational status.the analysis of the respondents in table 1 indicates that majority of the respondents (77.0% male and 75.5% female) were above the age of 40 years. this implies that most of the respondents were in their middle and old ages. according to ogundele (2004), the older the farmer, the more inefficient they were. the older age of the respondents was probably as a result of migration of younger people out of agriculture in the rural areas. the age of the respondents is an indication that groundnut in the study area may not have been very. table 1: socioeconomic characteristics of respondents men women characteristics fequency percentage frequency percentage(%) age ≤30 0 0 2 7.4 31-40 6 22.2 10 37.1 41-50 5 18.5 9 33.3 51-60 11 40.8 4 14.8 61-70 2 7.4 2 7.4 >70 3 11.1 0 0 household size 5-jan 7 25.9 14 51.9 10-jun 14 51.9 13 48.1 15-nov 5 18.5 0 0 16-20 1 3.7 0 0 farming experience 10-jan 3 11.1 6 22.2 20-nov 10 37 11 40.7 21-30 1 3.7 5 18.5 31-40 7 25.9 3 11.1 41-50 4 14.8 2 7.4 >50 2 7.5 0 0 land ownership inheritance 22 81.5 15 55.6 family 3 11.1 5 18.5 rent 0 0 5 18.5 gift 2 7.5 5 7.4 educational status no formal education 6 22.2 7 18.6 primary education 11 40.8 12 44.4 secondary education 6 22.2 7 25.9 higher education 4 14.8 3 11.1 farm size asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 650-656 653 2-jan 5 18.5 6 22.2 4-mar 18 66.7 15 55.6 6-may 2 7.4 5 18.5 8-jul 1 3.7 1 3.7 >8 1 3.7 0 0 source: field survey (2012) efficiently produced especially among the male who were older than the female respondents. about 78% of male and 81% of the female respondents respectively were educated to various levels of schooling implying that the female respondents were more educated. this agrees with the findings of dimelu et al. (2008) who observed that female cocoyam farmers were more educated than the male cocoyam farmer. the higher the level of education, the more farmers were willing to accept innovation in relation to farming. this shows that the female groundnut farmers in the study area were likely to be more efficient than male respondents in relation to adoption of improved technologies. the result also revealed that the male respondents had higher household sizes than the female respondents. this is probably as a result of polygamy among male respondents. the implication is that male respondents will have access to more family labour because the larger the household size, the more family labour will be available for farm operations. among the female groundnut farmers, majority (63%) of the respondents had one to twenty years of farming experience. however, 63% of the male respondents had farming experience above 20 years, indicating that male respondents were more experienced in groundnut production than female respondents. this was probably because groundnut being a cash crop was more a men than women’s crop in the past until recent years.the finding was unlike the finding of dimelu et al. (2008) whose result showd that female cocoayam farmers were more experienced than male cocayam farmers probably because cocoyam is a food which made it a female crop. this finding implies that groundnut production was previosly a male dominated preoccupation. according to iheanacho (2000), the farming experience of farmers to a large extent affects managerial know-how and decision making process. this implies that male respondents in terms of experience were likely to have more efficient groundnut producers, thus, making up for their shortfall in education. farm size analysis of respondents showed that majority of the female respondant (77%) had farm size of one to six hectares while more (about 85%) of the male repondents had one to six hectares of land. this implies that the production of groundnut was largely done in the small scale with more men in that category. about 7% of the men and less than 4% of the women had farm sizes above six hectares indicating that more men committed large scale land to groundnut production than women. the result also showed that in the case of land ownership, almost 90% of the male respondents owned their farm lands (gifts and inheritance) while only about 63% of the female respondents were owners of their farm land. the implication is that male respondents being more tenure secure and experienced were likely to be more motivated towards agricultural investments and efficient utilization of resources than their female counterparts who were less tenure secure. accessibility to resources among male and female in production the results of respondents’ opinion about male and female groundnut farmer’s accessibility to resources with regard to land, family labour, hired labour, improved seeds, fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, extension contact, credit, membership of cooperatives, education and market among male and female groundnut farmers are discussed in this section. 654 table 2: perception of accessibility to resources of production among male and female respondents resource male frequency access percentage female frequency access percentage undecided frequency percentage land 35 64.8 9 16.7 10 18.5 family labour 40 74.1 6 11.1 8 14.8 hired labour 10 18.5 8 14.8 36 66.7 improved seeds 10 18.5 14 25.9 30 55.6 fertilizer 6 11.1 8 14.8 40 74.1 herbicides 11 20.4 10 18.5 33 61.1 pesticides 10 18.5 9 16.7 34 64.8 market 15 27.8 10 18.5 27 50 cooperative 10 18.5 30 55.6 14 25.9 education 15 27.8 5 9.3 34 63 source: field survey data (2012) the analysis on access to land showed that 64.8% of respondents opined that male farmers had more access to sufficient land for groundnut production than women while only 16.7% of respondents thought that female farmers had more access to land for production of groundnut. the remaining 18.5% of the respondents were of the opinion that both male and female farmers had equal access to land. this result shows that most of the respondents (65%) felt that male groundnut farmers had more access to land than the female groundnut farmers while about 19% of respondents were undecided. the analysis on access to credit indicated that 27.8% of the respondents felt that male farmers had more access to credit than the female while 33.3% felt that female farmers had more access to credit than the male. almost 40% of the respondents were undecided. this result is an indication that both sets of respondents had equally low access to credit in the study. the results in table 2 further indicated that the male farmers were considered to have more access than the female to family labour, hired labour, extension visits, herbicides, pesticides, and market. on the other hand, female respondents were perceived to have more membership to cooperatives than the male. majority of the respondents were of the opinion that male and female farmers had equal access to improved seeds and herbicides. on the whole, the perception among the respondents is that men had more access to resources than women in the production of groundnuts in the study area. the profitability of groundnut production among male and female groundnut farmers this section looks at the level of profit in terms of gross margin obtained by male and female respondents. table 3 shows the gross margin of male (n6, 206, 580.00) and female (n3, 471, 320.00) farmers respectively. the result shows that groundnut production is profitable in the study area. it also shows that men had almost double the gross margin of women indicating that they earned much more than women. this is because the men had more access to production resources which enabled them to invest more than the women in groundnut production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 650-656 655 table 3: the profitability of groundnut production among male and female farmers source: field survey data (2012) the implication of men having more production resources as well as more farming experience (see table 1) is that men were likely to produce more efficiently than women. this probably explains why the gross margin/ha for male respondents (n 62,692.73) was higher than that of the female respondents (n37, 731.74). the result of greater efficiency of production among male respondents is that the male earned more per naira invested (5.4) than the female (4.1). this resulted in a situation where each woman on the average earned much lower gross margin (n128, 567.41 / woman) than the men (n229, 873.33/man). conclusion the study showed that even though women in the study were younger and more literate than men, they were less experienced in the production of groundnuts. the study further revealed that there was a perception among the respondents that women had less access to some production resources like land, chemicals and labour than their male counterparts. markets were also more accessible to men than women. this resulted in women having less gross margin per hectare than the men implying that the men produced more efficiently than the women thus earning more per unit of land farmed than women. the need to focus on women farmers' accessibility to resources for increased productivity and income cannot be overemphasized considering the large number of rural women concerned and the role women could play in improving household economy and poverty alleviation. credit provision in cash and kind to women by government and other relevant organisations will give women improved access to production resources. making particular efforts to extend extension services towards women farmers will improve their skills. these interventions will subsequently improve women’s productivity and income. references damisa, m. a. and yohanna, m. (2007). role of rural women in farm management decision making process: ordered probit analysis. world journal of agricultural sciences, 3(4): 543 – 546. dimelu, m. u. okoye a. c., agwu a. e, aniedu o. c. and akinpelu a. o. (2008). determinants of gender efficiency of small holder of cocoyam earners in nsukka agricultural zone of enugu state, nigeria. scientific research and essay, 4 (1): 28-32. echekwu, c. a. and emeka, i. (2005). groundnut endowing. the groundnut rediscovery programme in nigeria.opah mission abuja pp18. in lawal, a. m., animashaun, j. o. and towoju, a. s. (2012). economics of small-scale agro male female items amount (n) percentage(%) amount (n) percent (%) total revenue 7,354,300 100 4,320,400 100 variable cost mechanization 317,000 27.62 227, 000 26.73 seed 276,850 24.12 186, 830 22.00 herbicide 194,710 16.96 174,700 20.58 labour (family and hired) 150,340 13.10 135,550 15.96 transportation 208,820 18.19 125,000 14.72 total cost total cost/ha 1,147,720.00 11,593.13 849,080.00 9,229.13 gross margin 6,206,580.00 3,471,320.00 gross margin/ n invested 5.4 4.1 gross margin/hactare 62,692.73 37, 731.74 gross margin/person 229,873.33 128, 567.41 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 650-656 656 enterprises in nigeria. a case study of groundnut processing among rural women in kwara stata. journal of sustainable development in africa, 14(5): 54-64 elegbede, j. a. (1998). legumes. in. nutritional quality of plant foods eds. (osagie, a. u. and o. u. eka, o. u. eds). 1 st edn. post harvest research unit, biochem dept. university of benin, benin city, nigeria. p. 53 – 83. food and agriculture organization (1994). women, agriculture and rural development, a synthesis report of the africa region. rome. food and agriculture organization (1998). rural women and food security: current situation and perspectives. rome. glick. p. (2002). women’s employment and its relation to children’s health and schooling in developing countries: conceptual links, empirical evidence, and policies, cornell university, september haddad, l. (1999). the income earned by women: impacts on welfare outcomes. agricultural economics, 20: 135-141. higgens, b. b. (1951). origin and early history of peanuts. economic importance of peanuts, effect of fertilizer application on peanuts. washington d. c. iheanacho a. c. (2000). economics of millet production under different cropping system in borno state. unpublished ph.d thesis, department of agricultral economics and rural sociology, ahmedu bello university, zaria, nigeria. p. 111. mohammed, b. t. and abdulquadri, a. f. (2012). comparative analysis of gender involvement in agricultural production in nigeria. journal of development and agricultural economics, 4(8): 240-244 odame h., hafkin, n., wesseler, g. and boto, i. (2002). gender and agriculture in the information soociety. international service for national agricultural reasearch briefing paper, no. 55. the hague. the netherlands. ogundele, o. o. (2004). input use and socioeconomic characteristic of rice farmers: gender dimension and implication for small-holder agriculture in nigeria. institute of rice research (irrn), 29(1): 82-83. ojo, c. o. (2011). analysis of women’s resource accessibility and use efficiency in crop production in borno state, nigeria. unpublished ph. d. thesis, department of agricultural economics, university of maiduguri, borno state. ojo, c. o., bila, y. and iheanacho, a. c. (2012). women’s accessibility to resources of agricultural productivity in borno state, nigeria. journal of economics and sustainable development, 3(9): 56 – 61. ojo, c. o. and wurani, b. a. (2013). analysis of the socioeconomic factors affecting women’s contribution to household welfare mubi north local government area of adamawa state. nigeria. developing country studies, 3(1): 51 – 56. saito, k. a. mekonnen, h. and spurling. d. (1994). raising productivity of women farmers in sub-saharan africa. world bank discussion paper 230. washington, d. c. udry, c., hoddinott, j., alderman, h. and haddad, l. (1995). gender differentials in farm productivity: implications for household efficiency and agricultural policy. food policy, 20(5): 407-423. udry, c. (1996). gender, agricultural production, and the theory of the household. journal of political economy, 104(5): 1010-1046. moock, p. (1976). the efficiency of women as farm managers: kenya. american journal of agricultural economics; proceedings issue, 58(5): 831-835. welch, c. j., alemu, b. msaki, t. sengendo, m., kigutha, h. and wolff, a. (2000). improving household for food security: institutions, gender and integrated appproaches. u.s.a. basic management entity. retrieved from www.krepublishers.com world bank (2001). engendering development through gender equality in rights, resources and voice. policy research report. oxford university press. http://www.krepublishers.com/ publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. indirect solar drier for drying of hill products r. k. aggarwal (department of environmental science, dr. y. s. parmar university of horticulture & forestry, nauni (solan) india) citation: r. k. aggarwal (2012) “indirect solar drier for drying of hill products”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 201-205. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 201-205 201 author(s) r. k. aggarwal department of environmental science dr. y. s. parmar university of horticulture & forestry nauni (solan) india email: rajeev1792@rediffmail.com indirect solar drier for drying of hill products abstract an indirect solar drier of 25 kg capacity has been developed fitted with solar cell for running the fan. the bulbs are provided in the solar collector for air heating during clouds and evening & morning for faster drying reducing drying time. 15 such solar driers have been installed in the state. various hill agricultural crops have been dried in solar drier by the farmers and collected. the market value of dried products has also been compared. keywords: solar drier, drying, hill crops, quality, income generation introduction in himachal pradesh known as fruit bowl of india, large quantities of fruits and vegetables are damaged due to perishable nature / bad weather or lack of transportation facilities resulting in loss to the farmers. about 20% tomato, 10% ginger, 10% mushroom, 30% amla (emblicaofficinalis) and 5% apple are generally damages/waste during a year. people in the state dries apple, peach, palm nut, chilly, turmeric, ginger, pomegranate and other local products in open sun resulting poor quality of the dried product due to dust/fungus infection, insects, sudden rains, bacteria and loss due to wetting byrainsqualls wild animals and monkeys etc.. the part of perishable crops like tomatoes and pomegranate harvested during rainy season are wasted due to bad weather. this gives low return to the farmers. the open sun drying requires more time and labour to carry products from inside to outside during bad weather. solar drying of fruits and vegetables can reduce the losses and improve the quality of products for better price in the market. several types of driers are available in the country but these are not popular in rural areas due to high costs, technical knowhow, or lack of skill to use these driers [1]. an indirect drier has been developed for the drying of fruits, vegetables, seeds and medicinal plants. this drier reduces the drying time considerably as it provides heat during night through bulbs. the quality of the products improves for better market values. the payback period of the drier is less because the drier will be used throughout the year. the major portion of the initial expenditure on fabrication of drier is on wood, which is easily available with the farmers. thus, the total cost of the drier has been reduced which can be recovered in shorter span. pomegranate has great economic importance because of its high acetic nature. nearly 1000 tones of dried anardana extracted from wild pomegranate fruits costs about $ 3.0 billion. wild pomegranate is widely found in dried and sub-marginal land of mild hill region of outer himalayas at an altitude of 400m to 1,800m above mean sea level. in india it grows in vast track of the hill slopes of jammu & kashmir, himachal pradesh and utranchal. in himachal pradesh it is found in solan and sirmour districts in abundance. the size of fresh pomegranate varies from 5.31 cm to 7.53 cm and diameter varies from 4.35 cm to 6.50 cm. the weight ranges between 59.77 gm to 101.0 gm. the average weight of 100 arils is 12.65 gm and its colour is blood red – light pink. ginger is one of the important spice crops that are preferred for its therapeutic values. an herbaceous perennial plant, belonging to family zingiberaceae is believed to be native of south east asia. it is propagated through rhizomes, leafy stem30-90 cm in height. it is widely used in food beverages, confectioneries and medicine. total production in the world is 1004546 metric tons and total world area under cultivation is 33826 hectares. the average productivity of the world is 2956 kg/ hectare. major ginger producing countries in the world are india, nigeria, china, thailand, indonesia, bangladesh, philippines and korea. nigeria ranks first with respect to area under ginger covering about 56.23% of world total area under ginger followed by india (23.60%), china (4.47%), indonesia (3.37%) and bangladesh (2.32%) india ranks first with respect to ginger production contributing about 32.75% of total world’s ginger product followed by china (21.41%), nigeria (12.54%) and bangladesh (10.80%). india is the largest producer of dry ginger. the total production of ginger in india is 305900 tones in an area of 85100 mailto:rajeev1792@rediffmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 201-205 202 hectare with an average production of ginger 3.60 metric tones per hectare. in india, kerala is the highest producer of ginger contributing almost 23.08% of country’s total production followed by 19.57% in meghalaya. major ginger producing area in country is karnataka tamil nadu, west bengal, himachal pradesh, up, orrisa, gujrat, maharashtra, rajasthan and north-eastern states [3]. in himachal pradesh, ginger is one of the important cash crops of mid and lower hills covering an area of 3695 hectares and total production is 37,000 tones. in himachal pradesh, this crop is mainly grown in sirmaur, solan, hamirpur, bilaspur, mandi and shimla districts. methodology the drier has been developed under the project funded by the ministry of science and technology, government of india. a survey was conducted to identifying the drying techniques of the farmers and to identify the commercial crop which are being dried. on the basis of this survey an indirect solar drier has been developed. the design parameters of the drier have been presented in section (i). the results and discussion is presented in section (ii). the economics of drying has been discussed in section (iii). i. design parameters of the drier the solar drier of 25 kg capacity has two components. one a solar collector constructed with water proof board fitted with 4 mm glass at an angle of 30 0 (the latitude of the place) for maximum transmission of solar radiation (drawing is enclosed) [2]. solar collector with a glass area of 2.4 square meter and volume is 0.693m 3 . the solar collector base has black painted plywood to absorbed solar radiation insulated with saw dust. the drying chamber with dimension of 1.1m*0.7m*1.0m has three removable trays. each tray with size of 1.02m*0.7m*0.05m is made of iron square mesh in wooden border. front side of drying chamber is covered by glass having thickness of 6mm. the eight bulbs of 100 w each are provided in the solar collector for heating during rains and after sunset to reduce the drying time. the holes are provided at the bottom (south orientation) in solar collector. a dc fan is provided at top of the drying chamber (north orientation) for air circulation. a solar battery has been attached with the drying chamber to run the fan. a schematic view and camera photograph of solar drier are presented in fig. 1 and fig. 2 respectively ii. installation solar drier in the field: himmothan paryojana (hmp), navajbai sir ratan tata trust (nrtt), mumbai has sanctioned the project for the installation of 15 solar driers in the state. the main objective of installation of indirect solar drier in the state was to increase the income of the farmers by improving the quality of the dried products, protection from wild animals and saving in time & labour which can be utilized for farm and off farm activities. in order to assess the potential farmers a survey was required to be conducted under the project in different districts in the state. accordingly, the detailed survey was conducted to identify the farmers for installation of solar driers and who could contribute in the form of wood required for the fabrication of solar driers. the shgs working in the field of post harvest products were also identified. the local carpenters who may be interested to get training in the fabrication and upkeep of solar driers and to work in the field were also identified. methodology adopted 1. the detailed questionnaires for the survey were developed in hindi and printed for individual farmers, shgs and carpenters (copy of questionnaires enclosed). the carpenter engaged under the project was trained and oriented to elicit the correct information and fill up the questionnaires during survey in the field. 2. six districts were selected for the survey. the criterion adopted was the agro-climatic condition of the districts and which produce crops for commercial drying besides, being nearer to the university headquarter. in these six districts, survey was conducted in sixteen blocks. 3. the respondents were randomly selected, based on the information gathered at the local level. those farmers were interviewed who were engaged in commercial drying of their products throughout the year. 4. self-help groups (shgs) engaged in commercial activities by drying the local products constituted in the village were also interviewed. the breakup of the district, block and villages surveyed is given in table 1. analysis of survey the other salient points came to light during survey are as under:  90 % of women folk are engaged in the drying of products in the traditional way;  2 hours at an average daily are spent in the drying process, including handling of products;  by a conservative calculation arrived at by taking the minimum wage of unskilled worker as fixed by the govt. (presently $2.5/day), the average cost of labour input by women comes to $1.5 per day;  most of self help groups (shgs), consisting of female members only, are engaged in commercial activities. they market the dried local products of all types for income generation.  10 – 25% of crop is damaged after harvesting due to a variety of reasons; asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 201-205 203  the time taken in the drying of products by traditional methods is 5 to 15 days depending upon the type of crop and climatic conditions.  in addition to commercial crops, the farmers dry all types of vegetables, grains, cereals for their own use. sometimes there are also local specific typical products, like cheese, meat, bari, etc. inferences from the analysis of the survey results the following inferences are drawn:  although presently due to non availability of proper technology the solar drier is not in use in rural areas yet it can be gainfully employed for the whole year as and when it is properly introduced and technical knowhow for its operation and maintenance is made available to the farmers. not only for commercial purposes it can be used for drying the products even for domestic use which the farmers are otherwise importing from the open market.  once the utility of the drier is known to the farmers it will itself create demand for the same among the farmers  the shgs can become a formidable target group as they are drying their products in traditional ways for commercial marketing proposes.  when popularized there will be greater demand for maintenance and upkeep of drier which, in turn will generate income to the local carpenters. selection of farmer’s site the main part of the project is to fabricate and install 15 solar driers in the field in which the wood for the fabrication of solar drier was given by the beneficiaries as their contribution. the details of the solar drier sites in the state are given in table 2. capacity building awareness training camps the orientation training programmes were conducted to apprise the local community regarding the importance of solar drier for income generation, time saving, better quality of dried products and protection from wild animals. the basic purpose of these training camps is to aware the farmers about the benefits of solar drier after its installation in the field so that they can make up their mind for future. users’ training programme after the installation of solar driers in the villages users’ camps were organized for the farmers to apprise them about the functioning of solar drier. do’s and don’ts were highlighted. technical training programme the technical training programmes of three days duration were organized for carpenters to create workforce for repair and maintenance of solar driers. the carpenters were trained in fabrication of each part of the solar drier. they can fabricate solar drier as per the demand of local farmers. monitoring of solar driers one of the major weaknesses was the selection of shgs. the selection of shgs are difficult because in the state the shgs are not financial strong enough to motivate for providing wood etc..during the monitoring it was observed that the farmers have dried their products which have generated more income for example bark of (onion, walnut, pomegranate, kashmal) were dried to prepare colour for the dying of wool. the other products dried in the solar drier are: trigonella, mentha, cabbage, bitter guard, summer squash, coriander, methi, pudina powder, wild apricot, vach (medicinal plant), apple chips, tulsi leaves, leaves of colocasia, brinjal, lavender, cabbage, cauliflowers, parsley, peas, tomato, pumpkin, bottle gourd, ginger, cereals, guava, amla, potato, sunflower seeds, cannabis, wheat corn, wheat &rice, almond, colocasia (arbi), groundnut, walnut etc.. reduction in time and labour during the monitoring of solar driers in the field, the farmers told that the solar driers not only saves the drying time but also saves labour to carry products from outside to inside during morning and evening and even during bad weather. this time saved is utilized in farming. income of the farmers the quality of the dried product has improved considerably. during this season the farmers sold their products at higher price dried in the solar driers. the rates of dried products sold by the farmers in the field have been compared which is presented in table 3. this table reveals that the increase in income of the farmers is in the range of 29% to 200%. iii. economics of drying the cost per unit capacity of various dried products have been calculated taking into account the cost of drier, labour charges, maintenance charges, electricity charges and depreciation charges [4]. the cost of dried product has been found to be in the range of $0.1 to $0.12 per kg. references aggarwal rajeev (1998) “design, fabrication, installation and field evaluation of 1000 kg capacity solar asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 201-205 204 drier for chilgoza seed extraction”, reric international energy journal, vol. 20(2),pp 67-76. azad, e. (2008)“design and experimental study of solar agricultural dryer for rural area”, livestock research for rural development, vol. 20(9) joshi, c. b., gewali, m. b.andbhandari, r. c. (2004) “performance of solar drying systems: a case study of nepal”, ie(i) journal, vol. 85, pp 53-57. sreekumar, a., p. e. manikantan and k. p. vijayakumar (2008) “performance of indirect solar cabinet dryer”, energy conversion and management vol. 49(6), pp.1388-95. fig.1. design of indirect solar drier fig. 2. indirect solar drier table 1: the breakup of the district, block and villages surveyed s. no. district block village household surveyed shgs 1 solan 3 29 127 15 2 shimla 1 4 4 nil 3 sirmour 2 25 64 1 4 kullu 2 5 22 4 5 mandi 6 34 63 14 6 kinnaur 2 7 54 1 total 16 106 334 35 http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd20/lrrd20.htm http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd20/lrrd20.htm http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01968904 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=publicationurl&_tockey=%23toc%235708%232008%23999509993%23687337%23fla%23&_cdi=5708&_pubtype=j&view=c&_auth=y&_acct=c000074090&_version=1&_urlversion=0&_userid=8372258&md5=a93fb87565f4808370ac9bc2269c1441 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=publicationurl&_tockey=%23toc%235708%232008%23999509993%23687337%23fla%23&_cdi=5708&_pubtype=j&view=c&_auth=y&_acct=c000074090&_version=1&_urlversion=0&_userid=8372258&md5=a93fb87565f4808370ac9bc2269c1441 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 201-205 205 table 2: geographical data of solar drier locations s. no. location altitude (meter) latitude longitude 1 thola 1629 30044’450 n 77033’146e 2 thirdhar 2213 30042’894 n 77030’144e 3 sataun 552 30033’546 n 77038’545e 4 bhajond 1486 30044’175 n 77022’658e 5 bhangari 1809 30046’898 n 77024’410e 6 ritab 1596 30056’410 n 77019’567e 7 sanhot 1840 30053’251 n 77021’349e 8 jalana 1216 30009’748 n 76059’3338e 9 nagwain 1192 31048’468 n 77010’475e 10 sharan 1743 31040’070 n 77019’650e 11 kalashan 1650 31023’116 n 77008’275e 12 faigal 1262 31021’355 n 77004’972e 13 sangla 2622 31025’458 n 78015’823e 14 leo 2878 31053’180 n 78035’806e 15 khawangi 2300 31033’132 n 78016’367e table 3: rates ($/kg) of dried products in the local market product open sun dried solar drier dried increase (%) garlic powder 4.0 6.0 50.0 apricot 1.5 2.7 68.8 almond 6.0 0.0 turmeric 2.0 4.0 100.0 ginger (sounth) 6.0 10.0 66.7 peas 2.0 6.0 200.0 turmeric 4.0 6.0 50.0 red chili 2.8 3.6 28.6 apple chips 2.0 6.0 200.0 turmeric 1.6 4.0 150.0 red chili 2.0 3.0 50.0 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 576-583 576 factors affecting the decision and extent of rice-milling before sale among ugandan farmers florence nakazi and dick sserunkuuma department of agribusiness and natural resource economics, makerere university, kampala, uganda abstract the number of rice mills in uganda increased rapidly during the past decade, in response to increasing demand for milling services. however, despite the notable improvement in access to milling services, recent studies have shown that some farmers still sell rice in unmilled form which attracts lower prices. this study was undertaken to examine why some rice farmers still sell un-milled rice in the advent of improved access to milling services. descriptive statistical methods of data analysis were used to characterize rice-growing households by the form in which they sell rice, before fitting a tobit model to determine the factors influencing the proportion of rice sold as grain after milling. the returns (gross margins) to rice-milling were also estimated. the study findings show that rice production is profitable regardless of the form in which it is sold; and the majority of households invest in milling all or part of their rice before sale. however, although milling households incurred higher costs, they also had higher gross margins, implying that selling milled rice is more profitable than selling paddy. the price of milled rice, volume of harvested rice, household size and group membership have significant and positive relationships with the proportion of rice sold as grain; while distance to the nearest rice mill is negatively and significantly associated with the proportion of rice sold as grain. keywords: rice, rice-milling, profitability, uganda introduction 1 rice is becoming increasingly popular in africa judging from the steady growth in its production. the annual production is estimated at 14 million metric tons while consumption is within the range of 16 million metric tons per annum, (unrds, 2009). given this deficit in production and the rapid urbanization and population growth in africa, it is likely that the area under rice production in africa will continue to expand in the foreseeable future. as part of the efforts to enhance rice yield as a means to reduce the gap between supply and demand, and to curb food insecurity and income 1 corresponding author’s details: name: dick sserunkuuma email address: sserunkuuma@agric.mak.ac.ug poverty in africa, new rice for africa (nerica) was developed during the past decade by the west africa rice development association (warda) (africa rice center, 2006). in uganda, nerica was introduced in 2002 as one of the government’s strategies for achieving its overarching development goals of reducing poverty and food security, as well as import substitution. the introduction of nerica elevated uganda to a new level in the history of rice production. the total area under rice increased from 80,000 hectares in 2002 to 119,000 hectares in 2007 (ubos, 2007), with upland rice area increasing from 1,500 hectares in 2002 to 35,000 hectares in 2007 (tsuboi, 2008). despite this impressive growth in production, uganda still needs to import 60,000 asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:sserunkuuma@agric.mak.ac.ug asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 576-583 577 metric tons of rice, as total domestic production is estimated at 165,000 metric tons, which is lower than total consumption estimated at 225,000 metric tons (unrds, 2009). with uganda’s population growing at a rate of 3.2% per year (ubos, 2002), the demand for rice is expected to rise even further, which calls for sustained efforts to increase production to meet the growing demand. recent research shows that rice production in uganda still faces many challenges not only in production, but also in post harvest handling and marketing. kijima et al., (2006) found that many farmers did not have enough information on how to grow, harvest and dry rice, which negatively affected the harvested yield and milling rate. absence of rice millers in nearby towns was cited as a major constraint to nerica adoption by farmers in 2004. the common transportation means from the homestead to the rice mill was the bicycle, and a typical farmer had to travel 15 to 35 km by bicycle to take rice to the nearest rice mill (kijima et al., 2006). these problems are not unique to ugandan rice farmers. in ethiopia, for example, poor post-harvest handling leads to high post harvest losses that arise from threshing and lack of proper storage facilities, which dents the quality of locally produced rice (inundated with gravel, uneven or broken grains) and renders it less desirable to consumers than imported rice. there are a few millers who directly buy rice from farmers, and these millers also double as traders (wholesalers and retailers) who dictate the prices (asmelash, 2012). in the case of uganda, however, a follow up study by kijima et al. (2008) shows that the number of rice mills nearly doubled between 2004 and 2006 (from 360 to nearly 600), likely because of increasing demand for rice milling services by farmers. this is also reflected in the considerably shortened distance to rice mills from between 15 and 30 km in 2004 to between 6 and 11 km in 2006. this distance is believed to have reduced even further in recent years, with increased investments in rice milling services by the private sector. despite this notable improvement in farmers’ access to milling services, some farmers still sell rice in unmilled form as paddy, which attracts a lower price than milled rice (kijima, 2008). this paper examines why some rice-growing households in uganda mill their rice before sale and others don’t; and how this affects the profitability of rice production. the rest of the paper is organized as follows. section 2 gives an overview of rice production, processing and marketing in uganda. in section 3, we describe the methods used in the study, including the sampling procedure and data sources. section 4 presents the data analysis procedure and results, while section 5 discusses the policy implications and conclusions. rice production, processing and marketing in uganda in uganda, efforts to promote rice production and marketing have been championed by the office of the vice president (ovp), national agricultural advisory services (naads), and non-government organizations (ngos) such as sasakawa global 2000. rice is grown mainly under three production systems, namely rain-fed upland; rain-fed lowland and irrigated. of the three, rain-fed lowland is the most common system, covering 65,000 hectares of land, followed by rain-fed upland with 40,000 hectares and finally irrigated rice which covers 5,000 hectares of land (unrds, 2009). most rice in uganda is grown in eastern and western regions, due to the higher presence of lowlands and wetlands with sufficient soil moisture throughout the growing season (unrds, 2009). more than half of the rice produced by ugandan farmers is sold for cash income (sserunkuuma, 2008), meaning that rice is primarily grown as a cash crop; but the contribution of rice to smallholder farmers’ income is linked to the availability of functional milling services and markets for rice. smallholder rice farmers in uganda sell their rice in two forms, namely; un-milled form and milled form (npa, 2007). un-milled rice (also known as paddy) refers to rice in the form it is harvested from the field, before the husks and bran layer are removed in the process of milling. milled rice, also referred to as white rice or grain, has the husks and bran layer removed. after harvesting, some farmers transport paddy to rice mills and only sell after milling. the common means of transport is by bicycle and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 576-583 578 motorcycle if the distance between the farmgate and the rice miller is not very long or by loading the rice on buses and pick-up trucks if the distance is long. rice millers charge milling fees to the producers, who after milling sell grain to traders who wait for producers to come to the rice millers. therefore, rice millers seem to play the role of intermediary between producers and traders, and they facilitate rice marketing. other farmers sell their rice in paddy form usually at the farm-gate for various reasons that may include lack of access to mills, high milling costs, price of milled rice relative to the farm-gate price offered for paddy rice and poor quality of mills. according to fujiie (2009), since the quality of milling machines in uganda is poor yet selling rice in paddy form transfers the risk of getting low quality milled rice to traders, some farmers may prefer selling paddy to milled rice while the converse is true for traders. data and sample data for this study were collected in october 2009, through a household survey of rice farmers in pallisa, bugiri, bukedea and mayuge districts of eastern uganda by makerere university and the japan international corporation agency (jica) under the project entitled “an empirical analysis on expanding rice production in sub sahara africa”. the project’s aim was to analyze the impact of the card (coalition for africa rice development) initiative on rice productivity and poverty reduction, and to assess the effectiveness of various means of improving agricultural production, typified by the development of a new agricultural technology and its dissemination. the data were gathered using a structured questionnaire administered through one-on-one face to face interviews with sampled rice farmers. the study sample was drawn following a purposive sampling procedure, with subcounties being the primary sampling units. in each of the four districts (mayuge, bugiri, pallisa and bukedea), sub-counties were purposively selected based on participation in jica’s project entitled “sustainable irrigated agriculture development project in eastern uganda” this project targeted households that grew rice in wetland areas in irrigation schemes or swamps in the first season of 2009 and second season of 2008, and the majority of these are located in the selected sub-counties, which include busakira and buwunga in mayuge and bugiri districts, respectively; butebo, petete and bulangira sub-counties in pallisa district; and bukedea and kolir sub-counties in bukedea district. in each sub-county, local agricultural officers, sub-county community officers, local council chairmen and farmer group leaders led the exercise of generating lists of households that grew rice in wetland areas in the first season of 2009 and second season of 2008, from which households were randomly selected for the survey. based on these criteria, 75 households were selected in each of the four districts to give a total sample of 300 households. however, the analysis for this paper is based on 194 households that harvested and sold rice, because the rest (106 households) did not harvest any rice in the first season of 2009 and second season of 2008 because of serious drought or flooding conditions on their rice plots. the household survey gathered data on sociodemographic characteristics of the households and household heads, including gender, age, and education level of the household head; household income and size, farm size, rice growing experience, access to markets and extension services, and membership to farmers groups. data was also gathered on inputs into rice production, including type, quantity and cost of seed, fertilizer and chemicals, the area planted to rice, family and hired labor used, and quantities of rice harvested and sold. information on the form in which rice was sold, the selling price, place of sale, distance and transportation costs to rice mills or other selling places, as well as milling fees was also gathered during the household survey. data analysis and results conceptually, data analysis and hypothesis testing in this paper is guided by the theory of behavior of agricultural households under imperfect market conditions. these market imperfections create differences in the environment within which different households asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 576-583 579 operate due to differences in household endowments. this in turn creates differential access to markets and other agricultural services (like milling or processing in general, credit, and extension) across rural households, with some households facing lower transaction costs of accessing markets and other services than others (sadoulet and de janvry, 1995). rice farmers have various types of buyers, including wholesale traders, retailers, rice millers, and individual consumers to whom they can sell their rice either as grain or paddy; and at different locations or markets (farm-gate, local mill, distant mill, local market). those who sell at the mill after milling their rice receive higher prices but also incur higher marketing and transactions costs, including the costs of transporting the paddy to the mill, milling charges and waiting at the mill for their rice to get milled, which may take a few days depending on availability of electricity, among other things. if these costs are sufficiently higher relative to potential returns from milling the rice before sale, they may render ricemilling unprofitable. in this case, farmers will choose to sell unmilled rice even in areas where rice mills and premiums for milled rice exist. a similar situation may arise when farmers with limited training and experience in rice production and post-harvest handling have low confidence in the milling quality of their rice and thus prefer to sell it at a lower price as paddy rather than facing the risk of investing in milling and not getting the premium price if the milling quality turns out to be low. thus, it is hypothesized that the decision to sell rice as paddy or grain is influenced by locationlevel factors that operate at community scale (such as prices, distance and transportation cost to the nearest mill, availability and reliability of electricity, milling charges) as well as household-level factors, such as training and experience in rice production and post-harvest handling, education and age of the farmer which affects their risk preference and ability to decode and use available information on rice production and marketing for decision-making. to test these hypotheses, survey data were analyzed to generate summary statistics of the factors hypothesized to affect the decision to sell paddy versus grain, and to fit a tobit model to estimate the effect these factors on the proportion of rice sold as grain. also estimated are the returns to milling, since the profitability of milling (or lack of it) could explain why some farmers sell milled rice and others don’t despite the increased availability of rice mills. the profitability of selling milled versus unmilled rice was estimated using gross margin analysis, and compared using difference of mean tests between households that sold grain and their cohorts that sold paddy rice. the surveyed households were grouped into three categories based on the form in which they sold their rice harvested in the first season of 2009 and second season of 2008. the first category, “unmilled”, consisted of households that sold all their rice as paddy; while the second category, “milled”, consisted of households that sold all their rice as grain; and the third category, “both”, consisted of households that sold part of their rice as paddy and the other part as grain. nearly half of the sampled households (48.5% or 94 out of 194 households) sold all their rice as grain and about one third (34.5%) sold part of their rice as grain and the other part as paddy. the rest (17%) sold all their rice as paddy. these results show that the majority of the sampled households (83%) invest in milling all or part of their rice before selling because milled rice attracts a higher price than paddy. results of the analysis on profitability of ricegrowing show that it is associated with positive gross margins regardless of the form in which rice is sold (see table 1), suggesting that rice production is a profitable venture. however, although households which mill all their rice before sale incur significantly higher variable costs than their cohorts who sell all or part of their rice as paddy, they receive higher gross margins or profits from rice sales. this suggests that the higher price of milled rice relative to paddy more than offsets the higher costs incurred by households which sell milled rice to make the selling of milled rice more profitable than selling paddy, as hypothesized. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 576-583 580 table 1: returns to rice production and the associated costs variable mean values overall sample (n=194) “unmilled” (n=33) “milled” (n=94) “both” (n=67) total revenue (ushs/acre) 966,056.7 (811,797) 590,170 a (800,877.5) 1,197,713 b (783,756.7) 826,185 a (763,955.2) total variable cost (ushs/acre) 219,000 (199,279.8) 132,589.5 a (174,032.7) 280,756.3 b (220,495.2) 174,917.1 a (147,643.6) gross margin (ushs/acre) 748,927.9 (647,315.1) 457,580.5 a (644,861.1) 920,977.6 b (612,287.2) 651,044 a (633,321) milling cost (ushs/kg) 84.16 (17.91) price (ushs/kg) 900.30 a (195.42 1,437.77 b (312.87) note: pair-wise t test with equal variances assumed. superscripts for two categories ab, ba, ac, bc indicates that the variable is statistically different between the categories; a number marked with aa, bb indicates that the variable is not significantly different between the categories. figures in parentheses are standard deviations. tests of difference of the means (for continuous variables, e.g., education of the household head, family size and distance to rice mill) and chisquare (for discrete variables, e.g., group membership) were used to determine the differences in demographic and socio-economic characteristics between households that sold paddy rice and those that sold grain or a combination of paddy and grain. the results of the analysis (see table 2) show that nearly all the sampled households (94.6%) are headed by men, although the proportion of male-headed households is lower among households that sold paddy only (91%) than their cohorts who sold grain only (98.9%) and those who sold both paddy and grain (95.5%). table 2: socio-economic characteristics of rice-growing households variable mean values overall sample (n=194) “unmilled” (n=33) “milled” (n=94) “both” (n=67) % male headed households 96.4 90.9 a 98.9 b 95.5 b % households with group membership 39.7 24.2 a 35.1 b 53.7 c age of hh head 40.093(11.902) 40.485 a (12.324) 39.191 a (11.381) 41.164 a (12.476) education of hh head (years) 5.881 (3.778) 6.424 a (4.323) 5.947 a (3.748) 5.522 a (3.548) household size 7.387 (3.512) 6.788 a (2.770) 8.043 b (4.122) 6.761 a (2.686) rice plot size (acres) 1.075 (0.955) 0.629 a (0.505) 1.533 b (0.893) 0.653 a (0.918) landholding(acres) 4.581 (4.446) 3.746 a (3.306) 5.330 b (4.757) 3.942 a (4.364) rice output (kg) 776.304 (666.258) 271.879 a (300.556) 982.192 b (692.033) 735.896 c (624.652) experience (years) 8.526 (7.761) 6.818 a (7.338) 8.723 a (7.482) 9.090 a (8.326) distance to rice mill (km) 3.512 (3.877) 4.841 a (4.838) 3.280 b (3.452) 3.184 b (3.839) note: pair-wise t test with equal variances assumed. superscripts for two categories ab, ba, ac, bc indicates that the variable is statistically different between the categories; a number marked with aa, bb indicates that the variable is not significantly different between the categories. figures in parentheses are standard deviations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 576-583 581 forty percent of the households had membership in farmers groups, but the “both” category had a significantly higher proportion of households with membership in farmers’ groups (53.7%) than the “unmilled” (24.2%) and “milled” (35.1%) categories. on average, households which milled all their rice before selling were endowed with significantly bigger landholdings (5.33 acres) and households (8 people), which, among other factors enabled them to cultivate bigger rice plots (1.53 acres) and harvest bigger volumes of rice (982 kg) than their cohorts in the “unmilled” and “both” categories. however, those who sold all their rice as paddy were faced with significantly longer distance to the nearest mill (4.8 km) than households that milled all (3.28 km) or part (3.18 km) of their rice before sale. these results suggest that rice-milling is directly constrained by the distance traveled by farmers to access milling services, but is indirectly enabled by household endowment of land and family labor through their effect on the size of rice plots (and rice output) that households can cultivate. results of regression analysis on the determinants of proportion of rice sold as grain are presented in table 3. the results show that the harvested volume of rice (output), household size, price of milled rice, distance to nearest rice mill and membership in farmers’ group significantly affect the proportion of rice sold as grain. the positive relationship between price of milled rice and the proportion of rice sold as grain implies that as the price of milled rice rises, it triggers increasing proportions of rice to be sold as grain. a one shilling increase in the price of milled rice increases the proportion of harvested rice sold by 0.1%; increases the proportion of rice sold as grain by 0.04%; and increases the likelihood of making a sale by 0.1%. table 3: results of the tobit model observations =194, log likelihood = -94.00516, pseudo r2 = 0.5090 ^=dummy variable a= logarithm *, **, *** represents significance of coefficients at 10%, 5% and 1% levels respectively, in parentheses are standard errors the volume of rice harvested by the household is also positively and significantly associated with the proportion of rice sold as grain. this is because the fixed transaction costs of milling can be spread over a larger volume of produce, making it cheaper to invest in milling before sale. increasing the harvested volume of rice by 1 kg increases the proportion of harvested rice sold by 9.7%; increases the proportion of rice sold as grain by 5.6%; and increases the likelihood of selling rice by 11.5%. also, the number of people in a household positively influences the proportion of rice to be sold as grain. increasing the number of people in a household (family labor) by one person would lead to an increase in the proportion of rice sold as grain. this is likely because the higher family labour endowment enables the household to produce more, thereby reducing per unit fixed transaction costs of milling as explained above. explanatory coefficients marginal effects variables ix ey   ix ey   * ix zf   )( experience -0.007 (0.005) -0.005 -0.003 -0.006 education 0.007 (0.010) 0.005 0.003 0.005 household size 0.024** (0.012) 0.016 0.009 0.019 price of milled rice 0.001*** (0.0001) 0.001 0.0004 0.001 distance to rice mill -0.045*** (0.012) -0.030 -0.017 -0.036 groupmembership^ 0.136** (0.076) 0.135 0.077 0.148 rice output a 0.145*** (0.043) 0.097 0.056 0.115 other income sources -0.032 (0.110) -0.021 -0.012 -0.026 constant -1.121*** (0.305) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 576-583 582 membership in a rice-farmers’ group is associated with a significantly higher proportion of rice sold as grain. this is because it enables easier access to milling services through transport-pooling, for example, and entitles member farmers to other benefits that could explain the higher tendency to mill before sale. having membership in a rice-farmers’ group increases the proportion of harvested rice sold by 13.5%; increases the proportion of rice sold as grain by 7.7%; and increases the probability of making a sale by 14.8%. distance to the nearest rice mill negatively influences the proportion of rice sold as grain. this is because households that are closer to milling services face lower transactions costs of milling and are thus more likely to mill their rice before sale than more distant households. increasing the distance to the nearest rice mill for example by one kilometer reduces the proportion of rice sold by all rice-growing households by 3%; reduces the proportion of rice milled before sale (for households selling milled rice) by 1.7%; and reduces the probability of making a sale by 3.6%. conclusions and policy recommendations although rice production has been shown to be a profitable venture regardless of the form in which farmers choose to sell their rice, milling rice before sale makes rice production even more profitable. it is important, therefore, that farmers are encouraged and assisted to mill their rice before sale through training and extension; and through interventions that reduce the transactions costs of milling. such interventions include those that enable farmers to produce more (e.g., by facilitating their access to yieldenhancing inputs) and spread the milling costs over a larger volume of produce; and to market/mill their rice in groups for easier access to milling services and reduction of the fixed transactions costs of milling that they would otherwise face as individuals. this recommendation is supported by the positive relationships between the proportion of rice sold as grain and membership in farmers’ groups and volume of rice harvested. the negative relationship between the proportion of rice sold as grain and distance to the nearest rice miller suggests that interventions that enable milling services to be brought closer to farmers in major rice-growing areas (e.g., by facilitating private entrepreneurs to set up milling plants closer to farmers through rural electrification and reduction of electricity tariffs or to invest in mobile rice mills through rural road network improvement) would go further to reduce the transactions costs of accessing milling services and encourage ricemilling before sale. the positive relationship between the price of milled rice and the proportion of rice sold as grain suggests that the above interventions need to be complemented by efforts to get and keep prices right, such as developing new markets for rice and rice products to ensure that the intervention-driven increase in production and marketing of rice does not undercut the incentive for production and milling embodied in the prices received by farmers. there is also need for further research to assess the quality of available milling services, because this also could affect farmers’ willingness to mill their rice before sale. references africa rice center (warda) (2006). the growing nerica boom in uganda: brochure http://www.warda.org/publications/broch ure/uganda.pdf. alphonse, c., richard, s. and tobias, o. (2008). “survey report on the state of rice milling industry in uganda” mimeo, japan international cooperation agency rice contract farming schemes. agriculture for development, center of evaluation for global action, uc berkeley, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/97g2r7mk asmelash, y. (2012). farmers’ evaluation of upland rice varieties in fogera district, south gondar, ethiopia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4): 604 – 608. fujiie, m. (2009). research on rice market in rural uganda: midterm report. mimeo. http://www.warda.org/publications/brochure/uganda.pdf http://www.warda.org/publications/brochure/uganda.pdf http://escholarship.org/uc/item/97g2r7mk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 576-583 583 kijima, y. (2008). new technology and emergence of markets: evidence from nerica rice in uganda, discussion paper, no. 165 kijima, y., otsuka, k. and sserunkuuma, d. (2008). assessing the impact of nerica on income and poverty in central and western uganda. agricultural economics, 38: 327–337 kijima, y., sserunkuuma, d. and otsuka, k. (2006). how evolutionary is the “nerica revolution”? evidence from uganda. the developing economies, 44(2): 252–267. npa (2007). national planning authority. study to strengthen the marketing of rice; based on building a strong valuechain for the rice industry in uganda. coronet consult ltd. sadoulet, e. and de janvry, a. (1995). quantitative development policy analysis, the johns hopkins university press, baltimore and london sserunkuuma, d. (2008). assessment of nerica training impact: a study report prepared for the japan international cooperation agency (jica). tsuboi, t. (2008). towards rice green revolution in africa: the case of nerica promotion in uganda. presented in tokyo conference on african development, yokohama, may 2008. ubos (2002). uganda bureau of statistics. uganda national household survey 1999/2000. report on the crop survey module. entebbe. ubos (2007). uganda bureau of statistics. statistical abstract 2007. entebbe. unrds (2009). uganda national rice development strategy working paper; maaif, entebbe uganda; may 2009. © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 pattern of alcohol consumption and its effects on livelihood in selected rural communities of enugu state, nigeria dimelu m. u. (department of agricultural extension, faculty of agriculture, university of nigeria, nsukka, nigeria) agbo c. (department of agricultural extension, faculty of agriculture, university of nigeria, nsukka, nigeria) igbokwe e. m. (department of agricultural extension, faculty of agriculture, university of nigeria, nsukka, nigeria) to cite this article: dimelu, m. u., agbo, c., and igbokwe, e. m. (2011). pattern of alcohol consumption and its effects on livelihood in selected rural communities of enugu state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2), 69-79. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 69-79 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author(s) ng’en dimelu, m. u. † department of agricultural extension, faculty of agriculture, university of nigeria, nsukka, nigeria agbo, c. and igbokwe, e. m. department of agricultural extension, faculty of agriculture, university of nigeria, nsukka, nigeria pattern of alcohol consumption and its effects on livelihood in selected rural communities of enugu state, nigeria abstract the study examined alcohol consumption and its effects on economic and social livelihood of selected rural communities of enugu state. one hundred and twenty randomly selected alcohol consuming heads of households and sixty four purposively selected non-alcohol consuming heads of household were used. data were collected using structured interview schedule and analysed using percentage. alcoholic beverages available were palm wine (100%), beer (100%), local gin (100%), spirit (89.2%), and burukutu (41.7%). respondents indicated preference for palm wine (50.0%). choice of alcoholic beverage was a function of several factors namely availability, ability to produce the alcohol, cost and others. effects of alcohol consumption were evident by less commitment to livelihood activities, household’s welfare, incidents of violence and others. the study recommends that policies should be enacted to regulate proliferation and operation of alcohol enterprises in the rural areas. more importantly is the regulation of the type of alcohol marketed in the communities. also government should promote programmes that target improved livelihood strategies and empowerment of rural people to enhance diversification of the rural economy. keywords: alcohol, livelihood, rural, social, consumption introduction alcohol has been widely consumed since prehistoric times by man as a component of the standard diet, for hygienic or medical reasons, for its relaxant and euphoric effects, for recreational purpose, for artistic inspiration, as aphrodisiacs and for other reasons. some drinks have been invested with symbolic or religious significance suggesting the mystical use of alcohol; for example, in the christian eucharist and on jewish festivals (particularly, passover). globally, alcoholic beverage consumption patterns vary considerably among different countries and even among ethnic groups within the same country. the variations in drinking patterns according to bennett et al. (2004) include for example, the types of beverage consumed preferentially, occasions on which it typically occurs, drinking levels that are considered moral and population subgroups for whom drinking is considered acceptable. who (2004) reported that alcohol beverage preference of a particular area depends on the type of alcoholic beverages produced in the area. for instance beer is preferred in several european and african countries, wine is preferred in the wine producing countries of europe and spirits are preferred in eastern europe, asia and some island states. the arrack, a traditional drink produced by distilling fermented molasses, raw brown sugar, palm wine, rice or palm sugar is consumed more often in bangalore region of india. this is followed by palm wine produced from either coconut tree or other palm trees, which has alcohol content ranging from 20 – 40 percent. the third is imported liquors such as whiskey, brandy and rum. beer is also consumed in the bangalore region, although less commonly than the three pattern of alcohol consumption and its effects….. 70 types of beverages listed above. in mexico some difference exists in the alcoholic beverages preference of various population subgroups. for example, although both men and women drink pulgue, women tend to prefer wine. also young people consume beer and wine more frequently than other alcoholic beverages (medina – mora, 2000). overall, mexicans currently prefer beer and distilled alcoholic beverages such as tequila and rum. on the contrary, greenfacts (2006) stated that alcoholic beverage preferences of an area are no longer dependent on the type of alcoholic beverages produced in an area due to increasing importation of beverages other than those produced in the area or country. consumers are increasingly opening up to beverages other than those produced in their country. nevertheless, in many developing countries, traditional home made beverages are likely to be cheaper than factory made branded beverages, thus ensuring their continuing popularity, especially among poorer population groups (ellison, 2005). specifically, in africa they tend to be cheaper than factory made drinks. in nigeria various types of alcohol are consumed. they range from beer, wine and spirit categories. some of the alcohols are traditionally produced at the local level. the traditionally produced alcohols include palm wine, burukutu, pito, ogogoro (also known as kindana). these types of local alcoholic beverages produced locally are produced in different sections of the country and beyond. obot (2000) opined that before the arrival of western factory – made drinks, alcohol consumption was limited to a variety of beverages produced from palm trees and food grains. he further remarked that beer has become the most popular drink in the country, but traditional beverages (palm wine, burukutu, ogogoro, pito) are still widely consumed in both rural and urban area. in ibadan area of nigeria, the most commonly consumed alcoholic beverages are palm wine which is produced from the sap of the palm tree and beer (oshodin, 1999). generally, throughout nigeria native gin distilled from raffia palm wine is popular. for a long time however, consumption of alcohol has been strictly regulated by traditions, social norms, religion, natural limitations and laws. in the last two decades, global alcohol market is expanding particularly into developing countries. in many developing countries alcohol is often more easily available than clean drinking water. today many big multinational brewers sell a lot of their products – beer-to many parts of the world and their share of the global market is increasing (abderhalden, 2007). they make massive marketing efforts aimed particularly at new user groups such as young people, women and ethnic groups who traditionally did not drink. as a consequence, new drinks and drinking habits are being globalized across different continents and sections of the population. for example young people in developing countries are increasingly drinking and displaying the same harmful patterns of drinking-‘binge drinking’ common among young people in developed countries. consequently drinking habits vary from heavy drinking, heavy episodic drinking (binge drinking), alcohol dependent and moderate drinking (who, 2004) the increase in alcohol consumption in many developing nations where health and economic systems are weakest is of particularly great concern. poor people around the globe are vulnerable even to small changes destabilizing their daily hand to mouth economy. for those living under harsh circumstances, alcohol may seem an easy way out, but the social, economic, health and other problems created by alcohol use are severe additional burdens for poor people the paradox however, is that many developing countries are highly dependent on national revenues from alcohol. such countries seek to maximize income, but the social costs of alcohol are often overlooked. in enugu state there is increase in alcohol beverage drinking spots in various rural communities. alcohol beverage enterprise is experiencing heavy traffic in terms of new entrants in most rural communities of the state. the operators of these drinking spots are increasingly being patronized by alcohol beverage consumers. many of the alcohol consumers have formed the habits of going to these spots on daily basis, at working hours and stay into the night. according to babor and del boca (2003) alcohol is not an ordinary commodity; while it is linked with connotations of pleasure and sociability in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 69-79 71 the minds of many, its use has harmful consequences, particularly on rural households whose livelihood activities are seasonal, capital and labour intensive. the study therefore investigated:  alcohol consumption preference pattern in  rural communities of enugu state; and  effects of alcohol consumption on rural  livelihood, social and health life of rural areas methodology the study was conducted in enugu state. enugu north agricultural zone was randomly selected out of the three agricultural zones in enugu state. the zone is known for its involvement in production of highly-sought after palm wine. the population comprised heads of households. a multistage random sampling technique was used. the first stage involved simple random selection of three out of the seven local governments areas (lgas) in the zone. from each selected lgas, two town communities were randomly selected using simple random techniques, given a total of six town communities. two village communities were sampled from each town community by simple random method and a total of twelve village communities were used for the study. a list of heads of households was compiled in each of the selected villages using research assistants. four informants from the selected village were identified and used to stratified heads of households into alcohol consuming and non – alcohol consuming heads of households. ten alcohol consuming heads of households were selected using simple random techniques, giving a total of one hundred and twenty respondents. based on the dominance of alcohol consuming heads of households in the area, the available population (64) of non alcohol consuming heads of households was used. structured interview schedule was used to collect data for the study. alcohol preference pattern of the respondents captured issues on availability, preference, factors that influence preference, and others. the respondents were asked to indicate the available alcohol and preference, factors that influence choice of alcoholic beverage, frequency of consumption (number of time) and, income spent on alcohol consumption (#). to elicit information on influence of alcohol consumption on livelihood, data on livelihood activities, social and health life of alcohol consumers were compared with that of non alcohol consumers. respondents provided answers to questions on absence from work (number of time), number of work place accidents, size of farm (hectare), livestock (number), inputs used, injury sustained in the last 12 months (number), percentage of daily income spent on alcohol consumption road traffic accident in the last 12 months (number), number of spousal beating in the last 12 months, number of children unable to pay school fees, average number of meal per day and others. data were analysed using percentage. results and discussion alcohol preference pattern of respondents alcohol beverage availability and preference all the alcoholic beverages namely palm wine (100%), beer (100%), local gin (100 %) burukutu (41.7%) and spirit (89.2%) were available to the respondents (table1). however, the most preferred beverage was palm wine (50 %). only about 25%, 11%, 13 % expressed preference for beer, local gin and spirits/hot drinks, respectively. quite a small proportion (1.7%) of the respondents preferred burukutu. the result confirmed oshodin (1999), which reported that in ibadan area of nigeria, the most commonly consumed alcohol beverage was palm wine produced from the sap of palm tree. respondent’s preference for palm wine may be associated with its lower alcohol content, access, relatively lower price, popularity as local beverage and sociocultural importance. above all, palm wine is generally considered as cool or soft drink; while others are regarded as hot or hard beverage. traditionally, alcohol preference of an area often depends on the type of alcohol beverage produce in the area probably due to their relatively lower price. on the contrary, greenfacts (2006) opined that alcohol beverage preference of an area is no longer dependent on the type of alcohol beverage produced in the area due to increasing importation of beverages. nevertheless, homemade beverages are expected to be cheaper thus, ensuring continuing popularity particularly among poor population group (ellison, 2005). pattern of alcohol consumption and its effects….. 72 factors that influence choice of alcohol beverage the respondents indicated that choice of alcohol beverage consumed was influenced by availability (53%), ability to produce the beverage type (50 %), cost/relative prices (46.7 %) and prestige (43.3%) (table1). lesser proportion (25.0, 33.3, and 16.7%) of the respondents was influenced by taste, suitability for the body and advertisement, respectively. generally, the findings reveal that choice of alcohol beverage is a function of a mix of factors. although, alcohol beverage preference of a particular area depends on the type of alcoholic beverages produced in an area (who, 2004), the study confirms that access, relative prices, popularity. and sub group are also determinants. frequency of alcohol beverage consumption result in table 1 shows that 29.2% of the respondents consumed alcohol everyday of the week, while about 42% engaged in alcohol consumption for 2.-6 days in a week. only 4.2% of the respondents consumed alcohol once a month. overall, majority (70.8%) are frequent consumers of alcoholic beverages. this suggests harmful (binge/heavy episodic) pattern of drinking. according to babor and del boca (2003) binge drinking is mostly common among young people in developing country .often individuals attend such level of drinking for social reasons. health (2001) reports that it was identified as a predominant reason for drinking by people from a range of cultures in the developed and developing worlds. however, the social, economic and psychological consequences particularly on children and spouse are great. also time spent while drinking often competes with the time needed to carry on family life. .but more serious is the number/mix of alcohol consumed and how they are consumed. daily income spent on alcoholic beverages table 1 shows that majority (64.2%) of the respondents spent between 41 and 80 percent of their income on buying alcoholic beverage. a lesser number (27.5%) spent 1 to 40 percent of their daily income on alcohol; while about 8% spent greater than 81 percent in buying alcoholic beverages. most of the respondents spent more than half of their daily income in purchasing alcoholic beverages. table 1: percentage distribution of respondents by alcohol beverage availability, preference, factors that influenced preference, frequency of consumption and income spent on alcohol *alcoholic beverage available % palm wine 100 larger beer/stout 100 local gin 100 burukutu 41.7 spirits (other hot drinks) 89.2 preference palm wine 50.0 larger beer/stout 25.0 local gin 10.8 burukutu 1.7 spirits (other hot drinks) 12.5 *factors that influence choice of alcoholic beverages cost 46.7 taste 25.0 availability 53.3 ability to produce the beverage type 50.0 advertisement 16.7 for prestige 43.3 good for the body 33.3 frequency of consumption of alcohol every day of the week 29.2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 69-79 73 4-6 days in a week 23.3 2-3 days in a week 18.3 1 day in a week 8.3 2-3 days in a month 16.7 once a month 4.2 percentage daily income spent on alcohol 1-20 10.8 21-40 16.7 41-60 36.7 61-80 27.5 81-100 8.3 *multiple responses source: survey, 2009 this shows an uneconomical diversion of scarce within one month. no doubt, consistent occurrence of economic resource that could otherwise be used for this can precipitate domestic violence, indebtedness, and more useful needs of the family. in a similar study of broken homes, abandonment of children and poor alcohol use among two districts in botswana, nutrition of households. molamu and mcdonald (2006) reports that a significant proportion of household income was spent on liquor and as a result less cash was available for food, clothing and other essential items. this confirms assunta (2002) which opines that a rural labourer could spend his monthly salary in drinking effects of alcohol consumption on livelihood activities absence from work place results showed that 35% of alcohol consumers compared to 79.7% of non-alcohol consumers were regular in the work place (table 2). a significant proportion (56.7%) of alcohol consumers were absent from work place for 1 – 15 days in the past 12 months; while only 18.8% of non-alcohol consumers reported being absent from work place for similar days. alcohol consumers exhibited absence from work place more than the non alcohol consumers. the finding is in corroboration with klingemann and gmel’s (2001) which asserts that people with alcohol dependence and problem drinkers have higher rates of sickness-associated absence than other employees. he also noted that a number of studies have demonstrated an association between heavy drinking or alcohol abuse and unemployment. similarly a study conducted in ghana and nigeria among farmers shows that absenteeism from farms, loss of productivity and farm accident were the major concern of heavy drinkers of alcohol (yaro, 2006). absence from work place particularly among rural communities is detrimental to the economic activities of the respondents given the agrarian economy of the rural sectors. frequent absence from work will certainly affect productivity and subsequently income. it is possible that the days of absence from work place fall within the critical period of on-farm or off farm activities. thus, its attendant consequences on the livelihood of the respondents are not farfetched. number of work place accident majority (65.0%) of non-alcohol consumer had not experienced accidents in the work place, while only 23.4% of alcohol consumers expressed similar view (table 2). quite a significant number (76.6%) of alcohol consumers had work place accident between 1 and 9 times in the last 12 months. more alcohol consumers recorded accident in their work place. accidents of any form could negatively affect productivity because time and money are involved in treating the victim. moreover, such a situation may result to permanent incapacitation and sometime death of the victim, which invariably culminate in social and economic deprivation of the concerned family. room et al. (2002) also note that specific intoxicated events can also have lasting consequences through home accident and family violence. harmful drinking of an employee may result in accidents and this according to osiatynska (2004), causes severe damage to the pattern of alcohol consumption and its effects….. 74 coworkers and the work place. size of farm land cultivated (hectare) most (75.0%) alcohol consumers and about 64.0% non-alcohol consumers cultivated 1 to 2 hectare of farm land. about 21% of alcohol consumers cultivated between 3 and 6 hectare, while a greater proportion (37.6%) of non-alcohol consumers allotted the same size of farmland to farming. the study revealed that respondents are largely involved in production; however, the non-alcohol consumers are more committed to production. it is possible that the alcohol consumers might have taken to drinking for the purpose of relaxation, feeling of happiness and cheerfulness. according to saunders (1998) relaxation was one of the psychological benefits of drinking. unfortunately, most times this degenerate into binge drinking which is associated with, hyper-activity, sickness, sleeping and clumsy, and irresponsible behavior (bennett et al.,1998). above all, time spent while drinking often competes with the time needed to carry out economic activities. use of inputs table 2 shows that non-alcohol consumers (78.1%) used inorganic inputs more than the alcohol consumers (45.0%). also lesser proportion of alcohol consumers adopted pesticides (25.0%) and herbicides (12.5%) as against 31.3% (pesticides) and 25.0% (herbicides) of non-alcohol consumers who utilized similar inputs. however, improved seeds were used by greater percentage of alcohol consumers (22.55) compared to non-alcohol consumers (17.2%). generally, the non-alcohol consumers are more responsive to the use of modern improved technologies for enhanced production. it is not surprising because alcohol consumption competes with other needs both in terms of time and income. worst still, often priority is accorded to expenditure on alcohol particularly by alcohol dependant even to the detriment of necessities of life. although adoption of improved technologies may be both time and capital intensive, heavy dependence on traditional practices is very limited for improving productivity. number of livestock kept sheep, goat and pigs). a greater number (42.5%) of alcohol consumers compared to 39.1% of nonalcohol consumers were not engaged in rearing of sheep. the alcohol consumers (50.7%) kept between 1 and 8 sheep, while only 46.9% of nonalcohol consumers reared the same number of sheep. goat production was more popular among non alcohol consumers than alcohol consumer. about 69% non alcohol consumers reared 1 to 8 goats, while 47.4 % alcohol consumers kept the same number of goats. furthermore pig production was not very popular among both consumers (86.6%) and non consumers (78.2%). only about nine percent of consumers and nonconsumers each had 1 to 5 pigs. the finding reveals that both respondents are involved in rearing livestock. the alcohol consumers however, showed greater interest in rearing sheep probably because it is practically less labour and capital intensive. according to holtzer (2007) drinking establishments and/or clubs serve as a place to gather, a center separate from the world environment and from home. thus alcohol consumers may not have sufficient time and adequate technical know-how required for sustained production of some livestock. moreover, they are also prone to frequent disposal of livestock to make up for many competing needs. chicken table 2 further shows that majority (56.3%) of non-alcohol consumers kept between 1 and 10 local breeds of chickens compared to alcohol consumers (28.35). however, a greater proportion (45.0%) of alcohol consumers had 11 to 40 local chikens, while about 27% of non-alcohol consumers reared similar number. greater number of alcohol consumers are involved in local chicken production. it is not surprising because rearing of local chicken requires less attention, time, labour and other resources. unlike nonalcohol consumers, the alcohol consumers spend considerable time and days in drinking, thus may not be deeply committed in economic/household activities that are resource intensive. on the other hand, chicken rearing is traditionally a female dominated activity and this could explain the low proportion of respondents rearing chickens, effects of alcohol on social life of respondents effect of alcohol consumption on social life of consumers were discussed in terms number of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 69-79 75 times sustained injury, spousal beating, quarrel with neighbors and others. number of times sustained injury in the last 12 month table 3 shows that majority (81.35) of nonalcohol consumers had not sustained injury ; while about 485 of alcohol consumers had no injury in the last 12 months. similarly, greater number (46.75) of alcohol consumers as against 19.7% of non-consumer sustained injury 1 to 6 times. there is no doubt that injury sustained by alcohol consumers similar studies by osiatynska (2004) and garland (1999) is likely associated with binge drinking. reported that alcohol consumption is responsible for nearly 60 per cent types of disorder and injury. also a survey conducted in the united states of america found that farm residents who drank more frequently had significantly higher farm work injury incidence rates than others who consumed less frequently (stallones and xiang, 2003). however, grant and litvak (2004) opined that pattern of drinking is what best predicts whether they will experience positive or negative consequences of their alcohol consumption. according to the authors what is important is how a person drinks. nevertheless, high incidence of injury by consumers ultimately leads to financial drain and lower agricultural activities. frequency of road accident the non-alcohol consumers (85.9%) and alcohol consumers (51%) indicated that they had not been involved in any road traffic accident. a greater proportion (45.9%) of consumers and lesser number (14.0%) of non consumers expressed involvement in road traffic accidents between 1 and 6 times. the result reveals that more alcohol consumers have been victims of road traffic accident, than non-consumers. at times, such accidents may lead to permanent incapacitation of the victim and/or death leading to social and economic deprivation on the family. number of spouse beating substantial number of non-alcohol consumers (43.8%) and lesser number of alcohol consumers (28.3%) indicated that they had not experienced spousal beating. about 37% of consumers compared to 35.9% of non-consumers owned up having cases of spousal beating for 1 to 4 times in the last 12 months. generally both categories of respondents experienced spousal beating in their homes; however, greater proportion (71.7%) of alcohol consumers experienced such ills. the result is consistent with osiatynska’s (2004) who reported that alcohol consumption leads to family conflicts often related to domestic violence. also a study conducted in nigeria showed a strong association between domestic violence and alcohol use. alcohol use was involved in 57per cent of the cases in which a husband stabbed a wife (obot, 2000). regularity of quarrel with neighbours the non alcohol consumers (51.6%) compared to consumers (21.7%) revealed that they had never been involved in quarrels with neighbours. quite a significant proportion (31.7%) of consumers reported cases of conflict with neighbours very often, while only about 2% non consumers had similar experience. overall, majority (78.3%) of alcohol consumers as against (48.5%) non consumers had been involved in quarrel with neighbours, though in varying degrees. table 2: percentage distribution of respondents based on effect of alcohol consumption on livelihood activities livelihood activities consumers (n = 120) % non consumers (n 64) % no of days away from work since last 12 months none 35.0 79.7 1– 5 days 17.5 7.8 6– 10 days 19.2 6.3 11 – 15 days 20.0 4.7 16 – 20 days 8.4 1.6 number of work place accidents 1– 3 23.4 65.6 pattern of alcohol consumption and its effects….. 76 4– 6 25.0 34.6 7– 9 33.3 size of farmlands cultivated (hectares) 1– 2 75.0 64.1 3– 4 16.7 31.3 5– 6 4.2 6.3 7– 8 2.5 4.7 9– 10 1.7 1.6 use of inputs (multiple responses) inorganic fertilizer 45.0 78.1 pesticides 25.0 31.3 herbicides 12.5 25.0 improved seeds 22.5 17.2 industrially produced feeds 18.3 23.4 veterinary drugs 10.8 number of livestock kept sheep none 42.5 39.1 1– 4 32.2 26.6 5– 8 18.3 20.3 8– 12 7.0 14.1 goat none 48.4 25.0 1– 4 30.8 15.6 5– 8 16.6 53.1 9– 12 4.2 6.3 pig none 86.6 78.2 1– 5 9.2 9.4 6– 10 4.2 12.4 domestic fowl none 22.5 10.9 1– 10 28.3 56.3 11 – 20 20.8 10.9 21 – 20 14.2 9.4 31 – 40 10.0 6.3 41 – 50 4.2 6.3 source: survey 2009 in line with the findings, negative impacts of alcohol drinking were reported to include domestic violence, loss of wealth, indebtedness, less of social prestige and a loss of relationship with neighbours (www.addresources. alcohol and drug problem 79584_en.html.), and disruption of neighborhood harmony (osiatynska, 2004) this seems to contradict several assumptions and/or findings that alcohol consumption increases social network (saunders, 1998) and that sociability was identified as the predominant reason for drinking by people from a range of culture in the developed and developing countries. according to holtzer (2007) drinking tends to bind people together be it from shared experience, proximity with others in a drinking environment, or as a symbol of acceptance into a peer group. lyons et al. (2005), however, reported from a survey of social well-being and health in south wales that views among surveyed respondents on whether drinking expanded a person’s social network were mixed. whereas the majority (65 per cent) of respondents was of this opinion, substantial minority (27 per cent) stated it did asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 69-79 77 not enhance one’s social circle and indeed not restrict it, especially if drinking became a frequent event. practically, social network in terms of number of friends and acquaintances and a person’s connectedness can be enhanced (saunders, 1998) but the extent to which it extend to neighbor is questionable. dhital, (2001) concludes that impact of alcohol included double violence, loss of wealth and indebtedness, loss of social prestige and bad relationship with neighbours. number of children unable to pay school fees majority (59.4%) of non-alcohol consumers were able to pay school fees for all their children, while only about 29% of consumers expressed ability to do so. in other words 70.9% of consumers against 40.6% of non alcohol consumers were unable to pay school fees for their children. this is practically possible because alcohol consumption is associated with diversion of scarce resource to alcohol which could have been otherwise used for meeting important family needs. according to bonu (2004) alcohol use can reduce household income through morbidity associated with drinking habit among the consuming individual, resulting in increasing medical expenditure and loss of income due to lost wages and sometimes resulting in the premature death of sole wage earners in a household. children affected are exposed to early child labour, and hardship and at high risk of problems. number of meals households take table 2 shows that greater number (70.3 %) of non alcohol consumers had square -meal per day, while about 335 of consumers’ households had similar meal status. a significant proportion (30.8%, 36.7%) of consumers provided meal once and twice for their households, respectively. on the contrary, only 15.6% and 14.1% non consumers ensured once and twice daily meal for their households, respectively. the result revealed that households of non alcohol consumers were better fed compared to that of alcohol consumers. this is supported by molamu and mcdonald (2006) who reported that child neglect is an increasing problem when parents are intoxicated so early in the day that they are not able to prepare food for their children, even if there is food available a concern according to the study is that some parent will sell food to buy alcohol while others will give alcohol to their children as a food substitute and to starve off hunger. other reasons include diversion of income, poor commitment to household livelihood strategies and spousal conflict. ensuring household food security among rural communities in particular is a global, national and community concern. involvement of household heads in alcohol consumption /episodic /heavy dependent remains a threat to actualizing this and goal of other development interventions. conclusion alcohol dependent or episodic/binge drinking particularly among rural communities are increasing in an alarming level. while many rural communities are decimated with alcohol business enterprise, the populace is increasingly exhibiting new patterns of drinking. the findings show that among beverages available, palm wine was the most popularly consumed. the result indicated an episodic altitude to alcohol consumption with a significant proportion of income committed to it. choice of alcohol beverage largely depended on availability, ability to produce the beverage and cost. the alcohol consumers were less committed to livelihood strategies and amassed a lot of social and health problems for themselves and their household. alcohol consumption leaves several negative consequences on rural livelihood evidenced by low involvement in economic activities, the proportion of income spent in alcohol, absenteeism, work place accident, disharmony with neighbours, spousal biting and others the study therefore recommends that policy makers and development planners should enact policy to control the proliferation and operation of alcohol enterprises in rural communities. more importantly is the regulation of the type of alcohol marketed. the need for orientation of rural people on the attendant consequences of episodic/binge drinking is also expedient. government should promote programmes aimed at improving rural livelihood strategies and empowerment of households to help cushion the effect of alcohol consumption pattern of alcohol consumption and its effects….. 78 on individual and households. table 3: percentage distribution of respondents based on the effects of alcohol consumption on social life social and health life consumers (n = 120) % non consumers (n 64) % number of times sustained injury in the last 12 months none 48.3 81.3 1– 3 times 30.0 16.6 4– 6 times 16.7 3.1 7– 9 times 5.0 no of road traffic accident(s) in the last 12 months none 51.7 85.9 1– 3 36.7 10.9 4– 6 9.2 3.1 7– 9 2.5 no of spousal beating in the last12 months none 28.3 43.8 1– 2 23.4 28.1 3– 4 13.3 7.8 5– 6 35.0 20.3 no of children unable to pay school fees for none 29.1 59.4 1– 5 37.5 28.1 6– 10 16.7 7.8 11 – 15 9.2 16 – 20 7.5 1.6 no of meals the household takes per day on average once 30.0 15.6 twice 36.7 14.1 thrice 32.5 70.3 regularity of quarrel with neighbor very often 31.7 1.6 often 23.3 3.1 occasionally 10.8 6.3 seldom 12.5 37.5 never 21.7 51.6 source: survey 2009 views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abderhalden, i. (2007). the globalization of alcohol abuse. bulletin von medium schweiz, 06, november. assunta, m. (2002). the alcohol problems in malaysia. the globe, 2001-2002, special issues 4, 18-21. bennett, i. a., janca, a., grant, b. f., & sartorius, n. (2004). boundaries between normal and pathological drinking: a cross-cultural comparison. alcohol health and research world, 1(3), 192-194. bennett, l. a., campillo, c., chandra, c. p., shekar, c. p., & gureje, o. (1998). alcoholic beverage consumption in india, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 69-79 79 mexico and nigeria. alcohol, health and research world, 22, 245-250. babor, t. f., & del boca, f. k. (2003). treatment matching in alcoholism. cambridge university press. bonu, s. (2004). household tobacco and alcohol use and child health: an exploratory study from india. health policy, 70, 72-75. dhital, e. (2001). alcohol and drug in nepal: with reference to children. kathmandu, child workers in nepal concerned center. ellison, r. c. (2005). importance of patterns of alcohol consumption” circulation 2000, 112 -925 pp. 3818 – 3819. grant, m. and j, litvak (eds.). (2004). drinking patterns and their consequences. washington, taylor and francis. greenfacts, (2006). scientific facts on alcohol: information on our three level structures. (http://www.greenfacts.org/en/alcohol/retr ievedon3/5/08. garland, (1999). medieval feminist forum. 33(1), 51-52. available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/mff/vol33/iss1/9. holtzer, c. (2007). critical steps to developing a unified theory of alcohol use. unpublished masters thesis presented to the school of public health, university of pittshurgh. pp. 18-32. klingemann, h., & gmel, g. (eds.) (2001). mapping the social consequences of alcohol consumption, dorddrecht, kluwer academic publishers. lyons, r. a., lo., s. v., monaghan, s. & little page, b. n. (2005). moderate drinking improves health. british medical journal, 310326. medina-mora, m. e. (2000). mexico. alcohol and emerging markets: patterns, problems and responses. by m. grant. (ed). philadelphia: brunner/mazel. pp. 263-264. molamu, l., & macdonald, d. (2006). alcohol abuse among the basarwa of the kgalagadi and ghanzi districts in botswana. drugs: education, prevention and policy, 3(2), 145-152. obot, i. s. (2000). the measurement of drinking patterns and alcohol problems in nigeria. journal of substance abuse, 12(1 – 2), 169-175. oshodin, o. g. (1999). nigeria. in d. b. health. (ed.) international handbook on alcohol and culture. west report, c. t: greenwood press, pp. 217-223. osiatynska, e. (2004). alcohol and health, http://64.233.169.104/seach?9=cache: naudqbgesyj.www.q4q.nl/alcohol/bo ok.pdf and h… retrieved on 28/1/08. room, r., jernigan., d., calini_marlatt, b., gureye, o., makela, m., marshall. (2002). alcohol in developing societies: a public health approach. finnish foundation for alcohol studies in collaboration with the world health organization, pp. 79-114. saunders, j. b. (1998). defining beneficial patterns of drinking: a clinical perspective. paper presented at the second international conference on drinking patterns and the consequences, a thematic meeting of the kettil bruun society, perth. stallones, l., & xiang, h. (2003). alcohol consumption pattern and work related injuries among colorado farm residents. american journal of preventive medicine, 25(1), 25-30. world health organization (2004). global status report on alcohol, geneva. www.add.resources.org retrieved on 10/3/08. yaro, j. a. (2006). is deagrarianization real? a study of livelihood activities in rural northern ghana. journal of modern african studies, 44(1), 125-150. http://www.greenfacts.org/en/alcohol/retrievedon3/5/08 http://www.greenfacts.org/en/alcohol/retrievedon3/5/08 http://www.greenfacts.org/en/alcohol/retrievedon3/5/08 http://ir.uiowa.edu/mff/vol33/iss1/9 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 3 march 2013. † corresponding author socio-economic determinants of seed yam production in oyi local government area of anambra state okeke daniel, c. † (department of agricultural education, nwafor orizu college of education nsugbe, nigeria) okeke charity c. (department of agric economics and extension, nnamdi azikiwe university, awka, nigeria) udeora samuel n. (department of agricultural education, nwafor orizu college of education nsugbe, nigeria) citation: okeke daniel, c., okeke charity, c. and udeora samuel, n. (2013) “socio-economic determinants of seed yam production in oyi local government area of anambra state”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 148-153. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 148-153 148 author(s) okeke daniel, c. department of agricultural education, nwafor orizu college of education nsugbe, nigeria okeke charity, c. department of agric economics and extension, nnamdi azikiwe university, awka, nigeria udeora samuel, n. department of agricultural education, nwafor orizu college of education nsugbe, nigeria socio-economic determinants of seed yam production in oyi local government area of anambra state abstract this study assessed the socio-economic determinants of seed yam production in oyi local government area of anambra state. purposive and simple random sampling procedure was used respectively to select four communities and 120 respondents for the study. the data obtained were used to analyse the influence of socio economic factors on seed yam production and also determine the technical efficiency level of the seed yam farmers using descriptive statistics and stochastic production frontier functions. the result indicated that 88 percent of the farmers were below 60 years of age, 86 percent had more than 10 years farming experience and only 16 percent had no formal education. the findings also indicated that the effect of the socio economic variables such as age, experience, education level, household size and farm size were positive and significant. it is recommended among others that credit facilities should be provided especially to small holder farmers to engender their production capacity. keywords: socio-economic, technical efficiency, stochastic, determinants, seed yam introduction for a sustainable economic development of the developing economies, there is absolute need to increase the productivity of the agricultural sector. yam production and marketing are major sources of employment and income for 70% of the farming household population of over 140 million people (nbs, 2006). among the world’s producing countries, nigeria is known to have the greatest share of the world’s production (ogbonna, 2006). nigeria remains as the top producer of yam with annual production of 36.72 million metric tones (mt) (orkwor, 1998; jaussen, 2001; fao, 2008). yam production in nigeria according to idachaba (2004) is a more financially rewarding enterprise than groundnut, rubber and cotton production. between 1991 and 1998, monetary value of total yam production surpassed that of any food crop in nigeria (cbn, 2000). it commands the highest sociocultural value among food crops in nigeria hence is heralded as the “king” of all arable crops because it earns more money per unit weight than other food crops (okwor, 1998). over 95% of total production according to ugwu (1996) is devoted for human consumption such that almost all the yams produced in nigeria are consumed internally. the very little exported through informal sector is not recorded in international trade statistics and hence, is very difficult to estimate the volume of yam trade that moves through this sector (lev and shriver, 1998; ugwu, 1999). in nigeria, the procurement of the required seed yam for ware yam production, its reoccurring scarcity and high cost during planting season, is a major constraint to seed yam production (iroukwe et al., 2007). the seed yam constitute over 33% of the cost outlay in yam production and limits the size of yam farms under traditional cropping method (iroukwe et al., 2012). again, ikwelle et al. (2003) also stated that bulk, quantity, high cost of cultivable seed yams, and high cost of labour and staking materials requirements are among the major constraints to yam production and improvement in nigeria. socio-economic determinants of seed ... 149 it is necessary therefore to ascertain the factors that hinder the production of seed yams and the constraints encountered by the farmers. this study will examine the socio-economic determinants of seed yam production in oyi local government area of anambra state, influence of the socio economic factors on productivity and, the farmers’ level of technical efficiency. materials and methods the study was carried out in oyi local government area of anambra state. the local government is situated in anambra north. the major crops cultivated in the area are cassava, yam, rice, maize and leafy vegetables. sole cropping, mixed farming and mixed cropping are the major farming systems and the farmers integrate the growing of different crop with the rearing of animals to promote food security (ugwumba and uzuegbunam, 2010). the primary data for the study was obtained through structural questionnaire. a purposive and simple random sampling procedure was used in the selection of the communities and the respondents for the study. the first stage was the selection of four out of the six communities that make up the local government area which was done purposively as they are the major producers of seed yam. the second stage of sampling was the selection of thirty farmers from each of these communities to give a total of 120 respondents for the study. descriptive statistics (means, frequency distribution, percentages) and regression analysis was used to analyse the data collected. model specification y = 0 + 1x1 + u .................…. (1) y = seedyam output in kg x1 = independent variable (socio-economic characteristics) 0 = intercept parameters 1 = slope of estimated parameters u = error term y = 0 + 1x1 + 2x2 + 3x3 + ……. nxn + u ……….. (2) where: x1 = age of farmers in years x2 = marital status – a dummy 1 for married and 0 for single x3 = sex of respondents x4 = household size x5 = level of education (years) x6 = farm size (ha) x7 = farming experience (years) x8 = occupation u = error term the technical efficiency level of the yam farmers was determined using the stochastic frontier model of the form (akerele & akinleye, 2010) y = f (x1, x2 ……….. xn) y = 0 + 1x1 + 2x2 + 3x3 + …….nxn + v u ……….. (3) v = a symmetric error assumed to be independently distributed which accounts for the variation in output due to factors beyond the farmers control (weather, luck, measurement errors etc). u = random error, what is left for the farmer to reach outer bound of the production frontier or operate on the frontier. where: y = output of yam in tons x1 = farm size (ha) x2 = labour input in mandays x3 = quantity of yam sett (seed) x4 = capital (n) x5 = quantity of fertilizer (kg) the parameters were tested at 5 and 10 percent level of significance. results and discussion analysis of socio economic characteristics of the seed yam farmers in table 1 show that majority of the farmers (88.3 percent) was below 60 years of age. this implies that they are in their productive age. also, about 86 percent were male indicating male dominance in seed yam cultivation. most women are engaged in their husbands’ farms. the result also indicated that 77 percent of the farmers are married; only 23 percent of the sample population is single. male farmers usually engage in early marriage to enable them asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 148-153 150 exploit the benefits of family labour. married men according to awotide et al. (2009) were more allocatively efficient than their single counter parts. table 1: distribution of the socio-economic characteristics of the farmers socio economic characteristic frequency percentage (%) age < 30 31 – 45 46 – 60 > 60 28 40 38 14 23.3 33.3 31.7 11.7 sex male female 17 103 14.2 85.8 marital married single 92 28 76.7 23.3 farming experience (years) 1 – 5 6 – 10 11 – 15 16 – 20 > 20 15 26 30 37 12 12.5 21.7 25.0 30.8 10.0 education (years) no formal education primary secondary tertiary 19 62 26 13 15.8 51.7 21.7 10.8 household size (persons) 1 – 5 6 – 10 > 10 55 62 3 45.8 51.7 2.5 occupation farming trading artisan civil servant others 37 40 23 18 2 30.8 33.3 19.2 15.0 1.7 farm size (hg) < 1 1 – 2 > 2 62 47 11 51.7 39.1 9.2 source: field survey, 2012 it was found that about 65 percent of the farmers had above 10 years farming experience. this implies more efficiency in productive activity as, kalirajan (1981) and kalirajan and fllinn (1983), noted that farming experience is directly related to technical efficiency. only 16 percent of the respondents had no formal education. education enhances technical advancement in agricultural production for maximum returns on investment. again, about 52 percent of the sampled respondents have between 6-10 persons in their households implying reduced labour constraints thereby leading to increases in productivity. bravo-ureta and pinheiro (1997) opined that larger households might utilize family labour beyond the point where socio-economic determinants of seed ... 151 the marginal product of labour is equal to the wage rate. explaining the determinants of yam farmers’ output. the regression results in table 2, showed the socio-economic factors that influence yam production. the variables were fitted into four functional forms:linear, semi-log, double log and exponential forms. the variables tested include age, gender, marital status, experience, education level, household size, farm size, and hired labour. table 2: result of regression analysis variables linear semi-log double-log exponential constant 1236.61 (2.340) 628.64 (0.424) 6.529 (5.045) 7.143 (15.116) x1 -0.033 (-0.271) 0.033 (0.184)* -0.094 (-0.668) -0.085 (-0.721) x2 -2.225 (-2.276) -0.218 (-2.228)** -0.355 (-3.866)* -0.373 (-4.148)* x3 -0.061 (-0.543) -0.38 (-0.541) -0.040 (-0.428) -0.52 (-0.592) x4 0.018 (0.148) 0.018 (0.116)* 0.051 (0.269) 0.121 (0.938)** x5 0.052 (0.501) 0.043 (0.510) 0.028 (0.289) 0.012 (0.128) x6 0.083 (0.876) 0.082 (0.871) 0.086 (0.896)*** 0.147 (1.578) x7 0.232 (2.188)** 0.214 (2.077) 0.276 (2.886)* 0.261 (2.646) x8 -0.236 (-2.242)** -0.66 (-1.830)*** -0.171 (-1.826) -0.232 (-2.434)** adjusted r 2 0.262 0.697 0.533 0.68 f-value 1.627* 1.502* 3.786* 3.780* figures in parenthesis are t-values; * = 1%, ** = 5%, *** = 10% level of significance source: field survey, 2012 the lead equation (semi-log) was chosen based on the statistical criteria, having the highest adjusted r-square, highest level of significance and expected signs. the adjusted r2 value of 0.697 obtained indicated that 69.7 percent variation in seed yam production could be attributed to the combined influence of the socio-economic variables. the result indicated that the effect of such socio-economic variables as age, experience, education level, household size and farm size were positive and significant. this means that they are significant determinant of seed yam production in the study areas, therefore, increase in these variables will increase seed yam production level. the other variables, gender, marital status and hired labour negatively influence seed yam production, implying that their increase may decrease the seed yam production level. the result in table 3 indicated that farm size, hired labour, family labour capital and fertilizer were critical inputs in rice production in the study area. the coefficient of farm size is significant at 1 percent hence is an important variable in yam production. the use of chemical input fertilizer was significant to the output at 1% level. this shows that output of seed yam is greatly affected by the use of fertilizer. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 148-153 152 table 3: stochastic frontier regression result variables parameters coefficient standard error production frontier constant  6.5671* 0.0745 farm size  0.0064* 0.005 labour (family)  0.4012** 0.0063 labour (hired)  0.11461 0.0314 capital  0.3632** 0.0007 fertilizer  0.0013* 0.0003 vt 1.1802 0.4813 ut 0.3848 0.0479 technical efficiency (mean) 0.6138 *, **, *** = coefficients significant at 1%, 5% and 10% levels source: field survey, 2012 the pressure on arable land is due to population increase in most developing countries, and there is not enough land to practice fallow, rotation with legumes to make up for lack of mineral fertilizer (oluwatayo et al., 2008). in view of this, louise fresco (2003) said that organic agriculture, which eliminates the use of synthetic inputs, does not present a feasible alternative. the mean technical efficiency of 0.6048 (60 percent) implies that the efficiency of the inputs used was low and there were 40 percent inefficient usage of production resources. conclusion and recommendation this study analysed the socio-economic determinants of seed yam production in oyi local government area of anambra state. the variables which contribute significantly to the seed yam production include farm size, hired and family labour, fertilizer, capital, farming experience, educational level, household size. based on the findings, the following recommendations and made:  investing in agriculture to raise productivity through provision of credit facilities especial to the smallholder farmers.  more extension agents should be employed to facilitate easy adoption of modern techniques to increase productivity of the farmers.  the rural household education should be improved through establishment of rural distant education centres by tertiary institutions. this will facilitate improvement in the seed yam farmers’ technical efficiency. references akerele, e. o. & akinleye, s. o. (2010). socio economic determinants of maize production in yewa north local government area, ogun state. proceedings of the 24th annual national conference of farm management association of nigeria, 11-14 oct., 292-297. awotide, d. o., ololagbose, o., kehinde, a. l. & bamiro, o. m. (2009). credit access, farm size and cost inefficiency in maize production in yewa north area, ogun state, nigeria. faman journal, 10(12), 22-29. bravo-ureta b. e. & pinheiro, a. e. (1997). technical, economic and allocative efficiency in peasant farming. evidence from the dominican republic. the development economics, 35(1), 48-67. cbn (2000). the agrarian system in changing economy and implications for development. research department cbn, realm communications pp. 33-60. fao (2008). faostat. statistical division of the food and agricultural organization rome italy. idachaba, f. s. (2004). policy requirements for root crops market economy in africa. proceeding 8th triennial symposium istrcab. iita ibadan, pp. 1-4. ikwelle, m. c., ezulike, t. o. & eke-okoro, o. n. (2003). contribution of root and tuber crops to nigerian economy. proceedings of the eight triennial symposium of the socio-economic determinants of seed ... 153 international society for tropical root crops, africa branch (istrc-ab) held at iita, ibadan, nov. 12 – 16, 2001, pp.13-18. iroukwe, a. g., ogbonna m. c. & olojede, j. c. (2007). determinants of seed yam production by woman farmers in ohafia agricultural zone of abia state nigeria. international journal of agricultural and rural development, 10(12), 96-101 iroukwe, a. g., asiedu, r. & nwosu a. c. (2012). utilization of seed yam production technology by small-holder yam farmers in south eastern nigeria. proceedings of the 26th annual conference of farm management association of nigeria, october 15th – 19th, 2012 janssens, m. (2001). root & tuber crops. in r. h. raemaekers r. h. crop production in tropical africa. dgic brussels, belgium: 165-275. kalirajan, k. (1981). an econometric analysis of yield variability in paddy production. canadian journal of agricultural economics, 29(3), 287-294. kalirajan, k. & flinn, j. c. (1983). the measurement of farm specific technical efficiency. pakistan journal of applied economics, 2(2), 167-180. lev, l. s. & shriver, a. l. (1998). a trend analysis of yam production. area, yield and trade (1961-1996) in: j. berthaud, n. bricas and j. mardand (eds). yam, old plant and crop for the future. actes due seminaire inter. cirad intra-orstom-coraf. june 1997. mantpellier, france: 11-20 louis, f. (2003). fertilizer and the future. fao ag21 magazine nbs (2006). statistical year book. 2006. nigerian bureau of statistics (nbs), abuja, nigeria. ogbonna, m. c. (2006). trend of yam production, area, productivity and trade in nigeria (1961-2006). nigerian journal of farm management, 12(2), 1-8. okwor, g. c. (1998). yam production in nigeria. in j. berthand, n. bricas and j. mardand (eds). yam, old plant and crop for the future. actes du seminaire inter.ciradorstom-coraf. june 1997. montpelliar, france: 81-85. oluwatayo, i. b., sekumade, a. b. & adesoji, s. a. (2008). resource use efficiency of maize farmers in rural nigeria: evidence from ekiti state. world journal of agricultural sciences, 4(1), 91-99. okwor, g. c., asiedu, r. & ekanayake, i. j. eds. (1998). food yams. advances in research. iita and nrcri, nigeria. ugwu, b. o. (1996). increasing cassava production in nigeria and prospects for sustaining the trend. outlook on agriculture, 25(3), 179-185. ugwu, b. o. (1999). policy imperatives for sustainable production of root and tuber crops in nigeria. in: a. c. nwosu, c. u. nwajiuba, and j. a. mbanasor (eds). agricultural transformation in nigeria. proceedings of a national conference in honour of prof. m. o. ijere, held at fed. university of agriculture, umudike, abia state, nigeria, 24-26th august, 1999: 58-64. ugwumba, c. o. a. & uzuegbunam, c. o. (2010). value addition to soybean (glycine max). a case of traditional small scale soymilk production in awka agricultural zone, anambra state, nigeria. proceedings of the 24th annual national conference of farm management association of nigeria. oct., 2010; 283-287. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 321 the impact of integrated agricultural research for development on collective marketing among smallholder farmers of southern africa kefasi nyikahadzoi post doctoral fellow, forum for agricultural research in africa (fara), c/0 bunda college, lilongwe malawi. shepherd siziba post doctoral fellow, forum for agricultural research in africa (fara), c/0 bunda college, lilongwe malawi. nelson mango social scientist, international centre for tropical agriculture (ciat), mt pleasant harare, zimbabwe. byron zamasiya socio-economist, international centre for tropical agriculture (ciat), mt pleasant harare, zimbabwe. adenkule adewale adekunhle forum for agricultural research in africa (fara), pmb ct 173 accra, ghana abstract 1 this article demonstrates how integrated agricultural research for development (iar4d) impacts on collective marketing among smallholder farmers of southern africa through increased crop productivity, yields and income. we use a quasi-experimental design to compare outcomes under iar4d and under two other states namely conventional approach and non-intervention. the study relies on primary data collected from 665 households during baseline and end line survey. results from the study show that iar4d had a positive and significant impact on improving collective marketing in intervention sites as compared to the control sites. in conclusion, the paper demonstrates empirically that collective marketing can help smallholder farmers to reduce barriers to entry into lucrative agricultural markets through iar4d by lowering transaction costs of accessing input and produce markets. this finding is particularly very important given that middlemen and small traders face huge transaction costs of dealing with many sellers each selling small quantities. keywords: collective action, smallholders, africa, agriculture, development, marketing 1 corresponding author‟s details: kefasi nyikahadzoi email: knyika@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:knyika@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 322 introduction there has been a marked fall in income poverty in all regions of the world except in sub saharan africa, where there has been an increase in both the incidence and absolute number of people who live on less than us$1 per day (united nations, 2012). within the whole region, rural poverty still accounts for 90% of total poverty and approximately 80% of the poor still dependent largely rain fed on agriculture (morales, 2006). literature argues that among other production constraining factors, smallholder farmers also have small nutrient depleted landholdings and therefore cannot produce enough surpluses for sale (sanchez, 2002). their inability to produce larger volumes of well sorted and graded quality crops means that they receive lower prices from traders who would pay for bigger quantities. as individuals, they face difficulties to transport their produce to wholesale buyers, have little bargaining power and are at the mercy of itinerant traders. this leaves them to deal with unscrupulous small market vendors who offer them very low prices for their produce (barret, 2008). consequently, most sub saharan smallholder farmers are caught up in a vicious cycle of semi subsistence poverty with low output, low incomes, low savings and low investments as no single buyer is willing to incur transaction costs of dealing with many uncoordinated small sellers each selling small quantities. the recent structural adjustment policies implemented by governments within sub saharan africa in the early 1990s brought significant changes in the national and global food markets (jayne and jones, 1997). trade liberalization, price de-control, imports of cheap foods, increased quality consciousness and expanding agribusiness brought a new culture in the agricultural market that smallholder farmers are not familiar with (dash and purohit, 2006; barret, 2008). smallholder farmers are ill equipped to take advantage of these developments in national and global markets. unlike their counterparts – large corporations, smallholder farmers still lack appropriate access to production enhancing technologies, investment and agricultural and market information. to survive in this borderless economic environment, smallholders must seek new ways of competing in the market by unlocking the necessary opportunities for improved income (dorward et al., 2004). improved market participation accords smallholder farmers an opportunity to specialise based on comparative advantage and enjoyment of welfare gains (boughton et al., 2007). literature suggests that collective marketing is one of the institutional arrangements that can increase the competitive advantage of smallholder farmers in an increasingly commercialized and integrated world market (narrod et al.. 2009; world bank, 2008; dash and purohit, 2006). the institutional arrangement enables smallholder farmers to produce the required quantity and quality for a specified market (valentinov, 2007). collective marketing reduces cost of getting the product to the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 323 markets and improves the bargaining power of farmers. according to markelova and meinzen-dick (2009), collective marketing reduces transaction costs and enable smallholders to access services that private sector or government would not provide for. integrated agricultural research for development (iar4d), a concept promoted under the auspices of sub saharan african challenge programme (ssa cp) seeks to improve the competitiveness of smallholders in the market (adekunle et al., 2012). iar4d promotes institutional innovations such as collective marketing that reduces transaction costs of dealing with several uncoordinated production units. it promotes the interaction of smallholder farmers, farmer organisations, researchers and other service providers, ngos and market chain actors in identifying and developing potential business opportunities for smallholders and private sector (world bank, 2007). iar4d seeks to build networks that will continuously seek ways of overcoming limiting factors in policy, markets and territorial contexts and valorise enabling factors in these domains through applied research (hawkins et al., 2009). iar4d put emphasis on lundy et al.‟s (2002) proposition, which argues that „farmers must produce for the market rather than market what they produce‟. it argues that research and consented effort must be put in easing factors driving changes in supply and mobilise farmers to market collectively – to benefit from changes in market. the integrated agricultural research for development concept has been experimented with for the last two years within the zimbabwe, malawi and mozambique pilot learning site. this paper seeks to investigate the impact of iar4d approach to agricultural development on promoting collective marketing of agricultural produce. the rest of the paper is arranged as follows: section 2 discusses the context of integrated agricultural research for development in agriculture system followed by the description of the approach used in the study in section 3. while section 4 presents the description of the study sites where the study was conducted within the zimbabwe, malawi and mozambique pilot learning site. section 5 presents an outline of the empirical model and estimation strategy used in the analysis of data in this paper. the results and discussion, conclusion and recommendations are dealt with in sections 6 and 7 respectively. context of iar4d in agriculture system collective action is a necessary but not a sufficient condition that allows smallholders to fully take advantage of their competitive position in the global market. royal tropical institute, (2008) argues that smallholders are less attentive to market signals and on their own they may not be able to take advantage of changes in markets. figure 1 below suggests that smallholder farmers do not have a direct control over factors driving market changes (such as globalisation, urbanisation – see figure 1). however, it‟s in their choice and control to establish institutions of collective action which asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 324 enables them to acquire market information, create new markets opportunities, attain economies of scale, make consistent supplies to a given market at lower production and transaction costs. integrated agricultural research for development (iar4d), a concept promoted under the auspices of the sub saharan african challenge programme, seeks to improve the competitiveness of smallholders in the market (hawkins et al., 2009). iar4d does not claim to have an influence on the factors driving changes in the market (figure 1). it however seeks to influence market indirectly through a number of activities. iar4d seeks to promote adoption of relevant technological innovations that will increase production at least cost. to achieve these broad objectives, iar4d promotes institutional innovations such as collective marketing that reduces transaction costs of dealing with several uncoordinated production units. it promotes the interaction of smallholder farmers, farmer organisations, researchers and other service providers, ngos, market chain actors in identifying and developing potential business opportunities for smallholders and private sector. iar4d seeks to build networks that will continuously seek ways of overcoming limiting factors in policy, markets and territorial contexts and valorise enabling factors in these domains through applied research. iar4d put emphasis on lundy et al.‟s (2002) proposition, which argues that „farmers must produce for the market rather than market what they produce‟. it argues that research and consented effort must be put in easing factors driving changes in supply (figure 1) and mobilise farmers to market collectively – to benefit from changes in market. collective action direct influence (2) smallholder (4) factors driving changes in market globalization, urbanization, food quality standards, processed foods, disposable income, foreign investments, supermarkets (1) iar4d (5) the market (3) factors driving changes in supply chain technology, investment/finance, institutions, management, competition, information integration, procurement, retailing practices asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 325 indirect influence missing link direct influence and iar4d control modified from dash and purohit, (2006) figure 1: how iar4d can promote collective marketing there are debates whether the tendency towards collective action is a spontaneous process or a deliberately created process. literature argues that if smallholder farmers are confronted with unrealised collective gains, they will create institutions that make it in their private interest to make socially correct decisions (norman, 1982). some scholars argue that social engineering by technical experts cannot build social capital necessary for collective action (johnson et al., 2002). they argue that a collective is a self-organising system. daumann (2007) argues that in a free market economy with rational agents, the spontaneous institutional change may drive the economy towards a set of efficient outcomes. these efficient outcomes are a product of human action and not human design. the constructivism school view human institutions as arising from intentional acts. according to the social constructivist approach, instructors have to adapt to the role of facilitators (huang, 2001). the social constructivist approach emphasizes facilitated learning, which is the approach that iar4d has adopted. it is important to investigate which of the two processes – the unintentional and the constructivist approaches is promoting collective action among the smallholders farmers. the approach in this paper we use a quasi-experimental design to compare outcomes under iar4d and under two other possible states namely conventional approach and non-intervention. this involves experimental district, which receives the treatment, and two control groups, which do not receive treatment. according to binam et al., (2011), randomization under ideal conditions allows mean program impact to be assessed through simple comparisons of outcomes for treated and control groups. the districts were stratified on the basis of market access and agro-climatic potential. for each intervention (or iar4d) district there is one controls district (non iar4d), which were selected using stratified random sampling method. in the iar4d district, five villages were then selected using stratified random methods. these were sampled from the „clean‟ villages. from the control district, five clean and five conventional villages were then selected using stratified random sampling techniques. “clean” villages generally refer to villages in which there is absence or very minimal level of any agriculture developmental intervention in the last 2-5 years. conventional villages are villages with projects identifying, promoting and disseminating technologies in the last 25 years. in each of the selected villages ten asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 326 households were randomly selected for monitoring and impact evaluation. the objective of the programme is to determine whether or not iar4d has more impact in the intervention district relative to the clean and counterfactual districts. figure 2: random selection of sites and household source: ssa cp, 2008 in this study we use two panel data sets collected from zimbabwe malawi and mozambique. the first one was collected at the inception of the programme in 2008 and it solicits for baseline conditions of the smallholder farmers. the second data set was compiled after two years of project implementation in 2010. each survey had a sample size of 1 200 households. nevertheless, data on some households were dropped during analysis. the sampling frame is composed of only those smallholders who participated in both surveys. this is to ensure that we deal with the farmers with the same conceptualisation point, with changes in perception and attitude based on the same time frame. consequently, the evidence presented in this paper is based on data for 665 households. table 1 shows the distribution of households by treatment. table 1: distribution of sample country number of farmers total clean conventional intervention zimbabwe 68 67 81 216 malawi 93 89 68 250 mozambique 62 69 68 199 total 223 225 217 665 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 327 the household data was collected using a structured questionnaire that sought information on general household characteristics, awareness and use of improved technologies, access and use of improved agricultural inputs, marketing of agricultural produce and interaction among key stakeholders in the iar4d district. description of the study sites the zimbabwe-mozambique-malawi pilot learning site (zzm pls) is a corridor through north east zimbabwe, central mozambique and southern malawi. the zmm pls is dominated by the maize-mixed farming system. principal livelihoods are based on maize, tobacco, cotton, grain legumes, small ruminants, and poultry and off-farm work activities. the maize-mixed system is currently in crisis because smallholder farmers have reduced levels of use of science-based inputs resulting from shortages of seed of improved varieties, fertilizers and agro-chemicals and the high input to output price ratios. there are also problems of declining farm sizes and draught animal ownership; reduced labor supply due to hiv/aids; and falling migrant remittances. soil fertility is declining, yields are falling and smallholder farmers are reverting to extensive production practices. this is resulting in mutually self-reinforcing mechanisms of increasing land degradation and, in turn, accelerating poverty and food insecurity. drought and market volatility result in vulnerability, thereby reinforcing the vicious cycles. despite the current crisis, there exist significant opportunities for long term agricultural growth and high potential for poverty reduction. in the more densely populated areas with better services, strategies include intensification and diversification out of maize into higher value cash crops such as vegetables and livestock combined with increasing off-farm income activities with strong linkages to agriculture. implementation of these strategies depends on productive and profitable technologies for improved soil fertility management, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management (ipm), private sector investment for the development of viable input and output markets and farmers‟ collective action (bulk buying, rotational savings, joint marketing, and rural microfinance institutions). diversification could also involve development of low-lying areas for irrigated or rain-fed vegetable production. in the low population density areas priorities include area expansion and intensification through zero tillage, conservation farming, grain legumes integration, farmer-based multiplication of seeds and planting materials, and community-based land tenure reform. the principal challenge against which the zmm pls project is utilizing iar4d hinges around the need to reduce vulnerability through improved soil, water and nutrient use, intensification, diversification and improved functioning of markets and value chains. this paper assesses how iar4d improved farmers‟ access to markets through collective action. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 328 the empirical model for data analysis in this paper, we are interested in measuring the causal effect of the conduct of iar4d activities improve upon collective marketing. the impact of iar4d on outcomes such as collective marketing is assessed at the household level. also the variable is used generically to designate any outcome variable measured at time t after. however, to simplify the notation we will then drop the subscript t except when we introduce the baseline outcome measured at time t0 which we will denoted by we will then refer to as the endline outcome for simplicity. for any given population unit, we define the following three potential outcome variables 2 : = outcome if the population unit is located in a clean site; = outcome if the population unit is located in a conventional site, and; = outcome if the population unit is located in an iar4d site, let us also define the following three treatment status variables for the same population unit: if the population unit is located in the clean site and, 0 otherwise; 2 we are comparing three treatments, the clean, conventional and iar4d (for more detail see fara, 2009) if the population unit is located in the conventional site and, 0 otherwise; if the population unit is located in the iar4d site and, 0 otherwise. for each population unit we have because each population unit can only receive one treatment at the same time. hence, . it is important to note that the three potential outcomes , and defined above are not simultaneously observable for any given population unit. only the potential outcome that correspond to the treatment status which has its value equal 1 is observed. the other two unobserved potential outcomes variables are the counterfactuals. what one always observes unconditionally for any given population unit are the three treatment status variables and the outcome variable y. however, the observed outcome variable y can be written as a function of unobserved potential outcome variables and the treatment status variables as: (1) the differences , and give us the unit level impacts of iar4d compared to clean, conventional asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 329 compared to clean and iar4d compare to conventional, respectively. since two of the potential outcomes (the counterfactuals) are always missing, we cannot compute the unit level treatment effects. however, it is possible to estimate the mean of the distribution of each unit level treatment effect in the population. this mean is referred to in the literature as average treatment effects and noted ate. the following three average treatment effects parameters measure respectively the mean impact of iar4d compared to no intervention, the mean impact of conventional approach compared to no intervention and the mean impact of iar4d compared to the conventional approach: (2) these are the three impacts parameters that we want to estimate and test their equality to 0 in order to answer the first two questions above. 3 we note that = . hence we can focus on the estimation of the first two impact parameters and deduce the value of the third by taking their difference. equation (1) can be rewritten as: 3 the third question is not addressed in this report (3) by taking the mean of both sides of equation (3) conditional on d1 and d2 we obtain: (4) if assignment of villages to the three treatment groups (clean, conventional and iar4d) was carried randomly and if all villages have complied to their assignments, then we should have the distribution of the three potential outcomes , and variables in the population to be independent of that of the three treatment status variables d1, d2 and d3. this would then imply = , = and = so that equation (4) would simplifies to: (6) or (7) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 330 where , . equation (7) shows if we can assume that the assignment of sample villages to the three treatment groups was perfectly randomized and they all have complied, then the two impact parameters of interest can be estimated by a simple ordinary least squares (ols) procedure of that regress the two treatment status variables d2 and d3 on the observed outcome y. this is one of the estimations carried below. however, if the assignment of sample villages to the three treatment groups is not perfectly randomized so that the distribution of the three potential outcomes , and variables in the population are no longer independent of that of the three treatment status variables d1, d2 and d3, then the ols procedure described above will not yield us consistent estimates of the two impact parameters of interest. however, even if the above independence condition fails, the change in the three potential outcomes between the baseline and endline times may end up being independently distributed with respect to the three treatment status variables d1, d2 and d3. if true, such independence condition can be used to estimate the two impact parameters of interest. to see how such assumption and the difference in the observed endline and baseline outcomes can help estimate the two impact parameters of interest let: be the base and end line outcomes of a population unit located in clean; be the base and end line outcomes of a population unit located in conventional site, and be the base and end line outcomes of a population unit located in iar4d site. the changes in the three potential outcomes between time t0 and time t for population units located in the clean, conventional and iar4d sites are then given respectively by: (8) however, because iar4d was not operational at baseline time, we necessarily have an equation similar to equation (1) linking the difference in the observed endline and baseline outcomes and the changes in the three potential outcomes , and does also hold: (9) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 331 using equation (10) and the assumption of independence between the distribution of changes in the three potential outcomes , and and that of d1, d2 and d3, one can follow the same steps as above to derive an equation similar to equation (7) with as the dependent variable instead of y: (10) where , . hence, as above, the two impact parameters of interest can be estimated by a simple ordinary least squares (ols) procedure of that regress the two treatment status variables d2 and d3 on the difference in the observed endline and baseline outcomes. it may also be the case that even if assignment of sample villages to the three treatment groups was not perfectly randomized, sample villages were selected using some criteria based on observable characteristics x, which was used to assign sample villages a particular treatment group or to stratify the population of the villages into groups within which randomization was carried out. if this is the case, then we may have independence of the distribution of the endline potential outcome variables from, that of the treatment status variables conditional on x and by taking the mean of both sides of equation (3) conditional on d2 , d3 and x we will get: (11) or (12) where , . with the two impact parameters of interest given by the mean with respect x of the conditional means and respectively. if we parameterize (12) by assuming that: , then we have: (13) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 332 equation (13) can be estimated by an ols estimation procedure with interaction between each one of the two treatment status variables d1 and d2 and the covariates x to obtain the two impact parameters of interest as the marginal effects of the respective treatment status variable taken at the means of the covariates. again it can be easily shown that the same relationship holds exactly when we use the difference between the end line and the baseline outcome variables in place of the end line outcome y and we assume independent of conditional on x instead of assuming independent of conditional on x. in either case, whether we use the endline outcome or the difference of endline and baseline outcomes as dependent variable the ols regression with interaction defined by equation (13) will give us estimate of the two impacts parameters of interest as described above. the estimated impact parameters from the two ols procedures need not be equal, though. at the end, which dependent variable one uses between the two (i.e. endline or difference) depend on which one of the two conditional independence assumptions one believes hold. we have used both dependent variables in the estimation below to compare results. results and discussions table 2: a comparative analysis in change of selected variables over two years clean n = 209 conventional n = 201 intervention n = 247 zmm pls n = 657 variables baseline end line baseline end line baseline end line baseline end line c/market ing 2.62 2.59 2.00** 2.44** 2.29 2.64** 2.31*** 2.57*** educatio n 3.91 4 3.45 3.66 3.91 3.96 3.79 3.89 gender 0.85 0.86 0.69** 0.80** 0.71* 0.82* 0.75*** 0.83*** househol d size 5.61 5.57 5.88* 6.38* 5.69 6.07 6.00* 5.72* depende nce ratio 1.06 1.11 1.07 1.26 1.08 1.01 1.05 1.11 age 43.01 44.45 45.63* 48.29* 45.74 46.73 44.87*** 46.50*** duration 16.99 16.67 17.92 18.32 17.38 18.78 17.77 17.52 cultivate d land 4.00 3.36 5.05* 4.11* 4.66* 3.98* 4.60*** 3.84*** land owned 5.99 5.59 5.15 4.66 5.95 5.67 5.72 5.34 *=10 % level of significance, **=5% level of significance ***=1% level of significance asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 333 the results in table 2 show that the proportion of smallholder farmers engaged in collective marketing has improved significantly in interventions sites as compared to the control ones between 2008/9 and 2009/10. there is also an unexpected and significant increase in proportion of male-headed households in the conventional and counterfactual sites during the period under review. as expected, average land owned by interviewed smallholder remained the same in all the three sites. however, average land under cultivation has declined significantly in the conventional and intervention sites during the period under review. the results also show that the dependence ratio and education level have remained unchanged in all the sites under the period under review. table 3: impact of iar4d on collective marketing outcome ols ols interacted as compared to as compared to clean conventional clean conventional collective marketing 0.03909(0.028) 0.0255(0.072) 0.032 (0.033) 0.0248 (0.085) numbers in parentheses are p-value table 3 shows that iar4d has had a positive and significant impact on improving collective marketing in intervention sites compared to the control sites. however, the coefficients are weak. this suggests that institutions of collective action take time to build. collective marketing is a product of repeated transactions, so that with each transaction, transactors know each other better than they did for the first transaction. frequent successful exchanges, therefore, lead to decreased transaction costs since trust among economic agents increase and create disincentives for opportunistic behaviour. the change noted in collective action is only after two seasons of transaction and hence the low explanatory powers. conclusion and policy recommendation there is clear and uncontested evidence from both empirical and theoretical literature that collective marketing can help smallholders to reduce barriers to entry into lucrative agricultural markets, by lowering transaction costs of accessing input and produce markets (markelova and muinzen-dick, 2009). collective marketing can also improve the share of the consumer price received by smallholder farmers through improved bargaining power (giuliani, 2006; komarudin et al., 2006). additionally, collective marketing reduces the share of profit that is available to other market chain actors. however, findings from this study suggest that collective marketing does not happen spontaneously. we note that collective action has improved only in iar4d sites. this defies the logic of natural law of spontaneous order which presumes that regularities in social world order will emerge (out of unaided actions of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 334 individuals) as men generate and adapt to those institutions appropriate for mutual benefit of all. collective marketing requires some degree of outside assistance in terms of finance and capacity building for smallholder groups to be formed and operationalized. despite the presence of group characteristics such as social capital, trust among stakeholders and willingness to work together for a common goal, collective marketing fails to emerge spontaneously. these characteristics may have helped in aiding collective action in other aspects of social life such as natural resources management. there are success stories of how a collective sense of responsibility generated broad based participation in creating good will to solve the „tragedy of the commons‟. in commercial systems, agricultural markets transcend sphere beyond the boundaries of the villages and without access to market information, smallholders‟ access to markets is compromised. innovation platforms created under the integrated agricultural research for development (iar4d) provides access to information on markets, farming technologies and innovations. smallholder farmers in the innovation platforms realising that they cannot meet the quantities demanded by the markets were ready to engage in collective action. activities in the platform are governed by self-interest and are promoted by each stakeholder caring for his/her own welfare. iar4d is an institutional arrangement designed to encourage stakeholders to pursue their own long run interest at the same time promoting public interest. as discussed earlier, the explanatory power of iar4d on collective marketing are very weak. this is understandably so because social capital, a variable upon which collective action is dependent on takes time to build (nyikahadzoi et al., 2011). the iar4d participative approaches allow stakeholders to share information, capacity building and collective decision making at local level. the approach also promotes social learning from experience, reflection and action. in the process social capital (which embodies trust) is built in small increments by individual farmers stepping out of isolation, enjoying the connectedness and then taking an active responsibility in promoting public interest. in conclusion, the idea of spontaneous order – that most of those things of general benefit in a social system are a product of spontaneous forces that are beyond direct control of men is a fallacy. it may have been the case in environmental management. in a commercial system some sort of social engineering is necessary. references adekunle, a. a., j. ellis-jones., i. ajibefun., r. a. nyikal., s. bangali., o. fatunbi and a. ange, (2012). agricultural innovation in sub-saharan africa: experiences from multipleasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 335 stakeholder approaches. forum for agricultural research in africa (fara). accra, ghana barret, c. b. (2008). smallholder market participation: concepts and evidence from eastern and southern africa. food policy, 33: 299-317. binam, j. m., t. abdoulaye., l. olarinde., a. kamara, and a. adekunle, (2011). assessing the potential impact of integrated agricultural research for development (iar4d) on adoption of improved cereal-legume crop varieties in the sudan savannah zone of nigeria. journal of agricultural & food information, 12(2): 177-198. boughton, d. d., mather, c. b. barret., r. benfica., d. abdula., d. tschirley and b. cunguara. (2007). market participation by rural households in a low-income country: an asset based approach applied to mozambique. faith and economics, 50: 64-101. dash, r. and a. purohit (2006). collective action by smallholders for market access: an exploration of farmers initiatives and best practices. a paper presented in research workshop on collective action and market access for smallholders, 2-5 october 2006, cali, colombia daumann, f. (2007). evolution and rule of law: hayek‟s concept of liberal order reconsidered. journal of libertarian studies, 21(4): 123–150. dorward, a. j., kydd, j. morrison and i. urey (2004). a policy agenda for propoor agricultural growth. world development, 32(1): 73. giuliani, a. (2006). collective action for small-scale producers of agricultural biodiversity products” paper presented in research workshop on collective action and market access for smallholders, 2-5 october 2006, cali, colombia. hawkins, r. r., heemskerk, r., booth, j., daane, a., maatman and a. a. adekunle (2009). integrated agricultural research for development (iar4d). a concept paper for the forum for agricultural research in africa (fara). sub-saharan africa challenge programme (ssa cp).. fara, accra, ghana. huang, h. (2002). toward constructivism for adult learners in online learning environments. british journal of education and technology, 33: 27-37. jayne, t. s. and s. jones (1997). food marketing and pricing policy in eastern and southern africa: a survey. world development, 25(9): 1505–1527. johnson, n., r. ruth and m. lundy (2002). the importance of social capital in colombian rural agro enterprises. capri working paper no. 26 komarudin, h. y. siagian and n. p. oka (2006). linking collective action to non-timber forest product market for improved local livelihoods: challenges and opportunities”, paper presented in research workshop on collective action and market access for smallholders, 2-5 october 2006, cali, colombia asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 321-336 336 lundy, m., c. f. ostertag and r. best (2002). value adding agro enterprise and poverty reduction: a territorial approach for rural business development. rural agro enterprise development project, ciat, cali, colombia markelova, h. and r. meinzen-dick (2009). collective action for smallholder access, collective action and property rights”, policy brief no. 6. morales, e. g. g. (2006). institutional arrangements to improve the responsiveness of agricultural innovations systems to the needs of the poor: an investigation of participatory monitoring and evaluation in bolivia. degree of doctor of philosophy, university of london, london, uk norman, b. (1982). the tradition of spontaneous order. literature on liberty, 5(2): 7-58. narrod., c. d. roy., j. okello., b. avendaño., k. rich., a. thorat (2009). public-private partnerships and collective action in high value fruit and vegetable supply chains. food policy, 34(1): 8–15. united nations (2012). millenium development goals report 2012. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/md g%20report%202012.pdf. uphoff, n. and c. wijayaratna (2000). demonstrated benefits from social capital: the productivity of farmer organizations in gal oya, sri lanka. world development, 28(11): 1875-1890. valentinov, v. (2007). why are cooperatives important in agriculture? an organizational economics perspective. journal of institutional economics, 3(1): 55–69. world bank (2007). enhancing agricultural innovation. how to go beyond strengthening of research systems. the world bank, washington dc, usa. world bank (2008). world development report 2008: agriculture for development. washington, world bank publication. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/mdg%20report%202012.pdf http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/mdg%20report%202012.pdf © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 commercial agriculture and rural development: evidence from the zimbabwe farm project in tsonga, nigeria r. a. olawepo (department of geography and environmental management, university of ilorin, nigeria) to cite this article: r. a. olawepo (2012). commercial agriculture and rural development: evidence from the zimbabwe farm project in tsonga, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1), 27-38. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 27-38 © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author r. a. olawepo department of geography and environmental management, university of ilorin, pmb 1515, ilorin, nigeria email ralfabbey@yahoo.com commercial agriculture and rural development: evidence from the zimbabwe farm project in tsonga, nigeria abstract when the zimbabwe farmers were brought to kwara state, nigeria in 2004, the intention of the government was to enable the local farmers benefit from their wealth of experience through commercial farming especially in the area of grain production in tsonga and its environment. six years after continuous farming, a survey evaluation was done through sampling of 240 farmers within their environment. results showed that about 20% of the labour force required by the zimbabwe farmers was obtained within the local environment and most people were employed as labourers, security guards and other unskilled labours. similarly 3% of the local farmers were also trained to improve local productions while 18.8% of the farmers observed increased productivity and subsequent increase of income as a result of the commercial activities of these new farmers. apart from these, the state of rural infrastructures like roads, electricity and potable water supplies were improved upon jointly by the state government and the zimbabwe farmers. local production of milk, rice, poultry, soya beans and animal fields for international markets were introduced. this has also affected local market organization in the locality positively. even though some challenges were identified by local farmers, appropriate recommendations were presented accordingly. keywords: farmers, production, markets, infrastructure, income, community, agro-allied introduction in the development of literature, rural development is conceived as a positive term denoting a state of short or long term transformation and improvement in the standards of people living in the rural area of a nation. this transformation may be preceded by specified programmes initiated either by the government or the rural people being planned for or an external bodies with vested interest in the community affairs around the rural environment. this may also be attained inform of initiatives targeting the sources of rural income through infrastructure provision, agricultural development, extension services, capacity building or other forms of development issues that would alleviate the rural problems. in most developing countries and in nigeria in particular, the need to designate various programmes towards developing the rural areas arises as a result of past neglect of the rural areas by various planning strategies in favour of the urban areas. this scenario has led to a distinctive and recognized demarcation. its manifestations include lack of physical necessities, poor accessibility to public goods and services, income insufficient to ensure sustainable and comfortable livelihood, as well as powerlessness, social discrimination and exclusion (adedayo, 1988; world bank, 1990; olawepo, 2010). the conditions of the rural environment in nigeria have also necessitated unique attentions over the years. oladipo (1999) and olawepo (2003) opined that the rural economy in nigeria is that branch of the statesmanship which place agriculture in the center of economic life of rural communities and it is around that other enterprises revolve/or spring from. structurally, the rural economies are multi enterprise dominated entities with indefinable boundary lines between major, complementary, supplementary and other seasonally oriented subsidiary enterprises. the rural economy in nigeria is also known for part time nature of many enterprises, farmers, teachers, and government officials with little or no training in relevant trades often rely on family labour to work on farms and other forms of rural enterprises. a large proportion of the rural people are usually farmers who depend wholly on agriculture with little access to capital inputs like chemicals, fertilizers and modern machineries due to poor financial position and low education. while the arable crops are under traditional small scale cultivation, usually for subsistence commercial and are usually prone to poor yields and low productivity. developing the rural areas through attention to the agriculture sector is often seen as a panacea to sustainable rural and community development. since political independence in nigeria, definite policy goals and objectives aimed at improvement of the rural areas were formulated to enhance the living standards of the rural poor who are mostly farmers. in the 60s and 70s, most rural development programmes were mainly targeting the rural people through agricultural development mailto:ralfabbey@yahoo.com mailto:ralfabbey@yahoo.com commercial agriculture and rural development….. 28 programmes. it was assumed that this particular strategy definitely obscures other productive activities other than agriculture. features like income, infrastructure, market, small and medium scale enterprises, human resource development, cash flow, and rural environment would be adversely and positively affected. thus, various agricultural development programmes were intensified through agricultural development projects, co-operative societies, river basin development authorities and some other institutional development. all these were introduced at various levels of rural development programmes in nigeria. although other sectors in the nigerian economy have rapidly outgrown the agricultural sector, about 75% of the population still depends directly or indirectly on it for their livelihood. the people of tsonga in edu local government areas of kwara state are predominantly rice growing farmers, other forms of grain production and sugarcane, groundnut, millet and guinea corn for both subsistence and local markets. the coming of the zimbabwe farmers to their communities in 2004 could thus be seen as development oriented because it involved a partnership with the state and local governments. fifteen expatriate farmers from zimbabwe, in 2004 acquired fifteen thousand hectares of land in tsonga for commercial agriculture for a twenty five years lease hold. this initiative is the brainchild of the kwara state government whose aims were to create youth employment, and resettle the zimbabwe farmers in an environment where they would be able to impart new production techniques on the local farmers and improve grain productivity in the state. the zimbabwe farmers were also to train and equip local farmers and produce immense opportunities on local farmers through transfer of skills over the years. the state government on its part was to be a partner by providing enabling environment for extensive farming, infrastructural development in the areas of electricity in the farm settlement and local communities, provision of earth roads to the farms, and potable water supply for takeoff, while all these would be taken over by the expatriate farmers over the years. while planting season was officially flagged off on july 8, 2005 the zimbabwe cultivated 1,500 hectares of maize and soya beans for a start that year. against this background, it is therefore a thing of concern that well over five years after the tsonga farm project has come into existence, there should be a sort of evaluation to assess its impact on the economy of the people and the rural environment. the aim of this paper is thus two fold. first, it is to assess the commercial farming system among the zimbabwe farmers (the tsonga farm project) with a view to determining its impact on the rural production. second, it is to assess its impact on rural development within the rural environment where the project is situated. the basic question still remains; who actually benefits from the zimbabwe farmers project in tsonga and its environment? answers to these and others would therefore be the scope of this study. this study therefore examines the effects of commercial agriculture as a strategy for rural development. the major focus is upon the implication of the project on employment generation, improvement of skills among farmers, market development and cash flow as well as provision of physical and social infrastructure, firstly by the state government, and later by the expatriate farmers to the host communities. commercial agriculture and rural development: a theoretical approach past works and literature on rural development in developing world have shown that the development of agriculture had been paramount in the search for appropriate strategies for rural development. this because a large proportion of the rural dwellers rely on agriculture for their livelihood sustenance, thus experts felt that a boost in agricultural development would turn around lives in the rural areas. in other words, a well conceive agricultural development project will guarantee constant food supply, income enhancement and nutritional development, not only in the rural areas, but in the entire country where agriculture plays a dominant role. in addition, it will open windows of opportunities for other infrastructure and agroallied industries commensurable to rural economy development (omole, 2005). commercial agriculture refers to any form of agricultural production that is on a large scale with the major aim of producing for local, regional, national or international markets. this means that commercial agriculture produces crops, animals and food mainly for sale. this could be in form of either specialized farm or a form of mixed farming system including plantation and mechanization. a great majority of farmers in developed countries like canada, the united states, britain and others in europe are involved in commercial agricultures. in other words, commercial agriculture can best be described as any form of agricultural practices that involves large field and/or large numbers of animals, high resources input, capital, and a high level of mechanization. iwena (2007) mentioned plantation agriculture as a form of commercial agriculture that requires a large amount of capital, vast land area, and a high degree of labour. from asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 27-38 29 all these, it could be said that commercial agriculture produces for sale with a wide distribution to wholesaler’s outlets. crops like wheat, maize, tea, coffee, sugarcane, cashew and cotton among others are often under commercial production, so also ranches involving stock of cattle, piggery and other livestock production. in addition to the above, ogazi (1992) indicated that if this form of production resides in the rural areas and among the rural people would turn around the rural life especially in the area of their socio-economic development. this would enhance income development, rural infrastructure, provision of more and better food for the hungry mouths, and provision of efficient work force to take up employment in the rural areas. in the same vein, the raising of the quality of life of the rural people through improved agricultural production would be enhanced. the rural people could also have improved access to public goods and services over the years. however, the works of okafor (1981); adedayo (1988) and okoye (1992) among others indicated that rural development is more than all these. for example, okoye 1992) defined rural development as being concerned with the improvement as well as transformation of the social, mental, economic, institutional and environmental conditions of the low income rural dwellers through the mobilization of their human, natural and institutional for improvement that meets the demand of modern times. this definition is comprehensive and covers all aspects of human livelihood within the rural environment. ujo (2008) asserted that the process of rural development would be more encompassing if it include participation of the people that are being planned for. this form of development relates to what is generally known as development from below or bottom up approach. whatever method used, the essential components of rural development should include:  a fundamental restructuring of rural space and settlement, so as to improve the physical and social access of produces to vital resources;  the creation of new rural structure that would facilitate substantial re-investment of financial resources in the rural areas;  mobilization of rural farmers through effective organization framework that would promote mass involvement in development;  provision of appropriate technology for raising rural productivity and efficient utilization of resources;  provision of basic needs such as food, housing, water supply, health services;  creation of efficient transport network for rural areas;  agriculture transformation to ensure massive food production and supply of industrial raw materials; and,  creation of progressive social system in the rural areas. in all these, one basic fact is that rural people need food, employment, decent housing, education, health care and other public goods and services. this situation indicates that, there is need for special planning to effect the desired changes in the rural areas through various strategies. one of these strategies is the issue of agricultural development through commercial agriculture and other benefits that can come with it whether directly or indirectly. the sectoral agricultural model is often used as a panacea for overall rural development, the proponents of the model believe that if agriculture is developed, capital is generated for investment in industrial and agro allied sector, and which would have consequent influence on the generality of the rural landscape and residents. this was widely practiced in nigeria in the early 80s through the introduction of agric development projects and the emergence of river basins development authorities in the later years. the targets of the planners are thus to improve on the low productivity due to lack of appropriate technology for storage of farm produce, farmers income as well as the welfare of the rural populace. the coming of the zimbabwe farmers to nigeria in 2004 therefore was seen as leap towards positive development of agriculture firstly by the expatriates, and then with relative influence on the productivity of the rural farmers who were supposed to benefit from this strategy either directly or indirectly. the study area and research methodology tsonga is one of the four districts that made up edu local government area in kwara state, nigeria. this district is located between logitudes 40 54’’e, and 4 0 57’’ and latitudes 8 0 36’’ n and 80400 n of the equator. the location shares a common boundaries with patigi, local government area to the east, ifelodun local government area to the south, moro in the west and niger state in the north and within the range of about 150 kilometers to ilorin the state headquarters. the people of tsonga are predominantly farmers and fishermen with a large proportion of the farmers focusing on the production of indigenous rice, corn and beans among others. the people of tsonga are nupe by tribe with some non indigenous people (yoruba, hausa, fulani and gwari) living among them. farm production here is the mainstay of the economy, though at peasantry level, a large proportion is also meant for the market after the commercial agriculture and rural development….. 30 home consumption need has been met. generally in edu and in tsonga in particular, the indigenous rice has become a trade mark as they trade in rice with other neighbouring communities both in kwara and niger states. the zimbabwe farmers were invited by the kwara state government in 2004 with aim of establishing commercial agriculture in and around tsonga. the team of 15 farmers first acquired about 15,000 hectares of farmland in tsonga and the surrounding villages of dumagi, ogodu and sakpata on a first instance of a 25 years leasehold. this initiative was the brainchild of the state government, it was a high risk initiative to create employment and reduce poverty among the local farmers, as well as developing agriculture in the area. it was also meant to increase accessibility of the local people to public utilities which were to be provided by the state government as their counterpart funding. the expatriate farmers were in return to produce grain crops in commercial standard, first for the international markets, and second to set up rural farmers to expand their production with subsequent training, introduction of farm inputs and supply of improved seedlings. apart from these, the government felt that over the years, this project would attract more expatriate farmers to the region as well as indigenous farmers who may want to be partners, and thus there could be emergence of agro allied industries such as feed mills, fresh milk, yoghurts production and related farm productions. this paper draws data from field research on conservation based field observation in which the authors had to visit some of the project locations to ascertain the availability of the project. apart from this, the study relies heavily on questionnaire administration among the,2405 farm families in the project location villages. 240 farmers who happened to be seasoned farmers were sampled, representing 10% of the local farm families around the project. secondary data were also obtained from the kwara state planning commission as well as the project data base at tsonga. this data set was collected on farm productivity, cash-flow, marketing and productivity as well as relationships with and influence from zimbabwe farmers. tabulations resulting from simple percentages were used to explain farm productivity while laurence curves were used to explain income inequalities between the two time frames (before and after the zimbabwe farm project). apart from this, lawrence curve was used to explain the spread of local farmers’ income within a farming season. the limitation of this study however, is seen in the reliability of information obtained from farmers who do not keep records but we rely on their savings record from micro finance banks which some of them were able to present. in as much as they are all adults who are experienced over the years, we believe a high level of reliability on what they presented because the author had to recheck some of these information during return journeys to the study site. findings and discussion this section deals with analysis of data collated from the field work. the major task of this section is to explain farm productivity of the local farmers as well as commercial activities by the zimbabwe farmers with a view to assessing the impacts of their productivity on the rural farmers and their environment. for the purpose of discussion it is divided into five major sections; these are general characteristics of respondents, farm production and marketing of farm resources, wealth index and farm incomes, the zimbawe farmers’ productivity and rural development in the study area. general characteristics of respondents the main effort here is to assess farmers’ personal information and questions were exclusively asked regarding their sex, ages, family sizes and educational qualifications. farming is being undertaken by men and women in the study area. while the men prune and till the ground for continuous production women deal with harvesting, processing and marketing of fish, grains and rice in the study area especially in the core area of tsonga district and the neighbouring communities. it is clear that the majority of people dealing with farming in the study area are mostly men. about 89.5% of our respondents are men while only 10.5% are their female counterparts. it was however revealed that majority of women farmers here are involved in the processing of local rice, washing, cooking and actual marketing of farm products in the various markets, some of them however do actual farming through hired labour and engagement of itinerant farmers/labourers. as regards the age of our respondents, it is evident that a large proportion of our respondents fall within the age range of 25-55, that is about 76.8% of the total number of local farmers involved in farming production. from these findings, inference can be made that the active population makes up the main farming labour force in the study area. the younger age range of 16-25 has a lower percentage of about 10.5%, this indicates that farming is exclusive job for the elderly, especially the men folks. this is evidently shown by the number of people found in the age bracket 55 and above. this group accounts for about 12.7 % of the total labour force. one other implication of this is that most young and able bodied people have moved to the urban areas in search for more lucrative job opportunities. however, this scenario asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 27-38 31 is pointing to the facts that all our respondents are adults and thus, this would make information obtained from them a bit reliable, basing it on their maturity and experience. as regards the family sizes of the local farmers, this is important in every aspect of farming production; this is because it affects the labour force as well as per capital output. like many farming production, the harvesting of grains and local rice is a family labour that involves the parents and the children. these include the numbers of wives, children, dependants and other relations from outside and those living under the same roof. this study also revealed that majority of the respondents have large family sizes especially those in tsonga, dumagi,andsakpata. this is also typical of an average nupe family. about 46.6% of the respondents have a family of 11 people and above, while 24.3%, 17.4% and 11.7% have family sizes of between 7-9, 5-7 and 3-5 respectively. this implies that there are many more mouths to feed and so far farming is the major occupation of people in this part of the country, many more people would be involved in farming activities especially in rice, fishery and grain production businesses. in terms of education, generally a large proportion of the local farmers have no formal education but a substantial of them (52.1%) can read and write in the local languages of nupe and yoruba. table 1.1 shows the breakdown of educational qualifications. in all, 21.6% of them possess primary education , while only 7.5 % obtained higher education and these two groups and those with adult and tertiary education form the proportion of the literate farmers among the respondents. it has been known from past studies that the level of education has an exponential relationship with the farmer’s level of susceptibility to the adoption of innovations and modern farming techniques (see olawepo 2009). this discretely affects their methods of production as well as acceptability of new information and farm productivity; it is also one of the criteria set by the zimbabwe farmers for the farmers to benefit from their ventures. table 1: educational status of respondents education source no % cumulative % none 115 47.9 47.9 quranic/adult 30 12.5 60.4 primary 52 21.6 82 secondary 25 10.4 92.4 tertiary 18 7.5 100 total 240 100 100 source: author’s own calculation farming production and annual yield prior to the coming of the zimbabwe farmers initiatives, farming activities in the study area are for both subsistence and commercial levels although productions and yield are low due to the fragmentation of land holdings and poor accessibility to modern farm inputs and capital among others. it could be observed that the system of mixed cropping is widely practiced. apart from rice production, nupe farmers are involved in the production of tubers, sugar cane, grain production and some root crops in both wet and dry seasons. as regards types of crops grown in the area, about 20.4% are producing root crops, in conjunction with rice (both upland and fadama cropping) , and 22.6% grew grains and legumes. similarly about 8.58% are involved in vegetables production, while 43.28% plant all the four types of, crops within an agricultural year. table 2 shows a breakdown of acreage of land under cultivation during both dry and wet seasons at times these farming systems are produced on full time, while in other times they are to supplement their income. this has shown that a large proportion of farm land is under rice production throughout the year. for example, 66.5% acreage of land is under rice cultivation during the wet seasons while in the dry season, less than 23% of the land is under upland rice cultivation. with regards to wet season cultivation, farm sizes have been reported to increase for sugarcane and rice especially in dumagi and ogudu where there large expanse of marshy land for extensive cultivation. a farmer cultivates as large as 4.5 ha of land consisting of several plots. this however reduces in the dry season even for the same crop for as low as 2 ha per farmer except for where local irrigation is being practiced. in the same vein, the areas of land cultivated by the 240 farmers totaled 2,435.62 acres during wet season production compared with 1201.36 cultivated in the dry season cultivation in a typical farm season. these production schedules discussed here is typical of what is currently practiced by the local farmers during the zimbabwe farmers’ tenure. commercial agriculture and rural development….. 32 table 2: respondents crops and land areas cultivated in acres wet season agricultural production crop type acre crop (acre) % average yield (basket & sacks total production (sacks & basket) % rice 1620.27 66.5 14.92 78,054.50 87.8 maize /other grains 493.18 20.2 19.07 3,458.44 3.9 sugar cane 42.05 1.7 28.22 9 (tons) 3,625.87 4.1 tubers 224.5 9.2 15.52 (tons) 1,836.22 2.1 vegetables 55.62 2.3 65 965.44 1.1 sub total 2435.62 100 87,940.47 100 dry season agricultural production maize /other grains 362.15 30.1 12.77 2,602.91 3.5 tubers 195.03 16.2 6.92 (tons) 981.46 1.3 vegetables 36.5 3 32.33 340.31 0.5 sugarcane 12.65 1.1 7.39 9 (tons) 1,489.07 2 rice 595.03 49.5 12.36 68,620.51 92.3 sub total 1201.36 100 74,034.26 100 g/total 3636.98 161,974.73 source: author’s own calculation this according to them only changed slightly as some of them are being encouraged to produce mono cropping especially grains in commercial quantities. however, about 5.4% of our respondents indicated that some major transformations were made in the last three years due to the in influence of the zimbabwe farmers. such transformation include the introduction of improved seedlings for rice and maize and the introduction of mixed cropping involving soya beans and introduction of wheat production in some localities around tsonga. another innovation is that some of their farm products are sold to the expatriate farmers especially those producing soya beans and cassava. labour supply on the farm is mostly by family members. about 75% of the farmers use family labours, especially among the nupes and fulani farmers in sakpata. occasionally commercial labour is used in conjunction with hired labour. the zimbabwe farmers farm holdings, and rural development efforts here are diverted towards explanation on zimbabwe farmers productions and their influence on rural development in the study area. the aim is to look into the production systems of the farmers first and then to examine their impacts both directly on the farmers and then on the rural communities. (i) the zimbabwe farmers farm holdings: production and marketing. the initial planting for the farming season for 2005 was officially flagged off on july 8th and the zimbabwe farmers cultivated about 1500 hectares of land to plant maize and soya beans for a start. during the last quarter of the same year new breed of cassava brought from south africa was introduced, first to the expatriate farms and later to a little proportion of the local farmers. in the years following the base year, various large scale farming was introduced. these include production of both upland and fadama rice with improved seedlings, poultry and mass production of cattle, mostly imported from south africa. as at today, there are thirteen zimbabwe farm operators in tsonga, they are all involved in large scale grain productions and involved in small and medium scale enterprises in their farm settlements. table 3 shows the breakdown of farm production by the zimbabwe farmers during the current farming season. the table revealed that rice production has dominated the annual farm output of the zimbabwe farmers during the wet and dry season’s production. about 2,320 acres of land were put under rice cultivation, while 1,245 and 900 acres were put under cultivation for production of cassava and improved maize respectively. a look at this annual production appeared higher when compared to the total productions of all local farmers put together. this is as a result of large scale production and modern techniques of production introduced by the zimbabwe farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 27-38 33 these also include the use of heavy machines, harvesters, chemicals and improved seedlings introduced by the farmers. some of their productions are also put under irrigation during the dry season. table 3: wet season agricultural production crop type acres % average yield (bags /tons 0 total production (bags) rice maize soya beans cassava beans others 2,320.50 950.22 500 1,245 600 120 59.6 24.4 12.8 31.9 15.4 3.0 892.3 / 44 tons 584/ 29 tons 564/28.2 tons 85.52 tons 650 /32 tons 69/ 3 tons 11,600 bags 7,600 bags 3,625 1,820 tons 6,200 bags 200 bags total 3890.72 100.00 source: author’s own calculation (ii) livestock production, agro allied industries and infrastructure. one of the essences of the zimbabwe farm projects is the multiplier effects of the project will have on local productions and agro allied industries in the rural areas where they are located. apart from farm production, six of the thirteen farm projects are involved in the production of animals in ranches and two substantial dairy factories have been built in tsonga for the production of animal feed, fresh milk and yoghurt. to service these factories, 80 collets of high breed were imported in 2006 for the production of milk and cheese. the fleet in the ranches as at 2011 has increased to over 500 animal breeds. apart from these four of the farmers are involved in large scale poultry farms located at tsonga and sakpata farm stations. as at today, the two farm stations can boast of over 500,000 broilers and layers ready for both local and international markets. two farm companies are also involved in the production of animal feeds also for both local and international markets. table 5 shows the annual production of the zimbabwe farm project. recently, the products of the milk factory (tsonga dairy milk and soya milk) are being sold in the local markets at tsonga, lafiagi, patigi, ilorin and could be found in some of the popular departmental stores at ilorin, ibadan and lagos. others are also exported to south africa and some west african countries where west african manufacturing company (wamco) has branches in the case of the poultry farms, a substantial part of their products are produced for local markets especially at the state headquarters, some of them are sold to international corporations like uac, kfc and mr. biggs in lagos while more than 80 % are taken for international markets. this performance has added potential for rural development, firstly by the establishment of agro allied industries in the rural areas where they are located; secondly, they give consumers within the vicinity ample opportunities to choose their preferred products from wide varieties in the market. it is however to say at this juncture to say that more than 70% of the grain especially rice and soya are produced for the international markets by the expatriate farmers. in term of infrastructure development, it could be said that the presence of these multinational farms in the rural areas has raised their accessibility levels. in collaboration with the state government, roads linking the villages to the farm settlements are graded annually, while the roads leading tsonga to the major towns of patigi and lafiagi while the road leading to ilorin has recently been resurfaced. the zimbabwe farm project has also implemented the infrastructure development of its support programme through the provision of boreholes in neighbouring communities of sakpata, dummagi and ogudu. in the same vein, the kwara state government through the world bank assisted programmes has beefed up electricity supplies to some communities. communities like tsonga, and were given additional transformers as a result of the growing farm settlements and the communities at large. table 4: zimbabwe farmers production farm project types of farm industries types of products quantity in situ average annual income estimates (n) outlets helton estate dairy fresh and milk, yoghurt 1,300,000 litres 13,071,910 local &int.l markets commercial agriculture and rural development….. 34 rihunt farms poultry, grains eggs, broiler meat 145,000 birds 100 tons of grains 2,200,000 uac,kfc and intl. mkets pineleigh farms dairy fresh milk, yughurt 2,000,000 litres 6,795,293 lcal& intl. markets carpe diem grain ,pouutry eggs,animal feeds, broiler meat 266,000 birds 100 tons of grains 8,680,000 uac,kfc and intl. mkets hellam farms arable farming cassava, grains,palets 520 tons n.a 3,300,000 international. markets hatty farms arable farming cassava,grainspalets 600 tons, 4,000,000 kg 6,459,000 international. markets dixie farms grains ,poultry broiler meat 145,000 birds 3,3000,000 international. markets new ventures dairy fresh milk 1,000,000 litres 5,058,000 uac, mr. biggs, intl. mkets rosedare dairy fresh milk 1,500,000 litres 5,058,000 wamco danjen farms arable farming grains 470 tons 2,500,000 local and international. mkets time p. farms grains and poultry grains, broiler meat 200,000 birds 1,680,000 international. markets wona farms grains grains 455 tons 3,500,000 nternational. markets mafunzario grains grains,animal feeds 615 t0ns 1,500,000 nternational. markets source: author’s survey from field survey, it is observed that electricity and boreholes and experimental irrigation centers were provided in sakpata, tsonga and the health centre at tsonga is recently equipped by the state government to improve the people’s health care. this implies that the host communities were specifically targeted in the provision of infrastructure to enhance both the local farmers and the zimbabwe farmers’ conducive environment. however from the viewpoint of the farm project staff, the people in the host communities derive a lot of benefits from the physical and social services of the farm projects. to corroborate this claim, the responses of the field survey on the services provided by the zimbabwe farmers in collaboration with the state government are given in table 5. as the table reveals, only about 41.5 % and 40.4% of the respondents point to the positive contribution of the boreholes and feeder roads to community improvement respectively. this represents about one third of the respondents. the respondents however added that there are now peaceful relationships between the foreign farmers and the locals after the initial resistance in 2004. table 5: perception of respondents on infrastructural development in host communities services provided % of respondents satisfied/benefiting boreholes 41.5 electricity 21.4 feeder roads 40.4 health facilities 12.5 source: author’s survey (iii) human resources, income development farm input. one area from which the multiplier effects of the zimbabwe farm projects could be assessed is in the area of human resource development and farm labours supply. prior to the coming of the zimbabwe farmers, family labour on farm is heavily family dependent, and on occasional itinerant farmers who work as labourers on sugar cane plantation and local family farms. however, the emergence of the zimbabwe project has brought a slight reduction in the importance of children labour on farms. 6.7% of our respondents asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 27-38 35 reported that some of their children now work with the zimbabwe farmers. apart from this 12.3% of the respondents also indicated that they once worked as part time farmers especially during the harvesting periods on the zimbabwe farms. evidence from official documents with the expatriate farmers revealed that despite the fact that heavy machineries are used on the farm, over 20% of the labour force on these farms are supplied by the local residents. most of the people were employed as attendants, security guards, farm workers, cleaners and messengers. some of the skilled labours found on some of the farms are also residents from the local government areas. the implication of this is that some of the farmers’ children and others working with the zimbabwe farmers may have improved incomes and may one day bring back more farm innovations for their own local development. this may eventually help their parents’ productivity over the years. in addition to the above, the multiplier effects of the farm project are in term of employment provided in commercial and service enterprises for small traders, shopkeepers, grain millers, transporters, vulcanizers, cobblers and electricians. about 45% of our respondents confirmed the growth of off farm employment due to the presence of the zimbabwe farmers in their locality. apart from this, 3% of the farmers interviewed indicated that they enjoyed local training on keeping farm records and farm management from interactions with the foreign farmers during organized farm awareness workshops development at the end of each farming season, thus the issue of human resource development is positively affected. in order to assess the level of incomes, the gross sales from previous agricultural years and farmers income were collated. table 4 shows the average income of the producers based on the sale from the previous agricultural year. in the area of farm income and cash flow, an average local farmer earn between 5,000 to 80,000 naira per annum from local production ,while those involved in large scale production could earn as high as n100,000 per annum. table 6: farm income among the respondents income group tsonga dumagi ogudu sakpata total % n1-10,000 3 5 2 4 14 5.8 11,000-20,000 6 8 7 9 30 12.5 21,000-30,000 12 10 10 8 40 16.7 31,000-40,000 25 17 16 12 70 29.2 41000-50,000 13 11 10 8 42 17.5 51,000-100,000 11 5 3 4 23 9.6 above 100,000 10 6 3 2 21 8.8 total 80 52 61 47 240 100 source: author’s research income generally is low from agricultural production as a result of low capital input into production, low level of education, low price level of farm produce, and poor accessibility to credit facilities among others. from table 6, it is observed that income level rises rapidly from low income of n1-10,000 until income of between n40,000-50,000 when it descends again. within an agricultural year as observed, 28.4% of our respondents earned above the median income of n40,000. when considered in the context of average national per capita income, this is virtually low. from this distribution it is possible to infer on the level of income generally in the study area. this is generally low when compared to the standard poverty line of 1 dollar per day. this might also be as a result of the circular flow of poverty among farmers. it is difficult to compare the income of farmers generally before and after the coming of the zimbabwe farmers. however, 18.8% of the respondents agreed there have been improvements on their earning capacities since the coming of the expatriate farmers. this increase according to them, results from additional earnings from increased sales as some of them supply grains and cassava to the milling and animal feeds production. it may also be from farm payment they received from services rendered while 17% of them believed it came from increased production as a result of improved seedlings obtained at subsidized rates from the foreign farmers. despite the spread of low income from farming activities, it was evident that there is a great inequality in the distribution of farm income even among the farmers despite the introduction of commercial agriculture in the locality. the lorenz curve in figure 1 shows a depiction of current inequality among farmers in the study area. for instance it shows that the lower half of the population receives only about 22% of the total income; conversely, half the income goes to only 32% of the population. commercial agriculture and rural development….. 36 similarly about 91% of the population earns 62% of the total income. the in-equality gap curve is farther away from the equality line in most part of the graph until the high income level is reached. this is characteristically of the poverty nature among rural farmers and the general vicious circle among local farmers throughout the country. fig 1: lorenz curve showing current distribution of farmers’ income (iv) farm input and extension services. the zimbabwe farmers have also implemented partially, the farm input development aspect of its support zone programme in collaboration with the state ministry of agriculture. some of the farmers, apart from working on the zimbabwe farms on part time basis; they were given some elementary training through local workshops, especially in the areas of monocroping and in improved accessibility to farm inputs. however from the view point of the interviewed farmers, only few people in the support zone derive benefits from their extension services. to support this claim, the responses of the respondents on the extension services provided by the zimbabwe farmers are given in table 7. table 7: extension services provided by the zimbabwe project services provided respondents benefiting training and local workshops 3% farm input (fertilizer, insecticides and weeding chemicals) 10% improved seedlings (grains ) 17.7% tractor hiring programmes 2.2% accessibility to farm produce 8% source: author’s own calculation as the table reveals, only about 17.75 of the respondents have access to improved seedlings from the expatriate farmers while 10% had access to farm inputs from them at a subsidized rates. generally, it could be deduced that only few farmers benefit from the extension services associated with the project. the zimbabwe project and local challenges despite the fact that the zimbabwe farm project supposedly affected the lives and production of the local farmers positively, a substantial part of the local farmers saw the whole thing as a threat to their local production. this is because by their tradition, farmers in this part of the country are known for grain production, especially the local rice called tapa’s rice. according to one of the farmers in tsonga: “all the benefits promised our people by the government before they took our land for the foreigners are not fulfilled. it is only the rich farmers among us that are their friends and are benefiting from them, even their productions are not found in our local markets, but among the rich in the city”. the researcher was reliably told that apart from these complaints, there were clashes between the 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 y x asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 27-38 37 government agencies and the local communities at the initial take off of the programme in 2004. the communities initially resisted the release of their lands for the government. they however succumb to the government after due compensation were paid to them through the intervention of the elites and their traditional rulers. while the state government kept on monitoring the project, the local communities were promised future developments and they were assured that apart from the benefit they will derive over the years, most production from the projects would be meant for international markets. from the zimbabwe farmers point of views and production records, the project is not only successful, it is beneficial to the local communities. conclusion this paper has attempted to highlight the linkage between commercial agriculture and rural development through the introduction of the zimbabwe farms project in tsonga. even though the main aim of the project was not for rural development per se, it argues that there is a growing evidence to show that the surrounding communities have benefited from the project positively. results showed that about 20% of the labour force required by the zimbabwe farmers was obtained within the local environment and most people were employed as labourers, security guards and other unskilled labours. similarly 3% of the local farmers were trained to improve local productions while 18.8% of the farmers observed increased productivity and subsequent increase of income as a result of the commercial activities of these new farmers. apart from these, the state of rural infrastructures like roads, electricity and potable water supplies were improved upon jointly by the state government and the zimbabwe farmers. local production of milk, rice, poultry, soya beans and animal fields for international markets were introduced. despite all these, it has been discovered that there were some challenges facing the local farmers and they are not widely satisfied. also, the impacts of the projects are minimally felt by the local communities, and this scenario can be improved upon over the years. while it may be difficult presently to draw firm conclusions on the overall success of the zimbabwe farm project as a people oriented strategy to effect rural and agricultural development, some evidence of development, particularly infrastructures, off farm employment and human resource development can be observed in its catchment areas. we therefore recommend evolving an approach which will emphasize state government participation in the commercial production provision of infrastructure and involving a policy which will guarantee technical transfer to the local farmers over the years. this should also include provisions which will improve accessibility to farm input on the part of the local farmers. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adedayo, a. (1988). spatial ecology of social deprivation in a rural nigerian environment. international journal of environmental studies, 31, 45-53. iwena, o. a. (2007). essential geography for senior secondary school, tonad publishers, ibadan. ogazi, n. j. (1992). the role of agricultural education in rural development, the case of nigeria. olisa m. and obiukwa, j.i (eds), rural development in nigeria, pp. 88-99. okafor, a. f. c. (1981). measuring spatial dimension of rural development, constraints and prospects. proceedings of association of nigerian geographers’ conference; 80-84 mekslinks publishers, okoye, i. c. (1992). agricultural mechanization strategy and development of rural. nigeria. olawepo, r. a. (2009). participatory rural appraisal: a technique to enhance data security for rural development researches. lapai international journal of management and social sciences, 2(1), 173-187. oladipo, j. (1999). planning integrated rural development in nigerian experience. unpublished seminar paper, department of business administration, university of ilorin. olawepo, r. a. (2003). managing the nigerian rural environment for sustainable development through participatory rural appraisal. ilorin journal of business and social sciences, 8(1&2), 32-39. olawepo, r. a. (2010). determining rural farmers’ income: a rural nigeria experience. journal of african studies and development, 2(2), 15-26. commercial agriculture and rural development….. 38 omole, f. k. (2005). basic issues in housing development. femobless publications, ondo. ujo, a. a. (2008). theory and practice of development administration: kaduna. joyce graphic printer’s publishers. world bank, (1990). world development report, development and environment. oxford university press, oxford. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 469-476 469 does access to microfinance improve farm production? evidence from rice farmers in san francisco, agusan del sur, philippines jon marx p. sarmiento instructor; school of management, university of the philippines mindanao davao city, philippines adela g. ellson assistant professor; school of management, university of the philippines mindanao davao city, philippines adonis m. traje food safety and food technology coordinator; afos foundation for entrepreneurial development cooperation cebu city, philippines gianne francis alfred e. manzano project officer; mindanao microfinance council, inc. davao city, philippines sherleen m. comidoy research assistant; school of management, university of the philippines mindanao davao city, philippines abstract 1 poverty level remains high (36.7%) in agricultural areas in the philippines. the second poorest province in the philippines is agusan del sur with incidence reaching as high as 51.2%. one of the approaches to alleviate poverty is to provide access to capital through microfinance. this study draws conclusion on the link between access to microfinance and farm production taking the municipality of san francisco in agusan del sur as a case. a total of 95 rice farmers were interviewed. data revealed that microfinance client farmers were producing 27% more than non-client farmers. the production data were fitted using five production functions namely; (1) neoclassical, (2) neoclassical with interaction, (3) cobb-douglas, (4) transcendental and (5) transcendental with interaction. using ordinary least squares method, neoclassical function best fit the data with access to microfinance significantly improving farm production by 23%. output was most responsive to land (0.60 elasticity (e)), followed by fertilizer (0.18 e), labor (0.14 e), herbicide (0.12 e), seed (0.02 e) and pesticide use (0.00 e). irrigated farms were 23% more productive than non-irrigated farms. despite the positive impact of access to microfinance, only 34% of the farmers had availed agricultural microfinance loan from formal institutions while only 18% took advantage during the 2nd season of 2010 rice production. keywords: microfinance, ordinary least squares, production function modeling, rice farming 1 corresponding author’s details: name: jon marx p. sarmiento email address: marx_jon@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:marx_jon@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 469-476 470 introduction poverty remains to be a pressing problem in the philippines. in the latest 2009 poverty incidence report, the national statistical coordination board (nscb) revealed that the poverty incidence for farmers in the philippines is at 36.7%. mindanao-wide figures were above the national rate and were higher compared to the 2006 poverty incidence report except for davao region which incidence remained the same. the increase in incidence was highest in zamboanga peninsula with 2.4% increase followed by caraga region with 2.1% increase (nscb 2013a). caraga is characterized as a region of poverty amidst bounty (national economic development authority [neda]–caraga 2009). it is a resource-rich region but has consistently ranked at the bottom in terms of development. among the poorest provinces of caraga, agusan del sur has the highest poverty incidence of 51.2% in 2009. it is the second poorest province in the philippines next to zamboanga del norte (nscb 2013b). from 2006 report, poverty incidence in the province increased by 5.7%. this happened despite the fact that agusan del sur is the leading rice producing province in the caraga region with 176,876.50 mt produce in 2009 equivalent to 42% of the total production in the region (bureau of agricultural statistics [bas] 2013). as a vehicle to reduce poverty incidence in the country, the philippine government promoted microfinance. it includes provision of a broad range of financial services such as deposits, loans, money transfers and insurance to poor, low-income household and microenterprises (asian development bank [adb] 2013). in particular, agriculture microfinance is a subset of rural finance dedicated to agriculture-related activities such as input supply, production, distribution, wholesale, processing and marketing (microfinance council of the philippines, inc. [mcpi] 2010). recent studies have provided evidence to the link of access to microfinance or microcredit to improving the livelihood of the low income households and small scale women business entrepreneurs (ike and uzokwe 2012; ike 2013). there were already a number of laws passed to support microfinancing in the philippines. among those were the magna carta for small enterprises (republic act [ra] 6977) with amendments in ra 8289; the social reform and poverty alleviation act (ra 8425); agriculture and fisheries modernization act (ra 8435), general banking act (ra no. 8791), and barangay micro business enterprises act (ra 9178). furthermore, executive order (eo) 558 was issued on august 8, 2006 by former president gloria macapagal arroyo to repeal the market-oriented credit policies under eo 138. in effect, it allowed all government agencies to lend money for “unserved” areas of microfinance institutions. the main objective of this study is to compare the rice production of microfinance client and non-client farmers in the poverty stricken province of agusan del sur. in particular, the research is focused in the municipality of san francisco which contributed as much as 12,847 mt of rice during the second semester of 2009 as reported by the municipal agriculture office (mao) but suffering from high poverty incidence of 39.7% during the same year (nscb 2013c). client farmers are those who availed microfinance services during the 2 nd semester rice production in 2010. the study contributes to the ongoing research on the impact of microfinance in agriculture using quantitative methods, specifically using econometric modeling. methodology san francisco, agusan del sur is located on the eastern part of the province; bounded on the north by the capital town of prosperidad; on the south by the municipality of rosario; on the east by surigao del sur; and on the west by the municipality of talacogon. it has a total land area of 39,253 hectares or a total of 22 barangays (villages). a total population of 2,546 rice farmers was identified by the mao. according to the mindanao microfinance council, inc., data on all financial institutions offering agriculture microfinance in the municipality which include people’s bank of caraga, enterprise bank, kabalikat sa maunlad na buhay, inc. and san asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 469-476 471 francisco growth enhancement multipurpose cooperative among others totaled to 459 (18%) rice farmers in 2010. these farmers are referred in this study as client farmers while those not in the list of the financial institutions are referred as non-client farmers. ninety-five respondents were interviewed from the total population of rice farmers. simple random sampling was performed. to have the same proportion of client and non-client farmers, 18% of 95 respondents were randomly chosen from the list of client farmers while 82% of the 95 respondents were randomly chosen from non-client farmers. hence, a total of 17 client and 78 non-client farmers were surveyed on their second semester rice production in 2010. the study described the general profile of rice farmers using descriptive statistics. in econometric analysis, the study used the production functions namely: (1) neoclassical, (2) neoclassical with interaction, (3) cobbdouglas, (4) transcendental and (5) transcendental with interaction production functions (debertin, 1986). production function modeling is widely applied in agriculture (tvrdon, 2003; ekbom and sterner, 2008). the model adopted is explained as: yi = f(land, labor, seed, fert, pest, herb, irri, micro, age, hs, exp) (1) where: yi = volume of production (kg) land = farm size (ha) labor = quantity of labor used (man-days) seed = seeds used (kg) fert = fertilizers used (kg) pes = pesticides used (l) herb = herbicides used (l) irri = 1 if farm is irrigated; 0 otherwise (i.e., if farm is rain-fed) micro = 1 if microfinance client; 0 if otherwise (i.e., non-client) age = age of the farmer (years) hs = household size (number of household members) exp = experience in rice farming (years) models were tested to determine which best fit the data. diagnostic tests include heteroscedasticity of the variance, test of specification, significance of the model, and normality of residuals. values of adjusted r-squared were also taken into consideration. the ordinary least squares (ols) estimation was performed through the use of gnu regression econometrics and time-series library (gretl) software (adkins 2010). results and discussion two main groups of farmers were identified in this study: (1) client farmers who availed microfinance services during the 2 nd season rice production in 2010, and (2) the non-client farmers. these two types of farmers did not differ in their profile. the following are the demographic features of the farmers in general: male, married, average age of 48 years old; a household size of 5 members; with 23 years farming experience; having elementary to secondary education; rice farming as major occupation; who owns his land of about 2.07 ha; devoted 1.85 ha for rice production; uses 53.03 kg of seed per ha (rc 82 variety); facing a daily wage rate of php 156/day; hired 11.85 mandays/ha for labor not including family labor; applied fertilizer at a rate of 136.28 kg/ha; used pesticide at 1.66 l/ha; herbicide at 0.98 l/ha, and an insignificant amount of manure at 0.04 kg/ha. their other sources of income include carpentry, livestock farming, and operating a small retail store in the neighborhood. based on the results, farmers who availed microfinance services had higher rice production (table 1) compared to those who did not avail. there were four factors that contribute to higher production: (1) fertilizer use (2) herbicide use (3) seed use, and (4) irrigation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 469-476 472 table 1: rice production of microfinance client and non-client rice farmers, 2 nd season 2010 output land labor fertilizer seed pesticide herbicide irrigation (kg) (ha) (mandays) (kg) (kg) (l) (l) 1irrigated; 0-else nonclient 3962.26 1.85 21.46 248.08 99.81 3.24 1.79 0.19 client 5007.76 1.84 24.00 270.59 90.29 2.35 1.94 0.24 all 4149.35 1.85 21.92 252.11 98.11 3.08 1.82 0.20 per hectare analysis nonclient 2141.76 1.85 11.60 134.10 53.95 1.75 0.97 client 2721.61 1.84 13.04 147.06 49.07 1.28 1.05 all 2242.89 1.85 11.85 136.28 53.03 1.66 0.98 client farmers used more fertilizer (147.06 kg/ha) compared to non-client farmers (134.10 kg/ha). fertilizers when applied at the right level boosts production dramatically. herbicide use was found to be higher for client farmers (1.05 l/ha) compared to non-client farmers (0.97 l/ha). depending on the type of weeds and the timing of application, herbicides substitute manual weeding (labor). one of the limitations of the data was on the timing of application and other technical information such as type of dominant weed species. preemergence herbicide arrests weeds prior to planting giving due advantage to rice. once the crop has established, then it can compete and suppress weeds. manual labor is mainly employed when weeds start to overcome the crop after planting. in the said situation, herbicide application would be very selective or totally avoided due to risk of crop damage. the results of survey showed that the predominant herbicide applied are broad spectrum herbicide. on planting materials, the use of certified seeds appears to be uniform in terms of variety between client and non-client farmers. however, there was a marked difference in the amount of seeds used. client farmers used lesser seeds (49.07 kg/ha) compared to non-client farmers (53.95 kg/ha). optimum rice population per ha is a necessary information particularly the planting distance and number of plants per hill and per ha. overpopulation results to intraspecific competition for nutrients, and increased mutual shading of leaves creating favorable microclimate for insect pests and diseases. this claim is supported by the increase application of pesticide of non-client farmers (1.75 l/ha) as compared to client farmers (1.28 l/ha). furthermore, reduced yield of non-client farmer can be attributed to low investment in irrigation (10%) compared to client farmers (13%). the reasons for low investment in irrigation include high cost, dependence on rainfall, and natural limitation of water supply in the area. in fact, most of the farms are rain-fed for rice production. other problems identified include poor drainage facility, lack of government support and farm-to-market road problems. client farmers produced 2,721.61 kg/ha while non-client settled at 2,141.76 kg/ha. this translates to 27% higher production of client farmers than non-client farmers. client farmers were also users of machineries such as tractor (52%) and “turtle” (18%); while for non-client rice farmers, a few of them owned tractor (45%) and “turtle” (1%). such farm machineries increase further rice production. tractors plow field faster and break up soil in large clods; while, “turtle” facilitates harrowing of field faster or breaks up clods faster. in effect, the activity is finished within a day or two giving due competitive advantage to rice crop to establish while delay in the growth and emergence of weeds will be more likely the scenario for longer harrowing activity. econometric modeling was performed to support the difference in the production of client versus non-client farmers. the inputs considered asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 469-476 473 were land area, labor, seed, fertilizer, and crop protection chemicals which include pesticide and herbicide use. due to insignificant amount of manure it was no longer considered in the model. in addition, farm attributes such as microfinance provision and irrigation, and farmer’s profile such as age, household size and experience in rice farming were considered. the production data were fitted into the five production functions namely; (1) neoclassical, (2) neoclassical with interaction, (3) cobbdouglas, (4) transcendental and (5) transcendental with interaction models. homoscedastcity of the variance of the error terms assumption was tested. heteroscedastic models were corrected using generalized least squares approach. as the inputs to production contribute directly to output and are independent from each other, collinearity is not an issue. similarly, serial correlation is not applicable since cross-section data were used and the ordering of the data is arbitrary. test of specification was conducted using ramsey’s reset. significance of the model, normality of residuals, and adjusted r-squared were taken into consideration (table 2). table 2: diagnostic tests of five production function models model sample size adjusted r2 significance of the model normality of residuals heteroskedasticity test ramsey's reset neo-classical 95 0.87 6.27e-33*** jarque-bera test: 2.97e-012. not normal white's test: 0.003585. heteroskedastic. corrected using heteroskedasticitycorrected model n/a neo-classical with interaction 95 0.94 3.65e-40*** jarque-bera test: 0.00144528. not normal white's test: 0.019892. heteroskedastic. corrected using heteroskedasticitycorrected model n/a cobb-douglas 60 0.73 3.70e-14*** jarque-bera test: 0.0161862. not normal white's test: 0.55434. homoskedastic squares and cubes: 0.138 squares only: 0.0463 cubes only: 0.0472 correctly specified transcendental 60 0.75 9.74e-12*** jarque-bera test: 0.268311. normal white's test: 0.226603. homoskedastic squares and cubes: 0.319 squares only: 0.347 cubes only: 0.297 correctly specified transcendental with interaction 60 0.84 5.99e-14*** jarque-bera test: 2.78898e008. not normal white's test: 0.191048. homoskedastic squares and cubes: 0.443 squares only: 0.421 cubes only: 0.444 correctly specified ***significant at 1% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 469-476 474 among the five production models (table 3), neoclassical and transcendal functions revealed access to microfinance being a significant factor to production. both models were significant at 1% alpha and satisfying homoscedasticity and specificity assumptions. however, neoclassical was preferred over transcendental function because of the former having more number of significant variables, more sample size used and higher adjusted r 2 . table 3: comparison of five production function models neo-classical neo-classical with interaction cobb-douglas transcendental transcendental with interaction coeff pval coeff pval coeff pval coeff pval coeff pval const 148.91 0.78 2032.62 0.01 *** 5.60 0.00 *** 6.92 0.00 *** 7.14 0.00 *** land 210.34 0.69 -382.49 0.46 0.23 0.15 -0.40 0.16 labor 66.11 0.11 5.55 0.87 0.02 0.41 -0.03 0.30 fert -2.58 0.27 8.70 0.00 *** 0.00 0.20 0.00 0.02 ** seed 1.42 0.89 9.32 0.16 0.00 0.72 0.00 0.63 pest 284.37 0.17 -395.77 0.00 *** 0.03 0.74 0.16 0.03 ** herb 601.61 0.05 * -813.40 0.02 ** 0.07 0.55 -0.64 0.04 ** land^2 308.82 0.01 *** -443.37 0.00 *** labor^2 -0.91 0.34 -2.34 0.01 *** fert^2 0.01 0.00 *** 0.00 0.00 *** seed^2 0.00 0.95 -0.03 0.11 pest^2 45.26 0.11 51.40 0.00 *** herb^2 -92.97 0.05 ** -224.09 0.00 *** lnland 0.61 0.00 *** 0.19 0.62 0.29 0.44 lnlabor -0.08 0.51 -0.36 0.42 -0.02 0.96 lnfert 0.33 0.00 *** -0.06 0.82 -0.14 0.56 lnseed -0.04 0.73 0.15 0.75 0.39 0.34 lnpest -0.05 0.63 -0.04 0.89 -0.41 0.10 * lnherb 0.27 0.03 ** -0.06 0.85 0.29 0.35 land_labor 104.93 0.00 *** 0.03 0.00 *** land__herb 667.05 0.00 *** labor_fert -0.80 0.00 *** 0.00 0.00 *** labor_seed 0.00 0.01 *** labor_herb 46.48 0.00 *** 0.02 0.01 ** fert_seed 0.07 0.00 *** 0.00 0.00 *** fert_herb 1.55 0.00 *** seed_her -7.41 0.00 *** age -24.35 0.01 *** 0.02 0.00 *** 0.01 0.02 ** 0.01 0.03 ** experience 35.92 0.00 *** micro 910.04 0.01 *** 0.27 0.08 * irri 909.78 0.00 *** 923.58 0.00 *** asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 469-476 475 the neoclassical production function is expressed as: output = -148.91 + 210.34land + 66.11labor – 2.58fert + 1.42seed – 284.37pest + 601.61herb* + 308.82land 2 *** – 0.91labor 2 + 0.01fert 2 *** – 0.002seed 2 + 45.26pest 2 – 92.97herb 2 *** + 910.04micro*** + 909.78irri*** (2) equation 2 implies that client-farmers were producing 910.04 kg higher than non clientfarmers or 23% higher. this is a close estimate with the actual production of client over nonclient farmers which is 1,045.5 kg (26% higher) or 579.85 kg/ha (27% higher) using per hectare analysis. moreover, it also suggests a 909.78 kg (23 % higher) higher production for irrigated farms compared to non-irrigated farms. the elasticity analysis (table 4) showed that output is most responsive (0.60 elasticity (e)) to land with 1,350.66 kg/ha increase. this is followed by the use of fertilizer (0.18 e) with 3.03 kg/kg increase, labor use (0.14 e) with 26.01 kg/man-day increase, herbicide use (0.12 e) with 263.01 kg/l increase, seed use (0.02 e) with 0.97 kg/kg increase and pesticide use (0.00 e) with 5.21 kg/l decrease. this implies that increasing the use of inputs except pesticide will increase rice production. table 4: elasticity analysis for the neoclassical production function variables elasticity mean 10% change in input change in output (kg) productivity land (ha) 0.60 1.85 0.18 249.37 1350.66 kg/ha labor (mandays) 0.14 21.92 2.19 57.00 26.01 kg/manday fertilizer (kg) 0.18 252.11 25.21 76.27 3.03 kg/kg seed (kg) 0.02 98.11 9.81 9.51 0.97 kg/kg pesticide (l) 0.00 3.08 0.31 -1.61 -5.21 kg/l herbicide (l) 0.12 1.82 0.18 47.90 263.01 kg/l hence, it can be concluded that empirical findings revealed that access to agriculture microfinance improved production by 23% in the case of rice farming in san francisco, agusan del sur, philippines. although it positively impacts production, the prevalence of those availing these services was relatively low. only 34% of the respondents had experienced availing loans from financial institutions while only 18% took advantage during the 2 nd season of 2010 rice production. the reasons why farmers did not avail of the microfinance were as follows; they perceived microfinancing as not vital to farm operations (53%) while others were risk-averse (35%) and some (6%) complained of high interest rates. the low rate of patrons availing formal microfinance was attributed to the peculiarities in the rural and agriculture sector. as discussed by llanto (2008), this could involve information asymmetry, geographic dispersion, heterogeneity of the population, covariant risks, insecure property rights, and the absence of insurance markets and risk-reducing institutions among others. in many cases, farmers availed from informal credits. around 65% of client-farmers and 72% of non-clients had history of availing loan from informal credits. these loans, however, were intended for emergency purposes, education, and household expenditures and not for agricultural use. even agricultural loans from formal institutions were also used for other purposes in some cases. consumer loans were easier to avail compared to agricultural loans. either of these loan types, the personal needs were addressed while at the same time, the needs of the farm were not sacrificed making microfinance from the two sources effective. conclusion this study attempts to address the question “does access to microfinance improve rice farm production?” using 95 respondents in san asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 469-476 476 francisco, agusan del sur, philippines, client farmers were producing 27% more than the nonclient farmers. using econometric modeling, it was empirically shown that access to microfinance significantly improved farm production by 23%. however, there is still a wide gap existing in the study area since only 18% of the respondents availed microfinance loan during 2 nd cropping season of 2010 while only 34% had history of availing microfinance. the following are the recommendations arrived in the course of this study. (1) microfinance institutions and local government units should widely promote and disseminate the benefits of adding agriculture microfinance in the production system. (2) improve formal microfinance credit services by providing less stringent application procedure. in addition, formal institutions should provide mechanism on how to ensure that agricultural loans are used for farm improvements. (3) further studies on microfinancing should be conducted with focus on the proliferation of informal credit providers and its implications to farm profitability. (4) finally, include in future research the effect of microfinancing in farming efficiency, income, improvement of standard of living, quality of work life, nutrition, education, and empowerment of women. this will give a holistic assessment of the impact of microfinancing. acknowledgment the authors would like to thank the mindanao microfinance council, inc. and up strategic research and management foundation (upstream) for the support given in this publication. references adkins, l. c. (2010). using gretl for principles of econometrics (3 rd edition). oklahoma state university, usa. asian development bank (2013). microfinance: financial services for the poor. http://www.adb.org/sectors/finance/microfina nce bureau of agricultural statistics (2013). palay and corn: volume of production by ecosystem/croptype, geolocation, year and period. http://countrystat.bas.gov.ph/selection.asp debertin, d. (1986). agricultural production economics. new york: macmillian publishing. ekbom, a. and t. sterner (2008). production function analysis of soil properties and soil conservation investments in tropical agriculture. environment for development discussion paper 08-20. ike, p. c. (2013). analysis of impact of microfinance services on business performance of small scale women entrepreneurs in enugu state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6): 424-429. ike, p. c. and u. n. uzokwe (2012). alleviating rural farmers poverty through effective micro credit: evaluation of undp intervention in delta state. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3): 465-472. llanto, g. m. (2008). overcoming obstacles to agricultural microfinance: looking at broader issue. asian journal of agriculture and development, 4(2): 23-40. microfinance council of the philippines, inc. (2010). agriculture microfinance: guidebook. pasig city, philippines. national economic development authoritycaraga (2009). regional development agenda: 2010-2020. http://caraga.neda.gov.ph/download/rda.pdf national statistical coordination board (2013a). table 7a. poverty incidence for farmers, by region: 2003, 2006, and 2009. http://www.nscb.gov.ph/poverty/2009/table s_basic.asp national statistical coordination board (2013b). table 17. clustering of provinces based on 2009 poverty incidence among families, by province: 2003, 2006, and 2009. http://www.nscb.gov.ph/poverty/2009/tables_bas ic.asp national statistical coordination board (2013c). city and municipal-level small area poverty estimates, 2009. http://www.nscb.gov.ph/poverty/2009_sae/2009_sae _final.pdf tvrdon, j. (2003). conception of the model of agriculture with production and nonproduction function. agricultural economics, 49(5): 208-212. http://www.adb.org/sectors/finance/microfinance http://www.adb.org/sectors/finance/microfinance http://countrystat.bas.gov.ph/selection.asp http://caraga.neda.gov.ph/download/rda.pdf http://www.nscb.gov.ph/poverty/2009/tables_basic.asp http://www.nscb.gov.ph/poverty/2009/tables_basic.asp http://www.nscb.gov.ph/poverty/2009_sae/2009_sae_final.pdf http://www.nscb.gov.ph/poverty/2009_sae/2009_sae_final.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 430-436 430 gender participation in forestry and agro-forestry practices in sapele local government area of delta state, nigeria r. a. isiorhovoja department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, p. m. b. 95074, asaba, delta state, nigeria abstract this study examined the level of gender participation in forestry practices in sapele local government area of delta state, nigeria. specifically, the study examined the gender distribution of operators among various economic activities in forestry practices and gender differences in income. data were collected on the marital status, age, educational qualification, number of years of experience in forestry/agroforestry practices, income and challenges encountered from 91 respondents drawn by simple random sampling technique. the data were collected by using copies of a structured questionnaire and were analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. the findings, among others, were that: though there was significant difference in gender distribution by occupation within the subsector, there was no significant gender disparity in gender involvement in terms of number; there was no significant gender difference in the educational qualifications of the operators. furthermore, that a sizeable proportion of single again women depend on forest resources for their livelihood; that a good proportion of the female in the subsector had no alternative opportunity, finally that there was no significant gender difference in income. we conclude that the forestry economy has high potential for the pursuit of gender equality and for poverty alleviation and recommend that policies and programmes directed towards poverty alleviation in the subsector should, however, be gender sensitive. keywords: gender, forestry, agroforestry, delta state introduction 1 gender has virtually nothing to do with biological differences between sexes. rather it is an idiom used to express the roles of men and women and their socio-economic and cultural relationships in any community (fao, 2005). gender has to do with men and women and how they relate to each other in terms of roles, responsibilities, obligations and entitlements. it defines what men and women do, the degree of access, control and authority to resources and 1 corresponding author’s email address: straakpo@yahoo.com decision-making and consequently, the abilities to discharge these duties effectively. the current debate revolving around issues on women integration into the national economy variously referred to as women liberation or women empowerment and, to some extent, gender mainstreaming simply put, has to do with the giving of equal access to opportunities to both men and women for involvement in economic activities and in benefiting from the fruit of economic development. the perceived unfairness in this system of roles and relationships and how to make it acceptable is the crux of the issues involved in gender mainstreaming and more specifically, women asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:straakpo@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 430-436 431 empowerment. the end to this debate is hardly in sight notwithstanding the increasing rate of female engagement in the public sector and in competitive wage employments and the increasing recognition given to the role of women in non-monetized economic activities which until recently was not recognized in national income accounting and policy directives. the struggle for gender mainstreaming may have been rooted in the under-acknowledgement and inadequately understood gender roles in agriculture and rural development and the almost unrecognized and unreported role played by women in development policy, planning and implementation. over the years, culture stereo type role has become odious and therefore reprehensible. policy interest in rural women emerged as an issue in the 1980s, at a time when there was increasing disenchantment with the effects of development policies on rural areas (commonwealth, 2001). the situation has however improved remarkably and it keeps improving. the pain in whatever was left of the “imbalance” is today highly orchestrated by reasons of the fact that women now have similar qualifications coupled with the fact that women have internalized the desire to be more gainfully employed in preference to full time house wives (fink et al, 1994). this move by the women has strong international support. one of the objectives of the world food summit, for example, was to ensure gender equality and empowerment of women. to this end governments of member nations were, amongst others, required to: (i) support and implement commitments made at the fourth world conference on women, held in beijing in 1995 to the effect that a gender perspective is mainstreamed in all policies. (ii). promote women’s full and equal participation in the economy, and for this purpose introduce and enforce gender sensitive legislation providing women with secure and equal access to and control over productive resources including credit, land and water. (iii) improve the collection, dissemination and use of gender disaggregated data in agriculture, fisheries, forestry and rural development. nigeria is a signatory to the world food summit agreement of 1996 and to many other international agreements on gender mainstreaming. the global drive for gender mainstreaming has, as it were, provided a canopy for policy attention to be given to very specific issues such as women empowerment. today, nigeria like many other countries has established the ministry of women affairs with aims to identify and address gender issues in development from women perspective. nigeria has, in addition, under the administration of umar musa yar’dua, as president (2007-2009), allocated 30% of political appointments to women. this is without prejudice to other positions individual women may attract on the basis of personal merit. there are other campaigns, programmes and training that are gender biased to favour women political and economic emancipation and gender equality. nigeria’s forestry economy is small and is largely underdeveloped. its percentage contributions to the gross domestic product (gdp) have been small with a downward trend. the percentage contribution rose unsteadily from 0.92% in 1981 to 1.01% in 1987 (cbn, 2006). since this period the contribution has declined steadily to only 0.53% in 2006. over the years, especially in the face of the tight labour market coupled with the changing fortune of the african timber and plywood (at&p), there has been a remarkable increase in the number of small firms engaged in this subsector to justify an interest in assessing the gender relative performance, constraints and the potentials the subsector has for gender mainstreaming and for empowering its operators, especially the women, economically. presently, baseline data about the fact or otherwise of gender imbalance are scanty and the production of factsheets are piecemeal and far apart. this paper aims to add to the available factsheets with the specific objectives of examining of: (i) identifying the socio-economic characteristics of operators in the sector, (ii) examining the motivating factors for gender participation in the sector, (iii) evaluating areas of involvement by men and women in the sector, (iv) determining gender relative contributions and, (v) identifying the gender specific challenges of the subsector. the hypothesis was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 430-436 432 that there is significant gender difference in income in the forestry subsector. materials and methods the materials used in the study were obtained from a field survey of the operators of the forestry subsector in sapele local government area (lga) of delta state, nigeria, in june 2010. the three towns surveyed were sapele metropolis, okwurighwre and amukpe. these three towns were the major centers of wood and wood related activities in the lga. sapele is the home of the african timber and plywood (at&p) company, the largest of such companies in africa. at&p is involved in the processing and export of wood and wood products. the availability of raw materials and the ease of transportation by sea were the major determinants of the location of this company in sapele by the erstwhile owner –the united african company (uac). these same factors account for wood and forest related economic activities being one of the major occupations in this lga. simple random sampling was used to draw 120 respondents from a list of operators obtained from the association of timber and allied industries. ninety one of the filled in questionnaires were however used in the study due to observed errors and omissions in information supplied by the remaining 29. data were collected with the aid of copies of a structured questionnaire on the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, constraints to their involvement, the motivation business startup in the subsector, the staff strength and the turnover of the firm. the resulting data were analyzed by using frequency count, mean and percentages. results and discussion demographic characteristics of respondents table 1 shows the gender of respondents cross tabulated by their status as heads of household. out of the 91 respondents, 51.60% (47) were male and 48.4% (44) were female. a chi-square test statistic (p >.10) indicates that there was no significant difference in the number of male and female involved in the subsector. about 65.90% (60) of the respondents were heads of household while 34.10% (31) were not. about 91.50% (43) of the male were heads of household while 38.60% (17) of the female were heads of household. thus majority of the males were heads of household. on marital status, 76.90% of the respondents were married. a higher percentage of the male (87.20%) than that of the female (65.90%) were married. a sizeable proportion of single again women depend on forestry related economic activities for their livelihood. about 17% (15) of the respondents had no formal education. the educational qualification with the highest frequency for the male was secondary school certificate (36.3%) followed by national diploma(nd)/national certificate of education (nce) (21.30%). the female had primary school leaving certificate (pslc) with 38.60% as the qualification with the highest frequency followed by secondary school certificate or its equivalent (25%). there was however no significant gender difference in qualification (pearson chi square 8.57, df = 5, p > 0.13). this agrees with fink, grajewski, siebert and zierold, (1994) findings. finally, on table 1, the 6 10 years bracket was the modal number of years of experience. this was true for the male (38.39%) and the female (40.90%). two deductions can be made from the information contained in table 1. first was that the male were older in the business. the second is that more female entered into the entrepreneurial class through this subsector in the last five years. this finding agrees with that of zelliner et al cited in soonthonsmai (2010) that more women entre the entrepreneurial class. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 430-436 433 table 1: demographic characteristic of respondents male female total household head yes no total marital status single married single again total educational qualification no formal education primary school wasc/equivalent nce/nd first degree/equivalent higher degree total no of years of experience 15 6 10 11 -15 16 – 20 21 – 25 26 – 30 total 43(47.30%) 4 (4.30%) 47 (51.60%) 4 (8.50%) 41 (87.20%) 2 (4.30%) 47 (100%) 7 (14.90%) 8 (17.70%) 17 (36.20%) 10 (21.30%) 5 (10.60%) 0 (0.00%) 47 (100%) 7 (14.90%) 18 (38.39%) 12 (25.50%) 4 (8.50%) 3 (6.40%) 3 (6.40%) 47 (100%) 17 (18.70%) 27 (29.70) 44 (48.40%) 3 (6.80%) 29 (65.90%) 12 (27.30%) 44 (100%) 8 (18.20%) 17 (38.60%) 11 (25.00%) 4 (9.10%) 3 (6.80%) 1 (2.30%) 44 (100%) 14 (31.80%) 18 (40.90%) 7 (15.90%) 4 (9.10%) 0 (0.00%) 1 (2.30%) 44 (100%) 60 (65.90%) 31 (34.10%) 91 (100%) 7(7.70%) 70 (76.90%) 14 (15.40%) 91 (100%) 15 (16.50%) 25 (27.50%) 28 (30.80%) 14 (15.40%) 8 (8.80%) 1 (1.10%) 91 (100%) 21 (23.10%) 36 (39.60%) 19 (20.90%) 8 (8.80%) 3 (3.30%) 4 (4.40%) 91 (100%) source: field survey, 2010 gender distribution by occupation furniture making (36.2%), sawmilling (19.1%) and selling of planks (12.8%), in that order, were the occupation taken to by most male (table 2). for the female, the three most common occupations were leaf gathering (25%), cooking coal burning (22.7%) and selling of planks (15.9%). the table also indicates that women were not into such occupation as mushroom production, furniture making and fish production in forest estates. there is thus an apparent difference in gender distribution of forestry activities. this finding may have implications for the design of empowerment policy and programmes in the subsector if they are to be gender sensitive. table 2: gender distribution by occupation within the sector primary occupation male female total saw milling mushroom chew stick production selling of planks fuel wood selling cooking coal burning pole extraction furniture making bee honey production fish farming ply wood production leaf gathering 9 (19.10%) 1 (2.10%) 2 (4.3%) 6 (12.80%) 1 (2.10%) 1 (2.10%) 2 (4.30%) 17 (36.20%) 1 (2.10%) 4 (8.50%) 2 (4.30%) 1 (2/10%) 3 (6.80%) 0 (0.00%) 3 (6.80%) 7 (15.90%) 5 (11.40%) 10 (22.70%) 2 (4.50%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (4.50%) 0 (0.00%) 1 (2.30%) 11 (25.00%) 12 (13.20%) 1 (1.10%) 5 (5.50%) 13 (14.30%) 6 (6.60%) 11 (12.10%) 4 (4.40%) 17 (18.70%) 3 (3.30%) 4 (4.40%) 3 (3.30%) 12 (13.20%) total 47 (100%) 44 (100%) 91 (100%) source: field survey, 2010 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 430-436 434 gender of respondents by major problems encountered the nature of challenges encountered could indicate the degree of access to or control over farm resources. table 3 reveals that the three major challenges that confront the male were lack of working tools (46.80%), credit (17.00%) and market for products (12.80%). for the female, the challenges were those of credit (29.50%), market for products (20.50%) and working tools (15.90%). thus the challenges are sub-sectoral, they cut across occupations in the subsector. notwithstanding the gender differences in the prevalence of these challenges, that they cut across gender suggests that any form of invention that would be packaged for the forestry subsector should be holistic in approach at tackling challenges if it is to have any meaning impact. table 3: gender distribution by major problems encountered major problems encountered male female total land working tools credit technical knowhow market availability basic infrastructure culture stereotyping vehicle product preservation 4 (8.50%) 22 (46.80%) 8 (17.00%) 1 (2.1%) 6 (12.80%) 4 (8.50%) 0 (0.00%) 2 (4.30%) 0 (0.00%) 4 (9.10%) 7 (15.90%) 13 (29.50%) 2 (4.5%) 9 (20.50%) 4 (9.10%) 2 (4.50%) 2 (4.50%) 1 (2.30%) 8 (8.80%) 29 (31.90%) 21 (23.10%) 3 (3.30%) 15 (16.50%) 8 (8.80%) 2 (2.20%) 4 (4.40%) 1 (1.10%) total 47 (100%) 44 (100%) 91 (100%) source: field survey, 2010 membership of trade association out of the 47 male respondents 59.60% (28) were members of one trade association or another. for the female, 52.30% (44) of them belonged to one trade association or another. there was no significant difference between genders in their membership of trade association. given the importance of trade association in access to information and social capital, the about half of that number of respondents in both gender belonging to trade associations may indicate either lack of awareness of the existence or low level trade related content and therefore low benefit derived from them. this claim is supported by information in table 4 which shows the relatively high score for respondents who indicated “none” (30.10%). membership of trade association has obvious benefits as can be read from table 4. however, only trade associations which have direct and immediate effects on members’ business should be given priority to enable members’ businesses to grow and become vibrant. hence the development of appropriate contents for trade associations may be an essential initial activity in empowering operators of this subsector. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 430-436 435 table 4: gender distribution by major benefits derived from being a member of trade association benefits derived male female total ease of access to credit education representation of group interests social/moral support none 11 (30.60%) 0 (0.00%) 8 (22.22%) 4 (11.10%) 13 (36.10%) 5 (15.20%) 1 (3.00%) 8 (24.20%) 9 (27.30%) 10 (30.30%) 16 (23.20%) 1 (1.40%) 16 (23.20%) 13 (18.80%) 23 (33.30%) total 36 33 69 source: field survey, 2010 gender distribution by motivation for starting business table 5 which shows respondents’ motivations for taking to occupation in the forestry subsector reveals that the male are motivated principally by the “need to be independent” (47.80%) and “poor salary” (21.70%). about 29.50% of the female had “need to be independent”, 27.30% had “need to utilize unused capacity” 13.60% had “no other means of survival” as their motivation. finally, “parents’ occupation” and poor salary” were also motivating factors (11.4% each way). in other words, female have more motivating factors. that 69.50% of the male indicated “need to be independent” or “poor salary” as their motivation could suggest the availability of alternative employment for the male. the female, on the hand, given the relatively evenly spread responses coupled with the 13.60% of them who had no other means of survival and 6.80% who resorted to the subsector out of rising cost of living may have taken to their present occupation as a last resort. these responses point to a high likelihood of entrepreneurs of necessity and entrepreneurs of dislocation among the female respondents. such entrepreneurs are characterized by poor preparedness for entrepreneurial role and low aptitude for the vocation. barbato and bracker (1988) define entrepreneurs of dislocation as individuals who start their own business as a result of the loss of employment due to a business closing, plant closing or layoff. the relative ease of finding a place in the forestry subsector may suggest potentials within it for self employment opportunity and for alleviating poverty. table 5: gender distribution by motivation for starting business motivation for starting business male female total poor salary need to be independent need to utilize excess capacity parents’ occupation no other means of survival rising cost of living 11(23.40%) 22 (46.80%) 4 (8.50%) 7 (14.90%) 3 (6.40%) 0 (0.00%) 5 (11.40%) 13 (29.50%) 12 (27.30%) 5 (11.40%) 6 (13.60%) 3 (6.80%) 16 (17.60%) 35 (38.90%) 16 (17.80%) 12 (13.30%) 9 (10.00%) 3.30%) total 47 (100%) 44 (100%) 91 (100%) source: field survey, 2010 gender distribution by monthly income the income of the male ranged from n7000.00 to n100,000.00 with a mean of n31,686.00 and a standard deviation of n54,417.00. that of the female ranged from n4500.00 to n215,000.00 with a mean of n39,682.00 and a standard deviation of n23,182.00. a ttest of differences between means indicates that there was no statistically significant difference in income between male and female respondents (t = 0.78 prob. = 0.44). this may imply that the managerial capability of women in economic activities in the forestry subsector is unexploited and largely underutilized. having said that, it should be noted that the relatively high variation in the income of the female may also indicate that a number of them may just be on what may be term “marginal occupation” or under employed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 436 table 6: gender distribution by income group monthly turnover (=n=) male female total 1 – 49999 50000 – 99999 100000 149999 150000 – 199999 200000 249999 27 (77.10%) 7 (20.00%) 1 (2.90%) 0 0 26 (78.80%) 3 (9.10%) 1 (3.00%) 1 (3.00%) 2 (6.10%) 53 (77.90%) 10 (14.70%) 2 (2.90%) 1 (1.50%) 2 (2.90%) source: field survey, 2010 conclusion the paper set with the broad objective of adding to the factsheet of the truth or otherwise of the proposition that there is gender imbalance in the forestry subsector. all in all we have found that women are competitively engaged in the forestry economy with their male counterpart both in terms of number and in income generation. however, there is a significant difference between male and female in the type of occupation engaged in within the subsector with the implications that policies and programmes directed at gender mainstreaming and poverty alleviation in the forestry economy need to be gender sensitive. references barbato, r. and bracker, j. (1988). dislocation and potential entrepreneurship http://www.sbaer.uca.edu/research/sbida/1 988/pdf brown, l. r., feldstein, h., haddad, l., pena, c. and quisumbing, a. ( 2001). generating food security in the year 2020: women as producers, gatekeepers, and shock absorbers in the unfinished agenda, pinstrup-andersen and pandya-lorch (eds). washington, d.c. international food policy research institute cbn (2006). central bank of nigeria; statistical bulletin, vol.17. abuja, nigeria. commonwealth secretariat (2001). gender mainstreaming in agriculture and rural development: a reference manual for governments and other stakeholders. fao (2005). food and agriculture organization of the united nation annual report, water for people, water for life, rome, italy. fink, m., grajewski, r., siebert, r. and zierold, k. (1994). rural women in east germany in agricultural restructuring and rural change in europe. symes, d and jansen, a.j. (eds). agricultural university wageningen, the netherlands. kabutha, c. (1999). the importance of gender in agricultural policies, resource access and human nutrition. a paper presented to a seminar on “agricultural policy, resource access and nutritional outcomes”, addis ababa, november 3-5. ndp (2001). national development plan, dublin. www.irlgov.ie/justice/equality/gender/ soonthonsmai, v. (2010). an investigation of the relationships between market orientation, entrepreneurship and business performance of the small and medium enterprises: an empirical study of thai herbal product manufacturing and distributing firms. abr & tlc conference proceedings. orlando, florida, usa. http://www.clutteinstituteonlinejournals.com/programs/disney2010/a rticle%20138.pdf. http://www.sbaer.uca.edu/research/sbida/1988/pdf http://www.sbaer.uca.edu/research/sbida/1988/pdf http://www.irlgov.ie/justice/equality/gender/ http://www.clutteinstitute-onlinejournals.com/programs/disney2008/article%20138.pdf http://www.clutteinstitute-onlinejournals.com/programs/disney2008/article%20138.pdf http://www.clutteinstitute-onlinejournals.com/programs/disney2008/article%20138.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 4 april 2013. food security index and socio-economic effects of climate change on rural farming households in delta state, nigeria emaziye, p. o. (department of agricultural economics and extension delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, nigeria) citation: emaziye, p. o. (2013) “food security index and socio-economic effects of climate change on rural farming households in delta state, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 193-198. food security index and socio-economic ... 193 author(s) emaziye, p. o. department of agricultural economics and extension delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, nigeria food security index and socio-economic effects of climate change on rural farming households in delta state, nigeria abstract the study examined the food security status and the socioeconomic effects of climate change on rural farming households in delta state, nigeria. the main objective of the study was to determine the food security status of the rural farming households in the state while the specific objective was to determine the socio-economic effects of climate change on rural farming households in the state. multistage sampling procedure was used in the random selection of local government, communities and rural households for the research study. the data for the study were obtained with the aids of structured questionnaire survey randomly administered to rural farming households in the state. food security index was used to determine the level of food insecurity (food security status) among the rural households in communities that have been affected by flood and or other climate hazardswhile descriptive statistics was used to summarize the socio-economic effects and their food security status of the rural farming households in the state. most respondents (65.10%) were married with low annual income of n54,702 ($353) which is less than the poverty line of less than $1 (one dollar) a day. most rural farming households witnessed loss of investment on farm lands, lives and income respectively in the state. the study also reveals that rural farming households suffered ill health, such as malaria, water borne diseases and skin infections that were on the increase in the state. the study also revealed that majority of respondents was moderately food insecure. the study also recommends that government planning agencies and policy makers should put into consideration these food insecurity situations in their planning and policy implementation to prevent future chronic food insecurity situation in the state. keywords: food security, socio-economic effects, nigeria introduction climate change adversely affect socioeconomic sectors, which include water resources, agriculture, food security, forestry, fisheries and human settlements, ecological systems and human health, with developing countries being the most vulnerable (ipcc, 2000). fishing and fisheries are important occupation and operations that provide income, employment and protein to nigeria thereby enhancing food security in the country, but in a situation of global warming, fisheries in northern nigeria as in other northern parts of west africa, would evidently be impacted (ipcc, 2007). this is applicable to delta state where most rural households engage in fish farming and crops production for their livelihoods and attainment of food security. darnton-hill et al. (2005) also stated that lack of dietary diversity and poor diet quality will lead to micronutrient malnutrition or hidden hunger. this hidden hunger can cause illness, blindness and premature death as well as impair the cognitive development of survivors. iron deficiency among female agricultural workers in sierra leone will cost the economy $100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 193-198 194 million in the next years. this is applicable to delta state were women labour (work) under harsh environment condition in their farming operations. extreme high air temperatures contribute directly to deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory disease, particularly among elderly people (robine, 2003). high temperatures also raise the levels of ozone and other pollutants in the air that exacerbate cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, urban air pollution causes about 1.2 million deaths every year and rising sea levels and increasingly extreme weather events will destroy homes, medical facilities and other essential services (www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en /). people may be forced to move, which in turn heightens the risk of a range of health effects, from mental disorders to communicable diseases. arnell (2004) reported that increasingly variable rainfall patterns are likely to affect the supply of safe water can compromise hygiene and increase the risk of diarrhea disease, which kills 2.2 million people every year. methodology the study area delta state is located within longitudes 5 ◦ and 6.4 ◦ e and latitudes 5 ◦ 00 and 6.30’n, the state is bounded northwards by edo state, on the east by anambra state, on the south east by bayelsa state and on the south west by the bight of benin which covers approximately 160 km of the states coastline, (delta state government diary year?). southern parts of the state which is transverse by numerous flat floored rivers that drain into the atlantic ocean is generally low lying without remarkable hills, consisting of unconsolidated sediments of quaternary age. some hills can be found northwards within the lga’s of ika north and aniocha north. the major rivers include the niger river, ethiope, warri, kiagbodo (aweto, 2002). drainage is done in the eastern flank by the niger river via its several distributaries such as the forcados, escravos, and the warri rivers and creeks such as the bomadi creek. rivers jamieson and ethiope rise from the north and northeast respectively subsequently join and form the benin river which eventually drains into the sea in the west (online nigeria, 2003.) delta state was created on the 27 th of august 1991 out of the former bendel state. there are 25 local government areas and occupy a land mass of about 17,163 square kilometer with a population of about 4,098,398 persons (npc, 2006). the state shares similar climatic features with other states in the niger-delta. the general climate is characterized by a long rainy season from march/april through october. the climate in delta state shows latitudinal fluctuation in humidity ranging from the humid tropical in the south to the subhumid in the north east. lessening humidity towards the north is accompanied by an increasingly marked dry season (online nigeria, 2003) method of sampling / sampling size multistage sampling procedure was used in random selection of local government areas, communities and rural households for the research study. firstly, three local government areas each were selected from each of the three agricultural zones in the state making up to nine (9) local government areas from the twenty-five (25) local government areas. secondly, two communities from each of the local government areas were selected, making it up to 18 communities. finally, twenty five rural households were randomly selected from each of the sampled communities making it up to four hundred and fifty (450) rural households. only four hundred and ten (410) respondents were utilized for the study. method of data collection the data for the study were obtained with the aids of structured questionnaire survey randomly administered to rural farming households in the state. analytical framework descriptive statistics descriptive statistics was used to summarize the socio-economic effects and their food security status of the rural farming households in the state. food security index of respondents food security index was used to determine the level of food insecurity (food security status) among the rural households in communities that have been affected by flood and or other http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ food security index and socio-economic ... 195 climate hazard over the past thirty eight years. food security equation used by feleke et al. (2003) and ways of measuring household food security status by hoddinott (2001) were adopted for this study. the equation is stated as c* = cj – yj …………. i food security indicator for this study is defined by frequency and the number of different food consumed over a period of time. where: c* = food security index of rural farming household cj = quantity of food consumed (n = 1 to 5) yj = expected required food to be consumed (n = 5) if c* = 0 = household will be said to be a food secured. if c* < 0 = then the household will be said to be a food insecure. the required food = carbohydrate, fat/oil, vitamin, mineral, and protein given food. hoddinott (2001) outlined four ways of measuring household food security status; among them is dietary diversity which involves determining the frequency and the number of different foods consumed by an individual over a period of time. dietary diversity method of measurement was preferred to other methods as it is very difficult to calculate exactly the quantity of rural household food consumption in kilogrammes or calories as most daily food consumed by the rural farming households are not measured. therefore, food security index of the rural farming household were obtained based on the total household daily consumption (carbohydrate, vitamins, water, proteins, minerals and fat/oils). a food secured household is expected to consume all the five categories. it must be noted that water was generally consumed by all respondents hence it was excluded in the categories. expected required food to be consumed (yj) = 5 quantity of food actually consumed daily (cj) ranges from 1 to 5 food security index of rural household (c* = cj – yj) = 5-5 = 0 (food secured household) while c* < 0 is food insecure household, but for the purpose of this study the food insecure household category was further categorized into mild food insecure, moderately food insecure and severe food insecure household. food security index of rural household (c* = cj – yj) = 4-5 = -1 (mild food insecure) food security index of rural household (c* = cj – yj) = 3-5 = -2 (moderately food insecure) food security index of rural household (c* = cj – yj) = 2-5 = -3 (severe food insecure). results and discussion the socio-economic characteristics of respondents in delta state the mean age of respondents is 48 years with primary school level of education in the state. most respondents (65.10%) were married with low mean annual income of n54,702 ($353) which is less than the poverty line of less than $1 (one dollar) a day. this might probably due to climate change impact in the state. the rural households were with a large mean household size of 9 persons. the socio-economic effects of climate change on rural farming households in delta state the socio-economic effects of climate change on rural farming households in the state were hazardous and enormous. most rural farming households witnessed loss of investment on farm lands and income respectively in the state. the study also reveals that 13.6% of the rural farming households suffered ill health, such as malaria, water borne diseases and skin infections that were on the increase in the state. deaths were recorded as result of increased temperature and flooding in the state. the result is in line with robine (2003) who reported that extremely temperatures contribute directly to deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory disease. most farms (22.9%) were also lost to flooding placing the rural farming households into hunger and food insecurity situation. this situation needs urgent attention from government and researchers to combat these socio-economic effects of climate change on rural households in the state. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 193-198 196 respondents food security index in delta state the respondents revealed that 2.7% and 62.2% were food secure and moderately food insecure respectively in the state. while 9.5% and 25.6% rural farming households were mild food insecure and severe food insecure respectively. this situation is of great concern as most respondents were moderately food insecure as result of climate event (flooding) that rendered farm land marginal and loss of investment on farm lands in the state. conclusion and recommendations the mean age of respondents was 48 years with primary school as the least educational attainment in the state. most respondents were married with low annual income of n54,702 ($353) and lived below poverty level of less than $1 (one dollar) per day. most rural farming households witnessed loss of investment on farm lands, farms, lives, households’ properties, income and ill health respectively in the state. most respondents were moderately food insecure as result of climate event (flooding) that rendered farm land marginal resulting in hunger and food insecurity situation in the state. the study therefore recommends that short relief measure from donor agencies, multinationals and government to alleviate the food insecurity situation in the state. the study also recommends that government planning agencies and policy makers should put into consideration these food insecurity situations in their planning and policy implementation to prevent future chronic food insecurity situation in the state. reference arnell, n. w. (2004). climate change and global water resources: sres emissions and socio-economic scenarios. global environmental change – human and policy dimensions, 14, 31–52. aweto, a. (2002). outline geography of urhoboland. retrieved from http://www.waado.org/geography/urhobogeo graphy-aweto.htm climate change in nigeria www.nestinteractive.org (2009) delta state government. (n.d.) about delta state. retrieved from darnton-hill ian, patrick webb, phillip w.j. harvey, joseph m. hunt, nita dalmiya, mickey chopra, madeleine j. ball, martin w. bloem, and bruno de benoist (2005). micronutrients deficiencies and gender” social and economic costs. american journal of clinical nutrition, 81(5), 1198-1205. feleke s., kilmer, r. l. and gladwin (2003). determinants of food security in southern ethiopia. a selected paper presented at the 2003 american agricultural economics association meetings in montreal, canada hoddinott j. (2001). choosing outcome indicators of household food security, in j. hoddinott (2002) ed. food security in practice: methods for rural development projects ifpri pp 31-45. ipcc (2000). summary of policy makers and emission scenarios. special report of ipcc working group iii, intergovernmental panel on climate change, ipcc, geneva. ipcc (2007). summary for policymakers in: climate change 2007: impacts and adaptation and vulnerability. contribution of working group 11 to the forth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change: m.l. parry et al. (eds) cambridge university press, cambridge, u.k. and new york, u.s.a. pp 7 – 22. npc (2006) national population census. federal republic of nigeria. online nigeria (2003). physical setting. retrieved from http://www.onlinenigeria.com/links/bayelsaad v.asp robine j. m. (2003). death toll exceeded 70,000 in europe during the summer of 2003. les comptes rendus/série biologies, 2008, 331, 171–78. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs2 66/en/. http://www.nestinteractive.org/ http://www.onlinenigeria.com/links/bayelsaadv.asp http://www.onlinenigeria.com/links/bayelsaadv.asp http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ food security index and socio-economic ... 197 table 1: socio-economic characteristics of respondents in delta state (n=410) variables frequency percentages (%) age (years) 30 – 39 91 22.2 40 – 49 163 39.8 50 – 59 132 32.2 60 – 69 24 5.8 70 – 79 0 mean 48 years gender female 195 47.6 male 215 52.4 mode male marital status single 29 7.1 married 267 65.1 widow 60 14.6 widower 6 13.2 divorced 48 educational level informal 126 30.7 primary 157 38.3 secondary 87 21.2 tertiary 40 9.8 mode primary household size 2 – 4 17 4.1 5 – 7 85 20.7 8 – 10 155 37.8 11 – 13 97 23.6 14 – 16 56 13.8 mean (persons) 9 annual income(n) 21,000-60,000 304 74.1 61,000-100,000 100 24.4 101,000-140,000 6 1.5 141,000-180,000 0 181,000-220,000 0 221,000-260,000 0 mean (n) 54,702 ($353) source: field survey data, 2011 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 193-198 198 table 2: distribution of respondents according to socio-economic effects of climate change on rural farming households in delta state (n=410) socio-economic effects frequency percentages ill health (malaria, diarrhea, skin infections etc) 209 13.6 loss of roads 83 5.5 loss of investment on farm lands 372 24.7 loss of lives 2 0.2 loss of households properties 87 5.8 loss of income 368 24.5 loss of houses 42 2.8 loss of farms 345 22.9 multiple responses observed source: field survey data, 2011 table 3: distribution of respondents according to food security index (n=410) food security index frequency percentages food secured (0) 11 2.7 mild food insecure (-1) 39 9.5 moderately food insecure (-2) 255 62.2 severe food insecure (-3) 105 25.6 mean moderately food insecure source: field surveys data, 2011 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 437-445 437 effects of agricultural input assistance on households affected by hiv/aids: a case of chirumanzu communal area mutambara jackqeline, emmanuel mwakiwa, charity mumaniki lecturer; faculty of agriculture, department of agricultural economics and extension, university of zimbabwe, harare, zimbabwe abstract this study was designed to ascertain the effect of humanitarian and developmental aid programmes on vulnerable households affected by hiv/aids. the study looked at the effect of ngos-donated maize seed and fertilizer packs to the hiv/aids affected households using wards in chirumhanzu district of midlands province in zimbabwe as a case study. this was done by comparing the land-use and output of maize, household income, farming assets and number of the main livestock types for the affected households before and after they received agricultural input assistance. the results from this study showed that agricultural inputs were a limiting factor to the households that are affected by hiv/aids. provision of input packs enabled the households to increase cropping land by incorporating land that was not longer being utilize. in the process they managed to increase their agricultural maize production which resulted in increase in their welfare. following the findings of this study, it is recommended that government and donors should support the vulnerable households through the provision of agricultural inputs which is a better way of achieving poverty alleviation in the medium to long term for the vulnerable households. however, for this to be achieved effectively, the support to the households affected by hiv/aids should be holistic including other forms of support like medical, palliative and other socio-economic support. keywords: development aid, hiv/aids, agricultural inputs, ngo, welfare, zimbabwe introduction 1 zimbabwe is one of the countries among other sub-saharan countries that have been seriously affected by the hiv/aids pandemic with the prevalence rate estimated at 26.5% in 1997 but dropped to 14% in 2010 (ungass, 2010). about 60,000 people are estimated to be dying from hiv/aids related illnesses every year (ungass, 2010). zimbabwe is experiencing a terrible loss of labour and skills through this pandemic (fao, 2006). zimbabwe has a high number of orphans in proportion to its 1 corresponding author’s details: name: mutambara jackqeline email address: jmuzenda@yahoo.co.uk population with one in every four children (24%) mainly due to aids (zimstat, 2009). hiv/aids creates a poverty vicious cycle where both the consequences and root causes of the epidemic are one and the same, that is, poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition. hiv/aids has caused a reversal of these trends in the most severely affected countries, particularly in subsaharan africa. fao studies done in southern africa indicate evidence that poor households goes even to the extent of incurring debt in order to meet additional health costs, funeral expenses, amid other immediate expenses (fao, 2006). more than 60 percent of people in zimbabwe reside in rural areas and depend on rain fed smallholder asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:jmuzenda@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 437-445 438 agriculture as the main source of livelihood (muir, 2004). the welfare of the households affected by hiv/aids is compromised. the welfare here is measured in terms of income farm assets which include livestock and farm implements (mishra et al. 2002). hiv/aids affects more of these households through its impact on the availability of the assets that are required to undertake agricultural production because affected households have to dispose some of these assets to get money to look after the sick relative's medical and nutrition requirements and at the same time to meet the household’s needs. as a result, hiv/aids affected household are left without any meaningful productive asset, the household might not be able to revert back and restore their former productivity and food security status without any external assistance (zimvac, 2010). in addition, since members of the affected households have to spend more time looking after their sick household member suffering from the prolonged illness, hiv/aids affect the household’s ability to generate income from agriculture. in this case productive labour is diverted to care for the sick. affected households, and in particular female-headed households, reduces the total area under cultivation due to labour shortages (kwaramba, 1997). furthermore, stigmatization due to infection can limit the household's social linkages and networks, thus limiting access to resources (van lierre, 2002). the widespread loss of active adults disrupts mechanisms for transferring indigenous farming methods, knowledge, values and beliefs from one generation to the next. this has serious implications on agricultural and livestock production. in addition, the pandemic erodes gendered-local knowledge. death of the man usually means the disappearance of knowledge and skills related to maize and cotton production, whereas the death of the woman affects the household’s knowledge on legume production (drimmie, 2002). the burden of the care of sick adults might cause productive duties to be neglected or children to be taken out of school (kajawu and mwakiwa, 2006). in most cases many orphans are not taken in by extended families and thus burdened with adult responsibilities, such as putting food on the table, long before they are mature enough (barks-ruggles, 2001). the overall effects of hiv/ aids on agriculture is reduced production and productivity as labour and other basic resources for farming such as purchased inputs are compromised. in indonesia, waridin, 2013 noted that elasticity coefficients for farm inputs were positive (i.e. land 0.739, labour 0.497, and seed 0.163) implying that as larger the land size, the production will increase and fertilizer was also positively influencing food-crop production (coefficient 0,084). farmers who utilized k fertilizers were able to have larger productions as compared to others. it was indicated that input availability is the most important aspect for developing strategy of farming, performance of food crop farming was closely related to inputs availability and its distribution. mahadeb and shwu-en (2012) observed in south asian countries, the decline in wheat production was due to decline in both yields and area under cultivation, as such they recommended an urgent need to develop a program that can help to revive the yield growth of wheat such as provision of high yielding variety seeds along with subsidized inputs as a policy option to improve the competitiveness of wheat production in the country thereby attracting farmers to allocate more land to wheat production. these outcomes implied that any reduction in key resources to farming is likely going to induce a decrease in production and affect household welfare. the impact of hiv and aids on agricultural dependent households has attracted the attention of various governmental, non government developmental and humanitarian organizations playing different roles in trying to assist the affected households. various programmes and projects have been implemented ranging from agricultural, medical to socio-economic programmes on a humanitarian basis. the agricultural programmes come in mainly two forms: food aid and agricultural input programmes. food aid, a form of humanitarian aid, is just giving households a pack of food such as grain and pulses and it is mainly to cover the households short term food requirements, thus pronouncing setback to such type of assistance. on the other hand agricultural input asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 437-445 439 programme programmes are a form of development aid, is advantageous because it is aimed at medium to long term food security of the benefitting households. under developmental programmes, the hiv/aids affected households are usually provided with input aid in the form of mainly seed and fertilizer. in most cases the seed is for hybrid maize and in cases where the households are in an irrigation scheme they are provided with vegetable seeds (rohr et al., 2004). in zimbabwe, the non-governmental organizations which include care international, world vision catholic relief services, plan international, citizens network for foreign affairs and other internationa and local ngos have contributed to improved fertilizer use by training and establishing agro-dealers in smallholder areas in addition to agricultural inputs provision (rusike et al., 1997). there are success stories noted elsewhere in capacity building interventions for farming households such as those affected with hiv/aids. in a similar study by ayanwale and adisa, 2012, non-beneficiaries of farmer empowerment programme (fep) in osun state, nigeria had lower incomes when compared with their beneficiaries’ counterparts. it was further observed that poverty incidence, depth and severity as well as the poverty gap index were lower among beneficiaries of fep than non beneficiaries. . the higher income and lower poverty indicators of the beneficiaries compared to non beneficiaries was indicative of the potential of the fep to improve the livelihood of the respondents and lift them out of the poverty trap. despite the frequency of intervention programmes through input subsidies and grants in zimbabwe, little is known about their efficacy. the agricultural input distribution is assumed to contribute to an expansion of the cropped area but the hiv/aids affected households, but unfortunately there has been no independent data to ascertain such gains. this is because the inputs that are distributed could be misused by the households beneficiaries. in addition, the households might not the requisite capital to put the inputs distributed to good use. some cases of improper inputs that were distributed to vulnerable households have been reported, although there is no data to dispute such claims. despite no confirmation of gains and problems associated with agricultural inputs programmes, each year as the crop season approaches, these programmes are simple started afresh, so that the ngos can be seen to spend the funds allocated by their donors. this research intend to address the issue on the effectiveness of agricultural input aid and look at the household level of impact of fertilizer and seed donations on maize productivity and general livelihoods. the study used chirumanzu communal area, chiranzu district of midlands province in zimbabwe as a case study to show the effects of donor funded agricultural input programme on the livelihoods of hiv/aids affected households. masvingo province has a population of over 1.6 million (zimstat, 2012). materials and methods the study area this research was carried out in tatonga wards 1 and 2 in chirumanzu district, midlands province which lies in natural farming region 3 of zimbabwe. it is located to the central east of the province. chirumanzu district has a population of 81,000 whilst ward 1 and ward have populations of 4,030 and 3,825 respectively (zimstat, 2012). ward 1 has 1,042 households whilst ward 2 has 903 households (zimstat, 2012). the main activity of the district is agriculture. inhabitants of this district survive mainly through the cultivation of crops such as maize, groundnuts and rapoko. chirumanzu is characterized mainly by sand and clay soils with some very few portions covered with loam soils and this requires large amounts of fertilizers to boost production. due to high costs of inputs such as seed and fertilizers and unavailability of labour, some hiv and aids affected households among other vulnerable households have not been able to meet costs thereby leaving the fields uncultivated. this has attracted the attention of various organizations such as care international, cadec and oxfam now embarking on input donations in the area in the form of chemical fertilizers, maize and groundnut seeds. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 437-445 440 sample size selection, data collection and analyses this research focused on vulnerable households affected by hiv/aids. the sample was drawn from a list of households with members who had joined tatonga home based care program (thbcp) after testing positive for hiv virus and undergone counselling. the households ranged from child-headed to single-headed families and their occupation was mainly through small scale farming in chirumanzu district. a list of household heads was collected from thbcp. this program consisted of 365 families. of the 365 families, 200 families had received input assistance from ngos. from the list of the households that had received input assistance, 101 households were randomly selected. a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from these selected households. data that was collected included the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the households. this data included number of members in the household; sex of the household head; marital status of the household head; number of livestock, farm implements land under maize, output and income obtained in 2004/05 (before donations) and 2009/10 (after donations) seasons; source of inputs for the 2009/10 season. data was processed, cleaned and entered into computer for analysis. in turns comparative analysis using independent t-test and paired sample t-test were used to ascertain the implications of input donations on household welfare. in this case a comparison analysis was done to compare number of livestock, number of key farming implements, maize output and income realized before agricultural inputs donations (2004/05) and after input donations (2009/10). based on these results, appropriate recommendations were then made accordingly. results general characteristics of respondents sex and marital status of household heads: only 39% (n=101) of the households heads were males while 61% of the households heads were females (table 1). the majority of household heads were widowed/widower (69%), with more widows (49%) than widowers (20%). this outcome emphasis the dominants of females among vulnerable households. it is even worse when someone is a widow, since woman are usually disadvantaged in accessing resources. according to the un secretary general’s task force report on women, girls and hiv/aids in zimbabwe (2004), as the death toll from aids is mounting many widowed women are experiencing dispossessions of land in rural areas. women often do not have marriage certificates or other documentation to protect their rights (and wills are rarely drawn up). a study by brent et al. (2003) in namibia revealed that households where husbands had died of hiv/aids-related illnesses are disadvantaged. the traditional practice of taking land away from the widow and children continued and, in extreme cases, their livestock are also taken. from the results, about 13% were unmarried household heads mainly composed of children and 18% were married (table 1). table 1: sex and marital status of key household member marital status males females total frequency percent frequency percent married or living together 12 12% 6 6% 18% never married including orphans 7 7% 6 6% 13% widowed/widower 20 20% 49 49% 69% total 39 39% 61 61% 100% source: survey data, 2011 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 437-445 441 education : about 44% of the household heads had secondary education, 38% primary education, 12% tertiary education and the remainder with no education at all (table 2). this results shows that the majority of the household head were literate. table 2: highest level of education attained by household head education level frequency percent no education 7 6.9% primary level 38 37% secondary level 44 44% tertiary level 12 12% total 101 100% source: survey data, 2011 farming practices maize cropping area over time: table 3 shows the size of land under maize in both seasons of 2004/05 and 2009/10. the majority of the households, comprising of 47.5% cultivated a total area of less than one hectare in 2004/2005 season compared to only 32% in 2009/10 season indicating a reduction of households using less than one hectare in maize production. about 27% cultivated between 2-3 hectares of maize in 2004/05 season while 36% were in the same range in 2009/10 season indicating an increase is area of maize cropped in this range. maize area of over 3 hectares was attained by only 25% in 2004/05 season compared to 32% in 2009/10 season (table 3). table 3: total size of land cultivated under maize in both seasons hectares 2004/05 cropping season 2009/10 cropping frequency percent frequency percent <1 hectare 48 47.5 32 32 1-2 hectare 27 26.7 36 36 >2 hectare 26 24.7 33 32 total 101 100 101 100 source: survey data, 2011 procurement of inputs: table 4 show input sources and usage for the 2009/10 cropping seasons. when a comparison is made on the source of inputs, making a ratio of donated over bought: maize seed has a ratio of 1.31; an fertilizer has a ratio of 1.38; and compound d has a ratio of 1.75. this shows the major source of the inputs was made up of donations, with a greater of proportion of donations realized in the compound d fertilizer. from the table, the great majority of the donated seed was sown and households would leave an average of 4.4 kg for the next season which is even more than the quantity retained from the last season. seventy percent of top dressing fertilizer donated was applied whereas basal fertilizers applied were far below the mean quantities donated. this was mainly attributed to the late arrival of this input. table 4: input sources and usage (mean quantities in kgs) input (kgs) source use bought (own) retained from last season donated planted/applied remaining maize seed 9.8 1.1 12.9 22.4 4.4 an 55 5 76 59.3 14.5 compound d 20.1 35.2 24.9 36.6 source: survey data, 2011 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 437-445 442 input donations: farmers received input donations packs from various organizations such as oxfam, care, and masso and each organization was offering a standard package of inputs as indicated in table 6. table 5: input donations (mean quantities per household in kgs) for 2009/10 season donor received (kgs) planted/applied (kgs) remaining (kgs) oxfam seed an d 10 100 25 8 89.2 10 2 10 15 care seed an d 15 70 20 10 65.3 20 5 5.9 masso seed an d 12 50 50 11.2 50 0.8 50 source: survey data, 2011 impact of input donations on maize production comparison of maize output for 2004/2005 and 2009/2010 table 6 below presents results that compare mean output of maize per household in tonnes obtained in 2004/05 season and that of 2009/10 season. in order to see if this contribution made by the donated inputs was significant, an independent t-test was then conducted and results are presented below. table 6: paired sample tests: mean comparison of maize output for the seasons 2004/05 and 2009/10 before donations 2004/05 after donations 2009/10 t-value significance maize output (tonnes) 1.589 2.144 -3.569 0.001 source: survey data the result shows that there was a very significant increase in maize output realized in 2009/10 season when the donations of maize seed were made to the vulnerable households as compared to the 2004/09 season (t=-3.569, p<0.01; table 6). this shows that the agricultural input donations were effective in increasing agricultural output of the vulnerable households in ward 1 and ward 2 of chirumhanzu district of midlands province in zimbabwe. welfare impacts of input donations to evaluate the welfare impacts of the agricultural input donations, livelihoods of the vulnerable households were evaluated by looking at the average incomes obtained, total number of assets and livestock acquired by beneficiary households before and after donations. here we are assuming that the income, farm implements and livestock are indicators of being better off in terms of welfare in the rural areas (mishra et al., 2002). the following assets have significantly increased in 2009/10, after the donations as compared to the 2004/05 season before the agricultural inputs donation: hoes, chickens and goats. all these are significant at 5% expect for chickens which are significant at 1% level. the vulnerable households were also able to have more income realized mostly from their agricultural production (t=0.321; p<0.05) according to table 7. however, ploughs and number of cattle are not significant. this is a reasonable result given that these are major and expensive assets which would require significant investment and can asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 437-445 443 only be acquired in the medium to long term. nonetheless, besides these two assets (cattle and ploughs) the result indicates that the agricultural input donations significantly contributed to the increased welfare of the vulnerable households. table 7: paired sample t-test of mean income, assets and livestock variable mean before donations mean after donations t-value significance level of income (usd) 4.35 7.18 0.321 0.049 ** number of hoes 1.23 3.02 0.302 0.041 ** number of ploughs 0.33 0.33 -0.012 0.423 number of cattle 0.33 0.33 -0.012 0.423 number of goats 1.67 2.14 -0.428 0.03 ** number of chicken 1.73 4.23 -0.497 0.000 *** source: survey data, 2011 ** significant at 5% level, *** significant at 1% level discussions the impact of input donations on productivity of smallholder farmers the results have shown that the donations of agricultural inputs by the ngos in ward 1 and ward 2 of chirumhanzu district were actually required by the vulnerable households as shown by that the source of majority of inputs in the 2009/10 were made up mainly donations. in addition, the vulnerable households actually used the inputs in their fields. this is evidenced by increased area used when a comparison was made before the agricultural donations were made and after the donations were made. since the households did actually use the inputs and not abuse the inputs by selling them somewhere else to cover for looking after sick relatives, shows these inputs were a necessity to the households. it also shows agricultural inputs were a limiting factor to agricultural production by the vulnerable households. in addition this might also show the increase in life saving antiretroviral therapy success story in zimbabwe which enabled the households to shift their requirements and necessities from palliative care to agricultural production. this is because the respondents in this study were chosen from a home based care programme who actually receive antiretroviral therapy amongst other interventions. when an individual is under arv therapy, her or his productivity can be restored. ungass (2010) indicates an improvement of individuals receiving antiretroval therapy in zimbabwe for example there was a 50% increase between 2009 and 2010 (unaids, 2011). the results showed that the vulnerable households managed to increase the area they were cultivating as a result of the agricultural input donations. in addition, the mean output of the two seasons revealed before and after the donations, has shown that an increase in the output was realized after the donations. this shows that the seed donations increased the maize output for the vulnerable households in ward 1 and ward 2 of chirumhanzu district. seed distribution contributed to an expansion of cropped area whilst fertilizer presumably increased the production levels and productivity. if households did not receive these inputs, they would have simply planted less land and their output would not have been increased. the increase in production was achieved through opening up of farming on abandoned plots and increasing in hectrage. scarcity of seed and fertilizers before the program led to less land under cultivation and subsequently lower output, since the households did not have inputs given the devastating effects of hiv/aids on them (kwaramba, 1997). this outcome concur with maramanyika in 2008 who noted that provision of crop input packs enabled more farmers to increase their land under cultivation and yields. icrisat (2004) further noted that fertilizers offer an average of 60% yield gain in maize. similar observations were also noted by asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 437-445 444 waridin, 2013 who emphasized the importance of improved inputs in boosting production and productivity of farmers. the outcomes from literature and the current study proves the potential for production and productivity increases through use agricultural inputs. comparative evaluation of livelihood status of supported households three indicators of livelihoods or welfare analyzed were changes in the levels of asset and livestock ownership and changes in incomes. our results show that the vulnerable households managed to significantly their incomes, assets (in form of small livestock and farming implements) after they got agricultural inputs aid. it can be explained that increased income was realized from increased agricultural production which was made possible from increased access to inputs by the vulnerable households which were availed through the agricultural development aid. this means that households benefited from donated inputs and have therefore managed to improve their farming incomes which they would now use to acquire more assets, paying school fees and supplementing household food requirements. the above results show that the number of mechanical assets such as the average number of hoes acquired after the 2009/10 season had significantly increased from those acquired after the 2004/05 season. this same applied for chicken and goats. these have significantly increased since they are quite affordable and can easily be bought by these households. however, for bigger assets like cattle and ploughs, it would require more time and significant amounts of money to be acquired. ayanwale and adisa, 2012, has similar outcomes form osun state in nigeria. the study proved that nonbeneficiaries of farmer empowerment programme (fep) in osun state, nigeria had lower incomes when compared with their beneficiaries’ counterparts. it was further observed that poverty incidence, depth and severity as well as the poverty gap index were lower among beneficiaries of fep than non beneficiaries. . the higher income and lower poverty indicators of the beneficiaries compared to non beneficiaries was indicative of the potential of the fep to improve the livelihood of the respondents and lift them out of the poverty trap. thus intervention programmes though input support is a key strategy to improve livelihoods and welfare of vulnerable farming households. conclusion and recommendations this study has shown that agricultural inputs are a limiting factor to the households that are affected by hiv/aids. when these vulnerable households have this limiting factor removed, they can manage to increase land that was not longer being utilize and put under productive use. in the process they can manage to increase their agricultural production. this will result in increase in their welfare. however, this will only be achieved in conjunction with other programmes like antiretroviral therapy, palliative care, etc. otherwise, even if the households are given agricultural inputs in the absence of antiretroviral therapy and other supporting programmes (although this should be further ascertained), they might sell the inputs to meet the medical and other households needs. following the findings of this study, we therefore recommend that government and donors should support the vulnerable households through the provision of agricultural inputs, a form of development aid. the assistance through provision agricultural inputs provides a better way of achieving poverty alleviation in the medium to long term for the vulnerable households. however, for this to be achieved, the support to the households affected by hiv/aids should be holistic including medical support. this would enable the households to shift their requirements from medical to developmental needs. only in such cases will these vulnerable households use development assistance effectively to improve their welfare. references ayanwale, a. b. and o. d. adisa (2012). assessment of poverty among arable crop farmers: a case study of farmers empowerment programme (fep) in osun state, nigeria. asian journal agriculture and rural development, 2(3): 366-372. barks-ruggles (2001). meeting the global challenges of hiv/aids (unpublished). brent, r. j. (2003). cost-benefit analysis and health care evaluations, massachusetts: edward. elgar publishing company. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 437-445 445 drimmie, s. (2002). the impact of hiv/aids and agriculture in southern africa: what difference does it make? ids bulletin, 36(2): 1-5. food and agricultural organizations in zimbabwe (fao) (2006). fertilizer use by crops in zimbabwe; land and plant nutrition management service and water development division: fao of the united nations publications, rome. icrisat zimbabwe (2006). building sustainable fertilizer delivery systems for drought prone regions, icrisat publications, harare. kajawu g. and mwakiwa e. (2006). innovative approaches to empowering orphans and vulnerable children (ovc): crs/zw education initiatives. journal for social development in africa, 21: 67-84. kwaramba p. k. (1997). the impact of hiv/aids on zimbabwean communal agriculture. fao zimbabwe publications, harare. mahadeb prasad poudel and shwu-en chen (2012). trends and variability of rice, maize, and wheat yields in south asian countries: a challenge for food security, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4): 584 597. maramanyika, t., mutekwa, t., matsa, m. and mapuranga, j. (2008). evaluation of the impact of agricultural recovery programmes on communal farming productivity in masvingo district, midlands state university, gweru. mishra a. k., el-osta h. s., morehart m. j., johnson j. d. and hopkins j. w. (2002). income, wealth, and the economic wellbeing of farm households. agricultural economic report no. 812. u.s. department of agriculture, washington. muir k. (2004). agriculture in zimbabwe. in zimbabwe’s agricultural revolution (revised) edited by rukuni m, tawonezvi p, eicher c with hungwe m m and matondi p. university of zimbabwe publication. zimbabwe. pp41. ncube g. (1999). the impact of hiv/aids on smallholder agriculture production in the districts of gweru and shurugwi in zimbabwe and the current recommended sustainable coping strategies and areas of research, in aids and african smallholder agriculture , edited by g. mutangadura, h. jackson and d. mukurazita. safaids, harare. rohr, d., mashingaidze, a. b. and mudhara, m. (2004). the distribution of relief seed and fertilizer in zimbabwe: lessons derived from the 2003/04 season, fao zimbabwe publications, harare. rusike, j., reardon, t., howard, j. & kelly v. (1997). developing cereal-based demand fro fertilizer among smallholders in southern africa: lessons learnt and implications for other african regions. msu policy synthesis no. 30. east lansing. un secretary general's task force on women, girls and hiv/aids in southern africa (2004). facing the future together: report of the united nations secretary-general's task force on women, girls and hiv/aids in southern africa. unaids (2011). unaids world aids day report. unaids, new york. ungass (2010). zimbabwe ungass country progress report. unaids, new york. van lierre, m. j. (2002). hiv/aids and food security in sub-saharan africa, paper presented at the 7 th annual ecowas nutrition forum in banjul, gambia. waridin (2013). capacity building on foodcrop farming to improve food production and food security in central java, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 108-114. yamano, t. & jayne, t. (2002). measuring the impacts of prime-age adult death on rural households in kenya, department of agricultural economics, michigan state university, east lansing, michigan. zimbabwe national statistics agency (2009). multiple indicators monitoring survey (mims). united nations children’s fund, zimbabwe. zimbabwe vulnerability assessment committee (zimvac) (2010). rural livelihoods assessment. co-ordinated by the scientific industrial research and development centre (sirdc) – food and nutrition council (fnc). zimstat (2012). zimbabwe 2012 census report. government of zimbabwe, harare. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 667 response of cowpea (vigna unguiculata l.) genotypes to wicth weed (alectra vogelii benth) infection joyful tatenda rugare and stanford mabasa department of crop science, university of zimbabwe, p.o. box mp 167, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe shylet tsekenedza department of research and specialist services, crop breeding institute, p. o. box cy 550, causeway, harare, zimbabwe abstract a greenhouse pot experiment was conducted at the university of zimbabwe to screen six cowpea varieties for resistance to alectra vogelii infection. emergence of a. vogelii was first detected 55 days after crop emergence. a. vogelii emergence was not significantly (p > 0.05) influenced by cowpea genotype. no differences (p > 0.05) in cowpea parameters that were measured were observed among the cowpea genotypes. however, a. vogelii infection significantly (p < 0.05) reduced cowpea shoot biomass and pod number by 57 % and 98 %, respectively. infected cowpeas failed to produce any pods at all with the exception of cowpea cultivar c/83/4/6 and c/85/6/4. a similar trend of results was observed with grain yield. root biomass was not significantly influenced by a. vogelii infection. a. vogelii infected cowpeas had significantly (p < 0.05) higher root /shoot ratio compared to uninfected plants. based on results on a. vogelii emergence and cowpea parameters collected in this study, it can be concluded that all the cowpea genotypes evaluated are susceptible to a. vogelii infection. however, it can also be concluded that the two pre-released varieties c/83/4/6 and c/85/6/4 are moderately susceptible because they were able to produce grain and should therefore be further evaluated under field conditions. keywords: alectra vogelii, cowpea, resistance, zimbabwe introduction 1 cowpea (vigna unguiculata l) is an important subsistence crop that is grown for food and also as a green manure cover crop (gmcc) to improve soil fertility in conservation agriculture (ca) systems in zimbabwe and other african countries. in zimbabwe, cowpea food includes tender green leaves (munyemba), boiled and then dried (mufushwa) as relish, green peas (mukove), boiled dry grain (mutakura) and seed paste (rupiza) (rambakudzibga, 2000). like other cultivated 11 corresponding author’s details: name: joyful tatenda rugare. email address: rugarejoy@agric.uz.ac.zw crops, cowpea production is affected by several biotic and abiotic factors which include poor nutrition, pests, diseases, weeds and nematodes. amongst these factors, the obligate parasitic flowering plants, striga gesnerioides and alectra vogelii are regarded as the most common yield reducers in cowpea production. a. vogelii is more prevalent in east and southern african countries while s. gesnerioides is mostly found in west and central africa (parker and riches, 1993). in some areas, a. vogelii has been found growing simultaneously with striga asiatica, an important parasitic weed of cereals (hussien et al., 2006; kabambe et al., 2008). asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:rugarejoy@agric.uz.ac.zw asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 667-673 668 visser (1978) reported that a single plant of a. vogelii is capable of producing between 400 000 and 600 000 viable seeds per plant. this enormous reproductive capacity and persistence of their seeds which can be found in the soil even after 15 years makes it very difficult to manage this weed in one or two seasons using the currently available a. vogelii control strategies. monoculture of susceptible cowpea varieties and other hosts of a. vogelii together with failure by farmers to recognise the importance of controlling a. vogelii before it flowers has resulted in the increase of the a. vogelii seed bank in the smallholder sector in zimbabwe. yield losses of 80 % have been reported in botswana (karanja et al., 2011), up to 50 % in tanzania (mbwaga, 2000), 41-69 % (lagoke et al., 1993) and total crop loss in kenya (babnall-oakley et al., 1991). apart from cowpea, a vogelii has also been identified as a major growth and yield reducing parasite in other crops like bambara, soyabeans, pigeon peas, common beans and groundnuts (rambakudzibga, 2000). currently the recommended a. vogelii preventive control methods have not been very effective and have therefore not been widely adopted. these include, rouging emerged a. vogelii plants before they flower, and burning them in a pit, as well as avoiding contamination of grain at harvesting especially where farmer do not use certified cowpea seed as planting material (kabambe et al., 2002). cultural control methods for a. vogelii control include the use of trap crops and catch crops. catch crops are host plants that are grown to stimulate germination of parasitic weeds but they are destroyed before flowering of the parasite and harvesting of the crop. catch crops are effective in reducing the seed bank but have not been effective as a viable control option to subsistence farmers who consider it as a wasteful strategy. catch cropping has also proven to be ineffective because small a. vogelii infestations are capable of causing significant yield reduction since catch cropping is not able to deplete all the seed reserves in the soil within a short period of time (one or two seasons). on the other hand, trap crops are non-host crops that are able to stimulate a. vogelii emergence but cannot support the attachment and growth of the parasite on the host. important trap crops for a. vogelii management include cereals like, maize (zea mays l.), sorghum (sorghum bicolor [l.] moench), pearl millet (pennisetum glaucum [l.] r. br), cotton (gossypium hirsutum l.), sunflower (helianthus annus l.), dolichos beans (lablab purpureus) and guar bean (gymopsis tetragonoloba [l.] taub) (kabambe, 2013). the control of a. vogelii using herbicide seed dressing reported by berner et al. (1993) and lagoke et al. (1994) has remained theoretical because the target farmers who are mostly resource poor farmers have not shown interest in investing in the use of chemical control. the use of resistant varieties in the control of parasitic weeds, mainly s. asiatica and s. hermonthica has been extensive, but work on a. vogelii resistance remains scarce. a resisant variety has the ability to prevent emergence and attachment of a parasite to a host, whereas tolerant varieties are parasitized to the same extend as susceptible ones but suffer less damage (mabasa, 2003). growing resistant genotypes will not only protect the current crop from infection but will also reduce the a. vogelii seed bank, thus minimising infection levels in succeeding crops. in west africa, a. vogelii resistant cowpea cultivars have been developed (rubiales et al., 2006). in ethiopia, the first a. vogelii incidence was reported in groundnuts, but had no effect on the cowpea variety that was grown. this suggests that the cowpea variety that was grown could be resistant to the parasitic weed or the a. vogelii strain that was observed was a less virulent strain (hussien et al., 2006). variability for a. vogelii resistance has been widely reported (riches, 2001) and it is recommended that routine screening against the parasite is conducted so that choices of varieties to farmers may include a. vogelii resistance. seed company ( seedco) and the department of research and specialist services (dr&ss) in zimbabwe have developed a series of breeding lines that are claimed to firm against the negative effects of harsh environmental conditions such as drought, pests and diseases. therefore there could be merit in evaluating asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 667-673 669 some of these cowpea varieties for tolerance to a. vogelii because it has been reported that genes that confer tolerance to drought are also involved in resistance to parasitic weeds mainly due to the fact that parasitic weeds behave like diseases (taylor et al., 1996). this study determined the impact of a. vogelii on the growth of six zimbabwean stress tolerant cowpea cultivars, cbc1, cbc2, cbc3 (from dr&-ss crop breeding institute), it18 (from seed co.), c/83/4/6 and c/85/6/4 (dr&ss prereleased varieties). in this experiment it was hypothesised that some of the cowpeas genotypes that are grown in zimbabwe are resistant to a. vogelii. materials and methods study site and experimental design a glasshouse pot experiment was conducted at the crop science department, university of zimbabwe (17.78 0 s, 31.05 0 e, and 1523 meters above sea level) in harare in the summer rainy season of 2012 / 2013 using sandy soil. the experiment was designed as a randomised complete block design (rcbd) with three replications. blocking was done according to the position of the pot rows from the window. four commercial cowpea genotypes (varieties) were used as treatments in this experiment, namely; cbc 1, cbc 2, cbc 3, it-18 and two prereleased varieties, namely; c/83/4/6 and c/85/6/4. a. vogelii seeds that were used were taken from a seed stock collected in 2012 at weed research team, henderson research station in mazoe, zimbabwe. experimental procedure pots (diameter 20 cm, height 25 cm) were filled with sandy soil of equal volume. five grammes of compound d (8 % n; 14 % p2o5; 7 % k2o) per pot (equivalent to 250 kg per hectare) were applied to the cowpeas at planting. half of the pots were infested with a. vogelii seeds and the other half (control) were not infested because each cowpea genotype had a control. in infested pots, the top 5 cm of soil was thoroughly mixed with 0.04 g of a. vogelii seed. three seeds of cowpea were planted in each pot. thinning was done a week after crop emergence (wace) to one plant per pot. the pots were hand weeded regularly to remove other weeds. pots were initially irrigated to field capacity using a watering can fitted with a fine rose. thereafter pots were irrigated every other day to the same level until cowpea was harvested at physiological maturity. a. vogelii seeds were not preconditioned prior to infestation in the pots. time taken to a. vogelii emergence and flowering, as well as the number of a. vogelii plants per cowpea plant were recorded every two days after emergence of the first a. vogelii plant. number of days to flowering, total plant dry weight, number of pods per plant, weight of pods and grain yield of cowpea plants were recorded at physiological maturity. data analysis analysis of variance for the measured parameters was done using genstat version 14 at p < 0.05. data were checked to see if it was normally distributed before analysis of variance was done. in most cases the data had to be transformed using square root transformation √(x+1) to make it normally distributed. mean separation was done using the least significant difference (lsd) and standard error calculations were done using minitab 16. results alectra vogelii emergence the emergence of a. vogelii was first noticed 55 days after planting (dap). figures 1 and 2 show that a. vogelii emergence was not significantly (p > 0.05) influenced by cowpea genotypes at 55 and 75 dap. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 668-674 670 fig. 1. effect of cowpea genotypes on alectra vogelii emergence at 55 days after planting (dap). cowpea varieties a le c tr a c o u n ts a t 5 5 d a ys a ft e r p la n ti n g 0 10 20 30 40 c/83/4/6 c85/6/4 cbc1 cbc2 cbc3 it-18 a le c tr a c o u n ts a t 7 5 d a y s a ft e r p la n ti n g 0 10 20 30 40 50 cowpea varieties c/83/4/6 c/85/6/4 cbc1 cbc2 cbc3 it-18 fig. 2. effect of cowpea genotypes on alectra vogelii emergence at 75 days after plantng (dap). days to cowpea flowering the cowpea genotype x a. vogelii infestation interaction, the cowpea genotype and a. vogelii effects were not significant (p > 0.05) on flowering. flowering of cowpea genotypes was observed between 58 and 66 days from planting. cowpea parameters there was no significant interaction between cowpea genotype and a. vogelii infestation (p > 0.05) on cowpea shoot biomass, pod number, pod weight, grain biomass, root biomass and root to shoot ratio. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 667-673 671 all the cowpea parameters that were measured were not significantly affected by cowpea genotype (p > 0.05). however, a. vogelii infestation significantly (p < 0.05) influenced most of the parameters, with the exception of root biomass (table 1). table 1: effect of a. vogelii on cowpea parameters shoot biomass pod numbers pod weight grain root biomass root to shoot ratio +alectra 4.30±0.59 0.11±0.07 0.1±0.09 0.08±0.06 1.54±0.31 0.356±0.05 (2.24) (1.05) (1.04) (1.03) (1.55) (1.160) alectra 9.99±1.15 5.56±0.81 9.3±2.49 6.57±1.83 1.42±0.149 0.151±0.01 (3.24) (2.47) (2.87) (2.45) (1.54) (1.07) p value <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 0.763 <0.001 lsd 2.495 1.768 4.59 3.376 ns 1.106 data in brackets represent √(x+1) transformed values. ns=not significant alectra vogelii infection significantly (p < 0.05) reduced cowpea shoot biomass and pod number by 57 % and 98 %, respectively (table 1). it was observed that infected cowpeas failed to produce any pods at all with the exception of cowpea cultivar c/83/4/6 and c/85/6/4. a similar trend of results was observed with grain yield. root biomass was not significantly influenced by a. vogelii infection. alectra infected cowpeas had significantly (p < 0.05) higher root to shoot ratio compared to uninfected plants. discussion the six cowpea genotypes that were evaluated had the same capacity to germinate a. vogelii seeds as evidenced by similar emergence counts that were obtained in this study. this suggests that these cowpea varieties do not differ in terms of strigolactone production. some of the germination stimulants that have been identified are alectrol and sorgoleone produced by cowpea and sorghum respectively (rambakudzibga, 2000). a. vogelii was first noticed at 55 dap contrary to results by kabambe et al. (2008), who reported that a. vogelii emerged at 75 dap in soyabean and 109 dap in groundnut. this would suggest that cowpea genotypes evaluated in this study are very susceptible to a. vogelii infection due to their ability to produce high levels of stimulants. alectra vogelii infection reduced shoot biomass, pod numbers, pod weight and grain yield. only two genotypes, c/83/4/6 and c/85/6/4 managed to produce pods and grain under a. vogelii infection. these results concur with findings by mugabe (1983) and alonge et al. (2001) who reported that early infection delayed the onset of flowering, reduced number of flowers and resulted in a concomitant decrease in the number of pods per plant and low grain yield. whilst a. vogelii emergence in this study suggested that all the cowpea genotypes were highly susceptible, the ability of the two prereleased genotypes, c/83/4/6 and c/85/6/4 to produce pods and grain under a. vogelii infection could suggest that these genotypes have some degree of tolerance to this parasitic weed. haussman et al. (2000) reported that the susceptibility of the host may not be explained by the number of emerged parasitic plants but probably by the host genotype. a. vogelii infected cowpea had significantly higher root to shoot ratios than uninfected plants. similar findings were reported by rambakudzibga et al. (2002). attachment of a. vogelii plants to the roots of the host results in an increase in sink demand in the roots. this carbon transfer from the shoots to the roots due to changes in sink demands largely accounts for the reduction in shoot biomass and was reported to be responsible for the reduction in pod formation (rambakudzibga, 2000). similar findings were obtained in other host parasite associations involving tomato and tobacco infected with orobanche aegyptiaca (hibberd et al., 1996) and sorghum infected with s. hermonthica (cechin and press, 1993). however, inconsistent results on s. gesnerioides on cowpea infection asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 667-673 672 have been reported (hibberd et al., 1995 and hibberd et al., 1996). conclusion and recommendations based on results on a. vogelii emergence and cowpea parameters collected in this study, it can be concluded that all the cowpea genotypes evaluated are susceptible to a. vogelii infection. however, it can also be concluded that the two pre-released varieties c/83/4/6 and c/85/6/4 are moderately susceptible because they were able to produce grain and should therefore be further evaluated under field conditions. further evaluations of the effect of a. vogelii infection on the physiology of c/83/4/6 and c/85/6/4 can be useful to determine the level of tolerance of these two pre-released varieties. references alonge. s. o, lagoke, s. t. o. and ajakaiye, g. o. (2001). cowpea reaction to alectra vogelii ii. crop protection, 20(4): 283-290. bagnall-oakley h, gibberd v. and nyongesa, t. e. (1991). the incidence and control of a. vogelii, in embu district, kenya. in: ransom, j. k., mussleman, l. j., worsham, a. d and parker, c. (eds.), proceedings of the 5th international symposium on parasitic weeds, cymmit, nairobi, kenya. berner, d., ewad, a. e. and agboikhan, e. i. (1993). efficacy of imazaquin seed treatments for control of striga gesnerioides and alectra vogelii in cowpeas. striga newsletter, pan african striga control network (pascon), fao, rome. cechin, i. and press, m. c. (1993). nitrogen relations of the sorghum-striga hermonthica host-parasite association: growth and photosynthesis. plant,cell and environment, 16: 237-247. haussman, b. i. g, hess, d. e., reddy, b. v. s., welze, h. g and geiger, h. h. (2000). analysis of resistance to striga hermonthica in diallel crosses of sorghum. euphytica, 116: 33-40. hibberd, j. m., barker, e. r., scholes, j. d., quick, w. p. and press, m. c. (1996). how does orobanche aegyptiaca influence the carbon relations of tobacco and tomato? in: moreno, m. t. and cubero, j. i. (eds), advances in parasitic plant research. cordoba, spain. pp. 312-318. hibberd, j. m., quick, w. p., press, m. c. and scholes, j. d. (1995). carbon fixation, partitioning and growth of cowpea parasitized by striga gesnerioides. aspects of applied biology, 42: 117124. hussien, t., mishra, b. b and gebrekidan, h. (2006). a new parasitic weed (alectra vogelii) similar to striga in groundnut in ethiopia. tropical science, 46(3): 139-140. kabambe, v., katanga, l., kapewa, t. and ngwira, a. r. (2008). screening legumes for integrated management of witchweeds (alectra vogelii and striga asiatica) in malawi. african journal of agricultural research, 3(10): 708-715. kabambe, v. h., mloza-banda, h. r. and nyandule phiri, g. y. (2002). controlling witchweeds in cereals in malawi. an extension bulletin for field staff. department of agricultural research and technical services, extension bulletin no. 1/2002. ministry of agriculture and irrigation, lilongwe, malawi. kambambe, v. h., tembo, y. l. b. and kazira, e. (2013). awareness of the parasitic weed alectra vogelii (benth) amongst extension officers in three districts in malawi. american journal of experimental agriculture, 3(2): 432442. karanja, j., nguluu, s. n. and mwangi, g. (2011). the reaction of cowpea (vigna unguiculata) to alectra vogelii (benth.) parasitism as influenced by nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization. kasal end of program conference and exhibition, august, 2011. lagoke, s. t. o. (1994). host plant resistance and seed treatment for the control of flowering parasitic weeds in cowpea (vigna unguiculata (l.) walp). paper presented at the 21 st annual conference asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 667-673 673 of the weed science society of nigeria, armti, llorin, nigeria. lagoke, s. t. o., shebayan, j. y. and magani, i. (1993). striga problem and control in nigeria. in: 3rd general workshop of pan african striga control network (pascon). harare, zimbabwe. mabasa, s. (2003). nitrogen and the control of striga asiatica on maize: timing and dose of organic and inorganic forms [ph. d thesis]. university of sheffield. mbwaga, a. m. and kaswende j. s. (2000). a reference manual on striga distribution and control in tanzania. kilosa, tanzania: ilonga agricultural research institute. mugabe, n. r. (1983). effect of alectra vogelii (benth) on cowpea (vigna unguiculata (l.) walp.). some aspects on reproduction of cowpea. zimbabwe journal of agricultural research, 21: 35-147. parker, c. and riches, c. r. (1993). parasitic weeds of the world, biology and control. cab international, wallingford, uk. rambakudzibga, a. m. (2000). aspects of the host-parasite association between the grain legume vigna unguiculata l. (walp) and the parasitic angiosperm alectra vogelii benth. [phd thesis]. der justus-liebig-universitatgieben, gieben, germany. rambakudzibga, a. m., manschadi, and sauerborn, j. (2002). host parasite relations between cowpea and alectra vogelii. weed research, 43: 249-256 riches, c. r. (2001). alectra vogelii benth-a constraint to cowpea production in southern africa. in: mgonga, m. a., chivinge, o. a. and moyo, e. s. (eds). striga research in southern africa and strategies for regional control options. proceedings of sadc striga working group meeting held in dar es salaam, 22-23 may 2000. bulawayo, zimbabwe: icrisat. rubiales, d., perez de luque, a., fernandezaparica, m., sillero, j. c., roman, b., kharrat, m., khalil, s., joel, d. m and riches, c. r. (2006). screening techniques and sources of resistance to parasitic weeds in grain legumes. euphytica, 147: 187-199. taylor, a., martin, j. and seel, w. e. (1996). physiology of the parasitic association between maize and witchweed (striga hermonthica): is aba involved? journal of experimental botany, 47: 1057-1065. visser, j. h. (1978). the biology of alectra vogelii, an angiospermous root parasite. beitraege zur chemischen kommunikation in biologie und oekosystemen, witzenhausen, germany. 279-294. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 82 determining the role of inefficiency on elasticity of output supply and input demand: a case study of irrigated wheat in 27 provinces of iran alireza garshasbi institute for trade studies and research, iran hossein khosropour, narges rahimian and aref behrooz allame tabatabaee university, iran somaye sedighi ferdowsi university, mashhd, iran abstract this article appraises the impressions of technical and price or allocative inefficiency on elasticity of the supply of wheat and demand of its inputs in 27 provinces of iran. to this purpose, first the technical, price and economic efficiency has been calculated utilizing the stochastic frontier functions of production and cost. the influencing factors of efficiency including: the degree of scale economies, the share of technology in manufacturing process, the share of governmental supports, the cost of production processes and the experience have been estimated via a panel data approach. at the end, rejecting the hypothesis of perfect efficiency of farmers in production, the functions of output supply and input demand have been assessed in two scenarios (concerning efficiency and inefficiency) using a profit function and the impact of general (economic) inefficiency on relative and crossover elasticities of output and input are evaluated. the results show that the average of technical, price and economic efficiency of irrigated wheat respectively equal to 69, 63 and 45 percent. the estimated parameters have been affected, concerning the inefficiency. although relative elasticities of output and inputs are appeared with expected signs, entering the inefficiency, elasticity of irrigated wheat is generally increased. keywords: stochastic frontier function, profit function, output supply and input demand function, irrigated wheat introduction 1 agriculture has been always one of the most important economic subsectors in iran’s economy; so that averagely about 15 percent of the gross domestic product (gdp) in the period 2000-2009 belongs to this sector, 1 corresponding author’s name: somaye sedighi email address: somayesedighi@gmail.com based on central statistics (central bank of the islamic republic of iran). therefore, the growth and development of this sector can play a key role in iran’s economic development. the presence of basic commodities in cultivation subgroup of agriculture, high proportion of cultivation vintages in productions of agricultural sector and over 30 percent weight of basic cultivation commodities in foods and drinks index of household basket have turned this subgroup into the center of economic planners’ attention for quite a while. wheat is asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:somayesedighi@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 83 the most strategic product of iran among agricultural products which government is ever trying to be independent in its production and secure its need inside the country. so, the raise of its production has been always one of the most influential objectives. change in wheat production can be due to more hiring of production inputs or increase of its producers’ efficiency. considering the fact that there are limitations for the inputs in economy, politicians have to plan to increase the efficiency of productions. so efficiency calculation has a high level of importance as the first step in determining the optimal level of inputs usage. this sector’s producers just like it in other economic sectors, are in pursuit of their efficiency increase (especially in cases with economies of scale). the most efficient level of agricultural production output is achieved in a point in which producer is able to attain the maximum output with specefic amount of input. nevertheless, it should be noticed that the type and amount of farmer’s costs have a determining role in his efficiency in devotion of costs to inputs (allocative efficiency). surely, there is a straight relationship between efficiency (whether technical, allocative or economic) and the extent of firm’s ability to manufacture the product. also the point which is often left disregarded in most studies is the effects which changes of efficiency have on the price fluctuations as one of the essential parts of agricultural sector; the reason is that efficiency is in relationship with production and supply and they have also relation with price. the empirical studies done on agricultural production efficiency have been classified in two main groups during last four decades. first, studies which estimate inefficiency of different producer, regardless of the price reactions (like battese and seiford), while the second group have investigated the price reactions of agricultural production supplies and input demand with obvious efficiency (like ball; shumway, saez, and terttog). in the first group on which studies are usually done, there isn’t the possibility of scrutinizing the impacts of price changes on inefficiency. the study of inefficiency impact on the price functions is neither possible in the second group. the simultaneous study of the relationship between efficiency and price enables the researcher to survey the impacts of inefficiency on price without concerning the assumption of exogenous efficiency or price fluctuations. as, the reaction of the prices to which producers are in touch is presented in output supply and input demand, the study of inefficiency impacts on the price of agricultural sector can be realized thanks to its impacts on the output supply and input demand. hence, this study aims to scrutinize the changes of inputs elasticity as it appraises the effective factors on efficiency and effects of output supply and input demand to be able to offer policy recommendations for increasing the efficiency of iranian wheat farmers. data and methodology types of efficiency the issue of efficiency started with the study of farrell (1957) based on the study of debrev and coopeman. farrell suggested that the efficiency of an economic unit consists of two parts: 1. technical efficiency and 2. price (allocative) efficiency. the combination of these two touchstones together presents the general (economic) efficiency. according to farrell’s definition, there are two approaches to investigate the precise definition of efficiency and its calculating relations. measuring the efficiency based on minimizing the factors of production (input oriented) farrell presented the definition of varieties of efficiency, using a simple sample in which a firm uses two inputs of x1 and x2 for manufacturing one unit product of “q” under the fixed economies of scale. the isoquant curve of an economic unit that the distance function of which stands on the production possibilities frontier curve, is illustrated by  ss  in diagram(2). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 84   o qx /2 qx /1 px2 qx2 qx1 px1 p q q p    s  o qx /2 qx /1 s r  q tc (a) (b) diagram 1: the definition of different types of efficiency based on minimizing the production factors if an assumed firm hires the inputs in a level which could be defined by the p situation; it is possible to present different types of efficiency based on diagram (1) from farrell’s perspective by the use of distance functions characteristics: technical efficiency: it is predicated as the firm’s ability to produce the maximum product by the specific collection of input. if the production of assumed firm p, using inputs x1p, x2p only equals the production level which is shown by the ss  isoquant curve at the point q, so this firm will reach the same production by decreasing the use of input. from diagram perspective, the firm p can preserve its production level by decreasing the x1p-x1q for the first input and x2p-x2q for the second input (part b diagram 1). this means that by decreasing qp/op percent of the x1p and x2p, the firm can reach the point in which it has used the minimum of inputs for the production. based on this explanation, the proportion oq/op represents the technical efficiency of the firm p which is less than 1 (equation 1). it is obvious that if the firm was in the q point, this proportion would be equal to “1” which meant that the firm was technically efficient. opoqte / (1) price efficiency (allocative): it refers to the ability of the firm in choosing a collection of optimal inputs with minimal cost. therefore, the price and technical efficiency is presented as equation (2) about the assumed firm p. oq or xw xw ae     ˆ * (2) where: w is the vector of inputs price, x is the vector of inputs observed at point p, x̂ is the vector of a technically efficient input (point q) and *x is demonstrator of input vector with the minimal cost ( q point). if production accomplishes in q (price and technical efficiency) instead of q point (technical efficiency and price inefficiency) on an isoquant curve, the above equation would be demonstrator of decrease of production costs. refer to diagram (2) for further explanation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 85   o qx /2 qx /1 qx  2 qx2 qx  1 q q qx1 qtc qtc  diagram 2: definition of price efficiency from farrell’s perspective the firm’s cost at the point q is calculated by summing up the first ( qxpx 11 ) and second ( qxpx 22 ) purchasing cost of input which is on the qtc isocost line. if producing at the point q , the cost would be calculated by summing up the first( qxpx ′11 ) and second ( qxpx ′22 )purchasing cost of input which is on the qtc  isocost line. so, the firm can do the same production with decreasing the cost of ( qxpx  11 qxpx 11 ) for the first and ( qxpx ′22 qxpx 22 ) for the second input. 2 this means that the firm can reach the primary levels of production by decreasing the cost of qxpx 11 two qxpx 22 with the proportion or rq . so, the price efficiency equals to the fraction oq or . the economic (general) efficiency: it indicates the firm’s ability in the maximal production of output, selecting the optimal collection of inputs (the highest output with the lowest cost in the technical frontier) (equation 3). when the input price is determined, this kind of efficiency can be calculated. if w is the inputs price vector and x is the observed vector of inputs at the point 2 it is assumed that the cost of factors hasn’t changed. p, x̂ is also the demonstrator of the technically efficient input frontier (q point) and *x is demonstrator of input vector with minimal cost ( q′ point). thus, the general efficiency of the firm is equal to the proportion of input costs related to the input vectors in x and *x which are related to p and q . op or xw xw ee     * (3) the distance is rq. this can be shown drawing two isocost lines from the points q and q . also, economic efficiency is calculated by multiplying technical and allocative efficiency. (equation 4) ee op or oq or op oq aete   (4) technical, price and general efficiency will fluctuate between zero and one that reveals that the general efficiency is always less than or equal to the technical efficiency. the practical action mentioned above to measure different types of efficiency, began by publishing farrell’s article in scrutinizing the efficiency of agricultural sector in the economy of united states. farrell’s method is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 86 based on the comparison of the actual performance of production in the firm and the best performance on the frontier production. as a whole, measuring the efficiency is possible by two methods of 1. non-arametric and 2. parametric. the nonparametric method in measuring efficiency is highly affected by quantitative and qualitative variables’ categorization in the form of data envelopment analysis. in this analysis, measuring different types of efficiency is only possible by integrating the amounts of inputs and outputs and by the linear planning method. in parametric method, the econometric calculation methods are used for estimation of different types of efficiency which are typically done in the form of stochastic frontier analysis (parmeter and et al., 2013). both methods are used in various papers and they have their own particular advantages and disadvantages. table (3) presents the concise comparison of the weak and strength points of both methods. “the stochastic frontier analysis method has more popularity through the research methodology and innumerable empirical studies during recent decades.” (kuosmanen & kortelainen, 2012) econometric methods in efficiency estimation by frontier analysis method (in parametric method) can be categorized in two branches of primary and dual. the primary method (or straight based on production function) is the most popular method for the estimation of efficient frontier which the invalidity of model parameters through being biased and inconsistent, are the most vital problems of this method (henderson & parmeter, 2013). noting the existence of uncontrollable factors like climatic changes, a "stochastic frontier analysis" is preferred over a "data covering analysis" for estimation. furthermore, as dual method has the possibility of presenting the replacement behavioral objectives (minimal cost or maximal profit) and gives the researcher the possibility of estimation of multiple products, it is a more valid method for estimation (greene2003). so, the frontier production function is used for technical efficiency estimation and the frontier cost is used for allocative efficiency estimation (battese and coelli 1992). niuv xfy itit ijijtit ,...,2,1)( exp),(    (5) kjttni uvxyftc ititijijtitit ,...,1;,...,1;,...,1 )(),,(    (6) in model (5), y is the produced wheat of each province, x is the vector of inputs including the under cultivation level, sowing, labor force (number of labor force used in plowing, flattening, fertilizing, sowing, irrigation, and other operations), poisons (including the used amount of poisons for feeds, insects, molds and other kinds of poison), animal an chemical fertilizers (including phosphate, nitrogen, potassium and other kinds of fertilizers and their prices that achieved from ministry of jihad agriculture in 2000-2009 period),  is the vector of these inputs parameters, v is the stochastic disturb term (related to the uncontrollable economic variables of each economic unit), u is the effects of inefficiency (aigner and lovell 1977). it is necessary to mention that the difference of two terms )( itit uv  is asymmetric and abnormal and the degree of asymmetry depends on the fraction of u v  . if 02 u , the mentioned function would change to a normal regression with a disturb term with the normal distribution. 3 in mode (6) tc is the wheat production cost in each province, x is the price vector of mentioned inputs in model (5) and other variables are the same variables of first model. )(0f is an appropriate functional shape for estimating 3 see kim (2006), kim and nelson (2006), and kutlu and sickles (2010) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 87 the model. as what coelli, rao, donnell and battese emphasize in the book "efficiency and productivity analysis", the feature of an appropriate mathematic function is to have capablities such as the flexibility, linearity, order and similarity of the parameters. in order to estimate the model of "symmetry imposition" on inputs own cross, the price of inputs and outputs is necessary (coelli, 1996) the study information has been extracted for different years from statistical yearbook of ministry of agriculture jihad, provincial information and iran’s center of statistic for the period 2000-2009. to eliminate the impact of inflation on the estimated pattern (equations 5 and 6), all of variables have been changed to actual value based on price index of 2004 (as the basic) and this data have been used for the estimation. the calculations have been done by the use of frontier 4,1 and stata11 software. before estimation, it is needed to test the stationarity of variables and according to the data structure the method of im, pesaran and shin is used for this mean. the results show stationarity of the variables. therefore, by insuring the stationarity of variables, there is no need to do the variables convergence and nonliarity tests. in next stage, in order to estimate (5) and (6) equations , it is necessary to perform the data poolability test in the form of a panel data pattern against pooled data pattern or f leymer test that this test’s amount is equal to 13,45 percent for the production level and 22.08 per cent for the cost model which confirms the panel model. in this state, the inefficiency is estimated based on coelli’s assumptions without any change during time (pattern1) or with change during time (pattern 2). the results of calculated efficiency for irrigated wheat are presented in tables (1). table 1: the average of irrigated wheat different kinds of efficiency in the period 20002009 divided to country’s states row state name technical allocative economical 1 kermanshah 0.9 0.88 0.79 2 mazandaran 0.89 0.85 0.75 3 fars 0.89 0.88 0.79 4 tehran 0.89 0.87 0.78 5 zanjan 0.87 0.77 0.67 6 kohgiluye 0.86 0.73 0.64 7 koerdestan 0.86 0.75 0.65 8 ardebil 0.85 0.81 0.69 9 esfehan 0.84 0.88 0.74 10 bushehr 0.84 0.52 0.44 11 ghazvin 0.83 0.87 0.72 12 semnan 0.83 0.86 0.71 13 markazi 0.82 0.84 0.68 14 charmahal 0.82 0.75 0.61 15 ilam 0.8 0.71 0.58 16 yazd 0.8 0.8 0.63 17 hamedan 0.8 0.88 0.71 18 hormozgan 0.8 0.88 0.7 19 qom 0.79 0.91 0.71 20 western azarbayjan 0.78 0.69 0.54 21 sistan 0.76 0.49 0.38 22 eastern azarbayjan 0.76 0.73 0.55 23 kerman 0.75 0.75 0.57 24 lorestan 0.75 0.71 0.54 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 88 25 golestan 0.72 0.75 0.55 26 khorasan 0.53 0.69 0.37 27 khoozestan 0.51 0.79 0.42 source: research calculations according to table (1), technical, price (allocative) and economic efficiency of irrigated wheat in the discussed provinces respectively equal to 69, 63 and 45 per cent for the studying period. this amount of efficiency proves the existence of widespread inefficiency in the wheat production. the primary investigation shows that every kinds of efficiency react to the under cultivating level of wheat. all kinds of efficiencies have been confronted a decrease in 2008; is directly related to the decrease of under cultivating level of wheat 4 . surveying the under cultivating level shows that in the studying period , 77 per cent of whole used lands in the wheat production relates to dry lands and only 23 per cent of them relates to the irrigated wheat. as, any decrease or increase in under cultivating level in, the supply of wheat will increase or decrease. in 2008, we witness a harsh decrease on the technical efficiency because of straight effect on output wheat supply and also on the allocative efficiency because of inputs purchase and no utilization of index advantages in smaller lands. as technical and allocative efficiency change, economic efficiency would also change. the investigated statistics show that the most shares of cost relate to the cost of agricultural land renting which straightly influence the technical and price efficiency. despite the 8 per cent increase in irrigated wheat production, we see the salient increase in usage of inputs; so that, by 3 per cent increase of under cultivating level, the amount of variable inputs like labor force, 4 in order to discuss the state of under cultivated level on wheat supply refer to article of garshasbi et al. (2012) agriculture economics journal as survey of affected price and non price factors on wheat supply in country’s states by the use of panel data. seed, chemical fertilizer, poisons in every irrigated wheat hectare have increased respectively up to 25, 5, 18 and 45 per cent. the increase of governmental subsidies to chemical fertilizers and poisons in 2002, on the one hand and the on time distribution of agricultural fertilizer and poisons in the planting and harvesting period on the other hand have had important role in increasing the amount of inputs use. other kinds of agricultural poisons have had an important role in increase of inputs usage in planting and harvesting period on the other hand. other important cases can be presented as below: at the end of 2002 and after three years of relative drought which ended in lowering the level of water sources used for planting the irrigated wheat, the atmospheric status kind of improved; so that , the atmospheric downfalls increased up to 40 percent. this issue led to improving the level of function in level unit and increasing the technical efficiency during 1382 and 1383. the economic efficiency increased too following the increase of technical efficiency. in 2002 and after three respective continuous droughts, the financial need of farmers made them to desire to increase the amount of production by any probable method and after significant increase in guaranteed price, in order to acquire more financial resources by selling the product out to the government. it has been also effective in the amount of inputs usage like chemical fertilizer and poisons. the fluctuations of under cultivating level of irrigated wheat in country are not so high. meanwhile, what matters most is the usage of other inputs used for cultivation that highly depends on the governmental asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 89 policies. according to the article number (103) and fourth law of development plan about reforming the targeted subsidies act of agricultural inputs in 2005 and its significant decrease, a tangible decrease in price efficiency (allocative) and conclusively decrease of general (economic) efficiency is seen. this point should be noted that wheat production has experienced a developing process for years except in 2008 which confronted a significant decrease. indeed, the amount of increase has been salient from 2002. a main share of wheat production is bought by government guaranteed. wheat is consumed in three ways of human, bestial and medical in iran. human consumptions specify 80 per cent which are mainly consumed as bakery flour.5 bakery flour suppliants are the bakers. technical and price efficiency effect on output supply and input demand the condition of optimization is reached by solving the problem of maximization of profit along with the price and technical (allocative) inefficiency in profit function as in equation (7).       wycyp wp y , max, 1    (7) where: ii is profit function,  is the technical inefficiency,  is price or allocative inefficiency, y is output vector and c(y,x) is the production cost. derivation from profit function to output price, results in equations (8) and (9). 5 ministry of trade (2010)          i iii iii i i i i p p p y y wyc y p wp                 ,, 1 (8)           iii i iiii i iii i iii i p y py p y py p wp                0 , (9) similarly, derivations to input prices is presented by equation (10).        j i ij j w y y wyc w wyc o w wp              ,, , 1 1    (10) using equation (11) we have:        j i ii i j i ii i j w y p x w y p x w wp                      11, (11) the relations of output supply and input demands can be easily estimated in equations (10) and (11). according to theoric discussions and in order to survey the inefficiency effects on output supply and input demands, a normal profit function in tanslog form is used in equation (12). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 90         7,...,2,1,,...,2,1 )(2/1 ln 6 1 6 1 ** 2* 1 * 1 *                     jkni uwlnwln wlnw ln p ln it j k ktjtjkt it n i itit n i ito it it it    (12) where: * it is normal profit function which is attained from division of profit ( it ) by the product price ( itp ). jtw* and ktw* are the price of production inputs including renting price of the land, seed, labor force, poisons, animal and chemical fertilizers which have become normalized with the product’s price. in order to examine th effects of technical and price inefficiency (allocative) on output supply and input demand, it is necessary to consider the profit function regarding inefficiency.           7,...,2,1,,...,2,1 )( 2/1 1 6 1 6 1 * * 2* 1 * 1 *               jkni u wln wln wlnw lnln it j k ktkt jtjtitjkt itit n i itititit n i ititititoit     (13) we can reach to the functions of input and product share from profit by profit function derivation of outputs prices and product price and by utilizing hotelling’s lemma (arnade and trueblood 2002). equation (14) shows the share function of input profit and equation (15) shows the share function of product’s profit.           6,...2,1,,...,2,1 2/1 2 * * * * * *           jkni wln wln wln lnxw s jtitijt ktktitiktitit itit ititit it w j     (14) * *      y lnp ln s y it it y (15) according to equation (15), it w js is the share of jth input profit,  ititw * is the price of ith input considering the price inefficiency which have been normalized by the price of product. it is technical inefficiency, it , ikt , and ijt are the passive parameters. as before, inputs includes under cultivating level of wheat (x1), seed ( x2), labor force (x3), poisons (x4), animal fertilizer (x5), chemical fertilizer (x6) and inputs price also includes renting price of land (w1), seed price (w2), labor force wage (w3), poisons price (w4), animal fertilizer price (w5) and chemical fertilizer price (w6). in equation (16), it ys is the share of the profit, y itp is the guaranteed price of wheat and y represents the product supply which is resulted from its multiplying by the product price and total income and profit asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 91 (ii) is attained after subtraction of costs and the normal profit * is attained after division of profit by y itp . considering the existence of common parameters in equations (15) and (16), the estimation should be done simultaneously. as coefficients are equal in input demand and output supply, symmetry and similar coefficients restrictions have been applied in ultimate level too. these restrictions are presented as equation (16).       6,...2,1, * ** *      jk wln s wlnwln ln jt w it jjtitit i   (16) in order to investigate the effectiveness of inefficiency on the share of demand supplies, equations (17) and (18) are respectively the demonstrators of the mentioed functions for the states of considering and not considering inefficiency.       6,...2,1, 5.0 * *       jk wlnb wlnbb wln ln s ktjkt jtjjtjt jt it x j (17) without inefficiency       6,...2,1, 5.0 * * * *         jk w lnbw lnbb wln ln s ktkt jktjtjt jjtjtjt jtjt it x j     (18) with inefficiency according to equations (17) and (18), considering the inefficiency, intercept would decrease, but a precise opinion cannot be given about price variables coefficients. for the same reason, it is not possible to give a precise opinion about the share function of supply profit. in other words, these coefficients can be increased or decreased. these conditions are indefeasible for both irrigated and dry land wheat. the changes of elasticity of irrigated and dry land wheat one of the most important usages of the attained functions in previous part, is the changes of relative and cross elasticities of inputs and supply.6 in order to obtain the relative price elasticity of input x demand, we should act like equation (19). 6 hojabr kiani and haji ahmad (2002) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 92 i ii i ii ii i ii s b s lnp ln lnp ln lnp ln lnp lnx                   1 1   (19) in order to obtain the cross price elasticity of input x demand, we should proceed as equation (20). i ik k ik kk i ik s b s lnp ln lnp ln lnp ln lnp lnx                     (20) in order to obtain input x supply elasticity to the product price, we should proceed as equation (21).                                      n i i ik n i iiy n k i ik y i n i i iy iy y i yy i iy s b s s b lnp lnp lnp ln lnp ln lnp ln lnp lnp lnp ln lnp lnx 11 1 1 1 1      (21) in order to obtain supply elasticity to input ix price, we should proceed as equation (22).                           n k n k k ki iyi n k ki ii yi s b s lnp ln lnp ln lnp ln lnp lny 1 1 1 1 1     (22) in order to obtain relative elasticity of supply, we should proceed as equation (23).                                             n i n k n k k ki n i iyy n i n k n k k ki y i n i i yy n k iy yy yy s b s s b lnp lnp lnp ln lnp ln lnp ln lnp ln lnp lny 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1       (23) the changes of irrigated wheat elasticity are shown in table (2) table 2: elasticity of irrigated wheat inputs and output input. output price land seed labor poisons animal fertilizer chemical fertilizer wheat without considering inefficiency land -0.34 -1.43 -0.22 -0.19 -0.11 -0.11 0.23 seed -0.59 -0.86 -0.36 -0.11 -0.01 -0.09 1.78 labor force 0.21 -0.16 -0.13 0.07 -0.09 -0.30 2.03 poisons 0.11 0.59 0.09 -0.26 -0.10 0.24 0.32 animal fertilizer 0.11 -0.16 0.06 -0.13 -0.54 0.21 0.03 chemical 0.32 -0.19 -0.18 -0.16 0.16 -0.12 0.45 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 93 fertilizer irrigated wheat -1.34 -0.15 -0.21 -0.08 -0.11 -0.14 1.23 input. output land seed labor poisons animal fertilizer chemical fertilizer wheat with considering technical and price inefficiency land -0.27 -1.13 -0.16 0.09 0.09 -0.39 0.71 seed -0.31 -0.71 -0.31 -0.07 -0.11 0.51 2.54 labor force 0.27 0.10 -0.12 0.04 -0.07 -0.07 2.89 poisons 0.17 0.51 0.04 -0.23 0.15 0.11 0.56 animal fertilizer 0.19 -0.12 0.13 0.11 -0.65 0.17 0.16 chemical fertilizer 0.12 0.23 -0.07 -0.23 0.26 -0.38 1.13 irrigated wheat -0.77 0.24 -0.36 0.32 0.06 0.53 1.88 source: research calculations according to results of table, it is denoted that all of the relative elasticities have been appeared with expected signs. the investigation of calculated elasticities proves that: all inputs of irrigated wheat are a little elastic. the irrigated wheat product input with the lowest elasticity is chemical fertilizer which shows that the demand of this input does not conspicuously react to the price. considering the negative effects of the share of chemical fertilizer’s cost on the economic efficiency of irrigated wheat, the low elasticity of chemical fertilizer demand can be contriving of decrease of the efficiency along with increase in the price of this input in production. the relative price elasticity of seed has the highest level and therefore, it is the most sensitive input that this issue is because of the variety of used seeds and the possibility to substitute them with each other (more than 79 kinds of seed are used in provinces of iran). the price elasticity of wheat supply is more than one which expresses that the wheat supply is highly elastic. hence, the change of guaranteed price of wheat can have significant effects on the raise of its supply. therefore, announcing the guaranteed purchasing prices by government will directly impacts on the increase of wheat output.7 the cross elasticity also indicates the following items: the cross elasticity of land and all other inputs is negative which shows that land is a complement for other inputs. 7 considering the importance of the function of wheat supply output, this issue has been attentively discussed in the appendix of article. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 94 the cross elasticity of seed and all other inputs is also negative which shows that seed is a complement for other inputs. the cross elasticity of labor force and seed is positive (complement), animal and chemical fertilizer and negative (substitute) with poisons. the cross elasticity of poisons and animal fertilizer is negative and positive with seed, labor force and chemical fertilizer. the cross elasticity of chemical fertilizer and other inputs but animal fertilizer is negative. the elasticity of all inputs to the wheat price is positive. by the increase of the wheat price, the most sensitivity belongs to input demand of poisons and animal fertilizer. considering the inefficiency, the relative elasticities of inputs price has remained negative. however, elasticity of all inputs except animal and chemical fertilizer increases. considering the inefficiency, inputs elasticity except labor force has increased to wheat price, considering the inefficiency, the relative elasticity of wheat supply price has increased. in other words, the reaction of supply increases. the elasticity of irrigated wheat supply to the price of all irrigated wheat production’s inputs except land is low. therefore, the price of land has the highest effect on the irrigated wheat supply. whereas, the inputs with the lowest elasticity in the irrigated wheat supply are animal fertilizer and poisons which reveals the absence of reaction by wheat supply to animal fertilizer and poisons. policy recommendations as inefficiency is not considered in estimation of supply and demand functions of inputs and outputs of agricultural sector inputs and regarding the effectiveness of inefficiency on the output supply and input demand, it is recommended that all studies of this district lay away the assumption of perfect efficiency of producers in estimation of the mentioned functions. considering the congeniality between efficiency trend and under cultivating level of wheat on one hand and positive effectiveness of guaranteed rate of wheat and negative effectiveness of guaranteed rate of barley, the government should act in annual rates in a way that the planting pattern would not change harmfully to the wheat. (the current under cultivating asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 82-95 95 level suffices internal production and more production can be achieved by developing the efficiency). considering the inefficiency of the irrigated and dry wheat in country, planning for improving the technical efficiency of irrigated land wheat, can improve the country’s wheat production 21 per cent. therefore, the self sufficiency (independency) pattern of wheat should be codified and executed based on the technical efficiency in iran. references aigner, d., lovell, k., & schmidt, p. (1977). formulation and estimation of frontier production function models. jouranl of econometrics, 6, 21-37. battese, g. e., & coelli, t. j. (1992). frontier prodution functions, technical efficiency and panel data: with application to paddy farmers in india. journal of productivity analysis, 3, 153-169. farrell, m. (1957). the measurement of productive efficiency. journal of the royal statistics society, 120, 253-281. greene, w. (2003). maximum likelihood estimation of econometric frontier functions. journal of economietric, 31, 22 – 36. henderson, d. j., & c. f. parmeter (2013). nonparametric methods for practitioners, chapter 2 and 5. hojabr k., kambiz, h. a., narges (2002). estimation of irrigated and dry land production and supply inputs functions in iran. journal of agriculture and development economy, 39, 49-70. kuosmanen, t., & m. kortelainen (2012). stochastic non-smooth envelopment of data: semiparametric frontier estimation subject to shape constraints. journal of productivity analysis, 38(1), 11-28. ministry of jihad agriculture (20002009). statistic book of farming products cost and production. general office of statistics. parmeter, c. f., s. c. kumbhakar., & h.j. wang. (2013). semiparametric estimation of determinants of inefficiency with application to financing constraints. manuscript. garshasbi, a, y., kazem, n. r., & homayunifar, m. (2012). affected price and non-price factors on wheat supply in country’s states by the use of panel data. agriculture economics journal, 6(2), 189-204. coelli, j. (1996). measurement of total factor productivity growth and biases in technological change in western australian agriculture. journal of applied econometrics, 11(1), 77-91. http://ideas.repec.org/a/jae/japmet/v11y1996i1p77-91.html http://ideas.repec.org/a/jae/japmet/v11y1996i1p77-91.html http://ideas.repec.org/a/jae/japmet/v11y1996i1p77-91.html http://ideas.repec.org/a/jae/japmet/v11y1996i1p77-91.html http://ideas.repec.org/a/jae/japmet/v11y1996i1p77-91.html http://ideas.repec.org/s/jae/japmet.html © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 the analysis of productivity growth of tuber crops in nigeria (1995-2006) ogunniyi, l. t. (department of agricultural economics, ladoke akintola university of technology, ogbomoso, oyo state, nigeria) ajao, a. o. (department of agricultural economics, ladoke akintola university of technology, ogbomoso, oyo state, nigeria) to cite this article: ogunniyi, l. t., and ajao, a. o. (2012). the analysis of productivity growth of tuber crops in nigeria (1995-2006). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1), 96-102. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 96-102 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author (s) ogunniyi, l. t. † department of agricultural economics, ladoke akintola university of technology, ogbomoso, oyo state, nigeria email: titiogunniyi@yahoo.com ajao, a. o. department of agricultural economics, ladoke akintola university of technology, ogbomoso, oyo state, nigeria the analysis of productivity growth of tuber crops in nigeria (1995-2006) abstract this study analyzed the productivity of tuber crops in nigeria from twenty states between the periods of 1995 -2006 using data envelopment analysis (dea) to estimate the total factor productivity (tfp) which was further decomposed to reveal the source of productivity growth over the reference period. negative tfp growth was observed for all the tuber crops considered in the study on the average but an evidence of convergence in productivity level was observed when considering the starting tfp, majority of the states had low tfp (<0.6) but grew over the years by about 0.2 with kaduna and adamawa having the highest tfp for cocoyam and cassava respectively. keywords: malmquist index, tuber, nigeria, total factor productivity introduction agriculture provides primary means of employment for nigerians and contributed 43.64% to the gdp in q3, 2011 contrary to its share of the gdp which stood at about 90% before independence in i960, about 56% between 19601969 and more than 40% since 1986 (cbn, 2003). the decline in the contribution of agriculture to the country's gdp overtime is due to the slower growth of the sector relative to other sectors of the economy and most especially commercial exploration of petroleum (cbn, 1997). the national strategic importance of food is evident in its consideration as a key variable in matter relating to national security and in planning against disaster and other emergencies. however, a major indicator of depressed performance of the nigeria agricultural sector is the food crisis experienced in the country in the past years. nigeria as a country is endowed with a large expanse of land with tremendous potential resources and favorable climate for producing food and other raw materials for export and domestic industries has not been self-sufficient in food production (spore, 1993). the rate of growth of nigeria food production has been very low; food production grows at the rate of 2.5% annum in recent years while food demand has been growing at the rate of more than 3.5% annum due to high rate of population growth of 2.83% (fos, 1996). the apparent disparity between the rate of food production and demand for food in nigeria has led to:  a food demandsupply gap thus leading to a widening gap between domestic food supply and the total food requirement;  an increased food importation  high rates of increase in food due to a growing food supply deficit despite food importation (fmawrrd, 1988). root and tuber crops are second only in importance to cereals as a global source of carbohydrates. they also provide some minerals and essential vitamins. roots and tubers belong to the class of foods that basically provide energy in the human diet in the form of carbohydrates. the terms refer to any growing plant that stores edible material in subterranean root, corm or tuber. the principal root and tuber crops of the tropics are cassava (manihot esculenta crantz), yam (dioscorea spp.), sweet potato (ipomoea batatas l.), potato (solarium spp.) and edible aroids (colocasia spp. and xanthosoma sagittifolium). they are widely grown and consumed as subsistence staples in many parts of africa, latin america, the pacific island and asia. the potential of these crops is particularly high in the humid tropics and those sub-humid tropics, which are not suitable for cereal production (onwueme, 1978). considering the importance of tuber as a strategic crop and its perceived role in food security and wellbeing of the teeming population, this study therefore examined the productivity growth of tuber crops in nigeria. mailto:titiogunniyi@yahoo.com the analysis of productivity growth….. 97 materials and methods productivity growth is generally defined in terms of the improvement and technical change with which inputs are transferred into outputs in the production process (shih hsun et al. 2003). indexes of productivity can therefore be simply referred to as the ratio of aggregate output index to an index for total factor use. in assessing growth, sustainability and competitiveness in the agricultural sector, proper identification and measurement of agricultural productivity growth, particularly when technical change in the sector is factor-based rather than hicks-neutral is very important. there are different methods for estimating the tfp e.g.. malmquistand tornquist indexes. the former had gained popularity in recent years since fare et al. (1994) apply the linear programming approach to calculate the distance functions that make up the malmquist index. malmquist productivity index (mpi) was first introduced by caves et al. (1982). unlike the tornquist index, the malmquist index has the advantage of computational ease, does not require information on cost or revenue shares to aggregate inputs, consequently, less data demanding and it allows decomposition into changes in efficiency and technology. this method does not attract any of the stochastic assumptions restriction, however, it is susceptible to the effects of data noise, and can suffer from problem of 'unusual' shadow prices, when degrees of freedom are limited (coelli and rao, 2003). agricultural productivity growth determines the efficiency and effectiveness with which human and materials resources are utilized in agriculture. increase in agricultural productivity which hence increase the production of food supplied to the populace which excess can then be exported and shortage or scarcity will be a thing of the past. many things have to be taken into consideration through application of science and technology towards increasing the production of agricultural products (tuber crops to be precise). some of the methods include the use of improved crops and stock, application of fertilizer and use of good fertile soil, proper cultural practices and provision of good water as a medium for metabolic activities to increase production of tuber crops. the malmquist productivity index, as proposed by caves et al., (1982), allows one to describe multi-input, multi-output production without involving explicit data and behavioral assumptions. the malmquist productivity index identifies tfp growth respect to two time periods through native ratio of distance functions (malmquist). distance functions can be classified into input distance functions and output distance functions. input distance functions took for a minimal proportional contraction of an input vector, given an output vector, while output distance functions look for maximal proportional expansion of an output vector, given an input vector. by using distance functions, the malmquist productivity index can measure tfp growth without cost data, only with quantity data from multi-input and multioutput representations of technology. in this study, we use output distance functions. according to hjalmarson and veiderpass (1992), the malmquist (quantity) index was originally introduced in a consumer theory context as a ratio between two deflation and proportional scaling factor deflating two quantity vectors onto the boundary of a utility possibility set. this deflation or distance function approach was later applied to the measurement of productivity in caves et al. (1982) in a general production function framework and in a non-parametric setting by fare et al. (1992). the productivity change, that is tfp change (tfpch) using technology of period t as reference is as follows: m0 t (xt, yt, xt+1,yt+1) = d t0 (xt, yt, xt+1,yt+1) dt 0(xt, yt) (i) similarly, we can measure malmquist productivity index with period t+1 as reference as follows: m0 t+1 (xt, yt, xt+1,yt+1) = d t0 (xt, yt, xt+1,yt+1) d t +t 0(xt, yt) (ii) in order to avoid choosing arbitrary period as reference, fare et al. (1994) specifies the malmquist productivity index as the geometric mean of the above two indices m0 (xt, yt, xt+1,yt+1) = d t0 (xt, yt, xt+1,yt+1) d t+1 0 (xt, yt, xt+1,yt+1) ½ d t +t 0(xt, yt) d t +t 0(xt, yt) (iii) equation (ii) can be decomposed into the following two components namely efficiency change index (effch) which measures the catching up components measuring efficiency change in relation to the frontier at different time. the second component is the geometric average of both components and measures technical change (techch) which measure the technology shift between period t and t+1. the first component in techch measures the position of unit t+1 with respect to the technologies in both periods. the second component also estimates this for unit t. if the techch is greater (or less) than one, then technological progress (or regress) exists. effch = d t+1 0 (xt+1, yt+1,) dt 0(xt, yt) ( iv) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 96-102 98 and techch = d t0 (xt+1, yt+1,) d t0 (xt, yt,) ½ d t +t 0(xt+1, yt+1) d t +t 0(xt, yt) (v) nigeria ,the study area of this research work, is located on the southern coast of west africa between 2020' e and 140301 e longitude and 4030`n and 14017` latitude. it is bounded on the north by niger republic, on the south by the gulf of guinea, on the east by chad and cameroon and on the west, benin republic. it has a land area of 923,773 square kilometer with about 75% suitable for cultivation of almost all typical crops, out of which only about 14% is under cultivation of any form. nigeria has five main vegetation belts. these are the mangrove forest around the estuaries along the southern coastline, followed by equatorial deciduous forests, savannah grasslands and semi-desert scrublands are extreme north of the country. the country has a wide range of climate condition but as a tropical country. it is generally hot and humid. two seasons are discernible, the wet season and also dry season. the wet season falls between april or may to november when the prevailing monsoon winds blows from south west and dry season is between december to march when harmattan blows from 4000mm in the south eastern parts of the country to 500mm in the northeastern part of the country giving nigeria diversity, which reflected in large variety of crops produced. the average temperature for most of the country is between 240c and 270c in the eastern highlands and on the jos plateau, the average annual temperature is around 210c in extern north, the average high and average low annual temperature are about 430c and 100c respectively. nigeria has an estimated population of about 140 million with growing rate of about 2.5 percent year with nearly three quarter of its workforce employed in agriculture (fos 1996). this study covers the period of 1995-2006. the information and data are drawn from fao, warda, fos websites and international food policy research institute. the data consists the information on tuber crop production, labour, fertilizers use, land use. descriptive statistics and inferential statistic was used. descriptive statistics involve the use of tables and mean. inferential statistics involve the use of malmquist index to analyze the efficiency change and technical change in tuber production in the country. the dependent variable is tuber yield index while the independent variables are: (a) total agricultural area (l000ha) (b) total rural population ('000) (c) fertilizer in metric tons (d) seedlings in metric tons variation in the institutional yield index and tfp may be explained by variations in the quality of land. since comparison of agricultural productivity among states, nations would not be meaningful unless differences in land quality are taken into account. results and discussions this study used malmquist index to measure the productivity of tuber crops for twenty states, serving as the decision making units (dmu), representing the whole country between 1995 and 2006. in this study, the malmquist productivity index is decomposed into the technical change indexes (techch) and efficiency change (effch) index. in order to identify change in scale efficiency, effch was further decomposed into pech (pure efficiency change) and sech (scale efficiency change). the method used constructed the best practice frontiers in tuber production for each of the sampled states. if states' index is equal to one, the production of that particular country is on the best practice frontier; that is, technically efficient and otherwise if less than one. malmquist index summary for cocoyam production table 1 and 2 shows the mean malmquist index summary of the selected states over the period of study and malmquist index summary of annual means. it is to be noted that any value greater than one implies increasing productivity while less than one implies productivity decrease from period t (the present year) to period t+1 (the following year). the table revealed that kaduna is the only state that has increasing productivity with a value of 1.013 (greater than 1). it has about 1.3 percent average growth in tfp; the observed growth is entirely due to technological change and this implies that further growth can only be experienced by introducing new technology. the findings further revealed that the remaining states all have a decrease in their productivity. edo state has the highest negative tpf growth. recall that the value greater than one implies increasing productivity and less than one means productivity decrease from period t to period t+1. the mean value of tfp change for the whole period ranged from 0.801 to 1.013. a negative tfp growth was observed in all the years ranging from 1996-2006 with 2003 being the year with the highest negative tfp value; this is due to a decline in the technological change increase 5 percent. it is important to examine the main cause of improved productivity for cocoyam production. the level of tfp of agricultural sector can be improved either by change in technical efficiency or a shift in production frontier the analysis of productivity growth….. 99 (technological change). since efficiency change and technological change are the components measure of tfp, these two mean values were then compared to know the source of tfp growth in the sample period. on the average, the efficiency change increase by 0.2 percent while the technological change decreased on the average by 16.1 percent. this suggest that the observed decrease in tfp in cocoyam production in nigeria is due to technological change rather than efficiency change. it was observed that the technological change been positive was responsible for the only tfp growth that we have in kaduna state, other states like kaduna with increased efficiency change such as adamawa, bayelsa, ekiti, ermgu, lagos, ondo, oyo and rivers tend to still have a negative tfp growth , this shows how important is it to have the efficiency and technological change in increased form to be able to have a high tfp as clearly demonstrated in kaduna . this has shown also that the production frontier (technological change) is a vital measure in cocoyam production in nigeria. table 1: malmquist index summary of annual means year effch techch pech sech tfpch 1996 1.001 0.576 0.927 1.079 0.576 1997 1.012 0.712 1.009 1.003 0.720 1998 1.101 0.663 1.140 0.965 0.730 1999 0.952 0.995 1.019 0.934 0.947 2000 0.981 0.886 0.947 1.036 0.870 2001 0.975 0.941 0.916 1.064 0.917 2002 0.983 0.863 1.048 0.938 0.848 2003 1.012 0.659 1.001 1.011 0.961 2004 1.028 0.895 1.064 0.967 0.920 2005 0.975 0.946 0.990 0.985 0.923 2006 1.007 0.921 0.950 1.060 0.928 mean 1.002 0.839 0.999 1.003 0.928 table 2: malmquist index summary of firm means firm effech techch pech sech tfpch abia 0.997 0.807 0.997 1 0.804 adamawa 1.064 0.904 1 1.064 0.962 akwa ibom 0.997 0.805 0.997 1 0.802 anambra 0.996 0.804 0.996 1 0.801 bayelsa 1.005 0.851 1.01 1.994 0.855 cross river 0.995 0.821 0.995 1 0.817 delta 0.997 0.856 0.997 1 0.854 ebonyi 0.999 0.804 0.999 1 0.804 edo 0.996 0.897 1 0.996 0.894 ekiti 1 0.817 1 1 0.817 enugu 1 0.802 1 1 0.802 imo 0.997 0.81 0.997 1 0.807 kaduna 1 1.013 1 1 1.013 kogi 0.999 0.814 0.999 1 0.813 lagos 1 0.841 1 1 0.841 ogun 0.999 0.819 0.999 1 0.819 ondo 1 0.823 1 1 0.823 osun 0.999 0.844 0.997 1 0.841 oyo 1 0.824 1 1 0.842 rivers 1 0.821 1 1 0.821 mean 1.002 0.839 0.999 1.003 0.84 [note that all malmquist index averages are geometric means] effch technical efficiency change techch technological or technical change pech pure technical efficiency change sech scale efficiency change tfpch total factor productivity change asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 96-102 100 malmquist index summary for cassava production table 3 and 4 shows the mean malmquist index summary of the selected states over the period of study and malmquist index summary of annual means.). the table revealed that all the states have a negative tfp with bayelsa having the highest negative tfp with increased efficiency change of 3.8 percent and decreased technological change of 7.5percent. the mean of tfp change of each state considered for the whole period ranged from 0.766 to 0.960. a negative tfp growth was observed in all the years ranging from 19962006 with 2005 being the year with the highest negative tfp value, this is due to a decline in the technological change by 2.8 percent. since efficiency change and technological change are the components measure of tfp, these two mean values were compared to know the source of tfp growth in the sample period. on the average, the efficiency change increase by 0.1 percent while the technological change decreased on the average by 17.5 percent. table 3: malmquist index summary of annual means year effch techch pech sech tfpch 1996 1.034 0.534 1.013 1.021 0.553 1997 1.002 0.706 1.002 1 0.708 1998 0.985 0.804 0.985 1 0.792 1999 0.995 0.78 1.005 0.99 0.776 2000 1.011 0.865 1.005 1.006 0.874 2001 1.021 0.891 1.021 1 0.909 2002 0.972 0.887 0.969 1.004 0.862 2003 1.005 0.903 1.005 1 0.907 2004 1.004 0.916 1.004 1 0.919 2005 1.017 0.972 1.021 0.996 0.989 2006 0.966 0.924 0.962 1.004 0.893 mean 1.001 0.8255 0.999 1.002 0.825 table 4: malmquist index summary of firm means firm effech techch pech sech tfpch abia 1.019 0.825 1.019 1 0.844 adamawa 1 0.766 1.002 1 0.766 akwa ibom 0.994 0.825 0.994 1 0.82 anambra 0.987 0.821 0.987 1 0.81 bayelsa 1.038 0.925 1 1.038 0.96 cross river 1 0.821 1 1 0.821 delta 0.998 0.822 1.002 1 0.828 ebonyi 1.002 0.822 1.002 1 0.834 edo 1.014 0.823 1.014 1 0.834 ekiti 1.004 0.823 1.004 1 0.826 enugu 0.999 0.802 0.997 1 0.801 imo 0.997 0.808 0.976 1 0.806 kaduna 0.976 0.807 0.976 1 0.787 kogi 0.995 0.815 0.995 1 0.812 lagos 1 0.869 1 1 0.869 ogun 1 0.827 1 1 0.82 ondo 1 0.828 1 1 0.827 osun 1 0.828 1 1 0.828 oyo 0.995 0.824 0.995 1 0.82 rivers 1 0.82 1 1 0.82 mean 1.001 0.825 0.999 1.002 0.825 [note that all malmquist index averages are geometric means] effch technical efficiency change techch technological or technical change pech pure technical efficiency change sech scale efficiency change tfpch total factor productivity change the analysis of productivity growth….. 101 malmquist index summary for yam production table 5 and 6 shows the mean malmquist index summary of the selected states over the period of study and malmquist index summary of annual means. the table revealed that all the states have a negative with adamawa having the highest negative tfp with increased efficiency change of 15.6 percent and decreased technological change of 22 percent. the mean value of tfp change for the whole period ranged from 0.794 to 0.901. a negative tfp growth was observed in all the years ranging from 1996-2006 with 2005 being the year with the highest negative tfp value; this is due to a decline in the technological change by 6.6 percent. it is important to examine the main cause of improved productivity for yam production. the level of tfp of agricultural sector can be improved either by change in technical efficiency or a shift in production frontier (technological change). since efficiency change and technological change are the components measure of tfp, these two mean values were then compared to know the source of tfp growth in the sample period. on the average, the efficiency change increase by 0.5 percent while the technological change decreased on the average by 18.8 percent. table 5: malmquist index summary of annual means year effch techch pech sech tfpch 1996 0.994 0.512 0.994 1 0.509 1997 1.049 0.666 1.115 0.941 0.699 1998 1 0.737 0.989 1.011 0.737 1999 0.953 0.855 0.907 1.051 0.815 2000 1.057 0.841 1.105 0.957 0.889 2001 1.033 0.873 1.001 1.002 0.876 2002 0.991 0.904 0.992 1 0.896 2003 1.002 0.9 1.002 1 0.902 2004 1.021 0.907 1.007 1.015 0.926 2005 1 0.934 1.984 1.016 0.934 2006 0.966 0.924 0.962 1.004 0.893 mean 1.005 0.812 0.007 1.998 0.816 table 6: malmquist index summary of firms means firm effech techch pech sech tfpch abia 1.999 0.811 0.999 1 0.810 adamawa 1.159 0.780 1.201 0.962 0.901 akwa ibom 0.990 0.819 0.990 1 0.811 anambra 0.990 0.812 0.990 1 0.804 bayelsa 1 0.815 1 1 0.814 cross river 1 0.821 1 1 0.821 delta 0.996 0.820 0.996 1 0.817 ebonyi 0.997 0.811 0.997 1 0.809 edo 0.998 0.812 0.998 1 0.811 ekiti 1 0.818 1 1 0.818 enugu 1 0.799 1 1 0.799 imo 0.998 0.810 0.998 1 0.809 kaduna 0.997 0.803 0.997 1 0.800 kogi 0.997 0.816 0.997 1 0.813 lagos 1 0.794 1 1 0.794 ogun 0.997 0.814 0.997 1 0.821 ondo 1 0.825 1 1 0.825 osun 1 0.820 1 1 0.820 oyo 0.995 0.816 0.995 1 0.812 rivers 1 0.818 1 1 0.818 mean 1.005 0.812 1.007 0.998 0.816 [note that all malmquist index averages are geometric means] effch technical efficiency change, techch technological or technical change, pech pure technical efficiency change sech scale efficiency change, tfpch total factor productivity change asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 96-102 102 conclusion productivity growth of staple food like tubers has tremendous implications if government wants to meet up with its objective of food security and improve quality of life. the study investigated the productivity growth of tuber crops but did not make effort to examine its determinants due to lack of state wide data. the finding emerged that all the major crops examined had negative productivity growth with technological change accounted for the negative growth observed. the finding is not surprising due to the fact that state agricultural development programmes which are saddled with the responsibilities of transferring technologies and innovations experienced various challenges within the reference periods. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. 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(1982). the economic theory of index numbers and the measurement of input, output, and productivity. econometrica, 50, 1393-1414. central bank of nigeria, (1997). central bank of nigeria annual report and statement of account for the year ended 31st december, 1996. central bank of nigeria, (2003) annual report and statement of accounts. abuja, nigeria: cbn publicat0ion. coelli, t. j., and rao, d. s. (2003). total factor productivity growth in agriculture: a malmquist index analysis of 93 countries, 1980-2000. cepa working papers, no 2/2003, school of economics, university of new england, armidale. pp. 3. fare, r., grosskopf, s., lindgren, b., & roos, p. (1992). productivity changes in swedish pharmacies 1980-1989: a non-parametric approach. journal of productivity analysis, 3, 85-101. fare, r., grosskopf, s., & lovell, c. a. k. (1994). production frontier. cambridge university press, cambridge. federal ministry of agriculture and water resources and rural development (fmawrrd). (1988). agcultural policy for nigeria. fmawrrd publications. federal office of statistics (1996). annual abstract of statistics, lagos. hjalmarson, l., & veiderpass, m. (1992). productivity in swedish electricity retail distribution. scandinavian journal of economics, 9, 19932005. onwueme, i. c. (1978). the tropical tuber crops. english and language bone society and john wiley and sons chichester, pp. 179. shih-hsun, h., ming-miin, y., & ching-cheng, c. (2003). analysis of total factor productivity growth in china's agricultural sector. paper presented at the american agricultural economics association annual meeting, montreal, canada, july 27-30, 2003. spore, r. (1993). cta's bimonthly bulletin of the technical centre for agricultural and rural cooperation. no 45 june, 1993 published by cta, wageninges, the netherlands. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 400-411 400 increasing crop output through improved technology adoption: the fadama iii approach in delta state, nigeria chukwuji, christopher okeleke department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria abstract the study focused on increasing crop output through improved technology adoption: the fadama iii approach in delta state, nigeria. the study which took place between june 2012 and february, 2013 used stratified random sampling technique to select 340 respondents (made up of 279 fadama users and 61 non-users). data which came from primary source was generated through structured questionnaire and analysis was achieved by both descriptive and inferential statistics. it was shown that the rates of adoption of these technologies vary but they generally range from about 11% for irrigation practices to about 51% for use of improved crop cultivars. the mean rate of adoption of all arable crops technologies was about 43%. results also show that fadama users significantly had higher mean percentage increase in yield of about 21% than non-fadama users who recorded only a mean of about 15% increase. the variables that significantly affected rate of adoption were, farming experience, farm size non-farm incomes, access to advisory services and cost of technology adoption, all of which except the last positively influenced rate of adoption. among the constraints to adoption of technologies, cost of adoption, lack of knowledge of improved technologies, complexity of available technologies and late delivery of required improved technologies were most serious. among other recommendations it was suggested that governments should intensify efforts to the promotion of the more adoption of proven technologies through the provision of credits in order to increase productivity. keywords: technology adoption, fadama iii, crop output, delta state, nigeria introduction 1 nigeria is predominantly still an agricultural economy. approximately 70% of the population engages in agricultural production at a subsistence level, with holdings being generally small and scattered (nbs, 2007). agriculture provides about 41% of nigeria’s total gross domestic product (gdp). the agricultural sector is not only the most important non-oil economic 1 corresponding author’s email address: chukwujichris@yahoo.com chukwujichris@gmail.com activity in nigeria; it is also the single largest employer of labour forces. thus the agricultural sector is often seen as important for reducing poverty and providing food security (agenor et al., 2004). in the past years, governments at all levels had introduced several food security programmes to this end, all targeted at the numerous smallholder farmers. the primary purpose of such programmes had been to increase the output and productivity of the farms and by extension, incomes of the farming households. however, as each programme is phased out and replaced by another, it had been difficult to say asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:chukwujichris@yahoo.com mailto:chukwujichris@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 400-411 401 if they made the desired impact on the lives of nigerians in terms of food availability because of the persistent rise in food scarcity and demand in the country. among the earlier poverty alleviation and farm/farmer targeted programmes were national accelerated food production project (nafpp) in 1973, operation feed the nation (ofn) in 1976, river basin and rural development authorities (rbrda) in 1976, green revolution programme (grp) in 1980, agricultural development programme (adp) in 1975 among others. although governments at various levels and donor agencies had made deliberate efforts to transform the agricultural sector, the literature is replete with evidence of disappointing effects of these well-conceived programmes. the fact is that none of them had been able to increase the mean size of farm holdings, productivity of the farms and incomes of the farming households, with the net effect of the rural farm households remaining abysmally poorer than urban nonfarm households. according to (ozowa, 2005), about 94% of all farm holdings in nigeria, judging by the international standard are small scale. the small holder farmers however, are the main producers of 98 percent of the food consumed in nigeria. available evidences show that small scale farmers depend on their efficiency in the utilization of basic production technology available to them (nweka et al., 2002; tsegai and kormawa, 2002). the basic technologies available to the farmers had in many ways limited either growth in agricultural output or productivity of in nigeria. by agricultural productivity is meant general output per unit of input, farm yield by crop or total output per hectare, and output per worker. regardless of which measure is used, empirical findings point to the fact that any measure aimed at its improvements are important for poverty reduction (mellor, 1999). increasing agricultural production has multiple benefits to the economy. first, it brings about increased incomes for poor farmers who then increase demand for the goods and services produced by the non-farming rural poor. secondly, it stimulates employment in the rural and urban non-farm sectors through both forward and backward linkages. thirdly, it decreases urban poverty by slowing migration to urban areas and lowering food prices (mellor, 1999; hanmer and naschold, 2000). in her endless efforts at enabling the farming poor to increase their agricultural output, improve their income and thereby be lifted above the subsistence level, the nigerian government introduced the national fadama development project under a world bank financing 1990’s. over the years, fadama has grown to include the active participation of farmers as counterpart funders of the programme which has been replicated because of its level of success among rural. since introduction, the fadama programme has passed through different phases, the current one being fadama iii. fadama iii project is a follow on to the fadamail which was implemented in 18 states (with world bank support in 12 states and the african development bank (adb) in 6 states). the project is a $450m intervention credit shared amongst the world bank (55.6%) and the federal, state and local governments in the ratio of 5.1 %, 17.1% and 8.9% respectively while the participating communities are contributing about 13.3%. the project became disbursement effective on march 23, 2009 and currently in the fourth year of the proposed five years, and has demonstrated a boost in small scale farming and increased productivity across the participating states through the adoption of proven technologies. the emphasis on adoption of proven technologies is premised on the fact that among the multiple pathways through which agricultural productivity can be increased, availability, affordability, applicability and adoption of improved farm technologies are the core. increasing agricultural productivity and hence output of the farm sector using improved technologies is a necessary step towards achieving food security in nigeria. as noted by langyintuo et al. (2001) productivity will remain low as long as farmers continue to use low yielding inputs and technologies. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 400-411 402 adoption of innovations refers to the decision to apply an innovation and to continue to use it (oladele, 2005). intensity of adoption implies the number of technologies practiced or the extent of adoption of a specified technology by the same farmer. saha et al. (1994) observed that producers' adoption intensity is conditional on their knowledge on the new technology and on their decision to adopt. it has been noted that people do not just adopt a technology because it is available to them. even when the technology is available and appropriate, some personal and socio-cultural factors bear on the decision to adopt or not (berdegue and escobar, 2001; daniel et al., 2001; garforth et al., 2003; perkin & rehman, 1994). empirically, researchers including: onyenwaku (1988); iwueke (1989); mijinadadi and njoku (1985) have investigated factors related to the adoption of improved technology and they found that technology adoption was related to (1) farmers personal characteristics, characteristics of the farm, characteristics of innovation itself in terms of relative advantage. the fadama iii project has been implemented over a four years of its five-year period from 2008 to 2012 and will terminate in december 2013. the questions that need to be answered in order to assess the project in terms of achievement of its set goals are; what were those proven technologies that the project promoted among the farmers; how many of them were adopted by the farmers; how many of the farmers adopted the technologies; has the adopted technologies made any impact of the output of the farmers and were there constraints to adoption of the technologies? to these ends, the study sought specifically to; i. ascertain the types of technologies introduced to the fadama users and thence establish the rates of their adoption. ii. assess the impact of the adopted technologies on the output of the fadama users in comparison to those of non-fadama users. iii. identify constraints to adoption and continued use of technologies among the farmers. methodology this study was carried out in delta state, nigeria, from december 2012 to february, 2013. the state was created in 1991 and has 25 local government areas (lgas) divided into three agricultural zones of delta north, delta south and delta central. the state covers a landmass of about 18,050 km 2 of which more than 60% is land. the state has a population of about 4,098,391 composed of about 2,074,306 males and 2,024,085 females (national population commission, 2006). delta state lies roughly between longitude 5°00 and 6°45 east and latitude 5°00 and 6°30 north. the state is currently the highest producer of petroleum products in the country. however, as with most parts of the country, agriculture is the dominant aspect of the rural economy of the state. agriculturally, the state is divided into three zones, namely, north, central and the south zones. generally, the major food crops grown include: cassava, yams, cocoyams, maize, and rice, assorted vegetable and other crops. also of importance is livestock production and fisheries, besides forest and wildlife products. to analyse the impact of the fadama iii project on technology adoption, the food crop farmers in the state were divided into two strata, fadama users and non-fadama users. the stratification was designed to allow for estimation of the direct effects of fadama iii project by comparing fadama iii project beneficiaries to similar households in similar communities not included in the project. delta state has 25 lgas, out of which 20 are participating in fadama iii. out of the 20 lgas participating in fadama iii project in the state, and considering those who have paid their counterpart funds and have had their fadama user groups (fugs) funded, 9 lgas were randomly selected to represent areas of direct project intervention. from the selected lgas, a random sample of 279 fadama user households was drawn. selection of non-fadama iii participants from the 5 non-fadama iii lgas involved a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 400-411 403 systematic random selection of 61 households was drawn to serve as the control group. in all therefore, a total of 340 households were selected for this study. data for the study came from primary source. the data were obtained through the use of copies of a well-structured questionnaire were administered by a team of well-trained enumerators who speak english and local languages of the respondents very well. information sought for were those relating to the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents, the nature of their food crop farming enterprises, their inputs, output and income data. also sought for were information relating to the technologies provided by fadama iii project to the participants and their rates of adoption. data were analysed by means of both descriptive and inferential statistics. the descriptive tools used were mean, percentages, pie and bar charts. the inferential statistical tools employed were student tstatistic and regression analysis. the tstatistics was used to compare the mean values of relevant technology adoption and crop output parameters between the specified fadama user and non-user respondents. the regression analysis was employed to ascertain the socioeconomic factors of the respondents that influenced the rates of technology adoption. the simplest approach to make an impact evaluation is to compare the value of the indicator of interest before and after the intervention. however, this only tells us what happened, not why. it is a description of the factual. to capture the counterfactual, a comparison of the treatment group with a specified control group under the scenario of before and after an event with respect to the parameters of interest is required. this can be done using single difference, double difference of regression analysis in which project participation is an explanatory dummy variable (ravallion, 2005; banerjee et al., 2006). this study used the double difference method specified as follows. a qq b qq dd a j njnj b i pipi                   1 01 1 01 )()( where dd = differences in yield of the i th food crop between the respondents b = number of fadama iii participants a = number of non –fadama iii participant (control group) qpi1 = mean yield of i th crop for beneficiaries of fadama iii project since the project was launched qpi0 = mean yield of i th crop for beneficiaries of fadama iii project before the project was launched qnj1 = mean yield of i th crop for nonbeneficiaries of fadama iii project since the project was launched qnj0 = mean yield of i th crop for nonbeneficiaries of fadama iii project before the project was launched the level of significant difference in the yield/hectare was tested using paired-wise-t-test analysis. the use of double difference method became plausible because baseline data were available in the case of participants and was sourced via memory recall in the case of non-participants in fadama iii project. the regression model was specified as follows. ),,,,,,( cotcrdadsfexfsznfiledftr  where, tr = rate of technology adoption led = level of formal education nfi = annual non-farm income (n) fsz = farm size in hectares fex = number of years of farming experience ads = benefited from fadama iii advisory services (yes = 1 and 0 otherwise) crd = volume of credit accessed (n) cot = monetary cost of technology adoption (n) three functional forms of the regression equation were tried and were specified as follows. linear function: tr = β0+ βixi+e asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 400-411 404 semi-log function: tr = log β0+ βi log xi+e double log function: log tr = log β0+ βi log xi+e where, tr is the rate of technology adoption (explained variable). xi is the i th explanatory variable. β0 and βi are the intercept and i th slope parameters that were estimated respectively. e is the stochastic error term. the output of these functional forms were subjected to statistical, economics and econometric tests and the one which outperformed the others with respect to apriori expectations was adopted as the led equation and then use for discussion. results and discussion the demographic characteristics of the respondents are presented in table 1. the variable described were gender, age, level of formal education and types of primary occupation. table 1: demographic characteristics of respondents variable variable categories fadama users (n = 279) non-fadama users (n = 61) all respondents (n = 340) frequenc y percent frequenc y percent frequenc y percent gender male 162 58.1 28 45.9 190 55.9 female 117 41.9 33 54.1 150 44.1 age group less than 20 years 2 0.7 1 1.6 3 0.9 20 29 years 13 4.7 4 6.6 17 5.0 30 39 years 37 13.3 9 14.8 46 13.5 40 49 years 96 34.4 14 23.0 110 32.4 50 59 years 63 22.6 25 41.0 88 25.9 60 years and above 68 24.4 8 13.1 76 22.4 educational status no formal education 49 17.6 9 14.8 58 17.1 primary education 121 43.4 19 31.1 140 41.2 secondary education 57 20.4 15 24.6 72 21.2 nce/ond 25 9.0 11 18.0 36 10.6 first degree/hnd 22 7.9 6 9.8 28 8.2 postgraduate degree 5 1.8 1 1.6 6 1.8 primary occupation food crop production 182 65.2 38 62.3 220 64.7 civil/public servant 11 3.9 3 4.9 14 4.1 artisan 29 10.4 7 11.5 36 10.6 trading 17 6.1 5 8.2 22 6.5 general business 38 13.6 4 6.6 42 12.4 others 2 0.7 4 6.6 6 1.8 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 405 with respect to gender, about 56% of all respondents were male, while about 44% were female. this implies a fairly balanced male to female ratio participation in the sample, although male dominated the female marginally. the same pattern was observed for both fadama user and non-fadama users, although it appeared that more male than female participated in fadama iii than female. the sample was populated by respondents who were relatively advanced in age. this is because only 19% of the respondents were below 40 years of age. at the upper age group, as many as 81% were 40 years of age or more. this pattern is more with fadama iii users than the nonusers. with fadama iii project being targeted at the low income group of the rural population, majority of who are farmers, the seemingly advanced age nature of the respondents is a reflection of the fact that farming population in delta state is aging. to checkmate this undesirable trend and therefore attract younger ones into farming, more farm modernisation and rural infrastructure upgrades as currently being pursued through fadama iii project are further advocated. the educational level of the farmers presents a picture of relatively not well educated group of people, with as many as 17 % having no formal education at all. also, 41% of them had primary while about 21% were educated up to secondary levels. those who had post-secondary educations were only about 20%. good formal education is a necessary condition required for profitable participation in modern day farming and farm related enterprises. so any complimenting programme that would increase the educational levels of the farmers would improve the farming practices of the people. the respondents were engaged in food crop production enterprises either as a primary or secondary occupations. those who engaged in food crop production enterprises as their primary occupation accounted for 65% of the respondents, implying that only 35% were into other farm and non-farm enterprises as their primary occupations. these findings show that food crop farming was the main livelihood of the respondents. engagement in other farm/nonfarm enterprises was secondary and they serve to augment incomes from the primary sources. table 2: respondents’ farm characteristics variable variable categories fadama users (n = 279) non-fadama users (n = 61) all respondents (n = 340) frequenc y percent frequenc y percent frequenc y percent types of enterprises cassava 121 43.4 13 21.3 134 39.4 yam 76 27.2 16 26.2 92 27.1 maize 41 14.7 13 21.3 54 15.9 cowpea 12 4.3 4 6.6 16 4.7 groundnut 21 7.5 9 14.8 30 8.8 rice 8 2.9 6 9.8 14 4.1 farm size (ha) less than 0.5 65 23.3 17 27.9 82 24.1 0.5 1.49 98 35.1 24 39.3 122 35.9 1.5 2.49 68 24.4 10 16.4 78 22.9 2.5 3.49 34 12.2 8 13.1 42 12.4 3.5 4.49 5 1.8 1 1.6 6 1.8 4.5 or more 9 3.2 1 1.6 10 2.9 the types of food crop enterprises engaged in and the farm sizes of the respondents are shown in table 2. it could be seen from the table that majority of the respondents (39.4%) produced cassava as their main crop followed by those who were into yam (27.1%) and maize (15.9%). only few of them produced groundnut, cowpea and rice as their main crops. these show the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 400-411 406 suitability and acceptability of cassava, yam and maize in the farming system of delta state. there appear to be greater comparative advantages in growing these crops in the state than there is for other crops. irrespective of the crop enterprises the farmers were into, they were generally smallholders as table 2 indicates. on the whole, about 60% of the respondents had farm holdings of less than 1.5 hectares in size. on comparative basis however, fadama users appeared to have had relatively larger hectarage than non-fadama users. the most plausible reason for this differential size in farm holdings is support extended to some of the respondents by fadama iii project. the types of food crops production technologies identified and their rates of adoption (in terms of number of farmers using each as a percentage of all fadama user respondents) are given in table 3. there were 12 known technologies that were provided as could be seen in the table. the rates of adoption of these technologies vary but they generally range from about 11% for irrigation practices to about 51% for use of improved crop cultivars. the mean rate of adoption of all arable crops technologies was about 43%. other arable crops technologies that had fairly high rate adoption were product marketing technique (48.57%), controlled use of herbicides/pesticides (47.14%), dry season farming(18%), improved land preparation (47.14%) and optimum planting distances/densities (45.71%). table 3: types and rates of adoption of food crops production technologies identified food crop production technologies fadama users (n = 279) number of participants adopting technologies percentage level of adoption inorganic fertilizer application 30 42.86 organic fertilizer application 26 37.14 controlled use of herbicides/pesticides 33 47.14 dry season farming 13 18.11 inclusion of legumes in crop mixture 25 35.71 irrigation practices 8 11.43 crop rotation practices 28 40.00 optimum planting distances/densities 32 45.71 use of improved crop cultivars 36 51.43 yam mini-sett technology 12 17.14 improved land preparation 33 47.14 product marketing technique 34 48.57 all technologies 28 43.08 the result indicates that an irrigation practice which promotes dry season farming was not popularly adopted by the respondents. affordability issues were the constraints to adoption of this practice. to enable the assessment of the impact of adoption of proven technologies on productivity (output/hectare), a double difference method was adopted. this was to establish the counterfactual impact of the technologies on output of the farms. the result is as presented in table 4. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 400-411 407 table 4: difference in yield /ha of selected crop enterprises within and between groups enterprise yield/ha (tons) for fadama users yield/ha (tons) for non-fadama users inter-group differences (double difference) after before intra-group differences after before intra-group difference s yam 14.89 12.117 2.774 13.885 12.410 1.475 1.300* cassava 15.32 11.871 3.452 14.479 12.193 2.286 1.166* maize 2.297 1.840 0.457 2.152 1.887 0.265 0.192* cowpea 0.627 0.541 0.086 0.602 0.546 0.056 0.031* groundnut 1.309 1.118 0.191 1.288 1.123 0.165 0.027 rice 1.366 1.153 0.213 1.389 1.146 0.243 -0.031 note: * indicates a significant difference between fadama users and non-users (p ≤ 0.05) the table shows that with the exception groundnut and rice production enterprises, there were significant differences between fadama users and non-users in terms of output per hectare for the period before and during fadama iii project. in all cases except for rice production, fadama farmers recorded higher yield than non-fadama farmers. in the case of rice enterprise, non-fadama farmers appeared to have recorded higher yield than fadama farmers, though the difference was not statistically significant. the improved technologies adopted by fadama users could have enabled them to increase their output per unit of land area than nonusers over the fadama period. expressing the changes in yield since fadama iii project was introduced as percentage of the baseline (before the project) yield, shows that all respondents recorded increases in their farm output (see table 5). however to corroborate the result presented by the double difference analysis, it could be seen from table 5 that fadama users had higher mean percentage increase in yield of about 21% than non-fadama users who recorded only a mean of about 15% increase. table 5: percentage changes in output/ha of selected crops for fadama users and non-users enterprises fadama users non-fadama users yield/hectare after yield/hectare before percentage change over the period yield/hectare after yield/hectare before percentage change over the period yam 14.891 12.117 22.90 13.885 12.410 11.88 cassava 15.323 11.871 29.08 14.479 12.193 18.75 maize 2.297 1.840 24.83 2.152 1.887 14.05 cowpea 0.627 0.541 16.00 0.602 0.546 10.20 groundnut 1.309 1.118 17.12 1.288 1.123 14.65 rice 1.366 1.153 18.44 1.389 1.146 21.23 mean 21.39 15.13 the result of the regression analysis which was carried out to establish the socioeconomic factors that affect the rate of technology adoption by the respondents is presented in table 6. the three functional forms showed very high coefficients of multiple determinations (r 2 ), high f-values and comparable model standard errors. however, the linear model outperformed the others in most of the evaluation criteria except in the model standard asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 400-411 408 error. it had the highest r 2 , more number of significant coefficients and highest f-calculated value than the other two models and so, was adopted as the lead equation for further analysis. the significant variables were farming experience, farm size non-farm incomes, access to advisory services and cost of technology adoption. table 6: determinants of rates of technology adoption variables coefficients linear semi log double log intercept 12.337* (7.593) 1.256* (33.435) -0.427 (-1.988) farming experience (years) 0.045* (2.011) 0.001 (1.396) 0.019* (2.034) farmsize (hectares) 10.834* (10.892) 0.275* (11.945) 0.385* (7.885) non-farm income(n) 0.000* (5.400) 0.000* (5.661) 0.347* (8.312) formal education (years) 0.003 (0.230) 0.000 (0.021) 0.003 (1.094) advisory services (dummy) 1.364* (2.459) 0.009 (0.732) 0.004 (1.445) volume of credit(n) 0.000 (0.181) 0.000 (-0.897) 0.000 (0.339) cost of technology adoption(n) 0.000* (-3.554) -3.1e-06* (5.89798) -0.001 (-0.481) r 2 0.9669 0.8970 0.9619 adjusted r 2 0.9657 0.8933 0.9605 f calculated 800.98* 238.94* 692.73* model standard error 0.091777 0.07002 0.04258 note: figures in parentheses are t – values and * indicates coefficients that are significant at (p ≤ 0.05) farming experience had positive effect on the rate of technology adoption by the fadama users, implying that more experience farmers had higher rates of adoption than the less experienced ones. experience is the cumulative effect of learning processes. as such, farmers who have spent some years in farming have learnt by observation and training better and enduring ways of managing their resources, thus enabling them adopt more technologies than those with little or no experience in the art of farming. farm size also had positive effect on technology adoption, such that farmers with larger farms appeared to have adopted more technologies than those with smaller farms. although the number of small scale enterprise holders significantly outweighs those of the large scale operators, the smallholders’ rate of technology adoption was the lower. the reason for this could be the uneconomic scale of operation which makes the adoption of improved technologies to be unprofitable. this is so because most improved technologies require that size of enterprise holding should be reasonably large to justify investment in them. this then suggest that the fadama users and indeed all rural entrepreneurs should be more financially empowered to enable them increase the size of their holdings and therefore net enterprise incomes. availability of off-farm incomes seems to support technology adoption. the probable reason for this is disposable income augmenting synergy between farm and off-farm incomes. o’neill and matthew (2000) had noted that off– farm incomes have the direct effect on the use of improved farming technics and therefore technical efficiency of farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 400-411 409 participation in the advisory services provided by fadama iii project to farmers had positive effect on the rate of adoption of proven technologies and farm output. this agree with agbebi (2012), who noted that there is a relationship between access to extension services and profitability of farmers, that is, the more the farmers had access to extension and other advisory services the higher the farmers output will be. this implied that participants adopted more technologies than non-participants and therefore had higher farm output than nonparticipants. it is therefore obvious that for positive change of attitude by farmers towards their perception of modern farming techniques, reaching them through well designed advisory services will bring desired results. lastly among the significant variables, monetary cost implications for adopting new technologies had an opposite effect on rate of adoption. this meant that the higher the monetary requirements, the lower the rate of adoption. this is obviously so, considering the poor financial status of the farmers. education had positive effect on the level of technology adoption. however, contrary to expectation the is variable was not significant. this could be due to the general low level of educational attainments among the respondents. although a number of improved technologies were provided by fadama iii project to users of its less than 50% on the average of the respondents in each enterprise category adopted the technologies. the constraints to adoption of technologies are presented in table 7. among the constraints to adoption of technologies, cost of adoption, followed distantly by lack of knowledge of improved technologies, complexity of available technologies and late delivery of required improved technologies were the most serious. these factors were indicated by about 36%, 14%, 14% and 13% of the respondents as the most serious factors limiting their ability to adopt or continue to use adopted improved technologies. other constraints were nonavailability of improved inputs (9.7%), discouragement from earlier users (7.5%) and preference to older technologies currently in use (5.4%). table 7: constraints to adoption of improved technologies constraints to adoption frequency percent not aware of the technology 40 14.3 too expensive to adopt 101 36.2 too complex to apply 39 14.0 non-availability of improved inputs 27 9.7 late delivery of required improved inputs 36 12.9 discouraged by earlier users 21 7.5 prefer to old technology currently in use 15 5.4 total 279 100 conclusion the study had shown that fadama iii project introduced a number of food crops production technologies to the fadama user households. it also showed that though the rate of adoption of these technologies was less than 50%, the user households who adopted some or all of these technologies, significantly had higher output per hectare than those who did not adopt them. the variables that made significant effect on the rate of adoption of these technologies were, farming experience, farm size non-farm incomes, access to advisory services and cost of technology adoption, all of which except the last positively influenced rate of adoption. among the constraints to adoption of technologies, cost of adoption, followed distantly by lack of knowledge of improved technologies, complexity of available technologies and late delivery of required improved technologies were the most serious. it is therefore recommended that governments should intensify efforts to the promotion of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 400-411 410 more adoption of proven technologies through the provision of credits in order to increase productivity. in addition, measures to intensify extension 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(faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, malaysia) mohd rasdi z.† (senior lecturer, agriculture entomologist, faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara pahang (uitm), pahang, malaysia) fauziah i. (associate professor/entomologist; faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, malaysia) md jamaludin b. (senior lecturer; agribusiness faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara pahang (uitm), pahang, malaysia) fakhrorazi a. (international business department, college of law, governance, and international studies (colgis), universiti utara malaysia, malaysia) ismail r. (faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, malaysia) mohd hanysyam m. n. (faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, malaysia) norazliza r. (faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, malaysia) citation: shahir m. s., mohd rasdi z., fauziah i., md jamaludin b., fakhrorazi a., ismail r., mohd hanysyam m. n. and norazliza r. (2013) “the effective application time to spray bacillus thuringiensis subspecies kurstaki for managing bagworm, metisa plana walker on oil palm”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 72-78. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 72-78 72 author(s) shahir m. s. universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, malaysia mohd rasdi z. universiti teknologi mara pahang (uitm), pahang, malaysia fauziah i. universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, malaysia md jamaludin b. universiti teknologi mara pahang (uitm), pahang, malaysia fakhrorazi a. universiti utara malaysia, malaysia ismail r., mohd hanysyam m. n., norazliza r. universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, malaysia the effective application time to spray bacillus thuringiensis subspecies kurstaki for managing bagworm, metisa plana walker on oil palm abstract this study was conducted to determine the suitable time to apply the bacillus thuringiensis sub species kurstaki against the larvae of the metisa plana oil palm. the aim of this study is to search for the most economical method for using the b. thuringiensis sub species kurstaki. owing to that matter, the larvae was sprayed at three different times, 0800, 1200, and1600, with 0.68ml of the b. thuringiensis sub species kurstaki product dipel es®/200 ml of water, under fully netted, rain sheltered conditions. results showed the effectiveness of the b. thuringiensis sub species kurstaki in the control of bagworm, with more than 90% larvae mortality in three days after treatment. however there are no significant different in mortality rate and duration killing time for m. plana larvae on these three application times keywords: metisa plana, bacillus thuringiensis, oil palm introduction with the ninth malaysian plan, agriculture has been earmarked as malaysia’s third engine of growth for the economy in the new millennium. therefore, the oil palm, as the most important and the most produced crop planted in malaysia, plays a vital role in ensuring that this national aspiration becomes a reality. taking into account the economic importance of oil palm crops to the country’s economy, the productivity of the oil palm must increase, but a key obstacle in this objective is the presence of pests and diseases in the estate. bagworm (metisa plana) is one of the most serious leafeating insect pests of oil palm in malaysia (basri and norman, 2002). the bagworm is a polyphagous insect that feeds on several crops. it belongs to the order lepidopera and is among the family psychidae, which include several species. this insect pest can be recognized by the case or bag that the caterpillar forms, which are made of silk and the plant host’s leaves and twigs. the cases are usually hanging onto the oil palm leaves on which it feeds. the larval stage is the destructive stage of bagworm, because the larvae feed mainly on the palm leaves. high population densities can lead to the complete skeletonization and death of the fronds, which has caused sporadic economic damage and crop losses. the occurrence of these insect pests in the estate leads to the suppressed growth of the oil palms and may eventually cause economic injury. bacterial pathogens used for insect control are spore forming, rod-shaped bacteria in the genus bacillus. they are commonly found in soil, and most insecticidal strains have been isolated from soil samples (weinzierl et al., 1997). b. thuringiensis is a naturally occurring soil bacterium whose poison causes disease to the insect (pip, 1994). the insecticidal properties of b. thuringiensis have long been recognized. the egyptians were aware of the insecticidal properties of what probably was b. thuringiensis and used it to control insect pests, while the organism was first isolated about 100 hundred years ago in japan from silkworm larvae suffering from the disease name “flacherie.” the organism was the effective application time to spray ... 73 known as b. thuringiensis by berliner in 1991, who isolated it from the diseased flour moth larva (nester et al., 2002). the crystalline protein inclusion produced by b. thuringiensis in the course of sporulation was responsible for the insecticidal action (nester et al., 2002). insecticidal products of b.t. were first commercialized in france in the late 1930s. for over 40 years, b. thuringiensis has been applied to crops as an insecticidal spray, a mixture of spores and the associated protein crystals. by 1995, a total of 182 b. thuringiensis products were registered by the united states environmental protection agency (epa), but in 1999, b. thuringiensis formulations constituted less than 2% of the total sales of all insecticides. the use of b. thuringiensis has increased as insects have become resistant to chemical insecticides. recently, the use of b. thuringiensis in pest control has increased substantially through more widespread use by both conventional and “organic” food producers, as well as in forestry (nester et al., 2002). there are several methods to control a bagworm population in a plantation, but mostly all control methods use chemicals, such as trunk injection, knapsack spraying, and mist-blowing. increasing awareness about the adverse effects of chemical pesticides on human health and the environment put pressure on the plantation sector to replace controlling methods with those that are more environmentally friendly. one of the main replacement methods is using b. thuringiensis (b.t.) as a biological insecticide to control bagworm. this study was carried out to determine the effectiveness of b. thuringiensis to control a population of bagworm and to identify the most suitable time to apply the b. thuringiensis. this study was carried out by determining and identifying bagworm as either alive or dead after spraying. the samplings and observations were conducted at days 1, 3, 7, 15, and 30 after b. thuringiensis application. the data were collected according to the number of bagworms that were dead or alive. the results of the study are important to provide baseline information on the effectiveness of b. thuringiensis for controlling the population of bagworm, as well as providing insight into the effective timing to spray b. thuringiensis . this is to make sure that a proper control method can be carried out and avoid overuse of b. thuringiensis, which can increase cost plantation management. standard safety measures could be prepared and more extensive studies could be planned for future research following the outcome of this study. the objectives of study are (1) to determine the effectiveness of the b. thuringiensis sub species kurstaki for controlling the bagworm population, (2) and to identify the suitable time to spray the b. thuringiensis sub species kurstaki. materials and methods experimental site the study was conducted in pusat perkhidmatan pertanian tun razak (ppptr). the experimental site is situated at latitude 3º 50'n, longitude 102º 34'e and 76.0 meters above sea level. this study was conducted in the fully netted rain shelter at the crop protection department of ppptr. the size of the experimental site was 30 meters2 with a total plant density of 1m x 1m spacing. the age of the oil palms sampled was about 1½ years-old, of the variety dura x psifera, or tenera. the poly bags were arranged using complete randomized design (crd). the area inside the rain shelter was cleaned and the grasses were cut and sprayed with herbicide to destroy any potential breeding sites for the pest. the poly bags of oil palm trees at age 1½ years old were arranged according to crd in the rain shelter, and marked according to the application time of the b.t. and the number of replications [figures 1 (a)]. the oil palm trees were trimmed to eliminate the small canopy, to avoid the overcrowding the fronds and making the task of counting the bagworms more difficult. the stock of female bagworm were placed into plastic cages and attached to the oil palm leaves [figure 1(b)]. soon after hatching from the eggs, the bagworm larvae were allowed to spread on the oil palm leaves in the host plant [figure 1(c)]. after the bagworm larvae reached instar two, the larvae were distributed to the experimental unit by cutting the oil palm leaves in the host plant and subsequently attaching the leaves to each experimental unit. when the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 72-78 74 leaves were dried, the bagworms climbed to the green leaves in the experiment unit in order to access the new leaves for food. in order to get a uniform distribution, the larvae were picked and transferred to other leaves in the experimental unit. after two days, the pre-census was conducted and the equipment needed were assembled [figure 1(d)]. the mixture of b. thuringiensis kurstaki (dipel es) was prepared in the biker [figure 1(e)]. the 0.68 ml concentration of b. thuringiensis was measured using a pipette and poured into the biker. then, 200 ml of water were added and the mixture was stirred for about 2 minutes to make sure the solution was evenly mixed. then, the mixture was poured into the hand spray. the b. thuringiensis were applied at 0800, 1200, and 1600 [figure 1(f)]. the mixture needed to be shaken frequently before being sprayed on oil palm trees to prevent the dipel es® from accumulating on the bottom of the hand spray. this may affect the concentration of mixture, and also a barrier made of plastic was used to avoid spray moisture travelling to the other experimental unit. one solution was used for only one tree and sprayed uniformly onto the whole tree. data collection the precensus was made before the plant sprayed by b. thuringiensis by counting the number of bagworm larvae in the each plant. the post-census data were collected five times within one month, 6 until july, 5 2009. data were taken at day 1, 3, 7, 15 and 30 after sprayed with b. thuringiensis, then recorded by identified and counted number of dead and alive of bagworm larvae in each plant were calculated. data on timing sprayed were collected three times a day at 0800, 1200 and 1600. the data were analyzed and the percentage of dead and living bagworm larvae was counted. the study was conducted within the duration of one month. the data were collected five times on day 1, 3, 7, 15 and 30 after treatment. the numbers of dead and alive bagworms were counted, recorded, and analyzed. data analysis analyses of variance were performed to show the significant difference in the mean number of bagworms between three applications over time and the rate of mortality achievable. results and discussion from the anova table, the result shows that there is no significance difference (p<0.05) between the time of the applications to the mortality of the bagworm larvae. the interaction between the time of spray and of the sampling date also shows no significance difference (f=0.78; df=8,45; p>0.05). besides, the percentage of mortality shows the significance difference (f=922.9; df=4,45; p<0.001) between sampling dates. table 1: two-way anova on bagworms, metisa plana mortality after treated bacillus thuringiensis source df ss ms f p time (t) 2 20.8 10.4 0.55 0.581 sampling date (d) 4 70106.6 17526.6 922.9 0.000 (t) x (d) interaction 8 118.5 14.8 0.78 0.623 error 45 854.6 19 total 59 71100.5 s=4.358; r2=98.8%; r2 adj=98.42 mortality rate patterns of larvae metisa plana figures 2(a) to 2(c) show the mean percentage mortality of larvae metisa plana derived from three different times of application on five different sampling dates at days 1, 3, 7, 15, and 30 after treatment (dat). results showed that b. thuringiensis can effectively control the early instar of bagworm larvae, as it gave higher than a 90% kill at 3 dat. the curves were fitted to show the patterns of the mortality rate of the bagworm larvae at 1 dat and up to 30 dat. one day after treatment, the mean percentage mortality was low with only 11.35% of larvae killed at the 0800 application time and 10.2% at 1200. at the 1600 application time, the mean the effective application time to spray ... 75 percentage mortality was 17.45%, which was slightly higher compared to the mortality of larvae at 0800 and 1200. these finding are probably due to the physiological characteristics of bagworm larvae, in which active feeding is in the evening; therefore, greater numbers of bagworm larvae have already consumed b. thuringiensis. however, at 3 dat, the mortality of bagworm larvae increased drastically and more than 90% of the total larvae were killed. the highest mortality was noted at 1200, with the total mortality rate of bagworm larvae at 95.18%, followed by 93.85% at 0800, and 92.59% at 1600 (figure 2c). at 7 dat, the mortality of bagworm larvae was continuously increased at a decreasing rate. only 5.05% of an increase was noted at 0800, with 4.75% at 1200, and 7.4% at 1600. the total mortality of bagworm larvae was 98.9%, 99.2%, and 99.99% at 0800, 1200, and 1600 respectively. at 15 and 30 dat, no major differences between the mean percentage mortality and three application times were found. at 15 dat, very small numbers (0.57%) of bagworm larvae were still alive at 0800, and these larvae were still alive until 30 dat. perhaps the residual activity of b. thuringiensis has been already lost. some larvae were also observed still alive at 1200 for 15 dat, but all these bagworm larvae were killed at 30 dat. at the 1600 application time, 100% mortality was noted at 15 dat. 11.35 93.85 98.9 99.4 99.4 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 dat 1 dat 3 dat 7 dat 15 dat 30 m e an p e rc e n ta ge m o rt al it y (% ) day after treatment 10.2 95.17 99.92 99.93 100 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 dat 1 dat 3 dat 7 dat 15 dat 30 m e an p e rc e n ta ge m o rt al it y (% ) day after treatment a (0800) b (1200) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 72-78 76 figure 2: mean percentage mortality of larvae metisa plana at three different times 0800 (2a), 1200 (2b) and 1600 (2c) of application numbers of larvae between sampling dates result shows that, a significance difference between sampling at day 1 after treatment, with day 3, 7, 15 and 30 after treatment. findings are also noted that no significance difference in mean number of larvae dead between day 3, 7, 15 and 30 after treatment. the results are summarized in figure 3, where the histograms with same letter indicate no significance different between sampling dates. vice-versa, histogram with different letters shows the significance in mean numbers of bagworm larvae mortalities. figure 3: mean number of bagworm larvae, metisa plana at different sampling dates discussion results from the study show that the bacillus thuringiensis sub species kurstaki (b.t.k) could successfully control more than 90% of metisa plana larvae after 3 days of treatment, and could effectively kill 100% of the larvae after one week. this finding was supported by tan et al. (2008), which was conducted in a laboratory where the results concerning larvae mortality showed that a pesticide formulation containing b. thuringiensis was intrinsically effective on metisa plana larvae and lead to a high larvae mortality rate (70-100%) within seven days after treatment. one day after treatment, larvae mortality is low (less than 18%). this finding is supported by rowell (2005), who noted that b. thuringiensis does not work like most conventional 10.2 95.17 99.92 99.93 100 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 dat 1 dat 3 dat 7 dat 15 dat 30 m e an p e rc e n ta ge m o rt al it y (% ) day after treatment 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 dat 1 dat 3 dat 7 dat 15 dat 30 m e an n u m b e r o f la rv ae day after treatment b b b b a c (1600) the effective application time to spray ... 77 insecticides in that b. thuringiensis has no contact or “knock down” effect; insect pests are not killed instantly after spraying. in order to be effective, b. thuringiensis must be eaten by insects in the immature, feeding stage of development referred to as larvae (pip, 1994). after three days of treatment, larvae mortality rates increased rapidly (>90%). this finding is in accord with what has been reported in pesticide information (2004), which states that the infection causes death within 2 to 3 days. these b. thuringiensis proteins paralyze the digestive system, and the infected insects stop feeding within hours. bacillus thuringiensis affected insects generally die from starvation, which can take several days (cranshaw, 2008). in this study, early instar (instar two and three) were used as the experimental subjects, and the results showed that more than 90% of larvae were killed three days after the treatment was applied. tan et al. (2008) in their laboratory experiment reported that 3rd instar larvae were more susceptible to b. thuringiensis (more than 90% at 3 dat) than 5th instar, and that the speed of killing was faster for younger larva. rowell (2005) also suggested that b. thuringiensis must be used when insect larvae are small. there are no significant differences in terms of mortality and the speed of killing between treatments at different application times. this finding was in contradiction to weinzierl et al. (1997), in which they suggested that the application of b. thuringiensis in the late afternoon or evening can be helpful because the insecticide remains effective on foliage overnight before being inactivated by exposure to direct sunlight the following day. treating the oil palms on cloudy (but not rainy) days provides a similar result. in this study, the results showed that in a fully netted rain shelter, the different application time has no effect on the residual insecticidal activity of b. thuringiensis. behle et al. (1997) stated that comparing results for plots covered with clear plastic and those with no covers shows that the clear plastic tent had little effect on the loss of insecticidal activity. therefore, using clear plastic as a shelter from natural rain with little to no effect relative to light degradation should be possible (behle et al., 1997). in this study, the existing fully netted rain shelter was preventing b. thuringiensis from being exposed to the variability of weather conditions that may inactivate residual b. thuringiensis . during this study, the process of identifying which larvae were alive or dead was facing some difficulties. tan et al. (2008) stated that the larvae were considered dead when they did not respond to being prodded. in this study, however, the larvae were occasionally inactive during the morning, due to wet conditions caused by early morning dew, and as such the larvae did not respond to prodding. alternatively, if the eating marks were observed, the eating marks that were still green indicated that a larva was still alive. if the eating marks were dark, it indicates that the larvae have stopped feeding. then the teasing method was applied – dead larvae produce brownish-black liquid, similar in color to the b. thuringiensis product used (dipel es®), when they are squeezed. in some cases, the bags of larvae were empty but still attached on the leaves. this decision was made based on report by rowell (2005), which described that some larvae killed by b. thuringiensis may turn blackish in colour. besides that, dead larvae often shrivel and fall from the plant, where they are not easily observed by farmers. conclusions bacillus thuringiensis sub species kurstaki (dipel es®) was effective in controlling early instar of metisa plana under the conditions of a fully netted rain shelter. the speed of killing grew faster (>90% killed) at three days after treatment, and 100% were killed after seven days of treatment. in the fully netted rain shelter setting, the different application time showed no significant difference between the mortality rate and the speed of killing to the larvae. further study is recommended in a field condition, with uv light intensity taken into consideration, using the equipment such as the luxmeter to determine the effect of uv light on the effectiveness of the residual activity of b. thuringiensis . references basri, m. w. and norman, k. (2002). cassia cobanensis as a beneficial plant for sustenance asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2): 72-78 78 parasitoid in bagworm control, mpob information series, 2pp. behle, r. w., mcguire, m. r. and shasha, b. s. (1997). effects of sunlight and simulated rain on residual activity of bacillus thuringiensis formulations, j. econ. entomol., 90(6), 1560-1566. cranshaw, w. s. (2008). bacillus thuringiensis, colorado state university extension, 5, 556. 4pp. nester, e. w., thomashow, l. s., metz, m. and gordom, m. (2002). 100 years of bacillus thuringiensis: a critical scientific assessment, american academy of microbiology, 22pp. pesticide information profile, pip (1994). bacillus thuringiensis, extension toxicology network, cornell university, ithaca, ny. rowell, b. (2005). bt basic for vegetables integrated pest management. iipm newsletter #11. dept. of horticulture, university of kentucky, 8pp. tan, s. y., yusof, i. and dzolkhifli, o. (2008). efficacy of bacillus thuringiensis berliner subspecies kurstaki and aizawai against the bagworm, metisa plana walker on oil palm. journal of bioscience, 19(1), 103114. weinzierl, r., henn, t., koehler, p. and tucker, c. l. (1997). microbial insecticide. university of florida publication, eny275, 173-190. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 234 response of grain weight of maize to variety, organic manure and inorganic fertilizer in asaba area of delta state enujeke e. c. 1 department of agronomy, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria abstract this study was carried out in the teaching and research farm of delta state university, asaba campus from march 2008 to june 2010 to evaluate the response of grain weight of maize to variety, organic manure and inorganic fertilizer. the experiment was carried out in a randomized complete block design (rcbd) replicated three times in a factional layout. four different rates of poultry manure, cattle dung and npk 20:10:10 fertilizer were applied to three maize varieties sown at 75cm x 15cm and evaluated for the grain weight. the results obtained indicated that hybrid variety which produced yield of 2.1 tha -1 in 2008 and 2.3 tha -1 in 2009 was superior. the results of interaction showed that variety, manure type and rates of application were significantly (p<0.05) different in 2008 and 2009. based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that (i) hybrid maize variety, 9022-13, which was outstanding in grain weight be grown in the study area. alternatively, farmers who prefer open-pollinated varieties could grow br9922-dmrsf2 or agbor local variety for farmers who prefer local varieties in maize production. (ii) farmers who prefer mineral fertilizers for increased grain weight of maize should apply 450kgha -1 of npk 20:10:10. (iii) farmers who practice organic agriculture in asaba agro-ecological zone should apply 30tha -1 of poultry manure to enhance maize yield. keywords: grain weight of maize, variety, organic manure and fertilizer, asaba area of delta state corresponding author email: enujeke@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:enujeke@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 235 introduction maize (zea mays l) is one of the major cereal crops grown in the humid tropics and sub-saharan africa. it is a versatile crop and ranks third following wheat and rice in world production as reported by food and agriculture organization (fao, 2003). maize crop is a key source of food and livelihood for millions of people in many countries of the world. it is produced extensively in nigeria, where it is consumed roasted, baked, fried, pounded or fermented (agbato, 2003). in advanced countries, it is an important source of many industrial products such as corn sugar, corn oil, corn flour, starch, syrup, brewer’s grit and alcohol (dutt, 2005). corn oil is used for salad, soapmaking and lubrication. maize is a major component of livestock feed and it is palatable to poultry, cattle and pigs as it supplies them energy (iken et al., 2001). the stalk, leaves, grain and immature ears are cherished by different species of livestock (dutt, 2005). in spite of the increasing relevance and high demand for maize in nigeria, yield across the country continues to decrease with an average of about 1 t/ha which is the lowest african yield recorded (fayenisin, 1993). the steady decline in maize yield can be attributed to: 1. rapid reduction in soil fertility caused by intensive use of land and reduction of fallow period as reported by directorate of information and publications of agriculture.(dipa, 2006). 2. failure to identify and plant high yielding varieties most suited or adapted to each agro-ecological zone (kim, 1997; olakojo, et al.1998). 3. use of inappropriate plant spacing which determines plant population and final yield (zeidan et al., 2006). 4. negligence for soil amendment materials such as organic manure and inorganic fertilizers which improve soil condition and enhance crop yield. tolera et al. (1999) suggested that breeders should select maize varieties that combine high grain yield and desirable stover characteristics because of large differences that exist between cultivars. odeleye and odeleye (2001) reported that maize varieties differ in their growth characters, yield and its components, and therefore suggested that breeders must select most promising combiners in their breeding programmes. sonetra et al. (2002) suggested that subsistence farmers should apply organic manure directly to the soil as a natural means of recycling nutrients in order to improve soil fertility and yield of crops. manures and fertilizers are the life wire of improved technology contributing about 50 to 60% increase in productivity of food grains in many parts of the world, irrespective of soil and agro-ecological zone (dipa, 2006). reijnties et al. (1992) and adepetu et al. (2005) remarked that the downward trend in food production should prompt farmers to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 236 amend the soil with different materials in order to enhance growth and yield of crops. several organic materials such as cattle dung, poultry dropping, pig dung and refuse compost have been recommended to subsistence farmers in west africa as soil amendments for increasing crop yield (sobulo and babalola, 1992; ismail et al., 1999; olayinka, 1996 and olayinka et al., 1998). enujeke (2013) recommended the application of 450kgha-1 of npk 20: 10:10 or 30 tha-1 of poultry manure for increased grain yield of maize. the report further argued that poultry dropping and cattle dung increases root growth of maize and the crop extracts soil water more efficiently for increased grain yield. municipal wastes were reported to have reduced soil temperature, increased soil water, nutrient status and the yield of maize in temperate soils (movahedi et al., 2000). cattle dung has been reported to contain 0.3 – 0.4 % n, 0.1 – 0.2 % p and 0.1 – 0.3 % k (subedi and gurung, 1991). according to adekunle et al., (2005) cattle dung applied at the rate of 10 t/ha to cowpea resulted to increased plant height, leaf area, pod number, pod weight as well as improved soil structure in a mixed farming system. stefan (2003) indicated that fresh poultry dropping contain 70% water, 1.4% n, 1.1% p2o5 and 0.5% k2o while dried poultry manure contains 13% water, 3.6% n, 3.5% p2o5 and 1.6% k2o. ayodele (1993) reported that inorganic fertilizer are known to influence the quantity and yield of maize. iken and anusa (2004) recommended an optimum plant population of 53,333 plants/ha for maximum yield of maize. their report indicated that this is obtainable using a spacing of 75cm x 25cm at 1 plant per stand or 75cm x 50cm at 2 plants per stand. azam et al., (2007) reported that spacing of 75cm x 35cm resulted in increased grain yield of maize while 75cm x 15cm gave maximum cob weight. similar report by allessi and power (2004) revealed that maize cob weight decreased with increased plant population. at present, some farmers in asaba area not only neglect the use of fertilizers or soil amendments but also sow any maize variety of their choice and these do not translate into expected high grain yield in the study area. hence, there are no recommended standards taking into consideration the different combinations of such cultural practices as varietal selection, rates of appropriate organic manure and mineral fertilizer which interplay to influence yield and optimal performance of maize in asaba area of delta state. against this background, the broad objective of this study, therefore, was to: identify variety of maize most suited or adapted to asaba area, fertilizer types and rates for the variety. the specific objectives were to: (i) identify the best variety of maize for asaba area (ii) determine the effects of npk (20:10:10) mineral fertilizer, poultry manure, cow dung on maize grain weight. materials and methods site description asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 237 the study was carried out in the teaching and research farm of delta state university, asaba campus from march to december 2008 and repeated between march and december, 2009. asaba is located at latitude 06 o 14’n and longitude 06 o 49’n of the equator. it lies in the tropical rainforest zone dominated by mangrove, fresh water, swamps, humid forests and secondary vegetation (nest, 1991). its climate is influenced by the movement of the intertropical discontinuity (itd). the idt is made up of two wind systems namely the moisture-laden south-west monsoon from the atlantic ocean and the dry cold northeast trade wind from the sahara desert. the south-west trade wind most significantly determine the climate condition of asaba area of delta state. asaba is characterized by raining season between april and october, with annual mean-rainfall of 1500mm and 2000mm maximum. the distribution is bimodal with peak in july and september, coupled with a period of low precipitation in august. mean temperature is 23.8 o c with 37.3 o c as maximum. relative humidity is 77.2%, the mean monthly soil temperature at 100m depth is 20.3 o c, while sunshine stands at 4.8 bars (meteorological office, asaba, 2003). pre-planting soil analysis representative surface soils (0-20cm) were sampled with a tubular sampling auger. these soil samples were air-dried at room temperature for 5 days and crushed to pass through a 2mm mesh sieve. sub-samples from the bulked soil sample were further grounded to pieces to pass through 100mmmesh sieve for the determination of organic matter. the rest samples were then analyzed to determine the physical and chemical properties of the soil. the analysis was done at delta state university, asaba campus. analytical procedure physical properties particle size distribution: particle size distribution was analyzed using the bouyoucos hydrometer method in which 0.5 n sodium hexameta-phosphate was used as dispersant (landor, 1991). bulk density: the bulk density (bd) was determined by core-method. particle density: this was determined by pycometer or specific gravity bottle method as described by bowles (1992). chemical properties soil ph: this was determined in soil: water suspension (1:1) using glass electrode phmeter as described by mclean (1982). organic carbon: this was determined using the wet oxidation method of walkley and black (walkley and black, 1945). total nitrogen: this was determined using the modified kjeldah distillation method as described by landor (1991). exchangeable cations (ec) and effective cation exchange capacity (ecec): exchangeable cations were determined by extracting the cations with in ammonium acetate (in, nhoac) as displacing solution, buffered at ph7 as described by brady and weils (1999). the extract was then determined electrochemically using atomic absorption spectrophometry. the effective asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 238 cation exchange capacity (ecec) was calculated as the sum of exchangeable bases (ca, mg, k and na) and exchangeable a1 and h expressed in cmo1/kg -1 of soil. exchangeable acidity: this was determined by titration method as described by juo (1981). the exchangeable h + and a1 ++ were then expressed in cmo/kg -1 of soil available phosphorus: this was determined by bray no.1 method as described by landor (1991). cation exchangeable capacity: this was determined by neutral nh4acetate placement method using the procedure of anderson and ingram (1996). aim of the experiment the experiment was aimed at testing the response of three selected maize varieties to different rates of organic manure and inorganic fertilizer (npk 20:10:10) experimental design the study was carried out in randomized complete block design (rcbd), replicated three times in a factorial layout. the factors were three sources of nutrients:poultry manure (pm), cattle dung (cd), inorganic fertilizer (npk 20:10:10). the different rates of pm were 0, 10, 20, 30t/ha, cd were 0, 10, 20, 30t/ha and npk 20:10:10 were 0, 150, 300, 450kg/ha. agronomic practices among the agronomic practices carried out were land preparation/plot layout, planting, application of treatments, weeding. land preparation and plot layouts the land was ploughed and harrowed using tractor. three blocks (or replicates) consisting of 36 blocks each were layout, each block will measure 2.6m x 2.25m and was separated from one another with a space of 0.5m. alley pathways of 1m separated one block from another, and the total number of plots laid out in the entire experiment was108. planting maize seeds were sown on the plots at the rate of 1 seed per hole at a depth of 2-3cm, using 75cm x 15cm spacing as indicated by the first experiment. procurement and application of organic manure and npk 20:10:10 fertilizer well-decomposed cattle dung was collected from cattle pen area, while poultry droppings was obtained from the battery cage system of poultry management of delta state university, asaba campus. these organic manure were analyzed to determine their nutrient contents. npk 20:10:10 fertilizer was obtained from delta agricultural procurement agency (dapa), ibusa.these amendment materials were incorporated into the plots according to the treatment as suggested by olanikan (2006). weeding: weeding was done three times using hoe. data collection: fourteen middle stands were used as sample population for data collection. data collected was grain weight asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 239 of maize. the grain weight was measured using a weighing scale after harvesting and shelling at the end of the 16 th week. statistical analysis: data collected were subjected to analysis of variance (anova) and means were separated with duncan multiple range test (dmrt) according to wahua (1999). results soil physico-chemical properties of the experimental site: the pre-physico-chemical properties of the experimental site is shown in table 1. the result showed predominantly sand at the surface and this tends to decrease with depth of profile. texturally, the soil of the experimental site is classified as sandy loam. the soil is acidic with ph of 6.2 in h2o and 5.6 in cacl. the organic matter content and total nitrogen were low with values of 1.22 gkg -1 and 0.113 gkg -1 . the available p was high with value of 26.5 mgkg -1 . the exchangeable cations (ca, mg, na and k) were equally low in status with values of 2.6cmolkg -1 for ca 2+ and 0.9 cmolkg -1 for mg 2+ . the value obtained for na + was 0.57 cmolkg -1 , which was moderate while that for k + was 0.08cmolkg -1 , which was low. the cec was 4.15, while ecec was 5.6cmolkg 1 , which were generally low. the exchangeable acidity was only trace for al 3+ and characteristically low for h + with a value of 1.4 cmolkg -1 . nutrient content (%) of organic manure used in the study the nutrient content of organic manure (poultry manure and cattle dung) used in the study is shown in table 2. the values of n, p and k in poultry manure were significantly (p<0.05) higher than their values in cattle dung. with respect to n, poultry manure had 1.6% against cattle dung which was 0.4%. also, poultry manure had 0.6% p while cattle dung had 0.2% p. the value for k was 0.8% in poultry manure, while it was 0.3% in cattle dung. table 1: physico-chemical properties of experimental site soil property value interpretation particle size distribution (%) coarse sand 38 fine sand 41 silt 9 clay 12 texture ____ sandy loam ph h2o 6.2 acidic cacl 5.6 acidic organic carbon gkg -1 0.71 organic matter gkg -1 1.22 very low total nitrogen gkg -1 0.113 low available p (ppm) 26.5 exchangeable bases (cmol/kg -1 ) na + 0.57 moderate k + 0.08 very low asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 240 ca 2+ 2.60 low mg 2+ 0.90 low cation exchange capacity 4.15 exchangeable acidity (cmol/kg -1 ) al 3+ trace h + 1.4 effective cation exchangeable capacity (cmol/kg -1 ) 5.6 table 2: nutrient (%) of organic manure used in the study nutrient content (%) parameter n p k pm 1.6a 0.6a 0.8a cd 0.4b 0.2b 0.3b legend: pm = poultry manure, cd = cattle dung, n = nitrogen, p = phosphorus effects of variety, organic manure and inorganic fertilizer on grain weight of maize the responses of grain weight to variety, organic manure and inorganic fertilizer is shown in table 3. hybrid variety (9022-13) had higher grain weight of 2.10t/ha in 2008 and 2.30 t/ha in 2009, followed by openpollinated variety br9922-dmrsrf2 with 1.80 t/ha in 2008 and 1.91 t/ha in 2009, while agbor local variety had the lowest grain weight of 1.20 t/ha in 2008 and 1.43 t/ha in 2009. the order of superiority in terms of highest cob weight was 9022-13 > br 9922-dmrsrf2 > agbor local. plants that received inorganic fertilizer npk 20:10:10 were superior in weight (2.30 t/ha in 2008 and 2.20 t/ha in 2009), followed by plants that received poultry manure (1.50 t/ha in 2009 and 1.73 t/ha in 2009), while plants that received cattle dung had the lowest weight. increased application of manure or fertilizer resulted in increased gain weight. among the varieties, plants that received npk 20:10:10 fertilizer at the rate of 450kg/ha were superior with values of 3.10t/ha in 2008 and 2.76 t/ha in 2009, while unfertilized plants were inferior with values of 0.80 t/ha in 2008 and 1.27 t/ha in 2009. the effects of interaction (table 4) indicated that variety, manure type, rate of application, variety * manure type, variety * rate were significantly (p<0.05) different and affected the changes in grain weight of maize, while manure type * rate, variety * manure type * rate were not significantly (p>0.05) different and did not affect changes in grain weight of maize in 2008 and 2009. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 241 table 3: effects of variety, organic manure and inorganic fertilizer on grain weight and number of grains per cob of maize in 2008 and 2009 grain weight (tha -1 ) 2008 2009 mean variety 9022 – 13 2.10a 2.30a 2.20a br9922-dmrsf2 1.80b 1.91b 1.85b agbor local 1.20c 1.43c 1.31c nutrient source pm 1.50b 1.73b 1.61b cd 1.30c 1.70b 1.50c if 2.30a 2.20a 2.25a rates of application (tons or kg/ha) 0 0.80g 1.27d 1.03e 10 1.10f 1.52c 1.31d 20 1.80e 1.98b 1.89c 30 2.10c 2.19b 2.14c 150 2.00d 2.06b 2.03c 300 2.80b 2.57a 2.68b 450 3.10a 2.76a 2.93a means with the same letter(s) under the same column are not significantly different (p  0.05) using duncan multiple range test (dmrt). table 4: effects of interaction of variety, manure and inorganic fertilizer on grain weight of maize in 2008 and 2009 variety nutrient source rate grain weight (tha -1 ) grain weight (tha -1 ) 9022-13 pm 0 1.0 1.2 10 1.5 1.7 20 2.4 2.4 30 2.6 3.0 mean 1.9 2.1 cd 0 0.6 0.8 10 1.4 1.6 20 2.2 2.5 30 2.4 2.7 mean 1.7 1.9 if 0 1.5 1.4 150 2.5 2.4 300 3.2 3.8 450 3.7 3.9 mean 2.7 2.9 br9922dmrsrf2 pm 0 0.8 1.3 10 1.3 1.6 20 1.9 2.1 30 2.2 2.0 if (kgha-1) manure (tha-1) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 242 mean 1.6 1.8 cd 0 0.4 1.3 10 1.0 1.5 20 1.8 2.0 30 2.3 2.3 mean 1.4 1.8 if 0 1.3 1.4 150 2.1 2.4 300 0.7 3.8 450 3.4 3.9 mean 1.9 2.9 agbor local pm 0 0.6 1.1 10 0.8 1.3 20 0.4 1.4 30 1.7 1.6 mean 1.1 1.4 cd 0 0.5 1.3 10 0.7 1.4 20 1.0 1.5 30 1.6 1.6 mean 1.0 1.5 if 0 0.7 1.3 150 1.5 1.4 300 2.0 1.5 450 2.2 1.7 mean 1.2 1.5 variety * * manure type * * rate * * variety x manure type * ns variety x rate * * manure type x rate ns ns variety x manure type x rate ns ns legend: * = significant at 0.05 level of probability, ns = not significant discussion soil physico-chemical properties of the experimental site the sandy loam texture of the experimental site may be attributed to the parent material (pm) from which the soil was formed and the climate of the area. the soil might be formed from sandstone and quartz parent materials. these impart sandy texture to the soils. the high sand content of the soil could be attributed to high content of quartz in the material (brady and weils, 1999). the weak acid nature of the soil of the area may be traced to the marked leaching of exchangeable bases resulting from the high rainfall associated with the environment and the dissociation of strong and functional group in the organic matter. this is in harmony with the findings of esu (2001). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 243 the low organic matter status of the experimental site could be attributed to the rapid decomposition of organic matter due to high solar radiation and moisture, this favours optimum microbial activities in the soil, it could also be attributed to the annual seasonal bush burning which tend to deplete organic matter accumulation in the soil (landor, 199l). the low level of total nitrogen could be due to high temperature. it could also be attributed to leaching of’ nitrate by torrential rainfall prevalent in the environment (olatunji et al., 2007). the high level of’ phosphorus may be attributed to either of these reasons: (i) history of land use and cultural practices associated with the land use (that is, cropping of crops that do not take much p nutrient from the soil and the application of p organic fertilizers (nnaji et al., 2002 and nnaji, 2008). (ii) the parent material from which the soil was formed may be rich in p minerals (brady and weils, 1999). (iii) the soil may not be highly acidic as to cause high level of fixation (brady and weils, 1999, isirimah et al., 2003 and omokri et al., 2007). the low values of exchangeable cations may be attributed to the leaching of bases from the solum due to high rainfall characteristics of the area. the low action exchange capacity could be attributed to the pm from which the soil was formed, and low organic matter (om) content of the soil. the pm from which the soil was formed may be poor in basic nutrients. fmanr (1990) noted that soils of the study area was dominated by fe oxide and kaolinites. these clay minerals are low in basic cations (brady and weils, 1999). the exchangeable acidity was low possibly because of the cultural practices associated with the land use (that is, previous use of amendments to improve soil condition and enhance crop yield. the results, generally, are in harmony with the findings of osaretin et al. (2006), olatunji et al. (2007) and the results of soil fertility evaluation in the region. it is also consistent with the findings of nnaji et al. (2002) and nnaji, (2008) which reported that the history of land use and cultural practices affect soil conditions and crop productivity. nutrient content (% dry matter) of organic manure used in the study the values of n, p and k were higher in poultry manure than in cattle dung used in the study possibly because poultry manure, especially those produced in deep litter or battery cage house, have more concentrated nutrient content compared with other types of animal manure. this is similar to the findings of sharpley and smith (1995), lombin et al., (1991), and brady and weils (1999) who reported that among the different sources of organic manure which have been used in crop production, poultry manure was found to be the most concentrated in terms of nutrient content. it is also in harmony with the findings of subedi and gerung (1991) and d1pa (2006) who reported that poultry manure has higher levels of n. p and k than cattle dung. it is also consistent with the findings if ibeawuchi et al., (2007) who reported higher levels of n. p and k in plots treated with poultry manure than in plots treated with other nutrient sources. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 244 effects of variety, organic manure and inorganic fertilizer on grain weight of maize the superiority of hybrid variety 9022-13 over other varieties could be attributed to the yield advantage of hybrid varieties over other varieties. this is similar to the findings of kim (1997) and olakojo et al. (1998) who reported that hybrid varieties of maize have yield advantage of 25% and 50% over the best open pollinated varieties in nigeria. it also agrees with the report of obi (1999) that hybrid maize varieties possess such specials qualities as high yield, disease resistance, uniformity of flowering and ear placement, as well as ease of harvesting using combined harvester. the higher grain weight obtained from plants that received npk 20:10:10 fertilizer over other plants may be attributed to its faster rate of mineralization and release of nutrients for plants’ use. this is similar to the findings of abiola and aiyelaagbe (2005) who reported that inorganic fertilizer performed better than organic manure because inorganic fertilizer made their minerals easily available for plants’ use. it is also similar to the findings of akintoye and olufolaji (2005) that made such reports on the growth and yield of cayene pepper. higher rate of application of manure or inorganic fertilizer resulted in higher cob weight of maize possibly because of increased availability of nutrient elements in the soil. this is similar to the findings of olarewaju and showemimo (2003); aliyu and olarewaju (1996) who reported that the number of fruits, fruits yield and size increased as the nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer levels increased in the soil pepper. plants that received poultry manure had higher grain weight than plants that received cattle dung. this supports the report of lombin et al. (1991) which rated poultry manure best among the different source of organic manure because its nutrient content are more concentrated and supplied in readily absorbable form. conclusion and recommendations the study was carried out to evaluate the response of grain weight of maize to variety, organic manure and inorganic fertilizer in asaba area of delta state. it was a factorial experiment carried out in a randomized complete block design (rcbd) with three replicate. the result showed that hybrid variety 922-13 was superior in grain weight of maize and was therefore recommended to be grown in the study area. also, it was recommended that 450 kgh a-1 of npk 20:10:10 which resulted in higher grain weight be adopted by farmers who prefer mineral fertilizers in maize production. references abiola i. o. and aiyelaagbe i. o. 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(1945). an examination of detrigrareff methods for determining soil organic matter and proposed modification of the chronic and titration methods. soil science, 37: 29-38. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 615 the policy strategy of rice straw utilization of as feed for ruminants jasmal a. syamsu department of animal nutrition and feed science, faculty of animal science, university of hasanuddin, makassar, indonesia hasmida karim aciar field support office in makassar, indonesia abstract as it is known that the success of the livestock business associated with feeding management support. bantaeng district is one district that prioritizes the development of animal husbandry for the welfare of society, also this district has a great potential of agricultural waste. the tools used in the analysis is swot-analysis (strengths-weakness-opportunities-threats). this matrix combines opportunities and threats which can be match to the strengths and weaknesses to produce an alternative strategy, that is so strategy, strategy wo, wt strategy, and st strategy. the final step is making the decision to determine which strategies are feasible alternatives and the best, with quantitative strategies planning matrix (qspm) analysis which had previously been given an attractiveness score questionnaire. the result of research were the strategies require the provision of rice straw storage in groups on large livestock production centers, increased use of rice straw as a staple feed of cattle, provision of quality rice straw in the dry or drought season, supply and use of straw as animal feed with various methods of delivery and utilization. keywords: rice straw, feed, ruminant, strategy, swot analysis introduction 1 the livestock development, especially ruminants like cattle, still depends on the adequate availability of forage feed, both in quality and continuity throughout the year. often times, there is shortage of forage availability especially in the dry season. one of the feed source that can be used for ruminants food is agricultural waste. indonesia's tropical climate has agricultural waste potential which is very abundant according to season. agricultural waste is a local food waste originating from food crops and its production is very dependent on the type 1 corresponding author’s details: name: jasmal a. syamsu email address: jasmals@yahoo.com and amount of planting area or planting pattern of food crop sector in the region. agricultural wastes that are usually used as animal feed is rice straw, maize straw, peanut straw, soybean straw, rice straw green beans, sweet potato hay and cassava shoots. rice straw is one of the agricultural wastes that often used as animal feed, because rice production in indonesia is very abundant in accordance with the season, but some farmers do not use it optimally. according to komar (1984), 36 to 62% of rice straw in our country is burned or returned to the soil as compost, there is 31 to 39% used to feed livestock ranges, while the rest ranged from 7 to 16% is used for industrial purposes. this is understandable because rice straw has very low nutritional value or benefits as livestock food. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:jasmals@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 615-621 616 south sulawesi with a total area of 6,248,254 ha, about 44.5% of the area or 2.78131 million ha is agricultural land and of approximately 598,216 ha agricultural land is paddy fields (ella, 2001). based on bps (2005), the percentage of crop harvested area in south sulawesi showed 70.5% of rice, corn 17.8%, 3.39% of cassava, sweet potato, 0.47%, 3.61% peanuts, soybeans 1.41% and 2.76% green beans. the potential of the harvest area had serve as indication that the agricultural waste generated will also largely used as a source of ruminant feed. some efforts to improve the nutritional value of agricultural waste using feed technology has been applied in communities such as physical, chemical and biological treatment. at the farmer level, there are various obstacles to apply technology to improving the quality of agricultural waste, such as the relatively small amount of waste that can be collected by farmers due to lack of facilities for storage and the additional expense and labor costs for the farmers to apply making these technologies (djajanegara, 1999), therefore a simple, inexpensive and easy to adopt feed technology is required by farmers. as it is known that the success of the livestock business associated with feeding management support. bantaeng district is one district that prioritizes the development of animal husbandry for the welfare of society, also this district has a great potential of agricultural waste. the vision of animal husbandry development sector in this area is to establish a prosperous and productive society through the development of animal husbandry, whose mission is to utilize and conserve the natural resources supporting livestock. therefore, we need a strategy in determining the direction of the development of livestock policy tailored to the physical and socioeconomic conditions of local communities, particularly the utilization of rice straw as ruminant feed source. materials and methods the research was conducted in the bantaeng district, south sulawesi province, indonesia. interview technique was used to collect data by distributing questionnaires to experts. experts involved in the research are those who know about the potential and utilization of rice straw as ruminant feed, consisting of: the government namely bantaeng head of animal husbandry (one person), universities namely animal husbandry faculty in university of hasanuddin (two people), institutions research namely the agricultural technology assessment institute in south sulawesi (one person), a businessman in the district bantaeng (one person), as well as farmers namely those who are raising themselves (one person), and that included in the farmers' groups (one person) of bantaeng district. this research conducted in several steps based on formulation techniques strategy according to david (2001) to formulate a utilization strategy of rice straw as ruminant feed resources in the district bantaeng. identification of external and internal factors the first step is to capture information and identify internal and external factors relating to the utilization of rice straw as ruminant feed, by conducting discussions and interviews using questionnaire to experts. internal factors include the strengths and weaknesses. external factors include the opportunities and threats. determinant of weight and rating the results of identification and analysis of those two factors become an external determinant using external factor evaluation matrix (efe) and internal determinant using an internal factor evaluation matrix (ife), which in turn will be given a rating that is weighted and ranked by using a weights and ratings determining questionnaire by the experts. alternative strategy formulation the next step is matching which focuses on generate viable alternative strategy to integrate the result of external and internal factors in the initial steps. the tool used in the analysis is swot matrix (strengths-weaknessopportunities-threats). this matrix combines opportunities and threats which can be match to the strengths and weaknesses to produce an alternative strategy, that is so strategy, strategy wo, wt strategy, and st strategy. swot asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 615-621 617 matrix scheme consists of nine cells, there are four main factors cells (external and internal), four-cell and single-cell strategy that shows the external and internal factors. strategy decision the final step is making the decision to determine which strategies are feasible alternatives and the best, with quantitative strategies planning matrix (qspm) analysis which had previously been given an attractiveness score questionnaire. qspm matrix is using the results of the initial step and matching phase analysis. the main components are qspm key factors, alternative strategies, the value of attractiveness (attractiveness score usa), the total value of attractiveness (attractiveness total score tas), as well as the sum total value of attractiveness (attractiveness sum total score). after the experts filled in a questionnaire determining the value of attractiveness (attractiveness score) then the data is entered into the qspm matrix. result and discussion identification of external and internal factors based on the interviews conducted, the obtained results of the identification of external factors, including opportunities and threats, as well as internal factors which include the strengths and weaknesses are useful as preliminary information from the utilization of rice straw. meanwhile the result of identification interview and external and internal factor assessment (of weights and ratings) with the experts is shown in table 1 and 2. table 1: external factors evaluation matrix (efe) having obtained the identification of these factors, we perform weighting and ranking according to their importance which was repeated by experts through a questionnaire, and data is entered on the matrix of the external evaluation and internal evaluation matrix. having obtained the weights and ratings of each external and internal factors, then the weighting values multiplied by the rankings in order to obtain a score for each factor. based on the results of external evaluation matrix, we can see that the total score for the opportunity factor is 1.85 and the threat is 0.70. this shows that the utilization of the rice straw utility as animal feed has a significant opportunity in the bantaeng district. this is supported by many animal population in bantaeng which tends to increase, according to halim (2004) in 2003 the total population of ruminants in bantaeng district were 24,365.15 no external factors integrity (b) rating (r) score (bxr) opportunity 1 livestock population in bantaeng is quite large. 0,15 4 0,60 2 paddy-field is quite large. 0,20 3 0,60 3 lacking of pasture field so that farmers will use other feeding source 0,10 3 0,30 4 the availability of feed in dry season is hard to obtain 0,05 4 0,20 5 rice harvest season is twice a year 0,05 3 0,15 amount 1,85 threats 1 there is competition with other type of feed 0,10 3 0,30 2 it is used as raw materials by pulp industry 0,05 1 0,05 3 declining of livestock population especially the productive female due to the meat-market need. 0,05 2 0,10 4 farmers' habit to burn straw. 0,10 1 0,10 5 land conversion for industrial plants and residential. 0,15 1 0,15 amount 0,70 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 615-621 618 au (animal unit), with an increase of 328.064 au/year for cattle and 81.769 au/year for goats. also there is quite a lot of wetland in the district to enable the increasing of rice straw production every year. halim (2004) stated that there is 277.92 dm (dry matter) tons increase of rice straw production each year. however there is competition with other better feed nutrients and easy to obtain by the farmers. sarwono and arianto (2001) said that in addition to the low nutritional content, rice straw feed also part of forage that difficult to digest due to high crude fiber content. table 2: internal evaluation factor matrix (ife) based on the results of internal evaluation matrix, the total score for the strength is 1.94 and weakness is 0.76. this means that in the internal terms, rice straw quality has a better strength, although it is known that the nutritional quality of rice straw is very low because of high crude fiber content. however the hay nutritional quality can be improved with the use of feed technology. the often used feed technology to improve the quality of rice straw is fermentation, it is very easy and do not cost much so that farmers and ranchers can use it. this is in accordance with the opinion soetanto (2000) that the utilization of agricultural wastes like rice straw, cereal straw or sugar cane shoots need to be intensified by using simple, low-cost, and easily adopted technology by farmers and environmentally friendly. the obtained score difference is 1.15 on an external factor between the opportunities and threats and 1.18 on internal factors between the strengths and weaknesses. these results define focus strategy to be prioritized that is the so strategy or quadrant i, which means that the strategy should be applied in these conditions is a strategy that supports the activities of a development and utilization of rice straw as ruminant feed in the district bantaeng. alternative strategy based on the space matrix analysis result, the main priority of the strategy to be implemented is on the strategy of so (strengthsopportunities). other strategies such as strategies st (strengths-threats), wo (weakness-opportunities) and wt (weaknessthreats) is an alternative strategy that will be applied. so strategy is a strategy that uses the internal strength to take advantage of external opportunities. so strategy is 1). provision of rice straw storage facilities based in groups in no. internal factors integrity (b) rating (r) skor (bxr) strength 1. nutritional quality can be improved through fermentation, physical treatment, chemical and biological. 0,10 3 0,30 2. abundant straw production 0,20 4 0,80 3. all year long continuity 0,06 4 0,24 4. could be an alternative cattle feed. 0,15 4 0,60 amount 1.94 weakness 1. low nutritient quality 0,15 1 0,15 2. its production is determined by the harvested area 0,05 2 0,10 3. there is competition with other better feed nutrients. 0,10 2 0,20 4. easily damaged 0,04 4 0,16 5. les palatability 0,15 1 0,15 amount 0.76 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 615-621 619 large livestock production centers, 2). the increase of existing use of rice straw as a staple food of cattle, 3). provision of good quality rice straw in dry/drought season, and 4). provision and use of straw as animal feed with various methods of delivery and utilization. st strategies (strengths-threats) is a strategy which uses the internal strength to avoid or reduce the impact of external threats. st strategy is 1). optimize the utilization of rice straw rotation in paddy fields. 2). preparation of feed formulation using rice straw and other feed sources to improve quality. 3). increasing the economic value of straw as good quality and continuous animal feed. 4). increased farmers awareness to use rice straw as cattle feed. wo strategies (weaknesses-opportunities) is a strategy that seeks to minimize the internal weaknesses so as seize better external opportunities. activities that can be done in this strategy is 1). optimize the overall production of rice straw for animal feed. 2). improve the quality of straw as livestock feed. 3). improved the more durable storage methods, and 4). conduct of feeding rice straw throughout the year. st strategies (weaknesses-threats) is a strategy aim to reduce internal weakness and avoid threat. wt strategy is 1. improving nutritional quality and palatability of rice straw through the feed technology. 2. provision of rice straw in accordance with the needs and livestock population. 3. increased awareness of farmers to store rice straw after harvest period. 4. coordinate with relevant agencies to use rice straw as animal feed. strategy selection the selection of strategy is conducted by distributing qspm questionnaire (quantitative strategies, planning matrix) to determine the attractiveness of each so strategies that already exist, because the analysis result on the matrix space (figure 1) shows that the difference of external and internal factors are at quadrant i, i.e., in areas of strength and opportunity. the result of attractiveness assessment of each so strategy can be seen in table 3. it is known from the results in table 3 that the strategy that has the highest attraction is at the third strategy which is the provision of good rice straw quality in dry season / drought, while strategy ii, iv and i respectively ranked second, third and fourth namely to increase the use of rice straw as a staple food for cattle, supply and utilization of straw as cattle feed with various methods, as well as providing a means of rice straw storage in groups on large livestock production centers. picture 1: space analysis matrix asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 615-621 620 no. external and internal factors integrity strategy so strategy 1 strategy 2 strategy 3 strategy 4 as tas as tas as tas as tas opportunity 1. bantaeng livestock population is quite large and tend to increase. 0,15 3 0,45 3 0,45 4 0,60 4 0,60 2. total paddy-field area is quite large. 0,20 4 0,80 4 0,80 4 0,80 4 0,80 3. lack of grazing land so that farmers will utilize other food sources. 0,10 2 0,20 3 0,30 3 0,30 3 0,30 4. the provision of feed during drought season 0,05 4 0,20 3 0,15 4 0,20 3 0,15 5. harvest season is twice a year 0,05 4 0,20 3 0,15 3 0,15 3 0,15 threat 1. there is competition with other feed resouces. 0,10 3 0,30 2 0,20 2 0,20 2 0,20 2. it is used by pulp/paper industry as raw material. 0,05 2 0,10 1 0,05 1 0,05 1 0,05 3. the decline of livestock population push farmers to slaughter productive female cattle due to the need for meat. 0,05 1 0,05 2 0,10 2 0,10 2 0,10 4. farmers habit to burn straw. 0,10 3 0,30 4 0,40 2 0,20 2 0,20 5. land conversion for industrial plants and residential. 0,15 2 0,30 2 0,30 2 0,30 2 0,30 strength 1. nutritional quality cab ne improved through fermentation. 0,10 3 0,30 4 0,40 4 0,40 4 0,40 2. abundant production 0,20 4 0,80 4 0,80 4 0,80 3 0,60 3. all year continuity 0,06 3 0,18 4 0,24 3 0,18 3 0,18 4. alternative cattle feed. 0,15 3 0,45 4 0,60 4 0,60 4 0,60 weakness 1. less nutrient quality 0,15 3 0,45 3 0,45 4 0,60 3 0,45 2. its production is determined by the harvest area 0,05 3 0,15 3 0,15 3 0,15 3 0,15 3. there is competition with other better nutrient feed. 0,10 2 0,20 2 0,20 3 0,30 2 0,20 4. easily damaged 0,04 1 0,04 2 0,08 2 0,08 3 0,12 5. less palatability 0,15 1 0,15 4 0,60 3 0,45 4 0,60 total of attractiveness score 1,00 5,62 6,24 6,46 6,15 tabel 3: quantitative strategies planning matrix (qspm) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 615-621 621 total attractiveness value the implementation of strategy iii is supported by strategy i, ii and iv, because in order to streamline the provision of good quality rice straw in dry/drought and rainy seasons more is need such as warehouse storage, storage methods and the provision of appropriate feed technology so that there is increased use of rice straw as a staple food for cattle. in addition to the implementation of this strategy, it is expected to reduce the competition with other better feed nutrients. to support the successful implementation of these strategies will require planning programs, both in long and short term. the long-term planning programs which can support the implementation of this strategy is : 1). the increased demand for animal feed derived from local agricultural waste particularly rice straw. 2). development and application of feed technology in the processing of agricultural wastes, especially rice straw. 3). the quality development of human resources in livestock field, particularly in knowledge and skills. in addition, there is a short-term planning program for one year period consist of : 1. community organization and development :  the establishment of farmer groups.  guidance on the use of agricultural waste as animal feed.  training in the use of feed technologies for rice straw.  consultation on the rice straw provision and utilization method as animal feed. 2. development and maintenance of farm infrastructure :  manufacture of livestock feed warehouse in location near the paddy fields.  compose stables groups near the feed barn  provision means of transportation.  procurement of facilities inside stables conclusion and recommendation there is a conclusion based on the results and discussion to create rice straw utilization strategy as ruminant feed, it is that the strategies require the provision of rice straw storage in groups on large livestock production centers, increased use of rice straw as a staple food of cattle, provision of quality rice straw in the dry or drought season, supply and use of straw as animal feed with various methods of delivery and utilization. related to the implementation of rice straw utilization strategy as ruminant feed, there are other strategic alternatives that could be developed to support the success of key strategies including awareness raising of farmers to use rice straw as cattle feed and store the rice straw after harvest also increasing rice straw nutritional quality and palatability through the feed technology. the results of this study can be considered to enhance regional development programs especially in the livestock development in the bantaeng district. references badan pusat statistik (2005). statistik pertanian tanaman pangan dan hortikultura sulawesi selatan (2003). badan pusat statistik provinsi sulawesi selatan. djajanegara, a. (1999). local livestock feed resources. in: livestock industries of indonesia prior to the asian financial crisis. rap publication, 37: 29-39. david, f. r. (2001). strategic management: concepts and cases. 8 th ed. prentice-hall inc., new jersey. ella, a. (2001). crop livestock system di sulawesi selatan: suatu tinjauan pelaksanaan kegiatan. makalah seminar nasional teknologi peternakan dan veteriner. bogor 17-18 september (2001). pusat penelitian dan pengembangan peternakan, bogor. halim, i. (2004). evaluasi potensi dan pemanfaatan limbah tanaman pangan sebagai pakan ternak ruminansia di kabupaten bantaeng. skripsi. fakultas peternakan universitas hasanuddin, makassar komar, a. (1984). teknologi pengolahan jerami sebagai makanan ternak. yayasan dian grahita indonesia, jakarta. sarwono, b. and h. b. arianto (2001). penggemukan sapi potong secara cepat. penebar swadaya, jakarta. soetanto h. (2000). masalah gizi dan produktivitas ternak ruminansia di indonesia. pidato pengukuhan jabatan guru besar fakultas peternakan. universitas brawijaya, malang effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. morphological characterization of four selected spider plant (cleome gynandra l.) morphs from zimbabwe and kenya a. masuka (70-fleming road, southerton, harare, zimbabwe) m. goss and u. mazarura (department of crop science, university of zimbabwe, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe) citation: a. masuka, m. goss and u. mazarura (2012) “morphological characterization of four selected spider plant (cleome gynandra l.) morphs from zimbabwe and kenya”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 646 – 657. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 646-657. 646 author(s) a. masuka 70 fleming road, southerton, harare, zimbabwe m. goss and u. mazarura department of crop science, university of zimbabwe, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe morphological characterization of four selected spider plant (cleome gynandra l.) morphs from zimbabwe and kenya abstract faced with climate change one way of adaptation is to reach into the genetic resource of the so-called miner crops. these crops are thought to be more resilient to climate change while being more nutritious than the modern vegetables. it is vital to characterise these crops in order to gather information that will help in their widespread usage. the objective of this study was to morphologically characterise four morphs; three from zimbabwe and one from kenya under greenhouse conditions at the crop science department of the university of zimbabwe, harare, zimbabwe. this work assessed number of days to seedling emergence, number of days to flowering, number of leaflets/compound leaf and number of pods/plant and other parameters. the analysis of variance for all the traits exhibited significant differences (p=0.05). there was significant variation among spider plant morphs in plant height, petiole length, length of leaflet, fruit length, fruit width, days to seedling emergence, days to flowering, number of leaflets per compound leaf and number of pods per plant. morphs from different locations exhibited variability for stem pigmentations. the kenyan morph differed from the zimbabwean morphs as it was smaller and produced a higher number of pods per plant. we recommend further studies to reveal the molecular markers associated with the morphological differences we observed. keywords: nutritious, crops, morphs, zimbabwe introduction the cat's whiskers or spider plant (cleome gynandra l. /gynandropsis gynandra (l.) briq.) grows as a weed in zimbabwe. it is not formally cultivated as a commercial crop but for years has been a semi-domesticated volunteer crop in farmers‟ fields and on fertile soils near and around most homesteads in the world although there is some limited cultivation of commercial leafy varieties in several countries in east africa such as kenya, uganda and tanzania (mnzava and ngwerume, 2004). its tender leaves and shoots are gathered for use as a vegetable in most parts of zimbabwe although the palatability of the crop maybe low, especially without appropriate preparation. the high fibre content of the leaves enables them to be stored for a long time. in some cultures, the boiled leaves of cat's whiskers are also regarded as a medicinal meal whilst in asia, cat's whiskers are cultivated for their seed oil (chweya and mnzava, 1997). the status of the crop as a wild and weedy volunteer renders it unattractive for attention, especially as it is often seen as a poor man's crop. the cultivation of wild edible plants is necessary in widening the nutrition and food base in developing countries but they are regarded by scientists as minor crops and hence receive little attention in most research and development programs (the australian new crops newsletter, 1999). available local knowledge by the rural folk in kenya shows that spider plant is beneficial medicinally (opole et al., 1995). in some morphological characterization of four selected.... 647 communities, it is believed that regular consumption of the leaves by expectant mothers eases childbirth by reducing the length of labour. it is also believed to help them to regain health faster and to stimulate milk production (kokwaro, 1976). the concoction made from the leaves is believed to treat scurvy and marasmus, while malaria and epileptic fits can be treated using the sap from pounded leaves by squeezing it into ears, eyes and nostrils (opole et al., 1995). it is also believed that spider plant can be used to kill and repel insects as well as preventing them from feeding (verma and pandey, 1987). the leaves have anti-tick, repellent and acaricidal properties to larvae, nymphs and adult ticks (rhipicephalus appendiculatus) (chandel et al., 1987). the plant has anti-feedant action against the tobacco caterpillar, while the extract from the mature seeds is toxic to brinjal aphid and larvae of american bollworm (heliothis armigera), and lipids from the seeds can be used in soap manufacture (verma and pandey, 1987). the plant is a highly nutritious leafy vegetable rich in vitamin a and c, calcium, iron and proteins (abe and imbamba, 1977). existing evidence suggest that spider plant is endowed with high levels of nutrients (chweya and mnzava, 1997). some people believe that plants referred to as "indigenous vegetables" (although some are exotics) are more nutritious and healthy than more usual vegetables (van and gericke., 2000). during the period of abundance especially during the rainy season, the leaves and young tender shoots can be sold at urban markets and hence, the crop can become a source of income to the rural poor and the unemployed. available information is limited and short on several important and basic components, an issue that hinders the development of the crop and its sustainable conservation, let alone commercialization. the crop therefore falls into the category of “neglected and underutilized crops”. one major factor hampering the development of the crop is that in cases where information is present, it is usually not consolidated and therefore not readily accessible (existing only as „grey literature‟), written in local dialects that are hard to understand. more so, there is limited information on the genetic potential of spider plant. in fact, knowledge of plant breeding and agronomy is still very scarce. this has resulted, frequently, in uncoordinated research efforts, as well as in inefficient approaches to the conservation of its genetic resource (chweya and mnzava, 1997). studies in kenya and zimbabwe indicate that there is significant variation among plant populations for many characteristics. further studies are needed to determine to what extent these differences are due to climatic, soil fertility or stress conditions. clearly different populations can be found in the coastal regions of kenya and tanzania, with relatively small plants that are much branched and have distinctly dark, almost black, straight and stiff fruits. they appear to be very different from plants encountered elsewhere in africa, where the fruits are far from stiff and often green or yellow to pale brown (chayamarit, 1993). studies in kenya on germplasm collected from farmers have shown that differences do exist between plant characteristics of plants from seed lots collected from various areas although there was variability in most morphological characters between the seed lots (the australian new crops newsletter, 1999). this study investigated variations in morphological characters among existing spider plant accessions gathered from different parts of zimbabwe and kenya. materials and methods study site the experiment was carried out in a greenhouse at the crop science department, faculty of agriculture of the university of zimbabwe, harare, zimbabwe (17.780s, 31.050e , 1523 meters above sea level). the site is in natural region ii with an annual rainfall of 6001000mm and average temperatures of 20-300c. propagation material sexual propagation was used and the seed for the spider plant types used for this study were obtained from three different locations, two from zimbabwe and one from kenya. the first zimbabwean seed source was marondera horticulture research centre (hrc) (18.110 s, 31.280 e, 1630m elevation). the second zimbabwean seed source were collections from asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 646-657. 648 wildly growing plants in the zaka communal lands (20.340 s, 31.460 e, 776 m elevation). seed for the spider plant type from kenya was obtained from a harvested commercially grown spider plant crop in may 2012 from a farm in uasin gishu district, rift valley county (0.310 n, 35.170 e, altitude 2400 m). morphs are herein referred to as strains of a species having established morphological differences (ramaiah et al, 1983). morphology as explained by dutta, (1979) deals with the study of forms and features of different plant organs such as roots, stems, leaves, flowers, seeds and fruits, while singh, (1990) describes character or trait as a morphological, anatomical or physiological feature of an organism, which is usually a product of the action of both genotype and environment. the design was based on the premise of a highly heritable and easily identifiable morphological characteristic, the stem colour (purple and green) which could be expressed in all environments. the location of collections (marondera, zaka and kenya), representing the four morphological types identified and selected were marondera green stem (mrg), marondera purple stem-(mrp), zaka green stem (zkg) and kenya purple stem (kep). experimental design and management the four morphs were laid out as a randomized complete block design (rcbd) experiment with eight blocks and four replicates by sowing seeds in 2.4l pots. the pots were filled with pine bark substrate and compound „s‟ 7:21:7 fertilizer was applied 2g/pot just before sowing. the seeds were broadcasted sparingly within the pots and wood ash was sprinkled over the seeds. watering was done prior to and after sowing. after emergence, thinning was done 30 days after seedling emergence (das), leaving four plants per pot. the pots were irrigated three times a week until 45 das and every day thereafter. forty two days after seedling emergence, calcium nitrate (can) (15.5n:p0: 0k: 20ca:24s) was applied at 5g/pot. at 60 days after seedling emergence the following measurements (cm) were recorded:  length of leaflet, measured from the pulvinus of the leaflet to the tip of the leaflet;  petiole length, measured from the pulvinus to the base of the leaflets;  plant height, measured from the base of the plant to the tip of the main stem;  fruit length, measured from the end of the fruit stalk to the tip of the fruit and  fruit width, measured at the middle part of the fruit and considered to be broadest point at 80 days after seedling emergence. in addition counts were taken of number of days to seedling emergence, number of days to flowering, number of leaflets/compound leaf and number of pods/plant. the morphological characterization was done using fao spider plant crop descriptor states. all measurements, counts and observations of a given trait were done on the same day to avoid any differences in the developmental stage of plant growth. all the data collected was subjected to an analysis of variance (anova) using genstat 64-bit release 14.1 statistical programme. the differences were accepted as significant at p<0.05 and post hoc separation of means was done using fischer‟s protected least significant difference (lsd) test. results the existence of morphological types (morphs) for cleome gynandra was evident as there were variations in forms and features of the different plant organs measured and counted. the morphs collected from different locations revealed variability in all aspects: plant height; petiole length; length of leaflet; fruit length; fruit width; days to seedling emergence; days to flowering; number of leaflets per compound leaf and number of pods per plant (table 1). spider plant morphs showed significant differences (p<0.05) for all the variable measurements which were fruit length, fruit width, leaflet length, plant height and petiole length (table 1). with regards to flowering and stem pubescence the zimbabwean morphs (mrg, mrp and morphological characterization of four selected.... 649 zkg) seemed to cluster for traits, fruit position (throughout the plant), flower colour (white) and plant structure (erect). the flower colour ranged from white to purple. the white corolla colour was noted in the zimbabwean morphs (mrp, mrg and zkg) and purple tinged inflorescence was seen for the kenyan morph (kep) (figure 1). mrp white flowers kep flowers tinged with purple zkg purely white flowers mrg white flowers figure 1: variations in flower colour of four spider plant (cleome gynandra) morphs from zimbabwe and kenya kep produced densely glandular stems as compared to the glabrous stems of mrg (figure 2). generally the purple stem types of plants were more glandular compared to the green stem type of plants which were either glabrous or close to glabrous (figure 2) while the colours were either green or purple (figure 3). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 646-657. 650 mrp( moderate pubescence) kep (densely glandular) mrg (glabrous) zkg (almost glabrous) figure 2: comparison of stem pubescence of four spider plant (cleome gynandra) morphs from zimbabwe and kenya morphological characterization of four selected.... 651 kep mrg zkg mrp figure 3: variations in stem pigmentation of four spider plant (cleome gynandra) morphs from zimbabwe and kenya effect of morph type on measured fruit characteristics the highest fruit lengths were obtained from the purple stem type of plants (kep and mrp) whose means were significantly different (p<0.05) from the green stem type of plants (mrg and zkg). the means for the green stem type of plants (zkg and mrg) were however not significantly different from each other (table 1). the purple stem type plants had the greatest fruit width but their width were not significantly different (p>0.05) although they were significantly different from the green stem type plants which were also not significantly different from each other (table 1). table 1: morphological trait measurements and their treatment means of four spiderplant (cleome gynandra) morphs from zimbabwe and kenya kep– kenya purple stem type of plants; mrg– marondera green stem type of plants; mrp– marondera purple stem type of plants; zkg– zaka green stem type of plants. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 646-657. 652 trait index kep mrg mrp zkg fruit length 9.906c 7.125a 8.688b 6.750a fruit width 0.8531b 0.6625a 0.7781b 0.5906a leaflet length 4.625ab 5.500b 3.938a 4.750ab plant height 45.41a 76.19c 59.03b 75.66c petiole length 5.281a 15.625c 6.469a 11.312b s.e.d lsd0.05 p value significance fruit length 0.452 0.896 <.001 * fruit width 0.0496 0.0982 <.001 * leaflet length 0.453 0.897 0.009 * plant height 2.89 5.72 <.001 * petiole length 0.633 1.253 <.001 * figures followed by different letters within the same row are significantly (p=0.05) different according to fisher‟s protected least significant difference test. * = significant at the 5% level, ns= not significant. s.e.d standard error of difference. data are means of four replications of four plants each for the four spider plant morphs effect of morph type on measured leaf characteristics mrg was significantly different from mrp (p<0.05) with regards to the length of leaflet while all the other morphs were not significantly different (table 1). the green stem type of plants were significantly different from each other (p<0.05) and also significantly different from the purple stem type of plants for petiole length. the purple stem type of plants were however not significantly different from each other. purple stem types of plants were the same and green stem types of plants were also the same (table 1). effect of morph type on plant height for the plant height, only the morph kep was significantly (p<0.05) different from the rest whilst there was no significant difference for the green stem type of plants (table 1). mrg and zkg were not different but are significantly (p<0.05) taller than mrp and kep (table 1). counts comparisons the range of variation for the different characteristics showed significant variability (p<0.05) for all the counts which were days to flowering, days to seedling emergence, number of leaflets per compound leaf and number of pods per plant (table 2). table 2: morphological trait counts and their treatment means of four spider plant (cleome gynandra) morphs from zimbabwe and kenya kep– kenya purple stem type of plants; mrg– marondera green stem type of plants; mrp– marondera purple stem type of plants; zkg– zaka green stem type of plants. trait index kep mrg mrp zkg days to flowering 33.72c 22.00a 27.25b 21.62a days to seedling emergence 4.219a 4.156a 4.625b 6.594c no. of leaflets/compound leaf 3.406a 5.531b 3.844a 5.250b morphological characterization of four selected.... 653 no. of pods/plant 14.66c 9.53a 11.50b 9.19a s.e.d lsd0.05 p value significance days to flowering 0.828 1.641 <.001 * days to seedling emergence 0.1955 0.3872 <.001 * no. of leaflets/compound leaf 0.2597 0.5143 <.001 * no. of pods/plant 0.832 1.648 <.001 * figures followed by different letters within the same row are significantly (p=0.05) different according to fisher‟s protected least significant difference test. * = significant at the 5% level, ns= not significant. s.e.d standard error of difference. data are means of four replications of four plants each for the four spider plant morphs. effect of morph on days to seedling emergence there was no significant difference (p>0.05) between kep and mrg with regard to days to seedling emergence. there was significant difference between mrp and zkg as well as from the rest (table 2). germination was observed within five days for all the morphs except zkg which took longer (>5 days). effect of morph type on days to flowering the purple stem type of plants (kep and mrp) flowered later than the green stemmed morphs (mrg and zkg). the purple stem type of plants were also significantly different from each other (p<0.05) whilst there was no significant differences between the green stemmed morphs (table 2) effect of morph types on number of leaflets per compound leaf the purple stem type of plants were significantly different (p<0.05) from the green stem type of plants in terms of number of leaflets per compound leaf (table 2). both the green stem and the purple stem type of plants were not significantly different from each other within their grouping by stem coloration. the green stem type of plants exhibited on average five leaflets per compound leaf (figure 4). green stemmed plant showing seven leaflets on one compound leaf purple stemmed plant showing the most common number of leaflets per compound leaf figure 4: variations in number of leaflets per compound leaf between purple and green stem spiderplant (cleome gynandra) morphs asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 646-657. 610 effect of morph type on number of pods per plant generally, the purple stem type of plants had more pods per plant compared to the green stem type of plants (figure 5).the purple stem type of plants were significantly different from each other (p<0.05), and also significantly different from the green stem type of plants (table 2). there was, however, no significant difference between the green stem types of plants (mrg and zkg). kep mrp zkg mrg figure 5: variations in pods per plant for four spiderplant (cleome gynandra) morphs from zimbabwe and kenya discussion the present study revealed the existence of variability in morphological characteristics measured, counted and scored for during phenotypic characterization of four spider plant morphs from zimbabwe and kenya. the traits characterized displayed a high level of morphological diversity among spider plant morphs. the analysis of variance for all the traits exhibited significant differences (p= 0.05), something which is in close agreement with earlier findings by k‟opondo (2011) in kenya. the existence of morphological types (morphs) of cleome gynandra was based on the morphological characterization of four selected.... 655 premise of a highly heritable character, easily seen by the eye and which could be expressed in all environments, the stem pigmentation, representing four morphological types collected from different locations. earlier researchers identified that the stem colour could be used to distinguish and recognize different plant types (chweya, 1990). it was however yet to be seen whether other characteristics could also be used to distinguish between the plants. vegetative phase only morph zkg varied from others with regards to days to seedling emergence, but the values were almost within the range of those reported by other authors (kemei, et al., 1995; chweya et al., 1997). all the other three morphs took between 4 and 5 days to emerge from the soilless media. there was germination in all the pots planted and it was noticed that the seeds did not all germinate readily with the germination occurring over an extended period probably because seeds have a rest period. physiologically mature seeds are either dormant or nondormant and would germinate once the dormancy is relieved or optimum conditions are provided (ochuodho and modi, 2007). the results showed that for all the four morphs the compound leaves were palmate (leaflets attached to the tip of the petiole) and the most common number of leaflets for each compound leaf was five (figure 4). the green stemmed plants (mrg and zkg) sometimes however exceeded this number whilst the purple stemmed plants (mrp and kep) sometimes had less than five, this observation apparently contrary to what is stated by chweya and mnzava (1997), that leaflets were rarely three to four per each compound leaf. green stemmed plants had the longest petioles while the petiole length for the purple stems was much lower. the results do not concur with findings of k‟opondo (2011) where the longest petioles were produced by purple stem type of plants indicating, perhaps, variability in morps with regard to stem colour. zkg had the tallest plants overall while kep had the shortest. it was however noted that the shortest plants had the highest number of pods per plant kep as compared to those which were tall. the plant height measured from 24cm to 140cm figures which are somewhat higher than those recorded by makgakga (2011) in south africa (2560cm). it is highly conceivable that morph stem colour cannot be globally related to stem height. reproductive phase green stemmed plants flowered earliest, with zkg flowering earliest. purple stemmed plants which took the longest. kep produced the highest number of pods per plant as compared to zkg. kep produced longer and broader plants compared to the other morphs. this result confirms studies by k‟opondo (2011) who reported that morphs took over 40 days to flower, with purple stemmed plants producing broader fruits compared to green stemmed plants. all morphs exhibited high degree of flowering, an important character when considering seed production since more flowering is likely to lead to high fruit and seed production (k‟opondo, 2011). water stress can however trigger flowering even at the seedling stages, therefore distorting the count; number of days to flowering (chayamarit, 1993). zkg, mrg and mrp all produced white flowers whereas kep had flowers tinged with purple (figure 5). there is therefore need to study the relationship between early flowering and a higher fruit and seed production. fruits occurred in zones at the inflorescence stalk for all the morphs although in some cases, kep fruits were found on top of the canopy. chweya and mnzava (1997) stated that spiderplant fruits may occur on either the top of the canopy or throughout the plant, and position of the fruit is highly affected by nutritive conditions. kep produced yellow fruits while all the zimbabwean morphs had green fruits. all the morphs were erected and much branched although kep was highly affected by lodging. the green stem type of plants had glabrous stems as compared to the abundant pubescence of the purple stems (figure 6), an observation that is in conformity with the findings of makgakga, (2011), that purple stemmed plants are usually more glandular than green stemmed plants. kep had a sticky and densely glandular stem as compared to the other morphs. in general, the kenyan purple stem morph (kep), was significantly different from all the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 646-657. 656 other morphs (collected from zimbabwe; mrg, mrp and zkg) in terms of four traits out of the nine traits considered i.e. plant height, days to flowering, fruit length and number of pods per plant. there was no variation between kep and mrp for fruit width, petiole length and number of leaflets per compound leaf. kep only showed no variation with the green stem morphs in terms of leaflet length and days to seedling emergence. different evolutionary pathways of development could be responsible for these observed differences among the morphs as it is suggested that while genes interact with other genes, the way they are expressed is influenced by their environment (phillips, 2006). these differences could therefore be as a result of adaptations to the environmental conditions from which the morphs were collected. some of the variations shown among the kenyan and zimbabwean spider plant morphs studied, particularly the agronomic traits, could partly be attributed to selection pressure being effected by farmers in kenya for those characters they consider to be of importance to them, as they continue putting spider plant under domestication through cultivation (k‟opondo, 2011); whereas in zimbabwe, domestication is still only confined to research stations. phillips, (2006) reported that spider plant belongs to the genus cleome which has over 200 species (about 50 of them occurring in africa) consisting of highly polymorphic herbaceous plants, a point which could explain why more than half of the morphological traits considered showed significant differences among the morphs. conclusion and recommendations conclusion from this study it can be deduced that:  there is significant variation among spider plant morphs (a group of different types of individuals of the same species in a population) for important characteristics: plant height (29-140cm); petiole length (3-21cm); length of leaflet (2-11cm); fruit length (5-13cm); fruit width (0.3-1cm); days to seedling emergence (4-8); days to flowering (17-36); number of leaflets per compound leaf (3-7) and number of pods per plant (3-21).  although these characteristics differ, overlaps do occur and thus such characteristics cannot be used in isolation to identify differences between different morphs.  morphs collected from different locations exhibited variability for stem pigmentations; green and purple a character which can be used to distinguish and recognize different plant types.  the kenyan morph was different from the zimbabwean morphs as it produced relatively small plants that produced a very high number of pods per plant. recommendations  further studies are needed to determine to what extent differences in morphological characters are due to climatic, soil fertility or stress conditions.  since morphological characteristics are influenced by the environment, molecular markers should be used to supplement this study by identifying the polymorphism that is not due to environmental conditions.  further characterization trials should be done using more accessions and looking at more characteristics other than the ones used in this study and also growing the crop in a range of localities especially in the field. references abe, l. o. and s. k. imbamba. (1977) “levels of vitamins a and c in some kenyan vegetable plants”, east afr. agric. and forestry j. vol. 42(3), pp. 316-321. chandel, b. s., s. pandey and a. kumar. (1987) “insecticidal evaluation of some plant extracts against epilachna vigintioctopunctata fabr. coleoptera coccinellidae”, indian j. entomology, vol. 49(2), pp. 294-296. chayamarit, k. (1993) “cleome gynandra l. in: siemonsma, j.s. & kasem piluek (editors). plant resources of south-east asia no 8. vegetables”, pudoc scientific publishers, wageningen, netherlands. pp. 148–150. morphological characterization of four selected.... 657 chweya, j. a. (1990) “nutrient evaluation and production of gynandropsis gynandra (l.) briq: an indigenous leaf vegetable in kenya”, final scientific project report submitted to the national council for research science and technology, government of kenya. chweya, james a. and nameus a. mnzava. (1997) “cat‟s whiskers. cleome gynandra l. promoting the conservation and use of underutilized and neglected crops”, institute of plant genetics and crop plant research, gatersleben/international plant genetic resources institute, rome, italy. dutta a. c. (1979) “botany for degree students”, 5th edition, oxford university press, calcutta, k’opondo f. b. o. (2011) “morphological characterization of selected cleome gynandra types from western kenya”, annals of biology research, vol. 2(2), pp. 54-64 kemei, j. k., r. k. wataaru and e. n. seme. (1995) “the role of the genebank of kenya in collection, characterization and conservation of traditional vegetables and their wild/ weedy relatives”, paper presented at the workshop „genetic resources of traditional vegetables in africa. options for conservation and use‟, 2931 august 1995, nairobi, kenya. kokwaro, j. o. (1976) “medicinal plants of east africa”, east african literature bureau, nairobi, kampala, dar-es-salaam. makgakga c. (2011) “cleome gynandra”. www.plantzafrica.com. accessed 13 august 2012 mnzava, n. a. and chigumira ngwerume, f. (2004) “cleome gynandra l.” [internet] record from protabase. grubben, g.j.h. & denton, o.a. (editors). prota (plant resources of tropical africa / ressources végétales de l‟afrique tropicale), wageningen, netherlands. http://database.prota.org/search.htm accessed: 11 july 2012. ochuodho. j. o. and modi. a. t. (2007) “light-induced transient dormancy in cleome gynandra l. seeds”, african journal of agricultural research, vol. 2(11), pp. 587-591 opole, m., j. a., chweya and j. k. imungi., (1995) “indigenous vegetables of kenya: indigenous knowledge, agronomy and nutitive value”, field and laboratory experience report. phillips r. l. (2006) “genetic tools from nature and the nature of genetic tools”, crop sci., vol. 46, pp. 2245-2252. ramaiah k. v., parker c., vasudeva rao m. j. and musselman l. j. (1983) information bulletin no.15. international crops research institute for the semi-arid tropics, patancheru, a.p., india. singh b. d. (1990) “plant breeding”, 4th edition, kalyani publishers, new delhi. the australian new crops newsletter, (1999) issue number 11, january 1999. new crops publications. van wyk b-e. and gericke (2000) “people‟s plants”, a guide to useful plants of southern africa. briza publications, pretoria, south africa. verma, g. s. and u. k. pandey (1987) “insect antifeedant property of some indigenous plant products”, z. angew. zool. vol. 74(1), pp. 113116. http://www.plantzafrica.com/ http://database.prota.org/search.htm http://database.prota.org/search.htm http://database.prota.org/search.htm effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. resource accessibility and productivity among women crop farmers in borno state, nigeria catherine o. ojo., yakubu bila and andrew c. iheanacho (department of agricultural economics, faculty of agriculture, university of maiduguri) citation: catherine o. ojo., yakubu bila and andrew c. iheanacho (2012) “resource accessibility and productivity among women crop farmers in borno state, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 480 486. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 480-486. 480 author(s) catherine o. ojo. department of agricultural economics, faculty of agriculture, university of maiduguri email: nickatie2003@yahoo.com yakubu bila and andrew c. iheanacho department of agricultural economics, faculty of agriculture, university of maiduguri resource accessibility and productivity among women crop farmers in borno state, nigeria abstract the objective of this study was to determine resource accessibility and productivity among crop farming women in borno state, nigeria. likert scale was used to describe women’s accessibility to agricultural production resources. the maximum likelihood estimates (mle) of the stochastic frontier production function (sfpf) was used to estimate the production and technical inefficiency determinants as a measure of productivity of the respondents. results indicated that respondents had low access to most of the agricultural productivity resources considered in the study. furthermore, the gamma of 0.7865 was significant at 1%, revealing that over 78% of the variation in the productivity of respondents was attributable to technical inefficiency factors. this underscores the fact that low access to technical efficiency resources contributes immensely to productivity losses among women farmers it was recommended that access to technical efficiency factors including credit, education, extension contact and membership of cooperatives need to be enhanced among women farmers to empower women to effectively access and utilize resources of agricultural productivity. keywords: access, resource, women, technical inefficiency, production, productivity introduction the food security and agricultural development of nigeria lies in the hands of subsistence farmers in an extensive agricultural system. particularly striking is the fact that rural women more than their male counterparts take the lead in agricultural activities making up to 60 – 80 percent of the agricultural labour force in the country (world bank, 2003; mahmood, 2001) depending on the region. they also provide two thirds of the food crop (ogunlela and mukhtar, 2009). while men and women generally face the same external constraints, they have an unequal access to human-controlled factors. they have different endowments, such as land rights and education, and different access to technologies, labour, capital, support services and credit. this disparity results in differentials in productivity to the detriment of women. often, but not always, findings indicate that women farmers have lower productivity for reasons of poor access to resources. although women are less productive in farming, the general consensus is that they are no less efficient than men in their use of resources (udry et al. (1995). rather, a lack of complementary inputs leads to a lower labour productivity for female farmers. this is more so when agricultural policy is formulated with insufficient information on rural women’s access to and control over productive resources with respect to solving their immediate problems. many instances of the deprivation of women in terms of productive resources abound. for instance, the contribution of women to farm management decision making process is quite minimal going by the findings of damisa and yohanna (2007). lack of access to land remains a major constraint for women in developing countries (parveen, 2008). in the same vein, as the land holdings, women have less access to credit than men. women receive as low as 5 mailto:nickatie2003@yahoo.com resource accessibility and productivity among..... 481 percent of agricultural loans in burkina faso to as high as 32 percent in zimbabwe (screekumar, 2001).women in nigeria constitute almost half of the population. however, their literacy rate is 56% compared to 72% for males and in certain states, female literacy, enrolment and achievement is much lower. for instance, in sokoto state, female literacy rate is 15% compared to 59% for males (emerging issues, undated). identifying and redressing gender inequalities tend to have high financial, social and economic returns (bamberger et al., 2001). this is exemplified by the findings of hazell (2005) which revealed that in kenya, if women are given the same level of education, experience and farm inputs as their male counterparts, maize and cowpea yield will increase by about 22 percent. for women to overcome these productive constraints, they require actions to reduce women’s disadvantage in capabilities, opportunities and security with the action implemented in such a way as to provide women with control over resources and the ability to participate in and make decision regarding their use ( gupta and malhotra, 2006). the objective of this study was to determine the effect of women’s resource accessibility on crop production efficiency in borno state, nigeria. methodology the area of the study was borno state, nigeria. the data for the study was from primary sources and multistage sampling technique was used to select respondents for the study. random sampling technique was used to select the respondent local government areas and villages in the first and second stages respectively. in the third stage, purposive sampling was used to select 266 respondents for the study. purposive sampling was used to select respondents to ensure that only women who were farmers were included in the study analytical techniques used to analyze the data obtained in the study were descriptive statistics and stochastic frontier production function. analytical techniques used to analyze the data obtained in the study were descriptive statistics. result and discussion extent of rural farming women’s access to resources in this study, access to resources was understood to mean the ability of a rural farmer to get sixteen socioeconomic resources and the accrued benefits from them. these resources include production resources such as land, family labour, hired labour, mechanization, fertilizer, insecticide, herbicide and improved seeds. other resources were socioeconomic factors including education, extension contact, farm management decision making power, farm income, off–farm income, farming time, membership of cooperatives and credit. table 1: respondents’ access to productive resources in the study area (n = 266) resources frequently occasionally rarely not at all *mean cv sd rank by mean values farm income 8.7 60.0 24.5 6.8 1.71 42 0.720 1 decision making power 6.0 48.7 30.6 14.7 1.46 56 0.816 2 farm land 4.5 38.5 41.0 15.0 1.32 60 0.791 3 farming time 4.5 34.3 30.2 30.9 1.12 81 0.906 4 off farm income 1.9 34.3 37.0 26.8 1.11 74 0.823 5 hired labor 6.0 30.9 23.4 39.6 1.03 95 0.974 6 family labor 3.8 29.4 20.8 46.1 0.94 114 1.974 7 education 4.9 12.8 39.2 43.0 0.80 106 0.846 8 extension. 0.4 18.9 28.7 52.1 0.68 116 0.788 9 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 480-486. 482 * mean values of items ranging from 0 – 3 where 0, 1, 2 and 3 indicate no access, low access , medium access and high access respectively source: field survey, 2010. data contained in table 1 showed the extent of women’s access to socioeconomic resources in the study area using the likert scale. the rank order from the likert scale showed that respondents had better access to the first six resources than all the other resources. they were considered better accessed than the other resources because they all had mean scores that were above 1, though less than 2, indicating low access according to the specified likert scale. respondents’ access to other resources were limited (less than 1), and in some cases almost zero meaning that they were almost completely inaccessible. the result showed therefore that most farm specific resources were poorly accessed by respondents. production determinants the production function estimates from the stochastic frontier production function of the determinants of productivity showed that all the production variables (land, improved seeds, pesticide, herbicide, hired labour, family labour, fertilizer and mechanization) were all significant at 1% level of significance. these were unlike the findings of udoh and falake (2006) where fertilizer and capital inputs were insignificant because of an almost complete non-usage of those inputs in that study. table 2: ml estimates of stochastic frontier production function of respondents (n=266) *** = significant at 1% ** = significant at 5% ns = not significant seeds 2.3 15.5 29.4 52.8 0.67 122 0.818 10 fertilizer 1.9 10.6 37.0 50.6 0.64 117 0.749 11 mechanization 1.5 12.5 29.8 56.2 0.59 129 0.764 12 insecticide 2.3 13.2 17.4 67.2 0.51 158 0.808 13 herbicide 1.1 12.1 15.8 70.9 0.43 173 0.746 14 cooperatives 1.5 4.5 5.3 88.7 0.19 305 0.579 15 credit 0.4 0.8 6.8 92.0 0.09 402 0.362 16 variable coefficient std. error t ratio production function land β1 -0.0289 0.003 -10.345*** improved seed β2 0.0136 0.000 22.533*** insecticide β3 --0.0128 0.000 --13.745*** herbicide β4 0.0987 0.002 64.279*** hired labour β5 0.0122 0.000 66.822*** family labour β6 0.0419 0.000 76.090*** fertilizer β7 0.0696 0.000 189.489*** mechanization β8 diagnostic statistics sigma2 gamma -0.0242 0.1218 0.7865 0.000 0.909 0.212 -95.005*** 13.3890*** 423.4404*** technical inefficiency model education δ 1 -0.3854 0.190 -2.074** extension δ2 -0.0241 0.253 -0.095 ns farm income δ3 0.2654 0.125 .1.178ns off-farm income δ4 -0.0254 0.100 -10.584*** time δ5 -4.2361 0.406 -10.429*** age δ6 -0.5427 0.231 -2.132** credit δ7 -4.0145 1.420 -2.614** land owner δ8 -0.3762 0.173 -3.356 *** decision making δ9 0.0053 0.156 0.0345 ns cooperatives δ10 -0.2199 0.412 -5.335ns resource accessibility and productivity among..... 483 log likelihood function = 239.4681 source: field survey, 2010. the coefficients all had the expected signs (positive) except for land, insecticide and agricultural mechanization which had negative signs contrary to expectation. the result implied that a reduction in the quantity of land, insecticide and mechanization would result in increased productivity among the respondents. these variables presented unexpected negative signs indicating that decreasing their usage by 1% will result in 0.029, 0.024 and 0.013% increase in productivity. there seemed to be an inability to correctly interpret technology utilization information among respondents with regards to pesticide and mechanization utilization. this is probably arising from inadequate access to education and extension contact among respondents. this agrees with chi (2008) who observed that increasing farmer education and extension information is likely to increase farmers’ interpretation and evaluation of information, thus, adopting technology more efficiently. the over utilization of pesticide tends to reduce output and this probably results from respondents being improperly informed about correct direction in pesticide application and pest control. this agrees with the findings of kumar and regmi (2009) which showed that in nepal, about 74% of farmers used a lot more pesticide than required. such misinformation probably explains why respondents reported low access to pesticides, assuming that what was assessable to them was insufficient. mechanization among respondents needed to be reduced probably because there was a relatively high level of family and hired labour available to respondents which reduces the relevance of the more expensive and less accessible mechanization. access to land was among the highest in the study and may not have been efficiently utilized, such that reduction in the quantity of land allotted by respondents to crop production needed to be reduced in order to enhance agricultural productivity. this emphasizes the importance and need of extension contact among respondents in enhancing input use. as shown in table 2, herbicide appeared to be the most important determinant of agricultural productivity among the production variables with elasticity of 0.099 given the existing technology among respondents. this implies that increasing herbicide use by 1% will lead to about 0.099% increase in output. the possibility of the respondents increasing their use of herbicides hence their productivity is however limited by women’s low access to herbicides as shown in table 1. fertilizer was noted to be the second most important production variable with elasticity of 0.07. a 1% increase in the use of fertilizer would result in 0.07% increase in output. respondents however, had very low access to fertilizer thus; the possibility of increasing fertilizer usage leading to increased productivity was limited. a 1% increase in the use of the other production inputs (family labour, improved seeds and hired labour) which had elasticity’s of 0.042, 0.014, and 0.012 respectively, will increase productivity by 0.042, 0.014 and 0.012% respectively. accesses of respondents to these variables were low and the possibility of increasing productivity was thus limited among the women in the study area. technical inefficiency determinants table 2 presents results of determinants of technical inefficiency of respondents in the study area. the results showed a gamma of 0.7865 implying that 78.65% of the variations in productivity of respondents were determined by technical inefficiency variables. this indicates that reducing technical inefficiency among respondents will result in substantial productivity increases. the sigma squared (δ 2 ) of 0.122 was significant at 1% indicating a good fit, thus showing the correctness of the specified distribution assumption of the composite error term. the statistically significant determinants of technical inefficiency among the specified variables were education, off farm income; time spent on farming, age, credit, and ownership of land. these variables also carried the expected signs. these variables were significant at 1% and 5% levels of significance as shown on table 2. the variables negatively influenced technical inefficiency (shown by the negative sign on coefficients). this meant that these asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 480-486. 484 variables reduced technical inefficiency among the respondents, thus increasing productivity. the age of respondents positively affected the farm level technical efficiency effects. this implies that as age of farmers increased, inefficiency in resource use decreased while technical efficiency increased. this is in consonance with the findings of okunade (2007) in a related study on women’s accessibility to credit and inputs in osun state. in that study, it was observed that as women increased in age, they tended to have more access to inputs and credit, resulting in higher efficiency as age of farmer increased. the result in table 2 showed that increasing the years of schooling of respondents, off farm income, time on farm, age, access to credit and land ownership may contribute to bridging the gap between efficient and inefficient agricultural productivity. this is because education stimulates farmers’ adoption of agricultural technologies. similarly, as off farm income increased, there were more resources to help farmers’ to access and allocate farm inputs more easily. farmers’ input allocation was also enhanced when farmers had access to loans (credit). this is because credit enhanced farmers’ enablement to purchase inputs they could not ordinarily afford. access to farming time significantly affected the technical efficiency of women’s farms. this arises because as respondents were enabled to make time to give attention to their farms, farm efficiency was increased. land ownership was shown to significantly reduce technical inefficiency. this is because when women owned their own farm land, they were enabled to invest on such land without the limitations they contend with when they hold land temporarily. this land use limitation of women was observed by woldetensaye (2007), who noted that at the household level, women in ethiopia had less influence on decisions on land and land related matters like what crop to grow on the land. this poses a challenge on women’s ability to make investment decisions that will improve their technical efficiency as farmers. this limitation is however overcome when women owned their own land. extension contact, farm income, farm management decision making powers and membership of cooperatives were not statistically significant. extension contact and membership of cooperatives carried the expected negative sign, implying that they reduced technical inefficiency as they were increased. the decrease in inefficiency was however not significant. this was probably because of the generally low number of extension visits to farmers and low membership of cooperatives among respondents in the study. membership of farmers’ cooperatives affords the farmers the opportunity of sharing modern agricultural practices by interacting with other farmers. cooperatives also provide opportunities for resource access. all of these work to make farmers better equipped and more efficient, thus, leading to greater productivity. membership of cooperatives was probably not significant because very few women had access to cooperatives (cooperative membership ranked 15 th out of 16 with mean access of 0.19). farm income and women’s decision making powers increased inefficiency as indicated by the positive signs their coefficients carried. this implied that these variables increased technical inefficiency of production among respondents. these two variables were also insignificant. farm decision making powers of respondents probably increased inefficiency because of respondents’ low access to extension, education and membership of cooperatives, resulting in limited management decision making powers. this agrees with the finding of okunade (2007) where it was reported that the low level of women’s exposure to education, extension, and cooperatives suggested that women in that study were not likely to make efficient farm management decisions. farm income was insignificant and carried a positive sign meaning that the higher the farm income, the lower the technical efficiency. this may result from the fact that farm income is commonly obtained after the production season so is unavailable during the production season, the specified determinants of agricultural productivity among respondents in the study were considered in this section. the efficiency of the determinants were found to be influenced by level of access to resources. a situation like this has implications for the productivity of farmers. the lower the access respondents have to resources. the respondents’ membership of resource accessibility and productivity among..... 485 cooperatives, extension contact, off farm income and farm management decision making powers of women, all other variables were significant in determining agricultural productivity of respondents. there was therefore, a significant relationship between productive resources and agricultural productivity of women in the study area. conclusion and recommendation this study has found that resources of crop production were not very accessible to women in the study. some resources were only barely assessable among which were credit, cooperative membership, farm inputs extension contact and education this situation was shown to have a limiting effect on efficiency of crop production especially with regards to resources like credit and education that determined technical efficiency of production. the implication is that crop productivity will be depressed. such a situation among women farmers who are known to be the major producers of food crop in developing countries has implications for food security. it is recommended that that access to credit, extension contact, membership of cooperatives and girl child/adult education be given centre stage among policy makers as well as government and non-governmental organizations. this is because access to these opportunities is expected to empower women to access and efficiently utilize other resources. references bamberger, m., blackden, m., manonkian, v. and fort, l. 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(2005) “is agriculture still important for development and poverty”, speech given to the all party parliamentary group on overseas development house of commons. october 17. kumar, r. and regmi, a. (2009) “pesticides and productivity – a study of vegetable farmers in nepal”, (ed) bellamy, r. south asian network for development and environmental economics (sandee) brief. no. 37-09 mahmood, i. u. (2001) “the role of women in agriculture and poverty alleviation. lead paper”, 34 th annual conference of agricultural society in nigeria, agriculture in poverty alleviation. ogunlela, y. i. and mukhtar, a. a. (2009) “gender isues in agriculture and rural development in nigeria: the role of women”, humanity & social sciences journal, vol. 4(1), pp. 19 – 30. okunade, e. o. (2007) “accessibility of agricultural credit and inputs to women formers of isoya rural development project”, research journal of agricultural and biological sciences, vol. 3(3), pp.138 – 142. parveen, s. (2008) “access of rural women to productive resources as in bangladesh: a pillar for promoting their empowerment”, international journal of rural studies, vol. 15(1), article 2, pp. 1-9. screekumar, b. (2001) “women in agriculture: an evaluation of the central scheme in palakkad district (kerala)”, kerala research programme on local development, discussion paper no. 30, pp. 1 – 47. udoh, e. j. and falake, o. (2006) “resourceuse efficiency and productivity among farmers in nigeria”, j. agri. soc. sci. vol. 2(4), pp. 264–268. udry, c., hoddinott, j., alderman, h. and haddad l.(1995) “gender differentials in farm productivity: implications for household efficiency and agricultural policy”, food policy, vol. 20(5), pp. 407-423. http://www.worldbank.org/topcs/gender asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 480-486. 486 woldetensaye, a. (2007) “women’s access to and control over land in the current land administration system in two rural kebeles in ada’a woreda of oromia region”, a thesis submitted to the institute of gender studies, addis ababa university in partial fulfillment of the requirement of master of arts in gender studies. world bank (2003) “nigeria: women in agriculture” in sharing experiences–examples of participating approaches. the world bank participating source book, the world bank group, washington d. c. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. assessment of poverty among arable crop farmers: a case study of farmers empowerment programme (fep) in osun state, nigeria ayanwale, a. b. and o. d. adisa (dept. of agric. economics, faculty of agriculture, obafemi awolowo university, ile-ife, osun state, nigeria) citation: ayanwale, a. b. and o. d. adisa (2012) “assessment of poverty among arable crop farmers: a case study of farmers empowerment programme (fep) in osun state, nigeria”, asian journal agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 366-372. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 366-372 366 author(s) ayanwale, a. b. dept. of agric. economics, faculty of agriculture, obafemi awolowo university, ile-ife, osun state, nigeria o. d. adisa dept. of agric. economics, faculty of agriculture, obafemi awolowo university, ile-ife, osun state, nigeria email: ymc4reallove@yahoo.com assessment of poverty among arable crop farmers: a case study of farmers empowerment programme (fep) in osun state, nigeria abstract farmers’ empowerment has become an important part of the development agenda in the recent years. this study identified and analyzed the poverty status in terms of incidence, depth and severity among arable crop farmers in osun state and compared the socio-economic characteristics of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of farmers empowerment programme (fep) in osun state, nigeria. the study made use of pre-tested and validated structured questionnaire. a multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 240 respondents. data collected were analyzed using a combination of descriptive statistics, ttest of difference of two means and p-alpha measures of poverty. the result of poverty incidence, depth, and severity among respondents indicated that poverty incidence was lower among the fep beneficiaries (0.42) than the non beneficiaries (0.58). poverty gap index was also lower among the beneficiaries of fep (0.19) than with the non-beneficiaries (0.46). the severity of poverty was mild (0.13) among the fep beneficiaries while it was severe among non-beneficiaries (0.43). the lorenz curve revealed that 22.5 percent of the respondents control 50 per cent of the resources available indicating an apparent inequality in income distribution. a significant difference exists between the age (p<0.05), household size (p < 0.05), membership of cooperative societies (p < 0.05), land ownership (p < 0.05) and income (p < 0.05) of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of fep, respectively. in conclusion, the fep has alleviated poverty among the participants in the study area. the level of education, household size and farmers’ experience are the key determinants in alleviating poverty among the participating arable crop farmers in the fep in osun state. keywords: assessment, poverty, farmers’ empowerment introduction in nigeria, about 70 per cent of the poor live in rural areas and depend largely on agriculture. as in other african economies, most especially in the sub-saharan african, agriculture is the mainstay of the economy. past attempts to alleviate poverty in nigeria include national accelerated food production programme (nafpp) in 1972, operation feed the nation (ofn) in 1976, the 1979 green revolution programme, go back to land programme in 1983, the 1986 directorate of food, roads and infrastructure (dfrri) and better life programme (blp), the 1993 family support programme (fsp) and family economic advancement programme (feap) (anthony, 2000). a recent effort to alleviate poverty is the national poverty eradication programme (napep), which has four schemes. one of the schemes is the farmers empowerment programme (fep) aimed at giving agricultural credit to poor farmers to enhance their productivity and potentials for increased output. mailto:ymc4reallove@yahoo.com assessment of poverty among arable crop farmers..... 367 napep undertakes this scheme in collaboration with state governments, local governments and specialized agricultural agencies. using poverty indicators such as illiteracy, access to safe water and good health among others, the world bank assessment of poverty in nigeria (a report by the federal office of statistics and national planning commission 1996) revealed that poverty in nigeria is widespread and severe. the world bank and undp (1996, 1998) drew a poverty line in nigeria as at 1992 to be us $1 per day (equivalent of n128 per day). this was determined by the mean per capital household expenditure. those who lived on less than n128 per day then were considered to be poor. they had inadequate access to education, health, water and housing facilities. in 2004, the united nations development programme (undp) publications reported that over 70 per cent of nigerians lived below the international income poverty line of us$1 dollar per day. the united nations children’s fund/ federal office of statistics (unicef/ fos, 1997) classified nigeria as a country with severe malnutrition and very high mortality rate amongst children under the age of 5 years. this is an indication of the poverty level of the nigerian population. jemide (2008) reports a recent survey of 126 countries, which indicates that nigeria was the 17th highest poor country with 60 per cent of the population living below poverty line. thus, nigeria is ranked close to countries like niger (63%), mali (64%), bolivia (64%) and burundi (68%). according to the cbn (2003), alleviation of poverty through government intervention, united nations (un) agencies and nongovernmental organisation (ngos) is not a recent phenomenon in the country. the nigerian government has shifted its focus from poverty alleviation programme (pap), which was established in 2000 to the national poverty eradication programme (napep) in 2001. farmers empowerment programme (fep) (a scheme of napep), is put in place to achieve the millennium development goals (mdg’s) of halving poverty in 2015. it gives agricultural credit assistance to poor rural farmers to enhance farmers’ productivity. the beneficiaries often form themselves into selfhelp groups or cooperative societies to facilitate access to credit. despite the various efforts made by the nigerian government in alleviating poverty and ensuring food security among the citizenry, the situation still remains pathetic, most especially among the rural dwellers. many agricultural and rural development programmes/ schemes including farmers empowerment programme (fep) are being implemented while some had been implemented over the last three decades without visible improvement on the incidence and severity of poverty especially in the agrarian communities (oyesanmi et al,. 2006). it was against this background that this study was designed to investigate the extent to which fep has effectively addressed the incidence, depth and severity of poverty among the beneficiaries in nigeria and in particular the study area. this study therefore assesses the impact of farmers empowerment programme (fep) on poverty among arable crop farmers in osun state. specifically the study i. identify and analyze the poverty status (incidence, severity and depth) among arable crop farmers; ii. compare the socio-economic characteristics of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of fep. hypotheses: the hypotheses are stated in null form h01 there was no significant difference between the socioeconomic characteristics of beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries of fep. methodology the study was carried out in osun state, nigeria. a multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select respondents for the study. at the first stage, all arable crop farmers in the state constitute the population for the study. they were stratified into two: arable crop farmers who are beneficiaries (experimental group) and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 366-372 368 arable crop farmers who are non-beneficiaries of fep (control group). at the second stage, from the five (5) administrative zones in osun state (i.e. osogbo, ede, iwo, ilesha and ikirun zones), there were twelve (12) registered fep groups out of which eight (8) were randomly selected. at the third stage, 50 percent of the beneficiaries were selected from the groups using systematic sampling with a random start at an interval of two (2) using the fep’s groups register as the sampling frame. in all, one hundred and twelve (112) beneficiaries were interviewed. at the last stage, an equal number of non-beneficiaries were selected from the communities contiguous to the beneficiaries’ farms using the snowball method. the study was conducted in 2009. data collected were analyzed using a combination of descriptive statistics, t-test of difference of two means and p-alpha measures of poverty. results and discussions socio – economic characteristic of sampled respondents table 1 revealed that there were more males among beneficiaries than the non-beneficiaries. the distribution by gender follows the same pattern trend for both beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries. the mean age of nonbeneficiaries (51 years) was higher than the beneficiaries (47 years). this means that they are still in their productive years. this implied that majority of the respondents were in their productive age. majority of respondents 88 per cent of the beneficiaries and 78 per cent of the non-beneficiaries were married. this showed that majority of the adult respondents in the study area comprised of married people. majority (64.3 %) of the beneficiaries and 50 per cent of the non-beneficiaries had less than five members in their household. it could be deduced that a greater percentage of the beneficiaries in the study area have relatively small household size (less than 5). this means that few mouths would be fed which could in turn reduce the incidence of poverty. the mean number of years spent in schools by of the nonbeneficiaries (11 years) was merely higher than that of beneficiaries (10 years). this is perhaps indicative of the two groups having the same level of education. majority of the beneficiaries (85.8%) had formal education while 53.5 per cent the non-beneficiaries attended formal schools. majority of the non-beneficiaries (43.8 %) and 40 per cent of the beneficiaries had between 24 years of farming experience. this suggests that most of the beneficiaries had been in farming long before the advent of fep. fiftysix percent of the beneficiaries and sixty-seven per cent of the non beneficiaries earned less than n 100,000 per annum; 56 per cent of the beneficiaries and 41.5 per cent of the beneficiaries earned more between n100,000 and n300,000. this distribution generally reveals that non-beneficiaries in the study area are low income earners when compared with their beneficiaries’ counterparts (table 1b). the higher income of the beneficiaries is indicative of the potential of the fep to improve the livelihood of the respondents and probably lift them out of the poverty trap. table 1a: distribution of respondents by socio-economic characteristics gender male 76 67.9 76 67.9 female 36 32.1 36 32.1 total 112 100.0 112 100.0 age (years) 20 – 40 26 23.20 22 19.64 41 – 60 80 71.43 69 61.61 distribution of respondents category of respondents beneficiaries non-beneficiaries frequency percentage frequency percentage assessment of poverty among arable crop farmers..... 369 61 and above 06 5.37 21 18.75 total 112 100.0 112 100.0 mean 47.41 50.48 standard deviation 9.01 11.70 marital status single 1 0.9 5 4.5 married 99 88.4 87 77.7 widowed 9 8.0 4 3.6 widower 3 2.7 3 2.7 divorced 7 6.3 separated 6 5.4 total 112 100.0 112 100.0 household size (number) less than 5 72 64.3 56 50.0 5 – 10 36 32.1 35 31.2 10 and above 4 3.6 21 18.8 total 112 100.0 112 100.0 minimum 1 1 maximum 6 6 mean 2.21 1.54 standard deviation 1.83 1.07 source: field survey, 2009 table 1b: distribution of respondents by socio-economic characteristics distribution of respondents category of respondents beneficiaries non-beneficiaries frequency percentage frequency percentage educational level (years) no formal education 16 14.3 30 26.8 adult literacy/arabic 4 3.6 5 4.5 vocational school 5 4.5 3 2.7 primary school 22 19.6 33 29.5 secondary school 4.9 43.8 32 28.6 tertiary education 16 14.3 9 8.0 total 112 100.0 112 100.0 minimum 0 0 maximum 20 30 mean 7.52 6.64 standard deviation 5.78 6.51 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 366-372 370 analysis of arable crop farmers’ poverty incidence, depth and severity the result of poverty incidence (po), depth (p1), and severity (p2) among arable crop farmers in osun state indicated that there was lower poverty incidence (0.42) among the beneficiaries than the non beneficiaries (0.58), the poverty gap index was considerably lower among the beneficiaries of fep (0.19) than with the non-beneficiaries (0.46) while the severity of poverty was lower among the beneficiaries (0.13) than the non-beneficiaries (0.43), respectively (table 2). table 2: poverty incidence, depth and severity among arable crops farmers arable crop farmers incidence depth severity (po) (p1) (p2) beneficiaries 0.419 0.189 0.131 non beneficiaries 0.580 0.457 0.428 pooled 0.500 0.323 0.280 source: field survey, 2009 distribution of income among the respondents the pattern of income distribution was explored with the use of the lorenz curve. the curve does not follow a normal distribution pattern. table 3, revealed that 22.5 per cent of the respondents control the resources in the study area. although, only 23.2 per cent of the beneficiaries and 22.2 per cent of the nonbeneficiaries control the resources. this suggests that income is relatively not equally spread among the farmers’ that were surveyed. years of farming experience (years) less than 10 18 16.10 32 28.60 11 – 20 25 22.30 15 13.40 21 – 30 22 19.60 22 19.60 31 – 40 19 17.00 18 16.10 41 and above 9 8.00 5 4.50 no response 19 17.00 20 17.90 total 112 100.0 112 100.0 mean 3.99 3.79 standard deviation 2.98 3.13 income (n) < 100000 50 56.0 60 67.2 100001 200000 30 33.6 28 31.3 200001 300000 20 22.4 10 11.2 300001 400000 2 2.24 14 15.6 total 112 100.0 112 100.0 minimum 0 0 maximum 1,474,200 717,600 mean 165169.93 70171.61 standard deviation 170560.28 102342.04 assessment of poverty among arable crop farmers..... 371 table 3: gini coefficients for beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries arable crop farmers estimate (%) beneficiaries 23.2 (0.018) non beneficiaries 22.2 (0.022) pooled 22.5 (0.021) source: field survey, 2009 hypothesis 1: there was no significant difference between the socio-economic characteristics of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of fep. data in table 4 indicated that a significant difference exists between the age (p<0.05), household size (p < 0.05), membership of cooperative societies (p < 0.05), land ownership (p < 0.05) and income (p < 0.05) of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of fep, respectively. table 4: t-test summary on difference between the socioeconomic characteristics of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of fep category of respondents variables beneficiaries non-beneficiaries mean mean t-value p<0.05 age (years) 47.4 50.5 -2.06** 0.042 household size (number) 5.7 4.6 2.99*** 0.004 educational level (years) 9.5 10.7 -1.59 0.117 belong to cooperative society (dummy) 1.0 1.0 3.46*** 0.001 no of years spent in cooperative society (years) 5.6 7.6 -3.74*** 0.000 farmers experience (years) 17.7 20.5 -1.47 0.145 land ownership (dummy) 2.1 2.5 -2.39** 0.019 farmers income (naira) 24,869 26,039 -0.23 0.820 ***significant at 0.01% ** significant at 0.05% sources: field survey, 2009 conclusion the fep has alleviated poverty among the participants in the study area. the level of education, household size and farmers’ experience are the key determinants in alleviating poverty among the participating arable crop farmers in the fep in osun state. references anthony maduagwu (2000) growing up in oguta: “the economics of rural poverty in nigeria”, on website "http:// www. africaeconomic" www. africaeconomic_ analysis.org/ articles/gen/alleviatingpo vertyhtm. accessed on 23rd january, 2008 central bank of nigeria, cbn (2003) “an appraisal of federal government’s national poverty eradication programme cbn (napep), abuja, vol. 27(1), pp. 8–18. federal office of statistics and nigeria planning commission fos and npc (1996) “poverty and welfare in nigeria”, lagos. pp.34 – 36. jemide, a. (2008) “nigeria: doing business not exactly a piece of cake”, this day newspaper on web page: http://www.allafrica.com/stories/200804080196 .html. accessed on 7th april 2008 national poverty eradication programme (napep) (2001) “a blueprint for the schemes”, federal republic of nigeria. pp. 45 oyesanmi o., f. eboiyehi & a. adereti (2006) “evaluation of the concepts, http://www.allafrica.com/stories/200804080196.html http://www.allafrica.com/stories/200804080196.html asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 366-372 372 implementation and impact of poverty alleviation programmes in nigeria”, pp. 1-20 on web page www. iussp2005.princeton.edu/download.aspe?submis sionmld=50613. united nation development programmes undp (1996) “urban agriculture: food, jobs and sustainable cities. publication series for habitat ii. vol. 1, pp. 10 united nation development programmes undp (1998) human development report, undp, lagos, nigeria. united nation development programmes undp (2004) nigeria development profile march, 2004 united nations children’s fund. unicef/federal office of statistics (1997) multiple indicator cluster survey, lagos. world bank (1996) poverty in the midst of plenty. the challenge of growth with inclusion. world bank, washington d.c. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 1 january 2013. † corresponding author acknowledgements: we greatly thank the tobacco research board (trb) for sponsoring this research work, and availing field staff to help set up the trial. effect of two formulations of sufentrazone on weed control in tobacco (nicotiana tabacum l) bertha k. mashayamombe (department of agricultural technical and extension services, mutare, zimbabwe) upenyu mazarura† (university of zimbabwe, crop science department, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe) albert chiteka (africa university, muatre, zimbabwe) citation: bertha k. mashayamombe., upenyu mazarura and albert chiteka (2013) “effect of two formulations of sufentrazone on weed control in tobacco (nicotiana tabacum l)”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1-6. effect of two formulations of sufentrazone.... author(s) bertha k. mashayamombe department of agricultural technical and extension services, mutare, zimbabwe upenyu mazarura university of zimbabwe, crop science department, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe albert chiteka africa university, muatre zimbabwe effect of two formulations of sufentrazone on weed control in tobacco (nicotiana tabacum l) abstract field studies were done to compare the weed control efficacy of a wettable granular formulation (authority 75 wg) and a suspension concentrate formulation (authority 48 sc) of the herbicide sulfentrazone. a 6 x 2 factorial experiment was laid out in a split plot design to evaluate the effect of the two herbicides on the weed control efficacy in tobacco. the first factor was herbicide which had 6 levels and the second factor was weeding which had 2 levels. one rate of the wettable granular formulation at 0.225 kg/ha, four different rates of the suspension concentrate formulation at 0.165, 185, 0.205 and 0.225 kg a.i. /ha and the untreated control were tested. these were split into two weeding levels (weedy and weed free). the weed free plots were weeded every other week for 12 weeks beginning two weeks after transplanting tobacco. the treatments were combined to give 6 treatments for each main plot. these were replicated four times. this work reported efficacy data from the weedy plots. weed counts were measured at 4 and 8 weeks after transplanting (wap) and weed dry-mass at 8wap. results show that both formulations at all tested rates poorly controlled broadleaf and grass weeds while nutsedge control was excellent. this study showed that the rates used were too low to effectively control grasses and broadleaved weeds while they were adequate for control of nutsedge. we therefore suggest that this material fills an important niche as a nutsedge material with post emergent nutsedge control. further work should look at herbicide mixtures in order to improve grass and broadleaf control. keywords: broadleaf weeds, grass weeds, sedges, efficacy, phytotoxicity, residues. introduction tobacco (nicotiana tabacum l) is an important crop that has a major contribution to the gross domestic product (gdp) and export revenue of all countries that grow it. yields have been variable, depending on the implementation of good agronomic practices, an increased use of irrigation facilities and good management of pests, diseases and weeds (stocks, 1994). tobacco yield loss due to poor weed management was estimated at 50% (paunescu et al., 1992). effective weed control is therefore important especially during the critical required weed free period, which is the first 4-6 weeks of the crop’s production cycle. chemical control is an effective strategy to achieve this (chivinge, 1984). sulfentrazone is a herbicide widely used in the control of yellow nutsedge, broadleaf weeds and grasses in tobacco. in zimbabwe it was first registered for use in tobacco in 1999 under the trade name authority 75 wg, a wettable granular formulation (mazarura, 1999). the herbicide was developed for use in tobacco and soya bean (glycine max (l. merr.). it belongs to the aryl triazolinone family and controls weeds by inhibiting asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 1-6 2 protoporphyrinogen oxidase (ppo). the conversion of proto-porphyrinogen to protoporphyrin ix in the chlorophyll biosynthetic pathway is oxidized by ppo. hence inhibition of this enzyme leads to the build up of this intermediate leading to cell perturbation and eventual plant death (becerril & duke, 1989a; becerril & duke, 1989b) susceptible weeds take up the herbicide as they emerge from the soil and die on exposure to sunlight. sulfentrazone has excellent preemergent soil activity on yellow nutsegde and many other weeds like common lambsquarters (chenopodium album l.) and the amaranthus spp. which are important in tobacco production. the herbicide is also important in soya bean production. the herbicide has suppressive effects on grass weeds and can be used to manage als resistant biotypes (hulting et al., 2001). thus sulfentrazone has been applied as preemergence, early pre-plant or incorporated as a pre-plant application alone or in combination with other herbicides like clomazone or chlorimuron (hulting et al., 2001). this work was motivated by a formulation change of the herbicide sulfentrazone from a wettable granular formulation (authority 75®wg) to a suspension concentrate formulation (authority 480® sc) in order to reduce the risk of phytotoxicity without reducing efficacy. research done by riggle and penner (1990), suggested that a change in formulation can influence herbicide efficacy by modifying its biological activity, selectivity, mode of action and persistence. the suspension concentrate formulation is meant to address the problem of high phytotoxicity to tobacco, high residue build up in the soil and leaf as well as improve efficacy on broadleaf and grass weeds. the present studies therefore, sort to compare the two formulations of sulfentrazone with regards to weed control efficacy. materials and methods site description this experiment was done on a sandy loam soil (72.8% sand, 8.8% silt and 18.4% clay) at kutsaga research station (17o 55` s, 31o 08`; altitude 1480m, average annual rainfall 882 mm), zimbabwe from 2007 to 2008. the station has light, well drained sandy soils of granite origin and resembles those found in most tobacco growing areas in zimbabwe. the soils are very low organic content and have low water-holding capacity. land preparation and fertilization the land was ploughed, disked and treated with a nematicide as per standard practice. the nematicide, ethyl di-bromide (edb) was applied at 3l/ha. tobacco was grown on ridges 0.2m high and 1.2m apart, while the plant to plant spacing on the row was 0.56m. the tobacco variety t66, a slow ripening cultivar with a yield potential of more than 3500kg/ha cured leaf, was used. the fertilizer applied was compound c (6n:18p:17k) at 700kg/ha. treatment description, design and herbicide application the design was a split plot of four blocks. two main plots (weeded and weedy) and six subplots (weed control rates) were used. the weedy plots were used for assessing weed control efficacy and that data is presented in this paper. herbicide application was done by calibrated knapsack a day after transplanting the t66 variety. weeding was done every fortnight for the weeded plots, starting two weeks after transplanting. the herbicide subplot rates were: 1. untreated control 2. sulfentrazone wg formulation at 0.225 kg a.i. /ha 3. sulfentrazone sc formulation at 0.165 kg a.i. /ha 4. sulfentrazone sc formulation at 0.185 kg a.i. /ha 5. sulfentrazone sc formulation at 0.205 kg a.i. /ha 6. sulfentrazone sc formulation at 0.225 kg a.i. /ha seven 0.3 x 0.3 m quadrants, randomly arranged to go across the width of two harvested rows were used for sampling. for each plot the middle furrow, the two sides and tops of the ridges were sampled. this was effect of two formulations of sufentrazone.... done at 3 randomly selected positions in each treatment subplot. the full plot for each treated measured 4.8 m x 17.92 m (i.e. 4 rows) while the assessed plot was 2.4 m x 16.80 m (i.e. 2 rows). weed counts and dry mass were measured in the quadrants at 4 and 8 weeks after planting (wap). weeds, pulled with their roots were packed in pockets and oven dried for 28 hours at 85°c. samples were removed from the oven and the dry weights were measured. all data was subjected to anova to test treatment effects. the data was analysed using genstat version 9.2. mean separation was conducted using fischer’s protected least significant difference (lsd) test at 5%. results broadleaf weed counts various broad leaf weeds like upright starbur (acanthospermum hispidum), pigweed (amarunthus hybridus), mexican marigold (tagetes minuta), mexican clover (richardia scabra) and dwarf marigold (schkuhria pinnata) were evident in the plots used for this trial. at 4wap all herbicide rates gave significantly (p < 0.05) better weed control than the untreated control (table 1). all the rates of the sc formulation except the 0.185 kg/ha rate were as good as the standard wg formulation (table 1). as expected, herbicides continued to perform better than the control even at 8 wap. however, at this time all herbicide rates were the same (p < 0.05). however, in general broadleaf control was poor but better at 4wap than at 8wap. table 1: mean grass and broadleaf weed counts at four and eight weeks after transplanting broad leaf weeds grass weeds herbicide level kg/ha 4wap 8wap 4wap 8wap 0.00 (untreated control) 126.5 238.8 63.75 87.65 0.225(wg formulation) 43.4(65.3)1 179.2 (25.0) 52.00 (18.4) 70.10(20.0) 0.165(sc formulation) 61.85(50.7) 185.0 (22.5) 41.35 (35.1) 34.50 (60.6) 0.185(sc formulation) 72.15(42.6) 186.5 (21.9) 25.42 (60.1) 44.50 (49.2) 0.205(sc formulation) 54.5(56.5) 197.5 (17.3) 48.60 (23.8) 64.60 (26.3) 0.225(sc formulation) 60.75(51.6) 185.2 (22.4) 27.10 (57.5) 35.00 (60.1) p value * * * * lsd0.05 28.85 20.2 21.8 32.06 * denotes significant differences at p<0.05, wg-wettable granular, sc-suspension concentrate; 1 brackets show % control relative to the untreated control grass weeds control the plots showed infestation with rapoko grass (eleusine indica), couch grass (cynodon dactylon), foxtail species (setaria geniculata), large crab grass (digitaria sanguinalis), barnayard grass (echinochloa crus-galli), among other grasses. grass weed control at 4wap was different (p<0.05) from the control only for the sc formulation at 0.165, 0.185, and 0.255 kg/ha but was poor. the sc formulation at 0.185 and 0.225 kg/ha gave better grass weed control at 4wap than the standard wp formulation. a similar trend was apparent also at 8wap with only herbicide treatments of the sc formulation at 0.165, 0.185 and 0.225 kg/ha giving superior (p<0.05) weed control than the control and the wp formulation and the sc formulation at 0.0205 kg/ha controlling grasses poorly (table 1). like in the case of broadleaved weeds, there was poor control of grass weeds. nutsedge control the plots were mainly infested with yellow nutsedge (cyperus esculentus). at 4wap all herbicide rates and formulations gave excellent (p<0.05) nutsedge control compared to the control (table 2). the herbicides rates asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 1-6 2 did not differ with regards to efficacy (table 2). the control at 8wap was the same as at 4wap (table 2). in general nutsedge control was very good (table 2). early post emergence nutsedge control was evident in all herbicide treatments regardless of dose and formulation. table 2: mean total dry yellow nutsedge weed counts (/m 2 ) at six rates of sulfentrazone in tobacco cultivar t66 at 4 and 8wap yellow nutsedge counts total weed dry mass (g/m 2 ) herbicide level ka/ha 4wap 8wap 8wap 0.00(untreated control) 59.25 74.5 126.75 0.225(wg formulation) 8.35(85.9)1 8.95 (88.0) 48.95 (61.4) 0.165(sc formulation) 7.10(88.0) 10.82 (85.5) 46.40 (63.4) 0.185(sc formulation) 8.75(85.2) 10.90 (85.4) 33.30 (73.7) 0.205(sc formulation) 8.75(85.2) 14.20 (80.9) 42.35 (66.6) 0.225(sc formulation) 11.60 (80.4) 13.00 (82.6) 23.50 (81.5) p value * * * lsd0.05 14.5 18.2 54.6 * denotes significant differences at p<0.05, wg-wettable granular, sc-suspension concentrate; 1 brackets show % control relative to the untreated control. total weed dry mass the total weed dry mass was a composite measurement of all the weeds and showed the general trend which had been depicted by the weed counts. herbicides showed significantly (p<0.05) lower mass than the untreated control. all rates and formulations did not differ from each other in terms of dry mass (table 2). overall, with regards to dry matter, weed control efficacy was satisfactory only with the sc formulation at 0.185 and 0.225 kg a.i. /ha. discussion broadleaf weeds control the common broadleaf weeds encountered included upright statbur (acanthospermum hispidum), khakibos (tagetes minuta), wandering jew (commelina benghalensis), mexican clover (richardia scabra), fat hen (chenopodium album), pig weed (amaranthus hybridus), portulaca oleracea, hibiscus museei, and black jack (bidens pilosa), billygoat weed (ageratum conyzoides) while the grasses included rottboliea conchichinensis, setaria pumula, and eleusine indica. in essence, both broadleaf and grass weed control was unsatisfactory regardless of herbicide rate and formulation (table 1). on average, at 4wap, broad leaf control was about 53% while at 8wap it was about 21% relative to the untreated control. in addition, increasing rates of sulfentrazone did not give increasing broadleaf control. apart from the poor control, this data also suggest that sulfentrazone was not persistent in the case of broadleaf control and further, that a change in formulation did not improve efficacy. bailey et al. 2002 and clewis et al. 2007 reported poor control of ragweed, a broadleaf weed. in similar work utilizing rates from 0.14 to 0.28 kg a.i. /ha grey et al. 2009 reported excellent broadleaf control, again, at rates higher than those we used. grass weeds control on average grass control at 4wap was about 39% and virtually unchanged (43%) at 8wap. grass control was both persistent and poor. good control of grasses reported by bailey et al. 2002, was at rates much higher (0.28 kg a.i./ha) than those used in this work, implying perhaps that the reduced rates used in this work could have been well below the threshold for grass control. indeed, grey et al. 2009 reported that grass control increased with effect of two formulations of sufentrazone.... increasing rate from 0.14 to 0.28 kg a.i. /ha. very poor control has been reported by grichar et al. 2006, while mazarura, 1999 also noted variable grass control in similar plots as those reported in the present study. clewis et al. 2007 showed improved grass control only when sulfentrazone was mixed with other herbicides. peedin (1996) also reported that sulfentrazone was relatively weak on several grass species. nutsedge control control of nutsedge, primarily yellow nutsedge, since this was the only sedges observed in the plots, was excellent for all rates of sulfentrazone irrespective of formulation. this control was also persistent up to 8wap. grey et al. 2009 reported 83% yellow nutsedge control by rates ranging from as little as 0.112 to 0.28 kg a.i. /ha. work by grichar et al. 2006 showed that yellow nutsedge was dependent on both site and method of application, with pre-plant incorporation giving better control than preemergent applications. in addition, 0.11 kg a.i. /ha gave at least 93% control in one site while giving no better than 65% control in another site. such site depended response, is however not uncommon as herbicide control depends on many factors which include, soil clay content, organic content, soil ph and other factors. kopec and gilbert (2001) also reported high levels of nutsedge control by sulfentrazone. similar results were given by mazarura, 1999. total weed dry mass overall weed control with regards to total weed dry mass was satisfactory only with the sc formulation at 0.185 and 0.225 kg a.i. /ha. this observation shows, however, the overriding effect of the excellent yellow nutsedge control as reported by mazarura, 1999, kopec and gilbert, 2001, and others. conclusions and recommendations these studies show that the two formulations had excellent nutsedge control at all the tested rates. however, grass and broadleaf control was very poor at the rates tested. it is thus apparent that, while the change in formulation did not compromise weed control, it also did not increase efficacy, effectively ruling out the possibility of using reduce rates. further work must test possible herbicide mixtures in order to improve grass and broadleaf control. regardless of the poor grass and broadleaf control, this herbicide targets a very important niche when one considers the importance of nutsedge in tobacco production in the country and indeed the region. further, the ability by this herbicide to control nutsedge after emergent is a unique property that is not shared by many tobacco herbicides. references bailey, w. a., wilson, h. p. & hines, t. e. (2002). response of potato (solanum tuberosum) and selected weeds to sulfentrazone 1. weed technology, 16(3), 651– 658. becerril, j. & duke, s. o. (1989a). acifluorfen effects on intermediates of chlorophyll synthesis in green cucumber cotyledon tissues. pesticide biochemistry and physiology, 35(2), 119–126. becerril, j. m. & duke, s. o. (1989b). protoporphyrin ix content correlates with activity of photobleaching herbicides. plant physiology, 90(3), 1175–1181. camper, n. d. (1986). research methods in weed science, 3rd ed. southern weed science society . pp 37 chivinge, o. a. (1984). the role of herbicide technology in the small scale farms of zimbabwe, zimbabwe agricultural journal 81(3): 97-102 clewis, s. b., everman, w. j., jordan, d. l. & wilcut, j. w. (2007). weed management in north carolina peanuts (arachis hypogaea) with s-metolachlor, diclosulam, flumioxazin, and sulfentrazone systems. weed technology, 21(3), 629–635. grey, t. l., bridges, d. c. & brecke, b. j. (2009). response of seven peanut (arachis hypogaea) cultivars to sulfentrazone1. available at: http://www.wssajournals.org/perlserv/?request =get-abstract&doi=10.1614%2f0890 037x(2000)014%5b0051%3arospah%5d 2.0.co%3b2 [accessed december 21, 2012]. grichar, w. j., besler, b. a. & dotray, p. a. (2006). weed control and peanut (arachis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), pp. 1-6 4 hypogaea) response to sulfentrazone. crop protection, 25(8), 753–757. hulting, a. g., wax, l. m., nelson, r. l. & simmons, f. w. (2001). soybean (glycine max(l.) merr.) cultivar tolerance to sulfentrazone. crop protection, 20(8), 679– 683. kopec, d. m. and gilbert, j. j. (2001). sulfentrazone effects on purple nutsedge. turfgrass and ornamental research report. university of arizona college. http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/crops/az/1246 mazarura u. (1999). a new herbicide for nutsedge and some broadleaf weeds, zimbabwe tobacco, 8, 41-43. paunescu, a. d., cirnicia, m., paunescu, m. and udrescu, e. (1992). chemical control of the weeds on the fields of oriental type tobacco in rumania, coresta publication p.136 peedin, g. f. (1996). flue-cured tobacco, north carolina state university, raleigh, usa. pp 17-23 riggle b. d. and penner, d. (1990). the use of controlled release technology for herbicides, reviews of weed science, 5, 1-14. stocks, j. l. (1994). flue-cured tobacco production in zimbabwe, coresta zimbabwe, pp. 205-209. http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/crops/az/1246 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 813 analyzing the micro economic environment of agricultural product: applying the “diamond” model to a non – profit organization puttawan khuntonthong and nopasit chakpitak college of arts, media and technology, chiang mai university, chiang mai 50200, thailand gilles neubert esc saint etienne, lsti laboratory, 42009 st etienne cedex, france abstract the main objective of this paper was to explore environmental factors affecting the success in terms of helping small scale farmers to participate in high-value market by employing porter’s ‘diamond model’. the environmental factors that enhanced competitiveness of the bresse chicken cluster managed by a non-profit organization the royal project foundation to help farmers gain income in thailand were illustrated. according to the analysis, four favorable environmental factors consisted of factor conditions human and knowledge resources from universities and research units, material and financial resources, and well developed infrastructure. the knowledge and requirements of customers to improve quality as well as an increase in demand were the factors in the attribute of demand conditions that had impacts on the advance of the cluster. the favorable factors in the attribute of the supporting departments consisted of the presence of a relevant cluster, and pull of supporting organizations. furthermore, backward and forward integration and facility for joint working were the strategies that helped the project gain the advantage. the factors affecting the improvement in the cluster performance created by the government were import tariff and financial supports, and the chance that provided opportunity to the farmers to gain from this market was the growth in tourism sector. the existing environmental factors that provided opportunities for farmers to compete and participate in the high-value market resulted in an income generating. keywords: farmers, porter’s ‘diamond model’, agricultural product, competitive advantage introduction small-scale producers in remote areas are facing new opportunities and challenges related to an increasing in demand for high value of agricultural products in many developing countries (kaboli and zou, 2011; rota and sperandini, 2010). an involvement in such the markets is the corresponding author: name: puttawan khuntonthong email address: p.khuntonthong@gmail.com the challenge for farmers to gain income from available resources (kassam et al., 2011). to help farmers gain competitiveness by enhancing their participation in this emerging market, cluster management is suggested and has been proved to be an efficient approach. clustering helps small scale farmers overcome such obstructions as the lack of production techniques and technology to attain the standards demanded in markets, as well as empowers their marketing management (kassam et al., 2011; kaboli and zou, 2011; davis, asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:p.khuntonthong@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 813-822 814 2006). evidences can be seen in the cases of aquaculture clusters of farmers in india and thailand (phillips, 2011). the successful clustering can be organized through the farmer cooperatives as found in pakistan (cooperatives for safeguarding interests), india (the cooperative venture of dairy sector named amul), japan (one village one product (ovop)), or sri lanka (local competitive advantage (loca)) (“need for cluster initiatives in agriculture”, 2012). however, according to porter (1998), competitive advantage of clusters is strongly influenced by business environment in which they operate (porter, 2000). porter (1990, 1998) reveals that major focus of clusters is strategy development for more competitiveness; meanwhile the advantage of competitiveness arises from the interaction of business environment. four major factors affecting the success or failure of clusters are factor conditions the existence of specialized factors; demand conditions the existence of sophisticated demand of local customers which force companies to increase product quality or differentiation; the context for firm strategy and rivalry; and related and supporting industries (porter, 1998 cited in paterson, 2005). furthermore, there are two related factors that affect the interaction among the four major factors; those are government and chance (porter, 1998 cited in leech, 2011). since clusters advance through four broad attributes and two related factors which are business environment in which companies operate and influence the firms’ ability to innovate and upgrade. the results from diamond model analysis provide information on why some regions are more competitive than others (woodward, 2004). while solvell et al. (2003) also argue that the micro-economic business environment, represented in the diamond model, acts as an engine of cluster and innovation and plays an important role in driving innovation and upgrading firms’ competitive advantages. the interaction of the factors has been used to answer the question ‘why certain industries are more successful than others’. therefore this paper intends to investigate environmental factors affecting the success at the firm level of an agricultural product by employing porter’s ‘diamond model’ and the cluster of bresse chicken managed by a non-profit organization the royal project foundation-was selected to be a case study. the project has success experiences to link small-scale farmers to the high end market via cluster management which results in a high income generation for farmers who raise this type of chicken (khuntonthong et al., 2013). the major objective of this paper is to diagnose the environmental factors that influence competitiveness and advance of the cluster which help small scale farmers to participate and generate income from the high-value market. an exploring of business environment that affects the success of the cluster can provide information for decision makers to create supporting factors to help small scale farmers to overcome obstructions which results in advantages to produce and sell the product for farmers in the competitive markets. this paper is divided in to three main parts. firstly, background of the royal project foundation and the cluster of bresse chicken were revealed. secondly, theoretical of porter’s works employed in this study is mentioned followed by the methodology of the analysis. thirdly findings were stated in the results and conclusion. background of the royal project foundation the royal project foundation is a nonprofit organization, established in 1969; by his majesty the king of thailand to promote temperate cash crops to farmers living in highland areas and to help to promote a market for crops in thailand and beyond. the project facilitates collaboration between the thai government, foreign governments, universities, as well as public and private http://beta.dawn.com/news/707289/need-for-cluster-initiatives-in-agriculture http://beta.dawn.com/news/707289/need-for-cluster-initiatives-in-agriculture asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 813-822 815 agencies. the royal project foundation’s remit has emphasized research and development, which led to the substitution of opium with commercial crops. this has enabled hill tribes in growing useful agricultural products, allowing them raise their living standards (the royal project foundation, n.d.). appropriate cash crops and agricultural technology derived from the royal project foundation research have been introduced to farmers as a result; they have been motivated to live in highland areas, without destroying forests. currently the royal project administers 38 satellite branches situated in chiang mai, chiang rai, mae hong son, lamphun, phayao and nan provinces. there are 13 ethnic groups, which comprise 30,537 families or 151,277 people (the royal project foundation, 2011). the project purchases all promoted products from the farmers and markets the products for them. a stable income for farmers under the project is currently being maintained mainly from fruit and vegetables. bresse chicken is one of the promoted products of the project. it is a special variety of chicken given to the royal project foundation by the bresse chicken association, france, with restricted conditions to prevent other thai organizations from producing it. the royal project foundation produces and retails this type of chicken exclusively in thailand. therefore, it has a unique selling point which has potential to be leveraged by the royal project foundation. the cluster of bresse chicken is strong and successful as it enhances farmers to produce good quality of chicken and supply to the high – value product market. the major factors affecting the success are the presence of strong functioning networks and continual support from organizations in the cluster. the main outcomes of the bresse chicken cluster are increasing in farmers’ capabilities and high income providing. it provides high return profit which is additional income as the bresse chicken is raised as a part time job. the profit gained by farmers is about 80.50 thai baht per kilogram. an average number of reared chickens in a household are 150 chickens per year, and the average weight per live chicken sold to the project is about 2.5 kg. therefore, one farmer receives a profit from this product of approximately 30,187.50 thai baht per year which is above the national poverty line 1 . the increasing in farmers’ capabilities is from the supports of various organizations that enhance farmer’s abilities to overcome the weakness of scarce resources, as well as increasing participation in the high value market to small scale farmers (khuntonthong et al., 2013). theoretical background this section is a theoretical review which is based mainly on the works of porter. the related literature is reviewed to generate a better understanding of the analysis conducted in this research. as porter (1998) characterizes cluster into two levels (porter, 1998). firstly, at the macroeconomic level (government’s view), its objective is to improve competitiveness of a nation in world markets. the significant factors of this level are government policy, industrial promotion, law and regulation. secondly, at the micro-economic level (enterprise’s view), the aims are to improve innovation and productivity of enterprises. in the micro-level each firm performs different levels of upgrade or innovation, the diamond model analysis is a framework that helps to explore the effects of the micro economic environment to the success or failure. the level of the economic analysis in this study is set at the micro-economic level. four main factors and two related factors affecting the competitiveness of the firms are revealed as follows: 1 thailand poverty line is equal to an income which is less than 1.71 us dollars per day: source: http://www.thepovertyline.net/map http://www.thepovertyline.net/map asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 813-822 816 factor conditions the factor conditions consist of the created factors that provide initial advantages. the factor advantage can arise from highly specialized pools of skills, applied technology, infrastructure and sources of capital as well as qualification of human and knowledge resources that are the needs of particular industries (porter, 1998). the abilities of organizations in accessing specialized inputs allow competition to take place. these environmental factors are also defined as the created factors, not inherited (‘porter’s diamond model & clusters’, 2007). demand conditions demand conditions influence the shaping of particular factor conditions. local customers are more likely to stimulate improvement and innovation than distant customers because of the high visibly, a short line of communication and an opportunity for joint working relationships. demand conditions in home markets can help companies create a competitive advantage, when sophisticated home market buyers pressure firms to innovate faster and create more advanced products than those of competitors. by meeting such demand, local companies can gain competitive advantage in foreign markets. according to porter (1998), demand has been determined by three major characteristics: mixture (the mix of customer’s needs and wants), scope and growth rate, and the mechanisms that transmit domestic preferences to foreign markets (porter, 1991, 1998; ‘porter’s diamond model & clusters’, 2007). related and supporting industries related and supporting industries can produce inputs which are important for innovation and internationalization as well as provide cost-effective inputs. the presence of related and supporting industries provides innovation and product upgrading based on proximity and close working relationships. this helps stimulate companies in the chain to innovate. when there is a presence of effective supporting industries, the ability to access sophisticated suppliers of materials, components, machinery, services and information are needed for competitiveness. and when the cluster has been formed it helps to raise interconnected companies and institutes, which results in members’ benefit from the ease of pursuing relationships and form the ability to source specialist components, personnel, and service. firm strategy, structure and rivalry firm strategy, structure and rivalry are based on the outputs of rivalry and context of a region’s influence. the ways in which companies are created, set goals and managed are important for success. the presence of intense rivalry within the firm’s home base is also important as it creates pressure to innovate in order to increase competitiveness. the rivalry forces competition to lower costs, improve quality, and creates new products and processes which leads to an extension of their geographical reach. in different regions, factors like management structures, working morale, or interactions between companies are differently shaped. this can provide advantages and disadvantages for particular industries. government government can influence each of the above four determinants of competitiveness. a government can influence the supply conditions of key production factors, demand conditions in the home market, and competition between firms. the interventions from government can occur at local, regional, national or supranational levels. chance chance events are occurrences that are outside the control of a firm. they are important because they create discontinuities in which some gain http://pacific.commerce.ubc.ca/ruckman/competitiveadvofnations.htm http://pacific.commerce.ubc.ca/ruckman/competitiveadvofnations.htm http://pacific.commerce.ubc.ca/ruckman/competitiveadvofnations.htm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 813-822 817 competitive positions and some lose. the significant shifts in key factor costs are events such as wars, or other significant economic, or political dislocations. methodology the study was conducted using both primary and secondary data. primary data was collected using semi-structured questionnaires to interview the project’s staff, which consisted of the production unit, purchasing unit, sale manager, as well as experts from academic organizations who worked in the project as volunteers. the questionnaires were designed for each actor to get the answers. three stakeholders from the production unit, the head of the unit who was the expert from the university, manager, and a specialist were interviewed to figure out the answers of product extension and development. information related to marketing research and management was collected from four people involved in marketing unit. they were marketing managers of two head offices of the project in chiang mai province and bangkok, product purchasing manager, and an expert from private company who worked as volunteer. the staff of the project’s research unit was also interviewed to get the answer of research policy as well as data related to knowledge and fund supporting. finally, the customers who purchased the products, such as chefs in five star hotels, were also interviewed to collect data regarding customers’ demand. the aggregate number of customers, who purchased 50% of total sales, was sampled through interviews. semi-structured interviews were employed to collect data from each group of stakeholders as shown in figure 1. figure 1: methodology secondary data was collected from the project’s report and the statistics databases of government organizations. project data included information such as past sales data, product costs, and farmers’ profit under the project. national statistics were the imported value and volume of products, regulations, and data from the hotel and related sectors. finally, environmental factors affecting success in terms of helping small scale farmers to participate in the high value market were investigated. results the favorable environment factors that enhanced the advance of bresse chicken cluster were shown in figure 2. the details of each factor were described in the following section. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 813-822 818 figure 2: diamond model of bresse chicken managed by the royal project foundation factor conditions human and knowledge resource, material and financial resource, and well develop infrastructures were the factor conditions that helped the bresse chicken cluster gained advantage in producing and marketing. human and knowledge resources were the major factors that helped the project developed this exotic crop in the country successfully. since there were two universities located in the same province of the project and both of them had expertise in agriculture. at the same time, the project had a significant reputation of having been established by his majesty the king; and the project could create a short line of communication among the experts from the universities. these provided opportunities for joint working relationship between the project staff and the experts which resulted in the advances in terms of product development and marketing management. further, its reputation was also a major factor that influenced the involvement of experts from private companies to help in the area of business and marketing management. the specialists and experts, as chefs of the five star hotels, and traders joined the project as the volunteers to give information and knowledge to develop the product and manage the market. in terms of material resources, the project promoted bresse chicken to farmers who were in the areas that had internal inputs such as medical herbs (used as vaccine for chicken), defective vegetables (feed for chickens), and natural feed in grazing areas (earth asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 813-822 819 worms, insects). these resources helped increase the quality of chicken meat and reduce the costs of production. as a nonprofit organization that aimed to help farmers in remote areas, the project received support in terms of funds and basic infrastructures directly from the government. the well-developed basic infrastructures as cool transportation system and cool warehousing gave opportunities to the project in distributing good quality of produces and marketing availability products to customers efficiently. those were the factors that helped the project to produce and supply good quality of agricultural products which became the advantages of the competitiveness in the high-value market. demand conditions past sales data indicated that the high-end restaurants had a maximum market potential due to the ability to absorb the high price of bresse chicken. the main groups of customers who were foreign chefs had knowledge in this type of chicken and their requirements on the specialty qualities were the catalysts that impacted to the product development over time. in order to develop the product to meet the requirements of the customers; however, the project could use an advantage of knowledge supporting from experts of research and academic organizations to achieve its objective of product development. whereas, the demand for bresse chicken tended to increase, since, it sales volume had increased dramatically. the sale amount of bresse chicken had increased from 150 kilograms in 2009 to 4,679.7 kilograms in 2011. valuable information from customers and an increasing in demand for the chicken were the factors that impacted to the advance of the bresse chicken cluster to develop product as well as expand market which helped the farmers to gain income from this type of chicken. related and supporting industries there were 16 government and nongovernment organizations involved in bresse chicken cluster and they supported finance, knowledge and management. the experts from those of organizations jointed working with the project as volunteers. the platform for information sharing had been arranged monthly among the project’s director, volunteers and the project staff to share information, solved facing problems as well as updated and monitored the vision of the project. these helped to strengthening the cluster of bresse chicken which was the key factors to manage the cluster successfully. the related and supporting organizations had direct impacts on product development and market management. the presence of strong relevant actors in the cluster as financial actors who supported fund in terms of low interest rate loan provided opportunity to farmers who usually had difficulty to access source of fund to invest the farms. meanwhile the academic and research units helped to support useful information and knowledge to develop and market the product. the continuing supports from government in terms of fund for running the project’s tasks were the significant factors that helped the project to manage the product and enhance farmers’ abilities to produce and compete in the high value market. firm strategy, structure and rivalry as a non-profit organization, the strategic objective of the project focused on providing helps to the poor farmers in remote areas. the project was not required to show financial surpluses, but just needed to generate enough income to cover its costs as staff compensation and utility bills. its images of helping the poor farmers in remote areas, and ti’s having been established by his majesty the king were significant factors that helped to gain advantage from various supports. apart from its images, the successful management in terms of helping farmers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 813-822 820 gain income was a factor that induced the continuing financial supports from the government as well as in-kind donations as knowledge transferring from academic and non-profit organizations. furthermore, supporting organizations as universities or government had policies to support the project and allowed their staff to work as volunteers. this condition of joint working provided opportunities and availability to the project to gain advantage from the strong linkage. the project could create backward and forward integration along the supply chain to manage bresse chicken successfully from the supports of government and gained market opportunity from its images. the integration potentially offered advantages in terms of close supply chain coordination, and provided more opportunities to differentiate by means of increased control over inputs, and increased entry barriers to potential competitors which impacted the low rivalry in the market. government government played significant roles in supporting, especially in terms of finance and basic infrastructures to the cluster. all subsidies along the supply chain such as basic infrastructures, inputs, knowledge and technology to produce and market the chicken were the factors influencing the advance of the cluster. by the supports from government, the project could create vertical integration along the supply chain of bresse chicken, and this helped to collect and market the product effectively from the close link between farmers in remote areas and customers. apart from the effective management in the supply chain the significant factor that enhanced ability to develop the product was the research fund supported directly from the national research fund of thailand. this allowed the project to develop the product as well as to solve problems of production. the protective tariff of imported bresse chicken which was equal to 30 – 60 % of imported value was a major factor that caused difficulty to the importer to compete in the market. for the small scale farmers the government also provided low interest loan via the government bank which was a significant factor for farmers who usually had difficulty accessing the fund. this was opportunity for farmers to invest in their farms which resulted in an income generating. finally, since the major group of bresse chicken customers was the restaurants, therefore the policy on tourism promotion of government tended to have positive impact to the sale volume. chance the factor as chance are those outside the control of the royal project foundation, and in the case of the breese chicken, the growth of tourism sector in thailand was the chance that impacted the cluster both positively and negatively. since the main market channel of bresse chicken was the restaurants and its sale volume peaked in tourism season, therefore the market growth of bresse chicken depended on the growth of the tourism sector. whereas the violence and political sensitivities in the country are negative impacts on the tourism sector, these became indirectly negative impacts to the sale volume of the bresse chicken. conclusions in this study the diamond model analysis was employed in order to explore impacts of environment that caused innovations for bresse chicken cluster to be implemented which resulted in the increase in competitive advantage of the royal project foundation and farmers under the project. it was found that the competitive advantages of bresse chicken cluster were influenced by many business environmental factors. those of favorable environment provided opportunities for small scale farmers to produce and supply good quality of the chickens to target asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 813-822 821 markets. in the context of bresse chicken cluster, the government and academic organizations played significant roles for enhancing its competitiveness. since this product was sold as premium quality at the high price, in order to supply an exotic chicken to meet the requirements of the knowledgeably customers, capabilities of farmers to produce the product that met the required demand were very important. production know how transferring from the university experts helped to enhance skills of farmers which helped to address the competitiveness advantage for the farmers who raised bresse chicken. moreover, the policies of government as protective tariff of imported chicken and tourism promotion as well as the government’ supports which gave opportunities to the project to create backward and forward integrations in the supply chain enhanced capacities for the project to gain competitive in the market. all of those factors helped farmers to generate income from the high-end market linkage. references need for cluster initiatives in agriculture. 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(2000). location, competition, and economic development: local clusters in global economy. economic development quarterly, 14(1): 1520. porter, m. e. (1991). towards a dynamic theory of strategy. strategic management journal, 12: pp. 95 118. rota, a. and sperandini, s. (2010). value chains, linking producers to the markets. international fund for agricultural development (ifad). retrieved from http://www.ifad.org/lrkm/factsheet/v aluechains.pdf solvell, o., lindqvist, g. and ketels, c. (2003). the cluster initiative green book. brommatryck ab. stockholm, sweden. the royal project foundation. (2011). the royal project annual report 2011. the royal project foundation. chiang mai. thailand. the royal project foundation. (n.d.). the royal project of his majesty the king. retrieved from http://www.royalprojectthailand.com /general/english/socio.html woodward, d. (2004). porter’s cluster strategy versus industrial targeting. presentation at the icit workshop, orlando, florida. december 3, 2004. http://www.ifad.org/lrkm/factsheet/valuechains.pdf http://www.ifad.org/lrkm/factsheet/valuechains.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 412-423 412 agricultural production assets transfer and poverty upward mobility in isolated areas of zambia: a domestic life cycle perspective martin w. muyunda graduate school of international development, nagoya university, japan abstract in zambia poverty mitigation programmes based on agricultural production assets transfer constitute social protection and have been implemented to help the poor change their experiences of poverty and transform their social economic relationships. the effect of these programmes in realizing substantial poverty upward mobility has however been hindered by a myriad of factors including failure to understand the poor’s poverty situation and consequently misdirecting the poverty interventions. this study aims at clarifying changes in experiences of poverty due to agricultural production assets transfer, and identify potential intrinsic household attributes that could influence effective agricultural assets utilization among households within domestic life cycle stages. participatory poverty profiling and rapid appraisals were done to respectively identify poverty perceptions and experiences, and elicit household attributes perceived to influence effective asset utilization. data was collected from 150 randomly selected households. results indicate that agricultural production assets transfer to poor rural households can help mitigate their poverty, but movement out of poverty does not spontaneously cover all poverty dimensions, and could be affected by intrinsic attributes of a household. thus, anti-poverty programmes should pay enough attention not only to community age stratification but also to intrinsic household attributes and basic need areas which may respond most to interventions among the domestic life cycle stages. keywords: constructivism, domestic life cycle, participatory profiling, poverty upward mobility, zambia introduction 1 poverty is characterized by the failure of individuals, households or entire communities to command sufficient resources to satisfy their basic needs (alejandro, 2001). according to the 2010 living conditions monitoring survey, 61% of zambians live below the poverty line1). poverty in zambia is often characterized by the rural prominence, where it affects 78% of the population, compared with 28% in urban areas (cso, 2010). in zambia poverty mitigation programmes based on agricultural production assets transfer constitute social protection and 1 corresponding author’s email address: martin_muyunda@yahoo.co.uk have been implemented to help the poor transform their social economic relationships. transfer of agricultural production assets is a more suitable form of social protection for developing countries like zambia where the majority of the population is rural based and dependent on subsistence agriculture for a livelihood. while assets are multidimensional, provision of agricultural production assets as a form of social protection represents a coordinated push that should dramatically increase the poor’s scale of production. the effect of these programmes in realizing substantial poverty upward mobility has been hindered by a myriad of factors including poor targeting, failure to understand the poor’s poverty situation and consequently misdirecting asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:martin_muyunda@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 412-423 413 the anti-poverty interventions. assets thus either disappear within local political patronage networks or are just given to households which are not asset worth with little care for whether beneficiaries need or can use them, by virtue of their intrinsic household characteristics. according to the chronic poverty report of 2008-09, social protection, particularly social support such as through agricultural production assets transfer, helps the poor conserve and accumulate assets so they can improve their livelihoods and productivity. poverty mitigation programs based on the income paradigm have not significantly changed pre-transfer poverty because they are designed to help maintain people by supporting consumption (danziger and plotnick, 1986). social protection interventions using assets transfer, on the other hand, can lead to positive social economic outcomes because the assets are more often than not used to create opportunities, and thus increase well-being in ways that income cannot (shobe m., and d. page-adams, 2001). poor households that can steadily accumulate assets will grow their way out of poverty and this growth could take some time depending on household intrinsic characteristics that condition their desired level of accumulation and ultimate equilibrium level of well-being.(carter, m and barret, c., 2006). understanding poverty in asset space thus helps to determine whether upward mobility reflects asset accumulation and increased returns to the assets held by the poor. further, a household’s capacity to stand in the face of poverty varies with factors such as household size, composition and its stage in the domestic life cycle (alejandro, 2001). understanding poverty according to stages in the domestic life cycle can provide a better insight into the dynamic responses to development interventions among households as they evolve over time. this is because each of the stages in the developmental process of households is conducive to particular social arrangements that influence their ability to utilize availed resources. therefore, the objective of this study is to clarify changes in experiences of poverty due to agricultural production assets transfer within the domestic life cycle stages, and identify potential intrinsic household attributes that could influence effective agricultural assets utilization among households with changed poverty experiences. methodology scope information rich cases were selected from shangombo district (16° 05’ s and 23° 75’ e) of the western province (16° 3′ 22″ s and, 23° 45′ 8” e) of zambia. according to the 2006 living conditions monitoring survey of zambia, the western province is the most stricken by poverty out of the country’s ten provinces. shangombo district is the poorest district in the western province. the district has a population of 70,049 and is quite uniform in terms of cultural practices, ethnicity, marriage patterns, and access to social amenities. it has common features such as poor road networks, subsistent farming being a major livelihood source, and less development interventions by nongovernmental organizations and donor agencies. its remoteness from main service centres has partly led to an autarkic local economy bordering on household self-sufficiency. any external development interventions in the district are therefore likely to make tangible differences in poverty experiences among intervention beneficiaries compared to nonbeneficiaries. due to the unavailability of panel data to use as base line, villages without development interventions were selected as proxies for pre-development intervention villages. in this study therefore, the pre and post development intervention refers to either assets transfer versus none-assets transfer or beneficiary versus none-beneficiary scenarios. sample selection the domestic life cycle consists of three main stages namely; reproductive (symbolizing the initial family formation), intermediate (representing maturing family development), and dispersion (when parents are aging and children graduate into independent households) (alejandro, 2001). zambian adults below 35 years are referred to as youths (kaunda, 1974) and represent the reproductive stage. fifty five years is the mandatory retirement age for public service workers (grz 1996) and represents the upper limit of the intermediate stage. adults asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 412-423 414 above 55 years are considered to be elderly and therefore in the dispersion stage. limiting the sample to only villages with 75 or more households, five assets benefiting villages and another five non-assets benefiting villages were randomly selected. households2) in the selected villages of both categories were stratified by age of household heads (male spouses) to satisfy stages of the domestic life cycle. five households from each stage of the domestic life cycle in each village of the two categories were randomly selected and interviews were conducted with both the male and female spouse. a total of 300 individuals were thus interviewed from the two sets of 75 households. the non-assets and assets transfer households respectively represented pre-asset and post-asset transfer households. assets disbursed during intervention included brooder chickens to individual households and animal draft power packages (oxen and accompanying equipment) kept communally at village level. only households participating in the agricultural production asset transfer program for 5 to 7 years up to december, 2011 were targeted. rapid appraisal for effective asset utilization attributes according to carter and barret (2006), assets are multidimensional and broadly include conventional, privately held productive and financial wealth, as well as social, geographic and market access positions that confer economic advantage. carter and barret further note that individuals have intrinsic attributes that condition their desired level of asset accumulation and ultimate equilibrium level of well-being. a rapid appraisal was conducted with local key informants including contact and lead farmers, government extension workers and other managers of asset based anti-poverty programs to solicit opinions regarding attributes which they perceived to influence effective utilization of granted agricultural production assets. table 1 is a summary of the attributes: table 1: attributes perceived to influence effective asset utilization no attribute associated logic ordinal 1 level of education education helps better management 2 number of own children they determine family size and composition 3 number of young dependents 4 number of adult dependents 5 how many years one lived in the village understanding the local environment gives more flexibility 6 period of employment it could suggest level of pension earnings 7 how long the visit by friends took the longer the visits, the higher the chances of exchanging progressive ideas 8 how long the visits to friends took 9 how long one lived outside the province prolonged exposure to other peoples’ ways of life can help change attitudes categorical 1 experience in managing cattle previous experience in managing an asset gives good lessons 2 experience in managing chickens 3 main on-farm income source a person involved in a familiar on-farm activity can be more committed 4 whether employed formally before once formally employed individuals are more organized. 5 kind of employment permanent employment has the benefit of assured pension compared to casual work 6 if one visits friends peer interaction helps exchange of good ideas 7 if one is visited by friends 8 participation in communal activities it cultivates responsibility into an individual 9 village leadership responsibilities leaders would want to set good examples 10 vying for political elected office villagers with political ambitions have no time and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 412-423 415 lack commitment 11 belief in traditional taboos traditional and religious beliefs can hinder commitment and effective management of assets 12 belief in religious taboos 13 type of assets once owned by parents they could help as support to offspring in their early adult life. 14 main off farm income source on-farm activities will be disadvantaged if main livelihood is from off-farm income sources 15 if one ever lived outside the western province exposure to other peoples’ ways of life can help change attitudes source: field survey data (2011, 2012) participatory poverty profiling while popular quantitative measures of poverty including the head count and the poverty gap index use income levels to determine the extent to which individuals on average fall below the poverty line, participatory measures of poverty deploy indicators of living standards and incorporate perspectives of those with the experience of poverty into the theorization, thereby providing better insights into what poverty means and feels for those actually experiencing it. participatory poverty profiles can help to disaggregate poverty into several types and local definitions of poverty can help construct a more nuanced picture of the obstacles facing different groups of the poor (cpr, 2008-09). for this study, which is constructivist, participatory poverty profiling was undertaken and used uniquely with the brainstorming tool to enlist the perceptions and experiences of poverty among village members in the target district. group brainstorming exercises were conducted based on the perceived needs approach (mark & lansley, 1985), which aims at …”identifying minimum acceptable way of life not by reference to observed living standards, but by reference to the views of society as a whole”. the brainstorming exercise defined the local meaning of poverty and determined the key areas of perceived poverty. arising from this, eight poverty dimensions were consensually identified (table 2). each poverty dimension was then characterised by specific indicators of living conditions describing experienced depths of poverty. table 2: participatory poverty profile matrix: perceived dimensions and experienced depth of poverty perceived dimension poverty experienced depth of poverty light serious clothes new from the shop second hands from piecework from good will dietary carbohydrate breakfast, lunch, supper and others two meals per day only one meal per day sometimes sleep without a meal in a day dietary protein big fish breams or meat small fish exotic vegetables or cow milk traditional vegetables education to children below college below 10 th grade below 8 th grade below 1 st grade farm power oxen and implements oxen only implements only manual labor housing corrugated roof with clay walls grass thatched roof with clay walls grass thatched roof with grass walls improvised income annual from farm produce and other seasonal from farm produce part from piecework part from farm always from piecework asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 412-423 416 sources produce transport to hospital motor transport bicycle ox-cart traditional folded bed source: field survey data (2011, 2012) note) “piece work” refers to agreed manual labour jobs performed on other peoples’ farms and paid for in cash or in kind (second hand clothes or package of farm produce for food). the generated poverty profile in table 2 represents a consensual perception by the local people, and it was also in line with fundamental human basic needs. the inclusion of farm power as a poverty dimension appears to reflect the hardship of producing enough food for household food security as well as managing a surplus for sale to realise income for purchase of other domestic essentials. a lack of assets such as livestock and tools in rural areas not only exposes the chronically poor to risks, but also excludes them from employment opportunities and the growth process. the separation of food into carbohydrate and protein components was premised on the local understanding that a complete meal should have a fair share of respectable relish (protein), and that the carbohydrate and protein represented different types of strategies to secure. the semi structured questionnaire used to collect data on perceptions and experiences of poverty among non-asset beneficiary and asset beneficiary households was generated based on perceptions captured through participatory poverty profiling. hierarchical clustering of effective asset utilization attributes cluster analysis is an exploratory data analysis tool for organizing observed data into groups of relatively homogeneous cases. it reveals associations and structure in data (mooi e., and sarstedt m., 2011) thereby enable identification of exemplars to represent cases. using cluster analysis, “type of household” can represent a homogenous group of community members who are more likely to effectively utilize agricultural assets and gradually walk out of poverty. targeting specific segments of the community, based on certain desirable attributes, with antipoverty interventions can be cheaper and more accurate with pronounced impact than broadscale disbursement of assets. in this study, post asset transfer households indicating upward mobility in at least 50% of the poverty dimensions were identified. in shangombo district where marriage arrangements are patriarchal with the female spouse having to move to the male spouse’s village and literally depend on his available resources, attributes for effective asset management were only considered on heads of households (male spouses). data analysis descriptive statistics were used to accurately characterize the changes in poverty experiences among households in preand post-agricultural assets transfer villages. hierarchical cluster analysis with ward’s method (rencher, a. c and christensen, w.f 2012), and the chi-square statistic were employed, using the statistics package for the social sciences (spss) programme, to differentiate households moving into lighter poverty experiences based on the attributes elicited from the rapid appraisal. results and discussion the domestic life cycle stages and upward poverty mobility positive change in poverty experiences can be said to have occurred if there is an outward mobility (reduction) of the poor from deeper levels of experienced poverty, or an upward mobility of the poor into lighter levels of experienced poverty. table 3 is a comparison of the percent of households in the most desired (lighter) level of experienced poverty between none-asset transfer (pre-transfer) villages and asset transfer (post-transfer) villages. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 412-423 417 table 3: household migration into lighter poverty experience households experiencing lighter poverty (%) pre transfer domestic life cycle stage cloth es dietary carbohydr ate dietar y protei n educati on to childre n farm pow er housi ng inco me transp ort to hospita l reproducti ve 20* 14 8 10 30 8 38 0 intermedia te 24 16 8 20 36 12 44 0 dispersion 0 8 0 12 26 16 32 0 post transfer reproducti ve 60* 48 10 28 46 32 44 0 intermedia te 36 44 8 40 50 32 58 0 dispersion 16 16 8 24 36 14 52 4 percent points differen ce reproducti ve 40** 34 2 18 16 24 6 0 intermedia te 12 28 0 20 14 20 14 0 dispersion 16 8 8 12 10 -2 20 4 average difference 23*** 23 3 17 13 14 13 1 rank 1**** 1 5 2 4 3 4 6 source: field survey data (2011, 2012) note: *:% of reproductive stage households in pre-transfer villages experiencing the lighter poverty of clothes **: percent points difference in reproductive stage households between pre and post transfer experiences in the lighter poverty of clothes ***: percent points average difference in clothes lighter poverty experience across life cycle stages. ****: top ranked percent points average difference in clothes lighter poverty experience across life cycle stages. since assets are multidimensional and individuals have intrinsic attributes which may influence their effective utilization, the changes in poverty experiences above can at best be understood as resulting from the interaction between the many poverty dimensions and individual attributes, with the brooder chickens and animal draft power packages which were availed through asset transfer. according to table 3, at a glance, limiting to average differences, there were overall increments in the number of households that migrated into lighter poverty levels (upward mobility) in asset transfer villages. however, the reflected changes in experienced poverty were not shared equally between the domestic life cycle stages, with some stages showing larger differences in some poverty dimensions than others, suggesting that the upward mobility steps out of poverty did not spontaneously cover all poverty dimensions at the same time when assets were availed. clothes, dietary carbohydrate and education support to children showed the largest increments with more than 15 points in the percent of households experiencing lighter poverty. these were followed by positive changes in housing, income and farm power respectively. further, the increments were not uniformly distributed; carbohydrate poverty upward mobility was more pronounced in the reproductive stage (40 % points),while income poverty upward mobility was more noticeable among the dispersion stage (20 % points), suggesting that different domestic life cycle stages would move up different experienced poverty dimensions at a time. the positive change in clothes poverty were mainly due to that at the reproductive stage (20 to 60 points), while that for dietary carbohydrate could be attributed mainly to the reproductive and intermediate stages with little contribution from the dispersion stage. the latter pattern appeared to be consistent over the positive changes in housing and farm power. the positive change in income poverty experiences asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 412-423 418 could be attributed mostly to that at the dispersion stage (32 to 52 points). on the other hand, the smallest increase was in the poverty of transport to hospital (1 point) followed by dietary protein (3 points). the increases in households graduating into the lighter poverty level appeared to reduce in accordance with the domestic life cycle stage with regards to dietary carbohydrate, farm power and housing, implying that the dispersion stage showed the least upward mobility. the opposite was true for income poverty. the differences in life cycle stages with regards to dimensions of poverty responding most to assets transfer, and the inability of households to exhibit a tandem upward mobility pattern across all poverty dimensions alludes to the particular social arrangements within the respective domestic life cycle stages that influence their ability to utilize availed assets. further, while the transferred agricultural assets would improve on the individual household asset stock, the asset level may not be sufficient enough to catapult the household completely out of poverty. this observation appears to confirm barret and carter’s (2006) positing that there exists a dynamic asset poverty threshold that potentially separates those able to move to a high (non-poor) asset position from those caught in a low-level equilibrium trap. years spent in the village versus poverty upward mobility households showing upward mobility in at least 50% of the poverty dimensions were assumed to possess attributes that favour effective asset utilization, and were identified per domestic life cycle stage for cluster analysis. one way analysis of variance (anova) was conducted on ordinal (interval) attributes to determine on which classifying they are significantly different between the clusters. the significant differences between variables for the clusters suggested the ways in which the clusters differed or on which they were based. table 4 is the anova and descriptive statistics summary for the attributes. table 4: anova and descriptive statistics for ordinal attributes ordinal attributes domestic life cycle stage reproductive(n=27)* intermediate(n=19)** dispersion(n=11)*** attribute cluster mean f sig mean f sig mean f sig level of education 1 8.33 2.264 >.05 8.08 1.545 >.05 7.71 13.641 <.05 2 6.67 9.29 1.25 number of own children 1 3.17 7.431 <.05 6.00 .350 >.05 2.14 .441 >.05 2 5.44 6.71 3.15 number of young dependents 1 .83 2.410 >.05 .83 .209 >.05 2.86 .412 >.05 2 2.22 .71 2.00 number of old dependents 1 .11 10.256 <.05 .83 4.204 >.05 1.00 .164 >.05 2 1.44 .14 .75 years lived in village 1 28.39 157.55 <.05 43.05 55.935 <.05 26.00 38.538 <.05 2 8.56 20.86 74.75 period of employment 1 1.3 1.774 >.05 1.0833 .384 >.05 3.8571 .872 >.05 2 .5 1.5714 .7500 how long the visits to friends took 1 2.89 .166 >.05 1.42 7.261 <.05 2.14 1.001 >.05 2 2.44 5.00 4.25 how long the visit by friends took 1 2.22 5.241 <.05 2.83 .278 >.05 3.71 .374 >.05 2 4.44 3.37 2.50 period lived 1 0 1.67 5.57 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 412-423 419 outside province 2 .56 2.083 >.05 4.29 1.777 >.05 3.50 .236 >.05 source: field survey data (2011, 2012) note: *: cluster 1and 2 (n=18 and 9 respectively) **: cluster 1 and 2 (n=12 and 7 respectively) ***: cluster 1 and 2 (n=7 and 4 respectively) f=f ratio according to table 4, the two clusters of households in the reproductive life cycle stage moving to lighter poverty experiences in more than 50% of the dimensions were significantly differentiated between the number of own children (f=7.431, p<.05), number of old dependents (f=10.256, p<.05), years lived in the village (f=157.55, p<.05) and how long visits by friends took (f=5.241, p<.05). cluster 1 of the reproductive life cycle stage was composed of the majority households (66.66%) and characterized by small number of own children, less older dependents, prolonged stay in the village, and shorter stay by visiting friends. the opposite was true for cluster 2 with 33.33% of households. for the intermediate life cycle stage, the two clusters were significantly differentiated between years lived in the village (f=55.935, p<.05), and how long the visit to friends took (f=7.261, p<.05). cluster 1 of the intermediate life cycle stage was composed of the majority households (63.16%) and characterized by more years lived in the village and short visits to friends. cluster 2 of the intermediate life cycle stage was characterized by less years lived in the village with visits to friends taking much longer. the two clusters in the dispersion life cycle stage were differentiated between the level of education (f=13.641, p<.05), and the years lived in the village (f=38.538, p<.05). cluster 1 of the dispersion stage had majority of the households (63.63%) and characterized by higher level education. however, unlike the reproductive and intermediate life cycle stages, it was characterised by less years lived in the village. cluster 2 households were less educated and stayed more years in the village. for all the three domestic life cycle stages, the clusters were significantly differentiated on the years spent in the village. one of the possible outcomes of a longer village stay could be prolonged engagement and interaction with other village folks leading to the advantage of investing social capital into the local networks. benefitting from local networks requires establishment of trust, and the development of trust from other village members is a process that takes place over time (kadushin 2012). social networks have value because they allow access to resources and valued social attributes. while individual social capital increases individual well-being and can lead to social upward mobility, group level social capital provides individuals with information that is timely and trustworthy (kadushin 2012) and can provide better ability to navigate around hurdles. however, according to table 4, the condition for longer stay in the village among majority households only applied to the reproductive and intermediate life cycle stages. among the dispersion stage, upward mobility favoured those who lived fewer years in the village. old age, level of education and poverty upward mobility according to table 4, level of education was a uniquely differentiating variable in the dispersion life cycle stage. majority households in cluster 1 of the dispersion life cycle stage had a mean average education level of grade 8, which represents upper basic education that can be used for employment in artisanship according to zambia education standards. the dispersion domestic life cycle stage is however, composed of elderly individuals who were no longer in employment. this information may corroborate the assumption that households moving into lighter poverty among the dispersion life cycle stage were doing so partly as a result of their earned pensions when they worked from outside the village and only returned recently, hence fewer years lived in the village. given the higher levels of education and the consequent possibility of earned pension from prior employment, households in the dispersion life cycle stage could have had their asset portfolios further improved upon receipt of agricultural assets. the likelihood of improved returns to assets may also explain why according to table 3, the dispersion life cycle stage had up to 20 % points increment in the number of households asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 412-423 420 moving into lighter income poverty experience. it was also possible that better educated household heads could use their literacy for improved decision making and more systematic planning which favour effective asset utilization. this information suggested that in this isolated area of the country, education earlier in life could be an important factor to improved wellbeing during old age reproductive stage family size and poverty upward mobility according to table 4, the number of own children and number of adult dependents significantly differentiated the clusters only in the reproductive life cycle stage. the reproductive life cycle stage symbolizes initial family formation. in table 4, cluster 1 which had majority households also had the smallest number of own children (m=3.17, f=7.431, p<.05), and the least number of old dependents (m= .11, f=10.256, p<.05) compared to cluster 2 (minority households) with respectively number of own children (m=5.44) and number of old dependents (1.44). while the relatively large family size in cluster 2 could represent a potential household labour pool for farm work, cluster 1 with majority households had a relatively smaller household size and such could have been partly the condition which enabled the households in the reproductive life cycle stage to migrate into lighter poverty experience. the smaller number of large households which were able to migrate into lighter poverty experiences could also be confirmation that household size is one of the key drivers into poverty lister (2004). the information suggests that having a larger family size during the early stages of family formation may be a hindrance to improved wellbeing. peer interaction and poverty upward mobility according to table 4, the reproductive life cycle stage was differentiated between how long friends visited the households, while the intermediate stage was differentiated between how long the households visited friends. while the two scenarios may have different implications; “…i can’t invite friends to visit me because i have nothing to give them…”, as one respondent retorted, unlike visits by relatives which often go with “checking on the health” or discussing family issues, there is an element of peer interaction when friends visit each other. while cluster 1 of the reproductive domestic life cycle stage showed that majority members were visited only half the time spent in cluster 2, cluster 1 for the intermediate life cycle stage shows that majority members spent slightly more time when they visited friends. this information suggests that peer visits among the youthful, reproductive life cycle stage take relatively shorter days while those in the intermediate life cycle stage, representing family maturity, generally take more days. these visits to and from friends inherently consist of some form of interaction that may involve exchange of rich new ideas and information which could favour effective asset utilization. this is more so that the kind of visits considered in the study were those involving friends from distant places outside the neighbourhood, as visits to places outside one’s community could have the advantage of structural holes, and thus the benefit of progressive information from diverse sources (kadushin 2012). the advantage of peer interaction lies in the more age-appropriate vocabulary and examples. according to the australian parental website (http://raisingchildren.net.au), experiences with peers affect social, emotional, and cognitive functioning beyond the influences of family and neighbourhood. the information therefore suggested that visits among peers especially between households in the reproductive and intermediate life cycle stages could have been a contributing factor to their poverty upward mobility. reproductive life cycle stage and upward mobility push factors for categorical (nominal) variables, the chisquare test was done with cluster analysis to determine whether there is any significant association between a given attribute and specific clusters. table 5 is the summary for cross tabs analysis using spss. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 412-423 421 table 5: chi-square statistics for categorical attributes categorical attributes reproductive intermediate dispersion chisquare sig chisquare sig chisquare sig experience in managing cattle .307 .580 1.362 .243 .629 .429 experience in managing chickens 4.320 .038 a* a* main on-farm income source 3.857 .277 2.315 .314 1.925 .165 ever had salaried job .297 .586 .425 .515 .505 .477 kind of salaried job 1.699 .428 5.689 .058 1.493 .474 visit to friend in last one year 1.985 .159 2.574 .109 1.061 .303 visit by friend in last one year 2,345 .125 1.534 .216 .505 .477 participation in village activities 6.750 .009 .833 .361 .052 .819 leadership position in village activities 3.068 .080 .172 .678 .505 .477 ever stood for elected office a* a* a* belief in traditional taboos 4.876 .181 .854 .652 2.357 .308 belief in religious taboos 2.025 .363 .735 .692 1.397 .497 assets once owned by parents 12.525 .002 2.078 .149 .196 .658 main off-farm income source 4.531 .104 3.242 .356 1.637 .804 ever lived outside home province 2.077 .150 .090 .764 .351 .554 source: field survey data (2011, 2012) note: a*: no statistics are computed because no household responded according to table 5, none of the categorical variables significantly differentiated the clusters under the intermediate and dispersion life cycle stages. in the reproductive life cycle stage however, there were significant associations between the clusters and respectively the experience of managing chickens (x2 =4.320, p<.05), participation in village activities (x2 =6.750, p<.05), and assets once owned by parents (x2 =12.525, p<.05). the rest of other attributes did not produce any significant associations. experience is a good teacher, so it is said. households that had previous experience of managing village chickens may have used their experience to more effectively manage and utilize the brooder chickens that were availed under the agricultural assets transfer, this information therefore suggests that prior experience of some activity may be advantageous when a similar activity is presented for improved livelihood purposes. participation in village activities provides an opportunity to show initiative and develop skills and boost self-confidence. getting involved with community activities makes individuals come into contact with positive role models, and cooperating with other adults encourages to see the world in different ways. community activities also give people a chance to apply the skills they already have, thus an opportunity to see how many skills one has, and how valuable they can be. consequently, such could have been partly the condition which enabled the majority households in the reproductive life cycle stage to migrate into lighter poverty experience. the types of assets one’s parents possessed at the time of beginning own adult life may be significant in laying a foundation for a smooth take off into the future. prior ownership of certain types of assets by one’s parents could play a catalytic role as stepping stone into lighter poverty experiences among households in the reproductive life cycle stage. in this study, majority of the parents owned cattle, and the role of parents’ cattle could be traced in the possibility of easily accessible animal draft power (oxen and accompanying equipment) in the absence of assets transfer, and thus helped to build an initial asset portfolio which was further built through assets transfer. the information above suggested that household heads in the reproductive life cycle stage who had prior experience of managing a given asset, participate in community activities, and their parents had valuable assets had a better opportunity to migrate into lighter poverty when availed agricultural production assets. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 412-423 422 using potential attributes to manage an asset transfer programmes the household attributes noted above as having potential to mediate utilization of transferred agricultural assets could also be used as basis for effectively targeting of agricultural assets beneficiaries and also for follow-up management of agricultural asset transfer programmes. an asset transfer programme aimed at demonstrating quick impact could for example deliberately leave out households with negative attributes such as larger family size in the reproductive stage, those who have lived only a few years in the village among reproductive and intermediate life cycle stages, or less educated elderly household heads in the dispersion stage. on the other hand a programme designed to reach out to the poor who lack the desired attributes could for example use absence of experience in managing a particular asset as basis for introducing a relevant training component to provide the needed experience. in the same vain, households characterised by lack of participation in village activities could either be subjected to conditional asset transfers that emphasise village community participation, or designed a deliberate exposure programme to the outside of their neighbourhood where they could learn from peers. conclusion agricultural assets transfer to poor rural households can help uplift their livelihoods by changing their experienced poverty for the better. however, the responses by households to agricultural assets transfer vary according to the domestic life cycle stages, with some life cycle stages showing more pronounced responses among households in some poverty dimensions than others. a good comprehension of intrinsic household characteristics could be helpful not only in selecting and determining which households may have the potential to quickly make the first steps out of poverty, but also help design follow up programmes to prop up the poorest with most disadvantaged attributes. the varied responses to agricultural production assets transfer imply that different domestic life cycle stages have particular social arrangements that influence their ability to utilize the availed production assets. this would suggest, therefore that anti-poverty programmes should pay enough attention not only to community age stratification but also to intrinsic household attributes and basic need areas which may respond most to interventions among the domestic life cycle stages. notes 1): the poverty line in zambia is calculated based on a costed food basket for a family of six and is occasionally adjusted after some considerations. 2): households were defined using the criteria of those “eating from the same pot”, sleep under the same roof and have been living together for more than six months. although multiple marriages are not uncommon in the study site, no polygamous households were included in the survey. references alejandro, g. (2001). choices for the poor: lessons from national poverty strategies, undp, pp. 25. australian parental website: http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/community_ activity_teenagers.html chronic poverty report (cpr) (2008-2009). escaping poverty traps, belmont press limited central statistics office of zambia (cso) (2010). living conditions monitoring survey, government printers, carter, m. and barret, c.(2006). the economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty: an asset based approach. journal of development studies, 42(2): 178-199. danziger, s. and plotnick, r. (1986). poverty and policy: lessons of the last two decades. social service review, 60(1): 34– 51. field, a. (2005). discovering statistics using spss, sage publications government of the republic of zambia (grz) (1996). the constitution of zambia, government printers guba, e. (1994). competing paradigms in qualitative research, sage publications http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/community_activity_teenagers.html http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/community_activity_teenagers.html asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(6) 2013: 412-423 423 hulme, d. and turner, m. (1990). sociology and development theories, policies and practices, harvest wheatsheaf kaunda, k. (1974). humanism in zambia and its implementation part two, national guidance division kadushin, c. (2012). undestanding social networks – theories, concepts and findings, oxford university press lister, r. (2004). poverty: key concepts, polity press mark, j. and lansby, s. (1985). poor britain, london press merriam, s. b. (1998). what is qualitative research?,qualitative research and case study application in education, josseybass minichiello, v. (1990). in depth interviewing: researching people, longman mooi, e. and sarstedt, m. (2011). a concise guide to market research, springer rencher, a. c. and christensen, w. f. (2012). methods of multivariate analysis, wiley sons robb, c. m. (2002). can the poor influence policy?, world bank shobe, m. and page-adams, d. (2001). assets, future orientation, and well being: exploring and extending sherraden's framework. journal of sociology & social welfare, 28(3): 109-127. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. assessment of feed supplementation to dairy goat: results of research and technology dissemination trials muhammad zubair anwar, akhter ali, m. azeem khan, nisar ali shah and ikram saeed (social sciences research institute, national agricultural research center, park road, islamabad, pakistan) citation: muhammad zubair anwar, akhter ali, m. azeem khan, nisar ali shah and ikram saeed (2012) “assessment of feed supplementation to dairy goat: results of research and technology dissemination trials”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 609 – 620. assessment of feed supplementation to dairy goat .... 609 author(s) muhammad zubair anwar, akhter ali, m. azeem khan and nisar ali shah, ikram saeed social sciences research institute, national agricultural research center, park road, islamabad, pakistan assessment of feed supplementation to dairy goat: results of research and technology dissemination trials abstract over the years, role and strength of dairy goat is increasing in barani tract of punjab. the bread and butter needs of poor and small household are largely depends on livestock specifically on the dairy goats. the 80 percent livestock management activities are mostly depends upon women; therefore under the experimentation of feed supplementation mainly women's were included as research partners. the women perceptions regarding the effectiveness of feed supplement were collected by using a well structured questionnaire. a total of 62 women's were included in the sample size. results indicated that 95.08% women's had shown their complete satisfaction from the feed supplements given to dairy goats. a large majority of the respondents (98.31) were in view that the given feed supplements had increased their milk productivity. overall, 82.69 % sample women had pointed out that their knowledge about goat management has increased with this experimentation. both empirical and experimental data shows a significant increase in milk yield i.e 520 ml and 562 ml respectively. the marginal rate of returns from milk was about 246.38 % that also revealed economic significance of the feed supplementation intervention to the dairy goats. the sustainability of feed supplementation has serious problem, about 67.27 percent respondents were in view that feed supplementation to dairy goat will not sustain due to resources poorness, availability and relatively importance of goat in household economy. keywords: barani, feed supplement, dairy goat, dissemination, productivity, sustainability, punjab background livestock is a major component of the barani farming systems and closely associated with crop production. it also considered as a substitute for crop farming and provides food security against crop failure. the socioeconomic and physiological conditions of the rainfall areas do not permit farmers to rely on crop production as a sole source of income. mainly uncertain and erratic rainfall cause crop failure and have adverse effect on the livelihood of the poor farmers. farmers therefore raise livestock as a security against crop failure, as a means of savings and a source of supplementary income. the crucial role of livestock is further highlighted by rapidly increasing demand for meat and milk products in the country. but in the rainfed areas, this sector confronts host of constraints which if circumvented can double the output of livestock products (khan et al 1999). the present project was initiated with the objectives to improve the women livelihood status by introducing improved goat production technologies. in the barani tract of punjab, role and strength of dairy goat has increased over the years table asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 609-620. 610 1. but unfortunately, milk yield of common goat breeds was very low and it was ranged between 250ml to 500ml per day. the less nutritive feed resources and five to six month fodder and forage scarcity were the main reasons. hence, to address these issue low cost feed supplementation trial were executed. these experiments were conducted in collaboration with the animal nutrition program of blpri, fateh jang, fodder/range research program and social sciences institutes of narc. overall this study is an effort to highlight and document the performance of the feed supplementation to dairy goats. about 90 % of the goat population is found in the developing countries (iqbal et al., 2008). dairy goat sector in developing countries is less developed; hardely less than 5 percent of the milk is traded (dubeut et al., 2004). pakistan being an agrarian country supports 56.7 million goats which are primarily being raised for mutton by millions of poor and landless communities. they are playing a significant role in the country’s economy by producing approximately 257 thousands tones mutton, 25 million skins and 21.4 thousand tones hair. they also produce about 851 thousands tones milk which amounts to 2.5 percent of the national milk supply (ali, 2006). goat milk consumption has become an upper edge for the human afflicted with peptic ulcers, allergy and various gastrointestinal disorders which usually develop from intolerance to cow milk (haenlein, 2004). goat milk has also been found to be useful for diabetic patients in japan (nagura, 2004). this facts also favours goats for dairying and can prove an ideal preposition especially for developing world where majority of goat population is found with people having low economic status. table 1: livestock inventory and changes in livestock composition (000) livestock species 1996 2000 % change cattle 183 131 -39.6 buffaloes 153 120 -27.25 sheep 125 100 -25.0 goat 378 449 15.8 source: punjab development statistics, 2000 this study is planned specifically to assess the short-term effects and impacts of feed supplementation intervention introduced by the nutrition program of the project. the study also aims to understand the technology choices and their impacts on the incomes of the farming community of the project area. the spillover effects of some of the matured technological components would also be measured. the prime intention of the study is to monitor the process of technologies dissemination, shortterm impacts of the given interventions, farmer’s adoption behavior, constraints and their possible solutions. this would serve as a feed back to the researchers and development agencies involved in this project. objectives  estimate the quantitative performance of feed supplementation interventions  understand farmers’ perceptions about the improved feed ration  examine the compatibility of feed supplementation interventions with the farm situations and rural livelihood strategies. hypothesis introduction of low cost improved feed ration have potential to raise milk productivity of the available goat breeds. methodology in order to see whether the given interventions properly targeted the intended beneficiaries or not, the implications of their diffusion are examined in a holistic manner in terms of the contribution they have added in their livelihood. it also empowers women’s by harnessing their views and transforming them to future development efforts. the approaches used specifically assess the given technologies in relation to the following: relevance to issue of women livelihood profitability of the intervention assessment of feed supplementation to dairy goat .... 611 accessibility of the intervention women’s perception regarding the adoption of proposed solution the assessment was quiet difficult because the performance of the technology depends on a variety of factors. therefore, both qualitative and quantitative information was collected and analyzed. the qualitative and quantitative analysis were mainly based on the descriptive statistics, benefit cost ratio (bcr), partial budgeting, marginal rate of return (mrr), marginal physical productivity (mpp) and marginal value of physical productivity (mvp). the data was collected by the use of pre-tested questionnaire. to solicit women’s perceived and observed benefits and costs of the technologies as well as their opinions on its potential adoption in different farm situations, a pre-tested questionnaire was used. mainly information was collected from the participating women’s. the information includes compatibility of technologies to the farm resource situations and their livelihood strategies established to improve the relevance of the technologies. the feed supplementation intervention was given to dairy goat in the ten selected villages. the overall participating women in this activity was about 100, 10 from each village. keeping in view the time and resources a sum of 62 women’s were selected as sample for this study. the village wise sample is given in table 1. table 2: sample size by villages villages frequency percent dewal 7 11.3 muthralla 5 8.1 dhok pathan 7 11.3 dhok mehar ali 7 11.3 diba harmal 6 9.7 dhok bali 6 9.7 thatti bangla 6 9.7 dhok khor 6 9.7 mehmood wala 5 8.1 murali 7 11.3 total 62 100.0 map of the selected villages asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 609-620. 612 empirical analysis the empirical analysis is carried out by employing the probit model given as results and discussion socioeconomic characteristics education education level of the sample women’s was low. among the sample women’s, majority 75.8 percent were illiterate, only 17.7 percent have education up to the primary level and 4.8 percent having education up to the middle level. it is well documented that education of the farmers has positive effect or role in the technology dissemination process. so in the present development effort, stakeholders should take in consideration that their working community is largely illiterate and unable to understand the complexities of the interventions. therefore, it is necessary to properly educate the women’s about the given technologies . table 3: education level of the sample farmers in the selected villages of the project education level frequency valid percent primary (1-5) 12 17.7 middle 3 4.8 no education 47 75.8 total 62 100.0 tenancy status before starting the on -going assessment, the necessary variables were discussed and in this regard it was suggested that among the socioeconomic variables, tenancy status of women’s must be focused because it plays an important role in the adoption of new technologies. so in the survey female’s families’ tenancy status was explored. the results given in table-3 show that almost in all of the selected villages, the distribution of women’s in the sample by tenancy status was very similar. majority (89.7%) being owners, 5.2 percent were owner-cum-tenants and a small proportion of about 5.2 percent was tenant. table 4: tenancy status of the sample farmers tenancy frequency valid percent owner 52 89.7 tenants 3 5.2 owner-cum-tenant 3 5.2 total 58 100.0 system 4 family size on an average, the family size of the sample households was 7.25 persons; it ranged between 2 to 24 persons. the family composition wise analysis shows a minor difference between male and female population. the estimated strength of females in household was about 3.95 as of the male population 3.48 persons. in the study area, handling of livestock is the main responsibility of females. so the composition of male and female is favorable for the promotion of dairy goat project interventions. assessment of feed supplementation to dairy goat .... 613 table 5: average family size and male and female status of the respondents family mean avg. family size 7.25 male 3.48 female 3.95 income sources the present study was conducted in the marginal areas of pothwar, punjab. people are mostly resource poor. they have limited means of resources. agriculture income depends upon the rainfall. therefore people are not completely relaying on agriculture solely. it is evident from table 5 that 40.13 percent household got their major share of income from the off-farm sources like jobs, labor work and self businesses in the nearest towns. a reasonable size of households 41.63 % revealed agriculture as their major source, while only 18. 24 highlighted livestock as their main sources of income. the income analysis of the households depicted two things, one that the farming community have tradition of goat business and earning some money from this enterprise. the second thing is that due to income from off-farm sources, household seems able to invest some money on the improved goat production technologies but it is subjected to the profit of the given intervention. if profit margins will be high farmers can easily attracted towards the improved goat production system. table 6: sample households main sources of income (recheck table) sources percent agriculture 41.63 livestock 18.24 offfarm 40.13 total 100.00 women’s motivational sources effective motivational sources always play an important role in the adoption and dissemination process of new technologies. it is well narrated in the literature that the influence of pears group, fellow farmers and progressive farmers worked well to convince local communities. the survey results also proved this notion. the data shows that majority of the women’s have been involved in the feed supplementation trials by the local facilitators and about 21 percent women responded that they have involved by their fellow women’s. the scientist’s contribution in motivating the women’s was very little (6.45 %) only. table 7: respondents involvement in dairy goat feeding trials by motivational source sources poor middle rich all facilitators (%) 83.33 73.33 40.00 72.58 farmers 16.67 17.78 60.00 20.97 scientists 0.00 8.89 0.00 6.45 total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 women’s perceptions about effectiveness of feed supplementation the women’s perceptions about the effectiveness of feed supplementation was collected and presented in the table 7. this data was analyzed by the household categories to see difference in their perspectives. the results depicted that across the household categories, a vast majority of the women’s 95.08 percent found the feed supplementation intervention very effective. to clarify their response, women’s were further asked how it is effective; majority of them highlighted that they have given their view on the basis of increase in milk yield. the regression (probit estimates) results regarding women’s perception regarding effectiveness of the feed supplement are presented in table 8. the age coefficient is positive and significant at 5 percent level of significance indicating that experienced females have positive views regarding effectiveness of feed supplement. the education is positive and significant at 1 percent level of significance indicating that educated females consider the new technology as an opportunity. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 609-620. 614 household category is positive and significant at 5 percent level of significance. the family size is negative and highly significant at 1 percent level of significance. the agriculture being main income source is positive and significant at 10 percent level of significant. the tenancy status is positive and non significant. the r square value is 0.24 indicating 24 percent variation in the dependent variable is due to independent variables and vice versa. the lr 2 value is 124 indicating the robustness of the variables included in the model. table 8: women’s views about the effectiveness of feed supplementation response poor middle rich total yes 91.67 97.73 80.00 95.08 no 8.33 2.27 20.00 4.92 total 100 100 100 100 table 9: women’s perception regarding effectiveness of feed supplement (probit estimates) variable coefficient t-values age 0.21** 2.14 education 0.27*** 3.86 household category 0.11** 2.02 family size -0.13*** -2.77 main source of income 0.14* 1.72 tenancy status 0.04 0.31 livestock number 0.16** 2.05 constant 0.17*** 2.65 number of observations 62 2r 0.240 lr 2 124.57 prob> 2 0.000 status of milk consumption domestic use of goat milk is common and almost all goat milk is consumed at home. in the survey, to see the significance of the feed supplementation, change in milk consumption was inquired. almost all the respondents were in view that their milk consumption has increased. the women’s were further asked whether they used milk for tea purposes or any other. majority around 60 percent were in view that increased milk is also used for tea purposes. while about 40 percent females have used additional milk for fattening of weaned kids. table 10: change in milk consumption response poor middle rich total yes 100 97.62 100.00 98.31 no 0 2.38 0.00 1.69 total 100 100.00 100.00 100.00 social advantages of the project activities the present activity was introduced for economic uplift of the poor women’s. the mechanism devised for the launching of project activities was participatory in nature. every stakeholder is supposed to interact with each other on bi-monthly or monthly basis. the purpose of this interaction was to discuss and share the personal experiences regarding the given interventions. to explore the social assessment of feed supplementation to dairy goat .... 615 cohesion among the stakeholders, women’s were asked whether they have intensified their social relationships. a vast majority of the women’s were in view that project activities have improved their relationships within the community and out of the community. a considerable percentage (23.26%) of woman’s was in view that relationship with the project staff (facilitators, blpri and narc scientists) has great value for them. table 11: women’s distribution regarding to whom relationship established categories poor middle rich total with fellow farmers 66.67 78.13 80.00 76.74 with project staff 33.33 21.88 20.00 23.26 total 100 100 100 100 main beneficiaries of the project interventions the present project was conceived to improve the poor women’s livelihood through modern dairy goat production technologies. the idea is good but needs to understanding the family systems prevailed in the respective communities. generally in the western world male and female keep and consumed their income independently but largely it is not common in pakistan. religiously and culturally male members of the family area responsible for the livelihood of the family, while women’s are supposed to take care the household activities. the income earned by the male family members considered the income of whole family. contrary to this if females earned some income from any source that is also used for the benefit of whole family. so the idea of improving women income is not working well in the socio-cultural patterns of pakistan. the sample women’s response regarding the question of the main beneficiary of the project intervention was very realistic. a vast majority of the women’s (92.98 %) pointed out that all family is benefited not only the female table 11. table 12: women views regarding the beneficiaries of the interventions beneficiaries poor middle rich total male 8.33 1.75 female 7.50 5.26 all family 91.67 92.50 100.00 92.98 total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 participating women knowledge about feed supplementation to evaluate and see the farmer’s interest and knowledge about the use of feed supplementation; farmers were asked whether they know about the ingredients of the feed ration. majority of the women’s 82.69 % pointed out that they know about the ingredients which used in the feed. the females were further inquired what kind of ingredients they have found in the feed ration. among the sample women’s, of 91. 84 percent knows partially about the ingredients. while 8.16 percent claimed that they have complete knowledge but when names of the items used in the feed was asked they were unable to identify all the feed ingredients. overall from this information it is reflected that majority of the women’s have taken serious interest in the feed supplementation trials. furthermore, almost all feed supplementation trials were handled by participating women’s. the participating women’s were also asked do they know about improved feed ration prior to this project. majority about 71 percent said no, while around 28 percent said yes they know about it table 13. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 609-620. 616 the healthy effects of feed supplementation on dairy goat were also discussed with the respondents. the participating communities highlighted that good health of the animal improve resistance against the diseases, around 83 percent were favouring this logic. while about 16 percent said feed supplementation not saved animals from diseases. table 13: do you know the ingredients of the fs ration knowledge poor middle rich total yes 66.67 84.21 100.00 82.69 no 33.33 15.79 17.31 total 100 100 100 100 extent of knowledge completely 14.29 8.11 8.16 partially 85.71 91.89 100.00 91.84 total 100 100 100 100 do you know fs prior to this project yes 33.33 25.64 40.00 28.30 no 66.67 74.36 60.00 71.70 total 100 100 100 100 saved from diseases yes 80 81.58 100.00 83.02 no 20 18.42 16.98 total 100 100 100 100 women perceptions about sustainability the actual success of any intervention depends upon its regular use. most of the time it was observed that during the project life participating communities used new intervention regularly and tries to show positive results. usually in the projects, technologies are demonstrated free of cost or provided on very nominal prices, therefore farmers continue new theologies, and they don’t want to lose free opportunity. this issue was seriously investigated during the on-going assessment of feed supplementation. overall 67.27 percent respondents were in view that feed supplementation to dairy goat will not be survived. while a considerable percentage of women’s (32.73%) said feed supplementation will sustain in their villages. resources poorness and relatively less economic importance of dairy goat are the main causes limiting its sustainability. table 14: women’s response regarding sustainability of feed supplementation response poor middle rich total fs will sustain or not yes 10 40 20 32.73 no 90 60 80 67.27 total 100 100 100 100 average increase in milk the main purpose of feed supplementation (fs) was to increase the goat milk yield. the feed supplementation was provided for 60 days to the selected goats. before starting the feed supplementation initial average milk yield was recorded i.e. 760 ml across the household categories, goat breeds and age of the goats. the average per day milk yield with feed supplementation was 1280 ml. it shows an average increase of 520 ml in 60 days feed supplementation. the data of milk yield was crosschecked through various means just to ensure the accuracy of the data. the estimated experimental goat milk yield was quiet comparable with survey results i.e. about 562 ml per day. assessment of feed supplementation to dairy goat .... 617 table 15: average increases in goat milk yield (across age & breed) household category avg. milk yield without feed supplementation (ml) avg. milk yield with feed supplementation (ml) avg. increase in milk yield (ml/day) poor 800 1375 575 middle 760 1260 500 rich 700 1250 550 all 760 1280 520 milk yield by age groups the collected information was also analyzed by age groups. the range of first group is 1 to 3.5 years of age, the second group comprised of 3.6 to 7 years of age and the third group includes the goats having age between7.1 to 12 years. the milk yield before feed supplementation shows higher milk yield in older group (880 ml), which is about 150 ml more than the first two group. overall, milk yield with feed supplementation has increased significantly, the yield of first group was 1300 ml, the second group produced 1220 ml and the older group has shown yield (1380 ml). however, comparatively increase in milk yield was higher in young age group i.e. 560 ml per day table 15. table 16: age wise milk status of dairy goats age groups (years) avg. milk yield without feed supplementation (ml) avg. milk yield with feed supplementation (ml) increase in milk yield (grams) 1- 3.5 740 1300 560 3.6--7 730 1220 490 7.1---12 880 1380 500 total 750 1270 520 breed wise milk yield feed supplementation was provided to different dairy goat breeds. the common breeds of the area were rulgud, teady, desi and betal. the genetic potential of these goats varied. among these breeds, betal goat has more milk potential as compared to the remaining breeds. the average milk yield of rulgud, teady, desi and beatl without feed supplementation was 690ml, 710ml , 880ml, 1080ml respectively. while with feed supplementation average milk yield increased across the breeds but relatively increase was higher in desi breed (620ml). the less increase in betal milk was due to higher age of the selected goats. table 17: breed wise increase in milk goat breeds avg. milk yield without feed supplementation (ml) avg. milk yield with feed supplementation (ml) avg. increase in milk yield (ml) rulgud 690 1200 510 teady 710 1060 350 desi 880 1500 620 betal 1080 1500 420 level of feed used and increase in milk the economical use of feed supplementation is necessary to harvest the optimum benefits. in the survey it was observed that the women’s are using different quantities of feed. the women’s used 250 gram feed per were getting 1270 ml milk per day, while the group who used 251 to 500 gram feed was getting 1160 ml milk and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 609-620. 618 the last group used more than 501 to 1000 gram feed daily were getting 1080ml milk on daily basis. the corresponding effect of feed supplementation shows that use of 250 gram feed is more economical than the higher quantities of the feed used. the experimental results are also supporting the survey results where 242.7 gram feed has increased milk yield up to the 564.2 litre milk per day. table 18: level of feed consumed and average milk yield sr. no quantity of feed (grams) avg. milk yield (ml) survey result 1 up to 250 gm 1270 2 251 to 500gm 1160 3 above 501 to 1000 gm 1080 experimental result 1. 242.7gm 564.2 feed supplementation and increase in goat price feed supplementation has positive effects, one on milk yield and on the other hand also improves the goat health. bother these effects have produced economic benefits for the respective communities. the relative information was analyzed by different age groups of the goats. the results reveals that market price of all groups has increased but comparatively prices of the goats having age between 3.6 to 7 years was increased more (rs 1392). the increase in prices of older group was relatively less which is quiet logical and looking according to the prevailing market norms. the overall increase was about rs. 1312 table 18. table 19: average increase in goat price with 2 months feed supplementation age group anticipated price of goat without feed supplementation anticipated price of goat with feed supplementation increase in price 1- 3.5 4979 6292 1313 3.6--7 5318 6711 1392 7.1---12 6375 7125 750 total 5220 6532 1312 partial budgeting of feed supplementation the partial budget analysis of feed supplementation to dairy goat is presented in below table. from this table it is evident that feed supplementation to dairy goat is a very profitable intervention. the fixed costs are same, only difference is in the operational cost. among the operational cost only cost that varies is feed cost, no additional labor or marketing costs involved. the supplemented feed has produced two types of benefits. one is increase in milk and the other was increase in the physical value of the goat. the estimated gross filed benefits from the conventional method was about rs 1094 and from the improved rationing, gross field benefits from 60 day feeding was rs. 1843 per goat. the market value of feed supplemented goat has also increased, the market price of conventional goat was estimated rs. 5220, while the goat supplied supplementation ration, has got more market prices rs 6532. the simple reason behind this increase was the good health of the animals. the marginal rate of return from both milk and market price was about 677.96%, which shows significant economic benefit from the given intervention. the marginal rate of returns from only milk was about 246.38% that also revealed the economic significance of the feed supplementation intervention to the dairy goats. assessment of feed supplementation to dairy goat .... 619 table 20: partial budget analysis of dairy goat (2month feed supplementation) sr. items conventional improved a average milk yield (grams /day) 760 1280 b variable costs (rs/60day) 1085 1389 c cost that vary (rs/60 day) 0 304 d avg. milk price (rs/liter) 24 24 e gross field benefit from milk (rs/60day) 1094 1843 f *gross field benefit from goat price increase 5220 6532 g gross field benefit e+f 6314 8375 h cost benefit ratio (only milk) 1 : 1.00 1 : 1.4 i cost benefit ratio (only increase in price) 1 : 5.2 j cost benefit ratio (e+f) 1 : 6.1 k mrr only from milk 246.38% l mrr only from increase in goat price 431.57 m mrr from both milk and goat price 677.96% *increase in price due to goat health improvement conclusions and recommendations the study was conducted in the 10 selected villages of the dairy goat project. the total sample of the study was 62. on an average 6 farmers out of ten were interviewed. the respondents were the participating women’s. most of the sample females were poor and having less education. majority 75.8 percent were illiterate, only 17.7 percent have education up to the primary level and 4.8 percent having education up to the middle level. the family size was ranged between 224 but on an average, family size was 7.25 persons. majority of the women’s 89.7 percent have own agricultural lands, 5.2 percent were owner-cumtenants and a small proportion 5.2 percent was tenant. it is evident from table 5 that 40.13 percent household got their major share of income from the off-farm sources like jobs, labor work and self businesses in the nearest towns. around 40.13 percent household got their major share of income from the off-farm sources (jobs, labor work and self businesses in the nearest towns), while 41.63 % highlighted agriculture and 18. 24 pointed out livestock as their main sources of income. more than 90 percent female pointed out feed supplementation as an effective intervention. the women’s were in view that project activities have improved their relationships within the community and out of the community (facilitators, blpri and narc scientists). a vast majority of the women’s (92.98 %) pointed out that dairy goat intervention has benefited to the whole family not only the female members. initial average milk yield was about 760 ml across the household categories, goat breeds and age of the goats. the average per day milk yield with feed supplementation was 1280 ml. it shows on an average increase of 520 ml in 60 days feed supplementation. age wise analysis shows that as compared to other groups increase in milk yield was higher in young age group 560 ml per day. the breed wise analysis of milk yield reflected that with conventional feed, rulgud, teady, desi and beatl goats are yielding 690ml, 710ml, 880ml, and 1080ml respectively. while with feed supplementation average milk yield increased across the breeds but relatively increase was higher in desi breed (620ml). the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 609-620. 620 use of 250 gram feed was comparatively more economical than the higher quantities of the feed used. the results reveal that market price of all groups has increased but comparatively prices of the goats having age between 3.6 to 7 years have yielded more benefits rs 1392. the marginal rate of return from both milk and increase in market price of goat was about 677.96%, which shows positive economic significance of the given intervention. the preliminary results show positive effect of feed supplementation on goat milk yield. now in the future experimentation it will be better if we repeat these trials on different goat breeds having variations in the age groups. it will help us in further précising the research results and satisfying the farming communities. it was observed that women’s are using different levels of feed use. while majority of them were resource poor. therefore, it is necessary to create awareness about the economical use of feed supplementation ration. the education program seems important in this regard. the availability of feed supplementation ration is a critical question associated with this intervention. hence it is important for the project team to develop a viable feed marketing mechanism during and after the completion of project. value addition in local feed resources or combinations of these resources must be incorporated in the next year feed supplementation trials. regularly monitoring of the activities by the concerned program needs to be ensured. it is necessary to answer the practical problems and further to satisfy the farming communities. references ali, q. (2006) “goats-undervalued assets in asia. in: proceed. the arhca-ilri regional workshop on goat production systems and markets”, luang prabang, lao pdr, 24-25 october: 47-49. dubeut, j. p., r. morand-fehr and r. rubino, (2004) “situation, changes and future of goat industry around the world”, small ruminants research, vol. 51, pp. 165-173. haenlein, g. f. w. (2004) “goat milk in human nutrition”, small ruminants research, vol. 51, pp. 155-163. iqbal, a., b. b. khan, m. tariq and m. a. mirza, (2008) “goat a potential dairy animal: present and future prospectus”, pakistan journal of agricultural science, vol. 45(2), pp. 38-44. khan, m.a. m. i., sheikh, a. d., khan, n. a. and tariq, b. (1999) “baseline survey of livestock management in the rainfed farming systems of pothwar and shakargarh, punjab”, gtz, gmbh. socioeconomic research studies ssi, narc. govt. of pakistan (2000) district census report chakwal, population census organization, statistics division, government of pakistan, islamabad. nagura, y. (2004) “utilization of goat milk and meat in japan”, farming japan, vol. 36. pp. 69-73. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. hot bed & cold frame construction and use pradeep kumar singh (assistant professor cum junior scientist, division of vegetable science skuast-k shalimar campus srinagar-191121) citation: pradeep kumar singh (2012) “hot bed & cold frame construction and use”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 447-451. hot bed & cold frame construction..... 447 author(s) pradeep kumar singh assistant professor cum junior scientist, division of vegetable science skuast-k shalimar campus srinagar-191121 email: pradeepsingh584@gmail.com hot bed & cold frame construction and use introduction hot beds and cold frames are used by gardeners for propagating vegetables, flowers and ornamentals. hot beds are used for starting the plants and cold frames for tempering or hardening plants to outdoor conditions before transplanting. for most home gardeners the same frame can serve both purposes. the principle difference between the two is that hot beds have a heat source. traditionally, hot beds and cold frames were built even with or slightly below ground level and covered by glass sash. present-day frames are often completely above ground and plastic covered because film is generally available at a reasonable cost. location hot beds and cold frames should always be located on well-drained soil, free from flooding during heavy rain. a location with a southern exposure and adequate wind protection on the north and west is ideal. locate close to water and heat sources. the management it is worth to orient the hot bed in south west directions. size almost any size hot bed can be electrically heated; however, most are from 5 to 6 feet wide and 6 to 12 feet long. the ultimate size is dependent on planting requirements, kinds of plants, number of plants and spacing. if glass sash will be used to cover, the length is usually in multiples of 3 feet; however, plastic coverings do not limit dimensions. materials most beds are constructed with wood sidewalls; however, more permanent beds can be made of poured concrete or masonry blocks. wooden walls and supports should be painted or treated with copper napthenate mailto:pradeepsingh584@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 447-451. 448 but not creosote or pentachlorophenol, as both are harmful to plants. construction sash type excavate the bed area 8 inches deep. after walls are built, apply 6 inches of gravel or coarse sand for drainage. add a layer of burlap or other material to prevent sand from sifting down. add a 2-inch layer of sand on which the heating cables are laid. two more inches of sand should be applied over the heating cables and the sand covered with 1/2 inch hardware cloth to protect the cables. place either propagating medium or flats over the hardware cloth. construct the back or north wall 18 inches above the level at which the heating cable is placed. side walls usually slope toward the front about 1 inch per foot of width. a 6 foot wide bed will be 12 inches high in front. the footing for concrete or block walls must be placed below the frost line. nail a 1 x 4 inch board to the outside top edge of the back and side walls. (the sashes extend over the edge of the front wall to shed water.) the boards serve as weather stripping and reduce heat loss between walls and sashes. blank soil against the outside of the walls to prevent air leakage. the sash or plastic-covered frames, sometimes hinged at the back, are lifted in front and braced open for ventilation. hotbed a hot bed is generally a mass of well prepared manure placed out doors with a glass or polythene frame placed on top to it. the principle on which the hot bed works is that fresh manure (cow dung/sheep yard manure and poultry manure) ready for fermentation generates heat which is actually utilized to quick the germination by providing suitable conditions for germination and faster growth of the seedlings which result in early maturity of the crop. hotbed, obvious as it may sound, is basically a cold frame with heat. while cold frames receive all of their heat directly from the sun, hotbeds are heated with electric soil cables, stable manure or steam, or hot water heated with flues. the hotbed can be used earlier in the spring and laterin fall and early winter than the cold frame. hotbeds are constructed just the same as cold frames, with a slope to the south to admit heat from the sun and to allow water or snow to run off. plants growing in these frames are protected on cold spring nights with the same kind of mats suggested for cold frames. hotbeds are usually built to be permanent structures, with the frame of wood, concrete, or brick extending into the ground below the frost line. as with the cold frame, you can build it yourself, purchase a kit of materials for building it, buy a ready-built one, or have someone construct the entire thing for you. a soil-heating cable furnishes the simplest kind of heat for the hotbed and these cables come in a variety of sizes and prices. the type used for hotbeds is insulated and enclosed in lead or plastic sheathing. the cables are made in several lengths but the most useful sizes are 40, 60, or 80 feet, all adapted for use with an ordinary electric service of 110 volts. a 60-foot cable will heat a 6by 6-foot hotbed. you should reckon your cable to suit your space. each 60-foot cable carries an electrical load of approximately 400 watts. in our area the cost of operating such a cable on a continuous 24-hour basis is about 1 cent per hour. you should have a thermostat to regulate air temperature and another to regulate soil temperature. however, you will find that during many hours of the day the sun will heat the hotbed enough so the thermostat shuts off the current. as spring nears, the outdoor temperature rises and the artificial heat will be on for shorter periods can conserve heat by making certain that all construction is tight. bank the sides of the hotbed with earth and check the sash-it should fit tightly. if it doesn't, weather-strip the top of the frame. make sure that all glazing is well puttied and that it laps j4 inch at joining. keep the glass clean to admit maximum light. in my area it is not practical of time. use a hotbed before march first. as the spring temperature increases, start ventilating the hotbed by raising the sash a crack. this applies equally to cold frames. hot bed & cold frame construction..... 449 from midday until mid-afternoon on warm spring days, you will have to ventilate more. be sure to close the frame before the temperature falls at night. hot bed size hot bed size should conveniently about 6 feet long + 3 feet width and 2 feet above the ground level in case of raised bed. it is usually better to have a sunken hot bed than a raised bed growing to the fact that a sunken hot bed achieves a steadier and lasting heat. the depth of sunken hot bed should in no case exceed 2 feet below the ground level. essential items required for the construction of hot bed in general way timber + paddy grass + polythene sheet + filler + cheese cloth + matting + shade paint in advanced way insulated cables + supply of electricity +thermostat to regulate air temperature timber about 0.7 cfts of timber are required for the construction of hot beds. this is the only costly item required in the hot bed however; instead of costly timber straight popular of willow twigs of 1.6 to 2.5 inch in the diameter can also be used conveniently in the construction of hot bed frame and lid to reduce the cost component. the number of timber pieces required in the construction of the hot bed frame and lid along with the dimension is as follows: length size (inches) number of pieces 2.0 2 x2 3 2.5 2 x2 3 3.0 2 x 2.5 5 7.0 2 x 2.5 5 the sides of hot bed are best constructed in concrete. the concrete method is the costly method as an initial expense but over a period of years it is not more expensive than any type of system. paddy grass generally nineteen bundles of paddy straw are required for covering the sides of the hot bed frame. in case paddy grass is not available the sides should also be covered by polythene sheet of heavy gauge about 200 mm to avoid leakage of water and heat from the sides of the hot bed. about 1.5 kg polythene is sufficient to cover the sides as well as lid. filling material staple material in the formation of a hot bed is cow dung as well as poultry manure of 2025 days old well rotted. manures is turned several times at an interval of 2-4 days at least for 20 days for allowing steam and ammonia gas to escape. sowing time, seed rate per bed (3 x 1m 2 ) and number of beds needed per hectare vegetables time of sowing seed rate per bed 3 x1 m 2 no. of beds needed ha1 cauliflower march, june, oct 40-50 10 cabbage march, july 50-75 10 chinese cabbage april, aug-sep 50-60 16 celery april, aug-sep 80 4 capsicum april-may 115-120 12 chillies april-may 125-150 8 brinjal april-may 35-40 15 tomato april-may 40-50 8 broccoli march-april august-september 200 5 brussels sprout march-april august-september 150 5 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 447-451. 450 knol-khol march-april july-august 50-60 25 kale march-april, aug 50-60 25 lettuce march-april augustseptember 50-75 10 onion august 140-150 60 cucurbits may there is different waiting duration of germination for various vegetables in hot house effect of germination period (days) of various vegetable crops in hot beds and cold frames name of the vegetables seed germination (days) broccoli 3-10 brinjal 8-14 brussels sprouts 3-10 cabbage 6-10 cauliflower 6-10 capsicum 8-14 chillies 8-14 knol-khol 3-5 kale 3-5 lettuce 6-10 onion 8-14 cucurbits 6-10 how to build a cold frame the frame should face south. if you are going to have but one frame you might want to attach it to your south greenhouse wall. if you plan on a number of frames, build them in rows either free-standing in the garden or attached to the greenhouse, garage, or other building. in cold-winter areas the frames should be provided with a cover of matting, either the roll-up kind or straw mats. wooden slats, cheesecloth, and shading paint compounds help protect plants in the frame from summer sun. standard-sized sash for use on the frame come 3 by 6 feet. if you purchase this, you will have to govern the width and length of your frame accordingly. however, use any kind of window frame, and with so many home owners converting wooden window frames to aluminium, may be able to get wooden storm sash for little or no cost from almost any window or wrecking company or through a want in q local paper. it may be easiest for you to obtain the sash and then construct the frame around it. here's how we built our cold frame. for the back we used the cement wall of garage. the frame is 18 inches high in the back, sloping to 8 inches in front, to allow water to run off. lumber, 2 by 12 inches, 14½ feet, forms the front. the sides are 28 inches long. the lights (three storm sash) are hinged on a 2 by 4 wooden strip which is nailed to the garage wall. if live in a cold climate and plan on using the cold frame for year-round growing, build it on a concrete or brick foundation which extends below the frost line. in areas of the building code specifies that the frost line is 42 inches deep. on sunny days, even in midwinter, you'll have to be careful about ventilation. heat can build up rapidly in the confinement of a cold frame and "cook" the plants. a notched stick will make it easy to raise the sash cover as needed. above-ground plastic covered type units of this nature may be of most any form, from arch, a-frame to quonset, with the structure of wood or thin-wall electrical conduit. these frames are inexpensive to build and easy to construct. the frames are covered with 4-mil clear polyethylene plastic film designed to be rolled down the ridge or up the sides to allow for adequate ventilation. hot bed & cold frame construction..... 451 heating although steam, hot water and even manure have been used to heat hot beds, most home gardeners use electric cables. a thermostat is needed to control the temperature in the bed. although heating cables operate on either 240 or 120 volts, most small beds of 10 feet or less can be satisfactorily operated on a 120 volt system. one 60 foot cable is required for a 6 x 6 foot bed and two 60 foot cables for a 6 x 12 foot bed. the cables should be arranged in the beds. heating cables and thermostats are available from mail order and garden supply centres. use a soil temperature of 18 to 20 0 c is ideal for germination of most seeds. following germination, adjust the temperature to suit the particular plant. cool-season crops such as lettuce, cabbage and cauliflower require an air temperature during the day of 20 to 25 0 c. warm-season crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and melons require an air temperature of 25 to 30 0 c. night temperatures are usually 10 to 12 0 c lower than day air temperatures. if the air temperature in the bed goes above 30 0 c, ventilation will be necessary. the beds usually require ventilation on all mild, sunny days. electrically-heated beds tend to dry the medium rapidly, and attention to watering is a must. the soil should be kept moist at all times but not wet. apply water in the morning so the plant foliage will dry before evening. cold frames a cold frame is an outdoor growing "area" built without a bottom but with a solid-sided frame of wood, cement or brick, and a removable hinged top, glazed with glass, fiberglas, or plastic. cold frames are invaluable. for instance, they take some of the spring bulge from a greenhouse. by using them for growing greenhouse-started annuals and perennials, you make underglass room for a new crop of scalable plants. then there are plants such as delphiniums, pansies, and oriental poppies, to be planted in the frame in late summer and kept there over winter. the cold frame makes an excellent "cold-42 conditioning" rooting area for the spring-flowering bulbs wish to force. purchase material and build your own cold frame, buy ready-fitted supplies from a greenhouse dealer and assemble it, or buy a ready-made cold frame of wood or aluminium with plastic "lights." owners of home greenhouses invariably have one problem in common. they do not build them large enough. this is an especially knotty situation for those of us who have profit in mind. if you are in this boat, you will welcome ideas on obtaining more growing space with the use of "auxiliary growing facilities," such as cold frames, hotbeds, and lath houses. © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 assessment of the impact of extension services on fish farming in ekiti state, nigeria agbebi, f. o. (department of forestry, wildlife and fisheries management, university of ado ekiti, nigeria) to cite this article: agbebi, f. o. (2012). assessment of the impact of extension services on fish farming in ekiti state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1), 62-68. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 62-68 © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author (s) agbebi, f. o. department of forestry, wildlife and fisheries management, university of ado ekiti, nigeria email funmiaquaconsult@gmail.com assessment of the impact of extension services on fish farming in ekiti state, nigeria abstract the study was carried out to assess the impact of access to extension services on fish farming in ekiti state, nigeria. specifically, the study investigated the socio – economic characteristics of fish farmers, information disseminated to fish farmers, attributes of extension agents, and farmers’ access to extension services and farmers profitability. a wellstructured questionnaire was used to collect information from the farmers and a sample size of 90 fish farmers was selected from the six local government selected. analysis of data was carried out using frequency and percentage tables and gross margin analysis was used to determine the profitability of the farmers. there was relationship between farmers’ access to extension services and their profitability. it was recommended that extension agents should intensify their efforts in reaching farmers and passing useful information to them in order to increase farmers’ profitability. keywords: extension services, fish farming, ekiti state, nigeria introduction the term extension was derived from the practice of british universities of having one educational programme within the premises of the university and another away from the university buildings. the programme conducted outside the university was described as “extension education”. the expression connoted an extension of knowledge from the university to places and people far beyond. the term “extension education” was first introduced in 1873 by cambridge university in england to describe a particular system dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge to rural people where they lived and worked. within a short time, the idea had spread to other parts of britain, europe and north america and africa. (kelsey and heame, 1966). agricultural extension has three main facets:  as a discipline it deals with the behaviour of people: it is educational in content and purposive in approach. whether the content consists of agriculture, medicine, education, engineering etc, extension is always dependent on a firm knowledge and expertise.  as a process, agricultural extension seeks to influence the behaviour of rural through education and information exchange.  as a service, agricultural extension makes the government ministry, the university or voluntary agency as useful as possible of the people who support it through taxes and donations. agricultural extension is defined by ekpere (1990) as the discipline which seeks to develop professional competencies essential to the operation of a system of services which assist rural people through educational programmes of improved farming methods and techniques, increased production efficiency and income, level of living and achievement of a more fulfilling rural life. the extension agents carried out the responsibilities of educating and disseminating useful and timely agricultural information to the farmers. williams (1978) reported that the conduct of agricultural extension work in nigeria shows that one of the primary responsibilities is to help farmers make efficient use of available resources to meet the nation’s food needs. the goal of agricultural extension services in nigeria is to facilitate farmers acceptance while the ultimate goal of agricultural extension is to improve standard of living through the transfer of improved farming practices to the rural people. information is an indispensable factor in agricultural practices and it is the basis of extension service delivery. it is defined by adereti et al. (2006) as data that have been put into a meaningful and useful context which is communicated to recipient who uses it to make decision. fish farming information can be considered as all published or unpublished knowledge in all aspects of culture fish production. adereti et al. (2006) stated that the quality of information rests solidly on three pillars which are: accuracy, timeliness and relevance. accuracy implies that information is free from bias; timeliness means that recipients can get information when they need it, while relevance implies whether the piece of mailto:funmiaquaconsult@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 62-68 63 information specifically answers the user’s question. an individual consciously or unconsciously engages in information search in order to find appropriate information which can fill the information gap there by regaining physiological and psychological balance. information needed by fish farmers include information on pond construction, stocking, pond management, fish breeding, credit, fish harvesting, feed formulation, group formation and marketing outlets etc. however, agricultural extension agents carry out this particular responsibility by using various strategies to encourage farmers to adopt agricultural innovations. these strategies include establishment of farm institutes, extension work station, experimental farms, visits to farms and various types of farm settlement schemes. each strategy has met with some amount of success but the rate of farmers’ acceptance and use of agricultural innovations is still low. the importance of fish in human nutrition as a major source of protein cannot be over emphasized as it touches the lives of a large percentage of the population of the world. as population increases, the demand for fish and fish products increases, especially with its nutritional advantage over meat. this calls for improved fish farming technologies and other information needed for improved production level. therefore this study aimed at assessing the impact of access to extension services on fish farming in ekiti state nigeria. this is to have right assessment of the extension agent’s performance in the study area. in nigeria today, the population keeps increasing and these made the consumer demand for fish to increase since fish is a good source of protein. in order to meet this demand private sector were encouraged to invest in fish production and this has led to positive result in the production of fish to the populace. however, fisheries department has been the most important source of information for fish farmers and this is why a fish farming extension service is needed in fishery sector. objectives of the study the main objective of the study is to assess the impact of access to extension services on fish farming in ekiti state, nigeria. the specific objectives are: i. to determine the socio–economic characteristic of the fish farmers in ekiti state. ii. to determine farmers profitability in relation to access to extension services. iii. to identify the information been disseminated to fish farmers by the extension agents. iv. to determine farmers’ perception of extension agents in the area of information dissemination. present level of fish production in nigeria in nigeria, fish alone contributes on the average 20 – 25% per caput animal intake and could be as high as 80% in coastal and riverine communities (fao, 2000). tobor (1992) and ajana (2002) reported that the average annual demand for fish in nigeria between 1995 and 2000 was estimated at 1.22 million metric tonnes and that this might increase to about 1.425 million metric tonnes by the year 2005. adamu (2007) however, gave the actual total domestic fish production in 2005 as 579,500 tonnes, while production from aquaculture was 56,300 tonnes in the same year (table 2.1). fasasi (2003) put the demand – supply gap of fish in nigeria as 1.0 million metric tonnes while fingerlings demand – supply gap is over 500 million. according to satia (1990), artisanal fisheries contribute about 491 million tones, aquaculture, about 57 million tonnes, industrial (trawler), about 33 million tonnes and distance fishing (imports) about 612 million tonnes. from the above analysis, less than 50% of the total annual fish consumed by nigerians are produced locally. there is, therefore, the need not only to maximize the exploitation of our fishery resources but to concentrate more on the development of aquaculture which has the greatest potential to increase fish production for local consumption and export. overview of fish farms in ekiti state ekiti state is a non – coastal state, fish production in the state comes from rivers, man-made lakes, earthen and concrete fish ponds and backyard fish ponds. the most common method of fish farm development in ekiti state involves construction of one or more earthen ponds, with or without small dug out ponds downstream and construction of concrete ponds. access to adequate information is very essential to increased agricultural productivity (mgbada, 2006). the information on fish farming needed for farmers cover pond construction, stocking, pond management, fish breeding, water quality management, credit, fish harvesting, feed formulation, group formation and marketing outlets. methodology the research was carried out in ekiti state. the state is situated entirely within the tropics in the south west nigeria. it is located between longitude 40 451 and 50 451 east of the greenwich meridian and latitude 700 151 and 800 51 north of the equator. it lies south of kwara and kogi state and by ondo state in the east and in the south. the state enjoys tropical climate with two distinct seasons. these are rainy season between april and assessment of the impact of extension……. 64 october, and dry season between november and march. temperature ranges between 210c and 280 c with high humidity. the state is endowed with water resources. some of its major rivers are ero, osun, ose, ogbese and oni. figure 1: map of ekiti state the primary data source for this study was a wellstructured questionnaire. however, personal interview was conducted for those who could not read and write base on the items on the questionnaire. the secondary data was collected from ekiti state ministry of agriculture and rural development, department of fisheries. information collected are the socio – economic characteristics of the farmers, extension information disseminated to the farmers, farmers perceptions of the extension agents, farmers annual variable cost and annual yield. the dependent variable is the farmer’s profitability which was determined by using gross margin analysis to compare the profitability of those that has access to extension service and those that doesn’t have access. the independent variables consist of the socio – economic characteristics of the fish farmers and access to extension services. multi – stage sampling was applied in the study. six local government areas were randomly selected from the sixteen local government areas that constitute the study area. fifteen fish farmers were then selected purposively from each of the local government selected to give a total of 90 respondents. descriptive statistics was used to describe the socio – economic characteristics of the farmers and for analyzing the data that needed no inferential analysis. gross margin analysis (gm) was used to estimate the profitability of fish farmers that has access to extension services and was compared with those farmers that does not have access to extension services in the study area. the gm is the difference between the total revenue (tr) and the total variable cost (tvc). total variable cost is operating expenses. the gm was thus operationalized as the profit residual after payment for the variable costs of production total revenue = yield (kg/ha) x market price: (gm = tr – tvc). the greater the gm, higher the profitability. result and discussion table 1: socio–economic characteristics of respondents socio – economic characteristics frequency percentage age (years below 20 0 0 21 – 30 9 10 31 – 40 52 57.8 41 – 50 26 28.9 above 50 3 3.3 level of education primary education 4 4.4 secondary education 10 11.1 tertiary education 75 83.3 no formal education 1 1.1 gender male 86 95.6 female 4 4.4 marital status single 14 15.6 married 71 78.9 divorced 2 2.2 widowed 3 3.3 fish farming experience (years) < 5 56 62.2 5 – 10 24 26.7 11 – 15 8 8.9 above 15 2 2.2 membership of social group co-operative society 25 27.8 fish farmers association 4 4.4 monthly or daily contribution 8 8.9 none 53 58.9 table 1 shows that majority of the fish farmers were between the ages of 31 – 50 years. this is because fish farming requires adequate attention and a lot of sense of responsibility. the young people in the rural communities are mostly, pursuing tertiary education between the ages of 20 – 30 years and pay much attention to their studies and have little or no time for other serious activities, people above the age of 50 were few in fish farming because they lack adequate strength and vigor required in the management of fish farms. majority asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 62-68 65 (83.3%) of the respondents had one form of tertiary education or the other, while 11.1% and 4.4% had secondary and primary education respectively. just 1.1% had no formal education. this means that fish farming is dominated by the educated class with tertiary education. this is so because fish farming requires a lot of technical and scientific knowledge. the information on the innovations of fish farming is somehow complex and this need some high level of education to practice and the more educated an individual is, the easier it will be for him or her to decode and process information. male (95.6%) dominates in fish farming. the male dominancy in this source of livelihood implies the laborious nature of fish farming operations right from pond construction to management which their female counterparts cannot easily undertake. on the marital status, 78.9% were married. this suggests that there may be high demand for food and additional income as the family size increases. few percentages (15.6%) of the respondents were single and this indicates that they are youth and they still have strength to work on the pond without hiring labour. those that are widowed were 3.3% and 2.2% were divorced. as for fish farming experience, 62.2% of the respondents had been involved in fish farming for less than 5years and 2.2% for above 15years. this connotes that fish farming diffused very slowly among the farmers in the study area but involvement of farmers in fish farming in the last 5years had greatly increased. majority (58.9%) of the fish farmers did not belong to any social group while 27.8% subscribed to cooperative societies. those engaged in monthly contribution constituted 8.9%of the respondents, while 4.4% of them held membership of fish farmers association. those that did not belong to any social group are many because majority of the farmers in the study area lack knowledge on the benefits of those social groups. those that are members of co-operative societies did so mainly to have access to credit, input and aids from government and extension services. those engaged in monthly contribution did so to enhance their savings and those that belong to fish farmers association did so to have easy access to extension services, market and credit facilities table 2: farmers distribution by the information received from extension agents information frequency percentage pond construction 34 37.8 stocking 36 40 pond management 38 42.2 fish breeding 33 36.7 credit 35 38.9 fish harvesting 39 43.3 feed formulation 29 32.2 group formation 30 33.3 marketing 40 44.4 record keeping 25 27.8 fish preservation 37 41.1 table 2 above shows the distribution of the information disseminated by the extension agents to the farmers. majority of those that had access to extension services had information on marketing (44.4%), fish harvesting (43.3%), pond management (42.2%), fish preservation (41.1%) and stocking (40%). this is because these are the most common fish farming operations that are done routinely by the farmers. so the farmers were eager to get information on these operations. about 38.9% had information on credit, 37.8% had information on pond construction, 36.7% had information on fish breeding, 33.3% had information on group formation and 32.2% had information on feed formulation. this is because most of these operations were carried out by outside consultants, so the farmers pay little attentions to them. record keeping had the least with 27.8%, this implies that the farmers in the study areas lack appropriate information on record keeping and this is the reason why they lack adequate data on their farming operation. so, the extension workers should try and pay more attention to this. all this information will make the fish farmers to improve on their farming operation which will lead to high profitability. table 3: distribution of farmers by perception of the extension agents attributes of extension agents frequency percentage punctuality 41 45.6 energetic 37 41.1 patience 39 43.3 approachability 38 42.2 cordiality 36 40 cheerfulness 39 43.3 accepts no offer in cash/kind 33 36.7 ability to carry people along 37 41.1 ability to demonstrate 40 44.4 ability to proffer solution to problems 39 43.3 table 3 shows the farmers perception score of the extension agents. more than 40% of the farmers reported that the extension agents were punctual, had ability to demonstrate, cheerful, had ability to proffer solution to problems, approachable, energetic, had ability to carry people along and cordial. about 36.7% of the farmers revealed that extension agents do not accept offer assessment of the impact of extension……. 66 of cash or kind. those that did not respond are those that had no access to extension services. table 4: distribution of farmers in each local government area in the study area based on access to extension services lga access no access oye (a) 10 5 ekiti south west (b) 5 10 ijero (c) 4 11 irepodun/ifelodun (d) 3 12 ikere (e) 10 5 ado (f) 11 4 table 4 shows the distribution of farmers based on access to extension services in the study area. majority of the farmers in three local governments (ado, oye and ikere) had access to extension services because agricultural development office is located in these local governments. about 4 respondents had access to extension services in ijero while 5 and 3 respondents had access to extension services in ekiti south west and irepodun/ifelodun respectively. the low number of respondents in these areas is because extension offices are located far from these areas. so extension officers do not usually visit these farmers because they are far from them, and the extension officers may lack adequate mobility to reach these farmers. table 5: distribution of individual farmers based on access to extension services distribution frequency percentage access to extension services 43 47.7 no access to extension services 47 52.2 table 5 shows the distribution of the farmers generally based on access to extension services. this survey revealed that 52.2% of the respondents had no access to extension services and 47.7% of the respondents had access to extension services. the impact of the extension agents has not been really felt in the study area and this is because of the non chalant attitudes of the governments toward financing the extension services which leads to their poor performances. low performance of the extension agents in some areas leads to low productivity and profitability in the study area. table 6: estimated annual yield in each local government area lga annual yield (kg) a 87000 b 61975 c 59075 d 49350 e 79940 f 108400 total 445740 table 6 shows the annual yield for each farm and estimated annual yield for each local government in the study area. the annual yield varies from farm to farm with the highest being 25000kg and the lowest being 100kg per year. local government f, a and e had the highest annual yield of 108400kg, 87000kg and 79940kg while local government b, c and d had the lowest annual yield of 61975kg, 59075kg and 49350kg respectively. some of the farmers visited complained of low yield but when questions were asked on their management practices, it was discovered that improper management practices was responsible for these low yield. profitability analysis the profit was estimated based on each local government. average variable cost and average revenue of the farmers were used to estimate the profit. gross margin analysis for each local government was estimated by dividing the average total variable cost and total revenue by the number of respondents in each local government. the gross margin was derived by finding the difference between the average variable cost and total revenue. table 7: variable cost estimation ga a (n) b (n) c (n) d (n) e (n) f (n) items fingerlings/juvenile purchase 30000 14000 12250 7000 45000 70000 payment for hired labour 70000 68000 66000 60000 100000 100000 feed 200000 120000 100000 85000 200000 250000 fertilizer 4000 2000 1400 1000 4600 5000 lime 3000 3000 570 500 4200 4500 medication 3500 2900 2500 1700 5000 5700 transportation 5500 5200 4800 4000 6000 7100 maintenance 3500 3000 2600 2500 5250 6500 harvesting 1500 1000 1200 1000 2000 2450 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 62-68 67 total 321000 219100 191320 162700 372050 451250 table 8: revenue estimation total revenue is gotten by multiplying the yield (kg) in each local government with the unit price i.e. revenue = yield (kg) x price (n) table 9: annual profit of farmers in each local government lga total variable cost (n) total revenue (n) gross margin /annual (n) a 321000 3625000 3304000 b 219100 2383500 2164400 c 191320 2109500 1918180 d 162700 1898000 1735300 e 372050 3074500 2702450 f 451250 3871500 3420250 according to adegeye and dittoh (1982), gross margin is a good measure of profitability. the gross margin was derived by removing the total variable cost from the total revenue for each local government in the study area i.e. gm = tr – tvc. table 10 shows the profitability of farmers in each local government. this table revealed that local government f, a and e had high profit of n342025, n3304000 and n2702450 while local government b, c and d had lower profit of n2164400, n1918180 and n1735300 respectively. this indicate that local governments f, a and e has higher profit than local government b, c, and d because the number of farmers that has access to extension services in local government f, a and e is higher. the information received from these extension agents made the farmers to improve on their production method thereby increasing their profit. table 10: analysis of relationship between farmer’s access to extension services and profitability lga access no access gross margin/profit a 10 5 3304000 b 5 10 2164400 c 4 11 1918180 d 3 12 1735300 e 10 5 2702450 f 11 4 3420250 table 10 revealed that there is a relationship between access to extension services and profitability of farmers i.e. the more the farmers had access to extension services on fish farming operations, the higher the farmers profit will be. the table shows that local government f, a and e has high profit of n3420250, n3304000 and n2702450 because the number of respondents that had access to extension services in each of these local government were high i.e. 11, 10 and 10 respondents while in local government b, c and d with low profit of n2164400, n1918180 and n1735300, 5, 4 and 3 respondents respectively had access to extension services. this implies that those that had access to extension services had higher profit than those that had no access to extension services. constraints to information accessibility most of the constraints to fish farmer’s access to information are: inadequate extension contact, distance from other farmers also most of the time, the farmers find it difficult to comprehend information they get through the extension agent because the communication is ineffective. noise is one of the hindrances when such information is disseminated among the target groups. the distance of some farmer to the others makes it difficult for them to have easy access to information. also extension contact is poor because the ratio of extension agents to farmer is far from adequate. all these hinder the fish farmers from getting easy access to information. conclusion and recommendations considering the results of this study, it can be concluded that the study has obviously brought to light some facts about the impact of extension agents in disseminating information to fish farmers in the study area. the socio– economic characteristics of fish farmers in the study area influenced their access to extension services. it was also observed that not up to half (47.8%) of the farmers had access to extension services while 52.2% had no access to extension services. also some local government felt the impact of extension agents more than the others. this is because the extension agents lack adequate mobility to reach some of the farmers that are far from their locations. conclusively, there is a relationship between farmers access to extension services and farmers profitability. those that have access to extension services have higher profit than those that does not. in view of the findings, it is therefore recommended that: extension agents should a b c d e f yield (kg) 7250 4767 4219 3796 6149 7743 unit price (n) 500 500 500 500 500 500 revenue (n) 3625000 2383500 2109500 1898000 3074500 3871500 assessment of the impact of extension……. 68 put more effort in reaching fish farmers that have not had contact with them so as to pass useful information to them in order to increase their profitability also they should also encourage all fish farmers to subscribe to the various fish farmers group. this will make information and credit facilities easily accessible to them. fish farmers should be mobilize to establish cooperative society in order to enjoy government provision of capital under poverty alleviation programmes. adequate mobility should be provided for the extension agents for effective coverage and they should be updated on any new technology for quick dissemination. farmers too should also be eager to receive the extension agents and should always search for their help. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adamu, b. (2007). trade and investment opportunity in agriculture. a paper presented at the india africa agric. food submits in new delhi, 7 – 8th march 2007. adegeye, a. j., & dittoh, j. s. (1982). essential of agricultural economics. impact publisher ibadan, 113–116pp. adereti, f. o., fapojuwo, o. e., & onasanya, a. s. (2006). information utilization on cocoa production techniques by framers in oluyole local government area of oyo state, nigeria. european journal of social science, 3(1), 1-7. ajana, a. m. (2002). overview of highlight and problems of fisheries extension in nigerian agriculture. nigeria’s pioneer agriculture news reporting and trade promotion magazine, 4(1), 27-32. ekpere, j. a. (1990). agricultural extension: a searchlight of the nigeria small farmer. university of ibadan inaugural lecture series delivered on behalf of the faculty of agriculture and forestry. university of ibadan press. 94pp. fao (2000). fao fishery department country profile. nigeria. fid/cp/nir rev. 4 march 2000 11pp. fasasi, a. t. (2003). keynote address of the programme manager of the ogun state agriculture development programme (ogadep), abeokuta at the 1st annual fish farmers seminar and training workshop organized by fisheries society of nigeria (ogun state chapter) at ogadep abeokuta on july 31st 2003. 6pp. kelsey, l. d., & hearne, c. c. (1966). cooperative extension work. new york: constock publishing associates. 60pp mgbada, j. u. (2006). effectiveness of information sources on improved farming practices to women farmers in enugu state, nigeria. global approaches to extension practice, 2(1), 67-78. satia, b. p. (1990). national reviews for aquaculture development in africa. 29 fao fisheries circular, no. 770.29, rome, fao. 193pp. tobor, j. g. (1992). the fishing industry in nigeria. status and potential for self-sufficiency in fish production. niomr tech. paper no 54. williams, s. k. t. (1978). rural development in nigeria. ile–ife: university of ife press, nigeria, 100– 129pp. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 477-487 477 prospects and challenges of privatization of agricultural extension service in bangladesh md. ektear uddin assistant professor of agricultural extension and rural development, patuakhali science and technology university, bangladesh gao qijie professor of rural development and management, china agricultural university (cau); director of center for extension and innovation management, cau; deputy director of china high & new agro-technology society, beijing, china abstract globally there has been a growing interest towards the privatization of agricultural extension services. privatization of extension service delivery is being considered for bangladesh with a view to lower the government expenditures, to increase the efficiency of service delivery and to improve the quality of the extension services in changed circumstances on the part of the farmers. farmers’ willingness to pay for the extension service in bangladesh is still unknown. the lesson learned from the world review indicates that though some developed countries went for complete privatization of agricultural extension services, the most of the developing countries still remaining in the process of gradual privatization on a partly basis. therefore, after critical analysis, this paper assumed some challenges of privatization of agricultural extension service delivery in bangladesh. despite the challenges, it is hoped that bangladesh still has some prospects to adopt privatization of agricultural extension service if the recommended policy guidelines out lined in this paper are followed accordingly. keywords: privatization, agricultural extension services, challenges, prospects, bangladesh introduction 1 still now agricultural extension is considered as the central approach of delivering rural advisory services for bringing farm peoples’ autonomy as well as agricultural and rural development. extension is now recognized as comprising a range of services offering knowledge and information to farm people to enable them to change their behavior and use of technologies to get better their livelihood. its functions and tasks are increasingly assumed by multiple public and 1 corresponding author’s details: name: md. ektear uddin email address: ektearcau@gmail.com private organizations (rivera and alex, 2004). agricultural extension services of bangladesh are under invariable pressure to be responsive to ever-growing challenges of, and to demonstrate impact in food production. this force for being reactive is giving rise to call for a shifting from traditional extension service to more demand driven, efficient and effective one. since, preindependence of bangladesh extension service is running by public funds. public funds come from revenue, foreign loans and from foreign donor support as projects. foreign donors have spent huge money for improving the public extension system and its reform over the past four decades among the asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ektearcau@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 477-487 478 developing countries including bangladesh (anderson & feder, 2004, overseas development institute, 1994; world bank, 2006, islam et al., 2011). despite outsized financial intervention by these projects the reforms in extension revealed unstable once the donor support had withdrawn (anderson et al., 2006; dow, 2004; faure & kleene, 2004; gill et al., 2003; purcell & anderson, 1997; saviroff & lindarte, 2004). after the two decades of functions training and visit model (t & v) is no longer operating with the termination of world bank support aid in 1990’s (anderson et al., 2006; world bank, 2006). t & v has not met user demand for appropriate content and learning methods (omotayo, 2005). similar fate has been revealed in the very recent reform initiative of donor supported project that implemented the farmer led extension model in bangladesh (islam, et al., 2011). with the change of global context like climate change, restructuring in the economy, globalization and trade liberalization, (adejo et. al., 2012) revolution in information and communication technologies, the demand and approaches of extension being shaped (alex et. al., 2002; fao/world bank, 2000; rivera et. al., 2002) that call for a demand driven, cost effective and efficient service combining state of art technologies and methods of delivery. globally public extension services alone would never be able to meet the entire demand for extension service of the farmers (maalouf et. al., 1991). thus, there must have inclusive “power shift” from government to private is in progress (mathews, 1997). for providing efficient agricultural extension services to the farmers, private extension has been widely debated (kidd et al., 2000, rivera, 2001) such that a higher level of farmers involvement in the extension processes is advocated and the need to meet diverse range of requirements including information on markets, rural industry and other income opportunities (farrington et al., 2002). according to umali and schwartz (1993) the prime objectives of privatized extension is offering the right message to the right users at right time in the course of a demand driven service system that efficient also. the weak and opportunistic economic, political and legal institutions and prevalent corruptions resulting marked increases in transaction cost and weakening service delivery (nnaemeka et al., 2006; tib, 2012). moreover, the government is heavily loaded with foreign loan leading to declining budget for agricultural extension. so, fiscal crisis is the one of the important causes of finding alternative ways of delivering extension services in bangladesh. poor, inefficient and outdated services by the public extension agents are the others important causes that’s why farmers in many cases seeking demand driven and efficient services. it is assumed that private extension is more clients responsible and competent service provider that raises the voice of the farmers in problems definition, develops public finance, promote competitive participation of private sector and increase professionalism of extension service providers (adejo et al., 2012; mercy, 2008, sulaiman et al., 2005; saravanan, 2001). in view of the above litany it should be mention here that massive privation is indispensable and rational for bangladesh. at the same time the following consistent questions are arising in contrast of the rationality of provisioning privatized agricultural extension service delivery in bangladesh: is the private extension enough to supplement the public extension in bangladesh? what would be institutional framework for supporting privatization of extension service delivery? what would be the policy and how the policy should be implemented? what are the latent challenges associated with privatization of extension service delivery in bangladesh? objectives of the study the general objective of the study is to assess the prospects and challenges of privatization in delivering agricultural extension services to the farmers of bangladesh. however, the specific objectives of the study are to: i. ascertain the driving forces for the paradigm shift from public extension to private sector participation in extension service delivery. ii. describe the present status of privatization of agricultural extension services in bangladesh. iii. consider the lessons learned by the other countries in adopting privatized extension service delivery model. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 477-487 479 iv. know the farmers’ willingness to pay for the extension services around the world. v. recommend policy guidelines in pursuing privatization of extension service delivery in bangladesh. methodology data, arguments and experiences of privatization were taken for discussion from secondary sources like journals, books, reports and online repositories and used through content analysis which further provided the basis for sum up the content and policy recommendations regarding privation of agricultural extension service delivery in bangladesh. present status of privatization of agricultural extension services in bangladesh agricultural extension services in bangladesh is a public goods that is accessed at free of cost by the farmers since the independence in 1971. besides the public extension system there are several forms of privatized extension service delivery options. after 1993, the private sector was allowed entry into agriculture sector by giving permission carrying on business of agricultural inputs and irrigation equipment (haque, n.d.). but right now there is no formal institutional arrangement for private extension system. the private sector extension in bangladesh can be broadly categorized in to ngos, private companies and individual consultants. based on the motive of operation ngos are broadly two types – the service motive ngos and business motive ngos. on the other hand private extension service providers are dealers of seed companies, pesticides dealers, fertilizer dealers and companies involved in contact farming. individual consultant provides suggestions to the farms and households of agriculture, livestock and fisheries. since the birth of independent bangladesh, many social welfare organizations from home and overseas came forward to help the distressed people. with the passage of time most of these organizations have been transformed to nongovernment organizations (ngos). according to a recent estimation about 20,000 ngos are working in bangladesh of which about 400 ngos are directly involved in agricultural activities (world bank, 2003). some of the leading ngos providing agricultural extension services are brac, proshika, carebangladesh, rangpur-dinajpur rural services (rdrs), thangamara mohila shobuj sangho (tmss), helen keller international, mennonite central committee (mcc), gono unnayan prochestra, gono-kalyan trust (gkt), voluntary paribar kalyan association (vpka), world view international foundation (wif) etc. ngos target mostly landless and marginal farmers and in many cases they focus on women. services provided by ngos typically include credits, inputs supply and training. in some cases, ngos target that category of farmers who practically fall out of the public extension services. the public sector extension and advisory agencies have relatively narrow focus (i.e. dae focuses on crops, dls focuses on livestock, dof on fisheries, etc), where as ngos have become accustomed to provide multiple services to their beneficiaries. most of the ngos are, however, handicapped by the limited land area of their beneficiaries (haque, n.d.). in the beginning private companies were limited to agro-chemicals and seeds of vegetables. afterward, they expanded their scope to seeds, forestry, dairy, poultry and fisheries enterprises. the seed, pesticides and fertilizers companies have launched extension work and motivational drive through result demonstration of their inputs to maximize return (world bank, 2003). the leading seed companies in bangladesh are: lal teer seed limited, syngenta, aci, supreme seed company, mollika seeds, aftab bahumukhi farm, agri business corporation, mcdonald (bangladesh) ltd., tinpata seeds, petrochem ltd, duncan, kushtia seed stores, a.r. malik & namdharee seeds, allied agro industries, masud seed company, blue moon international, alpha agro and agri concern (bodker et al., 2006). these seed companies supply seeds in one hand and give extension service to their contact seed growers on the other hand. at the same time a large number of pesticides and fertilizers companies and importers are supplying agrochemical through their dealers all over the county. these dealers provide valuable information on pest and soil asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 477-487 480 fertility problems to the farmers at the expense of selling their products. global scenario of privatization of agricultural extension services the emerging social, environmental, political, and economic dynamics have shaped the strategy of delivering agricultural extension service across the globe. the united states currently reformed and reappraised the cooperative extension services once that was criticized for lacking significance and vision (dillman, 1986). the extension committee on organization and policy (ecop) has made a future task force to analyze issues and to offer recommendations to revive the scheme and to promote private sector participation (ecop, 1987). in the meantime, the development of electronic information systems has directed to increased privatization (goe & kenney, 1988). a fee based extension service delivery pattern has been developed in the northwest region of mexico and similar plan has also been taken for the small-scale farmers in the south central region (wilson, 1991). in chile the public extension service delivery approach has been substituted with voucher, distributed by government services, for farmers to hire private extension consultants. in colombia coupons are attached with agricultural bank loans and a certain percentage of the loan must be used for buying extension services (rivera and cary, 1997). in bolivia, the usaid mission started a private extension service in mid-1990s. the project emphasized private extension service without considering farmers’ willingness to pay for the services. in that case only one private agricultural producers’ organization is successfully providing extension service and reaching only an elite group of farmers (byrne, 1991). agricultural extension service in england and wales is privatized and operates on a partial cost-recovery system. this provision of costrecovery was started in 1987 and by 1993-94 half of its income from saleable fees was directed towards the agency (bunney & bawcutt, 1991; harter, 1992). in 1990 the netherlands has privatized about 50 percent of its government extension service by transferring field extension staffs, with initial government monetary support, to the farmer cooperatives. the fundamental task of the extension service responsible for connecting research and the privatized extension services, formulation of policy, its execution and promotion remained under the command of the ministry of agriculture (le gouis, 1991). the board is responsible for governing privatized extension services which equally represents both farmers' organizations and the government (proost & röling, 1991). extension service has been privatized in new zealand (hercus, 1991). at present public extension personnel of new zealand have given up a number of public service benefits and receiving consultation fee for the work undertaken. the source of annual budget of the agency is consultation fees derived from farmers and formal agreements with government for furnishing policy information and rural intelligence to government (rivera and cary, 1997). in victoria state of australia a mild type of "privatization" has been intended for the delivery of public extension services. the experience shows that private service provided by public extension system offers mainly private benefits to individuals, instead of cost recovery by government fee charging. on the contrast, service delivered by private sector extension is more beneficial and efficient than that of public extension system. however, a universal type service delivery is difficult to arrange because of varying degree of development in agricultural sector and constraints associated with it (watson et al., 1992; cary, 1993). currently privatization of agricultural extension services is being popular in different countries of africa and asia. in nigeria, farmers are paying fees indirectly for the extension services they received from informal private organizations at expense of purchasing inputs from them (saliu and age, 2009). the foremost participants in private extension services are united african company (uac), john holt, nigerian tobacco company (ntc), and diocesan agricultural development programme of the catholic diocese of ijebu-ode, among several others who became involved in agricultural production, processing, and marketing some decades ago (adedoyin, 1995). however, adetayo and eunice (2013) argued asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 477-487 481 that a county like nigeria where about more than 90% farmers are subsistence type who are too poor to pay the fee should not be serviced on payment for provisioning extension service as a matter of policy. privatization of agricultural extension service has been operating in iran in different forms but not evident as institutional form right now. most of the extension experts have expressed a desirable view towards privatization of agricultural extension service in iran (lashgarara and hosseini, 2011). many private extension players are providing agricultural extension services in different parts of india since the later part of 1990s (saravanan, 1999). among them individual agricultural consultants, progressive farmers, farmers organizations, ngos, krishi vigyan kendras (kvks), bhuvi care private ltd., mahindra krishi vibar, agribusiness companies, input dealers, newspaper etc are important (shekara, 2001, sulaiman et al., 2005). in pakistan, the process of privatization of agricultural extension system was started in 1988 through establishing a national commission of agriculture (government of pakistan, 1988). farmer’s willingness to pay (wtp) for advisory services by private sector extension in bangladesh, no studies have so far been conducted on farmers wtp for extension services delivered by private sector. so, to understand the farmers view on wtp the global reviews are described here. saravanan and veerabhalah (2003) in an indian studies found that farmers were willing to pay for cultivation practice of fruit crops, plant protection, marketing information, new varieties, post-harvest technology and land development. singh et al. (2011) in an another indian study found that about 30 percent farmers were having good or better economic status showing their willingness to pay for input delivery, advisory and diagnostic services. ali et al. (2008) conducted a study in punjab province of pakistan and found that farmers of rice, wheat and cotton zones were willing to pay for the services where farmers of central mixed zone were not willing to pay for the extension services. ajayi (2006) in his study conducted in oyo state of nigeria found that majority of the farmers described themselves as having the ability to pay for services and were willing to pay if their income from farming would increase and the program made be relevant to them. the farmers were also willing to pay through cooperative societies. the individual farmer was willing to pay 391.47 naira per year. in adana province of turkey it was found that majority of the farmers were willing to pay for the extension services which depends on farmers need (budak et al., 2010). according to oladele (2008) only 30 percent of the farmers of the oyo state of nigeria were willing to pay for selected extension service which is shaped by the various needs of the farmers. in a study in uganda, mwaura et al. (2010) found that about 35 percent and 40 percent farmers were willing to pay ugandan shilling 3400 (us$ 1.8) and 3700 (us$ 2) per trip for extension services in crop and animal husbandry respectively. prospects of privatized agricultural extension service delivery in bangladesh experience from the history of other counties of the world suggest that public extension is not enough to support the entire farming community in one hand, the privatization of agricultural extension cannot be substitute of public extension on the other hand. rather private and public extension can be complementary to each other in many folds. but private extension service providers have to play a more active role in providing extension services. however, to promote privatization of agricultural extension service the following prospects need to be considered: formation of viable farmers’ organization though seventy percent of the rural people directly involve with farming, there are very few viable farmers’ organization in bangladesh. a strong and active farmers’ organization can play an important role in market economy and in providing agricultural extension services in bangladesh. private extension agents can contact with farmers cooperatives regarding agricultural problems of the farmers and can collect consultation fees against their services. formation of viable farmers’ cooperatives or strengthening the existing cooperatives is very essential for bangladesh. farmers of the same socio-economic status or farmers of same asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 477-487 482 enterprise can form groups or cooperative to increase their voice in addressing farm problems and economic benefit out of it. the funds of the cooperative can contribute to help the farmers during crisis as loan which is payable in a stipulated period of time. the savings may also help in paying the fees for extension service continuously. extension service provided by agro-input companies there has been a rapid growth of agro-input companies by last couple of decades in bangladesh. agro-input companies can play a vital role in providing quality agro-input and others extension service delivery to the farmers at expense of their product selling. both farmers and input companies can be mutually benefited in that case. the government can arrange agricultural training for the marketing representatives and for their dealers on a regular basis at every six months interval. public-private partnership success of effective agricultural extension service delivery is in partnership and complimentary actions of public and private sector. public-private partnership will make agricultural extension less burdensome to government and more relevant to farmers. small farmers still believe that extension service is public goods and they lack ability to pay for the extension services. therefore, complete withdrawal of public extension service might not compatible with the present socio-economic and political situation of the country. individual consultancy huge number of agricultural graduates and diploma holders in bangladesh are wondering for job. there is a good chance to be involved with agricultural consultancy that might help them to be self employed. moreover, it needs no capital or less capital to start individual consultancy. ngos in agriculture at present about 400 ngos are involved in agricultural activities in bangladesh. if government encourages ngos, more and more ngos will be interested to works with farmers. ngos target mainly small, marginal and landless farmers for providing service. ngos can provide credit, inputs and market information together with other production information. making extension service demand driven be it the program of public sector or private, farmers should be involved with program building. if farmers are involved in program planning, implementation and evaluation it creates a feeling among them that this is their own program and they better understand their needs to be satisfied. moreover, public extension is general type where private extension is more commodity oriented. therefore, private extension service delivery will be more demand driven, effective and appropriate to the farmers needs. increase investment and cost minimization privatization will create competition in the service markets and there is opportunity of huge foreign and domestic investment in this sector as a result of trade liberalization. due to open competition extension service charge will also be decreased. in general, over time this will lead to lower prices, improved quality, more choices and less corruption. therefore, government will get relief from fund deficit in one hand and farmers will get quality service in a discount rate on the other hand. ultimately the privatization of agricultural extension service delivery will contribute to gradual economic growth of the country. use of icts there is a prospect for private investment in icts sector for increasing the access to information regarding pest problems, production technology and marketing of the produce. the telecommunication companies can play an important role in this sector by reducing the call cost for the farmers. easy and quick extension service delivery massive privatization will overcome the personnel shortage at organization level as well as field level. moreover, the private agency has capacity to furnish their service department with adequate vehicle support. therefore, it will be easy for the private company to respond quickly to farmers’ problems. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 477-487 483 challenges in operating private agricultural extension service in bangladesh the perceived challenges of agricultural extension service delivery in bangladesh are as follows: organizational structure for making public sector extension meaningful and sustainable it requires a major change in organizational structure. the present set up of public extension cannot fully support and coordinate private sectors activities unless a prescribed forms of policies and institutional framework. agricultural extension policy no organization can run smoothly or achieve goals without specific policy. there is extension policy in bangladesh for public sector but there is no policy guidelines for private sector extension. socio-economic condition of the farmers most of the farmers of bangladesh are small and marginal types. their poor socio-economic status might not adopt privatization of agricultural extension service in a sustainable manner. lack of financial capital might make them unwilling to adopt private extension support. moreover, private company targets mainly medium and large farmers who cultivate cash crops in a commercial basis. small and subsistence type farming is not suitable for the private sector extension provider except some ngos to earn money. poor communication facilities and remote areas all organizations are interested to works where communication facilities are good. therefore, some private organizations may not be interested to work in remote areas. hence, farmers of that region will be deprived from extension service. profit motive of agro-chemical companies with less caring the environmental sustainability the main intension of the dealers of agrochemical companies is to sale their products rather than providing services. in that case they will sale the hazardous chemicals without considering the environmental sustainability. politics and corruption at every transition periods of government the state became politically unstable. politics and corruption is wide spread in bangladesh and has a complementary action (tib, 2012). most of the corruption takes place under the power shade of politics. grafting with threat at office or at organizational level is common in bangladesh. people become compelled to give money being feared about the security of life. this discourages the private investor to invest money for development projects and also increases the transaction cost of the service. credibility and competency of the extension workers public extension has been criticized for providing irrelevant, incomplete and irregular message to the farmers. thus, farmers have lost their trust on public extension agents’ competency. so, it will be a challenge for private extension workers to regain the credibility showing high level of skill to the farmers. impact of climate change climate change has a great impact on agriculture as well as extension services. bangladesh agriculture shoulders heavily the impacts of climate change like flood, cyclone, drought, salinity, acid rain etc natural disaster of some kind in every year. these disasters cause a heavy damage of agricultural crops and make the result of extension service delivery invisible. bureaucratic complexity the big bureaucrats of the public extension organization who exercises power would not be happy to welcome privatization of extension service due to their own interest. moreover, government also fears to lose their popularity as well as vote among the employees of the public extension organization and government job seekers. conclusion and recommendations finally, it can be said that extension system of bangladesh should not be continued entirely publicly funded and it is high time to look forward for private extension system to achieve pluralism in agricultural extension services. the arguments for turning towards privatization of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 477-487 484 extension service are, to minimize government expenditure, more efficient delivery of services and higher quality of services. however, private extension agents will be less responsive to government policy and there may be linkage problems between private and public research and extension organizations. despite limitations some developed countries adopted complete privatization of agricultural extension where as in developing countries it is gradual and partial. in bangladesh, privatization of agricultural extension will face some challenges to deliver service smoothly as a great share of the farming community is poor and marginal. nonetheless, still bangladesh has a prospect to go for privatization of extension service partially at least. even, a parallel private extension system along with public extension system can increase coverage of extension service that will address farm problems and can better ensure the income of the farmers. to make a productive privatization of agricultural extension services in bangladesh the following recommendations are put forwarded. 1. the government should formulate appropriate policy for both public and private sector extension services. the policy should describe the ways of coordination between dae (department of agricultural extension) and private extension partners in a cohesive manner. under the leadership of privatization commission of bangladesh new private extension services system can take a shape of formal institution. however, there should have strong rules and regulations to protect the consumers’ rights and fostering the welfare of the farmers. for both of the extension system, good coordination, collaboration and monitoring in place are essential to make the extension service more pluralistic and effective. 2. like england more and more individual consultant should be encouraged to play role in private sector extension as it does not require much capital investment. government can arrange interest free motor bike loan for the private field extension consultants. 3. like india the educated unemployed youth can be given sufficient training followed by a handsome loan to establish an agro-input business. so that together with business they can also provide extension service to the community farmers. 4. in bangladesh crop sector are most exposed and vulnerable to furious natural disasters. crop insurance provision should be started to minimize the losses of the farmers. otherwise, though being suggested by extension agents continuously, farmers will not adopt innovation and will not put the innovation commercially bearing risk. 5. there is much deficiency of extension information in bangladesh. agricultural extension information should be more exposed to the common people of bangladesh. extension information should be included under the coverage of information communication technology (ict). 6. both for the private extension entrepreneurs and for the farmers, credit should be provided at very low rate of interest so that both parties can run their enterprise smoothly and sustainably. references adedoyin, s. f. 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(1997). privatizing agricultural extension. in: swanson, b. e., bentz, r. p. and sofranko, j. a. (ed.), improving agricultural extension: a reference manual. rome: fao pp. 203211. rivera, w. m., qamar, m. k. & crowder, l. (2002). agriculture and rural extension worldwide: options for institutional reform in the developing countries. rome: fao/un; research, extension and training service. saliu, o. j. & age, a. i. (2009). privatization of agricultural extension services in nigeria proposed guidelines for implementation. journal of sustainable development in africa, 2(11): 160-176. saravanan, r. (2001). privatization of agricultural extension. in shekara, p. c. (ed.), private extension in india: myths, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(7) 2013: 477-487 487 realities, comprehensions and approaches. hyderabad: national institute of agricultural extension management, india. saravanan, r. 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(verbanaceae) is an invasive plant widely distributed in zimbabwe and is toxic to livestock and humans. greenhouse and laboratory experiments were done at the crop science department, university of zimbabwe to assess the allelopathic effects of l. camara on bidens pilosa and pearl millet. first, l. camara biomass was evaluated for its impact on the emergence and growth of b. pilosa and pearl millet, after the addition of 0, 10, 30, 40 and 50 g per pot (18 cm diameter x 17 cm depth each), under glasshouse conditions and adequate moisture conditions. second, l. camara leaf extracts at 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 % concentrations were screened for their effects on the germination of b. pilosa and pearl millet under laboratory conditions. randomized complete block designs, with 6 treatments replicated 4 times were used in both experiments. lantana camara leaf biomass significantly (p<0.05) reduced the emergence and growth of b. pilosa, when it was added to the soil under glasshouse conditions. in contrast, pearl millet emergence and growth was not affected by l. camara. however, l. camara leaf extracts reduced the germination percentage, radicle length and plumule length of pearl millet under laboratory conditions. keywords: lantana camara, allelopathic effects, bidens pilosa, pearl millet, seed germination introduction 1 lantana camara l. (lantana or cherry pie) (verbinaceae), is a perennial shrub which was introduced in zimbabwe as an ornamental plant. it is known in the local shona and ndebele languages as mbarati and besikihwa, respectively (maroyi, 2012) and is one of the worlds’ worst non arable weeds. it is used as a hedge around houses in urban areas and homesteads in rural areas. lantana has a stem with four sides, which almost describes a square cross section and is covered with hooked prickles. it produces flowers of different colours namely white, red and yellow. the fruits are 1 corresponding author’s details: name: mabasa, s. email address: smabasa@googlemail.com green berries which turn black when they are ripe. these berries are eaten by birds and human beings and this aid in the dispersal of lantana seeds. this plant has been reported to produce allelochemicals, which are toxic to other plants growing near it (achhireddy and singh, 1984). lantana is able to colonise large areas, because seed dispersal is via birds and due to its ability to produce allelochemicals which causes it to out compete other plants. it grows mainly in non arable terrestrial habitats and farmers are reluctant to control it because it is not a threat to crop production. however, it has been reported that the leaves and unripe berries of lantana can produce high levels of poisonous alkaloids which are toxic to livestock and humans. some of the allelochemicals which have been found in lantana leaves are p-oh-benzoic acid, pcoumaric acid, caffeic acid, vallic acid, syringic asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:smabasa@googlemail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 543-553 544 acid and gentisic acid (hussein et al., 2011). rakesh et al. (1989) reported the presence of at least 14 phenolic compounds, which included phydrobenzoic acid, p-coumaric acid and salicycic acid. it was concluded that pentacyclic tripernoides, lantadene a and lantadene b were the allelochemicals responsible for the herbicidal effects on eichhornia crassipes and microcystis aeruginosa (kong et al., 2006). chatanga (2007) and sithole et al. (2012) reported the presence and spread of lantana in the gonarezhou national park in the south eastern part of zimbabwe. it has also been reported to be threatening biodiversity at victoria falls (nang’alelwa, 2010) and in masvingo province (masocha, 2009). lantana appears to be associated with wet areas (nang’alelwa, 2010) and high rainfall increases its spread. it has been noted that lantana is wide spread across all the agroecological regions of zimbabwe. although lantana is listed as an invasive weed in zimbabwe (zimbabwe environmental management act, 2002) no action is being taken to curb the spread of this fast spreading weed. identification of alternative uses of lantana biomass could motivate farmers to control this weed. in some countries it is used for medicinal purposes (kalita et al., 2012). svotwa et al. (2009) reported the use of a mixture of lantana and camfy leaf extracts for the control of sucking pests in organic vegetable farming. there could therefore be merit in studying the allelopathic potential of this weed on other weeds and crops with the hope of identifying ways in exploiting the use of allelochemicals that are produced by lantana in integrated weed management programs. there is a possibility of using lantana biomass as composted manure or through the use of lantana biomass as mulch in conservation agriculture and organic systems. the use of lantana biomass for weed control is likely to be adopted by farmers because it is cheap and safe both to human beings and the environment. this would increase the adoption of new and emerging environmentally friendly ways of crop production such as conservation agriculture and organic farming, because the uptake of these emerging technologies has been slow due to increased weed problems that are associated with these technologies. weeds are the most serious biotic factor limiting crop production in the smallholder farming sector in zimbabwe (chivinge, 1984). achhireddy and singh (1984) and kong et al. (2006) reported that lantana biomass was able to control weeds when incorporated into the soil. these researchers also observed that lantana leaf extracts were efficacious in reducing germination, radical and plumule length of weeds under laboratory conditions. however, the allelochemicals from lantana have also been observed to be phytotoxic to some crops (sahid and sugau, 1993; ahmed et al., 2007). there is need to investigate the effect of lantana on some important arable weeds and crops in zimbabwe. chivinge (1988) reported that blackjack (bidens pilosa l.) is an important weed in zimbabwe. it is a dicotyledonous annual arable weed that grows in all the different agroecological zones and is responsible for huge yield losses due to competition with crops for resources. one of the crops that has been affected by blackjack is pearl millet (pennisatum glaucum) which is a drought tolerant cereal mainly grown in marginal areas in zimbawe. pearl millet is an important food security crop not only in zimbabwe but also in other southern african countries where its grain is used as a source of carbohydrate in place of maize (zea mays l.) in this study it was hypothesised that lantana has phytotoxic effects on b. pilosa and is likely to be useful for controlling this weed. however, there is a possibility that it could also have negative effects on crops, for example, pearl millet. the objectives of this study were therefore to (1) to determine the effect of soil incorporated lantana leaf biomass on the emergence and growth of b. pilosa and pearl millet and (2) determine the effect of lantana leaf extracts on the germination of b. pilosa and pearl millet. materials and methods soil assays fresh leaves of lantana with white flowers were collected from the faculty of agriculture cropping field, university of zimbabwe (17.78°s, 31.05°e, 1523 meters above sea level) in january 2013. collections were done in january 2013. lantana leaves were washed thoroughly with tap water to remove any dirty asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 543-553 545 and dust. seeds of the receptor plants were collected from the field crop science department, university of zimbabwe field. the lantana leaves were air dried in a shade at room temperature 25-30 0 c for two weeks in the weed science laboratory. the leaves were grounded into a fine powder using the hummer grinder with 0.5 mm sieve size. pots, each measuring 18 cm diameter x 17 cm depth, were three quarter filled with red clay soil which contained 30 % clay and 1 % organic matter. then lantana leaf biomass was added to the soil in pots at 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 g per pot. these treatments were replicated four times and arranged in a randomized complete block design. the leaf biomass was mixed with the top 2 cm soil. b. pilosa seeds with a mass of 0.25 g and 10 seeds of pearl millet were sown in each pot. the pots were often watered to allow the germination and growth of b. pilosa and pearl millet. the number of emerged b. pilosa and pearl millet was recorded from 3 to 15 days from planting. the mass of dry matter of b. pilosa and pearl millet were determined after 15 days from planting. the phytotoxic symptoms caused by lantana biomass addition to b. pilosa were noted. analysis of variance was done on the final emergence counts of b. pilosa and pearl millet. regression analysis was done to relate lantana biomass rates (g / pot) to b. pilosa and pearl millet parameters (emergence counts and dry matter), using the sigma plot statistical software. petri dish assays lantana powder extract of 10 g, 20 g, 30 g, 40 g and 50 g was soaked in 300 ml of distilled water for 24 hours at room temperature, to give 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 % concentration of extract, respectively. the extracts were filtered using cotton and filter paper until, solid particles were removed. the filtrate was stored at 5 o c to avoid other biochemical changes. the seeds of pearl millet and b. pilosa were sterilized with sodium hypocloride for 5 minutes and followed by rinsing with distilled water to remove any excess chemical. the sterilized seeds were sun dried. twenty seeds of each receptor plant (pearl millet, and b. pilosa) were placed on filter papers, fitted inside 9 cm diameter petri dishes. lantana filtrate (2 ml) was added to each treatment. the addition of the filtrate was regularly done when the filtrate decreased. the petri dishes were placed in incubators which maintained temperature at 30° c in continuous darkness. the lantana concentrations (0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 %) were replicated four times in a randomized complete block design. the blocking factor was the shelves of the incubator. the seed germination which was defined as the emergence of the radicle from the seed coat, was recorded daily. the germination percentage was determined after seven days. the radicle and shoot length of five seedlings chosen at random per treatment was measured using a ruler and recorded after seven days. the dry matter weights of the seedlings were determined using a weighing balance. the regression analysis was done to determine the relationship of lantana concentrations and the parameters of pearl millet (seed germination, radicle length, plumule length and dry matter). results soil assay emergence of b. pilosa. b. pilosa emergence occurred in all the concentrations. weed seedling emergence in all treatments started after 3 days from planting as shown in fig. 1. there was no significant difference (p > 0.05) in b. pilosa emergence at 3 days from planting. after 15 days from planting there were significant treatment differences (p < 0.001). the emergence of b. pilosa in the control rose with a steep gradient from 3 to 6 days after planting and stabilization occurred from day 6 onwards. in the other treatments i.e.10 g, 20 g, 30 g, 40 g, and 50 g of lantana biomass per pot, the emergence was low. weed emergence continued until the termination of the experiment at 15 days from planting. the control treatment had high emergence counts and growth rate, while the other treatments had inhibited emergence. from day 12 and onwards some curling of leaves and yellowing were observed in the two treatments with highest lantana biomass of 40 g and 50 g per pot, on the b. pilosa seedlings. generally b. pilosa asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 543-553 546 emergence decreased as concentration of lantana increased. days from planting 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 b id e n s p il o s a c o u n ts /p o t 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 control 10 g/pot 20 g/pot 30 g/pot 40 g/pot 50 g/pot fig. 1. bidens pilosa emergence in different lantana camara concentrations. vertical bars show standard errors ± se bidens pilosa counts the regression line shown by fig. 2. was highly significant (p < 0.001) and the r 2 value was high. the inhibition of b. pilosa emergence increased with the increased application rates of lantana biomass. the control treatment had high b. pilosa counts compared to the other treatments. lantana suppressed the emergence of b. pilosa. the results show that the extent of inhibition is related to the quantity of lantana biomass addition. b. pilosa emergence counts decreased as the lantana biomass increases from 0 g / pot to 50 g / pot. fig. 2. the relationship of bidens pilosa counts with different lantana camara biomass. lantana camara biomass (g/pot) 0 20 40 60 b id e n s p il o s a c o u n ts /p o t 0 20 40 60 80 y = 52.62 1.01x r 2 = 0.76 p < 0.001 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 543-553 533 bidens pilosa dry matter although the regression which related b. pilosa dry matter and lantana biomass was significantly linear (p < 0.001), the r 2 value was low (fig. 3). the dry matter of b. pilosa decreased as the lantana concentration increased. fig. 3. the relationship of bidens pilosa dry matter in different lantana camara biomass. lantana camara biomass g/pot 0 20 40 60 b id e n s p il o s a d ry m a tt e r (g /p o t) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 y = 1.95 0.04x r 2 0.41 p < 0.001 emergence of pearl millet (local landrace) fig. 4 shows that the different lantana concentrations had no significant (p > 0.05) effect on the emergence of pearl millet after 15 days from planting. this implies that pearl millet emergence in the pots was not affected by the addition of lantana biomass. the emergence of pearl millet was not related to lantana biomass application rates. therefore, lantana did not have inhibitory effects on pearl millet. fig. 4. pearl millet emergence in different lantana camara concentrations. vertical bars show standard errors ± se days from planting 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 p e a rl m il le t c o u n ts /p o t 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 control 10 g/pot 20 g/pot 30 g/pot 40 g/pot 50 g/pot asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 532 pearl millet counts the emergence of pearl millet was not related to lantana biomass application rates as shown in fig. 5. it appeared that lantana did not have inhibitory effects on pearl millet emergence. lantana camara biomass (g/pot) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 p ea rl m ill et c o u n ts /p o t 2 4 6 8 10 12 fig. 5. the relationship of pearl millet counts and lantana camara biomass pearl millet dry matter lantana concentration had no impact on pearl millet dry matter as shown by fig. 6. the results more or less followed those of pearl millet counts. lantana camara biomass g/pot 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 p ea rl m ill et d ry m at te r (g /p ot ) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 fig. 6. the relationship of pearl millet dry matter and lantana camara biomass. petri dish assay pearl millet germination the relationship of pearl millet germination percentage and lantana was significantly (p < 0.05) linear. however, the r 2 value was very low as shown by fig. 7. this means that pearl millet asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 543-553 533 was not sensitive to lantana concentrations. there was a tendency of pearl millet germination to decrease as lantana concentration was increased. fig. 7. the relationship of pearl millet germination percentage and lantana camara concentrations. lantana camara concentrations (g/300ml) 0 20 40 60 g e rm in a ti o n p e rc e n ta g e o f p e a rl m il le t 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 y = 83.3 -0.26x r 2 < 0.21 p < 0.05 pearl millet radicle length the relationship of pearl millet radicle length and lantana concentrations was significantly linear (p < 0.001) as shown by fig. 8. pearl millet radicle length decreased with increase in lantana concentration. fig. 8. the relationship of pearl millet radicle length with lantana camara extract concentrations. lantana camara extract concentratios (g/300ml) 0 20 40 60 p e a rl m il le t ra d ic le l e n g th ( c m ) -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 y = 8.38 0.18x r 2 = 0.8205 p < 0.001 pearl millet plumule length the relationship of pearl millet plumule length and lantana concentration was significantly linear (p < 0.001), as shown by fig. 9 and the r 2 value was high. the plumule length decreased with increasing lantana concentrations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5) 2013: 234-248 550 fig. 9. the relationship of pearl millet plumule length with lantana camara extract concentrations lantana camara concentrations (g/300ml) 0 20 40 60 p e a rl m il le t p lu m u le l e n g th ( c m ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 y = 5.13 0.07x r = 0.8388 p < 0.001 pearl millet dry matter lantana concentrations had no effect on the dry matter production. there was no relationship between the amount of lantana extracts and dry matter as shown by fig.10. fig.11. shows pearl millet germination in different lantana extract concentrations. the roots and shoots were inhibited as the concentration of lantana leaf extracts were increased. fig.10. the relationship of pearl millet dry matter and lantana camara extracts concetrations. lantana camara extract concetration g/300ml 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 p e a rl m il le t d ry m a tt e r g /p e tr i d is h 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.20 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28 0.30 0.32 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 543-553 551 bidens pilosa germination bidens pilosa failed to germinate in all the treatments. discussion lantana biomass addition to the soil suppressed the emergence and growth of b. pilosa under glasshouse conditions. in contrast, pearl millet emergence and growth was not suppressed under similar conditions. probably the allelochemicals present in lantana (hussein et al., 2011; rakesh et al., 1989; kong et al., 2006) could be responsible for reducing the emergence and growth of b. pilosa. the fact that leaf curling and yellowing symptoms were observed on b. pilosa, suggests that the allelochemicals reduce chlorophyll content. this could lead to reduced photosynthesis, followed by reduced growth of b. pilosa. nashriyah et al. (2010) reported similar findings working with pink orchid. salicylic acid, which is one of the allelochemicals found in lantana was reported to interfere with photosynthesis (sharma et al., 2007), thereby resulting in stunted growth. dadkhah (2012) also reported that ephedra major allelopathy decreased chlorophyll and photosynthesis of cirsium avernse weed. this supports the evidence that allelochemicals have negative effects on photosynthesis. zheng et al. (2006) reported that lantana leaf extract sprayed to water hyacinth (eichhornia crassipes) caused the overproduction of hydrogen peroxide which killed leaf cells. there is a possibility that lantana caused similar effects in b. pilosa, when the latter absorbed the allelochemicals via the roots. pearl millet emergence was not inhibited by increasing the lantana biomass per pot in the glasshouse experiment. this shows that it was not sensitive to lantana allelochemicals. pearl millet emergence was not inhibited probably because the quantity of lantana was not sufficient to cause an inhibitory effect. pearl millet could be tolerant to allelochemicals from lantana or the soil had some binding properties that adsorbed the allelochemicals making them unavailable for plant uptake. the soil used for this experiment contained about 30 % clay. although pearl millet emergence was not adversely affected by lantana biomass incorporation in the soil, its germination was inhibited by lantana leaf extracts under laboratory conditions. this difference might be caused by the fact that the pearl millet seeds in petri dishes were in direct contact with lantana extracts. el-kenany and darier (2013) showed that lantana leaf extracts inhibited the germination of sorghum bicolor under laboratory conditions. b. pilosa successfully asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 543-553 552 emerged in the glasshouse conditions while in the laboratory it completely failed. it has to be noted that in the laboratory b. pilosa was exposed to temperatures of 30°c and continuous darkness. its failure to germinate may be due to dormancy. light and temperature fluctuations have effect on breaking the dormancy of seeds according to karlsson (2008). in the glasshouse conditions temperatures were fluctuating and light was alternating with darkness. this study demonstrated the allelopathic effects of lantana and may explain why this plant is colonizing many areas in zimbabwe. plants which grow near lantana could be killed through allelopathy. it has also been shown that there is a potential to use lantana to control weeds, for example, b. pilosa. however, there is a need to evaluate the effects of lantana on a wide range of weeds and crops. conclusion lantana leaf biomass reduced the emergence and growth of b. pilosa, when it was added to the soil under glasshouse conditions. in contrast, pearl millet emergence and growth was not affected by lantana. however, lantana leaf extracts reduced the germination percentage, radicle length and plumule length of pearl millet under laboratory conditions. references achhireddy, n. r. and singh, m. 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(2006). herbicidal potential of allelochemicals from lantana camara against eichhornia crassipes and the alga microcystis aeruginosa. weed research, 46: 290–295. hussein, f., ghulam, s., sher, z. and ahmad, b. (2011). allelopathy by lantana camara (l), pak. j. bot. 43(5): 2373-2378. holm, l. g., pucknett, l. d., pancho, j. v. and herberger, p. j. (1977). the world’s worst weeds, distribution and biology, university press of hawaii, honolulu. rakesh, j. singh, m. and dezman, d. j. (1989). qualitative and quantitative characterization of phenolic compounds from lantana (lantana camara) leaves. weed science, 37: 302-307. maiti, p. p., bhakat, r. k. and bhattacharjee, a. (2010). evaluation of allelopathic potential of an obnoxious weed using mung bean as bioassay material. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 543-553 553 international journal of science and nature, 1(2): 236-241. maroyi, a. (2012). garden plants in zimbabwe:their ethnomedicinal uses and reported toxicity. ethnobotany research & applications, 10: 45-57. masocha, m. (2009). savanna aliens, phd thesis. wageningen university, the netherlands, pp. 1-161. nang’alelwa, m. (2010). effects of treatment on lantana camara (l.) and the restoration potential of riparian seed banks in cleared areas of the victoria falls world heritage site, livingstone, zambia, msc thesis, rhodes university south africa, 1-154. nashriyah, m., shamsiah, a. r., salmah, m., misman, s., maizatul akkmam, m. n., jamaliah, m. y. and mazleha, m. (2010). growth and mineral content of mokora chark pink orchid as affected by allelopathic lantana camara weed. international journal of agricultural and biological sciences,1: 35-39. sahid, i. b. and sugau, j. b. (1993). allelopathic effects of lantana (lantana camara) and siam weed (chromolaena odorata var aculeate) on selected crops. weed science, 41(1): 303-308. sharma, o. p., sharma, s., pattabhi, v., mahato, s. b., and sharma, p. d. (2007). a review of the hepatotoxic plant lantana camara. critical review in toxicology, 37(4): 313-352. sithole, d., zisadza-gandiwa, p. and gandiwa, e. (2012). an assessment of alien plant species in gonarezhou national park, zimbabwe. greener journal of agricultural sciences, 2(7): 334-339. svotwa, e., r. baipai and jiyane, j. (2009). organic farming in smallholder farming sector of zimbabwe. journal of organic systems, 4(1): 8-14. zimbabwe environmental act. (2000). invasive alien species throughout zimbabwe, zimbabwe government publication n0. 13/2002, pp. 416-417. zheng, h. q.,wei, n., wang, l. f. and he, p. (2006). effects of lantana camara leaf extract on the activity of superoxide dismutase and accumulation of h2o2 in water hyacinth leaf. journal of plant physiology and molecular biology, 32: 189-194. © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 food security in nigeria: government’s intervention and the place of effective storage adegbola, j. a. (nigerian stored products research institute, kano, nigeria) bamishaiye, e. i. (nigerian stored products research institute, kano, nigeria) daura, a. m. (nigerian stored products research institute, kano. nigeria) to cite this article: adegbola j. a., bamishaiye e. i., and daura a. m. (2011). food security in nigeria: government’s intervention and the place of effective storage. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2), 56-63. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 56-63 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author(s) adegbola j. a. nigerian stored products research institute, kano, nigeria bamishaiye e. i. † nigerian stored products research institute, kano, nigeria e-mail: bamishaiyeeunice@yahoo.com daura a. m. nigerian stored products research institute, kano, nigeria food security in nigeria: government’s intervention and the place of effective storage abstract the paper discusses the importance of agriculture to a people, its economy and its place at achieving food security for nations, nigeria inclusive. furthermore, it talked about food security and insecurity and its indices. it delved into prospects for increased agricultural production and how this can be achieved. again, it discussed efforts that have been put in place by past nigerian governments at meeting food need of nigerians and making the country food secured. it maintained that food shortages in nigeria are due not primarily to underproduction but agreed that more crops should be grown to meet production shortfall. the paper indicted lack of adequate postharvest practices as the chief bane of food security in nigeria and posits that more should be done to see that food are adequately stored after they are produced to nip wastages and scarcity in the bud. finally, it recommended that agricultural support programmes, projects, and research institutes that have been put in place be spurred towards stepping up production and do even much more at storage. keywords: security, food, storage, economy introduction histories have shown that no nation has actually become great without developing its agriculture and its concomitant institutions (isife and albert, 2009). according to fao (1992) globally there is enough food for all, but more than 780 million people are chronically undernourished worldwide. nigeria has the highest number of undernourished people in west african (fao, 2003), and according to idachaba (2004) over 40% of nigerians are food insecure. however, agriculture production was the mainstay of nigerian economy and a source of food; in the colonial nigeria, and briefly after independence agriculture played a dominant role in the nation’s economy from the standpoint of adequate food for its population, rural employment, raw materials for its industries, source of public revenue, source of foreign exchange and internal market for agricultural related tools. according to akande (1998) at independence agriculture was able to match the expectation ascribed to it as regards food security; agriculture contributed 67% of gross domestic product (gdp) in 1960/1961. ogen (2003) posits that during the first ten years after independence nigeria could be seen as an agricultural economy because agriculture was the engine of growth of its overall economy, during this time nigeria was the world’s second largest producer of cocoa, and highest producer and exporter of palm-kernel and palm-oil. according to alkali (1997) and lawal (1997) then nigerian farmers produced 70% of nigerian export and 95% of its food needs. agriculture has contributed immensely by helping to maintain a healthy population; it has been a source of food and nutrition for households in nigeria. however, it has not done well enough, especially from the time the country started the production of crude oil in mailto:bamishaiyeeunice@yahoo.com food security in nigeria: government’s intervention….. 57 commercial quantity in the mid 1960’s till now. food security food security in a broad sense has to do with having at all times an adequate level of food and food products to meet increasing consumption demand to mitigate fluctuation in output and price (idrisa et al., 2008). according to fao (1996) food security is a situation when all people at all time have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food for a healthy and active life. ladele and ayoola (1997) see food security as a function of food production level, that is, high level of food production is equals to food security. however, to oriola (2009), food security entails producing food that will go round every citizen both in quality and quantity. to achieve this, agricultural production needs to be enhanced with adequate knowledge of the environment, climatic condition, the market and its operation, and be aware of price and price mechanism, good transportation system, storage, fashion modality to check glut and be well prepared in case of disasters. food insecurity is the opposite of this, it is the lack of access to sufficient quality and quantity of save nutrition food for an active and healthy life; the inability of households or individuals to meet the required consumption level in the face of fluctuating production, price, and income (maharjan and chhetri, 2006). according to gillespie and haddad (2001), food insecurity boils down to inability of households to have reliable access to food in sufficient quantity and quality to enjoy active and healthy life. food importation as a result of insufficiency have continued to be on the rise in nigeria a country which according to edokpa and okafor (2009) and igberaese and okojie – okoedo (2010) is the highest food producer in sub-sahara africa. food demand in nigerian has grown faster than food production (idrisa et al., 2008), the cbn (2001) corroborates this when it maintained that the rate of increased food production of 2.5% per annum does not measure up with the annual population growth of 2.8%. most nigerian farmers are inadequately informed, have inadequate supply of agricultural inputs, machinery and extension services, and high level of illiteracy and lack of adequate knowledge of modern techniques in agricultural practices which can propel production and bumper yield to meet the ever increasing food need and demand of nigerian growing population. again, adoption of modern technology and techniques is often a major constraint in agriculture in nigeria and this is where agricultural extension comes to bear. there is the need to link farmers with sources of knowledge of storage and good quality equipment as well as training institutions like the nigerian stored product research institute whose mandate it is to increase nigerian agricultural self reliance through adequate post harvest loss prevention. according to omonoma and agoi (2007) and von braun et al. (1992) there are four major elements of food security; food availability, food access, food utilization, and not losing the excess. again, the exploitation by middle men i.e. middle men’s share of total market margin indirectly leads to loss of interest in farming and subsequently food insecurity in the country. the dearth of knowledge in techniques for storage and or turning fruits and vegetable force farmers to sell produce at ridiculous price at harvest to avoid post – harvest losses, this lessens their income, reduce their purchasing power and subsequently their lack of interest in crop production (babatunde and oyatoye, 2005). food wastage has also been indicated as a bane of food security in nigeria, according to igberaese and okojie-okoedo (2010), nigeria experienced food wastage of 0.81 million metric tonnes between 1995 and 2000 and this would reduce greatly if storage facilities are in place. food security cannot be achieved in a culture of wastage; igberaese (2004) maintained that food wasted at ceremonies in edo state, nigeria on weekends in a month is enough to feed the state for a month. export of staple food has also been indicted by igberaese and okojie-okoedo (2010) as a cause of food insecurity, the export of staple food crops should be de-emphasized. the prospect for increased agricultural production and food security in nigeria is good because of these factors; the abundance of land for crop production, livestock and forestry products, and large domestic and international markets. agricultural production and food security will require a comprehensive strategy to reduce some important constraint as discussed earlier. food security challenges in nigeria and efforts at its eradication domestic food production is on the rise in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 56-63 58 nigeria but it is not enough to meet the national food demand, worst still losses of produced crops are on the rise because processing and storage of crops are not adequately done. nutritious food are limited by low income, and poverty; most nutrition food are often expensive, food intake and nutritional well being of many households are of relatively low quantity, and are affected by their low economic status. between 1975 and 1970 the percentage share of agriculture in total gdp was 54.8%, this however, dropped to 38.6% between 1971 and 1975, and reduced further to 21.1% in 1976-1980 (oriola, 2009), according to fao (1997) households’ food insecurity, under nutritional and micro nutrient deficiencies are found throughout nigeria. oriola (2009) also mentioned that since independence most nigerian administration strife to attain food security; in the 1960s the country relied on agriculture to provide infrastructure and run services until the end of the first republic through the military regime of 1976, then it became sufficient agriculturally that crop seedlings were exported to other countries like malaysia. in 1973 the government embarked on the national food programme (nafpp), this was a voluntary scheme launched in nigeria to make the country self sufficient and food secured. operation feed the nation (ofn) was launched in 1976, it’s sought to increase local food production and thereby reduce food imports, citizen were encouraged to cultivate empty plot of lands to boost agricultural production. the agricultural development project (adp) were initiated in the mid 1970s as nigeria oil production revenues were on the rise, the project was designed to increase crop production through rural development, its focuses on improved technology, increased supplies of farming inputs, and improvement of infrastructure. the river basin development authorities (rbda) were established to undertake the development of ground water resources and maintain dams, dykes, wells or boreholes, irrigation and drainage systems to boost agricultural production. national seed service (nss) was established in 1975 and has the mandate of producing certified seeds as well as to arrange for seed certification. furthermore, the national seed policy (nsp) was established in 1992 to provide guidelines for the development of seed subsector; it seeks to support varietal improvement, testing, registration, release, multiplication of released seed varieties, and improve the quality of seeds sold to farmers. agricultural credit guarantee scheme (acgs) was established in 1977 to provide guarantee on loans granted by banks to farmers to boost agricultural production and agro-allied processing. in 1986 the directorate of food, and rural infrastructure (dffri) was established to influence the performance of agricultural related project in rural areas to boost food production. green revolution was launched in 1980 to ensure self sufficiency in food production and introduce modern technology into the nigerian agricultural sector. the structural adjustment programme (sap) was established in 1986, it aims at restructuring and diversifying the production base of the economy so as to reduce the over dependency on the oil sector and imports. again, nigerian agricultural, cooperative and rural development bank (nacrdb) was established in the year 2000 and tasked basically with financing at both the micro and macro levels, it was mandated to meet the funding requirements of nigerians in the agricultural sector to foster increase food production and subsequent food security. national agricultural development fund (nadf) was established in 2002, the body was tasked to be involved in agricultural research and development, and it was designed to promote the development of the agricultural sector. the national food reserve agency of nigeria (nfra) was established in 1977 and given the mandate to feed the nigerian nation, export food to other countries, and produce processed agricultural products that would do well in international market. it was also saddled with the task of enlightening nigerian farmers to produce sufficient food commodities in reserve for difficult times. lastly, in 2005 the government assisted by the world bank established the fadama project, it was designed to enhance agricultural production and value addition to small holders and rural entrepreneurs in the states under the fadama programme; the fadama programme is to provide support for water management systems in low lying flood plains, so that farming can continue in the dry seasons. the project brought about the adoption of simple, low cost irrigation technologies that helped farmers achieve substantial rise in production of horticultural crops. food security in nigeria: government’s intervention….. 59 as part of effort to make nigeria food secured the government established various agricultural research institutes. institute for agricultural research was established in 1924 to take care of genetic improvement and development of production and utilization technologies for sorghum, cowpea, cotton, groundnut, and sunflower and the improvement of farm based farming system in nigeria. national cereal research institute was established 1975 for the genetic improvement and production of soybean, rice, sugarcane, and sesame. the lake chad research institute was established in 1960 for the genetic improvement and development of production technologies for wheat, millet, and barley. national root crop research institute was established in 1976 for the genetic improvement of yam, cassava, cocoyam, irish and sweet potato and ginger. cocoa research institute of nigeria was established in1964 for the genetic improvement of the production and local utilization of cocoa, cashew, kola nut, coffee and tea. national institute for oil palm research was established in 1937 to research into the genetic improvement, production and processing of oil palm, date palm coconut, and ornamental palms. furthermore, in 1977 the government established the national animal production research institute and mandated it to carry out research into the production of food animals’ species and forages. interestingly, nigeria food problems does not lie basically with food production per se, rather it lies with what is done to crops after their production; the food problem in nigeria is due largely to the inability to preserve food surpluses during the short harvest periods rather than to low production. according to fao (2001) when compared to other african countries, nigeria has one of the highest per capital food output; it accounts for about 70% of world production of yams (osunde, 2008) and 19% of global market share for cassava (hillocks, 2002).according to earth trends (2003) nigeria produces 8.41%, 1.09%, 2.85%, and 0.38% of world production of root and tubers, cereals, legumes, and meat respectively. food losses have a great bearing on food availability and security (fao, 2011), nkana et al. (1994) painted a dire picture of the situation when they posit that 20%-30%, 5%, 10%-20%, and 20%-67% of maize, rice, cassava, and yam are lost respectively at post harvest-stored levels in nigeria. furthermore, they maintained that 35%-100%, 20%-80%, 20%-95%, 20%-50%, 70%, and 40%100% of plantain, banana, citrus, tomatoes, pineapple, and pawpaw are lost respectively at post harvest levels. from the foregoing, we can say categorically that more efforts should be channelled towards food storage in nigeria rather than to production since available statistics show that an alarming percentage of crops that are produced in nigeria are lost at one stage or the other at post harvest– storage levels. the fao (2011) corroborates this when it maintain that the issue of food losses is of high importance in the efforts to combat hunger and improve food security. the nigerian stored products research institute (nspri) was established in 1954 to conduct research in all aspect of post harvest handling and storage of all agricultural crops, though it was initially mandated to focus its attention on export crops, at independence it was given the mandate to research also into local food crops via improvement and maintenance of quality of perishable crops. it has developed the use of the ventilated yam barn for the storage of yam tubers, techniques for preserving fresh cassava roots, development of waxes for the treatment of citrus, and techniques for the production of pineapple, mango, okra, tomato, and pepper etc into more stable forms. under its mandate of improvement and maintenance of quality of durable crops, it has developed systems for storing grains at domestic and commercial levels. it has developed techniques for maintenance of the quality of grains at warehouse level. again, it has perfected the inert atmosphere techniques for grain storage. under its mandate to improve and maintain the quality of tree crops it has developed techniques for checking mycotoxin and aflatoxin in cashew, cocoa, and also groundnut. it has developed techniques for storing and extending the shelf life of seed potato and ware potato by the use of diffuse light store; this can store seed and ware potato for up to 4-5months. it has developed the cassava stem storage structure for storage of cassava stem, and dryers for meat and fish products. it has the mandate to improve capacity building in post harvest technology for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 56-63 60 artisans in the fabrication of packaging and storage structures, on this, it has advised on problems associated with stored products, it has provided extension services to ngos on construction and uses of different dryers and trained interested small farm holders on food preservation techniques. conclusion food insecurity in nigeria is not solely tied to underproduction (nigeria produces 8.41%, 1.09%, and 2.85% of global production of roots and tubers, cereal, and legumes respectively) though there is need to step up production, this is in tune with the assertion of cbn (2001) that the rate of increased food production of 2.5% per annum does not measure up with the annual population growth of 2.8%. stepping up production is, however, not a panacea or silver bullet for food insecurity in nigeria, thus, an all encompassing, holistic approach needs to be employed and advantages accruing to this synergy would be gotten. the increased production of rice, cassava, maize, and yam since the 1980s according to shimada (1999) has been extra ordinary high, also hall (1968), adeniyi (1997) and agboola (1980) posit that self sufficiency in food in nigeria can only be achieved if all effort at increasing crop production is matched with greater effort at postharvest technology to save crops that are produced from spoilage and wastage. more so, nigeria is one of the leading producers of plantain, okra , tomatoes, and the leading producer of yams and cassava but 30%-50% of these are lost due to poor post harvest practices (aworh, 2010). hence, there should be maximum investment in storage technology, more production should be stimulated, and wastages that occur due to hoarding should be checked. income affects household food security which in the long run affects national food security, for this reason, households’ income should be raised (omonona and agoi, 2007). dependency ratio (the proportion of households’ members that are not working to those working) affects food security status of households and the nation at large and this should be looked into. furthermore, people should be gainfully employed and this would impact positively on food security of the country. ogwumike (2004) maintained that for nigeria to be food secured it has to increase the production of some staple foods which can lift the nation out of food self-insufficiency and insecurity. national food security is about selfsufficiency, self reliance, availability, affordability for all year round consumption and reserve, this could be achieved with effective linkages and synergies among food security programmes as discussed earlier, it is only when this is achieved that the benefit of establishing these would be achieved on sustainable basis (oyebanji, 2005). on a final note, agricultural support programmes and research institutes that have been put in place by the government should be spurred towards fully stepping up production and do much more in the quest to store what is produced to minimize post harvest losses, this will in the long run lead to the attainment of the much desired household and national food security that we long for. table 1: 2004 production of major crops in nigeria crop production (mt) 2004 incremental output over 2003 (%) sorghum 4,278,679 7.6 maize 4,582,035 2.2 millet 2,871, 879 4.0 rice 2,852,484 9.8 groundnut 2,089,673 4.5 cowpea 1,238,250 9.9 soybean 377,963 9.0 yam 21,983,283 10.0 cassava 33,217,488 10.3 sweet potato 2,896,202 1.2 cocoyam 3,060,285 5.4 source: oyebanji o. o. (2005) food security in nigeria: government’s intervention….. 61 table 2: major livestock products live stock population increment of production of 2004 over 2003 percentage poultry 143,507,164 5.0 cattle 14,659 0.1 sheep 30,808,473 2.4 goat 48,740,532 2.5 pig 5,905,017 4.0 source: oyebanji o. o. (2005) table 3: food production, demand, deficit and import (million metric tone) year food production food demand food deficit food import wastage 1995 89.23 89.53 0.30 0.57 0.27 1996 93.05 96.27 3.20 3.25 3.25 1997 93.05 99.06 3.53 3.59 3.59 1998 97.64 100.77 3.13 3.27 3.27 1999 100.40 104.60 4.20 4.43 4.43 2000 101.11 106.40 5.35 5.51 5.51 source: edokpa and okafor (2009) table 4: volume of nigerians production of some agricultural commodities compared with the worlds commodities world nigeria % of nigerians’ production in world production root and tuber 1996-1998 638,438 53,717 8.41% cereals 1999-2001 2,075,387 22,729 1.09% legumes 1996-1998 55,469 1,583 2.85% meat 1999-2001 233,218 894 0.38% source: earth trends (2003) table 5: estimate of losses in stored food products in nigeria crop estimated % losses legume 30-40 maize 20-30 rice 5 cassava 10-25 yam tubers 20-67 dried yam 5-10 source: nkana et al. 1994 table 6: estimate of losses due to handling and storage of fruits and vegetables in nigeria commodity loss of experience in % plantain 35-100 banana 20-80 citrus 20-95 tomatoes 20-50 pineapple 0-70 pawpaw 40-100 source: nkana et al. 1994 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 56-63 62 acknowledgement the authors acknowledge engr. f. f. olayemi for his constructive criticisms of the manuscript. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adeniyi, m. o. (1977). status of plant protection in the operation feed the nation programme. presidential address delivered at its 7 th annual conference at institute of agricultural research and technology (iar&t), moore plantation in ibadan, page 1017. agboola, s. d. (1980). the role of the nigerian stored products research institute in nigeria march towards self sufficiency in food nspri occasional paper series. 17, 25-29. alkali, r. a. (1997). the world bank and nigeria: cornucopia or pandora box? kaduna; baraka press. akande, s. o. (1998). public policy in nigeria agriculture in institutional reforms for agriculture development. oludimu o.l. and imodu p.b. (eds) triumph books publishers, pp 20-54. aworh, o. c. (2010). reducing postharvest losses of horticultural commodities in nigeria through improved packaging. the world of food science. vol 8 (robertson, g. l. ed.), international union of food science and technology (iufost). http://www. worldfoodscience.org/cms/?pid=10051 32&printable=1. accessed 21 march 2012. babatunde, r., & oyatoye, e. (2005). food security and marketing problems in nigeria: the case of maize marketing in kwara state. http:/www.tropentag.de. cbn. (2001). annual statistical bulletin. central bank of nigeria. earth, t. (2003). agriculture and foodnigeria. http: earthtrends.wri.org. edokpa, d. a., & okafor, f. c. (2009). rural development; a link to food security in nigeria. benin journal of social sciences, university of benin, benin city, nigeria. pp 259-269. food and agricultural organization, (1992). proceedings of the 1992 world food day symposium. (fao) rome. food and agricultural organization, (1996). declaration on world food security world food summit. november 13-17 1996 (fao) rome. food and agricultural organization, (1997). the state of food and agriculture 1997. (fao) rome. food and agricultural organization (2001). production year book. 1.55 (fao) rome. food and agricultural organization, (2003). the state of food in the world. (fao) rome. food and agricultural organization, (2011). global food losses and waste: extent, causes and prevention. study conducted for the international congress (fao) rome. gillespie, s., & haddad, l. (2001). attacking the double burden of malnutrition in asia and pacific. adb nutrition and development series no 4, asia development bank and international food policy research institute (ifpri), manila and washington dc. hall, f. w. (1968). prevention of waste of agricultural produce during handling, storage and transportation. tropical stored institute, pp 15-23. hillocks, r. (2002). cassava in africa. in hillocks r., thresh j and bellotti ac (eds). cassava biology, production and utilization. cabi publishing. idachaba, f. s. (2004). food security in nigeria: challenges under democratic dispensation. 9 th armti annual lecture, ilorin, 24 th march, 2004 idrisa, y. l., gwary, m. m., & shehu, h. (2008). analysis of food security food security in nigeria: government’s intervention….. 63 status among farming households in jere local government of borno state, nigeria. journal of tropical agriculture, food, environment and extension. 7(3), 199-205. igberaese, f. i., & okojie, o. (2010). food and hunger everywhere: a nigeria paradox of poverty. international review of \business research papers, 6(4), 90100. igberaese, f. i. (2004). africa in integrational transmission of poverty: towards a radical model for the new partnership for africa development (nepad). journal of university of the gambia, 1, 29-30. isife, b. i., & abert, c. o. (2009). issues in developing a natural policy on agricultural extension services in nigeria: the perception of extension professionals. agric journal, 4, 22-26. ladele, a. a., & ayoola, g. b. (1997). food marketing and its roles in food security in nigeria. in shaib b, adedipe n.o, aliyu a and jir, m,m (eds). integrated agricultural production in nigeria, strategies and mechanisms for food security. proceedings of national workshop on nigeria position at the world food summit, abuja. nigeria. pp 88. lawal, a. a. (1997). the economy and the state from the pre-colonial times to the present. in osuntokun, a and olukoya a (eds). nigeria people and culture ibadan; davidson. maharjan, k. l., & chhetri, a. k. (2006). household food security in rural areas of nepal: relationship between socioeconomic characteristics and food security status. paper presented at the international association of agricultural econmist conference. gold coast australia august 12-26. nkana, i., adamu, d. j. m., & igenem, j. o. (1994). food loss and conservation under arid environment. annals of borno journals, 11(12), 91-204. ogen, o. (2003). patterns of economic growth and development in nigeria since 1960. in arifalo s. o. and ajayii (eds) (2003). essays in nigerian contemporary history. lagos: first academic publishers. ogwumike, f. o. (2004). an approval of poverty reduction strategies in nigeria, central bank of nigeria. economic and financial review, 39, 4. omonona, b. t., & agoi, g. a. (2007). an analysis of food security situation among nigeria urban households: evidence from lagos state, nigeria. journal of central european agriculture, 8(3), 397-406. oriola, e. o. (2009). irrigation agriculture. an option for achieving the millennium development goals (mdgs) in nigeria. journal of geography and regional planning, 2(7), 176-181. osunde, z. d. (2008). minimizing post harvest losses in yam (discorea spp): treatments and techniques. international union of food science and technology. oyebanji, o. o. (2005). food security situation in nigeria. cafstondurbar hotel, kano, 26-27 th may, 2005. shimada, s. (1999). a study of increased food production in nigeria: the effect of the structural adjustment program on the local level. african study monographs, 20(4), 175-227. von braun, j., bouis, h., kumar, s., & panga –lorch, r., (1992). improving food security of the poor: concept, policy and programs. international food policy research institute, washington, u.s.a. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. the effect of logical choice weight and corrected scoring methods on multiple choice agricultural science test scores b. k. ajayi (faculty of education, ekiti state university, ado-ekiti, ekiti state, nigeria) citation: b. k. ajayi (2012) “the effect of logical choice weight and corrected scoring methods on multiple choice agricultural science test scores”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 514 518. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 514-518. 514 author(s) b. k. ajayi faculty of education, ekiti state university, ado-ekiti, ekiti state, nigeria the effect of logical choice weight and corrected scoring methods on multiple choice agricultural science test scores abstract the study focused on the effect of logical choice weight and corrected scoring methods on multiple choice agricultural science test scores the study also investigated the interaction effect of logical choice weight and corrected scoring methods in schools ,and types of school in multiple choice agricultural science test. the researcher used a combination of survey type and one short experimental design. the sample for the study consisted of 600 students selected by stratified random sampling techniques in south western nigeria. overall performance of students in percentage, and correlation was analyzed. the hypotheses were generated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. the study revealed that there was a significant difference in the academic performance of students in logical choice weight and corrected scoring methods in multiple choice agricultural science test scores. the result also shown that there was no interaction effect on the two scoring methods in the type of schools, the location of schools in multiple choices agricultural science test. the study revealed that logical choice weight scoring method was the best method that favoured the scoring of the students’ scripts in multiple choices agricultural science test. on the basis of these findings, logical choice weight should be introduced to the teachers to use in the classroom as a new method of scoring multiple choice agricultural science the logical choice weight method is recommended in the ministry of education, in examination division, and to junior secondary schools for scoring jss (3) three multiple choice test. examination bodies such as west africa examination council (waec), national examination council (neco), joint admission and matriculation board (jamb) should adopt the use of logical choice weight method in scoring multiple choice tests. the method could be used in tertiary institutions for post ‘jamb’ unify matriculation examination (ume) test. it is also recommended for all states of the federation as well the west african countries public service could also adopt the use of logical choice weight scoring method. keywords: logical choice weight, corrected scoring method, multiple choice, investigated introduction a test may contain several items. each item tends to confront the testee with a task to provide a means for observing its response to the task. test has little value if the score derived from it at once time varies from the score obtained from it in another time under similar condition. kolawole [2005] in his own view a test is a systematic procedure for comparing the performance of an individual with designated standard of performance, thus as an instrument to elicit a sample of behavior or human traits or attributes. the trait being measured in testing may be achievement test, intelligent skill, the effect of logical choice weight and.... 515 personality. ebel (1979) proposed two ways that can lead to a meaningful understanding of the term’ test’ [1] there is a determination on the part of a tester to obtain information from a learner , student or consumer of information called a tester [2] the instrument used by the testee to obtain the device. he also mentioned that, there exists a relationship in continuum between the tester, the test and the testee which makes the three inseparable ,the tester must have made the decision to obtain information from the testee he then prepares the applies a ‘test’. he also went further that the tests that are given in education and psychology are planned with intentions. the tests are directed forward attainment of specified objectives. tests are not given without purpose. achievement test serves as a psychological instrument which the school teacher applies to find out the amount of knowledge this students have acquired in a specific course of study at a specific time. achievement test consists of essay and objective test and of these two; the essay format requires learner or testee to write a sentence, paragraph or long passage which demands as subjective judgment regarding the quality of the written statement, while objective format is divided of subjectively because every expert arrives at precisely the same score. in primary, junior secondary school levels and entrance examinations to secondary and tertiary institutions objective test is the most commonly used test formats. according to ajayi (2007) scoring is a method of assigning marks to any correct option in item scoring can aid in making proper choice. according to ajibola (2003) logical choice weights are methods of scoring multiple choice tests in which differential weights are assigned to items options according to a priori assessment of the degree of correctness of each option by expert judgment. it involves awarding partial credit for partial information while the key option is assigned a weight of one. according to ebel (1965) in his contribution logical choice weight scoring method took into cognizance each of the options and the degree of closeness to the key. he explained that in an item having four options and d is the key, d will be assigned (marked if any of the response is closer to d, it will be assigned 0.75 and the next closer to d, will be assigned 0.5 while the last option will be assigned zero (0). therefore logical choice weight scoring method favoured students score. corrected scoring method according to ried (1970) stated that any multiple choice test in order to obtain success score there must be a penalty for guessing and consequently derived a formula to adjust for underserved score as follow: sc=r-(w/n-1) where sc=success score r= right response w= wrong response n= number of alternative response rowley and traub, (1977) in his own contribution he observed that in practice when the formula is applied, a considerable number of low ability students tend to emerge with –ve corrected scores. statement of problem the effect of logical choice weight is more or less test specific. knowledge and capacity learn usually involve the use of tests, logical choice weight method is a new method of scoring. stanley and wang (1970) reported that though item weighting had not been successful in significantly increasing the reliability and validity of a composite measure, the differential weighting of responses within items appears promising. afolabi (1990) however confirmed this expectation when he found out that logical choice weighted scores are more reliable and more valid than corrected score in agricultural science tests. the fundamental principle employed in corrected score is that students score should be proportional to the average number of in-corrected alternative which he can eliminate which means any student who failed to choose the correct answer will be penalized. chopping (1975) added that the scoring formula (sc) that is continually used to correct for guessing or chance success does not take account of when a testee acts on the basis of misinformation, and chooses the answer the ‘knows’ to be ‘right’, even though it is wrong. it is argued that students would usually not be asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 514-518. 516 guessing blindly, but rather choosing what seems plausible to them. in this study the following questions were raised (1) what is the overall performance of students in the two scoring methods (2) which of the two scoring methods give the best performance? research hypotheses based on the statement of the problem the following research hypotheses were raised. h01. there is no significant difference in the overall performance of students whose script were marked with logical choice weight method and those marked with corrected scoring method in multiple choice agricultural science test h02. there is no significant relationship between the students whose scripts were marked with logical choice weight method and those marked with corrected scoring method in multiple choice agricultural science tests. methodology using stratified random sample technique a total of 600 students were selected from south western nigeria. the research instrument used for the study were two different formats of multiple choice agricultural science tests, each of the test was made up of 60 items with four alternative options to each of the test item was a, b, c, and d with different instructions and different methods of scoring, after the test items were drawn from standardized achievement test constructed by west africa examination council (waec) for the logical choice weight it was 0.753, for corrected scoring method it was 0.624. using pearson product moment correlation, a coefficient of stability of 0.86 in logical choice weight and 0.510 in corrected method were found. discussion the results from the data analysis were discussed on the basis of the stated research hypotheses. the findings of the study showed that there was a significant difference in the academic performance of students in two scoring methods of multiple choice agricultural science test scores academic performance of any group of students is a product of many variables including innate abilities of inherited intelligence reinforced or inhibited by environment the findings of this study was in line with strashny (2002) in his own study, he mentioned that scoring in multiple choice tests are better in differentiating the academic performance of students. ajibola (2003) found that logical choice weight scoring capable of improving the ability of a test to reflect the degree of knowledge students have on the items. despite the fact that logical choice weight scoring method was time consuming and laborious, still it had significant effect in multiple choice agricultural science test scores. hawbleton et al (1970) found that empirical choice weighting greatly increases internal consistency reliability than logical choice weighting while logical-choice weighting has a slight tendency to improve validity, even though the effect of logical weighting is more or less test specific. also the finding of the study indicated that there is no significant relationship between the performance of students whose scripts were marked with logical choice weight and corrected scoring method conclusion based on the results of the study the following conclusions were drawn, logical choice weight had the highest percentage which is above average as a result of this, it was found to be the best method of scoring multiple choice agricultural science test scores, and the method favours student recommendation based on the findings and conclusions of the study, the following recommendations were made: (1) logical choice weight method should be introduced as new scoring method the effect of logical choice weight and.... 517 (2) the logical choice weight method could be used in tertiary institutions for scoring, ‘jamb’, ‘post-ume’ tests. (3) examination bodies such as ‘waec’, ‘neco’, and ‘jamb’ should adopt the use of logical choice weight scoring method. (4) the method is also recommended in the ministry of education, examination division to use the method to score jss3 examinations. analysis of data table: 1 overall performance of students in two scoring methods variable no of classes mean 60 marks sd range score % logical choice weight method 300 33.31 7.242 44 0.67 75% corrected scoring method 300 27.15 6.892 38 -0.18 43% table one shows the overall performance of agricultural science students in multiple choice tests. the logical choice weight method had the mean of 33.31 while the corrected scoring method had 27.15 in the z-score logical choice weight method has 75% which is above average but in corrected score of 43% in the final analysis, logical choice weight scoring method favoured the students than the corrected scoring method. table: 2 correlation analysis between logical choice weight and corrected method variable number rcal r table logical choice weight method 300 0.182 0.195 corrected scoring method 300 p>0.05 (result not significant) table 2 shows that the r cal was 0.182 which is less than the r tab value of 0.195 therefore there is no significant relationship between logical choice weight and corrected scoring methods. thus the null hypothesis was accepted. references afolabi e.r.i. (1990) “towards an account assessment of students cognitive capacity; an evaluation of three scoring procedures in objective testing”, unpublished manuscript, faculty of education, obafemi awolowo university, ile-ife ajayi b. k. (2007) “the effect of four scoring methods on multiple choice agricultural science test scores”, unpublished ph. d thesis, ekiti state university, ado–ekiti. ajibola a. a. (2003) “effect of logical choice weight on the psychometric properties of multiple choice test among secondary school students in osun state”, unpublished m. ed thesis, obafemi awolowo university,ile-ife. strashny, alex (2002) “a new scoring algorithm for multiple choice test: conditional knowledge model”, uci, 3151 social science plaza a, irvine, ca 92697-5100. chopping, b. (1975) “guessing the answer on objectives tests”, british journal of education psychology, vol. 45(2), pp. 111-255. ebel, r. l. (1965) “content standard test scores”, educational and psychological measurement, vol. 12, pp. 15-25. ebel, r. l. (1979) “can teachers write good true-false test items?” journal of educational and psychological measurement, vol. 31, pp. 417-426. hawbleton r. k., roberts, d. m. and traub, r. e. (1970) “a comparison of the reliability and validity of two methods for assessing partial knowledge on a multiple-choice test”, journal of education measurement, vol. 7, pp. 25-82. kolawole, e. b. (2005) “test and measurements”, revised edition published 2005 by bolabay publication, ikeja-lagos. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 514-518. 518 ried, f. (1970) “an alternative scoring formula scoring number right scoring and test-taking strategy”, journal of educational measurement, vol. 70, pp. 335-339. rowley, g. l. and traub, r. e. (1977) “formula scoring, number right scoring and test-taking strategy”, journal of education measurement, vol.15, pp. 14-22. stanley, j. c. and wang, m. d. (1970) “weighting test items and testitem options: an overview of the analytical and empirical literature”, journal of educational and psychological measurement, vol. 40, pp. 663705. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 532-542 532 principal-agent governance mechanism in an emerging biofuels supply chain in usa vivek pandey phd candidate; department of agricultural, food and resource economics, michigan state university, usa aleksan shanoyan assistant professor; department of agricultural economics, kansas state university, usa h. christopher peterson nowlin chair of consumer-responsive agriculture; department of agricultural, food and resource economics, michigan state university, usa r. brent ross assistant professor; department of agricultural, food and resource economics, michigan state university, usa abstract this article analyzes the incentives and compensation problems faced by cellulosic ethanol producer and logging firms and the consequent impact on the organization of the wood based cellulosic ethanol industry in the us. the success of this relationship is central to setting up the biofuel industry in michigan and in the us at large. the study utilizes the theoretical framework of institutional economics and uses case methodology to discuss potential problems arising from information asymmetry. theoretical results indicate that the specification contract under the principal-agent framework is of limited utility due to’ metering’ problem when the principal contracts with multiple agents for the supply of feedstock. alternative arrangements including joint ventures have the potential to provide close to first best solutions. keywords: cellulosic ethanol, contracts, asymmetric information, moral hazard, adverse selection, supply chain introduction 1 biofuels are being extensively promoted for their potential to contribute to energy security, stable energy prices, and mitigation of climate change in the united states (khanna, 2008). within the category of biofuels, corn based ethanol production has long been supported in 1 corresponding author’s details: name: vivek pandey email address: pandeyvi@msu.edu the united states. over 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol was produced in 2008 from corn grown over 90 million acres of farm land (donner & kucharik, 2008). however there has been a recent policy shift mandating increase in production of cellulosic ethanol (ce) to 21 billion gallons a year by 2022 (eisa, 2007). currently ce is not being produced at industrial scale. this article analyzes the incentives and compensation problems faced by a wood based asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:pandeyvi@msu.edu asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 532-542 533 ce producer and logging firms (they supply feedstock) and the consequent impact on the organization of the wood based ce industry in the us. we propose to study this problem under the principal-agent framework. this would allow us to introduce asymmetric information and investigate its impact on the proposed vertical coordination strategy (macho-stadler and perez-castrillo, 2001). the us biofuel policy is comprised of tax credits for biofuel blenders and production mandates (a renewable fuel standard) authorized in the energy policy act of 2005 and the energy independence and security act of 2007 (eisa, 2007). the new renewable fuel standard requires the use of at least 36 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2022. the law seeks to limit the impact of corn based ethanol (defined as conventional biofuels or first generation biofuels) in the rfs by limiting its production to 15 billion gallons a year after 2015 and encouraging the use of ce which is defined as advanced or second generation biofuel. the advanced biofuels on a life cycle analysis basis must encompass 50 per cent less green house gas emissions (ghg) than the gasoline or diesel fuel that it will replace. the second generation biofuels include fuel made from cellulosic materials, hemi cellulose, lignin, sugar, starch (excluding corn), and waste, as well as biomassbased biodiesel, biogas, and other fuels from cellulosic biomass (velasco, 2008). first generation biofuels processes are useful but limited. there is a threshold beyond which additional production cannot take place without jeopardizing food supplies (example: corn and sugarcane) and biodiversity (kish, 2007). they are also not cost effective when compared with fossil fuels and the green house gas emission savings are small. this had lead to increased interest in second generation cellulosic biofuels due to their enhanced potential to contribute to energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85% while mitigating the food vs. fuel competition for land as compared to corn ethanol (khanna, 2009). ce production has the advantage of abundant and diverse raw material compared to sources like corn and sugar cane. major sources for ce include switch grass, miscanthus and wood (example: aspen, poplar and willow). cellulose is present in almost every natural free-growing plant, tree, and bush all over the world without agricultural effort or cost needed to make it grow. objectives the cellulosic content in wood-logs is the major source of ce. once the tree has been cut the cellulosic content starts declining with time. it has been estimated that an uprooted tree looses 60% of the cellulosic content if it is left unprocessed for 10 days (maser et al., 1988). therefore the ethanol producer would prefer that landing 2 operations are completed by the loggers as soon as the tree has been cut. the problem arises during winters when snow affects logging operations. landing becomes difficult because the same task requires more resources to be spent by the logging firm (more men, fuel and better machines for transporting wood to the landing area). this will gives rise to conflict between the objectives of the principal (ce producer) and the agent (logging firm). opportunistic behavior on the part of the agent can adversely affect the ethanol production and hence the principal’s revenue. in short, moral hazard and adverse selection problems are anticipated in the contractual relationship between the ce producer and the logging firm. the moral-hazard problem is usually formulated in terms of a contract between the principal and the agent(s). the principal and the agent can be people or institutions. with regard to agricultural sharecropping, landowner is the principal and tenant is the agent. in the moralhazard problem, the agent works on a project for the principal. the amount of work the agent performs affects the probability distribution of the project’s return. the problem is that the principal cannot monitor the agent’s work, therefore agent’s effort is private information, that is, it is observed by only the agent (prescott, 1999). in some models, the agent’s amount of effort is not observed. in other models, precisely how the task is performed is not observed. adverse selection is present when agent has informational advantage concerning his own personal characteristics and will only be 2 landing is defined as transportation of logs of wood from the logging site to a storage site asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 532-542 534 revealed if it is in the interest of the agent to do so. the wood based ce industry has to yet take off on a commercial scale. in that respect, we would consider our study to be futuristic. it is strongly anticipated that theoretical findings of the study would be particularly utility to firms operating at various stages in the supply chain and also to venture capitalists that have plans to invest in ce production facilities and emerging technologies in ce production. the theoretical results indicate that specification contract under the principal-agent framework is of limited utility due to’ metering’ problem when the principal contracts with multiple agents for the supply of feedstock.. alternative arrangements including jvs have the potential to provide close to first best solutions. the article is organized as follows. section 2 presents the methodology and theoretical framework used in the research work while section 3 contains a brief literature review on supply chain contracting. the discussion section 4 is presented in the background of moral hazard and adverse selection problems. we also develop the conceptual framework which includes the base model and asymmetric information models. in section 5 we discuss various optimal contracting schemes under asymmetric information where some options are proposed and analyzed. we conclude our analysis in section 6. methodology theory of contracts and the new institutional economics provided relevant theoretical framework to conduct this case study. the case study is based on the state of michigan in the us which is used to analyze governance issues arising from principal-agent relationship based on specification contracts. michigan has 5 th largest timberland in the us and it grows 2.5 times more wood fiber annually than it harvests (pedersen, 2005). michigan has enough resources to support 6 commercial facilities each producing 50 million gallons of ethanol per year. as result michigan was able to attract investments from prospective ce producers. one of the renewable fuels company is planning to build the first ce production facility in michigan. the plant will be located in the chippewa province, upper peninsula (egan, 2009). the ethanol facility will use 375 thousand cords 3 of wood every year to manufacture 40 million gallons of biofuel. wood will come mainly from areas within 150 miles radius from the plant’s site. this largely rural area includes both state and federal forests, interstate 75 and access to the mackinac bridge, which puts forests in the northern lower peninsula within reach. so too are the forests of northern ontario, via sault ste. marie’s international crossing with canada. michigan wood harvesting industry has about 800 logging firms. most loggers are independent contractors and run their family businesses. loggers are supposed to possess variety of skills which include logging, maintaining their equipments, forestry know-how, accounting, and be able to work with private forest owners. it is a hard job with many risks. while there are many combinations of equipments, a common set-up includes a feller-buncher and skidder. a feller-buncher is a large machine that has big cutter on the end of a mechanical arm. the cutter holds the trees at once and places it in small piles, where they are cut into logs by people with chainsaws. skidder is used to pull whole trees to a collecting point called landings. there are two primary actors in ce production ce producer (principal) and the logging firm (agent). the ce producer processes the wood logs into ethanol by using an enzymatic process. the producer designs a contract for procuring wood from the logging firms in upper peninsula. the contract would typically carry quality and compensation details. the loggers generally don’t own the timberland and the trees. they buy the trees from the forest land owners by paying the stumpage 4 . the price paid for a specific stand of timber will vary considerably due to such factors as size, species, and quality, logging conditions, distance to the mill, end product, demand and competition. timber markets often change rapidly. the timberland owners generally obtain 3 volume of one cord of wood is 128 cubic feet 4 stumpage is the price of a standing timber before it is harvested asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 532-542 535 assistance from professional foresters and use the competitive bidding process as the ultimate determinant of fair market value for any specific tract of timber (michigan dnre, 2010). in the case of procuring wood for ethanol, logging conditions and distance to the processing facility would be the key factor for stumpage price determination. the next task of the loggers is to ship the wood to a landing area. a landing area is a small clearing where loggers gather the logs. the landing area is owned and operated by the logging companies. at the landings area truckers hired by the ce producer pick up the logs and transport it to the ce mill. operators can load an entire truck with about 15 to 20 cords in less than an hour. literature review several supply chain coordination and collaboration mechanisms such as virtual integration, vmi, contracts and inter-firm collaboration have been researched in considerable detail. these mechanisms are designed with the common purpose of alleviating the problems caused due to information asymmetry and its impact on negotiated relationship. the prominent assumption in all such studies is that one of the transacting parties has more information either about themselves (adverse selection) or about the course of action that they would take in response to a particular situation (moral hazard). the more informed party can use this informational advantage to minimize its disutility function. while doing so the utility function of the less informed agent is adversely affected. this study focuses on similar information asymmetry problem in the forest based biofuels industry. contracts as governance mechanism have been studied in appreciable detail in the supply chain and economics literature. gopal & koka (2010) have studied the role of contracts on quality and returns to quality in offshore software development outsourcing. various incentive structures inherent in the time and materials and fixed priced contract are found to influence the quality provided by offshore vendors. the analytical results hold that fixed price (fp) contracts ensure greater vendor quality. the incentive compatibility constraint is designed under the fp contracts in such a manner that incentivizes the vendor to recruit most skilled workers for fulfilling the contract. from cost side also, the fp contract has higher expectancy of inducing the vendor to strive for efficiency because compensation has been fixed by the principal. risk associated with demand forecasting (glut vs. stock outs) leads to trade-off between flexible quantity (fq) and low-price (lp) contracts. chung et.al. (2010) have studied fq and lp contracts in the case of a decentralized supply chain in which there are two suppliers and a single buyer. under the fq contract, the buyer does not assume full responsibility for the forecast, yet the supplier guarantees the availability of the forecasted quantity with additional buffer inventory. on the other hand lp contracts places full inventory burden on the buyer, but with a cheaper price. theoretical results show that buyers would benefit significantly from having multiple sources of supply. one of the major contributions of this work is the application of principal-agent contracting framework to an emerging supply chain. sebastiao and golicic (2008) study supply chain strategy for nascent firms in emerging markets. they claim that the strategic role of supply chain management has typically been examined in mature market driven firms. however there has been relatively little research on supply chain development in terms of vertical coordination in an early stage technology driven firms. the present study is a step towards filling this research gap. discussion moral hazard delay in landing operation is very common during winter season due to heavy snowfall conditions in michigan. both harvesting and transportation to the landing site becomes difficult and costly. additional equipments such as snow removers are required to clear the road for transportation (very few logging firms have their own snow removal vehicles). logging firms must also hire more number of loggers to perform the same task. usually fuel and labor asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 532-542 536 costs are higher during winters. in short, logging firms are expected to invest higher levels of effort during winter operations. higher effort implies higher disutility for the logger. however the effort of the agent is not entirely verifiable. a number of factors contribute to nonverifiability of the effort of the logging firm such as spatial nature of operations, catering to multiple buyers, complex logging and landing procedures and prohibitive monitoring cost. since the agent’s effort cannot be observed therefore it cannot be included in the contract. output is an observed variable when ce producer contracts with only one logging firm for all its feedstock needs. however in case of multiple agents, the principal can only observe the group output due to the lumpy nature of the production process. in absence of the information related to marginal output, the ce producer will find it practically very difficult to incentivize agents to provide high effort. this will adversely affect ce production and revenue for the principal. presence of moral hazard problem would not allow the principal to distinguish between those agents who exert high effort from low effort agents. as a result high effort agents will selfselect themselves to those buyers whose production process allows them to make such distinction. adverse selection michigan logging industry is highly fragmented, diverse and has many small and medium sized logging firms. therefore ce producer is expected to contract with multiple loggers. logging firms differ from each other in terms of expertise (unobserved), number of co-workers (varies from season to season), access to machines, and degree of mechanization. based on these criterions we can broadly categorize agents into two types: high type and low type agents. lack of homogeneity in the logging industry can give rise to adverse selection problem due to inability of the ce producer to observe the agent type. on heavy snowfall days, agents are supposed to exert high effort in order to avoid decay of cellulosic content. this implies greater disutility for the agent. agents are aware of the fact that it is not possible for the principal to make an approximation of their effort by visualizing the logs of wood supplied by them because principal observes only total output. hence they have incentives to delay the landing operations and instead supply the fresher logs to nearby factories for example-paper and pulp industry, furniture firms etc. because in these industries, the agent’s effort can be ascertained by visualizing and touching the wood (green and ross, 1997). in the background of this information, the lowtype ability loggers (defined as those with lower logging skills and lesser equipments and employees) would self-select themselves in the ce industry. on the other hand high type agents will not be interested in working with ce producers because they can maximize their objective function by working in those markets which can verify their high effort and type based on output produced. we would formally show that how this would adversely affect the principal’s utility function. conceptual framework this section presents the analysis of various contractual schemes between the ce producer and the logging firm(s) in the principal-agent framework. we begin by explaining the source of tension between the principal and agent followed by a discussion of the model under symmetric information. thereafter we examine the case of asymmetric information, the incentive mechanism under the first best solution, and the optimal contract design in the presence of moral hazard and adverse selection problems. ce producer is the principal who contracts with the agent to supply wood. the prime objective of the principal and the agent is to maximize their respective utility functions. their utility function can be expressed as follows: (1) principal’s utility function: b[r(c(t)) w] (2) agent’s utility function: u(w, e) = u(w) – v(e) r(c (t)): denotes the revenue from the sale of ethanol is function of the cellulosic content in the wood which in turn is dependent on time asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 532-542 537 taken t taken in landing operations after the tree has been cut. w: compensation received by the agent. e: agent’s effort exerted during logging and landing. v (.): disutility from a particular level of effort. for sake of simplicity, we assume a single-shot game and just two effort levels: high effort and low effort. hence e ε (e h , e l ) and that disutility from higher effort is more than disutility from lower effort level, i.e. v(e h ) > v(e l ) the agent is interested to have higher w which is cost to the principal, whereas the principal is interested in higher levels of e, because high e implies higher cellulose content and hence higher r, but high e translates into higher disutility for the agent. this explains the source of conflict in the relationship. outcome does not only depend entirely on logger’s effort but also on random factors which are beyond the control of the logger. a partial list of such factors includes forestry practices of the landowner, specie harvested, weather, technological constraints, ethanol demand etc. hence, we can attach probability values to each type of effort that can result into various levels of revenue for the principal. this is formally expressed as: pr[r=ri | e] = pi(e) for i ε (1, 2, 3,…..,n) base model the base model is the perfect or symmetric information model. the principal and the agent share the same level of information with respect to variables and functions determining the relationship (such as production function, or the distribution of random variables such as principal’s revenue) and with respect to identities (both know the utility function of the other) and behavior relevant to the relationship. therefore principal can observe agent’s effort without any monitoring cost. whatever informational asymmetries exist, they are common for both the players. the bargaining relationship between the ethanol producer and the logging firm under symmetric information is presented graphically in the figure 1 figure 1: order of moves under symmetric information when the logging and landing effort is verifiable and the output is observable, the ethanol producer’s decision process can be modeled as the following maximization problem: max    )()( rrprrp ll h lhh h h wbwb     niirwe ,...,2,1 )(,  s.t. pc: uvuu ewpwp hl h lh h h  )()()( u is the logger’s reservation utility and equals the utility from the compensation he receives in the other wood based industry like paper and pulp producing firms or the furniture industry. the optimal contract under the symmetric information would be fixed payments (fp) depending on the effort level observed by the ethanol producer. we derive the following solution after having set up the lagrangian function of the above maximization problems and then finding the first order conditions with respect to effort e and compensation w: ethanol producer designs & offers contract logger accepts or rejects logger supplies effort nature determines the state (snow or no snow) outcomes & payoffs asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 532-542 538  )( 1 euw h h vu   the producer would offer w h for high effort and w l = 0 for low effort in order to incentivize the agent to provide higher effort. model under asymmetric information (contracting with only one agent) informational asymmetries can arise due to agent’s behavior during the relationship. we have already discussed such a scenario in section 3 where the ethanol producer cannot observe the effort of the logging firm to ensure timely logging and landing operations. as a result the principal cannot distinguish between suboptimal outputs caused due to factors beyond the control of the agent or due to agent’s opportunistic behavior i.e. lower effort is exerted on a snowy day in order to bring down operations cost. relationship between the logging firm and the ethanol producer under asymmetric information is graphically presented in figure 2. figure 2: the order of moves under asymmetric information (contracting with one agent) the extent to which the agent deviates from the principal’s desired level of effort can be captured by the variable l, which is defined as the portion of cellulose lost due to delay in landings. if agent puts high effort then l=0 with probability )( hh erp  , and if agent exerts low effort, then 0<l<1. under the present scenario if the principal gives fixed wage w , to the agent, the payoff functions for the agent: )()( eeu hh vwu  )()( eeu ll vwu  since v(e h ) > v(e l ), the agent will choose the lower level of effort. in that case, the utility of the principal is  wlcrb  )1(*)( . hence, we have the moral hazard problem if we impose the first best solution to the asymmetric case of non-verifiable agent’s effort. model under asymmetric information (contracting with multiple agents) while contracting with multiple loggers, there are three sources of information asymmetry (i) the non-verifiable agents’ effort and (ii) the type of agent and (iii) the marginal output. therefore in addition to the moral hazard problem, principal faces adverse selection problem and lack of information on marginal output when he deals with multiple agents. vast quantities of wood are logged by foresters to provide fibers for pulp, paper products, and boards industry, and saw timber for house building and furniture. the buyers of wood in fiber and timber industry are concerned with the tensile strength of the wood that is, lignin content. lignin is a glue-like polymer found in the cell wall of plants that surrounds cellulose to provide strength to fibers and to resist microbial decay. the hardness of the wood can be appreciably ascertained through visual inspection. the monitoring cost in such industries is hence not very high. as a result, the low type firms would find it difficult to have contractual arrangements with the fiber and timber processors. the ce producer is concerned with the cellulosic content in the wood. unlike the case of lignin, the presence of higher cellulosic content cannot be based on tensile strength of wood. inspection of cellulosic content instead requires chemical treatment of the wood (rui et al., 2010). chemical pretreatment raises the cost ethanol producer designs & offers contract logger accepts or rejects logger supplies nonverifiable effort outcomes & payoffs nature determines the state (snow or no snow) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 532-542 539 for using the wood as the source of cellulose. it is not possible to examine the cellulose content outside the laboratory. therefore the agent’s output is not observed. moreover compensation to the logger must be equal or greater than the existing levels. hence, the low type agent has the incentive to self select himself in the contractual relationship with the ce producer whereas the high type agent will self-select himself in those industries which can verify its higher effort and ability. figure 3: order of moves under asymmetric information (contracting with multiple agents) the application of first best or pareto efficient solution in this case will lead to twin problems of moral hazard and adverse selection. the payoff functions of the ethanol producer and the logger under the status quo are summarized in figure 4 eu and eb denote the expected utilities of the logging firm and the producer respectively with subscripts denoting the type of the agent (high, low) and the superscripts denoting the effort level (high, low). from the figure 4, it is evident that the ethanol producer will prefer to contract with high type agent because if both types exerts high effort then h l h h ebeb  . this holds true because )()( h l h h evev  , i.e. the disutility of exerting high effort to high type is less than to the low type. moreover the low type has incentive to self-select into ethanol market under status quo because )()( ll l evwuueu  . this illustrates the presence of moral hazard (high type chooses low effort) and adverse selection (low type self-selects) under the first best case. h heu = )()()( 1 ep h h n i h i vwue   h heb = )()( 1 wrbe n i h ip   l heu = )()()( 1 ep l h n i l i vwue   l heb =  ))1(()( 1 wrbe lp n i l i   h leu = )()()( 1 ep h l n i h i vwue   h leb = )()( 1 wrbe n i h ip   l leu = )()()( 1 ep l l n i l i vwue   l leb =  ))1(()( 1 wrbe lp n i l i   figure 4: payoff functions of ethanol producer and the logging firm under status-quo ethanol producer designs & offer the contract logger accepts or rejects logger supplies nonverifiable effort outcomes & payoffs nature determines the state (snow or no snow) nature chooses the type for logger which is observed only by the logger agent’s effort level high low high agent’s type low asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 532-542 540 optimal contract under assymetric information contracting with one agent the agent’s effort is not verifiable but the output is observable. hence wage (w) is not fixed, but is a function of output r. the principal would solve following maximization problem: max )()( 1 ii n i h i rwrbp      niirwe ,...,2,1 )(,  s.t. pc:   uevrwu h i n i h ip   )()( 1 ic:     )()()()( 11 l i n i l i h i n i h i evrwuevrwu pp    pc is the participation constraint, through which the principal ensures that the agent accepts the contract by paying him at least the reservation wage. ic is the incentive compatibility constraint through which the principal incentivizes the agent to choose the high effort over low effort. here we have assumed that monitoring cost to be zero. in the repeated game, the principal can induce the agent not to defect from the high effort strategy by paying efficiency wages w* (moretti and perloff, 2002). efficiency wages are the wages above the market-clearing wage which is paid in order to provide incentives to the agent to provide higher level of efforts. the efficiency wage would increase the cost of defection for the agent and hence he would comply with the decision of the principal. contracting with multiple agents total output is observed but not the marginal output. although it is not team production but the complexity of the production process gives rise to metering problem (alchian and demsetz, 1972). in the principal agent setup, the final output produced by individual agent is essential to determine the compensation of the individual agent. since, effort cannot be linked to output, the optimal contract design is not possible. prohibitive monitoring cost renders the payment of efficiency wages ineffective and adds to the principal cost. the probability of getting caught is very low hence the agents find it profitable to defect from the cooperation strategy. the argument presented here is that moving away from specification contract towards vertical integration, for instance, joint venture, helps in solving the problem efficiently by correcting the incentives mechanism. if few of the big logging firms were to form a cooperative to supply wood and also have equity in the ethanol refinery, it is easier to ensure that the interest of both the parties is well aligned. mcafee and mcmillan (1991) work on optimal contracts for teams suggest that a team subject to both adverse selection and moral hazard, optimal contracts are linear in output under certain conditions. they conclude that the outcome is same whether the principal observes just the total output or each individual’s contribution. thus monitoring is not needed to prevent shirking by team members; instead the role of monitoring is to discipline the monitor. holmstrom (1982) showed that in team production under moral hazard, the principal can ensure a full information outcome by offering a contract that punishes each team member arbitrarily severely whenever team output falls below some target. however, this seems an impractical method of solving moral hazard. moreover, for our purpose the principal cannot disentangle an agent’s effort from his ability. in the special case where agents’ type is common knowledge, the moral hazard problem can be completely solved. the principal is needed to adjust the incentive constraint such that any increase in the marginal product is distributed among all the agents. this will give each agent enough incentive to exert desired effort. however principal’s variable costs will increase. this can be easily counteracted in the linear form of the contract. the fixed part of the payments is negative in order to account for increase in the principal’s cost. the changed relationship would greatly reduce the monitoring costs and each member would get the share in the group compensation and not individual compensation and they would pay a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(8) 2013: 532-542 541 fixed amount to the ethanol producer which will indicate t. the problem is hence again reduced to when principal contracts with one agentthe loggers’ cooperative. further work & recommendations there is a vast literature on optimal contracting when more than one agent is hired by the principal to perform task(s). the implicit assumption is: marginal productivity of the agent is observed by the principal. the investigation of scenarios in which metering of individual output is not possible, would be an important addition to the literature and would also find relevant application in fields where group production is an important element in the relationship. apart from conducting case studies in a theoretical framework for analyzing possible outcomes of such a relationship, empirical econometric based studies would significantly enhance our understanding. references alchian, a. and h. demsetz (1972). production, information costs, and economic organization. the american economics review, 62: 777-795. chung, w., talluri, s. and r. narasimhan (2010). flexibility or cost saving? sourcing decisions with two suppliers. decision sciences, 41(3): 623-650 donner, s. and christopher, j. k. (2008). cornbased ethanol production compromises goal of reducing nitrogen export by the mississippi river. proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 105(11) egan, p. k. (2009). uncertainty clouds plans to extract biofuel from michigan’s forests. the michigan messenger, december. eisa (2007). energy independence and security act of 2007. http://www.afdc.energy.gov/laws/eisa, accessed on 24 april, 2010 gopal, a. and koka, b. r. (2010). the role of contracts on quality and returns to quality in offshore software development outsourcing. decision sciences, 41(3): 491-516. green, d.w. and r. j. ross (1997). linking log and product quality for structural wood products. madison, wi: usda forest service, forest products laboratory holmstrom, b. (1982). moral hazard in teams. the bell journal of economics, 13(2): 324-340. khanna, m. (2008). cellulosic biofuels: are they economically viable and environmentally sustainable? choices, 23(3): 1621. khanna, m. 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(1991). strategizing, economizing, and economic organization. strategic journal management, 23: 75-94. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants published by: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 5(1)2015, www.aessweb.com 21 effect of forest ecotourism on socioeconmic conditions of local community rukhsana kausar assistant professor; department of environmental sciences, international islamic university islamabad, pakistan sarwat n. mirza chairman; department of forestry and range management, pmas-arid agriculture university rawalpindi, pakistan saira akhtar associate professor; department of rural sociology, university of agriculture, faisalabad, pakistan abstract pakistan is having scarcity of forests, with the total area covered under forest being 5%, while it must be 25%. inspite of the fact that we have to protect and expand our forests, many other alternative land cover and land use practices are going to be more common. current study is a part of that effort. to have panel discussion and interviews of activists and key persons of the rural areas in the vicinity of major ecotourism spots that is mall, bhurban, patriata 2-3 workshops were arranged in which a semi structured questionnaire was followed to assess the role of ecotourism in the livelihood and socioeconomic conditions of the local community. this study shows that most of the people get 5000-10000 ($49.30-98.60), rupees increase in the income per month while some earn 11000-20000 ($108.45-197.19). even (4%, who have rented houses and restaurants) think that the raise of income is pkr 21000-50000($207.5-492.98). the local villager’s perceptions about the ecological negative and positive aspects of ecotourism show that the forest based tourism has more positive effects on the lives of people as well as for biodiversity and nature conservation, as it develops the wildlife reserves, promotes the awareness of forests, environment and biodiversity, it also proves a good source of knowledge and motivation of visitors that increases the stewardship, to love and conserve natural resources. keywords: forest, ecotourism, nature conservation 1. introduction 1 ecotourism is a responsible tourism that generally deals with living parts of the natural environment. ecotourism focuses on socially responsible travel, personal growth and environmental sustainability. it particularly involves travel to destinations where flora and fauna and cultural heritage are the primary attractions (sadry, 2009). corresponding author’s name: rukhsana kausar email address: rukhsanatariqat@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:rukhsanatariqat@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 21-29 22 well managed ecotourism not only supports local biodiversity but it is also believed to be the perfect economic activity to promote the sustainability and development of that forest area and local community. ecotourism offers tourists an opportunity to interact with nature in such a way as to make it possible to preserve or enhance the special qualities of the site, while allowing local inhabitants and future visitors to enjoy these qualities (david, 1996). two conditions must be met during ecotourism, to ensure the successful integration of biodiversity conservation and local economic development: (1) the identification of economic incentives that provide immediate benefits to local people and (2) the identification of economic incentives that are appropriate in space and time to the scale of threats to biodiversity (dinerstein et al., 2007). in pakistan, murree is a favourite picnic spot for people of almost all parts of the country. it is a popular hill station lying approximately 33° to 34° north latitude and 72° 42’ to 73° 30’ east longitude, with an elevation of the area ranging from 600 m to 2100 m with a steady rise from south towards north. more than 1000 visitors pay their visit daily in murree particularly in two peak seasons, hot summer (june-july) and snow fall season (december-january). it is situated about 65 km north of islamabad. this area is geographically known as “foot hills of the himalayas”. it is very important location due to its state forest territory. it comprises of 14032 hectares of conifer forests and 5112 hectares of scrub forests. the vegetation is mostly comprised of chir pine, blue pine, and sanatha as under storey. wildlife comprises of common leopard, rhesus monkeys, and various birds, rodents and mammals. tourism is a multimillion rupees enterprise in murree. most of the local people are associated directly or indirectly to this industry. hence ecotourism plays a vital role in the improvement of socioeconomic conditions of the local people. visitors come from all over pakistan, due to its enchanting beauty associated with its forests. on a daily basis, visitors also come to this place to enjoy the serene environment and beautiful landscape. patriata is also developed as a big tourist resort having many small food huts and small hotels to stay. one of the major attractions is the chairlift and cable car that passes over forests, interspersed with waterfalls and streams, and passes over small mud houses of the villagers living in these areas. for pakistan and other such developing countries, there are so many socioeconomic problems, that forest conservation, park management and provision of recreational spaces for community is not a priority. supporting southgate and whitaker (1994); khan (2004) has also discussed that states of such countries are already facing a short of financial resources to run their country as welfare state and to protect and conserve their natural resources with sustainable utilization. in such countries the ecotourism can benefit both in conserving natural resources as well as providing economic benefits. 2. review of literature although tourism is called a smoke free industry, it disturbs the life of community and people. people become more conscious about their norms and values. though forest-ecotourism enhance the economic development of a community living in the vicinity, it also speedup the natural and cultural transformation at a nonstop rate. these changes are mostly undesirable, irreversible and negative environmental impacts; community and societal well-being are inextricably linked to human ecological relationship (jamal et al., 2006). the word “community” is derived from the word “communion” that means to share common task together. when the people join hands together they can accomplish the big tasks in better way that are sometimes far beyond their potential. the commonly used phrase of community-capitals, that is community and capitals give origin of a new approach that is “commonality”. the community can be getting the collective benefits from the forests and forest tourism, the “collective acquired asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 21-29 23 assets”. this may be a full package of benefits that community can use for itself. enhancement of community capitals leads to the spatial and temporal transformations of standards of living of local people, this as a result make people look into the problematic areas and rehabilitate the negative impact. if these negative impacts are left unaltered they will lead to the community deterioration (allen, 2001). according to singhe et al. 2008, the strict conservation of forest sometimes restrict local people from taking benefits of non-timber forest products and adversely affect their livelihood. ecotourism and making marketing channels for the sale of ntf and agricultural products will overcome this problem and can enhance their livelihood. when cosmopolitan people come and share space and time with the locals, attention to their culture, life style and environment, a new paradigm takes place. amazonians in remote areas gain an inner feeling of social ascension and importance, enhancing both social and human capitals. when the [eco] tourists come to support the locals in their own environment, to listen to their stories, myths, day-to-day challenges and difficulties, and set the locals at center stage during the visit, the tourists have a crucial role in helping these communities overcome social exclusion and feelings of inferiority. 3. methodology for the assessment of socioeconomic changes due to ecotourism activities, two activist workshops were conducted in which all the key persons in specifically defined areas in the vicinity of tourist resort were invited. the tool used for this study was a semi-structured survey form to be filled by the participants of the workshops and the focused group discussion. the questionnaire (annexure1) was formulated on the bases of questions related to the data required for socio-economic condition. prior to the collection of primary data from the study area, secondary data was collected from the departments of government sector and non-governmental organizations working in murree town. this data was collected to be used as base line or a bench mark. by this secondary data socioeconomic condition of the local communities were found out to be taken as a bench mark. this missing link was filled via quarrying by base-line surveys. further for the conduction of interactive workshops, small hamlets of the rural areas were selected randomly, that were in the close vicinity of ecotourism spots (murree, bhurban and patriata). the key persons and activists from these selected villages were invited for participation in the workshops where focal group discussions were also organized to determine the above mentioned effects. a semi structured but a comprehensive socio-economic survey questionnaire was given to the key persons to fill in the workshop. the main parts of the questionnaire were containing the questions related to their personal information, i.e. name, age, family type, cast, family size, house structure (mud house or concrete, education etc.). the second part contains the questions related to business related to ecotourism, their existing income and additional income related to ecotourism. the third and most important was the negative and positive impacts of ecotourism on their livelihood, agricultural practices, culture etc. local community is not only affected economically but also socially by forest-based ecotourism because a lot of people from different areas and different cultures visit this area. this interference of the visitors affects the area by changing traditions and culture that is sometimes liked by the community and sometimes rejected but it cannot be avoided. all the important aspects of social and economic impacts analysis amassing to forest ecotourism was covered in the questionnaires. that carried the questions about change in agricultural practices, marketing sources, improved varieties of seeds and livestock, soil erosion etc. the impact of forest-based ecotourism was finally calculated in monetary terms as well as social terms based on the focused group discussions and questionnaires filled during workshops. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 21-29 24 4. results and discussions the results of panel discussions and meetings with key persons of local community showed that forest ecotourism can support livelihood diversification. the profile (socioeconomic features) of panel discussion participants (table 1) and the descriptive analysis of 100 questionnaire showed that male respondents comprises of 80% and female 20%. among them 36% were of the age group 31-45 years while 4% were above 60 and 16% of the age group below 18. most of the household are living in joint family system that is 62%. and 46% families have their income in the series of rs 11000-25000 ($108.53-246.67), while 30% respondents have income of rupees 26000-50000 ($256.54-493.34) while 16% respondents have per month income below rs.10000 ($98.67). table 1, also shows that structure of houses is mixed that is most of the respondents, have concrete houses some have mixed and a few have mud houses. the two tribes (castes) are dominating the area, abbasi and rajas. only 6% respondents were chaudhary, though this title is not common in this area but with interaction and influence of more visitors coming from interior punjab the gujjar tribe is called as chaudhary. the data about all these factors was taken due to the fact that tourism effect culture and mixing up with other tribes (castes) and changing the way of living of local people. table 1: the socio-economic features of the participants gender family system male 80% single family 32% female 20% joint family 62% age (years) other 06% below 18 16% caste system 19-30 24% raja 28% 31-45 36% abbasi 56% 46-60 20% chaudhry(gujjars) 06% above 60 04% other 10% family income (rs) education level below 10000 16% primary 22% 11000-25000 46% secondary 36% 26000-50000 30% higher secondary 14% above 50000 08% graduates 16% house condition master 08% mud 22% others 04% cemented (pacca) 52% cemented n mud mixed (kacha-pacca) 20% other 6% table 2 shows that the current scenario of the infrastructure includes the electricity and roads access that is 86% people’s response. 14% respondents denied the presence of roads to their villages. it means the people near the tourism spots find most of the facilities while people away from picnic spots are deprived of most of the facilities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 21-29 25 table 2: current scenario of infra-structure sr. no. infra-structure yes no 1 electricity availability 100% - 2 roads access 86% 14% 3 picnic spots awareness 90% 10% 4 stream/canal systems -100% 5 gas facility -100% 6 drainage system 02% 98% one of the major objectives of this study was to find out the local villager’s perceptions about the ecological negative and positive aspects of tourism on local community. table 3 shows the responses of the participants against these positive and negative impacts of the tourism activity. the negative impact includes destruction of vegetation, disruption of breeding habits, reduction in wildlife species and the most important factor for the locals was the reduced access for wood and timber. table 3: impact of ecotourism on ecological aspects of the area positive impact negative impact creation of wildlife reserve reduction in wildlife species habitat restoration disruption of breeding habitats justification for park protection change in wildlife migration patterns government protection of natural resources reduced access for wood and timber production of more wild plant species other than pine trees diversification of natural resources increased stewardship changes in land use pattern in the areas new agricultural technology destruction of natural vegetation participant’s response show that the forest based tourism has more positive effects on the lives of people as well as for biodiversity and nature conservation. tourism develops the wildlife reserves. tourism promotes the awareness forests, environment and biodiversity so it increases the stewardship. some visitors also belong to research institutes from different areas that are coming for the research purposes, students from different universities and research organizations spend their leisure time with local community that share their knowledge and suggest different modern agriculture practices, that enhances the knowledge about the agriculture technology, and culture of the area. the respondent’s view about economic aspect is obvious from the table 4 that forest tourism has promoted their businesses, and employment opportunities are increased, so the income is increased. as more than a million populations is increased in every peak season the government has to increase and improve the social sector services in this area. the most important being the health services, availability of markets, developing main roads to have easy access to tourism spots etc. but more frequent link with the outside world has positive as well as negative impacts. economically local export and import of the goods and services improve their income while more exposure to a large number of visitors has deteriorated social culture and traditional patterns. table 4: economic impacts of ecotourism on social aspects of community sr. no. aspects yes (%) no (%) 1 employment generated 92 08 2 income increased 96 04 3 business opportunities increased 94 06 4 awareness raised 98 02 5 education and health facilities increased 80 20 6 skills enhancement opportunities increased 94 06 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 21-29 26 7 market become available 96 04 8 new varieties of crops 92 08 9 new pattern of farming increased 22 78 10 more link with outside world 76 24 11 land slide due to construction 86 14 12 soil erosion 94 06 13 deterioration of social culture and traditions 76 24 14 disappearance of animal or plant species 96 04 while this area is more prominent and an attraction for ngos and other research organizations, many residential trainings and workshops are organized. study visits are also arranged in the nearby villages so it affects agriculture pattern and improve crops ngos have developed guidance and demonstration plots of apple orchards and other fruit verities due to which human resource of local area is developed. figure 1: source of earning through ecotourism opportunities all the participants were of the view that forest based ecotourism has opened the doors of businesses and vast opportunities for income generation. as described in figure 1, most of the people (40 %) are involved in one or the other business activity. 12% participants answered that they have their own shops in the market particularly near picnic spots. 28% have houses that are given on rent in peak seasons, 16% have given shops on rent, 4% have given restaurants on rent. hence the tremendous opportunities of business and income generation activities have increased the income of the local people. (figure 2). figure 2: income generated through ecotourism opportunities 12% 16% 28%4% 40% own shop shop rent house rent restaurant rent others 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 5000-10000 11000-20000 21000-50000 above 50000 c o m m u n it y % ag e income(pkr.) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 21-29 27 according to 62% participants, 5000-10000 ($49.30-98.60), rupees increase in the income per month can be attributed to forest based ecotourism. while according to 32% participants the raise of income due to forest based ecotourism is 11000-20000 ($108.45-197.19). some of the participants (4%) even think that the raise of income is pkr 21000-50000 ($207.5-492.98). this group belongs to people who have been involved in house rent or restaurants on rent during the tourist peaks seasons. the results showed that the 52.78 % visitors preferred murree hills resort for the enjoyment of flora and fauna and natural beauty while 32.78% for general environment that also included the security issue. f distribution at 95% interval shows significant relationship between the responses of question about specific objective that was to enhance knowledge (kausar et al., 2013). 5. conclusions and recommendations 1. livelihood of people depends upon forests. so strict conservation that restrict the provision of wood and other non-timber benefits should not be done. 2. ecotourism development should be done on scientific bases that not only protect natural resources from deterioration but also develop love and importance of natural resources. 3. more facilities should be developed in the tourist’s resorts, to attract tourist and other investors to invest in ecotourism activities and develop ecotourism as economic as well as conservation industry. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references allen, j. c. (2001). community conflict resolution: the development of social capital with in an interactional field. the journal of socioeconomics, 30, 119-120. david, b. (1996). ecotourism, a tool for sustainable development. exploring ecotourism, a resources guide. exploring tourism, planeta.com resource guide. dinerstein, e., loaks, c., wikramanayke, e., ginsber, j., & sanderson, e. (2007). the fate of wild tigers, bioscience, 57(6), 508-514. himayatullah, k. (2004). demand for ecotourism: estimating recreational benefits from margalla hills national park. no. 5-04, sandee. jamal, m., borges, & amada, s. (2006). the institutionalization of ecotourism: certification culture equity and praxis, journal of ecotourism, 5(3), 112-116. kausar, r., mirza, n., saboor, a., saleem, a., & khalid, b. (2013). role of ecotourism in promoting and sustaining conservation of nature: a case study of murree forest recreational resort. pak. j. agri., sci., 50(3), 463-468. sadry, b. n. (2009). fundamentals of tourism with a special emphasis on iran; smat organization publishers, tehran. p. 22. singhe k. w., steele, p., & senaratnel, a. (2008). impact of forest conservation on peripheral communities. bandaratilake, iucn. southgate, d., & whitaker, m. (1994). economic progress and the environment: developing country's policy crisis. oxford university press, new york. pp. 150. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 21-29 28 annexure 1-interview schedule s. no. ____________date_______/_________/2012 name of respondent------------------------age of respondent ----------------------- name of village-------------------------------name of union council-------------------distance from murree--------------km. what is the nearest tourist spot------------what is the distance of your village from this tourist spot? ------------------------km 1. do you have any business link with that tourist spot? 1. your shop---------------2.shops given on rent----------------3.-restaurant-----------------4.restaurant given on rent----------------5.house given on rent-------------6.any other service rendered for income generation in tourist area from you or any other family member. --------------------------- 2. how much income is generated through this activity per month? 1. 5000-10000($ 49.33-98.67) 2.11000-20000($108.53-197.34) 3.21000-50000($207.2-493.34) 4.more than 50000( $493.34) (a) population and human settlement total population of the village------------------male-------------------female-------------- age 1: below 18 2:19-30 3: 31-45 4: 4660 5: above 60 gender 1: male 2: female family composition 1: nuclear 2: joint 3: extended ethnic group 1: rajas 2: abbasi 3: chaudary 4: others family income 1: below 10000($ 98.67) 2:1100025000($108.53-246.67) 3: 26000 50000($256.54-493.34) 4: above 50000( $493.34) condition of houses 1: kacha 2: pakka 3: kacha pakka 4: how many room.- education 1: illiterate 2: primary 3: pre matric 4: matric – graduate 5: masters 6: ms/mphil 7: others (b) health profile 1. what facilities are available in basic health units?---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. what ailments are being addressed in bhu?----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. where the patients are referred in case of complications. what type of diseases/cases is usually referred? 4. is there any private clinics? principal investigator: rukhsana kausar, ph.d forestry and range management pmas arid agriculture university rawalpindi asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 21-29 29 (c) existing infrastructure 1. electricity present yes no 2. concrete roads yes no 3. picnic importance yes no 4. stream yes no 5. natural gas supply yes no 6. drainage yes no (d) cultural values 1. social stratification 2. profession of individuals 3. ownership of land 4. caste system (e) flora and fauna what type of wild animals you observed in your village in your child hood? name) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------- what type of wild animal you observe now days. is there any change? --------------------what type of ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- name some plants which you usually observed in your child hood in nearby forests----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- what type of plans you observed now a days in your nearby forest------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- do you think some animal and plant species are vanished or diminished (decreased) form these forests? (e) agricultural pattern is farming culture changed with the increase of tourism in the area around your village. yes----------no-------------------- is this change: 1. productive or 2. non-productive level of production is more diversified or not milk production increased or milk products increased (cheese, curd , ghee, etc ) animal type changed goat or cow replaced with buffalo or any other crops and vegetables grown in home garden and fields are same as in your child hood or changed now.(more salads, more cabbage, broccli, srawberry etc or any other new variety is grown) or not / what are positive impacts of ecotourism generally or specifically in your village---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- employment generated, income increased, business opportunities increased, what are negative impacts of ecotourism generally or specifically in your area. (land slide due to construction, soil erosion, deterioration of social culture and traditions disappearance of animal or plant species.) effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 929 profitability analysis of organic cauliflower, radish and turnip produce at national agriculture research centre, islamabad, pakistan saima rani scientific officer; social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan muhammad azeem khan chief scientific officer; social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan hassnain shah principal scientific officer; social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan abdul sattar anjum scientific officer; national institute of organic agriculture, national agriculture research centre, islamabad, pakistan abstract organic farming support is an effective and cost-efficient measure to reach sustainability objectives in agriculture policies. organic farming having environmental and social concerns therefore it has a better market demand. the paper discuss the costs and returns structures in the production of vegetables (cauliflower, radish and turnip) grown under the national institute of organic agriculture (nioa) at national agriculture research centre. therefore the aim of the paper is to determine the cost of production and estimate the profitability of different selected vegetables. the results indicate that yield of the vegetables was low but the prices of the vegetables were high. all the organic vegetables produce at the nioa earn positive income without the land rent. in the production of the radish and turnip more labour used as compare to the cauliflower due to the picking of the vegetables. cost –benefit ratio was 1.43, 1.35 and 0.85 for turnip, radish and cauliflower respectively. the paper concludes that organic vegetables are profitable but less than the conventional vegetables. but it is hard to measure the profitability of organic vegetables due to the value of unseen indirect benefits. keywords: organic vegetable, cost of production, profitability, cost-benefit ratio introduction 1 “organic farming is an environmental friendly ecosystem management in which, use of all kinds of synthetic inputs are 1 corresponding author’s name: saima rani email: saimazahid6@gmail.com eliminated” (farooqi, 2007). organic farming is better because farmers are using the local resources and technologies and they have provision of better independence and control over the means of production. it also improve of soil biological activity, physical characteristics of soil, reducing nitrate leaching and increasing and improving wild life habitant which gives asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:saimazahid6@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 929-935 930 better impact on the environment (panhwar, 2004). organic commodities are considered to be better in quality in contrast to inorganic produced commodities and it also preventing from different health hazards. therefore organic products demand is increasing all over the world. various asian countries have involvement in the expansion of organic agriculture and different non government organizations support the producers for converting into organic agriculture from the conventional agriculture. but the large-scale and national programmes are still rare. india is the only country that develops the organic sector with a help of government programme (ifoam, 2003). according to the state bank of pakistan, 2001 in pakistan, agricultural practices at some areas are near to the organic approach. the rainfed areas with their intact natural conditions can be develop for undertaking organic enterprise. many farmers in pakistan are already involved in production of organic commodities for their home consumption, they kept certain piece of land for producing the food crops there is no usage of chemical fertilizer and pesticides. however potential exist in certain areas/ecologies of pakistan where organic farming is being practiced naturally that need to be identified and declared as organic farming producing areas (farooqi, 2007). the country also exporting a large quantity of vegetables and fruits in the different part of the world. therefore by launching a promotional marketing campaign in the world market it will be the supplier of organic commodities. it is a great opportunity for country to earn foreign exchange because organic food items having higher prices as compare to the inorganic vegetables (sbp, 2001). literature on production of organic vegetables and their marketing suggested that there are problems existing in marketing of these products. however, in pakistan, the market for organic products is not well developed and no market statistics are available because there is lack of proper retail venues, no continuous supply of the product and quality of the product is very poor. further, none of the marketers have adopted successful marketing strategies for the sustenance of the organic market in the country. further, market features of organic products were showed that it was in the "introduction stage" of the product life cycle along with this there exit gap between the supply and demand of organic products. the organic farming is promoting in the worldwide due to the environmental and economic sustainability of agricultural production. it is great challenged for agricultural researchers to build such systems with the different stakeholders through whom economic sustainability of agricultural production will be achieved. in less developed countries, very few studies have been conducted on the profitability of organic agriculture and none used farm budget-related data. long-term studies are hardly existent: only about a dozen studies compared both yields and net income, mostly focusing on coffee and cotton. national agriculture research centre has taken the lead role for introducing the organic vegetables and producing different organic vegetables in their farm area in winter, summer and off season and parc technology company (patco) is a move in the direction and it ensures fast delivery of technologies (like organic vegetable) generated by parc and/or national agricultural research system (nars) to their real end users. hence it needs to be upscale through developing proper market linkages to target the potential consumer. therefore the present study is designed with the objectives to calculate the economics of selected vegetables grown by national institute of organic agriculture at narc and marketed through the patco. the specific objectives are asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 929-935 931 objectives  to determine the cost of production and net return of cauliflower, radish and turnip organically produce by nioa at narc  to estimate the profitability of cauliflower, radish and turnip which organically produce by nioa at narc materials and methods three winter vegetables was selected namely turnip, cauliflower, radish. these vegetables were selected for the reason that national institute of organic agriculture grown at their fields areas during the winter season 2012. the study was based on primary data which was collected from the national institute of organic agriculture (nioa) to calculate the detail cost of production of organic vegetable. because economics/ cost of production will be help to identify the minimum price to cover the cost and premium for farmers that will help to decide price. all the operations and used inputs were recorded and based on these records, the production costs for each vegetable was estimated. data analysis data were analyzed on the statistical package for social sciences (spss) and microsoft excel. to carry out the profitability analysis following statistical tool were used (ali, 2005). (i). net return from the selected vegetables net return of selected vegetables was estimated by deducting the total cost from gross income of each vegetable. net returns = gross margin – total cost of production (ii). revenue per crop day revenue obtained from the each day vegetable in the field is calculated by the following formula. revenue per crop day = gross revenue (rs. /acre) / crop duration (days) (iii). revenue per rupee of input cost revenue per rupee of input cost = gross revenue (rs. /acre) / variable cost of input (iv). average cost per kg average total cost is the per unit cost which shows that how much cost is bear for producing one kilogram of vegetable. the formula is given below. average cost per kg = total cost of production / total unit produce (v) net profit per kg net profit per kg = net return / total unit produce results and discussion this section deals with the production of selected organic vegetables grown at national institute of organic agriculture. in the section there is estimated the cost of production, profitability, total output, net profit per kg, revenue per rupee of input cost, costbenefit ratio , revenue per crop day, cost and sale price per kg and labour day utilization. budget of selected organic vegetables grown at narc the data pertaining to the total cost and revenue per acre of cauliflower, radish and turnip produce organically at national institute of organic agriculture, national agriculture research centre are presented in table 1. the vegetables are sown in the field area of nioa on the 1.2 kannal, 1.8 kannal and 1.8 kannal respectively after that the data was converted on the one acre basis for the further analysis. table 1: budget of organic vegetables (acre/rs.) item cauliflower radish turnip total cost (without land rent) 19298 22478 22493 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 929-935 932 total cost (with land rent) 24298 27478 27493 total revenue 20760 37009 39291 net income (without rent) 1463 14532 16799 net income (with rent) -3538 9532 11799 the total cost and net income with rent and without land rent was taken of all the selected vegetables. the results show that overall the total cost without rent was estimated for cauliflower (19298/acre), radish (22478/acre) and turnip (22493/ acre), among all the vegetables turnip got the high revenue followed by the radish and turnip. however the cost, revenue and net income per acre was slightly more of turnip. regarding the net income without land rent per acre among all vegetables the highest return is estimated for turnip rs. 16799 followed by the radish and cauliflower. but the cauliflower earn very low income without including the land rent and when including the land rent that shows that vegetable earn a negative profit. the detailed cost of production shows in the annexure table 2: profitability, net profit and output of selected vegetables (acre) item cauliflower radish turnip output(kg) 692 5287 5613 net profit(rs/ kg) 2 3 3 labour days 32 46 47 the table 2 indicates the profitability, net income and output per acre of selected vegetables. the total output that national institute of organic agriculture produce and sale at patco is 692 kg for cauliflower and 5287 kg for radish and 5613 kg for turnip. evidence from the studies analyzed showed that yields in well-established organic farms are most often lower than conventional, to varying degrees. most european studies including cereals, vegetables and mixed farming systems produced somewhat lower yields (bmelf, 1991-1998; nieberg and offermann 2000). the turnip and radish got the same net profit per kg and cauliflower got the low profit as compared to the other vegetables. when calculated the total labour days for the vegetables than radish and turnip having the high labour days because picking of these vegetables required more labour days. table 3: revenue and cost-benefit ratio and prices of selected vegetable (acre) item cauliflower radish turnip revenue per crop day(rs.) 189 274 271 revenue per rupee of input cost(rs.) 1.08 1.65 1.75 costbenefit ratio 0.85 1.35 1.43 cost price (rs/kg) 28 4 4 farm gate price(rs/kg 30 7 7 the revenue per rupee, revenue crop day and cost-benefit ratio computed for the selected vegetable shown in tables 3. the revenue per crop day was rs. 189, rs. 274 and rs. 271 for cauliflower, radish and turnip respectively. this means that all the vegetables earn high revenue per day. the revenue per rupee of input cost of vegetables is rupees 1.08 for cauliflower, 1.65 for radish and 1.75 for turnip. in other words the inputs used in growing all the three vegetables proved that productive in radish, and turnip as compared to the cauliflower. the benefit–cost ratio computed for all the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 929-935 933 vegetables. the cost benefit ratio is same for the cauliflower is 0.85, 1.35 for radish and 1.43 for turnip. the cost rs/kg which national institute of organic agriculture bear for producing the cauliflower is rs. 28, selling on rs/30 of the sale point and earn rs.2 for one kg. the turnip and radish cost price is the rs.4/kg and their sale point is the rs.7/kg. table 4: shares in revenue of selected vegetable marketed through patco item(rs/acre) cauliflower radish turnip nioa share 14532 25906 27504 patco share 6228 11103 11787 total revenue 20760 37009 39291 the vegetables are produce by the national institute of organic agriculture but the vegetables are marketed through the patco (sale point). hence the above table shows the share in revenue for all the selected vegetables of the institutes. in the year 2012 the total revenue in the cauliflower was rs. 20760. the share was the rs.14532 and rs.6228 for nioa and patco respectively. the radish revenue was rs. 37009 and nioa and patco share was rs. 25906 and rs. 11103 respectively. conclusion and recommendation as the above results shown that organic yield was smaller, but the prices was higher. radish and turnip earn higher revenue per crop per day. turnip earns the higher revenue per rupee of input. but it is hard to calculate the economics of organic vegetables due to value of certain indirect benefits e.g. the soil structure will be improve, decreasing the risk related with the pesticide use. furthermore organic agriculture faces an unfair competition in the marketplace due to: the current situation that in the favour traditional production. besides directing much more research and extension investments into organic agriculture and shifting the bulk of public support from polluting activities to sustainable practices to give an equal footing to profitability studies, such studies need to take the differences in external costs and benefits into account to capture the real and multiple profits of agriculture. however the potential are exist in certain ecologies of pakistan. there is also need to create consumer awareness about organic food. furthermore, consumer expectation and product quality mainly determine the market potentials. hence there is need to create awareness among the consumer. references ali akhtar., niazi, m. a., akmal, n. and malik, m. r. (2005). comparative analysis of cost and return of patato, onion and tomato in upland baluchistan. sarhad journal of agriculture, 21(4): 785-791. bmelf (1991-1998). agrarbericht. bonn: bundesministerium für ernährung, landwirtschaftund forsten. ifoam (2003). developing local marketing initiatives for organic products in asia, a guide for small & medium enterprises. trade conference organized by international foundation of organic agriculture movement from 5 8 november. panhwar, f. (2004). organic products, social qualities with equal and fair trade its constrain and future. city farmer canada’s office of urban agriculture. the sindh rural women’s uplift group, 157-c unit no.2, latifaabad, hyderabad, sindh pakistan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 929-935 934 farooqi, a. (2007). potential of organic farming to alleviate poverty in pakistan. seminar held on 6 th june, 2007, pakistan institute of development economics. nieberg h. and offermann f. (2002). the profitability of organic farming in europe. in: oecd, organic agriculture: sustainability, markets and policies. oecd workshop on organic agriculture, washington, d. c. 23-26 september 2002. sbp (2001). state bank of pakistan annual report, available at: www.sbp.org.pk annexure i: cost of production cauliflower operation units qty/acre price/unit cost/acre duration of the crop days 110 deep ploughing no 1 1500 1500 ploughing no 1 1200 1200 ploughing & planking no 1 1200 1200 ridge making no 1 1200 1200 manual hoeing man days 5 350 1750 seedling cost plants 7500 0.34 2550 ridge sowing man days 3 350 1050 irrigation interval (after 10 days) days 11 0 0 labour cost for irrigation man days 6.6 350 2310 organic fertilizer (enriched compost) no bag 8 50 400 labour cost for fertilizer man days 0.75 350 262.5 manual weeding no 4 0 labour cost for weeding man days 12 350 4200 insecticide bottle 2 50 100 labour cost for insecticide man days 0.5 350 175 no of picking no 2 0 labour cost for picking man days 4 350 1400 land rent for 6 months@833 per month rs 0 0 5000 total cost without land rent rs 0 0 19298 total cost with land rent rs 0 0 24298 total value of sale kg 692 30 20760 net income without rent rs 0 0 1463 net income with rent rs 0 0 -3538 annexure ii: cost of production radish operation units qty/acre price/unit cost/acre duration of the crop days 135 0 0 deep ploughing no 1 1500 1500 ploughing no 1 1200 1200 ploughing & planking no 1 1200 1200 ridge making no 1 1200 1200 manual hoeing man days 4 350 1400 seed kg 3.5 250 875 ridge sowing man days 3 350 1050 http://www.sbp.org.pk/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 929-935 935 irrigation interval (after 15 days) days 9 0 labour cost for irrigation man days 5.4 350 1890 organic fertilizer(enriched compost) no bag 7 50 350 labour cost for fertilizer man days 0.75 350 262.5 manual weeding no 3 0 labour cost for weeding man days 9 350 3150 no of picking no 2 0 labour cost for picking man days 24 350 8400 land rent for 6 months@833 per month rs. 0 0 5000 total cost without land rent rs. 0 0 22478 total cost without land rent rs. 0 0 27478 total value of sale kg 5287 7 37009 wastage kg 59 7 413 total income rs. 0 0 37009 net income without rent rs. 0 0 14532 net income with rent rs. 0 0 9532 annexure iii: cost of production turnip turnip unit qty/acre price/unit cost/acre duration of the crop days 145 0 0 deep ploughing no 1 1500 1500 ploughing no 1 1200 1200 ploughing & planking no 1 1200 1200 ridge making no 1 1200 1200 manual hoeing man days 4 350 1400 seed kg 1.2 625 750 ridge sowing man days 3 350 1050 irrigation interval (after 15 days) days 10 0 labour cost for irrigation man days 5.8 350 2030 organic fertilizer (enriched compost) no bag 7 50 350 labour cost for fertilizer man days 0.75 350 262.5 manual weeding no 3 0 labour cost/weeding man days 9 350 3150 no of picking no 2 0 labour cost for /picking man days 24 350 8400 land rent for 6 months@833 per month rs. 0 0 5000 transportation cost rs. 0 0 0 total cost without land rent & transportation cost rs. 0 0 22492.5 total cost with land rent & transportation cost rs. 0 0 27493 total value of sale kg 5613 7 39291 net income without rent rs 0 0 16799 net income with rent rs 0 0 11799 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 697 economics of garlic production in baran district of rajasthan; break even analysis lokesh kumar meena, chandra sen and shoji lal bairwa department of agricultural economics, institute of agricultural sciences, banaras hindu university, varanasi (u.p.) -221005, india arun jhajharia department of farm engineering, banaras hindu university, varanasi (u.p.) -221005, india n. k. raghuwanshi department of agricultural economics, jawahar lal nehru krishi viswa vidyalaya , jabalpur (m.p.)482004, india abstract the study focuses on economic analysis of garlic production in the baran district of rajasthan. the study is carried out to determine break even analysis and constraints of garlic production in the study area. break even analysis is carried out to arrive at that minimum level at which optimum conditions of cost and returns is equated that is no profit no loss point. in this study selected small, medium and large farmers will not be at loss even if their actual yield of garlic is decline by 56.22, 54.27 and 54.18 quintals per hectare respectively and selected small, medium and large farmers will not be at loss even if their actual price of garlic is decline by 986.96, 1005.55 and 1014.77 /quintals respectively. break even yield and price were increased with increased size of holding of farmers. the most serious constraints as perceived by the farmers in garlic production were the high price of garlic seed at time of sowing, high cost of garlic cultivation, unfavourable product price and high cost of irrigation etc. keywords: garlic, production, constraints, break even analysis introduction 1 garlic (allium sativum l.) is a bulb belonging to the family alliaceae. it is the second most widely cultivated crop in the family after onion (allium cepa), as reported by (purse glove 1972). garlic originated from central asia about 3000 years and later spread to the mediterranean regions (tindal, 1986). the crop when fully grown is between 40 and 60 cm in height. it consists of an underground bulb and above ground vegetative part, which also consist of a flat as well as slender leaves. rooting system is fibrous, while the bulb corresponding author’s details: name: lokesh kumar meena email address: lokeshmn04@gmail.com comprises small bulblets called cloves (amans, 1989; wadjito et al., 1988). there is no definite area of origin but it probably originated in central asia and spread to the mediterranean region where its virtue is till cherished perhaps more than any part of the world. it is therefore mostly cultivated in the mediterranean countries where it is highly valued. garlic was probably carried to the western world by the spanish, portuguese and french (jourdain and lavigne 1987). the average yield of garlic was about 4505 kg/ha. introducing the improve varieties of garlic to the farmers field, yield has been increasing from 2002-2003. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:lokeshmn04@gmail.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/file:indian_rupee_symbol.svg asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 697-701 698 the total cost of production was tk 2 212389/ha in which 84.28 and 15.72 percent variable and fixed cost respectively. garlic grower received on an average tk 179997/ha as net return.the benefit cost ratio (1.85) indicated that garlic cultivation was profitable (hasan et al., 2012). the constraints in garlic production and marketing in the indore district of madhya pradesh are identified, and measures for improvement are suggested (verma, 2004). growth and instability in area, production and yield of spice crops such as coriander, cumin, fenugreek, fennel, garlic and chilli in rajasthan vis-a-vis india indicated that almost all the spices registered significant growth rates in their production in rajasthan as well as in india during the entire study period mainly due to significant increases in the same during posttechnology mission on oilseeds (tmo) period (from 1986/87 to 2000/01) (kumawat and meena, 2005) rajasthan is also leading in garlic production and area but there is low productivity than other states. like gujarat maharashtra and orissa. average yield is 4.535 tones / hectare. in rajasthan mpuat (maharana pratap university of agriculture and technology) area (w-e) is leading in garlic production. it include 12 districts out of 12 districts kota zone is leading zone and baran district included in kota zone which include highest area of 7476 hectare in rabi 2011-2012. out of total 20840 hectares garlic area in rabi 2011-2012. garlic cultivation requires a high level of working capital and human labour. the major constraints in the production of the garlic were the fluctuations in the market price, the lack of storage facilities and the transportation. also the lack of processing industries is one of the limiting factors in the production of garlic. the present investigation was carried out to workout break-even analysis and to identify the constraints in production and marketing of garlic. note: tk is currency of bangladesh i.e. “taka” research methodology this study was conducted in baran district of rajasthan; india and multi-stage sampling technique was used for this study. the baran district comprises eight blocks viz, anta, mangrole, atru, chapra, chipabarod, kishangang, shahabad and baran among these blocks; anta occupied maximum area and production under garlic in the baran district thus, anta block was selected purposively to fulfill the objectives of the present study. the villages of this block, growing garlic were enlisted from the record of raeo/panchayat secretary. five villages were selected randomly. these were lisari, badwa, akedi, molkhi, and khajurna-kala. out of 5 villages, 12 farmers were selected from each village making sample of 60 farmers for study. selection of respondents according to size from the selected villages the cultivators grown garlic were recorded which was further classified in to three size group based on size of holdings viz. small (up to 2 ha), medium (2.01 to 4 ha) and large (above 4/ha). from each size group, 20 farmers were selected by simple random sampling method, which totaled to 60 in number. table 1: respondents from sample farms according to size group size group total no. of garlic growers no. of farmer s selecte d percenta ge of farmers selected small 83 20 24.09 medium 68 20 29.41 large 65 20 30.76 total 216 60 27.77 699 figure1: respondents from sample farms according to size group results break-even analysis break even analysis is carried out to arrive at that minimum level at which optimum conditions of cost and returns is equated that is no profit no loss point. table 2: break even yield (quintal/ha) and price (( /quintal) of garlic on sample farm particulars size of groups small large medium overall i. yield (quintal/ha) (i) break even 83.92 84.93 86.82 85.22 ii. actual 140.14 139.2 141 140.11 iii. gap 56.22 54.27 54.18 54.89 i. price (( /quintal) (i) break even 986.96 1005.55 1014.77 1002.42 ii. actual 1648 1648 1648 1648 iii. gap (( / ha) 661 642.45 633.23 645.56 the table 2 reveals that selected small farmers will not be at loss even if their actual yield of garlic is decreased by 56.22 quintals per hectare. similarly in case of medium farm a yield lessened by 54.27 quintal/per hectare of the actual yield will be able to cover the total cost of cultivation per hectare. the garlic growers on large farms is at no profit no loss position if yield level on these farms is 54.18 qt/ha. at the overall level garlic yield would remain in no profit and no loss if actual yield declined by 54.89 qt/ha. thus, the existing cost of cultivation and physical output of crop yielded sufficient profit to the farmers. similarly actual market price of garlic obtained by sample farmers is 1648 which is higher than breakeven price ranged between 59.88 to 61.57 per cent in different size farms. thus, sample farmers are in profitable position in existing yield and price obtained in the study area. 0 50 100 150 200 250 total no. of garlic growers no. of farmers selected percentage of farmers selected small medium large total http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/file:indian_rupee_symbol.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/file:indian_rupee_symbol.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/file:indian_rupee_symbol.svg asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 697-701 700 figure 2: break even yield (quintal/ha) and price ( /quintal) of garlic on sample farm constraints the table 3 shows that 86 per cent of the sample farmers purchased inputs viz. seed, fertilizers, plant protection chemical not allow them to use these inputs in recommended doses. the analysis clearly reveals that most of the farmers, irrespective of size groups could not apply purchased inputs due to unsatisfactory recommendation. about 86 per cent of the 52 respondents gave high price of seed was reported as a main constraint in garlic production irrespective of the size of holdings. about 70 per cent of the 42 respondents told high cost of cultivation as a major constraint. about 68 per cent of the respondents were of view unfavorable product price cultivation as a third main constraint. attack of insect, pests and diseases also restrict the farmer to adopt garlic production technology. the farmers know the importance of plant protection measures but farmers showed the financial constraint for partial adoption of plant protections due to their rigidity. this tendency needs to be broken through proper training. these identified constraints need to be minimized for increasing the adoption of improved production technology for increasing production of garlic on sample farmers. conclusion under this study break even analysis and constraint of garlic was discussed. the result of this study indicates that the most serious constraints as perceived by the farmers in garlic production were the high price of garlic seed at time of sowing, high cost of garlic cultivation, unfavourable product price and high cost of irrigation. selected small, medium and large farmers will not be at loss even if their actual yield of garlic is decline by 56.22, 54.27 and 54.18 quintals per hectare respectively and selected small, medium and large farmers will not be at loss even if their actual price of garlic is decline by 986.96, 1005.55 and 1014.77 /quintals respectively. break even yield and price were increased with increased size of holding of farmers. garlic growing is expensive but also found to give high return to farmers but in this year there is bumper production because of it farmer could not get good return of garlic. small large medium overall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/file:indian_rupee_symbol.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/file:indian_rupee_symbol.svg 701 table 3: production constraints in garlic production s.n. production constraints small medium large overall ranking total no of respondent 20(100) 20(100) 20(100) 60(100) _ 1 seed variety, seed rate, seed treatment 16 (80) 14 (70) 10 (50) 40 (67) 5th 2 non availability of new variety seed 12 (60) 11 (55) 12 (60) 35 (58) 8th 3 preferred home produce seed 14 (70) 12 (60) 8 (40) 34 (53) 9th 4 non awareness of npk dosage 10 (50) 10 (50) 10 (50) 30 (50) 12th 5 unfavourable product price 7 (35) 10 (50) 24 (60) 41 (68) 3rd 6 unfavourable climate condition 4 (20) 10 (50) 12 (60) 26 (43) 15th 7 lack of capital 10 (50) 8 (40) 5 (24) 23 (38) 16th 8 attack of disease and pest 7 (35) 14 (70) 8 (40) 29 (48) 13th 9 high price of seed 19 (90) 17 (85) 16 (80) 52 (86) 1st 10 shortage of labour 14 (70) 10 (50) 8 (40) 32 (53) 10th 11 high cost of irrigation 15 (25) 14 (70) 10 (50) 39 (65) 4th 12 lack of human labour 12 (60) 11 (55) 14 (60) 37 (61) 7th 13 transfer of technology 9 (45) 9 (45) 9 (45) 27 (45) 14th 14 availing the facilities of credit 12 (25) 11 (55) 12 (60) 38 (63) 6th 15 lack of grading 12 (60) 10 (50) 9 (45) 31 (51) 11th 16 higher cost of cultivation 17 (85) 15 (75) 10 (50) 42 (70) 2nd note: parenthesis shows the percentage of the total references amans, e .b. (1989). effect of intra–row spaces and nitrogen fertilizer application on early and late sowing irrigated onions growth and bulb yield phd seminar 1. hasan, m. k., islam, m. s. and mahmud, m. a. a. (2012). present status profitability and potentiality of garlic production in bangladesh. international journal of sustainable agricultural technology, 8(7): 1-7. jourdain, j. m. and lavigne, d. (1987). garlic storage. horticultural abstract, 57(12): 9356. kumawat, r. c. and meena, p. c. (2005). growth and instability in area, production and yield of major spice crops in rajasthan vis-a-vis india. journal of spices and aromatic crops, 14(2): 102-111. pulseglove, j. w. (1972). tropical crop monocotyledons. longman group limited, p. 607. tindal, h. d. (1986). vegetables in the tropics. macmillan education limited hound mills basing toke, hamshire, england. p. 533. verma, a. r. (2004). economic analysis of production, resource-use efficiency, marketing and constraints of garlic in indore district of madhya pradesh. agricultural marketing, 47(2): 37-48. wadjito a. rubiatai a. and abidin, z. (1988). the effect of bulb size and spacing on the production of garlic (allium sativum l.) cultivar gombloh. bulletin penelitian horticulture, 16(3): 63-68. http://ovidsp.tx.ovid.com/sp-3.9.0b/ovidweb.cgi?&s=cjgafpjbioddabbencoknefbiaggaa00&complete+reference=s.sh.60%7c9%7c1 http://ovidsp.tx.ovid.com/sp-3.9.0b/ovidweb.cgi?&s=cjgafpjbioddabbencoknefbiaggaa00&complete+reference=s.sh.60%7c9%7c1 http://ovidsp.tx.ovid.com/sp-3.9.0b/ovidweb.cgi?&s=cjgafpjbioddabbencoknefbiaggaa00&complete+reference=s.sh.60%7c9%7c1 http://ovidsp.tx.ovid.com/sp-3.9.0b/ovidweb.cgi?&s=popmfpapmhddpaedncokjbibieifaa00&complete+reference=s.sh.18%7c11%7c1 http://ovidsp.tx.ovid.com/sp-3.9.0b/ovidweb.cgi?&s=popmfpapmhddpaedncokjbibieifaa00&complete+reference=s.sh.18%7c11%7c1 http://ovidsp.tx.ovid.com/sp-3.9.0b/ovidweb.cgi?&s=popmfpapmhddpaedncokjbibieifaa00&complete+reference=s.sh.18%7c11%7c1 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 609 gender analysis of rural dwellers accessibility to free natural resources in ussa local government area of taraba state, nigeria catherine o. ojo, hadiza s. nuhu and thomas a. igbankwe department of agricultural economics, faculty of agriculture, university of maiduguri, borno state, nigeria abstract the study analyzed gender accessibility of rural dwellers to free natural resources in ussa local government area of taraba state, nigeria. primary data were collected using structured questionnaire. sixty respondents were selected purposively to ensure that only forest resource gatherers were included in the study. descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data collected. the findings of the study revealed that equal number of male and female respondents (41.4% each) were farmers. also 32.4% and 31% of male and female respondents were landless. about 62% of male and 75.7% of female respondents were educated. about 87% and 90% of male and female had household sizes of over 5 persons. men had more access to high income yielding forest resources than women. the result showed that the women took more of what they gathered home to meet household needs while a little was sold for income, while men sold most of what they collected with only little was left for home consumption. based on the results of the study, it was recommended that increased gender based capacity building and responsibility for management of free natural resources should be encouraged among rural dwellers in order to ensure sustainability of the resources in contributing to food security and poverty alleviation among free natural resource gatherers in the study area. keywords: gender, free natural resources, rural dwellers, accessibility introduction 1 the consideration of men and women as separate entities when examining development activities has become virtually universal. this is justified on the basis of past and continuing inequity (oseni, 2004). gender affects the distribution of resources, wealth, work, decision-making, political power as well as the enjoyment of rights and entitlements within the family and in public life (welch et al., 2000). due to their different gender roles and responsibilities, men and women use forest products in different ways. corresponding author’s details: name: catherine o. ojo email address: nickatie2003@yahoo.com the general trend is that women gather forest products, forest fuel, food, fodder, herbs for medicinal purpose, and raw material for small scale income-generating activities, whereas men gather wood for selling or for construction (wednet, 1991; jacobson, 1992). men tend to play a greater role than women in extracting timber and non-wood forest products for commercial purposes, giving an indication of the accessibility to forest resources among men and women. traditionally, many villagers rely on gathering fishing and hunting in forests to get food as regular source of protein and fat. in some provinces, forest foods are the most important sources of food beside staples. this category of items includes wild fish from rivers and other asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:nickatie2003@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 609-614 610 aquatic animals, wild fruits, vegetables and mushrooms, insects and wildlife for meat. the collection of non-timber forest products is both a source of food and a source of income to gatherers (mulenga et al., 2011). notion of gender are integral to understanding the social relations and decision-making process concerning access to natural resources (kabeer, 2003). economic, social, cultural, political and legal environments affect the rights of women and men to control forest resources and own land. even where women have ownership rights to land, the access to forest products and opportunity for forest-generated income may not be assured. different members of the community may have established informal rights to use of different parts of the forest or even of a tree. women may have access to the vegetables, mushrooms, firewood and weaving materials while men in the rural community have full access to bush meat, honey, fish and timber. this differentiation by gender has major implications for the ownership and right to the forest and its by-products, it affects the decision process in the selection of species for new plantings and it affects the management of the forest (fao, 2003). studies have shown that gender based local knowledge is a central issue in the selection, collection and preparation of wild foods. while women are very much knowledgeable about direct food consumption activities, men are more knowledgeable and responsible for income generation for non-wood forest products (ogle, 1996). thus, accessibility to free natural resources is a contributor to livelihoods and a means of poverty reduction among rural households with access to them. the existing low level of consciousness about the roles played by women in the forest resources management has resulted in deep rooted cultural beliefs and traditional practices that prevent women from having access to forest resources (un, 2002). however, issues of accessibility and the dependency on natural resources products are not well synthesized and documented (kessy, 1998). there exists sources of free natural resources in nigeria but the role of men and women in the exploitation of these resources has not been given much attention by researchers. considering the relevance of these free natural resources to food security and poverty reduction, this study intends to analyze gender accessibility of rural dwellers to free natural resources in ussa lga of taraba state, nigeria. methodology the study area was ussa local government area of taraba state. it is located at the southern part of taraba state. the area is made up of eight wards which include fikyu, kpambo-puri, kpambo, rufu, lissam i, lissam ii, kwesati and lumbu ward. ussa has a total land area of 4,260 square kilometre which lies in latitude 7 0 11ˈ 00ˈˈn and longitude 10 0 02ˈ 00ˈˈ e (ministry of land and survey, 2003). it is bounded in the north east by kurmi local government, in the south and south east by the republic of cameroun and north by takum local government area. according to 2006 census, ussa local government area has an estimated population of 102,763.89. data were obtained through the use of structured questionnaire and oral interview which were administered illiterate respondents. the simple random sampling technique was used to select three wards which included kwesati, rufu and kpambo out of the eight wards in the study area. from each of these three wards, twenty respondents were purposively selected to include only forest resource gatherers. a total of 60 respondents were selected but only 58 of respondents gave complete responses. descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data collected. the descriptive statistical tools involved the use of tables, means, frequency distributions and percentages. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 609-614 611 results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of the respondents the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents considered in this study were: marital status, education attainment, occupation, age, farm size and household size. they were analyzed descriptively and the results were presented in table 1. table 1: distribution of socio-economic characteristics of the respondents socio-economic characteristics description male (%) female (%) marital status married single divorced widowed 72.4 17.2 3.4 6.9 27.6 20.7 20.7 31.0 educational attainment no formal education primary education secondary education tertiary education 37.9 13.8 17.2 31.0 24.1 24.1 27.6 24.1 occupation civil servant farming artisan trading forest resources marketer fisher 17.2 41.9 13.8 3.4 13.8 10.3 13.8 41.4 20.7 10.3 10.3 3.4 age ≤ 20 21-30 31-40 41-50 above 50 3.4 17.2 34.5 37.9 6.9 6.9 41.4 31.0 20.7 farm size 1-5 6-10 landless 69.9 27.6 3.4 65.5 3.4 31.0 household size 1-5 6-10 11-15 27.6 58.6 13.8 48.3 41.4 10.3 source: field survey, 2012 table 1 revealed that about 73.4% of male respondents were married as compared to 27.6% of female respondents in the study area. this was because forest resource gathering was more commonly undertaken by married men and single women in the study area. this was probably a custom in the area. the result also showed that 62% of male respondents and 75.9% of female respondents had different levels of formal education. it is expected that those that were educated will be better informed on how they could properly manage the resources than the uneducated. a large number of male respondents (41.9%) and female respondents (41.9%) were farmers. this implied that farming was the commonest occupation among the respondents. furthermore, 51.7% of male and 72.4% of female respondents was within the age range of 21 to 40 years. this indicated that the majority of the population in the study was made up of physically active people in their productive years. such people had the strength to search for forest resources outside their regular occupation which in most cases was farming. most of the male respondents (69.9%) and female respondents (65.5%) had farm sizes of 1 to 5 ha. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 609-614 612 this showed that most men and women in the area were small scale farmers. there were also 3.4% of male and 31% of female respondents that were landless. considering that about 58.6% of male and 41.4% of female had household size of over 5 persons, the tendency for these households to need extra sources of food and income presumes that the people in the study area were likely to make effort to acquire free natural resources to augment their household food and income sources. the result also showed that men were more endowed with farm land than women, implying that women may rely more heavily on free natural resources to meet their household food needs especially among female headed households. large household sizes usually had impact on household labour provision. this agrees with the findings of parikh and shah (1994) that large family size contributes to production than small family size. part of the food provision is that of gathering free natural resources for food and income, the implication of the finding of this study is that large households will gather more free natural resources than small households because of larger labour force and more people’s needs to be met. free natural resources in the study area this section unveiled different types of free natural resources found in the study area. table 2 showed that 51.7% of respondents were gatherers of vegetables. this implied that vegetable was the most popular and probably the most common free natural resources in the area. due to its availability, vegetables were usually collected freely from forest by the respondents. this confirms the findings of robinson and kajembe (2009) who observed that vegetables were collected regularly by some households due to elastic demand. table 2: distribution of free natural resources in the study area resources % rank vegetable 51.7 1 fuel wood 48.3 2 fish 48.3 2 mushroom 41.4 4 bush meat 41.4 4 honey 34.5 6 fruits 34.5 6 medicinal plants 34.5 6 roofing materials 24.1 9 mat making material 20.7 10 rope materials 13.8 11 ritual materials 6.9 12 source: field survey, 2012 it was observed that fuel wood and fish accounted for the same percentage (48.3%) which indicates that fuel wood and fish were equally demanded and were the second most demanded resources in the study area. fish was collected from water bodies while fuel wood was the product of forests. mushroom and bush meat had the same percentage (41.4%) demand. honey, fruits and medicinal plants had the same percentage (34.5% each) of number of gatherers. they were the fourth most popular group of resources which could be collected from the forest. roofing materials (24.1%); mat making material (20.7%); rope materials (13.8%) and ritual materials (6.9%) were the least frequently sought after. this was probably because their demand was dependent on need and they were apparently not as frequently demanded as the others. the others were food and drug related asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 609-614 613 resources. the food resources like vegetables, fuel wood and fish were the most frequently collected natural resources implying that they were the most frequently utilized free natural resources. mushroom, bush meat, honey and fruit which were also food related were the next set of most demanded resources. it was observed that all food related resources were more frequently collected than the nonfood resources implying that these food resources were important contributors to food security in the area. reasons for gathering free natural resources people in the rural areas gather free natural resources for a number of reasons. this section focuses on the reasons why respondents used free natural resources in the study area. the result in table 3 showed that free natural resources were gathered basically for home consumption and as a source of income. collection of free natural resources in the area was along gender lines as shown in table 3. accessibility to the free natural resources was observed to be determined by social norms that allocated resource collection along gender lines. the study revealed that the male respondents some resources, female respondents collected others, and a few others resources were accessible to male and female members of the community. table 3: gender based reasons for collecting free natural resources source: field survey, 2012 women traditionally collected vegetables, fish, fruit, fuel wood and mushrooms while men were traditional collectors of bush meat, honey, roofing, ritual and rope making materials, as well as fish and fruit. fish and fruit were the resources commonly table 3 showed that in the study area, women collected more mushroom, fuel wood fruits, fish and vegetables for household consumption (31%, 37.9%, 13.8%, 10.3% and 44.8% respectively) (10.3%) than for income (10.3%, 10.3%, 3.4%, 6.9%). the result showed that the women in the study gathered free natural resource more for the purpose of meeting household food needs than for making income. this is a common feature with women who are usually concerned about meeting immediate needs of their households. as shown on table 3, men gathered more honey, fish and fruit which had high market value for the purpose of making income than for household consumption the male respondents in this study were observed to be more prone to making money from marketable natural resources than taking the raw resources for home consumption conclusion this study examined the accessibility of rural dwellers to free natural resources found in their income consumption resources men (%) women (%) men (%) women (%) vegetable 6.9 44.8 fuel wood 10.3 37.9 fish 17.2 3.4 13.8 10.3 mushroom 10.3 31.0 bush meat 20.7 20.7 honey 20.7 13.8 fruits 10.3 10.3 3.4 13.8 medicinal plants 6.9 6.9 6.9 roofing materials 6.9 17.2 mat making material 6.9 13.8 rope materials 3.4 10.3 ritual materials 6.9 10.3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(9) 2013: 609-614 614 natural environments (forest and water bodies). the study showed the gender role of men and women in free natural resources. it also identifies the resources that were most commonly collected in the area. these included bush meat, honey, vegetables, fuel wood, fish and fruits. collection of all kinds of natural resources was traditionally determined by gender based cultural norms. reason for women’s free natural resource collection was most often for household consumption while men aimed more at income generation from the resources. this study further established that free natural resources contributed either directly or indirectly to household food security which made life better for rural dwellers. considering the importance of free natural resources to men and women both for food security and poverty alleviation, it was recommended that a gender based free natural resource management capacity building outreach should be aimed at the people of the area. this is so as to enhance the sustainable access to the resources. references fao (1997). household food security and forestry. an analysis of socio-economic issues. community forestry note, 1. fao lao p. 147. fao (2003). the state of food insecurity in the world. 31-33. kabeer, n. (2003). gender mainstream in poverty eradication and the millennium development and other stakeholders. otawa international development research centre. 14-15. kessy, j. f. (1998). conservation and utilization of natural resources in the east usambara forest reserves. conventional view and local perspectives. tropical resources management paper, no 18. wageningen. the netherland; wageningen university. ministry of land and survey (2003). jalingo taraba state, nigeria. mulenga, b. p., richardson, r. b., mapemba, l. and tembo, g. (2011). contribution of non-timber forest products to rural households in zambia. policy synthesi food security research project – zambia. ministry of agriculture and cooperatives, agricultural consultative forum, lusaka, zambia. ogle, b. (1996). people dependency of forest for food security. some lessons learnt from and program of case studies. in m. ruiz perez and j. e. m. anold (eds). current issues in non-timber forest product research . cifor, bagor. 34-36. oseni, j. o. (2004). structure and operation of agricultural extension economy: national conference of agricultural extension society of nigeria. annual report. parikh, a. and shah, k. (1994). measurement of technological efficiency on the northwest frontier province of pakistan. journal of agriculture economics, 45(1): 132-138. robinson, j. z. e. and kajembe, g. c. (2009). changing access to forest resources in tanzania. environment for development, 10-14. u. n. (2002). johannesburg summit 2002. ethiopia country profile. available on <http://www.un.org/esa/agenda21/nattinf o/wssd/ethiopia.pdfz (december 4,2007). wednet (1991). a research project on women and natural resources management in africa. reports of the proceedings of the researchers and information sciences meeting 17-21 june, 1991, accra ghana. welch, c. j., alemu, b., msaki, t., sengendo, m., kigutha, h. and wolff, a. (2000). improving household food security. institution, gender, and integrated approaches usa: basis management entity. 15-21. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. the effect of agricultural development project (adp) on the rural farmers in adamawa state, nigeria umar adamu madu (department of agricultural economics and extension adamawa state university mubi, nigeria) abba mohammed wakili (department of agric. education federal college of education yola, nigeria) citation: umar adamu madu and abba mohammed wakili (2012) “the effect of agricultural development project (adp) on the rural farmers in adamawa state, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 405-410. the effect of agricultural development..... 405 author(s) umar adamu madu department of agricultural economics and extension adamawa state university mubi, nigeria email: umaradamu24@yahoo.com abba mohammed wakili department of agric. education federal college of education yola, nigeria the effect of agricultural development project (adp) on the rural farmers in adamawa state, nigeria abstract majority of communities in nigeria are rural dwellers and agrarian by occupation. development strategy for a country whose rural population are mainly farmers cannot be achieved without first sustained growth in rural income and standard of living primarily from agriculture. it was based on this that the state wide agricultural development project (adp) was established to raise productivity, income and standard of living of rural farmers in nigeria. this study assesses the effect of the adp activities on the wellbeing of the rural farmers in adamawa state, nigeria. data for this study were collect on annual crop output, annual income, farm size, use of improved technology, access to credit among farmers, farmers’ training and rural infrastructure development. the data were sourced using structured questionnaire and personal interviews. the statistical analysis used to determine the effect to the project on the participating farmers include, descriptive statistics and comparability test for difference (t-test) analysis. the results indicates that adamawa adp had positive and significant impact on rural farmers productivity, income, access to credit, standard of living as measured by assets ownership. however, the project did not have significant impact on the rural infrastructure, adoption of improved technologies and farm sizes, even though the change from before and after adp activities was positive. the study recommends that much attention should be paid to the provision of rural infrastructure and the needed improved technologies. the study also recommends that the two tiers of government in nigeria should adequately fund the project to efficiently cope with its responsibility of developing the rural sector. keywords: effect, adps, rural, farmers introduction the average nigerian farmers still produces crops and livestock at a subsistence level, and this low productivity stems partly from inadequate support from the government. at the same, the continuing increase in the size of the nation’s population has created high demand for food which was not being met with existing traditional technologies. this has caused the government of nigeria to establish several agricultural development projects to increase food productivity and subsequently, the welfare of the rural farmers (adejo, 1983; umar, 2005; dennis, 2007; omonona, 2009). some of these programs include operation feed the nation (ofn), green revolution, national accelerated food production program (nafpp), river basin and rural development authority (rbrda) and agricultural development projects (adps). there is strong and urgent need to transfer and extend new practices, knowledge and skills of production to rural farmers to improve efficiency and thus improve the living standard mailto:umaradamu24@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 405-410. 406 and quality of life of the majority of the rural poor as well as improved the economy of the country. rural people in nigeria seem to have unique opportunities to benefit from the well tested package of the improved technologies of the agricultural development project (adp) strategies. it is the focus of this study therefore, to investigate the effect of the adamawa adp on the quality of life of the rural farmers. overview of the agricultural development project (adp) the concept of agricultural development projects (adps) evolved from the desire of the federal government to throw its might behind the state government’s efforts in the development of agricultural projects. this desire was buttressed in the third national development plan in which it was recognized that rapid economic development cannot be achieved within defective institutional framework (nwoko and mabawonku, 1983). adps were established in 1975 as three enclave projects in funtau, gombe, and gusau. presently, adps have evolved into state-wide project which covers the whole states of the country (omonona, 2009). the main objectives of the projects are to promote agricultural and rural development especially among the small scale farmers. some of the objectives of adps include:  the supply of farm inputs through farm services centres.  the supply, improvement of extension staff and farmers’ training.  introduction of new credit and marketing services  provision of improved seeds  provision of rural infrastructure such as rural roads, construction of dams and boreholes for water supply. in their integrated supply of farm inputs and infrastructural support and in their efforts to revitalized and revamp extension systems, the adps represent a truly innovative approach to agricultural and rural development in nigeria. methodology the study was conducted in adamawa state of nigeria. it is located in the north eastern part of the country. the state lies between latitude 12.20° n to 11.52° n and longitude 7.0° e to 7.5° e. adamawa state is bordered by the states of borno to the northwest, gombe to the west and taraba state to the southwest. its eastern border forms the international border with cameroon. based on 2006 population and housing census, the state has an estimated population of 3,194,781 (npc, 2006). to achieve the objective of the study, primary data were collected in five (5) local governments’ areas of the state, namely gombi, hong, maiha, mubi north and michika. these local government areas were selected based on considerable number of participating adp farmers. in each local government area selected, 20 farmers were randomly selected making a total number of 100 famers selected for the study. structured questionnaire and personal interviews were used to collect the data used in this study. the data were collected on farmers’ characteristics, total annual output, income per annum, farm sizes, adoption of improved technology, access to credit and farmers training. the analytical tools used include, descriptive statistics and statistical test for difference (t-test). the selection of the t-test is based on its proven capability to determine the difference between two means (dehejia and wahba, 2004). in this study, t-test is used to test for difference in the mean of explanatory variable before and after participating in adp. result and discussion socio-economic and demographic profiles of the respondents the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents are shown in table 1. the results indicate that 60% of the participating farmers were males, with about 70% of them falling below 51 years of age. the farmers’ level of education in the study area is generally low as 33% had no formal education and another 26% obtaining only primary education. this means that majority of the farmers are illiterates, and thus the new practices introduced by adp have suffered poor understanding. the effect of agricultural development..... 407 table 1: socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents variable categories frequency percentage gender male female 120 80 60 40 age (years) 20 – 30 31 – 40 41 – 50 51 – 60 above 60 29 51 60 50 10 14.5 25.5 30 25 5 education none primary secondary tertiary 66 52 63 19 33 26 31.5 9.5 source: field work, 2009 total annual crop output of the farmers the study investigated if participation in adp activities has influenced increase in output of the farmers and consequently increases in their income. the result shows that there was improvement in the output of the participating farmers as a result of the adp activities. there is disproportionately high difference between the total output of the farmers before and after adp activities. the statistical test for difference as shown in table 2, indicates that there is a significant difference in total output before and after adp activities at p = 0.05. this is consistent with findings by kwa (1992), ayichi (1995), rahman & lawal (2003) that crop output increased substantially among the adp participants due to the project’s activities. total annual income of the farmers the total annual income of the adp participants was examined before and after participating in the project. there is substantial and positive impact of the adp on the income of the participants. as shown the table 2, there is a remarkable improvement in the incomes of the beneficiaries of this project. the statistical test for difference, indicates that there is a significant difference in their incomes before and after participation at p = 0.05. this achievement may not be unconnected with increase in output realized by the farmers. farmer’s income is to a large extent determined by crop out. similar findings by kwa (1992), umar (2005), dennis (2007), farmers participating in adp activities have achieved substantial increase in income due to the project’s activities. table 2: summary of t-test analysis of parameters used to measure effects of adp parameter mean before mean after t-statistics p value total output 764 1528.86 1.186 0.0276** annual income 402.02 523.12 4.783 0.0123** farm sizes 716,02 746.2 2.389 0.0743 improved techn. 417.06 435.02 2.594 0.0667 access to credit 409.5 422 5.764 0.00359** farmers’ training 435.6 562.8 3.236 0.01345** property acquisition 356,4 452.78 3.142 0.01545** ** = significant at 5% farm sizes of the farmers the introduction of the adp system did not assist farmers in the study area to realize much increase in their farm sizes. the farm sizes of the participating farmers never witnessed substantial increases over the period of participation in adp activities. the result from the field as shown in table 2 above indicates asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 405-410. 408 that there is no significant difference in the farm sizes of the farmers before and after participation at 5% level of significance. even though, the number of plots increased for individual farmers, the increases were not significant. one of the criteria for measuring the status of rural farmers is their farm sizes (dennis, 2007). considering this result therefore indicate that a good number of farmers are not sure of their regular farming plots and this is detrimental to proper farm planning and job security needed for population stabilization and the development of the rural areas. adoption of improved technology the study investigated the use of improved technology among the participants which included tractors and related machines, improved seeds, use of chemicals, among others. little achievement is made in the area of technology use among farmers in the study area. statistical test for difference from before and after participation shows that there is no significant changes at p = 0.05 (see table 2). even though there is a difference in the mean from before and after, the improvement is not statistically significant. this non application of improved technologies may not be attributed to unwillingness by the farmers, but relative scarcity, cost and poor management of some of the technologies e.g. tractors (dennis 2007; umar 2005). acquisition of assets by farmers participation in adp activities has improved the lot of the farmers in adamawa state. generally there is increase in income which subsequently led to substantial increases in the number of assets owned by the farmers. t-test analysis of assets acquire by farmers before and after participation as shown in table 2 above shows that there is significant difference at 5% level of significance. the farmers have acquired modern gadgets ranging from modern houses, motorcycle, pick-up, tv sets, videos, satellite dish, etc. access to credit facilities by farmers access to credit facilities among the farmers participating in adp activities in adamawa state has improved over the period of the project’s operation. the result as shown in table 2 above indicate that there is substantial difference in access to credit before and after adp activities. the statistical test for difference (t-test) between before and after participation shows significant difference at p = 0.05 (table 2). this difference may be attributed to the awareness campaign and trainings provided by the project on the importance of credit, source of credit and how to access credit facilities. however, dennis (2007) in his findings revealed that the average loan received by adp farmers was grossly inadequate to influence meaningful agricultural activities. the importance of credit to farmers is not debatable, thus it is regrettable if farmers access to credit is poor because no meaningful agricultural investment can be made. farmers’ training farmers in adamawa state have received one form of training or the other from the adp. these includes techniques of storage, compost making, land preparation, cooperatives, importance of credit, fish farming and animal husbandry among others. the data as gathered from the respondents indicates that substantial impact is made by the adp in the area of farmers’ trainings. statistical test for difference (t-test) at p = 0.05 suggests significant difference in the number of farmers trained during pre-adp and post-adp operations (see table 2). these trainings have enabled the farmers to understand and apply the innovations introduced by the adp to some extent. infrastructure development by adp the performance of adp in the provision of rural infrastructure in the farming communities in adamwa state as stipulated was its objective is not encouraging. one of the objectives of the adp was provision of rural infrastructure such as bore holes, rural feeder roads, culverts, irrigation dams, tube wells, wash bore, etc. the field data shows that no bore holes were provided, only 22 tube wells out of targeted 936 were provided by the project in the study area. rural roads, dam and food storage constructions recorded zero achievement, while only 542 km roads out of targeted 2489 km roads were rehabilitated the effect of agricultural development..... 409 table 3: rural infrastructure development by adp infrastructure 1991 2003 target bore holes 0 0 1,200 road construction 0 0 na roads rehabilitated 201 km 341 km 2489 km culverts const. 18 11 na tube wells 16 6 936 wash bores 13 77 3540 water pumps 0 200 2352 irrigation dams 0 0 na source: field work, 2009 this is a good indication that adamawa adp did not perform up to expectation in the area of rural infrastructure provision. the targets set by adp were not met in any year. this is shared by ekpo and olaniyi (1995) that adp performed poorly in infrastructure development during its operation. poor roads in the farming communities has forced the farmers to sell at lower price as it is not feasible to transport produce to urban market for better prices. it has also incapacitated the farmers to increase productivity due to poor access to farm inputs. conclusion and recommendations the results of the findings have shown that adamawa state adp has positively on the livelihood of the farmers in the state. the project has influenced the rural farmers in the study area to realize increased in crop output, income, access to credits, ownership of assets and trainings. however, the project’s impact on farm size, adoption of new technologies and rural infrastructure were not found to be statistically significant, though some level of positive changes were notice from before and after participation in the project. these findings suggest that adp’s impact on the rural development in adamawa state is pronounced as it has contributed significantly to rural farmers’ wellbeing. based on the findings and experience gathered during the course of this study, the following recommendations are hereby made to address some of the problems:  the scarcity of tractors, other needed technologies and their relative cost has been an impediment to adoption of new technologies among the rural farmers. the farmers expressed willingness to use these technologies, but always resort to traditional methods due to non availability. it is therefore recommended that any technology introduced should be made available to farmer at subsidized rate through farmers’ cooperatives.  rural farmers have not been receiving better price for their commodities due to bad road network that makes it difficult and costly to transport their produce to the urban centres where better prices are obtained. bad roads also hinder evacuation of produce and supply of farm inputs. portable water supply borders on the health of the farmers. the funding level of the adp could not support the provision of these amenities. it is imperative that the government set machinery in motion to provide portable water supply and good access roads in all rural areas to support the activities of the farmers.  finally, it is observed that even the farmers are worried that there is dwindling activities of the adp and wished it will catch up again with its past glory. the funding level of adp is not commensurate with its activities. the federal and state governments should as a matter of urgency reconsider funding the project to enable bounce back to its role in developing the rural areas. references adejo a. j. (1983) “role of adp in rural development”, in uzo i and raza r (eds,) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 405-410. 410 rural nigeria: development and quality of life. a proceeding of a seminar on quality of life in rural nigeria. amrti, ilorin, 1983. ayichi d. (1995) “models of rural development in nigeria: with special focus on adps”, in eboh, e.c, okoye, c.u and ayichi (eds). rural development in nigeria. enugu autoccentury publishing company limited, nigeria. dehejia, r. and s. wahba (2004) “propensity score matching methods for non-experimental causal studies”, review of economics and statistics vol. 84(1), pp. 151–161. dennis a. l. o. (2007) “the impact of adps on rural development in adamawa state, nigeria”, unpublished phd thesis.fut yola. ekpo e. c. and o. olaniyi (1995) “analysis of the impact of the directorate of food, road and rural infrastructure in eboh e c, okoye c.u & ayichi d. rural development in nigeria: autocentury publishing co. ltd, nigeria. kwa a. r. (1992) “the impact of adp on the nigerian farmers”, paper presented at a symposium organized at agricultural show, kaduna, nigeria. npc (national population commission) (2006) “population and housing census of the federal republic of nigeria”, report; abuja, nigeria. nwoko s. g. and mabawonku a. f. (1983) “welfare indicators in lafiya adp area”, in uzo i and raza r 1983 (eds,) rural nigeria: development and quality of life. a proceeding of a seminar on quality of life in rural nigeria. amrti, ilorin, 1983. omonona b. t. (2009) “knowledge review on poverty and rural development in nigeria”, international food policy research institute (ifpri). nigeria strategy support programme report, december, 2009. rahman s. a. and lawal a. b. (2003) “economic analysis of maize based cropping system in giwa local government area of kaduna state, nigeria”, asse series a vol. 3(2), pp. 139-140. umar, a. m. (2005) “evaluation of the impact of the adps on the development of rural communities in adamawa, nigeria”, journal of tropical agriculture and sustainable development, vol. 5(6), pp. 120-134 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 4 december 2012. effect of poultry production on the poverty status of small scale farmers in oyo state, nigeria babatunde, raphael olanrewaju (senior lecturer; department of agricultural economics and farm management, university of ilorin, p.m.b. 1515 ilorin, kwara state, nigeria) adekunle, adedayo olufemi (graduate student; department of agricultural economics and farm management, university of ilorin, p.m.b. 1515 ilorin, kwara state, nigeria) olagunju, funke iyabo (senior lecturer; department of agricultural economics and extension, ladoke akintola university of technology p.m.b. 4000 ogbomoso, oyo state, nigeria) citation: babatunde, raphael olanrewaju., adekunle, adedayo olufemi and olagunju, funke iyabo (2012) “effect of poultry production on the poverty status of small scale farmers in oyo state, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 565 578. effect of poultry production on the poverty .... 565 author(s) babatunde, raphael olanrewaju senior lecturer; department of agricultural economics and farm management, university of ilorin, p.m.b. 1515 ilorin, kwara state, nigeria adekunle, adedayo olufemi graduate student; department of agricultural economics and farm management, university of ilorin, p.m.b. 1515 ilorin, kwara state, nigeria olagunju, funke iyabo senior lecturer; department of agricultural economics and extension, ladoke akintola university of technology p.m.b. 4000 ogbomoso, oyo state, nigeria effect of poultry production on the poverty status of small scale farmers in oyo state, nigeria abstract using data from 104 small scale poultry farmers in oyo state of nigeria, this study examined the role of poultry production in rural poverty reduction. the results show that majority of the farmers were male (87 percent), married (87 percent), having family size of 5 to 7 persons (53 percent), above 44 years of age with farming experience of 7.5 years on average and with formal education (95 percent). the average net farm income (nfi) is n788,164 per annum indicating that, the business is worth investing in. poverty incidence, poverty depth, and severity of poverty are 49 percent, 23 percent and 13 percent respectively, the poor farmers need to generate an additional 23 percent of the fixed amount of income to cross the threshold of poverty. the result showed that male headed households and farmers without tertiary education are poorer. poultry income and education level of the household head have significant, negative effects on poverty status of the households indicating that, additional increase in these variables will reduce the probability of being poor. keywords: small-scale poultry production, poverty reduction, fgt, logit regression introduction poverty is an issue that is central to the social and economic life of every developing countries of the world and efforts to reduce poverty have largely targeted rural areas. nnadi (2008) described poverty as a multidimensional concept involving not only material deprivation but also deprivation in terms of capability, vulnerability, and influence over institutions that affect one’s life. being a multifarious phenomenon, poverty is in different forms of which broad ones can be identified such as physiological, social and human deprivation. poverty can be chronic (structural) or transitory, depending on how long poverty is experienced by an individual or a community (okumadewa 2001). chronic poverty is long term and the causes are largely structural and endemic, while transitory poverty is temporary, transient and short-term in nature. world bank (2001) and ucha (2010) summarized the various dimensions as a lack of opportunity, lack of empowerment and a lack of security. the window of opportunity remains closed to the poor masses, and this makes them practically inactive in the society. their lack of empowerment limits their choices in almost everything and their lack of security makes them vulnerable to diseases, violence and so on. the agriculture sector employs approximately two-thirds of the country's total labour force and provides a livelihood for about 90 per cent of the rural population. poverty is especially severe in rural areas, where up to 80 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, and social services and infrastructure are limited (ifad 2011 and awotide et al. 2011). the general belief is that poverty is more widespread and prevalent in rural than urban areas (babatunde 2008) and theoretically the rural areas of a region or country lie outside the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 565-578 566 densely-built up environments of towns, cities and sub-urban villages and their inhabitants are engaged primarily in agriculture as well as the most basic of rudimentary form of secondary and tertiary activities (adebayo 1998 and ajadi 2011). poverty generally is caused by different factors, namely, unemployment, poor social infrastructure, lack of basic amenities and poor implementation of government policies, just to mention a few. thus, the poor cannot access a specified basket of basic goods and services (alaye-ogan 2008), the referred basic goods include nutrition, shelter/housing, water, healthcare, access to productive resources including education, working skills and tools, political and civil rights to participate in decisions concerning socio-economic condi tions (kanbur 1987). according to ajadi (2011) the most telling social characteristic of the poor in nigeria is exclusion. the major variants of this are exclusion from the labour market as manifested in the perennial and high unemployment rates, exclusion from basic housing and easy access to productive assets, public utilities and other services and exclusion from meaningful participation in community activity, social life and national development. agriculture generally has many important roles to play in nigeria economic development, particularly in poverty reduction. agricultural production till date remains the mainstay of the nigerian economy. it provides the means of livelihood for over 70 percent of the population, a major source of raw materials for the agroallied industries and a potent source of the much needed foreign exchange (world bank 1998; okumadewa 1997). however, upon the huge investments in agriculture by the federal government, agriculture has not performed up to expectation in the role of poverty reduction (olagunju et al. 2012; babatunde et al. 2007; okuneye 2002 and ogen 2007) as poverty level has being on the increase since 1980s. the agricultural sector has been growing at a very low rate and poverty in nigeria has been assuming wider dimensions including house hold income poverty, food poverty/insecurity, poor access to public services and infrastructure, unsanitary environment, illite racy and ignorance, insecurity of life and property, and poor governance (manyong et al. 2005). the livestock sector which could play an important role in the process of economic development of sub-saharan africa (ssa), due to policy neglect, the sector is only marginally contributing to economic growth and poverty reduction and, in general, to the attainment of the millennium development goals (nouala et al. 2011). according to kazybayeva et al. (2006) fao (2007) nouala (2011), livestock plays many important roles, including: as a provider of employment to farmer and family members; as a form of insurance; as a store of wealth; contributing to gender equality by generating opportunities for women; recycling waste products and residues from cropping or agro industries; improving the structure and fertility of soil; and controlling insects and weed. livestock residues can also serve as an energy source for cooking, contributing to food security. livestock also have a cultural significance – livestock ownership may form the basis for the observation of religious custom (fao 2006; holmann et al. 2005) or for establishing the status of the farmer (ashley et al. 1999). poultry production is an important livelihoods activity in the rural areas of many developing countries. several studies from african and asian countries have found that poultry production significantly contributes to several livelihoods indicators of rural households, such as income, food and nutrition security, and intra-household gender equality (birol and asare-marfo 2008). moreover, the role of agriculture in mitigating the effects of poverty in developing countries is well known and has been widely documented. for instance (okuneye 2000; oni and yusuf 2006) reported that agricultural resources should really serve the purpose of alleviating poverty in nigeria. nevertheless, in nigeria, only few studies have addressed the role of small-holder poultry production in poverty reduction in the rural areas. this is the research gap that this study wants to fill. this study therefore focuses on the role of poultry production in reducing poverty on small scale producer in oyo state, nigeria. the specific objectives are to examine the profitability of small-scale poultry production; and analyze the effect of poultry income on the poverty status of rural farming households. knowledge of sociojavascript:; effect of poultry production on the poverty .... 567 economic characteristics and profitability of small-scale poultry production could be of great value for policy makers in designing effective poverty reduction strategies in nigeria. this study provides information that could assist the small-scale poultry producers to improve on their farm budgeting and improve their income by allocating funds appropriately to different areas of production. the paper also contributes to the existing literatures on the economies of poultry production and poverty reduction in rural areas. methodology data collection this work builds on a survey of 104 small-scale poultry farmers selected from five local government areas of oyo state. these are afijio, atiba, iseyin, oyo east and oyo west local government areas; due to their high prevalence of poultry production in the area. the respondents were randomly selected from the lists of poultry farmers of nigeria in the state. majority of the smallholder farmers are residing in the rural areas (npc 2006). poultry industry in oyo state has its root in the initiatives of regional governments from the 1960s when, for example the western regional government entered into joint pilot poultry production schemes with some foreign partners, notably the israeli government. there is a concentration of commercial poultry farms that are based on the exotic chicken in the state. the types of poultry that are commonly reared in oyo state are chickens, ducks, guinea fowls, turkeys, and pigeons. those that are of commercial or economic importance given the trade in poultry, however, are chickens and turkeys, amongst which the chickens predominate (adene and oguntade 2006). the data used for this paper were collected in 2012, using interview guide with structured questionnaire. a two-stage simple random sampling technique was used to select the sample for the study. the first stage involved the random selection of five local government areas in the state. the second stage involved the random selection of 104 small scale poultry producers. efforts were made to collect the lists of poultry farmers from poultry association of nigeria in the study area. the lists were stratified into three strata namely small, medium and large scales. the small-scale stratum was chosen for random selection of the respondents. in the second stage of data selection, the small-scale poultry farming households were selected by simple random selection method. ikheloa and inedia (2005) classified poultry farm size of 1-999 birds as a small-scale, 1000-2999 as a medium-scale and 3000 and above as a large scale. information on socio-economic characteristics of smallholder poultry farmers, inputs and outputs, as well as management practices in poultry production were collected. outputs (eggs and meat) were converted into monetary value, using the individual selling prices. labour, feeding, medication, rent cost were collected and aggregated. fixed cost including cost of buildings, cages, feeders, drinkers were also collected and used in analyzing costs and returns in poultry production. effect of poultry income on total households’ income was modeled using the ordinary least squares (ols) regression method, and determinant of poverty status among the small-scale poultry farmers was modeled using logistic regression model. analytical technique descriptive statistics descriptive statistics was used to analyze the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents. profitability of small-scale poultry production and household characteristics according to poverty status and poverty headcount were analyzed with descriptive statistics. gross margin technique gm = tr -tvc ……………. (1) where tr = total revenue from sales of poultry products (broiler, eggs and culled layers) tvc = total variable cost of birds and eggs (this will include the cost of purchase of the birds, feeds, medication and cost of labour for feeding watering and general management of birds). the net farm income (π) was obtained asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 565-578 568 by deducting total fixed cost (tfc) from the gross margin. it is given in equation 2: π = gm – tf ………… (2) poverty level was analyzed by using the fostergreer-thorbecke (fgt) model weighted poverty index developed by foster et al. (1984) among the small scale poultry farming households in the study area. the general specification of the model is given in equation 3:    q i i nzynip 1 /)/1(   ..........… (3) z = the poverty line q = number of individual below the poverty line n = number of individuals in the reference population yi = income of the farmer per annum (naira) α = fgt index which takes values 0-2 z-yi = poverty gap of the ith household z-yi/z = poverty gap ratio ni = the size of the ith household when 0 , it implies zero concern for poverty incidence or depth. equation (3) then reduces to a headcount of poverty. that is,    q i ii nzynip 1 0 0 /)/1( .........… (4) when 1 , it conveys the information that there is uniform concern for poverty depth. consequently, equation (4) becomes,    q i ii nzynip 1 1 /)/1( .......…... (5) where ip1 is the poverty gap between the ith poor household and the poverty line. following from equations (4) and (5), the income gap ratio, which measures the proportionate distance of the mean income of the poor below the poverty line is estimated as the ratio of ip1 to ip0 (i.e. ii pp 01 / ). finally, when 2 , it implies that a distinction is made between the poor and poorest. equation (3) then reduces to the fgt index, which is a distinctive index of the severity of poverty. fgt for the ith group is given as:    q i ii nzynip 1 2 2 /)/1( ……… (6) determination of poverty line a poverty line is often defined as a predetermined or well-defined standard of income or value of consumption which is deemed to represent the minimum required for a productive and active life or even survival (ayinde 2003; anyawu 1997). two fundamental approaches have been widely adopted in the literature to determine the poverty line and they include the absolute approach and the relative or subjective approach. the poverty line adopted for the purpose of this work is the 2/3 of the mean income. model specification and estimation ordinary least squares regression model ordinary least squares (ols) is used for continuous dependent variables. standardized regression coefficients adjust for the fact that some variables have a much larger standard deviation than others; hence a one-unit absolute increase means different things for different independent variables (kachigan 1991). model specification for the effect of poultry income on total households’ income y= f(x1,x2,x3,x4,x5,x6,x7,x8,u) ………. (7) where: y = annual household income (naira) x1 = poultry income (naira) x2 = gender of the household head (1=male, 0=female) x3 = value of assets (naira) x4 = access to credit (1= yes, 0= no) x5 = age of the household head (year) x6 = education level (year) x7 = household size x8 = farming experience (year) u = error term. economic theory does not indicate the precise mathematical form of the relationship among effect of poultry production on the poverty .... 569 the variables, so different functional forms of the above model including the linear, semi-log, double-log and exponential functions were fitted. however, the double-log function was chosen as the lead equation on the basis of statistical theory as well as econometric criteria. the model is as specified in equation 8; double log form log y = b0 + b1logx1 + b2logx2 + b3logx3 + b4logx4 + b5 logx5 + b6 logx6 +b7 logx7 +b8logx8+u ........................ (8) logistic regression a logistic regression analysis extends the techniques of multiple regression analysis to research situations in which the outcome variable is categorical. the model assumes that the outcome variable, zi is categorical (e.g. dichotomous). the dependent variable (zi) is dichotomous and takes the value 1 for the poor individual and 0 for the non-poor individual (awotide 2011). the model is given as; zi=b0+b1x1+b2x2+b3x3+b4x4+b5x5+b6x6+b7x7 +u .............…… (9) where: zi=poultry status of the household (1=poor, 0=otherwise) x1=poultry income (naira) x2=education level (years) x3=household size x4=farming experience (years) x5=gender of the household (1=male, 0=female) x6=access to credit (yes=1, no=0) x7=other income apart from poultry income (naira) u=error term. results and discussion table 1: summary statistics variables description mean std dev. gross margin difference between total income and total variable income of poultry business (naira) 805,403 109,638,5 poultry income average annual income from poultry business (naira) 788,164 109,355,9 household size number of people in the household (adult equivalent) 5.4 2.1 gender gender of household head (male = 1, female = 0) 0.86 0.34 age age of household head (year) 44.3 10.3 farming experience years spent in poultry farming by household head (year) 7.5 4.4 farm size number of birds kept by household 405.4 269.8 access to credit dummy for access to credit (yes=1, no=0) 0.606 0.491 cooperative membership dummy for membership of cooperative society (yes=1, no=0) 0.67 0.471 education education of household head (year) 13.4 4.2 total income total household income both poultry and non-poultry income (naira) 108,673,6 116,869,6 poverty status dummy for household poverty status (poor=1, non-poor=0) 0.490 0.21 source: field survey, 2012 from table 2, majority (86.5 %) of the smallscale poultry operators are male, with very few female. this may be due to the high risks involved in poultry business and women are not good risk takers as observed by ironkwe and ajayi (2007). the result reveals that the 86.5% of the respondents are married, 8.7% are single and 4.8% are widowed. the higher percentage of married indicates the availability of family labour for poultry production. the result also shows that 52.9% of the modal group for the household size falls under 5-7. the household compositions of the respondents include husband/wives, children and other dependents. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 565-578 570 this suggests that, other things being equal, family labour is likely to be available, in the study area. the size of the family can determine the available family labour on the farm. table 2: socio-economic characteristics of small scale poultry farmers characteristics frequency percentage gender male 90 86.5 female 14 13.5 marital status single 9 8.7 married 90 86.5 widowed 5 4.8 household size <2 6 5.8 2-4 27 25.9 5-7 55 52.9 8-10 14 13.5 11-13 2 1.9 education level no formal education 5 4.8 primary education 9 8.7 secondary education 24 23.1 tertiary education 66 63.5 age (years) 20-29 6 5.5 30-39 28 26.9 40-49 38 36.5 50-59 20 19.2 60 and above 12 11.7 farming experience (years) <3 14 13.4 3-6 36 34.5 7-10 33 31.6 11-14 11 10.6 15-18 6 5.8 19 and above 4 3.8 farm size (heads) <100 3 2.9 100-299 37 35.7 300-499 30 28.9 500-699 20 19.0 800-999 14 13.5 main occupation poultry 53 51.0 civil service 25 24.0 formal private sector 12 11.5 trading 8 7.7 artisan 5 4.8 crop farming 1 1.0 credit status credit accessed 63 60.6 credit not accessed 41 39.4 effect of poultry production on the poverty .... 571 cooperative membership member 70 60.6 non-member 34 32.7 source: field survey, 2012 furthermore, the result reveals that the majority of the smallholder poultry operators have tertiary education with 63.5%. this level of education includes hnd/nd, nce, and bachelor degree. minority (4.8 %) of the respondents has no formal education with the mean of 13.44. the high levels of education would contribute to their ability for efficient resource management in their business. it could also positively affect the farmers’ access to useful information that may help them increase their productivity. table 2 also shows that the age of the majority (36.5%) of the farmers fall between 40-49 years with mean age of 44.35 years. this means that the majority of the respondents are middle age farmers, with their mean age of 44.35 years old. they are relatively young and fall within the active age bracket. they belong to economically active population category which is between 25-59 years according fao (1997). about 34.5% of the respondents have 3-6 years farming experience with the mean 7.52 years. the level of experience would contribute to their ability for efficient resource management in their business. farming experience could also relate to the acquisition of good skills in the use of any technological innovation. in the last production year, majority (35.7%) of the respondents raised 100-299 birds while the minority (2.9%) raised less than 100 birds. the mean size of the poultry raised is 405 birds, which shows that poultry production in the study area is a small-scale business. it was also shown that majority (51%) of the respondents have poultry as their main occupation while 49 percent of them have other jobs as their primary occupation, these include civil service, and some are working in formal private sector, trading, artisan and crop farming. among these, civil servants constitute 24%. this could be a way of diversifying income among the small poultry farmers; and it is a good measure against hardship among the low income earners. ruel et al. (1998) submitted that low income earners or wage workers with no other source of income are often vulnerable to poverty. the result reveals that majority of the respondent have access to credit for their poultry activities at a time or the other, the credit sources include agricultural bank, commercial banks, cooperative societies and relatives. this implies that they can improve their farming operations when there is need for that. about 67.3% of the respondents belong to other cooperative societies apart from being a member of poultry farmers association (pan). this implies that they have other means to access credit, sell their products or purchase inputs in bulk and obtaining information on their business, these can also reduce the total cost of operation. majority of the respondents operate on deep litter while few operate on battery cage systems with the mean farm size of 405 birds. this is an indication of low levels of technology and production, which are also the characteristics of most farmers in the study area. the members of the farming households contribute as family labour to production activities on the farm to complement hired labour, which is also used. profitability of poultry farming table 3 shows the profitability of small scale poultry production. it was analyzed with the use of budgetary analysis and the gross margin (gm) was carried out to determine the profitability. the gross revenue is n2,116, 999 while the total cost of production which include total variable and fixed costs is n1,328,835. the gross margin is n805,403 while the net farm income is n788,164. the result of the analysis shows a positive net farm income (n788,164), this is an indication that smallscale poultry production in the study area is a viable business enterprise. the result shows that poultry production is profitable therefore it is worth investing in, it will bring return in a short asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 565-578 572 time because the gestation period is short compare to other agricultural enterprises. table 3: costs and returns of the poultry farmers items average amount per farm per year (naira) feed cost 852,537.53 drug cost 137,717.60 labour cost 138,000.00 other costs 183,341.07 variable cost 1,311,596.20 fixed cost 17,238.82 total cost 1,328,835.02 total revenue 2,116,999.52 gross margin 805,403.32 net farm income 788,164.50 source: field survey, 2012 characteristics of households according to poverty status the estimated poverty line adopted for this study is n203,454 per annum. about 49 percent of the farmers were earning below this amount (table 4), this result shows that majority of the poultry farmers are not poor, the per capita income per day is higher than the national poverty line of $1.00 (n160.00)/day in the study area. the mean household size of the poor is higher (6) than the non-poor household (5), this shows that as the household size increases the extent of poverty increases. the reason may be attributable to the fact that increased household size implies more dependants who rarely contribute to household income. findings are however in agreement with world bank report (2001). the mean education level for the non-poor is higher (14.91) and that of the poor is 11.92. this indicates that education is a strong tool for emancipating rural farmers from poverty. the mean age and mean farming experience are higher for the non-poor, they are 44.5 and 9.58 respectively. farming experience could be responsible for the period to learn better skills for efficient management and period to build capital and grow the business. the mean farm size of the non-poor is also higher (476 birds). it indicates that scale of operation must be improved to alleviate poverty among the poultry farmers. table 4: characteristics of households according to poverty status poor households (49%) non-poor households (51%) characteristics mean standard dev. mean standard dev. household size 5.92 2.189 5.00 2.029 education level (year) 11.92 4.963 14.91 2.844 age (years) 44.18 10.809 44.51 10.051 farming experience (year) 5.37 3.498 9.58 4.316 farm size 331.82 224.663 476.23 291.961 source: field survey, 2012 further decomposition of poor households in table 5 shows that poverty incidence is 49 percent, poverty depth of 23 percent and poverty severity of 13 percent. this indicates that 49percent of the small scale poultry farmers are relatively poor, out of this, 13 percent are suffering from severe poverty. furthermore, the poor poultry farming households require 23 percent increase in their per capita income to reach the poverty line. male headed households are poorer than households with female head; this is in line with effect of poultry production on the poverty .... 573 fos report (1999) which revealed that female headed households are less poor compare to male headed households. this means when women are empowered they can improve their well being. households with poultry as their main occupation are poorer than the household with other poultry as secondary occupations; this does not negate that small scale poultry farming is capable of lifting poor household out of poverty. this could be due to the fact that the latter earn additional income from those jobs. they could also invest extra income into poultry to alleviate their sufferings. haan (2000) explained that holding too long to low paying and unstable jobs put a household at high risk of poverty and food insecurity. diversification as a source of income growth is a potential means of poverty reduction (nicholas et al. 2006). table 5: decomposition of poverty status according to households type category (poverty incidence) (poverty depth) (poverty severity) z = n203,454 p0 p1 p2 all households 0.49 0.23 0.13 male headed household 0.43 0.20 0.11 female headed household 0.06 0.03 0.02 total 0.49 0.23 0.13 poultry as main occupation 0.26 0.12 0.07 nonpoultry as main occupation 0.23 0.11 0.06 total 0.49 0.23 0.13 farmers with tertiary education 0.22 0.07 0.06 farmers with no tertiary education 0.27 0.15 0.08 total 0.49 0.23 0.14 farming experience of <5 0.31 0.16 0.10 farming experience of > 6 0.18 0.07 0.03 total 0.49 0.23 0.13 source: field survey, 2012 the result also showed that poverty level is higher among the farming households without tertiary education. this indicates that education is a strong tool for emancipating rural farmers from poverty. farmers with five years or less experience are poorer than the poultry farmers with more farming experience. this indicates the importance of good training on technical know-how to acquire more knowledge among the smallholders. the role of capacity building and human capital development in eradicating poverty cannot be over emphasis. education equips the people with information and new technologies that are necessary for enhancing economic activities (ruel et al. 1998; oniang’o and makudi 2002). effect of poultry income on household’s total income in order to determine the relationship between total household income and poultry income (x1) with other explanatory variables (x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, x7, x8), ordinary least square was used. table 6 shows the regression result of the lead equation selected from the four functional forms regressed; they are linear function, semilog function, double log function and exponential function which were compared so as to identify lead equation. the double-log function was selected based on magnitude of the coefficient of multiple determination (r 2 ) sign, the number of variables that are significant, f-value and the number of variables that meet the a priori expectation. it had the fvalue of 32.30, value of (r 2 ) which is 0.731, five positively significant variables conforming to a priori expectation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 565-578 574 table 6: ordinary least square result of effects of poultry income on total households’ income variables coefficient t-value constant 2.906112 (6.48) poultry income (naira) 0.1753165*** (5.06) gender (1= male; 0= female) -0.0749165 (-1.21) value of assets (naira) 0.1644*** (4.43) access to credit (1= yes; 0= no) 0.0624175 (1.13) age (years) 0.4962567* (1.79) education level (years) 0.1447086* (1.81) household size 0.1070251 (0.87) farming experience (years) 0.242382** (2.11) r 2 = 0.731 f-value = 32.30*** source: field survey, 2012 ***significant at 1% ; **significant at 5% ; *significant at 10% the coefficient of multiple determinations (r 2 ) of the lead equation (cobb-douglas) is 0.731. this indicates in the function that about 73 percent of the regression explained dependent variable. it shows that for a percentage change in the amount of annual household income of the small scale poultry farmers, poultry income will change, gender of the household head will not change, value of the assets will change, access to credit will change, age of the household head will change, education level will change, household size and farming experience will also change. the result from lead equation also shows that variables x1 and x3 are significant at 1 percent; variables x5 and x6 are significant at 10percent while variable x8 is significant at 5 percent, level of significance. they all have positive sign meeting a priori expectation. variable x1 is poultry income, it contributes significantly to total household income, i.e. 1 percent increase in poultry income will cause an increase to the level of income of the households by 0.18 percent if other factors are constant in the area. variable x3 is the value of assets, this will also cause an increase in household income because less will be deducted from the revenue as depreciation compared to the payment of rent per annum. variable x5 is the age of the households head; it indicates that age could contribute to skill acquisition that improves efficient production thereby improve the income. variable x6 which is education level and variable x8 which is the farming experience, these could help the farmers adopt better technology and acquire better skills due to the length of period used in the business. therefore, these can increase the profit and transfer to the household income. determinants of poverty status among poultry farmers the result of the poverty status is shown on table 7. the study reveals that most of the variables have a decreasing effect on poverty. specifically, education of the household heads, access to credit, farming experience and poultry income was all negatively correlated to poverty. this means that as these variables increase poverty will decrease. two variables are statistically significant: education level and poultry income. as expected, all these variables are negatively correlated with poverty. the implication of these results is that poultry production is an important determinant of the household poverty status, whether the household is poor or not. therefore it is reasonable to conclude as the results show that, to engage in small scale poultry production reduces the probability of household poverty. education level of the household head from the results shows it is also an important determinant of poverty status of the small scale poultry producers, meaning that the higher the education level, the lower the poverty situation. this could be possible because, educated farmers have the tendency to learn and adopt a new and appropriate technology for efficient production. effect of poultry production on the poverty .... 575 table 7: logistic regression result for determinant of poverty status variables coefficient z-value gender (1=male;0=female) 0.4154548 0.21 household size (adjusted) 0.271531 3.22 householder head age (years) -0.457732 -1.10 education level (years) -0.286391* -1.82* farming experience (years) -0.0939488 -0.63 farm size (heads) 0.002649 1.40 credit access (dummy) -1.829837 -1.48 poultry income (n) -0.0000103*** -3.64*** constant 4.134671 0.97 likelihood ratio chi-square (df) 112.96 (8) prob > chi square 0.0000 pseudo r 2 0.7837 source: field survey, 2012 ***significant at 1%; *significant at 10% conclusion the study found out that, the majority of the poultry producers are male, possessed tertiary education and belong to active age bracket. it also revealed that majority have other occupations, they have access to credit and belong to one cooperative society or the other. the study revealed that small scale poultry farmers are not really poor when we compare their per capita income of n557.60/day with $1.00 (n160.00)/day national poverty line of nigeria set by the world bank. poultry income formed an important determinant of poverty status of the household and has a substantial contribution to the total household income. education level also affects the poverty status of these households negatively. the coefficients of assets, age of the household head, education level and farming experience have positive impact on household income of smallholder poultry farmers. poultry production is a very profitable business in the study area and is an important enterprise to generate income in the rural area. the study also found that poultry income is contributing significantly to household income. the study showed that farming experience and access to credit have positive influence on the profitability of poultry production in the area. from policy perspective, governments should encourage the growth of the small-scale poultry industry, rather than promoting the few industrial farms to continue to grow bigger. government of oyo state should include poultry production as a means to reduce the rate of unemployment and poverty in the policy of the state. unemployed youths can be encouraged to take up poultry as a means of livelihood because it is profitable. the old farm settlement estates can be rehabilitated to accommodate unemployed youths. government should subsidize poultry inputs like cages, feeders, drinkers for small-scale poultry farmer. especially, feeds and drugs should be subsidized because these constitute large percentage of costs of production. smallscale poultry farmers would be registered and assigned identification numbers to them. the veterinary unit of ministry of agriculture should be charged with the responsibility of stocking necessary drugs and vaccines to be sold to the registered farmers at the subsidized rate. for feed, government can designate some reputable feed milling centres to be selling minimum feed required by these poultry operators for a specified time space. oyo state government should create credit facilities for small scale poultry farmers for higher capital base. it will also assist those that cannot access loan in a formal banking sector because of lack of security to obtain loans. the credit facility will involve revolving soft loan with proper administration among the groups of smallholder farmers. the farmers in the oyo state should be organizing training and retraining programs for themselves regularly, they should invite experts to train them in the areas of animal health, animal nutrition and general farm management for efficient production. this will cover the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4), pp. 565-578 576 lapses on the part of farming experience and education which are very important in poultry production. references adebayo, a. f. 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(2010) “poverty in nigeria: some dimensions and contributing factors”, global majority e-journal, vol. 1(1), pp. 46-56. world bank (2001) “attacking poverty”, world development report 2000/2001, new york: oxford university press inc. pp 15-23 www.worldbank.org. http://www.worldbank.org/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 106 analysis of communication sources used by farmers in handling poultry diseases in ughelli north local government area of delta state, nigeria agbamu, j. u. dept. of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, nigeria abstract this study examined the communication sources used by farmers in handling poultry diseases. using random and stratified sampling techniques, 8 villages and 80 farmers were used for this study. structured questionnaire and interview schedule were used to collect data. data were analysed through use of percentages, mean scores and regression analysis. it was found that veterinary officers, friends and contact farmers were the major sources of communication used by the farmers in handling poultry diseases. regulated movement of unauthorized persons, use of foot bath at entrance of poultry house, and battery cages for good litter management were the least techniques adopted by the farmers for poultry disease prevention. on the other hand, the techniques mostly adopted for disease prevention were good ventilation and hygiene, vaccination of birds and application of antibiotics in drinking water and feed. the result of regression analysis showed that veterinary officers, agricultural extension workers and friends made significant contribution to adoption of poultry disease prevention techniques. broadcast media programmes on livestock production should be initiated and aired twice a week to provide critical information on poultry disease management to farmers. keywords: communication sources, poultry diseases, livestock production introduction 1 poultry meat and eggs constitute major animal protein sources in nigeria. they are rich in essential amino acids. oluyemi and roberts (2000) defined poultry as domesticated birds raised by humans and can be classified into chickens, ducks, turkeys, geese, guinea fowls, swans, quails, pigeons and ostriches. chickens or what we generally call fowls are by far the most common form of poultry in nigeria. the poultry industry in ughelli north local government area of delta state has undergone significant corresponding author’s email address: joeagbamu@yahoo.com transformation since the early 1980s, from a backyard and peasant household oriented husbandry of local fowls to commercial oriented, modern and large scale poultry production involving the use of improved breeds of fowls. agbamu (2005) stated that poultry enterprise yields the quickest returns on investment in comparison to the production of other animals. this economic factor has largely accounted for expansion of poultry enterprise in the study area. apart from the huge costs associated with housing, equipment and feeding, the prevalence of diseases is one of the key constraints facing the poultry industry in delta state of nigeria. associated with asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:joeagbamu@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 106112 107 disease prevalence is the challenge of how to handle poultry diseases and taking disease prevention measures by poultry farmers. anything that affects the health of poultry birds negatively usually result in huge loss of profit for farmers. adequate information for farmers in handling poultry diseases becomes imperative for successful poultry production. of equal importance is the array of communication sources which the poultry farmers depend on for enhancing their knowledge on animal health management. ofuoku and ajieh (2005) noted that no matter the kind of poultry enterprise, health information is needed by the farmers if they must improve their production and raise their income. generally, the sources of information which farmers in developing countries use is dependent on their education level, age, the kind of information sources available in given communities, the kind of agricultural innovation in question and the extent of modernization in a locality. so the stage of development a society has reached plays a role in the farm information sources that farmers use at different stages of innovation adoption (agbamu, 2006). it should be noted that certain agricultural innovations are more likely to reach a farming audience through agricultural extension workers and other interpersonal sources, while some other innovations are likely to reach farmers through the mass media during awareness and other adoption stages. this study seeks to ascertain the extent of use of communication sources by farmers in dealing with poultry diseases; it also seeks to determine the communication factors that could contribute to adoption of poultry disease prevention practices. in a nutshell, the three major objectives of this study are to: (1) identify the various poultry disease prevention techniques used by farmers; (2) ascertain the sources of communication mostly used by farmers in handling poultry diseases; and (3) determine those communication factors that significantly contributed to adoption of poultry disease prevention techniques. methodology ughelli north local government area is situated in the central zone of delta state in nigeria. it has a total land area of 71,255 sq. km (manr, 2002). it has a population of 321,023 people (nat. population commission, 2006). the study area is located within the tropical rainforest belt of nigeria. it is characterized by heavy rain fall, high temperature, prevalence of tall trees and luxuriant plants. the predominant agricultural activities in this area are crop production, animal husbandry, artisanal fishing and aquaculture. poultry, goats and pigs are the main animals reared in this area. simple random sampling technique was used to select four clans from the seven clans that exist in ughelli north local government area. the four clans are ughelli, orogun, agbarho and agbarha. two villages were randomly selected from each of the four clans, giving rise to 8 villages. stratified sampling technique was used for the selection of farmers. poultry farmers were stratified into small, medium and large scale farmers. holders of 100 to 1000 birds are small scale, 1001 to 3000 birds are medium scale, while holders of 3001 to 6000 birds are large scale farmers. following the population of farmers in each stratum, 5 farmers were selected from small scale stratum, 3 farmers from medium scale stratum and 2 farmers from large scale stratum. these stratified samplings gave a total of 10 poultry farmers from each of the 8 villages earlier selected. the sample size was therefore 80 poultry farmers from the three strata. data for this study were collected through the use of questionnaire. data on socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents included gender, age in years, education level, income level, farming experience in years, type of birds reared in terms of layers or broilers or both, number of birds reared, and frequency asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 106112 108 of contact with extension workers. data were also collected on adoption level of poultry disease prevention techniques and the extent of use of communication sources. a likerttype scale was used to measure extent of use of communication sources; never used, seldom, often and very often were categories that were scored 0, 1, 2 and 3 points respectively. data were analysed through use of percentages, mean scores and multiple regression analysis. percentage was used to convert frequency counts associated with various socioeconomic characteristics of the farmers. having used a scaling technique to obtain total scores for extent of use of communication sources, the total score for each communication source was divided by number of respondents to arrive at a mean score. thereafter, the communication sources were ranked in order to indicate those mostly used by poultry farmers and those that were rarely used. the communication factors which significantly contributed to adoption of poultry disease prevention techniques were determined by use of multiple regression analysis. linear, semi-log and double-log functional forms of regression were used. the lead equation was chosen based on the function with the highest r 2 value, the highest fcal value and the function that had more significant variables. the implicit regression model used is given as: y = f (x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, e) where y = adoption level x1 = use of extension workers x2 = contact farmers x3 = use of friends x4 = use of veterinary officers x5 = opinion leaders x6 = radio e = random error results and discussion socioeconomic characteristics of respondents this study found that majority of the poultry farmers (70%) are males. the average age of the farmers is 38 years. unlike most crop farmers, poultry farmers are generally educated persons. in ughelli north local government area, 47.5% of the poultry farmers have secondary education, while 38.8% of them have tertiary education. the average income of the respondents is n133, 418.33 per month or n1.6 million per annum ($10,126.58/annum). the average number of birds reared per farmer is 2,254 birds. the farming experience of respondents averaged 9.1 years. it was found that 52.5% of the farmers rarely had contact with agricultural extension agents. while 7.5% of the farmers had 712 contacts/year with agricultural extension agents, 33.7% of the poultry farmers had no contact with extension agents. table 1 shows the details of the socioeconomic characteristics of the poultry farmers. common poultry diseases and type of information desired the commonest poultry disease found in ughelli north local government area of delta state is newcastle disease. this disease was identified by 77.5% of the respondents as one of the viral diseases prevalent in the study area, particularly in younger birds. when newcastle disease infects older chickens, the mortality rate is usually lower but egg production is severely reduced. as shown in table 2, fowl typhoid which is a bacterial disease is the next commonest disease identified by the poultry farmers. the study found that there was no incidence of bird flu in the study area. on type of information desired presently by the poultry farmers, it was found that information on administration of drugs to poultry birds (83.8%), how to obtain veterinary services (58.8%), and disease asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 106112 109 prevention methods (52.5%) were sort more than others as shown in table 3. table 1: distribution of respondents’ socioeconomic characteristics characteristics frequency n = 80 percentage average gender male female 56 24 70.0 30.0 age range (years) 27 – 32 33 – 38 39 – 44 45 – 50 51 – 56 21 21 19 11 8 26.2 26.2 23.8 13.8 10.0 38 years educational level no formal education primary education secondary education tertiary education 2 9 38 31 2.5 11.2 47.5 38.8 farming experience (years) 1 – 5 6 – 10 11 – 15 16 – 20 21 – 25 23 33 13 6 5 28.8 41.2 16.2 7.5 6.3 9.1 years type of birds reared broilers layers layers and broilers 20 50 10 25.0 62.5 12.5 number of birds reared 200 – 1999 2000 – 3999 4000 – 5999 44 24 12 55.0 30.0 15.0 2,254 birds/farmer income per month (n) n21,000 n60,999 61,000 100,999 101,000 140,999 141,000 180,999 6 12 13 49 7.5 15.0 16.2 61.3 n133,418.33/month contact with extension agents zero contact/year (no contact) 1 – 6 contacts/yr (rarely) 7 – 12 contacts/yr (often) 13 – 24 contacts/yr (very often) 27 42 6 5 33.7 52.5 7.5 6.3 table 2: distribution of respondents according to common poultry diseases identified common diseases frequency* n = 80 percentage gumboro disease 32 40.0 newcastle disease 62 77.5 fowl typhoid 41 51.3 fowl pox 38 47.5 bird flu 0.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 106112 110 chronic respiratory disease 34 42.5 * multiple responses table 3: type of poultry information desired common diseases frequency* n = 80 percentage disease prevention methods 42 52.5 how to obtain veterinary services 47 58.8 modern poultry equipment 36 45.0 administration of drugs 67 83.8 market information 34 42.5 * multiple responses extent of use of communication sources by poultry farmers the results in table 4 show that veterinary officers ( = 2.46), friends ( = 1.86) and contact farmers ( = 1.63) constitute the communication sources mostly used by farmers in handling poultry diseases. it was also found that agricultural extension agents ranked 7 th in usage among the various sources of communication. the use of television, radio and newspapers ranked 9 th , 10 th and 11 th respectively. television, radio and newspaper were, in most cases, never used by the poultry farmers. these mass media in delta state do not often carry messages on poultry diseases and farmers are thus less dependent on them for critical information on poultry health management. the poor usage of extension agents can be attributed to the few number of extension agents in this study area and the fact that extension agents lay emphasis on crop production with little attention to livestock production. table 4: degree of use of communication sources, n = 80 communication sources very often (3) often used(2) seldom used(1) never used(0) total score x rank veterinary officers 49(147) 22(44) 6(6) 3(0) 197 2.46 1 st friends 25(75) 27(54) 20(20) 8(0) 149 1.86 2 nd contact farmers 18(54) 26(52) 25(25) 11(0) 131 1.63 3 rd salesmen 16(48) 22(44) 24(24) 18(0) 116 1.45 4 th neighbours 11(33) 14(28) 23(23) 32(0) 84 1.05 5 th opinion leaders 5(15) 22(44) 25(25) 28(0) 84 1.05 5 th extension agents 8(24) 10(20) 31(31) 31(0) 75 0.94 7 th relatives 6(18) 14(28) 22(22) 38(0) 68 0.85 8 th television 7(21) 8(16) 13(13) 52(0) 50 0.63 9 th radio 4(12) 7(14) 14(14) 55(0) 40 0.50 10 th newspapers 3(9) 1(4) 1(2) 73(0) 15 0.19 11 th values which are in parentheses are scores from scaling. the cut-off point which indicates adequate usage is 1.50. adoption level of disease prevention techniques from the results in table 5, the techniques mostly adopted by farmers for poultry disease prevention are good ventilation, good hygiene and environmental sanitation, vaccination of birds against diseases, and application of antibiotics in drinking water and feed. regulated movement of unauthorised persons, use of foot bath at entrance of poultry house, and battery cages for good litter management were the least techniques adopted by farmers for poultry disease prevention. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 106112 111 table 5: farmers’ adoption of poultry disease prevention techniques disease prevention techniques* number of adopters percentage of adopters, n = 80 1. appropriate farm location 71 88.8 2. well drained poultry house 69 86.3 3. battery cages for good litter mgt. 58 72.5 4. good ventilation 80 100.0 5. good hygiene and sanitation 80 100.0 6. isolation of sick birds 77 96.3 7. vaccination of birds 80 100.0 8. good feeding regime 65 81.3 9. quarantine for new birds 62 77.5 10 foot bath at entrance of poultry house 54 67.5 11. antibiotics in drinking water & feed 80 100.0 12. regulated movement of unauthorized persons 34 42.5 *multiple responses communication factors that contribute to adoption level from the results of the multiple regression analysis, linear regression model was chosen as the lead equation based on the criteria earlier stated in the methodology. as shown in table 6, the three communication variables that made significant contribution to adoption level of poultry disease prevention techniques are agricultural extension officers, use of friends, and veterinary officers as information source. the results showed that all the variables combined explained 58.6% of the total variation in adoption level of poultry disease prevention techniques. although agricultural extension agent was rarely used by the poultry farmers in this study, it made significant contribution to adoption of disease prevention techniques. the significant contribution of extension agents could be as a result of the fact that during the few contacts, extension agents dwelt more on poultry health management than other aspects of poultry production. table 6: determinants of communication factors on adoption of poultry disease prevention techniques through linear regression model as lead equation variable coeff. standard error t-value constant 10.342 0.916 11.291 extension workers 0.319 0.137 2.328** contact farmers 0.134 0.132 1.012 friends as information source 0.319 0.143 2.230** use of veterinary officers 0.413 0.139 2.967** opinion leaders -0.174 0.180 0.962 radio 0.014 0.144 0.100 r 2 = 0.586 f-value = 3.266 conclusion and recommendations the average poultry farmer in ughelli north local government area of delta state is predominantly male, has average age of 38 years, well educated, has a flock size of 2,254 birds and rarely had contact with agricultural extension agents. the study revealed that newcastle disease is the commonest poultry disease in the study area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 106112 112 this study revealed that veterinary officers, friends and contact farmers constitute the communication sources mostly used by farmers in handling poultry diseases. it was observed that television, radio and newspaper ranked least in usage. this study found that the techniques mostly adopted for poultry disease prevention are good ventilation, good hygiene, vaccination of birds, and application of antibiotics in drinking water and feed. the result of regression analysis proved that the three communication factors that made significant contribution to adoption of poultry disease prevention techniques are agricultural extension workers, use of friends and veterinary officers. in order to improve the situation of communication sources depended upon by poultry farmers in dealing with poultry diseases, the following recommendations are made: (1) rather than focus more on crop production, agricultural extension workers should, in addition, ensure increase in their frequency of contact with poultry farmers. (2) given that 33.7% of the poultry farmers had no contact with extension workers, it has become desirable that delta state adp should employ more workers for good coverage of poultry farmers. (3) since television and radio ranked 9 th and 10 th in usage, broadcast media programmes on livestock production should be initiated by the state adp and this could be aired twice a week to provide critical information on poultry disease management to farmers. references agbamu, j. u. (2005). economic analysis of abundant grace poultry farm at egbokodo, warri south local government area of delta state. proceedings of 10 th annual conference of animal science association of nigeria held at university of ado ekiti, 12 th – 15 th sept., pp. 309 311. agbamu, j. u. (2006). essentials of agricultural communication in nigeria. malthouse press, lagos, p.74. manr (2002). delta state agricultural statistics and information. ministry of agriculture and natural resources (manr), asaba, nigeria. national population commission (2006). national census report. national population commission, abuja, nigeria. ofuoku, a. u., & p. c. ajieh (2005). sources of information on animal health management among poultry farmers in delta state, nigeria. proceedings of 19 th annual conference of animal science association of nigeria held at university of ado ekiti, 12 th – 15 th sept., pp. 322 324. oluyemi, j. a., & f. a. roberts (2000). poultry production in warm climate. spectrum book ltd., ibadan, p.18. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 3 no. 4 april 2013. the perceptions to climate change among rural farming households in the niger delta area, nigeria emaziye, p. o. (department of agricultural economics and extension delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, nigeria) citation: emaziye, p.o. (2013) “the perceptions to climate change among rural farming households in the niger delta area, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 226-233. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 226-233 226 author(s) emaziye, p. o. department of agricultural economics and extension delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, nigeria the perceptions to climate change among rural farming households in the niger delta area, nigeria abstract the study focused on the perceptions to climate change among rural farming households in the niger delta area, nigeria. the basic objective was to determine the rural farming household’s perception to climate change in the area and the specific objective was to determine the direction of change of the climate change indicators (whether increasing, decreasing or constant). multistage sampling procedure was sampled 739 rural farming households (respondents) for the study. data were analyzed using descriptive statistic. socio – economic profile of the respondents indicated that 37.69% of rural farming households falls between the age bracket of 47 to 51 years and majority (60.0%) having educational qualification below secondary school level. the study also reveals 76% had no extension contact during the farming season and 78.6% of respondents are not aware of the phenomenon of climate change. the study noticed an increasing change in the climate change indicators except longer raining season that is decreasing in the area. the perception to the cause of climate indicators was mostly attributed to natural occurrence by god/gods (67.7%). awareness campaign on climate change is recommended in the rural areas for climate change information. keywords: perception, climate change, rural farming household, niger delta area, nigeria introduction the niger delta area is prone to flooding due to its location in the coastal areas of nigeria. this corroborated the ipcc (2007b) report that flood and drought will be on the increase, (okoh et al., 2011) also reported “that the third most pervasive of the hazards of climate change is flood. this derives from overflow of the rivers, the atlantic ocean, river niger and other rivers in the niger delta region. flooding and coastal erosion in the region destroy roads, properties, crops, fresh water resources and threaten lives by rendering them homeless. roads used for the transportation of agricultural produce from the farm to market or households usage are destroyed and rendered not accessible, thereby creating inaccessibility of food to the rural farming households. exposure to climate change, most particularly flooding poses substantial risks to food production in the rural household resulting in food insecurity. a variety of crops such as maize, yam and cassava produced in the niger delta region depend on rainfall for their optimum performance. but in line with ipcc (2007a) reported that precipitation levels are on the downward trend. the decrease and irregular rainfall pattern pose a problem that need to be addressed to save the niger delta region from low agricultural production (yield) that will in turn lead to rural farming households’ food insecurity. this is in line with the prediction reported by ipcc (2007a) that climate variability and change would severely compromise agricultural production and access to food. the millennium development goals (mdgs) are one of the initiatives aimed at achieving food security globally (in particular the mdg1 – to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger). in meeting the challenges of the millennium development goals, greater effort must be geared toward ensuring rapid progress in the perception to climate change among ... 227 hunger reduction especially among rural households (united nations, 2005). the niger delta region is already experiencing some important climate change related hazards such as, increased temperature (including seasonal changes), more intensive and frequent storms, sea level rise, more heat waves, more flooding and extreme floods and more extreme rains including seasonal changes (okoh et al., 2011), and a greater percentage of the population of niger delta region lives in the rural areas. against the backdrop of these seasonal changes in the niger delta region, this research study sort to find out the rural households perceptions of the indicators of climate variability and the direction of change in the region. the following research questions were addressed: 1) what are the rural households’ perceptions of the indicators of climate change? 2) what are the directions of change to climate change in the region? 3) what is the awareness level of rural household to climate change the region? literature review concept of climate change climate change: firstly, in the most general sense, this term denotes the inherent characteristics of climate that manifests itself as changes of climate over time. the degree of climate variability can be described by the differences between long-term statistics of meteorological elements calculated for different periods. secondly, the term climate change is often used to denote deviation of climate statistics over a given period (such as during a specific month, season or year) from the long-term climate statistics relating to the corresponding calendar period. (in this sense, climate change is measured by those deviations, which are usually termed anomalies (wmo, 1992). causes of climate change climate changes occurs when carbon dioxide (c02) and other green houses gases that are important to human by trapping heat in the earth’s atmosphere and keep it warm enough to support human existence, are in dangerous levels as a result of human activities that boost its concentration in the atmosphere resulting in unstable climate and increasing temperature globally. climate change can also be defined as a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods” (unfccc, 1992). climate change according to ipcc (2007a) refers to changes in modern climate which are 90-95 percent likely to have been in part caused by human action. the niger delta region with gas flaring related activities are among human actions that causes climate change. climate change and agriculture agriculture production is affected in a number of ways by climate change. for instance, planting season cannot be predicted as a result of changes in rainfall pattern, resulting in crops been burnt by excessive heat. this leads to poor harvest resulting in food scarcity as reported by okoh et al. (2011). there is the occurrence of harsh weather conditions such as windstorm, thunderstorms and diseases of crops and pests that destroy farms leading to poor harvest in the area. mostly in the northern parts, pests such as as tsetse fly causes a lot of danger to livestock production resulting to lost of investment. food security and climate change the long term sustainability of life on earth rests on the world’s vegetation which can be described as the renewable green gold (odeemi, 1998). the world vegetation acts as a single source of primary biological production that sustains the human population and animal species. the aims of the world conservation strategy (wcs) which include: maintenance of essential ecological processes life support systems. it also involves the preservation of genetic diversity and sustainable development of species and the ecosystems, all these revolve around the land and vegetation. the most significant regional anthropogenic disturbance to the environment is the land-cover changes (roberts, et al., 1998). the biophysical life support system including land surface (vegetation), water resources, soil asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 226-233 228 and atmosphere which constitute the elements that support the long term sustainability of life on earth is cause by climate and environmental change. the biophysical life support system also affects the social and economic structure and framework, and by implication survival, of people. biophysical life support systems are driven by combination of both natural and anthropogenic causes. recently, climate was generally taken for granted and there was little thought that the climate could be a problem with severe impacts due to the effects of man’s activities on climate variation (ojo, 1987). the gradual process of environmental deterioration caused by climate change will result in rural households’ displacement as a result of excessive flooding and erosion. these will lead to destruction of homes, farms, lost of investment, lost of lives and roads resulting in rural inhabitants’ migration. the impacts of continuous flooding and drought will affect women most that work longer hours in the farm and in charge of water administration at home level (unceb, 2007). the cultural and social background of rural households and lack of information about climate change pose a lot of problem resulting in food security problem. methodology the area of study the coastal terrain that is situated in the atlantic coast of southern nigeria where river niger divides into numerous tributaries is the niger delta area, nigeria. the niger delta area is the second largest delta in the world with a coastline spanning about 450 kilometers terminating at the imo entrance (awosika, 1995). the area spans over 20,000 square kilometers and it has been acclaimed as the largest wetland in africa and among the three largest in the world. it is richest wetland in the world (iyayi, 2004). the niger delta area is divided into four ecological zones namely coastal inland zone, mangrove swamp zone, freshwater zone and low forest zone (anee, 2004). there are many unique species of plants and animals in the niger delta region due to high biodiversity characteristics of extensive swamp and forest areas. the area is rich in oil and several decades of oil companies’ activities in the area had much demand on the ecosystem, it has been observed that gas flaring as a component of climate change is a huge issue in the niger delta area. okecha (2000) reported that these activities contributed to climate change and other related health and socio-economic problems. the area niger delta is made up of nine states namely, cross river, edo, delta, abia, imo, bayelsa, river, akwa-ibom and ondo states (table 1). the niger delta area is with 25% of the nigerian population of total of about 140 million people (npc2006). the niger delta area land mass represents 12% of nigeria’s total surface area (npc, 2006). about 31 million inhabitants of more than 40 ethnic groups including the isokos, urhobos, annang, ibibio, efik, ijaw and igbo people speaking some 250 dialects live in the present day niger delta region (jike, 2004). the area has been described as heterogeneous, multicultural and ethnically diverse (akoroda, 2000). the niger delta area lie predominantly in the tropics having two seasons – the wet and dry seasons. the wet season in the niger delta area begins from may to september, while the dry season begins in october and ends in april. the niger delta area is located on latitude 4 0 15 1 n and 4 0 50 1 n and longitude 5 0 25 1 e and 7 0 37 1 e materials and methods states, local government, communities and rural farming households for the study were selected using multistage sampling procedure. firstly, were the random selected of four states from the nine states that make up the niger delta area. secondly, were the random selections of two local governments from each of these states. thirdly, were the random selected of two communities from each of the local government areas, making it up to 16 communities. finally, fifty rural farming households were randomly selected from each of the sampled communities making it up to 800 households. the data for this study were obtained with the aid of structured questionnaire survey and out of the 800 respondents 739 was utilized for this study. findings and discussion socio-economic characteristics of respondents: the rural farming household in the area is 49 years of age showing maturity of the perception to climate change among ... 229 the respondents and with male headed households (table 2). majority of respondents were married confirming that they were responsible, matured and conscious on the level of climate change direction phenomenon in the area. the area is dominated by primary school level of education with a mean household size 10 persons. the average yearly income of respondents in the area was n73, 896 ($480) showing a low yearly income level as result of the impacts of climate change in the area. direction of change of climate respondents in the niger delta region lack awareness (ignorant) to climate variability and change. greater percentages of respondents 78.6% are unaware about occurrence of climate change in the region (table 3), but majority of respondents are aware about changes in agricultural practices, decline in yield and forest resources over the past 30 years without laying claim to concrete proof of what is happening. respondents noticed changes in climate variables and events like early rains not sustained, crops smothered by excessive heat, crops are planted and replanted, irregular rainfall pattern, delayed onset of rainfall, shorter raining season, floods and higher temperature. most respondents attributed these changes to natural occurrence with a believe that only god can change the trend. this is corroborated bythe findings of kirina et al. (2012) that “the perception of farmers on ccv was fond to be influenced by their social economic status…” the vital variable to access in terms of food system is temperature and precipitation (ziervogel et al., 2006). these most critical climate variables, temperature are increasing above a level where crops are been smothered and rainfall are in downward trend (ipcc, 2007a). it is regretted to note that climate variables and events in recent times are having a negative impacts on agricultural production in the niger delta area that depends on agricultural production for their survival. rural farming households (respondents) perception in table 2 revealed that the occurrence of early rains not sustained 79.43%, crops smothered by excessive heat 77.00%, crops planting and replanting 67.52% and irregular rainfall pattern 76.32%. table 4.20 also revealed increasing occurrence of extreme weather events like thunder storm 72.25%, floods 78.62%, sea level rise 70.37%, delayed onset of rainfall 66.58%, shorter raining season 73.61%, higher temperature 81.12% and longer raining period (43.57%) decreasing (table 3). the rural farming households (respondents) perception was corroborated from the temperature and rainfall data analysis results from the data collected from nigerian metrological agency (nimet). agricultural production is directly affected by climate change, as agricultural is mostly affected by the impacts of climate change (parry et al., 1999). issues of food security are closely connected together. (winter, 1999,; reilly, 1995) the variation of environmental conditions (for instance; climate, soil, and water characteristics and land use changes) can place an additional stress on food production (mcconnell and moran, 2000). climate change is already adding to food production problems in the niger delta area. the main obstacle to food security in the developing countries is climate change as agricultural production relies on rainfall for optimal production (parry et al., 1999; ipcc, 2001a). the rural farming households food security in the niger delta area major threat is climate change as agricultural production are decreasing resulting to poverty and hunger. perception to climate change awareness in table 4 show that 78.6% of respondents were not aware about climate change in the studied area while only 21.4% got awareness about climate change. this was mostly due to illiteracy level and lack of exposure to extension services in the studied area. perception to extension services exposure the information in table 5 shows that 77.4% and 72.7% were not exposed to extension services in bayelsa and cross river state respectively, while 89.4% and 63.4% were not exposed to extension services in delta and ondo state respectively. the entire niger delta region, 76.0% of respondents were not exposed to extension services. this might have caused the unawareness to climate change level of the rural farming households. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 226-233 230 conclusion and recommendation the study findings reveals that perception of rural farming households to climate change was that of ignorant or unawareness and mostly attributed to their believe of natural occurrence by god or gods (67.7%). the study reveals the presents of climate change indicators signifying climate change in the niger delta area. this finding is supported by ipcc (2007b) that climate change refers to changes occurring in the climate during a period of time ranges between century and decade. the climate indicators decreasing and decreasing confirming climate change. climate change awareness campaign with science based data should be the beginning for policy making and implementation targeted at effective dissemination of climate change information to the rural farming households. also government policies and programmes should be geared towards rural farming households’ education through rural educational programmes, seminars and workshops in order to arrest the danger imposed by climate change in the niger delta area, nigeria. references akoroda, m. (2000). remediation response in the niger delta. paper presented at a seminar to market the anniversary of jesse fire disaster, nigeria institute of international affairs, lagos. anee, j. (2004). oil of poverty in the niger delta. a publication of the africa. network for environment and economic justice. www.fao.org/docrep/003/x8346e/x8346e02.ht m#pl_10. awosika, l. f. (1995). impacts of global climate change and sea level rise on coastal resources and energy development in nigeria. in: umolu, j.c. (ed). global climate change: impact on energy development. damtech nigeria ltd. nigeria. ipcc (2007a). summary for policymakers in: climate change 2007: impacts and adaptation and vulnerability. contribution of working group 11 to the forth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change: m.l. parry et al. (eds) cambridge university press, cambridge, u.k. and new york, u.s.a. pp 7 – 22. ipcc (2007b). climate change 2007: the physical science basis (summary for policy), ipcc, genera http//:www.nigeriaclimatechnage.org ikeme, j. (2001). assessing the future of nigeria’s economy: ignored threats from the global climate change debate www.africaeconomicanalysis.com. iyayi, f. (2004). an integrated approach to development in the niger delta. a paper prepared for the centre for democracy and development (cdd). jike, t. v. (2004). environmental degradation, social disequilibrium and the dilemma of sustainable development in the niger delta of nigeria. journal of black studies, 34(5), 686-701. kirina t. kitinya richard n. onwonga cecilia onyango joseph p. mbuvi and geofrey kironchi (2012). climate change and variability: farmers’ perception, experience and adaptation strategies in makueni county kenya. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), 411-421. mcconnell, w. j. and e. f. moran, eds (2000). meeting in the middle: the challenge of meso-level integration. lucc report series no. 5. international workshop on the harmonization of land use and land cover classification. ispra, italy, 17 – 20 october, 2000. bloomington: indiana university. pp. 62 national population census (npc) (2006). federal republic of nigeria, federal ministry of women and social development, 2006. odeemi, s. o. (1998). plant-the renewable green gold, inaugural lecture series, university of lagos press. lagos, nigeria. ojo, s. o. (1987). rainfall trend in west africa, 1901-1985: the influence of climate change and climate variability on the hydrologic regime and water resources, iahs publications no168. okecha, s. a. (2000). pollution and conservation of nigeria environment owerri nigeria: t afrique int association. pp. 29 – 30 okoh, r. n., okoh p. n., ijioma m., ajibefu a. i., ajieh p. c., ovherhe j. o. and emegbo j. (2011). assessment of impacts, vulnerability, adaptive capacity and adaptation to climate change in the niger delta region, nigeria. parry, m. c. rosenzweig, a. iglesias, g. fisher, and m. livermore (1999). climate change and world food security; a new http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/x8346e/x8346e02.htm#pl_10 http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/x8346e/x8346e02.htm#pl_10 http://www.africaeconomicanalysis.com/ the perception to climate change among ... 231 assessment, global environ. change 9 : 551 – 567. reilly, j. (1995). climate change and global agriculture: recent findings and issues. am. j. agric. econs, 77, 727 – 733. roberts, d. a. bastista, g. t. pereira, s. l. g., waller, e. k. and nelson, b. w. (1998) change identification using multitemporal spectral mixture analysis – applications in eastern amazonia, in lunette, r.s & elvidge, c.d. (eds) remote sensing and change detection environmental monitoring methods and applications. sleeping bear press inc. michigan. unfccc (1992). united nations framework convention on climate change report united nations millennium development goals (2005). united nations development of public information report. new york. u. n. chief executive board (unceb) (2007). coordinated n.u system action on climate change united nations. winters, p. (1999). climate change and agriculture; effects of developing countries. in; f. frisvoid and b. kuhn (eds0 global environmental change and agriculture, edward elger publications u. k. wmo (1992). international meteorological vocabulary, 2 nd edition. publication no. 182. available at: http://meteoterm.wmo.int/meteoterm/ns?g=tpl ostartµ=direct=yesrelog=yes#expanded. ziervogel g., nyong a., osmah b., conde c., cortes s. and downing t. (2006). climate variability and change: implications for household food security: aiacc working paper no. 20 available at www.aiaccproject.org. table 1: states in niger delta region, land area and population states land area (square kilometers population abia 4,877 2,833,99 akwa ibom 6,806 3,920,208 bayelsa 11,007 1,703,358 cross river 21,930 2,888,966 delta 17,163 4,098,391 edo 19,698 3,218,332 imo 5,165 3,934,899 ondo 15,086 3,441,014 rivers 10,378 5,185,420 total 112,110 31,224,587 source: national population commission (npc, 2006) table 2: socio-economic characteristics of respondents variables bayelsa (n=186) cross river (n=172) delta (n=198) ondo (n=183) niger delta (n=739) age (years) 30 – 39 24 (12.9) 24 (14.0) 44 (22.2) 19 (10.4) 111 (15.0) 40 – 49 76 (40.9) 62 (36.0) 79 (39.9) 61 (33.3) 278 (37.6) 50 – 59 68 (36.5) 66 (38.4) 64 (32.3) 78 (42.6) 276 (37.4) 60 – 69 18 (9.7) 19 (11.0) 11 (5.6) 23 (12.6) 771 (9.6) 70 – 79 0 (0.0) 1 (0.6) 0 (0.0) 2 (1.1) 3 (0.4) mean 49 years 49 years 47 years 51 years 49 years gender distribution female (0) 83 (44.6) 82 (47.7) 94 (47.5) 72 (39.3) 331 (44.8) male (1) 103 (55.4) 90 (52.3) 104 (52.5) 111 (60.7) 408 (55.2) marital status http://meteoterm.wmo.int/meteoterm/ns?g http://www.aiaccproject.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 226-233 232 single (0) 11 (5.9) 22 (12.8) 14 (7.1) 6 (3.3) 53 (7.2) married (1) 120 (64.5) 90 (52.3) 129 (65.2) 118 (64.5) 457 (61.8) widow (2) 33 (17.7) 17 (9.9) 29 (14.6) 29 (15.8) 108 (14.6) widower (3) 4 (2.2) 2 (1.2) 3 (1.5) 4 (2.2) 13 (1.8) divorced (4) 18 (9.7) 41 (23.8) 23 (11.6) 26 (14.2) 108 (14.6) educational status no formal education 55 (29.6) 48 (27.9) 61 (30.8) 29 (15.9) 193 (26.1) primary school 78 (41.9) 61 (35.5) 76 (38.4) 50 (27.3) 265 (35.9) secondary school 37 (19.9) 41 (23.8) 42 (21.2) 72 (39.3) 192 (26.0 tertiary school 16 (8.6) 22 (12.8) 19 (9.6) 32 (17.5) 89 (12.0) mode primary school primary school primary school secondary school primary school household size 2 – 4 5 (2.7) 7 (4.1) 8 (4.0) 2 (1.1) 22 (3.0) 5 – 7 26 (14.0) 45 (26.2) 41 (20.7) 60 (32.8) 172 (23.3) 8 – 10 71 (38.2) 66 (38.4) 75 (37.9) 86 (47.0) 298 (40.3) 11 – 13 54 (29.0) 38 (22.1) 47 (23.7) 33 (18.0) 172 (23.3) 14 – 16 30 (16.1) 16 (9.3) 27 (13.6) 2 (1.1) 75 (10.1) mean (persons) 10 9 10 9 10 annual income(n) 21,000-60,000 89 (47.8) 62 (36.1) 148 (74.7) 12 (6.6) 311 (42.1) 61,000-100,000 95 (51.1) 85 (49.4) 49 (24.8) 65 (35.5) 294 (39.8) 101,000-140,000 2 (1.1) 25 (14.5) 1 (0.50 67 (36.6) 95 (12.9) 141,000-180,000 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 28 (15.3) 28 (3.8) 181,000-220,000 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 6 (3.3) 6 (0.8) 221,000-260,000 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 0 (0.0) 5 (2.7) 5 (0.7) mean (n) 61,790 71,895 50,803 113,068 73,896 figures in parenthesis ( ) are percentages source: author survey data, 2011 table 3: direction of change of climate phenomenon in the last 30 years (niger delta region, nigeria) s/n climate change events increasing (% ) decreasing (% ) no change (%) remark 1 uncertainties in the on-set of the farming seasons increasing uncertainties a. early rains not sustained 587 (79.43%) 104 (14.07%) 48 (6.50%) increase b. crops smothered by excess heat 569 (77.00%) 118 (15.97%) 52 (7.04%) increase c. crops planting and replanting 499 (67.52%) 152 (20.57%) 88 (11.91%) increase d. shift in the start or end of rains 564 (76.32%) 119 (78.62%) 56 (7.58%) increase 2. extreme weather events viz: a. thunder storms 534 (72.25%) 153 (20.70%) 52 (7.04%) increase b. heavy winds 506 (68.47%) 167 (22.60%) 66 (8.93%) increase c. floods 581 (78.62%) 100 (13.53%) 58 (7.85%) increase d. more frequent draught 385 (52.10%) 263 (35.59%) 91 (12.31%) increase e. excessive heat 568 (76.86%) 107 (14.48%) 64 (8.66%) increase the perception to climate change among ... 233 f. heavy rainfall 604 (81.73%) 83 (11.23%) 52 (7.04%) increase g. sea level rise 520 (70.37%) 151 (20.45%) 68 (9.20%) increase h. sea surge 400 (54.13%) 231 (31.26%) 108 (14.61%) increase i. erosion 567 (76.73%) 122 (16.51%) 50 (6.77%) increase j. higher temperature 600 (81.19%) 86 (11.64%) 53 (7.17%) increase k. erratic rainfall pattern 583 (78.89%) 97 (13.13%) 59 (7.98%) increase l. less rain 505 (68.34%) 155 (20.97%) 79 (10.69%) increase m. delayed onset of rainfall 492 (66.58%) 151 (20.43%) 96 (12.99%) increase n. earlier onset of rainfall 517 (69.96%) 146 (19.76%) 76 (10.28%) increase o. short rainy season 544 (73.61%) 152 (20.57%) 43 (5.82%) increase p. longer rainy season 322 (43.57%) 350 (47.36%) 67 (9.07%) decrease 3 crop pest and diseases 458 (63.32%) 187 (25.30%) 94 (12.72%) increase 4 animal diseases 485 (65.63%) 158 (21.38%) 96 (12.99%) increase 5 weeds 516 (69.82%) 143 (19.35%) 80 (10.83%) increase 6 land degradation viz a. sheet erosion 554 (74.97%) 141 (19.08%) 44 (5.95%) increase b. coastal erosion 588 (74.97%) 93 (12.59%) 58 (7.85%) increase c. rill erosion 514 (69.55%) 137 (18.54%) 88 (11.91%) increase d. gully erosion 514 (69.55%) 153 (20.70%) 72 (9.74%) increase e. wind erosion 482 (65.22%) 163 (22.06%) 94 (12.72%) increase f. deposit of eroded materials 600 (81.19%) 102 (13.80%) 37 95.01%) increase table 4: distribution of respondents according to climate change awareness climate change awareness bayelsa (n=186) cross river (n=172) delta (n=198) ondo (n=183) niger delta (n=739) no (0) 141 (75.8) 134 (77.9) 168 (84.8) 138 (75.4) 581 (78.6) yes (1) 45 (24.2) 38 (22.1) 30 (15.2) 45 (24.6) 158 (21.4) mode no no no no no figures in parenthesis ( ) are percentages source: author survey data, 2011 table 4: distribution of respondents according to exposure to extension services extension services bayelsa (n=186) cross river (n=172) delta (n=198) ondo (n=183) niger delta (n=739) no (0) 144 (77.4) 125 (72.7) 177 (89.4) 116 (63.4) 562 (76.0) yes (1) 42 (22.6) 47 (27.3) 21 (10.6) 67 (36.6) 177 (24.0) mode no no no no no figures in parenthesis ( ) are percentages source: author survey data, 2011 table 5: respondents perception to the cause of direction of change of climate indicator causes of change bayelsa (n=186) cross river (n=172) delta (n=198) ondo (n=183) niger delta (n=739) god/gods 122 (65.6) 120 (69.8) 148 (74.7) 110 (60.1) 500 (67.7) climate change 64 (34.4) 52 (30.2) 50 (25.3) 73 (39.9) 177 (32.3) mode god/gods god/gods god/gods god/gods god/gods figures in parenthesis ( ) are percentages source: author survey data, 2011 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. acknowledgements: we were grateful to the head of mardi station in the cameron highlands for providing the experimental sites and other facilities used in this experiment. this project was supported by the ministry of higher education, malaysia. thanks to anonymous referees. field evaluation of some insecticides on whitefly (trialeurodes vaporariorum) and predator (macrolophus caliginosus) on brinjal and tomato plants mohd rasdi, z. (entomologist/senior lecturer, faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara pahang (uitm), pahang, malaysia) che salmah, m. r. (entomologist/professor, school of biological sciences, universiti sains malaysia, penang, malaysia) abu hassan, a. (entomologist/professor, school of biological sciences, universiti sains malaysia, penang, malaysia) hamady, d. (entomologist/associate professor, school of biological sciences, universiti sains malaysia, penang, malaysia) hamaseh, a. (entomologist, school of biological sciences, universiti sains malaysia, penang, malaysia) fauziah ismail (entomologist/associate professor, faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara malaysia (uitm), shah alam, malaysia) citation: mohd rasdi, z., che salmah, m. r., abu hassan, a., hamady. d., hamaseh a. and fauziah ismail (2012) “field evaluation of some insecticides on whitefly (trialeurodes vaporariorum) and predator (macrolophus caliginosus) on brinjal and tomato plants”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 302-311. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 302-311. 302 author(s) mohd rasdi, z. faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara pahang (uitm), pahang, malaysia email: dddpim@pahang.uitm.edu.my email: dddpim@yahoo.com che salmah. m. r school of biological sciences, universiti sains malaysia, 11800, penang, malaysia email: csalmah@usm.my abu hassan, a. school of biological sciences, universiti sains malaysia, 11800, penang, malaysia email: aahassan@usm.my hamady, d. school of biological sciences, universiti sains malaysia, 11800, penang, malaysia email: hdieng@usm.my hamaseh, a. school of biological sciences, universiti sains malaysia, 11800, penang, malaysia email: hamaseh_a@yahoo.com fauziah ismail faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara malaysia (uitm), shah alam, selangor, malaysia email: fauziah@salam.uitm.edu.my field evaluation of some insecticides on whitefly (trialeurodes vaporariorum) and predator (macrolophus caliginosus) on brinjal and tomato plants abstract the effect treatments with the recommended application rates of avermectin, buprofezin, white oil, lambda-cyhalothrin and cyromazine on trialeurodes vaporariorum westwood (aleyrodidae: homoptera) was evaluated. pesticides were applied against larvae infesting brinjal (solanum melongena l.) and tomato (lycopersicon esculentum mill) plants in a natural environment of the cameron highlands, pahang, malaysia. we also examined whether these pesticides affect the whitefly predator, macrolophus caliginosus wagner (heteroptera: miridae). tested pesticides significantly reduced the larval populations of the whitefly and affect throughout the survey period. similar effects were observed on the predator except for the white oil. avermectin was the most effective insecticide against the population of t. vaporariorum. however, it was highly toxic to the predator, m. caliginosus. considering relatively low mammalian toxicity of buprofezin and white oil, these two insecticides were more suitable for controlling whiteflies, particularly during fruiting period. proper selection of effective pesticides against the pest, but less harmful to natural enemies and also good timing of their applications are essential in formulating an integrated pest management (ipm) programme for whiteflies. keywords: brinjal, insecticides, macrolophus caliginosus, tomato, trialeurodes vaporariorum introduction brinjal (solanum melongena l.) and tomato (lycopersicon esculentum mill) are considered as important commercial crops planted in the cameron highlands, the most productive upland vegetable production area in the state of pahang, in peninsular malaysia. both of these fruit vegetables are grown in the open fields as well as under protected rain shelters. the most mailto:dddpim@pahang.uitm.edu.my mailto:dddpim@yahoo.com mailto:csalmah@usm.my mailto:aahassan@usm.my mailto:hdieng@usm.my mailto:hamaseh_a@yahoo.com mailto:fauziah@salam.uitm.edu.my field evaluation of some insecticides..... 303 destructive pest infesting these crops is a highland whitefly, trialeurodes vaporariorum westwood (homoptera: aleyrodidae) (syed abdul rahman et al. 2000, mohd rasdi et al. 2009) that sucks the sap of plant leaves, stems, buds and flowers (mohd rasdi 2005). insecticides have been substantially used to control this pest in malaysia (syed abdul rahman et al. 2000) and other parts of the world, particularly in the united states during the past decade (perring et al. 1993, ellsworth 1999). in the desert growing areas of arizona and southern california, control of whitefly relies solely on chemical control. at these places, warm and dry climates and overlapping availability of multiple crop hosts throughout the year caused the population to be very high (palumbo et al. 1999). consequently, the whitefly bemisia tabaci gennadius (homoptera: aleyrodidae) has developed resistance to numerous conventional insecticides throughout the world (dittrich & ernst 1990, denholm et al. 1996) leaving fewer effective insecticides to control the pest in the market (li et al. 2001). meanwhile several species of natural enemies have been reported to reduce the population of whiteflies in the fields (alomar & albajes 1996, albajes & alomar 1999). unfortunately, in the advent of insecticides usage, the roles of natural enemies in whitefly control are undermined and they are killed together with the pest during insecticide applications. in malaysia, suppression of whitefly population is very much dependent on chemical applications (syed abdul rahman et al. 2000). several types of insecticides which are very effective against whiteflies have been developed and available in the market (horowitz & ishaaya 1996). in this study efficacies of few selected insecticides on larval whitefly, t. vaporariorum infesting brinjal and tomato were investigated. their toxicities against predator, macrolophus caliginosus wagner (heteroptera: miridae) were also evaluated. material and methods study area this study was conducted at malaysian agricultural research and development institute (mardi) station, in the cameron highlands, pahang, malaysia. this station was located at an altitude of approximately 1400 meter above sea level, with an average temperature of 22±2ºc and relative humidity of 90±5%. insecticide trials were carried out in a protected rain shelter from february to august 2003. plant materials the seeds of „super naga‟ f1 hybrid brinjal and gin yuen bao variety of tomato were sown in seedling trays consisting of 104 small holes, filled with compost. after two weeks, the seedlings were transferred into white polybags (30×30 cm), filled with a mixture of cocoa peat and burnt rice husk at a ratio of 1:1. polybags were arranged in rows under a rain shelter, of which water and nutrients were supplied through a drip irrigation system. both plants were fertilized regularly with mixed fertilizers (calcium nitrate-900g/46%; potassium nitrate152g/7.87%; potassium chloride-320g/16.57%; magnesium sulphate-500g/25.89%; phosphoric acid-13.6g/0.7%; ferum edta-41.6g/2.15%; zinc sulphate-0.1g/0.05%; cuprum sulphate0.1g/0.05%; boric acid-1.4g/0.072%; ammonium molibadate-0.4g/0.02%; manganese sulphate-2g/0.103%) at doses recommended by the mardi. to ensure an optimum plant growth, nutrient concentration was measured using a td scan4 and ph of the water was estimated by a portable phscan1. the plants were supported by plastic ropes tied across the structure of the rain shelter when they grew to 45 cm high or had four to five branches. brinjal and tomato started to flowering at 4 to 6 weeks after transplanting. side branches were pruned twice monthly to maintain a single trunk for better growth and high fruit production. experimental layout tomato and brinjal plants were watered and fertilized using a drip irrigation system that was constructed perpendicular to one end of the experimental planting beds. to minimise the variations in nutrients uptake by plants in each bed, the experiments were laid out using a randomised complete block design (rcbd). for both brinjal and tomato plants, two parallel rows of seedlings (in polybags), spaced 45 cm within rows and 100 cm between rows, were placed on a raised planting bed of 18 m long and 1 m wide. the bed was covered with black plastic mulches. each bed was divided http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=articleurl&_aset=w-wa-a-a-avd-mssayza-uua-aucuuvzeyb-beubwbcdy-avd-u&_rdoc=24&_fmt=full&_udi=b6t5t-44hs98w-4&_coverdate=11%2f30%2f2001&_cdi=5011&_orig=search&_st=13&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=c000000958&_versi%20 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 302-311. 304 longitudinally into 6 plots of 10 seedlings (from 2 rows), separated by a plant from each row between plots to minimize effects of insecticide drift and movements of whiteflies to other plots. five types of insecticides, one insecticide in each plot, were used in the experiments. the sixth plot was untreated control plot. each planting bed represented one experimental block and four planting beds were prepared to provide four replications of each crop tested. insecticide application insecticides selected for these experiments were those commonly used by the farmers in the cameron highlands and readily available in the market (myint, 1997). five insecticides namely avermectin (agrimec, 2% w/w, 9ml/9l), white oil (albarol, 25ml/9l), buprofezin (applaud, 9g/9l), lambda-cyhalothrin (karate, 2.8%w/w, 9ml/9l) and cyromazine (trigard, 8.9%w/w, 24ml/9l) were applied at manufacturer's recommended rates on clear days, from 0900 am to 1000 am. a nine-litre knapsack sprayer (hatsuda industrial co.) was used to spray (spray pressure rate at 1.0 to 2.0 bar; deflector nozzle type= rated about 1.2 l/min at 1 bar) (jones, 2006) the insecticide with fine quality spray and uniformly to the plants throughout the experiments. the first round of insecticides application was carried out 4 weeks after transplanting (wat), when infestation of whiteflies reached the economic threshold level of 20 larvae per leaf. this population level was recommended by mardi and accepted in the cameron highlands growing area. following that, the insecticides were regularly applied at weekly intervals until the end of cropping period of about two and a half months. ten grams of fungicide (mancozeb 80% w/w) were mixed with all insecticides to prevent fungal infestation (powdery mildew) that commonly infested tomato and brinjal plants in this area. since whitefly larvae preferred the undersides of brinjal and tomato leaves, all leaf surfaces were thoroughly sprayed to ensure uniform distribution of pesticides. sampling of t. vaporariorum and m. caliginosus on brinjal and tomato plants a pre-treatment sampling of larval t. vaporariorum was carried out from 0900 am to 1200 noon, three days prior to the first application of tested insecticides. following insecticide applications at 4 wat, whitefly and its predators were sampled 3 days before the next insecticide treatments. according to gomez and gomez (1984), leaves at the middle stratum of the plant (10 leaves from the top) were the most suitable plant parts to estimate populations of whitefly and its predator. for both host plants, three leaves of similar sizes were randomly selected from each plot to sample whitefly and its predator. sampling of the predator, m. caliginosus was conducted simultaneously on both crops. each leaf was carefully and slowly inserted into a plastic bag (20×30 cm) and cut at its petiole. the opening of the bag was closed by holding it tightly and the predators on the leaves were immobilized with co (supplied by malaysia oxygen sdn bhd,) released for approximately 20-30 s into the bag at a flow rate of 20 psi. then the leaf was shaken vigorously to dislodge the predators to the bottom of the plastic bags. the plastic bag was slowly pulled down until the leaf was outside of the bag and immediately fastened to prevent the escape of the predators when the effect of co2 has worn out. the leaf was kept in a new bag. collection of the predators and whiteflies were done in three replicates per plot. the leaves with whiteflies and their predators were taken to the laboratory and examined under a stereo microscope (olympus-szx7). the numbers of whitefly larvae and their predators were counted and recorded. a total of 12 leaves per treatment (3 leaves×4 replicates) were thoroughly examined for whitefly larvae on every sampling occasion for each of the crop. similarly 12 samples were collected for the whitefly predators in each treatment. data analysis to evaluate the effect of the insecticides against the whitefly, the numbers of larvae were counted 72 hours after insecticide applications. differences in abundance of whitefly larvae among the treatments were analysed using the two-way analysis of variance (sokal & rohlf 1969) and significant means were differentiated by the duncan multiple mean comparison using the spss, (2004) version 14. field evaluation of some insecticides..... 305 results abundance of t. vaporariorum in various treatments on brinjal overall, all insecticides significantly reduced the population of t. vaporariorum larvae for the entire sampling period (f = 9.891; df = 5,167; p < 0.05) compared to the untreated plot. among the insecticides, avermectin was the most effective, reducing the population of whitefly below etl from 5 week after transplanting (wat) to 8.33/leaf at 10 wat. buprofezin was fairly effective as it decreased the pest population to etl from 6 wat to 9 wat (table 1). it was not effective at 4 and 5 wats because as an insect growth regulator (igrs). buprofezin did not kill adult whiteflies at the time of the treatment (bogran & heinz 2000). those adults continued to reproduce hence high numbers of larvae were recorded at those times. white oil (horticultural oils) reduced the population of t. vaporariorum larvae to 15/leaf at 9 wat. in lambda-cyhalothrin and cyromazine treated plots, the population levels of t. vaporariorum larvae were maintained at above 20 larvae/leaf and increased to >250 larvae/leaf at the end of the study. the abundance of whitefly fluctuated erratically in lambda-cyhalothrin treated plot and increased tremendously to a very high level (274.67 ± 316.86) at 10 wat, indicating this insecticide is completely ineffective against whitefly. a decrease in total number of t. vaporariorum larvae was observed at 5 wat in cyromazine treated plot (22.67 ± 10.12) but the population increased continuously until 10 wat (268.67 ±1 87.21). in the untreated plot, whitefly population increased superfluously (490.00 ± 148.44) at 10 wat (table 1), causing development of sooty mould on the surfaces of leaves. table 1: mean number of larval whitefly, t. vaporariorum on brinjal leaves treated with different insecticides means in the row with the same letters are not significantly different at p = 0.05 based on duncan multiple range test (dmrt). * week after transplanting; ** standard error of mean abundance of m.caliginosus in various treatment plots of brinjal at pre-treatment sampling, no significant difference was observed in the mean number of predators among the different plots (f = 1.067; df = 5,23; p > 0.05). after the treatment, all insecticides significantly reduced the population of m. caliginosus except white oil (f = 10.535; df = 5,147; p < 0.05). avermectin caused a wat* treatment untreated buprofezin avermectin lambdacyhalothrin cyromazine white oil premonitoring 19.50ab 24.25ab 15.50ab 7.750ab 38.25bc 21.25ab 4 wat 59.92±50.28a 127.33±59.65 b 46.00±39.80 a 82.00±82.64ab 85.33±99.81ab 49.67±32.68a 5 wat 68.33±79.12a 33.67±30.12a b 14.67±17.40 b 23.00±15.37b 22.67±10.12b 23.00±16.81b 6 wat 97.67±54.49a 16.67±11.51b 12.67±10.30 b 56.33±76.80ab 56.67±53.15ab 37.67±9.19b 7 wat 142.67±211.85 a 11.67±14.0b 17.33±3.39b 24.33±34.40b 53.67±62.30ab 61.33±11.12ab 8 wat 121.33±68.61a 19.67±16.62b c 2.67±8.02b 64.00±51.24ac 81.33±117.05a 31.67±17.59b 9 wat 400.67±459.35 a 11.33±18.83b c 8.33±5.31bd 149.00±187.79acd 111.33±109.0b d 15.00±13.15bd 10wat 490.00±148.44 a 31.00±37.11b 8.33±2.10b 274.67±316.86c 268.67±187.2c 28.00±17.07b mean± s.e.** 197.24±56.89a 35.90±13.95b c 15.71±4.89c 96.19±31.54ab 97.10±28.42ab 35.19±22.59b c asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 302-311. 306 significant decrease in population of predators compared to that untreated plot at 6, 7, 8 and 9 wat (f = 4.050; df = 5,23; p < 0.05) (f = 9.857; df = 5,23; p < 0.01) and (f = 10.345; df = 5,23; p < 0.01), respectively (table 2). during the study, predators‟ abundance was found to be the highest in the untreated plot (40.00 ± 1.43), followed by white oil (37.00 ± 1.21), buprofezin (26.00 ± 0.87), lambdacyhalothrin (24.00 ± 0.78), cyromazine (16.00 ± 0.78), and avermectin (1.00 ± 0.14) treated plots. table 2: mean number of m. caliginosus per leaf after insecticide applications on brinjal wat* treatment untreated buprofezin avermectin lambdacyhalothrin cyromazine white oil premonitoring 0.50a 0.50a 0.25a 0.50a 0.25a 0.75a 4 wat 1.00±0.41a 0.75±0.48a 0.00a 1.00±0.58a 0.25±0.25a 0.75±0.25a 5 wat 1.00±0.58a 0.25±0.25a 0.25±0.25a 0.75±0.48a 0.25±0.25a 1.25±0.48a 6 wat 0.75±0.25ab 1.00±0.41a 0.00c 0.25±0.25bc 0.00c 0.50±0.29abc 7 wat 1.25±0.25a 0.75±0.25ab 0.00bc 0.50±0.29b 0.75±0.25ab 1.25±0.25a 8 wat 2.50±0.29a 1.25±0.25b 0.00c 1.25±0.25b 1.25±0.25b 2.00±0.41ab 9 wat 3.00±0.41a 2.00±0.41ab 0.00e 1.5±0.25cd 1.25±0.25c 2.75±0.48ab mean ± s.e.** 1.43±0.36a 0.93±0.22ab 0.04±0.04c 0.86±0.20ab 0.57±0.19b 1.32±0.30a means in the row with the same letters are not significantly different at p= 0.05 based on duncan multiple range test (dmrt). * week after transplanting; ** standard error of mean abundance of t. vaporariorum in various treatment plots of tomato the pre-treatment sampling indicated that population of whitefly was high, above the etl in all treatment plots. there was no significance difference in their densities (mean numbers (f = 0.672; df = 5,23; p > 0.05) before the treatments but significantly different among treatments after chemical applications during the whole sampling period (f = 6.389; df = 5,167; p < 0.01). the number of whitefly larvae sharply decreased in all treatments (including control plot) after insecticides application at 4 wat (table 3). however, no significant difference was observed between plots treated with white oil and avermectin and the untreated plot at 4 wat (f = 1.764; df = 5,23; p > 0.05) and at 5 wat (f = 1.687; df = 5,23; p > 0.05) which possibly related to low effectiveness of the insecticides on whiteflies. generally, population of larval whitefly was not significantly different among the treated plots at 6 wat (f = 5.442; df = 5,23; p < 0.05), 7 wat (f = 4.904; df = 5,23; p < 0.05), 8 wat (f = 6.406; df = 5,23; p < 0.05), 9 wat (f = 7.630; df = 5,23; p < 0.05) and 10 wat (f = 6.314; df = 5,23; p < 0.05). the effect of insecticides on larval whitefly on tomato at 9 and 10 wat were similar to that recorded on brinjal on the same sampling occasion, although whitefly abundance was 9 times lower in untreated tomatoes compared to untreated brinjal. the population of whitefly was significantly lower (p<0.05) in all chemical treated plots compared to the control plot at 6 wat, but only populations in buprofezin and avermectin were lower at 7 wat. at 8 wat, no significant difference was observed among buprofezin, avermectin, white oil and the control plot (table 3). evidently, buprofezin and avermectin were effective in reducing the whitefly population to below the etl. at the end of the growing period, population density of whitefly larvae decreased when the predators‟ population increased. field evaluation of some insecticides..... 307 table 3: mean number of larval whitefly, t. vaporariorum on tomato leaves treated with different insecticides wat* treatment untreated buprofezin avermectin lambdacyhalothrin cyromazine white oil premonitoring 81.25a 32.00a 88.50a 62.00a 101.25a 91.75a 4 wat 31.00±7.35abc 20.25±2.59bc 37.00±7.35abc 25.75±11.52bc 46.00±4.18ad 30.25±2.83abc 5 wat 20.25±6.02ab 11.00±3.02ac 21.75±9.45ab 32.00±3.89bd 23.00±3.29ab 17.50±2.99ab 6 wat 42.00±2.35a 12.00±2.86b 18.75±1.93b 21.75±4.55b 19.25±2.75b 21.50±8.26b 7 wat 25.00±5.52a 4.75±1.75bc 7.50±1.55bcd 25.75±6.32a 18.00±2.80ad 14.25±3.11acd 8 wat 5.25±0.85a 3.50±0.96a 6.00±1.83a 17.50±3.30b 20.00±5.23b 8.50±1.26a 9 wat 17.25±3.44a 3.75±1.31b 5.00±1.08b 14.50±3.77a 20.00±3.24a 5.25±0.63b 10wat 10.75±1.11ab 4.25±0.75ad 1.50±0.65d 10.50±2.02ab 17.00±4.81bc 4.50±1.26ad mean± s.e.** 21.64±4.68a 8.50±2.37b 13.93±4.77ab 21.11±2.81ab 23.32±3.85a 14.54±3.54ab means in the row with the same letters are not significantly different at p= 0.05 based on duncan multiple range test (dmrt). * week after transplanting ; **standard error of mean abundance of m. caliginosus in various treatment plots of tomato significant difference in mean number of predator among the treatment plots were observed during the whole sampling period (f = 11.372; df = 5,143; p < 0.01). initially, the population of m. caliginosus was higher, then decreasing trends in its population were recorded in avermectin, lambda cyhalothrin and cyromazine plots. immediately after treatments in other plots, abundance of m. caliginosus increased tremendously in the untreated plot to its highest peak at 5 wat (5.50 ± 1.32), then decreased gradually until the end of growing season (table 4). avermectin suppressed the predator‟s population considerably (p < 0.05) until the end of the sampling period. in buprofezin treated plot, m. caliginosus populat ion fluctuated slightly but maintained at satisfactory levels (compared to the control plot) until the end of the growing season. lambda-cyhalothrin reduced predators‟ population significantly compared to the control plot at 6 wat (f = 3.886; df = 5,23; < 0.05) and 9 wat (f = 6.807; df = 5,23; p < 0.05). cyromazine significantly suppressed the population of m. caliginosus at 5 wat (f = 6.547; df = 5,23; p < 0.05), 6 wat (f = 3.886; df = 5,23; p < 0.05), 7 wat (f = 3.233; df = 5,23; p < 0.05), 8 wat (f = 3.395; df = 5,23; p < 0.01) and 9 wat (f = 6.807; df = 5,23; p < 0.05). apart from its toxicity towards the predator, cyromazine was previously found ineffective against whitefly infesting both brinjal and tomato (syed abdul rahman et. al. 2000). white oil was rather harmless to macrolophus caliginosus. table 4: mean number of m. caliginosus after insecticides application on tomato wat* treatment untreated buprofezin avermectin lambdacyhalothrin cyromazine white oil premonitoring 2.25a 2.75a 4.00a 2.25a 2.00a 5.75a 4 wat 3.75±1.25a 2.00±1.00a 1.50±0.50a 2.00±0.41a 2.75±1.11a 3.50±1.32a 5 wat 5.50±1.32a 3.50±0.65ad 0.50±0.29b 3.50±0.87ad 0.75±0.25bc 3.25±0.48d 6 wat 4.25±1.03a 2.75±1.44b 0.00c 0.75±0.25bc 1.75±0.48b 1.50±0.29bc asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 302-311. 308 7 wat 2.00±0.41a 3.00±0.71ab 0.00d 1.75±0.85ac 1.25±0.48cd 2.50±0.65ac 8 wat 2.25±0.75a 2.25±0.48a 0.25±0.25b 1.25±0.75ab 0.25±0.25b 2.25±0.48a 9 wat 2.00±0.41a 1.75±0.48a 0.00b 0.50±0.29bc 0.25±0.25b 1.25±0.25a mean ± s.e.** 3.29±0.59a 2.54±0.27ab 0.38±0.24c 1.63±0.44ab 1.17±0.40bc 2.38±0.37ab means in the row with the same letters are not significantly different at p= 0.05 based on duncan multiple range test (dmrt), * week after transplanting ; ** standard error of mean discussion population of t. vaporariorum was found to be very much higher (9 times higher) on brinjal than on tomato but its predator, m. caliginosus preferred the smoothness of tomato leaf better than the hairy brinjal leaf as a platform to attack the whiteflies. its population was 2.3 times more abundant on tomato plants compared to on brinjal plants. the result of this study also indicated that whitefly is more important as a pest for brinjal than for tomato. low population of m. caliginosus on brinjal further contributed to the seriousness of whitefly attack on this crop. in tomatoes however, lower whitefly population with a relatively high predatory activities (population ratio pest:predator = 6:1) alleviated the effect of whitefly infestation, keeping its population just slightly above the etl (20 insects/leaf) in the untreated plot. mohd rasdi (2005) reported that daily predation rate of m. caliginosus ranged from 5.3 to 6.3 whitefly larvae. at the population ratio recorded on tomatoes, whitefly infestation may not require chemical control interventions at all. albajes and alomar (1999) reported that an ipm program based on the conservation of mirid predators has significantly reduced population of whitefly in the fields and greenhouses. using biological control agents can reduce the toxic effect of insecticides in the plants as well as in the environment. at the initial stage of both experiments (brinjal and tomato), all the insecticides did not significantly decrease population of whitefly compared to the control plot. different developmental stages of whiteflies had different degree of tolerance to insecticides. the eggs and pupae were less susceptible to the insecticides as they were protected by their egg shells and cocoons respectively (sparks et al. 2002). therefore, a single application of insecticide only killed the susceptible stages during the time of application. more tolerant stages and escaped individuals (adults) continued to grow and reproduce thus added to the high numbers of larvae after the first treatment. the results of this study showed that insecticides such as avermectin, buprofezin, and white oil required weekly application during a 3040 day period (four to six rounds of application), a duration for the completion of a whitefly‟s life cycle. however, application of insecticides at alternate week and utilization of the lowest effective dosage also reduced or delayed pesticide resistance development on the whitefly population (palumbo et al. 2001, drees 2000). application of buprofezin and white oil that have relatively low mammalian toxicity, particularly during the fruiting period can help to reduce pesticide residue problems in the freshly harvested yields. among the insecticides used in this study, avermectin was found to be the most effective against the whitefly on both brinjal and tomato. however, this chemical was highly toxic to whitefly predator, m. caliginosus. avermectin with its systematic properties has a good effectiveness, especially to the underside of the leaves where whiteflies mostly develop. a growth regulator, buprofezin affects specifically on immature developmental stages of whitefly resulting in nymphal mortality during ecdysis (yasui et al. 1987). de cock et al. (1990) reported that buprofezin caused mortality of b. tabaci nymphs through its vapour (vapour pressure, 9.4×10 -6 mm hg). it acted through inhalation by nymphs, and through direct contact as well as adsorption by the integument of the pests. although buprofezin has no direct effect on longevity and oviposition of whitefly adult, it may reduce the fecundity and egg hatchability of females exposed to treated leaves (ishaaya et al. 1988). in this study, bufrofezin showed relatively high effectiveness field evaluation of some insecticides..... 309 on the whitefly larvae after the avermectin although its effectiveness was only started at 6 wat. white oil was detrimental to whiteflies on tomato but not on brinjal. different morphological characteristics of tomato and brinjal leaves possibly influenced the effectiveness of this oil. white oil makes inconvenient places for adult whiteflies to oviposit. this oil is a contact insecticide, causing suffocation and desiccation to the nymph and adult. this chemical can be considered as a good alternative to control whiteflies as it is relatively safe to the natural enemies (bogran & heinz 2000). white oil has relatively low mammalian toxicity and can be used during the fruiting period which can help to reduce pesticide residue problems in the harvested yield. the effectiveness of insecticides against whitefly in this study could be influenced by some factors other than efficacy of experimental insecticides. firstly, during fruiting period, brinjal fruits were harvested at a fortnight interval. the plants were disturbed and some movements of whiteflies from treated to untreated plots or displacement of individual whitefly (especially adults) in the field could be expected. secondly, the spraying coverage of insecticides on brinjal plants in the field is probably less uniform than in the full netted greenhouse due to the effect of wind. however, this factor can be considered negligible in this study. the honeydew deposited on the brinjal fruits makes them sticky, causing fungal growth and subsequently developed sooty mould on the leaves. the mould affects the dispersion of the insecticides as well as photosynthesis and transpiration processes of the plants (berlinger 1986). in this study, m. caliginosus colonised naturally in the experimental plots. according to alomar et al. (2002), natural colonisation of this predator occurs during the growing season and mixed population are commonly found in the crop. m. caliginosus is currently produced and marketed commercially in europe for controlling of the greenhouse whitefly, t. vaporariorum westwood, and the sweet potato whitefly, bemisia tabaci gennadius in tomato (lenfant & schoen 2000). a mirid bug management programme has been developed for an integrated pest management in tomato crops with the objective of keeping population density of predator high enough to maintain the greenhouse whitefly (t. vaporariorum) and other pest populations below than the economic threshold (alomar & albajes 1996, albajes & alomar 1999). smith et al. (1997) proposed that for a successful biological control, it is important that predator population must be present earlier in the field and established when the pest population is at low density. however, in many cases when the population of whitefly increases immediately, the predator would not be effective in controlling the whitefly. as conclusions, avermectin is the most effective insecticide to reduce population of larval whitefly on brinjal and tomato plants. however, it was toxic to whitefly predator, m. caliginosus. meanwhile, buprofezin and white oil decreased the population of whitefly quite satisfactorily especially on tomatoes with only slight reduction in density of predators in the field. combination of potential insecticide with biological agents such as m. caliginosus helps to control this pest. selection of insecticides that is less harmful to the natural enemies, appropriate insecticide rotation and timing of application should be taken into account in formulating an integrated pest management (ipm) against whiteflies. references albajes, r., and alomar, o. 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(2000) “whiteflies infesting vegetables in malaysia. mardi research station, cameron highlands” strategic, environment and natural resources center, mardi serdang, cabisearc, upm serdang, and mardi research station, jalan kebun. pp. 38-43. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=articleurl&_aset=w-wa-a-a-avd-mssayza-uua-aucuuvzeyb-beubwbcdy-avd-u&_rdoc=24&_fmt=full&_udi=b6t5t-44hs98w-4&_coverdate=11%2f30%2f2001&_cdi=5011&_orig=search&_st=13&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=c000000958&_versi%20 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 200 participatory rural appraisal of basic needs deprivation among rural dwellers of borno state, nigeria r. o. yusuf department of geography, ahmadu bello university, zaria, nigeria abstract inadequacy of environmental and infrastructural resources to satisfy basic needs results in deprivation among rural people which in most cases, rapid rural appraisal and other traditional survey methods rarely adequately capture. this paper employs therefore employs participatory rural appraisal (pra) techniques to analyse these phenomena in borno state. the objectives are to determine the seasonality of basic needs deprivation, analyse the triggers of need deprivation, and, assess the coping strategies for deprivation. pra techniques employed are seasonal calendar and force field analysis and 300 systematically selected participants from 9 local government areas were the study frame. the findings are that basic need deprivation is an outcome of environmental scarcities, resource capture, and failure of socioeconomic infrastructure. episodic drought, flood, and conflict over resources triggers loss of farm harvest and livestock hence food, income and other needs there from. the coping strategies include wild food foraging, migratory fishing and praying to god which lead to the conclusion that basic needs satisfaction among the studied rural dwellers in borno state is below societal expectations. recommendations for improvement were proffered. keywords: basic needs, rural deprivation, seasonal calendar, force field analysis, participatory rural appraisal, borno state introduction 1 differential access to environmental resources needed to satisfy basic needs determines which communities and individuals suffer deprivation. indeed deprivation of basic needs is similar to when fundamental right of an individual is denied, inability to satisfy these needs is one of the causes of protracted conflicts (nortrup, 1989). a study in britain (thompson, 2000) defined “necessities” which were as those things that everyone should be “able to afford and which they should not have to go corresponding author’s email address: royusoba@yahoo.co.uk without”. some very basic needs as defined by abraham maslow (doyal and gough, 1991) include physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs, esteem needs and self actualization. doyal and gough (1991) observe that though there is variation in needs, every individual aim to satisfy the very basic ones. basic needs can be classified into three. these are basic consumption goods such as food, clothing and shelter, which everyone must not be left without; basic services such as health services, potable water, transportation and communication infrastructure that facilitate socioeconomic integration; and, the freedom and asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:royusoba@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 200-211 201 empowerment to make decision in aspects that affect their lives (burton (1990); rothman (1997)). participatory rural appraisal (pra) as contemporary rural research methodologies have been discussed by authors including nel et al. (1997); doyle and krasny (2003); olawepo (2003); conroy, (2005); roncoli, (2006) among others. the key areas of pra techniques are participation, decentralization and empowerment (chambers, 1997). decentralization means that resources and discretion are devolved, turning back inward and outward flows of resource and people. empowerment means that the deprived are enabled to take more control over their lives and secure a better livelihood with ownership and control of productive assets. participation enabled rural dwellers to actively contribute their input to programmes that affect their livelihood opportunities. pra being a bottom-up approach to development is in consonance with agenda 21 of the world commission on environment and development to facilitate sustainable development. this perhaps is what informed olawepo (2003)’s statement that sustainable development might mean the end goal of our rural environment. basic principles of pra according to bhandari (2003) are imperative to stimulating exchange of knowledge and experience between rural dwellers and outsiders. livelihood analysis which is central to understanding how rural communities respond to environment and social change (scoones, 1998) focuses on the relationship of institution to local resource availability and access, and the resulting choice made at the local level (eakin et al., 2006). the pra techniques used in this study are discussed as part of methodology. study area borno state with an area of 69,435 sq km and lies within longitudes 12° and 15° e and latitudes 10° n and 13° n (ijere and daura, 2000) was created in 1976. according to the federal republic of nigeria official gazette, (2007) the population of the state was 4,151,193. there are twenty-seven local government areas (lgas) (ijere, 1993) in the state, ecological problems that affect ability of rural dwellers to satisfy basic needs include drought, desertification, (thambyahpillay, 1991; online nigeria, 2003 c; adebayo, 2010). drought increases the vulnerability of farmers to crop failure and death of livestock in the drought endemic areas of bomo north (gadzama, 1993 & 1995; gworgwor 1993; akinbolu, 1993; adefolalu, 2002). in the extreme north, rainy season lasts for less than 80 days but about 140 days in the extreme south (ijere and daura 2000). majority of the indigenous people who are kanuri, babur, bura, fulani and others are rural dwellers deriving livelihoods from farming, fishing, livestock rearing and other primary activities on (ayuba et al., 2003). method of study the primary sources of data for the study were pra methods such as focus group discussions; transect walks: seasonal calendars and force field analysis. separate fgd sessions were conducted with different groups such as farmers, herders, fishers, biomass resource users, workers in wage employment, community opinion leaders, etc. and their contributions were carefully recorded before bringing all the groups together to brainstorm on deprivation of basic needs as it affects the whole community. transect walks were systematic walks with key informants through areas where environment-provoked deprivation are most evident. examples include areas of infertile soil, areas devastated by pest and diseases, and areas affected by flood, and storm and so on. these were complemented with observing, asking, listening and identifying problems and possible solutions in different zones (nel et al., 1997; chambers, 1991). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 200-211 202 seasonal calendar was used to get the picture of typical years and identify points where basic needs are threatened. historical matrix was appropriate in obtaining information on coping strategies in crisis periods (chambers, 1997). it has been used in a study in senegal to understand how people cope in crisis such as locust invasion, drought, rat invasion, and fire in a village (freudenberger, 1995). seasonal calendars were drawn in participation with the rural dwellers. in the final analysis, because of similarities in these calendars, they were compiled and summarized into one. force field analysis was employed using a local game “na daya a tapa...” (firstly, we touch…) which is a variant of “tug of war”. to draw participants, 30% of the 27 lgas that is 9 lgas were systematically selected. these lgas are bama, chibok, damboa, hawul, konduga, kukawa, kwaya-kusar, mobbar and monguno. from the selected lgas, fifteen settlements were selected. in each settlement, twenty (20) adult participants were purposively selected such that a total of three hundred (300) participants were selected across the studied lgas. hausa was the medium of expression and field assistants competent in kanuri, fulfude and bura were employed as interpreters during the focus group discussion. socioeconomic attributes are presented in tables while trend description, seasonal calendars and force field analysis were employed in discussing other components. discussion of findings the findings are discussed in different subsections including socioeconomic characteristics of the participants, characteristics, and structure of basic need deprivation and strategies for coping with basic needs deprivation. socio-demographic characteristics of participants in pra techniques the socioeconomic attributes include age, tribal, educational and occupational attributes of the participants. these are further examined. table 1: age distribution of participants in pra techniques age (yrs) frequency % 21-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 above 60 29 59 69 62 84 9.6 18.7 23 20.7 28 total 300 100 source: field survey, 2008-2009 as revealed in table 1, majority of the participants were above 60 years which constitute about 28%. these people are obviously older and were able to contribute meaningfully to the discussion. age bracket 41-50 years was also higher (23%) among the discussants. participants between ages 21-30 years were 9.6% while those between 3140 years were 18.7%. muslims were however 70.7% while christians were 29.3%. table 2: tribal characteristics of participants in pra techniques tribal characteristics frequency % kanuri mafa babur bura fulani kibaku others hausa, tiv 132 26 66 37 10 31 44 8.7 22 12.3 3.3 10.3 total 300 100 source: field survey, 2008-2009 table 2 shows that 44% of the discussants were kanuri by tribe. most of these were from the settlements in borno north followed by babur-bura found mainly in settlements in kwaya kusar and hawul, chibok, and damboa lgas of southern borno. fulanis are found in both borno north and south and they constitute about 12.3% of the participants. kibaku, hausa, tiv, jukun, ibos etceteras scattered in several rural settlements across the study area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 200-211 203 table 3: occupational distribution of participants in pra techniques occupations frequency % farming herding fishing artisanal agro-pastoralism agro fishing farming artisanal others 128 25 17 10 62 28 12 18 42.7 8.3 5.7 3.3 20.7 9.3 4 6 total 300 100 source: field survey, 2008-2009 as described in table 3, farmers constitute (42.7%) of the participants followed by agro-pastoralists (20.7%). other occupational categories were herding (8.3%), fishing (5.7%). although, artisans were 3.3%, those that depended on artisanal and farming activities were 4%. generally, farming with other primary activities is common and this partly explains the critical influences of environmental factors on the occupational activities for basic needs options of the sampled population. basic needs deprivation basic needs deprivation reflect intricate web of political ecology, resource capture, environmental scarcities and failure of social and infrastructure provisioning in rural areas. see the seasonal calendars and force field analysis. the sampled settlements in northern borno are constrained by continuous decline in rainfall, soil nutrient deficiency, rising hot weather conditions, pests and diseases of crops and livestock. southern borno is however constrained by variation in heavy and low rainfall (alternate flood and drought conditions), rugged terrain, soil nutrient loss and diseases and pests of crops and livestock. for instance, food and income of pastoralists are seriously affected in the productionconsumption domain when reduction in feed and water for cattle lead to diseases and death among livestock depriving pastoralists of cattle, sheep and goat flocks. also, the same applies for the artisans dependent on gamba grasses and trees for “zana” mats used as screens in houses and locally woodcarved stools locally called “kujera”. according to the mat makers, the gamba grass is reducing consistently due to reduced rainfall making them to travel longer distance to get these grasses. according to the mat makers in settlements across monguno lga, their ability to meet the societal standards of basic needs (three square meals per/day, bicycle, children educational needs and other social consumptions) is undermined. reduced biomass stocks also affect cooking energy and building materials for rural households. in yimirshika and kukrupiya (hawul lga) and kwada (chibok lga) in borno south, rural dwellers claimed that excess rainfall led to flood that washed away their homes and farms. suddenly, dry spells which lasting three to four weeks set in to cause crop failure. according to the discussants, this led to about 200% inflation in food prices. during the floods, their houses, household properties and livestock were also lost. transect walks at kadauri and fulatari (mobbar lga) kawuram (monguno lga) and gurori (konduga lga) in borno north revealed the devastating effects of quella birds that coupled with drought and infertile soil led to crop failure. these intensified conflicts among farmers and cattle rearers, consequently the food and income. at alau logeri (konduga lga) and kwatan tulari (kukawa lga), increasing drought affect surface water which has reduced volume and varieties of fish-stocks thus aggravating resource conflict, reduced income and food of fishing households. related to this is water where the major source of domestic water supply is shallow wells and streams. declining farm productivity, reduced livestock/fish production, diseases and infection, and somatic-physiological discomfort are effects of reduced water resources. infrastructural facilities necessary for satisfaction of basic needs include asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 200-211 204 electricity, potable water, medical facilities, and road, credit and loan facilities because they facilitate and economic opportunities at monguno lga, rural dwellers in kolon kura, bore hole, kawuram had no access to electricity. also at chibok and kukawa lgas, several villages far from the local government headquarters were without electricity. some of these include kautikari, kwada, hierpaya, takulashi, kwatan tulari, musari, awasari, and others. absence of electricity in these villages reduces access to several non-farm opportunities and liveability of rural environment. lack of electricity make many of them travel to head quarters to recharge their mobile phones or pay to those using electric generator for commercial purposes. this has also increased the cost of milling grains used as food. the grain miller use diesel-fuelled lister grinding machines and charge n20 per “tia” of grains. the poor rural peasants (particularly women) consider it prohibitive which could be reduced if there is electricity. healthcare facilities are located far from many rural dwellers. most of the primary healthcare facilities where rural dwellers obtain health services are located mostly in headquarters of the lgas. as a result, only the settlements located not far from these head quarters have considerable access. during the fgd, it was gathered that average distance is about one hour working distance. for instance it takes thirty minutes on motorcycle to get to hospital at chibok from kwada, and it costs n500.00 2 to and from. this is because footpaths link these settlements. also in kwantan tulari (kukawa lga), the nearest hospital is at baga which is about thirty-five minutes on a motorcycle with a cost of about n400.00. the discussants also revealed that the cost of obtaining service is high and only prescription is given while the patients get the medications and drugs from patent 2 160 naira is equivalent to 1 us dollar. medicine stores. also the pastoralists claimed that lack of timely access to livestock drugs and veterinary services are some contributory factors to loss of livestock. as summarized by a key informant, the head of fulatari village in bama lga. “during extreme cold conditions when cattle and sheep suffer pneumonia infection, if there were drugs to counter the ailments; we would not have been deprived of our livestock and the benefits from them”. constraints associated with inadequate transport facilities are lack of roads or dilapidated roads, lack of adequate vehicle and high fares charged by the available few; high cost of obtaining health services and essential goods, high cost of transporting farm produce to markets, and high fare charged by the commercial motorcycles. mobility is generally fairly good during periodic market days and generally better during the dry season. coping strategies for basic need deprivation according to the officials of ministry of environment, efforts to combat the ecological threat from drought and desertification are; tree planting campaign that is done from time to time both in symbolic and practical ways. people are encouraged and advised to plant trees on their farms and around their settlements. another effort is enlightenment on soil management practices that preserve vegetation and increase the soil moisture content on farmland. people are educated to leave stumps of millet, guinea corn and maize stalks on their farmland to hold soil together during the long dry season. in conflict linked to environmental resource scarcities, conflicts among farmers are usually resolved through the traditional authorities like the lawans (village heads) hakimis (district heads), and, law enforcement agencies like the police force. in kukawa lga, conflicts among fishermen and between farmers and pastoralists are asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 200-211 205 settled by the police force and the military joint task force on border patrol (jtff). a combination of traditional authorities, law enforcement agencies have been used, adopting both conventional and alternative conflict resolution approaches. also, to reduce conflict pastoralists, a key informant, the deputy director, livestock department of borno state ministry of agriculture reveals that the grazing land for pastoralists are continuously been demarcated and preserved. this is known as “butali” and there are many gazzetted graze land for cattle rearers. moreover, water points for cattle are created in several areas. destruction from flood and fire disasters and windstorm are some of the incidents considered as “emergency” desirous of intervention by the borno state relief agency. in rural areas, fire disasters (locally called gombara) occur on two phases: farmland areas and domestic areas. several posters and fliers in different local languages are circulated by the emergency relief agency as enlightenment measure to prevent fire incidents. flood events are spatially concentrated in borno south whereas all the rural areas across the state experience deprivation from storm. flood phenomena usually attract state intervention in terms of relief materials such as distribution of roofing materials, clothes, food stuff and other domestic items to the affected rural dwellers. when the issue of spatial spread of the intervention and assistances are considered, it was revealed that only those who reported are assisted based on the list submitted by the local authorities such as village and district heads working together with the different local government councils. in terms of electricity, power supply to rural areas is done in phases. the first is the provision of power generating plants to rural communities under the rural electrification board (reb) scheme. this usually is collaboration between the state government and local government councils. however, only the local government headquarters and few rural settlements benefit. the local government councils supply the fuel, service and maintain the generating plants. once a lga is linked to the national grid, the generator is transferred to another local government area. apart from public policy intervention, adaptive strategies are developed from indigenous knowledge (i.k) and indigenous practices (i.p) which are both outcomes of several years of dealing with the environment. coping strategies evolved from two major ways; (1) autochthonous invention and modification which are developed by succeeding generations, and (2) spatial interaction engendered by human mobility and cultural transfer between people of similar livelihood characteristic. in rural areas of borno state, adaptation to mitigating basic need deprivation can be examined under two major aspects; livelihood adaptive strategies and societal adaptive strategies. livelihood adaptive strategies are strategies employed to improve rural livelihood (farming, fishing, livestock rearing, lumbering) and other socioeconomic activities from where basic needs are sourced. generally these strategies are referred to in the local languages as “dabara” which literally means “solutions” emphasizing the wise use of environment to ensure access to basic needs. in areas constrained by rugged and stony terrain in borno south, terrace farming and ‘soil on rock’ planting are employed. terrace farming is a common practice in settlements found in hilly areas where farmers plant their crops on terraces (steps) that have been cut to prevent rapid soil loss, water loss and loss of nutrient from the skeletal soils on the hills. in this manner rural people have been able to plant both food and cash crops. soil on rock planting is a very recent adaptation in areas where rock fragments cannot support crops. in these areas of hawul and chibok lgas, the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 200-211 206 strategy is to arrange rock fragments, collect these fragments and put soil on these rock fragments. after these, seeds are planted. the wisdom is that the volcanic rock fragments are rich in nutrients that support crops. development of plant roots further enhances the physico-chemical disintergration of rocks to increase the volume of soil. in these areas common hoes or cutlass cannot be used rather special axe-like hoes and sledge hammers are used for physical (manual) breaking of smaller rocks by farmers. the only adaptation to soil infertility is the use of animal waste to improve soil nutrients. in rural areas close to urban centres, solid wastes are packaged in bags and sold to farmers. to cope with quella birds, farmers employ children to chase the birds away for a fee. alternatively they mount scarecrow on their farms. among the cattle rearers, an adaptation is to change the feed of cattle from grasses to leaves from trees. this adaptation becomes necessary to survive the long dry season. fulani and bororo cattle rearers lop tree branches and the leaves are fed to livestock. among the farming households that keep livestock, crop residues are used as feed during the dry season. these residues include shells of groundnut, beans and other leguminous crops. leaves of cereal crops are turned to hay to feed animals meanwhile chaff of grains such as maize, millet and guinea corn, beans, and rice husks are also used for livestock feeds. another livelihood adaptation among cattle rearers is ethno veterinary, a traditional way of using local biomass for livestock therapeutic purposes prevalent among a community. for livestock diseases such as contagious bovine pleuro pneumonia; tissue culture rinderpest, black quarter and anthrax, livestock keepers employ leaves and roots of herbs for treating animals. another strategy is herd-splitting where herds are reduced to forty to fifty heads so that management will be easy. the fulani claimed that it helps spread resources exploitation and utilization over a wide area rather than a local concentration. among fishing households, majority change their fishing gears to catch more than their co-fishers. ultimately, majority of the fishermen in fishing settlements found in kukawa lga migrate to chad to fish or diversify their employment opportunities during the period when fishing activities are not very intensive. societal adaptive strategies are coping mechanisms evolved from series of social and communal interaction among rural people. among the adaptive strategies to mitigate individual weakness and vulnerability are communal labour and resource-sharing. communal labour is used in constructing and maintaining roads and footpaths that link settlements. a lesser form is age-group labour used in building house, building temporary tents and kiosks for commercial purposes. through this, people save more cash which could be used for other basic needs. age group labour is particularly used in repairing houses ravaged by flood and storm. when financial emergency arise, borrowing is another strategy to ameliorate income deprivation. poor yield and harvest heightens food insecurity hence rural people combine wild-food collection and borrowing grains from households with surplus. usually, it is paid back after the harvest of new crops. cash borrowing is usually to fulfil medical and. social consumptions needs. another strategy is seeking assistance from religious institutions. this assistance is rendered to mitigate situations like infections and health issues, flood disaster, fire disaster and other catastrophes. to ease transport needs, motorcycles are used by men while bicycles are becoming important with women and girls in rural areas of chibok and damboa lgas. these women who are mostly christians use bicycles as a means of going to farms, markets and hospitals as well as other social asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 200-211 207 functions. praying to god is major psychological (fatal) coping strategy among rural dwellers. all the people claimed that after praying to god, their supplications are answered and their living conditions are improved. migration is the last coping strategies and people move out to chad, cameroon, and niger republic to engage in primary activities or to urban centres to engage menial jobs. migration is a common strategy which happens seasonally or as condition demands. as the last resort, it reduces the local pressure on resources and holds a hope of improved quality of life on return compared to dismal living conditions in rural areas. as revealed in the seasonal calendar, rainymonths are end of august to early october in borno north while it lasts till end of october in borno south except for highland areas (such as biu). this makes water problem to be a major environmental constraint for better part of the year. month atmospheric conditions basic needs deprivation coping activities january cold-dry; harmattan diseases of livestock and poultry: shortage of food and water. off farm jobs ;fishing; wildfood/food collection, borrowing from friends; herding; migration february cold-dry; harmattan livestock and poultry infections; food and water shortage irrigation, migratory fishing in chad and benue rivers, wild fruits and foods; herding march warm-dry human ailments; rashes, fever, water scarcity; fire disasters wild fruit harvest, biomass harvest, herding. april warm-dry;high temperature fever, rashes, dysentery water problems migration, wild food and biomass harvest, herding may hot-dry; very high temperature fever, rashes, cerebro spinal meningitis (csm), dysentery; acute water shortage bush burning, fishing, herding, off-farm employment. june hot-dry; very high temperature acute water shortage herding, fishing irrigation activities. july hot-dry; cloudiness (coolness) acute water shortage fishing, irrigation activities. august hot-wet cloudiness & rain shower in southern borno windstorm conflict over farmland *drought condition return migration farmland clearing planting of crops. september cold-wet (in south); warm-wet (in north); peak of rainfall in borno state. effect of windstorm sporadic flooding in borno south cessation of rainfall peak of agricultural activities in north & south herding, fishing wetland farming. october warm-wet; cold-wet variable rainfall in north and south flood episode; effect of windstorm; crop pest & disease farm/herder conflict biomass/grass harvesting; herding, fishing, wetland farming. november cold-dry; on set of dry season water shortage (in north) conflict over resources. peak of fishing. harvest of crop herding asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 200-211 208 december cold dry; harmattan water shortage end of harvest, fishing, (cirani) migration, biomass harvesting figure 1: seasonal calendar of basic needs deprivation and livelihood activities source: field survey force field analysis the peak of dryness and heat are associated with health burdens such as fever, rashes, dysentery and other illnesses. rainy season (august-october) is usually characterized by flooding and windstorm that deprive rural dwellers of some of their basic needs of life. for instance, flood ravages farmland or sweep away harvested crops awaiting transportation to farmers’ houses. windstorm blows away rooftops of houses thereby depriving rural dwellers of shelter and protection. shops, market stalls and workshops are also affected depriving rural dwellers of means of non-farm earnings. these months are also associated with pests and diseases of crops and livestock that reduce the quality and quantity of agricultural yield and livestock produce. these major shortfalls affect livelihood opportunities of rural people. apart from pest and diseases, conflict over farmland, wet lands, water resources, graze land and other environmental resources occur. this ruptures social relationship in addition to bodily injuries and destruction that characterize these conflicts especially when they are violent. these challenges pose enormous constraints to rural dwellers well being and reinforce deprivation. varieties of livelihood strategies are adopted by rural residents depending on the seasons and months of the year. for the long dry season, fishing and pastoral activities go on among the people on a low level. wild foods and fruits are also harvested to augment diminishing household food reserves. in places where these opportunities are absent, migration typifies as “cirani” or “bude ido” is the last resort. as revealed in force field analysis (fig. 1), of all unmet needs, lack of water, reduced crop harvest, inadequate financial capital and effect of diseases and pests constitute the severest basin need deprivation followed by poor health services. however ailments, inefficient transport facilities lack of adequate productive input and destruction of farmland by flood are causes of deprivation while the last issue of deprivation relates to death of livestock and poultry and reduced number of fish catch. among coping strategies, long and short term of rural out-migration and praying to god are considered most important. borrowing money and food from neighbours and collecting wild foods are the second most important strategies. pooling communal labour and cooperative resources together is the third important strategies used in farming and other aspects where labour is needed like maintaining wells, roads and footpaths linking settlements. relief package from government is also placed in third category. according to rural dwellers, relief package has never gone round those who suffered basic need deprivation. using organic manure to improve soil fertility is on the fourth level because it is not readily available and few people could actually use it. due to great need for capital and other input irrigation agriculture cannot be used by generality of the people and it is placed on fifth rank while rain water harvesting is considered sixth. use of insecticides and herbicides to cope with diseases and pest, cover cropping and terrace farming to cultivate rugged, topography are the last set of coping strategies. these are not popular and generalized and are based on financial strength or hilly nature of the terrain. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 200-211 209 conclusion, implication and policy recommendation of the study this paper examined basic need deprivation among rural dwellers using force field analysis, seasonal calendar and transect walk. the pra methodologies were employed with 300 participants from rural settlements across 9 lgas in borno state. basic need deprivation varies based on ecological peculiarities of the rural areas. basically shortage of food and food-related needs; water; house and other material assets as well health needs are where deprivation is felt. these are consequences environmental scarcities and public policy failure. the coping measures for basic need deprivation are policy intervention and societal adaptive strategies that have varied mitigating effects. looking at the arrow showing the direction of pull, the general conclusion is that basic need deprivation felt by rural dwellers outweigh the available adaptive and institutional mitigation strategies. it is apparent that rural dwellers experience disadvantages in several domains of life. basic need deprivation as experienced by people is widespread and diverse across the study area. several recommendations emerging from this study are pinpointed: the findings have theoretical, academic, and planning implications that can help to further the attempt at improving quality of life at the local level. theoretically, it corroborates previous theoretical standpoints that physical environmental elements have a strong influence on rural life. the pra framework shows that outsiders can learn from indigenous knowledge. for example “soil on rock” planting is perhaps peculiar to rural settlements studied. it shows that learning with and from the local people can actually contribute to contemporary knowledge on survival strategies in rural settlements and environmental sustainability. policy makers should vigorously execute policies that improve the socio-economic wellbeing of rural people by addressing the peculiar environmental challenges of both northern and southern borno. for instance drought and desertification in extreme north requires a different approach from the flood ravaging farmlands and houses in the extreme south with rugged terrain. in the same vein, conflict resolution agencies should be sincere at dispensing justice on environmental resources-related conflicts. on several occasions rural disputants accuse local authorities of favouritism and deliberately perverting justice. provision of infrastructural facilities in the sampled rural areas will facilitate actualizing basic needs sustainability. access to adequate potable water, electricity, transport and health care-facilities are in this direction. there is also the need to encourage self-help activities among the rural dwellers in infrastructure provision. with self-help, life-improving community development projects can be provided by using home town development associations. to ensure adequate involvement of rural dwellers in all mitigation strategies, bottomup participatory approach that will be prompt, responsive, and inclusive should be adopted. participatory involvement of local people reduces feelings of helplessness, vulnerability and alienation that are key factors that aggravate basic needs deprivation. acknowledgement the author is grateful to the ahmadu bello university for financial support during the field survey and the mccathur foundation. references adebayo, a. a. 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(1997). resolving identitybased conflict in nation’s organizations and communities. san fransisco: jossey-bass publishers. scoones, i. (1998). sustainable rural livelihood. ids research report. 49, 1-42. thambyapillay, g. g. r. (1991). climate change, drought scenarios and desertification in the sahelo-soudan environment: palaeoclimatic and contemporary in: gadzama, n. m., adeniji, f. a., richards, w. s., and thambyapillay, g. g. r. (eds), arid zone hydrology and water resources. maiduguri: university of maiduguri press. thompson, h. (2000). widespread deprivation in britain. www.wsws.org/articles/2000/. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/ publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. estimation of the determinants of credit demand by farmers and supply by rural banks in ghana’s upper east region m. a. akudugu (school of agriculture, policy and development, university of reading, united kingdom) citation: m. a. akudugu (2012): “estimation of the determinants of credit demand by farmers and supply by rural banks in ghana‟s upper east region”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 189-200. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 189-200 189 author(s) m. a. akudugu school of agriculture, policy and development, university of reading, united kingdom email:macmoudan@yahoo.com abungah@gmail.com a.m.akudugu@pgr.reading.ac.uk estimation of the determinants of credit demand by farmers and supply by rural banks in ghana’s upper east region abstract credit is a strategic empowerment tool that has the potential to change the life of a person, family or community from a situation of abject poverty to a more dignified life. it can transform self-image, unlock potential and boost the productivity and well-being of the poor and vulnerable, especially farmers. this paper estimates the determinants of credit demand by farmers and supply by rural banks in the upper east region of ghana. semi-structured questionnaire complimented by key informant interviews and focus group discussions were used in gathering data from 250 farmers in 5 districts of upper east region. the logit model was used to estimate the determinants of credit demand by farmers and the tobit model used to estimate the determinants of credit supply by rural banks. the findings showed that age of farmers, gender and political affiliations among others are the main determinants of credit demand by farmers. type of crop grown, farm size and the amount of savings made are some determinants of credit supply by the rural banks. it is concluded that demand for credit by farmers and supply of it by rural banks in ghana‟s upper east region are determined by socioeconomic and politico-cultural factors. it is recommended that government; the bank of ghana and the rural banks themselves should develop strategies that aim at enhancing the positive determinants of credit demand and supply and mitigating the negative ones to ensure credit widening and deepening among farmers. keywords: credit, farmers, ghana, logit, rural banks introduction credit is a major component of agricultural production and access to it ensures increased output and food security (diange and zeller, 2000; duong and izumida, 2002). in developing countries, lack of it constitutes a critical constraint to the adoption and use of improved inputs and modern technologies of farming (akudugu, et al., 2012). a small but growing empirical literature suggests that in rural areas of developing countries, credit constraints have significant adverse effects on farm output (petrick, 2004), farm profit (foltz, 2004) and farm investments (carter and olinto, 2003). lack of working capital and low liquidity limit the ability of farmers to purchase inputs that enhance productivity. this leads to inadequate use of improved inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, and seeds among others (nyoro, 2002). it has been noted that the average production efficiency levels of producers who are able to secure formal credit are higher (awudu and richard, 2001). in kenya for example, it has been reported that access to credit has resulted to higher technical efficiency of maize producers (kibaara, 2005). the impact of credit access in facilitating agricultural production and economic growth is only possible provided the capital is used efficiently (yunus and alan, 2003). lack or inadequate access to credit (capital constraints) is a crucial militating factor against farmers in financing their farm operations and is one of the major underlying factors of low agricultural productivity in ghana (naninutako, 1998). there is evidence in latin america, for instance, of the prevalence of credit constraints and their impacts on farm efficiency as pressure to relax or overturn the financial liberalization policies widely implemented in the past two decades rises (guirkinger et al., 2007). access to capital in general and credit in particular, is crucial for increased agricultural production and improvement in livelihoods. it is expected that access to credit will give beneficiaries the chance to expand their production ventures thereby taking the responsibility of establishing self-dignity and integrity. despite the numerous positive impacts of credit on agricultural production, empirical studies reveal that several factors limit access to it (examples include crook, 2001; magri, 2002; thaicharoen et al., 2004; crook and hochguertel, 2005; del-rio and young, 2005; akudugu et al. 2009a; 2009b). mailto:macmoudan@yahoo.com%20abungah@gmail.com mailto:macmoudan@yahoo.com%20abungah@gmail.com mailto:a.m.akudugu@pgr.reading.ac.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 189-200 190 to be able to devise strategies to enhance farmers‟ access to credit for their farming activities, there is the need to identify and describe the determinants of their credit demand and the supply of credit by formal financial institutions such as rural banks, particularly in ghana‟s upper east region. the essence is that knowing the factors that influence farmers‟ credit demand and the supply of it by rural banks will help decision makers and implementers formulate policies that will take advantage of the positive factors and mitigate the negative ones. the findings of this paper constitute a critical input for the formulation of credit delivery strategies that are socially acceptable, culturally agreeable, economically viable, politically neutral, gender sensitive and environmentally sustainable to both farmers as well as other marginalized groups and the rural banks. the focus on the rural banks is as a result of the fact that, in ghana, rural banks have the mandate of providing financial services, particularly credit to rural dwellers most of who are farmers. as such, this paper estimates the determinants of credit demand by farmers and the supply of it by rural banks in the upper east region of ghana. methodology the study area carved out of the former upper region on 1 st april, 1983, the upper east region covers a total land area of 8,848 square kilometres (km 2 ) which is about three per cent (3%) of ghana‟s land area and has its capital at bolgatanga (asiseh, 2000). the region is situated in the north-eastern corner of ghana. it lies within 10 0 45 1 n and 0 0 45 1 w. it is bordered to the north by burkina faso, to the east by the republic of togo, to the south by the northern region and to the west by the upper west region. this means the upper east region is strategically located because it provides access to the land locked sahel countries such as burkina faso, mali, benin and niger as well as northern togo. the region is divided into nine (9) administrative areas comprising seven districts and two municipalities. these are the bolgatanga municipality, bawku municipality, garu/tempane district, bawku west district, talensi/nabdam district, bongo district, builsa district, kasena/nankana east and the kasena/nankana west districts. demographically, the region had a total population of 914,016 in 2000 (gss, 2000). out of this, 484, 428 representing about 53 percent are females with the remaining 47 percent being males. this is indicative of the need to incorporate gender interests in financial capital policy formulations. the region is predominantly rural with about 772,131 (84%) of the population living in rural settlements and 141,885 (16%) in urban areas (harold, 2005). however, there are concentrations of population in the main urban centres of bolgatanga, bawku, navrongo, sandema, bongo, zebilla, garu, tongo and paga which serve as service centres and administrative capitals of their respective municipalities and districts. the region is characterized by long dry conditions. the dry season begins in november and ends in late april or early may. even in the wet season, there are still some irregular drought spells. the dry season is characterized by hazy weather conditions as a result of the dusty winds (harmattan) blown from the sahara desert by the northeast trade winds. temperatures reach a maximum of 45°c in the mid-dry season and a minimum of 20°c in the midwet season. the average annual rainfall is about 1002mm/p.a. with the maximum recorded in july/august and the minimum in october/november. relative humidity reaches the peak of 86% in the rainy season and the lowest of 17% in the dry season (akudugu and gbene, 2005). the major off-farm economic activities prevailing in the area include sheabutter extraction, pito (local beer made of sorghum and maize) brewing, pito malt processing, rice processing/parboiling and “kulikuli” (groundnut cake) making. farming of cereals, roots such as sweet and frafra potatoes, vegetables such as onions and tomatoes and rearing of small and large ruminants such as goats, sheep and cattle are some of the on-farm activities. the farm activities with great potentials are sorghum, rice, onions and tomatoes production as well as guinea fowl rearing. a number of institutional and non-institutional financial capital intermediaries operate in the region. the institutional ones include the ghana commercial bank (gcb) with three branches at bolgatanga, bawku and navrongo; the agricultural development bank (adb) with three branches at bolgatanga, navrongo and bawku; the national investment bank (nib) at bolgatanga; ssb at bolgatanga; barclays at bolgatanga and bawku with a mobilisation centre at navrongo; five rural banks with eleven branches across the region; savings and loans companies at bolgatanga and bawku and insurance companies. the non-institutional financial intermediaries include the credit unions, special government programmes, private money lenders, susu collectors, distributors of farm inputs, rotating savings and credit associations (roscas), friends and relatives. all these form sources of credit to the people in the region. the survey two hundred and fifty farmers (250) comprising one hundred and thirty-five men (135) and one hundred and fifteen (115) women were interviewed. this indicates close gender parity in sampling which implies that the findings are to a large extent representative of both men and women. the multistage sampling technique was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 189-200 191 employed. the first stage included the purposeful selection of the five out of nine districts of the upper east region. the selected districts are the garu-tempane district where the bawku east small scale farmers association (bessfa) rural banks is located, the bawku west district where the toende rural bank is located, the builsa district where the builsa community (buco) bank is located, the kassena-nankana west district where the naara rural bank is located, and the bongo district where the bongo rural bank is located. after selecting the districts, stratified random sampling was employed. each of the selected districts was divided into five strata (i.e. north, east, south, west, and central). this implies that the whole study area was divided into twenty-five strata. simple random sampling was then used to select one community from each stratum. ten (10) farmers were then randomly sampled from each stratum which gave a sample size of two hundred and fifty (250) mentioned earlier. managers of the rural banks and in some cases their representatives were also interviewed. in each selected community, individuals were selected for the interviews using the random numbers technique. semi-structured questionnaire supplemented with key informant interviews and focus group discussions were used for the data collection. the theoretical and analytical framework two levels of analyses were carried out. the first was to estimate the determinants of credit demand by farmers using the logit model. the second level of analysis was to estimate the determinants of credit supply to farmers by rural banks using the tobit model. the analyses accounted for the possibility of selectivity bias (johnston and dinardo, 1998) on the part of farmers in their credit demand and the rural banks in their supply of credit. when people are selected for a particular intervention based on factors that are not physical and difficult to measure, it may result in selection bias. for instance, when a farmer for any reason is prevented by his/her colleagues from joining a solidarity group for credit disbursement, then, selectivity bias is introduced. better still, when credit is supplied to farmers by rural banks because of their political or religious inclinations, selectivity bias is introduced. all these affect the demand and supply of credit. to account for selectivity bias, the inverse mills ratio (imr) was computed from the logit model employed to estimate the determinants of farmers‟ credit demand from the rural banks. this means that the decision to demand credit from the rural banks by the farmers may not only be influenced by those factors specified in the model but also by factors which could not be captured by the researcher. for instance, a farmer may decide to demand credit from a rural bank because he/she is a brother/sister to the credit officer of that bank. the computed imr was included as an explanatory variable to estimate the determinants of supply of credit to farmers by the rural banks using the tobit model in the second level of analysis. a significant imr implies presence of selectivity bias and the vice versa. the logit model (amemiya, 1981) as stated earlier was employed to examine the determinants of credit demand by farmers from the rural banks. the study used the threshold decision-making theory proposed by hill and kau (1973) and pindyck and rubinfeld (1998) to analyse the determinants of credit demand by farmers. the theory points out the fact that when farmers are faced with a decision to adopt or not to adopt an innovation, in this case demand credit from rural banks, every farmer has a reaction threshold, which is dependent on a certain set of factors. as such, at a certain value of stimulus below the threshold, no adoption is observed while at the critical threshold value, a reaction is stimulated. such phenomena are generally modeled using the relationship: (1) where yi is equal to one (1) when a choice is made to adopt and zero (0) otherwise; this means: yi = 1 if xi is greater than or equal to a critical value, x * and yi = 0 if xi is less than a critical value, x * note that x * represents the combined effects of the independent variables ( ) at the threshold level. equation 1 represents a binary choice model involving the estimation of the probability of adoption of a given technology, innovation or intervention (y) as a function of independent variables (x). mathematically, this is represented as: ( ) ( ) (2) ( ) ( ) (3) where yi is the observed response for the i th observation of the response variable, y. this means that yi = 1 for an adopter (i.e. farmers who decide to demand credit from the rural banks) and yi = 0 for a non-adopter (i.e. farmers who decide not to demand credit from the rural banks). xi is a set of independent variables such as literacy, farm size, gender, interest rate charged and distance from residence of farmers to the rural banks among others, associated with the i th individual, which determine the probability of adoption (i.e. making the decision to demand credit), (p). the function, f may take the form of a normal, logistic or probability function. the logit model uses a logistic cumulative distributive function to estimate, p as follows (pindyck and rubinfeld, 1998): asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 189-200 192 ( ) (4) ( ) (5) according to greene (2008), the probability model is a regression of the conditional expectation of y on x giving: ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (6) since the model is non-linear, the parameters are not necessarily the marginal effects of the various independent variables. the relative effect of each of the independent variables on the probability of adoption (i.e. making the decision to demand credit) is obtained by differentiating equation (6) with respect to xij resulting in equation (7) (greene, 2008): [ ( ) ] ( ) ( ) (7) the maximum likelihood method was used to estimate the parameters. the implication for applying the logit model in this paper is that, the farmer would decide to demand credit from the rural bank at a given point in time when the combined effects of certain factors exceed the inherent resistance to change in him/her. the preference for the logistic regression model to the conventional linear probability regression model in analysing the determinants of farmers‟ credit demand from rural banks is based on the fact that, the parameter estimates from the former are asymptotically consistent and efficient. the estimation procedure employed also resolves the problem of heteroscedasticity and constrains the conditional probability of making the decision to demand credit to lie between zero (0) and one (1). the main reason for choosing the logit model over the probit model for this paper is because of its mathematical convenience and simplicity (greene, 2008) and the fact that it has been applied in similar studies by akudugu et al. (2009a) and ayamga et al. (2006) among others. the logit model provides information only with respect to the farmers‟ decision to demand credit from the rural banks or not to demand, but not on the extent of supply of credit by the banks after their demand is made. to estimate the determinants of the extent of supply of credit to farmers by the rural banks, the tobit model is employed. the tobit model allows us to indentify the factors that determine how much credit is supplied to every farmer who applied for it from the rural banks. the tobit model was developed by tobin in 1958 and has been used by a number of researchers including oladele (2005), dankyi et al. (2005) and akudugu et al. (2009b) in various studies. according to greene (2008) and cameron and trivedi (2005), the general formulation of the tobit model is usually given in terms of an index function. this is given in equation (8) as: (8) where is the unobserved latent variable or the threshold which must be exceeded for a reaction to take place; xi is a set of explanatory variables and εi is assumed to be an independently and normally distributed stochastic term with zero mean, μ and constant variance, σ 2 . assume that there is a perceived utility u(y) from adopting an intervention, say, demanding credit from rural banks, yi, and, a utility u(0) for not adopting it, say, not demanding credit from the rural banks. further assume that there is a cluster of the population with no decision to make at the limit (baidu-forson, 1999; oladele, 2005; dankyi et al., 2005; akudugu et al., 2009b), then: and where is the dependent variable, in this case, the extent (i.e. the ratio of the amount of credit supplied to the farmer to the amount of credit applied for) of credit supplied to farmers by the rural banks. the expected intensity, e(p) of credit supply by the rural banks to farmers is given as follows: )()()( zfzfxpe i   (9) where x is the vector of explanatory variables; f(z) is the cumulative normal distribution of z; f(z) is the value of the derivative of the normal curve at a given point (i.e. the unit normal distribution); z is the z-score for the area under the normal curve, given as z = xβ/σ; β is a vector of tobit maximum likelihood estimates; and σ is the standard error of the model. the relationship between the expected value of all observations, ep and the expected conditional value above the limit ep* is given by: *)( pp ezfe  (10) analyzing the policy implications of changes in the relevant explanatory variables is a major component of this paper. to this end, the effect of the k th variable of x on yi leads to the following decomposition: )/)(()/)((/ ** kpkpkp xzfexezfxe   (11) this (equation 11) suggests that the total change in elasticity of yi can be disaggregated into two parts asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 189-200 193 namely: the change in probability of the expected level of intensity and change in the elasticity of being a beneficiary of credit from the rural banks. to obtain the marginal effect of the observed variable that is of interest in this paper, the following formula (greene, 2008: 765) is used: i i x yobxye   )1*0(pr*)|(  (12) according to greene (2008), the log-likelihood of the tobit model is specified as: ∑ ( ) ( ) ∑ ( ) maximising this likelihood function with respect to β and σ gives the maximum likelihood estimates of these parameters. stata (version 10) was the statistical software employed to estimate the empirical parameters by mle. choice of variables for logit and tobit models and hypotheses the choice of variables for the above models was based more on related studies by researchers such as nathan et al. (2004); ayamga et al. (2006); akudugu et al. (2009a; 2009b); and fakayode and rahji, (2009). the age of a farmer (x1) was included in the models because it is used as a proxy for maturity and the potential ability to utilize and repay credit by borrowers (fakayode and rahji, 2009; and akudugu et al. 2009a). it was measured in years for both the logit and tobit models. it was hypothesized to assume a quadratic function, and that younger farmers are considered immature to be able to utilise credit effectively and to repay and therefore may not demand credit from the banks. besides, as farmers grow beyond their economically active age (x2) group, their economic activities become less which negatively influences their decision to demand credit from the rural banks. the literacy level of farmers (x3) was included in the estimations. given the quality of education in the study area, those who had less than nine (9) years of formal schooling (i.e. completed junior high school) were considered illiterate and assigned a dummy value of zero (0), while those who had nine (9) or more years of formal schooling were considered literates and assigned a dummy value of one (1). literacy was hypothesised to have positive relationships to the decision to demand credit and the amount that they could receive from the rural banks. this is because formal education is said to be a major factor that influences the decision to participate in credit programmes (ayamga et al. 2006; lukytawati, 2009). a cash crop grown (x4) was expected to have positive effect on the decision to demand credit. this is because those into cash crop production are into farming as a business and therefore are more likely to demand credit to finance their production activities. cash crop in this study was defined as a crop, 70 percent of the output of which is for sale. farmers into cash crop production are considered as being more entrepreneurial and business oriented. those respondents who did not cultivate cash crops were assigned a dummy value of zero (0) and those who cultivated cash crops were assigned a dummy value of one (1). it was used for both the logit and tobit estimations. the perception of farmers regarding the application procedures (x5) was included in the study because earlier studies (example akudugu et al. 2009a) found it to negatively affect the decision to demand credit. it was hypothesised that those who considered the application procedures as cumbersome were less likely to make the decision to demand credit from the rural banks and the vice versa. those farmers who said the application procedures were not cumbersome were assigned a dummy value of zero (0) and those who said the application procedures were cumbersome were assigned a dummy value of one (1). it was included in only the logit model estimation. savings (x6) was included in the study because it serves as a proxy for the net worth of the farmer. the more savings that is made by the farmer, the more the likelihood he or she is able to repay and therefore can take a higher amount of credit. it was measured as a dummy for the logit model and absolute amount of savings made in ghana cedis for the tobit model estimation. the reason for using dummy for the logit was to capture the perceptions of farmers regarding the „savings before credit policy‟ by the rural banks. farmers who did not have savings with the rural banks were assigned a dummy value of zero (0) and those who had savings with the rural banks assigned a dummy value of one (1). on the other hand, since a dummy for savings captures perceptions which may not necessarily be true, the real amount of savings made in ghana cedis with rural banks by farmers was used for the tobit estimation. in both cases, it was hypothesized to have positive effects on farmers‟ decisions to demand credit and the amount supplied to them by the rural banks. the farm size (x7) was also included because it can be used to estimate the potential income of the borrower and was expected to have a positive influence on both the decision to demand credit and the extent of supply of it by asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 189-200 194 the banks. it was measured in hectares. it was however, dropped from the tobit estimation because it was not only insignificant but also correlated strongly with the amount of savings made by farmers with the rural banks. the higher the perception of farmers that interest rate is high (x8), the lower the probability that they will decide to demand credit from rural banks. as such, it was hypothesized to be a negative determinant of credit demand. those farmers who said they did not perceive the interest rate charged by the rural banks to be high were assigned a dummy value of zero (0) and those who said they perceived the interest rate charged by the rural banks to be high were assigned a dummy value of one (1). it was used for the logit estimation only. the gender (x9) of farmers was also included in the estimation and was expected to be either positive or negative. men were assigned a dummy value of zero (0) and women assigned a dummy value of one (1). it was used in only the logit model estimation. the more difficult it is to access land for farming (x10), the lesser the probability that farmers would demand credit from the rural banks for farming. it was hypothesized to have positive effect on the decision to demand credit from the rural banks by farmers. farmers who said they did not have access to farm lands were assigned a dummy value of zero (0) and those who said they had access to farm lands were assigned a dummy value of one (1). it was used for the logit model estimation only. active political affiliation (x11) was hypothesized to be positively related to the farmers‟ credit demand from rural banks. this is because it has been observed that some poverty alleviation interventions by the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (mmdas) have credit components which are channeled through the banks for disbursement. political appointees of the mmdas use these credit facilities to appease their followers. it was therefore envisaged that active affiliation with a given political party will have a positive influence on the demand for such credit facilities from the rural banks. those who said they were not actively affiliated to any political party in ghana were assigned a dummy value of zero (0) and those who said they were actively affiliated to one political party or the other in ghana were assigned a dummy value of one (1). it was used for the logit model estimation only. membership of solidarity groups or associations (x12) is said to be a fundamental requirement for demanding credit by small borrowers (lukytawati, 2009). group based lending is a way of circumventing adverse selection and moral hazard issues (armendariz and morduch, 2005). farmers who belong to social or income generating groups are more likely to demand credit from the rural banks than those who do not. this is because most of the social groups are formed by the rural banks for credit disbursements and savings mobilizations. the rural banks rely on these social groups for the provision of social collateral provided by poor borrowers, particularly farmers for the advancement of credit. this implies that once a person belongs to a social group, such a person is not required to provide collateral to be able to access credit. members of the group jointly guarantee for each other. as such, membership of social groups was expected to be a positive determinant of credit demand from the rural banks by farmers. farmers who did not belong to social groups were assigned a dummy value of zero (0) and those who belonged to social groups were assigned a dummy value of one (1). it was used for only the logit model estimation. distance (x13) was expected to have a negative effect on both the decision to demand credit and the extent of supply of credit by the banks. this implies that those who are far away from the rural banks are less likely to demand credit from them and the vice versa. those who live far away and decide to demand credit are most likely to have lesser amounts compared to those closer. this is because people who live far away may have to board cars to the rural banks at a cost which eventually affects the amount they actually get for their farming activities since part of it is used to pay for transport. it was measured in kilometres for both the logit and tobit estimations. the results and discussion determinants of credit demand by farmers the estimated determinants of credit demand by farmers from rural banks using the logit model included the age of farmers, literacy, type of crops grown (i.e. cash or food crops), the application procedures, savings habit, farm size, perception of interest charged, gender, access to farm land, political affiliation, membership of solidarity groups, and distance from residence of farmers to the rural banks. the estimated logit regression model (table 1) gave an adjusted pseudo r – squared of about 0.73 which implies that all the explanatory variables included in the model were able to explain about 73 per cent of the probability of the decision of farmers to demand credit from the rural banks. the log likelihood ratio (lr) statistic is significant at 1 percent, meaning that the explanatory variables included in the model jointly explain the probability of farmers deciding to demand credit from the rural banks. given these two goodness of fit measures, it is concluded that the logit model used has integrity and is appropriate. the validity of the logit model in estimating the determinants of farmers‟ credit demand from the rural banks is consistent with related studies by akudugu et al. (2009); akram et al. (2008); asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 189-200 195 ayamga et al. (2006); benerjee (2001); and malik (1999), who employed it in similar empirical studies. the age of respondents met the apriori expectation of quadratic relationship with the probability of farmers demanding credit from the rural banks. the findings revealed that younger farmers are less likely to demand credit from the rural banks than elderly farmers. this is consistent with the findings of akudugu et al. (2009a); akram et al. (2008); benito and mumtaz (2006); thaicharoen et al. (2004); and crook (2001) that age is a significant determinant of credit delivery and access. literacy conformed to the apriori expectation of positive influence on the demand for credit from rural banks by farmers. it was found to be significant at 1 per cent. this implies that farmers who had at least, nine years of formal schooling are more likely to demand credit from the rural banks than those who had less number of years of formal schooling. this finding regarding formal schooling is consistent with the findings of ayamga et al. (2006); thaicharoen et al. (2004); and arvai and toth (2001) that formal schooling significantly influences the decision to participate in formal credit schemes. this is attributed to the fact that persons who are literate are able to read and make better applications to the banks than those who are illiterate. the cultivation of cash crops also met the apriori expectation of positive relationship and was found to be significant at the 10 per cent level. this means that farmers who cultivated cash crops such as rice, groundnut, maize and soybeans are more likely to demand credit from the rural banks for their production activities than those who cultivated staple food crops for household consumption. this is because those who are into cash crop production are into farming as a profit making venture and are therefore more inclined to expand their production activities in order to take advantage of economies of scale than those who are not into cash crop production. the perception of farmers regarding how cumbersome and long the application procedures are have negative influence on the probability of their demand for credit from the rural banks. though it met the apriori expectation of negative relationship, it was not significant. this finding of negative influence of long and complicated application procedures on the demand for credit from rural banks by farmers is consistent with the findings of akudugu et al. (2009), nathan et al. (2004) and johnson (2004) that cumbersome application procedures deter people, especially illiterates, from demanding credit from formal sources. savings made with the rural banks by farmers met the apriori expectation of positive relationship with the probability of farmers demanding credit from rural banks. it was significant at the 1 per cent level. due to the savings before credit policy by most rural banks, people who saved with them mostly demanded credit from them (rural banks) since the principal motive for saving with the banks is to get credit in return. this finding of positive effect of savings on probability of demanding credit from the rural banks is supported by the finding of akudugu et al. (2009b) and akram et al. (2008) that savings form a basic requirement of accessing credit from many formal financial institutions. farm size was also found to be positively related to the probability of farmers‟ demanding credit from the rural banks for their farming activities. this was found to be significant at the 5 per cent level. though the perception of farmers on interest rate charged met the apriori expectation of negative relationship, it was an insignificant determinant of the demand for credit from rural banks by farmers. this finding of negative influence of interest charged on the probability of farmers demanding credit from the rural banks is supported by that of business week (2005) and the financial express (2005) that the exorbitant interest rates charged by financial institutions deter many people from demanding credit from such sources. this implies that farmers who perceived the interest charged by the rural banks to be high are less likely to demand credit from them. gender of farmers was also found to be a significant determinant of the demand for credit from the rural banks. this means that female farmers are more likely to demand credit from the rural banks than their male counterparts. it was found to be significant at 1 per cent. this is understandable given that most credit schemes designed by banks and other development institutions such as ngos focus more on women. this is as a result of the fact that they are considered the most disadvantaged, vulnerable and above all, credit worthy. as expected, access to land for farming was found to be a positive determinant of the demand for credit from rural banks by farmers though insignificant. this finding is inconsistent with the finding of benerjee (2001) that land constitutes a major factor in deciding whether or not to demand credit from formal sources. this is because access to land for farming is not a serious challenge in the study area. active political affiliation met the apriori expectation of positive relationship with probability of the decision to demand credit from the rural banks. this was found to be significant at the 10 per cent level. the implication of this finding is that farmers who are actively affiliated to one political party or the other are most likely to demand credit from rural banks especially when their supposed party is in power than their counterparts who are not. this can have negative implications on credit recovery by the rural banks because of the fact that such people always regard credit advanced to them by virtue of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 189-200 196 their political affiliation as gifts from their political godfathers. also, membership of social groups also conformed to the apriori expectation and was found to be significant at 1 per cent (table 1). this implies that when farmers joined social groups, then, the probability that they will demand credit from the rural banks to support their farming activities is most likely to increase. this is more so given that most of such social groups are formed by the rural banks for mobilizations of savings and credit delivery. the decision to join such social groups is mostly driven by the desire to access financial services, particularly credit from the rural banks. this finding is consistent with the findings of akudugu et al. (2009a), armendariz and morduch (2005), and kah et al. (2005) that formation of economic and social associations helped improve access to credit since there is a joint guarantee by association members. the distance from the residence of farmers to the rural banks conformed to the apriori expectation of negative relationship with the probability of farmers demanding credit from rural banks. it was found to be significant at 5 per cent. the negative relationship between distance and the probability of demanding credit from the rural banks by farmers is consistent with the findings of fakayode and rahji (2009) and ayamga et al. (2006) that the closer the source, the higher the probability of the decision to demand credit and vice versa. this is because those close to the rural banks tend to know more about the services rendered by the banks and are most likely to demand such services. table 1: logit regression results of determinants of credit demand by farmers dependent variable: farmers‟ decision to demand credit (binary) variable coefficient std. err. marginal effects age -0.2110 0.1488 -0.0425 age2 0.0022 0.0013* 0.0004 literacy 2.6781 0.9245*** 0.5110 cash crop 1.2520 0.7218* 0.2310 application -0.2025 0.6895 -0.0405 savings 3.2476 0.9209*** 0.6576 farm size 1.8231 0.7682** 0.3814 interest rate -0.4948 0.7081 -0.1029 gender 1.8992 0.7638*** 0.4062 politics 1.2093 0.7012* 0.2548 land access 0.5315 0.8940 0.1113 group member 2.3090 0.7355*** 0.4499 distance -1.0068 0.4382** -0.2029 constant -0.3533 4.0238 goodness of fit measures lr chi-square (13) = 193.96 prob > chi-square = 0.0000 log likelihood = -36.313334 pseudo r2 = 0.7276 *** = significant at 1%; ** = significant at 5%; * = significant at 10% source: field survey data, 2010 in summary, the significant determinants of credit demand from rural banks by farmers in the upper east region of ghana are found to be the age of farmer, literacy, type of crop grown (cash or food crop), savings, farm size, gender, political affiliations, membership of social groups, and distance from residences of famers to the rural banks. the conclusion is that any strategy that aims at improving farmers‟ demand for credit from rural banks must of necessity target these socio-economic and politico-cultural characteristics of farmers. determinants of credit supply to farmers by rural banks the tobit model estimation gave a pseudo r 2 of 0.73 which implies that the variables included in the model are able to explain about 73 per cent of the variability in credit supply to farmers by rural banks in ghana‟s upper east region (table 2). the age of farmers conformed to the apriori expectation of quadratic function though insignificant. this implies that the banks are more inclined to supplying credit to farmers within the economically active age group. this finding is consistent with akudugu et al (2009b) that the amount of credit that farmers are able asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 189-200 197 to access from rural banks is influenced by their age which is used as a proxy for maturity and ability to use credit and to repay. literacy was also found to positively relate to the extent of credit supply to farmers by rural banks. this is in conformity with the apriori expectation and literature. this means that the amount of credit that the rural banks are ready to supply to farmers is positively determined by the level of formal education of the applicants. farmers who had at least nine years of formal education are likely to be supplied with higher amounts of credit by the rural banks than those with less number of years. the only tangible significant determinant of the amount of credit the rural banks supply to farmers is savings made. this determinant was found to be significant at the 1 per cent significance level and is positively related to the amount of credit that the rural banks are ready and willing to supply to farmers. this means that farmers who are able to save higher amounts are supplied with much more credit than those who are unable to do so. this finding is supported by the „savings before credit policy‟ of the banks. by this policy, farmers are expected to save continuously for at least three months before they could be supplied with credit. from the interviews with bank officials, the most important tangible determinant of their supply of credit to farmers is the ability of the farmers to keep active savings accounts with the rural banks. this simply means that farmers who do not keep active savings accounts are shut out of credit supply. the distance from the rural banks to residences of farmers was found to have a negative relationship with the credit supply to farmers. this implies that farmers who live further away from the rural banks are more likely to be supplied with less credit compared to those who live closer to the banks. the type of crop cultivated by farmers is also a determinant of credit supply to them by the rural banks. it means that those farmers who cultivate cash crops are most likely to be supplied with credit by the rural banks than those who cultivate food crops for family consumptions. the inverse mills ratio (imr) which measures selectivity bias in credit supply by the rural banks was found to be significant at the 1 per cent significance level (table 2). this implies that there is selectivity bias in the supply of credit to farmers by the rural banks. this means that apart from the determinants captured in the tobit model, there are other determinants that the rural banks consider in their supply of credit to their customers that were not captured in the model estimation. for instance, the criteria used by the rural banks in selecting people to form the social groups are not well documented and hence could not be captured. the fact that some factors were not captured in the model is further supported by the fact that the constant term is found to be significant at the 1 per cent level. some of such factors which are difficult to measure but determine supply of credit to farmers by the rural banks are political interference and interpersonal relationships. this is because some social groups are formed by politicians. this is particularly so in situations where poverty alleviation funds from government through the mmdas are channeled through financial institutions such as the rural banks for onward disbursement to beneficiaries as credit. in such cases, cohorts of political heads are put into social groups for such credit facilities. also, the personal relationships come into play in the formation of social groups by the rural banks, especially where the credit officer is a native. such a credit officer is most likely to select people who are close to him or her thereby introducing selectivity bias. political influences come to bare on bank officials who are coerced by politicians to supply credit to their political sympathizers thereby introducing selectivity bias in credit delivery. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 189-200 198 table 2: tobit results of determinants of credit supply to farmers by rural banks dependent variable: proportion of credit accessed (i.e. a ratio of the amount of credit received to the amount applied for by farmers) variable coefficient std. err. marginal effects age -0.0099 0.01087 -0.0099 age2 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001 literacy 0.0476 0.0508 0.0476 savings 0.0013 0.0005*** 0.0013 distance -0.0088 0.0282 -0.0088 cash crop 0.0425 0.0508 0.0425 imr -0.4245 0.0531*** -0.4245 constant 1.0387 0.2768*** goodness of fit measures lr chi-square (13) = 236.67 prob > chi-square = 0.0000 log likelihood = -43.7305 pseudo r2 = 0.7302 *** = significant at 1% source: field survey data, 2010 the issue of political interference came out strongly during discussions with bank officials and farmers. some of the bank managers interviewed lamented that the political interference was worrisome and negatively affecting supply of credit to customers, especially farmers. according to them, the interference by politicians is worsened by the fact that the district assemblies are major shareholders in the rural banks. as such, whosoever is appointed to head the district will always try to explore the avenue of credit supply to the advantage of his or her political favourites. from the above, it is concluded that the only measurable determinant that influences credit supply to farmers by rural banks in the upper east region of ghana is their amount of savings. there is selectivity bias in the supply of credit to farmers by the rural banks. conclusion and recommendations based on the findings, it is concluded that the age, literacy, type of crop grown (cash or food crop), savings with rural banks, farm size, gender, political affiliations, membership of economic or solidarity groups and the distance from farmers‟ residence to the rural banks are the significant determinants of credit demand by farmers in the upper east region of ghana. savings with the rural banks is the only tangible significant determinant of credit supply to farmers by rural banks. there is also selectivity bias in the disbursement of credit to applicants by the rural banks. based on the findings, two main recommendations are made as follows: first, to encourage farmers demand credit from the rural banks, policies should be formulated by government and other institutions that work to alleviate financial constraints of farmers to mitigate the effects of the negative determinants and enhance the positive ones. such policies should target at: i. the economically active age group of farmers ii. improving the literacy levels of farmers iii. encouraging farmers to cultivate cash crops iv. encouraging farmers to make savings with the rural banks v. increasing the farm sizes of farmers vi. depoliticising the supply of credit to farmers by rural banks and vii. encouraging farmers to join existing or form new social groups second, there is selectivity bias in the supply of credit to farmers by the rural banks which is largely caused by nepotism and political inclinations. it is therefore recommended that government, the bank of ghana and rural banks should come out with mechanisms that will make the supply of credit free of these biases. references akram, z., ajmal, s. and munir, m. 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(2003) “banker to the poor: micro-lending and the battle against world poverty”, new york, public affairs. 273p. © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 determinants of farmer’s participation in off-farm employment: a case study in kedah darul aman, malaysia roslan abdul-hakim (department of economics and agribusiness, school of economics, finance and banking, universiti utara malaysia, sintok, kedah darul aman, malaysia) siti hadijah che-mat (department of economics and agribusiness school of economics, finance and banking, universiti utara malaysia, sintok, kedah darul aman, malaysia) to cite this article: roslan abdul-hakim and siti hadijah che-mat (2011). determinants of farmer’s participation in off-farm employment: a case study in kedah darul aman, malaysia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2), 27-37. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 27-37 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author(s) roslan abdul-hakim† department of economics and agribusiness school of economics, finance and banking, universiti utara malaysia, malaysia e-mail: ahroslan@uum.edu.my siti hadijah che-mat department of economics and agribusiness school of economics, finance and banking, universiti utara malaysia, malaysia determinants of farmer’s participation in off-farm employment: a case study in kedah darul aman, malaysia abstract this paper investigates the determinants of agricultural households’ participation in off-farm employment. towards this end, a logit model is employed to identify factors that determine the participation in off-farm employment. here, determinants of participation in off-farm employment are divided into four categories-individual, household, farm and local area characteristics. with regards to the local area characteristics, the analysis is extended by including a new variable, which is the economic characteristic of the area. the results of the analysis show that the main determinants that influence the farmer’s decision to participate in off-farm employment are age, gender, household size, dependency ratio, remittance, land size, types of agricultural activities, working hours allocated to the farm, the ratio of income from agricultural sources in total income of the farmer. furthermore, this study uncovers that the economic characteristic of the area where the farmer reside is important determinant of the farmer’s decision to participate in off-farm job. one of the policy implications from the finding of this study is that, if the agricultural households are to be encouraged to participate in off-farm jobs, a balanced development in the rural areas must be pursued. keywords: determinants, farmer’s participation, off-farm employment, malaysia introduction agricultural activities usually represent the main source of employment in most rural areas. thus, it would not be surprising to discover that most rural households are farmers where their main source of income is from agricultural activities. however, this observation would probably the case for an underdeveloped and stagnant rural economy. in countries where the rural areas experiencing a rapid development and transformation, such as the improvement in infrastructure and transportation, development of rural industries and relocation of industrial estates to the rural areas, that observation might no longer relevant. development of the rural areas might have directly or indirectly open up opportunities for participation in off-farm employment to the agricultural households, and hence the potential to increase their household income from non-farm sources. in fact, non-farm income could eventually constitute an important and increasing share of total agricultural household income, and the dependence of agricultural households on agricultural activities as their main source of income might be declining. thus, the participation of agricultural households in off-farm employment could become an important option to them to increase their household income sources, and hence reducing rural poverty. the potential of diversifying and participating into off-farm activities among the agricultural households, however, raises the question on the determinants to participate in the off-farm employment. specifically, what are the characteristics of the farmers who are most mailto:ahroslan@uum.edu.my asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 27-37 28 likely to participate in off-farm employment? what are the factors that influence farmers in deciding to participate in off-farm employment? the importance of examining these questions cannot be over emphasized since off-farm employment has been recognised to have the potential in raising agricultural household income, and therefore reducing rural poverty (fao, 1998). in addition, examining this question appears to be an important especially in a situation where the prospect to increase income from agricultural sources is limited. such situation can happen, for instance, when improvement in technology to increase agricultural production is limited due to small size of land holding. as a result, the prospect to increase agricultural production, and hence income, would be limited. in this situation, the options available would be to participate in off-farm employment. besides, off-farm employment (income) is also important for agricultural household to lessen their income vulnerability particularly during poor harvest, and thus helping them to reduce their income risks (lanjouw and lanjouw, 2001; lanjouw and feder, 2001). therefore, examining and understanding of the determinants (variables) that influence the probability of agricultural households to participate in off-farm employment is imperative for policy makers in designing appropriate development strategy to raise agricultural household income, and hence reduce rural poverty. here, we examine the case of agricultural households in kedah darul aman, malaysia. this paper is organized as follows. section ii discusses the determinants of farmer’s decision to participate in the off-farm employment. section iii describes the methodology of the study, and section iv discusses the findings. section v provides the conclusion of the study. the determinants in this paper, we define off-farm activities as the participation of individuals in remunerative work away from a home plot of land, which is the definition given by the fao (1988). thus, any work carried out by the agricultural household other than working on their home plot of agricultural land would be considered as off-farm activities. having said that, the question that we would like to examine is this: what are the main factors that determine the likelihood of a farmer to participate in off-farm activities? following huffman (1980), benjamin (1992), and howard and swidinsky (2000), it is postulated that factors that may influence a farmer to participate in off-farm employment are as follows: (i) individual or personal characteristics; (ii) the household (or family) characteristics; and (iii) the characteristics of the agricultural activity itself; and (iv) the local area characteristics. the first three characteristics are variables that are related to the off-farm labor supply, while fourth characteristic are variables that are related to the off-farm demand for labour. thus, following huffman (1980), benjamin (1992), and howard and swidinsky (2000), the determinants that may influence likelihood of farmer i to participate in off-farm employment could be written as follows: offempi = f (indci, hhci, agci, laci) ..... (1) where, ofemp = off-farm employment, indc = individual characteristics, hhc = household characteristics, agc = characteristics of agricultural activities, and lac = local area characteristics. each of the characteristics is explained below. individual characteristics (indc) the individual or personal characteristics are those characteristics such as age, gender and human capital (huffman, 1980). with regards to age, younger farmers are expected to be more receptive, adventurous and mobile than older farmers, and thus they are more likely to have a higher inclination towards off-farm employment compared to older farmers. in addition, it is also expected that the probability to diversify into off-farm employment is lower for female than male farmers. benjamin and guyomard (1994) found that female farmers have less inclination to diversify into off-farm determinants of farmer's participation in off-farm... 29 employment if they have children at a lower age that they need to take care of. furthermore, human capital, i.e. skills and knowledge, owned by the individual farmers might also influence their likelihood to participate in off-farm employment (benjamin and guyomard, 1994). since offfarm employment, especially in the formal sector, normally requires higher skills and knowledge, it is expected that a farmer with a higher level of human capital have a higher probability to participate in off-farm employment. household characteristics (hhc) the household (or family) characteristics are those characteristics such as the household size and the number of employed member in the household. larger household size might become a push factor for the head of agricultural household to look for off-farm employment as a means to increase their household income. thus, a farmer with a larger family size is expected to have a higher probability to participate in off-farm employment than a farmer with a smaller family size. another factor would be the number of dependents in the family. the pressure for a farmer with a larger number of dependents to look for additional income to meet their living expenses is higher than a farmer with a smaller number of dependents. thus, it is reasonable to expect that a farmer with a larger number of dependents will have a higher probability to participate in off-farm employment than those with a smaller number of dependents. another factor that is related to household characteristics is the amount of remittance received by the household. a household that receive higher remittance, usually from their working children that are no longer living with them, is expected to have lower probability to participate in off-farm employment than those family that receive lower remittance. this is sensible since the higher the remittance that the household received, the lower the pressure for the farmer (head of household) to look for additional income for the family, and hence, the lower the probability for the farmer to look for off-farm job. characteristics of the agricultural activities (agc) agricultural characteristics are those attributes with regards to the size of agricultural land and the type or category of agricultural activity. a farmer who own and work on a small plot of agricultural land is expected to have a higher probability to diversify their income sources by securing off-farm employment for additional income (benjamin and guyomard, 1994; leinbach and smith 1994; lim-applegate et al., 2002; corsi and findeis 2000; lanjouw and lanjouw 2001). on the contrary, a farmer who own and work on a larger size of agricultural land is expected to have less pressure to diversify their income sources and therefore has a lower probability to look for off-farm employment. another factor that would affect the probability to participate in off-farm employment is the number of working hours allocated to the farming activities. the longer the working hours allocated to the farming activities, the less likely the farmer to participate in off-farm job. on the other hand, the shorter the number of working hours allocated to the farming activities, the more likely the farmer participate in off-farm job. another related factor is the nature (or category) of agricultural activity undertaken by the farmer. certain agricultural activities needs full attention of the farmer and hence requires the farmer to allocate most of the time on the activity. however, there are some agricultural activities that require the farmer to allocate less working hours on the activity. thus, it is expected that a farmer that involve in a certain agricultural activity (category) would have a higher probability to participate in off-farm employment than if the farmer involve in some other types of agricultural activities. besides, another characteristic which might be incorporated under agricultural characteristics is the relative importance of agricultural income to total income of farmer. a farmer that receives relatively higher income from agricultural sources in his or her asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 27-37 30 total income is expected to be less likely to participate in off-farm employment. the reason being, income from agricultural sources is already sufficient for him to support his family. local area characteristics (lac) local area characteristics are those attributes with regards to the demand for off-farm labor. most previous studies include the distance to the nearest town as one of the factor that influence the farmer to participate in off-farm job. the nearer the farmer lives to town, the higher the expected probability for the farmer to participate in off-farm employment. here, we extend the analysis of local area characteristics to include local area economic characteristics. specifically, we investigate the effect of the intensity of industrialisation (in the area that the farmer lives in) on the farmer’s decision to participate in off-farm job. for instance, a farmer that lives in an industrial area would be expected to have more opportunities, and hence higher probability, to participate in offfarm employment than those who live in an agricultural area. on the other hand, a farmer that lives in an area which is basically an agricultural area, is expected to have less opportunities to off-farm job, and thus less likely to participate in off-farm employment. data and method the data and sample the data used in this study is primary data which is gathered through a survey carried out among agricultural households in kedah darul aman, malaysia. a total of 384 agricultural households participated in this survey. the survey is carried out between the month of april and december 2008. a face to face interview were carried out with the respondents, where they were chosen through a stratified random sampling. six of the eleven districts in kedah were chosen in this study. these are kubang pasu, sik, kota star, baling, kulim and pulau langkawi. table 1 shows the number of respondents by district. for each district, the respondent is divided further according to the local economic characteristics. as being mentioned earlier, the purpose is to investigate the effect of local economic characteristics on farmer’s decision to participate in off-farm employment. in this study, we divide the local economic characteristics into four, which is based on the intensity of agricultural and industrial activities in the area. these are as follows (see also figure 1): (i) c1 = area which has significant agricultural and industrial activities. (ii) c2 = area which has significant agricultural activities but has no or minimal industrial activities. (iii) c3 = area which has minimal agricultural activities but also has no or minimal industrial activities. c4 = area which has minimal agricultural activities, but is a major industrial area. table 1: respondents by district source: population and family development board (2004) district estimated agricultural households number of respondents kubang pasu 8,736 71 kota star 16,541 135 baling 5,913 48 kulim 9,455 77 pulau langkawi 3,541 29 sik 2880 23 total 47,067 384 determinants of farmer's participation in off-farm... 31 figure 1: category of local (area) economic characteristics the logit model for the purpose of determining the effect of the various characteristics – individual, household, characteristics of agricultural activity, and the local area characteristics on the probability for participating in off-farm employment, we employ econometric approach that relies on logit model. this approach has been used by various authors such as abdulai and crolerees (2001), bagamba et al. (2007). thus, to estimate the decision of the farmer (head of agricultural household) to participate in off-farm employment, we employ a binary choice model based on maximum likelihood method. dummy dependence variable of 0 and 1 is used with the value of 1 for the farmer (head of agricultural household) participated in offfarm employment while the value of 0 for those who did not participate. given the value of the independent variables, the estimated value for the dependence variable could be interpreted as the probability to participate in off-farm employment, (greene, 2000; long and freese, 2006; maddala, 1983; wooldridge, 2000). the logit model used in this study is specified as follows: latent variable specification: yi* = β xi + ui ………....... (2) where: yi = 1 (participate in off-farm employment) if yi* > 0 yi = 0 (did not participate in off-farm employment) if yi* < 0 ui = error term β = estimated parameter. xi = vector of independent variables the error term, ui, is assumed to be logistically distributed. thus, the probability of individual i to participate in off-farm employment or not, i.e. pr(yi=1), depends on the vector of individual (indc), household (hhc), agricultural (agc), and high industrial activities high agricultural activities c1 c2 c3 c4 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 27-37 32 local area (lac) characteristics as specified in equation (1). it is written as follows: pr(yi = 1) = β0 + β1indc + β2hhc + β3agc + β4lac + ui …………….. (3) where β1, β2, β3, β4 are the estimated parameters, ui is the error term, and indc, hhc, agc, and lac are the independent variables. the variables used in the estimation are explained and summarised in table 2. equation (3) will be estimated and used to examine the probability of the respondents to participate in off-farm employment or otherwise. it is worth mentioning here that the sign of the estimated parameter is already sufficient to conclude whether the independent variable has a positive or negative impact on the dependent variable (wooldridge, 2002). in addition, the magnitude of the impact could be found out by looking at the odds ratio. the findings there are a few questionnaires that are not complete and therefore cannot be used for the analysis. as a result, only 381 respondents (questionnaires) are used and analysed. table 3 reports the results of the estimated logit model. the estimated parameter and the odds percentage change are reported together with the log likelihood value, wald chi-square, mc fadden’s rsquared, as well as the percent correctly predicted. the estimated logit model show that the value of mcfadden’s r-squared is 0.484. the percent correctly predicted is 84.28%, which indicates that the estimated logit model is generally good. generally speaking, the results show that the category agricultural activity and the local economic characteristics are significant to explain the decision of the farmer (head of agricultural household) to participate in off-farm employment. individual characteristics, on the contrary, are found insignificant. the results for each category are discussed below. individual characteristics (indc) the results show that age and gender are found statistically significant. quite surprisingly, education is found not significant. nonetheless, this is probably due to the nature of the off-farm job. in the rural areas, most off-farm jobs are probably selfemployed jobs in the informal sector. thus, the education level of the farmer might not be that important compared to a situation where the farmer is seeking off-farm job in the formal sector. the results also show that age has a negative relationship with the probability to participate in off-farm employment. this implies that the older the respondent (farmer), the lower the probability. determinants of farmer's participation in off-farm... 33 table 2: description of variables and expected sign variables definition expected sign dependent variable offemp (off-farm employment ) participation in off-farm employment (binary) yes = 1, no = 0 independent variable individual characteristics (indc) age (age) (continuous) age of the head of household + gen (gender) (dummy) male = 1, female = 0 + educ (education ) (continuous) highest level of education attained by the head of household + household characteristics (hhc) hhsize (household size ) (continuous) household size + depend (dependency ratio) (continuous) dependency ratio (kir/number of dependence) remitt (remittance) (continuous) total income received from remittance characteristics (category) of agricultural activity (agc) land (land size) (continuous) land size in “relong” type1 (paddy) (dummy) paddy; yes =1; no = 0 type2 (commercial crops) (dummy) commercial crops; yes =1; no = 0 + type3 (other crops) (dummy) other crops; yes =1; no = 0 + type4 (animal husbandry) (dummy) animal husbandry; yes =1; no = 0 + type5 (fishermen) (dummy fishermen; yes =1; no = 0 + type6 (aquaculture) (dummy) aquaculture; yes =1; no = 0 + time (working hours) (continuous) time allocated to agriculture activities per week rfthhi (ratio of farm income to total income of the farmer) (continuous) ratio of farm income to total income of the head of household local area (economic) characteristics (lac) c1(agriculture and industrial area) (dummy) agriculture and industrial area + c2 (agricultural area, no industrial activity) (dummy) agricultural area, no industrial activity + c3 (neither agriculture nor industrial area) (dummy) neither agriculture nor industrial area c4 (industrial area, with some agriculture activities) (dummy) industrial area, with some agriculture activities + distance to nearest town (dist) (continuous) distance between the respondent’s house to the nearest town asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 27-37 34 table 3: estimated logit model dependent variable offemp (off-farm employment ) participation in off-farm employment ((binary) (yes = 1, no = 0) independent variable estimated coefficient parameter standard error odds ratio constant 4.7002 1.6498 - individual characteristics (indc) age (age) -0.0662*** 0.0175 0.9360 gen (gender) 1.1635* 0.5994 3.2014 educ (education ) 0.1283 0.1429 1.1369 household characteristics (hhc) hhsize (household size ) -0.3093** 0.1116 0.7339 depend (dependency ratio) -2.9056* 1.2162 0.0547 remitt (remittance) -0.0025** 0.0008 0.9975 characteristics (category) of agricultural activity (agc) land (land size) 0.0995* 0.0465 1.1046 type1 (paddy) (reference) --- type2 (commercial crops) 1.5389** 0.5012 4.6598 type3 (other crops) 2.6692*** 0.6577 14.4279 type4 (animal husbandry) 3.5847*** 0.6643 36.0408 type5 (fishermen) 1.6902** 0.6306 5.4206 type6 (aquaculture) 1.1129 1.1588 3.0430 time (working hours) -0.0376** 0.0110 0.9631 rfthhi (ratio of farm income to total income of the farmer) -7.1274*** 0.8499 0.0008 local area (economic) characteristics (lac) c1(agriculture and industrial area) 3.1011*** 0.6604 22.2226 c2 (agricultural area, no industrial activity) 2.3765*** 0.6187 10.7677 c3 (neither agriculture nor industrial area) (reference) --- c4 (industrial area, with some agriculture activities) 2.5443*** 0.6741 12.7342 distance to nearest town (dist) 0.0042 0.0225 1.0042 log likelihood = -137.0678 number of obs = 381 lr chi2(18) = 203.66 prob > chi2 = 0.0000 pseudo r2 = 0.4262 percent correctly predicted = 84.25% mcfadden's r2 = 0.426 significance level: ***p<0.01; **p<0.05; *p<0.1 for the respondent to participate in off-farm employment. the odds ratio for age is 0.93, which implies that a one unit (year) increase in the age of the respondent will result in the odds of the respondent to participate in off-farm employment to decline by a factor of 0.93. it should be worth mentioning here that these results are quite similar to a study by howard and swidinsky (2000) in canada and also by matshe and young (2004) in zimbabwe. as for the gender variable, it is found significant in determining the decision of the farmer to participate in off-farm employment. besides, it is determinants of farmer's participation in off-farm... 35 also found to have a positive sign, which implies that the probability for male respondent (farmer) to participate in off-farm employment is higher than female. household characteristics (hhc) all of the variables under household characteristics – household size, dependency ratio and remittance are found significant in the decision of the respondent (farmer) to participate in off-farm employment. the result shows that the household size variable has a negative sign. this implies that the larger the household size, the lower the probability for the respondent (farmer) to participate in off-farm employment. in addition, the value of odds ratio for household size is 0.73, which suggest that an addition of one more member in the household would result in the odds of the the respondent (farmer) to participate in off-farm employment to decline by a factor of 0.73. the result also reveals that the remittance received by the respondent (farmer) has a negative relationship with the probability for the respondent (farmer) to participate in off-farm employment. the result suggests that the larger the amount of remittance received by the respondent (farmer), the lower the probability for the farmer to participate in off-farm employment, as expected. the finding also shows that the dependency ratio, which is the ratio of the farmer to the number of dependent in the household, has a negative relationship with the probability to participate in off-farm employment. this signifies that the lower the dependency ratio, i.e. the larger the number dependents, the higher the probability for the farmer to look for off-farm employment. this is understandable since a farmer with a larger number of dependents requires a higher income to sustain the family and hence, has a higher probability to look for off-farm job. characteristics of agricultural activity (agc) the result of this study shows that the size of the agriculture land is significant to explain the probability of the respondent (farmer) to participate in off-farm employment. however, quite surprisingly, it has a positive sign. this result suggests that as the size of the agriculture land increases, the probability for the respondent (farmer) to participate in off-farm employment is also increases. the odds ratio change indicated that a one unit increase in the agriculture land size would increase the probability of the respondent (farmer) to participate in off-farm employment by a factor 1.1. while the finding of this study shows that land size has a positive sign, which is contrary to prior expectation, this finding however, is similar to the findings of a study by benjamin and guyomard (1994), and benjamin and kimhi (2003). one possible explanation for this finding is that a larger size of land would enable the farmers to use more intensively modern technology as well as using paid labor to carry out their agricultural activities than small size of land. this is possible to do since those who own large land size normally find it easier to get credit from financial institutions than those with small land size. thus, farmers with large size of land would probably spend less time at their plot of land, which enable them to participate in off-farm employment. this study also discovers that the the number (length) of working hours allocated to agricultural activity is significant and has a negative relationship with the decision to participate in offfarm employment. this is expected since the longer the hours allocated to perform the agricultural activity, the shorter the time available to perform non-farm activity. thus, as more time is allocated to the agricultural activity, the lesser the probability of the respondent (farmer) to participate in off-farm employment. it is also found that the ratio of income from agricultural sources to total income of the respondent (farmer) is significant and as expected, has a negative relationship with the probability to participate in off-farm employment. this implies that the higher the proportion of income from agricultural sources in total income of the respondent (farmer), the lower the probability for the respondent (farmer) to participate in off-farm employment. this is sensible since those farmers whose main income is from agricultural sources probably they are also those who spend most of their time in agricultural activity. obviously, they will have less inclination for participating in offfarm employment. furthermore, the larger the contribution of farm income in total income of the farmer, which might indicate that income from asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 27-37 36 farm sources are already sufficient to sustain the family, the lower therefore the need to participate in off-farm employment. with regards to the type (or category) of agricultural activities, paddy planting (type1) activities is made as a reference. it is interesting to discover that, except aquaculture, all other categories (types) of agricultural activities are significant and have a positive signs. the results suggest that, respondent (farmer) who involve in these activities – commercial crops, other crops, animal husbandry, fishermen have a positive probability to participate into off-farm employment. it is worth mentioning the odds ratio for respondent (farmer) that involve in agricultural activities categorised as animal husbandry and other crops is larger. this implies that respondent (farmer) that involve in animal husbandry and other crops have a relatively higher probability to participate in offfarm employment compared if they were involved in paddy planting. local area characteristics (lac) the result shows that the distance to the nearest town is insignificant to explain the decision to participate in off-farm employment. however, all local economic characteristics of the area, i.e. variables c1, c2, and c4, are significant and have the expected positive signs. variable c3, which represents an area categorized as neither agricultural nor industrial areas, is made as a reference as it is expected that respondent (farmer) who live and work in this area category would be less likely to involve in non-farm activities compared to the other areas. the finding also uncovers that the odds ratio for respondent (farmer) who resided in area c1, i.e. an area that has significant agricultural and industrial activities, is considerably larger than the odds ratio for other areas. this implies that, if the respondent (farmer) in c3 is to be relocated to area c1, the probability of the respondent (farmer) to participate in off-farm employment is significantly higher. the results also shows that the impact of relocating the respondent (farmer) in c3 to area c2 (area which has significant agricultural activities but has no or minimal industrial activities) and c4 (area which has minimal agricultural activities, but is a major industrial area), the probability for respondent (farmer) to participate in off-farm employment will be higher, but less than the impact if they are relocated to area c1 (an area that has significant agricultural and industrial activities). conclusion most poor households are found in the rural areas where majority of them involved in agricultural activities. thus, improving their income and uplifting their socioeconomic status are important. in this regards, it has been argued in the literature that diversification into off-farm employment appears to be one of a viable options in uplifting the socioeconomic status of the rural-agricultural community. if the agricultural household could diversify their income through an off-farm job, and hence, improve their household income, the problem of poverty could probably be reduced. thus, the issue of how to increase participation of farmers in off-farm employment is an important question to be addressed. this entails an understanding on the determinants of farmers’ participation in off-farm employment. in this study, we consider this issue and investigate the important determinants in farmer’s decision to participate in off-farm employment. this study uncovers that the main determinants that influence the farmer’s decision to participate in offfarm employment are age, gender, household size, dependency ratio, remittance, land size, types of agricultural activities, the length of working hours allocated to the agricultural activity, the ratio of income from agricultural sources in total income of the farmer, and the local economic characteristics where the farmer reside. variables that are found to have a negative relationship with the decision to participate in off-farm employment are age, household size, dependency ratio, remittances, hours spend on agriculture activity, and the ratio of income from agricultural sources in total income of the farmer. on the other hand, land size is found to have a negative relationship with the decision to participate in off-farm employment. it is interesting to highlight that the evidence from this study suggest that respondent (farmer) who determinants of farmer's participation in off-farm... 37 resided in an area that has significant agricultural and industrial activities has higher probability to participate in off-farm employment than in other areas. thus, if the rural-agricultural households are to be encouraged to look for off-farm jobs, one of the policy challenges is to pursue a balanced development in the rural areas. a balanced development in terms of agricultural and industrial sector in the rural areas would increase the likelihood of the farmer to participate in off-farm job. this will consequently increase their income and uplift their standard of living. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdulai, a., & crolerees, a. (2001). determinants of income diversification amongst rural household in southern mali. food policy, 26, 437-452. bagamba, f., burger, k., & kuyvenhoven, a. (2007). determinants of smallholder farmer labour allocation decisions in uganda. paper presented in the eaae seminar on pro-poor development in low income countries: food, agriculture, trade and environment. montpellier, france. benjamin, c., & guyomard, h. (1994). off-farm work decisions of french agricultural households. in agricultural household modelling and family economics. benjamin, c., & kimhi, a. (2003). farm work, offfarm work, and hired farm labor: estimating a discrete choice model of french farm couples’ labor becisions. discussion paper no.5.03 may 2003. benjamin, d. (1992). household composition, labor markets, and labor demand: testing for separation in agricultural household models. econometrica, 60(2), 287-322. corsi, a., & findeis, j. l. (2000). true state dependence and heterogeneity in off-farm labour participation. review of agricultural economics, 27(2), 127-52. fao (1998). rural non-farm income in developing countries. the state of food and agriculture 1998. greene, w. h. (2000). econometric analysis. new jersey: prentice-hall international, inc. howard, w., & swidinsky, m. (2000). estimating the off-farm labor supply in canada. canadian journal of agricultural economics, 48(1), 1-14. huffman, w. e. (1980). farm and off-farm work decisions of husbands and wives: joint decision making. the review of economics and statistics, 62(1), 14-23. lanjouw, j. o., & lanjouw, p. (2001). the rural non-farm sector: issues and evidence from developing countries. agricultural economics, 26, 1-23. lanjouw, p., & feder. g (2001). rural non-farm activities and rural development: from experience towards strategy. rural development strategy background paper #4. the world bank rural development family. leinbach, t. r., & smith. a. (1994). off-farm employment, land, and life cycle: transmigrant household in south sumatra, indonesia. economic geography, 70(3), 273-296. lim-applegate, h., rodriguez, g., & olfert, r. (2002). determinants of non-farm labor participation rates among farmers in australia. the australian journal of agricultural and resource economics. 46, 85-98. long, j. s., & freese, j. (2006). regression models for categorical dependent variables using stata. stata press. maddala, g. s. (1983). limited-dependent and qualitative variables in economics. new york: cambridge university press, pp. 257-291. matshe, i., & young, t. (2004). off-farm labour allocation decisions in small-scale rural households in zimbabwe. agricultural economics, 30(3), 175-186. wooldridge, j. m. (2002). econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. massachusetts: the mit press. publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. estimation of a mechanization index and its impact on energy and economic factors in apple orchard in iran raheleh fadavi., alireza keyhani and seyyed saied mohtasebi (department of agricultural machinery engineering, faculty of agricultural engineering and technology, university of tehran, karaj, iran) citation: raheleh fadavi., alireza keyhani and seyyed saied mohtasebi (2012): ―estimation of a mechanization index and its impact on energy and economic factors in apple orchard in iran‖, asian journal agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 248-259. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 248-259 248 author(s) raheleh fadavi department of agricultural machinery engineering, faculty of agricultural engineering and technology, university of tehran, karaj, iran email:fadavi.raheleh@gmail.com alireza keyhani and seyyed saied mohtasebi department of agricultural machinery engineering, faculty of agricultural engineering and technology, university of tehran, karaj, iran estimation of a mechanization index and its impact on energy and economic factors in apple orchard in iran abstract this study was conducted in the 2008-9 production year in west azerbaijan province (uromia township). the energy ratio, energy productivity, economic productivity and mechanization index were estimated for apple production. data were collected using random sampling for 80 face-to-face respondents. results showed that the highest share of energy consumption belongs to packaging (57%) followed by irrigation (16%). the highest share of expenses was found to be 34% and 30% for labour and packaging, respectively. mechanization was considered at three levels including level 1 for spraying only, level 2 for spraying and plotting, and level 3 for spraying and fertilizing operations. the energy ratio was found to be less than one for all mechanization levels having the highest value in level 2 (0.58). the highest economic productivity was calculated as 1.9 for level 2. results showed that increasing the mechanization index, will not necessarily increase energy ratio and economic productivity. keywords: energy ratio, economic productivity, apple, mechanization index introduction nowadays, machinery and labour are the main resources for agricultural operations, but machinery is gradually replacing labour,, where savings in time and improving the quality of agricultural operations are mainly due to utilization of mechanical power, particular definition of mechanization only involves mechanical technology and machine-related issues, common definition of mechanization involves all issues related of agriculture and management of them (almasi et al. 2008). really, mechanization is benefiting of technology, as a result mechanization technology is locationspecific and dynamic (singh, 2006). at first, accessible indices are necessary to development in order to mechanization development. in this study, mechanization does not involve only machining agricultural operation rather every effective factor in energy and economic management and sustainable farming are considered mecha nization. in developed country, the main object of mechanization utilization is decreasing expenses or labour energy, but in developing country, it is increasing production. apple is one of the superior productions in worldwide due to its nutrient and exporting value. in 2005, apple orchards‘ area was summed up to 201000 ha with total production of 2.66 million ton in iran (anonymous 2006a). the west azarbaijan province is the leading apple (delicious & golden varieties with long legged, 277 trees per hectare) producer in iran, with approximately 27.1% share of total apple orchard area and 29.8% share of total apple production in iran (anonymous 2006a). also, about half of this province‘s apple production and apple orchard area is allocated to oromieh township (anonymous 2005). based asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 248-259 249 on data from the food and agriculture organization (fao) of the united nations in 2006, iran is ranked third largest apple production in the world after china and usa (anonymous 2006b) (table1). table 1: the production of apples in some important apple producing countries in 2006 (anonymous. 2006b) countries production quantity (ton) china 26065500 usa 4568630 iran 2661901 poland 2304892 italy 2112720 turkey 2002033 india 1739000 crop yields and food supplies are directly linked to energy and energy consumption. energy use in agriculture has been developed in response to increasing populations, limited supply of arable land and a desire for higher standards of living. more intensive energy use of fossil fuel, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, machinery and electricity has brought some important human health and environmental problems. thus, efficient use of energy inputs is of prompt importance in terms of sustainable farming. an input–output energy analysis provides farm planners and policy makers an opportunity to evaluate economic intersection of energy use (ozkan et al. 2004a). apple is a crop requiring high-energy inputs for successful commercial production of a high-quality fruit. considerable research studies have been conducted on energy use in agriculture, however, relatively little attention has been paid to apple production. van den berg et al. (2007) reported that increasing of farm size requires mechanization utilization, on the other hand these two factors are considerable in farmer sۥ production and income. nkakini et al. (2006) investigated that mechanized methods require less energy than manual methods. chen et al (2008) revealed that mechanization utilization has caused to productivity growth in agriculture in chin at 19902003 years. furthermore, this study considered the energy and economic matters in apple orchards, strapatsa et al. (2006), determined the amount of energy consumption from which one kilogram apple is produced along with energy indices in apple production in 1999-2000 for greece. hasanzadeh & rahbar (2005) studied energy use for apple production in iran. funt (1980) conducted a study to optimize the energy inputs for apple in eastern u.s. conditions. baldini et al. (1982), investigated energy utilization in apple in italy. the aims of this study were to estimation of a mechanization index and its impact on energy and economic factors. the study also sought to determine input–output energy use in apple production to investigate the efficiency of energy consumption and to make an economic analysis in apple production in oromieh township in iran. materials and methods the west azarbaijan province is located in the northwestern of iran, with 37 590 km2 area (except oromieh lake), within 44° 3' to 47° 24' eastern longitude, and 36° 5' to 39° 46' northern latitude. neighboring with three foreign countries, it is considered an important province with regard to export. data were collected from 80 apple orchard in the oromieh township of west azarbijan province by using a face to face questionnaire in 2008. information was sought on inputs used for production of apple as well as economic characteristics of the orchards. sample orchards were randomly selected from the villages in the study area by using a stratified random sampling technique. the sample size was calculated using the cochran method as in eq. 1: n= nt2s2/(nd2+t2s2) (1) where: d – the precision where (x x) or mid-confidence interval n – the required sample size n – the number of holdings in target population s2 – the variance of surveyed factor of population (energy and economic productivity) t – the reliability coefficient (1.96 which represents the 95% confidence interval) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 248-259 250 the permissible error in the sample size was defined to be 5% for 95% confidence. the sample size was calculated as 77 orchards and increased to 80 to improve accuracy. farmers‘ responses were obtained through face to face interviews, in production year in 2008. before collecting data, the survey form was pre-tested by a group of randomly selected farmers and these pre-tested surveys were not included in the final data set. a mechanization index based on the matrix of use of animate and mechanical energy inputs could be given by incorporating energy and cost factors in to eqs (2) and (3) respectively (singh, 2006): im= eem / (eem+eea+eeh) (2) im= cem / (cem+cea+ceh) (3) where: im is the mechanization index of the apple crop in the oromieh township; eem and cem are the energy and cost of use of machinery; eea and cea are the energy and cost of use of animal labour; eeh and ceh are the energy and cost of use of human labour (in this research, no animal energy is used). based on the energy equivalents of the inputs and outputs (table 2), the metabolisable energy was calculated. energy ratio (energy use efficiency) and energy productivity were calculated (mandal et al. 2002): output input ratio (er) = energy output (mj/ha) / energy input (mj/ha) (4) energy productivity (ep) = total output (kg/ha) / energy input (mj/ha) (5) table 2: energy equivalents of inputs and output in agricultural production inputs (unit) energy equivalent (mj/unit) reference 1. chemical fertilizers (kg) (a) nitrogen 78.1 mj/kg kitani, 1999 (b) phosphate (p2o5) 17.4 mj/kg kitani, 1999 (c) potassium (k2o) 13.7 mj/kg kitani, 1999 (d) superior chemical 120 mj/kg singh & mittal, 1992 2. farmyard manure (kg) 0.0303 mj/kg singh & mittal, 1992 3. chemical biocides (l) (a) insecticides 199 mj/l helsel, 1992 (b) benomyl 397 mj/l kitani, 1999 (c) captan 115 mj/l kitani, 1999 (d) other fungicides 92 mj/l helsel, 1992 4. diesel fuel (l) 47.8 mj/l kitani, 1999 5. electricity (kwh) 12 mj/kwh kitani, 1999 6.wood (packaging) (kg dry mass) 18 mj/kg singh & mittal, 1992 7. transportation (t.km) 2.6 mj/t.km kitani, 1999 8. tractor (kg) 138 mj/kg kitani, 1999 9. fertilizer (sprayer) (kg) 129 mj/kg kitani, 1999 10. disk harrow (kg) 149 mj/kg kitani, 1999 11. human labour (h) 0.27 mj/h kitani, 1999 12. apple (kg) 1.9 mj/kg singh & mittal, 1992 13. refrigerating (t.day) 1.151 mj/t.day anonymous., 2007 in order to calculate inputs energy needed for irrigation (required energy for pumping water), eq. (4) was used (kitani, 1999): qp ghq de    (6) where: de – direct energy (j/ha) g – acceleration due to gravity (m/s2) h – total dynamic head (m) q – volume of required water for one cultivating season (m3/ha)  – density of water (kg/m3) p – pump efficiency (70-90%) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 248-259 251 q – total power conversion efficiency (18-20%) (ercolia et al.1999) this study, required water was estimated 7000 m3 for one cultivating season. the output/input analysis was also applied in economic benefits analysis. the process was similar with energy balance analysis. the economic (or energy) inputs of this system include costs of human labour, chemical fertilizers, chemicals biocides, packaging, transportation, refrigerating, fixed costs and agricultural machinery. the economic (or energy) outputs of this system include main and secondary yields. all considered prices of inputs and outputs were averaged market prices in production year of 2008-2009. the economic analysis include ratio of total outputs to total inputs. all estimations were carried out using the spss16 software and excel program. results and discussion economic analysis of apple production the costs of each input and gross production values calculated in apple production are given in table 3. fixed and variable costs within total production costs were calculated independent from each other. the gross value of production (13 873 $/ha) was found by multiplying the apple yield (primary and secondary) (19 447 kg/ha, 4 335 kg/ha) to their corresponding prices (0.7 $/kg, 0.06 $/kg) and summing the results. the total mean production cost was 7816 $/ha, where 92.1% was the share of variable costs, and 7.9% fixed costs. several studies report that the ratio of variable cost was higher than that of fixed cost in cropping systems (esengune et al. 2007; cetin and vardar, 2008; mohammadi et al. 2008). based on these results, the benefit–cost ratio from apple production in the surveyed orchards was calculated to be 1.8. the research results were consistent with the findings reported by other researchers for other orchard crops, such as 2.37 for orange, 1.89 for lemon and 1.88 for mandarin (ozkan et al. 2004b), the gross return (6 673 $/ha) was calculated by subtracting the variable cost of production per hectare (7 200 $/ha) from the gross value of production (13 873 $/ha). the productivity (2.5 kg/$) was obtained by dividing apple yield (19 447 kg/ha) by total production costs (7 816 $/ ha). table 3: economic analysis of apple production cost and return components unit value yield (main) kg/ha 19447 sale price (main) $/kg 0.7 yield (secondary) kg/ha 4335 sale price (secondary) $/kg 0.06 gross value of production $/ha 13873 variable cost of production $/ha 7200 fixed cost of production $/ha 616 total cost of production $/ha 7816 total cost of production (only main) $/kg 0.4 total cost of production (main and secondary) $/kg 0.33 gross return $/ha 6673 net return $/ha 6057 benefit to cost ratio 1.8 productivity (only main) kg/$ 2.5 productivity (main and secondary) kg/$ 3 fig 1 shows that the percentage share of each input from the total energy input as can be seen from fig. 1, of all the inputs, the human labour expenses has the biggest share of 34%. the majority of manual labour in the orchards was spent during harvesting, irrigating, pruning, fertilizing orchard operations, respectively. almost in all surveyed orchards, most operation were performed by manual labour, due to lack of machineries suitable for tall trees. also, some farmers were concerned about the soil compaction resulting from machinery traffic. packaging (30%) and refrigerating (19%) expenses are followed by fixed costs (7%). results revealed that harvesting and postharvest operations are the most important expenses with a 65.6 %, labour expenses share for harvesting (43%), irrigation (21.7%), pruning (21.5%), fertilization (8.8 %), sprayer (3%) and plotting (2%) operation were found. results revealed that due to low mechanization level in apple orchard, human energy is accounted for 34% and that of machineries for 1% of total costs. postharvesting (53.62%), irrigating (12.3%), asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 248-259 252 harvesting (12%), fertilization (6.2%), plotting (1.2%), pruning (6%), fixed cost (6%) and sperying (4.1%) operations also accounted for most of expenses in surveyed apples orchard. fig 1: the percentage share of each input of the total expenses analysis of input–output energy use in apple production the yield in apple orchard is generally carried out by human labour energy in the research area and the number of large orchard holdings using modern technology is very limited. the average size in the surveyed orchards has been found to be 1.2 ha with a range from 0.1 up to 5 ha. machine power was used for only sprayer (in all orchards), and fertilizing and plotting (in few orchards) due to the fact that most apple orchards are designed in a conventional way in which machineries traffic is really limited. the source of labour in the surveyed orchards is from either family members or mainly from hired (seasonal) labours and most of the machineries are mainly provided by rent. the energy consumption and its sources for apple production are presented in table 4. total physical energy input consists of diesel, fertilizer, chemicals, human power, machinery, irrigation, packaging, refrigerating and transportation. as can be seen from table 4, the total energy used in various farm inputs is 101 505 mj/ha. the last column in table 4 gives the percentage share of each input from the total energy inputs. of all the inputs, wood packaging has the largest share (57%), apples are packaged with wood because owners of apple orchards are believed that wooden boxes that store more power box than plastics or other types of packing boxes. packaging energy is followed by the irrigation energy (16%), based on duration of irrigation (524h for one ha); irrigation methods were conventional or semi-mechanized (mostly with electric pump and conventional), an apple orchard is irrigated 8 to 10 times a year. one group of orchards was irrigated only the water supplied through the permanent river, another group was irrigated 2 to 3 times with seasonal rivers, and others only with well. energy for diesel is ranked third (10%). the diesel energy was mainly utilized for operating tractors, (mostly messy ferguson (mf) & goldoni in the surveyed apple orchards), fuel consumption of goldoni type is less than that of mf, in spite of being conventional, diesel energy was accounted for 10% of total energy inputs. the level of technology in the studied orchards was very low. the total energy equivalent of chemical fertilizers consumption placed fourth among the energy inputs and constituted (9%) of the total energy input, and nitrogen (7%) was in the first place followed by phosphate (1%), potassium (0.7%) and superior chemical (0.3%). the most frequently used fertilizer is farmyard manure and even in some orchards chemical fertilizers is not used because of soil structure and soil nutrients preservation. the contribution of transportation, farmyard manure and machinery energies remained at low level of 1% (in total) as indirect energy inputs. hasanzadeh and rahbar (2005), reported that the most energy consuming input for apple production in west azarbaijan province was that for irrigation, nitrogen chemical fertilizing and chemical biocides, respectively. according to kisilaslan (2009), percentage shares for fertilizers (42%), electricity (22%) and fuel (21%) showed highest from total energy used in cherry production in turkey. strapatsa et al. (2006), calculated that the most energy inputs for orchard apple production in greece were fuel (33%), machinery (25%) and fertilizers (15%), mainly n (where orchards were irrigated 1-2 times a year), respectively. in italy, in a similar study in apple 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 m ac hi ne s m an ur e c he m ic al f er til iz er c he m ic al b io ci de s ir ri ga tio n pa ck ag in g t ra ns po rt at io n r ef ri ge ra tin g or ch ar d es ta bl is hi ng la bo ur $ i n a h e c ta r 1 2 3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 248-259 253 cultivation carried out by baldini et al. (1982), fuel and fertilizers (mainly n) accounted for most of total energy inputs (46.4 and 20.9%, respectively). in eastern u.s. in apple orchards (funt, 1980), fuel and machinery accounted for around 70%, fertilizers 10.3%, and biocides 14.7% of total energy inputs, while human labour was not included in the energy analysis. in all studies sited, postharvest operation were not included. table 4: amounts of inputs, output and energy inputs and output in apple production inputs (unit) total energy equivalent (mj/ha) apple percentage (%) a. inputs nitrogen (kg) 7105 7 phosphate (p2o5) (kg) 1015 1 potassium (k2o) (kg) 710 0.7 superior chemical (kg) 305 0.3 water for irrigation (m3) 16241 16 chemical biocides (l) 2030 2 wood packaging (kg) 57858 57 refrigerating (ton.day) 2030 2 disel(l) 10151 10 human labour (h) 3045 3 transportation (ton.km) + farmyard manure (kg) + machinary (h) 1015 1 total energy input (mj) 101505 100 b. outputs yield (main) (kg) 19447 yield (secondary) (kg) 4335 yield (main & secondary) (kg) 23782 output energy (main) (mj) 36949 total energy output (main & secondary) (mj) 45185 c. items energy use efficiency (main) 0.36 energy productivity (main) (kg/mj) 0.19 net energy (main) (mj/ha) -64556 energy use efficiency (main & secondary) 0.44 energy productivity (main & secondary) (kg/mj) 0.23 net energy (main & secondary) (mj/ha) -56320 total energy input (mj/ha) 100 output–input ratio is one of the essential indicators that provide an understanding of the efficiency of orchard holdings. the energy use efficiency, energy productivity and net energy of apple production in the oromieh township are tabulated in table 4. energy use efficiency (energy ratio) was calculated as 0.36 and varied from 0.23 to 0.52 in the sampled orchard holdings, showing the inefficient use of energy in the orchard apple production. it is noteworthy that the ratio can be increased by increasing the crop yield (energy equivalent of apple is low relatively) and/or by decreasing energy inputs consumption (input management). similar results have been reported for differe nt orchard plants such as 0.96 for cherry (kizilaslan, 2009) and 0.97 for apple (hasanzadeh and rahbar, 2005) (postharvest operation were not included), some higher energy ratios have been reported such as 1.00 for apple (strapatsa et al. 2006) and 3.37 for apricot (gezer et al. 2003) in the literature. the results indicate that energy productivity and net energy were 0.19 kg/mj and -64 556 mj/ha, respectively. this means that 0.19 units output was obtained per unit energy. calculation of energy productivity is well documented in the literature for different crops such as soybean (0.18) (de asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 248-259 254 et al. 2001), potato (0.35) (mohammadi et al. 2008) and cherry (0.51) (kizilaslan, 2009). the calculated net energy is negative (less than zero) implying that in apple production, energy has been lost. results showed that economic productivity is better than energy productivity, which means that only economic issue is more important for farmers in the region. at first glance, this seems natural, since farmers think only of their immediate income and future effects of this negative energy gain is not obvious. this is something that governments should take into consideration by taking some steps such as managing or removing subsidies for agricultural inputs (fuel, fertilizers, biocides…), training farmers, introducing newer technologies and etc. to make the task beneficial both from economical and energetical points of views. the results revealed that the share of human energy and human expenses were 3% of total energy and 34% of total expenses, respectively (human energy is valuable energy). strapatsa et al. (2006), estimated human energy as 2.7% of total inputs energy. postharvesting (41%), fertilization (35%), plotting (13%), irrigating (9%) and spraying (2%) operations also accounted for most of energy inputs in surveyed apple orchards. strapatsa et al. (2006) reported that pest controlling (40%), harvesting and transportation (21.6%) and fertilization (16.8%) operations have the most share of energy inputs. results revealed that orchard operations is carried out mostly by human energy and its share is insignificant (almost zero) in energy consumption compared to other energy inputs. human energy is highly consumed in pruning and harvesting operations (pruning operation requires technical labour). mechanization analysis of apple production most agricultural operations are conducted using labour energy. in other words, the surveyed orchards are categorized as conventional. therefore, the share of machine energy and its corresponding expenses were calculated to be insignificant at 1% probability level. the average mechanization index was calculated as 0.052 and 0.48 for expenses and energies, respectively. according to results, orchardist does not utilize machines in order to prevent soil compaction and preserve soil structure. even if fertilizing, plotting and other operations had been conducted by machines, mechanization index could not vary significantly due to the fact that the share of labour cost and energy of harvesting operation summed up to more than all other operations, fadavi et al. (2010) and fadavi et al. (2011), reported that by increasing mechanization index only, energy consumption will not decrease necessarily, and suggested that management of inputs consumption is more important. tractors are utilized in fertilizing, plotting and spraying operations. agricultural experts of the region believe that the correct method of fertilizing to make nutrients available to the root, is fertilizer-pitting (burying fertilizer in depth of 30-40 cm of soil). in some of the orchards, fertilizing operation was implemented either by rotary tiller or manual on the surface of soil. in this case, fertilizer is not accessible to the root because of deep root of apple trees along with soil compaction due to the function and heavy weight of the rotary tiller. in the surveyed region, pitting operation was not mechanized; on the contrary, this was operated with labours leading to more expenses and time wasting. mechanization was considered in three levels that is level 1 for spraying only, level 2 for spraying and plotting and level 3 for spraying and fertilizing operations. irrigating was carried out as semimechanized with deep wells or by river or dam in levels 2 and 3 while it was conventional in level 1. fig 2 shows that increasing mechanization index causes to increase in machine expense while this fact could not lead to decrease in labour expense. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 248-259 255 fig 2: the percentage of the input energies in the mechanization levels the cost of irrigation is increased in level 1 due to applying conventional method. costs of packaging, transportation and refrigerating are increased by going from mechanization level 1 to 3. this means that production is increased by increasing mechanization level (the method of packaging, transportation and refrigerating operation was similar in all apple orchards). categorization of mechanization levels (based on mechanization index) is shown in table 5 and 6. table 5: classification of mechanization levels based on mechanization index of cost levels of mechanization frequency quantity specification level 1 15 0.010.032 spraying level 2 33 0.0320.05 sprayingplotting level 3 32 0.05-0.14 sprayingfertilizing table 6: classification of mechanization levels based on mechanization index of input energy levels of mechanization frequency quantity specification level 1 12 0.02-0.25 spraying level 2 26 0.25 -0.49 sprayingplotting level 3 42 0.49 -0.8 sprayingfertilizing fig. 3 shows that the energy of nitrogen fertilizer level 2 is less than that of other levels due to better inputs management. fig 3: the energy ratio in levels of mechanization the result of duncan test (using spss 16 software) is shown in table 7. it is clear that the mechanization index had significant effect on the energy ratio at 5% probability level. table 7: comparing the mean of energy ratio in the levels of mechanization index by using duncan test (5%) mechanization index frequency subcollection 1 2 level 1 12 0.48 level 3 42 0.52 level 2 26 0.58 according to table 5, energy ratio is calculated less than 1 at all levels of mechanization, this means that energy is lost, but energy efficiency in level 2 is more than that of other levels. one reason for increasing energy ratio is reduction of irrigation energy and its corresponding electricity or fuel consumption. also, in level 2, goldoni tractor was utilized while in other levels mf285 tractor was used, where fuel consumption of goldoni tractor is less than that of mf285. the energy ratio in mechanization levels are shown in table 8 and fig. 4. 0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 n itr og en c he m ic al fe rt ili ze r m an ur e c he m ic al b io ci de s irr ig at io n pa ck ag in g tr an sp or ta tio n r ef ri ge ra tin g m ac hi ne s fu el la bo ur m j /h a 1 2 3 0.48 0.34 0.58 0.4 0.52 0.37 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 er (main and secondray production) er (main production) e r 1 2 3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 248-259 256 fig 4: the economic productivity in levels of mechanization table 8: estimation of energy productivity and energy ratio in levels of mechanizati variable level 1 level 2 level 3 input energy (main & secondary) (mj/ha) 100681 93173 106898 output energy (main & secondary) (mj/ha) 47069 52688 53390 energy use efficiency (main & secondary) 0.48 0.58 0.52 energy productivity (main & secondary) (kg/mj) 0.3 0.35 0.32 net energy (main & secondary) (mj/ha) -53612 -40486 -53508 input energy (main) (mj/ha) 100633 93112 106842 output energy (main) (mj/ha) 33936 36993 37782 energy use efficiency (main) 0.34 0.4 0.37 energy productivity (main) (kg/mj) 0.18 0.21 0.19 net energy (main) (mj/ha) -66697 -56119 -69060 the result of duncan test (using spss16 software) is shown in table 9, results showed that mechanization index had significant effect on the economic productivity at 5% probability level. table 9: comparing the mean of economic productivity in the levels of mechanization index by using duncan test (5%) mechanization index frequency subcollection 1 2 level 1 15 1.76 level 3 32 1.79 level 2 33 1.9 according to table 9, economic productivity is calculated more than 1 at all levels of mechanization, but economic productivity in level 2 is more than other levels. the most of operation were conducted manually in level 1 as a result labour expense was increased; results show that management of inputs consumption in level 2 is better than other levels but unfortunately orchardists regard to neither energy nor environment only economic matters is important. table 10 and fig 5 the economic productivity in mechanization levels is shown. fig. 5. (here) table 10: estimation of expense, production and economic productivity in levels of mechanization variable level 1 level 2 level 3 expense in a ha (main & secondary) ($) 7612.2 7555 8020.2 income in a ha (main & secondary) ($) 13390.3 14304.7 14559.2 economic productivity (main & secondary) 1.76 1.9 1.8 the expense for one kg apple (main & secondary) ($) 0.43 0.39 0.41 expense in a ha (main) ($) 7425 7362.8 7840.8 income in a ha (main) ($) 12748.5 13680.2 13954 economic productivity (main) 1.7 1.9 1.78 the expense for one kg apple (main) 0.4 0.38 0.39 conclusions data used in this study were collected from 80 farmers located in the oromieh township of west azerbaijan province in iran. orchard production consumed a total of 1.7 1.76 1.9 1.9 1.78 1.8 1.6 1.65 1.7 1.75 1.8 1.85 1.9 1.95 main production main and secondary production e c o n o m ic p ro d u c ti v it y 1 2 3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 248-259 257 101 505.5 mj/ha energy and energy output was calculated as 45 185.135 mj/ha. the results revealed that wooden packaging (57%), irrigation (16%), fuel (10%) and chemical fertilizer (9%) were the major contributors of total energy use in apple orchards. energy productivity, net energy gain and output–input energy were calculated 0.23 kg/mj, 56320mj/ha and o.44 respectively. in this study, energy management is important, therefore, policies should emphasize on development of new technologies (application of new technologies such as packaging and irrigation are encouraged) and provide with alternative energy resources aiming efficient use of energy (use of goldoni tractors instead of other common tractors can be saved in fuel consumption and also prevent of soil compaction). the results derived from this study can be used by policy makers and other relevant agencies for recommendations to farmers in order to use energy more efficiently. the benefit–cost ratio was found to be 1.77. the mean net return from apple production was obtained as 6049.8 $/ ha. human labour (34%) and packaging (30%) expenses are followed by the refrigerating (19%). due to low mechanization level in apple orchards, human expense accounted for 34% and machine 1% of total costs. postharvesting (41%), irrigating (9%), fertilization (35%), plotting (13%), and sperying (2%) operations also accounted for most energy consumptions. also, postharvesting (53.62%), irrigating (12.3%), harvesting (12%), fertilization (6.2%), plotting (1.2%), pruning (6%), fixed cost (6%) and spraying (4.1%) operations accounted for most of expenses in surveyed apple orchards. the mean of mechanization index was calculated 0.052 and 0.48 for expenses and energies respectively in apple orchards due to being conventional orchards, mechanization was considered in three levels including level 1 for spraying only, level 2 for spraying and plotting and level 3 for spraying and fertilizing operations. energy ratio was found to be less than one for all mechanization levels having the highest value in level 2 (0.58). the highest economic productivity was calculated as 1.9 for level 2. results showed that by increasing mechanization index, energy ratio and economic productivity will not increase necessarily. at all levels of mechanization, energy ratio was calculated less than 1 and if this trend continues to be a serious threat to environmental sustainability. mechanization index had significant effect on the energy ratio and economic productivity at 5% probability level due to difference of management and method of inputs utilizing. energy management is an important issue in terms of efficient, sustainable and economical use of energy. these results indicate that energy use in apple production is not efficient, leading to many environmental problems and detrimental to the natural resources by excess use of inputs. all these inputs would be useful not only for reducing negative effects to environment, human health, maintaining sustainability and decreasing production costs, but also for providing higher energy use efficiency. list of selected symbols n – required sample size n – number of holdings in target population d – precision where ( x x ) t – reliability coefficient (1.96 in the case of 95% reliability) s2 – variance of surveyed factor of population er – energy ratio ep – energy productivity (kg/mj) im – mechanization index eem – energy of use of machinery cem – cost of use of machinery eea – energy of use of animal labour cea – cost of use of animal labour eeh – energy of use of human labour ceh – cost of use of human labour p – pump efficiency q – total energy and power conversion efficiency – density of water (kg/m3) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 248-259 258 h – total dynamic head (m) g – gravitational acceleration (m/s2) q – volume of required water for one cultivating season (m3/ha) references almasi m, kiyani sh, lavaimi n (2008) ―principles of agricultural mechanization‖, 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(in persian) helsel zr (1992) in: fluck rc, editor. energy and alternatives for fertilizer and pesticide use in ‗‗energy in http://www.fao.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 248-259 259 world agriculture‘‘, vol. 6. amsterdam: elsevier science publishing; pp. 177–210. kitani o (1999) cigr, handbook of agricultural engineering. vol. v., energy and biomass engineering. asae publication, st joseph, mi. kizilaslan h (2009) ―input-output energy analysis of cherries production in tokat province of turkey‖, journal of applied energy, vol. 86, pp. 1354-58. mandal kg, saha kp, gosh pl, hati km, bandyopadhyay kk (2002) ―bioenergy and economic analyses of soybean-based crop production systems in central india‖, journal of biomass bioenergy, vol. 23, pp. 337–45. mohammadi a, tabatabaeefar a, shahin s, rafiee s, keyhani a (2008) ―energy use and economical analysis of potato production in iran a case study: ardabil province‖, journal of energy convers manage, vol. 49, pp. 3566-70. nkakini so, ayotamuno mj, ogaji sot, probert sd (2006) ―farm mechanization leading to more effective energy-utilization for cassava and yam cultivation in rivers state, nigeria‖, journal of applied energy, vol. 83, pp.1317-25. ozkan b, akcaoz h, fert c (2004a) ―energy input–output analysis in turkish agriculture‖, journal of renew energy, vol. 29, pp. 39–51. ozkan b, akcaoz h, karadeniz f (2004b) ―energy requirement and economic analysis of citrus production in turkey‖, journal of energy convers manage, vol. 45, pp. 1821–30. singh g (2006) ―estimation of mechanisation index and its impact on production and economic factors-a case study in india‖, journal of biosystems engineering, vol. 93, pp. 99106. singh s, mittal jp (1992) energy in production agriculture. mittal pub. new delhi. strapatsa av, nanos g d, tsatsarelis ca (2006) ―energy flow for integrated apple production in greece‖, agriculture, journal of ecosystem & environment, vol. 116, pp. 176-80. van den berg mm, hengsdijk h, wolf j, van ittersum mk, guanghuo w, roetter rp (2007) ―the impact of increasing farm size and mechanization on rural income and rice production in zhejiange province, china‖, journal of agriculture system, vol. 94, pp. 841-50. publisher: asian economic and social society issn: 2224-4433 volume 2. no. 2, june 2012 effects of family size on household food security in osun state, nigeria adebayo oyefunke olayemi (department of agricultural economics extension, ladoke akintola university of technology, ogbomoso, nigeria) citation: adebayo oyefunke olayemi (2012): “effects of family size on household food security in osun state, nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 136-141. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 136-141 136 author(s) adebayo oyefunke olayemi economics extension, ladoke akintola university of technology, ogbomoso, nigeria email: fadeyo0007@ yahoo.com effects of family size on household food security in osun state, nigeria abstract the study investigated effects of family size on household food security in osun state, nigeria. multistage sampling technique was employed to select 110 respondents for the study. a well structured questionnaire was used in collecting information from the respondents. the data were subjected to descriptive and tobit regression analysis. the results of the study indicated that about 60.9% had family size of 5and 8 members. only 24.5% were food secure. coping strategies employed include borrowing money, relying on less preferred and less expensive food. the constraints faced includes, poor access to credit (84.5%), and lack of input (81.8%). the study concludes that large family size has negative impact on house food security. the study recommended that government and non government agency should intensified effort on importance of family planning and advocate small family size in rural area. keywords: family size, household, food security introduction food is a basic necessity of life. its importance at the household level is obvious since it is a basic means of sustenance (olayemi 1996). in view of the importance of food in man’s life food is rate as the most basic of all human needs (oluyole and lawal 2008). according to okunmadewa (2001), the concern for food security and nutritional well being in an economy is predicated by role of human element in economic development. this shows why at national level food is of economic and political significant especially in issues relating and ensuring peace and stability among the populace. the socio-economic characteristics and resources of individual household have been identified as basic factors influencing the food security status of household (sanusi et al. 2006). worldwide, about 852million men, women, children are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty while up to 2billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying degree of poverty (fao, 2003). typically large family size has significant relationship with much greater risk of poverty (maxwell 1996). obamiro et al (2003) reported that an increase in household size would likely being the household membership to food insecure group. in nigeria, the production of food has not increased at the rate that can match the food demand of the increasing population. while food demand increases annually at the rate of 2.5 percent, food demand increases annually at a rate of more than 3.5 percent due to the high rate of annual population growth of 2.83 percent (oluyole and lawal 2008). however household food security depends not only on the available of an adequate and sustainable supply of food but also on the coping strategies employed by households for its acquisition. in view of these, this study aims at finding answer to the following questions.  what are the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents in the study area?  what is the food security status of the respondents?  what are the coping strategies employed by the respondents?  what are the constraints facing the respondents in the study area? it was hypothesized that there is no significant relationship between socioeconomic characteristic and food security status. methodology the area of study was iwo local government area of osun state. the area shares boundaries with lagelu lga in the south, oyo lga in the west, aiyedire lga in the east, and olaoluwa lga in the north. the study area is located between latitude 7 0 45 1 n and longitude 4 15e and it cover a land area of 245km.it has a population of about 275,332 people in 2006, according to the national population commission (npc). farming is the main occupation of the people; others include slaughtering and sales of cattle, artisan and civil service. population of the study includes all asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 136-141 137 rural household in the local government area. multistage sampling technique was used. five wards were selected through a random sampling technique. from each wards, 22 household head were selected to obtain total sample of one hundred and ten (110) respondents for the study. both primary and secondary data were used. descriptive statistical tools such frequency and percentages were used to analyses the data obtained through the use of structured questionnaire. the inferential statistical tool is tobit model to test the relationship between the variables. measurement of variables the dependent variable of the study is the household food security level. it was measured using household food insecurity access scale hfias (coates et al. 2007). there are nine questions which were asked with a recall period of four weeks (30 days). the respondent was first asked an occurrence question that is whether the condition in the question happened at all in the past four weeks (yes or no). if the respondent answered “yes” to an occurrence question, a frequency of occurrence question was asked to determine whether the condition happen rarely, sometimes, often and never. given a scale of often=3, sometime=2, rarely = i never=0. the maximum score for a household is 27, while the minimum score is 0.the lower the score the less food insecurity (access) a household experienced. coping strategies: this refers to strategies employed when food is insufficient. this was measured on a four point scale always, sometime, rarely and never. these were assign value of 3, 2, 1 and 0. there are 11 items on the scale thus a cumulative score were obtained according to (maxwell 2008). family size: the ideal family size in nigeria according to national population policy (1988) classification is six (parents and children). any number less or equal to six is regarded as small family, while number greater than six constitutes larger family size in this study. results and discussion socio economic characteristic of the respondents age at marriage majority of the respondents were married between the age of 21 and 25 years. only 16.4% married between the age of 16 and 20 years, while 21.8% married between the age of 26 and 30 years. the mean age at marriage is 21.3. this implies that early marriage will be a dominant factor in the prevalent large family size. this support the findings of perez-morales (1996) that young people in rural area get married earlier and become involved in adult responsibility. age of respondents majority (69.9%) of small scale farmers are aged between 30 and 49 years. (table 1). this could be regarded as middle age. only (5.5%) were young (2029 years), while 14.5% could be regarded as fairly old i.e. 50-59 years. the mean age of the respondents is 45.7. this result suggests that respondents in the study area are medium to slightly old people. gender majority (76.4%) of the respondents were male, while 23.6% were female. this indicates that there are more male headed household in the area since household heads were sampled. marital status from table 1, majority (82.7%) of the respondents were married. given the very low rate of single (4.5%), widowed (9.1%) and separated (3.6%). this implies that majority of the respondents will have additional responsibilities to their spouses and children. educational level only (39.1%) of the respondents did not have any form of education. in essence, most of them (60.9%) had one form of education or the other. this shows that majority of respondents were literate which might enhance the food security status literate while might enhance the food security status adoption of improved farm practices. this will improve their production. family size from table 1, majority (60.9%) of the respondents had between 5 and 8 children with mean size of 7.32. this could be regarded as large family size. however it is likely that these children will be used as source of manual labour in the household, also the age at marriage will have an impact on family size. the implication of this finding is that the quantity of food intake will be affected and dependency ratio will be affected. the larger the family size the lesser food availability to each person within the household and also nutritional status is affected. monthly income the income level was also investigated and the result shows that most (81.8%) of the respondents fell within the range of n11,000n 20,000 with mean value of n 17,395.6. this is in line with fao (2001) report that household must have sufficient income to purchase the food they are unable to grow. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 136-141 138 farm size farm size is the total area (ha) cultivated by each respondent. the result showed that most (55.5%) of the respondents cultivated between 1 and 2 ha with the mean size of 1.55ha. also result showed that quite a sizeable proportion of the respondents (44.5%) cultivated farm land between 3 and above 5 hectares. this suggests that majority of the respondents were small scale farmers. the implication of this to food security is that food production will remain at a subsistance level and this can lead the respondents to diversity into nonfarm activities in other to be food secure. food security status figure i show that above 24.5% of the respondents were food secure, 34.5% were severely food insecure. in essence 40.9% of the respondents were moderately food insecure. a food secure household experiences none the food security condition. a moderately food secure household sacrifices more frequently by eating a monotonous diet but does not experience any of the three most severe conditions. a severe food insecure household has started cutting back on meal size, running out of food and going to bed hungry. in other words, 34.5 percent of the respondents experienced the severe condition in the last four weeks. coping strategies of respondents table 2 shows the coping strategies employed by respondents in the study area when they do not have enough to eat. the frequency of use of various coping strategies was ranked. borrowing money was ranked 1 st with mean score (1.69). this indicates short term household food availability. using part of saving to buy food was ranked 2 nd with mean score (1.65). this shows that respondents increased their access to food by these strategies. relying on less preferred and less expensive food was ranked 3 rd with mean score (1.56). this shows that respondents starts to change their consumption pattern that is (dietary adjustment) in the face of inadequate access to food. other coping strategies employed included; reducing the quantity of food to be eating ranked 4 th mean score (1.45), getting money through cooperative ranked 5 th mean score (1.41) and buying food on credit ranked 6 th mean score (1.37). the result shows that respondents increases short term household food availability. however reducing number of meals ranked 7 th mean score (1.31), relying on help from family and friends ranked 8 th mean score (1.21) working in exchange for money ranked 9 th mean score (0.87),sending household member to eat elsewhere ranked 10 th and lastly selling personal belonging ranked 11 th . this implies that respondents in the study area employed different coping strategies in other to be food secure. constraints faced by respondents table 3 show the constraints to food security in the study area and these include lack of credit facilities (84.5% crop failure (70%), poor storage facilities (62.7%), low income from sales (66.4%), lack of input (81.8%) poor transportation network (49.1%) and pest and diseases 56.4%.this shows that many constraints hindered the food security status of respondents in the study area. determinants of food security status the result in table 4 shows determinants of food security status of respondents in the study area. the result shows that year of formal education (x3) has a coefficient of 1.012 and it is significant at 0.01 levels. farm size (x4) with coefficient of 1.043 and it is significant at 0.011 family size (x5) with coefficient of -0.317 and it is significant 0.01. this indicates an inverse relationship with household food security. monthly income (x6) with coefficient of 0.431 and it is significant at 0.01.the positive sign of coefficient value shows direct relationship. this implies that for every unit increase in years of formal education, farm size, monthly income there is likelihood increase in household food security. however, the implication of family size with inverse relationship indicates that as family size decreases household food security increases. conclusion and recommendation based on the result of the findings, large family size has a negative influence on household food security. the study established that respondents engaged in different coping strategies and majority of the respondents faced with one constraints or the other cause of their production. recommendation  government and non-government organization should intensify effort on the importance of family planning and advocate small family size.  government should provide infrastructures like good transport network, improved storage facilities, in other to produce the constraints faced by respondents.  there should be easy access to credit facilities and government should subsidized cost of input references coates j., swuibale, a. and p. bilinsky, (2007) “household food security access scale (hfias) for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 136-141 139 measurement of food access indicator guide verse 3”, food and nutrition technical assistance usaid (fanta, 2007) fao (2001) “food and agricultural organization” committee on world food security rome 28, mayjune, pp. 14-15. fao (2003) “food and agricultural organization. committee on world food insecurity in the world”, rome maxwell, d. g. (1996) “measuring food security the frequency and severity of escaping strategies”, food policy, vol. 21(3), pp. 292-300. maxwell, d. (2008) “the coping strategies index: a tools for rapid measurements of household food security and the impact of food aid programs in humanitarian emergencies”, field methods manuals 2 nd edition january 2008. obamiro, e., doppler, w. and kormawa, m. (2003) “pillars of food security in rural areas in nigeria”, food africa, internet forum 31 st march-11 april. okunmadewa, f. (2001) “poverty reduction in nigeria”, a four-point agenda annual guest lecture of the house university of ibadan, ibadan olayemi, j. k. (1996) “food security in nigeria”, development policy centre policy report 2 ibadan. oluyole, k. a. and j. o. lawal (2008) an appraisal of the impact of agro-services corporation on proceedings of the 9 th international conference precision agriculture, 20-23, july, 2008. perez-morales, r. (1996) “issues papers: youth policy and resources related to rural youth programme”, in: cook, j. f(ed), expert consulation on extension rural youth, pp. 101-108. foa rome, italy sanusi, r. a., c. a. badejo and b. o. yusuf (2006) “measuring household food insecurity in selected local government areas of lagos and ibadan, nigeria”, palc. j. nutri, vol. 5, pp.62-67. table 1: distribution of respondents according to socioeconomic characteristics variable frequency percentage age at marriage 16-20 18 16.4 21-25 68 61.8 26-30 24 21.8 age range 20-29 6 5.5 30-39 24 21.8 40-49 53 48.1 50-59 16 14.5 above 60 11 10.0 gender male 84 76.4 female 26 23.6 marital status single 5 45 married 91 82.7 widowed 10 9.1 separated 4 3.6 years spent in school 0 43 39.1 1-6 23 20.9 7-12 32 29.1 above 12 12 10.9 family size 1-4 29 26.4 5-8 67 66.9 9 and above 14 12.7 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 136-141 140 monthly income n <10,000 11 10.0 11,000-15,000 39 35.5 16,000-20,000 51 46.3 >21,000 9 8.2 farm size (hectares) 1-2 61 55.5 3-5 27 24.5 >5 22 20.0 source: field survey 2011 table 2: distribution of respondents according to coping strategies employed coping strategies mean score rank order borrowing of money 1.69 1st using part of saving to buy food 1.65 2nd relying on less preferred less expensive food 1.56 3rd reducing the quantity of food to be eating 1.45 4th getting money through cooperative 1.37 5th reducing number of meals to be taken 1.45 6th relying on help from friends and family 1.31 7th working in exchange for money 1.41 8th working in exchange for food 1.21 9th sending household member to eat elsewhere 0.87 10th selling personal belongings 0.75 11th source: field survey 2011 table 3: distribution of respondents according to constraints faced constraint faced frequency percentage lack of credit facilities 93 84.5 crop failure 77 70.0 poor storage facilities 69 62.7 low processing capacity 73 66.4 lack of input 96 81.8 poor transportation network 54 49.1 pest and diseases 62 56.4 source: field survey, 2011 *multiple response recorded figure 1: categorization of respondents according to food security status asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 136-141 141 table 4: tobit result showing determinants of food security status variable coefficient t-value p-value age (x1) 0.049 1.366 0.172 gender (x2) 0.642 0.769 0.349 years spent in school (x3) 1.012 0.010 4.132** farm size (x4) 1.043 0.105 13.222*** family size(x5) -0.317 -2.475 0.013** monthly income (x6) 1.000 0.432 22.005** source: field survey 2011 ** significant at 0.01 sigma value 4.376 © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 farmers inaccessibility to agricultural credit in nyandarua district, kenya ng’eno vincent, erick jotham muiruri, philiph mulama nyangweso, b. k. langat and mary jepkemboi kipsat (department of agricultural economics and resource management, moi university, kenya) to cite this article: ng’eno vincent, erick jotham muiruri, philiph mulama nyangweso, b. k. langat and mary jepkemboi kipsat (2011). farmers inaccessibility to agricultural credit in nyandarua district, kenya. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2), 64-68. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 64-68 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author(s) ng’eno vincent † department of agricultural economics and resource management, moi university, kenya e-mail: cngeno@gmail.com erick jotham muiruri, philiph mulama nyangweso, b. k. langat and mary jepkemboi kipsat department of agricultural economics and resource management, moi university, kenya farmers inaccessibility to agricultural credit in nyandarua district, kenya abstract smallholder farmers face various challenges in production one of them being inaccessibility to credit. this study specifically sought to identify household socio-economic characteristics and institutional requirements influencing access to credit among smallholder farmers in nyandarua district. the study used a logit model. both quantitative and qualitative data were acquired from primary and secondary sources. primary data was collected using questionnaires through a survey design. a sample of 264 smallholder farmers was selected using stratified, multi-stage random sampling techniques. data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis using statistical package for social sciences (spss). the study established that socio-economic constraints such as age, gender, household size, farm income, collateral and awareness are critical determinants of access to credit. the study concludes that household socio-economic characteristics do influence access to credit. key recommendations made include the need by government to deal with bureaucracies involved in land registration to benefit majority of smallholder farmers who remain insecure in the land they use without proof of ownership and also to make easier the registration of lease certificates for those who do not own land and use land on leasehold tenure system. financial institutions should also put in place less stringent credit requirements and reduce credit costs especially interest rates to make credit more affordable. keywords: credit access, small-holder farmers, socio-economic constraints, kenya introduction the smallholder farm sector plays a critical role in kenya’s economic development. in 1998, for instance, the sector contributed 75 percent of the country’s total value of agricultural output and over 85% of the total employment in the agricultural sector (gok, 1999). in the year 2000, the smallholder farmers formed more than 80 percent of the farming community and produced most food and cash crops in the country (odendo, 2000). in 2008, agriculture, which is a major contributor to the country’s gross domestic product, was predominantly practiced by small scale farmers who accounted for 75 percent of the total output (agricultural finance corporation, 2008). there are about three million smallholder farms of which 80 percent are less than two hectares (cbs, 1996). most agricultural activities in kenya are concentrated in the countryside which happens to be entirely rural. more often than not, small scale agriculture is the source of income for the rural poor. nyandarua district, which happens to be the main focus of the study, is located in the rural set up and is characterized by many smallholder farmers, majority of whom are poor. the poor in the rural areas, who are mostly smallholder farmers, do require financial services in terms of rural finance, and more particularly, agricultural finance, which is a subset of rural finance dedicated to financing agriculture related activities such as input farmers inaccessibility to agricultural credit….. 65 supply, production, distribution, wholesaling and marketing (hossain, 1988). the providers of financial services are present. the challenge thus lies in the factors that inhibit the farmers from accessing financial services which forms the basis of this study. planners and researchers must focus on the constraints that inhibit smallholder farmers from accessing financial services if the objectives of attaining industrialization and decent living standards for all citizens by the year 2020 and the millennium development goal of poverty reduction are to be achieved. therefore, objective of the study was to establish the major constraints to accessing credit among smallholder farmers in nyandarua district and formulate policy recommendations aimed at promoting farmers’ access to credit. materials and methods to meet the objectives of this study, logit model was fitted on household data. the major focus of the study was the likelihood or probability of the outcome, that is, whether the respondent has access to credit or not. the binary response in this study was whether the respondent had access to credit from financial institutions (“success”) or had no access to credit from financial institutions (“failure”). if y is the random variable (dichotomous), it is then assumed that yi takes on the values 0 or 1, where 0 denotes non-occurrence of the event in question and 1 denotes occurrence of the event in question (maddala, 1983). if x1 -------------------xp, are the characteristics to be related to occurrence of this outcome, then the logistic model specifies that the conditional probability of event (that is, that y = 1) given the values of x1 -------------------xp, is as follows. 𝑝 𝑌 = 1/[1 + (𝑎 + exp− 𝑎 − 𝛽𝑖 𝑥𝑖 ] in order to linearize the right hand side, a logit transformation is applied by taking logarithm of both sides. the logarithmic transformation stabilizes the variance if the standard deviation in the original scales varies directly as the mean. this results into: 𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑡𝑡𝑝 𝑌 = 𝑎 + ∑𝛽𝑗 𝑥𝑖 + 𝑢𝑖 where: yi = 1 if success (respondent has access to credit), 0 if failure (respondent has no access to credit), α = constant term, 𝛽𝑗𝑠 = logistic coefficients for the independent variables, 𝑢𝑖 = error term, 𝑥𝑗𝑠 = independent variables such that: x2 = age of the respondent in years – categorical variable, 𝑥2= gender of the respondent – binary variable, 𝑥8 = marital status – categorical variable, 𝑥4= household size: number of persons in the household of the respondent – continuous variable, 𝑥6= size of arable land in acres – continuous variable, 𝑥6 = land tenure system – categorical variable, 𝑥7 = main occupational activity of the respondent – categorical variable, 𝑥8= farm income – continuous variable, 𝑥9 = perception of respondents regarding cost of credit – categorical variable. 𝑥10 = collateral. binary: 1 if respondent owns a title deed / registered lease certificate and 0 otherwise. 𝑥11 = awareness of the existence of credit by respondent. binary: 1 if respondent is aware and 0 otherwise. 𝑥12= level of education of the respondent – categorical variable. using stratified sampling, with access or no access to credit as the criterion for stratification, the population was divided into two strata of those who had accessed credit and those who had not accessed credit. after identifying the strata, multi-stage sampling for both strata was done to identify the groups of smallholder farmers who would be considered in the sample. the six divisions of the district were selected as the primary units and then locations were randomly selected to form secondary units from where the sample would be picked. proportionate simple random sampling was then done at the location level to select a sample size of 164 smallholder farmers from the secondary units selected under multi-stage sampling. the study used both primary and secondary data. both quantitative and qualitative data was collected. primary data was sourced through asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 64-68 66 survey. secondary data was obtained from journals, magazines, nyandarua district annual reports and any other secondary data source that was deemed necessary for the study. results and discussion a logit model was used to assess the factors that influenced credit accessibility among smallholder farmers in nyandarua district. statistics for variables incorporated in the model are shown in table 1 below. there was a positive and significant relationship between credit access and the age of respondent. age was significant at 5 percent. a unit rise in age led to an increase of log-of-odds in favour of credit access by 9.766. the positive relationship implies that the older people were more likely to access credit from financial institutions than the younger people. that was expected because, though the younger people were found to be more engaged in agriculture followed by the older people in the district, the younger people were more risky compared to the older people since the older people owned most productive assets and hence had a better asset base as they accumulate assets with age. therefore, financial institutions would prefer to lend the older generation than the younger ones. that was confirmed by most of the younger respondents who cited age as working against them in as far as credit accessibility was concerned. they were of the opinion that financial institutions overlooked them claiming that they (the younger people) were not credit worthy. moreover, the younger people farmed on small parcels of land either subdivided to them or bequeathed to them by their parents and that still limited their chances of accessing credit due to lack of proof of ownership. since most agricultural activities are carried out by youthful people, it would be necessary to ensure that age does not hinder them from accessing credit. it would thus be necessary to encourage the youth to acquire property to boost their asset base and at the same time ensure that they seek ownership for the same to serve as security. in this regard, they should ensure that ownership of land subdivided or bequeathed to them is transferred to them and documented appropriately. gender was also significant at 1 percent and negative. the results indicated that an increase in the number of female smallholder farmers into the sample was found to decrease log-of-odds in favour of credit access by 5.916. that implies that women had a lower access to credit compared to men. that could be due to the fact that productive assets in the rural areas are owned by men and hence financial institutions prefer to disburse credit to men rather than women since women are deemed to be more risky. therefore, resource access imbalances in favour of men deny women opportunities for credit. there is need to empower women by extending credit to them so as to accelerate production in agricultural and micro-enterprise sectors that are run by women and to also improve livelihoods. this could be achieved by way of encouraging women to form their own credit and saving groups and take viable economic forms of income generation so as to attract lenders. they should also endeavour to own property to make themselves more competitive as credit seekers. the total size of households was found to influence access to credit by smallholder farmers in nyandarua district. household size was found to be significant at 5 percent and negative. a unit increase in the household size was found to reduce log-of-odds in favour of access to credit by 1.915. that implied that those with larger families were more likely to face difficulties in accessing credit as opposed to those with smaller families. this could be explained by the fact that the total size of a household has financial implications in that larger families consume a lot of finances to smooth out their consumption expenditure and hence high budgets. consequently, many financial commitments are likely to threaten the credit worthiness of a household. with large household sizes being a common feature among rural households, it is necessary to take measures to enlighten them on ways of having manageable family sizes that do not put a strain on their finances and threaten farmers inaccessibility to agricultural credit….. 67 their credit worthiness. such measures can be by way of having campaigns on effective family planning and its benefits in print and electronic media, particularly radio, which is a major source of information for rural people. title deed / registered lease certificate ownership positively influenced access to credit by smallholder farmers in nyandarua district. the variable was significant 5 percent implying that an increase in acquisition of title deeds / registered lease certificates by one unit would lead to an increase in log-of-odds in favour of credit access by 6.073. that was expected since title deeds / registered lease certificates served as security / collateral for credit lent by financial institutions. therefore, a farmer who possessed a title deed / registered lease certificate would have easier access to credit as opposed to one without. table 1: logit model regression results variable coefficient standard error wald statistic age 9.766* 3.443 8.045 gender -5.916** 3.481 2.888 marital status 1.278 3.648 0.123 household size -1.915* 0.922 4.314 land size 0.567 0.967 0.344 land tenure -3.531 3.458 1.043 occupation 93.129 40,361.861 0.000 farm income 7.999* 2.860 7.825 perception -11.858 18.473 0.412 collateral 6.073* 2.277 7.113 awareness 0.304** 0.041 54.977 education level -2.630 4.544 0.335 constant -13.796 19.135 0.520 -2 log likelihood → 6.610 cox & snell r square → 0.706 nagelkerke r square → 0.941 omnibus test for model coefficients chi-square → 200.742 hosmer & lemeshow test model chi-square → 2.809 sample size → n = 164 the ** and * represent 1% and 5% levels of significance respectively. source: author’s survey data, 2009 with collateral being a major factor in accessing credit, it is necessary that land ownership issues are addressed especially among smallholder farmers. that could be facilitated by ensuring that the government deals with any bureaucracies and red-tapes involved in land registration to benefit majority of smallholder farmers who remain insecure in the land they use without proof of ownership. registration of lease certificates for those smallholder farmers who don’t own land and use land on leasehold tenure system should be made easier so as to give them an opportunity of using such land as collateral to obtain credit from financial institutions. awareness of credit availability had a positive and significant relationship with access to credit. awareness was significant at 1 percent. an increase in the awareness level was found to lead to an increase in log-of-odds in favour of credit access by 0.304. that implied that those individuals who were aware of the availability of credit from financial institutions had a better chance to access credit than those who were not aware. the relationship between farm income and credit access among smallholder farmers in nyandarua district was found to be positive and significant at 5 percent. a unit increase in average annual farm income would lead to an increase in log-of-odds in favour of credit access by 7.999. the coefficient was positive implying that those smallholder farmers in nyandarua district with a larger farm income outlay would access credit much easily than asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 1(2)2011: 64-68 68 those whose income was low. given that majority of the sampled smallholder farmers in nyandarua district had an average annual farm income below the mean average annual farm income of kshs 42,896.34, smallholder farmers had difficulties accessing credit from financial institutions due to low farm incomes. that was expected because nyandarua district is characterized by poor product prices for farm produce hence farmers do not benefit much financially from their agricultural produce. it is important for farmers to diversify their agricultural activities so as to increase their farm income. diversification of enterprises will ensure that farmers fetch more income and in turn repay their loans without difficulty. however, as it was observed in the field, majority of farmers fail to diversify their farming activities due to credit / capital challenges and inability to increase their land acreage. it is hence important that extension services be enhanced and effectively linked to research activities and farmers so as to facilitate smooth flow of developed innovations that are beneficial to farmers. that will ensure that farmers are engaged in successful and profitable enterprises and reduce chances of enterprise failures thereby giving value to credit through the improvement of performance of assisted enterprises. in addition, the government and market players should ensure that farmers obtain competitive prices for their farm produce so as to make their agricultural activities lucrative enough. that will also help increase their income margins significantly. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references agricultural finance corporation, (2008). nyandarua distrct lending and disbursement semi-annual report: january 2008-june 2008. nyahururu, technical services department. central bureau of statistics (cbs) (1996). welfare monitoring survey ii, 1994 basic report. nairobi, kenya. government of kenya (1999). economic survey. nairobi, government printer. hossain, m. (1988). credit for the alleviation of rural poverty: the grameen bank in bangladesh. ifpri research report no. 65. maddala, g. s. (1983). limited dependent and qualitative variables in econometrics. cambridge, cambridge university press. odendo, m. (2000). an economic analysis of soil conservation on small holder farms of vichuga division, western kenya. unpublished mphil thesis, moi university. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 352 analysis of the profitability and marketing channels of rice: a case study of menchum river valley, north-west region, cameroon bime, m. j., fouda, t. m. and mai bong, j. k. department of agricultural economics, faculty of agronomy & agricultural sciences, university of dschang, cameroon abstract the study carried out in menchum river valley, northwest region of cameroon had as objective to analyze the profitability and establish the marketing channels of rice in this zone. the study interviewed a total of 126 respondents, selected purposively and using the snow ball sampling technique. results showed that the main actors involved in the rice marketing channel were; producers, wholesalers, hullers, retailers and consumers. the production and marketing of rice in the zone is a profitable venture. in terms of profitability in the rice business, millers obtain a relatively large profit margin as a percentage of the cost price (18.69%) followed by the producers (12.77%), wholesalers (8.5%) then retailers (8.33%). the average profit margin per bag of 50kg was; 1054.5fcfa (franc communauté financière d'afrique) for producers, 1963.5 fcfa for millers; 1100 fcfa for the wholesalers and 1250fcfa for the retailers. the principal constraints identified by the study that affects actors of the rice channel were, bad condition of the roads, lack of capital, poor quality of rice. it was recommended that there should be improvement in infrastructure. keywords: profitability, rice, markets, channels, menchum-river valley introduction 1 rice is the 2nd most consumed cereal and half of the world’s population depends on it for about 80% of their food calorie requirements (braun, 2006). the continued reliance of african consumers on rice imports is a potentially precarious and politically dangerous situation (fao 2000). rice demand in sub-saharan africa has grown since the mid 1970’s with an average of more than 6 % per year (fao, 1999). rice profitability in west and central africa has improved in recent decades (lançon and erenstein, 2002). agriculture is the main-stay of cameroon’s economy and it satisfies the bulk of the population for food, raw materials for corresponding author’s name: bime, m. j. email address: mimeliet001@yahoo.com agro-industries and the export market. as a primary industry that provides employment for almost 72% of the cameroonian population, agriculture is likely to remain the backbone of cameroon’s economy for many generations to come (winrock international, 2002). the country's agricultural potential for food production is known to be immense and over 60% of its export earnings comes from this sector (pnvra, 2002). rice is the staple food for rural and urban populations in cameroon with national demand being estimated at 300,000 tons in 2009, essentially covered by imports (nsrgc 2009). average rice consumption/head in cameroon in 2007 was 25.7 kg per inhabitant for the national average (ecam3, 2008). marketing is the most important aspect in the development process. development means larger size productive activities in the economy. but we cannot have more of pro asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:egbuchuacn@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 352-360 353 duction unless the goods produced are actually sold out and selling depends on proper market conditions (prasad, 1995). the weak performance of agricultural markets (input and output) in most countries has been recognized in various studies as a major impediment to growth in the agricultural sector and the overall economy (astewel, 2010). dawit, (2005) explained that, the flow of agricultural produce from the producer to the consumer involves a long chain of intermediaries, who, without creating value-added, merely keep on stretching the chain. he further pointed out that the involvement of these superfluous intermediaries has constrained the development of the sector and deprived the farmers of equitable returns. jabbar (2004) also clearly states that the knowledge gaps in the crop sector in a country are inefficiency of the market system (which includes inefficient marketing channel, improper transmissions of price to producers and the type of product produced by farmers). despite the significance of rice in the livelihood of many farmers, it is also being regarded as an income generating crop in the study area even though it has not been given the due attention. it is only recently that few studies have been done on rice in the zone with the coming of the commodity value chain development support project (padfa). however, most of these studies have focused on production and were limited to a specific area and marketing aspects. furthermore, not much is known on various rice marketing channels that exist in the study area. also the profitability in rice production/marketing is still in doubt in the study area. therefore this study was initiated to investigate the different marketing channels and analyze the profitability along the market chains. specifically, the study was aimed at; analyzing the different marketing channels; determining the profit of actors at different levels as well as the role of each set of actors and identifying the major risk associated in rice production and marketing. research methodology this study was carried out in the menchum river valley in the north west region of cameroon. this area engulfs two divisions of the region namely mezam and menchum divisions which lies on both sides of the menchum river. this zone was selected for the study, because of its high rice production potential, long history and tradition of rice production. the study zone commonly known as menchum river valley also lies on both sides of the menchum river that drains this area, flowing westward into nigeria to join the benue river which is an added advantage for swamp rice production in the area. also, the region is dominated by high volcanic mountains with fertile soils (hydromorphic, volcanic and ferralitic), an area with good water retention capacity (contain some clay and/or organic matter, i.e. loamy soil); it has clay and heavy soils at the valleys which are most desirable for rice cultivation. a stratified sampling procedure was used in this study. since the study population was divided into subpopulations samples were taken at each stratum either purposively or randomly depending on its size. in each of these two divisions only the rice producing sub-division were selected on purpose i.e. bafut subdivision in mezam as well as menchum valley and wum central subdivisions in menchum respectively. in these 3 rice producing sub divisions, the rice producer organizations working were censured which gave us 9 producer organizations in menchum valley. from the producer organizations, individual farmers were randomly selected proportional to the number of members per producer’s organization. this gave a sample size of 126 respondents. the snow ball sampling was used to identify and select the intermediaries such that actors involved in the rice marketing channel identified each other. this technique was used because the population of these actors was not known and difficult to determine at the beginning of this study. data for this study came from two main sources i.e. primary and secondary sources. the primary data collected was obtained by the use of pre-tested structured questionnaires. the data was collected from a crosssectional sample of rice farming households asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 352-360 354 in the study area, rice millers, all intermediaries that were identified in the zone and rice consumers. the data collected was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. the descriptive statistics used includes frequency distribution, means and percentages. profitability was analyzed using profits and marketing margins of the actors at different levels of the channel. for this study the gross profit was adopted to analyze the profitability of rice production on one hectare to obtain cost and on 50kg to obtain returns in the study area. average profit = v – c = pq ∑pq…......(1) where c = average total cost of production fcfa, v = average total income, q =total production (per ha (kg), q = quantity of input, p = unit cost price of input fcfa, p = unit sales price of the produce in fcfa/kg marketing margins were used to analyze the profitability at the level of intermediaries. marketing margins can be expressed in cash or in percentage of the cost price (abbot and makeham, 1986; adegeye and dittoh, 1982). the formula adopted for this study was average profit margin = (av. gross margin – av. marketing cost) * 100 cost price …….................(2) results and discussion type and description of actors in the rice market five main actors that intervene in the marketing channel of rice were identified in the zone. they handle the commodity at different levels of the transaction. these actors form the link and create the channel which usually begins from the producers until the commodity reaches the final consumer. the five main actors that were identified in this study were; producers, millers, wholesalers, retailers and consumers. marketing channels of rice the analysis of t h e r i c e m a r k e t channel is intended to provide a systematic knowledge of the flow of the goods and services from their origin to the final destination (consumer). all the channels identified started with the producers ended with the consumers. they had varying lengths and were relatively less complicated when compared to channels indentified in other studies or work in different places. the rice market channels drawn are based on the data collected from different sources in the study area. a total of 18 lines of market channels were identified when we considered wholesalers and millers in the urban and rural milieu as separate entities. the main receivers from farmers were wholesalers and millers. base on estimates of volumes that passed through each channel, the channel that went out of the production zone hosted the largest volume of rice, followed by channels that stretched from farmer → millers → wholesalers → retailers → consumers. the 9 main channels of rice marketing identified in the study zone were as shown below and also identified in fig 1. 1. farmer → millers → wholesalers → retailers → consumers 2. farmer → millers → out of the region (by intermediaries) 3. farmer → millers → retailers → consumers 4. farmer → millers → consumers 5. farmer → wholesalers → retailers → consumers 6. farmer → wholesalers → millers → consumers 7. farmer → wholesalers → out of region 8. farmer → wholesalers → consumers 9. farmer → consumers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 352-360 355 the nine identified channels of rice in the zone figure 1: showing the marketing channels identified source: field survey (2013) from fig 1 above, it can be seen that channels 5, 7, 8 and 9 are without millers. in these channels the farmers are also millers, that is, they mill their products before selling. on the other hand, they are farmers who only cultivate the rice and seller to millers after harvesting (channels 1,2,3,4,6). marketing cost, margins and profitability of rice gross profit of paddy production the mean paddy rice production obtained from data in this study for the zone was 3221.57kg per hectare with a standard deviation of 1310.21. when the average paddy production is converted to milled rice using 0.7 as conversion factor, (3221.56*0.7), hence, the mean production in terms of milled/hulled rice is 2255.09kg hulled rice per ha. here producers generate income mainly from sales of paddy. very few of them sell hulled rice. rice has three byproducts straw yield, rice bran and husk yield. straw yield can be used in some areas for construction of house and husk yield (cover rice) and rice bran also used as feed for fattening of some animal by farmers. husk yield is also used for making chip wood in some countries. usually farmers in the study zone do not use the husk/rice bran yield. it is left at mill after milling of their paddy. this accounts for their low profit margin in the channel while favoring or accounting for the high profit margins of hullers. the typical average gross profit or income of paddy production in the locality per hectare estimated using equation 1 above: from the study q = 3221.566 kg per ha p = 150fcfa/kg c=348750 fcfa. /ha hence average profit /ha = (3221.56)*(150)348750=134484.9fcfa table 1 summarizes the results of the average cost margin, revenue obtained and the average profit margin per ha based on the data collected during this study. retailers (urban & rural) in te rm ed ia ri es out of region/ production zone producers (individuals and p.o) final consumers miller (urban & rural) wholesaler urban & rural seed sellers/producers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 352-360 356 table 1: average costs, revenues and margins of rice farming for 1ha in the zone quantity average selling price /kg av. revenue/ha average yield/ha in kg/ha = 3221.566kg paddy 150fcfa 483234.9fcfa item unit amount average total cost /ha atc=avc+afc 348750 fcfa average cost per unit total cost/quantity fcfa/kg 108.2548053 average profit-margin revenues-cost fcfa 134484.9 % profit to cost(profitability) (profit/cost)*100 % 38.56% % profit margin(return) (profits/revenue)*100 % 27.83% average profit margin profit/quantity fcfa /kg 41.75fcfa turnover ratio revenue / cost 1.386 source: field survey 2013 after hulling of their rice the secondary products such as rice bran and rice husk are left at the hulling mill. considering the rice yield which gives about 7-10% rice bran, the quantity of rice bran obtained per ha was as follows; considering 10% of average total yield/ha = (0.1*3221.566kg) = 322.1566kg rice bran/ ha. a bag of rice bran is sold for about 3000fcfa /50kg (about 60fcfa/kg) this therefore implies that per ha a farmer looses 322.1566*60 = 19329.396fcfa to the huller. this goes to the huller/miller and accounts for the high profit margins made by the hullers in the rice channel. therefore considering a scenario where the farmer were to own and sell their secondary products (rice bran) themselves, their profit per ha will increase by 19329.396 fcfa/ha and even more if other secondary products like the husk yield and straw yields are put into use. straw yield in some areas is used for construction of house and husk yield (cover rice) also used for cattle feeding and fattening purpose by farmers. husk yield is also used for making chip wood. usually farmers do not use the husk yield. it is left for millers during milling of their paddy. hence in this study, the value of straw was not considered to calculate the gross income of farmers nor for millers as majority rather burn it up after long accumulation. the turnover ratio obtained was 1.386, which is greater than one. all of these put together bring us to the conclusion that rice production in the study area is a profitable venture. results from similar studies such as that of ogundari, in 2006 on rice in nigeria showed that the mean yield was 1159.8kg per ha with a standard deviation of 1260.14kg/ha. also, in this same study results showed that the average price of 55 naira per kg of paddy rice as compared to the 150fcfa recorded in this study. the results of diop, (2008) in senegal showed that the gross margin on a 10hectare farm was 3,218,050fcfa (321805fcfa/ha) which is far higher than that obtained in this study. marketing cost and margin analysis of traders marketing cost for farmers and intermediaries incurred at different level of the channel have been summarized in the table 2. it gives an overview of distribution of marketing margin among different actors in the channel. from this table farmers got a profit margin of 1054.5frs/bag of 50kg of hulled rice (i.e. 21.09frs/kg). millers got the highest asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 352-360 357 profit margin i.e. 1963.55 fcfa/bag (39.27 frs. /kg) due to the value added by the milling process couple with the rice bran and husk which results from the paddy. retailers and wholesalers got almost equal profit margins 1100 fcfa (22fcfa/kg) and 1250 fcfa/50kg (25fcfa/kg) of hulled rice respectively. table 2: summary of marketing cost, margin and profit for farmers and traders cost item cost per bag (fcfa) gross market margin (1) total market cost (2) profit margins/ (3)=(1)(2) profit as % of cost & selling price profit/kg of hulled rice farmer/producers 2543.49 1489 1054.49 21.09frs average cost of paddy 6767.04 transport cost per bag 500 cost of hulling 714 packaging(twin + bag) 275 total cost 8256.04 12.77% average selling price 50kg 9310.54 11.33% millers / processors 3252.5 1289 1963.5 39.27frs av. buying price of paddy 9211.24 cost of packaging 275 loading & unloading 100 cost of hulling 714 other cost 200 total cost 10500.24 18.69% rice husk 280 sells price of bran 10kg 420 average selling price 50kg 11763.74 total sales 12463.74 15.75% wholesalers 2000 900 1100 22frs buying price 50kg rice 12000 transport cost per bag 500 travel cost and others 400 total cost 12900 8.5% average selling price 50kg 14000 7.86% retailers 2250 1000 1250 25frs av. buying price 50kg 14000 transport cost per bag 500 retailing plastic 300 market fee and others 200 total cost 15000 8.33% average selling price 50kg 16250 7.42% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 352-360 358 note: (1) gross marketing margin (value added) =average selling price –average buying price. (2)average selling and /buying price at different level was based on the own survey of this study. (3) the time dimension for profit margin is one year (2012/13) source: field survey 2013 it can be observed that although rice millers got the highest profit margin, they also incur the highest marketing cost amongst intermediaries. retailers got the lowest marketing cost while wholesalers got the lowest profit margin. the last but one column of the table shows the relative profitability (profit /cost and profit/selling price) amongst the different rice traders. it shows that rice millers obtain a relatively large profit as a percentage of the cost price (18.69%) while retailers obtain the lowest (8.33%). this indicates that in terms of profitability of the rice business, it is relatively more profitable at the level of the miller 18.69%, followed by the producers 12.77%, wholesalers 8.5% then retailers 8.33%. these results are on the other hand different from the findings of astewel (2010) who found in a similar study in ethiopia that farmers received the highest 10.22%, followed by retailers 6.37, wholesalers 1.28 and millers 0.8%, in terms of profit margin to cost. another study in vietnam showed that producers received 29.9%, followed by wholesalers 3.19, millers 2.29, and retailers 2.0. the differences between these findings and this study is based on the fact that in their studies producer took and made use of their secondary products which was not the case in this study. ranking of the identified risks managed by the actors from the farmers’ response and ranking, they were unanimous on the fact that, their three most important risk with regards the marketing of their products were transport problems, lack of capital and the poor quality of their product amongst others as shown in figure 2 below. figure 2: ranking of various risks as indentified by respondents  bad state of farm to market roads which increases cost of production in terms of time and transportation cost to evacuate their product to the house or market. here at least 14.69% the respondents agreed to the fact that roads are a big constraint to their activity. the case of bu and aguli villages are glaring examples where this constraint is a call for concern. accessing the production zone, to evacuate or transport their produce home or to the market is very tedious, difficult and therefore increases cost of production and marketing.  lack of own capital: featuring as one of the three most important constraints is that of lack of own capital which forces some farmers as well as other actors to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 352-360 359 sell away their product at give away prices sometimes even before harvest to enable them solve some crucial needs of the time. this obviously contributes in maintaining the vicious cycle poverty in the rural milieu.  another serious constraint that affects marketing of rice in menchum river valley is the quality of the rice. here at least 17.56% of the respondents equally agreed to the fact that the poor quality of their rice is really a big problem to its marketing. this comes as a result of presence of high amount of impurities, and mixing of varieties by farmers, thereby resulting to high break rates of the rice during processing making the product less attractive to consumers. conclusion based on the results obtained, the following conclusions can be made:the actors involved in the marketing channels of rice produced in menchum river valley were: individual’s farmers, producer organisations, millers/processor, wholesalers, retailers and consumers. there exist 9 main channels of rice marketing in the area but when we consider urban and rural wholesaler, millers, and retailers as separate entities we obtain 18 market lines of rice within and without the production zone. the production and marketing of rice in menchum river valley is a profitable venture. nevertheless the profit margins of the rice business are unevenly distributed and varied depending on the different actors involved and their position or role in the marketing channel. results showed that farmer receive the smallest margins among actors in the channel. rice processor/hullers receive the greatest share of the profit margins in the rice channel. this is explained by the fact that besides the income they obtain from hulling paddy rice they equally own and sell the rice bran, broken grains and waste that results from the hulling process. they also incur the highest marketing costs relative to other intermediaries. from the different risks identified in this study we can conclude that the three most important ones indentified by the actors of the channel were: transport problems, lack of capital and the poor quality of their product. it was therefore recommended that government should develop infrastructure especially good roads to enable the farmers evacuate their products from the farms. also they should help make credit available and accessible to farmers. note: cfa is a french acronym which means "communauté financière d'afrique" (african financial community). according to the exchange rate $1 = 500franc cfa references abbot, j. c., & markeham, j. p. (1986). agricultural marketing in the tropics. london: longman group ltd. adegeye, a. j., & dittoh, j. s. (1982). essentials of agricultural economics. ibadan: impact publishers ltd. nigeria astewel (2010). analysis of rice profitability and marketing chain: the case of fogera woreda, south gondar zone,amhara national regional state, ethiopia. m. sc thesis presented to the school of graduate studies of haramaya university. braun, j. v. (2006). public policy and international collaboration for sustaining and expanding the rice. a keynote at the 2nd international rice congress on “science, technology and trade for peace & prosperity” new delhi oct. 9 13, 2006. international food policy research institute (ifpri) washington d.c., usa. dawit, a. ( 2 005). the status and challenges of agricultural marketing in ethiopia. paper presented at a panel discussion organized by the ethiopian association of agricultural professionals (eaap), april 22, 2005. ethiopian agricultural research organization (earo). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 352-360 360 food and agriculture organization (fao). (1999). fao-agrostat. rome, italy. food and agriculture organization (fao). (2000). addressing marketing and processing constraints that inhibit agri-food exports: a guide for policy analysts and planners. agricultural service bulletin 160. rome, italy. 109p lançon, f., & erenstein, o. (2002). potential and prospects for rice production in west africa. paper presented at sub-regional workshop on harmonization of policies and coordination of programmes on rice in the ecowas sub-region, accra, ghana, 25-28 feb. 2002. jabbar, m. a. (2004). agricultural market development in ethiopia: problems and issues. paper presented at a planning workshop for the project ‘improved productivity and market success of ethiopian farmers’, addis ababa, ethiopia, 30 june–3 july 2004. 9pp. nairobi (kenya), ilri prasad, j., & prasad, a. ( 1995). indian a gricultural marketing emerging trends and prospective. mital publications, new delhi, india programme nationale de vulgarisation et de recherche agricole. pnvra. (2002). preparation of the farming season 2002. pnvra in flash, pnvra / naerp/nwp, bamenda, cameroon winrock international (2002). animal agriculture in sub saharan africa. university of california, davis, ca: institute of agricultural development. growth and trend in area, production and yield of major crops of khyber pakhtunkhwa, pakistan 149 growth and trend in area, production and yield of major crops of khyber pakhtunkhwa, pakistan saleem abid social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan nisar ali shah, abdul hassan and arshad farooq social sciences research institute (parc), tarnab, peshawar, pakistan m. asif masood social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan abstract the present study was conducted with a view to analyzed growth and trend in area, production and yield of major crops of khyber pakhtunkhwa. a time series data from 1980-81 to 2011-12 (32 years) of major crops (wheat, maize, rice and sugarcane) were collected. the compound growth rate as well as trend analysis indicated that the area under wheat crop has decreased over the time due to shifting of area to other rabi crops. the production of wheat during 1981-85 to 2010-12 was increased due the corresponding increase in per hectare yield of wheat crop in khyber pakhtunkhwa. the results show that area, production and yield of maize was increased over the time the reason is that more area was brought under hybrid and improved open pollinated maize varieties. the area under rice crop has decreased whereas their production increased due the corresponding increase in per hectare yield of rice crop. it was revealed from the results that area, production and yield of sugarcane crop was increasing at a rate of 0.24 percent, 0.85 percent and 0.60 percent per annum, respectively. keywords: growth, trend, semi-log model, wheat, maize, rice and sugarcane introduction1 agricultural production is the foundation of food availability, especially for calories and proteins. adequate food supply at affordable prices is the cornerstone of food security policy of all nations of the world including generally pakistan and particularly khyber pakhtunkhwa (ahmad and farooq, 2010). agriculture is the most important sector of corresponding author’s name: saleem abid email address: saleemabidpk@gmail.com pakistan due to its primary commitment of providing healthy food to her fast growing population. although the rate of population increase has considerably slowed down from over 3 percent in 1980s to 2.0 percent in 2012-13, but it is still considered high. with the current rate of population growth, it is expected that pakistan will attain fifth position from current status of sixth most populous country in the world by 2050 (government of pakistan, 2013). the khyber pakhtunkhwa (kp) is essentially a rural province. only 17 percent of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:saleemabidpk@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 149-155 150 population lives in urban conurbations. economic structure of the province reflects that 30 percent of provincial gdp is derived from agriculture. agriculture is not only an important source of employment and income generation for the rural population but also critical from nutritional perspective. wheat is the main staple food for most of the population and largest grain source of pakistan as well as of khyber pakhtunkhwa. it occupies the central position in formulating agricultural policies. the wheat area in khyber pakhtunkhwa is 729271 hectares with production of 1130263 tonnes, respectively during 2011-12. maize is the second most important crop after wheat in the khyber pakhtunkhwa, and for much of the province, it is the dominant crop in the farming system. the maize area in khyber pakhtunkhwa is 475342 hectares with production of 887787 tonnes during 2011-12. the area under rice in khyber pakhtunkhwa is estimated around 50081 hectares with a production of about 94695 tonnes during 2011-12 (government of khyber pakhtunkhwa, 2013). growth rates are commonly used as summaries of trends in time series data. productivity indices, price indices and output indices are usually discussed in terms of the changing growth rates over various periods of time. policy decisions are often based on such growth rate estimates. computation of trend rate estimates with and without the extreme fluctuations can provide meaningful insights into the process of crop forecasting and planning purposes. rao et al. (1980) assert that measurement of trends and fluctuations should be of great interest for both the researchers and planners. sagar (1980) discussed a general decomposition model of crop output growth that takes care of basic three components (area, productivity and prices). wiktor and travis (1985) have described that growth rates are measures of past performance of economic variables which are not developed to predict the trend in a variable over time. the present study was undertaken with a view to analyzed growth and trend in area, production and yield of major crops of khyber pakhtunkhwa. the information about the growth performance of selected food commodities would help the policy makers of the country to implement policy measures. materials and methods a time series data from 1980-81 to 2011-12 (32 years) regarding the area, production and yield of major crops (wheat, maize, rice and sugarcane) were collected from the various issues of crops statistics of khyber pakhtunkhwa (crops reporting services) and agricultural statistics of pakistan (ministry of national food security and research). the following semi-log trend function was used to find out the trend and estimate the growth rate of area, production and yield of major crops of khyber pakhtunkhwa. ln z = 0 + 1x + e where z = dependent variable (area, yield and production); x = trend over specific period 1 = coefficient of trend; ln = natural logarithm; and e = error term here, the coefficient of trend (1) measures the constant proportional or relative change in z for a given absolute change in the value of the regressor x. regressorin change absolute regressandin change relative 1  if 100 multiply the relative change in z, give the percentage change, or the growth rate, in z for an absolute change in x, the regressor. that is, 100 times β1 gives the growth rate in z; 100 times β1 is known in the literature as the semi-elasticity of z with respect to x and gives the instantaneous (at a point in time) rate of growth, to find out the compound (over a period of time) rate of growth, the following formula was applied. http://www.cabdirect.org/search.html?q=au%3a%22sagar%2c+v.%22 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 149-155 151 1 = ln (1+ r) where 1 = instantaneous rate of growth; ln = natural logarithm; r = compound rate of growth. hence taking antilog of 1, subtract 1 from it and multiply the difference by 100, would give compound rate of growth. results and discussion trend and rate of growth in wheat crop of khyber pakhtunkhwa wheat is grown extensively in pakistan as well as in khyber pakhtunkhwa on subsis tence basis for home consumption (farooq et al., 2007). table-1 indicates that during 1981-85 the area under wheat crop in khyber pakhtunkhwa was 801.5 thousand hectares as compared to 726.9 thousand hectares sown during 2010-12, which shows that area of wheat crop decreased over the time due to shifting of area to other rabi crops. the production of wheat during 1981-85 to 201012 was increased from 926.7 thousand tones to 1155.8 due the corresponding increase in per hectare yield of wheat crop in khyber pakhtunkhwa (table 1). table 1: trend in area, production and yield of wheat crop in kp, 1981-2012 (5-years average) years area ('000' hectares) production ('000' tonnes) yield (kgs per hectare) 1981-85 801.5 926.7 1156 1986-90 797.6 974.2 1220 1991-95 845.1 1161.9 1375 1996-00 858.2 1182.5 1375 2001-05 751.9 967.0 1291 2006-10 750.2 1138.0 1517 2010-12* 726.9 1155.8 1595 source: various issues of crops statistics of kp and agri. statistics of pakistan *2-years avg. the results of semi-log model for area, production and yield of wheat crop during 1980-81 to 2011-12 were presented in table2. the results of f-statistic show that the models were significant for area, production and yield of wheat crop in khyber pakhtunkhwa. it was revealed from the results that trend co-efficient for wheat production and yield was positive except area which was negative. the positive sign of compound growth rate shows that production and yield of wheat crop was increasing at a rate of 0.60 percent and 0.90 percent per annum. the compound growth rate during this period in area was -0.30 per cent, production grew at the rate of 0.60 per cent and yield growth is 0.90 per cent. table 2: trend and rate of growth in area, production and yield of wheat crop in khyber pakhtunkhwa, 1981-2012 particulars area production yield f-statistic 9.89** 7.15* 30.3** trend coefficient -0.003 0.006 0.009 t-statistic -3.15** 2.67* 5.51** instantaneous growth rate (%) -0.30 0.60 0.90 compound growth rate (%) -0.30 0.60 0.90 **significant at 1 percent level of significance; *significant at 5 percent level of significance asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 149-155 152 trend and rate of growth in maize crop of khyber pakhtunkhwa maize (zea mays l.) is an exhaustive cereal crop. it is a multipurpose crop that provides food for human, feed for animals especially poultry and livestock and raw material for the industries (khaliq et al., 2004). maize is the second most important crop after wheat in the khyber pakhtunkhwa, and for much of the province, it is the dominant crop in the farming system (byerlee and sajidin, 1986). table-3 indicates that maize was planted in khyber pakhtunkhwa in 1981-85 on an area of 420.4 thousand hectares with production of 534.2 thousand tonnes and yield 1272 kgs per hectare. in the year 2010-12 the maize area, production and yield was increased to 449.1 thousand hectares with an annual production of 814.2 thousand tones and yield 1809 kgs per hectare. table 3: trend in area, production and yield of maize crop in kp, 1981-2012 (5-yrs avg) years area '000' hectares production '000' tonnes yield (kgs per hectare) 1981-85 420.4 534.2 1272 1986-90 473.8 675.8 1424 1991-95 519.8 781.2 1503 1996-00 534.0 820.0 1536 2001-05 517.6 875.0 1691 2006-10 489.7 863.0 1762 2010-12* 449.1 814.2 1809 source: various issues of crops statistics of kp and agri. statistics of pakistan *2-years avg. the semi-log model was run for maize area, production and yield of khyber pakhtunkhwa and the results shows that the models were significant for area, production and yield of maize crop. the trend coefficient of area, production and yield was positive. the positive sign of compound growth rate shows that area, production and yield of maize crop was increased over the time. annual percentage growth during 1980-81 to 2011-12 was increased at the rate of 0.4 percent in area, while production and yield increased per year at the rate of 1.6 percent and 1.20 percent, respectively. whereas, the compound growth rate in area 0.40 percent, production 1.60 percent and yield 1.21 percent were calculated respectively. the data shows that area, production and yield of maize was increased over the time the reason is that more area was brought under hybrid and improved open pollinated maize varieties table 4: trend and rate of growth in area, production and yield of maize crop in kp, 1981-2012 **significant at 1 percent *significant at 5 percent level of significance trend and rate of growth in rice crop of khyber pakhtunkhwa the area under rice crop in khyber pakhtunkhwa was decreased from 70.1 thousand hectares to 48.1thousand hectares during 1981 to 2012. the production of rice during the same period was also decreased from 112 thousand tones to 86.5 thousand tones due to the corresponding decrease in area (table 5). particulars area production yield f-statistic 5.4** 64.1** 292.1** trend coefficient 0.004 0.016 0.012 t-statistic 2.32* 8.01** 17.1** instantaneous growth rate (%) 0.40 1.60 1.20 compound growth rate (%) 0.40 1.61 1.21 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 149-155 153 table 5: trend in area, production and yield of rice crop in kp, 1981-2012 (5-years average) years area ('000' hectares) production ('000' tones) yield (kgs per hectare) 1981-85 70.1 112.0 1597 1986-90 65.2 114.4 1759 1991-95 62.7 117.9 1880 1996-00 66.1 127.0 1919 2001-05 61.9 121.4 1960 2006-10 59.4 119.8 2015 2010-12* 48.1 86.5 1795 source: various issues of crops statistics of kp and agri. statistics of pakistan *2-years avg the results of semi-log model for area, production and yield of rice crop were presented in table 6. it was revealed from the table that trend co-efficient for rice production and yield was positive whereas the co-efficient for rice area was negative. the value of t-statistic of trend co-efficient for area, production and yield was also significant at 1%, 5% and 1% level of significance, respectively. the positive sign of compound growth rate shows that production and yield of rice crop was increasing at a rate of 0.08 percent and 0.70 percent per annum. the compound growth rate during this period in area was -0.80 per cent, which shows that area under rice crop in khyber pakhtunkhwa was decreased by 0.80 per cent per annum. table 6: trend and rate of growth in area, production and yield of rice crop in kp, 19812012 particulars area production yield f-statistic 34.31** 0.51ns 28.28** trend coefficient -0.008 0.0008 0.007 t-statistic -5.86** -0.39 ns 5.32** instantaneous growth rate (%) -0.80 0.08 0.70 compound growth rate (%) -0.80 0.08 0.70 **significant at 1 percent level of significance ns= non significant trend and rate of growth in sugarcane crop of khyber pakhtunkhwa sugarcane is an important cash crop of khyber pakhtunkhwa. sugarcane production in khyber pakhtunkhwa has increased over time up to the year 2001-2005. in 1981-85, the area under sugarcane was 98.5 thousand hectares which increased to 105.8 thousand hectares in 1996-00 and sugarcane production increased from 3892.1 thousand tonnes in 1981-85 to 4803.5 thousand tonnes in 1996-2000, while the yield of sugarcane increased from 39.5 tones per hectare to 45.4 tones per hectare during the same period. area of sugarcane crop for the year 2010-12 shows a decreased as compared to 2006-10 whereas their production also decreased due to the corresponding decrease in area and average yield of sugarcane (table 7). table 7: trend in area, production and yield of sugarcane crop in kp, 1981-2012 (5-years average) years area (‘000’ in hectares) production ( ‘000’ in tonnes) yield (tones per hectare) 1981-85 98.5 3892.1 39.5 1986-90 96.5 3973.7 41.1 1991-95 102.1 4509.1 44.2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 149-155 154 source: various issues of crops statistics of kp and agri. statistics of pakistan *2-years avg the results of semi-log model for area, production and yield of sugarcane crop were presented in table-8. the results of fstatistic show that the models were significant for production and yield of sugarcane crop whereas model for sugarcane area was statistically non-significant. it was revealed from the table that trend co-efficient for sugarcane area, production and yield is positive. the positive sign of compound growth rate shows that area, production and yield of sugarcane crop was increasing at a rate of 0.20 percent, 0.70 percent and 0.50 percent per annum, respectively. table 8: trend and rate of growth in area, production and yield of sugarcane crop in kp, 1981-2012 particulars area production yield f-statistic 2.52 ns 21.31** 50.63** trend coefficient 0.002 0.007 0.005 t-statistic 1.59 ns 4.62** 7.12** instantaneous growth rate (%) 0.20 0.70 0.50 compound growth rate (%) 0.20 0.70 0.50 **significant at 1 percent level of significance ns= non significant conclusion the compound growth rate as well as trend analysis indicated that the area under wheat crop has decreased over the time due to shifting of area to other rabi crops. the production of wheat during 1981-85 to 2010-12 was increased due the corresponding increase in per hectare yield of wheat crop in khyber pakhtunkhwa. the results show that area, production and yield of maize was increased over the time the reason is that more area was brought under hybrid and improved open pollinated maize varieties. the area under rice crop has decreased whereas their production increased due the corresponding increase in per hectare yield of rice crop. references ahmad, m., & farooq, u. 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(1985). the measurement of growth rates from time series. canadian j. of agricultural economics, 38(2), 231-242. http://www.cabdirect.org/search.html?q=au%3a%22rao%2c+v.+m.%22 http://www.cabdirect.org/search.html?q=au%3a%22nadkarni%2c+m.+v.%22 http://www.cabdirect.org/search.html?q=au%3a%22deshpande%2c+r.+s.%22 http://www.cabdirect.org/search.html?q=do%3a%22indian+journal+of+agricultural+economics%22 http://www.cabdirect.org/search.html?q=do%3a%22indian+journal+of+agricultural+economics%22 http://www.cabdirect.org/search.html?q=au%3a%22sagar%2c+v.%22 http://www.cabdirect.org/search.html?q=do%3a%22indian+journal+of+agricultural+economics%22 http://www.cabdirect.org/search.html?q=do%3a%22indian+journal+of+agricultural+economics%22 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(10), 201-209 201 chinese experiences and lessons learnt in agricultural development since 1949 bin jiang, m. a. phd candidate; international development studies, globalisation studies groningen institute (gsg), university of groningen, netherlands joost herman director; globalisation studies, groningen institute (gsg), netherlands yongjun zhao head; china affairs of globalisation studies groningen institute (gsg), netherlands article history: received: 10-nov-2016 revised received: 12-dec2016 accepted: 19-dec-2016 online available: 02-jan2017 keywords: chinese experiences, agriculture, rural development abstract the chinese agricultural development has made remarkable achievements, especially in recent four decades, while as several issues also emerged at the same time. this paper uses a historical view to find out the facts that exist in the agricultural development experiences in china since the people’s republic of china founded in 1949, both achievements and major issues. in this paper, the chinese development experiences have been divided into three phases in accordance with the developmental characteristics in each stage, and then to search for the main achievements in the past decades and problems that need to solve currently. 1. introduction agriculture is the oldest industry in human history. in the past six decades, especially in the recent forty years, chinese agricultural development has made remarkable achievements, however, behind these achievements; the reality of chinese agricultural development had been through different phases and went through ups and downs. in addition, there are still many issues exist in chinese agriculture and chinese society. for instance, one major reflection is the highest gini coefficient of 0.473 in 2013 1 , in china, and the household per capita net income of china for the rural residents and urban residents are 1,271 usd and 3850 usd respectively in 2013 2 . the corresponding author’s name: bin jiang email address: b.jiang@rug.nl 1 commonly, if the gini coefficient is above 0.4, then it means that there are large income gaps among residents in a community. 2 china rural statistical yearbook 2014, available on: http://www.yearbookchina.com/navibooklist-ymctj0.html (accessed on: 2016-1-3). asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.10/1005.10.201.209 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 201-209 202 biggest income gap between rural residents and urban residents is one of the major issues that impedes chinese economic development and agriculture industry development. the analysis on chinese agricultural achievements and lessons can help readers to get to know china’s domestic agricultural strategy. since the founder of the people’s republic of china in 1949, the history of chinese agricultural development can be divided into three phases and different phase has different characteristics. this division is based on the chinese national development strategy and reforms in different time periods. 2. different phases in chinese agricultural development since 1949 the chinese agricultural development since 1949 can be divided into three major phases 3 in accordance with different characteristics of every period. these phases are from 1949 to 1957, 1958 to 1978, 1978 until now. these phases are divided for three major factors: first, the chinese policy influencing each period; second, the economic status of each period; third, living standard of rural residents. 2.1. the agricultural development in early days after the founder of people’s republic of china (from 1949 to 1957) in this early stage of chinese agriculture, the majority of the population in rural china is poor and live without own land because of long war damage and the shackles of thousands of years’ feudal land system. in order to meet the urgent requirements of the majority of farmers on the land, the chinese government implemented agrarian reform. in 1950, with the promulgation of the people's republic of china agrarian reform law, feudal exploitation of land ownership was abolished, china started to implement peasantry land ownership. the land system of feudal exploitation, which continued for thousands of years in china had completely abolished in 1952. by 1952, the agricultural production had reached above the highest level in the history of china and farmers' enthusiasm for production has greatly improved. meanwhile, the closed small peasant economy has many disadvantages in agricultural development. it is not conducive to the production of the modern social division of labor; it is not conducive to set up large-scale irrigation and water conservancy construction; it cannot withstand a variety of severe natural disasters; it is unable to meet the needs of industrialization of agriculture for more and more industrial raw materials, capital and markets. in order to change the situation of dispersed rural productivity shackles of backward peasant economy cannot meet the development needs of national economic construction, from 1953 to 1956, china began to implement reforms in agriculture, which is taking the path of agricultural cooperation and transfer the individual agricultural economy to the socialist public economy. during this phase, mechanized agriculture reached a certain level of development. the major measures of the chinese government of the period are promoting new farming tools and develop water equipment; founded the mechanized state farms; pilot and tractor stations of state founder agricultural machinery industry. 3 this division is based on the chinese economy development stages since 1949. http://www.cssn.cn/zt/zt_zh/xwzt/ncgzhy/bglc/201412/t20141221_1450910_1.shtml, (accessed on: 2016-115). http://www.cssn.cn/zt/zt_zh/xwzt/ncgzhy/bglc/201412/t20141221_1450910_1.shtml asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 201-209 203 2.2. establishment and development of the people's commune period (from 1958 to 1978) the period from 1958 to 1978 is called the people’s commune period in the chinese agricultural history. and during this period, the ‘left’ mistake, which has symbols of high index, whim, rhetorical style and the ‘communist wind’ are serious flooding up. the people’s commune system is an attempt to collectivization of agriculture, but this production model seriously damaged the interests of farmers and a great blow to the farmers' enthusiasm for production, it also devastated agricultural production and lead to a sharp decline in agricultural production. in 1962, the cpc central committee meeting makes a preliminary summary of the lessons in the ‘great leap forward’ and start to take a number of economic and political measures, therefore, from 1962 to 1966 the national economy has been a relatively smooth recovery and development. agricultural mechanization is in a stage of exploration and adjustment from 1958 to 1965. the main policies in this stage are as follows: the announcement of the fundamental way to improve agriculture is agricultural mechanization; vigorously movement on implements reform; the tractor stations’ state decentralization and re-nationalize; development and adjustment of the agricultural machinery industry; establishment of a farm machinery repair network. then from 1966 until 1976 is the cultural revolution, during this phase, the china suffered severe social unrest, the rural economy and rural production order has been severely damaged, which lead to serious damage to agriculture and chinese agriculture has been through a yield long-term stagnation. 2.3. construction of the new era of modern agriculture (since 1978 until now) since 1978, cpc has summed up the lessons learned from the development experiences since the prc founded, especially summed up the extremely mistakes that happened during the cultural revolution period. chinese government started to implemented the economy centered construction national development strategy and a series of reforms. from 1978 to 1984, the main feature is a reconstruction of the household responsibility system in rural areas and promotion of micro-management body in rural areas. in the winter of 1978, eighteen farmers signed off a contract of production contracted to each household in xiaogang village, fengyang county, anhui province set off a prelude to the land contract with an individual in the whole china. in january 1983, the cpc central committee issued a circular (central document of 1983) ‘the problems of current rural economic policy’ and thorough affirmed the household contract responsibility system. since then, the country has begun to spread on agricultural household contract responsibility system and abolish of the people's commune old system. during 1985 to 1991, the feature of this period is reform of agricultural products circulation system and the rise up of township enterprises. with the determination of the agricultural basic operating system and the improvement of agricultural production efficiency, the urgency of agricultural products circulation system has become increasingly prominent. in 1985, the chinese government takes comprehensive reform in the unification purchase of agricultural products. additionally, with the implementation of price liberalization on the main kinds of agricultural products and let them being determined by the market forces of supply and demand. along with the reform of the circulation system of agricultural products, the chinese government has encouraged farmers to develop a diversified crop structure optimization, thereby to promote the transition from small-scale agriculture to large-scale agriculture. from 1992 to 1997, the main characteristics are the proposed agricultural industrialization strategy and emphasize the stability of land contracting and management, then, steadily promote the circulation system of grain and other major agricultural products. during this stage, although not gain the ultimate success of the grain distribution system, with the initial establishment of market asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 201-209 204 regulation framework, different varieties of agricultural products have basically achieved the goal of letting the market regulate the supplying chain. and major agricultural products have achieved the historical transformation from food shortages in the long term to supply and demand balance 4 . since 1998 till now, the main feature is with the implementation of urban and rural strategy, the abolition of agricultural tax, the stage of industry-driving-agriculture, town-driving-rural area. agricultural internationalization is an important content of this period’s reform. since china joined the wto in 2001 that means china's agricultural development has entered a new period. according to wto requirements of the agreement, china makes significant reform on domestic market access, domestic support and export subsidies, and then, makes the average agricultural tariff fell from 23.2% in 2001 to 15.23% in 2006 5 , this is far below the developed countries like the us, japan and the eu. at present, china has become one of the country that has lowest overall tariff level of agricultural products. since the opening up reform, with the agricultural mechanization and education, the agricultural technology system has gotten a large degree of development. with the extension of large agricultural machinery and the steady implementation of strategy of promoting agriculture by applying scientific and technological advances, agricultural talents and experts are more and more abundant, because of which, scientific and technological achievements in agriculture continued, biotechnology innovation has repeatedly been used in crop improvement. chinese agriculture ushered in an era of comprehensive development. 3. the main achievements of chinese agricultural development since 1949 since the prc founded, chinese agriculture has been through many ups and downs. this part will mainly concentrate on the main achievements in the chinese agricultural development process. these four major achievements are summarized based on historical perspective. firstly, rural economic structure has changed dramatically and achieved a comprehensive development of the rural economy. especially in the latest three decades, through the development of township enterprises and small towns, chinese rural non-agricultural industries and urbanization have been tremendous development. by 2007, the personnel of township enterprises reached 150 million, accounting for 19.5% of employees, an increase of 121.74 million more than in 1978, the contribution to employment growth by 33 percentage points; create added value 6.8 trillion, representing an increase of social value 27.6%, compared with an increase of 6.75 trillion in 1978, an annual growth rate of 18.5%, the contribution to economic growth by 28 percentage points; total profit of 242 billion usd with an increase of 241 billion usd more than in 1978 and the annual growth rate up to 19.6% 6 . township enterprises’ projections have optimized the industrial structure in rural areas, and promote the coordinated development of economy and overall prosperity in rural areas. secondly, agricultural science and technology has been greatly improved, also significantly improved agricultural irrigation, mechanization level. science and technology are core elements in the agricultural developing value chain, with the improvement and implementation of new science 4 from the fourth press conference of chinese national day, answered by deputy minister of agriculture, mr. chen xiaohua, http://www.ce.cn/cysc/ztpd/09/nyfz/, (accessed on: 2016-02-10) 5 from www.cssn.cn, (accessed on 2016-01-30) 6 quoted from "cpc central committee on rural reform and development of a number of major issues", people's publishing house in october 2008 edition, page 35. http://www.ce.cn/cysc/ztpd/09/nyfz/ http://www.cssn.cn/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 201-209 205 and technology in the agricultural area, with the outcome of agricultural development, china has also entered the ranks of the world's agricultural scientific and technological power. during the ‘twelve five’ 7 period, the rate of science and technology contributes to chinese agricultural development is more than 55% 8 , which effectively promoted agricultural and rural economic development and rural livelihood improvement. the major implementation that chinese government applies to the whole country’s rural area is agricultural technology and science extension, which leads to the newly agricultural technology being implemented by local farmers in rural areas. the chinese agricultural science and technology development enter into a new level. in the eleventh five-year period 9 , china's agricultural mechanization level has significantly increased, which to the successful achievement of agricultural production means transferring from human animal power based to mechanical work based. thirdly, steady growth of farmers' income help to achieve great success in poverty alleviation and development. from table 1, the per capita income of chinese rural residents has increased rapidly since 1978, until 2013, rural residents’ per capita income is reaching 1270 usd. the significantly reduced rural poverty population is another symbol. in 1978, china has about 250 million people lives in poverty in rural areas and the poverty rate is 30.7%; then, in 2014, the rural poor population was 70.2 million, the poverty rate dropped to 7.2%. table 1: china's rural residents’ per capita net income in major years year 1949 1957 1965 1978 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2013 per capita income (usd) 6.25 10.43 15.30 27.33 56.80 98.04 225.39 321.91 464.99 845.57 1270.84 data source: china rural statistical yearbook 2014 poverty alleviation and development of china not only effectively reducing its own country’s poverty, but also accelerated the process to eliminate world’s poverty. the chinese poverty alleviation implementation also reversing the rise of the world's poor population continued in the past fifty years and china has become the world's first advanced county to achieve the un millennium development goals that halving the country’s poor population (gong, 2009). fourth, the promoting of rural public utilities lead to achievements in comprehensive social progress in rural areas, which especially embodies in education, health service and social security system. rural education has made historic progress. in 1949, primary school enrollment rate was only 20%, the secondary school enrollment rate was 6%, the illiteracy rate was 80%. and then with the reform and development of the education system, by the year 2007, the proportion of illiterate rural laborers was 6.6%, the illiteracy rate of young adults was dropped to 3.58%. 150 million rural students in their compulsory education phase have been exempted from tuition fees and textbooks 10 . by 2009, all areas of china's nine-year compulsory education coverage reached more than 95% 11 . 7 since 1953, cpc start make five year development plan, the ‘twelve five’ means the twelfth five year plan, this period is from 2011 to 2015. 8 ministry of agriculture: the end of the twelfth five-year agricultural technology progress contribution rate will exceed 55%，http://www.chinanews.com/ （accessed on: 2016-2-16） 9 the eleventh five year period is 2006 to 2010. 10 from the website of ministry of education of the people’s republic of china, http://www.moe.edu.cn/ (accessed on: 2016-2-25). 11 http://news.sohu.com/20090908/n266558753.shtml (accessed on: 2016-2-25). http://www.chinanews.com/ http://www.moe.edu.cn/ http://news.sohu.com/20090908/n266558753.shtml asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 201-209 206 in health service area, before 1978, china has set up the barefoot doctor system in a rural cooperative medical system in accordance with the economic level. the unicef 1980-1981 annual report spoke highly of china’s ‘barefoot doctor’ system, which provides primary health care for chinese rural areas and this provides a model for underdeveloped countries to improve their level of health care (zhang et al., 2002). by the end of 2014, the total participants of the new rural cooperative medical 12 reached 736 million people, the participation rate was 98.9% 13 . china has basically established a rural medical and health service system currently. the rural social security system has gradually established and improved. before the opening up reform, the main characteristics of the rural social security system have been the establishment of a ‘five guarantees’ 14 . after the opening up reform, the social security system was established, which is guided by the spirt of socialist market economy. by march 2008, 35.66 million people living under the poverty line were covered by the minimum living standard security system in rural areas. agriculture is the foundation of the national economy; these developments mentioned above in chinese agriculture make great contribution to substantial growth in the chinese economy. in order to achieve industrialization as soon as possible, china has collected substantial funds for industrial development from agriculture (zhang, 2014). what’s more, a large number of rural surplus labor force become the main force in the construction industry and urbanization. after 1978, with the urban construction employment system reform, there were three chinese workers tides. in 2014, the migrant workers reached 274 million 15 and they become the main force of chinese urban construction. increase agricultural productivity is a prerequisite for industrialization, agriculture provides the market with a wealth of agricultural products, also promotes the prosperity of an active market. as the most basic industry of a country, the contribution of agriculture to a country not only in economic aspects, as well as in social stability, ecological balance are having an inseparable coordinating role of agriculture. therefore, the summary and conclusion of the chinese agricultural achievements embody the relationship between chinese agricultural development and national economic development. 4. the main issues in current chinese agricultural development in the chinese agricultural development process, not only achievable, but also issues that need to be paid attention to. during this part of chapter four, the main issues or lessons learnt in current chinese agricultural development is being discussed. 12 the new rural cooperative medical care, is defined as a system that the government organize, guide and support; individual, collective and multi-government offer funding; farmers participate voluntarily, serious disease coordination based medical mutual aid system. the new rural cooperative medical care system began to make pilots in partial china since 2003, and then gradually achieved comprehensive coverage of the whole countries’ rural residents in 2010. 13 from http://politics.people.com.cn/n/2015/1105/c1001-27782363.html (accessed on: 2016-3-1). 14 ‘five guarantees’ include: guarantee for food, guarantee for clothing, guarantee for medical care, guarantee for housing, guarantee for burial expenses (for orphans this changes to guarantee for education). the beneficiaries of ‘five guarantees’ refer to support the elderly, the disabled and minors in rural china that have no labour capacity, no living resources or no obligatory legal support. the ‘five guarantees’ funds of a region cannot less than 60% of per capita annual net income of rural residents in last year. 15 national monitoring survey report 2014 migrant workers, http://www.stats.gov.cn/, (accessed on: 20163-6). http://politics.people.com.cn/n/2015/1105/c1001-27782363.html http://www.stats.gov.cn/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 201-209 207 firstly, to pursuing a sustainable development pattern is one of the main issues in the chinese agricultural development. even though the great achievements in the chinese agricultural economy, over-exploitation of agricultural resources, agricultural inputs used in excess, overexploitation of groundwater, internal and external sources of agricultural pollution problems and other problems are of increasingly prominent, major challenges are existed in sustainable agricultural development. with the increasing hard resource constraints to achieve the task, of security of supply of grain and other major agricultural products more difficult. in recent years, the annual occupation of construction, land to farmland is around 0.8 million acres 16 , the soil plow layer of the occupied farmland is a serious waste of resources. environmental pollution is another serious issue, the proliferation of ‘industrial three wastes’ 17 and city life pollution into rural areas, cadmium, mercury, arsenic and other heavy metals continue to penetrate to agricultural production and environmental. point of major pollutants in soil exceeding the rate of 16.1% 18 . ecosystem degradation obviously and makes ecological conservation agriculture tasks more difficult. in china, until 2015, there are 2.95 million square kilometers of soil erosion area, 1.73 million square kilometers of desertified land and 12 square kilometers of rocky desertification area. additionally, the average annual amount of soil erosion 4.5 billion tons 19 . the unestablishment of land and water resource, asset management and other institutional mechanisms, this leads to lack of protection and restoration of forest, lake and farmland, etc. secondly, although agricultural technology and science extension system has played a significant role in the chinese agricultural development in the past six decades, there are still a number of issues existed in chinese agricultural extension. the mechanism of agricultural extension investment is imperfect, there is a serious shortage of financial supply. the knowledge structure of agricultural extension officers is not comprehensive and reasonable, which is not suitable for agricultural industrial chain development. what’s more, there is a lack of incentive mechanism for agricultural extension workers. thirdly, with a large number of rural labor forces move to cities, rural idle lands are increasing. therefore, the chinese government began to encourage the implementation of rural land use right transfer policy. however, during this process, there are a number of issues need to be taken consideration. one issue is that some farmers do not have the awareness of land transfer, on the other hand, some farmers do not understand the land transfer policy and they are afraid of that if they transfer their land’s rights of use, they will lose their life reliance, therefore, they would rather let their land stay abandonment than transfer the land’s rights of use. another issue is that the mechanism of land transfer is not perfect and also the management of land transfer is not standardized. fourthly, chinese rural social security system is not perfect. at present, in rural china, the social security system is mainly consists of rural minimum living security system, the new cooperative medical system, rural medical assistance system, five guarantees system, natural disaster relief system, the new rural pension system, etc. 20 16 national sustainable agriculture development plan (20152030), information office of the ministry of agriculture, www.cfc.agri.gov.cn, (accessed on: 2016-3-6). 17 ‘industrial three wastes’ refers to industrial emissions of ‘waste water, waste gas, solid waste.’ 18 national survey of soil pollution bulletin (ministry of environmental protection and the ministry of land), 2014, http://www.zhb.gov.cn/gkml/hbb/qt/201404/t20140417_270670.htm, (accessed on: 2016-3-7). 19 national sustainable agriculture development plan (20152030), information office of the ministry of agriculture, www.cfc.agri.gov.cn, (accessed on: 2016-3-6). 20 report on the situation of the social security system in rural areas, (2009), people's republic of china state council, www.chinanews.com, (accessed on: 2016-3-9). http://www.chinanews.com/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 201-209 208 in every individual system, there are problems need to be solved. for instance, the amount of funds allocated to every target family is very limited according to the current rural minimum living security system; moreover, it is difficult to determine the target population due to the lack of clarification about whether families are qualified to be secured by the system (jiang & zuo, 2013). in addition, rural people are still facing much financial pressure when they get severe disease because the actual refunds farmers obtained are still relatively low, even though the new cooperative medical system was implemented in rural china (sun, 2011). at the same time, rural residents are not very willing to spend money on health insurance when they stay healthy. at present, authorities need to make much effort to persuade rural families to be involved in the policy every year (zhu & wang, 2010). fifthly, there are many social issues that exist in rural china, for example, the left-behind population issue 21 . according to ye and pan (2011), in rural china, migrant workers to the city is very common and their children, who is left-behind by their parents, are taking care of elderly people or other relatives have many negative issues need to be taken consideration with. leftbehind children have more possibilities to have depression problems because the separation with parents (he et al., 2012). moreover, left-behind children have to spend more time on domestic housework and farm work than other children (chang et al., 2011), this may lead to the time allocation burden on these children of their study and entertainment time. the last but not the least, in the past six decades, although chinese economy has achieved enormous accomplishment, but because the implementation of the policy of restriction of migration from rural areas to urban areas, the biggest income gap has developed between urban and rural china (zhao, 1999; zhang & shunfeng, 2003). this income gap leads to the unbalanced development between rural areas and urban areas, and it is an urgent issue that has negative influences on chinese economy. with all these issues that have negative effects on chinese agricultural development, the chinese government and related agencies have already aware of the existences of these problems, but still need efforts and intelligence to really solve these issues. funding: the study is supported by china scholarship council. competing interests: the author declares that s/he has no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references chang, h., dong, x. y., & macphail, f. (2011). labor migration and time use patterns of the leftbehind children and elderly in rural china. world development, 39(12), 2199-2210. china rural statistical yearbook (2014). available on: http://www.yearbookchina.com/navibooklist-ymctj-0.html, (accessed on: 2016-1-3). cpc central committee on rural reform and development of a number of major issues, (2008). people's publishing house in october 2008 edition, page 35. 21 left-behind population in rural china mainly point to the children, elderly people, women that are being left-behind in rural household because their parents, children, husbands have to go to cities to be city workers to earn money for the whole family, the left-behind population have to live with themselves and this lead to a lot of social problems in rural areas in china. http://www.yearbookchina.com/navibooklist-ymctj-0.html asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 201-209 209 gong, y. 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(accessed on: 2016-3-7). national sustainable agriculture development plan (20152030). the information office of the ministry of agriculture. www.cfc.agri.gov.cn <http://www.cfc.agri.gov.cn>, (accessed on: 2016-3-6). report on the situation of the social security system in rural areas (2009). people's republic of china state council. www.chinanews.com. (accessed on: 2016-3-9). sun, g. (2011). problems and countermeasures of the new cooperative medical system. modern hospital, 2, 101-102. ye, j., & pan, l. (2011), differentiated childhoods: impacts of rural labor migration on left-behind children in china. the journal of peasant studies, 38(2), 355-377. zhang, k. h., & shunfeng, s. o. n. g. (2003). rural-urban migration and urbanization in china: evidence from time-series and cross-section analyses. china economic review, 14(4), 386-400. zhang, k., wen, y., & liang, p. (2002). from barefoot doctors to rural doctors. yunnan renmin press. zhang, s. (2014). the cause of new china’s agricultural development change, www.cssn.cn <http://www.cssn.cn>, (accessed on: 2016-3-2). zhao, y. (1999). leaving the countryside: rural-to-urban migration decisions in china. the american economic review, 89(2), 281-286. zhu, l., & wang, w. (2010), problems and countermeasures of the new cooperative medical system. hospital management forum, 10, 56-59. http://www.chinanews.com/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/ issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 5(4), 68-75 68 ecological interaction between insect pests, climatic factors and plant traits on abundance of beneficial insects in paddy field norazliza, r., mohd rasdi, z. and fauziah, i., ismail, r. faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara melaka, jasin, malacca, malaysia mohd hanysyam, m. n. faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, selangor, malaysia abstract 1 the presences of beneficial insects in the paddy field are very important for the ecological systems of paddy field as those insects could help managing the population of the pests. hence, it will reduce the dependence on pesticides usage to combat the population of insect pests. this study was aimed to study on ecological interaction between environmental factors such as insect pests, plant height, rainfall, temperature and humidity with abundance of beneficial insects in paddy field of sungai burong, tanjung karang, selangor for two seasons of paddy planting. low number of insects composition were recorded in paddy field at sungai burong during the vegetative phase and highest during the reproductive and maturity phases for two seasons of paddy planting. the trend of mean composition of insects were gradually increasing from vegetative to maturity phases while, the ecological interaction between insect pests, climatic factors and plant traits were acceptable as good predictor for all beneficial insects collected in this study namely zygoptera, gerridae, coccinellidae and staphylinidae except for anisoptera. therefore, consideration on several stated factors by maintaining or conserving ecology and controlling practices in good manner in paddy field has high potential and more reliable to control insect pests effectively using beneficial insects. keywords: ecological, beneficial, insect pests, climatic factors, plant traits 1. introduction the presences of beneficial insects in the paddy field are very important for the ecological systems of paddy field as those insects could help managing the population of the pests. following, less usage of chemicals that can harm the physical and chemical properties of the soil, water and paddy plants. moreover, in the paddy field with minimize pesticides application, crop production commonly depends on the natural control by biological agents (ueno, 2012). therefore, the present of beneficial insects is one of the key resources to improve both productivity and sustainability in the paddy field. study on ecological interaction between environmental factors such as insect pests, plant height, rainfall, temperature and humidity with abundance of beneficial insects in paddy fields are important. those environmental factors have significance influences on the abundance of beneficial insects in the paddy fields. once the survival factors of beneficial insects in the paddy corresponding author’s name: mohd rasdi zaini email address: dddpim@melaka.uitm.edu.my asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.4/1005.4.68.75 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4), 68-75 69 field were determined, thus the population of the those insects could be increased. as consequences, the population of insect pests that had been major problems in paddy field can be solved. furthermore, the information gathered from this study can be used by the farmers as a guideline for an augmentation population of beneficial insects in the paddy field. 2. material and methods 2.1. study area this study was conducted in paddy fields at sungai burong (3.4167°n, 101.1833°e). this area had been chosen due to it is one of primary paddy field in malaysia. in this area, the paddy plants are cultivated twice a year and the rice is commercially selling for local markets. a total of six paddy plots and drainages respectively in sungai burong were identified as selected study areas (table 1). table 1: coordinates of sampling areas localities sampling areas coordinate paddy plots and drainages a 3.304 °n, 101.102 °e b 3.300 °n, 101.938 °e c 3.293 °n, 101.908 °e d 3.290 °n, 101.834 °e e 3.284 °n, 101.764 °e f 3.279 °n, 101.726 °e 2.2. sampling and samples analysis samplings were carried for two seasons consisted of all phenological phases of paddy growth namely vegetative, reproductive and maturity phases. the samples were collected as earlier as 0700. there were three replications of insects sampling at each sampling areas. a sweeping hand net was (0.5mm) was used to collect the insect. the insect was killed in the killing jar containing 90% of chloroform. the sorting, classifying and counting of insects were done in the entomology laboratory, faculty of plantation and agro technology, universiti teknologi mara. the climatic data namely rainfall, temperature and humidity for both seasons were obtained from malaysian meteorology department. the height of the plant was proximately measured in the selected paddy plant in the sampling areas. 2.3. data analysis the composition of insects were calculated based on phenological phases of paddy growth while, the diversity of insects were calculate using ecological indices of shannon’s (h’) index and simpson’s (d) index. for the species richness of insects, both margalef’s (r1) index and menhinick’s (r2) index were used while, the evenness values of insects estimate using pielou’s index (j’). the shannon’s diversity index determined the species relative abundance while, the simpson’s diversity index determined the abundance of the most common species. the richness index is measured the number of species presence from the overall insects which had successfully collected. the evenness index (pielou’s) was used to quantify the distribution of individual species present in the paddy field (carlo et al., 1998; balachandran et al., 2012). the multiple regression from statistical package for social science (spss) version 9 was apply to predict the ecological interaction that exist between insect pests, climatic factors and plant traits on abundance of beneficial insects. the stepwise regression was done prior the multiple regression in order to select the variables that contributed to the abundance of beneficial insects. 3. results there were 1,257 of individuals insects consisted both beneficial and insect pests were successfully counted and classified. as for beneficial, the insects were known as rove beetles (coleoptera; staphylinidae), ladybird (coleoptera; coccinellidae), water strider (hemiptera; gerridae), asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4), 68-75 70 dragonflies (odonata; anisoptera) and damselflies (odonata; zygoptera) while, the insect pests collected were green leafhoppers (hemiptera; cicadellidae), moth (lepidoptera; pyralidae) and midge (diptera; chironomidae). the mean of insect composition according to the phases of paddy growth was shown in figure 1. the trend of mean compositions for gerridae, coccinellidae, staphylinidae and pyralidae were gradually increasing from the vegetative to the maturity stages. family gerridae recorded highest mean composition during the maturity phases with the value of 12.83 followed by coccinellidae with 1.29 and pyralidae with 0.83. the mean composition of staphylinidae was 0.33. as for zygoptera (damselflies), cicadellidae (green leafhoppers) and chironomidae (midges), the means of composition were highest during the reproductive phase of the paddy plant growth. the mean composition for zygoptera was 3.53, while the mean composition for cicadellidae was 0.31. the chironomidae had mean composition of 5.94. none of orders showed high composition during the vegetative phase except for odonata (suborder anisoptera). the mean composition of anisoptera during the vegetative phase was 0.25. after vegetative phase, the mean of composition for anisoptera was decreased during the reproductive phase (0.03) and increased again at the maturity phase of paddy growth (0.08). in overall, most of beneficial and insect pests have a high composition after the vegetative phases which are reproductive and maturity stages. the ecological indices were summarized in table 2. the shannon’s index was ranging between 0.13 and 1.49 for three phases of paddy growth in all sampling areas. the paddy plots showed higher value of shannon’s (h’) index compared to paddy drainages throughout two seasons of paddy planting. the highest shannon’s (h’) index value was recorded at the paddy plot in the first season during the vegetative phase and the lowest value of simpson’s (d) index was recorded at the paddy plot in the first season during the vegetative phase. the values of shannon’s (h’) and simpson’s (d) indices were 1.49 and 0.28 respectively. the lowest shannon’s (h’) index value was detected in the second season of paddy planting at the paddy drainages during the maturity phases of paddy growth. nevertheless, the value of simpson’s (d) index was higher at the paddy drainages during the maturity phases of second season. the values were 0.13 and 0.96 for shannon’s (h) and simpson’s (d) indices respectively. the highest and the lowest values of species richness were recorded particularly during the first season of paddy planting. the highest value for margalef’s (r1) and menhinick’s (r2) indices were 4.15 and 3.29 respectively during the vegetative phase of paddy plant at the paddy plots. the lowest values for margalef’s (r1) and menhinick’s (r2) indices were the same 0.57 during the reproductive phases of paddy plants at the drainage. seasons area phases of paddy growth diversity index richness index evenness shannon’s simpson’s margalef’s menhinick’s pielou’s 1 plot vegetative 1.49 0.28 4.15 3.29 0.83 reproductive 0.86 0.41 2.20 2.01 0.53 matured 0.80 0.45 1.78 1.62 0.50 drainage vegetative 0.73 0.53 1.10 1.10 0.15 reproductive 0.34 0.81 0.57 0.57 0.49 matured 0.16 0.94 0.65 0.65 0.15 2 plot vegetative 0.50 0.78 1.31 1.31 4.70 reproductive 1.13 0.45 1.50 1.50 0.54 matured 1.39 0.29 1.32 1.32 0.86 drainage vegetative 0.64 0.65 1.28 1.28 0.22 reproductive 0.57 0.68 0.95 0.95 0.52 matured 0.13 0.96 0.72 0.72 0.09 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4), 68-75 71 there were good interaction between insect pests (cicadellidae, chironomidae and pyralidae), climatic factors (rainfall, temperature and humidity) and plant traits on abundance of beneficial insects (anisoptera, zygoptera, gerridae, coccinellidae and staphylinidae) in paddy field of sungai burong, selangor (table 3) for two seasons of paddy planting. however, the insect pests, climatic factors and plant traits are incompetent to shows any ecological interaction with the anisoptera throughout two seasons of paddy planting. the significance values (p-values) recorded for zygoptera were 0.000. this indicated that the sets variables were able to predict the abundance of zygoptera in the paddy field with r 2 values of 63.6%. furthermore, there were significance interaction between the plant height and rainfall on abundance of zygoptera (p<0.01). the plant height, temperature and humidity were good predictors (p < 0.05) for gerridae. the overall significance values for ecological interaction between the insect pests, climatic factors and plant traits on abundance of gerridae was 0.004 (p<0.05). however, the r 2 values for these interactions were very low as much as 27%. therefore, there were others factors could contribute to the abundance of the gerridae in the paddy field such as the physical and chemical properties of water since the gerridae is an aquatic insect. consequently, the ecological interaction for gerridae was possibility highly affected by the quality of water in the paddy field instead of insect pests, climatic factors and plant traits. the plant height, temperature and rainfall were good predictors (p<0.05) for abundance of coccinellidae in the paddy field. in addition, the overall significance values for ecological interaction between insect pests, climatic factors and plant traits were 0.00. however, the r 2 value is low (42.3%). therefore, it will be others factors could interact and affect the abundance of coccinellidae in the paddy field. as for the staphylinidae, the results shows that two of insect pests namely pyralidae and chironomidae can be a good predictors (p<0.05). besides, plant height also can be good predictor to the abundance of staphylinidae in the paddy field (p<0.05). however, the r 2 values is low (27.5%) indicating a low ecological interaction between those set variables (insect pests, climatic factors and plant height) with abundance of staphylinidae in paddy field. overall, the ecological interaction between insect pests, climatic factors and plant traits were acceptable for all beneficial insects collected in this study except for anisoptera. further, the plant height shows good ecological interaction for zygoptera, gerridae, coccinellidae and staphylinidae. the insect pests namely pyralidae and chironomidae have good ecological interaction with staphylinidae. figure 1: insect compositions (mean number) based on phases of paddy growth asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4), 68-75 72 table 3: multiple regression analysis between beneficial insects and insect pests, plant height, temperature, rainfall and humidity on both season of paddy planting beneficial insects predictors constant a pyralidae cicadellidae chironomidae plant height temperature humidity rainfall anisoptera coefficient -0.104 -0.078 -0.016 0.113 0.811 0.689 -0.011 t 2.258 -0.693 -0.497 -0.102 0.748 -0.630 0.521 -0.055 p 0.884 0.491 0.621 0.919 0.457 0.531 0.604 0.956 r 2 0.044 zygoptera coefficient 0.056 -0.132 0.030 0.341 1.408 -1.457 0.745 t 2.706 0.605 -1.365 0.307 3.669 1.772 -1.787 6.335 p 0.000 (s) 0.548 0.177 0.760 0.000 (s) 0.081 0.79 0.000 (s) r 2 0.636 gerridae coefficient -0.0.77 -0.0.16 -0.036 -0.403 2.719 -2.653 0.093 t 4.763 -0.592 -0.117 -0.260 -3.055 2.416 -2.297 0.557 p 0.004 (s) 0.556 0.907 0.796 0.003 (s) 0.019 (s) 0.025 (s) 0.580 r 2 0.270 coccinelidae coefficient 0.219 0.034 0.056 0.289 2.004 -1.964 0.347 t 0.048 1.886 0.282 0.460 2.465 2.002 -1.912 2.341 p 0.000 (s) 0.064 0.779 0.647 0.016 (s) 0.049 (s) 0.060 0.022 (s) r 2 0.423 staphylinidae coefficient -0.291 -0.218 0.278 0.329 1.762 -1.667 0.212 t 0.268 -2.234 -1.603 2.037 2.507 1.571 -1.448 1.280 p 0.003 (s) 0.029 (s) 0.114 0.046 (s) 0.015 (s) 0.121 0.153 0.205 r 2 0.275 note: (s ) is significance at p < 0.05 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4), 68-75 73 4. discussions the mean composition of insects in paddy field at sungai burong was found to be the lowest during the vegetative phase and highest during the reproductive and maturity phases for two seasons of paddy planting. the vegetative phase is the phase of paddy plants begins to develop the panicles and there are no grains or flowers developed in the paddy plants. not as a vegetative phase, the biology traits of paddy plants during the reproductive and maturity phases have a lot of grains and flowers. following that, a lot of insects especially the insect pests were attracted to the paddy plants as food sources, resulting in high mean composition of the insects. due to high abundance of insect pests, the numbers of beneficial insects would be highest. abundance of food was known as one of the important factors for the presence of insects in particular areas as in studies of basset (1999), erb et al. (2008) and bambaradeniya and edirisinghe (2008). the ecological indices of insects (table 2) shows that diversity of insects calculated from shanon’s (h’) and simpson’s (d) were varied throughout the sampling periods. consequently, these results noted that the composition and diversity of insects were changing over the time with the phenological phases of paddy growth. each phenological phases of paddy growth have different level of paddy water, fertilizer usage and pesticides application. moreover, although the mean composition of insects was slightly different within the phases of paddy growth, the diversity of insects were varied throughout two seasons of paddy planting. the changes of biological traits of the paddy plants from the vegetative to the maturity phases may attract different insects to the paddy plants (koji et al., 2012). in addition, the values for species richness by margalef’s (r1) and menhinick’s (r2) indices and species evenness by pielou’s (j’) index were found to be the highest in the paddy plots. however, the lowest values for species richness by margalef’s (r1) and menhinick’s (r2) indices and species evenness by pielou’s (j’) index were recorded in the paddy drainages. the findings suggest that localities of sampling areas have significance influences toward the richness and evenness of the insects. paddy plots provided more foods for the insects compared to the paddy drainages. this is because paddy plots have many paddy plants but low water level, while the paddy drainages have no paddy plants and have a depth water level. availability of foods influenced the diversity and abundance of insects compared to the areas which have fewer amounts of food sources. result of multiple regression (table 3) shows that insect pests (cicadellidae, pyralidae and chironomidae), climatic factors (rainfall, temperature and humidity) and plant traits are unable to shows any ecological interaction with the anisoptera. therefore, the abundance of anisoptera in paddy field would be influenced by others factors. according to norazliza et al. (2014), the abundance of anisoptera in the paddy field was highly influenced by the water parameters namely water ph, dissolved oxygen, ammonia and total suspended solid. anisoptera is recognized as an aquatic insect and sensitized to water parameters for the breeding site (fox and cham, 1994). hence, the abundance of anisoptera in paddy field is highly interrelated with water parameters instead of abundance of insect pests, climatic factors and plant traits. the plant height shows good ecological interaction with zygoptera, gerridae, coccinellidae and staphylinidae. according to kandibe et al. (2005), fox and cham (1994), kadoya et al. (2009) and harabis et al. (2013) agreed that growth of paddy plants have important influences on the successful survivors of zygoptera from the predators and weather. in addition, the plant height was also important for survival of coccinellidae especially during the reproductive phase. snyder (2009) noted that the coccinellidae (ladybirds) used chemical cues of the plant to inhibit eggs and oviposition. gerridae are known as aquatic insect but the result shows that gerridae have significant ecological interaction with the plant traits indicating that there were indirect interaction between gerridae and plant height. the gerridae was fed on insects that belong to order diptera, homoptera and hymenoptera which recognized as terrestrial insects (izabella et al., 2007). in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4), 68-75 74 addition, results (table 3) shows that ecological interaction between insect pests, climatic factors and plant traits was very low (27%). study by norazliza et al. (2014) found that abundance of gerridae in paddy field was highly influenced by physical and chemical properties of water. as for staphylinidae, it shows abundance of staphylinidae are influenced by plant height. according to caroline (2013), staphylinidae are favour to high dense vegetation canopy for survival. in addition, the staphylinidae move to the weed plants during the harvesting time for a shelter. besides that, the presence of pyralidae and chironomidae shows good interaction with staphylinidae. a study done by ghahari et al. (2009) noted that the staphylinidae was also a good predator for the egg of pyralidae. to conclude, insect pests such pyralidae (moth) and chironomidae (midge), plant height, temperature, rainfall and humidity can be a predictors to abundance of beneficial insects such as zygoptera (damselfy), gerridae (water strider), coccinellidae (ladybird) and staphylinidae (rove beetles) in the paddy field of sungai burong, selangor. acknowledgement this research is supported by research management institute, universiti teknologi mara (uitm) shah alam (excellent funds: 600-rmi/st/dana 5/3 dst (24/2011). besides, this research also been supported by faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, uitm melaka. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references balachandran, c., dinakaran, s., subash, c. m. d., & ramachandra, t. v. (2012). diversity and distribution of aquatic insects in aghanashini river of central western ghats, india. national conferences on conservation and management of wetlands ecosystem in kerala, india, 10 pp. bambaradeniya, c. n. b., & edirisinghe, j. p. (2008). composition, structure and dynamics of arthropod communities in a rice agro-ecosystem. ceylon journal of science (biological sciences, 37(1), 23-48. basset, y. (1999). diversity and abundance of insect herbivores collected on castanopsis acuminatissima (fagaceae) in new guinea: relationship with leaf production and surrounding vegetation. europe journal entomology, 96, 381-391. carlo, h. r. h., peter, m. j. h., & karmine, s. (1998). indices of diversity and evenness. oceanis, 24(4), 61-87. caroline, a. (2013). a review on paederus fuscipes (rove beetle family). scientia biologia, 1(1), 7-14. erb, m., ton, j., degenhardt, j., & turlings, t. c. j. (2008). interaction between arthropods-induce above ground and below ground defence in plants. plant physiology, 146, 867-874. fox, a. d., & cham, s. a. (1994). status, habitat use and conservation of the scarce blue-tailed damselfly ischnura pumilio (charpentier) (odonata: coenagrionidae) in britain and ireland. journal of biological conservation, 68, 115-122. ghahari, h., anlas, s., sakenin, h., ostovan, h., & tabari, m. (2009). a contribution to the rove beetles (coleoptera: staphylinoidea: staphylinidae) of iranian rice fields and surrounding grasslands. biologie zentrum linz, 41, 1959-1968. harabis, f., tichanek, f., & tropek, r. (2013). dragonflies of freshwater pools in lignite spoil heaps: restoration management, habitat structure and conservation value. journal of ecological engineering, 55, 51-61. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4), 68-75 75 izabella, o., pawel. b., piotu. j., & lee, s. d. (2007). diet of water striders (gerris lacustris l. 1958) in a rice field near seoul, korea. journal of asia-pasific entomology, 10, 85-88. kadoya, t., suda, s., & washitani, i. (2009). dragonfly crisis in japan: a likely consequence of recent agricultural habitat degradation. journal of biological conservation, 142, 18991905. kandibe, m., raguraman, s., & ganapathy, n. (2005). relative abundance and diversity of odonata in an irrigated rice field of maurai, tamil nandu. journal of zoo’s print, 20(11), 2051-2052. koji, s., nakamura, a., & nakamura, k. (2012). demography of heike firefly luciola lateris (coleoptera:lampyridae), a representative species of japan’s traditional agricultural landscape. journal of insects conservation, 16(6), 819-827. norazliza, r., fauziah, i., mohd rasdi, z., fairuz, k., & ismail, r. (2014). comparison and relationship between water parameter and abundance of insects in field and irrigation system of paddy area of sungai burong, tanjung karang, selangor, malaysia. journal of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, 3(4), 249-256. snyder, w. e. (2009). coccinellids in diverse communities: which niche fits?. journal biological control, 51, 323–335. ueno, t. (2012). environmentally sound agro-practice, biodiversity and indicator species in rice paddies. paper present in 2nd international conference on ecological, environmental and biological sciences (eebs'2012) on 13-14 th october 2012 in bali (indonesia). 20-24. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(11), 221-228 221 effects of several cultivars', mulch and fertilizer applications on plant growth and development criteria and plant's nutrition elements uptake in organic strawberry plantation in nevşehir city sevinç şener akdeniz university, vocational school of technical sciences, turkey nurgül f. türemiş çukurova university, faculty of agriculture, department of horticulture, turkey article history: received: 20-nov-2016 revised received: 17dec-2016 accepted: 26-dec-2016 online available: 15jan-2017 keywords: organic strawberry, mulch, fertilizer, vegetative growth abstract this study was conducted to investigate the effect of different mulch types’ (black plastic, textile and sawdust) and fertilizer applications (ekoflora, mog, bio-one, ferbanat l and natural bioplasma) effect in strawberry (fragaria vesca l.) cultivars (‘monterey’, ‘albion’, ‘aromas’, ‘camarosa’ and ‘sweet charlie’). the effects of applications on plant nutrient concentrations (n, p, k, ca, mg and fe) and plant growth and development criteria (plant height, steam diameter, number of leaf and root height) were determined. fertilizer material and cultivars caused significant differences in the plant growth and development of five strawberry cultivars, while mulch materials’ effects found only on number of leaf and root height. highest values in terms of plant growth and development criteria were found in ‘camarosa’ cultivar and black plastic and textile mulch. the most superior cultivar in terms of plant's nutrition elements uptake was ‘camarosa’. black plastic and textile mulch were found more advantageous compared to sawdust mulch. differences in the plant growth and development criteria and plant's nutrition elements uptake obtained from fertilizer applications were noted. 1. introduction 1 organic foods are popular with healthy, delicious and environmentally friendly properties (nandwani & sochinwechi, 2016). organic strawberrys’ commercial value has increased worldwide (hakala et al., 2003). strawberry (fragaria) is a member of rosaceae. concerning strawberries, turkey was the third strawberry producer after usa and mexican with a total production of nearly 353.173 tons and 3.857 tons’ of this production was organic (fao, 2014). corresponding author’s name: sevinç şener email address: svncsener@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.11/1005.11.221.228 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 221-228 222 according to tüi̇k (2013) reports, 654 tones strawberries were produced in nevşehir and 8,80 tons’ of this production was organic. strawberry, which is cultivated and produced in high quality worldwide, has also gain importance in our country, recently. (macit et al., 2006). cultivar selection is feature in strawberry production (nacar, 2012). adaptation experiments are in progress as long as new cultivars are developed (kaleci & günay, 2006). deficit plant nutrients and control of the weeds are the main problems in organic agriculture. mulching may influence the temperature and moisture content of the soil (acharya et al., 2005). mulching increased the yield by controlled weeds and gain clean fruits (kumar & deyb, 2011; plekhanova & petrova, 2002). black plastic mulch material has been widely used in agricultural practices (anttonen et al., 2006). textile, straw, sawdust and paper mulch types are also prefered due to their air and water permeability properties (pop et al., 2013; dobbs, 2003; berglund et al., 2006; skroch et al., 1992). it is reported that, some organic and inorganic materials could also be used as mulch material in strawberry cultivation (birkeland et al., 2002; cabilovski et al., 2014; demirsoy et al., 2012; kumar & deyb, 2011; bilck et al., 2010; kuru, 2009). fertilizing is the most important factor for yield, quality and plant development in plant production. organic fertilization is as important as inorganic fertilization for plant growth processes (cabilovski et al., 2014). organic fertilizers’ harmful effects are not excessively when it applied high dosage cause of their narrow nutrition elements range. additionally, most of organic fertilizer types contain nutrition elements in more or less levels, therefore they ease keeping the plant nutrient balance (aktaş, 1991). several studies reporting that certificated and organic commercial fertilizer have effects on plant development (aras, 2009; gülbağ, 2010; rahman et al., 2014) and nutrition element uptake (türkoğlu, 2005; özkan, 2012; geçer & yılmaz, 2012). the aim of this study was to show the efficiency of different mulch types and organic fertilizers which will be used by strawberry growers in central anatolia. in this regard, the current research was carried out with three neutral ‘monterey, albion, aromas’ and two short-day strawberry cultivars (fragaria × ananassa duch.) ‘camarosa, sweet charlie’ to study the effect of organic fertilizer application and mulching on growth and development criteria and nutrient uptake of strawberry plants in the open conditions. 2. material and method 2.1. material experiment was carried out in the open conditions in nevşehir city, which has 1150 m height and located in central anatolia in 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 seasons. frigo seedlings of strawberry cultivars were grown under organic conditions. ‘monterey’, ‘albion’, ‘aromas’, ‘camarosa’ and ‘sweet charlie’ strawberry cultivars were used as plant material in the present study, while ekoflora, mog, bio-one, ferbanat l. and natural bioplasma used as organic fertilizer products. also mulch materials were black plastic mulch, textile mulch and sawdust. black plastic and textile mulch materials were bought from commercial associations and hornbeam sawdust as mulch was provided from a carpenter’s shop. 20 microns thick cloths were used for black plastic mulching. textile mulch material has air permeability. 2.2. method the experiment was designed as a randomized blocks with 4 replicates in nevşehir city in 20112012 and 2012-2013 seasons. each replicate which is a parcel contains 30 plants. the experiment continued for two years. soils were sampled and analyzed from the depth of 30 cm—in april 2011. through the trial, irrigation, sprinkler irrigation, drop irrigation was held. seedlings were planted on 19.05.2012. black plastic mulch was applied before planting process and sawdust mulch was applied 15 days after planting as 10 cm’s layer. as an addition, m.o.g and bio-one, natural plasma, and ferbanat l fertilizer types were applied as liquid fertilizer and ekoflora asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 221-228 223 fertilizer was mixed into soil before planting process. the applications dosage and methods of the fertilizers are given in table 1. table 1: applications dosage and methods of the fertilizers fertilizer application doses application time application method ekoflora 250 kg/da pre-emergence soil addition mog 0.5-1 l/da 4 applications soil addition plus foliar spray bio-one 0.3 l/da 1 application soil addition ferbanat l 0.5-0.7 l/da 4 applications foliar spray natural bioplasma 1 l/da 4 applications foliar spray in the trials, the effects of mulch type and fertilizer materials on the plant growth and development criteria (plant length, stem width, number of leaves and root length) and plant nutrient uptake (n, p, k, ca, mg, fe) were observed. 2.3. statistical analysis data were analyzed by spss 23 software and comparing averages was done by duncan’s test and a probability value of 5%. significance levels of application differences according to variance analysis and different group were given in tables. 3. findings and discussion some chemical and physical soil properties were determined (table 2). soil at the experimental site was found 55% sandy loam with a ph of 5.64. the results show that the trial soil is sandy loam, less acid reactive, unsalined, having very less azote, rich in phosphor and iron; efficient in calcium, zinc, potassium and magnesium, and poor in manganese. soil’s organic matter content was defined as 0.93%. table 2: chemical and physical analysis results of the experimental soils analysis measurement unit values ph 5.64 total salt (ec) (µs/cm) 147 salt (%) 0.006 caco3 (%) 1.1 organic matter (%) 0.93 texture (%) 55 n (%) 0.028 p (kg/da) 35.1 ca (mg/kg) 1225 k (kg/da) 63 ma (mg/kg) 218 fe (mg/kg) 71.73 mn (mg/kg) 2.53 zn (mg/kg) 1.22 3.1. effects of different mulch and fertilizer applications on strawberry cultivars’ growth and development criteria in table 3, plant height, stem width, number of leaves and root lengths are given. the effects of the cultivars on plant height, stem width, number of leaves and root lengths of plants were statistically (p < 0.05) significant. in all of the plant growth and development criteria, (plant height; 32.63 cm, stem width; 59.63 mm, number of leaves; 95.30 pieces and root length; 20.73 cm) the highest averages were reached in ‘camarosa’ cultivar. similar plant height results were also obtained by some researchers; ‘sweet charlie’ 22.58 cm, ‘camarosa’ 28.50 cm (rahman et al., 2014), ‘camarosa’ 30.43 cm (gülbağ, 2010), ‘camarosa’ 29.67-32.31 cm (atasay, 2007). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 221-228 224 stem width of ‘camarosa’ cultivar were reported as 41.87-52.00 mm range by atasay (2007). rahman et al., (2014) have reported average number of leaves as 35.42 pieces/plant for ‘sweet charlie’ and 37.58 pieces/plant for ‘camarosa’ cultivar. these values are lower than our results. yet reported difference might be resulted from different growing conditions. polat (2005) reported that average number of leaves for ‘camarosa’ has ranged between 43.15-52.05 pieces/plant. atasay (2007) reported that average number of leaves for ‘camarosa’ as 90.06-113.37 pieces/plant. results obtained by polat (2005) and atasay (2007) are close to values obtained in our study. table 3: effects of different cultivars on the plant growth and development cultivars plant height stem diameter number of leaf root height monterey 30.61 b 49.91 b 64.28 c 16.53 b albion 22.26 c 45.25 c 81.17 b 15.89 c aromas 20.39 d 41.28 e 80.05 b 14.87 d camarosa 32.63 a 59.63 a 95.30 a 20.73 a sweet charlie 20.47 d 42.44 d 63.87 c 14.24 e mean separation rows by duncan’s multiple test at 0.05 level effects of mulch types on the growth and development of plants were investigated (table 4). as shown in table 4, we observed a significant difference between mulch types in terms of number of leaf and root length. however, plants mulching with black plastic and agro-textile mulches had higher leaf number (agro-textile; 78.47 number/plant, black plastic; 78.03 number/plant) and lengthier roots (black plastic; 16.91 cm, agro-textile; 16.73 cm). table 4: effects of different mulch types on the plant growth and development mulches plant height stem diameter number of leaf root height black plastic mulch 25.96 48.15 78.03 a 16.91 a tekstil 25.49 48.37 78.47 a 16.73 a talaş 24.37 46.59 74.31 b 15.71 b mean separation rows by duncan’s multiple test at 0.05 level growth responses of strawberry plants in different fertilizer types are shown in table 5. statistical differences found between fertilizer applications in terms of plant growth criteria. examining effects of applications on plant height, the highest average value was reached in mog application (25.75 cm). the highest average value of stem width was found in mog application (48.61 mm) and bio-one application (48.98); the highest average number of leaves value was found in natural bioplasma (78.05 pieces) and the highest root length values were found in ekoflora (16.57 cm), bio_one (16.63 cm) and natural bioplasma (16.65 cm) applications. in some studies conducted by gülbağ (2010) and aras (2009), strawberry cultivars showed similar results; 25.07-26.87 cm average plant height ranges (gülbağ, 2010), 26.7-29.64 cm plant height values ranges for ‘camarosa’ cultivar (aras, 2009). table 5: effects of different fertilizer materials on the plant growth and development fertilizers plant height stem diameter number of leaf root height ekoflora 25.00 b 46.59 c 76.74 ab 16.57 a mog 25.75 a 48.61 a 75.78 b 16.40 ab bio-one 25.31 ab 48.98 a 77.33 ab 16.63 a ferbanat l. 25.28 ab 47.40 b 76.78 ab 16.00 b n.bioplasma 25.01 b 46.93 bc 78.05 a 16.65 a mean separation rows by duncan’s multiple test at 0.05 level asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 221-228 225 3.2. effects of different mulch and fertilizer applications on plant nutrition element uptake macro and micro nutrient content of the different strawberry cultivars are given in table 5. in the research plant nutrient uptake was statistically influenced by organic fertilizer treatments. the amount of n (2.86%), k (1.71%), ca (1.64%), mg (326.61 ppm) and fe (158.24 ppm) in ‘camarosa’ were observed to be higher than other cultivars. in terms of p the highest value was found in ‘albion’ cultivar (0.30%). according to previous studies, plant activator (crop-set and isr 2000) applications applied on ‘selva’ and ‘camarosa’ strawberry cultivars have a positive effect on n and cu content of leaves (türkoğlu, 2005). n rate was defined as 2.42-2.98% and p rate was defined as 0.45-0.52% on ‘camarosa’ cultivar (adak, 2009). geçer and yılmaz (2012) have reported the k content of seedlings similar with this study as 1.04% for ‘aromas’, 1.02% for ‘camarosa’ and 1.02% for ‘sweet charlie’. table 6: effects of different cultivars on the plant nutrient uptake varieties n (%) p (%) k (%) ca (%) mg (ppm) fe (ppm) monterey 2.57 b 0.25 bc 1.51 b 1.59 c 305.67 c 146.90 b albion 2.54 b 0.30 a 1.50 b 1.60 c 314.42 b 142.01 c aromas 2.55 b 0.24 d 1.47 c 1.57 b 312.25 b 137.35 d camarosa 2.86 a 0.26 b 1.71 a 1.64 a 326.61 a 158.24 a sweet charlie 2.57 b 0.24 cd 1.41 d 1.53 d 295. 43 d 110.68 e mean separation rows by duncan’s multiple test at 0.05 level the effects of black plastic, textile and sawdust mulches on strawberry’s plant nutrition uptake were given in table 7. as seen in table 7, the highest p (0.27%) and fe (142.22 ppm) uptakes were obtained from black plastic mulch treatment and it was significantly superior to the other mulches. effects of plastic and sawdust mulches on n uptake were found equal. agro-textile mulch was found superior by uptakes the mg elements. kumar and deyb (2011) reported that they have found n rate as ranging between 0.33-0.76% for application without mulching, as ranging between 0.42 0.88% for sawdust application and as ranging between 0.48 1.03% for black plastic mulch application. it is thought that, the results may occur from factors of climate or soil. table 7: effects of different mulch types on the plant nutrient uptake mulches n (%) p (%) k (%) ca (%) mg (ppm) fe (ppm) black mulch 2.63 a 0.27 a 1.52 1.59 312.28 b 142.22 a agro-textile 2.59 b 0.26 ab 1.52 1.59 314.79 a 139.29 b talaş 2.63 a 0.25 b 1.53 1.58 305.57 c 135.60 c mean separation rows by duncan’s multiple test at 0.05 level fertilizer products had significant effects on plants’ n, p, k, ca, mg and fe uptake (table 8). as shown in table 8, the highest effect on uptakes are; ekoflora on n (2.70%) and k (1.57%); bioone on ca (1.61%); ferbanat l on mg (316.89 ppm) and these form a significant difference depending on applications. özkan (2012) reported that, effect of fertilizer applications is not significant on ca uptake of leaves for ‘fern’ strawberry cultivar and average value ranges between 7863.4 10016.0 ppm. the reason different results were obtained from studies is thought to be different grow up conditions (greenhouse of open field) or ecological factors (day time duration, light intensity, height of location and etc.). table 8: effects of different fertilizer materials on the plant nutrient uptake gübreler fertilizers n (%) p (%) k (%) ca (%) mg (ppm) fe (ppm) ekoflora 2.70 a 0.27 a 1.57 a 1.58 b 309.02 b 139.68 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 221-228 226 mog 2.64 b 0.24 b 1.53 b 1.59 b 309.83 b 137.77 bio-one 2.64 b 0.25 ab 1.52 b 1.61 a 309. 43 b 139.29 ferbanat l. 2.48 c 0.26 a 1.45 c 1.58 b 316.89 a 138.68 natural bioplasma 2.63 b 0.26 a 1.54 b 1.58 b 309.21 b 140.18 mean separation rows by duncan’s multiple test at 0.05 level 4. result  it is found at the end of the study that, cultivar and fertilizer material differences over strawberries have a significant effect on growth and development criteria such as plant height, stem width, number of leaves and root length, however, mulch differences have an effect only on number of leaves and root length.  the highest values of growth and development criteria were found in ‘camarosa’ cultivar of all and black plastic mulch type of all.  a statistically positive effect of all fertilizer materials on plants’ growth and development criteria was found.  the most successful cultivar in terms of nutrition element uptake was ‘camarosa’ and it was followed by ‘albion’. additionally, black plastic mulch and textile mulch was considered to be more advantageous compared to sawdust mulch. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that s/he has no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: this study was funded by çukurova university scientific research project intuitional unit (project no: zf2011d17). we would like to thank assistant professor nilda ersoy and assistant professor şahlan öztürk for help in laboratory studies. this article is a part of doctoral dissertation by sevinç ateş. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references acharya, c. l., hati, k. m., & bandyopadhyay, k. k., (2005). mulches, in: encyclopedia of soils in the environment (eds. d hillel, c rosenzweig, ds pawlson, km scow, mj sorger, dl sparks, j hatfield). elsevier, amsterdam, pp. 521–532. adak, n. 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(2005). the effects of some plant activators on earliness, yield, quality and nutrient element levels of leaves in selva and camarosa strawberry cultivars. master thesis, ondokuz mayıs university, institute of science and technology department of horticulture, samsun, turkey, 88s. http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/ustmenu.do?metod=temelist effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 510 value addition to human managerial skills in the livestock sector in nigeria adeyemo, a. a., longe, m. p. and alakoso, a. a. agricultural and rural management training institute (armti), pmb 1343, ilorin, nigeria abstract value addition is an important concept in nigeria’s agriculture, including the livestock sub-sector. its definition is often given with special emphasis on and with respect to agricultural products. however, the general principle in value addition is the process of transforming resources, including human, from its original state to a more valuable state. in the livestock industry, human is a critical resource and adding value to its status should be the arrow head of developing the sub-sector. most people in the sub-sector are academically sound and technically competent in their respective fields of specialisation but gaps exist in their management skills and acumen. there is the need for value addition to the human managerial skills of officers managing livestock activities in the country. governments at all levels should endeavour to provide financial and institutional supports towards the achievement of this goal. this will provide impetus on fully actualising the robust agricultural transformation agenda of the country. keywords: value addition, human, managerial skills, livestock introduction 1 livestock production plays multiple roles in the livelihoods of people in developing countries. it accounts for about 30% of the agricultural gross domestic product, agdp, in nigeria (central bank of nigeria, 2007). value addition to agricultural products has been defined as a change in the physical state or form of the product; the production of a product in a manner that enhances its value or the physical segregation of an agricultural commodity or product in a manner that results in the enhancement of the value of that commodity (usda, 2013). consequent upon such value addition, the customer base for the commodity or product is expanded and a higher income is derived from the marketing. this definition has been given with special emphasis on and with respect to agricultural products. however, it is important to note that the general principle in value addition is the process of changing or corresponding author’s name: adeyemo, a. a. email address: akobimola@yahoo.com transforming a product (or a resource) from its original state to another but more valuable state. in the livestock industry, just as it is in virtually all other sectors, human is a critical resource. tailal (2008) has identified human resource as the most important and vital factors of economic development and hansson (2009) stated that globalisation and technological changes have increased the importance of human capital in recent years. positive transformation of or adding value to the status of the human resources should, therefore, be the arrow head of the transformation agenda of the livestock subsector. one way of transforming human resources in the sector is through value addition to their managerial skills and competencies. this will result in the empowerment of the unemployed and the enhancement of their prospects in the labour market. it will also improve the productivity of those already employed in the sector. value addition in the context of human resources value addition is often narrowly defined and considered only in the context of physical asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:akobimola@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 510-514 511 transformation of agricultural products. however, it is important to note that the general principle in value addition is the process of transforming resources, including human, from its original state to a more valuable state. in the livestock industry, human is a critical resource and adding value to its status should be the arrow head of developing the sub-sector. many managers have faced the challenges of successfully managing huge developmental and commercial livestock projects in nigeria because they do not have adequate managerial skills. there is, therefore, the need to escalate the human managerial skill levels of operators in the sector. a livestock project manager performs many roles. he or she is a planner, organizer, coordinator, director, controller, team leader, coach, problem solver, and decision maker. there are three managerial skills, namely conceptual, human relations and technical skills needed by all managers. the quantum of each of these skills required varies and changes according to the level of management and nature of the organisation. some strategies available for escalating human managerial skills in the livestock sector are; on-the-job methods, including understudy, job rotation, coaching, participating in special projects or serving on committees; and off-the-job methods, including special courses, distance learning and sandwich program. value addition to the human managerial skills of operators in the livestock sub-sector of agriculture will go a long way in fully actualising the robust agricultural transformation agenda of the government of the federal republic of nigeria. most people in the livestock sub-sector are academically sound and technically competent in their respective fields of specialisation. however, not many of them will be willing to flaunt their management skills and acumen. even with the vaunted chains of academic qualifications and technical knowhow, many managers and officers have faced the challenges of successfully managing huge developmental and commercial livestock projects in nigeria. most of such challenges are rooted in inadequate managerial skills required to complement academic knowledge and technical knowhow. better human knowledge and improved managerial skills will result in more effective and efficient use of other resources. there is, therefore, the need to escalate the managerial skill levels of operators in the sector. this, in turn, will lever up economic development in the country. this paper discusses the role of livestock managers, the managerial skills needed by them to carry out the responsibilities and possible strategies for value addition to the managerial skills of livestock managers. roles of livestock managers management is the process of planning, organising, directing and controlling of activities of an organizational in order to achieve defined objectives (drucker, 1973). planning involves selecting tasks that must be performed to attain corporate or project objectives, outlining how the tasks must be performed, and stating when they should be performed. its activity focuses on achieving objectives. managers outline exactly what organizations should do to achieve success either in the short or long term. organizing is the assigning of the tasks developed in the planning stages, to different persons or groups within the organization. the goal of organising is to establish a mechanism to put plans into action. people within the organization are given work assignments that contribute to the corporate goals. tasks are organized so that the output of each individual contributes to the success of different segments, which eventually contributes to the success of the organization. directing can be considered as guiding the activities of staff in an organization in the right direction. the purpose of influencing is to increase productivity. controlling is useful for ensuring that all other functions of the organization are in place and are operating successfully. it involves establishing performance standards and monitoring the output of employees to ensure that each person’s performance meets those standards. controlling often leads to the identification of situations and problems that need to be asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 510-514 512 addressed by creating new but higher performance standards (roberts, 2014). a livestock project manager performs many roles. he or she is a planner, organizer, coordinator, director, controller, team leader, coach, problem solver, and decision maker, all rolled into one. in his classic book, the nature of managerial work, mintzberg (1973) described a set of ten roles that a manager fills. the author grouped the roles into three categories, viz: interpersonal, informational and decisional. table 1 shows details of each category of roles that help managers, including livestock project managers, to carry out all their expected functions. table 1: mintzberg’s set of ten roles category role activity informational monitor seek and receive information; scan periodicals and reports; maintain personal; contact with stakeholder. disseminator forward information to organization members via memos, reports, and phone calls. spokesperson transmit information to outsiders via reports, memos and speeches. interpersonal figurehead perform ceremonial and symbolic duties, such as greeting visitors and signing legal documents. leader director and motivate subordinates; counsel and communicate with subordinates. liaison maintain information links both inside and outside organization via mail, phone calls, and meetings. decisional entrepreneur initiate improvement projects; identify new ideas and delegate idea responsibility to others. disturbance handler take corrective action during disputes or crises; resolve conflicts among subordinates; adapt to environments. resource allocator decide who gets resources; prepare budgets; set schedules and determine priorities. negotiator represent department during negotiations of union contracts, sales, purchases and budgets source: mintzberg henry (1973) managerial skills of livestock managers generally, management is a challenging job and it requires managerial skills for every manager to accomplish such a challenge. there are three managerial skills, namely conceptual, human relations and technical skills needed by all managers (katz, 1974). however, the quantum of each of these skills required varies and changes according to the level of management and nature of the organisation. conceptual skill is the ability to visualise the organisation as a whole rather than its integral parts such as departments, divisions or units. this skill encompasses analytical, creative and initiative skills. in the livestock and agro-allied industry, it helps a project manager to identify the causes of problems on the project rather than the symptoms. it also assists him or her to solve the problems taking into cognisance the interest of all appendages of the entire project. conceptual skills are mostly required by the top-level managers because they spend more time in strategic planning, organising and problem solving. human relations or interpersonal skill is the ability to get people to work willingly and enthusiastically. it enables livestock project managers to understand, communicate and work in a team with minimum of friction or conflict. this skill is of great importance because all managers must necessarily work and interact with other people, including colleagues and subordinates. technical skill in livestock management is the ability to perform a given responsibility in animal husbandry and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 510-514 513 related assignments. it helps the animal scientists in particular and other project managers in the livestock sector to use different tools, equipment, machines, ideas, information as well as various procedures and techniques to carry out their responsibilities. in addition to these three main skills identified by katz (1974), animal scientists, like other managers, also need some other complementary skills to enhance the performance of their duties. these include administrative, communication, problem solving and decision making skills. strategies for improving managerial skills of livestock managers there are several strategies available for escalating the managerial skills of livestock project managers and officers as well as those with similar responsibilities. however, the use of a particular method will be determined by the general management training needs and some specific aspects of managerial skills deficiency in the individual. some of the strategies are as follows: on-the-job methods this is a methods of training in which livestock managers can learn to improve on their performance on the job by active involvement in doing it. a person works on a job and learns as well as develops expertise concomitantly. these on the job trainings are given to the farm managers while they are conducting their regular work at the same places. in this way they do not lose time while they are training or learning. this method of capacity development also covers understudy, coaching, job orientations and involvement in multidisciplinary work on livestock farm. in the course of understudy, livestock managers are trained by his or her supervisor. they are attached with his or her superior officer. for example, a future manager might spend few months as assistant to the incumbent manager. coaching is a more intensive method of training that involves a close working relationship between an experienced employee and the trainee while job rotation, livestock managers are given several responsibilities in succession, to enable them to gain experience of a wide range of activities. for instance, a livestock graduate management trainees might spend periods in several different departments or sections in a typical commercial livestock farm. during the training sessions, they are expected to join project management teams which give them exposure to other parts of the business in multi-disciplinary. some other forms of training under on-the-jobmethod are apprenticeship, internship or serving on special committee assignments. generally on the job training methods are cost-effective because livestock mangers are also productive whilst undergoing training. off-the-job methods this method requires livestock managers to leave their workplace and attend special courses with specific training objectives based on training needs assessment conducted earlier. most special courses are relatively of short duration and are aimed at impacting knowledge, skills and positive attitudes to work. this method of self improvement encompasses avid reading of relevant and current books, analysing case studies, behaviour modelling, playing management games and role-playing. off-the job managerial capacity building may take the form of day release, that is, employee takes time off work to receive training at a local college or training centre. it may also be in the form of distance learning or evening classes. some other ways are block release courses, that is, trainees could spend several weeks at a local college within a period of time. it may also be sandwich courses where the employee spends a longer period of time at college (for instance, six months) before returning to work. one of the major benefits of off-the job methods of training is that a wide range of skills or qualifications can be obtained and trainees can learn from outside specialists or experts. this enables employees to be more confident when they get back to job. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 510-514 514 conclusion there is the need for value addition to the human managerial skills of project managers and officers operating in the livestock subsector of agriculture in nigeria. governments at all levels – federal, state and local – should endeavour to provide financial and institutional supports towards the achievement of this goal. this will go a long way in fully actualising the robust agricultural transformation agenda of the government of the federal republic of nigeria. references central bank of nigeria (cbn) (2007). annual report and statement of account for the year ended 31 st december published by the central bank of nigeria, abuja. drucker, p. (1973). management: tasks, responsibilities, practices. new york: harper and row. hansson, b. (2009). employers' perspectives on the roles of human capital development and management in creating value. oecd education working papers, no. 18, oecd publishing. katz, r. l. (1974). skills of an administrator people. managing your most important asset: http://practicehrm.blogspot.com/2009/ 10/training-methods-on-job-trainingoff.html. mintzberg, h. (1973). the nature of managerial work. new york: harper and row. roberts, c. (2014). five functions of management & leading, demand media. retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/fivefunctions-management-leading56418.html. tailal, l. (2008). importance of human resource development. retrieved from http://www.studymode.com/essays/im portance-of-human-resourcedevelopment-(3)153820.html. usda (2013). a national information resource for value-added agriculture. agriculture marketing resource centre. retrieved from http://www.agmrc.org/business_devel opment/getting_prepared/valueaddeda griculture/articles/usda. http://practicehrm.blogspot.com/2009/10/training-methods-on-job-training-off.html http://practicehrm.blogspot.com/2009/10/training-methods-on-job-training-off.html http://practicehrm.blogspot.com/2009/10/training-methods-on-job-training-off.html http://smallbusiness.chron.com/five-functions-management-leading-56418.html http://smallbusiness.chron.com/five-functions-management-leading-56418.html http://smallbusiness.chron.com/five-functions-management-leading-56418.html http://www.studymode.com/essays/importance-of-human-resource-development-(3)153820.html http://www.studymode.com/essays/importance-of-human-resource-development-(3)153820.html http://www.studymode.com/essays/importance-of-human-resource-development-(3)153820.html http://www.agmrc.org/business_development/getting_prepared/valueaddedagriculture/articles/usda http://www.agmrc.org/business_development/getting_prepared/valueaddedagriculture/articles/usda http://www.agmrc.org/business_development/getting_prepared/valueaddedagriculture/articles/usda effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 736 analysis of cassava product (garri) marketing in ekiti local government area, kwara state, nigeria olasore abiodun amos principal management development officer; agricultural and rural management training institute, ilorin, kwara state, nigeria rauf saliu imam assistant manager; amcon, lagos, lagos state, nigeria alao bashir idowu and abdulraheem ayinla mubarak management development officer; agricultural and rural management training institute, ilorin, kwara state, nigeria abstract this study is on analysis of cassava product (garri) marketing in ekiti local government area, kwara state, nigeria. data for the study were obtained from 150 respondents from the target group using a two-stage sampling procedure and analyzed using descriptive statistics, gini coefficient and lorenz curve. gini coefficient for all cassava product traders was estimated to be 0.624 or 62.4%. the estimated gini coefficient show high degree of inequality in the sales/income distribution. the lorenz curve plotted further revealed sales/income inequality among the traders. a wide gap between line of inequality and the plotted lorenz curve showed that there is a high inequality in the distribution of income among traders. keywords: analysis, cassava, product, marketing, nigeria introduction1 cassava has become a stable food for the continent of africa and accounts for approximately one third of the staples produce in the continent (fao, 1986). in nigeria, farmers produce cassava as a source of family food and income (iita, 2004). currently, nigeria is the largest producer of cassava in the world (fao, 2004) and it is believed that production of cassava is a way farmers could easily get out of poverty since it requires less input and could grow even under harsh environmental conditions. corresponding author’s details: name: olasore abiodun amos email address: aaolasore@yahoo.com the country has diversified agro-ecological zones which are suitable for producing wide range of annual and perennial crops including cash crops and food crops. however, nigeria is ranked 8 th in terms of cassava yield (kg/ha). this situation could be attributed to the varieties available in nigeria and farming practices being adopted amongst other factors. cassava is cultivated in the 36 states and federal capital territory of nigeria. cassava is used in many ways. it is used as a staple, for manufacturing, industrial feed, and many other forms (asiedu, 1989). for production of most traditional foods, it could be made to fermented and unfermented bread, snacks and alcoholic drinks (mandal, 1993). asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:aaolasore@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 736-745 737 cassava can be processed into garri, flour, tapioca, pellets and chips. it is a good source of animal feeds. federal government of nigeria is promoting 20% cassava inclusion in the wheat flour which is expected to increase cassava cultivation and reduce yearly wheat importation. garri is produced from cassava by peeling, washing and grating of harvested root which is poured into a bag and subjected to pressure to drain out water and left to ferment for 2-4 days. the fermented and resulting pulp is then removed, sieve and fried in wide shallow metal pan until it is well dried. a well dried garri can stay for up to three months without spoilage. garri can be soaked in water and taken or made into a paste by adding hot water to it to make a paste and then taken with soup. besides, the need to meet the food demands of the ever increasing nigerian population, industrial requirements such as the production of laundry starch and livestock feeds have made the establishment of large-scale cassava farm business desirable for farmers and industrialists. despite the fact that cassava production in nigeria is increasing at 3per cent every year, the country continues to import starch, flour, sweeteners that can be made from cassava. the demand for industrial cassava based products such as glucose and dextrose and starch is rising. for instance, about 121,000 metric tonnes of glucose and dextrose was imported in 2008, which was about three times more than imports in 2002 (ayodele et al., 2011). however, cassava growers face variety of challenges which affect their productivity and profitability. this could also be found in processing and marketing of cassava products. achoja et al. (2012) reported that majority of the farmers indicated that inadequate finance (35%), land fragmentation (27%), and high cost of labour (15%) were the major problems challenging export-led cassava production intensification. fao (2004) also reported that nigeria is ranked low in terms of yield of cassava production (kilogram per hectare) relative to such countries as brazil, thailand and indonesia who are major producers of cassava after nigeria with yield per hectare at 10.8, 13.43, 16.84 and 12.02 tonnes for nigeria, brazil, thailand and indonesia respectively. according to fao (2004), global cassava production is expected to rise with increasing demand for cassava based industrial products. iita (2004) reported that benue and kogi states in the north central zone are the largest producers of cassava, while edo, cross river, akwa-ibom, rivers and delta states dominate cassava production the south –south zone. in nigeria, the bulk of cassava output is produced by semi-subsistence and small holder family farms that generally use traditional farming methods (okuneye, 1997; upton, 1997; nweke, 1997). oni (2013) reported the distribution of the total income generated in the cassava value chain as follows, the medium scale processor had the lion share that represented 42 percent of total income generated at the various levels of the value chain. this was followed by the large scale processor with 21.4 percent. the domestic wholesale trader followed behind them with 16.54 percent of total income generated. medium scale industrial user was the next important income earner with 11 per cent of total income. the farmer who originated the process of the value chain trailed behind all the actors with just only 0.03 percent of the income generated in the value chain. the retailer came closely behind the exporter, but both have a low share of 1.04 percent and 3.21 percent respectively. the results revealed the earning of the farmer was very low compare to all other actors in the cassava value chain. the main objective of this study is to identify the socio economic variables of the cassava product (garri) marketers and the income distribution among them in the study area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 736-745 738 methodology the study was conducted in kwara state, nigeria. kwara state lies in the southern guinea savannah vegetation zone of the country. the state experiences two (2) seasons in a year: the wet season (aprilseptember) and dry season (october –march). annual rainfall is about 1000-1500mm. the state shares boundaries with ekiti, oyo, osun, kogi and niger states of nigeria. it also has international border with the republic of benin along its north-western part. the state is categorized into four (4) agricultural zones (a, b, c, and d). there are a total of 1,258 rural communities in the state. the target population for the study is the cassava product (garri) marketers in the state; the sampling technique was purposeful sampling of ekiti local government area of the state as it represents the largest producer of cassava in the state (kwadp, 2004). it is on this premise the sampling frame and distribution was focused. a two stage sampling technique was adopted in the selection of samples for the study. the first stage was a random selection of 10 communities out of 22 communities in ekiti local government area. these 10 communities have a total of 376 registered cassava product marketers. the second stage involved the random selection of 40% from each 10 communities of the sampled registered cassava marketers which is 150 marketers. the tools for analyses included use of descriptive statistics such as frequency tables and percentages to analyze the socioeconomic characteristics of the cassava processors. gini coefficient and lorenz curve were used to determine inequalities among the cassava product marketers. gini-coefficient is the most commonly used measure of inequality. the coefficient varies between o, which reflects complete equality and 1, which indicates complete inequality. lorenz curve on the other hand maps the cumulative income/sales shares on the vertical axis against the distribution of the population on the horizontal axis. gini coefficient (gc) is given as: gc = 1∑tz where t= proportion of traders per period of study/100 z= cumulative proportion of sales of traders per period of study/100 results and discussions socio economic characteristics of cassava processor the socio economic characteristics of the cassava marketers in the study area are shown in the table 1. the study revealed that about 78% of the traders are female. in nigeria, agricultural activities are gender specific. women in most cases are more involved in post-harvest activities than men. processing is one of the post-harvest activities of cassava. table1: socio-economic characteristics of the traders variable frequency percentage gender male female total 32 118 150 21.3 78.7 100 age (years) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 736-745 739 ≤ 30 31-40 41-50 50 and above total 17 61 43 29 150 11.4 40.7 28.7 19.3 100 scale of operation retailers itinerant wholesalers sedentary wholesalers processors total 45 27 11 67 150 30.0 18.0 7.3 44.7 100 educational level no formal education primary secondary tertiary total 61 44 34 11 150 40.7 29.3 22.7 7.3 100 marital status single married widowed widower divorced total 12 55 33 25 25 150 8.0 36.6 22.0 16.7 16.7 100 number of dependants 0-4 5-8 above 8 total 57 84 9 150 38.0 56.0 6.0 100 marketing experience 1-10 11-20 21-30 above 30 total 65 52 22 11 150 43.3 34.7 14.7 7.3 100 source: field survey, 2012 the study revealed that about 44.7% of the traders are small scale processors that process the cassava tuber to garri and or cassava flour. the survey revealed that about 40.7% are within the age of 31-40years. this indicates that the traders are still active and vibrant and as such it would have positive effect on the marketing activities. the literacy level shows that about 29.3% of the traders are primary school leavers, about 40.7% of the sample is illiterate and a very small fraction has tertiary education, this may affect their level of marketing efficiency due to the fact that education enhances productivity. in addition, education will enhances use of modern communication technology such as internet. on the year of marketing experience, the survey shows that 43.3% % of the traders had between 110 years of experience in the marketing activities, while 34.7% had experience between 11-20 years’ experience, experience is very important in every business as it enables traders to learn from previous mistakes in their marketing activities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 736-745 740 years of experience may sometimes take in lieu of education. about 36% of the respondents are married while 61% have five or more dependants. in a typical nigeria rural set up, the respondents are expected to take care of their dependants while the dependants also work for their masters. the dependants are expected to give helping hands in cassava marketing. the study revealed that 90% of the traders have free entry and exit to the market while about 10% of the respondents have restriction to the market. this may accounts for the reason while garri marketing is very common in the study area. the study also indicates that about 76% of the traders process their product into garri while only 14%% process it into cassava flour and 9.3% are involved in both products; this is as a result of high market demand for garri as against cassava flour. garri is one of the staple foods of the study area and kwara state in general. there is always a ready market for garri. people come from within and outside the study area to purchase garri and marketers as well take garri out of the state to market. the study also revealed that 58.7% of the major source of information comes from fellow traders, there is a limit to the kind of information one can get from a fellow traders. the information from this source may be local 14.7% of them access information from extension agents. this is low! there may be a need to promote extension services among the traders. extension services are not meant for producers only. only 3.3% of the traders access information from the internet and journal articles. this is expected because about 41% of the respondents did not have formal education. the rapid use of mobile telephone sets in nigeria has increased access to the internet. most people cannot access internet from their mobile handsets because of illiteracy. internet provides information across the globe. access to internet facilities will enable the traders market their goods globally. table 2: marketing performance of cassava trader variable frequency percentage market entry and exit free entry restricted total 135 15 150 90.0 10.0 100 cassava processed products garri cassava flour (lafun) both total 114 22 14 150 76.0 14.7 9.3 100 source of information fellow traders extension agents trade unions internet/journal total 88 22 35 5 150 58.7 14.7 23.3 3.3 100 source: field survey, 2012 gini coefficient and lorenz curve analysis results gini coefficient for cassava product traders in the study area was estimated to be 0.624 or 62.4%. this result indicates that there is a high degree of inequality in the sales/income distribution. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 736-745 741 the sales distribution shows that 67% of traders received about 34.7% of total sales and this result indicated that about 65% of market sales were concentrated in the hand of less than 35% of the marketers. the lorenz curve plotted further revealed sales/income inequality among the traders. a wide gap between line of inequality and the plotted lorenz curve showed that there is a high inequality in the distribution of income among traders. among different traders, gini-coefficient value of 65.3% (0.653) was estimated for the wholesalers followed by retailers with estimated value of 56.8% (0.568), while the processors had the least value of 52.2% (0.552). this showed that inequalities in sales/income among the itinerants are more serious when compared with other categories of cassava marketers. generally, it can be inferred that cassava traders experience high degree of inequality as reflected by estimated gini-coefficient (above 50%) and plotted lorenz curve. this is a reflection of inefficient market structure since the lower the inequality in sales volume, the more efficient is the structure of marketing system and vice-versa. table 3: estimation of ginicoefficient for all the wholesalers sale(n) no of traders proportion of traders (t) cumulative proportion (n) total value of sales proportion of total sales cumulative proportion (z) ∑tz 1-50,000 9 0.34 0.34 302,992 0.255 0.255 0.0289 50,0011000,000 6 0.23 0.57 462,600 0.315 0.57 0.04945 100,001150,000 2 0.67 0.64 288,000 0.181 0.751 0.02072 150,001200,000 4 0.15 0.75 768,000 0 0.751 0.0768 200,001250,000 2 0.07 0.86 451,000 0.067 0.816 0.04473 250,001300,000 2 0.07 0.93 582,000 0.08 0.896 0.05614 300,001 and above 2 0.07 1 707,800 0.102 1 0.07 total 27 1 1 3562392 1 1 0.34674 gc= 1-∑tz =1-0.34674 = 0.65326 = 0.653 table 4: estimation of ginicoefficient for all the retailers sale(n) no of traders proporti on of traders (t) cumulati ve proporti on(n) total value of sales proporti on of total sales cumulative proportion (z) ∑tz 1-50,000 7 0.19 0.19 216,000 0.09 0.09 0.02 50,0011000,000 2 0.06 0.25 113,600 0.047 0.137 0.01 100,001150,000 6 0.16 0.41 797,000 0.331 0.468 0.08 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 736-745 742 150,001200,000 5 0.14 0.55 956,000 0.397 0.865 0.13 200,001250,000 0 0 0.55 0 0 0.865 0 250,001300,000 18 0.45 1 0 0 0.896 0.39 300,001 and above 1 0 1 325,000 0.135 1 0 total 38 1 1 2,407,600 1 1 0.4320 gc= 1-∑tz = 1-0.43204 = 0.556796 = 0.568 table 5: estimation of gini –coefficient for all processors sale(n) no of trade rs proportio n of traders (t) cumulativ e proportion (n) total value of sales proportio n of total sales cumulative proportion (z) ∑tz 1-50,000 24 0.52 0.52 801,450 0.255 0.255 0.1326 50,0011000,000 14 0.3 0.82 989456. 8 0.315 0.57 0.171 100,001150,000 5 0.12 0.94 569600 0.181 0.751 0.0901 150,001200,000 0 0 0.94 0 0 0.751 0 200,001250,000 1 0.02 0.96 210,000 0.067 0.816 0.0163 2 250,001300,000 1 0.02 0.98 252,000 0.08 0.896 0.0179 300,001 and above 1 0.02 1 320,000 0.102 1 0.02 total 46 1 1 3142507 1 1 0.4479 gc= 1-∑tz =1-0.44796 = 0.55204 = 0.552 table 6: estimation of gini –coefficient for all categories of cassava traders sale(n) no of trade rs proportio n of traders (t) cumulativ e proportion (n) total value of sales proporti on of total sales cumulative proportion (z) ∑tz 1-50,000 46 0.41 0.41 1,469,742 0.1398 0.1398 0.05731 50,0011000,000 29 0.26 0.67 2,168,940 0.2063 0.3461 0.08998 100,001150,000 15 0.13 0.8 1,850,400 0.176 0.5221 0.06787 150,001200,000 11 0.03 0.83 2,108,000 0.2005 0.7226 0.07226 200,001250,000 3 0.04 0.87 661,000 0.0629 0.7855 0.02356 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 736-745 743 250,001300,000 4 0.01 0.88 1,132,000 0.1077 0.8932 0.03372 300,001 350,000 1 0.01 0.89 320,000 0.0304 0.9236 0.00923 350,001 400,000 1 0.01 0.9 384,000 0.0365 0.9601 0.00960 400,001 450,000 1 0.01 1 420,000 0.0399 1 0.01 total 111 1 1 10,514,542 1 1 0.37556 gc= 1-∑tz =1-0.375567 = 0.624433 = 0.624433 = 0.624 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 x fig. 1: lorenz curve for all categories of cassava traders 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 x fig. 2: lorenz curve for all categories of all wholesalers y axis y axis y-cumulative proportion of total sales of all cassava traders xproportion of all products traders y axis-cumulative proportion of total sales of all wholesalers x-proportion of all wholesalers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 736-745 744 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 x fig. 3: lorenz curve for all categories of processors 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 x fig. 4: lorenz curve for all categories of retailers conclusion and recommendation it is revealed through this study that majority of the cassava traders are women that fall within the active ages of 30-50 years. majority of them operate at small-scale level. the cassava market is characterized by many buyers and traders who receive information from each other. extension and internet information is very low among the traders. extension information is not only for farmers. cassava traders need extension services that will improve their various activities. garri is the most popular and common product traded by the respondents. garri is mostly consumed locally with very low export potential. through extension activities, traders could be introduced to other products from cassava with export potentials. some of these products could be handled at small-scale level. analysis of gini-coefficient reveals that there are serious inequalities among the traders, a situation leading to concentration of sales in the hands of just few large traders. y axis y-cumulative proportion of total sales of all processors xproportion of all processors y axis y-cumulative proportion of total sales for all retailers xproportion of all retailers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 736-745 745 this scenario is not good as it does not promote healthy competition. there are every possibilities that large trader could compete the small traders out of business. there may be a need to organize the small traders into cooperative groups and help any existing cooperative of small traders to be more active. the cooperatives should be able to provide necessary credit for the small traders and be forums for educating them. references achoja, f. o., idoge, d. e., ukwuaba, s. i. and esowhode, a. e. (2012). determinants of export-led cassava production intensification among small-holder farmers in delta state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2): 142-148 asiodu j. j. (1989). processing tropical crops. a technological approach, english language book society/macmillan publishers. pp. 1-22. ayodele d, u.andrew , e nnennaya o. chijioke, t. ganiat and s. lateef, (2011). a report on cassava value chain analysis in niger delta: in oni timothy olukunle (2013). evaluation of income and employment generation from cassava value chain in the nigerian agricultural sector. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 79-92. eze, v. a. (2007). propagating and evaluating the performance of 10 varieties of cassava (manihot esculent a). an unpublished b. agric. project, department of crop production university of ilorin food and agriculture organization (2004). food and agriculture organization online statistical data base. rome, italy: food and agriculture organization of united nations. www.fao.org. fao (1986). food and agricultural organization of the united nations. fao annual report, 1986. hays, h. m. (jr) (1973). the organization of staple food grain marketing system in northern, nigeria. a study of the efficiency of rural-urban link. an upublished ph.d dissertation. department of economics, kansas state university kwadp (2004). wet season crop area yield and yield survey (cays): summary reports. m and e sub-programme. mandal, r. c. (1993). tropics roots and tuber crops. cassava (tapiocal), sweet potato, poids, yams, beans, colens, agro botanical publishers india, (38): 120-130. oni timothy olukunle (2013). evaluation of income and employment generation from cassava value chain in the nigerian agricultural sector. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(3): 79-92 okuneye, p. a. (1997). poverty eradication and the role of family economic advancement programme (feap) paper presented at the workshop on feap and poverty alleviation, may, (1997) abeokuta, ogun state, nigeria. phillips t. p., d. s. taylor, l. sanniand m. o. upton, m (1997). the economics of tropical farming systems. in achoja, f. o., idoge, d. e., ukwuaba, s. i. and esowhode, a. e. (2012). determinants of export-led cassava production intensification among small-holder farmers in delta state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2): 142-148. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 893 attraction of investment in agriculture of kazakhstan dinar abdrakhmanova dept. of finance, faculty of economics, kazakh agro-technical university named after s. s. seifulin, kazakhstan abstract characteristic for conditions competition increase in the market of the investments, interfaced to world financial crisis, makes superrigid deman ds to investment decisions. in similar conditions the exit on the capital markets is one of the key advantages, providing to the enterprises their further development. attraction of investments is interfaced to a number of difficulties. in connection with shortage of own means for financing of investment activity of the organizations by the basic source of financing there was an extra financing. necessity of considerable volume of financial resources on development of investment projects does their attraction by a paramount problem of the enterprises-borrowers. availability of credit sources of financing is limited both because of the high price of the extra capital, and owing to inability of the enterprises-borrowers to interest potential creditors in realization of investment projects. it causes necessity of an economic justification of efficiency and appeal of investment investments. only having defined, what concrete parameters the company should possess, and having developed concrete ways and indicators of achievement of these parameters, it is possible in modern conditions effectively to develop business. such aspiration creates investment appeal and is realized by means of basic tools considered in given work. keywords: investment, agriculture, planning, enterprises introduction 1 process of attraction of investments by the enterprises is characterized by a weak level of scrutiny non-financial, influencing investment appeal and efficiency of the organizations-borrowers, thereby reducing probability of reception of credit resources and worsening their conditions. in this connection pressing questions in research of process of attraction are a problem of an economic justification of efficiency of investment investments in the enterprises, and also development of corresponding author’s email address: rk_bin@mail.ru methodical recommendations about increase of their investment appeal. realization of investment policy in agrarian sector depends from a condition of the theoretical base considering specifics of branch and a complex feature of attraction of investments and manifestation of their efficiency in modern conditions. dobrynin (2000), komarov (2001), agirbov (2002), etc. are engaged in research of these and other aspects of a problem. in works of these authors theoretical and methodical provisions, experience and the directions of investment activity are systematized and generalized. however, scientific and methodical approaches to development and the analysis, justification and an assessment asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:rk_bin@mail.ru asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 893-898 894 of investment processes in modern conditions, the directions and forms of the state support are studied insufficiently. further development of questions of investment of agriculture taking into account ash value, national specifics, requirements of the market, research of factors and ways of increase of efficiency of investments is necessary. the expecial contribution to development of the given direction have brought world rating agencies, such as standard and poor’s, moody’s investors service and fitch ratings to an estimation of risk of investment investments. thus, on the basis of long-term researches in the economic literature scientific bases of investment activity, estimations of investment potential and a climate are reflected, rich practice of investment designing and an estimation of efficiency of investment investments is generalized. over the past two decades kazakhstan has achieved prominent results in transformation of economy. there has been created more transparent and less regulated, marketoriented business and social environment attractive for investors. today the investment policy in the republic of kazakhstan have own features. swot analysis of the investment policy in the republic of kazakhstan is given below. table 1: swot-analysis of investment attraction in kazakhstan strengths weaknesses 1. favorable business environment of the country sustained by economic and political stability. 2. high investment attractiveness of the country due to rich natural and mineral resources. 3. favorable geographic position of kazakhstan in proximity to major consumer markets of central and western asia, russia, india and china. 4. consciousness of state investment policy priority. 5. establishing specialized institutes and a resource base focused on facilitating investment inflow. 1. lack of a systematic approach for holding state investment policy. 2. instable national legislation and a lack of mechanisms for law and contractual relationship observance. 3. poor competitive conditions for investment attraction (customs and exchange arrangements). 4. undeveloped infrastructure for investment attraction (special zones, financial, bank, information and analytical, consulting, transport infrastructure etc). 5. instable system of public administration related to investment attraction. 6. visa regime. opportunities threats 1. position of a regional leader for investment attraction volume. 2. creating a positive investment image of the country in the international capital markets. 3. building a systematic and consistent policy for investment attraction. 4. forming an effective state and private infrastructure for investment attraction. 5. ensuring a sustainable and balanced economic growth of the country through redistribution of investments from extractive to processing economic sector. 1. loss of investment attractiveness of the country resulted from raw material base depletion. 2. retained high-risk economy due to retained primary product disproportion in the economy and investments. 3. loss of available industrial potential for development of the country due to poor investments to capital stock. 4. strengthening a negative investment image of the country resulted from a lack of a clear-cut state policy and its implementation for investment attraction. 5. direct losses from the state budget due to ineffective usage of funds for investment attraction. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 893-898 895 in the republic of kazakhstan prevailing sources of financing of investments into fixed capital of branch are own funds from investors (78, 3% of the total amount of investments). in a total amount of investments into fixed capital in agriculture of kazakhstan the greatest investments fall on investment in cultivation of seasonal cultures (65, 8%) and animal husbandry (26, 7%). analyzing a condition of investments in the agriculture now, it should be noted that thee fixed capital of agriculture of the country past year was increased by 22% in 2013 year and reached 133 billion tenge. (table 2) table 2: the investments into fixed capital of the agriculture in the country (tenge) areas investments into fixed capital a percentage akmola 25270000 19 aktobe 1995000 1,5 almaty 13300000 10 atirau 16226000 12,2 east kazakhstan 2660000 2 zhambyl 4921000 3,7 west kazakhstan 5985000 4,5 karaganda 13965000 10,5 kostanay 32053000 24,1 mangstau 798000 0,6 pavlodar 1596000 1,2 south kazakhstan 14231000 10,7 total 133000000 100 as we see from table 2, the greatest volumes of investment were aimed at the development of agriculture of kostanay (24, 1%) and akmola (19, 0%) areas. the developed economic conditions don't contain in kazakhstan while real prerequisites for self-regulation of investment processes of agriculture. need to pass to purposeful state regulation of activization of the investment process, capable to organize steady investment process and an intersectoral modulation of the capital in scales of branches and regions of kazakhstan. the active investment policy of the government which has to pay a close attention to formation of the relevant investment structure of the market is necessary for the steady growth of economy. methodology the purpose of research consists in development of theoretical and methodological positions, and also working out of methodical recommendations about formation of investment appeal of the enterprises-borrowers and development of means of its increase for attraction of investments into agriculture. object in view achievement is defined by the decision of the following set of logically interconnected scientific problems: to define importance of extra financing in system of sources of financing of investments into agriculture; to reveal problems of attraction of investments of credit institutions; to investigate principles of an estimation of investment appeal of the enterpriseborrower; to analyze techniques of an estimation of a rating of investment reliability of credit institutions, applicable to the russian enterprises-borrowers; to define a set non-financial, influencing investment appeal of the enterpriseborrower; asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 893-898 896 to appropriate weight values to not financial indicators, influencing the general rating of investment reliability; to prove the chosen structure of the analysis of the enterprise-borrower for the purpose of assignment to it of a rating of investment reliability; to generate algorithm for an estimation of a financial and not financial component of risk not return of investments of the enterprise-borrower; on the basis of the formulated algorithm to develop tools of increase of investment appeal. as object of research the agricultural enterprises are considered. object of research are the organizationaleconomic relations arising at formation of investment appeal of the enterprisesborrowers. as theoretical and methodological basis of research methodological principles, theoretical positions and the conclusions containing in fundamental and applied researches of domestic and foreign authors under the theory of investments have served, to investment planning and the analysis, rating estimation of investment reliability of the enterprises, the theory and practice of formation of investment appeal. for the decision of tasks in view research is planned to carry out with application of the system approach, scientific abstraction, classification, grouping, ranging, comparison, the analysis and synthesis, analogies. as methodology of researches in work methods of researches, methods of the system and comparative analysis, with application of the economic analysis will be used dialectic, is abstract-logic, statistical, functional, including: methods of an estimation of investment reliability of the enterprise-borrower, a rating estimation, an expert estimation, etc. use of the specified methods will allow to prove the complex approach, will give the chance to study a role of investment appeal of the enterprise, to estimate its influence on the rating of investment reliability appropriated by banks. the basic methods of research will be offered comparative, index, analytical, system-structural and a method of expert estimations. set of used methodological base will allow providing finally reliability and validity of conclusions and practical decisions. as information base of researches the official data of the state statistics, is standard-methodical documents, methodical materials of commercial banks, the data of leading rating agencies (moody, s, standard and poor, s, fitch, expert ра), materials of scientifically-economic periodicals, resources of a global network the internet, and also materials of domestic and foreign periodicals on the given problematic will serve. scientific novelty of research consists in working out of new methodical recommendations about formation of investment appeal of the agricultural enterprises-borrowers and perfection of process of attraction of bank investments by them. conclusion the most essential scientific results consist in the following: to define the factors increasing investment appeal of borrowers; to offer algorithm of definition of a rating of investment reliability of the enterpriseborrower, providing use of a method of the complex estimation which are based on system of financial and not financial indicators, allowing to estimate investment appeal of the enterprise-borrower; to prove that for increase of an investment rating of the enterprise-borrower asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 893-898 897 at attraction of bank investments should be considered not only the financial components defined by indicators of profit, profitability, profitableness, liquidity; to define not financial components of bank rating estimations of investment reliability of the enterprises-borrowers and their weight values of influence on total of investment appeal of the enterpriseborrower are received; to generate algorithm of an estimation banks of an investment rating of the enterprise-borrower, providing a multiplefactor estimation of system of indicators both financial, and not financial with the scales appropriated by it; to define influence of investment appeal of the enterprise-borrower on conditions of attraction of investments; to develop methodical recommendations about increase of investment appeal of the enterprises-borrowers, allowing within the limits of corresponding plans it is essential to influence a rating of investment reliability of the enterprise-borrower and, thereby, to raise probability of attraction of investment means of bank sector. for the account, the analysis, planning and increase of efficiency of investments, a choice of objects their scientifically reasonable classification is necessary for financing. thought over and in the scientific plan reasonable classification of investments allows not only considering competently them, but also comprehensively to analyze level of their use, receiving on this basis objective information for development and realization of effective investment policy. (figure 1). figure 1: definition of the general requirement for investments ensuring necessary volume of attraction of external sources of financing calculation of the sizes of attracted loans, expenses and term of return of means assessment of the results reached by the organization, in comparison with the purposes established in the financial plan choice of a way of attraction of financial resources definition of the general requirement for investments attraction of external financing revision of the production program revision of financial streams definition of possibility of a covering of requirement for means at the expense of own sources and the extent of deficiency of resources assessment of availability of external sources of financing asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 893-898 898 revival of investment process in kazakhstan has to happen first of all at the expense of internal resources, and foreign investments should assign only a supporting part because of small volume and low мобильности.структуры the market. active intervention of the state will accelerate the solution of global economic tasks in kazakhstan. thus, having defined concrete indicators of achievement of investment appeal, it is possible in modern conditions effectively and rationally to attract resources, reducing cost and increasing term of loans that in turn promotes development of business and increases its profitability. such aspiration creates investment appeal and is realized by means of considered, in this dissertation work, the main tools. the practical importance of work consists that results of research can be used the enterprises with a view of formation and increase of investment appeal with the help нефинансовых, influencing a total rating of investment reliability of the enterprisesborrowers at attraction of investments of bank sector. the obtained data also can be used the enterprises-borrowers with a view of management of the investment reliability and as consequence of investment appeal. references agirbov, yu. i. (2002). ntp and increase of innovative activity. international agricultural magazine, 1(2): 18-24. dobrynin, v. a. (2000). how to make the village rich? journal of forage production, 1(6): 2-7. komarov, v.v. (2001). an investment and leasing in the cis. journal of finance and statistics, 3(3): 424-426. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 458 assessment of farm household food security and consumption indices in nigeria ojeleye, o. a. phd research scholar; department of agricultural economics and rural sociology, ahmadu bello university, zaria, nigeria adebisi, o. a. research technologist; savanna forestry research station, samaru-zaria, nigeria fadiji, t. o. lecturer; department of agricultural economics, university of abuja, gwagwalada-abuja, nigeria abstract this study was carried out to assess farm households’ food security and consumption indices. the study was conducted in kaduna state, nigeria. data used for this study was collected from a total of 244 farm households with the use of structured questionnaire using a multistage random and purposive sampling technique. the main tools of analysis for this study include descriptive statistics and food security index. the study shows that about one third of the rural farm households sampled was food insecure and that the average farm size of the farm households was 2.05ha as food secure and insecure households cultivate 2.09ha and 1.96ha respectively. average farm and non-farm income were $1,130.7 and $810.3 per annum respectively as household daily calorie consumed was found to exceed household daily calorie requirement. the food security indices for the food secure and insecure households were found to be 1.462 and 0.852 respectively. large family size was found to lower available calorie intake of households. the study recommends the need for family planning education and policy frames to increase household farm size. keywords: food security, food security indices, farm households, nigeria introduction 1 interest in food security has been very strong most especially since the world food crisis of 1972–74 (ajibola, 2000). during the quarter–century following the second world war, the faster growth of world food production than of both population and effective demand and the existence of large surplus stocks, although held mostly in north america, kept the subject of global food security in the background. according to fao, (1988), the world food crisis of 1972– 74 challenged the prevailing complacency, corresponding author’s name: ojeleye, o. a. email address: leviteseun@hotmail.com food suddenly appeared to be in short supply on world markets, cereal prices rose sharply and food aid fell; those on whom the heaviest burden fell were the poor people in poor countries (omotesho et al., 2006). this brought to center stage, an ongoing debate on the issue of hunger and food insecurity. even with the recent global commitment to food security, the problem of hunger and extreme poverty seem to have wide prevalence in the developing world, as the over 800 million people throughout the world and particularly in developing countries do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs. the rapid food price increase between 2005 and 2008 and recent economic recessions have dampened global efforts to achieving the millennium development goals (ifpri, asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:leviteseun@hotmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 458-464 459 2010). it has been further put forward by fao (2009) that high food prices and the economic slowdown have pushed 255–290 million more people into extreme poverty. the persistence of hunger in the developing world means that ensuring adequate and nutritious food for the population will remain the principal challenge facing policy makers in many developing countries in the years to come (stamoulis et al., 2004). the problem of food security is one that demands for continual attention and strategy. furthermore, the nigerian share of the crisis is alarming. a recent estimate put the number of hungry people in the country at over one-third of the total population of about 150 million, and 52% of the populace are said to be living under poverty line (ajayeoba, 2010). the country is characterized by high reliance on food imports as malnutrition is widespread and rural areas are especially vulnerable to chronic food shortages, malnutrition, unbalanced nutrition, erratic food supply, poor quality foods, high food costs, and even total lack of food (akinyele, 2009) despite the country’s vast potential food production capacity. the connections among dwindling food production capacity, rising food prices, and dependency on food importation and consequently food insecurity are nowhere more clearly demonstrated in recent times than in the sahelian food crisis, which also affected many of the 11 northern states of nigeria situated in the sahel savanna belt. carleto (2001) has however argued that reliable information on household food security is a pre-requisite for accurate and effective design, monitoring and development of development projects. hence many development agencies considered household food security a guiding principle for designing interventions in rural areas. measurement of food security at the farm family level will provide the basis for monitoring future progress and assessing the impacts of various projects, programmes and policies on the beneficiaries’ food security status (hoddinot, 2001). the need therefore arises to assess food security and consumption indices, particularly in the rural areas in other to properly position intervention programmes and policy frames to get the country in consonant with the global commitment to reducing hunger and food insecurity the world over. this study therefore looks at the food security and consumption indices of farm households in the study area with a view to present a baseline study for impactful policy design. materials and methods this study was conducted in kaduna state of nigeria, located in the northern part of the country between latitude 110 32’ and 090 02’ north of the equator and 800 50’ and 060 15’ east of the meridian. the state is in central northern nigeria and is the successor to the old northern region, which had its capital at kaduna. kaduna state is mostly populated by hausa, gbagyi, adara, gong, atyap, bajjuu, ninkyob, kurama, koro, zango kataf, mada and agworok, ikulu people moroa'a, atuku gwandara ham or jaba ethnic communities and agriculture is the main stay of the economy of the people. a multi-stage random and purposive sampling procedure was used for this study. the kaduna state agriculture development project being a state wide project operates in 4 zonal offices namely maigana, samaru kataf, birnin gwari and lere zones. of the four zones, two of them were purposively selected namely maigana and samaru kataf, representing two senatorial zones of the state and geographically, maigana is in the northern part of the state while samaru kataf in the southern part. two local government areas (lgas) were then selected within the chosen zones at random resulting in four (4) lgas altogether sampled for the study. in each of these randomly sampled lgas, two communities were chosen with efforts made to exclude urban centers, making a total of eight (8) communities that were studied. descriptive statistic was used to analyze the socio-economic characteristics of the farm families, food security index (fsi) was used to obtain the food security status of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 458-464 460 respondents. the approach taken in this study for the determination of food security index is to follow the identification and aggregation procedures. identification is the process of defining a minimum level of nutrition necessary to maintain healthy living. this is referred to as the ‘food security line”, below which people are classified as food insecure and subsisting on inadequate nutrition. the food security line was used in this study based on the dailyrecommended level of calories and protein, which are 2260 kcal and 65g respectively (olayemi, 1998). in order to generate food security indices, the nutrient content of the food items consumed were used to derive calorie availability. food security index (zi) = household daily per capita calorie/protein consumed (x) household daily per capita calorie/protein required (y)............................................ (1) for a household to be food secured, zi must be greater than or equal to 1 (zi > 1). if zi is less than 1 (zi < 1), the household is food insecure. the quantities of crops produced and purchased were converted to kilogram and further to calorie consumed per day per household and then compared with the standard (2260kcal). nutrient composition of commonly eaten foods in nigeria—raw, processed and prepared table as supplied by babatunde et al. (2007) was used (see table 1). for the purpose of this study, a household is defined as a group of people living together and eating from the same pot. based on zi, several food security measures are calculated; the shortfall/surplus index, p is given as p = 1 𝑀 𝐺𝑗𝑚 𝑗=1 ……………. 2 where gj = (xj – i)/i is the deficiency (or surplus faced by household j, xj is the average daily calorie or protein available to the jth household while m is the number of households that are food secure (for surplus index) or food insecure (for shortfall index). it measures at the aggregate level, the extent to which households are below (or above) the food security line. in implementing food security policies and programmes, the values of the index could be monitored over time and compared among different groups of the population (omotesho et al., 2006). table 1: nutrient composition of commonly eaten foods in nigerian—raw, processed and prepared food items kcal/kg food items kcal/kg staple foods mango 590 cassava tuber 1500 pawpaw 300 cassava flour 3870 pineapple 320 cassava chips 3000 apple 570 garri 3840 coconut 580 yam tuber 1100 guava 730 yam flour 3810 sugarcane 360 yam ships 3000 meat and animal products sweet potato tuber 1100 cow meat 2370 sweet potato chips 900 goat meat 2370 irish potato 1200 sheep meat 2370 cocoyam tuber 3830 pork 2370 maize green 3100 bush meat 2370 maize grain 4120 chicken 2380 maize flour 4120 turkey 2380 sorghum grain 3500 fish 2230 sorghum flour 3500 snail 2245 millet grain 3500 shrimps 2230 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 458-464 461 millet flour 3500 crayfish 2200 rice 1230 crabs 2200 wheat grain 3400 eggs (pieces) 1400 wheat flour 3300 dairy products cowpea (beans) 5920 milk 4900 ground nut 5950 cheese 4000 soybeans 4050 yoghurt 4100 soybean flour 2600 ice cream 4100 melon (shelled) 5670 beverages plantain 770 cocoa 1200 banana 960 tea (leaves) 1200 vegetables tea (liquid) 1200 okra 4550 coffee (powder) 1340 tomato 880 coffee (liquid) 1340 pepper 3930 drinks onion 440 soft drinks 620 carrot 400 orange juice 400 egg plant 440 apple juice 550 cucumber 270 pineapple juice 560 cochorus/ewedu 500 local beer 740 spinach 220 bottled beer 460 bitter leaf 220 wine 330 water leaf 180 condiments and spices cabbage 230 maggi 220 pumpkin 440 salt 180 source: babatude et al. (2007) results and discussion the mean age of the respondents as presented in table 2 is 39.1 years showing a virile and agile average farmers’ age with the consequent capability of doing a lot of farm work if given proper incentives. the average farming experience of 22.9 years suggests that with increasing years of farming, farmers gain experience in the art of farming to the advantage of gaining understanding and increasing productivity. from the survey 87.7% of the households are men headed while 12.3% have female headed households. about 34% of the respondents are however not literate enough in being able to read or write in english language, but 7.38% and 24.18% of household heads were observed to have adult and primary education respectively. secondary and postsecondary education of the respondents was found to be 27.87% and 6.56% respectively. it is expected that education in agricultural production will assist the farmer to test and accept innovations available to him. it will enhance his ability to make informed and accurate decisions on the management of the farm. this also could be a source of additional income. the significance of certain socio-economic factors of household heads in seen in the fact it is the responsibility of the household head to feed his family. these characteristic could well dispose him or otherwise in undertaking his responsibility accordingly, and it becomes imperative to appreciate these characteristics. table 2: socio-economic characteristics of the household heads in the study area variables frequency percentage age (years) < 40 155 63.52 41-60 82 33.61 >60 7 2.87 mean 39.1, farming experience (years) < 10 31 12.70 11-20 85 34.84 21-30 72 29.51 >30 56 22.95 mean 22.9, gender asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 458-464 462 male 214 87.70 female 30 12.30 maritalstatus unmarried 23 9.43 married 221 90.57 education level no formal education 25 10.25 arabic education 58 23.77 adult education 18 7.38 primary education 59 24.18 secondary education 68 27.87 postsecondary education 16 6.56 total 244 100 household food security and consumption indices the result presented in table 3 shows that about 66% of the respondents were food secure while 82 of the 244 farmers sampled, representing 33.61% were found to be food insecure. as shown in table 3, farming households operate on small scale with average farm size of 2.05 hectares. the food insecure households who constitute about 34 % of the sample however cultivate about 1.96 heactares. furthermore, table 3 shows that farm income in the study area is on the average of n180, 914.50k ($1,130.7) only per annum. this translates to an average annual farm income of n15,076.21k ($94.2) monthly, and n27,371.4k ($171.1) per capita for food secured households, and n17,000.5 ($106.3) per capita for food insecure households. the study also revealed that adjusted household size for food secure was found to be 7.0 while food insecure households have 9.4 average adjusted household sizes. further analysis revealed that the average crop production figure for food secure households is given as 2278.0kg grain equivalent while those of the households experiencing food insecurity is 1890.1kg grain equivalent. following our identification and aggregation procedures, food security index, and the shortfall/surplus index have also been presented in table 3 for both the food secure and food insecure households. the multiple indices were used to provide a basis for examining the extent of food insecurity among farming households from different perspectives. the average food security indices for the insecure and secure households are given as 0.852 and 1.462 respectively, while the average food security index for the 244 sampled farmers is 1.257. also, the average daily calorie consumption for food secure households is given as 3303.42kcal. that of the insecure households is 1925.88kcal as the mean score daily calorie consumption for the entire respondents is 2840.50kcal. it is to be noted that based on the recommended daily calorie intake of 2260kcal, the food secured household had 1043.42kcal in excess of the recommended intake while for the insecure household, their average daily household per capita calorie consumption is 334.12kcal short of the recommended value. even though the aggregate household daily calorie availability exceeded the minimum requirement, the study area is only on the threshold of food adequacy. besides, the study revelation that about onethird of the households that are food-insecure with an average daily per capita calorie consumption of 1925.88kcal per capita is about 15% less than the minimum daily requirement while about two-third of the entire households that are food secure exceeded the minimum calorie requirement by 46%. this is as presented in the shortfall/surplus index (p) which measures the extent of deviation from the food security line by the households. table 3: food security and consumption indices food security and consumption indices households food secure food insecure pooled number of households 162 82 244 percentage household 66.39 33.61 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 458-464 463 farm size (ha) 2.09 [1.302] 1.96 [0.995] 2.05 [1.207] farm income (n) 191,600.0 ($1,197.5) [124322.9] 159,804.3 ($998.7) [108695.1] 180,914.5 ($1,130.7) [120021.8] non-farm income (n) 136,587.4 ($853.7) [118845.3] 114,722.2 ($717.0) [86875.4] 129,642.0 ($810.3) [109919.5] adjusted household size 7.0 [3.45] 9.4 [3.84] 7.8 [3.76] total crop production in grain equivalent (kg) 2,278.0 [1444.7] 1,890.1 [1207.7] 2,147.6 [1379.4] household daily calorie requirement (kcal) 15,844.4 [7,793.1] 21,321.2 [8,667.5] 17,685.0 [8,485.3] household daily calorie consumption (kcal) 20,897.4 [8,476.6] 17,82.5 [6,532.7] 19,866.1 [7,996.4] household daily per capita consumption (kcal) 3,303.42 [1,178.17] 1,925.88 [253.78] 2,840.50 [1,168.89] household food security index 1.462 [0.521] 0.852 [0.112] 1.257 [0.517] short fall index 0.148 surplus index 0.462 0.257 figures in the parentheses are the standard deviations conclusion and recommendation this study shows that about one-third of the sampled households are food insecure with an shortfall of about 15% of their daily calorie requirement. in spite of the fact that the total household daily calorie requirement was found to exceed the total household daily calorie consumed, the calorie consumption was just at the threshold of adequacy raising the question of household accessibility and food distribution efficiency. this study also revealed that majority of the households are subsisting on less than the minimum required calorie per capita per day as the household size of the food insecure significantly lower the per capita calorie consumption of households. in view of the negative impact of large family size on the food security situation of rural households in the study areas, farming households should be educated on the need to adopt the modern family planning techniques so that they may bear the number of children that they can feed. policy frames that will address land acquisition and increase farm size should also be designed as the farmers surveyed were found to be mostly small scaled. references ajayeoba, a. (2010). concerning food security in nigeria. west africa insight, p. 1. ajibola, o. (2000). institutional analysis of the national food storage programme. research report, 23 development policy centre, ibadan. akinyele, i. o. (2009). ensuring food and nutrition security in rural nigeria: an assessment of the challenges, information needs, and analytical capacity. international food policy research institute (ifpri) serial no 7. babatunde, r. o., omotesho, o. a., & sholotan, o. s. (2007). socioeconomic characteristics of food security status of farming household in kwara state, north central nigeria. pakistan journal of nutrition, 6(1), 4958. charleton, c. (2001). constructing samples for characterizing household food security-monitoring and evaluating food security interventions. food security in practice: methods for rural development projects. international asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 458-464 464 food policy research institute (ifpri) p.77-78. food and agricultural organization (1988). world agriculture: toward 2000 n. alexandratos, ed. fao, rome and belhaven press. food and agricultural organization (2009). assessment of the world food security and nutrition situation committee on world food security, 34th session. rome. hoddinot, j. (2001). choosing outcome indicators of household food security in food security in practice. methods for rural development project, j. hoddinot, ed., international food policy research institute (ifpri) pp. 31-45. international food policy research institute (2010). toward a typology of food security in developing countries. ifpri discussion paper 00945. olayemi, j. k. (1998). elements of applied econometrics. elshaddai global ventures limited, ibadan, nigeria pp.154-155 omotesho, o. a., adewumi, m. o., muhammad-lawal, a., & ayinde, o. e. (2006). determinants of food security among the rural farming households in kwara state, nigeria. african journal of general agriculture, 2(1), 7-15. stamoulis, k. g., pingali, p., & shetty, p. (2004). emerging challenges for food and nutrition policy in developing countries special issues on globalization of food systems: impact on food security and nutrition. electronic journal of agricultural and development economics, 1(2), 154167. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/issn(e):2224-4433 volume 6(3), 50-58 50 spatio-temporal land use/land cover analysis of murree using remote sensing and gis rukhsana kausar international islamic university, islamabad, pakistan siddique baig and iqra riaz pmas arid agriculture university, rawalpindi, pakistan abstract 1 land use land cover (lulc) patterns are significantly effecting the urban/rural spaces in the encompassing areas. murree being tourist resort is always under pressure of tourists from all over the country. the population increase in peak season of tourism in summer season and extreme winter, causes a tremendous growth and expansion of urban area of murree. so a relic of blue pine forest and chir pine forest is expected to undergo tremendous change and to undergo expansion or degradation depending upon the tourist’s behavior. the present study uses multi-temporal landsat (tm and etm+ for year 1998, 2003, 2005, 2010) images to detect lulc change in murree due to the enhanced activities of ecotourism. change detection of three tourist hotspots of murree region including murree mall, bhurban and patriata was evaluated through maximum likelihood classification (mlc) algorithm. the urban expansion has impacted the land use, as it has increased from 57.37% to 69.10%. result indicates that the built-up area have increased by 11.73%, reserve forest by 8.11% while grassland and dense natural forest decreases by 7.50 and 12.37 percent respectively. the results provided the better knowledge and understanding of former and current spatial dynamics of lulc change in murree region along with its ecotourism hotspots. keyword: gis/remote sensing, land use/land cover, forests of murree, ecotourism 1. introduction lulc dynamics are two fundamental factors that describe the environmental and economic condition of a country. it is essential for understanding the impact of natural and anthropogenic activities on environment that in turn leads to soil erosion, deforestation and global temperature rise (dwivedi et al., 2005; mas et al., 2004; zhao et al., 2004). rapid growth of population coupled with industrialization, and unplanned infrastructure developments are altering the lulc patterns at large scale (shukla et al., 2014) especially in developing countries like pakistan. appropriate and precise detection of changes on earth’s surface provides fundamental prerequisites for selection, planning and enactment of land related policies to meet the needs of burgeoning population, to monitor land use dynamics and for the management of natural resources (rawat and kumar, 2015). comparison of two or more multi-source, multi-scale remotely sensed images provide important information for detection of land use/land cover dynamics (hansen et al., 2012). it is an essential tool for land management practices and meeting sustainable development needs. corresponding author’s name: rukhsana kausar email address: rukhsana.tariq@iiu.edu.pk asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:rukhsana.tariq@iiu.edu.pk mailto:rukhsana.tariq@iiu.edu.pk mailto:rukhsana.tariq@iiu.edu.pk mailto:rukhsana.tariq@iiu.edu.pk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 50-58 51 murree is considered to be the most important tourist spot of pakistan, however the region is facing severe environmental degradation due to population growth. traditional methods of assessing land and forest cover are practiced from centuries but now such methods are considered to be laborious and time consuming as they are difficult to implement in complex topographic regions and in inaccessible areas (ning et al., 2015). remote sensing and gis provides useful information regarding spatio-temporal data of earth’s surface (ulbricht & heckendorf, 1998). the information about any urban environment and built-up area can be acquired through high resolution satellite data at desirable spatio-temporal scale (miller & small, 2003). as urban environment exhibit spectral diversity, the spatio-temporal variability of a region is necessary to monitor the land use/land cover feature of a region (maktav et al., 2005). the varied land features, conversion of forest into built up areas and ongoing infrastructural changes to accommodate increasing population is affecting the local area at great pace. monitoring such changes are necessary as they prove to be useful in decision making process (anirban et al., 2013). many researchers have studied the dynamics of urban and forested spaces. coppin et al. (2004) and lu et al. (2004)analyzed the lulc of built-up extent by geo-spatial information technology. singh (1989) describes that the change detection can be quantified through supervised and unsupervised approaches.(bruzzone & prieto, 2002) illustrates the unsupervised technique which utilizes raw imageries to evaluate change detection however the method is declared to be have some limitations. adepoju et al. (2006) declared the supervised classification with maximum likelihood classifier (mlc) the most suitable one with reduced spectral confusion problem between some land use classes. he also describes that the post-classification method also describes “from-to” interpretation. it minimizes the problems caused by variation in sensors and atmospheric conditions (shukla et al., 2014). jensen (1996)declares that the accurate classifications are imperative to insure precise land use/land cover patterns. the current research is designed to investigate the temporal and spatial land models of murree region. specifically the study will identify the spatial patterns of lulc, evaluate the extension of built-up area and resultant deforestation occurring in targeted region. change detection analysis to determine forest cover loss, proportion of lulc and fragmentation over time and space enable us to generate visual representation of land feature transformation. the study also revealed the lulc patterns of tourism hotspots including bhurban, murree mall and patriata. the predicted changing trend in vegetation cover along with altered land patterns assist land planners in managing natural resources and conserving local biodiversity through sustainable strategies. 2. materials & methods 2.1. study area murree is a famous tourist spot of pakistan. it is among the major tehsils of rawalpindi district. the tehsil murree lies at 33° to 34°north latitude and 72° 42’ to 73° 30’ east longitude. it is situated along the kohala high way 30 km north of islamabad. elevation of area is 2,291.2 m. it is a famous tourism spot and hill station of pakistan. the area is important in having dense forest cover at high altitude that mainly includes chirr pine and blue pine forests. these forests not only provide firewood, timber and other benefits to local people but also act as water shed areas and tourist spots. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 50-58 52 figure 1: map of study area 2.2. data collection the present study utilizes satellite dataset of landsat 7 and 4 (tm and etm+) over murree region. three images of landsat 7 and one of landsat 4 was downloaded to conduct the study. images of 30m resolution was utilized to conduct quantitative analysis and dynamic changes of land cover/use in murree. usgs global visualization viewer (glovis) was used to acquire data. destriping to adjust incorrect brightness values was conducted. layer staking was carried out to create the multicomponent image. the images were rectified to common coordinate system (almas et al., 2005). the images were masked to study area with the aid of erdas 13 prior to classification. histogram equalizer was applied to increase their brightness level. supervised classification with maximum likelihood classification (mlc) technique was conducted to classify the rectified images. land cover consisting of dense natural forest, grasslands, built up areas and reserve forests were generated for the images of four years. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 50-58 53 spatial analysis data capturing acquisition of data satellite images image processing band combination area extraction analysis supervised classification land cover/use change map figure 2: methodology flowchart of work four lulc classes were identified in the images and used in the study namely dense natural forest, grasslands, built up areas and reserve forests. ground verification was done by google earth for doubt full areas and for better interpretation & visualization purpose. different band combinations were used in order to enhance the images for extraction of required information from the imageries of specified time scale. the second phase of land cover/use analysis includes reprojection of the image. the statistics including total area and changed area of classified images were calculated using arc-gis desktop 10.1. tabular representation to present the stated result were adopted to compare the statistics obtained. quantified results in form of land use/cover types, lulc change and district trends were analyzed and presented. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 50-58 54 table 1: land use/cover statistics of murree 1998-2010 land-use type area (ha) change area growth (%) 1998 2010 built-up 36251.41 42792.188 6540.778 11.73 dense natural forest 9504.34 4658.362 -4845.978 -7.50 grassland 11354.22 3450.207 -7904.013 -12.37 reserve forest 6124.35 11020.663 4896.313 8.11 source: authors’ own calculations figure 4: land use/cover change of murree 1998-2010 3. results the research study employed the “supervised classification approach” to detect the land use/cover patterns, if classification was done using “coarse resolution satellite datasets” the presence of mixed pixels was encountered. after thorough study of the data, the variables i.e. total area and changed figure 3: lulc map of study area asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 50-58 55 figure 5: land use/cover change of murree-mall 1998-2010 area to compute urban land use dynamics were adopted ultimately to acquire results. results obtained highlighted the gain/loss coverage of land feature classes. image analysis revealed the increasing trend of build-up area and reserve forests while decrease in area occupied by dense forest and grassland recorded. mainly the built up area has increased from 57.37% to 69.10% during study time. it’s revealed that in 1998 area occupied by some dense forests, grasslands and reserve forests were subjected to continuous degradation. in the year 2003 built up area increased further i.e. 65.02 % of total area, that is due to population growth and increase in settlements. however the constructed area shows downfall in year 2005 from 41043.43 ha to 37198.97 ha. during earthquake 2005, 40% of the houses were damaged and destroyed and land sliding was triggered out (iucn) so the area shows the decreasing trend in built up area for year 2005. the results shows that two types of vegetation i.e. thick forests and grassland illustrate an increasing trend in their area coverage as a response to these climatic factors i.e. high precipitation and availability of optimum temperature from 2003 to 2005. in 2010 there is a vivid gain in the area occupied by settlements and decreasing trend is observed in the coverage of forest land cover class. 3.1. murree mall the study also revealed the land use/cover trend of three tourist hotspot of murree, including bhurban, murree mall and patriata. changes in form of built-up area and forested or grassland were calculated with respect to time and space. the result indicates the positive trend in built-up area while negative trend in all three classes (dense natural forest, grassland and reserve forest) observed. results obtained for murree mall indicates the negative and positive trend of land use classes. it is revealed that in the year 2003 built up area wasreally high i.e. 1114.08 ha that is 72.51% of the area due to the development of infrastructure. this land cover type increases from 1998 to 2003. as we know that there is a vivid increase in population in the concerned years so there is an increase in settlements to cater this increase in the population of this area. as murree mall is the most commercialized area and tourism spot of murree it is dominated by infrastructure to cater overwhelming thrush of tourists. 3.3. bhurban change occurring at bhurban were also analyzed in the study. figure 6 shows that there is a slight decrease in the area acquired for built material. in year 1998, about 545.553 ha area was covered that was 58.25 % of the total area, in 2003 and 2005, 422.38 ha and 380.62 ha of the area asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 50-58 56 respectively was built up while in 2010 this area increased at a faster rate i.e. up to 1197.992 ha i.e. 69.2 %.the decrease seems to be due to land sliding issue that was a consequence of earthquakes of low magnitude but after 2005 there is a clear increase in construction. the forest cover of the area also showed a random trend. in year 1998 thick forests used to cover 171.027 ha area (18.26%). figure 6: land use/cover change of bhurban 1998-2010 table 3: land use/cover statistics of bhurban 1998-2010 land-use type area (ha) change area altered (%) 1998 2010 built-up 545.553 1197.992 652.439 10.99 dense natural forest 171.027 340.968 169.941 1.44 grassland 28.28 58.0718 29.79 0.346 reserve forest 191.69 132.942 -58.74 -12.78 in 2003 it decreased to 200.85 ha, in 2005 it increased further to 259.37 ha and in 2010 a decreasing trend was observed that is 340.96 ha was occupied by thick forests this kind of highly dynamic trend was result of various climatic factors that varied on irregular patterns. 3.4. patriata the situation of land use/cover trend in patriata is minor as compared to other areas. the year 2010 shows a significant increase in grassland, reserved forests and dense natural forest area because in 2005 national environmental policy commits to increase the forest cover. table represent then significant increase in built up area in 2010 that is 841.11ha (57.99%) but in the same year considerable increase in reserved forest is also observed. as the pakistan poverty reduction strategy makes projection to increase forest cover from 4.8 to 5%. built-up areas are more susceptible to land sliding as compared to vegetation so dense natural forests show increasing trend. as it is clear from the results that vegetation (both forests and grasslands) is showing an increasing trend from 2003 to 2005 in murree even at all three tourism spots the same trend is observed so it verifies this point that during 2003 -2005 climatic conditions were quite favorable for the growth of vegetation as iucn appraisal illustrates that rainfall rate was high during 2003 to 2005. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 50-58 57 figure 7: land use/cover change of patriata 1998-2010 table 4: land use/cover statistics of patriata 1998-2010 land-use type area (ha) change area altered (%) 1998 2010 built-up 281.170 814.115 532.94 11.29 dense natural forest 47.98 140.205 92.22 2.08 grassland 132.93 127.596 -5.333 -13.03 reserve forest 138.76 321.782 183.2 -0.17 4. recommendation the data analysis depicts that changes in the distribution of various land cover classes directly or indirectly influence the productivity of precious forest reserves. the land use classes are very much related to each other i.e. uncontrolled and unplanned expansion or contraction on the land coverage of any class can impart positive and sometimes negative effects on the other, so there is a need of proper and pre planned strategies in order to cater these issues. as this study shows infrastructure build to entertain the hot issues of population rise and urbanization is causing serious problems for the local biodiversity residing nearby areas. the study encourages further research work in order to assess the change in the area occupied by different land feature classes i.e. dense forests, grasslands, built up area and reserved forests with respect to specified period of time along with the factors that trigger such changes. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. reference adepoju, m. o., millington, a. c., & tansey, k. t. 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(1998). satellite images for recognition of landscape and land use changes. isprs journal of photogrammetry & remote sensing, 53, 235-243. zhao, g. x., lin, g.,&warner, t.(2004). using thematic mapper data for change detection and sustainable use of cultivated land: a case study in the yellow river delta, china. international. journal of remote sensing, 25(13), 2509-2522. © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 adoption of improved agroforestry technologies among contact farmers in imo state, nigeria orisakwe lambert (department of agricultural economics, extension and rural development, imo state university owerri, nigeria) agomuo florence ozioma (department of agricultural extension and rural development, university of ibadan, ibadan nigeria) to cite this article: orisakwe lambert and agomuo florence ozioma (2012). adoption of improved agroforestry technologies among contact farmers in imo state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1), 1-9. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 1-9 † corresponding author © 2011 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 www.aessweb.com author (s) orisakwe lambert † department of agricultural economics, extension and rural development, imo state university owerri, nigeria e mail: lamboriz@yahoo.com agomuo florence ozioma department of agricultural extension and rural development, university of ibadan, ibadan nigeria email: floxy80t@yahoo.com adoption of improved agroforestry technologies among contact farmers in imo state, nigeria abstract the study examined the adoption of improved agroforestry technologies among farmers in imo state. to achieve the study objectives, structured questionnaire were designed and administered to ninety farmers who were selected using a multistage random sampling technique. data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics regression analysis and pearson product moment correlation (ppmc). findings shows that the farmers were mainly small scale middle aged married men with secondary education and no access to credit. the average house hold size, farming experience and annual income of the farmers were 6 person, 15.5 years and n 148,255.6 respectively with two contacts with extension agents on monthly basis. the results indicated that the farmers were largely aware of gnetum africana and have adopted plantain/banana technology. the mean adoption rate of agroforestry technologies was 33.81%. the main determinants of the adoption were farmers’ age, educational level, farm size, income, access to credit and extension contact as this variables were all significant. apart from age of the farmers which was negatively related to adoption of agroforestry technologies all other variables mentioned affected the adoption rate of agroforestry technologies positively. based on the findings, it was strongly recommended that farmers be provided with loans at concessionary interest rates to solve their financial problem of adopting innovations. keywords: adoption, innovation, agroforestry technologies introduction adoption is a decision made by an individual or group to use an innovation in a continuous manner (akubuilo et al., 2007). adoption is regarded by rogers (1995) as a decision to make full use of an innovation or technology as the best course of action available. according to van den ban and hawkins (1996), adoption of innovation is the decision of an individual or group to use or apply an innovation. technology is the systematic application of scientific or other organized body of knowledge to practical purposes (akubuilo et al., 2007). this includes new ideas, inventions, innovations, techniques, methods and materials. agroforestry is an agricultural approach of using the interactive benefits from combining trees and shrubs with crops and/or livestock (enwikipedia.org/wiki/agroforestry). it combines agriculture and forestry technology to create more integrated, diverse, productive, profitable, healthy and sustainable land use system. agroforestry is an aspect of farm forestry that encourages the deliberate integration of woody perennials with agricultural crops and/or animals on the same management unit, with the aim of enhancing soil fertility and increasing farmers’ income through the use of economic trees (akinbili et al., 2007). the act of combining trees, crops and/or animals is as old as humanity itself, and it has been practiced since the middle ages in europe, asia, tropical america, and africa (udofia, 2001). agroforestry addresses many of the global challenges such as deforestation, unsustainable cropping practices and hunger, poverty and malnutrition. mailto:lamboriz@yahoo.com mailto:floxy80t@yahoo.com adoption of improved agroforestry technologies…. 2 the issue of environmental degradation is quite critical in imo state, where more than 80 percent of the population depends on forest products for survival, according to the nigeria conservation foundation (ncf, 2000). the forestry monitoring, evaluation and coordinating unit, has also reported an imbalance in the demand and supply of forest products (formecu, 1999). the improved agroforestry technologies disseminated in the state are snail rearing, apiculture, grass cutter domestication, production of gnetum africana, plantain/banana production, use of vertivar grass to control erosion, and mushroom production however, the adoption of these technologies over the years has not been encouraging. the adoption of agroforestry technologies among farmers in the state has been a subject of concern among stakeholders in agriculture. the reason for the increasing concern of stakeholders on the adoption of agroforestry technologies is due largely on the interactive benefits of agroforestry and other farming activities (egeonu and okoro, 2005). sanchez (1995) reported that agroforestry is widely recognized as a branch of agricultural science that is rapidly becoming a science in its own right and that many studies have been conducted in this area of study. most of the research studies have been studied from the biophysical perspective. however, mercer and miller (1998) revealed that nothing much has been done on the socioeconomic aspect especially as it affects the adoption of agroforestry technologies. this has caused a void in research. there is a growing awareness that agroforestry technologies are not reaching poor farmers. the main reason is the poor linkages between research organization and extension (aboh and akpabio, 2008). however, alimba and mgbada, (2003) found that inappropriateness of the innovation is responsible for non-adoption by the farmers while, asiabaka and okoro (1992). had a contrary view and concluded that farmers fail to adopt because they are wise and not because they are ignorant, and rationally weigh the changes in incomes and risks associated with agroforestry technologies under their socio-economic circumstance. this however, made the adoption of agroforestry technologies among farmers in the state unsatisfactory. previous studies on the adoption of agroforestry technologies (ajayi, 2006) focused more on the linkage between research organizations and extension, with neglect to the linkage between extension and farmers, and farmers are central to adoption of innovations as they are the supposed users of the technologies (aboh and akpabio, 2008). according to them, ineffective linkage between extension and farmers is responsible for low adoption of agroforestry technologies by farmers. it is against this background that the study addressed the following research questions: 1. what are the socioeconomic characteristics of farmers involved in agroforestry? 2. what is the farmers’ awareness level of the agroforestry technologies dessiminated in the area? 3. what is the extent of adoption of agroforestry technologies in the area? 4. what are the factors affecting the adoption of agroforestry technologies by farmers in the area? hypotheses the following null hypotheses were tested i. there is no significant relationship between adoption of agroforestry technologies and farmers socio-economic characteristics. ii. there is no significant relationship between adoption of agroforesty technologies and the farmers’ awareness level. methodology the study was carried out in imo state, nigeria. the state is located in southeast of nigeria and shares common boundaries with abia state on the east and northeast, rivers state on the south, and anambra state on the west and northwest. the state lies between latitudes 5 45’n and 6 35’n of the equator and longitudes 6 35’ e and 7 35’ e of the greenwich meridian (ismlsup, 1999). the state has an average annual temperature of 28 c, an average annual relative humidity of 80%, average annual rainfall of 1800-2500mm and an altitude of about 100m above sea level (imo adp, 1990). the state experiences two major seasons: dry and rainy seasons. the dry season starts by november and lasts to early march while the rainy season starts from april to october with a short dry spell in august called the “august break”. the state is in the tropical rainforest zone of nigeria which makes her vegetation habitable for many forest species and livestock species. many farmers in the state practice agroforestry because asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 1-9 3 of the vegetation of the area. the state is divided into three agricultural zones: owerri, okigwe, and orlu because of administrative and extension services but not with any agro-ecological reason. the population of the state is 3,934,899 persons with many subsisting in farming (nbs, 2007). sampling procedure and sample size the multistage random sampling technique was adopted for this study. firstly, the three agricultural zones were selected. in each agricultural zone, two local government areas (lgas) were randomly selected. in each selected lga, five communities were randomly selected. lastly, three farmers involved in agroforestry were randomly selected from the list of contact farmers in the communities (sample frame). in all, three agricultural zones, six local government areas, thirty communities, and ninety farmers were used for the survey. this brought the sample size of the study to ninety farmers (respondents). data analysis descriptive statistical tools such as frequency counts, percentages and means were used to describe the data collected, while inferential statistical tools were used to test hypotheses, using pearson product moment correlation (ppmc) and linear regression the rate of adoption is calculated as the number of technologies adopted divided by the total number of technologies transferred and expressed in percentage (ajayi, 2006). the implicit model of the regression is as follows: y = f(x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, x6,x7,x8,e). where; y = adoption rate of agroforestry technologies (%) x1= farmers age (years) x2= farmers educational level (years) x3= household size of farmers (number of persons) x4= farming experience of farmers (years) x5= farm size of farmers (hectares) x6= farmers income (n) x7= farmers access to credit (dummy variable, yes =1, no = 0) x8= farmers contact with extension agents (monthly). e= error term. results and discussion as shown in table 1, majority (44.40%) of the respondents fall within the age bracket of 41-50 years. about 25.00% of the respondents are between 51 and 60 years while the young farmers (below 40 years) who should constitute the major labour force in agriculture were 8.9%. the retired age of 61-70 years had a percentage of 18.90 while the remaining 2.20% of the respondents were older farmers (71 years and above). the respondents’ mean age was 51.6 years. this implies that the respondents are mainly of the middle age indicating that the middle age farmers could adopt agroforestry technologies more than any other group. the majority (57.80%) of the respondents were male. this implies that the contact farmers are more of male. thus, male headed households engage in agroforestry more than female headed households. this could be due to the sociocultural milieu of the area which gives males the access to production resources like land where agroforestry is practiced more than females. marital status indicates that the majority of the respondents (94.44%) were married. this may be as a result of high labour requirement in agricultural production in which they use members of their family as labour force (okoye, 1999) and partly due to the expected benefits derived in feeding members of their family from what they produce. about 3.33% of the respondents were single. the youths are involved here. this implies that many youths shy away from farming. the analysis shows that majority of the respondents (57.80%) had household sizes of 5-8 persons. the mean household size of the respondents was 6 persons. this is in line with the findings of okoye (1999) that large household is advantageous to farming as labour may be derived from the members. table 1 also reveals that the majority (36.67%) of the respondents had secondary education, 34.44% had primary education while 22.22% had tertiary education. about 6.67% of the respondents had no formal education constituting the illiterate class of the respondents. the mean educational level of the respondents was 8 years. following this result, respondents could be said to be mainly literates. this literate proportion of the respondents implies that adoption of innovations like agroforestry will adoption of improved agroforestry technologies…. 4 be favoured as education affects adoption of new technologies positively. the analysis shows that the majority (48.90%) of the respondents had farm sizes of 1-3 ha, 40.00% had farm sizes of less than 1 ha. the mean farm size of the respondents was 1.5 ha. this implies that the respondents are mainly smallholder farmers. this small landholding is not really favourable for adoption of agroforestry technologies. however, agroforestry practice may not be greatly influenced by farm size since farmers with fragmented farm land often try to make maximum use of their plots. the mean farming experience of the respondents is 15.5 years. this is an indication that the respondents have been in farming for a long period of time. the implication is that they are capable of adopting agroforestry technologies since many may have been practicing it for a long time. the analysis on income show that majority of the respondents (48.90%) realized between n20, 000 and n100, 000 per annum from agriculture. about 20.00% and 17.80% of the respondents had farm annual incomes of n100, 001n180, 000. the mean annual farm income of the respondents was n148, 255.60. with this result, it is likely that the adoption of agroforestry technologies will be favourable because income is very important in adoption process. access to credit shows that majority of the respondents (68.90%) had no access to agricultural credit while the remaining 31.10% had access to credit. accessibility to farm credit induces adoption of innovation. lack of collateral could be the reason why farmers’ accessibility to credit is poor. therefore removal of complex lending conditions is necessary for increased accessibility to credit to farmers to aid adoption of agricultural innovations. the majority of the respondents (38.89%) had contact with extension agents twice in a month, 21.11% had no contact with extension agents. regular contact with extension agents motivates and exposes the farmers to innovations and gives them information how to use the technologies. with persuasion and conviction from the extension agents, adoption of agroforestry technologies is likely to increase. farmers’ awareness of agroforestry technologies as shown in table 2 many agroforestry technologies have been transferred to end-users. the technologies as agreed by respondents includegnetum africana (okazi) (84.40%), snail rearing (83.30%), plantain/banana production (82.20%). others are bee keeping (57.80%), mushroom production (30.00%), grass cutter domestication (24.40%), and vertivar grass production (17.80%). this result shows that majority of the respondents are aware of gnetum africana followed by snail rearing and plantain/banana production. with the level of awareness of these agroforestry technologies, there is likely to be high adoption rate of these technologies, since farmers should be aware of a given technology before adoption. extent of adoption of agroforestry adoption frequency the results in table 3 reveal that majority of the respondents (74.40%) have adopted plantain/banana production, 70.00% have adopted gnetum africana, 65.60% have adopted snail rearing while 16.70% have adopted mushroom production. about 8.90%, 7.80%, and 3.30% have adopted bee keeping, vertivar grass production and grass cutter domestication respectively. this means that the respondents adopted mainly plantain/banana production .this could be because plantain/banana has for long been planted by farmers making it almost an indigenous crop in the area. gnetum africana followed plantain/banana production in the adopted technologies by the respondents. this could also be because gnetum africana does not require much cost for domestication. even at that adoption level of plantain/banana and gnetum africana, it does not still satisfy the adp target of 91.00% adoption of each of the packages (egeonu and okoro, 2005). also the high adoption of plantain/banana and gnetum africana is in minority considering the number of technologies to be adopted. extent of adoption of agroforestry technologies the distribution in table 4 shows farmers’ extent of adoption of agroforestry technologies. the table reveals that about 6.67%, 15.56%, 18.89%, and 27.78% of the farmers adopted 5, 4, 3, and 2 agroforestry technologies respectively. the majority (31.11%) of the farmers adopted 1 agroforestry technology. the average number of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 1-9 5 technologies adopted by the farmers is 2.389 (approximately 2) while the average rate of adoption of agroforestry technologies is 34.12% implying that adoption of the technologies is not satisfactory. this could be due to poor delivery system of the extension agents and high cost of adopting the technologies. table 1: respondents socioeconomic characteristics (n = 90) variables frequency percentage age (years) 31-40 8 8.90 41-50 40 44.40 51-60 23 25.60 61-70 17 18.90 71 and above 2 2.20 mean age=51.6 sex male 52 57.80 female 38 42.20 marital status married 85 94.44 single 3 3.33 divorced 2 2.22 household size 1-4 24 26.70 5-8 52 57.80 9-12 14 15.60 educational level no formal education 6 6.67 primary education 31 34.44 secondary education 33 36.67 tertiary education 20 22.22 farm size (ha) < 1 36 40.00 1-3 44 48.90 4-6 10 11.10 mean farm size = 1.5 ha farming experience (yrs) 1-10 40 44.44 11-20 22 24.44 21-30 18 20.00 31-40 8 8.89 41-50 2 2.22 annual farm income (n) 20, 000-100, 000 44 48.90 100, 001-180, 000 18 20.00 180, 001-260, 000 16 17.80 260, 001-340, 000 7 7.80 340, 001-740,000 5 5.56 mean annual farm income n 148,255.60 access to credit yes 28 31.10 no 62 68.90 adoption of improved agroforestry technologies…. 6 extension contact no contact 19 21.11 once in a month 16 17.78 twice in a month 35 38.89 thrice in a month 6 6.67 four times in a month 14 15.56 source: field survey, 2010 table 2: distribution of respondents’ responses on awareness of agroforestry technologies transferred technologies frequency percentage rank gnetum africana (okazi) 76 84.40 1 snail rearing 75 83.30 2 plantain/banana production 74 82.20 3 bee keeping 52 57.80 4 mushroom production 27 30.00 5 grass cutter domestication 22 24.40 6 vertivar grass production 16 17.80 7 note: multiple responses source: field survey, 2010 table 3: distribution of respondents’ responses on adoption of agroforestry technologies transferred technologies frequency percentage rank plantain/banana production 67 74.40 1 gnetum africana (okazi) 63 70.00 2 snail rearing 59 65.60 3 mushroom production 15 16.70 4 bee keeping 8 8.90 5 vertivar grass production 7 7.80 6 grass cutter domestication 3 3.30 7 note: multiple responses source: field survey, 2010 table 4: distribution of respondents’ according to number of agroforestry technologies adopted number of technologies adopted frequency percentage 1 28 31.11 2 25 27.78 3 17 18.89 4 14 15.56 5 6 6.67 total 90 100.00 average number of technologies adopted = 2.389 average rate of adoption = 34.12% source: field survey, 2010 factors affecting adoption rate of agroforestry technologies in order to determine the factors affecting the adoption rate of agroforestry technologies, a multiple regression analysis was done. the regression was subjected to four functional forms (linear, semi log, double log and exponential forms). the linear form was chosen as the lead function for further discussion because of the following reasons: -it has the highest coefficient of multiple determination (r 2 ) value (0.791) -it has the highest f-calculated value (5.477) -it has the highest number of significant independent variables (x1, x2, x5, x6, x7, and x8). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 1-9 7 the coefficient of multiple determination (r 2 ) has a value of 0.791 (79.10%) indicating that the independent variables (x1, x2,………. x8) jointly explained 79.1% of the variation in the dependent variable (y). consequently the interpretation of the regression result indicates the following: farmers’ age (x1) is negatively related to adoption of agroforestry technologies, meaning that younger farmers adopted the technologies more than the older farmers. this relationship is significant at the 5% level of probability as the tcalculated value (2.005) is greater than the ttabulated value (1.98). farmers’ educational level (x2) has a positive relationship with adoption rate of agroforestry technologies implying that the more educated farmers adopted agroforestry technologies more than the less educated farmers. the relationship is significant at the 1% level of probability as the t-calculated value (3.206) is greater than the t-tabulated value (2.617). farmers’ household size (x3) is positively related to adoption rate of agroforestry technologies indicating that farmers having larger households adopted the technologies more than their counterparts having smaller households.the effect is however insignificant at the 10% level of probability as the t-calculated value (0.121) is less than the t-tabulated value (1.658). farmers’ experience (x4) has a positive effect on adoption rate of agroforestry technologies showing that the more experienced farmers adopted the packages more than the less experienced farmers.the effect is not significant at the 10% level of probability due to the value of t-calculated (0.427) being less than the t-tabulated value (1.658). farm size of farmers (x5) is positively related to adoption rate of agroforestry technologies implying that as the farmers’ farm sizes increase they adopt more of agroforestry technologies, and vice versa. this effect is however significant at the 5% level of probability as the t-calculated value (2.325) is greater than the t-tabulated value (1.98). farmers’ income (x6) is positively related to adoption of agroforestry technologies meaning that the richer farmers adopted the technologies more than the poorer farmers. the effect is significant at the 1% level of probability as the t-calculated value (3.206) is greater than the t-tabulated value (2.617). farmers’ access to credit (x7) has a positive effect on adoption of agroforestry technologies indicating that farmers with access to credit adopted the technologies more than those without access to credit. this effect is statistically significant at the 10% level of probability as the tcalculated value (1.968) is greater than the ttabulated value (1.658). farmers’ contact with extension agents (x8) is positively related to the adoption rate of agroforestry technologies showing that farmers with higher number of contacts with extension agents adopted the agroforestry technologies more than farmers with less contact with extension agents. this relationship is statistically significant at the 1% level of probability as the t-calculated value (4.250) is greater than the t-tabulated value (2.617). the f-ratio which determines the overall significance of a regression is statistically significant at the 1% level of probability because the f-calculated value (5.477) is greater than the f-tabulated value (2.82). this implies that the independent variables jointly exerted great influence on the adoption rate of agroforestry technologies. this compels us to rejecting the first null hypothesis of the study which states that, ῍there is no significant relationship between farmers’ socio-economic characteristics and the adoption rate of agroforestry technologies῎. we now conclude that farmers’ socio-economic characteristics are significantly related to the adoption rate of agroforestry technologies. table 5: multiple regression estimates of factors affecting farmers’ adoption rate of agroforestry technologies independent variables linear form exponential form semi log form double log form coefficient t tratio coefficient tratio coefficient t ratio coefficient tratio intercept 2.08 0.181 5.60e+28 0.103 -15.29 2.373 1.544 x1 -0.403 -2.005 xx -7.89e-07 -0.02 -5.383 -0.294 -0.751 x2 1.273 3.265 xxx -1.60e+22 -0.536 -2.519 -0.048 -0.321 x3 0.096 0.121 -2.20e+23 -0.028 1.619 0.133 0.895 x4 0.081 0.427 -4.60e+08 -0.01 -0.231 0.008 0.07 x5 3.305 2.325 xx 2.20e+28 4.374 xxx 6.118 0.174 1.933 xx adoption of improved agroforestry technologies…. 8 x6 5.322 3.206 xxx 0.001 0.0001 5.198 0.141 1.703 x x7 5.727 1.968 x -7.00e+28 -0.639 8.123 0.271 1.464 x8 5.463 4.250 xxx 1.30e+28 2.781 xxx 10.546 0.295 2.778 xxx r 2 0.791 0.297 0.335 0.284    0.777 0.228 0.262 0.208 f-ratio 5.477 xxx 4.286 xxx 4.722 xxx 3.723 xxx xxx significant at 1% level xx significant at 5% level x significant at 10% level source: computer printout of field survey 2010 table 6: relationship between adoption and awareness level of agroforestry technologies variable r p-value decision awareness level vs adoption level of improved agroforestry technologies 0.33 0.001 significant r = correlation coefficient, pprobability level of significance p<0.05(significant) source: field survey, 2010 table 6 reveals that there is a significant though low relationship (33%) between the awareness level and the adoption level of improved agroforestry technologies. the null hypothesis is rejected because the p-value is < than 0.05 conclusion although the study was limited to imo state and farmers in imo state constituted the sample of the study, certain reasonable conclusions have been made from the results of the study. the farmers are mostly middle aged married men with farm size of 1.5ha. this definitely confines them to practice agroforestry farming on a small scale. out of the seven agroforestry technologies available, the farmers were mostly aware of gnetum africana and they adopted plantain/banana production more than others. the innovation on plantain/banana is almost same with the existing native practice by the resource poor farmers which shows that the technology on plantain/banana production is not difficult to practice. the significance of age, educational level, farm size, income, access to credit, and extension contact means that they exerted greater influence on adoption of agroforestry technologies. this implies that adoption of agroforestry technologies require mainly young, educated, large scale and rich farmers with access to credit and higher contact with extension agents. recommendation the results of this study lead us to make these recommendations. access to credit is very important for adoption of innovations. our findings support this assertion. therefore farmers should be provided with loans preferably at market interest rates to solve farmers’ problem of inadequate finance. the loans should be supervised to see that they are not diverted to wrong hands and ensure equally judicious utilization of such loans by farmers. inputs like planting and starting stocks should be subsidized so that the poor rural farmers will easily adopt the technologies by affording to buy the inputs. agricultural development programme should be intensified to sensitize and motivate farmers towards enlisting in farmers’ co-operative societies. farmers’ socio-economic factors should be considered fundamental in designing extension intervention strategies. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(1)2012: 1-9 9 references aboh, c. l., & akpabio, i. a. 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(2001). the role of agroforestry practices in checking environmental degradation. in forestry and sustainable development. proceeding of the first workshop association of nigeria, akwa ibom state branch udo, e.s.(ed); 10th11th april, 2001. fan/undp/aksmoe/department of forestry and wildlife, university of uyo, pp. 45-52. van, d. b., & hawkins, h. s. (1996). agricultural extension. 2nd edition. blackwell science limited, london, pp. 122-125. http://www.nigerianstat.gov.ng/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 113 a study on regional specialization of china’s agricultural production: recent trends and drivers meilin ma department of agricultural and resource economics, university of california, davis, usa sandro steinbach agricultural economics group, swiss federal institute of technology, zurich, switzerland junqian wu school of management, zhejiang university, hangzhou, pr china abstract the paper examines trends and drivers for regional specialization of china’s agricultural production for 2003-2011. we apply the regional specialization index to a data set of commodities that covers 70 percent of china’s crop and livestock production. actual prices at the provincial level are used and a seven-region framework is established that accurately reflects china’s agroecological characteristics. our findings show that inequality of specialization among the chinese regions has narrowed, with the year 2007 as a turning point. we argue that the enhanced regional specialization is due to less government intervention and more openness to international markets. growing economic freedom, accompanied by intensified internal and external competition, has driven the regions to adjust agricultural production structures closely according to comparative advantages. recent trends of specialization are identified and explained. moreover, quantitative evidence to relevant agricultural policies is provided. keywords: regional specialization, agricultural production, china introduction 1 labor division and specialization are keys to economic growth (young, 1928). specialized economies employ more sophisticated technologies that result in significant output increases (kim, 1995). in particular, regional specialization has long been linked to regional development and economic growth (north, 1955; perloff et al., 1960). with respect to agriculture, specialization allows a farmer to concentrate resources on specific needs (ilbery, 1984), which increases prod corresponding author name: sandro steinbach email address: ssteinbach@ethz.ch uctivity (kurosaki, 2009), rural income (gregson, 1996; rase and zhang, 2009) and farmers’ welfare (deininger and olinto, 2001), and enhances production structure (huffman and evenson, 2000). on the negative side, specialization could lead to soil deterioration because the economics of scope and rotation are lost (ilbery, 1984). furthermore, once dependent on a limited range of agricultural products, regions might become vulnerable to changes in the level of profitability of those products (bowler, 1981). yao (2004) pointed out that farmers in developed countries tend to specialize and explore their comparative advantages thoroughly, which brings them more profits from trade both in domestic and global mar asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ssteinbach@ethz.ch asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 113-127 114 kets, while developing countries are generally less specialized. the reasons for lower specialization in developing countries are manifold and often related to government interventions that cause market distortions. china’s agricultural sector offers an example where policy adjustments made by the central government have been strongly affecting the allocation of resources and influencing the production decisions of farmers throughout decades (xu, 2001). reviewing the history of china’s agricultural development, a unique and tortuous path, from having tight central control to a much freer market, and from having agriculture sector sacrifice for industry to having industry support agriculture, is observed. agricultural development in china was slow until deng xiaoping initiated the chinese economic reform and opening-up in 1978. tightly restricted by the centralized planning system, regions could hardly produce according to their comparative advantages. thus, it is widely believed that china remained insufficiently specialized compared with developed countries because of its dual economic structure (liu, 2004). agricultural development started to take off after the central government gradually loosened its control over domestic production and released its constraints on the agricultural market. in 1983, the household responsibility system (hrs) was established, and long-term landuse rights were granted to farmers. by 1986, the state monopsony purchase and trade system was abolished for most agricultural commodities, except for grains and cotton, which were considered strategically important for the country. a set of further policy adjustments was initiated before china’s accession to the world trade organization (wto) in 2001. after the accession, impressive agricultural reforms were carried on. for example, in 2006, the regulations for farmer professional cooperatives (fpcs) were implemented, encouraging the establishment of rural producer organizations. additionally, agricultural taxes were reduced since 2004 and abolished by 2007. except for the policy adjustments mentioned above, changes on other aspects are also observed in china’s agricultural sector. according to national bureau of statistics of china (1981-2012), the importance of agriculture out of the entire economy has fallen from 12.6 percent in 2003 to 8.9 percent in 2011. correspondingly, the portion of rural population fell considerably during the period. it dropped from 59.5 percent in 2003 to 48.7 percent by 2011. noticeably, rural labor force shrank substantially in recent years, from 475.1 million in 2003 to 405.1 million in 2011. on the other hand, as shown in figure 1, the portions of agricultural production value, in the broad sense, has remained rather stable. the value of crop category stays around 50 percent, while livestock accounts for 32 percent and fishery for about 10 percent (national bureau of statistics of china, 1981-2012). being the world’s second largest economy, and the largest food producer and consumer, china’s food security, rural development, and agricultural trade issues have considerable global impacts. despite the impressive achievement in the industrial, service and real estate sectors that china has achieved, its agriculture is still far from being equally successful. in light of the profound changes in agricultural markets and policies, various approaches have been chosen to figure out the reasons for the unbalanced development currently and future path for china’s agriculture. several scholars have tackled the questions from the perspective of agricultural specialization in china (carter and lohmar, 2002; tian, 2012; xu, 2001; yao, 2004). they agree that comparative advantages in the chinese regions are not properly exploited. carter and lohmar (2002) were the first to provide statistical evidence for this claim. they showed that the level of specialization is far below that in developed countries. to reveal comparative advantages in the chinese regions, the authors used the regional specialization index that was proposed in krugman (1991). our paper also takes this index as a starting point, and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 113-127 115 moves further to make two crucial modifications that improve the method to acquire a more precise picture of regional specialization in china’s agricultural sector. this paper is divided into four sections. in the next section, we discuss the literature relevant to agricultural specialization and comparative advantages of china’s regions. we continue in the third section with an overview of the methodology and the improvements achieved through our adjustments. details of our dataset are also included in this section. our main findings are presented in the fourth section that also comprises a comprehensive discussion, which links to recent policy adjustments and market changes. the last section wraps up the paper with our core conclusions as well as remarks for future research. figure 1: structure of china’s agricultural production (2003-2011) source: data from the national bureau of statistics of china (1981-2011). literature review realizing comparative advantages allows producers in competitive markets to outperform others and maximize profits (carter and li, 2002). producers are motivated to specialize in the production of goods for which they have the lowest opportunity costs relative to competitors. hence, regional specialization may arise when regions exploit their comparative advantages, and/or take advantage of economies of scale (kim, 1995). specialization is closely linked to the concept of comparative advantages that is widely used to explain production and trading patterns. one famous example is the heckscher-ohlin model, which suggests that the comparative advantages of an entity are determined by its relative abundance of resources endowment. moreover, it is important to realize that specialization has multiple layers. the broadest is the country level where different countries have different major commodities in the international market. the second layer is the region level where different regions within countries specialize in the production of certain goods. additionally, further specialization occurs at the farm and household level (yao, 2004). particularly regarding china’s agriculture, it is argued that provinces are not able to have asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 113-127 116 their comparative advantages effectively exploited, leading to a relatively low degree of regional specialization (tian, 2012). various constraints, such as the central government’s equalization policy, stereotypes of selfsufficiency, and deficient infrastructure, have been argued to be the reasons for the insufficient specialization (xu et al., 2008). yet, as china goes through substantial economic changes, accompanied by a considerable alteration in the global environment, significant adjustments in agriculture have been conducted (carter et al., 2012). after china joined the wto in 2001, a number of papers discussed whether the accession would lead china to follow its comparative advantages more accurately (carter and li, 2002). scholars have also analyzed the endowment of input factors in china’s agriculture and their roles regarding regional productivity growth (cho et al., 2010). these scholars applied various indices to measure the comparative advantages of agricultural production in different provinces (xu, 2001; yao, 2004; ye, 2004). based on the concept of regional comparative advantages, several papers investigated the production centralization of china’s major agricultural commodities (li et al., 2012; tian, 2012; zheng and cheng, 2005). none of them, however, depicted the macro picture of regional specialization sufficiently. the most thoughtful and recognized analysis of china’s regional specialization in agriculture is found in carter and lohmar (2002). the authors argue that the policy adjustments strongly affected regional specialization of agriculture since the 1980s. their methodology, though, has several disadvantages that will be discussed in the following section. methodology and data the literature provides a number of indices to measure the degree of economic specialization. according to previous research, the concept of specialization takes two complementary perspectives. the first perspective describes the absolute specialization. under this approach, a subject is considered as specialized if a relatively small number of industries exhibit high shares of the subject’s overall employment or production value (aiginger and davie, 2004). italy and its textile and food industry is a good example for such type of specialization. the perspective is also called as intraregional specialization, because only the internal production structure counts for the specialization degree of a region, regardless of how competitors perform. notably, specialization measured in this way tends to show a u-shaped pattern over time (zhang & cheng, 2012). for this perspective, widely used indices include the hirschman-herfindahl index (herfindahl, 1950; hirschman, 1964), the shannon entropy index (shannon, 1948), the diversification index (rodgers, 1957), and the absolute gini index (gini, 1921). on the other hand, specialization can be measured from a comparative perspective, called as interregional specialization (fan, 2007). this approach focuses on quantifying the deviation or heterogeneity of the subject’s production structure in comparison with a selected benchmark or competitors. under this approach, a revered u-shape pattern is usually found for the subject’s regions over time (kim, 1995). frequently used indices include the krugman specialization index, or the ksi (krugman, 1991), the index of inequality in productive structure (cuadradoroura et al., 1999), the theil index (theil, 1967), and the relative gini index (hoover, 1936). in fact, no index could ever reflect full information of the subject; but each catches a unique portion. it is crucial to choose the most appropriate index to the key question of the research. our focus is to investigate how chinese regions have enhanced their agricultural production structure based on comparative advantages in the course of recent agricultural reforms in china. hence, it is of most importance to directly measure how dissimilarity degree has changed gradually among regions after they were allowed to produce according to comparative advanasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 113-127 117 tages in a competitive market. in other words, an index that takes the comparative perspective should be picked. therefore, the ksi is chosen as the measure of specialization in this paper since it catches the core information to the research question. according to palan (2010), the ksi is a superior measure for relative specialization, because it is the only index that possesses the criterion of anonymity, progressive transfers, merging, and bounds. in recent years, the ksi has received broad attention and been used in various studies of regional specialization (kim, 1995; kriegerboden et al., 2008; liang, 2004; xian & wen, 2006, wolf, 2007). as mentioned, the measure has two potential references, a selected benchmark and all other regions. application examples are found using both alternatives compared among regions (krugman, 1991; palan, 2010). regarding our topic, ksi was applied to the agricultural sector in kim’s paper (1995) that unfortunately focused on manufactory industries. in 2002, carter and lohmar used the ksi to measure regional specialization of china’s agriculture used it. they proposed to calculate the index by comparing among regions. for this paper, since we are essentially interested in explicitly studying the structural distinction between one region and another in order to focus on the concept of comparative advantage, carter and lohmar’s specification is used as the final measure formula 2 . the pairwise index is defined as the sum of absolute differences over all sectors in the share of a sector in the agricultural production of a region minus the share of that sector in another region’s agricultural production. the range of the index is zero to two. if the index equals zero, two regions have identical agricultural structures, while two 2 to make a sensitivity test, we also calculate the ksi using national average as the reference. the results show highly similar trend, though the absolute values are smaller. for details, please refer to figure 2. regions are completely specialized if the index is equal to two. we compiled a dataset that covers provincial production and price data of seventeen commodities for all mainland china provinces and equivalents 3 . the dataset covers the period 2003-2011 and builds on the specification presented in carter and lohmar (2002). we focus on the period because price data at the provincial level are not published for earlier years. also, even national price data for earlier years are not comparable, because the data collection method changed in 2001. hence, we have derived the data for 2003 to 2011 from the china yearbook of agricultural price survey (department of rural survey, national bureau of statistics of china, 2003-2011), compendium of agricultural commodity prices and costs (committee of development and reform, 2003-2011), the agricultural economics yearbooks (ministry of agriculture of china, 1981-2011), and china’s statistics yearbook (national bureau of statistics of china, 1981-2012). these data sources are the only trustworthy ones for regional comparison as they are published by the central government. indeed, other sources of data are not useful because of the inconsistent data collecting methods or limited scope. notably, when a province reported the production of a commodity but no price data were available for a given year, we calculate the average price for the region that the province belongs to, and use it as the province’s commodity price in that year. less than 1 percent of the price data is calculated by this method. we included seventeen commodities from crop and livestock category. the two categories account for more than 80 percent of china’s total agricultural output value which also includes fishery and forestry. to be specific, the commodities from crop category are: apples, bananas, citrus fruits, corn, 3 municipalities (e.g. beijing) and autonomous regions (e.g. guangxi) are of the equivalent administration level as provinces in china. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 113-127 118 cotton, flue cured tobacco, peanuts, rapeseed, rice, soybeans, sugar beets, sugarcane and wheat; and from livestock category: beef, mutton, pork and poultry. throughout the examined period, the commodities contribute to over 70 percent of the total annual production value of crop and livestock category. the value of vegetables has been growing rapidly in recent years, and now occupies a considerably higher share in china’s agricultural production value. the regional specialization index would be even higher had we included vegetables, given the substantial production differences among provinces. unfortunately, the complete production data at the province level are not available, and hence we have to exclude the value data of vegetables from the calculation. figure 2: average ksi for china’s agricultural production (2003-2011) source: authors’ own calculation. the definition of regions is presented in appendix. actual prices at the province level, instead of normalized ones as earlier works did, are used. this adjustment is important because price differences are large among the commodities (i.e. it can be as much as a 74.4time difference) and among provinces (i.e. it can be as much as 6.1 times, and on average 2.3 times). thus, it makes better sense to use actual prices. as shown in figure 2, using normalized price for cross-sectional commodities results in a considerable upward bias compared with outcomes generated from using actual price data. in other words, the bias leads to an overestimation of the degree in terms of china’s agricultural specialization. such a bias is expected, because normalized prices can enlarge the value differences of a particular commodity as the difference is based on quantity only. in fact, regions with a lower quantity tend to have a higher price, or the other around. hence, the difference of production value is not as large as it should be if using normalized prices. furthermore, we argue that it is more appropriate to define agricultural regions according to natural conditions (e.g. rainfall, soil type and temperature) and historical agricultural production patterns. thus, we redefine china into seven regions rather than using asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 113-127 119 the popular division of six regions, which was used by carter and lohmar (2002). however, there was no convincing argument for the validity of this division in the context of agriculture. for our seven-region framework, we rely upon the definition proposed by the chinese committee of national agricultural regional planning (1981). the thirty-one mainland provinces or equivalents are grouped into northeast (ne), middlelower division of yellow river (yr), middle-lower division of long river (lr), south (s), southwest (sw), tibet-qinghai (tq), and northwest (nw) regions. an illustration of the sixand seven-region framework is provided in the appendix. notably, the seven-region framework generates larger indices and clearer trends over the period studied compared with the sixregion framework as shown in figure 2 results and discussion regional specialization is driven by a variety of factors. theories of regional specialization in agriculture classify the drivers as internal and external in respect to production. internal drivers include most fundamentally, natural endowment, technologies and labor force structure. to be specific, natural endowment refers to arable area, landscape, climate conditions and so on. on the other hand, external factors contain market conditions, infrastructure, and policies. for instance, market conditions refer to the openness of the market, the structure of the market, and the organizational structure of trading entities in the market. policies include domestic taxes, international trade regulations, and agricultural investments. note that, natural endowment and labor source are rather stable over years, while technologies and policies can have considerable changes in a short period of time. especially for china, market conditions and agricultural policies have had dramatic changes during the period 2003-2011 as mentioned earlier. thus, the following discussion is developed from an analysis of agricultural market and policies changes in recent years in order to explain the three major observations and other concerns with respect to the results. we argue that the liberalized agricultural market and supporting policies generate the major drivers, such as intensive competition and financial subsidies, for specialization enhancement in china. the major observations and some concerns on the negative side are analyzed as follows. major findings firstly, as a whole, china’s agriculture production has become more regional specialized; and each region in china has become more specialized since 2003, expect for ne. table 1 provides all average and pairwise ksi figures for the regions. the average national degree of specialization, which equals the ksi divided by two, went up from 47.5 percent to 53.5 percent over nine years. we argue that the change is largely due to increased economic freedom both in domestic and international agricultural markets. although the central government still controls the production and trade of staple foods, trade for other commodities is generally not distorted. particularly since china joined the wto in 2001, international agricultural markets have pushed china to move from emphasizing on self-sufficiency to balancing profit maximization. china no longer has a comparative advantage in the production of land-intensive agricultural goods (e.g. rice and wheat), while its competence in laborintensive commodities (e.g. fruits and meats) has strengthened (ye, 2004). table 1: average and pairwise ksi, using actual price data and the seven-region framework 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 national average 1.03 0.95 0.98 0.97 1.06 1.03 1.05 1.07 1.07 regional averages ne 0.95 0.87 0.84 0.86 0.87 0.89 0.87 0.89 0.91 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 113-127 120 yr 0.96 0.88 0.93 0.92 1.01 0.97 1.00 1.03 1.02 lr 0.87 0.81 0.85 0.84 0.94 0.91 0.94 0.95 0.95 s 1.02 1.00 0.95 0.95 1.05 1.03 1.06 1.08 1.08 sw 0.86 0.81 0.82 0.81 0.88 0.86 0.88 0.89 0.91 tq 1.50 1.34 1.43 1.35 1.51 1.44 1.46 1.49 1.48 nw 1.05 0.94 1.01 1.07 1.15 1.11 1.12 1.16 1.16 region pairs ne-yr 0.80 0.82 0.79 0.81 0.76 0.75 0.77 0.81 0.81 ne-lr 0.85 0.76 0.72 0.74 0.71 0.77 0.73 0.72 0.71 ne-s 0.93 0.86 0.75 0.80 0.76 0.83 0.79 0.78 0.81 ne-sw 0.79 0.65 0.60 0.62 0.58 0.62 0.57 0.59 0.67 ne-tq 1.51 1.39 1.43 1.38 1.51 1.45 1.46 1.50 1.53 ne-nw 0.80 0.73 0.77 0.79 0.91 0.90 0.91 0.94 0.95 yr-lr 0.90 0.80 0.90 0.92 0.96 0.93 0.98 1.01 0.98 yr-s 1.08 1.08 1.03 1.08 1.17 1.11 1.19 1.23 1.18 yr-sw 0.86 0.80 0.84 0.87 0.90 0.87 0.89 0.91 0.91 yr-tq 1.44 1.17 1.37 1.22 1.50 1.42 1.43 1.47 1.48 yr-nw 0.69 0.61 0.66 0.65 0.78 0.76 0.71 0.78 0.78 lr-s 0.37 0.41 0.38 0.43 0.48 0.46 0.49 0.52 0.54 lr-sw 0.26 0.34 0.36 0.44 0.42 0.43 0.46 0.47 0.49 lr-tq 1.60 1.51 1.56 1.35 1.66 1.59 1.62 1.63 1.59 lr-nw 1.21 1.05 1.17 1.16 1.33 1.30 1.34 1.36 1.37 s-sw 0.53 0.57 0.51 0.56 0.54 0.54 0.57 0.60 0.60 s-tq 1.76 1.66 1.64 1.42 1.76 1.68 1.71 1.75 1.75 s-nw 1.45 1.41 1.37 1.38 1.57 1.53 1.58 1.62 1.60 sw-tq 1.59 1.48 1.54 1.33 1.61 1.54 1.55 1.57 1.53 sw-nw 1.10 1.00 1.06 1.07 1.24 1.18 1.20 1.22 1.25 tq-nw 1.08 0.82 1.04 1.39 1.05 0.98 1.00 1.04 1.02 source: authors’ own calculation and illustration. the definition of abbreviations is given in the appendix. competition has motivated china to adjust its national production structure, moving from a crop-dominant to a crop-livestockdominant agriculture with forestry and fishery included. for instance, before 1978, grain production occupied over 80 percent of the total production value (national bureau of statistics of china, 2005). from 2003 to 2011, the share of crops made up around 50 percent of the total value, while that of livestock commodities contributed over 30 percent. in addition to the intensified competition, higher international prices as well as the growing domestic consumption of higher-quality and high-protein food are argued to be drivers for the structural changes (carter et al., 2012). the high value added to livestock commodities, fruits and vegetables stimulates commercialization. thus, an increasing number of business chains have been established to support the cycle from production to sales to services, which has resulted in more specialized agricultural markets. secondly, the year 2007 is a turning point for china’s regional specialization. since that year, the specialization degree moved up to a higher stage for most regions. table 1 provides regional averages of specialization for each region. kernel density estimation (see figure 3) also shows an obvious shift of specialization degree towards a higher level after 2007. the improvement did not happen overnight. instead, several key pushing factors that were implemented in prior years gradually led to the impressive leap in 2007. these factors include the preparation and accession to the wto in 2001, a jump in terms of national agricultural finanasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 113-127 121 cial support, the reduction of agricultural taxes in 2004, and the complete nationwide abolishment of agricultural taxes in 2006. overall, china’s switch from an agriculturesupport-industry to an industry-supportingagriculture economy greatly impacted the domestic agricultural pattern (carter et al., 2012). the central government’s investments in agriculture have grown at an annual rate of 20 to 38 percent since 2004. as a result, china spent 9.6 percent of its entire budget on agriculture in 2011 (ministry of agriculture of china, 1981-2011). this corresponds with a nearly six-fold increase in agricultural investments in the investigated period. the financial support includes subsidies on agricultural production, the supply of high-quality seeds and fertilizers, the construction of infrastructure, and loans provided by rural credit systems. consequently, farming entities have less financial burden and enjoy improved producing conditions. figure 3: kernel density estimation for regional average ksi source: authors’ own calculation. the kernel density estimation (kde) is a non-parametric way to estimate the probability density function of a random variable. kde is a fundamental data-smoothing problem where inferences about the population are made, based on a finite data sample. thirdly, we notice that the most similar region pairs distinguish themselves most rapidly, leading to substantial increases in their own overall specialization degree (see table 1). actually, the coefficient of variance for regional average ksi also drops from 0.213 in 2003 to 0.189 in 2011. 4 since the coefficient of variance measures the deviation of 4 the coefficient of variance is a normalized measure of dispersion of a probability distribution or frequency distribution. the region’s specialization level from the national average as the standard deviation divided by the mean, the decrease shows that the gap of specialization levels among regions has narrowed. in other words, specialization has increased in every region, and the inequality of regional specialization degrees has decreased. to be specific, the least distinguished region pair is lr and sw in 2003, whose index went up from 0.26 to 0.49 after nine years. an anaasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 113-127 122 logous trend is observed for the lr and s pair. looking into details, it is found that in 2003, the production patterns of staple food and meat in lr and sw were highly similar. staple food accounted for 36 percent and meat 47 percent of lr’s total production value, while the shares were 37 percent and 47 percent for sw, respectively. in the investigated period, lr gradually specialized in the production of staple food, which is considered as more land-intensive. the region’s comparative advantages include better irrigation systems and flatlands, which are more suitable for rice production. moreover, the coastal provinces in lr have prosperous economies, leading to a booming food demand. additionally, the region has the highest machinery level that allows for lower productions costs, and potentials for economies of scale. on the other hand, sw shifted from being staple-food-dominant to focusing on meat production, which is generally more labor-intensive. the comparative advantages of sw lie in their lower labor and feeding costs. therefore, in 2011, the production of staple food accounted for 44 percent of total production value in lr and only 29 percent in sw, while the production of meat contributed 40 percent in lr but 53 percent in sw. a similar pattern is observed for tobacco production in lr and sw. in fact crop and livestock category in the two regions have traditionally had similar patterns due to their somewhat similar natural conditions, while noticeable differences are found only in forestry and fishery. to be specific, with rich water resources, lr has a much stronger fishery than sw, while the mountainous landscape of sw contributes to its strength in forestry. knowing that the distinction of production structures cannot be brought only by natural condition changes given the short time span, we argue that the increasing interregional and international competition is driving the regions to focus on their comparative advantages. thus, the regions ended up differentiating their production structures. our argument is supported by china’s international trade data both at the national and regional levels. china’s agricultural trade growth was substantial in the investigated period. imports grew 397 percent, reaching almost us$ 109 billion in 2011, while exports grew 179.3 percent, equal to us$ 58.1 billion (united nations, 2013). the export growth is driven by horticultural (i.e. vegetables and fruits) trade, which has grown by 316.7 percent, with its share in total agricultural trade increasing from 9.8 percent in 2003 to 14.8 percent in 2011. export growth rates regarding other commodities are substantially smaller. the fact indicates a shift towards export trade in high-value products. on the import side, a similar trend is observed, but rates are significantly larger. these changes reflect the comparative advantages in china’s regions have regarding international markets on average. out of all the seven regions, lr, s, and sw record the fastest trade growth rates, increasing their aggregated agricultural trade by roughly 300 percent in the period 20032010 (ministry of agriculture of china, 1981-2011). for example, total exports and imports for s reached a historic height of us$ 27.1 billion in 2010. the fact indicates that the three regions are influenced by the intensified international competition the most, which gives the producers strong incentives to focus on their comparative advantages. meanwhile, it is important to notice that although international trade in china is growing, domestic trade still dominates. in 2010, only 1.8 percent of china’s total agricultural production value was from international trade (ministry of agriculture of china, 19812011). this implies that specialization is still mainly pushed forward by interregional competition. we find that the number of fpcs and the total assets of township agribusinesses have increased impressively recently. in 2006, the regulations for farmer cooperatives were implemented. thus, legal assurance was provided that motivated the development of fpcs, contributing to an increased ability of small-scale farmers to benefit from economies of scale (chen, 2009). the numasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 113-127 123 ber of fpcs in china reached 521,700 by 2011 (xu, 2012). finally, lr, s and sw are pioneering the expansion of fpcs and township agribusiness. for example, by 2010, the total assets owned by township agribusinesses in china already doubled in comparison with the record of 2003, and that of lr reached a record of us$ 17.2 billion (national bureau of statistics of china, 1981-2012). clearly, even though households still mainly conduct farming, the boom of fpcs and agribusinesses indicate that the value-chain integration is strengthened, both horizontally and vertically. larger groups of producers have more bargaining power and are more capable of acquiring technology, market access and economies of scale. having more economic freedom and closer market relations causes organized producers to compete more intensively, which forces producers to focus on comparative advantages, resulting in regional specialization (yang, 2011). impediments and opportunities for future regional specialization in spite of the observed improvements, china’s regional specialization lags behind that of developed countries, implying huge agroeconomic potentials from further specialization. taking the usa as an example, the national specialization index was 62.5 percent in 1987 (kim, 1995). this is substantially higher than that of china in 2011 (53.5 percent). there are a number of key factors that negatively affect agricultural specialization in china. firstly, the central government still controls most of the staple food production and trade, and sets the food self-sufficiency requirements. in terms of global markets, stateowned companies dominate trading relations. in addition, it is a major obstacle for further specialization that agribusinesses are not granted the full authority to participate in international markets. basically, they are merged as part of state-owned companies through contracts, and the companies will then trade for them. for instance, the most powerful chinese food company is cereal, oil and foodstuffs importing and exporting corporation (cofco). on the positive side, it is safer for small-scale producers to specialize when revenues are guaranteed by contract farming. on the negative side, however, farmers may not be able to produce according to their comparative advantages. furthermore, though chinese farmers are now free to lease and transfer their land, selling land is not yet legal according to china’s land law. thus, overall, land fragmentation is still serious (xu et al., 2008). the average arable land per capita remained at only 0.153 hectare by 2011 (national bureau of statistics of china, 2011). the uncertainty of long-term land use rights leads to low land integration, deters rural households from investing in land and limits production specializing. it is noticeable that the chinese government has released strong signals of modernizing agriculture and enhancing agricultural specialization. for example, as described in the national plan for modern agricultural development 2011-2015, beijing announces the establishment of national production centers and production-belts (the central committee of the communist party of china and state council, 2012). the plan includes bring in more investments to agricultural research and development, the improvement of agricultural infrastructure, increasing rural income, and enhancing industrialization of agricultural production. such policies are expected to motivate specialization of agricultural production in the coming years. conclusion and further thoughts the scope of this paper is to explore the trends and drivers of regional specialization in china’s agriculture. krugman’s regional specialization index is employed and modified. first, instead of normalizing prices as did in earlier studies, we use actual price data on provincial level. in addition, we argue that it is more appropriate to define agricultural regions in china based on their natural conditions and agricultural production patterns. thus, our new seven-region framework draws asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 113-127 124 a more precise picture of regional specialization. we apply the augmented index to a database, which covers more than 70 percent of china’s crop and livestock production value for the period 2003-2011. our findings show that chinese agriculture has moved to a higher level of regional specialization, especially after 2007. we have identified several drivers of these changes. firstly, the considerable increase in agricultural specialization has resulted from less government intervention, which has led to more economic freedom, prompting regions to adjust their production patterns. secondly, the liberalized domestic market and increased exposure to international markets have resulted in intensive internal and external competition, forcing regions to produce based on comparative advantages. thirdly, the commercialization of agriculture, accompanied by the horizontal and vertical integration of the value-chain, motivated a structural change in china’s agriculture. the change is also reflected by the prosperity of fpcs and agribusinesses during the period it is worth mentioning that the paper has several limitations that hold good potentials for future research. firstly, the time span of the study is relative short. a longer period is desired to figure out a general developing pattern of regional specialization in china. secondly, value data of vegetables and some fruits are lacked with current data source. adding in those data can be particularly helpful, given that vegetables and fruits are increasingly more important of china’s agriculture. in addition, since the paper is mostly descriptive, it requires more rigorous proof to formulize the structural changes or thresholds of regional specialization over time. lastly, as we discussed earlier, there are other indices that can be used to study specialization from different perspectives. especially given the multi-dimensions of specialization, it is promising to use other indices and look for more insight of regional specialization with alternative approaches. regional specialization goes hand in hand with higher agricultural production values. hence, it is crucial for china to increase the attractiveness in farming to ensure a sufficient level of farm labor in rural areas, especially as rural labor flooding to cities. besides, since the 1980s, china’s industrial, service and real estate sectors have grown rapidly, while agriculture has been left behind, resulting in a great urbanrural development gap. closing up the everwidening gap is a historical challenge for china. to tackle the task, beijing has already announced a series of policies that enhance agricultural infrastructure, improve agricultural research and development, and encourage deeper regional specialization in agricultural production. these policies promise a higher level of regional specialization in agriculture, with their implications far-reaching. all in all, china has substantial growth potentials in agriculture that promise a more balanced and 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(2005). from agricultural industrialization to agricultural industrial district: study on the feasibility of industrialization of competitive agriculture. world of management, 7, 64-73. appendix definition of china’s regions (sixand seven-region framework). northeast (ne): heilongjiang, jilin, and liaoning; north (n): beijing, hebei, henan, shandong, shanxi, and tianjin; northwest (nw): gansu, inner mongolia, ningxia, qinghai, shaanxi, tibet, and xinjiang; east (e): anhui, jiangsu, shanghai, and zhejiang; central (c): chongqing, hubei, hunan, jiangxi, and sichuan; and south (s): fujian, hainan, guangdong, guangxi, guizhou, and yunnan. northeast (ne): heilongjiang, jilin, and liaoning; northwest (nw): gansu, inner mongolia, ningxia, and xinjiang; middle-lower division of yellow river (yr): beijing, hebei, henan, shaanxi, shandong, shanxi, and tianjin; middle-lower division of long river (lr): anhui, hubei, hunan, jiangxi, jiangsu, shanghai, and zhejiang; south (s): fujian, guangdong, guangxi, and hainan; southwest (sw): chongqing, guizhou, sichuan, and yunnan; and tibet-qinghai (tq): tibet and qinghai. source: authors’ own illustration effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(5)2015, 116-123 116 analysis of crop enterprise combination among small holder farmers in delta north agricultural zone, delta state, nigeria kaine, a. i. n. department of economics, novena university, ogume, delta state, nigeria abstract this study on analysis of crop enterprise combination among small holder farmers was conducted in delta north agricultural zone, delta state, nigeria. the study covered fifty farmers randomly selected from two villages randomly selected from five local government areas in the study area. frequencies, means, percentages and net profit margin analysis was employed in analyzing the data obtained. net farm income for two years was estimated and discussed. the result gave #277,269.47 and #214,020.30 for the year 2012 and 2013 respectively. the result showed that there was a sharp decline in output and income in the year 2013. the result also showed a drastic decline in both quantity and price of cassava, melon and tomato produced in the year 2013. okro enterprise on the other hand showed a positive result at the end of 2013 farming year. the decline in output noticed among the various enterprise combinations may be attributed to some uncontrollable variables. keywords: enterprise combination, output, farm size, household, cost and small holder farmer 1. introduction 1 food is one of the man’s basic needs, for this reason and more agricultural food production has taken a central place in economic policies of most developing countries including nigeria. adequate food supply at affordable price is the cornerstone of food security policy of all nations of the world. adewuyi et al. (2014) observed that before the discovery of oil in commercial quantities in nigeria, the agricultural sector was the bedrock of the nigerian economy, relied upon for subsistence food and fiber supply and foreign exchange. it provides security, individual household income, poverty reduction and a catalyst for investment. agricultural production is the foundation of food availability, especially for calories and proteins. agriculture is very significant in economic growth and development of nigeria. it is the largest employer of labour and the only sector of the economy that provides the basic necessity of man. the agricultural sector has the onerous challenges of meeting the food and fibre needs of the estimated 140 million people providing employment for over 75 percent of the economically active people (okumadewa, 1979) a major source of foreign exchange and provision of raw material for burgeoning industrial sector. the importance of the sector can therefore not be over emphasized. corresponding author’s email address: kainatonne@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kainatonne@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 116-123 117 prior to the discovery of crude oil, nigeria produced enough food to sustain her populace and surpluses were exported to earn foreign exchange. for instance, abolagba et al. (2010) reported that nigeria produced above 15 percent of the world cocoa and was the second largest producer of crop in the world. similarly, nigeria ranked high in production of crops such as groundnut, cocoa, beans, palm produce and traded in palm oil. today, the expected role of agriculture in nigeria seems to have dropped drastically owing to introduction of petroleum, its product and associated changes in agriculture. nigerian’s agriculture is characterized by small holder farmers that are mostly found in the rural areas with little or no social amenities. however, small holder farmers in nigeria are very important component of the economy. these small holder farmers are characterized by small uneconomic and fragmented holdings, use simple farm tools and implements, unimproved planting materials, inadequate use of modern technology, adoption of rudimentary storage and processing facilities. the plight of the small holder farmer is best described as vicious cycle of poverty. alabi et al. (2004) reported that small holder enterprise production is feasible at the village level where low cost technology available is needed to improve production considerably. only low investment, small arable land, large dose of labour and low outputs are required, which makes village production environmentally friendly. over ninety percent of nigeria’s total agricultural production comes from these small holder farmers and they contribute to about forty percent of the gross domestic product (gdp) and about sixty five percent of the nation’s labour force. 2. methodology the study was conducted in delta north agricultural zone, delta state, nigeria. delta north agricultural zone is one of the three agricultural zones in delta state, nigeria. it is comprised of nine local government areas, which includes: aniocha north, aniocha south, ika north east, ika south, ndokwa east and ndokwa west. others are, oshimili north, oshimili south and ukwani local government areas. it has a total population of one million, two hundred and thirty six, eight hundred and forty (1,236,840) (30.07% of the total population of delta state) which is comprised of six hundred and fourteen thousand, five hundred and thirty four (614,534) males and six hundred and twenty two thousand, three hundred and six (622,306) females out of delta state’s total population of four million, one hundred and twelve thousand, four hundred and forty five (4,112,445) (national population commission, 2006). the zone is endowed with fertile agricultural land suitable for the growth and performance of various crops and animals. this account for why agriculture is the basic activity of the inhabitants. multi-stage random sampling technique was used to generate data used for this study. five out of the nine local government areas were randomly selected. they include aniocha south, ika south, ika north east, ndokwa west and ukwuani local government areas. the second stage involved the selection of villages. two villages were selected randomly from each of the five local government areas giving a total of ten villages used for the study. the third stage involved the selection of the respondents. five farmers were randomly selected from the list of farmers in each of the ten villages. thus, a total sample size of fifty farmers were interviewed and used for the study. to achieve objectives of the study, descriptive statistics and net profit margin analysis were employed. net annual farm income was estimated for the whole enterprises. net change in farm income was also estimated. net income is the difference between total income and total expenditure. this is otherwise known as gross margin. 3. results and discussion socio-economic variables of respondents: the socio –economic characteristics of the respondents studied include: age, gender, educational attainment, and household size, farming experience, farm size, enterprise combination and sources of labour used. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 116-123 118 3.1. age of respondents table 1 showed that the mean age of respondents was 47 years. the finding also indicated that ten percent of the respondents were over fifty years of age; thirty percent were within 40-50 years age bracket, forty four percent were within 31-40 years age bracket while the remaining four percent were less than thirty years. the mean age of forty seven showed that the respondents were relatively young. the result is consistent with the mean age of forty seven reported by chukwuji et al. (2007) as the mean age of garri processors in delta state, nigeria. it is also consistent with that reported by esobhawan (2007). it is however less than the 48 years reported by alabi (2002) as the mean age of cocoa-based agro-forestry farmers in oyo state, nigeria. it is equally less than 52 years reported by ajani and olayemi (2002) as the average age of food crop farmers in oyo north of oyo state nigeria. it differs from the mean age of thirty eight years observed by agbamu (2014) on his study on communication sources used by farmers in handling poultry diseases in ughelli north local government area, delta state nigeria. however, the point of agreement is that the farmers were relatively young. this however negates the report of united nation (1979) which observed that as a result of oil boom in early seventies, ebullient young men and women immigrated the urban areas in search of greener pasture thus leaving the age and weak with all activities in areas. the implication of the finding of this work on the age of the respondents is that farming activities was not left in the hands of the age and the weak in the study area. 3.2. gender of respondents the sex distribution of the respondents indicated that eighty eight percent of the respondents were male while twelve percent were female. the age and sex structure is important in this study as to a great extent it influences individual’s decision, ambition, attitude and aspiration. 3.3. educational level attained table 1 also shows that literacy level was high as ninety two percent of respondents had formal education while eight percent of respondents had no formal education. literacy level of respondents was important in this study as it determines to what extent respondents could imbibe new ideas and/or technologies, methods of doing things and willingness to spread new idea. the level of education attained can also affect the behavioral pattern of individual, remove fear and suspicion. this result is in line with that observed by kaine et al. (2015) and onubuagu and nnadozie (2005). 3.4. household size of the respondents the mean household size was seven indicating a large household size. the percentage distribution further showed that twenty (40%) of the respondents had family size of between 0-5, sixteen (32%) had family size of 6-10 while fourteen (28%) had a family size of 11 and above. the implication of this result (large household size) is that there will be more pressure on the household income, saving and investment. on the other hand, more persons will be available for farm labour. this result is however not in conformity with the mean age of 4.02 reported by adewuyi et al. (2014) in their study on economics of labour use in selected food crop farming in ogun state, nigeria. 3.5. farming experience of respondents the analysis of farming experience as indicted in table 1 showed that respondents were well experienced as fifty percent of respondents had over ten years experience. although, four percent of respondents could not precisely say the actual year they started farming, those that started farming below ten years were able to say precisely and they constitute forty six percent. 3.6. farm size as indicated in table 1, twelve percent of the respondents cultivated over 5 hectares of land while the remaining eighty eight percent had farm size ranging from 1-4 hectares. the analysis of farm size showed that respondents were small holder farmers. the mean farm size of 3ha was higher than 0.49 to 2.20ha reported by ajibefun (2002) among small scale nigeria farmers. umeh and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 116-123 119 ikejimba (1991) observed that farm size is significant determinant of output. this agrees with a prior expectation that farm size may influence total output. it therefore can be strongly stated that if a farmer has large farm, he or she can look up for a higher output. table 1: socio-economic characteristics of respondents characteristics frequency (age of farmers in years) percentage (%) mean less than 20 2 4 21-30 6 12 31-40 22 44 41-50 19 30 above 50 5 110 total 50 100 47 gender male 88 88 female 12 12 household size 0-5 20 40 6-10 16 32 11 and above 14 28 7 educational level no formal education 4 8 primary school 14 28 vocational/secondary school 22 44 ond/nce 6 12 hnd/b.sc 4 8 total 50 100 11 farming experience in years 1-5 6 12 6-10 17 14 11-15 12 24 16-20 8 16 above 20 5 10 not certain 2 4 total 50 100 10 farm size in hectare 1-2 22 44 3-4 22 44 above 5 6 12 total 50 100 3 source of labour hired labour 3 6 family, relatives and hired labour 42 84 co-oporative age grade labour 5 10 source: survey data, 2013 3.7. crop enterprise combination the analysis of crop enterprise combination showed that all the respondents had crop enterprise combination. this is shown by multiple responses as indicated in table 2. the crop enterprise combination include: food crop, vegetables and tree crop. table 2 showed that sixty five percent of respondents were into food crop production, nineteen percent of the respondents were involved in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 116-123 120 tree crop production while the remaining three percent of respondents were engaged in other farm and/or crop enterprise. 3.8. source of labor used by respondents the study on source of labour showed that both paid and unpaid labour services were used. eightyfour percent (42) of the respondents used family/relatives and hired, labour, ten percent (5) used mainly age grade labour while six percent (2) used hired labour. labour plays a very central and crucial role in agricultural production especially under small farm holdings. small holder farmers contribute the largest percentage of total domestic agricultural output in their area. chianu and tsuji (2004) however observed that human labour is about the only form of farm labour available to small holder farmers and that this form of labour accounts for up to eighty percent of total farm power. awoyemi (1981) on the other hand observed that human labour constitute between eighty and ninety percent of the total cost of production in many farming systems. table 2: distribution of respondents according to crop enterprise combination crop enterprise combination frequency percentage cassava 43 86 maize 44 88 yam 23 46 melon 29 58 okra 14 28 tomato 13 26 tree crop 18 36 total * * *multiple responses were obtained source: field data, 2013 table 3: depreciated value of inputs used in production inputs number unit price (n) total value (n) life span (years) depreciated value(n) matches knives 2 1 475 115 950 115 5 3 190.00 38.00 planting hoes 2 400 800 5 160.00 weeding hoes 2 200 400 5 80.00 source: field data, 2013 table 4: estimated value of output, income, expenses and losses year produce output (yield)/kg income year output (yield) kg income losses 2012 quantity/kg price (n) (n) 2013 quantity/kg price (n) (n) diff. (n) cassava 6189.00 4075 29397.75 4758.40 4.75 22602.40 1430.60 maize 854.00 13.90 11870.60 1020.00 13.90 14178.00 166.00 yam 3285.00 8.70 285790.50 4374.00 8.70 38053.80 1089.00 melon 581.00 27.25 15832.25 328.00 27.25 8938.00 25300 tomato 1890.00 35.38 66868.20 897.00 35.38 31735.86 993.00 okra 900.00 13.86 12474.00 980.00 13.86 13582.80 80.00 livestock 1250.00 100.00 125000.00 976.86 100.00 97686.00 273.14 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 116-123 121 total annual income 290,022.30 226,776.86 variable cost seeds/planting materials 1090.00 labour 5672.42 fertilizer 2714.71 total variable cost 9477.13 income above variable cost 290022.30 -9477.13 280545.17 fixed income land 1500.00 farm tool 1307.43 depreciation 468.00 total fixed cost 3275.43 total variable cost 9477.13 tvc + tc 12752.56 total expenses 290022.30 226776.86 -12752.56 -12752.56 net annual income (profit) 277269.47 214020.30 net change in farm income 243232.90 -277314.47 -34081.57 net profit for 2012 290,022.30 9477.13 _ 280,544.87 net profit for 2013 226,776.86 9,477.13 _ 217,299.73 source: computed field survey data, 2013 3.9. net farm income analysis kay (1986) referred to budgeting as a tool used to select the most profitable plan from a number of alternatives and test the profitability of any proposed change in plan. in this study, the profitability (economics) of the various farm enterprise combinations was analyzed by computing the value of the output per hectare of land for a period of two years and the net change in farm income was estimated by computing the net profit. for the purpose of uniformity, ease of comparison and evaluation, the current price was used to determine the net farm income. net farm income and losses were computed by finding the differences in the value of the output for the given period (using the mean value). the value of the fixed cost items were determined using the straight line method of depreciation (table 3). to estimate the net annual farm income, the cost items, average annual yield and income were estimated and analyzed using the net profit margin analysis. cost items were made up of variable cost and fixed cost. net annual farm income was computed by estimating the differences between the total income and total expenses. the result in table 4 gave n277314.47 and n243232.90 for the year 2012 and 2013 respectively. the result showed that an average of 1890.00kg/ha and 897.00kg/ha of tomatoes was produced and sold at the rate of n66868.20 and n3175.86 in 2012 and 2013 respectively; average of 6189.00kg/ha (2012) and n4758.40kg/ha (2013) of cassava was produced and sold at the rate of n29397.75 and n22602.40 (for the respective years). melon asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 116-123 122 enterprise showed a decline in both yield and income in 2013. output (melon) of about 3285.00kg/ha and 4374.00kg/ha was produced and sold at the rate of n2, 8579.50 and n38, 0553.80 in 2012 and 2013 respectively. okra enterprise showed positive (n13, 582.80) result at the end of 2013 farming year. from the survey, the total cost of production was n12, 752.56 which constitutes the total variable cost of about n9, 477.13 and total fixed cost of n3275.43. total variable cost was computed using the base year. income above variable cost was n280, 545.17 at the end of 2013 farming year while in 2012 a net profit of n277, and 269.7 was obtained. a net profit of n280, 544.87 and n217, 299.73 was obtained for the year 2012 and 2013 respectively. 4. conclusion the empirical result established that there was a significant decline in output with a consequent decline in income in the year 2013. the result also established that there was a decline in output in the year 2013, and that most rural dwellers were still involved in farming. it implies that they were motivated to farming not only because of the economic returns but the need to satisfy the food requirement of the teaming population, making provision for household and to ensure food security. the result also established that okra production was profitable in the study area. the result revealed that farmers in the area were relatively young. this implies that they may be willing to adopt new technological changes. given the wherewithal and attention, it is hoped that framers will not only increase their productivity but will also maximize their profits. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abolagba, e. o., kaine, a. i. n., onyekwere, n. c., & abolagba, o. o. (2010). the trend and growth rate of rubber and cocoa export in nigeria. international journal of crop science, 2(1), 68-73. adewuyi, s. a., smith, a. m., fapojuwo, o. e., & sowemimo, s. h. (2014). economics of labour use in selected food crop farming in ogun state, nigeria. journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2), 177-187. agbamu, j. u. (2014). analysis of comunication sources used by farmers in handling poultry diseases in ughelli north local government area of delta state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development. 4(2), 106-112. ajani, o. i. y., & olayemi, j. k. (2002). relative efficiency of food crop farmers in oyo north area of oyo state, nigeria: a profit function analysis. journal of rural economics and development, 14(1), 151-170 ajibefun, i. a. (2002). analysis of policy issues in technical efficiency of small scale farmers using the stochastic frontier production function: with application to nigerian farmers. paper presented at the international farm management congress, wagenignen, netherlands, july, 2002. alabi, r. a. (2002). economic efficiency of cocoa-based agro forestry system in oyo state, nigeria. phd thesis; department of agricultural economics and extension. federal university of technology, akure, ondo state, nigeria. alabi, r. a., daramola, a. g., & ajibefun, i. a. (2004). the relative advantage of agro forestry system over arable crop farming: empirical evidence from cocoa based agro forestry and arable crop farming in oyo state. journal of food agriculture and environment, 2(2), 169172. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 116-123 123 awoyemi, c. (1981). character of nigeria agriculture. in news from central bank of nigeria, bullion, 3(4), 2. chianu, j. n., & tsuji, h. (2004). missing link in sustainable food production in west africa: case of the savannas of northern nigeria. sustainable development, 2(2), 93-103. chukwuji, c. o., inomi, o. e., & ike, p. c. (2007). determinants of technical efficiency of garri processing in delta state, nigeria. journal of central european agriculture, 8(3), 327336. esobhawan, a. o. (2007). efficiency analysis of artianial fishery production in edo state, nigeria. phd thesis, ambrose alli university, ekpoma, edo state, nigeria. kaine, a. i. n., iku, j. e., & ebigwai, s. j. (2015). analysis of determinants of demand supply of maize in aniocha north local government area, delta state, nigeria. international journal of sustainable research, 2(1), 12-21. kay, r. d. (1986). farm management: planning, control and implementation. 2 nd edition. mcgraw – hill book company, singapore. national population commission, (2006). provisional population (census) figure. official gazette, 2006. okumadewa, f. (1997). poverty and home in nigeria. measurement and strategies for reform. a paper presented at vision 2020, abuja, nigeria .s. onubuagu, g. c., & nnadozie, b. c. (2005). socio-economic factors affecting broiler brooding in obowu local government area of imo state. proceedings of the 39 th annual conference of the agricultural society of nigeria, benin city. umeh, s. c., & ikejimba, d. u. (1991). resource-poor farmers, farm technology adoption and productivity in sap period. in j.o. olukosi, ao. ogungbeli and b.a. kalu (eds). appropriate agricultural technologies for resource farmers. 219-230. united nation, (1979). united nations publication. 1979. 14-16. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/issn(e):2224-4433 volume 6(1), 14-20 14 communication and adoption behavour of information technology by rural farmers in ebonyi state egwu, emeka williams department of agricultural economics management and extension, ebonyi state university, abakaliki, nigeria abstract 1 the study assess the communication method of disseminating agricultural information to rural farmers in ebonyi state. a multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select respondents. data analyzed by statistics such as percentage, frequency distribution table and mean score derived from 4-point likert scale. result show that only 39 percent of the respondents were aware of adp extension programme while 61 percent were not aware of their existence. the dominant problem to disseminating agricultural information to rural farmers in the study area are: inadequate formal education, lack of infrastructural facilities, lack of interest and aspiration among farmers, introphilly, unaffordable cost of indigenous communication and culture. based on the research findings, adp should put move effort in disseminating effective information to enable farmers adopt the new farming technologies that would be profitable and less expensive. government of ebonyi state should provide adequate infrastructural materials to the rural areas and encourage more the extension agents to enable them provide adequate information to the rural farmers. keywords: communication method, agricultural information, indigenous and culture 1. introduction communication as an academic discipline relates to all the way we communicate, it enables a large body of study and knowledge. it can be defined as a two way process in which there is an exchange and progression of thoughts, feelings or ideas towards a mutually accepted good or direction. it is also defined as a process by which an idea is transferred from a source to a receiver with the intent to change his behaviour (rogers, 1973). the purpose of communication is to bring about certain desired effect on the part of the receiver. these effects may consist of an alteration in the receiver’s knowledge of some idea, a change in his overt behaviours. it is also a process whereby information is encoded and imparted by the sender to a receiver via a channel/medium. the receiver then decodes the message and gives the sender a feedback. communication requires that all parties have an area of communicative commodity. there are auditory means such as speaking, singing and sometimes tone of voice and non-verbal physical means such as body language, touch, eye contact and by using writing. communication is a process by which we assign and convey meaning in an attempt to create shared understanding. this process requires a vast repertoire of skills in interpersonal and intrapersonal processing, listening, observing, speaking, questioning, analyzing and evaluating. if you use these processes, it is development and transfers to all areas of life, home, school, community, work and beyond. it is through communication that collaboration and cooperation occur. communication is the articulation of sending a message through different media, whether verbal and non-verbal, so long as a being transmits a though provoking idea, corresponding author’s email address: egwuwe@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:egwuwe@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1)2016, 14-20 15 gesture, action long as a being, the physical ability to make sound but must learn to speak and communicate effectively. speaking, listening and our ability to understand verbal and non-verbal meanings are skills we develop in various ways. we learn basic communication skills directly through educating and by practicing those skills and hearing they evaluated (huesca, 2012). communication as a common essential learning focuses on the language demands of each school subject. the role of the teacher is contract to improve students understanding through the development of communication abilities in all subjects. communication recognizes first, that the language requirement of all school subject must be clarified and second, that teachers must be supported as they assume responsibility for these. the over-riding purpose of such clarification and support is to assist students in coming to a better understanding of all their schools’ subjects, thus, a concern with communication implies an interest in change. there is no way to understand the process without considering communication since research and development are efforts directed towards socio-economic change (hannah, 2001). communication includes the transfer of technical information large. technical knowledge is of no use unless it is accepted as authentic, adopted to the need of the village and is put to use (humbleodume and kassami, 2002). when the information is relayed to the village, he may not understand the information and may need to ask questions, he may also have some special problems for which the extension worker must find answer. therefore, an exchange of an idea back and front between teachers (extension worker) and learner (farmer) is essential, communication is a continued process, it continues throughout times, never ending and never beginning (nwachukwu and osagu, 2005). the ability to communicate determines to a very large extent, the success or failure of an extension worker. he has the technical information from research and other sources; it is his responsibility to establish effective communication with the people he serves so that they can use this information to continually improve their agriculture and rural life. communication involves a teaching situation and this exists whenever the extension worker comes to see the rural farmers. it can be a village meeting where the extension worker shows a film, then gives his own talk and awareness questions and be able to communicate well (ozowa, 2008). 1.1. conceptual and theoretical review the important contribution made to agricultural extension in promoting agricultural development and food production have caused rapid growth in the last few years. extension involves the conscious use of communication information to help farmer form sound opinion and make good decisions (brin et al., 2001). the success of an extension agent is determined by his ability to communicate good ideas to farmers. the sender, message, channel, receiver (smcr). smcr communication and diffusion model is useful for examining a special communication event. that is, can isolate one event out of the on-going communication process and illustrate the action which takes place. it is basic in agricultural extension that new ideas must be efficiently communicated by extension officer or worker. the extension agents are to transmit ideas which will stimulate, persuade and help the individual farmers with whom they are in regular contact, extension task is to change farmers who subsequently may decide to change their farming technique. an extension massage is useless to a farmer if he does not receive it. it is when the individual farmers action coincide with the intention of the extension worker that they observe change in farming pattern (innovation) of the rural community. for adoption of innovation to take place, it has to undergo some processes which include: awareness, interest, evaluation, trail, adoption or rejection, discontinue. 1.2. barriers to effective extension communication human communication is beset by numerous problems. the major problems include: feed forward, homophily/heterophily principle, noise, language, information over load, lack of interest (umeh, 2014) etc. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1)2016, 14-20 16 1.2.1. feed-forward feed forward refers to information about the receiver his communication has failed before he starts. this assumption that are most times wrong become barrier to communication with/among farmers. homophily/heterophily principles: homophily is defined as the degree to which a source-receiver pain are similar in certain attributes such as belief, education, social status etc. communication between homophilous individuals is generally effective (mgbada, 2002). heterophily on the other hand refers to the degree to which a source and receives pain is different in attributes. communication in such situation is less effective. it can lead to delayed transmission, message distortion etc. 1.2.2. noise noise refer to any disturbance which interferes with the effectiveness of communication process. it could be in form of extraneous sound, wrong spelling in a written passages, distraction of a passing object etc. 1.2.3. information overload this is an excess of information inputs beyond what the receiver is able to process and utilize. this leads to information fatigue, poor performance or rejection of the entire information. 1.2.4. language language is man’s best communication tool because we use language to express and elicit meaning. language is a problem in nigeria because the nation is a multidialectal nation and as such communication becomes more difficult. for effective communication to take place, the massage from the source must be understood by the receiver. when farmers communicate with fellow farmers in the same community using the same language, adoption of agricultural information become easier than when they are from different origin or in the case of extension agent farmer relationship where extension agent farmer relationship where extension agents are posted to other states where language become a barrier to communication. 1.2.5. lack of interest poor presentation of subject matter reduces interest of the audience. in planning the presentation of your subject matter, draw form a variety of instructional materials. the use of motion pictures, models, tape recorders can make communication prices more effective. 1.3. communication methods of disseminating agricultural information to rural farmers communication includes the transfer of technical information from its sources to the farmer or villager. therefore, the generating and assigning meaning by a communicator and a receives which is done often by the use of words, actions or dressing could be referred to as communication. comparing the definition of communication with that of extension; extension is an educational process which brings about desired changes in human behavior, changes in attitude, values, belief and action. both extension and communication are processes which bring about changes in a desired direction. extension involves the conscious use of communication of information to help people such as the rural farmers form sound opinion and make good decision. communication become effective when extension workers as those having the technical information from research and other sources are able to establish effective communication with the people they serve so as to improve their agricultural and rural life. therefore, success of agricultural transformation is dependent on the fact that: extension must have something to extend such as a new technology or practice; the innovation offered must be technically possible and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1)2016, 14-20 17 reliable, economically attractive and socially acceptable, and the innovation must be effectively communicated to farmers. 1.4. communication channels the communication process consists of four essential elements. these include: the sender, the message, the channel and the receiver. the sender or communicator of ideas depends on who starts the conversation. if the extension worker starts, he becomes the sender. the message is what the communicator says, the spoken word is the channel and the listener is the receiver. the listener’s response is called feedback. for better understanding, the linear left-to-right model of communication with five elements namely source, message, channel, receiver and feedback shows the relationship between those channels of communication. 2. methodology likert scale was used to assign nominal values as follows: strongly agreed 4, agreed 3, disagreed 2, strongly disagreed 1. the cut-off point was determined by finding the mean of nominal values assigned to the options using the formula: 2.1. model specification xs = ∑fn/nr ∑ = summation f = frequency of each response made n = likert value nr = number of respondent 3. results and discussion 3.1. indigenous communication channels table 1: degree of agreement and disagreement of respondents to indigenous channels of communication used indigenous communication means score town crier 3.8 age grade 3.0 informal 1.9 friends 3.0 neighbours 3.5 moonlight meeting 1.4 work/labour group 3.3 dance group 3.9 rural market place 3.4 traditional religious meeting 3.1 family kindred meeting 3.4 source: field survey, 2014 source (message) encoder receiver (decoder) feedback channel asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1)2016, 14-20 18 3.1.1. decision rule mean score that is less than 2.5 is un-agreeable to the acceptance of the channel. the table shows clearly that the most acceptable and common channel of communication to the farmer is the town crier (3.8) while the less common one is the moonlight meeting (1.4). most other indigenous communication channels used contributed significantly such as age grade (3.0), friends (3.0), neighbours (3.5), work/labour group (3.3), rural market places (3.3), traditional religious meetings (3.1), family kindred meetings (3.4). this implies that most of the indigenous communication channels were actively used except for those that are no longer in vogue. 3.2. extension method communication channel table 2: degree of effective and ineffective of respondents to extension method communication channel communication channel/method means score demonstration 2.8 face to face contact 2.9 home visit 3.5 radio/tv broadcast 2.5 excursion/field trips 1.2 internet information technology 2.4 extension farmers training 3.0 agricultural farm school 2.2 agricultural farm days 2.0 source: field survey, 2014 3.2.1. decision rule mean score 2.5 means very effective while <2.5 means ineffective. the farmer’s perceived demonstration (2.8), face to face contact (2.9), home visit (3.5) and radio/tv broadcast (2.5). the result also show that extension farmer training was also effective. however, other communication methods were ineffective as show in the mean score. this implies that the methods as perceived effective mat their aspiration and interest while others were ineffective. this could be due to lack of finance since some amount is to be expended in excursion/field trips, internet assessment, and others. table 3: mean distribution of respondent based on adoption behavior of famers towards the available communication method adoption behavior of famers mean score(x) decision towards the available communication method mass media radio 3.0 accepted television 2.0 rejected print and poster 1.7 rejected computer 1.2 rejected group content seminar and workshop 1.5 rejected meeting and conference 2.0 rejected group discussion 2.7 accepted demonstration 2.8 accepted individual content extension work 2.7 farmers home visit 2.5 accepted personal letter 1.5 rejected telephone 1.9 rejected source: field survey,2014 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1)2016, 14-20 19 3.3. barrier instituting common inefficiency factors limiting communication efficiency among farmers table 4: degree of agreement and disagreement to farmers that institute inefficiency of communication among farmers factors limiting communication efficiency means score inadequate formal education 2.2 large of interest and aspiration among farmers 2.0 heterophilly 2.7 lack of infrastructure 2.9 noise 3.0 unaffordable cost of indigenous communication 3.3 channels procedures/physical discomfort 3.3 gender segregation 1.9 stick adherence to culture 1.9 inadequate knowledge of farmers 2.7 unfavourable attitude among farmers 3.0 diversity, firming system and interest among farmers 3.1 differences in local leadership and political affairs 1.5 source: field survey, 2010 3.3.1. decision rule mean score < 2.5 shows agreement to the statement while mean score below 2.5 means disagreement. the result of the finding indicates that factors show in the table are barriers to communication efficiency among farmers. farers admitted that the major barriers to communication efficiency are: channels on procedure/physical discomfort (3.4), unaffordable cost of indigenous communication (3.3), diversity among farming system and interest among farmers and heterophilly (2.7) each, lack of infrastructure (2.9). differences in local leadership and political affairs was not a limiting factor to communication efficiency in the study area. 4. conclusion 120 farmers were used for this study. appropriate data collected and analyzed. from the result, majority of the farmers were between the ages of 20-60 years. greater percentage of the farmers were female and most of the farmer were married. adp extension agents mainly communicated with the farmers. the most available source of information used by the farmers as communication channel in the area were the indigenous communication channel. major barriers of the indigenous communication channel were channels procedure/physical discomfort, noise and unfavourable attitude among farmers. farmers routinely make complex decision especially when it comes to adoption of new technology. farmers would chose to adopt a new technology of the expected profit from such technology is likely to exceed the expected profit without the technology. if farmers do not adopt a new technology, it is not compatible with existing practices, or because they have perceived the technology to be too complicated or too risky and not because they are ignorant. government should make provision for credit at low or no interest rate for rural farmers and there is need to develop technologies that are simple, comparatively advantageous and compatible with existing farming practices. this is very relevant because farmers have limited resources and they may not put their resources or energy in technologies that are very complex or not obviously profitable. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1)2016, 14-20 20 references brin, a. c., van d. b., & hawkins, p. (2001). new ways of developing agricultural technologies. wagening university cat p.16. hannah, n. (2001). the information technology reolution and economic development. world bank discussion paper 13717. south asia. department of aricultural operations division, washinton d.c. humble-odame, h., & kassami, a. (2002). listening to stake holders: agricultural research and royal radio linkages.briefing paper no. 48; the hague international service for national agricultural research pp 1-6. huesca, r. (2012). participation approach to communication for development in lindy kunot w.b. (ed). handbook of international and internal communication, 2 nd edition, thousand oaks, saga publications; pp 499-517. mgbada, j. u. (2002). effectiveness of information sourcesved farming practices to women farmers in enugu state, nigeria. global approaches to extension practice, 2(1), 67-78. nwachukwu, v. o., & osagu, c. n. (2005). agricultural extension and rural sociology a case study of alimosho local government of lagos state. journal of business and organizational development, 4, 5563. ozowa, v. n. (2008). information needs of small scale farmers in africa. the nigerianexample. paper presented at the orientation course for extension agents. enugu state agricultural development programme, april, 2013, pp 10 – 13. rogers, f. n. (1973). communication innovation. free press, new york cta pp. 161. umeh, g. n. (2014). a mimeograph on introduction to agricultural extension and rural sociology. an elevation of poverty of alleviation programmes in imo state. organized by imo state university. african journal of social sciences, 2(4), 1-10. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 115 pre-scaling up of improved faba bean technologies in the highland districts of guji zone, oromia regional state, ethiopia basha kebede a* and dembi korji a a oromia agricultural research institute, bore agricultural research center, bore, ethiopia * email address: bsshkbd@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 04-dec-2017 accepted: 11-jan-2018 online available: 26-jan2018 keywords: faba bean, gebelcho, walki, farmers abstract pre scaling up of gebelcho and walki was conducted in the highland districts of guji zone during 2014/15-2015/16 year to increase farmers’ capacity in production and management practices of faba bean. two kebeles from each two districts namely bore and ana sora were selected purposively based on their potential for faba bean production. from each kebele nine farmers were selected for the activity making it a total of 72 farmers for the two years. depending on the capacity of farmers 50kg-100kg of faba bean was given for the selected farmers. around 24.5ha was covered by the crop during the production years. training was also given for participating farmers and others on production packages of faba bean. exchange visits and mini field days were arranged for further promotion. the yield gained from the varieties was 33.76qt/ha and 27qt/ha from gebelcho and walki respectively. both varieties were found to be acceptable during field days by farmers due to their disease tolerant capacity. thus, highland farmers are recommended to use gebelcho and walki varieties to increase faba bean production and generate income for their livelihood. further dissemination of faba bean is expected from seed multipliers in producing quality seed and addressing potential areas. contribution/ originality contrary to existing studies, who looked at the adaptation of different crop varieties on small plot area and on few farmers, this study focused on larger area. this study emerged from the results of adaptation and demonstration of faba bean. based on farmers’ preference criteria during demonstration the selected varieties of faba bean where needed for pre scaled up for further promotion of faba bean on larger area in similar agro ecology. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.6/1005.6.115.119 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: basha kebede and dembi korji (2017). pre-scaling up of improved faba bean technologies in the highland districts of guji zone, oromia regional state, ethiopia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6), 115-119. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 6(2017): 115-119 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:bsshkbd@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.6/1005.6.115.119 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 115-119 116 1. introduction faba bean (vicia faba l.) is one of the major pulse crops grown in the highlands (1800 – 3000 masl) of ethiopia (temesgen and aemiro, 2012). faba bean is a protein-rich leguminous crop cultivated and consumed as human food in ethiopia. its straw is also used as animal feed during feed shortage. furthermore, faba bean plays a significant role in improving the productivity of soil by fixing atmospheric nitrogen and is a suitable rotation crop for cereals. a major benefit of rotating pulse crops, such as faba bean with cereal crops is in compensation or response to low soil fertility as well as in the interruption of diseases and insect pest cycles (barri and shtaya, 2013). among pulses, faba bean accounted for 31.4% (csa, 2015). however, the productivity of the crops under smallholder farmers is not more than 1.89 t ha-1 (csa, 2015). despite the immense economic and ecologic merits, however, the productivity of faba bean, in ethiopia is far below the potential due to a number of biotic and abiotic constraints, socioeconomic constraints in smallholder farms and inadequate technological interventions. shiferaw et al. (2013) also mentioned the productivity of faba bean is far below expected potential due to low input usage, natural disasters like snow storm, depletion of macronutrient from cultivable land and unavailability of essential nutrients such as phosphorus. the production of faba bean in the highlands of guji zone is well known. faba bean serve as source of household food in the form of kik wot and shumo prepared during jigi. faba bean is also used as cash crop since the crop has high market price that brings high returns to the farmers. however, most highland farmers use local varieties which are not disease resistant that lead to low yield. therefore, to over-come lack of improved seed and disease resistant variety the pre scaling up of improved faba bean technologies were initiated in the highlands of guji zone. 1.1. objectives  to scale up improved faba bean varieties in the community  to increase production of faba bean in the highlands of guji zone 1.2. description of the study areas the experiment was executed at bore and ana sora districts during the main cropping season of 2014/15 and 2015/16 under rain-fed condition. bore and ana sora was situated at a distance of 385km and 410km from addis ababa to the south respectively. the districts have similar agro ecology where diverse crops such as bread wheat, food barley, horticultural crops (mostly potato, enset, garlic and head cabbage) and highland pulse crops (faba bean and field pea) were largely produced in each district. both the districts were potential highland producers of faba bean in guji zone. the districts have longer growing season for the production major crops except for potato which has relatively a short maturity crop. in the districts there is high potential of honey production. 1.3. sampling procedure the pre -scaling up of improved faba bean varieties were conducted at two (2) districts (bore & ana sora). at each district two kebeles were purposively selected based on their potential for faba bean production. from each kebele nine (9) farmers were then selected having 0.25-1ha of land for each variety (gebelcho and walki). the amount of land used was based on the capacity of farmers to purchase fertilizer and perform management practices needed for faba bean variety. generally, 72 farmers have participated and planted the two faba bean varieties in the study areas. 2. methodology for scaling up of faba bean varieties 49 quintals of two improved faba bean varieties (29 quintals of gebelcho and 20 quintals of walki) were freely distributed for selected farmers while fertilizers and managements were applied by farmers themselves. this was done based on agreement (cost sharing) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 115-119 117 that enables ownership of farmers on the activity which in turn sustain the scaling up of varieties in the community. cost sharing is also important for agricultural research centers because it reduces cost of research and providing all technologies and with their packages for farmers is impossible. seed delivery alone does not ensure dissemination and scaling up of varieties in the community at a time. seed producers should provide initial seed for farmers during crop production season and should arrange exit strategy (give mandate for agricultural actors) by preparing a workshop at the completion of the activity. in our case we delivered 800kg of faba bean (400kg of gebelcho and 400kg walki) for exit strategy in bore and ana sora districts during the production year of 2017. trainings, exchange visit, leaflets and field days were the most approach used to popularize the faba bean varieties in the districts. field day was arranged with collaboration of agriculture and natural resource office of respective district. before the field day organization, the activity and performance of the faba bean varieties were monitored and evaluated. 2.1. method of data collection regular interaction with participating farmers, key informant and focus group discussion were used to collect the yield data. data was collected on technical data sheet. in order to present uniform results the farmers’ yield data was adjusted to quintal per hectare (1quintal=100kg). 2.2. data analysis method simple descriptive statistics was used to analysis the data. 3. result and discussion 3.1. training and field days training was given for 144 farmers on the productivity of improved varieties of this crop with its all packages for both farmers who got seeds and who not got seeds in order to share information on the technologies. mini field day was arranged at bore district of ano kerensa kebele and ana sora of irba buliyo kebele to share experience among farmers and pas participating on the activity. during the occasion farmers, das, experts were satisfied by observing the performance of delivered technologies farmers’ land. on self-initiation, farmers, das and others encouraged to work together in similar activities. around 140 farmers, 11 das 18 experts, two administrators (from each district) and six researchers attended and observed the yield advantage of the improved varieties over the local varieties. this field visit created a pressure of a good linkage among farmers, das and other participants on future research activities. 3.2. yield performance faba bean varieties from the pre scaling up of faba bean varieties in guji zone the higher yield (33.76qt/ha) was obtained from gebelcho variety while walki variety only gave 27qt/ha. the current study states that faba bean production in guji zone is at its maximum potential when compared to the production yield obtained by kissi et al. (2016) which was 28.65 qt/ha in the highlands of bale. table 1: yield of improved faba bean varieties scaled up variety yield from bore district (qt/ha) yield from ana sora district (qt/ha) average yield (qt/ha) 2014/15 2015/16 ave 2014/15 2015/16 ave ano kerensa abay kuture ano kerensa ano kuture irba buliyo bube korsa irba buliyo bube korsa gebelcho 40 46 22 24 33 48 44 26 20 34.48 33.76 walki 34 36 18 20 27 9.5 32 22 20 27 27 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 115-119 118 the above table revealed that during 2014/15 production season the production of faba bean was higher than that of 2015/16 due to occurrence of frost and disease (chocolate spot) attacking the crop in 2015/16. being affected by frost and disease the productivity of improved faba bean was higher than locally disseminated faba bean as farmers were interested to produce improved faba bean varieties during focus group discussion. ana sora district was higher faba bean productivity than bore district. gebelcho has higher yield than walki variety. 4. conclusion the pre scaling of faba bean in guji zone was conducted in the highlands of ana sora and bore districts to increase the production of faba bean in the community. faba bean is potential crop in the highlands of bore and ana sora districts. the crop is used for household consumption as well as cash crop in generating income for farmers. not only used for consumption and generate income for household faba bean but also used to keep the fertility of soil and thus contribute to increase productivity of subsequent crops. training, exchange visit and mini field days capacitated farmers on production of faba bean. gebelcho and walki varieties were acceptable by farmers due to their productivity per hectare. gebelcho and walki variety has got acceptance by participants during mini field days. recommendations  highland farmers should use gebelcho and walki variety of faba bean in order to increase their faba bean production and generate more income for their livelihood.  further dissemination faba bean is expected from seed multipliers in producing quality seed and addressing potential area  new adapted and disease resistant variety of faba bean should be adapted by research center funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: authors would like to acknowledge oari (oromia agricultural research institute) the then iqqo (inistitiyuutii qorannoo qonnaa oromiyaa) for their financial assistance. farmers and development agents directly involved for the completion of pre scaling up improved faba bean research activity also heartily acknowledged. author-1 initiate the proposal and write the full paper author-2 support the writing of proposal and help the planting of varieties during 2014/15 year views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references barri, t., & shtaya, m. (2013). phenotypic characterization of faba bean (vicia faba l.) landraces grown in palestine. journal of agricultural science, 5(2), 110-117. view at google scholar / view at publisher csa (central statistical agency). (2015). federal democratic republic of ethiopia. agricultural sample survey, volume i report on area and production of major crops. statistical bulletin 532, addis ababa, ethiopia 12 p. view at google scholar / view at publisher kissi, w., reta, d., & tamiru, m. (2016). effect of sowing date and seed rate on faba bean (vicia faba l.,) growth, yield and components of yield at sinana, highland conditions of bale, southeastern ethiopia. international journal of scientific research in agricultural sciences, 3(1), 025-034, 2016 available online at http://www.ijsrpub.com/ijsras issn: 2345-6795; ©2016; author(s) retain the copyright of this article http://dx.doi.org/10.12983/ijsras-2016-p0025-0034. https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=phenotypic+characterization+of+faba+bean+%28vicia+faba+l.%29+landraces+grown+in+palestine&btng= https://doi.org/10.5539/jas.v5n2p110 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=federal+democratic+republic+of+ethiopia&btng= https://doi.org/10.1596/24957 http://www.ijsrpub.com/ijsras http://dx.doi.org/10.12983/ijsras-2016-p0025-0034 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 115-119 119 shiferaw, d., diriba, m., & gezahegn, b. (2013). effect of phosphate solubilizing bacteria on seed germination and seedling growth of faba bean (vicia faba l.). international journal of agricultural research, 8(3), 123-136. view at google scholar / view at publisher temesgen, a., & aemiro, b. (2012). genotype x environment interaction and stability analysis of faba bean (vicia faba l.) varieties in north ethiopia. libyan journal international, 3(4), 195-200. view at google scholar https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=effect+of+phosphate+solubilizing+bacteria+on+seed+germination+and+seedling+growth+of+faba+bean+%28vicia+faba+l&btng= https://doi.org/10.3923/ijar.2013.123.136 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=genotype+x+environment+interaction+and+stability+analysis+of+faba+bean+%28vicia+faba+l.%29+varieties+in+north+ethiopia&btng= effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(9), 163-174 163 the determinants of adoption of improved varieties of sesame in northern burkina faso silamana barry institute of the environment and agricultural research (inera), ouagadougou, burkina faso article history: received: 25-oct-2016 revised received: 10nov-2016 accepted: 21-nov-2016 online available: 05dec-2016 keywords: improved varieties, sesame, model logit, determinants, adoption abstract in the northern region of burkina faso, the soils degradation and the irregularity of the rainfall patterns have been the major constraints that affect the food security. the stakeholders developed the initiatives aiming to reduce the effects of the climatic changes. in order to integrate the structures of agricultural researches, the objectives were to assess for farmers preferences on improved sesame seeds, to breed for improved varieties adapted to the soil and the climate; to evaluate and select the most ideal sesame variety of yatenga. a survey has been done on 126 farmers of two rural communes (barga and namissiguima) in the province of the yatenga. the rate of adoption of the improved varieties of sesame is 83.33%. the econometric results have shown that the decisions of adoption of the varieties improved were based on: age, the level of training, the number of workforce and the number of cattle possessed by the household. in a changing climate marked by cycles of season’s disturbances, it is more than necessary to promote improved varieties adopted socio-economic conditions of producers focusing on training farmers to use rationally improved varieties taking into account the recommendations of research. 1. introduction 1 in burkina faso, the economy is essentially based on agriculture activities that contribute to 35% of the gross domestic product (gdp). hence agricultural activities occupied up to 82% of the active population. the main agricultural activity in the northern region is cereals production that are staple food crops for farmers livelihoods. farmers in the region are still using the basics tools to farm their fields. since several decades; the country like many countries in the world is submitted to soils erosion. in addition, for several years the economy is being threaten by many constraints (economy and climate change). therefore, these facts are compromising the future of a whole generation in the sahel zones. otherwise, the different drought events and the climatic changes that the country had encompassed had non negligible consequences on the agricultural ecosystems and the average crops yields. this situation resulted in accentuate poverty in the rural area despite of numerous investments achieved by the government, projects and nongovernmental organizations. food security stays a constant preoccupation for the populations of corresponding author’s email address: silabarry@yahoo.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.9/1005.9.163.173 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 163-174 164 the sahel zones. in this part of the country, farming activities are undertaken during the rainy season and depend on erratic rainfall and soil fertility. the direct consequence is a great decrease in the crops productions. the research of new strategies of crop production that improve and sustain the crops productivities and protect the environment (rajot et al., 2002) needs to be address. the way chosen by the farmers in the north of the country and notably in the yatenga, supported by governmental services and ngo is the use of the improved varieties. even though, after several decades of broadcasting the improved varieties the level of adoption by the farmers is staying very low. the rate of adoption of the seeds varieties at the national level to all seeds is indeed very low 8.4% (sanou, 2014). the choice of the sesame is not fortuitous in this sense that it is one of the cash crops of the northern region. the rate of auto consumption of the sesame is 48% while the interior demand represents 50 at 52% of the national production (sp/cpsa, 2013). in addition, the contribution of the sesame to the gross domestic product (gdp) is lower to 0,2%. the returns of export of the sesame passed from 6,817 billion in 2008 to 98,898 billion in 2015 in fcfa (apex, 2016). in order to sustain the yield and the production of the sesame crops in the sahel zones, it becomes important to identify the factors of adoption of improved varieties for seek to increase the adoption rate. the present study aims to identify the factors that influence the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame in two rural municipalities (barga and namissiguima), yatenga province of burkina faso. it is in prior, to know the rate of improved seeds adoption, second to reveal the factors that have some impacts on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame in the province of the yatenga. the hypotheses of the survey were: the rate of adoption of the improved varieties of sesame is lower to 50% the level of education has a positive influence on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame the number of possessed cattle positively influences the adoption of improved varieties of sesame. 2. methodology 2.1. description of the study area four (4) villages of rural communes of barga (lemnogo-mossi, ramdolla-mossi) and of namissiguima (bagayalgo and kononga) in the province of the yatenga, county seat of the region of the north have been surveyed (figure1). the rural communes of barga and namissiguima are submitted to a climate of sahel type, hot and dry characterized by two (2) seasons: a dry season of october to may and a rainy season of june to september. the length of the rainy season is from one year to the next variable, with the maxima of precipitations recorded between july and august. the soils of these two communes belong to the big family of evolved soils of erosion on gritstones material. the populations of the two rural municipalities according to the data of the general census of the population and the dwelling (insd, 2009), were estimated to 65 223 inhabitants and 52.48% of the population are constituted of women. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 163-174 165 figure 1: localization of the survey sites 2.2. sources of data and methods of data collection the villages were selected taking into account the level of sesame production and their accessibility. producers were chosen in a reasoned manner, according to their area of sesame production. socio-cultural diversity was also taken into account. the approach used in study is a semi-structured individual interview. a questionnaire has been used to assess the views of 126 heads of household in the two rural communes. in two villages barga commune (lemnogo and ramdolla), 62 producers were selected i.e. 31 producers per village. for namissiguima commune, 64 producers were selected in the two villages (bagyalogo and kononga), ie 32 producers per village. in the total sample there was 29 women and 97 men. we used the software spss and stata for the analysis of the data. 2.3. theoretical framework the technological innovation makes reference to the action to innovate, that means the introduction of something again as regards to the use, the custom, the belief and the scientific system (rogers, 2003). it is admitted extensively that the technology can be material or immaterial. the technology also refers to elaborate methods in order to make efficient its use. the diffusion is the manner of which circulates information concerning an innovation. in the setting of a technological innovation product, the objective consists then in carrying the potential consumers to adopt the product. the diffusion will permit to provide information on the new technological product; thereafter, the consumers will determine if they will adopt or no the innovation or the technological product. the adoption of the technologies agricultural relief of a behavior rational of the farmer that grants preference more from the moment it procures him the more of utility (mounirou, 2015). there are three groups of adoption models: (i) the diffusion of innovation model, (ii) the model of the economic constraints and (iii) the model of innovation adoption. the last model is the one that is the more used. indeed, according to this model, the features of the technique, in the institutional and socioeconomic context of the production, play a big role in the process of adoption. the model of adoption of the innovations (adesina & zinnah, 1992) integrates in more the individual's perception that was very little studied. this definition puts in inscription the features fundamental of the adoption as the intensity, the time passed in the application and the choice rational of the agriculturist. according to the neoclassic theory, the farmers adopt new technologies if they bring them some clean economic advantages (kabunga et al., 2012). however, it is established that the reason for which the farmers adopt a new technology asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 163-174 166 goes beyond the neoclassic theory. numerous studies analyzed the variables that influence the adoption of new technologies in the agricultural sector (etoundi & kamgna, 2008; kini, 2007; miah et al., 2015). in general, the variables affecting the adoption of a new technology have been classified in three groups that are the human capital, the structural factors and finally the social capital. with regard to the human capital, it is of use to value the effect of age, the sex, the education, the literacy, and of the experience and the agricultural training. among the structural factors, the size and the income of the households have been analyzed extensively. finally, some recent studies put the accent on the effects of the access to the social networks on the perception of a new technology by the farmers and their consequences on the process of adoption. in the econometric literature, three models have frequently been used to analyze the adoption of the new technologies: the models with linear probability, the logistical function (logit) and finally the functions with normal density (probit). these models use some variables to binary choice as dependent variable. of these three models, the model logit is the more used. indeed, the objective of our study was to specify the behavior of the farmers facing the improved varieties while identifying the factors that influence its adoption, under the shape of a probability. to reach this objective, we opted for a modeling the logit, facilitating the handling of the results (hurlin, 2003; bourbonnais, 2011; duguet, 2008; jacquot, 2000). indeed, two properties make the interest of the logistical distribution function in the modeling of the discreet choices. it is notably about its interval that cuts down to [0, 1] and of the possibility to be linearize by a logarithmic transformation. in this model, one defines a variable y* as follows: where represents the profit or the interest withdrawn by the farmer of his engagement in the use of the improved varieties of sesame; xi is a variable that can influence the practice; β the coefficients associate to the different variable of the model and the mistake associated to the variable. the variable yi* not being observable, it is necessary to generate an observable variable expressing the use of the varieties improved of sesame by the farmers: y = 1 si y* > 0 et y = 0 si y* ≤ 0. the regression of the model logit characterizing the adoption by a sample of farmers is specified as following (hurlin, 2003; bourbonnais, 2011; duguet, 2008; jacquot, 2000). ( ) ( ) ( ) where does the "i" index indicate the i th observation in the sample, is the probability that an individual face a choice given yi, e is the basis of the natural logarithm , xi is a vector of the exogenous variables, α is a constant and βi is coefficients associated to every variable explanatory xi to estimate. a positive coefficient means that the probability increases with the growth of corresponding independent variable. the coefficients α and β in the logistical regression are estimated while using the method of maximum likelihood. the table 1 explain the variables used in the model. the decision to adopt the improved varieties depends on several factors: 2.3.1. age of the household head it is the number of years of the household head. it is expected that age has a positive effect on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame. 2.3.2. level of education it is a binary variable, takes the value 1 if the farmer is at least alphabetized and 0 otherwise. the level of instruction in theory plays positively on the adoption of the technologies insofar as one says itself that the one that is instructed is opened more to the change. it is a very determinant factor in the adoption of the technologies. it increases the level of understanding and the faculty to apply and to distribute the instructions of the extension services. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 163-174 167 2.3.3. training it is a binary variable that takes the value 1 if the farmer has been trained in the use of improved varieties of sesame and otherwise its value is 0. the training on the use of the improved varieties allows the farmer to be illuminated and to choose the best varieties as well to apply the recommendations on the technical itineraries. therefore the trained farmers are more capable to adopt the improved varieties than those untrained one. it is waited of the training a positive effect on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame. it is often admitted that the individuals having been trained on an innovation have tendency generally to adopt it. improved varieties 2.3.4. number of workforce on farm this variable refers to the total number of workforce in the household. the number of workforce is often mentioned like an essential variable in the adoption of new technologies (adéoti et al., 2002). the number of workforce of the household constitutes the main strength of work. the variable numbers of workforce is bound positively to the adoption of the new technologies. it is expected a positive sign of this variable on the adoption of the sesame varieties. 2.3.5. the membership to an organization of farmers it is a binary variable that takes the value 1 if the individual belongs to an organization of farmers and otherwise the value 0. the members of the farmers' organizations often receive multiform supports and it can contribute to the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame. a positive effect of this variable is expected on the adoption of the varieties improved of sesame (etoundi and kamgna, 2008). 2.3.6. plot size this variable is expressed in hectare. it is demonstrated that the grown area of a crop is negatively correlated to the probability of improved varieties adoption. the reason is that more the crop plot is big, more a few more of money is necessary to acquire seeds. therefore, it is expected a negative sign of this variable on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame. 2.3.7. gardening in dry season it is a binary variable taking the value 1 if the farmer leads an activity of gardening in the dry season and otherwise the value 0. one expects what those that practice the gardening are more minded to adopt the improved varieties because of this other source of income during the dry season. 2.3.8. the number of small ruminants the number of small ruminants possessed: the possession of small ruminants allows the household to produce manure for fields fertilization and as source of income. in addition, selling the small ruminants is a great source of income for the farmer. the households possessing more small ruminants will be arranged more to invest in the purchase of improved seeds than the others. it is waited of this variable a positive effect on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame. 2.3.9. the number of cattle according to randrianarison (2001), a large size of the livestock also associates to a bigger probability to adopt the soils water conservation techniques. indeed, the livestock not only constitutes a wealth for the household, but also constitutes an animal traction availability. a richer household is more motivated to adopt improved varieties of sesame and it is expected a positive effect of this variable on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame. 2.3.10. having a radio set it is a binary variable that takes the value 1 if the farmer possesses a radio set and 0, otherwise. it is waited that this variable acts positively on the adoption of improved varieties of sesame. the fact of having a radio set is an opening door to information’s and notably on the innovations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 163-174 168 2.3.11. number of meal per day it is a quantitative variable that indicates the level of food vulnerability of the household. more the number of meal per day in the household increases, more the household is less nutritionally vulnerable. 2.3.12. mastering of technical itinerary of the improved varieties it is a binary variable that takes the value 1 if the farmer is on ease with the improved varieties technical itinerary and 0, otherwise. one expects that the ease with technical itinerary of the improved variety of sesame has a positive effect on its adoption. table1: list of the variables of the model and the awaited signs of the parameters variables type of variables description adoption qualitative varying 1 in case of adoption of improved varieties of sesame and 0 if not. explanatory variables of the model sign expected age quantitative age of the household head positive level of education: qualitative level of education of the farmer : 1 educated, 0 non-educated positive training qualitative training on the use of improved varieties of cowpea. 1if yes, and 0 if no positive number of workforce on farm quantitative number of persons working in the farm positive the membership to an organization of farmers qualitative member of farmer group positive plot size quantitative number of hectare negative gardening activity qualitative run gardening during the dry season. 1 if yes, and 0 if no positive the number of small ruminants quantitative number of farmer’s small ruminants positive the number of cattle : quantitative number of farmer’s cattle positive having a radio set qualitative having a radio set. 1 if yes and 0 if no positive number of meal per day quantitative number of meal per day positive mastering of technical itinerary of the improved varieties qualitative ease of seed improved mastery 1 if ease and 0 if not positive 3. results and discussion 3.1. descriptive results of continuous variables the average age of the farmers who adopted and who have not adopted the sesame improved varieties is 46.78 years and 42.86 years, respectively. then, the most aged farmers are those who merely adopt the improved varieties of sesame? the average number of workforce household where improved varieties are not adopted is of 5.33 which is superior to workforce number (5.01) in household that adopted the new varieties. so, farmers don't adopt the improved varieties when they have enough de workforce. the average of plot size of the farmers who have adopted the improved seed is of 0.365 hectares that are slightly superior to the one of the farmers who don’t adopt the seed improved sesame that is of 0.27 hectare. this means that farmers who grow sesame on big plots tend to adopt the improved varieties in contrast of those that grow sesame on small plots. the average number of small ruminants in household that adopted the improved varieties (6.63) is extensively higher compared to the one of household that do not adopt (3.52). the average number of cattle of the farmers who adopted the improved seed (1.09) is similar to the one of the farmers who did not adopt the improved seeds (1.14). the average number of meal per day asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 163-174 169 of the farmers who adopted the improved seed (2.55) is equal to the one of the farmers who did not adopt (2.57) as indicated in the table 2. improved varieties table 2: some quantitative socio-economic characteristics according to the statute of adoption characteristics farmers having adopted the improved varieties sesame farmers who did not adopt the improved varieties sesame moyenne minimum maximum moyenne minimum maximum age 46.78 23 73 42.86 20 65 number of workforce 5.01 1 10 5.33 1 15 plot size 0.365 0.1 2 0.27 0.10 1 number of small ruminants 6.63 0 200 3.52 0 17 number of cattle 1.09 0 10 1.14 0 9 number of meal per day 2.55 1 3 2.57 2 3 3.2. descriptive results of dummy variables the table 3 shows that on the set of the men of the sample, 85.6% among them adopted the improved varieties of sesame against 14.4% among them that didn't adopt them. that shows the adoption of the varieties improved is incumbent more upon the men that to the women. this situation consists of itself by the fact of the sociological weights that banishes the women to the second plan concerning decision making and access to information. indeed 75.9% of the women of the sample adopted against 24.1% that didn't adopt them. the level of education is in general a key factor concerning adoption of the technologies and of the improved varieties in particular. indeed 87.3% of the educated adopted the improved varieties against only 12.7% of the educated that didn't adopt them. 80.3% of the non-educated adopted the improved varieties against 19.7% that didn't adopt them. the farmers having received some trainings in the use of the improved varieties, merely adopt improved varieties (94.3%) compared to non-trained one (5.7%). the training is a key element in the adoption of the innovations. 85.7% of the members of the farmers organizations adopted the improved varieties and 88% of those who practice gardening activities during in the dry season adopted the improved varieties of sesame. 85.7% of farmers who own a radio set adopted the improved varieties of sesame. table 3: some qualitative socio-economic features of the sesame farmers according to the statute of adoption qualitative socio-economic characteristics famers having adopted improved seed sesame farmers who did not adopt improved sesame seed sex male (%) 85.6 14.4 female (%) 75.9 24.1 level of education educated (%) 87.3 12.7 no educated (%) 80.3 19.7 training trained (%) 94.3 5.7 no trained (%) 79.1 20.9 member of farmer group yes (%) 85.7 14.3 no (%) 80.4 19.6 gardening activity yes (%) 88 12 no (%) 80.3 19.7 having a radio set yes (%) 85.7 14.3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 163-174 170 no (%) 75 25 mastering of technical itinerary of the improved varieties yes (%) 84.7 15.3 no (%) 62.5 37.5 source: own calculations. 3.3. rate of adoption of the improved varieties improved varieties of sesame the adoption rate is the ratio between the producers who have adopted improved varieties of sesame and the entire user population surveyed. the rate of adoption depends on several factors. on a sample of 126 farmers investigated 105 adopted the improved varieties of sesame giving a rate of 83.33%. while extrapolating, it can said that 83.33% of the farmers of the two rural municipalities use the improved varieties of sesame. the data don't allow us to estimate the extent of the adoption. 3.4. factors of adoption of the improved varieties of sesame the econometric model with the binary logit permitted to estimate the influence of the variables on the probability to adopt the improved varieties of sesame. the assessment of the model through the maximum likelihood method and the level of adequacy shows that the evaluations are globally meaningful for the model as the shows the table 4. indeed the log likelihood is -47.31 and the model is meaningful to 10% (prob.> chi2=0.0632). the numeric value of the coefficients of the logit model having not a direct interpretation, it is rather the signs of the coefficients that indicate the effect of every explanatory variable on the explained variable. the effect of the explanatory variables on the probability to adopt the improved varieties of sesame is appreciated through the calculation of the marginal effects. four variables influence the probability of adoption of the improved varieties of sesame. age, the training to the use of the improved varieties, the number of workforce and the number of cattle possessed by the household. age of the household head and the training act positively on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame while the number of workforce and the number of cattle act negatively on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame. variable age acts positively on the adoption of the varieties improved of sesame. indeed, more one is aged, more one adopts the improved varieties of sesame, it understands itself in the measure with age one ends up trying several improved varieties and by finishing to keep those that are effective. the young men not having an experience again prefer to use the local seeds. age could be an indication that the more farmers aged have more resources in relation to the young farmers, because they worked a long time and accumulated resources sufficiently. the analysis of the effects marginal watch that the fact to be aged driven a growth of the probability of adoption of the improved varieties of sesame of 0.006 point. this result is similar to the one found in tanzania (beyene & kassie, 2015) to the doorstep of 1% for the maize, to nigeria for the cowpea to the doorstep of 5% (adéoti et al., 2002), in ethiopia to the doorstep of 10% for the stones lines (aklilu & jan, 2007) in centrafrique for rice to the doorstep of 1% (bessane-mbetid, 2014), to cameroon for the maize to the doorstep of 5% (etoundi and kamgna, 2008), to nepal to the doorstep of 10% for the adoption of the potato (kafle & shah, 2012). this result is also in conformity with the one found in zambia (kaliba et al., 2000) for the adoption of improved varieties of maize in the doorstep of 1%. this result is invalidated however in ghana for the maize in the doorstep of 5% (hussein et al., 2015), to malawi for the maize to the doorstep of 5% (sanou, 2014), to cameroon to the doorstep of 5% for the soil water conservations techniques (ngondjeb et al., 2011) and to the northern of benin for the folio to the doorstep of 1%. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 163-174 171 the training in the use of the improved varieties acts positively on the adoption of the improved varieties of the sesame. it means that the one that is trained is reinforced in capacity. the analysis of the marginal effects watch that the fact to be trained to the use of the improved varieties of sesame deludes the probability to adopt the improved varieties of 0.104 point. these results are in conformity with those found in burkina for the adoption of the stones lines in the doorstep of 5% (kinané et al., 2007) and to benin where the training acts positively on the adoption of the struggle stacked targeted to the doorstep of 1% (kpadé & mensah, 2013). however to burkina, it has been found that the training influenced negatively the adoption of the technical water and soil conservation (kinané et al., 2007). two variables are correlated negatively to the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame; it is about the number of workforce and the number of cattle. the number of workforce has a negative impact on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame in so far as the culture of the sesame is not demanding in workforce. the number of workforce acts negatively on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame; it means the household that has fewer workforces adopts the improved varieties of sesame. in other words the household that has more of workforces made not resorts to the improved varieties because having a lot of strength of work. the analysis of the effects marginal watch that the number of workforce in the household decreases the probability to adopt the improved varieties of 0.023 point. this result is contrary to what has been found in ivory coast for the adoption of the improved varieties of rice (nde-atse, 2007), to cameroon on the adoption of technical water and soil conservation (ngondjeb et al., 2011). indeed, it has been found respectively that the number of workforce encouraged the adoption positively in the doorstep of 10%. it means that the households having more workforce adopt the techniques of conservation of waters and soils more because their realization requires a strong mobilization of the workforces (ngondjeb et al., 2011). to the north of benin, of the authors (paraïso et al., 2016) found that the number of workforce influence positively the cultivation of the fonio to the doorstep of 10%. the variable number of cattle is also correlated negatively to the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame. it can explain itself by the fact that more one has cattle more one is rich and one has enough manure to apply on the plots and less one is interested in the improved varieties of sesame. this result is in conformity with those found in ethiopia to the doorstep of 1%, indeed the number of livestock acts negatively on the adoption of the stone lines (aklilu & jan, 2007) for the adoption of fertilizer to the doorstep of 1% (asfaw & admassie, 2004). this result is invalidated however by the one found in ethiopia for the adoption of the improved varieties of maize in the doorstep of 5% (yishak and punjabi, 2011), in the center of nepal for the adoption of improved varieties of rice in the doorstep of 5% (ghimine et al., 2015), in zambia to the doorstep of 5% for the adoption of improved varieties of maize. it is some in the same way to nepal for the adoption of the potato in the doorstep of 10% (kafle & shah, 2012). the number of cattle acts negatively on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame it wants to say the household who has not enough the cattle adopts the improved varieties of sesame because conscious that the workforce, the generated incomes as well as manure is limited. the analysis of the marginal effects watches that the number of cattle in the household decreases the probability to adopt the improved varieties of sesame of 0.023 point. some previous studies showed results contradictory of the age effect however on the adoption of improved varieties. some studies (hussein et al., 2015; alene & mwalughali, 2012) showed that age had a negative effect on the adoption of the improved varieties whereas (kaliba et al., 2000; adesina & zinnah, 1993) showed a strong positive correlation between age and the adoption of the agricultural technologies. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 163-174 172 the number of cattle possessed acts negatively on the adoption of the improved varieties; this result invalidates several previous studies in this sense that the number of cattle is an approximation of the farmer's wealth and should permit them to reach and to buy the improved varieties. the farmers who possess lot of cattle should also have the ability to face the risks bound to the use of a technology. some crop residues are used like feed for the animals and the farmers use the manure descended of the cattle also to fertilize soils. some authors (njane, 2007; aklilu & jan, 2007) found that the ownership of cattle can influence the adoption of the technologies. the hypothesis that stipulates that the ownership of cattle is determining in the adoption of the improved varieties is invalidated. indeed the number of cattle influence negatively on the adoption of the improved varieties of sesame. the probabilities of adoption of the seed improved are weak if the farmers don't pull a short-term profit of it. the main objective of the farmers of the northern burkina is to achieve food security. table 4: econometric results of the factors of adoption of the improved varieties of sesame of the model logit variables seed improved sesame coefficients marginal effect probabilities age 0.069 0.006 0.077* level of education 0.356 0.033 0.494 training to use the improved seed 1.379 0.104 0.063* number of workforce -0.25 -0.023 0.037** plot size 1.227 0.114 0.188 adherence to group farmer -0.227 -0.021 0.715 gardening activity 0.602 0.054 0.333 number of small ruminants possessed -0.246 -0.023 0.098* number of cattle possessed 0.068 0.006 0.207 having a radio set 0.92 0,088 0.21 number of meal per day -0.783 -0.073 0.175 mastering of technical itinerary of the improved varieties 1.177 0.162 0.138 constant -0.727 0.708 logistic regression number of obs.: 126 wald chi2(12): 20.21 prob > chi2: 0.0632 pseudo r2: 0.1667 log pseudo likelihood: -47.31 correctly classified: 80.95% *** significant at 1%; ** significant at 5%; * significant at 10% source: own calculations. 4. conclusion and recommendations the rate of adoption of the improved varieties of sesame is 83.33% in the two surveyed rural zones. this rate is superior to 50%. the analysis of the econometric results find the right term shows that four factors influence the probability of adoption of the improved varieties of sesame. these variables are: age, the training to the use of the improved varieties the number of workforces and the number of cattle possessed by the household. the results also confirmed that more the farmer has cattle, less he is arranged to adopt the improved varieties of sesame. the results of this study are useful in strategies or interventions that will contribute to increasing the design of improved varieties of sesame extension policies among small farmers. in a changing climate marked by cycles of season’s disturbances, it is more than necessary to promote improved asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 163-174 173 varieties adopted socio-economic conditions of producers through training, educating and supporting them in raising cattle. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or 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(2011). determinants of adoption of improved maize technology in damot gale, wolaita, ethiopia. raj. j. extn. edu., 19, 1-9. publisher: asian economic and social society issn: 2224-4433 volume 2. no. 2, june 2012 adopted engineering and agronomic conservation measures of agricultural land use in lafia l. g. a. nasarawa state of nigeria jonathan kuje yohanna (department of agricultural engineering technology, college of agriculture, p m b 33, lafia, nasarawa state, nigeria) simeon ode (department of agricultural engineering technology, college of agriculture, p m b 33, lafia, nasarawa state, nigeria) habiba k. ali (department of agricultural engineering technology, college of agriculture, p m b 33, lafia, nasarawa state, nigeria) usman a. fulani (department of agricultural engineering technology, college of agriculture, p m b 33, lafia, nasarawa state, nigeria) azagaku e. dominic (department of crop production technology college of agriculture, p m b 33, lafia, nasarawa state, nigeria) citation: jonathan kuje yohanna., simeon ode., habiba, k. ali., usman, a. fulani., and azagaku, e. dominic (2012): “adopted engineering and agronomic conservation measures of agricultural land use in lafia l.g.a, nasarawa state of nigeria”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 155-161. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 155-161 155 author(s) jonathan kuje yohanna department of agricultural engineering technology, college of agriculture, lafia, nasarawa state, nigeria email:engrkuje@yahoo.com simeon ode department of agricultural engineering technology, college of agriculture, lafia, nasarawa state, nigeria habiba, k. ali department of agricultural engineering technology, college of agriculture, lafia, nasarawa state, nigeria usman, a. fulani department of agricultural engineering technology, college of agriculture, lafia, nasarawa state, nigeria azagaku, e. dominic department of crop production technology, college of agriculture, lafia, nasarawa state, nigeria adopted engineering and agronomic conservation measures of agricultural land use in lafia l.g.a. nasarawa state of nigeria abstract the study examined agricultural land use and adopted conservation measures in lafia local government area of nasarawa state. the data were collected by oral interview and structured questionnaire. two hundred farmers were randomly selected across the local government area. the field survey revealed that 42% of the farmers are at the range of 35-45 years of age. 60% of the farmers within the study area don’t practice irrigation farming. the results also showed that 58% of the farmers have attended post primary school. 66% of the land area is relatively flat thereby leading to moderate erosion. 88% of the farmers used local methods of cultivation leading to small area (1-4ha) of land being cultivated per a farmer. 44% of the farmers experienced sheet erosion on their farm lands leading to 40% of low yield. 22% of the farmers practiced most of the conservation practices on the land to minimize soil degradation and nutrient restoration. 40% of farmers surveyed encountered problem of high cost of labour and 46% of them obtained loan from the agricultural bank to solve some of the problems encountered. it is therefore recommended among other things that agricultural land use should be studied and conservation methods should be adopted to increase agricultural production in the study area. keywords: conservation measures, adoption, agricultural land use, lafia introduction land refers not just to soil but the combined resources of terrain, water, soil, and vegetation that provide the basis of land use (pieri et al., 1995; king, 2009 and ezeaku, 2011). the concept of land has been defined as the area of the earth`s surface, the characteristics of which embraces all reasonably stable or predictable cyclic attributes of the atmosphere vertically above and below this area, including those of the atmosphere, the plant and animal population and the result of the past and present human activities, to the extent that the attributes exert a significant influence on the present and future uses of the land (fao, 1976). land has also been referred to as the totality of fundamentals to our existence (akamigbo, 1999). land use and town planners, surveyors and other professions refers it to that portion of the earth which input and use by man for specific or particular purpose (naguto and usman, 2004). land use also has been defined by vink (1975) as any kind of permanent or cyclic intervention to satisfy human needs from complex of material and artificial resources which together constitute land. according to odingo (1991), land use in africa is excessively influenced by existing ecological conditions and is in turn influenced by the pattern of use which have been set by previous generations and administrators depending on the land and level of technology which was available to them at that time. due to changing human needs and competition for different uses of land, there is need for systematic land use planning where land evaluation serves as a basis for land use planning. land degradation in nigeria may be grouped into soil erosion, soil fertility and soil pollution by soil spillage and industrial waste (asadu et al., 2001, 2004) soil degradation is accelerated when the forest cover is removed or pasture are overgrazed . soil compaction could be as a result of misuse of machinery on agricultural soils or over-grazing. a soil that has been degraded required fallowing for effective rehabilitation. soil degradation refers to the processes through which soil productivity is reduced (hulugalle 1992; lal, 1993; steiner, 1996). soil productivity is the capacity of a soil asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 155-161 156 to produce a certain yield of crops or other plants with a specified management system (kang et al. 1999a). in rehabilitating a degraded soil, the level of degradation must be put into consideration as this would influence rate of soil recovery or soil resilience. kay (1990) defined resilience of soil structure as the ability of a soil to recover its structural form through natural processes when applied stresses are reduced or removed. land degradation due to nutrient, mining, erosion, and desertification is the major problem facing crop production in nigeria. over the years farmers have relied on the application of mineral fertilizer for maintenance of soil and crop production. however, high cost of mineral fertilizers has led to interest in soil conservation (ali, 2006). therefore, conservation is defined as the use of land within the limit of economic feasibility according to its capabilities and its needs in order to keep it permanently productive for the present and future generation. according to yohanna and isa (2007), when land is used carelessly, it can be swept away in a very short time. yet it has taken some hundreds of years to form. it is for this reason that soil should be given special care and every effort should be made to prevent erosion. thus, soil conservation is a system of preventing the soil from being damaged or destroyed or lost and to maintain and increase the fertility of the soil by good soil management. conservation has also been referred to as the dynamic application of appropriate legal economic and operational measure to preserve specific assets from destruction or deterioration and safeguard their future. ali (2006) further defined soil conservation as the use of land within the units of economic feasibility, according to its capabilities and its needs in order to keep it permanently productive for the present and future generation. all adaptable measures to achieve permanent production of soil constitute different forms of conservation. soil conservation on agricultural lands guarantees sustainable productivity of the soil (badajo and togun ,2001). based on recent consideration of environmental and soil quality, soil conservation indicates environmental issues such as mitigation of gas emission from the soil under forest or agricultural practices into the atmosphere (duxbury 1999, bourma 1997, auserward and kukilik 1998 and adesina et al. 1999).the research was aimed at studying agricultural land use and to evaluate the uses of land in terms of agricultural activities in lafia local government area. other objectives include; to identity soil conservation techniques adopted by the farmers within the environment of the study area and to recommend ways of minimizing land degradation processes and the best methods to be adopted as soil conservation practice materials and methods (methodology) the study area is lafia local government area of nasarawa state located within the guinea ecological/savanna zone of middle belt of nigeria. it is located within latitude 8 o – 9 o north of the equator and between 8 o – 9 o east of the greenwich meridian. the area has an estimated land area of about 2733km 2 (focus, 1991) and a projected population of about 260,000 (npc, 1991). a well developed and structured questionnaire was administered to 200 farmers within the two districts of the study area. the questions on the questionnaire sought information on farmers personal and socioeconomic characteristics, level of education, farm size, major occupation, types of crops cultivated, sources of water, nature of farm land, acquisition of farm land, method of cultivation, nature of erosion and its effects and control measures and how land is being utilized among other things. data were collected from using the administered questionnaire developed as the main tool. the questionnaire designed investigated and described the farming conditions in the study area. it also evaluated the conservation measures adopted in the study area in order to increase agricultural productivity. results presentation and analysis the information collected from the interview scheduled are presented and analysis using simple descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution tables and percentages. table 1: distribution of farmers according to age age class interval frequency percentage (%) 15 – 25 26 – 35 68 34 36 – 45 84 42 46 and above 48 24 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 155-161 157 table 2: distribution of farmers according to sex sex frequency percentage male 184 92 female 16 8 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 3: distribution of farmers according to educational level educational level frequency percentage post primary school 84 42 others 116 58 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 4: types of crops cultivated types of crops frequency percentage rice 12 6 maize 16 8 cassava 28 14 groundnut 4 2 all of the above 140 70 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 5: distribution of districts based on those practicing irrigation districts frequency percentage lafia 92 46 assakio 108 54 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 6: crops cultivated using irrigation crops grown under irrigation frequency percentage rice 36 18 maize 48 24 sugarcane 32 16 none using irrigation 84 42 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 7: frequency of farmers according to farm size using irrigation practices farm size (ha) frequency percentage 1 – 2 32 16 3 – 4 36 18 5 – 6 12 6 7 and above 0 none using irrigation 120 60 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 8: frequency of farmers based on farm size using pastoral farming farm size (ha) frequency percentage 1 – 2 40 20 3 – 4 16 8 6 above 4 2 none 140 70 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 155-161 158 table 9: distribution of farmers based on the nature of the farm nature of farm land frequency percentage flat 132 66 steep slope 32 16 sloppy 36 18 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 10: distribution of farmers according to land owner source of land frequency percentage purchase 32 16 hiring 28 14 inheritance 116 58 borrowing 24 12 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 11: distribution of farmers based on method of cultivation used methods of cultivation frequency percentage local (hoe) 176 88 mechanized (tractor) 24 12 animal traction total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 12: distribution according to nature of erosion taking place on the farmland types of water erosion frequency percentage sheet 88 44 rill 64 32 gully 32 16 all of the above 16 8 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 13: distribution based on the effect of erosion on farmland effect of erosion frequency percentage low yield 80 40 farmland reduction 56 28 farm operation difficulty 64 32 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 14: distribution according to method of controlling erosion method frequency percentage ridge construction 56 38 drainage system construction 68 14 plant cover crops 52 26 all of the above 44 22 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 15: distribution based on problem encountered during farm operations problem frequency percentage high cost of labour 176 88 leaching 44 22 high cost of input 56 28 diseases 20 10 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 155-161 159 table 16: distribution based on how problems were tackled during farm operations solution to problems encountered frequency percentage purchase of chemical 36 18 contacting of extension agents 72 32 obtaining loan from agric bank 92 46 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 table 17: distribution on how land was conserved method of conservation frequency percentage crop rotation 56 28 monoculture 72 36 shifting cultivation 40 20 bush fallowing 32 16 total 200 100 source: field survey, 2011 discussion of results the results of the field survey showed that most of the farmers in the study area are in the range of 36 – 45 years. it also shows that most of the people within the age range of 15 – 25 years do not participate in the farming (table 1). most of the farmers (92%) are males (table 2). it is also observed that majority of the farmers surveyed (58%) attended post primary school (table 3). the survey revealed that 70% of the farmers in the study area cultivate rice, maize, cassava and groundnut (table 4) but in the course of the field survey most of the crops grown include yam, millet and tree crops. this shows that farming has a dominant revenue yielding sector for the general population of the study area. it is also revealed from table 5 that, 54% of the respondents in assakio district do practice irrigation but for the high percentage (54%) of those that practiced irrigation, yield is increased and of high quality as a result of sufficient water supply and a variety of crops such as rice or maize may be grown twice in a year as stated by yohanna and isa (2007). most of the crops grown under irrigation during the dry season are vegetables (such as okra, tomatoes, and pepper), maize, rice and sometimes sugar cane. it was observed that most of the farmers (34%) cultivated between 1 and 4ha (table 7 & 8). this is because of the usage of primitive tools (hoes) for the cultivation of their farm lands, a result agreeing with that of table 11. from table 8, 70% of the farmers do not practiced pastoral farming because of the effect of soil erosion hence only 2% of the farmers have up to 6ha and above of farm land for pastoral farming (table 8). also only small area of land is cultivated due to land tenure system and reduction on the part of land user to embrace mechanization of farms (asadu et al., 2004) (table 11). most of the land use for agricultural activities (66%) are flat (table 9); thus resulting to moderate level of erosion. majority of the farmers (58%) acquired their lands through inheritance (table 10), agreeing with the system stated by asadu et al. (2004) that most of the tenure and allocation system restrict ownership to clan and community members. this situation affects agricultural land uses because excess land fragmentation leaves small holdings uncultivated. the survey also revealed that most of the farmers (88%) in the study area used local methods (hoe) in cultivating their lands (table 11). the situation may be due to rampant land fragmentation and existence of different land tenure and allocation system. another reason may be due to financial problem and beliefs that use of tractors causes soil compaction and destruction of soil structure and texture. it is noticed that majority of the farmers surveyed experienced high percentage (44%) of sheet erosion (table 12). this may be due to its unnoticibility to the eye when the top soil portions are removed in a very thin sheet (yohanna and isa, 2007). table 13 shows that erosion has a serious effect on agricultural land use due to low inherent fertility and poor soil structure are subjected to high rainfall intensity along with high temperatures, in addition to population pressure, all of which, favour land degradation. the high percentage (38%) of ridge construction and planting of cover crops (26%, table 14) agreed with what asadu et al. (2001, 2004) stated that contour ridging and ridging works best on permeable soils such as the lafia soils and cover crops such as melon hasten soil fertility restoration respectively. the high cost of labour (40%) table 15, during the farming operations may be due to farmers’ reluctance to embrace innovations as one of the problems of agricultural land users in nigeria. as a result of the problems encountered during farming operations, most of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 155-161 160 farmers (46%) secured loans from the agricultural bank, source (32%) contacted extension agents while 18% bought chemicals to solve some of the encountered problems (table 16). it is also being observed from the survey that a high percentage (36%) of the farmers practiced monoculture farming (table 17). this practice affect agricultural land uses due to continuous farming which makes the soil become weak and easily eroded by erosion. conclusion the agricultural land use plan for lafia local government area to succeed, they have to include government agencies, traditional institutions, farmers, researchers, non-governmental organizations (ngo) and companies involved in land matters for agricultural production. they all have to participate in the process of planning, preparation of agricultural land use plans, execution of plans and monitoring and evaluation of agricultural land and should also provide information for possible revisions and updating. the soils are generally poor in chemical fertility status and this affects productivity. generally, the studies on productivity enhancement through soil fertility maintenance in the nutrient poor soils of the study area are interdisciplinary in approach. as such the soil scientists, agro economists, geologists, economists and extension agents should be involved. the integration of cover crops techniques for sustainable agricultural production has control the noxious weeds, improve soil fertility, soil conservation and improve crop yields. recommendations 1. there is the need to increase land area under agricultural activities in the study area. effort should be made to remove all impediments to farmers’ access to suitable agricultural land. this will expand their farmland areas so as to increase their production status. 2. there is the need for more intensive irrigation development, as large irrigation potentials exists in the study area. 3. there is the need to promote a more effective use of modern inputs such as tractors, fertilizers and herbicides 4. the farmers should adopt certain conservation measures to enhance soil fertility restoration or rehabilitation for increased agricultural production 5. the state government and the individual communities should address the problems of farmers/pastorists (nomads). they should encourage forage crop production and restructure the management of grazing reserves livestock in order to reduce erosion 6. degraded lands should be reclaimed and protected from deforestation and erosion 7. finally government should effect legislation to control and penalize land degradation activities such as deforestation, bush burning, oil spillage, fishing activities with the use of chemical and establishment of structures in the wrong places. references adesina, f. a., w. o. sajanbola., f. a. oketola., d. a. pelmo., s. a. momadu., a. o. adegbalugbe and c. o. ojo (1999) “potential of agro-forestry techniques in mitigating co2 emission in nigeria: some preliminary estimates”, global ecology and biography letters, vol. 8, pp. 103-73. akamigbo, f. o. r. (1999) “land capability classifica tion as a tool for effective land use policy; in evolving an effective agricultural land use policy for nigeria”, proceedings of the national seminar on land use policy and practice ibadan. ali, a. (2006) “the need for introduction of conservation agriculture to nigerian farmers”, paper presented in training workshop on principles and practices of conversation agriculture at fmard, dept of agricultural land resource, padp jos-plateau state. ausserward, k. and m. kutilet (1998) “a european view to the protection of soil resources”, soil tillage research, vol. 46, pp. 9-11. asadu, c. l. a., p. i. ezeaku and nnaji g. u. (2001) “the soils of sub-saharan africa and management needs for sustainable farming”, in m.a. badeje and a.o. togun, eds strategies and tactics of sustainable agriculture in the tropics, college press ltd, ibadan. asadu, c. l. a., p. i. ezeaku and nnaji g. u. (2004) “land use and soil management situation in nigeria: an analytical review of changes”, usa journal of outlook on agriculture, vol. 33(1), pp. 27-37. badejo, m. a. and togun a. o. (2001) “strategies and tactics of sustainable agriculture in the tropics”, vol. 2 college press ltd ibadan-nigeria bourma, j. (1997) “soil environmental quality: a european perspective”, journal of environmental quality, vol. 26, pp. 26-31. duxbury, j. m. (1995) “the significance of greenhouse gas emission from soils of tropical agro ecosystems; in r. lal, j. kimble, e. levirie and b.a.” asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 155-161 161 stewart (eds); soil management and greenhouse effect crc press, boca raton, fl, usa pp. 279–91. ezeaku, p. i. (2011) “methodologies for agricultural land use planning: sustainable soil management and productivity”, great ap express publishers ltd. nsukkanigeria fao (1976) “a framework for land evaluation”, soil bulletin, no. 32, fao-rome 71p. focus (1991) “focus on lafia local government area: pamphlets produced by lafia l.g.c. information unit. hulugalle, n. r. (1992) “amelioration of highly degraded tropical alfisol changes in soil physical and chemical properties 1989-1991”, land degradation and rehabilitation, vol. 3, pp. 141-52. kang, b. t., affa-krah, a. n. and l. reynolds (1999a) “alley farming”, the tropical agriculturalist series. macmillan education ltd. london, uk. kay, b. d. (1990) “rates of change of soil structure under different cropping systems”, advance in soil science, vol. 12, pp. 1-52. king, c. (2009) “soil microsoft encarta premium”, redmon, w.a. microsoft corporation. lal, r. (1993) “tillage effects on soil degradation, soil resilience, soil quality and sustainability”, soil and tillage research, vol. 27, pp. 1-8. naguto, m. s. and m. d. usman (2004) “problems of land use accelerated soil erosion and soil quality”, a paper presented in estate management department, federal polytechnic, nasarawa state. npc (1991) national population census of 1991 odingo, r. s. (1991) “research and development of land use policies in africa”, paper presented for the united university project in the institute of national resources in africa, nairobi-kenya. pieri c., j. dumanski., a. hamblin and a. young (1995) “land quality indicator world bank decision paper”, washington d. c. 204333, usa 63pp. steiner, k. g. (1996) “causes of soil degradation and development”, approaches to sustainable soil management gtz eschborn germany 83pp. vink, a. p. a. (1975) “land use in advancing agriculture”, new york springer verlag berlin”, worldbank 1992 staff appraisal report. yohanna j. k. and isa i. a. (2007) “agricultural land use adopted conservation measures in lafia l.g.a., nasarawa state-nigeria”, unpublished pgd project, department of agronomy, faculty of agriculture, nasarawa state university, keffi. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 6(4), 59-67 59 a hedonic analysis of agricultural land prices in pakistan’s peshawar district salman khan, ghaffar ali, syed attaullah shah, abbas ullah jan, dawood jan and m. fayaz department of agricultural & applied economics, the university of agriculture peshawar, kpk (25000), pakistan abstract this study investigates determinants for agricultural land prices in peshawar district of pakistan. a linear hedonic model is used to analyze data set on sale prices of agricultural land parcels and their agricultural, location and environmental characteristics. results show that agricultural land price is affected positively by soil fertility, amount of irrigation water and closeness to agricultural market. among location characteristics, distance to city, distance to main road and distance to nearest houses have significant effects on land prices. agricultural land located closer to city, main road or houses has significantly higher price compared to a more distant land. environmental degradation such as polluted freshwater bodies has negative effect on nearby agricultural land prices. based on these findings and review of relevant literature, the study recommends government intervention for conservation of agricultural land, investment in developing agricultural infrastructure such as dams, irrigation canals, roads, transport, agricultural markets, etc., and provision of subsidized fertilizers and other inputs to increase farmers‟ returns and change their perception to favour using their land for agriculture. keyword: hedonic analysis, agricultural land prices, urbanization, peshawar, pakistan, agricultural land loss, agricultural, location and environmental characteristics, spatial autocorrelation 1. introduction land is an important natural resource, used as an input factor in economic activities, such as agricultural, forestry, industrial, residential and commercial uses. the economic allocation of land depends on returns from these alternative uses. land is utilized for that alternative generating maximum return. however, in agricultural based economies such allocation of land could threaten food security if agricultural sector is not performing well. rapid increase in human population and urbanization in most of the asian countries have resulted utilization of agricultural land for residential and commercial uses (ghaffar, 2015; govindaprasad and manikandan, 2014; samiullah, 2013; azadi et al., 2010). in pakistan total cultivated farmland has increased by 11 million hectares since 1947 (gop, 2015). despite this expansion, loss in agricultural land was also observed in many parts of the country, specifically, the khyber pakhtoonkwa province (kpk). agricultural land in kpk has been reduced from 2.10 million hectares in 1996-2000 to 1.78 million hectares in 2010-14 (gop, 2015). this loss is around 15 percent of the total land in 1996, and with this rate around 50 percent of the land will be lost in the next five decades. the loss of agricultural land could reduce corresponding author‟s name: syed attaullah shah email address: syedshah313@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.4/1005.4.59.67 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(4)2016, 59-67 60 domestic food production and could threaten national food security in future. in this scenario, the study of determinants of agricultural land prices could help in designing sound policies for agricultural land conservation. according to drescher et al. (2001) “understanding the determinants of land prices could provide policy makers with information to guide the development of land use management tools that balance need for agricultural land resources and economic growth”. in the beginning, the theories of david ricardo and von thunen laid the foundation of agricultural land price and are still used in current research. ricardian land model explain the existence of land rents from differences in fertility/ land qualities. von thunen‟s model uses location of agricultural land to cities, agricultural market and transportation costs for explaining land prices. then the bid rent theory was developed in the context of urban land uses and urban land values (see for example mills and hamilton, 1994). agricultural land is utilized for residential or commercial use if their bid is higher than the bid of agriculture. this theory better explain why agricultural land is utilized for alternative uses, such as residential or commercial uses, and why its price raises. land has special characteristics compared to other inputs: its supply is fixed, has a fixed location, and its use affects the use and value of surrounding parcels (koomen and buurman, 2000). also, each parcel of land is different from others in their agricultural, location and environmental characteristics. information about society‟s preferences and willingness to pay for land characteristics play important role in its allocation for alternative uses. at aggregate level, society‟s behavior within the land market help in formulation of urban and rural planning. the main objective of this study is to use hedonic analysis to investigate determinants for agricultural land prices in peshawar district of kpk. hedonic pricing model (hpm) is popular among economists for the study of land prices. it is also a powerful tool, used by environmental economists, for measuring the value of freshwater and air pollution (o'donoghue et al., 2015). hpm decomposes a land parcel into its characteristics and assumes that implicit markets for land attributes combine to form price for the land. the implicit price for a characteristic can be assessed within a parcel‟s entire sale price because market for individual characteristic does not actually exist. according to freeman (1979), land corresponds to a class of products differentiated by their structural, neighbourhood and environmental characteristics. this creates hedonic hypothesis that each good (parcel of land) is considered a bundle of characteristics, and its price depends on those characteristics. agricultural economists are also familiar with hpm. a number of studies have used hpm to examine determinants of agricultural land prices (kostov, 2009; guiling et al., 2009; plantinga et al., 2002; ready and abdalla, 2005; maddison, 2000; are few of them); however, such studies are rare in pakistan. so, this research work is important one from that point of view. results from this study have important implications for designing policies for improvement in agricultural land productivity and conservation. the reminder of this paper is organized as follow. section 2 discusses the methodology; section 3 present results from data analysis; and section 4 make conclusion and policy recommendations. 2. methodology 2.1. sampling of the study area peshawar, the capital of kpk, is located in the north-west of pakistan, close to the pak-afghan border. the total area of the district is 1,257 kilometres square and estimated human population is more than 4 million 1 (2015). during the past two decades increased human population consumed 1 estimated based on total population (2.983 million) and growth rate (3.26 percent) figures in 1998 census report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/durand_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/durand_line asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(4)2016, 59-67 61 around 8,748 hectares of farmland, mostly for residential uses (khan, 2015; samiullah, 2013). this loss in agricultural land could threaten our national food security in future (khan, 2015). figure 1: peshawar city and surrounding villages for selection of agricultural land parcels for data collection, peshawar district is divided into 5 different parts 2 and then north-western part is purposively selected where urban encroachment into agricultural land is alarming. agricultural farms in the selected area are irrigated by kabul river and are famous for production of wheat, corn, sugarcane and vegetable crops. the north-western part is further divided into different villages and then based on distance from peshawar city (main g.t. road) the following four villages are randomly selected: (1) lalazar colony; (2) palosai; (3) lakari; and (4) darmangi. 2.2. data collection the most difficult part is collection of accurate and reliable data on land sales. the only source is the land transaction records with property dealers. thus for real sale prices of agricultural land transaction records with local property dealers are utilized for the period 2013-15. in total, 142 agricultural land parcels 3 records are obtained. data on other important variables are collected through field visits, use of geospatial technology (google earth, 2015) and discussion with local people. 2.3. hedonic analysis the hedonic analysis for land pricing is conducted in two stages. first, the hedonic pricing model is estimated by regressing land sale prices over different characteristics. then in the next stage, the 2 town 1, town 2, town 3, town 4 and peshawar cantt. twon-3 was selected purposively. 3 transactions record of 34 land parcels from lalazar area, located at a distance of 3000 meters from g.t. road peshawar city; 36 from palosai, located at a distance of 10000 meters from g.t. road; 28 from lakari, located at a distance of 12000 meters from g.t. road; and 44 from darmangi, located at a distance of 5000 meters from g.t. road. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(4)2016, 59-67 62 estimated model in the first-stage is used to derive the marginal willingness to pay (mwtp) function for a land characteristic. this study is limited to the first stage only. we structured our hedonic pricing model for agricultural land prices based on land theories, empirical studies and ground realities. in general form, the model is specified as; ......................... (1) where phi is the agricultural land price per 25.29 square meters 4 (marla), pi, ni and qi represent the agricultural, location and environmental attributes for the i th agricultural land. most empirical studies on hpm used agricultural and non-agricultural factors, such as rents derived from crops and livestock production, farm location, population density, infrastructure, and urban access. for this study, variables are selected based on land theories, empirical studies and current scenario of urbanization pressure with associated environmental problems (air and water pollution). a list of those variables is provided in table 1. variables such as government tax on agricultural land, village population and per capita income are almost same across selected villages and that‟s why are not included in the model. by differentiating this function with respect to a characteristic „j‟, one could derive the society‟s marginal willingness to pay (mwtp) for that characteristic. ………………. (2) hedonic price functions can take on a number of different functional forms, such as linear, semilog, double-log or quadratic. as the main objective of this study is to identify important determinants of agricultural land prices for policy recommendation and not to derive the mwtp for different characteristics, a linear functional form is used. linear hpm is the simplest of all functional forms in terms of coefficients interpretation. however, society‟s mwtp for a land characteristic diminishes with its use; the linear model has the disadvantage of misrepresenting it. 3. results 3.1. summary statistics in the study area, average farm size is 2.5 acres and average adjusted sale price is rs.185352 per 25.29 square meters (marla). there are more than 1000 houses per village with average household size of 8 individuals and average area of 10 marlas. summary statistics on agricultural, location and environmental characteristics of selected land parcels are provided in table 1. agricultural characteristics are soil fertility, irrigation facility, type of irrigation facility and quantity of irrigation water. the table shows that 70 percent of the land parcels are fertile and suitable for intensive production of wheat, sugarcane, maize, rice and vegetable crops 5 . all land parcels have canal water facility for irrigation and the average distance from main irrigation canal is 1127 meters (m). kabul river is the main source of water supply to canal system. descriptive statistics for location characteristics show that 50 percent of the land parcels are located within 5000m to peshawar city, 24 percent are within 6000 m to farm market and 50 percent are within 200m to nearest property (houses). these parcels are located at an average distance of 530 m from a main road. 4 25.29 square meters, locally called a marla, is a land measuring unit widely used in study area. 5 tomato, onion, peas, potato, turnip, cauliflower, spinach, etc. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(4)2016, 59-67 63 table 1: summary statistics variable mean std. dev. price per 25.29 meter square land parcel 185352.10 174996.10 soil fertility 0.70 0.46 distance to main road (meters) 530.00 274.00 distance to irrigation canal (meters) 1127.46 884.47 distance to city centroid (= 1 if less than 6000 meters) 0.50 0.50 distance to farm market (= 1 if less than 5000 meters) 0.24 0.43 property within 200 meters 0.50 0.50 distance to polluted stream (meters) 390.14 229.19 source: survey data, 2013-2015 in western peshawar air and water pollution are serious threats to local human population. field visits confirmed around 100 industries in western peshawar and most of them were releasing chemical pollutants into hayatabad stream. the stream flows towards north and drains main settled areas of the north-western peshawar (khan, 2015). major concern for local communities is the impact of polluted water on nearby residents. agricultural land parcels and houses located close to polluted stream have comparatively low prices (khan, 2015). that‟s why distance from polluted stream is used as a price determining factor for agricultural land parcels. the table shows that the average distance of selected land parcels from polluted stream is 390 m. figure 2: areal images of the selected villages source: google earth images (2015) 3.2. post estimation diagnostic tests ordinary least square (ols) estimation approach is used to estimate the linear hedonic pricing model. before using the estimated results for policy recommendations, post estimation diagnostic tests are conducted to check for multicollinearity and hetroscadasticity problems. variance inflation factor (vif) test is conducted to check for multicollinearity. the given table shows that mean vif asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(4)2016, 59-67 64 value is 2.30. this means that there is no multicollinearity problem in the estimated model. a breusch-pagan test is used for detection of heteroscadasticity problem. the chi square (χ 2 ) value is 0.12 and the p value is 0.724. the p value indicates the probability of rejecting the presence of heteroscadastic variance of the error term. the value of 0.724 means the probability of rejecting the presence of heteroscadasticity problem is 72 percent. thus there is no hetroscadasticity problem. tests are conducted to check for spatial autocorrelation problem in the estimated model. spatial autocorrelation refers to the positive or negative correlation of observations based on proximity to other observations. this interconnection is a direct result of tobler‟s (1970) first law of geography that states “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.” the existence of spatial autocorrelation does not provide minimum-variance unbiased linear estimators. there are two types of spatial autocorrelation spatial error dependence and spatial lag dependence. the first refers to the correlated errors that occur among the independent variables. it is also called spatial heteroscedasticity. the second refers to the correlated errors that occur between the dependent variables. it can be said to be true spatial autocorrelation. lm and robust lm tests are used to check for both types of spatial autocorrelation problem. results show that lm and robust lm statistics are insignificant for spatial error and spatial lag dependence within 10000 meters range (see table 2). table 2: post estimation diagnostic tests problems diagnostic tests results statistic p-value multicollinearity vif test mean vif = 2.230 hetroscadasticity breusch-pagan test χ 2 = 0.12 0.724 spatial error dependence lagrange multiplier robust lagrange multiplier lm = 0.269 rlm = 0.364 0.604 0.546 spatial lag dependence lagrange multiplier robust lagrange multiplier lm = 0.001 rlm = 0.096 0.978 0.757 source: survey data (2015) 3.3. ols estimated results ols estimated results for hpm are given in table 3. results show that coefficients for variables that describe location of agricultural land have the expected signs and are statistically significant. the coefficient value for property within 200 meters is 7853.97 and is statistically significant at 10 percent level of significance. the positive coefficient value implies that holding other characteristics constant the price of an agricultural parcel would be higher by rs.7854 if located within 200 meters to nearest property. distance from main road has a negative significant coefficient. the coefficient value of -227.13 indicates that holding other variables constant, the price per marla for agricultural land would decrease by rs. 227 with increase in distance from main road by 1 meter. it shows that agricultural land located near a main road has higher price compared to one located faraway. agricultural land near an urban area is expected to have higher price as compared to one located in a faraway rural area. the estimated coefficient value for this variable is positive and is statistically significant. the coefficient value of 96103.15 indicates that holding other characteristics constant, the price per marla for an agricultural land located within 5000 meter to peshawar city would be greater by rs. 96103 compared to one located more than 5 km way from peshawar city. this indirectly shows the urbanization which leads to increase in land demand for residential and commercial uses has indirect positive effect on agricultural land prices. the closer an agricultural land to a market, lesser will be the transportation cost on agricultural produce and more will be the return. this increase in net return appears in land prices. result shows that the coefficient for this variable is positive and statistically significant. the value of 51657.42 indicates asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(4)2016, 59-67 65 that holding other characteristics constant, the price per marla for an agricultural land would be greater by rs. 51657 than the agricultural lands located more than 5km away from a market. agricultural characteristic is judged with land potential to produce crops and vegetables. similarly, distance from main irrigation canal in meters is used as a proxy variable for availability of irrigation water. results show that the coefficient for soil fertility is positive and statistically significant. the coefficient value of 72446.15 indicates that holding other characteristics constant, the price per marla for a fertile agricultural land would be greater than a less fertile land by rs. 72446. the coefficient for distance from irrigation canal is negative and statistically significant. the negative sign indicates that agricultural land price decreases by around rs. 37 with increase in distance from main irrigation canal by one meter. agricultural fields are used for various recreational activities. environmental degradation, such as polluted freshwater bodies, prevents such outdoor recreational activities on nearby agricultural land and its cost appears as loss in value of those nearby parcels. thus a positive and significant relationship is expected between distance from polluted stream and agricultural land price. greater the distance from the polluted stream, greater will be it‟s per marla price. the table shows a coefficient of 124.07 and is statistically significant with a p-value of 0.000. the coefficient value indicates that price per marla of agricultural land would increase by rs.124 with increase in distance from polluted stream by 1 meter. table 3: estimated hedonic pricing model land value per 25.29 square meters (marla) coefficient t-value p-value location characteristics: property within 200m (1 if yes, otherwise 0) 7853.97 1.97 0.052 distance from main road (meters) -227.13 -6.34 0.000 city within 5 km (1 if yes, otherwise 0) 96103.15 5.76 0.000 agricultural characteristics: distance from irrigation canal (meters) -36.75 -3.84 0.000 soil fertility (1 for fertile soil otherwise 0) 72446.15 5.76 0.000 market within 5km (1 if yes, otherwise 0) 51657.42 2.00 0.050 environmental characteristics: distance from polluted stream (m) 124.07 4.22 0.000 constant 187012.80 4.94 0.000 r2 = 0.82 f statistic (p-value) = 92.72 (0.000) m = meter km = kilometers 4. conclusion and policy recommendations understanding the determinants of land prices provide policy makers with information to design policies for improvement in agricultural land‟s productivity and conservation. the main objective of this study is to use hedonic analysis to investigate determinants for agricultural land prices in peshawar district of kpk. factors which increase agricultural land productivity also indirectly increase the price of land. results from hedonic analysis show that agricultural characteristics such as soil fertility, sufficiency of canal water for irrigation and closeness to an agricultural market have positive effects on agricultural land prices. in the study area urbanization and population pressure has resulted residential and commercial encroachment on agricultural land. this loss in agricultural land could reduce domestic food production in future. agricultural land located closer to a city, highway or houses has potential for residential and commercial uses. the pressure of urbanization has the potential to raise the market value of agricultural lands. findings from hedonic analysis of agricultural land prices show that agricultural land located closer to city, highway or houses has significantly higher price compared to a more distant land. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(4)2016, 59-67 66 the hedonic analysis also investigates for the effect of environmental degradation on agricultural land prices. results show that proximity to polluted hayatabad stream has negative effect on agricultural land prices. local people use agricultural fields for different recreational activities. pollution prevents such outdoor recreational activities on nearby agricultural land and the cost appears as loss in prices of nearby fields. based on these findings the study recommends government intervention for; regulation of land market through laws and taxes that could favor conservation of agricultural land. there is no law to restrict construction on agricultural land in kpk. investment in development of agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation canal, roads, transport, agricultural markets, etc. and provision of subsidized fertilizers and other inputs to farming community to directly or indirectly raise their returns from agriculture and change their perception to favor using land for agriculture. control over informal and illegal residential settlement and the implementation of technology based pollution control policy for industrial units to control the problem of air and water pollution in the urban area and the spillover of negative effects to adjacent rural areas. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references azadi, h., ho, p., & hasfiati, l. (2011). agricultural land conversion drivers: a comparison between less developed, developing and developed countries. land degradation & development, 22(6), 596-604. drescher, k., henderson, j., & mcnamara, k. (2001). farmland prices determinants. in american agricultural economics association annual meeting, chicago, il. freeman, a. m. (1979). hedonic prices, property values and measuring environmental benefits a survey of the issue. the scandinavian journal of economics, 154-173. ghaffar, a. (2015). use of geospatial techniques in monitoring urban expansion and land use change analysis: a case of lahore, pakistan. journal of basic & applied sciences, 11, 265-273. gop (2015). agricultural statistics of pakistan, ministry of national food security & research. government of pakistan, islamabad. govindaprasad, p. k., & manikandan, k. (2014). agricultural land conversion and food security: a thematic analysis. international research journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(1), 1-19. guiling, p., brorsen, b. w., & doye, d. (2009). effect of urban proximity on agricultural land values. land economics, 85(2), 252-264. khan, s. (2015). land values and proximity to polluted stream: a hedonic pricing model approach, unpublished m.s. thesis, the university of agriculture peshawar. koomen, e., & buurman, j. (2002). economic theory and land prices in land use modeling. in 5th agile conference on geographic information science, palma (balearic islands spain) april 25th-27th (vol. 7). kostov, p. (2009). spatial dependence in agricultural land prices: does it exist? agricultural economics, 40(3), 347-353. maddison, d. (2000). a hedonic analysis of agricultural land prices in england and wales. european review of agricultural economics, 27(4), 519-532. mills, e. s., & hamilton, b. w. (1994). urban economics. fifth edition. new york: harper collins. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(4)2016, 59-67 67 o'donoghue, c., lopez, j., o‟neill, s., ryan, m., & agrosup, d. (2015). a hedonic price model of self-assessed agricultural land values. in 150th seminar, october 22-23, 2015, edinburgh, scotland (no. 212639). european association of agricultural economists. plantinga, a. j., lubowski, r. n., & stavins, r. n. (2002). the effects of potential land development on agricultural land prices. journal of urban economics, 52(3), 561-581. ready, r. c., & abdalla, c. w. (2005). the amenity and disamenity impacts of agriculture: estimates from a hedonic pricing model. american journal of agricultural economics, 87(2), 314-326. samiullah, s. (2013). expansion of built up area and its impact on urban agriculture: a case study of peshawar pakistan. phd dissertation, university of peshawar, peshawar. tobler, w. r. (1970). a computer movie simulating urban growth in the detroit region. economic geography, 46, 234-240. publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012 response of broilers to two management systems of housing in etche local government area of rivers state, nigeria kalio, godfrey adokiye (lecturer, department of agricultural science, rivers state university of education, ndele campus, p.m.b. 5047, port harcourt. nigeria) okafor, belema beatrice (lecturer, department of agricultural science,rivers state university of education, ndele campus, p.m.b. 5047, port harcourt. nigeria) citation: kalio, godfrey adokiye and okafor, belema beatrice (2012): “response of broilers to two management systems of housing in etche local government area of rivers state, nigeria”, asian journal agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 184-188. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 184-188 184 author(s) kalio, godfrey adokiye lecturer, department of agricultural science, rivers state university of education, ndele campus, p.m.b. 5047, port harcourt, nigeria email: ag.kalio@yahoo.com okafor, belema beatrice lecturer, department of agricultural science,rivers state university of education, ndele campus, p.m.b. 5047, port harcourt, nigeria email: drbellamy68@yahoo.com response of broilers to two management systems of housing in etche local government area of rivers state, nigeria abstract a study was conducted to investigate the performance of broiler chickens under the intensive and semiintensive systems of poultry production in etche local government area of rivers state. results of the study revealed significant (p < 0.05) differences in all the parameters investigated between the broilers produced in the two management systems. birds managed under the intensive systems showed superior performances in average final weight (1,372.25g/bird) as compared to those managed in the semi-intensive system (1,161.25g/bird). the daily weight gains of the birds were also significantly (p < 0.05) different, with the birds in the intensive group showing better performance. the superiority in final weight observed in the intensively managed broilers further reflected in their dressing percentage and primal cuts. in contrast, broilers managed under the semi-intensive system possessed superior internal organs on account of the exposure of the birds to varying environmental condition and feeds they utilized as they scavenge. hence with the current trend in super market revolution, where the availability of primal cuts of broilers and internal organs are a major means of sales of the chicken in nigeria, better management of the birds to bring about better production of primal parts and internal organs is advocated. keywords: broiler, management systems, performance, carcass and organ characteristics introduction for the past decade, poultry (domestic fowl) keeping has advanced from total extensive (free range) to more complex and prolific methods which takes care of all necessary conditions needed by birds for efficient feed conversion (okujagu and kalio, 2006). the domestic fowls commonly raised by poultry farmers in nigeria are the broilers, cockerels and layers. the main reasons of managing these classes of fowls are to produce animal products that can increase the protein supplies with a high biological value to enhance the protein requirement of its consumers. three management systems: the intensive, semi-intensive and extensive systems can be distinguished in poultry production (oluyemi and roberts, 2000). reports reveal that chickens managed under the extensive and semiintensive systems account for more than 75% of all poultry in rural villages (van eekeren, et al. 2006). interestingly poultry farmers raise chickens all around the world under widely varying circumstances of housing and management and their main objectives may be generally the same, usually to maximize production via minimum costs and with minimum risks. reports through personal interviews and observations reveal that in etche local government area of rivers state two main systems of keeping domest ic fowls predominate: the small-scale subsistence farming using semi-intensive management systems and the commercial poultry management system, where chickens are housed intensively and produced in large scale. there is paucity of information as regards the performance of chickens especially the broilers in this area by farmers adopting these management systems. therefore the objectives of this study were to investigate the response of broiler chickens via animal performance, carcass and organ characteristics under the intensive and semiintensive systems of managing broilers. materials and methods experimental site the study was an on-farm experiment conducted at a privately owned poultry farm located at akwukabi village in etche local government area of rivers state, nigeria. birds and allotment to treatment groups a total of one hundred and thirty (130) anak day old broiler chicks were collectively brooded for 4 weeks at the first instant. two management and housing systems were then designed: the intensive system of housing and the semi-intensive system. mailto:ag.kalio@yahoo.com mailto:drbellamy68@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 184-188 185 at the fifth week the birds were equally divided into two groups of sixty (60) birds per group. the birds for the intensive system were randomly assigned to 4 pens of 15 birds per pen in a deep litter house. the birds allotted to the semi-intensive group were housed communally in an open deep litter house. the open deep litter house for the semi-intensively managed birds served as a means of housing during the night or unfavourable weather conditions. to simulate the semi-intensive system of management, birds were allowed to roam and scavenge within a fenced area of 20m x 20m in size. birds and their management within the brooding periods, routine medication and vaccination were carried out to ensure proper health of the birds. at the end of the brooding period, one hundred and twenty (120) birds were randomly selected, balanced for their weights and assigned to the housing systems of twenty (60) birds per group. the initial body weights of the birds in each of the groups were recorded. feed and water was provided to the birds ad libitum in the two treatment groups. daily feed requirements were provided at two allotments (in the morning at 8.00am and in the evening at 4.00pm) to avoid wastage and encourage feed intake for the intensively managed group. similarly, to simulate the semi-intensive management system, daily quantity of feed required by birds is put in twenty (20) feeding troughs and placed at random within the confines where the birds were allowed to roam and scavenge for the feed as well as other materials within their reach in the environment. broiler starter and finisher rations were fed for 4 weeks of age of birds and 5 – 8 weeks of age of birds respectively. routine vaccination and medication were carried out using the following drugs: lasota, gumboro, amprolium, vitalyte, etc. apart from the brooding period only intensively managed birds were medicated. feed intake and mortality records were taken on daily basis. body weight gains and feed conversions of birds per treatment were computed on weekly basis. carcass and organ characteristics on the last day of the experiment, the birds were starved of food but provided with drinking water for 18 hours overnight (olabode and onyekwere, 2010). four (4) birds each were randomly selected from the two treatments groups (different housing systems) and weighed before slaughtering. the birds were defeathered completely using warm water. they were decapitated, eviscerated and weighed to obtain the eviscerated weights. all body organs were separated and weighed to obtain their fresh weights. carcass yield and organ weight as indices of production were measured using a weighing balance. similarly, each primal cut (breast muscle, thigh, wing, shank, etc) was weighed and its proportion relative to the carcass was determined (ukah, et al. 2006). hence: statistical analysis the data of the parameters studied during the experiment were subjected to statistically analysis using the ttest (wahua, 1999). results and discussion the nutrient composition of the proprietary feeds fed to the experimental broiler chickens are shown in table 1. the nutrient compositions of the feed were: 21%, 6.0%, 5.0%, 1.0%, 0.45% and 2,800 kcal/kg dm me, 1.0, 0.50, and 0.30 for crude protein (cp), ether extract (ee), crude fibre (cf), calcium (ca) phosphorus (p) metabolizable energy, lysine, methionine and salt respectively in the broiler starter ration and 18.0%, 6.0, 5.0,1.0, 0.40, 2,900, 0.85, 0.35 and 0.30 for crude protein (cp), ether extract (ee), crude fibre (cf), calcium (ca) phosphorus (p) metabolizable energy, lysine, methionine and salt respectively in the broiler finisher ration. the crude protein (cp) and energy contents of the proprietary broiler starter diet used for the feeding trial was higher than the cp (20%) and energy (2,640kcal/kg) contents recommended for starting chicks by the indian standard institution (i s i), but lower than the standard range of cp (23 – 25%) but similar to the energy (2,800kca/kg) for the growth of starter chicks in the humid tropics (oluyemi and roberts 2000). similarly, the cp and energy contents are lower than the range of those (19 – 20% and 3,200kcal/kg respectively) recommended for finishing broilers by oluyemi and roberts (2000) and benerjee (2004). table 1: proximate nutrient composition of the proprietary broiler starter and finisher feeds nutrients composition (%) starter finisher crude protein 21.0 18.0 ether extract 6.0 6.0 crude fibre 5.0 5.0 calcium 1.0 1.0 phosphorus 0.45 0.40 metabolizable energy (kcal/kg) 2,800 2,900 lysine 1.00 0.85 methionine 0.50 0.35 salt 0.30 0.30 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 184-188 186 the overall performance of the broiler chickens fed the broiler finisher diet for 28 days (4 weeks) after brooding is shown in table 2. the feed intake of birds managed under the intensive and semi-intensive systems were not significantly (p > 0.05) different. however, the daily weight gains and the feed conversion ratios of the birds managed under the two management systems were significantly (p < 0.05) different. similarly the feed intakes of the broiler finisher chickens in the study are within the range of those (0.10 to 0.56 kg) reported by obioha (1982) for chickens within the finishing stages. the feed intake broilers may be attributed to the quest by the birds to meet up with their energy requirements. this is in agreement with the investigations of umole (1987) who gave a number of factors such as the energy content of the feed that will affect feed intake by broilers. however, the intensively managed broilers were reported to record a numerically higher feed intake although not statistically significant to the semi-intensively managed birds but exhibited a higher weight gain significantly. conversely the total weight assumed by the birds in the two management systems in the study are contrary to the recommended weight (1,650g) for mixed broiler finisher chickens at 8 weeks of age (olomu, 1979). this variation may be attributed to the difference in the strains of broilers utilized as well as the level of feed intake (van eekeren, et al. 2006). the feed conversion ratios of the intensively managed birds fell within the levels (2.12.57) reported by oluyemi and roberts (2000) for birds within the same duration. however, the feed conversion ratios were higher for the semiintensively managed group. the mortality rates for birds in the intensive and semi-intensive groups were 3.3% and 5.0% respectively. these rates were within the ideal mortality rates (5%) recommended for a well managed flock (oluyemi and roberts 2000).the slightly higher mortality rates recorded for the semi-intensively managed birds may be attributed to bad management or hygienic conditions, bad housing conditions and/or poor feeding (oruseibio, 2002). table-2: performance of the broiler chickens managed under the intensive and semi-intensive systems for 4weeks after brooding in etche local government area performance parameters management systems intensive semi-intensive daily feed intake (g/bird) 110.71ns 109.12ns total weight (g/bird) 1,372.25a 1,161.25b daily weight gain (g/bird) 49.01a 41.47b feed conversion ratio (feed intake/weight gain) 2.26a 2.63b mortality 2 3 mortality rate (%) 3.3 5.0 a,b. means bearing different superscripts along the same row are significantly (p < 0.05) different; ns = nonsignificant the results in table 3 shows the carcass weights, dressing percent and the primal cuts in relation to the dressed carcasses of broiler chickens managed under the intensive and semi-intensive systems for 4weeks after brooding in etche local government area. the results revealed that there were significant (p < 0.05) differences in all the parameters investigated. the carcass weight of the birds after slaughter was higher (1,122.25g) for birds managed under the intensive system as compared (911.25g) to the birds managed under the semi-intensive system. the differences in the carcass weight among the birds in the two different management systems reflected on the dressing percentages in the two groups and this was significantly (p < 0.05) different. the birds in the intensively managed group had a higher (81.78%) dressing percentage than those of the semi-intensively managed group (78.47%). the significant variations reflected on the carcass weight of the birds also brought about variations in the various primal cuts of the birds. superior values of primal cuts relative to carcass weights of the broiler chickens were recorded for the intensively managed group as opposed to their semiintensively managed counterparts. the values recorded for the breast muscles, thigh, wing, back, neck and shank were 280g (24.95%), 300g (26.73%), 180g (16.03%), 110g (9.80%), 80g (7.13%) and 60g (5.35%), respectively for the intensively managed group and 210g (23.05%), 230g (25.24%), 130g (14.27%), 80g (8.78%), 60g (6.58%) and 45g (4.94%) for semiintensively managed group. however, the variations in results of dressing percent and primal cuts possessed by the broiler chickens managed under the two different housing systems reflected the trend in body weights of the experimental birds. the result in this study was in support of the findings of atteh, (2004) who explained that the weight of the organs in broilers is known to indicate the response of birds to their growth. the higher body weight in the broiler chickens managed under the intensive system had a direct reflection in the respective primal cuts such as the breast muscle, thigh, wing, back, neck and shank (atteh, 2004). table-3: carcass characteristics of broiler chickens managed under the intensive and semi-intensive systems for 4weeks after brooding in etche local government area parameters management systems intensive semi-intensive live weight (g/bird) 1,372.25a 1,161.25b carcass weight (g/bird) 1,122.25 a 911.25 b dressing percent (%) 81.78 a 78.47 b breast muscle (g) 280 (24.95) a 210 (23.05) b thigh (g) 300 (26.73) a 230 (25.24) b wing (g) 180 (16.03) a 130 (14.27) b back (g) 110 (9.80) a 80 (8.78) b neck (g) 80 (7.13) a 60 (6.58) b shank 60 (5.35) a 45 (4.94) b a,b. means bearing different superscripts along the same row are significantly (p < 0.05) different; values in parenthesis are percentages of the parts in a dressed carcass. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 184-188 187 the results in table 4 shows the relative internal organ weights of broiler chickens managed under the intensive and semi-intensive systems for 4weeks after brooding in etche local government area. the results revealed that there were significant (p < 0.05) differences in the weight of the lungs of the broilers managed under the two different housing systems. the broiler chickens managed under the semi-intensive system possess a higher value 25g (2.74%) in terms of lung weight than those managed intensively 22g (1.96%). similarly, significant differences (p < 0.05) occurred in the kidney weight of broiler managed under the semi-intensive and intensive systems. the kidney weight of the semi-intensively managed broilers was higher 20g (2.19%) than those of their intensively managed counterparts18g (1.60%). this trend of variation in organ weights was also true for other internal organ parts of the broiler chickens managed under the two different housing systems. notably a high gizzard weight twice as large as 68.25g (7.49%) was recorded for broilers managed under the semi-intensive as opposed to the broiler chickens managed intensively with a gizzard weight of 37.25g (3.32%). it was observed that, the semi-intensively managed broiler chickens showed higher values in terms of organ weights. this may be as a result of the type of diets the birds were exposed to, since they were allowed to scavenge and were exposed to a wide range of diets ranging from diets high in fibre especially as they peck grasses and sand or pebbles as was observed. these findings was in agreement with the reports of atteh, (2004) who explained that the weight of organs in broilers reflects the anatomical response of birds to the type of diets consumed, such as the use of whole grains in the feed, or those high in fibre. in addition, the comparatively larger gizzard weight of broiler chickens managed under the semi-intensive system may have been as a result of the exposure of the birds to a variety of materials including coarse sand, pebbles, whole grains and other feed materials with varying particle sizes as they scavenge during the day time which may have caused the gizzard to be thicker and of a larger weight resulting to increased muscularization of the walls due to series of abrasive actions that may have lead to the formation of numerous layers thus making their walls thicker and heavier (oluyemi and roberts, 2000). table 4: relative internal organ weights of broiler chickens managed under the intensive and semiintensive systems for 4weeks after brooding in etche local government area parameters management systems intensive semi-intensive lungs (g) 22 (1.96) a 25 (2.74) b kidney (g) 18 (1.60) a 20 (2.19) b liver (g) 20 (1.78) a 23 (2.52) b heart (g) 15 (1.34) a 20 (2.19) b gizzard (g) 37.25 (3.32) a 68.25 (7.49) b a,b. means bearing different superscripts along the same row are significantly (p < 0.05) different; values in parenthesis are percentages of the parts in a dressed carcass. conclusion and recommendation the performance parameters investigated shows better results in broiler chickens managed under the intensive system. broilers managed under the intensive system possessed a higher body weight and this trend reflected in the dressing percentage as well as the primal parts or cuts of the birds. conversely, the internal organ parts of broilers managed under the semi-intensive system were better developed. the intensive system of managing broilers is therefore, recommended for adoption by poultry farmers in etche local government area of rivers state because it encouraged better performance of birds in terms of body weight gains as well as showed an improvement in the dressing percentage and primal cuts among broilers. in addition, the system is flexible and creates room for future expansion since large number of chickens can be accommodated with minimal labour requirements and low economic losses due to predators, poor weather conditions and thieves. finally, with the current trend in the supermarket revolution where meat type poultry such as broilers are sold dressed or in form of primal parts or cuts for easy packaging and sales in nigeria, it is pertinent that broiler producers plan in this direction of processing these products to enhance marketability of the meat. the sale of broilers in primal cuts or parts will enable consumers that are unable to purchase the products in whole quantities to get them in parts within their reach. references atteh, j. o. (2004) “theory and practice of poultry production”, adlek printer ilorin, nigeria. benerjee, g. c. (2004) “a textbook of animal husbandry”, 8 th edition, oxford and ibh pub. co. pvt, ltd. obioha, f. c. (1982) “a guide to poultry production in the tropics”, acena publishers, enugu, 212p. okujagu, a. a. and kalio, g. a. (2006) “introduction to agriculture”, ikogho publishers, benin city, edo state, nigeria. olomu, j. m. (1979) “production standard for poultry in nigeria”, nigeria animal production research institute, zaria, pp. 269-74. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 184-188 188 oluyemi, j. a. and roberts, f. a. (2000) “poultry production in warm wet climates”, revised edition. spectrum books limited, ibadan, nigeria olabode, a. d. and onyekwere, m. u. (2010) “growth performance and carcass characteristics of broilers fed three commercially produced diets”, in babayemi, o.j., abu, o.a. and ewuola, e.o, eds., proceedings of the 35 th conference of the nigeria society for animal production, university of ibadan, 14-17 march. pp. 292-94. oruseibio, s. m. (2002) “comprehensive commercial poultry production manual”, fand f publishers port harcourt. ukah, o. g., omojola, a. b., ogunsola, o. o. and okubanjo, a. o. (2006) “carcass and meat characteristics of grasscutter (thryonomys swinderianus)”, tropical journal of animal science, vol. 9(1), pp. 31-38. umole, s. (1987) “growth performance in anak broiler from day-old to 10 weeks”. unpublished bsc. project. pp. 1-5. van eekeren, n., mass, a., saakamp, h. w. and verschur, m. (2006) “small scale chicken production”. agrodok 4, 4 th revised edition, agromisa foundation and cta, wageningen wahua, t. a. t. (1999) “applied statistics for scientific studies”, africa link books, ibadan, nigeria. 356pp. publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e):2224-4433 volume 2 no. 2 june 2012. acknowledgement: the authors wish to acknowledge the international institute of tropical agriculture (iita-ibadan) and international fund for agricultural development (ifad) for providing the financial resources for the work. the regional coordinator, david annang and the project leader, dr. robert asiedu of iita are particularly acknowledged for their cooperation during the study. estimation of margins and efficiency in the ghanaian yam marketing chain robert aidoo (department of agric. economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana) fred nimoh (department of agric. economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana) john-eudes andivi bakang (department of agric. economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana) kwasi ohene-yankyera (department of agric. economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana) simon cudjoe fialor (department of agric. economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana) james osei mensah (department of agric. economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana) robert clement abaidoo (college of agriculture and natural resources, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana) citation: robert aidoo., fred nimoh., john-eudes andivi bakang., kwasi ohene-yankyera., simon cudjoe fialor., james osei mensah and robert clement abaidoo (2012): “estimation of margins and efficiency in the ghanaian yam marketing chain”, asian journal agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 226-234. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 226-234 226 author(s) robert aidoo agric. economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana email: badubob@yahoo.co.uk fred nimoh agric. economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana email: frediemoh@yahoo.com john-eudis andivi bakang agric. economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana email: alhajjab@yahoo.com kwasi ohene-yankyera agric. economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana email: kwasiyanky@yahoo.com simon cudjoe fialor agric. economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana email: simonfialor@yahoo.co.uk james osei mensah agric. economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana email:jemmyofghana@yahoo.com robert clement abaidoo college of agriculture and natural resources, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology (knust), kumasi, ghana; email: r.abaidoo@cgiar.org estimation of margins and efficiency in the ghanaian yam marketing chain abstract the main objective of the paper was to examine the costs, returns and efficiency levels obtained by key players in the ghanaian yam marketing chain. a total of 320 players/actors (farmers, wholesalers, retailers and cross-border traders) in the ghanaian yam industry were selected from four districts (techiman, atebubu, ejura-sekyedumasi and nkwanta) through a multi-stage sampling approach for the study. in addition to descriptive statistics, gross margin, net margin and marketing efficiency analyses were performed using the field data. there was a long chain of greater than three channels through which yams moved from the producer to the final consumer. yam marketing was found to be a profitable venture for all the key players in the yam marketing chain. net marketing margin of about gh¢15.52 (us$9.13) was obtained when the farmer himself sold 100tubers of yams in the market rather than at the farm gate. the net marketing margin obtained by wholesalers was estimated at gh¢27.39 per 100tubers of yam sold, which was equivalent to about 61% of the gross margin obtained. net marketing margin for retailers was estimated at gh¢15.37, representing 61% of the gross margin obtained. a net marketing margin of gh¢33.91 was obtained for every 100tubers of yam transported across ghana’s borders by cross-border traders. generally, the study found out that net marketing margin was highest for cross-border yam traders, followed by wholesalers. yam marketing activities among retailers, wholesalers and crossborder traders were found to be highly efficient with efficiency ratios in excess of 100%. however, yam marketing among producer-sellers was found to be inefficient with efficiency ratio of about 86%.the study recommended policies and strategies to be adopted by central and local government authorities to address key constraints such as poor road network, limited financial resources, poor storage facilities and high cost of transportation that serve as impediments to the efficiency of the yam marketing system in ghana. keywords: yam, gross margin, net margin, marketing efficiency, multi-stage sampling introduction background/state of the art food marketing is a very important but rather neglected aspect of agricultural development. in developing countries, more emphasis is usually placed on policies to increase food production with little or no consideration on how to distribute the food produced efficiently and in a manner that will enhance increased productivity. food marketing by farmers and traders, mostly in the immediate post-harvest period, usually involves a lot of costs and in ghana these costs are so high that lowering the costs through efficient mailto:badubob@yahoo.co.uk mailto:frediemoh@yahoo.com mailto:alhajjab@yahoo.com mailto:kwasiyanky@yahoo.com mailto:simonfialor@yahoo.co.uk mailto:jemmyofghana@yahoo.com mailto:r.abaidoo@cgiar.org asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 226-234 227 marketing system may be as important as increasing agricultural production. the people of developing economies face the problem of food insecurity. in order to solve the problem of food insecurity, there is the need to ensure the supply of basic food stuffs at prices within the reach of the average consumer. marketing of agricultural produce in most african countries has not yet achieved the necessary degree of competitiveness and transparency to ensure fair market prices for small-scale farmers, processors and consumers (peterson, 2004). market inefficiencies cause a net drag on the system leading to high prices and lack of growth. as a result of these conditions ghana and other developing nations have been an ideal market for cheap imports in a liberalized global market environment (meenakshi, 2004). there is, however, a growing recognition among development agencies and governments that, if agricultural produce markets were efficient, the bargaining position of farmers with intermediate traders would be strengthened, their income would increase and less produce would go to waste. in addition, more efficient markets would help to lower transaction costs, increase the volume of trade, lower food prices and offer greater food security, leading to greater benefits for the economy as a whole (fao, 2003). yams constitute an important source of food and income and play a major role in the socio-cultural life of a wide range of smallholder households. due to its importance in the west african sub-region, yam has the potential to alleviate poverty and ensure food security among rural producers, traders, processors and consumers (chukwu and ikwelle, 2000; fao, 1996). however, research on yam has focused more on pre-production issues to the neglect of post-harvest issues like marketing, storage and consumer demand. the link between the producer and the consumer is marketing. but the problems associated with transportation, wholesaling and retailing activities, commonly referred to as distribution activities in the yam sector, have been largely overlooked by researchers, particularly in ghana (bancroft, 2000). the purpose of this study was to examine the profitability and efficiency of yam marketing in ghana. objectives of the study the study addressed the following objectives:  to estimate the volume of yam handled by key players in the yam marketing chain  to determine the marketing costs incurred and margins obtained by major players along the yam marketing chain, and  to assess the level of marketing efficiency at each stage of the yam value chain. methodology study areas/sampling/data collection the study was carried out in four administrative districts in ghana. the districts included techiman and atebubu in the brong/ahafo region, ejura-sekyedumasi district in the ashanti region, and nkwanta district in the volta region of ghana. these districts were selected purposively due to their importance in yam production and marketing business in ghana. brong ahafo region is the leading producer of yam in ghana with the largest yam market located at techiman. atebubu, ejura and nkwanta are also major yam producing and marketing centers in ghana. yams are transported from these centers to other urban markets in ghana and across the borders of ghana. a total of 320 players/actors in the ghanaian yam industry were selected from the four districts for the study. a sample of 80 respondents consisting of 30 ware yam farmers, 30 retailers, 15 wholesalers, and 5 cross-border traders were selected from each district through a multi-stage sampling approach. yam farmers were selected from three villages within each district. whereas the villages were selected through a systematic random sampling technique, farmers in each village were selected through a simple random sampling approach. wholesalers were stratified into resident/sedentary assemblers/wholesalers and distant (itinerant) wholesalers. respondent wholesalers within each stratum were selected through simple random sampling. also, all yam retailers and cross-border traders were selected through simple random sampling technique. primary data for the study were collected through personal interviews with the use of standardized structured questionnaires. the interviews were conducted in local languages by trained research assistants with supervision by experienced researchers. data analysis the data collected was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. the descriptive statistics comprised the use of frequency distribution tables, percentages, arithmetic means and standard deviation. estimates of marketing margins were obtained through gross margin analysis. the expression below was used to estimate gross margin for the various yam traders along the yam value chain. gross margin = total revenue – total variable cost according to kohls (1985), marketing margin equals the difference between what the consumer pays and the farm gate price per unit of the food produce. based on this formula and on the assumption that wholesalers buy directly from farmers while retailers buy directly from wholesalers, it then follows that wholesalers’ margin equals wholesalers’ selling price per unit minus farmers’ selling price per unit. also, retailers’ margin equals retailers’ selling price per unit asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 226-234 228 minus wholesalers’ selling price per unit. the net margin accruing to the wholesaler or the retailer is the difference between the gross marketing margin and the marketing costs. marketing cost is the sum of transport cost, storage cost, labour cost and other costs associated with moving the commodity from the point of purchase to the customer or final consumer. marketing efficiency was calculated using the formula proposed by olukosi and isitor (1990) which is specified as: marketing efficiency = [value added by marketing activities /marketing costs] x 100% or marketing efficiency = [net margin /marketing costs] x 100% results & discussion characteristics of respondents table 1 provides the distribution of yam value chain players interviewed across the four yam districts. about 38% of the respondents were yam producers and 19% were yam wholesalers. table1: key players in the yam market chain selected for the study key players in the yam marketing chain district total* ejura techiman nkwanta atebubu yam producers 30 30 30 30 120 (38%) wholesalers 15 15 15 15 60 (19%) retailers 30 30 30 30 120 (38%) cross-border traders 5 5 5 5 20 (6%) total 80 80 80 80 320 (100%) *proportion of total number of respondents for each category in parenthesis. source: field survey, 2009 table 2 shows that the average age of respondents was 40 years, implying that a typical actor in the yam value chain was in the economically active age group. the study found out that yam trading was the preserve of women whereas males dominated yam production. a typical player in the yam value chain had spent only six (6) years in school and therefore had attained primary level of education. household size was estimated at about six (6) persons. table 2: descriptive statistics player in the chain age (years) sex(% female) years in school household size yam producers 44.6 20 5.3 6.3 wholesalers 39.4 100 6.2 5.2 retailers 38.1 100 4.8 5.5 cross-border traders 40.7 100 8.2 5.1 pooled sample 40.0 70 6.1 5.5 source: field survey, 2009 yam marketing channels figure 1 summarizes the product pathway for yam in a typical yam producing district. in all, about five different marketing channels were identified. it is evident from the channels that wholesalers are important players in the yam marketing chain. they support local yam distribution through retailers and yam exports through cross-border traders. producers district markets (64%) markets outside (11%) farm gate (19%) itinerant traders (4.5%) roadside (1.5%) consumers retailers  sedentary sellers (53.6%)  hawkers (41.6%)  both (4.8%) local wholesalers districtmarkets (90%) roadside (10%) cross border traders wholesalers and retailers in destination countries:  togo (55.5 %)  burkina faso (27.7%)  europe (16.7%) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 226-234 229 figure 1: yam marketing channels for the pooled sample source: researchers’ construct volume of yam traded by producers and prices sales volume and yam prices for the 2009 main yam season have been provided in table 3. a typical yam producer sold about 3,887 tubers during the main season at a unit price of gh¢76/100tubers at the farm gate and gh¢109.00/100 tubers in the main market. the difference between the farm gate and main market price was found to be gh¢33.00 for every 100 tubers of yam. yam price was highest in nkwanta and lowest in ejura. however, the difference between farm gate price and market price was lowest in techiman and highest in nkwanta. table 3: sales volume handled by producer-sellers and price of yam district quantity of yam sold (tubers) farm gate price (gh¢/100 tubers) price in main market (gh¢/100 tubers) ejura 2,473.33 68.62 95.52 techiman 1,275.00 74.13 97.73 nkwanta 5,900.37 81.18 134.14 atebubu 4,238.12 77.83 109.92 pooled sample 3,887.23 75.64 109.11 source: field survey, 2009 marketing costs and margins for producer-sellers table 4 shows the margins obtained by farmers when yams were sold in the main district market instead of the farm gate. the average value of 100tubers of yam was found to be gh¢75.64 at the farm gate compared to gh¢109.11 in the main district market. this means that farmers who sold their produce directly in the district market obtained a gross margin of gh¢33.47 per 100tubers more than farmers who sold yams at the farm gate. however, an average cost of gh¢17.95 was incurred on various activities that got the produce onto the market. the table shows that net marketing margin of about gh¢15.52 was obtained per 100tubers of yams sold in the market by the farmer himself. the highest marketing margin of gh¢44.50 was obtained by farmers in nkwanta and the lowest margin of gh¢13.93 was received by farmers in atebubu district. table4: marketing margin analysis for 100 tubers of yam sold by farmers in the market item (gh¢) ejura techiman nkwanta atebubu pooled sample a. gross revenue (value in main market) 95.52 97.73 134.14 109.92 109.11 b. cost of produce (value at farm gate) 68.62 74.13 81.18 77.83 75.64 c. gross margin (a-b) 26.9 23.6 52.96 32.09 33.47 marketing costs: transportation (t&t) 5.97 3.45 4.27 5.16 4.21 loading & off-loading 2.95 2.52 2.64 1.36 2.15 market toll 0.5 1.75 1.55 1.35 1.3 other costs 10.29 10.29 d. total marketing costs 9.42 7.72 8.46 18.16 17.95 net marketing margin (c-d) 17.48 15.88 44.50 13.93 15.52 source: estimated from field data, 2009. volume of yam handled by wholesalers and yam prices yam wholesalers normally sent their yams to kumasi, accra, hohoe and other major cities and towns in ghana. from these destination markets, many retailers came to buy yams from wholesalers for further distribution in various satellite markets and communities. table 5 provides yam purchase volumes, purchase price and related marketing costs per weekly trip. on average, a typical wholesaler purchased about 1,352 tubers of yam per week at a price of gh¢ 73.00/100 tubers. the total cost incurred on transportation was estimated at gh¢61.00 whereas loading and offloading cost traders about gh¢14.00 per weekly trip. total market toll paid per week amounted to about gh¢5.00. yam purchase price was highest in ejura asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 226-234 230 at gh¢86.00/100tubers and lowest in nkwanta at gh¢57.00/100tubers. wholesalers in ejura incurred higher transportation cost and those in techiman spent the least amount on transportation of yams every week. average selling price of yam in the destination markets was estimated at gh¢118/100tubers. this price was about 62% higher than the purchase price in the source markets. the difference between yam prices in destination and source markets was highest for traders in nkwanta and lowest for traders in techiman. table 5: weekly purchase volume and yam prices during district quantity of yam (tubers) purchased cost price (gh¢/100 tubers) selling price (gh¢/100 tubers) atebubu mean 1250.00 71.16 105.56 std. deviation 632.69 29.77 20.64 ejura mean 1293.87 86.33 138.67 std. deviation 1196.73 20.74 22.32 nkwanta mean 1018.89 56.72 124.44 std. deviation 1730.25 45.77 46.70 techiman mean 1864.71 79.23 105.53 std. deviation 979.76 28.77 21.54 pooled sample mean 1352.18 72.86 117.86 std. deviation 1220.55 49.64 60.51 source: field survey, 2009 yam marketing costs and margins analysis for wholesalers table 6 provides an analysis of margins obtained by wholesalers by handling 100 tubers of yams. when purchase prices in the supply markets were compared with the selling prices in destination markets a wholesaler obtained about gh¢45.00 as gross margin per 100 tubers of yam sold. the gross revenue obtained by wholesalers in techiman was the lowest and that obtained by traders in nkwanta was the highest. total marketing costs incurred by wholesalers ranged from a low of gh¢10.52 in techiman to a high figure of gh¢21.74 in ejura. the average marketing cost for the whole sample was found to be gh¢17.61 per 100 tubers of yam handled. transportation and yam losses were the two most important cost components in the yam wholesale business. generally, the two cost components together formed at least 55% of total marketing costs across all yam markets. on average, transportation and yam losses constituted about 40% and 24% of marketing costs respectively. evidence from table 6 shows that yam wholesaling was a profitable venture across all yam districts. the net marketing margin per 100 tubers of yam was estimated at gh¢27.39. the highest margin was obtained by wholesalers operating in nkwanta and the lowest was received in atebubu. net marketing margin formed between 41% and 72% of gross margins across study districts. this implies that a cedi invested in yam wholesale business earned a net margin of at least gh¢0.41. table 6: marketing margin analysis per 100 tubers of yam handled by wholesalers item (gh¢) ejura techiman nkwanta atebubu total sample revenue: a. gross revenue (value in destination market) 138.67 105.53 124.44 105.56 117.86 b. cost of produce (value insource market) 86.33 79.23 56.72 71.16 72.86 c. gross margin (a-b) 52.33 26.30 67.72 34.40 45.00 marketing costs: transportation 11.49 3.28 11.84 6.22 7.52 loading & offloading 1.34 0.76 1.6 1.01 1.11 market toll 0.19 0.27 0.92 0.35 0.40 value of yam losses 3.22 2.71 3.06 7.18 4.31 other marketing costs 5.50 3.50 1.75 5.62 4.27 d. total marketing costs 21.74 10.52 19.17 20.38 17.61 net marketing margin (c-d) 30.59 15.78 48.55 14.02 27.39 source: estimated from underlying field data, 2009 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 226-234 231 volumes of yam handled by retailers and yam prices the study identified three categories of yam retailers: sedentary sellers located at particular spots from where yams were sold to final consumers, hawkers who moved from place to place to distribute yams at the door steps of consumers, and retailers who combined both hawking and sedentary yam retailing activities. table 7 provides the quantities of yam sold and selling price of yam across all districts for a typical week. on average a typical yam retailer sold 250 tubers per week at an average price of about gh¢1.00 per tuber. table7: weekly sales volume and selling price of retailers district quantity of yam sold (tubers) selling price (gh¢/tuber) techiman mean 459.73 1.06 std. deviation 599.95 0.48 atebubu mean 199.81 0.96 std. deviation 86.06 2.34 ejura mean 101.33 0.97 std. deviation 86.42 0.13 nkwanta mean 245.67 1.10 std. deviation 133.43 1.32 pooled sample mean 250.05 1.03 std. deviation 407.16 0.89 source: field survey, 2009 yam marketing costs and margins analysis for retailers table 8 provides an analysis of margins obtained by retailers for handling 100 tubers of yams. the gross margin obtained by retailers was estimated at an average figure of gh¢25.16 per 100 tubers. the figure ranged from a minimum of gh¢20.00 in ejura to a maximum of gh¢32.26 in nkwanta. the average marketing cost was found to be gh¢10.00 per 100tubers and the highest marketing cost was incurred by retailers in ejura. it may be evident from the table that yam retailing was a profitable venture across all the yam producing districts. net marketing margin was estimated at gh¢15.37 for 100 tubers of yam and it ranged between gh¢6.00 in ejura and gh¢24.00 in nkwanta. it could be inferred from the table that net marketing margin constituted 28% of gross margin in ejura and as high as 82% of gross margin in techiman. table 8: marketing margin analysis per 100 tubers of yam handled by retailers item (gh¢) ejura techiman nkwanta atebubu pooled sample renenue: a. gross revenue (selling price) 96.67 106.36 109.89 96.25 102.86 b. cost of produce (cost price) 76.67 81.21 77.63 74.4 77.7 c .gross margin (a-b) 20.00 25.15 32.26 21.85 25.16 marketing costs: transportation 5.74 2.01 5.16 5.22 4.36 loading & offloading 2.76 0.59 1.45 2.61 2.19 market toll 2.17 0.1 0.6 0.86 0.59 value of yam losses 3.67 1.83 1.38 4.19 2.65 d. total marketing cost 14.34 4.53 8.59 12.88 9.79 net marketing margin (c-d) 5.66 20.62 23.67 8.97 15.37 source: estimated from field data, 2009 trade volume handled by cross-border traders and yam prices majority (56%) of cross-border traders sent yams to togo and 28% of them sent yams to burkina faso. some few traders also sent yam to europe via accra. table 9 provides information on quantities purchased by crossborder traders and yam purchase price for a typical trip in the 2009 yam season. traders purchased an average quantity of 3,106 tubers of yam per trip at an average price of gh¢72.86/100tubers. volume of yams purchased was found to be highest in nkwanta and lowest in atebubu. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 226-234 232 table 9: purchase volumes and purchase price of yam for a typical trips in 2009 source: field data, 2009 marketing costs and margins analysis for cross-border yam traders table 10 provides the marketing margin analysis for crossborder traders. gross margin among cross-border yam traders ranged from a low of gh¢50.78 in nkwanta to a maximum of gh¢55.51 per 100 tubers in atebubu. the average gross margin for the total sample was estimated at gh¢53.82 for every 100 tubers transported across ghana’s borders. average marketing cost incurred on 100 tubers of yams sent across the borders of ghana was found to be gh¢19.91 per trip. marketing cost, however, varied across yam producing districts. marketing cost was found to be between 38% and 42% of gross marketing margins in nkwanta and techiman respectively. results in the table show that cross-border yam trading was a profitable venture. the net marketing margin was found to range between a low of gh¢30.62 per 100tubers of yam in techiman to a maximum of gh¢33.24 per 100tubers in ejura district. table10: marketing margin analysis per 100 tubers of yam handled by cross border traders item (gh¢) ejura techiman nkwanta atebubu total sample a. gross revenue (selling price) 140.83 132.5 107.5 126.67 126.68 b. cost of produce (cost price) 86.33 79.23 56.72 71.16 72.86 c. gross margin 54.5 53.27 50.78 55.51 53.82 marketing costs: transportation 9.6 10.2 8.8 11.21 9.95 loading & offloading 0.6 0.89 0.56 1.97 0.81 value of yam loss 6.13 5.37 4.68 6.22 4.36 costs at road barriers 1.33 1.59 1.21 1.57 1.43 duties paid at borders 1.5 1.4 1.16 1.34 1.33 other costs 2.1 3.2 2.9 0.35 2.03 d. total marketing costs 21.26 22.65 19.31 22.66 19.91 net marketing margin (c-d) 33.24 30.62 31.47 32.85 33.91 source: estimated from field data, 2009 summary on yam marketing margins and marketing efficiency analysis table 11 provides a summary of the marketing margins analysis and the resultant marketing efficiency levels estimated for various players in the yam value chain for 100tubers of yam. results in the table show that yam trading was a profitable venture for all categories of traders across all yam producing districts covered in the study. net marketing margin was highest for cross-border yam traders (gh¢33.91) followed by wholesalers who obtained a net margin of gh¢27.39 on every 100tubers of yams sold. the net margins obtained by producer-sellers and retailers were found to be less than half the margins obtained by crossborder traders. net marketing margin received by wholesalers was about 78% higher than that obtained by retailers and producer-sellers. district quantity purchased (tubers) unit price (gh¢/100 tubers) ejura mean 3306.67 86.33 std. deviation 6218.73 20.74 techiman mean 3022.50 79.23 std. deviation 4029.23 28.77 nkwanta mean 5000.00 56.72 std. deviation 3559.03 45.77 atebubu mean 1426.67 71.16 std. deviation 481.80 29.77 pooled sample mean 3106.47 72.86 std. deviation 3351.20 49.64 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 226-234 233 table11: yam marketing margins and efficiency among players in the yam value chain district gh¢/100 tubers yam producers yam retailers yam wholesalers cross-border yam traders ejura gross margin 26.9 20 52.33 54.5 marketing costs 9.42 14.34 21.74 21.26 net marketing margin 17.48 5.66 30.59 33.24 marketing efficiency (%) 185.56 39.47 140.71 156.35 techiman gross margin 23.6 25.15 26.3 53.27 marketing costs 7.72 4.53 10.52 22.65 net marketing margin 15.88 20.62 15.78 30.62 marketing efficiency (%) 205.7 455.19 150 135.19 nkwanta gross margin 52.96 32.26 67.72 50.78 marketing costs 8.46 8.59 19.17 19.31 net marketing margin 44.5 23.67 48.55 31.47 marketing efficiency (%) 526 275.55 253.26 162.97 atebubu gross margin 32.09 21.85 34.4 55.51 marketing costs 18.16 12.88 20.38 22.66 net marketing margin 13.93 8.97 14.02 32.85 marketing efficiency (%) 76.71 69.64 68.79 144.97 pooled sample gross margin 33.47 25.16 45 53.82 marketing costs 17.95 9.79 17.61 19.91 net marketing margin 15.52 15.37 27.39 33.91 marketing efficiency (%) 86.46 157 155.54 170.32 source: researchers’ computation from previous tables marketing efficiency is defined as the ratio between net marketing margin and marketing costs expressed as a percentage. a ratio of 100% (or 1.0) indicates efficient trading/marketing activities since marketing costs will exactly equal net marketing margin. it actually indicates a break-even point because the value addition (i.e. marketing cost) is equal to the net margin obtained as a result of the value addition. marketing efficiency figure below 100% is indicative of inefficiency; more is spent on value addition compared to the margin received after value addition. from the table, it may be seen that yam marketing activities among retailers, wholesalers and cross-border traders were highly efficient with efficiency figures far greater than 100%. however, yam marketing among producer-sellers was found to be inefficient with marketing efficiency ratio of about 86%. marketing of yams in techiman and nkwanta was efficient among all trader categories. however, yam marketing among retailers in ejura and atebubu was found to be inefficient. for the pooled sample, marketing of yam among all trader groups was found to be efficient except for producer-sellers. in their assessment of the economics of yam marketing in abia state in nigeria, ehirim et al. (2007) estimated marketing efficiency ratio of 125%, indicating that an increase in the cost of performing marketing service (that is added time, form and place utility) by 100 percent will give a more than proportionate increase of 25 percent in the level of satisfaction derived from a kilogram of yam sold in the market. adinya and awoke (2007) also performed an economic analysis of yam marketing in obubra local government area in cross river state in nigeria and found the profit margin of traders in different markets to range from n 4,939.80 to n 6,289.40. they concluded that yam marketing was a profitable business in the state. conclusion the study examined marketing margins obtained and efficiency with which major players in the yam marketing chain conduct their activities. there was a long chain of greater than three different channels through which yams moved from the farm gate to final consumers. evidence from the study showed that majority (66%) of yam farmers sold their produce in the main district market and only 20% sold yams at the farm gate. an average net marketing margin of about gh¢15.52 was obtained when the farmers sold 100tubers of yams in the market rather than at the farm gate. the study provided evidence to suggest that yam wholesaling was a profitable venture in the study districts. the net marketing margin obtained by wholesalers was estimated at gh¢27.39 per 100tubers of yam sold, which was equivalent to about 61% of the average gross margin obtained. yam retailing was found to be profitable in all the yam producing districts. net marketing margin was estimated at gh¢15.37, which amounted to 61% of the gross margin obtained. the main destination markets for cross-border yam traders were identified as togo and burkina faso. their average gross margin and net margin were estimated at gh¢53.82 and gh¢33.91respectively for every 100tubers transported asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), pp. 226-234 234 across ghana’s borders. generally, net marketing margin was highest for cross-border yam traders, followed by wholesalers. the net margins obtained by producer-sellers and retailers were less than half the margins obtained by cross-border traders. net marketing margin received by wholesalers was about 78% higher than that obtained by retailers and producer-sellers. yam marketing activities among retailers, wholesalers and cross-border traders were highly efficient with efficiency figures in excess of 100%. however, yam marketing among producer-sellers was found to be inefficient with efficiency ratio of about 86%.the main constraints affecting yam marketing were identified as poor road network, limited financial resources, poor storage facilities and high cost of transportation. among cross-border yam traders, however, harassment by police officers at road barriers was the main impediment to efficient yam marketing. serious attention should, therefore, be given to these constraints by central and local government agencies to ensure that the yam marketing system functions optimally. references adinya, i. b. and awoke, m. u. (2007) “economic analysis of yam marketing in obubra local government area of cross river state, nigeria”, journal of agriculture, forestry and the social sciences, vol. 5(1), pp. 41-50. aidoo, r. (2009) “an analysis of yam consumption patterns in ghanaian urban communities”, ph.d thesis submitted to the department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science & technology, kumasi, ghana. bancroft, r. d. (2000) “relieving post-harvest constraints and identifying opportunities for improving the marketing of fresh yam in ghana, crop post harvest programme”, final technical report, no: r6505; zb no: zb0016. chukwu, g. o. and m. c. ikwelle (2000) “yam: threats to its sustainability in nigeria”, palawija news, the cgprt centre newsletter, volume 17, number 1 march 2000. ehirim, n. c., onyemauwa, c. s., ikheloa, e., and umezurumba, i. e. (2007) “economics of yam marketing in umuahia, abia state, nigeria”, international journal of tropical agriculture and food systems, vol. 1(1), pp. 5156. fao (2003) “trade liberalization and food security in developing countries”, in: trade reforms and food security-conceptualizing the linkages; published by commodities and trades division, food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), rome, italy. fao (1996) “food for consumers: marketing, processing and distribution”, technical background document presented at the world food summit, 13-17 nov, 1996, produced by: economic and social development department, food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), rome, italy. kohls, r. l. (1985) “marketing of agricultural products”, macmillan publishers, new york, pp. 83 meenakshi raman (2004) “effects of agricultural liberalization: experiences of rural producers in developing countries”, published by third world network, penang, malaysia. olukosi, j. o. and isitor, s. v. (1990) “introduction to agricultural market and price; principles and applications”, agitab publishers, zaria. pp 34 peterson, e. b. (2004) “a comparison of marketing margins across sectors, users, and regions”, paper presented at the 7th annual conference on global economic analysis, june 17 19, 2004, washington, d.c. http://www.fao.org/es/english/index_en.htm http://www.fao.org/es/english/index_en.htm effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 532 factors influencing rural dwellers participation in millennium village project (mvp) in pampaida, kaduna state, nigeria barnabas, tena m., akpoko, joseph g., akinola, michael o. and nandi, james a. department of agricultural economics and rural sociology, faculty of agriculture, ahmadu bello university, zaria, kaduna state, nigeria abstract this study examines the factors influencing rural dwellers participation in millennium village project (mvp) in pampaida of kaduna state, nigeria. specifically the socio-economic characteristic of the beneficiaries of the project were identified; and factors influencing rural dwellers participation in the project examined. data collection process was through the use of structured questionnaire. the study used 120 questionnaires administered to randomly selected respondents in 28 settlements divided into 4 clusters of 7 settlements each. descriptive statistics and multiple regressions were used to analyze the data. the findings show that most of the respondents were experienced young small scale male adult farmers with little formal education (42%) and massive contact with extension agents. furthermore, age, income, educational attainment, farm size and extension contact were the reasons why the respondents participated in the mvp. therefore, the following recommendations were made: more adult education centers should be established in the area, as well as more facilitators employed to increase the educational level of the programme participants; soft loans should be granted to the farmers to offset the bureaucratic procedures for credit facilities. keywords: mvp, participation, poverty, rural dwellers introduction 1 most of the poor people live in rural areas. their first need is food, and past successes in mass poverty reduction programmes have placed heavy emphasis on getting resources for increased staples production, productivity; and consumption to small holders and farm workers (lipton, 2001). yet, most developing countries’ poverty reduction strategies are macro-economic in nature, because they say little about where to get resources for agriculture or rural development, or how to get those resources to the poor. according to the united nations (un, 2001), the population of sub-saharan corresponding author’s name: nandi, james a. email address: jamesanandi@yahoo.com africa is on the increase; with one-third of the population living below the minimum level of dietary energy consumption, hence majority are undernourished people. they are crippled by factors such as diseases; climatic changes; low level of irrigation; extreme isolation in mountains and land locked; insufficient energy resources; and other liabilities that have kept them outside the mainstream of global economic growth. nonetheless, while many that live within these countries are impoverished, they are also capable and resourceful. though struggling to survive, they are not dispirited but are determined to improve their situations. the developing countries generally already contend with chronic poverty and food crisis in various dimensions. africa has a higher asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:jamesanandi@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 532-540 533 proportion of people living in poverty than any other continent, with 90 percent of the poor living in rural areas, where approximately 80 percent of the rural populace depend on agriculture for their livelihood (enete and amusa, 2010). in nigeria rural poverty issue has been described as widespread and increasing daily in spite of the country’s vast resources (cbn/world bank, 1996; ayanwale and alimi, 2004). the poverty situation in the country has since been a cause for concern as it shortens lifespan. for instance, given an estimated average global life expectancy of 68.09 years for both sexes, nigeria’s overall life expectancy at birth is 52.46 years (cia, 2012a). in other words, nigerians are about 23% below the average world life expectancy. the severity of poverty in nigeria’s rural areas is particularly heartrending. this is further aggravated by the country’s extremely low per capita income of us$1,600 – based on 2012 estimates; that is, us$4.38 per day, ranking nigeria globally at 146 th position. in addition, 2012 gdp based on purchasing power parity (ppp) was $2,800, depicting daily ppp of $7.67 (cia, 2012b). the agricultural sector in nigeria is predominantly in the hands of rural dwellers, majorly the smallholder farmers, who have been generally described as poor and hungry. the concern about the threat posed by poverty has led the nigerian government to devote considerable attention to alleviating its scourge through the implementation of various rural poverty alleviation programmes. some of these programmes include: the river basin development authority (rbda), launched in 1975; agricultural development projects (adps), 1975; operation feed the nation (ofn) of 1976; the green revolution, 1980; and the directorate for food, roads and rural infrastructure (dfrri), established in 1986. other initiatives were: better life programme (1994); poverty alleviation programme (pap); national special programme for food security (nspfs) launched in 2002; the community based agricultural and rural development programme (cbardp) of 2003; national economic empowerment development strategy (needs) (2003-2007); and a host of others. all these programmes failed to make a dent of impact to achieve the stated objectives in the lives of the rural dwellers due to topbottom approach adopted without due consultation, participation or involvement by the poor over programme initiative, execution, coordination and implementation. as a result, seven out of every ten nigerians are absolutely poor (needs, 2004). this situation is worse in the rural areas where more than 75% are very poor (ikwuba, 2011). the world’s target for reducing extreme poverty in its many dimensions by 2015 was reached after several conferences, summits and resolutions by concern bodies and organizations. finally, the united nations’ 189 member countries signed the millennium declaration on september 8, 2000 (united nations, 2001), which adopted a new global partnership in tackling the rural poverty problem. this has become known as the millennium development goals (mdgs), premised on eight goals, viz; (i) ending poverty and hunger; (ii) universal primary education; (iii) promote gender equality and women empowerment; (iv) reduce child mortality; (v) improve maternal health; (vi) combat hiv/aids, malaria and other diseases; (vii) ensure environmental sustainability; and (viii) develop a global partnership for development (anonymous, 2008). to achieve the mdgs, millennium village projects (mvp) were designed using community-led development approach with targeted and low-cost investments in selected villages in rural areas. the mvp operates in 80 villages organized in 14 clusters in africa. these villages were selected to represent the principal agro ecological zones and farming systems of africa that are hunger hotspots. the millennium village projects (mvp) are operating with financial and technical asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 532-540 534 supports from the earth institute/columbia university, the millennium promise, the united nations development programme (undp, 2011), governments and donor agencies. the first millennium village was started in sauri, kenya in 2004 (carr, 2008). the success led to the establishment of 75 other villages in 12 african countries. in 2006, the millennium village project, a bottom-up approach for lifting villages out of the trap of poverty, through rural dwellers participation was established in two clusters for the northern and southern parts of nigeria. these are the ikara millennium village cluster in ondo state and the pampaida millennium village cluster in kaduna state (undp, 2011). project participation is the involvement of an individual from the decision-making stage, planning, implementation, execution, operations and even evaluation. undp (1993) defines participation as when people are closely involved in the economic, social, cultural and political processes that affects their lives. according to kolawale (1990), participation may involve multi-sectoral approach whereby people take part in decision making. ekong (2003), defined participation as "playing active, though not necessarily direct roles in community decisions, knowledge of local issues, attendance of public meetings related attempts to influence proposed measures through individual and group actions, belonging to groups and committees and financial contributions towards community programmes". according to yoon (2001), different ways of participation in most development projects are: participation in implementation; evaluation; benefit and decision making. he opines that participation in decision-making is the most important form to promote as it gives people a say over their future and environment, it also helps the people to acquire problem solving skills and full ownership of projects. these are key elements of sustainable community development. ifad (2002) observed that participatory processes can be effective in increasing the incomes and food security of the rural poor as well as to reverse environmental degradation. participation, according to pretty (1995) is one of the critical components of success. to ascertain this, world bank (1997) in pretty (1995) stated that participation has been associated with increased mobilization of stakeholder ownership of policies and projects; greater efficiency, understanding and social cohesion; more cost-effective services; greater transparency and accountability; increased empowering of the poor and disadvantaged; and strengthened capacity of people to learn and act. studies have shown that different farmers have different or varied reasons for participating in agricultural and rural development programmes. edi et al. (2007) reported that labour intensive projects, with high dependence on household income constrained farmers’ participation. whereas, programmes that provides easy access to farming inputs, environmentally friendly, and provide adequate leisure time encouraged participation. according to dimitri and nicholas (2002), farmer’s decision to participate in agricultural development projects in greece was dependant on their agricultural education/training and economic level. therefore, there is need to investigate factors which motivated rural dwellers participation in the pampaida millennium village project in kaduna state, nigeria. hence, specifically this study sought to identify socio-economic characteristics of the project participants, as well as factors that influenced the rural dwellers’ participation in the project. methodology the study was conducted in pampaida, kaduna state of nigeria. pampaida is made up of 28 settlements with a population of 5,666 people (npc, 2006). pampaida represents the agro forestry parkland system in the dry sub-humid sudan savanna, characterized by shrubs, trees and grasses of different species with a strong presence of livestock. generally the farmers practice asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 532-540 535 agrosilvopastoral farming system with unimodal rainfall pattern averaging 1050mm annually commencing from june to november yearly. the area soil type is haplustalfs, sandy to loamy with sorghum and maize as the main cultivated crop (nziguheba et al., 2010). during the rainy season, the rivers spill their banks creating low lying seasonal flooded areas called fadama which the villagers use to grow rice. multistage method of sampling was employed for this study. the research covered 28 settlements of mvp in pampaida. the settlements were grouped into 4 clusters of 7 settlements each. in each cluster, 30 household heads, been adequate representation of each cluster, were randomly selected, making the total sampled respondents of 120 people. primary data were collected through the use of structured questionnaire. descriptive statistics and multiple regression methods of analysis were used in this study. the multiple regression is shown as: y=a+b1x1+b2x2+b3x 3…………….b9x9+ u where: y = access to mdgs interventions (total number) a = constant x1 = age (years) x2 = gender (male = 1, female = 2) x3 = farm size (ha) x4 = level of education (years) x5 = household size (number). x6 = extension contact (number.) x7 = access to credit (yes=1; no =2) x8 = income (total annual income) x9 = farming experience (years) b1-b9 = regression co-efficient u = error term results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of the beneficiaries result presented in table 2, depicts the socio-economic variables of mvp participants in the area of study. it was revealed that respondents’ ages range between 2170 years. age is very important in agricultural production and project participation because it determines the physical strength of the farmer / individual (oladimeji and abdulsalam, 2013; muhammed-lawal et al., 2009). table 2: socio-economic distribution of respondents variable frequency percentage (%) age 21-30 38 32 31-40 46 38 41-50 24 20 51-70 12 10 gender male 106 88 female 14 12 education no formal education 36 30 koranic 34 28 adult education 1 0.8 primary school 33 27.2 secondary school 8 7 tertiary institution 8 7 household 1-5 67 56.0 6-10 39 32.0 11-15 7 6.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 532-540 336 16-20 6 5.2 21-25 0 0 26-30 1 0.80 farm size less than 2 19 16 2-4 66 55 above 4 35 29 farming experience 1-10 6 5 11-20 50 42 21-30 43 36 31-40 19 17 frequency of contact with extension workers 1-10 24 21 11-20 32 28 21-30 14 12 31-40 16 14 41-50 14 12 51 and above 13 13 total 120 100 source: field survey, 2011 about 70% of the respondents are between the ages 21 40 years. this agrees with the assertion that young people tend to withstand stress, put more time in various agricultural operations and participate in programmes/projects which can result to increased output (adeola, 2010). rahaman et al. (2002) reported that farmer’s age may influence adoption of innovation or technology (participation) in several ways. majority (88%) of the respondents were males; indicating that males participate in mvp than females. this can be attributed to the fact that household heads are mostly men except in a situation where the husband is dead or the woman is a divorcee. the educational level of the respondents in the study area was very low; most (58%) of the respondents did not have formal education, with 27% academic apex being primary school. it was indicated that average household size was 6 people with about 56% having1-5 people. the rural communities are predominantly farmers who practiced early marriage; it was amazing at the small size of their households; implying that farmers labour would have to be supplemented with hired labour or animal traction. household size in an agrarian society plays an important factor because it influences to a large extent supply of labour for immediate farm need (akinyemi, 1998). farm size in an agrarian society is an important resource to fight against poverty and improve living conditions of the farmers. all the rural dwellers in the area were small scale farmers whose farm holdings averaged 3.6ha. the small size of farms can be attributed to the fact that most of the farm lands are owned through inheritance which fragments the land among the family members. this is in conformity with the report of olukosi and erhabor (1988) that most subsistence agrarian communities, land acquisition is usually through inheritance which is passed from generation to generation and gets fragmented the more as it is passed from generation to generation. experience is an important factor in agricultural production and project participation. it is assumed that the higher the experience of the farmer the better will be his productive capacity. from the study, 78% had 11-30 years of experience in farming. this reveals why the respondents readily participated in the programmes of the mvp. the more the experience in farming, the more farmers are asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 532-540 337 less likely to oppose participation in agricultural programme, as farmer’s performance could have great influence on their participation (nkonya et al., 2008). furthermore, nkonya et al. (2008) stated that experienced farmer will know the biophysical and socio-economic environment well and thus be able to make informed decisions on land management. the result from the study shows that 93% of the respondents had contact with extension workers on mvp; with maximum number of visits of 55 times during the project implementation period. factors influencing rural dwellers participation in mvp the coefficient of determination which shows the fitness of the data to the model indicates a value of 0.57. this implies that 57% of the variation in the model is as a result of the explanatory variables included in the model. this means that other factors other than the included variables are also responsible for the factors that influence rural dwellers’ participation in the project. age was found to have a positive sign and significant at 1% probability level. therefore, age is a major factor that influenced mvp participation. farmers are less likely to quit farming as they get older (rhodes, 1983). farm size is very salient in the participation of members in mdg project; hence, the coefficient for farm size indicates a positive sign and was significant at 5% probability level, which agrees with the a priori expectation. this means that as farm size of the individual increases interest in the project will increase. this could be so to adopt new technologies that will result to increased yield. education was positively signed and was significant at 1% probability level. as educational attainment of the people increase, their participation in a project will as well increase. this shows that even with the low level of education, they perceived the importance of the project and therefore encouraged them to participate in the project. as formal education increases, participation in a project increases because education facilitates adoption of innovation. household size was negatively signed and insignificant, implying the higher the number of people in a household the less the participation in the project. this is against expectation because household members are supposed to influence the level of participation in a project in order to meet the demand of the people. extension contact estimated coefficient showed that extension contact has a positive effect on participation of respondents in mdg project. it revealed that as the number of extension visits increases, the number of participants as well as individual interest in the project will also increase. table 3: multiple regression analysis coefficients standard error t-stat p-value intercept 3.487 1.377 2.531 0.013** age 0.167 0.025 6.682 0.0004*** gender 0.113 1.308 0.086 0.931 income 0.042 0.057 1.744 0.0458* education 0.513 0.127 4.021 0.0001*** farming experience -0.003 0.021 -0.123 0.903 farm size 0.910 0.314 2.901 0.044** extension contact 0.011 0.005 1.988 0.0156** access to credit 0.535 0.384 1.392 0.167 household size -1.170 1.387 -0.799 0.426 r2= 0.57; f = 3.20; *** significant at 1%, ** significant at 5%; * significant at 10% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 532-540 338 access to credit was positive but not significant. this implies that as access to credit of the individuals increase, their participation in the project will increase. the insignificant nature of the variable is against the expectation which may be attributed to the bureaucratic nature of the loans procedures. also, participants may not be having the collaterals often demanded by the formal lending agencies which can impede the participation in the project as a result of lack of capital to purchase some of the technologies provided them. income was found to be positive and significant. this implies that income consideration was of great influence that made the respondents to participate in the project so that they can improve their livelihood. conclusion the study set out to identify factors influencing rural dwellers participation in millennium village project (mvp) in pampaida community of kaduna state. the results showed that the respondents were young male headed household heads participating in mvp in the study area, with low level of education, small farm holdings and had massive contact with extension agents especially at the beginning of the project. the regression analysis revealed that age, income, educational attainment, farm size and extension contact were the reasons why the respondents participated in the mvp. as a result of the findings from the study area, the following recommendations are hereby advanced: that rural development experts and policy makers should adopt the community-based development approach in order to carry the participants along; more adult education centres should be established in the area, as well as more facilitators employed to increase the educational level of the programme participants; soft loans should be granted to the farmers to offset the bureaucratic procedures for credit facilities; and, rural dwellers participating in the mvp should form co-operative society to access loans and other capital for improved output. references adeola, s. s. 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(1983). related differences in work attitude and behaviour: a review and conceptual analysis. psychological bulletin, pp. 328-367. published by cornell university press. united nations (2001). road map towards the implementation of the united http://www.population.gov.ng/state/crossriverfinal.pdf http://www.population.gov.ng/state/crossriverfinal.pdf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 532-540 340 nations millennium declaration. report of the secretary-general, general assembly, distr. general 6 september 2001 fifty-sixth session a/56/326, item 40 of the provisional agenda, follow-up to the outcome of the millennium summit. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/doc s/56/a56326.pdf. retrieved on october 30, 2013. 1-58. united nations development programme (1993). human development report, united nations development programs. new york. united nations development project (undp) (2011). millennium development villages (mdvs). project factsheet. available at www.ng.undp.org/projects/poverty/m vp.pdf . world bank (1997). rural development poverty reduction and environmental growth in sub-saharan africa. findings no. 92 http//www.worldbank.org. yoon, c. s. (2001). participatory communication for development. in: bessette, g. and rajasunderam, c. v. (eds.) participatory development communication: a west african agenda. international development research centre (idcr) and southbound publishers, malaysia. available athttp://www.southbound.com.my/co mmunication/parcom.htm. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/56/a56326.pdf.%20retrieved%20on%20october%2030 http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/56/a56326.pdf.%20retrieved%20on%20october%2030 http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/56/a56326.pdf.%20retrieved%20on%20october%2030 http://www.southbound.com.my/communication/parcom.htm http://www.southbound.com.my/communication/parcom.htm effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 177 economics of labour use in selected food crop farming in ogun state, nigeria s. a. adewuyi and a. m. shittu department of agricultural economics & farm management federal university of agriculture, abeokuta, nigeria o. e. fapojuwo department of agricultural administration, federal university of agriculture, abeokuta, nigeria s. h. sowemimo department of agricultural economics & farm management federal university of agriculture, abeokuta, nigeria abstract the study evaluates economic analysis of labour use in food crops production in ogun state, nigeria. data were collected by the use of multistage random sampling with the help of wellstructured questionnaire from a cross-section of 170 food crop farmers and analysed using descriptive, budgetary and multiple regression. the socio-economic data of the respondents were analysed by descriptive statistics and the result revealed that majority (82.4%) of the food crop farmers were male, aged between 41 and 60 years. the mean household size was 4 persons. the mean farm size was 1.8ha with a mean farming experience of 25years. the result of the budgetary analysis reveals that for a hectare of farmland, a cost of n213, 60766 was incurred giving a revenue of n 352,809.59 and a rate of investment (roi) of 0.65. this shows for every n1 spent, there was corresponding profit of 65kobo. the study further revealed that farm size, labour (manday) and cost of plant material significantly influence the revenue of farmers in the study area. the study concludes that food crop production is profitable but at a high cost of labour. the study recommends the adoption of labour savings technology as an alternative to increasing scarcity and high labour cost in the study area. keywords: labour use, food crops, production, economics, ogun state introduction 1 food is one of the man’s basic needs, for this reason and more, agricultural food production has taken a central place in the economic policies of most developing countries. before the discovery of oil in commercial quantities corresponding author’s name: s. a adewuyi email address: elisam99@yahoo.com in nigeria, the agricultural sector was the bedrock of the nigerian economy, relied upon for subsistence food and fibre supply, and foreign exchange. the agricultural sector has the onerous challenges of meeting the food and fibre needs of the estimated 140 million people providing employment for over 75 percent of the economically active population (okumadewa, 1997), a major source of foreign exchange, asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:elisam99@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 177-187 178 and a provision of raw material for the burgeoning industrial sector. the importance of this sector cannot be overemphasized. despite the pride of place, in terms of total budgeted revenue and financing that the petroleum sector has received over the years, evidences now abound that oil wealth is not sustainable. the relative contribution of the agricultural sector to the gross domestic product (gdp) declined steadily to the point where the country agricultural production has all but stagnated, and food prices have risen dramatically. this decline was due to the neglect of agriculture as a result of sudden ‘oil boom’ of the early 1970’s (olatunbosun, 2005). nigeria is now totally economically dependent on oil. one of the major problems confronting nigeria is her inability to adequately feed her teeming population. it is in realization of this fact that programmes such as operation feed the nation of 1976, green revolution of 1979, directorate of food road and rural infrastructure of 1987, national fadama ii of 2004 were put in place to increase and sustain food production in the nation. (adewuyi et al., 2007). nigeria is an agrarian society with about 70% of her over 140 million population engaged in agricultural production (cbn, 2006). the agricultural sector remains a dominant sector in the nigeria economy in terms of its being a source of food and income to a large segment of the society (world bank,1993). most arable farmers, who are the back bone of the nigeria economy, are peasants and poorly endowed in terms of resources, yet they account for up to 95% or more of food produced for consumption in the country (olaitan, 2000). however, rural-urban drift has impacted negatively on agriculture as it poses some problems in the rural communities. in most rural areas, the impact of rural-urban drift has been a rapid deterioration of the ruraleconomy leading to a chronic poverty and food insecurity (mini, 2001). these arise mainly due to excessive drain of youth who constitute the largest percentage of labour from rural populace thus leaving only the older and aged members to constitute the labour force of the rural area. young people within the active working age who are to cope with challenges of modernizing agricultural production are migrating to urban centre in search of white-collar jobs and improved standard of living. this development has not helped agricultural productivity as it has left farming in the hands of old and non literate farmers with very few who could not leave villages perhaps due to unavoidable circumstances (adebayo, 1999). labour plays a central and crucial role in agricultural production, particularly under small scale peasant production system. the smallholder farmers contribute the largest proportion of total domestic agricultural output in their area. thus, the hope of continuing supply of food need of ever growing population anchors very auspiciously on human labour. human labour is about the only form of farm labour available to small holder farmers. this form of labour accounts for up to 80 percent of total farm power (chianu and tsuji, 2004) and constitute between 80 and 90 percent of the cost of production in many farming systems ( awoyemi, 1981). in africa, there exist different types of labour arrangement for cash and food crops production. these labour arrangements were highly popularised during the pre-colonial and colonial time for the production of export crops such as cocoa, groundnut, coffee, cotton and oil palm. however, with the slowdown in cash crops production, there has been a shift in favour of food production such as cassava, yam and vegetable e. t. c with ready markets in urban and peri-urban centres. these production shifts provide employment for local and immigrant labour from others states and neighbouring countries in the form of contract for food crop production. according to ezedinma (1999) labour is hired on a short term basis to complement or replace family labour. it was further reported that hired asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 177-187 179 labour is used for crop production in a greater proportion in villages located in the west africa countries especially nigeria, where labour is mostly hired from within the villages, neighbouring villages and countries. the constraints to the rapid growth of food production seem to mainly be that of high cost of production and low resource productivity. raising the productivity and output of small farmers would not only increase their incomes and food security, but also stimulate the rest of the economy and contribute to broad based food security and poverty alleviation (upton, 1987). in view of the federal government policy on food production that this research was conducted to determine the cost magnitude of food crop production in ogun state. specifically, the study estimates the cost and returns to food crop production; evaluate the quantity of labour (man-day) available under various labour arrangements and associated wages; determines the factors affecting revenue to food crop production in the area and determine the factors that influence the households’ choice of labour use. methodology the study was carried out in ogun state, nigeria. primary data on household’s farm activities used for the study were collected with the aid of questionnaire using a multistage sampling procedure. the state was divided into four agricultural zones of the ogun state agricultural development programme namely abeokuta zone, ikenne, ilaro and ijebu-ode zone. in the first stage of the sampling procedure, 10 blocks in the zones were randomly selected. in the second stage, 25 percent of cells from each selected block (a total of 17 cells) were randomly selected making. this was followed by random selection of two (2) sub cells (a total of 34 cells). in the final stage, five (5) farm households were randomly selected given a total of 170 farm households and the household heads were interviewed. data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics, multiple regression analysis and multinomial logit model. gross margin analysis the budgetary technique which estimates the financial outcome and profitability of a particular enterprise or several alternatives was used to determine and analyze the cost and returns to factors of production. where: gm = gross margin (n) p = unit farm gate price per unit of output i (n) q = quantity of output for crop; (kg) c = unit price of variable input (n) x = quantity of variable input j i = crop (n is the total number of cultivated crops) j = variable input (m is the total number of the variable input used in the farm enterprise) thus, gross margin (gm) = tr – tvc (2) gm = tr – tvc ii = gm – tfc (3) where: gm = gross margin tfc = total fixed cost multiple regression analysis multiple regression analysis was employed for the determination of factors affecting farmers’ revenue. in the implicit form, the regression model is represented by y = f(x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, u) (4) where: yi = total revenue (n) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 177-187 180 x1 = farm size (ha) x2 = labour ((n) x3 = cost of planting materials (n). x4 = cost of fertilizers (n). x5 = herbicide (n) x6 = tractor services (n) u = error term multinomial logit model this was used to estimate the factors that influence the household choice of labour. this model is specified below. j=1 pij = prob(y = i/x) = e x’β /1 + σ e x’β (8) j =1 j = 1.....n where β is a vector of parameters that satisfies ln (pij/pik) = x’ (βj – βk), differentiating equation (8) with respect to each of the explanatory variables provides marginal effects of the explanatory variables which are given as: j = 1 δpj/δxk = pj(βkj σ pj βkj) (9) j = 1 where y = 1…..4 mutually exclusive labour choices; 1= family labour only 2= family/daily paid contract labour 3= family/ job specific contract labour 4 = family/annual contract labour x = (j *1) = vector of respondents socioeconomic and farm characteristics such as sex, age, education, level, farm size, household size, farm distance etc which affect labour choice β = 1 * j vector of coefficient of x results and discussion the socio – economic variables investigated are the age, gender, and household size, educational level, farming experience, farm size and source of farmland. the socio economics characteristics of the farm household heads had significant influence in their decision making process in relation to farm production activities, as well as how resources are used for effective and efficient farm activities and nonfarm activities. the results are summarized in table 1below. table 1: distribution of respondents by personal / household characteristic characteristics frequency percentage mean age(years) 30 – 40 43 25.3 41 – 50 47 27.6 51 – 60 66 38.8 48.1 above 60 14 8.2 total 170 100.00 gender male 140 82.4 female 30 17.6 total 170 100.00 marital status married 149 87.65 divorce 5 2.94 widow 16 9.41 total 170 100.00 educational level no formal education 15 8.8 primary education 69 40.6 secondary education 47 27.6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 177-187 181 tertiary education 39 22.9 total 170 100.00 secondary occupation artisan 6 3.5 civil / public servant 21 12.4 trading 10 5.9 none 133 78.2 farming experience 10years or less 44 25.9 11 – 20 38 22.4 21 – 30 35 20.6 24.5 above 30 years 53 31.2 total 170 100.00 household size group < 5 persons 121 71.2 5-8 persons 42 24.7 9-12 persons 7 4.1 total 170 100.00 mean 4.02 farm size group 1ha or less 96 56.5 1.01 – 2.0ha 39 22.9 2.01 – 3.0ha 12 7.6 1.88 3.01 – 4.0ha 10 5.9 above 4.0ha 13 7.6 total 170 100.00 source of land inheritance 91 53.5 purchased 13 7.6 leased 66 38.8 total 170 100.00 source: field survey, 2011 age is a very important factor in farming activities as younger farmers (youths) are believed to commit more energy into production activities as well as having the potential to cope with challenges of modernizing agriculture through mechanization. table 2 shows that cumulative percentage of 91.8 were within the age bracket of 30-60 years which is considered as economically active age, while 8.2 percent were above 60 years of age. this implies that most crop farmers belong to the economically active age; hence they possess ability to earn some revenue in food crop production. the gender distribution shows that food crop production in the study area is male dominated, as the distribution of the household head shows that majority (82.4%) were males, while 17.6% were females. this corroborates the findings of kareem (2004), that crop farming is more attractive to male. table 1 equally shows that majority (87.6%) of household was headed by married persons. the widowed and divorced were negligible, accounting for only 2.9% and 9.4% respectively. the distribution of the household heads by educational level shows that most of the sampled respondents (40.6%) had primary asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 177-187 182 education. the implication of this result is that it will be easier for these farmers to adopt innovations and modern agricultural practices requiring basic level of education that will increase their productivity and efficiency. experience is considered to be an important factor in any undertaking, be it farming or non farming activities as people that are well grounded in the best practices of their chosen carriers stand better chances for improved and efficient production. table 1 shows that cumulative percentage of 68.9 had up to 30 years of farming experiences, thus they possess substantial wealth of experience in crop production. by implication, farmers with many years of experience on certain crop(s) within less varied environmental/climatic and prevailing farming practices stand the better chances for improved and efficient production. table 1 shows that majority (71.2%) of the sampled households had an average of 5 members in a household. this corroborates the findings of adebayo (1999) that less number of people is residing in rural areas. by implication, agricultural production activities being labour intensive, large household can provide farming labour at least or no cost. also, a cumulative percentage of 79.4% of the sampled household cultivated no more than two hectares of land with an average farm size of 1.88 hectares indicating that food crop production is based on subsistence practice/ objective. the distribution of household based on source of farm land shows that majority (53.5%) inherited their farmland, while 28.8% were leased and 7.6% purchased their farm land. by implication, with majority (53.5%) farming on inherited land, this might led to fragmentation of farm holding thereby discouraging commercial production objectives of most farmers. table 2: cost, return and profit profile of the average farmer per hectare family labour only family/hired labour pooled revenue items mean value(n) mean value(n) mean value(n) cassava 113,831.15 (41.80) 210,498.17 (52.90) 175.811.77 (49.83) maize 79,201.64 (29.09) 148,803.03 (37.40) 123,828.41 (35.10) yam 3278.69 (1.20) 11,522.94 (2.90) 8,564.71 (2.43) paddy rice 4,877.05 (1.79) 688.07 (0.17) 2191.18 (0.02) melon 1,669.72 (0.42) 1070.59 (0.30) fruit veg. 4,254.10 (1.56) 14,266.06 (3.59) 10673.53 (3.01) leafy veg. 55,295.08 (20.31) 8,310.09 (2.09) 25,169.41 (7.13) plantain 11,557.38 (4.24) 2,110.09 (0.53) 5500.00 (1.56) total rev 272295.08 (100) 397,868.17 (100.00) 352,809.59 (100.00) planting materials 23,666.57 (19.34) 34,400.99 (13.00) 30,549.23 (14.30) labour 70,038.52 (57.23) 170,406.17 (64.39) 134,391.90 (62.92) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 177-187 183 source: field survey, 2011 the budgetary analysis (table 2) showed that total variable cost (tvc) form the bulk (87.76) percent of the total cost (tc) while the total fixed cost (tfc) was just 12.24%, this implies that a farmer who want to be cost efficient would have to reduce total variable cost especially labour cost which accounted for more than three quarter of the total variable cost (tvc ).the total fixed cost (tfc) is small (12.24%), this may be due to the low cost of land rent (3.04%) which is typical of core rural communities in south western nigeria where most land are held by inheritance as reflected in the result. table 3 also shows the revenue, total variable cost, total fixed cost, gross margin and net farm income across family labour and hired labour uses category. labour cost accounts for a larger share of the total cost (tc) for both categories; 57.23 percent for family and 64.39 percent for hired. the mean cost of production incurred by farmers using household labour only was n122, 379.55 per hectare with mean revenue of n272, 295.08 and realised a net profit of n149, 915.52 per hectare. consequently, the rate of return on investment (roi) value of 1.23 indicates that for every one naira (n1) invested in cropping enterprise in the area, a return (net profit) of n1.23k was realized. similarly, the total cost and returns to crop farming among hired labour users in the study area revealed an average farmer incurred a total cost n264, 661.92 per hectare earn a total revenue of n397, 868.17 per hectare with a net profit of n133, 206.26 per hectare/annum and a low rate of return (0.50), the low rate of return (roi) may be attributed to the high cost of labour which impinged on the net profit of the farmer. table 3: distribution of respondents by labour (man-day) and associated wages per hectare labour types frequency percentage mean man-day mean wage family labour only 61 35.88 70.04 70,038.52 family/daily paid 27 15.88 49.14 71,769.24 fertilizer 6,765.57 (5.53) 9,455.50 (3.57) 8,490.29 (3.97) agro. chemicals 2,706.56 (2.21) 4,894.63 (1.85) 4,109.51 (1.92) transport 614.75 (0.50) 2,244.04 (0.85) 1,659.41 (0.78) feeding 2,028.69 (1.66) 11,759.17 (4.44) 8,267.65 (3.87) tvc 105,820.67 (86.47) 233,160.52 (88.10) 187,467.99 (87.76) land 7,991.80 (6.53) 17,768.81 (6.71) 14,260.59 (6.68) depreciation 8,567.08 (7.00) 13,732.59 (5.19) 11,879.08 (5.56) tfc 16,558.89 (13.53) 31,501.39 (11.90) 26,139.67 (12.24) tc 122,379.55 (100.00) 264,661.92 (100.00) 213,607.66 (100.00) gm/ha 166,474.41 164,707.65 165,341.60 profit/ha 149,915.52 133,206.26 139,201.93 roi 1.23 0.50 0.65 sample size (n) 61 109 170 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 177-187 184 contract labour (9.33) (10653.74) family/job specific contract labour 38 22.35 68.58 167,292.9 (9.72) (20297.23) family/annual contract labour 44 25.88 93.85 233,622.09 (13.14) (24944.32) pooled 170 100 72.56 134,391.90 (5.29) (10076.88) numbers in parenthesis are standard errors of mean. source: field survey, 2011 table 3 shows the distribution of farm household by the number of labour (man-day) and labour cost per hectare associated with labour category. the table revealed that the mean labour use by the farmers in the sample was 72.6 manday/ha; 34 percent of which were supplied by household members, 33.5 percent by labour hired on annual contract (ac), 22 percent by labour hired on job specific contract (jsc) and the rest (10.8 percent) by daily paid contract (dpc). however, the table revealed that farm household that utilised daily paid contract (dpc) for farming activities spent least manday (49 man-day) while that of family/annual labour (ac) recorded the highest man-day (94 man-day). on the basis of labour cost, household head that accomplished farm operation with family labour had the least cost of n70, 038.52 while that of family/annual labour recorded the highest cost of n233, 622.08. regression result of factors affecting revenue from crop farming in the study area. lny =6.667*** + 0.174** lnx1 +0.134* (9.84) (2.41) (1.88) lnx2 + 0.532*** lnx3 + -0.31 lnx6 (8.46) (1.27) + 0.075 lnx5+ 0.11 lnx6 (1.81) (0.48) r 2 = 0.51; adj.r 2 =0.49; f-value = 28.06 the lead equation chosen was double – log function. the function has three of its variables significantly different from zero, with relatively high r 2 and f-values. though the semi-log function and linear functions also have three of their variables significant at 10 percent and 1 percent level respectively, but the relatively lower values of coefficient of determination r 2 and adjusted r 2 value when compared with the value recorded for the double log function (51%) and (49%), conferred the choice of equation of best fit on the double log function. the result also showed that three of the parameters b1, b2 and b3 significantly different from zero at 1%, 5% and 10% probability level respectively. the overall significance of all variables used in the models were reflected in their f – values which were 13.33 (linear), 14.39 (semilog) and 28.06 (double log), df (5,169) at 1% level of significance. the adjusted r 2 value of the lead equation of (0.49) despite being lowed implies that 49% of the total variation in the total revenue is explained by the regressors-farm size, labour, planting material (n), fertilizer (n),herbicides (n),tractor service (n) while the remaining 51% is unexplained by the estimated model. the significance of the fvalue implies that all the significant variables had impact on the total revenue of the respondents in the study area. the result further showed that increase in farm size (ha), labour (man –day) and cost of planting materials (n) would lead to significant increase in respondents’ total revenue. the coefficient of 0.174, 0.134 and 0.532 shows that 5%, 10% and 1% increase in farm size, labour and cost of planting materials respectively is associated with asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 177-187 185 0.174, 0.134 and 0.532 increase in farmers’ income respectively. the elasticity of production with respect to each input was given as the regression coefficient of input while return to scale were obtained by adding together all the elasticities of production. return to scale measures the proportionate change in output provided all inputs are change simultaneously by one percent. it represents the sum of all the elasticities of production with respect to all the inputs. the return to scale (rts) in the study area is 0.84.this implies that, if all the explanatory variables are simultaneously increased by 1%, the total physical product will increase by 0.84%, thus increasing farmers revenue by the same percentage. the result showed that the food crop farmers are operating at decreasing return to scale, which implies that they are operating in region three of the production function. table 4: determinants of labour type used in crop production in the study area variables daily paid contract job specific contract annual contract coefficient marginal effects coefficient marginal effects coefficient marginal effects intercept -1.221 (1.508) 0.157 -3.577** (1.479) -0.320 -4.373*** (1.401) -0.583 age -0.008 (0.026) -0.003 0.035 (0.024) 0.005 0.023 (0.022) 0.003 sex 0.726 (0.660) 0.022 1.082* (0.619) 0.120 0.761 (0.634) 0.050 educational level 0.022 (0.052) -0.006 0.054 (0.048) -0.001 0.152*** (0.04) 0.026 household size -0.036 (0.127) -0.008 -0.092 (0.117) -0.025 0.149 (0.100) 0.037 farm size 0.361*** (0.145) -0.021 0.361*** (0.143) 0.033 0.293 (0.145) 0.019 farm distance -0.037 (0.581) -0.006 0.017 (0.014) 0.003 0.151 (0.014) 0.003 off-farm income 0.356e-05 (0.240e-05) 0.165e-06 0.5088e-05 (0.220e-05) 0.625e-06 0.2611e-05 (0.220e-05) 0.350e-06 standard errors are in parenthesis *** coefficients significant at 1%, ** coefficients significant at 5%, * coefficients significant at 10 multinomial logit model was used in this study to determine the factors that influence the households’ choice of labour type use. four labour choices were identified as earlier enumerated. the reference category for the multinomial logit analysis is family labour and the result is presented in table 5. the chi – square value of 48.688 associated with log likelihood ratio was significant (p<0.01) suggesting strong explanatory power of the model. the explanatory variables considered in the model are; age, sex, educational level, household size, farm size, farm distance, and off farm income. the result revealed that the explanatory variables in the model that significantly explained the choices were farm size, sex, offfarm income and educational level. the coefficient of farm size is positively significant (p<0.005) for contract labour users (dpc, jsc and ac), this implies that the likelihood of choosing any of these contract labour type (jsc/ac) increases as farm size increases but decreases the choice of dpc. the result further showed that the marginal affect (the effect of a unit change in each asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 177-187 186 independent variable on the likelihood of choice of labour) of farm size were 0.019, 0.033 and -0.021 for ac, jsc and dpc respectively. this shows that a unit increase in this variable (farm size) will increase the probability that the respondent will choose each of these choices by 0.019, 0.033 but decreases dpc by 0.021 respectively. similarly, the coefficient of educational level is positively significant (p<0.01) for respondents using annual contract labour implying that the likelihood of choosing annual contract labour increases as the level of education increases. this could be attributable to the ability of respondent to make wise decision toward efficient use of ac labour. the marginal effect of educational level was 0.026 indicating that a unit increase in this variable will increase the likelihood of respondent choosing this form of contract type by 0.026. it is believed that higher level of education is associated with access to and adoption to improved technology and productivity. furthermore, the coefficient of off farm income was found to be positively significant (p<0.05) in the case jsc labour users, implying that the likelihood of choosing jsc type of labour increases as off-farm increases. this could be due to the fact that this form of labour are being utilized by farmers having access to other financial source. the marginal effect of off-farm income was 0.625e-06 indicating that a unit increase in this variable will increase the likelihood of choosing farm of contract type by 0.625e-06. also, sex is positively significant (p<0.10) for respondent using jsc. the choice of this type of contract labour is significantly higher in male household than their female counterpart. conclusion and recommendation the research study examined the economic analysis of food crop production in ogun state, nigeria. particular attention was paid on the determinant of magnitude of production cost and factors affecting the revenue accrue to food crop production in the study area. the result of budgetary analysis showed that labour cost accounted for more than three quarter of the total variable cost (tvc). with a profit of n 139,201.93/ha and percent profit of 66 percent, while the rate of return on investment (roi) revealed that a farmer that invested n 1 realized a marginal return of n0.65. it showed that food crop production was profitable in the study area. the result further showed that increase in farm size (ha), labour (man –day) and cost of planting materials (n) would lead to significant increase in respondents’ total revenue. the study conclude that food crop production is profitable but at a high cost of labour. the following recommendations were made: farmers should be sensitised on labour – saving technology as an alternative to increasing scarcity of labour, reduce the high cost of labour and mitigate the problem of labour shortage during farming seasons. the use of daily paid contract (dpc) labour for farm activities is recommended as this is associated with least man day per hectare of farm operation. government should provide rural infrastructure in rural communities to stem the movement of young people away from rural communities as this will enable farm household to have access to labour for farm activities. farmers should increase their farm size as this is associated with significant increase in income. references adebayo, a. (1999). youth unemployment and the national directorate of employment, self employment programme. nigeria journal of economics and social studies, 41, 81104. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 177-187 187 adewuyi, s. a., t. e. mafimisebi., & awe, p. o. (2007). food expenditure patterns among urban households in ibadan southwest local government area, oyo state, nigeria. journal humanities, social science and creative arts, 6(1), 46-56. awoyemi, c. (1981). character of nigerian agriculture. in news from central bank of nigeria, bullion, 3(4), 2. cbn (2006). central bank of nigeria statistical bulletin. chianu, j. n., & tsuji, h. (2004). missing link in sustainable food production in west africa. case of the savannas of northern nigeria. sustainable development, 2(2), 93-103 ezedinma, c. i. (1999). the effect of population pressure and gender on farm labour use in cassava producing zones of sub – saharan africa. africa journal of root and tuber crops, 3(2), 7-11. kareem, r. o. (2004). economic efficiency of fish farming in ogun state of nigeria. unpublished m. agric thesis, university of agriculture, abeokuta. pp. 38-40. olayemi, j. k. (1998). food security in nigeria. research report. no. 2 development policy centre, ibadan nigeria. okumadewa, f. (1997). poverty and home in nigeria measurement and strategies for reform. a paper presented at vision 2020, abuja, nigeria. olatunbosun, d. (2005). agricultural cassava revolution and economics as a political paradigm shift a paper presented at 2005 convocation lecture at the federal polytechnic ado ekiti. upton, m. (1987). african farm management. cambridge university press. cambridge. uk. pp. 400. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 23 physioeconomic poverty analysis of grade 1 employees of rawalpindi city, pakistan sabeen siddiqui assistant scientific officer; social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan zubair anwar principal scientific officer; social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan saira batool assistant scientific officer; social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan nusrat habib, sobia naheed and naheed zahra scientific officer; social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan abstract poverty though a universal phenomenon, is the worst challenge in the modern era, which is termed as the age of information and technology. the present study was designed to estimate the incidence of poverty for the grade i employees of rawalpindi city. determinants of poverty were explored by using probit model, which was significant in the determination of the poverty status of the household. following variables were used in the model; household size, education, experience, working individual, extra income and migration are the variables. for that objective, data from 150 household were collected through questionnaires. the results of the poverty indices showed that about twenty percent households were poor among grade 1 employees of rawalpindi city. the result of probit models indicated that having large household size, with no extra income and migrants were increasing the probability of being poor while educational attainment and experiences did not had significant effect. on the other hand working individuals and migration were decreasing the probability of being poor. keywords: rawalpindi, poverty, probit analysis, household size introduction 1 poverty is the phenomenon that humanity is bound to live with through its history. in the course of the documented history, it is cleared that hundreds of people living on earth are corresponding author’s name: sabeen siddiqui email address: sabeennarc@gmail.com unable to meet their livelihood. however, about for last hundred years the despondency of poverty is taken into account. at first it was thought that poverty only engulfed the developing and under developed countries. but it is now realized that this is the problem of whole world but the extent is more in developing and under developed world. more than 1.2 billion people – one in every five on earthsurvive on less than $1 a day. during asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:sabeennarc@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 23-29 24 the 1990’s the share of people suffering from extreme income poverty fell from 30 to 23 percent. but with a growing world population, the number fell by just 123 million – a small fraction of the progress needed to eliminate poverty, and excluding china, the number of extremely poor people actually increased by 28 million. (anonymous, 2003). poverty is extremely gigantic problem so with the passage of time different social scientist came up with different approaches to pin down the factors which enhance poverty. the malthus theory of population, the marxist theory of increasing misery in masses, the noe-classical theory of maximizing behavior, the keynesian theory of income and employment determination, and the various macro theorist of economic growth all represent direct responses to various perception of the principal economic and social problems of time. but all these theories are unable to give any hard and fast rule to eradicate or even reduce poverty at greater level (sachchidananda, 1984). the issue of poverty is as old as economic development. a significant quantitative research on poverty has been undertaken for many decades all over the world in general and in developing countries in particular. however the issue of urban poverty has not been addressed effectively. nevertheless urban poverty has until recently, been low on the agenda of development policy not only in the developing world but also in pakistan. the reason for this negligence is dominant perception of urban bias and there is need to counter this with a focus on rural development policy. the analysis of urban poverty is as necessary as the overall level of poverty in the country. there are many causes and determinants of urban poverty but distribution and management of economic and social resources in poverty reduction cannot be ignored (malik and sharif, 2005). it is internationally recognized that poverty reduction and governance both are interrelated. bad governance has made poverty reduction efforts ineffective (blaxall, 2000), eid (2000) and gupta et al. (1998), while poverty reduction projects provide fertile ground for corruption (woodhouse, 2001). the large proportion of work on poverty in pakistan has been targeted towards determining absolute levels and extent of poverty in rural / agrigarian economies in the attempt to identify the effects, if any, of the 1960\s “green revolution” on poverty levels and income disparities in those areas. it is true that poverty is higher in rural areas, but more than one quarter of urban household is also poor (qureshi, 2001). there is no question however, that the world’s future is an increasingly urban one. cities already account for 60 – 80 percent of the gnp in developing countries. they provide capital and labour markets for entrepreneurs at all levels of economic activity. of world’s urban population currently 2.6 billion people), 1.7 billion of them reside in developing nations, yet a third of today’s urban population, some 600 million people, don’t have the means to meet their basic needs. urban poverty indicators are typically influenced by the rate of growth of the economy, since they are linked to employment, a variable which is strongly associated with the rate of output expansion (sadiq, 1996). pakistan is a developing agricultural country. poverty in pakistan is an increasing social problem and represents the critical challenge. socially we divide our living areas in urban and rural sectors, so two broad socio-economic categories are; urban poverty and rural poverty. the focus of the study was urban poverty. urban areas account for one third of pakistan's population; one fifth of the urban population is considered to be poor; that makes nine million urban poor; they may be more, the number of urban poor could be anywhere in the range of 8 to 15 million. thus, pakistan should be ranking fourth in south and south east asia by the number of urban poor. rawalpindi is one of the major cities of pakistan which is not only important historically and culturally but also from the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 23-29 25 defense point of view. rawalpindi city, also known as pindi, has a history spread over several millenniums extending to the ancient times corresponding with the decaying period of buddhism to the invasions of the macedonians and then to the dawn of the muslims era, leading to british raj (wikipedia, 2006). after independence of 1947, rawalpindi has been the home of various political powers and important events that shaped the future of the country. rawalpindi has the long time honor of having army headquarter. with historical buildings and bazaars, vast parks and high hills and chilling winter and hot summers, rawalpindi has proven its status as the place with a unique experience. archaeologists believe that a distinct culture flourished on this plateau as far as back 3000 years, now it is rapidly developing. as mentioned before, rawalpindi is not an industrial city, so most of the people here earn their bread by doing government jobs. they are paid according to the government pay scales. for it government devised many grades which the people get according to their job responsibilities. the basic objectives of this study was to estimate the poverty among grade i employees of rawalpindi city, other objectives were as follows.  to examine the demographic characteristics and household composition of grade i employees of rawalpindi city.  to identify the determinants of poverty for the grade i employees of rawalpindi city.  to estimate the marginal effects of poverty of grade i employees of rawalpindi city. data and methodology compared to other cities of pakistan rawalpindi is not modern city. although all the basic facilities are available here, but the employment opportunities are very limited. a lot of work has been done on poverty before but no such research has been done particularly for focusing on grade i employees within rawalpindi city. the targeted population for this study was grade i (class four) government employs. this is the most vulnerable group of the society, therefore this study aims to pin point the poverty analysis in this group and the incidence of poverty might be more in this group as compared to others. data collection process and sample size data for this study was collected in rawalpindi city. in total one hundred and fifty grades-i (class four) government employees were interviewed by using a well structured questionnaire from the rawalpindi city. the main occupation of targeted population was mali, naib qasid, daftari, wardboy, aya, sweeper etc. questionnaire had different parts regarding the information about the demographic characteristics, household characteristics and composition, finally assets holdings source of income for the household. the technique of stratum random sampling was used to gather the desired information. first of all the whole rawalpindi city was divided into six sampling unit and then from each strata twenty five questionnaire were filled each respondent in each strata was selected randomly. the major constraints while collecting the data were as follows. foremost, it was not possible to visit grade i employs at household level, so it was decided to go to different offices, schools, colleges and hospitals to collect the relevant informations. before collecting any information we had to seek permission from the head of the institution. many of them were very cooperative and helpful, and they spare their employees even from their job responsibilities so that they can answer the questionnaire. some of them were reluctant to give permission but when the researcher explained the purpose of the research they showed their willingness. statistical analysis numerical operations are applied to all the variables (except poverty) that are asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 23-29 26 unconditional and their respective means and standard deviations have been calculated. to approach the problem under consideration that is probability for being in the category of poor and non-poor probit model is recommended. ( madala, 2001). the probit model is expressed as; prob [yi=1] = pi= (+xi)……………………………… (1) yi=1 if non-poor yi=0 otherwise xi is independent variable including one dummy for marital status, one for illiterate and one for migration. moreover, experience, experience square, household size, household size square and extra income are the continuous variables.  and  are estimated coefficients. for the further depth of our analysis we aim to estimate the marginal effects. for this purpose first we took the derivatives for the probabilities in each category. the marginal changes in the expected probability e[yx]/ x are equal to e[yx]/ x = (x) …………………. (2) where  is the corresponding probability density function. for probit model  is given by , the standard normal density function, where (x) = 1 exp (-1  (x) 2 )……(3) 2 2 iii results and discussion probit estimates for poverty analysis, probit estimates (table 1) were used to find the factors contributing towards poverty. the probability models provide an improvement over the decomposition exercise since they show the effect on poverty attributes to a change in a single characteristic of a household. among the explanatory variables some were continuous variables but for some variables dummies were used. dummies were for marital status, for illiterate and for migration. furthermore, experience, experience square household size, household size square and extra income were the continuous variables contributing to poverty and the extent of poverty in various segments of the society. when the data for the poor household was examined, it indicated a fair amount of variation among the household, but there were many characteristics which are common among them. the classification according to the estimated coefficient of household size showed that household size was an important indicator; it showed a possibility for being in the category of poor household when the household size increased to a particular number of individuals then it started contributing toward being in the non poor category. reason being, a household with many individuals the number of working individuals also increased. this finally formed an inverse parabola. in this data set the co-efficient of our household size was negative that showed that our results were according to the theoretical background. the value of household size was 1.0611 which was not significant, although the incidence of poverty increased 65% with the increase in household size but the in the estimated model it was insignificant. that shows there is negative probability between poverty and household size and these findings are in line with the work of malik and sharif (2005). the increase in poverty with the increasing size of the household is also observed in havinga et al. (1989). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 23-29 27 table 1: estimated results of probit model dependent variable: poverty observations : 150 variables coefficient z-statistics hhsize -1.0611** -2.77 hhsizesq 0.0591** 1.83 edu 0.3322 0.73 exp 0.1319** 1.72 expsq -0.0037* -1.6 workind 1.9751*** 4.42 extrainc 0.7097** 1.87 migration 0.2372 0.72 constant 5.3677** 2.41 notes: *, **, *** shows 10 percent, 5 percent, and 1 percent level of significant household size square was positively effecting for being in the category of non-poor the reason is that when the household size increases at first it increases the poverty but when the household size reaches to a certain number every member of the house start doing some income generating activities so it will reduce the incidence of poverty. the results clearly indicate that square of the household size decreases the probability by 6% for being in the category of poor household. that showed there was a positive correlation between household size square and poverty. malik (1996) also observed that the proportion of poor household in the total number of household rises up to some level and after that it started declining. larger families suffer more than smaller ones from severe poverty and poverty itself is a factor behind larger familiesa cause and effect relationship (zeinelabdin, 1996). a household is more likely to be poor if it has a large number of individuals (qureshi, 2001). the reason behind it is that the number of potential earner in the household increases. educational attainments influence the extent of poverty considerably. but the targeted population of this research was of grade i employs most of them were mali, naib qasid, ayi etc. education didn’t play any significant role in getting these jobs or we can say that it was not the job requirement of these occupations, but even than the results showed significant effect of education on poverty. the results clearly indicated that an educational attainment did not have significant results in probit model, but decreased the probability by 39% for being in the category of poor household, because if a person is educated than he can increase his income by doing any other income generating activity. although education greatly influence the incidence of poverty in havinga et al. (1989), zeinelabdin (1996), malik (1996), qureshi (2001), jamal (2005). but the designed study only taken into account the individuals of a particular group/ class that may not be representing the whole working/non working class. experience always increases the income which in turns decreases the poverty. there was a positive relation between experience and poverty. inverse u-shaped pattern was observed in the case of experience. seeing that, in the start of the career as the experience increased the earnings also increased, but as the time passed the situation became the other way round. increase in income due to increase in experience last for a particular point in time. after that even though the experience increases but the income starts declining, this shows a negative relationship between incidence of poverty and experience square. in our analysis experience is positively related whereas experience square is negatively related to the probability of being non-poor household. working individuals always decrease the poverty because as the number of earner increases the income of household increases asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 23-29 28 which will affect the poverty negatively. the same expected results are drawn in our probit model estimates. but havinga et al. (1989) have the opposite results showing that the number of earners doesn’t influence the extent of poverty. it is founded in kazi and sathar (1985) that when the household size keeps on increasing labour force participation rates would be greater and women and children as soon as they are old enough are pushed into working to supplement income. the number of earners had a significant and negative impact on the probability of being poor (qureshi, 2001). our probit model estimates showed that if a household is getting any extra income it helps to increase the probability of being in the nonpoor category. migration is also one of the variables in poverty determination. when a household migrated from some other place it had to face many problems. that is why the incidence of poverty is more in them as compare to the ones who had never migrated. the results of our model showed that migration was insignificant. marginal effects the marginal effects show the probability of being in some particular sector with given characteristics on average. table 2 presented the marginal effects of the urban poverty. almost all the estimated effects for the variables are significant at the conventional levels and have the expected signs as well. table 2: marginal effects variable dy/dx hhsize -0.1456 hhsizesq 0.0053 illit* 0.0252 exp 0.1192 expsq -0.00033 workind 0.1785 extrainc* 0.0509 migration* 0.0213 *dy/dx is for discrete change of dummy variables from 0 to1 on average, with an increase of one member in a household, the probability of that household to be considered as non-poor decreases 14 percentage points more. however it increases 0.5 percentage point if household size continues to increase on average. on the other hand education doesn’t have any significant effect, it only increases the probability of being non-poor, only 2 percentage point on average. the estimated effects of experience showed that on average as a person had more experience his probability increased 11 percentage point of being non-poor. while looking at the marginal effects of working individuals the effect is 17 percentage points on average. the marginal effect on average, of extra income was 5 percentage point, whereas of migration is 2 percentage point. conclusion and recommendation regardless, of the efforts made for the poverty determination, it is still questionable that whether the researchers are able to get the true picture of the poverty in the country. the present study was also an effort to make some contribution for the vast literature available on poverty. the study was designed to estimate the incidence of poverty for the grade i employs of rawalpindi city. based on the judgment, that starvation and hunger are no longer common phenomenon in pakistan. so poverty is viewed as a relative concept. therefore, operationalize the concept of poverty by using poverty line. determinants of poverty were explored by using probit model, which is significant in the determination of the poverty status of the household. following variables were used in the model; household size, education, experience, working individual, extra income and migration are the variables. the researcher has given the following policy options on which action could be taken.  there is need of proper planning and government should focus on town planning in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 23-29 29 such a way that maximum people get the benefits of facilities available.  government should take steps for the betterment of people living below the poverty line with the help of micro financing.  government should help non government organization to identify households living below the poverty line.  people should given incentives with less household size. references blaxall, j. (2000). governance and poverty. paper presented at the joint workshop on poverty reduction strategies in mongolia, the world bank, ulan bator, mongolia. eid, u. (2000). good governance for poverty reduction. paper presented at the asian development bank seminar on the new social policy and poverty agenda for asia and the pacific, chiang mai, thailand. gupta, s., hamid d., & rosa alonso-terne (1998). does corruption affect income inequality and poverty? imf working paper no. 98/76, may, international monetary fund, washington, d.c. havinga, i. c., f. w. hannappel., a. s. louter and w. a. v. d. andel (1989). poverty in pakistan 1984-1985. pdr, 28(4): 851-869. anonymous (2003). human development report: millennium development goals, a compact among the nations to end human poverty. n. y. oxford, oxford university press. jamal, h. (2005). in search of poverty predicators: the case of urban and rural pakistan. the pakistan development review, 44(1), 37-55. kazi, s., & z. sathar, a., (1985). differences in household characteristics by income distribution in pakistan. pakistan development review, 24, 657667. maddala, g. s. (2001). introduction to econometrics iii rd edition john wiley and sons. malik s. (1996). determinants of rural poverty in pakistan: a micro study. the pakistan development review, 35(2), 171-187. malik, s., & sharif, c. i. (2005). urban poverty in pakistan: a case study of multan city. journal of research (humanities), 24, 119-140. qureshi s. k., & arif, g. m. (2001). profile of poverty in pakistan. mimap technical paper series, no. 5, pakistan institute of development economics. sachchidananda (1984). reaching the rural poor. journal of social and economic studies new series, 1(1), 79-92. sadiq, n. (1996). changing places, population, development and urban future. unfpa. woodhouse, andrea (2001). fighting corruption in kdp. the world bank, jakarta. wikipedia, (2006). accessed at www.wikipedia.com zein-elabdin, e. (1996). development, gender and the environment: theoretical or contextual link. journal of economic issues, 30(4), 929-946. http://www.wikipedia.com/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 136 cost and benefit analysis of adoption of climate change adaptation options among rural rice farmers in nepal niranjan devkotaa*, ram kumar phuyalb, durga lal shresthac a* doctoral candidate in economics, tribhuvan university, kritipur, kathmandu, nepal. bassociate professor, center for economic development and administration, tribhuvan university, nepal. cprofessor of economics, tribhuvan university, nepal. *email address: niranjandevkota@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 05-jan-2018 accepted: 06-feb-2018 online available: 22-feb2018 keywords: climate change, adaptation options, cost benefit analysis, rural rice farmers, nepal abstract this paper estimates cost and benefit of adoption of climate change adaptation options available to the rural rice farmers of nepal. multistage sampling technique was used to source respondents for the study and used structured questionnaire techniques to collect data from 773 households from seven districts 3 from terai and 4 from hilly region of nepal. the result revealed that there are 13 major adaptation options rice farmers practice in order to protect themselves from climatic risk. among the given adaptation options, the first three costly adaptation options are the alternative irrigation practice which incurred average cost of us $ 69.95 (us$ 1 = 102.84 nepalese rupees), followed by denser plantation of local seeds ($ 20.69) and using climate smart varieties ($ 18.06). nearby 88% farmers practiced more than one adaptation strategies on the same farm with the aim of reducing the effect of extreme climatic conditions. total cost and revenue revealed that per unit total cost ranges from $ 28.34 to $ 32.79 whereas per unit total revenue ranges $ 33.4 to $ 49.02. surprisingly, it is observed that farmers who do not adopt any adaptation options are able to received highest income from per unit production. contribution/ originality this paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on the adoption of climate change adaptation options among rural farmers from the calculation of the cost and benefit of the adoption of several climate change adaptation options in the case of nepalese rural rice farmers. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.7/1005.7.136.148 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: niranjan devkota, ram kumar phuyal and durga lal shrestha (2017). cost and benefit analysis of adoption of climate change adaptation options among rural rice farmers in nepal. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7), 136-148. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 7(2017): 136-148 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:niranjandevkota@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.5/1005.5.92.101 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 136-138 137 1. introduction estimation of the adaptation cost of climate change started only after 1990s (fankhauser, 2010) though the objective of this is only to refine understanding of climate change not to access adaptation costs per se (kavikumar et al., 2010). then after, in many literatures, the adaptation costs are defined as the expected value of avoiding climate damage in the future but they are conditional upon some future state of socioeconomic vulnerability (levina and tirpak, 2006; kavikumar et al., 2010). cost of climate change adaptation means the cost that is required for adapting climate change i.e. the cost of planning, preparation for, facilitating and implementing adaptation measures including transitional costs whereas the adaptation benefits include the avoided damage costs or the accrued advantages following adaptation and implementation measures (levina and tirpak, 2006; markandya and watkiss, 2009; mugula et al., 2015). ipcc (2007) mentioned that such benefit as the positive externalities from the successful adaptation. literature shows the cost of adaptation in many dimensions and found the total adaptation cost. bahinipati (2011) has separated adaptation costs as first generation study who shared a common methodology for calculating the adaptation cost, first developed by the world bank and second generation study adaptation cost by sectors. five sectors-agriculture, water, human health, coastal zone and infrastructure have been identified under second generation studies. he further argued, the first generation studies estimate adaptation costs without mention adaptation cost. agrawala and frankhusher (2008) in their study estimate the cost of adaptation as follows; world bank (2006) 9 to 40 billion us $/year; stern (2006) 4 to 37 billion us $/year, oxfam (2007) at least 50 billion us $/year in present scenario and undp (2007) 86 to 109 billion us $/year by 2015. similarly, the second generation studies identified the sector wise adaptation costs as; unfccc (2007) 49 to 171 billion us$ in 2030 of which developed nation requires 22 to 104 billion us$ and developing nation required 27 67 billion us$ in 2030. agriculture sector required 14 billion us$ in 2030 7 billion in developement and 7 billion in developing countries. these estimates are considered as incomplete (bahinipati, 2011). in nepalese context, prasai (2010) roughly estimates $12 million (nrs 951 million) adaptation cost for nepalese agriculture. pant (2011) divided adaptation cost of agriculture into cost of behavioral adaptation, changes in farming management practices, technological adaptation and subset of adaptation costs that encompass compliance to policy options. in other sides, world bank (2010) and mugula et al. (2015) mentioned the benefits of climate change adaptation in agriculture are increase in productivity, greater capacity to maintain diversified assets, less stress on social relationship and reduce dread not all of which reduce so readily into measuring equivalence. agrawala and frankhusher (2008) pointed that adaptation is inherently local problems, unlike mitigation which is a global problem. the benefits of mitigation are shared through international boundaries whereas the costs are not. it indicates that the adaptation is local and costs and benefits of adaptation fall largely to each private actor and local government (mendelsohn, 2012). therefore, adapting farmer’s own farm to climate change helps the farmer because the benefits are local which local farmers can captured with adaptation. for the successful adaptation, a process of social, institutional, and organizational learning and change should be undertaken ideally within a comprehensive and iterative framework. assessing cost and benefit of the adaptation options is an important part of this process (unfccc, 2010). there are several studies which have tried to capture adaptation strategies. however, it is restricted to single adaptation strategies. kurukulasuriya and mendelsohn (2006) show how climate affects crop choice and kurukulasuriya and mendelsohn (2007) show how climate affects the choice of irrigation in africa, animal husbandry in africa by seo and mendelshon (2008), crop switching as a strategy for adaptation to climate change by kurukulasuriya and mendelshon (2008), choice of irrigation and crop by wang et al. (2008). but, fankhauser (2010) remarked that the knowledge of adaptation costs and benefits at the sectoral level including agriculture was still fairy limit. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 136-138 138 more recent studies are found on climate change adaptation (esp. private) on economics focusing agriculture. several studies including enete et al. (2011), mohammed et al. (2013), shongwe et al. (2014), mugula et al. (2015) analyze cost and benefit of major strategies practice by the crop farmers to cope with climate change. still a little literature is available on the cost and benefit of adoption of climate change adaptation options in south asian region including nepal. pant (2011) mentioned it is not clear what cost the farmers face and benefit received as the impact of the climate change among the rural rice farmers. it left knowledge gap in the assessment of the cost and benefits of adaptation to climate change adaptation options for rice production in nepal. therefore, this study aims to contribute in addressing this research gap. understanding the costs and benefits of climate change adaptation in agriculture is important for mobilizing support and providing timely resource from institution to improve resilience and adaptive capacity (sova et al., 2012; mugula et al., 2015). 2. method of the study 2.1. theoretical framework farmers aim to maximize net revenue (or profit) from farm production subject to exogenous factors and conditions (mendelsohn et al., 1994; wang et al., 2008). net crop revenue is defined as total revenue less the total cost of production divided by the amount of land cultivated. total costs include both fixed and variable costs such as fertilizer, seed, irrigation, labor, pesticides and machinery costs. net revenue is a measure of returns per unit of land for each farm household. the use of net revenue is justified on the basis that it is consistent with crop yield that indicates crop productivity or farm profitability. in an economy where crop agriculture is the major livelihood activity, the direct impact of climate change and extreme climate events are manifested in the form of a decline in crop production through a reduction in cultivated area and/or crop yield (paul, 1998; ipcc, 2007; challinor and wheeler, 2008; hisali et al., 2011). this, ultimately, reduces a farm’s net revenue. a significant percentage of production loss is directly caused by climate change and extreme events such as droughts, floods and cyclones. ipcc (2007) predicted a 30% crop yield loss in south asia by 2050 due to climate change. according to the proponents of the structural–political economy approach of vulnerability theory, production losses of farming communities due to climate related extreme events will vary depending on their socio-demographic and farm characteristics and institutional factors (watts, 1983; ernel and peet, 1989; dreze and sen, 1989). in this regard, adaptation can be taken in order to minimize the harm or maximize the gains from weather variability and climate change. in the same vein, efficient adaptations are the set of adaptations that maximize net benefits (mendelsohn, 2000). but, every adaptation is not advantageous for farmers to adapt, only the selected adaptations whose benefits exceed costs are advantageous and worthwhile (pant, 2011). such adaptations which maximize benefits should be encouraged. besides, how much change is advantageous is depends upon where adaptation done. to know this, an economic analysis is necessary to determine whether or not it is advantageous doing any adaptation at all. this, further, can also be used to prioritize or choose most appropriate adaptation options. to measure cost benefit analysis focuses on the quantitative evaluation of climate change impacts on crops and allows for estimation of the net benefits of different adaptation options and is used to assess adaptation options when efficiency is the only decision making criteria (shongwe et al., 2013). this involves calculating and comparing all the costs and benefits expressed in monetary terms (bruin et al., 2014). this approach identifies the most economic adaptation strategy and allows ranking all the proposed strategies based on economic efficiency. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 136-138 139 2.2. the benchmark models the cost benefit analysis focuses on the quantitative evaluation of climate change impacts on crops and allows for estimation of the net benefits of different adaptation options and is used to assess adaptation options when efficiency is the only decision making criteria (unfccc, 2010; shongwe et al., 2013). this involves calculating and comparing all the costs and benefits expressed in monetary terms (bruin et al., 2014). this approach identifies the most economic adaptation strategy and allows ranking all the proposed strategies based on economic efficiency as shongwe et al. (2014) mentioned in their work. net present value (npv) are prefer because they discount the future benefits to present values, whilst internal rate of returns (irr) are used to evaluate the most economic adaptation strategy. this study will conduct cost benefit analysis of adaptation options to climate change. it involves calculation and comparisons of all costs and benefits that has been expressed in monetary terms; helps to inform decision making about the efficiency of different adaptation investment and hence provide the basis for prioritizing possible cost efficient adaptation measures (unfccc, 2010). following shongwe et al. (2014), this can be done by; i. identifying the adaptation strategies employed in the communities. ii. for each adaptation strategy, the total costs incurred when using the strategy and benefits were identified and to capture the net benefit for the particular adaptation strategy. nb = ∑tb ∑tc ……………………… (1) where, nb represents the net benefits tb represents the total benefits tc represents the total costs for adaptations that do not have direct costs and benefits, the shadow pricing and opportunity costs have been used to quantify computed. the npv are computed as: npv = ∑ bt−ct (1+i)t n t=0 ……………………… (2) where; npv = net present value in year t b = total benefits in year t c = total costs in year t i= discount rate (1 + i)t = discount factor for year t t = time horizon. the adaptation strategy with the positive and highest npv is the most economic and efficient. the npv has been computed based on per hectare average return. bcr is computed to understand the profit status of the adoption of adaptation options. this study conducted cost benefit analysis of adaptation decision of rice farmers to cope with changing climate. 2.3. study area and data this study was done in 7 districts that ranges from hill to terai belt of nepal. this study excludes mountain belt since rice cultivation practice on mountain belt is very rare and typically different that the study area. in this study 3 study districts come from terai belt and 4 comes from hilly belt. the reason behind choosing 7 districts is one district from each state. the study district ilam (hill) is located in eastern part of the country; whereas sinhdhuli (hill) and bara (terai) is located in central part of the country. similarly, syangja (hill) is located in western part and dang (terai) and surkhet asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 136-138 140 (hill) is located in the far western part of the country. lastly, kailali (terai) is located in the farwestern part of the country. to investigate the farm-level adaptation practice by rice farmers throughout the country, the selection of study districts were made based on rice pocket area from different agro ecological zones regardless of cropping patterns, irrigation networks and climate prone zone abid et al. (2015). to select the study sites and sample farm households in the study area, a multi-stage sampling technique was used. in the first stage, the seven districts of nepal, one each from the state, were randomly selected as the overall study area. telephone inquiry was made to each district agriculture office in order to collect the rice pocket area, most rice cultivate area, within the district. in the second stage, 14 vdcs, two from each district, were selected on rice pocket area. further telephone inquiry was made to each vdc secretary and social mobilizer in order cross-check the given information from district agriculture office. in the third stage, 28 rice pocket wards, two wards from each vdc, based on the information provided by vdc secretary and social mobilizer, were selected. in the fourth stage, 28 farmers were selected from each ward as per the convenience1 basis. during our field visit, we found the information provided was correct and the selected vdcs are the best rice pocket vdcs2 of the district. we excluded the urban cities and vdcs with the assumption that the cities and urban vdcs may have influence with market based adaptation. selecting vdcs therefore have an advantage of less influence by such market driven adoption which is the primary reason to select vdc as a study area. table 1 shows the study district and the selected households. the survey was conducted between january and february in 2017. for the data collection, total 773 farmers were interviewed irrespective of gender, farm size or tenancy status through a farm household survey. interviews were conducted for the crop year 2016 since main season rice cultivation in nepal falls on june/july to october/november of each year. a fully structured questionnaire was used to gather information on socioeconomic characteristics, crop and domestic livestock management, land tenure, detail of farm inputs and outputs, access to various institutional services, current and past knowledge of climate change, current adaptation measures undertaken and limitations to adaptation. prior to the study, a pretesting of the questionnaire was performed to avoid missing any important information. the enumerators received field training about the study objectives and farm household survey. 3. result and discussion 3.1. adoption of adaptation strategies farmers at the present situations adopts various adaptation options to cope with the changing climate they are perceived (mohammed et al., 2013; shongwe et al., 2014). adaptation plays a key role in determining the economic and social cost of climate change as its cost estimation is vital to gear up the climate talk and other activities (sarkar et al., 2012). several adaptation options are applied by the farmers in the study area. the common adaptation practice and the average adaptation costs bared by the farmers in order to adopt the adaptation options available to them are discussed in table 1. the most common adaptation practice made by the rice farmers in nepal are increase use of chemical fertilizer (60.93%), use of climate smart verities (49.29%) and change in nursery date (32.08%). similarly, the most costly adaptation options are change in irrigation practice (nrs 7914.35), denser plantation of local seeds (nrs 2128.36) and using climate smart varieties (nrs 1857.15). it indicates that farmers are using cheapest measures as far as possible. 1 this study found difficulties to get the selected farmers in the first day since most of the farmers are not available in their house during the enumerators present at the area which turn the selection procedure as per the sampling with the availability of the farmers in their home at the time of data collection. however, caution was taken for the distance of household for each questionnaire. after every hh questionnaire filled, few surrounding houses are left for the sake of coverage entire study area. 2 in each selected ward, rice farm households contain more than 90% of the respondents. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 136-138 141 table 1: common adaptation practice made by the rice farmers (n = 773) adaptation strategy practiced frequency percentage average cost number of respondent npv bcr change in rice varieties 381 49.29 976.82 1.3 denser plantation of local seeds 102 13.20 1857.15 133 1112.38 1.35 selecting short duration crop varieties 232 30.01 2128.36 52 1218.6 1.37 rice crop switching 53 6.86 1345.06 1.48 increasing use of chemical fertilizer, pesticides, insecticides 471 60.93 1643.04 48 898.46 1.29 starting/increasing use of vitamins 123 15.91 1840.43 195 1020.28 1.41 changing size of land under cultivation 33 4.27 1208.66 1.52 off farm activities 26 3.36 1491.72 1.56 change in nursery date 248 32.08 1053.02 43 1087.46 1.33 changing planting date 220 28.46 na 994.25 1.3 build water harvesting system 4 0.52 na 489.33 1.2 change in irrigation practice 171 22.12 7914.35 117 418.75 1.14 source: researcher’s calculation from survey data, 2017 every adaptation strategies were observed as per its cost for the production of rice production. farmers are always intended to know the best adaptation strategies among the available strategies in order to have better profit. it is observed that per unit net profit is higher with the strategies such as off-farm activities, rice-crop switching, selection of short duration rice verities and change size of land under cultivation. average per unit npv is observed with the most commonly practiced adaptation options such as change in rice verities, increase in use of chemical fertilizer and change in nursery and planting date. it is also observed that irrigation with alternative sources gives very less net profit to the farmers. bcr for entire adaptation options is positive indicates that using adaptation options is helping farmers to grow more production and, hence, profit. 3.2. intensity of use of adaptation strategies intensity of use of adaptation strategies was measured by the number of adaptation strategy (ies) practiced by respondents on their rice field. farmers are not restricted with single adaptation options rather they practice multiple adaptation strategies as it revealed that 88% of the rice farmers practice more than one adaptation strategies on the same farm with the aim of reducing the effect of extreme climate condition. similarly, 21.17% practiced five strategies, 16.90% practice four strategies, 16.37% practiced two adaptation strategies and 11.9% practice only one adaptation strategy. a dismal 0.53% and 0.18% of the respondents practiced seven and eight adaptation strategies respectively. this result corroborated the previous findings of mohammed et al. (2013) who observed that farmers practiced adaptation strategies in complementary way rather than taking them as an independent strategy. cost and returns are another important component to know how many adaptation strategies is more suitable famers as per the benefit they received from such practices. total land holding is very less with the farmers who do not adopt any adaptation strategies which indicate that small size land asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 136-138 142 holding farmers are the one who adopt less compare to large size land holding. it is also observed that both npv and bcr of using no adaptation options strategies are higher among other intensity of adaptation options. similarly, for every adaptation options used by the farmers npv is positive and bcr is greater than 1 that indicates farmers are able to earn profit for all the adaptation options they use for their land to protect climate anomalies. it means, the available adaptation options are profitable to the rice farmers. the table 2 shows the cost and returns of adaptation strategies based in their intensity of practice. table 2: net present value and benefit cost ration of intensity of practice intensity of adaptation practice no. of farmers average land holding npv bcr 0 215 11.76 1777.04 1.54 1 67 19.64 955.27 1.29 2 92 27.1 1232.37 1.39 3 127 21.41 892.24 1.29 4 95 21.31 713.03 1.23 5 119 16.57 1247.53 1.37 6 58 19.72 520.18 1.18 source: researcher’s calculation from survey data, 2017 table above shows that farmers who do not adopt have highest average net profit of nrs. 1777. with the farmers who adopt several adaptation options, the farmers who practice five adaptation strategies have highest average net profit of nrs 1247.43 per kattha followed by the farmers who practice two adaptation strategies i.e. nrs 1232.37 per kattha. respondents who practices one, three, four and six adaptation strategies had net profit of nrs 955.27; nrs 892.24; nrs 713.03 and nrs 520.18 per kattha respectively. here too, bcr is more than 1 for every adaptation practice pattern, it indicates farmers will be in profit for any types of adaptation but higher with no adaptation at all. it is also found that most of the respondent who has adopted adaptation options practices multiple adaptation rather than only a single adaptation options and net profit is also shows higher to such multiple adaptation practice rice farmers. farmers mentioned that the major causes of adoption of available adaptation options are climate change (59%), easy access to market (13%) and improvement in technology (6%). such adaptation options are helpful to them to cope from the changing climate. 3.3. cost benefit analysis of climate change adaptation by rice farmers our study divide labor input into three phases land preparation and seed showing, wedding and dressing and harvesting and grain separation. therefore, land preparation and seed showing costs basically cover the labor costs for first plowing, pudding, manure, nursery bed preparation and rice transplant. similarly, wedding and dressing costs include labor costs for wedding and top dressing. likewise expenses such as labor costs for harvesting including transportation; threshing and drying are calculated under harvesting and grain separation. like labor input, non-labor input is equally important sources of input in order to cultivate better rice production. that indicates various nonlabors input such as seeds, organic fertilizer, manure, pesticides and herbesticides and chemical fertilizer mainly urea, potash and phosphorous are also equally required for rice production. on the revenue part, the output is rice grain and straw as a by-product. the overall revenue received from both production and by product is calculated. we measure per unit (i.e. per kattha) cost and revenue from of total respondent, responded from terai and hill separately. similarly, all these respondents are further subdivided into adopter and non-adopter as per the basis of adaptation options adopted for the rice production process or not. table 3 shows the cost and revenue status of all the mentioned rice farmers. the overall land use by the farmers are 18.93 kattha which is classified by 20.76 kattha use by farmers who has been asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 136-138 143 adopted different adaptation strategies and 12.09 kattha from those farmers who have not adopted any strategies yet. it indicates that rice farmers’ who adopt poses more land compared to non-adopter rice farmers. similarly, farmers’ from terai region holds average land of 29.23 kattha, approx. three times more, for rice production compared to 10.10 kattha from the hilly farmers. per unit cost of land preparation and showing shows the first land preparation to plantation stage. the cost includes labor, bullock and tractor cost as per farmers applied for their land. this study finds the overall land preparation and showing cost is nrs 1213.89 whereas such cost is nrs 1219.01 for farmers who adopt various adaptation strategies and nrs 1200.24 for non-adopter farmers. it indicates farmers who adopt various adaptation options require more cost for land preparation and showing compared to the farmers who cultivate traditional rice crops with similar pattern. such high price for farmers who adopt is found in the case of all the rice farming region which shows every region follows similar pattern in terms of land preparation and showing that increase costs to the farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 136-138 144 table 3: per unit cost and benefit analysis of climate change adaptation heading cost benefit analysis of total respondent cost benefit analysis of terai region cost benefit analysis of hilly region total (n=773) adapter (n=562) non adapter (n=211) total (n=335) adopter (n=317) non adopter (n=18) total (n=438) adopter (n=245) non adopter (n=193) total land 18.39 20.76 12.09 29.23 29.18 30.17 10.10 9.87 10.40 per unit cost of land preparation and showing 1213.89 1219.01 1200.24 1017.26 1025.90 865.12 1364.27 1468.87 1231.49 per unit weeding and dressing 451.58 456.18 439.32 381.88 393.43 178.48 504.89 537.37 463.64 per unit harvesting and grain seperation 767.23 754.64 800.76 561.44 572.36 369.15 924.62 990.49 841.01 per unit non-labor cost 756.14 762.73 738.56 734.55 745.86 535.39 772.65 784.57 757.51 per unit production income 3601.21 3492.95 3889.59 2911.58 2929.26 2600.15 4128.67 4222.28 4009.85 per unit income of by product 786.01 691.88 1036.74 354.18 355.91 323.64 1116.30 1126.57 1103.25 total per unit cost (i.e. per kattha) 3188.84 3192.56 3178.88 2695.13 2737.55 1948.14 3566.43 3781.3 3293.65 total per unit revenue (i.e. per kattha) 4387.22 4184.83 4926.33 3265.76 3285.17 2923.79 5244.97 5348.85 5113.1 npv 1198.40 992.26 1747.45 570.63 1678.54 547.64 975.64 1567.55 1819.43 bcr 1.38 1.31 1.55 1.21 1.47 1.20 1.50 1.41 1.55 source: researcher’s calculation from survey data, 2017 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 136-138 145 weeding and dressing also shows more cost per unit is required for the farmers who adopt several adaptation options compared to non-adopter farmers. our calculation shows overall farmers from entire region requires labor cost of nrs 451.58 for weeding and dressing while farmers from terai region and hilly region requires nrs 381.88 and nrs 504.89 per kattha respectively. cost of weeding in hilly region is more than terai region because rice farmers at terai region mostly use chemical fertilizer and pesticides instead of weeding. harvesting and grain separation is another component that requires human labor and achine. the average harvesting and grain separation cost is nrs 767.23 per kattha. such harvesting cost is lower in terai region i.e. nrs 561.44 to the hilly region i.e. nrs 924.00 per kattha. this difference can be attributed to the mechanization. farmers from terai region mainly use tractor and threshers to separate grain that comparatively takes lower time than the manual work made by the hilly farmers. hand operating threshers are available in some area of hilly region but such thresher required large number of manpower. similarly, the overall cost of harvesting and grain separation is lower to the farmers who adopt in both regions. farmers during survey revealed that rice straw is short for hyv varieties that reduce both harvesting time and cost of grain separation. but in separate data, cost of harvesting and grain separation for farmers who adopts are more for both regions, it may be the impact of heterogeneity in number of respondent lies in the both category. the overall non-labor cost which is the comprises of seeds, manure, pesticides and fertilizer that consists urea, potash and dap, are nrs 756.14 per kattha which is measured nrs 762.73 per kattha for farmers who adopt various adaptation measures and nrs 738.56 per kattha for those farmers who have not adopted yet. such cost is found more for hilly farmers than the farmers belong to terai region. it is because terai region has very easy facility of seeds and fertilizer along with cheapest labor for per day work compared to hilly area. it is also revealed that the overall non-labor cost is high for the farmers who adopt in comparison to the farmers who does not adopt in both region. though there are many costs for rice production, its revenue can be generating only from two things that is product (rice grains) and by-product (straw). it is calculated that the overall income from per kattha rice yield is nrs 3601.21 where income of the farmers who adopt adaptation options are nrs 3492.95 per kattha compared to nrs 3889.59 per kattha of non-adopter farmers. it is seems surprising result that non-adopter rice farmers are in more benefit from the production results compared to the adopter rice farmers. farmers, during survey mentioned that they are not ending rice of hyv seeds and sell it in lower price. also, they mentioned that such product is highly pest attractive and not suitable to store for longer period whereas the traditional seed has quality of rice and last longer and cost high. this is also responsible to increase in income level of non-adopter farmers. similar to income, overall by-product income is high to the farmers who do not adaptation options compared to those farmers who adopt. during interview farmers argued that small and shorter straw which results low income from by-product of adopted seeds. the overall cost per kattha is measured nrs 3188.84 which is more with farmers who adopted several adaptation options i.e. nrs 3192 in comparison to the farmers who does not adopt i.e. nrs 3178 per kattha. such cost is lower in terai region compared to hilly region for both adopted and non-adopted farmers. it shows farmers who adopt bears more cost as per their counterparts in both regions. similar to cost, the overall per unit benefit is 4382.22 per kattha where non-adopters rice farmers are able to have (received) high revenue from farmers who adapt adaptation options. but in separate data of terai and hill revenue received by rice farmers who adopt is more than the farmers who does not adopt. net profit of farmers who does not adopt any adaptation options are high compared to non-adopters rice farmers. the overall profit ratio is double for entire survey but such ratio is narrower with the farmers in hilly region. however, it can be conclude that non-adapter farmers have leads more profit to adaptation as it reduce input cost. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 136-138 146 farmers were also asked for the opportunity cost of their land. 71% farmers opined that they have no alternatives of the rice farming and 29% of the farmers mentioned that they can adopt several alternative crops. farmers argued cereal crops – maize; cash crops like lentils, sugarcane, mustard, asparagus and fruits like banana, medicinal herbs and so on. similarly, most of the land if farmers will provide it to the lease will receive half of the product. 4. concluding remarks even though farmers practice adaptation options and intensity of such adaptation is more than one strategy on the same farm, farmers are using cheapest measures as far as possible. total cost and revenue calculation revealed that per unit total cost ranges from nrs 2914.95 to nrs 3372.17 whereas per unit total revenue ranges nrs 3435.13 to nrs 5041.76. surprisingly, it is observed that farmers who do not adopt any adaptation options are able to received highest income from per unit production. one reason could be the no cost for adaptation options. for the farmers who used adaptation options shows that the value of npv and bcr is greater than 1 for every adaptation options used indicates farmers are able to earn profit for all the adaptation options they use for their land to protect climate anomalies. farmers mentioned that the major causes of adoption of available adaptation options are climate change (59%), easy access to market (13%) and improvement in technology (6%). such adaptation options are helpful to them to cope from the changing climate. our study also revealed farmers’ adaptation strategies differs with the adaptation options and the knowledge they perceived regarding such adaptation options. therefore, government policy should target improving this significant determinants to boost farmers adaptation and hence to reduce vulnerability. focusing on cost of adaptation options is advantage. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall 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(p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 5(2)2015, www.aessweb.com 53 technical and economic efficiency of rice production in the kou valley (burkina faso): stochastic frontier approach souleymane ouedraogo institute of environment and agricultural research (inera), 01 bp 476 03 ouagadougou 01, burkina faso abstract the present paper seeks to deal with the issue of technical and economic efficiency of rice producers in the kou valley, located in the region of the high basins in the western part of burkina faso. the stochastic frontier approach was used to estimate the production function, from a cobbdouglas stochastic frontier function and its dual which allow the estimation of the technical, allocative and economic efficiencies. the determinants of efficiency were simultaneously assessed along with the frontier functions through the frontier 4.1 software. the data used herein are from a survey encompassing 130 rice producers, randomly chosen. results show that farm size, fertilizer used, years of experience and literacy are the explicative factors of rice production in the kou valley. the costs of the different production factors significantly contribute to explain the total production cost, and that is in concordance with the economic theory. the technical, allocative and economic efficiencies of producers are, on average, 80.15%, 92.7% and 74.43% respectively. a 25% improvement of rice production is possible if producers optimize their economic efficiency. keywords: technical efficiency, allocative efficiency, economic efficiency, rice, kou valley, burkina faso 1. introduction 1 among the food products, rice has continued to be the most important cereal in term of consumption by more than 2.6 billion people in the world. the contribution to global production indicates 92% from asia, 5% from america and west indies, and 3% from africa. africa meets roughly 10% of the domestic demand, subsequently absorbing 1/3 of global imports. burkina faso is no exception. local rice production meets about 40% of domestic demand for rice. the deficit has to be met with ever growing imports (alliance, 2010). around 89 million dollars were spent from the national budget in 2011 and 105 million dollars in 2012. the cost burden of these imports brought the country to support special measures to boost local productivity so as to enable food self-sufficiency. given the scarcity of the means of production, an assessment of the impact of producers’ efforts to increase production is necessary in order to enable an efficient implementation of local productivity improvement policies. the present paper proposes an analysis of technical, allocative and economic efficiency of rice producers of the kou valley in burkina faso. a strong emphasis is put on production and cost corresponding author’s email address: kouedsouley144@outlook.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kouedsouley144@outlook.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 53-63 54 function of rice productive input, economical level of efficiency of producers, and finally, the significant determinants that influence this level of efficiency. 2. methodology 2.1. study area the target area is located in the west of burkina faso. it is the agricultural region per excellence with regard to soil fertility in addition to abundant rainfall. this area is part of the government's targeted regions to implement sustainable rice production. the kou valley (vdk), located in the houet province has an average rainfall above 800 mm which is sufficient enough for rice production activities. rice production is inextricably dependent on water availability. the vdk has a high water potentials from the kou river, which enables intensive rice production through double annual production cycles. the choice of this area has also been motivated by the important rice production in the region (23% of the country rice farms, 46% of national rice production), the years of experience in rice farming at the vdk (40 years of experience), and the availability of supportive facilities as well as technical partnership able to consolidate the benefits from rice farming. 2.2. data collection data were collected using statistical survey conducted among rice producers in the kou valley. a sample of 130 farm owners was randomly selected out of the eight (8) rice farmers’ cooperatives of the vdk. 10% of owners from each cooperative were selected. the study also encompasses secondary sources of data in addition to survey data. these secondary data were sourced from literature review and statistics obtained from the "direction générale de la promotion de l’economie rurale" which is the rural economy directorate. 2.3. conceptual framework 2.3.1. efficiency concept in theory, the concept of efficiency refers to two key concepts: technical efficiency and allocative efficiency.  the first concept refers to the productive input mix. in that sense, a producer is said to be technically efficient when considering a set of factors and inputs, it is impossible to increase the quantity of a product without increasing the factor aspect or decrease the quantity of another product. for the same level of production, the most technically efficient producer is the one that uses less input.  the second concept is known as price efficiency, as faced by the producer in terms of economic optimisation performance (cost reduction, profit maximisation.). for example, a producer is said to be allocatively efficient when given a certain level of production, the production cost is kept to a minimum. producer who is both technically and allocatively efficient is said to be economically efficient. he maximises on profit. in other words, his profit is maximized because he equalizes the marginal cost of production for each input to its market price. according to traditional microeconomic theory, studies on technical or economic efficiency are irrelevant, given the fact that the producer is supposed to be rational and a profit maximizer. as a result, the producer always appears to be either on production frontier or cost frontier. in real life, it is quite the opposite as demonstrated by several studies. in fact, producers in general never stand either on production frontier or cost frontier as experience shows. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 53-63 55 several empirical studies that were subsequently conducted across various activities domains and throughout continents to assess the exact level of efficiency of producers (thiam et al., 2001) 2.3.2. efficiency estimation methods the measurement of efficiency first appeared in the work of koopmans (1951) related to production analysis, and debreu (1951) who introduced resource utilisation coefficient. farrell (1957) has established that the efficiency of a farm can be measured and thus submitted for the first time a radical measurement method of efficiency frontier based on the observation of real production situations. according to farrell, technical efficiency is used to measure the decision making about the quantity of inputs used in the production process, when their proportions are given. the price efficiency or allocative efficiency is used to measure the firm’s decision making about the different inputs proportions in comparison to the admittedly competitive market price. in theory, a production process is considered to be allocatively efficient if the marginal rate of substitution between each pair of inputs is equal to their proportional prices. economic efficiency is the product of both technical efficiency and price efficiency. bravo et al. (1997) found that this is related the capability for a firm to produce a predetermined output at minimum cost for a given technology set. however, across years, the methodology as developed by farrell has known a larger utilization leading to some major improvement. from those major changes, the stochastic model was developed, allowing to measure for the first time technical, allocative and economic efficiency, using maximum likelihood measurement method. aigner et al. (1977), meeusen and van (1977) were among the first to develop the stochastic frontier production function. aigner et al. (1977) extended this analysis method to agriculture in the united state (us). battese and corra (1977) applied this method to analyse a pastoral zone in eastern australia. meeusen and van (1977) extended this method to analyse 10 manufacturing industries in france. and more recently, empirical analyses were conducted by battese and coelli (1993), beloume (1999), ojo (2004) and nuama (2006). the method used in this paper is based on battese and coelli (1995), and battese et al. (1996) work. according to this specific method, the stochastic frontier encompasses inefficiency effects and any other parameters related to production or cost function measured simultaneously. 2.3.3. the efficiency analysis method the assessment of technical efficiency and allocative efficiency is achieved through the assessment of production frontier and cost frontier of the rice farmers. the type of frontier chosen is the stochastic production and cost frontier (called composed errors frontier) in addition to the incorporated effects of inefficiency proposed by battese and coelli (1995). this model was introduced in literature by aigner et al. (1977) and meeusen and van den broeck (1997). this type of production frontier offers the advantage of explaining deviations observed between random production frontier and actual productions observed from the technical inefficiency of the farmer on one side, and on the other side, random factors such as climate factors and other explanatory variables that are omitted. mathematically, if we assume that an individual farmer combines a set of given factors of production (land, labour, fixed capital and variable capital) to produce some goods y (rice), the stochastic frontier production is obtained by using the following equation: lnyi = ln f (xi ; β) exp (vi-ui) (1) where ui = σ δi zi + wi ........................ (1) exp is the exponential function; yi = the output of individual farmer i; xi = vector of input quantities used by the farmer i. these inputs include: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 53-63 56 a) the cultivated land (sup in hectare); b) total labour man/days in farming the land (including men, women, children labour); c) the quantity of seed used by the farmer; d) the quantity of fertilizer used; e) the quantity of pesticide used; f) the capital representing the value of other inputs and equipment; β: the vector of unknown parameters to be estimate; it represents the elasticities when the production function is based on cobb-douglas's type; vi: the random error term; ui: the error term that expresses the technical inefficiency of an individual farmer; zi: the socio-economic characteristics that explain the producer’s technical inefficiency with: z1: years of experience expressed by the number of years spent in growing rice; z2: the household size; z3: binary variable to describe farmer's level of education, that takes 1 if the farmer can read and write in french or local language and 0 if not; z4: binary variable, 1 if farmer invest in other activities apart from growing rice, and 0 if not; two hypotheses come into consideration when it comes to error terms: it is assume that ui follows a normal distribution with parameters n(μ ; σ2u) and vi a truncated-normal distribution that is to say n(0 ; σ2v). based on these hypotheses, coelli (1996) frontier software version 4.1, leads to the coefficients and to σ2 = σ2u + σ2v; γ = σ2u/ (σ2u + σ2v). γ measures the technical inefficiency of the total variable observed between the production frontier points and the data. considering y* the maximum frontier output; y* = f (xi ; β) exp (vi) …………….... (2) based on this function, the technical efficiency index of the farmer i is given by the following equation: et = yi / y* where et = f (xi ; β) exp (vi-ui) / f (xi ; β) exp (vi) ………….……. (3) therefore et = exp (-ui) the cost function of an individual farmer i is formulated as follows: )exp(),,( iiiii uvpygc   = 1, 2,…, n ........................ (4) where ic = the total cost incurred during the production process; iy = the quantity of rice produced; ip = the cost vector of inputs used. all inputs are assumed to be variable and to have market price;  = vector of parameters to be estimated; iv and iu are defined as shown above. the allocative efficiency (ae) index is defined as: )exp( * i i i i u c c ae  1 aeo ....................... (5) where ic is the total production cost incurred, and * ic is the stochastic frontier cost. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 53-63 57 this programme assesses cost efficiency (ce), which, conversely, corresponds to the allocative efficiency index ( *c c ce  ). ce ae 1 the ae index of the individual farmer is shown in the following relationship: the production and cost frontier functions are estimated through the method of maximum likelihood (ml) using frontier 4.1 software (coelli, 1996). it consists in setting the likelihood function and then determines the parameters that maximize this function. the frontier 4.1 software provides iterative production frontier and cost frontier elasticities, technical efficiency and cost efficiency scores, and significant coefficients. to estimate cost and production functions as well as the associated parameters, cobb-douglas functional form will apply. the advantage of this functional form is that it admits a self-dual, allowing to easily analyse economic efficiency. 3. results 3.1. the socio-economic characteristics of farm households table 1 shows the socio-economic characteristics of farm households. the average age of household heads is 49, showing a relatively younger population. years of experience in rice farming is between 3 and 40 years with an average of 33 years. the average family size is 15 persons. a clear evidence of the rural nature the household, with family labour as main source of labour. rice farms are of small size, 0.25 to 1.5 ha, with an average of 0.90 ha. the average output per cropping season is about 4.8 tons per hectare. the cost of production gives an average of 360 810 cfa f/ha. this cost is increased basically by the cost of fertilizer and labour which both constitute the main expenses items incurred by farmers. table 1: the socio-economic characteristics of farm households parameter minimum maximum mean standard dev age 24 86 49 4.56 experience 3 40 33 7.33 household size 3 41 15 7.85 farm size (ha) 0.25 1.5 0.90 0.21 production (kg/ha) 1436 7181 4816 1025 labour (md/ha) 193 1264 4.27 135 seed (kg/ha) 34 137 70.78 13.86 fertilizer (kg/ha) 50 700 370 1.01 pesticide cfa f/ha) 1000 28000 12177 7236 capital (cfa f/ha) 1250 282370 46016 5.7894 cost of labour (cfa f/ha) (fc (cfa f/ha) 50245 289000 106093 32938 fertilizer cost (cfa f/ha) (cfa f/ha) 22498 240000 110436 31643 cost of seed (cfa f/ha) (cfa f/ha) 7524 60000 28382 6.497 total cost (cfa f/ha) 82517 899370 303104 70674 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 53-63 58 3.2. estimation of stochastic frontier production function the results of the stochastic frontier production function estimation as obtained from frontier 4.1 software are displayed in the table 2 below: the maximum likelihood (ml) ratio test of the model is used to measure its overall fit. when the empirical value of ratio is greater than the theoretical value of the chi-square at 5% level, then we considered the model as well adjusted. herein, the calculated value is 21.62 while the theoretical one is 9.49. because the calculated value is superior to the theoretical value, the specified model is adequate. table 2: results of the estimation of stochastic frontier production function variables coefficient standard error t-ratio production function constant 7.17*** 0.72 9.5 ln(sup) 0.93*** 0.09 10.2 ln(mo) 0.12 0.104 1.2 ln(k) 0.005 0.004 1.3 ln(fer) 0,109* 0.07 1.6 ln(man) -0.003 0.003 -1.1 ln(pest) -0.0008 0.006 -0.12 technical inefficiency experience -0.08* 0.5 -1.7 household size 0.006 0.012 0.5 literacy 1.54* 0.97 -1.6 other activities -1.35 0.91 -1.5 variance parameters sigma squared (²) 0.6* 0.27 2.2 gamma ( ) 0.93*** 0.04 24.21 lr 21.62*** ***significant at 1% significance level; **significant at 5% significance level * significant at 10% significance level the results indicate that the coefficient of the variable « farm size » is significant at 1% significance level. a 10% increase of the cultivated land leads to about 9% increase of the total rice production. this reason is that farmers have acquired sufficient knowledge about the production process so much so that availability of farming lands has become a limiting factor to production. this result conforms to shehu and mshella (2007) studies about rice farmers in nigeria. their findings show that farm size has a positive effect and highly significant on rice production with an elasticities of 0.83 (nigeria). as to the use of fertilizers, a 10% increase of the quantities used would yield an increase of the production by 10.9%. the average level of technical efficiency of producers is 80.15%, (table 3). this indicates more possibilities to increase production without increasing inputs. indeed, these producers could increase their production by 19.85% without necessarily increasing the volume of entrants. on bagre rice production plain, the index of technical efficiency is about 80% (ouédraogo, 2011). table 3: technical efficiency index n minimum maximum mean standard deviation technical efficiency 130 25.7 95.85 80.1475 12.84417 n valid (list-wise) 130 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 53-63 59 figure 1 below shows the dispersion regarding the level of producers’ technical efficiency. 68% of famers are in the group of efficiency between 70% and 80%. figure 1: graphical distribution of technical efficiency the existence of technical inefficiency is confirmed by the gamma value, indicating that approximately 93% of the variations in the current production level are due to the difference in technical efficiency of rice farmers. the remaining 7% derive from random factors beyond the farmer's control. analysis of the determinants of technical efficiency of producers reveals that the coefficient of the variable experience is significant at 10% significance level. its coefficient shows a negative sign. the implication is that the more experience the farmer gets on the plain, the less efficiently does he allocate available resources. the reason is that these farmers are most often involved with other activities other than farming while leaving production activities under the care of their children and labourers. for the variable literacy, its coefficient is significant at 10% level. thus, literacy positively influences the production level. 3.3. estimation of stochastic frontier cost function table 4 shows the estimates values of parameters that represented the elasticity of unit cost of inputs as compared to total cost variation. the value of lr (131.66) is above the theoretical (11.1) chi square at 5% level. this means that the model is properly specified. overall, we can conclude that the choice of the variables and the model specification are of some good qualities. most coefficients are significant and relevant, with positive signs in cost formation, showing conformity with economic literature. the factors of production affect significantly the cost of production. to clearly illustrate this fact, the cost of mineral fertilizer has the most significant influence on the cost of rice production. a 10% variation of the price of mineral fertilizer would indice d’ efficacite technique p o u rc en ta g e indice d’ efficacite technique asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 53-63 60 have above 3% impact on the total cost of production. similarly, a price change of 10% of pesticides would lead to an increase of 1.4% of the total production cost. table 4: results of the estimation of the cost function variables coefficients standard error t-ratio constant 3.7*** 0.28 12.84 y 0.12*** 0.027 4.69 labour 0.14*** 0.028 5.07 fertilizer 0.36*** 0.027 13.28 seeds 0.14*** 0.027 5.2 pesticide 0.049*** 0.01 4.62 capital 0.023*** 0.006 3.77 allocative inefficiency experience -0.0067* 0.003 -1.93 household size -0.057*** 0.014 -3.9 literacy 0.043 0.08 0.52 other activities -0.0054 0.08 -0.066 sigma 0.1009**** 0.016 6.2 gamma 0.98*** 0.007 142.6 lr 131.66 ***significant at 1% significance level; **significant at 5% significance; *significant at 10% significance level the analysis of allocative efficiency determinants shows that the variable “years of experience and the household size have negative influence on the allocative efficiency of the producers. indeed, the more experience the farmer gets on the vdk plain, the less efficiently he allocates available resources. the same situation applies when the size of the farm increases. there is a tendency for producers who have spent a lot of years in rice production to overlook new operational management training delivered by supervisors. big farm owners make poor use of resources because of the low-level control on operational expenses. the 0.98 value of gamma indicates that 98% of inefficiencies observed result from the poor management of resources by the producers. rational producers keep factors of production costs to a minimum while increasing their profits. the analysis shows that producers display an average level of allocative efficiency reaching 92.7% (table 5). this value nearing 1 is a clear indication that the units of production are 7.3% away from their maximum capabilities to better managing the available resources. beloume (1999) came up with 83.83% of allocative efficiency index for the same producers in 1999. that is a complete improvement as compared to this year. table 5: allocative efficiency index n minimum maximum mean standard deviation allocative inefficiency 130 23.45 98.71 92.7 7.79 n valid (list-wise) 130 figure 2 below shows a major gap on the vdk plain with minimum allocative index at 23.45% and maximum at 98.71%. here again is an explicit corroboration for the resource management conditions on the plain. furthermore, a large majority of producers (72%) have an index of allocative efficiency between 80 and 89%. in other words, this majority share the same factors that determine their allocative inefficiency. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 53-63 61 figure 2: graphical distribution of allocative efficiency indices 3.4. economic efficiency calculation the economic efficiency synthesizes the two efficiencies developed above. the economic efficiency level at the vdk is between 20.48 and 93.80, with a mean of 74.43% (table 6). beloume (1999) came up with a value of 71.03% for this same region. in other words, in 2009, producers improved their economic efficiency level to a score of 3.4 as compared to 1999. table 6: economic efficiency index n minimum maximum mean standard deviation economic efficiency (%) 130 20.48 93.8 74.43 14.08 n valid (list-wise) 130 figure 3 shows a huge gap between producers. indeed, 36.2% have an economic efficiency level between 80 and 89%. more than 75% of producers' economic efficiency is above 70%. this is an evidence of potential reduction of the costs of production while keeping the same level of production by improving technical and allocative efficiencies. by efficiently allocating factors of production, there is a possibility for producers to save 25% of the resources. figure 3: graphical distribution of economic efficiency indices indice d’ efficacite allocative p o u rc en ta g e indice d’ efficacite allocative indice d’ efficacite economique indice d’ efficacite economique p o u rc en ta g e asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 53-63 62 4. conclusion and recommendations this paper made use of technical, allocative and economic efficiency indices to determine socioeconomic factors that have influence on technical and allocative efficiencies. with regard to stochastic frontier production function, the results showed that the coefficient of variables as farm size, quantity of fertilizer used, years of experience and literacy are significant, reflecting their influence on the production level. all selected variables pertaining to cost function proved to be significant. concerning the determinants of efficiency, the years of experience and the size of the household of an individual producer had a negative impact on their allocative efficiency. furthermore, the evolution of technical, allocative, and economic efficiency levels reveal that the average of producers are allocatively more efficient than they are technically and economically. the 74.43% of the level of economic efficiency is an indication that producers can save up to 25% without necessarily having to reduce the level of production. to improve the economic efficiency level of rice producers of the vdk along with their living conditions, the following steps could be taken, based on the findings of this paper:  organize and train producers technically so as to allow them to use in a rational manner the factors of production;  implement a policy for the extension of cultivated lands;  provide more mineral fertilizer subsidies (the government has already showed commitment) in order for farmers to secure the required quantity of fertilizer for greater production;  increase the educational level of producers by literacy;  encourage farmers to use improved seeds instead of local seeds and to diversify their activities. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references aigner, d. j., lovell, c. a. k., & schmidt, p. j. (1977). formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models. journal of econometrics, 6, 21-37. alliance, s. (2010). rice in the world. http://www.alliancesud.ch/fr/infodoc/dossiers/riz/le-riz-dans-le-monde. battese, g. e., & corra, g. s. (1977). estimation of a production function model with applied to the pastoral zone of eastern australia. austarilian journal of agricultural economics, 21, 169-179. battese, g. e., & coelli, t. j. (1993). a stochastic frontier production function incorporation a model for technical efficiency effects. australia, department of econometrics, university of new england, working papers in econometrics and applied statistics, 69, 22-30. battese, g. e., & coelli, t. j. (1995). a model for technical inefficiency effect in stochastic frontier production for panel data. empirical economics, 20, 325-345. battese, g. e., malik, s. j., & gil, m. a. (1996). an investigation of technical inefficiencies of production of wheat farmers in four district of pakistan. journal of agricultural economics, 47, 37-49. beloume, t. (1999). analysis of the effectiveness of the rice fields to the west and south-western burkina faso: the case of irrigated rice, rice lowlands and uppland rice. 3rd cycle thesis in economics. university of cocody. abidjan. pp.143. bravo-ureta, b. e., & antonio, p. e. (1997). technical, economic and allocative efficiency in peasant farming: evidence from the dominican republic. the developing economics, 35(1), 48-67. p o u rc en ta g e http://www.alliancesud.ch/fr/infodoc/dossiers/riz/le-riz-dans-le-monde asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 53-63 63 coelli, t. j. (1996). a guide to frontier version 4.1c: a computer program for stochastic frontier production and cost function estimation. mimeo, department of econometrics university of new england, armidale. debreu, g. (1951). the coefficient of resource utilisation. econometrica, 19, 275-292 farrell, j. m. (1957). the measurement of productive efficiency. journal royal stat, 506(120), part (3), 253-290. koopmans, t. c. (1951). an analysis of production as an efficient combination of activities. in t. c. koopmans, ed, activity analysis of production and allocation. cowls commission for research in economics, monograph no 13, wiley, new york. meeusen, w., & j. van, d. b. (1997). efficiency estimation from cobb-douglas production functions with composed error. international economic review, 18, 435-444. nuama, e. (2006). measuring the technical efficiency of food crop farmers in côte d'ivoire. rural economy, 296(11-12), 39-53. ojo, s. o. (2004). improving labour productivity and technical efficiency in food crop production: a panacea for poverty reduction in nigeria. food, agriculture and environment, 2(2), 227231. ouédraogo, s. (2011). technical and economic efficiency of rice production in lowland fitted bagré (burkina faso): stochastic frontier approach. in reviewing cedres-etudes, 54(2), 7891. shehu, j. f., & mshella, s. i. (2007). productivity and technical efficiency of small scale farmers in adamawa state nigeria. journal of agriculture and social sciences, 3(4), 133-136. thiam, a., boris, e., & bravo-ureta, r. t. e. (2001). technical efficiency in developing country agriculture a meta-analysis. agricultural economics, 25, 235-243. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 829 contributions of icts towards agricultural development among agricultural researchers in ibadan north west local government, oyo state, nigeria oyetoro john oyewole, adetunbi saheed ige and oladipo solomon oyetunde department of agricultural extension and rural development, ladoke akintola university of technology, ogbomoso, nigeria abstract the study examines the contributions of information and communication technology (ict) towards agricultural development among agricultural researchers in ibadan north west local government area of oyo state. random sampling technique was used in the selection of 50 respondents that constitute the sample size for the study. primary data were collected through the use of a well-structured questionnaire from the agricultural researchers. frequency counts, percentages and pearson product moment correlation (ppmc) were used to analyse the data. analysis of the data revealed collected that majority (70%) of the respondents are male, (64%) are married and (58%) had ict usage experience of 1-5years. the result also shows that the mean age of the respondents is 36.5years while (62%) had post graduate degree education. there is a significant relationship between contributions of ict facilities to agricultural development and selected agricultural websites accessed which are worldagriculture.com(r = 0.044, p= 0.002), moa.gov.jm (r = 0.364, p= 0.010), iita.org (r = 0.358, p= 0.012) and agweb.com (r = 0.435, p= 0.002). the study therefore recommends that internet facilities should be made available and affordable to agricultural researchers to enhance their accessibility, usage and contributions to agricultural development. keywords: contributions, ict, agriculture, researchers, development introduction 1 information has been the driving force to so many human activities in search of developing one-self, which has created a basis for the need to know. it has been said that “ignorance is a disease and knowledge is its cure, which is achieved by obtaining information” (momah, 1999). this therefore leads to formation of information and communication technologies (ict). an ict is any device, tool, or application that permits the exchange or collection of data through interaction or transmission. ict is an umbrella term that includes anything ranging from radio to satellite imagery to mobile phones or electronic money transfers. the increases in corresponding author’s details: name: oyetoro john oyewole email address: preciousfanta@yahoo.com their affordability, accessibility, and adaptability have resulted in their use even within rural homesteads relying on agriculture. new, small devices (such as multifunctional mobile phones and nanotechnology for food safety), infrastructure (such as mobile telecommunications networks and cloud computing facilities) have proliferated (ict in agriculture, 2012). many of the questions asked by farmers (including questions on how to increase yields, access markets, and adapt to weather conditions) can now be answered faster, with greater ease, and increased accuracy. many of the questions can also be answered with a dialogue—where farmers, experts, and government can select best solutions based on a diverse set of expertise and experience. the ability of icts to bring refreshed momentum to agriculture appears even more compelling in light of rising investments in agricultural research, the asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:preciousfanta@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 829-835 830 private sector’s strong interest in the development and spread of icts, and the upsurge of organizations committed to the agricultural development agenda. the place of information and communication technology (ict) in agricultural development cannot be over emphasized. this is because the world is becoming a global village where access to information is faster, quicker and easier than one would ever think of. more so, with the ict facilities all over the world, there is need for researchers to make use of these facilities in order to master their field of study in agricultural development. as this is done, there will be more impartation of knowledge, skill and experience to the researchers and extension agent to better development in the field of agriculture. icts have the potential and ability to transform agricultural extension if they are adopted and properly applied. the contributions of ict facilities in extension services include: availability of information, making farmers more intelligent, connecting farmers directly by passing extension works, new skill for extension workers and enhancing the feedback between extension and clients (fao, 1993). ict play a necessary role in addressing these challenges and uplifting livelihoods of the rural poor. ict have helped a lot in some agricultural institute in developing countries in order to enhance the knowledge and understandings of researchers which facilitate the innovations taking to the farmer’s and help in transforming information directly by the researchers to the farmer whose are not chance to attend agricultural extension meeting or services. five main trends have been the key drivers of the use of ict in agriculture, particularly for poor producers: low-cost and pervasive connectivity, adaptable and more affordable tools, advances in data storage and exchange, innovative business models and partnerships, and the democratization of information, including the open access movement and social media. these drivers are expected to continue shaping the prospects for using ict effectively in developing-country agriculture (world bank, 2011) information and communication have always mattered in agriculture. ever since people have grown crops, raised livestock, and caught fish, they have sought information from one another. people seek to obtain relevant and purposeful information by asking questions such as: what is the most effective planting strategy on steep slopes? where can i buy the improved seed or feed this year? who is paying the highest price at the market? how can i participate in the government’s credit program? producers rarely find it easy to obtain answers to such questions, even if similar ones arise season after season. farmers in a village may have planted the “same” crop for centuries, but over time, weather patterns and soil conditions change and epidemics of pests and diseases come and go. hence, this study is necessary to enlighten the public on various ways by which ict facilities has contributed to agricultural development. there are technological divide (great gaps) in ict facilities and a lot of web-based information which available to the real need of researchers and extension workers for agricultural development. the agricultural researchers are still lagging behind in the use of ict facilities and the benefit contributed by icts, compare with their counterparts in many other developing areas, in transforming and developing agriculture (fao, 1993). arising from these challenges, the study is designed specifically to: determine the level of utilization of available ict facilities among the researchers, examine the agricultural websites accessible to agricultural researchers, and describe the socio-economic characteristics of agricultural researchers in the study area. methodology the study was carried out in ibadan north west local government area of oyo state. it shares boundary with ido, ibadan south west and ibadan north local governments. the headquarters of the study area is located at dugbe-onireke. it has an area of 26 km 2 and a population of 152,834 at the 2006 census. there are two agricultural research institutions located at the study area which include: national horticultural research institute (nihort) and forestry research asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 829-835 831 institute in nigeria (frin). nihort headquarters is located on 350 hectares of land in the rainforest zone, idi-ishin, ibadan. some of the institution mandates are: research into the genetic improvement, development, processing and marketing of vegetables, citrus, ornamental plants and spices. however, frin conducts research into all aspects of forestry and forest products utilization and for the training of technical and sub-technical personnel for the forestry services in the country. two stage sampling technique was used for the study. first stage involved purposive selection of two agricultural research institutes (frin and nihort). the two institutes are the only agricultural research institute available in the study area. the list of agricultural researchers was obtained from their respective research institutes; hence second stage involves random selection of 40% of agricultural researchers from each of the research institutes, 14 respondents were randomly selected out of 35 from nihort and 36 respondents out of 90, thus the sample size was 50 respondents. the dependent variable is the contributions of ict facilities to agricultural development. it was measured by scoring some statements relating to ways by which ict facilities has contributed to agricultural development. the statements are: getting information every time needed, enhance production in getting technical information on agriculture, getting updated agricultural information, getting skills and knowledge of modern technology, disseminating new knowledge and technology, motivating in sustaining and enhancing agricultural production, linking researchers to organization that finance research work, ict as means effective extension channel, developing website for the purpose of agricultural production and enabling in creating simulation of agriculture in increasing the productivity. it was measured on 3 point scale of always-2, sometimes 1, never-0. the scores were sum up to generate contribution index. data collected was analyzed with the use of descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentage and pearson product moment correlation (ppmc) for the inferential statistics. result and discussion social economic characteristics of respondents in table 1, majority of the respondents (70%) were male and (30%) were female. this implies that male researchers dominated agricultural research institute in the study area. this finding supported the works of ogunjobi and fagbami (2012) that there were more male researchers than female researchers in agricultural research institutes in ibadan metropolis of nigeria. also, less than half (46%) of the respondents were between age 21-30 years and only (2%) were greater than 50 years in the study area. the finding shows that most of the agricultural researchers are still in their active age, hence they are capable of searching for useful information on agricultural development through ict facilities. meanwhile, the marital status shows that majority of the researchers (64%) are married and 36% are still single. this implies that respondents in the study area assume some responsibility with their family. table 1 also indicated that most of the respondents (34%) earned annual income between the range of n501, 000 – 1,000,000 and the lowest 20% earned below n 100,000. this implies that majority of the respondents obtained reasonable amount from their agency which can influence their acquisition and use of ict facilities for agricultural development. similarly, more than half (58%) of the respondents had experience of using ict of 15years. this means that most of the respondents had some experience and are knowledgeable about utilization of ict facilities which can build their confident in the research work so as to make better contribution to agricultural development. in addition, 62% of the respondents had post graduate degree education, this finding supported the works of salau and saingbe (2008) that majority (71.10%) of the agricultural researchers had post graduate degrees. this finding shows that they are highly knowledgeable and educated because education is light, knowledge and power, therefore high contributions to agricultural development are expected from these asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 829-835 832 agricultural researchers as they use ict facilities. table 1: distribution of respondents by socio-economic characteristics n=50 socio-economic characteristics frequency percentage sex male 35 70.0 female 15 30.0 age 21 – 30 23 46.0 31 – 40 22 44.0 41 – 50 4 8.0 >50 1 2.0 marital status married 32 64.0 single 18 36.0 annual income (naira) <100,000 10 20.0 100,000 500,000 10 20.0 501,000 – 1,000,000 17 34.0 >1,000,000 13 6.0 year of using facilities (years) 1 – 5 29 58.0 6 – 10 16 32.0 > 10 5 10.0 higher education attainment post graduate 31 62.0 first degree 19 38.0 source: field survey, 2012 agricultural websites accessed by the respondents agricultural websites contain information on agriculture and agricultural related issues. table 2 shows that majority of the respondents accessed and utilized information obtained from the following websites: fao.org, frin.com, hypergurl.com and iita.org. this means that the stated websites are highly accessible and useful to agricultural researchers in the study area. table 2: distribution of respondents by access to agricultural website *agricultural website(www) frequency percentage world-agriculture.com 25 50.0 mao.gov.gm 9 18.0 e-agriculture.com 25 50.0 fao.org 43 86.0 frin.com 39 78.0 nihort.com 23 46.0 hypergurl.com 14 28.0 iita.org 42 84.0 usda.gov 30 60.0 agsites.net 15 30.0 ukagriculture.com 12 24.0 nigeria.gov.ng 23 46.0 agricultureguide.org 24 48.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 829-835 833 agweb.com 18 36.0 mofa.gov.gh 15 30.0 nda.agric.za 16 32.0 *multiple responses source: field survey, (2012) contributions of ict facilities to agricultural development data in table 3 revealed several ways in which ict facilities has contributed to agricultural development in the study area. it can be observed that most of the respondents (78%) claimed that they always obtained information every time needed. this finding supported ogunjobi and fagbami (2012) that most researchers use ict for research challenges because it is a source of information required for a meaningful research work on the mandate of any research institute. this means that ict facilities can be relied upon to get information on agriculture every time needed. also (68%) of the respondents claimed of getting skills and knowledge of modern technology through ict facilities especially internet. this implies that respondents’ source skills acquisition through ict. however, (42%) of the respondents never develop website for the purpose of agricultural production. this means that some of them lack skills for website designing. table 3: distribution of respondents by contributions of ict facilities to agricultural development *contributions of ict facilities never sometimes always getting information every time needed 0(0) 11(22.0) 39(78.0) enhance production in getting technical information on agriculture 3(6.0) 15(30.0) 32(64.0) getting updated agricultural information 2(4.0) 17(34.0) 31(62.0) getting skills and knowledge of modern technology 4(8.0) 12(24.0) 34(68.0) disseminating new knowledge and technology 2(4.0) 19(38.0) 28(56.0) motivating in sustaining and enhancing agricultural production 7(14.0) 13(26.0) 28(56.0) linking researchers to organization that finance research work 10(20.0) 18(36.0) 21(42.0) ict as means effective extension channel 11(22.0) 17(34.0) 22(44.0) developing website for the purpose of agricultural production 21(42.0) 14(28.0) 6(12.0) enabling in creating simulation of agriculture in increasing the productivity 14(28.0) 20(40.0) 9(18.0) percentage in parentheses *multiple responses source: field survey, 2012 usage of ict facilities it can be observed from table 4 that majority of the respondents use most of the ict facilities presented such as: personal computer, email (personal), mobile phone, website and so on. this means that respondents put to use various ict facilities available to them. table 4: distribution of respondents according to usage of ict facilities *ict facilities not in use in use cdrom 4 (8.0) 46(92.0) e-mail (personal) 0 (0) 50(100) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 829-835 834 website (personal) 18(36.0) 32(64.0) electronic book 7(14.0) 43(86.0) computer 1(2.0) 49(98.0) vcd/audio cd 8(16.0) 42(84.0) mobile phone 2(4.0) 48(96.0) newspaper 1(2.0) 49(98.0) radio 2(4.0) 48(96.0) television 4(8.0) 46(92.0) e-mail (organization) 6(12.0) 44(88.0) website (organizations) 7(14.0) 43(86.0) multi-media projector 9(18.0) 41(82.0) overhead projector 15(30.0) 35(70.0) *multiple response source: field survey, 2012 correlation analysis of the relationship between contributions index of ict facilities to agricultural development and access to selected agricultural websites data presented on table 5 shows that there is a significant relationship between contributions index of ict facilities to agricultural development and access to selected agricultural websites such as worldagriculture.com (r = 0.044, p= 0.002), moa.gov.jm (r = 0.364, p= 0.010), iita.org (r = 0.358, p= 0.012) and agweb.com (r = 0.435, p= 0.002). this implies that the more the respondents accessed and utilized agricultural information on these selected websites, the better their contributions to agricultural development. the findings supported (adetimirin, 2009) that the usage of ict was attributed to the fact that many researchers have access to the internet in their offices and that many of them have modem for browsing in their homes, only few of them go to cybercafés to browse. table 5: correlation analysis showing significant relationship between contributions index of ict facilities to agricultural development and access to selected agricultural websites selected websites correlation coefficient (r) p-value remark world-agriculture.com **0.044 0.002 significant moa.gov.jm *0.364 0.010 significant iita.org *0.358 0.012 significant agweb.com **0.435 0.002 significant **significant at 1% *significant at 5% source: field survey, 2012 conclusion based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that agricultural researchers in study area accessed and utilized selected agricultural websites of which they obtained relevant and useful agricultural information which contributes to agricultural development. also, ict facilities has contributed to agricultural development through several ways such as developing website for the purpose of agricultural production and getting useful information as at when needed. the study therefore recommends that internet facilities should be made available and affordable to agricultural researchers to enhance their accessibility, usage and contributions to agricultural development. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 829-835 835 references adetimirin a. e. (2009). use of the internet by information professionals in some selected universities libraries in southwest nigeria. international journal of information communication technology, 6(1): 9-16. food and agricultural organization of the united nations (1993). the potentials of micro-computers in support of agricultural extension, education and training. rome, italy. government, spectrum books limited, ibadan, nigeria. pp. 9-133. ict in agriculture (2012). introduction: ict in agricultural development. http://www.ictinagriculture.org/ictinag /sourcebook/module-1-introductionictagricultural-development. assessed february 25, 2012. momah, s. (1999). technology is power; memoirs of a soldier, scholar, strategist, engineer in ogunjobi t. e. and fagbami o. o. (2012). use of the internet by researchers in agricultural research institutes in ibadan, oyo state. international journal of library and information science, 4(4): 52-56. salau e. s. and saingbe n. d. (2008). access and utilization of information and communication technologies (icts) among agricultural researchers and extension workers in selected institutions in nasarawa state of nigeria. production agriculture and technology journal, 4(2): 1-11. world bank (2011). food price watch. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/int premnet/resources/food_price_w atch_feb_2011_final_version.pdf. accessed september 4, 2011. http://www.ictinagriculture.org/ictinag/sourcebook/module-1-introduction-ictagriculturalhttp://www.ictinagriculture.org/ictinag/sourcebook/module-1-introduction-ictagriculturalhttp://www.ictinagriculture.org/ictinag/sourcebook/module-1-introduction-ictagriculturalhttp://siteresources.worldbank.org/intpremnet/resources/food_price_watch_feb_2011_final_version.pdf http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intpremnet/resources/food_price_watch_feb_2011_final_version.pdf http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intpremnet/resources/food_price_watch_feb_2011_final_version.pdf http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intpremnet/resources/food_price_watch_feb_2011_final_version.pdf http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intpremnet/resources/food_price_watch_feb_2011_final_version.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 688 analysis of rice production instability in southeast asian countries mamma sawaneh department of agribusiness and information systems, faculty of agriculture, university putra malaysia, 43400 upm serdang, selangor, malaysia, and school of agriculture and environmental science, university of the gambia, brikama campus, gambia ismail abd latif and amin mahir abdullah department of agribusiness and information systems, faculty of agriculture, universiti putra malaysia, 43400 upm serdang, selangor, malaysia abstract this study measures the extent of rice production instability and the sources of instability in selected rice producing countries of southeast asia. a time series data on rice harvested area, yield and production of five southeast asian countries was used to analyze the components of production changes (area, yield and interaction effects) from 1980 to 2010. the production data is categorized into two periods: (i) 1980/81 to 1994/95 and (ii) 1995/96 to 2009/10. the results show a significant increase in rice production in all the countries during the reference period. however, the effect of area and yield to increase production differs from one country to another. it is noted that instability in area, yield and production in countries (except for malaysia) are positively related. furthermore, the decomposition analysis indicated that changes in mean yield mainly contribute to mean production in malaysia, philippines, thailand and vietnam while change in mean area contributed larger in myanmar. however, changes in area-yield covariance between periods made a negligible contribution to the change in rice production. keywords: instability, rice, production, yield, southeast asia introduction 1 growth in agriculture and instability remained an intense debate in most agricultural economies in the literature especially the developing countries (wasim, 2002). the desire to increase agricultural growth is obvious in most countries, however increase in instability in agricultural production is also considered for many reasons such as the risk of farm production, farmers’ income as well as investment in agriculture. it is evident that production 1 corresponding author’s details: name: mamma sawaneh email address: msawaneh@utg.edu.gm instability affects the stability of market price and consumers thereby increases the vulnerability of low income households to the market as well as impact on food security (chand and raju, 2009; poudel and chen, 2012). reviews on literature indicate that several studies have some conflicting evidence of changes in instability in agricultural production due to adoption of new technology or new government policies. it is argued by some (hazell,1982) that adoption of new technologies reduce classic instability in agricultural production caused by natural phenomenon such as weather, pests and diseases while others believed that much of the instability in food crop production is as a result of widespread asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:msawaneh@utg.edu.gm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 688-696 689 adoption of new technologies (mehra, 1981; singh, 1989). mehra (1981) conducted a study in indian agriculture purposely to compare variability in production between crops and regions during the period 1949 to 1965 and 1965 to 1979. the study estimated the changes in instability after the introduction of high yielding technologies in the region. the results indicate that during the decade after the adoption of new technology the instability (coefficient of variation) of all crop aggregates increased as compared to before the adoption of new technology. however, another study by hazell (1982) was conducted on the same data utilized by mehra (1981) but adopted an improved analytical framework to study variability in food crop production. the results confirmed that of mehra in 1981 and even examined further by concluding that increased production instability was inevitable because of rapid agricultural growth. the two authors attributed the increase in production instability to the adoption of new technology.this has further increase the debate after the indian experience for production instability studies in south and southeast asia after the introduction of modern rice technology. flinn and hazell (1988) examined production instability in philippine rice sector to report on micro analysis of changes in rice production instability between the periods that preceded the introduction of the new technology so as to contrast with the findings from indian experience. the study also sought to find the factors that influence instability in the rice sector. the same methodology was applied as in hazell (1982) to identify the components and sources of instability in philippine rice sector during the period 1948 1968 and 1969 1983 which roughly signifies before and after the introduction of modern rice technology. the results indicated that growth in rice production since 1960s has been influenced by yield compared to area effect. the results indicated that relative instability has changed slightly while absolute variability increased significantly. among the sources that increased production variability include changes in production variances within the regions, increase in areayield covariance as well as positive covariance between the regions. however, the study concluded that irrigation may not have influenced production instability but real price fertilizer might have an impact on variability. thus, an increase in irrigated area greatly helped to reduced production instability while increase intensification in rainfed second rice crop increased variability. it is evident that southeast asian countries contribute about 25 percent to the global rice output (milled equivalent) as of 2010. the region’s total production is said to be increased by 18 percent between the period 2000 and 2010 (katherine et al., 2012). thus to estimate instability of rice production for different countries in the region will be of paramount importance for government policies and programs. the paper is organized into four sections including introduction and a brief review of some past studies done on agricultural production instability. data and analytical procedures are discussed in section two. section three presents empirical estimates of instability and sources of different components of instability. the last section consists of concluding remarks. data and analytical procedures times series secondary data on rice harvested area, yield and production from faostat are utilized. the study tried to analyze the components of production changes (area, yield and interaction effects) of rice produced in five rice producing countries from 1980 to 2010. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 688-696 690 the production data is categorized into two periods: (i) 1980/81 to 1994/95 and (ii) 1995/96 to 2009/10. the designated two periods in reference to the post green revolution, allow for an examination of sources and changes in instability intra and inter the two periods. the rationale for selecting these two periods is to test whether production instability changed during these two specified periods. crop production during the first period was the time growth in rice production in most countries largely depended upon improved farming methods and technologies due to green revolution while the second period was initiated to see the recent trend in production growth after phasing of the green revolution in most of the countries coupled with diversified agricultural production in many countries. following the work of bohrnstedt and goldberger (1969), who actually pioneered a work on ‘the exact covariance of products of random variables’ was the base of the approach and methodology used in this analysis. many researchers applied this technique to study instability in production of crops notably hazel, (1982), mahendradev (1987), wasim (1999), farih (1996), singh (1989) and hazell (1984) where complete and detailed description of the approach is highlighted. in this study, a standardized measure of instability represented by coefficient of variation is used to achieve the objectives. this is calculated for each period as the standard deviation (δ) divided by mean (µ) and then multiplied by 100 to have it in percent. hence a change in the coefficient of variation in period ii over period i was calculated. average production for the entire period, e (p), can be expressed as: method of decomposition of average production the equation above is further decomposed so as to partition the changes production variance and average production between the two periods into constituent parts, which can be related separately to changes in the means, variance and covariance of area and yield. from the equation (2), average production for each time period can be expressed as: for period i: .................(3) and for period ii: ........... (4) note that each variable in the second period can be written as its counterpart in the first period plus the difference in the variable (i.e area and yield) between the two periods. for example where , hence average production in the second phase can be represented as: as seen in the preceding equations, average production is influenced by changes in mean area and mean yield as well as changes in the covariance of area and yield. thus, the change in average production over the entire period is measured by subtracting equation (3) from equation (6) as in equation (7) below: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 688-696 691 this change in average production has four different components (sources of change). these sources include the changes in mean area ( ), changes in mean yield ( , the interaction between changes in mean area and mean yield ( ); and the changes in the variability of area and yield [ ] (mahir and abdelaziz, 2011). these components of change in average production are arranged in the table 1. table 1: components of change in average production sources of change symbol components of change change in mean yield change in mean area interactions between changes in mean area and mean yield change in area – yield covariance results and discussion change in area, production and yield of rice over the periods agricultural production varies as a result of variability in area planted to crop and yield and the interaction between the two (chand and raju, 2008). it must be noted that these variations to some extent depend on climatic factors, distribution and availability of inputs, as well as some government policies. table 2 shows the changes in production, area and yield of rice from period i to period ii. all the parameters increased significantly between the periods under study. however, the extent of changes differs from country to country. rice production in malaysia showed an increase in average production between the two periods by 19.27%, yield increased by the same fold (19.35%) while the rice harvested area increased slightly by only 0.16% from period i to period ii. with respect to changes in production over the period, vietnam posed the highest increase in average production (91.76%), followed by myanmar (69.84%), philippines (51.69%), thailand (44.3%) respectively while malaysia showed the least increase in average production with less than one fourth (19.27%). in terms of area harvested to rice over the reference periods, myanmar showed the highest increased in rice harvested area (40.03%) followed by vietnam, philippines and thailand each with 23.64%, 20.4% and 9.42% respectively. in the same development, malaysia posted the lowest (0.16%) in the average area harvested to rice from period i to period ii. these results could be explained by individual country characteristics towards diversification of agricultural production to other plantation crops. the results for the changes in yield show that vietnam has really gone far in the attainment of yield increase with 56.41% with an average yield of 4.6ha/ton in period ii leading the countries in this study. however, all the countries have witnessed some quite increase in yield of rice. this could be as a result of improvement in total factor productivity in most countries. with country specific analysis, the results indicate that malaysia witness more increase in the yield than increase in production and area harvested to rice; while the other countries have witnessed more increase in the average production compared to increase in area harvested and the yield. the analysis indicate that, an increase in area harvested to rice is less compared to increase in yield and production (except for myanmar), probably due to distribution of available land area for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 688-696 692 other sectoral development such as plantation crops. thus, since land devoted to rice production has shown to be a constraint then the policies should be geared towards better land by given more priority to increase in yield through improved technologies such as high yielding varieties with subsidized inputs as also suggested by poudel and chen (2012). table 2: average production, area and yield of rice in selected countries of southeast asia (period i1980/81 1994/95 and period ii 1996/97 2009/10 production(tons) area(hectares) yield(tons/ha) country i ii change i ii change i ii change malaysia 1873.67 2234.68 19.27% 675.15 676.24 0.16% 2.8 3.3 19.35% myanmar 14648.28 24878.84 69.84% 4884.69 6840.11 40.03% 3.0 3.6 19.72% philippines 8988.96 13635.16 51.69% 3383.04 4073.05 20.40% 2.7 3.3 25.38% thailand 19441.60 28054.12 44.30% 9283.29 10157.50 9.42% 2.1 2.8 31.52% vietnam 17715.26 33970.45 91.76% 5979.47 7392.87 23.64% 2.9 4.6 56.41% instability in area, production and yield of rice instability in crop production could be attributed to variability in area and yield as well as their interactions which are mainly influenced by some natural phenomenon such as flood, climatic variations and some man made hazards. in table 3, the results presented the instability in harvested area, yield and production of rice in five countries of southeast asia for a period of 16 years and 15 years (indicated as period i (1980 -1995 and period ii (19962010) respectively. the instability index for the area harvested ( shown as coefficient of variation) for the countries such as myanmar, philippines and thailand have shown an increase from period i to period ii while decline in the case of malaysia and vietnam. this increase in instability is also reflected in statistically f ratios for the increase in area harvested variances between the two periods. among the countries, philippines has shown the highest instability in area harvested recorded as 60.95% at 1% significant level followed by myanmar and thailand recorded as 53.74% and 32.59% at 1% and 10% significant level respectively. however, instability in vietnam and malaysia declined by 64.37% and 42.6% at 1% and 5% significant level respectively.( note: it should be 1% and 5% significant level instead of 5% and 1% significant level) in the case of instability in yield of rice in the region, myanmar posted the highest instability with 194.96% at 1% significant level between period i and period ii. this shows that myanmar has tremendously increased its rice production in the recent period compared to others. the same trend is witnessed in malaysia, philippines and thailand each recorded 5.99%, 21.21% and 14.64% respectively. however, increase in instability in malaysia is not significant while the instability index in philippines and thailand is significant at 1% and 10% respectively. the only country that has shown decline in instability of rice yield is vietnam with 28.56% from period i to period ii. however, this instability between the two periods has shown no significant change in the total yield variance. this is explained by an increase in both area harvested and production over the reference periods. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 688-696 693 table 3: coefficient of variation of production, area and yield of rice for period i and period ii country i ii change f-ratios malaysia area 3.45% 1.98% -42.61% 3.03** yield 7.53% 7.99% 5.99% 0.62 production 9.95% 7.17% -27.98% 1.36 myanmar area 9.48% 14.57% 53.74% 0.22* yield 3.53% 10.41% 194.96% 0.08* production 10.76% 24.35% 126.22% 0.07* philippines area 4.80% 7.72% 60.95% 0.27* yield 8.90% 10.78% 21.21% 0.43*** production 10.93% 17.03% 55.84% 0.18* thailand area 3.90% 5.17% 32.59% 0.48*** yield 7.25% 8.32% 14.64% 0.44*** production 7.99% 12.13% 51.80% 0.21* vietnam area 6.95% 2.48% -64.37% 5.15* yield 15.89% 11.35% -28.56% 0.8 production 22.51% 12.04% -46.50% 0.9 note: *, ** and *** indicate statistically significant f ratios (one tail tests) at 1%, 5% and 10% respectively between the two periods the results also indicate production instability in the region in which myanmar, philippines and thailand have witnessed high increase of instability in production each estimated as 126.22%, 55.84% and 51.80% at 1% significant level for each respectively. however, malaysia and vietnam has shown decline in production instability from period i to period ii measured as 27.98% and 46.50% respectively, although the decline has shown no significant difference in the variance of total rice produced in the two countries. on the basis of the above results it can be noted that rice production fluctuates increasingly in the period ii of three rice producing countries (myanmar, philippines and thailand) while fluctuations declined in the second period in malaysia and vietnam sources of instability the components of change in average rice production of the selected countries are presented in table 4. the table indicates that increases in rice yield and rice harvested areas have contributed positively to the increased in rice production in most countries. however, production changes were dominated by mean yield in most countries except for myanmar where increased in harvested area contributed significantly to the increased rice production. changes in harvested area varied considerably between countries, from a high of about 57% in myanmar, to a low of about 0.8% in malaysia. the impact of the area effect was the major cause of production change in myanmar rice production recorded as 57.21% compared to 28.18% in the yield effect. the highest change in mean yield was observed in malaysia about 100%, followed by thailand with an increase of 71% while vietnam and philippines posted 61% and 49% respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 688-696 694 however, some studies reported similar findings regarding sources of production changes especially in philippine’s rice production (flinn and hazell, 1988) and india’s agriculture (larson et al., 2004; chand and raju, 2009) , though some studies done in india have shown mean area to be the major components of increased rice production (hazell, 1984). the table gives an insight into the sources of increased rice production in each country. the four countries (malaysia, thailand, vietnam, and philippines) have shown increased rice production as a result of changes in mean yield compared to changes in mean area while increased rice production in myanmar was a result of changes in mean area than mean yield. these increases in mean yield in the countries might be related to varietal breakthroughs through research and development, increased irrigation facilities as well as use of chemical fertilizers. on other hand, changes in area-yield covariance between periods in the countries made a negligible contribution to the change in rice production as reported in other country studies (larson et al., 2004). most of the countries have shown less than a percent that accounted for the total change in average rice production between the periods. however, in myanmar and philippine average production has been influenced by 3% and 2% change in area-yield covariance respectively. changes in the interaction effect in each country occurred as a result of simultaneous changes in mean yield and mean area between periods. the highest interaction effect was observed in vietnam (14%), followed by myanmar (11%), philippines (10%), and thailand (8%). however, interaction effect between mean area and mean yield has negligible effect in malaysia (0.2). this happened as a result of decline in mean area for rice production. also in the table 4, it is seen that change in yield of crop play a major role in increasing instability in rice production. thus country policies should focused more on increase in yield of rice sector. table 4: components of change in the mean production of rice in each selected country, 1980/81 -1994/95 and 1995/96-2009/10 (percent) conclusion and recommendation a significant increase in rice production in all countries has been witnessed during the reference period. however the effect of area and yield to increase production differs from one country to another. in myanmar, mainly due to area increase whereas in others, yield played a dominant role in increasing rice production. with regards to instability in yield, the study of instability of rice production has witnessed a continuous increase in some countries (myanmar, philippines and thailand) and sharp decrease in others (malaysia and vietnam) over the two sub periods under study with regards to instability in yield, all countries witnessed increased instability except vietnam which experienced a sharp country change in mean area change in mean yield change in area yield covariance interaction between changes in mean area and mean yield malaysia 0.84 100.31 -1.31 0.16 myanmar 57.21 28.18 3.34 11.28 philippines 39.32 48.93 1.77 9.98 thailand 21.26 71.14 0.91 6.70 vietnam 25.54 60.96 -0.91 14.41 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 688-696 695 drop in instability from 15.89% to 11.35 in the second period. it is worth of mention from this instability study that instability in area, yield and production in countries (except for malaysia) moved in the same direction. that is to say their decreasing/increasing trend results in decrease/increase instability. thus, in these countries we might say that increase in rice production due to an increase in either area or yield would subsequently increase instability. however, in vietnam, an increase in yield would further help to reduce production instability. the decomposition analysis for the sources of changes in mean rice production in the selected countries indicated that mean production in malaysia, philippines, thailand and vietnam is mainly driven by changes in mean yield. however, change in mean area contributed larger in the case of myanmar. on other hand, changes in area-yield covariance between periods in the countries made a negligible contribution to the change in rice production. all the countries have shown low percent (less than 4%) that accounted for the total change in average rice production between the periods. changes in the interaction effect in each country occurred as a result of simultaneous changes in mean yield and mean area between periods. the highest interaction effect was observed in vietnam (14%), followed by myanmar (11%), philippines (10%), and thailand (7%). however, interaction effect between mean area and mean yield has negligible effect in malaysia (0.2%). this happened as a result of decline in mean area for rice production. thus in order to stabilize instability, government policies and programs should ensure increase productivity through provision of basic inputs for rice production and also strengthen and intensify agricultural research in the coming decades. acknowledgement the authors are indeed grateful to the universiti putra malaysia for funding this research under research university grants (rugs) project no: 0602122278ru references bohrnstedt, g. w. and goldberger, a. s. (1969). on the exact covariance of products of random variables. journal of the american statistical association, 64(328): 1439-1442. chand, r. and raju, s. (2008). instability in andhra pradesh agriculture–a disaggregate analysis. agricultural economics research review, 21(2): 283-288. chand, r. and raju, s. (2009). instability in indian agriculture during different phases of technology and policy. indian journal of agricultural economics, 64(2): 283-285. fao (2012). faostat database. http:www.fao.org farih, a. a. (1996). instability in agricultural production and its effects on farmers’ income. unpublished m.sc thesis, university of khartoum, sudan flinn, j. c. and hazell, p. b. (1988). production instability and modern rice technology: a philippine case study. the developing economies, 26(1): 34-50. goodman, l. a. (1960). on the exact variance of products. journal of the american statistical association, 55(292): 708-713. hazell, p. b. (1982). instability in indian foodgrain production. research paper no. 30. hazell, p. b. (1984). sources of increased instability in indian and us cereal production. american journal of agricultural economics, 66(3): 302311. katherine, b., nathan, c., john, d. and jim, h. (2012). southeast asia's rice surplus (pp. 38): a report from the http://www.fao.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 688-696 696 economic research service, usda www.ers.usda.gov. larson, d. w., jones, e., pannu, r. and sheokand, r. (2004). instability in indian agriculture a challenge to the green revolution technology. food policy, 29(3): 257-273. mahendradev, s. (1987). growth and instability in foodgrains production: an inter-state analysis. economic and political weekly, 22(39): 82-92. mahir, m. e. a. e. and abdelaziz, h. h. (2011). analysis of agricultural production instability in the gezira scheme. journal of the saudi society of agricultural sciences, 10(2): 5358. mehra, s. (1981). instability in indian agriculture in the context of the new technology, research report no. 25, international food policy research institute, washington, d. c. and u. s. a poudel, m. p. and chen, s. e. (2012). trends and variability of rice, maize, and wheat yields in south asian countries: a challenge for food security. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4): 584-597. singh, i. (1989). agricultural instability and farm poverty in india. indian journal of agricultural economics, 44(1): 16. wasim, m. p. (1999). growth rates and fluctuations in area, production and productivity: a study of major crops in sindh. pakistan economic and social review, 37(2): 155-168. wasim, m. p. (2002). a study of rice in the major growing countries of the world: their growth instability and world share. pakistan economic and social review, 40(2): 153-183. http://www.ers.usda.gov/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 304 the structure and competitiveness of pakistan’s basmati rice exports nadeem akmal social sciences research institute (ssri), national agricultural research centre (narc), islamabad, pakistan waqar akhtar scientific officer; social sciences research institute (ssri), national agricultural research centre (narc), islamabad, pakistan hassnain shah principal scientific officer; social sciences research institute (ssri), national agricultural research centre (narc), islamabad, pakistan muhammad azam niazi principal scientific officer; social sciences division (ssd), pakistan agricultural research council (parc), islamabad, pakistan tariq saleem research fellow; social sciences research institute (ssri), national agricultural research centre (narc), islamabad, pakistan abstract 1 this paper provides an analysis on structure of export and competitiveness of pakistan’s basmati rice over the period 1987-88 to 2011-12 by using revealed comparative advantage (rca) and regional revealed comparative advantage (rrca) approaches. results demonstrate that overall pakistan’s share in world basmati market has declined from 47% in 1987-92 to 32% in 2008-12 periods at global level and also at regional level i.e. iran, saudi arabia and united arab emirates (uae) markets. however pakistan has increased its market participation in oman and united kingdom (uk) from 60 % to 83 % and 14% to 39 % respectively during the period under analysis. iran, saudi arabia, sultanate of oman, uae, and uk have shown a high geographic concentration in basmati exports from pakistan however registered a decline in export concentration over time. the analysis of export competitiveness revealed that the pakistan has revealed comparative advantage in basmati export, implying revealed competitiveness of very high degree as basmati remained a dominant commodity of pakistan’s export basket. over the period basmati export competitiveness has shown a fluctuating pattern and clearly diminishing pattern in recent years. this calls for science based strategies to maintain comparative advantage and market participation in basmati rice exports from pakistan. there is also need to focus on the sector to improve export chain to obtain access in europeans markets like uk is vital for enhancing future economic performance of rice sector and improving competitiveness in basmati exports to ensure foreign exchange earnings for country. keywords: export competitiveness, pakistan basmati rice, rca, rrca corresponding author’s name: nadeem akmal email address: nadeemakmal@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:nadeemakmal@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 304-312 305 introduction rice is a member of the grass family and produced in about 42 countries and recognized as staple food in asia, latin america, parts of africa, middle east and serve as a primary source of food for more than half of the world population. about 90 percent of the world's rice is grown and consumed in asia (fao, 2012). the world rice market is also featured by a high degree of concentration as the data shows that most of the rice produced is consumed domestically, only 7 % of global production is internationally traded (fao, 2012). rice is not a uniform commodity and consumer preferences for specific types and qualities are often well-established so there is limited scope for substitution in rice (fao, 2004). rice is among the leading source of export earnings of pakistan. pakistan’s main competitors are thailand and vietnam for irri-type rice and india for the basmati rice. basmati rice is a premium long grain variety of rice, highly valued for its aroma and flavor and constitutes a unique group of rice in the international rice market and the basmati rice trade is entirely shared between pakistan and india. the production of basmati in pakistan is concentrated in punjab province. the cultivation of basmati rice is confined to a specific geographic differentiation in the foot hills of himalayas and is believed to be nature’s gift to indian sub-continent. pakistan basmati has stiff challenge with the world largest exporter india who aggressively marketing basmati rice and have shown that the world can absorb more of it (davidson, 1996). the adulteration of basmati rice with other cheaper varieties has become an area for potential exploitation. there is a need to develop a method that enables the differentiation of basmati varieties from other long-grain rice in order to ensure consumer protection and for use in regulation of rice trade (gop, 2010). in pakistan considering the importance of rice public policy intervention have long history which is however on decline. to reduce uncertainty and price risk in rice farming the government announcing the support price for basmati and irri paddy (gop, 2006). before 1996 the export of rice was the responsibility of public sector. at present private traders handle all exports of rice in pakistan. there is dire need to conduct international marketing research on basmati rice a traditional export commodity of pakistan as there is no significant work has seen in the literature. however recently few studies were conducted with reference to rice, including (apple yard, 1987). in the study the author analyzed the comparative advantage of various crops including basmati rice and found that pakistan has comparative advantage in basmati production. the author also found that basmati producers in pakistan were under implicit taxation by policy or market failures. akhtar et al. (2007) also analyzed economic efficiency and competitiveness of basmati rice production system of pakistan’s punjab and argued that basmati rice maintained economic efficiency in domestic resource use as an export commodity and performed advantageous commodity for the country/nation. they also concluded that at farm level, lack of competitiveness is evident by the results and economic incentive structure prevailing, unfavorable for basmati producers. davidson (1996) argued that due to agronomic factors, there is no significant competitor to pakistan in the supply of basmati rice. in the presence of data limitation, it was found that export elasticity of demand for basmati rice was highly inelastic. akhtar (1999) concluded that prices of basmati will go up and pakistan will gain in terms of basmati exports. (hassan, 2013) concluded that rice exhibits very strong comparative advantage and also observed increasing trend and justifying heavy potentials for export growth in global market. riaz and jansen (2012) revealed that at the world market level pakistan has a comparative advantage in cereals (especially rice) and horticultural products. basmati rice is such an important commodity for pakistan so it is pertinent to analyze performance, destinations and competitiveness of basmati exports from pakistan. in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 304-312 306 the era of trade liberalization and globalization, information about the global comparative advantage pattern can be invaluable to designing development strategies at both national and farm level. exploiting comparative advantage enables an economy to reap gains from trade. the study will look into the issues facing basmati exports regarding its competitiveness in the world and in major export destinations to sustain the competitiveness. it is hoped that this paper thus will be decent addition in the knowledge for design efficient strategies for exports competitiveness of basmati rice of pakistan. the study of export performance, especially for country like pakistan with serious external imbalances, is essential for economic decision-making and might prove crucial for the choice of policies aimed at addressing these imbalances and foreign trade deficit. export performance by developing countries is highly diverse. its patterns differ significantly by country and region and but the countries are rapidly expanding export earnings by improving export structures from products to high-technology and high-skill products (lall, 2000). it is necessary to identify markets in which pakistan’s basmati rice have comparative advantage, and therefore they have prospects for further development to deal with new opportunities and threats lie in marketing at domestic and overseas markets in basmati rice. materials and method time series data was obtained from different sources i. e. pakistan bureau of statistics (pbs), economic survey of pakistan, and agricultural and processed food products export development authority (apeda), world trade organization (wto) and food and agricultural organization (fao). revealed comparative advantage methodology developed by balassa (1965) and balassa (1977) was used for empirical analysis. rca methodology is being used in developing and developed world since its inception. deardorff (2010) argued that the rca remains valid in revealing true comparative advantage. karakaya and ozgen (2002) used the rca index approach to investigate the potential trade creation and diversion effects of the economic integration for turkey with the european union. mahmood (2004) examines export specialization of pakistan's non-agriculture production sectors during 1990-2000. hanif and jafri (2008) construct balassa’s rca index for the textile sector of pakistan. export competitiveness the export performance ratio (epr) was estimated to examine the comparative advantage from post-trade data by following the method suggested by balassa, (1965). following indicators were used at world level and region/country level to explain the argument.                  awt iwt ajt ijt ijt x x x x rca ……………….. (1) where rcaijt =revealed comparative advantage index value for product/commodity i in country j in year t xijt, xiwt = are values of country j and world exports of product/commodity i respectively in year t xajt, xawt = are values of country j and world total exports respectively in year t pakistan’s basmati rice export destinations are relatively concentrated to study the comparative advantage in relation to trading partners a regional revealed comparative advantage (rrca) index was calculated by changing the sub-script w to r richardson et al. (1999). using regional revealed comparative advantage index yue (2001) analyzed chinese export pattern. we used same approach to calculate regional rca in relation to specific county/ market for pakistan basmati export. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 304-312 307                  art irt ajt ijt ijt x x x x rrca ………….….. (2) rrcaijt =regional revealed comparative advantage index value for product i in country j in year t xijt, xirt = are values of country j and regional exports of product/commodity i respectively in year t xajt, xart = are values of country j and regional total exports respectively in year t in the present paper country ‘j’ refers to pakistan commodity ‘i’ refers to basmati rice, ‘w’ refers to the world and r refers to reference country or region total exports of pakistan ‘iw’ refers world export of basmati rice and ‘aw’ refer to total export of world and ‘ar’ total export of the region/country under consideration r refers to region or selected country. rca index can take values between zero and infinity. on the basis of observed trade pattern rca and rrca index reveals a comparative advantage (disadvantage) in export of commodity i by country j if the index’s value is greater (less) than one, with respect to the world or a reference country or region. to analyze the export concentration by commodity and market is measured by using share of basmati export in total export of the country and share different markets in total export of basmati rice. the degree of export concentration (diversification) has been measured at global and major basmati export markets level. results and discussion basmati rice remained traditional export commodity of pakistan and contribute significantly in total exports of country. historically basmati rice exports concentrated in few markets so it is necessary to identify the major basmati export markets, analyze trend in export competitiveness and also geographical diversification of commodity export. in addition to it this paper tried to examined the competitiveness of basmati exports and investigate pattern of trade concentration with major trade partners in the world only 7 % of global production of rice is internationally traded (fao, 2012). while in pakistan about half of basmati production is exported internationally during the period under analysis (gop, 2011-12). the result showed that pakistan has expanded basmati export into many countries of the world and registered remarkable growth in term of market access during the period under analysis. on average during 1988-92 pakistan has exported its basmati rice in to 19 countries and in 2008-12, pakistan basmati rice went to 66 countries showing a good geographical diversification in basmati export (table 1). table 1: market diversification of pakistan’s basmati rice, 1987-88 to 2011-12 period # of countries importing pakistan’s basmati rice 1987-88 to 1991-92 19 1992-93 to 1996-97 42 1997-98 to 2001-02 49 2002-03 to 2006-07 61 2008-09 to 2011-12 66 source: authors analysis, based on pakistan bureau of statistics data, gop with in the country the relative importance of basmati rice exports in total exports ranges from a minimum of 2.3 % on an average during 1993-97 to a maximum of 4.7 % in 2008-12, indicates the importance of basmati exports in the economy of pakistan on one hand. on the other hand the structure and increased share of basmati export in total exports shown a increased concentration of export after 1993-97. this situation argues for export diversification into exportable products to avoid the low growth and trade deficit. orszaghova et al. (2013) argues that the economies depend on commodity exports and highly concentrated economies tend to display more volatile growth. pakistan needs to sustain growth in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 304-312 308 foreign exchange earnings with export product diversification. table 2: pakistan total exports and basmati rice export share period pakistan basmati exports pakistan total exports basmati exports as % of total exports (million us $) (%) 1987-88 to 1991-92 173.7 5426.2 3.2 1992-93 to 1996-97 191.5 8054.4 2.3 1997-98 to 2001-02 260.0 9023.4 2.9 2002-03 to 2006-07 449.7 14915.8 3.0 2007-08 to 2011-12 961.1 20893.0 4.7 source: authors analysis based on economic survey of pakistan data different issues (gop) in comparison and competition analysis of pakistan’s basmati export market shares shows that the pakistan’s share in world market has declined, overall, from 47% in 1987-92 to 32% in 2008-12. the export market shares in iran, saudi arabia and uae also fell mainly due to competition stiff competition in the world. despite the steady increase in the value of basmati exports, pakistan share in major basmati import markets is decreasing over time which is the matter of concern. pakistan is gradually losing its share in saudi arabia. analysis revealed that in uae there is a sharp decrease in share during 2003-07 to 2008-12. in major basmati import markets pakistan’s share was dropped from 100 % to 41%, and from 29% to 10% in iran and saudi arabia respectively. in uae markets pakistan share first increased from 70 % to 82 during 198792 to 1998-02 and then decreased substantially in the end period 2008-12 to 32%. however pakistan has increased its market participation in sultanate of oman and united kingdom from 60 % to 83 % and 14% to 39 % respectively (table 3). table 3: pakistan’s share in world basmati exports (%) period/ partners iran oman saudi arabia uae uk total world 1987-88 to 1991-92 100 60 29 70 14 47 1992-93 to 1996-97 94 81 17 64 10 35 1997-98 to 2001-02 88 87 10 82 25 37 2002-03 to 2006-07 88 91 8 81 32 43 2007-08 to 2011-12 41 83 10 32 39 32 source: authors analysis based on pakistan bureau of statistics data, gop and apeda, data (goi) export diversification (concentration) is variously defined as the change in the composition of a country’s existing export product mix or export destination (ali et al., 1991). by using the trade data this paper investigate geographic diversification (concentration) of basmati export markets from 1987-88 to 2011-12. as for export structure is concerned, the concentration index revealed that uae is the main importer of pakistan’s basmati rice with 21 % of total basmati export of pakistan during the period 1987-92 and 41 % during 2003-07 followed by iran, saudi arabia, oman and uk in order. these five market has captured about slightly less than two third of the total basmati export from pakistan. as pakistan’s basmati exports are highly concentrated to few markets of middle east, which makes the economy more vulnerable to negative developments namely on those markets in term of export incentives. there is need to diversify its basmati exports across more regions beside middle east. this export expansion has helped pakistan to change its economic structure and export incentive for the country. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 304-312 309 table 4: geographic structure of pakistan’s basmati exports 1987-88 to 2011-12 year/partner iran oman saudi arabia uae uk rest of the world total world share in total basmati exports from pakistan (%) 1987-88 to 1991-92 28.3 5.4 21.4 20.6 1.6 28.2 100 1992-93 to 1996-97 13.4 9.0 21.6 25.6 2.2 28.0 100 1997-98 to 2001-02 1.8 9.6 10.4 32.0 6.0 40.4 100 2002-03 to 2006-07 5.8 6.4 5.8 40.8 5.2 35.8 100 2007-08 to 2011-12 14.4 8.0 7.2 23.4 5.0 41.4 100 source: authors analysis based on based on pakistan bureau of statistics data, gop basmati exports concentration is analyzed in major basmati import partner countries in relation to total export to these partners. comparison of the various markets suggests that diversification levels increased in oman, saudi arabia and uae. however in iran and uk markets analysis showed an increased concentration in export basket of pakistan. for developing countries like pakistan an export led growth strategy, export diversification is conceived as the progression from traditional to non-traditional exports. the extent of concentration (diversification) is merely described by referring to the share of basmati export in total exports of country to major export destinations of basmati rice. table 5: pakistan export concentration in major export destinations of pakistan (%) period /partner iran oman saudi arabia uae uk 1987-88 to 1991-92 40.8 64.8 19.5 19.1 0.9 1987-88 to 1991-92 44.1 56.7 16.4 13.3 0.7 1997-98 to 2001-02 21.2 51.1 12.6 16.3 2.8 2002-03 to 2006-07 21.2 56.1 7.3 16.0 2.6 2007-08 to 2011-12 59.5 44.6 17.0 12.2 4.7 source: authors analysis based on pakistan bureau of statistics data, gop we analyze briefly the structure of pakistan basmati rice trade using the rca index which was calculated at global level and also for major basmati importers countries. the analysis revealed that the pakistan has revealed comparative advantage in basmati rice export, implying revealed competitiveness. the rca index ratio for pakistan basmati rice is extremely high, revealing export competitiveness of a that basmati is dominant export commodity it is obvious that pakistan have comparative advantage in basmati rice due to its strategic position in exports of country. this finding is consistent with (ilyas et al., 2009) they conclude that pakistan has comparative and competitive advantage in rice. rca index at region/country level of basmati rice also shows revealed competitiveness. the analysis noted a declining trend in export competitiveness during the last five years. but declining trend in rca index in basmati rice is real issue. to maintained comparative advantage in basmati rice there is need to focus on the sector, particularly processed products in order to make it contribute further to the development of the region. overtime change in rca index suggested some changes in economic competitiveness and comparative advantage. basmati rca at global level followed a fluctuations pattern since 1988-92, but more recently it has declined at global and country level except saudi arabia and uk. overtime a meaningful sign of falling trend in export competitiveness of traditional export commodity. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 304-312 310 table 6: revealed comparative advantage of basmati rice exports in major export destinations and world period/country iran oman saudi arabia uae uk world (regional rca) (rca) 1987-88 to 1991-92 165 179 49 70 68 292 1987-88 to 1991-92 675 184 40 56 45 232 1997-98 to 2001-02 1046 162 25 69 130 256 2002-03 to 2006-07 321 264 32 65 130 272 2007-08 to 2011-12 170 168 63 36 154 259 source: authors analysis based on pakistan bureau of statistics data, gop of pakistan and apeda, data, goi conclusion revealed export performance have been analyzed which indicated that over time pakistan is losing its share and market participation of traditional export commodity in traditional import markets of basmati. despite the steady increase in the value of basmati exports over time and obvious high rca index value its share in global export of basmati rice is declining. the results suggest that the competitiveness of pakistan has decreased significantly over the period under analysis at global level. however the structure of basmati export by geographical destination has not much changed considerably. based on the present analysis, several conclusions can be drawn with respect to the export competitiveness of pakistan’s basmati rice. declining competitiveness is the real issue. the analysis of rca revealed that the pakistan has revealed comparative advantage in basmati rice export, implying revealed competitiveness of very high degree as basmati remained a dominant commodity of pakistan’s export earnings. it identified the export concentration and major international markets for pakistan basmati exports. as pakistan’s basmati export is highly concentrated to few countries /markets which makes the economy more vulnerable to negative developments namely on those markets in term of export incentives. there is need to diversify basmati exports across more regions beside middle east. there is need to increasing production capacity, infrastructure development for improved export chain to exploit potentials for export growth in highend markets. measures are necessary for standardized, normalized and scientific administration track in production and marketing of basmati rice of pakistan. opportunities provided by the global demand patterns and inherent competitive edge in basmati rice can be exploit with effective trade 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(2001). comparative advantage, exchange rate and exports in china, paper prepared for the international conference on chinese economy, cerdi, france. http://stat.wto.org/statisticalprogram/wsdbstatprogramyear.aspx,language=e http://stat.wto.org/statisticalprogram/wsdbstatprogramyear.aspx,language=e http://stat.wto.org/statisticalprogram/wsdbstatprogramyear.aspx,language=e effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(10), 225-229 225 knowledge, attitude and participation of fadama users group towards fadama iii project activities in ebonyi state, nigeria egwu, emeka williams department of agricultural economics, management and extension, ebonyi state university, abakaliki, nigeria abstract 1 the study assessed the knowledge, attitude and participation of fadama users group members towards fadama iii project activities in ebonyi state. multiple and purposive sampling techniques were used to select 180 (one hundred and eighty respondents). primary data collected directly through fadama iii project facitlitators with questionnaire and interview schedule were used. collected data analysed with both descriptive and inferential statistics. result showed that fadama iii were groups towards fadama project activities through formation of viable fugs and apext fcas (x = 3.1) formation group owned production assets such as cereal milk, rice milk, cassava processing plants, mini – tractors (x = 2.7), and managing of financial resources (x = 2.8). a coefficient of multiple determination show that above 64.2 percent change in the dependent variable was caused by changes in independent variables included in the regression model. based on the findings, qualitative extension services should be provided for the farmers, massive enlightenment seminars, capital and involvement of farmers in the project planning and implementation will strengthen their participation in the programme. keywords: fadama iii, user groups, fugs and fcas 1. introduction fadama is mainly low laying flood plains composed of alluvial deposits and containing extensive exploitable aquifers seasonally flooded for re-change diving the next season floods (ramahan, 1993) irrigation is one of the source of fadama season farming under the natural fadama condition and it is the application of water by human agency to assist the growth of crops and grass (ani, 2004). water for irrigation may be, firstly, pumped from underground sources may means of wells, secondly, drawn from the natural flow of streams, and thirdly, obtained by damming or otherwise regulating the flow of streams (afolayan, 2005). it may be applied to crop by fording, channels, spraying or drips from nozzles. the fadama development project is one of the nigeria’s agricultural policies designed to increase food production for the teeming and growing population (adaeyemi et al., 2007). the first phase of the project, fadama i started in 1990, through the collaboration of the federal government of nigeria and the world bank. this is in realization of the fact that fadama potentials had a high capacity of reducing the negative effect of rudimentary and small holder rain federal agriculture on corresponding author’s email address: egwuwe@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:egwuwe@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(10), 225-229 226 the teeming population in rural nigeria. the primary aim of fadama establishment in nigeria is for small scale and commercial farmers to partner with federal government of nigeria to increase their income, enhance efficiency in productivity in order to satisfy the countries food need and have enough to export (abiola and omoabngan 2003). the world bank in partnership with nigeria government developed the programme to enhance productivity and market linkage of fadama farmers through a new project on information and knowledge services. the programme was also aimed to improve agricultural potentials of the rural poor farmers. better access to information through improved information technology is expected to reduce marketing and transportation cost, encourage farmers to take informed risks and participate in markets. marie-nelly (2011) stated that this is in line with the drastic change in information and technology taking place across african markets. today, reverse is the case since the primary aim of fadama programme has been turned down and neglected by small scale farmers due to lack of basic knowledge and non-chalant attitude towards the programme. according to agwu and abah (2009), the fadama project activities focuses on government farmers partnership in the funding of agricultural enterprises with the aim of achieving suitable and stable funding for agricultural enterprises which will lead to agricultural development. the fadama iii project will be implemented using the community demand driven (cdd) approach which strongly emphasizes stakeholder’s participation at eh community level to develop participatory and socially inclusive local development plans (ldps) which provides the basis for support and finding under the project (adeolu and taiwo, 2004) (pcu –nfdo, 2005). this paradigm shift from the traditional public sector dominated/ supply led development approaches of the past to a private sector led demand-driven strategy ensures full guidance of participating farmers through several institutional structures. the various fadama resource users including crop farmer, pastoralists, fishermen and women and on and off farm entrepreneurs, operating through their respective fadama resources users group (frugs) and their apex bodies, the fadama community associations (fcas) agree on the consensus on how to use the common resources for the mutual advantage. through the process, communities decide on the advisory and infrastructures they need to enable them attain development goals they set for themselves based on their efforts, the consensus so reached are articulated in community development plan (cdps) drawn at the level of the fadama community associations (fcas). according to world bank (2003), success stories have been achieved in india, pakistan, argentina and kenya. however, in nigeria and ebonyi state, even though the fadama i, project recorded some measure of success, certain limitations and its restriction to crop production only brought about some problems of conflicts (onoja, 2004). these conflicts which were mainly between the farmer and others fadama users especially pastoralists and fisherman over stock routes, crop distruction and encroachment led to the initiative of fadama ii. the fadama ii programme fosters participation of all the other areas of farming. the project development document prepared by african development fund (adf) of african development bank (adb) in collaboration with the federal republic of nigeria (frn) in 2004 was adopted with moderation of the structural arrangement and implementation procedures planned and after the lesson from fadama i (adf. 2004) fadama ii project was implemented in seventeen states and the federal capital territory since the first quarter of 2004 with overwhelming success. ebonyi state, one of the remaining nineteen states that did not participate in the fadama ii due to their inability to meet up with the stringent eligibility criteria them. in response to the interest shown by state not participating in the fadama ii projects, the federal government of nigeria requested the world bank to initiate preparation work for putting fadama iii projects in place for the remaining states not participating in fadama ii project. national fadama development project (nfdp iii) was world bank assisted poverty reduction project and was implemented in the 36 states and the federal capital territory of nigeria (afolabi, 2010) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(10), 225-229 227 2. methodology the study area ebonyi state is situated in the north eastern part of south east of nigeria. the state has a population of about 2.137,501 million people according to 2006 national census. it occupies between latitude 5.40e and 6.45e. bounded on the north by benue state, east by cross river state, on the south by abia state and on the west richly endowed with numerous solid minerals spread across all parts of the state. the vegetation is semi – savanna grass land with forest and swamp. climate mixed with hot and mildly hot nature. the people of ebonyi state are mainly farmers due to her favourable climate condition. the state is divided into three agricultural zones – ebonyi north, ebonyi central and ebonyi south. ordinary least square (ols) multiple regression analysis was used to determine the relationship existing between the so in economic / personal characteristics of fadama farmers and their level of participation in fadama iii project activities. model: y = f (x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 , x5 , x6 , x7 , x8) implicit function y = q0 + q1x1 + q2x2 + q3x3 + q4x4 + q5x5+ q6x6 + q7x7 + q8x8 + et…….. explicit function where: q0 = constant q1 – q8 = regression parameters y = dependent variable (level of participation) x1= sex (male = 1, female = 0) x2 = age in years. x3 = marital status x4 = education attainment x5 = household size x6 = farm size in ha. x7 = animal income in naira x8 = membership in cooperation society. 3. results and discussion table 1: mean score analysis of knowledge and attitude of fadama users group members toward fadama iii projects activities s/n knowledge and article mean value x remarks i. formation of viable fugs and their apex fcas 3.1 accepted ii. formation of group owned productive assets such as cereals mills, rice mills, cassava processing plants, mini – tractors etc. 2.6 accepted iii input support for production, processing and marketing through fadama iii project 2.7 accepted iv. empowering participant with best agricultural practice and advisory service with areas of demand. 2.8 accepted v. rural infrastructural reliabilitation and construction of feeders and access road, convent, small bridges, rural markets. 3.3 accepted vi. sustainable land and water management practices and structures. 3.5 accepted vii. support to adp (agricultural development programme) 2.6 accepted viii. monitoring and evaluation of sponsored projects 3.1 accepted ix. funds disbursement to the fugs 2.7 accepted asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(10), 225-229 228 x. create for conflict resolution among fadama uses groups 2.7 accepted grand mean 2.91 source: field survey data, 2014 table 1 result showed that members of fadama iii user groups had knowledge and shoed positive attitude to fadama iii project activities. all the above factors were accepted because they served above decision point. the level of participation of farmers in planning, implementation and monitoring of faduma iii project activities was examined and result obtained in table 2. multiple regression analysis was carried out to determine the influence of socio-economic characteristics of fugs members on the level of participation in fadama iii project activities in ebonyi state and the result of the analysis shown in table 2. table 2: summary of multiple regression results variable variable name regression coefficient standard error tvalue sig constant 4.406 2.906 1.516 * x1 sex -1.404 1.079 -1.301 ns x2 age 0.183 0.057 2.440 ** x3 marital status 0.300 0.888 0.337 ns x4 educational attainment 0.333 0.143 2.328 ** x5 household size 0.000 0.151 0.002 * x6 farm size 0.136 0.214 0.63 * x7 animal income 0.000 0.000 1.686 *** x8 membership of cooperative society 1.755 1.381 1.270 * r 2 0.642 or 64.2% std error of the estimate 2.92188 adj. r 2 0.616 or 61.6 dw 0.533 fratio 24.895 service: data analysis, 2014 note: *, **, and *** indicate significant at 1%, 5% and 10% level respectively, while ns indicate not significant the analysis shows a co-efficient of multiple determination of 0.642, which is equal to 64.2%. this implies that about 64.2% change in the dependent variable (level of participation in fadama iii project) was caused by change in dependent variables included in the regression model (x1 – x8). this is an indication that the socio-economic characteristics of the members of fadama users groups studied exerted great influence on their level of participation in fadama iii project activities in ebonyi state. the overall significance of the regression model was depicted by the value of fstatistics (f-ratio = 24.895) which was significant at 1% level of significance. most of the independent variables were positively related to the dependent variable (level of participation) as shown by the positive signs of their coefficients and were also statistically significant while the coefficient of sex was negatively signed. only sex and marital status were not statistically, significant. 4. summary based on the findings, it was concluded that members of fadama user groups were highly knowledgeable and have positive attitude towards fadama iii project. this was evident in high participation of fadama user groups in fadama iii activities in the area. consequently, the fadama asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(10), 225-229 229 iii beneficiary participated in preparation. implementation and maintenance of sub-project, managing of financial resources; developing, monitoring and evaluation of fadama iii activities among others. age, educational level, household size, annual income and membership of cooperatives of fadama farmers were significant. this is an indication that these variable are important determinant of participation of fadama farmers in fadama iii project activities and thus, assets significant influence on their level of participation in fadama iii project activities. however, the development of sustainable positive attitude ensure effective participation of members of fadama user groups in fadama iii project activities in the study area, the financial / social, administrative / institutional political interference and non chalent constraints identified by the study should be addressed headlong. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abiola, r. o., & omoabngan, o. b. (2003). women involvement in food crop production, processing and marketing in nigeria. nigeria journal of research and aproduction, 2910, 55-62. adaeyemi, i. k, atsu, a. a, ndagi a., & aliyu, u. (2007). beneficiary assessment / impacts evaluation of fadama ii projects in niger state. unpublished impact studies, pp. 23-25. adeolu, b. a., & taiwo, a. (2004). the impact of national fadama facility in alleviating rural poverty and enhancing agricultural development in south – western nigeria. journal of social science, 9(3), 157-161. afolabi, j. a. (2010). fadama farming as an environment friendly and viable enterprise in ondo state. nigeria journal of human ecology, 30(2), 93-97. afolayan, s. o. (2005). water management in fadama research institute. cultural and environmental constraints in: l.o. oladije taiwo, (ed), obafemi awolowo university, lle – ife, osun state nigeria. agwu, a. e., & abah, h. o. (2009). attitude of farmers towards cost sharing in second national fadama development project (nfdp). the case study of kogi state of nigeria department of agricultural extension, university of nigeria, nsukka. nigeria journal of agricultural extension, 11(1), 81-88. african developmental found (adf) (2004). federal republic of nigeria fadama development project. implementation manual agricultural and rural development project ocar 2. ani, a. o. (2004). factors inhibiting agricultural production among rural women in southern ebonyi state, nigeria. unpublished ph d thesis, university of maiduguri, nigeria. marie-nelly, f. (2011). fadama farmers to increase their income through incorporation of information communication technology. world bank: nigeria. onoja, a. f. (2004). history of second national fadama development project (nfdp – 11) and its implementation arrangements. a paper presentation on the occasion of 2 – day fadama sensitization workshop organized by manic promotion (nig) limited in collaboration with local government services commission in lokoja, kogi state, nigeria. project corporation units, federal ministry of agriculture and rural development pc ii – nfdo. (2005). fadama development project poverty reduction and increased productivity through empowerment, abuja nigeria. ramahan, u. (1993). foundation for education and self – help: agronomic principles and practices of major fadama crops. fadama course for fadam users’ association held at bauchi, 1-17. world bank (2003). fadama ii, project. implementation manual vol. 1 and 2 and appraisal document on a proposal credit to the federal republic of nigeria for the national development project. november 18, 2003. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(11), 230-247 230 physico-chemical characteristics of gleyic luvisols and gleyic listosols production areas of garden produce in nieki valley, south-east of côte d'ivoire toure nantarie and kouadio koffi patrice department of earth sciences and mineral resources (strm), university félix houphouëtboigny of cocody, 22 bp 582 abidjan 22, côte d'ivoire, west africa kwadjo koffi eric department sciences of nature, university nangui abrogoua, 02 bp 801 abidjan 02, côte d'ivoire, west africa yao-kouame albert department of earth sciences and mineral resources (strm), university félix houphouëtboigny of cocody, 22 bp 582 abidjan 22, côte d'ivoire, west africa abstract 1 a study of the physico chemical properties of gleyic luvisols and gleyic histosols was carried on in nieki valley, a vegetable crops production area in south-east of côte d'ivoire. soil samples were collected at different depths (0-15 cm and 15-40 cm) on each of the sites studied for laboratory analysis. the results obtained of physical analysis show that the texture of soil is generally less thin and essentially provided in heavy clays. the observed average values of the index of crusting and the ability to cracking show that soils are not crusting and have an excellent ability to cracking. the results of physical analysis also show that the soils have an index of structural stability that change from very stable to stable and a very high risk of asphyxiation. results of chemical analysis reveal that the ph values increased with soil depth and are higher in field soils than in control soils. moreover, organic matter in soils studied is more abundant in surface horizons and decreases with depth. however, the contents of calcium, magnesium and potassium are lower in the surface horizons and increase with depth. keywords: gleyic fluvisols, gleyic histosols, vegetable crops, nieki valley, côte d'ivoire 1. introduction in the world, agriculture has become, one of the activities necessary to ensure the food security of people and procure at some of them, financial resources. in the current context of global agriculture, the quality of food products is becoming increasingly important, particularly with regard to vegetable production (baize, 2000). in africa, in large cities and surrounding areas, market gardening is seen as a solution to the vegetable supply problems. however, it remains subject to numerous constraints, of which the most important is constituted by the insect attack and pathologies, urging gardeners to use chemical pesticides anarchic and abusive manner. these corresponding author’s name: kouadio koffi patrice email address: kkpatrice@hotmail.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kkpatrice@hotmail.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 231 practices are dangerous, because the workers, who handle these delicate products, are not qualified (madjouma et al., 2009). it is an often informal activity, generating income and employment, practiced by poor of the urban and peri-urban areas (assogba-komlan et al., 2007). in côte d'ivoire, particularly in abidjan (economic capital) and its peripheral areas, we are witnessing in recent years, a development of urban agriculture, as a result of high population growth, leading to an increase food needs, after the socio-political crisis since 2002. the development of vegetable crops faces significant constraints, including land pressure, resulting over-cultivation, pest attacks, causing huge production losses and sometimes the abusive use of inputs. however, the presence of trace elements in chemical (traore et al., 2006) and biological (doelsch et al., 2006) inputs used in urban and peri urban agriculture, is a major constraint, as these can be supplied in labile forms and are potentially bioavailable. agrochemicals used in farms are implicated in the degradation of the quality of soil and water, both surface and ground, particularly in soil where vegetable crops are produced as well as banana production (traoré et al., 2003). then, to improve yields, farmers who produce these crops in niekivalley use mineral and organic fertilizers and chemical pesticides on vegetable crops (spinach, okra, eggplant and jew's mallow). in the absence of adequate monitoring mechanism, the use of pesticides is rarely in compliance with health and environmental standards (traore et al., 2006). the consequences on the environment in general and on the quality of soil in particular, are significant because these agricultural practices are likely to cause an accumulation of trace metals in the surface horizons, rich in organic matter (vogel et al., 2008), where concentrations well above of the pedogeochemical bottom and standards (burnol et al., 2006). fertility management techniques practiced by ivorianfarmers, lead to a rapid depletion of soils (yemefack et al., 2004; koné, 2009; koulibaly et al., 2009). in many cases, the failure to take into account the physical, chemical and microbiological soil constraints remains detrimental to their operation. yet it has long been known that some soil parameters play a key role in the management of plant nutrition and an adequate supply of nutrients depends on their optimization (troeh and thompson, 2005). this study aims to assess the physico-chemical characteristics of gleyic fluvisols andgleyic histosols and production areas of the vegetable crops in nieki valley in south-east of côte d'ivoire. 2. description 2.1. study area located in south-east region of côte d’ivoire, the study area (nieki valley) is part of a subwatershed with a surface of approximately 2.5 km 2 , bounded by the coordinates n 5°25’48 and n 5°18’36 ; w 4°17’24 and w 4°13’48 (figure 1). the different study sites are located in a climate of humid tropical type, characterized by the existence of two (02) rainy seasons and two dry seasons, as follows: a long dry season, from december to march; a long rainy season from april to mid-july; a short dry season from mid-july to mid-september; a short rainy season from mid-september to november. the rainfall for the first quarter of 2010 varied from 0.5 to 1.2 mm of rain, with a temperature average of 28.3 °c. soil samples analyzed come from control plots (in natural vegetation) and cultivated plots, in different soil horizons, on the three study sites that are azaguié, attinguié and dabou. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 232 figure 1: location of the different study sites 3. material and methods 3.1. physical characteristics of soils 3.1.1. granulometry granulometric analysis of sediment is to determine the proportion of the various classes of particle size (sand, silt, clay, etc.). this study enables to determine the specific surface (m 2 / g) of the sediment, which allows estimating the ability of adsorption of metals and organic substances (ceaeq, 2003). according to the pipette method of robinson-köln, 20 g of fine soil is suspended in water, after heat destruction of organic matter by hydrogen peroxide. this operation is followed by the dispersion of the particles with a sodium pyrophosphate solution (50 g / l). the principle of the method consists in determining, after removal of carbonates and organic substances, of any iron oxides and the fine fraction below 38 microns. the method is based on the difference in sedimentation velocity between the fine particles and the heavier particles. particle sedimentation is due to two opposing forces, gravity and friction, resulting in a movement in a fluid medium. in this method, a sample is pipetted at different times and at different depths of the suspension of the sample in a graduated cylinder. the duration and depth are determined from the stokes law. the pipetted suspension is condensed and dried and weighing determines the mass ratio of the pipetted fraction. the removal of clay and fine silt fractions is done by pipetting. the coarse silt, fine sand and coarse sand are obtained by dry sieving, after complete siphoning all (clay + silt). 3.1.2. index of soil crusting the formula used to calculate the index of crusting (ic) is given by the work of baize (1988). for soils with a basic tendency of ph> 7, the formula of index of crusting (ic) is: ic = 1.5 𝐹𝑠+0.75 𝐶𝑠 𝐶 + 10 𝑂𝑀 ……………………… (1) with fs: fine silt; cs: coarse silt; c: clay; om: organic matter. hydrographic network sampling sites towns scale asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 233 in acid soils trend, with a ph <7, the index formula of crusting (ic) is: ic = 1.5 𝐿𝑓+0.75 𝐿𝑔 𝐴 + 10 𝑂𝑀 – 0.2(ph-7) ……………………… (2) with, lf = stringers purposes, lg = coarse silts, a: clays and om: organic matter. 3.1.3. ability to cracking, risk of asphyxia and structural stability the ability to crack, the risk of asphyxiation and the structural stability are appreciated from the charts in the works of goulard et al. (1987). 3.1.4. dry bulk density and total porosity of soil the bulk density was determined using the method with sand described by yoro (1992). in this method, beach sand used to determine the volume of soil sample comprises grain diameter between 1 and 2 mm. then, the volume density of sea sand has been determined. in that purpose, 2 kg sand samples were weighed and placed in plastic bags. at the plot in field, soil sample is taken from the circular opening (similar to the orifice [152 mm]) of the circular densitometer membrane base; the aluminum plate is secured on the floor. the mass of the soil sample was determined after drying at 105 °c. the thus formed cavity was filled to the top of the aluminum plate, with each sand sample of 2 kg, poured into the cavity close to the ground, and the excess, recovered and then weighed. the sand mass poured into the cavity was calculated as the difference between the initial mass of the sample of sand and the excess recovered. the volume of the cavity is that of sand; it is the ratio of its mass to its density. determining the bulk density of a soil is to determine the dry mass (p ') and the volume (v) of a soil sample, and to establish the relationship: p′ = 𝐷−𝐷′ 𝐷 𝑥 100 ……………………… (3) where p’ is the total porosity; d is the actual density of the soil constituents and; d’ is the dry soil bulk density, such as: d′ = 𝑃′ 𝑉 ……………………… (4) where v is the total volume of voids as a percentage of total ground; the value of d’ in g.cm -3 3.2. chemical characteristics of the soil 3.2.1. ph soil ph was determined using a ph meter type orion 4-star, equipped with a glass electrode and a reference electrode; the two electrodes are combined in a single electrode, the ph-h2o or current acidity is determined in a soil-water suspension according to the weight ratio land/solution equal to 1/2.5. the procedure for the determination of ph-h2o is to introduce 20 g of fine soil in a 100 ml beaker, add 50 ml of distilled water and allow 30 minutes stirring regularly at first, with a glass stirrer. determining the ph of a soil is used to define the state of acidity or alkalinity (or acid-base status). agricultural soils have a ph of between 4 and 9. 3.2.2. total carbon according to the method of walkley and black (1934), the organic matter is oxidized with cold potassium dichromate (1n) in the presence of sulfuric acid. the excess dichromate is determined by return with the mohr salt (1 m). organic carbon is obtained by considering, in the operating conditions, that 1 ml dichromate oxidizes 0.39 mg carbon monoxide. organic matter is calculated by multiplying the total carbon content by 1.724. the organic matter was obtained by the formula: om = corganique x 1.724 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 234 3.2.3. organic total nitrogen according to the kjeldahl method, the organic matter is mineralized to hot (300 °c) with sulfuric acid in the presence of a catalyst (k2so4 + cuso4 + se) for 3 hours. the mineral deposit is filtered; an aliquot is distilled. ammonia moved by 10n sodium hydroxide is recovered in a sulfuric acid solution (0.01 n) mixed with a color indicator (methyl red + bromocresol green, dissolved in ethanol). the nitrogen content is obtained after back titration of the excess sulfuric acid with sodium hydroxide. 3.2.4. adsorbent complex (cec) the determination of the parameters of the adsorbent complex is made in two steps: o percolation cations retained on the adsorbent complex with the ammonium acetate buffered to ph 7. cations ca 2+ , k + and mg 2+ were determined by atomic absorption spectrophotometry; o washing the excess of ammonium acetate in alcohol and saturation of the complex with na + ions provided by a 10% solution of nacl. all cations adsorbed on the cec exchange sites are displaced, and then the sites are saturated by a single cation which is ammonium (nh 4+ ). ammonium is removed and assayed by kjeldahl method. the number of exchange site of the cec is exactly proportioned to the number of ammonium ions. the result is expressed as the number of loads for soil 100g (100g for milli equivalents (meq/100g) or centimoles / kg soil). the values of exchangeable cations, expressed conventionally in g / kg or ‰ may also be expressed as meq/100g, which allows calculating cec saturation level for each of these elements. 3.2.5. total phosphorus the determination of total phosphorus is made by acid digestion (nitric and per chloric acid) 0.5 g of fine soil reground until the complete discolouration. the extract is assayed by spectrocolorimetry phosphorus, using molybdenum blue through an uv-visible spectrometer of shimadzu mark. 3.2.6. determination of metals the various desired metals in the soil samples are: fe, al, zn, pb, cu and cd. icp-aes method was used for the determination of these metals (jeannot et al., 2001). solubilization of elements from a soil may be performed in two different ways: either by soil preparation and treatment with regiawater or leaching followed by treatment with nitric acid. soil preparation based on drying, grinding and sieving of the soil, while leaching comprises contacting the solid sample with an aqueous solution to determine the portion of the available elements run off of rainwater. the acid used for the digestion of the solids resulting from the preparation of the soil is a solution of regiawater. the latter consists of three parts hydrochloric acid (37% hydrochloric acid solution) and a volume of nitric acid (nitric acid solution at 65%). regiawater, also called royal water, can dissolve all metals. the standard application of the mineralization of the solids is nf en iso 15587-1 "digestion for the determination of certain elements in water and the regiawater digestion."as part of our work to the operating protocol followed is soil preparation and regiawater treatment. it first involves weighing 0.5 g of dry soil sample and place it in a digestion tube "digitube". then, 6 ml of a hydrochloric acid solution and 2 ml of nitric acid are added to the tube. then, the sample is heated at 95 ° c for 75 minutes on a heated block mineralizer. the mineral deposit obtained is cooled to room temperature and the volumetric following 50 ml with deionized water and centrifuged at 2,000 revolutions / minute for three minutes. the samples from the leaching are meanwhile, acidified with a nitric acid solution. 3.2.7. iso volumique masse assessments the isvolumetric method was chosen to calculate the stocks of chemical elements different soil horizons. the interest of the isvolumetric method is to determine the gain or loss elements between asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 235 rock and soil (sum of the different soil horizons) (soubrand-colin, 2004). in this study, due to lack of source rock for the two soils studied, we have chosen the same horizon for each soil type that was considered as a reference horizon. for fluvisol and / or gleysol, choosing the deepest horizon profiles is justified by the fact that this is a soil derived from successive sedimentation. thus, to calculate the isovolumique stocks, it was speculated that the alteration of our reference horizon is at the origin of the formation of the soil that is above. stocks are calculated by multiplying the chemical content of the element considered by the apparent density and the thickness of the horizon: stocks = [x]. d. l. ………………………… (5) with:[x] = content of the element x ; d = bulk density ; l = thickness stocks are estimated in kg.m -3 and g.m -3 , respectively, for major elements and trace elements. while the contents are expressed in g.kg -1 for major elements and mg.g -1 for trace elements. 3.2.8. enrichment factor (ef) the method of enrichment factor (ef) was used, on the one hand, consider the distribution of chemical elements within a weathering profile and, on the other hand, compare the behavior of chemical elements to each other on all pedons. this method makes it possible to see the changes of a chemical element as a function of the depth, in relation to a reference element for which the variation would be zero and the value of ef remain equal to one (1). thus, for a given element x, the corresponding enrichment factor is determined as follows: ef x = 𝑋𝑖 𝑋𝑜𝑖𝑜 ………………………… (6) x and xo are the contents of the element x, respectively, in a given soil horizon and the reference horizon, while i and io are the contents of the invariant element, respectively, in a given soil horizon and in the reference horizon. 3.2.9. statistical analysis a statistical study was performed to compare the knowledge and practices accumulated during data processing. with anova (analysis of variance), fischer, based on the null hypothesis for levels of significance α = 0.05 and 0.01, we checked any changes on each site, the effect of different fertilizers on the floor, the physical properties, the content of different chemical elements and agronomic parameters studied. whenever the computed probability is significant, the tukey hsd test for significance level α = 0.05 and 0.01, is performed to compare the mean and appreciate various significant differences among them. principal components analyses (pca) (wolff, 2003; wolff and visser, 2005) were performed to look for correlations between the different elements. data processing was done with the statistica 7.1 for windows. the variance analyzes were done with the glm procedure (general linear model: analysis of variance with tukey mean test at 5 pc threshold). 4. results 4.1. physical studied 4.1.1. granulometry considering the transect east-west, azaguié-attinguié-dabou, we note generally that the texture is less fine and essentially endowed with heavy clay. the clay proportions are changing in a decreasing manner. it is observed that the clay content is considerably higher in soils of azaguie that in those attinguié and dabou (clay: 70% in azaguié; 56% in attinguié and 48% in dabou). regarding sand and silt observed, values change increasingly using the same transects. dabou soil asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 236 is filled by sand than other sites (sand: 19% in azaguié; 28% in attinguié and 31% in dabou). silt rate is also changing in the same direction (silt: 11% in azaguié; 16% in attinguié and 21% in dabou). taking into account the vertical dynamics, the examination of the variation of clay content in the horizons shows that clay proportions increase with depth. that is true for the soils at the sites of azaguié and attinguié. in contrary, clay proportions decrease with depth in the soils at dabou (table 1). table 1: assessment of soil particle size in the study sites location sites horizons (cm) granulometry (g.kg -1 ) a limons sand lf lg sf sg azaguié field 0-15 69.55 8.26±0.0058 3.08±0.0088 10.23±0.0088 8.85±0.0133 15-40 70.05 8.43±0.0058 3.20±0.0577 9.20±0.0577 8.87±0.0115 control 0-15 70.22 8.27±0.0088 4.12±0.0088 8.18±0.0058 9.16±0.0088 15-40 72.22 8.76±0.0058 3.52±0.0058 8.05±0.0088 7.37±0.0088 attinguié field 0-15 53.5 10.74±0.0088 5.42±0.0088 12.20±0.0577 17.86±0.0088 15-40 55.38 10.85±0.0058 5.26±0.0088 13.33±0.0088 15.14±0.0318 control 0-15 57.57 10.27±0.0058 5.85±0.0058 12.86±0.0058 13.44±0.0145 15-40 58.43 10.75±0.0058 5.73±0.0088 13.26±0.0088 11.81±0.0088 dabou field 0-15 48.77 14.27±0.0088 6.23±0.0120 12.45±0.0233 18.17±0.0666 15-40 47.7 13.98±0.0058 5.98±0.0088 13.30±0.0577 19.13±0.0088 control 0-15 48.77 14.42±0.0058 6.40±0.0577 12.58±0.0033 17.74±0.0058 15-40 47.8 14.22±0.0058 6.20±0.0577 13.20±0.0577 18.41±0.1419 fcal 610.67** 140.62** 175.7** 357.7** 897.3** pcal 0 0 0 0 0 ptheor 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 means followed by the same letter in the same column are not statistically different at p <0.01 by tukey test. cal = calculated theoretical = theor. * = significant; ** = highly significant; *** = very highly significant 4.1.2. index of soil crusting the index of crusting, calculated from the results of the particle size and chemical properties, is reported in table 2. the average values of the observed crusting index are below 1.4.soils of the different study sites are not crusting. table 2: mean values of the index of soil crusting following depths on different sites location sites horizons (cm) crusting index (ic) azaguié field 0-15 0.17 15-40 0.18 control 0-15 0.18 15-40 0.18 attinguié field 0-15 0.22 15-40 0.22 control 0-15 0.22 15-40 0.23 dabou field 0-15 0.29 15-40 0.29 control 0-15 0.33 15-40 0.33 icappreciation (callot et al., 1982): <1.4: not crusting; 1.4 to 1.6: few crusting; 1.6 to 1.8: enough crusting; 1.8 to 2: crusting; > 2: very crusting asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 237 4.1.3. ability to cracking of the soil the values obtained on different sites show that the study sites soils have excellent ability to cracking (table 3). table 3: soil cracking index following the depths on different sites location sites horizons (cm) ability to cracking azaguié field 0-15 1 15-40 1 control 0-15 1 15-40 1 attinguié field 0-15 1 15-40 1 control 0-15 1 15-40 1 dabou field 0-15 1 15-40 1 control 0-15 1 15-40 1 assessment of fitness to cracking (keita, 2000): 1: excellent ability; 2: ability average with good and without mo mo; 3: ability with low and medium without mo mo; 4: no same ability without mo; 5: crumbling; mo = organic matter 4.1.4. structural stability table 4 show that the east-west transect soils, azaguié-attinguié-dabou, have a structural stability index that changes from very stable to stable. table 4: level of soil structural stability following the depths on different sites sites location horizons (cm) structural stability azaguié field 0-15 1 15-40 1 control 0-15 1 15-40 1 attinguié field 0-15 1 15-40 1 control 0-15 1 15-40 1 dabou field 0-15 1 15-40 2 control 0-15 2 15-40 2 assessment of structural stability (keita, 2000): 1: very stable; 2: stable; • 3: average; 4: unstable; 5: very unstable 4.1.5. risk of asphyxiation the values reported in table 5, indicate that soils of the sites have a very high risk of asphyxiation. table 5: level of soil asphyxiation risk following the depths on different sites sites location horizons (cm) risk of asphyxiation azaguié field 0-15 1 15-40 1 control 0-15 1 15-40 1 attinguié field 0-15 1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 238 15-40 1 control 0-15 1 15-40 1 dabou field 0-15 1 15-40 1 control 0-15 1 15-40 1 assessment of risk of asphyxiation (keita, 2000): 1: very high risk; 2: medium to high risk; 3: low to medium risk; 4: no risk 4.1.6. density and porosity examination of the porosity values show that, for both profiles of the plots cultivated on different sites, tillage resulted in compaction of surface horizons. indeed, the porosity of the surface horizon different soil profiles irrigated by well water is lower than that of the control soil. dabou the control soils have a higher bulk density than other materials, with low porosity values (table 6). table 6: bulk density, real density and porosity of different horizons of soil profiles made on the different study sites sites location horizon (cm) real density (g.cm 3 ) apparent density (g.cm 3 ) porosity (%) azaguié field 0-15 2.61 1.45 44 field 15-40 2.35 1.43 39 control 0-15 2.57 1.44 41 control 15-40 2.78 1.66 40 attinguié field 0-15 2.73 1.6 46 field 15-40 2.54 1.37 41 control 0-15 2.69 1.67 37 control 15-40 2.67 1.68 37 dabou field 0-15 2.75 1.45 47 field 15-40 2.83 1.59 43 control 0-15 2.83 1.58 35 control 15-40 2.63 1.58 34 4.2. chemical features studied 4.2.1. acidity and organic matter 4.2.1.1. acidity analyzed soils are acidic to weakly acidic. the ph values increase with depth of the soil and are higher in soils of fields than in the control soil (bare soil). weakly acidic soils are observed in the fields of azaguié (5.1 and 6.1) and attinguié (6.2 and 6.7) and the control plots of dabou (6.2 and 6.5). attinguié and dabou soils are relatively more acidic, with ph values up to 4.2 in dabou observed (table 7). 4.2.1.2. carbon in general, the surface horizons are richer in carbon than the depth of horizons on all the sites studied. the observed values show that the azaguié soils are poor in carbon, with levels below 1 pc the richest soil carbon are observed in dabou with an average of 1.77 to 2.3 g.kg -1 , and attinguié, with an average of 1.97 to 1.63 g.kg -1 (table 7). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 239 4.2.1.3. nitrogen the average contents of nitrogen in soils remain very low, with maximum of 0.1 mg.kg -1 determined in dabou soil. the vertical distribution of nitrogen in the soil of the different sites shows a relative constancy in different backgrounds (table 7). 4.2.1.4. organic matter the levels of organic matter in soils of the sites operate in the same direction as carbon. indeed, we note that the organic matter is more abundant in surface horizons and decreases with depth onall study sites. on all sites, the organic content is less than 5 g.kg -1 . however, it is noted that azaguié soils are less filled with organic matter, with levels ranging between 1.23 and 1.48 g.kg -1 , than the dabou soils, with contents ranging between 3.03 and 4, 05 g.kg -1 (table 7). 4.2.1.5. c/n ratio in this study, the most high c/n ratio are recorded on control soils (bare soils). it is also noted that this ratio decreases with depth, and for all the soils studied. in general, the values of c/n observed are very high, between 8 and 10. the observed mean values are 14.15 in azaguié; 29.7 in attinguié and 23.8 in dabou (table 7). table 7: assessment of the acidity and the organic matter in the different soils studied sites location horizons (cm) acidity and organic matter (mg.kg-1) phwater phkcl nitrogen and organicmatter c n mo c/n azaguié field 0-15 5.9 ± 0.1 b 4.7 ± 0.1 b 0.86 ± 0.0002 c 0.07 ± 0.000019 b 1.48 ± 0.00011 c 11.95 ± 2.09 c 15-40 6.1 ± 0.11 a 5.8 ± 0.1 a 0.78 ± 0.00018 c 0.07 ± 0.000019 b 1.34 ± 0.0001 c 10.43 ± 1.88 c control 0-15 5.2 ± 0.08 b 4.6 ± 0.003 b 0.80 ± 0.0002 c 0.04 ± 0.00001 c 1.38 ± 0.00009 c 18.68 ± 3.11 b 15-40 5.6 ± 0.09 b 4.7 ± 0.003 b 0.71 ± 0.00016 c 0.04 ± 0.00001 c 1.23 ± 0.00007 c 15.53 ± 2.34 b attinguié field 0-15 6.2 ± 0.12 a 5.4 ± 0.09 a 2.01 ± 0.0023 a 0.08 ± 0.00002 b 3.47 ± 00087 a 24.22 ± 5.16 b 15-40 6.7 ± 0.20 a 5.8 ± 0.1 a 1.93 ± 0.0021 b 0.08 ± 0.00002 b 3.32 ± 0.0078 b 22.46 ± 5.21 b control 0-15 4.8 ± 0.009 c 4.3 ± 0.003 b 1.65 ± 0.00019 b 0.04 ± 0.000001 c 2.85 ± 0.0065 b 38.62 ± 9.13 a 15-40 4.9 ± 0.009 c 3.4 ± 0.005 c 1.61 ± 0.00017 b 0.04 ± 0.000001 c 2.77 ± 0.0045 b 33.56 ± 8.67 a dabou field 0-15 4.2 ± 0.007 c 3.3 ± 0.004 c 1.76 ± 0.0002 b 0.05 ± 0.000001 c 3.03 ± 0.0034 b 32.83 ± 8.59 a 15-40 4.6 ± 0.007 c 3.5 ± 0.005 c 1.78 ± 0.0003 b 0.13 ± 0.00012 a 3.07 ± 0.0031 b 13.53 ± 2.12 c control 0-15 6.2 ± 0.12 a 5.4 ± 0.1 a 2.35 ± 0.0024 a 0.09 ± 0.00002 b 4.05 ± 0.0098 a 24.83 ± 5.02 b 15-40 6.5 ± 0.21 a 5.7± 0.2 a 2.24 ± 0.0017 a 0.09 ± 0.00002 b 3.86 ± 0.0095 a 24.07 ± 4.85 b fcal 341.63** 367.78** 154.18** 51.48** 155.75** 27.23** pcal 0 0 0 0 0 0 ptheor ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 means followed by the same letter in the same column are not statistically different at p <0.01 by tukey test. cal = calculated theoretical = theor. ns = not significant; * = significant, ** = highly significant 4.2.2. exchange complex and cation exchange capacity the clay humus complex (chc), also called "adsorbent complex," is all the forces that hold the exchangeable cations (ca 2+ , mg 2+ , k + , na + ) on the surface of mineral and organic components of soils. 4.2.2.1. calcium (ca 2+ ) ca 2+ values reported in table viii show two types of soil: soils with very low to low level in ca 2+ , obtained infields of azaguié, attinguié and dabou, with contents ranging between 0.24 and 2.75 cmol.kg -1 ; soils with normal concentration in ca 2+ ,in control plots at dabou, with 3.88 and 3.57 cmol.kg -1 in the horizon of 15-40 cm in fields at attinguié. calcium content is lower in surface horizons and increases with depth at azaguié, while at attinguié and dabou, it tends to decrease from the surface to the deeper horizons. mean levels of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 240 calcium vary from very low to low, in all studied horizons, with values between 0 and 1 cmol.kg -1 . high levels are however observed at attinguié (3.82 cmol.kg -1 ) and dabou (3.88 and 3.57 cmol.kg 1 ). 4.2.2.2. magnesium (mg 2+ ) magnesium is in small quantities in the surface horizons and increases in the deeper ones at azaguié and dabou. in contrary, magnesium is higher at the surface and decreases in deeper horizons in attinguié soils. the observed mean levels (table 8), are in general relatively weak; however with a peak is noted at dabou (1.1 cmol.kg -1 ). 4.2.2.3. potassium (k + ) potassium values obtained show relatively low levels compared to the scale of appreciation of the richness of soluble potassium in soils. however, the upper horizons are richer in potassium than deeper ones. of all the studied sites, dabou soils present the highest values of k + (table 8). 4.2.2.4. sodium (na + ) sodium is present in the soil in the form of sodium ions (na + ). it has a destructive effect on the soil structure, when it exceeds 5% of the cec. it is a secondary nutrient compared to nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. it should therefore be reduced to a minimum. according to the results obtained (table 8), there is not considerable variation in sodium content from one site to another, or from one horizon to another, with oscillating levels around 1 cmol.kg -1 . however, the highest levels are at dabou (1.4 to 1.9 cmol.kg -1 ). table 8: characterization of the absorbent complex and the cation exchange capacity in the different soils studied sites location horizons (cm) absorbent complex and cation exchange capacity(cmol.kg-1) k+ ca2+ mg2+ na+ cec azaguié field 0-15 1.87 ± 0.0002 c 1.06 ± 0.0001 b 0.27 ± 0.00021 c 1.06 ± 0.00014 b 5.94 ± 0.1 c 15-40 1.64 ± 00017 c 1.23 ± 0.0001 b 0.46 ± 0.00043 b 1.26 ± 0.00022 a 10.23 ± 2.02 b control 0-15 1.36 ± 0.00011 c 0.45 ± 0.00009 c 0.34 ± 0.00033 c 1.06 ± 0.00015 b 12.46 ± 2.17 b 15-40 1.23 ± 0.00009 c 1.75 ± 0.0002 b 0.54 ± 0.00042 b 1.05 ± 0.00015 b 10.08 ± 2.01 b attinguié field 0-15 2.84 ± 0.00021 b 2.75 ± 0.021 b 0.42 ± 0.00043 b 1.08 ± 0.00016 b 4.6 ± 0.09 c 15-40 2.17 ± 0.0002 c 3.82 ± 0.032 a 0.37 ± 0.00032 c 1.15 ± 0.00019 b 8.8 ± 1.25 c control 0-15 3.54 ± 0.00034 b 0.65 ± 0.000091c 0.92 ± 0.0011 a 1.08 ± 0.00016 b 6.24 ± 1.12 c 15-40 1.37 ± 0.000011 c 0.24 ± 0.00009 c 0.12 ± 0.00007 c 1.08 ± 0.00016 b 6.82 ± 1.14 dabou field 0-15 3.69 ± 0.032 b 0.65 ± 0.00021c 0.96 ± 0.0010 a 1.4 ± 0.00027 a 24.29 ± 5.21 a 15-40 5.03 ± 0.1 a 0.36 ±0.000091c 1.01 ± 0.0011 a 1.95 ± 0.00034 a 15.89 ± 2.78 b control 0-15 3.44 ± 0.023 b 3.88 ± 0.032 a 0.25 ± 0.00019 c 1.94 ± 0.00031 a 20.24 ± 5.19 a 15-40 3.43 ± 0.025 b 3.57 ± 0.023 a 0.65 ± 0.00037 c 1.06 ± 0.00014 b 22.15 ± 5.03 a fcal 969.85** 199.07** 34.72** 155.75** 10.59** pcal 0 0 0 0 0 ptheor ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 means followed by the same letter in the same column are not statistically different at p <0.01 by tukey test. cal = calculated theoretical = theor. ns = not significant; * = significant, ** = highly significant 4.2.3. levels of trace metals 4.2.3.1. manganese (mn 2+ ) the results show a strong accumulation of mn 2+ in the upper horizons; these manganese concentrations decrease with depth. the highest concentrations of mn 2+ were observed in the soils at azaguie with values between 15 and 25 mg.kg -1 compared to control soils at dabou (17.26 and 13.3 mg.kg -1 ). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 241 the values obtained for the soils at attinguié and dabou are relatively low (less than 8 mg.kg -1 ). these are poor soils in mn 2+ (table 9). 4.2.3.2. aluminum (al 3+ ) aluminum content decreases from the upper horizons to deeper ones, except of soils in dabou fields. soils of azaguié and attinguié are richer in aluminum. the lowest values were observed in dabou (table 9). 4.2.3.3. iron (fe 3+ ) iron in soils tends to decrease with depth in azaguié. but the evolution of iron concentration is not significant. in contrast, iron accumulates in the lower levels of the soils in dabou and attinguié. azaguié soils are richer in iron, with an average of 18.43 mg.kg -1 . similar values were also obtained in the control soils at dabou. however, very poor values have been recorded in the fields of dabou (4.76 and 4.85 mg.kg -1 ) (table 9). 4.2.3.4. zinc (zn 2+ ) the distribution of zinc in the various soil horizons shows a decrease in the concentration of zn 2+ with depth. the reverse phenomenon is observed in the control of soils at attinguié and dabou. the contents of zn 2+ are generally low on different sites (less than 5 mg.kg -1 ). some peaks are observed at azaguié: 10.63 mg.kg -1 (fields) and 7.34 mg.kg -1 (control) at 0-15 cm, and also 9.94 and 10.83 mg.kg -1 in dabou about control soils (table 9). 4.2.3.5. lead (pb 2+ ) the distribution of pb 2+ in different soil horizons shows, overall, a decreasing concentration with depth. the reverse phenomenon is observed in the fields at azaguié and dabou. the contents of lead, however, remain low in all sites, with a peak of 2.34 mg.kg -1 in dry matter observed in 0-15 cm horizonat attinguié. soils at azaguié and attinguié are poorer in lead than those of dabou (table 9). 4.2.3.6. copper (cu 2+ ) copper tends to accumulate in the upper soil horizons of the sites, except in azaguié control soils, where concentrations are higher in depth. very low contents of cu 2+ are observed in attinguié and dabou. some peaks are however observed: 3.34 mg.kg -1 in soils of fields at azaguié, 3.16 mg.kg -1 in field at attinguié, and 3.89 mg.kg -1 in control soils at dabou (table 9). table 9: major elements and trace metals in different soils studied location sites horizons (cm) major elements(g.kg-1) et trace metals (mg.kg-1) mn2+ al2+ fe2+ zn2+ pb2+ cu2+ azaguié field 0-15 25.78 ± 5.21 a 97.32 ± 14.12 a 18.25 ± 4.23 a 10.63 ± 2.11 a 1.56 ± 0.0012 b 3.34 ± 0.0033 a 15-40 14.95 ± 2.21 ab 83.28 ± 13.31 a 18.23 ± 4.22 a 4.85 ± 0.0078 b 0.83 ± 0.0008 c 2.03 ± 0.0021 a témoins 0-15 17.53 ± 3.23 ab 99.67 ± 14.45 a 18.65 ± 4.32 a 7.34 ± 1.21 ab 0.92 ± 0.0009 c 2.17 ± 0.0027 a 15-40 23.8 ± 5.01 a 98.77 ± 14.15 a 18.62 ± 4.31 a 3.27 ± 0.0056 b 0.83 ± 0.0008 c 2.63 ± 0.0029 a attinguié field 0-15 7.95 ± 1.01 bc 91.45 ± 14.01 a 12.46 ± 2.03 b 4.84 ± 0.0076 b 0.65 ± 0.0007 c 3.16 ± 0.0031 a 15-40 6.8 ± 0.12 bc 90.73 ± 13.31 a 18.64 ± 4.32 a 3.24 ± 0.0054 b 0.75± 0.00071 c 0.93± 0.000012 c control 0-15 9.5 ± 1.78 b 89.75 ± 13.78 a 12.36 ± 2.01 b 2.75± 0.0023 bc 2.34 ± 0.0021 a 0.95± 0.000015 c 15-40 3.7 ± 0.00007 c 73.74 ± 10.24 b 11.76 ± 1.91 b 2.97± 0.0033 bc 1.14± 0.00081 b 0.44 ± 0.00012 c dabou field 0-15 3.04 ± 0.004 c 56.91 ± 8.56 b 4.76± 0.0067 c 1.35 ± 0.0012 c 1.33± 0.00071 b 1.66 ± 0.00071 b 15-40 3.15 ± 0.002 c 72.67 ± 10.11 b 4.85± 0.0078 c 1.24 ± 0.0009 c 1.34± 0.00071 b 0.49 ± 0.00015 c control 0-15 17.26 ± 3.17 ab 92.17 ± 14.02 a 18.03 ± 4.02 a 9.94 ± 2.03 a 1.35± 0.00072 b 3.89 ± 0.0067 a 15-40 13.3 ± 2.17 ab 35.64 ± 6.34 c 18.33 ± 4.21 a 10.83 ± 2.21 a 1.25± 0.00056 b 0.53 ± 0.00021 c fcal 146.61** 427.23** 965.87** 624.69** 142.37** 13.64** pcal 0 0 0 0 0 0 ptheor ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 ≤ 0.01 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 242 means followed by the same letter in the same column are not statistically different at p <0.01 by tukey test. cal = calculated theoretical = theor. ns = not significant; * = significant, ** = highly significant 4.2.4. relative enhancements for major and metal elements examining the enhancements for the different profiles of the agricultural plots and control soils, major elements and trace metals show enrichment factors in most of the surface horizons, with a value up to 2. mnat attinguié gives enrichment factors much higher than 2 (9 to 13). about cu, it induces the values obtained in the surface layers that are of the order of 2 to 7 in the site at attinguié. for the pb, the highest enrichment factor is in upper horizons of the control soils in attinguié site (table 10). the data in table 10 indicate enrichment of mnin attinguié soils, and cu in attinguié and dabou soils. table 10: change in enrichment factors (ef) of the metal elements according to soil horizons location sites horizon (cm) enrichment factor (ef) mn al fe zn pb cu azaguié field 0-15 cm 1.083 0.985 0.980 3.251 1.880 1.270 field 15-40 cm 0.628 0.843 0.979 0.606 1.000 0.772 control 0-15 cm 0.737 1.009 1.002 2.245 1.108 0.825 control 15-40 cm 1 1 1 1 1 1 attinguié field 0-15 cm 11.357 1.240 1.060 1.630 0.570 7.182 field 15-40 cm 9.714 1.230 1.585 1.091 0.658 2.114 control 0-15 cm 13.571 1.217 1.051 0.926 2.053 2.159 control 15-40 cm 1 1 1 1 1 1 dabou field 0-15 cm 0.229 1.597 0.260 0.125 1.064 3.132 field 15-40 cm 0.237 2.039 0.265 0.114 1.072 0.925 control 0-15 cm 1.298 2.586 0.984 0.918 1.080 7.340 control 15-40 cm 1 1 1 1 1 1 4.2.5. total isovolume major stocks and metallic elements in different soil horizons table 11 summarizes the assessments of stocks isovolumiques determined for all profiles. the results show that isovolumiquestocks, in the surface horizons of agricultural plots at azaguié and those of the control plots at dabou exceed 2. table 11: summary inventory isovolumiques major and metal elements in soils of different sites sites location horizon (cm) iso volume stocks of the major (kg m-3) and metal (gm-3) elements mn al fe zn pb cu azaguié field 0-15 0.005 0.021 0.004 2.312 0.339 0.726 field 15-40 0.005 0.029 0.006 1.733 0.296 0.725 control 0-15 0.003 0.021 0.004 1.585 0.198 0.468 control 15-40 0.009 0.041 0.007 1.357 0.344 1.091 attinguié field 0-15 0.002 0.022 0.003 1.161 0.156 0.758 field 15-40 0.002 0.031 0.006 1.109 0.256 0.318 control 0-15 0.002 0.022 0.003 0.688 0.586 0.237 control 15-40 0.001 0.031 0.005 1.247 0.478 0.184 dabou field 0-15 0.001 0.012 0.001 0.293 0.289 0.361 field 15-40 0.001 0.029 0.002 0.492 0.532 0.194 control 0-15 0.004 0.021 0.004 2.355 0.319 0.921 control 15-40 0.005 0.014 0.007 4.277 0.493 0.209 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 243 5. discussion lamouroux (1972), referring to the action of the rock material, said alteration of primary minerals is causing multiple pedogenic transformations, and it largely determines soil differentiations. thus, differentiation and evolution of soils appear strongly conditioned by the middle of soil formation that can be defined as the physicochemical environment responsible for the evolution of soil and soil differentiations. rich horizons of coarse elements, like furniture horizons covering the stone-lines (lanfranchi and schwartz, 1991), seem to have been formed under the combined action of biological alterations, driving by gravity and lateral transport material and colluvial erosion in the catchment during the rewetting phases. thickness, depth, density and nature of the coarse elements are linked on the one hand, to the nature of the rock and on the other hand, to the topographic position (kouadio, 2012). the strong presence of coarse elements mid-slope and down slope could be explained by the fact that transport by water runoff through graded bedding. indeed, the further away from the summit, the coarse elements are relatively small, making them easily transportable then by water and wind, resulting in their accumulation on the more or less flat surfaces (kouadio, 2012). soil samples collected and analyzed at the different sites are generally acidic to moderately acidic, with ph values of around 5.1 (control soil) and 6.5 (cultivated land). such acidity is often characteristic of soils rich in organic matter. when the ground is grown continuously, this quickly leads to acidification due to the decomposition of organic matter as a result of microbial activity and root respiration. when soil acidity increases, following cultivation in successive years, the soil ph decreases (elberling et al., 2004). indeed, the ph is one of the most important factors that explain the mobility of trace metals in the soil. in general, lowering the ph (acidic ph or slightly acid) promotes metal mobilization by proton exchange, dissolving the insoluble salts or destruction of the retention phase. there is a provision in the middle of the proton of which the binding is highly competitive on the exchange sites and those sorption (baize, 1997). dissolution of metal salts or the destruction of the retention phase may also take place under acidic conditions (wu et al., 2002). in our study, the presence of metals is certainly due to soil acidity. also, the change in ph appears to be the parameter which easily modifies the behavior of metals (martinelli, 1999). the surface horizons of the studied vegetable crops production soils are relatively rich in organic matter, especially those in dabou soil, with contents of between 3.03 and 4.05 g.kg -1 . it is noted that the organic matter is more abundant in surface horizons and content decreases with depth on the three study sites. this richness could be due to the repeated intake of animal waste (manure chicken, pig excrement and others). the richness of different organic matter in soils can also be explained by the return of crop residues and by inputs of nutrients, as noted naman et al. (2002) at morocco. this enrichment in organic matter may ultimately affect the physical properties of the soil, because we know that there are strong positive correlations between organic matter content of the soil and the rate of stable aggregates (wesemael, 2006). also, among the most reactive components about the metal, organic matter are known for their complexing properties adsorbent or by acting as ligands. they sometimes play the role of storage of metals (lamy, 2002). the organic matter may fix trace metals and immobilize them in the ground within stable organomineral complex, or, in contrary, migrate with the soil solution and induce a transfer of trace metals associated to it, in ecosystem, to groundwater. this affinity is of great importance in the behavior of toxic metals. for example, the dissolved organic matter is capable of complexing the metal and to increase their solubility (wu et al., 2002). due to their small size, their high surface site and their asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 244 filling properties, organic soil colloids may potentially have a greater affinity for the metal than the other soil components. accordingly, the soluble metal types present in the soil solution may preferably be associated with mobile solid phases that are colloids (in particular organic) in the solution, rather than stationary solid phases of the components of the soil matrix, and therefore increase the mobility and transport of metals in depth. humic substances affect the speciation of metals by their chelating power, but also by their redox properties (asatiani et al., 2004). the organic matter in the soil is characterized, as clay, by a large specific surface and by its swell ability, allowing the penetration of water and the diffusion of small molecules, which can also bind with humic substances. however, humic substances may fix metal ions by complexing. the metalorganic matter bonds can be viewed as an ionic exchange process between h + and metal ions on the acid-functional groups (xue et al., 2003). this may explain the metallic trace metal levels in the studied soils, rich in organic matter. the various reversals in vegetable crops soil upper horizons may cause migration of organic matter to the underlying horizons. values of c/n determined on all sites are high. c/n ratio is a criterion to measure the progress of the humification in soils. when this ratio is between 8 and 10, the biological activity is normal and the soil working properly. however, when humidification conditions are bad (poor ventilation, excessive acidity, too poor soil nutrient solution), the speed of the humidification is slow and then fresh organic matter accumulates. in peat soils, like those found on the sites of attinguié and dabou, the humidification process is slowed down by excess water, acidity of the medium and lownutrient (especially phosphorus). this explains the c/n ratios observed on these sites (29.7 at dabou and 23.8 at attingué). in this type of soil, humus, relatively stable, consists of humic and fulvic acids, known for their chelating power (calvet, 2003). it forms a bond between organic compounds humified (fa, ha) or simple organic substances (organic acids, polyphenols) and metal cations, especially iron, aluminum and trace elements (calvet, 2003). that is the formation of a sort of "association" organometallic more or less stable chelate type. it is about of chelating phenomenon or sequestration. the monovalent cations (na + , k + ) and divalent (ca 2+ , mg 2+ ) are retained on humic compounds, basically a simple phenomenon of cation exchange. however, cations such as cu 2+ , zn 2+ and mn 2+ (trace elements), as well as fe 2+ (probably as fe 3+ ) and al 3+ , are able to form with organic compounds, coordination bonds. the cation exchange capacity in the different soil shows relatively high values in soils of azaguié and attinguié, with respectively 9 and 10 cmol.kg -1 , and higher in dabou soil (20 cmol.kg -1 ). cec values recordin studied soilsare relatively high, and can be an index of immobilization of trace metals (cations) analyzed (assa, 2005). the cation exchange capacity of the soil depends more on organic colloids than clay. decreasing of the cation binding capacity can be attributed to leaching of the clay, and above all to just polymerized humus, less abundant, dominated by fulvic acids, unable to form a clay-humus complex (yeboua and ballo, 2000). the high levels of cec in studied soils could mean that the type of humus observed is polymerized, thus capable of binding, hence the retention of heavy metals, which increases with increasing soil cec. the highest cu contents recorded in soil horizons reached respectively 3.34 mg.kg -1 in agricultural plots at azaguié and 3.89 mg.kg -1 in the control soils at dabou, especially in the surface horizons. these values are below the limit value of 35 mg.kg -1 proposed by baize (1997). examination of enrichment factor observed about cu in soils indicates that the vertical distribution of this metal is, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(11), 230-247 245 since the surface horizons to the depth ones; this could be explained by the use of organic fertilizers that enrich copper soils; including the use of pesticides such as bordeaux mixture (cu sulfate addition of lime), as a fungicide (tonneau, 2003). about the spray water, the levels are relatively low (<0.2 mg.l -1 ), not exceeding the limit concentration in drinking water (2 mg.l -1 ) according to the oms(1989), but high in vegetable crops (values between 1.34 and 20.82 mg.kg -1 ) particularly in corchorus tridens on all sites. the correlations between the cu content in the irrigation water and those plants (r = 0.59) could indicate that this metal, provided by the irrigation water in the ionic form (cu 2+ ), is sensed by the leaves. also, high levels in the plant on studied sites could demonstrate the presence cu, mainly labile (castaldi et al. 2003). there is no significant correlation between soil cu and organic matter. however, the work of nazih et al. (2009) indicate that cu generally reacts with organic matter in the soil to form coordination complexes stable, rather than forming compounds via hydrogen bonds or electrostatic attraction, because of its low power and low moisture load. this could allow the roots of vegetable crops to make cu available to plants. these results are consistent with those of mclaughlin et al. (2000), who explain that the distribution of cu in soil is often affected by various environmental factors such as soil temperature, moisture, and especially the distribution of plant roots in the ground. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references asatiani, n. v., abuladze, m. k., kartvelishvili, t. m., bakradze, n. g., sapojnikova, n. a., tsibakhashvili, n. y., tabatadze, l. v., lejava, l. v., asanishvili, l. l., & holman, h. (2004). effect of chromium (vi) action on arthrobacteroxydans. current microbiol, 49, 321326. assa, a. 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(2004). influence of agricultural practices on clay content and other agronomic properties of a soil ferrallitique south cameroon. tropicultura, 22 (1), 3 10. yoro, g. (1992). the method sand: protocol and practical use. laboratory of agronomy ideforidcc bp 31 bingerville ivory coast. cah. orstom, ser. pédol., 28(2), 365-370. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants . 242 analyzing spatio-temporal pattern of crop diversification in jalandhar district of punjab, india haroon sajjad and sandip prasad department of geography, faculty of natural sciences, jamia millia islamia, new delhi110025, india abstract this paper analyzed dynamics of crop diversification in one of the agriculturally prosperous districts of indian punjab using gibbs martin index. spatio-temporal analysis of crop diversification in the district shows decline in crop diversification in most of the blocks (administrative sub divisions). the cropping pattern in most of the blocks of the district has become over specialized in the favour of rice-wheat rotation. net irrigated area is continuously increasing for the cultivation of rice and wheat in the study area. declining diversity of crops in the district has serious repercussions for natural resources, ecology and socio-economic condition of the farmers. keywords: spatio-temporal, diversification, cropping pattern, crop concentration, gibbs martin index, jalandhar introduction 1 agriculture is an essential occupation for income and employment in developing countries, and particularly for the rural poor, and is widely considered to be the major “engine” of economic growth in most of the developing countries. agriculture is the mainstay of indian economy as it contributes nearly 14.6 per cent gross domestic product (gdp) and more than two-thirds of the population is directly or indirectly dependent on it. india experienced rapid strides in agriculture growth with the advent of green revolution in 1960s and it has managed to move from food deficient crisis to self food sufficient situation today. however, increase in agricultural productivity has led to several corresponding author’s name: haroon sajjad email address: haroon.geog@gmail.com environmental challenges. land degradation due to over cropping, over irrigation, loss of biodiversity, declining agricultural genetic diversity and climate change are some of the challenges that potentially threatened the future viability of agricultural systems, particularly at regional and local levels (dfid, 2002). punjab, the main bread basket of the country gained economic prosperity through new agricultural technology in mid sixties. since then the state’s growing agricultural sector has increased its relative importance in generating income and state domestic product (sdp). adoption of new agricultural technology consisting of high yielding varieties of seeds, chemical fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides and modern agricultural machinery set punjab agriculture on to an impressive trajectory. this led to far reaching implication in the state’s cropping pattern (sidhu, 2005). asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:haroon.geog@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 242-256 243 punjab has recorded an unprecedented growth both in terms of area and production of food grains particularly wheat and rice during the green revolution era and has been contributing significantly to the national pool of food grains (choudhury et al., 2013). the area under wheat and rice has increased consistently due to availability of inputs at subsidized rates with high remunerative prices for the produce through minimum support prices. the expansion of area under wheat and rice is taking place at the cost of low input crops like pulses, maize cotton, and millets during kharif season (summer season), and grams, rape seed and mustard, barley, vegetables, etc during rabi (winter) season (sood et al., 2000; sood et al., 2009). with the result more than three fourth area of the state is experiencing decline in water table (hira et al., 2004). the green revolution technologies that contributed increased food grain production have reached a plateau, and the growth in crop yields and total factor productivity has slowed down and, in some cases, stagnated (evenson et al., 1999; murgai et al., 2001; sidhu, 2002). furthermore, rising population pressure is squeezing agricultural land for cultivation and pastures. finally, the agricultural sector is under significant adjustment pressure related to market liberalization and globalization. crop diversification generally implies for growing a number of crops in different combinations on the same piece of land. crop diversification in indian punjab has become essential since it is facing second generation problem problems like lowering of water table, nutrient imbalance, soil degradation, salinity, resurgence of pests and diseases, environmental pollution and decline in farm profit. empirical studies shown that the water table in many parts of the state is declining due to excessive use of water in the cultivation of water guzzling crops resulting in poor quality of water (hira et al., 2004; singh, 1991; singh and sankhayan, 1991; singh, 1992; singh, 1995). the practice of rice wheat cultivation culture has degraded soil health across the state (singh et al., 1997; sidhu and johl, 2002). sustainability of agriculture has declined owing to increase in cost of cultivation and decrease in net farm returns (chand, 1999; singh, 2004; sidhu et al., 2010). crop diversification shows a lot of promise in alleviating these problems through fulfilling the basic needs and regulating farm income, withstanding weather aberrations, controlling price fluctuation, ensuring balanced food supply, conserving natural resources, reducing the use of chemical fertilizer and pesticide loads, environmental safety and creating employment opportunity. many studies have demonstrated this (reddy and suresh 2009; palanisami et al., 2009; chand and chauhan, 2002; gupta and tiwari, 1985). during the current decades, the process of diversification has been wide-spread due to the combined effects of water-seed fertilizer technology as well as some infrastructural development such as market centers, roads, transport, etc in the countryside (vyas, 1996; bhalla and singh, 1997). keeping in view these implications, present study was conducted in one of the centrally located districts of punjab to analyze spatio-temporal variation in crop diversification and to suggest alternate diversified plans for sustainable development. material and methods jalandhar has been chosen as the study area because it is one of the agriculturally prosperous districts of punjab and leading contributor of food grain production of the state. it lies in the central part of the state between the latitude of 30° 57′ 35.4″ to 31° 37′ 18.99″ north and longitude of 75° 4′ 27.27″ to 75° 57′ 57.50″ east (figure 1). topographically it is more or less a flat terrain, forming a part of indo-gangetic plains. physiographically, the district contains vast alluvial plains, having gentle slope from north-east to south-west. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 242-256 244 figure 1: location of the study area asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 242-256 245 district experiences semi-arid type of climate with an average annual rainfall of 770 mm, most of which is received during the monsoon months of july to september. the total geographical area of jalandhar district is 263.2 thousand hectares. agriculture is the backbone of the district as nearly 90% of the total gross cropped area is under cultivation with a cropping intensity of 173% (sood et al., 2009).the district enjoys excellent irrigation facilities. tube well is the major source of irrigation contributing more than 90% of the total irrigated area and the rest is irrigated by canal. the total population of the district is 2.2 million. of the total population, nearly 52 per cent are farmers. most of the farmers (65%) belong to medium and semimedium category possessing 2-10 hectares of land holding. the cropping pattern of the district shows that wheat is the dominant crop in the rabi season while rice is the principal crop in the kharif season. several methods like gibbs-martin index of diversification, herfindahl index (hi), transformed herfindahl index (thi), ogive index (oi), entropy index (ei), modified entropy index (mei) and composite entropy index (cei) explain diversification of crops in a given time and space by a single indicator (islam and rahman, 2012). in recent years many researches were carried out for analyzing diversification using gibbs-martin index (datta, 2012; das and mili, 2012; wen, 2010; subedi, 2010; lujan and gabriels, 2005). in this study gibbs and martin index has been used. the gibbs-martin index of diversification (1962) is a useful alternative index for measuring the extent of diversification in cropping pattern in an area and the mathematical formula for calculating index is given by:   2 1 2 1 n i i i gmi x x     where x = percentage of total cropped area occupied by each crop or hectarage under individual crop. besides, providing a useful measure of diversification in cropping this method has an advantage over other indices in that it is relatively easy to process since the index value may be calculated without reducing the actual statistics to percentages. if the total area in a region is devoted to wholly one crop (i.e., specialization), the index value is zero; and if it is evenly distributed among all crops (i.e. maximum diversification), the index value approaches 0.9. therefore, the index of diversification varies from 0.0-0.9 in case 10 crops are considered (singh and dhillon, 2004). this method considers the number factor and the even factor. besides the indices are directly related to the magnitude of diversification. the index of diversification provides a method of generalizing the relationship between the relative strength and the number of crops grown. for this analysis, time series data on crop acreage under different crops were gathered from various issues of punjab abstract and triennium averages were taken out for the period 1990 to 2010. crop concentration index was calculated by using location quotient method. location quotient method of crop concentration algebraically may be expressed as: 1. . n ij ij i j j j a a l q a a    a ij = gross cropped area under ith crop in jth block, a j = gross cropped area in jth block. j j a = gross cropped area in the district which is the summation of the gca of each block. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 242-256 246 when the index value is greater than unity, the component areal unit accounts for a share greater than it would have had if the distribution were uniform in the entire region and therefore, the areal unit has a concentration of great agricultural significance. results and discussion jalandhar is the heart of indian punjab in producing rice, wheat, potato, maize, sunflower and sugarcane. out of six agroclimatic zones of punjab, jalandhar lies in the central plain region. it enjoys the excellent irrigation facilities. the main source of irrigation is tube well. with adoption of input intensive agriculture by the farmers, the district has made tremendous strides in agricultural production and high rate of agricultural growth and productivity was registered here in the last two decades. cropping pattern of the district can best be understood in terms of gross cropped area under various crops. table 1: cropping pattern changes in jalandhar district, punjab (1990-2010) crops 1990 2000 2010 area % area % area % rice 119.7 35.46 133.57 39.24 163.57 45.28 wheat 169.4 50.19 165.63 48.66 169.40 46.9 maize 18.5 5.48 15.80 4.64 9.07 2.51 gram 0.07 0.02 0.03 0.01 0.00 0.00 mash 0.27 0.08 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 arhar 0.60 0.18 0.73 0.22 0.67 0.18 moong 0.1 0.04 0.13 0.04 0.10 0.03 massar 0.07 0.02 0.03 0.01 0.00 0.00 groundnut 1.17 0.35 0.03 0.01 0.00 0.00 rapeseed 2.3 0.68 2.30 0.68 1.03 0.29 sesamum 0.33 0.10 1.43 0.42 0.37 0.10 linseed 0.13 0.04 0.07 0.02 0.03 0.01 sugarcane 14.4 4.28 15.03 4.42 8.40 2.33 fruits 1.40 0.41 0.43 0.13 2.63 0.73 vegetables 9.03 2.68 5.17 1.52 5.97 1.65 gross cropped area 337.5 100 340.4 100 361.2 100 source: statistical abstract of punjab (various issues) table 1 shows the cropping pattern and its changes in the study area during 19902010. at the beginning of study period (1990), the district had 337 thousand hectares gross cropped area. out of this, 307.53 thousand hectares area was under total cereals and thus contributing 91 per cent of gca. among cereals, wheat was the main cultivating crop in the district. it has made an impact on the agriculture of the state. wheat occupied half of the gross cropped area. the area under rice was 35 per cent while the area under pulses was only 0.34 per cent of the gca. this clearly shows that the food grains dominated the cropping pattern of the state. only 1.5 per cent area was under oil seeds. sugarcane and vegetables accounted for 4.28 per cent and 2.68 per cent area of the gross cropped area. fruits were grown on 0.41 per cent area of the district. the gross cropped area of the district increased to 344 thousand hectares in 2000 from 337 thousand hectares in 1990. the area under cereals increased from 307.60 thousand hectares to 315 thousand hectares during this period. there was also an upward shift in the area under rice from 119.70 thousand ha in 1990 to 133.57 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 242-256 247 thousand ha in 2000 but the area under wheat declined from 169.40 hectares in 1990 to 165.53 hectares in 2000. the area under total pulses declined from 1.14 thousand ha to 0.96 thousand ha, a relative decline in the area from 0.34 per cent to 0.96 per cent of the gca during 19902000. among cereals, the area under maize, mash and massar declined during this period. oil seeds registered downward shift in their area coverage while sugarcane witnessed a slight increase in its area. the gca in the district increased to 361 thousand hectares in 2010 from 340 thousand hectares in 2000. the same trend was observed in the case of cereals. the area under rice increased from 35 per cent in 1990 to 39 per cent in 2000. it again increased to 39 per cent in 2000 to 45 per cent in 2010. the area under wheat declined from 48.6 per cent in 2000 to 46.9 per cent in 2010. the area under maize and sugarcane declined but the area under fruits and vegetables increased during 20002010. spatio-temporal analysis of area under various crops shows that area under rice and wheat increased while the area under maize, pulses, oil seeds and sugarcane declined from 1990 to 2010. measures of concentration/ diversification: gibbs martin index gibbs martin index of crop diversification was calculated for three time periods. the indices for each block and area under various crops are shown in the table 2, 3 and 4. crop diversification index in jalandhar district has decreased from 0.62 in 1990 to 0.57 in 2010 (table 2 & 4). the decrease in the index value is directly related with increase in area under few crops at the cost of others. the crops which have become more profitable in due course of time with the introduction of high yielding variety of seeds and assured market through state trading and support prices have recorded considerable increase in the area. rationalization of such cropping system has been largely facilitated by the expansion and intensification of irrigation and use of chemical fertilizers as an essential input for increasing agricultural production. rice has become the dominating crop of the district since it has recorded a considerable increase in its cropped area. the increase in its area occurred at the cost of decrease in area of maize, sugarcane, vegetables, oilseeds and pulses. a close perusal of the figure 2(a) shows that during 1990, there was only one highly diversified block viz. bhogpur block with 0.65 gmi. jalandhar west, jalandhar east, adampur, nakodar, nur mahal, rurka kalan and phillaur were medium diversified blocks with gmi ranging between 0.59 and 0.64. shahkot was only low diversified block with gmi less than 0.59. in the next phase of the study (19902000), bhogpur remained highly diversified block. shahkot turned to be the medium diversified block. jalandhar east and jalandhar west became low diversified blocks. adampur, nakodar, nur mahal, rurka kalan and phillaur remained medium diversified blocks (figure 2 b). during the final period (2000-2010), out of 9 blocks, 6 blocks showed tendency of increasing specialization. only adampur, bhogpur and nakodar showed medium tendency of increasing diversification (figure 2 c). during the entire period of the study (1990 to 2010), shahkot, phillaur, nur mahal and rurka kalan showed the maximum tendency of crop specialization. nakodar, adampur, bhogpur, jalandhar east and jalandhar west were found to have medium tendency of crop specialization. http://www.scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=ajar.2011.28.44&org=12#t2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 242-256 248 table 2: block-wise area under various crops and crop diversification index in jalandhar district, punjab (1990) blocks rice wheat maize gram mash arhar moong massar groundnut rapeseed sesamum linseed sugarcane fruits vegetables gmi nakodar 18.13 28.70 3.63 0.03 0.10 0.17 0.03 0.00 0.27 0.50 0.03 0.03 2.10 0.10 1.43 0.62 shah kot 24.57 32.13 2.47 0.03 0.07 0.03 0.10 0.00 0.83 0.43 0.23 0.00 1.07 0.13 0.93 0.59 phillaur 13.27 17.23 2.33 0.00 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.37 0.03 0.03 2.33 0.13 0.30 0.63 nur mahal 15.67 20.80 2.33 0.00 0.03 0.20 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.37 0.03 0.03 1.70 0.07 0.30 0.60 rurka kalan 10.97 14.00 1.87 0.00 0.03 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.33 0.00 0.03 2.23 0.03 0.20 0.63 jalandhar east 8.83 12.80 0.90 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.03 0.00 0.00 0.73 0.17 1.70 0.61 jalandhar west 13.3 19.43 1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.07 0.00 0.00 0.77 0.27 2.83 0.60 bhogpur 8.43 13.10 1.73 0.00 0.03 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.07 0.10 0.00 0.00 2.63 0.40 0.53 0.65 adampur 6.53 11.20 2.23 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.07 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.87 0.10 0.80 0.64 jalandhar district 119.7 169.4 18.5 0.07 0.27 0.60 0.13 0.07 1.17 2.30 0.33 0.13 14.43 1.40 9.03 0.62 source: statistical abstract of punjab table 3: block-wise area under various crops and crop diversification index in jalandhar district, punjab (2000) districts rice wheat maize gram arhar moong massar groundnut rapeseed sesamum linseed sugarcane fruits vegetables gmi nakodar 20.53 27.20 3.10 0.03 0.20 0.07 0.00 0.00 0.33 0.67 0.00 2.07 0.00 1.27 0.62 shah kot 28.80 32.13 1.90 0.00 0.07 0.07 0.00 0.03 0.43 0.60 0.00 1.57 0.00 1.20 0.58 phillaur 17.20 20.13 1.23 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.47 0.00 0.03 2.57 0.03 0.37 0.60 nur mahal 15.07 19.10 1.50 0.00 0.27 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.37 0.17 0.03 2.03 0.00 0.37 0.60 rurka kalan 10.57 12.13 1.40 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.27 0.00 0.00 2.17 0.00 0.13 0.63 jalandhar east 9.30 12.53 1.20 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.57 0.07 0.50 0.58 jalandhar west 14.23 18.20 1.73 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.33 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.60 0.17 0.83 0.59 bhogpur 9.93 12.50 1.40 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.13 0.00 0.00 8.80 0.13 0.20 0.69 adampur 7.93 11.70 2.33 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.67 0.03 0.30 0.61 jalandhar district 133.5 165.63 15.80 0.03 0.73 0.13 0.03 0.03 2.30 1.43 0.07 15.03 0.43 5.17 0.60 source: statistical abstract of punjab asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 242-256 249 table 4: block-wise area under various crops and crop diversification index in jalandhar district, punjab (2010) districts rice wheat maize arhar moong rapeseed sesamum linseed sugarcane fruits vegetables gmi nakodar 28.83 28.80 1.43 0.20 0.10 0.17 0.20 0.03 0.77 1.03 2.47 0.59 shah kot 33.73 29.50 0.60 0.07 0.00 0.27 0.10 0.00 0.23 0.33 0.90 0.53 phillaur 20.00 21.53 0.67 0.10 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.00 1.17 0.20 0.43 0.55 nur mahal 18.30 20.43 0.73 0.17 0.00 0.10 0.07 0.00 0.83 0.17 0.43 0.55 rurka kalan 12.80 14.13 0.53 0.13 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.00 1.17 0.17 0.13 0.57 jalandhar east 10.87 12.63 0.87 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.40 0.27 0.50 0.57 jalandhar west 18.70 17.27 0.90 0.00 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.63 0.27 0.73 0.56 bhogpur 11.87 13.23 1.07 0.00 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.00 2.30 0.17 0.23 0.61 adampur 8.47 11.87 2.27 0.00 0.00 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.90 0.07 0.13 0.61 jalandhar district 163.57 169.40 9.07 0.67 0.10 1.03 0.37 0.03 8.40 2.63 5.97 0.57 source: statistical abstract of punjab figure 2: spatio-temporal variation of crop diversification in jalandhar district (1990-2010) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 242-256 250 spatio-temporal analysis of crop diversification from 1990 to 2010 shows that shahkot, jalandhar east, jalandhar west, nur mahal, rurka kalan and phillaur were found to be low diversified blocks (figure 3). shahkot, jalandhar west and nur mahal have the largest area under rice crop while jalandhar east, rurka kalan and phillaur have rice and wheat rotation system. there were only three blocks having medium crop diversification status. these include nakodar, bhogpur and adampur. rice occupied the largest area in nakodar while rice and wheat were the major crops in bhogpur and adampur. thus it is evident that most of the blocks are experiencing crop specialization either in rice or rice-wheat cycle in the study area. figure 3: degree of change in crop diversification in jalandhar district (1990-2010) from the crop concentration table, it is clear that in those blocks where specialization is taking place, mostly the area shares of food grain crops viz., rice and wheat are going up at the cost of other non-food grain crops (table 5). in nakodar block, during first period, the rice and wheat were the most concentrated crops. in second period rice’s concentration increased and the concentration of wheat, maize, sugarcane and vegetables reduced while in the final phase of the study, rice remained the main concentrating crops of the farmers in the block. this block has shown the medium diversification of crops throughout the study period. gmi of this block shows that it is going towards specialization but at a slow rate. in shahkot block, high concentration of rice and wheat was recorded during 1990. during the next phase, the concentration of rice increased and concentration of wheat decreased while sugarcane and vegetables made slight improvement in their concentrations. during 2010, the concentration of rice increased while the concentration of all the other crops declined. it has lowest gmi with 0.54 in 2010 and has moved towards specialization. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 242-256 251 table 5: crop concentration index of five major crops in jalandhar district (1990-2010) blocks rice wheat maize sugarcane vegetables 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 nakodar 2.00 2.27 2.54 3.17 3.01 2.54 0.40 0.34 0.13 0.23 0.23 0.07 0.16 0.14 0.22 shah kot 2.09 2.20 2.82 2.73 2.45 2.47 0.21 0.14 0.05 0.09 0.12 0.02 0.08 0.09 0.08 phillaur 3.43 3.30 3.70 4.46 3.86 3.98 0.60 0.24 0.12 0.60 0.49 0.22 0.16 0.14 0.22 nur mahal 3.07 3.39 3.89 4.07 4.30 4.34 0.46 0.34 0.16 0.33 0.46 0.18 0.06 0.08 0.09 rurka kalan 4.17 5.02 5.44 5.32 5.76 6.00 0.71 0.67 0.23 0.85 1.03 0.50 0.08 0.06 0.06 jalandhar east 4.71 5.38 6.02 6.82 7.24 7.00 0.48 0.69 0.48 0.33 0.46 0.18 0.91 0.29 0.28 jalandhar west 3.16 3.70 4.53 4.62 4.73 4.19 0.24 0.45 0.22 0.18 0.16 0.15 0.67 0.22 0.18 bhogpur 3.90 3.09 5.11 6.05 3.88 5.70 0.80 0.43 0.46 1.22 2.73 0.99 0.25 0.06 0.10 adampur 4.60 5.08 5.40 7.88 7.49 7.57 1.57 1.49 1.45 0.61 0.43 0.57 0.56 0.19 0.09 source: statistical abstract of jalandhar district (various issues) table 6: area, net irrigated area and production in jalandhar district, punjab (1998-2011) crops 1998-99 2008-09 2010-11 area * net irrigated area * production ** area * net irrigated area * production ** area * net irrigated area * production ** rice 134316 133290 436 155095 155095 588 163057 163057 588 wheat 161325 161236 748 170562 170479 788 169336 169336 793 maize 13049 12799 34 11886 11842 41 8996 8996 35 sugarcane 13156 13155 730 9454 9454 n.a 8625 8625 4.2 source: directorate of economics and statistics, department of agriculture and cooperation, ministry of agriculture, government of india * hectares, **thousand tonnes asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 242-256 252 in phillaur, during the first phase of the study, rice, wheat, sugarcane and maize were the main crops. during the next phase, the concentration of wheat, maize, and sugarcane declined and the concentration of rice increased. it was observed that the concentration of rice, wheat and vegetables increased in phillaur during the final phase of the study and sugarcane and maize experienced decline in their concentration. its gmi has decreased from 0.63 in 1991 to 0.56 in 2010 indicating specialization. wheat and rice were the dominating crops of nur mahal during the entire phase of the study but the concentration of maize declined in this block. its gmi has decreased from 0.60 in 1990 to 0.56 in 2010. the block is experiencing specialization. in rurka kalan block during, 1990, the five most concentrated crops were rice, wheat, maize, sugarcane and vegetables with wheat at the top with an index value of 5.32. during the next period (1990-2000), rice and wheat became the most concentrating crops while the concentration of maize and vegetables declined. in 200010, wheat was the most dominating crop but the concentration of maize, sugarcane and vegetables declined. the area under rice increased here at the expense of these crops. its gmi has also decreased from 0.63 in 1990 to 0.57 in 2010. it indicates that this block is specializing in rice and wheat crops. in jalandhar east block, rice and wheat were the concentrating crops during 1990. in the next phase, wheat and rice remained the most concentrated crops and experienced phenomenal increase in their concentration. in the final period of the study, rice and wheat were the most dominating crops. there was a substantial increase in the concentration of rice and it was the most concentrated crops while the concentration of all the crops declined. the farmers of this block are rational and they wanted to maximize their profit by growing only these two crops. it has experienced decrease in its gmi from 0.61 in 1990 to 0.57 in 2010. in jalandhar west, rice and wheat were the most concentrating crops throughout the entire period of the study while the concentration of maize, sugarcane and vegetables declined continuously. though wheat and rice were the most dominating crops of the block but the concentration of rice has decreased continuously. the concentration of rice is increasing while the concentration of wheat, maize, sugarcane and vegetables is decreasing. the block experienced decline in its gmi from 0.60 in 1990 to 0.56 in 2010. in bhogpur and adampur, the concentration of rice and wheat are high throughout the study period but the farmers of these blocks are more interested in growing rice crop. the crop diversification of both these blocks declined from 1990 to 2010. policy implications the district has witnessed a paradigm shift in its cropping pattern. from a diversified practice, it has shifted to a specialized one. it was observed that no new crop emerged to the top five most concentrated crops; only there happened a little change in the ordering of the crops. the increase in area under rice has led to decline in area under other major kharif crops like maize, sugarcane, pulses, etc. wheat has, however, been the dominant crop of the district in rabi season from the very beginning. the increase in wheat cultivation has been at the expense of cutting down the area under other rabi season crops especially oil seeds. hence, after the green revolution, the farmers of punjab abandoned their traditional cropping practices in favour of the government-supported wheat-rice cropping pattern. the dominance of the wheat-paddy system has led to increase in area, net irrigated area under their cultivation while production has remained almost constant (table 6). declining diversity of crops in the district has serious repercussions for the farming economy of the district in terms of over asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 242-256 253 exploitation of natural resources, ecological problems and growing income risks. the other districts of punjab mainly gurdaspur, amritsar, kapurthala, ludhiana, patiala, faridkot and sangrur also show declining crop diversification (sajjad & prasad, 2012). the state experienced rapid strides in agriculture through expansion in area, growth in land productivity and shifts in the cropping pattern in favour of rice and wheat till 1980s.having achieved the comfort and complacency of quantum jump in production propelled by ostracized green revolution, agriculture in punjab has passed through several phases of intermittent growth with the terminal agrarian distress in recent years. the situation has arisen due to increasing cost of cultivation, falling crop prices and increasing indebtedness among farmers. during 1990s the agricultural growth stagnated due to limited expansion in cropped area and plateauing in the productivity of major crops (singh and sidhu, 2004). the contribution of agriculture in the gross state domestic product has declined from 32% in 2004-05 to 25% in 2009-10 (economic survey of punjab 2010-11). some of the negative effects of intensive resource use in post green revolution era are falling ground water table, water logging, salinity, etc (sood et al., 2000). diversity decline in variety of rice and wheat has also been registered as nearly 93% of wheat area in the state is under only one variety and 55% of rice area is under two crops (pau 2003). wheat and rice have together removed 83% of major nutrients of the soil (aulakh and bahl, 2001). the government is contemplating reduction of public stocking of wheat and rice and freezing their minimum support prices (kurosaki 2003). under such a scenario, the basic question to be answered is: how can agricultural growth be accelerated? the best answer is to promote crop diversification. many studies in south and southeast asia and sub saharan africa have demonstrated that diversification towards high-value food commodities supports the development of innovative supply chains and opens new vistas for augmenting income, generating employment and promoting exports (joshi et al., 2002; barghouti et al., 2005; pingali 2004; deshingkar et al., 2003; birthal et al., 2007; goletti, 1999; jacobson, 2010). policy makers in the state are trying their best to promote crop diversification through contact farming of high value crops like fruits, vegetables, oil seeds and pulses. attempts are also being made to educate farmers about ill effects of ricewheat crop culture on ecology. all these efforts have hardly made any dent in the cropping pattern. hence, strong policy framework towards reduction in area under rice crop, technological change, value addition and public-private partnership are needed to arrest the dismal condition of agriculture in the state. contact farming experience as a great boost to the economy of thailand, zimbabwe, sub saharan african countries, if replicated and adopted as alternative to crop specialization can perhaps make a difference. conclusion from the foregoing analysis it is observed that the crop diversification in jalandhar district is decreasing over time. the cropping pattern in the district in terms of allocation of acreage has been shifted in favour of wheat and rice. the cropping pattern turned against pulses, maize sugarcane, oil seeds and vegetables. therefore, the district is experiencing specialization of the wheat – rice system. from the block level analysis it has been found that during 1990-2010, shahkot, jalandhar east, jalandhar west, nur mahal, rurka kalan and phillaur were low diversified blocks. all these blocks have shown specialization in rice and wheat. nakodar, bhogpur and adampur were medium diversified district. bhogpur and adampur showed very high concentration towards rice and wheat while nakodar is specialised in rice crop. the increase in area under rice has resulted in higher asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 242-256 254 demand for water. due to limited availability of surface water, ground water resources have been over exploited to meet the growing demand. declining diversity in agriculture has led to serious implications for the farming economy of the district in the form of resource depletion, nutrition deficiency, fall in ground water table and growing income risk. the government is freezing the minimum support price of wheat and rice. this has affected the economic returns of the farmers. hence, there is urgent need to explore the strategies for improving the diversification. contract farming through vegetables, fruits, oilseeds, suitable alternate cropping pattern, reorganization of sustainable agriculture management, empowering farmers, appropriate policy formation, dissemination of knowledge to the farmers should be adopted to protect the interest of the farmers and the sustainable development of the district. acknowledgement the authors are thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions for improving the overall quality of the manuscript. references aulakh, m. s., & bahl, g. s. 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(2010). research on the spatial structure and landscape patterns for the land use in beijing suburb based on rs & gis. information computing and applications. proceeding of first international conference icica. r zhu, zhang y, liu b, liu c (eds.): icica: 517524. springer, germany. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 914 effects of development interventions on the productivity and profitability of women shea butter processors in the west gonja district of northern ghana afishata mohammed abujaja department of extension, rural development and gender studies, university for development studies, ghana hamza adam department of community development, university for development studies, ghana hudu zakaria department of extension, rural development and gender studies, university for development studies, ghana abstract this paper examines the effects of development agencies’ interventions on productivity and profitability of women shea butter processors in contributing to the development of the shea nut industry in northern ghana. a survey of 114 women shea butter processors, comprising of 57 each of both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of development interventions in the west gonja district were sampled and interviewed with a semi structured questionnaire. focus group discussions were also held to obtain qualitative data. results of analysis of variance (anova) conducted at 5% level of significance found that labour productivity of beneficiaries of development interventions by way of training, equipment and machinery provisions do not differ significantly from that of respondents who had never benefited from such interventions. similar results were found with regard to average monthly profit made by beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries. market sourcing was identified as a major problem affecting women shea butter processors in the district. the study therefore recommends that development agencies programs should highlight follow-up trainings, monitoring and supervisions to ensure the sustainability of projects so that they can continue to yield expected impacts. also, development agents should include market sourcing opportunities in rural enterprise improvement interventions since that remains a challenge to the realization of development interventions. keywords: development, interventions, shea butter, processors, productivity and profitability introduction 1 the shea tree is one of the major economic trees growing in arid zones in sub-saharan africa. it is largely found in most countries along the stretch of south of the savannah, 1 corresponding author’s name: hamza adam email address: hamzeet@yahoo.com from the eastern senegal through the southern periphery of ethiopia and down to northern part of uganda covering countries such as guinea, mali, ivory coast, ghana, togo, benin, burkina faso, nigeria, niger, chad, cameroon, central african republic, uganda, congo and sudan (pobeda, 1999). the stretch is popularly described as the shea belt of africa, and it covers an area of about 1million km 2, stretching over 5,000 km long and 400 – asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:hamzeet@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 914-923 915 750 km wide, localized between latitudes 9° and 14°n in west africa, 7° and 12° n in central africa and 2° and 8° in east africa ( sanou and lamien, 2011). in ghana, the shea trees are found predominantly in the three northern regions. as observed by hatskevich et al. (2011), the shea trees are concentrated in eastern dagomba, southern mamprusi, western gonja, lawra, tumu, wa and nanumba with eastern gonja having the densest stands. however, there is sparse shea tree cover found in brong-ahafo, ashanti, and the eastern and volta regions in the south of the country. the shea trees have both economic and environmental benefits to the people in the north in particular and the entire country at large (chalfin, 2004; dogbevi, 2007). the shea nut industry which involves gathering of nuts and processing into butter has been exclusively rural activities largely dominated by rural women who are highly vulnerable to poverty (boffa, 1999; hall et al., 1996). the shea business was previously a largely opportunistic trade, with little or no organization supporting it at community level. it was termed an “opportunistic business” because no one has ownership rights over the trees and gathering is equally open to all (dogbevi, 2007). in recognition of the commercial opportunities arising from the shea, and the importance of its the products, there has been a proliferation of shea projects sponsored by united nations development fund for women (unifem), aimed at providing women with the required knowledge, practice and skills to enable them increase production on a sustainable basis (chalfin, 2004). some of these intervention packages come in the form of skill training equipment provision and micro-credit with the aim of increasing the productivity of women share butter processors to take advantage of the growing market for shea products. other objectives of these projects were to set up ideal production environment for shea butter processes, identify the marketable quality of shea butter, and provide business management skills for local women’s producer groups and promote entrepreneurship skills in women, and to transform the shea butter production skills and techniques among women processors into a more organized industry. although such interventions have made some positive impacts, the industry still encounters numerous challenges which affect the productivity of the industry (olukoya, 2008). both the quality and quantity of the shea butter produced in spite of the number of interventions introduced leave much to be desired. among the challenges that leads to poor productivity include poor hygiene, use of rudimentary equipment and approach, poor marketing of the product as well as poor management of income accruing from the shea enterprise. however, most of these interventions were aimed at improving the skills and human capital of women processors so as to help improve the productivity and quality of shea butter to meet the taste of both local and international market standards and more importantly reduce poverty among the rural women. the west gonja district in the northern ghana is one of the remote, deprived and poorest areas in ghana, and has benefited from such shea butter interventions over the last two decades. this paper therefore explored the influence of the support given by various development agencies on the productivity and profitability of women shea butter processors in the district by comparing the average labour productivity of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of these interventions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 914-923 916 methodology the research design used for the study was quasi-experimental design. quasiexperimental design is an experimental design that does not meet all requirements necessary for controlling influences of extraneous variables and often, random assignment of participants is also not possible (rossi and freeman, 1985; kidder and judd, 1986). specifically, a comparative group study was employed. the two groups in the study were the beneficiary and non –beneficiary women’s group. the difference between these two groups being that one group received external support from development agencies whilst the second group did not receive any form of external support. all women engaged in shea butter extraction within the west gonja district constituted the population of the study. data was collected from three distinct groups, consisting of women groups that benefited from various interventions, individual women who have been on their own without benefiting from development agencies’ support and the organisations that have offered support to women in the district for shea butter extraction. a sampling size of 114 was then taken for the study. fifty seven (57) women were then selected from each group (beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries) to constitute the sample size. drawing of lots was used in selecting the beneficiaries group whilst non-beneficiaries were rather selected using snowball technique. snowball was found appropriate because there was no sampling frame productivity analysis in this study labour productivity is indicated as; lp =y/h where lp= labour productivity, y = volume or value of output produced at a given time, h = hours spent in the production of outputs based on the model developed by corvers (1997). profit analysis average monthly profit was calculated based on the formula below: profit = total revenue (tr) total cost (tc). where: total revenue = pq (p is price per kilogram of shea butter produced and q is quantity of shea butter produced in kilogram). in oder to rope in other benefits enjoyed by shea butter processors apart from financial benefits, determined by quantity sold and revenue obtained, benefit / cost ratio was determined based on the formula below: benefit /cost = ∑bi/∑ci, where ∑bi is sum of stream of benefits associated with shea butter processing and ∑ci is sum of stream of costs incurred in shea butter processing. results and discussion socioeconomic characteristics of the study population women shea butter processors interviewed for this study were largely within economic active age bracket with the youngest being 23 years while the oldest being 69 years, with a mean age of 34 years. while a few (7%) women beneficiaries of development agencies interventions were within their youthful age of 20 – 30 years brackets, about 40.4% of the 57 women shea butter processor who have never benefited from any intervention in their enterprise, also fall within the youthful age bracket. marriage is acknowledged as a very important institution in the ghanaian society. it is believed that marriage enhances the social asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 914-923 917 status of individual in the society, and for that reason people attach prestige to marriage in ghana including the people in the west gonja district in northern region (chitambar, 1993). in the light of this, marital status of respondents was recorded as relevant demographic information. results of the study as shown in table 1 indicates that most of the women shea butter processors surveyed were married; with 70.2% and 80.7% of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries respectively being married women. education is recognized as a very important basic social institution (chitambar, 1993). in respect to this, the educational level of respondents was analysed to determine the influence of respondents’ education on their status. women shea butter processors in the district generally lack formal education. about 66.7% of beneficiaries and 56.1% of non-beneficiaries have no formal educational background while 29.8% and 40.4% of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries respectively have a basic level educational background. however, only 2 respondents each of the beneficiary and non-beneficiary groups were educated beyond basic educational level. women shea butter processors surveyed for this study obtained their start-up capital from diverse sources. whiles some raise their capital from personal or family savings, others took loans from formal credit sources such as rural banks or microcredit schemes operated by ngos operating in the study area. as shown in the table 1, most respondents obtained their start-up capital from their own personal savings with about 70.2% and 91.2% of beneficiary and non-beneficiary groups respectively indicating that they raised their initial capital from their own savings. table 1: socio-economic characteristics of respondents socio-economic characteristics status of respondent beneficiary non-beneficiary number percent (%) number percent (%) age of respondent 20-30years 4 7.0 23 40.4 31-40years 16 28.1 14 24.6 41-50years 21 36.8 12 21.1 51-60years 10 17.5 3 5.3 above 60years 6 10.5 5 8.8 total 57 100 57 100 educational level of respondents no formal education 38 66.7 32 56.1 40.4 3.5 basic educational level 17 29.8 23 beyond basic education 2 3.5 2 total 57 100 57 100 marital status married 40 70.2 46 80.7 19.3 single 17 29.8 11 total 57 100 57 100 source of initial capital formal credit 15 26.3 2 3.5 personal savings 40 70.2 52 91.2 cooperative/association 2 3.5 3 5.3 total 57 100 57 100 source: field survey, 2009 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 914-923 918 profitability of shea butter enterprise in every investment it is important to compare the production or investment cost and the financial benefit accrued to determine the profitability of the investment. shea nuts are the main raw material in shea butter processing. the study found that the respondents either buy their nuts or pick them from the wild during the shea nut picking season, usually between may-july. however, the study established that most respondents interviewed (98.2%) for this study supplemented the shea nuts they gathered from the wild with what they buy from others from community markets. another cost element in shea butter processing is labour input. women shea butter processors relied much on family labour to meet the labour requirement of their shea butter processing enterprise. labour is required in cracking shea nuts, milling and extracting of the shea butter. labour was valued by finding out how much women would charge when similar services are rendered to them by other people. others cost elements were fuel cost, milling cost, transportation and marketing cost. in determining total cost (tc), depreciation or capital consumption allowance was excluded since the equipment used by respondents in their shea butter business have long life span and are used for domestic activities as well. for instance metallic pots used in parboiling and roasting shea nuts, according to the women can be used for over two decades and it is often used in cooking, pito brewery and storing water for family consumption as well (bille, 2009). the poor nature of record keeping among women shea butter processors in the study area, made it extremely difficult for women in providing specific details. average monthly profit was calculated based on the formula below: profit = total revenue (tr) total cost (tc). where: total revenue = pq (p is price per kilogram of shea butter produced and q is quantity of shea butter produced in kilogram). the calculation of profits reveals that average monthly profit made by respondent was gh ¢10. 25. overwhelming majority (85%) made profit while 13.2% of the respondents made losses and two respondents broke even. also analysis of variance conducted to ascertain whether the profit made by beneficiaries is significantly different from what is made by non-beneficiaries, reported no significant difference in the level of profit made by beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries at 5% level of significant as shown in table 2. thus monthly profit made by beneficiaries of development interventions is not significantly higher than what is made by nonbeneficiaries. the short lived nature of the various support interventions could account for this trend or results. according to beneficiaries the machines provided frequently broke down compelling beneficiaries to revert to their old ways of processing as in the case of the nonbeneficiaries. in order to rope in other benefits enjoyed by shea butter processors apart from financial benefits, determined by quantity sold and revenue obtained, benefit / cost ratio was determined based on the formula below: benefit /cost = ∑bi/∑ci, where ∑bi is sum of stream of benefits associated with shea butter processing and ∑ci is sum of stream of costs incurred in shea butter processing. respondents were asked to indicate the average amount of shea butter consumed, given to friends and for other purposes. other benefits associated with shea butter aside asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 914-923 919 selling of shea butter are; using of by-product of shea butter for cementing walls of local buildings and as fuel for cooking. the benefit / cost analysis reveals an average benefit / cost ratio per respondent of 1.32 (benefit exceed cost by 32% of the cost), with a maximum benefit / cost ratio of 2.1 (benefits more than double the costs incurred) and a minimum of 0.79 (benefit fall below cost by 21%). analysis of variance of benefit / cost ratios conducted at 5% level of significance found no significant difference between benefit / cost ratio of beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries. thus the benefit obtained from shea butter processing relative to cost incurred for beneficiaries is not significantly different from that of non-beneficiaries. table 2: anova on shea butter profitability source of variation sum of squares df mean square f between groups 132.711 1 132.711 2.286 within groups 6501.895 112 58.053 total 6634.605 113 source: field survey, 2009 ftab. (1, 112) = 3.90 p<0.0 not significant table 3: anova on benefit / cost analysis of shea butter as per bag of 50 kg source of variation sum of squares df mean square f between groups 112 1 0.112 1.865 within groups 6.746 112 0.060 total 6.858 113 source: field survey, 2009 ftab. (1, 112) = 3.90 p<0.05 not significant analyzing the productivity of shea butter productivity of women shea butter processors was assessed in terms of quantity of shea butter produced in kilogram per man-hour used in producing it in a year, thus quantity produced per man-hour. women shea butter processors covered by this survey used mainly family and group labour for their labour energy requirement. women beneficiaries work in groups when undertaking activities such as roasting, milling and kneading of the shea nuts while non-beneficiaries work as individuals in their various homes. for that matter labour unit was determined by the number of hours man energy was engaged in producing a given quantity of shea butter. man energy or labour are required in activities of shea butter processing such as parboiling, drying, cracking of shea nut, frying, milling and kneading and scooping shea butter. women usually measure the quantity of shea butter produced in calabash. to determine the unit of shea butter in kilogram, an experiment was conducted with three women prior to actual data collection for this survey. in the experiment, a bag of shea nut (50kilograms) was purchased and processed by the women using their method of processing to determine the average number of calabashes to be obtained in a bag of shea nuts and the average weight of a calabash of shea butter in kilogram. results from this experiment were compared with results of similar findings obtained from programme documents of supporting institutions. in determining the quality of shea butter produced by respondents, sample of shea butter produced by them was collected and subjected to quality examination with guidance from experts in the field (ghana standard board and food and drugs board). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 914-923 920 productivity= 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑆𝑕𝑒𝑎 𝐵𝑢𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑎 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝐾𝑖𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚 𝐿𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑟 (𝑀𝑎𝑛 − 𝑕𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑃𝑒𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑆𝑕𝑒𝑎 𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟) from the analysis, average productivity was found to be 0.632kg of shea butter per hour of man labour input with a maximum of 0.89kg of shea butter per hour of man labour input and a minimum of 0.05kg of shea butter per hour of man labour input. the results also established that women interviewed processed 7 to 12 bags of shea nut annually producing between 220kg to 300kg of shea butter annually. this compares fairly well with the findings of derks and lusby (2006) that on the average a woman could make 5-10kg of shea butter a day which she may only do once or twice a week depending on her other activities and need for cash. also the respondents said they spent between 38 to 48 hours per week in shea butter processing, with one or two cycles of production weekly, where they usually processed less than one bag of shea nuts monthly. lack of market was mentioned as the main reason why they do not produce larger quantities. productivity per respondent was calculated using the formula above and analysed using bi-variate analysis of variance to determine if there existed any significant difference between productive figures of beneficiaries of development interventions and nonbeneficiaries. the result of the analysis in table 4 reveals that beneficiaries of development interventions do not significantly differ from non-beneficiaries in terms of productivity at 5% level of significance. results not significant means the null hypothesis “no difference in productivity of shea butter produced between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries” was accepted, meaning there was no evidence for a treatment effect. although development interventions were aimed at helping beneficiaries to improve on the productivity of their shea butter processing ventures it appeared not to be the case since non-beneficiaries were doing better than beneficiaries. the beneficiary group of damongo had stopped production for the past three years for lack of market and also because some parts of the processing plant had broken down. another reason for the trend was that beneficiary women of development support were acting as middle women between nonbeneficiary women and buying agents thereby creating opportunities for non-beneficiaries to increase production. the average productivity per non-beneficiary respondent was found to be 0.66kg of shea butter per man-hour of labour as against 0.62kg of shea butter per man-hour of labour in the case of beneficiaries. table 4: anova on productivity between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries source of variation sum of squares df mean square f between groups 0.042 1 0.042 2.240 within groups 1.697 90 0.019 total 1.739 91 source: field survey, 2009 ftab. (1, 90) = 3.95 p<0.05 not significant asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 914-923 921 influence of shea butter processing method on productivity shea butter quality is a function of both the processing method used and the nature of nuts genetics (bonkoungou, 2005). respondents use either the improved method or the indigenous method in shea butter processing. the method of production used is expected to influence the productivity of the output as reported by bonkoungou (2005). the improved method is expected to help increase productivity and reduce drudgery associated with shea butter processing and hence should perform better than the indigenous method. the analysis of variance of productivity figures of those who used the indigenous method as against those who used the improved method of shea butter processing, found no significant differences in their productivity figures at 5% level of significance. from the analysis, the average productivity of those who used improved method was found to be 0.614kg of shea butter per man-hour of man labour input as against 0.655kg of shea butter per man-hour of those who still used indigenous method of shea butter processing. in other words productivity figures do not differ between respondents using indigenous or improved method of shea butter processing. but for one beneficiary who used the indigenous method, all the other beneficiaries used the improved method in processing their shea nuts because the equipment and machinery used in the improved method of shea butter processing have been offered by the development agencies. beneficiaries abandoned broken equipment and machines for lack of technical expertise in repairing them. this lays emphasis on hyman et al. (1988) suggestion that a strategy for disseminating technology must be based on a clear identification of the target beneficiaries and their resources and constraints. the group ownership of machines does not allow individuals to take proper care of the machines thereby reducing the performance of the machines. this situation accounted for the trend of findings, since those who used improved method were expected to have high productivity than those who used the indigenous method. table 5: anova on method of shea butter processing and productivity source of variation sum of squares df mean square f between groups 0.039 1 0.039 2.053 within groups 1.701 90 0.19 total 1.739 91 source: field survey 2009 ftab(1, 90) p<0.05 not significant conclusions and recommendations this paper examined the effects of development interventions on the productivity and profitability of women shea butter processors in the west gonja district of northern ghana. the results from the anova reported no significant difference in the level of profit made by beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries (p < 0.05). the monthly profit made by beneficiaries of development interventions was not significantly higher than what is made by non-beneficiaries, probably because of the short lived nature of development interventions given. the machines provided frequently broke down compelling beneficiaries of development agencies support to revert to their old ways of processing. the average productivity per beneficiary was 0.66kg / man-hour and 0.62kg /man-hour for non-beneficiary. the results of the analysis reveals further that beneficiary of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 914-923 922 development interventions do not significantly differ from non-beneficiaries in terms of productivity at 5% level of significant. the study can therefore conclude that shea butter processing is a viable income generating venture for women of west gonja district and the role development agencies’ interventions cannot be under scored provided they are well coordinated and monitored to ensure the needed impact and onward sustainability. the study justifies that shea butter production indeed is a viable venture. it is against this background that women of the study area have continuously engaged in the enterprise for their survival. development agencies programs should highlight and concentrate on follow-up trainings, monitoring and supervisions to ensure the sustainability of projects to continue to yield the expected impact since the study found that interventions do not continue to be significantly beneficial to the people soon after projects are ended. market sourcing was identified as a major problem affecting the productivity of women shea butter industry in the district. the research also recommends that development agents should actively include market sourcing opportunities in rural enterprise improvement interventions since that remains a challenge to the realization of development interventions. references accion international (1988). an operational guide for micro enterprise projects, accion international, cambridge, ma. boffa, j. m. (1999). agroforestry parklands in sub-saharan africa. fao conservation guide 7. fao, rome. bonkoungou, e. g. (2005). the shea tree (vitellaria paradoxa) and african shea parklands. proceedings of the interenational workshop on processing and marketing of shea products in africa, dakar (senegal) 4-6 march 2002. pp51-59. cfc technical paper no. 21 food and agriculture organisation rome. chalfin, b. (2004). shea butter republic: state power, global markets, and the making of indigenous commodity. chitambar, j. b (1993). introductory rural sociology: a synopsis of concepts and principles. wiley eastern limited, new delhi, india corvers, f. (1997). the impact of human capital on labour productivity in manufacturing sectors of the european union maastricht: research centre for education and the labour market, faculty of economics and business administration, university of limburg. (roa-rm-1996/2e) derks e. & lusby (2006). mali shea kernel value chain case study report prepared for acdi / voca with funding from usiad washington dc. dogbevi, k. e. (2007). the shea tree has economic and environmental values for ghana. retrieved from www.sekafghana.com on the 12th april 2008 hall, j. b., aebischer, d. p tomlinson, h. f., osei amaning, e. & hindle, j. r. (1996). vitellaria paradoxa: a monograph. school of agricultural and forest sciences pubication number 8. uuniversity of wales, bangor. hatskevich a., jeníček v., antwi darkwah s (2011). shea industry a means of poverty reduction in northern ghana. agricultura tropica et subtropica vol. 44 (4) 201 hyman, e. l, b. moreau, d. nichols, r. (1988). combining facts and values in environmental impact assessment: theories and techniques. boulder, c. o: west view press. kidder, l. h. & judd, c. m (1986). research methods in social relations. (5ed) new york: holt, rinehart & winston. olukoya (2008). women ideal shea butter producers, retrieved september 01, 2008 from the world wide web: http://www.undpghana. http://www.sekafghana.com/ http://www.undpghana/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 914-923 923 pobeda, m. (1999). shea butter: the revival of an african wonder. global cosmetic industry april 1999: 34-41. sanou h and lamien n. (2011). vitellaria paradoxa, shea butter tree. conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources of priority food tree species in sub-saharan africa. bioversity international (rome, italy). available on http://citarea.citaaragon.es/citarea/bitstream/10532/1689 /1/2011_342en.pdf (accessed on july, 2013) http://citarea.cita-aragon.es/citarea/bitstream/10532/1689/1/2011_342en.pdf http://citarea.cita-aragon.es/citarea/bitstream/10532/1689/1/2011_342en.pdf http://citarea.cita-aragon.es/citarea/bitstream/10532/1689/1/2011_342en.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 721 factors affecting the adoption and use of nerica varieties among rice producing households in ghana asante bright owusu csir-crops research institute, kumasi, ghana and une business school, university of new england, armidale, australia wiredu alexander nimo csir-savanna agricultural research institute, nyankpala, ghana, and rural development theory and policy, institute of agricultural economics and social sciences in tropics and subtropics, university of hohenheim, stuttgart, germany dogbe wilson csir-savanna agricultural research institute, nyankpala, ghana asuming-boakye alfred department of agricultural economics, university of ghana, accra, ghana frimpong benedicta nsiah and haleegoah joyce csir-crops research institute, kumasi, ghana nortey john ministry of food and agriculture, statistics information and research directorate, accra, ghana diagne aliou africa rice center, cotonou, benin abstract 1 this paper uses cross sectional data which were collected from 200 smallholder rice producers in ghana, to examine the factors influencing the adoption and extent of use of nerica rice varieties in ghana. about 57.93 per cent of the sampled rice producers allocated 35.77 per cent of their land to nerica accounting for about 33.13 per cent of seeds planted. the tobit regression model suggests fertilizer use, existence of other complementary projects in the area, proportion of active persons in household, access to alternative income sources, distance to seed source and education as key factors influencing the quantity of seeds planted as well as the proportion of land allocated to the nerica varieties. with the exception of distance to seed source, all the other factors positively influenced the extents of adoption. the findings suggest the need to ensure availability of nerica seeds within acceptable distances to farming communities. this could be achieved through identification of certified rice seed growers in strategic locations throughout the country and supported with necessary logistics to produce nerica seeds at reasonable proximities to rice producing communities. this could also be enhanced through establishment of linkages with existing institutions and projects to compliment promotional efforts. keywords: intensity of adoption, nerica varieties, rice, tobit model corresponding author’s details: name: asante bright owusu email address: basante.csir_cri@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development mailto:basante.csir_cri@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 721-735 722 introduction rice is important to ghana’s economy and agriculture, accounting for nearly 15% of the agricultural gross domestic product (gdp) (isser, 2010). the rice sector is an important provider of rural employment. undoubtedly, rice is an important ghanaian staple; its availability throughout the year is of greater importance. besides being an important food staple for both rural and urban communities across ghana, it is the most important cash crop in the communities in which it is produced (asumming –brempong and osei-asare, 2007). despite the importance of rice in the ghanaian economy, it has been very difficult for the country to achieve self-sufficiency in rice production over the years. as at 2009, rice was the only domestic food that had deficit in supply. between 2010 and 2015 for instance, rice demand was projected to grow at an annual rate of 11.8 percent (isser, 2010). self-sufficiency could be achieved through area expansion or increased output per unit area. however, issues including, lack of improved seeds, land tenure, water control systems and poor soil fertility, which consequently, lead to low yields and profitability have been the major constraints in the ghanaian rice industry (kranjac-berisavljevic, 2000). in response to the increasing importance of rice in ghana in terms of food security and incomes of farmers, governments have in the past years increased attention and support to the rice industry. these include the implementation of a number of rice development projects such as the lowland rice development project, the gatsby rice project, the inland valley rice development project, the fertilizer subsidy program, the block farm project and the multinational nerica rice dissemination project (mnrdp) (metasip, 2010). implemented since 2005, the mnrdp involved a number of rice development and improvement activities including, the distribution of improved seeds of nerica rice varieties among selected small scale rice producing households in ghana. although many varieties of rice have been developed, adoption rates have generally been low (efisue et al., 2008). consequently, most of these farmers continue to use low-yielding rice varieties in addition to poor agronomic practices (agyei-holmes et al., 2011). adoption of improved rice varieties may differ depending upon the concerns of the farmers, which are defined by the attributes of the variety. farmers assess a new technology such as crop variety, in terms of a range of attributes, such as grain quality, early maturity, input requirements in addition to grain yield (joshi and bauer, 2006). existing literature on ghana have revealed that adoption decisions in the country are largely influenced by socioeconomic, institutional and technical factors. specific conditions such as poor access to credit, high cost of inputs and the existing land tenure arrangements serve as constraints to effective adoption of agricultural technologies. in these studies adoption was computed as a binary variable where a person is assigned a value of 1 for adoption and 0 for non-adoption. these studies have mostly applied probit regression models to estimate the determinants of adoption (akudugu et al., 2012; aneani et al., 2012; asuming-brempong et al., 2011; donkoh et al., 2011; wiredu et al., 2011 and adeoti, 2009). the literature on intensity of adoption of these interventions in ghana is however limited. information on these factors will also be useful in promoting improved agricultural interventions. in addition, to address the instantaneous decision to adopt an improved agricultural technology and the extent of adoption, some studies have applied tobit regression models (wiredu et al., 2012; katungi asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 721-735 723 and akankwasa, 2010; kavia et al., 2007; acheampong, 2002; adejobi and kormawa, 2002; mussei et al., 2001; and degu et al., 2000). this study applied the tobit regression model to estimate the determinants of intensity of adoption of the nerica rice seeds by the households. factors hypothesized to be influenced by policy and development partners to improve adoption and use of improved agricultural technologies were identified. likewise, these factors will guide rice scientists, agricultural extension agents and other stakeholders in refining their research and development procedures. the remaining portions of the paper are presented as follows. first, a description of the methodology for the study is presented. this includes a description of the study area, sampling and data collection methods as well as the analytical framework for the study. the next two sections present the results of analysis of the empirical findings and the implications of the result. the final section presents conclusions and policy recommendations. methodology the study area the study was conducted in 3 major rice producing districts in ghana, namely, ejurasekyeredumase district and hohoe district in southern ghana, and tolon-kumbungu in northern ghana. the ejura-sekyedumase district is geographically located within longitudes 1˚5’ w and 1˚39’ w and latitudes 7˚9’ n and 7˚36’n. it consists of a relatively large land size of about 1,782.2 square km with ejura as its capital (figure1). it is the fifth largest district in ashanti region accounting for about 7.3% of the region’s total land area. the district is located in the northern part of the region and is bounded in the north by atebubu/amantin and nkoranza districts, both in the brong-ahafo region, on the west by offinso district, on the east by sekyere east district and the south by sekyere west and afigya-sekyere districts. the current population is estimated at about 81,119 (ghana statistical service, 2010). ejura-sekyedumase lies within the transition zone of the semi-deciduous forest and guinea savannah agro-ecological zones (figure 1). thus, it experiences both the forest and savannah climatic conditions. the district is marked by two rainfall patterns; the bi-modal pattern in the south and the uni-modal in the north. the annual rainfall ranges between 1500mm and 1600mm with an average of about 1300mm per annum. temperatures are generally low throughout most part of the year with the highest of 28 o c in march and april. lower temperatures are experienced during the major season in june and july. relative humidity is high especially during the rainy reason recording the highest of about 90% (in june) and 55% (in february). rice, roots and tuber crops such as cassava, yam, cocoyam and sweet potatoes as well as plantain are the major food crops cultivated in the zone. rice cultivation is basically in valleys. cocoa (theobroma cacao) and oil palm (elaeis guineensis) are the common tree crops that form an integral part of the people’s livelihood. the hohoe district is located in the centre of the volta region, with hohoe as its capital. the district is geologically located between latitudes 070 08’ 56.54’’ n and longitude 000 28’ 28.56’’ e, and shares boundaries with the kpando district to the west, the jasikan district to the north-west and the ho municipal to the south, all three districts in the volta region (figure 1). to the east, it is bounded by the republic of togo. the current population is estimated at about 152,627 (ghana statistical service, 2010), and covers an area of about 1,172 square kilometers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 721-735 724 available land suitable for agricultural purposes is 65,000 hectares consisting of about, 55,085 hectares for crop and 9,962 hectares for livestock production representing about 47% and 8.5% for crops and livestock respectively (ghana districts, 2012). hohoe district is in the coastal savannah agro ecological zone. the zone is characterized by a bi modal rainfall pattern. the first begins in may and ends in mid-july and the second season begins in mid-august and ends in october with an annual rainfall ranging between 750mm and 950mm. the mean monthly temperature ranges from 24.7°c in august (the coolest) to 28°c in march (the hottest) with an annual average of 26.8°c. relative humidity is generally high varying from 65% in the mid-afternoon to 95% at night. the tolon-kumbungu is one of the oldest districts in the northern region with tolon as its capital. the district is located closer to the center of the region and is bordered in the north by the west mamprusi district, and in the west by the west gonja district. in the south, it is bordered by the savelugunanton district and in the east by the tamale municipal assembly. geographically, the district is located between latitude 10 o n and 20 o n and between 10 o w and 50 o w longitude (figure 1). the average elevation of the district is 163.43 metres above sea level and it covers an area of about 2741 km 2 . the current population is estimated at about 145,876 (ghana statistical service, 2010). tolon-kumbungu is located in the guinea savannah agro ecological zone. the zone experiences a unimodal rainfall pattern, beginning in may and ending in october, with annual rainfall ranging between 900 and 1000 mm. temperatures are high throughout most of the year with the highest of 36 o c in march and april. lower temperatures are experienced between november and february, the harmattan period. the major arable crops cultivated in the zone include maize, rice, millet, sorghum, cassava, yam, groundnut, cowpea, and soybean. generally, agriculture is the main occupation of the inhabitants of these districts with almost about 65 percent of them engaged in agriculture employing mainly traditional technologies. rice cultivation is common among selected communities in the districts be it inland or upland. data and sampling data for the analyses was basically primary data, collected through informal interviews by the use of structured questionnaires. data collected included information on household characteristics, farm level characteristics, access to institutions, extension and information. multi-stage systematic random sampling technique was employed for the selection of respondent. the first stage involved a purposive sampling of the three districts involved in the study. this was followed by a random selection of a minimum of 20 communities from a list of rice producing communities in the project districts. the next stage involved the selection of farm households from a list of rice producing households in the selected communities representing at least 60 households from each agro-ecological zone. overall, 200 rice producers, 10 per community were involved in the study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 721-735 725 figure 1: a map of ghana showing the study areas. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 721-735 726 analytical framework the instantaneous decision by rice producers to use nerica seeds (adoption), is not entirely sufficient in the description of the adoption status. in addition, the adopters also make decisions regarding the intensity of adoption; in spite of the fact that the two decisions can be made disjointedly (wiredu et al, 2012). in this study however, adoption decision and intensity of adoption in terms of the proportion of land area allocated to the nerica varieties and quantity of nerica seeds planted were assumed to be jointly made by farmers. this is because in contrast with non-agricultural technologies where it is possible to decide to adopt or have a technology without using it, for example a camera, the same cannot be said for rice or other agricultural technologies. a farmer will not adopt it if he does not intend to use it hence cannot decide to adopt without using the technology. a randomly selected farmer who decided to plant nerica seeds is expected to allocate a proportion (between 0 and 100 percent) of their farm land to the variety. a non-adopter did not use or plant nerica variety and was assigned a value of 0. thus, the proportion of land allocated to nerica seeds ( p ) was computed as the ratio of the land area under nerica ( nerical ) and total land area under rice production ( ricel ) as: nerica i rice l p l  …………… (1) similarly, the proportion of nerica seeds planted by an adopter ( q ) was also estimated as the ratio of the quantity of nerica seeds planted ( nericaq ) and the total quantity of rice planted ( riceq ) as: nerica i rice q q q  ………….. (2) following greene (2002), the model for the quantity of nerica seeds planted as well as the proportion of land allocated to it was explicitly expressed by equations 3.0 and 4.0 respectively as: ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ... (3) ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ... (4) .k ih represents a set of variables that described the characteristics of the sampled rice producers including their respective socioeconomic status. ,k is represents the set of variables that described the access to information among the sampled rice producers. .k ix represents farm level characteristics and ,k iy represents the expectation of the rice producers about the returns or challenges of the nerica varieties. the computations of the n and q suggests that the proportion of rice land allocated to the nerica as well as the quantity of seeds planted are truncated for the non-adopters. ordinary least square estimators (ols) of the determinants of model with n and q as the dependent variables were bound to be characterised by heteroskedasticity (maddala, 2005). the application of the tobit regression procedure produces consistent estimates that eliminate heteroskedasticity associated with the truncated dependent variables. the tobit model estimated the probability of adoption and extent of use for a randomly selected rice farmer (asfaw et al., 2010). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 721-735 727 results the results of the study are presented in two parts. the first part presents a comparison of characteristics of the sampled rice producers by agro ecological zones (table 1). thereafter, the results of the tobit models of factors influencing the intensity of nerica adoption in terms of proportions of seed planted and land allocated to nerica are presented in table 2 and table 3 respectively. characteristics of the sample rice producers by agro ecological zones table 1 presents descriptive statistics of the sampled households. overall, 57.93 percent of the farmers have adopted and used the nerica varieties. however, this adoption rate is relatively higher in the transition zone. the sampled rice producers consisted of about 67 percent male farmers and their average age was about 51 years. the typical rice producing household includes an average of about 7 persons with almost equal gender distribution. overall, about half of the sampled rice producers had formal education and this is similar across the three zones. an average of 6 members of nearly 70 percent of the rice producing households was engaged in off-farm income generating activities. the results further showed that about 19 percent of the rice producers were engaged in off-farm income generating activities. this proportion is however relatively lower in among the rice producing households selected from the guinea savannah zone. about 67 percent of the rice producer had contacts with extension services. this proportion is similar across the agro ecological zones. other sources of support included nongovernmental organizations (ngos) and farmer based organizations (fbos) which overall, accounted for about 16 percent and 6 percent respectively (table 1). in all, about 30 percent of the sample households had access to market facilities. however, markets access was relatively high in the transition zone (54%) and least in the guinea savannah (6%). the average distance travelled by rice producer to participate in markets is about 3.83 km across the ecological zones. rice producers in the guinea savannah zone however travelled relatively shorter distances (1.85km) than other zones (table 1). table 1: characteristics of rice producing households by agro-ecological zones characteristic agro-ecological zone transition (n=69) coastal savannah (n=63) guinea savannah (n=61) overall (n=193) personal/household level adoption (n) 60.87 55.56 57.38 57.93 household size (n) 6.7 6.07 7.35 6.71 male producers (%) 65.22 66.67 68.85 66.84 female producers (%) 34.78 33.33 31.14 33.16 age of producer (years) 49.54 49.96 53.1 50.87 educated producers (%) 55.07 53.97 40.98 50.53 off-farm activity producer (%) 23.19 20.63 13.11 18.98 household (%) 69.62 56.45 89.09 71.7 members (n) 6.7 6.07 7.35 6.71 institutional support (%) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 721-735 728 extension 66.67 68.25 65.57 66.83 ngos 11.11 11.11 25.49 15.9 fbos 5.56 7.41 3.92 5.63 infrastructure existence of market (%) 6 53.97 32.79 30.85 av. distance to market (km) 4.82 4.81 1.85 3.83 farm level area (ha) 0.92 0.88 0.85 0.86 labour (man-days/ha) 280.83 147.23 155.34 194.47 seed (kg/ha) 191.59 210.52 118.38 173.5 fertilizer (kg/ha) 392.43 316.01 582.32 430.25 herbicides (lit/ha) 109.56 5.84 11.86 42.42 agric income(us$) 973.38 993.26 491.87 819.5 yield (kg/ha) 4544.18 3503.2 2073.92 3373.77 nonfarm income (us$) 112.39 48.65 160.92 107.32 at the farm level, overall, about 175kg of seeds were planted per hectare across the zones, though the quantities were greater in the transition zone. labour use was much greater in the guinea savannah zone (280.83 man-days) with an overall average of about 194.47 man-days. fertilizer use was greater in the guinea savannah zone, 582.32kg/ha, with an overall average of about 430.25kg/ha. the average agricultural income across the zones was us$ 819.50. the average non-farm income was about us$ 107.32; with coastal savannah recording the minimum (us$ 48.65). incomes from agriculture were consistent across all three agro ecological zones. overall, the average yield is about 3373.77 kg/ha, with the highest average recorded in the transition zone, and the least in the guinea savannah zone (table 1). determinants of proportion of nerica seeds planted the tobit regression results of the factors influencing the proportion of seeds of nerica varieties planted by sampled households are presented in table 2. the significant likelihood ratio revealed joint significance of the independent variables in explaining the disturbance of the error terms in the model. in addition, the marginal effects of the explanatory variable expressing the relative change to intensity of adoption resulting from changes in the explanatory variables were also presented. the results exemplify that the proportion of nerica seeds planted by the households was influenced by fertilizer use, existence of projects in the area, existence of fbos, proportion of active persons in household, access to alternative income sources, education, existence of markets, extension and distance to seed sources. all other variables were not significant. there were positive relationships between the proportion of nerica seeds planted and fertilizer use, existence of projects in the area, existence of fbos, access to alternative income sources, education and extension. conversely, negative relationships were identified with distance to seed source, proportion of active persons in the household and existence of markets. interestingly, the results suggest that an increase in the proportion asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 721-735 729 of active persons in the household decreases the quantity of nerca seeds planted. other factors including quantities of fertilizers and herbicides used, agricultural income, age, yield, herbicide use and labour did not have any significant effect on the proportion of nerica seeds planted (table 2). table 2: factors influencing quantity of nerica seeds planted n=150; lr chi2 (16) = 144.42; prob>chi2=0.000; predicted adoption=0.708177 determinants of the proportion of land allocated to nerica varieties table 3 presents the tobit regression results of the determinants of proportion of land allocated to nerica varieties by sampled households. the result suggests that the proportion of land allocated to nerica varieties was influenced by herbicide use, existence of projects in the area, proportion of active persons in household, access to alternative income sources, education, existence of markets, labour use, extension, yield and distance to seed sources. positive relationships were identified between extent of adoption in terms of proportions of land allocated to nerica and herbicide use, existence of rice projects in the area, fertilizer use, and man-days of labour used, extension, access to alternative income sources, existence of markets and education. on the contrary, negative relationships were also identified with distance to seed source and the proportion of active persons in household. although not significant, the following identified factors also affected on the proportion of land allocated to nerica varieties. this relationship was positive with membership of fbos, fertilizers used and rice income. however, factors such as age, quantity of herbicides used and fertilizer use were negatively related with proportion of land allocated to nerica (table 3). variable marginal effects std. error t-stat p-value age -0.003425 0.00267 -1.28 0.202 yield -0.000014 0.00001 -1.15 0.253 projects 0.179576 0.0865 2.08 0.040 fbos 0.158800 0.0742 2.14 0.034 herbicide use 0.039619 0.0821 0.48 0.630 fertilizer use 0.208395 0.0801 2.60 0.010 nonfarm income 0.000093 0.00005 1.76 0.081 rice income -0.000003 0.00001 -0.27 0.787 fertilizer (kg/ha) 0.000021 0.00002 0.84 0.403 herbicides (l/ha) -0.000001 0.00005 -0.03 0.978 labour (man-days) -0.000110 0.00016 -0.67 0.505 proportion of active persons -0.020007 0.00902 -2.22 0.028 education 0.181067 0.0769 2.35 0.020 markets 0.145090 0.0762 1.91 0.059 distance to seed source -0.024045 0.00812 -2.96 0.004 extension 0.118137 0.06769 1.75 0.083 constant -0.072261 0.1783 -0.41 0.686 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 721-735 730 table 3: factors influencing proportion of land allocated to nerica varieties variable marginal effects std. error t-stat p-value age 0.001033 0.003067 0.34 0.737 yield 0.000002 0.000011 0.17 0.867 projects 0.225217 0.090445 2.49 0.014 fbos 0.129154 0.098956 1.31 0.194 herbicide use -0.207920 0.105147 -1.98 0.050 fertilizer use 0.354864 0.104045 3.41 0.001 nonfarm income 0.000102 0.000053 1.91 0.059 rice income 0.000002 0.000013 0.18 0.859 fertilizer (kg/ha) 0.000010 0.000028 0.35 0.727 herbicides (l/ha) -0.000026 0.000054 -0.48 0.634 labour (man-days) 0.000171 0.000164 1.04 0.299 proportion of active persons -0.026313 0.010301 -2.55 0.012 education 0.312331 0.086063 3.63 0.000 markets 0.136163 0.072164 1.89 0.061 distance to seed source -0.023935 0.010661 -2.25 0.026 extension 0.173649 0.083835 2.07 0.040 _cons -0.422541 0.199522 -2.12 0.036 n=150; lr chi2 (16) = 134.38; prob>chi2=0.000; predicted adoption=0.708173 discussions the study jointly examined the instantaneous decisions to adopt and use the nerica varieties among rice producers in ghana. subsequent discussions and recommendations about strategies to effectively target and promote the nerica rice varieties are expected to be influence by certain factors. these include observations about the rice producer and production characteristics. household characteristics and extent of adoption the sampled households were male dominated; the observed male dominance in the rice production systems in ghana is an obvious and unique characteristic of the agricultural based production systems in the country (wiredu et al., 2011; asuming-brempong et al., 2011). the results of this study highlighted the fact that rice production and ghanaian agriculture is generally male dominated. the generally high proportion of male headed households in the country may limit access to land resources especially rice valleys among females and could possibly account for this finding. the high gender imbalance in the rice production system can limit the full potential of the rice sector. in addition, the study also confirmed results from other studies in the country of a generally aging farming population (asumingbrempong et al., 2011; wiredu et al., 2012). this observation can negatively affect efforts to improve rice production in the country as these farmers who are targeted by interventions are already heading towards retirement. their enthusiasm to invest in new technologies as well as productivity levels can be low. it is therefore necessary to design strategies to attract the youth as well as women to invest their time and resources in the rice production systems. efforts should thus be made at targeting the youth and women especially in the development and dissemination of technologies. intervention should ensure equal attention to both gender and age groups during the implementation process. additionally, it may be very useful to target interventions beyond heads of households and involve specific members of the households. interestingly, the results illustrate a high rate of education among heads of rice producing households. however this is in contrast with the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 721-735 731 general situation across the country. studies have shown variation in education status in the northern and southern parts of the country. they report relatively high rate of education amongst most farmers in southern ghana and the reverse was true for those of northern ghana (akudugu et al, 2012; wiredu et al, 2010). this has the tendency of improving ability to understand and discover new things in their farming operations. the role of off farm activities as a source of livelihood for most farm households in ghana in terms of income provision is very vital. regardless of the fact that majority of the heads of the rice producing household were not into offfarm income activities, most of the households had members who were actively engaged in offfarm activities. this has been found by villano and fleming (2006) to significantly contribute to household income status thereby easing the financial burden on the heads of the rice producing households. it can also provide additional source of funds for adequate investment in rice production including new technologies (kuwornu and owusu, 2012; mendola, 2006). besides the role played by the national extension service which is predominant in the country, ngos and fbos also provided access to information and development support to rice producers. these institutions serve as a pathway for the dissemination of improved technologies to farmers. to ensure effective promotion of agricultural technologies aimed at achieving desired impacts, it is important for development interventions to engage these institutions. factors influencing the extent of nerica adoption interestingly, the results show that, the quantity of nerica seeds affected the proportion of land allocated to nerica varieties were influenced by similar factors. this is because the proportion of land allocated and the quantity of nerica seeds planted are related hence likely to be affected by similar factors. the results revealed the presence of active persons in the household has significant influence on the quantity of seeds as well as the proportion of land allocated to nerica. this is important because cultivation does not end with planting rather; it requires intensive provision of labour to ensure good harvest in the face of other important factors. the presence of active persons will provide support in terms of labour which is an important factor in rice production systems in ghana. moreover, given the aging population of the heads of the households, other members of the households can take up supervisory roles especially when it comes to adopting new technologies. availability and access to nerica seeds beyond the dissemination process should be encouraged in order to improve the intensity of adoption of the varieties. quality seeds are basic to the production of any crop. far distances to seed sources negatively impact on the intensity of nerica adoption. available options to increase the intensity of adoption should include strategies of make quality seeds available as close as possible to the farmers. this will enhance farmers’ access to nerica seeds and increase the chances of adoption. this could be implemented by promoting local rice seed producers in the communities or within certain distance from rice producing communities. for instance the dissemination process adopted by the roots and tuber improvement and marketing programme (rtimp) could be emulated. their approach encouraged the establishment of certified seed growers throughout the country to ease availability of planting materials (metasip, 2010). the positive relationship between education and extent of nerica adoption is encouraging. the ability to process information about the variety is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 721-735 732 enhanced by the educational status of the rice producers. moreover, the educated tend to appreciate the need for information and are better motivated to look for innovations. this results supports the evidence of positive relationships between education and technology adoption in the literature (tambo and abdoulaye, 2011; hexuefeng et al, 2007 and udoh et al, 2008). the negative effect of distance to seed source and positive effect of market availability implies that farmers who do not have access to markets and therefore have to travel far distances to seed sources reduces the proportion of resources that can be allocated to the technologies. consistent with these findings, availability of market been found to positively influence the adoption of modern rice technologies (mariano et al., 2012) and water saving technology (zhou et al., 2008), among small holder farmers in the philippines and china respectively. technology development and dissemination should consider options with improved availability and access to the technology by target beneficiaries. efforts should be made to provide basic relevant infrastructure such as markets to facilitate access to improved seeds. this will minimize the time spent in obtaining the seeds since this has the potential of hampering the extent adoption of such interventions. access to information, capacity enhancement and other production support is assured through membership of farmer based organization (asante et al, 2011). in addition, institutions such as farmer based organizations, non-governmental rganizations and extension have been identified as essential in adoption decisions among small scale farmers (kavia et al., 2007; langyintuo and mekuria, 2005; kristjanson et al., 2005) there is the need for agricultural interventions to link activities with existing institutions such as farmer based organizations and other non-governmental organizations to facilitate dissemination efforts. most of all, it is impossible to ignore the influence of development partners such as extension agents and other projects in terms of their ability to reach out to large groups of people hence having a positive impact on farm level performance (mariano et al., 2012). conclusion and recommendations this study investigated factors that jointly influence the instantaneous decision and extent of adoption of nerica rice varieties. about 57.93 of the farmers adopted the nerica varieties. the adoption decision process was influenced by factors such as fertilizer use, nonfarm income, existence of projects, existence of fbos, education, existence of markets and distances to seed sources and the proportion of active persons in households. seed availability plays an important role in nerica adoption; hence, promotion of technologies should include strategies to bring the seeds close to rice producers. subsequently, because, planting periods are time bound, availability and timely supply of the right kind of seeds is very essential to the rice producers. the ability of farmers to obtain the optimal yield from rice cultivation partly hinges on timely availability of seeds and other essential inputs. besides the adoption of the nericas, to promote the continued use and an improvement in the proportion of seeds planted and area allocated to nerica, there is the need to encourage women and the youth to be engaged in agriculture. this will require training and capacity building, sensitization on the use of fertilizers and other good agricultural practices. additionally, agricultural interventions of this nature should also establish linkages with existing institutions and projects in complementarity. for example seed dissemination promotional activities should emulate approaches employed by existing project like the rtimp to ensure the availability of seeds asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 721-735 733 at affordable prices and at reasonable proximities as possible to farmers. this could be made possible by identifying certified rice seed growers in strategic locations throughout the country and supported with necessary logistics to produce nerica seeds at reasonable proximities to rice producing communities. other development partners like nongovernmental organizations and farmer based organizations could also be partnered to undertake promotional activities to complement effort by the project in ensuring seed dissemination. acknowledgment the authors of this paper wish to acknowledge the contribution of africa rice center (africarice) for the financial and technical support for the generation of the data. the contribution of council for scientific and industrial research (csir) of ghana for the administrative support and for serving as the host for this study is also acknowledged. all technicians of who worked on this study are appreciated. we also wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and advice. the usual disclaimer applies. references acheampong, f.o. 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(2008). factors affecting chinese farmers’ decisions to adopt a water-saving technology. canadian journal of agricultural economics, 56: 51–61. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 56 knowledge and attitude of poultry farmers towards biosecurity against zoonotic avian influenza h5n1 in kaduna state, nigeria c. c. ezeha, o. h. ezehb and s. b. afolayana a college of agriculture, ahmadu bello university, zaria, nigeria. chukezeh14@gmail.com (corresponding author email) b department of community medicine, ahmadu bello university, zaria, nigeria. corresponding author article history: received: 22-mar-2017 accepted: 23-jul-2017 online available: 08-aug2017 keywords: knowledge, attitude, poultry, farmers, biosecurity, avian influenza abstract the reported outbreak of avian influenza (h5n1) in august through september, 2015 prompted this cross-sectional study carried out between february and april, 2016. the study sought to appraise the knowledge and attitude of poultry farmers in kaduna state, nigeria, regarding biosecurity against avian influenza. a total of 112 poultry farmers randomly selected from two of the three sensational zones in the state were interviewed using a pretested structured questionnaire primary data generated were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents revealed a mean age of 39.5 years, predominance of male farmers and a reasonably high level of educational attainment. majority of the respondents (58.0%) were small scale operators; 30.4% medium scale and 11.6% large scale. the level of awareness of disease was found to be high (86.6%), while only 38.4% had knowledge of the cause and nature (clinical signs) of infection. results also revealed poor observance of biosecurity measures (bsms) among the respondents. the regression analysis of socio-economic variables showed that only educational status and flock size significantly influenced adoption of bsms. constraints limiting strict compliance with bsms were identified, and recommendations aimed at enhancing biosecurity against h5n1 were proffered. contribution/ originality this article contributes to (a) ascertaining the level of awareness of biosecurity measures (bsms), (b) identifying socio-economic factors that significantly influence the adoption of bsms and (c) proffering vistas for increasing awareness and knowledge of bsms. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.3/1005.3.56.64 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: c. c. ezeh, o. h. ezeh and s. b. afolayan (2017). knowledge and attitude of poultry farmers towards biosecurity against zoonotic avian influenza h5n1 in kaduna state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3), 56-64. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 3(2017): 56-64 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:chukezeh14@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.3/1005.3.56.64 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 56-64 57 1. introduction there is no gainsaying the fact that nigeria with a population of about 165 million (npc, 2006) is grossly undersupplied with essential food components, notably animal protein. according to odedire and abegunle (2015), low supply and high cost of animal protein such as beef, pork, mutton, chevon, poultry, eggs and milk have brought about an acute shortage of animal protein in the diet of most nigerians. many have argued that the poultry industry holds the key to bridging the supply gap in high quality animal protein intake. no doubt, the nigerian poultry industry has come of age and commands recognition as a viable sub-sector of the agricultural economy in nigeria. invariably, poultry farming is the most popular livestock enterprise adopted by small and medium scale farmers in both rural and urban areas of nigeria (idowu et al., 2005; afolayan et al., 2014). according to ozoedu et al. (2015), poultry production represents the fastest means of correcting the shortage of animal protein intake, because poultry has the best efficiency of nutrient transformation into high quality animal protein. however, sight must not be lost of the fact that the poultry industry, promising as it seems, has been bedevilled with a myriad of daunting challenges with mitigating consequences. notable among these challenges is the avian influenza h5n1popularly known as bird flu which was first reported in kaduna in 2006. the highly pathogenic avian influenza (hpai) is a devastating virus infection of the strain h5n1 usually associated with high mortality rates which may lead to disruptions in production and trade. the disease, being zoonotic, may be transmitted from birds to humans and is a potential source of future human influenza epidemic (thamawat et al., 2004; wakawa et al., 2015). from 2003 to date, a total of 228 persons were reported to have died out of 362 persons that were infected with confirmed hpai h5n1 worldwide (who, 2008). one human dead due to the disease was reported in nigeria in january, 2007 (who, 2008). as already mentioned, bird flu is very lethal, highly pathogenic and usually results in massive depopulation of poultry stocks any time there is an outbreak. the outbreaks reported in 2006 and 2007, firstly in kaduna and subsequently in other parts of the country, took a massive toll in its wake. saidu et al. (2008) estimated that over 480,000 birds were lost in four states of kano, kaduna, katsina and jigawa following the outbreak. as the poultry industry was recuperating from this onslaught after its containment in 2008, fresh outbreaks were reported in august/september, 2015. more recently in january 2016, more outbreaks have been reported in about six state including kuje and gwagwalada area councils in the federal capital territory (fct). highly pathogenic and devastating as bird flu is, it is gratifying to note that the disease is preventable and can be controlled and contained. according to fao (2008), the hpai, like any disease that spreads primarily through human activities, is susceptible to biosecurity measures (bsm) along the production and marketing chain. it is this that makes biosecurity an important tool for the control and eradication of h5n1 hpai. in fact, regarding the 2015 outbreaks, the poultry site news desk of august 19, 2015 had this to say: “the disease report to the world organization of animal health (oie) commented that the one farm and three backyard operations involved displayed poor biosecurity”. given that the 2006/2007 outbreaks of bird flu took everybody off guard, being the first time, why are we having resurgent outbreaks in recent months? are nigerian poultry farmers aware and knowledgeable of biosecurity measures (bsms) that must be put in place to keep the disease in check? these questions coupled with the apparent dearth of information on the subject have made this study an imperative. the specific objectives of the study are to: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 56-64 58 i. describe the socio-economic characteristics of poultry farmers in the area of study ii. ascertain the level of awareness and knowledge capacity of the respondent about bird flu. iii. determine the factors that influence the adoption of biosecurity measures by the farmers. iv. identify the constraints that mitigate the adoption of biosecurity measures by the farmers. 1.1. sampling procedure and data collection the study was carried out in kaduna state in the north western geopolitical zone of nigeria. the state has 23 local government areas with kaduna as the state capital. with a population of over 9 million people (npc, 2006). kaduna state is bordered to the north by katsina state, to the east by kano state and niger state to the south (figure, 1). figure 1: map of nigeria showing kaduna state and the area of study (unmarked) a cross-sectional survey of small, medium and large scale poultry farmers in kaduna north and kaduna central senatorial districts of the state was carried out using a structured questionnaire and involving 120 randomly selected farmers. at the end of the exercise 112 questionnaire were duly completed and constituted the sample size for the study. data generated were analyzed using descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis. a 4-point likert-type scale was used to appraise the attitude and compliance with bsms. the scales are: strongly agree and strictly observed (saso =4), agree and observed (ao=3), disagree but observed sometimes (dos=2) and strongly disagree and not observed (sdno=1). 2. results and discussion results of the study are discussed under the following sub-headings: 2.1. socio-economic characteristics of poultry farmers socio-economic characteristics of the poultry farmers examined include age, gender, education status, farming experience, farm/flock size and extension/veterinary contact. birnin gwari kajuru sabon gari kaduna north kauru lere kubau igabi kaduna south zaria chikun kudan makarfi ikara soba kachia zango kataf kagarko jema’a sang a kaura asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 56-64 59 table 1: distribution of poultry farmers based on socio-economic characteristics characteristics frequency (n=112) percentage age 15-24 years 7 6.3 25-34 years 26 23.2 35-44 years 48 42.8 45-54 years 22 19.6 55-64 years 9 8 mean 39.5 years gender female 50 44.6 male 62 55.4 educational status primary education 17 15.2 secondary education 32 28.6 ond/nce 35 31.3 hnd/b.sc./pgd/m.sc. ph.d 21 18.8 farming experience <5 years 12 10.7 6-10 years 27 24 11-15years 44 39.3 >16 years 29 36 source: field survey (2015) result in table 1 showed that the mean age of the respondents was 39.5 years, with over 65% of them aged between 25 and 44 years. there were more males (55.4%) than females (44.6%) in the sample and the educational attainment of the respondents could be adjudged as reasonably high. over 63% of the poultry farmers had put in between 5 and 15 years in the business of keeping poultry based on the farm/flock size, the distribution of the respondents is as shown in table 2. table 2: distribution of respondents based on flock size category/flock size frequency percentage ss:<1000 birds ms 1000-2500 birds ls>2500 birds total 65 34 13 112 58.0 30.4 11.6 100 source: field survey (2015) note: ss = small scale ms= medium scale ls = large scale majority (50%) of the poultry farmers in the sample were small scale operators, 30.4% were medium scale while only 11.6% fell into the large scale category. contact with extension/veterinary agent was recorded as generally poor because only 17.8% of the farmers claimed to have contact quarterly, 22.3% once in six months and 49.1% once a year. zero scores were recorded for ‘once a month’ and ‘twice a month’ while 10.7% indicated they hardly made any contacts. these observations were consistent with the findings of ezeh et al. (2015) on information seeking behavior of poultry farmers where the number of those who sought veterinary advice was dismal. 2.2. awareness and knowledge of bird flu by respondents the study sought to ascertain the level of awareness and knowledge of cause and nature of disease among the farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 56-64 60 table 3: distribution of poultry farmers based on level of awareness and knowledge of bird flu response awareness of bird flu (h5n1) disease knowledge of cause and nature (clinical signs) of disease yes no total 97 (86.6)* 15 (13.4)* 112 (100) 43 (38.4)* 69 (61.6) 112 (100) source: field survey (2015) note: * figures in parenthesis represent percentage the responses in table 3 indicated that a high percentage of the farmers (86.6%) were aware of the disease while only 13.4% were not. with respect to the knowledge of cause and clinical signs of bird flu, 38.4% had knowledge while 61.6% admitted not having knowledge of the cause and clinical signs of avian influenza. apparently, poultry farmers are yet to fully understand the nature of the disease since the first outbreak in 2006. as reported by saidu et al. (2008), “the absence of h5n1 in nigeria prior to the outbreak of january 2006 made the diagnosis difficult for both veterinaries and poultry farmers regarding the sources of information on avian influenza, the farmers responded as shown in table 4. table 4: distribution of poultry farmers based on sources of information on avian influenza h5n1 source of information frequency percentage rank newspaper extension/vet agent television (news) radio neighbours/friends farmers/poultry association subscribed newsletter/journals internet total 41 22 57 32 7 15 6 28 208* 19.7 10.6 27.4 15.4 3.4 7.2 2.8 13.5 100 2nd 5th 1st 3rd 7th 6th 8th 4th source: field survey (2015) note: * multiple responses results in table 4 indicate that television was the most popular source of information on hpai among the respondents followed by newspapers and radio in that order. internet, extension/vet agent ranked 4th and 5th respectively. only 3.4% and 2.8% of the respondents got their information through neighbours/friends and subscribed newsletters/journals respectively. evidently, the importance of television, newspapers, radio and internet as information sources relate to the literacy status of most of the poultry farmers in the sample. it is also evident that if these sources were pivotal to creating awareness, they do not seem to have done much in enhancing knowledge about the cause and nature of the disease. 2.3. attitude and observance of biosecurity measures (bsms) the attitude of the poultry farmers and their strict observance of key biosecurity measures against bird flu (fao, 2008; gov. uk, 2014) were appraised as shown in table 5 using the 4-point likerttype scale already explained in the methodology. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 56-64 61 table 5: attitude and observance of biosecurity measures by poultry farmers s/n biosecurity item saso ao dso sdno f (%) f (%) f (%) f (%) ∑x 1 always remain vigilant for signs of disease 29 (25.9) 34(30.4) 27(24.1) 22(19.6 ) 294 2.62** 2 register poultry farm with a vet clinic 21 (18.8) 31(27.7) 35(31.3) 25 (22.3) 272 3.43 3 seek prompt attention of a vet when there are concerns 27 (24.1) 31(27.5) 28(25.0) 26(23.2 ) 283 2.53** 4 cleansing and disinfecting protective clothes footwear, vehicles, equipment before and after contact with poultry 15 (13.4 ) 29(25.9) 34(30.4) 34(30.4) 249 2.22 5 reduce movement of people, vehicles and equipment from and into areas where birds are 31 (27.7) 39(34.8) 25(22.3) 17(15.2 ) 304 2.75** 6 thoroughly cleansing and disinfecting housing at the end of a cycle 47 (42.0) 36(32.1) 23(20.5) 6 (5.4 ) 348 3.11** 7 avoiding contact between poultry and wild birds 21 (18.8) 26(23.2) 36(32.1) 29(25.9 ) 263 2.3 8 always maintaining clean surroundings around poultry pens 30 (26.8) 36(32.1) 24(21.4) 22(19.6 ) 298 2.66** 9 not recycling egg trays from and into poultry farms 11(9.8) 20(17.9) 32(28.6) 49 (43.8 ) 217 1.94 10 do not introduce old birds from other farms e.g. at pointoflay 25 (22.3) 31(27.7) 31(27.7) 27 (24.1) 278 2.48 source: field survey (2015) note: * figures in parenthesis represent percentages **mean (�̅�) ≥ 2.5 results shown in table 5 indicate that only five of the key biosecurity measures examined had means of 2.5 and above implying reasonable observance of biosecurity measures. these biosecurity items with positive compliance had means ranging from 2.53 for item (3) to 3.11 for item (6). a look at the poorly observed bsms indicated poor compliance with critical issues which are key to preventing and controlling bird flu e.g. items 7, 9 and 10. while wild birds are known as the primary carriers of the bird flu virus (fao, 2008), the recycling of egg trays from and into poultry farms portends great danger. the markets where the eggs/trays are carried to are same markets where already infected birds are sold to minimize losses. with respect to the introduction of old birds (item 10), wakawa et al., (2008) reported that the introduction of new birds (without history of health status) into an already existing flock was probably responsible for the outbreaks in two of the cases reviewed in zaria. also, saidu et al. (2008) reported that the farm from which bird flu was first suspected and later diagnosed in kaduna state had purchased some pointoflay pullets from several farms in kano prior to the outbreak of ai in the farm. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 56-64 62 2.4. socio-economic factors influencing observance of biosecurity measures linear regression was run against the socio-economic characteristics examined in the study to determine those that influenced the adoption of biosecurity measures by the poultry farmers. table 6: regression coefficients of socio-economic characteristics influencing the adoption of biosecurity measures socio economic variable coefficient t-value remarks age gender educational status farming experience farm/flock size extension/vet contact -077 -010 0.217 0.011 119 -0.192 -636 -115 2.018 -142 1.120 -2.394 ns ns * ns * ns source: field survey (2015) note: * significant at p<0.05 ns not significant the regression analysis results showed that only two variables education status (r = 0.217) and flock size (r = 0.119) were statistically significant at p<0.05 level. age, gender, farming experience and extension/vet contact did not significantly influence the observance of biosecurity measures by the respondents. 2.5. constraints limiting the observance of biosecurity measures table 7: constraints limiting the strict observance of biosecurity measures constraints frequency percentage ranking 1. poor knowledge of biosecurity measures 65 15 2nd 2. measures are laborious and time consuming 57 13.1 5th 3. difficult to access/contact vet in the area 54 12.4 6th 4. high cost implications 78 18 1st 5. few hands/labourers on the farm 63 14.5 3rd 6. technical nature of biosecurity measures 28 6.4 8th 7. nonchalant attitude/carelessness 32 7.4 7th 8. poor/advocacy/sensitization on bird flu 58 13.3 4th total 435* 100 source: field survey (2015) note: *multiple responses result in table 7 indicates that major constraints identified in order of ranking, include high cost implications, poor knowledge of bsm, and few hands on the farm. poor advocacy/sensitization on disease and the laborious/time consuming nature of bsm ranked 4th and 5th respectively. apparently, accessing a vet, technical nature of bsm and careless attitude (6th, 7th and 8th) did not seem to bother the farmers much. it is important to relate the low ranking of accessing a vet to the poor perception of the respondents regarding the place of vet. in the effective observance of biosecurity measures. again, this corroborates the findings of ezeh et al. (2015) in their study on the information seeking behaviour of poultry farmers in zaria and environs. 3. conclusion and recommendations highly pathogenic and devastating as avian influenza is, it is gratifying that the disease can be prevented and controlled. the findings here indicate that while majority of poultry farmers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 56-64 63 (86.6%) were aware of the disease, knowledge of the clinical signs as well as biosecurity measure were found to be generally poor ‘knowledge is power’ and in this matter is very crucial to helping the farmers save the huge investments they have made in the business. the following recommendations are proffered with a view to enhancing knowledge and forestalling further outbreaks of hpai. i. being pro-active and embarking on a sustained surveillance to help nip outbreaks in the bud. ii. more diagnostic centers are required for rapid diagnosis of suspected cases and necessary action. the national veterinary research institute (nvri), vom and few veterinary teaching hospitals that are capable are far flung from most poultry farms in nigeria, iii. stronger synergies between agencies and stakeholders for impactful intervention. iv. more advocacy and sensitization is required to enhance knowledge of both clinical signs of disease (h5n1) and biosecurity measures. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references afolayan, m., bawa, g. s., sekoni, a. a., abeke, f. o., & daramola, s. t. 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(2008). closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health: commission on social determinants of health final report. world health organization. view at google scholar / view at publisher https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=review+of+highly+pathogenic+avian+influenza+outbreaks+in+poultry+in+zaria%2c+nigeria&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=closing+the+gap+in+a+generation%3a+health+equity+through+action+on+the+social+determinants+of+health%3a+commission+on+social+determinants+of+health+final+report&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9044.v10i3p253-266 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 48 nutritional composition of cocoyam (colocasia esculenta), grown in manicaland province in zimbabwe matikiti a.a*, allemann j.a, kujeke g.b , gasura e.b, masekesa t.,b chabata i.b a*, a department of soil, crop and climate sciences, university of the free state, south africa. amatikiti@agric.uz.ac.zw (corresponding author) b department of crop science, university of zimbabwe, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe. corresponding author article history: received: 09-feb-2017 accepted: 12-jul-2017 online available: 20-jul2017 keywords: composition, cocoyam, manicaland abstract cocoyam is one of the important root food crops especially in eastern parts of zimbabwe. however, the nutritional composition of the zimbabwean cocoyam has not been ascertained. a field trial was conducted in rusape, makoni district, manicaland province, thandi area under chief makoni in maramwidze village, 10km from rusape town in 2015/16 season. treatments consists of the control, cowdung manure, inorganic fertilizer, and a combination of cowdung manure and inorganic fertilizer, and was laid out in a split-plot design with cocoyam types (madhumbe, magogoya and ghana) assigned to the main plots and manure type as the sub-plots with three replications. the results showed that nutrient supply to the cocoyam crop influenced the quality of the crop in a non-synchronously form. proximate nutrition composition of cocoyam were in the range of 65 – 78% (moisture), 2 – 5 % (ash), 0.2 – 1.10% (fat), 2 – 5% (fibre), 14 – 23% (carbohydrates), 390 – 460 mg/100g (potassium), 24 – 43 mg/100g (calcium), 79 – 91 k/cal (energy), 0.3 – 4.8% (protein) and 79 – 110 mg/100g (magnesium). the high carbohydrate content in the cocoyam shows that the crop is superior compared to other tubers like sweet potatoes and cassava. in conclusion, the utilization of cocoyam combined with other foods with high protein content like cowpea will be beneficial to the nutrition of vulnerable groups considering the resultant high nutritive values. contribution/ originality the current study ascertained the nutritional composition of the zimbabwean cocoyam. the study also shows that cocoyam is superior as compared to other tubers like sweet potatoes and cassava. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.3/1005.3.48.55 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: matikiti, a., allemann, j., kujeke, g., gasura, e., masekesa, t., and chabata i. (2017). nutritional composition of cocoyam (colocasia esculenta), grown in manicaland province in zimbabwe. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3), 48-55. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 3(2017): 48-55 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:amatikiti@agric.uz.ac.zw http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.3/1005.3.48.55 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 48-55 49 1. introduction cocoyams are tubers that are widely cultivated in both the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. it is a wetland herbaceous plant which grows to a height of 1 – 2m and it is perennial. cocoyam can be distinguished into two main groups; the “eddoes” and the “dasheen” types (onwueme, 1994). the eddoes type which is refered to madhumbe in zimbabwe, have side tubers (cormels) that may be 5 – 20 in number and they become as big as the mother corm. in manicaland province where it is mainly grown, cocoyam ranks second in importance after sweet potato among the root and tuber crops cultivated and consumed in that area. the tubers are edible and they provide carbohydrates for human consumption. usually they are used as a substitute for bread just like cassava and sweet potatoes (kusena, 2002). in nigeria, being the largest producer of cocoyam, and other west african countries it is an important staple food crop commonly grown by women (eze and okorji, 2003). food is one of the people’s basic necessities of life, therefore cocoyam represents important vital economic food value in most rural households, farmers produce their crop mainly for consumption and family upkeep, and they also sell and preserve for replanting in the subsequent cropping season. nutritionally, cocoyam is superior to cassava and yam because of its high protein content, minerals and vitamins in addition to more digestible starch (onyenweaku and okoye, 2007). the main nutrient provided by cocoyam, as with many other root and tuber crops, is the dietary energy supplied by carbohydrates (o’hair, 1990). the protein fraction content of corms and cormels is low (1-3%) and like other tuber crops proteins, sulphur containing amino acids are limiting (mwenye et al., 2011). the mature corms are mostly boiled in zimbabwe, while in west african countries they can be roasted, baked and fried. they can be eaten alone or with stew and they are served in some five star hotels (personal observation). the boiled corms are sometimes mashed like irish potatoes and used as a weaning diet for babies. in west africa, the mature corms are also processed into flour, which is used to prepare “fufu” that is commonly eaten with stews. the leaves of cocoyam are also nutritionally rich, containing about 23% protein on a dry-weight basis (onwueme, 1994). young cocoyam leaves are mixed with coconut cream to prepare a dish, which is then eaten with the boiled or roasted cocoyam, breadfruit or plantain. the leaves and sometimes stems are eaten as spinach and provide a supplement to maize (coetze and allenmann, 1996). cocoyam can be used as an industrial raw material in the manufacture of alcohol and drugs (okwuowulu et al., 2000). recent studies in other crops have revealed that use of intergrated use of organic and inorganic fertilizer influences yield and nutritional composition of the crops (hota et al., 2016). however, there is need to apply both inorganic and organic fertilizers to increase the performance and chemical properties of soil such as ph, total nutrient content and nutrient availability (usman et al., 2015). hence there is need to ascertain the nutritional composition of cocoyam in this study. 2. materials and method the experiment was carried out in rusape, makoni district, manicaland province, in thandi area under chief makoni in maramwidze village, 10km from rusape town in 2015/16 season, on three farmer fields. makoni district is in natural region ii and receives about 1250 – 1800mm rainfall per annum falling between november and march with dry spells in mid-january. most soils in the area are loamy with high land-use potential. the cropping season starts around november and lasts until the end of april. cropping, gardening, livestock rearing, fruit production and forestry are integrated on these communal farms. mechanisation is very low and family labour is the main labour sources. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 48-55 50 2.1. description of varieties used in the experiment 2.1.1. madhumbe (eddoes) the eddoes type which is refered to madhumbe in zimbabwe, have side tubers (cormels) that may be 5 – 20 in number and they become as big as the mother corm. the corm is small, globoid, and surrounded by several cormels (stem tubers) and daughter corms. the cormels and the daughter corms together constitute a significant proportion of the edible harvest. corms, cormels and daughter corms are quite similar in their internal structure. 2.1.2. magogoya (dasheen) the dasheen type is known as magogoya in zimbabwe, the cormels are usually absent and it is the mother corm which is the main storage organ (tumuhimbise et al., 2009). in the dasheen types of taro, the corm is cylindrical and large. it is up to 30cm long and 15cm in diameter, and constitutes the main edible part of the plant. the crop can grow up to 1.5m in height than the eddoes. the crystal oxalates in the dasheen type is less than in the eddoes (onwueme, 1994). 2.1.3. ghana variety (mankani brobe) mankani brobe is an indigenous variety to west africa (karikari, 1976). it is a stout herbaceous plant, tuberous rhizomes, erect, semi-erect or horizontal, up to 3 m high, leaf-blade up to 35 cm broad, 30-50 cm long, bottom nerves nearly marginal at petiole. the leaves arise from a broad corm; offshoots appear on short rhizomes extending from the corm. the corms have mixed colours of white and pink. 2.1.4. soil analysis at the experimental site soil samples were taken on-farm station in rusape sites for physical and chemicals analysis at the chemistry and soils research institute of zimbabwe. table 1: summary of the soil analysis results for the experimental site in the 2015 -2016 rainy season parameter karumbidza maramwidze makuvaza ph (cacl2) 5.65 5.63 6.10 nitrogen (mg/kg) 18 15 20 phosphorus (mg/kg) 29 23 32 calcium (me%) 18.78 17.22 21.45 magnesium (me%) 5.89 6.03 6.34 potassium (me%) 0.67 0.84 0.51 sodium (me%) 0.35 0.28 0.43 clay % 27 31 22 silt % 10 13 8 sand % 63 66 70 soil texture scs scs scs soil colour black black black 2.2. experimental design and treatments the trial was laid out as a split-plot design consisting of control, cowdung manure and inorganic fertilizers and the other with inorganic fertilizer only. cocoyam varieties were assigned to the subplots with three replications and 12 plants in each sub-plot. 2.3. establishment and maintenance of experimental plots the experiment was set up in a swampy area. the field was manually cleared on the land which a crop of maize had been grown previously. the land preparation was done using ox-drawn mould board ploughs and harrowed to a fine tilth. main plots measuring 6m x 6m were laid out with 1m border between plots. holes were made with a hoe with a circumference of about 45cm and depth of 15-20cm. each replication contained four main plots accommodating the cowdung asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 48-55 51 manure,inorganic fertilizer, cowdung manure and inorganic fertilizer and the control. three varieties namely: madhumbe, magogoya and ghana v1 were the sub-plots. the plant spacing was 1m x 1m (10,000 plants ha-1) and contained 36 plants. the crop was planted on 05 august 2015. the experiments were kept weed-free throughout the experiment by hand-hoeing. while weeding the plants were heaped with soil so that they have room for tuber growth. this was done three times. at 90 days (dap) amoerilites were added to the plants as top dressing. 2.4. harvesting and measurements plant growth was evaluated at 60, 90, 120 days after planting (dap). data collected included plant height, number of shoots, number of corms, corm fresh weight. corms were harvested on maturity on the 15 may 2016. the fresh corms were thoroughly washed with tap water and sent to food science department for nutritional analysis. 2.5. determination of nutritional composition the nutritional analysis was conducted in the department of food science, faculty of science at the university of zimbabwe. the nutritional composition (protein, ash, fibre, carbohydrate and moisture) were determined by the methods of association of official analytical chemists (2005). the minerals composition (calcium and magnesium) were determined using atomic absoption spectrophotometer as outlined (aoac, 2005). pottasium was determined using flame photometer. atwater factors were used to calculate the energy value of the samples. samples were analysed in triplicates. 2.6. data anaysis data obtained was subjected to analysis of variance (anova). significance difference was accepted at 5% probability level. 3. results 3.1. effects of organic and inorganic manure on nutritional composition of cocoyam (colocasia esulenta) in rusape district on three varieties there was a highly significant (p<.001) interaction between variety and fertilization with respect to all the nutritional composition measured (figure 1). the nutritional composition responded according to the type of fertilization that was applied. for moisture content, treatment 1 with cowdung manure produced the highest moisture content on ghana variety and also magogoya produced the lowest moisture content on that same treatment. as for ash content, the ghana variety produced the lowest and as for magogoya and madhumbe it was almost the same. ghana variety produced the highest fat content on treatment 2, 3, 4 and there were small differences on the two varieties. however, on treatment 1 the madhumbe and magogoya varieties produced the highest. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 48-55 52 moisture ash fat fibre carbohydrates pottasium 55 60 65 70 75 80 trt1 trt2 trt3 trt4 (% ) m o is tu re treatments 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 trt1 trt2 trt3 trt4 (% ) a sh treatments v1 v2 v3 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 trt1 trt2 trt3 trt4 (% ) f at treatments 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 trt1 trt2 trt3 trt4 (% ) f ib re treatments v1 v2 v3 0 5 10 15 20 25 trt1 trt2 trt3 trt4 % c ar b o h yd ra te s treatments 340 360 380 400 420 440 460 480 trt1 trt2 trt3 trt4 m g/ 1 0 0 g (p o tt as iu m ) treatments v1 v2 v3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 48-55 53 calcium energy protein magnesium figure 1: variety and treatment interaction on nutritional composition of cocoyam. variety v1, v2, v3 represents madhumbe, magogoya and ghana respectively. treatment 1, 2, 3 and 4 represents cowdung manure, inorganic fertilizer, cowdung and inorganic fertilizer and control respectively. bars indicate sed values 4. discussion nutritional composition of crops is a highly challenging trait due to both the different properties which determine crop quality and the various factors the affects them (wiesler et al., 2002). the determination of proximate and mineral compositions of cocoyam will go a long way in providing substantive information on the crop for effective guide on dietics in zimbabwe. in this study, nutrient supply to the cocoyam crop influenced the quality of the crop in a non-synchronously form. obervations made in this study revealed that, the difference in mineral composition of the cocoyam grown could be probably due to the differences in the potential of each variety to obtain nutrients from the soil. the moisture content obtained is consistent with earlier research conducted in south africa and nigeria (mwenye et al., 2011 and aregheore and perera, 2003). both authors obtained moisture contents that was between 65% 80%, the variation may be attributed to the cocoyam variety used, environmental factors and agronomic practices. the low moisture content for treatment 1 on magogoya variety and treatment 3 on ghana variety is important as it enables 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 calciu m mg/10 0g treatments 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 trt1 trt2 trt3 trt4 kcal treatments v1 v2 v3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 trt1 trt2 trt3 trt4 (% ) p ro te in treatments 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 trt1 trt2 trt3 trt4 m g/ 1 0 0 g (m g) treatments v1 v2 v3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(3)2017: 48-55 54 long storage by minimizing fungal contamination and spoilage on cocoyam and also during transportation to the markets. the percentage ash content fall within the range reported in the literature, (lewu et al., 2010) which is between 1 – 5%. the ash content of ghana variety was however lower than the other two local varieties. the ash content helps to determine the amount and type of minerals in cocoyam (reference), whereby minerals are essential for growth and metabolism in humans and helps in preventing mineral deficiency disease like anemia, goiter, cretinism and mycardiopathy and reducing the risk of contracting other chronic dieases like cancer and cardiovascular (wiesler et al., 2010). the local varieties had the highest fibre content than the ghana variety confirming that they are good source of fiber compared to other root and tubers especially potato (bradbury and holloway, 1988). the high fiber content found in the local varieties is good for the zimbabwe population as this highlights protection against some health problems. conversely, low fibre is undesirable as it can cause constipation resulting in diseases of the colon like piles, appenditics and cancer (olaleye et al., 2013). the high carbohydrate content in the cocoyam shows that the crop is superior compared to other tubers with low carbohydrates (reference). generally, cocoyam is a carbohydrate/energy source with very low protein content (aregheore and perera, 2003); this agrees with the fact that tuber and other root crops in rich in carbohydrates hence their high caloric values. the makes the crop to be of high value both nutritionally and economically hence it is food of major importance in the eastern parts in zimbabwe. the low protein in the first three treatments by the ghana variety could be due to low intake of nitrogen by the plant. the mineral composition of cocoyam showed high percentage of potassium, calcium and magnesium on the ghana variety and the other varieties had almost similar percentages. this indicates that the ghana variety had the capacity to take more of these minerals from the soil than the other two. 5. conclusion and recommendation it is evident from this study that cocoyam can be consumed with other staple foods with higher protein to make up for the deficiency. cocoyam production and consumption should be encouraged and popularized nationally as an additional tuber crop next to sweet potato, cassava and irish potato to help curb malnutrition and lower incidence of other diet related diseases. this will extend the utilization options for this underutilized tuber beyond its current use in zimbabwe hence increased source of income for farmers and market stall vendors. the results of this study will help nutritionists, hospitals, government and non-governmental organizations with data in their planning. the study also revealed that conjuctive use of soil amendments, balanced fertilizers and organic manure improves the physio-chemical and biological properties hence obtaining a sustainable crop with good nutritional values for good health. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the author is grateful to the south african government for sponsoring this study through the university of the free state. the late dr david ichisihayo is acknowledged for his critical statistical advice. we are also thankful to the university of zimbabwe, departments of food science and crop science for providing laboratory facility in the research work and the farmers in rusape for their land use. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references aoac. 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https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=growth+and+development+of+wetland-grown+taro+under+different+plant+populations+and+seedbed+types+in+uganda&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://doi.org/10.4314/acsj.v17i1.54210 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=the+combined+use+of+organic+and+inorganic+fertilizers+for+improving+maize+crop+productivity+in+nigeria&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=influence+of+mineral+fertilizers+on+nutritional+quality+of+staple+foods+crops&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 65 the moroccan wheat sector: what if there is no more tariff protection? roberto telleria juáreza* and boubaker dhehibib a ipc policy and investment officer; ipc global support unit (ipc gsu), food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao). roberto.telleriajuarez@fao.org (corresponding author email address) b agricultural resource economist, international centre for agricultural research in the dry areas (icarda) abdoun, khaled abu dalbouh street, buildings no. 15 amman – jordan corresponding author article history: received: 15-jun-2017 accepted: 26-jul-2017 online available: 13-aug2017 keywords: morocco, trade, productivity, wheat, tariff, gtap abstract this paper focusses on testing how a hypothetical elimination of tariffs to imported wheat coupled with changes in productivity would impact on the domestic wheat supply, prices and factor use in morocco. having one of the highest per capita wheat consumption in the world, the government is determined to increase domestic wheat production to become self-sufficient. to this end, wheat imports have been subject to high tariffs, but morocco’s trade agreements with the eu and the usa have been pushing import tariffs on wheat to be complete eliminated. using a methodology based on the gtap model, our simulation results indicate that domestic wheat production would augment as result of improvements in capital and unskilled labor productivity, and would reduce as result of elimination of tariff protection to imported wheat. the future of wheat production in morocco will depend on the tradeoffs between the potential cost savings from the substitution of domestic production of wheat with imports, and the contribution of wheat to gdp and employment opportunities generated in the cereal sector. contribution/ originality the current paper is a timely contribution to the ongoing discussion among moroccan policy makers that are concerned on the implications that eliminating tariffs would have on wheat production, employment and other domestic indicators. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.4/1005.4.65.85 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: roberto telleria juárez and boubaker dhehibi (2017). the moroccan wheat sector: what if there is no more tariff protection? asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4), 65-85. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 4(2017): 65-85 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:roberto.telleriajuarez@fao.org http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.4/1005.4.65.85 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 66 1. introduction overtime the government of morocco has provided significant support to the agricultural sector, and in particular to wheat production (adb, 2016). as result ordinary people in morocco has been paying as low as 0.2 dollars per loaf of bread (about 500 gr). wheat support has overtime driven patterns of consumption to be intensively based on cereal consumption (ciheam, 2006). wheat supply, essentially in the form of soft and durum wheat flours1, in average accounted for 247 kg/per capita (or 660 gr/day) in 2001-2013 (faostat, 2017), placing morocco among the top wheat consumers in the world (arrisueño et al., 2016). yet the country is a net-wheat importing country (agriculture and agri-food canada, 2017) with low and stagnant wheat yields (mrabet et al., 2012). morocco, as world trade organization (wto) member has to start with liberalizing its wheat market by eliminating wheat import tariffs (united states trade representative, 2014). however, in may 2017 the government announced the increase of the import duty on “soft” wheat from 30 to 135% (fao, 2017). as per the green morocco plan (gmp), that is country’s 2008-2020 national development plan for modernizing and integrating agriculture into the world market, improving human development, and enhancing sustainable growth (gmp, 2009), morocco has been investing resources to improve labor and capital productivity aiming at enhancing domestic wheat productivity (gmp, 2014). previous research (radouane and ghoufrane, 2016; and aziz and hertel, 2007) has sought to understand the possible scenarios out of full liberalization of import tariffs, but changes in productivity of wheat reflecting the government’s intention to increase domestic wheat production have not being sufficiently specified. in this context, the purpose of this paper is to analyze macroeconomic implications for the wheat sector that would emerge out of both liberalizing the wheat market (for both soft and durum wheat), and increasing labor and capital productivity used in wheat production. results from our simulations focus on changes in production, imports, prices, overall welfare, terms of trade, and production factors, which are variables of outmost importance to assess changes in the moroccan wheat sector. to analyze effects on the wheat sector out of wheat tariff liberalization, we simulated changes in tariff protection. to analyze effects on the wheat sector out of labor and capital productivity, we simulated technological changes improving labor and capital productivity. this paper is organized as follows: following this introduction, the second part presents the model, database aggregation and simulation scenarios used to estimate changes in protection tariffs and productivity of production factors. the third part presents results of the simulation scenarios, focusing on import liberalization effects and changes in wheat production, including changes in macro indicators such as gdp, welfare, imports, terms of trade, and shares of domestic production. the fourth section discusses feasibility of results, focusing on historical wheat production, level of dependence of the country to imported cereals, wheat relevance in moroccan diet, and wheat water consumption as compared to other commodities. by introducing water consumption in the discussion, we seek to understand (from a macro perspective) restrictions that limited water resources could impose in the overall framework of commodities that are produced in the country. finally, section five presents conclusions emerging from this study. 1 used to make a wide range of foods including bread, crumpets, muffins, noodles, pasta, cakes, pastries, cereal bars, sweet and savoury snack foods, crisp-breads, sauces and confectionery. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 67 2. model, database aggregation, and simulation scenarios growth and development of the wheat sector is important for food security in morocco (gmp, 2014; yigezu et al., 2013). the extent to which tariff protection and subsidies contribute to improved performance of the wheat sector is analyzed here using the gtap model (hertel, 1997). in this paper, the gtap database version 8.0 (129 regions or countries and 57 sectors or commodity groups – latest available) was used, which represents a snapshot of the world economy in the year 2007. this database contains all trade agreements morocco has singed so far (latest one with the us in july 2005). as the gtap model has been widely discussed and described in many economic policy articles, here we just point out its general characteristics. gtap it is a standard, static, multi-region, multisector computable general equilibrium (cge) model. it is basically expressed in equations contained in the code of the model, which represents the fundamental theory behind the gtap model (telleria, 2010). gtap includes explicit treatment of international trade and transport margins, global savings and investment, and price and income responsiveness across countries. it assumes perfect competition, constant returns to scale, and an armington specification for bilateral trade flows that differentiates trade by origin. it also assumes a fixed factor endowment and full factor use. model results for all variables are expressed as relative changes from the original gtap database. that is, scenario results are percentage changes from the base case scenario. the gtap database is huge containing input-outputs matrices for 129 regions (countries or groups of countries) and 57 sectors (commodity groups), which are available in version 8.0. given this size, the amount of computational resources needed to compute the data is usually unbearable and, therefore, for the simulations to be solvable data aggregation is needed (hertel et al., 2004). thus, this database was aggregated into 11 regions and 12 sectors, where criterion for regional aggregation consisted of choosing countries that are important trade partners for morocco, while that of commodity groups consisted of sectors that are important contributors to moroccan gdp (see table 1). table 1: regional and sectoral aggregation based on gtap database, version 8.0 no. region description 1 mar morocco. 2 oceania oceania: australia, new zealand, rest of oceania. 3 east asia east asia: china, hong-kong, japan, korea, mongolia, taiwan, rest. 4 se asia south east asia: cambodia, indonesia, lao people's democratic republic, malaysia, philippines, singapore, thailand, viet nam. 5 south asia south asia: bangladesh, india, nepal, pakistan, sri lanka. 6 n america north america: united states, canada, mexico. 7 latin america latin america: argentina, bolivia, brazil, chile, colombia, ecuador, paraguay, peru, uruguay, venezuela, costa rica, guatemala, honduras, nicaragua, panama, el salvador, caribbean, rest of lac. 8 eu25 european union 25: austria, belgium, cyprus, czech republic, denmark, estonia, finland, france, germany, greece, hungary, ireland, italy, latvia, lithuania, luxembourg, malta, netherlands, poland, portugal, slovakia, slovenia, spain, sweden and uk. 9 mena middle east and north africa: egypt, tunisia, rest of mena. 10 ssa sub-sahara africa: cameroon, cote d'ivoire, ghana, nigeria, senegal, ethiopia, kenya, madagascar, malawi, mauritius, mozambique, tanzania, uganda, zambia, zimbabwe, botswana, namibia, south africa, rest of africa. 11 row rest of the world. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 68 no. sector description 1 wheat wheat. 2 cereal grain cereal grains nec. 3 grain crops paddy rice, vegetables, fruit, nuts, oil seeds, sugar cane, sugar beet, plant-based fibers, crops nec, processed rice. 4 meat livestock bovine cattle, sheep and goats, horses, animal products nec, raw milk, wool, silk-worm cocoons, bovine meat products, meat products nec. 5 extraction forestry, fishing, coal, oil, gas, minerals nec. 6 processed food vegetable oils and fats, dairy products, sugar, food products nec, beverages and tobacco products. 7 textile textiles, wearing apparel. 8 light manufacture leather products, wood products, paper products, publishing, metal products, motor vehicles and parts, transport equipment nec, manufactures nec. 9 heavy manufacture petroleum, coal products, chemical, rubber, plastic products, mineral products nec, ferrous metals, metals nec, electronic equipment, machinery and equipment nec. 10 util. constr. electricity, gas manufacture, distribution, water, construction. 11 trans. comm. trade, transport nec, water transport, air transport, communication. 12 other services financial services nec, insurance, business services nec, recreational and other services, public administration, defense, education, health, dwellings. source: own classification based on gtap 8.0 database to set simulation scenarios, we used historical yield data for morocco and wheat production goals as established by the gmp. that is, as part of its twelve-year agenda, the gmp 2008–2020 highlights wheat as an strategic crop for enhancing the ability of the agricultural sector to make progress toward productivity-led growth (gmp, 2014). table 2 shows wheat yields achieved in morocco before and after implementation of the gmp. the country increased wheat yields from 1,388 kg/ha in average for the period 2001-2007 to 1,747kg/ha in average for the period 20082014 (in 2008 the gmp was launched). this translates into an implicit annual growth rate of 25.86%. to analyze how productivity change might impact wheat production, imports, exports, and the economy as a whole, we imposed this annual growth rate (rounded to a more conservative 20%) onto the gtap model as an annual change in capital and labor factor productivity. table 2: wheat yield 2001–2014 (kilograms per ha), implicit annual growth rate year yield year yield 2001 1,228 2008 1,319 2002 1,279 2009 2,140 2003 1,722 2010 1,709 2004 1,808 2011 1,949 2005 1,026 2012 1,234 2006 2,036 2013 2,164 2007 615 2014 1,713 growth (%) 25.86 source: own elaboration based on faostat, 2017 note: yield data for 2014 is the latest data available at faostat as we used the gtap static model, productivity increases and tariff changes take place in a single period. this single period can be one year, three or five years. it is not defined in the gtap model, but it is understood that the single period corresponds to the time needed for all agents in the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 69 model (e.g. consumers and producers) to make their “optimal” decisions. productivity and tariff variables are naturally exogenous in the gtap model. that is, the national productivity and tariff levels are given in the baseline scenario, and become shocks when exogenously modifying them through changing their levels from the initial calibration year (2007) to current time. in the gtap model, simulated changes in productivity and tariff levels induce variations in relative prices and a structural adjustment for the entire world economic system. to assess liberalization of the domestic wheat market and technological changes affecting wheat productivity, we defined the following three scenarios:  scenario 1: 20% productivity increase in capital used in wheat production in morocco;  scenario 2: scenario 1 plus 20% productivity increase in unskilled labor used in wheat production in morocco;  scenario 3: scenario 2 plus full liberalization of import tariffs to wheat imported into morocco. the first scenario tests impacts on wheat production in morocco emerging from improved technology in the form of 20% more productive capital (e.g. improved mechanization and improved irrigation) utilized in wheat production. the second scenario adds productivity shock in the form of 20% more productive unskilled labor. unskilled labor improvement refers to workers earning better skills and knowledge in agricultural management practices such as more effective timing for pesticide application, better irrigation management and/or improved application of organic/inorganic fertilizers, all leading to improvements in labor productivity used in wheat production. we hit unskilled labor because most of the manpower used in wheat production in morocco is non-specialized labor. the third scenario adds a hypothetical liberalization in the wheat market by simulating 100% elimination in wheat tariffs. this last scenario weights increases in productivity vis-à-vis elimination in wheat import tariffs. 3. results as per the purpose of this paper, presentation and discussion of results concentrate on the impacts that the different scenarios would produce over the moroccan economy only (i.e. no results for moroccan trade partners –such as the eu or the usa– are provided). results focus on the most important variables relevant to evaluate how technological (improving factor productivity) and trade reform changes affect the wheat sector in morocco. presentation of results starts with macroeconomic changes in terms of gdp, welfare, and terms of trade. then, results are reported in terms of changes of demand of production factors, changes in wheat production, changes in domestic prices, and changes in international trade of wheat. 3.1. aggregate welfare outcomes the moroccan gdp would increase by 0.09% and 0.49% under scenarios 1 and 2 respectively, and decrease by 0.83% per year under scenario 3 (table 3). although these numbers at first sight look very small, in fact they are annual changes in gdp values. gtap computes these percentages in terms welfare. the first scenario (s1) would represent for morocco a net positive welfare gain of us$ 130 million per year. the second scenario (s2), which adds increased productivity in unskilled labor, results in welfare increases of us$ 429 million per year. the last scenario (s3), which adds unilateral trade liberalization on wheat, yields a net welfare gain of us$ 495 million per year. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 70 table 3: aggregated welfare changes for morocco (percentage changes) economic variable s1: 20% productivity increase capital s2: s1 + 20% productivity increase in unskilled labor s3: s2 + 100% liberalization of the wheat sector value gdp 0.09 0.49 -0.83 welfare (millions of us$) 130 429 495 terms of trade 0.04 0.26 -0.64 source: own elaboration based on results from gtap 8.0 simulations understanding welfare changes is one of the most important results in the gtap model as provides a general overview of changes emerging from policy adjustments. in the gtap model, such changes come from four main sources: a) improved (or deteriorated) efficiency, b) improved (or deteriorated) technology, c) improved (or deteriorated) terms of trade (which refers to changes in relative prices of exports and imports), and d) more (or less) investments. all these factors together provide decomposition of welfare changes (table 4). allocative efficiency is negative in s1 and s2 indicating loses to the economy due to less efficient allocation of production resources between sectors. allocative efficiency under s3 was projected to be positive (us$ 209 million), which is explained by the removal of the import tariff. that is, when a commodity is subject to a protection tariff, it implies that this commodity is under-using resources compared to what it would use under free market conditions (conversely, subsidies lead to overuse of resources, which in turn leads to over-production relative to free market conditions). technical change effect is positive in all three scenarios, which is just due to the improved productivity of capital and unskilled labor. table 4: welfare decomposition for morocco (million us$) sources of welfare s1: 20% productivity increase capital s2: s1 + 20% productivity increase in unskilled labor s3: s2 + 100% liberalization of the wheat sector 1) allocative efficiency effect -51 -125 209 2) technical change effect 167 463 463 3) terms of trade effect (tot) 9 60 -149 4) investment savings effect 5 31 -27 total 130 429 495 source: own elaboration based on results from gtap 8.0 simulations in s1 and s2 the terms of trade – tot (expressed in millions of us$) increased in relation to the baseline, while in the third scenario it decreased. from morocco’s perspective, changes in tot measures the price of products exported from morocco relative to the price of products imported into morocco. tot increased under the first two scenarios because the price index of exported commodities increased faster than the price index of imported commodities, determining that moroccan exports became more competitive abroad (appreciation of the tot). negative tot as in s3 indicates that price index of imported commodities grew faster due to elimination of import tariffs to wheat, resulting in depreciation of tot. positive values of investment savings effect reflect increases in national savings due to improved productivity of capital and labor, while the negative value of investment saving effect under s3 denotes a reduction in national savings due to trade policy changes. thus, welfare changes in morocco came predominantly from the technical change effect. 3.2. aggregated production this section addresses changes in aggregated production in morocco, which would increase in some commodity sectors and decrease in others (table 5). under scenarios 1 and 2, the model asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 71 projected that the production of wheat would increase, while the production of other commodities (which includes domestically consumed and exported goods) would experience minor changes – less than one percent in cereal grains, meats and livestock and other commodities. under the s3, wheat production would decrease, while the production of cereal grains, grain crops, processed foods and textiles would increase in the range of 0.1 4.5%. the most noticeable result is observed in the domestic production of wheat that would increase by 16.37% under s2 and would decrease by 13.72% under s3. table 5: moroccan production of tradable commodities (percentage changes) no. commodity production in moroccan sectors s1: 20% productivity increase capital s2: s1 + 20% productivity increase in unskilled labor s3: s2 + 100% liberalization of the wheat sector 1 wheat 5.99 16.37 -13.72 2 cereal grain 0.11 0.25 2.13 3 grain crops -0.23 -0.75 2.22 4 meat livestock 0.16 0.40 1.83 5 extraction -0.09 -0.59 0.66 6 processed food 0.55 1.35 4.32 7 textile -0.24 -1.17 3.40 8 light manufacture -0.13 -0.36 1.28 9 heavy manufacture -0.10 -0.39 1.00 10 util. construction -0.17 0.39 0.16 11 transp. communic. 0.13 0.31 1.04 source: own elaboration based on results from gtap 8.0 simulations these results are explained by the way in which gtap computes changes in aggregate output. that is, changes in output are captured by production function (qva) that assembles inputs or endowments (qfe), which are quantities of endowments e used in sector p (equation 1). these endowments are weighted by a distributive parameter (δ) indicating its relative importance in production, and raised to a power (σ) that governs the elasticity of substitution between endowments. 𝑄𝑉𝐴𝑝 = (∑ 𝛿𝑒,𝑝 𝑒 𝑄𝐹𝐸𝑒,𝑝) ( 𝜎𝑝−1 𝜎𝑝 ) ( 𝜎𝑝 𝜎𝑝−1) … … … … … … … … (1) on the one hand, if there is a high degree of substitutability among inputs (i.e. high σ), the reduction in one input can be offset by increasing other inputs. on the other hand, if σ is very small (zero in the limit), then a case of the leontief production function appears where factors of production are used in fixed proportions, as there is no substitutability between factors. increase in wheat production in s2 and reduction under s3 denote relatively high substitutability in inputs. hence, as result of the shocks (i.e. changes in tariffs and changes in productivity of unskilled labor and capital), aggregate output changes resulting in changes in domestic sales, changes in exportable production, and a slack variable in the market clearing condition, which is exogenous to the model and, therefore, is zero as no changes are produced in this variable. changes in production are an important result in terms of understanding the general equilibrium demand response. decomposing changes on wheat, table 6 shows that under scenarios 1 and 2 the driving force behind the increases in total domestic wheat production was increased demand for domestically produced wheat, while in s3 wheat domestic production decreased mainly due to lowered demand for domestically produced wheat. despite increased capital and unskilled labor asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 72 productivity, in the third scenario demand switches in favor to imported wheat. that is, the effect of the liberalization in the wheat sector overcomes the increases in factor productivity, suggesting that the moroccan wheat sector strongly depends on import tariffs to keep the wheat sector protected from more competitive (i.e. cheaper) wheat purchased from abroad. table 6: moroccan wheat production (percentage changes) aggregated wheat production s1: 20% productivity increase capital s2: s1 + 20% productivity increase in unskilled labor s3: s2 + 100% liberalization of the wheat sector domestic sales 5.63 15.41 -15.08 export sales 0.35 0.96 1.36 slack variable 0 0 0 total 5.99 16.37 -13.72 source: own elaboration based on results from gtap 8.0 simulations in the gtap model changes in production are explained by changes in the demand of factors of production. table 7 shows that under s1 and s2 there is an overall increase in the demand for production factors which drive to an increase in wheat production in morocco, while under s3 the model projected an overall reduction in the demand for production factors, which drive to a reduction in the production of wheat in morocco. under s1, the demand for land, unskilled labor and skilled labor used in the production of wheat would increase in percentages that vary from 2.91 and 4.56%. changes in demand for natural resources used in wheat production are almost zero across all simulation scenarios. this result is because the gtap model considers natural resources (such as land, mines, forests, and natural gas) as sluggish production factors, meaning that the amount of natural resources is almost fixed, and therefore its supply curve is almost perfectly inelastic leaving very little room to mobility among sectors. under s2 the demand for land and skilled labor used in wheat production would increase in the range of 7.96 and 12.39%, while the demand of unskilled labor and capital would decrease by about 2.5%, which is due the direct effect of the productivity simulation (that consists of increasing productivity by 20% that lowers the demand for capital and unskilled labor used in the moroccan wheat production gtap’s general equilibrium closure). under s3 the demand for all production factors used in wheat production would reduce by from -33.85 to -12.88%. these reductions are explained by lowered demand of domestically produced wheat, which is the direct effect of the wheat tariff elimination. productivity changes (afe in table 7) are zero meaning that it is an exogenous variable that has not been shocked in the model, except in the cases of capital and unskilled labor that were shocked by 20% increased productivity. gtap uses general equilibrium closure and, as a result, the direct effect of the productivity simulation is to lower the demand for capital and unskilled labor used in the wheat moroccan sector by -20%. table 7: changes in demand of factors of production, and changes in production of wheat in morocco production factor s1: 20% productivity increase capital s2: s1 + 20% productivity increase in unskilled labor s3: s2 + 100% liberalization of the wheat sector afe qva esubva total afe qva esubva total afe qva esubva total 1 land 0 5.99 -3.08 2.91 0 16.37 -8.41 7.96 0 -13.72 0.84 -12.88 2 unsk lab 0 -1.46 4.53 -20 1.08 -2.55 -20 -0.04 -33.76 3 sk lab 0 -1.42 4.56 0 -3.98 12.39 0 -5.3 -19.03 4 capital -20 3.66 -10.36 -20 1.06 -2.57 -20 -0.13 -33.85 5 nat res 0 -5.97 0.02 0 -16.32 0.05 0 13.65 -0.08 source: own elaboration based on results from gtap 8.0 simulations asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 73 these results are explained by the way in which the gtap model computes production factor demand. that is, in the left-hand side of equation 2 an increase in capital productivity (afe) for a constant level of output of value added (qva) and constant relative prices (pfe and pva), implies that less capital is needed (qfe). on the right-hand side, an increase in capital productivity (afe) lowers the effective price of capital (pfe), thus encouraging substitution of capital for other inputs (analogous is the case of productivity in labor). then, when productivity of capital (afe) increases, three effects are generated: i) if capital becomes more productive, then less capital is used for a given amount of output and constant prices; ii) if capital becomes more productive and returns to capital do not change, then the effective price of capital is reduced, encouraging the substitution of other inputs for capital (i.e. more capital demanded); and iii) more productive capital also lowers the cost of production, facilitating output expansion. the price ratio is raised to a negative value of the elasticity of substitution (esubva). this means that if the price of a given input (pfe) rises relative to the average price or cost of all inputs (pva), then the demand for that particular input (qfe) will fall given that the relative prices are raised to a negative value of elasticity of substitution. the price index of value-added (pva) is determined by the sum of share weighted prices of endowments. 𝑄𝐹𝐸𝑒,𝑝. 𝐴𝐹𝐸𝑒,𝑝 = 𝑄𝑉𝐴𝑝. 𝑆𝑉𝐴𝑒,𝑝. [ 𝑃𝐹𝐸𝑒,𝑝 𝑃𝑉𝐴𝑝 . 𝐴𝐹𝐸𝑒,𝑝 ]−𝐸𝑆𝑈𝐵𝑉𝐴𝑝 … … … … … … … … (2) hence, gtap captures the changes in demand of production factors through changes in productivity, in prices of production factors and in the elasticity of substitution among production factors. in equation 2, productivity changes in capital and in unskilled labor are reflected through the variable afe, which has a negative sign meaning that if technical change makes capital and unskilled labor more productive, then agricultural farms would need less labor and less capital if production remains unchanged. yet, afe also appears within the last bracket, which refers to prices of production factors. when capital and unskilled labor become more productive, the retributions to those production factors increase. farmers have an incentive to substitute capital and unskilled labor for other inputs that are comparatively less productive. the level of replacement depends on the elasticity of substitution (esubva) among production factors. in terms of commodity prices, gtap assumes that changes in supplier prices are transmitted to consumers as function of production costs reflected in prices and taxes. as expected wheat prices in all scenarios would decrease (table 8). in s1 the price of domestic wheat suppliers would decrease by 3.94%, while in s2 prices would lower by 10.78%. the largest wheat price reduction is projected in s3 (-15.08%) which occurs because of import tariff elimination. table 8: changes in moroccan domestic prices (percentage changes) commodity group s1: 20% productivity increase capital s2: s1 + 20% productivity increase in unskilled labor s3: s2 + 100% liberalization of the wheat sector wheat -3.94 -10.78 -15.08 cereal grain 0.36 1.1 -1.03 grain crops 0.31 0.99 -1.04 meat livestock 0.13 0.53 -1.22 extraction 0.01 0.11 -0.03 processed food -0.35 -0.78 -3.02 textile 0.06 0.27 -0.58 light manufacture 0.08 0.32 -0.32 heavy manufacture 0.04 0.26 -0.22 util. construction 0.05 0.37 -0.28 transp. communic. 0.1 0.44 -0.36 source: own elaboration based on results from gtap 8.0 simulations asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 74 these results are explained by the way gtap computes changes in commodity prices. that is, commodity prices in the model are assumed to change as function of tariffs on imports (tm), which is a source-generic change in tax on imports of commodity i into country s, plus supplier import tariffs (tms), that is a bilateral import protection measure, and plus the cost, insurance and freight (cif) world price of commodity i supplied from country r to country s (pcif): pms(i,r,s) = tm(i,s) + tms(i,r,s) + pcif(i,r,s) ……………………….. (3) under s1, the price of wheat would reduce because overall wheat supply in the country (domestic and imported) would increase due to more domestic production. in s2, wheat domestic price would further decline due to more domestic wheat production. in the scenario of wheat trade liberalization (s3), the price of wheat decreases the most (-15.08%), which is concomitant to import tariff reduction and technological change improvement in capital and unskilled labor productivity. as expected, changes in prices of other commodities were very small (most of them less than one percent), indicating that as a result of the shocks the model produced relatively small reallocation of production factors among sectors, and therefore the production level in each one would not change significantly. 3.3. changes in imports morocco has historically been a net importing wheat country (figure 2, below). this situation does not change in the three scenarios simulated, meaning that morocco would not become selfsufficient or a net wheat exporter country. under the first two scenarios, the first point of impact emerging from increase in moroccan productivity of capital and unskilled labor is reduced imports of wheat at the expense of increased domestic wheat production. the first two scenarios estimate a reduction in wheat imports of 11.39% and 31.14%, which would take place because morocco would produce more wheat, and therefore can afford to reduce imports (table 9). in s3, wheat imports substantially increase by 44.29%, because eliminating wheat import tariffs makes more attractive to import wheat rather than producing it domestically. in this scenario imported wheat displaces domestically produced wheat. as discussed in the next section, such a large increase in wheat imports is mainly explained by the much lower production cost of wheat in other countries supplying morocco. table 9: changes in moroccan imports (percentage changes) commodity group s1: 20% productivity increase capital s2: s1 + 20% productivity increase in unskilled labor s3: s2 + 100% liberalization of the wheat sector wheat -11.39 -31.14 44.29 cereal grain 0.52 1.56 0.32 grain crops 0.85 2.63 -1.15 meat livestock 0.59 2.25 -2.49 extraction -0.09 -0.09 0.84 processed food -0.37 -0.63 -3.91 textile 0.07 0.18 1.02 light manufacture 0.11 0.87 0.04 heavy manufacture 0.09 0.87 0.11 util. construction 0.24 1.17 0.22 transp. communic. 0.34 1.32 0.27 source: own elaboration based on results from gtap 8.0 simulations thus, the model projected the effect of tariff elimination overcomes improvements in productivity, suggesting that if an objective is to hold substantive domestic wheat production in morocco, then asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 75 tariff protection measures are needed. in the first two scenarios moroccan importers (firms, households and government) would find more supply of domestic wheat sold at competitive price, which would lead to a reduction in moroccan imports of wheat. in the third scenario, moroccan dealers find imported wheat cheaper (due to the tariff elimination) which displaces domestic production provoking an increase in wheat imports. 4. discussion how feasible are these results i.e. how feasible is it that wheat production in morocco would increase under productivity change scenarios, and would decrease under liberalization scenario? how feasible is that imports of wheat would decrease in morocco under the two first scenarios and would increase in the third one? it is not straightforward to discuss the credibility of cge projections given the difficulty in appraising predictions. when changes in production are forecasted, it could be arguable that many variables have to be considered, such as production costs, commodity demand, import tariffs, labor market and others. it could also be argued that results also depend on the type of economic model being used (e.g. partial or general equilibrium), the level of the national currency (appreciation, stability or devaluation), the economic situation (recession/expansion, economic cycles), environmental and physical variables among others. in this paper, the gtap model has been chosen to analyze the moroccan wheat sector under three specific scenarios. the gtap model has many components, where the most important ones are the assumptions, the inputs parameter values and the output values. analyzing the feasibility of prediction can target any of these components, and as a result the analysis may focus on different parts of the model. in practice, it turns difficult to achieve a full assessment of the model, especially if the system being modeled includes informal markets like in case of the moroccan wheat sector. we chose to analyze feasibility of results based on outputs of the model, and to this end secondary data was collected from national and international sources. discussion elements focused on analysis of historical production value data of wheat and other commodities, domestic and imported supply of wheat, water consumption in morocco, and expansion of the moroccan export sector relative to the world market. a key finding related to the first two scenarios is that as response to productivity change, wheat production in morocco would increase by 5.99% in s1 and by 16.37% in s2. these results are feasible considering several measures the government has been taking in recent years. since the launch of the gmp, morocco increased its investments in labor training and physical capital accumulation reaching figures between 5.4 and 6% of gdp (world bank, 2010; unesco, 2014), which is almost twice (3.8%) the average for middle east and north african countries (amcml, 2014). these investments have been mainly given in the form of subsidies to the wheat sector. for example, in 2016 the government has set seed subsidies for durum wheat, common wheat, and for barley, which covered 40 to 60% of the seed costs (usda, 2017). in calendar year 2017 the volume of subsidized common wheat flour, known as “national flour”, is 650,000 mt (usda, 2017) given by the government in an effort to support low-income consumers. stocks held by licensed agents (such grain merchants, cooperatives, processors and government managed port silos) also receive storage premium subsidies. in 2012 the government allocated 28 million dollars to lower the price of wheat certified seeds (usda, 2013). this subsidy targeted 70% soft wheat, 29% durum wheat, and 1% barley (usda, 2013). other subsidies to foster wheat production and productivity included 30% to 70% subsidy in the purchase of capital (modern machinery and irrigation facilities) and training of farmers. in 2011, the moroccan government implemented a crop insurance program to reduce the biotic (such as insects and pests) and abiotic (such as droughts, floods and storms) risks associated to production of cereals. this insurance program targeted 500,000 ha representing about 10% of morocco’s cereal planted areas (usda, 2013). the purpose of the program was to absorb between 50% and 90% of the financial loses if farmers experience unfavorable conditions. hence, the moroccan cereal policy has supported domestic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 76 wheat production to the point that wheat became by far the most important crop in the country (figure 1) in terms of quantities produced (more than five million tons produced in 2014), and the second more important in terms of net production value (445 million dollars in 2014).2 figure 1: top ten commodities in moroccan agriculture, production and value, 2014 source: own elaboration based on production and value data extracted from online faostat, 2017 note: yield data for 2014 is the latest data available at faostat despite years of support, the country has been unable to be self-sufficient in wheat production. in fact, morocco has overtime become more and more dependent on wheat imports. in the 1960s, with an average population of 13 million inhabitants, morocco used to be largely self-sufficient by producing 81% of total wheat supply (figure 2). by 1970s the domestic wheat production dropped to 62%, while imports increased from 20% in 1960s to 38% in the 1970s. the trend in supplying with smaller share of domestically produced wheat continued over 1980s and 1990s, while in parallel the imports of wheat were increasing. by 2001-2013 morocco used to produce 60% of domestic supply, while 40% was imported mainly from the france, united states, canada and ukraine. meanwhile, moroccan population more than doubled from the 1960s, reaching 34.5 million in 2015, and along with population growth wheat per capita supply increased from 138 kg/person in the 1960s up to 247 kg/person as average for the period 2001-2013. 2 other important crops in moroccan agriculture are sugar beet, potatoes, barley and olives (in that order of importance) that have been produced in levels that exceeded one million tons in 2014. for morocco, the value of olive production is the commodity that yielded more income to the economy in 2014 (more than 1.2 billion dollar), followed by wheat and potatoes (445 and 303 million dollar respectively), and sugar beet, barley and beans (between 60 and 138 million dollar). 1,260 445 303 61 138 60 16 9 16 1.57 5.12 1.95 1.64 3.21 0.17 0.28 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1,400 p ro d u ct io n ( m ill io n t o n s) n et p ro d u ct io n v al u e ( m ill io n u s$ ) net production value (constant 2004-2006, million dollars) production (million tons), 2014 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 77 figure 2: morocco: total domestic wheat supply (1,000 tons) source: own elaboration based on data extracted from faostat online database, 2017 note: international trade data for 2013 is the latest data available at faostat this historical trend shows that as population increased wheat demand also increased along with wheat imports that overtime became progressively more important to satisfy domestic wheat consumption. the projections of the gtap model seem to be acceptable under the first two scenarios. that is, production would increase as result of technological changes, but those increases would not be enough to completely get rid of wheat imports. morocco has been and, according to its historical trend and our projections, will continue to be a net wheat importing country. the third scenario, that eliminated wheat import tariffs, forecasted an increase on imports of wheat and a reduction of domestic wheat production. these results were due to lowered imported wheat prices that displaced some of the domestic wheat production. the tariff protection that morocco applies to imported wheat is complex and varies according to the source (table 10). in 2015 durum wheat imports were subject to 75% ad-valorem tariff when imported from us, and 170% when coming from the eu, while 30 to 70% and 30% were applied in the case of soft wheat imported from the us and the eu respectively (wto, 2017; usda, 2017). in 2015 the moroccan import tariff for cereal products ranked from 59.4% to 195% in 2014 (wto, itc and unctad, 2016). such tariffs suggest high protection to the moroccan wheat sector. our simulations suggested that removing them could significantly lower imported wheat prices, which in turn would increase wheat imports and displace some domestic production. tariffs applied to other countries that morocco has also a trade agreement with, such as the united arab emirates, mauritania, algeria, iraq or libya, are all zero (table 10). however, these countries (likewise morocco) are net wheat importers and therefore no wheat trade takes place among them. 1,515,600 1,831,068 2,718,973 3,083,302 4,627,772 373,952 1,113,040 1,727,743 2,351,910 3,063,219 138 167 197 201 247 (81%) (62%) (61%) (57%) (60%) (20%) (38%) (39%) (43%) (40%) -10% 10% 30% 50% 70% 90% 110% 1961-70 1971-80 1981-90 1991-00 2001-13 exports domestic production imports wheat supply (kg/person /year) population (million) 31 17 22 27 13 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 78 table 10: tariff structure applied to wheat, by region specific, 2015 tariff regimes granted by reporter (excluding mfn) original nomenclature duty free tl (%) maximum duty (%) hs subheading 6-digit description hs version hs subhdg fta-dr for united arab emirates hs02 100110 100 0.0 durum wheat fta-dr for the arab league member countries hs02 100110 100 0.0 durum wheat fta-dr for mauritania hs02 100110 100 0.0 durum wheat fta-dr for united states of america hs02 100110 0 75.0 durum wheat fta-dr for arab mediterranean countries (agadir) hs02 100110 100 0.0 durum wheat fta-dr for the european communities hs02 100110 0 170.0 durum wheat fta-dr for algeria hs02 100110 100 0.0 durum wheat fta-dr for iraq hs02 100110 100 0.0 durum wheat fta-dr for libya hs02 100110 100 0.0 durum wheat fta-dr for united arab emirates hs02 100190 100 0.0 soft wheat fta-dr for the arab league member countries hs02 100190 100 0.0 soft wheat fta-dr for mauritania hs02 100190 100 0.0 soft wheat fta-dr for united states of america hs02 100190 0 30-70 soft wheat fta-dr for arab mediterranean countries (agadir) hs02 100190 100 0.0 soft wheat fta-dr for the european communities hs02 100190 0 30.0 soft wheat fta-dr for algeria hs02 100190 100 0.0 soft wheat fta-dr for iraq hs02 100190 100 0.0 soft wheat fta-dr for libya hs02 100190 100 0.0 soft wheat fta-dr = free-trade agreement duty rate. source: own elaboration based on wto online database, 2017, tariff download facility. usda, 2017. global agricultural information network. report: mo1703. note: morocco applies most favored nation (mfn) clause to countries with no preferential agreement. as per the uruguay round multilateral trade negotiation (1995), morocco has converted all its import tariffs into ad-valorem rates asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 79 if morocco eliminates wheat import tariffs to the us and eu countries, moroccan farmers would face challenging competition from foreign producers. saubanov et al. (2014) estimated that wheat production costs in france (us$ 266,7/ton), germany (us$ 245,3/ton), united states (us$ 238/ton) and argentina (334 us$/ton), which are wheat suppliers to morocco, are significantly lower to the average wheat production in morocco estimated in 580 us$/ton (bentaleb, 2012). these estimates suggest that producing one ton of wheat in morocco would cost between 74 and 144% more as compared to france, germany, united states and argentina. competitiveness of us, france, germany and others is not only about having lower production costs, but it depends on other factors too. a significant one is the substantive domestic support developed economies provide to their cereal farmers. for example, the united states, through the us farm bill, uses different forms of subsidies that directly affect farmers’ income. these include (in order of financial importance): yield and revenue protection insurance, conservation subsidies, direct payments, agricultural research services, disaster aid payments, countercyclical payments, and marketing loans (rupp, 2014). the structure of european subsidies, provided through the common agricultural policy (cap), to its farmers is similar to that of the us farm bill, except that the generally the cap does not subsidize crop insurance programs.3 schnepf (2014) estimated that the us average farmer income was us$ 108,844 in 2013, which was about 53% higher than the average income of an ordinary us household. ifpri (2014) estimates the average principal farm operator income for 2008-2012 was 127% of average us household income. matthews (2012) estimated that in average the total subsidy that a typical french farmer received in 2012 was euro 32,204, while it was euro 33,974 and 44,824 for german and british farmers respectively. for morocco, aclimas (2014) estimated that farmers producing wheat in rainfed areas made in average us$ 5,160 in 2013, while wheat producers from irrigated areas made us$ 8,940 in 2013. additionally, the us and european countries have invested in large cereal storage capabilities to undertake extensive storage, thereby giving these countries market power. research and subsequent use of improved wheat varieties and advanced agronomic practices have for years position european countries (new zealand, ireland, belgium, netherlands, germany, united kingdom, denmark and france) in the top of world’s highest wheat yields ranging from 7.3 to 10 ton/ha in 2014 (faostat, 2017). while the united states (3 ton/ha) and argentina (2.7 ton/ha) achieved lower yields than european countries, they still attained higher wheat yields as compared to morocco (1.7 ton/ha in average in 2014) (faostat, 2017). for morocco eliminating wheat import tariffs would imply competing with heavily supported wheat production in developed economies. stiglitz (2011) claims that subsidized agriculture in developed countries tends to drive downwards agricultural domestic prices in developing countries, which in turn frequently causes lesser domestic production (just as predicted by the gtap model). lower prices and smaller production can drive farmers, particularly small ones, out of the business or expose them to substantial income reductions (stiglitz, 2011). the government of morocco is aware of the importance of tariffs to protect domestic wheat production, which contributes to create agricultural and agro-industrial employment, and provides livelihoods for thousands of families along the wheat commodity chain (i.e. variety development, seed improvement, certification, multiplication, planting, transformation and marketing to endusers). in the country there are around 1,300 wheat seed growers spread out across different production regions (icarda, 2014). they use about 70,000 ha to produce 1.5 million quintals of cereals, mainly wheat (amms, 2014 personal communication mohamed bouanani). cereals (soft and durum wheat, and barley) covered over five million hectares in 2013, representing most 3 the cap provides some crop insurance payments for few crops and under certain events related to damages caused by hail or freeze asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 80 of the agricultural lands in morocco (gmp, 2014). about 72% of the total cereal production corresponds to wheat, and the remaining to barley (faostat, 2017). the latest agricultural census in morocco (1996) is outdated, but still provides an indication the number of farmers that that directly depend on cereals for their income. this census estimated that 1.45 million moroccan farmers were engaged into cereal production in 1996 (madr, 1996). despite of such a large wheat production areas and the amount of manpower dedicated to produce cereals, wheat imports in morocco are the most important (in both quantitative and value terms) among all agricultural imports (figure 3). in 2013 morocco imported more than 2,700 million tons of wheat, which was valued in almost one billion dollars (at an average cost of 359 us$/ton). moroccan dependency on cereals is high, and wheat is one of the most important foodstuffs in moroccan diet. usda (2013) estimated that in 2013 per capita consumption of wheat was 258 kg per year, which is about 700 grams per day per person. our estimations suggested that in the period 2001-2013 average per capita wheat consumption was 247 kg per year (figure 2). taking either of these two estimations, morocco is a high per-capita wheat consumer country in the world. figure 3: top 10 imported commodities in morocco, 2013 source: own elaboration based on import data extracted from online faostat, 2017 high consumption of cereals is explained by government policy to keep bread prices at affordable levels to all segments of the population. politically and socially keeping low prices for bread has traditionally been a popular policy not only in morocco, but also in many other arab countries. rapid population growth in most arab countries has prompted governments to make sure that wheat, as basic foodstuff, should be available to every household in the country. even in countries like jordan, that only produces about 3% of the total wheat that consumes (the rest is imported), the price per kilogram of bread can be as low as 0.2 dollars/kg. similarly in egypt or syria (before the conflict), the prices of bread products responded to government policies that kept them to less than one quarter of dollar per kilogram. the moroccan government has only subsidized imports of soft wheat suitable for bread production, and has managed to keep domestic bread price at about 0.2 cents of dollar per loaf (morocco has not been subsidizing imports of durum wheat). low 978 484 440 266 380 111 52 51 49 190 2,728 1,777 921 469 457 378 215 180 133 59 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 im p o rt q u an ti ty ( th o u sa n d t o n s) im p o rt v al u e ( m ill io n u s$ ) import value (million us$) import quantity (thousand tons) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 81 prices of bread in net-importing wheat countries contrast with high prices in net-exporting wheat countries such as argentina where bread products can cost as much as two dollars per kilogram. removing import tariffs to wheat would be a very challenging trade policy measure for many reasons. according to gmp (2014) all cereal production in 2013 contributed to 47% of the agricultural added value (no estimation for wheat only was found). in turn, agricultural gdp in 2016 represented 13% of the total moroccan gdp (wdi, 2017). gmp (2014) estimated that 75% of the rural employment is generated by the cereal sector. these figures suggest that the main contribution of cereal production is not in terms of gdp, but it is massive generator of employment in the country. liberalizing fully the moroccan wheat market could negatively affect thousands of jobs that directly depend on wheat for livelihoods. yet, liberalizing the wheat market could provide market signals for moroccan farmers to further diversify production. relatively less production of domestic wheat might not necessarily harmful to the moroccan society as a whole. as shown in figure 2, wheat supply per capita showed a significant increase since the 1960s onwards. this suggests that morocco does not necessarily need be self-sufficient in production to increase wheat supply per person, even in the face of rapid population growth. large cereal producers such as the united states, russia, france, canada, germany, australia, ukraine and argentina supply significant volumes of wheat at cheaper price that would cost to domestically produce them. the fact that morocco is a net cereal-importing country can also be regarded from water efficiency and virtual water utilization viewpoints. figure 4 shows average water consumption per ton for traditional irrigated and rainfed crops in morocco. in general cereals (maize, barley, durum wheat, soft wheat and rice) and pulses (lentils, peas, chickpeas and soya beans) tend to consume more water per ton of crop than fruits (apples, lemon, oranges, mandarins and bananas, excepting fruit trees dates and olives) and vegetables (garlic, sugar beet, carrots, potatoes, onions, cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes). figure 4: water consumption for traditional crops in morocco, 2010 source: own elaboration based on data from mekonnen and hoekstra (2010). mekonnen note 1: following schyns and hoekstra (2014), we estimated average water consumption per ton for irrigated and rainfed crops (in m3/ton) by summing-up green and blue water footprint. green water footprint is the volume of rainwater consumed during the production process of a crop. blue water footprint refers to the volume of surface (irrigation) and groundwater consumed (evaporated) as a result of the production of a crop. note 2: strong color denotes green water footprint (rainfed crop), while light color denotes blue water footprint (irrigated crop). 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 da te s m ai ze ol ive s le nt ils ba rle y pe as ch ick pe as du ru m w he at so ft w he at so ya b ea ns ri ce ap pl es ga rli c su ga r b ee t le m on or an ge s m an da rin s ba na na s ca rr ot s po ta to es on io ns cu cu m be rs le ttu ce to m at oe s m 3 /t on cereals pulses fruits vegetables low-water consuming crops (less than 1,000 m3/ton) high-water consuming crops (more than 1,000 m3/ton) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 82 cereals utilize between 1,570 and 6,700 m3/ton, which is substantially more water if compared with vegetables or fruits (except dates and olives) that consume between 100 and less than 1,000 m3/ton. pulses, fruit trees olives and dates also consume higher quantities of water (more than 1,730 m3/ton) as compared to vegetables and fruits. in average, durum and soft wheat consume 3,003 and 2,642 m3/ton respectively. green water (rain) is mainly used for wheat and barley, while maize and rice use 47% and 81% respectively of blue water (surface irrigation). green water consumption is predominant for pulses. vegetables and fruits use mix of green and blue water (i.e. rainfed and surface irrigation). water resources in morocco have been shrinking due to lower levels of precipitation, overabstraction of groundwater, population growth and an increasing demand for water (sadler and magnan, 2011). it is estimated that due to climate change water for agriculture will reduce 16% by 2030 and 34% by 2050 (boughlala, 2013). hence, from a virtual water utilization perspective, it seems that importing wheat from well-endowed water countries would bring much-needed savings in water that can be utilized in other cultivars that are less water-intensive, but still well-priced and counting with steady domestic and international demand. figures 3 and 5 back-up trend of moroccan farmers that since the 1960s have relatively been reducing wheat cultivars that use more water, while intensifying their farming systems with fruit and vegetable that use relatively less water. 5. conclusion this research had the motivation of improving understanding of the macro implications that would emerge should morocco decides to liberalize its wheat market. in view of international trade agreements already signed by morocco, permanent trade liberalization on wheat is a reform that the government of morocco will have to consider undertaking. in this context, we simulated improvements in factor (capital and labor) productivity and elimination in wheat import tariffs, and estimated their effects on domestic wheat supply, per-capita wheat consumption, and wheat prices. shedding light on these issues provide policy makers with key information to analyze trade-offs emerging from keeping protected the wheat sector or liberalizing in light of trade agreements and current trends. one of the main results suggest that wheat production under scenarios s1 and s2 would increase by 5.99% and 16.37% respectively, while it would decrease by 13.72% under s3. our simulations and analysis of morocco’s historical trend in wheat production lead us to conclude that morocco has been and it is likely to continue to be a net wheat importing country. discussion of results suggests that the import tariffs that morocco applies to imported wheat are very important to keep substantial domestic wheat production. import tariffs provide a framework to produce domestic wheat in a way that competes with cheaper wheat produced in other counties (such as france, united states, and germany), which use high-yielding varieties and are comprehensively supported. removing tariffs to wheat could reinforce the historical trend that moroccan farmers have been following since the 1960s that consisted of relatively reducing wheat cultivars that are more water-intensive, while intensifying their farming systems with fruits and vegetables that are less-water intensive. this could also lead towards increasing dependency on wheat from well-endowed water countries. however, our analysis also shows that without these tariffs local wheat production would drop drastically. tariffs contribute to keep a relatively large wheat sector generating significant agricultural value added and, more importantly, to maintain thousands of jobs along the wheat chain sector. removing them would be a challenging trade policy as thousands of families that directly depend on wheat for their livelihoods can be affected in the short and medium term. the moroccan government has a difficult duty ahead that consists of maintaining wheat-associated agricultural employment in light of shrinking water resources for agriculture, and while dealing with international pressure that is asking for liberalization of the wheat sector. the future of wheat asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 65-85 83 production in the country will therefore depend on the trade-offs between the potential cost savings from the substitution of domestic production of wheat with imports on one hand, and the contribution of wheat to gdp and employment opportunities with its social and political benefits on the other. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references aclimas (2014). adaptation to climate change of the mediterranean agricultural systems. inra/eu aclimas project on economic impact assessment of direct seeding technology. adb (2016). morocco: evaluation of the bank’s country strategy 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(2013). assessing the impacts of the gafta agreement on selected members’ bilateral agricultural trade: an application of the gravity model. american-eurasian journal of agricultural & environmental sciences (aejaes), 13(2), 269-290. http://www.thefarmsite.com/reports/contents/mgap13.pdf https://gain.fas.usda.gov/recent%20gain%20publications/grain%20and%20feed%20annual_rabat_morocco_4-14-2017.pdf https://gain.fas.usda.gov/recent%20gain%20publications/grain%20and%20feed%20annual_rabat_morocco_4-14-2017.pdf http://databank.worldbank.org/ http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intmorocco/resources/maeconomicanalysis2010-en.pdf http://siteresources.worldbank.org/intmorocco/resources/maeconomicanalysis2010-en.pdf http://tariffdata.wto.org/tarifflist.aspx http://unctad.org/en/publicationslibrary/wto2016_en.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 506 in-vitro conservation of sugarcane germplasm rabia ikram, shazia erum, hina javed, shah zaman, shahid khan, aish muhammad and saima kanwal plant genetic resource institute, narc, islamabad abstract lack of in vitro multiplication procedure has long been a serious problem in sugarcane breeding programs. this problem has been solved to maximum extent by in vitro propagation. in the present study, 6 genotypes of sugarcane (sc 06, sc 04, sc 25, sc 11, sc 13 and sc 30) was acquired & excised for apical and sub apical parts (eyes/ lateral buds). the explants were surface sterilized with clorox (70% +100%, 20 & 10 min). results showed that highest survival % was achieved with apical buds (66%) as compared to lateral buds (33%). in addition, effect of different concentrations of rooting media (naa, 5% sucrose and 6% sucrose) and shooting media (ga3, 0.1mg/, kinetin, 0.1mg/l and bap 0.1mg/l, kinetin 0.1mg/l,ga3 0.1mg/l, naa 0.1mg/l) was studied. synergistic response was observed on the growth of plant with hormone consortia. significant differences were observed in no. of roots, shoot length @ no. of shoots at all tested treatments. highest no. of roots recorded for sc 30 at with 6% sucrose. highest no. of shoots was recorded for sc 04 with ga3 @ 0.1mg/l and highest shoot length for sc 06 at 0.1mg/ l of kinetin. keywords: growth regulators, in vitro preservation, saccharum officinarum, sugarcane introduction 1 conservation of plant genetic resources via tissue culture received immense attention from researchers in the last three decades. storage of shoot tips or meristem derived explants under slow rate of growth has a significant use in the international germplasm resources units. this procedure makes germplasm available at any times for international distribution. several types of plant materials have been used for in vitro preservation of clonally propagated crops. meristem derived explants such as shoot tips and buds were mostly suggested for their genetic and generative stability (baksha et al., 2002). sexually propagated plants may be stored as seeds and are not in danger if compared with vegetatively propagated plants. clonally corresponding author’s name: saima kanwal email address: saima.kanwal80@gmail.com propagated plants are usually maintained in botanical gardens. some of those plants are usually preserved by continuous multiplication of tubers, roots, cuttings or bulbs. such a procedure is laborious and exposes plants to pests and environmental stresses. tissue culture has proved to be a useful tool for storage of vegetatively propagated commercial crops like potato, palm, forest trees, fruit trees and other species. sugarcane is a member of the genus saccharum from family gramineae. it is a high valued cash crop and exclusive source of 75% world sugar production (lakshmanan et al., 2006). this crop provides many byproducts for bio-factory such as alcohol, butanol, acetic acid, animal feed and paper besides, sugar and energy (garcia et al., 2007). varieties of sugarcane are highly heterogeneous and generally multiplied vegetatively by stem cutting. lack of suitable multiplication procedure and contamination by systemic diseases are the asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:saima.kanwal80@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 506-509 507 serious problem to multiply an elite genotype of sugarcane in the open field (lal and singh, 1994). tissue culture of sugarcane has received considerable research attention because of its economic importance as a cash crop. plant regeneration through tissue culture technique would be a viable alternative for improving the quality and production of sugarcane. material and methods sugarcane varieties namely sc 06, sc 04, sc 25, sc 11, sc 13 and sc 30 were acquired. sugarcane in vitro cultures were established using standard procedure (uzma et al., 2012). surface sterilization was done using 70% and 100% clorox (commercial bleach comprising 5.25% v/v sodium hypochlorite; an active agent) or 20 and 10 min of time duration under aseptic conditions. after culture establishment, the effect of different concentrations of rooting media (naa, 5% sucrose and 6% sucrose) and shooting media (ga3, 0.1mg/l, kinetin, 0.1mg/l and bap 0.1mg/l, kinetin 0.1mg/l,ga3 0.1mg/l, naa 0.1mg/l) on rooting and shooting respectively, was studied. the cultures were incubated at 25˚c temperature and 16hr light period. data for number of leaves, number of roots was recorded after 1 month of culturing. results and discussion results showed that highest survival percentage was achieved with apical buds (66%) as compared to lateral buds (33%). %age survival of explants is generally low in case of treatment with 70% clorox for 10 min. however, when the concentration of clorox is increased to100%, the survival percentage of explants is elevated 2 to 4 times. in addition, effect of different concentrations of rooting media (naa, 5% sucrose and 6% sucrose) and shooting media (ga3, 0.1mg/, kinetin, 0.1mg/l and bap 0.1mg/l, kinetin 0.1mg/l,ga3 0.1mg/l, naa 0.1mg/l) was studied. significant differences were observed in number of roots, shoot length and number of shoots at all tested treatments. (table 1). the genotype sc 30 exhibited highest number of roots on treatment 6% sucrose. whereas, highest number of shoots (8) were recorded for sc 04 and maximum shoot height (9.667cm) was given by sc 30 at ga3+0.1mg/l. these results indicate that sc 30 was the best performer among all genotypes. these genotypes are now available in disease-free state at the in vitro conservation lab, plant genetic resource institute (pgri), narc which can be used any time for further multiplication, characterization and research. table 1: analysis of variance table for rooting source of variation df number of roots number of shoots shoot length rep 2 6.222 8.722 0.728 var 5 336.500** 12.388** 41.713** treat 2 149.733** 0.722 18.623** var x treat 10 67.367** 7.677** 9.697** error 34 3.065 0.741 0.102 total 53 cv 27.64 29.25 5.27 table 2: effect of different rooting media on number of roots variety x treatment number of roots sc 06 xnaa 4.333 efgh sc 06 x 5% sucrose 1.000 h sc 06 x 6% sucrose 0.333 h sc 04 x naa 2.333 gh sc 04 x 5% sucrose 1.000 h sc 04 x 6% sucrose 18.333 ab sc 25 x naa 2.000 h sc 25 x 5% sucrose 1.333 h asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 506-509 508 sc 25 x 6% sucrose 8.333 cdef sc 11 x naa 2.333 gh sc 11 x 5% sucrose 10.000 cd sc 11 x 6% sucrose 7.667 cdefg sc 13 x naa 0.667 h sc 13 x 5% sucrose 3.667 fgh sc 13 x 6% sucrose 9.667 cde sc 30 x naa 5.333 defgh sc 30 x 5% sucrose 13.000 bc sc 30 x 6% sucrose 22.667 a table 3: effect of different shooting media on number of shoots and shoots length variety x treatment number of shoots shoot length sc 06 x ga3, 0.1mg/l 1.3333 d 5.1333 cde sc 06 x kinetin, 0.1mg/l 1.6667 cd 8.1667 b sc 06 x bap 0.1mg/l, kinetin 0.1mg/l,ga3 0.1mg/l, naa 0.1mg/l 3.6667 bcd 7.9667 b sc 04 x ga3, 0.1mg/l 8.0000 a 3.8667 fg sc 04 x kinetin, 0.1mg/l 4.0000 bc 2.5333 h sc 04 x bap 0.1mg/l, kinetin 0.1mg/l,ga3 0.1mg/l, naa 0.1mg/l 2.3333 cd 9.9000 a sc 25 x ga3, 0.1mg/l 1.6667 cd 4.7333 defg sc 25 x kinetin, 0.1mg/l 1.6667 cd 6.0000 c sc 25 x bap 0.1mg/l, kinetin 0.1mg/l,ga3 0.1mg/l, naa 0.1mg/l 2.3333 cd 4.8000 def sc 11 x ga3, 0.1mg/l 2.6667 cd 3.7667 g sc 11 x kinetin, 0.1mg/l 5.6667 ab 4.0000 fg sc 11 x bap 0.1mg/l, kinetin 0.1mg/l,ga3 0.1mg/l, naa 0.1mg/l 3.6667 bcd 5.4667 cd sc 13 x ga3, 0.1mg/l 3.3333 bcd 2.6667 h sc 13 x kinetin, 0.1mg/l 2.0000 cd 5.9667 c sc 13 x bap 0.1mg/l, kinetin 0.1mg/l,ga3 0.1mg/l, naa 0.1mg/l 2.6667 cd 4.2333 efg sc 30 x ga3, 0.1mg/l 2.0000 cd 9.9667 a sc 30 x kinetin, 0.1mg/l 2.3333 cd 9.9000 a sc 30 x bap 0.1mg/l, kinetin 0.1mg/l,ga3 0.1mg/l, naa 0.1mg/l 2.0000 cd 9.9667 a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 506-509 509 figure 1: performance of genotypes on treatments conclusions it is concluded from this study that apical buds give better result as compared to lateral buds. results indicate that sc 30 performed best among all genotypes. these genotypes available at the in vitro conservation lab, plant genetic resource institute (pgri), narc which can be used any time for further multiplication, characterization and research. references baksha, r., alam, r., karim, m. z., paul, s. k., hossain, m. a., miah, m. a. s & rahman, a. b. m. m. (2002). in vitro shoot tip culture of sugarcane (saccharum officinarum) variety lsd 28. biotechnology, 1(2-4), 67 72. garcia, r., cidade, d., castellar, a., lips, a., magioli, c., callado, c., & mansur, e. (2007). in vitro morphogenesis patterns from shoot apices of sugarcane are determined by light and type of growth regulator. plant cell tiss. org. cult, 90, 181–190. lakshmanan, p., geijskes, r. j., wang, l. f., elliott, a., grof, c. p. l., berding, n., & smith, g. r. (2006). developmental and hormonal regulation of direct shoot organogenesis and somatic embryogenesis in sugarcane (saccharum spp. interspecific hybrids) leaf culture. plant cell rep, 2, 1007–1015. lal, n., & singh, h. n. (1994). rapid clonal multiplication of sugarcane through tissue culture. plant tissue cult, 4, 1-7. uzma, m., khan, r., muhammad, a., hussain, i., shah, s. h., kumar, t., inam, s., zubair, m., rehman, h. u., sher, a., rehman, n., ahmed, s., & ali, g. m. (2012). rapid in vitro multiplication of sugarcane elite genotypes and detection of sugarcane mosaic virus through two steps rt-pcr. int. j. agric. biol, 14, 870‒878. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 shoot length (cm) no. of shoot no. of roots shoot length (cm) no. of shoot no. of roots shoot length (cm) no. of shoot no. of roots ga3 0.1 mg/l kinetin 0.1 mgl kinetin 0.1 mgl+ga3 0.1 mgl+ bap 0.1 mg/l sc-06 sc-04 sc-25 sc-11 sc-13 sc-30 linear (sc-06) effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 960 economic analysis of cattle marketing in gombe, nigeria suleiman mohammed and isiaka mohammed agricultural economics and extension department, abubakar tafawa balewa university bauchi, nigeria zahraddeen danjuma department of animal science, faculty of agriculture, ahmadu bello university zaria, nigeria ishaku adamu no.2, alhaji balan wada house, jekadafari gombe, gombe state, nigeria abstract the study was conducted in 2010 to assess the profitability or otherwise of cattle marketing in gombe, gombe state, nigeria. data were collected using structured interview-schedule from 40 randomly selected cattle traders and were analyzed using budgeting technique. results showed that the net income of small, medium and large size cattle was n6, 438.69, n11, 056.25 and n16, 474.64 per cattle respectively. similarly, the respective values of gross return per each naira invested were 1.18, 1.16 and 1.14 respectively while those of gross ratio were found to be 0.845, 0.846 and 0.876. on the other hand, average net income accrued to each trader per trading cycle were n19, 036.09, n 27, 215.39 and n 56, 837.50 for small, medium and large size categories of cattle, respectively. thus, cattle marketing in the area were profitable and therefore recommended as an economic venture. keywords: profitability, net income, return per naira, gross ratio introduction 1 economic analysis involves studying costs and returns of an activity or project with a view of determining returns to entrepreneurship or net income of that activity. total costs in agricultural marketing consists of purchase cost and marketing cost; while the former is the cost of owning the products, the latter refers to the actual expenses incurred in the performance of marketing functions as the product moves from farm to the ultimate consumer (olukosi and samuel, 1990). total returns, on the other hand, is the total or gross income realized from the sales of products and from which total costs is corresponding author’s name: suleiman mohammed email address: suleiman_mhd@yahoo.com deducted to arrive at net income or returns to entrepreneurship. apart from serving as a source of food for human, animal agriculture is also important in providing non-food materials such as hide, skin, wool and feathers which are in turn used as raw materials for manufacturing other valuable products. the nigerian livestock population was reported to be about 150 million excluding pigs, dogs, cats, rabbits and guinea pigs (bourn et al., 1994). in monetary terms, the value of nigerian livestock resources was conservatively estimated to be approximately six billion us dollars (akande et al., 2011). of the nigerian livestock population, cattle contributed about 10% while in monetary terms, they accounted for about 40% of livestock total revenue of nigeria (mclntyre et al., 1992). asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:suleiman_mhd@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 960-965 961 despite the important role being played by cattle marketing in the economy of gombe, there is little work carried out to determine the profitability or otherwise of the enterprise in the area. gombe metropolis was chosen for the study because it is one of the largest among its neighboring locations not only by number of buyers and sellers but also in terms of number of animals traded. based on the aforementioned, this study attempts to determine the profitability or otherwise of cattle marketing in the area. the outcome of the research would be essential in determining whether or not investment in cattle marketing in the area is worthwhile, hence justifying the relevance of the study to all stakeholders of cattle marketing and distribution. the study attempts to answer questions such as: what is the average net return each for different sizes of cattle and what is the average net return accrued to a trader per trading cycle in the area? a marketing cycle as used in this study is an average length of time it takes a trader to dispose-off or sale all his cattle before purchasing another batch. this length of period in the study area was found to be averagely 16 days. methodology the study area the study area lies between latitude 9 0 to 12 0 north and longitude 8 0 to 11 0 easts with an altitude of 407 meters above sea level. it has mean maximum and mean minimum temperature of 32.8 0 c and 18.3 0 c respectively. the coldest months are from november to january while march to may is the hottest period. gombe metropolis has a rainfall distribution which ranges from 970.7 mm to 1,142 mm annually, with a mean of 1,009.4 mm. the rain falls from the month of april to october. the vegetation of the area is savannah grassland (gombe state government, 2009) with a land mass of 1,279.62 square kilometers, a population of about 261,536 people (npc, 2006). most of the inhabitants of gombe are predominantly farmers and traders with well-established regional markets for livestock and grains in the area. the predominant cattle breed in the area is white fulani while few other breeds are also found. a white fulani breeds has a live weight of 250kg – 665kg (tawa and rege, 1996). sampling procedure simple random sampling technique was employed to select 40 cattle traders for the survey from the sampling frame of about 400 traders in the area. first, a list containing all the names of cattle traders in the study area was collected from the local cattle traders’ association and then a table of random numbers was used to select the 40 traders as explained by pagano (1994) and many other statistical books. data collection and analysis data were collected in 2010 from cattle traders in gombe metropolis using interview schedule method and from the data budgeting technique was employed to compute net income and returns per naira invested as indices for measuring profitability. earlier, a preliminary survey in gombe livestock market revealed that for easy transactions cattle were being classified based on their sizes into small, medium and large each category weighing approximately <350kg, 350 – 480kg and >480kg, respectively as reflected by their body condition scores. this also corresponds to a classification of cattle by zahraddeen et al. (2009) for small, medium and large sized as those that were 3 years or less, 3-6 years and more than 6 years old, respectively. thus, analyses in this study were carried out for each of these categories of cattle. models specification i. total cost (n) the total cost (tc) was captured as sum of purchase cost (pc) and marketing cost (mc). thus, tcs = pcs + mcs (1) tcm = pcm + mcm (2) tcl = pcl + mcl (3) where: tcs, tcm and tcl = total costs in naira of small, medium and large size cattle, respectively pcs, pcm and pcl = purchase costs in naira of small, medium and large size cattle, respectively asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 960-965 962 mcs, mcm and mcl = marketing costs in naira of small, medium and large size cattle, respectively. it is important to note that marketing costs composed of market tax, storage costs, traders’ union levy, loading and offloading costs, transportation costs, agent commission and cattle maintenance costs. ii. gross income (n) the gross income was computed as total income in naira received by traders from the sales of cattle; and for each size category, it is defined as number of cattle sold in the category multiplied by the average price of the cattle in that category. thus, gis = ys x pys -(4) gim = ym x pym -.(5) gil = yl x pyl -.(6) where: gis, gim and gil = gross income in naira of small, medium and large size cattle, respectively ys, ym and yl= number of small, medium and large size cattle sold, respectively. pys, pym and pyl = average price of small, medium and large size cattle, respectively iii. net income (n) this represents trader`s profit or return to entrepreneur due to cattle marketing. it is depicted as: nis = gis – tcs --(7) nim = gim – tcm (8) nil = gil – tcl (9) where: nis, nim and nil = net income obtained in naira due to marketing small, medium and large size cattle respectively. gis, gim, gil, tcs, tcm and tcl are as defined earlier. here, the higher the value of ni, the higher the trader’s equity or profit and the better the business. iv. returns per naira invested this is represented as rni and it is the monetary returns in naira obtained from every single naira invested in marketing of cattle. thus: rnis = gis / tcs (10) rnim = gim / tcm (11) rnil = gil / tcl (12) where: rnis, rnim and rnil are ratios that represent gross return per naira invested in small, medium and large size cattle respectively. gis, gim, gil, tcs, tcm and tcl are as earlier defined. the decision rule is that, if the value of rni is greater than 1, the business yields profit; and if it is less than 1, it yields loss. on the other hand if it equals 1, the enterprise is said to breakeven – a situation where a business yields neither profit nor loss. gross ratio this is another measure of business success and was used to determine the proportion of gross income suffice to cover total costs i.e. purchase and marketing costs put together. the model is described as: grs = tcs / gis --(13) grm = tcm / gim ----(14) grl = tcl / gil --(15) where: grs, grm and grl = gross ratios in marketing small, medium and large size cattle respectively, while tcs , tcm , tcl , gis, gim and gil are as earlier defined. if the value of gr is greater than 1, it means total cost is more than the gross income and the business is said to be a failure; and if it is less than 1, gross income is more than the total cost and the business is said to be a successful one. on the other hand if the gr value equals 1, the enterprise is said to breakeven – a situation where a business yields neither profit nor loss. thus, the decision rule is that the lower the ratio of gr, the better the business performance. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 960-965 963 results and discussion costs and returns analysis table 1 shows that the total costs involved in the purchase and marketing of small, medium and large size cattle were n35 076.03, n70 287.50 and n115 844.20 respectively. further, the respective gross and net income values were found to be n41 514.72 and n6 438.69 for small size, n81 343.75 and n11 056.25 for medium size and n132 318.84 and n16 474.64 for large size cattle. gross income refers to the total revenue obtained by a marketer from the sales of cattle while net income is the actual gain or profit accrues to the marketer. similarly, the returns per naira invested in the respective categories of the cattle were 1.18, 1.16 and 1.14 implying that for each n1 capital invested in the purchase and marketing of cattle, n0.18, n0.16 and n0.14 or 18%, 16% and 14% of the n1capital were realized as returns to entrepreneurs or profits for small, medium and large sized cattle respectively. these are quite lower than the 1.67 obtained by umar et al. (2008) in his study of cattle fattening in borno state, nigeria. the parity can be due to the fact that combining fattening and marketing requires more resource-inputs in terms of time, labor and capital investments than only marketing. the gross ratios of the small, medium and large size cattle were 0.845, 0.846 and 0.876 respectively implying that 84.5%, 84.6% and 87.6% of the gross incomes would suffice to payback total costs in the respective categories. the results also showed that the marketing margin for the small, medium and large size cattle was 25.08%, 20.55% and 18.18% respectively of the consumers pay, indicating that the proportions of resale price taken by marketing cost and traders’ profit decreased as the traders handled larger animals even though the absolute values increased. this implies that all things being equal, in situations of capital constraint traders shall concentrate more in handling smaller cattle than larger ones. furthermore, the high proportions of the marketing margins could mean much expense was being incurred on the animals by traders before reselling probably in form of feeding costs. these proportions of marketing margin to consumers pay are much higher than the 9.8% obtained by murtala (2008) in kano state, nigeria. however, the parity could be due to locational difference where kano state is well known in receiving high supply of cattle from neighboring niger republic. table 1: average costs and returns of cattle marketing in gombe metropolis (n / cattle) categories of cattle being traded components small size medium size large size purchase cost 31, 102.94 64, 625.00 108, 260.87 marketing cost 3, 973.09 5, 662.50 7, 583.33 total cost 35, 076.03 70, 287.50 115, 844.20 gross income 41, 514.72 81, 343.75 132, 318.84 net income 6, 438.69 11, 056.25 16, 474.64 return per naira invested (rni) 1.18 1.16 1.14 gross ratio 0.845 0.846 0.876 margin (%) 25.08 20.55 18.18 exchange rate: n160 = 1usd source: field survey, (2010) table 2 on the other hand reveals that in each marketing cycle of approximately 16 days as discovered by the study, the average total cost and gross income for a trader in the study area were n 103, 703.04 and n 122, 739.13 (small size), n 173, 015.38 and n 200, 230.39 (medium size) and; n 399, 662.50 and n 456, 500.00 (large size). these, however, resulted to the average net incomes of n19, 036.09, n 27, 215.39 and n 56, 837.50 per trader for small, medium and large size cattle in one marketing cycle. this makes the business of cattle marketing in the are profitable. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 960-965 964 table 2: average costs and returns of cattle marketing in gombe metropolis, nigeria (n /trader/cycle) categories of cattle components small size medium size large size purchase cost 91, 956.52 159, 076.92 373, 500.00 marketing cost 11, 746.52 13, 938.46 26, 162.50 total cost 103, 703.04 173, 015.38 399, 662.50 gross income 122, 739.13 200, 230.39 456, 500.00 net income 19, 036.09 27, 215.39 56, 837.50 note: 1. one marketing cycle among the traders was approximately 16 days 2. exchange rate: n160 = 1usd source: field survey, 2010 conclusion the study assessed the economics of cattle marketing in gombe metropolis, gombe state, nigeria. it showed that the net income of small, medium and large size cattle was n6, 438.69, n11, 056.25 and n16, 474.64 per cattle, respectively. similarly, the respective values of rni were 1.18, 1.16 and 1.14 while those of gross ratio were found to be 0.845, 0.846 and 0.876. on the other hand, average net income accrued to each trader per trading cycle was n19, 036.09, n 27, 215.39 and n 56, 837.50, for small, medium and large size categories, respectively. based on these, cattle marketing in the area can be said to be profitable and therefore recommended as a profitable economic venture. references akande, f. a., m. i. takeet, o. t. adenubi and o. a. makanju (2011). comparative haematological values of parasitised and none parasitized cattle in abeokuta, southwest, nigeria. in value reorientation in animal production: a key to national food security and stable economy by a. a. adeniji, e. o. olatunji and e. s. gana, eds., proceeding of the 36 th annual national conference of the nigerian society for animal production (nsap), university of abuja nigeria, pp. 516-518. bourn, d., w. wint, r. blench, and e. woolley (1994). nigeria livestock resources survey. world animal review, 78(1): 49–58. gombe state government (2009). jewel in the savannah: diary book. gsg: gombe. mclntyre, j. d., d. bourzat and p. pingal (1992). crop–livestock interaction in sub–saharan african. regional world bank, washington d. c. www.wikipedea.org document accessed on december 5, 2009. murtala, n. (2008). economic analysis of cattle marketing in two agricultural development programme zones of kano state, nigeria. a ph.d thesis submitted to agricultural economics and extension programme, school of agriculture, abubakar tafawa balewa university bauchi, nigeria, pp. 205. npc (2006). national population commission, 2006 census report. federal republic of nigeria, abuja: nigeria. olukosi, j. o. and v. l. samuel (1990). introduction to agriculture marketing and prices: principles and application. living book series g.u. publishers, abuja: nigeria. p. 36. pagano, r. r. (1994). understanding statistics in the behavioural sciences. west publishing company: united states of america, p. 498. tawa, c. l. and j. e. o. rege (1996). white fulani cattle of west and central africa. animal genetic resources information bulletin, 11: 137-158. umar, a. s. s., j. f. alamu and o. b. adeniji (2008). economic analysis of small scale cow fattening entreprises in bama local government area of borno state, nigeria. production agriculture and technology journal, 4(1): 1-10. http://www.wikipedea.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 960-965 965 zahraddeen, d., i. s. r. butswat, s. t. mbap and k. a. akibu (2009). assessment of body conditions of abattoir and field grazing ones in northern guinea savannah ecological zone of nigeria. journal of applied agriculture research, 1: 89-95. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(6), 90-105 90 comprehending smallholder maize enterprises’ profitability with the current maize marketing system in zimbabwe: a case of mazowe district john basera agronomy specialist; seed co limited, 1 shamwari road, stappleford, harare, zimbabwe clifton makate graduate student; unep tongji institute of environment for sustainable development, tongji university, shanghai, china takesure tozooneyi student; university of zimbabwe, department of agricultural economics and extension, zimbabwe article history: received: 29-june-2016 revised received: 25july-2016 accepted: 10-august2016 online available: 25august-2016 keywords: smallholder farmers, maize, profitability, mazowe, zimbabwe abstract maize enterprise profitability is essential for sustainable maize production in smallholder farming. in zimbabwe a lot of factors including several policy measures implemented in the past are believed to be influencing current maize profitability trends. literature to confirm some of the crucial factors is limited especially in the smallholder farming sector. in this study we analyze profitability of smallholder maize farmers in mazowe district of zimbabwe. we estimate maize enterprise profitability using gross margin analysis, factors driving profitability using linear regression analysis and the influence of tobacco farming adoption on maize enterprise profitability using propensity score matching. we relied on both primary and secondary data from the study area. results did not show robust outcomes on maize enterprises profitability. maize profitability was found to be influenced positively by age of household head and selling produce to private buyers and negatively by fertilizer, chemical, and transport costs. tobacco farming adoption was found to have a positive influence on maize profitability. based on the results the study recommends the government through its various programs targeting agricultural development and food security to focus on smallholder maize production and marketing with the aim of improving its profitability. 1. introduction 1.1. background agriculture and farming is an integral part of zimbabwe’s social, economic and environmental well-being. in contributes significantly to overall economic growth, livelihoods, food, income and corresponding author’s name: clifton makate email address: ruumakate@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.6/1005.6.90.105 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 91 nutrition security (juana & mabugu, 2005). at the center of this well-being is the smallholder farmer (family farm). for the smallholder farmer, farming is more than just a business; it is also a way of life. for sustainable production, the market must allow the smallholder farmer to make profit or else we risk destroying our rural economy that produces most of the food. weak and or non-remunerating markets and marketing systems will only make the family run farm hard to sustain. remunerating markets and marketing systems will be important for the farm business as an enterprise since when farmers are profitable they re-invest their profits back into their businesses, benefiting more stakeholders in the economy. most expected benefits will be job creation, improvement of food security, adding value to the rural society in general etc. in zimbabwe, maize is one important cereal crop grown. it is the staple cereal and it forms an important component of food security and livelihoods especially amongst smallholder farmers. maize production is now dominated by smallholder farmers since the advent of the fast track land reform 1 (ftlr) of year 2000.the birth of the ftlr led to an increase in the number of smallholder farmers in zimbabwe (clifton, 2013; moyo, 2011). this development improved significantly the role played by smallholder farmers in maize production in zimbabwe. most of the smallholder farmers grow maize primarily for subsistence purposes (mazvimavi et al., 2012). with radical changes in the zimbabwean agricultural sector since ftlr of year 2000, an estimated 70% of the population in zimbabwe now lives in the smallholder farming areas (mano, 2006). this has significant implications for food security, given the critical role of the smallholder sector in producing the staple maize crop. it therefore implies that any sort of challenges that affect smallholder farmers in production and or marketing might have serious consequences on incomes, food security and general livelihoods of the country’s population. however, the smallholder farming sector is constrained by several challenges that are affecting maize production and productivity. according to mazvimavi et al. (2012) production of the main staple crop (maize) has been declining since the early 1990s significantly compromising household food security. a lot of factors have contributed to this decline but policy and institutional factors have played a major role (rukuni et al., 2006). some of the notable current challenges include the inconsistent maize marketing policy, lack of security of land tenure (offer letters and 99 year leases which discourage long term investment on land), lack of collateral to access credit, obsolete technologies, climate change, and lack of skills amongst other challenges. of importance to this study is the government maize marketing policy that is currently affecting maize production and marketing. the government through the grain marketing board (gmb) has failed to offer genuine support to maize farmers in zimbabwe in terms of pricing and payment patterns. the gmb is a wholly state owned enterprise with network depots. it is involved in commodity trading in cereals and oil seeds, the provision of logistic services to the agricultural industry as well as processing of products. the institution plays a pivotal role in maize marketing in zimbabwe. however, the national institution has been dictating maize prices but without cash to pay the farmers. this alone has caused numerous problems in maize marketing in zimbabwe. recently, we have noticed the mushrooming of private companies (e.g. national foods, agrifoods, feedmix, fivet, novatek, profeeds, staywell), millers, poultry and animal rearing companies (e.g. irvines, hubard, chinyika, lunar chickens, carswell and koala meats) entering the maize market mix and pose competition to gmb. the problem with these companies is that they are taking advantage of poor payment terms and lack of funds of gmb to pay farmers and take farmers’ maize produce at very low prices. the farmers are falling to the trap as they are left desperate because of the situation. they are finding it better to accept the low prices from private 1 fast track land reform: a land redistribution exercise implemented in year 2000 that was meant to address imbalances in land ownership between blacks and whites post-independence in zimbabwe. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 92 buyers than to wait for the gmb lengthy payment periods despite them (gmb) paying a better price sometimes. besides the poor and lengthy payment patterns, the gmb have been offering low prices that do not tally with high maize production costs characteristic to the smallholder farming sector. a good example is that of 2012/13 season in which the gmb gazetted price per tonne was us$390, which was far less than the cost to produce a tonne of maize that season which was at us$410 (zimvac, 2014). in that same season private buyers were offering prices as low as us$250 per tonne of maize. this scenario dis-incentivises maize production particularly among smallholder farmers who face many other challenges in their farming activities. considering that the new crop of smallholder farmers are resource poor, such kind of unfortunate circumstances may force farmers out of maize production or at least reduce focus on the crop. there has been a noticeable trend of most farmers increasing acreage grown under tobacco at the expense of maize production (zimvac, 2011). this has serious implications on food security to the zimbabwean population. maize production, productivity and profitability is declining in the agriculture sector mainly because of these challenges (zimvac, 2011). maize production and productivity is slowly declining in zimbabwe because of a couple of problems in the sector. for example, per capita maize production is slowly declining because of a significant decline in yield per hectare over time. in the 1990s, the smallholder maize yield was around 1.5 tonnes/ha but after 2000 it dropped to about 0.7 tonnes per hectare (agritex, 2015). the situation could be improved by improving maize marketing policies in zimbabwe. this is most likely due to the confidence the farmers has on the national marketing institution. improving maize output pricing and payment patterns is also most likely to attract more land towards maize farming than tobacco farming. this study aims to unravel the effects of various elements in the current smallholder maize production and marketing sector. precisely we ought to do the following: i. analyse profitability in the current smallholder maize production system in zimbabwe ii. identify the factors influencing maize profitability and, iii. assess the impact of tobacco farming adoption on profitability of smallholder maize enterprises. results from such a study will be important in understanding significant factors influencing current smallholder maize profitability hence making it easy to offer sound policy recommendations that may improve profitability and hence benefits from farming e.g. income and food security. results will confirm whether type of buyer dealt with by the smallholder farmer in selling his/her maize output is significantly related to profitability. this will go a long way in improving smallholder farmer incomes, food security and zimbabwe’s smallholder agriculture as a major source of livelihood. we explore the maize productivity trends in zimbabwe since 1980 in the next section. 1.2. maize productivity trends in zimbabwe since 1980 figure 1 shows national maize productivity trends from 1980 to 2014. since 1980, maize productivity based on national statistics has been declining as shown by the downward trend in the graph. the linear trend line confirms the continuous decline in maize average output per hectare. in the early 80’s, average maize productivity reached extremely high figures above 12 hectograms per hectare as shown on the graph. productivity in maize production since then was high which to some extent explains why zimbabwe was regarded the bread basket of southern africa. however, due to various factors that has continuously hard hit zimbabwean agriculture, such as climate change, macroeconomic challenges, disease and pest attacks, and government policy, maize productivity has been declining. from early 2000 to present, productivity continued to fluctuate within the range of 2 to 10 hectograms per hectare. mostly blamed for the declining productivity asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 93 especially in the smallholder sector is the lack of productive resources by the new group of smallholder farmers. to add on, a lot of maize marketing policies have had an impact on the production and productivity of maize in zimbabwe (table 1). the maize sector is one sector that experienced a lot of policy changes since 1980. figure 1: maize productivity trend since 1980, zimbabwe source: faostat (2015) 1.3. maize policies in zimbabwe in the past 40 years in table 1 we give a summary of some of the important policies targeted at improving maize productivity and profitability. when the country got its independence in 1980, the country was dominated by four main parastatals supervised under agricultural marketing authority (ama) formed in 1967. ama acted as a conduit between the government and the farmers’ interests. producer and selling prices were fixed by the government through the ministry of agriculture in negotiations with the producers (gwara, 2011). the main policy objective of the ministry during that time was to ensure self-sufficiency, retention of capital and expertise within the agricultural sector through incentive pricing and supply control through stabilization of prices and income. table 1: main policies and programs targeted to maize in the past 40 years year policy/program main objective/s 1967 formation of agricultural marketing authority improve production and marketing 19801985 doubling of maize producers prices, input support increase maize productivity, production and income early 1990s the structural adjustment programs (sap) reduction of government control in markets and increasing market competition. 1994 establishment of zimbabwe agricultural commodity exchange (zimace). in 1996 maize marketing was completely liberalized improve efficiency in maize marketing 2001 grain marketing act to retain the gmb to its monopoly status. wipe competition in maize marketing 2001 suspension of zimace wipe away competition in maize marketing i.e. ensuring gmb was the sole buyer and seller of maize 2001 release of statutory instrument (si235a) to control maize grain, maize and wheat meal. one needed a permit to trade in the 0.00 5.00 10.00 15.00 20.00 25.00 1 9 8 0 1 9 8 2 1 9 8 4 1 9 8 6 1 9 8 8 1 9 9 0 1 9 9 2 1 9 9 4 1 9 9 6 1 9 9 8 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 8 2 0 1 0 2 0 1 2 2 0 1 4 y ie ld p er h ec ta re h ec to g ra m s year asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 94 three commodities. private trading was prohibited 2005 operation maguta increase productivity and production 2007 agricultural mechanization program improve maize productivity as a reinforcement to land reform of year 2000 2007 agricultural sector productivity enhancement facility (aspef) improve productivity in the agricultural sector through improving access to credit. 2008 grain mobilization program ensuring timely payments to maize producers for their grain 2009 market liberalization reforms making gmb’s main function as the buyer of last resort food aid policy ensure that food aid does not negatively affect maize pricing and productivity gmo policy restriction of importation of gmo seed 2013 zimbabwe agenda for sustainable and social economic transformation (zim asset) improve maize productivity amongst other crops to improve food security in the period between 1980 and 1985 smallholder maize sales increased from 8 to 45%. this increase was attributed to doubling of the producer price of maize and input support programs (gwara, 2011). the sap program in zimbabwe saw the dissolution of ama and it formed an autonomous board of directors for marketing. however, the board experienced losses under the pretext of performing social and developmental obligations (gwara, 2011). the sap was also associated with conversion of the maize pricing policy from a system of producer and selling prices to a system of floor prices and also the deregulation of statutory marketing controls to encourage competition. the economic structural adjustment program (esap) also aimed to promote active participation of private players in the maize market. zimace was established in 1994 to improve efficiency in maize marketing by giving competition to the national marketing entity gmb. maize marketing was thus within a relatively free market with zimace (rukuni et al., 2006). liberalization of the maize marketing system was not very successful, the structural adjustments failed to stabilize prices. the liberalization efforts failed as evidenced by food riots in 1998. in 2001, the government made efforts to control maize trade and pricing. the gmb was made the sole player in maize trade and zimace was suspended in the process. the statutory instrument (si-235a) was released in the same period and it was aimed to tighten trade and exchange of maize grain, maize and wheat meal. one was to obtain a permit to effect movement of the three mentioned products. from 2001 to 2005 the gmb could not cope up with inflation and hence production fell, with private importation prohibited this saw the emergence of the parallel market. a lot of other policies/programs meant to improve food security through improving both productivity and profitability of maize producers have been implemented. the main objectives of the policies have been generally the same. one such policy was named ‘operation maguta’. under this scheme, communal farmers were given inputs such as seed, fertilizer and herbicides in order for them to grow one hectare of wheat and or maize. farmers were expected to pay back the inputs soon after harvest at an interest rate of 50%. according to bird and busse (2007) the input prices were heavily subsidized and were set way below market clearing prices. in addition, the agricultural mechanization program was also conceived in 2007 as a long term measure that was to ensure consolidation of gains from the land redistribution exercise of the year 2000. the reform significantly transformed the equipment and productive landscape of the agricultural sector through mechanizing both communal and commercial farmers (gwara, 2011). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 95 in the same year (2007), the agricultural sector productivity enhancement facility (aspef) was launched by the zimbabwean government to support maize crop production amongst other commodities such as wheat and livestock. the policy was meant to improve productivity through improved credit access. however, lack of tittle deeds constrained the program as banks were reluctant to offer large sums of money to farmers with no collateral (dawes et al., 2009). the grain mobilization program of may 2008 is also another program meant to improve maize marketing and profitability. it set up a grain mobilizing committee comprised of officers from the ministry of agriculture, gmb and the reserve bank of zimbabwe (rbz). the main objective of the program was to ensure timely payments to farmers for their grain and to mitigate inflationary pressures. in addition, the intervention had the objective of ensuring urgent procurement of surplus produce from farmers in order to build the national stock of grain reserves. with liberalization reforms of 2009, the gmb was made the buyer of last resort. in this case it tried to maintain floor prices to promote domestic maize producers. this also saw the removal of duties and import restrictions on the maize commodity. in addition, the zimbabwe food aid policy has always been supportive of crop production. the zimbabwean government always ensure that the food aid policy should not; destabilize the local market, act as a dis-incentive for producers, depress commodity prices (mudzonga & chigwada, 2009). in addition, the zimbabwean government restrict importation of gmo seed. esterhuizen and kreamer (2011) pointed out that the ban on importation of gmo seed may reduce competitiveness and comparative advantage of maize production in zimbabwe. in 2013, the government introduced the zimbabwe agenda for sustainable and social economic transformation (zim asset) which is an economic blueprint with a lot of themes/clusters, targeting to improve welfare in zimbabwe. one main aim of the zim asset has to do with improving food security and nutrition (matutu, 2014). the policy is however very new and still at early stages of implementation. maize is the main target commodity considering its importance in curbing food shortages in zimbabwe. in the end, the various policies addressed in this section give information on the importance of maize as a cereal staple crop in the country. in addition various socioeconomic indicators targeted by the various policies provide a good insight on the factors likely to influence maize productivity and profitability in zimbabwe. also, they show the importance of the commodity (maize) to the agricultural sector. 2. research methods and data collection 2.1. description of the study area, sampling and data we make use of primary and secondary household level based data for mazowe district of zimbabwe. mazowe is the southernmost of seven districts of the mashonaland central province in zimbabwe. the large parts of the district lie in natural region 2. the rainfall ranges from 750 to 1000 mm/year. it is fairly reliable, falling from november to march/april. the region is suited to quite a number of crops that include maize, flue cured tobacco, cotton, wheat, soybeans, sorghum, groundnuts, seed maize and burley. the district is linked to harare by a 35 km highway. the district location is shown in figure 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 96 figure 2: map of zimbabwe showing the mazowe district secondary data pertaining to smallholder crop production and marketing statistics were obtained from the ministry of agriculture. primary data was gathered in the form of a household survey using a structured questionnaire. the questionnaire was pre-tested, modified and then used to collect data. specifically, information on maize production and marketing constituted the bulk of the questionnaire. however, farmer characteristics (resources’ endowment and demographic characteristics etc.), costs and benefits incurred by farmers in the value chain, access to some institutional variables (such as credit, extension etc.) and some brief information relating maize and tobacco farming in the study area were also captured in the questionnaire. face to face interviews were used to gather the data as the method was regarded as the one with a higher possibility of getting high rate of responses and to take less time than other interviewing methods. a sample of 120 randomly selected smallholder farmers was gathered from mazowe district of zimbabwe. local agricultural extension officers in the district assisted in providing list of smallholder farmers in the study area from which 120 farmers were randomly selected from 5 randomly selected villages. 2.2. data analysis and processing quantitative data was processed and analyzed using excel, stata and spss. we relied on both descriptive and causality analysis to answer the study’s research questions. 2.2.1. evaluating private profitability one prime objective was to assess the profitability of smallholder farmers in the district. to assess private profitability of smallholder maize producers we used value chain costs and benefits. precisely, gross margin approach was used to assess private profitability in maize production. from the gross margin analysis the study reported cost benefit analysis ratios to assess profitability of the i th farmer. we applied the benefit cost ratio (bcr) taking into account the time value of money. the benefit cost ratio as shown in equation 1 is calculated as the net present value of benefits divided by the net present value of costs. we used the formula for bcr as follows: ∑ { } ∑ { } ………………......... (1) where bt is benefit in time t and ct is cost in time t. if the bcr exceeds one, then the maize enterprise is profitable. if the ratio is less than one, then maize production as an enterprise in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 97 smallholder farming is not profitable. it is however important to note that we used value of all the farmers maize produce as the benefits and costs incurred in producing the same quantity of produce as costs discounted at an assumed 5% interest rate. we value all maize output from a specific season to avoid under or overestimation of profitability since most of the produce may not be sold but rather kept for household consumption. 2.2.2. evaluating factors influencing maize profitability we used multiple regression analysis techniques to examine the factors influencing smallholder maize profitability in the district. according to barrow (2009), regression analysis is a more sophisticated way of examining the relationship between two (or more) variables. it is a generic term for all methods attempting to fit a model to observed data in order to quantify the relationship between two groups of variables. multivariate regression takes into account several predictive variables simultaneously, thus modelling the property of interest with more accuracy. the study borrowed from a study by olujenyo (2008) who selected various demographic, social, economic, institutional and environmental variables as factors into the regression model that affect profitability. we therefore apply multiple regression analysis to identify factors that significantly influence profitability. maize enterprise benefit cost ratio (bcr) was used as a dependent variable whilst a number of social, economic, cultural, and institutional and environmental factors were used as covariates explaining variation in profitability of smallholder maize producers. the multiple regression adopted took the following form: …….…………… (2) where, y= is the dependent variable, x1-nare the independent variables b0-n are the coefficients to be estimated and is the random error term. definition, description and measurement of variables used in regression analysis is shown in table 2. 2.2.3. evaluating impact of tobacco farming adoption on maize enterprise profitability to assess the impact of tobacco farming on maize profitability the study adopted the potential outcomes framework following the work of heckman and vytlacil (2005). according to this framework impact (treatment effect) can be defined as outcome for exposure (adoption) minus outcome for non-exposure (non-adoption). in our specific case it will be the difference in maize enterprise gross margins for adopters and non-adopters of tobacco farming. in this study the average treatment effect (ate) was estimated using the nearest neighbor matching approach. this approach imputes the missing potential outcomes for the untreated group using average outcomes for individuals with similar observed characteristics, based on covariates x. stata version 12 was used to do the analysis. 3. results and discussion 3.1. overview of smallholder maize production and marketing in mazowe 3.1.1. maize productivity trends productivity trends in smallholder maize production can be positively related to profitability. average maize productivity in the district has been fluctuating as shown in figure 3. data collected in the past nine seasons reveal that productivity levels in the district have been fluctuating between 1.5 tons per hectare and 3 tons per hectare. considering the high agricultural potential in the district the result is not surprising and an upward trend can be expected with improved maize production and marketing conditions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 98 figure 3: maize productivity trends in mazowe district in the past nine seasons source: agritex (2015) 3.1.2. major market players in mazowe maize marketing is very important if farmers are to fully benefit from their production. marketing improves incomes for the farmer. this therefore justifies the need for reliable marketing players in the district. from statistics gathered by the ministry of agriculture, government through the gmb and private buyers have dominated as maize marketing players in the district. other relevant players in the district were noted as private millers and some contractors. some notable private buyers playing a big role in maize marketing in mazowe are processors such as national foods, poultry producers and beverage making companies e.g. delta beverages. the pie chart in fig 4 shows the major market players in maize in mazowe district. gvt 37% private buyers 36% private millers 9% contractors 18% figure 4: major maize market players in mazowe source: (agritex, 2015). 3.1.3. socioeconomic profiles of smallholder maize producers in mazowe table 2 show characteristics of the sampled smallholder farmers from mazowe district of zimbabwe. 2.76 2.13 1.5 2.2 2.9 2 1.85 2.3 1.74 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 2006/7 2007/8 2008/9 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 a v er ag e y ie ld p er h ec ta re season asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 99 table 2: socioeconomic characteristics of the sample variable description and measurement mean/ proportion age age of household head in years 49.1 education number of years in formal education for the household head 9.8 gender (%) sex of household head (1=male) 70.0 dependency ratio household age dependency ratio 0.7 farming experience farming experience of the household head in maize production and marketing in years 10.5 land holding size of land holding that the household have access to in hectares (ha) 5.9 extension (%) access to extension advice (1=yes, 0=no) 87.0 extn freq number of times extension visit/advice was received 3.0 dist mkt distance to the nearest maize market in kms 11.0 seedcost15 average maize seed costs incurred per season (us$) 79.4 fert cost average maize inorganic fertilizer costs incurred per season (us$) 265.7 chem cost average maize chemical costs incurred per season (us$) 51.6 labor cost average maize labor costs incurred per season (us$) 28.6 transpt cost average maize transportation costs incurred per season (us$) 7.2 maize buyer categorical variable indicating where the smallholder farmer sold his/her maize produce in 2014/15 season farmgate (%) proportion sold to other farmers (farmgate) 7 private buyers (%) proportion sold to private buyers 86 gmb (%) proportion sold to gmb 7 source: own calculations 3.2. demographic characteristics results of the descriptive characteristics 2 shows that smallholder maize producing households in mazowe are mainly male headed (70%). maize production is still mainly dominated by males probably because of the importance attached to the crop when it comes to household welfare. results from the sample also show that maize producers in mazowe are middle-aged with an average of 49 years. age is very important in the studying of farming households as it is believed to have a bearing on many aspects of production and marketing i.e. risk preferences and experience. for example, old aged farmers are believed to be risk averse, a characteristic which may negatively implicate on adoption of maize marketing strategies and technologies. more importantly, results showed that on average smallholder farmers sampled had on average 9.8 years of formal education. the results show an average of 0.7 age dependency ratio meaning for every economically active household member there is about 1 person as a dependent (aged or too young). this is a rather fair result since high dependency is usually associated with poverty and low productivity especially in rural farming communities. moreover, the group of farmers that constituted the sample was experienced with the maize crop both in production and marketing. results show that the household head had on average about 10.5 years of experience in maize production and marketing in the area of study. 3.3. landholding land holdings represent a key factor of production for agricultural enterprises in smallholder farming systems. the amount of land which a household allocates to a particular crop depends largely on the land holding which a household owns. in terms of landholding, results show that each household had an average of about 6 hectares of arable land owned. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 100 3.4. extension in terms of institutional characteristics, results show that farmer have high access to agricultural advice and extension as shown by 87% access at the time of the survey. this was a good result considering the importance of agricultural advice in improving access to productive information that can improve maize and other crop’s productivity and or profitability. on average, households received extension advice or visits by extension personnel at least 3 times per agricultural season. 3.5. costs transaction cost is another challenge affecting mainly maize marketing in smallholder farming. transaction costs are those costs associated with delivering produce to the market. they act as a barrier to market participation in most farming communities. in this study we used distance to the nearest main market as our proxy measure for marketing transaction costs. results reveal that the distance to the nearest main market was about 11 km which indicates moderate to low transaction costs associated. in terms of other physical costs, results show that on average, smallholder maize farmers spent much on fertilizer costs (us$ 265.7), followed by seed costs (us$79.4), then chemical costs (us$51.6), labor costs (us$28.6) and spent the least on transportation costs (us$7.2). the result shows that fertilizer, seed and chemical costs are the current three major cost areas farmers spent on in maize production. fertilizers constitute the bigger chunk of the maize production costs because of the need by the farmers to raise productivity given the low fertility status of the soils. for seed it implies that farmers are trying to desist from using retained seed so as to aim for germplasm with desirable attributes that may improve on maize profitability. in addition, chemical costs are also one of the major costs mainly because of the prevalence of conservation farming which is encouraging use of herbicides in controlling maize weeds. 3.6. buyer in terms of the marketing channels smallholder maize producers are using, we found that currently most of them are selling their maize output to private traders (86%) and the remainder of the produce to either gmb (7%) or other farmers (7%). the results show that private traders currently dominate the maize market in the study area. 3.6.1. maize enterprise profitability with the current maize marketing system in zimbabwe the study also analyzed the gross margins of the smallholder farmer’s maize enterprise. as elaborated under research methods, gross margins were calculated by subtracting variable costs specific to maize enterprise from gross income from maize. table 3 shows the gross margin analysis statistics. reported are gross margin and profitability ratio statistics for the past three seasons (2012/13, 2013/14 and 2014/15). table 3: table maize gross margins statistics and profitability ratios profit (us$) mean min max profit2013 416.48 -598 11495 profit2014 983.55 -553 9051 profit2015 378 -783 10945 benefit cost ratio (bcr) bcr_2013 0.60 0.05 1.86 bcr_2014 0.85 0.06 3.741 bcr_2015 2.14 0.09 6.55 source: own calculations results show that, average profit per maize enterprise in all the three seasons was positive. from the average profits we can tell that the smallholder farmer maize enterprise is profitable. however, the results report negative minimum gross profit incurred in all the three seasons. this however asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 101 complicates making conclusions on profitability based entirely on the gross profits. the analysis went on to calculate a profitability ratios based on costs and benefits from the smallholder farmer’s maize enterprise to ensure comparability of results and a more firm conclusion on profitability. from profitability ratios we could see that only season 2014/15 had a bcr greater than 1 whilst the two previous seasons 2012/13 and 2013/14 had average ratios less than 1. this gives a more reflective picture on profitability of smallholder maize enterprises in the district. the average bcr statistics shown in table 3, show that in 2014/15 season smallholder maize producer got on average us$2.14 for every dollar of costs spent, us$ 0.85 per dollar spent in 2013/14 season and us$ 0.6 per every dollar of costs spent in 2012/13 season. overall, the results do not allow making a robust conclusion on smallholder maize profitability. results in table 3 confirm the conclusion. to further understand on the profitability the study went on to analyze the factors influencing maize profitability. analysis of factors affecting profitability is based on causal analysis. results are shown in table 4. 3.6.2. factors influencing maize profitability in smallholder farming in mazowe district of zimbabwe the study also analyzed the factors that affect maize profitability in smallholder farming. the regression model was highly significant as shown by the high significance of the model at 1% and r-squared value of 68% and adjusted r-squared of 60%. the chosen model variables both dependent and independent variables and the data had a good fit to the regression model as shown by the high values of r-squared and adjusted r-squared. results revealed that, age of the household head, fertilizer costs, chemical costs, transport costs and selling maize to private buyers influenced profitability significantly. precisely, results revealed that chemical costs, fertilizer cost and transport costs have a negative significant influence on maize profitability in smallholder farming, whilst age of the farmer and selling to private buyers have a positive significant influence on maize profitability. table 4: factors influencing maize profitability profitability coef. std. err. t p-vale age 0.044 0.0253 1.75 0.086* education -0.076 0.0700 -1.09 0.282 dependency ratio 0.324 0.4790 0.68 0.502 yrsfarming -0.052 0.0608 -0.85 0.400 seedcost15 -0.003 0.0070 -0.41 0.684 fert cost -0.004 0.0011 4.07 0.000*** chem cost -0.046 0.0150 -3.08 0.003*** labor cost -0.001 0.0071 -0.07 0.945 transpt cost -0.074 0.0380 -1.96 0.056* private buyers 0.888 0.4721 1.88 0.066* gmb 1.067 0.8246 1.29 0.202 extn freq -0.025 0.0268 -0.92 0.360 _cons 1.120 1.2910 0.87 0.390 prob >f =0.000*** r-squared= 0.68; adjusted r-squared= 0.60 ***significant at 1%; **significant at 5%; *significant at 10% source: own calculations results in table 4 revealed that some of the main costs in maize production and marketing were significantly affecting maize profitability. notably fertilizer costs, chemical costs and transport costs were found to have a negative significant influence on maize profitability. fertilizer costs and chemical costs were highly significant in influencing maize profitability as shown by the pvalues of the coefficients which are less than 0.01. transport costs were however less significant asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 102 when compared to chemical and fertilizer costs as the p-value for variable coefficient was greater than 5% but less than 10%. the results could reflect on the cost of fertilizers and necessary chemicals in maize production in the zimbabwean economy. precisely, the result could imply that some prices of the necessary inputs in maize production are high which therefore impacts negatively on farmer’s profitability. considering that most smallholder farmers in zimbabwe are resource constrained and the harsh economic environment that has worsened the economic situation in the past decade, this is not surprising as input dealers have adopted pricing models that are not close to efficient prices. fertilizer prices in zimbabwe for example are in the range of us$ 30 to us$ 40 for a 50 kilogram bag, which is way too high if we are to compare prices in the southern african region. when compared to south african prices, fertilizers in zimbabwe are 15 to 20% more expensive which reflects also on protection of the fertilizer industry. moreover, with the high promotion of climate smart agricultural technologies such as conservation agriculture in zimbabwe, use of herbicides has been on the rise in place of frequent weeding. moreover, the cost of spraying in case of disease and pest attack is also a significant factor increasing costs of chemicals. adopting efficient chemical prices and ensuring maximum competition to local industries in the business of agrochemical is one way of improving on pricing of the chemicals. transport costs were also found to influence profitability though to a lesser extent when compared to fertilizer and chemical costs. this shows that, transaction costs in accessing maize markets is also another area affecting maize profitability. considering the low prices received per ton of maize on average in the country, it is logical for any significant addition in costs along the value chain to influence profitability. on the other hand, age of the smallholder farmer and type of buyer were the other variables found to have a significant influence on maize profitability. the two variables were found to have a positive significant influence on profitability. the age of the household head can be a proxy for farming experiences. this could mean that as the household head age increases, a household’s knowledge in maize production and marketing issues can also improve which can therefore transform to profitability. most studies have shown that as household head age increases, they acquire more farming experience, become risk averse and diversify their production (olujenyo, 2008). as such, households headed by elderly heads are more likely to be profitable than households headed by younger heads. type of buyer that the smallholder farmer sold maize produce to was also an explanatory variable included in the linear regression. the explanatory variable was a categorical variable with the different type of buyers common in the study area. it was however, found that selling maize to private buyers had a positive significant influence on maize profitability. this could be because farmers have a role to play in the price discovery process and this have a strong bearing on profitability. when prices are set without letting market forces come to play, as with the case with gmb in zimbabwe, there are high chances that the set prices are lower than market clearing prices and this would negatively affect farmers’ profit. 3.6.3. impact of tobacco farming on smallholder maize profitability competition between tobacco farming and maize production is also one interesting aspect believed to be negatively affecting maize profitability in zimbabwe. the general belief is that smallholder farmers are investing much of their effort, income and resources towards tobacco farming at the expense of the maize production because of the lucrative tobacco market. in this study we tried to establish the impact of tobacco farming adoption on maize profitability in the study area. the paper as highlighted under research methods used propensity score matching techniques to estimate the impact. the results of the impact analysis are shown in table 5. reported in the table is the average treatment effect on the treated (att), the number of observations treated and control, standard errors and the test statistic. the radius matching asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 103 technique was applied to find att using data on gross margins from the three seasons 2014/15, 2013/14 and 2012/13 season. the instrumental variable was tobacco farming adoption. table 5: impact of tobacco farming on maize profitability profitability indicator n. treated n. control att std. error t gross margin 2015 90 30 1322.8 458.2 2.9* gross margin 2014 90 30 1286.7 486.8 2.6* gross margin 2013 90 30 1922.4 681.7 2.8* ***significant at 1%; **significant at 5%; *significant at 10% source: own calculations results show that, tobacco farming adoption had a positive significant impact on maize profitability. a priori thinking of the researcher was proven opposite as results showed the strict opposite. the researcher thought that due to competition on land area and resources imposed by tobacco farming on other crops such as maize, adopting tobacco would negatively impact on maize profitability. results imply that tobacco farming in smallholder farming is actually aiding maize production in mazowe. smallholder farmers could be using income from tobacco sale to boost their maize production by acquiring productive inputs hence improving maize profitability. he att figures confirm the positive impact, they report that in 2012/13 season tobacco farming adoption had an impact of about us$1922 on gross margins i.e. adopters will have us$ 1922 more gross margins than non-adopters. the same trend was found for the 2013/14 and 2014/15 season with us$1287 and us$1323 respectively. the impact was however estimated on the maize profitability for the whole enterprise and not per hectare grown maize. 3.6.4. summary of the results 3.6.4.1. profitability and factors affecting profitability an analysis of the gross margins revealed maize farming enterprises to be profitable as shown by the positive average figures. however, an analysis of the benefit cost ratios (bcr) did not confirm the result. bcr for 2014/15 season was found to be 2.14, for 2013/14 it was 0.85 and 0.60 for 2012/13. we could say that smallholder farmers are profitable based on average positive maize enterprise profits. based on the on both profitability ratios and average gross margins we could not make a robust conclusion though. maize profitability was found to be influenced positively by age of the household head and selling produce to private buyers. on the other hand, fertilizer costs, chemical costs and transport costs were found to have a negative significant influence on maize profitability. 3.6.4.2. impact of tobacco farming on maize profitability tobacco farming was found to have a positive significant impact on maize profitability. tobacco farmers were found to be more profitable in maize farming when compared to non-tobacco farmers. results imply that tobacco farming could be aiding maize farming enterprises thereby contributing positively to maize profitability. farmers may be using profits from tobacco farming enterprises to support their maize production activities. 4. conclusions and recommendations 4.1. conclusions based on the results we conclude that, maize enterprises in smallholder farming have high potential in improving the welfare of the farmer and that of zimbabweans at large. results showed modest profitability of smallholder farming enterprises which is a positive indicator for farmer income and food security of zimbabwean inhabitants. based on the result we also conclude that for smallholder farmers to be profitable in maize production with the current situation, they have asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 104 to sell their maize output to private buyers. chemical costs of production, fertilizer costs and transport costs are the main factors negatively affecting maize enterprise profitability. we also conclude that tobacco farming in smallholder maize farming is playing a supportive role as results showed tobacco farming to have a positive and significant impact on maize profitability. farmers seem to be supporting maize farming from their income from tobacco sales. 4.2. recommendations based on the results the study recommend the government of zimbabwe through its various programs targeting agricultural development and food security to focus on smallholder maize production and marketing with the aim of improving its profitability. this is important for the smallholder farmer to sustain his/her maize production as well as in extending benefits of maize farming to the economy. a) specifically the study suggests the government to subsidize smallholder maize production in zimbabwe either through input support or through allowing efficient pricing in input and output markets. subsidizing is worthwhile considering that maize profitability will benefit both the nation and the farmer. subsidizing will be key since chemical costs, fertilizer costs and transport costs were found to influence maize profitability negatively. overall, it is through subsidizing maize (a staple cereal) that we can fight poverty and food insecurity that is disturbing a significant part of the zimbabwean population. b) moreover, the government through the ministry of agriculture should continue promoting crop diversification as results show tobacco farming adoption to be playing a supportive role in maize farming. adopting more than one crop is a key as income from one crop can be used to support production of the other. c) lastly the government should also consider less protection on inputs such as fertilizers as this can promote close to efficient pricing by the local input producers. chemical input and fertilizer prices could be lowered significantly by less protection and this can improve maize productivity and hence profitability. farmers and or other private players should be allowed to import some of the maize inputs without too much restriction as this may help lower domestic input costs through competition. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references agritex. (2015). crop assessment report, ministry of agriculture, mechanization and agricultural development. zimbabwe. in z. agricultural technical and extension services (agritex) (ed.). harare, zimbabwe: government of zimbabwe (goz). barrow, m. (2009). statistics for economics, accounting and business studies. pearson education. bird, k., & busse, s. (2007). re-thinking aid policy in response to zimbabwe’s protracted crisis. overseas development institute discussion paper. clifton, m. (2013). structure-conduct and performance of the informal metal manufacturing industry in zimbabwe: implications to stakeholders in the agricultural sector. university of zimbabwe. dawes, m., murota, r., jera, r., masara, c., & sola, p. (2009). inventory of smallholder contract farming practices in zimbabwe. snv netherlands development organisation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 90-105 105 esterhuizen, d., & kreamer, r. 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(2008). the determinants of agricultural production and profitability in akoko land, ondo-state, nigeria. journal of social sciences, 4(1), 37-41. rukuni, m., tawonezvi, p., eicher, c., munyuki-hungwe, m., & matondi, p. (2006). zimbabwe vs agricultural revolution revisited. university of zimbabwe publications. harare, zimbabwe, 22. zimvac. (2011). rural livelihoods assessment july 2011. harare, zimbabwe: zimbabwe vulnerability assessment committee. zimvac. (2014). zimbabwe rural food security and vulnerability assessments september 2014 rural livelihoods assessment. harare, zimbabwe: zimbabwe vulnerability assessment committee. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(9), 202-217 202 comparing the costs and benefits of floating rice-based and intensive rice-based farming systems in the mekong delta van kien nguyen director; research centre for rural development, an giang university, vietnam & research fellow; luc hoffmann institute, australian national university, australia oc van vo and duc ngoc huynh research centre for rural development, an giang university, vietnam abstract 1 this paper compares financial costs and benefits of floating rice-based and intensive rice farming systems using data from focus group discussions and household survey in four locations in the mekong delta. we argue that the net financial benefit per 1000m 2 of integrated floating rice-based farming systems is greater than the net financial benefit of intensive rice farming system. the total net benefit of floating rice-leeks shows the highest net benefit (vnd 24.8 mil./1000 m 2 ), followed by floating rice-sweet corntwo baby corn crops and cattle systems (vnd 18.5 mil./1000m 2 ), and floating rice-chili (vnd 16.7-17.7 mil./1000m 2 ). if farmers cultivate monoculture of rice either two or three crops, the net benefits are ranging from vnd 2.2-4.8 mil./1000m 2 respectively. alternatively, farmers integrate vegetables; the net benefit was ranging from vnd 5.6 to 11.7 mil./1000m 2 . the net benefit of the two rice crops is lowest (vnd 1.3-2.3 mil./1000m 2 ). surprisingly, if farmers convert from two intensive rice crops to two maize crops, the net benefit can reach to vnd 21 million/1000m 2 . the results support the argument that the floating rice based systems allows farmers diversified into profitable upland crops, which can help farmers to improve their total income. keywords: financial cost, floating rice-based, mekong delta 1. introduction as recently as the 1990s, nine million hectares of floating rice were cultivated in the river lower basins of the ganges-brahmaputra of india and bangladesh, the irrawaddy of myanmar, the mekong of vietnam and cambodia, and the chao phraya of thailand (catling, 1992). at that time it was a key source of nutrition for more than 100 million people in asia, also west africa (kende et al., 1998). it was grown in areas which flooded to depths of 50 cm for a month or longer each year (catling, 1992). it has extreme elongation capacity which can grow at rates of 20 to 25 cm/d when partially submerged and can reach the lengths of up to 7 m in water depths up to 4 m (kende et al., 1998). its yield was relatively low (average 2.0 tons/ha), it was grown largely without the addition of chemicals, but it had high nutritional value. corresponding author’s name: van kien nguyen email address: nv.kien@anu.edu.au asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:nv.kien@anu.edu.au asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 203 during the pre-colonial period, in the nguyen dynasty (18 th century) floating rice was grown in the vietnamese mekong delta (quadrangle and plains of reeds). floating rice varieties were a source of high quality dietary nutrition for people living in the mekong delta. during colonial period (1858-1954), people harvested floating rice, fished and hunted wild animals for their home consumption (biggs, 2003). prior to 1975, the total area of cultivated floating rice in the mekong delta was estimated at over 0.5 million ha, of which 50% (0.25 million ha) was grown an giang province (nguyễn, 1994; võ and matsui, 1998; biggs et al., 2009) (figure 1). between 1975 and 1994 cultivated floating rice areas have reduced signficantly (up to 80%) due to the vietnamese doi moi policy, an export-oriented policy involving irrigation improvement based on rapid canal excavation to efficiently supply water in support of short term high yield rice intensification (karonen, 2008). nowadays much of these areas are given over to modern varieties which are grown inside dike compartments protected from flood water by high walls and required water, energy and irrigation systems. in an giang province only, around 67 ha of floating rice was grown in vinh phuoc and luong an tra communes of tri ton district in 2012, where short term high yield rice variety are not suitable because of the presence of strongly acid soils (nguyen et al., 2013). the reason for the rapid reduction in floating rice area was low yields and long growth period which encourage its replacement by short term high yield rice. recently, dikes were built for intensification of rice in the mekong delta to narrow channels for natural flood retention and reducing areas for floating rice (nguyen, 2014). figure 1: planted areas of floating rice in 1960s adapted from: brocheux, (1995) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 204 the growth of rice initially depends on rainwater, providing moisture until flooding occurs in midaugust. the flood water level usually rises gradually, and the rice plants follow the rising water through stem elongation. when the water level recedes in november (lunar calendar), the rice plants lay flat on the ground and the flower during may to december following lunar cycles in lunar calendar. according to a group of floating rice growers, each rice plant can produce around four tillerrs each with two or three panicles (personal communication with farmers in vinh phuoc commune, jan 2013). after harvesting floating rice in early january, farmers rotate one or two crops of upland crops such as cassava, chili, pumpkin, eggplant, leek, cucumber, maize or taro. some farmers rotate only one cassava crop, but other can grow one chili crop and egg plant. in contrast, the growth of short term high yield rice is about 100 or 110 days. farmers can grow up to three crops of rice a year. mono rice farming can be seen more than 30 years in some regions of the mekong delta. in an giang province, the period of rapid conversion from one crop floating rice to two crops of high yield rice occurred during 1990s, three crops of rice from 2000 up to present. in 1990, the land area for paddy was 325,000 ha but this area was 641,000 ha in 2013 because farmers shifted from one traditional rice crop to three crops of intensive rice a year. however, the mono intensive rice crops provide less profitability and diversity of income sources from small scale farmers. this paper will compare financial costs and benefits of some floating rice based farming systems in the mekong delta to argue for recovery of the floating rice-based farming systems will provide better income for farmers. 2. description of research sites 2.1. vinh phuoc and luong an tra communes – tri ton district of an giang province vinh phuoc commune has 5,437 ha of natural land in 2013. of which 4,669 ha (85.8%) are used for agriculture. the commune is located in the strongest acid soil areas of long xuyen-ha tien quadrangle of the mekong delta (figure 2). although the agricultural land is relatively larger than the average land size of the other communes in an giang province, most of the lands (66.9%) are occupied by people in other communes [xâm canh]. the total cultivated rice land per year was 11,200 ha because some farmers cultivate up to 2 to 3 crops of rice using intensive high dikes, making up a total rice 2 production of 57,000 tons a year. before 2000, floating rice was the crop mostly cultivated in this commune. however, it was replaced by short term high yield rice crops rapidly. in 2012, there were only 31.10 ha of floating rice with 10 farmers cultivating it. the average land size of this farmer group is 3.01 ha. some farmers grew more than 01 ha of the floating rice while the other farmers cultivated up to 05 ha of floating rice. the floating rice is grown from june to december [during the flood season] each year in this village. after harvesting the floating rice, farmers rotate cassava, leeks, pumpkins, or chili on the same land from january to may, then the floating rice is rotated on the same land in this village. similarly, there were 07 farmers growing floating rice in neighboring commune, luong an tra. the average land size is 4.5 ha. some farmers own up to 10 ha, while the smallest farm size is 3.0 ha. these farmers grew floating rice and rotated by cassava in all of their lands. 2.2. my an commune – cho moi district of an giang province agricultural activities are very diversified in my an commune. the commune has 1,286 ha of natural land which is located in the cho moi district, between the bassac and hau rivers (figure 2). there are 954 ha of agricultural land, but only 317 ha are used for rice cultivation, mainly three intensive rice crops a year using high dikes which were built in 2002. the commune is much 2 this information refers to short term high yield rice which does not include production of floating rice asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 205 diversified in agricultural activities by integrating cattle, and baby corn crops. in 2014, the commune has 3,778 cattle and nearly half of the areas are under upland crop cultivation. the my loi is one of six hamlets of the my an commune which has 702 households, but less than one third (202/702 households) own agricultural lands. over 200 households are landless whose livelihoods are relying on non-farm hired labor, handicrafts in the village and migration to binh duong city for work as laborers. the hamlet has 46.18 ha of upland crops and 69.81 ha of artificial bushes. some 46.18 ha of the agricultural lands in my loi commune are used for cultivating floating rice integrated with sweet corn, two baby corn crops and rearing cattle. it means that the natural flood events continue in this hamlet because the village dose not built high dikes. the largest land size is one ha for the households; most of them (202 households) own less than one ha of agricultural lands. farmers have diversified into cattle rearing in recent years. the number of cattle in the hamlet has increased significantly since 2003 by integrating with baby corn production. at the present, there are 400 cattle rearing in the hamlet. 2.3. tan long commune – thanh binh district of dong thap province tan long commune is located on the fertile soils nearby the bassac river, in thanh binh district of dong thap province (figure 2). in 2014, the commune had 4,107 households and 535 ha of rice lands, which were cultivated in three crops of winter-spring, summer-autumn and autumn-winter using high dikes. there are 362 ha of upland crops which are grown in winter –spring and summerautumn seasons. some 45 ha of agricultural lands are cultivated for maize, chili and mung bean on the floating rice-based lands. in 2014, 33.57 ha of floating rice (involving 52 households) were cultivated, while some of them did not grow it during the flood season (tan long people's committee, 2014). the average land size of the floating rice farmers is 0.6 ha per household (min 0.2, max 1.56 ha). floating rice farmers have continuously grown this crop for several decades. 2.4. my phu and thanh my tay communes – chau phu district of an giang province my phu and thanh my tay communes are located in chau phu district of an giang province (figure 2). before 1990, more than 25,000 ha of floating rice were cultivated in this district. during 1990s, the intensification of rice program has been introduced to replace by short term high yield rice. the district has 45,100 ha of natural land, comprising 39,774 ha of agricultural land. of which, 37,900 ha of land are used for intensive rice farming. the district has 12 communes and one town. thanh my tay has 3,565 ha, of which 3,165 ha are using for rice intensification. similarly, my phu commune has 3,646 ha of natural lands, but almost 3,027 ha of lands are using for rice intensification. more than 60% of the total rice lands are used for cultivating three crops of rice using high dikes, while the remaining land areas are growing two crops of rice a year with low dikes. since after 1990, rice has almost been a mono crop in this district. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 206 figure 2: research sites [floating rice areas] in the mekong river delta source: pham (2015) 3. research methods focus group discussion, in-depth interviews, household survey and field observations are the key techniques for this research. in each commune, we carried out from two to three focus groups discussions which includes from six to eight participants. all detailed financial costs and benefits of each farming activity were identified by group discussions. the production costs and benefits were quantified by local prices of the materials and outputs. for the net benefits, we used the farm gate to quantify the total benefit. in vinh phuoc and luong an tra communes, we carried out three focus group discussions with floating rice farmers, who grow cassava, chili and leeks separately. in my an commune, we carried out three focus groups discussions with the intensive short term high yield farmer group, and with the floating rice farmers who grow sweet corn, baby corns, and with the cattle rearing group. in tan long commune, we carried out two focus group discussions with floating rice farmer group who grow chili and rearing cattle. in thanh my tay and my phu commune, we conducted three focus group discussions with farmers who grow two rice crops a year, those who integrate maize, mung bean, and those who rear cattle. each focus group discussion included about eight participants. also we carried a household survey with intensive rice farming (two crops a year) in both my phu (16 samples) and thanh my tay (22 samples) communes of chau phu district. also we carried out in-depth interviews with key informants (five people) in each research site, who are knowledgeable about farming system, and the history of farming in the village, and who are used to cultivating floating rice in the past and current cultivating floating rice and intensive rice crops. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 207 4. results and discussions 4.1. seasonal calendar for farming systems in four study sites in the mekong delta traditionally, several upland crops have been cultivated in the same paddy fields after harvesting the floating rice crop. from 1986 to 1988 the cuu long rice research institute had an intensive research program for faming systems in chau phu district of an giang province, hon dat district of kien giang province, and co do district of hau giang province in the mekong delta. farmers grew several crops including sesame, soybean, mung bean, cucumbers, and pumpkin, etc., as part of the rice farming system (nguyen and dang, 1987). in the existing floating rice based farming systems, farmers rotate sticky corn, baby corn, chili, or cassava on the same land after harvesting the floating rice in december. some farmers then grow three crops of corn. others cultivate one chili crop and one short term leaf vegetables, or one cassava crop. comparing to high yield intensive rice crops, floating rice farmers are more diversified in their farming activities involving upland crops. also each family can rear up to 4 or 5 cattle using by-product from baby corn. the seasonal calendar of these crops can be seen in table 1. table 1: seasonal calendar of floating rice-based farming systems locations jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec dry months flood months vinh phuoc [tri ton district] leeks chilly + pumpkin floating rice cassava floating rice tan long [thanh binh district] chilli floating rice rearing cattle my an [cho moi district] sticky corn baby corns baby corns floating rice rearing cattle ---------------rice--------------------------rice----------------------------rice---------------- thanh my tay and my phu communes chau phu district --------------rice---------------------------|--------flood---------------------| rice--- 4.2. cost-benefit analysis of floating rice-based farming systems this section presents the comparison of costs and benefits of several typical farming systems with the traditional floating rice based farming systems in the mekong delta. 4.3. cost-benefit analysis of cultivating a floating rice crop in three locations although the yield of floating rice is quite low in vinh phuoc commune (200-250 kg/1000 m 2 ), the net benefit of the floating rice crop is vnd 3 1.2 -2.0 million/1000 m 2 . however the production cost is relatively low (vnd 630,000 /1000 m 2 ) which requires less capital investment compared to the system of two or three short term intensive rice crops produced in vietnam mekong delta. 3 one usd is equivalent to vnd 21,500 in january 2015 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 208 in my an and tan long communes 4 , the soil is more fertile due to annual deposited sediment, where floating rice farmers can earn a net benefit of vnd 3.0 million/1000 m 2 at the farm gate price of vnd 10,000 /kg because the yield is much better than in acid soil areas (300 kg/1000 m 2 ) (table 2). the total production cost of the floating rice crop is estimated at vnd 625,000 /1000 m 2 . here farmers tended to sell floating rice to local consumers in better-off social groups, who prefer to eat safe rice (no pesticide is applied to floating rice). the benefit cost ratio of the floating rice in my an is highest (3.93) because the yield is better than in tan long and vinh phuoc communes. the yield of floating rice is lowest in vinh phuoc due to the strongest acid sulphate soil and rat damage in the 2013 crop. table 2: cost-benefit analysis for floating rice crop in my an, tan long and vinh phuoc communes indicators my an commune cho moi district tan long commune thanh binh district vinh phuoc commune tri ton district total costs (vnd 1000 /1000 m 2 ) 670 596 630 yields (kg/1000 m 2 ) 300 240 187 farm gate price (vnd 1000/kg) 10 10 10 by-products sold (vnd1000/1000 m 2 ) 300 154 00 total benefits (vnd 1000 /1000 m 2 ) 3,300 2,554 1,875 net benefit (vnd 1000/1000 m 2 ) 2,630 1,957 1,245 bcr 3.93 3.28 1.98 source: focus group discussions (fgds) with farmers in tan long and my an communes in december 2014 and with farmers in vinh phuoc commune in march 2014. eight participants attended each fgd 4.4. economic analysis of upland crops on the floating rice-based lands several upland crops are also grown in the dry season in the same land unit such as cassava, leeks, egg plants, pumpkin and chilies, baby corn, sweet corn and crop production is integrated with cattle rearing in the study sites. cassava production in vinh phuoc commune is the most important cultivated upland crop in the dry season because this system requires less financial investment and is suitable for acid sulphate soil. the net financial benefit of cassava is vnd 3.8 million/1000 m 2 , according to the price at the farm gate in july 2013 (table 3). leek is a crop with high benefit, but it requires high investment (vnd 13.4 million/1000 m 2) and specialist knowledge, so few farmers grow leeks. the net benefit for leek is vnd 24.3 million/1,000 m 2 . chili is highly suitable for this soil in vinh phuoc commune, after floating rice has been harvested, as it brings a net benefit of vnd 16,500,000/1,000 m 2 (nguyen et al., 2013). chili shows the highest bcr (2.75) because the investment cost is lower than leek. the net benefit for pumpkin is vnd 4,850,000/1000m 2 , according to the farm gate price in march 2013. table 3: cost-benefit of the floating rice-based farming systems in vinh phuoc commune of tri ton district indicators floating rice cassava leeks chili total cost (vnd1000/1000m 2 ) 630 1,820 14,157 6,000 total benefit (vnd1000/1000m 2 ) 1,875 5,000 37,807 22,500 net benefit (vnd1000/1000m 2 ) 1,245 3,180 23,650 16,500 bcr 1.98 1.74 1.67 2.75 source: focus group discussions with three floating rice based farmer groups in vinh phuoc commune in january 2013 in thanh binh district, after harvesting floating rice in november (earlier than in tri ton), farmers rotate a profitable chili crop and leaf vegetables. some farmers use by-products of young corns for 4 the findings of this calculation is based on focus group discussion with 10 floating rice farmers in cho moi and 9 floating farmers in thanh binh district in december 2014 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 209 cattle rearing. the chili crop in tan long is perceived the most profitable (table 4). the total production cost of the chilly crop is at vnd 14.4 million, while the total benefit is ranging from vnd 8.5 to 28.8 million which is fluctuated by the yields of 1.8 to 4.0 tons/1000 m 2 . the net benefit ranges from vnd 6.0 million to 31.0 million, at farm gate price of vnd 15,000/kg. the common net benefit is vnd 14.4 million/1000m 2 . yield also varies from 1.3 to 3.0 tons/1000m 2 . if farmers rear an additional cow, they would earn a net of 17.5-40.2 vnd million/1000 m 2 . table 4: cost-benefit of the floating rice-based, chilli farming systems in tan long commune of thanh binh district indicators floating rice chili total cost (vnd1000/1000m 2 ) 598 14,407 total benefit (vnd1000/1000m 2 ) 2,924 28,845 net benefit (vnd1000/1000m 2 ) 2,326 14,437 bcr 3.89 1.00 source: fgd in tan long commune, 8 farmers participated in this fgd in december 2014. the lowest net benefit is vnd 6.0 million, while the highest net benefit is vnd 31.5 million on the other hand, farmers in cho moi district rotate one sweet corn crop followed by two baby corn crops and rearing cattle. the net benefit for the sweet corn is estimated at vnd 4.0 – 5.0 million/1000 m 2 depending the fluctuation of the market (table 5). with two baby corn crops, floating rice farmers can earn a net benefit of vnd 3.2 to 4.0 million/1000 m 2 depending on the yield/1000m 2 . the total net benefit for production systems of floating rice-sweet corn, and two baby corn crops ranges from 10.2 to vnd 12.0 million/1000 m 2 . if farmers rear cattle for selling meat using the by-product from baby corn (leaf, stems and bark), a net benefit per head of cattle aged 10-12 months is estimated at vnd 6.0 – 10.0 million/10-12 months. as a result, the total net benefit of the system can reach to vnd 16.2-22.0 /million/1000 m 2 /year. cattle show the lowest bcr because the investment cost is relatively high. the floating rice shows highest bcr because the cost of production is very low comparing its benefit. table 5: cost-benefit of the floating rice-based farming systems in my an commune of cho moi district indicators floating rice sweet corn baby corn 5 cattle* total cost (vnd1000/1000m 2 ) 670 2,275 2,965 22,467 total benefit (vnd1000/1000m 2 ) 3,300 7,500 4,550 30,000 net benefit (vnd1000/1000m 2 ) 2,630 5,225 1,585 7,532 bcr 3.93 2.30 0.53 0.25 *cost and benefit analysis is made for one cattle. most household rears at least 3 cattle 4.5. the economic analysis of intensive rice farming systemscomparing with the floating rice crop in contrast, the net benefit for the winter-spring and summer-autumn high yielding rice crop in vinh phuoc commune (acid soil) is 0.9 vnd and 0.0 million/1,000 m 2 respectively (nguyen et al., 2013). when growing two crops of rice per year, the total costs for the summer-autumn high yielding rice crop are relatively high, so less profit is made by farmers. floating rice-based farming systems in vinh phuoc commune has a relatively high benefit in comparison with intensively growing two short term crops of rice because the production costs are high and the benefit is low due to low price and yields. in chau phu district, for the first winter-spring high yielding rice crop, the total costs are estimated at vnd 2.2 million/1000m 2 (table 6). with the average yield of 800 kg/1000 m 2 , and the farm gate price at vnd 4,600 /kg in march 2014, the total benefit is estimated at vnd 3.6 million/1000 m 2 . 5 farmers can grow two baby corn crops continuously. each crop lasts for totally 55 days asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 210 after subtracting the costs, the net benefit is vnd 1.4 million/1000 m 2 for the winter-spring crop [short term high yield crop] which is less than the net benefit of the floating rice crop in vinh phuoc commune of tri ton district, my an commune of choi moi and tan long commune of thanh binh districts (vnd 1.4 million/1000 m 2 compared to vnd 1.5-3.0 million/1000 m 2 ). for the second summer-autumn rice crop, the total cost is vnd 2.5 million/1000 m 2 , while the total benefit is 2.5 vnd million/1000 m 2 due to low yield in the summer-autumn crop (600 kg/1000 m 2 ), and lower farm gate price (vnd 4,200 /kg of rice). table 6: costs-benefits of a two short term high yield rice crop systems in chau phu district of an giang province, 2014 indicators my phu – chau phu thanh my tay – chau phu winterspring summerautumn winterspring summerautumn total costs (vnd 1000/1000 m 2 ) 2,245 2,573 1,716 1,732 yields (kg/1000 m 2 ) 800 600 1,000 577 farm gate price (vnd/kg) 4,600 4,200 3,500 3,800 total return (vnd 1000 /1000 m 2 ) 3,680 2,520 3,500 2,192 net return (vnd 1000 /1000 m 2 ) 1,435 53 1,783 460 bcr 0.64 0.02 1.04 0.27 source: household survey conducted in my phu (22 samples) and thanh my tay (16 samples) communes, december 2014 table 7 shows if farmers shift from one short term rice crop in chau phu district to maize and mung bean or double maize crops a year, the net benefits range from vnd 11.0 to 21.0 million/1000 m 2 , with the bcr of 1.07 to 1.75. however, the number of farmers cultivating these crops is very small, just under five farmers in the two communes for each crop because the market is not attractive. table 7: costs – benefits of upland crops (maize, mung bean, and pumpkin) in chau phu, an giang, 2014 indicators maize mung bean pumpkin total costs (vnd 1000/1000 m 2 ) 5,993 4,360 4,560 total benefits (vnd 1000/1000 m 2 ) 16,500 4,900 7,700 net benefit (vnd 1000/1000 m 2 ) 10,507 540 3,140 b/c 1.75 0.12 0.69 source: focus group discussions with farmers in my phu and thanh my tay communes in december 2014. eight farmers involved in each fgd 4.6. cost-benefit analysis of intensive short-term rice farming systems [three crops of rice a year] data from a focus group discussion with 8 key farmers in my an commune of cho moi district where high dikes were completely installed in 2004 for rice intensification, shows that the total cost of the first winter-spring [dong xuan] crop is estimated at vnd 2.3 million/1000 m 2 , while the benefit is only 3.2 vnd million/1000 m 2 , at the farm gate price of vnd 5,300 /kg and the yield of 612 kg/1000 m 2 . the net benefit is only vnd 931,100 /1000 m 2 , with a bcr of 0.39 (table 9). the net benefit of the summer autumn crop [he thu] is negative (vnd-508,800 /1000 m 2 ) because the yield is low (441 kg/1000 m 2 ), and the low farm gate price of (vnd 4,700 /kg). the total cost of the summer-autumn crop is relatively higher than the winter-spring crop (vnd 2.5 million/1000 m 2 ) (table 9). the reason for the higher cost is additional use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and the lowest yield for the second crop. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 211 the autumn-winter crop [thu–dong] is grown during the flood season from august to november each year). the third crop was introduced after the high dikes were installed in 2004. the net return of the third crop is reported as positive, but the figure is relative small (vnd 218,500 /1000 m 2 ), as the yield is low (500kg/1000 m 2 ), and the farm gate price is much better than the summer-autumn crop (vnd 5,300 /kg) while the total cost is a less than that of the winter-spring’s crop (vnd 2.4 million /1000 m 2 ) (table 8). table 8: cost and benefit analysis of intensive rice farming systems in cho moi district indicators winter-spring crop 6 summerautumn crop 7 autumn-winter crop 8 yields (kg/1000 m 2 ) 612 441 500 farm gate price (vnd/kg) 5,300 4,700 5,300 total cost (vnd 1000/1000 m 2 ) 2,312 2,581 2,431 total benefits (vnd 1000/1000 m 2 ) 3,243 2,072 2,650 net benefit (vnd 1000 /1000 m 2 ) 931 -508 218 bcr 0.39 -0.19 0.08 source: fgds with 8 farmers in cho moi district, my an commune 4.7. cost-benefit comparison of floating rice-based and intensive rice farming systems if the comparison between floating rice-based farming systems is made with the intensive three crops of rice per year, it the data show that the net benefit from three crops per year is relatively lower. if farmers grow three crops of rice in chau phu district, the net benefit is vnd 4.8 million/1000m 2 /year, while the bcr is 0.71 (table 9). if farmers cultivate only two short term rice crops a year, the net return is vnd 2.2 million/1000 m2/year. however, if farmers grow two rice crops and one sesbania sesban [bông điên điển] crop or one chili crop in chau phu district, the total net return are vnd 5.6 and 6.7 million/1000 m 2 respectively, with the bcr 0.8 and 0.5. however, if farmers grow only two rice crops a year, the net returns are the lowest (from vnd 1.3 to 2.2 million/1000 m2, with the lowest bcr of 0.29 and 0.56 respectively) (table 9). if farmers grow two short term rice crops and rear additional cattle, the bcr of the farming system reduces as the bcr for cattle is very low (table 9). table 9: net benefit and bcr for intensive rice farming in chau phu district locations systems net benefit (vnd1000/1000 m 2 ) b/c chau phu district-an giang 9 winter-spring rice summer – autumn rice autumn -winter rice 4,827 0.71 winter –spring rice summer-autumn rice 2,243 0.65 winter-spring rice summer –autumn rice – one cattle* 10,701 0.35 6 this is called the first crop 7 this is called the second crop 8 this is called the third crop 9 secondary data analysis was collected from chau phu sub department of agriculture and rural development in 2013 crops *cost-benefit analysis was carried out at the unit of one cattle asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 212 thanh my tay-chau phu district chili – 1 cattle* 11,761 0.31 chili – sesbania sesban 6,716 0.50 winter –spring rice summer-autumn rice sesbania sesban 5,656 0.81 my phu-chau phu district winter –spring rice summer-autumn rice 1,382 0.29 winter –spring rice summer-autumn rice 1 cattle* 8,015 0.28 maize – mung bean 11,047 1.07 mung bean – pumpkin – autumn-winter rice 3,627 0.32 maize – maize 21,014 1.75 note: synthesis from partial analysis more interestingly, if farmers grow floating rice plus cassava or leeks in vinh phuoc commune or chili or sweet corn and baby corn crops in my an commune, the bcr is improved greatly (table 11). the system of floating rice rotated by leeks in vinh phuoc commune shows the greatest net benefit (vnd 24.8 million/1000m 2 , the bcr of 1.68, followed by floating rice rotated by chili (net benefits of vnd 16.7 to 17.7 million/1000m 2 , with the bcr of 1.1 to 2.6). the system of floating rice – cassava in vinh phuoc commune shows the second highest the bcr (1.81), but the net return is vnd 4.4 million/1000 m 2 , due to smaller investments and smaller benefits. the system of floating rice-sweet corn baby corn baby corn shows a relatively high the bcr of 1.2 and high net benefit of 11.0 vnd million/1000 m 2 . table 10: net benefit and bcr for intensive rice farming in tri ton, cho moi and thanh binh districts locations systems net benefit (vnd1000/1000 m 2 ) b/c vinh phuoctri ton district one floating rice – cassava 4,425 1.81 one floating rice – leeks 24,895 1.68 one floating rice chili 17,745 2.68 tan longthanh binh district one floating rice chili 16,763 1.12 my an-cho moi district floating rice – green sticky corn – bay corn – baby corn – 1 cattle* 18,557 0.48 floating rice – green sticky corn – bay corn – baby corn 11,025 1.24 source: focus group discussions (fgd) with farmers vinh phuoc commune of tri ton district, my an commune of cho moi district, and tan long commune of thanh binh district in december 2014. eight participants involved in each fgd 5. conclusions floating rice based farming systems declined after the introduction of high yielding rice varieties and use of high dike systems in the mekong delta. floating rice produces low yields, but provides good opportunities for diversifying into profitable upland crops when used in combination with rearing cattle. financial benefits of several combinations of floating rice-based farming systems can provide greater financial benefits than other intensive high yielding rice crops in the mekong delta because intensive rice crops involve high production costs, but provide less income for farmers. farmers can even diversify their cropping systems in the same floating rice-based land area for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 213 many crops and cattle year round. in particular, there are opportunities for expanding the floating rice based systems in deeply flooded areas where construction of dikes is not feasible. secondly, the floating rice is very suitable for acid soils so this system is potential for strongest flooded acid soils in the plains of reeds and long xuyen quadrangle. in the islands between the branches of the mekong river, it is possible to develop this farming system to adapt to floods, while maximizing the benefits from rice straw for feeding animals and additional upland crops. there is a sign that farmers in luong an tra commune of tri ton district, my phu commune of chau phu district and hong ngu town of dong thap province, are likely to return to floating rice–based farming systems in 2014 in the mekong delta. it is important to maintain and expand this area for sustainable agriculture. finally, a further advantage of this floating rice-based farming system is that it presents an alternative option that obviates the need to build dikes in the mekong delta. acknowledgement i would like to thank sfrt (seed fund for research and training) under searca to offer this research. i also would like to thank the research centre for rural development to support a small grant to evaluate the feasibility of floating rice recovery in chau phu district. the results of this research are totally using information collected during 2014 and early 2015 from both research projects. i like to give special thanks to dr kim alexander, adjunct senior research fellow james cook university, professor eric creswell, the visiting fellow from the australian national university for initial english editing of the paper and ms julie watson, academic skills advisor at anu fenner school of environment and society. i would like to thank my colleagues, mr le thanh phong, mr truong ngoc thuy, mr dang minh man, and ms tran thi thuan at research centre for rural development of an giang university for data collection and input. i give special thanks to vinh phuoc people’s committee, my an people’s committee and tan long people’s committee, my phu and thanh my tay people’s committee for great support. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references biggs, d. (2003). problematic progress: reading environmental and social change in the mekong delta. journal of southeast asian studies, 34, 77-96. biggs, d., miller, f., chu, t. h., & molle, f. (2009). the delta machine: water management in the vietnamese mekong delta in historical and contemporary perspectives. in: molle, f., foran, t., & karonen, m. (eds.) contested waterscapes in the mekong region. london: earthscan. brocheux, p. (1995). the mekong delta: ecology, economy and revolution usa. madison wi: center for southeast asian studies, university of wisconsin-madison. catling, d. (1992). rice in deep water, london. the macmillan press ltd. karonen, m. (2008). mekong delta at the crossroads: more control or adaptation. ambio, 37, 205212. kende, h., knaap, e. v. d., & cho, h. t. (1998). deepwater rice: a model plant to study stem elongation. plant physiol, 118, 1105-1110. nguyễn, h. c. (1994). former and present cropping patterns in the mekong delta. southeast asian studies, 31, 345-384. nguyen, m. c., & dang, k. s. (1987). hệ thống canh tác lúa nổi đồng bằng sông cửu long (farming systesm of floating rice in the mekong delta). ho chi minh, ho chi minh city. nguyen, v. k. (2014). an economic evaluation of flood dike construction in the mekong delta: cost-benefit analysis of flood protection dike construction in an giang province. lamber academic publishing. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 214 nguyen, v. k., pham, x. p., huynh, n. d., pham, h. t. v., dang, t. t. q., tran, v. h., & nguyen, v. t. (2013). technical report for giz on assessment of current status of conservation and cultivation of floating rice – upland vegetables systems in vinh phuoc commune, tri ton district of an giang province, vietnam. long xuyen: research centre for rural development an giang university. pham, d. t. (2015). map of research sites in the mekong delta. long xuyen: an giang university. tan long people's committee (2014). annual report of socio-economic development of the commune in 2014. võ, t. x., & matsui, s. (eds.) (1998). development of farming systems in the mekong delta of vietnam. ho chi minh city: ho chi minh city publishing house. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 215 appendixes 1: cost-benefit analysis of floating rice crop in my an commune of cho moi district indicators unit quantity price total costs land preparation vnd/1000 m2 1 180,000 180,000 seeds kg/1000 m2 10 10,000 100,000 weeding vnd/1000 m2 1 40,000 40,000 harvesting (sickle) vnd/1000 m2 1 200,000 200,000 fertilizer vnd/1000 m2 5 1,000 5,000 threshing vnd/1000 m2 1 100,000 100,000 total costs 625,000 yield 1 300 10,000 3,000,000 yield 2 320 10,000 3,200,000 yield 3 340 10,000 3,400,000 net benefit 1 2,375,000 net benefit 2 2,575,000 net benefit 3 2,775,000 note: fgds with 8 farmers in my an commune of cho moi district, in january 2015 2: cost-benefit analysis for one baby corn crop in my an commune of cho moi district indicators unit quantity price (vnd/1000m 2 ) total cost (vnd/1000m 2 ) land preparation time 1 180,000 180,000 seeds kg 2 150,000 300,000 fertilizer bag (50kg) 1 420,000 420,000 dap kg 5 ure kg 20 npk kg 25 irrigation days of labor 10 100,000 1,000,000 harvesting days of labor 10 100,000 1,000,000 pesticides bottle 1 25,000 25,000 total costs 2,925,000 yield 1 (kg/1000m2) 270.00 15,000 4,050,000 yield 2 280.00 15,000 4,200,000 yield 3 290.00 15,000 4,350,000 yield 4 300.00 15,000 4,500,000 by-product 500,000 total benefit 1 4,550,000 total benefit 2 4,700,000 total benefit 3 4,850,000 total benefit 4 5,000,000 net benefit 1 1,625,000 net benefit 2 1,775,000 net benefit 3 1,925,000 net benefit 4 2,075,000 note: fgds with 8 farmers in my an commune of cho moi district, in january 2015 3: cost-benefit analysis for sweet corn in my an commune indicators unit quantity price (vnd) total cost (vnd/1000m 2 ) land preparation days of labor 5 100,000 rice straw cleaning home labor rice straw covering home herbicides bottle 1 80,000 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 216 seedling hrs 3 15,000 ure vnd/bag (50kg) 35 420,000 294,000 dap vnd/bag (50kg) 5 870,000 87,000 npk vnd/bag (50kg) 35 670,000 469,000 electricity kw 20 1,600 irrigation times/crop 7-8 hiring labor days/1000 m2 7 100,000 700,000 total costs 1,746,600 yields note: fgds with 8 farmers in my an commune of cho moi district, in january 2015 4: cost-benefit analysis for three intensive rice crops in my an commune of cho moi indicators winterspring summerautumn autumnwinter land preparation (vnd/1000 m2) 260,000 260,000 260,000 seeds (vnd/1000 m2) 132,500 132,500 117,500 sowing rice (vnd/1000 m2) 30,000 30,000 30,000 re transplanting (vnd/1000 m2) 100,000 100,000 100,000 fertilizer (vnd/1000 m2) 600,000 700,000 600,000 agricultural chemicals (vnd/1000 m2) 650,000 750,000 750,000 fertilizer labouring (vnd/1000 m2) 80,000 80,000 80,000 pesticide spraying (vnd/1000 m2) 70,000 84,000 84,000 harvesting (vnd/1000 m2) 170,000 240,000 200,000 transport (vnd/1000 m2) 60,000 45,000 50,000 irrigation electric pump (vnd/1000 m2) 160,000 160,000 160,000 total cost (vnd/1000 m2) 2,312,500 2,581,500 2,431,500 yields (kg/1000 m2) 612 441 500 farm gate price 5,300 4,700 5,300 total net benefits 3,243,600 2,072,700 2,650,000 net benefits 931,100 508,800 218,500 note: fgds with 8 farmers in my an commune of cho moi district, in january 2015 5: cost-benefit analysis of two intensive rice crops a year in chau phu district indicators my phu commune thanh my tay cost -benefit analysis of winter-spring crop w-s s-a w-s s-a land preparation (vnd/1000 m2/crop) 158,955 176,682 113,056 163,188 seeds (vnd/1000m2/crop) 211,636 214,705 224,000 234,219 seeds used (kg/1000 m2) 20 20 24 24 hiring labours (vnd/1000 m2/crop) 241,118 243,323 231,438 243,500 total fertilizer and pesticides costs (vnd/1000 m2/crop) 1,176,636 1,269,832 1,009,438 1,099,188 irrigation costs (vnd/1000 m2/crop) 193,955 193,955 141,125 136,125 harvesting costs (vnd/1000 m2/crop) 197,273 213,636 202,625 197,563 transportation costs (vnd/1000 m2/crop) 76,259 63,573 4,813 4,813 total cost (vnd/1000 m2/crop) 2,255,832 2,375,705 1,926,494 2,078,594 yields (kg/1000 m2/crop) 868 679 854 634 farm gate price (vnd/kg) 4,692 4,633 4,356 4,372 total benefits (vnd/1000 m2/crop) 4,059,886 3,150,341 3,710,856 2,778,594 net benefits (vnd/1000 m2/crop) 1,804,055 774,636 1,784,363 700,000 note: n=16, thanh my tay communechau phu district note: n=22, my phu communechau phu district source: household survey in my phu and thanh my tay communes of chau phu district, in january 2015 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(9)2015: 202-217 217 6: cost-benefit of chilli crop in tan long commune of thanh binh district indicators unit quantity price total costs (vnd/1000m 2 ) land preparation time/1000m 2 1 78,802 78,802 pesticide spray bottle/1000m 2 2 78,802 78,802 ditch arrangement time/1000m 2 1 home labour seeds kg/1000m 2 472,813 seed nursery vnd/1000m 2 189,125 seedling vnd/1000m 2 425,532 fertilizer and pesticides vnd/1000m 2 5,516,154 labour home labour irrigation vnd/1000m 2 118,203 harvesting vnd/1000m 2 7,880,221 total cost vnd/1000m 2 14,759,653 yield 1 kg/1000m 2 1,389 yield 2 kg/1000m 2 1,929 yield 3 kg/1000m 2 3,086 price vnd/1000m 2 15,000 total benefit 1 vnd/1000m 2 20,833,333 total benefit 2 vnd/1000m 2 28,935,185 total benefit 3 vnd/1000m 2 46,296,296 net benefit 1 vnd/1000m 2 6,073,680 net benefit 2 vnd/1000m 2 14,175,532 net benefit 3 vnd/1000m 2 31,536,643 note: fgds with eight participants in tan long commune in january 2015 7: cost-benefit of floating rice in tan long commune of cho moi district indicators (vnd/1000m2) land preparation 92,592.59 seeds 154,320.99 herbicide 15,432.10 nutritional chemical 27,006.17 harvesting 231,481.48 threshing 77,160.49 total cost 597,993.83 yield 1 240.00 yield 2 312.00 yield 3 360.00 farm gate price (vnd/kg) 10,000.00 total cost (vnd/1000 m2) 775,000.00 rice leaf sold-by product 100,000.00 rice straw sold-by product 100,000.00 total benefits 1 1,825,000.00 total benefits 2 2,545,000.00 total benefits 3 3,025,000.00 note: fgd with 8 participants in tan long commune of thanh binh district, in january 2015 8: cost-benefits for rearing one cattle in a 12 month cycle in thanh my tay and my phu communes – chau phu district, an giang province, december 2014 indicators my phu – chau phu thanh my tay-chau phu total costs (vnd 1000/1000 m2) 23,366* 27,542* unit of analysis 1 1 total benefits (vnd 1000/1000 m2) 30,000 36,000 net benefit (vnd 1000/1000 m2) 6,633 8,457 b/c 0.28 0.31 source: focus group discussions with farmers in my phu and thanh my tay communes in december 2014. eight farmers involved in each fgd effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 951 mixture experiments and their application in agricultural research irum raza and m. asif masood social sciences research institute, national agriculture research centre, islamabad, pakistan rashid mahmood honey bee research institute, national agriculture research centre, islamabad, pakistan abstract the present study was designed to show the applicability of mixture designs in agricultural research system and to fit an appropriate mixture regression model making response variables as functions of the proportions of the mixture components. data on four components namely neem oil, garlic oil, clove oil and tobacco extract (ml) were collected from field experiment conducted by honeybee research institute, narc. the main goal of the experiment was to check whether blending two components have any synergistic effect on honey yield. the results of the mixture regression showed that the positive interaction coefficients of blending components neem oil*garlic oil (1.10) and neem oil*tobacco extract (6.73) were smaller than their individual coefficients which indicated that combining these components will not have significant impact on honey yield. negative interaction coefficients of neem oil*clove oil (5.11) and garlic oil*clove oil (-15.86) signaled no significance meaning that they were antagonistic towards one another and will not contribute in increasing honey yield. the positive interaction coefficient of the blending component clove oil*tobacco extract (16.99) shows synergistic effect of these components on honey yield implying that honey yield can increase when clove oil and tobacco extract are blended. keywords: mixture design, mixture regression model, components, honey yield introduction and background 1 in mixture experiments a product is formulated by blending proportions of different components and ingredients together for instance if we wish to obtain an optimal taste of a pancake then the components of interest might be the proportions of flour, milk, eggs, oil and baking powder in a blend. scheffe (1958) was the first to introduce the concept of corresponding author’s name: irum raza email address: irumraza83@gmail.com mixture experiments and their analysis. piepel and cornell (1994) have discussed the planning of a mixture experiment which involves defining objective of the experiment, selecting the mixture components, identifying constraints on the mixture experiments and the response variable to be measured, proposing a mathematical model for modelling the response data and choosing an appropriate experimental design to fit the proposed model. various examples of mixture experiments and their applications in agriculture can be asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:irumraza83@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 951-959 952 found in literature that includes yield measurement of a crop due to applications of various mixtures of fertilizers or pesticides. batra et al. (1999) have used mixture experiments in the analysis of agricultural experiments with the application of fixed amount of fertilizer to different crop growth stages. in animal husbandry feeding trials are useful to study the response on milk yield. mixture experiments are also pertinent to use in the field of food sciences for the evaluation of the products in terms of taste, flavor, aroma etc. deka et al. (2001) applied mixture methodology for quality evaluation of mixed fruit juice/pulp ready to serve beverages. begon et al. (1990) and vandermeer (1989) have talked about the use of crop mixtures for competition studies in plant ecology. lapointre et al. (2008) stated that mixure designs and their applications are useful for insect rearing programs where diet optimization is desired for researcher selected ceiteria. peace (1993) has discussed about choosing a design and experiments in the book taguchi methods. spitters (1983) stated that yield of grain per unit area is an essential measure of mixture performance in such experiments although it represents only a part of total plant biomass and may not fully reflect the result of competition between species in mixture cornell (2002) and sas (2003) have discussed the analysis and modeling of mixture experiments. cornell (1990), montgomery and voth (1994), meyers and montgomery (2002) and john (1984) have worked a lot on the design and analyses of mixture experiments. an experiment was conducted to study the effect of nitrogen applied in splits at different crop growth stages on yield of paddy crop at rice research station, behrampur (orissa) in 1971. keeping in view the importance of mixture design and mixture experiments, a study was planned to show the applicability of mixture design in different fields of agriculture and to fit an appropriate mixture regression model making response variables as functions of the proportions of the mixture components. methodology data on four components namely neem oil (ml), garlic oil (ml), clove oil(ml) and tobacco extract (ml) individually and in combinations such as (neem oil + garlic oil, neem oil + clove oil, neem oil+ tobacco extract, garlic+ clove, garlic+ tobacco, clove+ tobacco) with different percentage proportions 0, 0.3,0.5,0.7, 1 were collected from field experiment conducted by honeybee research institute, narc. in a mixture experiment four components namely neem oil, garlic oil, clove oil and tobacco extract were blended and applied to the bee hives in order to determine increase in honey yield. custom mixture design approach in minitab was used to create a design. table 1 shows these components when mixed together made a total of six combinations as (neem oil + garlic oil, neem oil + clove oil, neem oil + tobacco extract, garlic + clove, garlic + tobacco, clove+ tobacco) with different percentages such as (0.70, 0.30), (0.50, 0.50) and (0.30,0.70) repeated respectively for each blend. the sum for each run of the mixture is equal to one and the component values are interpreted as proportions (cornell 2002). design points in runs 1 to 4 are referred to pure blends comprising only one component mixture. runs 5 to 66 are concerned to be binary blends belonging to the mixture of two components (table 1). simplex design plots are useful for visualizing the mixture design space or a slice of the design space for more than three components. a matrix asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 951-959 953 plot displaying four simplex design plots in a single page layout was created using graph options in minitab software after analyzing data from mixture experiment. fig 1 shows a matrix of simplex design plots in proportions. each plot shows respectively a three components triangle keeping the effect of the fourth component as constant. the vertices or the corners of the triangle, denoted by 1 represent pure blends consisting of only a particular component and the rest of the components set to ‘0’ as in runs 1 to 4. ‘2’ indicates a binary blend consisting of two components as in runs 5 to 66. table 1: four components (neem oil, garlic oil, clove oil, tobacco extract) custom mixture design with 0, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 1 proportion run point type blend type neem garlic clove tobacco 1 vertex pure 1 0 0 0 2 vertex pure 1 0 0 0 3 vertex pure 1 0 0 0 4 vertex pure 0 1 0 0 5 vertex pure 0 1 0 0 6 vertex pure 0 1 0 0 7 vertex pure 0 0 1 0 8 vertex pure 0 0 1 0 9 vertex pure 0 0 1 0 10 vertex pure 0 0 0 1 11 vertex pure 0 0 0 1 12 vertex pure 0 0 0 1 13 edge centroid binary 0.7 0.3 0 0 14 edge centroid binary 0.7 0.3 0 0 15 edge centroid binary 0.7 0.3 0 0 16 edge centroid binary 0.5 0.5 0 0 17 edge centroid binary 0.5 0.5 0 0 18 edge centroid binary 0.5 0.5 0 0 19 edge centroid binary 0.3 0.7 0 0 20 edge centroid binary 0.3 0.7 0 0 21 edge centroid binary 0.3 0.7 0 0 22 edge centroid binary 0.7 0 0 0.3 23 edge centroid binary 0.7 0 0 0.3 24 edge centroid binary 0.7 0 0 0.3 25 edge centroid binary 0.5 0 0 0.5 26 edge centroid binary 0.5 0 0 0.5 27 edge centroid binary 0.5 0 0 0.5 28 edge centroid binary 0.3 0 0 0.7 29 edge centroid binary 0.3 0 0 0.7 30 edge centroid binary 0.3 0 0 0.7 31 edge centroid binary 0.7 0 0.3 0 32 edge centroid binary 0.7 0 0.3 0 33 edge centroid binary 0.7 0 0.3 0 34 edge centroid binary 0.5 0 0.5 0 35 edge centroid binary 0.5 0 0.5 0 36 edge centroid binary 0.5 0 0.5 0 37 edge centroid binary 0.3 0 0.7 0 38 edge centroid binary 0.3 0 0.7 0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 951-959 954 39 edge centroid binary 0.3 0 0.7 0 40 edge centroid binary 0 0.7 0.3 0 41 edge centroid binary 0 0.7 0.3 0 42 edge centroid binary 0 0.7 0.3 0 43 edge centroid binary 0 0.5 0.5 0 44 edge centroid binary 0 0.5 0.5 0 45 edge centroid binary 0 0.5 0.5 0 46 edge centroid binary 0 0.3 0.7 0 47 edge centroid binary 0 0.3 0.7 0 48 edge centroid binary 0 0.3 0.7 0 49 edge centroid binary 0 0.7 0 0.3 50 edge centroid binary 0 0.7 0 0.3 51 edge centroid binary 0 0.7 0 0.3 52 edge centroid binary 0 0.5 0 0.5 53 edge centroid binary 0 0.5 0 0.5 54 edge centroid binary 0 0.5 0 0.5 55 edge centroid binary 0 0.3 0 0.7 56 edge centroid binary 0 0.3 0 0.7 57 edge centroid binary 0 0.3 0 0.7 58 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.7 0.3 59 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.7 0.3 60 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.7 0.3 61 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.5 0.5 62 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.5 0.5 63 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.5 0.5 64 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.3 0.7 65 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.3 0.7 66 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.3 0.7 neem 0 1 garlic 1 0 clove 1 0 neem 0 1 garlic 1 0 tobacco 1 0 neem 0 1 clove 1 0 tobacco 1 0 gar lic 0 1 clove 1 0 tobacco 1 0 neem 0 garlic 0 clove 0 tobacco 0 hold values 222 2 2 2 2 2 2 11 1 222 2 2 2 2 2 2 11 1 222 2 2 2 2 2 2 11 1 222 2 2 2 2 2 2 11 1 simplex design plots in proportions figure 1: a matrix of simplex design plots in proportions asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 951-959 955 neem 0 1 garlic 1 0 clove 1 0 neem 0 1 garlic 1 0 tobacco 1 0 neem 0 1 clove 1 0 tobacco 1 0 garlic 0 1 clove 1 0 tobacco 1 0 neem 0 garlic 0 clove 0 tobacco 0 hold values > – – – – < 12.0 12.0 13.5 13.5 15.0 15.0 16.5 16.5 18.0 18.0 yield matrix of mixture contour plots for yield (component proportions) figure 2: matrix of mixture contour plots for yield fig 2 shows a matrix of four contour plots for honey yield versus different combinations of the four components (neem oil, garlic oil, clove oil and tobacco extract). the contour lines help define the shaded regions more sharply. in this figure, the third triangle shows darker regions indicating higher yield-values. these higher yield-values are the result of the synergistic effect of the components clove oil and tobacco extract. a statistical technique called mixture regression was used to analyze and fit multiple regressions to data collected from the experiment. analysis and modeling of mixture experiments have been discussed by cornell (2002) and sas (2003). table 2 shows response (honey yield) data from applications of 4 components ( neem oil, garlic oil, clove oil, tobacco extract) in a mixture experiment. design of experiments and analyze mixture design options were selected from the stat menu of minitab software. four columns namely neem oil, garlic oil, clove oil and tobacco extract and a response column “honey yield “were selected for analysis. table 2: response (honey yield) data from applications of 4 components (neem oil, garlic oil, clove oil, tobacco extract) in a mixture experiment run point type blend type neem garlic clove tobacco yield kg 1 vertex pure 1 0 0 0 12 2 vertex pure 1 0 0 0 13 3 vertex pure 1 0 0 0 11.9 4 vertex pure 0 1 0 0 14.5 5 vertex pure 0 1 0 0 15 6 vertex pure 0 1 0 0 15 7 vertex pure 0 0 1 0 16.5 8 vertex pure 0 0 1 0 17 9 vertex pure 0 0 1 0 16.1 10 vertex pure 0 0 0 1 14 11 vertex pure 0 0 0 1 15 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 951-959 956 12 vertex pure 0 0 0 1 14.7 13 edge centroid binary 0.7 0.3 0 0 12 14 edge centroid binary 0.7 0.3 0 0 14 15 edge centroid binary 0.7 0.3 0 0 12 16 edge centroid binary 0.5 0.5 0 0 14.7 17 edge centroid binary 0.5 0.5 0 0 16 18 edge centroid binary 0.5 0.5 0 0 15 19 edge centroid binary 0.3 0.7 0 0 13 20 edge centroid binary 0.3 0.7 0 0 14 21 edge centroid binary 0.3 0.7 0 0 11 22 edge centroid binary 0.7 0 0 0.3 12 23 edge centroid binary 0.7 0 0 0.3 12 24 edge centroid binary 0.7 0 0 0.3 14.7 25 edge centroid binary 0.5 0 0 0.5 18 26 edge centroid binary 0.5 0 0 0.5 18 27 edge centroid binary 0.5 0 0 0.5 17.4 28 edge centroid binary 0.3 0 0 0.7 11 29 edge centroid binary 0.3 0 0 0.7 12 30 edge centroid binary 0.3 0 0 0.7 11 31 edge centroid binary 0.7 0 0.3 0 12 32 edge centroid binary 0.7 0 0.3 0 11 33 edge centroid binary 0.7 0 0.3 0 12 34 edge centroid binary 0.5 0 0.5 0 14.4 35 edge centroid binary 0.5 0 0.5 0 16 36 edge centroid binary 0.5 0 0.5 0 15 37 edge centroid binary 0.3 0 0.7 0 13 38 edge centroid binary 0.3 0 0.7 0 12 39 edge centroid binary 0.3 0 0.7 0 12 40 edge centroid binary 0 0.7 0.3 0 11 41 edge centroid binary 0 0.7 0.3 0 12 42 edge centroid binary 0 0.7 0.3 0 11 43 edge centroid binary 0 0.5 0.5 0 12.6 44 edge centroid binary 0 0.5 0.5 0 13 45 edge centroid binary 0 0.5 0.5 0 12 46 edge centroid binary 0 0.3 0.7 0 12 47 edge centroid binary 0 0.3 0.7 0 11 48 edge centroid binary 0 0.3 0.7 0 11 49 edge centroid binary 0 0.7 0 0.3 11 50 edge centroid binary 0 0.7 0 0.3 11 51 edge centroid binary 0 0.7 0 0.3 11 52 edge centroid binary 0 0.5 0 0.5 12 53 edge centroid binary 0 0.5 0 0.5 12 54 edge centroid binary 0 0.5 0 0.5 13 55 edge centroid binary 0 0.3 0 0.7 11 56 edge centroid binary 0 0.3 0 0.7 10.5 57 edge centroid binary 0 0.3 0 0.7 10.5 58 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.7 0.3 18 59 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.7 0.3 19.5 60 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.7 0.3 20.5 61 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.5 0.5 21 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 951-959 957 62 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.5 0.5 20.5 63 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.5 0.5 20 64 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.3 0.7 15 65 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.3 0.7 14 66 edge centroid binary 0 0 0.3 0.7 17 results and discussion regression for mixtures: yield (kg) versus neem oil, garlic oil, clove oil and tobacco extract table 3 shows estimated regression coefficients and table 4 depicts analysis of variance for honey yield (kg) in component proportions. the parameter estimate for clove oil is greater than neem oil, garlic oil and tobacco extract (table 3), it can be concluded that clove oil will be the most effective single component in increasing honey yield. the positive interaction coefficients of blending components neem oil * garlic oil (1.10) and neem oil *tobacco extract (6.73) are smaller than their individual coefficients which indicates that combining these components will not have significant impact on honey yield. negative interaction coefficients of neem oil *clove oil (-5.11) and garlic oil *clove oil (-15.86) indicate no significance and antagonism towards one another implying that these components when blended together will not augment honey yield. the positive interaction coefficient of the blending component clove oil*tobacco extract (16.99) shows synergistic effect of these components on honey yield implying that honey yield can increase when clove oil and tobacco extract are blended. traditionally different statistical techniques such as descriptive statistics, analysis of variance etc have been used for the quality evaluation of honey. iftikhar et al. (2011) used analysis of variance technique for the comparison and quality of different samples of honey from different areas of pakistan. lazarova et al. (2010) made use of descriptive statistics for studying botanical origin and inorganic content of bee honey in northeast bulgaria. however less attention has been paid on the use of mixture design for the evaluation of honey. literature shows the applicability of mixture design and experiments in different fields of agriculture. an example from minitab software version 15.1 (2006) shows an application of mixture design which was used to determine how the proportions of three ingredients in an herbal blend household deodorizer affect the acceptance of the product based on scent. the three components were neroli oil, rose oil, and tangerine oil. the results of the mixture regression implied that the two blend mixture of the components neroli oil and tangerine oil was synergistic or complimentary with each other having the highest acceptance level. the importance of mixture design for the quality improvement of honey has been highlighted by cano et al. (2006). an example from food science and technology states the application of mixture design for optimization of fruit punch containing (lemon, orange and mango) (kumar et al., 2010). regression in the analysis of variance (table 4) tests whether the terms in the model ie the four components alone and their combinations have any effect on the response variable (honey yield). the regression model is significant at p ≤ 0.01 which means that at least one of the terms in the regression equation makes a significant impact on the response variable. regression is broken into different orders of terms in the model, linear and quadratic. the p values for all effects are less than 0.05. there are significant linear and quadratic effects for components. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 951-959 958 table 3: estimated regression coefficients for yield (kg)(component proportions) r-sq = 64.97% rsq(pred) = 52.93% r-sq(adj) = 59.34% table 4: analysis of variance for honey yield (kg) (component proportions) source df adj ss adj ms f p regression 9 328.69 36.5216 11.54 0.000 linear 3 35.69 11.8951 3.76 0.016 quadratic 6 229.52 38.2529 12.09 0.000 residual error 56 177.19 3.1641 lack-of-fit 12 147.68 12.3066 18.35 0.000 pure error 44 29.51 0.6708 total 65 conclusion and recommendation mixture regression technique has proven to be functional in finding the synergistic effect of the components clove oil and tobacco extract on honey yield. this implies that honey yield can rise by blending these two components. mixture experiments and their analysis are applicable to a wide range of agricultural field experiments such as split application of fertilizers, intercropping experiments where the interest of the experimenter is to find the best crop mixture, feeding trials in animal nutritional experiments etc. references batra p. k., prasad r., gupta v. k. and khanduri o. p. (1999). a strategy for analysis of experiments involving split application of fertilizer. statistics and applications, 1(2): 175-187. begon m., harper j. l. and townsend c. r. (1990). ecology. blackwell scientific publications, boston cornell, j. a. (2002). experiment with mixtures, designs, models and the analysis of mixture data, 3rd edition, 680 pages, john wiley & sons , inc, usa. cristiane b. cano, maria l. felsner, roy e. bruns, jivaldo r. matos. ligia b. almeidamuradian, (2006). optimization of mobile phase for separation of carbohydrates in honey by high performance liquid chromatography using a mixture design. journal of the brazillian chemical society, 17(3): 588-593. d. c. montgomery and s. r. voth (1994). multicollinearity and leverage in mixture experiments. journal of quality technology 26: 96-108. deka, b. c., sethi, v., prasad, r. and batra p. k. (2001). use of experiments with mixture methodology for quality evaluation of mixed fruit juice/ pulp rts beverages. journal term coef se coef t p neem oil 12.35 0.9220 * * garlic oil 14.41 0.9220 * * clove oil 16.29 0.9220 * * tobacco extract 13.10 0.9220 * * neem oil*garlic oil 1.10 3.9958 0.28 0.784 neem oil*clove oil -5.11 3.9958 -1.28 0.207 neem oil*tobacco extract 6.73 3.9958 1.68 0.098 garlic oil*clove oil -15.86 3.9958 -3.97 0.000 garlic oil*tobacco extract -10.49 3.9958 -2.63 0.011 clove oil*tobacco extract 16.99 3.9958 4.25 0.000 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 951-959 959 of food sciences and technology, 38(6): 615-618. farida iftikhar., m. asif masood and elizabeth stephen waghchoure (2011). comparison of apis cerana, apis dorsata, apis florae and apis mellifera honey from different areas of pakistan. asian j. exp. biol. sci. 2(3): 399-403. g. s. peace (1993). taguchi methods: a hands-on approach to quality engineering. addison-wesley. lapointe s. l., evens, t. j and niedz r. p. (2008). insect diets as mixtures: optimization for a polyphagous weevil. j insect physiol 54(7): 11571167. maria a. lazarova., juliana r. atanassova and lilyana d. yurukova (2010). botanical origin and inorganic content of bee honey in northeast bulgaria, phytologia balcanica 16(1): 131-135. minitab version 15 (2006). statistical software for data analysis. piepel, g. f. and j. a. cornell (1994). mixture experiment approaches: examples, discussion, and recommendations. j. quality technology, 26: 177-196. r. c. st. john (1984). experiments with mixtures in conditioning and ridge regression. journal of quality technology 16: 81-96. r. h meyers and d. c. montgomery (2002). response surface methodology: process and product optimization using designed experiments, second edition, john wiley and sons. s. bharath kumar, r. ravi. and g. saraswati (2010). optimization of fruit punch using mixture design. journal of food science, 75: 1-7. s. a. s. institute inc, (2002-2003). sas/stat, user’s guide version 9.1, cary, nc:, sas institue inc. scheffe, h (1963). simplex centroid designs for experiments with mixtures. jour. royal. statist. soc, 25: 235-263. scheffe, h. (1958). experiments with mixtures. jour. royal. statist. soc. 20: 344-360 spitters c. j. t. (1983). an alternative approach to the analysis of mixed cropping experiments, 1, estimation of competition effects, netherlsnd journal of agricultural science, 31: 111. vandermeer j. (1989). the ecology of intercropping. cambridge university press, cambridge. 767 identification of fungus flora associated with lagenaria siceraria (molina) standl in côte d’ivoire koffi ahébé marie-hélène, atta diallo hortense and zoro bi irié arsène université nangui-abrogoua, unité de formation et de recherche des sciences de la nature, laboratoire de biologie et amélioration des productions végétales abstract lagenaria siceraria (molina) standl is a cucurbit which seeds are consumed by people in rural and urban africa. this plant is subjected to a strong parasitic and diseases pressure that reduces seeds production. efficient fight against plant parasite, particularly fungus is a prerequisite for an improved productivity. this study was undertaken in five localities (alepe, bondoukou, bongouanou, divo and korhogo) belonging to three agroecological areas of côte d’ivoire. the aim was to identify fungal genera infecting l. siceraria in order to design an efficient control measure. leaf samples with necrosis and discoloration symptoms were collected throughout the localities and subsequently, fungus were isolated and identified in laboratory. from a total of 750 samples collected, 7 types of symptoms were distinguished. fungal genera found in all of the localities were aspergillus, botryosphaeria, cochliobolus, colletotrichum, fusarium, lasiodiplodia and phoma. only pestalotiopsis was specific to the locality of divo. an anova test performed on the data showed a significant difference between fungal genera in terms of isolation frequency. principal components analysis revealed that fungus distribution in each locality was correlated with climatic factors. keywords: côte d’ivoire, climatic factors, fungal genera, lagenaria siceraria, symptom introduction 1 seeds of african cucurbits commonly called egusi in benin and nigeria are wrongly called “pistachio” in côte d’ivoire and are used in human food (fondio et al., 2000; zoro bi et al., 2003). in côte d'ivoire, surveys made in various departments, have allowed to identify five species of “pistachio”: citrillus lanatus, cucubita moschata, cucumeropsis mannii, curcumis melo and lagenaria siceraria (zoro bi et al., 2003). of all these species, lagenaria siceraria is the most strong and has a higher capacity of seeds production (achigan et al., 2006; zoro bi et al., 2006). “pistachios” are important in the diet and socio-cultural life of many people. in côte d'ivoire, they represent a significant source of income especially for women that occur in association with major food crops (anader, 2004). lagenaria siceraria, the most abundant species on the market of abidjan after citrillus lanatus, is the subject of this study. seeds of l. siceraria are sold at an average price of 1500 cfa francs per kilogram; that is one and half times the price of cocoa and two and half times that of coffee (anonymous, 2011). corresponding author’s details: name: koffi ahébé marie-hélène email address: ahebemarie77@yahoo.fr cultivated for food, this cucurbit is prized for its oilseeds and is consumed as soup thickener. seeds are good source of lipids and proteins (loukou et al., 2007; augem et al., 2011; enzoga-yoca et al., 2011). soup of lagenaria siceraria is valued in sub-saharan african traditional societies. in côte d'ivoire, this soup is highly valued by the akan during rejoicing times such as new year, births and wedding ceremonies (zoro bi et al., 2003). in spite of their nutritional and socio-economic importance, african oil cucurbits remains a minor culture. in plantation, they are subjected to a high parasitic pressure that reduces seeds production from 40 to 70% (fondio et al., 2000; vodouhe et al., 2000). among the pathogens, fungi cause various symptoms on cucurbits in plantations. several previous studies have allowed the identification of fungi on cucurbitaceae. thus, the most devastating fungal diseases are downy mildew (pseudoperonospora cubensis) in korea (choi and shin, 2006), powdery mildew (podosphaera xanthii) in the united states (kousik et al., 2007) and fusarium wilt (fusarium oxysporum) in italy (trionfetti nisini et al., 2002). in côte d'ivoire, few works on fungal diseases of l. siceraria have been conducted. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ahebemarie77@yahoo.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 767-779 768 preliminary study conducted in 2008 at the university nangui abrogoua on leaves and seeds of l. siceraria revealed the presence of plants severely attacked by fungi. accurate knowledge on these fungi would allow better control methods that would contribute to the improvement of l. siceraria productivity. the objectives of this study are on one hand to isolate and identify fungal genera associated with leaves symptoms of l. siceraria from three agroecological areas in côte d'ivoire and on other hand to make a correlation between fungal genera isolation frequencies and climatic factors. study site one step in this study involved the completion of surveys to collect samples. surveys were carried out from 2008 to 2009 in various locations in three areas of côte d'ivoire (east, north and south). these areas were chosen in three agroecological regions in the main producing areas of l. siceraria. thirty plantations of l. siceraria distributed in localities of alepe, divo (south) bondoukou, bongouanou (east) and korhogo (north) were selected to conduct the investigations. the climate data used in this study are air moisture, rainfall, temperature and wind speed. these data provided by sodexam (society development and operations airports, aviation and meteorology) in abidjan, have been supplemented by data collected on www.tutiempo.net site. the geographic coordinates and agroecological characteristics of localities are as follows (avit et al., 1999; brou, 2005). the eastern area takes into account regions of moronou (bongouanou) and gontougo (bondoukou). it is localized between latitudes 6°00 n-8°1 n and longitudes 3°00 w-5°00 w. the climate is equatorial, baouléen or transitional regime mitigated with two seasons interspersed with two dry rains seasons. rainfalls vary from 1100 to 1600 mm. annual mean temperature is between 25 and 28°c. air moisture varies between 71.48 and 76.54% and the wind speed from 1.5 to 2.73 km/h. this area is characterized by the transitional woodland savannas, with several blocks of semideciduous forests. the northern area takes into account the region of poro (korhogo). it is localized between latitude 9°26'n and longitude 6°38 w. the climate is tropical sudanese or transitional regime with two seasons (dry, wet). the dry season, from november to march comes before the rainy season. rainy season is marked by two maxima rainfall, one in june and other in september. annual mean rainfall varies from 1000 to 1400 mm. temperatures are high and vary between 28 and 32°c. air moisture is 67.02% and the wind speed of 7.1 km/h. the vegetation consists of woodland savannas with extended ranges of herbaceous areas. the southern area covers parts of lôh-djiboua (divo) and massan (alepe). it is localized between latitudes 5°00 n-6°00 n and longitudes 4°00 w-7°00 w. the climate is sub-equatorial, guinea with two dry seasons and two rainy seasons. in this area, rainfalls are abundant (annual mean reach of 1500 to 2400 mm) and annual temperature is almost constant around 25.5 at 27°c. air moisture varies between 78.11 and 89.48% and the wind speed from 2.8 to 10.14 km/h. vegetation is mainly represented by the tropical rain forest, with mangrove on the coastal side. materials and methods plant material the experiment was conducted using infected leaves of l. siceraria of 2-3 months-old. these infected leaves were come from five surveyed localities and have presented different fungal diseases symptoms. methods sampling and data collection symptoms of fungi infections were observed and described for the form, size and the color. infected leaves of l. siceraria with symptoms were collected on thirty (30) randomly selected plantations: ten in korhogo and five in each of the four localities. in each plantation, five leaves with the same type of symptoms were collected and placed on blotting paper, then in polyethylene plastic bag and brought to the laboratory. a total of seven hundred and fifty (750) leaves were collected to conduct the fungal identification study. disinfection and purification fragments of 2 cm long of infected leaves of l. siceraria were cut off the margin of lesions. these leaves explants were disinfected in 10 % sodium hypochlorite for 3 min, twice rinsed with sterile distilled water and air-dried. dried leaves fragments were placed on potato dextrose agar (pda) then incubated at room temperature (25 ± 2 o c) for three days. the cultures were observed daily to prevent any mycelial colonies are confluent in the culture dishes. growing mycelial tips of fungal strains were transferred to new pda plates to obtain pure cultures. different http://www.tutiempo.net/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 767-779 769 fungal colonies grown on different samples were systematically planted separately on pda plate in three petrie dish of sterile cultures strain to obtain individualized cultures. the experiment was twice repeated. characterization and identification of fungal isolates macroscopic descriptions of obtained fungal isolates were observed under a phase-contrast photonic microscope (zeiss) to 40 x magnification. identification of fungi was done using identification keys of barnett and hunter (1972) and botton et al. (1990) after two weeks of culture on pda plate. the identified fungi have been described. the observations focused on characteristics such as color and form of the spores, the partitioning and branching or not of mycelium. isolates were then grouped into different fungal genera. isolation frequency of fungal isolates the number of fungal genera isolation on different samples and the total number of isolates were evaluated. the isolation frequency of identified fungi was determined by genera according to walder (1996): fi (%): isolation frequency ni: number of isolates belonging to a fungal genus nti: total number of isolates of all strains belonging to a fungal genus relations between isolation frequencies of fungal genera and climatic factors the occurrence of fungal genera in each locality has been linked with air moisture, rainfall, temperature and wind speed in order to clarify the existing correlations between fungal populations and climatic factors. statistical analyzes of data averages of fungi isolation frequency were compared. the results were statistically analyzed using the software statistica 7.1 through analysis of variance (anova). whenever a significant difference was found, anova is complemented by fisher's lsd test, which allows identify the variables significantly different of others. the averages of the variables were separated at the probability threshold p <0.05. principal components analysis (pca) with statistica 7.1 software package was applied to the frequencies of fungi and data of climatic factors. from the matrices of the original variables, we extracted a limited number of correlated combinations. the projection of individuals on the planes defined by the axes of the principal components was used to assess their dispersion and variability. to admit that the variability is sufficiently expressed, the cumulative sum of the contributions of the main areas identified should be around 70% (thomassone et al., 1993). correlations test between variables were performed using the software tanagra. correlation measures the relationship between two or more variables. the correlation coefficient used is the pearson r, also called linear correlation coefficient. the correlation coefficients were in the range from -1.00 to 1.00. values -1.00 and +1.00 respectively represent a perfect negative or positive correlation and value of 0.00 represents a lack of correlation or independence between variables. results foliar symptoms observed on lagenaria siceraria fungus attack symptoms observed on l siceraria leaves are of various forms, sizes and coloration. seven types of symptom were distinguished. three out of the seven were observed regardless the localities. these types are described as follows: small circular brown spots with yellow halation of approximately 1 cm in diameter (figure 1a), brown coalescent spots of approximately 2 cm in diameter of which some are detached (figure 1b) and large brown spots (figure 1c). two types of symptom were observed in korhogo (north), bondoukou and bongouanou (east): brown spots extended symmetrically to the main vein to the petiole on the upper surface of leaves (figure 1d) and more or less circular brown spots that scatter thereafter (figure 1e). the sixth type of symptom was observed in alepe and divo, and in bondoukou and korhogo; it is consisted of black flocculants spots located at the two sides of leaves (figure 1f). the seventh type in alepe, bondoukou and korhogo and consisted of numerous small white and powdery spots on the two sides of leaves (figure 1g).\ fi (%) = ni/nti × 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 767-779 770 fungal genera isolated from leaves of lagenaria siceraria the fungus identification was done based on their macro and microscopic characteristics and revealed 17 genera associated with l. siceraria leaves. these are the following: aspergillus, botryosphaeria, curvularia, cochliobolus, colletotrichum, diaporthe, fusarium, lasiodiplodia, penicillium, peronospora, pestalotiopsis, phoma, phomopsis, podosphaera, pythium, rhizoctonia et trichoderma (figure 2). seven of theses genuses were encountered in all of the localities of this study. these are colletotrichum, fusarium and lasiodiplodia isolated from the symptom types a, b, c, d and e; aspergillus and botryosphaeria isolated a, b, c and d, phoma isolated from the symptom types a, c et d and cochliobolus isolated from the symptom types b, c and d. curvularia was isolated from the symptom types a, b and e, diaporthe from the types a, b and d, podosphaera from the type g, peronospora from the type f, penicillium from the types a, b and c, pestalotiopsis from the types a and c, phomopsis from the types a and b, pythium from the types a, d and e, rhizoctonia from the types a, c and e, and trichoderma from the symptom types b and f (table 1). thus, a total of 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8 fungal genera were observed in alepe, korhogo, divo, bondoukou and bongouanou, respectively. figure 1: fungus attacks symptoms on l. siceraria leaves: a: small circular brown spots with yellow halation of approximately 1 cm in diameter; b: brown coalescent spots of approximately 2 cm in diameter of which some are detached; c: large brown spots; d: brown spots extended symmetrically to the main vein to the petiole on the upper surface of leaves; e : more or less circular brown spots that scatter thereafter; f: black flocculants spots located at the two sides of leaves; g: small white and powdery spots on the two sides of leaves. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 767-779 771 figure 2: macroscopic (a1, b1, c1, d1, e1, f1, g1 et h1) and microscopic appearance (a2, b2, c2, d2, e2, f2, g2 et h2) appearance of fungi isolated on potato dextrose agar medium from disease symptoms of lagenaria siceraria leaves. a1. brown mycelia colonies of aspergillus sp., a2. biseriate head spore of aspergillus sp. with rounded conidia; b1. mycelia colonies of botryosphaeria sp., b2. conidia of botryosphaeria.; c1. mycelia colonies of curvularia sp., c2. solitary conidia of curvularia sp.; d1. mycelia colonies of cochliobolus sp., d2. conidia of cochliobolus sp.; e1. mycelia colonies of colletotrichum sp., e2. conidia of colletotrichum sp.; f1. mycelia colonies of diaporthe sp., f2. conidia of diaporthe sp.; g1. mycelia colonies of fusarium sp., g2. conidia of fusarium sp.; h1. mycelia colonies of lasiodiplodia sp., h2. conidia of lasiodiplodia sp. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 767-779 772 figure 2: (continuation): macroscopic (i1, l1, m1, n1, o1, p1 et q1) and microscopic appearance (i2, j, k, l2, m2, n2, o2, p2 et q2) appearance of fungi isolated on potato dextrose agar medium from disease symptoms of lagenaria siceraria leaves. i1. mycelia colonies of penicillium sp., i2. conidia of penicillium sp ; j. conidia of peronospora sp., k conidia of podosphaera sp. l1. mycelia colonies of pestalotiopsis sp., l2. partitioned conidia of pestalotiopsis sp; m1 mycelia colonies of phoma sp., m2. pycnidia of phoma sp., n1. mycelia colonies of phomopsis sp., n2. conidia of phomopsis sp., o1. mycelia colonies of pythium sp., o2. oospore of pythium sp., p1. mycelia colonies of rhizoctonia sp., p2. brown and septate mycelia with a right angle of rhizoctonia sp., q1. mycelia colonies of trichoderma sp., q2. conidia de trichoderma sp. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 767-779 773 table 1: list of fungal genera encountered on lagenaria siceraria leaves collected in the five localities. sa: type a symptom; sb: type b symptom; sc: type c symptom (to be continued) surveyed localities east north south symptom types bondoukou bongouanou korhogo alepe divo sa colletotrichum fusarium pythium phoma botryosphaeria diaporthe fusarium phoma aspergillus botryosphaeria colletotrichum lasiodiplodia phoma phomopsis aspergillus botryosphaeria colletotrichum curvularia fusarium penicillium phomopsis botryosphaeria colletotrichum diaporthe fusarium pestalotiopsis lasiodiplodia sb botryosphaeria colletotrichum fusarium aspergillus cochliobolus colletotrichum diaporthe aspergillus colletotrichum curvularia fusarium phomopsis botryosphaeria cochliobolus colletotrichum lasiodiplodia phomopsis rhizoctonia cochliobolus colletotrichum diaporthe penicillium lasiodiplodia trichoderma fungal genera sc aspergillus colletotrichum lasiodiplodia phoma botryosphaeria colletotrichum fusarium lasiodiplodia cochliobolus colletotrichum fusarium phoma rhizoctonia botryosphaeria colletotrichum fusarium lasiodiplodia phoma botryosphaeria colletotrichum penicillium pestalotiopsis phoma sd cochliobolus colletotrichum fusarium aspergillus diaporthe pythium botryosphaeria colletotrichum fusarium lasiodiplodia phoma se colletotrichum fusarium lasiodiplodia colletotrichum fusarium colletotrichum curvularia fusarium pythium rhizoctonia sf peronospora peronospora peronospora peronospora sg podosphaera podosphaera podosphaera asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 767-779 774 occurrence of the fungal genera isolated from lagenaria siceraria leaves significant difference was observed between the occurrences of the 17 fungus genera (p ≤ 0.001) on l. siceraria leaves. the occurrence showed significant variation between localities and within localities as well. between locality variation was observed for 14 genera: botryosphaeria, curvularia, cochliobolus, diaporthe, lasiodiplodia, penicillium, peronospora, pestalotiopsis, phoma, phomopsis, podosphaera, pythium, rhizoctonia et trichoderma and not for aspergillus, colletotrichum and fusarium (table 2). however, the occurrence of all the 17 genera varied within the localities. they varied from 3.23 % to 6.45 % in alepe, 3.33 % to 9.33 % in bondoukou, 3.85 % to 7.69 % in bongouanou, 3.85 % to 5.38 % in divo and 1.89 % to 7.92 % in korhogo. ranking the occurrences revealed 3 groups of genera in bondoukou and divo, 4 groups in alepe, five groups in bongouanou and 6 groups in korhogo (table 2). colletotrichum was the most isolated in bondoukou, bongouanou and korhogo with respective frequencies of 9.33 %, 7.69 % and 7.92 %. in alepe, the most isolated fungi were cochliobolus and phoma with respectively 5.81 % and 6.45 %. with both, 5.38 % of frequency botryosphaeria and fusarium were more isolated in divo table 2: mean frequency of the fungal genera isolation in each of the five localities surveyed localities east north south statistics fungal genera bondo ukou bongou anou korhogo alepe divo averages f p aspergillus 3.33±0 c 3.85±0 d 3.77±0 bc 3.23±0c 3.85±0 b 3.61±0 2.28 0.10 botryospha eria 6.67±0 b 5.38±2.1 1bcd 2.26±0.84 cd 3.87±1.4 4 bc 5.38±2.1 1 a 4.71±2.08 6.12 0.002 curvularia 1.89±0 d 3.23±0c 1.02±0 185.86 ˂0.001 cochliobol us 3.33±0 c 3.85±0 d 1.89±0 d 5.81±1.4 4 a 3.85±0 b 3.74±1.41 23.70 ˂0.001 colletotric hum 9.33±3. 65 a 7.69±3.8 5 a 7.92±3.63 a 4.52± 1.77 b 4.62±1.7 2 ab 6.82±3.43 2.44 0.08 diaporthe 6.15±2.1 1 abc 3.85±0 b 2±0.42 129.41 ˂0.001 fusarium 6±1.49 b 4.62±1.7 2 cd 4.15±3.10 b 4.52±1.7 7 b 5.38±2.1 1 a 4.93±2.05 0.62 0.65 lasiodiplo dia 5.33±1. 83 b 3.85±0 d 1.89±0 d 3.23±0c 3.85±0 b 3.63±1.36 11.62 ˂0.001 penicillium 3.23±0c 3.85±0 b 1.41±0 242.57 ˂0.001 peronospo ra 5.33±1. 83 b 1.89±0 d 3.23±0 c 3.85±0 b 2.86±0.36 38.60 ˂0.001 pestalotiop sis 3.85±0 b 0.77±0 332.36 ˂0.001 phoma 3.33±0 c 6.92±1.7 2 ab 3.02±1.03 bcd 6.45±0 a 3.85±0 b 4.71±1.86 20.84 ˂0.001 phomopsis 3.77±0 bc 3.23 ± 0c 1.4±0 442.16 ˂0.001 podosphae ra 3.33±0 c 1.89±0 d 3.23±0 c 1.69±0 39.74 ˂0.001 pythium 3.33±0 c 1.89±0 d 1.04±0 262.27 ˂0.001 rhizoctoni a 2.64±1.69 bcd 3.23±0 c 1.17±0.56 23.04 ˂0.001 trichoder ma 3.23±0 c 3.85±0 b 1.42±0 211.67 ˂0.001 f 32.71 24.13 12.06 26.55 29.34 p ˂0.001 ˂0.001 ˂0.001 ˂0.001 ˂0.001 f: fischer value, p: probability. in the same column, means with the same letter are not significantly different at the 0.05 level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 767-779 775 relationships between occurrence of fungus genera and climatic factors the occurrence of the fungus genera was correlated with climatic factors, namely air moisture, rainfall, temperature and the wind speed. axes 1 and 2 explained 79.9 %, 81.5 % 87.5%, 88.2% and 78.1 % of the total variability in alepe, bondoukou, bongouanou, korhogo and divo, respectively (table 3). for the locality of alepe, 14 out of the 18 descriptors (variables) were significantly correlated with the two first axes. therefore, these were the factors explaining variability in the distribution of fungus genera (table 3). the axe 1 explained 59.5 % of variability and was linked to 11 traits as shown on the correlation circle (figure 3a). these traits are isolation frequencies of aspergillus (asp), curvularia (curv) and colletotrichum (colle) which are positively correlated to the axe 1, cochliobolus (coch), lasiodiplodia (las), penicillium (pen), peronospora (per), phomopsis (pho), podosphaera (pod), rhizoctonia (rhi) and trichoderma (trich) which are negatively correlated to axe 1 (|r|>70). fusarium (fus), rainfall (pv) and temperature (tm) are the parameters which correlated with axe 2 (|r|>70) explaining 20.51 % of the total variability. isolation frequency of fusarium (fus) was positively correlated to axe 2 while the rainfall and the temperature were negatively correlated to this axe. the correlation matrix (table 4) revealed that fusarium (r = -0.86%) is negatively correlated to temperature and phoma (r = 0.88%) is positively to wind speed. this suggests that the higher the temperature, the lower the spore dissemination by fusarium and the higher the wind speed, the higher the spore dissemination by phoma. table 3: matrix of eigenvalues and correlations between variables and the two axes 1 and 2 after the pca. the correlations used to interpret the factors are those above 0.7 (r2 ≥ 0.7) surveyed localities east north south bondoukou bongouanou korhogo alepe divo parameters f1 f2 f1 f2 f1 f2 f1 f2 f1 f2 eigenvalue 6,91 4,50 6,43 4,06 9,53 3,77 10,72 3,70 10,20 3,92 percent of total variance 49,34 32,15 53,62 33,85 55,99 22,14 59,46 20,51 63,72 24,53 percent of total cumulative variance 49,34 81,49 53,62 87,47 55,99 78,14 59,46 79,97 63,72 88,25 aspergillus -0,96 0,23 0,86 -0,50 -0,97 -0,23 0,99 -0,05 -0,99 -0,05 botryosphaeria 0,43 0,62 0,86 -0,50 0,63 0,42 0,39 0,41 -0,15 -0,69 curvularia -0,31 0,30 0,99 -0,05 cochliobolus -0,96 0,23 0,86 -0,50 0,56 -0,64 -0,70 0,52 -0,99 -0,05 colletotrichum 0,31 -0,73 -0,89 -0,18 -0,68 0,72 0,89 -0,09 0,81 -0,07 diaporthe 0,98 -0,07 -0,99 -0,05 fusarium 0,55 0,22 0,49 -0,86 -0,95 0,30 0,31 0,86 -0,51 0,74 lasiodiplodia -0,14 -0,91 0,86 -0,50 -0,97 -0,23 -0,99 0,05 -0,99 -0,05 penicillium -0,99 0,05 -0,99 -0,05 peronospora 0,76 0,41 -0,97 -0,23 -0,99 0,05 -0,99 -0,05 pestalotiopsis -0,99 -0,05 phoma -0,96 0,23 0,72 -0,17 -0,84 -0,34 0,10 0,51 -0,99 -0,05 phomopsis -0,97 -0,24 -0,99 0,05 podosphaera -0,96 0,23 -0,97 -0,23 -0,99 0,05 pythium -0,96 0,23 -0,97 -0,23 rhizoctonia -0,61 -0,31 -0,99 0,05 trichoderma -0,99 0,05 -0,99 -0,05 air moisture -0,41 -0,79 -0,49 -0,86 0,55 -0,64 0,02 -0,64 0,15 -0,92 rainfall -0,41 -0,79 0,48 0,08 0,55 -0,64 -0,26 -0,80 0,15 -0,92 temperature -0,76 0,62 -0,49 -0,86 -0,13 0,75 0,06 -0,88 0,15 -0,92 wind speed -0,41 -0,79 -0,49 -0,86 -0,13 0,75 0,43 0,63 0,50 0,56 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 767-779 776 at bondoukou, the two first axes explained 81.49% of the variability. the axe 1 (f1) explained 49.34% while the axe 2 explained (f2) 32.15% of variation (table 3). the correlation circle (figure 3b) showed that axe 1 was negatively correlated with isolation frequencies of aspergillus (asp), cochliobolus (coch), peronospora (per), phoma (pha), podosphaera (pod), and pythium (pyth) and positively with the temperature (tm). axe 2 was negatively correlated to isolation frequencies of colletotrichum (colle), lasiodiplodia (las), air moisture (hm), rainfall (pv) and the wind speed (vt). five genera, aspergillus, cochliobolus, phoma, podosphaera and pythium showed a great and positive (r= 0.87%) correlation with temperature (table 4). at bongouanou, axe 1 and axe 2 contributed to 53.62% and 33.85% to the variability, i.e. a total of 87.47 % (table 3). the correlation circle shows that axe 1 is made up with aspergillus (asp), botryosphaeria (bot), cochliobolus (coch), lasiodiplodia (las), phoma (pha) diaporthe (dia) and colletotrichum (colle). colletotrichum (colle) is positively correlated to this axe while the other genera are negatively correlated. fusarium (fus), air moisture (hm), temperature (tm) and wind speed were those which correlated with axe 2 (|r|>70) negatively (figure 3c). the correlation matrix (table 4) shows that fusarium was negatively correlated (-0.86 %) to air moisture, temperature and wind speed suggesting that fusarium is fairly isolated when the factors are low. at divo, 14 out the 16 descriptors were correlated to the two first axes. axe 1 explained 63.72% of variability and was correlated to 10 genera (table 3), negatively with isolation frequencies of aspergillus (asp), cochliobolus (coch), diaporthe (dia), lasiodiplodia (las), penicillium (pen), peronospora (per), pestalotiopsis (pes), phoma (pha), trichoderma (trich), and positively (|r|>70) with colletotrichum (colle). fusarium (fus), air moisture, rainfall (pv) and temperature were the variables which correlated (|r|>70) with axe 2 (24.53 % of variability). fusarium (fus) was positively correlated to this axe and the others, negatively. the axe 2 can be defined as the axe of climate variability in divo. at korhogo, the axes 1 and 2 concentrated 55.99% and 22.14% of variability, i.e. at total of 78.13% (table 3). the correlation circle (figure 3e) shows that the axe 1 (f1) is (negatively) correlated to isolation frequencies of aspergillus (asp), fusarium (fus), lasiodiplodia (las), peronospora (per), phoma (pha), phomopsis (pha), podosphaera (pod), pythium (pyth) the axe 2 is positively correlated to isolation frequencies of colletotrichum (colle), temperature (tm) and wind speed (vt). it appears from the correlation matrix that isolation frequency of cochliobolus was positively correlated to air moisture and rainfall while colletotrichum isolation frequency was negatively correlated to these two factors (table 4). this suggests that the higher the rainfall and the air moisture, the higher the isolation frequency of colletotrichum (-0.82), and the lower the rainfall and air moisture, the lower higher the isolation frequency of cochliobolus (0.99). figure 3: distribution of variables in the factoriel plane (1x2) in each of the localities: a: alepe; b: bondoukou; c: bongouanou; d: divo; e: korhogo asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 767-779 777 table 4: correlation matrix between fungus genera and climatic factors localities pair of variables r r² t pr (>|t|) bondoukou temperature temperature temperature temperature temperature aspergillus 0,88 0,77 3,20 0,049* cochliobolus 0,88 0,77 3,20 0,049* podosphaera 0,88 0,77 3,20 0,049* phoma 0,88 0,77 3,20 0,049* pythium. 0,88 0,77 3,20 0,049* bongouanou air moisture temperature wind speed fusarium -0,86 0,74 -2,97 0,049* fusarium -0,86 0,74 -2,97 0,049* fusarium -0,86 0,74 -2,97 0,049* korhogo air moisture air moisture cochliobolus 0,99 0,98 15,75 0,0006** colletotrichum -0,82 0,67 -2,50 0,087 ns rainfall rainfall cochliobolus 0,99 0,98 15,75 0,0006** colletotrichum -0,82 0,67 -2,50 0,087 ns alepe temperature temperature temperature botryosphaeria -0,70 0,49 -1,73 0,18ns cochliobolus -0,70 0,49 -1,73 0,18ns fusarium -0,86 0,74 -2,97 0,049* wind speed phoma 0,89 0,79 3,37 0,043* discussion this study led to the distinction of various fungus attack symptoms on lagenaria siceraria leaves in field. seven symptom types were observed in korhogo and bondoukou, five types in alepe and bongouanou, and four types in divo. the difference among localities in terms of symptom types may be attributed to the difference in plant species composition of vegetations surrounding l. siceraria farms as well as to the association of l. siceraria with other crops on the same farm (anahosur, 1992). indeed, fungus species hosted by the surrounding vegetation may vary according to the plant species composition. the presence of a fungus species in a given locality implies that it has host plant species or other sink in that locality and that environmental conditions are conducive to its growth and development (anahosur, 1992; banvart, 1998). the fact that the localities have in common a great part of the fungus genera observed probably originate from the fact that farmers get stock of seeds through markets which are places from where contaminated seeds are dispersed. in the same way, montes-hernandez and eguiarte (2002) showed that sharing seeds among farmers is one of the main causes of the reduction of genetic differentiation in several cropped plant species. from all the leaves sample collected, 17 fungal genera were identified, the 7 were found in all the localities. only one genus, pestalotiopsis, was found to be specific to one locality, divo. the variability in symptom types does not necessarily reflect variability in fungus genera. according to howell (2003) and mouria et al. (2003), one lesion can be provoqued by one pathogen species that can be thereafter colonized by others. also, attack by different pathogen agents can result in similar symptom and attack by a specific pathogen agent can result in variable symptoms, owing to the conditions. thus, one type of symptom is not necessarily specific of one fungus genera. the statistical analyses performed on the data revealed a significant difference between mean isolation frequencies of the 17 genera encountered on the l. siceraria leaves. the frequencies varied between as well as within localities. in addition, the presence of the fungal genera was found to be linked to the climatic factors such as rainfall and temperature as reported by anahosur (1992). for all of the localities, monthly rainfall amounted to 250 mm and the temperature, to 27°c. such conditions are favorable to fungus development and dissemination. the isolation frequency of the genera aspergillus, colletotrichum and fusarium didn’t vary among localities; this can be explained by the fact that these are soil-born genera which breed through spore dissemination. indeed, soil-born fungi disseminate the best through drainage or surface run-off during rain periods (bieysse et al., 2002; oostland and pacico, 2007). conclusion this study allowed the identification of numerous fungus genera that parasite l. siceraria leaves on farm, based on their morphological characteristics. the isolation frequencies of the fungal genera varied between as well as within localities. the presence of a fungus genus was found to be greatly influenced by the prevailing climatic conditions. r = corrélation; t = student test; pr = probability; ns = not significant; * = significant correlation at p < 0, 05; ** = significant correlation at p < 0,001 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 767-779 778 fungal genera responsible of devastating plant disease such as fusarium wilt, blight and powdery mildew were isolated. since the symptoms were not specific to the fungus genera encountered on the l. siceraria leaves, the identification may have suffered from some inaccuracy. thus, further studies including pathogenicity test are needed to make more accurate link between fungus genera and plant disease. references achigan, e. d. g., fanou, n., kouke, a., avohou, h., vodouhe, s. r. and ahanche, a. 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(2003). caractérisation botanique et agronomique de trois espèces de cucurbites consommées en sauce en afrique de l'ouest: citrullus sp., cucumeropsis mannii naudin et lagenaria siceraria (molina) standl. biotechnologie agronomie société et environnement, 7: 189-199. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(8), 152-162 152 the status of the adoption of mangrove swamp rice varieties in sierra leone moses gborie, nazir a. mahmood, adam s. kanu, finda b. jenkins, henry m.s. kargbo sierra leone agricultural research institute (slari), rokupr agricultural research center (rarc), freetown, sierra leone article history: received: 15-oct-2016 revised received: 10nov-2016 accepted: 15-nov-2016 online available: 30nov-2016 keywords: mangrove, rice, adoption, adopters, non-adopters, probit model, sierra leone abstract mangrove swamp rice varieties developed at the rokupr agricultural research centre (rarc), sierra leone were evaluated in 2014 to determine their adoption status in kambia, port loko and moyamba districts of sierra leone. the study evaluated farmers’ knowledge about the varieties, the varieties grown by farmers at least once, adopters, non-adopters, loss of varieties, abandonment of varieties, and the determinants of the adoption of mangrove rice varieties. data were obtained from a sample survey of 600 mangrove rice farmers using the multistage stratified random sampling technique. farmers in the kambia district were more knowledgeable about the mangrove varieties: rok 5 and rok 10 are the most adopted varieties while rok 5, rok 10 and cp 4 are the most cultivated and have been grown at least once by some farmers in all the districts – rok 5 (380 farmers); rok 10 (315 farmers); and cp 4 (99 farmers). probit regression estimation shows that farmers’ adoption of the mangrove rice varieties was affected positively and significantly by farmers’ level of education, training, access to credit, farm size, contact with extension, and farming experience. 1. introduction the mangrove ecology has significant potentials for rice production in west africa. mangrove swamp rice farming is among the oldest rice farming systems in west africa and accounts for 10% of the total regional rice production. the average mangrove rice farmers’ annual yield is 2 t/ha of paddy compared to 1 t/ha for most other rice ecologies in the region (agyen-sampong, 1984). this suggests that improving rice production in the mangrove ecology can enhance the production of enough rice to meet the increasing demand in west africa in general and sierra leone in particular. corresponding author’s name: moses gborie email address: mosesggborie@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.8/1005.8.152.162 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 152-162 153 such improvement can be facilitated through technologies generated at research centers, disseminated and validated at the farm level and communicated to influence adoption by farmers. adoption is most often a self-decision process based on the perceived knowledge and appreciation of the said technology in terms of its specific physical characteristics and intrinsic qualities. in addition to these factors, the related cost of the technology, its simplicity, adaptability to the farming circumstances, and its comparative advantage over existing local technologies constitute a range of potential factors that can affect adoption decisions made by farmers. this study was undertaken to obtain an inventory of the disseminated and adopted mangrove swamp rice varieties in sierra leone. 1.1. objectives of the study the key objective was to evaluate the disseminated mangrove swamp rice technologies (mostly rice varieties) in the various rice growing ecologies and assess their adoption status in sierra leone. the specific objectives were to:  list the mangrove swamp rice technologies and their present adoption status.  identify the key determinants of adoption of the improved mangrove swamp rice technologies.  identify key policy issues that will guide the strategy for out-scaling the improved mangrove swamp rice technologies to ensure high rates of their adoption. 2. methodology 2.1. sampling design a multi-stage stratified random sampling procedure was adopted for the study. first, kambia, port loko and moyamba districts were purposively selected based on the ecology to be surveyed. the mangrove ecology is not spread across the country but is predominant in the selected districts. then, two chiefdoms 1 were purposively selected from each district, based on the spread of the mangrove ecology therein. finally, 100 farmers were randomly selected and interviewed per chiefdom. thus 600 respondents were interviewed for the entire survey. 2.2. data collection and analysis primary data were collected from selected samples of rice farmers within the various chiefdoms. for that purpose, a data collection tool was developed, field tested, and administered to farmers. qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyze the data with microsoft excel 10 and stata 13, a robust analytical tool for socio-economic studies. 2.3. probit regression model probit regression, also called probit model, is used to model dichotomous or binary outcome variables. data gathered in the 2014 cropping season on the cultivation of mangrove swamp rice varieties developed at the rokupr agricultural research centre (rarc) were used to define two categories of rice farmers:  adopter a farmer who has planted a rarc variety at least once and continues to use such a variety in his/her field in the 2014 cropping season (the period when the survey took place), and  non-adopter a farmer who previously planted a rarc variety but did not continue growing such a variety during the 2014 season. 1 the third geographical division of sierra leone asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 152-162 154 probit model is one of the most popular statistical methods developed for analyzing dichotomous response-dependent variables (donkoh & awuni, 2011). most of the adoption literature estimate a probit model to ascertain the factors that affect the adoption of a new technology or innovation (feder et al., 1985). for instance, foltz (2003) provided a theoretical explanation of the probit model and also summarized the factors that explain the rate of adoption/diffusion of a soil and water conservation technology under four hypotheses, viz resource scarcity, capital constraint, learning costs and risk aversion. according to foltz (2003), increasing scarcity of a naturalresource endowment (like fertile lowland) leads to higher shadow prices for the resource, causing farmers to switch to a resource-conserving technology (like soil and water conservation technology). the capital constraint hypothesis implies that new technologies would spread faster among farmers with better access to capital to pay for the new technology than farmers with little or no access. moreover, the learning-cost-hypothesis suggests that technologies will spread fastest in areas where information about the innovation is readily available and most easily evaluated by potential adopters. this means that farmers who have access to extension services, better education (able to read and understand information about the technology), the opportunity to attend useful workshops and participate in on-farm experimentation stand a better chance of adopting the technology than the less privileged ones. lastly, risk aversion implies that farmers would not like to invest in unknown technologies because of uncertainties with regards yield and income. similarly, an expensive technology is relatively more risky because farmers are not sure if they would be able to recoup the money invested into the technology. in this case, the chances of adoption/diffusion would be slim. but, if a new technology is risk-reducing in the sense that farmers are familiar with it or it is relatively cheap, then farmers would readily adopt it, other things being equal. the probit model was used in this study to empirically quantify the relative influence of various factors in the decision of the respondents to adopt the mangrove rice varieties developed by rarc. from previous adoption studies, many factors influence farmers’ adoption decision. for instance, tiamiyu et al. (2009) found that age, education, land tenure status, farming experience, farm income, farm family size, family labour, contact with extension agents, membership of an association, credit use, and extent of commercialization influence farmers’ adoption decisions. in india, sita and ponnarasi (2009) analysed variables like age, literacy level, farm size, income of households, number of earners in the family, and number of contacts with extension agencies as determinants of adoption. in the current study, it is postulated that the probability of a farmer adopting the rarc mangrove varieties (pi) depends on farm and farmers’ specific attributes like age, education, farmer’s income, training, access to credit, membership of an association, farm size, sex, extension contact and farming experience. the index variable (pi), which indicates whether a farmer adopts the rarc mangrove varieties, is a function of the independent variables (xi). in this study, age was measured in years, a dummy variable was used for education a literate farmer was assigned a score of 1 and an illiterate farmer a score of 0. farmers’ income was determined based on farm income in the previous year. training was determined based on rice farming training acquired and a dummy variable was used farmers who acquired training were assigned a score of 1 and a score of 0 otherwise. access to credit was measured as a dummy farmers with access to credit were assigned a score of 1 and a score of 0 otherwise. a dummy variable was used for membership of an association farmers who are members of an association were assigned a score of 1 and a score of 0 otherwise. farm size (hectare) was defined as the size of the farm allocated to rice cultivation during the growing season under survey. a dummy variable was used to specify the sex of the respondent a male respondent was assigned a score of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 152-162 155 1 and a female respondent a score of 0. extension services to the farmers were defined as a dummy variable in the model 1 for farmers who received at least one contact with the extension service and 0 otherwise. farming experience was incorporated into the model as the number of years for which the farmer has been a rice farmer. assuming that a farmer is an adopter of the rarc varieties, the probit regression model has been specified as follows: pi = f(x₁, x₂, x₃, x₄, x₅, x₆, x₇, x₈, x₉, x₁₀) pi= β₀ + β₁x₁ + β₂x₂ + β₃x₃ + β₄x₄ + β₅x₅ + β₆x₆ + β₇x₇ + β₈x₈ + β₉x₉ + β₁₀ x₁₀ + ԑi where: x₁ = age of respondent x₂ = education x₃ = farmers income x₄ = training x₅ = access to credit x₆ = membership of an association x₇ = farm size in hectares x₈ = sex x₉ = extension contact x₁₀ = farming experience β0 = constant βis = parameters to be estimated, and ԑi = error-term 3. results nine rarc mangrove rice varieties (cp 4, rok 4, rok 5, rok 8, rok 9, rok 10, rok 21, rok 22 and rok 23) were identified and the 600 farmers were interviewed about their knowledge and use of these varieties. data and information were gathered using the data collection tool developed for this purpose. both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analysed. the list of mangrove rice varieties was provided by the breeding unit at rarc, so that all mangrove varieties developed at rarc by the breeding unit were captured in the research. 3.1. knowledge of the improved mangrove rice varieties  cp 4 a large proportion of the farmers interviewed know about the rarc-improved rice varieties. most of the farmers in kambia district know about all the rarc mangrove varieties; this is because the research centre (rarc) is located in this district and this enables them to easily know about and have access to these improved rice varieties. about 81% of farmers in mambolo chiefdom and 61% of those in samu chiefdom know about cp 4.  rok varieties it is estimated that 66% of farmers in mambolo and samu chiefdoms know about rok 4. also, rok 5 is known to 97% of farmers in mambolo chiefdom and 98% of farmers in samu chiefdom. rok 8 is known by 36% of farmers in mambolo chiefdom and 34 % of farmers in samu chiefdom. rok 9 is known by a relatively smaller proportion of farmers 34% in mambolo and samu chiefdoms. about 98 % of farmers in mambolo chiefdom and 88% of those in samu chiefdom are familiar with rok 10. these compare with 51% of farmers in mambolo chiefdom and 26% in samu chiefdom who know about rok 21. rok 22 is known by 60% of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 152-162 156 farmers in mambolo chiefdom and 22 % of those in samu chiefdom. rok 23 is known by 48% of farmers in mambolo chiefdom and 24 % of farmers in samu chiefdom. farmers in port loko and moyamba districts are more knowledgeable about rok 4, rok 5 and rok 10 because these varieties are more popular in mangrove rice farming communities than the other mangrove rice varieties. farmers in kaffu bullom chiefdom know about rok 4 (61%), rok 5 (92 %), and rok 10 (34%). 3.2. mangrove rice varieties grown at least once by farmers table 2 shows that rok 5, rok 10 and cp 4 are the most cultivated of the mangrove rice varieties and have been grown at least once by some farmers in all the districts – rok 5 (380 farmers); rok 10 (315 farmers); and cp 4 (99 farmers) in 2014. in kambia district, cp 4 was grown at least once by 44% farmers in mambolo chiefdom and 33% in samu chiefdom. however, rok 8, rok 9, rok 21, rok 22 and rok 23 were not widely grown by farmers because they were not aware of their existence. also, rok 9, rok 21 and rok 22 have never been grown by farmers in moyamba district because these varieties are not accessible. finally, rok 21 and rok 23 have not been grown by farmers in port loko district due to issues relating to awareness, exposure and accessibility. 3.3. adopters of rarc mangrove rice varieties the number of farmers who cultivated the varieties at least once and who have continued to cultivate them up to 2014 is provided in table 3. rok 5 and rok 10 are the most cultivated rice varieties (163 farmers still cultivate rok 5 and 86 farmers still cultivate rok 10). rok 4 and cp 4 were also grown by quite a reasonable number of farmers in all the districts surveyed (30 farmers for rok 4 and 23 farmers for cp 4). in 2014, rok 8 was not cultivated in samu, lokomasama and bumpeh chiefdoms; rok 21 and rok 22 were not cultivated in port loko and moyamba districts; rok 23 was cultivated by only one farmer in samu chiefdom in port loko district and one farmer in ribbi chiefdom in moyamba district. the reasons for varieties not being cultivated are a lack of awareness, availability and accessibility. in this regard, rok 5 and rok 10 are the varieties that are mostly readily available to farmers and are, therefore, the most adopted ones. 3.4. non-adopters of rarc mangrove varieties table 4 shows the number of farmers who cultivated the varieties at least once but discontinued their cultivation rok 5 (217 farmers); rok 10 (127 farmers); cp4 (76 farmers); and rok 4 (68 farmers). the reasons given for non-adoption were the lack of skilled labour for the various farm operations and the lack of training and extension service. the low levels of adoption of the remaining mangrove rice varieties were due to the lack of awareness of the existence of the varieties. these results reveal that a large number of mangrove farmers did not adopt rarc mangrove rice varieties because of the lack of skilled labour, training, extension visits and awareness of the varieties. 3.5. rarc mangrove rice varieties lost by farmers table 5 provides information on farmers who cultivated the varieties at least once but stopped their cultivation because they lost the varieties. this is a serious problem because it is difficult for farmers to regain lost varieties. farmers reported that varieties were lost due to admixture and the civil war. rok 5 and rok 10 were the most affected 172 farmers lost rok 5 while 112 lost rok 10 – but other varieties were also lost (table 5). farmers indicated their interest in cultivating the lost varieties should they become available again. 3.6. rarc mangrove rice varieties abandoned by farmers table 6 shows the number of farmers that cultivated the rarc varieties at least once but abandoned them because of high bird damage and the lack of access to seed. the abandonment asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 152-162 157 rate was high for rok 5 (43 farmers), cp 4 (22 farmers), rok 4 (19 farmers) and rok 10 (16 farmers). 3.7. probit model results the usage of the rice varieties in the 2014 cropping season was regressed against farmers’ socioeconomic variables, which include farmers’ age , education, income, training, access to credit, membership of an association, farm size, sex, extension contact and farming experience. these variables were chosen based on the findings of previous studies on technology adoption in developing countries (see tiamiyu et al., 2009; sita & ponnarasi, 2009). the influence of age on adoption decision depend on experience, wealth, authority, risk taking and consumers/workers ratio in the household. older farmers may have more experience, authority and wealth, while younger farmers might be less risk-averse, may have greater access to information and have higher consumer/workers ratio but lack experience and resources. thus, older farmers are expected to be positively related to adoption. age can either be positively or negatively correlated with adoption decision. the coefficient of age carries a negative sign and is significant in adoption decision. this indicates that younger farmers are more likely to be interested in adopting new technologies if they are not constrained by cash resources, while older farmers are less likely to be able to use new technologies if they require extra physical labour and/or older farmers may be less interested because they are more risk-averse. education is expected to affect the level of technology adoption positively through effective skill acquisition in choosing better inputs. in this study, the coefficient of education carries the expected sign and is significant in influencing the adoption of the varieties. therefore, farmers that are educated (literate) are more likely to adopt new technologies than those that are not. income derived from farming activities indicates the level of profit of the farmers. the expectation is that farmers will be able to plough back profit from their previous farming into future production process in order to increase profit. farmers with more income are likely to be able to afford and apply expensive inputs aimed at increasing productivity; hence income is expected to influence technology adoption positively. the result from the probit does not carry the expected sign and is not significant. training acquired for rice farming is expected to affect adoption of technology positively, since farmers acquired better skills to carry out their farming activities. the result carries the expected sign and is significant. this proves that farmers who benefitted from training are more likely to adopt technologies than those who did not benefit from any training. access to credit is expected to assist farmers to purchase necessary inputs for rice production and pay for hired labour. many sources of credit give the farmer more chances of securing improved inputs. they also provide farmers with an additional source of investment in new ideas and therefore is expected to be positively related to technology adoption. in this study, access to credit carries the expected sign and is significant. this indicates that the more farmers have access to credit facilities the better their chances of adoption of improved technologies. membership of an association is expected to assist farmers to have easy access to credit and other production inputs. it can also enhance access to technological information. the sign of the parameter of this variable is expected to be positive. the result carries the expected sign but is not significant. this indicates that gaining membership of an association is not enough reason for farmers to adopt a technology. information on the influence of farm size on adoption decision is important in order to identify the appropriateness of a technology for a range of farm sizes. the influence of farm size on the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 152-162 158 decision to adopt depends on the technology (jha et al., 1991). farm size carries a positive coefficient and is significant, suggesting that farm size has a significant positive influence on adoption decision. in the surveyed districts, the improved varieties are cultivated for both subsistence and commercial purposes, thus making adoption of the varieties more attractive to farmers. the role of gender in rice farming is important. a dummy variable was used to specify the sex of the respondent, 1 for a male respondent and 0 for a female respondent. male farmers have better access to the resources needed to use improved technologies. they are, therefore, expected to be positively related with the adoption of improved varieties. women contribute about 70% of the labour used for agricultural production in sierra leone but farming resources are mostly controlled by men (lakoh, 1996). the coefficient of the result is negative and significant in influencing adoption decision. this means that gender significantly influences adoption decision negatively. the result obtained indicates that female farmers were therefore more likely to adopt improved rice varieties, probably because ngos favour women in the distribution of seed of improved rice varieties. extension contact is a very important determinant of technology adoption because newly developed technology is introduced to farmers through the activities of extension agents. a farmer whose contact with extension agents is very high is expected to be more familiar with and more knowledgeable about the use of improved agricultural innovations. this variable is expected to be positively related to technology adoption. the result has the expected sign and is significant in determining the adoption of the varieties. farming experience could take on either a negative or positive sign depending on the length of the period involved. it is expected to demonstrate increasing returns up to a stage and later diminish as more elderly farmers have been reported to be more risk averse, hence less likely to experiment with new technologies. in this study, farming experience carries the expected sign and also has a significant influence on adoption. 4. conclusions nine rarc mangrove rice varieties (cp 4, rok 4, rok 5, rok 8, rok 9, rok 10, rok 21, rok 22 and rok 23) were identified. most farmers in kambia district are knowledgeable about all the rarc varieties but farmers in port loko and moyamba districts are more knowledgeable about rok 4, rok 5 and rok 10. in all the districts surveyed, rok 5 and rok 10 are the most known varieties. a significant proportion of farmers (528) know about rok 5 and 321 farmers know about rok 10. the percentages on the knowledge and use of the varieties indicate that some varieties are specific to some areas while others are grown in several localities. a constraint was, however, the fact that improved rice varieties are given local names linked to the source of access, the performance of the variety or physical traits. in the 2014 cropping season, for farmers who are still cultivating the varieties (i.e. the adopters), rok 5 and rok 10 are the most adopted rarc varieties. rok 4 and cp4 were adopted by quite a reasonable number of farmers in all the districts surveyed rok 4 by 30 farmers and cp 4 by 23 farmers. the number of non-adopters is high for rok 5 and rok 10. the reasons given were the lack of skilled labour for various farm operations, lack of training and extension service. loss of variety was recorded for all the varieties but rok 5 and rok 10 recorded the highest loss due to admixture and the civil war. farmers indicated their interest in cultivating the lost varieties if they have access to them. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 152-162 159 the cultivation of rarc varieties at least once is high particularly for rok 5, rok10 and rok4. in 2014, however, the cultivation rate dropped, indicating the abandonment and loss of varieties. reasons given were the lack of access to seed of rarc varieties, admixture and the high rate of bird damage to the varieties. seed of rarc varieties with awns should be made available and accessible to mangrove rice farmers. the availability of and easy access to improved varieties with awns can increase production and help reduce bird damage. all the variables in the probit model, except farm income and sex, have the expected signs and eight are significant in explaining the use of the rarc improved rice varieties. the positively related and significant variables are farmers’ level of education, training, access to credit, farm size, extension contact and farming experience, as expected. this means that improvements in these major factors would lead to higher levels of technology adoption. 4.1. recommendations to improve the adoption of improved rice varieties, the following recommendations can be useful. 1. seed of rarc mangrove varieties should be made available and accessible to mangrove rice farmers 2. farmers should be provided with credit 3. extension services should not be biased against women 4. adult literacy facilities should be establish in farming communities funding: the study was funded by west africa agricultural productivity programme (waapp) – sierra leone competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgements the authors acknowledge the west africa agricultural productivity programme (wapp)-sierra leone for financial support and the rokupr agricultural research center (rarc) of the sierra leone agricultural research institute for providing the enabling environment for the study. we are grateful to dr. c. s. kamara (director rarc) for his moral support during the study. we are also grateful to dr. ali a. toure (agricultural economist) and dr. olupomi ajayi (rice research coordinator), both out-posted by the africa rice centre to rarc, for backstopping the study and for editing the original manuscript. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references agyen-sampong, m. (1984). mangrove swamp rice production in africa. pp 185-188. in: cornier-salem, m-c (ed.). dynamics of mangrove use in southern rivers (from senegal to sierra leone). proceedings of the workshop of dakar from 8 to 15 may 1984. orstom edition paris 1994. donkoh, s. a., & awuni, j. a. (2011). adoption of farm management practices in lowland rice production in northern ghana. journal of agricultural and biological science, 2(4), 084093. feder, g. r., just, r. e., & zilberman, d. (1985). adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries: a survey. economic development and cultural change, 33(2), 255298. foltz, j. d. (2003). the economics of water-conserving technology adoption in tunisia: an empirical estimation of farmer technology choice. economic development and cultural change, 51(2), 359-373. jha, d., hojjati, b., & vosti, s. (1991). the use of improved agricultural technology in eastern province. in adopting improved farm technology: a study of smallholder farmers in eastern province, zambia, ed. r. celis, j.t milimo, and s. wanmali, 173-201”. washington, d.c: international food policy research institute. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 152-162 160 lakoh, a. k. (1996). the effectiveness of agricultural research in sierra leone. atps working paper no.6: african technology policy studies, nairobi. sita, d. k., & ponnarasi, t. (2009). an economic analysis of modern rice production technology and its adoption behaviour in tamil nadu. agricultural economics research review, 22, 341-347. tiamiyu, s. a., akintola, j. o., & rahji, m. a. y. (2009). technology adoption and productivity difference among growers of new rice for africa in savanna zone of nigeria. tropicultura, 27(4), 193-197. appendix table 1: knowledge of rarc mangrove rice varieties district chiefdom knowledge of variety cp4 rok 4 rok 5 rok 8 rok 9 count % count % count % count % count % kambia mambolo 81 81.0 66 66 97 97 36 36 34 34 samu 61 61.0 66 66 98 98 34 34 34 34 port loko kaffu bullom 26 26.0 61 61 92 92 15 15 14 14 lokomasama 32 32.0 46 46 90 90 17 17 17 17 moyamba bumpeh 22 22.0 21 21 89 89 6 6 9 9 ribbi 20 20.0 31 31 62 62 8 8 7 7 total 242 291 528 116 115 district chiefdom rok 10 rok 21 rok 22 rok 23 count % count % count % count % kambia mambolo 98 98 51 51 60 60 48 48 samu 88 88 26 26 22 22 24 24 port loko kaffu bullom 34 34 1 1 5 5 4 4 lokomasama 61 61 15 15 11 11 11 11 moyamba bumpeh 24 24 5 5 4 4 4 4 ribbi 16 16 6 6 4 4 5 5 total 321 104 106 96 table 2: mangrove rice varieties grown at least once by farmers district chiefdom grown variety at least once cp 4 rok 4 rok 5 rok 8 rok 9 count % count % count % count % count % kambia mambolo 44 44 22 22 88 88 6 6 5 5 samu 33 33 20 20 84 84 8 8 8 8 port loko kaffu bullom 6 6 28 28 57 57 4 4 2 2 lokomasama 7 7 12 12 57 57 1 1 1 1 moyamba bumpeh 7 7 4 4 61 61 0 0 0 0 ribbi 2 2 12 12 33 33 2 2 0 0 total 99 98 380 21 16 district chiefdom rok 10 rok 21 rok 22 rok 23 count % count % count % count % kambia mambolo 94 94 11 11 29 29 12 12 samu 68 68 7 7 5 5. 6 6 port loko kaffu bullom 10 10 1 1 1 1 0 0 lokomasama 33 33 2 2 0 0 1 1 moyamba bumpeh 4 4 0 0 1 1 0 0 ribbi 6 4 1 1 0 0 1 1 total 215 22 36 17 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 152-162 161 table 3: adopters of rarc mangrove rice varieties table 4: non-adopters of rarc mangrove varieties district chiefdom non-adopters cp4 rok 4 rok 5 rok 8 rok 9 count % count % count % count % count % kambia mambolo 33 75 17 77.3 48 54.6 5 83.3 5 100 samu 29 87.9 18 90 73 86.9 8 100 8 100 port loko kaffu bullom 5 83.3 14 50 34 59.6 3 75 2 100 lokomasama 7 100 11 91.7 38 66.7 1 100 1 100 moyamba bumpeh 2 28.6 2 50 16 26.2 0 0 0 0 ribbi 0 0 6 50 8 24.2 0 0 0 0 total 76 68 217 17 16 district chiefdom rok 10 rok 21 rok 22 rok 23 count % count % count % count % kambia mambolo 41 43.6 10 90.9 25 86.2 10 100 samu 59 86.8 7 100 5 100 5 83.3 port loko kaffu bullom 7 70 0 0 1 100 0 0 lokomasama 18 54.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 moyamba bumpeh 2 50 0 0 0 0 0 0 ribbi 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 total 127 17 31 15 table 5: rarc mangrove rice varieties lost by farmers district chiefdom varieties lost cp4 rok 4 rok 5 rok 8 rok 9 count % count % count % count % count % kambia mambolo 24 54.5 12 54.5 37 42 5 83.3 3 60 samu 26 78.8 12 60 69 82.1 6 75 8 100 port loko kaffu bullom 1 16.7 13 46.4 27 47.4 3 75 1 50 lokomasama 3 42.9 5 41.7 22 38.6 0 0 0 0 moyamba bumpeh 1 14.3 1 25 10 16.4 0 0 0 0 ribbi 0 0 6 50 7 21.2 0 0 0 0 district chiefdom adopters still grown the variety cp 4 rok 4 rok 5 rok 8 count % count % count % count % kambia mambolo 11 17.5 5 7.9 40 63.5 1 1.6 samu 4 21.1 2 10.5 11 57.9 0 0 port loko kaffu bullom 1 3.3 14 46.7 23 76.7 1 3.3 lokomasama 0 0 1 4 19 76 0 0 moyamba bumpeh 5 10.6 2 4.3 45 95.7 0 0 ribbi 2 7.4 6 22.2 25 92.6 2 7.4 total 23 30 163 4 district chiefdom rok 10 rok 21 rok 22 rok 23 count % count % count % count % kambia mambolo 53 84.1 1 1.6 4 6.3 0 0 samu 9 47.4 0 0 0 0 1 5.3 port loko kaffu bullom 3 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 lokomasama 15 60 0 0 0 0 0 0 moyamba bumpeh 2 4.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 ribbi 4 14.8 0 0 0 0 1 3.7 total 86 1 4 2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 152-162 162 total 55 49 172 14 12 district chiefdom rok 10 rok 21 rok 22 rok 23 count % count % count % count % kambia mambolo 35 37.2 6 54.5 22 75.9 11 91.7 samu 59 86.8 7 100 5 100 5 83.3 port loko kaffu bullom 2 20 1 100 1 100 0 0 lokomasama 13 39.4 2 100 0 0 1 100 moyamba bumpeh 1 25 0 0 1 100 0 0 ribbi 2 33.3 1 100 0 0 0 0 total 112 17 29 17 table 6: rarc mangrove rice varieties abandoned by farmers district chiefdom abandonment rate cp4 rok 4 rok 5 rok 8 rok 9 count % count % count % count % count % kambia mambolo 9 20.5 5 22.7 9 10.22 0 0 2 400 samu 3 9.1 6 30 4 4.8 2 25 0 0 port loko kaffu bullom 4 66.7 1 3.6 7 12.3 0 0 1 50 lokomasama 4 57.1 6 50 16 28.1 1 100 1 100 moyamba bumpeh 2 28.6 1 25 6 9.8 0 0 0 0 ribbi 0 0 0 0 1 3 0 0 0 0 total 22 19 43 3 4 district chiefdom rok 10 rok 21 rok 22 rok 23 count % count % count % count % kambia mambolo 6 6.4 4 36.4 3 10.3 1 8.3 samu 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 16.7 port loko kaffu bullom 4 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 lokomasama 5 15.1% 0 0 0 0 0 0 moyamba bumpeh 1 25.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ribbi 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 total 16 4 3 2 table 7: parameter estimates for probit model parameter estimates parameter estimate std. error z sig. probit a age -0.126*** 0.187 -0.673 0.005 educational level 0.014*** 0.047 0.291 0.010 farmer's income -0.166 0.056 -2.964 0.255 training 0.055* 0.023 2.391 0.065 access to credit 0.202** 0.192 1.052 0.038 membership of association 0.010 0.159 0.060 0.352 farm size 0.044*** 0.022 2.000 0.008 sex -0.167*** 0.183 -0.912 0.009 extension contact 0.289*** 0.325 0.889 0.007 farming experience 0.072** 0.096 0.750 0.041 intercept 0.369 1.080 0.341 0.733 a. probit model: probit(p) = intercept + bx note: ***, ** and * indicate significance at 1 percent, 5 percent and 10 percent probability levels, respectively effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 1 producers’ perceptions of public good agricultural practices and their pesticide use: the case of mygap for durian farming in pahang, malaysia yuichiro amekawaa*, ng chuck chuanb, linda a. lumayagc, guan huat tand, chee seng wongd, lukman, b. abdulra’ufe, hui bing tanf, wen xi taig, she mei tanh, chai hong liui, jing lim cheej a*assistant professor; center for promotion of international agricultural education and research, faculty of agriculture, kyushu university, japan amekawa.yuichiro.995@m.kyushu-u.ac.jp (corresponding author) b senior lecturer; school of green sciences and engineering, greencity international college, kuala lumpur, malaysia c senior lecturer; department of sociology and anthropology, faculty of social sciences, university of malaysia, sarawak, malaysia d professor; department of chemistry, institute of biological sciences, university of malaya, malaysia e lecturer; department of chemistry, college of pure and applied sciences, kwara state university, nigeria f project officer; school of biological sciences, nanyang technological university, singapore g quality control chemist; the hovid bhd., malaysia h consultant; climate change and sustainability division in kpmg, malaysia i auo sun power, malaysia j crowe horwath kuala lumpur, malaysia corresponding author article history: received: 14-feb-2017 accepted: 15-mar-2017 online available: 29-mar2017 keywords: mygap, public gap standard, food safety, pesticide use, durian farming, malaysia abstract this paper investigates the local implementation of malaysian public gap standard called mygap by examining its effectiveness in raising the awareness and improving the pesticide use practices of participant smallscale farmers toward better food safety and quality assurance. for this objective, 19 mygap certified and 57 uncertified durian farms in the state of pahang, malaysia were surveyed. the research found that certified farm managers have a much better understanding of the basic intent of the policy than uncertified farms, reflecting the individually oriented interests and motivations of participant farmers in the national scheme. their interests in and assessment of the merits of the scheme are found to concentrate in economic realms rather than in the original policy goal of food safety and quality assurance. as regards pesticide use practices, certified farms showed a much better performance than uncertified farms in record keeping and pesticide use and management. there remains a question, however, whether it is due to the farming practices improved through mygap adoption or due to the participation of farms already well-performing prior to mygap adoption. contribution/ originality the primary novelty of this study is that it is the first study that examines the local implementation of malaysian good agricultural practices standard called mygap with a breath of farm samples. the paper should be of interest to readers in the areas of global agri-food standardization, in particular that of public gaps in southeast asia. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.1/1005.1.1.16 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: yuichiro amekawa, ng chuck chuan, linda a. lumayag, guan huat tan, chee seng wong, lukman, b. abdulra‟uf, hui bing tan, wen xi tai, she mei tan, chai hong liu, jing lim chee (2017). producers‟ perceptions of public good agricultural practices and their pesticide use: the case of mygap for durian farming in pahang, malaysia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1), 1-16. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 1(2017): 1-16 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 2 1. introduction since the early 2000s, several countries of the association of south-east asian nations (asean) have introduced national public good agricultural practices (gap) standards with the objective of improving the safety and quality of agricultural produce. this is largely a response to the rapidly increasing levels of agricultural pesticide use in the region as well as the increasing concerns of foreign and domestic consumers about food safety (schreinemachers et al., 2012). they have also emerged in the context where private gap standards led by globalgap dominate the food safety standardization of the global value chain. private gap standards such as globalgap have been reported of the tendency to give advantage to larger farms over smaller farms due to costly investments in valuable inputs for the applicant forms to meet their relatively stringent standards (e.g., asfaw, 2007; mungai, 2004; graffham et al., 2007). in the case of public gap standards in southeast asia, the governments largely bear the costs of audit and certification and generally set lower certification standards than private gap standards. these public gap standards may have more potential than private gap standards for the inclusion of small-scale farmers in mainstream markets (amekawa, 2009). table 1 shows the basic information of national public gap standards in six southeast asian countries that are currently under implementation, along with that of globalgap and aseangap, while sharing the goal of food safety assurance, public gap standards in asean countries encompass varying levels of grower adoption and differing ways of policy implementation. table 1: adoption of national public gap standards in selected countries in southeast asia as shown with the cases of globalgap and aseangap country/region program year of inception number of farms who maintain certified status (year) responsible agency europe globalgap 1999 <123,000 (2012) euro-retailers produce working group malaysia mygap 2002 903 (2015) department of agriculture thailand q-gap 2004 >120,000 (2015) ministry of agriculture and cooperative singapore singapore gap-vf 2004 7 (2013) agri-food & veterinary authority the philippines philgap 2005 15 (2013) department of agriculture viet nam vietgap 2008 575 (2013) ministry of agriculture and rural development brunei bruneigap 2013 1 (2014) ministry of industry and primary resources asean region aseangap 2015 t.b.d. asean secretariat note: the expression “… farms who maintain certified status…” refers to those who maintain certified status in the particular year. source: created through reference to the gap protocol and direct contact to the responsible agency in southeast asia thailand‟s q-gap has the largest amount of farms, i.e., about 120,000 farms, mostly small-scale, who maintained certified status in 2015. its crude scale of certification in a single country is even comparable with globalgap that has certified farms worldwide. as compared with the number of farms maintaining certified status in 2012, i.e., 220,000 farms, however, it has rapidly declined asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 3 since 2013. in 2013, the country introduced the new code of practice (the version tas 9001-2013: national bureau of agricultural commodity and food standards (acfs), thailand, 2013), which has made it more difficult for applicant farms to obtain q-gap certification or recertification. the number of farms maintaining a certified status in the other listed asean countries are much lesser, respectively. this is mainly due to the much smaller number of existing fresh fruits and vegetables (ffv) farms and accordingly those applying for a public gap program than q-gap. yet their higher levels of stringency in compliance for certification might be another cause. there is a growing body of research on national public gap standards (e.g., amekawa, 2013a, 2013b, 2010; banzon et al., 2013a, 2013b; islam et al., 2012; mankeb et al., 2014; nicetic et al., 2010; pongvinyoo and yamao, 2014; pongvinyoo et al., 2015, 2014; schreinemachers et al., 2012; srisopaporn et al., 2015). a critical question regarding the implementation of national public gap standards is whether they are meeting the original goal of food safety and quality assurance through engaging small-scale farmers in the gap compliance. the following four studies address the problem by examining the level of the quality assurance of q-gap certified farms. first, comparing 45 q-gap certified and 245 uncertified farms for a total of nine vegetable and fruit crops in a watershed of chiang mai province, northern thailand, schreinemachers et al. (2012) found that there are no significant statistical differences between the between farmer groups in terms of the amount of pesticides used, methods of pest control adopted, and pesticide handling. second, amekawa (2013b) found that 34 of the 64 q-gap certified pomelo growers from two communities of chaiyaphum province, northeast thailand, showed a lack of the understanding of the basic objective of gap. in addition, most of those who acknowledged a reduction of their pesticide use around the period of their certification attributed it to the growth stage of pomelo rather than the positive effect of q-gap certification. third, pongvinyoo et al. (2015) examined the cost efficiency of 112 q-gap certified farmers in mangosteen production (of the 2013/4 crop year) in chanthaburi province by comparing it with the mean data of uncertified farms drawn from the 2013 doa extension surveys. they found that q-gap certified mangosteen farmers spend 64% more annual production expenses in mangosteen production (11,554.7 baht versus 7,007.9 baht) and earn 2.24 times more annual incomes from mangosteen production (20,131.4 baht versus 8,968.0 baht), thus enjoying 47% higher income efficiency (1.74 versus 1.27) than uncertified mangosteen farmers. the authors attribute the result to the farming practices of certified farmers that have been improved through their gap adoption. yet considering the fact that 64% of mangosteen farmers in the province were q-gap certified farmers, there remains a possibility of selection bias in which the economic gap reflects a socioeconomic differential of certified and uncertified farms existing independently of the positive changes in training for certification. fourth and last, srisopaporn et al. (2015) compared the agrochemical use of 41 rice farmers who were continued q-gap adopters with 66 adopt-then-disadopters and 70 neveradopters. continued adopters are found to spend significantly less total fertilizer costs than neveradopters and adopt-then-disadopters (at 5% anova), and have significantly less frequencies of pesticides application (at 0.1% anova) except for herbicide application that showed no significant differences. in reference to schreinemachers et al. (2012) and amekawa (2013b) which show different results from the study, the authors ascribe the observed differences to the generally easier nature of rice production to reduce pesticides as compared with the case of ffv production. this study aims to investigate the local implementation of malaysia gap standard called mygap (malaysia good agricultural practices) by examining the effectiveness of the policy in raising the awareness and improving the pesticide use practices of participant small-scale farmers toward better food safety and quality assurance. the existing research on mygap has been limited to a case study conducted by a group of researchers at the universiti putra malaysia, with the number of studied tomato farms only six (three salm certified and three uncertified farms (radam et al. 2007; islam et al. 2012). it is imperative that more research on the implementation of mygap be conducted with more farm samples. this case study focuses on durian farming in pahang state, peninsula malaysia. the aforementioned purpose of study is broken down to two objectives. first, perceptions of q-gap certified and uncertified durian farmers are compared with regard to their asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 4 interests in (or a lack therein) and understanding of (or a lack thereof) the policy, as well as their own assessments of the program. second, farmers‟ pesticide use practices that should affect the level of their food safety and quality assurance are examined by delving into their experiences of training through local doa and record keeping practices as well as by comparing the pesticide use and handling of mygap certified and uncertified farms. the rest of the paper is organized as follows. the next section provides research contexts and methods. the third section offers research results and discussion. the fourth section closes the paper with conclusions. 2. contexts and methods 2.1. mygap in 2002, the malaysian government established a public gap certification scheme for fresh fruits and vegetables called salm (skim akreditasi ladang malaysia or malaysian farm accreditation scheme) (islam et al., 2012; salleh and osman, 2007; van der valk and van der roest, 2009). it was the original gap scheme for mygap, along with other gap schemes for fishery and livestock. salm was aimed at creating vibrancy within the domestic commercial ffv sector by promoting “agricultural practices that are environment-friendly, sensitive to workers‟ welfare and yield quality products that are safe for consumption” (robert and menon, 2007, p.31). a steering committee called the national farm accreditation committee (nfac) makes major decisions (van der valk and van der roest, 2009). doa serves as the secretariat for mygap. the department of standard malaysia (dsm) and any agency licensed by the dsm accredit the farms for good agricultural practices (salleh and osman, 2007). in august 2013, the malaysian ministry of agriculture and agro-based industry launched mygap as the rebranding exercise of the three existing gap schemes established in 2002. hence, mygap emerged as a comprehensive certification scheme for agriculture, aquaculture, and livestock sectors (ministry of agriculture and agro-based industry malaysia, 2014). table 2: control points in salm/mygap code of practice control categories major must minor must encouraged 1. traceability 1 0 0 2. record keeping and internal audit 3 5 0 3. planting materials and root stocks 2 3 5 4. site history and site management 4 4 1 5. soil and substrate management 1 3 6 6. fertilizer management (organic and inorganic) 2 13 9 7. irrigation and fertigation 1 1 7 8. crop protection 7 27 10 9. harvesting 0 7 1 10. post-harvest handling 5 4 2 11. pesticide residue analysis of produce 1 1 3 12. waste and pollution management, recycling and re-use 0 0 4 13. workers pollution management 1 6 7 14. environmental issues 0 2 2 15. record of complaints 1 0 0 16. legal requirements 0 1 0 sub-total 29 77 57 total 163 source: department of agriculture, malaysia (2005) participation of farms in the mygap scheme is voluntary (salleh and osman, 2007). the mygap certification for crops consists of 16 categorical items (table 2), each of which comprises specific rules or conditions based on the malaysian standard ms 1784: 2005 – crop commodities – good asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 5 agricultural practice (gap) (othman, 2006). the doa sends to the applicant from a team of auditors who are normally local doa officers on the regular basis yet could also be officers from the doa malaysia in putrajaya once in two years, in order to check if the applicant farm complies with a set of required control points (interview at doa raub on 10 december, 2013). record keeping is one of the most important elements for farm verification. every farm activity should be recorded for the sake of traceability for the product or the farm worker (salleh and osman, 2007). a certification requires three times of sample collection of crops and water from the applicant farm for the laboratory residue analysis of pesticides and heavy metals. a certification will last for two years. before the end of the term, the farm can apply for recertification. for these farms, submission of samples will be required for residue analyses only once instead of three times (salleh and osman, 2007). the government bears the cost of inspection and residue analysis, providing publicity for promotion (van der valk and van der roest, 2009). 2.2. methods according to the doa malaysia, of the total national (re-)certifications of 313 in 2013, durian comprised the second largest number of certifications after rice. since our focus in this study was ffv, we chose durian as the target crop for this research. as of july 2013 there were 21 certified durian farms in malaysia, all of whom concentrated in pahang state. out of them, 19 farms were surveyed. two certified farms were excluded from this research as they were doa experimental farms operating on the public basis. certified farms were contacted for interview with assistance by local doa officers and using the local official doa directory of mygap certifications for durian in raub district and bentong district. for the purpose of comparison, 57 uncertified durian farms were also surveyed. reflecting the regional pattern of durian production in the state of pahang, the majority of farms surveyed were located in raub district, the most prosperous durian production district in malaysia, 110 km from the malaysian capital of kuala lumpur and 265 km from pahang's capital of kuantan. in addition, one certified and three uncertified farms were located in bentong district (figure 1). figure 1: map of pahang state, peninsular malaysia source: radam et al. (2007) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 6 3. results and discussion 3.1. farmers’ adoption of mygap table 3 shows the socio-economic background of respondent farms. the majority of farm managers are male in both certified and uncertified farm groups. unlike expectations, the number of certified farms exporting durians is limited (only three), and that of uncertified farms are none. this suggests that with a powerful exporter of durians located nearby (thailand); even certified farms in the dominant durian production area of malaysia find it difficult to sell durians overseas. the total durian farm size of certified farms is nearly 60% larger than that of uncertified farms, with the number of employed workers of certified farms being 40% more than the latter. regarding the compared items for statistical significance, certified farm mangers are 11.4 years old younger than uncertified farm managers with statistically significant difference at 1%. certified firms also show a number of economic advantages over uncertified farms such as more employed farm workers (p < 0.01), larger durian farm land size (p < 0.05), more durian sale and that per ha (p < 0.10). it is worth stressing that even though certified farms have slightly lower durian produce her ha (1.02% difference), they have as much as 51.5% higher durian sale than uncertified farms. this suggests that the former receives 52.5% higher mean farmgate prices than the latter due to selling more expensive and better quality durians. table 3: socio-economic background of respondent farms certified (s.d.) ertified (s.d.) certified (s.d.) uncertified (s.d.) total number of studied farms 19 57 farms in raub 18 54 farms in bentong 1 3 chinese (farm manager) 19 55 malay (farm manager) 0 2 male (farm manager) 17 52 female (farm manager) 2 5 number of farms exporting durians 3 0 tested for statistical difference mean age (farm manager) 44.9*** (9.75) 56.3 (13.11) mean durian farm land size (ha) 5.71** (3.50) 3.67 (2.53) mean number of employed farm workers 1.74*** (1.48) 0.91 (1.01) mean durian produce per hectare (ton/ha) 4.63 (4.63) 4.72 (8.66) mean durian sale (malaysian ringgit: myr) myr)myr)myr) 57,158* (79,446) 19,750 (14,120) mean durian sale per hectare (myr/ha) 8,913* (6,056) 5,883 (4.498) ***p< 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.10 s.d. = standard deviation figure 2 shows a comparison of educational background between the two farm groups. seventynine percent of certified farm managers have secondary education or higher while 58% of uncertified farm managers had primary education or less. such an observed superiority in the educational background of certified farms over uncertified farms seems to conform to the observations in some literature of good agricultural practices (e.g., asfaw et al., 2010; kersting and wollni, 2012; pongvinyoo et al., 2014). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 7 figure 2: educational background of respondent farms on the issue of why individual farms have decided to participate in the mygap program, the majority of certified farm managers (77%) responded that they had decided to apply for mygap certification because they expected that once they obtain the certification, they will be eligible to export their produce to overseas markets. this result comes as no surprise because in many cases doa extension officers tell farmers that mygap certification is a minimum requirement for the export of their durian product. for most durian farm managers, the farmgate price of durian is their utmost concern since durian sales are their main (or only) source of income. their main goal is to be able to export durians in order to improve their economic conditions. they claimed it is difficult to negotiate on the prices, however, as middlemen are positioned to play much more powerful roles in controlling farmgate prices. apart from economic motives, only five farm managers (26%) considered the improvements in food quality assurance as a reason for their participation in the mygap scheme. in this regard, a significant gap in the expectations of farmers and local doa officers were observed. farmers claimed that economic expectations for mygap must be their primary concern of their participation in the food safety program as they make a living based on farming. and yet, doa officers seemed to undervalue this point. they complained that farmers do not understand the main objective of the policy which is food safety and quality assurance through conducting good agricultural practices, and that they rather insist solely on economic interests instead. the primary reason why uncertified farms had not applied for mygap at the time of research is that they had little or no knowledge about it. thirty-seven uncertified farms (74%) responded that they had never heard about it nor had any clues for thinking about applying for it. of the 20 uncertified farms that had some knowledge of mygap, eight farms (40%) pointed to the lack of tangible benefits from mygap certification as the reason why they had not applied for the program. even though getting a gap certificate has become the necessary condition for farmers to export their produce, simply holding it does not guarantee them a feasibility to do so as other conditions need to be met. fruit quality (e.g., flavour, size, appearance, etc.) is the main consideration of middlemen in sending farmers‟ produce to the export market. 3.2. farmers’ understanding of the basic gap concept a critical issue in gap is related to the extent to which certified farm managers do understand the concept and purposes of gap. all the 19 certified farm managers interviewed correctly pointed to food safety assurance as the main goal of the mygap policy, whereas only eleven managers (55%) out of the 20 uncertified farm managers who knew mygap did. this result is clearly in contrast to the finding of amekawa (2013b) on q-gap, where over half of the interviewed 64 0% 21% 53% 16% 5% 5% non-primary primary secondary high school undergraduate postgraduate 5% 53% 40% 2% 0% 0% certified uncertified asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 8 certified pomelo farmers failed to identify the policy objective. this divergence may be largely due to the contextual difference between the countries in terms of the farm recruitment process for public gap certification. in thailand, officially targeted clusters of small-scale farmers who belong to a producer group are collectively promoted for registration and provided education and training for the q-gap program. farmers‟ decisions to participate still lay with the individuals, yet the opportunities for them to get access to information and resources could be significantly larger than those without a membership of any producer group. this approach seems to solicit a situation where there are farmers, especially old and less educated, who participate in the program rather passively, failing to understand or recall what they have been involved in (amekawa, 2013b). by contrast, in malaysia where the amount of small-scale farms nationwide is much less and the proportion of those who belong to a producer group is also much less than in thailand, the farm recruitment process is largely individually-based. and as such, there is not much organizational mechanism for group-led certification other than personal connections with local doa officers. decisions to participate in the mygap program lie significantly with individual farmers and their personal ties in their access to information. once they have decided to join it, therefore, they tend to try to learn, comprehend the fundamental concept, and embrace its significance as best as they can. 3.3. perceived benefits and shortcomings perceptions of certified producers about the benefits and shortcomings of mygap certification on their farm operation may affect their decisions on reapplication in the next round. based on the questionnaire response, ten farm managers (53%) mentioned that there are no benefits from obtaining mygap certification, followed by four managers (21%) who pointed to „acquired export opportunities‟ as a merit of gaining mygap certification. it is important to stress that only two farm managers pointed to „increased producer awareness of food safety assurance/improved pesticide management‟ as such benefits. a more specific question on perceived economic advantages of mygap certification was asked to all the interviewed certified farm managers; they were asked whether they consider themselves to have become economically more advantaged, remained the same, or less advantaged after obtaining certification. sixteen certified farm managers (86%) said their economic status had remained the same. eight of them attributed the view to the farmgate price exhibiting no changes after they received certification. there were only three managers (16%) who pointed to increased economic advantages. they considered the advantages to be related to the export opportunities opened for them via gaining mygap certification. these results seem to indicate a relative lack of appreciation of mygap certification among many certified farm managers who have felt no changes in their economic status via gaining mygap certification; this is in part reflected by the limited number of certified farms who enjoy relatively high farmgate prices based on their durian export. perceived shortcomings of participation in the mygap program involved, among others, the burden of complying with certification requirements as pointed out by six farm managers (32%), followed by five managers (26%) who referred to complex management procedures as such. these results appear consistent with the results on the question of the most difficult thing to do in attempting to obtain mygap certification. five farm managers (26%) pointed to the difficulty in complying with the requirements for pesticide control and/or passing pesticide residue sample analysis. other five managers referred to the difficulty in following tedious documentation requirements in the application and record keeping. a few even confessed regrets in having applied for mygap because of the allegedly complicated application procedures required relative to the tangible benefits they have obtained from certification. 3.4. doa support for compliance applicant farms for a gap program must have training to gain an understanding of compliance requirements and acquire the necessary skills. fourteen certified (74%) and four uncertified farms asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 9 (7%) received mygap training provided by the doa. with regard to training on the use and handling of pesticides, nine certified (47%) and six uncertified farms (11%) responded that they had received training through the doa. these results indicate that over half of the certified farms have neither received pesticide training nor have about a quarter of them had any mygap training through the doa. although the doa is the main enforcer of mygap regulations related to pesticide use, many farms were self-reliant on how to abide by the rules and regulations related to certification and pesticide management. farmers must know which pesticides are legal and which are not, given that illegal pesticides are readily available at the local market. all the legal pesticides are registered under the pesticide act, a law in malaysia which was first introduced in 1974 and later amended over time to control pesticide use. eighteen certified (95%) and 44 uncertified farms (77%) responded that they are aware of the types of pesticides officially registered under the pesticide act. the majority of them (certified 80% and uncertified 53%) referred to agrochemical suppliers as the major source of such knowledge, reflecting the lack of training they have received through the public sector. farm managers were also asked whether they sought out any advice on pesticide use from relevant authorities. of the 13 certified (68%) and 31 uncertified farm managers (57%) who answered that they did, twelve certified (93%) and all the uncertified managers (100%) replied that pesticide suppliers are the main agents they seek advice from. only one certified farm manager and none of the uncertified managers sought advice from the doa. hence, farmers‟ knowledge of pesticides is much more private sector driven than the public sector. 3.5. record keeping record keeping is a requirement of compliance for mygap certification. in the case of globalgap, farms applying for certification are most likely to fail if record keeping has not been practiced properly even when all the other requirements have been met. this is not the case with mygap where record keeping comprises only part of many compliance criteria upon which the decisions of the doa on certification are to be made. asked about their daily record keeping habits, eleven certified farm managers (58%) mentioned they always keep records while there are three managers (16%) who confessed that they never do it (figure 3). figure 3: frequency of respondent farms’ record keeping habits (%) meanwhile, the majority of uncertified firm managers (77%) said they never keep record while only seven uncertified managers (12%) noted that they always maintain some form of record keeping. the performance of record keeping of mygap certified farms appears much better than the case of q-gap certified pomelo farms in amekawa (2013b), where most of the interviewed 64 certified pomelo farmers ceased to keep records after receiving certification. while it is important to evade overgeneralization, farmers‟ awareness of the importance of record keeping may be somewhat different between malaysia and thailand. while many thai farmers may be q-gap certified based on group solicitation and thus they may not readily understand what the q-gap 58% 5% 0% 10.5% 10.5% 0% 16% always 80-99% 60-79% 40-59% 20-39% 1-19% never 12% 2% 0% 3% 2% 4% 77% certified farms uncertified farms asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 10 policy is all about, most malaysian farmers certified on the more individual basis may have a better understanding of the requirements of mygap of which record keeping are part. 3.6. pesticide use pesticide use and handling practices take a critical part of mygap as a food safety standard. in the mygap code of practice, approximately 30% of control points are directly relevant to the use or handling of synthetic pesticides. in case those of indirect relevance are included, more or less 50% of control points are relevant, with the control category of crop protection comprising the majority of 44 control points related to the use of synthetic pesticides (doa, malaysia, 2005). in the area under study, there are three kinds of synthetic pesticides that durian farmers were using: insecticide, fungicide, and herbicide. not all the interviewed farms used the three kinds altogether but around 40% of farms used either one or two kinds of synthetic pesticide (table 4). table 4: pesticide use of respondent farms type of pesticide used certified (19 farms) uncertified (57 farms) insecticide number of farms whose data are available ilable 17 (84% a ) 48 (84% a ) number of farms who use insecticide 17 (100% a ) 45 (94% a ) annual amount of active ingredients (a.i.) per hectare (kg/ha) 1.01** (s.d. 1.96) 4.04 (s.d. 8.73) fungicide number of farms whose data are available 15 (79% a ) 54 (95% a ) number of farms who use fungicide 4 (27% a ) 10 (19% a ) annual amount of a.i. per hectare (kg/ha) 0.23* (s.d. 0.86) 0.25 (s.d. 1.08) herbicide number of farms whose data are available 14 (74% a ) 49 (86% a ) number of farms who use herbicide 13 (93% a ) 32 (65% a ) annual amount of a.i. per hectare (kg/ha) 0.69** (s.d. 1.25) 7.26 (s.d. 18.92) *** p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.10 a the percentage refers to the number of farms who use a particular pesticide type in question divided by the number of farms whose data are available to examine whether mygap helps reduce the amount of pesticide use, comparisons of certified and uncertified farms were made in terms of the annual quantity of active chemical ingredients contained in and used for each of the three pesticide types respectively. of the farms who provided available information, uncertified farms were found to use 4.0 times more insecticide than certified farms (p < 0.05). as for synthetic herbicide use, of the farms who provided available information, uncertified farms were using eleven times more than certified farms (p < 0.05). synthetic fungicide tended to be applied as needed to the trees with fungal infections. of the farms who provided available information, the average amount of fungicide used by uncertified farms was much lesser than the case of insecticide and herbicide, with certified farms showing a slightly smaller amount of use than uncertified farms. it is worth noting that despite the significantly lower pesticide use as shown above, certified farms have achieved the durian yield that is nearly equal to uncertified farms. non-synthetic, alternative pest management practices could be employed as part of an integrated pest management strategy for the reduction of pesticide use and associated social and environmental costs. there are six certified (32%) and six uncertified farms (11%) who use one or more pest management methods other than synthetic pesticides, with a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) (table 5). special mention needs to be made of alternative weed management methods. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 11 table 5: alternative pest management of respondent farms certified (19 farms) uncertified (57 farms) number of farms who adapt alternative pest management 6*** (32% a ) 6 (11% a ) number of certified farms who use: rodent trap 2 0 biological control (birds) 2 0 cutting weeds 1 0 burning litters 1 0 shot gun 0 1 wire fence 0 1 mesh wire trap 0 1 cats catching rats 0 1 smoke release to scare pests 0 1 biological control (lizards) 0 1 ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.10 a the percentage refers to the number of farms who use a particular pesticide type in question divided by the number of farms whose data are available note: only the first item (number of farms who adopt alternative pest management) was tested for statistical significance while there are 16 certified farms (84%) who use synthetic herbicide with a much smaller average amount than uncertified farms, there is only one farm that relies on an alternative weed management method: mechanical weed cutter. on the part of uncertified farms, there is only one farm who substitutes herbicide use by a non-synthetic method: manual removal of weeds. this evidence suggests that while using little or no herbicide, the majority of certified farms let weeds grow without caring much about potential adverse ecological consequences such as weed-tree competition over soil nutrients. many certified durian farms mentioned that they are not concerned about weed growth very much since they consider its negative effects on tree and fruit growth to be negligible in the case of durian farming in the region. further, some explained that many farms are just too large for the amount of labor required for manual or mechanical weeding methods, given that weeds regularly grow in the weeks after cutting them. such methods are considered less efficient than the power of herbicide leading to elimination of weeds in several months to come. 3.7. pesticide handling pesticide handling practices of certified and uncertified farms were examined comparatively in terms of selected items covered and not covered in mygap guidelines (table 6). of the seven items covered in mygap guidelines, all of them present no statistically significant differences (p > 0.1) except for item number seven on the possession of a pesticide storage (p < 0.01). it should be noted that there is one farm that does not have a storage that specializes in the housing of pesticides even though the farm has been mygap certified. with regard to the seven items that are not covered in mygap guidelines, four items showed a statistically significant difference (item number nine and ten for p < 0.05 and item number eleven and twelve for p < 0.01), with all of them in favor of certified farms. in item number eight (the observance of pesticide labels for preharvest intervals), the ratio of farms following the practice appears low for both certified and uncertified farms. the results are misleading because the majority of farms follow their own rules for pre-harvest intervals. three certified (16%) and three uncertified farms (5%) mentioned, however, that they use pesticides as needed while not following any pre-harvest intervals. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 12 table 6: pesticide handling of respondent farms certified (19 farms) uncertified farms (19 farms) (57 farms) t-test items covered in mygap guidelines 1. change clothes after spraying pesticides 18 (95% a ) 50 (88% a ) ns 2. wear long-sleeved shirt for spraying 18 (95% a ) 50 (88% a ) ns 3. wear long-sleeved pant for spraying 19 (100% a ) 55 (96% a ) ns 4. wear mask for spraying 19 (100% a ) 56 (98% a ) ns 5. take care of wind direction while spraying pesticides 18 (95% a ) 49 (86% a ) ns 6. follow product label to decide on the dosage 10 (53% a ) 33 (58% a ) ns 7. have a pesticide storage that does not store other things but pesticides 18*** (95% a ) 40 (77% a ) other things but pesticides items not covered in mygap guidelines 8. strictly follow the pre-harvest intervals 5 (26% a ) 21 (37% a ) ns as prescribed on pesticide labels 9. smoke while spraying pesticides 0** (0% a ) 4 (7% a ) 10. eat anything while spraying pesticides 0** (0% a ) 4 (7% a ) 11. drink anything while spraying pesticides 0*** (0% a ) 14 (25% a ) 12. take shower within one hour after spraying pesticides 17 (89% a ) 44 (77% a ) ns 13. change clothes after spraying and as soon as 19*** (100% a ) 45 (79% a ) arriving at home 14. wash clothes used during spraying together 10 (53% a ) 25 (44% a ) ns with clothes not used for spraying *** p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.10; not significant at 0.01 a the percentage refers to the number of farms who use a particular pesticide type in question divided by the number of farms whose data are available overall, pesticide handling practices of certified farms appear to be performed better than uncertified farms with five of the total 14 items exhibiting a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05 or p < 0.01). although a direct comparison may not be appropriate, it should be noted that this finding parts ways with the aforementioned schreinemachers et al. (2012) on q-gap where no significant differences in pesticide handling were found between certified and uncertified farms for seven items 1 . 3.8. discussion with the results unfolded above, a question arises as to whether the conceived superiority of mygap certified durian farms over uncertified ones in pesticide management is due to improved practices of the former through mygap training or due to other causes. since this study is based on cross-sectional data rather than a time-series comparative approach, we do not keep empirical evidence handy for a direct answer to the question. nonetheless, there remains a considerable possibility of sampling bias where most applicant farms would have already been well-performing practitioners prior to their application for mygap. pieces of evidence that support the view are: (1) the educational and economic standings of the average certified farm manager are significantly higher than the average uncertified farm manager; (2) on average, certified farm managers are significantly younger than uncertified farm managers, which seems to attest to the former‟s greater receptivity to a technological novelty over the latter; (3) the majority of both certified and uncertified farms do not draw on doa but on agrochemical suppliers as their major source of 1 the seven items in schreinemachers et al. (2012) include: 1. use pesticides in a preventive way (regular spraying); 2. follow product labeling to decide on dosage to use; 3. take temperature or radiation into account when spraying; 4. take wind speed and/or direction into account when spraying; 5. cover mouth when spraying; 6. cover arms and legs when spraying; and 7. take a shower and wash clothes after spraying (p. 524). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 13 knowledge and advices on pesticides; and (4) the relatively low adoption rate of mygap certification in pahang state (14.5% for 2002-2015, see table 7) implies that only better prepared and more capable farmers could have passed the certification screening. table 7: mygap adoption of durian farms in pahang state, 2002-2015 year registered certified adoption rate (%) 2002 6 0 0.0 2003 6 0 0.0 2004 4 0 0.0 2005 3 0 00 2006 3 1 33.3 2007 4 0 0.0 2008 15 0 0.0 2009 4 0 0.0 2010 18 1 5.6 2011 34 7 20.6 2012 37 21 56.8 2013 50 9 18.0 2014 157 22 14.0 2015 176 14 8.0 total 517 75 14.5 note: “certified” here refers to the farms who received certification in the particular year, rather than those who maintain certified status regardless of the year when they got certified source: personal contact with doa malaysia these items of circumstantial evidence notwithstanding, it would be too hasty to assert that certification screening occurs in ways that mygap‟s relatively high stringency in compliance works to single out the already well-performing farms while screening out not-yet-well-practicing farms. mygap adoption for crop nationwide shows a different trend of adoption rate from the case of durian in pahang (table 8). in the first ten years from 2002, the adoption rate for crop nationwide remained as low as 18.2% (the total number of registered farms: 1,953 versus that of certified farms: 356). table 8: mygap adoption by crop nationwide, 2002-2015 year registered certified adoption rate (%) 2002 313 15 4.8 2003 331 56 16.9 2004 147 31 21.1 2005 147 48 32.7 2006 79 39 49.4 2007 179 23 12.8 2008 251 12 4.8 2009 97 23 23.7 2010 203 39 19.2 2011 206 70 34.0 2012 336 157 46.7 2013 511 313 61.3 2014 907 533 58.5 2015 758 535 70.6 total 4,465 1,894 42.4 note: “certified” here refers to the farms who received certification in the particular year, rather than those who maintain certified status regardless of the year when they got certified source: personal contact with doa malaysia however, the annual number of registered and certified farms and the adoption rate has asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 14 significantly increased since 2012, reaching the adoption rate of 61.2% (2,512 registered farms versus 1,538 certified farms) during the four years till 2015. accordingly, the cumulative adoption rate for crop nationwide from 2002 to 2015 amounts to as high as 42.4% (4,465 registered farms versus 1,894 certified farms). aware that there had been no changes in the content of mygap regulations during 2002-2015, we sought the reasons through doa malaysia, why such a rapid rise in the adoption rate in the last four to five years has occurred. the response was that there has been no research conducted on this aspect but it might be a result of the effective promotion and extension work to farmers and exporters by doa (correspondence with assistant director of the crop quality control division, doa malaysia on march 30, 2016). 4. conclusions this study on malaysia‟s mygap standard has investigated the local implementation of the policy program by examining its effectiveness in raising the awareness and improving the pesticide use practices of participant small-scale farmers toward better food safety and quality assurance. this has been done by comparing the cases of 19 mygap certified and 57 uncertified farms growing durian in pahang state, peninsular malaysia. with regard to effectiveness in raising awareness, the results are mixed. it was found that all the surveyed certified farm managers understand the basic rationale of mygap, while only about half of the uncertified farm managers who knew the presence of mygap do. the majority of certified farm managers pointed out that they applied for the certification program primarily because they wished to acquire the eligibility of durian export for obtaining better farmgate prices, rather than to improve farming practices for food safety and quality assurance. over half of the certified farm managers mentioned there have turned out to be of no benefits from obtaining mygap certification, while only two farm managers pointed to the increased producer awareness of food safety assurance/improved pesticide management as such benefits. in regard to effectiveness in improving pesticide use practices, the majority of certified farms keep records every time they engage in field practices, while nearly four-fifths of uncertified farms confessed they never do such practices. certified farms are also found to use significantly smaller annual amount of insecticide and herbicide than uncertified farms. they also exhibited significantly superior performance to uncertified farms in several pesticide handling items. these findings appear different from schreinemachers et al.‟s (2012) study of thailand‟s q-gap, which found no statistically significant differences in the annual amount of pesticide use and handling between 45 certified and 245 uncertified farms for nine ffv crops in northern thailand. the revealed superiority of mygap certified durian farms over uncertified ones in pesticide management poses a question as to whether it is due to improved practices of the former through attempted compliance with mygap regulations or else. circumstantial pieces of evidence appear to suggest that the results are likely due to the sampling bias where many applicant farms would have already been well-performing practitioners before they had applied for mygap rather than due to improved practices ex post facto. despite the low adoption rate of mygap certification for durian farming in pahang state, the much higher adoption rates by crop nationwide make it difficult for us to determine the degree to which mygap‟s existing level of stringency in compliance effects such pre-screening determinism. the small sample size in this study, coupled with the deviation of the adoption rate of mygap certification in the durian sector of pahang state from the recent trend of crop nationwide suggest, however, that the obtained results should not take an outright acceptance, and that some findings should be cautioned for a national level generalization. more studies of mygap and other public gap standards being implemented in asean countries are definitely called for to gain national and asean regional-level insights into the true impact of the standardization enterprises for food safety and quality assurance. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 1-16 15 funding: university of malaya research grant (umrg) project number: rg186-12sus. competing interests: the author declares that s/he has no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors are deeply thankful to the doa malaysia, doa raub, doa bentong and the university of malaya for allowing us entry and investigation in the districts under study. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references amekawa, y. 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infiltration rate for improving water application efficiency duba chena deroa kishor purushottam kolheb alecturer department of soil and water resources engineering, college of engineering and technology, bule hora university, ethiopia. bprofessor college of engineering and technology, bule hora university, ethiopia.  skishor75@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 28 october 2020 revised: 2 december 2020 accepted: 30 december 2020 published: 18 january 2021 keywords soil texture furrow geometry furrow parameters infiltration rate irrigation water irrigation efficiency soil moisture monitoring field capicity. soil texture, furrow geometry, and infiltration rate are the main characteristics for improving water application efficiency. substantial amounts of diverted irrigation water are often lost because of poor water control, inefficient irrigation conveyance systems, poor on-farm water management, or poor application practices. field experiments were conducted on three farm plots within the command area for water availability and accessibility under the melka hida small-scale irrigation scheme in the west guji zone of oromia region, ethiopia. the physical characteristics of soil, including depth, particle distribution, textural classification, bulk density, field capacity, and permanent wilting point, were studied and the results are presented. furrow parameters including slope, width, length, and shape geometry were measured. the cumulative infiltration and infiltration rates were also recorded. the results show that irrigation application efficiency ranged from 57 to 64% with an average of 61%, indicating that about 40% of the applied water was not used by crops. the storage efficiency ranged from 79.6 to 81.6% with an average of 80%. soil moisture measurements showed that crops were water stressed during the experimental period. application efficiency decreased with increasingly steep slopes and cutoff times, greater applied depth, and high inflow rate in the study area. unavailability of irrigation water control structure, weakness of water users’ associations, and maintenance of furrows and steep slopes were observed as the major causes of inefficient water management in the melka hida irrigation scheme. contribution/originality: this study contributes original research work carried out to solve the real problems of marginal farmers in the west guji zone of oromia, ethiopia. this study uses new estimation methodology for improvement of field irrigation effeiciency in the melka hida small-scale irrigation scheme, through soil moisture monitoring and water mangement. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.19.27 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: duba chena dero --kishor purushottam kolhe (2021). analysis of soil texture, furrow geometry, and infiltration rate for improving water application efficiency. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 19-27. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.19.27 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 19-27 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8435-998x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3259-6342 mailto:skishor75@gmail.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.19.27 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 19-27 20 1. introduction water is the most important resource for life, since it is a basic need. with increased population growth and the erratic nature of rainfall, competition for water resources has increased. due to water scarcity and drought, efficient application of irrigation water is expected in the context of increasing competition for water resources. reliable and suitable use of irrigation water with appropriate system management can result in improvements in irrigation performance and ensure economic development (mancosu, snyder, kyriakakis, & spano, 2015). the main purpose of irrigation is to restore water to the plant root zone, making it available to the crop as a whole. this may be accomplished by means of several procedures that can be grouped thus: overhead, surface, and subsurface. ethiopia has an irrigation potential of 5.3 million ha, of which 3.7 million ha can be developed using surface water sources and 1.6 million ha using groundwater and rainwater. currently a number of irrigation projects are being implemented with huge resources to help overcome human struggle and the hardship of poverty. despite their promise as engines of agricultural growth, the efficiency of irrigation schemes in this country has not reached full potential (awulachew & ayana, 2011). according to the food and agriculture organization (2011), 60% of the fresh water diverted for agriculture globally does not contribute directly to food production. this amount of water is lost because of poor water control, inefficient irrigation systems with leaking conveyance and distribution, and poor onfarm water management and application practices. the fao maintains that only about 40% of fresh water abstracted globally for irrigation is being used effectively for consumption in agriculture. part of the water discharged in these systems is lost to saline groundwater. according to beshir and bekele (2006), ethiopia’s irrigation efficiency is generally low – around 25–50% – and problems with rising water tables and soil salinization are now emerging. it is crucially important to measure application efficiency as a performance parameter in the use of irrigation water, to minimize wastage. pearse (1973) suggested that improvement in surface irrigation efficiency is limited to the understanding of key factors such as soil type, topography, furrow shape, flow rate, and crop age that affect the performance of such systems. in the case of furrow irrigation, holzapfel, pannunzio, lorite, silva, and farkas (2010) suggested that the correct selection of furrow irrigation variables – length, time of cutoff and discharges – improves irrigation scheduling and field water management. this may potentially reduce over-irrigation and deep percolation of applied irrigation water. furrow length, width, shape, spacing, topography, and flow rate are among the parameters that were considered for evaluation of performance measures in the melka hida irrigation scheme. the efficient use of irrigation water is highly important due to the rapid increase in the world’s population, particularly in developing countries where great potential for increasing food production and rural incomes is often found in areas under irrigation. this has become a very serious challenge in recent years and, despite the very high costs involved; the performance of many irrigation schemes has fallen far short of expectations (food and agriculture organization, 1989). to fill this knowledge gap, the present study was carried out on the melka hida surface irrigation scheme, constructed in 1999 by the government. it has an irrigation potential of 80 ha, and around 200 households are currently benefiting from it. despite deterioration in its biophysical appearance, no evaluation of water application efficiency has been carried out to identify constraints and improve efficiency. hence, it was deemed necessary to evaluate water application efficiency and devise the required improvements. the melka hida small-scale irrigation system is located in the oromia regional state of ethiopia, west guji administrative zone. irrigation development constitutes a major requirement and benefit for agricultural development and food security strategies. on the down side, irrigation schemes have the potential to degrade soil and waste valuable water resources if they are mismanaged. in recognition of both the benefits and disadvantages, assessment and evaluation of irrigation scheme efficiency has now become of paramount importance, not only to determine where the problems lie, but also to identify alternatives that may be both effective and feasible in improving efficiency (abebe, 2015). this paper reports the results of recent research on soil physical properties, furrow geometry, and infiltration rate with the aim of improving water application efficiency. 2. materials and methods the field experiments were conducted on three farm plots within the command area, with water availability and accessibility being key for selection of plots. these plots were selected through communication and discussion with irrigation users, with input from kebele administrations and gelana district irrigation office experts. the three selected plots are situated at the head (feleke farm, h1), middle (geremew farm, m1), and tail (wako farm, t1) of the irrigation scheme. a detailed description of the experimental plots and crops grown in the study area is shown in table 1. table 1. description of the experimental plots and crops grown. field id area (m2) crop growing stage at start of experiment (days) planting date harvesting date head (h1) 510 tomato 45 4/1/2017 5/5/2017 middle (m1) 672 tomato 40 9/1/2017 10/5/2017 tail (t1) 375 tomato 48 1/1/2017 2/5/2017 head (h1) 510 tomato 45 4/1/2017 5/5/2017 middle (m1) 672 tomato 40 9/1/2017 10/5/2017 tail (t1) 375 tomato 48 1/1/2017 2/5/2017 source: field data, 2017. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 19-27 21 the experiments were conducted with three replications (furrows) in each of the experimental blocks; the selected replications in each plot were separated by a distance of 8–11 m. immediately after selection of replications from each plot, wooden marker posts were installed to identify the selected replications from other furrows, as shown in figure 1. weir structure head (h1) middle (m1) tail (t1) main canal (mc) secondary canal (sc) tc sc sc tertiary canal (tc) tc field ditch (fd) fd tc tc fd tc tc fd tc tc fd fd figure 1. schematic diagram of experimental plots. 2.1. fieldwork for primary data collection soil texture, field capacity (fc), permanent wilting point (pwp), and bulk density of the experimental fields were determined in the laboratory. soil samples were collected from the three experimental plots at depths of 0–30, 30–60, and 60–90 cm using a core sampler. locations of soil sampling in the experimental plot are shown in figure 2. soil samples were collected using a diagonal technique and mixed thoroughly according to recommendations (thakur, baghel, sharma, sahu, & amule, 2012). in the process of sampling, the core sampler was inserted into the soil without disturbing the arrangement and structure of the soil using hammered metal. a sampling code was given to each soil sample based on pit, replication, and farm plots, to identify and analyze soil data without confusion. figure 2. location of sampling sites in the experimental plot. in the laboratory, hydrometry was used to determine soil particle distribution while the usda scs soil textural triangle method was used to establish soil textural classification.the laboratory testing procedure on soil samples is presented in figure 3. bulk density of the soil was computed using equation 1: t s v m b = (1) where ρb is the bulk density of soil (cm-3), ms is the weight of oven-dried soil (g), and vt is the total volume of soil (cm3). soil fc and pwp were determined using a pressure plate apparatus at 1/3 and 15 bar, respectively. moisture content was computed gravimetrically, by applying equation 2: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 19-27 22 100= s w m m m  (2) where θm is soil moisture content expressed on a mass basis (%), mw is mass of water (g), and ms is mass of ovendried soil (g). volumetric water content was determined from the gravimetric content using equation 3: )( )( w b mv    = (3) where θv is volumetric water content (%) and ρw is water density (g/cm-3). figure 3. laboratory test of soil samples. soil infiltration rate was determined in the field using a double-ring infiltrometer (figure 4). total available soil water was computed using equation 4: rpwpfc ztaw −= )(10  (4) where taw is total available water (mm), θfc is moisture content at fc (vol %), θpwp is moisture content at pwp (vol %), and zr is rooting depth (m). in this study, furrow length, width, depth, and spacing were measured for each replicate at all three farm plots using measuring tape, spirit level, ropes, and stakes (kulapongse, 1966). furrow slope was measured at two locations along each replicate using equation 5: h v s = (5) where s denotes furrow slope (–), v is vertical distance (m), and h is horizontal distance (m). figure 4. measurement of soil infiltration rate. 2.2. field application efficiency as reported by the food and agriculture organization (2002), furrow application efficiencies of 50–70% are commonly reported, 85–90% are periodically reported from studies incorporating careful soil moisture monitoring, and performance may be acceptable if water application efficiency is >70%. application efficiency is computed using equation 6, and the depth of water stored in the root zone was calculated by equation 7: 100= f s d d ea (6) where ea is application efficiency (%), ds is the actual volume of irrigation water stored in the root zone (mm), and df is water delivered to the field or farm (mm). ds was estimated thus: rcs zasgmd = (7) where ds is the depth of water stored in the root zone (mm), m.c is the moisture content of soil (%), asg is the apparent specific gravity of soil, and zr is the depth of the root zone (m). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 19-27 23 3. results and discussion 3.1. analysis of physical characteristics of soil the soil texture in the experimental field is dominated by clay loam and loam, which is red in color. soil particle distribution and textural classification of the topmost 90 cm are presented in table 2. percentage particle size distribution across the experimental plots showed no significant variation. the topmost 30 cm is dominated by clay loam in all experimental plots; the middle 30–60 cm is predominantly clay loam near h1 and t1 but is loam in m1. the topmost 90 cm of t1 is clay loam while the bottom 60–90 cm is loam; a higher percentage of sand is present in both h1 and m1. the average soil texture is dominated by clay loam and, in general, shows no significant variation across the experimental field. soil texture is one of the most basic soil characteristics influencing infiltration, moisture, and drainage. according to the food and agriculture organization (1992), a clay loam soil with a depth of 90 cm is often chosen as optimal for crop production under average management. the proximity of our experimental plots to each other is one of the reasons for the uniformity of soil texture across the site. the soil texture in the study area is good in regard to water-storage capacity and crop production. for this soil type, good irrigation performance should be expected under effective irrigation system management. table 2. results of soil particle distribution and textural classification. experimental plot soil depth (cm) soil particle distribution (%) textural classification sand silt clay head (h1) 0-30 37 24 39 clay loam 30-60 31 29 40 clay loam 60-90 40 35 25 loam middle (m1) 0-30 29 34 37 clay loam 30-60 34 41 25 loam 60-90 34 39 27 loam tail (t1) 0-30 26 38 36 clay loam 30-60 21 39.5 39 clay loam 60-90 27 33 40 clay loam average 29 34 37 clay loam 3.2. bulk density, fc, and pwp bulk density, fc and pwp of the experimental plots were determined in the laboratory for the topmost 90 cm of soil, and are presented in table 3. bulk density is a key soil property because it is used to estimate water-holding capacity. the bulk density of soil in the study area was 1.25 and 1.36 g/cm-3 for clay loam and loam, respectively. this is in agreement with results found in the literature, which describe a range of 1.2–1.5 g/cm-3 for medium soil (ministry of agriculture, 2011). bulk density increased with soil depth in our experimental plots except for m1, which was low at a depth of 60–90 cm. this shows that soil compaction increases from top-down. this bulk density value demonstrates that both soil aeration and water-holding capacity are high across the plot. therefore, under gentle slopes, soil erosion would not expected with such a level of bulk density. table 3. results for bulk density, fc, and pwp. plot soil depth (cm) head (h1) 0–30 30–60 60–90 average ρbg/cm-3 1.25 1.31 1.36 1.3 fc (vol. %) 29.2 29.5 28.1 29 pwp (vol. %) 13.3 14.5 13 13.6 taw (mm/m) 159 150 151 155 middle (m1) 0-30 30-60 60-90 average ρbg/cm-3 1.29 1.35 1.27 1.31 fc (vol. %) 30.5 29 29.2 29.6 pwp (vol. %) 13.6 13.2 11.4 12.7 taw (mm/m) 169 158 178 169 tail (t1) 0–30 30–60 60–90 average ρbg/cm-3 1.27 1.33 1.34 1.33 fc (vol. %) 30.7 28.7 29.8 29.8 pwp (vol. %) 14.2 13.8 13.1 13.7 taw (mm/m) 165 149 167 163 note: *fc, field capacity; pwp, permanent wilting point; ρb, bulk density; taw, total available soil water. based on volumetric method, the average fc of the topmost 90 cm soil layer was 29, 29.6, and 29.8% at h1, m1, and t1, respectively. this shows that the fc of the melka hida irrigation scheme is almost uniform across the area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 19-27 24 the recommended values for soil fc range from 15–30% and 12–18% for clay loam and loam, respectively. the fc values of the study area are higher than those recommended in the literature for medium soil texture. the average pwp of the topmost 90 cm soil layer was 13.6, 12.7, and 13.7% at h1, m1, and t1, respectively. the recommended range for pwp is 7–16 and 6–10% for clay loam and loam, respectively (michael et al., 1972). as such, the pwp of the study area is marginally within the values recommended in the literature. the uniformity of fc and pwp across the experimental field is due to the uniformity of the soil texture in the study area. the available soil water of the topmost 90-cm layer ranged between 155 and 169 mm/m; the water-holding capacity of medium soils is expected to be 100–180mm/m (michael et al., 1972). the soil moisture available is also virtually uniform across the plots, i.e., the moisture-holding capacity of the melka hida irrigation scheme is within the range of values described in the literature. this implies that the field has high water-storage capacity that will be beneficial in yielding enhanced agricultural production. 3.3. furrow slope and dimensions furrow slope was estimated for the experimental plots (figure 6) using equation 5; slope varied between 1 and 2%: the average at h1, m1, and t1 was 1.45, 1.1, and 1.7%, respectively. in the experimental plots, average maximum (1.7%) and minimum (1.1%) slopes were at t1 and m1, respectively. slope showed significant variation even between replicates in the same experimental plot. maximum slope variation was 0.5%, at t1,. these values are outside the limits recommended in the literature – 0.2–0.4% for medium soil (michael et al., 1972). our results show that the study area was dominated by a marginally suitable degree of slope in regard to surface irrigation, which has certain limitations. slope is among the major topographic criteria regarding the suitability of surface irrigation as it is largely responsible for runoff and soil erosion, and the findings from our study area imply a potential erosion problem. it was observed that the challenge of soil erosion was of major consideration in the irrigation scheme. to deal with the soil erosion problem in yhe study area, permissive stream size should be applied (figure 5). farmers had constructed their furrows almost horizontally to reduce soil erosion and water wastage, especially at t1. despite the best efforts of users, due to the gap in scientific knowledge, soil erosion and water losses remain of great concern in the irrigation scheme. losses of this precious resource were due to the steep slopes, which were identified as the key factor affecting performance in the study area. figure 5. measurement of slope and furrow dimensions in the field. figure 6. influence of furrow slope in experimental plots. note: r1,r2,r3 :replications of h1,m1,t1 for irrigations events 1,2 and 3. 3.4. soil infiltration rate the infiltration rate of soil in the irrigation scheme was determined for the three experimental plots by field measurement (figure 7). the initial infiltration rate rapidly decreased as the soil was wetted, and infiltration reached the basic rate almost after 3 h. basic infiltration rate determined for h1, m1, and t1 was 8.5, 9.0, and 11.25 mm/h, respectively. according to the food and agriculture organization (2002), the recommended optimum infiltration rate for gravity irrigation is between 7 and 35 mm/h; for clay loam and loam this ranges between 5 and 10 mm/h, respectively. hence, the basic infiltration rate for h1 and m1 was within the recommended range, while for t1 it was slightly higher. this may be due to land management conditions, because infiltration rate is markedly influenced by the condition of the soil surface. in regard to the ideal infiltration rate, the time for which irrigation water is applied must be properly managed to avoid deep percolation. at t1, due to furrow alignment, severe deep percolation was a problem that farmers did not take into account. the efficiency of irrigation application can be increased by using an asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 19-27 25 appropriate inflow rate no greater than the soil infiltration rate. in general, the basic soil infiltration rate in the study area was within the optimum infiltration rate range for the gravity irrigation method (tables 4–6). figure 7. cumulative infiltration (mm) and infiltration rate (mm/h) in the experimental plots. table 4. infiltration rate and cumulative infiltration at h1. elapsed time (min) time interval (min) time (h) average intake (mm) average infiltration rate (mm/min) average infiltration rate (mm/h) average cumulative infiltration (mm) 0 0 0 0 0 0.5 0.5 0.00833333 1.1 2.2 132 1.1 1 0.5 0.00833333 1 2 120 2.1 2 1 0.01666666 0.97 0.97 58.2 3.07 3 1 0.01666666 0.91 0.91 54.6 3.98 4 1 0.01666666 0.81 0.81 48.6 4.79 5 1 0.01666666 0.75 0.75 45 5.54 7 2 0.03333333 1.15 0.575 34.5 6.69 9 2 0.03333333 1.05 0.525 31.5 7.74 11 2 0.03333333 0.96 0.48 28.8 8.7 13 2 0.03333333 0.84 0.42 25.2 9.54 15 2 0.03333333 0.75 0.375 22.5 10.29 20 5 0.08333333 2.15 0.43 25.8 12.44 25 5 0.08333333 1.9 0.38 22.8 14.34 30 5 0.08333333 1.65 0.33 19.8 15.99 35 5 0.08333333 1.3 0.26 15.6 17.29 40 5 0.08333333 1.05 0.21 12.6 18.34 50 10 0.16666666 2.32 0.232 13.92 20.66 60 10 0.16666666 2.1 0.21 12.6 22.76 70 10 0.16666666 1.9 0.19 11.4 24.66 80 10 0.16666666 1.75 0.175 10.5 26.41 100 20 0.33333333 2.96 0.148 8.88 29.37 120 20 0.33333333 2.85 0.142 8.55 32.22 140 20 0.33333333 2.85 0.142 8.55 35.07 160 20 0.33333333 2.85 0.142 8.55 37.92 180 20 0.33333333 2.85 0.142 8.55 40.77 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 19-27 26 table 5. infiltration rate and cumulative infiltration at m1. elapsed time (min) time interval (min) time (h) intake (mm) infiltration rate (mm/min) infiltration rate (mm/h) cumulative infiltration (mm) 0 0 0 0 0 0.5 0.5 0.008333333 1.05 2.1 126 1.05 1 0.5 0.008333333 0.97 1.94 116.4 2.02 2 1 0.016666667 0.95 0.95 57 2.97 3 1 0.016666667 0.88 0.88 52.8 3.85 4 1 0.016666667 0.83 0.83 49.8 4.68 6 2 0.033333333 1.2 0.6 36 5.88 8 2 0.033333333 0.97 0.485 29.1 6.85 10 2 .0333 0.92 0.46 27.6 7.77 12 2 0.033333333 0.89 0.445 26.7 8.66 14 2 0.033333333 0.82 0.41 24.6 9.48 18 4 0.066666667 1.25 0.3125 18.75 10.73 22 4 0.066666667 1.15 0.2875 17.25 11.88 26 4 0.066666667 1.05 0.2625 15.75 12.93 34 8 0.133333333 0.95 0.11875 7.125 13.88 42 8 0.133333333 0.92 0.115 6.9 14.8 50 8 0.133333333 0.85 0.10625 6.375 15.65 62 12 0.2 2.15 0.179167 10.75 17.8 74 12 0.2 2.1 0.175 10.5 19.9 86 12 0.2 1.85 0.154167 9.25 21.75 106 20 0.333333333 3.1 0.155 9.3 24.85 126 20 0.333333333 3.05 0.1525 9.15 27.9 146 20 0.333333333 3 0.15 9 30.9 166 20 0.333333333 3 0.15 9 33.9 186 20 0.333333333 3 0.15 9 36.9 206 20 0.333333333 3 0.15 9 39.9 table 6. infiltration rate and cumulative infiltration at t1. elapsed time (min) time interval (min) time (h) intake (mm) infiltration rate (mm/min) infiltration rate (mm/h) cumulative infiltration (mm) 0 0 0 0 0 0.5 0.5 0.008333333 1.2 2.2 144 1.2 2 1.5 0.025 3.12 2 124.8 4.32 3 1 0.016666667 1.1 0.97 66 5.42 5 2 0.033333333 2.3 0.91 69 7.72 7 2 0.033333333 2.26 0.81 67.8 9.98 10 3 0.05 3 0.75 60 12.98 13 3 0.05 2.96 0.575 59.2 15.94 16 3 0.05 2.91 0.525 58.2 18.85 20 4 0.066666667 3.1 0.48 46.5 21.95 24 4 0.066666667 2.75 0.42 41.25 24.7 28 4 0.066666667 2.55 0.375 38.25 27.25 32 4 0.066666667 2.4 0.43 36 29.65 40 8 0.133333333 3.5 0.38 26.25 33.15 48 8 0.133333333 3.2 0.33 24 36.35 56 8 0.133333333 3 0.26 22.5 39.35 66 10 0.166666667 3.4 0.21 20.4 42.75 76 10 0.166666667 3.2 0.232 19.2 45.95 86 10 0.166666667 3 0.21 18 48.95 98 12 0.2 3.55 0.19 17.75 52.5 110 12 0.2 3.45 0.175 17.25 55.95 122 12 0.2 3.25 0.148 16.25 59.2 136 14 0.233333333 3.35 0.1425 14.36 62.55 152 16 0.266666667 3 0.1425 11.25 65.55 168 16 0.266666667 3 0.1425 11.25 68.55 184 16 0.266666667 3 0.1425 11.25 71.55 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 19-27 27 4. conclusion in this research, performance measures for the melka hida community-managed furrow irrigation scheme were evaluated. the performance measures used were the efficiency of application, distribution uniformity, and water storage, deep percolation ratio, and tail water runoff ratio. these parameters were evaluated at h1, m1, and t1 in the irrigation scheme. performance showed variation based on plot and irrigation event variation in the system. water application efficiency ranged between 57 and 64%, with an average of 61% across the scheme. excess wastage of irrigation water was found, resulting from deep percolation and tail water runoff. steep slopes, long cutoff times, and inflow rate greater than soil infiltration rate were revealed as the key factors. other factors identified included lack of attention during irrigation application, absence of a water control structure, and irregular furrow construction by farmers. in addition, the effectiveness of the water users’ association was poor in regard to irrigation system management due to a knowledge gap and financial constraints. the efficiency of application of irrigation water at the farm level was poor, particularly in t1. in conclusion, the need for further improvements in irrigation is required in this scheme. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: both authors participated equally in the design and performance of the current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abebe, s. (2015). performance assessment irrigation schemes cccording to comparative indicators: a case study of shina-hamusit and selamko, ethiopia. international journal of scientific and research publications, 5(12), 451-460. awulachew, s. b., & ayana, m. (2011). performance of irrigation: anassessment at different scales in ethiopia. expl agric, cambridge university pres (2011), 47(s1), 57–69. beshir, a., & bekele, s. (2006). analysis of irrigation systems using comparative performance indicators: a case study of two large scale irrigation systems in the upper wash basin. addis ababa: unpublished thesis. food and agriculture organization. (1989). guidelines for designing and evaluating surface irrigation system. irrigation and drainage paper. no. 45. food and agriculture organization. (1992). cropwat, a computer program for irrigation planning and management. irrigation and drainage: paper no. 46. food and agriculture organization. (2002). monitoring the technical and financial performance of an irrigation scheme. harare: fao. food and agriculture organization. (2011). the states of the world land and water resources for food and agriculture. rome: fao of the united nations and london, earth scan. holzapfel, e. a., pannunzio, a., lorite, i., silva, d. o. a. s., & farkas, i. (2010). design and management of irrigation systems. chilean journal of agricultural research, 69(suppl. 1), 17-25. kulapongse, p. (1966). factors affecting efficiencies of furrow irrigation. thesis-reproduction (electronic), the university of arizona. mancosu, n., snyder, r. l., kyriakakis, g., & spano, d. (2015). water scarcity and future challenges for food production. water, 7(3), 975-992.available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/w7030975. michael, a. m., mohanshri, a., & swaminthan, k. r. (1972). design and evaluation of irrigation methods. new delhi: water technology centre, indian agricultural research institute. ministry of agriculture. (2011). guideline irrigation agronomy. addisabeba, ethiopia: nrm september. pearse, t. l. (1973). furrow irrigation evaluation. paper presented at the rhodesia sugar association experiment station, proceedings of the south african sugar technologists’ association. thakur, r. k., baghel, s. s., sharma, g. d., sahu, r. k., & amule, p. c. (2012). training programme on advances in agro-technologies for improving soil, plant and atmosphere systems. jabalpur 482 004 (mp): laboratory manual, jawaharlal nehru agricultural university. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 851 an assessment of the nutritional status of under five children in four districts in the central region of ghana ayensu eunice and darkwa sarah department of vocational and technical education, university of cape coast, cape coast, ghana abstract the study determined the nutritional status of under five children in komenda edina eguafo abirem (keea) districts in central region, ghana. weight and height measurements for 120 children selected from 4 clusters were taken and survey data collected by structured questionnaire from mothers of the selected children. prevalence of underweight/severely underweight stunting/severely stunted and wasting/severely wasted was 13.3%, 34.2% and 10.8% respectively. results also indicated that stunting, wasting and underweight were more prevalent in girls than in boys and in children aged >2 5 years than those <2 years. wasting only occurred in a small percentage of the boys and girls, and children <2 years. survey revealed that there is a significant association between nutritional status of children and mothers’ age, education, nutrition knowledge and feeding practices. wald statistics and confidence intervals after adjusting for mother’s age, education, occupation, father’s occupation and feeding practices showed mothers nutrition knowledge, feeding practices and mothers’ education as predictors of children nutrition status. curbing teenage pregnancy, encouraging girls to pursue education, developing and implementing a comprehensive nutrition education programme for mothers with emphasis on providing quality nutritious and adequate food to children is highly recommended. keywords: malnutrition, nutritional status, predictive factors, nutrition assessment introduction 1 malnutrition occurs when there is deficiency (under nutrition), excess (over nutrition) or imbalance of certain important nutrients in an individuals’ diet (blossner et al., 2005). the world food program (2005) defined malnutrition as “a state in which the physical function of an individual is impaired to the point where he or she can no longer maintain adequate bodily performance processes such as corresponding author’s name: darkwa sarah email address: sardarks@yahoo.co.uk growth, pregnancy, lactation, physical work or resisting and recovering from disease”. it affects people of all age groups but is more common in children, the elderly and pregnant women. the world health organization (2005) estimated prevalence of malnutrition world-wide to be 17.6% in 2015 stressing greater number of malnourished population will be from developing countries in southern asia and sub-saharan africa. other organizations like unicef specify that africa has the worst nutritional status with high underweight, stunting and wasting incidences (ubos, 2000-2001). asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:sardarks@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 851-860 852 when demands of the body are not met, it can lead to effects on growth, physical health, mood, behaviour and other functions of the body. malnutrition in children however is the consequence of a range of factors that are often related to poor food quality, insufficient food intake, and severe and repeated infectious diseases, or frequently a combination of the three (who, 2003). malnourished children are easily irritable, loose focus easily and fail to grow to their required height as reported by who (2005) when it projected that 29% of malnourished children from developing countries will have stunted growth due to poor nutrition in 2015. malnutrition-related deaths often do not occur during sudden food crises and famines but result from long-term chronic hunger that gradually destroys the immune system and expose children to diseases. malnourished children are twice as likely to die from malaria as well-nourished children and this risk is nine fold for severely undernourished children (who, 2008). unicef (2006) reported that under nutrition accounted for 5.6 million deaths of children under 5 in the developing world and 146 million underweight children. it further added that in the least developed countries, 42% of children under 5 were stunted and 36% underweight as a result of poor nutrition. following this report, other studies have also come up with staggering figures on malnutrition related deaths and other health conditions. every year, about 9 million children across the world die before age 5 and one-third of these deaths are attributed to under nutrition (black et al., 2008). dfid (2010) reported that 178 million children under age 5 worldwide were stunted, 55 million acutely underweight and wasted, and 19 million severely wasted worldwide while who (2010) estimated that approximately 150 to 200 million preschool children (<5-years) in developing countries were underweight and stunted. from 1980-2000, the number of pre-school children stunted in africa increased from about 12.9 million to 22 million with prevalence of wasting and underweight remaining at 10% from 1990-2004 (who, 2005). overall averages however tend to hide disparities between and within the countries. the 1998 and 2003 ghana demographic health surveys showed 26% versus 30% of children were stunted, 10% versus 22% wasted and 25% versus 7% underweight respectively (ghana statistical service (gss) and macro international inc. (mi), 1999; ghana statistical service (gss), noguchi memorial institute for medical research (nmimr), and orc macro., 2004). unfortunately, the under 5 mortality is expected to increase in subsaharan africa where the prevalence of childhood malnutrition is about 41% compared to other regions of the developing world (smith and haddad, 2000; united nations children's fund, 2007; united nations, 2004). studies have reported that the prevalence of childhood malnutrition is disproportional according to regions and socio-economic status of the family, as well as ecological zone where these families find themselves (wag staff watanabe, 2000; hong, 2006). others suggested poverty, low parental education, poor feeding practices, lack of sanitation, and family size as factors that cause malnutrition among children (who, 1999; fao, 2006). the ghana health service (2007) in a similar study using 250 children under 5 in the same four communities (keea) reported a malnutrition rate of 18.3% for children 6 months to 2 years. this study was aimed at assessing the nutritional status of children under five in the keea municipality by determining the z-scores of weight-for-age, weight-for-height and height-for-age. other objectives include; finding the relationship between nutritional status of children and the following factors: mothers’ age, education, occupation, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 851-860 853 nutrition knowledge and feeding practices as well as fathers’ occupation; and to recommend appropriate intervention for improving the nutritional status of these children. materials and methods the study area keea municipality is located along the gulf of guinea specifically within longitude 1º 20´ west and 1º 40´ west and latitude 5º 05´ north and 5º 15´ north. the study area has an estimated land area of 1372.45 square kilometers (919.95 square miles) and a projected population of about 138, 711 (keea municipality directorate statistics, 2009). the inhabitants are predominantly fisher folks with few peasant farmers. a cross-sectional, 4-cluster study was done choosing children under five years and their mothers from each cluster. a list of all the villages under each of these four districts (clusters) was obtained from the keea municipal directorate and 3 villages were randomly selected out of each district/cluster totalling 12. snow balling was used to identify 10 children and their mothers from each of the 12 selected villages making a total of 120 children and 120 mothers. mothers with more than one child under 5 had the youngest child picked to ensure that all mothers presented only one child for the study. weight-for-age, height-for-age and weight-for-height were obtained using a meter rule and weighing scale and used to assess the nutritional status of the children. these indices were derived as a standard deviation (sd) or z-score of a child’s measurement to the median weight of the international standard reference, i.e., the growth reference of the centre for disease control-usa (cdc, 2000). the z-score of -2 is generally considered as the cut-off point for screening the individuals who are likely to be malnourished. the formula for sd or z-score is as follows: z = (child’s measurement – reference median) divided by the reference sd, where, child’s measurement = height or weight of a given child at age x; reference median = mean or 50th percentile of the reference population at age x; reference sd = standard deviation of the reference population at age x. an attempt was made to follow as far as possible the standard techniques of taking the measurements as described in the ibp handbook (weiner and lourie, 1981). a well-developed structured questionnaire was administered to the 120 mothers’ in their home settings after their consents were obtained and they were assured of confidentiality of the responses they provide. the questions on the questionnaire sought information on demographics of mothers, children feeding practices, mothers’ knowledge in nutrition and fathers’ occupation. prior to administering the questionnaires to the 120 mothers, few questionnaires were pre-tested using 20 mothers from amisano, one of the villages in the keea municipality which was not sampled for the study. a cronbach α of 0.86 obtained from analysing responses from the protest confirmed the validity of the questions. results presentation and analysis information collected from the questionnaire is presented using simple descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution tables and percentages. the information were earlier coded, quantified and analysed statistically using spss windows software version 17.0 to calculate means, percentages and binary logistic regression coefficient after the raw scores were dichotomized for analysing the effects of maternal age, education, occupation, nutritional knowledge and father’s occupation and feeding practices on the three anthropometric indices – weight-forage, height-for-age and weightfor-height. logistic regression helped to determine predictive powers of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 851-860 854 parameters tested in relation to the nutritional status of the children. the z-scores for weight-for-age, weightfor-height and height-for-age of children are presented using simple descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution tables and percentages. the study was based on anthropometric data from 120 children under 5 and survey results from 120 mothers. the results of the field survey show that most of the mothers in the study area are in the range of 15 – 19 years. results also show that most of the mothers do not either have any formal education or never completed basic education (table 1). there were more male children (about 58%) to females (42%); and 60% of the children were within 2 -5 years with 40% under 2 years (table 1). for this study, prevalence of underweight /severely underweight, stunting/severely stunted and wasting/severely wasted was 13.3% (11.7% +1.6%), 34.2% (25.0% +9.2%) and 10.8% (8.3% + 2.5%) respectively. results also indicated that stunting, wasting and underweight were more prevalent in girls than in boys and in children aged >2 5 years than those <2 years. wasting only occurred in a small percentage of the boys and girls, and children <2 years. table 1: demographic information of study sample source: field survey, 2013 parameter frequency n=120 percentage % age (years) children ≤ 2 48 40 > 2 -5 72 60 mothers 15-19 48 40.0 20-25 36 30.0 26-30 25 20.8 31-35 8 6.7 > 35 3 2.5 gender (children) males 69 57.5 females 51 42.5 mothers education no formal education 25 20.8 primary education 48 40.0 junior high school 35 29.2 senior high school 12 10.0 tertiary education 0 0.0 other (specify) 0 0.0 mothers occupation trading 82 68.4 farming 26 21.6 other (specify) 12 10.0 fathers occupation fishing 57 47.5 farming 18 15.0 other (specify) 45 37.5 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 851-860 855 table 2: prevalence of malnutrition among children below 5 years of age in the keea municipality by sex weight for age z score weight for height z score height for age z score sex of children severely under weight under weight normal severely wasted wasted normal severely stunted stunted normal male 1 0.8% 3 2.5% 65 54.2% 2 1.7% 2 1.7% 65 54.2% 6 5.0% 12 10% 51 42.5% female 1 0.8% 11 9.2% 39 32.5% 1 0.8% 8 6.6% 42 35.0% 5 4.2% 18 15.0% 28 23.3% total 2 1.6% 14 11.7% 104 86.7% 3 2.5% 10 8.3% 107 89.2% 11 9.2% 30 25.0% 79 65.8% source: field survey, 2013 table 3: prevalence of malnutrition among children below 5 years of age in the keea municipality by age weight for age z score weight for height z score height for age z score age of children (months) severely under weight under weight normal severely wasted wasted normal severely stunted stunted normal 0-24 0 0.0% 4 3.3% 44 36.7% 1 0.8% 3 2.5% 44 36.7% 2 1.7% 13 10.8% 33 27.5% 25-60 2 1.7% 10 8.3% 60 50.0% 2 1.7% 7 5.8% 63 52.5% 9 7.9% 17 14.7% 46 38.3% total 2 1.7% 14 11.6% 104 86.7% 3 2.5% 10 8.3% 107 89.2% 11 9.2% 30 25.0% 79 65.8% source: field survey, 2013 table 4: unadjusted odds ratio predicting association between mothers’ age, education, occupation, nutritional knowledge, fathers’ occupation, feeding and nutritional status of children parameter unadjusted wald statistic df sig. (p-value) odds ratio confidence interval (95%) mother’s age* 10.93 1 .04 9.33 1.07-8.57 mother’s education* 13.93 1 .03 14.74 1.17-16.26 constant 9.70 1 .00 0.08 mother’s occupation .00 1 1.00 .00 .00 constant .000 1 .00 5.94 mother’s nutritional knowledge 10.14 1 .023 9.859 1.39-11.91 constant .953 1 .001 .558 father’s occupation 0.71 1 .79 1.38 0.14-13.60 constant 0.37 1 .00 0.08 feeding practices 10.66 1 .02 14.57 .25-14.33 constant .01 1 .00 .94 * mother’s age and education had the same constant. the wald statistic and significance or p-value is used to evaluate whether or not the logistic coefficient is different than zero. the effect of the predictor increases when the logit odd ratio >1.0; has no effect when it is 0; and decreases when it is < 1.0. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 851-860 856 table 5: adjusted odds ratio showing which factor best predicts association with nutritional status of the children parameter adjusted wald statistic df sig. (pvalue) odds ratio confidence interval (95%) mother’s age 2.07 1 .15 .316 .07-1.52 mother’s education 6.04 1 .05 5.20 11.21-6.74 father’s occupation 0.00 1 .99 8.20 .00 mother’s occupation 0.00 1 .99 .00 .00 feeding practices 8.91 1 .04 10.52 1.21-8.74 mother’s nutrition knowledge 10.69 1 .03 11.68 1.28-16.69 constant 0.00 1 1.00 3.07 the wald statistic and significance or p-value is used to evaluate whether or not the logistic coefficient is different than zero. the effect of the predictor increases when the logit odd ratio >1.0; has no effect when it is 0; and decreases when it is < 1.0. discussion of results the aim of this study was to determine how the anthropometric profile of children under 5 and factors such as mother’s educational level, age, occupation, nutritional knowledge, father’s occupation and feeding practices predict the nutritional status of children under 5 in the keea municipality compared to the national profile as these types of data on children are limited in ghana. the results of the field survey showed that most of the mothers in the study area are in the range of 15 – 19 years and had no formal education or just completed basic education. this result is expected because the central region has been leading the rest of the regions in ghana in terms of teenage pregnancy and adolescent fertility figures. ghana statistical service (gss) and macro international inc. (mi). (1994) reported 33.3% of teenage girls start child bearing in the central region as against the national average of 22% and the lowest regional figure of 11.1 % from volta region from the 1993 ghana demographic health survey. the keea district is predominantly rural with most of the population involved in fishing and is not an exception to the high teenage pregnancy situation in the region. also because they end up getting pregnant early in life, they are not able to achieve high education. prevalence of stunting/severely stunted, wasting/severely wasted and underweight /severely underweight was 34.2%, 10.8% and 13.3% respectively. this implies that about a third of the children were shorter in height for their age. the results of this study also indicated that stunting, wasting and underweight were more prevalent in girls than in boys and in children aged >2 5 years than those <2 years. there is a possibility that the children may have been well breastfed but have not been properly fed after weaning. although catch-up growth is possible when circumstances change, malnourished children never achieve optimal growth (golden, 1994). wasting only occurred in a small percentage of the boys and girls, and children <2 years. it seems as if the children in this study experienced a chronic, rather than acute, insufficient food and nutrient intake (uncf, 2007). gdhs (2003) stipulated a 30% stunting, 22% wasting and 7% underweight among ghanaian children under 5 and the rate of stunting in this study is comparable to that stipulated, although wasting is lower and underweight slightly higher than stipulated. five years later, unicef (2008) reported a 23% stunting and 7% severe stunting among ghanaian children which is similar asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 851-860 857 to that reported by gdhs (2003) showing that there was no improvement in stunting among children under 5 in ghana from 2003 -2008. the findings in this study indicated similar results to that of unicef (2008) with stunting of 30% (23% stunting and 7% severely stunted) in children under 5 years nationally. nti and lartey (2007) study of under 5 children in manya krobo district in the eastern region of ghana revealed a stunting rate of 20% lower than the national rate of prevalence. although the same publication reported a slightly higher malnutrition prevalence rate for males (18.3%) than females (17.1%), malnutrition prevalence rate (per underweight, wasting and stunting) for female children (36.6%) in this study was rather higher than that for the males (21.7%). a study conducted by the ghana health service (ghs) in 2007 at the elmina urban health and rehabilitation centre revealed that out of the 250 children studied, 18.3% of them, between the ages of 6 months-2 years, were malnourished. five years later, the rate of malnutrition among children in the same area was found to be 19.1% for children <2 years and 40.1% for children >2-5 years. this shows that probably not much has been done to reduce malnutrition among these children or if certain measures are in place for reducing malnutrition, then probably they are not effective. in an earlier report ghana statistical service (gss), noguchi memorial institute for medical research (nmimr), and orc macro (2004) recorded slight improvements in rates of underweight and wasting among children under 5 years between the 1998 and 2003 ghana demographic health surveys, but deterioration in stunting rates (gdhs, 2003). this shows stunting has always been a big challenge in the health of children in most parts of ghana and need to be critically looked at and efforts put in place to reduce it as much as possible. results indicated that mother’s age (wald χ² = 10.93, ci = 1.07-8.57, odds ratio = 9.33, p= .04) can be used to predict the nutritional status of the child if the following variables are unadjusted: mother’s educational level, occupation, nutritional knowledge, father’s occupation and feeding practices. once these variables are adjusted, mothers’ age (wald χ² = 2.07, odds ratio = 1.32, p= .15, ci = 0.66-1.52) can no longer be used to predict child’s nutritional status. mothers’ educational level however can be used to predict child’s nutritional status for both adjusted and unadjusted mother’s age, occupation, nutritional knowledge, father’s occupation and feeding practices (unadjusted-wald χ² = 13.93, ci = 1.1716.57, odds ratio = 14.74, p = .03) and (adjusted-wald χ² = 6.04, odds ratio = 5.20, p = 0.05, ci = 1.21-6.74). webb and lapping (2002) identified mothers’ education and nutritional knowledge as significant but independent factors associated with children nutrition outcomes. they explain that children of educated mothers are often more healthy and better cared for. the low educational attainment of these mothers may impact the prevalence of malnutrition among these children although there may be other more important factors like income. probably, providing more nutrition knowledge to these mothers during post natal visits to the clinic could help improve children feeding and reduce malnutrition. mothers’ nutrition knowledge (wald χ² = 10.14, ci = 1.39-11.91, odds ratio = 9.86, p = .023) significantly associated with the nutritional status of children and can be used to predict the nutritional status of the children with or without adjusting mother’s age, educational level, occupation, father’s occupational status and feeding practices. mothers’ nutrition knowledge is the most significant variable with the highest predictive index. the fact that the nutritional knowledge of mothers in this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 851-860 858 study can predict children nutritional status supports earlier studies by bloss et al., (2004) who found maternal nutritional knowledge as key to determining the nutritional status of children especially those below five years and odunayo and oyewole (2006) who found a significant association between the nutritional status of children and the feeding practices of their families when they studied a group of nigerian children below the age of 5 years. kumar et al., (2006) identified improper feeding practices as accounting for poor nutrition among children and contribute to 1 out of 2 deaths associated with infectious disease. also, both mothers’ occupation (wald χ² = 0.00, ci = .00, odds ratio = .00, p = 1.00) and father’s occupation (wald χ² = 0.71, ci = 0.14-13.60, odds ratio = 1.38, p= .79) cannot be used to predict the nutritional status of the children in this study without adjusting for mother’s age, educational level, occupation, nutritional knowledge and feeding practices. after adjusting for mother’s age, educational level, occupation, feeding practices and nutritional knowledge, father’s occupation was still not significant and could not predict nutritional status of children in the keea municipality. when all predictors were adjusted, results did not show any statistical significance for any of the predictors in association with children nutritional status. reyes et al. (2004) identified poor socioeconomic conditions such as low paying jobs of fathers to promote malnutrition in children. fathers’ occupations in this study were weak in predicting the nutritional status of the children probably because most of them were either small scale farmers or fishermen who usually live on low incomes or had unstable jobs. in a recent study of children under 5 in india, temsutola and varte (2012) identifies low prevalence of wasting (weight-for-height measurements) but believe it to be independent of age, whereas indices of underweight and stunting are dependent of age. temsutola and varte further states that weight-forheight measurements are better indicators of nutritional status of children under 5. the prevalence of wasting in this study was low (10.8%) and using it as the better and only indicator of nutritional status may not be very appropriate or may underscore the rate of malnutrition that really exists. conclusion overall, the nutritional status of the children in this study indicated a need for intervention. since occupation of both fathers’ and mothers’ had no association with the nutritional status of children in this study but rather age and education with children of older and more educated mothers better nourished, curbing teenage pregnancy and encouraging girls to pursue education may help improve the nutritional status of these children. there is the need for development and implementation of a comprehensive nutrition education programme for mothers with emphasis on mothers providing quality nutritious and adequate food to children. focus on general healthy eating, menu planning, food preparation and serving of nutrientadequate, economical meals is highly recommended. menu planning education should specifically address important principles such as portion or serving sizes, meal variety and nutritional considerations for various age groups. the above recommendations can be achieved if guidelines that pertain to healthy eating are made available and linked to. in addition, it may be important to establish more effective nutritional surveillance systems to help monitor the nutritional status of children more frequently. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 851-860 859 references black, r. e., l. h., allen, l. h., bhutta, z. a., caulfield, l. e., de onis, m., essati, m., mathers and rivera, j. 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they obtain 13 from the asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:asovinchidi@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 74-81 75 soil. soil is of great important to farmers as it supports the growth of their crops and yield. when the soil is not well managed, the particles and nutrients can be swept away by erosion through water, wind and human activities. soil erosion, in the view of brandy and weil (2009) is the wearing a way of land surface by running water, wind, ice or other geological agents including such as gravitational pull. olaitan et al. (2011) noted that soil erosion is the detachment and transfer of soil particles from their original place to another by water, wind or human activities. the authors added that there are two major effects of soil erosion: positive and negative. the positive effects involve soil formation, deposition of alluvial soil on valley floor and at the mouth of river, creation of job opportunities for people and deposition of sand along water ways which can be used for building farmsteads. the negative effects, in the view asogwa (2007) are not beneficial to man, animal and plant in that it leads to general decrease in soil fertility, displacement of population, loss of residential houses and farm crops, pollution of water resources, change in topography and disfiguration of roads. the effects of soil erosion through loss of soil particles, nutrients among others results in poor yield of crops. this implies that management of soil erosion is very necessary to enable soil retain its fertility for crop growth, development and yield. management, in the view of anyakoha and eluwa (2000) is planned activity directed towards the realization of value, the satisfaction of wants and accomplishment of desired goal. kotler and dan (2002) explained management as creative and systematic flow of knowledge that is applied to produce result by using human and other resources in an effective way. morgan (1996) stated that the aim of soil erosion management is to maintain soil fertility and structure of the soil. therefore, soil erosion management is the planned application of knowledge in the utilization of human and material resources for preventing or controlling soil erosion on the farm. it is a planned activity directed by farmers towards the maintenance of soil structure and fertility of the soil. a farmer as defined by olaitan (2005) is a person who grows plants or rears animals for the benefit of mankind. it is an individual who owns or manages a crop or an animal farm. in this study, a crop farmer is an individual who grows crops such as grain, cassava, vegetables, cocoyam, yam and others for the benefit of mankind. okonkwo (2006) stated that farmers use various methods like crossbars, hedges, construction of local channels, digging of catchments pits and sand bags to prevent and control soil erosion. in enugu state, the effective utilisation of each of the methods aforementioned, to a great extent, depends on competency of the farmer. competency as stated by olaitan and ali (1997) is the successful performance of a task through the use of knowledge, skills, attitude and judgement. ogwo (2002) explained that competency is characterized by clearly stated, attainable and measurable objectives, followed by identified knowledge and skills that the learners have to master within a given time. olaitan (2003) said that to be competent means that the individual has acquired knowledge, skills, attitude and judgement, which he requires in order to perform successful at a specific proficiency level in any given work. with reference to this study, competency is the acquisition of knowledge, skills and attitude needed by crop farmers for effective soil erosion management. the competency of a farmer is directly proportional to effective soil erosion management on his farm, all things being equal. that means that a competent farmer in soil erosion management is likely to prevent or control soil erosion on his farm and have a better crop yield than one who is not competent and has problem of soil erosion in his farm. in enugu state, the researchers observed that soil erosion is one of the most ecological problems faced by farmers. the effects of soil erosion through loss of soil particles, nutrients among others, have resulted into poor yield of crops and low supply of food crops to the market. nevertheless, an opinion pull among some extension workers and crop farmers in the state, revealed that the majority of crops farmers have poor awareness of the causes, effects and measures for managing soil erosion. it shows asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 74-81 76 that crop farmers have low level knowledge and skills in the methods of soil erosion management while they have the potential and most tendencies to expand into large scale production of crops if their training needs in erosion control management are substantially satisfied and their interests well motivated in the occupation. this means that, to encourage crop farmers into large scale production, they need capacity building in soil erosion management. capacity building, in the view of olaitan et al. (2009) is effort geared towards in proving an individual’s level of knowledge, skills and attitudes essential in carrying out a given task. in reference to this study, capacity building is the process of improving the level of knowledge, skills and attitude possessed by crop farmers to enable them control and manage erosion for production of crops in large quantity to maximize profit and enhance their income. the purpose of this study therefore, is to determine the competency capacity building needs of crop farmers in soil erosion management in enugu state, nigeria. specifically, the study sought to determine the competency capacity building needs of farmer in:  tillage operation,  mulching,  cover cropping and  strip cropping. methodology four research questions guided the study. descriptive survey research design was adopted for this study. olaitan et al. (2000) stated that descriptive survey research design is the plan, structure and strategy that the investigators wants to adopt in order to obtain solutions to research problems using questionnaire in collecting, analyzing and interpreting the data. questionnaire was developed and used for collecting data from respondents. the study was carried out in enugu state, made up of three agricultural zones, awgu, enugu and nsukka. (enugu state agricultural development project enadep, 2009). these zones are endowed with fertile lands which favour the growth of different types of crops but highly disturbed by soil erosion menace. this encourages equipping crop farmers with skills for effective soil erosion management and soil nutrient conservation. therefore, the area was considered very suitable for conducting this study. the population of the study was 3,562 made up of 484 teachers of agricultural science in senior secondary schools, 38 agricultural extension agents and 3,040 registered crop farmers from the three agriculture zones in the state (enadep, 2009). the sample of the study was 279 consisting of 59 teacher of agricultural science, 38 agricultural extension agents and 182 crop farmers. the sample was drawn using quota sampling technique. quota sampling in the view of osuala (2005) is a non-probability method which aims to make the sample representative of the population by setting quota controls. eboh (2009) stated that quota sampling ensures that a certain number of sample units from different categories with specific characteristic appear in the sample so that all characteristics are represented. the instrument used to collect data for the study was a structured questionnaire consisting of 84 items generated from review of literature. the questionnaire was divided into two categories of competencies needed and competencies performed. the needed category had a 4 –point response scale of highly needed (4), averagely needed (3), slightly needed (2) and not needed (1) while the performance category had a 4 point response scale of high performance (hp), average performance (ap), low performance (lp) and no performance (np), with a corresponding value of 4, 3, 2 and 1 respectively. three experts validated the instrument, two from department vocational teacher education and one from department of soil science, university of nigeria, nsukka. their corrections and suggestions were used to produce the final copy of the questionnaire. pearson product moment correlation method was adopted to determine the stability of the questionnaire items. a reliability coefficient of 0.84 was obtained. three research assistants who were familiar with the area of the study were hired and given orientation on how to administer the questionnaire to the respondents. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 74-81 77 two hundred and seventy-nine copies of the questionnaire were administered to crop farmers. two hundred and seventy-three copies of the questionnaire were retrieved and analyzed using weighted means and improvement needed index (ini) to answer the research questions. to determine the capacity building needs of crop farmers, the following steps were taken. the weighted mean of each item under the needed category was calculated. the weighted mean of each item under performance category was calculated. the difference between the two weighted means represented performance gap (pg) which indicated the level of capacity of the =pg was calculated. inference from the calculation was as follows where the performance gap (pg) equals zero (0) for each item, the farmers needed no capacity building because the level at which the competency item, was needed was equal to the level at which the farmers could perform the competency item. where the performance gaps (pg) was negative (-) for each item, the farmers needed no capacity building because the level at which the competency item was needed was lower than the level at which the farmers could perform the competency item. where the performance gap (pg) was positive (+) for each item, the farmer needed capacity building because the level at which the competency item was needed was higher than the level at which the farmers could perform the competency item. research questions the following research questions guided the study: what are the competencies in tillage for erosion management where crop farmer needed capacity building? what are the competencies in mulching for erosion management where crop farmers needed capacity building? what are the competencies in cover cropping for erosion management where crop farmers needed capacity building? what are the competencies in strip cropping for erosion management where crop farmers needed capacity building? results the results of this study were obtained from the research questions answered using data collected and analyzed. the data for answering the research questions are presented in tables below. table 1: performance gap analysis of mean ratings of the responses of crop farmers on competencies in tillage for erosion management where crop farmers needed capacity building (n=182) s/n item statements in tillage xn xp pg (xn-xp) remark 1 mark out area to be tilled 3.84 2.12 1.72 cbn 2 handle the implement 3.82 3.10 o.72 cbn 3 cultivated to break up crusted soil 3.85 2.90 0.95 cbn 4 determine the tillage depth depending on soil condition 3.39 2.73 1.08 cbn 5 lift the soil collected with the implement 3.81 2.74 1.07 cbn 6 twist the implement with the soil 3.39 2.63 0.76 cbn 7 turn over the residues 3.58 2.80 0.78 cbn 8 break up the soil clods 3.81 3.15 1.66 cbn 9 stir or mix the soil with the implement 3.53 1.92 1.61 cbn 10 bury the weeds properly with the implement 3.79 2.50 1.29 cbn 11 prepare the land flat without ridges/beds 3.82 3.30 0.52 cbn asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 74-81 78 12 make ridges/seedbeds and create furrow 3.63 3.01 0.62 cbn 13 scrap the surface of the ridges to enhance in filtration 3.71 2.58 1.13 cbn 14 smooth the surface of the seedbeds 3.77 2.50 1.27 cbn 15 open furrow or hole for seed placement 2.60 1.66 0.58 cbn xn = mean of needed, xp = mean of performance, pg = performance gap, n = number of respondents, cbn = capacity building needed the data in table 1 revealed that the performance gap value of all the fifteen (15) items ranged from 0.52 to 1.29 and were positive. this indicated that farmers needed capacity building in all the fifteen competency items in tillage for erosion management. table 2: performance gap analysis of mean ratings of the responses of crop farmers on competencies in mulching for erosion management where crop farmers needed capacity building (n=182) s/n item statements in mulching xn xp pg (xn-xp) remarks 1 cut the materials to be used as mulch 3.84 3.49 0.35 cbn 2 spread the materials to dry 3.61 1.25 2.36 cbn 3 carry the mulch materials from home to farm 3.77 1.60 2.17 cbn 4 spread by hand around germinated plants 3.81 2.85 0.86 cbn 5 for materials like straw or hay, use shredder to chop up the materials 3.67 1.99 1.68 cbn 6 pile quite high 152mm or more of organic matter and settle over the season 3.68 2.76 0.92 cbn 7 cover every part of the ridge or bed (complete mulching) 3.80 3.22 0.58 cbn 8 cap or shed young tendrils or seedlings 3.69 3.13 0.56 cbn 9 chop up mulch materials to make layers more permeable to water and speed up rotting 3.76 2.69 1.07 cbn 10 avoid contact between leaves and mulches to prevent transmission of fungal diseases 3.59 2.61 0.98 cbn 11 remove mulch after seed germination to prevent damage to the seedlings 3.81 2.88 0.93 cbn xn = mean of needed, xp = mean of performance, pg = performance gap, n = number of respondents, cbn = capacity building needed. the data in table 2 revealed that the performance gap value of all the eleven (11) items ranged from 0.35 to 2.36 and were positive. this indicated that crop farmers need capacity building in all the eleven competency items in mulching for erosion management. table 3: performance gap analysis of mean ratings of the responses of crop farmers on competencies on cover cropping for erosion management where crop farmers needed capacity building (n = 180) s/n item statement in cover cropping xn xp pg (xn-xp) remarks 1 select an appropriate site 3.69 2.24 1.45 cbn 2 clear the site with suitable implement 3.57 2.83 0.74 cbn 3 select suitable seed for planting 3.90 3.05 0.85 cbn 4 carry out seed viability test 3.10 2.11 0.99 cbn 5 loosen soil but do not over till 3.75 2.48 1.27 cbn 6 break clumps and kill weed seedlings 3.75 2.22 1.56 cbn 7 irrigate a few days before planting, the 3.29 1.77 1.52 cbn asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 74-81 79 soil is dry 8 broadcast the seeds on the prepared land 3.79 2.80 0.99 cbn 9 inspect the field and reseed any gap after one week of planting 2.84 1.75 1.09 cbn 10 protect the farm from the outbreak of pests and diseases 2.86 2.06 0.80 cbn xn = mean of needed, xp = mean of performance, pg = performance gap, n = number of respondents and cbn = capacity building needed. the data in table 3 revealed that the performance gap value of all the ten (10) items ranged from 0.74 to 1.56 and were positive. this indicated that crop farmers needed capacity building in all the ten competency items in cover cropping for erosion management. table 4: performance gap analysis of mean ratings of responses of crop farmers on competencies in strip cropping for erosion management where crop farmers needed capacity building (n=182) s/n item statement in strip cropping xn xp pg (xn-xp) remarks 1 draw the plan of the strip 3.39 1.79 1.60 cbn 2 measure out position of the strip in the field using the plan. 3.59 1.88 1.71 cbn 3 lay out the strip on long slops subject to inter rill and rill erosion. 3.81 2.85 0.96 cbn 4 cultivate across the slope rather than within. 3.82 3.26 0.58 cbn 5 determine the width of the strip. 3.45 2.77 0.68 cbn 6 construct field strip not wider than 30m and narrower than 15cm. 3.55 1.89 1.66 cbn 7 clear the soil of trashes in the areas to be tilled. 3.29 2.77 0.52 cbn 8 till the soil. 3.80 3.24 0.52 cbn 9 purchase the crops to be planted on the strips. 3.80 2.68 1.12 cbn 10 plant at right angle to prevent wind. 3.61 2.85 0.76 cbm xn = mean of needed, xp = mean of performance, pg = performance gap, n = number of respondents and cbn = capacity building needed. the data in table 4 revealed that the performance gap value of the ten (10) items ranged from 0.52 to 1.71 and were positive. this indicated that crop farmers needed capacity building in all the ten competency items in strip cropping for erosion management. discussion of the result the result of the study revealed that crop farmers in the area of the study needed capacity building in fifteen (15)competency items in tillage, eleven (11) competency items in mulching, ten (10) competency items in cover cropping and ten (10) competency items in strip cropping for erosion management in enugu state. the findings in tillage and its corresponding competency items were in agreement with the view of brandy and weil (1999) that outlined the following competencies in tillage practices; mark out area to be tilled, force the implement into the soil, determine the depth depending on soil condition among others. the finding in mulching and its corresponding 11 competency items were in consonance with the view of osinem (2005) who stated the following procedures for mulching: collect material such as saw dust wood, leaves, grasses, refuse, carry the mulch materials from home to the farm, and cover every part of the ridge or bed among others. the findings in cover cropping and its corresponding 10 competency items were in agreement with the view of thomas, robin, russel, hand joesph (2008) who stated the procedures in cover cropping to include, select crop for planting, loosen soil but do not over till, break up clumps and others. the findings in strip cropping and its corresponding competency items were in consonance with nwoke (2005) who outline the following asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 74-81 80 competency items in strip cropping: draw the plan of the strips, measure out the position of the strip in the field using the plan among others. the views and submissions of the authors cited above helped to add credence to the findings of this study. conclusion and recommendations it was observed that crop farmers in enugu state do not produce enough crops to meet up with the demand in the market due to the loss of land as a result of effect of soil erosion. this situation could be attributed to several factors such as the level of competencies possessed by crop farmers in erosion management. the study was carried out to determine competency capacity building needs of crop farmers in soil erosion management in enugu state, nigeria. this study found out that crop farmer in enugu state needed competency capacity building in tillage, mulching cover cropping and strip cropping for erosion management. based on the findings of this study, it was therefore, recommended that. the state government should direct the skill acquisition centres to integrate the identified competencies into their training programmes to retrain farmers in soil erosion prevention and control. enugu state government should utilize the identified competencies in soil erosion management in organizing improvement workshops for farmers on soil erosion management. agricultural extension agents should use the competencies identified to work more closely with farmers in retraining them in area of soil erosion management. references asogwa, v. c. (2007). soil erosion management in edo state. nsukka: calvary publishing company. brandy, n. c., & weil, r. r. (1999). the nature and property of soil. new jersey: prentce hall. chukwurah (1999). investigation of soil erosion problem in onistsha l. g. a of anambra state. unpublished b. sc. thesis, department of agricultural extension, university of nigeria, nsukka. eboh, e. c. (2009). social and economic research: principle and methods. enugu, nigeria: african institute of applied economics. emone, e. o. (2003). agricultural terms. a-z onitsha: janison publishing company. enugu state agricultural development project (enadep, 2009). list of agricultural extension agents in the state. kotler., & dan, v. (2002). resource management. retrieved from www.http://org.resources management.edu/wikion 24/03/11. morgan g. r., & kent, a. m (2004). terrace maintenance. usa: kansas state university. ogwo, b. a. (2002). curriculum. an unpublished mimeograph, university of nigeria, nsukka. okonkwo, c. o. (2006). the deposition of environment of the eocene nanka sandstone in anambra basin, south eastern nigeria. a paper presented at the annual confrence of geological society of anambra on 28 th october, 2002 at denver colorado, usa. olaitan, s. o (2003). understanding curriculum. nsukka-odim printing publishing company. olaitan, s. o., & ali, a. (1997). the making of curriculum (theory, process, product and evaluation. onitsha: cape publisher intl limited. olaitan, s. o., alaribe, m. o., & ella (2009). capacity building needs of palm oil and kernel marketers for enhancing economic returns from oil palm industry in south eastern nigeria. a paper presented to the annual conference of nigeria vocational association (nva), at the university of nigeria, nsukka. olaitan, s. o., ifeanyieze, f. o., & eze, s. o. (2011). erosion management education. enugu, nigeria: cheston limited. olaitan, s. o. (2005). development curriculum of vocational and technical education. onitsha: cape publishers. olaitan, s. o. (2005). soil erosion management in the tropics. unpublished http://www.http/org.resources asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 74-81 81 undergraduate lecture note, university of nigeria, nsukka. olaitan, s. o., & omomia, o. a. (2009). round up agricultural science: a complete guide. enugu; longman nigeria plc. olaitan, s. o., ali, a., eyoh., & sowande, k. g. (2000). research skills in education and social sciences. onitsha: cape publishers ltd. osinem, e. c. (2005). environmental education in agriculture. enugu: cheston agency limited. osuala, e. c. (2005). introduction to research methodology. enugu: cheston agency limited. plaster, e. j. (1992). soil science and management. new york: delmar publisher inc. thomas, b. r., robin. b. russell and hand joseph, w. s (2008). cover crops for vegetable growers. http:/www/nysaca.cornelledu/edu/hortfac ulty. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 277 impact factors of days open cost on dairy profitability zainalabidin mohamed, ismail abd latif and ali chizari department of agribusiness and information systems, faculty of agriculture, universiti putra malaysia, 43400 upm serdang, selangor, malaysia abstract effort to decrease cost of production is a mainly step to improve profitability at the farm. hidden cost, specifically, days open cost as a huge part of operation cost in dairy herd is one of important task of the managers. the aim of this study investigate of days open cost to identify, assess and control it. pregnancy rate, culling rate, death rate, mastitis, lameness and also milk price, feed cost, heifer price, cull price, calf price and veterinary cost are included the fundamental costs which has been considered. keywords: days open, profitability, dairy herd management, livestock economics introduction 1 breeding of livestock in iran is a fundamental sector of the iranian agriculture industry and rearing cattle especially dairy cattle for milk production is of strategic importance. it is then clear that this industry plays a great role in the economy of the villages making the economic aspect of the dairy herd a focus of particular interest. the main task of keeping dairy herd is for it to generate money so profitability is an important benchmark for measuring its success. closely related to this goal are the different reasons for culling cows which in turn impacts costs and profits thus making judgments and decisions to remove cows a burdensome task. in addition, the market price of the supplies and products are affected with this plan simply because of its influence on revenue and expenditures at the farm. corresponding author’s name: zainalabidin mohamed email address: zam@upm.edu.my furthermore, economic yield of the herd could be taken as a fundamental point to continue the farm business and recognize the points of weakness. in line with this is attention given to costs specifically production costs as compared to assets being used on the farm. based on this there is a need for the creation of a tool to evaluate and assess the cow’s performance and indulge on the decision to keep or cull the cows. given the importance of the livestock industry and it association with the economics of agricultural and that of dairy farming and milk production. the use of new tools and methods to increase productivity and performance are indispensable. one of the factors to reduce production costs while raising dairy cattle is livestock identification and distinguishing high-quality or low productivity animals and removing them from the herd. once the decision is taken to reduce production costs and use capital efficiently, improvements show in terms of riding capital. livestock identification and its assessment should be based on the economic conditions of the market and biological characteristics of the affected animal. based on the current asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:zam@upm.edu.my asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 277-280 278 economic conditions and the absence of a practical system of assessment and decision making, related operations are not being carried out properly on the farms. material and method gap days from calving to conception (days open) is normally linked with reduced profitability in dairy cows. one of the major but mainly hidden costs which affect cow’s performance is days open cost (doc). previous studies confirm that any delay in cow’s pregnancy can adversely impact the income. this is simply because, the maintenance cost of the cow will be amplified and the pregnancy income as a partial revenue will decline dramatically. moreover, any pregnancy delay has an inverse influence on milk production. the results indicate a clear trend of greater risks of death and culling rate for the increasing number of days open. it follows that the odds of death and culling rate were reduced for cows with fewer days open in the previous parity when compared with cows with lengthy days open (table 1) (pinedo et al., 2010). table 1: risk (%) of death or live culling of days open days open death (%) live culling(%) 1 to 45 2.48 ± 0.14 4.51 ± 0.21 46 to 90 2.52 ± 0.07 5.00 ± 0.12 91 to 150 2.89 ± 0.08 5.41 ± 0.13 151 to 210 3.60 ± 0.11 6.05 ± 0.15 211 to 300 4.36 ± 0.14 6.87 ± 0.19 301 to 600 5.79 ± 0.22 8.06 ± 0.27 several factors such as voluntary waiting period, ai techniques, management policies, herd size, and production levels are influenced after calving (oseni et al., 2003). days open have been widely used as a success measure of reproductive programs. dairy farmers are conscious that cows with extra days open get more harmed and become potentially more at risk of being culled. extended days open may increase the risk of over conditioning of cows at the end of their lactation because milk yield is then typically lower and feed intake is less reduced (pinedo and de vries, 2010). in line with this, some factors such as days open, milk production, lactation, veterinary cost, breeding cost, replacement cost, feed cost, calf price, milk price, culling rate and death rate affect days open cost and based on this formula doc can be computed (groenendaal et al., 2004). .........................(1) where doc = days opencosts, ci = calving interval (month), ci = net income in the first month of lactation with a ci measured in months, and ci + 1 = net income in the first month of lactation with a ci of ci+1 month. de vries (2006a) has demonstrated that one of the important factors affecting doc is the cow replacement cost (crc) that will be discussed in the next section. furthermore, some diseases like lameness, ketosis, milk fever, and lad (leukocyte adhesion deficiency) cause that extra days open (table 2).one more interesting thing is that mastitis not only influences milk production but it also affects the culling rate, death rate and extra days open as shown in table 2 (de vries, 2009b). table 2: effects of common diseases on risk of leaving the herd, milk sales, days open, farmer labour and veterinary costs %death %culled milk not milk extra farmer vet & /case /case made discard days open labour drug lb/case lb/case /case hr/case usd/case mastitis 1.1 7 275 300 0 1 15 lameness 1 12 330 66 12 0.5 26 lda 2 8 840 77 12 1 86 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 277-280 279 ketosis 0.5 5 506 0 10 0.67 19 rp/metritis 1.5 6 550 248 15 0.67 20 milk fever 4 5 286 0 13 0.5 25 dystocia 1 2.2 390 90 12 1 44 results and discussions in this and previous studies, one of the most important costs after feed cost is doc (about 24.31% of cow operating cost) (51.88, 24.31, 11.22, 6.33, 4.41, 1.84 % involved feed cost, days open cost, replacement cost, breeding cost, lameness cost, mastitis cost respectively). as it has been implied, pregnancy has its own revenue with two different costs that can be included in the fertilization cost (breeding cost) and pregnancy delay cost (days open cost). figure 1: sensitivity analyses of average days open cost according to formula (1) the results represent the average doc in the herd with sensitivity to milk price, heifer price, calf price, herd turnover rate, cull price, veterinary cost, and feed cost (figure 1). however, the sensitivity analysis shows that milk price and heifer price (30.31% and 25.41% respectively) have the largest effect on daily days open cost though with some differences because milk price affects the annually revenue of the cow but heifer price impacts the yearly expenditures of the herd. on the other hand, according to the figure 3 20% changes the parameters such as milk price, calf price and cull price, the average daily doc has been improved (31.37%, 18.60%, 10.49% of total changes respectively), whereas, heifer price, culling rate, vet cost, death rate and dairy feed cost have influenced inversely on the doc (25.41%, 8.73%, 3.16%, 1.18% and 1.06% of total changes respectively). moreover, studies show that doc in the different month is, from 12 to 13 month is usd 3.164, from 13 to 14 month usd 3.774, from 14 to 15 month usd3.832, and from 15 to 16 month usd 4.638. past studies mentioned that increasing days open affects the probability of culling and death rates, so it is one main individual replacement cost for each cow (oseni et al., 2003). base on the outputs of calculated 16.30% of total days open cost has been impacted by replacement cost of cows influenced by days open cows (usd 94.07 of usd 577.24 average per head). moreover, delay of pregnancy is very costly for the farmers, and it will improve the expenditures of maintain cow cost. finally, according to the analysis, doc has changed from usd 159.97 to usd 2291.09 with 23 to 549 days open respectively emphasis that the main costs and reasons to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 277-280 280 cull the dairy cows are delay in pregnancy and farmers need to focus on these programs. conclusion according to this study and results days open cost as a huge hidden operation cost should monitor by management to control the herd profitability, albeit, all factors that can impact on it which has been mentioned before need to access and evaluate to analysis of herd total cost. references de vries, a. (2006). determinants of the cost of days open in dairy cattle. in proceedings of the 11th international symposium on veterinary epidemiology and economics, cairns, australia, august, pp. 6-11, 19–20. de vries, a. (2009). ranking cows for culling decisions. in southeast dairy herd management conference, november 11& 12, 2009, georgia farm bureau building, macon, ga, 1– 10. groenendaal, h., galligan, d. t., & mulder, h. a. (2004). an economic spreadsheet model to determine optimal breeding and replacement decisions for dairy cattle. journal of dairy science, 87, 2146–2157. oseni, s., misztal, i., tsuruta, s., & rekaya, r. (2003). seasonality of days open in us holsteins. journal of dairy science, 86(11), 3718–3725. pinedo, p. j., & de vries, a. (2010). eect of days to conception in the previous lactation on the risk of death and live culling around calving. journal of dairy science, 93(3), 968–977. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 281 technical efficiency of maize production in nigeria: parametric and nonparametric approach yusha’u hassan, amin mahir bin abdullah, mohd mansor ismail and zainalabidin mohamed department of agribusiness and information system, faculty of agriculture, university putra malaysia abstract the study was carried out to provide empirical evidence on technical efficiency of maize production in nigeria using parametric and non-parametric approaches. the study employed annual secondary data on maize production in nigeria from 1971 to 2010.stochastic frontier analysis (sfa) and data envelopment analysis (dea) were used to estimate the technical efficiency of maize production. the results revealed that, the mean technical efficiency scores were 64.1%, 77.8% and 87.7% for technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis, technical efficiency of dea constant return to scale and technical efficiency of dea variable return to scale assumptions, respectively. these showed that the efficiency scores obtained from dea are higher than those obtained from sfa. the results implied that, the country can expand its scope of output production by 35.5%, 22.2% and 12.3% for technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis, data envelopment analysis constant return to scale and variable return to scale, respectively. it is concluded that under the two methods used farmers can still expand their scope of output production through appropriate combination and use of production inputs at the given technology. keywords: efficiency, data envelopment analysis, stochastic frontier analysis, constant return to scale, variable return to scale, maize introduction 1 maize is a cereal staple food crop that is popularly grown in many of the subsaharan countries of africa of which nigeria inclusive, with per capital consumption of 40kg/year (faostat, 2003).the crop has big impact in the economics of developed and developing countries. according to national bureau of statistics (nbs) 2012in nigeria, over 60% of the population is employed by corresponding author’s name: yusha’u hassan email address: hassanyushau@yahoo.com agriculture. this sector contributes about 40% to the nigerian gross domestic product (gdp). despite the economic importance of the crop to the country, yet its supply to meet the demand of the teaming population is not met. in nigeria population is estimated to be growing at 3.2% per annum (npc, 2006) while agricultural production is growing at 2.5% per annum (ogundari and ojo, 2007). hence, this creates demand-supply imbalance of food in the country. according to usda (2012) in 2011, 5.15 million hectares were cultivated to maize, with a production of 9.25 million tons per asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:hassanyushau@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 281-291 282 annum, giving a yield of 1.8 tons per hectare. ojo (2003) reported that factors such as price fluctuation, diseases and pests, poor storage facilities have been associated with low maize production in the country. in nigeria the food demand-supply deficit has caused the country to increase its import bill from n160.2 billion in 2001 to n290.7 billion in 2007( cbn, 2007). by the same token, maize domestic demand of 3.5 million tons outstrips supply of 2.0 million tons per annum. hence, poultry producers and feed millers are unable to get sufficient corn supplies from local sources and are therefore looking to imports. because of the need to import maize in order to meet the local demand, import ban on corn was lifted in 2008 and allowed at 5% tariff (usda, 2012). price of maize is increasing because demand outfaced the supply by 400 dollar per ton in 2011/12, up from 366 dollar per ton in 2010/11. in an attempt to increase food production in africa, during african head of states summit on food security and poverty reduction in abuja nigeria, december 2006, the african heads of states and government identified maize, among other crops as a strategic commodity for achieving food security and poverty reduction (auc, 2006).based on the resolutions reached, they called upon all member states to adopt strategic plans for increasing maize production in the area through measures such as research and development, access to production inputs and appropriate use of farm resources. in order to increase food production in the country successive and present government adopted some strategic agricultural policies and programs such as operation feed the nation (ofn) program of 1975-1980. the program aimed at increasing local food production through increasing more cultivable land in the country. green revolution (gr) program was established in 1980 to ensure self-sufficiency in food production and to introduce modern technology in to the nigerian agricultural sector through the introduction of modern inputs such as high yielding variety of seed, fertilizer and tractors. the policy was supported by projects such as 11 river basin development authority and agroservice centres in order ensure all year round farming and efficient production inputs distribution. the structural adjustment program (sap) was introduced in 1986 in the country with the aim of increasing food production and rural incomes and to reduce her dependence on petroleum exports; eliminate distortions and rationalize consumption and expenditure patterns, through restructuring the economy’s productive base. during the same period directorate for foods, roads and rural infrastructure (dffri) program was also established, aimed at developing rural and agricultural infrastructures including roads, agrofacilities, and electricity to improve rural productivity, employment and incomes. a year later, better life program (blp) for rural women was established to improve rural and agricultural women’s incomes and welfare through productivity enhancing measures, skills and capacity development. in 1989 peoples’ bank was established to ease access to low-cost credit in the informal sector including farmer groups and producer’s associations. agriculture in the 7-point agenda program was launched in 2007 to ensure food security, access to credit, land reform, agricultural extension, research and training, appropriate technologies etc. geared towards increases in agricultural productivity (okoro and ujah, 2009). despite the various government’s agricultural policies and programs developed and implemented the sector suffers years of mismanagement, and inconsistency in the government policies and the era of huge oil revenue has as well contributed in the neglect of the agricultural sector (umar and zubairu, 2012). it was asserted that, lack of proper policy formulation, implementation and evaluation lead to policy failure in the agricultural sector in nigeria. socio-political and economic factors contribute to agricultural asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 281-291 283 policy failure in nigeria (olaye, 2010). the president of all farmers association of nigeria (afan) adamu (2010) said successive government policies on agriculture failed because of lack of proper monitoring mechanism as part of policy measures to increase maize production research works on maize conducted by national agricultural research institute (nari) and international institute for tropical agriculture (iita) have developed and introduced a range of improved maize varieties that are disease resistant and high yielding. consequently maize production in west and central africa including nigeria has since the mid-1980s increased more than tripled. the new varieties have not only double the yield but also shortened the harvesting period to 80 days after planting. the development of rapid maturing varieties has enabled maize production to expand into the sudan savannah zone of nigeria because the zone has short duration of rainy season (abdulkarim et al., 2004). the rapidly increasing population which leads to demand increase for maize for human consumption and use as animal feed in the country, requires avenues for raising the maize production. this increase in output can be ascertained through this type of research of analyzing the maize production technical efficiency in the country. the finding could be useful to farmers to make adjustment in the use of farm resources and by government to introduce developmental project for farmers to raise their production output. policy makers can also use the finding as a guide to come up with policy strategies for improving maize production. even though government adopted a lot of agricultural policies and programs with a view to increasing maize production in nigeria, not much was explored on maize production technical efficiency using several techniques. however, the few researches on maize production technical efficiency measures were in most cases on states basis or regional basis and have not used several methods at the same time to explore technical efficiency measurement. among the studies visited include amaza et al. (2006) who researched on identification of factors that influence technical efficiency of food crop production in west africa adopted a stochastic frontier production function, using the maximum likelihood estimation (mle) technique. the results revealed that the mean farmers’ technical efficiency index was 0.68. farmer-specific efficiency factors, which comprise age, education, credit, extension and crop diversification, were found to be the significant factors that account for the observed variation in efficiency among the farmers. fasasa (2007) studied on technical efficiency in food crop production in oyo state, nigeria. the author used stochastic frontier production (maximum likelihood estimation) methodology to estimate the technical efficiency of 100 farmers in the study areas. the mean score of technical efficiency was 70 percent. furthermore, the results showed age of farmers, farming experience and level of education were factors that significantly influenced the level of technical efficiency. sekhon et al. (2010) also used stochastic frontier production function to estimate individual farms technical efficiency of crop production at a region level. the result showed that the average technical efficiency has been found maximum in the central region (90 per cent), and the main drivers of inefficiency have been identified as experience in agriculture and age of a farmer. other studies reviewed include shanmugam and atheendar (2006) that researched on technical efficiency in agricultural production and its determinants: an exploratory study at the district level by employing stochastic frontier function methodology. they found that the mean efficiency of raising agricultural output was 79 per cent and therefore there was a scope for increasing output by 21 per cent without additional resources. furthermore, the result indicated that, health, education, and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 281-291 284 infrastructure are powerful drivers of efficiency at the district level. however the determinants of efficiency across districts depend greatly on environmental factors, such as agro-climatic zones, technological factors, and crop mix. shumet (2011) reported on analysis of technical efficiency of crop producing smallholder farmers in tigray, ethiopia using descriptive and econometric methods. the mean technical efficiency of farmers was 60.38% which implied that output in the study area can be increased by 39.62% at the existing level of inputs and current technology by operating at full technical efficient level. the analysis further revealed that all determinants (except households' sex, farm size, participation in irrigation, and member to association) have significant effect on efficiency of farmers. in their work omonona et al. (2010) researched on farmer’s resource–use and technical efficiency in cowpea production in nigeria. the authors used stochastic production frontier, budgetary and resourceuse efficiency analyses. the enterprise economic efficiency was 1.17. this means that for every n1 spent by the farmer on cowpea production, 17 kobo was realized as profit. farmers’ average technical efficiency is 87%, which implied an appreciable use of inputs in productivity. farm size, seed, hired labour, family labour, fertilizer and pesticides are significant at 1%. at the same time, to bit regression analysis indicated that some socio-economic variables were found to be significantly different from zero at 1% for cooperative membership and farming experience. huynh and mitsuyasu (2011) reported in their study on technical efficiency analysis of rice production in vietnam. the authors used stochastic frontier analysis employing cobb-douglass production function to analyze vietnam household living standard survey 20052006, yielding the mean of technical efficiency of 81.6%. intensive labour, irrigation and education had positive impact on technical efficiency while agricultural policy did not help farmers cultivate rice more efficiently. this showed that, most of the studies reviewed explored technical efficiency on regional or state basis using stochastic frontier analysis. thus, data envelopment analysis was not much used to explore technical efficiency and none have used both sfa and dea to explore technical efficiency in the country. the current study is to evaluate maize production technical efficiency in nigeria using both stochastic frontier analysis (sfa) and data envelopment analysis (dea). using the two techniques will help to acknowledge and highlight the strength of the each technique in evaluating technical efficiency measurement. learmer and lecnard (1983) reported that using several analytical techniques to analyze an economic phenomenon could serve as a cross verification for the robustness of the results. methodology the current study employed the two most commonly used methods based on the pioneer work of farrel and his efficiency measures (farrel, 1957). the two approaches employed are the data envelopment analysis (dea) and stochastic frontier analysis (sfa) in order to determine and acknowledge the strength of the two techniques based on the technical efficiency levels generated. even though these approaches were tried by other researchers regarding efficiency measurements until now no consensus was reached to which method should be used (bauer et al., 1998). the preference of using a particular method is given by the distribution of the data set. the use of the two methods to analyze technical efficiency could serve as a cross verification for the robustness of the results (learmer and leonard, 1983). the stochastic frontier analysis used in the current study was developed by aigner et al., (1977). the parametric approach requires that the shape of the frontier be guessed beforehand by specifying a particular function relating output to input. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 281-291 285 sfa involves econometric estimation of parametric frontier. using this approach one can account for noise and conduct hypothesis test. its disadvantage compared to dea includes the need to specify a functional form. it is also more difficult to accommodate multiple outputs. the basic stochastic frontier production function model is specified as follows: y = f (xi; β) + ɛ, i= 1, 2…n……………. (1) where y represents farm’s output, xi is a vector of inputs used by the farm; ɛ is a composite error term. this ɛ decomposed to give v-u. v represents random variable which is assumed to be n~ (0, δ 2 v). this component of the error term accounts for the stochastic effects that are beyond farmers’ control. examples of these effects include natural disaster, weather, measurement error and statistical noise. u is a non-negative random variable which represents inefficiency of the producing farm (coelli et al., 2005). u is assumed to be independent of v. β represents parameter to be estimated. to determine physical relationship between inputs and output, several functional forms were adopted. based on hanley and spash (1993) that when there are three or more independent variables in the model it is more appropriate to apply cobb-douglass production function model. to determine technical efficiency using cobb-douglass stochastic frontier analysis, the empirical model is specified as follows: lny = lnβ0 + β1lnx1 + β2lnx2 + β3lnx3 + β4lnx4 + β5lnx5 + v-u…………………..…(2) where y represents quantity of maize output in tons, x1 represents area harvested in hectares, x2 represents quantity of seed in tons, x3 represents fertilizer quantity in tons, x4 represents labor in no. male and female economically active in agriculture and x5 represents number of tractors in use in no., v represents random variable which is assumed to be n~ (0, δ 2 v). u is a nonnegative random variable which represents inefficiency term. β1-β5 represent unknown parameters to be estimated. β0 represents the intercept term. the data envelopment analysis (dea) was developed by charnes, cooper, and rhodes (1978). it involved the estimation of nonparametric frontiers. other than comparing efficiency across decision making units (dmus) within an organization, dea has also been used to compare efficiency across firms. this approach does not require price data, and if price data are available, then allocative efficiency can be calculated. charnes et al. (1978) used this approach in their study to estimate an empirical production technology frontier. dea with the most basic being ccr based on charnes et al. (1978) address varying returns to scale, either crs (constant returns to scale) or vrs (variable return to scale). in the dea methodology, formally developed by charnes et al. (1978), efficiency is defined as a ratio of weighted sum of outputs to a weighted sum of inputs, where the weights structure is calculated by means of mathematical programming and constant return to scale (crs) are assumed. in 1984, as an improvement to the analytical technique, banker et al. developed a model with variable returns to scale (vrs). technical efficiency (te) reflects the ability of (dmus), such as firms to obtain maximal output from a given set of inputs (farrell, 1957). when using the dea model, there is no need to specify the functional form. in addition, there is no need to specify the distributional form for the inefficiency term (coelli et al., 1998). it is assumed that a maize farm or dmu produce a quantity of maize (yi) using multiple of inputs (xi), such as land, labour, seed, fertilizer and rainfall. to determine technical efficiency for the i-th maize dmu in the linear programming (lp) problem in an output-oriented dea, the model was solved as follows: maximize θλ θ subject to: -θyi + yλ ≥ 0 xi – xλ ≥ 0 λ ≥ 0………………………….. (3) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 281-291 286 where yi is the maize quantity for i-th dmu, xi is nx1 vector of input quantities for i-th dmu, y is 1xm vector of maize quantities for all the country, x is nxm matrix of input quantities for all country, λ is mx1 vector of weight and θ is a scalar. the above specified theoretical empirical linear programming model was specified based on constant return to scale (crs). for variable return to scale (vrs) equation (3) is altered by adding the convexity constraint, n1’λ=1. the study used variable return to scale assumption. when using variable return to scale assumption, it helped to access both technical efficiencies under variable return to scale and constant return to scale, and as well access scale efficiency measurements. the model was previously calculated under crs and vrs assumptions (coelli et al., 1998; coelli & rao, 2003). data and variables annual data for the period from 19712010 was used. the data comprise of quantity of maize output (qp) in tons; quantity of maize seed (qsd) in tons; area harvested (ah) in ha; quantity of fertilizer (ftq) in tons; labor (lab) in no. male & female economically active in agriculture and number of tractors in use (tu) in no. the study used data retrieved from faostat and national bureau of statistics (nbs). table 1 shows descriptive statistics of the variables. table 1: descriptive statistics of the variables qp ah qsd ftq lab tu mean 3944492. 2815114. 1114683. 287602.6 11543213 14350.35 median 4949000. 3309430. 1275812. 179200.0 12464000 14175.00 maximum 7676850. 5472000. 2297980. 4022223. 12870000 24800.00 minimum 488000.0 425000.0 162543.9 9245.000 4342500. 3450.000 std. dev. 2539284. 1684964. 660924.2 626929.6 2257164. 6660.631 observation 40 40 40 40 40 40 empirical results in this section results of technical efficiency using stochastic frontier analysis and data envelopment analysis are presented and discussed. some hypothetical tests were conducted to ascertain the presence or absence of some properties of the data. to test for the stationary of the data, unit root test was conducted using augmented dickey fuller unit root test, and the results are present in table 2 table 2: augmented dickey fuller (adf) unit root test result variable level 1 st difference test statistic test critical value test statistic test critical value qp -0.346632 ns -3.610453 -5.501367*** -3.615588 lab -0.933801 ns -3.610453 -4.867627*** -3.615588 ftq -6.143761*** -3.605593 -8.581218*** -3.610453 ah -0.850919 ns -2.606857 -4.926555*** -3.610453 tu -0.165859 ns -2.611531 -6.074618*** -3.639407 qsd -0.562617 ns -2.606857 -3.559573** -2.938987 it can be deduced from table 2 that most of the variables were not stationary at level. in order to have the variables in the same order 1 st difference of the entire variables were taken. the variables were all stationary at 1 st difference. it can be observed from the table 2that at 1 st difference the value of test statistic is greater than the test critical value. that implied the null hypothesis of nonstationary is rejected. the test helps to avoid spurious result. furthermore, to check if there could be a long run relationship of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 281-291 287 variables co-integration test was conducted using johannes co-integration test and the results are presented in table 3 table 3: var unrestricted johannes co-integration rank test (trace) 1to 1 lags interval hypothesized trace 0.05 no. of ce(s) eigen value statistic critical value prob.** none * 0.742501 147.1171 95.75366 0.0000 at most 1 * 0.568984 98.27450 69.81889 0.0001 at most 2 * 0.504264 67.97655 47.85613 0.0002 at most 3 * 0.425944 42.71494 29.79707 0.0010 at most 4 * 0.316973 22.73393 15.49471 0.0034 at most 5 * 0.221415 9.009963 3.841466 0.0027 it can be observed from table 3 that the trace statistic values are greater than the critical values and all probability values are significant at less than 5%. that implied a rejection of null hypothesis of no cointegration of the variables. table 4 shows percentage frequency distribution of maize production technical efficiency under constant and variable return to scale, and technical efficiency estimated by stochastic frontier analysis in nigeria. table 4: percentage frequency distribution of maize production technical efficiency under constant and variable return to scale and technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis in nigeria from 1971-2010 efficiency scores (%) frequency te crs % te crs frequency te vrs % te vrs frequency te sfa % te sfa 21.0-30.0 1 2.5 31.0-40.0 1 2.5 9 22.5 41.0-50.0 2 5 2 5 51.0-60.0 4 10 2 5 1 2.5 61.0-70.0 6 15 3 7.5 8 20 71.0-80.0 10 25 8 20 12 30 81.0-90.0 5 12.5 5 12.5 4 10 91.0-99.0 6 15 7 17.5 3 7.5 100.0 6 15 15 37.5 total 40 100 40 100 40 100 mean 77.8 87.7 64.1 minimum 40.4 52.5 29.3 maximum 100.0 100.0 99.9 table 4 shows the percentage frequency of maize production technical efficiency scores by dea under constant return to scale and variable return to scale; and technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis(sfa) in nigeria from 1971-2010. the result showed that, under sfa the country has the lowest technical efficiency scores that ranged from 21% to 30% at frequency of one, and this represents at 2.5%. the lowest technical efficiency score under dea constant return to scale ranged from 31% to 40% at frequency of one, and it stood at 2.5%. while the lowest technical efficiency score under dea variable return to scale ranged from 51% to 60% at frequency of two, or 5% of the observation. it is revealed from the result that, technical efficiency level under stochastic frontier analysis ranged between 29.3% to 99.9%.the results indicated that, technical efficiency score under dea with constant return to scale assumption ranged between 40.4% to 100%. while technical efficiency asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 281-291 288 score under dea variable return to scale are between 52.2% to 100%. it can be deduced that the country did not register full technical efficiency level under stochastic frontier analysis during the period studied. under dea constant return to scale, the country registered full technical efficiency level at frequency of six (6), and it stood at 15% of the total observations. while under variable return to scale the country registered full technical efficiency level at frequency of fifteen (15), or 37.5%. the result revealed that, mean technical efficiency scores were 64.1%, 77.8% and 87.7% for technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis; technical efficiency dea constant return to scale; and technical efficiency dea variable return to scale, respectively. even though in majority of the time the country did not recorded full technical efficiency levels, the result implied that, under technical efficiency dea variable return to scale, the country stood more chances of being technically efficient in maize production. that is the technical efficiency scores obtained under dea are higher than those obtained from sfa. under dea variable return to scale assumption farmers have more chances of moving from one level of production to another to attain suitable frontier level. this revealed the extent at which dea particularly under variable return to scale assumption showed the capability to capture and address variability and imperfection in issues related to efficiency measurements which could not be captured and addressed by other analytical techniques. the results further implied that, the country can expand its scope of output production by 35.5%, 22.2% and 12.3% under technical efficiency stochastic frontier analysis, data envelopment analysis constant return to scale and variable return to scale, respectively. amaza et al. (2006) observed the mean of farmers’ technical efficiency index was found to be 0.68, this implied that technical efficiency in food crop production could be increased by 32 percent through better use of available resources, given the current state of technology. omonona et al. (2010) observed the farmers’ average technical efficiency was 87%, which implied that, output can be increased by 13% using the same inputs level at the given technology. table 5 shows the average 5 years of maize production technical efficiency under constant and variable return to scale assumptions, and the technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis in nigeria. table 5: average 5 years of maize production technical efficiency under constant and variable return to scale and technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis in nigeria from 1971-2010 year % te crs te crs (% oiq) % te vrs te vrs (%oiq) %te sfa te sfa (%oiq) 1971-1975 84.2 15.8 90.5 9.5 95.7 4.3 1976-1980 95.1 4.9 100.0 0.00 9.26 7.4 1981-1985 97.4 2.6 99.4 0.6 91.0 9 1986-1990 93.7 6.3 98.8 1.2 94.6 5.4 1991-1995 96.4 3.6 100.0 0.0 97.5 2.5 1996-2000 93.6 6.4 98.7 1.3 97.3 2.7 2001-2005 97.3 2.7 100.0 0.00 99.0 1 2006-2010 96.5 3.5 98.0 2 98.6 1.4 oiq= output increasing quantity table 5 shows average 5 years of maize production technical efficiency under constant and variable return to scale assumptions and technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis. it can be deduced from the table that from 1971 to 1975 on average the country’s technical efficiency scores were 84.2%, 90.5% and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 281-291 289 95.7% for technical efficiency under dea constant return to scale, variable return to scale and technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis, respectively. this implies that, under the two approaches the country can increase its output by 15.5%, 9.5% and 4.3% under dea technical efficiency constant return to scale, variable return to scale and technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis, respectively using the same inputs levels at the given technology. huynh and mitsuyasu (2011) observed 81.6% technical efficiency; thus, there was 18.6% scope to increase output using the same inputs levels at the given technology. shumet (2011) also observed the mean technical efficiency of farmers was 60.38% which implied that output in the study area can be increased by 39.62% at the existing level of inputs and current technology by operating at full technical efficient level. from 1976-1980 on average the country registered full technical efficiency under dea technical efficiency variable return to scale. that means the farmers were able to use as few inputs as possible to produce maximum output. while under technical efficiency dea constant return to scale and technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis efficiency score stood at 95.1% and 92.6%. that means through appropriate use of farm resources the country still can explore more output by 4.9% and 7.4% under technical efficiency dea constant return to scale and technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis, respectively, at the given technology. from 1986-1990, under dea technical efficiency constant return to scale, variable return to scale and technical efficiency via stochastic frontier analysis, the efficiency scores were respectively 93.7%, 98.8% and 94.6%. the country stood a chance to expand its output production by 6.3%, 1.2% and 5.4% under dea technical efficiency constant return to scale, variable return to scale and technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis, respectively. shanmugam and atheendar (2006) observed the mean efficiency of raising agricultural output was 79 per cent and therefore there was a scope for increasing output by 21 per cent without additional resources. from 1991-1995 the country was technically efficient in maize production under dea estimation with variable return to scale assumption. this implied that, the farmers used as fewer inputs as possible to produce maximum output in maize production. while under constant return to scale assumption efficiency score was 96.4%. however the sfa indicated the maize production in the country experienced a 97.5% efficient. this implied that, through better use of farm resources, the country can increase its output production by 3.6% and 2.5% under the former and later approaches, respectively. later in the period of 20012005 the country once again registered full technical efficiency under dea technical efficiency variable return to scale. however the technical efficiency under constant return to scale was 97.3%. in contrast, the technical efficiency score under stochastic frontier analysis was 99%. these efficiency scores indicate that, given the amount of input used, the maize production can still be increased by 2.7% and 1% respectively, in the period of analysis. table 5 depicts the country’s maize production efficiency from 2006-2010, were 96.5%, and 98%under dea technical efficiency constant return to scale and variable return to scale, respectively. interestingly to observe that, the technical efficiency score under stochastic frontier analysis is almost equal to the score obtained from dea at variable return to scale assumption that is 98.6%. through better use of farm resources the country can still increase its scope of output production by 3.5%, 2% and 1.4% under dea technical efficiency constant return to scale, variable return to scale and technical efficiency under stochastic frontier analysis, respectively. luke et al. (2012) observed that the average technical efficiency of the sample farms was 77.26%, implying that output can be increased by 22.74% using the same inputs levels at the given technology. sekhon et al. (2010) observed average technical efficiency 90%, indicating that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 281-291 290 with the present technology there was still room for a 10 percent increase in output production. conclusion even though the technical efficiency scores obtained from dea in most cases were higher than those obtained from sfa, the two approaches used show strengths in evaluating maize production technical efficiency in nigeria. that means the use of the two methods is justified in evaluating technical efficiency. this implied that, the choice between the two methods depends on the preference of a researcher which is guided by the distribution of data set. it is concluded that, under the two approaches employed; stochastic frontier analysis and data envelopment analysis farmers can still expand their scope of output production through appropriate combination and use of production inputs at the given technology. it is recommended that the two techniques can be adopted as analytical techniques for evaluating technical efficiency measurements. reference abdulkarim, b., ibrahim, d. a., omotoso, o., shehu, a. g., &ukin, i. (2004). survey of selected agricultural raw material in nigeria on maize. published by raw materials research & development council, federal ministry of science & technology garki abuja, nigeria.170 p. aigner, d., lovell, c. e., & schmidt, p. (1977). formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models. j. econometrics, 6, 21-37. amaza, p. s., bila, y., & iheanacha, a. c. (2006). identification of factors that influence technical efficiency of food crop production in west africa: empirical evidence from borno state, nigeria. journal of agriculture and rural development in the tropics and subtropics, 107(2), 139147. auc (2006). resolution of the abuja food security summit. african union commission, addis ababa, ethiopia. adamu, a. (2010). why government policies on agriculture have failed. a news paper (leadership) abuja nigeria, report by grace azubuike, 29 january, 2010. bauer, p., berger, a., & humphrey, d. (1993). efficiency and productivity growth in us banking” in fried, h., knox lovell, c. and schmid, s. (eds) the measurement of productive efficiency: techniques and applications, oxford university press, pp. 386-413. cbn (2007). statement of accounts 2007. country annual report, central bank of nigeria (cbn) abuja, nigeria. charnes, a., cooper, w., & rhodes, e. (1978). measuring the efficiency of decision making units. european journal operational research, 2(6), 429-444. coelli, t. j., & rao, d. s. p. (2003). total factor productivity growth in agriculture: a malmquist index analysis of 93 countries 1980-2000. cepa working papers02/2003, university of queensland, armidale. australia. coelli, t. j., rao, d. s. p., & geoge, e. b. (1998). an introduction to efficiency and productivity analysis, kluwer academic publishers, boston, usa. coelli, t. j., rao, d. s. p., & george, e. b. (2005). an introduction to efficiency and productivity analysis. springer science, new york. faostat (2003). food and agricultural organization corporative document repository. diet, nutrition and the prevention of chronic diseases. agriculture and consumption protection department. farrel, m. j. (1957). the measurement of productive efficiency. journal of the royal statistical society, 120(3), 253290. fasasa, a. r. (2007). technical efficiency in crop production in oyo state, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 281-291 291 nigeria. journal of human ecology, 22(3), 245-249. henley, n., & spash, c. i. (1993). farm management research for small farmer development. food and agricultural organization of the united nations, rome. huynh, v. k., & mitsuyasuy, y. (2011). technical efficiency analysis of rice production in vietnum. journal of issaas, 17(1), 135-146. learmer, e., & leonard, h. (1983). reporting the fragility of regression estimates. review of economics and statistics, 65, 306-317. nbs (2012). the review of the nigerian economy 2012 edition. 57p. npc (2006). national population commission nigeria: report on the survey of demographic and health survey. ojo, s. o. (2003). factor productivity in maize production in ondo state, nigeria. journal of applied tropical agriculture, 15(1), 57-63. olaoye, o. (2010). why policies fail in nigeria: an evaluation of agriculture policies made from 1972-1985. international journal of sustainable development, 1(1), 84-86. ogundari, k., & ojo, s. o. (2007). economic efficiency of small scale crop production in nigeria. a stochastic frontier approach. journal of social sciences, 14(2), 123-130. okoro, d., & ujah, o. c. (2009). agricultural policy and budget analysis in nigeria (1999-2007): perspectives and implications for slissfan project state. report submitted to oxfam gb nigeria. 63p. omonona, b. t., egbetokun, o. a., & akanbi, a. t. (2010). farmer’s resource-use and technical efficiency in cowpea production in nigeria. journal of economic analysis and policy, 40(1), 87-95. sekhon, m. k., mahal, a. k., & sidhu, m. s. (2010). technical efficiency in crop production: a region-wise analysis. journal of agricultural economics research review, 23(2), 367-374. shanmungan, k. r., & atheendar, v. (2006). technical efficiency in agricultural production and its determinants, an exploratory study at the district level. working paper 10/2006 madras school of economics gandhi mandapam road chennai 600 025 india. shumet, a. (2011). analysis of technical efficiency of crop producing smallholder farmers in tigray, ethiopia, munich personal repec archive (mpra).pp 25. umaru, a., & zubairu, a. a. (2012). an empirical analysis of contribution of agriculture and petroleum sector to the growth and development of the nigerian economy from 19602010. usda (2012). nigeria grain and feed annual 2012. http://www.thebioenergysite.com/rep ort. http://www.thebioenergysite.com/report http://www.thebioenergysite.com/report effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/issn(e):2224-4433 volume 6(3), 41-49 41 empowerment among small farmers of sindh province, pakistan ghulam mujtaba khushk department of social and development sciences, faculty of human ecology, universiti putra malaysia department of rural sociology, faculty of agricultural social sciences, sindh agriculture university, tandojam, pakistan asnarulkhadi abu samah, hanina hamsan and nobaya ahmad department of social and development sciences, faculty of human ecology, universiti putra malaysia abstract 1 community empowerment is an important goal for many governments in developing countries. various activities for the empowerment of communities have been conducted in developing countries like pakistan. the present research attempted to assess an activity of community empowerment on the crop maximization project (cmp-ii) in sindh province, pakistan. a total of 455 small farmers were surveyed using questionnaire in three districts namely; khairpur, nawabshah and mirpurkhas. the level of empowerment was assessed based on three domains namely; capacity building, self-esteem and self-efficacy. the findings of the study showed that, there was a moderate level of empowerment among the beneficiaries (small farmers) of the crop maximization projects of the sindh province based on a summed mean score of 178.77 for the three dimensions of empowerment. therefore, it is concluded that projects like crop maximization are able to empower the beneficiaries as the intangible outcomes. keyword: community development, community empowerment, small farmers, capacity building, self-esteem, self-efficacy 1. introduction empowerment of communities has remained the main target for local governments of the developing countries. similarly the government of pakistan is working for the empowerment of small farmers’ communities in sindh province through the launching of programs such as food security programs, micro-finance schemes, farmers’ field school, poverty alleviation programs, crop-maximization projects. the main objective of these programs and projects is to empower the small farmers and their communities. likewise, the government of pakistan has also launched usaid dairy project, youth economic empowerment project (yeep) and community empowerment through livestock development and credit project (celdac), but only a few studies have been conducted to asses or evaluate the impact. the empowerment of communities have been described in various ways; empowerment is a process through which people build their capacities and competencies, both as individuals or as participating members of different groups, corresponding author’s name: asnarulkhadi abu samah email address: asnarul@upm.edu.my asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:asnarul@upm.edu.my mailto:asnarul@upm.edu.my mailto:asnarul@upm.edu.my mailto:asnarul@upm.edu.my asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 41-49 42 communities and societies, to gain or achieve results for themselves (christens et al., 2011). the process of empowerment enables or empowers the individual or groups to take part in decisionmaking, enhance capacity, and increase ability to make changes individually and collectively (christens & peterson, 2012). pretto and pavesi (2012) also argued regarding empowerment as it is a social action process through which individuals, organizations and communities gain control over their lives and also try to improve their equity and quality of life by changing their political and social environment. similarly, iqbal (2007) described empowerment as a process through which a person or a community gives and gets power. in line with this, maton (2008) has defined that empowerment is a process through which less privileged and powerless people/ individual or groups can achieve or get higher control of their lives and they can acquire value of their lives and resources to achieve their goals in life. according to perkins (1995) empowerment means to give power to another and to provide the means of exerting or asserting power as behavior practiced by individuals. kabeer (1994) stated that “the expansion in people’s ability to make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to them. similarly, hjorth (2003) said that, empowerment is necessary and important for people to have control on the process of development, have a solid increase in political power or social influence. corbett & keller (2004) said “power” can be acquired through a process individually or collectively. burn (2005) viewed that empowerment is a process through which, people develop their confidence in their own capacities. wallertein (2006) explained that empowerment is an umbrella term which includes, control, mastery, and self-efficacy. generally, empowerment is a process by which people gain control over their lives (cattaneo & goodman, 2010; hedayat et al., 2012). in addition, it is a process through which one can gain the power and acquired power gained through process is known as empowerment (perkins & zimmerman, 1995; peterson & zimmerman, 2004). in the light of reviewed literature, the researchers tried to determine the empowerment level among small farmers by focusing on the three dimensions of empowerment; capacity building, self-esteem and self-efficacy. capacity building mean enabling people to develop and enhance their individual as well as collective potential as contributing members of community or society (aref, 2011). smith et al. (2001) and sail and abu-samah (2010) said that the capacity building is a process that can lead to community development. in the same way few researchers have also more or less explained the capacity building as it is basically the name of the ability of an individual or community at collective level to adapt the challenges or opportunities for the betterment of individual or community (rogers et al., 2007; clinch, 2008; crabbe et al., 2010). furthermore, the self-esteem dimension of empowerment is also used to determine the level of empowerment. zarnaghash (2011) said that the self-esteem is an attitude regarding the individual acceptance, importance, success and values; besides, it is also an individual’s self-evaluation. in addition, stupnisky et al. (2013) said that self-esteem is the positive or negative attitude towards his/her self. furthermore, the third empowerment dimension used in this study is self-efficacy which is a perceived expectation of people regarding their abilities through which they can solve their tasks and issues to achieve their targeted goals as an active agent (bandura, 1997; sainz & eccles, 2012; hatlevik et al., 2015). in pakistan, only a few studies have been conducted about the impact of these programs and projects. the best example of empowerment has been set by the study conducted in the project by oxfam (2015) entitled “empowering small producers, especially women” in dairy sector in muzzaffargarh district, south punjab. they evaluated that the project had given an impact over small producers in district with resulted their success by getting empowered. muhammad et al. (2013) similarly conducted a study to observe the impact of ffs (farmer field school) on the empowerment of farmers in khyber pakhtunkhwa (kpk) province, found that project had empowered the farmers in the study area. likewise, waheed (2009) conducted a research study on rural micro credit in the province of punjab according to which the micro-credit schemes improved the income and empowered the borrowers. however, there is lack of study conducted about the empowerment of small farmers in sindh, pakistan that could assess the level of empowerment in detail. furthermore, to realize the imperative level of empowerment, the researchers tried to determine the level of empowerment by examining the levels regarding asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 41-49 43 capacity building, self-esteem and self-efficacy of small farmers who participated in the cmp in sindh, pakistan. therefore, this project was launched by the provincial government and it’s agriculture department in collaboration with the federal government of pakistan. the main features of the project were to organize and empower communities of farmers, intensify agriculture extension services at local level, provide farmers’ extensive trainings, provide assurance for easy access to soft agricultural credit or loan, capacity building for crop productivity, establish small enterprises for income enhancement and build linkages of farmer groups with main marketing chains. thus, this study has been conducted to scrutinize the empowerment among small farmers of sindh province. 2. methodology three districts of the sindh province (khairpur, nawabshah and mirpurkhas) randomly selected for this study. the crop maximization project was much focused in these particular districts that covered the main zones of province ; upper, middle and lower sindh. this study was approached quantitatively using survey design. questionnaire was administered to the respondents for data collection. a total of 455 respondents who participated in the crop maximization project (cmp-ii) were surveyed. the sample size was computed as 455 using formula of rea and parker (2014), sheikh et al. (2015) and more recently followed by khushk et al. (2016). the sampling method applied for this study was the multistage sampling technique. a multistage cluster sampling technique is suitable in a large scale sampled survey because of its advantage of clustering collection system (preston et al., 2013) as reflected in the three selected districts in this study. the breakdowns of respondents were khairpur (155), nawabshah (151) and mirpurkhas (149), respectively. we followed the procedure with some modification given by previous authors such as ciarrochi et al. (2007), schwarzer and jerusalam (2010), amadi and abdullah (2012) respectively. the validity of questionnaire was prior analyzed and further validated by expert of committee of universiti putra malaysia and sindh agriculture university, pakistan. the recommended range as shown in table 1 was reliable (> 0.7) and widely accepted at cronbach’s alpha level for this questionnaire (fedorowicz et al., 2007, sheikh et al., 2015). the questionnaire was further divided into three domains such as capacity building, self-esteem and self-efficacy. the responses to the questions were collected using a six-point likert scale (1=strongly agree to 6=strongly disagree) because the validity of the likert scale is justified in a perception-based research (teck-hong, 2012). table 1: reliability coefficients for pilot and final test latent variable construct variables pilot test (n=50) final test (n=455) items alpha (α) items alpha (α) empowerment capacity building 23 0.99 23 0.98 self-esteem 11 0.99 11 0.98 self-efficacy 9 0.99 9 0.97 3. results 3.1. level of empowerment the level of empowerment in the present study was divided into three sections namely: capacity building, self-esteem and self-efficacy. 3.1.1. level of capacity building table 2 showed the item analysis measuring capacity building which revealed that the respondents’ capacity was developed as a result of their participation in crop maximization projects. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 41-49 44 different statements were asked regarding their competence, ability and skills acquired through trainings. the analysis result of capacity building section showed that there were a majority of items that fell under the category of moderate level of empowerment. the results in table 2 were ranked from high, moderate and low; and were labeled 3, 2 and 1 respectively, and from the highest mean score of the items to the lowest mean score of the items. thus the result revealed that the respondents of the study can use their experiences to bargain with other people (m=4.51, sd=0.79) and they can influence other people to defend their own rights (m=3.41, sd=1.02). thus, the overall mean score result of this section showed the moderate level of empowerment among the respondents (m=4.12, sd = 0.89). table 2: level of capacity building (n=455) s.no statements m sd levels ranks 1 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can use my experience to bargain with other people 4.51 0.79 high 3 2 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can use and manipulate the available resources 4.49 0.82 high 3 3 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can use my experience to give opinion 4.48 0.85 high 3 4 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can implement an activity 4.48 0.82 high 3 5 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can negotiate with other people 4.45 0.85 high 3 6 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can use my experience to interpret an issue 4.45 0.81 high 3 7 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can interpret community’s problem and needs 4.42 0.91 high 3 8 participation in crop-maximization project increased my competence regarding crop production 4.42 0.83 high 3 9 after participation in crop-maximization project, i am aware of my own skills 4.39 0.95 moderate 2 10 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can influence and make decision in implementing an activity 4.36 0.82 moderate 2 11 participation in crop-maximization project increased my overall agricultural knowledge 4.28 0.95 moderate 2 12 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can analyze the situation 4.17 0.95 moderate 2 13 after participation in crop-maximization project, i am aware of the issue/problem that happened in my community 4.07 1.06 moderate 2 14 after participation in crop-maximization project, i know about my own needs 4.07 1.02 moderate 2 15 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can use my experience to make decisions 4.07 0.84 moderate 2 16 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can manage an activity 4.07 0.81 moderate 2 17 participation in crop-maximization project provided awareness regarding agriculture 3.78 0.87 moderate 2 18 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can use my experience to collaborate with other people 3.75 0.83 moderate 2 19 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can plan and form an activity 3.71 0.89 moderate 2 20 participation in crop-maximization project increased 3.69 0.89 moderate 2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 41-49 45 my skills of crop management (through training) 21 after participation in crop-maximization project, i know to whom i should refer when problems happen 3.61 0.89 moderate 2 22 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can identify and determine the priority of an issue/problem and needs of the community 3.58 0.89 moderate 2 23 after participation in crop-maximization project, i can influence others to defend their own rights 3.41 1.02 moderate 2 overall m and sd 4.12 0.89 moderate 2 m= mean; sd= standard deviation; ranks (1-3); levels (low, moderate and high) 1=low (1-2.6), 2=moderate (2.7-4.3), 3=high (4.4-6) 3.1.2. level of self-esteem the analysis of items in table 3 showed that the respondents’ self-esteem had increased moderately. the respondents were asked to respond and judge their own capabilities through statements. the results showed that there was high confidence in respondents in doing their activity (m=4.41, sd=0.94) and they had created loving and healthy relationships (m=4.23, sd=1.01). thus the overall mean score results of this section showed the moderate level of empowerment among the respondents (m= 4.31, sd=0.94). table 3: level of self-esteem (n=455) s.no statement m sd level rank 1 i have the confidence in doing an activity 4.41 0.94 high 3 2 i can lead and guide in implementing an activity 4.37 0.92 moderate 2 3 life is good, and i like being a part of it 4.35 0.96 moderate 2 4 i am able to do things as well as most other people do in the community 4.35 0.86 moderate 2 5 i feel that i am a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others in my status 4.33 0.95 moderate 2 6 i am not feeling afraid 4.32 0.97 moderate 2 7 i feel that, i have number of good qualities to share with the community members 4.31 0.91 moderate 2 8 i take a positive attitude towards myself 4.29 0.95 moderate 2 9 i respect myself and others 4.27 0.96 moderate 2 10 on the whole, i am satisfied with my life 4.26 0.92 moderate 2 11 i am creating loving, healthy relationships 4.23 1.01 moderate 2 overall m and sd 4.31 0.94 moderate 2 m= mean; sd= standard deviation; ranks (1-3); levels (low, moderate and high) 1=low (1-2.6), 2=moderate (2.7-4.3), 3=high (4.4-6) 3.1.3. level of self-efficacy the items in table 4 were used to measure the level of self-efficacy section of empowerment and the results were presented in the order from the highest to the lowest mean score. the analysis of results revealed that there was a moderate level of self-efficacy among small farmers. in this section the respondents were inquired about their perceived expectations and abilities. the analysis of self-efficacy showed that all items came under the category of moderate level of empowerment. the analysis demonstrated that as a result of their participation in projects, the respondents can usually think of a solution to a problem (m=4.29, sd=0.99) and they are confident of dealing with their problems that come up in their life efficiently (m=3.62, sd=0.81). the overall mean score (m=4.06, sd = 0.93) showed the moderate level of empowerment among the respondents. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 41-49 46 table 4: level of self-efficacy n=455 s.no statements m sd level rank 1 as a result of participation in crop maximization project, i can usually think of a solution to a problem 4.29 0.99 moderate 2 2 as a result of participation in crop maximization project, i learned how to find several solutions to a problem 4.26 1.00 moderate 2 3 as a result of participation in crop maximization project, i can manage to solve difficult problems through my hard work 4.24 0.98 moderate 2 4 as a result of participation in crop maximization project, i can make my plan to work successfully, especially if i invest the necessary effort 4.16 1.04 moderate 2 5 as a result of participation in crop maximization project, i can find means and ways to get what to cater for my basic needs 4.07 0.87 moderate 2 6 as a result of participation in crop maximization project, i can achieve most of my aims and accomplish my goal 4.03 0.93 moderate 2 7 as a result of participation in crop maximization project, i can remain calm when facing difficulties because i rely on my coping ability 3.97 0.91 moderate 2 8 as a result of participation in crop maximization project, i am brave enough to face the situations 3.93 0.86 moderate 2 9 as a result of participation in crop maximization project, i am confident of dealing with most problems that come up in my life efficiently 3.62 0.81 moderate 2 overall m and sd 4.06 0.93 moderate 2 m= mean; sd= standard deviation; ranks (1-3); levels (low, moderate and high) 1=low (1-2.6), 2=moderate (2.7-4.3), 3=high (4.4-6) 4. summary of level of empowerment the results in table 5 presented a summation of the individual level of empowerment sections and also a summation of all three sections as the total empowerment level. further, it depicted that the level of capacity building section of empowerment was in the moderate category with summated mean score of 94.71 and a standard deviation of 20.46, in which is in line with the analysis results on the previous table 2. this means that the small farmers of the sindh province of pakistan have a moderate level of capacity building. similarly, the level of self-esteem section of empowerment showed that all the items fell under the moderate category based on an aggregated mean score of 47.49 (sd=10.39) which reflected the analysis of the previous table 3. this indicated that all the small farmers were moderately confident and possessed self-esteem to handle not only farm related activities but also other activities of daily living. furthermore, all the respondents felt that they were persons of worth and had equal status in their community. table 5: summary of level of empowerment n=455 s.no dimensions of empowerment total sd level rank 1 level in capacity building 94.71 20.46 moderate 2 2 level in self-esteem 47.49 10.39 moderate 2 3 level in self-efficacy 36.57 8.43 moderate 2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 41-49 47 4 total level of empowerment 178.77 39.29 moderate 2 sd= standard deviation; ranks (1-3); levels (low, moderate and high) 1) 1=low (23-61.33), 2 =moderate (61.4-99.73), 3=high: 99.74-138.07) 2) 1=low (11-29.33), 2=moderate (29.34-47.67), 3=high (47.68-66.01) 3) 1=low (9-24), 2=moderate (24.1-39.1), 3=high (39.2-54.2) 4) 1=low (43-114.63), 2=moderate (114.84-186.5), 3=high (186.62-258.28) in addition, the level of self-efficacy was also similar to the other two sections of empowerment. all the items were found in the moderate category of empowerment based on a combined mean score of m=36.57 and sd= 8.43. this proved that the respondents had taken advantages from crop maximization projects with regards to their capabilities to organize and execute a course of action(s) required in managing prospective situations. finally, the present research result showed that, there was moderate level of empowerment among the beneficiaries (small farmers) of the crop maximization projects of the sindh province based on a summed mean score of m=178.77 and sd= 39.29 for the three dimensions of empowerment (capacity building, self-esteem and self-efficacy). 5. discussion crop maximization project is government initiated project to improve farmers’ income. however, there are also intangible outcomes from this project gained by beneficiaries (small farmers). these intangible outcomes were examined in terms of the level of capacity building, self-esteem and selfefficacy of the farmers, which is labeled as empowerment. the study discovered that the overall empowerment among the beneficiaries is at moderate level. the small farmers developed their own capacities, competencies, knowledge and skills regarding farming productivity after participating in the project. they were convinced that with their newly found confidence, they could achieve success in particular situations. furthermore, the results of present research were in line with the study of waheed (2009), who observed the impact of micro-finance schemes on the empowerment and well-being on borrowers in the punjab province. similarly, the results of this study were nearly similar to the findings of the study of muhammad et al. (2013) about the impact of farmers field school (ffs) on empowerment and well-being on farmers of khyber pakhtunkhwa province of pakistan. likewise, the results of present study found similarity with the study ofoxfam (2015) about the empowerment of small producers, especially women in the dairy sector in muzzaffargarh district, south punjab and it was found that the small holders got empowered through projects. in these studies, the impact of projects/ programs towards the empowerment of farmers was assessed but these studies were limited and could not provide detailed information of the level of empowerment. on the other hand, the results of the present research provided detailed levels on different sections, such as capacity building, self-esteem and self-efficacy in empowerments. furthermore, based on the analysis results and overall mean score of level of empowerment, the crop maximization project gave an impact on the small farmers’ community of sindh such as the micro-finance credit schemes and farmers’ field school projects of other provinces of pakistan. 6. conclusion on the basis of the results of this study, it is concluded that the small farmers of the study area have achieved an overall moderate level of empowerment after participating in crop maximization project launched by provincial agricultural department of sindh in the collaboration with the federal government of pakistan. the project has yielded satisfactory results in terms of capacity building, self-esteem and self-efficacy of the small farmers. in addition, the projects such as crop maximization not only empower the individuals but also lead them towards the empowerment of their communities as a whole. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(3)2016, 41-49 48 views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references amadi, b. o., & abdullah, h. 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(2011). the relationship between the desired disciplinary behavior and family functioning locus of control and self esteem among high school students in cities of tehran province. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 30, 2438-2448. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 59 improving rural livelihood through nerica farming: an inquiry into najja sub-county in central uganda dan makosa and nagatada takayanagi department of agricultural economics, tokyo university of agriculture, sakuragaoka, setagaya, tokyo, japan abstract new rice for africa (nerica) was introduced in uganda to help rural farmers in improving their livelihood in terms of income and food security. using the livelihood impact analysis technique, this study sought to assess the role of nerica in improving rural livelihood by (i) understanding the production environment (ii) exploring the marketing opportunities and challenges and (iii) highlighting the changes in livelihood outcomes. the findings indicate that upland varieties are cultivated mainly in lowland areas and rural farmers prefer early maturity attribute to high productivity. milling places also double as selling points where buyers and sellers meet. selling milled rice fetches more profits than paddy. the most popular asset purchased from nerica proceeds is land. the main challenges to production and marketing are inadequate extension service and high transport costs respectively. keywords: nerica farming, uganda, rural livelihood, rice marketing, livelihood impact analysis introduction 1 like in the rest of the developing world, ugandan farmer‟s livelihood remains in a miserable state. agriculture, a main source of livelihood, is subsistence characterized by use of rudimentary tools, poor quality seeds, inadequate supply of agricultural chemical inputs, no irrigation and poor marketing channels. as a result, this has led to low yields, low household incomes, food insecurity, malnutrition and poor livelihood in general. the situation is worse in rural area which is home to over 80% of the entire population. for the last fifteen years the government of uganda has been implementing macroeconomic and civil corresponding author‟s name: dan makosa email address: makosadan@yahoo.co.uk service reforms aimed at improving the livelihood of people in terms of income, food security and socio-economic status (maaif, 2005). promotion of nerica (new rice for africa), which was first developed by african rice center, is one of the initiatives adopted in this context. dubbed a „food cash crop‟, nerica has attracted a lot of public and international attention in the country. locally, the effort to boost nerica rice production and marketing is jointly pursued by the office of the vice president (ovp), the national agricultural advisory services (naads), partner ngo`s such as sasakawa global 2000 and the private sector with the view to improving rural livelihood (odogola, 2006). against this backdrop, whether the nerica promotion initiative is yielding results is a matter of interest. according to the ministry of trade, rice production in uganda has asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:makosadan@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 59-73 60 increased 2.5 times over the five years since 2004 (savitri, 2009). in the same period, nerica varieties increased yields by 0.5 tons (incremental effect) although it wasn`t clear whether this increase would translate into higher profits and improvement of welfare (kijima, 2008). in a separate research, kijima et al. (2008) concluded that nerica has the potential to increase per capita income by 10% and to decrease the poverty incidence by 4 percentage points as measured by the head count ratio generally speaking, the previous impact assessment studies have been mostly assessing adoption, yet adoption explains only part of the impact picture which assumes real (direct) impacts (la rovere et al., 2008). since agricultural technology has both direct and indirect impacts, there is need to capture both of them (de janvry and sadoulet, 2002). agricultural technology and particularly rice may have a much wider impact on livelihoods than simply improving crop yields or household food security. unfortunately the linkages between technology and livelihoods are not always captured in technical evaluations. as a result, the dynamic role that agriculture may play in eliminating rural poverty is easily overlooked (megor et al., 2007). this paper assesses the livelihood of rural farmers in relation to nerica rice farming using a livelihoods approach. specifically the research sought to (1) understand the nerica production environment, (2) explore marketing opportunities and challenges and (3) highlight the role of nerica in rural livelihood. as a result this study will serve as a guide to how nerica project may be reshaped to improve rural livelihood without negatively impacting on other critical enterprises. a livelihood approach takes into account several of the factors that affect household well-being, and provides a way of examining diverse influences, thus ensuring that key issues are captured (la rovere et al., 2008). ashley and hussein (2000) also concurs with this argument by asserting that measurable changes such as cash and yield must be assessed not in their own right, but in terms of the contributions they make to livelihood. they (ashley and hussein, 2000) further stress that wellbeing is not only about improved income. since livelihood priorities vary, putting central focus on peoples` lives by taking time to understand their livelihood objectives and opinions of how to best achieve them is a great step towards addressing the problem of rural poverty. the weakness with this approach is that it is descriptive and not explanatory. it is also unlikely that a single project may change the livelihood of a given community. however, going by ashley and hussein`s (2000) statement „a single project may not substantially change the livelihood in quantifiable terms. nevertheless livelihood impact assessment can highlight how it fits with livelihoods, any incremental changes and how impacts can be enhanced‟. methodology study area the survey was conducted in najja sub county buikwe district which is about 20 km from njeru town council along jinjakampala highway. formally in mukono district, buikwe became independent in 2009. najja sub-county is bordered by lake victoria in the east and south, nyenga and najjembe sub counties in the north and buikwe and ngogwe sub counties in the west. the area is under tropical rainforest (equatorial) climate and therefore no distinct seasons over the year. the vegetation is savannah with a mixture of grasses and scattered shrubs and trees in almost equal proportion. with average minimum temperature of 17.5 0 c and average maximum of 27 0 c, the area is warm throughout the year. the rainfall pattern is bimodal with march-may and octoberdecember rainy seasons bringing the annual average to 1200ml. according to the sub county report (2011), it was established that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 59-73 61 najja sub county has a population of 38200 people of whom 17700 are males and 20500 are females with the average household size of 6. the households are spread into 7 parishes of: namatovu, mawotto, kisimba, kiyindi, gulama, busagazi and tukulu. fishing, livestock rearing and crop farming are the main sources of livelihood to the community. the source of livelihood to najja-sub county community varies with the distance from lake victoria. people in the neighborhood of the lake are majorly fishermen and as you move further crop farming intensifies. among crops, sweet potatoes, cassava, maize, beans and rice are the most commonly grown. currently, maize and rice (nerica) are main crops grown for cash income. coffee, which was a main source of livelihood until the late 1990‟s, was destroyed by coffee wilt. the emergency of vanilla in the early 2000 was a relief to the people of najja as a livelihood source. unfortunately, this was short lived following the loss of vanilla market to madagascar (the main producer) which left this community with no alternative. at the same time, banana bacterial wilt disease emerged and destroyed all the banana plantations. the introduction of nerica rice in 2004 came at an opportune time to this community who viewed it as a food cash crop for their livelihood. they were therefore among the early adopters following the introduction of nerica rice varieties by sasakawa global 2000 through buwagajjo agro processors and marketers association (bamta). to see how this community is coping up with the new crop, the challenges they are encountering and the possible improvement strategies were some of the interesting points which motivated this study. research design multi-stage purposive sampling method was used. within najja sub county three parishes of kisimba, mawotto and namatovu were selected because of their high concentration of nerica farmers. the data was mainly collected using primary sources which were complimented with secondary sources through review of literature both online and printed materials. primary data was collected between 22 th august and 9 th september 2012 using a variety of techniques. for this period the researchers were on site traversing the area while making observations of such things as housing status, availability and accessibility of shopping centers, rice milling machines, state of roads, land preparation and planting methods. for the purpose of quick memory, photography was employed in this exercise. to capture the profile information of the study area, key informant interviews with sub-county extension and administrative staff were conducted. thereafter, three group meetings in the form of dual moderator focus group discussions with 12 participants each were conducted at parish level. the exercise was conducted according to the participatory assessment of livelihood impacts (pali) suggested by ashley and hussein (2000). to allow for smooth flow of information, male and female groups were separated. the topics of discussion included: input requirements and their prices, cropping calendar, perception and importance of nerica attributes, challenges encountered in nerica farming, relevance of nerica in their livelihood and their opinion on curbing the challenges. each discussion was moderated by one researcher while the other made sure all topics of interest were covered within 2 hours period. as a way of confirming the collected data, well-designed survey forms were administered by the researchers to the household heads. a total of 18 such structured interviews were conducted covering detailed information on production and marketing of nerica and its role to the livelihood of respective households. this survey was structured according the livelihood impact analysis procedures described in ashley and hussein (2000). data on attributes such as perceptions and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 59-73 62 preferences was captured and organized with the help of likert scales. profitability was estimated through gross margin analysis. using descriptive statistics, the survey employed both qualitative and quantitative analyses in a triangulation manner to ensure meaningful conclusions. results and discussion production environment of nerica rice in najja sub-county rain-fed rice farming: a fragile business the farming pattern in uganda is entirely dependent on rainfall. comparing the nerica cropping calendar (figure 1a) and the rainfall pattern (figure 1b), it was established that planting starts with the onset of rainfall while harvesting is done during dry periods. therefore the first rains (march-may) and the second rains (september-november) correspond with the first and second cropping seasons respectively. in this rain-fed farming, delayed rainfall leads to late planting and failure of rainfall means failure of the crop. this makes rice farming under rain-fed conditions to be such a risky and fragile business. with no irrigation facility in place and given their risk aversion nature, farmers are trying to minimize the risk by planting upland nerica varieties in lowlands. those who grow it on uplands look for that part of the parcel with high water retention capacity to ensure adequate moisture over a long period of time. farmers reasoned that lowland soils retain moisture for a longer period which may reduce the yield loss in case of drought. interestingly, this argument is in line with several studies which have been carried out in uganda. basing on the simulation results of cropland optimization, fujiie et al. (2010a) study on potential of nerica production in uganda expounds on the yield-rainfall relationship. they stressed that in case of rainfall variability, the probability of obtaining no yield is 29% compared to 0% when nerica is planted on upland and lowland respectively. in a separate study, they explained that high fluctuations in seasonal yield as a result of unstable rainfall may act as a signal to discontinue nerica production. using duration analysis, fujiie et al. (2010b) found that exposure to drought or erratic weather significantly increased the chances of nerica dis-adoption in uganda. to contain this situation the nerica rice promoters will need either to introduce simple irrigation methods or promote moisture conserving farming technologies. for example goto et al. (2012) demonstrated that the introduction of terraces as water catchment instruments into nerica fields does not only increase volumetric water content but also the average yield. similarly larson et al. (2010) had stressed that rice yield can be raised by introducing simple water control systems such as bunds, leveling and general crop husbandry. figure 1a: nerica cropping calendar in najja source: field survey (aug-sep, 2012) jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec nerica rice convetional rice land preparation planting weeding harvesting asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 59-73 63 figure 1b: monthly rainfall and temperature in jinja source: field survey, ubos statistical abstract (2010) nerica: a strategic crop for najja table 1a compares yield of key crops in najja sub-county to the national average. production (tons/ha) of nerica, maize and beans were found to be higher than the national average. this was not true for sweet potatoes, cassava and banana which recorded very low yield levels. nerica has the highest yield (3.3 tons/ha) which is far more than the national rice average of 2.2 tons/ha. the yield is poorest for banana (0.5 tons/ha) which contrasts the national average of 5.8 ton/ha. the interesting general observation was that the yield was relatively higher for grains compared to tubers. the cause of this scenario is unclear though it could be due to agro-ecological (mainly soil) conditions which favor particular category of crops. the low banana yield was due to outbreak of bacterial wilt which has been destroying most of the crop since 2001. benkunda (1999) also listed mukono and masaka as the least productive districts in the country. according to diagne et al. 2011, the average nerica yield in uganda is 2.2 ton/ha. the yields however vary with farm size and across regions as summarized by different studies in table 1b. table 1a: crop yield in najja versus national average source: field survey (2012) and ubos 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec t e m p e r a t u r e r a i n f a l l rainfall in jinja (mm) avmintemp in jinja (0c) avmaxtemp in jinja (0c) crop study area national average rice 3.3 1.4 bean 0.8 0.6 maize 1.9 1.5 banana 0.5 5.8 cassava 2.6 8.2 s/potato 2.3 4.3 yield (tons/ha) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 59-73 64 table 1b: nerica yield by location and farm size locations the yield reported in this study (3.26) was realized with an average planted area of 0.29 ha. this concurs with the findings of the above previous studies. nerica rice yields for central and western uganda are generally higher than that of northern region. this is probably due to favorable conditions as indicated in the nerica rice suitability map (asea et al., 2010). the variation within region can be attributed to management efficiency as explained by farm size yield inverse relationship. as witnessed in the above previous studies, nerica yield decreases with increase in acreage hence the higher yield in najja due to small planted area per farm. although not considered a priority crop for buikwe district in the national agricultural zoning, nerica rice should be promoted in najja sub-county given its high productivity in comparison to national rice figures and to other crops within the sub-county. since this high productivity is being realized without applying any fertilizer, there is no doubt that the introduction of such inputs will further improve the yields. early maturity: a powerful nerica attribute although promotion of nerica varieties has been biased towards their high productivity attribute, farmers of najja rated early maturity as the most important reason for adopting it. according to group interview results (right part of table 2), farmers strongly agreed with nericas as early maturing varieties which take 90-105 days to mature as opposed to conventional varieties which require more than 120 days. their perceptions were also in favor of productivity and taste. however, they strongly disagreed with nerica`s drought resistance feature as well as doubting its resistance to pests and diseases. it is for this reason that they have restricted nerica to water retaining areas as discussed in the previous section. when it came to ranking their preferences (left part of table 2) for nerica attributes, they ranked early maturity highest followed by productivity on 1-5 scale with 1 the most preferred. still resistance to harsh conditions ranked poorly. nerica`s short growth period means that it is not only labor saving, but also can help in escaping drought effects. early maturity`s ability to allow double cropping of nerica was also applauded as a great attribute compared to conventional rice in which single cropping is unavoidable as earlier illustrated in the cropping calendar. nerica study area nerica area per farm (ha) yield (ton/ha) namulonge (central uganda)* 0.27 3.30 najja (central uganda)** 0.29 3.26 western and central uganda*** 0.39 2.60 northern uganda**** 0.40 1.80 namulonge (central uganda)* 0.46 2.00 *miyamoto et al 2012, ** research interview (aug-sep 2012), *** kijima et al 2006, **** fujiie et al 2010 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 59-73 65 table 2: rank importance and perceptions towards nerica attributes source: field survey (aug-sep 2012) these findings are consistent with larson et al. (2010) discussion in their study “can africa replicate asia`s green revolution in rice?” where they explain the relevance of early maturity in nerica promotion. bzugu et al. (2010) study in nigeria also confirms that early maturity is considered the most important reason for adopting nerica 1 variety. the same study places productivity in third place below pest and disease resistance. these results thus provide the concerned stakeholders with an alternative approach to promoting nerica rice, more especially in areas where the local varieties out-perform it in terms of productivity. there is need for strengthening the extension system growing of nerica in najja sub-county was started in najja village in 2006 by sasakawa africa association (saa) and national agricultural advisory services (naads) as shown in table 3. particularly saa, through its farmers` association center (bamta), has been responsible for spreading nerica to other villages until 2012 when farmer-to-farmer extension started. inadequate knowledge of nerica farming (by naads) and lack of adequate human resources (by saa) have resulted into poor information dissemination and slow adoption of nerica. although extension is mainly by saa, the center is located in nyenga sub-county (buwagajjo village) about 20km away and connected with muddy impassable roads during the rainy season. the center also has one extension staff who serves a membership of about 3000 farmers covering four subcounties. table 3: nerica introduction in najja by agency and year *farmer does not grow nerica source: field survey (aug-sep 2012) preference (1=most important) perception (s=strongly,a=agree,d=disagree) attribute men women mixed overall men women mixed overall early maturity 1 1 2 1 a sa sa sa high productivity 2 2 1 2 a a a a good taste 3 3 3 3 sa a a a drought resistance 5 4 4 4 sd sd d sd pest and disease resistance 4 5 5 5 d sd d d nerica introduced farmer village by year seed source 1 najja naads 2006 own saved 2 kisimba sg2000 2006 own saved 3 najja sg2000 2006 other farmer 4 najja naads 2006 own saved 5 buleega * * * 6 kobubiro sg2000 2006 own saved 7 makindu naads 2006 own saved 8 kitabazi * * * 9 kitabazi * * * 10 buleega sg2000 2008 own saved 11 kisimba naads 2009 own saved 12 buleega naads 2010 own saved 13 kitabazi * * * 14 najja sg2000 2012 other farmer 15 buleega sg2000 2012 own saved 16 buleega other farmer 2012 own saved 17 kisimba other farmer 2012 other farmer 18 buleega * * * asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 59-73 66 in turn, the training intensity has been minimal with some farmers not able to access any service at all. this lack of effectiveness and efficiency has caused weaknesses in farmer group activities such as input purchase and output marketing. sseruunkuma et al. (2011) showed that adoption of improved technologies depends on the intensity of participation in trainings. many other studies (such as floyd et al., 2003, mariano et al., 2012) also support this argument that extension related activities have the greatest impact on technology adoption. in line with bamba et al. (2010), this study recommends an integrated approach which involves designing a strong information dissemination system through: enhanced collaborations between various stakeholders, capacity building and or hiring of more extension staff with expertise on nerica rice and adoption of modern extension approaches such as farm field schools (ffs). nerica marketing: opportunities and challenges rice mills as pivotal selling points all the nerica produced by najja subcounty farmers is sold in processed form as white rice despite mills being a long distance away. with the help of hired or owned motorcycles or bicycles, farmers carry their paddy to the milling machines which double as the selling points. it is at the milling machines that you find buyers waiting for farmers to process their rice before payments are made. as illustrated in figure 2, these buyers are of various categories although locally generalized as middlemen. they include agents who buy on behalf of wholesalers or retailers for a commission, speculators who buy and store the rice with the hope of selling in the near future for a relatively higher price and processors (usually mill owners) who purchase white rice from farmers, add value through packaging in unbranded 50kg gunny bags before selling. price is collectively set by these middlemen and as such farmers take it up passively due to their lack of bargaining power which is brought about by individual marketing. occasionally, farmers have the opportunity to sell directly to consumers who are usually public or private institutions such as schools, prisons and hospitals. interestingly, all the rice produced is readily sold. besides middlemen, whose dealings are secretive, prices received by other key players increased along the value chain as expected. it was on average ush1500, 2000 and 2500 per kilogram for farmers, wholesalers and retailers respectively. since this research`s focus was at farm level, the margins for wholesalers and retailers were not investigated. however, at a price of ush1500, farmers were able to make a profit of ush420/kg which could increase to ush512/kg with the sale of rice bran. this market assurance is an opportunity to nerica farmers which give them the desire to continue engaging in the crop. not surprising, the rice producers are not the consumers although most of it is consumed within the region. it is produced in rural areas but consumed in urban areas due to a number of reasons. first, rice is an expensive food which cannot be afforded by the rural population who live on low income. for this reason, the rural people (including rice farmers) would rather sell rice expensively and make savings through buying cheap foods like cassava and sweet potatoes than consume it. secondly, due to its ease in cooking compared to staple foods such as sweet potatoes, cassava and maize, it is preferred by urban dwellers who value time in terms of opportunity cost. lastly, the urban population has been exposed to a variety of food culture including rice diet as a result of interaction with both national and international friends. given that rice is the main food served in schools, it is obvious that the urban people were introduced to it during their school days since they tend to be more educated than their rural counterparts. all the above reasons have created demand in urban areas for rice hence asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 59-73 67 providing farmers with ready market for their produce. this rice marketing model is slightly different from kijima et al. (2011) study on the development of agricultural markets in sub-saharan africa. in that report they found that price was solely set by the mill operator. according to the same study, mill operators never participated in buying rice which would partly explain why they were entrusted with price setting. since the mill operators in this study also buy rice, it is reasonable that price is collectively determined by all buyers. this is done at the expense of sellers who are powerless. however, the role of rice mills in rice marketing cannot be underestimated as they provide the marketing opportunity by doubling as selling points besides milling. figure 2: rice marketing channels in najja source: field survey (aug-sep 2012) value addition: a necessary requirement table 4 compares gross margins from nerica farming when sold in a paddy and milled form. most of the surveys on gross margins (emg 2008, pma 2009) have been concentrated in the northern part of the country. the margins were lowest (ush143300/acre) in lango and highest in acholi sub-regions. the only study (mbeine and ebong 2006) which has been conducted in the eastern region, the country`s highest rice producing area, has put the gross margins to as high as ush747100/acre. it is evident that irrespective of region, the margins are higher if nerica is sold in milled form than in paddy form. although the data on national gross margins is limited, apep (2006) field survey which covered most parts of the country put it at ush262500 per acre if sold in paddy form. this figure is almost half the margins reported in current survey of ush432500 per acre if sold in milled form. it is therefore necessary for key stakeholders to encourage simple value addition mechanisms such as milling which can double the profits from nerica compared to when sold in paddy form. unfortunately, the long distance to the farmer ush300/kg ush1500/kg mill operator ush500/kg middlemen agents, speculators, processors poultry farmer at the mill wholesaler ush2 000/kg retailer ush2 500/kg consumer major route (milled rice) minor route (milled rice) rice bran asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 59-73 68 rice mills is a major constraint which raises the marketing cost. table 4: seasonal nerica gross margins per acre across different parts of uganda source: various sources as indicated the first column in the table increased rice production: a remedy to high transport costs fourteen out of eighteen farmers interviewed were at least 15km away from the rice mill (selling point) which is located in njeru town council. to transport their rice for milling, farmers had to part with ush7000 for every 100kg of paddy through hiring of motorcycle which is the most commonly used means. transport problem was also unanimously cited across all categories during group interviews as their undoing in rice marketing. seasonal impassable roads during rainy season as well as distance to the mill were responsible for high transport costs. although there was a rice mill within the study area, farmers rarely used it. they reasoned that it produced poor quality rice with many broken particles. its milling recovery was also poor (at about 50%). according to yamano et al. (2010), the distance and quality of roads connecting to the markets has great influence on household crop income. they thus recommend investment in rural roads through repair and construction to overcome marketing constraints and enhance crop income improvement. considering the costs involved however, this study believes road investment should be long term rather than a short term intervention. one viable option therefore is introduction of quality milling services in the village. since najja town is connected to electricity, the miller will incur low costs which will transmit into low milling charges to farmers. the closeness of farmers to millers may build trust making it possible to extend credit for rice production. monitoring and supervision of such credit will also be easy. having been convinced by introduction of rice mills as a sound option, the main challenge becomes how and by whom? according to kijima et al. (2011), milling business is offered by private entities and is demand driven. it is for this reason that they tend to concentrate in urban areas where they expect to receive rice from different locations. if rice production in a given location increases, the establishment of rice mills will follow suit (kijima et al., 2008, 2011). therefore the immediate solution to transport challenge comes back to increasing rice production. one farmer, who managed to produce 2 tons of rice in two consecutive seasons, has never encountered any marketing problem as testified during the research. according to him, buyers come with trucks to his field after harvesting, offer free transport to the mill and pay for the rice after milling. in the long term however, investment in roads will be inevitable. since rice is consumed more in urban than in rural areas, introduction of mills in rural areas will imply more costs to traders in terms of transporting milled rice to the consumption points. this may result into lose-lose situation for farmers and consumers as study region gross margin (ush) selling form emg (2008) northern (acholi) 225000 paddy pma (2009) northern (lango) 143300 paddy pma (2009) northern (acholi) 315000 paddy apep (2006) national 262500 paddy current central (buikwe) 432500 milled asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 59-73 69 traders will react by lowering the buying price and raising the selling price to recover the transport costs. these costs can however be significantly lowered by a good road network. the role of nerica in rural livelihood profitable enterprise and a major contributor to income nerica`s role as a key income contributor was witnessed in study area. analysis of how rice produce is utilized (pie chart not included) revealed that 84% is sold, 9% consumed and the rest is put into other uses. the high percentage of rice sold is explained partly by its high prices and partly by its non-staple nature in the rural setting. given its high prices, rice consumption has been restricted to public holidays and on special events. farmers prefer selling it for cash income which can be put into various uses. comparing the gross margin of nerica with that of its closest substitute maize (table 5), it was established that every ush100 in revenue comes along with a profit of ush32 and ush23 for nerica and maize respectively. although comparing these gross margins is unfair for maize which does not enter the processing stage, the analysis reflects what usually happens in the study area. it is also important to note that the gross margins were constructed using group interview data which relied on consensus. at household level, although not covered by this research, many farmers use unpaid family labor which can considerably improve the gross margin figures for both crops. given that rice is more labor demanding, however, it is logical to believe that gross margin for nerica will increase more than that of maize if family labor is removed from the analysis. also, the gross profit of ush432500 per acre per season received by nerica farmers in najja subcounty is well above the national average of ush262500 reported in apep (2006) report. the big difference is attributed to the stage of marketing. whereas in najja rice is marketed by farmers after milling, the national average was estimated by marketing before milling. however, this gives najja sub-county a competitive advantage in nerica production. table 5: seasonal gross margins of maize and nerica (ush/acre) source: field survey (aug-sep 2012) gross margin analysis nerica maize yield/acre (kg) 1300 786 price/kg if milled (ush) 1500 * milling recovery 65% 845 * price/kg if unmilled (ush) * 700 sub total revenue 1267500 550200 rice bran revenue (20%*1300kg@300) 78000 * total revenue (ush) a 1345500 550200 costs/acre (ush) slashing 120000 120000 first ploughing 150000 150000 second ploughing 100000 * seed (rice:20kg@1500, maize:10kg@1500) 30000 15000 planting 50000 30000 weeding 100000 50000 chemical & appln (4l@ush5000 + labor) 27000 * harvesting & transport to home 100000 60000 transport to mill (ush7000 per 100kg bag) 91000 * milling (ush100/kg) 130000 * total costs (ush) b 913000 425000 gross profit/acre (ush) a-b 432500 125200 gross margin (%) {(a-b)/a}*100 32 23 * not applicable note: labor wages are determined on piece rate (usually acre unless stated) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 59-73 70 stepping stone to assets accumulation the revenues from nerica have been pivotal in transforming the livelihood of rural community. the farmers‟ response to key achievements from nerica farming revealed that 54% of the households considered buying land as their best achievement from nerica farming. this was followed by building permanent houses and purchasing motorcycle at 15% each. payment of school fees was also mentioned (8%) while the rest contributed to 8%. the purchased motorcycles were being hired out as bike taxis (locally called boda boda) for daily income. they were also used for transporting paddy rice to the mills during the marketing period. although some of the land has been purchased in urban areas for commercial development, most of it has been purchased in rural areas to enable farm expansion. almost every household has increased its land size. on average nerica farmers owned 4.68 acres in 2003 compared to 6.72 acres owned in 2011. land, being a renewable natural resource, has been entrusted as a safe store of wealth whose value never depreciates given its rapidly growing demand. besides farming, land also provides collateral for agriculture loans and can be used as last resort for settling debts (educational, health and judicial). by their location, rural farmers have limited business opportunities and therefore buying land presents an investment opportunity. for these reasons, it is every farmer`s utmost desire to expand his/her landholding as it forms the apex of asset accumulation. conclusion new rice for africa (nerica) was introduced in uganda in 2003 to help the rural farmers in improving their livelihood in terms of income and food security. using livelihood impact analysis technique, this study sought to assess the role of nerica in improving rural livelihood by (1) understanding the production environment (2) exploring the marketing opportunities and challenges and (3) highlighting the changes in livelihood outcomes. although the nericas currently released in uganda are upland varieties, they have been restricted to lowland cultivation due to unpredictable rainfall. this does not only exert pressure on wetlands, but also leaves the uplands under-utilized. as rainfall becomes more erratic, the rain-dependent rice farming system will become more and more risky. it is therefore necessary that water management practices such as irrigation, leveling and bunding be considered in reducing the risks posed by drought. another viable approach to containing drought impacts is the release and or promotion of early maturing varieties. these varieties are able to reach reproductive stage before onset of drought thereby managing to escape the adverse effects. given that farmers prefer early maturing to high yielding varieties, there is an opportunity of promoting nerica using alternative means. many farmers who do not adopt nerica find it to be less productive than other local varieties (mainly the lowland ones). however, if the maturity period is put into consideration, nerica will be preferred for its ability to allow for double cropping. all the above interventions can only be possible with a good extension network which facilitates quick and accurate technology dissemination in place. unfortunately, lack of skilled personnel is a limiting factor. it is therefore mandatory that more efforts be put in training and capacity building of extension staff in nerica agronomy and marketing. it is evident that nerica farming is more profitable than its `closest substitute` maize. it even becomes more profitable when simple value addition technique such as milling is done before selling. unfortunately, lack of milling machine in the community implies that farmers have to move long distances to access the milling services. this comes along with high transport costs. on the other side, mill asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 59-73 71 operators prefer areas with adequate paddy for continuity of their business. therefore increased production is necessary for mill establishment which in turn will reduce the transport costs. however, in the long run, investment in roads will be needed. the high profitability of nerica has enabled farmers to accumulate assets such as land which in addition to farming acts as a store of wealth and collateral for loan transactions, permanent houses and motorcycles which are hired out as boda bodas (bike taxis) for daily household income. it is however not clear how these changes in land redistribution will affect the livelihood of entire community. the unfortunate scenario will be the one in which low income (non-nerica) farmers will continue losing land to high income (nerica) farmers. if that happens to be the case, there will be food insecurity in the community since land for staple foods will have been taken over by nerica which is not consumed locally. a number of policy implications can be drawn from these findings: (i) water conserving technologies need to be promoted to reduce the drought risks (ii) early maturity as an attribute should be given more attention during nerica promotion (iii) training and or hiring of more extension workers who are knowledgeable in rice agronomy is necessary (iv) emphasis to value addition by providing conducive environment to milling services in rural areas is worth considering. to get a concrete picture, which is necessary in policy formulation, more detailed studies will need to be conducted. for example this study reports increase in landholding by nerica farmers but does not explain from whom land is bought? therefore a study on land redistribution in nerica growing communities by identifying the winners and losers will be appropriate. this should put gender perspectives, age and wealth into consideration to capture the necessary information. since nerica farming is entirely rain-fed, studying the vulnerability and adaptation measures to the possible effects of climate change on the farmers‟ livelihood is also recommended. the marketing section was limited to the farmers and research did not cover in detail the entire marketing chain. since marketing of rice is a complex process with many players, there is need for a detailed study to get a clear image of possible opportunities. such issues as the role of middleman in the marketing chain, estimation of demand and supply and changes in rural and urban diets need to be prioritized. acknowlegment this paper is as a result of tokyo university of agriculture‟s graduate research grant. we thank the academic staff of department of agricultural economics, tokyo university of agriculture for the useful comments. references asea, g., onaga, g., phiri, n. a., & karanja, d. k. 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(2010). the associations of soil fertility and market access with household income: evidence from uganda. food policy, 35(1), 51-59. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 40 invitro propagation of selected medicinal plants species shabana irum a , farhat ali khan a , shazia erum b , faisal nouroz a,c , saima kanwal d * and aish muhammad c a department of botany, hazara university mansehra, pakistan. b plant genetic resource institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan. c molecular genetics laboratory, department of biology, university of leicester, uk. d food science and product development institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan. saima.kanwal80@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 17-apr-2017 accepted: 02-june-2017 online available: 15-june2017 keywords: medicinal plants, ex-plants, in vitro propagation abstract the present studies carried out on thymus vulgaris, lavandula angustifolia, rosmarinus officinalis, ocimum basilicum and ocimum americanum which showed the effect of different growth hormones (t1: ga3 1ml, t2: bap 1mg, t3: agar 5gm/l, t4: kinetin 1mg/l + 0.3mg/l. ga3 (semi solid media) and t5:ms control) on plant height, number of nodes, number of shoots, number of roots and number of leaves. the shoot tips and seeds were used as explants, which were cultured in all the five different media. ga3-1ml showed best response in the multiplication of shoots and plant height, agar 5gm/l showed best response in root production, semi solid media is best for no. of nodes and no. of leaves as compared to ms control. afterward adapted and transplanted invitro derivative plants were found 100 %strong in in vivo environments. contribution/ originality in the present study, optimized protocol for micro propagation of selected plants provide new means of conserving and rapidly propagating valuable, rare, and endangered medicinal plants and can satisfy the demand of expanding markets for plant-based medicines and the need to protect medicinal biodiversity under disease free state. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.2/1005.2.40.47 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: shabana irum, farhat ali khan, shazia erum, faisal nouroz, aish muhammad and saima kanwal (2017). invitro propagation of selected medicinal plants species. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2), 40-47. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 2(2017): 40-47 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:saima.kanwal80@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.2/1005.2.40.47 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 40-47 41 1. introduction for the pharmacological trade and traditional medication medicinal plants are an important foundation of complexes and in emerging countries about 80 percent of the population still use out-dated medicines derived from plants (cunningham, 1993; de silva, 1997). tissue culturing is defined as the competency of plant cells besides tissues emerging up to roots into entire fresh and new plant termed as tissue culturing (fowler et al., 1993). several plants under certain conditions do not produce flower and seeds or have lengthy time period of growth and in multiplications. micro propagation is superlative for to supply regular pharmaceutical plants with in fewer space plus time interval (prakash and staden, 2007). for giant scale of plant duplication the tissue culture machinery is being broadly recycled and used. in quite little period of time and with beneath explicit surroundings plus nevertheless of a season, solitary explant can be bourgeoned into numerous thousand plants and undertake on a year plump source (idu et al., 2005). in this research work by using nodal explant and seed we recognised a reliable plantlet regeneration practice for extensive production of five medicinal plants species and also the five different medium effect used during experiment for stretched or long term germplasm stowage in in airconditioning behalf of preservation or conservation. in our present work the proprieties which were obtainable should be developed a prised amount of imminent energies at inherited/organic enrichment of these imperative certain medicinal plants. 2. methodology 2.1. materials in vitro propagation of five medicinal plants species (thymus vulgaris/ thyme, lavandula angustifolia/lavender, rosmarinus officinalis/ rosemary, ocimum americanum/ lime basil) and ocimum basilicum/ italian basil) were carried out in plant genetic resource institute (pgri) inin vitro lab at national agricultural research centre (narc) islamabad. mature seeds of ocimum basilicum and ocimum americanum were used as a source of ex-plant where from healthy explants (5-6cm) of rosmarinus officinalis, thymus vulgaris and lavandula angustifolia were used as explants for invitro propagation. 2.2. study design (crd) experiment was achieved by using complete randomize design (crd). individually each experiment was repeated three times. 2.3. ex-plant preparation and pre-soaking of seeds leaves present on the herbaceous part of stem were removed. the excised stem was further cut into different segments of 1 cm each. by adding a pinch of detergent and two drops of tween-20 solution (1 drop for 20 ml), shacked for 1-2 minutes, the explant segments and seeds were surface sterilized. within different beakers the same explants and seeds were then put under running tap water separately for 30-45 minutes. the seeds were washed to remove the gelatinous materials. the nodal segments were then surface-sterilized with 70% ethanol for 3 minutes and in 28% clorox for 15 minutes and lastly washed 4 or 5 times with autoclaved disinfected water in laminar flow chamber while seeds were pre-soaked in distilled water and 1% ga3 for 72 hour and then disinfected with 70% ethanol for 1minute then in 5% sodium hypochlorite for 10 minutes and then wash systematically with distilled water. 2.4. culturing the sprout or shoots tips/tops and seeds were cultured separately on ms medium comprising 30gram sucrose and different concentrations of growth regulators. five ms media were prepared, t1: ms media with ga3 at the rate of 1ml/l., t2: ms media containing bap at the rate of 1mg/l., t3: only ms media., t4: ms media with agar at the rate of 5gm/l and t5: ms media with kinetin at the rate of 1mg/l + 0.3mg/l ga3.they served as explant sources for consequent experiments. the ph of all the preferred five medium were familiar or adjusted to 5.8 with sodium asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 40-47 42 hydrochlorides and hydrochloric acids (naoh and hcl) formerly crystalizing through 7 per gram agar. all the experimentations used analytical grade chemicals. the ex-plants firstly were inserted perpendicularly on culture medium in test tubes then ploughed tightly withnonabsorbentyarn cotton. the light duration were kept as 25±1 ºc in 16 hours light/2,000 lux with cool white florescent for all the cultures (ahmad et al., 2003). 2.5 in vivo propagation after in-vitro propagation the cultured plants were shifted to in-vivocondition (figure 1) figure 1: medicinal plants in organic media 3. results on the basis of organs development after four weeks of culturing of seeds and nodal explants phenotypic parameters were noted (height of plants, shoots numbers, leaves numbers, roots numbers and nodes numbers). 3.1. plant height our fallouts displayed that determined height among all the medicinal plants were shown by thymus vulgaris(2.16cm) at ga3-1ml as related to ms control and others growth regulators (table 1; figure 2; and 7). figure 2: effects of different hormonal concentrations on medicinal plants height -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 ga 3 1ml bap-1ml ms-control simple agar 1mg/l kinetin+0.3 mg/lga3 plant height/cm thymus vulgaris lavandula angustifolia ocimum americanum ocimum basilicum rosmarinus officinalis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 40-47 43 3.2. no of nodes between all the test plants number of nodes were found to be supreme in 1mg per litre kinetin+0.3 mg/l ga3 (semi solid media) in thymus vulgaris (19.06) as compared to ms control and other concentrations (table 1; figure 3; and 7). figure 3: effects of different hormonal concentration on number of nodes 3.3. no of roots ocimum americanum showed best no of roots in simple agar media (6.7) as compared to ms control and other growth regulators (table 1; figure 4; and 7). figure 4: effects of different hormonal concentrations on number of roots 3.4. no of shoots shoots were found best in thymusvulgaris (5.73) in ga3-1ml media as compared to ms control and other concentrations (table 1; figure 5; and 7). -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 ga 3 1ml bap-1ml ms-control simple agar 1mg/l kinetin+0.3 mg/lga3 no of nodes thymus vulgaris lavandula angustifolia ocimum americanum ocimum basilicum rosmarinus officinalis -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 ga 3 1ml bap-1ml ms-control simple agar 1mg/l kinetin+0.3 mg/lga3 no of roots thymus vulgaris lavandula angustifolia ocimum americanum ocimum basilicum rosmarinus officinalis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 40-47 44 figure 5: effects of different hormonal concentration on number of shoots 3.5. no of leaves semi solid media (1mg/l kinetin+0.3 mg/lga3) showed best number of leaves in thymus vulgaris (19.06) as compared to ms control and other concentrations (table 1; figure 6; and 7). figure 6: effects of different hormonal concentration on number of leaves -5 0 5 10 15 20 ga 3 1ml bap-1ml ms-control simple agar 1mg/l kinetin+0.3 mg/lga3 no of shoots thymus vulgaris lavandula angustifolia ocimum americanum ocimum basilicum rosmarinus officinalis -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 ga 3 1ml bap-1ml ms-control simple agar 1mg/l kinetin+0.3 mg/lga3 no of leaves thymus vulgaris lavandula angustifolia ocimum americanum ocimum basilicum rosmarinus officinalis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 40-47 45 figure 7: influence of diverse hormonal applications on (a). thymus vulgaris (b). rosmarinusofficinalis (c). ocimum americanum (d). lavandula angustifolia. (e). ocimum basilicum 4. discussion presented work showed that among all the five ms medium includes ms media, ms media with ga3 at the rate of 1ml per litre, ms media containing bap at the amount of 1mg/litre, ms media with agar 5gm per litre, ms media with kinetin at the proportion of 1mg per litre plus 0.3mg per litre ga3 were affective for the germination of five medicinal plants. present work was with in agreement with aicha et al. (2013) while their work showed that great figures of shoots were gotten in ga3 in which media were added with 0.5/1.0/2.5 and 5.0 μm ga3. ga3-1ml media was responsible for maximum plant height while according to shabnum and wagay (2011) shoots could be definitely rooted on the ms medium in thymus species with concentration of media is (0.3mg/l iba + 3mg/l bap). (chishti et al., 2006) concluded that lavendula abgustifolia were showed best shoot production in (bap 2.0mg/l). according to other works the naa-2mg/l-1 and kin-2 mg/l-1 were best for callus growth in thymus vulgaris by former work of (valizadeh and kazemitabar (2011). when the ga3 concentrations is increased the inter nodaldistance is also increased which is reported by ndagijimana et al. (2014). conferring to al-bakhit et al. (2011) were described that once lavender shoots were refined/cultured at ms medium which is accompanied within 0.4 mg per litre of naa or at indole iba(butyric acid) weredeeprootedhealthy. according to janarthanam and sumathi (2012) ocimum citriodorumbrought roots/6.0 ± 1.0 onceshifting to partial ms medium perfected with 0.5 mg per litre iba (indole-3butyric acid), however our effectsexposed that enhanced number of roots in ocimum basilicum and ocimum americanumwere formed in simple agar media. our work as compared to other researchers have shown variation in results. this may be due to the collection of ex-plant in various seasons and also the medium used during experiment of in vitro (machado et al., 2011) a b c d e asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 40-47 46 and also the different ratio of auxin and cytokinin present in media responsible for rooting and the taking of explant (de klerk et al., 1999; de klerk, 2002). 5. conclusion in the current study we established the original efficient and consistent micro proliferation etiquette and in vitro propagation for thymus vulgaris, lavandula angustifolia, rosmarinus officinalis, ocimum basilicum and ocimum americanum from nodal explants. for huge balance propagation these plants may be recycled and would convert a valued part of approaches for ex situ preservation and conservation of mentioned significant scented and homoeopathic or medicinal herb. it was concluded that ga3 1ml, semi solid media and simple agar media have great effect on organogenesis as compared to other selected media. plant height and number of shoots were best in ga3 media while number of leaves and number nodes were best in semi solid media (kinetin 1mg/l+0.3mg/l ga3). simple agar media was best for number of roots while ms control were best for conservation of plants by keeping their growth in control condition and also should be available for future research studies. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: conceived and designed the experiments: shabana irum performed the experiments. shazia erum and faisal nouroz supervised the researcher. aish muhammad and saima kanwal contributed in downloaded the related literature. farhat ali khan analysed the data (anova and lsd) and shabana irum wrote the paper including graphs. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ahmad, t., rehman, h., ahmed, m. s., & laghari, m. h. 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(2011). thymus daenensis: regeneration from hypocotyls explants in vitro. eleventh congress agronomy and plant breeding science, 3(9), 10151019. appendices table 1: all para-wise comparison test for selected medicinal plants genotypes height/plant leaves/plant shoots/plant roots/plant nodes/plant rosmarinus officinalis 1.0800b 3.9333b 21.9333b 2.9000bcd 3.0000b thymus vulgaris 2.1667a 19.067a 5.7333a 1.8667cd 9.1333a ocimum americanum 1.2267b 4.2000b 1.5333bc 6.6667a 1.8667bc ocimum basilicum 1.1000b 2.1333b 0.4667bc 5.4000ab 0.6000bc lavandula angustifolia 1.4067b 3.2667b 1.6000b 3.4000bc 1.7333bc lsd 0.4850 4.3839 1.5851 2.6348 2.8538 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=the+language+and+aims+of+plant+cell+and+tissue+culture&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=ethnobotanical+study+of+nnewi+north+local+government+area+of+anambra+state%2c+nigeria&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=plantlet+regeneration+from+nodal+explants+of+ocimum+citriodorum+vis.+bangladesh.+&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://doi.org/10.3329/bjsir.v47i4.8547 https://doi.org/10.3329/bjsir.v47i4.8547 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=effect+of+plant+growth+regulators+on+in+vitro+regeneration+of+lavandula+dentata+l.+shoot+tips&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=effect+of+plant+growth+regulators+on+in+vitro+regeneration+of+lavandula+dentata+l.+shoot+tips&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=in+vitro+effects+of+gibberellic+acid+and+sucrose+concentration+on+micro+propagation+of+two+elite+sweet+potato+cultivars+in+rwanda&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=in+vitro+effects+of+gibberellic+acid+and+sucrose+concentration+on+micro+propagation+of+two+elite+sweet+potato+cultivars+in+rwanda&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://doi.org/10.5897/ijbmbr2013.0178 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=micropropagation+of+hoslundia+opposite+vahl--a+valuable+medicinal+plant&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sajb.2006.07.001 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=micropropagation+of+different+species+of+thymus&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(5), 83-89 83 assessment of bio-energy potential in tea industries of india sonu kumar department of agricultural engineering, north eastern regional institute of science and technology, nirjuli, itanagar-79110, arunachal pradesh, india k. r. jolvis pou department of agricultural engineering, school of technology, assam university, silchar788011, assam, india article history: received: 23 may 2016 revised received: 20 june 2016 accepted:25 july 2016 online available: 15 august 2016 keywords: tea industry, thermal energy, electrical energy, tea waste, processing waste, garden waste abstract tea production is an energy intensive agro-processing trade. since high demand of energy and increased in fuel prices, tea waste can be utilized to supplement part of energy required in tea processing. this study was conducted in tea estates of assam (north lakhimpur, sonitpur, and silchar), india. the total energy consumption in tea manufacturing was found to be 4.2-8.5 kwh/kg of made tea. thus, total energy consumption (5 kwh/kg of tea) for manufacturing of 1197 million kg of tea from 564 thousand hectare tea plantation in india (during 2014-2015) was 5.985×10 9 kwh. the total obtainable energy from tea waste was estimated and the conversion efficiency of calorific value to electrical energy was assumed to be 10%, which is the least value of conversion efficiency. energy potential in processing and garden waste was found to be 11.999×10 7 kwh and 3.492×10 10 kwh, respectively, and corresponding electrical energy was estimated to be 1.1999×10 7 kwh and 3.492×10 9 kwh, respectively. thus, comparing the energy that could be generated from wastes in tea estate and that required in tea manufacturing, it can be concluded that the huge amount of energy could be saved with the utilization of tea waste. 1. introduction 1 india is the second largest producer of tea next to china. it occupies an important place and plays a very vital role in india’s national economy. it is perhaps the only industry where india has retained its leadership for over the last 150 years (gupta & dey, 2010; pou, 2016). the major tea producing states in india are assam, west bengal, tamil nadu, kerala, himachal pradesh, and karnataka. of these, assam state is the major contributor. tea board of india (tbi) (2016) has reported that china is leading in production share and kenya in export share as shown in fig. 1 and 2, respectively. tbi (2016) has shown the total production of tea in india during 2014-2015 corresponding author’s name: k. r. jolvis pou email address: jolvispou@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.5/1005.5.83.89 mailto:jolvispou@gmail.com mailto:jolvispou@gmail.com mailto:jolvispou@gmail.com mailto:jolvispou@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.5/1005.5.83.89 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(5)2016, 83-89 84 was 1197 million (m) kg. the total area under tea plantation in india is 564 thousand hectare. assam contributes 56% of total tea plantation area and produces about 55% of total tea production of india (kumar et al., 2014).tea processing involved different unit operations namely, plucking, withering, rolling, maceration, fermentation, drying, grading, and packing, which are highly energy intensive. tea drying is the most energy intensive unit operation in tea manufacturing (dutta & baruah, 2014).the processes consume huge energy in the form of thermal energy and electrical energy at the ratio of 85:15 (baruah et al., 2012). thermal energy is mostly used during withering and drying operations while electrical energy is utilized for running motors, fans, humidifiers, and lighting purpose. in indian tea industry parlance, thermal energy requirement is mainly obtained from firewood, coal, briquetted biomass/coal, natural gas, and furnace oil. the specific energy consumption varies from 4-10.4 kwh/kg of made tea (baruah et al., 2012). the plantation and transportation also consumes a large amount of energy in the form of petro-fuels (saikia et al., 2013). therefore, considering the energy use pattern in tea industries it is necessary to take great care in energy consumption patterns for sustainable production of tea. tea manufacturing involves various operations of intensive energy consumption. part of this energy requirement can be supplemented with the utilization of tea waste. tea waste comprises of processing (factory) waste as well as garden waste. the processing waste is generated during sorting or grading of made tea. during this process, the fibers are separated from the main tea. on the other hand, garden waste is generated from pruning/skiffing of tea bushes during off season. garden waste consists of leaves and branches of tea bushes and shade trees.according to tea research association (tra), tocklai, assam, india (2016), albizziaodoratissima, albizziachinesis, albizziaprocera, accacialenticularis,andderris robustaare most commonly used shade trees for dropping of excessive heat and light radiation. the tea bush waste varies from 2-2.5 kg (wet matter basis) per bush per year in a 4 year pruning cycle. tbi (2016) has reported the tea waste generation is about 2% of the total tea production. thus, during the year 2010-2015 the tea waste generated in india was approximately in the range of 19-24 m kg annually. therefore, utilization of tea waste in a positive manner could meet the part of energy required in the processing of tea.tea waste is a biomass; energy can be obtained by pyrolysis and gasification of this biomass (rao et al., 2012). figure 1: production share of major tea producing countries during 2014-2015 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(5)2016, 83-89 85 figure 2: export share of major tea producing countries during 2014-2015 2. materials and methods this study was carried out in assam (north lakhimpur, sonitpur, and silchar), india. the samples and necessary information were collected from the various tea industries in assam. the samples consist of both processing (factory) waste and garden waste (tea bush and shade tree pruned materials). 2.1. moisture content (mc) determination moisture content of factory waste, garden waste leaves and branches were calculated as shown in eq.1. the samples were chipped into smaller pieces and placed in muffle furnace at 105 ° c for 24 hours. 𝑀𝐶 = wet weight −dry weight wet weight ×100 ----------------------(1) 2.2. calorific value the calorific value of the sample was measured using bomb calorimeter. a bomb-calorimeter is a device to measure heat created by sample burnt under an oxygen atmosphere in a closed vessel, which is surrounded by water, under controlled conditions. the heat created during the burning process, which can be determined by the combustion process, is transferred into the surrounding water and the rise in the temperature is determined by calorimeter. the calorific value of the sample can be calculated as given in eq. 2. calorific value (kwh/kg) = 𝑊𝑤 𝑋 𝑇2−𝑇1 𝑊𝑠 × 𝐶 ---------------------(2) where, ww = 2322 =weight of water equivalent to calorimeter (g) t1 = stabilized temperature before firing (°c) t2 = maximum temperature after firing (°c) ws= weight of sample (g) c = 0.00116 (constant) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(5)2016, 83-89 86 2.3. estimation of energy potential of tea waste 2.3.1. processing tea waste the energy potential of processing (factory) tea waste can be calculated as given in eq. 3. ep kwh = 𝑃 𝑘𝑔 × 0.02𝐹𝑐𝑣 (𝑘𝑊ℎ/𝑘𝑔) ----------------------(3) where, ep = energy potential (kwh) p = total tea production (kg) fcv = calorific value of factory (processing) tea waste (kwh/kg) 0.02 = constant, percentage of tea waste generated 2.3.2. garden waste the energy potential of tea bush waste and shade tree waste can be calculated as shown in eq. (4) and (5), respectively. 𝐸𝑝 𝑘𝑊ℎ = 𝐵𝑤 𝑘𝑔 × 𝑁 × 𝐴 ℎ𝑎 × 𝐺𝑐𝑣(𝑘𝑊ℎ/𝑘𝑔) ----------------------(4) where, ep = energy potential (kwh) bw = tea bush waste (kg) n = number of tea bush/hectare a = tea bush plantation area (ha) gcv = calorific value of tea bush waste (kwh/kg) ep kwh = sw kg × n × a ha × scv kwh/kg ----------------------(5) where, ep = energy potential (kwh) sw = shade tree waste (kg) n = number of tree per hectare a = tea plantation area (ha) scv = calorific value of shade tree waste (kwh/kg) 3. results and discussion most of the tea industries considered in the studies are more than 50 years old. the processing waste generated during sorting was approximately 2 % of total tea production. the energy requirement in different unit operations for tea production was found to be withering (35%), crush tear curl (ctc) operation (6%), fermentation (0.6%), drying (57%), sorting (0.6%), packaging (0.1%), and auxiliary operation (0.5%). the total energy consumption in tea processing was found to be 4.2-8.5 kwh/kg of made tea. the average pruned tea leaves and branches obtained were recorded as 10 kg/tea bush/pruning cycle. thus, the average annual pruned material obtained in a pruning cycle of 4 year was 2.5 kg/tea bush. on the other hand, the pruned material obtained from the shade tree was approximately 5 kg dry biomass/tree. the average moisture content of processing (factory) waste, tea bush pruned leaves, tea bush pruned branches, shade tree pruned leaves, and shade tree pruned branches were determined as 2 %, 80 %, 58 %, 76 %, and 60 % (wet basis), respectively. 3.1. estimation of energy in tea waste 3.1.1. calorific value of tea waste the calorific value of processing (factory) tea waste samples were determined using bomb calorimeter and the average calorific value of factory tea waste was obtained as 5.012 kwh/kg of tea waste.similarly, the calorific value of collected garden waste samples (tea leaves and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(5)2016, 83-89 87 branches) were analysed and the average calorific value was found to be 4.302 kwh/kg, as shown in table 1. table 1: calorific value of tea bush waste type of garden waste calorific value (kwh/kg) average calorific value (kwh/kg) tea leaves 4.281 4.302 branch of tea bush 4.323 3.1.2. calorific value of shade tree waste similarly, the calorific value of shade tree (leaves and branches) were estimated and the average calorific value was recorded as 4.555 kwh/kg, as given in table 2. table 2: calorific value of shade tree waste type of garden waste calorific value (kwh/kg) average calorific value (kwh/kg) shade tree leaves 4.120 4.555 branch of shade tree 4.990 3.2. energy potential of tea waste the energy potential from processing tea waste (approximately 23.94 m kg) in india during the year 2014-2015 was calculated as 11.999×10 7 kwh as represented in table 3. on the other hand, the energy obtainable from the garden tea bush pruned materials (leaves and branches) was estimated as 3.478×10 10 kwhas shown in table 4. table 3: energy potential of processing tea waste parameters value annual tea production in india, 2014-2015 (million kg) 1197 tea waste (million kg) 23.94 calorific value (kwh/kg) 5.012 energy potential (kwh) 11.999×10 7 table 4: energy potential of garden tea bush waste parameters value tea plantation area in india, 2014-2015 (hectare) 563980 spacing between rows (m) 1.05 spacing between bushes (m) 0.70 bush/area (m 2 ) 1.05×0.70=0.735 bush/area (hectare) 13605 total number of bush 7.7×10 9 garden tea waste/bush/year (wet matter basis) (kg) 2.5 garden tea waste/bush/ per year (dry matter basis) (kg) 1.05 total garden tea waste (dry matter basis) (kg) 8.085×10 9 calorific value/kg of garden tea waste (kwh/kg) 4.302 total energy production from garden tea waste (kwh) 3.478×10 10 3.3. energy potential of shade tree waste as observed in table 5, the energy potential from the shade tree waste including leaves and branches was found to be 1.387×10 8 kwh.consequently, the total energy that could be generated from the garden waste (tea bush and shade tree) was estimated as 3.492×10 10 kwh. thus, the total energy potential of tea waste (factory and garden waste) was calculated as 3.504×10 10 kwh. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(5)2016, 83-89 88 table 5: energy potential of shade tree waste parameters value tea plantation area in india (hectare) 563980 shade tree/area (m 2 ) 13.7×13.7=187.69 (medium shading, square) shade tree/area (hectare) 54 shade tree waste/ tree/ year (dry matter basis) (kg) 5 total shade tree waste (dry matter basis) (kg) 3.0455×10 7 calorific value/kg of shade tree waste (kwh/kg) 4.555 total energy production from shade tree waste (kwh) 1.387×10 8 3.4. energy consumption in tea industries total energy consumption in tea manufacturing was found to be 4.2-8.5 kwh/kg of made tea. therefore, total energy consumption (5 kwh/kg of tea) for manufacturing 1197 m kg of tea from 564 thousand hectare tea plantation in india during the year 2014-2015 was 5.985×10 9 kwh. hence, thermal energy consumption per kg of tea production was around 5.67 times that of electrical energy (baruah et al., 2012). 3.5. estimation of amount of energy saving using tea waste energy available in waste generated in tea estate of india was 3.504×10 10 kwh. energy conversion efficiency of calorific value to electrical energy was assumed to be 10%. the total amount of energy in terms of electrical energy that can be obtained from wastes in tea estates was estimated to be 3.504×10 9 kwh. hence, the total energy available from tea waste compared with total energy consumption annually during manufacturing of tea (5.95×10 9 kwh, 5 kwh/kg of made tea) shows that good amount of energy required in manufacturing of tea could be saved with the positive utilization of tea waste generated from tea industry. 4. conclusion tea manufacturing process is an energy intensive operation which consumed energy in the form of thermal energy and electrical energy. the prime sources of thermal energy are coal, firewood, natural gas, and briquetted biomass. tea waste comprises of processing (factory) waste as well as garden waste. the calorific value of factory waste, garden tea bush waste, and shade tree waste were found to be 5.012, 4.302, and 4.555 kwh/kg, respectively. the total energy potential of tea waste (factory and garden waste) was estimated as 3.504×10 10 kwh. thus, with the positive utilization of tea waste, part of the energy requirement in processing of tea could be met. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors gratefully acknowledge tea industries of assam (north lakhimpur, sonitpur, and silchar), india, and technical education quality improvement program (tequip-ii), nerist, for providing financial support. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references baruah, b. p., khare, p., & rao, p. g. (2012). the energy utilization pattern in tea industries of ne india and environmental issues. two and a bud, 59(2), 9-13. dutta, p. p., & baruah d. c. (2014). gasification of tea (camellia sinensis (l.) o. kuntze) shrubs for black tea manufacturing process heat generation in assam, india. biomass and bioenergy, 66, 27-38. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(5)2016, 83-89 89 gupta, r., & dey, s. k. (2010). development of a productivity measurement model for tea industry. arpn journal of engineering and applied sciences 5, 16-25. pou, j. k. r. (2016). fermentation: the key step in the processing of black tea. journal of biosystems engineering, 41(2), 85-92. kumar, s., nilling, j. j., imchen, l., bhutia, p. l., & pranav, p. k. (2014). estimation of waste and its energy potential in tea estates of assam.international symposium on aspects of mechanicaal engineering and technology for industry, 1, 314-319. rao, y. k. (2012). performance of downdraft gasifier using bamboo, khokan and kadam biomass feedstock. unpublished m. tech. thesis, department of agricultural engineering, north eastern regional institute of science and technology (nerist), nirjuli. saikia, m., bhowmik, r., baruah, d., dutta, b. j., & baruah, d. c. (2013). prospect of bioenergy substitution in tea inustries of north east india. international journal of modern engineering research (ijmer), 3(2), 1272-1278. tea board of india (2016). http://www.teaboard.gov.in/. tea research association, tocklai, assam, india. (2016). http://www.tocklai.net/activities/teacultivation/shade-shade-trees/#. http://www.teaboard.gov.in/ http://www.tocklai.net/activities/tea-cultivation/shade-shade-trees/ http://www.tocklai.net/activities/tea-cultivation/shade-shade-trees/ © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(6), 150-157 150 reviewing morphologic specifications of acorn leaves and fruits in lorestan province naser nazar department of biology, payame noor university, i.r. iran saeedeh delfan department of agriculture, payame noor university, i.r. iran farhad zand department of social science, payame noor university, i.r. iran abstract zagros forests, as the greatest jungle area of the country, are considered not only as a higheconomic zone in wooden products, but also as a highly important zone in environmental values. it should be mentioned that acorn is one of the main elements in the forests of lorestan, and grows on different ecologic conditions’ realizing the variance-range of quantities and qualities aspects of leaves and fruits. this research has been done within the seven zones of lorestan province’s acorn forests. 40 samples of leaf and fruit have been gathered from various trees. for each sample, 8 morphological aspects of fruit, and 16 morphological aspect of leaf were measured and recorded. received data were statistically analyzed by minitab ver.14 software. results show that there are three types of acorn in the province of lorestan: quercus persica (persian acorn), quercus branti (broodar), and quercus infectoria (darmazoo). the quercus infectoria can be seen separately on the zone of zasht & ghalai; two types of branti and persica can be seen irregularly. on ghalai zone, due to the rain fall rate and more humidity in comparison to other zones, suitable conditions are available for the growth of quercus infectoria. among the reviewed aspects in this research, leaf color, the existence of fluff on leaves, existence of teeth, and the length of grain cover have the greatest effect on the separation of persia and branti from infectoria. keywords: quercus persica, quercus infectoria, quercus branti, zagros forests 1. introduction1 disorders and problems of each matter attract more attention along with the increase of its importance (mosadegh, 2004). forest eco system, as the most complicated and an important ecosystem of the land, especially in the modern world, is not an exception to this rule (jazirehee, 2003). after the growth area of alborz, which forms the commercial forests of iran, the growth area of zagros has formed an important part of iran forests on both quantity and quality values. zagros forests, as the greatest jungle area of the country, are considered not only as a higheconomic zone in wooden products, but also as a highly important zone in environmental values (poorhashemi, 2004). it should be mentioned that acorn is one of the main elements in the forests corresponding author’s name: farhad zand email address: naser.nazari2012@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:naser.nazari2012@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 150-157 151 of lorestan, and grows on different ecologic conditions’ realizing the variance-range of quantities and qualities aspects of leaves and fruits (rahimzadegan, 2004). fatahi (1994) reviewed the acorn forests of zagros, introducing the growth land of persica as mountain ramps and heights above 1670 meters. sabeti (2003) introduces rush family in iran as consisting of three types of rush, acorn, and chestnut growth in northern forests. kafashzadeh et al. (2007) reviewed the morphological aspects of infectoria fruit of kurdistan province forests, introducing the most variant attribute of the fruit as the length of fruit’s grain and the least variant attribute as the length of grain. kafashzadeh et al. (2008) introduced the most variant attribute of the leaf as the surface area of it, and the least variant as the number of veins. 2. methods lorestan, as a part of iran’s western lands, is affected by semi-mediterranean climate (marvi and mohamad (2003). this area is divided into different climate zones regarding norms of annual rain fall rate. northern and north-eastern parts have cold mountain climate, central and western parts have mild climate, and southern parts have warm climate. normal annual rain fall rate is 620 mm. maximum falls is during winter, and minimum fall is during summer. minimum altitude is 1030 m., and maximum is 2640 m. normal annual temperature is 31.1˚c, and mean of minimum temperature in february is around -6˚c. maximum and absolute maximum temperatures are -14.6˚c and 44.2˚c. this research about lorestan province acorn forests are fulfilled in four zones of khoramabad, alashtar, noorabad, and dureh-chagni. in order to review the climate conditions of the studied zones, 20-year meteorological statistics of the nearest stations are used. table 1: climate aspects of the seven studied zones a n n u a l r a in ra te (m l) a v er a g e tem p era tu re (c) m a x im u m tem p . (c) m in im u m tem p . (c) t em p . a v er a g e o f th e co ld est m o n th (c) t em p . a v er a g e o f th e h o ttest m o n th (c) r ela tiv e h u m id (% ) n o . o f fro st d a y s n o . o f ra in y d a y s n o . o f sn o w y d a y s shoorab 507 17 47 -14 12 35 38 51 97 28 dad abad 475 19 49 -11 12 34 41 53 91 28 maleh shabanan 460 19 47 -12 12 35 41 48 93 29 kahman 540 12 42 -21 10 32 47 71 108 31 kaka reza 482 13 40 -19 11 30 44 67 112 33 zarin chogha 525 14 41 -17 11 30 43 65 116 31 zasht-oghalaie 625 11 38 -27 7 27 52 91 124 43 2.1 sampling technique according to the existing data, the time of acorn blooming in lorestan is from the second half of april until the end of may, and the season of fall starts from the second half of november till the end of the month. northern and north-eastern parts have cold mountain climate, central and western parts have mild climate, and southern parts have warm climate. normal annual rain fall rate is 620 mm. maximum falls is during winter, and minimum fall is during summer. disorders and problems of each matter attract more attention along with the increase of its importance. forest eco system, as the most complicated and important eco systems of the land, especially in the modern world, is not an exception to this rule. in each sampling zone, 40 trees were chosen randomly. from each tree a small branch with leaf and fruit was gathered. gathered data were statistically analyzed by minitab ver. 20 software. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 150-157 152 figure 1: measured attributes of acorn’s leaf: length of petal (lp), length of limb (ll), total length of leaf(tll), maximum width of limb (mw), maximum with from height (hmw), base width of limb (lwb), width of limb from above(lwa), minimum width length (llw), color of leaf (cle), puff (p), number of lobs (nl), length of lob (llo), width of lob (wlo), tooth of leaf (tr), length of tooth (lt), width of tooth (wt) figure 2: measure attributes of acorn’s fruit: length of grain (cl), diameter of grain (cd), diameter of naval (hd), length of cup (cul), diameter of cup (cod), and length of grain cover (ccl) 3. results after gathering samples in under-study zones, measuring desired attributes in leaf and fruit were done. mean of each attribute in millimetres was identified, and then received measures about leaf attributes in the seven studied zones are as table 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 150-157 153 table 2: mean of measures in quantity attributes of leaf & fruit of acorn samples in the 7 zones dad abad male shabanan shoorab kaka reza zarin chogha kahman ghalaie lp 14 14.5 15 16 9 21 10.5 ll 96 100 70 94 110 85 79 tll 83 114.5 85 110 120 106 90 mw 36.5 63 41 57 60 40 38 hmw 11 13.5 12 13 8 11 0 lwb 7.5 9 6.5 7 9 7 0 lwa 19 28 18 24 20 15 0 llw 40 28.5 31 34 21 28 25.5 cle 31.5 39 38.5 46 45 35 25.5 p 22 56 30 32 36 28 20 nl 56 44.5 39 60 75 57 53.5 llo 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 wlo 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 tr 0 0 0 0 0 0 18 lt 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 wt 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 cl 35 36 38 28 32 38 29.2 cd 12 14 12.5 10 10 14 15 hd 4.5 3.5 4 2 5 5 6 cul 17 13.5 15 12 15 18 17 cod 16 12 13 11 14 19 17 cde 13 10.5 9.5 9 11 13 14 ssn 4 4 3 3 4 4 3 ccl 23 16 17 14 13 16 19 in order to identify the most important factors in separation of the seven sampling zones, breaking down of main categories of 24 variants of leaf and fruit attributes were done. acorn is one of the main elements in the forests of lorestan, and grows on different ecologic conditions’ realizing the variance-range of quantities and qualities aspects of leaves and fruits. according to table3, 48.6% of changes were in first category, 21.8% in second, and 13.9% in third. first category consists of hmw, cle, p, and nl; second one consists of mw, cul, and ccl; the third one consists of lp, tll, llw, lt; the fourth one consists of lwb, cl, cd, and ssn; the fifth lwa, nt, wt, hd, and cde; and the sixth one consists of ll and cod (table 4). in these table it is shown that some categories has positive coherence while the rest has negative coherence with other attributes of each category. according to table3, 48.6% of changes were in first category, 21.8% in second, and 13.9% in third. after gathering samples in under-study zones, measuring desired attributes in leaf and fruit were done. table 3: special amounts & percentage of variance for each category s. no. special values variance percentage congregate variance percentage 1 11.726 48.9 48.9 2 5.233 21.8 70.7 3 3.333 13.9 84.6 4 1.850 7.7 92.3 5 1.054 4.4 96.7 6 0.804 3.3 100.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 150-157 154 table 4: amounts of special vectors related to variants for each category variant 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th lp 0.124 -0.167 0.405 0.021 -0.322 -0.144 ll 0.001 0.340 -0.073 0.213 -0.008 0.603 tll 0.180 0.132 -0.364 -0.187 -0.113 -0.108 mw 0.135 0.311 -0.215 0.244 -0.110 -0.053 hmw 0.255 -0.058 -0.204 -0.145 -0.200 -0.036 lwb 0.232 0.007 -0.236 0.248 0.169 -0.223 lwa 0.158 0.267 -0.094 0.299 -0.354 -0.088 llw 0.075 0.267 0.314 -0.195 0.233 -0.312 cle 0.237 0.032 0.168 -0.005 0.145 0.056 p -0.237 -0.032 0.168 -0.005 0.145 0.056 nl -0.237 -0.032 -0.168 0.005 -0.145 -0.056 llo -0.237 -0.032 -0.168 0.005 -0.145 -0.056 wlo -0.237 -0.032 -0.168 0.005 -0.145 -0.056 tr 0.255 0.026 0.195 0.086 -0.288 -0.098 lt 0.226 0.074 0.323 0.080 0.002 -0.139 wt 0.270 0.133 -0.081 0.058 0.152 0.034 cl -0.201 0.129 0.081 0.436 -0.00 0.289 cd -0.204 0.086 0.131 0.464 -0.0103 -0.100 hd -0.212 0.219 0.153 0.082 0.350 -0.002 cul -0.135 0.326 0.145 0.218 0.211 -0.168 cod -0.198 0.206 0.216 0.068 0.133 -0.411 cde -0.168 0.294 0.089 -0.141 -0.308 -0.256 ssn 0.098 0.320 0.145 -0.379 0.107 0.057 ccl -0.013 0.390 0.116 0.073 -0.330 0.200 in order to identify the most important factors in separation of the seven sampling zones, breaking down of main categories of some different variants of leaf and fruit attributes were done. acorn is one of the main elements in the forests of lorestan, and grows on different ecologic conditions’ realizing the variance-range of quantities and qualities aspects of leaves and fruits. after gathering samples in under-study zones, measuring desired attributes in leaf and fruit were done. mean of each attribute in millimeters was identified, and then received measures about leaf attributes in the seven studied zones are shown in figures. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 150-157 155 first component s ec on d c om po n en t 0.30.20.10.0-0.1-0.2-0.3 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.0 -0.1 -0.2 ccl ssn cde cod cul hd cd cl wt lt tr wlo llo nl p cle llw lwa lwb hmw mw tll ll lp figure 3: graph of effective acorn leaf & fruit in the categorization of sampling zones first component s ec on d c om po n en t 420-2-4-6-8 3 2 1 0 -1 -2 -3 zesht va ghalaei dadabad zarrin choga kakareza maleh shabanan shorab kahman figure 4: graph of sampling zones categorization related to the variants of acorn leaf & fruit in the cluster analysis based on morphological attributes of gathered samples from the seven zones, the most proximity (61.65%) relates to zarin chagha and maleh shabanan which formed the first cluster (figure 5). after them dadabad and kaka reza has formed the 55.63%. two zones of kaka reza and shoorab are in the same cluster with 52.46% and 53.94%. maleh shabanan and kahman have formed a bigger cluster with 49.56%. zasht ghalai and kahman have formed the biggest cluster at the bottom of dandrogram because of the least proximity (25.55%). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 150-157 156 locality s im il ar it y zesh t v a ghal aei zarr in c hoga m aleh sh aba nan d ad ab ad kak are za shora b kah m an 25.55 50.37 75.18 100.00 dendrogram with single linkage and euclidean distance figure 5: sampling zones dandrogram based on morphologic attributes of acorn leaf & fruit of the seven zones 4. discussion and conclusion results show that there are three types of acorn in the province of lorestan: quercus persica (persian acorn), quercus branti (broodar), and quercus infectoria (darmazoo). the quercus infectoria can be seen separately on the zone of zasht & ghalai; two types of branti and persica can be seen irregularly. on ghalai zone, due to the rain fall rate and more humidity in comparison to other zones, suitable conditions are available for the growth of quercus infectoria. among the reviewed aspects in this research, leaf color, the existence of fluff on leaves, existence of teeth, and the length of grain cover have the greatest effect on the separation of persica and branti from infectoria. fatahi (2000) reviewed the acorn forests of zagros, introducing the growth land of persica as mountain ramps and heights above 1670 meters. sabeti (2003) introduces rush family in iran as consisting of three types of rush, acorn, and chestnut growth in northern forests. kafashzadeh et al. (2007) reviewed the morphological aspects of infectoria fruit of kurdistan province forests, introducing the most variant attribute of the fruit as the length of fruit’s grain and the least variant attribute as the length of grain. kafashzadeh et al. (2008) introduced the most variant attribute of the leaf as the surface area of it, and the least variant as the number of veins. lorestan, as a part of iran’s western lands, is affected by semi-mediterranean climate; this area is divided into different climate zones regarding norms of annual rain fall rate. northern and northeastern parts have cold mountain climate, central and western parts have mild climate, and southern parts have warm climate. zagros forests, as the greatest jungle area of the country, are considered not only as a higheconomic zone in wooden products, but also as a highly important zone in environmental values. it should be mentioned that acorn is one of the main elements in the forests of lorestan, and grows on different ecologic conditions’ realizing the variance-range of quantities and qualities aspects of leaves and fruits. this research has been done within the seven zones of lorestan province’s acorn forests. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 150-157 157 quercus persica (persian acorn), quercus branti (broodar), and quercus infectoria (darmazoo). the quercus infectoria can be seen separately on the zone of zasht & ghalai; two types of branti and persica can be seen irregularly. on ghalai zone, due to the rain fall rate and more humidity in comparison to other zones, suitable conditions are available for the growth of quercus infectoria. among the reviewed aspects in this research, leaf color, the existence of fluff on leaves, existence of teeth, and the length of grain cover have the greatest effect on the separation of persica and branti from infectoria. two types of q.persica and q.branti are mostly found in altitude between 1400 and 2000 m. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. refrences fatahi, m. (1994). zagros oak forest. journal of iran natural resource, 52,102-118. fatahi, m. (2000). zagros pistichia jungles and its destructive factors. journal of iran natural resource, 54, 70-84. jazirehee, m. (2003). zagros jungles, tehran university press. kafashzadeh, s. (2007). morphological characteristics of kordestan oak jungles. journal of research and construction, 77, 112-123. kafashzadeh, s. (2008). morphological characteristics of kordestan oak jungles. journal of research and construction, 79, 87-99. marvi, m., & mohamad, r. (2003). silviculture and tending forest. tehran university press. mosadegh, a. (2004). world jungles’ eco system. tehran university press. poorhashemi, m. (2004). natural relief of oaks in marivan jungles. tehran university press. rahimzadegan, h. (2004). study of altitude on oak in baneh forest. thesis of master department of forestery, gilan university, p.122. sabeti, h. (2003). jungles & trees of iran. yazd university press, p. 583-588. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 414 determinants of farmers' agricultural diversification: the case of cambodia kimty seng graduate school of asia-pacific studies, waseda university, japan abstract a heckman sample selection approach is employed with the data on cambodia socio-economic survey cses-2007 to explore price and non-price factors determining farmers' crop diversification decision, and consequently affecting diversification intensity. the findings suggest that high relative price discourages farmers from diversifying crops. irrigation, agricultural equipment ownership and farming expenditure have significantly positive effects on the decision, and sequentially increasing the intensity. arable land size per household member, agricultural and transportation equipments have positive correlation with the diversification decision. small scale of farming is a major hindrance to the decision, and consequently reducing the intensity. land dispute, one of the main institutional matters in cambodia, is found to have significantly negative marginal-effect on farmers’ decision on crop diversification. keywords: agricultural diversification, sample selection model, cambodia introduction 1 in the process of economic development, agriculture serves as a food producer and factors-of-production supplier to industrial sector. it is also a major income generator for rural households in less developed economies. the well developing sector makes tremendous contribution to poverty and inequality reduction in out-of-the-way areas. agricultural diversification has been considered one of the most likely avenues to promote the development of agriculture. the diversification is the adjustment of farming, which combines various and complimentary agricultural activities and moves agricultural resources from low to higher value (meerta et al., 2005; joshi et al., 2003; mcculloch and ota, 2002; delgado and siamwalla, 1999). in sub-saharan africa, the movement of resources to high-value produce is the most likely way to better the agricultural productivity within a context of growing corresponding author’s email address: kim_sengty@yahoo.com urbanization and global integration (ifpri, 2007). the importance of agriculture has attracted researchers’ attention to the factors determining the agricultural production pattern. in thailand, land title induces higher farming investment; famers with legallytitled land make more investment in farming, use more inputs, and produce more outputs (feder et al., 1988a; 1988b). regarding crop diversification in kanartaka, irrigation, fertilizers, physical infrastructure, markets structure and transportation are the main determinants (saraswati et al., 2011). in kenya, agricultural assets, amount of hired labor, occupation of household head, contractual arrangements, farm size, and distance to output market are a major factor affecting the farmer’s decision to diversify into horticulture (mwangi et al., 2013). moreover, in sudan the degree of crop diversification has positive correlation with the household size and income level (abdalla et al., 2013). meanwhile, in india, assam plains’ diversification of agriculture asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kim_sengty@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 415 is a mechanism adopted to respond to ecological risk from flood (mandal and bezbaruah, 2013). in cambodia, more than 80 percent of the population lives in the countryside, earning their living by farming dependently upon rain-fed condition. the farming is dominated by rice production either for subsistence or small-scale commercial purpose. over the past decades, the agricultural outputs have increased by 4.4 percent, driven mainly by rice, livestock and fisheries. paddy covered around 2.63 million hectares during 20072011 (up to 90 percent of the cultivated land), and the production increased from 4 million tons in 2000 to 6 million tons in 2007 (maff, 2011; and maff & mwrm, 2010). however, the paddy yield remains relatively low vis-à-vis the neighboring countries’. the yield averaged around two tons per hectare in cambodia, compared to 2.65 4.95 tons in the neighbors (eic, 2006). the agricultural productivity is constrained by the shortage of capital investment for such inputs as seeds, fertilizers, and irrigation. given price instability and relatively low productivity of agriculture, coupled with poor connection between rural economies and the rest of the economy, the rural population has not been much better off. however, a full employment of agricultural resources makes it more possible to shore up the rural struggling economies. but, only 0.9 percent of total land areas are now permanently-farmed (hem, 2012). this reflects that the agricultural resources are not fully used, causing the agricultural output level to stay far below what it otherwise would be. transforming monoculture into diversified agriculture can not only promote the full employment of resources, but also bridge the market efficiency gap. the diversified agriculture has been equally considered a major strategy to conquer many challenges faced by farmers and to respond to opportunities. it improves farmers’ nutrition; and more dynamic farmers can diversify agricultural products to meet changing consumption patterns as consumers become rich and urbanization develops rapidly. the diversification can also allow farmers to increase revenue by supplying products to potential export market. in cambodia, the diversification of agriculture is, however, low and probably constrained by price factors and many non-price factors. cambodian farmers’ rice double-cropping is mainly determined by the water availability and cultivable land (tong et al., 2011). the unfamiliarity with and limited knowledge of non-rice crops, and unpredictable rainfall causes cambodian famers to perceive that diversifying paddy field puts them at high stakes (aciar, 2011). concerning land right issue, some of the farmers are landless or lost their land, as a result of the government’s economic land concession, insecure land rights and tenure, limited access to information, and land grabbing. in 2008, 150, 000 cambodians nationwide were intimidated into getting forcibly evicted (amnesty international, 2008); and 21.1% of 2,235 households sampled were landless, and 26.3% held less than half a hectare of land (chan, 2008). because land title and land conflicts are a main issue in cambodia, they may have significant effects on cambodian farmers’ diversification of agriculture. moreover, price factors seem to be overlooked in the previous studies. also, the impact of such institutional factors and price factors on the diversification has yet to be explored in the case of cambodia in particular. the current study is, as a part of growing branch of literature on agricultural economics, conducted to bridge this gap and to offer further empirical evidence. the attempt in this paper is therefore to provide new insights into a question of why the agricultural diversification is low in cambodia, based on data on cambodia socio-economic survey 2007. in so doing, the paper has twin objectives: (i) to explore factors determining farmers’ behavior towards agricultural diversification, with a focus on price factors and issues of rights to land, (ii) and consequently investigate their influences on the diversification intensity. the finding is crucial to the government’s policies at micro and macro level in reducing poverty and inequality through rejuvenating asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 416 agricultural market favorable to the marketoriented diversification. analytical framework the agricultural diversification is a production of additional crops to existing ones at farm level (dorjee et al., 2003). the agricultural activities are, with the availability of production technology, changed in response to the signals of markets. more specifically, it is a change in product (or enterprise) choice and input use decisions forced by market principle and profit maximization (pingali and rosegrant, 1995). at farm level, the diversification represents a change in the underlying characteristics of the farm system such that farming and products are more aligned with the social, environmental, and economic contexts (barghouti et al., 2004). farmers make such a change in response to both opportunities (changing consumer demand and demographics, export potential, changing marketing opportunity, and improving nutrition) and threats (risk, external and domestic policy threats, and climate change). to theoretically identify price and non-price factors affecting the farmers’ decision, let assume that farmer i has, with the available agricultural resources, two strategic choices to produce commodities: either to diversify crop portfolio or produce a specific crop. he prefers any production strategy that can generate the highest profit. the model is solved as follow: crop diversification choice as a producer, farmer i is to maximize the profit subject to the production technology constraint. the production technology is characterized by a combination of land ki and other agricultural inputs xi such as seeds, fertilizers…etc. farmer i’s profit optimization problem can be written and solved as follow: max 𝐾𝑖 ,𝑋𝑖 𝜋 = 𝑝𝑄𝑖 − 𝑟𝐾𝑖 − 𝑝𝑋𝑋𝑖 𝑆. 𝑡: 𝑄𝑖 = 𝑄 𝐾𝑖 , 𝑋𝑖 ; 𝑍𝑞 , 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑛𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑄𝑖 , 𝐾𝑖 , 𝑋𝑖 ≥ 0 ................ (1) where 𝑄, 𝑝, 𝑟 and 𝑝𝑥 are output of diversified crops, average price of output, cost of land renting and price of agricultural inputs respectively; and zq is production’s characteristics, including access to irrigation and production techniques, shifting the production technology. the problem can be solved with the foc for inputs as follow: 𝜕𝜋 𝜕𝐾𝑖 = 𝑝 𝜕𝑄𝑖 𝜕𝑋𝑖 − 𝑟 = 0 => 𝜕𝑄𝑖 𝜕𝐾𝑖 = 𝑟 𝑝 𝜕𝜋 𝜕𝑋𝑖 = 𝑝 𝜕𝑄𝑖 𝜕𝑋𝑖 − 𝑝𝑋 = 0 => 𝜕𝑄𝑖 𝜕𝑋𝑖 = 𝑝𝑋 𝑝 … (2) from these equations, the optimal level of input x and the optimal land size to be used in the production, as well as the optimal output are obtained as follow: ki * = k (p, r, px, zq) 𝑋𝑖 ∗ = 𝑋 𝑝, 𝑟, 𝑝𝑥 ; 𝑍𝑞 .............. (3) 𝑄𝑖 ∗ = 𝑄 𝑝, 𝑟, 𝑝𝑥 ; 𝑍𝑞 .............. (4) the maximized profit from the diversification choice, called the indirect profit function, can be obtained: 𝜋𝐷 ∗ = 𝑝𝑄𝑖 ∗ − 𝑟𝐾𝑖 ∗ − 𝑝𝑥𝑋𝑖 ∗ 𝑜𝑟 𝜋𝐷 ∗ = 𝜋 𝑝, 𝑟, 𝑝𝑥 ; 𝑍𝑞 ...…….. (5) crop specialization choice like the crop diversification choice, but here farmer i produces a specific crop with the available agricultural resources. the production technology is characterized by a combination of land ki and input xi’. the farmer maximizes the profit subject to the production technology constraint. farmer i’s profit maximization problem can be written as follow: max 𝐾𝑖 ,𝑋𝑖 𝜋 = 𝑝𝑠𝑄𝑠𝑖 − 𝑟𝐾𝑖 − 𝑝𝑥 ′𝑋𝑖 ′ 𝑆. 𝑡: 𝑄𝑠𝑖 = 𝑄 𝐾𝑖 , 𝑋𝑖 ′; 𝑍𝑞 , 𝑄𝑠𝑖 , 𝐾𝑖 , 𝑋𝑖 ′ ≥ 0 .............. (6) where qs, ps and 𝑝𝑥 ′ are output of specialized crop, specialized crop output price and price of input x ’ respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 417 solving the profit maximizing problem gives the optimal profit from crop specialization expressed in functional form as: = 𝑝𝑠𝑄𝑠𝑖 ∗ − 𝑟𝐾𝑖 ∗ − 𝑝𝑥𝑋𝑖 ∗ 𝑜𝑟 𝜋𝑠 ∗ = 𝜋 𝑝𝑠 , 𝑟, 𝑝𝑥 ′;𝑍𝑞 .................. (7) finally, let consider the farmer’s choice between the crop diversification and specialization, by comparing the optimal profit from the crop diversification choice with the optimal profit from the crop specialization choice. there are three choices as follow: if 𝐷 = 𝜋𝐷 ∗ − 𝜋𝑠 ∗ > 0, farmer 𝑖 chooses crop diversification if 𝐷 = 𝜋𝐷 ∗ − 𝜋𝑠 ∗ < 0, farmer 𝑖 chooses crop specialization if 𝐷 = 𝜋𝐷 ∗ − 𝜋𝑠 ∗ = 0, farmer 𝑖 is indifferent . if the diversified profit is higher than the specialized profit, then the farmer is induced to diversify crops, and vice versa. the farmer is indifferent, if the profits are equal. the optimization solution also implies that the farmer’s decision on crop production pattern is a function of the average price of the diversified outputs (p), the price of the specialized output (ps), the land renting cost (r), the input prices (px, and px’), the characteristics of the production (zq). however, to make it easier to predict price effects, a relative price (the ratio between ps and p) is taken into account. if the relative price of crop a in terms of other crops goes up, it is more likely the farmer has tendency to increase the production of that crop, and vice versa. at the indifferent point, apart from the above factors, new market opportunity also serves as a main incentive for the choice between the crop diversification and specialization. to empirically analyze cambodian farmers’ diversification of crops, factors determining farmer’s behavior towards the diversification are established, based on the above theoretical framework and the previous studies (e.g. feder et al., 1988a, b; saraswati et al., 2011; mwangi et al., 2013; abdalla et al., 2013; tong et al., 2011). the factors assumed to determine the diversification are divided into: price factors, farmer’s characteristics, farmer’s endowments, production risk and characteristics, and institutional factors. the empirical analysis is conducted within a two-stage framework starting with the farmers’ choice between the crop diversification and specialization and ending with the diversification intensity. it is hypothesized that price factors and secured land rights determine the farmers’ decision on crop diversification, and consequently affecting the level of diversified-farming. empirical methodology econometric approach the study of diversification is, in this paper, conducted in relation to the determination of the factors affecting farmers’ decision on crop diversification, and sequentially the intensity of diversification. such a study is assumed to follow the selectivity models (key et al., 2000; omiti et al., 2009). first, a peasant decides discretely whether or not to diversify. second, the peasant decides on the level of diversified-farming conditional on the diversification decision. tobit model, double-hurdle model and heckman model are broadly employed to analyze such a sequential decision. the tobit approach is, however, inappropriate for the current study because it contains mixed information on both direct and partial effects of the independent variables on the dependent ones. the double-hurdle approach suffers from selectivity bias, and then not suitable to this study (greene, 2002). some of the factors affecting the farmer’s diversification decision would likely affect the diversification intensity. this may cause an overstatement of the estimators in a linear dummy variable regression (greene, 2002). hence, to estimate the famers’ diversification and intensification decision needs to control for self-selection bias. heckman sample selection approach can be employed to deal with the selectivity bias resulted from non-random subsets of diversified farmers selected from all sampled farmers and tobit model’s problem. another reason for using the approach is that farmers may prefer crop diversification, because of such unobserved effects as risk-aversion, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 418 their skills and soil quality. practically, the heckman sample selection model can be explained in two steps. the first step addresses determinants of the diversification decision. the dependent variable is a binary choice, the probability of being diversified or otherwise. the second step deals with factors affecting the diversification intensity, conditional upon diversification decision. farmer i’s diversification decision is expressed as follow: 𝑌1𝑖 = 𝑍𝑖𝛾 + 𝑢𝑖 𝑌1𝑖 ∗ = 1, 𝑖𝑓 𝑓𝑎𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑟 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑖𝑓𝑦 𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑠 0, 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑖𝑠𝑒 …………………… (1) where y1i is a latent endogenous variable, measuring the probability of diversifying crop; zi is factors determining the diversification probability; and 𝛾 is estimators. the outcome equation, representing the diversification intensity, is given by: 𝑌2𝑖 = 𝑋𝑖𝛽 + 휀𝑖 ; 𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑓𝑓 𝑌1𝑖 = 1 … (2) where y2i is the diversification intensity, observed if only if farmer decides to diversify crops or y1i = 1; xi is factors determining the intensity; and 𝛽 is estimators. 𝑢𝑖 and 휀𝑖 are error terms of the regression equations. in the model, there is also the assumption about the distribution of and the correlation between 𝑢𝑖 and휀𝑖 . the assumption is that the errors have bivariate normal distribution with 𝜎 = 0 and correlation𝜌, and are independent of explanatory variables. that is, the error terms in the selection and outcome equation are: 𝑢𝑖~𝑁 0,1 휀𝑖~𝑁 0, 𝜎2 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟 𝑢𝑖 , 휀𝑖 = 𝜌 the conditional mean in the model has to do with the selectivity problem, obtained by taking the expectation of eq. 2 conditional on 𝑍𝑖𝛾 + 𝑢𝑖 > 𝑌 (𝑌 is diversification threshold). 2 𝐸[𝑌2𝑖/𝑌1𝑖 > 𝑌 ] = 𝐸[𝑌2𝑖/𝑍𝑖𝛾 + 𝑢𝑖 > 𝑌 ] = 𝐸[𝑋𝑖𝛽 + 휀𝑖/𝑍𝑖𝛾 + 𝑢𝑖 > 𝑌 ] = 𝑋𝑖𝛽 + 𝐸[휀𝑖/𝑢𝑖 > 𝑌 − 𝑍𝑖𝛾] ................ (3) if 𝑢𝑖 and 휀𝑖 are uncorrelated, 𝐸[휀𝑖/𝑢𝑖 > 𝑌 − 𝑍𝑖𝛾] = 0, and then the parameters estimated by the ols regression of eq. 2 are consistent. with the assumption of there being a correlation between these error terms, the selection problem needs to be taken into account by estimating 𝐸[휀𝑖/𝑢𝑖 > 𝑌 − 𝑍𝑖𝛾]. under the assumption that 𝑢𝑖 and 휀𝑖 are jointly normally-distributed, the conditional mean of diversification intensity in the heckman model is: 3 𝐸[𝑌2𝑖/𝑌1𝑖 > 𝑌 ] = 𝑋𝑖𝛽 + 𝜌𝜎휀𝜆𝑖 𝛼𝑢 = 𝑋𝑖𝛽 + 𝛽𝜆𝜆𝑖 𝛼𝑢 + 𝑣𝑖 ...................... (4) and, the marginal effects would be expressed as 𝜕𝐸[𝑌2𝑖/𝑌1𝑖 > 𝑌 ] 𝜕𝑋𝑖 = 𝛽 − 𝜃( 𝜌𝜎휀 𝜎𝑢 )𝛿𝑖(𝛼𝑢) . eq. 4 shows that the only ols of outcome equation with xi can, because of omit 𝜆𝑖 𝛼𝑢 which is sometimes called inverse mills ratio bring about the biased and inconsistent estimates. with the above assumptions, the heckman model is practically estimated by using maximum likelihood procedure that jointly estimates the parameters of both diversification decision and intensity equation. the parameters can be interpreted as the marginal effects of a unit change in explanatory variables, which consist of two components. there are the direct effects of explanatory variables on the mean of diversification intensity captured by 𝛽 and the indirect effects caused by a change in explanatory variables that appear both in the outcome and selection equation. this is 2 see also johnson and dinardo, 1997. econometric methods. 4th edition, pp. 447-449 3 see also greene, 2003. econometric analysis. new jersey: prentice hall, pp. 780-784 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 419 because a change in some xi affects not only the mean of intensity, but also the probability of diversifying crops; that is, it affects y2i through 𝜆𝑖 𝛼𝑢 . if independent variable is binary, the marginal effects are interpreted as a result of the discrete change of the variable from zero to one. model specification paddies are the main farming of the majority of cambodian rural people. however, people settling alongside mekong river plant other crops than rice, such as soybean, maize, tobacco…etc. some plant only a specific crop a year, engaging for the rest of the year in non-agricultural activities. then, any farmer who grows more than one specific crop is considered to diversify the crops. this is used as diversification threshold. the crop diversification intensity is usually computed by using herfindalh index (hi) who’s the value ranges between zero and one. but, transformed herfindalh index (thi) is preferred to the hi, because the later measures the concentration; and the former is also suitable to cambodia’s available data. the thi is calculated by subtracting herfindalh index (hi) from one. then, the thi is bounded by zero and one; the higher the value, the higher the diversification intensity. the index is calculated with the following formula: 𝑇𝐻𝐼 = 1 − 𝐻𝐼 𝑜𝑟 𝑇𝐻𝐼 = 1 − 𝑝𝑗 2𝑛 𝑗=1 , 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑝𝑗 = 𝐴𝑗 𝐴𝑗 𝑛 𝑗 , where pj is proportion of j th crop; aj is area under j th crop; and 𝐴𝑗 is total cultivated land. a set of independent variables include variables theoretically expected to determine the decision on whether or not to diversify crops, and possibly to affect the degree of diversification. in the theoretical model, the decision on crop production strategy is a function of the relative price, the input price, and the farmers’ and production’s characteristics. given the dominance of paddy in cambodian farming, paddy relative price is used to capture the price impact on the diversification decision, 4 expected to have 4 ratio of village paddy price to village weighted average price of multiple crops. negative effects on the diversification. the relative price is a ratio between the paddy price and a weighted average price of multiple crops individual farmers grow. persquare expenditure on farming includes a pay for planting materials, chemical fertilizers, hired labor and gasoline…etc. to maximize the use of such inputs, the farmers may increase the diversified crop production. land per household member and ownership of agricultural equipments represent the farmer’s endowments, expected to have positive effects on the production and market regime decision. access to irrigation and yield loss caused by rot, eaten by birds/other insets, rodents, over-rainfall, and flood are used as proxies for the production’s characteristics and ecological risk. access to irrigation, crucial to the farming, increases farming productivity, and then being expected to positively affect the diversification. to adapt to the ecological condition, the farmers may opt crop diversification strategy. but the ecological risk such as unpredictable rain-fed water may constrain the farmers from diversifying their farming as documented by aciar (2011). household head’s age, sex, ethnicity, education level, household member’s nonagricultural paid-job, and other languages than khmer, and farming scale are used to capture the farmer’s characteristics. the farming scale is captured by whether the farmer owns or cultivates arable lands of one hectare or less. because the majority of the farmers cultivate crops on small plot of land (table 2), they are expected to have tendency to reduce crop diversification. in other words, cultivable land size of one hectare or less discourages the farmers from diversifying their farming. the age can be also a proxy for the farmer’s experiences in farming. squared age is also included as an independent variable to control for the aging affect on the diversification decision. the ethnicity can equally capture mutual trust and common belief; it may then influence the decision on the market-oriented diversification of crops. this is because the ethnicity can facilitate the sharing of information amongst farmers. in the context asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 420 of cambodia's economy, it can, moreover capture the effects of rural in-labor-force population migration to the capital and to other regional countries. the mass migration may engender a shortfall in labor forces available for agriculture, and then affecting the agricultural production. household member’s non-agricultural paid-job captures the impact of off-farm jobs on the household’s agricultural decision, so too does it capture the information effects. family members having other off-farm jobs can get more access to information on agriculture, since they have more social networks. moreover, a highly educated household head can generally gain more easily access to information than does the low educated head. then, the education level can have positive effect on the diversification decision. land title and land dispute representing farmer’s property rights and land insecurity are used to capture the institutional effects on cambodian farmers’ crop diversification. the farmer with titled land can find it easier to have access to credit than does the farmer with untitled land, and more apparently being motivated to invest more in diversified farming. by contrast, land conflict may discourage them from investing in production of diversified crops. moreover, transaction costs, also a main institutional factor, are taken into account in the diversification regression. the transaction costs are typically categorized into variable transaction cost (vtc) which is proportional to quantity of goods trades and fixed transaction cost (ftc) which is related to information-on-market cost (key et al., 2000, heltberg and tarp, 2002, and goetz, 1992). however, it is difficult to empirically measure the transaction costs, because the latter are not easily recorded in a survey (key et al., 2000). based on previous studies, especially a study conducted by heltberg and tarp (2002), transportation equipment ownership is used as a proxy for the vtc, while information equipments such as radio, tv and telephone are proxied for the ftc. an increase in transportation costs and time of travelling is expected to have negative impacts on the market-oriented diversification of crops. therefore, any household possessing the transportation equipments can reduce the transportation costs, and then being induced to diversify crops for commercial purpose. access to information and social networks can reduce the ftc. then, the information equipments such as radio, tv and telephone can facilitate the information on markets, encouraging the farmers to diversify their crop portfolio and participate in the markets. data and descriptive statistics the data on cambodia socio-economic survey cses-2007 are used for the regression analysis. the survey was conducted by the national institute of statistics of cambodia, with the sample size of 360 villages or 3,600 households in 11 provinces, which is the subsample of cses2004. it gathered necessary information on the population’s living standards. in the cses, there are various modules, including households’ demographic characteristics, production and cash income, consumption and nutrition, education, health, access to social and community services, transport and communication, housing, assets such as land and other equipments, and rights to land. on average, farm household in the observed households possesses arable land of 1.50 hectares, with the majority of household head being male and 45 years old and having educational level of 5 years and half. the descriptive statistics in table 2 shows that only 31.17% of the observed households diversified crop cultivation, with the paddy crops covering up to 72.87%. the majority of households were smallholder farmers, with 56% of the observed farmers owning arable of 1 hectare or less. 98% of the observed households are khmer; and only 42% has access to irrigation. only 59.54% of the observed households cultivated titled land, showing that almost 50% of the households did insecure land. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 421 table 1: summary of variables variables proxy & measurement ex. sign dependent dummy for diversification decision diversify = 1, otherwise = 0 thi measurement of crop diversification intensity independent log relative price natural log of paddy relative price + log expenditure on agriculture natural log of per-square expenditure on farming + farmer's characteristics log hhh's age natural log of household head's age +/ log hhh’s age squared square of natural log of household head’s age log hhh's schooling years natural log of household head’s schooling years + dummy for ethnicity dummy for household head's ethnicity (khmer = 1, otherwise = 0) +/ dummy for non-agricultural paid job dummy for any household member’s non-agricultural paid jobs (paid jobs = 1, otherwise = 0) + dummy for hhh's sex dummy for household head's gender (male = 1, otherwise = 0) +/ dummy for land area of 1 hectare or less dummy for farmer possessing arable land of 1 hectare or less, considered smallholder farmer (smallholder = 1, otherwise =0) dummy for language dummy for any household head who can use other language than khmer (yes = 1, otherwise = 0) +/ farmer's endowments log arable land size per household member natural log of arable land size per household member who can work (square meters) + dummy for agricultural equipment ownership dummy for household's agricultural equipments such as cart, tractor, plough, threshing machine, harrow/rake/spade, hand tractor, rice mill and water pump (equipment ownership = 1, otherwise = 0) + risk and production's characteristics dummy for yield loss dummy for yield loss. yield loss is caused by rot, eaten by birds/other insets, rodents, and overrainfall, flood…etc. it captures ecological conditions (loss = 1, otherwise = 0) +/ dummy for access to irrigation dummy for any household that can have access to irrigation for cultivation (access to irrigation = 1, otherwise = 0) + institutional factors dummy for land dispute dummy for any household that experiences land dispute (land dispute = 1, otherwise = 0) dummy for land title dummy for any household whose the land is titled (land title = 1, otherwise = 0) + dummy for transportation equipment ownership dummy for any household that owns transportation equipments such as car, van/jeep, motorcycle, bicycle (equipment ownership = 1, otherwise = 0) + dummy for info. equip. ownership dummy for any household that owns informative equipments such as radio, telephone and tv (equipment ownership = 1, otherwise = 0) + asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 422 table 2: main characteristics in the whole sample characteristics percentage paddy crops 72.87% non-paddy crops 27.13% khmer ethnicity 97.92% household head (male) 80.30% farmers with titled land 59.54% access to irrigation 42.30% transportation equipment ownership 86.74% informational equipment ownership 73.04% agricultural equipment ownership 97.43% with arable land ≤ 1 hectare 55.66% crop diversification 31.17% source: author’s calculation from cses-2007 table 3 suggests that land size cultivated by diversified farmers is statistically significant bigger than that cultivated by the specialized farmers, reflecting that the land size may affect the crop diversification decision. the difference in access to irrigation between the diversified farmers and the specialized farmers is very significant, showing the importance of the irrigation to the diversified farmers. about 67 % of diversified farmers hold land title, while only around 56% of specialized farmers hold the title. the ownership of agricultural and transportation equipments are significant different between the diversified farmers and specialized ones. the percentage of diversified farmers with such equipments is significantly higher than that of specialized ones. this can show that those who own such equipments would be likely to diversify crop production. table 3: main differences between diversified and specialized farmers’ characteristics variables diversified (d) specialized (s) difference (s) – (d) p-value (two-tailed) average arable land size in ha 1.784 1.369 -0.415 0.006 *** spending on farming per m 2 (riel) 128.793 100.106 -28.687 0.223 access to irrigation 0.483 0.396 -0.087 0.000 *** household head's age 45.023 45.170 0.147 0.822 household head's sex 0.815 0.797 -0.018 0.348 household head's schooling years 5.565 5.460 -0.105 0.467 land title 0.666 0.563 -0.103 0.000 *** informational ownership 0.753 0.720 -0.033 0.118 agricultural equipment ownership 0.989 0.968 -0.021 0.005 *** transport equipment ownership 0.904 0.851 -0.053 0.001 *** land dispute 0.005 0.010 0.005 0.227 off-farm jobs 0.397 0.381 -0.016 0.498 note: *** means the difference is statistically significant at 1% level. source: author’s calculation from cses-2007 the descriptive statistics of the variables used in the regression are summarized in table 4 as follow. table 4: summary of descriptive statistics of variables variables mean max min std. dev. obs. thi 0.119 0.998 0 0.208 2066 dummy for diversification decision 0.312 1 0 0.463 2066 log relative price -0.011 1.437 -1.822 0.184 1847 log expenditure on agriculture 3.793 9.622 -2.08 1.116 2028 log hhh’s age 3.762 4.511 2.944 0.312 2066 log hhh’s age square 14.250 20.348 8.670 2.333 2066 dummy for ethnicity 0.979 1 0 0.143 2065 dummy for land of 1 hectare or less 0.557 1 0 0.497 2066 dummy for non-agricultural paid job 0.386 1 0 0.487 2049 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 423 dummy for hhh’s sex 0.803 1 0 0.398 2066 dummy for language 0.076 1 0 0.266 2066 log land per household member -1.75 2.931 -7.06 1.247 2066 dummy for agri. equipment ownership 0.975 1 0 0.157 2066 dummy for yield loss 0.644 1 0 0.479 2066 dummy for access to irrigation 0.423 1 0 0.494 2066 dummy for land dispute 0.008 1 0 0.09 2066 dummy for land title 0.595 1 0 0.491 2066 dummy for transport. equip. ownership 0.867 1 0 0.339 2066 dummy for info. equip. ownership 0.73 1 0 0.444 2066 log hhh’s schooling years 1.579 2.773 0 0.527 1576 source: author’s calculation from cses-2007 results and discussion table 5 presents the estimated results of heckman selection model, marginal effects of independent variables on crop diversification decision and conditional marginal effects on the diversification intensity. the first column presents the estimated results of outcome equation, the second the estimated results of diversification selection, the third the marginal effects on diversification selection and the fourth the result of conditional marginal effects. the likelihood-ratio test of independent equations at the bottom of the table suggests that the null hypothesis of uncorrelated errors for the outcome and selection regression can be rejected at 10 percent. that is, there is the presence of sample selection bias in the second stage, and then using sample-selection model is justified for the regression analysis. the estimated results suggest that the coefficients of the paddy relative price are significantly negative for the diversification selection, as expected. also, the relative price has significantly negative marginal effect on the degree of diversification. this can reflect that higher price of paddy theoretically induces the farmers to increase rice production for commercial purpose. that is, the farmers’ market-oriented diversification of crops is more sensitive to a change in paddy price. the coefficients of spending on farming are very significantly positive for both the outcome and selection regression. moreover, the marginal effect results indicate the very significant impact of spending on the diversification intensity. the spending, in particular on planting materials and chemical fertilizers, encourages the farmers to maximize the uses of agricultural resources by diversifying crops. the availability of such inputs is very crucial to the farmers’ crop production. arable land size per household member has, in spite of the insignificant impact on the diversification intensity and of there being no marginal effect on the intensity, significantly positive effect on the crop diversification decision. farmer with bigger arable land size may be more intent upon engaging in the diversified farming. this finding seems to support the government’s policy on social land concession (slc) 55 , suggesting that the policy can help improve the rural farmers’ lives, through promoting the crop diversification. the result is consistent with the findings by mwangi, et al. (2013) in the case of kenya, by ashfaq, et al. (2008) in the case of pakistan and by tong et al. (2011) in the case of cambodia. the finding is seemingly more optimistic about the slc in terms of economic development than the arguments by neef et al. (2013) that the slc is just the ruling political elites’ strategy to use international aid agencies as a tool to formalize the displacement and distributional injustices. 5 the social land concession is a legal mechanism to allocate private state land to landless and land-poor households or communities for social purposes, especially for residential and farming use, according to article 2 of cambodia’s sub-decree on land concession, 2003. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 424 the results also suggest that the ownership of agricultural equipments has significantly positive correlation with the diversification decision and the intensity at 1 and 10 percent level respectively. it has very significantly positive marginal effect on the diversification degree. this result is also consistent with the findings by mwangi et al. (2013) and ashfaq et al. (2008). in cambodia, the majority of farmers, especially smallholders, use primitive equipments for their farming. then, based on this finding, modern or sufficient agricultural equipments more likely induce the farmers to diversify crops, more apparently for commercial purpose. the access to irrigation is found to have significantly positive effect on both the diversification decision and diversification intensity, and also significantly highlypositive marginal-effect on the intensity. the irrigation improves the farming productivity and induces the farmers to diversify crops. yet, the access to irrigation is still limited due to the insufficient development. this result is consistent with the findings by tong et al. (2011), indicating the importance of production technology extension through developing adequate irrigation for the farmers. as for the ecological condition, it is not found to have significant influence on the diversification decision and its intensity. the land title, one of the main institutional variables, is not found to have significant impact on the farmers’ decision. however, the estimated results of the marginal effects suggest that land dispute wreaks significantly havoc on the diversification decision. the results reflect the negative implication of land dispute for the farmers’ agricultural production, especially smallholder farmers’, on which their lives are mainly dependent. then, urgently solving the land conflict may encourage the peasants to diversify crops, and then bettering their living standards. the results also show that the transportation equipments have statistically significant positive impact on the crop diversification decision. this reflects that the transportation costs affect the agricultural production pattern. the low costs, resulting in the low vtcs, provide incentive for the farmers to diversify crop portfolio which is more possibly for the purpose of selling in the market. the ethnicity is found to have, although it has insignificant effect on the diversification decision, significantly negative impact on the diversification intensity. this more seemingly has something to do with rural labor forces. in cambodia, the largest ethnicity is khmer (up to 98 percent); and the agricultural activities are still primitive. according to the ministry of planning (2012), 90 percent of rural villages have seen a decline in population, owing to the rural migration to phnom penh and other regional countries, especially to thailand, for jobs. this suggests that khmer farmers have faced the deficiency of labor forces, resulted from the mass migration of rural working-age population, and then inducing them to reduce the crop diversification degree. interestingly, the farmers owning plot of land of 1 hectare or less are found to decide to reduce crop diversification as expected, spelling out the fact that their diversification of crops is constrained by the small scale of farming. foreign language of household members has significantly negative effect on the crop diversification decision. in cambodia, especially in urban areas, english is the first popular foreign language. those who can use english well can easily find jobs in urban areas, and normally remit a share of their income to their families. then, their families may have tendency to reduce agricultural production, or crop diversification in particular, due to the lack of labor forces and dependency on the remittance. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 425 table 5: estimated results (heckman sample selection and marginal effects, dependent variable: thi) independent variables thi selection me on selection conditional me log paddy relative price -0.043 -0.553 -0.193 -0.061 (0.291) (0.003) *** (0.003) *** (0.013) ** log expenditure on agriculture 0.052 0.194 0.068 0.0324 (0.000) *** (0.000) *** (0.000) *** (0.000) *** log land per household member 0.002 0.113 0.039 0.01 (0.893) (0.022) ** (0.022) ** (0.167) dummy for agri. equip. ownership 0.237 1.033 0.247 0.096 (0.094) * (0.004) *** (0.000) *** (0.000) *** dummy for access to irrigation 0.075 0.14 0.049 0.035 (0.001) *** (0.067) ** (0.068) ** (0.002) *** dummy for yield loss 0.005 0.009 0.003 -0.002 (0.813) (0.904) (0.904) (0.834) log hhh’s age 0.23 3.463 1.209 0.367 (0.764) (0.181) (0.181) (0.344) log hhh’s age squared -0.018 -0.451 -0.157 -0.044 (0.861) (0.195) (0.195) (0.396) dummy for ethnicity -0.218 0.288 0.092 -0.021 (0.085) * (0.429) (0.383) (0.76) dummy for hhh’s sex 0.036 0.014 0.005 0.012 (0.251) (0.900) (0.900) (0.434) dummy for land area ≤ 1 hectare -0.073 -0.482 -0.169 -0.064 (0.029) ** (0.000) *** (0.000) *** (0.000) *** dummy for language -0.062 -0.276 -0.090 -0.038 (0.222) (0.090) * (0.066) * (0.051) * dummy for land title -0.032 -0.014 -0.005 -0.011 (0.141) (0.854) (0.854) (0.338) dummy for tran. equip. ownership 0.002 0.229 0.076 0.02 (0.967) (0.062) * (0.049) ** (0.230) dummy for info. equip. ownership -0.031 -0.079 -0.028 -0.016 (0.221) (0.363) (0.367) (0.221) log hhh’s schooling years -0.008 0.102 0.036 0.007 (0.719) (0.161) (0.161) (0.542) dummy for land dispute 0.115 -0.72 -0.195 -0.047 (0.568) (0.215) (0.073) * (0.479) dummy for non-agri. job 0.019 0.101 0.036 0.014 (0.400) (0.181) (0.183) (0.203) constant -0.645 -9.089 (0.653) (0.059) * observations 1389 1389 1389 rho 0.758 sigma 0.246 lambda 0.187 lr test of indep. eqns. (rho = 0) prob > chi2 = 0.077 note: (1) p-values are in parentheses. (2) *, **, and *** are significant at 10%, 5% and 1% level respectively. source: author’s estimation asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 426 conclusion a heckman selection model is applied with the data on cambodia socio-economic survey cses-2007 to scrutinize the price and non-price impacts on cambodian farmers’ behavior towards crop diversification. in general, the relative price between paddy price and weighted average price of all crops has negative impact on the crop diversification decision. irrigation and farming expenditure have positively significant effects on farmers’ crop diversification, and consequently increasing the intensity. farmer possessing adequate agricultural equipments has high tendency to diversify crops. land dispute, one of the main institutional matters in cambodia, is found to have significantly negative marginal-effect on farmers' decision on crop diversification. the significance of land size is also found, suggesting that the appropriate land distribution policy such as social land concession is very crucial. the current paper provides an analysis of exogenously-presumed price and non-price factors determining the farmers' behavior towards crop diversification. for further research, the analysis will be further extended to the farmers' behavior towards the market-oriented diversification of crops, with a main focus on price and institutional effects. references abdalla, s., leonhäuser, i., siegfried, s. b., & elamin, e. 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(2011). what limits agricultural asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 414-428 428 intensification in cambodia? the role of emigration, agricultural extension services and credit constraints. cdri working paper series no. 56. phnom penh: cambodia development research institute. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 381 farmers’ perceptions regarding the use of botswana’s tsa temo thuo television programme gababolokwe, k. and hulela, k. department of agricultural economics, education and extension, botswana college of agriculture, gaborone, botswana abstract the purpose of the study was to examine farmers’ perceptions about the usefulness of the tsa temo thuo agricultural programmes broadcasted every monday of the week on the botswana television between 7:30 and 8:00 pm for farmers. a questionnaire was used to gather data from 36 farmers with different agricultural backgrounds in the boteti sub-district regarding the effectiveness of the programme in disseminating information. a simple random sampling technique was used to get the 36 farmers from the list of 40 farmers. the results showed that the farmers saw the programme as relevant for their farming services but voiced that the programme be frequently reviewed to ensure emerging issues were integrated. the results also revealed that factors such as farming environment (mean = 4.36; sd = .49); access to television programme (mean = 4.22; sd = .59) and ignorance about farming issues (mean = 3.36; sd = 1.05) were perceived as useful. however, this being a case study, a similar study should be conducted nationwide to ascertain and compare the perceived effectiveness of the television programme. keywords: television, mass media, dissemination, tsa temo thuo, farmers’ perceptions introduction 1 several mass media programmes have emerged in the past fifteen years in botswana as a way to address the needs of farmers’ knowledge systems. previously, there were programmes such as molemi ithuthe and pitso ya balemi broadcasted through radio botswana. in addition, there was also the agri news magazine published by the ministry of agriculture (moa) since in the early 1970s for disseminating agriculture related information to farmers coupled with the botswana daily news, a government supported newspaper. other print media such as the gazette newspaper, corresponding author’s name: hulela, k. email address: khulela@bca.bw the sunday times, the voice, mmegi, the mid week sun etc. also published sparingly agricultural oriented news and advertisements (oladele and boago, 2011). with the advent of the botswana television (btv) in the early years of the 21st century, several new programmes addressing agricultural issues have emerged, giving farmers a broader perspective to watch, listen, read and acquire a diverse knowledge (education) about farming system. the tsa temo thuo is the new programme currently broadcasted on the botswana television with the goals of facilitating the efforts made by ispaad in (i) disseminating information and research findings to the farming community, (ii) sensitizing (educating) farmers on different agriculture issues, (iii) educating on support services available for the field production agriculture asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:khulela@bca.bw asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 381-391 382 promoting food security at different levels of the economy, and (v) promoting commercialization of the agriculture activities through adoption of mechanization, different farm inputs, credits and extension outreach programmes (http://www.gov.bw). the tsa temo thuo television programme, which was initiated by the government in 2007 through the ministry of agriculture, seems to have gained popularity as farmers tend to watch it and further discuss its outcomes during their formal and informal meetings, reflecting on what has been broadcasted. the programme is aired in the local television in both english and setswana languages to draw the attention of farmers and extension educators (oladele, and boago, 2011; mosime, 2007). the perception of people about such a new innovation in the community therefore plays a significant role in understanding its relevance and effectiveness. farmers’ perceptions about television programmes as a new tool and intervention in disseminating information can bring about a shift among small scale farmers who are socioeconomically challenged. it is for this reason a study of this nature was set to assess the perceptions of small-scale farmers on the adoption of tsa temo thuo television programme in disseminating information in the boteti agricultural sub district. perception is a psychological concept essential in social sciences to examine people’s beliefs, opinions, values and awareness of new innovations. as indicated by huff man et al. (1987), cited in mohamed and mukhiar (2007), psychology is a scientific study of behavior that has four goals of describing, explaining, predicting and the changing behavior of people. thus, farmers thinking in their business of farming is important. currently, there is no research that has been conducted to evaluate the impact of television programmes in disseminating knowledge information to botswana farmers; hence this study is significant. farmers are targeted in the tsa temo thuo television programme and how they perceived the intervention is crucial in the development of the education of farmers. according to nazari and hassam (2011), educational interventions transferred through a tv program end up in a significant knowledge enhancement to farmers. as mentioned by mahmood and sheikh (2005) and nazari and hasbullah (2010), television and radio programmes (mass media) have become popular in agriculture. the use of mass media such as television and radio has several advantages in farming. first, it enables one to reach out to a larger group of farmers, disseminating information about weather forecasts, natural disaster, and agricultural markets opportunities available and new technologies for the improvement of farming (ibid). second, mass media (television) programmes have edge over other programmes as they penetrate the illiterate people, who watch tv without being bothered about the unfriendly environment; thus ensuring more information gets to farmers (badodiya and chaudhary, 2011). third, ict in the form of television helps in changing the socioeconomic and cultural aspects of many people particularly farmers in rural areas and adds to knowledge regarding technology integration in agriculture (nazari and hasbullah, 2008). fourth, television programmes educate the farmer about any implied new change, discoveries and knowledge in farming (chhachhar et al., 2012). according to irfan et al. (2006), and chhachhar et al. (2012), television is one of the forms of mass media capable of disseminating agriculture information very fast to the farming community. even though a research study by chhachhar et al. (2012) has shown that a small proportion of farmers (20%) received information through television as compared to more than half who indicated that television was not their source of information, the television still http://www.gov.bw/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 381-391 383 played an important role in disseminating information to a larger audience. positively, the study also showed that 87.7% of the people surveyed owned television sets, which means people perceived television as important tool for learning. in nigeria, ango et al. (2011) examined the role of mass media towards developments in agriculture and found that majority were males, well experienced in farming with over twenty years of experience and accessed information through television and radio programmes. the study also revealed that the strategies for disseminating agricultural programs were highly accessible, convenient, effective and highly beneficial to farmers (p.305). abubakar et al. (2009) reported that the hypotheses tested in their study showed a significant relationship between farmer’s sources of agricultural information and relevance of information received in solving agricultural problems (r = 0.544, p = 0.290) (p. 42 ). in this regard, scholars tend to imply that television and radio programmes have been observed to play a major role in conveying the latest agricultural technology in many countries, thus facilitating the advancement in farming. important also in this was the competency of leaders, location, infrastructures and quality of services as they have significant influence on the success of telecommunication centres (bashir et al., 2011). the challenge pointed out in ango et al. (2011) about such innovations included lack of electricity which affected the information dissemination through television. noted in this regard was that farmers tend to face some challenges and difficulties in accessing the required information through mass media (hassan et al., 2010), inadequate staff and awkward broadcasting times. other challenges as outlined by scholars included ineffective transfer of the agricultural technology and information to farmers. ramzli et al. (2005) found that the challenges faced by farmers in using television included ‘missing the opportunity to watch agriculture programs, limited duration for viewing programme, the competition from other programmes, ‘such as news, entertainment and sport’ as well as lack of interest from the young generation. therefore, the questions are: how useful and effective is the tsa temo thuo television programme in disseminating the required technology to farmers? what factors are likely to hinder television information dissemination to farmers? to answer these questions, farmers in the boteti sub-region were surveyed with the intent to understand their perceptions regarding the use of television to disseminate information. the purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions of farmers about the effectiveness of the tsa temo thuo television (btv) programmes. specifically, the study is designed to, 1) describe the demographic characteristics of farmers surveyed in the boteti subdistrict. 2) determine the farmers’ perceptions about the usefulness of the tsa temo thuo. 3) describe challenges associated with the programme faced by farmers. materials and methods this is a descriptive survey design where data were collected through the use of a questionnaire to describe the status of tsa temo thuo television programme as perceived by boteti agricultural sub-region farmers. the research design was appropriate to describe the situation currently prevailing in the boteti sub-district about the programme as an intervention to enhance the farming. the study targeted 40 small scale farmers who were both crops and livestock producers. to obtain a sample studied in this article, a simple random sampling method was used to select a group of 36 farmers from the list obtained by the researchers from the boteti agricultural subdistrict office. the sample size for this study was determined using krejcie and morgan (1970) formula. a random sampling approach was conducted to get 36 out of 40 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 381-391 384 farmers who participated in the study. to conduct the random sampling, names of 40 farmers were written in a piece of paper separately and cut into small pieces. the pieces of papers were folded and placed in a card board box and shook to mix them. the investigators selected one piece of paper from the box one by one after each other, shaking the box after each selection to come up with 36 names who participated in the study. a questionnaire was used to collect data from the sample so as to address the three objectives in the study. the questionnaire was formulated to have three sections based on (i) demographic information (2) farmers’ perceptions of the tsa temo thuo television programme usefulness, and (3) challenges faced by farmers in accessing information broadcasted on the programme. the questionnaire was self-administered whereby farmers were asked to respond to the items on their own by checking on a scale anchored at the end of each statement; 1 = strongly disagreed (sd); 2 = disagree (d); 3 = uncertain (u); 4 = agreed (a) and 5 = strongly agreed (sa). to validate the questionnaire, professionals in the agricultural extension unit of the botswana college of agriculture (bca) reviewed the instrument for the coverage content worth to be in the instrument, whether or not the statements were appropriately formulated, useful and relevant and challenges with the programme. the questionnaire was then pretested using 10 farmers in gabane village in the kweneng district which was not included in the final survey. to collect data, the questionnaire was delivered to farmers in the boteti agricultural sub-district by hand and was given five days to complete at their own time. the farmers were required to check on the space provided for their views and opinions about the television programme. the questionnaires were collected on the fifth day and 10 (27%) farmers out of the 36 had not completed their questionnaires. another set of 10 questionnaires was distributed to the farmers who had not returned their completed questionnaires. at the end of the second week [14 days], six (60%) farmers out of 10 had completed theirs, bringing the total completed questionnaire to 32 (89%) which was deemed appropriate for the study. the last four completed questionnaires were received after a second follow-up with mobile phone which brought the total return rate to 36 (100%). the latest version of the statistical package of social science (spss) was used to analyze data at botswana college of agriculture computer laboratory. descriptive statistics were used to interpret and report the findings. frequencies and percentages were used to describe the demographic characteristics of respondents. statements about the preemptions of farmers about tsa temo thuo television programme together with the challenges faced by farmers in watching the programme were described using means and standard deviations. a mean value of 2.00 separated agreements from disagreement in reporting the decisions made on the results. results the purpose of this study is to describe the perceptions of farmers surveyed in the boteti sub district about the effectiveness of tsa temo thuo television program in disseminating information to farmers. the specific objectives of the study included; (i) describing the demographic characteristics of farmers surveyed, (ii) determining farmers’ perception about the effectiveness and usefulness of the television programme in providing information for improving farming and (iii) identifying challenges faced by farmers in accessing information through the television programme. to achieve the objectives of the study, data were analyzed and results are presented in simple descriptions in tables formatted in apa styles organized according to objectives of the study. the results of the study were therefore presented as follows; asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 381-391 385 objective 1: demographic characteristics of boteti farmers surveyed for the study. to achieve the first objective, farmers were asked to indicate their personal information in terms of age, gender, marital status, highest education achieved, the type of farming practiced, the number of years (experience) in the type of farming practiced. results in table 1 showed that out of the thirty-six (36) farmers who responded to the survey, majority (56%) were male farmers; an equal proportion close to forty percent (38.9%) of farmer respondents were between the ages of 21 and 30 and 41 and 50; while less than one quarter (22.2%) of the farmers were between the ages of 31 and 40. there were no farmers of fifty one years old and above. this means that majority of the farmers surveyed in the boteti region were young. at least half (50%) of the farmers were single, close to two thirds (27.8%) were staying with their spouses as partners (cohabiting) and fourteen percent (13.9%) were married. results in table 1 also showed that above two thirds (69.4%) of the farmers had secondary education; less than one quarter (22.2%) had reached college as the highest level of education achieved. the results also showed that close to forty percent (38.9%) were arable farmers (crop farmers), thirty six percent (36.1%) practiced mixed farming (that is growing crops and keeping livestock simultaneouslyth) while just one quarter (25%) practiced pastoral farming (livestock rearing). the results also showed that out of the thirty six farmers, slightly above half (55.6%) of them indicated that they practiced a form of commercial farming; forty five percent (44.4%) were subsistence farmers, majority (58.3%) of the farmers had 3 years and above experience in farming, which shows that most of the farmers were new in farming, one quarter (25%) had two years in farming and the rest were between one year and below. based on the results, it can be concluded that farmers surveyed were inexperienced in farming and youthful in terms of age. this is unlike in other countries where scholars have found old and experiences of more than ten years in farming (suriname, 2009). since majority of the farmers surveyed were young, perhaps there was need to consider a comprehensive research to determine the proportion of novice farmers in relation to experienced farmers. the results of this study may not be a true reflection of the situation in the boteti agricultural sub-region since the region originally was the cattle post center in the country and one would expect to find majority of farmers to be old and experienced. the results were also not in line with previous research in developed countries which had shown that majority of farmers were aging and needed replacement from the youths. it could have been also beneficial in this study to ask farmers if they owned television and the frequency with which they watched it. table 1: demographic characteristics of farmers (n=36) characteristics frequency percentage (%) age between 21and 30 years old 14 38.9 between 31 and 40 years old 8 22.2 between 41 and 50 years old 14 38.9 gender male 20 55.6 female 16 44.4 marital status single 18 50 married 5 13.9 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 381-391 386 divorced 3 8.3 staying together 10 27.8 educational level primary leaving certificate 3 8.3 secondary education 25 69.4 college education 8 22.2 type of farming pastoral 9 25 arable 14 38.9 mixed 13 36.1 level of farming subsistence 16 44.4 commercial 20 55.6 work experience less than a year 1 2.8 1 year 5 13.9 2 years 9 25 3 years and above 21 58.3 objective 2: perceived effectiveness of tsa temo thuo television programme by farmers. to address this objective, farmers responded to items that asked them to indicate their level of agreement with statements describing relevance and usefulness of the television programme in providing information about farming. table 2 presented the means and standard deviations of the perceptual statements about tsa temo thuo television programme in disseminating information to farmers. the statements presented different situations about the uses, values and effectiveness of the programme anchored on a 5 point likert-type scale for farmers to indicate their level of agreement: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = uncertain, 4 = agree or 5 = strongly agree. the results as shown in table 2 were categorized into two parts. in part a, the results presented the kinds of agriculture sectors practiced by stakeholders which the to programme disseminate information on. part b of table 2 asked respondents to give their perceptions of the services rendered about the different farming activities through the television programme. to interpret results on a 5-point likert type scale, means ranging from 1 to ≤ 2.49 were used to denote less agreed. the means ≥ 2.50 denoted highly agreed. based on the results, it can be interpreted that farmers highly agreed that the tsa temo thuo television programme adequately addressed different agricultural sectors. that is, the programme broadcasted programmes that taught about different areas of the agriculture sectors. the highest means were found on ‘horticulture’ and ‘animal production’ both with a mean = 4.83, sd = 0.38, followed by ‘crop production’ with mean = 4.81, sd = 0.40. this means farmers agreed that two sectors were taking an upper hand compared to other sectors of the agriculture. the least was on ‘agricultural mechanization’ with a mean = 4.19; sd = .87. it can be interpreted to mean that both crop and livestock farmers equally highly agreed that the tsa temo thuo television programme broadcast issues related to a variety of agricultural programmes. part b of table 2 showed results on farmers’ perceptual statements about the programme. the results showed that farmers agreed that ‘the television programme was providing useful information in different areas/ types of farming’ (mean = 4.17; sd = 0.57). this was followed by the statement which stated that ‘tsa temo thuo needs to be reviewed’ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 381-391 387 (mean = 4.08; sd = 0.55). the lowest (mean = 2.89; sd = 0.89) was obtained from a statement which reads that the programme ‘provides adequate information required by farmers’. although the farmers tended to agree and positively perceived the programme to be effective, the results showed that the farmers agreed that there was need for the programme to be reviewed (mean = 4.08; sd = 0.55). the results therefore showed mixed feelings about the programme. table 2: means and standard deviations of farmers’ perceptions about the programme statements m sd part a: the television programme provided information on; horticulture 4.83 0.38 animal production 4.83 0.38 crop production 4.81 0.40 extension education/agricultural advisory services 4.53 0.61 commercial agriculture 4.42 0.60 agricultural mechanization 4.19 0.86 agricultural supplies(fertilizers, seeds, machinery) 4.44 0.65 funding of agricultural projects 4.22 0.80 poultry production 4.75 0.44 part b: the television programme created farmers’ understanding of their farming 4.08 0.55 provided useful information in all types of farming 4.17 0.52 provided adequate information required by farmers 2.89 0.92 was a relevant programme for farmers in rural areas 3.47 0.97 was a relevant programme to improving farming 4.06 0.41 information broadcasted was objectively prepared 3.44 0.91 uses appropriate language to educate farmers 3.50 0.78 tsa temo thuo is a good programme 4.00 0.41 tsa temo thuo needs to be reviewed 4.31 0.67 tsa temo thuo empowers farmers with appropriate knowledge 3.97 0.61 objective 3: challenges of farmers regarding tsa temo thuo television programme. the farmers were asked to indicate the challenges they face in viewing the tsa temo thuo programme. results as shown in table 3 presented statistical means and standard deviations on perceived challenges faced by the farmers. to indicate how the farmers perceived the challenges on a 5 point likert-type scale, the farmers indicated or checked on scale 1= strongly disagreed, 2= disagreed, 3= uncertain, 4= agreed or 5= strongly agreed. the results as shown in table 3 presented the highest mean = 4.36; sd =0.49, implying that the farmers highly agreed that “farming environment was not improving” as the biggest challenge followed by farmers’ “access to television programme” (mean = 4.22; sd = 0.59) and “minimum discussion forums for farmers” (mean = 4.14; sd = 0.593). the least perceived to be a challenge by the farmers was the variable on “literature materials for farmers’ (mean = 3.28; sd =1.05). these results may be a true reflection of what transpired in the field about challenges affecting farming today since information is available through different outlets such as the internet and social networking technology like facebook, twitter and world wide web (www). farmers of today are able to download relevant information online for use. the use of information and communication technology (ict) such as mobile phone also provides information asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 381-391 388 relevant for use by farmers; hence there may be no need to fret about hard copy literature materials ‘literature materials for farmer’ and that could be the reason why farmers found the statement to be a least challenge. however, the results are interesting to see farmers indicating that ‘farming environment was not improving’ despite the government’s effort to use television programmes as an innovation and other financial support available. table 3: means and standard deviations on challenges challenges faced by farmers m sd ignorance towards farming issues 3.36 1.046 literature materials for farmers 3.28 1.003 preference given to traditional methods of farming 3.44 1.027 education of farmers 3.58 0.967 absenteeism of farmers 3.69 0.951 minimum discussion forums for farmers 4.14 0.593 funding 3.50 0.878 access to television programs 4.22 0.591 farming environment not improving 4.36 0.487 attitudes of farmers towards technology 3.08 1.025 discussion the same proportions (38.9%) of respondents fell in the ages of 21 to 30 and 41 to 50, with a smaller proportion (22.2%) falling in the ages between 31 to 40. although the age distribution of respondents tended to be symmetrically distributed, there seemed to be flat-shaped density curve at the center because of the few proportions of the aged between 31 and 40 years old. majority of the respondents in this study were males. this is not surprising since previously farming in many african countries was associated with man; but today women have taken the lead in farming particularly in rural parts of the developing countries to address poverty issues. as indicated by squire, (2010), fao (2011) approximately 80% in african farming were women addressing food security. most of the respondents in this study were ‘not married’ and were cohabiting. the study found that most of the respondents have secondary education qualification probably because currently the government tends to support out of school programmes particularly the youths to address unemployment. majority practiced arable farming at a commercial level of production and had 3 years and above farming work experience and this may be due to government farmer empowerment schemes and policies introduced in the past five years to improve the livelihoods of people living in rural areas in botswana. the tsa temo thuo television programme was seen to be a good programme as it broadcasts information on crop and livestock production, agricultural advisory services and supplies, commercialization of agriculture and funding of agriculture projects, research findings as well as agricultural mechanization. this is in line with nazari and hassam (2011); sher (2001) in chhachhar (2012) educational interventions transferred through tv programmes to enhance knowledge of farmers. the results further indicated that minimum discussion forum, access to television programmes, ignorance and attitudes of farmers towards technology, conservativeness and education of farmers were some of the issues raised as challenges faced by farmers in watching the tsa temo thuo television programme. this was supported by ramli et al. (2013) and hassan et al. (2010) who also identified some challenges faced in using television by farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 381-391 389 conclusions majority of males who participated in the study were single, cohabiting and were within the ages of 21 to 30. majority had attained secondary education and practiced arable farming with a maximum of 3 years and above farming work experience. this means there is need to continue the innovation as it provides education for farmers. results indicated that farmers agreed and perceived tsa temo thuo television programme as a good programme as it broadcasts information on crop and animal husbandry, agricultural advisory services and supplies, commercialization of agriculture and funding of agriculture projects as well as agricultural mechanization. secondly, the education and knowledge of agriculture disseminated through the tsa temo thuo television programme was found to be relevant and appropriate to farmers and other stakeholders. however, the results showed that the programme needs to be reviewed to empower farmers. the information provided by the programme was perceived to be inadequate and the local language used was found to be appropriate to educate botswana farmers. the results further indicated that minimum discussion forum, access to television programmes, ignorance and attitudes of farmers towards technology, conservativeness and education of farmers were some of the issues raised as challenges faced by farmers in watching the tsa temo thuo television programme. farmers should be encouraged to use the toll free lines to obtain feedback from the agriculture authority. farmers perceived the programme to be useful, relevant and educational as it disseminate accurate and appropriate knowledge for improving their farming. a similar study should be conducted in all districts of botswana to ascertain and compare the perceived effectiveness of the tsa temo thuo educational programme by farmers’ nationwide. farmer education on new innovations and interventions is important in this information age. references abubakar, b. z., ango, a. k., & buhari, u. 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(2005). crop yields from new technologies. daily dawn. march 28: april 3, 2005. ministry of agriculture (n.d). guidelines for integrated support programme for arable agricultural development (ispaad). retrieved from http://www.gov.bw/en/ministriesauth orities/ministries/ministryofagricultu re-moa/departments-ofmoa/moadepartments1/ispaadprogramme/ mohamed, r., & mukhiar, s. n. s. (2006). the basic desires of malaysian audience in watching reality television: the case of akademi fantasia. malaysian journal of media studies, 3345. mosime, a. t. (2007). botswana television (btv) negotiating control and cultural production in a globalizing context: a political economy of media state ownership in africa. a thesis in total fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of doctor of philosophy. graduate program in media and cultural studies, faculty of human sciences, university of kwa-zulu natal, durban, south africa. nazari, m. r., & hasbullah, a. h. (2010). radio as an educational media: impact on agricultural development search: the journal of the south east asia, research centre for communication and humanities, 2, 13-20. nazari, m. r., & hasbullah, a. h. (2008). farmers’ approach and access to information and communication technology in the efficient use of modern irrigation methods. european journal of scientific research, 21(1), 37-44. nazari, m. r., & hassam, m. s. b. hj. (2011). the role of television in the enhancement of farmers’ agricultural knowledge. african journal of agricultural research, 6(4), 931-936. okwu, o. j., & iorkaa, t. i. ( 2011). an assessment of farmers’ use of new information and communication technologies as sources of agricultural information in ushongo local government area. benue state, nigeria oladele, o. i., & boago, c. (2011). content analysis of agricultural news in botswana newspapers. journal of human ecology, 36(3), 173-177. ramli, n. s., hassan, md. s., samah, b. a., ali, m. s. s., azril, h., shaffril, m., & azaharian, z. s. (2013). problems in using agricultural information from television among farmers in malaysia. asian social science, 9(9), 1911-2025. squire, p. j. (2003). strategies for enhancing women’s full participation in sustainable agricultural development and environmental conservation in sub-saharan africa. journal of international agricultural and extension education, 1(10), 510. suriname, v. l. (2009). youth in agriculture challenges and opportunities. unpublished report presented at the thirtieth regular ttp://www.gov.bw/en/ministries-a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 381-391 391 meeting of the conference of heads of government of the caribbean community, 2-5 july 2009, georgetown, guyana. available at http://www.caricom.org/jsp/communi ty_organs/cohsod_youth/youth_in_a griculture_concept_note%20final.p df http://www.caricom.org/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants publisher: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 2 no. 3 september 2012. participation in development: a case study on local participation in rural water supply and sanitation in vietnam dang ngoc toan (development practitioner and lecturer in development studies at the college for vocational training of the central highlands ethnic minority youths, daklak, vietnam) citation: dang ngoc toan (2012) “participation in development: a case study on local participation in rural water supply and sanitation in vietnam”, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 422-446. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 422-446. 422 author(s) dang ngoc toan development practitioner and lecturer in development studies at the college for vocational training of the central highlands ethnic minority youths, daklak, vietnam email: dngtoandaklak@gmail.com participation in development: a case study on local participation in rural water supply and sanitation in vietnam abstract since the adoption of doi moi (reform) policy in 1986, local participation has attracted special attention in development projects in vietnam. in particular, the questions of whether local participation in development projects should be promoted and whether it would be feasible became a major concern among development practitioners, as the debates on participation and project sustainability continued. while some argued that although socio-economic, cultural, ethnic and political obstacles were always present, many also believed that the promises of participation in development projects in vietnam had been strengthened in recent times especially when the government realised that its top-down approach in implementing development projects could only weaken local capacity. this article is an examination of how participatory approach was promoted in two villages in daklak province, vietnam, where a danish-funded rwss (rural water supply and sanitation) project was implemented. it investigates how development was perceived differently by local people and other major stakeholders, and in turn, how participation was exercised. it also identifies the obstacles that emerged that hampered local participation and discusses how locals responded with appropriate solutions. background the term “participation” has been closely associated with development projects recently. yet historically the participatory approach can be traced back to the 1940s. in practice, it was only in the 1960s that participation was given wide attention in development studies. however, despite its popularity and wider recognition, there is still not one single definition of participation that is universally accepted and various interpretations of what participation entails abound. according to pearse and stiefe (l979), participation is concerned with efforts that aim to increase control and influence over available resources in given social contexts on the part of groups and movements of those hitherto excluded from such control. paul (1987) defined participation as a process by which intended beneficiaries have an influence over the direction and execution of a project with a view to enhancing their social-economic well-being. similarly, tikare et al. (1979) stated that participation is seen as a process through which all related stakeholders influence and share control over priority setting, policy-making, resource allocations and access to public goods and services. implicit in these definitions is that there is no blueprint of participation as it is practiced in different contexts. in latin america, participation is considered beneficiaries’ voluntary contribution in projects, but they are not expected to take part in shaping, changing the projects or criticizing their designed contents (ecla 1 1973). oakley (1991) argued that participation could be 1 economic commission for latin america mailto:dngtoandaklak@gmail.com participation in development: a case study..... 423 approached from two angles. one is to regard participation as a means and the other as an end. as a means, participation is used as a vehicle to achieve a predetermined goal rather than participation itself. as an end, participation means placing its concentration more on capacity building and strengthening participants’ confidence, believing that their own involvement will ensure developmental activities in their community to be more effective and sustainable. as a conclusion, he stresses that participation, whatever form it may take, cannot be simply seen as physical and tangible contributions from the community. in vietnam, participation is particularly referred to by the government as “people’s participation”, particularly since the promulgation of doi moi (reform) policy in 1986. the aim of the reform was to review the experiences of development in the past and learn from the serious shortcomings the country had encountered in its 21 years’ experimentation of collectivisation and communisation of agricultural production in the north (1959 – 1980). it also aimed to examine the consequences of rapid collectivisation in the south after reunification in 1975 and mismanagement of the state (boothroyd 2000), so that new efforts could be initiated to accelerate “economic growth linked closely with social progress and equity, cultural development and environmental protection” (government of vietnam 1991). since 1986, participation has been further bolstered by foreign funded development projects in the country. these projects aimed to promote local participation, particularly regarding it as prerequisite for the success and sustainability of the projects. in spite of its recent popularity, other than exclusive reports from ngos 2 and personal anecdotes, participation has not been examined systematically and critically especially in terms of its relevance and acceptance by the intended beneficiaries in development projects. whether participation could actually improve effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of development projects, or whether it actually has further strengthened local ownership of the project, given extra incentive to its people for 2 non-governmental organization mobilising their own resources and commitment to make decisions for its own future also remains uncertain. in this context, an empirical and critical examination of people’s participation in development projects seems to be both timely and urgent. here, this article proposes to investigate a danish funded project on rwss in daklak province in vietnam with special focus on two villages in nam dong commune, cu jut district, one of the three pilot districts chosen to have such a project implemented. a critical study of the project hopefully demonstrates how participation has been practiced and perceived by different related stakeholders and the insights gained from such observations in the province may perhaps be most valuable in assessing participation and its contribution in other development projects elsewhere in the nation. aim and objectives of the study this study examines how the concept of participation is being practiced in vietnam, using a case study of the rwss project in daklak with special emphasis on investigating how the villagers in the study areas perceive, expect, and ultimately practice participation in the course of working with the project. furthermore, it will highlight the degree of participation among the major stakeholders. this includes how they evaluate the effectiveness and relevance of participation in their project, particularly in terms of the benefits they consider to be most significant. in this study, a set of research questions was prepared: 1. how is participation or the participatory approach understood and exercised by the personnel and stakeholders in the project? 2. how do local villagers in the project areas perceptive and interpret the meaning of participation? what are their expectations? 3. how are people in the villages included in the process of participation? specially, in what type of activity and at what stage of the project are they called to participate? 4. in what capacity do local villagers participate in the project? as informants or knowledge contributors or decision makers? asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 422-446. 424 how do local people evaluate their experience with participation? how do they assess the eventual outcomes? participation: a literature review meaning of participation there is little doubt that “participation” has become a term entrenched in development studies. after continuous efforts in promoting the concept as a set of principles for planning and implementing inclusive development for more than a decade, participation is no longer considered something entirely novel to most development practitioners and beneficiaries in the western world. however, its trajectories to common acceptance have not always been smooth. although development assistance was offered to third world nations, it was not until the 1960s that planners considered it made sense to enable local villagers to have involvement with projects. however, what they meant by involvement was only encouraging a greater number of villagers to take part in a project that had already been designed for them. in other words, although participation was promoted, local people were still denied an opportunity to have their say in decisions that would affect their lives. nor had they been offered the option to articulate their needs and priorities which they knew better than anyone else. since then, however, the concept of participation has been continuously moulded and remoulded. in 1973, ecla, for example, considered participation as the outcome of the involvement of the targeted beneficiaries of a development project as well as the contributions they made. in this context, the targeted beneficiaries were not expected to have any role in shaping or defining the project objectives or its agenda and design. participation at the time was only to make local people feel good, so that they would take part in the development activities already in place for them (pateman 1970). cohen and uphoff (1977) argued that participation should include local members in the decision-making processes as well as in the evaluation of the outcomes of a project whereby they not only could make contributions, but also be embraced by the project and empowered by it. in this regard, pearse and stiefel (1979) made it clear that participation should involve organising targeted beneficiaries of the development project to increase their control over resources from which they had hitherto been excluded. richardson (1983) proposed that participation should be about the ways in which ordinary people should take part in the formulation and implementation of a social policy and decision. according to him, there are two forms of participation-direct and indirect. what characterised the former was the attempt made by locals to influence the course of government policy in a face-to-face manner. the latter, in contrast, involved no face-to-face interaction, nor any attempt to take action influencing government decisions. it is important that intended beneficiaries should be in an appropriate position to influence the direction and implementation of a development project with a view to enhancing their existing well-being particularly with regard to income, personal growth, self-reliance and/or other values that they cherished (paul 1987). according to oecd (1994), it is important that partnership upon the basis of open dialogue among the various actors be built and local views and indigenous knowledge be deliberately sought and respected in development. by far the most influential figure in pushing participation in a new direction was illich (1983), who argued strongly that participation should be a process of de-professionalization in all domains of life. in his view, development practitioners should not be seen as the only people who were knowledgeable and that the locals were ignorant and incapable. he stressed that local knowledge and experience were even more important for the success and sustainability. for this reason, development practitioners should not consider local participation as a process of handing over the stakes to their target audiences, but as a process through which future beneficiaries can fully get involved in making plans, contribute to the design and more importantly to decisionmaking processes (illich 1983 in chamber 1997). in some ways, this coincided with the broader changes in the philosophy of participation in development: a case study..... 425 governance of the time. specially, some researchers had argued that there was a strong connection between participation and decentralisation or empowerment. according to rondinelli (1981), for example, decentralising administration from a single centre and conferring power to local government would encourage people’s active participation in cultural, social, economic and political activities in their communities. faguet (1997) agreed that decentralisation promoted political equality, accountability, responsiveness, a sense of ownership and, in turn, efficiency and effectiveness. thus, decentralisation could become a renovated structure for improving democracy and participation. barriers to participation oakley’s (1991) pointed out three main barriers that could heavily hinder participation: structural, administrative, and social obstacles. first and foremost, participation could be heavily influenced by the political environment within the country it was promoted. he further stressed that where the prevailing political ideology does not encourage openness for public consultation and prefers to maintain a highly centralised political system, it is more likely that participation would face serious obstacles as the political environment frustrates rather than encourages participation. he called these structural obstacles, which tend to maintain the status quo and prevent people from developing an awareness of their rights that they are entitled for participation. structural barriers are more likely to be found in a centrally planned political environment as its planned goals are usually hard to change, and leave little room for the more spontaneous development initiatives that usually come from local communities. he further argued that barriers to participation are not limited to governments and administrative structures. they could also be found in people’s mentality of dependence, especially in cases where people have become overly dependent on the government to make decisions for them, their own confidence in and capacity for making their own decisions, and organising and developing their own initiatives would also be weakened. there are, however, other social obstacles for participation, among which gender emerges as an important one. for a long time, the place of women was traditionally defined to stay within the household, performing housework. this gender barrier obviously denies women any opportunity to participate in socio-economic development activities. advantages of participation uphoff (1986b) pointed out a number of advantages associated with participation. first, one would gain more accurate information on the needs, priorities and capacities of the local community through their participation, and these elements could be essential for the success of projects. second, participation could also provide more efficient ways to allocate limited resources to better meet local needs. castillo (1983) insisted that top-down strategies have proved to make little impact upon poverty alleviation, whereas a participatory approach could be more helpful, especially community members were generally resourceful and knowledgeable rather than ignorant and apathetic as commonly stereotyped. oakley (1991) concluded that participation could contribute most to five key aspects in development projects efficiency, effectiveness, self-reliance, coverage and sustainability. he argued that participation not only allowed local people to be involved in determining the objectives and priorities of a project, but also in making plans and decisions. through this process, indigenous knowledge, experience and resources could then be fully and effectively utilised. therefore, participation would also provide local people with an opportunity to break away from their dependence on external assistance in providing solutions to their problems. as a result, they would also develop confidence in their own capacity and become self-reliant in the future. in turn, participation would further bring local community a greater sense of control of their own destiny as well as the pride of being independent, bringing an end to their feeling of being isolated and their possible mentality of dependence. principles of practicing participation in order to ensure the success of participation in development projects, oakley (1991) proposed three major principles for practice the primacy of people, people’s knowledge, and inclusion of women. specifically, he maintained that as development is more a humanising process, all asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 422-446. 426 development projects must first be oriented to local people, their interests, needs and priorities. this means that the projects should not simply focus on people as objects of change, but rather as subjects of development. as objects of change, local people would remain passive actors in that they would only perform what they were told to do instead of taking their own initiatives for change. sethi (1987,:52) rightly observed, “conventional modes of development, explicitly or implicitly, always treat local people as an object of change and the relation between the development agent and the people themselves often takes the form of a subject acting upon an object; the outcome is a delivery approach – that is, an attempt to bring development to people through deliveries of knowledge and resources from outside”. further, it is recommended that the long-term objective of promoting local participation is to improve the locals’ capacity, leadership, organizational skills, a sense of ownership and responsibility in the projects. to do so, a number of principles should be borne in mind. the first principle is the inclusion of all people that will be affected by the decisions, policies or a project. attention should also be given to ensure equal partnership among the participants. recognition of indigenous knowledge, capacity and equal rights of every participant, regardless of their social backgrounds, will be important as it will help the projects explore and fully utilise local resources. this has been neglected in the past projects that promoted a top-down approach (borda 1987). transparency is another important principle. to achieve this, an environment conducive to open communication and building dialogue should be created. sharing power combined with sharing responsibility is another important element. the purpose is to avoid possible conflicts that may occur among stakeholders as a result of uneven division of power and also to make sure that all stakeholders have equal responsibility for the decisions that are made and each should have a clear mandate for implementing those decisions. empowerment is another important principle. the purpose is to promote mutual learning and empowerment. cooperation is the last point that should attract due attention. it helps to share every participant’s strength and reduce their weaknesses (sethi, 1987). women and participation historically, the struggle for gender equality can be traced to the early stages of the inception of the united nations in 1945 when only 30 out of 51 member states, allowed “women’s equal voting rights with men or permitted them to hold public office”. at that time, not much progress was achieved. however, the struggle did not come to a deadlock but continued and led to a number of steps considered as important marks in achieving better gender equality as it had attracted special attention of many more nations. at this stage, international efforts were given to achieve codification of women’s legal and civic rights, acknowledging that law itself was not enough to ensure equal rights for women. this therefore led the struggle to the second phase with convening of the number of international congresses on gender equality in decision making e.g. the open dialogue in mexico in 1975, the conference in copenhagen in 1980, in nairobi in 1985 and in beijing in 1995 etc. impressive progress has been achieved in recent decades (kongolo and bamgose 2002). as a result, social perception of women as merely a house lady has also gradually disappeared as a result of socioeconomic developments as well as the increasing requirements of life quality between women and men (bui. 2003 in barry. 2003). this could be seen as an important step marking a sharp change in ideology. however, one can still see that today, women especially women in rural areas, remain consistently neglected and forgotten by policy and decision makers. their inclusion in development projects is rare. this becomes rarer in such a society as vietnam, where people were heavily influenced by confucianism, which stated that men were always superior to women (barry. k 1996) and women considered to belong to the weak side are not suitable for working outside. however, nowadays, this conception has changed. as a result, women have gained a greater representation in society. an increasing higher proportion of women’s representation at various levels is also seen. however, further improvements still need to be made, particularly in political systems, as presently women’s representation in political organisations remains very limited. participation in development: a case study..... 427 although conditions of freedom, initiative and creativeness have been expanded for everyone in recent decades, women, particularly rural and ethnic minority women, are still marginalised. part of the reason for the marginalisation is that they feel inadequately prepared and unable to catch up with increasing requirements and demands that society is posing. further limitations in narrowing the gender gap still emerge. one of the limitations encountered is the social attitude, not only in men but also in the women themselves, toward women’s role. to change this, there is a need for persistent efforts in education and affirmative activities, so that they can build self-confidence, the capacity and necessary skills to make better contributions to the development of their own communities. at this point, it is appropriate to add that the constitution of the socialist republic of vietnam clearly states that “male and female citizens have equal rights in all aspects of political, economic, cultural, social and family life”. as an attempt to turn the constitutional stipulations into practice, in 2002 the government of vietnam issued a national gender strategy and action plan for the advancement of women. in november 2003, a gender strategy in agriculture and rural development to the year 2010 was also published. the overall ideology of these strategies are to achieve gender equality and raise the status of rural women, thus achieving a higher level of agricultural and rural development in the period of industrialization and modernization of agriculture. the research site the research was conducted in nam dong commune of cu jut district in daklak province in vietnam. the commune had 13,990 people living in sixteen villages. it was the first commune in the district chosen to have the piped water schemes constructed under this project for its local characteristics such as high local need, a chronic scarcity of water, and diversity in ethnicity etc. however, due to limited resources, this research was only limited to village one and village two, where two piped schemes were already installed. table 1: basic information on research sites village total househol d total populatio n ethnicity % of access to water and sanitation income (vnd)/m % of participation in water supply and sanitation village 1 184 920 30% 10 150.000 to 200.000 60% village 2 201 1005 56% 10 120,000170,000 30% available reports indicated that only half of the households owned dug wells, which run dry six months of the year. it was common for many households to share one well. as far as water quality was concerned, the reports showed that 60% to 70% of ground water was contaminated with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. many were constructed too near to latrines or animal sheds. furthermore, percentage of people affected with water borne and sanitation related diseases like diarrhoea, worms, and red eye has increased as a result of using poor quality water keep increasing. a greater concern was the incidence of reproductive and urinary tract infections among women. the reports also indicated that more than two thirds of the households in these villages did not have access to hygienic latrines. for local participation in the schemes, according to a project officer, most of the villagers had some reservations about the project as they fear that it might not be successful, and that they would lose money and time. their fear was understandable because there had been several projects implemented in these communities without success. additionally, many of the households could not asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 422-446. 428 afford the contributions required to participate in the project. research design & sampling for this research, due to time and resource constraints, only 25 people from different social backgrounds were invited to participate as key informants who are categorised into three groups: group one consisted of ordinary villagers; group two consisted of project personnel; group three was made up of local authority leaders and project administrators. the researcher is aware that a small heterogeneous sample might not able to reflect correctly the issue under study, as it would make it hard to generalise the eventual findings of the research (patton, 1990). still, the researcher believed that given the different backgrounds the informants had, they would be the most helpful in providing a general impression, if not a definitive generalisation of, the different views people had about participation in local communities in this part of vietnam, which in turn would suffice in an exploratory study. 20 out of 25 key informants are direct beneficiaries of the piped schemes, one is a representative of nam dong ppc 3 , two are piped scheme managers and two are project personnel at the provincial level. the direct beneficiaries in this research were ordinary villagers of different ethnicities who took part in constructing work for the piped schemes. these twenty beneficiaries – ten from each village – were selected at random. apart from these, a representative of the cpc 4 , piped scheme managers and villager leaders were invited to participate in the research as a key informant. of the selected informants, more than a half is women who are the most regular users of the scheme. the researcher believed that they had the most thorough of understanding about the scheme in terms of how they had been constructed and operated than other members in the family etc. method of data collection in this research, qualitative approach using indepth interview was chosen as the major 3 province people’s committee 4 commune people’s committee information collecting method for its suitability for exploratory study. this method is usually adopted in exploratory researches where the researcher is attempting to gain understanding of the field of study and to develop theories rather than test them. for taylor and bogdan (1984, p.77), in-depth interviewing is “repeated face-to-face encounters between the researcher and informants directed toward understanding informants’ perspectives on their lives, experiences or situations as expressed in their own words”. for this research, note-taking combined with tape recording. for the former, an advantage was that it promoted the researcher to review and analyse his notes and interpretations as soon as the interview was completed when his impressions were still fresh. more importantly, he was also made to pay closer attention to non-verbal language and nuances of the informants during the interview. for the latter, many informants indicated some reluctance and uneasiness for fear that their responses might be used against them later. data analysis for this research, data collected was first reviewed before all interviews were grouped together to identify if themes and narratives emerged that would warrant closer analysis. the researcher then examined the collected raw data to search for themes that were closely associated with the foci of the research by going through all the interview questions and the responses. after this step, he analysed and interpreted the data by using the major themes/concepts that emerged. research findings main research questions and perceptions of key informants the information collected from a total of twenty-five informants reveal three main perceptions of the meaning of participation. approximately two thirds of informants of group one in village two considered participation as physical contributions of target audiences in the construction of the schemes. as one male informant said: participation means participating in meetings, digging channels to prepare for installing the participation in development: a case study..... 429 pipes and contributing money to constructing the scheme. another female informant also shared the same view, saying: participation means participating in implementing project’s activities that we are requested to, for example, digging the channels, attending meetings and contributing money to setting up the scheme. in this context, it is clear that for this group participation was understood simply as a process through which prospective beneficiaries could make contributions to a project. this group did not see participation as a means to achieve democracy or sustainability, but merely as a means to gain a physical access to clean water for daily consumption. furthermore, there was no clear link for these people between their participation and the democracy and sustainability of the scheme. as one informant said: we do not care how much we participate in the project nor if we can make a decision for our own. what we care is when and how to access clean water at a reasonable price. we do not understand what is meant by sustainability, it is so vague to us. field observations showed two main reasons that this perception may have developed. the main reason was that the meaning of participation was not clearly communicated to this group. consequently, members of this group were not equipped with necessary knowledge about participation, or its close link with the scheme’s sustainability. though the project organised a number of community consultations and short training courses which aimed to equip prospective users with information in relation to the project, and the approach it would introduce, the courses and consultations did not meet local needs. one informant said: we were invited to consultations and training courses. we really liked it as there we could discuss the scheme and were taught about the approach. however, the courses were too short for us to understand everything in detail. this indicates that the main cause of deficient understanding of the meaning of participation in this group resulted from insufficient communication between the project and its target audiences. while iec activities were almost entirely neglected, the project seemed to concentrate all of its resources on building a physical scheme as soon as possible. this was done so that the scheme could be duplicated in surrounding areas as soon as possible. in other words, the fact that the project focussed on setting up physical structures led to the neglect of iec activities that were specifically intended to explain the project to the villagers. consequently, the villagers were not sufficiently prepared to participate in the project. as a result, many of the users lost interest in the scheme. one of the main reasons, according to them, was that the scheme did not supply the quality of water they had expected. moreover, the water tariff that was applied was not affordable. one said: we initially thought that water would be used for free or at a very cheap price. now it turned out that is so expensive and unaffordable to us. this again indicates that members of this group did not have adequate knowledge about the project. in short, they were not given enough opportunities to discuss details relating to the scheme. nor did they have the right to make a decision on their own, though they invested money in the scheme. the field study also revealed that the project did not conduct an adequate assessment of its perspective users’ financial capacity, or their willingness to pay for water, before setting up the scheme. information contained in the project’s pra reports was not reflective of villager’s financial status or their willingness to pay. it is necessary to add that the pra reports were not conducted by professionals or experienced personnel. furthermore, upon completion, these reports were not used as an important source of reference, but were shelved. it was not surprising then that the villagers were ignorant of the meaning of participation. it is also not surprising that the outcomes of the project turned out to be different to their initial expectations. another major issue with this project stems from a long tradition in vietnam. that is the tendency of common people to leave it to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 422-446. 430 others, particularly the elite, to decide everything for them. they did this conscious of the fact that the decisions of others would affect their lives. one of the informants stated: well, let the government decide everything and we will follow. we do not know what to do. it is better to let it be decided by the government and let us know what we have to contribute. on the other hand, the other one-third of the informants from this group described participation as the full involvement of locals in all stages of a project. one male informant, who was also a secondary school teacher, stated that: participation does not simply mean participating in carrying out activities in relation to the scheme, but also means that we, the prospective beneficiaries, have the right to discuss and make a decision on the scheme related issues. this perception of participation is supported by pateman (1970), who stated that participation should be considered as a process in which each individual member of the policy and decisionmaking body has equal power in the outcomes of the decision or policy. another informant, who was a village motivator in the project, said: participation is more than making physical contribution. but it also gives us a chance to express our opinions freely. our sense of responsibility and ownership is built and we will be the owners of the scheme later. it was apparent that for these informants, participation really conveyed a different message. to these people participation was considered important in ensuring sustainability and democracy. although democracy is a worthy goal of any project, it is extremely broad, and must be pursued separately (white 1981). the major reason behind such a difference in the perception of the meaning of participation between villagers in this group was the lack of clarity of information distributed by the project. we have already seen how iec activities in the project were not prioritised; this resulted in misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the approach among villagers in village two. the damage done by the lack of communication was highlighted by the fact that the villagers who described participation more adequately had received more information and training from the project. the respondents from the third of the villagers who responded more adequately tended to come from organisations with whom the project worked, or from local schools, which had been a focus of project activities. it is apparent that the more information people received about the approach, the more they understood about its implications. it was unfortunate that this project did not give sufficient attention to communication with the villagers. even worse, locals were perceived as outsiders, and merely as recipients of the project’s outcomes. their local experience and knowledge were not utilised by the project. as one person from group two (project personnel) said: having local involvement is time consuming and it will slow down the project progress because they are not knowledgeable about the project and its approach. we’d better do everything. the villagers’ marginalisation in this project may have been because project personnel underestimated local capacity and knowledge. this kind of attitude toward local inputs is not new in development. white (1981) said that in practice a great change in the attitudes of participation practitioners in many fields toward the value of local knowledge and skills needed to be made. it needed to become generally accepted that local knowledge was a useful resource, and could be well adapted to local circumstances. however, local inputs are still disregarded in development projects. as a result, intended users, who were more knowledgeable about local conditions and priorities than anyone else, were not invited to participate in the project adequately. nor were they given an opportunity to have a say in the decision making process. consequently, many of the projects did not solve local problems or meet local demands. the project in village two is no exception. according to many villagers, the scheme did not function to their satisfaction financially, or in terms of water quality. participation in development: a case study..... 431 respondents belonging to group one in village one, where the scheme was installed after village two, had a more positive opinion of the project and of participation in general. one of the main reasons for this difference was the fact the experiences from village two were taken into account during the implementation of the project in village one. participation was perceived by respondents from village one as more than merely physical contributions. (as many respondents from village two stated it was.) one of the informants said: participation gives us a chance to express our own ideas. we really feel happy about that. it is very democratic indeed. i assume that it is necessary because it is our own scheme. in this context, participation was apparently understood as a required means, not as an end, to achieve sustainability and democracy in water supply. they also realised that there is a close link between participation, sustainability, and democracy. another informant added that: previously, there have been some projects working in the community, for example the electricity and irrigation projects, but they did not work satisfactorily. the company sent their people down here and let them work without a close technical supervision. we were not invited to get engaged in any single stage of the project nor were we given a chance to contribute our local experience and ideas, but in this project we can raise our opinions, and more importantly we can decide things. this highlights the fact that prospective users were always willing to participate and share their local knowledge and experience as long as they were given an appropriate opportunity. having a chance to express their own opinions, in their own words, meant a lot to local people. they felt that their voice was heard, and that their local knowledge was utilised in the project. more importantly, their ideas were seriously considered when decisions were made. by getting involved in decision-making, locals became more responsible for the project outcomes. this sense of responsibility helped to protect those outcomes later. white (1981) stated that when prospective users take an active part in project activities like planning and implementation, they collectively consider the completed scheme as their own. furthermore, they feel proud of the scheme and feel responsible for it. they therefore use it more, use it more carefully, and do their best to maintain it. one of the informants said, proudly, that: we are very happy with the scheme now. the water quality is so good. we will not allow any damage to the scheme. we will protect it at all costs for our use. this again points to the sense of ownership and responsibility that can only be formed when prospective users have input into decisions that will affect their lives. these informants also saw a close link between participation and sustainability. they also realised that their local experience and knowledge were important for the projects, as they understood more the local situation and needs better than anyone else. one might wonder why there was such a big gap in the meaning of participation between villagers in the two villages. there are a number of possibilities. one widely recognised reason was that in village one, attention was given to carrying out iec activities. more community consultations and training courses were held. the prospective users were given the right to discuss, plan, and make decisions on whether or not to install the scheme, as well as how and where to install it. another important point was that the administrator in this village was more active and educated than that in village two. moreover, lessons learned from the implementation in village two were taken into account during the implementation of the project in village one. that meant instead of just focusing on creating a tangible product, much of the project’s attention was given to iec activities. a noticeable difference in village one was that iec activities had been conducted long before the real implementation of the project. one extremely important component of the iec activities was a careful assessment of local needs, the affordability of the scheme, as well as willingness to pay for water. this assessment was conducted with support from an international iec specialist before construction was commenced. in summary, data assembled showed that the scheme in village two was not implemented in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 422-446. 432 a participatory manner, as the users here merely got involved in assisting with the implementation of the program once decisions and plans had already been made. they were passive recipients of development services more than development initiators. this is despite the fact that they were called on to participate in a number of activities. because of passive participation, many of them seemed to lose interest in the scheme and did not know how the scheme was constructed or operated. the situation in village one was different from village two, where data showed that the users were highly interested in the scheme, and that they considered it their own. it is clear to see that the scheme here was implemented in a totally participatory manner, as everything in relation to the scheme, from making plans, to discussing water tariffs, to physical construction, was discussed and decided by the users themselves. this process was accomplished with technical assistance and support from the project’s technical staff. white (1981) considered this type of participation as the most usual situation encountered in practice. data revealed that there was a gap that needed to be bridged in terms of the understanding and interpretation of the meaning of the participatory approach among the project staff. there were many different opinions on the meaning of participation, including those of staff members who worked directly with the public. some staff simply interpreted participation as informing the target audience of the project’s plan. furthermore, full promotion of participation was not done because the process required to develop participation was considered time too consuming and impractical. as one staff member said: we are working in participatory manner as said in the strategy. the villagers are called for to participate in implementing the project’s activities. we furthermore frequently keep them informed of the project’s situation. it is hard to involve the locals in all activities, because many of them are incapable of taking initiatives and implementing activities without the project assistance. it would slow down the project progress. it is clear that participation in this project was interpreted improperly not only by ordinary villagers, but also by the staff themselves. this is particularly troubling because these same staff members considered themselves specialists. in some cases, participation was seen as an obstacle that prevented the project from progressing. this indicates that the project’s main concern was how to keep progress up while paying little or no attention to the sustainability of the development. one of the primary ways to ensure sustainability is to build local capacity. because local villagers were perceived to be ignorant and incapable, they were marginalised. this marginalisation led to a belief that their participation in the project would be a hindrance to the project. as a result, they did not participate in a meaningful way in the project. this meant that at the end of the project the villagers did not feel the scheme was theirs, or even feel particularly attached to it. another staff member revealed that the project was under pressure to deliver tangible products, even at the cost of non-tangible ones. apparently the higher ups from the organisations involved in the project wanted to see as many tangible results as possible. this may have been why project staff proceeded without gaining local participation in favour of creating a tangible result quickly. that pressure may have also contributed to the feeling by some staff members that local participation would slow the project down too much. it is possible to believe that the upper levels of the organisation were demanding results in a time frame that was too short to foster any meaningful local participation. participatory approach exercised in the project despite diversity in the understanding, definition, and interpretation of the participatory approach, a certain consensus has emerged among international development organisations. the participatory approach, according to this definition, should entail three main dimensions: the involvement of every individual member that will be affected by the decisions made in the planning process; the consequent implementation of those decisions; and the sharing of the benefits (or liabilities) resulting from those decisions (world bank 1978). it may have been because of misinterpretation and inadequate understanding of the above participation in development: a case study..... 433 definition that many projects in vietnam and elsewhere have failed to achieve or maintain their expected outcomes. the recognition of the importance of the participatory approach for future development activities that aim to achieve sustainability has pushed the government of vietnam to take action. it has prepared itself to ensure that its future investments in development projects, particularly in the field of rwss, will not be a waste of resources. one of the actions it took was the approval by the prime minister of nrwsss in 2000. this introduced a radical change in terms of the approaches to be adopted in all development projects and programs. that is, it was made explicit that a participatory was to replace heavy, top-down approaches. under nrwsss, local participation was described as seeking full local involvement from the initial planning stages and decision making, all the way to reaping the benefits of projects. the rwss project in daklak province, which was the subject of this article, was an attempt to pilot the nrwsss. the project was commenced in early 2001 and was expected to be complete by june 2006. however, after five years, much remains to be done to see the strategy implemented as designed. so far, it seems that the project has generally gone off track, despite some encouraging results in village one and elsewhere. structurally, the implementation of the project generally followed the government’s existing top-down structures. this means that implementation was undertaken through different administrative levels. it seems difficult to believe that the strategy was developed at a central level but that the provincial level officers were responsible for implementing it locally. this was despite the fact that the strategy’s content was completely novel to the province. moreover, provincial staff members were not adequately trained about the approach. as a result, a large gap in understanding the meaning of the approach emerged among project staff, stakeholders, and leaders. these gaps led to several issues for the project. one of the first and most obvious was the distribution of inconsistent information to ordinary villagers. data also showed that the project was off track, as it had devoted all of its resources to creating tangible structures. iec activities were, for the most part, neglected. apart from all of this, the donor’s role was very limited. this lack of involvement meant that the influence of the donor was not strong enough to move the project back on track. for some reasons, the donor also seemed to prefer the setting up of physical structures to “soft building” projects. this may have been so that the donor could show its danish visitors that the money it had spent was well invested. it is worthwhile to add that during the last five years, the project received visitors from the danish embassy and ministry of foreign affairs on a regular basis. another problem with the program was the interference that using existing government channels created for local participation. part of this interference was the fact that a concentration was placed on government staff rather than locals. additionally, locals felt unable to express their opinions openly when government representatives were present. due to limited project resources, the project involved social organisations such as the wu, the youth union, and the farmer’s association in the implementation of the strategy. this inclusion was considered to be an optimal solution as it was thought that these organisations would participate in the dissemination of project related information throughout the communities. however, in practice, the project received a poor response from these social organisations. the organisations usually claimed that they were busy implementing their own activities. going a little deeper into this, one can see that the main reason for such a poor response was the lack of a real partnership between the project and these organisations. it is hardly fair to expect these organisations to devote their limited resources to an outside project without some kind of remuneration. the only way that it would be possible to induce social organisations to participate in external projects without some type of remuneration would be to create a situation whereby part of a social organisation’s responsibility would include participation in government directed projects. again due to resource limitations, the project established an iec network that was responsible, from the top down, for the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 422-446. 434 provincial, regional, and village level. members of the network were selected from social organisations in the province. the objective of this network was to disseminate to villagers all information related to the project. this included training them on the approach. the tot 5 model was applied, and was the key idea in the establishment of the network. however, due to the lack of continuous participation by members at the provincial level, the training of lower level staff was irregular and incomplete. again, the core reason was the lack of an appropriate mechanism to stimulate these staff to work closely with the project in a regular manner. consequently, staff members at the district, commune, and village levels were not adequately trained on the approach. we have already seen how the project prioritised the establishment of physical structures while little attention was given to building “soft structures”. in this sense, the “soft structures” are those which are socially based, such as an understanding of participation, democratisation, and sustainability. it is critical to stress that this process was especially highlighted in the strategy. despite the emphasis “soft structures” received in the strategy, there was strong evidence that it was taken lightly in practice. the neglect of “soft structures” led prospective users to a confused understanding of the project and the approach that it aimed to introduce. the project held community consultations and training courses to help ordinary villagers gain an insight into the approach. however, due to internal factors like a large implementation area, and external factors like a shortage of specialised staff, political pressure for tangible products, and competitive environments between project sections, these kinds of activities were conducted in a perfunctory manner. consequently, many of the villagers, especially in village two, lost interest in the scheme. partially contributing to this loss of interest, and as a result of it was the fact that the final outcome of the project was very different than the villagers had expected. some villagers, believing they had been cheated, expressed 5 training of trainers anger and disappointment at the project’s outcomes. another major issue was the fact that villagers were not called upon to contribute to the construction of the project. this was because project staff feared that they would lose control of the project if villagers were given a role. the events that transpired in village two are an example that further illustrates this. here, many of the activities like planning, design, selection of a construction contractor, construction, and supervision were not decided locally. prospective users were simply called on to make physical contributions like digging channels and making monetary payment. sadly, there were many other examples of situations where local participation was completely neglected or forgotten. data revealed that this was, at least partly, because of the project personnel’s faulty understanding of the importance of local participation, and a concurrent failure to promote it. additionally, the project considered success solely in terms of the number of physical schemes installed and the amount of money spent every year. it is also important to add that the participatory approach was not only novel to the locals, but also to many of the project personnel, commune, and provincial leaders. data indicated that many of the commune and provincial level personnel also interpreted local involvement simply as physical participation. it was therefore not surprising that the approach was not effectively implemented. if those who are responsible for implementing a project are ignorant of its aims, how could we expect anything different? there is little doubt that many of the personnel, including iec national specialists, understood inadequately, and interpreted incorrectly, the meaning of the approach. for these people, participation was simply understood as informing the target audience of the activities and plans of the project once they had been decided. in their view, the approach was sound in theory, but impractical in reality. in practice, it was difficult to implement; it took a long time and required a significant amount of additional resources. as this project worked under a very tight time frame, this may have been unrealistic. as one staff member said: “facilitating participation in development: a case study..... 435 participation was difficult and timeconsuming”. moreover, it is difficult to foster participation when the local political climate is resistant to participation. there were leaders and organisations that feared the erosion of their power and control if villagers were encouraged to take an active role in all the activities of the project. this is not a completely surprising phenomenon in a politically sensitive environment such as vietnam. openness and the desire for public consultation and feedback were still limited. in this regard, oakley (1991) stated that where political ideologies did not encourage public participation, but maintained a highly centralised political system, it was likely that participation would face serious obstacles. therefore, the fear that exercising the participatory approach in this project would slow it down was, at least, understandable. one interesting fact was that the agreement between the three provinces indicated that if any of the annual budget allocated for a province was not spent, the balance would be transferred to the other two provinces at the end of the fiscal year. this was expected to put some pressure on each province to spend the project money. while it does do that, it also tends to encourage a situation where money must be spent, rather than allowing time to adequately determine needs and spend money to best effect. considering this project in a broader context, of the three selected provinces – ha tinh, nghe an, and daklak, ha tinh was generally considered the one in which the participatory approach was best implemented. it is worth mentioning though, that this province was frequently criticised for its slow progress in the development of physical schemes. however, the assessments of many national and international specialists revealed that this province was laying a solid foundation for future development because its efforts were concentrated on developing “soft” outcomes. in this province, physical structures were only established when the prospective users fully understood every detail about the project and how it related to them. villagers then voluntarily took an active role in implementing the project. it is clear that villagers would not understand all the details of the scheme if they had not been fully involved in the project, from initiation, to planning, to finalising decisions, to reaping benefits from the schemes (white 1981). obstacles to local participation in the project data assembled revealed that the promotion of the participatory approach in this project encountered a number of obstacles. the first obstacle encountered in village two was due to the lack of clarity of information. villagers were not sufficiently communicated about the project and its approach. they were also not communicated about the mechanisms that would be adopted. data collected also revealed that administrators were not active enough to handle construction, or deal with problems occurring in relation to the scheme. secondly, low levels of literacy were an obstacle to promoting effective participation in this village. higher proportions of illiteracy were seen among ethnic minority villagers. the project suffered from a combination of factors which made sharing information difficult. the project’s communication strategy was not well designed for the average villager. at the same time, low levels of literacy interfered with the ability of ordinary villagers to correctly interpret the information. thirdly and perhaps most obviously, was the project’s use of a top-down model in which attention was devoted to constructing physical structures with little concern for participation. although project staff members were fully aware that the top-down method was not sustainable, they found it easier to adopt than the new one. this phenomenon existed not only in village two, but also elsewhere in the project areas. in village two, the project’s intention was, as quickly as possible, to establish a tangible structure to strengthen ordinary villager’s belief, and then to duplicate it in other areas later. this led to a neglect of communication with ordinary villagers. the project personnel’s lack of specialised knowledge about the approach was also a major obstacle that hampered the effective promotion of participation in the community. the fact that the provincial office was located away from the community was another obstacle to the general implementation of the project. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 422-446. 436 although there was a “district advisory office” established at district level only three staff was based at this office. furthermore, no clear mandate was in place to guide the work of these staff. many people felt that the staff based at the district office were based there temporarily, and only until somewhere else could be found for them. besides the obstacles mentioned above, the project encountered a number of general obstacles. the cultural and the historical characteristics of the vietnamese, who were colonised and dominated for a long period of time, and who were taught to listen more than to speak, were regarded as a limitation in promoting local involvement. moreover, the approach was not only novel to project personnel and stakeholders but also to ordinary villagers. although it was developed and popular in western world, it was virtually unknown in vietnam. the present political environment in vietnam in general, and in the project areas in particular, was not supportive of local participation. we have already seen in the literature review how participation can be negatively influenced by the political environment in which a project is implemented. in this case, it is no surprise that local participation faced serious obstacles. although ordinary villagers were invited to attend community consultations, they tended to be very quiet and reserved, particularly in the presence of representatives of the local authority. furthermore, due to a shortage of specialised staff and resources, these consultations and discussions were held in a perfunctory manner. some staff argued that creating active participation in a development project was too hard and time consuming. this argument was at least partially true in this instance because of the political environment. some also argued further that these obstacles were structural, and prevented local people from developing an awareness of the rights to which they were entitled. these barriers also made it difficult for people to access the services they deserved as well. despite encouraging socio-economic achievements in recent years, vietnam remains a centrally planned country. this is described as structural barrier. centrally planned goals are usually hard to change, and leave a very little room for spontaneous development initiatives that can usually be achieved through local community participation (oakley 1991). this description reflected the situation the project faced, where prospective users were mobilised to participate in carrying out plans already made by project. in many cases, the project left almost no room for the users to have a say in planning or decision-making. it is fair to say that this is, at least partially, a consequence of the centrally planned environment. there were a number of other limitations to the promotion of local participation in this project. one of these was the locals’ mentality of dependence. a villager from in village two said: it is better to leave everything for the government to decide. we cannot do anything. once the decision is made, we will participate in implementing it. data collected revealed that the issue of a mentality of dependence not only existed among villagers in village two, but also in village one and elsewhere. their main fear was that they would not be capable to make decisions. a secondary fear was that even when they did make a decision, it might not be acceptable to the government. in their minds, it was better to let the government decide everything on their behalf. this proves the point that when people become overly dependent on the government to make decisions for them, their own confidence and capacity for decision-making of is weakened. in time, they become passive recipients. according to oakley (1991), this is particularly commonplace in rural areas in a developing country like vietnam, not only because they lack leadership and organizational skills, but also because they are made incapable of responding to the demands of participation in development projects. another limitation encountered in this project was related to gender issues. although much progress in gender issues has been made in vietnam since 1950s, particularly since 1986, much remains to be done. special efforts need to be made to improve the roles of rural, particularly ethnic minority, women in participation in development: a case study..... 437 development projects. the doi moi policy has been an important step forward that the government has taken in economic development. however, together with the userpays principle, it has created economic competition which is particularly disadvantageous for women. besides participating in new economic and social activities women are still expected to fulfil their traditional responsibilities such as childcare and household duties. consequently, the equality of women in light of this situation has become a major issue. in the project under review, the strategy highlighted the gender issues, paying particular attention to the role of women in project activities. once again though, in practice, this issue was not given due attention. as a result, many women, especially those from ethnic minorities, were still disadvantaged. they were still perceived to be the weaker gender and were also seen as incapable of taking a role in decision-making or implementation. their place was believed to be at home, doing the housework and caring for their children. a project staff stated: well, i do not think rural women here are good enough to implement activities that we would allot them. it is better to invite their husbands. let them stay at home to do the housework. it is clear that the notion that women’s place is at home doing housework still exists. because of this attitude towards their role, they were not encouraged to take an active part in project activities. data revealed that this traditional gender ideology guides not only the men, but also the women. one woman said about the project implementation process: “i have to ask my husband, i do not know. i cannot decide.” many women were invited to community consultations. however, during these events many kept silent from beginning to the end, while others sitting in a far corner of the meeting room paid no attention, and were talking to each other about other things. this was observed particularly in consultations where men outnumbered women, and when local authority representatives were present. women were also found to be very dependent on their husbands, particularly in decisionmaking. data collected showed that none of the interviewed women could make a decision without referring to their husbands. in summary, apart from obstacles like low literacy, the neglect of iec activities, a lack of specialised professionals to promote the strategy and approach, general obstacles related to cultural, political, and administrative characteristics hampered this project. solutions to better participation a number of basic problems must be solved before this project can create meaningful local participation. first and foremost, there is a need for continuous iec activities in the target communities, particularly in villages where ordinary villagers are encountering difficulties resulting from a lack of clarity in communication materials. the iec section of the project needs a thorough overhaul: iec activities must become a priority of the project along with construction; staff members need to be trained to promote the strategy, and the approach it aims to introduce; some of the iec messages need to be redesigned to be more locally appropriate; and the iec network, particularly at the village level, needs to be strengthened and consolidated. special attention must be paid to establishing an open political environment because the present system is not conducive to local participation. on the contrary, it hinders local participation, making it difficult for local people to express their concerns openly. the centrally planned system needs to become more decentralised. presently, the government maintains its tight control over planning and decision-making processes. because government administrators have maintained their grip on planning, local people have remained passive recipients rather than active initiators of development projects. efforts must be made to diminish cumbersome and difficult administrative procedures. a simpler and more accessible system should be put in place. otherwise, all efforts made to promoting local participation will end in failure. this is because locals only take an active part in a project when they feel comfortable and free to express their opinions. efforts must also be made toward internal capacity building. in the context of this project, internal capacity is understood as a development asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 422-446. 438 process where locals develop aspects of the project’s core skills and capacities. these include management, specialised knowledge, and leadership. the development of local capacity enhances the project’s effectiveness and sustainability. local capacity building is also sometimes seen as a process that assists individuals or groups to identify and address issues while gaining insight, experience, and specialised knowledge. this process is normally facilitated through the provision of technical assistance and training. unfortunately, in this project, there was very little increase in local capacity. one of the reasons for the failure in fostering participation in this project is attributable to the lack of capability of project implementers and stakeholders. as we have seen many project personnel and stakeholders did not possess a correct understanding of the approach they were trying to promote. the lack of specialised knowledge about the approach on the part of those responsible for implementing it meant that it fell off the rails relatively quickly. the process of improvement should be considered as continuous and required professional development. however, to fill the gaps in knowledge that still exist in the project the management must first see the importance of participation. once they have realised the importance an effort can be made to address the shortcomings of staff, and of project activities. a separate budget should be allocated for building capacity of staff training, and should be included as an important element of the project strategy. although data indicated that the project did allocate resources for staff development, this training did not address the core needs of staff development. the training courses were mostly short courses on technical issues. at present, the project has five people in charge of promoting the approach. however, only two of them are quite knowledgeable about the approach. as we can see, staff members need to be knowledgeable about an approach to promote it effectively. thus, it is critical that these staff members be trained adequately so they can promote the approach. with the present resources of the project, it is understandable why many local villagers, including project officers, did not understand the approach or its implementation in practice. efforts must also be made to correct the erroneous belief that the production of physical infrastructure is the sole criterion upon which success of the project can be judged. project personnel and policy planners at the provincial and central level must understand that promoting the participatory approach is extremely important for the sustainability of the project outcomes. a serious review of past lesson is advisable; it might help explain why past projects failed. it might also demonstrate how important participation is in maintaining project results. it was clear that in this project, project management was under considerable pressure for tangible products from the upper levels. because of this pressure attention was given primarily to the production of physical outcomes, and the national strategy was entirely neglected. despite remarkable improvements in gender equity achieved in recent years, more effort still needs to be made to increase women’s roles in development. efforts should be given to establishing a legal framework that regulates that women can, on one hand, still carry out their reproductive responsibilities and on the other, participate fully on an equal basis in political, economic, cultural and social activities, particularly once the nation has entered into a new phase of economic development, that is, in the industrialization and modernization process. without such a framework, women are easily marginalized, as they are unable to compete with men because the prime “reproductive responsibilities” are placed on them. as barry (1996) said, social and family responsibilities constitute a heavy burden on their shoulders. they lack time to increase any of their capacities; of particular importance, women’s cultural education and professional training have been stunted. it is precisely due to this state of affairs that although women are entering an era of change when conditions of freedom, initiative and creativeness are being expanded for everyone, women feel unprepared and unable to meet the new demands that the new society is posing. in the context of this project, women were too busy, and too timid to properly participate in project activities. data collected showed that participation in development: a case study..... 439 they were rarely invited to take part in activities in their communities. their responsibilities were felt to be limited to reproduction and household work. it was their husbands that were regular participants in project activities because both men and women believed that women should stay at home and let their husbands go. for this reason, efforts must be made to bring an end to the traditional notion that a woman’s place is at home with the children. on the contrary, the project should encourage them to equally participate in its activities, and also to participate in learning opportunities alongside men. it is likely that many women may initially feel uncomfortable due to fear, and a lack of confidence. however, as their confidence and capacity are gradually built and strengthened through these activities, a sense of comfort will emerge. moreover, women should also be helped to realise that they are equally capable, and can thus make valuable contributions to the project if they participate. furthermore, it should be explained that their participation means a lot to the sustainability of the project. of course, to make sure that women would have enough time to take an active part in activities of the project, it is important that local men should be educated to share the housework, so that women can have more time to participate in the activities. last but not least, efforts must be made to bring an end to the mentality of dependence of the locals. it was generally hoped by local people that the government would invest in the construction of a scheme for them, and what they would have to do is to use it. local people must be helped to gain self-confidence, and improve their awareness, organisational skills, and leadership. this is very important, because without these things they cannot take an active part in activities of the project. neither can they create initiatives in development for their communities after the project has finished. for this reason, locals should be encouraged to take an active role in the activities of projects in their communities. it is also necessary to stress though, that special attention should be given to creating a politically comfortable environment so locals feel able to discuss their concerns, needs, and ideas openly. ideological interference from the project, as well as from political authority must be avoided at the local level. an end must also be brought to the erroneous belief on the part of project staff members that local people are ignorant or incapable of making decisions. in summary, the issue of how to promote better local participation in the project requires a great deal of effort from the project, the government, and from villagers themselves. moreover, social, political, cultural and administrative barriers as mentioned above must be demolished. an open environment with simple administrative procedures needs to be established so that the villagers feel able to discuss openly without the fear of political consequences later. the project itself might need to reconsider whether a reorientation of its strategy and goals is needed, as presently its top priorities were given to set up as many physical structures as possible with very little attention being given to building local capacity, selfconfidence, organisational skills, and leadership. this is very risky, as evidence has shown that sustainability has become an issue in schemes where local participation has not occurred. discussion and conclusion consistent with the literature review given in this article, eventual findings of the research in this article pointed out that local participation involves more than just physical contributions or the presence of intended beneficiaries in activities of development projects. more important than simple participation is the involvement of future beneficiaries in planning and decision making processes. the findings also revealed that simple participation itself does not exist in society as a social reality, but is a process through which reconstruction by all stakeholders involved can be made (nguyen 2003). past projects in vietnam and elsewhere indicated that promoting intended beneficiaries’ participation was a good mechanism to help ensure the sustainability. however, its implementation in practice is not always smooth, and it often encounters a great number of invisible obstacles. furthermore, it requires a lot of additional resources. above all, it requires strong commitment from the local environment within which it is promoted. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 422-446. 440 this section is devoted to a summary of the major findings and observations of this research. it demonstrates outcomes brought about by the approach and highlights lessons learned from the promotion of local participation in the project under study. it is devoted to a discussion of the practical and theoretical implications of this research. summary of research findings the focus of this research was an examination of the perceptions of local villagers and other stakeholders of the participatory approach in a danish funded rwss project in the daklak province in vietnam. special attention is also given to offering an account of how the approach is implemented, and obstacles that may hamper the approach. local situation as mentioned previously, the project was implemented in three rural districts in the daklak province where there is diversity of culture, ethnicity, economics, and sociopolitical features. this research, however, is limited to two villages in one single district cu jut district. the culture of this area is characterised by a rich variance, made up of more than forty different ethnic groups, each with its own distinctive identity. in terms of ethnicity, all the groups, including the kinh majority, live in harmony together. however, one can find differences between ethnic groups in their relationships, particularly with the local government. the ethnic minorities are still facing marginalisation. this is despite the fact that they have been given special priority by the government in recent years. their involvement in the projects in general, and in this project in particular, has increased. there is still some complexity to be seen in social interaction among the ethnic groups, particularly with the kinh. there are groups that are more vulnerable than others. a special feature possessed by these ethnic groups is their strong cohesion and high level of homogeneity. with regard to economic development, the communities are primarily dependent upon agriculture. short-term crops such as wet rice, beans, and maize are the main income source. the findings indicated that the communities are heavily dependent upon the government in terms of policy-making and resource allocation. it is fair to say that the political environment is not conducive to local participation. local initiative for development within communities is not highly encouraged, but is heavily influenced by local stakeholders, including the local authority. it is understandable in this case why these communities lack capacity and the skills to turn their initiative into practice. it is unfair to conclude that the shortage of community capacity and skills results solely from marginalisation. there are other reasons, one of which is a high level of illiteracy, including the lack of proficiency of the national language. another reason is the lack openness of the local government and its cumbersome administrative procedures. solutions that create a better relationship between local communities and the government must be worked out to ensure that local participation is effectively promoted. a more open political environment, including the abolishtion of current cumbersome administrative procedures, and establishment of new ones that are simpler and more accessible, should be in place to stimulate local initiatives. furthermore, local capacity must be built to ensure that there is sufficient local capability to turn initiatives into practice. all of these issues have significant implications for promoting participation within the project. perceptions of participation as described previously, participation is perceived quite differently among the people participating in the project. in general, it can be concluded that participation is perceived simply as physical contributions from intended beneficiaries to the project. these physical contributions take place without any input in the decisions involved in the formulation of the project, how the project will be implemented, or by whom. the intended beneficiaries were frequently denied the opportunity to express their opinions, needs, and priorities even though community consultations were held. only a very small number of people interviewed believed that participation involved more than just physical contributions. to these people, it participation in development: a case study..... 441 involved local participation in discussion and decision-making processes. this notion is supported by cohen and uphoff (1977), who defined participation as the inclusion of community members in planning and decisionmaking processes. the reasons leading to such differences in the perceptions of the meaning of participation among informants in the project is rooted in the objectives of the project. the objective was to try to achieve as many tangible products as possible with little or no regard to the promotion of local participation. furthermore, project personnel perceived local participation simply as a process through which the target audiences are communicated about the project. in other words, these people defined participation as involving the audiences in carrying out activities that were already planned by the project. it is apparent that participation, in this sense, is a means for the project to achieve its target. in this regard, oakley (1991) stated that when participation is considered a means, it could only be seen as a vehicle for achieving an already designed socio-economic objective. this limitation results in a situation where local people’s capacity and skills are not consolidated or built. he further argued that capacity and skills can only be built when participation is considered as an end of the project in and of itself. some respondents felt that the project was short of staff that had specialised knowledge about the approach. though they were assisted by danish specialists, there was limited implementation of the approach introduced in the national strategy as it was believed to be too time intensive and hard to implement. project outcomes despite a number of issues that still require further action to ensure that the project is targeting sustainable development, the project has brought about a number of significant changes for local people, at least within the research areas. for infrastructure, one success of the project is that it has established a number of piped water schemes that supply clean water for ordinary villager’s everyday consumption, putting an end to the utilisation of contaminated water. the use of contaminated water has been identified as the main cause of common disease in the communities. the availability of water schemes has lead to other positive physical changes among the households. for example, it was observed that many households upgraded or constructed new bathrooms and latrines using piped water. regarding behavioural changes, although the project was limited in several ways, the project has introduced villagers and local leaders to a completely new approach which proves to be more effective than the existing one. an advantage of this approach is that it allows villagers to have active participation in planning and decision making processes. though the implementation of the approach in this project was not always smooth, a new air has been blown in the community. for the stakeholders and local leaders, the approach urged them to rethink their traditional attitudes toward development and local input. it pointed out to them that local input is an important resource for the success of a project. it also pointed out that sustainability could hardly be achieved without active local participation. for the villagers, the approach signified the beginning of the end of a long period where the mentality of dependence reigned. to some extent, the traditional notion that it is the government’s responsibility to establish schemes for local projects has changed among the villagers. many of the locals have created development initiatives, though not all of them have been feasible or supported. despite this, it is an important step in the process that brings an end to the mentality of dependence. the approach created an opportunity for villagers to discuss, express their feelings, and exchange opinions about development freely. it also helped them change their awareness and behaviour: marginalisation, particularly of women, the poor, and of ethnic minorities was reduced. moreover, with the water schemes coming into existence, the incidence of waterborne and sanitation related disease was significantly reduced. this meant that villagers could save asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(3), pp. 422-446. 442 more money to purchase more sophisticated means of production, to improve productivity of crops, or purchase labour saving devices like washing machines. lessons learned from the promotion of participatory approach in the project although there are a number of definitions and interpretations of participation, its progress toward common acceptance has not always been smooth. (please see chapter 2 of this article.) although generalisation is problematic, it is useful to measure and judge participation in specific social, economic, cultural, and political contexts. the results of this article also reveal that the term “participation” connotes a wide range of meanings and practices. first, local participation was identified as a central principle for the implementation of the daklak rural water supply and sanitation project. yet, its implementation in practice has not been as effective as had been intended. this is because of varying perceptions of the meaning of participation among project personnel and stakeholders. moreover, the project lacked an appropriate mechanism to promote it. data collected revealed that the project lacked determination in promoting the approach. furthermore, it lacked an appropriate mechanism to attract the involvement of all levels of the government in promoting participation. secondly, it is important to increase donors’ roles, particularly in terms of piloting the strategy and approach. as it happened, the donor’s role in this project was diminished. donor participation is considered necessary, especially once the project is on track. this is particularly true when local participation is promoted in a political environment which does not generally promote participation. in this case, the involvement of the donor was not strong enough to promote participation. thirdly, local participation is critical because data collected showed that the sustainability of schemes is closely associated with the degree of local participation. the more attention is given to iec activities, the more sustainable the projects will be. fourth, the promotion of local participation must be locally sensitive and appropriate. that is, socio-economic, cultural, ethnic and political contexts must be considered. moreover, factors like local capacity, literacy, language, and other social relations need to be considered carefully. the experience of this project revealed that the success of the project in general was largely dependent upon how carefully these factors were taken into consideration. fifth, cumbersome administrative procedures, and a style of administration that is autocratic and hierarchical, creates few incentives for local participation. it does however frustrate efforts to promote participation. last but not least, in areas with a high incidence of poverty and a need for clean water, it is completely understandable why villagers were interested mainly in immediate benefits that could help alleviate their most urgent needs. therefore, it is important that long-term strategies be reinforced by tangible, short-term objectives (nguyen 2003). the conclusions of this article are primarily formulated on the basis of field observations, project documents, and the experiences of the researcher after three years working for the project. it is therefore important that these lessons should be viewed with some caution, as they are not entirely reflective of the overall situation of the project. this is due to certain constraints encountered in the course of executing the research. it is also necessary to verify the reliability of observations by a review documented in the project documents. implications for practice due to constraints as described in previous parts, the eventual findings of this research cannot be generalised to conclude what should be done in all cases to promote a participatory approach in a development project. also, it cannot indicate best practices or specific procedures that should be followed in all cases. nonetheless, a number of useful recommendations do emerge from the research. these recommendations can be used as resources by development projects that aim to promote the participatory approach as a part of their major implementation strategies. participation in development: a case study..... 443 first and foremost, development practitioners need to clarify what the participatory approach actually means in their projects (nguyen 2003). without this clarity they cannot set up smart 6 objectives. owen and rogers (1999) stated that the “smarter” the objective, the easier it will be achieved. in other words, these practitioners need to identify whether participation as envisioned by their projects simply means the physical contributions of the target audience. or, is it envisioned as a process of informing and consulting the public? or, is it something else all together? once the objectives are clarified, a specific set of procedures by which the approach will be promoted, needs to be formulated. this is very important; without a clear procedure, the promotion of local participation will likely fail because of a lack of direction and information. another consideration is the fact that the promotion of the participatory approach is difficult to achieve through existing social organisations and administrative systems. social organizations and the current administrative system are not conducive to local participation. consequently, vulnerable individuals and groups are easily marginalised. to avoid this, appropriate mechanisms and environments must be established to promote participation apart from focusing on building local capacity. the promotion of local participation depends greatly on specific local context, which varies from place to place. certain approaches that may increase local participation in one area may not be successful in another due to different social, cultural, ethnic, and political contexts. to maximise local participation it is important that program staff make necessary adjustments to procedures to make sure they are culturally appropriate and sensitive. specialised staff is required to develop and implement programs that enhance local participation. these staff must be locally knowledgeable, particularly in terms of culture and indigenous language. the latter is particularly important when the project takes place in indigenous communities where the 6 specific, manageable, achievable, realistic and time limited national language (the kinh’s language) may not be spoken by most people. last but not least, there remains room for further efforts to narrow the gap in the partnership between international donors and the local governments. presently, these partners still participate in the project as normal stakeholders. an expanded view of the donor and local government must emerge. the donor must maintain impact throughout the project, not just in the early stages. attention was not sufficiently paid to the relationship between the community and local government in this project. communities need support from the local government to increase local participation in projects. they also need short-term, tangible outcomes which provide incentive. local government can either aid this process, or, it can severely diminish it. without the effective cooperation of the local community, local government, and the international donor, no meaningful increase in participation can occur. as argued in the literature review, the promotion of local participation remains a controversial topic, particularly in the field of development. some authors considered that the promotion of participation is important in development projects, while others showed reservations. despite the differences in opinion that exist, data presented in this article demonstrates that the promotion of local participation is necessary and important as it has a close association with the success and sustainability of a project. furthermore, it appears to be the best way to create a sense of responsibility and ownership among target audiences. therefore, we should not question whether or not local participation should be promoted in development projects, but rather we should question how to promote it in the most effective way in different communities. nor should we consider the obstacles to the promotion of local participation, or challenges to the adoption of changes by local and international stakeholders as a basis to question or dismiss local participation (nguyen 2003). references aaker, j. and shumaker, j. 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(eds) development planning in mixed economies. tokyo: the united nations university. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 96 opportunities and challenges in cultivating underutilized field crops in moneragala district of sri lanka malkanthi, s. h. p. and karunaratne, a. s. senior lecturer; faculty of agricultural sciences, sabaragamuwa university of sri lanka, sri lanka amuwala, s. d. lecturer; faculty of agricultural sciences, sabaragamuwa university of sri lanka, sri lanka silva, p. agriculture instructor; agrarian services office, thanamalvila, sri lanka abstract cultivation and use of underutilized crops is gradually popularizing in many countries since they create several benefits for the man and the environment. same as in many other countries, a large number of useful underutilized crop species are available in sri lanka as well. although traditional people had used them in a great deal in many different aspects of their life, the present generation has moved away from using them due to lack of knowledge and interest. in this context, finding of the real potential of cultivating and using them in the country is timely important. thus the aim of this research is to study the opportunities and challenges of cultivation of underutilized field crops in sri lanka. this research is based on the findings of the field survey using 120 farm families in thanamalwila divisional secretariat division of the moneragala district during january-october 2012. results revealed that there are several opportunities such as availability of traditional knowledge, land resource, labor for cultivation etc. however, several constraints like unavailability of seeds and planting materials, lack of market infrastructure, lack of knowledge on processing and value addition, competition from modern crops, negative attitude of consumers are also affecting the cultivation and use of these crops. keywords: underutilized crops, opportunities, challenges, food security, sri lanka introduction 1 underutilize crops the term underutilized crops referring to the crops or plants that have been traditionally used for their food, fiber, fodder, oil or medicinal properties, but which have been overlooked by scientific research and development workers corresponding author’s name: malkanthi, s. h. p. email address: malkanthi09@gmail.com (jaenicke, 2006) although these crops are in a position to play a crucial role in food security, income generation and overcome culture of the rural poor, providing income to rural small business, unfortunately the lack of attention has meant that their potential value is under-exploited, and they are in danger of continued or leading to disappearance in future. the huge numbers of those underutilized species represent massive unused commodity resources which can help to asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:malkanthi09@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 96-105 97 meet the increasing demand for food, energy, medicines and industrial desires. some of these unused assets are either partly or fully domesticated but most stay wild and unevaluated. with the development of modern agriculture practices the potential of many of these commodity resources have been neglected. some have been so neglected and the erosion of their gene pools so severe that they are often regarded as “lost crops”. nevertheless, in much of the world underutilized crops and commodities play a vital role in the lives of the rural and urban poor, because they contribute to livelihoods, poverty alleviation and sustaining the environment. many of these species are included in traditional subsistence farming systems particularly in marginal areas and, in many cases, these crops and commodities are life-savers for millions of resource poor people in regions where food and nutritional security are significant problems (williams & haq, 2010). underutilized crops cultivation in sri lanka sri lanka is an agricultural country which has been identified as one of the countries in asia with a very high degree of biodiversity. the wide variation in temperature, rainfall, topography and soils in the country has provided a wide diversity of ecosystems resulting in a rich diversity of plant species, which the sri lankan farmers have been able to maintain over thousands of years. thus, there are nearly 3400 species of flowering plants (26 percent endemic), 300 species of ferns and related species (57 percent endemic) 575 species of mosses, 110 lichens, 896 algal and 1920 fungal species. however, genetic erosion of cultivated indigenous varieties and wild relatives of crop plant species in sri lanka has been occurring rapidly in natural habitats during the period of the last century (muthukudaarachchi & wijeratne, 2007). according to the studies, sri lanka is rich with around 60 varieties of underutilized crops. most of these underutilized species have lost their significance among the present generation due to many reasons such as urbanization and changing food habits. there is no organized or proper cultivation of these crop species. most of these underutilized plant species are fruit crops and found in wild or in home gardens, which are 100 m 2 to 1 000 m 2 in extent and are commonly found in many rural areas of sri lanka. as altitude increases, the extent of home gardens becomes smaller with greater diversity of plant species and lesser diversity within the species. very little inventory work has been done so far on the state of diversity of crops in home gardens (muthukudaarachchi and wijeratna, 2007). as a result of baseline surveys on underutilized fruit crops in sri lanka, around 400 accessions, belonging to 25 species have been noted in home gardens. a great diversity of underutilized crops was found in these crops. they are; citrus aurantium, syzygium spp, baccaurea motleyana, pouteria campechiana flacourtia inermis citrus reticulate citrus grandis atalantia ceylanica pometia pinnata annona reticulate, dialium spp, euphoria longana manilkara zapota, ziziphus mauritiana, garcinia quaesita, citrus crenatifolia, elaeocarpus serratus, psidium cattleianum, syzygium cumini, syzygium spp, anona spp. limonia acidissim, angle marmelos, phyllanthus emblica. when the home gardens are concerned, other food crop species are very important. as rural people value these crops, they cultivate them in their home gardens at least in small-scale for their own use. examples for commonly grown underutilized crops are; cereals (panicum sumatrense, paspalum scrobiculatum, setaria italica and proso millet, panicum miliaceum), legumes macuna pruriens, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 96-105 98 phaseolus lunatus, vigna umbellata, lablab purpureus, canavalia gladiate, roots & tubers crops (dioscorea alata, d. bulbifera, d. esculenta, d. koyamae, d. oppositifolia, d. pentaphylla, d.spicata, d. tomentosa, d. trimenii, colocasia esculenta, alocasia cucullata, amorphophallus paeoniifolius, canna indica and vegetables (solanum macrocarpon, solanum torvum, solanum violaceum, solanum capsicoides, coccinia spp, celosia argentea, talinum traingulare) (muthukudaarachchi and wijeratna, 2007). currently same as in other countries, sri lankans also depend on a very few crops species to meet the needs of staple diets and on very narrow major non-food crops to meet associated needs. however, in the past people depended on a much wider range of species for food, fiber, health security and other needs. this large array of plant species spans those recognized to be underutilized to those that are recognized as important minor crops. with modernization of agricultural practices, many have become neglected due to low esteem. it has been identified that poor level of cultivation and poor usage of underutilized crops in sri lanka. further, there is no available literature about this type of research studies. research objectives the main objective of this study was to evaluate the opportunities and challenges of cultivating underutilized field crops in moneragala district of the country. thus, finding out the socio-economic characteristics of the farmers cultivating these crops, underutilized crops cultivated in the study area during the studied period and opportunities and challenges of cultivating underutilized crops were the objectives of the study. research method moneragala district, the second-order administrative division in uva province has been selected for this study. the researchers purposely selected this area as it has suitable climate and agro-ecological conditions for the cultivation of these crops. furthermore, majority of the people in this area are rural farmers and cultivate underutilized crops up to some extent. out of the six divisional secretariat portals in the district, thanamalvila divisional secretariat division (figure 1) was selected for the study by using simple random sampling technique. finally, a sample of 120 farm families was selected randomly for the study as 60 families from each division. primary data was collected through a field survey of these 120 farm families in january-october 2012. other than the survey, few group discussions were conducted to get the detailed information. farm families were visited with the help of agriculture instructor (ai) of the division. secondary data was obtained from agrarian services center and divisional secretariat office at thanamalwila, library books and some online sources. collected data was coded and entered into a excel worksheet. since this is an exploratory type of research, descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage analysis were conducted to obtain the results. results and discussion socio economic characteristics of the farmers socioeconomic information of the farmers was important to analyze different dimension of them. socioeconomic characteristics were studied and presented in the table 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 96-105 99 figure 1: a map of sri lanka locating thanamalwila divisional secretariat of moneragala district table 1: socioeconomic characteristics of farmers (n=120) socio economic factor frequency percentage (%) age (in years) 20-30 08 07 31-40 33 28 41-50 47 39 51-60 28 23 61-70 04 03 gender male 68 57 female 52 43 marital status married 97 81 unmarried 23 09 educational level up to primary 14 12 primary to ordinary level 85 71 ordinary level to advanced level 16 13 other 05 04 main occupation farming 109 91 businessmen 04 03 ctb technicians 01 01 policeman 02 02 tailors 03 03 family size asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 96-105 100 below 4 16 14 4-5 46 38 above 5 58 48 total family income (per season 1 ) below rs 50,000 (< 385 us $) 22 18 rs 50,000-75,000 (385 577 us $) 86 72 rs 75,001100,000 (578 769 us $) 09 08 above rs 100,000 (>769 us$) 03 02 income from underutilized field crops (per season) (from selling extra production after family consumption) below rs 5,000 (<39 us $) 37 31 rs 5,000 – 10,000 (39-77 us $) 49 41 rs 10,001-15,000 (78-115 us $) 16 13 rs 15,001-20,000 (116-154 us $) 11 09 above 20,000 (<154 us $) 07 06 1season = 4 months, us $ 1=rs or lkr 130) source: field survey, 2012 according to the table 1, majority of the respondents in the sample (39%) were in the middle age category. these people are mature and had considerable level of traditional knowledge. comparatively less contribution from younger and elderly generation for the cultivation of underutilized crops could be seen. most of the respondents (57%) were male farmers. however, significant number of female respondents (43%) was also there. as most of the male farmers are working at farm lands away from home garden during the day time, it is difficult to meet them. this is the reason for meeting of many female farmers during the study. when concern the marital status of the respondents, majority of them (81%) were married while only 9% was unmarried. since this is a rural area, people engage in education up to a certain level and after that, they enter to marriage life at very young stages. majority of the respondents (71%) had completed ordinary level education and 12% of them had not completed the ordinary level examination. small percentage (13%) of respondents had education above ordinary level and a very few number of them (4%) had done vocational training, diploma and so on. when the education is concerned, the overall level of education of the area is comparatively lower. farming was the main occupation of most of the respondents (91%). in addition to that small percentages of respondents were working as businessmen, ctb technicians, policemen and tailors. since this a rural area with people having lower level of education, farming is the way of life of the majority. the responses regarding their family size were obtained to see the number of family members in the study area, as it has a significant impact on farm labour. majority of the farm families (48%) had more than five members. also there was a considerable percentage (38%) of the farm families having 4-5 members. majority of the respondents (72%) were having family income of rs 50,000-75,000 per season (for four months). this is a very low level of income. furthermore, a significant percentage of respondents (18%) were getting less than rs. 50,000 per season. this shows that the people in this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 96-105 101 area are getting comparatively low level of income. when the income from underutilized filed crops is considered, it was also at a very poor level. out of all, 94% of the respondents were getting income below rs 20,000 per season. 31% was getting even below rs 5, 000. the main purpose of cultivating these crops is to use for the home consumption. as they cultivate in small-scale, after using home consumption, only a little portion of the production is remained and they sell that portion and earn some money. underutilize crops cultivated at present in moneragala district climate and the topography of moneragala district, is favorable for cultivation of most of the underutilized field crops such as menery, thanahal, finger millet, sesame, kollu, undu, rata kaju, gahala, raja ala, innala, etc. however, in this research, mainly seven major underutilized field crops as three varieties of grain namely finger millet, menery and thanahal, an oil crop called sesame, a minor legume called kollu, two root and tuber crops called welala, and gahala were studied in detail. cultivating statistics of these crops is shown in the table 2. table 2: cultivating statistics of the selected crops (n = 120) crop scientific name number of farmers total land extent (acres 2 ) percentage of farmers finger millet eleusine coracana 104 88.93 86.7 menery panicum sumatrense 28 39.50 23.0 thanahal panicum miliaceum, 31 23.35 25.8 sesame sesamum indicum 68 58.39 56.7 kollu macrotyloma uniflorum 42 34.75 35.0 welala dioscorea spp 14 05.49 11.6 kiriala colocasia spp 36 21.44 30.0 21 hectare = 2.5 acres source: field survey, 2012 as shown in the table 2, finger millet had been cultivated by 86.7% of famers of the sample covering the land extent of 88.93 acres. it was the crop cultivated in the largest extend. it is one of the main foods of the people of this area. 23% of the famers had cultivated menery within 39.5 acres. further, thanahal had been cultivated by 25.87% of the farmers in 25.8 acres of land. land area under the crop sesame or gingerly was 58.39. it had been cultivated by 56.7% farmers. kollu had been cultivated by 35% of the farmers in 34.75 areas of land. 11.6% of the farmers had cultivated welala in 5.49 areas of land and 30% of the farmers had cultivated kiriala within 21.44 acres of land. when compare with the available land in the two divisions, land extend used for underutilized field crops is small. as mentioned before, since unavailability of good marketing facilities, farmers told that they didn’t have motivation to cultivate these crops in large extents. so they cultivate these crops mainly in their home gardens in small-scales. opportunities and challenges of cultivation of underutilized crops  opportunities of cultivation of underutilized crops several opportunities for the cultivation of underutilized crops were identified in the area. they are presented in the table 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 96-105 102 table 3: opportunities of respondents for the cultivation of underutilized crops (n = 120) opportunities frequency percentage (%) availability of knowledge on cultivation 112 93 availability of land for cultivation 106 88 availability of labor for cultivation 82 69 favorable attitude of the farmers 73 61 availability of knowledge on cultivation considerable percentage of respondents (93%) had enough knowledge on cultivation of underutilized crops. as most of the respondents are middle aged farmers, they have sufficient level of traditional knowledge about these crops and some of their uses. only a small number of respondents (7%) said that they did not have enough knowledge on cultivation of these crops. although respondents have sufficient knowledge for the cultivation, they did not have good knowledge on value addition, processing and marketing of them. if respondents can improve their knowledge on these aspects, they can get maximum returns from their products. availability of land for cultivation the result revealed that 88% of the respondents have enough land for cultivation. in this area, population density is low due to many reasons such as poor infrastructure facilities, distance from the main cities, and hot climatic condition. although there are enough lands for the cultivation, respondents did not have enough knowledge on good land management practices to get maximum utilization of these lands. availability of labor for cultivation 69% of the respondents mentioned that there were enough labors for various cultural practices like land preparation, planting, protecting and harvesting of underutilized crops. as there are more than five members in many families, majority of respondents used family labour for the cultivation of these crops. also they used “attam” method (helping each other) when need extra labor and rarely hire labors for the cultivations. favorable attitude of the farmers when the attitude of the respondents is concerned, 61% respondents said that they had positive attitude to cultivate underutilized field crops. if they have basic facilities and needs, they are willing to cultivate them. they have better knowledge on nutritional, medicinal, and cultural values of these crops. further, they hope that there will be a better market for these crops in future.  challenges for the cultivation of underutilize crops other than several opportunities, some challenges were also associated with the cultivation of underutilized crops. these challenges affect the reduction in cultivation of these crops by the farmers. identified challenges are shown in the table 4. table 4: challenges of respondents for the cultivation of underutilize crops (n = 120) challenges frequency percentage (%) unavailability of seeds and planting materials 102 85 lack of knowledge on processing and value addition 98 82 lack of access to affordable credit 94 78 unavailability of extension service 83 69 competition from modern crops 92 77 negative attitude of consumers 85 71 poor level of market facilities 80 67 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 96-105 103 unavailability of seeds and planting materials results revealed that 85% of respondents have the problem of getting seeds and planting materials. on one hand, seeds are not available for some crops and on the other hand, for some varieties, qualities of available seeds are in poor level. since good quality seed is one of the main requirements of a successful cultivation, this is a major challenge face by the farmers at present. according to (williams & haq, 2010) also, access to good quality planting materials is a major constraint of the farmers. there should be sustainable sources for the supplement of quality seeds/planting materials. as a solution for this problem (engels, rao, brown, & jackson, 2002) some remedies had been suggested in their book “managing plant genetic diversity”. it is the responsibility of the government to provide training and consultancy to the farmers to maintain the local seed banks, village nurseries and keeping the quality of seeds. further, actions such as obtaining improved planting materials from traditional varieties, initiation of programmes to obtain clean planting materials and improved varieties should be promoted by the government. lack of knowledge on processing and value addition strategies results showed that 82% of the respondents have faced challenges due to the lack of knowledge on processing and value addition strategies. poor knowledge of rural farmers on value addition strategies cause some valuable crops to still remaining as less used crops. rural farmers don’t have good level of know-how on value addition of underutilize crops. (engels, rao, brown, & jackson, 2002) have also mentioned about lack of value addition gives limited income for the respondents. need to focus on development of improved low cost processing techniques suitable for rural farmers. there should be facilitating the small entrepreneurs to the setting up of new enterprises that process underutilized crops. needs to provide necessary training, information and technology required for food processing. although underutilize crops had been processed manually on farms using family labor using more time in the past (mabille & probt, 2005), development of time saving quick methods for a large scale cultivations is crucial. lack of access to affordable credit according to the results, 78 % of the farmers had mentioned that they have the problem of access to credit. this is also a main problem. although there are credit schemes for main crops like paddy, maize etc, it is very difficult to get credit for these crops. williams & haq, (2010) also pointed out about this problem. lack of access to credit is also commonly cited as a constraint to small-scale production. the majority of small-scale farmers and processors face a variety of problems when seeking credit, including lack of information, high interest rates, lack of collateral, bureaucratic difficulties and misunderstandings, and lack of government support in accessing credit. unavailability of extension service 69% of the respondents had faced the problem in extension service. these crops are not familiar to government officers or extension workers. so they don’t have good knowledge on these crops to help the farmers regarding the cultivation and processing of these crops. this is a problem in many countries. underutilized crops receive little attention from research, extension services, farmers, policy and decision makers, donors, technology providers and consumers (williams & haq, 2010). competition from modern crops results revealed that 77% of the respondents had challenges due to the competition from modern crops. it is major challenge for cultivation of underutilize asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 96-105 104 crops. farmers prefer to cultivate modern crops than underutilized crop varieties due to the short lifetime of cultivation, higher productivity, and good demand for those crops. using improved varieties, modern crops can get higher productivity than the underutilize crops. with the globalization of agricultural markets, limited number of crop varieties has been commercialized. underutilized crops remaining as subsisting farming. consumers’ uses underutilized crops less because these crops get less attention among other crop species (padulosi et al., 2006). negative attitude of the consumers results have shown that 71% of the respondents face challenge of the negative attitude of the consumers. the main contributing factors to low consumption of underutilized crops are the negative perception towards them. consumers have different myths about these crops. underutilized crops were associated with the poor and backwardness. consumers have less awareness on the nutritional value; medicinal properties and other special characteristics of underutilize crop products. indigenous traditions and local specialties may be dismissed as 'oldfashioned' or 'paupers' food’ (mabille and probt, 2005). local populations of past generations have used these species effectively. however, the increasing ignorance of new generations of the traditional uses of these crops contributes to create a misleading image on underutilized crops (padulosi et al., 2006). the younger generations don’t have the knowledge about edible natural food and skills to recognize climatically adapted food sources to supplement their food supplies. they view them as unfashionable when compared to fast foods (peter, 2008). poor level of market facilities as per the results, 67% of the respondents face the challenges of lack of marketing facilities. there is no proper marketing mechanism, other than selling the excess production to the middlemen at very low price by the respondents. non-availability of improved storage facilities, pack houses would create problems in marketing the production. (mayes et al., 2011) have pointed that many farmers suffer from poorly developed market and lack of value added products which may limit crop’s value. lack of access to market information, experiences in running businesses, business management skills are also prevent in achieving a good market. conclusion and recommendations based on the findings of the study it can be concluded that the majority of the farmers cultivating underutilized crops comes under middle-aged married group and education up to a lower level (below ordinary level). most of them use family labor for the cultivation. the total seasonal income levels received by these farmers are low and also the seasonal income of farmers from underutilized crops is very low. there are good potential to cultivation of underutilized crops in this area. major identified opportunities to cultivate underutilize crops of the area are; traditional knowledge on cultivation of these crops, enough lands for cultivations, ability to use family labor for cultivation and favorable attitude of the respondents towards cultivation of these crops. although there are opportunities, due to many challenges on cultivation of these crops, they are still remaining as neglected crops. major challenges identified were; unavailability of seeds and planting materials, poor level of market facilities, lack of knowledge on processing and value addition strategies, lack of access to affordable credit, unavailability of extension service, competition from modern crops and negative attitude of consumers. they are affecting for the reduction of cultivation of these crops. if it is possible to find solutions for these asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 96-105 105 challenges by respective authorities in the country, there is a good potential to cultivate underutilized crops in this area successfully. in order to overcome these challenges, government support to receive improved quality seeds and planting materials, arrange marketing facilities and provision of the improved technologies in processing value addition are vital. facilitating for access to credit and efficient and effective extension service are also essential. provision of positive image in consumers by improving knowledge on potential benefits of using these crops, nutritional and medicinal value can also play an important role to popularize these crops among people in the country. acknowledgement this research was conducted under the university research grant number susl/rg/ 2011/02 of the sabaragamuwa university of sri lanka. the authors acknowledge for the vice chancellor and the research committee for giving financial support to carry out this research. references engels, j., rao, v., brown, a., & jackson, m. 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(2007). country report on the state of plant genetic resource for food and agriculture sri lanka. fao/ government cooperative program, the status of the pgrfa in sri lanka, department agriculture. http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i150 0e/srilanka.pdf. padulosi, s., hodgkin, t., williams, j., & haq, n. (2006). underutilized crops: trends, challenges and opportunities in the 21st century. international center for underutilized crops (icuc), uk: http://www.cropsforthefuture.org/pu blication/articles/underutilizedcrops-trends-challenges-andopportunities-in-the-21stcentury.pdf. peter, k. (2008). underutilized & underexploited horticultural crops. new india publishing agency. http://books.google.lk/books williams, j., & haq, n. (2010). underutilized crops for food security and poverty alleviation icuc. http://www.underutilized.org/docum ents/publications/n_h.pdf. http://www.underutilizedspecies.org/documents/publications/press_release_090306.pdf http://www.underutilizedspecies.org/documents/publications/press_release_090306.pdf http://www.underutilizedspecies.org/documents/publications/press_release_090306.pdf http://www.conservationdevelopment.net/projekte/nachhaltigkeit/cd1/laenderdessuedens/themenblaetter/pdf/agrobiodivunderutilizedspecies.pdf http://www.conservationdevelopment.net/projekte/nachhaltigkeit/cd1/laenderdessuedens/themenblaetter/pdf/agrobiodivunderutilizedspecies.pdf http://www.conservationdevelopment.net/projekte/nachhaltigkeit/cd1/laenderdessuedens/themenblaetter/pdf/agrobiodivunderutilizedspecies.pdf http://www.conservationdevelopment.net/projekte/nachhaltigkeit/cd1/laenderdessuedens/themenblaetter/pdf/agrobiodivunderutilizedspecies.pdf http://www.conservationdevelopment.net/projekte/nachhaltigkeit/cd1/laenderdessuedens/themenblaetter/pdf/agrobiodivunderutilizedspecies.pdf http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1500e/srilanka.pdf http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1500e/srilanka.pdf http://www.cropsforthefuture.org/publication/articles/underutilized-crops-trends-challenges-and-opportunities-in-the-21st-century.pdf http://www.cropsforthefuture.org/publication/articles/underutilized-crops-trends-challenges-and-opportunities-in-the-21st-century.pdf http://www.cropsforthefuture.org/publication/articles/underutilized-crops-trends-challenges-and-opportunities-in-the-21st-century.pdf http://www.cropsforthefuture.org/publication/articles/underutilized-crops-trends-challenges-and-opportunities-in-the-21st-century.pdf http://www.cropsforthefuture.org/publication/articles/underutilized-crops-trends-challenges-and-opportunities-in-the-21st-century.pdf http://books.google.lk/books http://www.underutilized.org/documents/publications/n_h.pdf http://www.underutilized.org/documents/publications/n_h.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 233 social impact assessment of crude oil pollution on small scale farmers in oil producing communities of the central agricultural zone of delta state, nigeria ofuoku, a. o. u. department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, p.m.b 95074 asaba, nigeria emuh, f. n. department of agronomy, delta state university, asaba campus, p.m.b 95074 asaba, nigeria ezeonu, o. medical microbiology department, rivers state university of science and technology, port harcourt, nigeria abstract the study assessed the social impact of oil production on small holder farmers in oil-producing communities of the central zone of delta state, nigeria. data were collected from 120 respondents by the use of questionnaires. soil erosion (96.6%), noise pollution (98.3%), bush burning (93.3%), land degradation/pollution (87.5%), water pollution (80.3%), air pollution (62.5%), massive deforestation (62.5%) and acid rain (52.5%) were seen as the major environmental problems experienced in the study area. the respondents reported that oil pollution impacted negatively on their income (83.3%), agricultural production (98.3%) and land availability (85.8%). none of the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents such as age, gender, educational level, religion, marital status, type of farming, family size, farming experience, farm size, income, housing, tenure, membership of organization, land tenure and source of labour were found to determine the social impact of oil pollution on small-scale farmers. recommendations given dwelt on making the environment conducive for the communities, agricultural activities and it sustenance for future generations. keywords: agricultural activities, crude oil pollution, farmers, socio-economic activities introduction 1 the significance of the agricultural sector as a source of food in nigeria took a downward trend soon after the discovery of crude oil and corresponding author’s name: emuh, f. n. email address: fnemuh@yahoo.com subsequent exploration and exploitation of crude oil in the 1970s as a major foreign exchange earner (adesina, 2012; babatunde, 2012). the exploration and exploitation of crude oil in commercial quantities led to the massive drift of farmers from the rural settlements to urban areas in search for white collar jobs, enhanced employment and improved standard of living. this resulted in asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:fnemuh@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 233-241 234 almost total neglect of the agricultural sector. the aim of agricultural development is to raise the production level of selected crops and livestock through the adoption of innovations developed from researches. however, since the later part of the last century, the focus shifted to environmental issues. undp (2006) reported that more than 70% of the inhabitants of crude oil producing communities depend on environment for their livelihood. thus, the emphasis arose based on ecological damage to resource base, the health and social hazards to which farmers are exposed (adinna, 1994). abah (2004) posited that crude oil spillage and pollution led to socio-economic and social insecurity and public health. in recent years, the negative effect of environmental impact of crude oil pollution in agriculture and the environment with attendant effects which are based on farming, fishing and lumbering has been increasingly obvious (opukri and ibaba, 2008). similarly, emuh (2009; 2010) reported that crude oil pollution affects physical and chemical properties of the soil and as well as seed germination, plant growth and subsequent yield. iyoha (2002) noted that, environmental effects arose from land degradation, air pollution, water pollution, deforestation and ecosystem degradation. it became so serious that many affected communities of small holder farmers have no option than to exploit the resources available to them so intensely that environmental degradation is on the increase (ashimolowo and busari, 2006). various literature defined environmental impact assessment (eia) in different ways. according to arthur (2001), it an activity designed to identify and predict the impact on the bio-geophysical environment on man’s health. similarly, holder (2004), jay et al. (2007), noted that eia is used as a decision making tool to account for environmental values after detailed environmental studies. it is an action designed to ascertain and predict the effect of any activity or action on the social economic and health aspects of man’s life. therefore, the purpose of the exercise is to enthrone a sustainable development process whereby environmental considerations are effectively integrated into the developmental process before commitments are made. man’s environment is very important as it influences directly or indirectly the quality of his/her life. eia is one of the tools used to control possible environmental damage, especially as a result exploitative interventions. epa (1987) opined that the quality of life of man depends ultimately on the quality of his environment and the ability of his environment to provide food, shelter and natural resources needed to generate employment and a well secured life. without good condition of health and environmental safety, there can be no meaningful economic development. these factors have to be ensured by appropriate environmental impact assessment, setting up of relevant coherent standard and control as well as building necessary capacities at various levels of civil society. therefore, the solutions to environmental problems in this country is the building of capacities to provide the appropriate and effective integrated approach to the conservation and management of the natural resources as well as managing the environment (ashimolowo and busari, 2006). formecu (1990) suggested that water, air and noise form environmental pollution. air pollution can be experienced as smoke, dust, odour and it can still be experienced as a result fossils fuels, chemical, metallurgical industry, vehicles and gas flaring. it can also be derived from acidic rain (rain water is slightly acidic). when rainwater absorb carbon dioxide, as it passes through the atmosphere it forms a weak acid-carbonic acid. acid rains occurs during exploration, exploitation and gas flaring which acidifies the environment causing loss of soil fertility, damage crops and corrodes corrugated aluminium roofs (orimoogunje et al., 2010). carbonic acid affects many forms of plant and animal life. formecu (1990) posited that it damages leaves, affected growth of roots and inhibits germination in plants. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 233-241 235 man has changed the nature of the nigerian environment consciously and unconsciously through his/her economic and social activities and each of these activities has effect on agricultural systems in nigeria (ibe, 1988). according to adejuyigbe (1995), nigeria is endowed with abundant natural and human resources which has attracted many manufacturing industries such as petrochemical industries, iron and steel industries and cement factories. nortcliff (2011), reported that emission released from agriculture, industry and traffic vehicles are the major sources of atmospheric pollution and deposition of air borne pollutants releases organic compounds (such as pahs, dioxins, pcbs), metals (such as arsenic, cadmium, lead) and soil acidifying contaminants (no2, so2) into the environment. the resultant effect is that the country’s land, water and animals are exposed to toxic matters arising daily from individual effluents, and the occurrence of acid rain (ashimolowo and busari, 2006). this, as suggested by awoniyi et al. (1995) is evidenced in communities like ewekoro, ogun state, nigeria where domestic livestock species, have been reported to suffer from diseases such as skin irritation, carcinogenic cancer and respiratory problems. green peace (1993), aghalino (1998) reported that crude oil polluted waters in niger delta caused illness such as cough, catarrh; diarrhea and cholera were most prevalent with school children. similarly, epa (1987) reported that ingestion of organic and inorganic waste from petro-chemicals damages kidney, liver and leads to neurological and blood disorder and thus life threatening. in the oil flow station in erhoike, in ethiope east local government area of delta state, oil spillage is known as an almost regular occurrence and this has led to destruction of cassava plants in the small farm holdings of the various inhabitants of the community. aghalino and eyinola (2009) reported that a spilled site in niger delta, the fish taste was altered to kerosene taste which indicated the taste of hydrocarbon. similarly, idodo-umeh and ogbeibu (2010) reported bioaccumulation of heavy metals in cassava tubers and plantain fruits in areas of petroleum activities while lecoultre (2001) reported that toxicity of ingested heavy metals has been an important health issue for decades. moreover, this finding is in consonance with peterson (1997) who stated that a lot of hazards are associated with pollution. it is of great importance to analyze the impact of these hazards and its influence on the environment of oil producing areas with regards to its effect on the populace of the central agro-ecological zone of delta state, nigeria. this study was therefore embarked upon to access the social impact of oil (petroleum) production on small-holder farmers in central agro-ecological zone of delta state, nigeria. hypothesis: the following hypothesis was tested: hoi: there is no significant relationship between the socio-economic characteristics of farmers in the study area and the social impact of the oil industry. methodology the study area consists of the ten oil producing communities in the central zone of delta state which consists of afiesere, erhioike, agbarho, elume, ekakpamre, jesse, oghara, orogun, out-jeremi, ekakpamre, ododegho, eruemukohwarie, evwreni, awirhe, erhobaro, ughweru, deghele, oteri, olomu and uduovwori. the main cash crops grown in the area include oil palm and rubber. the food crops are cassava, maize, yam, plantain/banana and cocoyam. livestock such as birds, goat sheep are raised. capture and culture fisheries activities are carried out in the study area. in the central zone of delta state, the most important of the oil exploration companies is shell petroleum development company (spdc). the population of the study included men and women in the selected oil producing communities or villages. using the simple lottery system, 50% of the total oil producing asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 233-241 236 communities in central zone of delta state was selected, totalling 10 communities. from every selected community 12 respondents of 25-80 years were randomly selected. the total numbers of 120 respondents were interviewed for the study. descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution and percentages were used to analyze the variables of the study while chi-square was employed to test the hypothesis. results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of the respondents the result showed that 31% of the respondents were between the age brackets of 30-49 years, while 10% were below the age of 30 years. this indicates that a handful of the people engaged in farming were in their middle age would have enough energy and relevant knowledge and experience in farming. majority (52.50%) of the respondents were males, while 47.5% were females. the implication was that though males were more into farming while females were measuring up with them in the study area. most (53.3%) of the respondents had no formal education. this may be attributed to poverty. the analysis further revealed that 24.2% of them had primary education; 29.2% had one form or the other of secondary education; while 7.5% had tertiary education. majority (46.7%) of the respondents had family size of 6-10 members. this was due to lack of awareness of family planning and the quest for more farm lands. a large population (59.2%) of the respondents was christians. this is as a result of missionary influence in the area especially those of them that attended mission schools; who once worked for the missionaries are the ones who got converted as a result of the aggressive evangelism by the missionaries. most (74.2%) of the respondents were married. as for the farming status, 45.4% were full-time farmers, while 51.7% were part-time farmers. the results also showed that 43.3% of the farmers had over 15 years of farming experience; 30% had 6-10 years experience; 17.5% had less than 5 years experience and 5% had 11-16 years experience. majority (51.7%) of the respondents had farm size of between 2.6-4.5 hectares. most (40%) of them were land occupiers. similarly, 40% lived in their own houses; 38.3% occupied relations houses. as for membership of organization, 5.0% subscribe to various cooperative societies; 2.5%, farmers’ union; 4.2%, association of marketers; while 5.0%, village age group. agricultural activities practiced in the study area table 1 indicates that some of the agricultural activities were rarely practiced by the smallholder farmers. the activities that were widely practiced included maize production (100%), yam production (56.6%) cassava cultivation (100%), vegetable production (61.6%), plantain production (88.3%), poultry farming (57.3%), fish farming (43.3%), cassava milling (53.3%), frying of garri (53.3%), and fufu making (49.2%). soyabean and cowpea cultivation, sheep and goat rearing had little attention. but the small-scale farmers were into poultry and fish farming. this is in consonance with a similar study carried out by ashimolowo and busari (2006) in cement producing areas of ogun state. the low level of goat and sheep production could be attributed to damages caused to the vegetation by oil pollution. the low rate of involvement in processing activities could be owing to low input emanating from environmental related problems. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 233-241 237 table 1: types of agricultural activities practiced (n=120) agricultural activities yes no frequency % frequency % maize cultivation 120 100 soyabean cultivation 2 1.7 118 98.3 cowpea cultivation 9 7.5 111 92.5 yam cultivation 68 56.6 52 43.3 cassava cultivation 120 100 cocoyam cultivation 39 32.6 81 67.5 vegetable production 74 61.6 46 38.3 melon cultivation 40 33.2 80 66.6 rubber cultivation 120 100 oil palm cultivation 120 100 plantain production 106 88.3 14 11.6 goat rearing 20 16.6 100 83.4 sheep raising 6 5 114 95 cattle rearing 120 100 poultry farming 69 57.3 51 42.5 fish farming 25 43.3 68 56.6 cassava milling 64 53.3 56 46.7 garri frying 64 53.3 56 46.7 fufu making 59 49.2 61 50.8 palm oil processing 20 16.6 100 83.4 rubber processing 9 7.5 111 92.5 source: field survey, 2011 environmental problems encountered the most important environmental problems (table 2) were soil erosion (96.6%), bush burning (93.3%), noise pollution (98.3%), land degradation/pollution 87.5%, water pollution (80.3%) and air pollution (62.5%). most of the respondents believed that regular oil exploration and exploitation activities caused soil erosion and land degradation/pollution in their localities and the noise of flow stations vibrate on their buildings and created cracks on the walls. in another study, iyoha (2002), nortcliff (2011) found noise, air water and soil pollution as problems caused by oil exploration activities. they also were of the opinion that gas flaring caused acid rains that corroded their roofs and caused much heat in the environment. orimoogunje et al. (2010) supports this view. their waters were polluted as a result of spillage which they believed was also responsible for the inferno that affected their bushes. the air and water pollution caused health hazards in the area. peterson (1997), agbogidi et al. (2005) also discovered this in a similar study as they attributed the high occurrence of health hazards to oil industry activities. table 2: distribution of respondents in oil producing communities of central agro-ecological zone of delta state according to types environmental problems faced (n =120) environmental problems frequency % rank land degradation/pollution 105 87.5 4 soil erosion 116 96.6 1 water pollution 100 80.3 5 air pollution 75 62.5 6 bush burning 112 93.3 3 massive deforestation 75 62.5 6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 233-241 238 acid rain 63 52.5 8 noise 118 98.3 2 source: field survey, 2011 factors responsible for diversification into other generating activities in oil producing communities table 3 reveals that 83.3%, 85.8% and 98.3% of the respondents opined that oil pollution had a great negative impact on their income, land availability and agricultural production respectively. the waters were polluted and the fishes were lost to death. this implies that many farmers had abandoned farming and land to take up new jobs and considered farming as a part-time job. oil exploration activities have significance reductions in crop output emuh, (2009; 2010). baker (1970) also observed that the presence of crude oil in farmlands renders the land unproductive and has serious adverse effects on plant growth and consequently a decrease in their income earning capacity. these problems have subjected the inhabitants of host communities to economic and social hardship (stanley, 1990). table 3: impact of oil pollution on socio-economic activities (n=120) social indicator degree of impact greatly positive f (%) slightly positive f (%) no impact f (%) slightly negative f (%) greatly negative f (%) income 4(3.3) 7(5.8) 100(83.3) living standard 43(35.5) 15(12.5) 15(12.5) 47(39.2) infrastructure 16(13.3) 57(42.5) 39(32.5) quality of heat 47(39.2) 23(19.2) 58(48.3) price of commodities bought 25(20.8) 17(14.2) 31(25.8) 24(20.0) immigration 37(30.8) 19(15.8) 40(33.3) 24(20.0) emigration 44(36.7) 19(15.8) 33(22.5) agricultural production 2(1.7) 118(98.3) other income generating activities 13(10.8) 60(50.0) 47(39.2) gender relationship 73(60.8) 47(39.2) conflict 27(22.5) 4(3.3) 50(41.7) 47(39.2) educational facilities 4(3.3) 69(57.5) 47(39.2) employment opportunities 8(6.7) 65(54.2) 47(39.2) rural development 23(19.2) 50(41.7) 47(39.2) land availability 47(39.2) 9(7.5) 8(6.7) 103(85.8) community interaction 9(7.5) 15(12.5) 47(39.2) source: field survey, 2011. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 233-241 239 test of hypothesis table 4 shows that all the socio-economic characteristics such as age (x 2 = 3.07,p = 0.69), gender (x 2 = 2.79, p = 0.24), education (x 2 = 1.78, p = 0.77), religion (x 2 = 3.51, p= 0.32), marital status (x 2 = 4.56, p = 0.21) type of farming (x 2 = 1.37, p = 0.50), family size (x 2 = 2.97, p = 039), farming experience (x 2 = 3.99, p = 0.41), farm size (x 2 = 3.77, p= 0.58), income (x 2 =6.89, p = 0.14), housing tenure (x 2 = 3.61, p = 0.16), membership of organization (x 2 l = 3.72, p = 0.59), land tenure (x 2 = 2.21, p =0.33), and source of labour (x 2 = 4.43, p = 0.48) are not significantly related to social impact. thus, the null hypothesis is accepted for the socioeconomic characteristics listed above. therefore, there are no significant relationships between socio-economic characteristics and the social impact of oil exploration companies in the study area. this means that age for example does not determine the impact of oil pollution. table 4: test of chi-square analysis of relationship between social impact and socio economic characteristics of farmers in the study area (n=20) variable x 2 cal x 2 tab d.f ά remark age 3.07 11.070 5 0.05 ns gender 2.79 3.841 1 0.05 ns educational level 1.78 9.488 4 0.05 ns religion 3.51 7.815 3 0.05 ns marital status 4.56 7.815 3 0.05 ns type of farming 1.37 5.991 2 0.05 ns family size 2.97 7.815 3 0.05 ns farming experience 3.99 9.488 4 0.05 ns farm size 3.77 11.070 5 0.05 ns income 6.89 9.488 4 0.05 ns housing tenure 3.61 5.991 2 0.05 ns membership of organization 3.72 11.070 5 0.05 ns land tenure 2.21 5.991 2 0.05 ns source of labour 4.43 11.070 5 0.05 ns conclusion and recommendations the study was conducted to examine the social impact of oil pollution on small-scale farmers’ oil producing communities of the central zone of delta state, nigeria. agricultural activities practiced in the study area ranged from crop and animal/fish production to crop product processing. the environmental problems they contended with ranged from land degradation to noise pollution. the problems caused by oil pollution greatly affected their socioeconomic activities (abah, 2004). oil exploration and exploitation caused a lot of ecological damage to soil resources, human health, the environment and social problems in the oil producing communities (iyoha, 2002). it is therefore concluded that there is an urgent need for the enactment and enforcement of a comprehensive and effective environmental protection law and education to protect and preserve oil producing communities’ environment for sustainability of the present and future generations (awoniyi, et al., 1995). based on the findings, it was recommended that  communities should be enlightened on how to control the exploit of their resources  oil companies should compensate their host communities with health facilities, youth employment and other amenities development.  oil companies should make provision for proper clearing of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 233-241 240 polluted water and remediation of affected soil.  improved farm inputs should be supplied to farmers in order to cope with devastation of the environment  oil companies should be made to dispose their wastes properly and carry out constant maintenance of their facilities, especially pipelines. references abah, s. o. 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(2010). perception of effect of gas flaring on the environment. research journal of environmental and earth sciences, 2(4), 188–193. peterson. j. e. (1997). industrial health. margnette university prentice hall new jersey: series in environmental sciences. stanley, w. r. (1990). socio-economic impact of oil in nigeria. geojournal, 3, 67-79. united nations development programme report (2006). niger delta human development report. pp. 151–158. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(8), 175-186 175 status and constraints of jute cultivation in bangladesh: an experience from selected upazilas under chandpur district mohammad muzahidul islam phd candidate; college of humanities and development studies (cohd), china agricultural university, beijing, china & assistant professor; department of management studies, patuakhali science and technology university, bangladesh jian xiaoying professor; college of humanities and development, china agricultural university, beijing, china md. ektear uddin associate professor; agricultural extension and rural development, patuakhali science and technology university, bangladesh faruk bhuiyan assistant professor; department of business administration, international islamic university chittagong, bangladesh abstract 1 this study aimed at exploring the obstacles of jute cultivation under chandpur districts in bangladesh by the principle component analysis (pca). the required data were collected through structured interview schedule from 803 jute farmers sampled conveniently. though jute diversified industry has been seen as potential since the last decade in bangladesh, raw jute production is not satisfactory due to several obstacles. the study has identified three categories of constraints that hinder sustainable jute production. these are lack of capital and inputs, knowledge and natural resources, and market information. basically farmers cultivate jute for earning profit but they are not conscious about forward market. lack of jute diversification knowledge is the unique findings of this study. the findings may help policy makers and stakeholders for taking effective decision in addressing the barriers to jute cultivation in bangladesh. keywords: constraints, jute cultivation, jute diversification, bangladesh 1. introduction in the history of human civilization jute occupies a unique position in the array of natural fiber. jute is very vital sector in agricultural, industrial, and commercial context in bangladesh. it was once known as the golden fiber of bangladesh, since it was the most important cash crop for the country. bangladesh enjoys comparative advantages in jute production over other countries in the world. in corresponding author‟s name: mohammad muzahidul islam email address: muzahidhrm@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:muzahidhrm@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 175-186 176 bangladesh, jute is locally popular by the name paat. jute fiber is produced mainly from two commercially important species, namely white jute or deshi paat (corchours capsularis), and tossa paat or boghi jute (corchorus olitorius). jute occupies approximate 6% of the total land area and about 10% of the total agriculture land area of the country. the share of jute in agriculture export is around 39% (ijsg, 2012). bangladesh produces around 33% of the total global jute and is the largest exporter in the world with around 29% as raw jute. moreover, bangladesh earns foreign currency by exporting raw jute, jute manufactures, jute carpet, yearns and twine. over the past six years jute export has been doubled from usd 326.15 million in 2003-2004 to usd787.99 million in 2009-2010. moreover, there is increasing raw jute export growth has observed during 2010-11 to 2011-12 by 1.1% and 2.36% respectably but 1.1% decreased in 2012-13 (ijsg, 2013). it indicates that jute sector is prospective in bangladesh but with some challenges. in bangladesh, approximately 32 million people are involved in agricultural activities of which 12.5% is involved with jute sector (molla, 2014). being ignored by adequate government policy, bangladesh‟s jute glory has been grabbed by the mighty synthetic corporate house. as jute sector is economically important in bangladesh, any problem of this sector should be studied and solved very carefully as early as possible. however, the researchers are not much aware any research on jute cultivation in chandpur district. nowadays jute cultivation and raw jute marketing is not satisfactory because of enormous challenges which are still unaddressed. the recent success of small jute diversified industries show that diversified finished jute products exporting can revive the weaken jute sector and livelihoods of the jute famers. however, there are no well documented research evidences of solving the problems of jute sector through alternative approach other than the raw jute export. nevertheless, a holistic problems identification is the precondition for looking appropriate ways of addressing them. as problems are multifaceted, policy intervention for sustainable and vibrant jute sector deserve knocking at critical gates to improve the lives of farmers and sustainable development of the country. 1.1. literature review of jute cultivation constraints based on research objectives, researchers have investigated obstacles of jute growers in jute cultivation in different previous research. hussain et al. (2002) investigated various problems in producing jute likely low market price, low demand of jute, farias influence of government purchasers, and inadequate grading knowledge of the farmers etc. another scholar has also found different constraints in jute producing such as physical (limited water availability etc) technological (lack of more productive technical knowledge and know how) etc. (hussain, 1969). according to skidar and banerjee (1990), jute farmers face several obstacles such as insufficient irrigation facilities, high inputs price, insufficient credit facilities, and lack of market and particularly scarcity of clean water for jute retting in their study. for retting, farmers usually have to go away from his house; it will incur the cultivation cost. hossain et al. (2002) found that agricultural knowledge and attitude are significantly related and these directly impact in farmer‟s decisions making. raw jute has been passing through challenges due to low and unstable price at the growers' level (dass, 1999). anonymous (2010) found that the jute sector of bangladesh is hindered by lack of availability of quality seed, retting problems, mill efficiency, product diversification issues and market linkages. in nepal, the area and production of land has decreased in jute production due to several obstacles such as unstable and low price of raw jute, unavailability of quality seed, labor shortage during peak season, weed problem, irrigation at sowing period and disease complex (wilt) etc. (ghimire and thakur, 2013). this study has considered some contemporary issues in research such as diversified use, knowledge and natural resource issues of farmers which contributing jute cultivation decisions. it is noted that researchers in not much aware any academic research how these factors are contributing in jute cultivation decisions by jute farmers. 1.2. status of jute cultivation bangladesh produces best quality jute fiber in the world. the land of bangladesh is suitable for jute production. it should be noted that bangladesh stood first position in producing jute among the countries of the world. for the last couple of years, india took the first position of raw jute asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 175-186 177 production defeating bangladesh. recently, bangladesh government has developed “mandatory jute packaging act 2010” and “mandatory jute packaging rules 2013.” furthermore, demands of jute products have increased significantly at home and abroad. but raw jute production is not satisfactory at farm levels. farmers are reluctant to cultivate jute due to obstacles at different phases of the cultivation. the statistics shows that jute cultivation area has been declined gradually from 84 hectare in 2011 to 74.36 hectare in 2014. on the other hand, jute production has been reduced from 7.09 metric tons to 6.66 metric tons during the last four years (figure 1). figure 1: jute cultivation area and production trends in bangladesh source: ijsg (2012) and dae (2015) more than 80% of world jute grows in the ganges delta of bangladesh which has been categorized in to three areas such asjat area (brahmaputra alluvium), the nothern area (teesta silt) and the districts area (ganges alluvium). the jat area covers the grater dhaka, comilla and mymensingh districts. the northern area comprises grater rangpur, dinajpur, bogra, and rajshahi district. the district areas are composed of greater faridpur, jessore, pabna and kustia. jat area contributes to 41.69% of total raw jute production whereas northern and districts area contributes 30.08% and 28.23% respectively. but the picture has been changed over the couple of decades. district area accounted for 63.72% of total jute cultivation area where as jat area contributed only 17.87% during 2009-10 (molla, 2014). the total cultivated land of chandpur district was 2666.88 hectare during 2008-09 and 4783.79 hectare during 2010-11. the total jute cultivated land area decreased more than 446.32 hectare during 2013-14 compare to the year 2010-11/12 (bbs, 2013). furthermore, the targeted area is only 4714 hectare in 2015-16 (dae, 2015). despite conducive environment for jute cultivation, the size of jute cultivation land is decreasing in chandpur districts over the last few years. the government and policy makers needs to be well informed about the status of jute cultivation as well as causes of deviation that undermine jute production and livelihoods of the farmers. if farmers get the motivation and benefits, they will cultivate jute. so it is very urgent to address farmers‟ problems and obstacles in growing jute. bangladesh can enjoy and lead the natural fiber market through jute production and by making diversified eco-jute products. the policy makers and authorities may take urgent steps to resolve jute cultivation obstacles. 4.48 4.57 4.37 4.08 3.9 4.02 4.19 4.41 4.21 4.17 7.09 7.6 6.81 6.66 7.57 6.73 45 47 44 44 59 46 48 46 46 50 84 80.03 76.1174.36 80.14 75.01 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 area ('00000h a) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ganges_delta http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=brahmaputra_alluvium&action=edit&redlink=1 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=teesta_silt&action=edit&redlink=1 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ganges_alluvium&action=edit&redlink=1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 175-186 178 2. materials and methods the study was conducted in purposively selected four upazillas (sub-district) of chandpur districts. these four upazillas are chandpur sadar, matlab dakkhin, kachua and hajiganj. purposive selection was favoured because maximum numbers of jute growers are located in these upazillas. moreover, the areas are familiar to the researcher. all jute farmers under these four upzillas were considered as population. to get generalizable data in short time 803 jute growers were sampled following a convenience sampling. data were collected through a structured interview schedule from accidentally meet available jute farmers during february to march of 2015. the researchers were guided by local ngo workers who have informal relationship with the jute farmers. a five point likert scale was used to get the ratings against 31 selected constraints. data were entered into computer package spss 17 version for analysis. descriptive statistics like frequency distribution, mean and standard deviation were used to analyze the socio-economic status of the jute growers whereas factor analysis was performed to identify the major constraints for jute cultivating in the selected areas. 3. result and discussion a summary of nine characteristics of the respondents has been presented in table 1. the information of the table shows that the majority of the respondents (54.1%) were at middle aged (31-50 years), 5.8% respondents were young (up to 30 years), the remaining were old age (above 51 years). women respondents of the survey were about 8.1%. medium sized (5-9) family (65%) dominates in the locality. about 75.3 % household possess 1-3 family labor. in addition, more than half of the respondent‟s farm size is between 10.1-20 decimal (0.0409 to 0.081 hectares) and almost 50% of the respondents possess up to up to 6 decimals (0.0243 hectares) land for jute cultivation. the table 1 also indicates that 84.6% respondents have more than 10 years experiences in jute cultivation. about half of the respondents have annual income bdt.35000 to 75000. traditionally most of the respondents (57.90%) prefer to cultivate native varieties of jute locally named as shutli. 3.2. constraints of jute cultivation based on literature review and expert opinion, the study has chosen thirty one (31) probable constraints of jute cultivation in bangladesh (table 4). respondents‟ opinions regarding the constraints were matched with a 5-point likert scale. principal component analysis (pca) has been operationalized to extract perceived constraints of jute cultivation in reduced form. from the correlation matrix [appendix table-1], it has been seen that some of the items have scores more than 0.3 and hence it is appropriate for factor analysis (tabachnick and fidel, 2007). in addition, for checking data normality and sample advocacy, kaiser-mayer-olkin (kmo) measure and bartlett test of sphericity is frequently used by different practitioners and researchers. if bartlett‟s test of sphericity is large and significant and the kmo is greater than 0.6 then factorability is assumed. high value of kmo between 0.5 and 1.0 indicates the data feasibility for factor analysis (leech et al., 2005). as the study found 0.631 from kmo test and significant bartlett‟s test of sphericity as p< 0.01 (see table-2), hence the study goes for operating factor analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 175-186 179 table 1: demography and characteristics of jute farmers characteristics of jute farmers f % range m sd age (in full years) below 30 48 5.8 31-50 437 54.1 20-69 47.90 7.86 51 above 318 39.5 gender male 738 91.9 female 65 8.1 family members 1-4 43 5.3 5-9 525 65.4 2-16 8.69 2.24 10 and above 235 29.27 household labor 1-3 605 75.3 1-5 2.63 0.89 4-6 198 24.7 total farm size (in decimal) below 10 18 2.22 10.1-20 408 50.9 3-180 28.25 24.93 20.01-30 250 31.1 above 30 127 15.8 jute cultivation area ( in decimal) below 6 401 49.94 6-12 386 48.07 3-40 7.63 3.76 above 12 16 1.99 experience of jute production less than 5 years 56 7.0 5-10 years 68 8.4 1-40 21.96 9.73 above 10 years 679 84.6 annual house income (000‟ bdt) less than 35 228 28.4 35 -75 428 53.3 15-200 65.78 38.81 above 75 147 18.3 name of varieties jute (deshi ) 465 57.90 jute (tossa) 298 37.12 jute (mesta /kenaf) 40 4.98 source: field survey table 2: kmo and bartlett's test kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy 0.631 bartlett's test of sphericity approx. chi-square 3475.567 df 465 sig. 0.000 to identify the optimum number of components, authors have tested two different options. kaiser‟s criterion, as one of two options, suggests extracting the factors with eigen value of equal to or more than one. the pca shows that there are 12 factors consist of eigen values more than 1 [see table3]. these twelve factors explain 59.528 percent of variance (from cumulative percentage column in total variance explained table). however, scree-plot is another option that can facilitate researchers to extract the right factors for the further study. from the scree-plot, it has been seen that 5 components exist above the third elbow [appendix figure-1]. therefore, it suggests five categories of factors significantly hinder jute cultivation in bangladesh. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 175-186 180 table 3: total variance explained component initial eigen values extraction sums of squared loadings rotation sums of squared loadings a total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % total 1 3.728 12.025 12.025 3.728 12.025 12.025 3.266 2 1.730 5.581 17.605 1.730 5.581 17.605 1.915 3 1.607 5.185 22.790 1.607 5.185 22.790 2.168 4 1.466 4.730 27.520 1.466 4.730 27.520 1.586 5 1.442 4.650 32.170 1.442 4.650 32.170 1.495 6 1.372 4.427 36.597 7 1.340 4.324 40.921 8 1.239 3.997 44.918 9 1.191 3.842 48.760 10 1.163 3.752 52.512 11 1.135 3.661 56.173 12 1.040 3.355 59.528 13 0.974 3.142 62.670 14 0.947 3.055 65.725 15 0.895 2.887 68.612 16 0.861 2.778 71.391 17 0.853 2.752 74.143 18 0.798 2.575 76.718 19 0.737 2.378 79.097 20 0.722 2.329 81.425 21 0.707 2.281 83.707 22 0.690 2.225 85.932 23 0.654 2.111 88.042 24 0.596 1.922 89.965 25 0.569 1.835 91.799 26 0.511 1.647 93.446 27 0.475 1.533 94.980 28 0.448 1.445 96.425 29 0.404 1.305 97.730 30 0.377 1.215 98.944 31 0.327 1.056 100.000 extraction method: principal component analysis a. when components are correlated, sums of squared loadings cannot be added to obtain a total variance from the total variance explained table [see table 3], it has been seen that five components cumulatively explain 32.17 percent variance whereas twelve components cumulatively explain 59.528 percent variance. in addition, to interpret five components elaborately, oblimin rotation was performed which is given in the structure matrix table 4. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 175-186 181 table 4: structure matrix constraints component 1 2 3 4 5 lack of capital 0.650 no purchasing of jute by govt. and mills -0.635 unavailability of quality seeds 0.545 insufficient credit facilities 0.517 0.483 lack of transport facilities -0.507 lack of subsidies from government 0.484 lack of suitable land -0.469 cyclone -0.456 lack of knowledge of crop rotation -0.397 0.303 high price of inputs 0.335 0.318 hail storm -0.353 -0.535 lack of knowledge on diversified use 0.503 drought -0.309 0.498 lack of knowledge on retting methods 0.485 0.343 lack of knowledge for jute cultivation 0.385 0.300 distance market no grade difference in pricing 0.509 unavailability of buyer 0.485 fixed soil (unproductive soil) -0.372 -0.449 inadequate knowledge on ecosystem -0.429 low price of jute 0.420 lack of information on market price -0.359 strong syndicate among local buyers 0.356 -0.307 weak extensions service -0.537 lack of storage facilities -0.524 lack of bargaining power with buyer -0.460 highly laborious 0.446 0.358 scarcity of water 0.314 -0.412 lack of monitoring in fake seed import 0.620 lack of processing facilities 0.504 shortage of knowledge on environmental benefits extraction method: principal component analysis. rotation method: oblimin with kaiser normalization the component correlation matrix (table 5) shows the strength of correlation between two components. correlation among the variables of the existing study varies from -0.056 to 0.119. it shows week correlations among the variables as it is less than 0.2. moreover, the components are almost independent from or no relation to one another. hence, the decision of oblimin‟s five factor solution is appropriate for the study. table 5: component correlation matrix component 1 2 3 4 5 1 1.000 0.119 0.162 -0.036 -0.026 2 0.119 1.000 0.041 -0.038 0.006 3 0.162 0.041 1.000 -0.036 -0.056 4 -0.036 -0.038 -0.036 1.000 0.040 5 -0.026 0.006 -0.056 0.040 1.000 extraction method: principal component analysis rotation method: oblimin with kaiser normalization asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 175-186 182 from the structure matrix (table 4), it has been seen that eight variables loaded under identifiable component-1 with negative scores (such as; -0.635, -0.507, -0.372, -0.353, -0.309, -0.469, -0.456, 0.397) which indicate an opposite relationship between the observed variables and component-1. as the study deals with the constraints of jute cultivation at selected upzillas under chandpur districts in bangladesh, these negatively loaded variables have excluded from the component-1. however, component-1 loads five variables with high positive scores of more than 0.4 each: lack of capital, lack of subsidies from government, insufficient credit facilities (as strongly correlated at .517 with component-1 than 3), lack of subsidies from government and high price of inputs. by considering the nature of and the literature on the extracted variables, authors argue financial and inputs obstacle as one of the constraints behind the jute cultivation in study area. similarly, by excluding the variable „hail storm‟ as it is negatively loaded under component-2, the study realizes another constraint which consists of five variables: lack of knowledge of crop rotation, lack of knowledge on diversified use, drought, and scarcity of water, lack of knowledge on modern retting methods (as it is strongly correlated with component-2 than 3), and lack of knowledge for jute cultivation. hence, the second broad constraint of jute cultivation in bangladesh is knowledge and natural resources obstacle. similarly, the third broad constraint of jute cultivation is market and information obstacle which consists of four closely related variables: strong syndicate among local buyers, low price of jute, no grade difference in pricing, and unavailability of buyers. most of the variables under component 4 and 5 are negatively correlated with each other and the rest of the variables under each component (only 1 and 2 under component4 and5 respectively) are considered as constraints of jute cultivation in study area due to significant constraints. thus a fourth constraint is highly labourious. farmers think that whole process of jute cultivation is labourious work compare to other crops. finally the fifth as others constraints are lack of monitoring in fake seed import and lack of processing facilities. therefore, broad barriers of jute cultivation at chandpur district are lack of sufficient finance and other inputs, knowledge and natural resources, and market and information 4. conclusions the main findings of this study have generated some important obstacles which have been faced by jute growers of chandpur districts such as lack of capital and inputs, knowledge and natural resource constraints, and market and information obstacles. these obstacles make difficult in decision making of jute cultivation in study area. problems could be minimized by providing sufficient jute crop credit facilities and subsidies on inputs from government for sustainable jute cultivation. awareness program on modern jute retting and cultivation methods, diversified uses of jute and adoption of climate change effects should be addressed by the concern authority to minimize the knowledge and natural resource obstacles. however, most of the obstacles could be removed by promoting jute diversified entrepreneurs and develop its market at home and abroad. as a result, automatically farmers will get high price, buyer and market benefits. besides, promoting farmers to be an entrepreneur or ensuring strong linkage among jute diversified industries will also minimize the market related obstacles. finally, it is expected that the results of this study will be useful for jute farmers, policy makers and researchers to address the contemporary obstacles of jute cultivation in effectively. 4.1. recommendations in view of the concluding remarks, the following suggestion are given for addressing several obstacles in jute cultivation and for sustainable jute production on the basis of analysis as well as information gathers from the selected areas. 1. department of agricultural extension should identify and address farmers problem in effective way. they can set farmers complain box at local level and respond accordingly. 2. ngo‟s should offer seasonal loan to the jute growers without collateral. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 175-186 183 3. government can disseminate knowledge through different media or agencies on modern jute cultivation and environmental changes to address knowledge and natural resources obstacles. 4. government also should take initiative for farm mechanization instated of traditional inefficient agricultural tools to reduce before and after the process of jute cultivation. it will reduce the lengthy process and make the work easy for farmers. besides government should monitor all imported inputs such as seeds, machines, fertilizers etc strictly. 5. government should take massive roadmap for enhancing jute cultivation at farmer‟s level by using jute wing of department of agricultural extensions. extension workers may give suggestions before and after crop cultivation in selection of quality seed and fertilizer. government can be more active by taking help from dae and bangladesh jute research institute for identifying effective strategies in jute cultivation. 6. contract farming can help to reduce hindrances of the jute cultivation. through contract farming farmers will be benefited and they will get security in jute cultivation. it will help to ensure sustainable jute production. 7. government should develop and implement minimum price support policy for the poor jute growers. 8. government could distribute and subsidies agricultural inputs to the poor jute farmers and give reward on the basis of jute production. 9. promoting farmers to be entrepreneurs of diversified jute products through training and providing other facilities. here jute diversification promotion centre (jdpc) can play a good role. ultimately jute farmers will be motivated in jute production. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. 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(2007). using multivariate statistics. 5th edition, boston; pearson education. http://jute.org/statistics_01.htm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 175-186 185 appendix table 1: correlation matrix lkcr ub lsf ltf lpf hl sw dm lbp ngp lmp lkr lkd ike skeb lkjc wes lpj lsg lmfs npjg d h c uqs fs icf hpi sslp lc lsl lkcr 1.000 -.074 -.121 .079 .074 .011 .023 .057 -.030 -.007 .180 .018 -.074 .035 -.087 .063 -.007 .000 -.188 .048 .183 .192 -.021 .014 -.160 .183 -.146 -.129 -.041 -.155 .071 ub -.074 1.000 .006 -.076 -.072 -.025 .029 .037 -.095 .110 -.083 .080 -.061 -.048 .038 .095 -.122 .193 .016 .006 .031 -.055 -.080 -.004 -.009 -.207 .079 .021 .052 .139 .000 lsf -.121 .006 1.000 -.053 .058 -.105 .130 .018 .091 -.010 -.178 .074 .048 -.072 -.077 .099 .071 .121 -.025 .086 -.065 -.033 -.029 -.089 .118 -.093 .164 .022 .168 .098 -.015 ltf .079 -.076 -.053 1.000 .009 .089 -.039 .181 -.055 .004 .132 .006 -.018 .004 -.045 .003 .065 -.210 -.150 .041 .232 .148 .159 .213 -.232 .128 -.200 -.091 -.024 -.227 .131 lpf .074 -.072 .058 .009 1.000 .013 -.083 -.124 .041 .079 .053 -.113 .037 .042 .055 .098 -.152 .033 -.025 .140 .106 .099 -.107 .059 -.041 .054 -.014 -.063 .033 .079 .070 hl .011 -.025 -.105 .089 .013 1.000 -.163 -.021 -.003 -.046 .072 -.079 -.211 .118 .040 .046 -.064 -.190 .034 .072 .034 .093 .092 .142 .016 .025 .004 .063 -.140 -.046 .037 sw .023 .029 .130 -.039 -.083 -.163 1.000 -.040 .046 -.025 .071 .149 .180 .005 .031 .050 .140 .104 .061 -.033 -.066 .017 -.057 -.087 .127 -.139 .020 .036 .021 .114 -.014 dm .057 .037 .018 .181 -.124 -.021 -.040 1.000 -.016 .033 .022 .015 -.191 .051 -.043 -.019 .036 -.052 -.117 -.001 .102 -.115 .151 .094 -.015 .027 -.073 -.048 .006 -.195 .011 lbp -.030 -.095 .091 -.055 .041 -.003 .046 -.016 1.000 -.016 -.016 -.027 .038 .111 -.004 -.036 .090 .058 -.062 .039 -.098 .057 .090 .102 -.006 .056 -.049 -.042 .008 .101 .120 ngp -.007 .110 -.010 .004 .079 -.046 -.025 .033 -.016 1.000 -.123 .108 .039 -.125 .069 -.037 .044 .093 -.024 .056 .012 -.021 -.032 -.049 -.088 -.058 .173 .106 .022 -.029 .110 lmp .180 -.083 -.178 .132 .053 .072 .071 .022 -.016 -.123 1.000 -.056 -.058 .053 .086 -.002 -.041 -.079 .022 .083 .187 .147 .131 .156 -.091 .198 -.151 -.111 -.011 -.255 -.029 lkr .018 .080 .074 .006 -.113 -.079 .149 .015 -.027 .108 -.056 1.000 .143 .018 .053 .128 -.032 .264 .063 .010 -.095 .080 -.215 -.169 .154 -.160 .322 .175 .027 .178 -.086 lkd -.074 -.061 .048 -.018 .037 -.211 .180 -.191 .038 .039 -.058 .143 1.000 -.030 -.022 .101 .069 .021 .079 -.073 -.041 .192 -.130 -.058 .005 -.067 .116 .112 -.010 .194 .006 ike .035 -.048 -.072 .004 .042 .118 .005 .051 .111 -.125 .053 .018 -.030 1.000 -.027 .073 .080 -.073 .060 -.022 .074 .074 -.069 .027 .085 .080 -.143 -.085 -.127 -.071 .108 skeb -.087 .038 -.077 -.045 .055 .040 .031 -.043 -.004 .069 .086 .053 -.022 -.027 1.000 -.003 -.001 .039 .094 .053 -.071 .054 .081 -.014 .059 -.035 .007 .055 .057 -.039 .046 lkjc .063 .095 .099 .003 .098 .046 .050 -.019 -.036 -.037 -.002 .128 .101 .073 -.003 1.000 .116 .257 .075 .053 -.064 .033 -.183 -.046 .068 -.039 .088 -.047 .027 .148 .008 wes -.007 -.122 .071 .065 -.152 -.064 .140 .036 .090 .044 -.041 -.032 .069 .080 -.001 .116 1.000 .055 -.002 .160 .032 .121 .032 -.038 -.031 .092 .048 -.029 .038 -.003 -.080 lpj .000 .193 .121 -.210 .033 -.190 .104 -.052 .058 .093 -.079 .264 .021 -.073 .039 .257 .055 1.000 .078 .032 -.110 -.114 -.097 -.086 .137 -.178 .140 .136 .104 .217 -.117 lsg -.188 .016 -.025 -.150 -.025 .034 .061 -.117 -.062 -.024 .022 .063 .079 .060 .094 .075 -.002 .078 1.000 .078 -.241 -.093 -.067 -.166 .104 -.061 .216 .079 -.045 .174 -.194 lmfs .048 .006 .086 .041 .140 .072 -.033 -.001 .039 .056 .083 .010 -.073 -.022 .053 .053 .160 .032 .078 1.000 .041 -.031 .118 .025 -.159 .045 .042 -.105 -.173 -.026 .131 npjg .183 .031 -.065 .232 .106 .034 -.066 .102 -.098 .012 .187 -.095 -.041 .074 -.071 -.064 .032 -.110 -.241 .041 1.000 .184 .151 .322 -.161 .240 -.218 -.110 .021 -.329 .206 d .192 -.055 -.033 .148 .099 .093 .017 -.115 .057 -.021 .147 .080 .192 .074 .054 .033 .121 -.114 -.093 -.031 .184 1.000 .000 .091 -.097 .023 -.120 -.031 -.039 -.117 .073 h -.021 -.080 -.029 .159 -.107 .092 -.057 .151 .090 -.032 .131 -.215 -.130 -.069 .081 -.183 .032 -.097 -.067 .118 .151 .000 1.000 .280 -.227 .236 -.266 -.146 -.078 -.239 .091 c .014 -.004 -.089 .213 .059 .142 -.087 .094 .102 -.049 .156 -.169 -.058 .027 -.014 -.046 -.038 -.086 -.166 .025 .322 .091 .280 1.000 -.268 .135 -.194 -.198 -.142 -.180 .118 uqs -.160 -.009 .118 -.232 -.041 .016 .127 -.015 -.006 -.088 -.091 .154 .005 .085 .059 .068 -.031 .137 .104 -.159 -.161 -.097 -.227 -.268 1.000 -.130 .211 .169 .037 .315 -.229 fs .183 -.207 -.093 .128 .054 .025 -.139 .027 .056 -.058 .198 -.160 -.067 .080 -.035 -.039 .092 -.178 -.061 .045 .240 .023 .236 .135 -.130 1.000 -.303 -.145 -.087 -.251 .114 icf -.146 .079 .164 -.200 -.014 .004 .020 -.073 -.049 .173 -.151 .322 .116 -.143 .007 .088 .048 .140 .216 .042 -.218 -.120 -.266 -.194 .211 -.303 1.000 .353 .179 .394 -.232 hpi -.129 .021 .022 -.091 -.063 .063 .036 -.048 -.042 .106 -.111 .175 .112 -.085 .055 -.047 -.029 .136 .079 -.105 -.110 -.031 -.146 -.198 .169 -.145 .353 1.000 .091 .179 -.126 sslp -.041 .052 .168 -.024 .033 -.140 .021 .006 .008 .022 -.011 .027 -.010 -.127 .057 .027 .038 .104 -.045 -.173 .021 -.039 -.078 -.142 .037 -.087 .179 .091 1.000 .016 -.013 lc -.155 .139 .098 -.227 .079 -.046 .114 -.195 .101 -.029 -.255 .178 .194 -.071 -.039 .148 -.003 .217 .174 -.026 -.329 -.117 -.239 -.180 .315 -.251 .394 .179 .016 1.000 -.310 lsl .071 .000 -.015 .131 .070 .037 -.014 .011 .120 .110 -.029 -.086 .006 .108 .046 .008 -.080 -.117 -.194 .131 .206 .073 .091 .118 -.229 .114 -.232 -.126 -.013 -.310 1.000 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 175-186 186 figure 1: scree plot effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 525 mid-day meals scheme in hilly areas: tamil nadu, india a. mahendran phd scholar, tata institute of social sciences hyderabad, india s. indrakant rbi chair professor, council for social development hyderabad, india abstract in the year 1956 the state of tamil nadu introduced the mid-day meals scheme for the first time in the country. today almost all states are following different methods of menu‟s and patterns. the government is trying to solve the problems of malnutrition and other side to concentrate as school education from 1 st standard to 10 th standard. in the state one step forward to introduce different food menu and importantly to launched daily eggs for children. aim of this case study to find out the utilisation of mid-day meals programme among school children based on filed visit in children, teacher, organiser, cook, parents and public and also what are problems are faced by school children in hilly, rural and urban areas. most of the studies concluded that the scheme is working satisfactorily (urban, coastal areas) in tamil nadu and even recommend that other states should follow the tamil nadu mid-day meals scheme. the working of the mid-day meals scheme in hilly, rural areas was not assessed till now and needs to be examined. this study was conducted at theni district, tamil nadu. this case study concludes that mid-day meals scheme in tamil nadu has positive points and negative points. the children faced many problems and others opinions are not satisfied. however, with some more commitment, vision and realism the scheme can be made more effective to fulfil the dreams of k. kamaraj and m.g. ramachandran. in the case study strongly suggested alarming findings about the future development of mid-day meals programme. keywords: mdm, icds, children, cost, leakages, hilly areas introduction 1 mid-day meals scheme in tamil nadu has a long history. it was started by the then chief minister of tamil nadu late k kamaraj in early 1956. it was confined to primary government schools covering about 2 million children. quality of food was good and the food was cooked in very hygienic environment. the quality of food was so good that even the teachers used to take the meals. mr. k. kamaraj strongly believed that it is of no use to teach children who come to the school with empty stomach. it was a corresponding author‟s name: a. mahendran email address: dr.a.mahendran@gmail.com strategy to improve the literacy rate and to reduce hunger among children. on 1 st july 1982, at the initiative of the then chief minister late m. g. ramachandran, this scheme was replaced by a new scheme called „nutritious noon meal scheme‟, which covered 5.6 million children in about 32 thousand elementary schools and about 20 thousand child welfare centres. later, (i.e. on 15 th september1982) the scheme was universalised by extending to the urban schools. in 1992, then (and also present) chief minister, j. jayalalitha renamed the scheme as „puratchi thalaivar mgr‟s nutritious noon meal programme‟, which is being used even now. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:dr.a.mahendran@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 525-531 526 the government support policy to the poor children in tamil nadu is very comprehensive. besides providing free meals with a variety (rice, daily eggs, weekly once potatoes), it provides free notebooks, four sets of uniforms, bicycles, school bags, bus passes to students from both short and long distances, mathematical (geometric) box, pencils & colour pencils, atlas (map), footwear, scholarship for scheduled caste and scheduled tribe children all primary, upper primary and higher secondary government and government-aided schools. (jean & aparajita, 2003) in this study suggests that, „with informal visits to nine primary schools in rural tamil nadu, it‟s covered by kancheepuram, nagapattinam and dharmapuri districts. overall results suggest it‟s to more enjoy all-round support from the village community. even teacher‟s side more positive aspects of school lunches and mid-day meals are conductive to improved school education. even unit costs of mid-day meals in tamil nadu are not much high. there is much scope for learning from tamil nadu‟s achievements at reasonable cost. and finally suggested no-one recalled any case of food poisoning since mid-day meals started more than 20years ago. (irudaya & jayakumar, 1992) in this study find out the primary aim of the objective was to reduce drop-out rate at the primary level, promote universal education and improve the nutritional status of children. methodology part covered by secondary data collected from various government reports. in analysis part these studies suggest that (cmnnmp) mdm has impact of the primary education in terms of enrolment, in attendance and drop-out on the basis from nagercoil education district which come under the district of kanyakumari. (jitendra, 2013) in this article suggest that 92% schools have good kitchen infrastructure and started upgrading and modernising, it‟s by providing cooking gas facilities. complaint boxes have been installed in every school in tamil nadu. (padmini et al., 2004) in this study mainly focused policy note on 2002-2003. the main aim of the study is to provide adequate nutrition to economically disadvantaged children to improve the health and nutritional status of children to develop their mental and physical ability and to increase the enrolment in schools and reduce dropouts. this study based on hard data from state government reports. the findings part suggest that, there is no doubt that mdm in largest number of beneficiaries, equally large schools dropout rates in primary schools children have come down. in particular girl children are significantly improvement in all schools. in this study also suggested more effective observation and recommendations. (thozhamai, 2013) one of the ngos project suggest that, 24% of icds centres are not functioning after lunch hours. in 9% of centres supplementary food is not provided to the children. 11% of centres do not provide any education on health and hygiene. 10% centres does not perform the major function of maintenance in proper records. finally icds status was very low level functioning and problems are high. (planning commission, 2010) an evaluation report of the national mdm scheme for a few findings and highlights presented. tamil nadu and kerala working of mdm is better functioning compare to other states. in most of the selected states are suffering from the unavailability and poor functional condition of kitchen and other infrastructure. in most of states teachers spend about one or two hours during an activity and reducing precious teaching time. need for the present study there are many studies on the working of mid-day meals scheme in tamil nadu. most of these studies conclude that the scheme is working satisfactorily in tamil nadu and even recommend that other states should follow the tamil nadu policy. most of these studies have been carried out in places either near to chennai or other urban centres or in coastal districts. the working of the mid-day meals scheme in hilly area needs to be examined. towards this end, the working of the scheme in theni district, a hilly area in tamil nadu has been taken up. in other important concepts in this state to more concentrate on different food menu and daily eggs to all children from 1 st standard to 10 th standard. in this case study asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 525-531 527 find out the utilisation of mid-day meals programme in school level children as per filed visit and what are problems are face by school children in hilly, rural and urban areas. theni district theni district is also called „the south kashmir‟ and is located in the hills of western ghats. it is very famous market place for cardamom, coffee, tea, pepper and silk. it is inhabited by two tribes namely paliyars and muthuvars. the total area is 3242.3 sq.km and density of population is 337 sq.km as per 2011 census. the temperature in the plain areas ranges from 16 to 40.5 degree celsius but data are not available for uplands. presently, there are 58 pre-primary schools, 518 primary schools, 181 middle schools, 55 high schools and 72 higher secondary schools in the district. the total strength of boys and girls in first to fifth standard is 12,746 and 11, 692, respectively. the total number of noon-meals centres is 694 and the total number of beneficiaries is 26,074 children. under icds in 2012, 14,999 beneficiaries were registered in 1053 anganwadi centres. education is fundamental for economic growth and developments. providing noon meals and other subsides tend to improve children health and increase school stickiness (tendency to stay longer) of the poor children. these measures to some extent help in reducing poverty and in improving social equity. introduction of daily egg according to, „india state hunger index‟ of 2008, 17 major states are affected by child malnutrition and undernourishment. it points out high levels of health problems among school children (like anaemia, deficiencies of iron, protein and other vitamins) in all the states in india. after the findings of the report, the tamil nadu government (from 2011 onwards) changed the menu of mid-day meals and introduced daily egg in the menu, vegetarians were given banana, green gram or black bengal gram, potato. there is a proposal, perhaps for the first time in the country, to introduce millets in the menu to take additional care of school children, the future pillars of our nation. food cost per child the government of tamil nadu, no doubt, is running the largest feeding programme in the country. this is the most extensive and more expensive nutritious feeding programme being currently undertaken in the state. over 42 thousand feeding centres manned by 128 thousand persons are functioning across the state to feed about 5 million school-going children (i.e. from first standard to tenth standard) (noon-meal programme report, 2013). the food cost per child due to inflation and changes in the menu has been increasing (table 1). for example, in 2001-02 the cost per egg was only 0.18 paise but now it is rs.3. neighbouring states also started providing eggs in their noon-meals programme but only once or twice in a week and so food cost per child is relatively low. but provision of daily egg in tamil nadu is imposing heavy financial burden to the state government while children are experiencing diminishing marginal utility. table 1: food cost per child in noon meals scheme in tamil nadu food cost per child in noon meals scheme in tamil nadu schools 2002-03 (1) 2007-08 (2) 2012-13 (3) primary level 2.69 4.01 7.32 upper primary level 2.69 4.51 7.70 sources: (1),2),(3) department of social welfare and nutritious meal programme, government of tamil nadu asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 525-531 528 table 2: food cost per child in mdm scheme in selected states in 2012-13 food cost per child in mid-day meals scheme schools tamil nadu kerala west bengal odisha bihar karnataka andhra pradesh primary 7.32 4.92 3.33 3.61 3.35 3.11 5.51 upper primary 7.70 6.00 4.65 5.00 5.00 4.65 5.55 sources: mhrdstate wise mid-day meals division report 2013-2014 table 2 shows that the food expenditure on noon-meals programme is higher in tamil nadu than in other states. it appears that the state government is taking measures to improve the health status of children and school education. the benefits of the program need to be examined. field visit in theni the present case study covers the schools in hilly areas, village, and municipality. opinion of four stake-holders namely, (a) students from 5 th to 10 th standard, (b) school teachers, (c) parents of children and (d) mid-day meal staff (organiser, cook cum store keepers) is gathered. in all, the study covered 42 schools. the study revealed many interesting findings and some important results are discussed. opinion of children in hilly areas, it sounds strange but true, the children are generally regular to the school but not the teachers. the teachers generally stay at foot hills i.e. in the plane and daily commute by undependable bus service. the number of students benefitted by noon meals scheme is low (out of 40 children, only 20 children are having midday meals). a student from 6 th standard said “i am not interested to eat daily eggs. my friends are also feeling the same. the food is prepared in unhygienic conditions and is not tasty”. children prefer to have the variety rice, eggs for once or twice in a week and tasty millets food, and if possible biscuits, mixed fruit or juices, cashew nuts, date and dry fruits, etc. girls informed “some of our friends are daily absent due to health problems. nobody pays attention to these issues”. high school children complained „basically food is not tasty in our schools‟. in the some village like kandamanur, mailladuparai, vellaimalai, andipatti and kurankani (rural, hill areas and aided schools) primary and upper primary schools children said that „one egg is divided into two parts and is given to two children‟. this practice is in existence since long time. one child was feeding a part of food given under mid-day meals to an animal. when asked for the reason, he replied “no one can digest this food which has no taste and not good, sambar is like hot water. the egg is half boiled, sometimes rotten. due to poverty, i am forced to have this food. i cannot eat fully. i am giving leftover food to the animal. if i do not take the food and egg daily then „ayaas‟ may sell the eggs to the shops. i am preventing it and have the satisfaction of feeding the unfortunate animal”. opinion of teachers in hilly areas, in some villages like kurakani, agamalai, uradi, uthukadu, vellaimalai, kadamalaikundu and varusanadu due to lack of kitchen and other facilities in the schools, the noon-meals is prepared in anganwadi centres and is transported to the schools. head masters of some primary school and upper primary school told “kitchen building is very old and expecting a new one with proper gas facilities and store room. we are adjusting with anganwadi centres for time being”. opinion of teachers about mdm scheme was collected from different types of schools. one of the teachers, who wanted her name to be kept confidential, shared her experience. she informed “we have 185 students (boys and girls) in upper primary schools. the food is not prepared in clean manner and it leads to lot of health problems to children which, in turn, affects their studies. only 30 to 40 children are taking asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 525-531 529 mid-day meals and the rest are bringing their lunch from their home. this issue was brought to the notice of headmasters several times and we also fought with mid-day meals organisers and cooks. we decided to go on strike along with children for a day (in the month of august 2012) without food. still there is no response from anybody. we also do not know where to go and whom to inform to solve these issues”. to make the programme more effective and useful the teachers suggested that eggs should be given on alternative days like one day to boys and next day to girls or one day to the children of 6th standard and next day to the children of 7 th standard. the government provided cooking gas facilities to cook mid day meals but it is not used by the cooks. instead of gas cylinders they are using fire wood. its smoke suffocates the children and also affects their studies. some high school teachers (bodinayakanur, periyakulam, cumbum, theni, varusanadu, andipatti in hilly areas and devaram in the town areas) reported that 9 th and 10 th boys and girls are not eating mid-day meals because they do not want to appear to be poor among their friends, a “false social status”. opinion of parents it appears to be strange but true. very few parents are permitting their children to have mid-day meals in school because they opine that the food is not prepared in hygienic environment and having egg daily, up sets the stomach and leads to other health problems. so the parents advise the children not to take anything from the school. public opinion opinion of people from different walks of life was also gathered. the government servants expressed that mdmp was good and food was hygienically prepared during mr. k. kamaraj period. but now there are many leakages in the noon meals scheme. in spite of high fees, they prefer private schools only for the better quality of education. even common persons like auto-derivers, daily wage-earners, vegetable-sellers, small traders etc, prefer private schools. they say “we are not educated, at least let our children be educated and we want to improve our status in the society. in private schools, the teachers are teaching not only in tamil but also in english (and hindi for children belonging to other states) and they are giving more attention towards children. the performance of private schools is better than the government schools”. opinion of organisers, cooks and helpers the educational qualification of mid-day meal organiser is either sslc or hsc and while that of the cook and helper is generally below 8 th standard level. most of the cooks and helpers are ladies. the organisers blame the cooks and helpers for the poor quality of food, and the cooks and helpers, in turn, blame the organisers. in this conflict, the children are made to suffer. status of anganwadi centres a visit to some of the anganwadi centres in bondinayakanur, cumbum, theni (rural and urban), periyakulam, andipatti and varusanadu during the month of june 2014 revealed unsatisfactory functioning of these centres. some of the buildings are very old and only few (15 to 20) children attend the aganwadi centre (bodinayakanur, periyakulam and andipatti areas). in some places, new buildings are constructed but there are no children (munthal, kurangani, agmalai, selamalai, lakshipuram, t. kallipatti, chinnamanur, and devaram). for most of the time the rooms are closed and used for public functions. in few anganwadi centres only teacher and helper were present. they complained that parents are not willing to send their children to anganwadi centre and prefer to take them to their work place. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 525-531 530 leakages it appears that the organisers misuse the food items and the workers sell eggs to their relatives at cheap rate. in the government aided schools teachers also misuse eggs and other food items. every school in tamil nadu has a noon-meal organiser, a cook and a helper. their salaries are good and enjoy other benefits. these employees are under the control of the officials at districtlevel, block-level, and municipal and panchayat levels and accountable to them only but school head masters/mistress has no control over them. this is one of the important reasons for leakages in the scheme. it appears that only 50% of students are participating in the scheme by taking mid-day meals. further, about 30% of children do not relish the food and leave a part of food. thus, only 20% of children are fully depending on the mid-day meals scheme as they get insufficient food at home. the way ahead success of a welfare scheme largely depends on the commitment of the leader and the implementing agency. generally, a welfare scheme happens to be brain–child of a leader and his fortunes depend on the outcome the scheme. obviously, he will have strong commitment in its implementation and administrative machinery will be geared to implement the scheme. his successors may not evince same interest in the scheme. their apprehension is that credit for the success of the scheme will go to the leader who started the scheme and will not benefit them much and sometime it may go against their interest (especially, when there is a change in political party in power). besides commitment, the leader should be a visionary, realistic and feel the pulse of the people. in this context it is not out of place to mention briefly about rs. 2 per kg rice scheme launched by n. t. rama rao in andhra pradesh during early 1980s. he concentrated on „what people want” i.e. rice, which is a staple food in the state. he, keeping in mind the administrative capacity, did not bother to distribute large number of items through pds. the fact that he was very realistic is reflected in the fixation of ration price of rice, a price relatively lower than open market price. the open market price was rs3 to 4 per kg and he fixed ration price at rs 2 per kg. the people were happy with that price. even at that time nobody demanded rice to be distributed at rs. 1 per kg. with the passage of time the commitment of succeeding leaders, for various reasons, is likely to come down. further, administrative machinery is entrusted with the task of implementation of other schemes. the general opinion of different stake-holders is that earlier midday meals scheme was serving the intended objectives. however, with passage of time for various reasons, (at least in hilly areas) different types of leakages have crept into the scheme. effective mdm scheme based on the opinion expressed by different stake-holders few suggestions have been made to make mid-day meals scheme more effective. the scheme should not have top-down approach. the menu in the mid-day meals should be changed only when there is a demand from children for a change and not at whims and fancies of some individuals, which may be prompted by various considerations. even when nutritional experts want to change the menu, initially it must be implemented in few pockets fallowed by feed-back from the children. only when there is a good feed-back from the children, the menu may be changed. provision of daily egg has become controversial. as a compromise it may be provided on alternative days. mid-day meals should not be compulsory but be made optional. at the time of admission, the opinion of children should be elicited. this will go a long way in plugging the leakages and in reducing the wastage by asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 525-531 531 not serving the food to the disinterested children. further, it will reduce the burden to the state exchequer. to reduce the leakages and for the effective implementation of the scheme, the mdm organiser, cook and helper must be made accountable to the school staff/head masters. complaint and suggestion box must compulsorily be placed in all the schools. to make the scheme children–friendly, a toll-free number must be introduced to report any problem in mid-day meals and any related problems. biometric attendance system should be introduced to control the unauthorised absenteeism of the teachers regular social audit, it is hoped, will make the scheme more effective. conclusion in short, the mid-day meals scheme in tamil nadu has some positive points and some negative points. however, with some more commitment, vision and realism the scheme can be made more effective to fulfil the dreams of mr. kamaraj and mr. m.g. ramachandran. study area of theni district in tamil nadu, india references irudaya, r. s., & jayakumar, a. (1992). impact of noon meal programme of primary education: an exploratory study in tamil nadu, economic and political weekly, 27(23/44), 23722380. jean, d., & goyal, a. (2003). future of midday meals, special articles. economic and political weekly, 38(44), 46734683. jitendra, (2013). mid-day meal scheme: tamil nadu show the way, down -toearth, july 19. http://www.downtoearth.org.in/conten t/mid-day-meal-scheme-tamil-nadushows-way. padmini, s., jeyarajan, j., sreenivasan, r., jayashree, k. (2004). tamil nadu‟s mid-day meal scheme where assumed benefits score over hard data. economic and political weekly, 39(44), 4811-4821. planning commission (2010). performance evaluation of cooked mid day meal programme. peo report no 202. government of india. thozhamai, (2013). status and problems of icds centres in tamil nadua study report. chennai, tamil nadu, pp. 1211. http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/mid-day-meal-scheme-tamil-nadu-shows-way http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/mid-day-meal-scheme-tamil-nadu-shows-way http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/mid-day-meal-scheme-tamil-nadu-shows-way effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 870 investigating social capital levels among small holder maize farmers in the kwahu north district, ghana enoch kwame tham-agyekum department of agricultural extension, university of ghana, ghana fred nimoh department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi, ghana abstract the process of community development has often been linked with social capital, in recent times. using a household-level survey data, this study investigates social capital levels among small-holder maize farmers in the kwahu north district of the eastern region of ghana. the results of the study show that there exists a low level of social contacts among farmers in the study area. however, there are moderate levels of information flow, access to resources and attendance to community activities among the sampled farmers. the level of social capital was found to be relatively high, as a majority of the respondents were at the moderate level and beyond. the study recommends that there is the need for behavioural change among farmers, particularly with their social contacts, as this could help further enhance their social capital and hence their livelihoods. keywords: social capital, small-holder maize farmers, information flow, kwahu north, ghana introduction 1 social capital has often been linked with development. this makes it very important to scholars in rural development activities. according to hawe and shiell (2000), social capital has found applications in already existing initiatives that strengthen rural networks, build capacity and empowerment of community members. social capital is conceptualised as a new way of looking at social relationships as they have the potential to reform thinking corresponding author’s: name: enoch kwame tham-agyekum email address: donsprakels@yahoo.com about society with either positive or negative outcomes (mort et al., 2003). an element in the concept of social capital is the structure of the social relationships that expedite action. while economic capital is in the bank accounts of individuals and human capital is in their minds (adler and kwon, 2002), social capital occurs when a person relates with others (bowles & gintins, 2002). it will exist only when it is shared and embedded in the social structure (narayan and pritchett, 1999). it has also been found that these features of social organisation can facilitate co-ordinated actions, advance the efficiency of society and involve horizontal and vertical social structures that link local asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:donsprakels@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 870-884 871 organisations to broader social groups (ardichvili et al., 2003). according to dekker and uslaner (2001), social capital is about the value of social networks, bonding similar people and bridging between diverse people with norms of reciprocity. the core intuition guiding social capital research is that the goodwill that others are a valuable resource. as such, social capital is defined as, “the goodwill available to individuals or groups. its source lies in the structure and content of the actor's social relations. its effects flow from the information, influence and solidarity it makes available to the actor” (adler and kwon 2002, p. 23). individuals engage in interactions in order to produce profits; the social ties that are located in certain strategic locations can provide an individual with useful information about opportunities and choices otherwise not available. these ties can also alert an organization and its agents about the availability and interest of an unrecognized individual. it may exert influence on the agents who play a critical role in decisions involving the actor. some social ties, due to their strategic locations and positions, also carry more valued resources and exercise greater power in organizational agents’ decision making (adam and roncevic, 2003). the rationale behind social capital is that, investment in social relations comes with expected returns (erickson, 1995; portes, 1998). narayan and cassidy (2001) made it clear that social capital is of importance in societal wellbeing. collier (1998) also maintains that people living in poverty situations may choose to depend on more social capital than the wealthy people in society because they have a lower cost of opportunity and less human and financial capital than wealthy people. the sustainability of technological innovations in rural settings often depends on the socio-environmental interactions among and between the relevant local stakeholders. this makes the building of social capital an essential goal in many development programmes, including community-driven development and selfempowerment. social capital is also being considered as a means of slowing the stream of perceived community decline and pervasive distrust associated with it. with this development, the increasingly central role that social capital plays in ghana and for that matter rural farming communities has fuelled demand for empirical understandings of it. yet, demand for empirical measures of social capital exceeds what is currently known on the subject. because social capital may have wide ranging implications, it is important to know how it can be influenced. in principle, the concept of social capital makes it possible for relationships and networks to be quantitatively and qualitatively measured. the aim of this study is to quantify the perceptions of small-holder maize farmers on qualitative characteristics of community social relations among them. research questions specifically, the study seeks to; determine the level of social contacts among farmers; assess the level of information flow among farmers’ social contacts; assess farmers’ level of access to resources among their social contacts; assess farmers’ level of participation in community social activities and determine the level of social capital among small holder maize farmers. theoretical framework according to liu and besser (2003). the abstract nature of measuring social capital and its varying definitions has resulted in the inconsistent measures in different studies. cavaye (2004) posited that there are no best indicators, rather some key characteristics that guide the choice of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 870-884 872 indicators such as: ease of measurement, reliability and rigor, specificity targeted to the variable to be measured, comprehensiveness measures of a range of social characteristics and continuity ability to translate across situations and be consistent in local state or national frameworks. many early studies have had to rely on uneven proxies for social capital which are somewhat experimental. examples include; trust (cox and caldwell, 2000); membership (baum and ziersch, 2003; wollebaek and selle, 2003); membership and trust (veenstra, 2002); membership, trust and norms of reciprocity (staveren, 2003); network resources (zhao, 2002; kilpatrick, 2000); rules and norms governing social action (collier, 1998); types of social interaction (snijders, 1999) and informal social ties, formal social ties, trust and norms of collective action (liu and besser, 2003). putnam (2000) identified the following indicators: measures of community or organisational life, measures of informal sociability, measure of engagement in public affairs, measures of community volunteerism and measures of social trust. stone (2001) posits structure of social relations and quality of social relations and aldridge et al. (2002) also suggested that the main determinants of social capital include history and culture, the family, education, the built environment, residential mobility, economic inequalities, social class, the strength and characteristics of civil society, patterns of individual consumption and personal values. pantoja (1999) identified a different set which included family and kinship connections, networks, political society, formal rules and norms that regulate public life, social norms and values. methodology research design and sampling the research design that was adopted for the study was largely quantitative which employed a survey method. according to kazerooni (2001), the study population is the group of individuals to which the study can legitimately apply its conclusions. therefore, the population of respondents used for this study was primarily made up of all maize farmers within the kwahu north district in the eastern region of ghana. the sample size that was used for the study was 280 respondents. with a confidence interval of 90% and study population of about 10,000, the minimum sample size according to bartlett et al. (2001) was 264 but the sample size was adjusted for 280. a multi-stage sampling technique was used: purposive, cluster and simple random sampling technique. the purposive sampling technique was used at the first stage to select the district in which to conduct the study. this was because among the entire maize growing districts in the country, kwahu north is the highest producing with the highest number of maize farmers. the cluster sampling was used at the second stage by grouping the communities into geographical clusters. this has already been done by the district mofa office or the statistics office? there are four zones: donkorkrom zone, tease zone, maame krobo zone and abotanso zone. three out of the four zones were selected using the simple random sampling technique. the balloting system was used where the names of the four zones were written on a paper, folded and placed into a box. the researcher was blindfolded in order to pick three out of the four zones. the three zones that were selected were donkorkrom, tease and abotanso. next to this, communities were selected from the three different zones using the same process that was used for selecting the zones. five communities from the abotanso zone were selected; koranteng, fodoa no. 1, kubease, seibia and abosomafreho. four communities in the tease zone were selected; samanhyia, forifori, tease and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 870-884 873 odumase. three communities in the donkorkrom zone were selected; avatime, adukrom and donkorkrom. finally, the individual farmers were also selected using the simple random sampling technique. a list was obtained by the agricultural extension agents (aea’s) assigned to the selected zones. the respondents were selected using the list and they were contacted to answer the questionnaires. some of the selected respondents were not available as at the time of data collection, so replacements were found for them using the list. data analysis before the data analysis was conducted, a reliability test was performed on the variables that were used to measure the farmers’ level of social capital. the cronbach’s alpha obtained was 0.638 (63.8%). this gives credence to the variables that were used for the measurement. the data were first coded and analysed using spss 16. the data were summarised descriptively using frequency, percentages, means, standard deviations, variances and correlation analysis. analytical methods the level of social capital among maize farmer is explained in terms of their social relationships among themselves and other actors, the resources they use, flow of information, norms of trust and social participation (actual or virtual) that accrue to them. this study takes the second approach elucidated by stone and hughes (2002) which aimed at producing an overall measure of social capital. the characteristics (number of social contacts, strength of contact, level of norms of trust, number of information, receipt of information, usefulness of information, number of resources, frequency of receipt of resources, usefulness of resources and social participation) of the various variables on social capital [social contacts (lin, 1999; paldam & svendsen, 2000), information flow (lin, 2001, black and hughes, 2000), access to resources (lin, 2001) and social participation baum et al., (2000)] were collated and a grading was given. the measurement was done with the use of the likert scale where statements were put forward and respondents were allowed to rank their responses. a categorical data was produced for the coalition of all the responses gained. hence the categorization was created: low level, moderate level and high level. the study conceptualised the grades for social capital as follows; low level: 1 to 60; moderate level: 61 to 120; high level: 121 to 180. social contacts three different indicators were used to measure the social contacts of farmers; number of social contacts, strength of contacts and level of norms of trust. the number of contacts was measured by asking farmers to mention the different person(s) or contact(s) they interact with concerning their farming activities. the number of person(s) or contact(s) mentioned by the farmers (family/relative, colleague farmer, extension agent, farmer organisation, input supplier, friend/ neighbour, traders, processors, labourers, financial institutions, transport officers, chiefs, researchers etc.) was added and the number or score was recorded. the strength of the contacts was measured by asking farmers to rank on a scale of 1 to 5, the strength of their relationship with each of the contact (s) mentioned. these ranks were added and transformed into a single score to represent the strength of farmers’ contacts. an explanation of the ranks is as follows: very weak = 1, weak = 2, moderate = 3, strong = 4 and very strong = 5. the norms of trust were measured by asking farmers to rank on a scale of 1 to 5, the level of trust they hold for each of the contact(s) mentioned. these were added and transformed into a single score to represent the level of norms of trust for the farmers. an explanation of the ranks is as follows: very low = 1, low = 2, moderate = 3, high = 4 and very high = 5. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 870-884 874 information flow three different indicators were used to measure information flow among farmers and other actors; type of information, frequency of receipt of information and usefulness of information received. a list of the different types of possible information available to farmers through their contact(s) was provided in the questionnaire: seed preparation, land clearing, land preparation, planting, watering, fertilising, disease control, pest control, irrigation, sorting, processing, packaging, transportation and marketing. farmers were then asked to mention the various types of information they have access to through their contact(s). the number of types of information mentioned by the farmers was added and the score was recorded. the frequency of receipt of information was measured by asking farmers to rank on a scale of 1 to 5, the frequency with which they received information from their each of their contact(s). these ranks were added and transformed into a single score to represent the frequency of receipt of information. an explanation of the ranks is as follows: very low = 1, low = 2, moderate = 3, high = 4 and very high = 5. the usefulness of the information received was measured by asking farmers to rank on a scale of 1 to 5, the usefulness of the information they receive from each of their contact(s). these were added and transformed into a single score to represent the usefulness of the information farmers receive from their contact(s). an explanation of the ranks is as follows: not at all useful = 1, not useful = 2, neutral = 3, useful = 4 and very useful = 5. access to resources three different indicators were used to measure the access of farmers to resources; type of resources, frequency of receipt of resources and usefulness of resources received. a list of the different types of possible resources available to farmers through their contact(s) was listed in the questionnaire: credit, social resources, land, labour, professional/advisory resource, commercial, insurance, farm implements, farm inputs, markets, organisations. farmers were then asked to mention the various types of resources they have access to through each of their contact(s). the different types of resources mentioned by the farmers were added and the score was recorded. the frequency of receipt of resources was measured by asking farmers to rank on a scale of 1 to 5, the frequency with which they received resources from each of their contact(s). these ranks were added and transformed into a single score to represent the frequency of receipt of resources. an explanation of the ranks is as follows: very low = 1, low = 2, moderate = 3, high = 4 and very high = 5. the usefulness of the resources received was measured by asking farmers to rank on a scale of 1 to 5, the usefulness of the resources they receive from each of their contact(s). these were added and transformed into a single score to represent the usefulness of the resources farmers receive from their contact(s). an explanation of the ranks is as follows: not at all useful = 1, not useful = 2, neutral = 3, useful = 4 and very useful = 5. social participation in order to measure level of social participation, farmers were asked to rank on a scale of 1 to 5, their level of attendance to social activities in and outside their communities. the social activities included funerals, naming ceremonies, political meetings, communal labour, durbar, sports festivals, visit to friends and neighbours, cinema/theatre and party. these ranks were added and transformed into a single score to represent farmers’ level of social participation. an explanation of the ranks is as follows: very low=1, low=2, moderate=3, high=4 and very high=5 (baum et al., 2000). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 870-884 875 results and discussion farmer social contacts from the table 1, it can be observed that a majority of the farmers (92.9%) link up with one to six person(s) concerning their farming activities. about 7% link up with between seven and twelve people. the mean number of contacts that farmers have was 3.6 person(s). the maximum number of contacts that the farmers had was 12 while the minimum was 1. comparing the mean number of contacts of 3.6 with a maximum of 12 contacts means that the number of contact of farmers is relatively small. linking up with an average of about 4 persons means that farmers would be limited in terms of the number of people they interact with concerning their farming activities. this can also influence the level of knowledge and useful techniques they can gain through their contacts. benin et al. (2007) in a similar study noted that farmers gain a lot by forming contacts with other actors within their activities and this helps to enhance their livelihood. hill et al. (2005) also showed the relevance of contacts and noted that a large proportion of households (84%) in which the head of the household or another member of the household died, received help from friends or family. this could arise out of linking with other farmers. the respondents were asked to indicate the strength of all the various contacts they had on a scale of 1 to 5. about 43% of the farmers indicated a level of strength of between one and six. this was followed by seven (7) to 12 (42.9%), 13 to 18 (12.9%) and 19 to 24 (1.4%). the mean strength of the contacts that farmers have was 7.9. the maximum strength attributed to the contacts was 24 while the minimum was 2 contacts. comparing the mean strength of the contacts of 7.9 with a possible level of 24 contacts indicates that the strength of contact of farmers is relatively weak. the respondents were also asked to indicate the level of trust they hold for their contacts on a scale of 1 to 5. most of the respondents (40.7%) attributed a level of trust of between one and six. this was followed by 7 to 12 (37.1%), 13 to 18 (18.2%) and 19 to 24 (3.9%). the mean level of trust that farmers indicated for their contacts was 8.5. the maximum strength attributed to the contacts was 23 while the minimum was 2. comparing the mean level of trust of 8.5 with a possible level of 24, this means that the level of trust that farmers hold for their contacts is low. this low level of trust can adversely influence farmers’ engagement in group activities within the community. in uganda, low levels of trust and lack of liquidity are mentioned by people working with farmer groups as explaining some of the restraint to become involved in collective marketing. experimental studies have also shown that expectations of trustworthiness of an individual affect the behaviour of those trusting that individual. however, it is difficult to determine a causal relationship between trust and group formation given that levels of trust are likely to be influenced by the nature and frequency of social interactions (weinberger & jutting, 2001). table 1: farmer social contacts responses number of contacts strength of the contacts level of trust for contacts frequency percent frequency percent frequency percent 1-6 260 92.9 120 42.9 114 40.7 7-12 20 7.1 120 42.9 104 37.1 13-18 0 0.0 36 12.9 51 18.2 19-24 0 0.0 4 1.4 11 3.9 total 280 100.0 280 100.0 280 100.0 source: field data, 2012 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 870-884 876 level of farmer contacts the level of social contacts of farmers could be said to be low (1-18) as indicated by about 52% of the farmers. a moderate level (19-36) was indicated by 43% of the farmers while about 5% of the farmers indicated a high level of contact. the mean level of contact of farmers was also found to be 20.02. table 2: level of farmer contacts level frequency percent low level (1-18) 146 52.2 moderate level (19-36) 119 42.5 high level (37-52) 15 5.3 total 280 100.0 source: field data, 2012 information flow the responses show that majority of the farmers (85%) are able to have access to between one (1) and six (6) different types of information. the respondents who have access to between seven and different types of information represented 15%. the mean number of different types of information that farmers are able to assess through their contacts was 4.7. the maximum number of different types of information was 11 while the minimum was 1. from the study, it could be deduced that there is a relatively low level of number of information that farmers have access to. the type of information that farmers assess can have some form of influence on their activities on and off the farm. these various forms of information that farmers have access to through their contact(s) will go a long way to enhance the work of the small holder farmer (clark, 2002). the frequency of receipt of information was measured by asking farmers to rank on a scale of 1 to 5, the frequency with which they received information from their contact(s). majority of the farmers (45.0%) have attributed a frequency of between 7 and 12 on the information they receive. this was followed by 1 to 6 (33.9%), 13 to 18 (15.4%), 19 to 24 (5.0%) and 31 to 36 (0.7%). the mean level of frequency of receipt of information that farmers have access to was 9.7. the maximum level of frequency of receipt of information was 36 while the minimum was 2. from the study, it could be said that the frequency of receipt of information is relatively low. this could mean that farmers do not receive information frequently from their contacts. the usefulness of the information received was measured by asking farmers to rank on a scale of 1 to 5, the usefulness of the information they receive from their contact(s). majority of the respondents (50.7%) attributed a level of usefulness of information between seven (7) and 12. this was followed by 1 to 6 (24.3%), 13 to 18 (20.0%), 19 to 24 (4.3%) and 25 to 30 (0.7%). the mean level of usefulness of information that farmers receive through their contacts was 10.1. the maximum level of usefulness of information received was 35 while the minimum was 3. from the study, it could be said that the usefulness that farmers ascribe to the information they receive from their contacts is relatively low. this could mean that farmers do not consider the information they receive to be relevant. in support of this result, barr (2000) asserted that by virtue of being involved in social activities, a farmer can benefit from information spill over that extends beyond social activities to other spheres like production and marketing of their farm produce. further, a study by cháveza and hartwich (2011) showed that the connectivity of farmers in social networks allows for the exchange of information on asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 870-884 877 improved practices and innovations in peach production and marketing. table 3: information flow responses number of type of information extent of receipt of information level of trust for contacts frequency percent frequency percent frequency percent 1-6 238 85.0 95 33.9 68 24.3 7-12 42 15.0 126 45.0 142 50.7 13-18 0 0.0 43 15.4 56 20.0 19-24 0 0.0 14 5.0 12 4.3 25-30 0 0.0 0 0.0 2 0.7 31-36 0 0.0 2 0.7 0 0.0 total 280 100.0 280 100.0 280 100.0 source: field data, 2012 level of information flow the level of information flow could be said to be moderate (19-36) as indicated by about 52% of the farmers. a low level (118) was indicated by 35% of the farmers while about 13% of the farmers indicated a high level of access to information. the mean level of information flow among farmers and their social contacts was also found to be 24.47. table 4: level of information flow level frequency percent low level (1-18) 98 35.0 moderate level (19-36) 145 51.8 high level (37-54) 37 13.2 total 280 100.0 source: field data, 2012 access to resources the responses show that majority of the farmers (95.0%) are able to have access to between 1 and 6 different types of resources. respondents who have access to between 7 and 12 different types of resources represented 5.0%. the mean number of different types of resources that farmers are able to assess through their contacts was 4.0. the maximum number of different types of resources was 9 while the minimum was 1. a mean of 4 out of a possible maximum of 12 could be considered low. this means that farmers’ access to resources through their contacts is relatively low. in support of this result, monge and poole (2008) and de herdt and deneulin (2007) asserted that farmers are social agents and so are embedded in a variety of networks and contacts from and through which they have access to a set of different resources and opportunities. this implies that farmers’ access to resources is dependent on the various contacts and networks they have created. the responses on the frequency of receipt of resources show that, most of the farmers (56.1%) have attributed a frequency of between 7 and 12. this was followed by 1 to 6 (31.8%), 13 to 18 (11.4%) and 19 to 24 (0.7%). the mean level of frequency of receipt of resources that farmers have access to was 7.9 resources. the maximum frequency of receipt of resources was 24 while the minimum was 1. from the study, it could be said that the frequency of receipt of resources is relatively low. this could mean that farmers do not receive resources frequently from their contacts. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 870-884 878 most of the respondents (45.7%) attributed a level of usefulness of resources between 7 and 12. this was followed by 1 to 6 (30.4%), 13 to 18 (19.6%), 19 to 24 (1.8%) and 25 to 30 (2.5%). the mean level of usefulness of resources that farmers receive through their contacts was 9.4. the maximum level of usefulness was 28 while the minimum was 1. from the study, it could be said that farmers attribute a relatively low level of usefulness to the resources that they have access to. this could mean that farmers do not consider the resources that they receive to be so useful. shaw et al. (2006) have also showed that although social contacts are not created specifically for economic gains, they serve as important platforms where farmers get feedback on their farming activities since members informally and openly discuss their activities. such social associations are also places where social conventions and trust are inculcated in the members. therefore, farmers could harness these benefits or resources if they have contacts. level of access to resources the level of access to resources could be said to be moderate (19-36) as indicated by about 49% of the farmers. a low level (118) was indicated by 46% of the farmers while about 5% of the farmers indicated a high level of access to resources. the mean level of information flow among farmers and their social contacts was also found to be 21. 32. table 6: level of access to resources level frequency percent low level (1-18) 130 46.4 moderate level (19-36) 137 48.9 high level (37-54) 13 4.7 total 280 100.0 source: field data, 2012 social participation from the results obtained, it can be deduced that funeral is the most important social activity that farmers attend. this was attested by a mean of 4.18 out of 5. this was followed by naming ceremonies (3.50), political meetings (3.39), communal labour (3.16), durbar (3.09), sports festivals (2.94), visiting of friends and neighbours (2.80), cinema or theatre (2.58) and party (2.35). a study has shown that social activities like sports have been shown to be places where potential workers and business associates could be matched. it is also most likely that bonding and team building between members of a farming enterprise can be easily accomplished which can then be carried over to the farmers’ activities. in addition, by actively partaking in social activities, entrepreneurs become visible to members of the community who are also the market for their products (anderson & jack, 2002). table 7: social participation social activities very low low moderate high very high mean freq per’t freq per’t freq per’t freq per’t freq per’t funerals 13 4.6 22 7.9 34 12.1 43 15.4 168 60.0 4.18 naming ceremonies 29 10.4 41 14.6 67 23.9 47 16.8 96 34.3 3.50 political meetings 37 13.2 50 17.9 55 19.6 42 15.0 96 34.3 3.39 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 870-884 879 communal labour 25 8.9 70 25.0 77 27.5 50 17.9 58 20.7 3.16 durbar 22 7.9 78 27.9 83 29.6 48 17.1 49 17.5 3.09 sports festivals 44 15.7 68 24.3 80 28.6 38 13.6 50 17.9 2.94 visited friends and neighbours 45 16.1 87 31.1 70 25.0 34 12.1 44 15.7 2.80 cinema or theatre 49 17.5 84 30.0 93 33.2 43 15.4 11 3.9 2.58 party 82 29.3 76 27.1 77 27.5 33 11.8 12 4.3 2.35 source: field data, 2012 level of participation in community social activities farmers were asked to indicate their level of attendance to the following community activities on a scale of 1: very low to 5: very high on each community activity. a sum of the scores was taken to produce the table above. results from the table shows that majority of the farmers (85.7%) have attributed a moderate level of attendance to community activities (19 to 36). this was followed by a high level (8.9%) and low level (5.4%). the mean is 27.99, the minimum was 9 while the maximum was 43. it could be deduced from this study that farmers’ attendance to community activities is relatively encouraging since over 90% of the farmers had a level of attendance to community activities either at or more than the moderate level. table 8: level of participation in community activities level of attendance to community activities frequency percent low level (1-18) 15 5.4 moderate level (19-36) 240 85.7 high level (37-54) 25 8.9 total 280 100.0 source: field data, 2012 level of social capital the scores for the characteristics (number of contacts, strength of contacts, level of norms of trust, number of information, receipt of information, usefulness of information, number of resources, frequency of receipt of resources, usefulness of resources and social participation) of the various variables on social capital (contacts, information flow, access to resources and social participation) were added. a categorical data was produced for the coalition of all the responses gained. the grade for low level was a figure of 1 to 60, moderate was 61 to 120 and high was a response figure of between 121 and 180. the results show that majority of the farmers (89.6%) have a moderate level (61120) of social capital, 7.1% have a high level (121-180) of social capital while 3.3% have a low level (1-60) of social capital. the mean level of social capital of the farmers was 93.2. the minimum level of social capital was 45 while the maximum level was 158. from the study, over 90% of the respondents are at the moderate level and beyond. it could be deduced therefore from this study that farmers have a relatively higher level of social capital. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 870-884 880 table 9: level of social capital of farmers levels frequency percent 1-60 9 3.3 61-120 251 89.6 121180 20 7.1 total 280 100.0 source: field data, 2012 correlation matrix of measures of social capital table 10 results show some relationships between individual items measuring dimensions of social capital. from the results obtained above, it could be said that there are positively strong correlation between social capital and access to information and access to resources. this implies that high levels of access to information and access to resources tend to be paired with relatively high levels of social capital and vice versa. so, if a farmer has higher access to information or access to resources, it can be predicted that the person could experience a high level of social capital and vice versa. there are also positive and weak correlation between social capital and level of social contact and attendance to community activities. this implies that although weak, high levels of contacts and attendance to community activities tend to be paired with relatively high levels of social capital. table 10: correlation statistics for measures of social capital pearson correlation of social capital variables social capital contact access to information access to resources attendance to community activities social capital 1.000 0.475 0.687 0.652 0.108 contact 0.475 1.000 -0.012 0.104 -0.091 access to information 0.687 -0.012 1.000 0.303 -0.219 access to resources 0.652 0.104 0.303 1.000 -0.119 attendance to community activities 0.108 -0.091 -0.219 -0.119 1.000 source: field data, 2012 conclusion and recommendations this study investigates social capital levels among small-holder maize farmers in the kwahu north district of the eastern region of ghana. the study found that the level of contacts among farmers is low (1-18) as indicated by about 52% of the farmers. a moderate level (19-36) was indicated by 43% of the farmers while about 5% of the farmers indicated a high level of contact. the mean level of contact of farmers was also found to be 20.02. the level of information flow could be said to be moderate (19-36) as indicated by about 52% of the farmers. a low level (1-18) was indicated by 35% of the farmers while about 13% of the farmers indicated a high level of access to information. the mean level of information flow among farmers and their social contacts was also found to be 24.47. the level of access to resources could be said to be moderate (19-36) as indicated by about 49% of the farmers. a low level (1-18) was indicated by 46% of the farmers while about 5% of the farmers indicated a high level of access to resources. the mean level of information asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 870-884 881 flow among farmers and their social contacts was also found to be 21.32. the results from the shows that majority of the farmers (85.7%) have attributed a moderate level of attendance to community activities (19 to 36). this was followed by a high level (8.9%) and low level (5.4%). the mean is 27.99, the minimum was 9 while the maximum was 43. it could be deduced from this study that farmers’ attendance to community activities is relatively encouraging since over 90% of the farmers had a level of attendance to community activities either at or more than the moderate level. the results show that majority of the farmers (89.6%) have a moderate level (61120) of social capital, 7.1% have a high level (121-180) of social capital while 3.3% have a low level (1-60) of social capital. the mean level of social capital of the farmers was 93.2. the minimum level of social capital was 45 while the maximum level was 158. from the study, over 90% of the respondents are at the moderate level and beyond. it could be deduced therefore from this study that farmers have a relatively higher level of social capital. it could be said that there are positively strong correlation between social capital and access to information and access to resources. this implies that high levels of access to information and access to resources tend to be paired with relatively high levels of social capital and vice versa. so, if a farmer has high on access to information or access to resources, it can be predicted that the person could experience a high level of social capital and vice versa. there are also positive and weak correlation between social capital and level of contact and attendance to community activities. this implies that although weak, high levels of contacts and attendance to community activities tend to be paired with relatively high levels of social capital. behavioural change could be induced in farmers through the creation of awareness in research extension policies and the value of social capital to livelihood enhancement. this could also be facilitated through access to market and competition such that farmers will appreciate the value of building social capital to enhance their activities. support must be massively granted to innovations that are forwarded by farmers. the focus has always being on technology adoption and these have gained lots of support from government agencies. a shift in that focus to innovations produced by farmers will go a long way to reduce poverty among most farmers. the support could also be given through research activities into farmers’ innovation and its potential to influence the livelihoods of community members. infrastructural support in terms of logistics could also be given to boost farmers’ activities towards innovations. mofa, the fao and other ngo’s should encourage farmers to be innovative through their interactions and activities among farmers. care must be taken to avoid constraining innovative capacity among the farmers. skills in information technology, financial management, natural resource management, marketing and risk management and in the use of increasingly sophisticated machinery are of growing importance in 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(2002). measuring the social capital of laid-off chinese workers. current sociology, 50: 555-571. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 102 rural communities’ perception of climate change and its determinants in dejen district, nile basin of ethiopia zerihun yohannes amarea*, johnson o. ayoadeb, ibidun o. adelekanb, menberu teshome zelekec a* life and earth sciences institute (including health and agriculture), paulesi, pan african university of ibadan, ibadan, nigeria email address: zerihun.yohannes19@gmail.com (corresponding author) b department of geography, faculty of the social sciences, university of ibadan, ibadan, nigeria c department of geography and environmental studies, debre tabor university, debre tabor, ethiopia corresponding author article history: received: 18-nov-2017 accepted: 06-jan-2018 online available: 19-jan2018 keywords: climate change and variability, perception, determinants, nile basin of ethiopia abstract communities’ perception of climate change must be integrated with research information to improve their adaptive capacity successfully. thus, to propose appropriate adaptation options to the specific localities, understanding the levels of perception of rural communities to climate change and variability is crucial. this study aims to capture the rural communities’ perception of climate change and its determinants in dejen district, nile basin of ethiopia. cross-sectional socio-economic and time series climatic data were used. stratified and snowball sampling techniques were employed to select a sample of 398 households. chi-square analysis was carried out at p≤0.05. the majority (65.7%) of households had information about climate change before this study survey. age, farming experience, income, the number of relatives, access to weather information, farmer to farmer access, and government experts’ extension services had a significant effect on the majority of climatic variables perception of households. the households’ perception of climate change was in line with results of climate data analysis. the chi-square analysis test of hypothesis shows gender has no significant effect on the perception of climate change. the implication is that all social groups in the study area perceived that there are changes in climate. contribution/ originality this article “as opposed to majority of previous studies, gender has no significant effect on the perception of climate change. this unified local perception could be an indicator to say the impacts of climate change is at the community level (covariate risk)”. contribute to the field of gender and climate change studies. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.5/1005.5.102.114 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: zerihun yohannes amare, johnson o. ayoade, ibidun o. adelekan, and menberu teshome zeleke (2017). rural communities’ perception of climate change and its determinants in dejen district, nile basin of ethiopia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5), 102-114۔ © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 5(2017): 102-114 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:zerihun.yohannes19@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.5/1005.5.102.114 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 102-114 103 1. introduction climate change is a change in climate that usually takes place over a long period of time at least 150 years with clear and permanent impact on the ecosystem (ayoade, 2002 cited in ayoade, 2016). like most of developing countries, ethiopia is one of the countries that are exstremely affected by climate change. menberu and aberra (2014) argue that water shortage and soil erosion are the major problems in amhara regional state of ethiopia. the solution is partly depending on how rural communities perceive climate change and variability. according to aberra (2012), scientific evidence now abounds about the inevitability of climate change and what measures should be taken to combat it. in spite of this, people of the world, from policy-makers down to the individual, are bogged down in an awkward of conflicting mind-sets of urgency, disbelief, and indecision about the extent of the climate change impact and the responses to it. to combat the problem, understanding the perception of all that have a stake in it provides the stronger ground for the decision-making process. therefore, for this reason, perception research on climate change becomes extremely crucial to increase the adaptive capacity of rural communities to climate change impacts. perception research is the study of how individuals or communities perceive their environment. humans’ decisions and actions concerning their environment are based not only on objective factors but also on subjective ones. this is the underlying principle of environmental perception research (whyte, 1997). perception is more complex process by which people select, organize and interpret sensory stimulation into a meaningful and coherent picture of the world. as a result, farmers learn and adopt innovations in different ways. rural communities tend to update and try to adapt to the adverse effects of weather changes based on their perception and observations from neighbours, success stories and practices (boissière et al., 2013). in the case of climate change, it refers to whether farmers understand the changing temperature and rainfall patterns over time and respond to the negative impact through adaptation (madison, 2006). experience with local weather may also influence global warming beliefs (joireman et al., 2010; li et al., 2011). most perception of climate change is simply based on human expectations (e. g. snow in winter, the sunshine in summer) which are little related to observational evidence from instrumental records (aberra, 2012). the reliance on short-term signs to interpret climate change is quite expected because weather events have a more significant association with the time horizon of people’s everyday life rather than climate change which occurs on a longer timescale. rural communities may be unable to accommodate the thought of a global climate change impact causing the gradual extinction of their agricultural production attached the incidence to spiritual dimension (madison, 2006; mertz et al., 2009). climate change perception researchers concluded that perception decides over resource allocation. without perceiving the risk adequately, all other determinants seem meaningless (falaki et al., 2013). therefore, assessing households’ perception of climate change could be a pre-condition for adaptation. meteorological data are often used to confirm villagers’ assessments (deressa et al., 2009; fisher et al., 2010; orlove et al., 2010; boissière et al., 2013) and local knowledge in forecasting weather and adapting to climate (orlove et al., 2010). to guide future adaptation, we need an understanding of past and current coping strategies, to better understand what is acceptable to rural communities. this information in combination with communities’ perception of climate change and variability is a key to prioritize measures to address and prepare for its consequences (richard et al., 2012). in addition to the scientific analysis of historical and current climatic condition, the importance of combining indigenous knowledge of the communities for climate change adaptation was analysed by adelekan and fregene (2015). therefore, this study aims to capture the rural communities’ perception of climate change and its determinants in dejen district, nile basin of ethiopia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 102-114 104 2. methodology 2.1. study area the household survey data was collected from 398 households in the period between march 2016 and october 2016 in the nile basin of ethiopia. dejen district is located in west central ethiopia (figure 1) at a road distance of 335km south of the regional state capital, bahir dar, and 230 km north-west of the capital city of ethiopia, addis ababa, at the edge of the canyon of the blue nile. the district lies between longitude 38o 6’ e and 38o 10’ e, and between latitude 10o 7’ n 10o 11’ n, with an elevation of 1071 and 3000 meters above sea level (m.a.s.l). the same to most parts of ethiopia; it is a mixed production system with both crop and livestock rearing. in the lowland parts of the district, the combination of moisture stress and poor soil fertility is the limiting factor for agricultural production (ddardo, 2016). the climate of the district is traditionally classified based on altitude and temperature. the annual average temperature and total annual rainfall of the district range between 20oc and 24oc and 800 mm and 1200 mm, respectively. the district has been categorised into three traditional climatic zones, 41% highland(2500-3000 meters above sea level), 31 % midland (1500-2500) and 28 % lowland (1071-1500 ) meters above sea level (ddardo, 2016; ddepo, 2016). figure 1: the study area asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 102-114 105 2.2. research design and sampling this study used cross-sectional research design with both quantitative and qualitative research methods. multi-stage stratified sampling was used to select sampled households. at the first stage, among the east gojjam zones of districts, dejen district of the nile basin was purposely selected. this was based on the availability of climate data, its location to the valley of the blue nile with highly undulated topography and frequent susceptibility to climate-related problems such as erratic rains, crop pests, livestock disease and malaria outbreaks, its ideal representativeness of highland; midland and lowland areas where mixed farming exists. in the second stage, six kebeles (lower administrative unit next to district) were selected from the total 21 kebeles using purposive sampling based on: its location to the highly undulated topography, frequent susceptibility to climate-related problems, and agro-ecological location. since the area is vast and is difficult to undertake a survey in all villages of kebeles, about 50 villages were selected using simple random sampling techniques. households were selected based on stratified sampling. the study population was stratified into male and female-headed households that are more homogeneous than the total population (the different sub-populations are called strata) and then the sample was selected from each male and female-headed household to constitute a representative sample. based on kothari (2014), in stratified sampling, the method of proportional allocation under which the size of the sample from the different strata was kept proportional to the sizes of the strata. however, in case the purpose happens to compare the differences between the strata, then equal sample selection from each stratum would be more efficient even if the strata differ in sizes. thus, this study was selected an equal number of male and female-headed households to analyze the perception difference of gender to climate change and variability. in ethiopia context, femaleheaded households are those who do not have husband due to either being divorced, widowed or separated. in ethiopia, in some of the rural communities but not all, disclosing of the marital status of older females is culturally not allowed, or they will not have a good feeling. thus, to get female-headed households, snowball sampling was employed. this strategy could be viewed as a response to overcoming the problems associated with sampling hidden populations such as the criminal and the isolated (faugier and sargeant, 1997). the sample size was determined from each agro-ecology kebeles using probability proportional to size method to make an equal representation of households in each kebele based on the formula provided by yemane (1967) at the 95 % confidence interval and 5%, level of precision. sample households were selected using simple random sampling technique. at the six kebeles and 50 villages of the district, 398 households were selected. the formula is defined as: 𝑛 = 𝑁 1 + 𝑁(𝑒)2 where; n = sample size, n = the population size e = the level of precision. n = 102,478 1+102,478(.05)2 = 398 the sample size of 398 was distributed into the six sampled kebeles based on the number of households reside in the sampled kebeles. 2.3. data collection the study used three main data sources to analyze the rural communities’ perception of climate change and its determinant factors. the first was aspects of the literature on theories, methods, methodological approaches, and empirical findings which helped to gain initial insights into the study. the second source was meteorological records of temperature and rainfall data which helps to triangulate the households’ perception of climate change. the third data source was the socioeconomic data collected through household survey supplemented with focus group discussions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 102-114 106 2.3.1. secondary and primary data sources the data sources were both secondary and primary quantitative and qualitative sources. the secondary data source was climate data such as temperature and rainfall data. whereas the primary data sources were; household survey and focus group discussions. 2.3.2. climate data temperature and rainfall data over the period 1979-2014 was extracted from global weather data for soil and water assessment tool (swat) to analyze the trends over the past 36 years. these climate data analysis results were used to triangulate the perception of households to climate change and variability. 2.3.3. household survey the household questionnaire survey was the main source of data for this study. the household survey was used to collect quantitative data on households’ perception of climate change and variability. the survey questions were organized into close-ended supplemented with open-ended forms. the survey questions were prepared in english and thoroughly reviewed to maintain the validity and reliability of the households’ data. it was translated into local language-amharic and then encoded into english during data processing and analysis. to assess whether the instruments were suited and appropriate to the study, the pretest of questionnaires to 10% of the sampled households from both male and female headed households in the three agro-ecological zones were selected. pretested kebeles and participants were not involved in the actual survey. after pretesting, ambiguous words and, inappropriate questions were deleted and replaced. besides, the culture of communities in disclosing of marital status was also considered and then snowball sampling was employed. the author trained data collectors concerning the survey techniques and confidentiality protocol. after the training, the data collectors acquired practical experience while the author made a faceto -face interview in the actual data collection in the field. the data was collected by the trained data collectors under the close supervision of the author. 2.3.4. focus group discussions (fgds) the main purpose of the fgds was to triangulate households’ perception and to assess impacts of climate in the rural community groups. focus group discussions were carried out using guiding questions. the survey data was cross checked through focus group discussions with rural communities of homogeneous groups. the participants were carefully selected in consultation with the district officials, kebeles level agriculture and rural development officials, and data collectors. the number of participants in each focus group discussion was range from eight to twelve members from the three agro-ecological zones. the participants of fgds was selected based on criteria; the same age group (age >40 years), the same livelihood type, those who live in the rural community more than 20 years, those who did not have political involvement (those who are in the politics is assumed to be more active than others, and it affects discussion of the group), those who did not have higher educational level, and the same sex. the number of focus groups was six in the three agro-ecological zones of the study area. the duration to conduct one focus group was 1 to 1 and1/2hours. 2.4. data analysis 2.4.1. simple linear regression temperature and rainfall trends over the period 1979-2014 were analyzed using simple linear regression. the parametric test considers the simple linear regression of the random variable y on time x. the regression coefficient of the interpolated regression line slope coefficient was computed from the climate data based on mongi et al. (2010). this type of trend line used the following linear equations to calculate the least square fit for a line using ms excel: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 102-114 107 y = βx + c …………………………. (1) where y is physical factor (separately computed for change in temperature and rainfall) β is slope of the regression equation, x is number of years from 1979-2014(36 years), c is regression constant 2.4.2. standardised precipitation anomaly index (spi) over the period 1979-2014 the procedure of standardization was used to transform rainfall and temperature data to come up with standardised anomalies. it used to determine periods of anomalously dry and wet events. the temperature and rainfall data were standardized using the following equation as used by mckee et al. (1993) and svoboda et al. (2012). 𝑆𝑃𝐼 = 𝑋−�̅� 𝜎 …………………………. (2) where; spi refers to rainfall anomaly (irregularity and precipitation deficit) over the period 1979-2014 x is the observed rainfall over the period 1979-2014 𝑋 ̅, refers the mean annual rainfall over the period 1979-2014 σ, refers the standard deviation of rainfall over period 1979-2014 2.4.3. chi-square (χ2) and descriptive statistics the numbers of perceived responses of the perceptible variables was used as measurement for perception of households. these variables were temperature, rainfall, and drought change over the period 1979-2014. the factors that influence households perception of climate change and variability is described (table1). descriptive statistical tools such as percentages and frequencies were used to summarise and categorize the information gathered from different sources. the scientific analysis results of temperature, rainfall and drought change over the period 1979-2014 were compared with households’ responses on these climatic variables. table 1: variables description that affect households’ perception of climate change and variability explanatory variables description sex dummy, 1=male,2=female age discrete, (years), 18-30, 31-59, >59 educational level discrete, (years), <cannot read and write, primary school, secondary school, tvet farming experience continuous, (years), <10, 10-20, 21-30, 31-50, >50 income continuous, (etb), <10,000, 10,001-30,000, 30,001-50,000, > 50,000 family size discrete, (number), <5, 5-7, >8 number of relatives discreet, (number), <5, 5-10, 11-16, >16 access to weather information dichotomous, 1= yes, 2=no access to extension service dichotomous, 1=yes, 2= no source: author based on aspects of the literature, personal judgment, and availability of household survey data, march-october (2016), ethiopian birr (etb) is ethiopian currency (1$=22.3ethipian birr), (nbe, 2016) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 102-114 108 3. results and discussion 3.1. climate change and weather information of households the majority (65.7%) of the rural communities heard about the word “climate change” before this study. the remaining (34.4 %) of the household heads did not hear about climate change before this survey. information sources were evaluated by presenting a list of sources to respondents compiled from the aspects of the literature and asking them to indicate which one, they regularly use. households receive climate change information from the radio and television (49.8%), development agents (18%), friends/neighbours who have access to information (17%), educated family members (19%) and only some (1.5%) from kebele leaders. just a few (0.8%) farmers who have experience and education have their own knowledge about climate change either from school education or from reading. studies in sub-saharan africa by hansen et al. (2011) and tanzania by mahoo et al. (2015) indicates relative importance that various forms of media vary significantly by region and country. but radio receives most attention as the key means for delivering climate change and weather information to rural communities. the majority (62.3%) of communities do not have access to weather information, and only 37.7% have access to weather information from different sources. among the sources of weather information, the majority (68.2%) was from the radio. the share of agricultural office experts in providing weather information is only 19.2%. knowledge of a problem, such as a climate change impacts, and of possible solutions can enable people to take adaptive measures by helping them to determine which actions are most likely to produce the desired outcome and to build the sense of self-effectiveness required to take those actions (williams et al., 2015). the sources of weather information for development agents were the national meteorological agency through the channel from district agricultural office. households who did not have radio or contact with development agents use their friends (5.3%) and educated family members (7.3%) as sources of information. only a few (0.7%) farmers received weather information from kebele leaders. agricultural office experts in ethiopia are assigned in the rural areas to promote modern agricultural practices with close technical guidance and convincing rural communities to adopt technologies. however, the roles of agricultural office experts’ in providing climate change, and weather information is not as expected as the standards. based on study by belay and abebaw (2004), lack of training, lack of facilities, working conditions, and the salaries paid to them were among the vital impediment factors which affect their performance. thus, the study findings imply, there are commitment problems on agricultural office experts in providing weather information to the rural communities. the study areas of rural communities have more or less diversified sources of information. luk (2011) stated that information available from different sources helps farming households to be aware of their vulnerability in the face of climate change and variability. for example, access to weather information is crucial for the day-to-day planning of farming activities. when farmers are harvesting, and threshing crops, dry conditions are vital. however, the study area communities did not get weather information regularly and intentionally. as a result, weather forecast in the study area cannot be helpful in decision making. this implies having diversified sources of information alone does not mean it can increase households’ adaptive capacity unless the knowledge accessed regularly and applied practically for decision making purpose. for example, ipcc (2014) rightly noted that access to information about climate change and weather does not, by itself expand adaptive capacity. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 102-114 109 3.2. climate change and variability in the study area the mean annual temperature has been increased by 1.66 oc. the maximum and minimum temperatures also increased by 2.16 oc and 1.91 oc respectively. the annual rainfall declined by 399.96 mm. from 36 years of observation, 2002 and 2012 received below the longterm average rainfall and characterized by extremely dry years while 2008, 2011, 2013, 2014 years characterized by moderately dry. the year 1983, 1986,1987,1996,1998, and 2010 were moderately wet. among these negative patterns, the year 2002 and 2012 were extreme drought years. majority of the respondents perceived an increase in temperature (96.5%) and decreased in rainfall (79.9%) over the past ten years or so. besides, the majority of respondents perceived an increase in drought (84.4%) (table 2). as a result, majority of the households’ perception are in line with the estimated climate data analysis results. for example, the temperature trend line has a positive slope (tmax = y = 0.060x + 26.07, tmin = y = 0.053x + 17.76, tmean = y = 0.046x + 9.453) which shows as time increases, there is an increase in temperature. on the other hand, rainfall trend analysis indicates a decreasing trend over the period 1979-2014. nearly, male and female headed households perceived equally an increase in temperature and drought and a decrease in rainfall. this implies that rural households could be highly valuable key informants on climate change studies, and their indigenous knowledge could also be used for weather forecasting. table 2: households’ perception of climatic variables (%) temperature rainfall drought increase 96.5 7.5 84.4 decrease 0.8 79.9 8.5 no change 2.8 12.6 7 source: household survey data, march-october (2016) 3.3. determinants of households’ perception of climate change and variability gender, age, educational level, farming experience, household income, family size, number of relatives, access to weather information, and access to extension services were determinant factors of households’ perception of climate change and variability (table 3). 3.3.1. gender of the head of household gender has no significant effect on the perception of climate change variables such as temperature, rainfall, and drought. the male and female-headed households perceived equally. the implication is that all social groups in the study area understood there are changes in climate. this has emanated from the existence of widespread covariate risks in the area as a direct result of climate change and variability. households in developing countries are frequently hit by severe idiosyncratic shocks (i.e. household-level shocks, such as death, injury, and unemployment) and covariate shocks (i.e. community level shocks, such as natural disasters or epidemics), resulting in high-income volatility (günther and harttgen, 2006). therefore, the possible explanation for this result is that, a shift from idiosyncratic risk to covariate risk due to climate change might have led to a uniform local perception instead of multiple perceptions and varying insights among rural communities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 102-114 110 table 3: summary of chi-square result for households’ perception of climate change and variability explanatory variables temperature rainfall drought p-value p-value p-value sex 0.070 0.731 0.594 age 0.045* 0.465 0.047* educational level 0.228 0.101 0.058 farming experience 0.213 0.310 0.006* income 0.000* 0.013* 0.003* family size 0.228 0.673 0.096 number of relatives 0.148 0.148 0.031* weather information 0.084 0.055 0.008* farmer to farmer extension services 0.058 0.000* 0.259 government experts’ extension service 0.058 0.000* 0.259 source: computed based on household survey, march-october (2016), note: *, signify levels of significance at 0.05 study by yirgu et al. (2013) in ethiopia; men are more responsible for agricultural activities and females are responsible for household activities. this implies males are more likely access to information about climate change. women also have limited access to the outside activities. as a result, in this study, males perceived slightly more than female-headed households in terms of an increase in temperature and decrease in rainfall. both sexes perceived the same percentage of an increase in drought (84.4%). this similar perception of drought is due to; male headed households were experienced in their crop failure and productivity during drought and women were responsible for fetching water, firewood collection, and child care. this was confirmed during focus group discussions. 3.3.2. age of the household head age has a significant effect on the perception of climate change such as an increase in temperature (p = 0.045), and drought (p = 0.047). adult headed households perceived an increase in temperature, and an increase in drought. the age of the household head is considered as a proxy indicator of the farming experience. this is expected to have a positive and significant effect on the perception of their locality in terms of change in temperature, rainfall, and drought over the past 10 years or so. 3.3.3. education head of the households with a higher level of education were more likely to be aware of climate change than those with lower educational levels. as we move from not educated to who attended technical vocational education and training levels (tvet), the respondents had not any doubt about the change in climate in terms of the three climatic variables. increasing educational levels of the head of households can increase their understanding of climate change and variability in their locality. this implies, strengthening the education sector in the rural community could be one of the key human capitals for building climate change resilience of the households. based on educational levels of the head of households, households who perceived in line with the results of the climate data analysis were in between 77.8% to 100% in the four educational levels with no significant difference. this implies, for those who did not attend formal education, age has a vital role in perceiving nearly equal to educated household heads. 3.3.4. farming experience farming experience of head of households has a significant effect on perception of an increase in drought(p = 0.006) in their locality. head of households who have farming experience of <10 years, the majority of households perceived an increase in temperature (95.2%), a decrease in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 102-114 111 rainfall (83.3%), and an increase in drought (69%) over the years in their locality. households having farming experience of 21-30 years, the majority of households perceived an increase in temperature (97.4%), decrease in rainfall (76.3%), and increase in drought (86.6%) over the years. drought affects mainly the farming households. as a result, farmers with more farming experience feels the impacts of climate change extremes like drought. farming experience improves awareness of potential benefits and willingness to participate in local natural resources management and conservation activities. 3.3.5. income the study found income has a significant effect on the perception of climate change and variability in all climate change variables (table 3). as we move from low-income groups to rich households, the perception of households increased in line with the results of meteorological data analysis. this implies income increases access to weather and climate information in that, rich people have access to meet experts, government leaders, and have money to buy radio and television. 3.3.6. number of relatives (next of kin) the more the number of relatives near to households’ village, the more likely they have access to weather information. as a result, households having more than 16 relatives had no doubt on the increase in temperature (100%) and a decrease in rainfall (88.9%), and an increase in drought (88.9%) which is in agreement with the climate data analysis results. number of relatives have a significant effect in terms of drought (p = 0.031). therefore, this implies as the number of relatives increase households could have the possibility of access to weather information. 3.3.7. access to weather information among household heads who had access to weather information, the majority perceived an increase in temperature (98.7%) & decrease in rainfall (74%) and an increase in drought (91.3%). therefore, households in terms of access to weather information have slightly different in their perception of climate change and variability. households who have weather information perceived parallel to the analyzed climate data results than those who did not have access to weather information. access to weather information has a significant effect in terms of an increase in drought (p = 0.008). however, due to the irregularity of weather information; access to weather information has no significant effect on the change in temperature and rainfall. this is because the forecast is not area specific and can’t help them in decision making process. 3.3.8. farmer to farmer extension services among households who had access to extension services from model farmers, the majority perceived an increase in temperature (96%), a decrease in rainfall (71.2%), and an increase in drought (86.4%). theoretically, access to extension services from model farmers increases the perception of households in climate change and variability. however, in this study, access to extension services has a negative effect on the perception of rainfall variability. this implies farmer to farmer extension services has not a contribution in the decision making of climate change impacts on rural communities. 3.3.9. government experts’ extension services households who had access to government experts’ extension services, the majority of households perceived an increase in temperature (96%), decrease in rainfall (71.2%) and, increase in drought (86.4%). surprisingly, households who had not extension services have slightly perceived more than those who had access to extension services which is reversed from expected. the extension services provided in the study area was inadequate, and it has no role in decision making of rural communities. this implies the extension message would need to be broad and call for a range of management services such as provision of information, pest and weed control mechanism and related issues that are more basic for rural communities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 102-114 112 access to extension services has a significant effect on the perception of a decrease in rainfall (p = 0.000). previous study in ethiopia by elias et al. (2016), farmers overall satisfaction with agricultural extension services contribute to the understanding of their locality. elias et al. (2016) found that among those who got extension services only 55% of them were satisfied. whereas, 45% of farmers were not satisfied with the extension services provided by government experts. their satisfaction levels could be measured in terms of prior fulfillment of certain priority expectations such as methods of extension service, skills of the service providers, and related issues. this implies, a mere access to extension services could not be an asset for climate change perception. therefore, the quality, type, and adequacy of extension services should be considered rather than counting the number of contact hours between rural communities and extension service providers. 4. conclusions and policy implications both the scientific results of climatic variables and households’ perception indicated that the climate is changing over the period 1979-2014. the majority of the surveyed rural households replied that they had observed an increase in temperature and drought, and a decrease in rainfall. this implies, the climate change impact in the study area is at the community level. this study can help prove the non-existence of significant gender imbalance in climate change perception between male and female-headed households of rural community in the study area. however, to avoid conflict, if any, with findings from other studies on gender issues, this study would like to note that, the gender balance this study found is in the understanding of climate change variables and perception instead of general socio-economic issues between genders. in the study area, access to weather information was found limited. age, farming experience, income, the number of relatives, and access to weather information has a significant effect on the perception of an increase in drought. households with access to extension services from model farmers, and government experts had an inverse and a significant effect on the perception of climate variables. the possible reason for poor performance of extension services was inappropriate extension systems, lack of trained experts, the low satisfaction of government experts on their job due to low salary, and poor working conditions. this implies the extension services were inadequate and leads the households to the low level of satisfaction with the extension services provided by experts. regarding policy, weather information and appropriate adaptation strategies should be made available to the rural communities. as part of this effort, communication between policymakers, the academia, non-governmental organizations, the media, and other stakeholders should collaborate to ensure the dissemination of accurate information to the rural communities. funding: this study was sponsored by the pan african university (pau) a continental initiative of the african union commission (au), addis ababa, ethiopia competing interests: the authors declared that they have no competing interests authors’ contributions: za1 designed the data collection tools, conducted fieldwork and data analysis, and developed the manuscript. ja2 and ia2 contributed in commenting the data collection tools, recommending data analysis methods, reviewed, and made editorial comments on the draft manuscript. mz3 contributed in developing the data collection tools, commenting data analysis methods, reviewed, and made editorial comments on the draft manuscript. acknowledgments: the authors would like to thank the pan african university (pau) a continental initiative of the african union commission (au), addis ababa, ethiopia. further, authors would like to thank the university of ibadan for hosting the programme. the authors would like to acknowledge the data collectors and field assistants for their effective coordination, support, and time spent in organizing and conducting successful households’ interview and focus group discussions. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 102-114 113 references aberra, y. 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department of agribusiness, faculty of agriculture, satya wacana christian university, jl. diponegoro 52-60 salatiga, indonesia suhatmini hardyastuti, slamet hartono and irham agriculture science, gadjah made, post graduate program jl. flora no. 1 bulaksumur yogyakarta, indonesia abstract this study examines social-cultural function that arise on wet-land rice cultivation system. the observations and data analysis showed that employment absorption and emergence of social cohesion among farmers that enhance the technological innovation of organic rice cultivation were felt due to the application of organic farming system. organic rice farming systems tend to gave higher economic value as labor absorber, but this study found that organic rice farming system did not guarantee farming tradition maintenance and increasing of farmer women participation. keywords: rice, farming systems, social function, cultural function introduction 1 rice is one of the most important crops produced in indonesia. as a country endowed with a wealth of unique tropical biodiversity, abundance of sunlight, water and soil, as well as the culture of the people who respect nature, indonesia has a tremendous capital base to develop organic agriculture. a strategic option to accelerate development realization of the agribusiness competitive, sustainable and environmentally farming to improve the farmer’s welfare, organic agriculture program had been initiated since its launched "goorganic 2010" program by the ministry of agriculture in 2000. organic agriculture concept is not only speak about economic criteria and safety corresponding author’s name: tinjung mary prihtanti email: tinjung.murjono@gmail.com environmental insights, but also encourage social and cultural values. culture has traditionally been viewed as a component of the social dimensions of sustainability or as part of discussions on social capital, and has largely been unexamined. as pike (2003) in duxbury and gillette (2007) observes, while there has been much written in recent years about social capital, there has been comparatively little said about cultural capital. according to the indonesia organic alliance (2009), organic agriculture is considered to encourage farmer groups become more dynamic, and even became one of the efforts to restore farmer women rights, it also contains the socio-cultural values of farmers. according to de vries (2000), farming practice always had roles and functions that are interrelated to each other, between economic, environmental, and social/cultural aspect. european council asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:tinjung.murjono@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 341-351 342 (1998) mention that agriculture is in itself a multifunctional activity because multiple outputs are provided for when agricultural activities are carried out. a much-used working definition of multifunctionality has been developed by the oecd (2001): multifunctionality refers to the fact that an economic activity may have multiple outputs and, by virtue of this, may contribute to several societal objectives at once. this concept means that organic farming has economic, environmental, and social/cultural functions, which some studies conclude the organic farming system gave better performance than conventional, but social and cultural functions were still not widely discussed. social and cultural aspect were giving contribution on sustainable agriculture, and both were mutifunctionality aspect of agriculture. social and culture function gave influence to empowering communities action. empowering communities was one of the agenda of the united nations ‘agenda 21’, a principal outcome of the united nations conference on environment and development (the rio conference), which sets the agenda “to reverse the effects of environmental degradation and to promote environmentally sound and sustainable development in all countries” (robinson, 1993). social ties are commonly viewed as important assets, a form of capital at par with physical, financial, human and political capital, and a potential instrument for building the other forms of capital. within the community development field, cultural considerations often emerge through discussions about social sustainability or community capital; in both contexts, culture is just now emerging as a topic of inquiry. the pattern is similar: community sustainability continues to be most commonly seen as a way to improve a community “well-being” in social, economic, and environmental terms, with culture gradually forming a part of this vision. the main objective of this paper was to give an overview social-cultural function of organic and conventional rice farming system at reserach area. simple model was made to describe the role of social-cultural function of farming system to rural development. research methods the study was conducted at pereng village, mojogedang, karanganyar district, and sukorejo village, sambirejo, sragen district, central java province, indonesia. these districts were chosen for two reasons. firstly, they are typical of intensive ricegrowing areas in central java province. secondly, the two area were consistently expand the organic rice cultivation until now, 3 times in a year. respondents were classified into 2 group, i.e. organic rice system farmers group which apply organic input technique (without chemical inputs) at wetland, with a number of 37 farmers which is saturated sample, and the group of conventional rice system farmers (using chemical inputs), 80 farmers were randomly selected. data were collected using interview list and analyzed by percentage, frequency, and t-test. social-cultural function analysis include employment absorption, social cohesion, farmer women's participation, and tradition aspect. social cohesion among farmers and participation of farmer women based on farmers perception that measured by several indicators in the questionnaire, where the indicator set had met the requirements of a research instrument, validity and reliability. tradition aspect was measured by the frequency of farming ritual done by farmers. the rice farming system determination about employment absorber function value (nftk), based on the formula: nftk = l = farm area (ha) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 341-351 343 t = farming labor requirement (workdays/ha) w = wage (rp/work-days) result and discussion farm labor characteristic table 1 describe farmer characteristic from the sample. generally, likewise found that organic farmer characteristic did not different with conventional farmer, except farming experience of farmer. table 1: sample characteristics no. characteristic organic farming system conventional farming system total % total % 1 age (year) a. ≤ 29 0 0 0 0 b. 30 39 2 5.41 9 11.25 c. 40 49 17 45.95 17 21.25 d. 50 59 9 24.32 26 32.25 e. > 60 9 24.32 28 35 total 37 100 80 100 mean 51 53.93 st. dev. 10.19 11.12 t-test 1.357 ns 2 education a. no education 1 2.70 9 11.25 b. elementary school 21 56.76 36 45.0 c. junior high school 6 16.22 14 17.5 d. high school 8 21.62 18 22.5 e. diploma 1 2.70 2 2.5 f. undergraduate level 0 0 1 1.25 total 37 100.0 80 100.0 mean 9 year = junior high school 9 year = junior high school st. dev. 2.89 3.49 t-test 0.573 ns 3 household size (person) a. 12 3 8.11 17 21.25 b. 34 22 59.46 35 43.75 c. > 5 12 32.43 28 35.0 total 37 100 80 100 mean 4.19 3.99 st. dev. 1.19 1.59 t-test 0.759 ns 4 farming experience (years) a. 2 3 8 21.62 0 0 b. 4 – 5 3 8.11 0 0 c. 6 – 10 23 62.16 13 16.25 d. > 10 3 8.12 63 83.75 total 37 100 80 100 mean 7.30 >26.34 (since child) st. dev. 2.97 13.51 t-test 11.99*** source: primary data (2012) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 341-351 344 employment absorption farm labor in the research area include family labor and hired labor. hired labor was widely used in rice farming in land preparation, planting, and harvesting. agricultural mechanization in cultivation process using tractor for tillage stage and tresher for harvesting, which speeding the work of farming but potentially reduce the absorption of human labor. rice farming includes man and women workers, while children labor was not found in the study site. usually hired labor paid by a wage system or wholesale system (“borongan”). labor used in organic and conventional rice farming systems in general were relatively similar between planting seasons, but there were some difference in labor requirements on some of the activities. differences in farm labor requirements in every stages of organic and conventional systems are shown in table 2. table 2: labor utilize of organic and conventional rice farming systems no activities organic farming system (workdays/ha/planting season) conventional farming system (workdays/ha/planting season) hired labor family labor total % hired labor family labor total % 1 nursery/ seedling 0.10 4.39 4.49 3.05 1.60 2.29 3.89 3.15 2 tillage 21.43 2.88 24.31 16.51 20.36 4.33 24.69 19.97 3 planting 52.16 0.00 52.16 35.43 42.58 0.00 42.58 34.44 4 fertilization 0.45 3.27 3.72 2.53 0.46 3.62 4.08 3.30 5 weeding 3.74 21.68 25.42 17.27 7.80 3.46 11.26 9.11 6 harvesting 37.13 0.00 35.13 25.22 37.13 0.00 37.13 30.03 total 115.01 32.21 147.22 100.00 109.93 18.65 128.58 100.00 st dev. 39.10 48.64 t-test 2.587 *** source: primary data analysis (2013) note: *** there is a difference between organic and conventional systems at 5% error level labor used for both types of farming was allocated most on tillage, planting, and harvesting activities. almost at all stages of farming systems showed difference in labor used, where the biggest difference was weeding activity. organic farming system requires more labor than on comparable conventional farming systems, in the other words, organic farming systems lead to the labor intensive. surprisingly, in contrast to the results offermann and nieberg (2000) study the resource endowment of family labor per ha is almost always lower on organic than conventional farms. there is no clear explanation for this phenomenon. it might be related to the different sociological characteristics of organic farms. possibly, as organic farms in europe contries are more often managed by younger, better educated farmers, the spouse is more likely to have an off-farm job and may thus not be counted as farm labor. labor is one factor that has a major influence on farming cost, therefore farmers should be held accountable in their use. total cost of organic farming system in this study was slightly lower on average than on comparable conventional farming system. cost share on labor in organic systems tend to be higher than spending for other farming resources, but in the conventional system, expenditure on fertilizer closed to labor cost. supadi (2008) concluded that the largest asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 341-351 345 share of rice cultivation cost was labor cost. according this study result, nowadays fertilizer cost share seems getting larger in rice farming cost structure, and labor cost share became decline. the high share of cost of fertilizer in conventional rice farming cost structure, partly due to the use of excessive amounts of fertilizer by farmers, exceeding the government dosage recommendations. figure 1 and figure 2 describe labor cost share in cost structure of rice farming systems. figure 1: labor share in cost structure of figure 2: labor share in cost structure of organic rice farming system conventional rice farming system based on the research results, the organic rice farming system absorbs labor 144.35 workdays/ha/planting season or 433.05 workdays/ha/year, while the conventional rice farming systems absorb 128,58 workdays/ha/planting seasons or 385.71 workdays/ha/year. function value of rice farming system as a labor absorber showed at table 3. when the working day for 1 year 260 days/year, the opportsocial cohesion of working with one hectare of rice field cultivation with organic systems is equivalent to 1.67 people, while the employment of one hectare of rice field with conventional cultivation systems equivalent to 1.48 people. a conversion of fields cultivated with organic rice farming systems at pereng village, karanganyar, will eliminate farmers employment and farm workers with higher economic value than the conversion of land planted with conventional systems at the same location. employment loss is also higher in case of conversion of rice fields with organic systems in the sukorejo village, sragen, than if rice fields planted with conventional systems. table 3 describe economic value of labor absorption function of organic and conventional rice farming in rp/ha/year at research areas. implementation of agricultural mechanization on rice farming nowadays affect the economic value of job opportunities, which it will reduce employment level in rice farming. social cohesion among farmers social cohesion measured from 4 indicators that had met validity and reliability criteria. the indicators based on farmers perception during farming activity shown in table 4, which showed that custom mutual helps, involvement in farmer group, involvement in agricultural activities, and need for searching in agricultural information of organic rice farming systems tend to be dynamic than conventional systems. seed 2.40% fertilizer 13.27% pest icide (organic/ chemical) 0.51% hired labor 54.12% irrigation 1.04% family labor 3.76% depreciation 0.69% land tax 1.16% land rent 23.05% seeds 2.66% fertilizer 28.90% pesticide (organic/ chemical) 0.28% hired labor 30.45% irrigation 1.07% family labor 4.63% depreciation 0.49% land tax 0.35% land rent 31.16% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 341-351 346 table 3: economic value of labor absorption function of organic and conventional rice farming in research areas no. region economic value of labor absorption function (rp./ha/year) t-test organic rice farming system organic rice farming system 1 pereng village, mojogedang, karanganyar district 154.086.836.914,87 124.977.379.016,80 0.968 ns 2 sukorejo village, sambirejo, sragen district 140.701.050.773,51 149.940.051.633,89 0.495 ns t-test 0.968 ns 1.254 ns source: primary data analysis (2013) table 4: social cohesion among farmer of organic and conventional rice farming systems no. indicators organic farming systems conventional farming systems t-test mean st. dev. mean st. dev. 1 custom mutual helps in farming 2.162 0.374 1.588 0.609 5.284* 2 involvement in farmer group meeting 2.784 0.417 2.075 0.854 4.786* 3 need for cooperation in searching for agricultural information 2.757 0.495 2.138 0.759 4.533* 4 involvement in agricultural activities 2.459 0.605 1.688 0.722 6.025* mean 2.541 0.366 1.872 0.551 7.767* sources: primary data analysis (2013) note: (*): there is a difference between organic and conventional systems at the level of 5% error information needs of agriculture and farmers 'involvement in farmer group activities of organic rice farmers tend to be higher than conventional system. organic farming has not been done and understood by every rice farmers in the countryside, therefore farmer group activity was one way to seeking the information on how organic farming systems works. organic farmer’s will increase the ability of individuals or farmers group to participate in the development of organic rice farming, because the social cohesion become a social capital that will give effect to the surrounding communities as well as rural development. farmer women participation the results of this study, the organic farming system encourages the participation of farmer women, showed in table 5. table 5: participation of farmer women in organic and conventional rice farming systems no. indicator organic farming systems conventional farming systems t-test mean st. dev. mean st. dev. 1 involvement in the farming 2.081 0.795 2.000 0.796 0.513ns 2 involvement in farm 1.946 0.575 2.050 0.614 0.891ns asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 341-351 347 management decisions 3 involvement in product value/marketing 2.378 0.681 2.288 0.715 0.661ns 4 involvement in the organization/farmer groups 1.216 0.479 1.275 0.551 0.588ns mean 1.9054 0.41396 1.9031 0.45265 0.026ns sources: primary data analysis (2013) description: (ns) there is no difference between organic and conventional systems at the level of 5% error table 5 shows there weren’t differences in participation of farmer women between two farming systems. farmer women in rice farming in this study tend to be passive in farmer groups due to the position of women farmers in the farming only help her husband. the presumption that husband is responsible for the success of farming, puts farmers women not as a prime position in farming system. there weren’t differences in the farmer's wife's participation stages of farming activities, explained by the farmer woman involvement at farming stages in table 6. table 6: involvement of farmers women in farming no. activity women farmer involved in organic rice farming women farmer involved in conventional rice farming t-test workdays % workdays % 1 tillage 0 0 0 0 2 nursery/ seedling 0.13 18.92 0.28 21.25 1.97 ns 3 planting 42.97 86.49 41.58 98.75 0.22 ns 4 weeding 4.78 72.97 7.52 77.50 1.30 ns 5 fertilizing 0.008 2.70 0.43 18.75 3.47 * 6 harvesting 0.11 5.41 0.13 3.75 0.176 ns sources: primary data analysis (2013) description: (ns) there is no difference between organic and conventional systems at the level of 5% error there weren’t differences in women's involvement in organic and conventional rice farming system, except at fertilization stage. fertilization stage of conventional rice farming system performed twice in one planting season. the first fertilization is done when the plants mature approximately 12 days at a dose of fertilizer-third of the overall demand for fertilizer, while the rest of the fertilizer is given in the second phase which is approximately at 40 days old plants. some farmer who only narrowly control the land, tend to involve his wife to help. unlike farmer at organic system, because the amount of manure applied to the crop tends too much, so the fertilization of rice organic system usually done by man. tradition maintenance tradition and culture is gradually emerging out of the realm of social sustainability and being recognized as having a separate, distinct, and integral role in sustainable development. within the sustainability field, culture is discussed in terms of cultural capital, defined as “traditions and values, heritage and place, the arts, diversity and social history (roseland et al., 2005). the stock of cultural capital, both tangible and intangible, is what we inherit from past generations and what we will pass onto future generations. until now, the process stages of rice cultivation at java, has not lost its religious asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 341-351 348 nature and was celebrated with accompanying slametan. certain ceremonies that long ago regarded as a means of an application to the regulator of the universe in order to keep the fields to avoid disastrous crop failures, more and more were not believed by farmers. slametan” or ceremony which was held related to dewi sri (rice goddes) respected by making offerings include “wiwit”, “tingkeb tandur”, and “methik”. tabel 7 describe some rice farming ritual at research area. table 7: rice farming tradition at research area type of tradition time implemented symbols farmer motivation wiwit when will grow rice. offerings of rice cone, boiled chicken, with vegetables aware of farming depends on the natural environment, wiwit ceremony to hope that when early farmers planting lots of water so that the rice can be grown either as an individual responsibility to parent advice and as cultural education towards next generations tingkeb tandur when rice plants 'mrekatak' (panicle out together) and then pregnant when rice grow and started out the grains of rice in panicle, regarded by farmers have given sustenance and protection to farmers as an individual responsibility to parent advice and as cultural education towards next generations methik the first rice harvest, offerings of rice cone with egg, rice stalks and storage in the barn / house. tribute to dewi sri, who has been keeping rice since birth to harvest, and expected savings from the rice harvest in the next harvest bountiful results. as an individual responsibility to parent advice and as cultural education towards next generations bersih desa/ sadran after the rice harvest season-2, the collection includes food and prayer together villagers villagers expressed their gratitude for the rice crop has been harvested and managed to produce a satisfactory crop. there are socio-cultural values, the mutual cooperation, sacrifice, equality of social / economic as a public responsibility and cooperation in rural community source: interview result (2012) the results showed only a small number of farmers do farming tradition, at figure 3. figure 3: distribution of farmers based on rice farming tradition activity 0.0 20.0 40.0 60.0 always do the farming tradition sometimes do the farming tradition not done the farming tradition % farmer conventional farming system organic farming system asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 341-351 349 only about 5% of farmers still do “slametan” tradition in the farming process, which is carried out by farmers who are relatively old, because they feel obliged perform their parents message. simplicity reason and lack of farmer confidence were the reason that affects the abandonment of farming tradition. the majority of rice farmers do not do the traditions and ceremonies because cost savings thinking and the belief that the tradition of farming will not prevent natural disasters, because disaster is the cycle of the seasons that cannot be avoided. the results conclude that rice cultivation with organic system does not ensure the maintenance of rice farming tradition. tradition regurlarly do by farmer can increase quality of life, suporting positive norms, such as cultural understanding and free expression, and also fostering trust between farmers and relationship, because they do the ritual together. simple construction model social-cultural potential to rural development social cohesion among rice farmers is ongoing social capital for rural development, the same with human and culture capital, which referring to sakurai (2006), social potential can gave influence on rural development. figure 4 is simple model to describe the role of human, social, and culture to rural development. figure 4: social and cultural role in rural development social cohesion among farmer, farmer women participation, tradition, are support community capital building, so it can give contribution on rural development. today, professionals and academics in the field consider sustainable community development to be an appreciation of many types of community capital and/or assets within a community, as “all forms of capital are created by spending time and effort in transformation and transaction activities” (roseland et al., 2005). social sustainability reflects the capability and character of a society; at its core is the capability and character of its individual members. this human capability also pertains to the human capital which is also a component of economic sustainability. sustainable rural development must be achieved at every level of society. people’s organizations, women’s groups and nongovernmental organizations are important sources of innovation and action at the local social cohesion among farmer community cohesion capital building (farmers, farmer women, and farmer group as agent of change of rural development) made possible the emergence of new activities (diversification potential rural, example agriculture tourism with cultural atractions) improvement of agricultural production and infrastucture (include cultural facilities) optimal utilization of rural resources women participation on farming farming employment tradition activities and value of farmers human capital, social capital, and cultural capital asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 341-351 350 level and have a strong interest and proven ability to promote sustainable livelihoods. social capital has increasingly gained recognition in many aspects of agriculture, natural resource management and rural development in developing countries due to its perceived positive consequences for development and opportunity for those who lack possession of and access to financial, human or natural capital. social capital theory provides a useful framework for explaining social connections or relationships that can generate collective action advantageous to a group (meinzen-dick et al., 2004 in ouma and abdulai, 2009). conclusions this study analysis showed that organic rice farming systems was labor-intensive, and the economic value as labor absorbers and social cohesion were better than conventional rce farming system. organic farming improved cooperation between famer, dynamic farmer groups, also encourage cooperation among farmers, increase the activity of extracting information together, as well as agricultural activities following the activity. application of organic rice farming system is no different from conventional rice farming systems in encouraging the participation of women farmers, also in the maintenance farming tradition. references aliansi, o. i. (2009). peran perempuan dalam produksi pangan organis. www.organicindonesia.org. p. 5-7. de vries, b. (2000). multifunctional agriculture in the international context: a review. the land stewardship project, white bear lake, minnesota, p. 15. http://www.landstewardshipproject.org /mba/mfareview.pdf. duxbury, n., & eileen, g. (2007). culture as a key dimension of sustainability: exploring concepts, themes, and models. working paper no. 1. creative city network of canada. p.3. http://tosca.vtlseurope.com:8098/ arxius/pdf/e130054.pdf. european council (1998). council strategy on environmental integration and sustainable development in the common agricultural policy. established by the agricultural council. http://www.ue.eu.int/uedocs/cms_dat a/docs/pressdata/en/misc/13078.en9.ht m irawan, e. husen, m., r. l. watung, & f. agus (2004). society perception and apreciation of agricultural multifunctionality: a case study in west java and central java. proceedings of the seminar on multifunctionality of agriculture and land resource conservation. bogor, december 18, 2003 and january 2004. centre for research and development of soil and agroclimate. bogor. meinzen-dick, r., m. digregorio, & n. mccarthy (2004). methods for studying collective action in rural development. agricultural systems, 82(3), 197-214. oecd (2001). multifunctionality: towards an analytical framework. oecd publications service. paris offermann, f., & hiltrud, n. (2000). economic performance of organic farms in europe. vol. 5. federal agricultural research centre (fal) institute of farm economics and rural studies. germany ouma, e., & awudu, a. (2009). contributions of social capital theory in predicting collective action behavior among livestock keeping communities in kenya. international association of agricultural economists conference, beijing, china, august 16-22, 2009. http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream / 49994/2 pike, m. (2003). can do citizens. london. uk, social enterprise services & scarman trust. robinson, n. a. (1993). agenda 21: earth’s action plan. iucn environmental http://www.organicindonesia.org/ http://tosca.vtlseurope.com:8098/ http://www.ue.eu.int/uedocs/cms_data/docs/%20pressdata/en/misc/13078.en9.htm http://www.ue.eu.int/uedocs/cms_data/docs/%20pressdata/en/misc/13078.en9.htm http://www.ue.eu.int/uedocs/cms_data/docs/%20pressdata/en/misc/13078.en9.htm http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/%2049994/2 http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/%2049994/2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 341-351 351 policy and law, p. 27 (world conservation union). roseland, m., connelly, s., hendrickson, d., lindberg, c., & lithgow, m. (2005). towards sustainable communities: resources for citizens and their governments. (rev. ed.). gabriola island, bc: new society publishers. sakurai, s. (2006). role of social capital in rural diversification: a case of mountainsous villages in japan. in potential of social capital for commsocial cohesion development. asian productivity organization. pp. 104 – 140. supadi (2008). struktur biaya dan profitabilitas usahatani tanaman pangan (kasus desa-desa patanas. agrika jurnal ilmu-ilmu pertanian, 2(1), 1-12. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(10), 188-200 188 technical efficiency of irrigated rice production in burkina faso water control infrastructures: a stochastic frontier approach daniel p. kabore agricultural economist; center for the analysis of economic and social policies, ouagadougou, burkina faso article history: received: 28-oct-2016 revised received: 18nov-2016 accepted: 27-nov-2016 online available: 15dec-2016 keywords: technical (in) efficiency, stochastic production function, irrigation system, ricekou, bagré, sourou , burkina faso abstract the present study examines the technical efficiency of irrigated rice production in burkina faso for the three irrigation systems: along the river at kou, downstream the dam at bagré and pumping system at sourou. the results show that the overall technical efficiency is high: 87%. the estimates of the stochastic production frontier model indicate that chemical fertilizers and equipment expenses have a positive relationship with rice production, in contrast of the cropped area which comes as a complementary factor to equipment. the socio-economic factors that significantly reduce technical inefficiency are the household type and the age of the head of the household. the findings also revealed that increasing cropped area alone is not enough to increase rice production without a better access to fertilizers and to equipment implement (plows, harrows, and oxen). the pumping irrigation system operated at sourou proved to be more technically inefficient than the system along the river at kou valley. therefore, in the current conditions, the option of the pumping irrigation system should be excluded from future irrigation scheme. 1. introduction 1 agriculture is an important sector for the economy of burkina faso; it is the main source of livelihood for 80% of the population; it contributes for 35-40% to the gdp and 60% of export earnings. despite its importance, this sector has not benefited from effective policies since the political independence so that poverty is still high in rural areas (47%). this lack of performance is partially attributable to various constraints such as (i) a poor spatio-temporal distribution of rainfall, (ii) an extensive production system leading to natural resources degradation and (iii) a low level of technical equipment and innovation. these constraints are more and more acute in the presence of the harsh effects of climate change. increasing agricultural productivity is widely corresponding author‟s email address: dpkabore@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.10/1005.10.188.200 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 188-200 189 recognized as an important engine of socioeconomic transformation in sub-saharan africa and irrigation is an important vehicle for promoting increased productivity (you, 2008). therefore, in order to address the above constraints and increase food availability, the government of burkina faso initiated water control policies consisting of building water management infrastructures to crop rice. due to a drastic increase in rice demand, rice cropping was the first option on such improved lands where water is optimally managed. despite an absolute increase in rice production, yields remain under their potential levels so that the actual supply is lower than the potential quantity of this strategic staple food. in burkina faso, the national rice production which amounts to 300,000 t only meets 30% of the total needs (kaboré et al., 2011) and imports accrue to 40 billion fcfa per year. the challenge is still there as well as the government‟s propensity to pursue the same policy, namely the development of infrastructures to better manage water in order to increase and sustain national rice production. however the long-term viability of this option is questionable. in particular, it would be relevant to know if the rice producers on the sites have reached their maximum level of production, or in other words if their technical efficiency can be improved in order to increase the profitability of the whole irrigation infrastructures. ouédraogo (2015) studied rice production efficiency in burkina faso but for the single site of kou dam while kaboré (2011) used the national agriculture census data, collected not only on governmental water scheme sites but also on any wetland where rice is produced, to analyze rice production efficiency in burkina faso. on the other hand, kaboré (2014) did some research on production efficiency but for horticulture in the nakanbé river basin. the present study examines the technical efficiency of the irrigated rice production on the three irrigation infrastructures existing in burkina faso, namely “the along the river” system (kou), the “downstream of the dam system” (bagré) and “the pumping” system (sourou). it aims to make policy recommendations in order to (i) increase the technical efficiency of the rice producers on those costly production sites leading to rice yield increase and therefore (i) improve the overall performance of water control infrastructures in burkina faso. specifically, it analyzes the determinants of the irrigated rice production, computes the technical efficiency of the irrigated rice growing and analyses the factors of the associated inefficiency. 2. methodology 2.1. study area and data collection the survey was conducted in november 2005 to mid-january 2006 in dry season 2005 on three sites (see map 1 of localization): the kou valley in the west of burkina faso where the operated irrigation system is along the kou river; the sourou valley in the north-west where irrigation is made by pumping from the sourou river; bagré in the center-east with an irrigation system downstream of the bagré hydro-electric dam. the choice of these sites is motivated by the importance of rice cropping and the operated irrigation system. fifteen (15) villages were selected: eight (8) in the kou valley, four (4) in the sourou and three (3) in bagré. a total sample of 150 households (10 per village) was randomly drawn to conduct the survey. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 188-200 190 km 100 50 0 ghana togo beni n niger mal i cote d'ivoire ouagadougou source: igb réalisation: ctig / inera 2005 province limits study site n  legend kou valley du kou bagré souro u map 1: geographical situation of the study sites 2.2. method of analysis: stochastic production frontier and inefficiency models the function of stochastic production has been used to estimate the technical efficiency (te) of the individual producers of rice and the factors of inefficiency. the use of stochastic production function has some advantages. for battese & coelli (1995), it is more appropriate than the dea (data envelopment analysis) method for agricultural productions, especially in developing countries where data are more likely to be strongly influenced by measurement errors and by other effects outside of producers‟ control such as weather conditions, diseases and parasites. therefore, the stochastic production function, developed by aigner et al. (1997) and meusen & van broeck (1997) was used in this study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 188-200 191 in general the production function is written as follows: )exp(),( uivixifyi   ……………... (1) where yi represents the production of rice in the i th household; xi is a vector (1xk) of inputs of production associated with the i th household; β is a (kx1) vector of unknown parameters to estimate; the vi are random errors of distribution which are assumed to be iid n (0, σ 2 v) and the ui, independently distributed among themselves and between the random errors. ui which represent the inefficiency in production, are non-negative random variables assumed to be iid n (0, σ 2 u) and follow a half normal distribution (truncated distribution at zero); this distribution has more realistic properties and is often preferred to others (chaffai, 1997). in order to determine the effect of the inputs and the socio-economic factors of productivity and technical efficiency, a stochastic translog function was estimated, following wilson et al. (2001), alvarez & arias (2004) and rahman & hasan (2008) who already used it; it is of the form: iijiiji j ii uvxxxy    lnln2/1lnln 6 1 0  ……………... (2) where yi = the production of rice in quantity (kg) for the household i (i=1…150) xi= factors of production (x1= cropped area in ha, x2= used inputs (fertilizers) in quantity (kg), x3= expenditures on equipment (fcfa). the ui are specified by the following function: ui = zi δ wi (3), where the zi a (1xm) vector of explanatory variables associated with the technical inefficiency of production units, δ is a (1xm) vector of unknown parameters and wi the residual term. the iz are the socio-economic characteristics of producers in the inefficiency model, namely:  z1: the household type (small=0, large=1 i.e larger than six (6) members);  z2: the age of the head of the household (in years);  z3: the education level of the household‟s head (in years);  z4: the number of years of head of the household‟s experience in the rice production on the site;  z5: pumping irrigation system (no=0, yes=1);  z6: downstream the dam irrigation system (no=0, yes=1); (the reference is the „along the river‟ system at kou)  z7: the use of organic manure (no=0, yes=1);  z8: the practice of soil and water conservation (swc) techniques (no=0, yes=1). the error terms being assumed mutually independent and of inputs, the function is estimated by the method of maximum likelihood and the associated parameters with vi and ui are ²= ²u + ²v and = ²u / (²u + ²v),  reflecting the importance of the inefficiency in the output gap. the simultaneous estimate proposed by battese & coelli (1997) and implemented by the software frontier 4.1 (coelli, 1996) enables to limit the criticism of the two-step estimation method. this software was used in the present study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 188-200 192 3. results and discussion 3.1. socio-economic characteristics of the sample households table 1 summarizes the socio-economic characteristics of rice growers on the study sites. it shows that the minimum age is 20 years (at sourou) while the maximum is 80 at kou valley as well as the highest mean age (54.4 years). this means that rice growing is practiced by middle age farmers. farmers‟s experience ranged from 3 years at kou to a maximum of 41 years at sourou. the mean family size was 19 members at kou against 12 at sourou and bagré. farmers at kou valley have more family active members on average: 7.3 against 5.73 and 5.03 for sourou and bagré, respectively. the mean number of years of education is about 5 years at kou against 3 at bagré and sourou. total cropped area averaged at 0.94-1.00 ha per household while the mean yield reached 3631, 42 kg /ha at sourou, 3245,2 kg/ha at kou and 3164,44 kg/ha at bagré. the mean quantity of chemical fertilizers used on rice was larger at sourou (317, 9167 kg) than on the other two sites: 285, 7 kg at kou and 298,6421 kg at bagré. the results show that rice growers in burkina faso are small-scale farmers and this small size makes mechanization difficult. 3.2. the determinants of the stochastic function of production the maximum likelihood estimates of the stochastic production function are presented in table 2. the lr value of 31.76, significant at 1% for a theoretical chi-square value of 11.64, means that the model is adequate. the parameter = ²u / (²u + ²v) = 0.83 is significant at 1%; this implies that the effects of the technical inefficiency are significant in the irrigated rice production of burkina faso. in other words, almost all the variation in the irrigated rice production is attributable to producers‟ technical inefficiency. idiong (2007) found a  value of 0.77 for small rice producers in non-irrigated lowlands in the cross river state in nigeria; battese & coelli (1997 op. cit.) obtained a  value of 0.95 for rice producers in a indian village with panel data over 10 years, collected by icrisat. myint & kyi (2005) and donkoh et al. (2013) have shown that  was 0.99 for the myanmar rice producers in south-east asia and in the north of ghana, respectively. table 2 provides information on the determinants of both the function of stochastic production of irrigated rice and the associated technical inefficiency. the relative importance of the production factors is indicated by the sign and the magnitude of the associated coefficients. the quantity of chemical fertilizers applied and the equipment expenses have the predictable sign which is positive and significant at 1%. this indicates a direct relationship between these factors and the quantity of irrigated rice production: an increase in the quantity of chemical fertilizers of 1% results in an increase of 9% in rice production. this important role of chemical fertilizers in rice production is thus confirmed both by by ouédraogo (2015, op. cit.) and the drastic increase in rice production by 20% during the 2008-2009 campaign, when the government of burkina faso subsidized fertilizers (kaboré et al., 2011 op. cit.). similarly, an increase in equipment expenses (mostly for animal traction) of 1% induces an increase of 5% in the quantity of produced rice. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 188-200 193 table 1: socio-economic characteristics of the sample households on three water scheme sites site age of house holhead family size (members) experience (years) level of education (years) crop area (ha) yield (kg/ha) chemical fertilizers used (kg) number of active members kou valley minimum 24 7.00 3.00 0 0.50 1500 100.00 0 mean 54.3 18.8 25.7 4.57 1.0 3245.2 285.7 7.3 maximum 80 35.00 50.00 5 1.50 5250 400.00 18 standard deviation 14.34 7.05 11.97 7.713 0.16 668.38 76.89 3.71 sourou minimum 20 3.00 3.00 0 0.50 320 160.00 2 mean 40.18 11.6000 14.8250 3.33 1.0938 3631.42 317.9167 5.73 maximum 55 37.00 41.00 20 2.00 5440 400.00 20 standard deviation 8.305 6.82304 8.0284 3.724 0.4732 1706.506 72.6521 3.501 bagré minimum 31 5.00 7.00 0 0.75 963 100.00 2 mean 43.37 11.9310 22.1724 2.97 0.9417 3164.44 298.6421 5.03 maximum 61 23.00 36.00 10 1.00 5056 500.00 12 standard deviation 7.654 4.6746 8.2335 2.988 0.0849 1185.175 88.6645 2.428 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 188-200 194 table 2: maximum likelihood estimates of the stochastic production function for rice production in burkina faso variables coefficients t-ratios stochastic frontier production model constant (β0) -43.5326*** -10.3147 area (β1) -5.1301** -1.7963 chemical fertilizer (β2) 9.1239*** 10.1588 expenditures on equipment (β3) 4.6348*** 5.7131 (area) 2 (β4) 0.0007 0.0011 chemical fertilizer 2 (β5) -0.0377 -0.2218 expenditures on equipment 2 ( β6) 0.0096 0.26 area x chemical fertilizer (β7) 0.2446 0.3866 area x equipment (β8) 0.4770* 1.5484 chemical fertilizer x equipment (β9) -0.8141*** -5.2374 inefficiency model constant δ0 0.0241 0.0292 household type (δ1) (small=0 ; large=1) -0.9051*** -3.0333 age of the head of household (δ2) -0.0263** -1.5032 level of education (δ3) -0.1457 -0.7255 experience on the site (δ4) -0.0275 -0.9059 pumping irrigation system (0/1)(δ5) 2.3409*** 3.4327 downstream the dam irrigation system (0/1)(δ6) 0.0144 0.026 use of organic fertilizer (0/1)(δ7) 0.5338 1.0333 practice of soil and water conservation technique (0/1)(δ8) -0.2631 -0.6427 diagnostic statistics σ 2 0.2889*** 4.673  0.8264*** 14.892 likelihood ratio 31.76*** mean technical efficiency 0.87 *, ** and ***: significant at 10, 5 and 1 percent respectively the cropped area showed an inverse relationship with the produced quantity: an increase in cropped area of 1% leads to a decline in rice production of 5%. such a finding is due to the factorintensive nature of rice production which requires a lot of labor and fertilizers (organic and inorganic) to keep productivity at the same level when the cropped area increases. therefore, cropped area appeared to be a limiting factor to irrigated rice production in burkina faso, in the absence of favorable conditions in terms of fertilization and equipment to implement timely and appropriate operations. despite the crucial role of the fertilizers in irrigated rice production, this input is neither financially affordable nor available on a timely basis to the producers. our research results are confirmed by similar findings by donkoh et al. (2013) op. cit. on the irrigated perimeter of tono in northern ghana, where an increase in cropped area also induces a negative effect on rice production while an increase in fertilizer and labor has a positive effect on produced rice quantity. regarding interactions, the positive sign of a coefficient indicates that the variables are complementary while the negative one implies that they are substitute. the results show that cropped area and equipment are complementary while fertilizers and equipment expenditures are somehow substitutable. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 188-200 195 3.3. distribution of technical efficiency score the estimation of the stochastic production allowed to get an average technical efficiency score of 87%, meaning that there exits an improvement margin of 13% in rice production in burkina faso. this result is comparable to the 81% score found on the water scheme of tono in northern ghana by donkoh et al. (2013) op. cit. and 86.6% on ijesha rice production site in osun state in nigeria (tijani. (2006). ouédraogo (2015, op. cit.) found a technical efficiency score of 80% at kou valley in burkina faso. figure 1 presents the distribution of producers by the level of the technical efficiency score: 83% of producers have a score between 80% and 95%; only 5% of the rice producers displayed a score between 96% and 100%; the other 13% are the least efficient producers with a score between 50% and 80%. figure 1: distribution of rice producers by level of technical efficiency score, burkina faso, dry season 2005 3.4. the sources of inefficiency results on the technical inefficiency model are presented in table 2; the δ coefficients account for the effect of different variables on the technical inefficiency: the variables with a negative sign coefficient have a negative relationship with the inefficiency, in contrast of those having a positive sign (battese & coelli, 1995). in the model, significant variables are the type of household, the age of the head of the household and the type of irrigation. figures 2-6 give an illustration of the source of the producers‟ technical inefficiency. the negative sign of the coefficient associated with the household type means that the large size of the household (more than 6 members) tends to reduce technical inefficiency. a similar result was highlighted by otitoju et al. (2014) for the soybean producers in nigeria. it can be seen in figure 2 that the score of large households of 0.88 is higher than that of small households (0.86). the greater availability of family labor in large households enables them to timely implement cropping operations, which tends to reduce inefficiencies in irrigated rice production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 188-200 196 figure 2: distribution of rice producers by level of technical efficiency and type of household, burkina faso, dry season 2005 the finding about the age of the head of the household indicates that older household heads are less technically inefficient. in other words, the age is a reducer of the technical inefficiency in the practice of the irrigated rice production in burkina faso. otitoju et al. op. cit have also found a similar result in the production of soybeans in nigeria. this finding is illustrated in figure 3 where it is clear that the score of efficiency increases with age: the household heads of over 60 years have an efficiency score of 0.93 against 0.80 for the younger heads of household (less than 30 years). figure 3: distribution of rice producers by level of technical efficiency and age of the head of the household, burkina faso, dry season 2005 only the pumping irrigation system (present in the sourou) has a positive and significant sign; this indicates that compared to the reference system (the along the river system in kou valley), this irrigation system records a technical inefficiency. this result is not surprising given the high energy costs incurred in operating the water pumping engines. the downstream of the dam of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 188-200 197 bagré has a positive although non-significant sign. therefore, the two irrigation systems are technically inefficient compared to the „along the river system‟. figure 4 illustrates the case: the technical efficiency score of „the along the river system‟ is 0.92 against 0.88 and 0.64 for „the downstream of the dam‟ and the pumping system, respectively. figure 4: distribution of rice producers by irrigation system, burkina faso. dry season 2005 coefficients associated with the experience of the head of the household, his level of education have a negative but non-significant sign. the coefficient associated with the grower‟s experience is positive although not significant. figure 5 shows that the effect of this variable on the technical efficiency is not clear-cut. it seems that the experience alone does not reduce technical inefficiency by itself. figure 5: distribution of rice producers according to the level of technical efficiency and the experience of the household, burkina faso, dry season 2005 the same trend is observed for the level of education; as it can be seen on figure 6, it is not clear that the level of education is a reducer of technical inefficiency since the households with less than 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 downstream the dam pumping along the river 0.8847 0.6355 0.9176 ef fi ci e n cy s co re irrigation system asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 188-200 198 two years of education have proved to be more efficient than those with 2-6 years of education. those of 8-10 years of education are more efficient than those of over 10 years of education. figure 6: distribution of rice producers by technical efficiency score and the level of education, burkina faso, dry season 2005 4. conclusions and policy recommandations this study aimed to analyze the determinants of the irrigated rice production and calculate the growers‟ technical efficiency on the so costly water control infrastructures of burkina faso. maximum likelihood method was used to estimate a stochastic frontier translog production function. the findings of the study revealed that factors which significantly determine irrigated rice production are the cropped area, the quantity of used chemical fertilizers and equipment expenses. chemical fertilizers and equipment expenses have a positive coefficient as expected but the one associated with the cropped area is negative, which indicates that an increase in cropped area is a source of irrigated rice production decline. cropped area and equipment were found to be complementary factors, which indicates that the only increase in cropped land cannot lead to a rice production increase without an improvement of operation implement. the results also showed that the age of the head of the household and household size tend to reduce technical inefficiency. the pumping irrigation system at sourou was found to be technically inefficient compared to the system operated at kou valley. recommendations to improve the irrigated rice production in burkina faso focus on the main factors of technical efficiency including cropped area, chemical fertilizers use and equipment expenses. any increase in the cropped area should be accompanied by an improvement of rice producers‟ equipment. due to the intensive nature of irrigated rice growing, any extension of the cropped area which is not complemented with equipment for field operations such as plowing and planing) would be unnecessary because it would have a depressing effect on the production. water control for rice growing is indeed important but it is not enough to increase rice production. a policy which provides rice producers with adequate equipment (motorized plows. oxen-plows. harrows and others) as well as traction animals should be conducted on behalf of producers on existing sites, before increasing investments on water control infrastructures. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 188-200 199 although the chemical fertilizer revealed to be a key factor to irrigated rice production, this input is very costly and not available on a timely basis. therefore, the government needs not only to subsidize it, but should financially support the private sector responsible for the production and distribution of this critical input. another important result is that the pumping irrigation system operated at sourou is technically inefficient compared to the „along the river system‟ operated at the kou valley. it should therefore be abandoned if it is not possible to substantially reduce operating costs, namely by using the solar energy for pumping irrigation water. the average technical efficiency score of 87% is relatively high because the production conditions (such as the water availability) were well-controlled. however, for this technical efficiency score to stay at this high level, it is crucial to ensure that favorable conditions continue to prevail on the production sites. it is recommended that research (over several years) be conducted in order to better understand the evolution of the technical efficiency determinants and those of the associated technical inefficiency. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that s/he has no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: na views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references aigner, d. j., lovell, c. a. k., & schmidt, p. (1997). formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier function models. journal of econometrics, 6, 21-37. alvarez, a., & arias, c. (2004). technical efficiency and farm size: a conditional analysis. agriculture cultural economics, 30, 241-250. battese, g. e., coelli, t. j. (1997). estimation of frontier production functions and the efficiency of indian farms using panel data. journal of quantitative economics, 5, 327-348. battese, g. e., coelli, t. j. (1995). a model for technical inefficiency effects in a stochastic frontier production function for panel data. empirical economics, 20, 325-332. chaffai, m. (1997). estimating efficiency boundaries: an overview of recent developments in literature. journal of development economics 3, 33-67. coelli, t. j. (1996). a computer program for stochastic frontier production and cost function estimation. center for efficiency and productivity analysis working paper 96/07, university of new england donkoh, s. a., ayambila, s., abdulai, s. (2013). technical efficiency of rice production at the tono irrigation scheme in northern ghana. american journal of experimental agriculture, 3(1), 25-42. idiong, i. c. (2007). estimation of farm level technical efficiency in small scale swamp rice production in cross river state of nigeria: a stochastic frontier approach. world journal of agricultural sciences, 3(5), 653-658. kaboré, k. b., segda, z., ouédraogo, m., traoré, h., lompo, f., & dakouo, d. (2011). burkina faso rice policy and prospects. conference on 30 years of partnership mali-syngenta foundation for sustainable agriculture 5-7 october 2011, bamako. mali. kaboré, p. d. (2014). financial profitability and technical efficiency of horticultural crops in the nakanbé river watershed in burkina faso. journal of development and agricultural economics, 6(9), 405-411. kaboré, w. t. (2011). the technical efficiency of small plots of irrigated rice in burkina faso. 6th scientific days of 2ie, 4-8 april 2011, 2ie, ouagadougou, burkina faso. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(10)2016: 188-200 200 meusen, w., & van den brock, j. (1997). efficiency estimation from cobb-douglas production functions with composed error. international economic review, 18, 435-444. myint, t., & kyi, t. (2005). analysis of technical efficiency of irrigated rice production system in myanmar. deutscher tropentag 2005 stuttgart-hohenheim, october 11-13, 2005 conference on international agricultural research for development. otitoju, m. a., adebo, g. m., & arene, c. j. (2014). identification and stochastic analysis of factors influencing technical inefficiency of nigerian soybean farmers. tropicultura, 32, 197-204. ouédraogo, s. (2015). technical and economic efficiency of rice production in the kou valley (burkina faso): a stochastic frontier approach. asian economic and social society, 5(2), 53-63. rahman, s., hasan, m. (2008). impact of land fragmentation and resources ownership on productivity and efficiency: the case of rice producers in bangladesh. land use policy, 26, 95-103. tijani, a. a. (2006). analysis of the technical efficiency of rice farms in ijesha land of osun state. nigeria. agrekon, 45(2), 126-135. wilson, p., hadley, d., & ashby, c. (2001). the influence of management characteristics on the technical efficiency of wheat farmers in eastern england. agricultural economics, 24, 329338. you, l. z. (2008). africa infrastructure country diagnostic: irrigation investment needs in subsaharan africa. summary of background paper 9, environment and production technology division of the international food policy research institute (ifpri). effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants published by: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 5(3)2015, www.aessweb.com 64 entitlement to food security approach explaining food security in the southern highlands of tanzania more than other theories dorah h. mende principal agricultural research officer; socio-economics, agricultural research institute, uyole (ari-uyole), mbeya , tanzania maulid w. mwatawala associate professor of applied entomology; crop science department, sokoine university of agriculture, morogoro, tanzania kim a. kayunze associate professor of rural development; development studies institute, sokoine university of agriculture, morogoro, tanzania abstract data for this paper were collected in mbeya and makete districts, tanzania, in 2012 from 233 households with the specific objectives to determine proportions of food secure and food insecure households; rank some indicators of entitlements and those of malthusians, anti-malthusians and woldemeskel‟s contentions with regard to their relationship with food security; and determine the impact of the above indicators on dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent per day, which was the dependent variable. the independent variables were household size, number of agricultural technologies used, number of cattle owned, income from non-agricultural activities, monetary values of household assets, farmer group membership, years of schooling of household head and kilograms of fertilizer used. the dependent variable was regressed on the eight independent variables to find the impact of each of them on it. entitlement to food security in terms numbers of cattle owned, farmers‟ group membership and non-agricultural activities were found to be more important factors enhancing food security. addressing these factors could improve food security in the study area. it is recommended that the government and policy makers should support farmers in other income generating activities besides agriculture to increase their purchasing power for higher food security. keywords: entitlement, food security theories, southern highlands, tanzania 1. introduction 1 more than 800 million people throughout the world and particularly in developing countries do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs (fao, wfp, ifad, 2012). even though food supplies have increased substantially, constraints to food access and continuing inadequacy of household and national incomes to purchase food, instability of supply and demand, as well as natural and man-made disasters prevent basic food needs from being fulfilled. food security as a corresponding author‟s name: dorah h. mende email address: dlisso@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:dlisso@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 64-76 65 concept is a complex issue which is still undergoing evolution, with other authors trying to adopt a multi-disciplinary approach to link the subject with different fields of specialization. in 1996 the world food summit in rome defined food security as follows: “food security at the individual, household, national, regional and global levels exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (fao, 1996). this definition implies that food security is a broad concept that is more than food production and food accessibility. while developed countries of europe, north america and northern asia have no problem of food insecurity, most developing countries especially in sub-saharan africa (ssa), south-eastern asia and the pacific have it. tanzania, like most other sub-saharan african countries, is faced with a challenge for maintaining sustainable food security to all the people at all times. although agriculture is central to reduction of food insecurity in tanzania, the progress has been slow relative to the pace required for meeting the millennium development goal (mdg) number one target by 2015 (urt, 2010). general causes of food insecurity in tanzania which are also the same in most other developing countries are little acreage; dependency on rainfall; use of low level technologies for tillage, crop and livestock husbandry, processing of crop and livestock products; financial inability to use improved seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides; poor markets for agricultural and livestock products; poor division of labour at the household level; climate change; and poor transport means that constrain inputs supply and products delivery to market places (urt, 2010). while the above factors are well known, the extent to which theoretical contentions on determinants of food security explain insecurity in mbeya and makete districts is not known. therefore, the research from which this paper is based was to analyse, among other things, the extent to which the entitlement to food approach by sen (1981), woldemeskel (1990) contentions, and multhusian and anti-malthusian theories explain food insecurity in mbeya and makete districts. the specific objectives of the study were to: (1) determine proportions of food secure and food insecure households in the study area, (2) rank some indicators of entitlements and those of malthusians, anti-malthusians and woldemeskel‟s contentions with regard to their relationship with food security, and (3) determine the impact of the above indicators on dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent per day. the empirical knowledge generated might inform strategies to improve food security in mbeya and makete districts and probably elsewhere in tanzania. 2. contentious theoretical issues explaining food security 2.1. malthusians and anti-malthusian contentions malthusians contend that food insecurity is due to the presence of too many people compared to the amount of food produced. this contention began during the time of a famous british reverend called thomas robert malthus who lived from 1766 to 1834. he wrote his first essay titled an essay on the principle of population that was published in 1798 arguing as follows: “population when unchecked increases in a geometrical ratio while subsistence food production increases only in an arithmetical ratio”. subsistence (i.e. food production) increases only in an arithmetical ratio... by that law of our nature which makes food necessary to life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers (of population and food) must be kept equal. this implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. this difficulty (of providing sufficient food) must fall somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind” (malthus, 1798, cited by dyson, 1996). the core principle of malthus was that food is necessary for human existence even if human population tends to grow faster than the power on the earth to produce subsistence. malthus was specific on the negative impact of population growth on food production. people who believed in the above contentions were classic malthusians; those who believe so until today are neo-malthusians; and those who have contrary beliefs are antimalthusians. classic malthusianism was the dominant thinking about the relationship between population growth and food security until the early 1960s. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 64-76 66 in the late 1960s classic malthusianism became less popular after ester boserup, a danish economist who lived from 1911 to 1999, argued successfully that technological development could boost food production enough to keep up with population growth for many years. she was mainly reacting against malthus‟s model of the relationship between population growth and food security. contrary to malthus, she argued that population growth is a major factor determining agricultural development hence food security. ester boserup's theory is known as an optimistic theory, and she based her theorisation on the following indications: a) if population increases, there is larger workforce and hence more food is produced; b) if population increases, mechanization occurs; more food is produced as more effective means of producing high yields of crops using mechanization are devised; and c) if population increases there will be increase in fertilizers use and more food production for the growing population, hence more food security (boserup, 1993). boserup‟s arguments are shared by other anti-malthusians, for example, julian simon (cited by dyson, 1996) who argues: “the ultimate resource is people; skilled, spirited, and hopeful people who will exert their will and imaginations for their own benefit, and so inevitably, for the benefit of us all.” another anti-malthusian scholar before malthus wrote the first essay was marquis de condorcet (1743) who argued that “with high population increase, a very small amount of ground will be able to produce a great quantity of supplies of greater utility or higher quality” (dyson, 1996). in addition, condorcet argued that education would bring lower birth rates as rational human beings would see the value of limiting family size, giving their children the prospect for longer and happier lives. 2.2. the entitlement to food security theory unlike the above pessimistic (malthusian) and optimistic (anti-malthusian) theories that focus almost exclusively on food supply, the entitlement to food theory focuses more on possession of wealth materials which can be exchanged for food or can be used to get food through other means. the entitlement approach concentrates on each person‟s entitlement to commodity bundles, including food, and views starvation as resulting from failure to entitlement to a bundle including enough food. entitlements are defined as “...the set of alternative commodity bundles that a person can command in a society using the totality of rights and opportunities that he or she faces” (sen, 1984, cited by leach et al., 1999). the pessimistic and optimistic contentions about the relations between population growth and food security reviewed above have been challenged by sen (1981) who argues as follows: “people do not usually starve because of insufficient supply of food at local, national or international level, but because of insufficient resources, including money („entitlements‟) to acquire it.” sen classified entitlements into three categories: (i) endowments, which are all legal resources that can be used to obtain food, including money, land, machinery and animals, but also more abstract resources such as labour power, „know-how‟, kinship and citizenship; (ii) entitlement mapping (or e-mapping), which includes terms of trade between endowments and food, goods, and the ratio between money wages and the price of food, or the input-output ratios in farm production; and (iii) entitlement-set, which represents the basket of food, goods, and services that a person can obtain using his/her endowments. food security is more pronounced when some or all of the above entitlement categories are attainable to the individual or household. 2.3. composite theories on food security woldemeskel (1990) opposed sen‟s analysis of food security in terms of food access through entitlements rather than food availability. he argued that the entitlement approach is narrow because it dwells on only possession, while food security attainment is contingent upon four determinants: (a) availability, (b) institutional elements, (c) market forces and (d) possessions. according to woldemeskel (1990) the entitlement approach recognises the contribution of food availability to food security but dismisses it, and completely ignores institutional elements and market forces. examples of institutional elements include access to extension services, credit asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 64-76 67 facilities and/or financial institutions, farmer groups and or associations. moreover, market forces include food prices in market places and prices offered to farmers for their agricultural produce. 3. methodology 3.1. geographical location of the study area the research on which this paper is based was conducted in mbeya and makete districts in mbeya and iringa regions respectively. mbeya and makete districts have good climate and high agricultural potential, which provide for good economic development for they enable people to undertake various farm and non-farm activities. mbeya district is among the eight districts of mbeya region. the district covers an area of 2,432 square kilometres of which 1,898 square kilometres is arable land ideal for agricultural production (urt, 2003). the district is administratively divided into three divisions namely tembela, isangati and usongwe having 25 wards, and 148 villages, but the research was confined to two divisions, tembela and isangati from which two wards namely tembela and santilya were selected. four villages, two from each of the two selected wards, were selected for the research. the villages were ilembo usafwa, shibolya, sanje and mpande. makete district is one of three districts in njombe region. the region was established in october 2013. the district covers an area of 5,800 square kilometres of which 4,195 square kilometres is arable land ideal for agricultural production (urt, 2008). the district is administratively divided into six divisions namely ikuwo, ukwama, lupalilo, bulongwa, magoma and matamba having 17 wards and 97 villages. in makete district, the research was confined to two divisions, bulongwa and lupalilo, from which two wards namely isapulano and kipagilo were selected. four villages, two from each of the two selected wards, were selected for the research. the villages were ivilikinge, isapulano, kitula and iyoka. 3.2. indicators used for contentious theoretical factors affecting food security the dependent variable for this research was food security in terms of dietary energy consumed (dec) per adult equivalent (ae) per day. the independent variables whose impact on food security were analysed were (i) household size (malthusian school of thought); (ii) the use of improved agricultural technologies (anti-malthusian school of thought); (iii) involvement in non-agricultural activities, ownership of assets and livestock ownership (entitlement approach); and (iv) farmers groups and or farmers‟ association membership (woldemeskel‟s contentions). 3.3. research design the target population was all households in areas where agricultural production and other economic activities are conducted in mbeya and makete districts. a cross-sectional research design and a multistage sampling procedure were adopted in the selection of respondents. the first stage involved selection of two divisions per district based on the number of major food and cash crops grown. the second stage involved purposive selection of one ward from each division from each of the two divisions per district, making four wards. the third stage involved random selection of two villages from each ward making a total of eight villages. that means four villages per district were selected. the last stage was sampling of households. the sampling frame was households which were involved in agricultural production and other economic activities. 3.4. data collection primary data were the main source of information for this study and were collected through interviews using a structured questionnaire. both quantitative and qualitative information were collected. key informant interviews were held with people who had in-depth understanding and knowledge on various entitlement indicators to food security in the respective districts. key informants included district agricultural and livestock district officers (daldos), village and ward extension officers, village government leaders, leaders of farmer groups and traditional elders. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 64-76 68 secondary information for the study was obtained from published and unpublished documents and reports, from different sources as follows: ministry of agriculture, food and cooperatives; district agricultural and livestock development offices (daldos) in mbeya and makete districts; agricultural research institute–uyole, mbeya; sokoine national agricultural library (snal); and websites. 3.5. data processing and analysis the primary quantitative data collected were analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (spss) software. data were analysed by computing descriptive statistics to determine frequencies, percentages, statistical means, and standard deviations of individual variables. multiple linear regression was used to assess impacts of independent variables on the dependent variable that was food security in terms of dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent per day. the dependent variable and the independent variables were first checked for normality and multicollinearity. normality was checked by computing distribution curves of all the variables and observing them visually to find whether any of them was skewed. income from non-agricultural activities, number of cattle owned and monetary values of household assets were found to be skewed. therefore, they were transformed into normal distributions using log10 transformations. multicollinearity was checked by computing tolerances and variance inflation factors (vif). according to landau and everitt (2004), tolerance values of more than 0.1 and vif values of not more than 10 show that there is no multicollinearity. none of the tolerances or vif value was less than 0.1 or greater than 10 respectively, hence there was no multicollinearity. 3.6. adult equivalent units’ computation cognisant of the fact that if variables such as income and dietary energy consumed are expressed per capita they do not reflect good comparative figures in households with different sizes and composition by age and sex, dietary energy consumed was expressed per adult equivalent following the procedure used by collier et al. (1990). in order to calculate adult equivalent units, the sex and age of every household member were recorded. a two-step procedure was followed whereby in the first step adult equivalent scales for east africa by age and sex were added up for all household members to get all the household members in terms of adult equivalents. the equivalent scales are presented in table 1. the second step involved adjusting the above adult equivalents for economies of scale due to the fact that larger households need fewer resources per person due to sharing some facilities. the economies of scale are taken into account by multiplying the adult equivalent units by the average cost (table 2) corresponding to the number of people in the household. the adjusted adult equivalent units were used as denominators for calculating values per adult equivalent in particular households. table 1: adult equivalent scales for east africa age group sex male female 0 2 0.40 0.40 3 4 0.48 0.48 5 6 0.56 0.56 7 8 0.64 0.64 9 10 0.76 0.76 11 12 0.80 0.88 13 14 1.00 1.00 15 18 1.20 1.00 19 59 1.00 0.88 above 60+ 0.88 0.72 source: latham (1965), cited by collier et al. (1990) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 64-76 69 table 2: household economies of scale constants household size (number of adults) marginal costs average costs 1 1.000 1.000 2 0.892 0.946 3 0.798 0.897 4 0.713 0.851 5 0.632 0.807 6 0.632 0.778 7 0.632 0.757 8 0.632 0.741 9 0.632 0.729 above 10+ 0.632 0.719 source: deaton (1980), cited by collier et al. (1990) 3.7. dietary energy consumed computation quantities of all food items consumed were recorded. quantities of dietary energy in all the food items were computed using tanzania food composition tables (lukmanji et al., 2008). the quantities of dietary energy consumed by all household members were expressed per adult equivalent units (aeu). dietary energy consumed per aeu was computed to dec per capita and per adult equivalent per day based on all foodstuffs eaten for thirty days. in this case households were said to be food insecure if they had consumed less than 2100 kcal per capita or less than 2200 kcal per adult equivalent per day. 4. results and discussions 4.1. indicators of the contentious issues explaining food security household size was used as an indicator of population based on the level of analysis that was a household and the study being a cross-sectional one. the results showed the mean household size was 4.39 persons with the minimum and the maximum of 1.0 and 10.0 persons respectively. the major improved technologies used in the study area were fertilizer, pesticides and improved seeds. however, very few households used at least one of the improved technologies. the total number of the improved technologies per household as a composite measure of technology was used so that more households could be included in the analysis. the results showed that the greatest proportion (49.4%) of the sampled households used two technologies and few (1.7%) did not use any technology (table 3). the reasons given for none use of technologies were inadequate knowledge of improved technologies and lack of capital to purchase inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides. involvement in non-agricultural activities by the households was used as an indicator of entitlement because households which were involved in non-agricultural activities were more likely to be food secure. the results showed that 54.5% of the sampled households were involved in non-agricultural activities. during key informant interviews and focus group discussions, the respondents argued that they were constrained by shortage of land for agricultural activities and therefore they were obliged to be involved in non-agricultural activities to supplement income from agriculture. table 3: total technologies used per household number of technologies frequency percentage 0 4 1.7 1 30 12.9 2 115 49.4 3 84 36.1 total 233 100 household assets ownership was used as an indicator of entitlement because they can be converted into cash during food insecurity crises. assets are also regarded as stocks or a base of wealth that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 64-76 70 reflects the accumulation and use of economic value and income over time. membership to farmer groups or associations was used as an indicator of institution because in rural areas farmer groups or associations are vehicles for development. for example, access to credit or other financial institutions depends on individual membership to groups or associations. access to credit will increase household income, food production and hence improved food security. years of schooling of household head was used as an indicator of institution because education attainment by the head of household could lead to awareness of the possible advantages of modernizing agriculture and diversification of household income sources, which in turn would enhance household‟s food supply. dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent per day was used as a measure of food security because it is a universal measure of food security and the actual indicator of the same, which is recommended and used by fao. 4.2. proportions of food secure and insecure households the results from dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent per day showed that a minimum of 792 and a maximum of 21,100 kcal had been consumed. they also showed a mean of 3,368.6 kcal and a standard deviation of 1, 1728.1 kcal per adult equivalent per day. the dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent per day was divided into two groups of food secure and food insecure households based on the cut-off point of 2,200 kcal per adult equivalent per day, as stated above (section 3.7). food secure households were 79% while food insecure ones were 21%. the respondents were asked to mention major factors that affected food security in their households. several factors (table 4) were mentioned by the respondents to affect food security. a high proportion of the respondents reported low use of improved technologies (12.5%), which they said was due to inadequate knowledge of improved technologies. the respondents‟ argument was supported by observation from key informant interviews and focus group discussions. they argued that they rarely had access to extension services which are a channel for dissemination of new and improved technologies. moreover, the respondents reported large family size as compared with level of food production, low use of fertilizers due to high prices and small plot sizes per household for crop production. a small proportion of the respondents reported destruction of crops by vermins, laziness and sickness of household members as minor factors affecting food security. table 4: factors affecting food security (n=1513) variable frequency percentage over sale of food crops 126 8.3 low production due to low capital 128 8.5 climate change 130 8.6 small plot size 172 11.4 low use fertilizers due to high prices 173 11.4 low use of improved technologies 189 12.5 destruction of crops by vermin 33 2.2 low soil fertility 55 3.6 high prices of food in markets 162 10.7 laziness 72 4.8 sickness of household members 100 6.6 large family size as compared to level of food production 173 11.4 total 1513 100 4.3. independent sample t-test comparing levels of food security between theoretical indicators an independent sample t-test was conducted to compare the levels of food security between different theoretical indicators (table 5). the indicators included household size, number of improved technologies used, cattle ownership and farmers groups and or association membership. levels of food security in terms of amount of food produced per capita were compared between households with at most 4 people and those with 5 and more people, those who had used at most asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 64-76 71 two agricultural technologies and those who had used three and more agricultural technologies, those who owned cattle and those who didn't, and those who were members of farmers groups and or associations and those who were not. as seen in table 5, it was found that there were significant differences in amounts of food produced per capita between households with at most 4 people and households with 5 and more people (f = 9.197, p < 0.01), households which used at most 2 improved technologies and those which used 3 and more technologies (f = 14.999, p < 0.001) and households which owned cattle and those which did not own cattle (f = 5.889, p < 0.05). the results imply that household size, uses of improved technologies and cattle ownership have big relationships with the amount of food produced per capita. table 5: independent sample t-test comparing levels of food security between theoretical indicators variables compared n mean f-value p-value amount of food produced per capita in households with at most 4 people 105 10.7681 9.197** 0.003 amount of food produced per capita in households with 5 and more people 128 14.0486 amount of food produced per capita in households which use at most 2 technologies 149 10.8985 14.999*** 0.000 amount of food produced per capita in households which used 3 and more technologies 84 15.5356 amount of food produced per capita in households which own cattle 209 13.1878 5.889* 0.016 amount of food produced per capita in households which do not cattle 24 7.1930 amount of food produced in households whose their heads are members in institutions 217 12.4280 0.348 0.556 amount of food produced in households whose their heads are not members in institutions 16 14.5000 monetary values of food eaten per adult equivalent in households with at most 4 people 105 49163.9303 5.557* 0.019 monetary values of food eaten per adult equivalent with 5 and more people 128 27446.4375 monetary values of food eaten per adult equivalent in households which use at most 2 technologies 149 29890.5421 7.246** 0.008 monetary values of food eaten per adult equivalent in households which used 3 and more technologies 84 50257.9274 monetary values of food eaten per adult equivalent in households which own cattle 209 37547.8942 0.238 0.626 monetary values of food eaten per adult equivalent in households which do not own cattle 24 34493.6165 monetary values of food eaten per adult equivalent in households whose their heads are members in institutions 217 37043.4936 0.000 0.990 monetary values of food eaten per adult equivalent in households whose their heads are not members in institutions 16 39807.4106 dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent in households with at most 4 people 105 4001.1225 4.275* 0.040 dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent in households with 5 and more people 128 2849.6692 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 64-76 72 dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent in households which used at most 2 technologies 149 3131.9897 2.433 0.120 dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent in households which used 3 technologies and more 84 3788.2030 dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent in households which own cattle 209 3414.8076 0.201 0.654 dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent in households which do not own cattle 24 2965.8640 dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent in households whose their heads are members in institutions 217 3366.4112 0.270 0.869 dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent in households whose their heads are not members in institutions 16 3397.7679 *significant at the 5% level (2-tailed); **significant at the 1% level (2-tailed); ***significant at the 0.1% level (2-tailed) regarding monetary value of food eaten per adult equivalent per day, significant differences were observed between households with at most 4 people and those with 5 and more people (f = 5.557, p < 0.05) and households which used at most 2 improved technologies and those which used 3 and more technologies (f = 246, p < 0.01). the results imply that household size and use of improved technologies have big relationships with monetary value of food consumed per adult equivalent. also there was significant difference in dietary energy consumed between households with at most 4 people and those with 5 and more people (f = 4.275, p < 0.04). the result implies that household size has a big relationship with food security level. 4.4. impact of some of independent variables on food security the dependent variable, food security, was regressed on eight independent variables which were thought to account for more of variation in household food security (table 6). the independent variables were household size, number of technologies used per household, number of cattle owned, income from non-agricultural activities, monetary value of household assets, farmers‟ group membership, years of schooling of household head and amount of fertilizer used. the coefficient of determination, r 2 , was 0.367, which means that the eight independent variables that were entered in the multiple linear regression models accounted for 36.7% of variation in the dependent variable, food security. the remaining 63.3% was probably due to other independent variables not included in the model and errors in the research (mendenhall and beaver, 1991). the statistical tests of the model itself showed that the explanatory power of the model was highly significant (p < 0.001). with regard to influence of independent variables on food security, the results in table 5 indicate that three out of the eight independent variables had significant positive impacts on the dependent variable. the levels of significance were as follows: household size (p < 0.001), farmers‟ group membership (p < 0.05) and number of cattle owned (p < 0.05). table 6: impact of some of the independent variables to dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent unit model n unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig collinearity tests b std error beta tolerance vif constant 5385.396 1843.247 2.922 0.005 household size 233 -394.183 71.273 -0.580 -5.531*** 0.000 0.959 1.042 number of technologies used 229 -214.181 224.112 -0.148 -0.956 0.344 0.441 2.267 number of livestock kept 209 858.991 437.926 0.225 1.961* 0.050 0.804 1.243 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 64-76 73 income from non-agricultural activities 125 361.864 221.850 0.209 1.706 0.094 0.783 1.277 household assets values 233 -1.540e-5 0.000 -0.105 -0.857 0.395 0.702 1.425 farmer group membership 16 858.185 391.331 0.255 2.193* 0.033 0.783 1.277 education of household head 233 -206.748 107.252 -0.216 -1.928 0.059 0.843 1.186 amount of fertilizers used 163 -410.061 383.113 -0.169 -1.070 0.289 0.423 2.366 dependent variable: dietary energy consumed per adult equivalent unit r2 adjusted = 0.367, *** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05 household size showed negative significant impact (p < 0.001) on food security. this implies that as household size gets larger household food security decreases. this result is in conformity with malthusian and neo-malthusian contentions that population has negative influence on food security. it is also consistent with results of a study conducted by aidoo et al. (2013) in ghana. the plausible explanation of the findings is that, where households depend on less productive land, low use of agricultural technologies and poor implements to cultivate land, increasing household size results in increased demand for food. this demand, however, cannot match with the existing food supply from own production, and this ultimately ends up with the household becoming food insecure. however, some previous researches elsewhere have shown positive impact of household size on household food security. for example, kayunze (2000) found positive impact of household size in mbeya region. kamuzora (2001) found less poverty in larger households in kagera region. in both cases the authors said that the likely explanations for the findings were that it happens more where households have more labour force in terms of bigger proportion of adult members who work either on-farm or otherwise. kayunze (2000) argues that in households with higher dependency ratio or where households depend on one or few members who are working, the bigger the household size the less the food security. number of cattle owned showed positive significant (p < 0.05) impact on food security. this might imply that households that own larger numbers of cattle are likely to be more food secure. the results are in conformity with the entitlement approach to food security by sen (1981) who argued that “people do not usually starve because of an insufficient supply of food but because they have insufficient resources including money to acquire it." cattle ownership is a good entitlement for gaining access to food since cattle and their products are sold to get cash to buy food. observations from the key informant interviews and fgds showed that, among livestock types owned, cattle contribute to households‟ economy in different ways. they mentioned major benefits obtained from cattle as a source of draught power, cash income, supplementary food, and manure, which is used as fertilizer. moreover, they added that for them cattle and other livestock are a living bank and are considered as a means of security and a coping strategy against crop failure and other calamities. farmer groups and or farmer association membership showed positive significant (p < 0.05) impact on food security. this implies that households whose heads are members of farmer groups and or farmer associations are more likely to be food secure. the result supports woldemeskel (1990) suggestions that institutions contribute to household food availability. in most rural areas farmer groups or associations are regarded as institutions which play a vital role in development and livelihood of people. active participation of household heads in these institutions tend to attract benefits in terms of helping members in mobilizing resources within society for agricultural operations and marketing, access to inputs at cheaper prices, enabling members to take advantage of economies of scale in production, processing and marketing of agricultural produce. it is expected that as the level of participation increases the probability of being food secure increases. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 64-76 74 monetary values of assets owned had negative impact (beta = -0.105) on food security, but which was not significant (p > 0.05). this is contrary to prior expectations that assets ownership affect food security positively. according to sen (1981) the entitlement to food theory focuses more on possession of wealth materials which can be exchanged for food or can be used to get food through other means. the negative impact on food security found could be due to the fact that in the sample most of assets owned were not productive. most of assets owned in the sample included houses for household members' shelter, bicycles, hand hoes, radio and mobile phones which were not productive. income from non-agricultural activities showed a positive significant impact (beta = 0.209) on food security. although the impact was not significant, this indicates that households which are involved in non-agricultural activities are more likely to be food secure than those which do not have such activities. this result is in conformity with sen‟s entitlement approach to food security under endowment set category which are all legal resources that can be used to obtain food. during key informant interviews and focus group discussions it was revealed that most households in the study area had one or more additional sources of income other than agriculture. other studies, for example by reardon et al. (1998) and asogwa and umeh (2012), found that income from nonagricultural activities is potentially important for long term food security because it can increase the use of farm inputs and hence farm productivity and ability to intensify production. moreover, income from non-agricultural activities enhances a household‟s economy and food security by giving additional income and reducing food deficit when agricultural production falls short and also avoiding grain sales. amount of fertilizer used in kilograms had negative impact (beta = -0.169) on food security, albeit it was not statistically significant. this is contrary to prior expectations that use of fertilizers results in more food security as stated by ester boserup. although the results do not support boserup‟s (1993) contention that fertilizer use can improve food security status of the household it does not mean that she was not right. these results might imply that in the sample those households which used fertilizers used small amounts per unit area, which could not make significant change in food security status of the household. the results show that the proportion of the sampled households which used fertilizer was 70%. however, among the households which used fertilizers the majority (68.6%) used 50 kg and fewer kg/acre. moreover, the negative impact does not mean that use of fertilizer results in food insecurity, but this might imply that, since fertilizer is expensive, a farmer might use all household cash meant for food and purchase fertilizer which could not make much change in crop yield and leave the household to be food insecure. the number of technologies used had negative impact (beta = -0.148) on food security, but which was not significant (p > 0.05). this result is contrary to anti-malthusians‟ contention that use of improved technologies improves productivity and increases food supply. however, this does not mean that ester boserup (1993) and other anti-malthusians were not right, but in the sample 49.4% of households used at most two technologies while 36.1% used three technologies, 12.9% used 1 technology and 1.7% did not use any technology. the negative impact of the number of technologies used on food security might imply that those households which used the technologies did not use them as per recommendations due to inadequate knowledge. 5. conclusion and recommendations it was found that, of the sampled households, 79% were food secure. this proportion is not so good since the study area is potential for various agricultural and non-agricultural activities. these findings might imply that the productivity potential of the study area was not fully utilized. on the basis of this conclusion, mbeya and makete people are urged to utilize the productivity potential of their area to improve their food security status. it was also found that population in terms of household size was the most important factor influencing food security negatively in mbeya and makete districts. therefore, it is concluded that household size is a factor with the highest negative asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 64-76 75 effect on food security in the study area based on the sample. on the basis of this conclusion, the government and policy makers are urged to introduce training programmes on health and birth control measures to be directed to the people of mbeya and makete districts. this should be aimed at controlling family size in the long run, which could have positive effects on households‟ food security. the most important theory explaining food security in the study area is entitlement to food, particularly income from non-agricultural activities and livestock, especially cattle. on the basis of this conclusion, mbeya and makete districts people are urged, besides crop production, to look for profitable non-agricultural activities in order to increase their income and get more access to food. policy makers and ngos are urged to support other income generating activities in mbeya and makete districts so as to increase income and hence increase their purchasing power and get access to food. since livestock ownership is a good entitlement for gaining access to food, people of mbeya and makete districts are also urged to keep more cattle and other livestock types especially goats, sheep and local chicken so that they can get income to buy food and other needs. the ministry of livestock and fisheries is urged to give more support to people keeping livestock in mbeya and makete districts. institutions in terms of farmer groups and associations membership also play a considerable role in enhancing food security, although very few respondents from the sample were found to be members of such groups and associations. given the role of farmer groups and associations in rural development generally and agricultural development specifically, the introduction and promotion of groups and associations of farmers should be given adequate priority by the government and policy makers. moreover, mbeya and makete people are urged to form farmer groups and or associations for easy access to extension services, agricultural inputs and other services related to improved agricultural production and improve their food security status. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references aidoo, r. j., mensah, o., & tuffour, t. 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(2004). statistical analyses using spss, chapman & hall/crc press llc, boca raton: london, new york and washington d.c. leach, m., mearns, r., & scoones, l. (1999). environmental entitlements: dynamics and institutions in community-based natural resource management. world development, 12(2), 225-247. lukmanji, z., hertzmark, e., mlingi, n., assey, v., ndossi, g., & fawzi, w. (2008). tanzania food composition tables. muhas-tfnc and hsph, dar es salaam, tanzania. mendenhall, w., and beaver, r. j. (1991). introduction to probability and statistics. pws-kent publishing co. boston. reardon, t., stamoulis, k., balisacan, a., cruz, m. e, berdegue, j., & bank, b. (1998). rural nonfarm income in developing countries. special chapter in the state of food and agriculture 1998, food and agricultural organization of the united nations. rome. sen, a. (1981). poverty and famine: an essay on entitlement and deprivation. oxford university press: oxford. urt (2003). mbeya rural district socio-economic profile. national bureau of status (nbs), dar es salaam. urt (2008). makete district socio-economic profile. national bureau of status (nbs), dar es salaam. urt (2010). national strategy of growth and reduction of poverty ii (nsgrp ii). vice president‟s office, dar es salaam. woldemeskel, g. (1990). famine and the two faces of entitlement: a comment on sen. world development, 18(3), 491-495. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 162 estimation of cost and return of plantain production in orhionwon local government area, edo state, nigeria kaine, a. i. n. and l. j. d. okoje department of economics, novena university, ogume, delta state, nigeria abstract the study examined the cost and return of plantain production in orhionmwon local government area, edo state. multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 40 plantain farmers from two clans in the study area. data required for the study were generated using questionnaire and interview schedule. information generated was coded and analyzed using descriptive statistics, gross margin analysis, t-ratio statistic and likert scale method. the finding shows that plantain production is a very profitable enterprise and that for every one naira invested in plantain production, there is a return on investment of about n12.60 kobo. the result shows that the farmers are relatively young with majority (90 percent) below 54 years of age. about 45 percent of farmers acquired formal education. the study indicates that both male and female were engaged in plantain production enterprise. total cost of production was n37, 983 with the variable cost item as the major component while the fixed cost was (3,934). there was a net profit of n36, 421.70. the result also shows that plantain production is affected by farm size and also that output is corrected to farm size too. keywords: production, cost, returns, profitability, plantain and liker scaling method introduction 1 plantain belongs to the family musaceace and the genus musa. it is a perennial herbaceous plant that belongs to a group of shrubs 2 to 9m tall with an underground rhizome or corm. it strives on a wide range of tropical and sub-tropical climate. plantain requires an optimum temperature of 30 0 c. mean monthly rainfall of 100mm, p h of 4.5 to 7.5 and sandy loam soils (oluwatosin 2003). swennen (1990) observed that plantain is an important food crops in the sub-sahara corresponding author’s name: kaine, a. i. n. email address: kainatonne@yahoo.com afric, providing more than 25% of the carbohydrate and 10% of the calories of approximately ten million people in the region. frison and sharrok, (1990) observed that banana and plantain play vital role in the feeding systems of both human beings and farm animals. it has a high nutritional value. it is a source of dietary carbohydrate, vitamins and minerals. plantains are extremely rich in vitamins a. cbn (2003), observed that plantain is one of the major stable food in nigeria. it has the highest percentage increase in output over the years 1999 to 2003, implying the existence of market potential but increased productivity in the market potential in the country. nigeria is one of the largest plantain producing countries in the world (foa, asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kainatonne@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 162-168 163 2006). it is the highest producer of plantain in the west african, which is mainly obtained from the southern states with the share of its annual production of about 2.4 million metric tons. in nigeria, plantain is produced in large quantities in edo, delta, ogun and ondo state. other producing states are rivers state. cross river state, imo, anambra, lagos, kwara, benue, plateau, kogi, abia and enugu. plantain cultivation is not limited to big plantations, but is often grown in small orchards which sometimes go unnoticed. in edo state, as in other humid forest zones of the country, plantain is consumed as a staple crop. it is either consumed boiled alone, or used to make porridge or boiled and pounded with yam or cassava (called fufu in nigeria). it can also be roasted on heated charcoal by women on the road sides (boli) as means of sales. researchers have shown that plantain is an important food crop rich in carbohydrate, protein, vitamins and minerals. also it has been observed that demand for plantain in the last one decade has increased tremendously. despite the importance of plantain, its production is still with small holder farmers. several studies have been conducted in different aspects of plantain production, processing and marketing. however little or no work exist on estimating cost and return of plantain production in orhionmwon local government area, edo state, nigeria. it is against this background that this work was carried out. methodology this study was carried out in orhionwon local government area edo state, nigeria with abudu as the head quarter. it has a total population of 182,717 (2006 census) with men recording 98,203 and women recording 84,514 and an area of 2,382 km2 (national population census, 2006). the local government area has climatic and edaphic factors that support the growth of plantain trees well, thereby making it suitable for plantain production. the sampling technique used for this study is the multi-stage random sampling technique. a total of forty eight small holder plantain farmers were randomly selected for the study. first involved the selection of communities. three communities each were selected from the two clans in the study area. the second involved selection of respondents. from the six communities eight respondents each were selected given a total of forty eight respondents that were used for the study. the statistical techniques employed in this study include descriptive statistics, t-ratio statistics and gross margin analysis. the likert scale method was also used. the socio economic variables were determined using descriptive statistics such as table, frequency distribution, mean and percentages. the profitability (returns) technique was determined using the gross margin analysis. the likert scale method was used in determining the constraints of plantain production in the study area. the relationship between the farm output and farm size was determined by the use of tratio statistics. the gross margin analysis was estimated for the cost and returns in plantain production. gross margin model is expressed as gm = gfi-tvc or gm= tr-tvc where, gm = gross margin tr = total avenue tvc = total variable cost gfi = gross farm income asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 162-168 164 also, the profitability technique following ogbonna and ezedinma, (2005) as adapted from jirgi and baba, is expressed as; nfi = gfi = tc gfi = pq.q tc = tvc + tfc where, nfi = net farm income gfi = gross farm income pq = price per unit of output q = total output tc = total cost of plantain product tfc = total fixed cost tvc = total variable cost the likert scaling is a bi-polar scaling method, measuring either positive or negative response of statement, commonly involved in research that employs questionnaires. it is a summative scale. the likert scale method was used in determining the constraints faced by farmers in production of plantain in the study area. it is a 5-point scale and employs an ordinal level of measurement. the various responses to the various constraints were scored in a way that the response indicating the most serious constraint is given the highest score (that is 5). as a 5-point scale, the responses are grouped into 5 that is; very serious (vs) = 5, serious (s) = 4, moderately serious = 3, least serious (ls) = 2 and not serious (ns) = 1 results and discussion socio-economic profiles of the respondents: the socio-economic traits of the respondents were examined under the variables: age, gender, marital status, level of formal education attained and household size. age of respondents: the mean age of the respondents is 47 years. the study reveals that two of the respondents were within the age range of 25-35, twelve were within the age range of 35-45, twenty-two were within the age range of 45-55 and four were within the age of 55 and above. this represents 5 percent, 30 percent, 55 percent and 10 percent respectively (table 1). this implies that majority of the farmers are relatively young and that youths are involved in plantain production. gender of respondents: distribution of respondents by gender is shown in (table 1). out of the forty households that participated in the study, 91 of them (73%) were male while 11 of them (27%) were female. this indicates a dominance of male folks in plantain production. it also reveals that plantain production in the area is not restricted to male folks only. marital status of respondents: the marital status of the sampled respondents indicates that 23 of them (57%) were married and living together, 10 of them (25%) were single while 7 of them (18%) were widowed. table 1: socio economic characteristics of respondents characteristics frequency percentage % mean sex male female 29 11 73 27 20 total 40 100 age of farmers in years 25-35 35-45 45-55 55 and above 2 12 22 4 5 30 55 10 47 total 40 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 162-168 165 marital status married single widow divorced 23 10 7 57 25 18 level of education no formal education primary school secondary others 22 11 7 55 27 18 family size (person) 4 and below 5-9 10-14 15 and above 6 26 8 15 65 20 7.3 total 56.7 2.835 field data (2013) level of formal educational attainment by respondents: most of the respondents sampled had no formal education. about 22 (55%) of the respondents had no formal education, while 11 (27%) of them had primary education. the study (table 1) indicates low literacy level. this has a great implication as literacy level determines to what extent the respondents is ready to accept new technology and willingness to spread new idea. household size of respondents: household size is the number of persons that contribute and draw on the incomes of the household. the average household size of the respondents is 7.3 (table 1). a detailed investigation indicates that 6 (15%) have a household size of less than 4 while 26 (65%) have a household size of 5 to 9. however, about 8 (20%) have a household size of 10 and 14. the study indicates a large household size. the implication of this is that there will be more pressure on the household income. also, more persons will be available for labour. however, large household size have been reported to have correlation with food insecurity and poverty especially when the household head is engaged in agriculture as the main sources of livelihood and income (ike and uzokwe, 2011). table 2: determination of relationship between output and farm size items t-calculated t-tabulated remark farm size 0.48783 1.796 (df=11) reject h0 field data (2013) t-test statistics output and farm size: the t-test was used to determine output and farm size relationship (table 2). a detailed study of the farm output and farm size shows that t-test tabulated (t-test table value) was greater than t-calculated at 11% degree of freedom and (0.05) level of significance. since ttabulated (1.796) was greater than tcalculated (0.488), ho was rejected. alternative hypothesis (h1) plantain production output is affected by farm size was accepted. this implies that plantain production in the study area is affected by farm size. it also shows that plantain production output is correlated to farm size. cost and return of plantain production and profitability analysis: the cost and return and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 162-168 166 profitability of plantain was determined (table 3). the result reveals that total income was n74, 404.70. the analysis also shows that total cost of production was n37, 983.00 with the variable cost items (n34, 048) as the major components while the fixed cost was (n3, 934.00). using the profitability technique following ogbonna and ezedinma (2005) as adopted form jiriga and baba (2001), the result shows that the net farm (nfi = gfi –tc) income was n36, 421.70. the return on investment was 12.60%. this implies that for every one naira invested, there is a profit of n12.60kobo. this indicates that plantain enterprise is profitable in the study area. table 3: cost and returns of plantain production and profitability analysis items value in naira (n) returns plantain bunch value (n) 74,404.70 variable cost planting material (suckers) fertilizers chemicals labour total variable cost (tvc) 4,149.00 600.00 500.00 28,800.00 34,049.00 fixed cost cost of land/annum (renting) description of tools and equipment interest on capital total fixed cost 1,530.00 1,271.70 1,132.30 3,934.00 total cost (tfc+tvc) 37,983.00 total gross returns 74,404.00 net farm income (nfi=gfi –tc) 36,421 return per naira 12.6% field data (2013) constraint to plantain production plantain producers in the study area were confronted with a number of problems that tend to limit their production profitability frontier and consequently expansion on investment in plantain production. table 4: major constraints to plantain production constraint mean value standard deviation transportation 1.39 1.3 labour 1.36 1.26 storage 1.32 1.15 processing 1.27 1.11 land 1.17 1.07 finance 1.13 0.93 marketing 1.03 0.77 fertilizer 0.53 0.8 chemical 0.47 0.78 field data (2013) the result of the production constraints as presented in table 4 using the likert scaling method, shows that transportation ranked first as the most serious constraint with the mean value of (1.39) (1.3). this is followed by labour (1.36) (1.26), storage (1.32) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 162-168 167 (1.15), processing (1.27) (1.11), land (1.17) (1.07), finance (1.13) (0.93) and marketing (1.03) (0.77). fertilizer and chemical were ranked as minor in the production of plantain in the study area with a mean value of (0.53), (0.47) and standard deviation of (0.8) and (0.78) respectively. conclusion the study established that plantain production in the study area is a very profitable venture and that for every one naira invested, there is a return on investment of n12.60 kobo. it also established that output is a function of farm size. the result established a low literacy level in the study area. this may affect production, productivity efficiency. low level of education may likely impact negatively on the input and output relationship and efficiency of farmers. this is so because educated farmers have more access to useful information. the result established too that variable cost items (n34, 049) was the major components of the cost incurred in plantain production in the study area. it is hoped that if the recommendation given in this study are taken seriously, plantain farmers will not only maximize cost or profit, but will also enhance their standard of living. policy recommendation following the result of the study, recommendations are made as follows: the result show that literacy level of farmers was low and that farmers are relatively young with a mean age of 47 years. it is recommended that an out of school education campaign should be carried out. this will not only increase the literacy level but will help the farmers to imbibe new farming technique with a consequent increase in production efficiency. the result shows that plantain production is very profitable enterprise. it is recommended that campaign on the potentials, economics and/or profitability of plantain should be carried out. by this, many youths will be involved in plantain production. since plantain production is affected by farm size and since majority of the farmers are small-holder farmers, it is recommended that plantain farmers should form cooperative groups and pull their resources together to maximize their production possibility frontier. a number of constraints were identified as challenges to plantain production in the area. notable among these are transportation, labour, storage and processing. it is recommended that the government should create more access roads to reduce the problem of transportation. since labour was identified as one of the major constraints, it is therefore recommended that a cheaper but labour saving device should be introduced. similarly, storage and processing equipment should be made available to the farmers to avoid economic waste of scarce resources. since the variable cost of items dominates in plantain production, government and private sector participation is therefore recommended. references central bank of nigeria (2003). annual report and statement of accounts (various issues). centre for the study of african economics. department of economics, university of oxford. food & agricultural organization (2006). production year book 2006. fao rome. frison, e. a., & s. l. sharrock, (1999). introduction the economics, social and nutritional importance of banana in the world. in banana and food security. ike, p. c., & u. n. uzokwe, (2011). estimation of poverty among rural farming households in delta state, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 162-168 168 nigeria. international journal of agriculture and food science and technology, 2(1), 11-21. jirigi, r. i., & k. m. baba (2001). economics of crop production in traditional farming in northern nigeria: a case study of dungaya village in sokoto state. in: the role of agriculture in poverty alleviation. m. m. abubajar, t. a. adegbola and i. s. r. butxwat(eds) processing of the 43th annual conference of the agricultural society of nigeria held at atbu bauchi 15 th – 19 th october 2000. pg 41 – 47 national population commission (2006). estimated population commission of nigeria, abuja. ogbonna, m. c., & c. i ezedinma, (2005). economics of palm oil processing in ihette/uboma imo state, nigeria. proceeding of the 39 th conference of agricultural society of nigeria, benin, 2005. oluwatosin, b. (2003). plantain multiplication: a study of its potentialities in the context of nigeria’s food production programme. niger j. dev. stud, 2(1), 29–38. swennen, r. (1990). plantain cultivation under west african conditions. a reference manual. amarin printing group co., bangkok. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 169 determination of efficacy of metalaxyl seed treatment fungicide on incidence of sorghum diseases and its cost-benefit in borno state of nigeria richard, b. i. department of crop protection, university of maiduguri, nigeria ojo, g. o. s. department of crop production, university of agriculture, makurdi, nigeria maina, t. y. department of crop protection, university of maiduguri, nigeria abstract sorghum (sorghum bicolor (l.) moench) is an economically valued food and cash crop in of nigeria. in 2001 and 2002 cropping seasons, field experiments were conducted in a split-pot using randomized complete block design to determine the efficacy of metalaxyl fungicide and it costbenefit on incidence of sorghum diseases in borno state at the teaching and research farm of the department of crop protection, university of maiduguri. six sorghum genotypes which include bes, icsv 111, icsv 400, warwarbashi, paul-biya and ex-mali were used. the seeds were treated with 2.5g a.i/kg of metalaxyi, plus control before sowing. results showed that plants grown from the untreated seeds significantly had the highest mean anthracnose incidence of 33.6% and 33.9%, sooty stripe mean incidence of 42.1% and 38.6% in 2001 and 2002, and a higher covered smut mean incidence of 10.7% in 2002 respectively. long smut incidence and grain yield were not significant among treated and untreated seeds in 2001 and 2002. treated plants had an increased yield of 0.28% and 28.9% more than the untreated in 2001 and 2002 respectively. treated ex-mali and untreated paul-biya, ex-mali recorded higher cost-benefit ratio and net profit in monetary valued. the physiological attributes of each sorghum genotypes can dictate their choice for local uses as well. keywords: disease incidence, sorghum genotype, metalaxyl, cost benefit introduction 1 sorghum is a potential economic cash crop and also one of the most important food grain crops grown in nigeria and other parts of the semiarid regions of africa like sudan and ethiopia. it is the fifth most important cereal crop in the world (fao, 1985). the five largest producers of sorghum in the world are u.s.a. (25.0%), india (21.5%), mexico (11.0%), china (9.0%) corresponding author’s name: richard, b. i. email address: richybwala@gmail.com and nigeria (7.0%). together, these five sorghum cultivating countries account for 73.5% of the total world area devoted to sorghum production (fao, 1995). in nigeria, sorghum account for about 50% of the total cereal production and more than 95% of the sorghum grains produced in the country are consumed in the form of thick porridge, thin gruel, while the stalks are put into other economic uses such as building, basket making, fencing, fish traps, fuel wood and fodder for farm animals (obilana et al., 1984). sorghum yield losses due to diseases are a major economic setback particularly in third asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:richybwala@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 169-176 170 world countries where seeds are not treated before sowing. according to richard et al. (2009), diseases of sorghum constitute a major problem to sorghum production in areas where the crop is grown. sorghum diseases like anthracnose, downy mildew, sooty stripe, leaf blight, charcoal rot, smuts and oval leaf spot are biotic factors that limit sorghum production in the semi-arid areas of the world. anthracnose is of great importance in latin america where it is the most serious disease and one of the main yield-limiting factors, especially in brazil, venezuela and guatemsala (maunder, 1975). anthracnose cause severe foliar damage on sorghum in nigeria (tyagi, 1980) and the most important in more than 95% of the surveyed fields in niger (pande et al., 1993). sooty stripe is common throughout the sorghum producing areas of the usa and the substantial hybrid variation in susceptibility to sooty stripe impact on yield ranging from 10 – 26% as a result of two or more lesions per leaf in kansas (jim, 2009). in nigeria, richard et al. (2011) observed sooty stripe incidence of 84.3% and 61.8% on susceptible bes in 2001 and 2002 respectively in nigeria. according to pande et al. (1993) panicle diseases such as covered, loose, kernel and head smuts are the most widespread and most destructive group of sorghum diseases. in an infected panicle the grains are replaced and covered with smut sori. in nigeria, covered smut incidence of 14.9% and 12.4% and long smut incidence of 43.2% and 77.5% has been reported on icsv111 in 2001 and 2002 respectively (richard et al., 2008). many disease control management strategies have been adopted to reduce crop disease menace to economic minimum level. hence, the evaluation of chemical efficacy, diagnosis and measurement of plant diseases is very important and fundamental to disease prediction, disease management and crop yield loss assessment for retrospective and prospective aspects. the objective of this work was to determine the efficacy of metalaxyl seed dressing fungicide on the incidence of sorghum diseases and its cost-benefit in borno state. materials and methods the field experiment was conducted during the rainy seasons of 2001 and 2002 at the teaching and research farm of the department of crop production, faculty of agriculture, university of maiduguri in the sudan savannah of nigeria. the experiment was laid in a strip-plot using randomized complete block design with three replications. the seed treatment fungicide was tested in the sub-plots while the six sorghum genotypes were tested in the mainplots. each replicate had 12 plots of 5 x 5m separated from adjoining replicate by 0.5m alley. there were a total of 36 sub-plots and each sub-plot contained 32 plants with 90cm and 60cm as inter-row and intra-row spacing respectively. the seedbeds were prepared after the land was ploughed and compound fertilizer (npk 15:15:15) was applied at the rate as recommended by borno state agricultural development programme (bosadp) (1993). the six sorghum genotypes used include three icrisat improved varieties namely: icsv111, icsv400, and bes obtained from the lake chad research institute maiduguri, while paul biya, ex-mali and wbs are local landraces obtained from bosadp. the metalaxyl (apron star 42ws) seed treatment fungicide was applied at the rate of 2.5ga.i/50gm seeds by shacking properly to ensure proper adhesiveness. both the treated and the untreated check were sown within 24 hours. first weeding was done three weeks after sowing (was) and the crop was thinned down to two plants per stand. subsequent weeding was done regularly to keep the entire farm weed-free throughout the farming season. data collection disease incidence (%) at 65 days after sowing (das), data on incidence of sorghum foliage anthracnose, sooty stripe while the incidence of covered and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 169-176 171 long smuts on the panicle was recorded at 95 das. disease incidence was calculated using the formula: grain yield at maturity stage, the panicles in all the middle rows of each sub-plot were harvested separately, sundried, threshed, winnowed, weighed and converted into kilogram per hectare. economic data were taken using the following formula: selling price = mean yield x cost of grain in the market at that year profit = selling price – cost of production cost benefit ratio = profit total cost of production results and discussion the efficacy of the metalaxyl seed dressing fungicide on the incidence of four major sorghum diseases namely anthracnose, sooty stripe, covered and long smuts are shown in table 1. the results showed that the untreated sorghum had significantly the highest anthracnose incidence means of 33.6% and 33.9% compared to the treated sorghum crops with lower incidence of 28.4% and 20.9% at 65 das in 2001 and 2002 respectively. similarly, results also indicated that the untreated sorghum genotypes recorded significantly the highest sooty stripe incidence of 42.1% and 38.6% while the treated recorded lower disease incidence of 28.4% and 29.4% in the respective years. the efficacy of metalaxyl seed dressing fungicide in lowering the initial inoculum was obvious in light of the lower incidence of anthracnose and sooty stripe recorded for the treated sorghum genotypes in the current work is in agreement with the findings of richard et al. (2009) who reported that seed treatment with apron star 42ws controlled the early stage of anthracnose and ensured high seedling establishment. similarly, richard et al. (2011) also reported that plants grown from seeds treated with metalaxyl fungicide were less susceptible to sooty stripe by recording the lowest disease incidence. results in table 1 showed that there was no significant difference on panicle covered smut incidence among the fungicide treated and untreated sorghum genotypes at 95 das in 2001. however, in 2002, the treated sorghum plant significantly had the lowest panicle covered smut incidence mean of 0.72% while the untreated recorded the highest panicle covered incidence mean of 10.7%. there was no significant difference between the treated and untreated plants in relation to panicle long smut incidence. in the two years, both the treated and untreated plants significantly recorded high panicle long smut incidence. this study also agree with mtisi (1996) who reported that metalaxyl and thiram based formulation gave better control of covered smut. el hilu and fredericksen (1992) reported that loose and covered smut can be effectively controlled by seed dressing. long smut is an air-borne disease which was not significantly lowered by the seed treatment and hence resulted in significantly high long smut incidence at 95 das in the two cropping seasons (table 1). results in (table 1) showed that both the treated and untreated recorded higher mean grain yield of 731.7kg/ha and 729.6kg/ha in 2001, and mean grain yield of 998.8kg/ha and 710.4kg/ha in 2002 which was significantly indifferent from each other. the production activities and cost involved on fungicidal treated sorghum genotypes was higher (n12670.00) compared to the untreated plants (12270.00) (table 2). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 169-176 172 in table 3, the cost-benefit analysis of mean production of treated sorghum genotypes indicated a slight yield increase of 0.29% above the untreated in 2001, but in 2002, there was a significant yield increase of 28.9% above untreated and a higher cost benefit ratio of 1:0:6 while the untreated was 1:0:2. the cost benefit analysis of production of each of the six sorghum genotypes when chemically treated and untreated showed that treated and untreated ex-mali had the highest cost benefit ratio of 1:1:10 and 1:1:9 and with a net profit of n24795 and n23071 against the production cost of n12670 and n12270 respectively in 2001 (table 4). the untreated icsviii, bes, paul biya and wbs recorded higher percentage yield increase than their untreated counterparts in the same year. similarly, in 2002, results (table 4) indicated that the treated ex-mali and untreated paul biya equally had the highest cost-benefit ratios of 1:1:4 and 1:1:3 with monetary net profit value of n18264.5 and n16081.5 against their production cost respectively. in 2001, among the treated sorghum genotypes icsv400 and ex-mali recorded an increased grain yield of 48% and 5.7% over their untreated counterpart respectively. in 2002, the treated icsv111, icsv400, bes, ex-mali and wbs had an increased grain yield of 64%, 9.04%, 43%, 51.3% and 22.4% above their untreated counterparts respectively. the mean grain yield of both years was far below the annual average grain yield of 1.532 kg/ha (fao, 1985). crop diseases, insect pests and lack of farming incentives are major production constraints in nigeria. this finding also agrees with onyenweaka et al. (2000) who stated that about 70% of the nigerian population is engaged in agriculture, yet the country is still not self-sufficient in food production. this work has revealed the yield potentials of the six sorghum genotypes evaluated. however, the marginal grain yield in some genotypes may not be the only basis for recommendation. the individual choice of genotypes may not be dictated by the grain yield alone, but such traits like height, robustness of the stalk for building local houses, fencing, basket making, fish traps, fuel wood and fodder for farm animal as observed in table 5. this is consistent with the findings of obilana et al., 1984 who had earlier recommended some sorghum genotypes for building, fencing, and roofing and as fodder for farm animals. this work has therefore proved that metalaxyl fungicide seed treatment lowered the incidences of both foliar and panicle diseases of sorghum. it has shown ex-mali as having the highest cost benefit ratio and net profit. this work has also high-lighted the performances of each genotypes and physiological attribute which can dictate the choice of the farmers. hence the evaluation of the chemical efficacy and determining the costbenefit of any chemical used in controlling crop disease(s) is of paramount importance in order to ascertain effective disease control and production efficiency. table 1: efficacy of chemical seed treatment on mean disease incidence and grain yields in 2001 and 2002 cropping seasons diseases incidence means mean grain yield 2001 2002 2001 2002 treated untreated treated untreated treated untreated treated untreated anthracnose 23.4b 33.6a 20.9b 33.9a 731.7a 729.6a 998.8a 710.4a se ± 1.091* se ± 0.828** se ± 49.27 ns se ± 65.16 ns sooty stripe 28.4b 42.1a 29.4b 36.6a se ± 2.366** se ± 0.960* covered smut 5.8a 8.9a 0.72b 10.7a se ± 1.799 ns se ± 1.432* long smut 22.7a 18.4a 42.9a 43.5a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 169-176 173 se ± 4.175 ns se ± 4.201 ns mean within the same letter (s) in the same column are not significantly different from each other at 5% level of probability. table 2: production activities and cost of production for the treated and untreated sorghum genotypes in 2001 and 2002 cropping seasons production activities/cost cost /ha (n) dressed undressed check land preparation/planting 3000 3000 fertilizer (npk) 3 mudus 360 360 cost of application 250 250 urea application 4 mudus 560 560 cost of application 300 300 3 weeding operation 4800 4800 cost of fungicide (n150 per sachet) 300 (2) 0 seed dressing labour 100 0 harvesting 1200 1200 threshing/winnowing/bagging 1500 1500 transportation 300 300 total cost of production 12670 12270 table 3: cost benefit of production of sorghum in 2001 and 2002 income 2001 2002 dressed undressed dressed undressed yield of marketable grain kg/ha 731.7kg 729.6kg 998.8 710.4kg yield increase over undressed check 0.29% 28.9 production cost (n) selling price n 12670.0 n 12270.0 n 12670.0 n12270.0 n21585.15 n 21523.2 n 20475.4 n14563.2 profit n 8915.15 n 9253.2 n 7805.4 n 2293.2 cost-benefit ratio 1:0.7 1:0.8 1:0.6 1:0.2 the cost-benefit ratio is based on n 29.50/kg and n 20.50/kg (mudu measure), the prevailing cost of sorghum grain at monday market in 2001 and 2002 cropping seasons respectively asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 169-176 174 table 4: cost-benefit analysis for production of each of the six treated and untreated sorghum genotypes in 2001 and 2002 cropping seasons icsv111 icv400 bes cs-35 ex-mali w.w. bashi treated untreated treated untreated treated untreated treated untreated treated untreated treated untreated 2001 income yield of marketable grains (kg/ha) 616.9 kg 815.1 kg 502.1 kg 261.4 kg 652.5 kg 689.0 kg 881.5 kg 906.8 kg 1270.0 kg 1198.0 kg 467.3 kg 507.4kg yield increase over untreated check 23.3% 48% 5.3% 2.7% 5.7% 7.9% production cost n 12670 12270 12670 12270 12670 12270 12670 12270 12670 12270 12670 12270 selling price n 18198.55 24045.45 14811.95 7711.3 19248.75 20325.5 26004.6 26750.6 37465 35341 13785.35 14968.3 profit n 5528.55 11775.45 2141.95 4558.7 6578.75 8055.5 13334.25 14480.6 24795 23071 1115.35 2698.3 cost-benefit ratio 1:0.4 1:0.10 1:0.2 1:0:4 1:0:5 1:0:7 1:1:1 1:1:2 1:1:10 1:1:9 1:0:1 1:0:2 2002 income yield of marketable grains (kg/ha) 1222.0kg 432.8kg 441.3kg 401.4kg 806.8kg 460.0kg 9187kg 1383.0kg 1509.0 kg 735.0kg 1096.0kg 850.4kg yield increase over untreated check 64.5% 9.04% 43.0% 33.6% 51.3% 22.4% selling price n 25051 8872.4 9042.55 8228.7 16539.4 9430 18833.35 28351.5 30934.4 15067.5 22468 17433.2 profit n 12381 3397.6 3627.45 4041.3 3869.4 2840 6163.36 16081.5 18264.5 2797.5 9798 5163.2 cost-benefit ratio 1:1:0 1:0:3 1:0:3 1:0:3 1:0:3 1:0:2 1:0:5 1:1:3 1:1:4 1:0:2 1:0:8 1:0:4 the cost benefit ratio is based on n29.50/kg and n20.50/kg (mudu measure), the prevailing cost of sorghum grain at monday market in 2001 and 2002 cropping seasons respectively asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 169-176 175 table 5: attributes of six sorghum genotypes for economic uses genotypes characteristics icv111 medium tall (1.8 – 2.1m), leaves are 70 – 80cm long, 7-10cm wide, midrib colour is white, panicles are semi compact, elliptic, completely exserted (2-5cm) 20-25m long and 9-13cm wide. the glumes are tough, leathery yellowish brown. awns are absent. tolerate to drought and resistant to leaf diseases. wbs tall, erect with robust stalk (2-3m), the panicles are loose, cylindrical shape with reddish brown grains most susceptible to anthracnose foliar disease, awns are present. ex-mali medium height (1.8 – 2m, light green leaf compact panicle, big panicle with oval shape that bend downward (gooseneck) grains are big and creamy in colour. moderately resistant to most foliar diseases and resistant to panicle smut diseases. paul biyia very tall (2 – 2.5m) high green leaf liable to lodging, moderately compact panicles and cylindrical in shapes, grain coloiur is light brown with some blackish spots. susceptible to foliar and panicle disease. icsv400 medium tall (1.8 – 2m) tan colour, and matures in 105 to 115 days. leaves are 70 – 80cm long, 8 – 11m wide, and semi-erect. the midrib is white, panicles are semi-loose, long and elliptical, completely exserted (6 to 15cm), 25 – 35cm long, and 7 – 12cm wide. the slimes are soft, leathery and light red. awns are absent, tolerant to drought, lodging and resistant to leaf diseases. bes dwarf genotype (1 – 1.3m), leaves are 40 – 50cm long, 5 – 8cm wide. midrib colour is white. panicles are compact and elongated. grains are medium in size and light yellow in colour. tolerant to drought and resistant to foliar diseases. source: gupta et al. (1994), bosadp (1993) and richard (2002) references bosadp (1993). package of crop recommendation in borno state. borno state agricultural development programme, maiduguri, nigeria. p. 37. el hilu, o., & frederiksen, r. a. (1992). sorghum smuts. in: sorghum and millet disease: a second world review (de milliano, w. d. j., frederiksen, r. a., & bengston, g. d. eds.), international crop research institute for the semi-arid tropics (icrisat), patancherus, india. pp. 245-252. fao (1985). food and agricultural organization of the united nations. production year book, 39, 121-122. fao (1995). sorghum and millet in human nutrition. food and agricultural organization, rome, italy. pp. 2–5. jim, s. (2009). sooty stripe of sorghum. dauglas jardine extension specialist, plant pathology. kansas state university, kansas city, kansas, usa. pp. 1-4. maunder, b. (1975). potential for crop production in latin america, commercial point of view. in: university of puerto rico, maya. guez, pr. u. s. a., pp. 3-27. mtisi, e. (1996). evaluation of systemic seed dressing for the control of covered kernel smut on sorghum in zimbabwe. in: drought-tolerant crop for southern africa. proceeding of the sadc/icrisat regional sorghum botwana (leouschner, k. and manthe, c.s., eds), international crop research institute for the semi-arid tropics (icrisat), patancherus, andhrapradesh, india. pp. 185-188. obilana, a. t., ajayi, o., & manzo, s. k. (1984). sorghum improvement in nigeria. in: proceedings of the regional workshop on sorghum improvement in west africa, ovagadougu, burkina faso, 14, 27-30. november, international crop research institute for the semiarid tropics. icrisat, 169-186. onyenweaku, c. e., agu, s. e., & obasi, f. c. (2000). economics of smallholder rice asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 169-176 176 farming under different production systems in southeastern nigeria. journal of agric. business and rural development, 1(1), 1-9. pande, s., hariskrishan, r., mughogho, l. k., karunakar, r. l., alegbejo, m. d., & ajayi, o. (1993). prevalence of sorghum diseases in nigeria. int. j. past manag, 39(3), 297 – 383. richard, b. i., anaso, a. b. & bolliya, b. s. (2008). effects of seed dressing and genotypes on the incidence and severity of covered and long smuts in the nigerian sudan savannah. nigerian journal of experimental and applied biology, 9(2), 65–70. richard, b. i., anaso, a. b., & mohammed, z. h. (2009). effects of apron star 42ws and genotypes on plant establishment and severity of sorghum leaf anthracnose in nigerian sudan savannah. journal of arid agriculture. 18, 50– 56. richard, b. i., degri, m. m., & dauda, z. (2011). susceptibility of sorghum genotypes and effect of chemical seed treatment on sooty stripe (ramulispora sorghi) of sorghum in semi-arid region of nigeria. nigerian journal of experimental and applied biology, 12(2), 189–198. tyagi, p. d. (1980). sorghum diseases in nigeria: in: sorghum disease, a world review (patancheru: international crop research institute for the semi-arid tropics, icrisat. pp. 45-52. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 823 growth performance characteristics of goats fed varied levels of poultry manure in whole cassava plant based concentrate diet yousuf, m. b., adeloye a. a., okukpe k. m., adeyemi, k. d and a. h. a badmus department of animal production, university of ilorin, ilorin, nigeria daramola, j. o. college of animal production, university of agriculture, abeokuta, nigeria ogundun, n. j. forestry research institute of nigeria, frin p. m. b. 5054 ibadan, nigeria abstract a 56-day feed intake, growth and digestibility trial was carried out to investigate the use of poultry manure as a fermentable nitrogen source in whole cassava plant-based concentrate fed to goats on basal panicummaximum hay (9.18 % cp). sixteen adult (2 years old; 12.48 – 16.72 kg initial body weights) west african dwarf goats were blocked on the basis of body weights into four similar groups that were assigned randomly to four treatments. treatments consisted of dried poultry manure that was included in a cassava-based concentrate at 0, 14, 18 or 22 % level. average feed intake (g/w0.725 kg) was reduced (p < 0.05) in goats fed poultry manure at 22 % inclusion level when compared with the other dietary groups. effects of poultry manure treatments on digestibility of dry matter or crude protein, nitrogen retention and body weight gain were significant (p < 0.05). it was concluded that poultry manure could be used to complement cassava leaf meal in cassava plant-based concentrates for the goats. the use of poultry manure as a source of fermentable nitrogen would promote activities of rumen microbial populations for efficient fermentation and reduce the constraints associated with collection and processing of cassava leaf in sufficient quantity for inclusion in the diet. keywords:whole plant cassava, poultry manure, goats, growth performance introduction 1 the practice of agriculture the world over, is presently in favor of mixed farming systems by which various aspects of livestock production are integrated with cultivation of arable crops for efficient utilization of resources and improved profitability. cassava is undoubtedly one of the most popular arable crops in nigeria and in several other african, asian and caribbean nations; it is the second most important calorie source, after maize (nweke etal., 1997) in the regions. cassava production corresponding author’s details: name: yousuf, m. b email address:mb_yousuf@yahoo.com has grown rapidly in africa to around 50 percent of global production by the mid-2000s, with nigeria surpassing brazil as the world’s largest producer (fara, 2012). current estimates of cassava production are around 34 million tons per annum (markelovaet al., 2009) with opportunities for processing into different staple foods, industrial products and livestock feed. the opportunities are not being effectively utilized in nigeria leading to frequent glut periods in the cassava market. akpan etal. (2012) reported that cassava farmers’ economic efficiency in the south-east nigeria could be raised by about 38 % using appropriate strategies. increased domestic utilization of cassava would be a viable option to improve the economic asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:mb_yousuf@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11)2013: 823-828 824 efficiency as achoja et al. (2012) had noted that an export-led cassava production in nigeria is capital intensive. productive feeds for the ruminant livestock could be prepared with the various components of cassava plant including the tuber as a nonstructural carbohydrates and fermentable energy source (fao, 2005); the stalk for the supply of dietary fiber and the leaves as a source of rumen by-pass protein (sath et al., 2008). dried poultry manure would provide fermentable nitrogen required for optimum utilization of the readily fermentable carbohydrates of the cassava tuber in the concentrate diet. the aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that dried poultry manure would improve the feeding value of whole cassava plant based diet fed to the goat. several previous studies had assessed the feeding values of cassava peelings (ukanwoko and ibeawuchi, 2009), cassava tuber (chanjula et al., 2007) or cassava stem (thanh et al., 2012) separately for goats production. abad-ur-rahman et al. (2012) had emphasized the unique roles of goat in the social-economic and religious life of man. materials and methods location of the study the feeding trial was conducted from the months of april-july, at university teaching and research farm located (14o n 11o e) in sub humid tropical environment with an annual rainfall range of 1500-1700 mm and average maximum and minimum temperature readings of 18oc and 25o c respectively. processing cassava for inclusion in the concentrate diet cassava tubers (unpeeled) and stalks obtained from tms 30572 cassava variety were washed under running tap water, sliced into pieces (5-10 mm) and sundried for 5 days on polythene sheet. cassava leaves also harvested from tms 30572 cassava plants were dried under the shade, at room conditions (25-320 c). dried cassava tuber and stalks were milled separately to pass through 5 mm sieve for inclusion in the concentrate diet. the cassava leaf meal was pulverized by hands to be included in the diet composition. animals and treatments sixteen adult male west african dwarf goats weighing between 12.48 and 16.72 kg initially were divided into four groups, balanced for body weights. goats were assigned to four dietary groups in a randomized complete block design. goats in each group received a concentrate diet (table 1) containing 0, 14, 18 or 22 % dried poultry manure. the concentrate diet was fed at 2 % equivalent of the goat body weight in two equal rations (0800 and 1600 hours) daily as supplement to basal panicum maximum hay (9.18 % cp). goats were housed individually in concrete floored pens (1 × 1.5 m2) during the first 49 days and thereafter transferred into metabolic pens equipped with facilities for individual animal separate feeding, provision of water and collection of faeces and urine over the last seven days. the goats were treated against external and internal parasites before the commencement of the feeding trial. collection of samples and analyses average daily feed intake for the individual goat was measured as the difference between the amounts of feed offered and the amounts refused over 24hour during the 7-day collection period. body weight measurements were recorded prior to early morning feeding on the first day of the 56-day feeding trial and subsequently at 14-day intervals. the difference between two consecutive measurements was used to estimate body weight gain over the interval period. total faces voided by each goat were collected during the 7-day digestibility period and about 10 % preserved for chemical analyses. urine was collected into plastic bucket acidified with 100 ml of n hcl and about 10 % of the daily urine production composited for each goat. samples of feeds and orts were composited every two weeks, oven dried (60o c) to constant weights and allowed to air-equilibrate before being ground to pass through 1-mm sieve. about 10 % of the ground feed and orts samples were preserved for later dry matter and proximate analyses. preserved feed and faces subsamples were analyzed for dry kjeldahl nitrogen, crude fiber, ether extracts and total ash (aoac, 1990). percentage nitrogen in the urine subsamples was measured (aoac, 1990). wet faecal samples were used for the determination asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11)2013: 823-828 825 of dry matter digestibility. empirical data were subjected to analysis of variance of a randomized complete block designed experiment (steel and torrie, 1980) with treatment means separated (duncan 1955) where there were significant differences. results the poultry manure which contained 89.35 % dm and 26.17 % cp was used to replace cassava leaf (90.52 % dm; 24.28 % cp) as the main nitrogen source in the cassava based concentrate diets.proximate studies on the concentrate diets indicated crude protein and crude fiber ranges of 12.76-13.82 % and 9.8610.14 % respectively. table1: compositions of experimental feeds ingredient/ manure, % 0 14 18 22 cassava tuber 48 46 46 44 cassava stalk 22 22 20 20 cassava leaf 28 16 14 12 poultry manure 14 18 22 salt + bone meal (1:1) 2 2 2 2 dry matter and proximate composition, % dry matter 93.42 93.88 92.74 93.16 crude protein 12.76 13.08 13.37 13.82 crude fiber 9.86 10.14 9.98 10.12 ether extract 3.68 3.15 3.07 2.93 ash 8.15 8.02 7.97 7.64 nitrogen free extract 12.09 13.11 13.18 13.21 a decrease (p < 0.05) in dry matter intake over the 56-day feeding period was recorded for goats fed concentrate supplement that contained poultry manure at 22 % inclusion level when compared with the control group. average total dry matter intakes (g/w 0.725 kg) were 53.56, 56.43, 49.74 and 46.88 for goats fed poultry manure at 0, 12, 14 and 18 % inclusion levels respectively. body weight gain (g/day) was similar (p > 0.05) for goats on the control diet and those fed poultry manure at 14 or 18 % inclusion level but reduced (p <0.05) at 22 % poultry manure treatment. goats fed 22 % poultry manure were less efficient in the conversion of feed for body weight gain than the control group or those that received poultry manure at 14 or 18 % dietary level. digestibility of dry matter (%) at 75.38 obtained for goats on 22 % poultry manure treatment was lower (p < 0.05) than the values of 88.26 for the control group or 86.84 and 88.84 for goats fed poultry manure at 18 or 22 % inclusion levels respectively. crude protein digestibility was reduced (p < 0.05) by the effects of poultry manure treatment at 22 % inclusion level when compared with the other treatment levels or the control. table 2: performance characteristics of goats fed poultry manure in cassava based diet item/poultry manure, % 0 14 18 22 ± sem number of goats 4 4 4 4 mean initial live weight, kg 14.36 13.96 14.12 14.04 1.32 mean final live weight, kg 17.27 16.68 16.88 15.92 1.61 live weight gain, /head/day 51.24a 48.57a 49.28a 33.57b 6.08 dry matter intake, g/head/day panicum maximum hay 160.12 164.39 159.69 157.91 12.18 cassava-based concentrate 264.64 272.36 228.73 198.81 16.73 total 424.76a 436.75a 388.42b 356.72b 12.46 dry matter intake g/w0.75 kg 53.56a 56.43a 49.74a 46.88b 8.68 efficiency of feed conversion, 8.29b 9.01b 7.88b 10.63a 1.03 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11)2013: 823-828 826 effects of poultry manure treatments on digestibility of crude fiber, ether extract of nitrogen free extract were not significant (p > 0.05). urinary nitrogen excretion was similar (p > 0.05) in the four dietary groups. goats fed poultry manure at 22 % inclusion level had reduced (p < 0.05) nitrogen retention when compared with those on 14 % poultry manure treatment or the control group. retention of nitrogen expressed as percentage of nitrogen intake was reduced (p < 0.05) at the 22 % inclusion level for poultry manure in the concentrate supplement. discussion air-drying cassava was to minimize loss of nutrients and preserve the texture of the cassava feed products. ajala et al. (2012) had recommended drying cassava at low temperature to reduce color change. preparation of cassava leaf meal is a major limiting factor in the formulation of whole plant cassava concentrate because of the low dry matter content of the leaf. cassava tuber, stalk and leaf meal in the concentrate supplement were the main sources of energy, fiber and protein respectively. fao (2005) identified cassava tuber and leaf meal as potent sources of fermentable carbohydrates and fermentable protein that could promote the activities of the rumen microbes. crude fiber levels of the concentrate diets were considered low for efficient rumen functioning hence, the provision of panicummaximum hay (9.18 % cp) adlibitum to compensate for inadequacy in fiber intake. the values for dry matter intake (g/bw0.75) obtained in the present study were within the ranges of values reported (alikwe etal. 2011) for west african dwarf goats of similar metabolic body weights fed dry poultry waste-based concentrate as supplements to cynodon nlemfuensis. reduction in feed dry matter intake in goats fed poultry manure at 22 % inclusion level could be attributed to a reduction in feed palatability as observed by macdonald etal. (2002). the similarity in crude fiber digestibility among the dietary groups in the present study suggests that poultry manure had no adverse effect on the process of rumen fermentation in the goats. ukanwoko and ibeawuchi (2009) reported a decrease in crude fiber digestibility with increasing dietary levels of poultry manure in goats fed poultry wastescassava peels based diet. poultry manure is rich in fermentable nitrogen that could promote rumen fermentation process to improve fiber digestibility at a moderate level of intake. dry matter intake and digestibility are indexes of feed acceptability and quality. lower nitrogen intake and nitrogen retention for goats fed 22 % poultry manure could be attributed to the lower dry matter intake and nitrogen digestibility obtained for the dietary group. sarwar etal. (2003) observed that nitrogen retention is dependent on the intake of nitrogen and amount of fermentable carbohydrates. the retained nitrogen values for the four dietary groups f/g dry matter/nutrient digestibility dry matter 88.26a 86.94a 88.84a 75.38b 3.46 crude protein 71.84a 69.32a 68.27a 65.77b 2.12 crude fiber 57.24 57.94 59.18 58.96 1.32 ether extract 61.17 63.98 61.34 60.32 4.81 nitrogen free extract 71.57 74.83 72.26 72.66 3.64 nitrogen metabolism nitrogen intake, g/day 7.78ab 9.47a 6.91b 6.71b 2.87 faecal nitrogen, g/day 3.09ab 4.23a 2.87b 2.95b 1.06 urinary nitrogen , g/day 2.43 3.07 2.06 2.28 1.92 nitrogen digested, g/day 4.69a 5.24a 4.04a 3.76b 1.18 nitrogen digested, % intake 60.28 55.33 58.47 56.04 4.28 nitrogen retained, g/day 2.26a 2.17a 1.98ab 1.48b 0.62 nitrogen retained, % intake 29.05a 22.91b 28.65a 22.06b 4.46 a, b, c, d –different superscripts in a row represent significant differences between dietary groups at the probability of p < 0.05. sem – standard error of treatment means asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11)2013: 823-828 827 indicated that inclusion of poultry manure up to the level of 18 % in the cassava based concentrate had no adverse effect on nitrogen utilization by the goats when compared with the control group. conclusion the findings from the study demonstrate that cassava plant based-concentrate with different levels of dry poultry manure is suitable for use as supplement to low quality panicum maximum hay in the dry season feeding of the goat. all the animals consumed adequate feed dry matter, gained in body weight and showed no sign of intoxication. poultry manure could therefore be safely used to replace cassava leaf meal in whole cassava plant concentrate supplements for the goat. inclusion of poultry manure at 14 or 18 % level in the concentrate supplement promoted dry matter intake, nitrogen retention and body weight gain in the goats at levels comparable to those of the control group. the use of poultry manure would reduce labour and time required for the collection and processing of the cassava leaf. references abad-ur-rahman s. b., khan, j. and ayaz, m. 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(2009). nutrient intake and digestibility of west african dwarf bucks fed poultry wastecassava peels based diets. pakistan journal of nutrition, 8(9): 1461-1464. http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd20/supplement/sath2.htm http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd20/supplement/sath2.htm http://www.mekarn.org/workshops/dalat2012/html/thanh.grrc.htm http://www.mekarn.org/workshops/dalat2012/html/thanh.grrc.htm effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(8), 141-151 141 the role of the agriculture sector in regional development disparity in pegunungan arfak regency fenny salomina jensanura asyerem department of agriculture, faculty of agriculture, papua university. amban-manokwari, indonesia article history: received: 12-aug-2016 revised received: 20oct-2016 accepted: 3-nov-2016 online available: 16nov-2016 keywords: agriculture sector, leading sector, regional development, disparity, pegunungan arfak regency abstract developing inequality is a phenomenon that is always present in every process of development and varies between one region and another. developing regions in pegunungan arfak regency still rely on the agricultural sector as a driving force of the development in their territory to reduce the disparity. this study aims to assess the potential of the agricultural leading sector at the pegunungan arfak regency, the level of the regional development disparity, as well as the role and the relevance of the leading sector of agriculture in regional development. the result based on lq method, it showed that the leading sector of agriculture in pegunungan arfak regency consists of food crops sub sector, horticulture sub sector and plantation sub sector. at the same time, the result further suggested that the level of the development disparity, horizontally (among regions) showed high values refer to the williamson index about 0.86, as well as the level of the development imbalance, vertically (among community group's income) using the gini index had a value about 0.43. agricultural leading sector is one of the factors that can be spurred on into a prime mover of the development in order to reduce the inequality of regional development. 1. introduction 1 agriculture sector, until this day, is still having great contribution in regional economic development in pegunungan arfak (pegaf) regency. it can be seen from its share to gross domestic regional product (gdrp) of pegaf about 72.60% (pegaf, 2014), and supported by the availability of land resources that use especially to land intensification of agriculture as well as animal husbandry both. as we known, regional economic development is one urgent aspect that need more focus on development programs because it was a driven force in order to spur the development of social and economic and also to reduce development disparity among regions. table 1 below shows the level of contribution of economic sectors in pegaf regency. corresponding author‟s email address: fenny_asyerem@yahoo.co.id asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.8/1005.8.141.151 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 141-151 142 table 1: contribution of economic sectors and its shares to gdrp of pegaf regency no. economic sector share to gdrp (%) 1 sector of agriculture 72.60 2 sector of mining and quarrying 0.18 3 sector of manufacturing industry 0.00 4 sector of electricity and water supply 1.02 5 sector of building and construction 3.63 6 sector of trade, hotel and restaurant 0.05 7 sector of transport and communication 0.00 8 sector of finance, ownership and business services 0.00 9 sector of services 22.53 source: pegaf, 2014 the contribution of the agricultural sector, in addition supported by land resources, it‟s also supported by the role of farmer families in pursuing agricultural commodities include sub sectors of food crops, horticultural crops, plantation crops and livestock sub-sector. the development in the pegaf regency should be developed more intensively with emphasis on the utilization of local resources and the agricultural sector (sector basis and non-base) that are potentially give a positive impact on improving people's welfare. the basic sector (leading sector) by rustiadi et al. (2009) and tarigan (2005) is the sector with the ability to export orientation, meaning that the industry will produce a product basis (agriculture) for both the domestic market as well as market area outside the territory. whereas non bases sector is a sector with economic activity in the market, which only serve their own region and the export capacity of the areas has not increased. in reformation era, the policy development in local government had been supported by law no. 23/2004 about local government and law no. 33/2004 about financial balancing between central government and local government, this means that the local government has full right to manage its own resources along with the obligation to manage his own region becomes greater as all government matters decentralized to local government except in regard to foreign relations and defense and security. policy development in the pegaf regency can be formulated in the development sector of the economy, however, to develop all sectors of the economy will require huge investments. if capital or investment is not sufficient, then the need for prioritization of development, typically the sector that gets these priorities is the leading sectors (setiawan, 2006; james & movshuk, 2003) which is expected to be push factor to other economic sectors to develop into a prime mover of economic growth of the region, besides that, miranti et al. (2013) says that the mapping of potential economic sectors in each of the regions is essential to overcome the problems of regional development imbalances. the development of the region is a comprehensive and integrated program of activities taking into account available resources and it contributes to the development of a region. the concept of regional development is an attempt to realize integration in the use of resources by balancing and harmonizing the development of inter-regional, intersector and development actors in achieving regional development objectives, as is well known that the strategy of development of a region is determined by the characteristics and the potential contained in the region. therefore, prior to the formulation of policies to be implemented need to know the type or kind of policy that appropriate in the development of the region. anwar (2005) says that in a region, there will be some kind of regional characteristics that is developed region, the developing region and the underdeveloped region. while alkadri (2001) says that the development of the region in general covers various dimensions of the construction carried out gradually. in the early stages, the regional development activities are usually emphasized in physical development to stimulate economic growth, followed by the construction of socio-political systems. however, this step is not a standard provision, because every region has a growth potential which is different from other areas, caused by the potential of natural resources, social, cultural, economic communities, the availability of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 141-151 143 infrastructure and others, highly influential on the application of the concept of regional development used. in the process of development of the region itself, is certainly the disparity of the development take effect, it is an aspect that is common in the economic activity of a region and this imbalance is usually due to differences in the content of the natural resources and demographic conditions contained in the respective regions. sjafrizal (2008) told that as a result of this difference, the ability of a region to encourage the development process are also to be different, so that there is a developed region and the developing region. inequality of development among regions carry implications for the level of welfare of the people as expressed by rouch et al. (2001) found that inequality causes poverty to occur because of the gap between the system prevailing in a region of a service provider to the community. this is because aspects of the development gaps among regions have implications for the formulation of regional development policies carried out by the local government. associated with the development of the region, there are two types of imbalance in the concept of empirical studies that became the center of attention. first, the unequal distribution of income among groups (vertical inequality), usually measured using the gini index, where, it is a measure of aggregate inequality and the scores ranged from zero (perfect equalization) to one (perfect inequality). second, the development gaps among regions (inequality horizontally) that differ from gini index who commonly used to measure the distribution of income, williamson index uses gross domestic regional product (gdrp) per capita as a baseline data, because being compared is the level of development among regions and not prosperity levels among groups. based on the explanation above, the strategy for the development of the potential sector of agricultural as the engine of growth in the pegaf regency can be pursued through the determination of the location of the development is in accordance with the potential of agricultural sub-sector, beside that, the support and policies that affirmative from the local government of pegaf is a force that can boost the farmers in order to increased production of the agricultural sector and increase their income. this study aims to assess (1) the potential of the agricultural leading sector in pegaf regency, (2) the level of inequality of the development in regency of pegaf, (3) the role and relevance of the agricultural leading sectors in regional development at pegaf regency. 2. brief overview of pegaf regency pegaf is a new regency (new autonomous region) separated from manokwari regency by law no. 24/2012 on the establishment of pegaf regency in west papua province. geographically, pegaf regency is at 0 0 55' 1 0 40' south latitude and 133 0 10‟134 0 05' east longitude as well as administratively border with manokwari regency in the north, in the south side of the regency of bintuni bay, west side of regency of tambrauw and east side of the regency of south manokwari. it located at an altitude ± 2500 asl, with a total area of 2773.74 km 2 consisting of ten districts of the region, namely, sururei, didohu, anggi, taige, anggigida, membey, menyambouw, hingk, catubouw and testega. district residents are natives of papuan who are a large ethnic group of arfak tribe, divided of the subs-group ethnic, they were atam tribal, meyakh tribe, sough tribal and moyle tribal. the main livelihood of the population is farming, hunting and gathering food. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 141-151 144 figure 1: map of pegaf regency 3. materials and research method 3.1. source of data the study is based on secondary and primary data, where, as a new autonomous region, very restricted and minimum secondary data are available, so that, secondary data used in this study are gross domestic regional product (gdrp) of the agricultural sector of pegaf regency issued by the statistic of manokwari regency for a period of 2013-2014 along with the development planning papers related to this study. meanwhile, primary data collected by using surveys to respondent in pegaf regency in december 2015. 3.2. respondent sampling the primary data conducted among respondents are representative of households that cultivate agricultural crops in ten (10) districts in the regency of pegaf with the consideration that the characteristics of population are homogeneous. respondent conducted at random (purposive sampling) with total respondent sample of farmer households as much as 40 respondents. 3.3. determinants of agricultural leading sector determination of the agricultural leading sector in pegaf regency by using location quotien (lq) analysis, which is an index to compare the share of the sub-region in certain activities with a total share of these activities in the total activity of the region. the assumptions used in this analysis are (1) the geographical conditions are relatively equal, (2) activity patterns are equal, and (3) any activity produces the same product. equation of lq (bendavid val, 1991) is: where : xij = degree of activity of agricultural sector-i xi = total activity of agricultural sector-i xj = total activity in district region x.. = degree of total activity of region in pegaf regency. analysis of lq will show the following: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 141-151 145 1. if value of lqij > 1, then sub-region i have more relative share just than the activity that found generally in the whole region or activity j is an activity/leading sector in sub-region i 2. if value of lqij < 1, then sub-region i have less relative share just than the activity that found generally in the whole region or activity j is not an activity/leading sector in sub-region i 3. if value of lqij = 1, then sub-region i have equally relative share with the activity that found generally in the whole region in this analysis, the output value of lq will be known agricultural sectors that are leading sectors in each district area of the regency of pegaf, while the potential of the agricultural sub-sectors commodity calculated with basic data on the number of households who undertake agricultural sub-sector. 3.4. determinants of regional development disparity analysis on the level of regional development disparity in the regency of pegaf are calculated by using two equations, first, by calculating the value of the williamson index (amos, 2004) in pegaf regency and manokwari regency, i use the output of the williamson index in manokwari regency to compare it with the result of pegaf regency, can be seen in equation (2) below. √ (2) data using to analyze the levels of regional development disparity in pegaf and manokwari regency are gross domestic regional product (gdrp) for a period of 2013-2014, the formula of equation (2) becomes equation (3): √ (3) where iw = variation of williamson index value, yi = gdrp per capita in regency i, ys = average of gdrp per capita in regency i, pi = population in regency i, ps = total of population in regency i, subscript i (regency of pegaf and regency of manokwari), subscript t year of 2013 and 2014. while the second approach, by counting the inequality of income distribution (gini index) vertically among the segments of the population in the regency of pegaf, usually measured by calculating the ratio of the areas located between the diagonal line and the lorenz curve divided by the half area of the rectangle in which the lorenz curve is, mathematically, the calculation of the gini index (todaro and smith, 2011) as in equation (4). ∑ where, gr = gini index, fpi = frequency of population in the level of income i, fci = cumulative frequency and the total of expenditure or income on the level of income i, fci-1 = cumulative frequency and the total of expenditure or income at the level (i-1). 4. result and discussion 4.1. develop on potential leading sector of agriculture 4.1.1. food crops sub sector the performance of the potential spread of food crops in the regency of pegaf according in lq analysis by category basis and non bases are presented in the following, see table 2. table 2: the lq value of food crops sub sector in the regency of pegaf no. district lq value paddy field crops planted corn 1 sururey 0 1.48 0.01 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 141-151 146 2 anggi 0 1.13 0.74 3 taige 0 1.45 0.07 4 membey 0 0.75 1.54 5 menyambouw 2.76 0.76 1.48 6 catubouw 0 1.29 0.40 7 testega 0 1.30 0.39 8 didohu 0 1.20 0.60 9 anggigida 0 1.24 0.50 10 hingk 0 1.02 0.98 table 2 above, it can be seen that there are three types of groupings of food crops were identified from the 10 district in the regency of pegaf namely paddy fields, crops and corn. the results of the analysis in table 2 above shows that the food crops sub sector, which has a value of lq > 1 has the potential to become a dominant sector (leading sector) which can be developed as a prime mover of the economy. the results of the analysis also shows that the development of food crops, especially paddy fields and corn can be done in the area of menyambouw district. 4.1.2. horticulture sub sector horticultural plants that had been cultivated by people in the region of pegaf regency consist of pepper, onion, potato, turmeric and vegetables. the lq value of each horticultural sub sector in district region displayed below. table 3: the lq value of horticultura sub sector in the regency of pegaf no. district lq value pepper onion potato turmeric vegetables 1 sururey 0.00 2.95 1.38 0.00 0.58 2 anggi 0.00 0.15 1.98 0.00 0.83 3 taige 0.00 0.00 1.56 0.00 1.03 4 membey 5.87 2.33 0.73 0.00 0.53 5 menyambouw 0.83 0.43 0.46 0.12 1.34 6 catubouw 0.69 0.85 0.85 0.00 1.12 7 testega 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 8 didohu 0.00 0.20 1.94 0.00 0.83 9 anggigida 1.15 1.53 1.41 0.00 0.73 10 hingk 0.29 0.50 0.79 4.55 1.20 the analysis result displayed above showed that the potential of regional development based on the leading sector of horticultural sub sector explained that commodity with an index of lq>1 especially pepper plants can be built to be developed in the district region of membey and anggigida, onions can be done to develop in the district of sururey, membey and anggigida, potatoes can be developed in the district area of sururey, anggi, taige, didohu and anggigida, turmeric plants can be developed in the district of hingk as well as vegetable plant can be developed in the district of taige, catubouw and hingk. 4.1.3. plantation sub sector the performance of the potential spread of plantation sub sector that can be built in the district area of pegaf regency related to the analysis of lq method can be seen in the table 4 below. table 4: the lq value of plantation sub sector in the regency of pegaf no. district lq value banana lemon manggo 1 sururey 0.00 0.00 0.00 2 anggi 0.00 0.00 0.00 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 141-151 147 3 taige 0.00 0.00 0.00 4 membey 0.00 0.00 0.00 5 menyambouw 0.69 1.62 1.26 6 catubouw 1.58 0.00 0.08 7 testega 0.00 0.00 0.00 8 didohu 0.00 0.00 0.00 9 anggigida 1.59 0.00 0.00 10 hingk 1.30 0.21 1.22 the result given on the table 4 above explained that in agro-ecologies, the district region of menyambouw have the potential to develop the plantation sub sector, especially lemon and mango, besides that, district of catubouw and district of anggigida have potential to expand banana plants, and also district of hingk is expandable to develop the plantation sub sector of banana and mango. based on the study of the leading sector of agricultural sub sector (comparative) in the pegaf regency, it can be seen that the planning of agriculture development must be pursued through investment in the agricultural sub sector featured accordance with its development potential in every area of the district. the development of the leading sector of agricultural sub-sector is expected to spur an increase in income of farmers in every region of the district, so that the agricultural sub-sector is expected to be the main engine (prime mover) for the development of other economic sectors (arifien et al., 2012). therefore, the increasing of the development of agricultural leading sector in pegaf regency should be supported through the following points that are the focus of attention of the local government of pegaf regency: (1) extension and advisory intense for farmers in each district area in intensifying the production of agriculture subsector, (2) provision of special transport to serve the mobilization of agricultural products to the market, this is because during this day, the farmers are very difficult to transporting and marketing the harvest of their agricultural products to the market, (3) provision of information from a service provider (local government) about the prices of agricultural products prevailing in the market, this is due to the fluctuations in product prices of agricultural sub-sector due to high inflow of imported products of agriculture sub sector from outside the region, other than that, the marketing of agricultural product by the people in the market tend to oligopsony (supriadi, 2008) so that the trader have a role in determining the price, (4) providing aid farming equipment as well as technical training to use, as long as land management systems and farming is still done traditionally with a simple farming tool, so that the number harvest of agricultural sub-sector products has been limited in quantity. it is also in line with research conducted by syahza and suarman (2013) that the government can do in spurring development in the newly autonomy area (developing area) with due to respect to poverty alleviation, human resource aspects along with the development aspect infrastructures as supporting in regional development. the attention focus of the local government of pegaf regency for the development of the agricultural sub sector based upon some of the findings when doing surveys and discussion with the farmers, some of them are, some areas of the district have comparative advantage in the agricultural sub sector as a basic sector and non bases sector based on lq analysis written out above. as a basic sector because of the fulfill needs of consumption in manokwari regency and south manokwari regency, especially the consumption of the sub sector of horticultural crops, such as chili, onions, potatoes and vegetables (collards, cabbage, leeks) supplied from the regency of pegaf. 4.2. regional development disparity in pegaf regency the regional disparity in pegaf regency is still high, this has happened because of the regional inequality is a real condition that always there in the development progress, at the early stage of the development process, the imbalance always increasing and next will tend to decline as long as the process of development (reverse “u” shape curve). the level of the regional disparity in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 141-151 148 pegaf regency based on the analysis using the williamson index in equation (2) displayed in figure 2 below. figure 2: trend value of williamson index in pegaf regency for a period of 2013 – 2014 the result of williamson index analysis by using data collected from per capita gross domestic regional product for a period of 2013-2014 based on constant price displayed in figure 2 showed that the regional development disparity between region in pegaf regency is very high. the value of williamson index has a range from 0-1, where, when the value close to the 1 then the disparity increase and vice versa. figure 2 also explained that for a period of 2013-2014, the trend of regional development disparity (horizontally) in pegaf regency experienced a significant increase when compared to manokwari regency. this is can be explained that economic development horizontally between region in pegaf regency is under development because of the lack of the development activities. the condition of high disparity (divergence) of the area in accordance with the view of regional development disparity indicated that the regency of pegaf is a newly autonomous area (of the division of manokwari regency) so that the development process is still in its early stages. in line with the development process, is expected for the level of disparity will gradually be decreased (convergence of development). it was differ with williamson index, to see the regional disparity vertically (income inequality among community groups) by using the gini index in equation (3) above, where, the data that use to analyze are people income. so that, the ability of the people in pegaf regency to fulfill the need of their life necessities was the aspect seen out. the analysis result of the gini index in pegaf regency can be seen in figure 3 below. 0.05 0.86 0.12 0.37 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 2013 2014 iw ill ia m so n i n d e x year pegaf manokwari asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 141-151 149 figure 3: lorenz curve and gini index value in pegaf regency figure 3 showed that the value of gi = 0.43, where the coefficient of gini index is a measurement of the aggregation disparity which its numeral range from „0‟ (perfect equality) to „1‟ (perfect inequality). so it can be concluded that the income distribution of people in the region of pegaf regency as an indicator of unequal disparity. the value of the gini index drawn out the positive correlation with the value of williamson index, when the regional development disparity in pegaf regency increases (divergence), then it had implications for the level of the community's welfare, showed by the imbalance of the income distribution among community groups in the region of pegaf regency, this the phenomena that usually happen in the new autonomous area (new developing area). 4.3. the implication of regional development policy based on agricultural leading sector in pegaf regency development disparity was phenomena that always happen in the development process of a region and its caused by factors of economic development progress, political issue and fiscal decentralization, accessibility issue, ethnic discrimination and market failure as well as the concentration of natural resources owned by some of the region than the others, in such a way that the effort did in order to decrease the development imbalance by handling the factors that caused the lameness, where, the factors usually varies between one region with the others (baransano et al., 2016). agricultural leading sector is not an absolute factor that can overcome the problems in regional development (baransano et al., 2016), but it was one of the factors to solve the problems of regional development in pegaf regency. it can be done by increasing the development investment in the leading sector of agriculture, especially in the sub sector of food crops, sub sector of horticulture and sub sector of plantation based on the analysis using lq method. this thing had been explained out by miranti et al. (2013) that mapping potential sector in each region is essential to overcome the problem of development of the region. overall, the advantages sub sector of food crops, horticulture and plantation crops is a priority for development in pegaf regency, so that, be expected that the development of the agricultural leading sector in pegaf regency can trigger the development (prime mover) to other economic sectors (multiplier effect) in favor of equitable development in the region of pegaf regency. 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 % c u m m u la ti ve o f e xp e n d it u re % cummulative of population lorenz curve budget line 𝐆𝐈 𝟎 𝟒𝟑 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(8)2016: 141-151 150 the development disparity in pegaf regency measured by williamson index and gini index explained that the inequality both horizontally (among regions in pegaf regency) and vertically (among community group‟s income) showed a very high value. efforts to reduce the inequality can be done either by developing with intensification of the leading sector of agriculture in pegaf regency includes the sub sectors of food crops, horticultural crops sub-sector and plantation sub-sector and also by developing extensively can be done in the district area that have potential to develop the agriculture sub sector. the development of the agricultural sub sector as one of the alternatives to reduce the inequality of development because the people who inhabit in the whole area of pegaf regency are a farming community with their main agricultural commodities are food crops, horticulture and plantation crops. 5. conclusion leading sectors, especially the agricultural sector has a significant relationship to regional development in the pegaf regency. the analysis result showed that pegaf regency has potential to develop the leading sector of agriculture, especially the sub sector of food crops include paddy field, crops planted and corn, sub sector of horticulture includes pepper, onions, potatoes, turmeric and vegetables, as well as a sub sector of plantation include banana, lemon and mango. concerned with regional development, pegaf has very high levels of disparity both horizontally (among regions) with the williamson index value about 0.86 in the year of 2014, and vertically (among community group‟s income) with the gini index value about 0.43. it had been known that agriculture sub sector had an important role to support regional development that can be beneficial as a push factor to other sectors in order to grow up as driving force of the regional development in the pegaf regency to reduce regional development disparity both among regions and community group's income. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: this research was funded by the local government of pegaf regency through cooperation between the regional development planning agency and unipa research center of demographic in 2015, headed by dr. onesimus kambuaya (deceased). views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. reference alkadri, a. 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(2011). economic development. tenth edition. pearson addison wesley. boston usa. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5k43bvt2dwjk-en http://repository.ipb.ac.id/bitstream/handle/123456789/40668/2006idm.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants . 297 hydraulic conductivity functions in relation to some chemical properties in a cultivated oxisols of a humid region, delta state, nigeria egbuchua, c. n. department of agronomy, delta state university, asaba campus, asaba delta state, nigeria abstract the study was conducted to evaluate hydraulic conductivity functions in relation to some soil chemical properties in an oxisols of the tropics. field and laboratory studies were carried out and data collected, subjected to statistical analytical procedure for computing coefficient of variability and correlation among soil properties. results of the study showed that hydraulic conductivity functions varied spatially and temporarily across the experimental points with a moderate mean value of 0.0026 cm/h and a coefficient o variation of 31.45% soil chemical properties showed that the soils were acidic with a mean ph value of 5.12. organic carbon, total nitrogen and available phosphorus were low with mean values of 1.29%, 0.68% and 4.43 mgkg 1 . coefficient of variability among soil properties indicated less to moderately variable. soil ph had negative correlation with all the soil properties evaluated. keywords: hydraulic conductivity, soil chemical properties, oxisols, humid region, nigeria introduction 1 the oxisols of the sub-saharan africa are among the potential arable lands that are exhaustively exploited for crop production activities (agboola et al., 1997). they are highly weathered soils derived from the pre-cambrian basement complex which formed part of the african crystalline shield (fasina et al., 2005). the most important diagnostic features of these soils are the deep oxic sub-surface horizons that are high in clay-size particles and dominated by hydrous oxides of iron and aluminum (brady and weil, 2007). characteristically, oxisols have low activity clay that are non-sticky and usually resistance to compaction. they have a poor corresponding author’s email address: egbuchuacn@gmail.com. structural stability, low inherent fertility, low water holding capacity, various nutrients imbalances, and high susceptibility to water erosion (agboola et al., 1997; egbuchua 2007). the high concentration of iron and aluminum oxides in this soil, allow it to bind so tightly with phosphorus end thus, deficiency of phosphorus is common (egbuchua, 2007). the hydraulic conductivity which is defined as the volume of water flux which passes through a unit cross-sectional area of a soil, in unit time, given a unit differences in water potential (landon, 1991) is governed by two basic principles namely the law of continuity and resistance. their combination provides a differential equation which describes water movement in soils (miyazaki et al., 1984). soil hydraulic conductivity (ksat) and water constant (o) are key parameters for crop growth, drainage, irrigation and asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:egbuchuacn@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 297-303 298 modelling of water flow and chemical transport through the soil (suleiman and ritchie, 2001). in many soils, hydraulic conductivity is not constant due to various chemical, physical and biological processes but changes as water permeates and flow through the soil. the chemical properties of a soil are ‘a sine qua non’ or a major productive factor in crop growth, yield and yield components. thus, the assessment of the productivity of a soil lies on its chemical properties. amongst these properties are, soil ph, organic carbon, total nitrogen, available phosphorus, exchangeable bases are cation exchange capacity. a soil that is moderate to high is these properties, coupled with a slope gradient of about 0 2% an effective soil depth of > 60 cm, good texture/structure and a good drainage capacity are important for the growth of tropical crops (esu, 2004). because of the depleted chemical nature of most oxisols, and the intensity of cultivation on these soils, the objective of this study therefore is to evaluate the relationship between water transmissivity and soil chemical properties. the outcome of this study provides a guide on how best to use and manage the soil for sustainable crop production system. materials and methods description of the study area the study was conducted at the delta state university research and teaching farm anwai, asaba, nigeria. anwai falls within the coordinates 06° 14¹ and 06° 49¹e and basically located in the humid rainforest zone of nigeria. the annual rainfall is about 1,650mm with peaks in july and september and a dry season which appears to be coalescing in recent times. the mean annual temperature ranged from 25°c to 28°c. an isohyperthemic soil temperature and aquic moisture regime typify the general area. the geology is made up of coarse grained pegmatites derived from basement complex that are more acid than base (egbuchua, 2011). the general landscape is undulating with pockets of rolling topography scattered all over the places. land use is typically based on rainfed agriculture and the major crops extensively cultivated include roots and tuber crops, pulses, grains and wide varieties of vegetable species. field study a grid of 12 x 12m 2 was distinctly mapped out and pegged 3x4m 2 apart to give a total of 12 experimental points. at each point, core samples were taken at 0-20 cm soil depth for laboratory determination of hydraulic conductivity. auger samples were also collected for the analysis of the chemical properties of the soils. hydraulic conductivity determination a 12 cm iron-metal cylinder which was locally fabricated was very carefully driven fully into the soil. thereafter, it was then excavated and both ends trimmed with a knife. the cylinder with its soil content was placed in a polythene bag, tied and taken to the laboratory for the determination of hydraulic conductivity. the hydraulic conductivity of the soil was finally calculated using darcy’s law according to dhan and varde (1976) as; v = k (hst x) x where, v = infiltration rate or saturated soil column k = hydraulic conductivity hs = surface head x = length of the saturated soil column t = time (minute) laboratory analysis the auger samples collected from the experimental points were routinely processed by air-drying at room temperature of 25-27 o c, for 3 days, grinded using agape motor and sieved through a 2mm mesh. the sieved samples were carefully labelled and packaged for laboratory estimation of some chemical properties. the chemical properties evaluated were soil ph which was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 297-303 299 determined in a 1:1 soil/water ratio using electrometric digital ph meter. organic carbon was determined by oxidizing soil samples with dichromate solution and later titrated with ferrous sulphate solution. total nitrogen was determined using micro-kjeldahl method. available phosphorus was determined by the bray no 1 method and p in solution determined colorimetrically by the molybdenum blue method. the exchangeable cations were extracted by leaching 5g of soil with 50 ml of ammonium acetate at ph 7. the potassium and sodium in the leachate were determined with column model 21 flame photometer. calcium and magnesium were determined with atomic absorption spectrophotometer. all the determinations were done following the procedures of canadian society of soil science (cater, 1993) statistical analysis statistical analysis procedure for computing coefficient of variability and correlation (r) as described by steel and torrie (1980) were employed to determine relationship between hydraulic conductivity and soil chemical properties. results and discussion soil chemical properties the soil ph (table 1) measured in water ranged from 4.8-5.6 indicating very strong to moderately acid reaction. the acidic nature of the soil could be associated with erosion and leaching effects due to high rainfall characteristics of the area which in most cases exceed 1,650mm/annum. the organic carbon (1.29%); total nitrogen (0.68%); and available phosphorus (4.43 mgkg -1 ) were generally low for the ecological zone (fmanr, 1990). the low content of organic carbon could be attributed to extensive cultivation of the soils, rapid mineralization of organic matter, non return of harvested crop residues back to the soil, rampant annual bush burning which is more of a ritual in the study area; and short fallow period in recent times due to increased demand for land for various purposes. the low content of total nitrogen on the other hand, could be attributed to crop uptake, low organic matter status of the soil and effects of soil erosion and leaching. available phosphorus was generally low (< 15 mgkg -1 ) reflecting the low status of reserved phosphate minerals in the soil and its parent material. it could also be attributed to the fixation of phosphate by sesquioxides and high acidic nature of the soil (akpan-idiok et al., 1996, egbuchua, 2011). the exchangeable bases (table 1) were generally low, with the mean values of 3.59 cmolkg -1 , for ca; 0.82 cmolkg -1 , for mg; and 0.15 cmolkg -1 for k. the low content of these basic cations may have been caused by intensive weathering of the environment, excessive leaching which may have caused looses of colloidal materials and low activity clay of the parent material (egbuchua, 2011). the cation exchange capacity (table i) was also low with a mean value of 7.06 cmolkg 1 . the low value has been reported to be an indication of the dominance of kaolinitic clays in the fine earth fraction (egbuchua, 2007). it could also be attributed to low organic matter content of the soils which was reflected in this study. hydraulic conductivity hydraulic conductivity varied widely both spatially and temporarily in response to differences in land use. it is known to be influenced by physical factors such as porosity, structure and exchangeable sodium percentage of the soil. in this study, the values ranged from 0.0012 cm/h to 0.038 cm/h with a mean 0.026 cm/h which is relatively moderate for the ecological zone (fmanr, 1990). this may be due to the reduction in the turtuosity of pores for water movement by some aggregating agents and hence transmissivity of water. relationship between hydraulic conductivity and some soils chemical properties results of correlation analysis (table 2) showed that hydraulic conductivity correlated poorly (r = -0.44) with soil ph. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 297-303 300 probert and keating (2002) associated this poor correlation to soil acidification resulting from in balance in uptake of cations and anions in the soil. organic carbon showed moderate correlation (r = 0.51*) with hydraulic conductivity. according to franzeluebber (2002), soil organic matter has an inverse impact on soil porosity. it is also associated with increased aggregation and permanent pore development as a result of biological activities in the soil. total nitrogen (r = 0.19); available phosphorus (r = 0.05); calcium (r = --0.86); magnesium (r = 0.23) and potassium (r = 0.32) were all negatively correlated with hydraulic conductivity (table 2). cation exchange capacity on the other hand, correlated positively (r=0.82**) with hydraulic conductivity. the poor correlation associated with nitrogen could simply be adduced to leaching of nitrates due to the climatic environment of the study area, while that of calcium could be as a result of the aggregating agent which binds soil particles together and as such, reduced the water transmissivity in the soil through reduction on tortuosity of soil pores. this fact has been buttressed by anikwe et al. (2004) in their study of hydraulic conductivity in different soils of southeast, nigeria. coefficient of variability the coefficient of variation values determined for the eight (8) soil chemical properties and hydraulic conductivity are shown in (table 1). when grouped by the methods of wilding and dress, (1978) that is, cv < 15% = less variable, cv = 15 35% =moderately variable and cv > 35% = highly variable, the results show that soil ph, available phosphorus; exchangeable calcium, magnesium and cation exchange capacity were less variable. organic carbon; total nitrogen; exchangeable potassium and hydraulic conductivity on the other hand, were moderately variable (table 1). the results also showed that the experimental sites were more homogenous in terms of ph as they were characteristically acidic in reaction. the results also indicated that the soil chemical properties evaluated varied spatially and temporarily. this could be attributed to differences in land use and management practices employed in the study area. the correlation matrix among soil chemical properties (table 3) showed that soil ph correlated negatively with all the soil properties. on the other hand, organic carbon, total nitrogen, available phosphorus and exchangeable potassium correlated positively (table 3). the negative correlation was an indication that soil ph could affect the availability of these soil properties. summary and conclusion hydraulic conductivity functions and their relationship with some soil chemical properties were studied in a cultivated oxisols both in the field and laboratory. the field study involved a grid of 12 x12m 2 that was mapped out into 12 experimental points (sites). auger soil samples were randomly collected for the measurement of hydraulic conductivity using darcy’s equation and laboratory determination of soil chemical properties using appropriate procedures. data obtained were subjected to correlation analysis and relationship between soil properties and hydraulic conductivity were also evaluated using regression models. results of the chemical data of the study area, showed that the soils were generally acidic in nature and low in inherent fertility. hydraulic conductivity was found to vary widely both spatially and temporarily but relatively moderate. the correlation studies showed that, hydraulic conductivity correlated poorly with soil ph, which invariably, had negative correlation with all the soil properties evaluated. on the other hand, organic matter, total nitrogen, available phosphorus and exchangeable potassium were all positively correlated. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 297-303 301 table 1: soil chemical properties and hydraulic conductivity (ksat) rates of the study area s/no soil ph (h2o) organic carbon (%) total nitrogen (%) available p (mgkg -1 ) exchangeable cations (cmolkg -1 ) ca mg k cec (cmolkg -1 ) hydraulic conductivity (cm/h) 1 5.4 1.76 0.63 4.35 3.45 0.76 0.19 7.25 0.028 2 4.8 1.87 0.48 3.86 3.32 0.81 0.10 6.35 0.026 3 5.6 0.98 0.65 4.76 3.48 0.83 0.17 7.30 0.025 4 5.3 0.94 0.86 4.56 3.62 0.78 0.16 7.25 0.027 5 5.5 1.25 0.72 4.67 3.54 0.89 0.18 8.10 0.027 6 4.8 0.86 0.51 3.96 3.48 0.76 0.12 6.45 0.025 7 5.2 0.92 0.82 4.24 3.76 0.82 0.16 6.72 0.024 8 5.3 0.96 0.87 4.62 3.66 0.81 0.18 6.85 0.038 9 5.5 1.23 0.81 5.08 3.48 0.91 0.14 8.13 0.039 10 4.8 1.82 0.54 4.21 3.25 0.84 0.09 6.40 0.012 11 4.9 1.95 0.48 4.35 4.15 0.80 0.11 6.55 0.012 12 5.3 0.98 0.82 4.50 3.88 0.83 0.15 7.35 0.025 mean 5.12 1.29 0.68 4.43 3.59 0.82 0.15 7.06 0.026 std deviation 0.39 0.43 0.15 0.34 0.25 0.05 0.03 0.62 0.01 cv% 7.68% 33.17 22.07 7.73 6.92 5.58 23.11 8.73 31.45 table 2: relationship between hydraulic conductivity and some soil chemical properties of the study area dependent soil properties regression model r soil ph (h2o) ksat = 72.4x+ 372.4 -0.44 ns organic carbon (%) ksat = 89.8 x+ 235.1 0.51 total nitrogen (%) ksat = 0.172 x+ 0.0210 0.19 ns available phosphorus (mgkg -1 ) ksat = 236.8 x+ 1338.7 0.05 ns exchangeable cations (cmolkg -1 ) ca ksat = 114.2x+ 414.92 -86** mg ksat = 19.76 x+ 35.28 0.23 ns k ksat = 102.38 x92.24 0.32 ns cec (cmolkg -1 ) ksat = 802.4 x+ 016.4 0.82** ns= not significant * = significant at p = 0.05, ** = significant at p = 0.01 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 297-303 302 table 3: correlation matrix showing correlations among selected soil chemical variables in the study area variable x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 x6 x7 x8 x1 0.58* 0.06 ns 0.42 0.35 ns 0.17 ns 0.13 ns 0.15 ns x2 0.65** 0.58* 0.54* 0.52* 0.50* 0.61** x3 0.57* 0.61** 0.57* 0.67** 0.65** x4 0.56* 0.52* 0.58* 0.60* x5 0.61** 0.58* 0.63** x6 0.51* 0.61** x7 0.58* x8 note: x1 = soil ph; x2 = organic carbon; x3 = total nitrogen; x4 = available phosphorus; x5 = exchangeable calcium; x6 = exchangeable magnesium; x7 = exchangeable potassium; and x8 = cation exchange capacity (cec). ns = not significant, * = significant at 0.05, ** = significant at 0.01 levels of probability. the outcome of this study clearly showed that an understanding of the relationship between hydraulic conductivity and soil chemical properties will provide a basis for sustainable crop growth and modeling of water flow and chemical transport through the soil especially in degraded oxisols. references agboola, a. a., eneji, a. e., aiyelari, e. a., & tijani-eriola a. (1997). marginal lands, water quality and agricultural land pollutants in nigeria. proceedings of the 23 rd annual conference of soil science society of nigeria. 2 nd – 5 th march, 1997, sokoto, nigeria. pp. 303-315. akpan-idiok, a. u., opuwaribo, e. e., & longanathan (1996). available phosphorus of selected soils of the niger–delta and their relationship with iron and other soil characteristics. delta agric, 3, 96105. anikwe, n. a. n., mbah, c. n., & konugah d. i. (2004). relationship between saturated hydraulic conductivity and soil properties from different soils in south eastern nigeria. proceeding of the 29 th annual conference of the soil science society of nigeria 6-10th dec. 2004 abeokuta, nigeria. brady, h. c., & weil, r. r. (2007). the nature and properties of soil. (13 th ed.) prentice-hall india. carter, m. r. (1993). soil samples and methods of analysis. canadian society of soil science: lewis publishers, london. 823 p. dhan, p., & varde, s. b. (1976). capillary conductivity and soil water diffusivity as influenced by moisture content and texture. journal of india society of soil science, 24, 1-7. egbuchua, c. n. (2007). pedological characterization of some wetland soils in delta state. ph. d thesis of the delta state university, abraka, nigeria. egbuchua, c. n. (2011). characterization of some acid sulphate soils in relation to their agricultural land use potentials in delta state. nigerian journal of soil and environmental research, 9, 71-77. esu, i. e. (2004). soil characterization and mapping for food security and sustainable environmental in nigeria. key note address. proceedings of the 29 th annual conference of soil science society of nigeria 6-10 th dec., 2004, abeokuta, nigeria. fasina, a. s., arulebo, j. o., omolayo, f. o., & okunsanmi, t. a. (2005). properties and classification of five soils formed on granitic parent material of humid south west nigeria. nigerian journal of soil science, 15, 21-29. fmanr-federal ministry of agriculture and natural resources (1990). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 297-303 303 literature review on soil fertility investigation in nigeria (in 5 volumes) published by the federal ministry of agriculture lagos, nigeria p. 281. fran zeluebber, a. j. (2002). soil organic matter stratification ration as an indicator of soil quality. soil and tillage research, 66, 95-106. landon, j. r. (1991). booker tropical soil manual: a handbook of soil survey and agricultural land evaluation in the tropics. paper book edition. essex: longman p. 255. mbagwu, j. s. c. (1995). effects of land use on the hydrological properties of a south-east nigerian soil. wirtsch vetrinamed, 25, 375-382. miyazaki, i. d., nelson, r., & mac-intyr, l. (1984). early stage infiltration of water into horizontal and vertical soil column. hilgardia, 53: 1 24. probert, m. e., & keating, h. a. (2002). what soil constraints should be included in crop and forest models. agriculture ecosystem and environment, 82, 273-281. steel, g. d., & torrie, j. h. (1980). procedures of statistics. a biometric approach. (2 nd edition). mcgraw hill book company, inc. new york. p. 633. suleiman, a. a., & ritchie, (2001). estimating saturated hydraulic conductivity from soil porosity. trans asae, 44, 235 339. wilding, l. p., & dress, l. r (1978). spatial variability: a pedologist’s view point in: diversity of soils in the tropics. asa special publication, 34, 1 – 12. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 163 effects of spiruline (spirulina platensis) supplementation on oxidative stress markers, biochemical characteristics, and hematological parameters in rabbit (oryctolagus cuniculus) does chongsi margaret mary momoa mahamat tahir markhous adamb tchoffo hervec vemo bertin narcissed ngoula ferdinande tchoumboue josephf a,c,d,e,funiversity of dschang, faculty of agronomy and agricultural sciences, department of animal science, cameroon. buniversity of dschang, faculty of agronomy and agricultural sciences, department of animal science, cameroon; department of biology, faculty of science and techniques, university of adam barka, abeche, chad.  margaretchongsi@yahoo.fr (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 17 february 2021 revised: 19 march 2021 accepted: 22 april 2021 published: 25 may 2021 keywords rabbit doe oxidative stress hematology spirulina supplementation health. the present study was carried out in order to evaluate the effects of feed supplementation with spiruline powder on the oxidative stress markers, biochemical characteristics, and hematological parameters in rabbit doe. twenty-one nulliparous and sexually mature does (7–8 months old) were distributed into three groups of seven does each, comparable in terms of body weight. after a week of feeding with experimental feed, does of each group were mated. during the trial, does of group 1 (control group) were fed ad libitum with a feed free from spiruline (control feed), while those of groups 2 and 3 received the control feed supplemented with spiruline powder at 0.6 and 1.2%, respectively. immediately after parturition, blood was collected for analyses of hematological, biochemical, and oxidative stress parameters. studied parameters included serum concentrations of total proteins, cholesterol, aspartate aminotransferase (asat), alanine aminotransferase (alat), creatinine, and urea; malondialdehyde, reduced glutathione, catalase, and superoxide dismutase; and hematological parameters. the total protein concentration, number of white and red blood cells, platelets, hemoglobin, hematocrit, and mean corpuscular volume were significantly (p<0.05) higher in does treated compared to control. oxidative stress parameters were comparable (p>0.05) among treatments. hence, these results show that feed supplementation with spirulina powder can improve rabbit doe health, notably at 1.2%, since optimal results were obtained at this percentage. contribution/originality: this study contributes to providing evidence on the effects of supplementing with spiruline in its raw powder form, in farm animal feedstuffs. this may contribute to other means of improving farm animal productivity by using medicinal plants to protect them from oxidative stress effects to which they are exposed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 2 (2021): 163-170. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:margaretchongsi@yahoo.fr http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 163-170 164 doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.163.170 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: chongsi margaret mary momo --mahamat tahir markhous adam --tchoffo herve --vemo bertin narcisse --ngoula ferdinand --tchoumboue joseph (2021). effects of spiruline (spirulina platensis) supplementation on oxidative stress markers, biochemical characteristics, and hematological parameters in rabbit (oryctolagus cuniculus) does. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2), 163-170. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.163.170 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction many endogenous factors (valko, morris, & cronin, 2005) can be responsible for the perturbation of the animal system through the production of reactive oxygen species (ros), which lead to induction of oxidative stress (os). these include mitochondria, peroxisomes, the endoplasmic reticulum, prostaglandin synthesis, auto-oxidation of adrenalin, reduced riboflavin, inflammation, and infection (poljsak and milisav, 2013). exogenous factors may also be involved, such as air and water pollution, heat, feed, aging, certain drugs, industrial solvents, cooking gas, radiation, and heavy metals. oxidative stress is a state that results from a disequilibrium within an individual, between the production of oxidants and the defense mechanism of antioxidants (pastre, 2005) in favour of oxidants. many parameters, including enzymatic antioxidants (superoxide dismutase, catalase, and peroxidases), end products of lipid peroxidation like malondialdehyde, hepatotoxicity and nephrotoxicity markers of oxidative stress (alat, asat, creatinine, urea, total proteins, and cholesterol), and hematology can facilitate the evaluation and measurement of os (birben, sahiner, sackesen, erzurum, & kalayci, 2012). perturbation or dysfunction of the animal system by oxidative stress leads to negative consequences on productivity (tamboura et al., 2006), resulting in important economic losses. to deal with these problems, animal breeders turn inceasingly towards medicinal substances such as antibiotics and hormones, to fight against numerous infections, stimulate growth, and improve production (fao/who, 2009). awareness of the dangers of these medicines create distrust and worry in the minds of consumers, making it an obligation for governments to ban the use of antibiotics as growth activators in farm animal feedstuffs. the increasing demand for ‘natural’ products, which are seen as pure and ecologically sound, has stimulated the minds of researchers who are more and more interested in substitutes for synthetic products considered dangerous for animal and human health (afssa (french food safety agency), 2007). thus, studies have been carried out on diverse plants with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, anticancer, antibacterial, anti-protozoan, and hepatoprotective properties and that also stimulate growth and fertility (chowdhury, islam, & khalequzzaman, 2009). equally, spiruline (spirulina platensis) has been the object of many studies. it represents the most abundant photosynthetic micro-organism and is common in the lakes of central africa and mexico (ould, bouchabchoub, massoui, & elyachioui, 2013). spiruline is considered a food source with high nutritive value, due to its high digestibility and protein content (60–70%) (ould et al., 2013), fat (15–25%) (djaghoubi, 2013), and lipid (5.6–11%) (sguera, 2008). it has antioxidant properties due to its phytocyanine content (djaghoubi, 2013). these properties of spiruline make it a potential protector of animals from the effects of os. razafindrajaona, rakotozandriny, randria, and ramampiherika (2010) observed that the administration of aqueous extract of spiruline at doses of 2 and 8 mg/kg bw led to increase in growth and better libido in male rats. deutcheu (2016) reported an improvement in reproduction in rabbits treated respectively with 5, 15, or 25 mg methanolic extract of spiruline/kg bw and rabbit does having received 5, 10, or 20 mg aqueous extract of spirulina/kg bw. all the above studies were performed on extracts of spiruline and, to the best of our knowledge, data are rare on the use of raw spiruline as a feed supplement and its anti-toxicity effects. thus the current study was initiated to contribute to improvement in the health of farm animals using medicinal plants. a search of the literature on spiruline and its effects showed that data are very scarce on its raw/powder form. recent data on this product are equally hard to find, making comparison difficult for the results obtained from this work. 2. materials and methods 2.1. animal material twenty-one healthy adult fertile rabbit does (new zealand breed) 8 months of age, weighing 2.8–3.0 kg, produced at the teaching and research farm of the university of dschang, were used. they were treated against external (exo) and internal (hemo) parasites by subcutaneous injection of an ivermectin solution (0.1 ml/kg bw), repeated after two weeks. 2.2. housing and feeding animals were housed in a cement-block building with a sheet metal roof, plaster-rendered and an open 1/3 upper section. they were kept individually in wire cages (galvanized metal, 96 cm long, 40 cm wide, 15 cm high). each cage was equipped with a feeder and a drinker (800 ml capacity). the building was previously disinfected with a solution of javel water and cresyl (1/2 l each mixed in 20 l water), which was sprayed inside the building and in all the cages. animals were introduced to the cages two weeks after disinfection. throughout the trial period, animals received http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.163.170 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 163-170 165 complete feed and water ad libitum. the composition and chemical characteristics of this feed are summarized in table 1. table-1. composition and chemical characteristics of the feed. ingredients proportion in feed (%) maize 27.00 wheat bran 14.00 kernel cake 18.00 soy bean cake 5.00 cotton cake 4.00 premix10%* 5.00 fish meal 3.00 palm oil 2.00 sea shells 1.50 salt 0.50 rice bran 20.00 total (kg) 100.00 chemical characteristics metabolizable energy (kcal/kg) 2435.23 crude protein (% dm) 16.47 crude cellulose (% dm) 13.65 calcium (% dm) 1.26 phosphorus (% dm) 0.55 sodium (% dm) 0.28 lysine (% dm) 0.83 methionine (% dm) 0.36 note: *premix10%: a mixture of vitamins a, b complex, d, k, and e plus fe, cu, zn, se, mn, methionine and lysine principally and incorporated at 5% in diet. 2.3. plant material spiruline (spirulina platensis) in the form of dried flat cake was collected from lake chad. the flat form was powdered to coarse particles using a grinding mill and incorporated in the feed. 2.4. ethical considerations experimental protocols used in this study were approved by the ethical committee of the department of animal science of the university of dschang (ecdas-uds 23/02/2015/uds/fasa/dsaes), and were in conformity with the internationally accepted standard ethical guide lines for laboratory animal use and care as described in the european community guidelines; eec directive86/609/eec, of the 24 november1986. 2.5. experimental design before starting the experiment, 21 does with the above-mentioned characteristics were weighed and randomly divided into thre groups of seven, comparable in terms of body weight (bw). spiruline was incorporated in feed at the following rates: • group 1 (control): feed without spirulina, • group 2: control feed + 0.6 % spiruline, • group 3: control feed + 1.2% spiruline. after one week of feeding the experimental feed rations, all does were put to reproduction. after parturition, they were followed up for 2 weeks. 2.6. parameters and characteristics studied 2.6.1. hematological and biochemical analysis blood samples were obtained by cardiac puncture and collected without anticoagulant for biochemical and os indicator dosages, and with anticoagulant (edta) for complete blood count. the biochemical parameters analyzed from serum were performed with appropriate commercial chronolab kits (barcelona, spain). the spectro-photometric method was used according to the manufacturer’s instructions. the hematological parameters analyzed were performed using a veterinary hematology analyzer (genius kt 6180, shenzhen genius electronics co., ltd., hong kong, china). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 163-170 166 2.6.2. oxidative stress markers the activities of superoxide dismutase (sod), glutathione (gsh) and catalase (cat) and the concentration of malondialdehyde (mda) were measured. 2.6.2.1. estimation of catalase activity catalase activity was estimated according to aebi (1984), based on on the ability of h2o2 to decompose via the action of cat to produce h2o and o2. decrease in absorbance in the uv region over time corresponds to cat activity. a volume of 2.0 ml of substrate (10 pmol/ml of h2o2 in 50 mmol/l sodium-potassium phosphate buffer, ph 7.0) was incubated with 100 ml of serum. decomposition of h2o2 was followed directly for 2 min by decrease in absorbance at 240 nm. 2.6.2.2. estimation of gsh the glutathione level was measured according to the method of moron, depierre, and mannervik (1979), based on the reaction of gsh with 5,5-dithiobis-2-nitro-benzoic acid (dtnb) (sigma aldrich, berlin, germany) at ph 8.0, which was added to the tubes and the intense yellow color formed turned red at 412 nm in a spectrophotometer after 10 min. a standard curve of gsh was prepared using concentrations ranging from 2 to 10 nmol of gsh in 5% trichloroacetic acid (labtech,windsor, australia). after centrifugation, absorbance of the yellow color was measured and the results were calculated from the glutathione standard curve. 2.6.2.3. estimation of lipid peroxidation lipid peroxidation was estimated by the reaction of thiobarbituric acid (tba) (qulaikems, new delhi, india) with malondialdehyde (mda) according to botsoglou et al. (1994). in the presence of an acid and heat (ph 2–3, 100 mc), mda condensed with two molecules of tba to produce a pink color complex that absorbs at 532 nm. a total of 105 ml of orthophosphoric acid at 1% and 500 ml of the precipitation mixture (1% tba in a 1% acetic acid solution) was added to 100 ml of homogenate. the mixture in each tube was homogenized and placed in boiling water for 15 min. the tubes were then cooled in an ice bath and the mixture was centrifuged at 3500 rpm for 10 min. absorbance was read at 532 nm against the control. 2.6.2.4. estimation of sod adrenaline is sufficiently stable at acidic ph but, when ph is increased, its rate of auto-oxidation increases. the dosage of sod is thus based on the its capacity to inhibit or decelerate auto-oxidation of adrenaline to adrenochromium in the milieu of a base. the method proposed by misra and fridovich (1972) was used in this study. microtubes of serum were introduced into the spectrometer, as well as 1660 ml of carbonate buffer solution (ph 10) and 200 ml of adrenaline (0.3 mm). the absorbance of adreno-chromium formed was read at 480 nm 30 and 90 s after initiation of the reaction. 2.7. statistical analysis data were submitted to one-way analysis of variance (anova) to test the effects of the rate of spiruline powder incorporation on the study parameters. the duncan test was performed to separate means when there was a significant difference. the results are expressed as mean ± standard deviation, and the limit of significance was fixed at 5%. the software spss 20.0 was used for the analysis. 3. results 3.1. effects of spiruline powder feed supplementation on os indicators in rabbit does table 2 presents the variation in rabbit doe serum concentration of os indicators according to the level of spiruline powder in the feed. serum levels of malondialdehyde and concentrations of catalase and superoxide dismutase were lower in animals administered feed containing spiruline powder as compared to the control group. meanwhile, the reverse was observed with reduced glutathion. however, no significant difference (p>0.05) was found irrespective of the indicator considered. table-2. variation of serum concentration of os indicators according to dose of spiruline powder in rabbit doe. os indicator level of spiruline supplementation (%) p 0 (n = 5) 0.6 (n = 5) 1.2 (n = 5) malondialdehyde (µm/l) 0.35±0.16 0.29±0.12 0.21±0.07 0.28 reduced glutathion (µm/l) 47.48±12.63 69.88±23.75 60.46±14.28 0.25 catalase (µm/min/ml) 0.24±0.03 0.21±0.07 0.21±0.05 0.73 superoxide dismutase (µm/l) 0.37±0.07 0.32±0.11 0.32±0.02 0.80 note: n: number of animals per group. 3.2. effects of spiruline powder supplementation in feed on biochemical parameters in rabbit doe variation of serum concentration of biochemical characteristics with respect to dose of spiruline powder in rabbit doe is summarized on table 3. it appears that, serum levels of creatinine, urea, asat and total cholesterol were asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 163-170 167 comparable (p>0.05) among the different treatments. on the contrary, concentrations of total proteins and alat were significantly (p<0.05) higher in rabbits given feed with highest rate of spiruline with respect to the other two treatments. table-3. variation in rabbit doe serum concentrations of selected biochemical parameters with respect to level of spiruline powder administered. biochemical parameter level of spiruline supplementation (%) p 0 (n = 5) 0.6 (n = 5) 1.2 (n = 5) creatinine (mg/dl) 1.21±0.38 1.36±0.49 1.47±0.56 0.75 urea (mg/dl) 342.71±42.27 350.00±89.24 259.25±38.94 0.12 alat (u/l) 16.19±5.41b 14.44±3.14b 23.63±2.93a 0.02 asat (u/l) 16.56±4.84 24.44±6.50 18.13±5.36 0.17 total protein (g/dl) 4.10±0.85b 3.86±0.19b 5.48±0.53a 0.01 total cholesterol (mg/dl) 21.01±5.56 14.81±5.87 19.92±7.61 0.39 note: a,b: values with the same subscript letter in the same line are not significantly different (p> 0.05). n: number of animals per group. alat: alanine aminotransferase. asat: aspartate aminotransferase. 3. 3. effects of spiruline powder supplementation in feed on hematological parameters in rabbit doe table 4 summarizes the variation in rabbit doe serum concentrations of hematological characteristics according to the level of spiruline powder administered. the number of white blood cells was significantly (p<0.05) higher in animals fed with a ration containing spiruline than in those those without spiruline. red blood cells, hematocrit, mean corpuscular volume and level of hemoglobin were higher in t2 females (1.2% spiruline), though comparable (p>0.05) to the control, except for hemoglobin level. contrary to this, the numbers of platelets were significantly (p<0.05) higher in t1 rabbits (0.6% spiruline) in comparison to the other groups. nevertheless, the other hematological characteristics were comparable (p>0.05) among the different treatments. table-4. variation in rabbit doe serum concentration of hematological parameters according to level of spiruline powder administered. hematological parameter level of spiruline supplementation (%) p 0 (n = 5) 0.6 (n = 5) 1.2 (n = 5) wbc (103/µl) 4.43±1.87b 7.60±1.20a 7.13±0.47a 0.03 lymphocytes (103/µl) 3.27±1.86b 6.10±1.17a 4.67±0.91ab 0.04 monocytes (103/µl) 0.23±0.06b 0.40±0.14ab 0.60±0.10a 0.01 granulocytes (103/µl) 0.93±0.57 1.10±0.24 1.87±0.50 0.17 rbc (106/µl) 5.86±0.99ab 4.87±0.78b 6.63±0.70a 0.04 hgb (g/dl) 9.37±1.55b 10.70±1.73b 14.54±1.67a 0.01 hct (%) 38.30±6.00ab 30.13±4.95b 45.73±9.15a 0.04 mcv (%) 66.63±3.91ab 62.05±0.97b 68.53±2.25a 0.03 mch (pg) 17.96±7.68 21.98±1.61 22.43±0.51 0.40 mchc (g/dl) 27.00±10.59 35.53±2.21 32.87±1.80 0.23 plt (103/µl) 78.67±5.69b 129.25±24.78a 84.67±19.55b 0.02 mpv (fl) 8.57±1.56 6.58±0.57 7.17±1.27 0.14 rdw (fl) 9.77±4.22 5.85±0.67 8.30±1.73 0.18 pct (%) 0.06±0.01 0.08±0.03 0.05±0.02 0.26 note: a,b: values with the same subscript letter in the same line are not significantly different (p > 0.05). n: number of animals per group. rbc: red blood cell count, wbc: white blood cell count; hg: hemoglobin ; hct: hematocrit ; mcv: mean corpuscular volume; mch: mean corpuscular hemoglobin; mchc: mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration; plt: platelets; rdw: red cell distribution width; pct: plaquetocrit.; mpv: mean plaquetocrit volume. 4. discussion many parameters, including hematology, enzymatic antioxidants (superoxide dismutase, catalase, and peroxidases), end products of lipid peroxidation like mda, hepatotoxicity and nephrotoxicity markers of os such as aspartate aminotransferase (asat) and alanine aminotransferase (alat), creatinine, urea, total protein, and cholesterol can facilitate the evaluation and measurement of os. the detection of oxidation derivatives of these different substances will therefore serve as markers of the presence of os (birben et al., 2012). variation in the values of these characteristics is used as test to show the action of extracts of substances that act as antioxidants against os to which animals are exposed, from both endogenous and exogenous sources. enzymes commonly used in the evaluation of liver function are aspartate asat and alat; increase in aminitransferase activity reflects cytolysis. the biochemical analyses in this study showed higher values of asat and alat in treated groups compared to controls, although this difference was only significant for alat. these results are in disagreement with kader and kalapuram (2017), who recorded a marked decrease in the activities of alat and asat in rats treated with e. officinalis at a dose of 250 mg/kg bw; and with jotham, hilou, ouedraogo, sombie, and traore (2018), who asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 163-170 168 administered extracts of a. hispidum and recorded a significant decrease in alat. this contradiction may be due to the form and dose of spiruline used. meanwhile, a non-significant decrease in total cholesterol and urea (at 1.2%) and a rise in creatinine levels were observed in spiruline-treated animals compared to those given the control feed. these findings are in agreement with cimanga et al. (2015), who administered oral doses of 0.5 and 1 g/kg bw aqueous extract of triclisia gilletii to wistar rats. creatinine is a breakdown product of creatine phosphate in muscle and is usually produced at a fairly constant rate by the body, depending on muscle mass (zuo, wang, zhou, sachdeva, & ruelos, 2008). the increase in creatinine level found in this study could be due to dysfunction of glomerules, which are the structures responsible for renal filtration, while that in urea could be explained by the increase in protein catabolism due to the high synthesis of the enzyme arginase, which intervenes in the urea production. equally, an increased rate of total serum proteins was noticed in animals that received the highest dose of spiruline powder (1.2%). these results are in agreement with those of kameni (2011), who observed an increase in the rate of total serum protein in rats treated with an aqueous extract of nymphaea lotus at a dose of 75 mg/kg bw. such a rise in serum protein concentration may be due to enhanced digestibility of proteins by spiruline. these results suggest that plant extracts could improve os via their free-radical-scavenging mechanism, which could be linked to the effects of bioactive constituents including phenols, flavonoids, and alkaloids present in plant extracts. assessment of hematological characteristics can be used to explain the hematological functions of a chemical compound or plant extracts in an organism. blood acts as a pathological reflector of the status of exposed animals to toxicants and other conditions and/or agents (olafedehan et al., 2010). spiruline has immunological properties (shih, cheng, wong, kuo, & chou, 2009) and phycocyanine, which it contains, has the capacity to stimulate the production of cells within bone marrow, with a direct consequence which is the stimulation of synthesis of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets (le bail, 2010) necessary for the survival of rabbit kids. also, certain polysaccharides possess immunostimulatory and immunoregulatory properties (evets, 1994), as in the case of the spirulan contained in spiruline (rechter et al., 2006). this could explain the increase found in the numbers of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets and levels of haemoglobin and hematocrit recorded in this study in rabbits given feed supplemented with spirulina, with respect to the control. the increment in hematocrit and haemoglobin can only have arisen as a consequence of the increase in red blood cells; and that of lymphocytes and monocytes a result of the rise in white blood cells. these results are similar to those obtained by ngoula et al. (2014) in male guinea pigs treated with essential oil of guava leaves; by ezejiofor and orisakwe (2017), who administered aqueous leaf extract of costus afer at doses of 750, 1150, and 2250 mg/kg bw to rats; and by cimanga et al. (2015) who used an aqueous extract of triclisia gilletii in wistar rats at an oral dose of 5 g/kg bw. the results registered in the present work indicate a decline in sod and cat activities and mda levels, with an increase in reduced glutathione in rabbits given spiruline powder with respect to the control, though these were not significant. this finding iss similar to a report by vemo et al. (2017), who treated guinea pigs with ethanolic extract of b. engleriana leaves and obtained a significant decrease compared to those not receiving the extract. similar observations were made by ngoumtsop et al. (2017) in japanese quail receiving 200 mg/kg bw of aqueous leaf extract of persea americana, by babatunji et al. (2016) after treatment of rats with an aqueous extract of aframomum melegueta (400 mg/kg bw), and by jotham et al. (2018) in rats treated with acanthospermum hispidum extract (250 mg/kg bw). these mitigate the antioxidant capacity of plant extracts, which can be attributed to their bioactive components such as phenols, flavonoids, and alkaloids. the major enzymatic antioxidants of the lungs are sod, cat, and glutathione peroxidase. sod ensures the elimination of the superoxide anion, the first toxic species formed from oxygen. it thus provides the first line of defense against os. low values of sod can be explained by low levels of these trace elements. in the case of os, sod will behave in two different ways. initially the body will respond to moderate os by overexpressing sod. if the stress persists and produces massive reactive oxygen species (ros), sod will be destroyed and its concentration will drop. like sod, seleno-dependent glutathione-peroxidase or reduced glutathione will behave in two different ways faced with os. paradoxically, excess concentration of sod can be dangerous because, in this case, it is at the root of overproduction of hydrogen peroxide (birben et al., 2012). knowing that sod behaves in two ways when faced with os, the slight decrease found in this study may be attributed to the fact that excessive free radicals may have been produced, thereby destroying this antioxidant enzyme and reducing its concentration. polyunsaturated fatty acids in cell membranes are the primary target of ros (birben et al., 2012), resulting in the formation of lipid peroxides (meagher & fitzgerald, 2000). lipid peroxidation yields mda, which is generally a product of the oxidative decomposition of unsaturated lipids (haj-mouhamed et al., 2003). at birth, the system of rabbit kids is very rich in lipids and is thus potentially susceptible to thre influence of free radicals. some components of spirulina, including phenolics, phycocyanine, and tocopherol, possess antioxidant activities (guan et al., 2009; patel, mishra, & ghosh, 2006) and may played a role in protecting kids from free radicals. this can be demonstrated by the decrease in mda level and increased concentration of reduced glutathione observed in spirulina-treated groups in the current study. mda is a product of the oxidative decomposition of unsaturated lipids (haj-mouhamed et al., 2003), while glutathion is mainly used as a substrate of glutathionperoxidase that ensures the elimination of lipid peroxides. thus, the values recorded for these two os markers show low lipid peroxidation in females fed with rations containing spiruline powder. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 163-170 169 5. conclusion the present study shows that supplementation of feed with spiruline powder improved hematological parameters, as seen in white blood cells, and biochemical parameters, as indicated by an increase in total protein but no significant change in most parameters as well or in os markers. however, there was a general tendency of improvement in the parameters considered in animals that received feed containing spiruline powder, in a dosedependent manner. thus, supplementing feed with a higher dose of spiruline powder may protect rabbits from os to which they are exposed from various sources. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: all authors contributed in an equal manner in designing the present research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references aebi, h. 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(2008). simultaneous determination of creatinine and uric acid in human urine by high-performance liquid chromatography. analytical sciences, 24(12), 1589-1592. available at: https://doi.org/10.2116/analsci.24.1589. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(4), 103-115 103 rural development ngos and service delivery to the very poor: an empirical analysis of a training center in rural cameroon balgah roland azibo research fellow/lecturer; college of technology, university of bamenda, bambili, cameroon emmanuel yenshu vubo department of sociology and anthropology, faculty of social and management sciences, university of buea, buea, cameroon innocent ndoh mbue lecturer; faculty of industrial engineering, university of douala, douala, cameroon jude ndzifon kimengsi department of geography and environmental studies, catholic university of cameroon (catuc), bamenda, cameroon abstract the role of development nongovernmental organizations (dngos) in driving change, servicing the very poor and reducing poverty especially in rural areas in developing countries has been generally affirmed in the rural economics literature. this romantic image accounts to a large extent for the exponential numeric growth observed in the sector, and for burgeoning research on the subject by rural development economists. however, not enough empirical evidence exists on the extent to which such organizations actually service the very poor. this paper uses the example of a rural development ngo in the administrative unit of north west cameroon to assess the extent to which the very poor actually benefit from dngo services. a relative poverty approach is applied, allowing for the use of individual indicators and computed poverty indices to compare beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the dngo service delivery based on cross sectional data. the results indicate that the dngo serviced mainly poor communities. however, a disproportionately higher share of the benefits (60%) went to groups that were already well off before service delivery, than to the very poor. the paper then emphasizes the need for dngos to carry out poverty analysis prior to service delivery, as a prerequisite to effectively reach out to the very poor, particularly in rural areas in cameroon. keywords: development ngos, service delivery, the very poor, rural cameroon 1. introduction the importance of non-governmental organizations (ngos) as key actors for poverty reduction and promoting sustainable development especially in rural communities have been repeatedly emphasi corresponding author’s name: balgah roland azibo email address: balgazib@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:balgazib@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 103-115 104 zed in the rural development and economic literature. this importance resonates from multiple perspectives. market failure theorists, for instance, suggest that the poverty reduction relevance of ngos emerges from the disinterest of businessmen to provide services to poorer segments of society who usually do not have the resources to afford such services that will provide benefits to the entrepreneur, as well as the growing inefficiency of governmental organisations to provide for the same type of needs. under such circumstances, ngos emerge to provide services that meet the demands of the poor (hansmann, 1980). supply-side theorists perceive ngos as outlets for goodwill behaviour, dissemination of own ideas, and a means to promote conceived socially accepted values and norms of behavior (rose-ackermann, 1996; steinberg, 2006). social values as used here represent an enduring belief that a conceived end-state by the nonprofit managers is essentially different to a preferable, generally accepted or conventional agreed way of life (rokeach, 1973). if individuals or communities have their conception of this end-state, they are motivated to create ngos that practically allow them to direct their activities towards their preferred end state. this is more glaring, especially when states fail, are dysfunctional or do not function properly (rose-ackermann, 1996; jegers, 2008; balgah, 2014), or when state and other resources are very limited (tchakoa and nji, 1999). integration theorists view ngos as institutional responses to the shortcomings of specialized labour markets. ngos then emerge to stimulate the compensation of shortcomings at the market place through self-propelled activities promoted by such organizations (steinberg, 2006; valentinov, 2009). irrespective of theoretical perspective, it is generally agreed that ngos play crucial roles in reducing poverty especially in developing countries with regional, rural-urban or intra-household poverty disparities (tchakoa and nji, 1999; fambom and baye, 2002). in cameroon, for instance, where disparities exist between different regions and between households in the same region (baye, 2004), the poor have been identified as being mainly concentrated in rural areas (epo and baye, 2007). dngos can reduce these disparities by targeting the very poor in rural areas. though data is difficult to find, dngos often direct services and therefore enormous funds towards the poor. the presbyterian rural training center fonta, a dngo of the presbyterian church in cameroon for instance devoted almost fcfa 130 million (us $ 290,000) to poverty alleviation programs between 1994 and 1996 (walla and nji, 1997). while this seems plausible, not enough efforts have been made to assess how deep such ngo service delivery reaches out to the very poor. this article intends to empirically narrow this gap by examining a case study dngo from the north west region of cameroon. the paper will proceed as follows. it will briefly review the economic and development literature on targeting, before presenting the materials and methods implored in the study. the results and discussions will follow. conclusions will then be made on the possible implications of the case study for service delivery by ngos to the very poor in a developing country like cameroon. 2. servicing the very poor: a succinct literature overview directly servicing the very poor by governments and ngos especially in developing countries has proven to be a vital and efficient approach to explicitly or implicitly reach country-specific poverty reduction targets or contribute to global development goals. efficiency of service delivery is measured as the percentage of the group initially targeted compared to those who eventually benefit from a service. targeting includes all efforts to direct access to a service to selected beneficiaries. for instance to fight poverty and reduce income inequality, certain services may target only the poor or the very poor (sen, 1995; hoddinott, 2001). the more precise the poor are targeted, the less costly it is to fight poverty (sen, 1995). in this light, for an antipoverty policy to effectively achieve its goal, it must target the poor and at best, the very poor. in other words, limited resources must be targeted to those who need them most (tchakoa and nji, 1999). for development ngos to effectively contribute to poverty alleviation, they must target their limited resources to the very poor in rural areas (baye, 2005). traditionally, the economic literature has used poverty lines asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 103-115 105 (between 1 and 2 us $/day) to define who is poor or not (ravallion, 1992; deaton, 1999; hoddinott, 2001; baye, 2005; carter and barrett, 2006). the very poor are logically categorized by how much and to what extent they depart in a negative sense from the poverty line. this approach – in spite of some criticisms (such as the actual value of the us $ in different countries, the fact that such measurements are often cross sectional, requiring comprehensive living standards measurement surveys for validity) the poverty line has remained key in determining the very poor from the near poor or the non-poor. indicator based approaches have nevertheless been developed as alternative options for disaggregating poverty groups in society. such indicators that should be easily observable, verifiable and objectively describe and measure poverty would form the basis of an eventual individual or household poverty index. the higher the index, the better off the household is, and vice versa. negative indices will generally indicate that households are very poor, compared to other sections of society with positive indices (undp, 2000; henry et al., 2003; carter and barrett, 2006; zeller et al., 2006). in this sense, service delivery to the very poor could therefore be proxied by the initial indices of beneficiary households, while impacts would be measured on the level of (positive or negative) change of such indices after service delivery, in relation to the situation before. thus while the poverty lines provide absolute measures of poverty, indicator based approaches are much more important in identifying relative poverty differences within the same communities. a number of approaches are applied in the development economics literature to improve targeting of services to specific groups. generally speaking, there are two broad approaches, namely administrative and self targeting. administrative targeting on the one hand refers to targeting approaches that encourage the active participation of desired group(s) while discouraging others. self targeting on the other hand puts service delivery at the disposal of all. service delivery beneficiaries-such as the very poorself select themselves. very often, services are packaged so that they are less appealing to undesired groups, for example the rich (irungu and zeller, 2002). for poverty alleviation programs, it seems primordial to identify and target services to the very poor, thereby increasing efficiency of service delivery, especially when resources are very limited (sen, 1995; skoufias et al., 1999; tchakoa and nji, 1999; holzmann et al., 2003; müller and bibi, 2007). very often, administrative targeting has been achieved on the basis of prior assessment of living standards, household consumption expenditures, poverty lines or the cost-of basic-needs (ravallion, 1992; deaton, 1999; baye, 2005). scarcity of household level data especially in developing countries has necessitated the emergence of targeting approaches based on indicators, whereby service delivery increasingly depends on independent indicators of poverty such as land size, educational level, housing, access to food, or on a calculated poverty index (ravallion, 1992; balgah and buchenrieder, 2010). although this approach is practically plausible, it is not completely void of program capture by the better-off, this likely to result in targeting inefficiency of government and ngo pro-poor programs (phillips et al., 2014). there is considerable evidence of attempts to assess targeting levels by government and ngo programs in developing and developed countries. an example is the work of dufhues and buchenrieder (2005) on government microfinance schemes that aimed at reaching out to the poor in vietnam. they report a satisfactory targeting efficiency, as half of the households who benefited from access to credit were predominantly poor. however, the poorest households were not fully targeted. irungu and zeller (2002) assess the targeting efficiency of child protection programs carried out by two kenyan based dngos. they report that dngo services benefitted more of the less poor compared to the very poor households. households with lower social capital benefitted less than those with higher social capital. as targeting made use of community knowledge and processes, the authors challenge the importance of community level participation in enhancing better targeting (kevane and conning, 2002). nevertheless, the program was lauded to have succeeded geographically, by targeting communities with higher poverty incidences in kenya. the preceding examples show divergent results, justifying further empirical research. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 103-115 106 a relative poverty assessment approach is used here to compare targeted and non-targeted households, as a means to measure the targeting efficiency of service delivery by a dngo in the north west region of cameroon. 3. materials and methods 3.1. background and problem setting development ngos play crucial roles in the development of the smallholder agriculture in cameroon. one dngo with a long development history in the country is the presbyterian rural training center (prtc) fonta. established in 1968, the center delivers development-oriented services to “poor” rural communities under the umbrella of the presbyterian church in cameroon (pcc). its key mission consists to fight poverty in rural areas in the northwest region of cameroon where it concentrates its activities, through training, extension and adaptive, participatory research (balgah and buchenrieder, 2011). the northwest is one of the two predominantly englishspeaking regions in cameroon. it lies within latitude 5° 40´ and 7° 10´ north of the equator and longitude 9° 36´ and 11° 10´ east of the greenwich meridian (tah, 2001). the region counts about two million inhabitants who live predominantly (80 percent) in rural areas. most of the region lies between 1,2001,700masl, with agricultural activities witnessed at elevations as high as 2,200masl. it receives an average annual precipitation of 2,000mm. the natural ecosystem is covered by wooded savanna hence the name: the grasslands of cameroon (scheidegger, 1997). patches of secondary and cultivated forests can be seen on the hills and valleys. economic development of the region depends largely on agriculture which is predominantly subsistence and carried out on small holdings using hand tools like hoes and cutlasses (balgah and buchenrieder, 2011). highly complex intercropping systems with up to five crops usually on wide ridges (1.5-2m) can be observed. fish farming has been developed over the years as an integral part of the complex farming systems in the region. only households with permanent or usufruct access and rights to specific resources (e.g. a permanent water supply) are privileged to farm fish. most fish ponds are therefore located on gentle slopes either far away or close to the homesteads. fish farming practices are either extensive or semi intensive, with intensive systems only occasionally practiced at government fish stations. a land based production system with earth ponds is the rule. usually, unsophisticated technology is used and the fishes mostly depend on natural food with the chief external feed source being kitchen left over. most ponds however contain compost heaps built on the basis of available vegetation. family labor is often employed. the region counts some 1,365 fish farmers owning some 1700 ponds, with a mean pond size of 200m²/ farmer (ayika, 2003). prtc as a rural development ngo operates as a service delivery organization under the umbrella of the presbyterian church in cameroon. it aims at servicing 600 very poor people annually in rural areas, who often neither do not benefit from state services 1 nor can afford private development services 2 . integrated fish farming is one of the dngo’s extension (service delivery) packages. 1 in cameroon, an extension worker coordinates a very broad zone often consisting of one to three villages. most farmers therefore do not know the extension workers assigned to them. although almost 20 percent of government extension workers in cameroon work in the research (northwest) region, the extensionist –farmer ratio is still about 1 to 1000. this ratio has only been slightly improved following the recruitment of 25.000 workers into the civil service undertaken in 2011. fonjong, (2004) and goufo (2008) for instance consider the shortage of extension workers a hindrance to agricultural and rural development in the country, justifying ngos intervention in service delivery to the very poor. 2 training private candidates in cameroon’s national veterinary, animal or agricultural colleges since the early1990s has generated an emerging market for private extension services, initially servicing the commercial plantations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 103-115 107 we use the integrated fish farming program to assess the ability of the case study ngo to service the very poor, as the program implicitly aims at improving the diets and income of the very poor in the research area. additional motivation for choosing this program sector for analysis emanates from the key role that farmed fish plays for very poor, as a potential source of home produced animal protein (missikire, 2001). also, cameroon has been a net importer of fish for a long time. integrated fish farming therefore represents a sustainable option to enhance local production. lastly, the fish farming program has been lauded for its ability to enhance poverty alleviation amongst the poorest of the poor in north west cameroon (walla and nji, 1997; balgah, 2004). this conjecture has never been verified. this is even more interesting as the case study organisation is one of the oldest national dngos in cameroon. 3.2. design and sampling procedures the case study service delivery dngo did not have baseline information on the beneficiaries of the fish farming project. therefore, only cross sectional analysis after service delivery could be performed. to measure the service delivery efficiency to the very poor, we compare beneficiaries with a matched sample of non-beneficiary households in the same beneficiary communities. we purposively selected two divisions (mezam and boyo) in northwest cameroon, considering that they had the highest concentration of beneficiaries of the dngo’s service delivery. mezam division also has better access to the bamenda city market than boyo division. this sampling approach reduces bias and improves beneficiary representativeness. only beneficiary villages of dngo services were sampled (balgah and buchenrieder, 2011). seven villages from mezam division (kedjom keku, fonta, njimbee, akossia, asanje, mforya and nibe) and three from boyo division (mbesa, akeh and ajung) that satisfied the above mentioned criterion were retained for the survey. a structured questionnaire was applied to collect data on household demography, income structures as well as other additionally interesting variables. data was collected at household level. the household included all who lived together in the same house. a household member was only legible if he or she spent nine out of twelve months a year with the household (ellis, 1993). exceptions to the rule were household heads and children of school going age, which impacted household welfare and expenditures, and who by obligation, could not live in the house for nine months a year as stipulated above. 152 households (including a census of 60 beneficiaries and a random sample of 92 non-beneficiary ones) provided primary data for comparison. the rural training center provided a list that was used to identify service delivery beneficiaries. matched non-beneficiaries were randomly drawn from the same villages as the beneficiary households, using household lists constructed by community leaders in the research villages (balgah and buchenrieder, 2010). efforts were made to maintain the ratio of 2:3 for beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries as suggested in the relative poverty assessment tool (henry et al., 2003; zeller et al., 2006). this accounts for only 92 households being sampled amongst non-beneficiaries. subsamples of 30 beneficiary and 30 non-beneficiary households were purposively identified to collect data on income and expenditures at household level, over a one year period. the basis for selecting these households was their capacity and readiness to provide information through recall, considering that households in the research area do not regularly record household financial transactions. thus while the first survey round collected general information using a structured questionnaire, the second round focused on household income and expenditures analysis, only with the 60 households purposively selected during the first round. in both surveys, the household head and spouse participated together in the recall process (balgah and buchenrieder, 2010, 2011). poverty indicators based on relative poverty assessment framework provided poverty variables used to compare beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries (henry et al., 2003). all households participated in a feedback workshop organized after the surveys. the data was analysed using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss). results from the data analysis will be presented in the next section. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 103-115 108 4. results 4.1. socio-economic analysis of sampled households the sample literacy rate (42.5 percent) fell far below half of the national average assessed by wri (2006) at 94 percent. however, literacy rate was significantly different amongst household heads, as 72 percent of beneficiary household heads were literate as opposed to only 53 percent of the matched ones. the household size of beneficiary households (mean of 5.3) was significantly larger, compared to non-beneficiaries (4.6), suggesting a possible positive correlation between household size and the adoption of fish farming. over 80 percent of all households (81.4 percent beneficiaries and 81.3 percent of the matched ones) reported food insecurity. at the same time both household types reported and average of almost three meals/day. under these circumstances, food insecurity is likely to be sporadic, being more serious only at the beginning of the planting season between march and june, when food is usually scarce. luxury food consumption was not only high, but also significantly different (p< 0.001) between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. tea, eggs, fish and meat considered in the research area as luxury foods in ascending order of importance were cumulatively consumed on average trice/week by beneficiary households and twice by nonbeneficiary ones. however, the consumption of home produced fish by beneficiaries was zero/week; cancelling any conjecture that higher consumption could have resulted from access to service delivery. consumption of inferior meals – twice/week was similar for beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. concerning habitation, about 90 percent of all sampled households lived in their own houses. house ownership was found to be very important in the research area. most of the houses were permanent and generally in good condition. owning a permanent house seems to be highly appreciated socially in the research region. this was confirmed through key informant interviews. table 1 presents an analysis of assets by household type. with the exception of transport facilities, non-beneficiary households owned significantly less assets than beneficiaries. for instance, nonbeneficiaries of dngo service delivery own on average almost 2 hectares less land, compared to beneficiaries. per capita expenditure on dressing (clothing/foot wears) is a key indicator in relative poverty assessments. empirical evidence from previous studies suggests that this variable often accounts for 5 to 10 percent of household expenditures, increasing with household incomes (see for instance zeller et al., 2006). also as clothing/foot wears are not purchased very often, households are often likely to recall such expenditures, compared for instance to food items (minten and zeller, 2000). per capita expenses on dressing for beneficiaries were significantly higher than for nonbeneficiaries (p< 0.001), suggesting higher incomes for beneficiaries of dngo service delivery than for non-beneficiaries. table 1: comparative analysis of values of some selected household assets household type mean standard dev. p values value of livestock assets (fcfa) beneficiary 92760 102830 0.009 non-beneficiary 50890 89510 land size (ha) beneficiary 5.991 4.7 0.011 non-beneficiary 4.093 3.8 value of selected household equipment (fcfa) beneficiary 35210 70905 0.031 non-beneficiary 15125 42260 family size beneficiary 5.3 3.0 0.077 non-beneficiary 4.6 2.2 value of transport facilities (fcfa) beneficiary 14390 48740 0.516 non-beneficiary 20590 6200 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 103-115 109 per capita expenditure on clothing and footwear (fcfa) beneficiary 24880 11240 0.001 non-beneficiary 19115 10170 source: field data notes: (1) all monetary values have been rounded up to the nearest fcfa (2) 1 us$ = fcfa 450. household incomes analysis by household type is presented in table 2. as conjectured above beneficiaries generally have higher incomes compared to match non-beneficiaries, even if it is lower than national averages. for instance, gross revenues for service beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries per capita of fcfa 94170 (almost us$ 210) and fcfa 95,650 (around us$ 215) poorly compare with cameroon’s purchasing power parity (ppp) of fcfa 1209920 (almost us$ 2670) (globalis, 2009). the population growth rate in the research region of 4.5 percent is higher than the national average of 3.3 percent (world bank, 2009). hiv/aids prevalence rate of 8.7 percent amongst sampled households surpasses the national mean of 5.1 percent (unaids, 2004).over 80 percent of all households in the sample depend mainly on agriculture for their livelihoods. these figures lead us to conclude that the dngo at least succeeded in geographical targeting. however these results say little about the dngo’s ability to service the very poor. to investigate this, further analysis is necessary, key results of which will be presented in the following section. table 2: income analysis for beneficiary and non-beneficiary households variable household description mean in fcfa standard dev. p values total farm cash income beneficiary 205220 146995 0.135 non-beneficiary 159235 77480 total non cash income beneficiary 174695 89760 0.850 non-beneficiary 170420 84630 total non farm income beneficiary 119200 122845 0.780 non-beneficiary 110340 121320 gross revenues beneficiary 499110 231190 0.306 non-beneficiary 439990 211365 gross margin beneficiary 445255 199330 0.300 non-beneficiary 392925 187900 source: field data notes: (1) all monetary values have been rounded up to the nearest fcfa (2) household gross margins were calculated by deducting the variable costs from the household gross revenues (3) 1 us$ = fcfa 450. 4.2. targeting efficiency of the dngo service delivery to the very poor the descriptive statistics presented above lead us to conclude that non-beneficiaries are generally poorer than beneficiaries. nevertheless, it is not possible at this stage to attribute this difference to the impact of access to dngo services. this is methodologically challenging in the absence of baseline information or panel data for both household types. to resolve this, we proceed in two steps. firstly, we identify the strongest poverty indicators in order to combine them to calculate individual household poverty indices (zeller et al., 2006). such indices will form the basis of relative poverty groupings that will be used to categorize the households. secondly, we determine the actual contribution of service delivery -in this case the fish farmto household wellbeing of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 103-115 110 beneficiaries. a significant contribution can be attributed to access to service delivery. both steps are discussed and their results presented in the following sections. 4.2.1. calculating individual household poverty indices the first step towards computing individualised household poverty indices included the identification of the strongest indicators for relative poverty; using linear correlation analysis. this was done by running all ordinal and ratio-scaled variables in the data against the per capita dressing expenditures, the bench mark variable in the relative poverty assessment approach. the correlation directions are used to select the variables for calculating the poverty indices. according to henry et al. (2003), the preference for linear correlation emanates from the fact that “it does not require that the units used in the variables be same. the resulting values range from -1.00 to 1.00, and their sign and magnitude indicates how the two variables relate to each other”. negative coefficients indicate inverse relationships while positive ones indicate positive relationships. zero or values close to it suggest no relationships. all variables correlating in the right direction with the per capita expenditures on clothing/footwear at a significance level less than 10 percent were retained for calculating the individualised household poverty indices, based on principal component analysis (henry et al., 2003; balgah and buchenrieder, 2010). principal component analysis pca combines the different indicators to produce a poverty index which indicates the poverty status of the individual household in relation to other households in the sample. the resulting poverty index [p*] for each household represents its poverty status in comparison to other sampled households. pca therefore extracts the “poverty component”, used to calculate specific household indices from a relative poverty perspective (henry et al., 2003; zeller et al., 2006; balgah and buchenrieder, 2010). the new index of poverty is computed as: p*= w1p1+w2p2+w3p3......+wnpn ................... (1) where the specified weights for each variable (wn) insure that the newly computed household index (p*) captures the variance in all selected variables (pn). the eigen value sizes illustrate the extent to which the variances can be explained by the different components of the model. an eigen value of minimum one is used to determine if the component can be considered as explaining any observed variances (zeller et al., 2006). the eigen values calculated for each component in the model are displayed in table 3 below. components 1 and 2 that cumulatively explain almost 54 percent of all the variance contain eigen values greater than 1, with the poverty component (i) explaining over 35 percent of the total variances and the second component (household specific characteristics) explaining almost 19 percent. table 3: explained common variance component eigen values extraction sums of squared loadings total per component % explained variance % cumulatively explained total % explained variance % cumulatively explained i 2.12 35.34 35.34 2.120 35.34 35.34 ii 1.12 18.59 53.93 1.115 18.59 53.93 iii 0.92 15.38 69.31 iv 0.81 13.56 82.87 v 0.65 10.87 93.74 vi 0.38 6.26 100.00 source: field data asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 103-115 111 a histogram of the calculated poverty indices for all households is demonstrated in figure 1. this figure illustrates a skewed relative poverty distribution amongst the sampled households. however, households with lower scores are relatively poorer than those whose scores are higher (henry et al., 2003; balgah and buchenrieder, 2010; 2011). figure 1: distribution of household poverty indices for sampled households most households have negative indices, indicating that the project generally targeted poor households. however, it does not conclude about the ability of the dngo service delivery to target the very poor households. to address this issue, we create relative poverty groups using the computed household indices. since non-beneficiaries represent the population, we use the corresponding indices to create three terciles representing, the lowest, the middle and the upper terciles. the lowest tercile (33 percent of non-beneficiaries) constituted the “very poor” households. these households had indices only up to -0.59. the middle tercile designated as the “less poor” were demarcated with indices from -0.58 to -.09. the last tercile designated as “well off” had indices higher than -0.09. beneficiary households were then subjected to these grouping patterns to see how they will vary with respect to the general population. using uniform poverty terciles of non-beneficiaries allows us to see how beneficiaries of dngo service delivery vary with respect to the general population (henry et al., 2003; zeller et al., 2006). as demonstrated in figure 2, almost 60 percent of beneficiaries belong to the “well off” tercile, compared to 33 percent for the general population. around 22 percent belong to the “less poor” tercile and only 18 percent are part of the “very poor”. in other words, the service delivery of the rural training center reached a higher proportion of the well off than the very poor. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 103-115 112 figure 2: poverty distribution by terciles and by household type 4.2.2. contribution of service delivery to poverty reduction we have to keep in mind that that the project did not keep baseline information for beneficiaries. to verify if the difference with non-beneficiaries can be attributed to the dngo service delivery, we compare the net contribution of the benefits of service delivery (fish farming enterprise) to the wellbeing of beneficiary households. if it is significant, then the observation in figure 2 will be attributed to an impact of dngo service delivery. the contrary scenario will suggest poor targeting of service delivery to the very poor by the dngo. the mean income per annum (around us$ 8) from fish farming was found to contribute less than one percent to the gross annual revenue of beneficiary households (almost us$ 1110). therefore, the fact that beneficiary households are generally well off than non-beneficiaries cannot be attributed to project intervention. in other words, more of the better-off households than the very poor ones had been targeted by the dngo. this indicates a targeting inefficiency of the very poor by the organization. this conclusion is expected, as enormous household contributions in the form of land, labour, and local pond construction inputs (e.g. cement and sand) were required to benefit from ngo services (balgah, 2004). only households with sufficient resources could benefit. such a strategy naturally discriminated against the very poor. nevertheless, the low poverty indices (figure 1) indicate a generally acceptable level of service delivery to the poor. it is true that beneficiary contribution is crucial for the sustainability of development programs. however, for organizations targeting the very poor, it seems plausible to carry out poverty assessments before service delivery as a prerequisite to identify and effectively service the very poor. service delivery to the very poor by dngos is therefore not automatic, as it is often influenced donor money and policies (brummett et al., 2008; balgah, 2014) 3 . dngos who depend on donors for continual funding and sustainability will have to think carefully before attempting to change existing approaches. one option recently proposed is for such ngos to engage in commercial activities (balgah, 2014). the costs and benefits as well as long term consequences should however be properly assessed prior to policy change. 3 many funding agencies are often contented with simple output indicators if they assume that their ngo partners are working in poor communities. sometimes, they also are not willing to pay for poverty assessments. nonprofit commercialization can liberate executing development ngos to effectively carry out such assessments, needed to service the very poor. for further discussions, see for instance brummett et al. (2008) and balgah (2014). 34 33 33 18 22 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 very poor less poor well off p er ce n t d is tr ib u ti o n b y h o u se h o ld t y p e poverty terciles beneficiaries nonbeneficiaries asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 103-115 113 5. discussion and conclusions targeting services to the very poor has often been used to laud the importance of ngos as key actors in reducing poverty especially in developing countries. empirical evidence on this is scarce and at best mixed. this article empirically analyses the ability to service the very poor by a rural development institution in northwest cameroon. we have applied a relative poverty assessment approach to assess beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in order to ascertain the ability of the case study dngo, to target services to the very poor. we observe an acceptable geographic targeting of rural areas as most of the poverty indices of the households both for beneficiary and nonbeneficiary households are negative. the results confirm the theoretical position that dngos can be generally efficient in servicing the poor, particularly in less developed countries where states and markets often fail to provide development services, particularly to those in rural communities. however, the very poor accounted for only about 40 percent of all who benefitted from the dngo’s service delivery. beneficiaries were therefore found to be generally well off than nonbeneficiaries, although this could not be attributed to the impact of service delivery. in other words, the better off have been targeted more than the very poor, suggesting an unsatisfactory servicing of the very poor by the dngo. because service delivery is essentially donor driven, commercialization has been proposed as an option to improve targeting efficiency of such organizations. assessing poverty before service delivery can significantly increase the number of the very poor who benefit from dngo services. without putting to jeopardy the role of dngos in servicing the poor, our results suggest the need for constant analysis rather than generalization currently conceived in the development literature. nevertheless, it seems as if the role of dngos will continue to be important particularly in less developed countries where state and market institutions are likely to fail, or where states often have very limited resources to engage in broad based development initiatives. acknowledgements the authors sincerely acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for their critical comments that significantly improved the quality of the paper. special thanks also go to the volkswagen foundation germany for funding this stage of the research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ayika, e. a. 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(2006). population, health and human well-being. country profilecameroon” http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/population-health/country-profile-32.html (accessed on 31.04.2013). zeller, m., sharma, m., henry, c., & lapenu, c. (2006). an operational method for assessing outreach performance of development policies and projects: results of case studies in africa, asia and latin america. world development, 34(3), 446-464. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 171 an assessment of economic sustainability in broiler enterprises: evidence from jordan ali al-sharafat a  bassam al-deseit a motasem al-masad b a department of agricultural economics and extension, faculty of agriculture, jerash university, jerash, jordan b department of animal production and protection, faculty of agriculture, jerash university, jerash, jordan  a.alshorfaat@jpu.edu.jo (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 07-jan-2020 accepted: 19-mar-2020 online available: 15-apr2020 keywords: sustainability, economic sustainability, broiler, jordan abstract assessing economic sustainability is crucial to measure livestock enterprise success. this study is aimed at assessing the economic sustainability of broiler enterprises in jordan. to achieve the goals of this study, 94 broiler farms were surveyed. a multi-stage sampling technique, descriptive statistics, and simple economic analysis were adopted. the investigated farms’ economic viability, which is the best indication for sustainability, is measured through profitability, liquidity and productivity indicators. the values of the economic sustainability indicators used in this study to assess profitability, liquidity, and productivity showed that the broiler sector in jordan is economically viable and sustainable. investors in livestock activities in jordan are advised to invest in the broiler industry as it is with high economic sustainability. contribution/ originality in jordan, this is pioneer research in investigating the relationships between broiler farm profit and economic sustainability. analyses concerning relationships between various sustainability components of the broiler industry in jordan were conducted. the study adopted different indicators, which could not be overcome even by rigorous methods of analysis. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.171.182 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: ali al-sharafat, bassam al-deseit and motasem al-masad (2020). an assessment of economic sustainability in broiler enterprises: evidence from jordan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 171-182. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 171-182 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:a.alshorfaat@jpu.edu.jo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1714-4196 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.171.182 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 171-182 172 1. introduction according to the jordanian ministry of agriculture (moa), the jordanian agricultural sector considered being one of the most important pillars of the country’s economy. in 2018, the agricultural gross domestic product (agdp), with a growth rate of 18%, was around 1.6 billion jordan dinars (jds) at current prices (1 jd = 1.4 usd). according to the jordanian department of statistics (dos) records agriculture contributed around 6% of the gross domestic product (gdp) of the country and around 18% of the national exports in 2018 (dos, 2018). the jordanian livestock sub-sector contributes, on average, about 60% of the agricultural output and provides a major source of income to many of the rural people. the broiler industry is a major component of the livestock sub-sector in the country. this industry supplied the country with about 209000 metric tons of broiler meat in the year 2018 with a self-sufficiency percentage of about 81% of this product (dos, 2018). according to the dos last agricultural census which (2017), broiler farms number of jordan was of 1623 with a total capacity of around 29 million birds. around 140 farms (almost 9% of broiler farms) in the country are with a capacity of more than 30,000 birds (dos, 2017). based on conway (2018), the total production of world broiler meat is estimated to be 122.5 million tons. sustainable broiler production systems must depend on identifying production system which is suitable for broiler breeds despite major environmental, technical and economic constraints, and sustainable practices in broiler production should ensure system ability to maintain productivity (kheiry, 2019). investigating sustainability is largely related to the economic efficiency of farm activities. in low-sustainable or not sustainable farms, there is a significant increase in costs compared to returns (bachev, 2017). all around the world, sustainability assessment of farming activities was investigated by many researchers (bachev, 2017; bachev, 2016; bachev et al., 2016; bastianoni et al., 2001; ec, 2001; fao, 2013; bachev and petters, 2005; fuentes, 2004; andreoli and tellarini, 2000; sauvenier et al., 2005; un, 2015 and rigby et al., 2001). bahri et al. (2019) stated that; “it is important to guarantee sustainable production of the broiler for present and future generation”. abdurofi et al. (2017) concluded that; “in meeting the expected higher demand for chicken meat, the broiler industry must operate sustainable production”. sustainability dimensions are measured through many techniques (de olde et al., 201a; 2016b). farm economic sustainability among a large number of indicators has been developed (werf and petit, 2002). complicated information is analyzed, quantified and simplified by indicators (warhurst, 2002). clearly understood results are produced by a useful indicator (becker, 2004). sustainability measures and indicators related to economic performance are widely used in farming sectors such as the broiler sector (girardin et al., 2000 and bélanger et al., 2012). in measuring the sustainability of livestock enterprises such as the broiler industry, several economic indicators can be used to investigate its viability (moldan et al., 2012). to achieve the objectives of the present study, indicators related to profitability, liquidity, stability, and productivity were utilized. in recent years a trend of completely integrated poultry farms was established in jordan where the farms include hatcheries, feed plants, chicken houses, and slaughterhouses. this change in the poultry industry is a close relation to its sustainability, so it is very important to investigate the impact of this change. this study aimed at assessing the sustainability of the broiler industry in jordan, as a major poultry sub-sector in the country, under the present situation of this industry. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 171-182 173 2. what is agricultural economic sustainability? agricultural sustainability is considered to be a crucial component of global sustainable development (binder et al., 2010). more than 70 definitions for “agricultural sustainability were identified in the literature since the widespread of this concept in the 1980s (zhen and routray, 2003). fao (2014) has defined sustainable agriculture as; “the management and conservation of the natural resource base, and the orientation of technological change in such a manner as to ensure the attainment of continued satisfaction of human needs for present and future generations. sustainable agriculture conserves land, water, and plant and animal genetic resources, and is environmentally non-degrading, technically appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable”. for agriculture to be sustainable the followings should be considered (pretty, 1999):  natural processes should be included in the production process;  renewable resources utilization should be preferred while non-renewable resources utilization to be minimized;  farmers' self-reliance should be enhanced;  sustainable, profitable, efficient and long term levels of production to be guaranteed; and measuring agricultural sustainability is related to social, economic and ecological dimensions (hayati et al., 2010). agricultural sustainability assessments usually involve the evaluation of environmental sustainability, social sustainability and economic sustainability (pope et al., 2004; gómez and sanchez, 2010). brodt et al. (2011) stated that sustainable agriculture integrates environmental health, economic profitability, and social equity. he also reported that; “agricultural sustainability rests on the principle that we must meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. brodt et al. (2011) also concluded that; “social, economic, and environmental sustainability are closely intertwined and necessary components for truly sustainable agriculture”. the following figure presents the three dimensions of sustainable agriculture according to brodt et al. (2011). figure 1: dimensions of sustainable agriculture source: (brodt et al., 2011) an economically sustainable farm must meet the individual economic needs of farmers, farm families, and farmworkers. an economically sustainable farm allows financial stability and an acceptable economic return on used resources (bachev, 2016). a sustainable farm manages all activities most economically. high costs and difficulties for the functioning are the results if the farm does not govern its activities (bachev and petters, 2005). agricultural enterprises could be sustainable through its economy-related functions as well as its social and environmental related functions. the economic functions of agriculture include, among others, producing food and raw materials, achieving efficiency and effectiveness of production and sales, price competitiveness, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 171-182 174 providing a high quality of products and services and providing income (wilkin, 2010 and wrzaszcz and zegar, 2016). 3. materials and methods 3.1. data and sample the data and information utilized in this study were based on; first, secondary data sources as the (moa, 2019) and its related agricultural directorates in the country, as well as the department of statistics (dos). second, a source of primary data includes a well-designed survey questionnaire. the information in the questionnaire was used to extract the basic economic sustainability indicators. the items in the questionnaire were directly related to the economic components of the input and outputs of the activities of the investigated farms (costs, revenues…). balance sheets of the investigated farms were the major source for the values of the total assets and total liabilities of these farms. a multi-stage sampling procedure was adopted in this study to select the sample from 1623 registered broiler farms in the country. the first stage was to stratify the farms in the country according to northern, middle and southern provinces. the second stage was to select broiler farms with an average capacity of 30000 birds across the three provinces of the country. this capacity was selected because it is the most dominant one in the country. finally, a simple random sampling was conducted to obtain the number of broiler farms which were administered with the survey questionnaire. the next step was collecting the data through the questionnaire. all of the above stages and steps were carried out during the period from july 1 to september 30, 2019. based on the population of broiler farms in each province, sample distribution among the country is presented in table 1. the sample size was determined according to the following formula (yamane, 1967): 𝑛 = [𝑁] [1 + (𝑁 × 𝑒2)]⁄ where: n = sample size (?). e = maximum tolerable error for the prevalence estimate (e.g. ± 0.10) n = population. according to the above mentioned formula, the sample size is: n = [1623]/ [1+ (1623× 0.102] n = [1623]/ [1+ (1623× 0.01)] n = [1623]/ [1 + 16.23] n = [1623]/ [17.23] n = 94 table 1: provinces wise sample distribution province no. of broiler farms % of broiler farms no. of farms in the sample northern 779 48% (0.48 × 94) = 45 middle 633 39% (0.39 × 94) = 37 southern 211 13% (0.13 × 94) = 12 total 1623 100% 94 source: moa and researchers’ computations 3.2. analytical techniques to achieve its goals, descriptive statistics and simple economic analysis were adopted in this study. the farm budgetary method was used in this study to compute indicators related to sustainability asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 171-182 175 assessment. descriptive statistics and budgetary techniques are very popular methods for calculating the cost of different input and return from the poultry business (afzal and khan, 2017). sustainability involves future outcomes that cannot be observed at present. to achieve sustainability, agricultural enterprises should be able to maintain high efficiency of productionrelated directly to high economic viability. the problem of assessment of the sustainability of farms is directly related to the estimation of its economic viability. farm economic sustainability is generally viewed as farm economic viability. economic sustainability is defined as the economic viability of farming systems, i.e., their ability to be profitable (gómez and sanchez, 2010). so, the analysis of this study was related to the economic viability of the investigated farms. farm economic viability, which is an indication of whether a farming system can survive in the long term is usually measured through profitability, liquidity, and productivity. because calculations were conducted for one production cycle the total fixed costs (tfc) were not included in computing the investigated measures. 3.2.1. profitability in assessing the sustainability of farm business profitability is one of the most important indicators. profitability is the ability of an enterprise to achieve profit by utilizing its resources. in a farming business, such as broiler production, profitability indicators are used to evaluate the ability of a farm to produce maximum output (i.e. margin or profit), ideally with minimal input. profitability indicators used throughout this study include gross margin and profitability ratios. many studies are considered the gross margin and profitability ratios of an agribusiness as a sustainability indicator related to the business financial efficiency (wrzaszcz and zegar, 2016; gómez and sanchez, 2010; moldan et al., 2012). 3.2.1.1. gross margin when using farm budgetary analysis the gross margin of an agribusiness is obtained by deduction of the total variable costs (tvc) from the total revenues (tr) obtained from selling broiler live weight. in the broiler industry, tvc is mainly the costs of day-old chicks, feed cost, house preparation costs, labor cost, veterinary costs, and miscellaneous costs. gross margin formula is as follows: gross margin (gm) = gross revenue (gr) – tvc the formula could be written as follows: gm = σpy – tvc gm = gr – tvc where: gm = gross margin (jds) p = farm gate price/ kg of live weight (jds) y = total live weight (kg) tvc = total variable cost (jds) 3.2.1.2. profitability ratios for any farming business, the ability to generate profit could be evaluated by profitability ratios. these ratios indicate how well a farm is using its assets to generate profit. a higher profit ratio means the farm is performing well by generating revenues, profits, and cash flow. profitability ratios used in this study include the benefit-cost ratio (bcr), the rate of return on investment (roi) and the profitability index (pi). the formulas used to obtain these ratios are as follows: bcr = total revenue (tr) ÷ total cost (tc) roi = gross margin (gm) ÷ total cost (tc) pi = gross margin (gm) ÷ total revenue (tc) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 171-182 176 where: tr = value of total live weight of birds (jds) gm = gross margin (jds) tc = total costs incurred during production (tvc + total fixed costs or tfc) in jds. tfc are costs paid for permanent labor and housing. 3.2.2. liquidity liquidity for any farm business is the availability of cash to meet immediate and short-term obligations of debt payments, taxes, and family living expenses. high liquidity produces flexibility for a farm in a low-risk position. agribusiness's sustainability could be predicted using liquidity ratios. the most common measures of liquidity are the current ratio and working capital to gross revenue ratio. these two ratios were used in the present study. 3.2.2.1 current ratio (cr) cr is calculated by dividing the current farm assets (ca) by the current farm liabilities (cl). cr could be computed as follows: cr = ca ÷ cl in the broiler industry, current farm assets include cash and those items that farm can convert into cash in the normal course of business, usually within one production cycle. current farm liabilities include those items that need to be paid within one production cycle. commonly accepted ranges for cr include:  greater than 2 is strong  2 to 1.3 would fall in the caution range  less than 1.3 would be weak 3.2.2.2. working capital to gross revenue ratio (wc/gr) working capital to gross revenue ratio is used to determine the adequacy of working capital. the ratio measures the amount of capital the farm has with relation to the farm size. working capital is calculated by subtracting total current farm liabilities from the total current farm assets. wc/gr is determined by dividing the working capital (wc) by gross farm income or gross revenue (gr). the ratio could be computed as follows: wc/gr = (ca – cl) ÷ gr here, cl represents the current farm liabilities and ca represents the current farm assets. commonly accepted ranges for this ratio include:  greater than 30% is strong  10% to 30% would fall in the caution range  less than 10% would be weak 3.2.3. productivity a general definition of productivity is the ability of production factors to produce the output. one of the commonest definitions of productivity is the ratio of output to input. it is generally measured as a partial productivity indicator which is a ratio of output to one input (latruffe et al., 2008). feed productivity (pf) and cost productivity (pc ) indicators, as single-factor productivity measures, were used in this study to determine the average productivity of input used in broiler production in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 171-182 177 jordan. these two well-known indicators were used in many studies related to farm business economics and sustainability measurement (adeoti and olawumi, 2013). 3.2.3.1. feed productivity to cope with their faster growth, broilers are fed special feeds. feed plays a vital role in broiler production. it is the major cost of broiler farming which seriously affects the production output of the birds. pf is an important consideration for efficient and sustainable broiler farming. feed productivity measures the average productivity of feed-in producing a certain quantity of broiler meat. the following formula was used to compute feed productivity: pf = y ÷ qf where: pf = feed productivity y = average output or average quantity of broiler meat produced (tons) qf = average quantity of feed consumed/ average output (tons) 3.2.3.2 cost productivity expenses that a firm face in producing a good or service are costs of production. cost is considered to be the most significant determinant of the productivity of broiler farms. pc shows how efficiently farmers are using their available inputs in production. the following formula was used to compute cost productivity: pc = y ÷ atc where: pc = cost productivity y = average value of output or average quantity of broiler meat produced atc = average total costs of production (jds) 4. results and discussion the main financial items related to the financial indicators adopted in the analysis of the financial performance of the sampled broiler farmers in the present study were costs, returns, and cash flows. these items were determined based on market prices. the study delved into the economic sustainability of the broiler industry in jordan. profitability, liquidity and productivity measures for the 94 surveyed broiler farms were computed. the computing of these three measurements was based on data presented in table 2. calculations were conducted based on the following marketderived facts per one production cycle:  5% mortality rate.  the average selling price of 1.28 jd/kg of live weight (1jd = 1.4 usd)  average selling weight of 1.75 kg/bird  average purchasing price of feed is 345 jds/ ton (4 kilograms/ bird/ cycle =  one day old chicks price is 0.34 jds/chick asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 171-182 178 table 2: various statistics of broiler farms (30,000 birds) item and explanation average value (jds) average variable costs: feed [4 × ((30000 – (0.05 × 30000))] × 345 = (114 × 345) 39330 day-old chick (30000 × 0.34) 10200 labor 1440 medication and veterinary services 450 miscellaneous (electricity, water, cleaning and sanitizing, litter ...) 900 average total variable costs: 52320 average total costs (atc): 52320 average revenue (28500 × 1.75 × 1.28) = (49875 × 1.28) 63840 source: moa and researchers’ computations 4.1. profitability measures gross margin and profitability ratios were used in this study to measure the surveyed broiler farms' sustainability. table 3 shows the results of the analysis of these two measurements. the indicators of profitability ratios measure were the benefit-cost ratio (bcr), the rate of return on investment (roi) and the profitability index (pi). table 3: profitability measures analysis measure indicator formula value (jds) gross margin tr – tc 63840 52320 = 11250 profitability ratios: benefit cost ratio (bcr) = tr ÷ tc 63840 ÷ 52320 = 1.22 rate of return on investment (roi) = gm ÷ tc 11250 ÷ 52320 = 0.215 profitability index (pi) = gm ÷ tr 11250 ÷ 63840 = 0.176 source: researchers’ computations table 3 shows that the average value of the gross margin (gm) of the surveyed farms is 11250 jds. the gross margin measure is important as it expresses the relationship between cash generated from operations and sales. the high average value of the gm of the surveyed farms indicates that these farms can earn cash to pay dividends, suppliers, service debt, and investment in new capital assets. the table also shows that the average values of the benefit-cost ratio (bcr), the rate of return on investment (roi) and the profitability index (pi) are 1.22, 0.215 and 0.176 respectively. these values indicate that the broiler business is performing well by generating revenues, profits, and cash flow. bcr value suggests that the benefit of broiler farming is higher than the costs by almost 22%, indicating that the investment is a good one. the value of roi is a net positive, which means that it is worthwhile and suggests that there is a profit generated on broiler investment relative to the amount of money invested. the pi value (17.6%) indicates that the investment present value (pv) of the surveyed farms is higher than the initial investment. as the value of the profitability index increases, so does the financial attractiveness of the investment. gm value, as well as the profitability ratios values of the surveyed broiler farms presented in table 3, shows that broiler farming is a sustainable and profitable investment. similar conclusions were derived by pourkand and moetamed (2011) and adeoti and olawumi (2013). 4.2. liquidity measures the current ratio (cr) and the working capital (wc) to gross revenue (gr) ratio were used in this study to measure the surveyed broiler farm's liquidity. the average current farm assets value is (50514 jds) and the average current farm liabilities value is (20656 jds). table 4 shows the results of the analysis of the current ratio (cr) and the working capital (wc) to the gross revenue (gr) ratio. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 171-182 179 table 4: liquidity measures analysis measure components value current ratio: 2.445 current farm assets (ca) 50514 current farm liabilities (cl) 20656 working capital to gross revenue ratio 0.4677 working capital (wc) 50514 – 20656 = 29858 gross revenue (gr) 63840 source: researchers’ computations table 4 shows that the average value of the cr of the surveyed farms is 2.445. this value is higher than 2 and means that the farms are with enough resources to meet their short-term obligations and they can generate sufficient cash to pay off all its debts once they become due. the table also shows that the value of the wc to gr ratio is 0.4677. this value is more than 30% (strong according to the commonly accepted ranges for this ratio) indicating that there is sufficient cash is available for the surveyed farms to meet their short-term needs without the use of additional financing. the values of the surveyed broiler farms presented in table 4 show that broiler farming in jordan is with a high level of liquidity and not at risk of needing financing indicating a high level of sustainability. similar results and conclusions were obtained by fawwaz and al-sharafat (2013). 4.3. productivity measures feed productivity (pf) and cost productivity (pc) were used in this study to determine the average productivity of inputs used in broiler production in jordan. table 5 shows the results of the analysis of these two measurements. table 5: productivity measures analysis measure components and formula value feed productivity (pf): y ÷ qf 0.4375 y = average quantity of broiler meat produced (tons) 49.875 qf = average quantity of feed consumed/ y (tons) 114 cost productivity (pc) y ÷ atc 0.9532 y = average quantity of broiler meat produced (kilograms) 49875 atc = average total costs of production (jds) 52320 source: researchers’ computations table 5 shows that the average value of the pf of the surveyed farms is 0.4375. that is, 0.4375kg of live broiler meat was produced per kg of feed consumed. this value means that birds are efficiently using feed and have the potential to increase productivity or output. pf is the opposite of the feed conversion ratio (fcr). pf is the meat-to-feed ratio, while fcr is the feed-to-meat ratio. fcr is a performance indicator that is commonly used in all types of farming to measure an animal’s efficiency in converting feed into increased body mass. it is a ratio or rate measuring the efficiency with which the bodies of broiler or other livestock types convert feed into the desired output. the lower the fcr, or the higher the pf, the higher the weight gain obtained from the feed, and hence the better efficiency and sustainability. in the broiler industry, the average range of fcr is (1.8 – 2.8). the fcr of the investigated farms is (2.6) which is within the average range. the findings are higher than those obtained by and pourkand and moetamed (2011). the table also shows that the value of pc is 0.9532. this value, which is high compared to the results of hajirahimi and karimi (2009), adeoti and olawumi (2013) and pourkand and moetamed (2011) studies, means that the investigated farms are allocating their cost-productivity in an optimum way. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 171-182 180 cost-allocation is a technique for the reallocation of capital to improve productivity by reducing the amount of a cost item that has been budgeted for and is in the process of expenditure. this will improve performance or reduce costs in the long run and ends in attaining sustainability. 5. conclusion sustainability is important for any business in any industry but is especially important for agribusinesses. so it is important to understand sustainability and its economic dimension. profitability, liquidity, and productivity are the three main factors of economic sustainability. the present paper investigated these three major components of economic sustainability in the broiler industry in jordan. based on the findings of this study, it could be concluded that the broiler industry in jordan is economically sustainable. the economic sustainability indicators used in this study to assess profitability, liquidity, and productivity showed that this sector is economically viable and sustainable. investors in livestock activities in jordan are advised to invest in the broiler industry as it is with high economic sustainability. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors would like to show gratitude to the jordanian department of statistics, the jordanian ministry of agriculture and jerash university for their assistance in conducting this study. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdurofi, i., ismail, m., kamal, h., & gabdo, b. 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(1967). statistics: an introductory analysis. 2nd edition, harper and row, new york. zhen, l., & routray, j. (2003). operational indicators for measuring agricultural sustainability in developing countries. environmental management, 32(1), 34-46. doi.org/10.1007/s00267003-2881-1. http://www.iied.org/mmsd/mmsdpdfs/sustainability/indicators.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants agro-morphological, physiological and yield related performances of finger millet [eleusine coracana (l.) gaertn.] accessions evaluated for drought resistance under field condition awol assefa and masresha fetene department of plant biology and biodiversity management, addis ababa university, addis ababa, ethiopia kassahun tesfaye department of cellular, microbial and molecular biology, addis ababa university, addis ababa, ethiopia abstract the study was conducted at dhera sub-center of kulumsa agricultural research center, oromia regional state, ethiopia from july december 2011; to screen drought tolerance of 96 finger millet accessions (eleusine coracana l. gaertn.) collected from different agro-ecological zones of the country. data were collected for plant height (ph), green leaf number (gln), green leaf area (gla), ear number (en), ear length (el) and relative water content (rwc). significant difference (p<0.05) were obtained between accessions for most selected physiological, morphological and yield related traits such as chlorophyll content index (cci), rwc, and yield related parameters, such as tiller number (tn), productive tillers (pt), seed weight per head and per plant. based on high rwc, cci, gln, pt, el, and en, grain yield per head and per plant, a total of 23 accessions were categorized as drought stress tolerance and promoted to the next intensive physiological and yield related evaluation. moreover, aaufm-7, aaufm-2, aaufm-44 were the first top three accessions with the highest grain yield of 77.5, 72g/plant and 65.4g/plant, respectively. overall, the higher genetic variability observed among accession in this study should be further utilized for finger millet improvement targeting semi-arid areas of ethiopia. keywords: accession, drought stress, finger millet, morphological and physiological trait, ethiopia introduction 1 millets are in the family of cereals grown globally with differential importance across continents and within regions of the world. the crop is mostly produced in mixtures (intercropped, double-cropped or relaycropped) with other cereals like sorghum, legumes and oil crops (groundnuts, cowpeas, corresponding author’s details: name:, awol assefa e mail address: awolassefa2001@gmail.com pigeon peas and sesame), and root crops mostly cassava (obilana, 1996). finger millet (eleusine coracana l. gaertn.) [family poaceae (gramineae)], ranks third in importance among millets in the world after sorghum (sorghum bicolor), pearl millet (pennisetum glaucum) and foxtail millet (setaria italic). the crop originated in africa and has been cultivated for thousands of years in the highlands of ethiopia and uganda (hilu et al., 1976). the crop can be cultivated in diverse eco-geographical areas worldwide asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:awolassefa2001@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 709-720 710 and displays high genetic variability indicating that it can be improved through breeding. the crop has wide adaptability, probably due to its c4 photosynthetic nature. in africa, smallholder farmers grow finger millet with area allocated to the crop varying from country to country. in eastern africa, finger millet is produced in uganda, kenya, tanzania, rwanda, burundi and ethiopia. (obilana et al., 2002, cited in oduori 2005). kenya and uganda are among the leading producers of finger millet in africa and the rest of the world (chrispu, 2008). finger millet is one of the important food crops in ethiopia. it plays a significant role both as food grain and animal feed in areas where production of other cereals are reduced by marginal environments. moreover, as a result of increased drought and soil fertility degradation, a growing number of farmers are resorting to finger millet and thus the area allocated for this crop has significantly increased over the last ten years. it occupies ca. 5% (228,000 ha) of the total area covered by cereal production and accounts for 4% of total cereal yield annually. in ethiopia, the grain is used for making traditional fermented liquors, tella (local beverage) and areki (local sprit). the flour of finger millet alone or with mixture of teff (eragrostis tef), maize (zea mays) and barley (hordeum vulgare) is commonly used for making injera (flatbread). traditionally, porridge prepared from finger millet flour is believed to cure diarrhoea and malaria and the straw is used for animal feed and thatching roof. in ethiopia, where agriculture is the foundation of the country’s economy, the importance of finger millet in relation to climate variability, especially unpredictable rainfall and recurrent drought cannot be overstated. the purpose of this research was twofold; (1) to screen finger millet accessions adapted to low moisture content and (2) to promote and recommend elite accessions for further drought stress field evaluation. material and methods a total of 96 finger millet (eleusine coracana) accessions were included in the experiment of which 50 and 44 were collected by bioinnovate africa project team from tigray (northern ethiopia) and institute of biodiversity conservation (ibc) collected from different part of ethiopia, respectively. moreover, nationally released improved cultivars, namely tadesse and boneya were included as standard check. description of the study area the study was conducted at dhera, (subcenter of kulumsa agricultural research center) found in oromia regional state, 117 km from addis and located between 08 0 19′06.3′′ n latitude 039 0 19′ 0.74′′ e longitude at an altitude of 1677 m a.s.l. soil analysis and climate data soil samples were taken from the depth of 015 cm and physicochemical property of the soil was analyzed at ecophysiology laboratory, addis ababa university. the collected samples were air-dried and passed through 2 mm sieve to remove large particles and debris. the sieved samples were analyzed for ph in 1:1 soil to water ratio using ph meter (ph-100 digital controller, india). electrical conductivity was determined using conductivity meter (conductivity/tds/ salinity/resistivity meter, china). soil texture (particle size) was determined using hydrometer measurement and organic carbon was determined by walkley and black procedure (magdoff et al., 1996). total nitrogen was determined by the micro kjeldahl method (van schouwenberg and walinge, 1973).the physicochemical property of the soil at the experimental site is summarized in table1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 709-720 711 table 1: physicochemical property of the soil at dhera sub-center physical characteristics clay % 8 sand % 51.5 silt % 40.8 chemical characteristics soil ph 6.8 electrical conductivity (ds/m) 2.8 total nitrogen (%) 0.05 organic carbon (%) 1.4 five years averages (2007-2011) of maximum and minimum temperature were 30.80 c and 5.20 c, respectively, with mean annual rainfall of 834 mm. experimental design the experimental was planted in randomized complete block design (rcbd) with three replications. to minimize the effect of soil variation on different treatments, both replications were folded to hold 32 accessions with block size of 2 m x 24 m (48 m 2 ). in each plot, accessions were planted with 75 cm distance between rows. for plot management and data collection 1.5 m path was left between each block. the seeds were drilled in each line. fertilizer application was carried out 100 kg ha -1 of dap (nitrogen = 18% and phosphate = 46%) as a basal dose, and 100 kg ha -1 of urea (nitrogen = 46%) as top dressing following the procedure described by (upadhyaya et al., 2007), three lines of finger millet was sown to minimize the boarder effect. after three weeks each row was thinned to have 10 plants with 10 cm gap between each individual plant. according to international board for plant genetic resources (ibpgr, 1985) plant descriptor for finger millet, five finger millet plants were selected from each plot for measured trait. data collection agronomic and morphological measurements agro-morphological parameters such as plant height (ph), total tiller number (tn) and productive tillers (pt), green leaves number (gln), total green leaves area (tgla), finger number (fn) and finger length (fl) were taken following international board for plant genetic resources (ibpgr, 1985) plant descriptor for finger millet. physiological and yield related parameters were also scored from five plants randomly sampled from each plot and replication as per the descriptor of ibpgr (ibpgr, 1985). morphological traits (plant height, green leaf number and) measurement and yield and yield related traits (tiller number, productive tillers, ear number, ear length, grain yield per head and yield per plant) measurement were taken when 50% of the plot was at maturity. plant height was measured from the base of ground to the tip of the head. number tillers and productive tillers were counted other than the mother plant. number of green leaves was counted when the leaves was 50% and above were green. total green leaf area was calculated using the formula, gla= (c* l *w), where l is the length measured from the base to the tip of the leaf, w is the width taken from the widest part of the leaf and c is the correction factor calculated from the ratio of actual leaf area to the estimated leaf area of randomly selected 15 leaves. total green leaf area can be also calculated as tgla= σ (c*l *w). finger length was measured using a ruler from base to the tip of longest spike. physiological measurements relative water content (rwc), was determined following the procedure of gonzalez and gonzalez (2001) at 50% crop maturity. leaves were collected from the flag asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 709-720 712 and the second leaf from top to down, in order to minimize age effects. a sharp razor blade was used to cut the leaf base. the leaf was trimmed at 1 cm 2 and immediately fresh weight (fw) was determined. this leaves were floated in distilled water inside a closed petri dish for 24 hr. after the water was wiped from the leaf surface gently with tissue paper, turgid weight (tw) was determined. subsequently the leaves disks were dried in the oven at 80 0 c for 48 hrs to obtain the dry weight (dw). the dw was then determined using the same balance and finally rwc was calculated using the formula below: rwc= [(fw – dw)/ (tw – dw)] x100 (where, fw= fresh weight, dw= dry weight, tw= turgid weight) chlorophyll content index (cci) triplicate of cci (leaf greenness) was measured from each six leaves sampled from ninety six accessions using chlorophyll content meter, ccm-200 plus (opti-sciences, inc. 8 winn avenue hudson, usa). cci measurements were made at 50% plot maturity. grain yield per head and per plant the panicles from each head were trashed from each tagged plants and the seed was kept in the greenhouse and seed weight was taken every other day until at constant seed weight was maintained. finally seed weight per head and per plant was determined using top load balance when the moisture content was ca12.5%. data analysis all the collected data were subjected to the analysis of variance (anova), using spss software (version 16, spss inc., chicago usa). means of each measured data were separated using tukey’s range test at the 95% level of probability to test the significance of the treatments. ‘r’ program version 2.11.1 was used to draw dendrogram. result agronomic and morphological measurements analysis of variance (anova) showed that there were significant (p< 0.05) differences among accessions in plant height. moreover, plant height had significant correlation with yield per head and yield per plant and strong significant correlation with r 2 = 0.430 and r 2 = 0.331 was also observed with number of productive tillers and ear numbers, respectively. table 2: mean ± s.e values of agronomic measurement for top ten finger millet accessions in descending order accession green leaf number accession green leaf area (cm 2 ) accession total green leaf area (cm 2 ) 215851 10.8 (1.6) aaufm-19 144.2 (3.4) aaufm-36 542.1 (0.4) 242132 10.2 (1.2) aaufm-36 125.1 (2.4) aaufm-19 528.6 (1.1) aaufm-15 10.0 (1.6) 238310 36.5 (2.9) 215851 300.3 (0.6) aaufm-47 9.4 (0.4) 241618 32.3 (3.8) 241618 245.2 (0.5) 237475 8.4 (2.0) aaufm-29 30.2 (3.4) aaufm-15 228.9 (0.4) 238300 8.2 (1.0) 230110 30.0 (3.5) 230110 219.7 (0.4) aaufm-44 8.0 (1.1) aaufm-39 29.2 (1.5) aaufm-44 217.3 (0.4) 237465 7.6 (0.6) 215989 28.8 (3.5) 234159 217.1 (0.9) 211618 234159 7.6 (1.5 7.6 (1.2) 238325 234159 28.8 (0.2) 28.6 (0.5) aaufm-47 238300 207.9 (0.2) 204.7 (0.6) where ph= plant height, gln= green leaf number, gla= green leaf area, tgla= total green leaf area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 709-720 713 total green leaf area is the product of the number of green leaves and the number of green leaf area of a plant, showed significant difference between accessions. accessions (p<0.05). moreover, green leaf area had highly significant correlation (r 2 =0.669 and r 2 = 0.767) with green leaf number (r 2 = 0.669) and total green leaf area (r 2 = 0.767) per plant (table 6). cci reading was also showed significant difference among the accessions measured (p < 0.05). except positive correlation with green leaf area and relative water content, there was no correlation so far observed with other parameters. table 3: correlation coefficient among different morpho-physiological traits of ninety six genotypes of finger millet accessions ph nt pt gln gla tgla en el cci rwc gyph gypp ph 1 nt .091 1 pt .430** .581** 1 gln -.032 .071 .118 1 gla .001 .135 .062 .053 1 tgla .000 .145 .125 .669** .767** 1 en .331** .001 .329** .083 -.049 .029 1 el .166 .155 .283** .040 -.104 -.054 .364** 1 cci .196* -.034 .194* -.060 -.076 -.084 .511** .201* 1 rwc -.153 -.042 -.143 -.144 .062 -.053 -.198* .095 .004 1 gyph .191* -.084 .261** -.152 .037 -.077 .187* .002 .208* -.211* 1 gypp .282** .259** .614** -.054 .009 -.053 .111 -.069 .086 -.143 .733** 1 * = correlation is significant at the 0.05 level **=correlation is significant at the 0.01 level asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 709-720 714 histological measurements cci reading showed significance difference between the accessions (p < 0.05) measured. except positive correlation with green leaf area and relative water content, there was no correlation so far observed with other parameters. analysis of variance also indicated that relative water content was significantly different among accessions (p > 0.05). moreover, relative water content (rwc) was positively correlated with root to shoot ratio, yield per head and per plant as well as with cci reading, while dry root weight showed a strong significant correlation at r 2 = 0.905 with rwc. three accessions namely 215985, aaufm-6 and 215989 showed the highest rwc with 100 %, 98.6 % and 93.7 %, respectively. table 4: mean ± s.e values relative water content and chlorophyll contents of top ten finger millet accessions accessions rwc accessions cci 215985 99.2 (10.0) aaufm-14 20.2 (7.0) aaufm-5 95.9 (5.2) aaufm-44 18.2 (6.3) 515989 93.7 (2.6) aaufm-24 18.1 (3.3) 235782 92.3 (2.8) 215965 16.2 (0.2) 242620 91.5 (6.2) aaufm-23 15.8 (1.3) aaufm-8 88.8 (1.6) aaufm-12 15.4 (2.4) aaufm-50 87.4 (0.8) aaufm-33 15.3 (0.4) 234194 87.0 (0.4) 235785 15.2 (0.5) aaufm-21 86.8 (4.6) aaufm-20 15.1 (2.1) 238327 86.5 (11.8) aaufm-7 14.8 (1.9) where; rwc= relative water content, cci= chlorophyll content index yield and yield related parameters the amount of grain yield per head and grain yield per plant depends on the number of ear, ear size and productive tillers. analysis of variance showed grain yield per head and grain yield per plant varied significant (p < 0.05) between accessions. table 5: mean ± s.e values yield and yield related parameters of top ten accessions accessions gyph (g) accessions gypp (g) aaufm-7 tadesse 238325 aaufm-43 aaufm-2 aaufm-30 230109 aaufm-42 aaufm-50 aaufm-44 5.40 (0.3) 4.64 (1.4) 4.00 (0.9) 4.00 (0.9) 4.00 (0.6) 3.85 (0.0) 3.74 (2.3) 3.74 (1.7) 3.73 (0.6) 3.60 (0.9) 238299 238325 aaufm-2 aaufm-30 aaufm-44 aaufm-38 aaufm-21 230103 aaufm-36 aaufm-18 84.50 (3.4) 80.00 (0.3) 77.50 (2.5) 75.20 (1.3) 72.00 (1.6) 70.50 (1.6) 67.00 (1.5) 65.49 (1.4) 64.50 (2.6) 63.50 (2.6) where gyph= grain yield per head, gypp= grain yield per plant cluster analysis fifteen quantitative traits (morphological, physiological and yield related traits) were used to carry out cluster analysis and all the 96 accessions were grouped in to six major clusters (fig.1). overall, in the cluster analysis finger millet accession tend to form group based on their geographic proximity and origin. the first cluster contains forty five accessions, three from amhara regional state (gonder, gojam and wollo), thirty seven were collected from tigray and five from eritrea. the second cluster contains nineteen accessions, i.e., eighteen from asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 709-720 715 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 3 0 0 4 0 0 agglomerative hierarchical classification accessions d is si m ila ri ty 23 01 02 23 01 05 a a u f m -2 3 24 26 24 a a u f m -4 a a u f m -1 7 a a u f m -2 1 a a u f m -7 23 01 08 a a u f m -2 0 a a u f m -3 0 a a u f m -1 0 a a u f m -4 2 23 74 76 23 83 34 21 59 65 20 84 40 a a u f m -1 a a u f m -1 1 a a u f m -3 2 23 41 58 24 36 39 a a u f m -2 5 23 51 45 23 41 99 a a u f m -4 6 24 26 16 a a u f m -5 t a d e s s e a a u f m -2 9 c o ll -0 10 a a u f m -6 a a u f m -3 1 c o ll -0 09 23 01 06 23 41 94 a a u f m -2 2 24 16 17 23 83 05 a a u f m -3 5 23 83 25 21 60 46 23 83 27 a a u f m -4 1 23 01 09 23 82 99 24 21 20 a a u f m -4 5 a a u f m -2 6 a a u f m -2 8 a a u f m -4 0 23 01 07 a a u f m -9 a a u f m -3 9 a a u f m -4 8 23 01 10 23 83 10 a a u f m -4 7 a a u f m -4 4 a a u f m -1 5 23 41 59 23 74 65 23 74 75 b o n e y a 23 83 00 24 16 18 24 21 32 24 21 33 10 00 02 21 59 90 21 59 89 24 21 35 23 51 40 23 57 82 23 57 83 24 26 20 22 58 92 24 26 22 a a u f m -1 4 21 59 82 21 59 85 24 21 11 a a u f m -3 7 a a u f m -1 2 a a u f m -1 8 a a u f m -3 3 a a u f m -2 4 a a u f m -8 a a u f m -1 6 23 01 03 a a u f m -4 3 a a u f m -3 8 a a u f m -2 21 58 51 a a u f m -3 6 a a u f m -1 9 figure 1: dendrogram showing similarity among ninety six accessions based on the measured parameters 1 2 3 4 5 6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 709-720 716 tigray and one from amhara. cluster-3 contains twenty three accessions (ten from tigray and thirteen from amhara). cluster-4 contains five accessions, three from tigray and one accession from amhara and eritrea. the fifth cluster contains only one accession from tigray while the last cluster (cluster-6) contains two accessions from tigray. correlation coefficient revealed that grain yield per head and per plant showed strong correlation with plant height, productive tillers, number of tillers and productive tillers at 0.01. strong positive correlation was observed among grain yield per plant and grain yield per head at r 2 = 0.733. moreover, grain yield per head had significant correlation with plant height, productive tillers, ear number and the greenness of the leaf (cci). strong positive correlation was also detected among grain yield per plant and grain yield per head at r 2 = 0.733. grain yield per head had also significant correlation with plant height, productive tillers, ear number and the greenness of the leaf (cci). discussion the genotypes evaluated in this study were variable for most of the traits considered. in this study accessions observed to show variation in days to heading and maturing and both traits were positively correlated with plant height, whereby early maturing accessions were observed to be taller (230107, 230108, 230106 with 105.6 cm, 103.6 cm and 99.4 cm, respectively) than the late maturing accessions (238325, aaufm41 and 216046 having plant height of 56.7 cm 52.1 cm and 67.2 cm respectively). in contrast, the shortest plant such as accessions 215982 and 215985 with plant height of 36.4 cm and 36.8 cm, respectively, were recorded for accessions collected from moisture rich area like amhara region (north-western part) which was very susceptible to water deficit. water deficit could reduce plant height during the vegetative and flowering stages, which is attributed to reduction of stem and leaf expansion and resulted in stunted growth (vurayai, et al., 2001; mirbahar et al., 2009). it also affects both elongation and expansion growth (anjum et al., 2003a). according to vaezi, et al. (2010) significant reduction in plant height was observed by 14.6% in susceptible chickpea accessions than the irrigated once. accessions with the higher number of green leaf retention is another characteristic features of drought stress resistant mechanisms in plants (blum, 2007). however, when the soil moisture content declines, traits related to leaf mainly green leaf number and total green leaf area could be affected seriously with drought in susceptible plants. this is in agreement with the report of metcalfe et al. (1990); expansion of leaves of the drought-treated plants was slower than that of well watered plants. mean tgla (total green leaf area) per plant drastically decreased for accessions under soil moisture stress condition. for instance, accession aaufm49, 242622 and aaufm -32 collected from tigray (northern ethiopia) showed the lowest tgla, which resulted in lower yield and agronomic performance. in agreement with the result of this study, reduction in tgla has been reported for many plant species under moisture stress condition (zhang et al., 2004; sah and zamora, 2005; farooq et al., 2009). however, the response varies depending on genotypes and intensity and duration of water stress. drought stress mostly reduced leaf growth and in turn the leaf areas in many species of plants such as populus (wullschleger et al., 2005), and rice (farooq et al., 2009). one of the effects of drought stress has been attributed to the destruction of chlorophyll pigments and the instability of the pigment followed by leaf abscission (levit, 1980). the same observation was made in this study on susceptible genotypes of finger millet, however, there were some accessions maintaining the green leaves longer than their counterparts. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 709-720 717 table 6: mean ± s.e values agronomic, physiological and yield related traits of ten finger millet accession selected for its drought stress performance accaccession, phplant height, tntiller number, nptnumber of productive tiller, glngreen leaf number, gla-green leaf area, tglatotal green leaf area, enear number, elear length, rwcrelative water content, cci (chlorophyll content index),gyph-grain yield per head and gyppgrain yield per plant acc ph tn npt gln gla tgla en el rwc cci gyph gypp aaufm-7 77.9(4.2) 10.2(1.2) 6.4(0.3) 2.0(0.4) 26.2(5.4) 52.5(0.9) 11.5(0.4) 10.5(0.2) 70.9(2.8) 16.4(1.9) 4.0(0.9) 74.8(3.4) aaufm-2 79.0(1.6) 18.5(0.2) 16.9(0.0) 7.2(2.0) 23.5(1.7) 169.5(1.1) 10.5(0.3) 10.5(0.2) 74.7(0.8) 15.4(2.5) 1.9(0.6) 64.9(0.3) aaufm44 62.4(6.4) 13.6(0.5) 8.7(0.4) 8.0(4.1) 27.1(2.7) 217.3(0.6) 20.6(0.3) 8.8(0.1) 56.3(7.9) 24.6(6.3) 1.8(1.3) 63.5(2.5) aaufm30 64.5(3.3) 13.2(2.7) 12.1(2.4) 4.3(0.9) 25.0(0.9) 106.2(0.6) 8.9(0.3) 8.0(0.1) 76.3(16.0) 13.3(1.4) 4.2(0.1) 61.4(1.3) aaufm43 79.4(0.4) 16.6(0.1) 12.7(1.5) 1.4(0.5) 17.9(0.4) 25.1(0.5) 10.3(0.2) 8.7(0.1) 70.5(2.3) 15.4(1.1) 2.3(0.8) 60.2(1.6) tadesse 83.4(2.6) 9.7(0.7) 6.4(1.9) 2.7(0.8) 23.8(1.2) 63.5(0.2) 6.8(0.1) 7.3(0.0) 81.8(3.6) 11.6(0.6) 4.9(.20) 58.6(1.6) 230109 93.4(1.6) 10.6(0.2) 9.3(0.2) 2.5(0.6) 18.8(1.9) 47.2(1.0) 10.1(0.5) 7.9(0.2) 57.6(0.4) 13.6(1.6) 4.1(0.1) 57.1(1.5) aaufm10 103.4(9) 15.2(1.0) 13.0(0.1) 6.0(1.7) 18.0(4.1) 107.9(0.7) 10.3(0.3) 11.4(0.1) 67.4(18.5) 15.3(3.1) 3.7(0.4) 55.3(1.4) aaufm42 77.4(3.3) 11.8(0.7) 10.9(0.1) 5.0(1.4) 22.8(1.0) 113.9(0.4) 9.2(0.2) 10.7(0.1) 76.0(13.2) 15.5(1.0) 4.1(0.1) 53.3(2.6) aaufm50 69.2(1.0) 11.2(0.0) 10.0(0.2) 1.7(0.4) 25.1(2.2) 41.8(0.4) 9.3(0.2) 9.2(0.1) 87.3(0.8) 14.1(1.2) 4.1(0.1) 51.2(2.6) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 709-720 718 those accessions with the highest cci records (aaufm-14, aaufm-44 and aaufm-24) exhibited the highest relative water content, highest number of green leaf area, and the highest yield per head and per plant. on the other hand accession with the lowest cci records such as accessions 215982, 216046 and aaufm-26 had the lowest ear numbers, plant height, green leaf area, relative water content, and yield per head. overall, the lowest chlorophyll content reading value was recorded in accessions which were susceptible to drought. similar result were reported for eggplant by kirnak et al. (2001), that water stress resulted in significant decreases in chlorophyll content and the leaf relative water content. leaf water content is a useful indicator of plant water balance, since it expresses the relative amount of water present on the plant tissues (pirdashti et al., 2009). relative water content could decrease as the extent of water stress becomes more severe (kyparissis et al., 1995). according to pastori and trippi (1992), higher rwc has been reported to play a role in the stress tolerance of maize. in our study, accessions 242135, 215990 and 225892 which were collected from moisture rich region, amhara region (northwest ethiopia) observed to be more susceptible to drought with the lowest value in rwc. similarly, siddique et al. (2001) reported that wheat leaves subjected to drought condition were exhibited large reductions in rwc comparing to the control. yield is the sum total of the grain from the main plant and the tillers as well and hence, the number of productive tillers directly correlates with seed yield. accordingly, accessions 238299, 238325, aaufm-2, aaufm-30 had the highest yield per head and per plant in the present study. moreover, these accessions had moderate to high number of productive tillers, seed weight per head, relative water content, cci reading, ear size and the aggregated nature of the spikelet in the panicle. this is partly indicated in the clustering analysis whereby out of the total 23 best performing accessions under drought condition, 11 were from the same cluster. water stress during the flowering and grain filling periods reduced seed yield and seed weight and accelerated maturity of dry bean (singh, 1995, bouman and tuong 2000 and pirdashti et al., 2009) on rice. insufficient rainfall can also reduce the corn reproductive stage which resulted in significant reduction in grain yields (liu and wiatrak, 2011) and 28.05% yield reduction was also recorded in barley (vaezi et al., 2010). conclusion the present study indicated the existence of variability among genotypes collected from different locality in terms of their response to moisture stress condition. a total of 23 out of the 96 accessions evaluated were selected as drought tolerant based on agro-morphological and physiological and yield related parameters. accessions such as aaufm7, aaufm-2, aaufm-44, and aaufm-30 were found to be high yielder with grain yield per head than the nationally released varieties (tadesse and boneya). the cluster analysis of all the 96 accessions revealed six distinct groups, of which total 23 accessions were selected and promoted based on their good performance against drought. out of the total 23 selected accessions, 11 accessions belong to cluster 1 of which nine accessions were obtained from one region, tigray (northern part of ethiopia). acknowledgement the authors thank bioinnovate africa project and addis ababa university for financial and material support during the study, respectively. reference anjum, f., m., yassem, e., rasel, a., wahid, and anjum, s. 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(2005). phenotypic variation in growth and biomass distribution for two advanced-generation pedigrees of hybrid poplar. canadian j. for. res., 35: 1779–1789. zhang, x., friedl, m. a., schaaf, c. b. and strahler, a. h. (2004). climate controls on vegetation phenological patterns in northern mid and high latitudes inferred from modis data. global change biology, 110-113 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 220 indigenous technologies fishing settlement response to climate change variability’s in southern nigeria albert, c. o. and isife, b. i. department of agricultural & applied economics/extension, rivers state university of science and technology port harcourt, rivers state, nigeria abstract the study focused on indigenous technologies used by fishermen in southern nigeria as adaptation measures to climate change variability’s. interview schedule was used to elicit information from sixty respondents in three (3) communities using simple random sampling technique. percentage and mean scores were utilized for data analysis. the study established that the climate change experiences were: rise in sea level, rise in temperature, high wind, change in tidal pattern and frequent storms. the effects of climate change experiences on fishing include low fish catch, increase in boat mishap, reduced fish production and low growth rate of fishes. indigenous technologies used as mitigating steps include building of bigger boats, the use of diverse fishing gears and observation of weather. these technologies had been very effective as mitigating steps. the study recommended mainly that modern weather forecasting facilities should be provided for the fishermen. keywords: indigenous technologies, fishing settlement, climate change introduction 1 in nigeria, fish production is not only important as a source of rich protein, but can also be used to bring about institutional changes. these changes can offer access to production assets and resources which can help to empower the poor and directly promote their livelihood (obikezie, 1999). however, in recent times, fish production has been affected by climate change. climate change represents several factors associated with increasing atmospheric concentration of green house gases. it include increasing acidification of the corresponding author’s name: albert, c. o. email address: carobinedo@yahoo.com oceans, increasing sea level and related factors such as change in winds, strength of storms, precipitation patterns among others (secretan et al., 2007). impact of climate change on aquaculture could occur directly and indirectly and not all facets of climate change will impact equally on fisheries and aquaculture (ipcc, 2007). the bid to reduce the effect of climate change on fisheries, made man to seek for ways on how to adapt to climate change experiences as an increased frequency is at an extreme. adaptation to climate change is an active set of strategies and actions taken by people in reaction to or in anticipation of change in climate in order to enhance or maintain their well-being. adaptation can therefore involve either building adaptive capacities to increase the ability of individuals, groups or asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:carobinedo@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 220-224 221 organizations to predict and adapt to changes, as well as implementing indigenous knowledge adaptation decisions, in transforming that capacity into action (desiloa & soto, 2009). indigenous knowledge or technology is defined as a knowledge or technology characterizing particular region or country. silitoe (1998) opined that indigenous knowledge are not primitive left over from the past but in a country, as system that have been timetuned and adopted both biologically and socially, to counter the process of what are often hash and inimical environment. the fish farmers in fish farming settlements also have adapted indigenous technologies in fish farming (sicat, 2003). problem statement climate change therefore, is a major challenge to agricultural development in nigeria and rivers state in particular. it is not only a challenge to agricultural development but to food security and general livelihood of many populations. agriculture including fish farming being the most weather dependent of all human activities is highly vulnerable to climate change. rivers state is experiencing an increase risk from climate change that is evident in rising temperatures, increasing flood, sea level rise, among others. these have increasingly affected livelihood of the rural populace which have resulted to poor output in agricultural produce including fish farming, in the way of poor growth and reproduction of fishes. it is therefore necessary to find answers to the following questions. what are the climate change experiences of the fish farming settlement? what are the effects of these climate change experiences? what indigenous technologies have been applied to adapt to the climate change variability’s? and how effective are these indigenous technologies to the fish farmers for climate change adaptation? purpose of the study specifically, the study sought to: i. identify the climate change experiences in the study area; ii. examine the effects of these climate change experiences on fish farming; iii. determine the indigenous technologies that have been applied to adapt to the climate change effects; and iv. ascertain the effectiveness of these indigenous technologies used for climate change adaptation. methodology the study was carried out in andoni local government area (lga) of rivers state, nigeria. the lga is bounded by the atlantic ocean, which made the people to be predominantly fish farmers and serves as the major supplier of fish and other sea food in the state. the lga has many fishing settlements namely: ebukuma-ija, okwunibi, asaramatoro, asarama-otro, akaja, light house, down-billow, oyorokoto, agbama and chekmoluk. simple random sampling was employed to select three fishing settlements namely: oyorokoto, agbama and ebukuma-ija and twenty (20) fish farmers from each of the selected fish settlements. this gave a total of sixty (60) fish farmers that were selected for the study. interview schedule was used for data collection. the data collected were subjected to percentage and mean scores. a four point lekert type scale with options very effective (4), effective (3), less effective (2) and not effective (1) was used. the values were added to get 10 which were further divided by 4 to get 2.50. the 2.50 was the mean score used for judgment. any value equal to or greater than 2.50 was considered effective, while values less than 2.50 were considered not effective. results and discussion climate change experiences in the study area table 1 reveals the climate change experienced by fish farmers in the study area. the experiences include frequent storms (58.3%), high wind with water speed (40%), change in tidal pattern (50%), high temperature (45%), rise in sea level (38%) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 220-224 222 and flooding (13.3%). this implies that the climate change experiences of the fish farmers in the fishing settlements included frequent storms, change in tide pattern, high wind with speed, and rise in sea level, extreme sun and flooding. frequent storm and high wind with speed have prevented fishermen from going out to fish because it has led to capsize of boats that has caused lost of lives in the area. the finding is in line with ipcc (2007) which observed ocean productivity and change in circulation patterns due to climate change. table 1: percentage distribution of climate change experiences experience frequency percentage rise in sea level 21 38.0 high temperature 25 45.0 flooding 20 33.3 erosion 15 25.0 high wind with speed 20 40.0 change in tidal pattern 30 50.0 frequent storm 35 58.3 source: field survey, 2012 multiple responses effects of climate change experiences in fish farming table 2 reveals that all the listed variables were the effects of climate change experienced in fish farming. they include: low fish catch (m = 2.84) increase in boat mishap (m = 2.60), drives fishes far away from the shore (m = 2.81), damages fishing settlements (m = 2.54), increase in prices of fish (m = 2.72), reduces fish production and the growth rate of the fishes (2.63) and the production of same fish species (m = 2.83). increase in boat mishap has made some of the fishermen not to go very far from the sea shore to fish. this has led to the catch of same fish species that is, catching the same type of fish at the shore since the others have been driven away from the shore. it also leads to low fish catch those results to increase in the prices of fish. this is in line with de siloa and soto (2009) who observed two direct impacts of climate change on aquaculture. they are fluctuations of fish catch and unavailability of fish meal and fish oil. table 2: mean distribution of the effects of climate change experiences in fishing and fish production effects mean score(m) remark low fish catch 2.84 effective increase in boat mishap 2.60 effective production of some fish specie 2.83 effective divers fishes far away from the shore 2.81 effective damages fishing settlements 2.54 effective increases fish prices 2.72 effective reduces fish production and growth rate 2.63 effective source: field survey, 2012 indigenous technologies applied for adaptation of climate change variability’s results in table 3 reveal that majority (67%) of the respondents applied indigenous technology of building bigger boats to withstand the roughness of the sea. other indigenous technologies applied were observing weather/cloud formation to avoid risk of storm on the sea (50%), use of wind gauge on boats (55%) and use of diversified fishing gears (47%). the use of bigger boats with wind gauge which is an indigenous knowledge has helped to reduce the effect of high wind with speed on their boats. world bank (1998) sees indigenous technologies or knowledge as local basis decision taking in agriculture, health care, food production, education, natural resource management and host of other activities in a community. 223 table 3: indigenous technology applied to adapt to climate change indigenous technologies frequency percentage fishing far from the shore 6 10.0 observing weather/cloud formation to avoid risk of storm on the sea 30 50.0 building bigger boats to withstand the roughness of the sea 40 67.0 use of wind gauge on boats 33 55.0 diversification of fishing gears 28 47.0 source: field survey, 2012 multiple responses effectiveness of these indigenous technologies used for climate change adaptation table 4 established the effectiveness of these indigenous technologies used by fish farmers to eliminate or reduce the effect of climate change variability’s on fishing in the study areas. the study revealed that the knowledge or idea of building bigger boats for fishing (m = 2.82), the use of diversified fishing gears (m = 2.90), change in fishing pattern (m = 2.63), observation of weather before going out to fish (m = 2.51) and the use of wind gauge on fishing boats (m = 2.70) have actually help to reduce the impact of climate change variability’s on fishing thereby helping adapt to the weather which the fish farmers have found themselves. the mean score for observation of weather is 2.51, which indicates that the impact on mitigating climate change variability’s is low and could not be wholly depended on. table 4: effectiveness of indigenous technologies of climate change variability’s indigenous technologies very effective moderately effective less effective not effective total mean score (x) fishing far from shore 86 27 24 15 152 2.43 observing the weather 80 28 28 18 154 2.54 building bigger boats 108 36 30 11 185 2.82 diversification of fishing gears 100 33 26 16 175 2.90 change in fishing patterns 80 27 34 14 155 2.63 use of wind gauge to prevent wind 96 21 32 27 176 2.70 source: field survey, 2012 conclusion the study has established that climate change has caused frequent storms, rise in sea level, and change in wind speed and tidal pattern. these have made fishermen in the study area to use indigenous technologies by observing the weather/cloud and also build bigger boats. whenever they predicted that it was going to rain, they did not go for fishing and even when they went, bigger boats with wind gauge tied to them where used. the wind gauge helps to reduce the impact of the wind on the boat. the study therefore recommends that better and improved weather monitoring instrument should be introduced to the fishermen as this technology have helped to reduce incident of boat mishap. references de siloa, s. s., & soto, d. (2009). climate change and aquaculture, potential impact, adaptation and mitigation. in cochrane, k., detoung, c., soto, d., & bahri, t. (ed.). climate change implication for fisheries and aquaculture. overview of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 220-224 224 current scientific knowledge fao fisheries and aquaculture technical paper. no. 530. international panel for climate change (ipcc) (2007). climate change 2007. synthesis report. intergovernmental panel on climate change. retrieved on 10/12/12 from www.ipcc.ch/pd/assessmentreport/a r4/ syr/ar4-3yr-topic/pdf. obikezie, a. (1999). poverty alleviation through fisheries production: the way forward. paper presented at the annual zonal workshop of the research – tension farmer-inputlint-systems, umudike, nigeria. secretan, r. a. d., bueno, p. b., van aurooy, r., & olofsson, s. v. (2007). guidelines to meet insurance and other risk management needs in developing aquaculture in asia, rome, fao fisheries technical paper, no. 496, pp145 – 148. sicat, r. s. (2003). integrating farmers’ knowledge in a gis for land use planning. m.sc thesis. enschede, international institute for geoinformation science and earth observation, netherlands, pp 7-15. silitoe, p. (1998). defining indigenous knowledge. the knowledge continuum. indigenous knowledge and development monitor, 6, pp 622. world bank (1998). indigenous knowledge for developmenta framework for action. knowledge and learning center, african region, world bank. http//www.worldbank.org/afr/ik/ikr ept.pdf. sical, b. (2003). using indigenous knowledge in land use planning and management. a participating geographic informapttion system approach. sitibe, p. (1998). defining indigenous knowledge. the knowledge constraint. indigenous knowledge and development monitor 6. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 885 does local development exist? sustainability of artisanal agri-industry of jatropha seeds in yucatan armando rucoba garcía visiting professor of technology institute in merida. graduate in business planning and regional development, guanajuato alfonso munguía gil professor of technology institute in merida. graduate in business planning and regional development, yucatán maría isabel cano lópez professor of university of guanajuato. agribussiness program, guanajuato abstract this study seeks to analyze the benefits, as well as the likely risks of cultivating jatropha curcas in small production units of rain fed lands in yucatán. in order to analyze the possible development of local artisanal agri-industry in the context of policies related to biofuels in mexico, interviews with key informants were made to identify the agricultural potential of jatropha c. in monoculture and associated crops. its cultivation and using for biodiesel in the country will be possible as long as it not implies competition with crops for family consumption and it not represents an environmental degradation factor. production of jatropha c. on small areas could be a productive choice if public policies are established to promote biodiesel production and its use in national industry. keywords: local development, sustainability, jatropha curcas introduction 1 jatropha c. is a native tree from mexico and central america, which seeds (with 40-50% of oil and 25% of protein) are used as food for the population in veracruz, morelos and puebla regions. in these states from méxico non-toxic varieties for human consumption have been used for several generations. jatropha c. oil can be used directly as fuel or to produce soap and biodiesel. the secondary products (shell of the fruit and paste) are used to 1 corresponding author’s name: armando rucoba garcía email address: arucoba@gmail.com elaborate pesticides, fertilizers and livestock food. in addition, its sap is used to heal wounds and other skin diseases, making it highly desirable as medicinal plant. mainly, jatropha c. has been established in commercial plantations in monoculture; however, its harnessing on small surface through live fences in association with other crops represents a productive option that would allow to small producers to achieve an additional benefit with seed local exploitations, oil and other derivatives. the objective of this study was to identify opportunities and risks for the establishment of jatropha c. in rain fed land in yucatan and to analyze sustainability of small agri-industry asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:arucoba@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 885-892 886 locally, with bioenergy public policies as reference. interviews with key informants were subsequently conducted and their answers and statements allowed the comparison between production experiences in elsewhere in the world. policy for agri-fuels in the world in recent years, many countries have focused their energy policies to reduce the dependence of fossil fuels industry, and to prevent a greater environmental crisis caused by the dominant economic model. policies include the identification and development of alternative sources of energy that allow the partial substitution of fossil fuels demand as well as the reduction of the emission of greenhouse gases that cause global warming. societies in industrialized countries have a high demand of energy due to their lifestyle (rodriguez, 2011). they have an excessive expenditure of energy in order to maintain their high level of comfort, but in detriment of the environment. this expenditure of energy puts on risk sustainability processes and survival activities for other social groups in the rest of the world. the document "biomass and agriculture, sustainability, markets and policies" published by the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) in 2004 promotes among its members the establishment of policies that give an opportunity to the agriculture as an activity which generates energy through biofuels (oecd, 2004). in 2005, the international energy agency (iea) published the document "biofuels for transport: an international perspective" related to the potential use of bio-fuels for motor vehicles in developed countries (iea, 2005). likewise, in 2009, the oecd published the document "the bioeconomy to 2030-designing a policy agenda", which integrates potential benefits of agriculture to modern economy and encourages the research and production of biofuels. it also tries to influence to governments to adopt policies to favor the participation of their countries to the bioeconomy. in other words, bioeconomy can be understood as a model of sustainable management of agricultural resources and biotechnology to benefit the society (oecd, 2009). in 2010, following the same trend to promote biofuels, the world bank published the document "biofuels, markets, targets and impacts". it considers that the offer of ethanol and biodiesel in developed and developing nations is steadily increasing, due to the establishment of public policies on this matter (world bank, 2010). similarly, the document "bioenergy development, issues and impacts for poverty and natural resource management", published in 2010 by the world bank, asserts that bioenergy production will be a competitive energy supply in countries with significant resources of biomass (world bank, 2010). jointly, the oecd, the iea and united nations development programme (undp) (2010) published a document "does energy poverty, how to make modern energy universal access? it sums up the objectives of millenium, thinking and policies to be implemented in member countries: "using clean energy to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses and global warming". reduction in the use of energy derived from petroleum is the result of a concern, especially from developed countries to prevent the depletion of fossil fuels. if agri-fuels were established without planning, it might imply sustainability risks for the society and the environment (coello and castro, 2008). however, when they are settled in a planned way, they might turn into an alternative to reduce oil dependence and a productive option to generate income to producers and investors, as well as for smallholders who do not participate in subsistence agriculture. finally, it’s important to add that they have a reduced potential to be a full response to shortage of petroleum products, due to the limited availability of land for their establishment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 885-892 887 public policy for agri-fuels in mexico the legal framework that justifies the searching for alternative sources of bioenergy in mexico is the law for use of renewable energies and financing of energy transition (2008), which determines mechanisms for changing an energy system based on fossil fuels to a system that promotes renewable energy sources, including biofuels (laerfte, 2008). the publishing of the law for promotion and development of bioenergy (lpdb) (2008) creates the principles to promote sustainable development in rural areas through the production and use of the bioenergy, in order to enable the population to reach a better living standard. this is consistent to the policies implemented by developed and some undeveloped countries for bioenergy production, along with recommendations of international organisms such as united nations (2007), economic commission for latin america and the caribbean (eclac) (2011) and world bank (2010). the law for promotion and development of bioenergy in article 1, subparagraph i, indicates the duty to "promote production of inputs for bioenergy from agricultural and forestry activities, algae, biotechnology processes and enzyme of the mexican countryside, without risking the safety and food sovereignty of the country, in accordance with the articles 178 and 179 of the sustainable rural development law (2012). the section ii of the same article from the law, indicates that it ought “to develop production, marketing and the efficient use of bioenergy to contribute to the reactivation of the rural sector, to foster the generation of employments and a better quality of life for the population; specifically those people who live in high and very high marginality". finally, in paragraph iii, it points out the duty of "promoting, in terms of the law of planning, regional development in disadvantaged rural communities". according to the regulation of the lpdb (2009), risk of food scarcity in rural areas by use and exploitation of biofuels must be avoided. particularly, regulation has reaffirmed that marginal areas (eroded, abandoned, with low fertility and non-use) is where the jatropha c. could be established for commercial monoculture. through the inter-secretarial strategy of bioenergetics (eib) created in 2009, the federal government has included agricultural, environmental, social and economic aspects that should be considered for developing bioenergy systems in the country. this strategy seeks to provide a development based on policies and programs that will be needed to order sustainable development of bioenergetics industry in mexico (eib, 2009). program of introduction to bioenergetics, from secretary of energy (sener) was published in 2008, and the program of sustainable production of inputs for bioenergy and scientific and technological development (proinbios), from secretary of agriculture, livestock, fisheries and food (sagarpa) was published in (2009). both programs seek to guide and join efforts to get the best use and development of the bioenergetics. program of introduction to bioenergetics of the secretary of energy considers three strategic lines of biofuels promotion: a) promoting available information of various aspects of production chains and consumption, b) promoting research at laboratory level and economic studies through a specialized group in biofuels, c) promoting partnerships between society actors and government for development of biofuels according to the multidisciplinary nature of the bioenergy systems (sener, 2008). these three actions have been replicated in each state from mexico; public and private institutions have created working teams in bioenergy to conduct research, to disseminate information related to biofuels and to promote their development. the program of sustainable production of inputs for bioenergy and scientific and technological development (sagarpa, 2009) considers five strategic lines: i. developing an information system. establishment an information system in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 885-892 888 short term with access through the internet to facilitate decision-making of the actors of the bioenergy chain. ii. promoting research, development and technology transfer for the production of biomass. iii. encouraging partnerships in the chain that would allow development of an integrated and competitive agroindustry, by encouraging the creation of societies. iv. generating market certainty. establishment of production and biomass commercialization schemes in mid and in long term, for give certainty to farmers. v. promoting production of supplies (increasing capacities and production). supporting the development of investment projects to meet the supplies demand in a competitive and sustainable manner, taking advantage of production diversification, which allows the rising of the living standard of rural society. these governmental actions have congruence with the international policies that encourage the establishment of biofuels, which seeks to create commercial network and global services to make a maximum use of resources for bioenergy production. biofuels in mexico in mexico jatropha curcas commercial crop had its beginning in 2008. the first settlements took place in chiapas with the purpose of producing biodiesel for local public transport use. in 2008, the institute of bioenergetics and alternative energy (ibea) delivered jatropha c. seeds and m$2,000/ha (two thousand mexican pesos per hectar) on loan to producers enrolled in the project. in the same year, it was proposed to support participating farmers with a one-timepayment of m$6,310/ha, from proarbol program for paying $2,000/ha destined for planting and maintaining costs of the plantations. it was estimated that from productive stability of plantation (3 rd year), producers may earn an income of $16,000 to $35,000/ha annually (valero, et al., 2011). the ibea disappeared the same year and the bioenergetics societies union of chiapas (usb) was created. the project was briefly under their control, because in the same year it came under control of the institute for the encouragement of tropical agriculture (ifat), and afterward the institute of tropical agricultural productive reconversion (irpat) was created (valero, et al., 2011). the constant transformation of responsible institutions for this project caused confusion to the producers and delayed technical assistance, which brought with it a poor handling of the plantations and high yields were delayed. in 2009, around 3,000 producers in 166 locations of 16 municipalities in centro, frailesca, sierra and istmo regions from chiapas began the construction of a biofuels plant in tapachula city with an investment of $14.5 million for the project, using colombian technology (valero et al., 2011). for 2011, there were about 2,700 producers at 16 municipalities with 10,000 hectares of jatropha c. in chiapas. several producers have withdrawn activity, due in part to the lack of support in technical assistance, research, subsidies and credit to increase yield of jatropha c. seeds on plantations (valero et al., 2011). policy instruments aimed to the promotion of biofuels still are emerging, as well as being uncertain the trade of the jatropha c. oil in the country, since only large companies have links abroad to sell it. as it will discuss later, production systems of inputs for bioenergy in general, must be coherent with the population local needs and integral use of natural resources. sustainable development of the agricultural sector regarding to the policies planning in different countries of the world, it considers environmental destruction, climate change and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 885-892 889 population needs to promote various bioenergy projects, which generate jobs and income for the local economy, although sometimes this is accomplished in detriment of their environmental conditions (jiwan, 2008; kucharz, 2008) and food scarcity for population (riechmann, 2008; roa, 2008). risks attached to the establishment of agri-fuels in self-consumption production lands might cause food shortage and famine to the local families. in this context, sustainable development can be defined as the sustainability of the human race on the planet, based on conservation dynamic and rescue of the living beings (bustillo and martinez, 2008). sustainable development model seeks the rational use of the natural resources based on three main components: 1) social welfare, reflected in actions of health, education, housing, security, and human rights protection; 2) ecological preservation, with conservation of water, air, soil, plants and animals, 3) economic development, involving creation of jobs, generation and distribution of wealth, as well as public policies to foster these (alcocer, 2007). sustainable development emerges as a response to critics about implementation of unilateral development models mainly focused on economic growth, causing environmental degradation. the lack of comprehensive development policies hinders the conservation and rational use of natural resources, causing poverty and marginalization in a large part of the population, mainly in underdeveloped countries. on one hand, the economicist approach centralizes needs and desires of men by perceiving nature as a means of exploitation and as an instrument to improve people life quality. this approach not considered a scenario of scarce resources, which generates depletion, environmental pollution and social inequality (bustillo and martinez, 2008). on the other hand, ecological approach considers that there is a shortage of natural resources due to biophysical constraints imposed by the environment. the principle that operates in this model is that economical production requires a constant flow of matter and energy, so it is advisable to reduce that ecologically flow (bustillo and martinez, 2008). sustainable development integrates two approaches, the economic and the ecological, generating a complementary model that allows coordination among different actors who seek to link social needs, as well as scientific and technological knowledge to political actions by promoting comprehensive development of society and environment. sustainable development has been widely criticized, nevertheless it has created a debate regarding how countries must conceive and promote national development. in other words, how should be a comprehensive vision of the problematic presented in different spheres of government and society, by paying attention to its impact on living standards of population in general and of the vulnerable population in particular. sustainable model, although pragmatically limited, attempts to reconsider and seek to assign greater importance to social and environmental areas, which had been relegated to second place in favor of economic growth; causing current problems of climate change, environmental degradation and poverty in the world. sustainability of small agri-industry of jatropha c. seeds in yucatan in mexico, cultivation of jatropha c. for biodiesel production is still incipient. production of biodiesel on a commercial scale is not economically feasible yet due to high costs implied by oil transformation process (semarnat, 2008). only a few states have important jatropha c. plantings, excelling chiapas, veracruz, michoacan, sinaloa and yucatan, whose oil production is mainly intended for supplying private companies demand for exportation, leaving aside industry uses and national market. despite being originally from yucatan peninsula, jatropha c. is an unknown plant for the majority of the population, as well as their potential to achieve the benefits already asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 885-892 890 described. its cultivation in small area in yucatán does not exist, while in other states it has already been established for commercialization purpose. small producers can be benefited by the establishment of jatropha c., considering that its cultivation can be carried out on lands without agricultural use or with limited productivity. according to the experts’ point of view, it is quite feasible to reach a yield of 500 kg in rain fed conditions per hectare in monoculture. however, it is very difficult to achieve 1000 kg/ha due to soil and weather conditions in yucatan, unless its cultivation process includes irrigation and mechanized soil preparation. crop of jatropha c. in yucatán can be established in two production systems: monoculture, which production would be directed to its marketing; and association of crops, which production would be directed to marketing and local harnessing. in lands not committed to self-consumption, jatropha c. can be interleaved with crops such as beans, squash and chili, by considering appropriate distances between crops to avoid competition and to achieve acceptable yield. in addition, jatropha c. can be used as living fence to integrate it to local agro-ecosystems. the living fences system would allow selfconsumption-production in the rest of the agricultural land; therefore, family self-supply crops would not be displaced, and the food necessities would not be affected. the producers might be benefited not only by the establishment of jatropha c. around maize crop to prevent transit of animal, but also to collect seed for consume it or to extract oil useful as fuel or for soap production. discussions energetic policies at international and national levels impulse the establishment of projects focused on bioenergy production. these projects are oriented to produce raw material to satisfy biofuels industry needs. jatropha c. yields is the main query, according to agri-ecological potential that have regions of mexico, due to yields found about 420 to 573 kg of seed per hectare (felix, 2009). in addition, ariza and lele (2010) claim that in conditions of non-irrigated lands at india it has been reached only 450 kg/ha; other authors in contrast, point out the possibility of reaching a production greater than 1,000 kg per hectare in non-irrigated lands (falasca and ulberich, 2008), and even up to 5 ton of seed per hectare (toral, et al., 2008). for most of experts in yucatan, jatropha c. can help to improve physical, chemical and biological condition of degraded soils, because it contributes with organic matter and provides protection against wind and water erosion. this crop can be established in soils with sparse vegetation, as lands in disuse, mainly with plants obtained from seeds, which have a primary root that allows nutrients extraction at greater depth. moreover, this root provides great support to the plant, contrary to what happens to the plants obtained from cuttings, which produce secondary roots; these roots grow at little depth and provide few nutrients to the soil surface. in general, jatropha c. crop will continue in expansion, constituting itself as an important alternative source of energy. biodiesel obtained of jatropha c. oil could be blended with fossil diesel. therefore, it is expected that market in mexico of jatropha c. seed grows in a near future. likewise, it presents a business opportunity for paste and fruit peel of jatropha c., with potential to be used respectively, as livestock food and as fertilizer. it is convenient to create and to strengthen producers associations for to collect raw material of small and medium producers, in order to negotiate sale volumes and prices with buyers and intermediaries. it is very important that bioenergy projects not remove natural vegetation for establish crops as jatropha c. only to receive government subsidies. the exploitation of these lands through commercial plantations endangers natural ecosystems. in terms of environmental asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 885-892 891 protection, law forbids to remove vegetation for agri-fuels establishment (regulation of lpdb, 2009). agri-fuels should be a response to environmental, economic and social problems, and not the root or cause of environmental deterioration and loss of biodiversity. conclusions energy policies in mexico are oriented promoting commercial development of biofuels. different studies generated by international agencies coincide with internal politics of the country, regarding to the need of finding alternative energy sources that can be a substitute of fossil fuels and promoting sustainable development at national, regional and local levels. biodiesel production of jatropha c. on a commercial scale might be feasible on the country, if public policies are implemented in order to carry out more research in field and lab for to reduce production costs of biodiesel, to increase subsidies and facilities for small producers and to promote the cultivation in the rural sector. in case of spaces directed to subsistence agriculture it is recommended to set jatropha c. as living fences. it is possible to glimpse an opportunity to achieve a sustained harnessing of jatropha c. agri-fuels establishments should not generate a negative impact either on environment or in life quality of settled population in surroundings. then, it should search that jatropha c. agroecosystems accomplish with purpose of environmental regeneration and sustainability in long term. references alcocer, f. 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(2011). the biofuel project in chiapas: experiences of pinion farmers (jatropha curcas) within of the rural crisis. social studies journal, hermosillo, mexico, 19(38): 120-144. world bank. (2010). biofuels: markets, targets and impacts. policy research working paper. washington, usa. 47 pg. http://www.unido.org/fileadmin/user_media/services/energy_and_climate_change/renewable_energy/publications/weo2010_poverty.pdf http://www.unido.org/fileadmin/user_media/services/energy_and_climate_change/renewable_energy/publications/weo2010_poverty.pdf http://www.unido.org/fileadmin/user_media/services/energy_and_climate_change/renewable_energy/publications/weo2010_poverty.pdf http://www.unido.org/fileadmin/user_media/services/energy_and_climate_change/renewable_energy/publications/weo2010_poverty.pdf © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(7), 167-174 167 does egyptian orange exports really have a market power in saudi arabia market? yasser s. a. mazrou department of agriculture economic, faculty of agriculture, tanta university, egypt community college, king khalid university, saudi arabia abstract1 egypt is one of the important orange exporters and saudi arabia also is an important import orange market. the saudi orange market is a main market for egypt which has a market share that exceeds half of saudi orange market by 55.72%. this article aims to discover the degree of market power for egyptian orange exports and other competitors in the saudi market and if it is considered a measure of the relative markup by applying residual demand elasticity approach. the results show that egyptian orange exports has just a statistically signified market power by sur and 3sls and has a negative sign, which may gain monopolistic profits by the relative mark-up over its marginal cost by about 63.7% without losing any of its market share. the source of egyptian orange exports market power is due to: 1product differentiation where egypt exports navel orange most its export season compared with sweet orange which exported from other competitors. 2 saudi arabia market demand characteristics which reflect on the consumers preference for egyptian oranges. keywords: international trade, market power, residual demand elasticity, fresh orange, ksa, egypt 1. introduction egypt is an important orange exporters. it ranks the fourth among the top orange exporting countries after spain, south africa, and usa by 8.54% of the total world orange exports as an average quantity for the period 2000-2011, shows that table 1. table 1: top exporter and importer countries of fresh orange and their percentage for the average period 2000-2011 export country* import country** country market share % country market share % spain 30.29 germany 9.5 south africa 18.8 france 7.91 usa 12.75 russian federation 7.69 egypt 8.53 netherlands 7.62 greece 6.13 united kingdom 5.72 morocco 5.34 saudi arabia 5.28 turkey 4.34 canada 3.71 netherlands 4.33 china, hong kong, sar 3.36 turkey 4.34 belgium 3 * countries more than 4% **countries more than 3% source: own compilation based on faostat corresponding author’s name: yasser s. a. mazrou email address: mazrou_y@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:mazrou_y@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 167-174 168 on the other side, saudi arabia is an important import orange market. it ranks the fifth among the top orange importing countries, by5.28% of the total world orange imports, as an average quantity for the same period, after germany, russian federation, netherlands, and united kingdom, table 1.saudi arabia is also one of the high-income countries and it does not produce orange, so it is a net importer of fresh orange and there are no barriers for access to its market. therefore, orange export countries compete to have a share in saudi arabia orange market (egyptian commercial services, 2011). these characterizes same saudi arabia market as a perfect competition but, however, because of product differentiation among competitors where each one, exports different species of orange, the marked becomes a monopolistic competition market. the saudi orange market is a main market for egypt that has a market share exceeds half of saudi markets by 55.72%, followed by south africa 27.24%, then lebanon 10.24% shows that table 2. where egypt exports navel and sweet orange within its export season from the beginning of december until the end of may, but south africa exports sweet orange within its export season from beginning of march until the end of september. as for lebanon, it exports sweet orange within its export season beginning of december until the end of may (egyptian commercial services, 2011). we may arrange the three competitors market power according its market share as a traditional approach egypt, south africa and lebanon regardless of whether leading to markups. this article aims to discover the degree of market power for egyptian orange exports and other competitors in the saudi market and if it is considered a measure of the relative markups. we apply residual demand elasticity (rde) approach to satisfy this goal and analyze the sources of this market power if it is present. table 2: the main parameters of saudi imports of fresh orange for the period 2000-2013 item / country egypt south africa lebanon quantity (thousand ton) 174.1 84.53 29.96 market share % 55.72 27.24 10.24 price (sr/ton) 1603 1851 515 source: own compilation based on saudi central department of statistics & information 2. conceptual framework market power is defined as the ability of a firm to charge a price above its marginal cost (goldberg and knetter, 1999). the exercise of market power leads to reduced output and loss of economic welfare by the ability of a firm (or group of firms) to raise and maintain price above the level that would prevail under competition (oecd, 2007). so it is necessary searching about the source of market power source; if it due to monopolistic practices, product differentiation and the nature of supply and demand in the market. there are many methods to measure market power. the traditional methods include: market concentration, size of competitor's market share, and accounting profits. the new econometric methods include: methods based on responses to variation in cost, methods based on variation in the elasticity of demand, and methods based on detecting multiple pricing regimes (baker and bresnhan, 1992). market power can be expressed by lerner index which is denoted by p mcl p  , where p is the output price and mc is the marginal cost of a unit of output, but there are some difficulties are facing lerner index especially marginal costs accounting. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 167-174 169 2.1. the rde approach this search apply the rde approach that was introduced by goldberg and knetter (1999) to measure market power in international trade based on aggregated market data. the theoretical model is based on glauben and loy (2003). suppose two exporting countries selling a product in a particular foreign destination market. the inverse residual demand (ird) function facing any of two exporting country can be written as: , , i i i j p d q p z       ....................... (1) where pi and pj are the prices of export products expressed in destination market currency. z is a vector of demand shifters in the destination market. country i profits are defined as: ....................... (2) where ei is the exchange rate (destination currency per unit of export country currency), and is the total cost function of exporting in destination currency. the first-order condition for profit maximization implies: ....................... (3) where is the marginal cost expressed in source currency units. assuming that the second order condition is met, then the lerner index is thus: ........................ (4) the right item of the equation denotes the competitive interaction between the exporter countries and the source country exporters in destination market. is the inverse residual demand. if its absolute value equals zero, that means perfectly competitive market, where the exporter is a price taker and hasn't any market power, and there is no influence for the export quantity on its price. in contrast, if its value equals one, that means a monopoly, where the exporter is a price maker and has market power, which means true mark-ups and the export quantity influences the price. the absolute value estimate denotes the degree of market power; the larger value express more market power, but not necessarily measures the relative mark-up. a negative estimate indicates imperfect competition (pall et al., 2014). goldberg and knetter (1999) developed and applied a framework to measure the intensity of competition in export markets based on techniques used in domestic markets in the industrial organization literature, and commensurate with the available international trade data. they also applied a method which consists of one equation for mainly competitive exporter’s to estimate the elasticity of inverse residual demand which denote to exporter’s market power as a result of the previous analysis. the inverse residual demand function for an exporter is expressed as: : , 1,2i j  i j i i i i ii p q e c q          c i q i 1 0)( i i i j i i i i i i j i p d d p e mc q q q p p               imc 1 i i ii i i i i j i i j i p e mc q p d d p qp p l p                i i i i i q p qp      asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 167-174 170 ............. (5) where is the elasticity of inverse residual demand, is the quantity exported by the export country, z denote demand shifters for the destination market; consisting of various combinations of a time trend, real income, and the price level. w denote the cost shifters for the main competitors; including measures of input prices and exchange rate movements. is an error term. the remaining greek letters denote parameters. this model was applied in many studies estimate the elasticity of inverse residual demand (glauben and loy, 2003; reed and saghaian, 2004; ismaiel and al-rwis, 2009; pall et al., 2014). 3. empirical model and data it is assumed, that each exporting country faces a residual demand curve that slopes downwards, reflecting the market demand minus the supplies of other competitors in the same import market. the empirical model includes demand shifters; time trend, real disposable income for the destination country, and the exporter price in destination market currency price. it also includes cost shifter; bilateral exchange rate which is used as ideal cost shifter in international trade (goldberg and knetter, 1999). as previously displayed at the introduction, saudi orange import market has three main orange exporters; egypt, south africa, and lebanon, therefore, three equations will estimate in the double log functional form for each three main exporters as follows: .................... (6) where the subscript , and denote exporting countries and time, index the bilateral exchange rate between saudi arabia and export countries (in sr per unit of the export country's currency). stands for saudi nominal disposable income and the consumer price index respectively (both expressed in sr). the endogenous variables unit export prices in destination market currency. symbol is the elasticity of inverse residual demand and its value is between zero and one. the parametric signification of both demand and cost shifter will be used as an index to indicate the source of market power is on the demand side or the supply side, or in both. according to previous equation, there are three equations one for each competitor. for egypt for south africa: and for lebanon: previous studies applying the rde approach used different methods to estimate the model's parameters. in this search, we use two methods three stage least square 3-sls and seemingly unrelated regression (sur) which use the correlations among the errors in different equations to improve the regression estimate. when the sur method consider all variables are independent, the 3-sls method is used for simultaneous equations and avoid simultaneity bias, especially over identified equations. ln ln ln lnex mt ex n m mt mt mt mt mt mtp q z w         q  ln ln ln ln j ji i sa t t t t tt j i p q t r e            i j t e r  1 1 1 1 11ln ln ln ln ln eg eg eg sa sa so so le le t t t t tt tp q t r e ea            2 2 2 2 22ln ln ln ln ln eg egso so so sa sa le le t t t t t ttp q l t r e ea b e         3 3 3 3 33ln ln ln ln ln eg egle le le sa sa so so t t t t t ttp q t r e ea            asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 167-174 171 the empirical model uses annual data from 1990 to 2013. data on saudi arabia imports and its prices are obtained from saudi central department of statistics & information (scdsi) (2014). the exchange rate is obtained from the international monetary fund. saudi real disposable income is obtained from both international monetary fund and (scdsi, 2014) world orange exports and imports are obtained from food and agriculture organization (fao) (2015) and united nation comtrade database (2014). 4. estimation results table 3 shows that egyptian orange exports has just a statistically signified estimate two methods and has a negative sign. statistically, the best estimate is by 3sls which avoid basis. these results show that egyptian orange exports faces an imperfect market and has market power, that can gain monopolistic profits by the relative mark-up over its marginal cost by about 63.7% without losing any of its market share. it is also seen from the results of table 2 that south africa and lebanon orange exports have not a statistically signified estimate by 3-sls and sur. all competitors have a negative sign by all methods, that support the saudi orange market is monopolistic competition because of the differentiation of their products. table 3: rde results by 3-sls. and sur lebanon south africa egypt sur 3-sls variables sur 3-sls variables sur 3-sls variables 0.204 (0.297) -0.175 (0.300) -0.065 (0.120) 0.07 (0.099) -0.833*** (0.310) 0.64*** (0.253) 1.211 (0.862) 0.601 (o.709) 0.865*** (0.215) 0.685*** (0.163) 0.869* (0.499) 0.386 (0.54) 0.753 (0.795) 0.427 (0.619) 0.753*** (0.220) 0.676** (0.195) 0.765** (0.33) 0.68** (0.342) 0.611 (0.475) 0.487 (0.474) -0.141 (0.172) -0.076 (0.153) -2.098*** (0.584) -1.56*** (0.494) -0.031 (0.08) -0.023 (0.080) 0.008 (0.015) 0.018 (0.012) 0.069 (0.062) 0.05 (0.62) -0.397 (0.266) -0.107 (0.096) -0.903** (0.392) -0.307 (0.621) -0.022 (0.074) -0.215* (0.122) notes: 1-the superscript ***, **, and * denotes that estimated parameter is statistically significant at 1%, 5%and 10% a -numbers in brackets are standard error. source: own calculations using stata (version12) table 4 shows that the competition among the three competitors become strong during months april and may because all of them share the same time and export sweet orange. while the period from december to a middle of mars the competition is between egypt and lebanon and there is a product differentiation where, egypt is exporting navel orange and lebanon is exporting sweet orange. south africa has not any competition most of its export season from other competitors during the period from june to september. these results show there is no competition between egypt and south africa in general. simple correlation coefficients among export prices of the three ln le tqln so tqln eg tq ln sa trln sa trln sa tr ln eg teln eg teln so te ln so teln le teln le te tt tt ln eg tpln eg tpln so tp ln so tpln le tpln le tp asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 167-174 172 competitors support this results and show that there is no competition between egypt and south africa, but table 4: orange export season for egypt, south africa and lebanon country month n o v d ec jan f eb m ar a p r m ay ju n e ju ly a u g s ep o ct egypt south africa lebanon navel orange sweet orange source: own design based on; egyptian commercial service in jeddah lebanon is facing competition from egypt and south africa as shown in table 5. table 3 shows that egyptian orange market power due to the characteristics of the supply side than on the demand side by two methods, where the parametric of cost shifters are signified estimate at level 1%and 5%, but the parametric of demand shifter are signified at level 10% by sur. so we can explain the sources of egyptian orange market power by two reasons: 1-product seasonality and differentiation as shown previous. 2-saudi arabia's location and its demand characteristics; where saudi arabia is the eastern neighbor to egypt, and comes at the top of the countries that accommodate egyptian workers abroad, about 25 % of the total number of egyptian workers abroad in year 2013 (egyptian ministry of labor and immigration, 2013). in addition, egyptian nationality comes in the forefront of foreigners entering and leaving saudi arabia (saudi interior ministry, 2013).the previous reasons are reflected on the consumption of the egyptian orange. so the market power of egyptian orange exports is considered as a measure of the relative markup. table 5: simple correlation coefficient matrix among main competitor’s export prices country egypt south africa lebanon egypt 1 south africa 0.491 1 lebanon -0.0513 -0.0755 1 source: statistical analysis for data based on saudi central department of statistics & information 5. conclusion often adopt international trade studies to determine competitors in foreign markets based on the exporter's market share and thus studying market power for them. this does not reflect the real competition among exporters especially for fresh agricultural products, which vary in seasonal production and export; it is uncertain if the reliance on annual data. the kingdom of saudi arabia import market of fresh orange is an example of this case; most of the previous studies considered each of egypt and south africa major competitors in accordance with market share, and each has market power. this article study egyptian orange exports market power, research and analysis, the source of this power and what is its relationship with other competitors, taking into account export seasons. the results of estimated model confirm just the market power of egyptian fresh orange exports because of product differentiation and the effects of some of other factors affecting the demand for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 167-174 173 the saudi market. also indicate that there is no competitive relationship between egypt and south africa because of the different of the export seasons. finally, the finding of this article may have implications on increasing the saudi food security of orange, where it is a net importer of fresh orange. for egypt, it must be increase its exports of navel orange, where it has product differentiation of the other competitors. it also may encourage more detailed market power studies taking into consider the seasonality of export products especially, fresh agricultural products. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references baker, j. b., & bresnahan, t. f. (1992). empirical methods of identifying and measuring market power. anti .law. j., 61(1), 3-16. egyptian commercial services (2011). study on competitive of egyptian fresh orange exports. egyptian ministry of labor and immigration (2013). immigration and egyptian abroad statistics database. http://www.emigration.gov.eg/. food and agriculture organization (fao) (2015). statistics at fao. accessed at http://www.fao.org/statistics/en/. glauben, t., & loy, j. p. (2003). pricing-to-market versus residual demand elasticity analysis of imperfect competition in food exports: evidence from germany. j. agric. food ind. organ. 1(1), 1-19. goldberg, p. k., & knetter, m. m. (1999). measuring the intensity of competition in export markets. j. int. econ., 47(1), 27-60. ismaiel, m. s., & al-rwis, n. k. (2009). masuring the degree of market power among main countries exporting rice to the kingdom of saudi arabia. agric. sci. studies, 36(1), 1-8. reed, m. r., & saghaian, h. s. (2004). measuring the intensity of competition in the japanese beef market. journal of agricultural and applied economics, 36(1), 113-122. organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) (2007). glossary of statistical terms. pp.964. pall, z., perekhozhuk, o., glauben, t., prehn, s., & teuber, r. (2014). residual demand measures of market power of russian wheat exporter. agr. econ., 45(3), 381-391. saudi central department of statistics & information (scdsi) (2014). foreign trade statistics, different years. http://www.cdsi.gov.sa. saudi interior ministry (2013). foreigners entering and leaving saudi arabia by nationality, general directorate of passports. united nations commodity trade statistics database (2014). http://comtrade.un.org/. http://www.emigration.gov.eg/ http://www.fao.org/statistics/en/ http://www.cdsi.gov.sa/ http://comtrade.un.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(7)2015: 167-174 174 appendix table a1. augmented dickey-fuller test for unit root notes: the superscripts *** , **,and * denote statistical significance at 1%,5%, and 10% level respectively. source: own calculations using stata software (version 12) real income bilateral exchange rate export price exported quantity test / variable lebanon south africa egypt lebanon south africa egypt lebanon south africa egypt 1.422* -3.453 *** 2.636*** -0.549 ** -1.612 * 0.365 -1.996** -2.526** -2.491** -2.261** 1 lag with drift effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 92 technical and resource use efficiency of urban vegetable farming in the kumasi metropolis: a stochastic frontier approach adams abdulaia, simon cudjoe fialorb, john eudes andivi bakangb emmanuel tetteh jumpahc aresearch scientist; council for scientific and industrial research, accra, ghana. bassociate professor; faculty of agriculture, department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi, ghana. c principal technologist, council for scientific and industrial research, accra, ghana. boginah@yahoo.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 24-sep-2018 accepted: 29-oct-2018 online available: 18-nov2018 keywords: allocative efficiency, kumasi metropolis, stochastic frontier analysis, technical efficiency, urban vegetable farming abstract the changing food demands by the teeming urban population, job search, and sector profitability have made vegetable production indispensable as it contributes to increased incomes and livelihoods of urban dwellers.this study investigated the current level of productive efficiency (technical and allocative) of vegetable farmers in the kumasi metropolis using crosssectional data obtained from 135 sampled farmers using a semi-structured questionnaire. data analysis was conducted using the stochastic frontier approach to estimate firm-specific technical efficiencies and the factors that influence efficiency levels. the results show that inefficiency exists among the sampled vegetable farmers as they currently achieve an average technical efficiency score of 66.7%. allocative efficiency estimates for land and labour revealed that both factors of production are over utilised by farmers. the age of the farmer is the main socioeconomic determinant of technical efficiency.the study recommends that farmers be educated on the correct use of inputs by extension agents. the government policy of recruiting community extension agents under the ‘planting for food and jobs’ programme is in line with addressing inefficiency in the production sector and should be promoted. contribution/ originality the study provides empirical evidence of the existence of inefficiency in urban vegetable production systems in the kumasi metropolis of ghana using robust estimations. the study revealed that technical inefficiency is linked to over utilisation of inputs by farmers. enhancing urban vegetable production to meet the increasing demand for food, therefore, requires the support and collaboration of all stakeholders (vegetable farmers, researchers, input dealers, and policy makers) at the municipal and national levels. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.92.103 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: adams abdulai, simon cudjoe fialor, john eudes andivi bakang and emmanuel tetteh jumpah (2018). technical and resource use efficiency of urban vegetable farming in the kumasi metropolis: a stochastic frontier approach. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 92-103. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 92-103 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:boginah@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.92.103 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3828-972x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8820-0925 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4980-075x asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 92-103 93 1. introduction vegetables play an important role in the household economy and occupy a unique position in both domestic and foreign food trade of ghana. besides being an integral part of balanced diets that supply minerals and vitamins for healthy growth, economically they create employment for the teeming youth along the crop value chain. vegetable production is more profitable than cereal production (adewumi et al., 2005; weinberger and lumpkin, 2007) and irrigated vegetable production systems are more profitable than rain-fed vegetable systems (dittoh, 1992; ursu, 2014). the agribusiness potential for actors in the vegetable crop value chain exists (dittoh et al., 2013) and yet research to assess production and resource use efficiency in the sector has remained limited. furthermore, actors within the vegetable value chain face multiple constraints: limited access to water resources, lack of capital/financing to purchase inputs, high storage losses,lack of proper market infrastructure, poor transportation and effects of climate change (mashnik et al., 2017; ekobi and mboh, 2018). empirical studies that focused on analysing vegetable production efficiency largely point to the existence of inefficiency with various determinants (haji and andersson, 2008; shettima et al., 2015). in estimating the technical, allocative and economic efficiency of 300 vegetable farmer in ethiopia, haji and andersson (2008) reported substantial inefficiencies in production with efficiency differentials among farmers. the main socio-economic factors influencing production inefficiency as revealed by the study were illiteracy, large family size, non-farm income, asset ownership, high consumer spending, and small farm size. singbo (2012) reported that inefficiency in marketing poses a greater challenge to urban vegetable farmers in benin and that the type of market arrangements has an effect on marketing efficiency. in the bono state of nigeria, shettima et al. (2015) found technical inefficiency among irrigated vegetable farmers engaged in various crop enterprises (sole onion, sole tomato, sole pepper, onion-tomato, and onion-pepper).farm size, agrochemical use, cost of improved seeds, and family labour were reported as the main determinants of technical efficiency. more recently, ullah et al., (2017) assessed the technical efficiency of 120 broiler farms and reported a mean technical efficiency of 0.85 with minimum and maximum values of 0.61 and 0.99 respectively. few known studies have examined input use efficiency in irrigated vegetable production. the general decline in agricultural productivity growth in developing countries has been linked to both under-utilisation and over-utilisation of resources in production (khan et al., 2014). fernandezcornejo (1994) analysed input use efficiency in vegetable production in florida using the slackbased model. the findings revealed the over-utilisation of pesticides by farmers with an effect on technical efficiency. this means that inefficiency exists in pesticides use among farmers with likely impact on farm profitability. singbo (2012) analysed the efficiency of pesticides use and other inputs using boot strapping to compare various irrigated farming systems in benin. the study found that vegetable farms within lowland farming systems were diverse and inefficient. the mean input use efficiency in the integrated rice-vegetable farming system was significantly higher than of sole vegetable farming system. while there was clear evidence of pesticides overuse, interdependence between pesticides and other productive inputs could not be established technically. similarly, ursu (2014) found that reductions in labour increase with the economic size of holding and decreases as the number of man-hours to incomes increases. this shows that labour is a critical factor in the production process as it impacts on profitability level of farm enterprises. dlamini and kongolo (2014) analysed the efficient use of resources in organic vegetable production to show that the use of inputs has decreasing returns to scale. the study revealed that land, labour, organic manure, seeds, soil preparation, age, educational level, and legal status of the farm are significant factors that affect organic vegetable production. sanusi et al. (2016) reported that farmers using stream water has the highest effect (21%) on technical efficiency in vegetable asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 92-103 94 production than users of other sources of water (wells, boreholes). seed and fertilizers were found to be important inputs in the efficient production of vegetables. furthermore, akamin et al. (2017) analysed the technical efficiency of vegetable farming in eight selected sites in cameroon and found farmyard manure to be the most productive input followed by farm equipment and labour. the mean technical efficiency reported was 67%, revealing production shortfalls. females and more educated farmers were found to be more technically efficient but the efficiency level of farmers’ decreases as farm sizes became larger. urban agriculture is said to contribute significantly to urban food security, poverty alleviation, women empowerment, job creation, and improved nutrition. understanding the level of production efficiency in vegetable production is crucial in influencing resource allocation decisions and in determining the returns on investment. this study contributes to the efficiency literature by examining the current level of production efficiency of urban vegetable farmers and their resource use efficiency in the kumasi metropolis of ghana. the findings have policy implications for the numerous urban cities where urban agriculture (especially vegetable production) is seen as a livelihood strategy. the study tested two main null hypotheses: (i) all the vegetable production units considered are technically efficient and there is no room for efficiency growth; and (ii) there is no significant relationship between the socio-economic characteristics of urban vegetable farmers and their resource use efficiency. 2. methodology 2.1. study area and data the study was conducted in kumasi metropolis (the second largest and populous city in ghana after accra) in march 2015. the metropolis is one out of the 30 districts that constitute the ashanti region and was purposively selected based on its high potential for vegetable crop production and high concentration of urban vegetable farmers. the metropolis is located in the transition forest zone (latitude 6.35on & 6.40os and longitude 1.30ow &1.35oe) with an elevation of 250-300 metres above sea level. with an estimated population of 1,730,249 (36.2% of the total population of the ashanti region), only 8.5% of households are directly engaged in agriculture (population and housing census, 2010). increasing urbanisation, changing dietary patterns and immigration has made urban vegetable farming a key feature of the municipality. nine vegetable production sites as identified by the international water management institute (iwmi) survey (2005) was used for the study (see figure 1). lists of vegetable farmers operating in all the sites were obtained from group executives and a simple random sampling done to select 15 farmers from each production site to constitute a study sample of 135 farmers. the data collection was done using a semi-structured questionnaire and this was complemented with focus group discussions. the data collected covers the production, marketing, socio-economic and demographic characteristics of farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 92-103 95 figure 1: map of vegetable production sites in kumasi metropolis 2.2. analytical framework and empirical specification this study used the cobb-douglas stochastic frontier production function to represent the production technology of vegetable farmers in the metropolis. this functional form is still very relevant due to the logarithmic nature which makes an econometric estimation of the parameters easy (murthy, 2002) and recent studies on efficiency favoured its use (dlamini and kongolo, 2014; abdulai and tewari, 2016; ullah et al., 2017). however, limitations associated with its use such as the assumptions of unitary elasticity of substitution and constant returns to scale and input elasticity remain (yin, 2000).the translog functional form which is widely used as an alternative to the cobb-douglas in the literature is also without limitations. it is susceptible to multicollinearity and degrees of freedom problems and this renders estimated parameters inaccurate. kopp and smith (1980) reported that functional specification has only a small impact on measured efficiency. the use of a cobb-douglas functional form is said to be justified in industries characterised by imperfect producers (coelli and perelman, 1999). considering the fact that the vegetable production industry in kumasi is not perfectly competitive, we applied the cobb-douglas functional form in the current study. the model utilised in this study follows the stochastic frontier analysis (sfa) approach proposed independently by aigner et al. (1977) and meeusen and van den broeck (1977) which is defined as: 𝐼𝑛𝑌𝑖 = 𝐼𝑛 𝑓(𝑋𝑖 , 𝛽) + 𝑣𝑖 − 𝑢𝑖 ; 𝑖 = 1, … . 𝑁 ........................ (1) where 𝑣𝑖 is the systematic noise assocated with the random factors, and 𝑢𝑖 is the one-sided error term that captures technical inefficiency relative to the stochastic frontier. the random errors (𝑣𝑖 and 𝑢𝑖) are assumed to be independently and identically distributed (iid) over each other as random variables. the distributional assumption of 𝑢𝑖 followed in this study is the half normal which provides a more useful formulation (battese and coelli, 1988) compared to the exponential, truncated normal or the gamma density distribution. most efficiency studies have relied on either the half-normal or exponential specifications due to ease in interpretation compared to the gamma model parameterisation. there is no established rule or criterion that inform the choice of these specifications, hence, the decision rests with the researchers concerned. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 92-103 96 the technical efficiency (te) of an individual firm is defined as the ratio of the observed output (y) in relation to the frontier output (y*), based on the level of inputs used by the firm in production. the te of an individual firm is determined empirically as: 𝑇𝐸 = ln 𝑦𝑖/𝑙𝑛𝑦∗ = (𝑓 (𝑥𝑖; 𝛽)exp (𝑣𝑖 − 𝑢𝑖)/𝑓(𝑥𝑖 ; 𝛽) exp(𝑣𝑖) = exp(−𝑢𝑖) ......... (2) such that, 0  te  1. the technical inefficiency effect 𝑢𝑖 is unobservable and hence the best predictor is the conditional expectation as proposed by jondrow et al. (1982) as follows: 𝐸 [ 𝑢𝑖 𝜀𝑖 ] = 𝜎 [∅(𝑧)−𝑍] 1 +  2 1 − ∅(𝑧) .............................. (3) where 𝑧 = 𝜀𝑖 𝜎 , and  is read from the normal distribution table. the operational predictor of 𝑢𝑖 involves replacing the unknown parameters with the maximum likelihood estimates. jondrow et al. (1982) suggested that the technical efficiency of the 𝑖𝑡ℎfirm should be predicted using e [𝑢𝑖/휀𝑖]. the rationale for this prediction is that 1 – 𝑢𝑖 is a first order approximation to the equation: 𝐸𝑥𝑝 (𝑢𝑖) = 1 − 𝑢𝑖 + 𝑢𝑖 2 2 − 𝑢𝑖 3/6 + ⋯ .............................. (4) if u = 0, it means that vegetable production lies on the stochastic frontier and the production unit is technically efficient. if u > 0, it implies vegetable production lies below the frontier and is inefficient. inefficiency in production could result from the quality and availability of inputs (labour, land, capital, and materials) used in production. the one-step approach to maximum likelihood estimation was employed in estimating the technical efficiency scores as implemented by previous studies (battese and coelli, 1993; abdulai and tewari, 2016). the empirical model used is specified as: 𝐼𝑛 𝑌 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐼𝑛𝐿𝐴𝐷 + 𝛽2𝐼𝑛𝐿𝐴𝐵 + 𝛽3𝐼𝑛𝐶𝐴𝑃 + 𝛽4𝐼𝑛𝑀𝐴𝑇 + 𝛽5𝐼𝑛𝑃𝐸𝑇 + 𝛽6𝐼𝑛𝑀𝐴𝐹 + 휀𝑖 .... (5) where, y = output in kilograms lad (land) = area put under cultivation (ha) lab (labour) = number of man-days spent on the field (family and hired labour). cap (capital) = depreciated value of capital equipment in ghana cedis (gh¢). mat (materials) = value of other inputs (fertilizers, manure, seeds, and pesticides) in gh¢ pet (pesticides) = volume of pesticides applied in litres maf = quantity of manure and fertilizer used (kg) 휀𝑖 = composed error term given as 휀𝑖 = 𝑣𝑖 − 𝑢𝑖 s = unknown parameters to be estimated. all variables were taken in logs for ease of estimation and interpretation of the results. the inefficiency effects model estimated is assumed to be a function of socio-economic and institutional factors (haji and andersson, 2008; ullah et al., 2017) and it is presented as: 𝜇𝑖𝑡 = 𝛿0 + 𝛿1𝐷1𝑖𝑡 + 𝛿2𝐷2𝑖𝑡 + 𝛿3𝐷3𝑖𝑡 + 𝛿4𝐷4𝑖𝑡 + 𝛿5𝐷5𝑖𝑡 + 휀𝑖𝑡 .............................. (6) where 𝜇𝑖𝑡 is the mean technical inefficiency; d1, d2, d3, d4, and d5 represents the age of farmer, level of education, farming experience, access to credit (for inputs and other production requirements), and access to off-farm income respectively. these variables ware selected based on asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 92-103 97 literature and are assumed to influence the technical efficiency of the farmers. 𝛿0 to 𝛿5 are coefficients of the parameters estimated. both equations (5) and (6) were simultaneously estimated in a one-step approach using limdep version 10 econometric software. we used the factor elasticities for labour and land obtained from equation (5) to compute the input use efficiency. the allocative efficiency rule is that the marginal physical product should equal the inverse ratio of input price to output price at the point of profit maximisation (ellis, 1988).the marginal product (mp) of the 𝑖𝑡ℎ factor and the allocative efficiency index (z) was determined as: 𝑚 = 𝑀𝑃𝑖 = 𝜇𝑌𝑖 𝜇𝑋𝑖 ∗ 𝐸𝑖 .............................. (7) 𝑧 = 𝑀𝑃𝑖 = 𝑃𝑦 𝑃𝑥 .............................. (8) where 𝑀𝑃𝑖 is the marginal product of the factor (land, labour), µ𝑌𝑖 and µ𝑋𝑖 are the arithmetic means of the output and inputs used respectively, and 𝑃𝑦 and 𝑃𝑥 are the price of output and input respectively. the decision criteria are that: z =1, implies efficient utilisation of the input; z > 1, implies an under-utilisation of the factor input; and z < 1, implies an over utilisation of the factor input. 3. results and discussions table 1 present the results of the ols estimates from the cobb-douglas frontier production function with most variables being statistically significant. the goodness of fit (r2) for the estimated regression equation is low, suggesting that outliers exist and that some of the variables included do not statistically influence the model output. the low r2 is not relevant in this study since the focus of analysis is on efficiency. the overall predictive power of the estimated function is what is of great importance in efficiency analysis and the f-statistic is shown to be significant at 1% level. this means that the estimated coefficients can be relied upon. table 1: ols estimates of vegetable production in kumasi metropolis variable parameters coefficient standard error t-value constant b1 4.1947 0.4472 9.379** ln (land) b2 0.1373 0.6373 2.155* ln (labour) b3 0.3615 0.3400 0.915 ln (capital) b4 0.3395 0.2787 4.998 ln (materials) b5 0.3395 0.4537 4.239** ln (pesticides) b6 0.1109 0.3348 3.316** in (manure/fertilizer) b7 0.1916 0.3374 0.568 f-statistic 11.33*** r-squared 0.2586 note: ***, **, * means significant at 1%, 5% and 10% levels respectively the coefficient of land is positive and significant at 10% level. this means that access to land and the area put under cultivation has an effect on the vegetable output produced. the coefficients for materials and pesticides are both positive and significant at 5% level. the amount of money invested in purchasing seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and other inputs and the quality of these inputs thus influence the output obtained by farmers. estimates of the firm-specific technical efficiencies using the maximum likelihood procedure for the pooled sample are presented in table 2. the relative magnitude of the inefficiency in production and the variance associated with the frontier model is depicted by the variance ratio asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 92-103 98 ().the value of the variance ratio () revealed that about 78.5% of the variation in vegetable output is due to technical efficiency differences among the production units considered while 21.5% is due to random factors which are beyond the control of farmers. these random factors may be due to the effects of pest and disease, unfavourable weather conditions, and errors in data aggregation by researchers. table 2: maximum likelihood estimates of the cobb-douglas production frontier function variable parameters coefficient standard error t-value constant b1 4.6540 0.3374 13.793** ln (land) b2 0.1068 0.4740 2.254* ln (labour) b3 0.1678 0.3205 0.052 ln (capital) b4 0.3452 0.2992 1.154 ln (materials) b5 0.1586 0.3875 4.092** ln (pesticides) b6 0.1119 0.3687 3.035** in (manure/fertilizer) b7 0.3578 0.3254 1.099 variance-ratio  0.7851 total variance 2 0.1218 sigma-squared 2 u 0.0956 log-likelihood function -0.4204 note: ***, **, * means significant at 1%, 5% and 10% respectively 3.1. results of hypothesis tests the first null hypothesis stipulates that the sampled vegetable farmers are technically efficient and have no room for efficiency growth. thus, {ho: there is no difference in technical efficiency among the sampled vegetable farmers ( = 0)}. however,  = 0 lies on the boundary of the parameter space and is difficult to test. if  = 0 is true, then the generalised likelihood ratio statistic () will have a mixture of chi-square distribution (coelli, 1995). the decision rule for one-sided generalised likelihood ratio test of size (α) is that reject the null hypothesis (ho) in favour of the alternative hypothesis (h1: > 0) if  exceeds χ2 2(α). from the test results presented below, the value for the test at 5% is 2.706 (using table 1 of kodde and palm, 1986). log likelihood function frontier function average function  critical value decision vegetable -0.4205 -23.0540 45.2671 2.706 reject null hypothesis we, therefore, reject the null hypothesis that there is no room for technical efficiency growth and conclude that inefficiency exists among the production units considered in the study. the second null hypothesis {(ho: there is no significant difference in technical efficiency between the sampled farmers} was tested using the analysis of variance (anova) technique. from the test results (see table 3), f calculated is less than the f critical, so we fail to reject the null hypothesis. this means that there is no significant difference in technical efficiency estimates between production units at 5% level of significance. the absence of variation in technical efficiency among production units in the statistical sense implies that any observed differences are probably due to chance or measurement errors. table 3: hypothesis testing using analysis of variance (anova) source df ss ms f f-critical regression 1 0.4533 0.4533 0.9429 3.6800 error 134 64.4165 0.4807 total 135 64.4440 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 92-103 99 3.2. distribution of technical efficiency scores the farmer-specific technical efficiency estimates showed a great variation in efficiency levels among the production units considered in the study. it is appropriate to question why some producers can achieve relatively high-efficiency levels whilst others are technically less efficient. the variation is probably due to differences in managerial decisions and farm characteristics that may affect the ability of farmers to adequately utilise the existing technology. table 4: distribution of technical efficiency scores technical efficiency (%) frequency percentage (%) cumulative (%) less than 30 7 5.18 5.18 30 – 40 8 5.92 11.11 41 – 50 7 5.18 16.29 51 – 60 12 8.88 25.18 61 – 70 15 11.11 36.29 71 – 80 67 49.62 85.92 81 – 90 17 12.59 98.51 91 – 100 2 1.48 100 total 135 100 distribution of the efficiency scores revealed that about 50% of farmers operate within the efficiency range of 71-80% while 13% were operating between 81 to 90%. only a few farmers (1.5%) were operating within the efficiency range of 91-100%. this is reflected in the cumulative percentage as a greater number of farmers (36%) operated below 70% efficiency level. the study shows that technical efficiency levels achieved by vegetable farmers in the metropolis range from a minimum of 22% to the highest of 95%. the minimum efficiency score of 22% means that such production units are far below the efficient frontier by 78% and are technically inefficient. the highest level of technical efficiency (95%) suggests that such production units are only 5% away from the frontier. considering the fact that in reality production units hardly operate at 100% level of efficiency, the performance of such units can be said to be good. the mean technical efficiency of the pooled sample is 66.7%, meaning that on the average, 33.3% more output could be produced using the same level of inputs if farmers were producing on the frontier following best practices. inefficiency, therefore, exists in the urban vegetable farming system. this outcome compares favourably with findings from previous studies on vegetable production efficiency (ullah et al., 2017; akamin et al., 2017) which reported mean values of 85% and 67% respectively. 3.3. allocative efficiency estimates the ols estimated results alongside the mean values of the variables included in the model were used to establish the allocative efficiency level of factor inputs. the marginal value product (mvp), as well as the marginal factor costs (mfc) obtained for land and labour, were used to compute the allocative efficiency index (r) as presented in table 5. table 5: allocative efficiency estimates for land and labour variable mvp mfc r= mvp/mfc land 30,378 63,725 0.4767 labour 3,645 8,000 0.4556 the allocative efficiency ratios for land and labour are less than one, suggesting over-utilisation (inefficient use) of these inputs by farmers (table 5). this means that the two factors of production are paid much more than their mvp in the vegetable production process. nearly all farm operations are done manually by farmers under intensive cultivation and the effects of urbanisation asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 92-103 100 and scarcity of water resources often restrict farmers. thus, shifting cultivation can no longer be practiced in urban areas leading to over-utilisation of production lands. this finding is in line with previous studies on resource use efficiency (singbo, 2012; khan et al., 2014; ursu, 2014). for instance, singbo (2012) found evidence of pesticides overuse among lowland vegetable farmers in benin. ursu (2014) reported negative effects of labour on farm profitability. the policy implications of this result for farmers can be seen in high production costs and inefficient utilisation of production resources (reduced profits for farmers). as noted by khan et al. (2014) underutilisation and overutilisation of resources are linked to declining productivity in most developing countries with serious implications for sustainable agriculture. table 6 present results of the inefficiency effects model. almost all the variables included in the model showed insignificant effects except age of the farmers. farmer contact with extension agents was represented with a dummy variable and is insignificant. this may be interpreted as extension agents not seeing vegetable farmers as a top priority considering the fact that cocoa and other cash crops dominate in the region. table 6: determinants of technical efficiency variable parameter coefficient standard error t-value constant α1 2.3893 0.7988 2.991 extension contact α2 -0.2990 0.1558 -0.192 age α3 -0.5870 0.2344 -2.504*** off-farm income α4 -0.5870 0.1196 -0.217 farmer experience α6 0.7911 0.1143 0.692 access to credit α7 -0.2241 0.2686 -0.835 note: ***, means significant at 1% level the age of the farmer was found to be highly significantly related to productive efficiency at the 1% level of significance. the negative coefficient of age means that increasing age could significantly lead to a decrease in technical inefficiency. the majority (76%) of the respondents covered were youthful in nature (18-39 years) and this could account for the low level of technical efficiency in production observed. this suggests that over time, the performance of firms could likely improve as farmers’ age in the business and the potential for efficiency gains exists in the vegetable sector. policies geared towards improving agricultural productivity should, therefore, target the youth. this finding support sprevious evidence by dlamini and kongolo (2014) that age influences the ability of farmers to adopt new technology for efficiency gains. farmer access to off-farm income had negative coefficient and is statistically insignificant. farmer experience has a positive coefficient but statistically insignificant while access to credit showed negative insignificant effects on technical inefficiency. this could be explained by the fact that only a small proportion of the respondents had access to these services. for instance, 93% of the respondents do not have access to any form of credit to invest in the vegetable production business and hence technical efficiency levels are low. the implication is that stakeholders need to turn attention to urban produces by providing the needed extension and financial support. 4. conclusions and policy implications this study applied the stochastic frontier analysis to predict farmer-specific technical efficiencies using a sample of 135 urban vegetable farmers in the kumasi metropolis. the results obtained from the one-step maximum likelihood estimation shows that inefficiency exists among the production units considered in the study. the mean technical efficiency revealed in the study is 66.7%, suggesting that about 33% more output could be produced with the same level of inputs if farmers were following best practices. the likelihood ratio test strongly confirms this outcome. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 92-103 101 considering the rising demand for vegetables in urban centres following the emergence of fast food shops, the policy implication is for the metropolis and decentralised government agencies in charge of agriculture and urban development to focus special attention to those engaged in the vegetable value chain by providing the needed technical and financial support. it was found that about 78.5% of the variation in vegetable output is due to technical efficiency differences among the decision-making units (dmus) while about 21.5% of the variation is caused by random factors (such as unfavourable weather, water scarcity, pest and disease attacks, errors in data aggregation, etc.) which farmers have no control over. in urban agriculture, land and labour are critical inputs in the production process. the allocative efficiency ratios for land and labour obtained from the study (0.4556 and 0.4651) respectively showed that both factors of production are over-utilised by farmers in the production process, suggesting a sub-optimal combination of inputs. this has an implication on farm profitability as these enterprises are undervalued with potential negative impacts of limiting investments in the sector. the age of the farmer was found to be the main determinant of technical efficiency and is significantly related to productive efficiency at the 1% level of significance. efforts by the government to incentivise and attract the youth to take up agriculture as a business for job creation and improved livelihoods are steps in the right direction. the youth should take advantage of the profitable nature of vegetable production which has hitherto been neglected in terms of both research and extension and invest in the sector. this would have long-term impacts on technical efficiency performance of the sector. farmer education on the appropriate use of inputs through the strengthening of extension service delivery to urban agriculture production sites needs to be pursued by decentralised agencies at the municipalities. this will help improve their resource allocation decisions and contribute to increased productivity and profitability. in addition, the government should give priority to metropolises where urban agriculture activities are intense and access to water resources is limited. funding: this study was supported by the international water management institute (iwmi), ghana. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: this work was part of the challenge programme for food and water (cp38) under the volta basin project. the views and opinions expressed here are solely that of the authors. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian 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https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=diversification+into+horticulture+and+poverty+reduction%3a+a+research+agenda.+&btng= https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2007.05.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2007.05.002 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=rival+explanations+as+an+alternative+to+reforms+as+experiments&btng= © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(6), 137-149 137 impact of certification system on smallhold coffee farms’ income distribution in vietnam thi minh chi nguyen department of accounting & auditing, university of danang, campus in kon tum, kontum, vietnam li-hsien chien department of applied economics, national chung hsing university, taichung, taiwan shwu-en chen department of agribusiness management, national pingtung university of science and technology, neipu, pingtung 91201, taiwan abstract this study attempts to investigate the impact of the working certification programs on the income of the coffee farms operated by the local smallholders at dakha district, kontum, vietnam. followed by the comparisons of the socio-demographic and economic characteristics between certified and non-certified farmers, the study adopts the binary probit model and linear regression model were applied to analyze the decision on farmers’ attitude for participation on the available certification programs and their impacts. propensity score matching (psm) was applied to examine the average treatment effect of certification program on net coffee income per hectare to reduce the selection bias. statistical results show that net coffee income per hectare is positively influenced by certification participation. furthermore, education status the household head, number of members involved in coffee cultivation, distance from household to town center, and training availability effect significantly on net coffee income. moreover, four matching algorithms of psm highlighted that members of the certified cooperative achieve higher net coffee income per hectare compared to non-certified ones. finally, how to introduce an organizational framework to assist local smallhold farmers and local coffee cooperatives become more effective and influential in domestic coffee value chain are suggested. keywords: certification program, coffee farmer, decision analysis, vietnam agriculture 1. introduction1 vietnam's coffee industry has made a long stride to become the world's first place on robusta coffee export and second position on export in the last decade. revenues from coffee export contribute about 3 percents to the gross domestic product of vietnam, where half of a million people earn a living by producing coffee. according to the ministry of agriculture and rural development of vietnam, coffee cropping areas and its production increased dramatically from 2004 to 2013. during the 2012/2013 crop corresponding author’s name: li-hsien chien email address: hankchien72@hotmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:hankchien72@hotmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 137-149 138 year, some 584,600 hectares were directly involved in bean production, which grows 2.1% of the last crop year. some studies indicate that climate change may be the most reason causes for this outcome. besides, inconsistent quality is another key challenge in vietnam coffee industry. in the past few years, the coffee area increases with the expansion of coffee farms which owned and operated by family with low efficiency. in addition, linkages between stages of coffee value chain in production management is fairly weak, therefore domestic farmers are hard to benefit from the market expansion. to sum up, all disadvantages above had affected the performance of vietnam coffee in the context of global competition. more and more coffee consumers concern not only in quality and taste, but also in the issues with rural poverty, social injustice, and environmental degradation during bean production and marketing processes. in addition, certification of product provides necessary information to identify its origin and/or its production process. with this trend, supply of the certified sustainable coffee has risen from about 1% in 2001 to 9% in 2010 and is projected to rise to 20 to 25% in 2015 (kuit et al., 2013) in the globe market and provides opportunities for many countries to produce certified coffee. vietnam coffee annual report 2012 (usda, 2013) also indicated that the ratios of certified sustainable coffee held by vietnamese coffee producers, small farm holders, and traders are increasing. specifically, some certification programs, which introduced by the 4c association, fairtrade, rainforest alliance and utz certified, have been applied on vietnam coffee since 2001. they are more than 25% of vietnam’s coffee had been certified or verified “sustainable” by the end of 2012. the popularity of certified sustainable programs in the world created a window of opportunity for vietnam coffee farms, which operated under groups of smallholders, to participate in certification cooperatives to export certified coffee. however, it remains unclear whether these sustainable certification programs can reconstruct market forces by delivering high incomes to participating farmers. based on some studies of certification, it concluded that evidence from the impact of certification in vietnam is very limited because certification is so new and certification organizations have just appeared within last decade. this study attempts to investigate the impact of certification program on the net coffee income per unit for those farms owned by smallholders at dakha district, kontum, vietnam. three objectives are, firstly, to define the critical variables to describe and compare the socio-demographic and economic characteristics between certified and non-certified farmers at dakha district; second, to estimate the impact of certification scheme in function of farmers’ net coffee income per hectare; and last, to measure average treatment effect of certification program on farmers’ net coffee income per hectare through psm technique. 2. literature review certification is a procedure that a third party, the accreditation agent, can assure a production unit with written assurances if the products, process or service conforms to the specified requirements (grieg-gran, 2005). moreover, certification scheme2 is a system as related to specified products, processes or services with the same specific standards, rules, and the same procedures and applications. particularly, coffee certification schemes have emerged as one approach to try and raise the standards in economic, social and environmental during coffee production and transaction. five dominant certification schemes include: fairtrade, organic certification, rainforest alliance, utz and common code, are applied at coffee community in vietnam. 2 in some countries the same concept is covered by the term ‘certification program’ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 137-149 139 evidences on whether the sustainable certification of agricultural products can benefit farmers at farm level were diverted. there are only few researches find empirical evidences that certification has positive socioeconomic or environmental impacts on farm level. ruben (2008) finds that those certified farmers are said to be reward for the processes by receiving stable, and sometimes higher, prices for products in relation to household income. according to the studies from arnould et al. (2009) and bolwig et al. (2009), the certification has significant socioeconomic benefits to the stakeholders. after surveying 228 coffee smallholders in northern nicaragua, bacon (2005) argues that although the livelihood level of small scale coffee farmers are influenced by some political, social and economical factors, those certificates, such as fairtrade and organic certification, have provide potential opportunities to improve the livelihoods of those pariticipants. murray et al., (2006) finds that the most direct benefit to small-scale farmers to apply the certificate is the product can be priced high with the fairtrade logo. besides, ruben (2008) concludes that the producers participate the fairtrade program can receive higher net incomes, particularly when they combine the fairtrade mark with organic certification. on the contrary, fort and ruben (2008) find a negative impact of fairtrade identification on total gross and net income of coffee farms in peru. using a small but rich sampling group of coffee growers in nicaragua, valkila (2009) questions whether fairtrade/organic coffee promotes sustainable development or it makes minor marginal contributions to growers who are trapped in an equilibrium with low-yield and low-income. in addition, some studies find limit effect of certification program on farmers’ income. evidently, in the research of ruben and fort (2012) in peru, for both groups of organic and conventional farmers, their results did not show significantly effect of fairtrade involvement in terms of higher household income. in addition, after surveying 327 members from some conventional, organic, and organic-fairtrade certified cooperatives in nicaragua, beuchelt and zeller (2011) found that per capita net coffee incomes are insufficient to cover basic needs of all coffee producing households. calo and wise (2005) and kilian et al. (2006) construct farm budget models suggesting that price premiums for certification are too low to be profitable. similarly, lyngbaek et al. (2001) concludes that excluding organic certification costs, means of variable costs and net income were near for both groups, mainly because organic price premiums received by the farmers compensated the ones with low yields. 3. materials and methods 3.1. statistical models a two stage procedure for decision estimation is adopted to describe the participation consideration for coffee farmers. the decision models for participation in studies is estimated by two parts with two functions; they are “participation decision” measured by a zero-one bi-variate response function in probit model and the return function with the real nominal number in the ols model. the linearity assumption of ols linear regression is probably too restrictive for studying impacts of certification program effect. particularly, the endogeneity problem between different experiments may arise due to unobservable characteristics which may affect treatment, but also correlate with outcome. for instance, the decision for participating certification program may significantly correlate with the characteristics of observable households and their farms. several methods, such as heckman model (heckman, 1979), and instrument variable (heckman, 1997), have been suggested to remedy the endogeneity problem occurring in ols model. with the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 137-149 140 advantage of correcting the selection bias, the propensity score-matching approach (psm) becomes popular in measuring the average treatment effect. as this study mentioned, the invitation to farmers to participate in certification programs is not random during the organizing processes since the program administrators and local marketing agents may focus on some villages and households with some specific consideration to minimize the potential administrative costs afterward. this concern may cause the selection bias and divert the degree of impact for potential factors to join the causal program, then may activate households’ self-selection intention to the certification program or cause the endogenous program placement. alternatively, according to beuchelt and zeller (2011), there is no difference between conventional and organic-fairtrade producers found in net coffee income per hectare. with the different methods applied, this outcome also concluded by lyngbaek et al. (2001) and kilian et al. (2006). evidently, ruben and fort (2012) apply psm method with longitudinal (before/after) analysis of certified farmers and control groups with similar attributes. based on empirical approaches of rosenbaum and rubin (1983) and khandker et al. (2010), this study applies the psm model to measure average treatment effect of certification program on farmers’ return from coffee cropping by the net income per hectare. the idea is to match certified farmers with non-certified farmers that have very similar observable characteristics that properly affect outcomes, and to use outcomes for this matched control sample as the counterfactual outcome. the expected value is the difference between two expected outcomes from with or without participants who both were actually certified. supposes that there is the average treatment effect for a single individual, 𝒊, is defined as: i = yi1 − yi0 ……………….. (1) where y is the variable of interest outcome, i is the sample under consideration where i = 1….n, and n denotes the total population. and 𝑌𝑖1 is the variable of interest outcome when individual ith is subject to treatment (t=1), and 𝑌𝑖0 is the same variable in the control group (t=0), t is a binary treatment. for estimating average treatment estimation, it is necessary to estimate the potential outcomes and the counterfactual outcomes. table 1 shows the possibilities for the potential and counterfactual outcomes. table 1: evaluation framework for treatment group outcomes y 𝐘𝟏 𝐘𝟎 treatment (t = 1) observable counterfactual control (t = 0) counterfactual observable from colume1 in table 1, the counterfactual problem is clear because only the potential outcomes is observed for each individual i. 𝑌𝑖0 is not observed for treated individuals, whereas 𝑌𝑖1is not observed for non-treated individuals. therefore, estimating the individual treatment effect 𝑖 is not possible and there is a need to concentrate on average treatment effects (caliendo and kopeinig, 2008). the primary treatment effect of interest in quasi-experimental settings is the expected average treatment effect on the treated samples (att); hence. att = e(iti = 1) = e(yi1ti = 1) − e(yi0ti = 1) …………….. (2) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 137-149 141 where ti = 1 if individual ith was assigned to treatment or ti = 0 if individual ith was assigned to control. equation (2) cannot be directly estimated because e(yi0=1) is not observed for the treated. for att it can be noted as: e(yi1ti = 1) − e(yi0ti = 0) = att + e(yi0ti = 1) − e(yi0ti = 0) …………..….. (3) the expected value of att is now the difference between expected outcome values with and without treatment for those who actually were treated. in another way, the difference between the left hand side of equation (3) and att is the so-called “self-selection bias” or “average treatment effect” (connelly et al., 2013). ate is rewritten as equation (4): ate = e(yi0ti = 1) − e(yi0ti = 0) ……………….. (4) the additional challenge when estimating ate is that both counterfactual outcomes e(yi0ti = 1) and e(yi0ti =0) have to be constructed. intuitively, if yi0 for the treated and comparison individuals systematically differ, then in observing only yi0 for the comparison group, the study does not correctly estimate yi0 for the treated group. the true parameter of att is only identified if the outcome of treatment and control in the absence of treatment are the same. this is written as: yi1 , yi0 ∐ ti f e(yi0ti = 0) = e(yi0ti = 1) = e(yiti = 0) …………….… (5) or e(yi0ti = 0) − e(yi0ti = 1) = 0 ………………. (6) to reduce bias problem, rosenbaum and rubin (1983) suggest applying the balancing scores approach to estimate the effects of treatment. individuals with similar propensity scores are compared based on the outcomes of treatment, and those which with no match will be dropped due to lack of comparison base. therefore, based on a model for the probability of assignment to treatment, t, conditional on observed characteristics, x, the propensity score can be obtained. in other words, the propensity score is the probability of an individual being assigned to a particular treatment given a set of observed covariates. it defines as: pi = p(t = ix) ………………….. (7) the matching method bases on two assumptions which are conditional independence assumption (cia) and presence of a common support (khandker et al., 2010). according to cia, it states that given a set of observable covariates x that are not affected by treatment, potential outcomes y are independent of treatment assignment t (khandker et al., 2010; rosenbaum and rubin, 1983). cia based on the propensity score (pscore) can be written as: yi0, yi1 ∐ t  p(x), x …………………… (8) the common support or overlap condition is the second assumption. it rules out the phenomenon of perfect predictability of t given x: 0 < p(t = 1x) < 1 ……………………. (9) it ensures that farmers with the same x values have a positive probability of being both treated and non-treated individuals (heckman et al., 1999). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 137-149 142 given that cia holds and assumes additionally that there is overlap between both groups called “strong ignorability” (rosenbaum and rubin, 1983), the psm estimator for att can be written in general as following. att psm = ep(x)ti=1(e[yi1ti = 1, p(x)] − e[yi0ti = 0, p(x)) ……………. (10) to put it in words, the psm estimator is simply the mean difference in outcomes over the common support, appropriately weighted by the propensity score distribution of individuals. basing on caliendo and kopeinig (2008) and li (2013), table 1 shows a brief outline of the matching estimator in the general evaluation framework. 3.2. data in 2012-2014, kontum is one of five provinces chosen to implement sustainable coffee production project of the national agricultural extension center. dakha is a special coffee area, accounting for 65% of coffee area and 75% of green coffee production of kontum. primary data of the study were obtained from the survey of 200 smallholders coffee farmers in dakha district, vietnam from july 2013 to january 2014. out of 200 samples, 80 smallholders are members of certified cooperatives. 3.3. statistical methods 3.3.1. description of variables after reviewing theory and related empirical researches, five categories of independent variables were considered in determining the net coffee income per hectare by using the regression analysis (see table 2): 1) characteristics of the household head; 2) characteristics of household; 3) farming environment; 4) conditions for upgrading quality of coffee; and 5) the certification. table 2: description of variables and its definitions variable definition description of variables netincome net coffee income per hectare local currency (1,000 vnd) cert certification participation no=0, yes =1 age age of the head of the household numbers gender gender of the head of household “female” =0, “male”=1 hsize household size numbers labors labor size in coffee cultivation numbers edu education level of the head of household “never been to school or illiterate” = 1, “primary school”=2, “secondary school”= 3, “high school and more”=4 exp coffee farming experience of the head “less than 5 years”=1, “5-10 years”=2, “10-15 years”=3, “more than 15 years”=4 area total harvest coffee area hectares distown distance from homestead to center of town number of kilometers credit household has access to credit no=0, yes =1 training number of trainings “less than 5 years”=1, “5-10 years”=2, “10-15 years”=3, “1520 years”=4, “more than 20 years”=5 record household keep record on coffee no=0, yes =1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 137-149 143 3.3.2. regression analysis this study estimates impact of certification program with two stages: the decision stage and demand stage. the former part will be estimated the certification program participation decision by a binary probit model. next, two income response equations for those farmers with and without certification will be estimated by ols model. certification participation is strongly correlated with observable household and farm characteristics. from the actual practice, households in this area may determine to participate in the programs and self-select into the program based on their access to productive resources. in addition, program administrators and agents may target certain villages and select those households with specific characteristics. with these backgroud, a decision equation is important before the income analysis. the processes can be illustrated as following stages. first stage for constructing a decision equation cert = α0 + α1age + α2sex + α3edu + α4exp+ α5hsize + α6labors + α7area + α8distown + α9credit + α10training + α11record + 𝛼12netincome + εi next, an income reponse equation for farmers with or without certification by applying the probit model at the second stage netincome = α0 + α1age + α2sex + α3edu + α4exp+ α5hsize + α6labors + α7area + α8distown + α9credit + α10training + α11record + εi 3.3.3. psm in practice steps to practice psm are described as following four steps. first, do a representative sample survey of 80 certified farmers as well as one for 120 non-certified farmers with the same questionnaire, same interviewer training, and same survey period. next, calculate the probability of certification participation or propensity score (pscore). a binary model is applied with the zero-one treatment variable (t), certification status of the farmers in the present study, as the selection variable conditional on basic characteristics (x) of both groups to estimate these propensity scores (pi1), where pi = p(t = 1x). third, organize two balanced groups based on their estimated propensity scores for farmers in each group have most close propensity scores, which are measured by different matching algorithms. last, calculate the mean value of the individual gains for each matching algorithm to obtain the average overall gain. this value is the average effect of the certification program on farmers’ household income from coffee production (att) following the equation below: att = ep(x)ti=1 = e[yi1ti = 1, p(x)] − e[yi0ti = 0, p(x)] ........................ (11) where yi1 is net coffee income per hectare when the ith farmer is subject to certified groups (1), and yi0 is the value of the same variable when the individual is exposed to non-certified group (0). 4. results and discussions 4.1. regression analysis results 4.1.1. decision equation from table 3, we can conclude that the certification participation decision is strongely supported by the following variables, they are: age of head, experience of head, numbers of labor, credit condition and production record. young and experienced farm head who keep financial relation asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 137-149 144 with credit units and consistent record for coffee farming with limited labors at the farm is with high propensity to participate the certificate program. table 3: certification participation decision analysis –probit model variables coefficient s.e t-test age -0.059 0.015 -3.871*** labors -1.873 0.392 -4.769*** experience 0.452 0.195 2.309** credit 0.659 0.287 2.293** record 2.920 0.633 4.611*** netincome 0.00004 0.000008 4.552*** constant 0.216 1.045 0.207 n = 200, mcfadden r2 = 0.5817, note: ***, **, and * show the value statistically significant level at 1%, 5%, and 10% 4.1.2. income response equation for with and without certification this study applied ols regression to investigate the influential factors, including certification participation, that affect net coffee income per hectare. table 4 summarizes the results of response equations below. all estimated coefficients show the expected signs as prior discussed. table 4: ols regression analysis results variables coefficient s.e t certification participation 16,326.06 3,584.69 4.55*** age 89.24 132.94 0.67 gender 1,942.55 -3,237.68 -0.60 hsize -691.76 852.77 -0.81 labor 33,715.10 1,823.34 18.49*** edu 2,779.06 1,277.83 2.17** exp 1,419.04 1,892.47 0.75 distown -1,837.70 466.72 -3.94*** area 148.06 1,508.98 0.10 credit -5,324.89 2,739.19 -1.94* traning 7,850.80 1,390.45 5.65*** record 5,924.13 3,377.04 1.75* constant -35,109.33 9,433.11 -3.72*** number of obs f(12, 187) prob > f r-squared adj r-squared = 200 = 130.48 = 0.0000 = 0.8933 = 0.8865 note: ***, **, and * show the value statistically significant level at 1%, 5%, and 10% first of all, the estimated coefficients in table 4 show that the certification dummy is statistically insignificant for net income earned from coffee production per hectare at a 1% critical level. ols regression result indicates that certified farmers earn about 16.33 million vnd3 than non-certified farmers. besides, the estimated coefficients in table 4 show that the number of labor, education of head, training, production record and the distance between the homestead and downtown are the factors significantly influence the net income level for those farms without certification. 3 the exchange rate between usd and vnd is 1ntd for 21,091 vnd. 16.33 million vnd equals 77,43 usd, approximately. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 137-149 145 the number of family members participating in coffee production positively and significantly affects coffee net income at 1% critical level. this result implies that labor may increase the costs, but it also increase of coffee productivity as well. in coffee production, some activities, such as watering, fertilizing, transporting, require labors. with this understanding, more family members participate in production could improve the family income by coffee sales. this is the reason why coefficient of household labor size involving coffee cultivation is 33,246.10. it means that every household member could earn approximately 33.72 million vnd for net coffee income per hectare. furthermore, the education level of the household head has an effect on coffee net income at significant level 10%. specifically, table 4 highlights that the education level of family head increase a level more, it helps household earn more 2.69 million vnd net coffee income per hectare. alternatively, in the term of distance from homestead to center of town, the result shows a negative impact on net coffee income per hectare. furthermore, the distance from homestead to center of town significantly affects coffee net income at critical level 1%. as the distances increases 1 kilometre, net income from coffee production will decrease 1.55 million vnd for noncertificate farms. the accessibility to the training or number of trainings which farmers attended in one year has a strong effect on the net income per from coffee. for example, if a farmer takes more than about 5 training courses, they can add annually 7.1 million vnd into net coffee income per hectare. particularly, during the application processes to become a member of the certification cooperatives, the famers can access to the training programs by attaining workshops or being instructed by extension agent to improve their productivity in cropping coffee. also, the variable, household keep records on coffee farm, is significant in the statistical result for non-certificate farms; it may due to the reason that records help farmers to monitor those activities of production and can manage the risks and vulnerability for farming operations. keeping record of cultivating coffee has a positive effect net coffee income at a 10% critical level. moreover, in global competition, it is necessary to encourage and increase farmers’ aware in the important role of keeping records in international trading and organic farming for traceability. for income response equation of certificated farms, numbers of labors, gender of head, distance between homestead to downtown, and training are significant variables to influence the level of net income. the negative sign for gender implies that male farmers earn less than female colleagues when their farms are all in the certification program. also the more distance between homestead and downtown, the more income the farm can earn, which is different from the case in non certification group. 4.2. psm results after calculating pscores for each farmer, these pscore are stratified in five blocks. the study eliminates the farmers of non-certified group with pscore lower than minimum pscore in the certified group, and the farmers of certified group with pscore higher than maximum pscore in the non-certified group. this results in reduction of the sample with 25 farmers in non-certified group. and, there are no farmers removed in certified group. the distribution of pscores of farmers is illustrated in figure 1 below. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 137-149 146 figure 1: propensity score distribution next, the study referred to four different matching algorithms in order to verify the robustness of the results to the method applied: (1) nearest neighbor matching; (2) caliper and radius matching; (3) kernel matching; and (4) stratification matching. illustratively, table 5 presented the matching estimates of the average treatment effect of certification program for outcome variable below: table 5: psm results for certification participation (‘000 vnd) matching algorithms average effect of participation se t-test nearest neighbour 24,137.13 9,215.561 2.62*** caliper and radius 21,745.35 4,217.374 5.16*** kernel 19,207.52 7,547.768 2.56*** stratification 19,951.26 7,506.779 2.66*** note: ***, **, and * show the value statistically significant level at 1%, 5%, and 10% the estimates of the net coffee annual income per hectares of a household earned from certification participation range from 19,208 million vnd to 24,137 million vnd depending on the matching method used. also, all estimates are statistically significantly different from zero with at 1% critical level. moreover, by comparison with ols results, the results of the psm are different with those from the ols estimation; it suggests that original estimates are affected by either selection bias or the endogeneity. it also implies that ols and psm methods both provide consistent evidences for positive income effects from certification scheme. besides, the study also recognized that the psm results are similar to the previous studies which established a positive impact of certification on income levels (arnould et al., 2009; bacon, 2005; bolwig et al., 2009; fromm and dubón, 2006; ruben, 2008). in addition, the significance of certification for income levels of farmers actually indicates that there is a success of the farmer’s organization as well as a success of certification. generally, the main challenge for farmers in certified coffee production is how to keep the record since it is crucial for traceability in international trade. furthermore, the cost of coffee production is quite large. specifically, agriculture assets, fertilizer, and pesticide are expensive, particularly soil conditioner applied in organic farming. moreover, it is not easy to preserve and keep the quality of coffee cherries or beans since it depends on equipment, storehouse. in addition, the quantity and quality of coffee production depend severely on weather and market. in general, certification 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 propensity score untreated treated asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 137-149 147 participation, therefore, can be considered to be an interesting and reliable opportunity for the coffee farmers in the study area. although, in comparison to non-certified farmers, certified farmers have to implement strict requirements and need to be compensated by cooperative with indirect benefits. apart from paying a premium price, certified farmers supported from cooperative by providing materials, such as fertilizer, safety working clothing, feeding-up allowances per training course or meeting. other benefits also come from the cooperative’s welfare fund. in 2012 this resource of fund supported the certified members at 15.8 million vnd per coffee hectares and some infrastructures. 5. conclusions the objective of this study is to investigate the impact of certification program on smallholder farmers’ net coffee income per unit at dakha district, kontum, vietnam. both regression and psm results show that certification participation has a positive significant effect on household income per hectare. this study reveals the certified coffee potential for smallholder farmers. specifically, the results of ols regression and psm provide consistent evidence for positive income effects arising from certification scheme. when comparing certified with noncertified cooperatives, it becomes evident that participation in certification program guarantee the members of certified cooperatives a higher net coffee income can be received. furthermore, our findings are considered as quantitative and qualitative evidences to policy makers and donors who are currently supporting or planning to support certification schemes to conclude that the farming management program acts as a tool can improve the income level for local smallhold coffee farms. therefore, it must be ascertained to not only focus on coffee cooperatives, but to turn these cooperatives into stronger and more effective partners in the value chain if the farmers’ income is the issue of the industry-chain policy for the domestic coffee farming sector. the statistical results also support for the importance that education and training can contribute to improve coffee farm income. also, the record of farming is critical factors, both in improving the economic situation for farms with and without certification in vietnam. from this study of the organization for coffee farmers in vietnam, it is essential to increase awareness among local farmers with promising high incomes for becoming certified farmers to develop a sustainable coffee industry. hence, cooperatives should regard to provide specific training courses as well as a strict follow-up system for introducing global markets. all of the above, the participating members can learn the required knowledge in improving productivity and these schemes can strengthen the royalty to the organizations after participation. also, local cooperatives and certification programs will authorize farmers to opt organic fertilizer, soil conditioner or pesticide both under acceptable nomenclature and regular inspections from cooperatives. furthermore, the cooperatives can provide credit service to build up the royalty of farmers to cooperate. although the effect of the program on an aspect of income is not so big, the statistical results conclude that the certification participation has a positive welfare impact on smallhold farm and is pushing them move towards a more decentralized, integrated and participatory system. therefore, extending the certification programs or cooperatives further to reach the majority of smallholder household farmers at dakha district will likely benefit smallholder farmers’ income in various aspects. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(6)2015: 137-149 148 views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references arnould, e. j., plastina, a., & ball, d. 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(2009). fair trade organic coffee production in nicaragua-sustainable development or a poverty trap?. ecological economics, 68, 3018-3025. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 267 weed management in zimbabwean smallholder conservation agriculture farming sector tarirai muoni university of zimbabwe, p. o. box mp 167, mount pleasant, harare, zimbabwe blessing mhlanga university of zimbabwe, p. o. box mp 167, mount pleasant, harare, zimbabwe abstract weed management is one of the major constraints in the zimbabwe smallholder farming sector contributing to smallholder poor yields, hence there is need to identify cropping systems that have potential to reduce weed pressure while improving crop yields. conservation agriculture has been suggested as one of these farming systems. the implementation of ca three key principles reduces weed pressure even when the use of herbicides is minimised. crops included in crop rotations, intercropping or relay cropping may have faster growth rate than weeds hence, have a comparative advantage over weeds. maintenance of permanent soil cover through crop residues impedes weed germination thereby reducing weed population. elimination of ploughing also reduces the chances of bringing buried weed seeds to the surface where their chances for germination are high. hence, some seeds lose viability thus reducing weed density. weed seeds accumulate at the surface, when allowed to set seed, increasing their exposure to predation resulting in reduction of weed density over time. the use of herbicides ensures that the fields are weed free as the season’s progress thus ensuring better yields at the end of each growing season. hence, weeds are reduced in ca systems over time despite the weeding option used. keywords: conservation agriculture, minimum tillage, cover crops, rotations, herbicides introduction 1 the impacts of poor weed management practices have continued to worsen crop yield loss within the smallholder farming sector in southern africa. this has left the majority of smallholder farmers food insecure where their average maize grain yields is as low as 0.8 tonnes ha -1 (baudron et al., 2012). traditionally, weed management has been handled via the use of conventional tillage corresponding author’s name: tarirai muoni email address: tarirai.muoni@gmail.com practices where the mould plough is the common tool used for land preparation (colbach et al., 2000). the mouldboard plough facilitates turning of the soils burying weeds and their seeds leaving the farmers’ field weed free at the onset of the season. however, such weed management practices are ideal to farmers who have access to draft power that is necessary when using the mouldboard plough. most of the resource limited smallholder farmers use hand hoes for land preparation, planting and weeding that is normally done three times per growing season (siziba, 2008). however, hand hoe weeding is labour intensive (mandumbu et al., 2011) and asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:tarirai.muoni@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 267-276 268 labour availability is limited due rural to urban migration of most youths. thus the smallholder farms are occupied by old farmers whom some of them have been affected by the hiv/aids pandemic disease that reduces their ability to weed three times and before yield losses are encountered. this has left more land abandoned due to weed infestation, especially on resources poor farms. although the conventional tillage practises facilitates easy weed management practices at smallholder farming level, it has been reported to offer more detrimental effects on the farm. conventional tillage practices increases soil loss in the fields (alba et al., 2006; thierfelder and wall, 2009; zhang et al., 2003). this reduces the productivity of the plots since most fertile soils are washed away by water runoff (thierfelder and wall, 2012; thierfelder and wall, 2009). also, conventional ploughing reduces soil moisture retention and crops are affected by moisture stress that are commonly experienced during the growing season which results in yield decrease at the end of the season (thierfelder and wall, 2010). due to increasing worries about low yields in smallholder farming sector, most researchers became interested in promoting more sustainable agriculture systems that will enable yield increase and safeguarding the soil quality. one of the proposed farming systems is conservation agriculture (ca) which is expected to promote more precise use of land, vegetation and water resources. it is defined as a farming system that is based on three principles namely (a) minimum soil disturbance, (b) diverse crop rotations and (c) maintenance of a permanent soil cover through crop residues (kassam et al., 2009; fao, 2010). it is generally gaining acceptance in zimbabwe smallholder farming and most of the farmers have heard or practiced ca. it has been reported to increase yields, promote moisture retention by reducing runoff, reduce soil loss and increase soil organic matter content (fao, 2001; fao, 2002; hobbs, 2007; johansen et al., 2012; kassam et al., 2012; kassam et al., 2009). although it is reported to have more benefits over conventional ploughing, it requires proper or well-planned weed management practices to overcome an expected increase in perennial weed species. a suggested increase in perennial weed species (gan et al., 2008) increases the complexity of weed management under ca; hence the first years of adopting ca may require the use of herbicides (wall, 2007). some researchers have observed a decrease in weed density during the growing season via use of herbicides and even in hand hoe weeding only (muoni et al., 2013). this suggests that ca has potential to decrease weeding problems over time even when manual weeding is the available weeding option by adopting all three ca principles and avoid neglecting any one of the principles. ca principles on weed management minimum soil disturbance elimination of soil inversion enables all the buried weed seeds to remain dormant for a long time and reduces their chances of germinating. minimum soil disturbance ensures that all weed seeds that are buried within depths of 10cm or more are not exposed to the surface where there are conducive environments for germination since the soil is not disturbed to such depths (forcella and lindstrom, 1988). the weed seed bank is likely to be depleted with minimum soil disturbed since weed seed that is on the soil surface is not buried hence, exposing them to predation by birds and other macro fauna (baral, 2012). it has been reported that in reduced tillage systems there tends to be a shift in the weed spectrum and annual weed species become the dominant ones and hence making weeding easier since these are easier to eradicate compared to perennial ones (muoni et al., 2013). annual weeds germinate in one season so if controlled timely, their seed bank is depleted quickly over the seasons. however, with a shift from conventional to reduced-tillage practises, there is a shift in weed spectrum and this leads to difficulties in the handling of weeds during the first years of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 267-276 269 ca. a knowledgeable understanding of the new weed species is required for them to be controlled much more easily of which most smallholder farmers lack this (derpsch, 2008). also, with reduced tillage, weed species that produce through rhizomes e.g. cynodon dactylon become more difficult to control since the underneath rhizomes are not disturbed (vogel, 1994b). this calls for the use of herbicides e.g. atrazine which may be unaffordable to some smallholder farmers or may not be used in some crops like soybean restricting possible desirable crop rotations. diverse crop rotations and plant associations crop rotations have been reported to play an important role in the eradication of weeds in ca systems. there are some weeds that are crop specific e.g. striga hemonthica (del.) which is stimulated to germinate by certain chemical compounds found in root exudates produced by cereals (kanampiu et al., 2002). the witch weed can lead to yield losses of up to 100 % in cereal systems and in africa losses of up to approximately us$40 million have been reported in maize and sorghumbased systems (kanampiu et al., 2002). desmodium unicinatum is a legume that may be rotated with maize and this legume produces a chemical that stimulates suicidal germination of s. hermonthica but s. hermonthica will not be able to attach to the roots of this legume to siphon nutrients and hence will eventually die off and with time, the striga seed bank is depleted (khan et al., 2010). there are some leguminous cover crops that may be incorporated into rotations and these produce allelochemicals that have live allelopathic effects on some weed species e.g. crotalaria juncea (skinner et al., 2012; moyer, 2008). in the presence of these cover crops, some weed seeds are unable to germinate or die at early stages due to competition for resources before they reproduce seed and so depleting the weed seed bank leading to a gradual decline in weed numbers (norsworthy et al., 2011; fisk et al., 2001). sunflower has been reported to have an allelopathic effect to quite a number of weeds species and so its involvement in cropping systems ensures a decrease in weed problems (leather, 1987). in addition to their ability to suppress weeds, leguminous cover crops may also contribute significantly to the nitrogen in cropping systems (thierfelder et al., 2012). however, rotations with these edible and nonedible legumes may a challenge for some smallholder farmers due to unavailability of ready market for the legume seed (thierfelder et al., 2012) and also due to limited access to arable land and hence find it difficult to substitute staple crops with these legumes. maintenance of a permanent soil covers through crop residues permanent soil cover is attained by retention of crop residues on the soil surface. the residue maybe of the previous crop or may be imported into the field. when spread on the surface, crop residues offer a smothering effect on the weeds and hence, hinder their growth leading to their death (sasa, 2009). in some cases, weed seeds may germinate but due to the presence of the layer of residues, they may fail to emerge but if the weeds manage to emerge, they may be shaded from light by the crop residue and will eventually die before they reproduce leading to reduced number of weeds over the seasons (chauhan and abugho, 2013; moyer, 2008). runzika et al. (2013) found out that some cover crop residue e.g. jack bean (canavalia ensiformis) have functional allelopathic effects on weeds like the eleusine indica, bidens pilosa among others so their involvement in cropping systems reduces these weed species. the presence of crop residues has been reported to improve macroand microbial activity in the soil and so this also improves the predation of weed seeds by some microorganisms that are found in the soil leading to reduced number of weeds seed and in turn reduced number of weeds (kremer, 2000). however, a study by vogel (1994a) revealed that the presence of crop residues may block herbicides from reaching the weeds therefore reducing their efficiency. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 267-276 270 chemicals and manual weed management systems the most effective and time-efficient weed control method is the chemical weed control (chhokar et al., 2007). under this strategy any technique which involves the use of herbicides is summarized as chemical weed control (boydston et al., 2012). the use of herbicides is effective and ensures a decrease in weed density over time (muoni et al., 2013). ca is associated with increased weed problems during the early years of adoption thus herbicides has been highly recommended for weed control. however, great care should be taken when handling herbicides to prevent contaminations of the sprayer. this is achieved by wearing protective clothing when spraying and destroying the empty containers after use to avoid contamination of water bodies. the exponential growth of ca in brazil and argentina was mainly due to the availability of more effective and affordable herbicides in their countries especially glyphosate and paraquat (bolliger et al., 2006). to date, smallholder farmers in southern africa use herbicides only in malawi, where it has become a common practice due to the influence of sasakawa global 2000 (ito et al., 2007). in other areas herbicides slowly become more known as an economic way of weed control (rugare and mabasa, 2013). potential herbicides for ca available in zimbabwe include atrazine, glyphosate, metolachlor and paraquat among others. atrazine atrazine is a selective herbicide with an active ingredient found in many products that control a wide range of broadleaved weeds and some few grass species. it can therefore, be used in maize production. it is a pre-emergent herbicide that can be applied early, post, alone or in combination with other compatible herbicides (williams et al., 2011). this enables farmers to combine it with other herbicides thus widen the weed spectrum controlled. its active ingredient is s-triazines [2-chloro-4-(ethylamino)-6-(isopropylamino)s-triazine], and it is widely used in most parts of the world (williams et al., 2010). atrazine is a photosynthetic inhibitor which blocks electron transport between the primary qa and secondary acceptor qb plastoquinones in photo system ii in the chloroplasts and has long lasting soil activity, which enables it to control late emerging weeds (baker et al., 2007). depending on soil texture and amount of irrigation, the herbicide half-life ranges from one week to more than a year (hang et al., 2003). the herbicide can be carried over to the next season but the carry-over is largely dependent on climatic and edaphic conditions (helling et al., 1988). the effects of the ca system on atrazine carry-over are not yet fully understood but the herbicide carry over to the next season may be reduced by increased biological activity under conservation agriculture. retention of residues and minimum soil movement induces biological activity with strains possessing atrazine chlorohydrolase, atz a (eapen et al., 2007) and related amidohydrolase enzymes, trzn (houot et al., 2000) which may enhance atrazine degradation in soil. during metabolism, atrazine is dechlorinated and additional enzymatic hydrolytic transformations end in atrazine-ring cleavage, mineralization, and successive release of ammonium (wackett et al., 2002). nitrogen released from atrazine metabolism serves as a nitrogen source for atrazine-degrading bacteria. thus, using atrazine under ca can be very efficient since it will be available for almost a third of the season to control emerging weeds. nevertheless, the use of atrazine has been banned in europe as it leaches to groundwater which raised concern on the safety of life (helling et al., 1988). however, the current cumulative risk assessment of atrazine by the u.s environment protection agency has shown no evidence on the negative effects of the traces of the herbicide on human life hence; the herbicide was reregistered in 2006 in europe (williams et al., 2010; williams et al., 2011). glyphosate glyphosate with its active ingredient [n(phosphonomethyl) glycine], is a nonasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 267-276 271 selective systemic herbicide applied post emergent to green tissues. the herbicide inhibits the activity of the enzyme 5enolpyruvylshikimate-3-hosphatesynthase (esps synthase) where the herbicide molecule binds to the esps synthase (franz et al., 2009). the binding of the herbicide alters the shape of the enzyme thereby disturbing the normal function of the enzyme which results in the control of living plants. glyphosate is an effective herbicide on perennial grasses but supplementary weeding is necessary because it lacks residual activity to control newly emerging weeds (chikoye et al., 2010). glyphosate resistant crops like roundup-ready soybean and maize (i.e. genetically modified organisms (gmos) can be grown to reduce supplementary weeding with hoes (balkcom et al., 2011). round-up ready maize supports a full cover spray of glyphosate even after the crop has emerged without any damage to the crop. the herbicide has been reported to have low-mammalian toxicity (riley et al., 2001) thus making the herbicide a good option for ca. the introduction of glyphosate augmented the widespread adoption of ca in the americas due to reduced weeding and operation costs (derpsch, 2008; fao, 2001). glyphosate replaced the need for tillage practices to reduce weed pressure at the onset of the season (yang et al., 2008) (yang et al., 2008). hence, the use of glyphosate as a weed control strategy is an effective measure to reduce weed pressure at the onset of cropping season and ensures less contamination of groundwater and the environment (stewart et al., 2011). it can be applied at seeding with a knapsack sprayer and during the growing season if a weed wipe is used (rugare, 2009). this helps to control newly emerging weed shoots during the season. however, it has been reported that the herbicides should not be used on soils with a sand content greater than 90% (thierfelder, personal communication). the herbicide is deactivated through binding on clay particles hence, the herbicide remains active in soils where not enough clay or organic matter is present, which may have significant inhibitory effects on plant emergence. though the herbicide is effective, some weed species have been reported to be resistant to glyphosate and these includes conyza bonariensis, digiteria insularis and lolium rigidum among other weed species (johnson et al., 2009). to reduce such risks of weeds developing resistance, integrated weed management practices have been recommended by many researchers (deytieux et al., 2012; mandumbu et al., 2011; mézière et al., 2013; pardo et al., 2010; vogel, 1994a). metolachlor metolachlor is a chloroacetamide herbicide (active ingredient: 2-chloro-n-(2-ethyl-6methylphenyl)-n-2-methoxyl-1-methylethyl), which belongs to the acetamide family. it is applied as pre-emergent herbicide in maize, soybean, sorghum, potatoes amongst other crops (rivard, 2003). it acts as a growth inhibitor that suppresses the synthesis of chlorophyll, fatty acids, proteins and lipids in both grasses and broadleaved weeds and the herbicide can suppress striga (kabambe et al., 2008). the product is a short residual herbicide that can be mixed with atrazine and glyphosate. the herbicide half-life ranges from 7 to 292 days depending on soil type (kabambe et al., 2008). paraquat paraquat, [1, 1‘-dimethyl-4, 4‘bipyridinium], is a non-selective contact herbicide capable to suppress both perennial grasses and broadleaved weeds. it is a post emergence herbicide, a photosynthetic inhibitor, which is applied after emergence of weeds. great care should be taken to avoid spraying the main crop with paraquat (croplife, 2006). the herbicide should be applied to green tissue, where it intercepts electrons from photosynthesis and transfers energy to free radicals and damages the cell membrane that permits leaching of cell contents to intercellular spaces (dodge and harris 1970). though the herbicide may be ideal in ca systems, it works best when the target plants are already stressed (baker et al., 2007). it is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 267-276 272 bound to soil particles and remains bound for a long time but it can be desorbed again and become biologically active (rytwo et al., 2010). though paraquat is not restricted in many countries, the herbicide is the most acutely toxic herbicide that may cause death if farmers do not wear enough protective clothing as well as use leaking knapsack sprayers (rytwo et al., 2010). some countries have restricted the use of paraquat mainly for health reasons. manual weeding another common method in smallholder farming is mechanical weed control. this method involves killing or suppressing weeds through physical beating or disruption. however, successful control depends on the life cycle of the target weed species. examples of techniques include hand pulling and hand hoeing. the use of hand hoes in small-scale farming is a common practice in zimbabwe (siziba, 2008) but it is labour intensive and generally affected by the health and mood of the farmer and also the availability of labour (steiner and twomlow, 2003). conclusions this paper has given an account of different weed management strategies under ca. minimum soil disturbance reduce bringing buried weed seeds to the surface where conditions are favourable for germination hence their chances of germination are low reducing weed densities over seasons. on the other hand, there is accumulation of weed seeds at the soil surface where they are likely to germinate within one season and if timely weeding is practised the weed seed bank is likely to be depleted over shorter periods of time compared to conventional systems. weed seed are exposed to predation and are damaged making them fail to germinate when they are left on the surface and hence depleting the weed seed banks. retention of residues promotes increased macroand microbial activity which increases organic matter and hence improved crop growth giving them a competitive advantage over weeds. retention of crop residues also promotes build up fungi and bacteria which facilitate fast decomposition of weed seeds before they germinate and hence over time the weed seed bank is depleted making weed management easier over time. crop rotations and/or crop interactions, if designed properly, are capable of reducing weeds to manageable levels. the involvement of allelopathic crops such as sunflower in cropping systems facilitates weed suppression that enables decrease in weeding pressure. crop rotations with leguminous cover crops that have a vigorous growth ensure the smothering of weeds and at the same time contributing to nitrogen in cropping systems and hence, eventual death of weeds and crop yield improvement. the use of herbicides also facilitates the reduction of weed density during the cropping season and continuous application reduces weeding pressure over seasons. however, timely and correct application of herbicides determines the success of reducing weed density and avoiding crop yield 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(2003). assessment of soil losses on cultivated land by using the 137cs technique in the upper yangtze river basin of china. soil and tillage research, 69(1–2), 99-106. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 131 demonstration of improved teff varieties at selected midland districts of guji zone, oromia regional state, ethiopia basha kebede* and dembi korji oromia agricultural research institute, bore agricultural research center, bore, ethiopia * email address: bsshkbd@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 11-dec-2017 accepted: 30-jan-2018 online available: 14-feb2018 keywords: demonstration, teff, evaluation, guji zone abstract the activity was conducted during 2014 and 2015/16 year at adola rede and ana sora districts, guji zone to evaluate the performance of improved teff varieties along with management practices under farmers’ circumstances and to raise farmers’ knowledge and skill on improved teff production and management practices. two improved teff varieties (tseday and boset) were demonstrated along with local varieties. sites were selected with respective district agricultural offices based on the potential of the area for teff production. training was given for farmers, development agents and experts on teff production. the participating farmers were also capacitated through training, follow up, exchange visits and mini field days. according to the results, the two improved teff varieties demonstration showed better yield performance when compared to the local variety. thus, farmers in the area should use tseday and boset variety in order to increase their teff production and productivity. contribution/ originality this research has typically shown the participation of different stakeholders who can influence the agricultural production on larger area. the study also enhances the farmers’ agricultural experiment by farmers research group approach. further, it focuses on active participation of farmers in the whole process of research and evaluate the progress of crop at all stages of crop. the study links farmers, research center and agricultural offices for the agricultural development of the area through field days and trainings. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.7/1005.7.131.135 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: basha kebede and dembi korji (2017). demonstration of improved teff varieties at selected midland districts of guji zone, oromia regional state, ethiopia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7), 131-135. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 7(2017): 131-135 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:bsshkbd@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.7/1005.7.131.135 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 131-135 132 1. introduction teff (eragrostis teff) is a self-pollinated and warm season cereal crop originated in ethiopia and have been domesticated and used throughout the world due to its excellent nutritional value as grains for human consumption and as forage for livestock (baye, 2014). ecologically, teff is adapted to diverse agro-ecological regions of ethiopia and grows well under stress environments better than wheat, barley and other cereals known world-wide (refissa, 2012). it tolerates low moisture conditions and often considered as a rescue crop that survives and grows well in the season when early planted crops fail due to moisture stress. because of this, it is said to be a “low-risk" crop for farmers. for better performance, it requires an altitude of 1700-2400 meter above sea level (ayalew et al., 2017), annual rainfall of 750-850 mm and a temperature range of 10-27oc (adera, 2016). in ethiopia, teff is important cereal crops that 24.02% of all land under cultivation is covered by teff (first among all cultivated crops in terms land coverage) and contribute 17.57% to grain production, second next to maize in terms of total grain production (csa, 2015). most of ethiopian farmers motivated to cultivate teff because of its relative merits over other cereals in the use of both the grain and straw. culturally, teff grain is used for human consumption which is called enjera the most popular food of most of ethiopians. teff has both cultural and economic value for ethiopian farmers. in recent days it is among the cash crops and has been attracting an export market due to its nutritional value and is believed to be gluten free. teff straw, besides being the most appreciated feed for cattle, is also used to reinforce mud and plaster the walls of house and local grain storage facility called gotera (adera, 2016; minten et al., 2016; ayalew et al., 2017). the teff straw is highly preferred by cattle over the straw of other cereals and demands high prices in the markets. it also serves to reinforce mud and plaster the wall in local house construction (engdawork, 2009). teff is the main crop produced in the midland area of guji zone. usually the crop is sown after other crops (maize and haricot bean) are harvested. the crop is produced for both household consumption and cash crop. teff could be produced in both seasons (meher and belg) hence the crop is used for double cropping purpose which increases farmers’ production and income. the straw of teff is also used for construction of house and used as the main feed resource for cattle during drought. despite the importance of teff the yield of the crop is low in the midland area of guji zone due to lack of improved seeds, drought resistant and low application of the recommended packages of teff. to over-come these problems demonstration of teff was initiated with objectives of demonstrating and evaluating the performance of improved teff varieties along with their management practices under farmers’ circumstances, increasing knowledge and skill on improved teff production and management practices and enhancing the network between research, farmers and agricultural offices. 2. methodology 2.1. description of the study areas adola rede district located around adola town which is situated at a distance of 470 km from addis ababa and 120 km from the zonal capital city, negele borena. it is an area of where a mixed farming and semi-nomadic economic activity takes place, which is the major livelihood of the local people. the total area of the district is 1254.56km2. astronomically, adola rede district is located between 5o44'10” 6o12'38” northing latitudes and 38o45'10” 39o12'37” easting longitudes. the district is characterized by three agroclimatic zones, namely dega 11%humid, weina dega 29% sub humid and kola 60% dry arid respectively. most of the earth surface of the district is ups and down of the land surface with an elevation ranging from 1500 meters up to 2000 meter in the larger southern portion of north western part. plains, dissected hill plateau and mountain as well as valleys and gorges characterized the relief of the district. the major soil of the district are nitosols (red basaltic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 131-135 133 soils) and orthic acrosols. they are red brown and black brown in colors and they are found on sloping terrain. therefore, their agricultural utilization is good under natural vegetation. the percentage coverage of each soil is red soils 80%, brown soil 15% and black clack 5% respectively. ana sora district which is 410km from addis ababahas diverse agro ecology of midland and highland. in the midland area maize and teff were the most potential crop while barley, wheat, potato and enset were the most crops grown in the highland parts. in addition to these crops, livestock rearing is also observed in the district. white honey produced in this district is marketed to other area and generating incomes for farmers. 2.2. sampling procedure the demonstration took place in two districts of guji zone namely adola rede and ana sora. three kebeles from adola rede and one kebele from ana sora districts were then purposively selected based on their potential to teff production. the selection of kebeles and participating farmers was carried in collaboration with district agricultural offices, development agents, and kebele leaders. 2.3. trial design and management the trial was done on a land size of 100m2 (10m *10m) per variety. a seed rate of 30kg/ha was used and 60kg/ha dap and 40kg/ha urea were applied. weeding and threshing was done by farmers research group (frg). in each kebele 15 farmers were grouped as one farmer research groups. one farmers research group subdivided in to three experimental farmer groups. thus, there were 9 and 3 experimental farmers in adola and ana sora districts respectively. yield data was collected from these experimental farmers. 2.4. method of data collection data was collected from 12 experimental farmers. technical data sheets (for agronomic data), regular interaction with farmers, personal observations and four focus group discussions were used to collect the data. 2.5. data analysis method simple descriptive statistics and qualitative analysis of farmers’ feedback were used to analysis the data. 3. results and discussion 3.1. training and field day training were given for 120 farmers, 12das and eight (8) experts on the demonstration of improved teff varieties. technical support, follow up and supervision were also done. mini field day was arranged at adola rede district of dole kebele, so that, results and information about teff production was communicated among participating farmers. during the occasion farmers, das, agricultural office experts were satisfied by observing the demonstrated teff technologies and they demanded for these technologies for further pre-scaling up activities. beside further promotion of teff technologies the mini field day organized enhanced the linkage between research and agricultural offices as agricultural problems were raised and discussed by participants. 3.2. yield performance the maximum yield performance (15.7qt/ha) was obtained from tseday variety in adama diba kebele during 2014/15 production year while the lowest yield performance was recorded from local variety in all production seasons. during the 2014/15 production year there was comfortable environment (good rain fall). but during 2015/16 production year there was frost and shortage of rain fall that reduced the yield performance of varieties. when compared the districts, good yield of tef was obtained from adola rede. this showed that adola rede is more potential area for teff production than ana sora district. the average yield performance of tseday variety in midland asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 131-135 134 district of guji zone was 12.95qt/ha while boset was 11.18qt/ha. during demonstration of teff the lowest yield (7.88qt/ha) was obtained from local variety. generally, the improved varieties were not showed their maximum potential yield due to shortage of rain fall when compared to the adaptation yield of 15.82qt/ha for tseday and 15.61qt/ha for boset in midland agro ecology of guji zone (aliyi et al., 2016) and 14.27 qt/ha (csa, 2015) in guji zone. table 1: demonstrated yield of tef over two years variety the yield of adola rede (in qt/ha) the yield of ana sora (in qt/ha) average yield (qt/ha) 2014/15 2015/16 2014/15 2015/16 gobicha adama diba dole ave. gobicha adama diba dole ave. sololo kobo sololo kobo tseday 14.5 15.7 15 15.1 14.6 13.1 10.3 12.7 13.5 10.5 12.95 boset 11.6 14.4 11.7 12.6 14.4 14.8 9.1 12.8 11.3 8 11.18 local 10 13.2 8 10.4 7.2 9.2 7.8 8.1 7 6 7.88 3.3. farmers’ teff preference farmers have their own preference to use certain technology. yield per plot determines acceptability of teff by farmers. higher yield than locally available teff variety increases farmer’s motivation to grow recommended and improved teff varieties. not only high yield but also early maturity among teff varieties is another important characteristics in teff variety promotion. in adola district there was shortage of rainfall. thus early mature teff variety was preferred by farmers in the area. more farmers were inclined to rank tseday first and boset second for further production. but some farmers yet prefer boset variety for multiplication. tseday and boset showed better performance for most of the studied characters including grain yield (aliyi et al., 2016). generally variety preference depends on farmers and each variety had its own unique trait for further production. the following table describes farmers’ preferences among the demonstrated teff varieties based on their characteristics. table 2: farmers’ preference of teff tseday boset local high yielder relatively low yielder lower early mature relatively late mature late tolerant to disease (leaf rust) tolerant to disease(leaf rust) not at all not lodge not lodge at some place lodge white in color white mixed thin and few straw has strong and more straw few straw in the midland area of guji zone rain fall is not uniform and scarce. thus, early mature varieties were preferred by farmers. as shown on the above table, tseday variety was early mature than both boset and local varieties thus preferred by farmers to over-come drought. but tseday variety can shatter unless harvested as soon as it matured. teff is multipurpose crop in guji zone. the grain of crop is used for household consumption while teff straw is used for house construction in rural and urban areas. the straw is also used as feed for cattle. this is an important characteristics of teff important for farmers. in the study area boset variety was preferred as it has strong and more straw than tseday which has thin straw that can easily be broken in to pieces. besides the above characteristics, teff seed color was another important characteristics farmers see to increase the market demand of their teff products as white seed teff was preferred on the market asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(7)2017: 131-135 135 and preferred during cultural occasions. with regard to color, both tseday and boset varieties have white and attractive seed color than the local variety farmers produce. 4. conclusion the teff demonstration was conducted in midland district of guji zone, adola rede and ana sora districts. the two improved variety of tef demonstrated were tseday and boset. training, exchange visit and field day encouraged the promotion of teff varieties in the study area. farmers research was enhanced the linkage between research, agricultural district offices and farmers on development activities. farmers research groups evaluated tseday and boset during belg season of 2015 and 2016 on their farm. these varieties get acceptance over local varieties due to their better yield, early maturity and no-lodging status. 4.1. recommendations farmers should use tseday and boset varieties in their teff farming. these varieties were promised for further extension since they have good yielder, early mature and have importance against local varieties. thus farmers should multiply both varieties to improve their teff production and income from teff. tseday variety should be harvested as soon as it matured to minimize the shattering problem. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors would like to acknowledge oari (oromia agricultural research institute) and bore agricultural research center for their financial assistance. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adera, s. 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(2012). effects of sowing methods and fertilizer types on yield and yield components of teff (eragrostis tef) at guduru woreda. western oromia, ethiopia. m.sc. thesis, haramaya university, haramaya, ethiopia. https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=response+of+tef+%28eragrostis+tef%29+to+different+blended+fertilizer+rates+on+vertisols+in+jama+district.+&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=response+of+tef+%28eragrostis+tef%29+to+different+blended+fertilizer+rates+on+vertisols+in+jama+district.+&btng= https://doi.org/10.15406/apar.2014.01.00030 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=unmet+need+and+the+demand+for+family+planning+in+addis+ababa&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=unmet+need+and+the+demand+for+family+planning+in+addis+ababa&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=teff%3a+nutrient+composition+and+health+benefits.+the+ethiopia+strategy+support+program&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=feeding+africa%e2%80%99s+cities%3a+the+case+of+the+supply+chain+of+teff+to+addis+ababa&btng= https://doi.org/10.1086/683843 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/issn(e):2224-4433 volume 6(1), 1-13 1 determinants of crop diversification amongst agricultural co-operators in dundwa agricultural camp, choma district, zambia lighton dube faculty of commerce and law, zimbabwe open university, national office, mt pleasant, harare, zimbabwe revaux numbwa faculty of agriculture and natural resources, africa university, mutare, zimbabwe emmanuel guveya aema development consultants, zimre park, ruwa, zimbabwe abstract 1 a sound understanding of the socio-economic characteristics of smallholder farmers and how they influence their crop diversification decisions would help policy makers in crafting appropriate measures for promoting crop diversification. the objectives of this study is to assess the degree of crop diversification and the factors influencing crop diversification among the farm households at dundwa agricultural camp of zambia. the study uses primary data collected from 60 farm households using structured questionnaire during the period october to november 2014. the degree of crop diversification among farm households was measured using the entropy index. further, the censored tobit model was used to examine how the farmers’ socioeconomic characteristics influences crop diversification. the mean entropy index is 0.88 and this showsa very high degree of crop diversification among the farmers. the tobit regression model showed that crop diversification is positively influenced by the gender of head of household, the production of cash crops by the household and household investment in basic farming equipment. on contrary, the age of head of household, total farm size, access to agricultural markets and total area cultivated negatively influenced crop diversification. the study recommends for increased capacity building of female headed households in farm decision-making and promoting household investment in basic farming implements as measures to promoting crop diversification. keywords: crop diversification, entropy index, tobit regression, agricultural cooperatives 1. introduction agricultural cooperatives have long been seen as an important vehicle for achieving agricultural development and household food security. smallholder farmers benefit from cooperatives through improved bargaining power, resource sharing and creating sustainable rural employment that lead to food security and poverty reduction. producer cooperatives offer smallholder farmers market opportunities, and improved access to services such as better training in farm and natural resource management, information, technologies, innovations and extension services. corresponding author’s name: lighton dube email address: dubelig@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:dubelig@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1), 1-13 2 ifad (2011) notes that in 2009 cooperatives were responsible for 37.2 percent of brazil’s agricultural gdp and 5.4 percent of total gdp, and received about us$3.6 billion from exports. in mauritius, cooperatives account for more than 60 percent of national production in the food crop sector while in kenya the savings and credit cooperatives have assets of us$2.7 billion, which account for 31 percent of gross national savings. cooperatives operate in all sectors of the economy, have more than 800 million members and employed 100 million people worldwide that are 20 percent more than multinational enterprises. in 2008, 300 leading cooperatives of the world had an aggregate turnover of us$1.1 trillion, and this is equal to the gdp of many large economies (ifad, 2011). in zambia (then northern rhodesia) the first cooperative was started in 1914 by the european settler farmers as a means of marketing agricultural produce to the newly opened copper mines in the copper belt of southern zaire and northern zambia. the initial cooperatives were largely restricted to the eastern and southern provinces of zambia. zambia currently has about 20379 registered cooperatives from all provinces (mtonga, 2012). a major worrying aspect of most agricultural cooperatives in zambia is mono cropping. most agricultural cooperators are reliant on maize cultivation for their livelihoods. given the poor climatic conditions the country has been facing of late, the government of zambia, with the support of a number of non-governmental organizations (ngos), has been promoting crop diversification by farmers through cultivating other crops like cotton, sunflower, soya beans, and cowpeas, groundnuts, mixed beans, cassava and vegetables. these crops offer a huge potential income source for farmers as they are of high value and are currently produced in small quantities. government has also put in place a number of measures and agricultural policies regarding cooperative productivity and crop diversification in terms of farmers’ input support programmes and marketing of agricultural produces. during the 2013/2014 production and fiscal year, the government of zambia allocated 7.2 percent of the budget to agriculture sector. of this amount, 51 percent was reserved for programs that could make the divergence in the sector. the government asserts that there is an advantage in diversified farming than the mono-cropping of maize to boost co-operators’ household economic development and thereby, offering a viable channel for cooperators to come out of the vicious cycle of rural poverty. many countries have also pursued diversification of the agricultural sector as a way to improve the long-term viability as well as to enhance the profitability and stability of the sector. 2. statement of the problem there has been a slow shift to other crops or economic activities by agricultural co-operators in zambia despite government support in the shape of more supportive policies and improved infrastructure for supporting diversification programs. co-operators have year in and year out remained cultivating the same crop – mostly maize. therefore, a sound understanding of the socioeconomic characteristics of co-operators and how these characteristics influence farmers’ crop diversification decision making would help in formulating appropriate policies regarding agricultural co-operative societies crop diversification levels in zambia. this study therefore seeks to assess the major socioeconomic factors influencing diversification by agricultural cooperators in choma district of zambia. 2.1. objectives of the study the major objectives are: i) to assess the extent of crop diversification by cooperative members of dundwa camp, choma district, zambia. ii) to determine the influence of socio-economic characteristics of cooperative members on crop diversification. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1), 1-13 3 3. review of related literature 3.1. agricultural cooperatives, types of agricultural cooperatives and their role in development the international co-operative alliance (ica) defines a co-operative as “an autonomous association of individuals voluntarily united to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs through a jointly-owned and democratically controlled enterprise”. a cooperative is also defined as a private business group owned and controlled by its members. cooperatives in agriculture offer to producers the opportunity to own and control businesses related to their farming operations thereby allowing them to deal with common problems as well as develop market opportunities together. agricultural cooperatives can be classified broadly into (i) supply cooperatives; (ii) marketing and processing cooperatives; and (iii) new generation cooperatives. the purpose of supply cooperative is to provide members with inputs and services at competitive prices. the purpose of a marketing and processing cooperative is to market and process member goods. new generation cooperatives add value to member goods through the combined processing of raw commodities and its members are the producers who purchase shares obligating them to deliver a specified volume of raw product to the processing facility. cooperative enterprises worldwide employ 250 million people, and generate 2.2 trillion usd in turnover while providing the services and infrastructure society needs to thrive (http://ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles, accessed 6/11/2015). cooperatives empower people to collectively realize their economic aspirations, while strengthening their social and human capital and developing their communities. co-operatives contribute to sustainable economic growth and stable, quality employment, employing 250 million (indirect and induced employment not included). within the g20 countries, co-operative employment makes up almost 12 % of the total employed population (http://ica.coop/en/whats-coop/co-operative-identity-values-principles, accessed 6/11/2015). in agriculture, co-operative businesses offer small scale farmers distinct advantages by addressing a variety of market situations and issues. through agricultural co-operatives smallholder producers realize economic benefits which they could not otherwise achieve alone. agricultural co-operatives allow smallholder farmers to address common problems, develop new market opportunities or expand existing markets. some of the benefits smallholder agricultural producers derive from cooperatives include: (a) improved bargaining power; (b) reduced costs; (c) economies of scale; (d) increased returns; (e) improved product and service quality; (f) reduced risk; and (g) improved access to needed products or services. 3.2. crop diversification, drivers of crop diversification and constraints to crop diversification crop diversification refers to the addition of new crops or cropping systems to agricultural production on a particular farm taking into account the different returns from value-added crops with complementary marketing opportunities (http://www.climatetechwiki.org/content/cropdiversification-and-new-varieties, accessed 6/11/2015). it can also be defined as a cropping system where a number of different crops are planted in the same general area and may be rotated from field to field, year after year. there are two methods to crop diversification in agriculture. the horizontal diversification; which is primary approach to crop diversification in production agriculture. the vertical diversification approach; in which farmers and others add the value to products through processing, regional branding, packaging and merchandising etc. opportunities for crop diversification vary depending on risks, opportunities and the feasibility of proposed changes within a socio-economic and agro-economic framework. http://ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles http://ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles http://ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles http://www.climatetechwiki.org/content/crop-diversification-and-new-varieties http://www.climatetechwiki.org/content/crop-diversification-and-new-varieties asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1), 1-13 4 farmers diversify their crops in response to both opportunities and threats. some of the major factors driving diversification include the need to: (i) increase income on small farm holdings; (2) withstand price fluctuations; (3) mitigate ill-effects of weather; (4) balance food demand; (5) improve fodder for livestock animals; (6) conserve natural resources (soil, water, etc.); (7) minimize environmental pollution; (8) reduce dependence on off-farm inputs; (9) decrease insect pests, diseases and weed problems; (10) increase community food security; (11) mitigate the negative impacts of climate change; (12) mitigate domestic policy threats; (13) address the pressures of urbanization in fast developing countries; and (13) address international trade opportunities and threats (singh, 2011). on the other hand, the main problems and constraints in crop diversification are due to following reasons: (i) most countries and in particular developing countries are completely dependent on rainfall for cropping and this limits opportunities for crop diversification (ii) sub-optimal and overuse of resources causing a negative impact on environment and sustainability of agriculture (iii) insufficient supply of seeds and plants of improved cultivars (iv) highly fragmented land holdings that are less favourable to modernization and mechanization of agriculture (v) deprived basic infrastructure like rural areas roads, power supply, transportation and communications etc. (vi) inadequate post-harvest technologies and infrastructure for post-harvest handling of perishable horticultural produce (vii) weak agro-based industry (viii) feeble research extension farmer linkages (ix) un-trained human capital together with persistent and large scale illiteracy amongst farmers (x) host of diseases and pests affecting most crop plants (xi) poor database for horticultural crops and (xii) decreased investments in the agricultural sector over the years. 3.3. determinants of crop diversification a number of studies from developing countries have shown that factors like rapid economic growth accompanied by slowdown of demand for cereals coupled with increasing demand for high value commodities, increasing availability of advanced technologies, declining agricultural prices, changing role of government, expanding role of private sector, improving supply chain management, improving food safety and better quality, emerging trade liberalization and liberalization of capital flows are fostering the process of crop diversification (sharma, 2011). market availability and size, price risk, land suitability and land rights, irrigation infrastructure and labour supply have been identified as major constraints in accelerating the process of crop diversification (joshi et al., 2007; benziger, 1996; dorjee et al., 2003; pingali et al., 2005; braun, 1995; pingali, 2006). sichoongwe (2014) found that farm area size, access to inputs such as fertilizers, availability of farming implements, and access to the market in terms of distance influenced the extent of crop diversification in the southern province of zambia. pingali and rosegrant (1995) also noted that several forces influence the nature and speed of agricultural diversification from staple food to high value commodities. earlier evidence suggests that the process of diversification out of staple food production is triggered by rapid technological change in agricultural production, improved rural infrastructure, and diversification in food demand patterns. ndhlovu (2010) in their study in malawi also found that the fertilizer subsidies had an impact on farm households’ cropland allocation and crop diversification decisions. they attest to the general picture of the relationships between farm households’ access to fertilizer subsidy and their crop diversification levels, crop choices and cropland allocation patterns. 4. research methodolody 4.1. study area and data collection dundwa agricultural camp is located about 65km north of choma town. the camp covers a radius of about 20km. it is one of the oldest well-established camps in zambia which also acted as an agricultural skills training centre. a seasonal stream runs through the area making vegetable gardening possible for the households that live closer to the stream. the choma namwala road, a tarred road that connects the two districts runs through the area making transportation easier for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1), 1-13 5 those who can afford. within the camp there is an established food reserve agency (fra) holding depot where the farmers take their maize for sale. the map below shows the location of dundwa camp in zambia. figure 1: location of dundwa camp source: map data google 2015 4.2. sampling design and data collection methods within this camp a sample of twelve (12) agricultural co-operatives was purposefully sampled with the help of the enumerator who was the camp officer. from each co-operative five (5) cooperators (member farmers) was purposefully sampled, identified by the chairperson for each cooperative. this gave a total sample population of sixty (60) respondents. data collection took place during the period october to november 2014. 4.3. methods of data analysis descriptive and inferential statistics were used in the study. descriptive statistical tools applied include simple percentage means, standard deviation, and frequency table. crop diversification was then measured using the entropy index of crop diversification given as;   ii n i ppei log1 where, pi is the area share or proportion of crop i out of the total area cultivated. the examination of the determinants of crop diversification was addressed through application of a tobit regression model. the tobit model allows for the estimation of linear relationships between variables when there is either leftor right-censoring in the dependent variable. the farm level entropy index values are used in the regression model to show the relationship between the measurement of crop diversification and socioeconomic characteristics of farmers. the determinants of farm crop diversification are assessed using the following multiple regression function: ei = ß0 + ß1hhage + ß2hhgender +ß3hsize + ß4farmsize + ß5landhrtd + ß6labhired + ß7market + ß8areacult +ß9pccrop + ß10farminvest +µt asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1), 1-13 6 table 2 below presents the variables used in the tobit regression together with their a priori expectations. table 2: description of variables -tobit regression model variable variable description hypothesis dependent variable ei entropy index independent/explanatory variables hhage age of head of household in years hhgender dummy variable for gender of household head: 0 = female headed; 1 = male headed + hsize household size + farmsize total farm size in hectares + landhrtd dummy variable for access to inherited land: 0 = no; 1 = yes + labhired dummy variable for use of hired labour: 0 = no; 1 = yes + market access to markets: 0 = no; 1 = yes + areacult total area being cultivated in hectares + pccrop dummy variable on whether farm produces cash crops: 0 = no; 1 = yes + farminvest dummy variable for basic farm investment in farming equipment: 0 = no; 1 = yes + 5. results and discussion 5.1. demographic characteristics fifteen percent of the sampled households were female headed. male headed households are more likely to be more diversified than female headed households as diversification often require skill and there are also high demands for frequent and early ploughing (mesfin et al., 2011 and fetien et al., 2009). forty-seven percent of the household heads are aged 50 years and above compared to 53 percent who were aged below 50 years (table 3). the number of households with heads below 50 years is more than double for male headed households compared to female headed households. age is one of the factors that influence farm production decision making. elderly farmers tend to look at farming as just a way of life, whereas young farmers may be more inclined to look at farming as a business opportunity in order to financially support their families and self-employment creation. previous studies suggest that older farm operators are less likely to diversify (mishraand el-osta, 2002). table 3: distribution of age of head of household by gender head of household age category (years) percent households female headed (n=9) male headed (n=51) total (n=60) ≤ 50 22.2 58.8 53.3 >50 77.8 41.2 46.7 the mean household size was 8.97 with a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 22. thirty percent of the households have up to 6 members per households while 18.3 percent of the households have household sizes above 12 members (table 4). none of the female headed households have more than 12 household members while 72.6 percent of the male headed households have more than 6 household members compared to 55.6 percent of female headed households. the maximum household size for male headed households is almost twice that for female headed households. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1), 1-13 7 family size is more likely to positively influence crop diversification as larger families are more likely to also have a larger family labour pool (abdalla et al., 2013, weiss & briglauer, 2000, benin et al., 2004). culas 2006) also found that increased use of both family and hired labourpositively influences crop diversification. table 4: distribution of household size by gender household size category (number of members) percent households female headed (n=9) male headed (n=51) total (n=60+ ≤6 44.4 27.5 30 > 6≤ 12 55.6 51 51.7 >12 21.6 18.3 mean 6.89 9.33 8.97 minimum 3 3 3 maximum 12 22 22 5.2. farm size the mean farm size for the sample is 6.2 hectares with a minimum of one hectare and a maximum of 20 hectares (table 5). female headed households have an average farm size of 4.2 hectares compared to 6.6 hectares for male headed households. the maximum land size for male headed households (20 hectares) is twice that for female headed households (10 hectares). a majority of the female headed households (77.8%) have farm sizes of 5 hectares and less while more than 50 percent of the male headed households have farm sizes greater than 5 hectares. table 5: distribution of farm size by gender farm size category (hectares) percent households female headed (n=9) male headed (n=51) total (n=60) ≤ 5 77.8 43.1 48.3 >5 ≤ 10 22.2 45.1 41.7 >10 11.8 10 mean 4.22 6.55 6.20 minimum 1 2 1 maximum 10 20 20 previous studies have shown that there is a positive relationship between diversification activities and farm size (weiss & briglauer, 2000, benin et al., 2004, mwangi et al., 2011,mishraand elosta, 2002; fetien et al., 2009; culas and mahendrarajah, 2005). thus male headed households in this study are expected to be more diversified than female headed households as the majority have larger farms when comapred to female headed households. ninety-seven percent of the households indicated that they have access to inherited land and only 3 percent have no access. access to inherited land increases the landholding for a household and this is expected to have positive effect on diversification. limited or no access to inherited land is assumed to have a limiting effect on crop diversification. the mean area cultivated is 4.4 hectares and the minimum is 0.9 hectares and the maximum is 11.7 hectares (table 6). the mean area cultivated by male headed households is twice that cultivated by female headed households while the maximum area cultivated by male headed households is 3 times that cultivated by female headed households. table 6: area cultivated by gender area cultivated category (hectares) percent households female headed (n=9) male headed (n=51) total (n=60) ≤ 3 77.8 25.5 33.3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1), 1-13 8 >3≤ 6 22.2 54.9 50 > 6 19.6 16.7 mean 2.2 4.8 4.4 minimum 0.9 1.3 0.9 maximum 3.6 11.7 11.7 5.3. hired labour seventy percent of the households indicated that they do not use hired labour (table 7). the percent male headed households indicating using hired labour is higher (31.4%) than that for female headed households (22.2%). table 7: use of hired labour by gender use of hired labour percent households female headed (n=9) male headed (n=51) total (n=60) no 77.8 68.6 70 yes 22.2 31.4 30 5.4. market availability and access seventy-five percent of the households indicated that they have access to agricultural markets for both inputs and their produce (table 8). the female households (44.4%) with no access to agricultural markets are twice for male headed households (21.6). table 8: access to agricultural markets by gender access to agricultural markets percent households female headed (n=9) male headed (n=51) total (n=60) no 44.4 21.6 25 yes 55.6 78.4 75 previous studies on farm diversification highlighted the importance of proximity to main roads and markets for development of other farm enterprises (benin et al., 2004 and joshi et al., 2003). crop diversification in recent years has been market driven and markets are therefore considered to be an important determinant of crop diversification. 5.5. farm investment ninety percent of the households indicated that they have invested in the basic farming equipment (table 9). however, the percent female headed households indicating not having invested in basic farming equipment is almost three times that for male headed households. table 9: farm investment in basic farming equipment by gender investment in basic agricultural farming equipment percent households female headed (n=9) male headed (n=51) total (n=60) no 22.2 7.8 10 yes 77.8 92.2 90 farmers who own more farm tools and implements are more likely to diversify than those with fewer basic farm tools (mishraand el-osta, 2002 and babatunde and qaim, 2009). 5.6. cash crop production less than half of the sampled farmers indicated producing cash crops while 90 percent of the female headed households indicated not producing cash crops and this compares to 47 percent for male headed households (table 10). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1), 1-13 9 mai ze g/n uts swe et pot atoe s cow pea s cott on veg etab les sunf low ers sug ar bea ns rou ndn uts soy a bea ns cass ava sorg hum female headed 100. 100. 55.6 66.7 11.1 11.1 0.0% 22.2 22.2 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% male headed 100. 100. 66.7 41.2 35.3 29.4 25.5 17.6 15.7 11.8 5.9% 3.9% total 100. 100. 65.0 45.0 31.7 26.7 21.7 18.3 16.7 10.0 5.0% 3.3% 0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0% 100.0% 120.0% p e rc e n t h o u se h o ld s crops grown crops grown table 10: cash crop production by gender produces cash crops percent households female headed (n=9) male headed (n=51) total (n=60) no 88.9 47.1 53.3 yes 11.1 52.9 46.7 5.7. crop production and extent of crop diversification twelve different crops are being grown among the co-operators in dundwa agricultural camp (figure 2). all the households grow maize and groundnuts and the percent male headed households growing sweet potatoes, sunflowers, cotton, vegetables, soyabeans, cassava and sorghum is higher than that for female headed households. on the other hand, the percentage of female headed households producing cow peas, sugar beans and round nuts is higher than that for male headed households. figure 2: crops being grown by farmers at dundwa agricultural camp the mean number of crops being grown is 4.4 with a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 7. thus none of the sampled households at dundwa agricultural camp are practicing mono-cropping and over 80 percent are growing at least 4 crops (figure 3) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1), 1-13 10 2 2 .2 % 1 1 .1 % 6 6 .7 % 2 .0 % 5 .9 % 5 .9 % 1 7 .6 % 6 8 .6 % 1 .7 % 5 .0 % 8 .3 % 1 6 .7 % 6 8 .3 % 0 0 . 2 0 . 2 0 . 4 0 . 4 0 . 6 0 . 6 0 . 8 0 . 8 1 p er c en t h o u se h o ld s entropy index categories extent of crop diversification female headed male headed total 3.3 13.3 41.7 26.7 8.3 6.7 0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 2 3 4 5 6 7 p e rc e n t h o u se h o ld s number of crops grown number of crops grown figure 3: percent households growing different crops the mean entropy index is 0.88 and 85% of the households have an diversification index of more than 0.6 showing that the sample farmers are highly diversified (figure 4). figure 4: distribution of crop diversification the percent male households with a diversification index of more than 0.8 is similar to that of female headed households while the percent female headed households with a diversification index of 0.6 and below (22.2%) is almost 3 times that of male headed households. 5.8. determinants of crop diversification all the model variables have expected signs except for total farm size (farmsize), access to agricultural markets (market) and total area cultivated (areacult). the log likelihood for the fitted model is6.69 and the chi-square is 34.05 and strongly significant at 1% level. thus the overall model is significant and the explanatory variables used in the model are collectively able to explain the variations in farm crop diversification. the variables that do not significantly influence crop diversification at dundwa agricultural camp are household size (hsize), access to inherited land (landhrtd), and access to hired labour (labhired). variables that significantly and positively influence crop diversification are gender of the head of household (hhgender), the production of cash crops by the household (ppcrop) and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1), 1-13 11 household investment in basic farming equipment (farminvest). on the contrary the age of the head of household (hhage), total farm size (farmsize), access to agricultural markets (market) and total area cultivated (areacult) significantly and negatively influence crop diversification. table 11: tobit regression estimates of factors influencing crop diversification variable coefficient std. error t sig. constant 0.684 0.208 3.290 0.002 hhage -0.110 0.067 -1.640 0.107 hhgender 0.165 0.100 1.660 0.103 hsize 0.012 0.009 1.350 0.182 farmsize -0.022 0.011 -1.940 0.058 landhrtd 0.166 0.163 1.020 0.312 labhired 0.075 0.064 1.180 0.244 market -0.151 0.070 -2.140 0.037 areacult -0.051 0.020 -2.580 0.013 pccrop 0.198 0.063 3.150 0.003 farminvest 0.216 0.097 2.220 0.031 log likelihood = 6.69 lrchi 2 (10) = 34.05 prob>chi 2 = 0.0002 pseudo r 2 = 1.647 the results indicate that male headed households are more diversified that female headed households and is significant at 10%. the probability of crop diversification is 16.5% higher for male headed households compared to female headed households. this result is supported by akaakohol and aye (2014), fetien et al. (2009) and mwangi et al. (2013). households producing cash crops have a 19.8% more probability of diversifying their crop production activities when compared to households not producing cash crops and the result is significant at 1%. the production of cash crops is more likely to give the farmer more income to invest in new cropping enterprises. this is consistent with the findings of ibrahim et al. (2009) and abdalla et al. (2013). the study also found that having basic agricultural equipment has a positive and significant influence on crop diversification at the 5% level of significance. households with basic agricultural equipment for their farming operations have a 21.6% more probability of crop diversification when compared to farmers without. similar studies by seng (2014), mesfin et al. (2011), mishra and elosta (2002) and sichoongwe et al. (2014) also reported a positive relationship between possession of farm implements and machinery by a farmer and crop diversification. the study further revealed age negatively and significantly affected crop diversification in the study area at 10% level of significance. a one year increase in age reduces the probability of crop diversification by 11%. this agrees with the findings of ojo et al. (2014) and bandara and thiruchelvam (2008) who also found that a farmer’s risk bearing ability reduces as his/her age increases. farmers with access to agricultural markets are 15% less likely to diversify their crop production when compared to farmers with no access to agricultural markets and this is significant at 5% level. this finding is consistent with akaakohol and aye (2014), kankwamba et al. (2012) and abebe (2013). however, previous studies by benin et al. (2004), mwangi et al. (2013), and sichoongwe et al. (2014) found that access to agricultural markets positively influences crop diversification. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(1), 1-13 12 finally, the study also revealed that crop diversification is negatively and significantly influenced by total area under cultivation. a one hectare increase in total area under cultivation reduced the probability of crop diversification by 5% and this result is significant at 5% level. this maybe because farmers already cultivating larger areas of current crop enterprises will not have enough time and labour to diversify into new crop enterprises. 6. conclusion this study aimed to find the extent of crop diversification and the determinants of crop diversification among cooperators at dundwa agricultural camp using the entropy index and the tobit regression model respectively. the study found that the farmers at dundwa agricultural camp are highly diversified as shown by a mean entropy index of 0.88. the tobit results show that gender of the head of household, the production of cash crops by the household and household investment in basic farming equipment positively and significantly influence crop diversification while the age of the head of household, total farm size, access to agricultural markets and total area cultivated were fund to significantly and negatively influence crop diversification. the study therefore recommends enhanced decision-making of the female headed households and promoting household investment in basic farming implements as measures to promoting crop diversification. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdalla, s., leonhäuser, i., siegfried, s. b., & elamin, e. 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(2011). crop diversification in himachal pradesh: patterns, determinants and challenges. indian journal of agricultural economics, 66(1), 97-114. sichoongwe, k., mapemba, l., tembo, g., & ng’ong’ola, d. (2014). the determinants and extent of crop diversification among smallholder farmers: a case study of southern province, zambia, journal of agricultural science, 6(11), 150-159. singh, a. (2011). diversification in agriculture. retrieved from http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/151757. weiss, c. r., & briglauer, w. (2000). determinants and dynamics of farm diversification. working paper ewp 0002. department of food economics and consumption studies, university of keil, germany. http://www.climatetechwiki.org/content/crop-diversification-and-new-varieties http://www.ifad.org/media/press/2011/76.htm http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/151757 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 92 comparative financial analysis of open-field and greenhouse crop rotation and green manure applications in organic strawberry production hülya sayğıa*, nurgül türemişb a*çukurova university yumurtalık vocational school, turkey. email address: husaygi@gmail.com (corresponding author) b department of horticulture, faculty of agriculture, çukurova university, turkey. corresponding author article history: received: 31-jul-2017 accepted: 30-sep-2017 online available: 16-oct2017 keywords: organic strawberry, crop rotation, greenhouse, green fertilization, farm manure, abstract this study investigated the profitability of open field crop rotation and greenhouse green fertilization along with farmland manure applications implemented to ensure sustainability of soil fertility in strawberry cultivation performed in line with the organic farming principles. in the open field experiment (1) cowpea (vigna sinensis l.), (2) bean (phaseolus vulgaris l.), (3) cucumber (cucumis sativus l.) were used as the crop rotation plants. in the greenhouse experiment 1) cowpea (vigna sinensis l.), (2) bean (phaseolus vulgaris l.),) were used as green fertilizations. also this study investigated the impact of certified organic farmland manure as [(1) farmland manured and (2) farmland manure-free] on the parcels. the study compared the profitability in organic strawberry cultivation between crop rotation application in open field and green manure incorporation under soil by conducting a financial analysis. to conclude, result of the financial analysis indicated that both in greenhouse and open field, the application which combined cowpea and farmland manure was found to be more economical. contribution/ originality this article ''as opposed the general belief in society the study proves that organic farming costs are lower than conventional farming costs and so there will be no reduction in the income of the manufacturer, consumers will be able to reach healthy products at low cost.'' contributes to the field of organic agriculture. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.5/1005.5.92.101 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: hülya sayğı and nurgül türemiş (2017). comparative financial analysis of open-field and greenhouse crop rotation and green manure applications in organic strawberry production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5), 92-101. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 5(2017): 92-101 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:husaygi@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.5/1005.5.92.101 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 92-101 93 1. introduction all human activities are driven by the desire to satisfy human needs that arise within the boundaries of their assets. according to the science of economics the essential problem that human beings face is that human needs considered limitless are met through limited resources available. at the heart of these needs lies nutrition need. in this sense, agriculture, as the production source of the nutrients required to fulfil the nutrition need is indispensable. throughout centuries, agriculture has undergone changes with human beings and this change has gained pace with technological and industrial advances. establishment of european community in the late 60s and the policies it implemented to support agriculture and manufacture of pesticides and chemical fertilizers in 1970s contributed to this development. the initiative named ‘green revolution’ in agriculture was introduced in 1960s and 70s with the aim of offering a solution to the nutrition problem that arose out the rapid population growth particularly and this initiative only aimed at an increase in efficiency and use of synthetic chemical agricultural drugs and mineral fertilizers increased. however, because of these implementations that disregarded the fundamental principle of economics (that the resources to meet the needs are limited) great damages were made to our nature, in the other words our living environments, which is a vitally important agricultural source. the adverse effects that green revolution caused in agriculture were primarily seen in developed countries where green revolution was intensely followed. green revolution, which initially set out to offer a solution to the hunger problem in the world, not only failed to achieve this goal but also made enormous damages to the nature and human health. scarce agricultural resources available (nature) began to lose their sustainable production ability in an irreversible manner. people began to seek alternative solutions to solve the problems that resulted from agricultural green revolution applications and to protect sustainable production ability of agricultural resources, in other words to protect the nature and human existence. one of this alternative methods is ecological farming which is expressed with concepts such as alternative agriculture, biological agriculture, biodynamic agriculture, natural agriculture, low input agriculture, integrated agriculture system, good agricultural practices and organic agriculture. the ecological farming system aims to protect the natural balance disturbed as a result of bad practices by maximizing the efficient use of the resources. in this farming system, use of syntactic chemical fertilizers, drugs, and hormones is prohibited. soil fertility, selection of the appropriate method for protection against diseases and pests, crop rotation, recycling plant wastes, green fertilization, use of organic wastes, animal manure and biological control and similar methods are among the methods applied within the scope of ecological farming. organic agriculture is a system which aims to achieve high productivity in agriculture. the essential objective of it is to ensure production optimization safely in life chain among soil-plant-animal and human. ecological farming which started as a family business initially has gained a commercial dimension after it lost family business status. when ecological products began to be traded, there occurred the requirement for legal arrangements regarding control and certification. the rules to be conformed to during the production, processing, labelling, storing and marketing of the ecological products were specified by the legislations in a detailed way (anonymous, 2005). all national and international standards about organic agriculture necessitate the control and certification of all steps followed about the product from soil to shelf. through certificates an assurance is provided to the customers who aim to pursue healthy lives and to protect the environment by consuming organic products. moreover, certification allows organic agricultural manufacturers to prove their that production takes place in accordance with the standards by documenting it and market their products at prices they are worth of. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 92-101 94 organic agriculture which started in turkey in 1980s with conventional products such as dried grapes and dried figs in line with exportation demands, has showed significant developments in years. organic agriculture activity started with eight products and has exceeded 200 products in recent years. as of 2016, in a total of 523.778 ha field, 489.671ha of which is production field and 34.106 ha of which is natural collection field, about 2.473.600 tons of production is made by 68.000 manufacturers (table 1). a similar development is seen in the number of the firms that specialize in production, processing and marketing the products (anonymous, 2017). as a vast majority of the organic products (more than 85%) (sayin et al., 2005) manufactured in turkey are exported, the number and variety of organic food manufacturing is shaped in line with the demands from foreign countries. production organization institutions employ farmers on contract to undertake organic food production because of its nature. contracted production ensures price and sale assurance to manufacturers. the contract made specifies production conditions, price and rate of premium, if any, and secures the partners legally by reserving the right to take a legal action (demiryürek, 2000; 2004; 2011). however, in recent years, as a result of some disputes between organic product manufacturers and the companies that they have a contract with some manufacturers have begun to start their own unions. these manufacturers obtain their certificates from control and certification institutions that they make a deal through their own organizations and try to market their organic products in and outside of turkey on their own (günay, 2007; demiryürek and ceyhan, 2008). table 1: organic agriculture plant production (transition period included) years number of products number of farmers farming field (ha) natural collection field (ha) total production alanı(ha) production amount (ton) 2002 150 12.428 57.365 32.462 89.827 310.125 2003 179 14.798 73.368 40.253 113.621 323.981 2004 174 12.751 108.598 100.975 209.573 377.616 2005 205 14.401 93.134 110.677 203.811 421.934 2006 203 14.256 100.275 92.514 192.789 458.095 2007 201 16.276 124.263 50.020 174.283 568.128 2008 247 14.926 109.387 57.496 166.883 530.224 2009 212 35.565 325.831 175.810 501.641 983.715 2010 216 42.097 383.782 126.251 510.033 1.343.737 2011 225 42.460 442.581 172.037 614.618 1.659.543 2012 204 54.635 523.627 179.282 702.909 1.750.126 2013 213 60.797 461.395 307.619 769.014 1.620.466 2014 208 71.472 491.977 350.239 842.216 1.642.235 2015 197 69.967 486.069 29.199 515.268 1.829.291 2016 225 67.878 489.671 34.106 523.778 2.473.600 within this scope, taking into consideration that income inequalities in our country have a deeper effect on the people who live in rural areas and who do not have an opportunity to be engaged in other economic activities other than agricultural one, implementations are needed to enable especially people who live in mountain and forest villages to get better living conditions. it is foreseen that organic farming, as an alternative production system for the local people, could provide a production model which would increase the income and which fits the regional characteristics (usal, 2006). usal (2006) investigated the profitability of organic agriculture in their study carried out to compare the activity results of the institutions that are engaged in conventional agricultural production with the institutions that are engaged in organic agriculture in the villages located in the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 92-101 95 highlands of adana toros mountain and to reveal the possibility of organic agriculture manufacturing. findings of the study indicated that the major reason why manufacturers want to be engaged in organic agriculture is that organic agriculture is an environmentally protective and healthy production model as well as the expectation of yield high income. the reasons why strawberry is the most common and widely produced one among the berry fruits is that its farming dates back to old times and its multidimensional consumption (türemis and agaoglu 2013). turkey is the third strawberry producer country worldwide and 3.857,05 tons' of this production was organic (fao, 2015). according to tüi̇k (tsi) reports (2016) 1575 tones strawberries were produced in adana. strawberry, which is cultivated and produced in high quality worldwide, has also gained importance in our country, recently (macit et al., 2006). cultivar selection is a feature in strawberry production (nacar, 2012). 2. material and method 2.1. material the study was conducted within 1000 m2 open field and 1000 m2 glass greenhouse in çukurova university yumurtalık research station test field and fresh and frigo strawberry seedlings of sweet charlie species cultivated under organic seedling cultivation conditions were used as the plant material. the experiment was carried out in four cases of recurrence according to split parcel test pattern. in main parcels, crop rotation and green manure applications and in lower parcels ekoflora organic farmland manure applications were examined. the factors and their levels handled in the test are as follows: main parcel: crop alternation (ca) application (open field): • cowpea (c), • bean (b), • cucumber (c), • fallow (f) lower parcel: ekoflora organic farmland manure (fm) application  with ekoflora organic farmland manure fm (+)  without ekoflora organic farmland manure fm (-) main parcel: green manure (gm) application (greenhouse): • cowpea (c), • bean (b), • fallow (f) lower parcel: ekoflora organic farmland manure (fm) application  with ekoflora organic farmland manure fm (+)  without ekoflora organic farmland manure fm (-) in open-field agriculture system, each september seedlings were planted according to split test parcels test pattern divided in a way which will include 30-35 plants in each recurrence. for the greenhouse, each october, which is the seedling planting time, seedlings were planted in a way which will include 30-35 seedlings in each recurrence. in open fields and in greenhouse fields where strawberry seedlings would be planted the parcels where soil preparations were made and crop rotation was applied and green manure parcels (main parcels) were divided into two. the compost used in the study was made juicy in line with the method specified by brinton et al. (2004). it was determined at the end of the analysis that the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 92-101 96 juice contained 0.001% n; 0.02% p; 0.18% k. applications were made in a way in which the juice obtained from 30 kg compost was provided to the irrigation system. juice preparation: after measuring 3% organic farmland manure and resting it in the necessary amount of water for 2 days, it was given to the plants. fertilization was performed this way, however, no application was done on the other one. farmland manure was applied on the parcel left fallow in crop rotation and on half of the fallow parcel on which green fertilization was not performed. however, no fertilization was performed on the other half. at the end of the study, gross margin analysis was conducted in order to compare the profitability of the strawberry on which green manure was applied and the strawberry which was cultivated after open field crop rotation applications (aras, 1988). 3. findings and discussion the applications which performed in the greenhouse and open fields for organic strawberry cultivation is of importance in order to explore the best strawberry cultivation method. additionally, financial data of these applications are significant in terms of the continuity of these applications and implementing them. even though it is desired to apply organic agriculture methods that aim to achieve production for a sustainable agriculture without damaging the environment, it does not sound realistic to expect the manufacturers to undertake these applications without a financial support. macit et al. (2011) carried out a study in order to investigate the applicability of organic strawberry cultivation in black sea agricultural research institute test field between 2004-2005. financial analysis findings obtained from their study indicated that organic strawberry cultivation and conventional strawberry cultivation methods were examined with regard to profitability and both were found to be so. however, since they could not obtain accurate information about organic strawberry price, they could not make a financial comparison in terms of profitability between the cultivation methods. in our experiment, the most marketable product in organic strawberry cultivation carried out in open field was obtained from the parcel where cowpea was used as the previous crop and farmland manure was applied during crop rotation. from among the organic strawberry products that we put on the market with an average of 3 tl sale price, the highest profit was obtained from the parcel where cowpea + farmland manure was applied with 7.921 tl. whereas, the lowest profit was obtained from the fallow parcel, where no application was carried out with 1.920 tl. as presented in table 2-3 since raw material input costs are quite similar, use of cowpea+farmland manure application method in greenhouses and open fields would be financially more rational. table 2: open-field organic strawberry production budget-i values budget applications fallow bean cowpea cucumber 1. annual income i. yield per crop (g/plant) 178 263 288 239 ii. total production kg (crop yield *6.000 items/da)/1000 =600 seedlings per decare*yield per crop 1.068 1.578 1.728 1.434 iii. total income (tl/da) =total yield* kg price( 3 tl) 3.204 4.734 5.184 4.302 2. annual income i. yield per crop(g/plant) 146 262 281 234 ii. total production kg (crop yield *6.000 items/da)/1000 =600 seedlings per 876 1.572 1.686 1.404 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 92-101 97 decare*yield per crop iii. total income(tl/da) =total yield* kg price( 3 tl) 2.628 4.716 5.058 4.212 total income 1st year+2nd year 5.832 9.450 10.242 8.514 2-year production expenses fallow bean cowpea cucumber i. equipment machinery leasing(tl/da) 25 115 115 115 ii. labour costs(tl/da) 2.050 2.050 2.050 2.050 iii. material costs(tl/da) 2.881 3.016 3.061 2.941 iv. fixed costs(tl/da) 684 684 684 684 total costs(tl/da) 5.640 5.865 5.910 5.790 net profit (tl/da) 1.920 3.585 4.332 2.724 table 3: open-field organic strawberry production budget-ii values budget applications fallow+ fm bean+fm cowpea+f m cucumber+ fm 1. annual income i. yield per crop 308 386 400 313 ii. total production kg (crop yield *6.000 items/da)/1000 =600 seedlings per decare* yield per crop 1.848 2.316 2.400 1.878 iii. total income =total yield* kg price( 3 tl) 5.544 6.948 7.200 5.634 2. annual income i. yield per crop 274 343 385 289 ii. total production kg (crop yield *6.000 items/da)/1000 =600 seedlings per decare*yield per crop 1.644 2.058 2.310 1.734 iii. total income =total yield* kg price ( 3 tl) 4.932 6.174 6.930 5.202 total income 1st year+2nd year 10.476 13.122 14.130 10.836 2-year production expenses fallow +fm bean +fm cowpea +fm cucumber +fm i. equipment machinery leasing(tl/da) 25 115 115 115 ii. labour costs(tl/da) 2.125 2.125 2.125 2.125 iii. material costs(tl/da) 3.105 3.240 3.285 3.165 iv. fixed costs(tl/da) 684 684 684 684 total costs(tl/da) 5.939 6.164 6.209 6.089 net profit (tl/da) 4.537 6.958 7.921 4.747 the most marketable product in organic strawberry production carried out in the greenhouse was obtained from the parcel where cowpea was used as the previous crop in green fertilization and farmland manure was applied. from among the organic strawberry products that we put on the market with an average of 3 tl sale price, the highest profit was obtained from the parcel where cowpea + farmland manure was applied with 5.275 tl. whereas, the lowest profit was obtained from the fallow parcel with 1.236 tl, where no application was carried out (table 4-5). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 92-101 98 table 4: greenhouse organic strawberry production budget–i budget applications fallow bean cowpea 1. annual income i. yield per crop 133 149 174 ii. total production kg (crop yield *6.000 items/da)/1000 =600 seedlings per decare*yield per crop 798 894 1.044 iii. total income (tl/da) =total yield* kg price( 3 tl) 2.394 2.682 3.132 2. annual income fallow bean cowpea i. yield per crop 249 304 317 ii. total production kg (crop yield *6.000 items/da)/1000 =600 seedlings per decare*yield per crop 1.494 1.824 1.902 iii. total income (tl/da) =total yield* kg price( 3 tl) 4.482 5.472 5.706 total income 1st year+2nd year 6.876 8.154 8.838 2-year production expenses fallow bean cowpea i. equipment machinery leasing(tl/da) 25 115 115 ii. labour costs(tl/da) 2.050 2.050 2.050 iii. material costs(tl/da) 2.881 3.016 3.061 iv. fixed costs(tl/da) 684 684 684 total costs(tl/da) 5.640 5.865 5.910 net profit(tl/da) 1.236 2.289 2.928 table 5: greenhouse organic strawberry production budget–ii budget applications fallow+fm bean+fm cowpea+fm 1. annual income i. yield per crop 162 192 241 ii. total production kg (crop yield *6.000 items/da)/1000 =600 seedlings per decare*yield per crop 972 1.152 1.446 iii. total income =total yield* kg price( 3 tl) 2.916 3.456 4.338 2. annual income fallow +fm bean+fm cowpea +fm i. yield per crop 355 376 397 ii. total production kg (crop yield *6.000 items/da)/1000 =600 seedlings per decare*yield per crop 2.130 2.256 2.382 iii. total income =total yield* kg price( 3 tl) 6.390 6.768 7.146 total income 1st year+2nd year 9.306 10.224 11.484 2-year production expenses fallow +fm bean+fm cowpea+fm i. equipment machinery leasing(tl/da) 25 115 115 ii. labour costs(tl/da) 2.125 2.125 2.125 iii. material costs(tl/da) 3.105 3.240 3.285 iv. fixed costs(tl/da) 684 684 684 total costs(tl/da) 5.939 6.164 6.209 net profit( tl/da) 3.367 4.060 5.275 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 92-101 99 when open field and greenhouse models in organic strawberry production and were examined within the scope of yumurtalık region climate conditions, it was found that open field organic strawberry production was more profitable than the greenhouse organic strawberry production from a financial perspective. taking into account the climate expectations of strawberries, it was observed that yumurtalık region climate provided natural greenhouse conditions for strawberries. besides, it was seen that organic strawberry production took place in the greenhouse was adversely affected in the region where heat increases swiftly in spring months. considering production input costs, it was found that it was possible to derive the highest profit in organic strawberry production from the open field in yumurtalık region. atasay (2007) conducted a financial analysis in the study carried out on directorate of eğirdir fruit research institute camarosa strawberry species between 2004-2006. this study compared the profitability obtained from conventional production and organic production applications. at the end of 2-year production applications, the highest profit was obtained from organic production application. besides, amount of the production achieved was found to be highly similar between conventional production (4.206 kg/da) and organic production (4.072 kg/da). no difficulties were encountered in marketing the products produced in the study with the desired price (3.00 tl in average). a high demand was observed in this field. however, some problems were encountered in preserving the products, supply of suitable packing materials, difficulty in transportation to the demanding markets. for a crop like fruit, which must be put into the market immediately after its harvest, facing such problems causes a loss in the marketable products. it would be possible to enhance profit by preserving the strawberries harvested under suitable conditions and by providing the necessary packing materials. the findings obtained from the financial analysis of the abovementioned studies demonstrate that organic agriculture activities and organic strawberry production are still profitable despite some structural problems. the financial cost of the profit derived from protecting the natural resources for a sustainable agricultural production is excluded from this calculation. 4. result in the organic strawberry production carried out in open field where crop rotation was performed the highest profit (7.921 tl/da) was obtained from the parcel where cowpea + farmland manure was applied, whereas, the lowest profit (1.920 tl/da) was obtained from the fallow parcel. in organic strawberry production carried out in the greenhouse where green fertilization applications were performed the highest profit (4.060 tl/da) was obtained from the parcel where cowpea + farmland manure was applied, whereas, the lowest profit (1.236 tl/da) was obtained from the fallow parcel where farmland manure application was not performed. when open-field and greenhouse applications were compared, it was seen that the highest profit was derived from cowpea + farmland manure application. in the financial analysis evaluations of the previously conducted studies, no problems regarding the low amount of production achieved or marketing were encountered during organic production transition process. in the present study problems encountered include preserving the product, supply of suitable packing materials, and difficulty in transportation to the demanding markets. also in this study, other problems arose out of warm weather that adversely affected the organic strawberry production in the greenhouse. similarly, the results obtained from financial analysis of the previous studies concluded that organic agricultural activities and organic strawberry production were profitable. open-field organic strawberry production is recommended since open field organic strawberry production was found to be financially more profitable at the end of 2-year production activities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(5)2017: 92-101 100 to conclude, open-field organic strawberry production was found to be more economical for yumurtalık (adana) region because climate conditions of this region provide a natural greenhouse environment for strawberries. one of the points that must be taken into account in order achieve sufficient yield and quality in organic strawberry production is the use of farmland manures obtained from organic farms or farmland manures certified for organic agricultural use. additionally, use of farmland manure along with green fertilization materials is both economical and also enhances yield and quality to a great extent. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: this study was funded by çukurova university scientific research project intuitional unit (project no: zf2010d28). this article is a part of doctoral dissertation by hülya sayği. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references anonymous (2005). ecological agriculture in the world. http://www.eto.org.tr. anonymous (2017). http://www.tarim.gov.tr/konular/bitkisel-uretim/organik-tarim/istatistikler. aras, a. 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(erişim: eylül 2017) https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=the+organic+farming+movement+in+turkey.+&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=the+organic+farming+movement+in+turkey.+&btng= http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/ustmenu.do?metod=temelist effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 225 assessment of benefits derived from sacdp/ifad through community based participatory projects in bodinga zone attahiru, m. department of agriculture, sokoto state polytechnic, sokoto, nigeria b. z. abubakar and a. a. barau department of agricultural extension and rural development, usmanu danfodiyo university, sokoto, nigeria abstract the study was carried out to assess the benefits derived from sacdp/ifad through community based participatory projects in bodinga zone. the zone comprises four villages from two local government areas. all the four villages were purposively selected for the study. eighty (80) respondents were randomly selected and interviewed using structured questionnaire (60 male and 20 female). data collected was analyzed using frequency and percentages. results revealed that majority of the respondents are men, married and within their active productive age. results further show that majority of the respondents have benefitted from one project or the other and have subsequently replicated similar community based initiatives. it is recommended that vigorous efforts be put in place by both donor agencies and government to enhance rural people derivation of benefits from community based participatory projects and participation in self-help initiatives. keywords: assessment, community, benefits and participatory projects introduction 1 while the past decade has been dominated by efforts to promote a more participatory approach, the concept of participation in development is not entirely new. by the late 1940s, the early initiatives of development assistance and of planned interventions in underdeveloped countries to promote development and change had commenced. however, it was in the 1950s, and particularly in the 1960s, that these initiatives, via the actions of processes of community development, sought to involve corresponding author’s name: a. a. barau email address: akilutsafe@yahoo.com local people in efforts to improve their communities. community development in the 1960s built the infrastructure of rural and urban communities; it also developed local skills and abilities and encouraged local people to play a part in and to take some responsibility for supporting and implementing a range of physical infrastructure works. community development at that time also sought to build community-based organizations to serve as vehicles through which local people could get actively involved. it promoted literacy campaigns to enable people to better understand and relate to existing administrative bodies. it sought to generate a sense of cohesiveness and solidarity among community members (undp, 2005). the 1980s and 1960s saw asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:akilutsafe@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 225-232 226 the community development movement flourish and particularly in africa and asia, national programmes sought to build community infrastructure and to break down communities' inclusion from development activities (undp, 2005). the style was quite generalized (although in west africa animation rural was seen as more instructive), and the community development worker was seen as a government official working at the interface between the outside forces of modernization and the natural conservatism and suspicion of rural communities. community development did promote communities involvement but it was for an already agreed purpose. control was usually exercised externally and communities were seen as contributing to and supporting the national development agenda and not necessarily as being instrumental in determining its content or direction (undp, 2005). while community development as a basic strategy of community involvement persisted into the 1970s, it has largely lost its predominance. changing analyses and examination of underdevelopment in the late 1970s and 1980s began to offer different explanations of the causes of people’s poverty and to suggest different forms of project design. poor people were seen as excluded and marginalized both from broader societal participation and also to devise strategies whereby poor people could become more directly involved in development efforts. in development terms the last decade or so has been largely dominated by efforts to promote peoples participation in development, which would involve a fundamental shift both in attitudes and in methodology – if it was to break decades of top-down non-participatory practice. since the early 1990s the major donor development agencies here put their weight behind and committed resources to promoting participatory development (undp, 2005). rural communities are faced with a number of problems. these affect economic growth and well being of the people. in spite of decades of effort and some progress made, as much as one fifth of the world's population still lives in chronic poverty in rural areas (fao, 1992). and unless the communities are carried along in the process, any project intervention strategy will not stand much chance of success. it is against this background that this study was carried out in order to assess the benefits derived from sacdp/ifad through community based participatory project in the bodinga zone of sokoto state, nigeria. methodology the study was carried out in bodinga zone of sokoto agricultural and community development project with assistance from international fund for agricultural development (sacdp/ifad). it comprises bodinga and silame local government areas of sokoto state. bodinga zone comprises a number of districts and villages and is located within latitude 12°n to 14°n and longitudes 5°e to 6°e (sacdp/ifad, 1998). the zone share boarders with yabo and shagari local government areas to the west, dange/shuni and tureta local government areas to the east, wamakko and binji local government areas and some villages of neighbouring argungu local government area of kebbi state to the south. bodinga zone is blessed with abundant natural resources that include extensive area of fertile upland and lowland for arable crop production. farming and artisanal fishing are the predominant occupations of the people in the zone. both rainfed and irrigated crops are well grown in the zone. they include: sorghum, millet, groundnut, including onions, rice, tomatoes, pepper etc. animals reared in the zone are cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys, horses and poultry. vegetation in the zone is typically sudan savanna type characterized by scarce or sparse grass population, shrubs and scattered trees such as acacia albida (gawo) and acacia nilotica (bagaruwa) (sacdp/ifad, 1998). the population of bodinga and silame local government areas is 113,467 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 225-232 227 and 60,284 respectively. the zone is dominated by the famous hausa-fulani of northern nigeria (sokoto state diary, 1995). bodinga zone is one of the six (6) zones of sacdp/ifad project in sokoto state. it was created in the last quarter of 1995, with headquarters at bodinga and commenced work actively in the first quarter of 1996 (ifad, 1988). primary data was generated through interview of farmers using questionnaire. the secondary sources of data include published and unpublished literature such as textbook, research journals, student’s research projects, seminar papers, internet and sacdp/ifad official documents. purposive sampling was used to select the benefiting villages in the local government areas. the villages are kwacciyar lalle and mazangari (bodinga lg), silame and labani (silame lg). eighty (80) respondents were selected; 20 from each of the four (4) village areas. to ensure representation of the entire population, simple random sampling technique was employed to obtain the needed sample size. data collected for this research was subjected to descriptive statistical analysis such as frequency and percentage. results and discussion table 1 shows that 75 percent of the respondents were male, while 25 percent were female; which implies that men participated more in community development projects. this is in line with olawoye, (1989) and abdullahi, (1996) as cited by yahuza, (2000) who observed that female respondents do not participate actively in community development project, despite the significant role they need to play in community development projects. 55 percent of the respondents fall within the age range of 21-40, 41.25 percent fall within the age range of 41-60, 2.5 percent fall within the age range of 1-20 and 1.25 percent were 61 and above, implying that majority of the respondents were within the active productive age (21-40years), because it is at this age that individuals are found more capable and energetic enough to perform the duties assigned to them effectively, this is in line with adamu, (1997) as cited by yahuza, (2000) who observed that majority of the extension workers were within active productive age when they fall within the obtained age range. majority (91.25 percent) of the respondents were married, 5 percent were divorced, 2.5 percent were single while 1.25 percent was widows. this indicates that marriage is not a barrier to participation which this is in line with yahuza, (2000) and igben, (1935) as cited by isa, (1999) who found that 95.5 percent of nigerian farmers were married. most (43.75 percent) of the respondents acquired qur'anic and adult education, 12.5 percent primary education, 21.25 percent acquired secondary education while 22.5 acquired tertiary education. this result indicates that majority of the respondents do not possess higher educational qualification which might not necessarily be a negative factor to benefit derivation in the zone. rahman, (1987) as cited by isa (1999) also said that formal or informal training and conscious raising activities build beneficiaries' capacity. the table further reveals that most of the people that benefitted from community development project have farming (31.25 percent) as their primary occupation, 26.25 percent were traders, 26.25 percent engaged in small scale enterprise, while 16.25 percent were civil servants. this indicates that most of the people that benefitted from community development project in the zone are farmers and traders, even though others engaged in other worthwhile activities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 225-232 228 table 1: distribution of respondents according to their socio-economic characteristics gender frequency percentage male 60 75 female 20 25 total 80 100 age range 20-jan 2 2.5 21-40 44 55 41-60 33 41.25 61 and above 1 1.25 total 80 100 marital status single 2 2.5 married 73 91.25 divorced 4 5 widowed 1 1.25 total 80 100 level of education qur'anic & adult education 35 43.75 primary education 10 12.5 secondary education 17 21.25 above secondary education 18 22.5 total 80 100 primary occupation farming 39 48.75 trading 9 11.25 civil servant 20 25 others 12 15 total 80 100 primary occupation farming 25 31.25 trading 21 26.25 civil servant 13 16.25 others 21 26.25 total 80 100 table 2 shows that 75 percent of the respondent had benefitted for 1-5 years and 25 percent had benefitted for 6-10 years. this implies that all the respondents had benefitted from the project for more than one year. table 2: distribution of respondents according to period (years) of benefits years range frequency percentage 5-jan 60 75 10-jun 20 25 15-nov 0 0 16 and above 0 0 total 80 100 table 3 shows that 50 percent of the respondents had benefitted through provision of infrastructure, 33.75 percent through credit facilities, while 16.25 percent through provision of para-veterinary clinics. this implies that all the respondents had benefitted from one or the other of community development projects. table 3: distribution of respondents based on type of benefits they derived from sacdp/ifad project types of projects frequency percentage provision of 40 50 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 225-232 229 infrastructure access to loan 27 33.75 paraveterinary clinics 13 16.25 total 80 100 table 4 shows that 33.75 percent of the respondents had participated in school construction, 11.25 percent had partake in road rehabilitation while 55 percent had participated in other forms of community development projects before sacdp/ifad intervention. this attest to the fact that the rural dwellers in the zone are knowledgeable of the relevance of community based participatory projects before the sacdp/ifad intervention. table 4: distribution of respondents based on type of community development projects executed in their communities before the intervention of sacdp/ ifad project types of projects frequency percentage school 27 11.25 road construction & rehabilitation 9 33.75 others 44 55 total 80 100 table 5 shows that the entire respondent had embarked on one project or another after sacdp/ifad intervention projects. this indicates that sacdp/ifad project had stimulated and encouraged the benefitting communities to initiate self-help community development projects in their areas. this further proves the propensity of extension workers to motivate self-help initiatives. moussa (2002) asserted that extension agents are very active in awakening farmers for sustainable natural resources management. table 5: distribution of respondents based on whether they embark on similar project after sacdp/ifad project responds frequency percentage yes 80 100 no 0 0 total 80 100 table 6 shows that 47.5 percent of the respondents had participated in road rehabilitation, 27.5 percent participated in schools construction, and 25 percent had partaken in mosque constructions. this indicates that all the respondents have participated in one form of community development project or the other after sacdp/ifad intervention. it is line with paul, (1987) as cited by isa, (1999) that the most essential organizational groups used, or the "instruments" for active community participation are existing self-help groups. table 6: distribution of respondents based on the type of project executed after sacdp/ifad intervention types of project frequency frequency road construction & rehab 38 47.05 school 22 27.5 mosque 20 25 total 80 100 table 7 shows that 53.75 percent of the respondents contributed labour, 36.25 percent contributed financially while 10 percent contributed through provision of food, water and other incentives to encourage the people that supplied labour during the community development projects. this indicates that labour is the major contribution of the people in community development projects in the area. this goes a long way to confirm the findings of isa, (1999) who observed that rural people are ready to contribute money, labour and materials resources to improve their living condition. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 225-232 230 table 7: distribution of respondents based on the contributions they gave in the execution of any community development projects in their respective areas types of project frequency percentage labour 43 53.75 materials 0 0 financial 29 36.25 others 8 10 total 80 100 table 8 shows that all the respondents in the area contribute towards sustaining the facilities put in place for them through community labour. this indicates that respondents in the area are ever ready to sustain any community development project executed in their communities. this is in line with moussa (2002) who observed in his area of study that from the assistance given by the government, farmers participate more in natural resources management and increased their production, soil quality and keep the soil good for all. table 8: distribution of respondents based on contribution given towards sustaining the facilities put in place for them by sacdp/ifad in their areas ways of sustainability frequency percentage community labor 80 100 community taxation 0 0 local government 0 0 none substance 0 0 total 80 100 table 9 shows that 56.25 percent of the respondent had attributed their problems to little support from the government, 28.75 percent attributed it to lack of adequate awareness and 15 percent linked it to leadership problem. this indicates that rural people are ready to initiate community development projects and derive its benefits, but hindered from full satisfaction by certain problems. table 9: distribution of respondents based on the problems they encountered during execution of any community development project responds frequency percentage little govt's support 45 56.25 inadequate awareness 23 28.75 poor leadership 12 15 total 80 100 table 10 shows that 37.5 percent of the respondents suggested public enlightenment in promoting peoples' participation and full benefit derivation in community development projects, 28.75 percent were of the view that motivation would serve, 23.75 percent were of the view that government support would boost their morale to participate and benefit in community development projects while 10 percent were of the view that trustworthy and dedicated leaders would promote people's participation and benefit derivation in the study area. this implies that benefitting community members are ready to participate in their own development and harness the full benefits of community based projects, but require solution to their faced bottlenecks. table 10: distribution of respondents based on suggestion they made towards promoting people’s participation in the execution of any community development project responds frequency percentage public enlightenment 30 37.5 support from the govt. 19 23.75 motivation 28.75 trust & dedicated leaders should 23 be appointed to head 8 10 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 225-232 231 organisation(s) total 80 100 conclusion the continuity of any society depends on the survival of its communities, it is therefore paramount, to note that some socio-cultural characteristics influence participation of people in community development programmes. to this effect, to identify constraints to derivation of benefits of any participatory development strategy, it becomes necessary to evaluate beneficiary’s socio-cultural characteristics, assess their needs, involve them in activities that are meant for them and mobilize them to take active part in all policies meant for their welfare. bringing beneficiaries only when such policies had been formulated and everything sealed-up, the project is bound to fail. this could also lead to cynicism and make rural people doubt the veracity of the policy, thus less benefit derivation. recommendations having examined the benefits derived from community development projects, and contribution of sacdp/1fad project in stimulating and encouraging rural people in initiating and execution of self-help community development projects. it is essential that the following recommendations are offered with a view to draw the attention of government and donor agencies towards ensuring the realization of community developments in the study area. vigorous efforts are put in place by both donor agencies and government to enhance rural people derivation of benefits from community based participatory projects for a successful project implementation and participation, beneficiaries should be fully involved in project design, implementation and maintenance. this is to remove skepticism and inspire, and motivate the spirit of active participation. manpower training and development should be given priority attention to enable the rural people to update their knowledge and acquire technical know-how to perform to expectation even after intervention. adequate working materials should be provided to the rural areas, as these would enable them to realize their needs and their potentials and ways of exploiting those potentials through self-help initiatives. references fao, (1992). peoples participation in rural development. the fao plan for action ifad (1988). strategic framework for ifad 2002-2006 strengthening the capacity of the rural poor and their organization. http://www.ifad.org/pub/ar.htm. isa, m. m. (1999). factors affecting participation in community development projects of sokoto agricultural and community development project (sacdp) in yabo local government area of sokoto sate. unpublished bsc. project report, department of agricultural economics and extension, faculty of agriculture, usmanu danfodiyo university sokoto. moussa, t. (2002). factors affecting the participation of farmers in natural resources management in doutchi local government area of niger republic. unpublished bsc. project report, department of agricultural economics and extension, faculty of agriculture, usmanu danfodiyo university, sokoto. rahman, m. a. (1987). participation of the rural poor in development. development, 1(1), 3-5. sacdp/ifad (1998). a community participatory approach to poverty alleviation and natural resource management in sokoto state. a http://www.ifad.org/pub/ar.htm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 225-232 232 review of project achievement and journey to success. an overview report of sacdp/ifad head office. sokoto state diary (1995). local government development in sokoto state, p. 8. undp/sustainable livelihood, (2005). empowering people: a guide to participation. http://www.undp.org/sl/documents/m anuals/ empowring/chapter l-3.htm yahuza, g. i. (2000). assessment of training needs of extension workers in sokoto agricultural and community development project (sacdp/ifad). unpublished bsc project report, department of agricultural economic and extension, faculty of agriculture, usmanu danfodiyo university sokoto. http://www.undp.org/sl/documents/m%20anuals/%20empowring/chapter%20l-3.htm http://www.undp.org/sl/documents/m%20anuals/%20empowring/chapter%20l-3.htm effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 142 assessment of the effect of fungicide and seed rate on the incidence of leaf blast (magnaphorthe grisea), on the growth of foxtail millet (setaria italica (l.) p. beauv) in north-eastern nigeria z. g. s. turaki lake chad research institute maiduguri, nigeria b. i. richard and m. m. degri department of crop protection, faculty of agriculture, p. m. b 1069, university of maiduguri borno state, nigeria abstract in 2007 a multilocational trial was conducted in a split-plot using randomized complete block university of maiduguri and gashua farm station to assess the effects of fungicide and seed rate on the incidence of leaf blast (magnaphorte grisea), on the growth and yield of foxtail millet in the northeastern nigeria. the results showed that the lowest disease incidence of 20.8% and 0.4% were recorded from 100% recorded significantly (p < 0.05) the highest disease incidence of 80.0% and 64.3% at maiduguri and gashua respectively. the highest plant height and panicle length were recorded from plants grown at fungicide seed treatment ranging from 80-100% at seed rate of 5.0kg/ha. the lowest plant height and panicle length were obtained from plants grown from the untreated seed tate of 12.5kg/ha and while the lowest grain yields were recorded from untreated seed rate of 5.0kg/h at maiduguri and gashua respectively. keywords: incidence, fungicide treatment, leaf blast, seed rate foxtail millet introduction 1 foxtail millet (setaria italica (l.) p. beauv) is the second most widely cultivated species of millet in the world (zohary and hopf, 2000). millet is a very important food grains and economic crop in areas where it is cultivated extensively. it is known by several other names such as italian millet, german millet, chinese millet and hungarian millet (baker, 2003). the crop is a dwarf millet cultivar newly introduced in bauchi state and other northern nigerian savannah where several millet cultivars are corresponding author’s name: b. i. richard email address: richybwala@gmail.com used as food and cash crop. according to nkama et al. (1994), most of the millet grains produced in nigeria are used for human consumption and for preparing fermented and unfermented breads, weaning food and for production of local alcoholic beverages (nkama, 1998) millet generally can adopt to poor nutrient sandy soil in low rainfall areas and it is one of the oldest cultivated crop in sub-saharan west african (andrea et al., 2001). in nigerian savannah where several millet cultivars are grown extensively, plant disease pose a big threat in lowering the yield potential if a necessary and adequate disease control measures are not adopted. leaf blast of foxtail asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:richybwala@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 142-148 143 millet is a seed borne fungal pathogen of major economic importance and other prominent fungal diseases include smut (ustilago crameri), green ear (sclerospora graminicola) and blight (cochliobolus setariae) ito et kuribayashi) drechsler exdastar (skerman and riveros, 1990). according to kato et al. (2001) and farman, (2002) leaf blast foxtail millet has been reported to affect photosynthetic activity and transport of metabolites in the crop. also thakur et al. (2002) stated that the incidence of the disease has been quite variable depending on cultivars, season and location. disease can cause an annual yield lose of 6-8% and up to 55% yield loss has been recorded in some millet fields in nigeria (ajayi et al., 1998) machenzie and sah (1991) stressed the need for quantitative relationship that relate to the effects of disease and yield losses for development of disease control strategies and crop management plans. anaso (1996) has pointed out the simulation of various disease conditions which offered a range of data points to predict yield loss in foxtail millet. the use of chemical and cultural control in combination can effectively lower the disease incidence and severity when ever resistant cultivars are not available even though the use of resistant cultivars has been recommended as the best disease control option, but the genetic improvement is very tedious, slow and takes several years before improved cultivars are introduced for cultivation richard et al. (2008). similarly, richard et al. (2009) reported that seed dressing with apron star 42ws fungicide controls the early stage of anthracnose and ensure high seedling establishment. also, anaso (1989) controlled sorghum downy mildew in maize by seed dressing with apron plus 35sd. as a newly introduced crop in the nigerian semi-arid regions there is dearth of information on the crop, diseases and environmental factors. therefore, the objective of this work was to assess the effects of chemical and seed rate on disease incidence growth and yield loss on foxtail millet due to leaf blast (setaria italica) in the northeastern nigeria. materials and methods the field experiments were carried out as multi-trials during the 2007 cropping at maiduguri and gashua located in the sudan and sahel agro-ecological zones respectively. the trail was laid out in a split-plot using randomized complete block design. the varying percentages planting rows of 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% sown with apron star 42ws treated seeds (2.0g a. i/kg) was laid in the main-plot in order to simulate variable disease incidences, while the variable seed rates of 5.0, 7.5, 10.0 and 12.5 kg/ha was laid in the sub-plots of 5 x 3m replicated four times. there was 0.5m and 1m as spacing between plots and replicates respectively. there was 30cm and 45cm interand intra-spacing between plant stands and rows accordingly. an infector rows sown to lcic 9702 at 4.5m apart was established three weeks earlier. the total land area used was 34.5 x 17m. the first weeding was done at two weeks after sowing (was) and the millet were thinned down to two plants per stand. inorganic fertilizer was applied at the recommended rate of 60.0kg n/ha, 30kg p2o/ha and 30kg k2o/ha for millet in the savannah according to anon (1989). the experimental plots were kept weed-free throughout the experimental period. data collection the leaf blast incidence was recorded at fifty days after sowing (das) using the formula: z = k /y x 100 where: z = disease incidence (%) k= number of plants infected by leaf blast in the middle rows y= total number of plants infected and uninfected by the leaf in the middle rows the plant heading was taken at fifty-nine days after sowing and while the plant height panicle lengths were recorded at maturity stage. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 142-148 144 yield the panicles in the middle rows of each plot were cut-off from the main stalk, sundried properly, threshed, winnowed and the grains were weighed separately and converted in kilogram per hectare. all data were subjected into statistical analysis of variance (anova), the means were separated using duncan’s multiple range test (dmrt). results and discussions results in (table 1) showed that in 2007 cropping season, the effect of fungicide seed treatment levels and seed rates on diseases incidence and grain yield were significant in both maiduguri and gashua agro ecological locations. results revealed that plants grown from the untreated seed (control) significantly had the highest leaf blast incidence of 80.0% and 64.3% at maiduguri and gashua locations, while those grown from the highest fungicide level of 100% recorded the lowest disease incidence of 20.8% and 10.4% at maiduguri and gashua respectively (table 1). similarly, the effect of different seed rates on disease incidence showed that plants grown from the highest seed rate of 12.5kg/ha recorded significantly the highest disease incidence of 51.6% and 39.7% at maiduguri and gashua, while the lowest leaf blast incidence of 41.0% and 28.2% were obtained from the plants grown from the lowest seed rate of 5.0kg/hg at maiduguri and gashua locations respectively. the result also indicates that the disease incidence increased significantly with each successive increase in seed rate and decrease with each successive increase in fungicide level at both locations. table 1: effect of fungicide seed treatment and seed rates on leaf blast incidence of foxtail millet at maiduguri and gashua locations during the 2007 cropping season treatments disease incidence maiduguri gashua fungicide rates (%) leaf blast (%) leaf blast (%) 0 80.0a 64.3a 20 60.3b 49.6b 40 50.2c 36.1c 60 39.1d 26.4d 80 27.7e 18.2e 100 20.8f 10.4f se ± 1.07 1.10 seed rates (kg/ha) 5.0 41.0d 28.2d 7.5 44.7c 32.5c 10.0 48.1b 36.1b 12.5 51.6a 39.7a se ± 0.61 0.65 interaction f x sr ** * means in the same column followed by similar letter (s) are not significantly different at 5% probability level of the duncan’s multiple range test (dmrt). the results in (table 2) showed that the effect of fungicide levels and seed rates on plant height and panicle length of foxtail millet were highly significant at maiduguri and gashua agro-ecological locations in 2007 cropping season, but the heading days was not significantly different at both locations in the same season. the results of 2007 indicated that the highest plant height and panicle length of 44.9cm and 6.2cm; 42.9cm and 6.1cm which were not significantly different from each other was recorded on the plants grown from the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 142-148 145 highest fungicide level of 100% and 80% respectively at maiduguri. similarly, the highest plant height of 45.0cm and panicle length of 7.2cm were recorded from foxtail millet grown from seed treated with the highest level 100% fungicide at gashua. the untreated (0%) plant had the lowest plant height and panicle length of 27.8cm and 4.9cm; 34.3cm and 5.4cm at both maiduguri and gashua locations respectively. also, results in table 2 showed that at the two locations, plants grown from the lowest seed rate of 5.0kg/ha significantly had the highest plant height and panicle length. based on this rate, the highest plant height and panicle length of 42.6cm and 6.1cm were recorded at maiduguri agro ecological location, while the highest plant height and panicle length of 44.7cm and 6.5cm were obtained at gashua agro ecological locations. this was followed by the plants grown at the seed rate of 7.5kg/ha. this result indicated that an increase in seed rate with corresponding increase in the plant population resulted to a highly significant decrease in the plant height and panicle length which could be due to competition for light, space, water and nutrients. results on grain yield in 2007 (table 2) showed highly significant differences in relation to levels of fungicide seed treatment and seed rates in the two locations. at maiduguri location, the results revealed that the highest grain yields of 1334.0kg/ha and 1337.0 kg/ha were recorded on plants grown at 100% fungicide level and seed rate of 10.0kg/ha respectively. also results showed that at gashua location, the highest grain yields of 1248.0 kg/ha and 981.0 kg/ha were obtained on plants grown from fungicide seed treatment level and seed rate similar to those of maiduguri. on the same trend, results in (table 2) also indicates that at maiduguri location, higher grain yield of 1236.0 kg/ha was recorded on plants grown from 80% fungicide seed treatment level which was not significantly different from the grain yields obtained at 100% fungicide seed treatment level at gashua location. the lowest grain yields of 307.0 kg/ha and 264.0 kg/ha were recorded from the untreated plants (%) at maiduguri and gashua locations respectively (table 2) in 2007. also, the results of the same year showed that the lowest grain yields of 430.0 kg/ha and 414.0 kg/ha were obtained from the plants grown from the lowest seed rate of 5.0 kg/ha at maiduguri and gashua zones respectively. in light of this, the work has obviously found that the optimum attainable grain yield of foxtail millet if possible within the fungicide seed treatment of 80-100% and seed rate of 10kg/ha which also agreed with emechebe et al. (1994) which stated that seed dressing with effective chemical is a viable option for disease control and maximum yield production for the peasant farmers in the west african sudan savannah. anaso et al. (1989) state that seed dressing with apron plus 35sd controlled downy mildew in maize. similarly, richard et al. (2009) also stated that seed dressing with apron star 42ws at the rate of 2.5 product a.i.kg/ha lowered the incidence and severity of sorghum anthracnose. table 2: effects of fungicide seed treatment levels and seed rates on heading, plant height and panicle length of foxtail millet at maiduguri and gashua during the 2007 cropping season treatments heading (days) plant height (cm) panicle length (cm) grain yield (kg/ha) heading (days) plant height (cm) panicle length (cm) grain yield (kg/ha) fungicide rate (%)[fr] maiduguri gashua 0 57.2 27.8d 4.9e 307d 57.1 34.3e 5.4c 264e 20 57.3 32.2c 5.4d 734c 56.8 36.2d 5.8c 590d 40 27.8 36.2b 5.7c 820c 57.1 37.8cd 5.8c 614d 60 57.7 38.5b 5.8b 980b 57.5 38.7c 6.1c 780c 80 58.3 42.9a 6.1a 1236a 57.3 41.2b 6.4b 1065b 100 58.2 44.9a 6.2a 1334a 57.7 45.0a 7.2a 1248a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 142-148 146 se ± 0.59 0.92 0.04 47.4 0.29 0.61 0.26 43.4 seed rate (kg/ha) 5.0 58.6 42.6a 6.1a 430d 57.3 44.7a 6.5a 414d 7.5 57.8 37.7b 5.9b 867c 57.3 38.9b 6.2a 760c 10.0 57.3 36.3b 5.6c 1337a 57.3 38.1b 6.1b 981a 12.5 57.3 31.7c 5.2d 973b 57.1 33.6c 5.6b 886b se ± 0.44 0.63 0.03 30.2 0.21 0.53 0.18 29.7 interaction f x sr ns * ** ** ns * * ** means in the same column followed by similar letter(s) are not significantly different at 5% probability level of the duncan’s multiple range test (dmrt) results in (tables 3) showed that the effects of interaction between the seed treatment fungicide levels and seed rates on the incidence of leaf blast and grain yield were significantly different at both maiduguri and gashua locations during 2007. results obtained from the maiduguri location proved that plants grown from the untreated seeds at the seed rate of 12.5kg/ha significantly had the highest disease incidence of 90.5 while those plants treated with 100% fungicide at seed rate of 5.0 kg/ha recorded the lowest leaf blast incidence of 13.0% in the same season (table 3).similarly, results in (table 3) showed that the highest disease incidence of 74.1% was recorded on the untreated plant (0%) under the seed rate of 12.5kg/ha while the lowest disease incidence of 5.6% was obtained on plants grown from 100% level of fungicide seed treatment under the lowest seed rate of 5.0 kg/ha at gashua location. higher grain yields (table 3) of 1805.0 kg/ha, 1812 kg/ha and 1636 kg/ha which were not significantly different from each other were obtained under the same seed rate of 10.0 kg/ha at fungicide seed treatment levels of 100%, 80% and 60% maiduguri respectively, while the lowest grain yield of 176.0 kg/ha was recorded from the untreated plant under seed rate of 5.0 kg/ha at maiduguri location. in contrary, at gashua location, the highest grain yield of 1599 kg/ha and 1460 kg/ha; 1444 kg/ha and 1326 kg/ha were obtained at fungicide levels 100% and 80%; and at seed rates of 10.0 kg/ha and 12.0 kg/ha respectively. in the two agro-ecological locations, result revealed that the disease incidence and the resultant yield loss were higher at maiduguri than gashua location. this could be due to favourable humid environment which might have favoured spore sporulation and dispersal with resultant high disease incidence and yield reduction. this finding also agree with kato et al. (2000), eto et al. (2001) and farman (2002), who reported that leaf blast affect photosynthetic activity and transport of metabolites in the crop. table 3: effect of interaction between fungicide seed treatment levels and seed rates on leaf blast incidence and grain yield of foxtail millet at maiduguri and gashua locations during the 2007 cropping season fungicide rate (%) incidence of blast (%) 5.0 7.5 10.0 12.5 5.0 7.5 10.0 12.5 maiduguri seed rates (kg/ha) gashua 0 72.5c 75.7c 81.3b 90.5a 57.9d 59.8c 68.2b 74.1a 20 56.4ef 60.0de 62.3d 62.4d 46.0f 49.2ef 50.7de 52.4de 40 46.7hi 49.8hi 50.5gh 53.7fg 28.9ij 36.4gh 38.5gh 40.7g 60 33.9kl 35.5k 41.8j 56.3ij 19.9kl 24.3jk 27.7j 33.6hi 80 23.6mn 29.9mn 29.4lm 30.8klm 13.8m 14.7m 19.7l 24.5jkl 100 13.0p 20.30o 23.1bo 26.8no 5.6n 10.8m 12.0m 13.1m se ± 1.48 grain yield (kg/ha) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 142-148 147 0 176m 266lm 433kl 355lm 199k 290jk 327jk 241k 20 302lm 733ij 1065efg 837hij 375jk 494hij 778d-g 712efg 40 321lm 794hij 1271cde 893ghi 398jk 606ghi 800d-g 652fgh 60 418kl 856g-j 1636ab 1010fgh 415ijk 841c-f 941cd 924cde 80 631jk 1190def 1812a 1312cd 468hij 1022c 1444ab 132b 100 730ij 1366cd 1805a 1434bc 626f-i 1309b 1599a 1460ab se ± 74.02 means in the same column followed by letter(s) are not significantly different at 5% probability level of the duncan’s multiple range test (dmrt) the results (table 4) of the combined analysis of the two agro-ecological locations in 2007 showed that the average (mean) and ranges of heading days, plant height and panicle length are 57.5 (56.5 – 59.5 days), 38.0cm (25.2 – 53.5cm) and 5.9cm (4.2 – 7.5) respectively. on the same trend, results also revealed that the average (mean) and ranges of leaf blast incidence and yield are 40.2% (5.6 – 90.5) and 831.0 kg/ha (176 – 1812 kg/ha) (table 4). this results agree with skerman and riveros (1990) which reported that the leaf blast is among the major three diseases of foxtail millet and also that the yield of the crop ranges from 800 – 900 kg/ha with flowering date ranging from 56 – 52 days in the sudan savanna. table 4: combine analysis of the effects of fungicide levels and seed rates on heading days, plant height, plant length, leaf blast, incidence and grain yield at maiduguri and gashua agro ecological locations in 2007 cropping season heading (days) plant height (cm) panicle length (cm) leaf blast incidence (%) grain yield (kg/ha) means 57.5 38.0 5.9 40.2 831.0 range 56 – 59.5 25.2 – 53.5 4.2 – 7.5 5.6 – 90.5 176 – 1812 cv (%) 3.00 7.65 11.26 8.57 20.67 this work shows that an appropriate apron star seed dressing fungicide level and appropriate seed rate can lower the incidence of leaf blast, increase plant height, panicle length and reduce yield loss. therefore, this result will immensely serve as first-hand vital information to the farmers for the effective management of foxtail millet diseases in nigerian savannah and other parts of the semi-arid regions. references ajayi, o., owonubi, j. j., uyovbisere e. o., & zarat, a. b. 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(2000). domestication of plants in the old world. third edition. oxford university press. p. 86. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 372 acceptance of climate change by rural farming communities in delta state, nigeria: effect of science and government credibility albert ukaro ofuoku and uche n. uzokwe department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, pmb 95074, asaba, delta state, nigeria abstract this study was conducted to examine delta state rural farming communities’ attitude to climate change in relation to science and government credibility. a preparatory assessment of delta state rural communities’ understanding of climate change and insights into potential barriers to communication were given by influences on their attitudes. average of 60.46% of the farmers reported that climate change was occurring and asserted that climate change was the consequence of human activities. most (91.23%) were certain that climate change is adversely affecting their farming businesses. many (mean=1.40) found climate change information not easily comprehensible. however the farmers have negative view about the credibility of science, but had low levels of confidence in government. they reported that lack of information was a barrier to adaptation to climate change. this suggests that such barrier lies with the delta state extension service. there is also an indication that government through the public extension service, need to wake up to her responsibilities of sending related information the rural farming communities. the government should consider the local socio-cultural economic and biophysical environment of the farmers the information is meant for. keywords: climate change, adoption, rural, farming communities, science and government credibility introduction 1 rural farmers have direct contact with elements of nature in their environment. their environment includes physical and biological components. the physical environment consists of all the physiographic factors such as soil inorganic elements, natural forces such as wind, radiation, and gravity; while biological environment consists of soil organic matters, insects, parasites, wild plant and animals (ofuoku, 2011). man perceives and considers his environment from the way he corresponding author’s name: albert ukaro ofuoku email address: ofuoku@yahoo.com feels his about it as he interacts with it. he reacts to secure his comfort and future according to the way he perceives the environment. umar et al. (2008) state that climate change refers to change occurring in the climate during a period of time which can range from decades to centuries. the changes noted are attributed to natural and human activities. human existence is currently facing serious threat as a result of climate change. food is a basic requirement for life sustenance and to be made available to man for maintenance of good health and optimal performance. therefore, food must be provided in enough quality and quantity (umar et al., 2008). adetunji et al. (2005) asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ofuoku@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 372-380 373 assert that agricultural production depends on weather and climate, despite the impressive advances in recorded only agricultural technology and accumulated wealth of knowledge. climate change has impacts on agriculture as can be clearly seen. there is the need to enhance adaptation and resilience capacities of farmers in delta state, nigeria. there are adaptation options meant to build resilience into agricultural systems coupled with mitigation strategies to reduce green house gas emissions suggested by various bodies such as the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc). according to evans et al. (2011), research and development was proposed to support the strategies in enabling the agricultural sector to respond to climate change. science’s role in transferring information to farming communities to enhance good decision-making processes at the rural community level was made the central factor of the strategies. evans et al. (2011) showed that only 33% of all respondents (n = 411) found climate change information easy to understand. in addition, results indicated that generally respondents had concerns with the credibility of science and low levels of trust in government, which contributed to their attitudes to climate change. evans et al. (2011) opined that national agricultural and climate change action plan (naccap) of australia directed that the rural sector's understanding of climate change should be assessed and barriers to communication identified. for the implementation of the strategy to be successful, farmers’ realization of the risk of climate change ought to be relied upon in relation to their need to respond. there is therefore the need to know if farming communities in delta state are accepting the evidence of climate change provided by science; if farming communities deduce the scientific evidence as significantly meaning threat to their livelihood and if farming communities’ attitudes to science and government were being remoted by their perception to science and government. objectives the major objective of this study was to examine the effect of science and government credibility on acceptance of climate change by rural farming communities in delta state, nigeria. specifically this study sought to: i. determine the socio-demographic characteristics of the farmers, ii. ascertain their personal perception of climate change iii. determine their attitude to climate change, which included perception of threat responses to climate change threat -opinions of science and perception of climate science credibility; perception of governments’ (state and federal) climate response iv. unveil of the influence of their perception of science and government credibility on their responses. hypothesis (ho): farmers’ perceptions of science and government credibility do not significantly influence their response to climate change. methodology this study was carried out in delta state, nigeria. delta state is demarcated by the delta state agriculture development programmer (dtadp) into three agricultural zones-delta north, delta central and delta south agricultural zones. multi-stage procedure and random sampling technique were used to select the sample size used. first, two local government areas were selected from each of the three agricultural zones resulting in the selection of six local government areas for the study. secondly, twenty-five farmers comprising of arable crop, only livestock and fish farmers were selected from each local government asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 372-380 374 area, from the list of registered farmers. this exercise resulted in the selection of one hundred and fifty farmers. at the end nineteen questionnaires could not be retrieved. this reduced the sample size to one hundred and thirty-one. data were collected from the farmers using structured interview schedule for the less formally educated farmers and those who had no formal education while questionnaire was used for those who had reasonable level of formal education. the data were analyzed with the application of descriptive statistics for objectives ‘i’, and ‘ii’. the 5-point and 4-point likert’s type scale was used to treat objective ‘iii’, while pearson product moment correlation analysis was used to test the hypothesis which was used to address objective ‘iv’ results and discussion socio-demographic characteristics of farmers most of the farmers (63.36%) were female. this is attributed to the fact that women are more involved in farming them men. uzokwe and ofuoku (2006) found that women have taken over almost all agricultural tasks from men. many of the farmers (44.27%) were in the age range of 41-50 years. this implies that most of them were in their energetic years. majority of them (84.73%) were married. this is indicative of the fact that they had families which they are responsible to cater for. most of them had one form of formal education or the other. education is expected to enhance their comprehensibility of information on climate change as in relates to their farming activities. most (83.21%) of them owned farms while 16.79% were employees in farms as most (45.80%) of them had 31 and above years of farming experience. table 1: socio-demographic characteristics of farmers variables frequency percentage (%) gender male 48 36.64 female 83 63.36 age (years) 20-30 15 11.45 31-40 36 27.48 41-50 58 44.27 >50 22 16.79 marital status married 111 84.73 single 20 15.27 level of education no formal education 35 26.72 primary education 8 6.11 secondary education 64 48.85 tertiary education 24 18.32 contribution to farming on a farm 109 83.21 farm employee 22 16.79 farming experience (years) 1-10 21 16.03 11-20 26 19.85 21-30 24 18.32 31 and above 60 45.80 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 372-380 375 personal perceptions of climate change by respondents table 2 indicates that farmers experienced delayed onset of raining season, increased flooding, increased temperature, eratic rainfall and longer dry season. few (16.03%) of them reported that they had not experienced change in climate. the implication is that there is shorter raining season. this means that farmers recognized the changes in climate factors. this finding confirms ofuoku et al. (2011), ofuoku (2011), guring and bhandari (2008) who found that farmers in edo state, delta state, and chituen village in nepal experience changes in climate factors respectively. farmers in ethiopia and south africa observed increased temperature and decreased rainfall (bryan et al., 2009). hageback et al. (2005) maddison (2006), gbetibouo (2009) reported that farmers perceived long term changes in temperature and decreased precipitation. according to gbetibouo (2009), farmers’ perceptions are congruent with the statistical record in the limpopo river basin. mertz et al. (2009) observed that farmers in senegal have climate change awareness. table 2: personal perceptions of climate change perception frequency percentage (%) delay in onset of raining season 75 57.25 increased incidence of flood 61 46.56 increased temperature 98 only erratic rainfall 87 66.41 longer dry season 75 57.25 farmers’ perception of causes of climate change farmers reported that climate change was a consequence of deforestation, population explosion, gas flaring, use of chemical fertilizer, increased use of fossil fuel, soil degradation and erosion, intensified agriculture and loss of indigenous knowledge practice by man (table 3). the study area is vulnerable to effects of climate change. the implication is that the agroecosystems have consequently deteriorated in recent times. leisa (2008) opined that this is the main consequence of change in land use patterns in intensified agriculture coupled with deforestation, soil degradation and erosion prompted by population explosion. as a result of deforestation and erosion, considerable volumes of carbon dioxide are being released into the atmosphere and this is complemented by the production and use of chemical fertilizer. table 3: farmers’ perception of the causes of climate change cause mean rank population explosion 3.98 2 intensified agriculture 3.32 7 deforestation 4.21 1 use of chemical fertilizer 3.88 4 soil degradation erosion 3.67 6 increased use of fossil fuel 3.84 5 loss of indigenous knowledge practice 3.16 8 gas flaring 3.94 3 cut-off score = 3.0 (> 3.0 = important observation, < 30= not important observation) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 372-380 376 farmers’ attitude to climate change perception of threat table 4 shows that the farmers reported that the threats posed by climate change included reduced yield, reduced egg production, stunted growth of crops, livestock and fish, decreased feed intake by livestock and fish, reduced growth rate, changes in timing and length of cropping season, increased rate of post and disease outbreak and loss of fish to flood. these effects of climate change are a big threat to agricultural rural productivity. shah and ameta (2008) asserted that rising temperature and reduced period of rains, leading to drought are directly linked to reduced soil productivity and high level of pest and disease incidence. this scenario is also directly linked to the poor performance of livestock and fish. these effects have serious implications for food security in the study area, especially the rural communities which rely on agriculture to meet their subsistence needs (ofuoku, 2011) and have ripple effect on urban food security. table 4: perception of climate change threat threat mean rank increase post and disease outbreak 3.86 7 reduction in yield 4.43 1 changes in timing and length of cropping season 4.06 5 stinted growth of crop livestock and fish 4.25 3 decreased feed intake by livestock and fish 4.18 4 reduced egg production 4.34 2 reduce birth rate and size 3.06 9 loss of fish to flood 3.37 8 growth rate of livestock & fish 4.18 4 cut – off score = 3.0(>3.0 = important threat, < 3.0 = not import and threat) on 5-point likert’s scale farmers’ responses to climate change threat table 5 indicates that many farmers highly responded by adopting some adaptive measures such as planting of trees around livestock pens and fish ponds; adopting soil conservation methods; raising of dykes to prevent loss of fish to flood and planting different varieties of crops to manage the risks of pests and diseases. their responses to changing of planting dates, cooling of livestock pen by use of fans, adoption of heat tolerant species of crops and animals, and irrigation as adaptation measures were low. however, some did not respond at all to climate change threat. most of these reponse/adaptive measures are in consonance with the findings of bradshaw et al. (2004), maddison (2006), nhemachena and hassan (2007), hassan and nhemachena (2008), kurukulariya and mendlesohn (2008), deressa et al. (2009), ofuoku et al. (2011) in their earlier studies. table 5: farmers’ responses to climate change threat response mean rank no response 1.85 7 planting of trees 2.94 1 application of soil conservation methods 2.66 2 irrigation 1.32 9 changing planting date 2.48 5 using heat tolerant species 1.68 8 cooling of livestock pens 2.13 6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 372-380 377 planting of various crop 2.52 4 varieties raising of dikes 2.59 3 cut-off score = 2.50 (>2.50= high response; <2.50=low response on 4-point likert’s type scale credibility of science and climate science table 6 indicates that the people perceived that scientific information are useful (mean = 2.70) and the source are important (mean = 2.51). they agreed that science is unable to solve climate change (mean = 3.36) and that scientists had not as consider all factors (mean 3.23). they also saw science as being divisive (mean = 2.81) and scientists exaggerated the impact of used climate change (mean = 2.93). scientists used climate as a means of sourcing for fund (mean = 2.70). the people would contribute to solutions as much as science (mean = 3.11). however, they placed value on science’s view on climate change (mean = 2.80), but disagreed that climate change information were easy to understand (mean = 1.40). the people had regard for scientific information and the sources of information. this is attributed to the familiarity with the change agents in the study area who they have become used to but as far as climate change was concerned, science had no credibility. this is prompted by the fact that the farmers’ knowledge contextualized within a local socio-cultural framework. this contributed to the peoples’ attitude to science credibility. the farmers’ attitudes to climate change appeared to be influenced by their attitudes to science and perception of science credibility, but there was evidence of iota of trust (evans et al., 2011). table 6: values attributed to science and climate science characteristics scientific information is useful 2.70 7 agriculture and science should cooperate 2.33 10 science is unable to solve climate change 3.36 1 science is divisive 2.81 5 scientists are exaggerating impact 2.93 4 scientists are using climate change as finding sources 2.70 7 people will contribute as much to solutions as science 3.11 3 science information sources 2.51 9 value science view on climate change 2.80 5 climate change information easy to understand 1.40 1 scientists have not considered all factors 3.23 2 note: on a scale of 1-4, where 1 = strong disagree and 4 strongly agreed cutoff score = 2.50 (> 2.50 = agree, < 2.50 = disagree governments’ credibility with rural farmers few (19.08%) of the respondents believed government’s climate change policy would be fair and sensitive to the needs of farmers and rural communities. most (80.91%) disagreed that government climate change policy would be fair and sensitive to farmers and rural communities. this implies that the farmers were pessimistic about how future climate change policy would treat them. their trust and credibility in government decreased from this point (mean = 1.59) as farmers did not believe that policy makers would consider all relevant factors while making future policy on climate change. only 18.32% of the farmers perceived that all factors were going to be taken into consideration, while most (81.68%) were of the view that this was not going to occur. the most serious indictment of loss of trust in government emerged when the farmers’ opined that politicians will use climate change as an election campaign issue. most (84.73%) of the farmers agreed that this would happen in the future. these findings asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 372-380 378 are congruent with evans et al. (2011) in an earlier study in western australia. table 7: governments’ credibility with rural farmers perception sa (4) (%) a (3) (%) da (2) (%) sd (1) (%) score mean governments’ climate change policy will be fair and sensitive 9.16 9.92 39.69 41.22 221 1.69 policy makers will take all 2.29 16.03 19.85 61.83 208 1.59 factors into account for future climate change policy politicians will use climate 41.98 42.75 15.27 0 428 3.27 influence of farmers’ perception of science and government credibility on their response to climate change only table 8 shows that farmers’ responses had significant relationship with science (r = 0.70) and government (r = 0.54) credibility. this means that their perception of science credibility and government credibility influenced their responses to climate change. if science and government credibility are high, their responses to climate change will also be high. table 8: influence of perception of science and government credibility on farmers’ response to climate change variables 1 2 3 farmers’ response 1.000 0.071* 0.054* science credibility 0.071* 1.000 0.038 government credibility 0.054* 0.038 1.000 conclusion the outcome of this study revealed that there was climate change awareness among farmers in rural communities in delta state. they were of the view that it was human induced and saw it as a threat into their farming businesses. though they were exposed to various adaptation methods, only less than half had been highly adopted by the farmers. as a result of this, it is pertinent to ask if science is able to communicate relevant and important information on climate change to the rural farmers. government had not been found to be credible and not to be trusted. this is not unconnected with government’s very low commitment to researches and the plight of rural or farming communities. this is also linked to the poor communication of information on climate change information by science. implications the role of science in research and development of knowledge and adaptation measure to climate change will be essential part of the future of farming in rural communities of delta state, nigeria. there is, therefore the need to address the lapses in communication process of climate change. in the future, local socio-cultural, economic and biophysical environment of the rural people should be taken into cognizance when the information on climate change will be designed. these people may understand better, if they are able to translate or interpreter the information provided in relation to what they see around them. the ideas will be translated into action if they are exposed to what can be done to mitigate or adapt to climate change. there is need to carry out further study on how best to communicate with farming communities so that it can be understood and can be compared to the existing knowledge of the rural dwellers. in addition, this study needs asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 372-380 379 to be replicated in a large geographical area if similar results will be observed. references adetunji, l. a., olaniyi, peer, j. o., aremy, e.o., & kolawala, e. o. (2005). agro-climatology: a textbook of agronomy. department of agronomy, ladoke akintola university of technology ogbomoso, nigeria bradshaw, b., dolan, h., & smith, b. (2004). farm level adaptation to climate variability and change: crop diversification in canadian prairies. climate change review, 67(1), 119141. bryan, e., deressa, t., gbetibowo, g., & ringler, c. (2009). determinants of adaptation to climate change in ethiopia and south africa. south africa centre in ethiopia and south africa. south africa center for environmental economics and policy. international food policy research institute. deressa, t. t., hassan, r. m., ringler, c., alamu, t., & yusuf, m. (2009). determinants of farmers’ choice of adaptation methods of climate change in the nile basin of ethiopia. global environmental change, 19, 248–255. evans v., storer, c., & wardell-johnson, a. (2011). rural only farming community climate change acceptance. impact of science and government credibility. international journal of sociology of agriculture and food, 18(3), 217-235. gbetibouo, g. a. (2009). understanding farmers’ perceptions and adaptations to climate change and variability: the case of the limpopo basin, south africa. discussion paper no. 00849. south africa environment and production technology division, ifpri. gurung, g. b., & bhandari, d. (2008). an integrated approach to climate change adaptation. leisa, 24(4), 6-8. hassan, r., & nhemachena, c. (2008). determinants of african farmers’ strategies for adapting to climate change multinomial choice analysis. african journal of resource economics, 2(1), 83-94. hageback, j., sundbery, m., ostroald, d., chen, x., & kuntsson, p. (2005). climate variability and land use change in damagou water shed, china-examples of small scale farmers’ adaptation. climate change, 72, 189-212. kurukuraliya, p., & mendelsohn, r. (2008). richardian analysis of impact of climate change on african crop land. african agricultural resource economics, 2(1), 1-23. leisa (2008). dealing with climate change. leisa, 24(4), 4-5. maddison, d. (2006). the perception of an adaptation to climate change in africa. discussion paper no. 10. centre for environmental economics and policy in africa, university of pretoria, south africa. mertz, o. c., reenberg, a., & diouf, a (2009). farmers’ perception of climate change and agricultural adaptation strategies in rural sahel. environmental management, 43(5), 804-816. nhemachena, c., & hassan, r. (2007). micro-level analysis of farmers’ adaptation to climate change in south africa. ifpri discussion paper no. 00714. international food policy research institute, washington, d.c. ofuoku, a. u. (2011). rural farmers’ review perception of climate change in central agricultural zone of delta state, nigeria. indonesian journal of agricultural science, 12(2), 63-69. ofuoku, a. u., okoh, r. n., & saiki, p. k. (2011). determinants of adaptation to climate change among arable crop farmers in edo state, nigeria and its implications for extension service. agriculture-science and practice journal, 3-4(79-80), 129-140. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 372-380 380 shah, r., & ameta, n. (2008). adaptation to climate change with a blend of traditional and improved practices. leisa, 24(4), 9-11. umar, a. g., omoayena, b. o., & okonkwo, m. c. (2008). the climate scourge and implications for natural food security in nigeria, issue and challenges for extension service delivery. proceedings of 3rd annual conference of forestry association of nigeria (fan) held in umuahia, abia state, nigeria pp. 29-31. uzokwe, u. n., & ofuoku, a. u. (2006). gender division of agricultural tasks in delta state, nigeria and implications for agricultural extension services. extension farming systems journal, 2(1), 9196. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 160 participatory evaluation and selection of improved haricot bean varieties at liben district, lowland agro ecology of guji zone, oromia regional state, ethiopia basha kebede*, dembi korji and girma amare bore agricultural research center, bore, ethiopia. *email address: bsshkbd@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 10-jan-2018 accepted: 06-mar-2018 online available: 27-mar2018 keywords: pastoral research group, pastoral preference, haricot bean, improved variety abstract the activity was conducted in liben district to evaluate the yield performance of improved haricot bean varieties. 25 pastorals and agro pastorals were selected from measa kebele with collaboration of liben pastoral and agro pastoral office, zonal mobile supporting team and kebele leaders. the 25 pastoral and agro pastorals were grouped into one paprg. then 25 paprg members were regrouped into three experimental pastorals and agro pastoralists. training were given for paprg members. exchange visit was arranged to share experience on the work each paprg. haramaya, awasa dume, ebado varieties were evaluated with standard check variety. descriptive statistics and direct matrix ranking was used to analysis the data. local variety give the highest yield (31kg/ha). paprg criteria for haricot bean production was market demand, color, disease/insect reaction, drought resistance. accordingly, ebado variety was preferred by paprgs based on marketability while local check and awasa dube were selected as first and second respectively based on drought resistance, number of pod/plant, higher yield and resistance to insects. haramaya variety was susceptible to insects. pastoralists and agro pastoralists should use ebado variety to increase their income and local variety for household consumption. contribution/ originality contrary to previous literatures which mostly focused on highland areas this research activity deal with lowland agro pastoral area where agricultural activities challenged by prolonged drought. most research activities were not indorsed the participation of pastorals and agro pastorals in their research experimentation. this activity, however, emerged from the agro pastorals’ problem. agro pastorals conducted the research on their farm and set preference criteria for haricot bean varieties by themselves. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.8/1005.8.160.166 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: basha kebede, dembi korji and girma amare (2017). participatory evaluation and selection of improved haricot bean varieties at liben district, lowland agro ecology of guji zone, oromia regional state, ethiopia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8), 160-166. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 8(2017): 160-166 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:bsshkbd@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.8/1005.8.160.166 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 160-166 161 1. introduction haricot bean is the most economically important pulse crop grown in ethiopia (wondwosen and abebe, 2017). haricot bean is considered as the main cash crop and protein source of many lowlands and mid-altitude zones of ethiopia. (alemneh et al., 2017; abebe, 2009; ferris and kaganz, 2008). according to miklas et al. (2006) this crop has a high nutritional value with important protein contents (22%), minerals (calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, zinc), and vitamins necessary to warrant the food security of people in the developing countries. haricot bean is an important income source; its straw serves as feed for livestock, and also improves soil fertility by its virtue of nitrogen fixation in the cropping system (fekadu, 2013). ethiopia is one of the top twelve producers of total legumes in the world, third largest producer of haricot bean in comesa member countries and the leading exporter in africa (agete, 2014). on the other hand, the current productivity level of haricot bean falls significantly below the demonstrated potential. the current national average productivity of haricot bean in ethiopia is 1.48 tons per hectare that is below average research demonstrated productivity potential (3.4 tons per hectare) in the country (mulugeta et al., 2015). this is attributed to combined effects of edaphic, climatic, disease, and pest problems. of course, lack of improved varieties is one of the top problems for low yield (fekadu, 2007). all the released and high yielding varieties were not equally accepted by users due to differences in beneficiaries’ preference for the varieties in different localities. this was because the varieties were developed through conventional breeding that did not consider users’ criteria (fekadu, 2013). participatory research is the preeminent decision to diligently work with pastoralists and agro pastoralists in order to recognize their interest. pastoral participatory research refers to the active participation of pastoralists in identifying their problems, prioritizing and planning their research agenda, implementing research, evaluating the technologies on their farm, adopting the new technologies and rehearsing the activity by themselves in their farming environment. the reasons to promote participatory research according to gemechu et al. (2004) includes improving the efficiency and effectiveness of research through increased adoption rates of technology and techniques, and reduced research extension cost, increasing equity and insurance that stakeholders play a role in activities that affect them and empowering the poor and strengthening their bargaining power. in terms of pulse production, haricot bean stands first in area coverage with 22qt/ha in guji zone (csa, 2015). in pastoral area of guji zone, haricot bean is the major crop produced and used as household consumption and cash crop. the crop is also used for increasing soil fertility. the crop is grown either as a sole crop or intercropped with cereal (maize). this characteristics make it an ideal crop for intensification of existing farming system. the crop can be produced in meher and belg season. despite used for household consumption, high nutrition values and increasing soil fertility the yield and production of haricot bean in pastoral and agro pastoral guji zone is very low due to poor agronomic practices, lack of drought resistant variety, lack of improved varieties, insect, pest, environmental degradation and etc. (personal survey, during problem identification), and probably due to the remoteness from the center and inaccessibility of the area. most participatory activities were conducted in highland and midland areas of the ethiopia (fekadu, 2007; fekadu, 2013; abraham et al., 2016; ayalew, 2017). however, there were no detailed participatory activities conducted in pastoral and agro pastoral of guji zone. as a result pastoral and agro pastorals selection preference for haricot bean varieties were not evaluated in guji zone. thus participatory evaluation and selection of haricot bean varieties was initiated (i) to evaluate the yield performance of improved haricot bean varieties (ii) to build pastoral and agro pastoral knowledge and skills on production and management of haricot bean (iii) to assess pastoral and agro pastoral asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 160-166 162 haricot bean variety preference and (iv) to enhance linkage with participating stakeholders through pastoral and agro pastoral research group approach. 2. research methodology 2.1. site and number of pastoral and agro pastoral selection the experiment was conducted at liben lowland district of guji zone. from this district measa kebele was selected purposively based on the potentiality of the area to demonstrate haricot bean technologies. the selection of participating pastoralists and agro-pastoralists was carried out by close collaboration with agro-pastoral and pastoral district offices, zonal mobile supporting team, and kebele administrators. considering model, gender and youth, twenty five (25) pastorals and agro pastorals were selected and grouped as one pastoral and agro pastoral research group (paprg). one chair-person and secretary was selected based on the willingness of members and the selected person/s. 2.2. research design the 25 members of paprg then regrouped into three having one experimental pastoral and agro pastoral (pap) in each. the three sub-group members conduct an experiment on experimental pastorals and agro pastorals. three improved haricot bean varieties (haramaya, awasa dume and ebado) were evaluated for their performance on pastorals’ and agro pastorals’ land with standard check variety. the experiment was planted on plot size of 10m x 10m, 10cm between plant and 50cm between rows. the recommended seed rate of 100kg/ha and 100kg/ha of dap was used. agreement of cost sharing was signed (land, labor and other equipment was delivered by pastoral and agro pastorals while technical advice and inputs were incurred by researchers). 2.3. data collection and analysis for this study data was collected by personal observation and measurements, focused group discussion and interacting with pastoral and agro pastoral research members. the collected data was analyzed by descriptive statistics. one way anova was used to test the mean yield difference among haricot bean varieties. pastoral and agro pastoral assessment on preference of haricot bean variety was analyzed by matrix ranking used de boef and thijssen (2006). 3. result and discussions 3.1. capacity building training was given for paprg on packages of haricot bean production. exchange visit was conducted between the three experimental paprgs in order to learn strengthen and weakness of each experimental paprg on management practices of demonstrated varieties and in pinpointing progress of haricot bean varieties on their farm. as such one experimental paprg (abdulkadir group) was very good in group working and discussing the progress of varieties among themselves. 3.2. yield obtained the yield of haricot bean varieties were presented in table below. varieties were not showed their maximum potential yield due to lack of shortage of rain fall after vegetative stage. local variety namely warabu was the leading in yield. though the seed source is unknown this local variety has the characteristic of improved varieties and difficult to state as local variety rather standard variety. obviously pastoral and agro pastoral were on border area where exchange of inputs (seed) with other pastoral is high. as discussed during variety evaluation with pastoral and agro pastoral research group, local variety (warabu) was obtained from somali pastoralist. the yield obtained from awasa asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 160-166 163 dume was 26qt/ha while haramaya and ebado varieties were 23qt/ha and 20.5qt/ha respectively. warabu variety has higher pod per plant and seed per pod than all varieties. from expected improved varieties haramaya variety has higher pod per plant but the pods were not fertile due to lack of rainfall during flowering stage. table 1: yield obtained in 2016 year crop characteristics variety minimum maximum mean std. deviation yield (qt/ha) haramaya 18 28 23.00 5.000 awasa dume 25 27 26.00 1.000 ebado 20 21 20.50 .500 local variety 29 34 31.50 2.500 pod per plant haramaya 21 25 22.87 1.804 awasa dume 18 22 20.20 1.929 ebado 19 29 22.53 5.278 local variety 25 27 26.00 1.000 seed per pod haramaya 3 5 4.13 0.808 awasa dume 4 5 4.33 0.577 ebado 3 5 3.80 1.386 local variety 5 6 5.33 0.416 there was mean difference in yield per hectare of demonstrated varieties in study area with f value of 8.299 that was significant at 1% level. table 2: anova analysis of yield per hectare of haricot bean varieties in liben district, 2016 sum of squares df mean square f sig. between groups 203.333 3 67.778 8.299 0.008 within groups 65.333 8 8.167 total 268.667 11 3.3. pastorals' and agro pastorals' preference criteria on haricot bean varieties variety selection was conducted by paprg based paprg criteria of market demand, color, disease and insect reaction, drought resistance (early maturity) and other parameters. accordingly, ebado variety was preferred by paprgs based on marketability while local check and awasa-dume were selected as first and second respectively based on their early mature (drought resistance), number of pod/plant, higher yield and resistance to insects. haramaya variety was susceptible to insects. though paprg did not knew the name of local varieties being used the local variety has the characteristics of improved seed varieties since guji pastoralists and agro pastoralists were served by different agents (ngos) and sometimes market from somali land. ebado variety and local variety (warabu) was ranked as first and second respectively. among the improved varieties ebado variety was the least in yield (20.5qt/ha). but ebado variety was selected due to its seed color (red dotted) and highly export to somali market. this result was similar to the result of fekadu (2013) who reported that among the variety selection the lower yield ebado and local variety was selected as first and second respectively. this showed that the recommended and high yielding varieties were not correspondingly accepted by pastoral and agro pastoral due to different peculiarity preferences of pastorals and agro pastorals to the varieties. in this study market demand and drought resistant variety was the most trait preferred by pastorals and agro pastorals (table 3). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 160-166 164 table 3: direct matrix ranking preference of haricot bean varieties by pastoralists (n =25) selection criteria drought resistance market demand disease and insect reaction yield seed/pod straw total score rank relative weight 4 5 2 2 2 3 awasa dume 12 (3) 10 (2) 6 (3) 6 (3) 6 (3) 9 (3) 49 3 ebado 12 (3) 20 (4) 6 (3) 4 (2) 6 (3) 9 (3) 57 1 haramaya 8 (2) 10 (2) 2 (1) 6 (3) 6 (3) 9 (3) 41 4 local variety 16 (4) 5(1) 8 (4) 8 (4) 8 (4) 9 (3) 54 2 note: numbers in parenthesis indicated the performance rating value of each variety given from 1-5 (5= excellent, 4=very good, 3= good, 2= poor and 1=very poor) and numbers written in the bold indicate total score of a variety as per each selection criteria, which was obtained by multiplying the relative weight of each selection criteria with that of the performance rating number in the parenthesis. the relative weight criteria (4= very important, 3 = important, 2= somewhat important, 1= not important) figure 1: participatory variety selection at liben, measa kebele, 2016 4. conclusion and recommendation participatory demonstration of haricot bean varieties was conducted in pastoral and agro pastoral. pastoral and agro pastoralist were capacitated their knowledge and skills on the production of haricot bean by training and exchange visit. the improved varieties (haramaya, awasa dume, and ebado) being demonstrated were not showing their highest yield potential due to lack of rain. but each of these varieties were preferred by pastoral and agro pastoralist on some crop trait. even though ebado was lower yield per hectare the variety was mostly preferred due to its high market demand and export to somali. warabu (local check) variety has higher in yield than all varieties but it has no market demand. ebado variety should be disseminated in pastoral and agro pastoral area of guji asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 160-166 165 zone. pastoralists and agro pastoralists should use ebado variety to increase their income and warabu for household consumption. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors would like to acknowledge pcdp iii (pastoral community development project) for financial assistance. pastoral and agro pastoral research group members on haricot bean were also heartily acknowledged for their land provision and contributed for the accomplishment of the research work by conducting research on their farm and providing information. 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ogata and sen, 2003; barnett, 2003). these cases can threaten the sustainability of development processes and poverty reduction (few et al., 2006). it is predicted that billions of people in developing countries will face shortages of water, food and greater risks to health and life. it is required to enable developing countries to adapt to the effects of climate change (unfccc, 2007). asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:mamun@ru.ac.bd asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 42-58 43 bangladesh is one of the disaster-prone developing countries. almost every year, the country experiences disasters of one sort or another such as tropical cyclones, storm surges, coastal erosion, monsoon wind, evaporation for monsoon rainfall, floods and droughts (ali, 1999) causing heavy loss of life and property and threatening the development activities. in future, bangladesh is likely to be one of the most vulnerable areas of the world. an average temperature and annual mean rainfall have registered an increasing trend. the precipitation decline and droughts have resulted in the drying up of wetlands and severe degradation of ecosystems (ipcc, 2007). almost every sector of bangladesh is probably to be affected by climate change. however, the people of this country have fewer resources to adapt socially, technologically and financially. bangladesh is a country where agriculture is the largest sector of the economy. agriculture in bangladesh has been already under pressure from increasing demands for food and the parallel problems of depletion of agricultural land. the impact of climate variability and change on agricultural production is a global concern. adaptation to climate change is one of the approaches considered likely to reduce the impacts of longterm changes in climate variables. adaptation is a process by which strategies to moderate and cope with the consequences of climate change impact variability, can be enhanced, developed and implemented (undp, 2004). evidently, many developing countries have already conformed to current climatic events at national, provincial, state, territory and local levels in the short-term, medium-term and long-term time frames. indigenous knowledge has been defined as institutionalized local knowledge that has been built upon and verbally passed on from one generation to the other (osunade, 1994; warren, 1992). it is the basis for local-level decisionmaking in many rural communities. indigenous knowledge has value not only for the culture in which it evolves, but also for scientists and planners striving to improve conditions in rural localities (mundy and compton, 1991). the knowledge set is determined by the previous generations, observations and experiment and provides an inherent connection to one’s surroundings and environment. consequently, indigenous knowledge is not transferable but provides relationships that connect people directly with environments (woodley, 1991). these findings concentrate on the development of some low cost climate change adaptation strategies for agro crop production in the flood prone areas of bangladesh, and examine their low cost financial suitability. these developed adaptation strategies may facilitate the rural poor farmer to face the challenge of climate change in near future. material and methods study area the experiments were carried out in the jamalgonj upajila (sub-district) which is situated under the district of sunamgonj area of bangladesh. this jamalgonj upazila is located in between 24°50´ and 25°04´ northern latitudes and in between 91°05´ and 91°19´ east longitudes. it is bounded by tahirpur and bishwambarpur upazilas on the north, khaliajuri and derai upazilas on the south, sunamganj sadar upazila on the east, mohanganj and dharmapasha upazilas on the west. (banglapedia, 2012). the climate is humid subtropical with a predominantly hot and humid summer and a relatively cool winter. average annual rainfall of sunamgonj district is between (4000-5500) mm and mean annual temperature is (24.5-26.0)°c (hossain, 1990). however, the total area of jamalgoonj is 338.78 sq km, and crossed by the great river surma. others river is nawa gang, baulai and dhanu. a lot of wetland including pakna haor, halir haor, chanuar haor and dakuar haor and the beel of patilachura, pangna, lamba, baska, chhatidhara and kachma are noted. the purposive sampling areas remain submerged for the six months in every year (banglapedia, 2012) (figure 1). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 42-58 44 map 1: location of the study area map 2: location of the study area (map credit: banglapedia, 2012) data sources and sampling technique the study areas were selected purposefully as there are farming systems. also farmers were selected randomly with the sampling of the three unions, namely as jamalgonj sadar union, bhimkhali union and beheli union. a semi-structured questionnaire was prepared for interviewing farmers by direct observation of their farming system. unit price (/kg) was collected through market survey by random sampling over one week of each replicate treatment yield production variable. crop selection the potential agro crops were chosen for the study through market survey. the selected agro crops were preferred both by farmers and consumer in their daily food items. and these selected agro crops are bean (lablab purpureus), tomato (lycoperscion esculeatum), cowpea (vigna sinensis) long coriander (eryngium foetidum), bottle gourd (lageneria siceraria), kangkong (ipomoea reptans), spinach (spinacea oleracea ). experimental pattern there are carried out two different types of experiments in this study and they are as follows– experiment-a a randomized complete block design with five replicates was adopted for each treatment in this study. there were altogether 35 tubs involving treatments combine with 7 various hybrid species. the experiment has the following treatmentsta: bean+tub; tb: cowpea + tub; tc: tomato + tub; td: kangkong + tub; te: spinach + tub; tf: long coriander + tub; tg: bottle gourd + tub. experiment-b the beneficial impact of cow dung and water hyacinths for improving the growth of agro crop was examined in this experiment. randomized complete block design with five replicates of each treatment was adopted. there were altogether 70 tukri involving treatments asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 42-58 45 combined with seven various species whereby 35 tukri (bamboo basketry) involving treatment matching with cow dung and soil glutted potting media and another 35 tukri involving treatment design with water hyacinth and soil belonging same species. the experiment has the following treatmentsta: bean +tukri; tb: cowpea + tukri; tc: tomato + tukri; td: kangkong + tukri; te: spinach + tukri; tf: long coriander + tukri; tg: bottle gourd + tukri. benefit-cost ratio (bcr) benefit-cost ratio (bcr) is used for decision making about the establishing farming techniques. the benefit-cost ratio is calculated by total benefit divided total cost. and, net income (ni) is calculated by the total income (ti) minus total cost (tc). results and discussion results in this study, different types of adaptation strategies for agro-crop production are examined through an experimental treatment for flood prone areas of bangladesh. they can be used all the year round as for summer and winter crops and can supply enough agro crops to be eaten and sold in climate change adverse condition. experiment a cost benefit analysis cost benefit analysis for thirty five tubs of seven treatments were measured here. total benefit is 899.63tk. (bdt) (10.81usd) 2 . if the farmers do not destructed the tub until broken and keep it for the next year application for better production, he/she will derive more benefit initially only 1249.63tk. if the farmers contribute his/her own labor in this farming system, he/she will be gain net benefit 1179.63 tk. among the seven treatment t c is more beneficial. the average b/c ratio of this treatment is 3.54 followed by t g(3.22), tf(2.14) tb(1.41), t e(1.34) t a(1.16) and t d(1.04) the lowest b/c ratio was found in the treatment td (1.04) (table 1). 2 01 usd = 83.1910 bdt as of 28th april, 2012 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 42-58 46 table 1: cost benefits analysis (tub) treatment r expenditure (tk.) revenue (tk.) **benefit cost ratio labor seed top cow dung pesticide transports total cost production(kg) *unite price/(kg) income *net income ta ta1 8 2.00 10 1.20 0.50 0.8 22.50 0.50 26.00 13.00 -9.5 0.58 ta2 8 2.00 10 1.20 0.50 0.8 22.50 1.50 26.00 39.00 16.5 1.73 ta3 8 2.00 10 1.20 0.50 0.8 22.50 1.00 26.00 26.00 3.5 1.16 ta4 8 2.00 10 1.20 0.50 0.8 22.50 0.50 26.00 13.00 -9.5 0.58 ta5 8 2.00 10 1.20 0.50 0.8 22.50 1.50 26.00 39.00 16.5 1.73 average 8 2.00 10 1.20 0.50 0.8 22.50 1.00 26.00 26.00 3.5 1.16 tb tb1 8 1.20 10 1.20 0.30 0.8 21.50 1.00 28.42 28.42 6.92 1.32 tb2 8 1.20 10 1.20 0.30 0.8 21.50 1.50 28.42 42.63 21.13 1.98 tb3 8 1.20 10 1.20 0.30 0.8 21.50 2.50 28.42 71.05 49.55 3.30 tb4 8 1.20 10 1.20 0.30 0.8 21.50 2.00 28.42 56.84 35.34 2.64 tb5 8 1.20 10 1.20 0.30 0.8 21.50 0.50 28.42 14.21 -7.29 0.66 average 8 1.20 10 1.20 0.30 0.8 21.50 1.07 28.42 30.41 8.91 1.41 tc tc1 8 1.20 10 1.20 0.40 0.8 21.60 2.50 45.00 112.50 90.9 5.21 tc2 8 1.20 10 1.20 0.40 0.8 21.60 1.00 45.00 45.00 23.4 2.08 tc3 8 1.20 10 1.20 0.40 0.8 21.60 2.50 45.00 112.50 90.9 5.21 tc4 8 1.20 10 1.20 0.40 0.8 21.60 0.50 45.00 22.50 0.9 1.04 tc5 8 1.20 10 1.20 0.40 0.8 21.60 2.00 45.00 90.00 68.4 4.17 average 8 1.20 10 1.20 0.40 0.8 21.60 1.70 45.00 76.50 54.9 3.54 td td1 8 1.50 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.50 0.50 18.57 9.29 -12.22 0.43 td2 8 1.50 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.50 1.50 18.57 27.86 6.36 1.30 td3 8 1.50 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.50 0.50 18.57 9.29 -12.22 0.43 td5 8 1.50 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.50 1.00 18.57 18.57 -2.93 0.86 td5 8 1.50 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.50 2.50 18.57 46.43 24.93 2.16 average 8 1.50 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.50 1.20 18.57 22.28 0.78 1.04 te te1 8 1.00 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.00 1.00 31.22 31.22 10.22 1.49 te2 8 1.00 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.00 1.50 31.22 46.83 25.83 2.23 te3 8 1.00 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.00 0.50 31.22 15.61 -5.39 0.74 te4 8 1.00 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.00 1.00 31.22 31.22 10.22 1.49 te5 8 1.00 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.00 0.50 31.22 15.61 -5.39 0.74 average 8 1.00 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.00 0.90 31.22 28.10 7.10 1.34 tf tf1 8 4.00 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 24.00 0.30 160.72 48.22 24.22 2.01 tf2 8 4.00 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 24.00 0.20 160.72 32.14 8.14 1.34 tf3 8 4.00 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 24.00 0.40 160.72 64.29 40.29 2.68 tf4 8 4.00 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 24.00 0.50 160.72 80.36 56.36 3.35 tf5 8 4.00 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 24.00 0.20 160.72 32.14 8.14 1.34 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 42-58 47 average 8 4.00 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 24.00 0.32 160.72 51.43 27.43 2.14 tg tg1 8 1.50 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.50 4 pieces 28.86/ piece 115.44 93.94 5.37 tg2 8 1.50 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.50 2 pieces 28.86/ piece 57.72 36.22 2.68 tg3 8 1.50 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.50 1 pieces 28.86/ piece 115.44 93.94 5.37 tg4 8 1.50 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.50 3 pieces 28.86/ piece 86.58 65.08 4.03 tg5 8 1.50 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.50 2 pieces 28.86/ piece 57.72 36.22 2.68 average 8 1.50 10 1.20 0.00 0.8 21.50 2.4 pieces 28.86/ piece 69.26 47.76 3.22 notes: r=replicates, ta=bean, tb=cowpea tc=tomato, td=kangkong, te= spinach; tf= long coriander; tg= bottle gourd * net income is estimated as the total income minus total cost. **benefitcost ratio is estimated as income divided by total cost. *unit price (/kg) was collected through market survey by random sampling over one week of each replicate treatment yield production variable. each value under expenditure and revenue represent the seasonally expenditure and revenue except tub cost over a rotation length of 6 months. this experiment includes an allowance for unpaid labor of the experiment treatment estimated at the present wage rate (wage rate/ day; male tk.200) and every day one labor has prepared 25 tub. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 42-58 48 modification of adaptation strategies dais/stage adaptation the stage preparation technique may be a new farming system in flood prone areas of bangladesh. an effort of practicing stage preparation has been reported here. tub beds were shifted on the bamboo stage made on the pond. stage established (a platform for keeping plants tub bed) by pieces of bamboo. in the stage establishment, at first six pieces of bamboo were driven into the soil under the water of the pond at a proper distance mainly 56 ft away from each other. then two bamboo pieces were parallels tied by plastic ropes for strengthen of the stage then again another two bamboo pieces were parallel tied by plastic ropes. similarly, bamboo sticks were crossly arranged to prepare the platform for putting tubes. tubs were put on the stage for cultivation of crops. finally, crops from the stage were harvested manually or with knives (figure-2). fig-a fig-b figure 2: clockwise stage preparation and their adaptation technique (fig-a: bamboo sticks were crossly arranged and attached by plastic ropes; fig-b: bamboo stage made on the pond and adapting over-view with crop tub gathers on the stage) experiment-b the techniques of two experiments were altogether combined with seven various species the first experiment involving treatment matching with cow dung and soil glutted potting media and second involving treatment design with water hyacinth and soil belonging same species. cost benefit analysis cost benefit analyses for thirty five tukri were measured here. total benefit 1161.03 tk. (bdt) (13.96 usd) 1 . if the farmers do not destructed the tukri until decompose and keep it for the next year production for better yield, he/she will gain benefit initially only 1686.03 tk. (bdt) (20.27 usd) 1 . if the farmers contribute his/her own labor in this farming system, he/she will be gain net benefit 1511.03 tk. (bdt) (18.16 usd) 1 . among the seven treatments tc is more beneficial. the average b/c ratio of this treatment is 3.52 followed by tf (3.36), tg (2.58), tb (2.01), ta (1.94) td (1.43) and te (0.95). the lowest b/c ratio was found in the treatment te (0.95) (table 2). controversy, second experiment had measured total benefit 1818.36 tk. (bdt) (21.86 usd) 1 . if the farmers do not destructed the tukri bed until decompose and keep it for the next year application for better production, he/she will gain benefit initially only 2343.36 tk. (bdt) (28.17 usd) 1 . if the farmers contribute his/her own labor in this farming system, he/she will be gain net benefit 2168.36 tk. (bdt) (26.06 usd) 1 . among the seven treatments tf is more beneficial. the average b/c ratio of this treatment is 4.74 followed by tg (3.46), tb (3.26), tc (2.74), ta (2.69), te (1.65), td (1.24) and the lowest b/c ratio was found in the treatment td (1.24) (table 3). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 42-58 49 table 2: cost benefits analysis (tukri; soil + cow dung) treatment r expenditure (tk.) revenue (tk.) **benefit cost ratio labor seed tukri cow dung pesticide transports total cost production(kg) unite price/(kg) income *net income ta ta1 10 2.00 15 3.50 0.50 2.50 33.50 2.50 26.00 65.00 31.5 1.94 ta2 10 2.00 15 3.50 0.50 2.50 33.50 3.00 26.00 78.00 44.5 2.33 ta3 10 2.00 15 3.50 0.50 2.50 33.50 3.50 26.00 91.00 57.5 2.72 ta4 10 2.00 15 3.50 0.50 2.50 33.50 1.50 26.00 39.00 5.5 1.16 ta5 10 2.00 15 3.50 0.50 2.50 33.50 2.00 26.00 52.00 18.5 1.55 average 10 2.00 15 3.50 0.50 2.50 33.50 2.50 26.00 65.00 31.5 1.94 tb tb1 10 1.20 15 3.50 0.30 2.50 32.50 2.50 28.42 71.05 38.55 2.19 tb2 10 1.20 15 3.50 0.30 2.50 32.50 3.50 28.42 99.47 66.97 3.06 tb3 10 1.20 15 3.50 0.30 2.50 32.50 1.50 28.42 42.63 10.13 1.31 tb4 10 1.20 15 3.50 0.30 2.50 32.50 3.00 28.42 85.26 52.76 2.62 tb5 10 1.20 15 3.50 0.30 2.50 32.50 1.00 28.42 28.42 -4.08 0.87 average 10 1.20 15 3.50 0.30 2.50 32.50 2.30 28.42 65.37 32.87 2.01 tc tc1 10 1.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 32.00 2.00 45.00 90.00 58 2.81 tc2 10 1.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 32.00 1.50 45.00 67.50 35.5 2.11 tc3 10 1.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 32.00 2.00 45.00 90.00 58 2.81 tc4 10 1.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 32.00 1.00 45.00 45.00 13 1.41 tc5 10 1.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 32.00 1.00 45.00 45.00 13 1.41 average 10 1.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 32.00 2.50 45.00 112.50 80.5 3.52 td td1 10 1.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 32.50 2.00 18.57 37.14 4.64 1.14 td2 10 1.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 32.50 1.00 18.57 18.57 -13.93 0.57 td3 10 1.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 32.50 1.50 18.57 27.86 -4.65 0.86 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 42-58 50 td4 10 1.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 32.50 2.00 18.57 37.14 4.64 1.14 td5 10 1.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 32.50 1.80 18.57 33.43 0.93 1.03 average 10 1.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 32.50 2.50 18.57 46.43 13.93 1.43 te te1 10 2.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 33.00 1.00 31.22 31.22 -1.78 0.95 te2 10 2.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 33.00 1.00 31.22 31.22 -1.78 0.95 te3 10 2.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 33.00 1.50 31.22 46.83 13.83 1.42 te4 10 2.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 33.00 1.00 31.22 31.22 -1.78 0.95 te5 10 2.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 33.00 0.50 31.22 15.61 -17.39 0.47 average 10 2.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 33.00 1.00 31.22 31.22 -1.78 0.95 tf tf1 10 4.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 35.00 0.80 160.72 117.71 82.71 3.36 tf2 10 4.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 35.00 0.50 160.72 73.57 38.57 2.10 tf3 10 4.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 35.00 1.10 160.72 161.85 126.85 4.62 tf4 10 4.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 35.00 0.40 160.72 58.86 23.86 1.68 tf5 10 4.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 35.00 1.20 160.72 176.57 141.57 5.04 average 10 4.00 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 35.00 0.80 160.72 117.71 82.71 3.36 *tg tg1 10 2.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 33.50 4 pieces 28.86/ piece 115.44 81.94 3.45 tg2 10 2.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 33.50 2 pieces 28.86/ piece 57.72 24.22 1.72 tg3 10 2.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 33.50 4 pieces 28.86/ piece 115.44 81.94 3.45 tg4 10 2.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 33.50 3 pieces 28.86/ piece 86.58 53.08 2.58 tg5 10 2.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 33.50 2 pieces 28.86/ piece 57.72 24.22 1.72 10 2.50 15 3.50 0.00 2.50 33.50 3 pieces 28.86/ piece 86.58 53.08 2.58 notes: r=replicates, ta=bean, tb=cowpea, tc=tomato, td=kangkong, te= spinach, tf= long coriander, *tg=bottle gourd, in case of tg(bottle gourd) was sold unit of price per piece. * net income is estimated as the total income minus total cost. **benefitcost ratio is estimated as income divided by total cost. each value under expenditure and revenue represent the seasonally expenditure and revenue except tukri cost over a rotation length of 6 months. this experiment includes an allowance for unpaid labor of the experiment treatment estimated at the present wage rate (wage rate/ day; male tk.200) and every day one labor has prepared 20 tukri. . . 51 table 3: cost benefits analysis (tukri; soil + water hyacinth) treatment r expenditure (tk.) revenue (tk.) labor seed tukri pesticide transports total cost production(kg) unite price/(kg) income *net income **benefit cost ratio ta ta1 10 2.00 15 0.60 1.43 29.03 4.50 26.00 117.00 87.97 4.03 ta2 10 2.00 15 0.60 1.43 29.03 3.00 26.00 78.00 48.97 2.69 ta3 10 2.00 15 0.60 1.43 29.03 3.50 26.00 91.00 61.97 3.13 ta4 10 2.00 15 0.60 1.43 29.03 1.50 26.00 39.00 9.97 1.34 ta5 10 2.00 15 0.60 1.43 29.03 2.50 26.00 65.00 35.97 2.24 average 10 2.00 15 0.60 1.43 29.03 3.00 26.00 78.00 48.97 2.69 tb tb1 10 1.20 15 0.30 1.43 27.93 2.50 28.42 71.05 43.12 2.54 tb2 10 1.20 15 0.30 1.43 27.93 3.50 28.42 99.47 71.54 3.56 tb3 10 1.20 15 0.30 1.43 27.93 4.50 28.42 127.89 99.96 4.58 tb4 10 1.20 15 0.30 1.43 27.93 3.00 28.42 85.26 57.33 3.05 tb5 10 1.20 15 0.30 1.43 27.93 2.50 28.42 71.05 43.12 2.54 average 10 1.20 15 0.30 1.43 27.93 3.20 28.42 90.94 63.01 3.26 tc tc1 10 1.00 15 0.50 1.43 27.93 2.50 45.00 112.50 84.57 4.03 tc2 10 1.00 15 0.50 1.43 27.93 1.50 45.00 67.50 39.57 2.42 tc3 10 1.00 15 0.50 1.43 27.93 2.00 45.00 90.00 62.07 3.22 tc4 10 1.00 15 0.50 1.43 27.93 1.50 45.00 67.50 39.57 2.42 tc5 10 1.00 15 0.50 1.43 27.93 1.00 45.00 45.00 17.07 1.61 average 10 1.00 15 0.50 1.43 27.93 1.70 45.00 76.50 48.57 2.74 td td1 10 1.40 15 0.00 1.43 27.83 1.70 18.57 31.57 3.74 1.13 td2 10 1.40 15 0.00 1.43 27.83 1.50 18.57 27.86 0.03 1.00 td3 10 1.40 15 0.00 1.43 27.83 1.00 18.57 18.57 -9.26 0.67 td4 10 1.40 15 0.00 1.43 27.83 2.80 18.57 52.00 24.17 1.87 td5 10 1.40 15 0.00 1.43 27.83 2.30 18.57 42.71 14.88 1.53 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 42-58 52 average 10 1.40 15 0.00 1.43 27.83 1.86 18.57 34.54 6.71 1.24 te te1 10 2.00 15 0.00 1.43 28.43 1.50 31.22 46.83 18.40 1.65 te2 10 2.00 15 0.00 1.43 28.43 1.20 31.22 37.46 9.03 1.32 te3 10 2.00 15 0.00 1.43 28.43 1.50 31.22 46.83 18.40 1.65 te4 10 2.00 15 0.00 1.43 28.43 1.60 31.22 49.95 21.52 1.76 te5 10 2.00 15 0.00 1.43 28.43 0.50 31.22 15.61 -12.82 0.55 average 10 2.00 15 0.00 1.43 28.43 1.50 31.22 46.83 18.40 1.65 tf tf1 10 3.40 15 0.00 1.43 29.83 0.50 160.72 80.36 50.53 2.69 tf2 10 3.40 15 0.00 1.43 29.83 1.20 160.72 192.86 163.03 6.47 tf3 10 3.40 15 0.00 1.43 29.83 0.30 160.72 48.22 18.39 1.62 tf4 10 3.40 15 0.00 1.43 29.83 1.40 160.72 225.01 195.18 7.54 tf5 10 3.40 15 0.00 1.43 29.83 1.00 160.72 160.72 130.89 5.39 average 10 3.40 15 0.00 1.43 29.83 0.88 160.72 141.43 111.60 4.74 *tg tg1 10 2.50 15 0.00 2.50 30.00 4 pieces 28.86/ piece 115.44 85.44 3.85 tg2 10 2.50 15 0.00 2.50 30.00 2 pieces 28.86/ piece 57.72 27.72 1.92 tg3 10 2.50 15 0.00 2.50 30.00 5 pieces 28.86/ piece 144.30 114.30 4.81 tg4 10 2.50 15 0.00 2.50 30.00 3 pieces 28.86/ piece 86.58 56.58 2.89 tg5 10 2.50 15 0.00 2.50 30.00 4 pieces 28.86/ piece 115.44 85.44 3.85 10 2.50 15 0.00 2.50 30.00 3.6 pieces 28.86/ piece 103.90 73.90 3.46 notes: r=replicates, ta=bean, tb=cowpea, tc=tomato, td=kangkong, te= spinach, tf= long coriander, *tg=bottle gourd, in case of tg(bottle gourd) was sold unit of price per piece.* net income is estimated as the total income minus total cost. **benefitcost ratio is estimated as income divided by total cost. each value under expenditure and revenue represent the seasonally expenditure and revenue except tub cost over a rotation length of 6 months. this experiment includes an allowance for unpaid labor of the experiment treatment estimated at the present wage rate (wage rate/ day; male tk.200) and every day one labor has prepared 20 tukri. . . 53 modification of adaptation strategies dais/ stage adaptation stage preparation technique is a completely new farming system in bangladesh. an effort of practicing stage on the pond or any other flooded area has been given here. stage was established (a platform for keeping the plants on top bed) by a piece of bamboo. in stage establishment, the first of six bamboo post was driven into the soil below the water of the pond at a proper distance mainly 5-6 ft away from each other. after then two bamboos were parallel arranged on the post of bamboo tied by plastic ropes to strengthen the stage. then other bamboos were parallel arranged across the parallel two bamboos tied by plastic ropes. similarly bamboo sticks were crossly arranged to prepare the stage for a platform of plants tukri. tukris were put on the stage for cultivation of crops on the pond or flood affected area. lastly, we harvested crop from stage manually or with knife. collected agro crops were mainly adult feeding part of crops, not the whole plant. crops were harvested several times from a tukri in this way (figure-3). photo a photo b photo c fig-a fig-b figure-3: clockwise stage preparation and their adaptation technique (fig-a: bamboo stage made on the pond and tukri a side-view gathers on the stage; fig-b: shows dais adapting system with the crop on the stage). raft adaptation raft (locally known as vella) technique is a completely new farming system in flood prone areas of bangladesh. an effort of practicing raft has been taken here. tukris were shifted on the raft in the pond or haor-baor or river side or others flooded area. raft (a platform for keeping tukri bed) established by piece of banana logs. at first some proper size banana trees were cut for making rafts, and then connect them with bamboo through banana logs. after then tukris were settled on the banana raft which float on the flooded water of the flooded areas (figure4). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 42-58 54 photo a photo b fig-a fig-b figure 4: clockwise raft preparation and their adaptation technique (fig-a: overview banana raft on the water; fig-b: show raft adapting system on water with crop) heap made on the plain land the heap preparation technique may be an old farming system in the flood prone areas in bangladesh. an effort of practicing heap in the pond side has been described here. if whole land is flooded, tukris can be settled on the heap land (locally known as kandi). but the dry condition a hole was dug on heap land and the tukri put on them. the size of the hole was as same as the tukri size. small pieces of water hyacinth were also given in the hole which may turn into organic manure after a few days. in this way half of the hole was filled with a small piece of water hyacinth. when tukris were settled within the opening, then the gap was filled with soil very tidily. creeping and spreading agro crop was supported by a bamboo stem (locally known as jhar) (figure-5). fig-a fig-b asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 42-58 55 fig-c fig-d figure 5: clockwise heap adaptation technique (fig-a: show heap adapting system over-view and tukri to settle on heap land; fig-b: digging for tukri set up in a hole on the heap land; fig-c: pressure by foot on water hyacinth based on indigenous system; fig-d: adapting condition and use support bamboo as jhar). heap made on the water logged condition it is also a heap adaptation made on waterlogged condition of the pond. hanging preparation technique is partly familiar in the flood prone areas of bangladesh. an effort of practicing hanging system on the ponds, hoar or boar side of flooded area has been described here. it was made of water hyacinth or water weeds which were piling on the waterlogged area. the maximum size of which was 2.5 ft wide 3 ft long and 6 ft depth. then tukri to settle on the stack of the water hyacinths (locally known as dibi). after that at the side of the stack a platform for creeping plants to shoot up and spread (locally known as jangle) had established by bamboo. in the jangle establishment, at first six pieces of bamboo were driven into the soil below the water of the pond at a proper distance mainly 6-7 ft away from each other. after then two bamboo pieces were parallels tied by plastic ropes for strengthen of the jangle then again another two bamboo pieces were parallel tied by plastic ropes. similarly bamboo sticks were crossly arranged to prepare the platform for creeping plants to shoot and spread. finally crops from the jangle were harvested by manually or through knife (figure-6). discussion the indigenous knowledge system is the main basis of the climate change adaptation strategies for agro crop production and it ensures the financial aptness for flood prone areas of the northeastern part of bangladesh. the most significant aspect of the results is developed from different climate change adaptation strategies in farming system for production of common agro crops as well as their financial suitability of the study area. according to indigenous knowledge system, in our study we found that by identifying the best developed adaptation strategies and assess the financial suitability of farming system for production of common agro crops can be ensured. . . 56 fig-a fig-b figure 6: clockwise preparation and their adaptation technique (fig-a: overview prepared of bamboo jangle and dibi on the water; fig-b: show adapting system on waterlogged condition and crop is being creeping and spread with support as jhar) a similar finding was reported of bcas (2006) that, the farmers in many floodplain have found various ways of improving their climate change adaptation strategies in farming system and adopted floating gardens (locally called baira) for growing agro crops. if the local poor farmer prepare baira and get involved in the marketing of agro crops, they would be benefited of the season in the beel areas. baira cultivation promotes the local technique, helping in conserving indigenous knowledge. it has been practiced in some parts of bangladesh such as gopalganj, barisal and pirojpur as well as other territories. the results of these studies were supported by some researchers (haq et al., 2005; haq et al., 2002; ghosal and haq, 2000), who described the soil-less agriculture is an indigenous practice in the central southwestern part of bangladesh. this study corroborates the findings of rasid and mallik (1995) regarding agricultural cropping patterns and related development strategies. moreover, some researchers (green et al., 1994; haq et al., 2004) who reported that the most benefit can be achieved with less input. household income level has a close link to coping strategies and can readily help them in a flood event and therefore is less vulnerable to flood impacts. also, our findings were agreed with (nyong et al., 2007) who reported the local farmers have developed adaptation strategies that enable reduce their vulnerability to climate variability. the farmers are considered that financial suitability is the most important indicator of adaptive capability. the indigenous knowledge systems offer great prospects that will be attractive enough to the vast majority of smallscale farmers who are required to apply them. in some cases, we found that some of developed adaptation strategies have been more effective in the study area but it is a complex process and financially more costly. they are linked to others as ecological, social or economic condition. these findings coincide with paul and routray (2010) that traditional strategies make a positive contribution to improving people’s adaptability to a flood hazard, but as a whole, it is a complex process, linked to other physical and socioeconomic variables. although our research is gradually recognizing the importance of indigenous knowledge systems in developing climate change strategies have received little attention, indigenous knowledge systems create a moral economy asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 42-58 57 (nyong et al., 2007). people’s indigenous adapting strategies can significantly reduce their vulnerability to disaster. however, such strategies are highly effective only in a normal situation: when floodwaters rise and cross a critical threshold, people have no choice but to migrate to a safer place (paul and routray, 2010). indeed, farmers in our study site still prefer their self developed different climate change adaptation strategies in farming system for production of common agro crops because it is their indigenous knowledge system and in the short term it gives relatively stable net cash flow each year. conclusion the south asian bangladesh is a low-lying country, however, she is known globally as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. according to the prediction of scientists in the near future the negative impacts of climate change could be more dangerous. in this situation mitigation is impossible because a favorable return back is a lengthy process. so we need to improve our adaptation strategies. this paper has discussed climate change adaptation strategies for flood prone areas of bangladesh. it is a severe flood affected country. experience shows that some floods in the agricultural sector can be a cause of huge losses. adaptation strategies have the potential to alleviate adverse impacts, as well as to capitalize on new opportunities posed by climate change. a few adaptation options have also been identified. these options will pay a favorable return even if the climate change does not occur. the present experiment is found to be the best adaptation option as well as a kind of new farming system which provides high yielding agricultural production helping flood affected people. the cost-benefit analysis of the experiment reveals that options are financially sustainable. the benefit-cost ratio (bcr) is also satisfied that is calculated for a certain period. acknowledgments the authors would like to thank mohammed abu sayed arfin khan, md. mominul islam, kazi mohammad masum, syed ajijur rahman and shitangsu kumar paul for their support and guidance. the authors are also thankful to the department of forestry and environment science, shahjalal university of science and technology, bangladesh who supported this research. many thanks are also extended to the farmers at the field site where field experiment was conducted. it is worth-mentioning that we are very happy with getting a support from the seminary library of the department of folklore, university of rajshahi, bangladesh. references ali, a. 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(1995). flood adaptations in bangladesh. is the compartmentalization scheme compatible with indigenous adjustments of rice cropping to flood regimes? applied geography, 15(1), 3– 17. undp (2004). united nations development programme. user’s guidebook for the adaptation policy framework. p. 33. unfccc (2007). united nations framework convention on climate change. climate change. impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation in developing countries. climate change secretariat, bonn, germany. available at: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/publicat ions/impacts.pdf. accessed on november 21. 2010. warren, d. m. (1992). strengthening indigenous nigerian organizations and associations for rural development: the case of ara community. occasional paper, african resource centre for indigenous knowledge, no. 1. woodley, e. (1991). indigenous ecological knowledge systems and development. agriculture human values, 8, 173–178. http://www.leisa.info/ http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/publications/impacts.pdf http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/publications/impacts.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants published by: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 5(2)2015, www.aessweb.com 42 assessing the extension service needs of credit officers of microfinance banks in anambra state: implications for rural finance intermediation onugu, charles uchenna department of agricultural economics and extension, nnamdi azikiwe university, awka, nigeria taiwo abdulahi olabisi and agbasi obianuju e. department of cooperative economics and management, nnamdi azikiwe university, awka, nigeria lawal kamaldeen cooperative management units, national open university of nigeria, nigeria abstract the credit officers of microfinance banks (mfbs) are key players in rural finance intermediation for economic development. the paper assessed their extension service needs in anambra state. thirty-six (36) credit officers drawn from eleven (11) rural based mfbs in anambra state were the respondents. data was collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics of simple percentage, frequency table and mean. three (3) hypotheses were tested with the use of chi square (x 2 ). the findings of the study revealed that the credit officers are sufficiently knowledgeable about credit extension service delivery. however, they were found not involved in designing, and implementation of effective credit policies for their clients. also, they are not adequately motivated to carry out their duties. based on the findings, it was recommended that the board of directors and management of the mfbs should provide capacity building program for credit officers to improve and sustain their knowledge and skills, also they should improve their welfare especially, attractive and encouraging salary, incentives and insurance cover which are paramount to performance. keywords: micro finance banks, rural finance intermediation, credit officers, credit extension service 1. introduction 1 credit is a critical factor in development of agriculture in the rural areas and small business in general. this is because it derives capital formation and technology upgrade (adigwe, 2007). micro finance activity involves the direct making of small loans available and strengthening the capacity of credit officers who are duty bond to deliver credit at the rural level. credit officers of mfbs are financial and education providers to farmers. using the most effective and efficient operational strategy, this is to provide the link between sources of knowledge, information and financial benefit, inform of loan disbursement to the beneficiaries. the knowledge provided by the credit officers must be processed into forms useable and adaptable to appropriate local conditions (umebali, 2004). micro finance banks embark on various initiatives to strengthen their credit delivery structure at the local levels. giving its credit officers the required personnel management corresponding author’s name: onugu, charles uchenna email address: taiwo2020@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:taiwo2020@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 42-52 43 with emphasis on manpower planning, training and development is key to their performance. the effect of the personnel management on credit officer of mfbs is because their duties require an active participation in training, decisions and program involving appropriate disbursement and use of credit by beneficiaries (anyanwu, 1998). the question is how and where does credit officer of microfinance banks feature in rural credit administration? in answering this question, we should place credit officer of mfbs in its traditional position in-between the credit source and the credit user. extension service needs of micro finance banks play a supporting role in credit procurement, credit disbursement, and use of credit as well as repayment of credit. umebali (2004) is of the view that credit officers of micro finance banks have some vital role to play as an extension agents and these role include to help farmer identify and plan prospective viable projects; help farmers assess their credit worthiness and also assist beneficiaries to make profitable economic decisions; they create awareness campaigns to inform client about credit sources and conditions for obtaining credit; and, help to stimulate group action through their instructions on the principles and practices of group formations. also, anyanwu (1998) opined that credit officers play crucial extension role by informing farmers on the dynamics of group behaviors’, theories and principles of group formation and the need for effective management of the group. therefore, in order to make credit attractive and more productive, the mfbs will begin the implementation of necessary capacity building programmes and motivational activities that will boost productivity and zeal of credit officers of mfbs so as to have passion and competence in effective service delivery as rural finance intermediations and as such improve the economic development of the rural areas as well as improve the livelihood of its populace. majority of credit officers of microfinance banks do really understand their roles but do not give members of rural communities the required information and basic services that will sustain their economic empowerment (ahmed, 2008). and there are challenges faced by these rural dwellers especially farmers of which they require credit-assistance from micro finance banks through the intermediation of their credit officers who are employed to bring change through appropriate dissemination of required information relevant to the beneficiaries clients, for efficient productivity. the fact is that micro finance banks are agents of rural development, through their credit officers, by assisting rural dwellers who are trapped in poverty and isolated with low per capita income. but in the view of anyanwu (1998), the failure of credit officers of micro finance banks to exercise effective service delivery to its clients has caused a negative down-turn in the rural economy which also made negative impact on the financing of rural economy especially rural populace whose majority of are farmers and other rural small scale enterprises. so in order to effectively actualize the sustenance of increase in per capita income, which is associated with concomitant structural changes in the socio-economic sphere of the rural people, credit officers of mfbs must undergo proper extension training and possess the basic skills required for effective service delivery to the rural dwellers. there are numerous constraints that are hindering effective lending by mfbs through their credit officers. therefore, assessing the extension service needs of credit officers of mfbs is very crucial to advancing their effective intermediation in rural finance an as such, the call for the study. this study tried to assess the extension service needs of credit officers of mfbs in anambra state of nigeria in which the implication will serve for rural finance intermediation. specifically, the objectives are to:  examine the extent which the credit officers are knowledgeable about credit extension services of mfbs.  assess credit officers level of involvement in the credit extension services of mfbs asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 42-52 44  examine mfbs programmes meant to enhance credit officers performance  identify constraints to effective credit officers’ performance in mfbs, and make recommendations based on findings. 1.1. hypothesis of the study h01: credit officers are not significantly knowledgeable about extension services of mfbs h02: credit officers of mfbs are not involved in the credit extension service delivery to clients. h03: credit officers of mfbs do not significantly have the support of their organization for effective extension service delivery. 1.2. micro finance in nigeria micro finance in nigeria, though on informal setting is as old as the nation itself. though the informal system is a rural unregulated and unofficial financial arrangement, it has highly respected modus operandi by which individual or groups relate in their various capacities as debtors and creditors outside the regimented and regulated markets. the informal financial market is classified into institutional and non-institutional markets. the evolution of banking system in nigeria can be traced to 1890 when the monetization of the nigerian economy was growing side by side with barter trading. during this period, the use of cash had grown sufficiently throughout west africa. modern banking in nigeria dates back to 1892 with the establishment of the african banking corporation in lagos. despite having a vibrant financial sector, accessibility to finance has been the main challenge facing economic agents particularly those at the bottom of the pyramid. medium and small enterprise form the main crust of every economy contributing about 70% of gdp and employing well over 75% of the population both in the rural and urban centers (adeyemi, 2008). this general trend has not been true for nigeria where the financial sector had shown a preference for large multi-nationals and big trading companies to the detriment of other sectors in the economy thereby making access to credit for input purchase (fertilizer, seed and labour), processing and trade a key constraint to improved economic performance in the rural sector (adekanye, 1998). in the non-institutional markets, the activities of savings and acquisition of credits are done by individuals on their own or through person to person arrangement. the market includes selffinancing, financing by relations, friends and well wishers, professional money lenders, jack pot, raffle and fool winnings and trust system of credit transactions. institutional market on the other hand refers to any organizational or institutional arrangement that aim at mobilizing savings and credits found in this market such as the rotating savings and credit associations (roscas), thrift associations, savings mobilization groups (which are traditionally called esusu, bam bam, ajo and adashi) by different communities, daily savings or contribution organizations, cooperative societies, religions organization, social clubs and village credit irrespective of the meager amount it generates remains the major source of finance for the poor who see the formal financial institution as being too bureaucratic, costly and cumbersome (beko, 1991). the government of nigeria has identified micro finance as an effective tool for promoting better access of the poor, low income population and vulnerable groups, to financial and social services and broad based and strong economic growth. micro finance enables poor people to expand their businesses, increase their revenues, and created employment. the government of nigeria has also made several efforts to redressing the inadequate supply or financial services to the poor. in 1936, government in support of the cooperative promulgated the cooperative society’s ordinance. this made the cooperative have regular/compulsory savings as one of their goals. while thrift and credit asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 42-52 45 societies combined regular savings of members with lending. the commercial bill financing scheme in 1962 and the regional commodity boards (later called national commodity boards in 1977) were among the efforts made by government to improve the poor access to lending (aja, 1998). the nigerian agricultural and cooperative bank (nacb) were established in 1972 to act as development finance institution extending to both small and large scale farmers. a similar institution, the agricultural credit guarantee scheme fund (acesf) was established in 978 for the purpose of agricultural risk reduction. the bank guarantees up to 75% of the principle in case of default due to natural events beyond the control of the farmers. others are the rural banking system of 1977, where banks were required to establish a specified number of branches in identified rural areas. export financing rediscount facility in 1987 measured rural credit markets including the sect oral allocation of credit, specified percentage of total deposits mobilized in the rural areas to be lent to borrowers in such areas, concessional interest and grace periods on agricultural loans. however, some of these measures were abolished with the introduction of liberal economic policies in 1989 (ahmed, 2008). the peoples banks established in 1989 for the same purpose, was charged with the responsibility of taking deposit and lending to the poor. there was also licensing of community banks in the 1990s for the provision of non-sophisticated loans to the community. community banks metamorphosed into the recent micro finance bank in 2007. some of these efforts were frustrated by lack of managerial where withal, lack of supervision, mishandling of credit facilities, bribery and corruption (cbn, 2011). this nigerian banking industry which is regulated by the central bank of nigeria is made up of deposit money banks, development finance institution and other financial institutions which include micro finance banks, finance companies, bureau de changes, discount houses and primary mortgage institutions. as at december 2010, the banking industry included twenty four deposit money banks, five discount houses, five development finance institutions, one thousand five hundred and ninety-eight bureau de change, one hundred and seven finance companies and eight hundred and sixty-six micro finance banks (cbn, 1995). to put micro finance in proper perspective, the nigerian government launched the micro finance policy, regulating and supervisory frame work for nigeria on 15 th december, 2005. the policy as stated by cbn (2011), seeks to achieve the following targets:  cover the majority of the poor but economically active population by 2020.  increase the share of micro credit as a percentage of total credit to the economy from 0.9 percent in 2005 to as at least 20 percent in 2020.  increase the share of micro credit as a percentage of gdp from 0.2 percent in 2005 to at least 5 percent in 2020.  promote the participation of at least two-thirds of state and local governments in micro credit financing by 2015.  improve women’s access to financial services by 5% annually; and,  increase the number of linkages among universal banks, development banks, specialized finance institutions and microfinance banks by 10% annually. 1.3. practice of credit administration in financial institutions credit administration in financial institutions could be explained as a comprehensive arrangement for funding, financing, or providing the needed facilities on deferred payment basis for the support and promotion of a particular programme and the economy (agene, 1995). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 42-52 46 usually such a measure is intended to fill a missing gap that could hinder a planned course of action geared towards achieving definite goals in agro-industrial, marketing, housing and other sectors of the economy. the purpose of a financial institutions or organization is to make credit facilities available to members of the society at a reasonable cost or interest rate. a great deal of effort is required on the part of the policy makers of financial institutions in their credit administration and processing to the needy citizens of the country (agene, 1995). financial institutions give credit inform of loans either in the form of an overdraft or a full loan. an overdraft is a facility to draw cheque over and above the amount shown in credit on a customers’ current account. by this method the financial institutions does not know exactly how much it will be asked to lend but it usually puts an upper limit on the overdraft facility in the interest of the financial institutions and the customer. when a customer takes his account into overdraft without first having secured the financial institution permission, the customer is acting illegally and the financial institution is not aware of its commitment until a formal agreement is reached. in the case of commercial banks, for a customer to enjoy this facility, he must be operating a current account with his bank (okaro and onyekwelu, 2003). when a loan is arranged the bank adds the amount to the customers’ current account and opens up a loan account in the name of the customers with the balance in debit. when considering whether to lend money to a customer the financial institution managers base their decisions on principles which have evolved over the years. basically, the manager is lending to the proposition. this is the proposal the customer brings to the manager in order to secure loan. this is not just the use to which the money will be put. the manager goes through the proposal and then using these principles and his experience decides whether or not to grant the loan. he does not apply these principles strictly at all times but has the power to grant a loan even if it is seen as an extremely high risk. it may be that, he or she wishes to foster a very useful connection. this is where the art of lending comes in; for he needs to be able to know just when to accept a risk with the hope that it will end up profitable for all concerned. however, in nature of credit administration, more often than not financial institutions managers are very careful about lending, so that generally only reasonable safe and secure prepositions are accepted. 2. methodology the type of research design adopted for this study was survey research design which involves collecting and analyzing of data so as to achieve the objectives of the study. the study area is anambra state which has 21 local government areas, with 3 senatorial seats, but among all, 3 local government areas were choose for the purpose of this study and they are ihiala, aniocha and anambra east local government areas representing respectively the three senatorial zones in anambra state. these local government areas comprises of typical rural communities in which their main economic activities are basically agricultural production, craft making and other small scale enterprises that are part of informal sector. the population of the study consists of eleven (11) licensed and functional micro finance banks in the lgas. all together, these mfbs have 86 credit officers of which simple random sampling method was used to determine the sample size. four (4) credit officers each were randomly selected from the 11 mfbs, thereby making the sample size 44 credit officers. data were collected with the use of structured questionnaires and then analyzed with the descriptive statistics. the hypotheses formed were subjected to chi square (x 2 ) test. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 42-52 47 it is important to note that out of 44 questionnaires administered only 36 questionnaire was duly filled and returned. 3. results and discussion 3.1. credit officer knowledge about credit extension services table 1: responses of credit officers of mfbs on knowledge about their extension service needs s/n credit extension services fx mean (x) decision a design and preparation of mfbs credit policy 144 4.0 knowledgeable b collection, compilation and analysis of client data 132 3.67 knowledgeable c engage in appropriate working out viability of credit needs of mfb clients 141 3.9 knowledgeable d preparation of credit recovery schedule of loanees 153 4.25 knowledgeable e submission of proposal for review of mfb credit policy 115 3.2 knowledgeable f identification and relationship with good individual and group 140 3.89 knowledgeable g training and development of credit clients 147 4.08 knowledgeable h formation of credit groups for linkages with mfb 120 3.33 knowledgeable i collaboration with government, and other development partners 116 3.22 knowledgeable 1 research and financial product development 113 3.14 knowledgeable j inculcation of savings habits and mobilization from clients 155 4.31 knowledgeable k promotion and provision of micro-leasing services to clients 129 3.58 knowledgeable l promotion and provision of micro insurance services 94 2.61 not knowledgeable m promotion and provision of micro housing services 103 2.86 not knowledgeable n social mobilization and community development 110 3.06 knowledgeable o clients training on entrepreneurship and financial management 121 3.36 knowledgeable p provision of business information and market linkages 124 3.44 knowledgeable q clients advice on health and family nutrition 114 3.17 knowledgeable r clients training on basic accounting principles 108 3.0 knowledgeable s importance of it and its application in credit administration 151 4.19 knowledgeable t clients training on leadership 116 3.22 knowledgeable grand mean 73.48 3.49 knowledgeable source: field survey july, 2012 the use of 5 point likert scale was applied to measure knowledge ability of the credit officers in which 3.0 mean (x) was adopted so as to reject (<.3.0) or accept ( 3.0) if really credit officers are knowledgeable. based on the result, most of the extension services needs of the mfbs they agreed to be adequately knowledgeable about. however in promotion and provision of micro insurance services (2.61), and, provision of micro housing services (2.86) that they were found not knowledgeable. with a grand mean of 3.49 it meant that credit officers are knowledgeable on almost credit extension service needs of the mfbs. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 42-52 48 3.2. test of hypothesis one in order to validate or disapprove the result of the table 2 the hypothesis one (h01) was subjected to test with x 2 . h01: credit officers of mfbs are not significantly knowledgeable about the credit extension services of mfbs. ha1: credit officers of mfbs are sufficiently knowledgeable about the credit extension services of mfbs. table 2: test statistics result summary of x 2 df calculated x 2 value sig 19 1.636 0.000 3.3. decision from the result, the x 2 calculated value is 1.636, while the pvalue is .000 at 5% level of significance. therefore, the pvalue is significant since it’s less than the conventional value of 0.05. as such, null hypothesis (h01) was rejected and the alternate (ha) was accepted; this implied that credit officers of mfbs are knowledgeable about the credit extension services of mfbs. the result of hypothesis one (h01) and descriptive statistics analysis of table 2, affirmed and validated that the credit officers are knowledgeable about the credit extension services of mfbs. thus, this implied that they have great potentials for effective rural finance intermediation. 3.4. credit officers involvement in credit extension services delivery table 3: responses of credit officers on their level of involvement actual delivery of credit extension services of mfbs s/n variables fx mean (x) decision i design and preparation of effective credit policy for clients 106 2.94 not involved ii collection, compilation and analysis of socioeconomic data of ruralites business environment 108 3.0 involved iii assess credit needs of the clients 111 3.08 involved iv credit schedule of clients 132 3.67 involved v review of mfb credit policy for clients 100 2.78 not involved vi formation of credit groups (e.g. cooperatives) 113 3.14 involved vii technological diffusion of clients and farmers group 110 3.06 involved viii collaboration for effective credit delivery to clients 102 2.83 not involved ix research and development 94 2.6 not involved x inculcating saving habits and credit mobilization among clients 157 4.36 involved xi credit creation, disbursement and income generation for mfb 137 3.81 involved xii promotion and provision of other micro finance services 109 3.03 involved xiii community development services 89 2.47 not involved grand mean 40.77 3.14 involved source: field survey july 2012 the result (table 3) showed that most of the credit extension services score more than 3.0 mean rating at 5 point scale (> 3.0) and this implied that credit officers are functionally involved. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 42-52 49 services include collection and analysis of socioeconomic data of clients (3.0); assess credit need of the client (3.08); credit schedule of clients (3.67); formation of credit groups (3.14); technological diffusion to client especially farmer groups (3.06); inculcating savings habits and credit mobilization among clients (4.36); credit creation and disbursement for mfbs (3.81); provision of other micro finance services (3.03). however, they were found not involved in some credit extension services such as design and preparation of effective credit policy for clients (2.74); review of mfbs credit policies (2.78); research and development (2.6). therefore, with grand mean of 3.14, the result showed that the credit officers are functionally involved in credit extension services delivery. 3.5. test of hypothesis two hypothesis (h02) was formed in order to affirm or not the result of the descriptive statistics (table 3). h02: credit officers of mfbs are not significantly involved in credit extension services delivery to their clients. ha2: credit officers of mfbs are significantly involved in credit extension services delivery to their clients. table 4: test statistics result summary of x 2 df calculated x 2 value sig model 12 0.000 1.000 3.6. decision since the calculated value of x 2 (.000) is less than the table value (1.000) at 5% level of significance, therefore, the null hypothesis (h02) was accepted and the alternate (ha2) was rejected, meaning that credit officers of mfbs to a significant level are not involved in credit extension services delivery to their clients. the grand mean (3.14) result of the descriptive statistics (table 3) was contrary to the outcome of the hypothesis. the implication is that the credit officers may not have been very involved in credit extension service delivery to their clients. 3.7. institutional (mfbs) support for credit extension service table 5: responses of credit officers on how supportive mfbs are in their delivery of extension services to bank clients s/n facilitation activities of mfbs fx mean (x) decision a regular capacity building programmes 152 4.22 supportive b provision of logistic (bikes, vehicle or allowance) for field work 133 3.69 supportive c provision of incentives for staff motivation 99 2.75 not supportive d provision of modern it technology and facilities 154 4.28 supportive e adequate numbers of staff for effective outreach 130 3.61 supportive f provision of funds to meet clients needs 133 3.69 supportive g assistance from bods and management team 145 4.03 supportive h necessary information and networking opportunities 143 3.97 supportive i provision of marketing materials (fliers, handbills, posters) 129 3.58 supportive j product or services development activities (research linking) 109 3.03 supportive k promotional programs (customer forum, road work) 86 2.39 not supportive asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 42-52 50 l advertisement (printing press, radio, tv and local advert) 74 2.06 not supportive m a good living salary /remuneration 81 2.25 not supportive grand mean 47.69 3.41 supportive source: field survey july, 2012 the result showed that the institutions (mfbs) provided a lot of support to facilitate credit extension services which include capacity building programmes (4.22); adequate logistic (3.69), i.t facilities (4.28); adequate number of staff (3.69); bod and management assistance (4.03); information and networking (3.97); marketing materials (3.58); product/services development (3.03). in summary, the grand mean is (3.41) which indicated that the mfbs have been supportive to the credit officers’ extension services delivery. meanwhile, there are some aspects where the institutions (mfbs) have not been supportive to the credit officers and these score below (< 3.0) mean rating. these include; incentives and motivation (2.75); promotional programmes (2.39); advertisement (2.06); and a good living salary (2.25). 3.8. test of hypothesis (h03) hypothesis (h03) was subjected to test with x 2 so as to affirm the result of descriptive (table 5). h03: credit officers of mfbs do not have significant support of their organization for effective extension service delivery. ha3: credit officers of mfbs do have significant support of their organization for effective extension service delivery. table 6: test statistics result summary of x 2 df calculated x 2 value sig model 12 0.857 1.000 3.9. decision in the above test statistics summary, the calculated x 2 value (.857) is less than the table value (1.000) at 0.05 level of significance. therefore, the null hypothesis (h03) is accepted while the alternate (ha3) is rejected. the implication is that the credit officers of mfbs do not have significant support from their organization for effective credit service delivery in rural finance intermediation. comparing the result to the descriptive analysis (table 4) which has grand mean of 3.41 indicating that the banks support, we conclude that though there might be support from the mfbs, but, perhaps not strong enough. 3.10. challenges of carrying out credit extension services table 7: responses of the credit officers on the challenges of carrying out credit extension services s/n challenges fx mean (x) decision a unavailability of effective credit policy 153 4.25 agree b unavailability of socio economic baseline data 114 3.17 agree c delinquency cases such as loan default 136 3.7 agree d lack of fund to meet credit needs of clients 86 2.39 disagree e poor/lack of support from bods 99 2.65 disagree f non availability of collateral for lending 149 4.14 disagree g lack of assistance from mfbs management 81 2.25 disagree h poor knowledge/training in dealing with clients 120 3.33 agree i inadequate staff to effectively mobilize and monitor clients 111 3.08 agree asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 42-52 51 j weak savings mobilization and loan recovery method 106 2.94 disagree k inadequate logistics/infrastructure to meet need of clients 122 3.38 agree l poor remuneration and motivation of staff 199 3.30 agree grand mean 38.58 3.22 agree source: field survey july, 2012 the result obtained from 5 point likert scale with mean of 3.0 which means that any response that score below 3.0 of the mean is negative (disagree) while any response that is above () 3.0 mean rating is positive (agree). therefore, the respondents (credit officers) agree to the most of the challenges that constraints their credit extension service delivery and these include, unavailability of effective credit policy (4.25), loan default (3.7), non-provision of collateral for lending (4.14); logistic problem (3.38), as well as poor salary package (3.30). meanwhile, the respondents disagree to some of the challenges since that does not constraints their extension service delivery in rural finance intermediation. these include; lack of fund to meet clients’ needs (2.39), lack of support/assistance from bods (2.65) as well as weak savings mobilization and loan recovery method (2.94). so in order to strengthening credit officers in effective credit extension service for rural finance intermediation all the aforementioned challenges need to be addressed. 4. conclusion and implications for rural finance intermediation rural finance intermediation is vital to achieving rural development and credit officers of mfbs have a role of effectively delivering microcredit and its support services (extension) to the bank clients. the outcome of this study has shown that the credit officers have adequate knowledge of the extension services obligations of their banks to clients. equally, they have been found to be involved, though not significantly high in delivering extension services. the study did also find out that though the credit officers are supported by their banks to execute their services, but that it was not significantly adequate. in a bid to strengthen credit officers of mfbs for effective rural finance intermediation through credit extension service delivery, the following recommendations are made:  capacity building programmes for credit officers should part and parcel of mfbs support activities so as to improve and sustain credit officers’ knowledge and skills on credit extension services for effective rural finance intermediation.  credit officers should be more involved in the design, reviewing and implementation of credit policies, because they transact directly with the clients and therefore exposed to their needs.  for mfbs to achieve result, the institutions should not only provide materials needed for the extension services, but in addition improve on their welfare. therefore, incentives such as attractive salary; timely allowances; insurance covers; training and logistics are motivational factors that will bring out their best in rural finance intermediation.  mfbs should also directly carryout a socio-economic baseline data of their catchment-area (business environment) if they have the skill to do so or in the alternative use professionals (consultants). such information (data) if derived will facilitate their detailed knowledge of their clients, their economic activities which is need for strategic planning.  microfinance banking is indeed mostly a field activity in-view of the nature of their clients. therefore, they should have adequate credit officers to effectively cover, monitor, develop and ensure effective loan repayment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 42-52 52 views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adekanye (1998). community and rural financing in ayo and jemoke reading of micro-financing of osun state review. retrieved from http://www.google.com on june 2012. adeyemi (2008). macroeconomic environment and agricultural sectors growth in nigeria. world journal of agricultural science, 4(6), 981-986. adigwe (2007). development targets in nigeria enugu micro-loan to agricultural sector. enugu. rex publishers ltd. agene, c. e. (1995). the principles of modern banking. lagos: gene publications, nigeria. ahmed, a. a. (2008). the role of banking system in agricultural development. the nigerian bankers journal, 4(2), 23-46. aja (1998). financing cooperative movement in nigeria. university of nigeria, nsukka, enugu state. anyanwu, a. c. (1998). the agricultural sector: objectives, priorities, strategies and policies. chapter in book of readings on policy issues in nigeria economy ncema: 2338. beko, s. y. (1991). the dynamics of traditional savings and credit associations in rural development. monograph series, crdc, university of nigeria, nsukka. cbn (1995). central bank of nigeria annual statement of account. lagos, nigeria in nworgu f.c. 2006) prospects and pit falls of agricultural production technology, institute of agricultural research and trading, ibadan nigeria. cbn (2011). microfinance certification programme: a study manual. publication of central bank of nigeria (cbn). lagos. the cibn press limited, nigeria. okaro and onyekwelu (2003). element of banking method and principles. enugu press publisher. umebali (2004). agric business and financial analysis. enugu: noble publisher ltd. http://www.google.com/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 313 accelerating agricultural productivity and marketing for rural transformation in nigeria evelyn nwamaka ogbeide-osaretin a, ben ozougwu b, oseremen ebhote c a department of economics, faculty of arts, management and social sciences, edo university iyamho, edo state, nigeria b department of economics, university of nigeria, nsukka, nigeria c department of business administration, faculty of arts, management and social sciences, edo university iyamho, edo state, nigeria  iyokoevelyn@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 13-sep-2019 accepted: 16-dec-2019 online available: 31-dec2019 keywords: agriculture, gender, rural, transformation, total factor productivity abstract this study examined the essential factors required to drive agricultural productivity and marketing towards enhancing rural transformation. nigeria data on total factor productivity (tfp) generated using the solow’s residual approach, quality of labour force captured by different educational levels and health status, availability of credit, and the role of female gender among others were used for the period between1981-2016. autoregressive distributed lag method was employed as no existence of long-run association was found among variables confirmed by the bound testing result. findings showed that the female labour force is positively significantly related to tfp. educational levels of labour were positively but insignificantly related to tfp except the primary educational level. life expectancy rate was significantly negatively related to tfp. we thus recommended among others that female access to education and credit be enhanced to improve the female labour agricultural productivity, enhances the rural secondary and tertiary educational levels as well as increase in investment in farmers’ health status. contribution/ originality this study contributes to the present literature as it relates to agricultural productivity and marketing as a tool for economic development by specifically analyzing the important role of gender towards enhancing the development of agricultural sector and economic development at large. it took a step away from the previous study by employing a total factor productivity measure of productivity. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.313.330 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: evelyn nwamaka ogbeide-osaretin, ben ozougwu and oseremen ebhote (2019). accelerating agricultural productivity and marketing for rural transformation in nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 313-330. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 313-330 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:iyokoevelyn@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2914-1929 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.313.330 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4789-561x asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 314 1. introduction most developing countries highly rely on the rural areas for their survival yet, developmental policies (international and domestic) are usually urban biased making the rural part of often suffer lack of productive resources hence, high rural poverty. agriculture is common and the main income source in the rural area, forming the total of about 69% of rural household’s income and employing about 80% of rural working force (barrett et al., 2017). agriculture plays essential roles in export earnings and employment in sub-saharan africa (ssa) countries. findings showed that about seven million people will be brought out from poverty with about 10% increase in small-scale agricultural productivity in ssa as against other sectors. it accounts for about 32% of the gdp and absorbs about 65% of the labour in ssa (iaastd, 2009). agriculture is the bedrock for industrialization and developmental takes off (johnston and mellor, 1961). regardless of the importance of agriculture in sub-saharan african countries, adequate actions have not been taken on the sector hence, low productivity and welfare of the people. irrespective of the global fall in poverty from 44% in 1982 to 10% in 2016, about 390.3 million poor were still poor in ssa countries as at 2013 and about 82% of the poor population are in the rural areas (beegle et al., 2016; world bank, 2017a; world bank, 2017b). in 2010, about 19kg per hectare of arable land of fertilizer was used in ssa, but in asia and pacific region, an average of 64kg per hectare of fertilizer were used. also, while about 1.3 tractors per 1000 hectare of arable land were used in 2012 in ssa, 14.9 was used in asia and pacific region (fao, 2012); new partnership for african development (nepad, 2013). sectorial total expenditure declined from 4.5% in 2001 to 2.5% in 2012 (cadoni and angelucci, 2013 in mbabazi et al., 2015). in nigeria, agricultural sector is an important sector contributing to the growth of the country. national bureau of statistics (nbs, 2018) noted that agriculture dominated the labour market accounting for 48.19% of employment in 2017. before 1970, agriculture contributed about 70% of gdp, employed about 70% of the population and to contributed to about 90% of the foreign earning and federal government income (cbn, 2017) . however, agricultural sector’s contribution in total real gross domestic product (rgdp) has continued to decrease from about 30% percent in 1980s to 6.2% in 2011. however it increased slightly to 25% in 2016 (cbn, 2017). food productivity in nigeria in 2016 was as low as 124.6 making the country to rank 81 out of 190 countries assessed while the country has an arable land of 37.4% ranking 14 countries with the highest size of arable land. (theglobaleconomy.com, 2019). in 2014, tractors per 100sq.km of arable land was as low as 4.76 (world bank, 2017a). federal government has made efforts to enhance the sector’s productivity (the nigerian agricultural co-operative and rural development bank of 1972, the agricultural credit guarantee scheme fund (acgsf) in 1977, national accelerated food production programme (nafpp), and fadama programme, among others) yet productivity is low. financial allocation to the sector that is a main income source for rural dwellers, a core driver of growth and poverty reduction in the country is very low and can be contributory to the sector’s low productivity. for instance, average federal government budget for the sector between 2001 and 2005 was only 1.7% of total government expenditure. in 2008, recurrent expenditure in the agricultural sector was only 3% falling rapidly to 0.69% in 2017. commercial bank loan to the sector was 1.4% in 2008 but increased marginally to 3.2% in 2017 yet, not encouraging given its importance (cbn, 2017). as a share of aggdp, the investment in agricultural research fell from 0.39% in 2008 to 0.22% in 2014 (asti, 2018). a wealth of literature relating to agricultural productivity exists on the global, regional studies, cross-country studies and country-wise studies (africa countries and nigeria inclusive) (coelli and rao, 2003; akpan et al., 2011; eboh et al., 2012; adepoju and salman, 2013; nwangi and kariuki, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 315 2015; mensah et al., 2017). however, large number of these studies failed to consider the whole sector’s productivity and looked at only one agricultural product (akpan et al., 2011; adepoju and salman, 2013). others (chukwu, 2014) analyzed partial productivity, using estimation methods where the quality of the data was not verified. the study is carried out by eboh et al. (2012) needs an update of the data given the recent policies in the nigerian agricultural sector and the globe at large. in addition, previous studies such as olagunju (2010), akpan et al. (2011) and bustos et al. (2016) have not considered the role of gender in nigeria agricultural sector’s productivity as recommended by inclusive growth agenda (kanu et al., 2014). this is because women engage more in agricultural activities than other economic activities. for instance, in 2017, 36.24% of female workers are engaged in agricultural activities (nbs, 2018). food and agriculture organization (fao, 2012) noted that agricultural output of developing countries will increase by 3% if women are given the same amount of access to resources as gave to male. in nigeria, women’s contribution to the agricultural sector increased from 33% in 1985 to 42% in 2016 (unctd, 2016). hence, it became imperative to carry out an in-depth study to underscore the role of gender as a pre-requisite for rural transformation with particular attention on its contribution to agricultural productivity. this research is expected to provide any evidence on key policy insights for nigeria’s rural transformation through enhancing agricultural productivity. the above background accentuates our research significance that strives to offer knowledge in three important ways: first, the study investigates into the determining factors for enhancing agricultural productivity in nigeria using total factor productivity paradigm. second, it investigates the gender implication towards enhancing agricultural productivity in nigeria to achieve the goal of inclusive growth and to determine the need for gender specific policy towards nigeria rural transformation. third, the intensity of rainfall was introduced in the derivation of total productivity which has been neglected in previous studies. following this introduction, section 2 provides conceptual issues and empirical literature; section 3 is the methodology section; presentation and discussion of results is on section 4, while section 5 is a key policy priority and conclusion. 2. literature review 2.1. conceptual literature agriculture is the practice of cultivating the soil and rearing of livestock to produce plants and animals, the supply of input, as well as marketing agricultural products useful to human existence (asoegwu and asoegwu, 2007). agricultural productivity according to grosskopf (1993), is an amount of the increase in output given improvement in the factor input. it measures performance , guilds the sector’s efficiency and synonymous with efficiency or technical progress. it an important causes of aggregate output growth. hayami and ruttan (1985) noted that agricultural productivity can be enhanced either through the increase of input or the advanced method of production. productivity is usually measured by dividing an index of output by input(s). this can be partial factor productivity (pfp) or total factor productivity (tfp). pfp measures productivity as the ratio of output to a single input (diewert and nakamura, 2005 cited in ibok et al., 2014). pfp = y/xi …………………… (1) where y is total output and x is input i (odhiambo and nyangito, 2003). this is the measure often used, and labour is easily used. hence, productivity is proxies as output per worker or output per area of land planted. this measure ignored the relevance of other input that contributes to the output change. a more accepted and generalized gauge of agricultural productivity is tfp. this is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 316 the ratio of total output quantity to total input quantity (ibok et al., 2014). this is justified on the bases that a holistic and unbiased measure of productivity can only be achieved by recognizing all necessary factor inputs. defining rural transformation requires knowledge of structural transformation because rural transformation is built-in structural transformation. structural transformation is the gradual change in the comparative sectorial contribution to gdp while rural transformation is the gradual improvement in the welfare and standard of living of rural dwellers through promoting investment in rural health status, educational, technological knowledge, infrastructure and diversified livelihoods (dabla-norris et al., 2013). rural transformation is concentrated in enhancing agricultural productivity, diversifying production patterns and livelihoods in the sector and it is essential to drive and is driven by structural transformation. as presented by ifad (2016), the following among others is a number of the rural transformation agenda:  poverty and inequalities reduction  ensuring food security and accelerating agricultural development  creation of better jobs and economic self-sufficiency in the rural areas  rouse the growth of rural towns and transitional cities  managing convoluted and tactful issues of rural–urban migration.  general opportunity to use essential public services such as education, health, housing, fresh water, electricity, transport and communications  providing widespread access to efficient and sustainable financial services and capital  promoting innovation, research and development with emphasis on the needs of rural people, producers and firms. marketing encompasses all business functions including production and in its widest sense, it also looks at the decision that pertains to production. one can say that in farming such resolution as the variation of crops to cultivate or the variety of the animal to rear is marketing decisions. therefore, the main significance of an integrated marketing system is to add form, place, time and utility to products (benjamin and victoria, 2012). according to onyeabor (2009), agricultural produce marketing portrays an image involving demands and motivation of sellers to deliver food substances to the final consumers at a reasonable profit margin. agricultural marketing in nigeria over the years have suffered a lot of setbacks according to eze et al. (2010) who acknowledged produce corrosion, insufficient processing equipment, poor marketing facilities, high costs of shops, insufficient packaging information etc. as some of the difficulties of agricultural marketing in nigeria. rural transformation through enhancing agricultural productivity encompasses, good marketing strategies and facilities. access to market have been one of the factors hindering agricultural productivity in nigeria. 2.2. theoretical literature theories tend to generalize the necessity for agricultural growth for the growth and development of any economy. in the neoclassical growth literature showing the inter-temporary changes in the development process, no economy can withstand the fixed supply of natural resources without agricultural productivity. hence they cannot achieve a sustained economic growth. according to the classical economist, agriculture is to be held in high esteem as its role of food supply is without substitute towards stimulating economic growth. a stagnated agrarian sector will result in large engel coefficients for households alliance for a green revolution in africa (agra, 2017). in drawing inference from these theories, hayami (2001) noted that successful industrialization requires increased food production to avoid the “ricardian trap” (driving the economy into a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 317 stationary state given the increased labour cost which is a short flow of labour from agriculture to the other sectors). hence, increasing agricultural sector’s productivity is important. hazell and roell (1983) in agra (2017) opined that the consumption linkage as a result of increased rural incomes is agriculture’s most important linkage in the development process. 2.3. empirical literature current interest on the significance of agriculture is renewed with the finding that it has the panacea for poverty reduction. the study of johnston and mellor (1961) was the first to show that agriculture has an important function in the development process. linking consumption and production, they concluded that in a closed economy, growth in agricultural productivity will lead to high rural incomes, lower food prices, increased rural savings for the mobilization of capital for industries and expansion of the domestic market. findings showed that agricultural productivity growth resulted in lower nominal wages in the manufacturing sector and more competitive agriculture and non-agricultural export through price reduction. a global analysis of technological change and deforestation was carried out by brady and sohngen (2008) using cross-sectional studies of thirty countries nigeria inclusive from 1969 to 2001. result showed a positive effect of land on productivity. using statistics and total factor productivity model, adepoju and salman (2013) investigated on the access and effect of infrastructure on agricultural productivity in surulere and ife, east local government areas of oyo and osun states. farm size, extension visit and labour positively and significantly affected productivity while female labour contribution was higher than their male counterpart. akpan et al. (2011) analysed the determinant of productivity in a sample of 240 vegetable farmers in akwa ibom state. the cobb-douglas production function in an ordinary least square estimation was used and the result revealed that farm size, age, household size, farmer’s income, accessibility of water and credit are major determinants of tfp while muzari et al. (2012) reviewed the impacts on agriculture productivity of smallholders’ adopting technology in the subsaharan africa. findings showed that holdings, income, labour and innovativeness by smallholder farmers among others are factors affecting technology adoption. this is in line with the study of nwangi and kariuki (2015) on the potential factors influencing developing countries adoption of agricultural technology. they identified technological, economic, institutional factors and human factors as the major cause of low technology adoption in agriculture in developing countries. iheke and nwaru (2013), examined innovation use, farm productivity and state of poverty of rural small farm households in south-eastern nigeria. using descriptive statistical tools they corroborated that the most adopted innovations/technologies were use of inorganic fertilizer, improved seed, the crop remains recycling, crop rotation and use of animal waste. factors found influencing the adoption of innovations/technologies were gender, age, years of formal education attainment among others. analyzing the relevance for credit availability for productivity, olagunju (2010) assessed the influence of credit on poultry productivity in southwest nigeria. adopting a descriptive statistics, logit and multiple regression model, it was discovered that credit acquisition by the farmers, source and amount had a significant impact on poultry productivity. this study was in agreement with kiplimo et al. (2014) who investigated on the contributing factor of access to financial services by smallholder farmers in kenya. employing logistic regression, the marginal effects of education level, occupation and access to extension services were statistically significant with access to credit financial service. household earnings and the distance to the credit source had negative significant effects on access to credit financial services. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 318 bustos et al. (2016) examined the relevance of agricultural productivity in the structural transformation of brazil and reached a verdict that a labour biased technical change will cause agricultural productivity to result in a fall in industrial employment. chukwu (2014) looked at crop-sector agricultural productivity in nigeria on time series data from 1970 to 2013. employing a multiple regression and analysis of variance (anova), agriculture was discovered to be labour intensive, effective and productive. capital stock was gender sensitive against the female. poor health status and lack of infrastructures in the rural areas of impaired agricultural productivity. alilu and ichoku (2015) using the malmquist index and tobit model analyzed the total factor productivity dynamics of thirty sub-saharan african countries from 1999 to 2011. result showed a small amount of tfp growth in technical progress with about 47% and 20% having a positive trend of technical efficiency and catch-up effect respectively. 2.4. contribution to knowledge and gap in literature the demand to transform the rural sector has led to several studies on the agricultural sector particularly on the productivity and marketing of the sector given that the agricultural sector is prominent in the rural sector. an examination of previous studies showed that different measures of productivity and models have been used. general consensus tends to support improved technological advancement and credit to enhance agricultural productivity in developing countries. however, greater part of these studies concentrated on sub-sector analysis and a specific function of gender policies in enhancing full agricultural sector’s productivity has been neglected. this study intends to fill this lacuna by adopting a total factor productivity measure and carrying out an analysis of the impact of gender on total productivity for effective policy framework towards transforming the rural areas. 3. theoretical framework and methodology 3.1. theoretical framework this study adopts both the classical and neo-classical theories that underscore that agricultural productivity is the foundation for any form of transformation. a stagnated agricultural sector will have ripple-effect on all other sectors. food supply which is based on the agricultural sector and rural area is a necessary condition for any well-being and having a good well-being is a step towards transformation. this study adopts the tfp using the solow residual approach to account for the productivity of other factor inputs. recognizing that productivity has also been measured in some other ways like the malmquist productivity index adopted by coelli and rao (2003); alilu and ichoku (2015), the malmquist index approach has been established to be in-appropriate. this is based on its submission of fundamental technology that naturally devalues productivity (nin et al., 2003) although, it has the advantage of decomposing productivity into pure technical efficiency and change technological progress. oecd (2001) noted that it suffers from theoretical and empirical drawbacks. 3.2. estimation framework literature provides three ways by which productivity can be estimated: the first two are the growth accounting/index numbers and the non-parametric approach. these include the malmquist index. they are criticized on the ground of failing to show the link between capital formation and output growth as well as their inability to point out the sources of growth (zepeda, 2001). the third way of estimating productivity is the econometric approach. this approach accommodates the weakness of the other two, using the solow type growth model and providing for a robust result from the estimation. though criticized for data quality requirement, the econometric approach is most employed for study purpose. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 319 3.3. the model for the purpose of analysis, we adopt a model that follows the hicks-neutral cobb-douglas-type model. 𝑌 = 𝐴𝑓(𝐾𝑎, 𝐿𝑏) …………………… (2) where 𝑌 represents output, 𝐴, 𝐾 and 𝐿 represents technology and innovation, capital and labour respectively. if we suppose our core variables change through time, we indicate this by including the time subscript "t" to model (2), and the model becomes: 𝑌𝑡 = 𝐴𝑡𝑓(𝐾𝑡 𝑎, 𝐿𝑡 𝑏) …………………… (3) for the intent of this study, we modify the production function in (3) above to include such inputs as agricultural land (𝐿𝑎) and the degree of rainfall (𝑅) because agricultural production depends largely on the amount of rainfall in a country. 𝑌𝑡 = 𝐴𝑡𝑓(𝐾𝑡 𝑎, 𝐿𝑡 𝑏 , 𝐿𝑎𝑡 𝛾 , 𝑅𝑡 𝜋) …………………… (4) to accommodate the econometric approach, we do a logarithmic transformation on (4) above. 𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑌𝑡 = 𝐿𝑜𝑔(𝐴𝑡) + 𝑎𝐿𝑜𝑔(𝐾𝑡) + 𝑏𝐿𝑜𝑔(𝐿𝑡) + 𝛾𝐿𝑜𝑔(𝐿𝑎) + 𝜋𝐿𝑜𝑔(𝑅) …………………… (5) where: y is agricultural real gdp la is agriculture land % of land area. kt is capital agricultural machinery (proxy by tractors per 100 sq. km of arable land) lt is agricultural labour as % of labour force r is average annual rainfall. a, is solow's residual, accounting for current level of technology which is called total factor productivity. output increases not only because of capital and labor expansion, but also with increases in total factor productivity. 1 percent increase in total factor productivity with other inputs constant, output increases by 1 percent (mankiw, 2002). the total factor productivity 𝐿𝑜𝑔(𝐴𝑡), is not a constant rather it mirrors other factors working together to increase the productivity of capital and labour. it is a type of error term or residual. therefore: 𝐿𝑜𝑔𝐴𝑡 = 𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑇𝐹𝑃𝑡 = �̂�𝑡 …………………… (6) substituting (6) into (5) and introducing the intercept term will lead to (7) below 𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑌𝑡 = 𝛿 + 𝑎𝐿𝑜𝑔(𝐾𝑡) + 𝑏𝐿𝑜𝑔(𝐿𝑡) + 𝛾𝐿𝑜𝑔(𝐿𝑎) + 𝜋𝐿𝑜𝑔(𝑅) + 𝜇𝑡 .................(7) but total factor productivity is a function of certain covariates. following miles and scott (2005), tfp is a degree of efficiency upon which productive inputs are put together to produce output. the version of tfp developed by miles and scott recognizes the basis of tfp to include the educational level and skills of the work force, technology, institutions and government policies, amongst many other factors. so the equation for the tfp could be expressed as: 𝑇𝐹𝑃 = 𝑓(𝑋) …………………… (8) where x stands for certain covariates as education measured by gross enrolment rates at the different levels of education, public expenditure in agriculture; government recurrent expenditure asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 320 in the sector; nominal exchange rate to account for the impact of international prices on imported farm inputs and exported farm products; agricultural loans, to account for access to finance; gender influences captured by % of female in agricultural labour force and health status measured by life expectancy rate. equation (8) is specifically stated as: 𝑇𝐹𝑃 = 𝑓(𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑝𝑟𝑖, 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑐, 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟, 𝑅𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑛, 𝐸𝑥𝑟, 𝐴𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑛, 𝐹𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑏, 𝐿𝑒𝑥) ………………… (9) the log transformation of the above model of the variables that are not in rate is stated as 𝑇𝐹𝑃 = α0 + α1grospri + α2grossec + α3groster + α4 log(𝑅𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑛) + α5exr + α6log(𝐴𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑛) + α7falab + α8lex + еi ) …………………… (10) where tfp = total factor productivity, grospri = primary gross enrollment rate, grossec = secondary gross enrollment rate, groster = tertiary gross enrollment rate, rexpen = government recurrent expenditure, exr = exchange rate, aloan = agricultural loan, falab = % of female in the agricultural labour force, lex = life expectancy rate and еi = error term. our focus will be on model (7) and (10). 3.4 method of estimation the autoregressive distributed lag method of estimation was used for the estimation of the above equation given its ability to establish a baseline estimate of the relationships between the dependent variable and independent variables where the variables are of different order of integration. 3.5 estimation techniques to avoid a spurious result from using non-stationary data set, some pre-regression tests were carried out. first, the time series properties of the data were considered using the augmented – dickey fuller (adf) test. the order of integration was determined for un-stationary variables. correlation test was also carried out to determine the existence of multi-collinearity amid the variables. diagnostic tests were further carried out. 3.6 data secondary data was used obtained mainly from the cbn statistical bulletins (2017) and world bank (wdi) (2017) and span the period from 1981 to 2016. the choice of the variables used for the study was majorly based on the availability of the data. hence, the study was limited for data needed for some important variables such as labour force participation rate among others. e-views 9 econometric package was used. 4. empirical findings 4.1. pre-estimation test 4.1.1. correlation result the correlation matrix as presented below helped us to account for the degree of multi-collinearity amidst the variables of the study. according to gujarati (2003), when the correlation coefficient is greater eight (>8), multicollinearity is suspected in the model. however, multicollinearity is a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 321 table 1: correlation matrix tfp agl aglab agmtm aloan exr falab grospri grossec groster lex rexpen tfp 1 agl 0.00756 1 aglab 0.01079 0.82093 1 agmtm 0.02399 0.85548 0.85404 1 aloan 0.35169 0.45593 0.20467 0.54654 1 exr 0.26306 0.71815 0.52671 0.82877 0.81633 1 falab 0.45992 0.56901 0.32906 0.67678 0.83047 0.80414 1 grospri -0.11582 -0.54493 -0.33416 -0.43589 -0.35045 -0.24148 -0.33424 1 grossec 0.42954 0.57344 0.32135 0.64013 0.74230 0.80410 0.86876 -0.32449 1 groster 0.39845 0.71155 0.50653 0.78786 0.67097 0.88586 0.84592 -0.27726 0.83167 1 lex 0.44550 0.54105 0.25755 0.64055 0.82157 0.81524 0.88809 -0.33341 0.80514 0.84434 1 rexpen 0.26560 0.56961 0.31616 0.62805 0.68269 0.75388 0.76675 -0.31449 0.65200 0.74204 0.77677 1 source: authors’ own computations asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 322 problem when we have perfect multicollinearity and this is when if r2 k is greater than 0.9, or the correlation coefficient between the variables is greater nine (>9) (gujarati, 2003). hence for this study, there is absence of perfect multi-collinearity among the variables as the pair-wise correlation values are less than 0.9 for the variables. it is also important to note that one of the remedies to multicollinearity according to gujarati (2003) is to do nothing particularly when there is no redundant variable in the model. 4.1.2. unit root test the stationarity state of the dataset was ascertained and result shown below. table 2: abridged presentation of unit-root tests using adf variable levels 5% critical 1st diff 5%critical 2nd diff 5% critical remarks la -3.6973 -2.9484 i(0)* l 1.9693 -2.9484 -5.3024 2.9511 i(1)* k -2.9493 -2.9484 i(0)* tfp -3.2035 -2.9484 i(0)* alaon -2.7421 -2.9484 -5.1774 2.9511 i(1)* exr 1.3111 -2.9484 -3.66928 2.9511 i(1)* falab 1.8138 -2.9484 -3.41766 2.9511 i(1)* grospri -1.9160 -2.9484 -5.23577 2.9511 i(1)* grossec -1.8420 -2.9484 -6.38576 2.9511 i(1)* groster -1.3194 -2.9484 -6.06587 2.9511 i(1)* lex 0.7869 -2.9511 -1.35522 2.9511 -7.4211 -2.9540 i(2)* rexpen -2.7706 -2.9484 -6.98918 -2.9540 i(1)* r -4.6147 -2.9484 i(0)* source: authors’ own computations; *indicates significant at 5% level of significance the above result of the unit root showed different orders of integration. most variable were integrated of order one. tfp, r, la and k were stationary at levels while lex was stationary at first difference. given that the variables are not all stationary at levels, the existence of long run relationship is suspected. however, with different orders of integration, presence of long run cannot be verified using the johansen’s technique of cointegration. rather, we employed the ardl bond testing to ascertain the presence of long-run connectivity among the variables of interest. 4.2. presentation and interpretation of ardl estimation given the result of the unit root with different orders of integration for the variables, the test of the existence of cointegration cannot be carried out using the johansen’s technique of cointegration. also the long-run analysis cannot be carried out using the ols method of estimation to avoid spurious result. rather we employ the ardl bond testing and the ardl regression used in securitizing the factors that will count for enhancing agricultural productivity towards transforming nigerian rural areas. the outcome is as presented in table 3 below. 4.2.1. establishment of the short-run dynamics given the unit root result where the variables were of different orders and majority of the variables were not stationary at levels, it became necessary to explore the possibility of a long-run and shortrun dynamics among the variables. the study employed the bounds testing (or autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) cointegration procedure because of its applicability irrespective of whether the regressors in the model are purely i(0), purely i(1) or mutually cointegrated as this case. in its basic form, an ardl regression model is specify thus: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 323 t k k tkk k k tkktit lrsryy        1 1, 1 1,10 ……………. (11) where: δ denotes first difference of variable, µt is a random "disturbance" term, yi is the dependent variable (tfp), while sr is the short-run dynamics of explanatory variables, lr is the long-run dynamics of the explanatory variables.  and, are the parameters to be estimated; 0 is the constant parameter. the result as presented in appendix 2 showed absence of long-run dynamics among the variables given the f-sat of 2.000121 which is less than the 5% level of significance of 2.22. 4.2.2. establishment of ardl table 3: ardl long run estimation dep. var = total factor productivity (tfp) long-run estimation method = ols; r2 = 0.57; f-stat. = 3.64 f-pro.= 0.005; dw = 1.61 independent variable coefficient standard error t-sat probability tfp(-1) -0.2080 0.2728 -0.7626 0.4528 grosprim -0.0098 0.0064 -1.5310 0.1383 grossec 0.0163 0.0167 0.9745 0.3392 groster 0.0708 0.0416 1.7023 0.1011 log(rexpen) -0.0376 0.0560 -0.6705 0.5087 exr -0.0001 0.0019 -0.0778 0.9386 log(aloan) -0.1520 0.1085 -1.4005 0.1737 falab 0.3473 0.1335 2.6016 0.0154* lex -0.2787 0.1356 -2.0547 0.0505* c 1.4024 2.7881 0.5030 0.6194 source: authors’ own computations; *indicates significant at 5% level the ardl result demonstrated that the previous levels of productivity negatively impacts on the current level of productivity with no substantial impact. this portrays that the drive towards achieving productivity can effectively be done with effective short run policies. outcome of the result also showed that the quality of agricultural labour force captured by the educational achievement was positive only at the secondary and tertiary educational level. primary educational level was negatively related with productivity. the result showed that 1% change in secondary and tertiary educational level leads to about 2% and 1% increase of tfp respectively while 1% change in primary level of education leads to about 1% fall in tfp. the above outcome concerning the effect of education on productivity represents the actual need for effective rural transformation. apart from the npe and ube educational policy that are for primary education and are extended to the rural areas, policy on higher educational levels have not been put in place. the recent need for technological advancement in the agricultural activities calls for the need of enhancement of higher educational levels in the rural areas for effective transformation. as shown by data, in 2013, the gross attendance rate in post-secondary was 2.87% in rural area and 12.69% in urban. in same vain, while net attendance rate in primary school was 52.62% and 76.1% for rural and urban respectively, in secondary it was 37.37% and 66.63% for rural and urban respectively. proportion of drop out from primary school is also higher in the rural area standing as 42.41% and 12.71% for rural and urban respectively (trading economics, 2018). given the dominance of agricultural activity in the rural area, the low quality will doubtlessly hinder the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 324 productivity of agriculture. the above result on the role of educational levels towards enhancing well-being is harmonious with the findings of umoru and ogbeide-osaretin (2018) on educational attainment for poverty reduction and kiplimo et al. (2014) on the study of smallholder farmers in kenya. government recurrent expenditure, agric loan and life expectancy rate were negatively related with productivity contrary to expectation while exchange rate and female labour were correctly signed. 1% increase in rexpen, aloan, exr and lex reduces productivity by 3%, 15%, 0.01% and 27% respectively other factors held constant. on the other hand, 1% increase in falab increases productivity by 34%. variables that significantly impact on productivity were female labour force and life expectancy rate at 5% level of significance. the negative and insignificant impact of finance both from government and loan clearly shows the financial constrain that the agricultural sector in nigeria is faced with. studies are also in support of the insufficient credit that has inhibited agricultural sector’s productivity (akpan et al., 2011); kiplimo et al (2014) among others. the result of the significant function of female gender in increasing agricultural productivity is coherent with the findings of adepoju and salman (2013). consequently, the impoverishing health condition of rural dwellers has also been shown by the above result. a scenario where the primary health care centers which is the only health care means lacks adequate nurses, no doctors neither are there health equipment and infrastructures. this is also confirmed by chukwu (2014), that the poor state of health of the rural areas has been a major inhibitor of agricultural productivity. the fitness of these results was confirmed by the value of multiple determinant of variation r2 the f-statistics and dw-statistics as shown in table 3. the regressors in the model explained 56% of the variation in total factor productivity which is not a bad fit. the f-statistics and dw-statistics confirmed the facts that the overall model exhibits good fit and no problems of autocorrelation in the model. 5. policy implication of empirical findings 5.1. policy implications based on our empirical estimates, the study has shown that enhancing agricultural productivity towards perking up the quality of life in the rural areas rests on some specific areas to be considered. the following policy implications are drawn from the result. i. educational levels used to measure the quality of labour showed that only secondary and tertiary levels of education can increase agricultural productivity. this is highly shown by the high percentage of unemployment at the primary level in nigeria. so, policies of increasing productivity towards transforming the rural areas demands – investments beyond the primary level of education to higher educational levels. educational infrastructure facilities to enhance the teaching and learning in the rural areas are urgently needed in line with the rural transformation agenda as presented in the ifad (2016). ii. the negative and insignificant impact of government expenditure and loan showed that dearth of credit is a major obstacle to the productivity of the agricultural sector. if there is going to be rural transformation in nigeria, it is important that the increase of credit availability be a priority for both government, commercial banks and private individuals. although over time government has made an effort in providing credit to farmers, most often, the farmers claims not to have access to these credit facilities. hence, feedback and accountability part of policy formulation should be enforced. iii. the result of the empirical estimate showed clearly the significance of female labour force in the productivity of agriculture in nigeria with the variable having the highest coefficient. given this, rural transformation policies in nigeria should provide explicit room to enhance the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 325 productivity of the female gender through increasing their access to education, health, credit and land. iv. health which is needed for human capital development was negatively related to productivity which is contrary to expectation showing that the poor health status of the rural people has been a major constraint to the productivity of the agricultural sector in nigeria. however, it finds significant. the health status of the rural people is of immense need for effective transformation. it is thus recommended that the provision of health facilities should be accelerated in the rural areas so that the health status of the people can be improved. v. in addition to the above findings, the insignificant negative effect of exchange shows that our agricultural export is not competitive in the foreign market. however, agricultural export can be a major avenue of diversifying nigerian economy. hence, exports can be made competitive by increasing innovation and technology of production for productivity as has also been recommended (muzari et al., 2012; iheke and nwaru, 2013). policy formulation on the increase in government expenditure on agricultural technology will generate higher growth in agricultural productivity and higher quality of output. 5.2. conclusion for sustainable development, rural transformation and development cannot be neglected. in the drive for the advancement of the well-being of the rural dwellers, the preferment of agricultural productivity is inevitable given that agriculture is the major occupation of the rural areas. results of this study have shown that there is need for promotion of investment in health, education (particularly beyond primary level) and technology in the rural areas. the results of this study are consistent with other studies. the study also concludes that the position of female gender is imperative and should be given a priority in the formulation of policies for the provision of access to credit, health, education and technologies. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adepoju, a. a., & salman, k. k. 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(2001). agricultural investment. production capacity and productivity, in fao economic and social development paper 148. food and agriculture organization of the united nations. http://www.fao.org/docrep/pdf/003/x9447e/x9447e.pdf. http://www.un.org/en/africa/osaa/pdf/pubs/2013africanagricultures.pdf https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/food_production_index/ https://tradingeconomics.com/nigeria/gross-enrolment-ratio-primary-and-secondary-female-percent-wb-data.html https://tradingeconomics.com/nigeria/gross-enrolment-ratio-primary-and-secondary-female-percent-wb-data.html http://unctadstat.unctad.org/tableviewer/tableview.aspx?reportid=94 http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/2017-global-poverty-update http://www.fao.org/docrep/pdf/003/x9447e/x9447e.pdf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 329 appendix appendix 1: ardl long run estimation dependent variable: tfp method: ardl date: 12/02/19 time: 11:20 sample (adjusted): 1982 2016 included observations: 35 after adjustments maximum dependent lags: 1 (automatic selection) model selection method: akaike info criterion (aic) dynamic regressors (0 lag, automatic): grosprim grossec groster log(rexpen) exr log(aloan) falab lex fixed regressors: c variable coefficient std. error t-statistic prob.* tfp(-1) -0.2081 0.2728 -0.7626 0.4528 grosprim -0.0098 0.0064 -1.5310 0.1383 grossec 0.0163 0.0167 0.9745 0.3392 groster 0.0708 0.0416 1.7023 0.1011 log(rexpen) -0.0376 0.0560 -0.6705 0.5087 exr -0.0001 0.0019 -0.0778 0.9386 log(aloan) -0.1520 0.1085 -1.4005 0.1737 falab 0.3473 0.1335 2.6016 0.0154* lex -0.2787 0.1356 -2.0547 0.0505* c 1.4024 2.7881 0.5030 0.6194 r-squared 0.5672 mean dependent var -0.0075 adjusted r-squared 0.4114 s.d. dependent var 0.2463 s.e. of regression 0.1889 akaike info criterion -0.2600 sum squared resid 0.8923 schwarz criterion 0.1844 log likelihood 14.5492 hannan-quinn criter. -0.1066 f-statistic 3.6406 durbin-watson stat 1.6100 prob(f-statistic) 0.0050 *note: p-values and any subsequent tests do not account for model section source: authors’ own computations; *indicates significant at 5% level of significance appendix 2: ardl bound testing for cointegration ardl bounds test date: 10/17/18 time: 11:17 sample: 1982 2016 included observations: 35 null hypothesis: no long-run relationships exist test statistic value k f-statistic 2.000121 8 critical value bounds significance i0 bound i1 bound 10% 1.95 3.06 5% 2.22 3.39 2.5% 2.48 3.7 1% 2.79 4.1 test equation: dependent variable: d(tfp) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 313-330 330 method: least squares date: 10/17/18 time: 11:17 sample: 1982 2016 included observations: 35 variable coefficient std. error t-statistic prob. d(grosprim) -0.0134 0.0114 -1.1820 0.2511 d(grossec) 0.0306 0.0228 1.3416 0.1948 d(groster) 0.1092 0.0511 2.1365 0.0452* d(exr) -0.0046 0.0026 -1.7854 0.0894 dlog(aloan) 0.1595 0.1818 0.8770 0.3909 c -0.9726 4.1200 -0.2361 0.8158 grosprim(-1) -0.0133 0.0098 -1.3583 0.1895 grossec(-1) 0.0152 0.0301 0.5045 0.6195 groster(-1) 0.0334 0.0586 0.5704 0.5748 log(rexpen(-1)) 0.0086 0.0779 0.1099 0.9136 exr(-1) 0.0016 0.0026 0.6074 0.5504 log(aloan(-1)) -0.1871 0.1582 -1.1825 0.2509 falab(-1) 0.1256 0.2054 0.6118 0.5476 lex(-1) -0.0529 0.2201 -0.2402 0.8126 tfp(-1) -1.2509 0.3531 -3.5430 0.0020* r-squared 0.5835 mean dependent var -0.0160 adjusted r-squared 0.2920 s.d. dependent var 0.2413 s.e. of regression 0.2030 akaike info criterion -0.0537 sum squared resid 0.8242 schwarz criterion 0.6129 log likelihood 15.9398 hannan-quinn criter. 0.1764 f-statistic 2.0015 durbin-watson stat 2.2264 prob(f-statistic) 0.0762 source: authors’ own computations; *indicates significant at 5% level of significance -.6 -.4 -.2 .0 .2 .4 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 tfp effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 333 crop residue management in conservation agriculture systems in zimbabwe smallholder farming sector: importance, management challenges and possible solutions blessing mhlanga and tarirai muoni university of zimbabwe, p. o. box mp 167, mount pleasant, harare, zimbabwe abstract conservation agriculture (ca) is promoted as a cropping system that has potential to alleviate poor crop yields in smallholder farming while protecting the environment. it involves maintenance of permanent soil cover, diverse crop rotations and/or interactions; and minimum soil disturbance. ca is associated with crop residue management challenges due to low crop biomass yields and crop-livestock interactions in zimbabwean smallholder farming sector. there is competition on crop residue uses causing challenges in retaining adequate crop residues for full benefits of using residues to be realised. among the crop residues management options fencing fields reduces the chances of crop residues grazing by free roaming cattle during the dry season. construction of rakes to pile up crop residues where cattle cannot access has been practiced in some communal areas. farmers have practised the system of taking the crop residue harvest to homesteads into protected areas to reduce risk of grazing. farmers may use fences around fields to reduce access into fields. however, all these management options require an investment from the farmers who are resource constrained. farmers may use non-crop residues such as thatch grass and reduce competition for crop residue use where farmers feed them to livestock during the dry season. keywords: crop residue management, conservation agriculture, smallholder, permanent soil surface cover, management challenges introduction 1 smallholder crop yields have remained low in southern africa and their increase has been very slow and this has been attributed to the detrimental effects of traditional ways of farming (mazvimavi et al., 2010). traditional (conventional) farming involves the inversion of the soil using the mouldboard plough and this has led to enormous soil losses from arable lands hence, leading to low crop yields (fao, corresponding author’s name: blessing mhlanga email address: blessing.mhlangah@gmail.com 2002). there is a need to identify cropping systems that ensure the conservation of the soil and at the same time improving crop yields and conservation agriculture (ca) has been a suggested option to conserve the soil while at the same time improving crop yields. ca as defined by fao (2002), is a cropping system that is based on three principles which are minimum soil disturbance, maintenance of a permanent soil cover by the use of crop residues and cover crops; and diverse plant associations (which include crop rotations). minimum soil disturbance is achieved by disturbing only the area where seed and fertilizer are placed using the simple hand hoe or more sophisticated tractor drawn implements such asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:blessing.mhlangah@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 333-340 334 as the happy seeder © and hence maintaining soil structure, reducing water and wind erosion (montgomery, 2007). animal drawn direct seeders and magoye chisel-tine opener (magoye ripper) are also possible options that can be used in ca systems that ensure less soil disturbances. permanent soil cover is attained by the retention of crop residues onto the soil surface. the crop residues may be of the previous crop or may be imported into the field to achieve 30% or more ground cover (berger et al., 2012). a diversification of plants is achieved by practising crop rotations or intercrops with other plants. crop rotations can break disease and pest cycles and hence, reducing management costs and may add in nitrogen if the associate crop is a legume hence, reducing production costs at the same time improving yields (thierfelder et al., 2012). the full benefits of ca are realised when the cropping system is adopted as a full package than adopting only one of the principles (twomlow et al., 2008). however, the adoption of ca as a full package in the smallholder farming sector of zimbabwe is apparently slow as well as its growth to a larger scale (chiputwa et al., 2011; mavunganidze et al., 2013). farmers are, in different circumstances and/or for different reasons, unable to adopt all three principles and this paper addresses the issue of crop residue management by smallholder farmers to achieve permanent soil cover, its importance, challenges that limit smallholder farmers in implementing this principle and the possible solutions to their challenges. importance of crop residues in smallholder farming systems crop residues are retained to the soil to achieve permanent soil cover which in-turn gives benefits to the farmer. thierfelder and wall (2008) described the retention of crop residues as the key drive in the positive realisation of the benefits of ca. crop residues on the soil surface reduce direct raindrop impact on the soil hence reducing soil erosion (anderson, 2009; thierfelder et al., 2013; thierfelder and wall, 2009). the presence of crop residues and considerable nitrogen applications has been shown to improve soil properties (physical, chemical and biological) (ailincâi et al., 2012). a build up in soil microand macrofauna and an increase in biological activity of the soil have been reported when a permanent soil cover with crop residues is maintained and this improves soil properties such as porosity hence infiltration (thierfelder and wall, 2008). an increase in the microorganism population in the soil, facilitated by the presence of crop residues, ensures an increase in microbial decomposition of plant material hence an increased rate of build-up of organic matter, which leads to improved soil structure hence higher crop yields (rengel and singh, 2010). crop residues prevent the hardening of the soil hence facilitate easier emergence of crops and also improves the cation exchange capacity of the soil hence easier availability of important micro elements to the crops (batiano and mokwunye, 1991). nitrogen is an important element for crop growth and development and it is very essential in attaining high crop yields in smallholder agriculture and if legume residues such as of mucuna pruriens (l.) are used as cover, their decomposition releases nitrogen into the system and hence greater yields (erenstein, 2003). the amount of nitrogen released from the residues over time, however, depends on the quality of the residue (schomberg et al., 1994). nitrogen may be supplemented to cropping systems in the form of urea, which can be hydrolysed to form an unstable compound carbamic acid. carbamic acid can decompose rapidly to form ammonia and carbon dioxide (teasdale et al., 1985; benini et al., 1999). ammonia is unavailable to plants and escapes into the atmosphere unless it reacts with water to form ammonium that is available to plants and hence the presence of crop residues ensures moisture conservation increasing the chances of ammonium formation. (schwab and murdock, 2005). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 333-340 335 ammonia volatilization affects the economic efficiency of cropping systems and is affected by several environmental conditions such as temperature, ph and soil moisture of which higher temperatures and drier conditions promote increased ammonia volatilization (olson-rutz et al., 2011). the presence of crop residues conserves moisture and prevents direct heating of the soil surface by the sun, which reduces nitrogen volatilisation (schwab and murdock, 2005) which is an advantage to smallholder farmers who cannot input high levels of synthetic fertilizers. crop residues can be a source of cattle feed during the dry season when most of the grazing pastures are exhausted (jayasuriya and owen, 1989). crop residue management, challenges faced by smallholder farmers and possible solutions to their challenges some smallholder farmers practicing ca understand the need for maintaining a permanent soil cover, but they produce inadequate crop biomass to meet the demand for the residue for different uses (savadogo, 2000). crop residues are used for different purposes other than soil surface cover in the field and these include feeding their livestock during the dry seasons and as a source of fire in countries such as ethiopia (tsigie et al., 2011). utilisation of crop residues can be through the brown route or the green route at farm level. in the brown route, farmers opt to feed their crop residues such as maize stalks to livestock (which are an important component of the smallholder farming system set up) during the dry season and then collect manure from the livestock and use it as a source of organic matter in their fields (mafongoya, personal communication). this is a common method in zimbabwean smallholder farming sector. if farmers opt to go the brown route, they compromise the use of residues for ground cover. however, farmers will still have an option of using other non-crop residues such as thatch grass (hyparrhenia filipendula) (picture 1) and feed crop residue to livestock and then use their manure in the fields. picture 1: shows thatch grass used by farmers as supplementary soil surface cover in maize systems in zimuto village of masvingo in zimbabwe asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 333-340 336 however, ca cropping system seems to favour the green route where crop residues are retained in the field as post-mortem green manure cover crops or as crop residue harvested at the end of the season (saini, 2009). due to the high demand for crop residues, there is need for sustainable crop residues management practices that ensures maintenance of a permanent soil cover in the ca plots. among the management strategies for crop residues is fencing the farmers plots either with barbed wire or biological (live) fences that ensures that free roaming livestock do not get access to the crop residues in the fields (picture 1). even though fencing is an effective crop residues protection measure, most farmers are cash constrained to purchase wire fences or construct wooden fences. in the effort to protect crop residues, some farmers adopt the use of rakes constructed from wood which are more than one meter from the ground where cattle cannot reach the crop residues which they later spread the crop residues at the onset of the season. this has been a successful method commonly practised by communal farmers in zimuto communal area (picture 2) who are practicing ca through facilitations by research institutes such as cimmyt. this method is also applicable to fields that are far from the homesteads. some farmers take their crop residues from the fields to their households where they closely monitor them and put them in protected places (picture 2) to reduce the risk of getting them grazed by cattle before the onset of the season. however, these methods of removing the residue and keeping it away from the field surfaces take away the essence of permanence in surface cover hence, allowing residual nitrogen to be lost from the cropping system through volatilization. also, if it happens to rain during the offseason, rain drop impact on soil surfaces is not cushioned since residues would have been removed from the soil surfaces hence, soil erosion may occur. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 333-340 337 picture 2: (top) showing a maize residue rake at one of zimuto communal farmer’s fields to keep maize residue from grazing by stray cattle during the dry season; and (bottom) crop residues taken to a protected place near a homestead in nyarukunda village of zimbabwe although the removal of residue may be effective, it is labour intensive and keeps the farmer busy throughout the year. labour availability in smallholder farming sector is inadequate hence, this may compromise the success of maintaining an important principle of ca. staking of crop residue on rakes also tends to shorten the period which microand macro-organisms would act on and decompose the residue for organic matter build up thereby compromising soil structure improvement. in order to avoid grazing of crop residues by stray cattle or for easier management of the residue, farmers may also concentrate more on fields closer to the homestead for high yields where they easily manage the crop residue. use of organic repellents to protect residues has been demonstrated and this is another option in the protection of crop residue from cattle grazing (mutsamba et al., 2012). organic repellents are substances that can be used to deter certain species of animals from protected items or objects (osko et al., 1993). using this method ensures that the more labour intensive transfer of residues is eliminated since this can be done in the fields. strengthening of strict grazing policies within communities may also ensure the banning of free-roaming cattle even during the off-season period to prevent grazing of crop residue hence, maintaining permanent soil surface cover. improving soil fertility to boost crop yields through the use of synthetic fertilizers, leguminous cover crops and/ or organic manures is another option to improve crop biomass production hence, more biomass to meet the demands of all its farm household uses. relay cropping or intercropping the main crops with non-palatable associate crops such as tephrosia vogelii (l.) gives farmers an option to both feed the main crop residue to cattle and retain associate crop residue for ground cover or the other way round. conclusions crop residues are a very important component at smallholder farming level asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 333-340 338 practising ca and if their use is managed well, they give considerable returns to croplivestock systems. maintenance of a permanent soil surface cover gives better benefits than when the residue is removed during the off-season. smallholder farmers find permanent soil cover difficult or almost impossible to maintain due to the competition for crop residue for different household uses. the full benefits of the uses of crop residues as soil surface cover are not fully realised because the residues are removed at some point during the dry season. cropping systems that supplement biomass such as intercropping reduce pressure on the crop residues and hence making it almost possible for permanent soil cover to be attained. the use of a fence to keep cattle out of the fields could be a considerable option since this ensures that crop residue are not grazed or moved thereby maintaining a permanent soil surface cover throughout the entire year. if wire fences are expensive farmers may also use live fences where they plant fast growing, thorny bushes or vines (e.g. bougainvillea spp) around their fields to keep livestock out of their fields (wall, 2009). organic repellents are another affordable option that can protect crop residue from livestock grazing during the dry season. measures that protect crop residues from being removed from the fields need to be considered as part of the ca farming system package for the benefits of the system to be fully realised. references ailincâi, c., jitareanu, g., bucur, d., & ailincâi, d. 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(2007). soil erosion and agricultural sustainability. in national academy of sciences of the united states of america, vol. 104, 13268– 13272 (ed p. a. matson). boston, usa: stanford university's highwire press ® . mutsamba, e. f., nyagumbo, i., & mafongoya, p. l. (2012). dry season crop residue management using organic livestock repellents under conservation agriculture in zimbabwe. journal of organic systems, 7(1), 5-13. olson-rutz, k., jones, c., & pariera, c. (2011). enhanced efficiency fertilizers, (ed m. s. university). osko, t. j., hardin, r. t., young, b. a., (1993). research observation: chemical repellants to reduce grazing intensity on reclaimed sites. j. range manage, 46, 383–386. rengel, z., & singh, b. (2010). the role of crop residues in improving soil fertility, in nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems, vol. 10 (eds p. marschner and z. rengel). springer-verlag berlin heidelberg. saini, m. (2009). integration of cover crop residues, conservation tillage and herbicides for weed management in corn, cotton, peanut, and tomato. auburn university. savadogo, m. (2000). crop residue management in relation to sustainable land use, a case study in burkina faso. wageningen university and research centre. schomberg, h. h., steiner, j. l., & unger, p. w. (1994). decomposition and nitrogen dynamics of crop residues: residue quality and water effects. soil sci soc am j, 58, 372-382. schwab, g. j., & murdock, l. w. (2005). nitrogen transformation inhibitors and controlled release urea. extension report. lexington, ky: university of kentucky college of agriculture. thierfelder, c., cheesman, s., & rusinamhodzi, l. (2012). benefits and challenges of crop rotations in maize-based conservation agriculture (ca) cropping systems of southern africa. international journal of agricultural sustainability, 11(2), 117. thierfelder, c., mwila, m., & rusinamhodzi, l. (2013). conservation agriculture in eastern and southern provinces of zambia: long-term effects on soil quality and maize productivity. soil and tillage research, 126(0), 246-258. thierfelder, c., & wall, p. c. (2008). the role and imortance of crop residues, technical extension bulletin, cimmytsouthern africa. thierfelder, c., & wall, p. c. (2009). efects of conservation agriculture techniques on infiltration and soil water content in zambia and zimbabwe. soil and tillage research, 105(2), 217-227. teasdale, s. l., nelson, w. l., & beaton, j. d. (1985). soil fertility and fertilizers, new york: macmillan, pp. 161–168, isbn 0-02-420830-2. tsigie, a., agegnehu, g., & tesfye, a. (2011). crop residues as animal feed vs conservation agriculture in the central highlands of ethiopia, research report by ethioian institute of agricultural research, ethiopia. twomlow, s., urolov, j., jenrich, m., & oldrieve, b. (2008). lessons from the field–zimbabwe’s conservation asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 333-340 340 agriculture task force. journal of sat agricultural research, 6(1), 1-11. wall, p. c. (2009). strategies to overcome the competition for crop residues in southern africa, some light at the end of the tunnel, in: 4th world congress of conservation agriculture. presented at the innovations for improving efficiency, equity and environment, new delhi, india. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 156 the shedding and growth dynamics of yak down wool and links to habitat ecological conditions baigalmaa danzan graduate school, mongolian state university of agriculture, mongolia khishigjargal tsedev school of biological resources and management, mongolian state university of agriculture, mongolia nyambat luvsandorj school of economics and business, mongolian state university of agriculture, mongolia abstract this research has been carried out to identify correlations between the shedding and growth dynamics of yak down wool and the ecological conditions of yak habitat. according to the research, the location of the aimags and soums where yak herds are bred in large cold khangai mountains, with an average altitude of 2000-3300m above sea level. the average winter temperatures dropping to between -30 0 c and -40 0 c and average summer temperature +12 0 c to +20 0 c. in order to survive such harsh environment, the down wool between the coarse top hair fibres grows intensively on yaks at the start of the cold season; throughout winter a yak’s body is covered with down wool with a complete morphological structure consisting of coarse down and midtype fibres, enabling yaks to withstand cold temperatures. with the onset of spring and warmer temperatures, the hair fibres are gradually shed until june, when new fibres appear. however, the growth of new fibres slows down in the months of july and august, intensifying with the approach of colder months. the research reveals that the adaptive capacity of yaks to the ecological conditions of their habitat affects the renewal process of the morphological structure of yak down. keywords: stabilization of hair fibre, hair growth and shedding, hair growth cycle, fine fibres (down and midtype fibres) introduction 1 yak herds are found in the mountainous regions of afghanistan, bhutan, mongolia, russia, china, india, kyrgyzstan, tajikistan and nepal on the central asian plateau. corresponding author’s name: khishigjargal tsedev email address: ktsedev@yahoo.com there are about 14 million yaks worldwide. interest in yak research has grown and a number of studies have been undertaken on yak biology and products. for instance, yaks have a strong body conformation, wellshaped large heads, broad foreheads, slightly hollow long noses, convex black muzzles, mobile and convex eyes, and short-, smaller ears, and they are mostly polled. yaks’ necks are short, and narrow at throat, asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ktsedev@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 156-161 157 broader at the base-skin folds are small, the thoracic vertebral projection is longer and vertical, therefore the animal is higher at the wither and relatively lower at the spine and croup and have shorter hips and narrow buttocks (tumurjav, 1989; bat-erdene, 2002; shagdarsuren, 2005; tumurjav, and doyoddorj, 2002; bat-erdene and doyoddorj, 2010). last year’s international research tended to focus on global warming and ecological equilibriums therefore; yak researchers are investigating the animal’s biological and productive features in conjunction with the ecological conditions of its habitat. it is emphasized that yaks’ biological features as a whole are formed as a result of ecologically peculiar impacts on the anatomical-morphological, physiological and biological specificities of its body, cells, tissues and organs, which are uniquely adapted to severe natural and climatic conditions, the central asian high mountains (bat-erdene, 2002; shagdarsuren, 2005; wiener et al., 2003). some researchers reported that one of the natural and ecological factors impacting on yak growth and body size was the air temperature of its habitat (li, 1992; yubi and yuquing, 1995; zhihua et al. (2000); shagdarsuren, o. 2005). developed the following mathematical modeling derived from a calculation of the relationship between yak meat productivity and habitat air temperatures. y = 2.452 + 7.166 t7 + 1.726 r2 t7: average air temperature in june, r2: relative air humidity in february (yubi and yuquing, 1995). according to some studies, long, thick hair and tails, greater down fibres, less sweat and oil glands, and soft and thick skin give yaks a unique resistance to the cold. because the thermal regulation ability via body-surface heat loss is weak, yaks have less body thermal regulation in hot conditions and hence are not resistant to the heat. (baterdene, 2002; shagdarsuren, 2005; wiener et al., 2003). studies by xi and qianfei (1984) demonstrated that yaks’ coats consist of three hair fibres: course, mid type and down fibres which differ significantly with external appearances and technical characteristics. of those, down fibre is a yak’s winter clothing jiying and zhengfeng (1981) noted that the ability of yaks to live in extremely cold and wet conditions was due to the water impermeability of their coats. yaks’ skeleton hair and down fibre are of a seasonal character; abdominal and tail-hair fibres are gradually shed and replaced by new ones, ensuring the thermal balance of the body in the cold seasons. it is described as a thin and light hair coat because short, thin, coarse, shiny hair is present during summer after shedding. (bat-erdene, 2002; shagdarsuren, 2005; tumutjav and doyoddorj, 2002). although extensive research on mongolian yak biological and economic factors have been conducted, there have only been limited studies carried out on the specific characteristics of yak hair in relation to the prevailing ecological conditions; therefore, more detailed studies on this area will be significant in terms of the advancement of yak down processing technology and optimization. methodology geographical locations of the aimags and soums covered in the study geographically, 79.3 percent of the total number of yak populations are located in the khangai and khuvsgul mountains of mongolia. (mongolian statistical yearbook, 1998 2012). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 156-161 158 a sampling survey was conducted among 70 khot ails (a group of herder families living in the same vicinity and sharing access to common seasonal pasturelands) with 350 yaks of different ages and gender. samples were collected from main parts of the body: the neck, throat, kidney, side and legs. all samples were recorded and coded by aimag, soum, khot ail, animal age, sex, and date of sampling. based on the spread of yak herds across the altai and khangai mountain regions, samples were taken from localities at the longitude of 99 0 07/-102 0 07/ and latitude of 46 0 07/-49 0 50/ with an average elevation above sea level of 2200м: 13 soums in arkhangai, uvurkhangai, bayankhongor and khuvsgul aimags (ikh tamir, tariat, undur-ulaan, khangai, tsenger, erdene-tsogt, gurvanbulag, galuut, jargalant, uyanga, bat-ulziit and ulaan-uul and khatgal). results geographical localization herders and business entities raising a number of yaks are evidence of their characteristics, their adaptability to nature, and the capability of their technological features for processing productivity. because of this, locations at altitudes above sea level were surveyed. maps of some aimags where the study was conducted are partially demonstrated, as illustrated below, with the purpose of showing where yaks are bred. figure 1: geographical localizations of yak breeding areas (bayankhongor and arkhangai aimags) the map above shows that the geographic location of the aimags and soums in which yak husbandry is carried out is at a significantly higher altitude. soums in arkhangai aimag, in which yaks are bred are at 2464—3239 m above sea level, whereas those of bayankhongor aimag are at 2685 3290m, uvurkhangai aimag at 2431-2787 m, and khuvsgul aimag at 2077–3077 m. in other words, the valleys of larger rivers at 2000-2300 m and 2500-3000 m mountains prevail. air temperature based on the information provided by meteorological stations in the aimags and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 156-161 159 soums studied, the average air temperatures in the past 5 years in the above areas where yaks are bred are shown in diagram 1, and average annual precipitation is shown in figure 2. (mongolian statistical yearbook, 2007-2013). figure 2: average air temperatures in the aimags where yaks are bred (temperature 0 с) figure 2 shows the average air temperatures of the past five years in the yak breeding soums of those aimags exceed -20 0 с in january and reach -30 0 с to -40 0 с in some years. the average air temperature in july is 12 0 с to 20 0 с. the warm and cold regimes from march to september are identical to tropical regions, while those from september to march are identical to cold regions. in other words, the habitat of yaks has strong seasonal distributions; cold and warm. figure 3: average annual precipitation of yak-breeding aimags (mm) figure3 reveals annual precipitation in the yak-breeding soums of those aimags for the past five years has different seasonal distributions. of the total level of annual precipitation, 15-20 percent occurred in cold seasons or from november to march, while the remaining 85-90 percent was from april to october. these soums and aimags belong asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 156-161 160 to wet and cold weather zones of the khangai high mountainous region. the above studies show that yak habitat is distributed in ecological conditions with seasonal distributions, with obvious differences shifting from wet and warm weather to wet and cold weather, and vice versa. therefore, the formation of norms with broader fluctuations of physiological reactions maintaining unique biological characters withstanding seasons with such sudden shifts, reproducing, producing next generations and giving their productivity is seen to be as the main outcome of various harmonies of its evolution. as one of them, study on dynamics of principles of growth intensification, maturation and shedding of hair fibres, involved in thermal regulation in conjunction with air temperature changes for different periods is of greater significance. yak hair coat a yak’s hair coat differs according to body region; skeleton hair has greater down fibres, thick abdominal hair, a thick and long tail hiding its thigh, back and groin regions,; a short forehead is covered with hair, but the inside of the thigh, abdomen, udder and scrotum has fine, soft hair. observations and experiments on the dynamics of seasonal replacements of hair fibres of the yak skeleton were conducted for our study, with the results shown in figure 4. 20 15 10 5 0 mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec jan feb mar -5 -10 -15 -20 -25 -30 + + ⌂ ⌂ ○ ○ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ □ □ + wool molting stable phase of new wool base intensive growth of the wool stable phase of new wool base av era ge te mp era tur es, c0 loosening wool dy na mi c re pla ce me nt, by mo nth figure 4: dynamics of the replacement of yak hair fibres figure 4 reveals that fine fibres grow intensively between coarse fibres on the skin from the start of the cold period and that their growth intensifies during the cold winter, when yaks’ bodies are covered with a morphologically complete structure of thick long hair. hair then gradually comes off and is shed in warmer months new, shiny coarse hair grows and fine fibres appear, and the source of these fine fibres becomes stabilized, when yak habitats enter into the warmer summer months. fine fibres then grow intensively, with their growth completed by the onset of the cooler months. according to such principle, repeating of dynamics of yak hair renewal and changes are found. in such a fashion, seasonal renewal and changes to yak hair fibres in conjunction with environmental temperatures can be seen as one of the unique principles of adaptability to ecological conditions, cyclically repeated in a pattern of hair shedding, growing and stabilizing. conclusions because yakbreeding aimags and soums in mongolia are located in high mountains, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 156-161 161 larger valleys, and river basins at 20003300 m above sea level, yaks are acclimatized to living in different weather conditions, shifting from wet cold to wet warm and vice versa. seasonal renewal and changes in yak hair fibres in conjunction with environmental temperatures can be seen as one of unique principles of adaptability to ecological conditions, cyclically repeated in an annual pattern of hair shedding, growing and stabilizing. studies on the growth principles and dynamics of yak hair fibres are significant for technological optimization for the preparation and processing of yak hair and the advancement of yak husbandry technology. references bat-erdene, т. (2002). mongolian breed yaks. ulaanbaatar, pp. 15-16, 35-36, 51-52, 71-78. bat-erdene, t., & doyoddorj, d. (2010). study of definition of breeds, types and strain of mongolian yak, report of livestock breed and types of ministry of mongolian agricultural and light, food industry. pp. 7-11. cai li (1992). china yak. beijing, agricultural publishing company. gerald w., han j., & long ruijin (2003). the yak, second edition. pp. 62-90. journal of southwest nationalities college, 2(2), 403-406. mongolian statistical yearbook (1998 2012). the number of livestock by type, regions, aimags and the capital. pp. 212-216. mongolian statistical yearbook (20072013). annual average temperature and precipitation by aimags’ centers and the capital. pp. 406-408. ouyang x., & wang qianfei (1984). an observation on adaptation of calf yak. a research on utilization and exploitation of grassland in the northwestern part of sichuan province, sichuan national publishing house. pp. 159-161. shagdarsuren, o. (2005). biology of mongolian pastoral livestock and features of nomadic animal husbandry. ulaanbaatar, pp. 174175, 166-189. тumurjav, m. (1989). pasture mongolian livestock. ulaanbaatar, pp. 16-17. тumurjav, m., & doyoddorj, d. (2002). some issues of yak biology and productivity. ulaanbaatar, pp. 6-7, 18-19, 50-51. xue j., & yu zhengfeng (1981). the property and utilization of yak’s down hair. journal of china yak, 1(1), 1-5. yao y., & li yuquing (1995). analysis on the effect of climatic factor on meat production of yak. journal of china animal husbandry, 1, 33-34. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 401 effects of paddy price support withdrawal on malaysian rice sector: time series econometric approach umar haruna suleiman department of agribusiness and information system; faculty of agriculture, university putra malaysia, serdang selangor, malaysia and department of agricultural economics and extension; faculty of agriculture, nasarawa state university, keffi (lafia campus), nigeria amin mahir abdullah, mad nasir shamsudin and zainal abidin mohamed department of agribusiness and information system; faculty of agriculture, university putra malaysia, serdang selangor, malaysia abstract the study simulated effects of paddy price support withdrawal, as an alternative policy, on key variables namely domestic rice supply, domestic rice demand, net import of rice, area planted to paddy and paddy producer price. time series data (1980-2012) were collected and analyzed using autoregressive distributed lag (ardl). the long run coefficients or elasticities generated were used in scenarios simulation through appropriate simulation technique. the results show that, on the average, paddy price support withdrawal would affect the rice sector by 2020 in the following ways: 13% decline in domestic rice production; 23% increase in net rice import; area planted to paddy decrease in size by 13%; and, paddy producer price reduce by 20%. however, there was no effect on aggregate rice consumption. since the country is concern about raising farm income and ensuring rice food security, sustaining the paddy support price is worthwhile policy in order to avoid a decline in paddy producer price (income) and surge in import bills. keywords: paddy price support withdrawal, simulation, food security, rice sector introduction1 rice sector in malaysia is, at the moment, heavily supported and protected because of its socio-political and economic importance. the country has a long history of government intervention in rice sub-sector. the global instability in rice prices experienced in early 1970 and middle of 1980 reinforced the necessity for the state intervention. three main objectives for the formulation and implementation of various policies on rice through the decades by the corresponding author’s name: umar, haruna suleiman email address: umarhsuleiman@yahoo.com government included: (i) ensuring food security; (ii) raising farm income and productivity; and, (iii) ensuring food supply to consumers at reasonable cost. the government supports for the rice sector has been consistently maintained and reflected in both national agricultural plans (naps) and malaysia plans. in 1980s, the government intervention in rice market was reinvigorated through different policies like monopoly on imports, paddy price support and fertilizer subsidy. the government also provides investments in building drainage and irrigation facilities and funded research and development in rice sector. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:umarhsuleiman@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 401-413 402 over the years, the malaysian government interventions in rice industry, in the form of paddy price support, guarantee minimum price, fertilizer and agro-chemical subsidy and monopoly on import, have earned different levels of self-sufficiency in rice production. the country usually resorts to importation of rice to augment deficit in demand-supply gap. though the country current rice import policy supports the nation's self-sufficiency policy in that the import volume depends on the production of local rice. bernas (a state owned company with monopoly right of rice import) imports about 35% to 40% of malaysia's domestic rice demand annually (gain report, 2011). malaysia has entered “agreement on agriculture” (aoa) of wto and the “common effective preferential tariff” (cept) of afta. these agreements called for the liberalization of agricultural sector by removing all forms of trade barriers including production subsidy (such as paddy price support) by all member countries. though at the moment, there had been different levels of compliance to the agreement’s obligations among member countries, some major changes in rice production and market has been witnessed by some member countries as a result of enforcement of the agreements. for instance, market-driven rice production in vietnam has resulted in surplus production and making the country to be the second largest rice producer in the world. the country large rural population produces rice, so the positive impacts of increased export was largely dispersed. according to minot and gulotti (2000), overall poverty incidence of vietnam has decreased significantly following liberalization policy of rice sector. in china, market-orientation has induced a shift towards production of high quality rice. contrary to the support and protection of rice sector by malaysian government, the country membership in the wto and afta makes it mandatory to open up agricultural sector in terms of adopting liberalization and market-driven policy option. the full implementation of the agreements connotes removal of trade barriers and production subsidy (paddy price support). while some economist analysts believe that adopting such policy option would make the country agricultural sector more competitive. however, according to arshad et al. (2005), the price support scheme of malaysian rice sector was able to increase output by 65.8% and contribute to a 38.6% change in income. the fertilizer and price support components of production subsidy constitute 58% of total farm income. other studies have also lent credence to the above reports: ahmed and tawang (1999) observed that malaysian paddy rice subsidy alone constituted almost 50% of the farm income, and that a situation where all subsidies were to be withdrawn, the farm profitability would decline by 57%. thus, this significant decline in income is believed to have an economic injury on the wellbeing of small size farmers who constitute the majority of rice farmers in the country. hence, the government’s efforts toward striking a balance between the goal of protecting smallholder paddy producers (by proving paddy price support) and pursuing food security for the nation on the one hand, and the need to honour her bilateral agreements by making agricultural sector a market driven (which implies the removal of all forms of subsidies and protections from rice sector) on the other hand, certainly depend on knowledge garner from empirical analysis of implications of such policy on domestic rice production, paddy producer price (income) and net import of rice. previously, few studies have attempted to analyze the impact of malaysian liberalization policy on rice sector (ramli et al., (2012); daviga et al. (2011); ahmad and tawang, (1999); mustapha (1998)). ramli et al. (2012) research is limited in scope to income effect of paddy price support withdrawal, no mentioned was made about effects on domestic production level, paddy farm price, import level etc. the system dynamic (through cross sectional data) was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 401-413 403 used as against time series econometrics. the dynamic information which time series data convey could be useful in determining the direction of future development. deviga et al. (2011) observed large net welfare gains and a significant reduction in government expenditures if all forms of government interventions were removed and a free market allowed in agricultural sector. in this study, elasticity of demand and supply were obtained from different secondary sources as the model used (spem) lack the capacity to estimate them. importing elasticity from different sources could affect both authenticity of the final results and inferences made from the results. the study effect of trade liberalization on agriculture in malaysia (rice sector infocus), using time series econometrics, ahmad and tawang (1999) observed allround efficiency and welfare gains from the policy. however, no mentioned was made about subjecting the econometric estimation of supply function to validation tests which is necessary for valid inference. the authors’ imported elasticity of demand from secondary sources could affect the final results; and due to the old nature of the research (1999), this result might not adequately apply to current situation in the sector. mustapha (1998) observed that the imposition of price control favoured consumers at the expense of producers .the policy instrument under analysis in this research was guaranteed minimum price (gmp) and their relationship to the selfsufficiency level in rice production. no mentioned was made regarding other policy instrument such as paddy support price and gmp policy is no longer applicable in rice sector of the country. in view of the above shortcomings observed in the previous research on the subject matter, assessing the effect of alternative policy (paddy price support withdrawal) on major variables, such as domestic rice production (drpp), rice net import (rnim), rice total consumption (rtcn), area planted to paddy (apap) and paddy producer price (pppr), using up-to-date time series data, has becomes imperative to policy makers in the country. hence, the objective of this study is to simulate the effects of alternative rice sector policy (that is paddy price support withdrawal policy) on the nation rice output, consumption level, paddy farm price and rice import quantity in the country. simulation of the selected variables was based on estimated elasticity from appropriate time series econometric method. besides introduction, the paper is subdivided into methodology, empirical result findings, conclusion and recommendations, and references. methodology time series data for the periods of 1980 to 2012 were collected from the paddy statistics unit, ministry of agriculture and agro-based industry, malaysia; and, food and agricultural organization (fao) website. data were collected and measured on the following variables: apapt = paddy area planted (ha) in period t; apydt = paddy yield (kg/ha) in period t; ppprt = paddy producer price (rm/t) in period t; pfprt = paddy farm price (rm/t) in period t; rrprt = rice retail price (rm/t) in period t; wrprt = wheat retail price (rm/t) in period t; fesubt = fertilizer subsidy (rm/annum) in period t; techt = technological progress (trend); pprst = paddy price support (rm/t) in period t; rpcnt = rice consumption per capita (kg) in period t; pcyt = income per capita (rm) in period t; rtcnt = rice total consumption (t) in period t; popt = country population (number of people) in period t; rnimt = rice net import (t) in period t; drppt= domestic rice production (t) in period t; dapap= dummy (1= period of global crisis in rice market; 0= any other period); cv= conversion factor for paddy into rice grain. the functional form of time series econometric model which explains the behaviour of actors or players in rice market asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 401-413 404 in malaysia consists of four components namely; domestic rice producers, the consumers, importing agency and agency in charge of policy formulation concerning price support to paddy producer and other production subsidy. in this model, the rice/paddy production (supply side) is disaggregated into area planted and yield, while rice demand market is represented by demand equation. thus, the model consists of three structural or behavioural equations and five identity equations. the behavioural equations were equations of area planted and yield, and domestic demand. while identity equations involved total domestic production, total consumption, import demand, paddy producer price and price transmission equation. area planted the area planted equation is the nerlovian type where the paddy area planted (papt) is written as a function of the lagged dependent variable, papt-1, lagged paddy producer price, ppprt-i, and, dummy that captured the effect of global shock periods on area planted to paddy (dapap). the lagged of area planted is included to reflect the partial adjustment of cropland towards the desired level. it should be noted that the area planted equation is a restricted equation mainly due to heavy support and subsidy enjoy by paddy farmers in the country. the equation is specified as follows: lapapt = α0 + α1lapapt-1+α2lppprt-i +α3dapapt+µt………….................….. 1 yield the paddy rice yield is assumed to be determined by technology, techt, (improved seed and management practices), and amount of fertilizer applied (which depend on fertilizer subsidy), fesubt. thus, the paddy rice yield is function of technological development, and fertilizer subsidy. again, yield equation was specified as a restricted equation in view of protectionist policy on the supply-side of rice sector. lpydt= λ0 + λ1lfesubt +λ2techt+µt……………………....……..... 2 l= natural log in respective equation; t= time period in respective equation; α and λ = constants and coefficients for respective variables; µt =white-noise error term in the respective equations; dapapt= dummy that captured effect of shock periods on paddy area planted. domestic demand the demand equation was given as a function of own price, (rrprt), the price of substitute crop (wheat), (wrprt), and income per capita, (pcyt). hence, the rice consumption per capita equation was specified as follows: lrpcnt= γ0γ1lrrpr1t + γ2lwrpr2t + γ3lpcy3t+ µt ………………….........…… 3 l= natural log; γ = constant and coefficients of respective variable; µt= error term. import demand the import demand is considered as an excess demand over the country total rice production. it is therefore considered as a difference between total rice consumption and domestic production. the identity equation is expressed as follows: rnimt= rtcnt drpt ............................. 4 other identity equations were specified as follows: rtcnt = rpcnt * popt ……………….... 5 drppt= (papt * pydt)* 0.644785983(cv) ………………................................……. 6 ppprt= pfprt + pprst .....………….... 7 the market clearing condition is given below: market equilibrium (me) = drppt + rnimt -rtcnt asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 401-413 405 price the paddy farm price is considered as a function of retail price of rice or the price consumers willingly paid for rice demanded. the price transmission equation is specified as follows: pfprt= f (rrprt) ……………………. 8 the estimation of structural equations containing non-stationary variables, but their linear combinations are stationary, were done using auto regressive distributed lag (ardl) particularly as combining variables are integrated of order (0) and (1). engle and granger (1987) observed that the presence of co-integration implied the existence of a corresponding error-correction representation. so, error correction model (ecm) was also estimated from long-run coefficients but not provided here because of non-applicability to the main objective of the study. the ardl is specified as follows: yt = α0 + + + + ɛt ……….9 yt = vector for dependent variable; yt-1 = vector for lag-dependent variables; xt = vector for exogenous variables; k = lag length; α = coefficients for the variables; and ɛt = error term in respective equations. according to labys and pollak (1984) policy decision making can be simulated by changing the values of the exogenous policy variables and observe their impact on variables y (endogenous variables). arshad et al. (2012) specified the equations for simulation and forecasting as applied to estimated model with elasticity. it is stated as follows: yt= yt-1 + yt-1(∆y) …….……… ….10 where; ∆yt=α1*∆x1 + α2*∆x2 + α3*∆x3 +……………+ αn*∆xn …........……….. 11 ∆y= (ytyt-1)/yt-1 ................................. 12 y = variable of interest to be projected; yt-1 = one period lag value of the affected variable; ∆yt = annual growth rate for the variable of interest either endogenously determined (equation 11) or exogenously determined (equation 12); α1 = estimated coefficient; ∆x = percentage change in exogenous variables. note: solver tool in excel was used to solve simultaneously the results generated from equations 10-12. unit root and co-integration tests were done using appropriate methods. the popular test of stationary (or non-stationary) adopted for this study was the unit root test using augmented dickey-fuller (adf) and phillips-perron (pp) tests. autoregressive distributed lag (bounds) testing approach to co-integration, using joint test or f-test statistics, was used for determining the existence of a long run relationship among the variables. given the relatively small size sample for this study (33 observations), the critical value for small size sample generated by narayan (2005) was used. the lag length selections for each equation was determined through hendry’s general to specific procedure with minimum value of sic (schwarz information criterion). the maximum lag in each case was two. model validation and diagnostic tests were done to validate the predictive ability of the model to ensure valid inferences about the estimated coefficients. the estimated equations were validated using root mean square percentage error (rmspe) and theil inequality coefficient (u). the estimated coefficients were subjected to the following diagnostic tests: autocorrelation (lm); and, structural stability (cusum of square). empirical result findings the unit root tests were based on the methods of intercept with trend for variables at level, and only intercept for variables at first difference test. the schwarz information criterion (sic) was used in choosing the optimum lag length. the results of these tests are presented in table asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 401-413 406 1. the results show that both adf and pp concurred in classifying the following variables as i(1)-that is they are nonstationary at level but become stationary after first differencing: lpppr, lpfpr, lfesub, lrpcn, lwrpr and lpcy. the variables-lrrpr and tech were confirmed to be stationary at level, i(0), as indicated by their critical values which are both significant at 5% level (table 1). however, for lapap, the results from the two methods-adf and pp were conflicting. hence lapap is treated as and i (1) variable. the equations of lapap and lrpcn were confirmed to be co-integrated which implies that they have long-run relationship (table 2). the remaining equation namely lapyd was having inconclusive bound test results. but further confirmation tests such the dynamic stability tests and the sign of error correction terms (which must be negative) obtained from the equation suggested treating lapyd as co-integrated equation. table 1: result of unit root tests variables level adf pp first differencing adf pp lapap -3.56** -3.54 -4.622*** -6.73*** lapyd -3.43 -3.26 -6.25*** -7.22*** lpppr -1.36 -1.48 -4.04*** -4.04*** lpfpr -1.10 -1.20 -4.04*** -4.04*** lfesub -1.03 -1.22 -4.59*** -4.59*** tech -15.40*** lrpcn -3.37 -3.24 -7.34*** -7.35*** lrrpr -4.03** -3.96** lwrpr -3.53 -3.53 -9.93*** -9.76*** lpcy -1.30 -1.71 -4.40*** -4.40*** table 2: co-integration test results dep. variables (represent each equation) k sic (minimum value) f-statistic narayan (2005) cv at 5% i(0) i(1) remark ∆lapapt 1 -4.611 6.409*** 5.393 6.350 yes ∆lapydt 2 -2.716 4.965** 4.269 5.473 inc. ∆lrpcnt 3 -2.718 6.977*** 3.710 5.018 yes note: (**) and (***) denote significant at 5% and 1% respectively. k = exogenous variables in each equation; sic = schwarz information criterion (minimum value in each equation); cv = critical values at 5% level of significant. estimated long-run coefficients the long-run coefficients were obtained by estimation of equation 9. in each of the respective equations, the long-run coefficients for exogenous variables were obtained after normalizing on the lag dependent variables (narayan, 2004). the estimated long-run level equations were made to pass autocorrelation test and structural stability test for all the equations. the estimated equations appear stable as cusum test statistics did not exceed the bounds at 5% level of significant (narayan, 2004). note: the actual graphs for cusum test are not included here but can be provided if considered necessary. full discussion on the statistical and economic property of estimated coefficients is deliberately avoided since our interest is only focusing on estimated elasticity to be used for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 401-413 407 simulation. as earlier stated, short run coefficients were not included too. estimated long-run coefficients for lapapt-equation the partial adjustment of area planted toward the desire level captured by change in the lag dependent variable has expected positive sign and significant at 1% level. the long run elasticity of paddy producer price (pppr) has expected positive sign but shows no significant influence on area planted (apap) to paddy (table 3). the dummy variable (dapap) shows significantly influence on area planted to paddy in the country. table 3: lapapt-estimated long-run coefficients variable coefficient std. error t-statistic c 2.741367 1.283853 2.135266** lapapt-1 0.793249 0.095807 8.279621*** lppprt-1 0.002096 0.008936 0.234596 dapap 0.033557 0.004896 6.853828*** normalized long-run relation c 13.25926 0.292495 45.33162*** lppprt 0.010140 0.043088 0.235325 dapap 0.034722 0.005242 6.623836*** r 2 =0.75 dw=2.13 lm=5.03 note: (**) and (***) denote significant level of 5% and 1% respectively. estimated long-run coefficients for lapydt-equation the long run coefficient for the trend variable (techt) which capture the rice related technological advancement has expected positive sign and statistically significant at 1% level; an indication of appreciable technological driven improvement in paddy production. the long-run elasticity of fertilizer subsidy variable (fesubt) has expected positive sign but insignificantly influencing the paddy yield (table 4). table 4: lapydt-estimated long-run coefficients variable coefficient std. error t-statistic c -1.713506 3.048768 -0.562032 lapydt-1 0.671893 0.124725 5.386993*** lfesubt 0.225093 0.177601 1.267403 techt 0.046734 0.018438 2.534630** normalized long run relation c -5.222397 9.222433 -0.566271 lfesubt 0.686034 0.492667 1.392490 techt 0.142434 0.042971 3.314619*** r 2 =0.85 dw= 2.06 lm=2.639912 note: (**) and (***) denote significant level of 5% and 1% respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 401-413 408 estimated long-run coefficients for lrpcnt-equation the owned price elasticity of rice demand has expected negative sign but statistically insignificant in the long run (table 5). the long run coefficient for wheat with expected positive sign and statistically significant at 1% level, implies that wheat is a substitute to rice commodity in consumption even in the long run. the coefficient for income was negative, inelastic and significant at 10% level (table 5). this result implies that rice is an inferior good in malaysia. estimated price transmission equation for lpfpr the estimate of price linkage equation is necessary to identify the relationship between the rice retail price and paddy farm price. the elasticity of rrpr (rice retail price) with respect to paddy farm price is 0.22 and is statistically significant at 5% level (table 6). this means that a 1% increase in retail price would result in 0.22% increase in the paddy farm price. the result also suggests that any movement in the retail price in response to global price changes would affect the domestic paddy farm price in the same direction of the movement. table 5: lrpcnt-estimated long-run coefficients variable coefficient std. error t-statistic c 5.443459 1.110779 4.900577*** lrpcnt-1 -0.214619 0.208336 -1.030157 lrpcnt-2 -0.072065 0.165232 -0.436143 lrrprt -0.023796 0.151709 -0.156853 lwrprt 0.094531 0.048315 1.956570* lwrprt-1 0.158022 0.049989 3.161155*** lpcyt-1 0.259050 0.086823 2.983657*** lpcyt-4 -0.390882 0.094790 -4.123667*** normalized long-run relation c 4.764291 1.311576 3.632493*** lrrprt -0.020827 0.130806 -0.159220 lwrprt 0.221043 0.068889 3.208699*** lpcyt -0.115383 0.066622 -1.731902* r 2 =0.69 dw=1.97 lm=4.598489 note: (*), (***) denote significant level of 10% and 1% respectively. table 6: lpfprtprice transmission equation estimate variable coefficient std. error t-statistic c -0.981149 0.341391 -2.873980*** lpfprt-1 0.912534 0.061899 14.74231*** lrrprt 0.221581 0.080591 2.749448** r 2 =0.97 rw=1.49 lm=2.526508 reset=0.730160 note: (**) and (***) signify significant level of 5% and 1% respectively. the model ex post prediction power (validation) tests results the estimated equations of apap, apyd, rpcn and pfpr were validated through the sample periods to examine how closely they could track the path of the actual observation. this is described as estimated equations predictive power. they were asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 401-413 409 measured by root mean square percentage error (rmspe) and theil’s inequality coefficient (u). the values of rmspe were generally low (less than 2%) for all the dependent variables. also, the calculated values of u of all the endogenous variables were less than one (table 7). the results imply that predictive error associated with estimated equations in tracking the actual data (ex-post prediction) were very low and insignificant, hence could be used for exante projection with high projection validity. table 7: model ex-post prediction power (validation) tests dependent variables root mean square percentage error (rmspe) theil’s inequality coefficient (u) lapap 0.03 0.0007 lapyd 0.24 0.0012 lrpcn 1.60 0.0080 lpfpr 0.70 0.0040 (c) the effect of paddy price support withdrawal policy alternative was simulated on selected variables namely; pppr (paddy producer price), apap (area planted to paddy), drpp (domestic rice production), rtcn (rice total consumption), and rnim (rice net import). the policy scenario simulated was (i) sn 1: removing paddy price support while retaining any other production subsidy-fertilizer subsidy and (ii) bl: the baseline scenario represents current government policy in rice sector (that is provision of production subsidy in the form of paddy price support and fertilizer subsidy). the variables for simulation were estimated using equations 11, 12 and 13 respectively as implemented by arshad et al. (2012). in order to determine the rate of change (%) in the exogenous policy variables for 2013, seven years aggregate mean of ‘change rate’ (between 2006 and 2012) were calculated for each of the variables. the projection of the endogenous variables from 2013 to 2020 was made with 2012 data as base year. in determining the price at market clearing, the estimated variables from equation 11 to 13 were solved simultaneously using solver tool in excel window. the effect of sn1 scenario was compared with the baseline, and both were projected to 2020 from 2013. generally, the projected baseline values grow steadily up and until 2016 after which it started declining and with fluctuated growth henceforth. this is due to price transmission mechanism as price at market clearing was lower than the prevailing market price which by effect forces the paddy farm price lower than the actual prevailing price. paddy producer price (pppr) the paddy producer price is made up of paddy farm-gate price and paddy support price. if government decided to adopt alternative policy of sn1 on rice sector, then paddy producer price would decline by 20%, on the average, by 2020 (table 8). such decline could affect the paddy farmers’ income greatly and may serve as an incentive for paddy land contraction and subsequently leading to decline in the rice output. the graphical representation of effect is also given below (figure 1). table 8: effect of on pppr variable scenario year 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 ave. % ∆ pppr (rm) baseline 1,408 1,422 1,434 1,444 1,425 1,304 1,782 1,743 sn 1 1,206 1,215 1,222 1,232 1,212 1,061 1,110 1,239 -20 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 401-413 410 figure 1: graphical illustration of sn1 effects on pppr area planted (apap) to paddy the implementation of sn1 alternative policy (that is removal of paddy price support while retaining other production subsidy namely fertilizer subsidy) would result in total reduction of area planted to paddy by 13%, on the average, by the year 2020 (table 9). this finding implies that removal of paddy price support would result in contracting the land under paddy production, as farmers might decide to substitute paddy farming for other crops because of decline in income. see figure 2. table 9: effect of sn1 policy on apap variable scenario year 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 ave. % ∆ baseline 689.2 697 702.5 707.3 698 638 875 856 apap (‘000’ha) sn 1 589.2 594 597 602 592.4 517.4 838.4 803 -13 figure 2: graphical illustration of sn1, sn2 and sn 3 effects on apap 200.00 400.00 600.00 800.00 1,000.00 1,200.00 1,400.00 1,600.00 1,800.00 2,000.00 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 pppr(bl) sn1 100,000.00 200,000.00 300,000.00 400,000.00 500,000.00 600,000.00 700,000.00 800,000.00 900,000.00 1,000,000.00 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 apa (bl) sn 1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 401-413 411 domestic rice production (drpp) the removal of paddy price support while retaining other production subsidy to paddy farmers (sn1) would result to decline of 13% (on the average) of domestic rice production, when compare with baseline projection, by 2020 (table 10). the amount is less than 24% reduction (from 1.61million tonnes to 1.22million tonnes for 2015) reported by ramli et al. (2012) as a simulated effect of fertilizer subsidy removal on domestic rice production in the country. this implies that the effect of paddy price support withdrawal on domestic rice production is less when compare to situation where fertilizer subsidy is removed. the decline of domestic rice production is represented graphically by figure 3. table 10: effect of paddy price support withdrawal on domestic rice production variable scenario year 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 ave. % ∆ drpp (‘000’t) baseline 1,735 1,762 1,786 1,807 1,792 1,645 2,268 2,229 -13 sn 1 1,483 1,501 1,517 1,538 1,521 1,335 2,174 2,092 figure 3: graphical illustration of sn1 effects on drpp rice total consumption (rtcn) the simulated scenario has little or no effect on the rice total consumption because any shortfall in domestic production is usually filled from importation. the importation to fill the demand supply gap would stabilize the domestic retail price thereby necessitating stable demand. the seemingly 0.6% reduction was cause by projected increase in income per capita for the periods of 2013 to 2020. as income increases, total demand for rice decreases-inferior commodity characteristic. table 11: effect of sn1 on rtcn variable scenario year 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 ave. % ∆ drpp (‘000’t) baseline 2,479 2,577 2,681 2,788 2,907 3,055 3,048 3,180 -0.6 sn 1 2,470 2,569 2,673 2,781 2,899 3,052 2,998 3,133 500,000.00 1,000,000.00 1,500,000.00 2,000,000.00 2,500,000.00 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 drpp(bl) sn1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 401-413 412 figure 4: graphical illustration of sn1 effects on trcn rice net import (rnim) the country normally resorts to rice importation to fill in the demand-supply gap. the implementation of sn1 policy option would boost quantity of rice import by 23%, on the average, by the year 2020 (table 12). such increases will exert pressure on the country’s hard earned foreign reserve. table 12: effect of sn1 policy on rnim variable scenario year 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 ave. % ∆ rnim (‘000’t) baseline 744 815 895 981 1,115 1,409 1,480 1,451 23 sn 1 986 1,068 1,156 1,243 1,378 1,717 1,625 1,541 figure 5: graphical illustration of sn1 effects on rnim conclusion and recommendation the simulated effects of alternative policy of paddy price support withdrawal while retaining other production subsidy, namely fertilizer subsidy, show that paddy producer price (pppr) would decline by 20%, on average, when compare with baseline by 2020. the area planted to paddy (apap) would reduce in size up to 13%, on average, by 2020. as a result of contraction in area planted to paddy, the domestic rice production in the country would reduce by same amount. with two percent increase in population annually, the paddy price withdrawal would cause increase in net rice import by 23%, on the average, before the 500,000.00 1,000,000.00 1,500,000.00 2,000,000.00 2,500,000.00 3,000,000.00 3,500,000.00 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 trcn (bl) sn1 0.00 500,000.00 1,000,000.00 1,500,000.00 2,000,000.00 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 rnim (bl) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 401-413 413 end of 2020. however, withdrawal of paddy price support would not affect domestic retail price of rice as shortfall in supply would be augmented by import thereby stabilizing domestic rice demand. therefore as country that is concern about raising farm income and ensuring rice food security, retaining the paddy support price is worthwhile policy in order to avoid a decline in paddy producer price (income) and increase in import (surge in import bills) by 20% and 23% respectively. references arshad, f. m., shamsudin, m. n., mohd, n. k., abdulrahim, k., mohd, z. a., ismail, m. m., & sadique, s. f. a. (2012). malaysian agricultural policy analysis model (magpa): user guide. institut kajian dasar pertanian dan makanan (ikdpm), universiti putra malaysia. p. 51. arshad, f. m., shamsudin, m. n., & rosli, s. (2005). food security in malaysia. in public sector intervention in the rice industry in malaysia, by e. c. dano, and e. d. samonte. www.zef.de/module/register/media/ 2692. accessed 23-01-2014. ahmed, t. m. a., & tawang, a. (1999). effect of trade liberalization on agriculture in malaysia: commodity aspects. the cgprt center working paper series no. 46. deviga, v., harris, m., & macaulay, g. (2011). malaysian rice trade and government interventions. paper presented to the 55 th annual conference of the austrian agricultural and resource economics society, melbourne. 8-11 th feb. engle, r. f., & granger, c. w. j. (1987). cointegration and error correction: representation estimation, and testing. econometrica, 55, 251-276. global agricultural information network (gain) report (2011). grain and feed annual report for malaysia. usda foreign agricultural service. www.gain.fas.usda.gov. labys, w. c., & pollak, p. k. (1984). commodity models for forecasting and policy analysis. nicholas publishing company new york, usa. p. 209. minot, n., & goletti, f. (2000). rice market liberalization and poverty in viet nam. research report 114. washington, dc: ifpri mustapha, n. h. (1998). welfare gains and losses under the malaysian rice pricing policy and their relationships to the self-sufficiency level. journal ekonomi malaysia, 32, 75-96. narayan, p. k. (2005). the saving and investment nexus for china: evidence from cointegration tests. applied economics, 37, 1979-1990. narayan, p. k. (2004). reformulating critical values for the bounds fstatistics approach to cointegration: an application to the tourism demand model for fiji. a discussion papers. depatment of economics, monash university, australia. www.arrow.monash.edu.au:2167. accessed 20-02-2014. ramli, n. n., shamsudin, m. n., mohamed, z. a., & radam, a. (2012). impact of price support policy on malaysian rice industry. paper presented at umt 11 th international annual symposium on sustainable science and management. 09-11 th july, terengganu, malaysia. http://www.zef.de/module/register/media/2692.%20accessed%2023-01-2014 http://www.zef.de/module/register/media/2692.%20accessed%2023-01-2014 http://www.gain.fas.usda.gov/ http://www.arrow.monash.edu.au:2167/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 909 trend analysis of mungbean area and yield in pakistan nusrat habib scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan muhammad zubair anwer principal scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan sabeen siddiqui assistant scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan saira batool assistant scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan sobia naheed scientific officer, social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan abstract the present study was planned to analyze mungbean area and yield trends in pakistan. the findings are based time series data pertaining to the years 1984 to 2011.the quadratic trend model was applied on the basis of best accuracy measures. the results showed that if the present growth rates of area allocated to mungbean remain the same then the area of mungbean in pakistan would predict to decline from 165,000t in 2012 to 116,000t in 2016. similarly, yield analysis revealed that that if the present growth rates of mungbean yield remains the same then its yield would be increase from 703.75 kg/h in 2012 to 807.82 kg/h in 2016. forecasted values show that there is an increasing trend in yield of mungbean in pakistan, however predicted values of area under this crop show decreasing trend. keywords: mungbean, area, yield, quadratic trend model, pakistan introduction1 pulses; one of humanity's oldest food crops, originated in the fertile crescent of the near east (webb and hawtin 1981) pulses are imperative part of food because it provides proteins and vitamins particularly to the vegetarian societies of almost all the corresponding author’s name: nusrat habib email address: nusrat.habib@ymail.com developing countries (kannaiyan 1999), specifically for pakistan. mungbean is grown in pakistan on largest pulse area second only to chickpea. in pakistan minor crops like pulses occupy .07 % of the total cropped area of 22.8 million hectares in 2011-12(government of pakistan 2011). mungbean, as a crop, is growing both in rainfed as well as in irrigated areas of pakistan. it is a short duration crop therefore has less water requirement as compared to summer crops (anjum et al. 2006). during asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:nusrat.habib@ymail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 909-913 910 2010-11, this crop was badly affected by rain and flood. as a result, the production of mungbean fell short by 55% to 76,000t as compared with 118,000t produced during 2009-10 while demand was 125,000t which shows gap between demand and supply of mungbean for pakistan in 2009. pakistan is spending large amount on pulses imports to fill the gap between supply and demand of pulses (government of pakistan 2010). the area wise share of mungbean area, production and yield of provinces is given in table 1. table 1: area, production and yield of mungbean particulars punjab sindh kpk balochistan pakistan area ( % of total) 76.78 7.86 6.18 9.17 100 production ( % total) 78.74 5.77 6.69 8.79 100 yield kg/ha 569 407 600 532 555 economic survey 2010-11 table 1 show that punjab province is leading in area and production of mungbean. but it is alarming that yield of mungbean is lowest than khyber pakhtunkhwa, khyber pakhtunkhwa average yield per ha is 600 kg and punjab yield is 569 kg per ha (government of pakistan 2011).the mounting pressure on economy to feed more people has increased the importance of utilizing the potential rainfed regions of pakistan to improve food security through increasing area under food crops (mahmood et al., 1991). the main objective of the study was to check past and future trends of mungbean area and yield in pakistan by using appropriate trend analysis model. trend analysis studies help policy makers in taking policy decisions keeping in view the future forecast. methodology the study was conducted by using time series data of mungbean area and yield during the years 1984 to 2011 (27 years) of pakistan. the data was collected from the various issues of agriculture statistics and economic surveys of pakistan, published by government of pakistan. data was analyzed by using minitab software. the linear, exponential and quadratic these three models of trend analysis were applied for this study as these were also used by karim et al. 2010, finger (2007), boken et al. (2000) and rimi et al. (2011). the best model was selected on the basis of three accuracy measures. these accuracy measures were mean absolute percentage error (mape), mean absolute deviation (mad) and mean squared deviation (msd). smaller values of all these measures indicate a good fitted model with minimum forecasting errors (karim et al., 2010). the best fitted model for this study was quadratic model and applied for forecasting the area and yield of mungbean in pakistan for the years 2012 to 2016. results and discussion this section deals with time series data and estimated trends in table and figure form of mungbean area and yield in pakistan. selection of forecasting model for mungbean area the results revealed that all the values of accuracy measures are smaller in quadratic trend model (table 2), therefore instead of other two (linear trend and exponential trend) models, quadratic trend model was selected for forecasting the future trends of mungbean area in pakistan on the basis of smaller values of accuracy measures (karim et al. 2010). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 909-913 911 table 2: diagnostic of model selection for mungbean area in pakistan measures of accuracy criteria mape mad msd linear trend model 18.08 28.66 1380.41 quadratic trend model 12.58 19.30 537.27 exponential trend model 19.09 31.38 1630.90 selection of forecasting model for mungbean yield all the values of accuracy measures for mungbean yield in pakistan are smaller in quadratic trend model comparative to linear trend model and exponential trend model. that’s why, this study applied quadratic model to estimate the future values of mungbean yield in pakistan. table 3: diagnostic of model selection for mungbean yield in pakistan measures of accuracy criteria mape mad map linear trend model 9.34 47.77 3224.64 quadratic trend model 6.39 34.27 2264.57 exponential trend model 8.75 45.28 3037.34 previous trends of area and yield of mungbean in pakistan the estimated time series parameter of area and yield of mungbean in pakistan during the year 1984 to 2011 showed the area of mungbean has upward and downward trend but moving towards decreasing trend and while in case of mungbean yield it has increasing trend. starting from 1984 mungbean area was 94 (000 ha) but with upward downward trend at the end 2011 area occupy by mungbean was 141 (000 ha), area has remained constant or gradually slow growth from 1984 to 2006, but after 2006 there was a sudden decrease of mungbean area in pakistan. in case of yield in 1984 yield was 476 kg per ha and increased gradually and at the end in year 2011 it reached at 657 kg per ha in pakistan. these previous trends depict that area of mungbean not much increased comparative to yield. figure 1: area and yield of mungbean in pakistan source: agricultural statistics of pakistan 94 104 114 94 97 144 142 126 147 168 180 199 192 195 200 203 219 239 258 256 225 209 218 246 220 183 137 141 476 468 484 461 426 396 399 405 423 413 445 455 465 455 453 468 477 482 537 550 577 546 636 723 716 648 555 657 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011 area yield asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 909-913 912 forecasted mungbean area after fitted the adequate model next step was to estimate forecasted values for area and yield of mungbean crop in pakistan. objective was to predict the future value subject to minimum errors as less as possible (yaseen et al., 2005). the black, red and green symbols represents the actual, fitted and forecasted values for area at 95% prediction interval in pakistan(fig. 2). results showed that if the present growth rates of mungbean area remain the same then the area of mungbean in pakistan would be 165.09, 154.32, 142.55, 129.78 and 116.02 (000 h) respectively for the years 2012 to 2016 respectively, with continuous decreasing trend (table 4). reasons for decrease in area for mungbean can be due to poor planning and research by government and policy makers, the return to farmers is far less compared to major crops. forecasted mungbean yield the black line shows actual values, red fitted values and green line is for forecasted values of mungbean yield at 95% prediction interval (fig. 3). results illustrated that if the present growth rates of mungbean yield remain the same then yield of mungbean in pakistan would be 703.75, 728.17, 753.66, 780.20 and 807.82 kgs per ha respectively with continuous increasing trend, for the years 2012 to 2016 respectively, (table 4). positive increase in yield is due to availability of high yielding varieties, proper use of inputs and in time availability of inputs for mungbean in pakistan. these trends show that instead of an incentive for farmers in form of high yielding from mungbean and there is also country demand available for mungbean in pakistan. the need is that to take such type of policy measures which ultimately increase the area under mungbean in pakistan 2014200920041999199419891984 250 200 150 100 50 year a r e a i n ( 0 0 0 ) h a actual fits forecasts variable 2014200920041999199419891984 800 700 600 500 400 year y ie ld k g / h a actual fits forecasts variable figure 2: trend analysis of mungbean area figure 3: trend analysis of mungbean yield table 4: forecasted mungbean area and yield forecast years area (000 hectares) yield (kg/ hectare) 2012 165.09 703.75 2013 154.32 728.17 2014 142.55 753.66 2015 129.78 780.20 2016 116.02 807.82 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 909-913 913 conclusion and recommendations the results showed that quadratic model is appropriate for estimation of mungbean area and yield in pakistan. the analysis clearly indicated continuous decreasing trends in mungbean are during 2012 to 2016 in pakistan. but contrary to the area, yield data had shown upward trend which is very encouraging. more specifically, if the present growth rates continue, mungbean yield during next five years (2012 to 2016) would be increased at the rate of 703.75, 728.17, 753.66, 780.20 and 807.82 kgs per ha respectively. these trends indicated that there is an incentive for farmers to grow mungbean as yield has shown positive trend. keeping in view the ever increasing trend of population and pulses demand in pakistan, it is important for the planners and policy makers and other concerned stakeholders to look into the matter that why area of mungbean is decreasing in pakistan. references anjum m. s. ahmed z. i. and rauf c. a. (2006). effect of rhizobium inoculation and nitrogen fertilizer on yield and yield components of mungbean. international journal of agriculture and biology, 8(2): 238– 240. boken v. k. (2000). forecasting spring wheat yield using time series analysis: a case study for the canadian prairies. agronomy journal, 92(6): 1047-1053. finger r. (2007). evidence of slowing yield growth the example of swiss cereal yield. agri-food and agrienvironmental economics group, eth zürich, switzerland. government of pakistan (1975-2010). agricultural statistics of pakistan (various issues), ministry of food and agriculture, economic wing: islamabad, pakistan. government of pakistan (2010). economic survey government of pakistan. finance division, economic advisor's wing, islamabad. government of pakistan (2011). economic survey government of pakistan. finance division, economic advisor's wing, islamabad. kannaiyan s. (1999). bioresources technology for sustainable agriculture associated publishing company, new delhi. p. 422. karim r., awala, a. and akhter m. (2010). forecasting of wheat production in bangladesh. bangladesh journal of agricultural research, 35(1): 17-28. mahmood k., munir m. and rafique s. (1991). rainfed farming systems and socio-economic aspects in kalat division (highland balochistan). pakistan journal of agriculture and social sciences, 5: 15-20. minitab version 15.1(2006). statistical data analysis software. rimi, r. h., rahman s. h., karmaker s. and hussain g. (2011). trend analysis of climate change and investigation on its probable impacts on rice production at satkhira, bangladesh. pakistan journal of meteorology, 6(11): 37-50. webb c. and hawtin g. (eds). (1981). press, minneapolis. lentils commonwealth agricultural bureau and icarda. yaseen m., zakriya m., islam-ud-dinshahzad, khan m. i. and javed m. a. (2005). modeling and forecasting the sugarcane yield of pakistan. international journal of agriculture and biology, 7: 180–183. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 212 diffusion and adoption of oat narc variety in rainfed area, pakistan sobia naheed scientific officer; social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan nusrat habib scientific officer; social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan m. zubair anwer principal scientific officer; social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan sabeen siddiqui assistant scientific officer; social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan abstract the present study was planned to estimate the extent of diffusion (spread) and adoption of fodder variety oat narc developed by fodder programe narc. for this study, farm level information was collected through a formal survey method. for the official survey, an organized and well-structured questionnaire was designed. mainly oat area of pothwar region was the study domain. overall from all selected tehsils, 65 farmers were taken as sample farmers. the findings of present study that includes frequency, descriptive analysis, oat adoption rate and also identified adopters and non adopters. technical, extension, financial, agro-colmatic and marketing factors constraining adoption of oat narc variety also acknowledged. main objective of this study is to determine the factors affecting the adoption of oat narc variety through probit model. factors like fodder area, soil type, cultivated land , nearest grain market (distance in km), farming experience (years), present level of involvement in farming, availability of credit for purchasing inputs, different varieties you have tested at your farm have positive role in the adoption of oat narc variety. the above mentioned variables positively affecting the adoption of oat narc. this model also show that the area wheat, input market (distance in km), area for local variety, distance from market, lack of knowledge of market information and do you prefer change of varieties grown affects the adoption of oat negatively. keywords: diffusion and adoption, oat, constraining factors, rainfed, pakistan introduction 1 pakistan is sanctified with diverse types of livestock and gives foodstuff safety to small corresponding author’s name: sobia naheed email address: sobianarc@gmail.com farmers. it donates 11.5% in the nationwide gdp and 55% towards agricultural gdp (gop, 2008). the residents of live stock in pakistan is 163.0 million which is additional growing day by day resultantly animal nourish necessities are also mounting in the country (gop, 2006). pakistan has a strict or unlikable fodder deficiency in two periods. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:sobianarc@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 212-219 213 the most deficit periods are december to january and other critical period is may to june respectively (parc, 2011). (hussain et al., 1993) deliberated give up and superiority mechanism of 15 foreign and native varieties of oats. they informed that highest mean fresh scavenge and dehydrated substance yields were attained from variety pd2lv65 while variety no.681 had higher unfinished backbone contented. oats (avena sativa l.) is an imperative coldness season cornflakes feed crop which can be profitably developed all over pakistan below equally irrigated and rainfed surroundings with a rain of 400 mm and a best possible warmth series of 16-32 o c. it is an significant forage/grin crop grown as a meadow, hay, silage and pullet nourish in the earth. it involves moderate and cold subtropical circumstances for its expansion. the utilization of oats as search or grain crop is a frequent performs the world over. in recent times propensity to use oats for forage and seed has enlarged in irrigated as well as high rainfall areas of pakistan (ashiq et al., 2011). ali et al. (2003) detailed that oats afford green fodder during the incline phase (december, january) when green fodder is limited and animals are fed with dehydrated silage, encouraging the oats production in the country. scientists of fodder programe narc have developed many fodder varieties. the present study was planned to estimate the extent of diffusion (spread) and adoption of fodder verity oat narc developed by fodder programe narc and give appropriate suggestions to farmers and policy makers to improve the invention and worth of fodder. materials and methods survey was conducted for this study. fodder area was selected and visited to categorize the areas and farmers that provide fodder. questionnaire was urbanized in collaboration with the fodder program narc for collecting data. both quantitative and qualitative data was collected according to diffusion and adoption status of fodder varieties developed by fodder program narc. then farmers were interviewed based on a prearranged questionnaire. data processesed and analysed using spss and stata softwares. survey technique for this study, farm level information was collected through a formal survey method. the information so synthesized can be utilized as basis for research, planning and policy making. a multi-disciplinary team of social scientists from national agricultural research center (narc) conducted the survey in april 2013. questionnaire for the official survey, an organized and well-structured questionnaire was designed. in questionnaire the order of the questions was specially taken care of so that farmers may easily recall their memory and provide the compulsory information with selfreliance. also practicability and workability of the questionnaire was given priority for smooth running of the interviewing process. so, before implementation, questionnaire was pre-tested modified keeping in view the workability and systemization of ordering of the information gathered. mainly the variables programmed for the present study included socio-economic condition of the farmers, village infrastructure, land ownership, soil type cropping pattern of the area, crop rotation, varietal spread, adoption history and factors constraining adoption of oat varieties. study area mainly oat area of pothwar region was the study domain. however, special emphasis was given to that area where oat seed was provided in three tehsils namely rawalpindi, islamabad and gojar khan through parc agro tech company private asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 212-219 214 limited (patco) which was developed by fodder program, narc. sampling procedure and data collection mainly oat area of pothwar region was the study domain. at the first stage we found list of oat narc seed purchaser of three tehsils from fodder program where they distribute the seed of new developed oat variety then it was decided as sample tehsils and at the second stage, no of villages from each tehsil were selected. keeping in view the scope of the study, resources and time, three villages from each tehsil were surveyed. at the third stage, number of sample farmers was decided and about 5 farmers were supposed to be interviewed from each village. overall from all selected tehsils, 65 farmers were taken as sample farmers table 1. table 1: sample farmers distribution by tehsils tehsils frequency percent gojar khan 23 35.4 islamabad 22 33.9 rawalpindi 20 30.7 total 65 100 source: field survey, 2013 data analysis the composed data was passed in to the computer using the spss and stata softwares, keeping the requirement of the study, expressive statistics was used to find the result, pronounced in new section, descriptive analysis and probit model was run through spss packages and stata software. probit model the probit model is expressed as prob [yi=1] = pi =  (+ xi + xii + xiii……… xxiv) yi = 1 if adoption and dependent variable including one dummy for adoption status. xi = 0 non-adoption and denotes independent variables those are: xi = area wheat xii = fodder area xiii = soil type xvi = cultivated land xv = nearest grain market xvi = input market xvii = farming experience xviii = present level of involvement in farming xix = area for local variety xx = do you prefer change of varieties grown xxi = different varieties you have tested at your farm xxii = availability of credit for purchasing inputs xxiii = lack of knowledge of market information xxiv = distance from market results and discussion this section presents the finding of study that includes frequency, descriptive analysis, oat adoption rate and also identified adopters and non adopters. socioeconomic characteristics have an important role in distribution process of any new farm technology. it is general information, among the experts, that if a person or community possesses a strong socioeconomic background, both dissemination and adoption rate of the new technologies, always remain higher. hence, socioeconomic information about the respective communities is vital to be explored for planning and policy formulation work. this kind of information also significance for the scientist working on the development of technology packages. table 2 shows the present level of involvement, formal education and farming experience and age of respondents. mostly farmers were involved in present farming maximum number of farmers belongs to the age group of 47 years. education plays a vital role but the average education of the respondent were middle pass of the area and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 212-219 215 average farming experience of the respondents was 24 years in the area similarly it was found that all the respondents of the area. table 2: sample farmer’s socioeconomic characteristics variable minimum maximum mean std. deviation present level of involvement in farming 1 2 0.65 0.482 formal education (years) 0 16 8.84 3.813 farming experience (years) 4 60 24.03 14.64 age of respondent (years) 20 80 47.28 15.951 source: field survey, 2013 the socioeconomics characteristics of the host farmers were determined to judge their compatibility with the farm size of the area. in above table 50.8 farmer’s have less than 5 acre farm size, 26.1 farmers have 5 to 12.5 acre farm size and 23.1 farmers have greater than 12.5 acre farm size in table 4 table 3: distribution of sample farms by size farm size farm size categories number of respondents percentage small < 5 acre 33 50.8 medium 5 – 12.5 acre 17 26.1 large > 12.5 acre 15 23.1 total 65 100 source: field survey, 2013 generally in rainfed areas, soils are good and fit for crops production. mainly soils are well and almost every farmer prefers best soil for oat cultivation the results also supported the general observation and indicated that those farmers who have clay type of soil and mix soil are not a promblem for them. about 13.9 percent farmers, who have clay type of soil, as well as 13.9 percent farmers who have laal soil and 21.5 percent farmers have mix soil also pointed out that their soils are well and they can grow oat on their land. about 50.7 percent farmers who have kaali soil, this type of soil has been considered best soil by large majority of the respondents. the farmer’s response was understandable and logical in nature. overall, it can be concluded that in majority of the oat producing tehsils, abiotic factors are favorable for oat cultivation. table 4: distribution of sample farmers by soil types soil type frequency percent clay 9 13.9 kali matti 33 50.7 laal matti 9 13.9 mix 14 21.5 total 65 100 source: field survey, 2013 generally in rainfed areas, soil fertility is good and fit for crops production. mainly soils are healthy and approximately every farmer prefers good soil fertility for oat cultivation. about 51.9 percent farmer has good soil fertility. the results also maintained the general observation and specified that those farmers who have medium soil fertility are not a problem for them, those are about 22.8 percent farmers and 1.3 percent farmers who have poor soil fertility, also pointed out that their soils are poor and they can grow oat on their land. overall, it can be accomplished that in majority of the oat producing tehsils, soil fertility are favorable for oat cultivation table. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 212-219 216 table 5: distributions of sample farmers by soil fertility soil fertility frequency percent good 46 51.9 medium 18 22.8 poor 1 1.3 total 65 100 source: field survey, 2013 according to the survey adoption rate was low of oat narc variety as 30.7 percent adopters and 69.3 percent non-adopter of this variety of the sample farmers. table 6: adoption rate of variety oat narc adoption rate frequency percent adopted 20 30.7 non-adopted 45 69.3 total 65 100 source: field survey, 2013 two types of fallow systems are predominant in barani areas. first was on year fallow system, land is fallowed for one year in drier areas to protect moisture and the other is seasonal fallow system. the major reasons for fallowing land were lack of moisture and risk due to drought. continuous cropping produces lower yield and is not economically feasible. indifferent provinces for the oat fodder production; it should be sown in mid-october to november. oat is sown with wheat crop to fulfill the fodder shortage during that period. after that maize and ground nut is sown as food crop. constraining factors table 7 shows that technical factors constraining adoption of oat varieties, fodder legumes have an important role, in animal health and fulfilling the nutritional requirements of the animal. moreover, government of pakistan is also spending lot of time for developing the new varieties of fodder as high nutritional value. in the present production scenario, oat cultivation looks extremely important in the pothwar region of punjab. but having, much technical factors, constraining adoption of oat variety the farmers perceived constraints were identified and then prioritiezed separately. among the technical factors non availability of quality seed, non availability of harvesting machinery, due to non availability of water and soil type problem emerged as most important technical problems. the farmers supposed extension and financial constraints were also identified. among extension factors, lack of technical assistance for extension linkages, non-availability of literature, lack of coverage of adopting fodder by mass media, poor extension backup and in financial factors non-availability of credit for inputs. table 7: technical, extension, financial, agro-colmatic and marketing factors constraining adoption of oat narc variety score percentage rating technical factors adopters nonadopters adopters nonadopters adopters nonadopters non availability of quality seed 54 11 83.08 16.92 3 7 non availability of harvesting machinery 53 12 81.54 18.46 4 6 due to non availability of water 53 12 81.54 18.46 4 6 soil type problem 47 17 72.3 27.7 5 2 extension factors asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 212-219 217 lack of technical assistance from extension linkages 61 4 93.84 6.2 1 8 non-availability of literature 58 7 89.23 10.77 2 1 lack of coverage of adopting fodder by mass media 58 7 89.23 10.77 2 1 financial factors non availability of credit for inputs 44 21 67.69 32.31 1 1 agro-climatic factors sand lands 45 20 57 25.3 8 3 dry rainfall zone low 46 19 58.2 24.1 7 4 high rainfall zone 45 20 57 25.3 8 3 marketing factors marketing problem for inputs 45 19 57 24.1 8 4 distance from market 45 19 57 24.1 8 4 lack of knowledge of market information 48 16 60.8 203 6 5 source: field survey, 2013 regular marketing and stable prices are considered as key factors, which facilitate the process of bringing change in the farm. the price of agricultural produce specifically perishable commodities remains almost unstable in the markets. the price instability, directly or indirectly provide opportunity to change the farmers preferences. in this context, marketing factors constraining adoption of oat were marketing problem for inputs, distance from markets, and lack of knowledge of market information. likewise agro-climatic factors were sand lands, dry rainfall zone low, medium and high. determinants of adoption of oat narc variety main objective of this study is to determine the factors affecting the adoption of oat narc variety. factors like fodder area, soil type, cultivated land , nearest grain market (distance in km), farming experience (years), present level of involvement in farming, availability of credit for purchasing inputs, different varieties you have tested at your farm have positive role in the adoption of oat narc variety. the above mentioned variables positively affecting the adoption of oat narc. by increase one unit in mentioned factors fodder area in their mean value will asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 212-219 218 increase the probability of oat by 31 percent adoption of oat narc variety with 2.21 zvalue which is significance at 5 percent as such type of results are described in (aloyce r. m et al., 2000). by increase in mention factor soil type and cultivated land by one unit increase in their mean value will increase the probability value of oat by 28 and 5 percent. by increase in these factors nearest grain market and farming experience by one unit increase in their mean value will increase the probability value of oat by 31 and 01 percent. likewise by one unit increase in present level of involvement in farming and different varieties you have tested at your farm in their mean level will increase the probability value of oat by 44 and 74 percent with 2.22 z-values which is significant at 5 percent. similarly by one unit increase in availability of credit for purchasing inputs of its mean value will increase the probability value of oat by 6 percent. the model also show that the area wheat, input market (distance in km), area for local variety, distance from market, lack of knowledge of market information, do you prefer change of varieties grown affects the adoption of oat negatively. by one unit decrease in the mean level of area wheat will decrease the probability value of oat by 6 percent. by one unit decrease in the mean level of input market and distance from market will decrease the probability value of oat adoption by 25 and 3 percent. one unit decrease in area for local variety will decrease the 6 percent adoption of oat narc variety with 2.21 z-value which is significance at 5 percent. by one unit decrease in the mean level of lack of knowledge of market information and do you prefer change of varieties will decrease the probability value of oat adoption by 45 and 61 percent as results are similar in (cimmyt, 1993). table 14 shows the role and significance of different factors in the adoption of oat variety. r 2 value is 0.41 which shows that there is 41 percent of variation in variables of adoption. table 8: determinants for adoption of oat narc probit regression note: the independent variables were adoption of new variety; * and ** indicate significance at the 5% and 10% levels respectively conclusions and recommendations the results of survey about adoption of oat narc variety indicated that those farmers who have more experience of oat varieties, growing oat narc. its results also showed that increasing in fodder area also increasing the rate of adoption of this variety. adoption coef. z-test p-value odd ratio area wheat -0.0556 -1.09 0.274 0.945902 fodder area 0.27544 2.21* 0.027 1.31711 soil type 0.25256 0.46 0.644 1.287317 cultivated land 0.05359 1.69** 0.091 1.055055 nearest grain market (distance in km) 0.27452 1.41 0.159 1.315896 input market (distance in km) -0.2786 -1.41 0.158 0.756832 farming experience (years) 0.00195 0.11 0.911 1.001955 present level of involvement in farming 0.36738 0.72 0.472 1.443953 area for local variety -0.0601 -0.08 0.937 0.941632 do you prefer change of varieties grown -0.5935 -1.21 0.228 0.552381 different varieties you have tested at your farm 0.55735 2.22* 0.026 1.746034 lack of knowledge of market information -0.9208 -1.46 0.144 0.398197 availability of credit for purchasing inputs 0.7236 1.07 0.283 2.061849 distance from market -0.0244 -0.04 0.971 0.97591 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 212-219 219 likewise good soil type, cultivated land , nearest grain market , their farming experience , their present level of involvement in farming, availability of credit for purchasing inputs are the factors which are going toward adoption of this variety so it can said that these factors have been identified of affecting adoption of fodder verity oat narc developed by fodder program narc. these would be helpful for researchers, policy makers and other stake holders to streamline their activities. it would also be helpful for fodder program to realign it in future research and development effects. similarly the results were the availability of good quality fodder throughout the year ultimately improvement in animal productivity and value chains. the ultimate objective of this study is to promote oat crop among the farmers and increase. it is only possible by increasing per acre yield of crops particularly the high value cash crops. in journal observation majority of the farmers were preferred narc oat variety pd2-lv65 due to high grain yielding and fodder production. it is clearly indicated from the empirical results that oat crop has potential to improve socioeconomic conditions of the rural masses. the current oat crop management practices needs immediate attention of the stakeholders to popularize use of agriculture machinery at farm level. this intervention will save farmers time, precious resources and ultimately provide them resources to improve their farming activities. government should announce support price for oat to encourage the oat growing community to improve fodder for the livestock and references ali. z., hussain a., khan, s., & m. bashir, (2003). performance of exotic oats varieties under irrigated condition of islamabad. j. agri. rese. 4, 235-238. aloyce r. m. k., hugo v., & wilfred m. (2000). factors affecting adoption of improved maize seeds and use of inorganic fertilizer for maize production in the intermediate and lowland zones of tanzania. journal of agricultural and applied economics, 32(1), 35–47. ashiq h., sartaj k., m. shafiq z., safdar s., & zulfiqar a. (2011). a new high yielding oat variety for fodder in the rainfed potohar and irrigated areas of pakistan. sci. tech. and dev, 30(4), 16-23. cimmyt economics program (1993). the adoption of agricultural technology: a guide for survey design. mexico, d. f. govt. of pakistan (2006). ministry of food, agric. and livestock econ. wing, islamabad. govt. of pakistan (2008). economic survey of pakistan 2008-2009. ministry of finance, econ. adviser’s wing, finance div, islamabad. hussain. a., muhammad d., khan s., & m. b. bhatti (1993). forage yield and quality potential of various cultivars of oats. pak. j. sci. ind. res. 36, 258260. parc (2011). www.parc.gov.pk/narc/fodder/pag es/intro.html. http://www.parc.gov.pk/narc/fodder/pages/intro.html http://www.parc.gov.pk/narc/fodder/pages/intro.html effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 86 estimating compound growth rate, instability index and annual fluctuation of cotton in pakistan saima rani, nusrat habib, irum raza and naheed zahra social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan saimazahid6@gmail.com (corresponding author email address) article history: received: 14-jun-2017 accepted: 01-aug-2017 online available: 22-aug2017 keywords: growth, instability index, fluctuation, cotton, pakistan abstract the key concern of this research is to assess the growth, instability and annual fluctuations of cotton during last three decades in pakistan. the time series data on area, production and yield of cotton is collected for the year 1981 to 2015 from different issues of agricultural statistics of pakistan. the results depict that positive growth rates on area, production and yield of cotton expanding over time due to involvement of private companies. the growth rate of yield is 2.65 followed by 0.88 growth of yield in cotton area in pakistan. while analyzing the data the instability is high in production and low in area of cotton in pakistan that mainly due to insect and pest attack on crop. production annual fluctuation of cotton is high and not a consistent during study period especially in 1981-90. the fluctuation highly increased in 1984-85 and lowest during the year 1983-84. in the cotton area fluctuation highest in 1995-96 and lowest in 2010-11 in country. the yield of cotton is highly fluctuating during the year 1984-85 and lowest in 1983-84. there should be some control over the diseases this will reduce the fluctuation for production in cotton. easy availability of modern factor inputs and sustained supply will reduce area instability largely. contribution/ originality this paper has attempted to assess the growth rates of cotton yield, area and production over the year and calculate the instability index over the year in the case of pakistan. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.4/1005.4.86.91 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: saima rani, nusrat habib, irum raza and naheed zahra (2017). estimating compound growth rate, instability index and annual fluctuation of cotton in pakistan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4), 86-91. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 4(2017): 86-91 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:saimazahid6@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.4/1005.4.86.91 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 86-91 87 1. introduction cotton is one of the important commercial crop of pakistan. cotton plays a key role in the national economy in terms of both employment generation and foreign exchange earnings and around two third of the country’s export earnings are from the cotton. with economic liberalization and globalization sweeping the world there is scope for our country to play a leading role in the production and export. cotton commonly known as “white gold” is an important cash crop for pakistan and normally cultivated in agriculture plains of punjab and sindh. it contributes 8.2 percent of the value-added share in national agricultural and about 3.2% to gdp; around two third of the country’s export earnings come from the cotton made-up and textile which adds over $2.5 billion to the national economy; while hundreds of ginning factories and textile mills in the country heavily depends upon cotton (ijaz, 2009). primarily millions of farmers are dependent on this crop, in addition to millions of people employed along the entire cotton value chain from weaving to textile and garment exports. the area under the cultivation of cotton crop has been increased significantly in the last 30 years around 7.85 million acres in 2005-06 as compared to 7.2 million acre in 2002-03 (gop, 2008). besides being the world’s fourth-largest cotton producer and the third largest exporter of raw cotton and a leading exporter of yarn in the world our yield per acre ranks 13th in the world. during the year, 2015 crop production in the country declined 33% with a decrease of 44% in the largest cotton producing province punjab alone. the reason behind decline is climate change; including heavy rains, pest attacks and harsh weather across the cotton growing areas are to blame for the slump in production, due to which the crop in most areas of southern punjab was badly damaged (muhammad, 2016). as a result, pakistan imports cotton to meet growing demand from local textile mills; therefore, it has become vital for pakistan to increase its yield potential. the cotton industry and cotton related services play the foremost role in pakistan’s economy and contributing 63.9 percent of the total exports earnings (pakistan economic survey, 2005). it provides raw material to local/domestic cotton industry comprising of 503 textile mills, 1263 ginning factories, 8.1 million spindles and 2622 oil expelling units. it also yields 3.5 to 3.6 million tons of cotton seeds which contributes over 64 percent of the total domestic edible oil production (pakistan cotton ginners association, 2005). cotton is cultivated on an area of 3.19 million hectares (agricultural statistics of pakistan, 2005). approximately 77 percent of all pakistan cotton is produced in punjab and remaining 23 percent in other provinces (gop, 2005). on global basis, pakistan is the fourth largest cotton producing country of the world after china, india and usa. pakistan’s share of total world cotton production in 2004-05 stood at 9.47 percent (cotton statistical bulletin, 2006). pakistan is the third largest consumer, consuming 10 percent of the world production. it is the third largest yarn producer with 9 percent second largest yarn exporter with 26 percent, third largest cloth producer with 7 percent and is also the third largest cloth exporter with 14 percent of the world cotton production (icac, 2005). the production process involves rationale use of inputs including seed, pesticides, fertilizers and irrigation. there is a significant increase in cotton production during the last decade but still potential yield has not yet been exploited. however, the advanced production technologies and judicious use of inputs at the subsidized rates can enhance the production of cotton. this paper has attempted to assess the growth rates of cotton yield, area and production over the year and calculate the instability index. 2. material and methods the study is based on the secondary data. the time series data on area, yield and production of cotton is collected for the year 1981-82 to 2014-15 (34 year). the data is taken from the various issues of agriculture statistics of pakistan published by ministry of food and agriculture and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 86-91 88 later on published by the ministry of national food security and research (gop, 1981-2011 and gop, 2012-2015). 2.1. compound growth rate estimation average annual growth rates have been computed for area, production and yield for cotton. hence for measuring the growth rates of area, production and yield it is using as follows (prajneshu and chandran, 2005, rani et al., 2012 and rehman et al., 2010). the following equation is used for calculating the growth rate separately for each variable. yt= y0 (1 + r) t --------------------------(1) where: yt = price/area/production/yield of cotton in year t y0=initial (i.e. 1981/82) price/area/production/yield of cotton r = the compound (i.e. over time) rate of growth of yt.where stands for the year t. 2.2. instability estimation instability index capture both explained and unexplained variations of the concerned variable and should better reflect the true instability situation. the index is used to measure instability for area, production and yield it is defined as follows by (karim and ismail, 2007 and rani et al., 2012). i = c.v. x √ 1r2 --------------------------(2) where: i = instability index c.v. = coefficient of variation r2= adjusted coefficient of determination 2.3. annual fluctuation estimation the inter year fluctuation in area, production and yield was estimated by the simplest method year by year. the method is followed by (javed et al., 2004 and rani et al., 2012). δxt = [(xt – x t-1) / xt-1] x 100 --------------------------(3) where x = area/production/yield in year t δxt= percentage changes of area/production/yield in year t over the last period (year) xt= current year’s area/production/yield in year t xt-1 = previous year’s area/production/yield in year t -1 3. results and discussion compound growth rates on area production and yield of cotton for 34 years (1981-2014) in pakistan shows in table 1. the results shown that growth rates of area, yield and production of cotton found positive it means that the area, production and yield is expanding over time. but the rate of growth of production is high in cotton in pakistan one of the reason behind this is introduction of new cotton varieties with high yield in pakistan. the growth rate of yield is 2.65 followed by 0.88 growth of yield in cotton area of pakistan. table 1: compound growth rates and instability index of area, yield and production of cotton in pakistan estimates compound growth rate instability index (i)* area 0.88 7.13 production 3.56 14.39 yield 2.65 13.12 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 86-91 89 instability index capture both explained and unexplained variations of the concerned variable and should better reflect the true instability situation of the selected cotton shown in table 1. while analyzing the data the instability is high in production and low in area of cotton in pakistan. table 2: annual fluctuations of lagged area, yield and production of cotton in pakistan annual fluctuation lowest value highest value area -13.41 12.99 prod -39.97 103.96 yield -38.74 101.79 when a farmer cultivated a crop on his farm keeping in mind its price of previous year profitability then a farmer will allocate his limited resources for that crop which is stable and less risky. annual fluctuation of cotton area; yield and production is shown in table 2. it was noticed that production fluctuation of cotton is high and not a consistent during study period especially in 1981-90. the fluctuation highly increased in 1984-85 and lowest during the year 1983-84. in the cotton area fluctuation highest in 1995-96 and lowest in 2010-11 in country. the yield of cotton is highly fluctuating during the year 1984-85 and lowest in 1983-84. the detail of annual fluctuation shown in annexure 1. 4. conclusion this study shows the growth rates of cotton are positive in case of yield, production and area. the instability index is high in case of yield and production. annual fluctuation is higher for production and yield. the reason of these fluctuations is that production is not in the control of farmers due to insect and disease attack. therefore, there should be some control over the diseases this will reduce the fluctuation in production of cotton. easy availability of modern factor inputs and sustained supply will reduce area instability largely. further government should insure stable annual price that will also helpful in reducing area instability for cotton in the country. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: author 1: conceptualize the idea, analysis the data and write up the manuscript. author 2: review the literature. author 3 & 4: collected the data. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. reference gop-government of pakistan (2005). economic survey of pakistan (2005-06). ministry of finance. government of pakistan. gop-government of pakistan (2008). economic survey of pakistan (2007-08). ministry of finance. government of pakistan. gop-government of pakistan (1981 to 2011). various issues of agricultural statistics of pakistan ministry of food. agriculture & livestock (economic and planning wing). islamabad. pakistan. gop-government of pakistan (2012 to 2015). various issues of agricultural statistics of pakistan. ministry of national food security and research, (economic wing), islamabad, pakistan. gop-government of pakistan (2006). cotton statistical bulletin. directorate of marketing & economic research. pakistan central cotton committee. karachi. ijaz, a. r. (2009). first bio-technology cotton grown in pakistan. bahawalpur. report available on. http://www.pakissan.com/.../first.bt.cotton.grown.in.pakistan.shtml. http://www.pakissan.com/.../first.bt.cotton.grown.in.pakistan.shtml asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 86-91 90 international cotton advisory committee (icac). (2005). international cotton trade to rise in 2005/06 icac press release. april 1, 1629 k street nw, suite 702, washington, dc 20006 usa. javed, m. a., sharif, m., & masood, m. a. (2004). price instability and flexibility of major crops in pakistan. socioeconomic research studies. federal. social science institute. national agriculture research center. islamabad. pakistan. pp 145-154. view at google scholar / view at publisher karim, i. e. e. a., & ismail, i. s. (2007). potential for agricultural trade in comesa region: a comparative study of sudan. egypt and kenya. african journal of agricultural research, 2(10), 481-487. view at google scholar / view at publisher muhammad, p. (2016). pakistan left with higher import of cotton. the express tribune, published: january 30, 2016 https://tribune.com.pk/story/1036653/low-local-productionpakistan-left-with-higher-import-of-cotton/. pakistan cotton ginners association (pcga) (2005). small and medium enterprise development authority government of pakistan. annual report, textile vision. prajneshu, & chandran, k. p. (2005). computation of compound growth rates in agriculture. agricultural economics research review, 18, 317-324. view at google scholar rani, s., shah. h., ali, a., & rehman, b. (2012). growth. instability and price flexibility of major pulses in pakistan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), 107-112. view at google scholar rehman, m. s., matin, m. a., hossain, s., karim, m. r., & salam, m. a. (2010). an economic study of mango cultivation in chapainawabganj and dinajpur district of bangladesh. bangladesh journal of agricultural research, 35(4), 621-30. https://tribune.com.pk/story/1036653/low-local-production-pakistan-left-with-higher-import-of-cotton/ https://tribune.com.pk/story/1036653/low-local-production-pakistan-left-with-higher-import-of-cotton/ https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=computation+of+compound+growth+rates+in+agriculture&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=growth.+instability+and+price+flexibility+of+major+pulses+in+pakistan&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(4)2017: 86-91 91 annexure 1: annual fluctuation in area. production and yield of cotton in pakistan year annual fluctuation (area) annual fluctuation (production) annual fluctuation (yield) 1981-82 5.01 4.70 -0.29 1982-83 2.20 10.13 7.69 1983-84 -1.86 -39.97 -38.74 1984-85 0.94 103.96 101.79 1985-86 5.46 20.64 14.44 1986-87 5.97 8.46 2.33 1987-88 2.50 11.25 8.54 1988-89 2.01 -2.87 -4.90 1989-90 -0.80 2.08 2.94 1990-91 2.45 12.48 9.82 1991-92 6.51 33.18 25.04 1992-93 0.01 -29.39 -29.39 1993-94 -1.10 -11.19 -10.13 1994-95 -5.41 8.16 14.14 1995-96 12.99 21.82 7.90 1996-97 5.05 -11.52 -15.81 1997-98 -6.00 -2.03 4.30 1998-99 -1.25 -4.29 -3.08 1999-00 2.06 27.87 25.28 2000-01 -1.86 -4.52 -2.71 2001-02 6.43 -1.11 -7.09 2002-03 -10.34 -3.79 7.31 2003-04 7.01 -1.60 -8.04 2004-05 6.80 41.97 32.93 2005-06 -2.81 -8.74 -6.10 2006-07 -0.91 -1.25 -0.34 2007-08 -0.67 -9.34 -8.73 2008-09 -7.67 1.41 9.83 2009-10 10.13 9.26 -0.79 2010-11 -13.41 -11.25 2.49 2011-12 5.41 18.63 12.54 2012-13 1.56 -4.15 -5.63 2013-14 -2.54 -2.01 0.54 2014-15 5.55 9.33 3.58 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 7 effects of socio-economic and demographic variables on meat consumption in vietnam nguyen van phuong phd candidate; faculty of agriculture, university of bonn, germany tran huu cuong associate professor; department of marketing, hanoi agricultural university, vietnam marcus mergenthaler professor; department of agriculture south westphalia university of applied sciences, germany abstract this study relates social-demographic characteristics of vietnamese households to their consumption of meat. pork and poultry constitute the majority of meat consumed in vietnamese households. hence, pork and poultry consumption have great influence on the total amount of meat consumed. increasing pork and poultry consumption has strongly contributed to the total meat consumption growth. tobit models are estimated drawing on the latest vietnamese household living standard survey in 2010. the analysis of demand for pork and poultry in vietnamese households demonstrates that meat demand in vietnam is significantly affected by socio-economic and demographic factors of households. understanding meat consumption patterns will help the vietnamese government to implement policies to ensure food security. the policies may affect food redistribution between rural and urban areas, ethnic groups, the poor and the rich. in addition, food firms who wish to invest in the food market in vietnam have to understand meat consumption patterns and meat demand to develop suitable business strategies and thereby contribute to increasing food security. this opens possibilities for domestic meat supply chains like feed producers and other livestock input suppliers, agricultural producers, processors, traders and the retail sector to take advantage of this dynamic markets sector. keywords: vietnam, meat consumption, household consumption, tobit model, vhlss introduction 1 worldwide, meat consumption has attracted much attention of study for nutritionists but also agricultural and food corresponding author’s name: nguyen van phuong email address: phuonglangvan@gmail.com economists in recent years (schroeter et al., 2013; ishdorj et al., 2013; mergenthaler et al., 2009; rae, 1999). reasons are that changing meat consumption patterns have effects on the nutritional and health status of people but also on different food markets and the involved supply chain actors. growing meat consumption also impacts indirectly asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:phuonglangvan@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 8 on other food markets via higher demand for animal feeds and thus having an impact on food prices and food security. much of previous research on meat consumption has provided a better understanding of how meat demand responds to changes in price, income but also socio-demographic variables. rae (1998) studied the effect of expenditure growth and urbanization on food consumption in east asia, in particular in the case of animal products. delgado et al. (1999) used data of 78 developing and developed countries to illustrate how per capita meat consumption increases with increasing per capita income. bansback (1995), huston (1999) argued that noneconomic factors have been becoming more important in recent years in meat consumption patterns while garciajimenez and mishra (2011) analyzed socio-economic factors using probit regressions to find major factors influencing the decisions to purchase meat products in u.s. consumer market. mejia and peel (2012) estimated the effects of demographic variables and income variables on the demand for cereals and meat in mexico. vietnam is one of the developing countries with considerable changes in meat consumption patterns. annual gdp has achieved a comparatively high growth rate of approximately 6% over the last years. income per capita has increased rapidly over the last two decades (gso, 2013). there are nearly 87 million people in vietnam making up about 26 million households (gso, 2013). in terms of expenditure, meat is one of the most important food groups consumed as families spent 20.9% of their food expenditure for meat. and pork is the most popular meat consumed by vietnamese households, followed by poultry. furthermore, meat demand, especially for pork and poultry, has been rapidly increasing (tisdell, 2009) and vietnam’s demand for meat has grown more rapidly than the domestic production. this has resulted in the real price for pork’s rapid rise over the last years. vietnamese’s strong and persistent preference for fresh pork (lapar et al., 2009; tisdell, 2010) has made it difficult for imported pork to fulfill the shortfall. in addition, the meat and poultry industry is positioned as one of vietnam's most important manufacturing industries. in 2010, livestock husbandry has contributed about 23% of total agricultural products (gso, 2011). so understanding meat demand is important for vietnamese producers, traders and agricultural policy makers. investigating pork and poultry consumption and their determinants in vietnam provides insights that might apply to other countries being on a similar path of economic, social and cultural transformation. in vietnam, several studies on household’s consumption have been conducted by using the vietnam household living standard survey (vhlss). minot and goletti (2000) used data from 1998 to estimate household food demand in vietnam. dien et al. (2004) investigated vietnamese food consumption patterns and examined how food was influenced by the demographic and socio-economic status of vietnamese based on vlss 1998. thang and popkin (2004) utilized data from 1993 and 1998 to analyze the change in food consumption. le (2008) investigated food consumption in vhlss 2004 data. hoang (2009) used data of vhlss 2008 to analyze food consumption patterns of vietnamese households. while these studies analyzed food consumption in general based on previous rounds of the vlss, no specific attention was given to the growing importance of meat consumption. the major objective of this study is to analyze the consumption patterns of pork and poultry in vietnam based on the most recently available data of the vietnamese asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 9 vhlss 2010 and to assess the viability of this data source for meat consumption analysis. income and meat expenditure in vietnam according to data of gso, the national, monthly average income per capita in current prices is nearly 1.39 million vnd in 2010, an increase of 39.4% in comparison to 2008. real income (income which is controlled for price changes) in the period 2008-2010 increased 9.3% per year. this increase is higher than the real income increase of 8.4% per year in the period 2006-2008, 6.2% in the period 2004-2006, but lower than the increase of 10.7% in the period 2002-2004. the rise in household income in 2010 was mainly due to an increase in salaries, wages, selfemployment in the construction; in addition self-employment in the trade in rural areas (gso, 2012). especially, the income per capita of the richest group increased approximately four times over the period from 2002 to 2010. the poorest group’s income started from a low level and grew three times in the considered time period. these results show that the income gap between rich and poor has widened (figure 1). figure 1: monthly income per capita by quintile (thousand vnd) note: exchange rate on 1st dec. 2010, ministry of finance, vietnam (1 usd = 18.932 vnd) source: vhlss, 2002-2010 in 2010, the monthly average expenditure per capita across the nation in current prices rose to 1.21 million vnd, increasing 52.8% in comparison to 2008, and the annual increase was 23.6% (gso, 2012). vietnamese households spend a considerable proportion of their income on food consumption. basic foods (e.g. rice, salt, sugar, vegetable, meat, oil, and sauces) account for more than half of total food expenditures of the households. in particular, households in rural areas have a higher share of food expenditure (58%) than those in urban areas (47%) as can be seen in figure 2. more importantly, it is indicated from the results in figure 3 that the share of meat in food expenditure of both rural and urban families are approximately 21% on average. this implies that vietnamese households spend a considerable amount on meat. 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 t h o u sa n d v n d quintile 1 quintile 2 quintile 3 quintile 4 quintile 5 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 10 figure 2: share of household’s income spent on food in urban and rural source: vhlss, 2010 figure 3 shows household expenditure food share in total income. it also summarizes the share meat consumed in total meat expenditure. nationally, in average vietnamese families spent 54.85% of their income on food. like many other countries in the world, pork is still the most widely spread meat consumed in vietnamese families (52.6%), followed by poultry and to a much lesser degree by beef. this number is higher than the pork’s share of world meat consumption (43.4%) (barnard, 2005) and emphasizes the importance of this meat type in vietnam. furthermore, the percentages of beef and processed meat consumed are low compared to pork and poultry. source: vhlss 2010 figure 3: household expenditure share in vietnam 47 58 53 42 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% urban rural non-food expenditure food expenditure total income food exp. 54.85 % non-food exp. 45.15% beef exp. 9.13% non-meat exp. 79.08% meat exp. 20.92 % pork exp. 52.68% poultry exp. 30.41% other meat 7.78% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 11 table 1 show that almost all vietnamese households consume pork (99.6%) and poultry (94.7%), whereas only 52.4% of households consume beef. this is different compared to meat consumption in many other parts of the world where beef has been the second most important type of meat being consumed since 1980 after being overtaken by pork (barnard, 2005). at the same time, households reporting zero-consumption of processed meat such as grilled chopped meat, traditional sausage, grilled meat, etc. and other meat types are 36% and 85% respectively. this clearly shows that pork and poultry are the most important meat types consumed in vietnamese households. table 1: share of households consuming meat surveyed in vhlss 2010 (in %) source: vhlss, 2010 meat consumption in vietnam over time rapid income growth, urbanization and globalization have led to considerable changes of asian food consumption patterns. the westernization of asian countries’ diets is characterized by less calorie intake from rice and more from meat and dairy products, fruits and vegetables (pingali, 2007). it is well known that aggregate meat supply has reached a higher level over the last 2 decades. since 1990, meat consumption per person in vietnam has increased. especially in the 2000s, the average supply per capita of meat in vietnam has increased faster than in the region and the world. it was approximately 20 kg/capita/year in 1999 and after 10 years this number increased to nearly 50 kg/capita/year in 2009. although this number is higher than the average supply of other south-eastern asian countries and the world, it is still lower than in some countries in the region such as china (58.2 kg/person/year) and malaysia (52.3 kg/person/year) (faostat, 2013). figure 4&5 compare average pork and poultry supply in vietnam, south eastern asia and the world. pork supply per capita of south eastern asia and the world has increased steadily during the analyzed period of the years 1990 2009. however, unlike that trend, pig meat supply per capita in vietnam has increased rapidly since the 1980s, especially in last decades. on the other hand, starting at low level in 1990, per capita poultry supply in the world and south eastern asia increased steadily and faster than pork, while vietnamese poultry consumption increased slightly in the period 1990-1998 and then has risen fast since 1999 up to now. especially from 2006 to 2009, poultry consumption doubled to 10.2 kg/person/year. slight decreases occurred in the years 2004, 2005 when vietnam was affected by avian flu (bird flu). poultry consumption rebounded in 2006. comparing with the average of the region and the world, the vietnamese have eaten less poultry. however, especially since 2006 vietnam’s poultry supply per capita has increased rapidly, has almost caught up with south eastern asia and is on a trend closing the gap to the average per capita consumption in the world. pork poultry beef processed meat other meat 99.6 94.7 52.4 63.8 15.1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 12 figure 4: annual per capita pork supply quality of vietnam, the world and south eastern asia, 1990-2009 source: faostat, 2013 figure 5: annual per capita poultry supply quality of vietnam, the world and south eastern asia, 1990-2009 source: faostat, 2013 data food demand can be analyzed based on either time-series data or cross-sectional data with consumer or household surveys. however in many developing countries, reliable time-series data on consumption and demand is limited. in contrast, there are many household consumption surveys conducted in these countries. using household survey data to analyze food consumption patterns has been increasingly employed over the last years (e.g. reynolds, 1990; yen and jones, 1997; newman et al., 2003; hoang, 2009; zhang and goddard, 2010; mejia and peel, 2012). the data analyzed in this study is from the vietnamese household living standard survey (vhlss), which was conducted by the vietnam general statistical office (gso). vhlss records the expenditure and quantities consumed of households for 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1 9 9 1 1 9 9 2 1 9 9 3 1 9 9 4 1 9 9 5 1 9 9 6 1 9 9 7 1 9 9 8 1 9 9 9 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 3 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 7 2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9 p ig m ea t su p p ly q u an ti ty (k g /c ap it a/ y r) viet nam world southeastern asia 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 1 9 9 1 1 9 9 2 1 9 9 3 1 9 9 4 1 9 9 5 1 9 9 6 1 9 9 7 1 9 9 8 1 9 9 9 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 3 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 7 2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9 p o u lt ry s u p p ly q u an ti ty (k g /c ap it a/ y r) viet nam world southeastern asia asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 13 certain products and product groups, as well as regional and socio-demographic characteristics such as income, region, size and composition of the household, and age of household members. the model used in this paper is based on data from vhlss 2010. the vhlss 2010 was conducted nation-wide with a sample size of 69,360 households (22,365 households for income survey, 37,596 households for income and other and 9,399 households for income, expenditure and other survey) in 3,133 communes/wards. the surveys were representative for the whole country, 6 regions of the country, urban and rural areas and provincial levels. surveys collected information during 4 periods in 2010-2011 through face-to-face interviews conducted by interviewers with household heads and key commune officials (vhlss 2010). to provide a context for the regression results in the next section, this section shows a series of descriptive statistics on household’s characteristics as well as pork and poultry consumption over the years surveyed for the difference area groups. based on the result of vhlss in 2010, an independent samples t-test was conducted to compare socio-economic factors and demographic factors in rural and urban vietnam. the result of the ttest shows that the difference in two groups’ means is statistically significant with p-value at 1%. the number of people who live in urban families is less than in rural families. in particular, age of rural household heads’ is lower than in urban areas due to the lower wedding age in rural than urban areas. furthermore, urban household head’s education is higher than in rural areas. income in urban households is always more than nearly twice as high as in rural households. on average, the income per person of urban households is 27.09 million vnd per year, while this figure for rural families is 14.79 million vnd per year (table 2). table 2: households’ socio-economic and demographic factors in rural and urban vietnam characteristic units urban rural t-test sig mean sd mean sd household size person 3.82 1.46 3.98 1.60 -4.71 .000 age of household head years old 49.73 14.07 47.8 14.28 5.93 .000 education years of schooling 8.59 3.61 6.57 3.63 24.36 .000 annual total income per person million vnd 27.09 26.12 14.79 38.48 12.82 .000 source: based on vhlss 2010 (gso) quantity of pork and poultry consumption per person per year by income quintiles in 2010 is shown in table 3. the difference between income quintiles in consuming meat is pronounced: the quantity of pork and poultry consumption increases with income quintiles. per capita pork consumption in the richest quintile is more than twice as much as in the poorest quintile. while, on average a person in the richest quintile ate 3 times more poultry than persons in the poorest quintile (table 3). these results give a first indication that income growth is a major driver of increasing meat consumption in vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 14 table 3: quantity of meat consumption per capita per year by quintile income 2010 income groups pork consumption poultry consumption mean (kg per capita) sd mean (kg per capita) sd quintile 1 8.71 7.34 4.31 5.94 quintile 2 11.87 8.93 5.98 6.65 quintile 3 13.59 9.76 7.77 7.68 quintile 4 15.69 11.17 9.51 9.68 quintile 5 17.78 12.70 12.08 10.32 source: based on vhlss 2010 (gso) econometric model it is noticeable that most vietnamese household consume pork and poultry for their daily meal. however, with crosssectional data in vhlss 2010, there is a considerable number of households that do not consume meat, particularly no poultry. hence, there is a large number of zeros in the dataset. using ordinary least square (ols) estimates to model household meat consumption is biased toward zero (greene, 2002). therefore, one method to deal with both zero and non-zero values of the dependent variable is to employ a tobit model. the maximum likelihood estimation of censored regression models has been named ‘tobit’ after tobin (1958). the tobit model has been widely employed to estimate expenditure and consumption with censored data (e. g. tobin, 1958; melenberg and soest, 1996; song et al, 2012). the tobit model can be specified as follows: iii uxy  '* , i= 1, 2, 3,…, n * ii yy  if 0* iy 0 if 0* iy where, n is the number of observations, yi is the dependent variable, xi is a vector of independent variables,  is a vector of unknown coefficients, and ui is error term that is assumed to be independently normally distributed with zero mean and constant variance 2 . thus the model assumes that *y is observed only when it is positive, otherwise values of *y less than zero are unobserved, hence, yi is censored at zero. the log likelihood function of the standard tobit model is given by: log (l) = 𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑜 1 − 𝜱 𝑖 𝑤 − 𝟏 𝟐 2𝜋 1 1 2 𝑙𝑜𝑔 1 𝜎2 − (𝑦 𝑖 − 𝑥 𝑖 𝛽)2 𝜎2 1 where  is the standard normal distribution function evaluated at  ix iw  . meat consumption is potentially influenced by factors such as demographic characteristics and household structure (verbeke et al., 2000; reynolds-zayak, 2004; zhang and goddard, 2010). in particular, in demand analysis with crosssectional household budget data it was found that household size and composition have a significant impact on food consumption (george and king, 1971; thiele and weiss, 2003, moon et al., 2010). household size is also expected to have impact on meat consumption as household size includes children, economically active persons and retired people (old people). many large households have more than one generation. households that are larger and have different generations under one roof are expected to display a different asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 15 household behavior. furthermore, household size also is expected to show economies of scale in consumption. knowledge and experience in food consumption and changing preferences lead to changes in choosing food products (moon et al., 2010). so education and age are expected to have an influence on meat consumption. the gender of the household head was found to impact on meat demand, too (lazaridis, 2003). in addition, meat consumption is hypothesized to differ across geographic regions and ethnic groups because of differences in cultures and availability. and of course, household income is expected to be an important driver for the purchasing power of households. age squared and income squared is included in the analysis to capture the possibility of a non-linear relationship between household head and meat consumption, income and meat consumption. in several studies using cross-section household data, researchers assumed that prices are constant (prais and houthakker, 1955; george and king, 1971; cited in cox and wohlgenant, 1986). since price information was not collected in the vhlss, we treat the surveys as crosssections and all of households are assumed to face the same price. therefore prices are not included in the tobit model. table 4: variables names, definition and descriptive statistics of data used for model estimation variable description sample mean standard deviation y1 quantity of pork consumption (kg/capita/year) 13.525 10.615 ln(y1) natural logarithm of pork consumption 2.247 1.015 y2 quantity of poultry consumption (kg/capita/year) 7.929 8.661 ln(y2) natural logarithm of quantity of poultry consumption 1.360 1.511 hsize number of household’s members 3.937 1.566 urban urban equals one if the household resides in an urban area and zero otherwise 0.282 female female equals one if household head is female and zero otherwise 0.248 ethnic minority ethnic minority equals one if minority and zero otherwise (vietnamesse or kinh) 0.821 age age of household head 48.345 14.245 age2 age square 2540.178 1505.398 edu years of schooling of household head 7.142 3.732 income per capita annual income of household (‘100 million vnd) 0.183 0.359 income2 income squared 0.162 8.604 regij geographic location of households reg1 red river delta area ( is base) 0.212 reg2 northern midland and mountain area (1/0) 0.177 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 16 reg3 north central area and central coastal area (1/0) 0.220 reg4 central highlands (1/0) 0.069 reg5 south east (1/0) 0.119 reg6 mekong river delta (1/0) 0.203 source: based on vhlss 2010 (gso) the demand equation can be written as: ln(yi) = 0 + 1i hsize + 2i urban + 3i female + 4i ethnic + 5i age+ 6i age2 + 7i edu + 8i income+ 9i income2 +   6 2 9 j ij regịj where y is the quantity of meat consumed by household i; urban is a binary variable indicating the location of household in an urban area (rural as reference). hsize denotes number of members in the household. female and age denote the gender and age of household head respectively; ethnic denotes if the household belongs to an ethnic minority in vietnam. edu represents years of schooling of the household head; income denotes income per capita per year of households; reg denotes the geographic location of households. it is included as zero-one dummy variables for the 6 regions of vietnam (red river delta, northern midland and mountain area, north central area and central coastal area, central highlands, south east, mekong river delta). particular information about variables is described in table 4. one of the major econometric problems in modeling household consumption is that households might not consume some kinds of food during the survey period. in the models, we work with values of the natural logarithm pork and poultry consumption as the dependent variables. these variables are originally set to missing if these are zero consumption. so they need to be set to non-missing values to run the tobit model. we set all censored observations of pork and poultry consumption to very small value that is smaller than the minimum non-censored value of pork and poultry consumption. in this way, zero consumption data become left-censored observations. the interpretation of the model is different in the alternative variables of the model: (1) for continuous variables in the form ln(y) = 0 + 1 x + ȝ, 1 is interpreted as a one unit change in x will cause 1 (100)% change in y. (2) for dummy variables in the form ln(y) = 0 + 1 x + ȝ, 1 is interpreted as the value of y is approximately 1 (100)% than base variable. regression results to identify the factors affecting pork and poultry consumption, two demand functions were estimated and the results are presented in table 5. the table summarizes the parameter estimates of the tobit model for household’s pork and poultry consumption. the results are consistent with prior expectations concerning household’s characteristics for almost all coefficients. almost all coefficients are significant at the 0.01 and 0.05 level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 17 table 5: estimated tobit model of pork and poultry consumption notes: the dependent variable is the natural logarithm of the meat consumption per capita in kg/year; *** p<0.01; **p<0.05; *p<0.1. standard errors are in parentheses. source: based on vhlss 2010 (gso) there are several clear results from the pork and poultry analysis. table 5 clearly indicates that the coefficients of income appear to be positive and significant at 1%. in the second place, the parameters of income squared are clearly negative and again significant at 1%. so the results suggest that meat consumption is a nonlinear function of income. we have log of pork and poultry consumption variables pork poultry intercept 1.758 *** (0.108) 0.075 (0.167) income 0.551 *** (0.058) 1.337 *** (0.090) income squared -0.020 *** (0.002) -0.046 *** (0.004) hhsize -0.091 *** (0.007) -0.042 *** (0.010) edu 0.034 *** (0.003) 0.079 *** (0.005) female -0.057 ** (0.024) -0.078 ** (0.037) ethnic minority -0.186 *** (0.032) -0.202 *** (0.050) age 0.027 *** (0.004) 0.037 *** (0.006) age squared -0.0002 *** (0.000) -0.0003 *** (0.000) urban 0.028 (0.024) -0.050 (0.037) northern midland and mountain areas 0.215 *** (0.036) 0.153 *** (0.056) north central area and central coastal area -0.405 *** (0.030) -0.896 *** (0.047) central highlands -0.359 *** (0.044) -0.489 *** (0.068) south east -0.469 *** (0.036) -0.443 *** (0.056) mekong river delta -0.546 *** (0.032) -0.448 *** (0.049) log likelihood : -12857.9 -16779.2 lr chi2(12) : 1520.25 1545.14 prob > chi2 : 0.000 0.000 pseudo r2 : 0.0558 0.044 no. of left-censored observations: 90 499 no. of uncensored observations : 9312 8903 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 18 increasing with income, but at a decreasing rate that we have decreasing returns. in particular, the coefficients of income and income squared are 0.551 and -0.020 in the pork consumption model and 1.337 and 0.046 in the poultry model, respectively that means that quantity of pork and poultry consumption seems to follow a growing trend with a steep slope for low income value. as income increases, the slope turns more gently until an annual per capita income of 1.378 billion vnd with pork and 1.453 billion vnd with poultry, from that moment a continuous fall can be seen. in fact, the mean per capita annual income is 16.68 million vnd that is very small compared to the numbers 1.378 billion vnd and 1.453 billion vnd. so if continued income growth is assumed for the future the meat consumption can expect further growth induced by income growth. only at very high income levels, meat consumption would start to decrease. with respect to household characteristics, it can be seen that a negative impact of household size is found in the models, i.e. the quantity of both pork and poultry consumed decreases by 9.1 % for pork and 4.2 % for poultry if household size increases by 1 person. the negative impact that was expected for the coefficient of household size indicates economies of scale in consumption (reynolds, 1990), i.e. when the number of people in households increase, meat consumption per capita will be reduced. according to data of vhlss from 2002 to 2010, the average number of people in families has decreased from 4.44 persons per household in the year 2002 to 3.89 people/household in the year 2010. therefore continued household and family restructuring could contribute to increased demand for pork and poultry as smaller household consume more meat on a per capita basis. in addition, the model results suggest that pork and poultry consumption are influenced by other socio-demographic characteristics. factors such as household head’s education and gender were found to have significant impacts on pork and poultry consumption. in particular, the education level is positively related to pork and poultry demand. this means that households where the head has a higher education level tend to have higher meat consumption. consumption per person increases by 7.9% for poultry and 3.4% for pork when household head’s education increases by one year. these findings are contrary with results of su and yen (1996) and newman et al. (2003) who found a negative relationship between education and us pork consumption and between education and irish prepared meals expenditure, respectively indicating major differences in meat consumption patterns between developed countries and an emerging country like vietnam. moreover, the negative coefficient of female heads reflects that households with female heads consume less pork and poultry than other households. concerning the household’s ethnicity, families that are vietnamese consume more pork and poultry than ethnic minority families. we suppose that this is caused by the differences in culture (hai, 2010). however, the regressions model also include, along with age, an age squared term which turned out to be significant. the results are suggestive of nonlinear function and imply that per capita pork and poultry consumption seems to increase with a steep slope for young household heads. as in households that have older heads, the slope turns gentler until the age of household heads of 67.5 year old with pork consumption and 61.7 year old with poultry consumption, from that point, quantity of pork and poultry asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 19 consumption decreased with the higher age of household heads. it is surprising that parameter estimations of urban in both equations are not significant. it means that there is no statistically significant difference between urban and rural households in pork and poultry consumption. this indicates that there are no significant differences in pork and poultry consumption between rural and urban areas in vietnam and that differences that might be observable in simple comparisons can be attributed to the factors that we included in our models as described above, i.e. it is not urbanization per se that drives the increasing amounts of meat consumption but rather the accompanying socioeconomic and demographic changes. finally, we find significant differences between six regions of the country. with the red river delta region being the base variable, the results show that there is a significant difference between the red river delta region and other regions of the country. in particular, the coefficients for the dummy northern midland and mountain areas mean that these households consume 20% more pork and 15.3% more poultry than households in the red river delta. the negative signs of the other dummy regional variables are in contrast. especially, households that live in the mekong river delta consume 54.6% less pork compared to households in the red river delta. households that are located in the north central area and the central coastal area consume less poultry. the coefficients indicate that per capita poultry consumption of households is 89.6 % less than in the red river delta. possible reason of this fact may be differences of culture and differences in the socialeconomic situation not covered by the other variables included in our models. conclusion vietnam’s economy has been developing rapidly over the last two decades and vietnamese diet patterns have changed. vietnam’s meat consumption has become more important. the focus of this study has been an attempt to better understand meat consumption patterns in vietnam. the article presents analyses of descriptive statistics of pork and poultry consumption by demographic groups. two tobit models for pork and poultry consumption have been estimated. the analysis of demand for pork and poultry in vietnamese households demonstrates that meat demand in vietnam is impacted by many factors. the econometric results indicate that pork and poultry are necessity goods in vietnam and socio-economic, demographic and geographic variables are important indicators of future vietnamese meat consumption. the study results show that for a long time, rising income is still one of the major determinants which had impacts on increasing meat consumption in vietnam. increasing incomes have resulted in a higher demand for meat products. the average meat consumption per capita in vietnam is about 40kg per year and is projected to increase to 57kg per capita by 2020 (gso, 2010). the study findings also suggest that the per capita meat consumptions with different demographic variables of the household sample show an increasing trend of meat consumption per capita with respect to household size where households’ structure have been changing household size has been decreasing over the years (gso, 2010). the change in food consumption occurs for the whole country (cf. thang and popkin, 2004). this has implications for vietnamese policy makers but also private actors in meat supply chains. the structure of meat consumption is different among poor and rich, female and male headed asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 7-22 20 households, and minorities and vietnamese (kinh) ethnic groups. understanding meat consumption patterns will help policy makers to implement measures to ensure food security. these policies may be based on food redistribution between different areas, ethnic groups, the poor and the rich. improvement of infrastructure, especially the transportation system can support production and exchanges between regions. in addition, food firms who wish to invest in the food market in vietnam have to understand meat consumption patterns and meat demand to develop suitable business strategies and thereby contribute to increasing food security. indeed the growing shortfall in vietnam’s domestic supply of meat has resulted in opportunities for foreign exporters. however, the preference of vietnamese consumers for fresh (i.e. warm) meat has become a barrier for meat imports into vietnam. this opens possibilities for domestic meat supply chains like feed manufacturers and other livestock input suppliers, agricultural producers, processors, traders and the retail sector to take advantage of this dynamic markets sector. reference ishdorj, a., 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(potato) from genus solanum belongs to the family solanaceae, is an annual crop (khurana et al., 2003). 2n=48 is the number of chromosome of potato. an autotetrapoloid potato is stuffy, perennials and heterozygous plant species (roodbar et al., 2008). potato is originated from peru in north america and feast to other parts of the world where in it is spread efficaciously plusdevelop essential crop of europe (bashir, 1981). depending on cultivar during storage of potatoes start gathering reducing sugars, by which transport sweet flavour in their end vintages because of the objectionable brown shade of chips and fries as well as creating them unfit for chip treating (schimmer, 1957). corresponding author’s name: saima kanwal email address: saima.kanwal80@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.11/1005.11.210.220 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 210-220 211 potatoes which have rich reducing sugars concentrations are responsible for the browning of potato chips during frying and therefore lower applications of reducing sugars result in high quality product (mazza, 1983). potatoes are disbursed every wherein the biosphere with enormous amounts in which potatoes could be a right pedestrian vehicle for hectoring some fitness connected complications (ezekiel et al., 2013). because of their favourable effects on health, frequent of the compounds existing in potatoes are essential therefore they are highly required in the human diet (katan & de roos, 2004). during the year 2010 to 2011 the total cultivation of potatoes in all over pakistan were recorded as 3491700 tones with total 159400 hectares, while in khyber pakhtunkhwa the total production area was 8900 hectares, in punjab 148100 hectares, in baluchistan 2000 hectares were recorded (anonymous, 2005). in all over the world 315 million tons of potatoes were produced where in pakistan total production was 3.49 million tons of potatoes with 14 kg/capita/year, while according to the year 2008 potatoes production was 2.5 million metric tons (fao, 2008). most vegetative crop for pakistan is considered is potato in pakistan which grown 101.5 thousand hectares on an area with a yearly invention of 666.1 thousand loads (anonymous, 2005). andigena is widely grown by native farmers since mexico, from south america the north and central american cultivars were most familiarized but from colombia to argentina the cultivars are likely active (hawkes, 1990). in europe plant protection policies has been closely linked to potatoes (ebbels, 2003). due to the economic position of the crop and the wide range of pests that affect them, phytophthora infestans causes irish potato dearth in the 19th century, an effective example set for the distressing effects and far accomplishment implications a plant disorder (bourke, 1964).the objective of the present study was to evaluate and study the effect of seed size (small, medium and large) on potato manufacture under field conditions plus also to select potato diverse genotypes for yield traits and processing aspects, for growers, food industrialists and the potato product consumers in pakistan. 2. materials and method potato genotypes including exotic and local varieties obtained from different sources as collected from potato program were planted at national agriculture research centre, islamabad, pakistan, during the month of october, 2014 for their evaluation and screening. the potato planting was done according to randomized complete block design with three replications. the fertilizer was applied @ 250-125-125 npk (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) kg per hectare at seed bed preparation. the other dose of n (250 kg/ha) was divided in to two equal parts, applied at first and second earthening up. eight varieties per bed were sown in rcbd (r1 small tuber, r2 medium tuber, r3 large tuber) propagating was done by guardianship tuber to tuber space 20 cm and line to line space 75 cm. plant protection measures were applied as when they are compulsory. depended on environmental conditions irrigation practices were done i.e. four to five times in a month. for all treatments uniform cultural practices were adopted. at crop maturity, devaluing 1 was done and tubers were harvested after 15 days of devaluing allowing tuber skin to firm up. in a specific temperature for additional cultivation these tubers were stored. 1 note: npk stands for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 210-220 212 figure 1: (a) soil bed preparation, (b) size of tubers, (c) tuber measuring tool 2.1. collection of data/yield parameters the field measurement data of selected potato germplasm were recorded on the basis of phenotypic parameters germination percentage and height of plant (cm), no. of eyes per tuber, tuber shape, tuber skin type, no. tubers per plant, average tuber weight per plant, average tuber size per plant). small size range was 10 to 20mm, medium size was 20 to 30mm and large size was 30 to 40mm (table 1). table 1: total computable parameters used no total parameters methodology 1 plant height/plant by using meter rod plant height was measured from the bottom to the top maximum level of the plant in centimeter (fig. 2.1). 2 germination percentage (%)/plant by subtracting the total number of tubers sown from the total number of tubers germinated multiplied by hundred germination percentage was calculated and the values were expressed in percentage(%). germination % age = no. of tubers sown × 100 no. of tubers germinated 3 total tubers/plant after harvesting the crop plant character was detected by calculating total number of tubers per plant manually. 4 average tuber size/plant with the helping of potato measuring tool plant size character was measured. 5 average tuber weight/plant (gm) by using electronic balance total number of tuber weight per plant was measured in weight measuring unit gram. 6 quantity of eyes/tuber by visual inspection after harvesting entire number of eyes per tuber were noted. 7 tubers shape/plant tubers shapes were noted after harvest. 8 skin type of tubers/plant by optical observation the tuber skin type were examined after harvesting. 2.2. statistical analysis to examine the in vivo data statistix 8.1 software were used and for the construction of graph microsoft excel were used. anova (analysis of variance) was applied for the comparison among diverse potato specie while for the grouping of recorded qualitative data upgma cluster was used. c b a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 210-220 213 3. results after the cultivation of potato cip germplasm the data were recorded according to the following parameters 3.1. plant height and germination percentage variation record in plant height is from 37.200 a to 1.300 h . among all the cip germplasm zina red gave the maximum height (37.200 a ) followed by desiree (33.000 ab ) while, minutes plant height was detected in cip 03 cultivar (1.300 h ). 5% level of lsd at results about germination percentage were significant. supreme sprouting percentage was obtained in cip germplasms (06, 08, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20, 22, 30, 32, 33), desire, hzd2 1499 and zina red (100.00 a ) monitored by cip 02, cip 05, cip 19, cip 28, cip 29, cip 31 and astrix (93.33 ab ) while lowest germination percentage was noted in cip 03 (20.00 d ) (figure 2, 3 and table 2). figure 2: plant height figure 3: germination percentage -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 plant height (cm) -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 germination percentage asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 210-220 214 3.2. number of tubers per plant and number of eyes per tuber cip 07 (10.133 a ) and cip 12 (9.267 ab ) showed supreme tubers per plant while, cip 03 (1.000 k ) showed lowest number of tubers per plant. by visual inspection cip 01, 02, 04, 07, 09, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29 30, 31, 32, 33, asterix, desiree, zina red, hzd2 1499 presented intermediate eyes per tuber although cip 03, 05, 06, 08, 11, 13, 15, 18, 19, 22, 34 exhibited few eyes per tuber (figure 4, 5 (a-i) and table. 2). figure 4: number of tubers 3.3. shape of the tuber and tuber skin type for tuber shapes the composed gathered tubers were observed giving to the following key. ovate: cip05, cip28, cip31. oblong: cip01, cip03, cip06, cip07, cip08, cip09, cip11, cip15, cip20, cip25, cip27, cip29, cip33, asterix, desiree, zina red, hzd2 1499. round: cip02, cip04, cip10, cip13, cip16, cip18, cip19, cip24, cip30, cip32, cip34. long oblong: cip12, cip14. obovate: cip17, cip22. according to the following key the tubers skin type were noted rough: cip07, cip16, cip017, cip19, cip28, cip30, cip34. smooth: cip02, cip03, cip04, cip05, cip06, cip08, cip09, cip11, cip12, cip13, cip14, cip15, cip18, cip20, cip22, cip24, cip27, cip29, cip31, cip32, cip33, asterix, desiree, zina red, hzd2 1499. partially netted: cip01, cip25. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 number of tubers /plant asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 210-220 215 a l k j i h g f e d c b figure 5 a-i: tuber skin type and shape of different cip and local germplasms c ip 2 2 c ip 3 4 c ip 1 9 c ip 1 8 c ip 1 3 c ip 0 5 c ip 1 5 c ip 1 1 c ip 0 8 c ip 0 6 c ip 0 3 c ip 1 7 h zd 2 14 99 z in a re d d es ir re a st ri x c ip 3 3 c ip 2 9 c ip 2 7 c ip 2 0 c ip 0 9 c ip 3 1 c ip 2 8 c ip 3 0 c ip 1 6 c ip 1 4 c ip 1 2 c ip 0 7 c ip 3 2 c ip 2 4 c ip 10 c ip 0 4 c ip 0 2 c ip 2 5 c ip 0 1 33.33 55.56 77.78 100.00 observations s im ila ri ty dendrogram single linkage, euclidean distance figure 6: on the basis of qualitative characterization upgma cluster observed in 35 genotypes of potato asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 210-220 216 analysis was measured by the upgma (un weighted pair group method with arithmetic average) between cip and local potato cultivars for the qualitative correlation principal and cluster component. by upgma cluster analysis 35 diverse genotypes of potato paired into two main clusters, having extra sub-clusters, clusters i and ii, (fig. 3.5). within i group showed that, genotypes were closely accompanying with each other, though slightly diverse inside the ii group. in sub groups these subgroups further divided comprehended of genotypes. the ecotypes presented by dendrogram that were products of inherently analogous form, assembled unruffled. in the existent study, the cluster (band) analysis the altered genotypes were interposed with each other, which established no association between the qualitative development arrangements and their geographical source beneath examination. 4. discussion maximum plant height among all the genotypes were obtained in zina red (37.200 a ) and lesser height was produced by cip 03 (1.300 h ). this modification in plant height (cm) may be due to the genetic transformation of verities. our upshots are also in mark with luthra et al. (2005) who also give description difference in between the unlike genotypes allocated to enough growth. similar results in potato were also testified by other personnel (schittenhelm et al., 2006; shaterian et al., 2008). present studies showing maximum number of germination percentage contained (100.00 a ) at cip germplasms (06, 08, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20, 22, 30, 32, 33), desiree, hzd2 1499 and zina red in that order followed by cip germplasms (02, 05, 19, 28, 29, 31) and astrix (93.33 ab ) however this difference among the genotypes might be due to genetically disparity and ecological conditions. due to (patel et al., 2008) large size tubers of high quantity might be due to inattentive plant beginning and with plant progression. analogous effects were renowned by khan et al. (2013) who described 80% to 95% disproportion in development percentage between tested cultivars. present studies showed the maximum number of tubers per plant in cip 07, followed by cip 12 (9.267 ab ) (10.133 a ). variation between tubers per plant might be due to genetic growth in all the genotypes. imperative protagonist in stolen and tuberilisation processes showed genetic makeup and environmental factor (subarta & upadhya, 1997). the results are within agreement with the conclusion of singh and ahmad (2008) who described variance due to vegetation and tuber origination. according to our fallouts average tubers weight per plant was in zina red (338.029 a ), surveyed by hzd2 1499 (280.68 ab ) while these alteration may be due to the aspects of genotypes, suitable progress plus disorder although these outcomes are adjusted to the deduction of tuku (2000). the average tuber size per plant showing the existent work of the altered potato varieties were significant (5%) in which resolute number of minor size tubers were obtained in cip 10(9.0000 a ) tracked by cip 12, cip 13 and cip 30 (8.3333 ab ). genotypes with medium size of tubers were observed in cip 22 (3.0000 e ) followed by cip 28 (4.6667 abcd ) although medium tubers were found in cip 03 (0.0000 h )while, great number of large size tubers were found in zina red (4.3333 a ) followed by hzd2 1499 (3.6667 ab )besides minimum number of huge size tubers were establish in cip 03 (0.0000 d ). present work was buttressed by masarirambi et al. (2012) which showed that by seed size the last size and number of tubers formed per plant was managed. recent results about the qualitative characteristics showed that numbers of eyes per tuber in all the genotypes were intermediate in nature which were found in cip 01, 02, 04, 07, 09, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29 30, 31, 32, 33, asterix, desiree, zina red, hzd2 1499 and some of them like cip 03, 05, 06, 08, 11, 13, 15, 18, 19, 22, 34 showed unsatisfactory eyes per tuber while, tubers shape also exhibited variation among all the potato germplasm tubers where in cip05, cip28, cip31 presented ovate shape, cip01, cip03, cip06, cip07, cip08, cip09, cip11, cip15, cip20, cip25, cip27, cip29, cip33, asterix, desiree, zina red, hzd2 1499 indicated oblong shape, cip02, cip04, cip10, cip13, cip16, cip18, cip19, cip24, cip30, cip32, cip34 revealed round shape, cip12, cip14 showed long oblong and cip17, cip22 showed obovate shape. tuber skin types were noted in which rough types were cip07, cip16, cip017, cip19, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 210-220 217 cip28, cip30, cip34, however smooth types were designated by cip02, cip03, cip04, cip05, cip06, cip08, cip09, cip11, cip12, cip13, cip14, cip15, cip18, cip20, cip22, cip24, cip27, cip29, cip31, cip32, cip33, asterix, desiree, zina red, hzd2 1499 and partially netted were exhibited by cip01, cip25. our results about qualitative characteristics was within contract with khan et al. (2014) as they determined that all the characteristics of potatoes in which tuber shape, skin colour, flesh colour, eye depth and their general presence are the distinguishing qualities of potato for money making interest about performs and innumerable handling whereas, in former observations of ganga et al. (2013). with a little bit similarity with our work most of their potato verities contours were unalike from our existing results and numbers of eyes were littler in utmost of the cultivars which showed 5. conclusion existent studies concluded that such type of trainings is necessary to enhance yield of potato. field experiment or in vivo propagation should be shepherded to cultivate parsimoniously or economically attainable diseases-free planting quantifiable. in the altered areas of pakistan researchers need to improve these genotypes to check their production for future research study funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that s/he has no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references anonymous (2005). agricultural statistics of pakistan. govt. of pakistan. ministry of food, agriculture, and livestock. food, agriculture & livestock division (economic wing), islamabad. bashir, a. 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(2014). evaluation of potato hybrids for yield components in humid subtropical climate during autumn season. japs. 24, 1511-1517. khan, m. f., najma, t., anila, l., abdul, k., & mansoor, m. (2013). morphological characterization of potato (solanum tuberosum l.) germplasm under rainfed environment. j. nairobi, kenya, afri. j. bio., 22, 3214-3223. khurana, s. m. p., minhas, j. s., & pandey, s. k. (2003). the potato: production and utilization in sub-tropics. mehta publishers, new delhi, india. 445. http://www.fao.org/ http://www.potato2008.org/en/potato/cultivation.html asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 210-220 218 luthra, s. k., gopal, j., pandy, s. k., & singh, b. p. (2005). genetic parameters and characters associated in tubersoum potatoes. potato j., 32(3-4), 234. masarirambi, m. t., mandisodza, f. c., mashingaidze, a. b., & bhebhe, e. 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(2006). drought resistance of potat cultivars with contrasting canopy architecture. europ. j. agronomy, 24, 193-202. shaterian, j., waterer, d. r., de jong h., & tanino. k. k. (2008). methodologies and traits for evaluating the salt tolerance in diploid potato clones. am. j. pot. res. 85, 93-100. singh, n., & ahmad, z. (2008). effect of mulching on potato production in high altitude cold arid zone of ladakh. potato j., 35 (3-4), 118-121. subarta, m., & upadhya, m. o. (1997). potato production in western bengal. enviromental ecology, 4(15), 646-649. tuku, b. t. (2000). the utilization of true potato seed (tps) as an alternative method of potato production. indonesian j. agric. sci. 1(2), 29-38. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 210-220 219 appendices table 2: lsd all-pairwise comparisons test for all morphological traits genotypes plant height (cm) germination% average weight of tubers number of tuber/plant average tuber small size/plant average tuber medium size/plant average tuber large size/plant cip-01 7.200 fgh 66.67 bc 55.74 jk 4.800 ghij 4.6667 cde 1.6667 fgh 2.3333 bc cip-02 10.300 def 93.33 ab 102.40 hijk 7.133 abcdefghi 8.0000 ab 2.3333 defgh 1.6667 cd cip-03 1.300 h 20.00 d 3.24 k 1.000k 3.0000 e 0.0000 h 0.0000 d cip-04 3.067 gh 66.67 bc 153.25 cdefghij 5.667 defghij 3.0000e 3.3333 cdefg 2.6667 abc cip-05 6.767f gh 93.33a b 88.58 ijk 5.267 efghij 7.3333 abc 1.0000 gh 1.3333 cd cip-06 10.567 def 100.00 a 200.99 bcdefg 8.700 abcd 8.0000 ab 3.6667 bcdef 1.3333c d cip-07 12.933 cdef 86.00 abc 168.68 cdefghi 10.133 a 6.0000 abcde 2.0000 efgh 1.3333 cd cip-08 12.733 cdef 100.00 a 131.34 defghij 7.267 abcdefgh 8.0000 ab 2.3333 defgh 1.3333 cd cip-09 9.433 efg 73.33 abc 101.39 hijk 8.133 abcde 7.3333 abc 3.0000 defg 1.3333 cd cip-10 17.800 c 100.00 a 245.85 abc 9.133 ab 9.0000 a 4.0000 abcdef 1.3333 cd cip-11 10.200 def 100.00 a 103.07 hijk 5.000 fghij 6.3333 abcd 3.0000 defg 1.3333 cd cip-12 17.033 cd 100.00 a 232.92 abcd 9.267 ab 8.3333 ab 4.3333 abcde 2.0000 bc cip-13 11.867 cdef 100.00 a 215.00 bcde fg 9.000 abc 8.3333 ab 4.0000 abcdef 2.0000 bc cip-14 9.767 efg 80.00 abc 110.53 ghijk 3.967 jk 5.3333 bcde 1.6667 fgh 2.6667 abc cip-15 10.533 def 73.33 abc 142.63 cdefghij 6.667 bcdefghij 6.6667 abcd 1.0000 gh 1.3333 cd cip-16 13.533 cdef 100.00 a 155.40 cdefghij 7.067 abcdefghi 7.0000 abcd 2.3333 defgh 1.3333 cd cip-17 11.033 cdef 100.00 a 94.62 hijk 5.333 efghij 7.0000 abcd 2.6667 defg 2.0000 bc cip-18 11.067 cdef 60.00 c 122.66 efghij 5.067 efghij 5.3333 bcde 3.3333c defg 1.3333c d cip-19 13.400 cdef 93.33 ab 154.84 cdefghij 4.133 ij 4.0000 de 3.0000 defg 1.6667 cd cip-20 14.933 cde 100.00 a 224.18 bcde 6.333 bcdefghij 5.3333 bcde 4.3333 abcde 2.3333 bc cip-22 14.933 cde 100.00 a 241.30 abc 6.733 bcdefghij 7.0000 abcd 6.3333 a 2.0000 bc cip-24 11.533 cdef 66.67 bc 104.76 hijk 4.500 hij 5.6667 bcde 2.6667 defg 2.0000 bc cip-25 13.833 cdef 86.67 abc 199.26 bcdefgh 5.067 efghij 4.0000 de 3.6667 bcdef 2.0000 bc cip-27 13.700 cdef 66.67 bc 132.00 dcefghij 5.933 cdefghij 4.6667 cde 2.6667 defg 1.3333 cd cip-28 12.267 cdef 93.33 ab 175.64 bcdefgh i 8.067 abcdef 8.0000 ab 4.6667 abcd 2.6667 abc cip-29 15.267 cde 93.33 ab 91.19 ijk 4.100 ij 5.6667 bcde 3.0000 defg 2.0000 bc cip-30 16.033 sde 100.00 a 220.56 bcdef 7.867 abcdefg 8.3333 ab 4.0000 abcdef 1.6667 cd cip-31 14.867 cde 93.33 ab 122.76 efghij 5.233 efghij 4.6667 cde 3.3333 cdefg 2.3333 bc asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(11)2016: 210-220 220 cip-32 16.400 cde 100.00 a 233.55 abcd 6.533 bcdefghij 6.0000 abcde 3.6667 bcdef 3.0000 abc cip-33 9.800 efg 100.00 a 115.90 fghij 5.433 efghij 5.666 7bcde 2.6667 defg 2.0000 bc cip-34 16.067 cde 86.67 abc 141.70 cdefghij 5.033 fghij 4.0000 de 3.6667 bcdef 1.3333 cd asetrix 28.033 b 93.33 ab 237.97 abcd 6.600 bcdefghij 5.3333 bcde 4.0000 abcdef 2.0000 bc desirre 33.000 ab 100.00 a 233.11 abcd 5.667 defghij 7.0000 abcd 4.6667 abcd 2.6667 abc hzd2 1499 25.933 b 100.00 a 280.68 ab 6.533 bcdefghij 5.3333 bcde 5.6667 abc 3.6667 ab zina red 37.200 a 100.00 a 338.02 a 6.267 bcdefghij 4.3333 cde 6.0000 ab 4.3333 a lsd(0.05) 7.1194 33.304 107.97 3.0812 3.0417 2.5789 1.7112 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 936 impact of the mobile telecommunication network’s milk flow project on the livelihoods of pastoralists in ladugga grazing reserve, kaduna state, nigeria john gambo laah department of geography, ahmadu bello university, zaria, nigeria abstract the paper aims at assessing the impact of mobile telecommunication network (mtn) milkflow project on the livelihoods of pastoralists in ladugga grazing reserve in kaduna state, nigeria. a structured questionnaire was administered to 242 pastoralists in ladugga. to complement the quantitative source of data, focus group discussions (fgds) and in-depth interviews (idis) were conducted to assess the benefits and impact of the milk flow project. a total of four (4) fgd sand four (4) idis were held with fulani pastoralists and stakeholders in ladugga grazing reserve. the mean age for male respondents was 55 years while that of the females was 42 years. the result reveals that the milk-flow project has led to: formation and membership of cooperative societies; significant increase in milk production and consequently income; a reduction in morbidity and mortality rates of cows due to better health seeking behaviours; the development of pasture farms and an increase in school enrolment. the paper suggested the need to encourage more private sector participation in supporting pastoralists’ livelihoods within the grazing reserve systems. keywords: fulani pastoralists, grazing reserve, livelihoods introduction the guinea and sahel savannas ecosystems that are home to over 90% of the fulani herdsmen in nigeria have become very vulnerable (folami, 2010).rapid population growth has led to the expansion of people into the ecology of the pastoralists in africa leading to scarcity of grazing areas (reckers, 1997). a cocktail of statistics indicates that at current trend the ability of different ecosystems to provide food, water and shelter is compromised by changes in climatic events (nicholls and lowe, 2004; international organization for migration, 2008). climatic uncertainties decrease people’s ability to grow food and livestock sustainably especially in developing countries (ziska, 2010). recent happenings in the world economy and the frequency to which new diseases that affect agriculture and livestock production occurs have raised questions about the state of food security especially in africa, against the backdrop of the continuous increase in population numbers (naylor and falcon, 2010). the challenges facing most societies in the world today as regards food security have necessitated the evolution of different methods of boosting food supply and ensuring sustainable use of resources. some of the methods aimed at boosting food supply include, the use of hybrid varieties and exotic breeds, application of fertilizers and pesticides and the involvement of the private sector in agriculture. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 937 nigeria, with a population of about 168.8 million people (world bank, 2013), is grossly underprovided with essential food components like protein, which is important for the realization and development of both the mental and physical potentials of human beings. nigeria’s agriculture is dependent on rainfall with a very small proportion engaged in irrigation. unfortunately, rainfall variability and associated droughts coupled with wrong implementation of government policies have been major causes of food shortages in nigeria. although, there is the dearth of data on dairy farms and milk production in africa in general and indeed nigeria in particular (millogo et al., 2008), the production of milk which is rich especially for children, has either decreased in most areas or has remained unchanged in the last two decades against rising human population. the annual national milk requirement in nigeria is estimated at 1.5 billion litres, however, only 1% of this total demand is met locally (national bureau of statistics, 2009). this translates to less than 10 litres per head. the global average is about 40 litres per head while in most parts of africa it is 28 litres per head. there are several factors responsible for the progressive decline in the quantity of milk produced. some of the reasons include; changes in climatic events, low milk yield of the dominant cow specie (zebu), shorter shelf life, high somatic cell count and prevalence of tsetse fly (millogo et al., 2008; laah, 2011). researchers have argued that the participation of the private sector in food production in nigeria has not been encouraging and even the few that are involved not much is known of the impact of their projects or programmes on the livelihoods of the people (afrique avenir, 2011). the world bank (wb) has blamed the setback in nigeria’s agricultural development to the non-participation of the private sector and the visible under-investment by government. it also believes that the participation of the private sector will unlock the country’s agricultural potentials (afrique avenir, 2011). the study area ladugga grazing reserve (lgr) has a land area of 71,311 hectares and located between latitudes 10 o 04” and 10 o 12” north of the equator, and between longitudes 7 o 59” and 8 o 10” east of the greenwich meridian. the ladugga grazing reserve was carved out of three local government areas, namely; zango kataf (70%), kachia (20%) and kajuru (10%). the area falls under the high plains of northern nigeria. the geology of the area consists mainly of pre-cambrian rocks of the basement complex (barbour et al., 1982). the grazing reserve has an undulating gentle slope that is heavily dissected by several tributaries of the river kaduna towards the eastern and northern parts. the area generally lies between 560 to 700 meters above sea level and has two distinct climatic seasons; the wet and dry seasons. the wet season occurs between april and october (7 months) while the dry season is between the months of november and march (5 months). ladugga area has a mean annual rainfall of about 1520 meters with the highest rainfall occurring in the months of august and september (abbas, 2010). the original vegetation of the area is largely the guinea savanna type, but due to excessive bush burning and felling of trees, what remains of the vegetation are patches of woodland with trees that rise to maximum height of 15 meters. the population of ladugga grazing reserve is estimated to be between 15,000 and 25,000 people and almost 100% of the population is fulani pastoralists. in the last three (3) years the population of the area has increased rapidly because of the influx of fulani pastoralists into the grazing reserve. the influx of the pastoralists into the grazing reserve is due to the increase in the frequency and intensity of conflicts between the pastoralists and sedentary farmers in the adjoining areas. the pastoralists in ladugga asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 938 live in unguwa settlements (hamlets). these settlements are scattered around the reserve. in terms of the administrative structure, ladugga grazing reserve is under zango kataf local government area, while politically it is under kachia local government area. the fulani pastoralists have a social structure that recognizes the ardo (clan leader or chief) as the leader of the group. although, ladugga grazing reserve was meant to be used by fulani pastoralists for the sole purpose of grazing, most fulanis in the grazing reserve are agro-pastoralists, that is, they combine farming of crops/legumes with cattle rearing. farming here is done in small scale and crops grown include sorghum, millet, maize, cocoyam, yam and groundnut. the average household herd size varies between 20 and 35 cows. in spite of the combination of farming and cattle rearing the economic capacity of an average fulani man in ladugga is limited and he is not able to provide enough for his family. description of the milk-flow project the milk flow project is one of the mobile telecommunication network of nigeria (mtnn) corporate social responsibility (csr) projects under its health, education and economic empowerment portfolios. mtn is the major mobile telecommunication company in nigeria with network coverage in all 774 local government areas in nigeria. these projects are being executed all over nigeria and are designed to impact upon the quality of life of the people in various communities.the milk flow project was a 2year project funded by mtn foundation in partnership with a private diary farm, integrated diary limited (idl), vom, plateau state. mtn foundation provided funds and logistics to idl and idl in turn provided the hybrid bulls and also supervised the implementation of the project. the project was implemented in three states of nigeria, namely; bauchi, kaduna and plateau states. this paper is an evaluation of the implementation of the project in kaduna state. the project was initially planned for between august 2007 and july 2009, however, the implementation extended to middle of 2010.the full benefits of the project was expected to start manifesting from december 2012 when the first set of the calves were expected to be between three (3) and four (4) years old and thus start their own cycle of reproduction. table 1 shows the items that were supplied or installed by mtn in collaboration with idl for the successful execution of the project. base on field observation and document review, integrated dairy limited has a history of involvement in the dairy industry in nigeria. the company was established in 1986 and incorporated in april, 2003. the company is generally known as farm fresh® which is the brand name of most of its product. the company is located on 550 hectares of land on the highlands of vom, plateau state and as at 2012, the company had staff strength of 150 employees comprising experienced veterinary doctors, agricultural professionals and expatriates. idl had over 580 holstein friesian herds out of which 160 are lactating cows producing an average of about 3200 litres of milk per day (20 litres/cow). table 1: distribution by items installed/provided for the milk flow project items number to be installed/ supplied number supplied/ installed proportion of items supplied/ installed (%) tractors 1 1 100.0 mobile milking machines 10 10 100.0 freisbian bulls 70 63** 90.0 hilux pickup 1 1 100.0 motorbike 3 3 100.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 939 first aid box 3 3 100.0 borehole 2 0* 0.0 artificial insemination kits & accessories 3 3 100.0 mobile phones, sims, antenna & airtime 200*** 0 0.0 ln2 3 3 100.0 *borehole not drilled ** three of the bulls had died as at the time of this study *** mtnf was yet to supply the items the goal of the project was to economically empower the fulani pastoralists through production of improved animal breeds that will increase the volume and quality of milk produced for sale. table 1 show that items installed or supplied for the project. the underlying objectives of the project were to: (a) increase the volume and quality of milk produced for sale (b) encourage the fulani pastoralists to adopt the sedentary lifestyle rather than the nomadic lifestyle and (c) assist the fulani pastoralists to have easy access to social amenities such as schools for their children, hospitals for the pastoralists and veterinary clinics for their animals. after two years of the cessation of the project, this study sought to assess the impact of the project on household livelihoods. data and methods the data for this study was obtained through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. project beneficiaries-based data were sourced from beneficiaries of the mtn milk flow project using questionnaire, focus group discussions (fgds) and in-depth interview (idis). the questionnaire was administered to 242 heads of households in ladugga grazing reserve. the questionnaire elicited information on basic socio-demographic characteristics of age, sex, marital status, type of marital union, level of education, number of cows owned, membership of cooperative society and mortality rates of cows and calves. the questionnaire also sought robust information on knowledge and participation in the mtn milk flow project, livelihood activities, quantity of milk produced, income generated and other benefits of the mtn project. to complement the questionnaire, a total of four (4) focus group discussions (fgds) were conducted with an average of 10 persons per fgd. the cooperative societies had average membership of 36 households per cooperative society. also, four (4) indepth interviews (idis) were conducted with the district head of ladugga grazing reserve, the headmaster of ladugga primary school, the project manager of idl and the mtn project field officer. the discussions were all recorded using a voice operated recording (vor) tape with the permission of the respondents. the recorded responses were transcribed and analysed. the major challenge of this study was in conducting fgds and kiis with mobile population like the fulanis. it was difficult meeting at agreed time as they had to take their cows out early for grazing. also attempt to interact with the pastoralists children was almost stalled because they were unavailable in the early hours as their lesson hours were usually in the afternoon. also, they were not forthcoming in discussing issues around them, probably as a result of the fear of offending their parents, but more so because, most of them only understood fulani and could barely communicate in another language not even hausa. results and discussion demographic and socio-economic characteristics of respondents table 2shows the distribution of the respondents by some selected demographic and socio-economic characteristics. the distribution by age reveals that the age range 55-64 years had the highest number of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 940 respondents (59.9 percent) followed by the age group 45-54 years with 21.9 percent. the age groups 35-44 years and 65 years and above had 10.3 percent and 5.8 percent respectively. those who are less than 35 years constituted 2.1 percent. the mean age of the respondents interviewed was55 years. the high proportion of respondents in the age group 55-64 years was not unexpected. although a good number of the pastoralists who were members of the cooperative societies were relatively young (under the age of 40 years), the household arrangement was such that they were still under an elder when it came to representation. the fulani pastoralists have a system of respect in that when it comes to passing out messages or discussing the affairs of the fulanis, the ardos (the clan chiefs) are usually saddled with such responsibilities. this probably explains the high proportion of respondents who were 50 years and above. table 2: distribution by certain socio-demographic characteristics age group* number percentage less than 15 0 0.0 15-24 1 0.4 25-34 4 1.7 35-44 25 10.3 45-54 53 21.9 55-64 145 59.9 65 and above 14 5.8 total 242 100.0 sex male 225 93.0 female 17 7.0 total 242 100.0 marital status never married 0 0.0 married 210 86.8 divorced 10 4.1 widowed 21 8.7 separated 1 0.4 total 242 100.0 type of marital union polygamous 174 71.9 monogamous 68 28.1 total 242 100.0 level of education none 53 21.8 koranic 128 52.7 primary incomplete 36 14.8 primary complete 10 4.1 secondary incomplete 8 3.5 secondary complete 5 1.9 tertiary 3 1.2 others 0 0.0 total 242 100.0 *mean age = 55years asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 941 the distribution of respondents by gender reveals that 93.0 percent of the respondents were males and 7.0 percent were females. the dominance of males in this study could be attributable to the fact that the study focused on those who were members of a cooperative society and were also head of households. although, proportion of female headship of household has increased in the last two decades, female headship of households in nigeria is still very low (national population commission and icf macro, 2009; national population commission, 2009). the practice of purdah (the islamic practice of keeping women away from public view and in strict seclusion) is not very common amongst the fulani pastoralists. however, socially and culturally, fulani women are not to be seen divulging information pertaining to specific aspects of household livelihoods to ‘a stranger’. therefore the number of women respondents should expectedly be small. table 2 shows that all the 242 respondents in this study had ever married. in all, 86.8 percent were in marital union at the time of the survey, 13.2 percent were widowed, separated or divorced. marriage is a proximate determinant of fertility; therefore, the high proportion of those in marital union has implications on current and future levels of fertility (national population commission and icf macro, 2009). the data on type of marital union reveals that 71.9 percent were in polygamous union as against 28.1 percent in monogamous union. polygamy is very common amongst the fulanis who are mostly muslims. islam is a religion that allows men to marry up to four wives. the distribution of respondents by level of education shows that 74.5 percent had no formal education, this include 128 (52.7 percent) of those with koranic education. a total of 18.9 percent had primary education and 5.4 percent had any form of secondary education. also, 1.2 percent of the respondents had tertiary education. those with tertiary education were those with national certificate of education (nce) and were mostly those teaching in the primary school in ladugga grazing reserve. the statistical test of the distribution by educational attainment shows that the calculated chi-square (χ) value (439.87) is greater than the observed value (14.1) at 0.05 percent and at 7 degrees of freedom. this implies that there is significant difference in the distribution of respondents by level of education. however, the general low level of education of the respondents is not unexpected as the fulani pastoralists are generally known to have low school enrolment and attendance rates in nigeria due to their nomadic life style that makes them to live in temporal settlement. household herd size respondents were asked the average number of cows per household and whether the number had increased or decreased in the last two decades. the data reveals that most respondents (82.9 percent) said the number of their cows had decreased in the last two decades, 6.8 percent had witnessed and increase in the average number of cows per household and 10.3 percent did not notice any change in the number of cows in the last two decades (see figure 1). there are several reasons why the number of cows per household or per head has been decreasing. hjort (1980) and reckers (1997) have noted that pastoralists live in a political situation where grazing land cannot be expanded to meet the need of the pastoralists and where also the quality of the pasture has deteriorated due to over exploitation or changes in climatic events. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 942 figure 1: pastoralists perception of increase/ decrease in number of cows in the last two decades the decline in the average number of cows per household could also be as a result of the high mortality rate of cows due to the incidence and prevalence of diseases that are resistant to simple medication known to the fulanis pastoralists. fulainis have lost a lot of cows as a result of conflicts and litigations. although, the pastoralists will like to increase their herds of cattle, however, virtually all interventions in the sector have favoured the idea of the pastoralists adopting sedentary lifestyles. this will require pastoralists to keep little number of cows that will serve household needs than having large herds of cattle that will necessitate nomadic movements. the mtn milk flow project seem to discourage pastoralists from having large herds of cattle as keeping large herds is not practicable and very uneconomical. impact of the milk flow project in order to assess the impact of the project beneficiaries were asked to state what they considered were the impacts of the milk flow project. the impact of the mtn project was measured by assessing membership of cooperative societies, changes in the quantity of milk produced, number and quality of calves, mortality rate, school enrolment and attendance, contribution to income level and health seeking behaviour of the pastoralists. table 3 shows pastoralists perception of the impact of the mtn project. the respondents agreed that the benefits of the milk-flow project included; formation of cooperative societies (100 percent), improvement in the quality of cows/calves (99.5 percent), increase in quality of milk (98.8 percent), development of pasture farms (98.3 percent), training and increased education of pastoralists (64.0 percent), reduction in cows’ morbidity and mortality (63.2 percent) and living a sedentary life (56.9 percent). table 3: perceived impact of the mtn milk flow project 0 20 40 60 80 100 decreased number of cows increased in number of cows no change in number of cows % d is tr ib u ti o n o f r e sp o n d e n ts responses benefits/impacts number percentage formation of cooperative societies 242 100.0 development of pasture farms 238 98.3 increase in the quality of milk 239 98.8 training of pastoralist/increased education 155 64.0 improvement in quality of cows/calves 240 99.5 reduction in morbidity and mortality of cows 153 63.2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 943 the project encouraged the pastoralists to engage in sedentary living because experts believe that movement of the cows from one place to another in search of food and water is not good. it actually increases the morbidity and mortality of cows and reduces the milk content of the cows, as they utilize the milk in the process of burning energy. also, roaming about prevents children of pastoralists from enrolling and remaining in school. formation of cooperative societies the pastoralists were asked to state some of the benefits of the milk-flow project and how it has impacted on their livelihoods. many of the fulanis agreed that the project has encouraged them to form or belong to cooperative societies in order to access loans from banks and to ensure collective bargaining. membership of cooperative societies enables the pastoralists to register with microfinance banks and access loans. table 4 shows the eight (8) functional. table 4: cooperative societies in ladugga grazing reserve s/n name of society number of households gender of members 1 belaladugga pastoralist herd owners association 78 males 2 ballolndurgol multipurpose society 49 males 3 kautalko’edurobe pastoralist herd owners society 36 males 4 bornoweeti women multipurpose cooperative society 41 females 5 kwassamnemban women cooperative society 39 females 6 tiggirdeballaji cooperative society 27 males 7 naggebeldumsappo cooperative society 17 males 8 balludiwainabe cooperative society 24 males fulani cooperative societies in ladugga grazing reserve. out of the eight (8) cooperative societies, two (2) were found to be all-females cooperative societies. women play significant role in the fulani household structure, there is a clear division of labour with men mostly engage in milking the cows and the women produce the cheese and process the milk for sale. although, from the discussion sessions and in-depth interviews, there are probably over 15 cooperative societies in ladugga grazing reserve. the eight cooperative societies have a total membership of 311 households (an average of about 39 households per cooperative society). the all-female cooperative societies have an average membership of 40 households per cooperative society. a cursory look at the goals and activities of most of these cooperative societies reveals that they are all participating in communitybased projects to generate revenue and to enhance pastoralists living standards. the discussants agreed that virtually all fulani pastoralists in ladugga belong to one or more cooperative society/societies, that was/were formed with the sole aim of improving the wellbeing of the fulani pastoralists in view of the decline in the fortunes of the pastoralists over the years. one of the participants at one of the fgd stated. we all belong to a society. our association, kautal durobe, was formed as a way of helping us to draw maximum benefits from the animals. we pull resources together to carter for ourselves and our families, now that livelihood not as easy as before. we discuss ways of rearing our cows, draw maximum impacts of the cattle with the full believe that rearing of our cows will improve sedentary living 138 56.9 improvement in animal health 160 66.1 others 119 49.2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 944 our lives. although, we had a few cooperative societies before the coming of the mtn project in 2007, the project has enlightened us on the need to belong to societies so as to harness maximum benefits (early beneficiary, ladugga). the pastoralists spoke well of the milk-flow project as most of the participants agreed that the project had helped them to appreciate the need to belong to a cooperative society to enhance their collective bargaining efforts and to help them pull resources together to maintain the exotic bulls and the young calves. according to one of the beneficiaries of the mtn milk flow project: in the association we gather money to buy drugs and feeds for the friesian bulls and with the help of the mtn and idl, we have planted grasses which we hope to harvest and use to feed the bulls during the dry season. we are also gathering money to buy kantu (potash) to give the cows (late beneficiary, ladugga). quality of cows and calves the milk-flow project aimed at improving the quality of cows and calves since their quality have impact on the future wellbeing of the pastoralists. pastoralists were happy with the quality of calves since the mtn project began. the health demand of the high breed bulls has increased the health seeking behaviour of the pastoralists, which has consequently led to a reduction in the mortality rate of calves and cows. figure 2 shows that 63.2 percent of the pastoralists agree that the mortality rate of their cows and calves has reduced since the mtn milk flow project started in ladugga grazing reserve. one of the figure 2: perceived reduction in the mortality rate of cows and calves major problems of the pastoralists in africa especially now that climate change is having detrimental effect, is the high rate of mortality of cows, a trend observed not just in northern nigeria but in the guinea, sudan and sahel ecosystems (warren, 2006). participants at the fgd sessions agreed that the mtn project has helped improved the quality of their cows and calves. one of the late beneficiaries of the mtn project in ladugga grazing reserve stated. we have witnessed increase in growth of calves compared to the local ones that we have. the new calving from the crossing breeding is healthier than the local ones. a seven months calve is like a 3–4 years old local cow. in the aspect of milk flow, we still have the f1 generation that is yet to grow into maturity for milk flow production (adamu, late beneficiary, ladugga). 63.2% 36.8% yes no asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 945 the above position was supported by one of the early beneficiaries, according to him: we are very happy with the size and quality of calves that are being born from this crossbreeding. yes! we had our fears, but it is common with us fulanis to be sceptical about new things or ideas. indeed, when this idea came up and idf came to me to inform me, i was not convinced initially. i reluctantly accepted. everyone in this village wanted to see the “magic” that would happen. i am happy to tell you that my cows have successfully given birth to eight young healthy calves (pointing to the eight calves tied to a tree nearby) without any casualty. to crown it, all the calves are females. it is probably a coincidence but that has endeared many people to the project (ahmed, early beneficiary, ladugga). initially a lot of skepticism trailed the project. many of the pastoralists seem not to be convinced that the mtn project meant well to them. many of the beneficiaries of the project only join the project after observing the impact it had in those who adopted early. many of the pastoralists waited to see the performance of the project in its first one year before deciding on whether to join or not. according to a participant, when they first brought this project to this community, many people wanted to identify with the project, so since we are one, we now decided that those who have accepted, should go ahead while we observed what will happen. when they brought the bulls and gave them out, we then observed that it came with lots of benefits, and we started regretting why we did not start with others. we then decided to join the project (late beneficiary, ladugga). the general opinion is that the milk flow project is a well-thought out project with immediate and long term benefits to the pastoralists not only in ladugga grazing reserve but in other regions within the upper niger river basin. according to the head teacher of one of the primary schools in ladduga grazing reserve, the project has been of tremendous benefit to the pastoralists in ladduga grazing reserve. in his own words: we have benefitted from this project. many of the cooperative associations have registered to get the high breed bulls that mtn through idl have provided for us. our cows now are beginning to give bird to the new calves from this cross breeding. you can see this calve (showing a young calve) she is only three weeks old. our own local breed has to reach between 6 and 8 months old before she can reach this size. we are very excited with what we see. all the fulani associations in ladduga are all happy to associate with this project. even those who have not benefited from the project but who are seeing the types of calves that we are producing from this partnership are happy (head master, ladugga primary school). increase in milk production one of the main objectives of the milk-flow project was to increase milk production to eventually increase the income of the pastoralists. figure 3 shows the trend in the daily milk production. the average daily milk production in the ladugga area has increased from 10.4 litres per family in 2007 to a little more than 31 litres in 2012, an increase of 203.8 percent in about five years. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 946 figure 3: trend in average daily milk production per family to estimate the average production in 2012 given the observed distribution, a linear projection was made using microsoft excel trend line projection. the estimate showed that average daily milk production during the peak period (june-november) will increase to more than 37 litres per household in 2013 and beyond. with fresh milk selling at n300 per litre this will translate to about n11,100 (us$68.52) per day or n335,000 (us$2055,56) per month. if the factor of wastage and domestic consumption put at an estimated 11 litres per day is considered the total income per household from milk alone in 2012will be over n173, 040 or us$1068.15 per month. this amount excludes income generated from the sale of cheese, which is a very rich and highly valued product obtained from the processing of milk. the bane of milk production in ladugga is the high proportion of wastage due to crude production techniques and lack of storage facilities. there is no doubt that the pastoralists have witnessed significant increase in milk production. as attested to by one of the discussants: i am more educated concerning the upkeep of our cows. my cows produce more milk, now that i vaccinate them regularly and i believe if we continue like this, we will produce more milk. also, the drugs we get from this project have been very helpful to us (early beneficiary, ladugga). there is an average of three (3) families per household in ladugga. although, the average income of average households in ladugga has increased, so also is the expenditure. the feeding requirements of one freisbian bull are equivalent to the feeding requirements of six local cows. also, the bulls and calves are so delicate that they require so much medical care to enable them survive in the environment of ladugga grazing reserve. this means that much of the profit from milk also goes into maintaining the cows, calves and bulls. training and school enrolment one of the main objectives of the mtn milk flow project was to increase school enrolment. by increasing the proportion of people that live in a sedentary way, more and more pastoralists’ children would be able to enrol in schools. the pastoralists were asked if the project has led to an increase in school enrolment and attendance. figure 4 show that 67.5 percent the respondents agreed that the project has increased school enrolment. 10.4 15.7 27.9 31.6 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 2007 2009 2011 2012d ai ly m ilk p ro d u ct io n ( li tr e s) year asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 947 figure 4: response on whether the milk flow project has increased school enrolment the mtn partnership with integrated diary limited has encouraged pastoralists to send their children and wards to primary and secondary schools. most of the schools are operating afternoon shifts to allow for the children to take the cows out in the morning. besides the provision of exotic bulls, the foundation has also established sustainable educational projects that are in many ways benefitting the cattle rearers, their wives and children. according to one of the fulani elders: we did not understand what government meant by education. but with the mtn project, we have come to appreciate the need to be educated because now, our children are being trained in the computer and they do not even want to leave the computer. this is what mtn and idl have initiated by encouraging sedentary life. now we have time to do all that we are enjoying now....yes our children go to rear cows in the morning and go to school in the afternoon. i see it as a gradual process of adopting sedentary life. since they have to go to school in the afternoon, they tend not to go far when they take the animals out in the morning (clan head (ardo), ladugga). as part of the project deliverables, the pastoralists have also received other forms of education in form training on how to care for the bulls and how to ensure hygienic handling of the milk. according to the pastoralists at the discussion sessions, these trainings were done in the form of training workshops to educate the pastoralists. although the workshops were not regular, the pastoralists agreed they received adequate training on how to handle their cows and ensure hygienic ways of handling their milk and related products. in respond to the question on whether they have been well trained, a pastoralist opined: i went for the training too. i learnt a lot from this training, which excites me and gladdens my heart. when we were called to vom (jos) to attend this training, they showed us the mtnf/idf bulls and herd of cattle’s that we have never seen. they showed us the type of feed they fed on and they showed us the milk from the cows. they also showed us fodder bank which made me happy. i also saw the way they rear the cattle which were different from ours (early adopter, ladugga). besides the training on how to maintain their animals they also received training on how to secure loans to improve the workings of their cooperatives. this fact was made clear by a participant at one of the discussion sessions: i went for the workshop too. firstly, the workshop enlightened us on ways of crossbreeding the friesian bull with our cows. secondly, they advised us on how to feed our cows. thirdly they called us and enlightened us on how to secure loans. we were linked to the bank of industry (boi) concerning the loan, so you can see that we now have an [value]% [value]% yes no asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 948 idea of where to get loan from (early beneficiary, ladugga). some beneficiaries however, had mixed feelings on the training anchored by idf suggesting that not all participants /beneficiaries were trained. one of the beneficiaries had this to say on this: we have never being to any town for training but whenever they visit us, they instruct us on what to do. sometimes when we see that our cattle are looking sick or are sick we call them on phone, to check them (late beneficiary, ladugga). although participants generally spoke well of the training they received from idf, it is very obvious that idf has conducted fewer training workshops or in-house training to the benefitting fulanis. a lot of training is required for the fulanis to be able to meet the objectives of the project. this may not be very adequate given the socio-economic status and the operating environment of the benefiting fulani pastoralists. mobility of fulani pastoralists it widely accepted that the main reason pastoralists have been able to cope with changes in climatic events is because they move from one place to another. this movement is considered to be good because when they move they allow trees and grass to grow in the place. one of the main objectives of this project is to encourage sedentary life style among the fulani pastoralists. respondents were asked if sedentary living has tremendous benefits than nomadic life style. figure 5 shows that 46.4 percent of the respondents agreed that sedentary living has more benefits than nomadic ways of life, 35.1 percent disagreed while 18.5 percent could not say agree or disagree. while the pastoralists perceived that sedentary life style could improve their health and that of their animals, nomadic living is considered a traditional way of coping with the vagaries of weather in pastoralists enclaves. figure 5: distribution by opinion on the benefits of sedentary life style before the project started the fulani pastoralists were using indigenous knowledge and all kinds of trial and error methods to keep their animals healthy. but all their efforts in most cases ended at nothing because the animals were usually taken on the long tortuous journey in search of grass and water, further endangering the lives of these animals. many of the pastoralists admitted that the project has been of tremendous benefit to them as it has led them to realise the benefits of sedentary life style, although, it would be difficult for them to practice it. according to one of the beneficiaries: 46.4% 35.1% 18.5% agree do not agree can't say asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 936-950 949 before it takes a while before our cattle grow fat…..now our cattle have improved and even the quantity of milk has increased. we did not know that moving up and down stresses our animals. we have seen the cows of the idl looking fat and healthy because they graze around (late beneficiary, ladugga). many of the pastoralists have started appreciating the advantages of keeping their stocks small and hence avoiding the desire to move from one place to another in search of food and water. sustained advocacy and enlightenment programmes coupled with informal training programmes have helped them to appreciate staying in one location. some of the pastoralists are beginning accept this view point as started by one of the officials of one of the cooperative societies: we have been well educated by mtn and the partners. they have encouraged us to keep fewer cows to reduce the chances of migrating from place to place in search of fodder. some of us that have accepted their advice are beginning to see the sense in their talk. although, there are other benefits of moving from place to place but we do not have to run from one place to another and our children can have time to go to school. the opinion on sedentary living however, varies. a few of the pastoralists think that sedentary living is meant for those fulani cattle rearers that are too weak or lazy to embark on any long journey. conclusion this paper has provided an insight into how direct intervention by the private sector can go a long way in improving the livelihoods of people, especially the fulani pastoralists. it utilized simple methods of data collection and analysis that identified the impact of the mtn milk flow project within a geographical area. the analyses indicate the benefits and challenges of the project. although, there were initial sceptism about the project, as it was seen as an attempt to force the pastoralists to abandon the traditional methods, pastoralists are satisfied with the positive impact of the project. the quality and the quantity of milk have increased, so also is the heath seeking behaviour of pastoralists. the major challenges facing the fulani herdsmen in ladugga grazing reserve are the inadequate funds to initiate and or maintain projects that serve to reduce their vulnerability to changes in climatic events. there is need for more private sector participation to assist the pastoralists in the grazing reserves. this could come inform of the creation of fodder banks and provision of microfinance banking services in the grazing reserves. references abbas, s. (2010). analysis of accessibility and utilization of healthcare facilities in kachia local government area of kaduna state being a m. sc. geography thesis submitted to the postgraduate school, ahmadu bello university, zaria. afrique avenir (2011). world bank blame agricultural setbacks in nigeria on underinvestment downloaded from www.afriqueavenir.org/en/2011/06/1 5/world-bank on thursday 31st april 2012 barbour, k. m., oguntoyinbo, j. o., oyemelukwe, j. o. c. and nwafor, j. c. (1982). nigeria in maps hodder & stoughton folami, o. m. (2010). climate change and inter-ethnic conflict between fulani herdsmen and host communities in nigeria being a paper presented at the conference on climate change and security organized by the norwegian academic of sciences and letters on the occasion of 250 anniversaries in trodiem, norway hjort, a. 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(2006). impacts of global climate change at different annual mean global temperature increases in schellnhuber, h. j., cramer, w., nakicenovic, n., wigley, t. and yohe (eds) avoiding dangerous climate change. cambridge university press world bank (2013). nigeria retrieved from http://data.worldbank.org/country/nig eria on monday 4th november 2013 ziska, l. (2010). the hidden hunger caused by climate change haramata, 55: pp. 5 http://data.worldbank.org/country/nigeria http://data.worldbank.org/country/nigeria effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 437 the perceptions of a farming community in the limpopo province on hiv/aids ntombifikile elizabeth klaas lecturer; department of family medicine, faculty of health sciences, university of pretoria, south africa mmapheko doriccah peu senior lecturer; department of nursing science, faculty of health sciences, university of pretoria, south africa thinavhuyo robert netangaheni senior lecturer; department of family medicine, faculty of health sciences, university of pretoria, south africa abstract the hiv/aids pandemic has evoked a wide range of reactions from individuals, communities, and even nations. these reactions range from sympathy and caring to silence, denial, fear and anger. little is known about the farming community’s views in africa, and south africa in particular. it is therefore crucial to understand these views in order to mitigate the spread of hiv/aids. an explorative and descriptive research design was applied. purposive and convenience sampling was used to select participants with whom one-on-one semistructured interviews were conducted between october and november 2012 in the levubu farming community in the limpopo province. data was collected until data saturation was reached and no new information was obtained. data saturation was reached after interviewing fifteen participants and the author interviewed five more participants after data saturation. tesch’s data analysis method was used. four categories were identified during data analysis: emotions linked to hiv/aids, individual characteristics and experiences, behavior-specific cognition and affect and healthcare needs. training on hiv/aids is crucial, as the study revealed that despite the ongoing hiv/aids awareness campaigns in south africa, some segments of the population are not getting the message, specifically the farming community. keywords: aids, hiv, farms, farm employees, farming community, perceptions introduction 1 in the mid-1980s, human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (aids) were virtually unheard of in southern africa, now the worst affected region in the world. of the 11 southern african countries most affected, at least 6 are estimated to have an infection rate corresponding author’s name: ntombifikile elizabeth klaas email address: fikile.klaas@up.ac.za of over 20% (joint united nations programme on hiv/aids, 2010). historic success in bringing hiv/aids programmes to scale has laid the foundation for the eventual end of aids. although much of the news on hiv/aids is encouraging, challenges remain. the number of people newly infected globally is continuing to decline, but national epidemics continue to expand. sub-saharan africa remains most severely affected, with nearly 1 in every 20 adults living with hiv (joint asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:fikile.klaas@up.ac.za asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 437-448 438 united nations programme on hiv/aids, 2012). hiv/aids programmes must be culturally appropriate and address social norms and values that negatively impact on vulnerable populations. in this way individuals will be able to more readily adopt safer sex behaviors (joint united nations programme on hiv/aids, 2012). in south africa, the government's previous failure to respond to the aids crisis has led to an unprecedented number of people living with hiv (department of health, 2007). several strategies exist to prevent hiv transmission and include the millennium development goals (mdgs), national strategic plan (nsp), and prevention of mother to child transmission (pmtct) (geyer, 2010). the farming community’s perception, knowledge and understanding of hiv/aids are seen as crucial factors that can have an influence on engaging in high risk activities. understanding the way the farming community perceives hiv/aids is crucial to understanding why it has been so difficult to mitigate the spread of hiv/aids in the farming community. background south africa has been seriously affected by the hiv/aids pandemic, with the farming communities being no exception (zvomuya, 2005). the department of health identified that inadequate healthcare capacity in rural areas is one of the factors contributing to the disproportionate provision of good quality care and targeted development. therefore, in south africa, the farming community receives a disproportionate provision of healthcare in hiv/aids management. among farming communities, awareness, treatment and prevention have been used as components of a strategy intended to empower the farm employers and farm workers (zvomuya, 2005). in fact, rural areas are the hardest hit by the hiv/aids pandemic. hiv/aids undermines agricultural systems and affects the nutritional situation and food security of rural families (lemke, 2005). according to the food and agriculture organization (fao) cited in chucks (2008) and saliu & adejoh (2010), it is estimated that in the 25 most affected sub-saharan african countries, hiv/aids killed 7 million agricultural workers between 1985 and 2001 and could kill an additional 16 million, or up to 26% of the agricultural labor force by 2020. table 1 summarizes the estimated number of people newly infected with hiv and aids related deaths in sub saharan countries between 1999, 2001 and 2009. this estimation includes the farming community. table 1: estimated aids related deaths in subsaharan africa global total: 2 200 000 adults newly infected with hiv estimated aids-related deaths 2009 2009 2001 1999 sub-saharan africa:1 500 000 estimate estimate estimate estimate angola 17,000 10,000 10,000 15,000 botswana 13,000 5,800 15,000 24,000 burundi … 15,000 14,000 39,000 burkina faso 5,000 7,100 15,000 43,000 central african republic 3 600 3,600 11,000 15,000 cameroon 48,000 37,000 31,000 52,000 chad … 11,000 89,000 10,000 côte d'ivoire 11,000 36,000 51,000 72,000 congo 5,100 5,100 58,000 8,600 gabon 18,000 18,000 7,600 2,000 ghana 18,000 18,000 120,000 180,000 kenya 92,000 80,000 16,000 33,000 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 437-448 439 lesotho 20,000 14,000 14,000 16,000 madagascar … 1,700 1,300 8,700 malawi 56,000 51,000 68,000 70,000 mozambique 110,000 74,000 43,000 98,000 namibia 4,400 67,000 81,000 18,000 nigeria 270,000 220,000 210,000 250,000 rwanda 6,000 41,000 15,000 40,000 south africa 340,000 310,000 220,00 250,000 swaziland 12,000 7,000 68,000 7,100 uganda 100,000 64,000 89,000 110,000 tanzania 88,000 86,000 110,000 140,000 uganda 100,000 64,000 89,000 110,000 zambia 59,000 45,000 68,000 99,000 zimbabwe 48,000 83,000 130,000 160,000 source: unaids, 2000, report on the global hiv/aids epidemic, geneva; unaids, 2010, report on the global aids epidemic, geneva according to the fao, 20% of those between the ages of 15-49 are infected with hiv/aids in south africa. the projected loss in the agricultural labor force through hiv/aids will be 20% by 2020 (lemke, 2005). for farming communities’ poor access to healthcare and health-related information is partly due to their remote location. poverty and poor education make these communities even more vulnerable to the impact of hiv/aids (department of agriculture, 2008). the author realized an urgent need to conduct an in-depth study by exploring the alarming statistics of hiv/aids among the farming community. methodology design a qualitative, exploratory and descriptive design was used to explore and describe the perceptions of a farming community in the limpopo province on hiv/aids. participants and sampling the farm owner, farm managers, supervisors and both male and female farm workers above the age of 18 in the masakona, ravele and tshakhuma farming community were the study population. the farm owner and managers made the decision not to take part in the study. purposive and convenience sampling methods were used to sample the population for participation in the study. the author purposively and conveniently selected 5 participants from the masakona, ravele and tshakhuma farming community in the limpopo province. anyone who met the inclusion criteria and was willing to participate was selected. the 15 participants were 7 males and 8 females between the ages of 28 and 49. two of the 15 participants were supervisors and the rest were farm workers. the duration of the participants’ employment ranged between 7 months and 10 years. table 2 summarizes the profile of these participants. table 2: participant characteristics characteristic n gender female 8 male 7 age (years) 20–30 1 31–4 4 41–50 10 job title supervisor 2 farm worker 13 duration employed 6-12 months 2 4-5 years 2 6-7 years 7 9-10 years 4 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 437-448 440 data collection in-depth, semi-structured one-on-one interviews were conducted during october and november 2012. data was collected until data saturation was reached and no new information was obtained. there was no predetermination of the number of participants. data saturation was reached after interviewing fifteen participants and the author interviewed five more participants after data saturation. apart from being asked to give biographical details, they were also asked about: (a) their perceptions of hiv/aids; (b) challenges experienced by those infected and affected with hiv/aids; (c) strategies in place to support those infected with and affected by hiv/aids. interviews were conducted in the language preferred by the participants. data analysis the taped interviews were transcribed verbatim. anonymity was ensured by not recording the names of the participants during the interviews. data analysis was conducted according to tesch’s analysis method (burns & grove, 2007). an experienced research assistant assisted in transcribing and translating the data into english. thoughts and ideas about the content of the interview were jotted down. a final decision on each category and assembling the data belonging to each category was carried out. finally, a preliminary analysis was done by the researcher. categories, sub-categories and themes were identified through clustering of descriptive phrases from the transcriptions. in order to avoid bias, the transcriptions together with field notes were sent to an independent coder for validation (polit & beck, 2008). results the prevalence of hiv is very high among farm workers, with almost 4 people out of every 10 being hiv positive. this is stated to be the highest prevalence ever published in southern africa among a working population (mushwana, 2011). the healthcare worker in charge of the mobile clinic at which the study was conducted affirmed that the number of new infections is declining but it is still a challenge. even though differences existed among participants with regard to their views, perceptions and experiences, four categories during data analysis were drawn up. a summary of categories, sub-categories, and themes is presented in table 3. table 3: summary of categories, sub-categories and themes categories sub-categories themes 1. emotions linked to hiv/aids 1.1. pleasant and unpleasant (emotions) 1.1.1. fear 1.1.2. pain, pity and sympathy 1.1.3. concern and neglect 1.1.4. acceptance 2. individual characteristics and experiences 2.1. personal biological factors 2.1.1. gender inequality and exploitation of women 2.2. personal socio-cultural factors 2.2.1. poverty and low wages 2.3. personal psychological factors 2.3.1. stigma and social isolation leading to non disclosure 3. behavior specific cognition and affect 3.1. perceived benefits of 3.1.1. multiple partners and use of sexual protection 3.2. perceived barriers to 3.2.1. low wages and long working hours 3.2.2. alcohol intake increases the risk of contracting hiv 3.2.3. insufficient knowledge about asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 437-448 441 hiv/aids due to lack of training in hiv/aids 4. healthcare needs 4.1. mobile clinic and shortage of staff 4.1.1. cessation of healthcare delivery and increased workload emotions linked to hiv/aids the first category that emerged relates to emotions linked to hiv/aids. the participants expressed pleasant and unpleasant emotions when surveyed. however, mostly unpleasant emotions emerged when exploring the perceptions on hiv/aids. fear participants expressed fear explicitly, fear of being infected with hiv and fear of contracting hiv from their spouses as expressed by participant number 5 and 13. the majority of participants expressed fear to test, whereas participant number 11 feared to be retrenched if he missed work because of follow-up appointments to collect antiretroviral treatment. stigma and prejudices associated with hiv/aids can, not only, undermine attempts to identify, treat and control the disease but also the opportunity to offer sufferers the care and compassion they deserve. this is evident from statements such as: hiv is a killer disease. it is scary to see people dying like this. people are scared to test for hiv. pain, pity and sympathy the emotion of pain, pity and sympathy was verbalized when someone is ill or dies due to hiv related illnesses. this is evident from statements such as: it is painful to see people dying like this. this disease makes me feel pain, and i don’t want to hear about it, i feel pity and pain for those who have this thing. as much as most of the participants verbalized that they still do not talk about hiv/aids but there was a general feeling of pain and sympathizing with those (coworkers and family members) who had signs of hiv. participant number 14 verbalized that aids is a hateful disease, but when her aunt contracted it, she pitied her; but she had to change her attitude and accept it. the majority of the participants felt that they could not just talk about aids freely: we don’t talk about hiv/aids at work or at home, but people must go to the clinic to be checked and know their status. i hate it, my aunt died because of it, i pitied her... concern and neglect most participants raised concern that people are still not using protection even if they know that they have hiv. some spread it intentionally. participant number 11 raised the concern that since he is infected he is concerned about who will support his family financially once he becomes sick. participant number 14 emphasized that the government does not care about the farm workers otherwise they would come and see what is happening in the farms. in addition, all participants expressed that even the healthcare workers did not care about them because the mobile clinic has not been coming for the past four months. the narrative statements quoted below that the farming community is neglected and no one cares about it, including the government, confirmed concern and neglect: it is tough in the farms; the government neglects us. we blame the government, they don’t care about us. when it comes to hiv, it is difficult, people in the farms do not have knowledge about hiv and the mobile clinic has not been coming for the past four months. in reference to these quotations from the transcripts, the participants emphasized that people in the farming community are still dying because of hiv because the government neglects them and their healthcare needs are not attended to. however, concern and neglect was not raised by the farm employees only, but also by the healthcare worker who was in charge of the mobile clinic. she raised a concern that as voluntary counselling and testing (vct) counsellors they were not focusing only on vct but also on other routines of the institution, like attending to other primary asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 437-448 442 healthcare (phc) services and school health programmes. acceptance the pleasant emotion expressed was acceptance of one’s status once infected and to be accepted and supported by their family members. participant 11 expressed that he has accepted his status and that he gets support from his family: hiv kills but i take it like a cold. my family is supportive. individual characteristics and experiences the second category that emerged is individual characteristics and experiences which is one of the components of health promotion model (hpm) that supported the findings of this study. within the study, gender inequality and exploitation of women, poverty and low wages, stigma and social isolation leading to non-disclosure and multiple partners and use of sexual protection were significant variables. gender inequality and exploitation of women gender equality is a fundamental human right, and a necessary condition for the achievement of internationally agreed on development objectives. participant number 2, who is a supervisor, raised the issue of exploitation of women and gender inequality irrespective of qualifications and experience that the women have. the majority of participants expressed that women end up in a relationship with a manager or supervisor because they want to work less, have more money and secure their employment. some females feel victimized and forced to be in such relationships. it was evident that even females in management positions did not support female employees: it is tough, if you are a woman and you are a supervisor a man in a similar position gets more money than you get. women don’t have a say, even the women in management positions don’t support us. people want to have less work, by becoming the 'girlfriend' of a supervisor because it guarantees better working conditions. poverty and low wages there are strong bi-directional linkages between hiv/aids and poverty in resource poor settings. the issue of poverty was expressed by participant number 12, who remarked that its effects are carried over from generation to generation. the majority of participants verbalized that they were underpaid and linked low wages to transactional sex, which increased the risk for contracting hiv. participant number 14 stated that her niece contracted hiv from her mother because she breastfed the child because she could not afford to buy formula milk: if you have two boyfriends you are increasing your income. there is no money in the farms. my parents are poor, i am poor; the farming community is poor, it is from generation to generation. my sister was advised not to breastfeed, but she had to breastfeed because she couldn’t afford formula milk. stigma and social isolation leading to non disclosure stigma and social isolation leading to nondisclosure was identified as the only theme within personal psychological factors. participants stated that those that have the virus do not disclose because of fear of social isolation. it was evident that despite the basic knowledge that the farming community had on transmission of hiv, the stigma and the social isolation are still prevalent: when people start getting ill they say it is tb of the bones. people don’t disclose their status because most people will judge you if you tell them you have hiv. behavior-specific cognition and affect behavior-specific cognition and affect emerged as the third category. the assumption predicted by the hpm confirms that it is a common practice to have multiple partners for monetary purposes. under behavior-specific cognition and affect, it is stated that the immediate competing demands, such as the pressure to buy food, have a direct impact on the participation in health-promoting behaviors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 437-448 443 multiple partners and use of sexual protection the theme emphasizes that multiple partners and not using sexual protection are still common in the farming community: people have multiple partners here in the farms, they don’t want to use the condoms, and they say it is not nice to have sex if you use a condom. there are people with hiv in levubu farms, it’s not a secret, i’m married but i have a girlfriend. hiv is not controlled because people don’t use protection... one female has two or three boyfriends here in the farms. the narrative statements indicate that there is some form of hiv/aids awareness among members of the farming community. the medical aspects of hiv/aids are not necessarily well articulated, though. low wages and long working hours the farm employees are the lowest paid members of the workforce according to the literature and they are subjected to long working hours. participant number 13, who disclosed his status, raised a concern that there is no time for visiting the clinic: there is no time to go to the clinic; we are working from 7am 5pm and on saturday its overtime. alcohol intake increases the risk of contracting hiv alcohol is the most commonly abused substance in sub-saharan africa, and people with hiv are more likely to use alcohol than the general population (pandrea et al., 2010). participants acknowledged that alcohol intake increases the risk of contracting hiv. the narrative statements affirm that: people overlook the issue of protection especially when they are not in their sober senses. insufficient knowledge about hiv/aids and lack of training in hiv/aids the majority of participants raised the concern that they have insufficient knowledge about hiv/aids. this finding demonstrates that there is an urgent need for training the farming community about hiv/aids. healthcare workers raised the issue of lack of support from farm managers and owners when they (healthcare workers) want to provide training to employees. we need training on hiv. in order to use condoms correctly, we must be taught how to use them. some of them still don’t believe that hiv exists; they say you are bewitched. healthcare needs healthcare needs were identified as the fourth category. healthcare needs are important to individuals and families and need to be fulfilled in order that individuals and families have optimum health. cessation of health care delivery and increased workload all participants stated that the mobile clinic had no longer reached them since april 2012. when the healthcare worker in charge of the mobile clinic was interviewed, she mentioned that the healthcare workers have 2 mobile cars and 1 driver responsible for transporting staff. with these limited resources the 10 healthcare workers were expected to cover 7 local clinics, all farms in levubu and all the local schools: the mobile clinic is no longer coming for the past 3 4 months. i have never seen the mobile clinic since april 2012. we blame the government; it does not care about us. for us to be cured, doctors must come to the farms. discussion analysis of the qualitative data revealed the emotions linked to hiv/aids as the first category. these emotions could be grouped into pleasant and unpleasant emotions. the most prominent unpleasant emotions expressed by the participants were fear, pain, pity and sympathy. in addition, most participants articulated concern and feeling neglected. the findings of this study were consistent with the findings of van empelen (2005) and setswe (2010); it was evident that continuous counseling of infected patients is crucial especially when patients say they have accepted their status. fear is related to images and notions of suffering, shame and death, being dependent on others to take care of you, being rejected and feeling alone. stigmatization, social rejection and the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 437-448 444 frightful nature of hiv/aids prevented some people from undergoing the hiv tests (saliu & adejoh, 2010). as much as most of the participants verbalized that they rarely talk about hiv/aids, there was a general feeling of sympathy for those who had signs of hiv. according to the joint united nations programme on hiv/aids (2011), millions of people around the world know people close to themselves who are living with hiv. they are likely to feel pain, pity and sympathy; be fearful and upset over how the disease could affect their loved ones or their relationship; worry about how they can best support that person. family members and friends in the current study shared these feelings, but they also struggled with accepting the changes their loved ones go through. this struggle was frequently translated into withdrawal. (mudzisi et al., 2007). concern and a feeling of being neglected were expressed by the participants in this study. they mentioned that the government does not care about farm workers. the majority of participants expressed that even the healthcare workers do not care about them. the literature proves that farm owners are dismissing hiv/aids as “the government’s problem”, while others are extremely concerned but are hampered by a lack of information and assistance from the department of health and other governmental departments, and the impression that there are no tools in place to “fix the problem” (department of agriculture, 2008). the second category that emerged during data analysis is individual characteristics and experiences. according to pender (1996), individual characteristics and experiences are predictive of a given behavior and shaped by the nature of the target behavior being considered. the importance of an individual’s unique personal factors or characteristics and experiences depends on the target behavior for health promotion. the researcher focused on biological, sociocultural, and psychological factors as a basis for the study. the literature consulted indicates that women are becoming infected at a faster rate than men. the reasons for the high infection rate among women stems from women’s physiological vulnerability to hiv infection, as well as gender disparities. gender inequalities showed in women being less educated and poorer than men and having less decision-making power. women are vulnerable to sexual violence and other harmful practices. these same gender disparities are also harmful for men in spite of the fact that they tend to favor men. men are expected to have multiple sexual partners, which increases their risk of contracting and transmitting hiv. there is still little public awareness and discussion about men’s conflicting roles (brophy, 2010). farm workers in south africa workers struggle with a childhood history of violence alcoholism and low self-esteem (united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization, 2008). the researcher’s findings are in line with the literature referred to above. poor labor conditions and non-compliance with labor legislation were reported by trade union representatives of farm workers in the western cape to the south african human rights commission’s inquiry in 2003. it was found that the unequal treatment of women was prevalent as well as non-compliance regarding overtime, leave, and information regarding remuneration, illegal deductions and dismissals (south african human rights commission, 2003). trade unions reported that housing and permanent employment for single women on farms is seldom ever a possibility. parenzee and smythe (2003) stated that these extreme dependence increases women’s vulnerability asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 437-448 445 as they are reluctant to utilize the legal system because of the very real risk of losing their work and home. poverty and low wages were significant in this study. there are strong bi-directional linkages between hiv/aids and poverty in resource-poor settings. hiv/aids are both symptoms of the existent poverty conditions manifesting where livelihoods are unsustainable and show the unmitigated impact of the epidemic on social and economic conditions. hiv/aids is at the same time a cause and an outcome of poverty and poverty is both a cause and an outcome of hiv/aids. the department of agriculture (2008) further emphasizes that environmental factors like poor living and working conditions, separation from families, physically demanding work and low wages, and limited recreational facilities exacerbate the spread of hiv on the farms. government has adopted a comprehensive approach to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. this approach combines cash transfers with social wage packages including clinic-based free phc for all, compulsory education for those aged 7 to 13 years, provision of subsidized housing, electricity, water, sanitation and refuse removal (millennium development goal country report, 2010). stigma and social isolation leading nondisclosure of one’s status were identified as a personal psychological factor. participants stated that those who are infected with hiv do not disclose their status because they fear social isolation. counseling and testing for hiv combined with disclosure of hiv status to sexual partners can enable people living with hiv/aids (plwha) to seek appropriate care and treatment. additionally, it can allow both plwha and uninfected persons to make informed choices about their sexual behavior. despite public health benefits of disclosure, there are a number of potential risks, including loss of economic support, blame, abandonment, physical and emotional abuse, discrimination and disruption of family relationships. these risks may lead plwha to choose not to disclose their hiv status to friends, family and sexual partners. the racialization of hiv as a black or african disease by mainstream cultural media and institutions has a detrimental impact on willingness to approach health services. hiv stigma intersects with other forms of stigma and discrimination, and its impact is heavy on gay men, women, and poor people (lawson et al., 2006). the assumption predicted by the hpm, confirms that it is common practice to have multiple partners for monetary purposes. for the farming community, these demands include poverty and low income. basic needs such as food and safety must be addressed before health promotion can become a focus (burns & grove, 2007). according to shisana, et al. (2008), concurrent sexual partnerships are noted to be a major contributing factor to the rapid spread of hiv. although male and female condoms are readily available in south africa, male condoms have been more widely available than female condoms. low use, inconsistent use and non-use are also noted to occur among people with multiple partners (shisana et al., 2008). mudzusi, et al. (2007) discovered that intentional exposure to contracting hiv is still a common practice for the sake of receiving the disability grant. it was further stated that most clients who came for vct wanted to be infected so that they are eligible for disability grants. lemke (2005) stated that south african farm workers are the most vulnerable members of the south african workforce, earning the lowest wages with women earning even less than men. in this study participants acknowledged that alcohol intake increases the risk of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 437-448 446 contracting hiv. several studies in subsaharan africa suggested strong links between alcohol and risky sexual behavior such as having multiple sex partners, having unprotected sex and transactional sex (shisana et al., 2010). most participants in this study had basic knowledge about hiv/aids. prevention programmes in africa include hiv/aids education in schools, peer education for high-risk groups, widespread communication campaigns against risky behavior, hiv testing for pregnant women and free condom distribution. more programmes are tailored to women, especially those with low education levels and those from rural areas. however, these programmes also need to address socio-cultural influences on sexuality. findings by netangaheni (2008) revealed that 75% of the participants indicated the need for a full-time hiv/aids trainer on the levubu farms. the author recommended that a full time trainer should be appointed because such an appointment would especially alleviate the shortage of the healthcare workers who are expected to provide training on hiv/aids on the levubu farms. this study was conducted in 2008 but to date there was no hiv/aids trainer. barriers to healthcare identified in this study were a long distance to the clinic, long working hours and unavailability of condoms. cessation of healthcare delivery and the increased workload for the healthcare workers were raised by all the participants. health and human rights are interconnected and complementary approaches to sustainable development. citizen’s rights to healthcare in south africa is safeguarded by the national service delivery standards. according to the batho pele principles all the individuals have a right to access healthcare services they are entitled to and this includes the farming community (andersson et al., 2004). according to the health act (2003) every metropolitan and district municipality must ensure that appropriate municipal healthcare services are effectively and equitably available in their respective areas. this is no exemption to the farming community. health services in most countries are affected by hiv/aids. if the capacities to meet the new demands are limited, decisions on who and what to treat will need to be made. the hiv/aids pandemic may, therefore, affect the health not only of those infected but also of others in the community (joint united nations programme on hiv/aids, 2008). limitations the study was conducted in the levubu farming community in limpopo province. the study was conducted in the participant’s indigenous languages. the transcribed interviews had to be translated to english. this was difficult and time consuming. words and expressions of various emotions are easily available in english but unavailable in indigenous languages. this fact calls for further research regarding the use of indigenous languages in phenomenological interviews. conclusion and recommendations regular training on hiv/aids is crucial, given that the findings of this study showed that despite the ongoing hiv awareness campaigns in south africa; some segments of the population do not get the message, specifically the farming community. universal access to healthcare services, which most of us take for granted, is not accessible to the farming community. farm workers are the most under-serviced workers in south africa. according to the findings of this study, poor access to healthcare and health related information is partly due to their remote location of work. the high incidence of poverty makes the farm worker even more vulnerable to the impact of hiv/aids. multiple factors influencing the increased asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 437-448 447 hiv infection rate in farming communities warrant concern. it was revealed that factors that lead to hiv vulnerability include: poverty, a lack of access to appropriate information, education and communication materials on hiv, cultural attitudes and practices, beliefs in hiv myths, genderbased violence, very few interventions from government and non-governmental organizations targeting farm workers, lack of incentives or facilities to test for hiv and lack of access to condoms. it is recommended that further research should be done in the farming community in order to explore the perceptions of the farming community in depth. implications of the study the study highlighted that hiv is the fastest growing epidemic in south africa. the following implications are therefore relevant. implications for the government and farm owners a multidisciplinary approach between the government, ministries of health and the healthcare professionals in limpopo province should work hand in hand in order to control the spread of hiv especially in the farming communities. more healthcare professionals should be trained to meet the high demands of the farming communities. more support and funding needs to be given, by the government, the ngo sector and sponsors to those organizations that already exist to assist with awareness campaigns on the farms. the farm owners must consider increasing the salary of the farm employees so that they can improve living conditions and avoid risky behavior like engaging in transactional sex. the researcher generated recommendations, which can empower the farm owners and other healthcare workers to facilitate a better understanding of hiv/aids amongst the farming community. these recommendations could also be useful to programme planners and other stakeholders involved in designing interventions to assist the farming community in hiv/aids awareness. references andersson, n., matthis, j., paredes, s., & ngxowa, n. 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(2005). what is the impact of hiv on families, who regional office for europe, health evidence network report. zvomuya, a. (2005). aids prevention for farmers. farmers weekly: ubisi mail. http://www/sahrc.org.za http://www/sahrc.org.za effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(10), 218-224 218 diversification and a multidisciplinary approach for raising agriculture production and attaining food security in smallholder farming systems of sub-saharan africa catherine n. munyua department of applied community development studies, egerton university, kenya isabel n. wagara department of biological sciences, egerton university, kenya abstract 1 agriculture is the primary economic activity for between 50 and 90 percent of the population in sub-saharan african countries. ninety five percent of the food that is produced in sub-saharan africa is grown through rain-fed agriculture. this implies that the region will suffer most from climate change due to its dependence on rain-fed agriculture. vulnerability to climate change will be especially significant among the resource poor smallholder farmers in african countries whose livelihoods depend on rain-fed agriculture in marginal areas. african agriculture is characterized by variations in farming systems with about 90% of the farming occurring in integrated systems. in these mixed farming systems, the food security challenge may require an integrated approach to match the existing systems. a rainbow evolution which emphasizes the need for diversified systems may be the best practice in raising agricultural productivity. a multidisciplinary approach based on the theory of embededdness whereby farmers, researchers, extension institutions, and political institutions work together can further raise agriculture production and improve food security. social networks in communities of farmers provide channels for identifying problems and farmers’ knowledge integrated with that of research and extension can provide sustainable solutions for food production in smallholder farming systems in africa. keywords: food security, climate change, rainbow evolution concept, theory of embededdness, rain-fed agriculture, extension 1. introduction agriculture is the source of livelihood for many smallholder farming households in africa. in most sub-saharan african countries, agriculture is the primary economic activity for between 50 and 90 percent of the population (fahsi, 2013). food security in africa relies on small-scale localized production on farms that are less than five acres. further, ninety five percent of the food that is produced in sub-saharan africa is grown through rain-fed agriculture (mwaniki, 2012). in the respect, it is expected that, among the developing regions in the world, sub-saharan africa will suffer most from climate change due to its dependence on rain-fed agriculture (ringler et al., 2010). vulnerability to climate change will be especially significant among the resource poor smallholder farmers in african countries whose livelihoods depend on rain-fed agriculture in corresponding author’s name: catherine n. munyua email address: c_munyua@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:c_munyua@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(10), 218-224 219 marginal areas with a poor natural resource base. change in climate in itself presents heightened and new combinations of risks in africa attributed to among other things the direct dependence on the natural environment for livelihood. the intricate food situation in africa is linked to climate change that has brought about unpredictable rainfall patterns, insufficient rainfall and high temperatures. ziervogel et al. (2008) point out that efforts to support african agriculture in the face of climate change must incorporate a multi-disciplinary set of stakeholders. the latter include climate science experts, agricultural practitioners and technicians, local communities and policy makers. the highlighted concerns in african agriculture could be addressed using two perspectives: the ‘theory of embededdness’ (granovetter, 1985) and the ‘rainbow evolution concept’ (inter academy of sciences, 2009).’ the theory of embededdness is based on the need for analysis of all the structures and relationships in an economic activity while the rainbow evolution is suggested from recognition of the integrated nature of african agriculture. agriculture production can be considered as an action with economic implications whereby the farmer in deciding to engage in farming hopes to gain directly or indirectly. smallholder farmers also engage in intercropping applying their wealth of traditional knowledge gained and experimented on over time. most of agriculture that is conducted by smallholder farmers in africa in addition occurs within a social system where farmers are in a continuous system of interaction sharing ideas and information. thus if agriculture is regarded as an economic activity that occurs within a social system, then the theory of embededdness and the rainbow evolution concept are appropriate in rationalizing ways in which agricultural production can be improved among smallholder farmers. this paper is a theoretical perspective on proposals to increase agricultural production in the context of climate change in smallholder farming systems in sub-saharan africa. 2. literature review 2.1. agricultural production in africa and the rainbow evolution concept african agriculture is characterized by variations in farming systems with about 90% of the farming occurring in integrated systems (ziervogel et al., 2006). farming is conducted in small farm holdings mostly of less than 2 hectares and crop production involves a mixture of different crops that are usually intercropped. a concern is that large breakthroughs in agricultural productivity and improvements in food security are yet to occur in africa. according to inter academy of sciences (iac) (2009), in these mixed farming systems of africa, the monoculture and large scale mechanization adopted in asia may not be effective in raising agriculture production to a level of attaining food security. the food security challenge may require an integrated approach to match the existing systems. diao et al. (2007) are in agreement that, most african countries have not met the requirements for a successful agricultural revolution witnessed in the green revolution in asia. the green revolution which was a high input approach to agriculture involved breeding of early maturing, fertilizer responsive semi-dwarf varieties and innovation diffusion environments that were enhanced by irrigation and agrochemicals. many smallholder farmers in africa may not have these resources and as stated by thomson and feffer (2007), the integrated farming systems will need several evolutions or multiple initiatives such as intercropping, indigenous technologies and indigenous crops. problems attributed to poor agriculture production and food insecurity are environmental degradation, declining soil fertility, competition for water and extreme weather changes. these problems are now more evident due to global climate change and resultant weather variability. vulnerability of sub-saharan africa to climate change is made worse by limited adaptive capacity attributed to poverty, poor infrastructure and high dependence on rain-fed agriculture more so among smallholder farmers (ringler et al., 2010). the iac (2009) acknowledged that, science and technology based green revolution used in asia for raising food production may not be the road for africa and there is the need to build on the existing african practice as well as use a quadrangle approach that incorporates research and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(10), 218-224 220 extension, education and farmers participation. axinn (1997) had a similar opinion that technologies developed for large scale specialized operations often do not fit the needs and interests of small-scale subsistence farmers. when research emphasis is one commodity, agriculture extension systems in such situations become useless to the people in small mixed farming systems. farrington and martin (1993) note that resource limited farmers have little to gain from processes of development and transfer of technology characterized by the green revolution. instead, resource limited farmers need more of evolutionary than revolutionary processes. evolutionary approaches require understanding of the diverse and complex environment in which farmers operate. the recommendation is that development of technology should be tailored to farmers’ circumstances and build on farmers’ indigenous technical knowledge. in evolutionary practices, it is not only farmers who gain but the researchers as well because they will be able to understand the role of the technology introduced in the complex farming systems. the researchers can also gain insights on how farmers adopt and adapt technology. considering that agriculture practices in among smallholder farmers in africa are complex and integrated, governments, agricultural extension agencies and agricultural research institutions among other stakeholders can reinforce the rainbow evolution. the latter can inform on strategies for dealing with climate change threats that promote diversification, indigenous knowledge merged with scientific findings to develop practical options for raising agricultural production in smallholder farming systems and subsequently attaining food security. government agencies need to work closely with farmers and all other stakeholders in defining the way forward in addressing climate change challenges and food insecurity in african countries. this approach would be part of adoption of climate smart agriculture suggested by alliance for a green revolution in africa (agra, 2014) which emphasizes the importance of synergies, tradeoffs, adaptation and mitigation among practices needed to respond to climate change in africa. these actions can contribute significantly in reducing threats to climate change by increasing resilience and effective use of available resources to raise agricultural production. 2.2. improving agriculture production in africa through an embededdness approach the theory of embededdness (granovetter, 1985) suggests a relational approach in addressing economic activities. the author explains that, economic action is strongly embedded in social structure which leads to trust and points out that extreme good comes from social networks and hence requires social embededdness. the theory links economic actors to economic relationships and structures at both the micro and macro levels and aids in focusing on the inter-linkage and interpretation of these relationships. agriculture can be viewed from such a relational concept because it involves several stakeholders who include farmers, extension workers and agencies, research and national government. ochieng' (2009) using the interdisciplinary concept points on the need to link social with natural sciences, sociological with economic and political and natural analyses in seeking strategies to address sustainable agriculture in africa. the social and natural sciences are also interlinked in meeting the needs of farmers. he uses the theory of embededdness to point out that sustainable agriculture cannot meet the needs of local users in africa if policymakers and research institutions ignore farmers as the principle actors and researchers. the assumption that traditional knowledge of farmers is inefficient, unproductive and backward and that the donor, government and the scientist know what is best is unacceptable. the emphasis is that all those with interest in agriculture production must meet on the same platform and work out practical solutions for improving productivity. ochieng' concludes that, sustainable agriculture should be understood as a systemic process that is embedded in historical, biophysical, socioeconomic, and political institutions and relationships that are found in specific localities. agriculture as an economic activity should be conducted in ways that are specific and dependent on social relations and structures. in order to raise agricultural production in africa which has a rich social history, it would require an understanding of how social structures in communities can be adapted to address the problems of climate change. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(10), 218-224 221 the inter academy of sciences (iac) report on ways of harnessing the best science and technology to increase agricultural productivity in africa observes that science and technology alone will not raise agricultural productivity in africa without the existence of an enabling environment (loffler, 2009). some of the factors that affect agriculture production and food security are inadequate support institutions and poor policies reflected in low government investment in agriculture. for instance, mungai (2012) observes that in kenya, the agricultural sector comes a poor second to industrialization and urbanization that are soaking up development resources. the political environment determines to a great extent the goodwill needed for realization of agricultural productivity and food security in africa. the level of resource allocation in the agricultural sector by governments will influence the focus and comprehensiveness of activities in agricultural research and extension activities. boosting productivity of smallholder farms, wider participation, and empowerment of the rural poor and helping families to cope with external shocks like climate change that affect their access to food production resources will ultimately assist in attainment of food security. the multidisciplinary concept is also emphasized by ziervogel et al. (2008) and diao et al. (2007) who indicate that to support african agriculture in the face of climate change, science experts, agricultural practitioners and technicians, local communities, donors and policy makers must all work together. agricultural production in africa which has a rich social history would require further an understanding of how social structures in communities are used to address the problems of climate change. the process of social learning thus becomes socially embedded and jointly utilized leading to change in behaviour that can lead to adoption of new agricultural production technologies and eventually improve productivity (pretty, 2008; axinn, 1997). adaptation to climate can be viewed as a social learning process in which farmers need to be equipped with skills and knowledge on how to respond to difficult circumstances brought about by variable and unpredictable weather. for instance, threats from climate change means farmers must find coping mechanisms to ensure continued agricultural productivity. extension service should be a social exchange process between farmers, families, and extension agents where information is shared and discussed on how the farmers and families can adopt new technologies to improve agriculture production and their livelihoods. as axinn (1997) observes, agriculture extension systems should be careful not to drift away from multiple roles that require organizing farmers, empowering, ensuring equity, and sustainability. empowering farmers will lead to a process whereby the farmers can exert influence and power over research systems so that they generate useful and practical information that meets their needs and interests. extension workers and research personnel should work with farmers and communities to build capacity towards understanding the complex nature in the farmers’ fields and to act on the information in making decisions. 2.3. sustainability in agricultural production and climate change climate change adaptation may not be based on a single technological solution that research and extension pass to farmers. the latter implies that any recommendations to address climate change must be based on specific local circumstances. leaders in agriculture extension systems need to bear in mind that research based technologies with large scale farming systems bias do not fit the needs of smallholder subsistence farmers. increase in agricultural productivity is often linked with the question of sustainability as changes in agricultural practices automatically bring changes in demands on resources. climate change can affect attainment of sustainability because of unpredictable rainfall patterns and temperatures. sustainable agriculture practices should be economically viable, socially acceptable, environmentally friendly, and technically appropriate (pretty, 2008; ochieng', 2009). this means that as various regions implement measures to increase the productivity of their farm land, they must also find ways to ensure that future generations will also have the resources they will need to live and thrive. overcoming the challenges of climate change is also accompanied by the issue of sustainability which is especially a concern in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(10), 218-224 222 increasing agricultural productivity in marginal lands and fragile ecosystems where poverty is prevalent and which are occupied by smallholder farming systems. farmer participation in agricultural research is recommended due to recognition of the need to have technologies and practices that meet the needs of farmers. participation ensures relevance and success because programmes become farmer centred with the farmers actively involved in determining the agenda, communication and channels of communication. participation should not be mistaken with research done in farmers’ field initiated and completely controlled by scientists. as pointed out by farrington and martin (1993), participation in agricultural research should be informed by the concern that, conventional quantitative research methods tend to preserve social inequality. it is thus necessary for those leading in research in agriculture to realize that research is an educational process not only for the researcher but for the community as well. problem oriented research, respect for peoples’ capability to produce and analyze knowledge and researcher’s commitment to and involvement with the community should be the priority. research should be seen to take into account the purposes of participation which are community involvement in social research; action for development and education as part of the mobilization process for development. this view is also emphasized by aprodev (2012) that long term sustainable agricultural solutions are more likely to be realized from participatory research approaches that are community based and responsive to farmers’ needs. in particular, focus on knowledge intensive techniques as observed in integrated african agriculture is sure to give more benefits in the context of climate change compared to high external inputs recommendations. agricultural production is often based on the premise that there are technologies that farmers need to adopt and these technologies should be generated by research (ministry of agriculture and rural development, 2001). the information from research is expected to reach the farmers for adoption that will transform agriculture production. this model of change, however, overlooks the fact that the use of agricultural technologies is a process of social learning. in his theory of social learning, bandura (1971) points out the need to consider social variables learning approaches. the implication is that people learn from others with similar characteristics through interaction, observation and imitation. thus, as pretty (2008) points out, finding solutions for sustainable agriculture should include farmer participation, group action, and promotion of local institutions, culture, and farming communities. an important consideration is appreciation that as farmers seek for appropriate means of raising productivity, there are likely to emerge new configurations of social capital reflected in social organizations, horizontal and vertical partnerships between institutions, and human capital oriented towards leadership, management skills and ability to be innovative. pretty also notes that agriculture systems that have high levels of social and human assets are more likely to innovate in the face of uncertainty and variability in weather presents such an opportunity for creativity among smallholder farmers. people make decisions that are closely tied to ongoing economic relationships and social structures. the decisions are further affected by choices of other individual actors and groups and hence the need to identify actors, factors and structures in addressing the problem of sustainable agriculture. indigenous technical knowledge should be viewed as an important complement to scientific knowledge because it is location-specific and can supplement science in explanation and prediction. the implication is that science should provide technology options to problems and constraints identified by farmers and relevant to their conditions. 3. conclusion the reality of climate change and the resultant threat to agricultural production and food security are of great significance in african countries. considering the diversity in african agriculture especially smallholder farming systems, a rainbow evolution may be the best practice in raising asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(10), 218-224 223 agricultural productivity. improving agricultural production may further require using integrated approaches that go along with integrated farming systems characteristic of smallholder rain-fed agriculture in africa. the rainbow evolution fits adequately with the social culture in africa. merging well tested indigenous knowledge with science can thus lead to sustainable solutions for addressing climate change. the practice would fit well with the integrated and diverse production systems where adaptations are tailored to the needs of the farmers and local communities. agriculture production cannot be improved by single effort of the farmers and all stakeholders must work together in reciprocal relationships tapping into strengths of each institution. a multidisciplinary approach is also needed and the theory of embededdness can be a useful guide in that farmers, researchers, extension institutions, and political institutions need to work together to develop and support interventions that will raise agriculture production and ensure food security in africa. this implies that farmers’ knowledge can be integrated with that of research and extension. social networks in communities of farmers are in addition crucial because they provide channels of identifying problems and sharing information. the political will of the government cannot be overlooked because agriculture production cannot occur in politically unstable localities lacking the needed infrastructure that will enhance productivity. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references alliance for a green revolution in agriculture (agra) (2014). africa agriculture status report 2014:.climate change and smallholder agriculture in sub-saharan africa. retrieved 7 th september 2015 from www.agra.org. aprodev (2012). agricultural research for sustainable agriculture and global food security. aprodev policy brief 2020. retrieved 20 th march 2015 from www.aprodev.eu. axinn, g. h. (1997). challenges to agriculture extension in the twenty-first century. in scarborough, v., killough, s., johnson, d. a., and farrington, j. (eds.) farmer-led extension. london: overseas development institute. bandura, a. (1971). social learning theory. retrieved june 2015 from http://www.esludwig.com/uploads/2/6/1/0/26105457/bandura_sociallearningtheory.pdf. diao, x., hazell, p., resnick, d., & thurlow, j. (2007). the role of agriculture in development in africa: implications for sub-saharan africa. research report 153. washington d.c.: international food policy research institute (ifpri). fahsi, m. (2013). obama’s plan to end hunger in africa is really a plan to industrialize agriculture. retrieved 18 th march 2015 from www.mintpressnews.com. farrington, j., & martin, a. (1993). farmer participation in agricultural research: a review of concepts and practices. london: overseas development institute. granovetter, m. (1985). economic action and social structure: the problem of embededdness. retrieved 28 april 2014 from www.faculty.babson.edu. inter academy of sciences (iac) (2009). iac report on realizing the promise and potential of african agriculture. retrieved from http://www.cgiar.org/wwwarchive/www.cgiar.org/pdf/. loffler, h. (2009). realizing the promise and potential of african agriculture. retrieved from www.interacademycouncil.net/. ministry of agriculture and rural development (2001). national agricultural extension policy. nairobi: agricultural information centre. mungai, c. (2012). families feeling the pinch of rising food prices. sunday nation, may 13, 2012. p. 11. mwaniki, a. (2012). achieving food security in africa; challenges and issues. retrieved from www.un.org/africa/. http://www.agra.org/ http://www.aprodev.eu/ http://www.esludwig.com/uploads/2/6/1/0/26105457/bandura_sociallearningtheory.pdf http://www.mintpressnews.com/ http://www.faculty.babson.edu/ http://www.cgiar.org/www-archive/www.cgiar.org/pdf/ http://www.cgiar.org/www-archive/www.cgiar.org/pdf/ http://www.interacademycouncil.net/ http://www.un.org/africa/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(10), 218-224 224 ochieng, c. m. o. (2009). sustainable agriculture in africa: towards a new paradigm the embeddedness approach. retrieved from www.codesria.org/img/pdf/obote.pdf. pretty, j. (2008). sustainable agriculture and food. volume 1. london: uk. earthscan. ringler, c. zhu, t., cai, x., koo, j., & wang, d., (2010). climate change impacts on food security in sub-saharan africa. ifpri discussion paper 01042. thomson, c., & feffer, j. (2007). africa: green revolution or rainbow evolution? retrieved from http://fpif.org/africa_green_revolution_or_rainbow_evolution/. ziervogel, g., cartwright, a., tas, a., adejuwon, j., zermoglio, f., shale, m., & smith, b. (2008). climate change adaptation in african agriculture. stockholm. rockefeller foundation. ziervogel, g., nyong, a., osman, b., conde, c., & downing, c. (2006). climate variability and change: implications for household food security. aiacc (assessments of impacts and adaptations to climate change) working paper no. 20, 1-32. http://www.codesria.org/img/pdf/obote.pdf http://fpif.org/africa_green_revolution_or_rainbow_evolution/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 392 intervention of one rupee rice in pds: utilisation and impact in andhra pradesh and odisha states in india a. mahendran phd research scholar; tata institute of social sciences hyderabad, telangan, india abstract to find out the utilisation and impact of the scheme of pricing one kg rice at one rupee among the poor people and other beneficiaries at pds outlets in andhra pradesh and odisha states of india. for the purpose of this study, multi-stage random sampling method was used. quantitative data was collected from the public using structured questionnaire. data collection was done between 2 nd december 2013 and 11 th february 2014. the results show that more than 94.8% of poor families are utilising pds grains in odisha and 92.5% of bpl families are utilising pds grains in andhra pradesh. in both the state’s 30% of the population is above poverty line (apl) families, and they do not buy most of the commodities and more particularly in rice. as part of pds reform, both these states have improved transparency with computerised ration shops and biometric ration cards and pin numbers. pds outlets are more useful to poor people than for the above poverty line families. this study suggests that allotments of rice for apl families must be cut to control corruption and leakages, this study also suggest that millets must be introduced in the pds to increase nutrition security. keywords: one rupee rice, utilisation, impact, poor people, millets, rural, pds, andhra pradesh and odisha introduction 1 food security has many dimensions in india and other developing countries. india’s public distribution system is the largest network of its kind in the world. targeted public distribution system (tpds) is a poverty alleviation programme and has contributed towards the social welfare of the poor people. in india the total number of ration cards issued by state governments and union territory are (bpl 8.71 crore, aay 2.43crore, and apl 13.14crore) amounting to a total of 24.26 crore. the number of fair price shop in india is 5.13 lakh as on 31. 5. 2014 (monthly food grains bulletin, 2013). corresponding author’s name: a. mahendran email address: dr.a.mahendran@gmail.com essential commodities like rice, wheat, sugar, kerosene, cereals, salt, pulses, and oil (state civil supply, 2013) are supplied to the poor through fair price shops at reasonable prices. pds schemes are used by political parties to attract the poor in the rural areas during the election time. upon winning the election, these schemes are among the first to be rolled out as proof of delivering election promises. a glance at the statistics on nutrition and health status in india seriously disturbs the mind of socially concerned persons. these statistics suggest that 20% of the population in the country are undernourished, 40% of children below the age of 3 are under weight, 80% of children in the age group of 6 to 12years are anaemic and 33% of women asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:dr.a.mahendran@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 392-400 393 in the age group of 15 to 49 are in poor health (who, 2005). rice is an essential and staple food for the poor people who depend on pds outlets to provide the same. public distribution system is a backbone of the below poverty line families in india particular for above the reason. this is an important reason why the one kg rice at one rupee scheme is introduced at the state level, which is to reduce hunger in rural india. the government of andhra pradesh introduced the one rupee per kg rice from 01 st nov2011 and odisha has introduced this scheme on 01 st feb-2013. the amount of rice provided is minimum 12kg to maximum 25kg (ap & odisha civil supply, 2013) in both states. government of india introduced the targeted public distribution system (tpds) from 1 st june 1997. under this system, the population divided in two groups (bpl&apl) as per family income based. food grains are distributed to the people at differing prices (food grains policy 2000). many studies found that pds has inclusion and exclusion errors (madhura, 2001; hirway, 2003) and corruption and leakages are more in the rural areas (george, 2006) targeted scheme is not effective for poor (bhargava, 2008). this scheme is better for the urban population compared to the rural population (indrakant, 1997). planning commission evaluation report suggests that 58% of the food subsidised is not reaching the bpl families because of identification errors and non-transparent operations. some studies have suggested the policy of issuing food coupons to poor people instead of pds (sebastian, 2009), recommended the information technology (it) based public distribution system (saxena, 2010). consumption patterns are changing in both rural and urban (ranjan, 2007) and rural poverty line reduced in chhattisgarh and tamil nadu (dreze & reetkia, 2013). the chhattisgarh pds model extending coverage, improving food delivery and better transparency to remarkable revival (raghav, 2012). these studies address some of these gaps and make us to understand the ground realities. so the present research conducted in two different states. this study used quantitatively measurement tools. the present study aims to remove some of these gaps and suggest ways to make the rural people draw greater benefits from the pds. increased food subsidy in selected states in the financial year 2010-12, state and central food subsidy was not adequately available in andhra pradesh. however from 2012-13 rs 225.514 crores was allocated to andhra pradesh, which was increased to rs 875.954 crores in 2013-2014 as on 18-112013(ap civil supply, 2013). in odisha, from financial year 2009-2014 the food subsidy was increased gradually, in 2009-10 rs 1281.960 crores was allocated followed by rs 2243.970 during 2010-2011. in 2011-2012 rs 2934.710 crores was allocated and the rs 2731.500 on 20122013(not included buffer subsidy) and 20132014 rs in 2005.110 crores (not included buffer subsidy). food subsidy was more than doubled under this scheme as on 18-112013(odisha civil supply, 2013). scale of entitlement and consumer price the main purpose of introducing the scheme was to help the poor people to alleviate hunger deprivation and poverty. in odisha state rice supply scheme involved distributing to different group of people based on their socio-economic status. beneficiaries who were part of bpl families amounted to 36, 90,027, and the scale of entitlement is 25kg, antyodaya anna yojana (aay) families are poorest of poor families in urban and rural areas. total number of beneficiaries in aay is 12, 53,164 and scale of entitlement is 35kg. for both families the consumer price for rice is one rupee per kg. senior citizens over 65 years are covered under the annapurna scheme and the beneficiaries are 63,789 families with entitlement is 10kg rice at free of cost (ap civil supply, 2013). in kbk region the total apl families 5, 32,133 and scale of entitlements 25kg at one asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 392-400 394 rupee whereas in the other regions of odisha, rice is priced 9.30rupees per kg. under apl wheat entitlement is 7kg and consumer price is rs 7/kg and sugar price is rs 13.50/kg (both bpl & apl). andhra pradesh too follows similar strategies the date on total number of beneficiaries categories wise is not available (odisha civil supply, 2013). objectives the objectives of the study are (1) to find the utilisation of one kg rice at one rupee in selected states (2) to find the impact of public distribution system in selected states and (3) suggest alternate policies. methodology of the study study area the socio-economic conditions of the states selected vary. in andhra pradesh the study area was the three coastal districts namely (srikakulam, vizianagaram and vishakhapatnam). in srikakulam district total population as per 2011 census is 26, 99,471 and total area is 5,837km, population density per sq.km is 462km and literacy rate is 52.56%. in this area, below poverty line households holding are 90.1% as on 2008. then vizianagaram district total population is 2,342,868, total area 6,539km, population density per sq.km is 384km and literacy rate is 50.60%. in this area, below poverty line households holding are 87.31% as on 2008. in vishakhapatnam district total population is 4,288,113, total area 11,161km, population density per sq.km is 384 and literacy rate is 60%.in this area, below poverty line households holding are 73.8% as on 2008. in andhra pradesh total numbers of bpl households are 40.63lakhs, number of fair price shops are 45,322, number of ration cards in bpl is 199.93 lakh, aay 15.58lakh and apl 29.94 lakh, are circulated. number of ration cards per fair price shops is 542 as on 31.5.2014. odisha is one of the poorest states in india. indian planning commission report has identified that 18 districts are backward out of 30 districts in the state. the present study covered three districts namely (kalahandi, balangir and koraput). it is called kbk region. in kalahandi district total population as per 2011 census is 1,576,647, total area 7,920km, population density per sq.km 199.1km and literacy rate 60.22%.in this area, below poverty line households holding are 54.2% as on 2008.in the district balangir district total population is 1,648,997; total area 6,575km and population density per sq.km 250.8km and literacy rate 64.72%.in this area, below poverty line households holding are 47.9% as on 2008. in koraput district total population is 1,379,647, total area 8,807 and population density per sq.km 156.7km and literacy rate 49.72%.in this area, below poverty line households holding are 62.9% as on 2008. in odisha state total number of bpl households is 32.98 lakh, total number of fair price shops is 30,710, number of ration cards in bpl 36.78lakh, aay 12.65lakh and apl 34.58lakh, are circulated. number of ration cards per fair price shops covered 274 as on 31.5.2014. in all the districts (paddy) rice is predominant food and in cultivation also second one is millets food grains. data collection in this study, multi-stage sampling technique was adapted to select the districts. the study area covered 2states, 6 districts, 12mandals, 24villages and (from each village 50 respondents were selected). 1200 rural household families are covered. in this study data was collected from 2 nd december 2013 to 11 th february 2014. the data was collected through structured questionnaire model. the questionnaires and discussion were prepared in the local languages with the help of the colleagues of the author (telugu in andhra pradesh& oriya in odisha). the questionnaire covered the respondents household’s socio-economic variables, satisfaction of rice delivery and other food grains, sufficiency of food grains, buying capacity of poor people and problems of fair price shops. the simple frequency technique was used for data analysis in this study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 392-400 395 results socio-economic variables in selected household data the present study described the demographic variables such as gender, educational qualification, family occupation, household members, total no. of children, caste, agricultural land owned, household assets, membership in sghs and mgnrega and bank &post office accounts. in andhra pradesh female respondents are higher 90.6% and odisha state female respondents are 89% because this study mainly focused (food security in households) on home makers. in education qualification, illiteracy rate is highest in odisha state 65% (up to 5 th std only 22.5% and 5 th to10 std only 12.5%). but in andhra pradesh only 29.8% are illiterate (up to 5 th std 31.6%, 5th to 10std 26%, pre-degree or hsc is 8.2% and degree is 3.8%) compare to the rural education status are very low in odisha than andhra pradesh. family occupation wasagriculture farmers 64%, industrial labour is 14%, causal labour 11% and business families’ and government services are 11% available in andhra pradesh. in odisha agricultural farmer’s 75% industrial labour is 10%, casual labour 10% business families and government services 5%.in this study both states agricultural famers are high in percentage. in andhra pradesh schedule castes families are at 73% and schedule tribes 17%, obc are 9.6% and general categories are not available in rural areas. in odisha state schedule tribes are high at 92.3% and schedule caste only 7.6% is covered there is no other categories family. most of the families are joint systemin rural odisha is 69.8% and nuclear family is 30.2%.in andhra pradesh joint family are 65.8% and nuclear family is 34%. the number of children per family is high in odisha in a range of 3to6 children at 82% and 1 to 2 children 12% no children in nuclear family 6% in most of the family’s female children are high in 76% but all children appeared weak and unhealthy during interaction of the author, most of the student are studying in government schools. in andhra pradesh family children 76% are join families (3 to 6 children) 1 to 2 children are nuclear families 18% and 6%percent no children in nuclear family. children studying in government schools are 73.5% and private schools 26.5%. the study assessed the ‘standard of living index’ (sli) along the lines of the index used in the national family health survey (nfhs) has been created using household asset and the data collected in these districts. in this study 94% of the people scored high, in availability of household assets in andhra pradesh and it was opposite in odisha, only 24% of the people have household assets availability, rest of them are comes under non availability (electricity, lpg, cooker, mixer, grinder, bicycle, two wheeler etc.). agricultural lands are owned by 6-10%only in both states. most of the odisha state poor families are members of mgnrega 84% and remaining 16% shgs members. in andhra pradesh membership of mgnrega is 82% and 18% are shgs. the main reason for buying food grains from pds is to save the money for their children education and other needs. in both state all people have account in either the post office or the banks. utilisation of pds the present study covered the ration cards in andhra pradesh, bpl families (rice cards) 75%, apl cards18%and aay cards 4% and annapurna cards 3%. in odisha state bpl families 70% apl 12%, aay 11%and 7%annapoorna cards. purchasing capacity of food grains is 95.5% in both states bpl, aay and annapurna for beneficiaries are buying rice and other food grains. in both states total rural apl families are 30%, these families are not buying any commodity in ration shops. this is an important point to watch as allotment of food grains to apl families quota was misused by sending to black markets. it leads the way to corruption and leakages in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 392-400 396 rice and other commodities. this is happening in the urban areas as well. the poor families are satisfied with the low cost of price of rice (one kg rice one rupee). the present research measured the satisfaction in two different ideas one is quantity and another is quality. in quantity; normally a family of 3 will get12kg rice. a family of 5 members and more in a family gets 20 to 25kg at same cost. the family members who are satisfied on one rupee rice in fair price shops are 85% in odisha and 89% in andhra pradesh. regarding quality of rice; these measurements are three types, good quality, average quality (eatable) and poor quality (not eatable). in odisha 80% respondents suggests that rice quality is average, good quality is 8%, poor quality is 12%. in andhra pradesh suggest that eatable quality of rice is an average 82%, good quality of rice 7% only poor quality of rice distribution17%. this result shows that poor quality of rice is still being distributed in rural areas. the poor people are suffering a lot when utilizing the poor quality rice. no effective action was taken yet to prevent the supply of poor quality rice. the study suggests over all that in odisha 97% and in andhra pradesh 96% is satisfied. utilisation of rice rice is important and staple food for poor people. the present study find out the utilisation of food grains particular in rice consumption (about the allotment of rice). in bpl, aay and annapurna families are 94.8% in rural families are utilising pds food grain (rice) and only 5%families are used rarely in odisha. in andhra pradesh (bpl, aay and annapurna) 92.5%rural people fully utilised food grains particular rice, only7.5% is rarely used. changes in consumption allotment of rice in fair price shops (minimum 12kg to maximum25kg based on family members).the study found that rural family members are high and family health conditions are very poor. the study found that insufficiency of rice to the families are more in rural about odisha 85% and in andhra pradesh 89%. the poor people are not buying cereals because very poor quality distribution from ration shops. a majority of respondents in odisha and andhra pradesh (both above 86%) are buying millets (jowar, ragi, maize and other millets at open market at low price). millets are more nutritious than rice at less cost to the poor. jowar in andhra pradesh and maize in rajasthan respective of (indrakant, 2000) and (reetika, 2011) suggested more consumption of millets than rice. introducing millets in pds is not a new ideas, the possibility was already noted in the 10 th five year plan and was promised by the national policy for farmers in 2007. according to food and public distribution website ‘coarse grains’ have already been made available under the targeted pds at 50% of economic cost for bpl families, 70% of above poverty line families and at rs 200 per quintal for aay families in certain states (food grains policy 2007). people’s preference between free rice, cash transfer, millets food security was an important concern among rural and urban poor households. in the sense of food security that poor households derive from getting an assured access to the monthly quota of food grain through the pds to many of households a preference for food (himanshu, 2011 & raghav, 2012). but the present study finds that the rural people’s preferences in both states either free rice, cash transfer and inclusion of millets. very clearly they state that preference between free rice is 32%, cash transfer only19%and 49% millets in both states. in the selected states the pds is better in rural, most of the people suggest that do not want free rice and cash transfers. in general, rural poor said that “give some good food-to improve our health”. most of the respondents depends on millets grains. very interestingly, tribal female stated that our primary health centre (phc) medical officer asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 392-400 397 said that ‘consumption of millets is good for health. reasons for preferring free rice the state of tamil nadu introduced free rice distribution in universal pds considered all is bpl family’s concepts (tritah, 2003). the same concepts in odisha people only 14% and andhra pradesh 18% respondents are preferred in free rice distribution. the main important reasons are: in rural areas most of the families, members are high and children are more. mgnrega wages help to buy pds grains, some time they cannot buy the food grains due to delayed wages mgnrega. in rural families unemployment is for long time (except during agricultural season). among the rural tribal female respondents said ‘our monthly food expenditure is high, to concentrate our children school fees, medical and festival expenditure is more. some respondent’s who are physical challenged (either male or female) suggesting that “they want to have free rice with better quality”. as per statements above, the respondents prefer free rice with better quality. reasons for preferring cash most of the respondents feel misusing of items, corruption in fpss and dissatisfaction about the quality and quantity of food grains especially of rice. this is one of the main reasons for preferring cash. this study finds that only 8% of people in odisha and 11% of andhra pradesh are selecting the cash transfer. major reasons are: the quantity was incorrect due to old weighting machines. 28% of female respondents are insisting that rice quality is very poor. it is not edible rice, we are using only for our pet animals. some female respondents said that “if cash is possible, we will buy better quality and quantity of food grains in open markets. we have banks and post office accounts” they can credit directly to our accounts. reasons for preferring millets interestingly most of the respondents are showing preference for millet grains. in odisha 28% prefer millets and andhra pradesh 21% prefers millets. the main reasons for using millets are to improve the health conditions. millets contains high protein than rice. in rural area, the families’ health condition is very poor. most of the children become anaemic and under weights. the primary health centre (phc) rural medical officer advises that people, ‘should eat nutritious food like millets’. due to their poor health condition, rural people preferring millets like jowar, maize, sama, sorghum, finger millet, pearl millet, foxtail millet, barnyard miller and little millet. computerised pds the world food programme (wfp) and state government have jointly introduced a new computerised targeted public distribution system (tpds) in bhubaneswar, state capital of (computerised pds in andhra pradesh, 2012). the state government issued new ration cards to the all eligible families based on the national population register (npr in 2011). the new upcoming ration cards data digitization with reference to npr will be based on the learning from the model with the support by the wfp. this model was first introduced in rayagada municipality with full support on electronic based computerisation of fair price shops (fps) include better coverage such as, grievance redressal mechanism, social audit, convergence with unique identity for enrolment, beneficiary authentication to ensure accountability and better transparency in the distribution of food grains in addition to strengthening the components of new computerised targeted public distribution system running successful and the satisfaction of rayagada region. a similar was process implemented in andhra pradesh districts like east godavari and rangareddy districts pilot projects was better successful in 36 fair price shops (fpss). in the same model will be replicated in both states. mobile van odisha state introduced mobile vans to distribute essential food commodities at the door-step of the poor people in remote inaccessible areas. at present 74 mobile vans are available in 15districts in the state asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 392-400 398 to follow the lifting, door-step delivery to gram panchayat level. decentralised procurement of paddy scheme, increase in scientific godowns in rural and urban areas to maintain long term storage of food quality and capacity. better improvement in pds the study suggests the following measures to improve the pds. in the rural areas particularly in villages ration shops can be made available within 3km distance. poor people can be given smart ration cards. new computerised fair price shops can be introduced in rural area. the bpl families will get better access to ration food grains. as they are satisfied with one rupee rice scheme this scheme may be continued. the poor people’s buying capacity are improved because the help of mgnrega and hence this scheme may be continued. in rural areas more effective food delivery and better transparency may be implemented in both states. district wise satisfaction of rice before concluding, the important findings in districts level satisfaction in rice for poor household with six parameters: fewer prices, essential of rice, depended of pds rice, support the scheme, quality and quality. table 1: satisfaction of one kg rice one rupee in different parameters: (in percentages) andhra pradesh price essential depended quality quantity support srikakulam 33 13 23 9 12 10 vizianagaram 25 20 22 10 12 11 vishakhapatnam 23 21 28 8 13 7 odisha kalahandi 34 18 28 6 10 4 balangir 31 21 25 5 13 5 koraput 31 20 35 4 6 4 interestingly, in most of the respondents are suggesting that affordable price of rice is highest scores 23% to34% in both states. in koraput districts most of the respondents are depended pds rice is 35 % in vishakhapatnam is 28% in normally all the districts respondents are depended on pds rice 22% to 28%. in third categories essential of pds rice is 13% to 21% in selected districts. in other categories are fewer percentages in quality, quantity and support the one rupee schemes. in most of the respondents are suggesting that “we are depended and essential of pds rice, the main reasons for affordable price”. conclusion the one kg rice one rupee scheme was more a successful programme in selected states in terms of making the public distribution system more impact and efficient of leading and running in the states. in odisha state was very poor in early, but now after launched in this scheme rural poor was more utilised rice and other commodities. to more significance level of pds is successful in the poor state. in andhra pradesh now has divided in two parts but in coastal region is more effective utilisation of pds grains particular in rice. targeted public distribution system is very largest food entitlement programme in india. it is accessed by more than a one third of the total population in india. this study suggests that bpl families are more benefitted in pds; apl households are not buying any commodities from pds outlets. one kg rice for one rupee scheme is effective in all selected districts. despite this, a number of individuals are having health problems. this is the main reason why people are shifting to the consumption of millets. millets may be distributed through the pds to reduce the health issues faced by the rural families. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 392-400 399 the present study found 30% of above poverty line (apl) families are not buying any food grains from fair price shops. in tamil nadu universal public distribution system, introduced free rice distribution to all families like (rice cards) irrespective of categories (bpl &apl).the apl families sell their ration cards to black marketers, so leakages are due to free rice distribution in the state (mahendran & indrakant, 2014) . in karnataka one kg rice scheme (anna bhagya), the rural poor say that quality of rice is very poor. apl families are not considering ration grains (mahendran, 2014). in kerala state apl families are very rich (rajan, 2011). in this point of view, in southern states above poverty line (apl) families are not willing to buy the ration products. these allotments are going to black markets; it leads to corruption and leakages in rural and urban areas. this study suggests that food grains should be given only for bpl, aay and other cards, but not for apl cards. this study suggests that “food only for poor people not for rich people”, if we concentrate on this point, we will have better reforms in pds in future. this will reduce food subsidy burden on the state government. the fair price shops in the rural areas are using old weighing machines which are inaccurate. in rural area there is no vigilance check up and also administrative weakness. study area in odisha balangir kalahandi koraput figure 1: location map of selected districts in andhra pradesh and odisha, india asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(7)2014: 392-400 400 figure 2: districts wise satisfation in pds rice references bhargava, a. (2008). food, economics and health oxford. oxford university press. george, c. (2006). enforcing the right to food in india. bottlenecks in delivering the expected out come. unu-wider-research paper no132. himanshu (2011). food or cash: the subsidy conundrum. retrieved from www.livemint.com/opinion. indrakant, s. (2000). food security and public support. a study of andhra pradesh’ sage publication, 246-275. indrakant, s. (1997). coverage and leakages in pds in andhra pradesh. economic and political weekly, 32-10, 9991001. jean, d., & reetika, k. (2013). rural poverty and the pds. economic and political weekly nov, 16(45&46), 5560. mahendran, a., & indrakant, s. (2014). public distribution system in tamilnadu, india: rice supply scheme-prospects, problems and policy. journal academica, 4(1), 3849. mahendran, a. (2014). reforms in pds in india. a comparative study on andhra pradesh and odisha’ 7 th doctorial conference paper, ibs hyderabad. monthly food grain bulletin (2013). department of food and public distribution, government of india. ranjan, r. (2007). changes in food consumption and implications for food security and under nourishment: india in the 1990s. development and change, 38(2), 321-343. rajan, a. p. (2011). public distribution system in keralaa study of kollam district. unpublished mba final year project under kerala university. raghav, p. (2012). reforming the pds: lesson from chhattisgarh. economic and political weekly, 47(05), 21-23. reetika, k. (2011). revival of the pds: evidence and explanations. economic and political weekly, 44(44-45), 36-50. saxena, c. n. (2010). modernisation of public distribution system in india through computerisation. www.sccommissioners.org/documents /download/134. sebastian, p. t. (2009). fix the system. http://business.outlookindia.com/artic le.aspx?262372, 31 st october. the official web site in state governments food and civil supply (www.foododisha.in) and (www.apcivilsupplies.gov.in). tritah, a. (2003). the public distribution system in india. counting the poor from making the poor count. gremaq, university des sciences socials, toulouse, france. tenth five year plan reports (2002-2007). http://planningcommission.nic.in/plan s/planrel/. 0 10 20 30 40 p er ce n ta g es districts in andhra pradesh & odisha districts wies satisfaction price essential depended quality quantity support http://www.livemint.com/opinion http://www.sccommissioners.org/documents/download/134 http://www.sccommissioners.org/documents/download/134 http://www.foododisha.in/ http://www.apcivilsupplies.gov.in/ http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/ http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/ 702 time series analysis of wheat flour price shocks in pakistan: a case analysis asad raza abdi assistant professor; department of economics, shah abdul latif university, khairpur mirs, pakistan ali hassan halepoto assistant professor; department of commerce, shah abdul latif university, khairpur mirs, pakistan aisha bashir shah assistant professor; iba, university of sindh, pakistan faiz m. shaikh assistant professor; szabac, dokri, larkana, pakistan abstract the current research investigates the wheat flour price shocks in pakistan: a case analysis. data was collected by using secondary sources by using time series analysis, and data were analyzed by using spss-20 version. it was revealed that the price of wheat flour increases from last four decades, and trend of price shocks shows that due to certain market variation and supply and demand shocks also play a positive relationship in price shocks in the wheat prices. it was further revealed that government should take certain measures to stable prices of wheat in pakistan. keywords: time series, price, shocks, wheat introduction 1 the agriculture sector continues to be an essential component of pakistan’s economy. it currently contributes 21 percent to gdp agriculture generates productive employment opportunities for 45 percent of the country’s labour force and 60 percent of the rural population depends upon this sector for its livelihood. it has a vital role in ensuring food security, generating overall economic growth, reducing poverty and the transforming towards industrialization. the present government is determined to improve the quality of life of the people and to banish hunger and malnutrition from the country by making agriculture an efficient, productive and profitable sector of the economy. 1 corresponding author’s details: name: faiz m.shaikh email address: faizanmy2000@hotmail.com in order to improve governance in the public sector the government took bold steps and brought in the 18 th amendment to the constitution of 1973. accordingly, ministr ies performing tasks which were provincial subjects were devolved from the federal level, including the ministry of food and agriculture. however, realizing the food security concerns across the country the government took timely steps to establish the ministry of national food security and research to tackle the food security issues. the newly created ministry, under the aegis of the present government, has planned to take two major steps in order to solve the food security issues on a permanent basis. the first step is the establishment of the national food security council federal, province local level governments. secondly, through a letter of intent the ministry, in collaboration with world food program, is launching the zero hunger program worth us $ 1.6 billion to address the asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:faizanmy2000@hotmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 702-708 703 food security objective. under this program the ministry shall donate up to 500,000 metric tons of wheat per year and the world food program intends to negotiate with local producers to exchange part of the donated wheat for high energy biscuits (heb) and similar products manufactured in pakistan factories for distributions through wfp operations to primary school children, siblings of malnourished children and the vulnerable populations especially children at risk of malnutrition. the fund wil l a l so be converted to fortified wheat flour for distributions aimed at combating food insecurity in pakistan. the w f p wi l l a l s o c o o p e r a t e in t h e c a p a c i t y wfp building of the ministry’s officials in areas addressing food security and monitoring progress. in pakistan, wheat being the staple diet is the most important crop and cultivated on the largest acreages in almost every part of the country. it contributes 14.4 percent to the value added in agriculture and 3.0 percent to gdp. over the past three decades, increased agricultural productivity occurred largely due to the deployment of high-yielding cultivars and increased fertilizer use. with the introduction of semi-dwarf wheat cultivars, wheat productivity has been increased in all the major cropping systems representing the diverse and varying agro-ecological conditions. wheat in pakistan pakistan has been divided into ten production zones because of great agro ecological areas where wheat is grown. the zoning is mainly based on cropping pattern, disease prevalence and climatological factors. however, production zones need to be revisited. in pakistan, wheat is grown in different cropping systems, such as; cotton wheat, rice wheat, sugarcane wheat, maize wheat, fallow wheat. of these, cotton-wheat and rice-wheat systems together account about 60% of the total wheat area whereas rain-fed wheat covers more than 1.50 m ha area. rotations with maizesugarcane, pulses and fallow are also important. improved semi-dwarf wheat cultivars available in pakistan have genetic yield potential of 6-8 t/ ha whereas our national average yields are about 2.7 t/ha. a large number of experiment stations and on-farm demonstrations have repeatedly shown high yield potential of the varieties. there are progressive farmers of irrigated area who are harvesting 6 to 7 tones yield per hectare. however, farmers yield ranges 0.5 to 1.3 tons per hectare depending on the amount of rainfall in rained areas and in irrigated areas it ranges from 2.5 to 3 tons per hectare depending upon the amount of water available and other factors. table 1: area, production and yield of wheat year area production yield (000 hectares) % change (000 tons) % change (kgs /hec.) % changes 2007-08 8550 -0.3 20959 -10.0 2451 -9.8 2008-09 9046 5.8 24033 14.7 2657 8.4 2009-10 9132 1.0 23311 -3.0 2553 -3.9 2010-11 8901 -2.5 25214 8.2 2833 11.0 201112(p) 8666 -2.6 23517 -6.7 2714 -4.2 source: pakistan bureau of statistics p: provisional (july-march) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 702-708 704 table 2: wheat flour price shocks years acreage under wheat(000) production under wheat(000) price of wheat rs/mons. average price of wheat flour 1961 6639 3814 15.62 16.46 1962 4923 4027 14.49 16.88 63 5022 4170 13.78 16.85 64 5019 4162 15.25 15.27 65 5317 4591 16.65 33.34 66 5155 3916 15.18 14.84 67 5344 4335 2290 19.32 68 5983 6418 2026 23.22 69 6160 6618 17.37 24.50 70 6229 7294 17.53 32.42 71 5977 6476 18.27 22.51 72 5797 6890 20.77 24.19 73 5971 7442 21.36 33.33 74 6113 7629 27.54 39.34 75 5812 7673 40.71 49.5 76 6111 8691 39.65 46.36 77 6390 9144 42.37 48.59 78 6360 8367 46.31 79.64 79 6687 9950 51.45 68.12 80 6924 10587 51.88 74.62 81 6984 11475 58.00 100.00 82 7223 11304 68.05 139.75 83 7398 12414 71.08 121.23 84 7343 10882 74.66 93.06 85 7259 11703 81.80 100.10 86 7403 13923 86.76 106.08 87 7706 12016 85.89 82.38 88 7308 12675 86.10 105.36 89 7730 14419 94.43 174.52 90 7845 14316 104.52 134.83 91 7911 14565 119.03 107.51 92 7878 15684 139.99 133.26 93 8300 16157 147.53 178.74 94 8034 15213 160.00 257.37 95 8152 16699 188.71 344.62 96 8194 16374 190 400 97 8219 16853 200 423 98 8280 17417 225 450 99 8231 17734 250 700 2000 8349 19210 270 760 2001 8291 19320 280 800 2002 8234 19443 300 440 2003 8243 1955 310 500 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 702-708 705 2004 8543 1988 390 550 2005 8767 1966 415 500 2006 8786 1888 514 650 2007 8876 1988 523 1100 2008 9000 1991 540 1200 2009 9200 2000 567 1250 2010 9230 2100 900 1300 2011 9240 2150 1000 1400 2012 9290 2200 1100 1500 years production under acreage price 1961 3814 6639 15.62 1962 4027 4923 14.49 63 4170 5022 13.78 64 4162 5019 15.25 65 4591 5317 16.65 66 3916 5155 15.18 67 4335 5344 2290 68 6418 5983 2026 69 6618 6160 17.37 70 7294 6229 17.53 71 6476 5977 18.27 72 6890 5797 20.77 73 7442 5971 21.36 74 7629 6113 27.54 75 7673 5812 40.71 76 8691 6111 39.65 77 9144 6390 42.37 78 8367 6360 46.31 79 9950 6687 51.45 80 10587 6924 51.88 81 11475 6984 58 82 11304 7223 68.05 83 12414 7398 71.08 84 10882 7343 74.66 85 11703 7259 81.8 86 13923 7403 86.76 87 12016 7706 85.89 88 12675 7308 86.1 89 14419 7730 94.43 90 14316 7845 104.52 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 702-708 706 results according to the table no.2 in which production and acreage of wheat were discussed. there was huge difference year to year from 1961-2012. the wheat flour price trend was found to be increasing trend. there was price shocked in the years 1955, 188, 2000.2007 where nearly 7080% prices were changed. anova 91 14565 7911 119.03 92 15684 7878 139.99 93 16157 8300 147.53 94 15213 8034 160 95 16699 8152 188.71 96 16374 8194 190 97 16853 8219 200 98 17417 8280 225 99 17734 8231 250 2000 19210 8349 270 2001 19320 8291 280 2002 19443 8234 300 2003 1955 8243 310 2004 1988 8543 390 2005 1966 876 415 2006 2011 8787 514 2007-08 2088 8765 613 2009 2090 8900 620 2010 2100 9000 640 2011-12 2200 9100 670 summary output regression statistics multiple r 0.767893 r square 0.58966 adjusted r square 0.559636 standard error 3477.025 observations 45 df ss ms f significance f regression 3 7.12e+08 2.37e+08 19.63908 4.76e-08 residual 41 4.96e+08 12089705 total 44 1.21e+09 coefficients s. error t stat p-value lower 95% upper 95% upper 95.0% intercept -5768.27 2665.794 -2.16381 0.036358 -11151.9 -384.585 -384.585 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 702-708 707 consider gain the demand for wheat varieties. one way to analyze these beverages would be to postulate that they form a block independent group and then use demand equation. one disadvantage of this approach is that equation group the nose demand equation. one disadvantage of this approach is that equation involves real income and. through their influence on the frisch price index log p, the price of other (i.e. non-wheat) goods. conditional demand equations deal only with wheat and thus avoid he problem. accordingly a system with a large number of commodities can be transformed into a number of smaller. independent sub systems, one for each group of goods. in this section, we set out detail of this approach recall from the retail price. due to unstable prices of wheat consumers are paying more every month. the recent price shocks have a negative impact on the consumers. residual output observation predicted y residuals standard residuals 1 7322.614 -3508.61 -1.04535 2 4097.919 -70.9192 -0.02113 3 4419.852 -249.852 -0.07444 4 4540.888 -378.888 -0.11289 5 5250.198 -659.198 -0.1964 6 5062.623 -1146.62 -0.34162 7 3926.496 408.5037 0.121709 8 5492.769 925.2307 0.275662 9 7408.916 -790.916 -0.23564 10 7671.597 -377.597 -0.1125 11 7306.554 -830.554 -0.24745 12 7080.952 -190.952 -0.05689 13 7548.519 -106.519 -0.03174 14 7949.536 -320.536 -0.0955 15 7479.81 193.1898 0.057559 16 8192.841 498.1591 0.148421 17 8864.073 279.9273 0.083401 18 8930.571 -563.571 -0.16791 19 9693.868 256.1318 0.076312 20 10284.67 302.3333 0.090077 21 10525.48 949.5196 0.282898 22 11113.28 190.7203 0.056823 23 11581.05 832.9511 0.248168 24 11598.95 -716.95 -0.21361 25 11557.62 145.3781 0.043314 26 11963.42 1959.576 0.583833 27 12684.14 -668.135 -0.19906 28 12034.15 640.8453 0.190932 29 12980.81 1438.187 0.428491 30 13326.26 989.7408 0.294882 31 13572.77 992.226 0.295622 32 13621.19 2062.812 0.614591 x variable 1 1.954231 0.439955 4.441889 6.61e-05 1.065724 2.842739 2.842739 x variable 2 -0.71805 1.198775 -0.59899 0.552478 -3.13902 1.702927 1.702927 x variable 3 127.9544 47.78352 2.677793 0.010612 31.45359 224.4551 224.4551 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 702-708 708 33 14568.41 1588.586 0.473301 34 14167.59 1045.411 0.311468 35 14505.53 2193.472 0.65352 36 14714.63 1659.367 0.494389 37 14884.26 1968.737 0.586562 38 15113.47 2303.526 0.686309 39 15127.72 2606.28 0.776511 40 15471.91 3738.087 1.11372 41 15479.34 3840.659 1.14428 42 15481.54 3961.457 1.18027 43 15619.91 -13664.9 -4.0713 44 16276.69 -14288.7 -4.25715 45 1403.596 562.4036 0.167562 the trend of wheat flour prices were changes from the above trend. it has direct relationship with the demand of the market and supply shortage from time to time increased the prices of wheat in pakistan. in pakistan have genetic yield potential of 6-8 t/ ha whereas our national average yields are about 2.7 t/ha. a large number of experiment stations and on-farm demonstrations have repeatedly shown high yield potential of the varieties. there are progressive farmers of irrigated area who are harvesting 6 to 7 tonnes yield per hectare. however, farmers yield ranges 0.5 to 1.3 tons per hectare depending on the amount of rainfall in rain fed areas and in irrigated areas it ranges from 2.5 to 3 tons per hectare depending upon the amount of water available and other factors. conclusion the current research explores the wheat prices shocks and wheat flour prices in pakistan. the results of the analysis indicate that wheat growers are response to changes in the wheat of wheat in the case of production and acreage under wheat response. the lagged wheat of cotton has no significant impact on the production of wheat and acreage under wheat. this may attributed to the reason that cotton is grown on marginal lands and usually in the western areas of pakistan. the cultivation of cotton is also risky due to the attack of pests. government of pakistan should fixed the price of the wheat and also take some measures to control the prices of wheat. references cocharne, w. w. (1995). conceptualizing the supply relation in agriculture. journal of economics, 37(5): 1161-1175. economic survey of pakistan. (2010-11) various issues, ministry of finance, government of pakistan. jaforullah, m. (1993). asymmetric supply response: evidence from bangladesh. journal of agricultural economics, 44: 490-495. lim, s. l. (1999). the supply response of primary producers. penerbit university malaysia. maitha, j. k. (1970). productivity response to price, a case study of kenyan coffee. african economic review, 2: 31-37. nerlvo, m. (1958). the dynamics of supply response estimation of farmers response to wheat. jhon hopkins pres, baltimore. ogbu, o. m. & gwetibou, m. (1990). agricultural supply response in sub-saharan a critical review of the literature. afr. dev. rev, 2: 83-99. r. piggot, supply response of wheat, une, armidale nsw 2351. australia. rao j. m. (1989). agricultural supply response: a survey. agric. eco. 3: 1-22. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 753 willing, but unable: determinants of participation rates for training workshops in central vietnam ryan p. gockel seattle wa, usa alison c. cullen daniel j. evans school of public affairs, university of washington, seattle wa, usa abstract this article examines the determinants affecting individuals’ previous participation in training workshops in rural vietnam. this is the first study to examine training program participation rates in a rural asian context. according to a survey conducted in ha tinh province, vietnam in 2008, more than 90 per cent of individuals expressed an interest in participating in a job-training program, yet only 41 per cent participated the previous year. this disconnect presents a serious challenge to increasing job training participation rates. we find that gender, age, location, and also behavioral constraints such as an individual’s risk attitude and willingness to compete are significant predictors of previous participation. our results also indicate that those who could benefit most from job-training programs participate at lower rates. governments and ngos need to rethink development models taking these behavioural constraints into account. by designing interventions aimed at mitigating these constraints, participation rates for rural individuals will likely improve, offering a chance to improve livelihoods. keywords: vietnam, job training programs, behavioural decision-making, risk, rural livelihoods introduction the economy and society of vietnam are undergoing a structural transformation. in vietnam, 70 per cent of the population lives in rural areas, yet the country is becoming more urban as its economy industrialises (world bank, 2011). according to the international labour organization (ilo), agricultural workers comprised 53 per cent of the vietnamese work force in 2007, a decline from 65 per cent in 2000 (ilo, 2010). as vietnam’s economy continues to industrialise, investing in human capital will be a corresponding author’s details: name: alison cullen email address: alison@uw.edu key component in the development process (thang and quang, 2007). governments and development organizations are increasingly interested in job training workshops as a tool to tackle unemployment and to better align job skills with labour market demands. the vietnamese government has identified job training as a high priority for socioeconomic development and has set a goal of increasing the share of the workforce with skills training to 45 per cent by 2015 (ilo, 2010). as urban migration trends continue, vietnam’s rural poor face particularly limited employment opportunities since they tend to lack technical training. therefore, increasing rural access to training workshops is a high priority for the vietnamese government. however, very little research exists asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:alison@uw.edu asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 753-766 754 regarding rural workers’ willingness to participate in training workshops, particularly in the developing world where many individuals face social, physical and economic constraints. this makes understanding the determinants of training workshop participation in a rural context increasingly urgent (betcherman et al., 2000; card et al., 2011). this paper analyzes data from a large-scale survey conducted in vietnam in march 2008. the survey revealed that over 90 per cent of the sample population stated a desire to participate in a training program, reflecting a high level of interest in job training and skills workshops. in the previous year, several groups, including the people’s committee, the farmer’s union and the women’s union, had organised free one and two day training programs. given the population’s stated interest in job training, it is surprising that, when asked if they had participated in a training program the previous year, only 41 percent of respondents answered affirmatively. this finding raises questions regarding the role that household, individual and behavioural characteristics play in the decision-making process (anderson and stamoulis, 2006). the vietnam case challenges our basic understanding of individual economic behaviour because of the disconnect between stated willingness and actual participation rates. the purpose of this study was twofold: 1) to investigate the effects of traditional demographic variables on job training participation rates in a rural, agriculturally based setting, and 2) to examine several behavioral variables that have not been incorporated into previous job training participation models, namely an individuals’ risk attitude and willingness to compete. while the lack of participation may be due in part to economic constraints, preliminary analysis reveals the importance of behavioural constraints. to illustrate this point, we present probit regression models examining the determinants of previous participation in training workshops, as well as the factors influencing willingness to participate in the future. the paper is structured as follows. section ii provides a review of the literature on the role of training workshops and previous job training participation models. section iii describes the survey instrument and the data upon which our analysis is based. in section iv, we describe the methods used to identify the determinants of participation. in section v we present findings, identifying the determinants of individuals having participated in a training workshop the previous year and their stated willingness to participate in the future. section vi concludes. active labour market policies and determinants of job training participation in the aftermath of the great depression and the second world war, many member countries of the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) promoted active labour market policies (almps) as a means to tackle the issue of unemployment (betcherman et al., 2004). previously, governments had addressed unemployment with “passive” labour policies, such as unemployment insurance. these previous policies did not require or encourage unemployed workers to take retraining courses or other “active” measures. the oecd defines five active labour market policies: public employment services and administration, labour market training, youth measures (i.e. apprenticeships), subsidised employment, and measures for the disabled (martin, 2000). these new labour policies encouraged unemployed individuals to retrain and acquire new skills. in the united states and many european countries, governments promoted job-training programs as excellent tools to tackle unemployment and poverty (martin and grubb, 2001). almps serve as the foundation for current labour policies throughout the developed world and are now becoming more common in the developing world. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 753-766 755 a major challenge in the developing world is poorly functioning labour markets. these market failures make it difficult for employers to obtain qualified employees who have the skills they seek and for workers to find employment or obtain the training they need to become more qualified applicants. a poorly functioning labour market makes it more challenging for workers to find employment or obtain the training they need to become more qualified applicants. in theory, almps help to mitigate labour supply problems by investing in human capital via job-training programs. typical almps are formal classroom training, on-the job training, job search assistance, employment subsidies, and direct job creation by the government. previous research has evaluated the costeffectiveness of these programs. several evaluations have been conducted on program effectiveness through the lens of curbing unemployment for a given target population (for detailed evaluation results see fay, 1996; friedlander et al., 1997; denny et al., 2000; carling and richardson, 2001, and lalive et al., 2011). these studies show that program effectiveness can vary due to factors such as gender. for example, on-the-job training appears to help women re-enter the workforce, but it does not help men to the same degree (martin and grubb, 2001). still, many development programs specifically target women, thus understanding the relationship between risk aversion and gender is critical. weber et al. (2002), dohmen et al. (2005), fellner and maciejovsky (2007), gneezy et al. (2008) and croson and gneezy (2009) find that women are more risk averse than men on average. fletschner et al. (2010) finds that this gender gap in risk aversion persists regardless of how risk is framed. this is an important consideration since risk averse individuals may avoid change as part of a regret avoidance strategy, while risk aversion can also be argued to drive individuals to make changes, depending on context. in order to improve program effectiveness, it is critical to understand the factors influencing training workshop participation. over the past several decades, numerous studies have examined why individuals participate in training workshops. many studies have examined the effects of sociodemographic variables such as age, gender and education levels on participation rates. these studies have often found that older, less educated individuals participate at lower levels in non-mandatory training programs (maurer et al., 2003; birdi et al., 1997). researchers have also examined the effect that individual behavioral characteristics, such as self-efficacy and willingness to learn, have on participation rates (tharenou, 2001; mathieu et al., 1993; noe and wilk, 1993). while these studies have increased our knowledge of the determinants of job training participation, they are limited by context. self-selection bias is a perennial concern for those designing job training and other social programs. in other words, the individuals who choose to participate are often not necessarily those who could benefit most from participation. anderson et al. (1993) and heckman and smith (2004) found that self-selection bias impacted participation rates in programs affiliated with the job training partnership act (jtpa) in the united states. while eligibility for a program is important, personal choice plays a larger role in determining participation. we hypothesize that self-selection bias also may be an issue in ha tinh, vietnam, the site of our research. studies examining determinants of job training participation have taken place almost solely in developed countries like the united states (heckman and smith, 1999, 2004; heckman et al., 1999; jacobsen et al., 2005), canada (renaud et al., 2004), europe (arulampalam et al., 2003), australia (tharenou, 2001) and singapore (thangavelu et al., 2011). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 753-766 756 thus, it has proven difficult to effectively targettraining programs in the rural developing world to ensure that those who could benefit most (i.e. low-income, disabled, migrants) are availing themselves of the opportunity (bennell, 1999; bergemann et al., 2011). data the data for our analysis are drawn from a survey conducted by researchers from the university of washington and the institute for family and gender studies in hanoi, vietnam, in partnership with the international fund for agricultural development (ifad). the survey aimed to explore patterns in attitudes among farmers, the intended recipients of ifad’s program for improving market participation of the poor (impp) in ha tinh and travinh provinces. the impp program is designed to build infrastructure, invest in skills training, and offer financial services to encourage diversification of livelihood strategies for the rural poor. the survey was conducted in march 2008. vietnamese enumerators were trained to properly administer the survey in the vietnamese language. a total of 1,165 individuals were surveyed in 637 randomly selected households from three communes in ha tinh province. ha tinh is a rural, agriculturally based province with relatively low population density, located on the northern, central coast of vietnam. the surveyed population is representative of ha tinh province specifically and rural vietnam in general. the survey covered various topics relating to land, occupation, and household composition. revealed preference experiments were included to ascertain risk attitudes, willingness to compete, as well as individuals’ self-efficacy. the majority of respondents were from dual headed households where both the husband and wife resided. male and female heads of households were interviewed separately. the remaining observations were from single femaleheaded households, which accounted for less than 10 per cent of the sample (see appendix 1). the sample population was 43 per cent male (n=479) and 57 per cent female (n=642). the annual household income average was 23.7 million vnd or 1,124 usd1. model design for training workshop participation this study seeks to identify the determinants of individual participation in the previous years’ training workshops, as well as the determinants of individuals’ stated willingness to participate in future training programs. we identify factors that affect rural individuals’ participation and interest in training workshops, and highlight constraints individuals face, through probit models. in order to gain a better understanding of the preferences and constraints of individuals surveyed, we asked a series of questions about individual willingness to participate in a future program as well as whether individuals had participated in the program the previous year. the survey read, ‘this year there will be training courses in the commune. would you want to participate in those trainings?’ enumerators recorded responses as either affirmative or negative. of the 1,165 people surveyed, 93 per cent (n= 1082) said they wanted to participate, while 7 per cent (n=83) said they did not. although these are encouraging numbers for those organizing job-training programs, the province has a history of non-participation that may prove difficult to overcome. the survey also contained a question regarding participation in a training program in the past year: ‘during 2006-2007, have you participated in a job/skills training program?’ enumerators recorded responses as either affirmative or negative. in response to this question, 59 per cent responded that they had not participated (n= 686). while over 90 per cent of individuals stated that they were willing to participate, only 41 per cent had in fact participated in the previous year. 1 income was calculated using an exchange rate of $1 usd equals 21,080 vietnam dong (vnd), as of august 15, 2013. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 753-766 757 we hypothesize that behavioural characteristics such as risk attitude, willingness to compete, and self-efficacy are significant predictors of previous participation in a training workshop and will similarly affect an individual’s stated willingness to participate in the future. controls included household size, level of food insecurity, and whether a couple lived together within the household. controls for individuals included age, gender, education level, communist party affiliation, religion, and occupation. probit regression models were used to capture household, individual, behavioural, and commune characteristics affecting previous and stated willingness for future participation in a training workshop. model 1: pr (participated in the previous year = 1) = φ (h( hj, ij, bj, cj)) model 2: pr (willingness to participate in upcoming year = 1) = φ (h( hj, ij, bj, cj)) in these models, h is a function of the explanatory variables for individual j. hjrepresents household characteristics; ij represents individual characteristics; bj represents behavioural characteristics, and cj represents commune dummy variables (barslund and tarp, 2008). model 1a contains only the control variables. model 1b adds variable capturing risk attitudes. model 1c replaces that variable with one representing a willingness to compete. model 1d incorporates individuals’ self-efficacy. selfefficacy determination was based on individuals’ stated confidence in their ability to make good decisions. finally, model 1e includes risk attitudes, willingness to compete, and selfefficacy. model 2 repeats the above experiment, but uses individuals’ willingness to participate in the upcoming year as the dependent variable. these models were designed identically in order to compare each independent variable’s effect on the dependent variables. analysis was conducted with spss 16.0 software to recode variables and stata 10 for regression analyses. behavioural characteristics risk perception is an important behavioural factor related to decision-making. we define risk as a two dimensional construct comprised of the probability of a loss or gain occurring, and the outcome itself. a risk adverse individual may be less likely to be retrained in a new profession or to adopt new agricultural techniques than a risk seeking individual (dercon, 2006). on the other hand, aversion to risk might also lead an individual to participate in a risk mitigation strategy such as attending a training workshop. in order to classify individuals as risk averse or risk seeking, the survey posed coin toss questions designed to reveal individuals’ risk attitudes. the coin toss experiments had two options. if an individual chose option 1 he/she received a guaranteed payoff of 10,000 vnd. alternatively he/she could choose option 2, which involved a coin toss—heads, an individual did not win anything, but if tails, the individual collected 20,000 vnd. those who chose option 1 were classified as risk averse. our hypothesis is that risk averse individuals are less likely than risk seekers to have participated in a training workshop in the previous year. an experiment was also conducted to explore an individual’s willingness to compete. the experimental design was based on work done by gupta et al., (2005), niederle and vesterlund (2007), and gneezy et al. (2003). participants were asked to memorise a series of numbers and then repeat them to the enumerator. the individuals had two options for this game. if the participants chose option a they received 1,000 vnd for every correct sequence. however, if the participants chose option b their scores were compared to 5 people from another village who had played earlier (the group was 3 men and 3 women, including the targeted participant). if the targeted participant’s score was higher than 4 other participants they would receive 3,000 vnd for each correct response, but if it was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 753-766 758 lower they received nothing. individuals who chose option b were classified as having a greater willingness to compete. we posit that this willingness to compete is an important factor influencing whether an individual chooses to take advantage of a market orienting opportunity, such as a training workshop. household and individual characteristics in models 1 and 2, controls included gender and age. aversion to risk makes it especially difficult for women to undertake new economic activity. we hypothesise that women have a lower likelihood of having participated in a training workshop in the previous year than men, and are also less willing than men to participate in the future. age is another important indicator of the likelihood that an individual participated in a training workshop the previous year as well as the willingness of an individual to participate in the future. according to human capital theory, individuals of a younger age and lower income are expected to participate at a higher rate (becker, 1962). theoretically, due to their age, younger individuals have the most to gain from a training workshop, as it represents an investment in human capital. the models also control for individuals’ level of food insecurity. food insecurity is expected to decrease the probability of participating in the future, and of having participated previously. food insecurity also has an independent effect, since the food insecure may not have high levels of productivity and could be most in need of new agricultural techniques to improve crop yields. adoption of new farming methods is a large risk and thus may present a significant constraint for food insecure individuals. if the new technique does not lead to yields greater than or equal to the previous technique, then an individual will be left in a precarious position. further, 80 per cent of individuals identified themselves as farmers. survey data reveal that the most demanded training workshops focused on planting techniques, aquaculture, and raising livestock. table 1 shows the percentage of men and women interested in different types of training programs. these data reinforce the importance of agriculture and livestock in ha tinh province. the data also indicate that a significant percentage of the female population was interested in learning planting and livestock techniques. lastly, the models control for self-selection bias by including variables for individuals’ years of education, as well as recall ability. respondents were asked to repeat a series of numbers and their accuracy was recorded. the recall variable represents how many correct answers a respondent gave out of 9 attempts. this variable is included in the model as a control since we expect that individuals with a higher recall ability to be more likely to have participated and willing to participate in a training workshop due to their higher cognitive abilities (djankov et al., 2005). education is also an important variable when examining training workshop participation because self-selection bias suggests that better educated individuals may participate at higher levels due to better access to information and available resources (heckman and smith, 2004). results risk attitudes, willingness to compete, and selfefficacy behavioural variables were found to have predictive power regarding participation in jobtraining programs; however there were differences in how these variables were associated with stated willingness to participate versus actual participation. these findings suggest that some individuals may have been facing behavioural constraints in addition to traditional ones. risk averse individuals were 10 percent less likely to have participated the previous year in a job-training program, than were their risk seeking counterparts asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 753-766 759 (see table 2). it is interesting to note however that individual’ risk attitudes were not statistically significant in predicting a stated willingness to participate in the future (see table 3). also, individuals who exhibited a willingness to compete in the context of this study were almost 12 per cent more likely to have participated in a training workshop the previous year than individuals who were unwilling to compete; however willingness to compete was not a significant predictor of stated willingness to participate in the future. finally, an individuals’ self-efficacy was a significant predictor of both participation in a training workshop in the previous year, and also stated willingness to participate in the future. higher self-efficacy was associated with a 7.6 per cent higher likelihood of having participated in the previous year, and a 3 per cent higher likelihood of stating a willingness to participate in the upcoming year. our findings suggest that current program designs are likely helping individuals who are already more competitive and confident than their counterparts (likely those who are less in need of assistance are availing themselves of the opportunity at a higher rate). also, risk aversion appears to be a statistically significant behavioural constraint affecting previous participation rates. gender, education, and age gender played a key role in determining the likelihood of participation in a training workshop. our results indicate that women were significantly more likely to have participated in training workshops in the previous year. in fact, when controlling for risk attitudes and willingness to compete, evidence suggests that being a woman increased the probability of having participated by approximately 16 per cent. but being female did not significantly affect the probability that a respondent expressed willingness to participate in a program in the upcoming year. descriptive statistics indicate that older, female individuals were most likely to have participated in a program last year. this may be due to the absence of child rearing responsibilities, and the corresponding increment of free time. also, some training workshop programs targeted women, which also might explain the higher rate of participation. education was a significant positive predictor of stated willingness to participate in a future training program; however it was not predictive of actually having participated in the previous year. every year of education attained was associated with an increase of 1.2 per cent in stated willingness to participate in the future. age was another significant predictor of prior participation. every additional year of age was associated with a 1.9 per cent decrease in the likelihood that he or she participated during the previous year. however, age was not a significant predictor of willingness to participate in a training workshop in the upcoming year. economic activities and social ties fluidity of occupation proved to be associated with the probability of having participated in a training workshop in the previous year. an individual who reported changing occupations in the past three years was 20 per cent less likely to have participated. since many training workshops were directed toward improved agriculture and livestock techniques, it is expected that individuals moving out of the agricultural sector would have less use for the training workshops offered. not surprisingly, communist party affiliation was also a significant predictor of having participated in a previous year. party membership was associated with a 28 per cent higher probability of having participated. there is strong social pressure to participate suggesting a potential bias towards supporting and enrolling existing party members over nonmembers. as mentioned earlier, anecdotal evidence suggested that communist party chapters organised and hosted many of the workshops. this result also may be attributed to the increased number of social connections that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 753-766 760 party membership offers, which may provide greater access to information and education. religious affiliation and current occupation were associated with job training program participation – consistent with our hypothesis that geographic distribution of these characteristics in the population would be predictive. those who selfidentified as catholic were 14 per cent less likely to have participated in a training workshop the previous year than non-catholics. we note that the catholic community is a sizeable minority in the sample, comprising almost 25 per cent. further, the catholics in ha tinh province historically lived in communes near the coast, and were primarily fisherman. location of the training workshops appears key to participation levels. unwillingness or inability to travel long distances was hypothesised to prevent individuals from participating. and indeed our results indicate that the distance to a training workshop was an important determining factor for many individuals. cost and investment of time were not hypothesised to influence participation in ha tinh province since most training workshops lasted no more than two days and were provided free of charge. conclusion international organizations such as the united nations development programme (undp) and the ilo advocate job training as a basic human right (ilo, 2008). in addition, many developing countries have experienced substantial unrest due to the adverse effects of globalization that strike the poor of the developing world hardest. our findings highlight the importance of considering behavioural variables and risk attitudes when designing policy interventions. many of the people that government and ngo programs target – the food insecure, the less educated, the elderly – tend to be more risk averse than the general population. and indeed we find that they report comparatively low rates of participation in past programs, even if they state that they plan to participate in the future. there is a growing need to look beyond traditional economic variables when designing and evaluating programs to serve those in the developing world. frequently, these populations face poorly functioning markets and higher levels of livelihood risk. this may affect how they approach decisions generally, and whether they choose to avail themselves of a market orienting opportunity, such as a training workshop. evidence suggests a gap between desire or stated willingness to participate in these social programs and demonstrated action. our findings reveal the role of behavioral factors such as willingness to compete and self-efficacy vis a vis this gap. this research underscores the importance of considering all forms of constraints, from economic to behavioural. governments and organizations can mitigate some of these constraints by establishing a safety net to protect participants from potential unexpected adverse effects which may occur by chance. this could be in the form of crop insurance or a guaranteed employment opportunity upon training completion. local context is also critical to a program’s success. the location of the workshops, for example, is a significant predictor of participation with residents from certain communes and communities (e.g. catholics and communist party members) more or less willing to participate. historical, political, and religious ties significantly affect the likelihood that an individual participated in a training program. these associations should be taken into account when designing new programs in order to promote participation of those with weaker social ties. in conclusion, many rural individuals face considerable constraints, both practical and personal, that prevent them from availing themselves of market orienting opportunities such as training workshops. while the vast majority of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 753-766 761 individuals state that they are willing to participate, ultimately, fewer than half actually do. our results suggest that organisations designing or evaluating programs in the developing world need to take into account the full range of constraints and characteristics relevant to these populations, such as orientation toward risk and competition, so that they might mitigate these behavioural constraints. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank professor c. leigh anderson, principal investigator and professor andrew gordon of the daniel j. evans school of public affairs, university of washington, seattle usa, dr. diana fletschner of landesa rural development institute, seattle usa, and dr. minh nguyen from the institute for family and gender studies in hanoi vietnam, for their work designing the survey and collecting the data upon which this research is based. references anderson, c. l. and stamoulis, k. 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(2002). a domain-specific risk attitude scale: measuring risk perceptions and risk behaviors. journal of behavioral decision making, 15: 263-290. world bank (2011). vietnam urbanization review: technical assistance report. 764 appendix a: descriptive statistics of sampled population (n=1121) descriptive total number percentage (%) men 479 43 women 642 57 youth (17-30) 141 13 middle (31-45) 750 67 older (45-65) 229 20 risk averse 575 51 food insecure 779 70 willing to compete 477 43 couple household 1017 91 farmer 900 80 changed occupation past 3 years 55 5 catholic 276 25 communist party member 78 7 tuong son commune 413 37 thac lac commune 347 31 thac viet commune 361 32 table 1: demand for skills training findings are significant at *10%, ** 5%, *** 1% χ2 = 17.3 (planting techniques), χ2 = 22.0 (livestock), χ2 =19.4 (aquaculture), χ2 =5.7 (job skill) male (%) female (%) total (%) skills you want to learn planting techniques*** 45 58 52 livestock techniques*** 73 84 79 aquaculture*** 10 4 7 trade skills** 5 2 3 765 table 2: determinants of having participated the previous year in a job training/skills workshop probit (participated past year = 1) source: stated preferences survey, ha tinh, vietnam – march 2008 as described in main text. notes: findings are significant at * 10%, ** 5%, and 1%, respectively. 1 standard error terms may be correlated because two individual respondents may come from the same household and share basic household level data that only one individual gave. dependent variables model 1a model 1b model 1c model 1d model 1e df/dx std. err df/dx std. err. df/dx std. err. df/dx std. err. df/dx std. err. risk averse -.120*** 0.032 -.099*** 0.033 willing to compete .136*** 0.033 .117*** 0.034 self-efficacy .084*** 0.032 .076** 0.033 controls age -.018*** 0.002 -.018*** 0.002 -.018*** 0.002 -.018*** 0.002 -.018*** 0.002 gender (female=1) .133*** 0.033 .143*** 0.033 .146*** 0.033 0.143*** 0.033 0.162*** 0.034 education level (years) 0.009 0.008 0.009 0.008 0.007 0.008 0.008 0.008 0.007 0.008 couple household (couple hh=1) -0.006 0.058 -0.005 0.058 -0.004 0.058 -0.015 0.058 -0.011 0.058 total household size 0.009 0.013 0.009 0.013 0.012 0.013 0.009 0.013 0.012 0.013 food security (insecure=1) -0.051 0.035 -0.044 0.035 -0.044 0.036 -0.051 0.035 -0.039 0.036 catholic (catholic=1) -.144*** 0.045 -.134*** 0.046 -.157*** 0.045 -.143*** 0.046 -.146*** 0.046 changed occupation in past 3 years -.176** 0.073 -.185** 0.073 -.179** 0.073 -.189** 0.071 -.196** 0.071 tuong son (tuong son=1) .314*** 0.039 .340*** 0.039 .323*** 0.039 .326*** 0.039 .353*** 0.039 thac lac (thac lac =1) .201*** 0.043 .223*** 0.044 .210*** 0.044 .221*** 0.044 .244*** 0.045 party member (communist=1) .278*** 0.062 .285*** 0.062 .271*** 0.063 .284*** 0.062 .285*** 0.063 recall ability (out of 9) .016** 0.008 .015* 0.008 0.012 0.008 .016** 0.008 0.012 0.008 farmer (farmer =1) 0.047 0.046 0.054 0.046 0.067 0.046 0.048 0.046 0.076 0.046 log likelihood -654.175 -647.26 -645.603 -650.826 -638.188 pseudo r2 0.14 0.1495 0.1516 0.1448 0.1614 number of observations 1121 1121 1121 1121 1121 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10)2013: 753-766 766 table 3: determinants of willingness to participate in a job training/skills workshop in upcoming year probit (willing to participate= 1 dependent variables model 2a model 2b model 2c model 2d model 2e df/dx std. err.[1] df/dx std. err. df/dx std. err. df/dx std. err. df/dx std. err. risk averse -0.002 0.014 0.002 0.014 willing to compete 0.013 0.015 0.011 0.015 self-efficacy .033** 0.014 .033** 0.014 controls age 0 0.001 0 0.001 0 0.001 0 0.001 0 0.001 gender (female = 1) 0.017 0.016 0.017 0.016 0.019 0.016 0.017 0.016 0.022 0.016 education level (years) .012*** 0.003 .012*** 0.003 .012*** 0.003 .012*** 0.003 .012*** 0.003 couple household (couple hh = 1) -0.018 0.028 -0.018 0.028 -0.017 0.028 -0.018 0.028 -0.017 0.027 total household size -.010* 0.006 -.010* 0.006 -.010* 0.006 -.010* 0.006 -.011* 0.005 food security (insecure = 1) 0.015 0.016 0.015 0.016 0.016 0.016 0.015 0.016 0.017 0.016 catholic (catholic=1) 0.027 0.018 0.027 0.018 0.026 0.019 0.027 0.018 0.025 0.018 changed occupation in past 3 years 0.02 0.026 0.02 0.026 0.02 0.026 0.02 0.026 0.016 0.027 tuong son (tuong son = 1) .032* 0.017 .032* 0.017 .032* 0.017 .032* 0.017 .036** 0.017 thac lac (thac lac =1) 0.009 0.019 0.009 0.019 0.009 0.029 0.009 0.019 0.016 0.018 party member (communist = 1) 0.009 0.028 0.009 0.028 0.008 0.029 0.009 0.028 0.008 0.028 recall ability (out of 9) 0 0.004 0 0.004 0 0.004 0 0.004 0 0.003 farmer (farmer = 1) .065*** 0.027 .065*** 0.027 .067*** 0.028 .065*** 0.027 .065*** 0.028 log likelihood -269.736 -269.724 -269.373 -267.004 -266.704 pseudo r2 0.0643 0.0643 0.0656 0.0738 0.0748 number of observations 1121 1121 1121 1121 1121 source: stated preferences survey, ha tinh, vietnam – march 2008 as described in main text notes: findings are significant at * 10%, ** 5%, and 1%, respectively. 1 standard error terms may be correlated because two individual respondents may come from the same household and share basic household level data that only one individual gave. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(7), 131-140 131 effect of the performance of primary health care service providers on the wellbeing of cassava farmers in abia state, nigeria nwafor s. c., and ogbonna k. n. farming systems research and extensionnational root crop research institute, umudike kanu n. a. product development technologynational root crop research institute, umudike adegbola j. a. extension department nigerian stored products research institute, ilorin article history: received: 15-jul-2016 revised received: 10oct-2016 accepted: 20-oct-2016 online available: 05nov-2016 keywords: primary health care, socio-economic characteristics, cassava farmers abstract the study examined the health care delivery of primary health care centres (phc) in abia state, nigeria; it assessed the quality of services rendered and the effects on the wellbeing of cassava farmers. multistage sampling technique was used to select the sample size of 180 cassava farmers for the study. primary data were generated using a pre-tested questionnaire and were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. the result of the study revealed that the mean age of the respondents was 45.44 years, majority (67.2%) of the respondents were females while about 68.3% of the total respondents were married. the mean household size was 5.23. majority (93.3%) of the respondents had good knowledge of primary health centres in their area, 72.2% utilized the phc service centres moderately, and there was a positive perception of the performance of the phc service providers in the study area. the results of the relationship between performance of phc service providers and respondents’ wellbeing showed that household savings status was significant at 1%, education, household expenditure, health status was significant at 5% while food security, and income level were positive and significant at 10%. the study concluded that the health care delivery of primary health care service centres had a positive effect on the wellbeing of respondents in the study area. 1. introduction 1 the state of health of a farmer is directly related to his efficiency in the field (adejare, 2001). agriculture affects health, and health affects agriculture. the vulnerable groups of men and woman farmers incapacitated by poor state of health are found mostly in the rural areas (obioha corresponding author’s name: nwafor s. c. email address: solomonnwafor8@mail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.7/1005.7.131.140 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016: 131-140 132 et al., 2006). majority of these vulnerable groups play undoubtedly critical roles in the cycle of food production. the principles of phc allow individuals and groups particularly rural communities active participation in planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating health interventions. anyanwu (1993) observed that the prevailing conditions in nigeria have denied a significant proportion of nigerians the level of health that can enable them live a socially and economically productive live. it is sad that almost three decades after the alma ata declaration of 1978 elevated health to the state of basic fundamental human right and explicitly recognized its relationship with economic development nigerians are still witnessing a record high health and development challenges. the right to health is about the most basic of all human rights and is a fundamental objective of social and economic development (who, 1992). primary health care represents “essential health care based on practical scientifically sound and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community through their full involvement (fmoh, 1988). this approach to health care emphasizes the cooperation and involvement of the community as contributors and customers in the health care system. nigeria is the highest producer of cassava (erhabor et al., 2007), the crop is also a major staple food in nigeria. as a result of growing urbanization, cassava has become an essential part of diet of more than 70 million nigerians (fao, 2003). the estimated per capita consumption of cassava in nigeria is 238kcal (cock, 1985). according to nyerhovwo (2004), 80 percent of nigerians reside in the rural areas and they eat cassava meal at least once a day. however, for cassava farmers and rural communities to survive, the local economy must be sustainable, and allow for the provision of important local services. the nigerian government is committed to quality and accessible public health services through provision of primary health care (phc) in rural areas as well as provision of preventive and curative services (nigeria constitution, 1999). the services provided at these phc centres include: prevention and treatment of communicable diseases, immunization, maternal and child health services, family planning, public health education, environmental health and the collection of statistical data on health and health related events. the rural communities and cassava farmers have immense potentials, which can be tapped to enhance the economic survival of the nation, for this health conditions of the rural farmers should be of utmost concern to us. the on-farm and off-farm activities of cassava farmers contribute to the economic growth of the nation and provide job for the teeming population and most essentially serve as source of food for the people (onumadu & egeonu, 2012). smallholder farmers (cassava farmers inclusive) who produce 80% of food and raw materials in nigeria are being denied health care as a basic human right; health care is either difficult to access or completely inaccessible to them (killen, 2005). this poses a significant constraint to economic and agricultural productivity. primary health care centre is a core institution in the primary health care program. for many communities in nigeria it is not only the first point of contact but the only available health practice in the rural areas (lambo, 1989). therefore, the quality of health care at these primary care centres is an issue of interest not only for the success of primary health program but for the justifications of the community resources deployed therein. health care services are examples of services in which quality is critical and is demanded most times out of necessity. hence, it is often asserted and demanded that providers supply output of highest quality, an output that produces perceptible health gains or reduction of sufferings (ann & david, 1998). with the above mentioned importance of farmers and reasons put forward for them to be healthy this research work is germane. furthermore, this paper seeks to ascertain the effect of the performance of primary health care service providers on the wellbeing of cassava farmers in abia state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016: 131-140 133 2. hypothesis 1. there is no significant relationship between performance of the primary health care service providers and the wellbeing of respondents in the study area. 3. materials and methods this study was conducted in abia state, nigeria. multistage sampling was adopted. the first stage was the selection of the aba, ohafia and umuahia agricultural zones of abia state. at the second stage, two local governments were randomly selected from each of the zones-aba zone; osisioma and ukwa west government areas: ohafia zone; ohafia and bende local government areas: umuahia zone; ikwuano and umuahia north government areas. stage three was the purposive selection of three communities from each of the six local governments; those were the communities that have completed and have functional health centres for upward of four years. the fourth stage was the random selection of ten (10) cassava farmers from each of the communities which gave a sample size of 180. mean, frequency distribution and percentages were used to describe the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents. frequency count and mean were used to ascertain respondents’ awareness level of primary health care centres in the study area. a five-point likert-type scale was used to get a mean. the five point likert-type scale was as follows: (1) very much not aware, (2) not aware, (3) undecided, (4) aware, (5) strongly aware. an index of awareness was created for each respondent. the respondents were classified as having high, moderate, or low awareness level based on this range of their overall mean score: 3.5-5.0 = high level of awareness; 3.0-3.49 = moderate level of awareness; less than 3.0 = low level of awareness. frequency count and mean was used to determine the level of utilization of phc centres in the study area. a five-point likert-type scale was used to get a mean. the five point likert-type scale was as follows: (1) very irregular, (2) irrregular (3) undecided, (4) regular, (5) very regular. an index of utilization was created for each respondent. the respondents were classified as having high, moderate, or low utilization level based on this range of their overall mean score: 3.5-5.0 = high level of utilization; 3.0-3.49 = moderate level of utilization; less than 3.0 = low level of utilization. the ordinary least square regression (ols) analysis was used to determine the effect of primary health care delivery on the wellbeing of cassava farmers. 4. results and discussions the result of the analysis on age revealed that the age bracket of 42-51yrs constitutes the largest age class of about 31.7% of the total respondents, and the mean age of the respondents was 45.44. this implies that most of the cassava farmers are middle aged farmers, this strongly suggests that the majority of the respondents were agile and in their productive age where their energies could be harnessed and utilized for productive ventures in agriculture. 67.2% of respondents were female farmers, while only (32.8%) were males. this indicates that there were more female cassava farmers than males in the sampled population, 68.3% of the total respondents were married, with a mean household size of 5.23, which could be said to be a representation of a moderate household size. the study further revealed that 97.8% of the total respondents had acquired one form of formal education or the other. this implies therefore that there is a relatively high level of literacy among the respondents. ojukaiye (2001) and ibeagwa (2011) noted that education is an important socio-economic factor that influences farmers’ decision because of its influence on the farmer’s awareness, perception, reception and the adoption of innovation that can bring about increase in production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016: 131-140 134 table 1: distribution of respondents according to their socio economic characteristics socioeconomic characteristics percentages (180) age 11 – 21 5.0 22 – 31 6.7 32 – 41 25.0 42 – 51 31.7 52 – 62 21.1 63 – 72 10.6 total 100.0 mean gender female 67.2 male 32.8 total 100.0 marital status married 68.3 single 12.2 widow 17.8 divorce 1.7 total 100.0 household size 1 – 4 30.0 5 – 8 65.0 9 – 12 5.0 total 100.0 mean educational status no formal education 2.2 primary education 22.8 secondary education 37.2 tertiary 37.8 total 100.0 4.1. awareness level of primary health care centres the distribution of the respondents by awareness level of primary health care centres is presented in table (2). it revealed that the rural farmers were aware that there is a primary health care centre in their area with a mean score of 4.27 and that they knew the exact location of the health centre with a mean score of 3.94. the overall mean score of 3.85 revealed that the respondents had better awareness level of the establishment of primary health care centres in the studied area as well as showed positive attitudes towards the relevance of the established phc centre. table 2: awareness level of the existence of primary health care centres awareness of primary health care centre strongly aware aware fairly aware not aware very much not aware mean score are you aware of any primary health care centre in your locality? 71(39.4) 91(50.6) 16(8.9) 0 2(1.1) 4.27 do you know the exert location of primary health care centre in your community? 62(34.4) 60(33.3) 50(27.8) 2(1.1) 6(3.3) 3.94 do you know that it was established by the government to take care of your health challenges? 56(31.1) 77(42.8) 33(18.3) 12(6.7) 2(1.1) 3.96 are you aware of some of the benefits you stand to gain by patronizing the primary health care centre in your locality? 32(17.8) 63(35.0) 61(33.9) 15(8.3) 9(5.0) 3.52 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016: 131-140 135 do you know that medical experts at the primary health care centre can take care of your health matters? 40(22.2) 69(38.3) 49(27.2) 17(9.4) 5(2.8) 3.68 do you know that visiting the primary health care centre in your community would help you to prevent illness more than to cure it? 49(27.2) 6536.1) 41(22.8) 17(9.4) 8(4.4) 3.72 overall mean score 3.85 number of respondents 180 source: field survey, 2014. figures in parenthesis are percentages the findings according to table 3 implies that majority of the respondents (93.3%) had good knowledge of the primary health care centres situated in the studied area. table 3: distribution of respondents according to their level of awareness level of aware percentage(180) high 37.2 moderate 56.1 low 6.7 total 100.0 source: field survey, 2014 4.2. utilization level of primary health care centres the result in table (4) revealed that the overall mean score of responses of the respondents was 3.31, an indication that the respondents utilized the phc located in their area very effectively.. this agrees with the assertion of effiong and ebong (2009) that there are two types of health care services to the farming household, this include the general hospital, health centres and patient medicine shops referred to as modern medical services and the traditional health services. however, the result further implied that the respondents had no confidence in the phc managements/service providers in handling their delicate health challenges such as surgery. table 4: utilization level of primary health care centres statements very regular regular undecided ill regular very ill regular mean score attainment of monthly check-up 26(14.4) 95(52.8) 24(13.3) 22(12.2) 13(7.2) 3.55 inviting of phc medical personnel to render home treatment to you or to any family members of yours that could not visit the centre due the state of his/her illness. 28(15.6) 69(38.3) 52(28.9) 22(12.2) 9(5.0) 3.47 do you take your children to phc centres for immunization 43(23.9) 49(27.2) 66(36.7) 16(8.9) 6(3.3) 3.59 purchasing of drugs from the primary health care centres only. 31(17.2) 34(18.9) 51(28.3) 8(4.4) 56(31.3) 2.82 taking of inoculation against certain infections 28(15.6) 69(38.3) 37(20.6) 29(16.1) 17(9.4) 3.34 visiting the health centre for treatment of major sickness like appendicitis and for other major surgery challenges 27(15.0) 29(16.1) 35(19.4) 40(22.2) 49(27.2) 2.69 visiting the health centre for 51(28.3) 42(23.3) 53(29.4) 18(10.0) 16(8.9) 3.52 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016: 131-140 136 field survey 2014. figures in parenthesis are percentages the result in table (5) revealed that majority (72.2%) of the respondents had moderate level of utilization of phc in their areas, while 18.9% of the respondents had high level of utilization of the primary health care centres located in their areas. this implies that the primary health care facilities are highly utilized by the respondents. this may be due to the easy accessibility to the health facilities, functionality of the health facilities as well as the quality of treatments and care they received from the phc personnel. it is expected that continuous and consistent utilization of primary health care facilities will reduce poverty, improve farmers’ health status, improve the wellbeing and standard of living of the rural farmers, (nwaekpe, 2013). table 5: distribution of respondents according to their utilization level of primary health care centres utilization level percentage (180) high 18.9 moderate 72.2 low 8.9 total 100.0 4.3. performance of primary healthcare providers table (6) revealed that respondents perceived all other variables used in assessing the performance of primary health care service providers as positive and satisfactory except that of providing adequate information for farmers which had a score of ( ̅ = 2.29). this will have policy implication on the performance of the farmers. farmers need adequate health related information that will enable them to remain healthy in carrying out their farming activities. on the whole, rural farmers (respondents) perceived performance of the health care service providers to be satisfactory. this was indicated by the mean score of 3.31 which was higher than the bench means score of 3.00. this explains why the rural communities predominantly use primary health care facilities (modern health care facilities) as ascertained by effiong and ebong (2009). table 6: performance of the primary health care service providers treatment of wounds like knife cuts etc.. visiting the health centre for treatment of minor sickness like fever, headache, stomach ache etc.. 58(32.2) 29(16.1) 55(30.6) 18(10.0) 20(11.1) 3.48 average of mean scores 3.31 number of respondents 180 statements very satisfactory satisfactory undecided unsatisfactory very unsatisfactory mean score provision of essential drugs; 31(17.2) 68(37.8) 63(35.0) 10(5.6) 8(4.4) 3.58 appropriate treatment of common diseases and inquiries 29(16.1) 64(35.6) 64(35.6) 19(10.6) 4(2.2) 3.53 attention to patients 25(13.9) 62(34.4) 71(39.4) 14(7.8) 8(4.4) 3.46 responding to emergency 28(15.6) 63(35.0) 55(30.6) 27(15.0) 7(3.9) 3.43 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016: 131-140 137 source: field survey 2014. figures in parenthesis are percentages. the result for relationship between the performance of primary health care service providers and the wellbeing of respondents revealed that the coefficient of multiple determinations (r 2 ) was 0.881, an indication that 88.1% of variation in the performance of health care providers was explained by the independent variables included in the model. the results showed that, household savings status, education, food security, expenditure on food, health status and income level were positive and significant at varying risk level. the coefficient of household saving status (1.033) was positively related to the performance of the phc providers at 1% significant level. this implies that, as the performance of the phc service providers increases, the household saving status of the respondents increases. the coefficient of education (0.068) was positively related to the performance of the phc providers at 5% significant level. this implies that as educational status increases, the performance of the phc service providers increases as well and vice versa. the coefficient of food security (1.208) was positively related to the performance of phc service providers at 10%. this implies that a unit increase in the performance of phc service providers lead to a corresponding increase in food security and vice versa. situations identification of the main cause of an ailment 19(10.6) 59(32.8) 74(41.1) 22(12.2) 6(3.3) 3.35 oral communication with patients while administering medication 29(16.1) 59(32.8) 38(21.1) 26(14.4) 28(15.6) 3.19 immunization against the major infectious diseases 38(21.1) 48(26.7) 45(25.0) 32(17.8) 17(9.4) 3.32 response to admitted patients’ demands 18(10.0) 63(35.0) 64(35.6) 26(14.4) 9(5.0) 3.31 maternal and child health care including family planning 23(12.8) 59(32.8) 55(30.6) 31(17.2) 12(6.7) 3.28 billing of discharged patients 19(10.6) 59(32.8) 56(31.1) 38(21.1) 8(4.4) 3.24 adequate supply of safe water and basic sanitation; 28(15.6) 70(38.9) 43(23.9) 27(15.0) 12(6.7) 3.42 provision of adequate health information by the phc centres to the farmers 17(9.4) 38(21.1) 29(16.1) 44(24.4) 52(28.9) 2.59 overall mean scores 3.31 number of respondents 180 bench mark mean score 3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016: 131-140 138 the coefficient of health status (9.05f-06) was positively related to the performance of phc service providers at 5% significant level. this implies that as performance of phc service providers increases, health status of respondents increases as well. the coefficient of income level (1.812) was positively related to the performance of the phc providers at 1% significance level. this implies that an increase in the performance of phc service providers lead to a corresponding increase in the income of respondents. in contrast however, no significant relationship seemed to have existed between the performance of phc centres and such factors as age and occupation. from the findings presented on table 7, the value of f-ratio computed (41.139) was greater than the value tabulated at 1 % level of significance. the implication here is that the null hypothesis which states that “there is no significant relationship between performance of the primary health care service providers and the wellbeing of respondents in the study area” is rejected. thus the study concludes that there is a significant relationship between the performance of the primary health care service providers and the wellbeing of respondents in the study area. table 7: regression result for relationship between the performance of primary health care service providers and the wellbeing of respondents. variable linear exponential double-log(l) semi-log age -0.144 -0.091 -0.002 -0.001 (-2.734)*** (-1.550) (-0.601) (0.514) household saving status -0.016 0.053 1.033 -0.014 (-0.091) (0.702) (3.402)*** (-1.357) education 0.294 0.145 0.068 0.024 (2.081)** (2.350)** (2.493)** (2.027)** food security 0.255 0.124 1.208 5.02e-05 (2.342) (2.460)** (1.750)* (2.023)** household expenditure 0.055 0.018 3.74e-07 2.1434 (1.481) (1.111) (2.446)** (0.587) health status 0.397 -0.118 9.05f-06 -5.91e-06 93.406)*** (-2.312)** (2.423)** (-3.657)*** income level -0.693** -0.039 1.812 -2.59e-05 (-2.298) (-1.227) (3.745)*** (-2.341)** constant 6.060 1.650 2.250 0.941 (3.601)*** (2.242)** (4.924)*** (4.753)*** r 2 0.906 0.883 0.881 0.880 adjusted r 2 0.886 0.861 0.860 0.858 f-statistic 43.220*** 41.769*** 41.139*** 40.610*** ***, ** and * represents statistical significance at 1%, 5% and 10% levels respectively 5. conclusion the study described the socio-economic characteristics of cassava farmers, ascertained cassava farmers’ awareness level of the existence of primary health care service centres, determined the level of utilization of primary health care service centres, ascertained the perceived performance of the primary health care service providers, and determined the effect of the primary health care service delivery on the wellbeing of cassava farmers in abia state, nigeria. the study concluded that since there are evidences that the health centres have much potentiality for improving the health conditions of the rural farmers, all necessary supports (from government, community and donor agencies) should be given to such centres to function in full capacity. by so doing, better modern health services shall be rendered to farmers through the health centres. health information programs should be organized as well as presented in such a way that it will motivate individuals asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016: 131-140 139 particularly those in the rural areas to use such information for their personal benefit and the benefit of their families and community funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: author 1 designed the study, wrote the protocol and supervised the work, performed the statistical analysis and managed the analyses of the study. author 2 wrote the first draft of the manuscript and carried out all field work. author 3 & 4 managed the literature searches and edited the manuscript views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adejare, t. g. 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(2007). epidemiology and management of occupational exposure to blood borne viral infections in a resource poor setting: the case for availability of post exposure prophylaxis. nigerian journal of clinical practice, 10, 100-104. fao (2003). food and agriculture organization (fao) website. www.fao.org. fmoh (1988). the national health policy and strategy to achieve health for all nigerians. federal ministry of health, lagos, nigeria, october. ibeagwa, o. b. (2011). the effect of snfdp on the income and welfare of farm households in imo state. an m.sc thesis research, department of agricultural economics, michael okpara university of agriculture umudike. killen, b. (2005). the millennium development goals for health. international journal of public health.bulletin of world health organization, 83(10), 876. lambo, e. (1989). health for all nigerians: some revolutionary management dimension. inaugural lecture, university of ilorin. nigeria constitution (1999). section 7(1) c. http://www.nigerialaw.org/constitutionofthefederalrepublicofnigeria.htm nwaekpe, j. o. (2013). effect of selected world bank-assisted community-based poverty reduction projects on beneficiaries in abia state, nigeria. nyerhovwo, j. i. (2004). cassava and the future biotechnology issues for developing countries. electronic journal of biotechnology. pointificia universiel to catolica de valparaiso chile, 7(1), 22-32. obioha, e. e., ajala, a. s., & matobo, t. a. (2006). report on the influence of social-political environment on primary health care delivery pattern in contemporary sub-saharan africa: a comparative analysis of expanded programme on immunization (epi), in nigeria and lesotho. daker, council for the development of social science research in afeica, codesria 2004 crn series. http://www.fao.org/ http://www.nigeria-law.org/constitutionofthefederalrepublicofnigeria.htm http://www.nigeria-law.org/constitutionofthefederalrepublicofnigeria.htm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016: 131-140 140 ojukaiye, e. o. (2001). economic analysis of cassava production in three local government areas of kogi state. m.sc thesis, department of agricultural economics and rural sociology, abu, zaria. onumadu, f. n., & egeonu, e. (2012). impact of abia state agency for community based poverty reduction project on the farm income and output of smallholder cassava farmers in abia state. journal of sustainable agriculture and the environment, 13(1), 9-14. world health organization who, (1992). women’s health: across age and frontier. geneva. p5. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(12), 240-253 240 empirical evidence on contract farming in northern nigeria: case study of tomato production iro ibrahim kutawa college of economics & management, south china agricultural university, guangzhou 510642, china article history: received: 25-jan-2017 revised received: 20feb-2017 accepted: 25-feb-2017 online available: 10mar-2017 keywords: tomato income, nigeria, participation, transaction cost, household income abstract this study contributes to the scarce empirical evidence on contract farming in northern nigeria using a case study of tomato production. using data from five local government areas of kano state in northern nigeria, a total of 116 tomato contract farmers and 84 non contract farmers were selected. the econometric result indicated that there was a high level of participation in contract farming. participation in contract farming generated desirable causal effects on transaction costs, productivity, tomato income, total household income and poverty status of the farmers and this implies that the contract farming arrangement is very appealing to the farmers currently engaged in contract farming. the major factors that swayed the farmers’ decision to engage in contract farming were education, farm size and extension indicating that these variables are key policy variables that could be leveraged to influence participation in contract farming in the study area. the study may give detailed information on how contract and noncontract tomato production is currently functioning in northern nigeria. 1. introduction 1 contract farming (cf) is defined as “an agreement between farmers and processing and/or marketing firms for the production and supply of agricultural products under forward agreements, frequently at pre-determined prices” (eaton and sherperd, 2011). cf refers to an agreement on agricultural production vis-à-vis buyers and farmers that institutes settings for the production and selling of farmhouse produce. generally, the farmers agree to deliver certain quantities of a specific product at the quantified eminence criteria and time, and the buyer might also supply some inputs or hands-on backing to the farmer. in southern and eastern africa, cf is synonymously referred to as “out grower scheme” and can be used for several products, even though in middle income economies, it is typical for staple crops like yams, plantain and rice. corresponding author’s email address: kutawairo@hotmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.12/1005.12.240.253 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 240-253 241 empirical studies in middle income economies give mixed investigations about the safety and membership outcome of cf. although the degree at which membership subsidizes to the wellbeing of smallholders endure a practical question, several authors found that partaking increases farmers’ earnings (barrett et al., 2012; bellemare, 2012; warning and key, 2002). singh (2002) was of the view of the exclusion of smallholders from partaking in cf. in this prospective, many researchers recommended the inclusion of smallholders in cf warning and key (2002) and miyata et al. (2009). the literature similarly posits numerous complications startling cf performance, which include: deferred payments, cheating, high defaulting rate, biased terms and with no reimbursement for crop failure (guo, 2005; singh, 2002). barrett et al. (2012) re-counted cases of high input turn over as both parties fail to honor their agreements. the double-hurdle model was used to standardize the drivers of engrossment in cf. it is a parametric synopsis of the tobit model, in which two isolated stochastic processes regulate the certainty to partake in cf (greene, 2007). pronouncements in the tobit model, participation and the level or extent of participation are presumed to be jointly and henceforth the factors affecting the two level decisions are equivalent. however, the choice to partake might lead to the conclusion level/intensity of participation and therefore the control variables may differ (asfaw et al., 2011). the double-hurdle model is applied in a way that, both hurdles (the decision for input in cf and the continuous participation) have equations associated with them, incorporating the outgrowth of farmer's characteristics and circumstances. in estimating the double-hurdle model, a probit regression (with complete observations) is tracked by a condensed regression on the non-zero observations (cragg, 1971) and this was used to define the resolution to participate and the level/intensity of involvement in contractual arrangements in zambia (kiwanuka and machethe, 2016). the double-hurdle assumes that households make two sequential decisions with regard to participating and level/intensity of a scheme like cf or the use of a technology. the number 1 is assigned to the first decision variable (d) for farmers who participated in contract farming and the value zero for otherwise. however, the expected utility of participating in cf (di*) is latent. the psm (propensity score matching) was used to resolve the concussion of input in cf transaction costs and welfare. basically, the psm framework matches the observations of participants and non-participants of cf, conferring to the anticipated susceptibility of input in cf (wooldridge, 2005). the underlying principle of psm is that the predicted probabilities (propensity scores) from an estimated probit or logit model are used to find matches for farmers partaking in cf. the overall objective of the study is the empirical evidence on contract farming in northern nigeria using a case study of tomato production. the specific objectives are to: i) determine the basis of involvement into tomato cf ii) effect of partaking in cf on transaction cost iii) influence of participation in cf on output, earnings and wellbeing 2. methodology 2.1. sampling technique a pre-survey was conducted to identify the tomato farmers under contract and those under the conventional farming system so as to establish a complete sampling frame and afterwards, a pilot survey was conducted to pre-test the questionnaire in order to help detect any fault that may surface in the questionnaire administration sample designs. the target populations were tomato farmers in the villages where tomato is mostly grown in the thirty villages of five local governments targeted in the study area, the population of tomato producers amounted to 2,143 farmers. multi-stage sampling technique was employed. in the second stage, five local government areas, namely: garun mallam, kura, bunkure, rano and kiru were randomly selected and the third stage involved the purposive choice of six villages from each of the local government areas. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 240-253 242 2.2. data collection using a survey method encompassing a designed questionnaire, primary data were collected from farmers. the socioeconomic data collected included sex of the respondent, cropping pattern, household size, age, marital status and formal education levels. production information collected included size of farmland owned, size of land under tomato production, type of labour used in production, varieties of seed planted, fertilizer application, cyclical yields and domestic income. amount of credit, access to extension services were also among production information (number of visits), amount of fertilizers used. market information was also collected which included prices of seeds, seasonal quantities produced, cost and returns, produce sold. data about constraints faced by tomato farmers and suggestions to increase their output was also collected. 2.3. double-hurdle model this model outline the impact of drivers in cf. it is a parametric simplification of the tobit model, in which dual distinct stochastic processes define the resolution and level to partake in cf (greene, 2007). decisions and level or extent of membership in the tobit model, are supposed to be the same. nonetheless, asfaw et al. (2011), suggested that the proclamation to partake may lead the level/intensity of participation decision and therefore the control variables in both stages may vary. in this model, both hurdles (the decision for partaking in cf and the level of participation) have equations associated with them, integrating the accouterments of the farmer's physiognomies and surroundings. in estimating the double-hurdle model, a probit regression (utilizing complete observations) is tracked by a condensed regression on the non-zero observations (cragg, 1971) and this determine the resolution to partake and the level/intensity of involvement in contractual arrangements in zambia (kiwanuka and machethe, 2016). the doublehurdle assumes that households make two sequential decisions for participating and level/intensity of contribution in a scheme like cf or the use of machinery. each hurdle is habituated by the family circle socioeconomic characteristics and institutional variables. however, a diverse underlying variable is used in the double-hurdle model, to epitomize each resolution procedure. the first decision variable (d) is 1 for farmers who have partook in cf and zero for otherwise. the expected utility of participating in cf (di*) is latent however. evaluated with a probit model, the first hurdle input equation is given as: where, = 1 if the farmer participates in tomato cf and 0 otherwise, = descriptive vector variables (farmer/farm specific characteristics and institutional characteristics that influences the likelihood of partaking in cf), = vector of parameter estimates, = error term. the second hurdle of double-hurdle model involves an outcome equation, which uses a truncated model that determines the level of participation in cf measured in terms of the proportion of farm area allocated to tomato cf relative to the cumulative cultivable crop area owned. therefore, the second hurdle uses observations only from those farmers who indicated a positive value on partaking in cf. it is worth stating that the farmers’ involvement in cf does not partake at the same level of participation. hence, the level/intensity of participation (level of participation hurdle) of in tomato contract farming is projected using a tobit-like model given as: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 240-253 243 { where, = observed response on the proportion of land allocated to tomato contract farming, = vector of explanatory variables, = vector of parameter estimates, = error term the observed value of the proportion of land allocated to tomato contract farming is therefore given by: the error terms of the two decision models (participation model and level of participation model) are distributed as follows: { the error terms and are usually assumed to be independently and normally distributed. it is assumed that for each respondent the decision whether to participate in contract farming and the decision about the participation level are made independently. the two decision processes are non-separable and thus both parts of the likelihood function must be maximized simultaneously. moffat (2005) was of the view that a variable appearing in both equations of the double-hurdle model have reverse effects. 2.4. propensity score matching (psm) psm was used to evaluate the impact of membership in contract farming transaction costs and welfare. psm technique is a non-parametric approach that involves constructing a statistical comparison group by modeling the probability of participating in contract farming/adopting a technology on the basis of practical features that are unpretentious by the contract farming/technology. the underlying principle of psm is that the predicted probabilities (propensity scores) from an estimated probit or logit model are used to find matches for farmers participating in contract farming (participants). the estimation of average treated effect on the treated (att) is specified as follows: { | { | the problem with estimation of the equation (6) is that { | is not observable. however, it is probable to appraise equation (6) by replacing { | with { | as follows { | { | valuation of equation (7) is a biased estimate of the causal effect of membership in cf. this leads to the modeling of a more reliable estimation by controlling observable characteristics to ensure that participation in cf is random and not connected with the outcome variables i.e restricted independence hypothesis is satisfied. { | { | asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 240-253 244 { | { { | { { | { | | where, = value of the outcome for participants in tomato contract farming, = value of the outcome for adopters of the new technology, = participation (1 for participants in tomato contract farming and 0 otherwise), = vector of explanatory variables. this study employed two matching techniques (nearest neighbor matching and kernel based matching) instead of only one to ensure robustness of the impact of farmers’ involvement in cf. 3. results and discussion 3.1. descriptive results of the continues variables the result given in table 1 shows that a larger proportion of the contract farmers (54.3%) and non-contract farmers (50%) respectively had no proper education. this matches cordially with the findings of ayandiji (2011) who reported that 57% of the tomato farmers in ogun state, nigeria had no official education. this finding implies that the majority of the farmers are not favourably disposed to the influence of education on their farm production activities due to their lack of education. this is in accordance with the literature that education builds a supportive mental attitude for getting innovative practices, particularly information and management-intensive practices. thus, the more educated the farmer is, the higher the likelihood of participating in cf as they are in a position to acknowledge the benefits and advantages of partaking. according to beard (2005), the exceptional educated household head; is likely to participate in projects. table 1: distribution of tomato farmers based on educational qualification educational qualification contract farmers non-contract farmers frequency percentage frequency percentage no formal education 63 54.3 42 50 primary education 18 15.5 17 20.2 secondary education 25 21.6 13 15.5 tertiary education 10 8.6 12 14.3 total 116 100 84 100 the results in table 2 below shows that 98% of the non-contract farmers cultivated tomatoes in 0.1-1.0 hectares of farmland compared to 93% of the contract farmers. on the average, the contract farmers cultivated tomatoes on 1.0 hectares compared to 0.8 hectares for the noncontract farmers, signifying that tomato farming by both the contract and non-contract farmers were on a small scale. this result is in support of relates maliwichi et al. (2014) who reported that 65% of the tomato farmers in limpopo province, south africa had farm size of at most 2 hectares. thus the production of tomato on a small scale could be attributed to low access to large agricultural land which makes agricultural productivity growth through farm area expansion limited and therefore, productivity growth through sustainable intensification is a better option. this further validates the important role of cf in driving sustainable tomato production in the study area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 240-253 245 table 2: distribution of tomato farmers based on farm size farm size contract farmers non-contract farmers (hectares) frequency percentage frequency percentage 0.1 – 1.0 108 93.1 82 97.6 1.1 – 2.0 8 6.9 2 2.4 total 116 100.0 84 100.0 mean 1.0 0.8 the result in table 3 shows that most (97%) of the contract farmers had contacts with extension agents compared to 56% of the non-contract farmers. this result is expected as cf arrangement gives the contract farmers more access to agricultural extension support services as one of the benefits of the contractual agreement. this is not in tandem with usman and bakari (2013) who reported that a majority (64%) of the tomato farmers in adamawa state, nigeria had no access to extension. with cf, access to extension service is mostly made accessible to the contract farmers depending on the terms of the contract. table 3: distribution of tomato farmers based on their frequency of extension contact extension contract farmers non-contract farmers contact frequency percentage frequency percentage no contact 4 3.4 37 44.0 had contact 112 96.6 47 56.0 total 116 100.0 84 100.0 3.2. level of participation in tomato contract farming mwambi et al. (2016) pointed out that the concept of smallholder farmers’ participation in cf is fundamental for policy makers pursuing to uphold rural economic activity and development. this makes understanding of tomato farmers’ level of participation in contract farming in the study area a critical issue. the result presented in table 4 indicates that a majority (60%) of the tomato contract farmers had high participation in contract farming in terms of allocating a larger proportion of their cultivable land to tomato contract farming and this implies that contract farming arrangement is very appealing to the farmers currently engaged in contract farming. also, the result shows that there were farmers with very low, low and very high level of participation in tomato contract farming. this stipulates the level of disparity in membership in the study area of contract farming. table 4: level of participation of farmers in tomato contract farming level of participation frequency percentage very low (1 – 25%) 15 12.9 low (26 – 50%) 21 18.1 high (51 – 75%) 69 59.5 very high (76 – 100%) 11 9.5 total 116 100.0 nb: level of participation in contract farming was defined based on percentage of land allocated to tomato contract farming in relation to the total land cultivated by the farmers 3.3 determinants of participation in tomato contract farming table 5 presents the result of the estimated probit model of the determinants of participation in tomato contract farming. the likelihood ratio (lr) of 152.03 of the estimated probit model for tomato contract farming is significant at 1% probability level and this implies the joint significance of the explanatory variables included in the models. there is disparity in the factors that leverage the farmers’ involvement in tomato cf. the coefficient for education was positive and significant in influencing farmer’s participation in tomato contract farming at 1% level of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 240-253 246 probability. this result is in support of arumugam et al. (2011) whose findings indicated that education was positive and significantly influenced the farmers’ likel ihood of participation in fresh fruits and vegetable farming in malaysia. coefficient for farm size was positive and significant in influencing farmer’s participation in tomato contract farming at 1% level of probability and this shows a direct relationship between farm size and participation in tomato contract farming. this result disagrees with the findings of azumah et al. (2016) whose study showed a negative relationship between farm size and participation in contract farming in northern ghana. coefficient for extension contact was positive and significant in influencing farmer’s participation in tomato contract farming at 1% level of probability. this result is in accordance with that of anim (2011) who recounted that in the limpopo province of south africa, extension visits was absolutely important in swaying the maize farmers’ input in cf 3.4. level of participation in tomato contract farming the result of the estimated truncated regression models in table 5 shows that lr of 183.23 of the fitted models for data generated from tomato contract farming was significant at 1%. this indicates the joint significance of the explanatory variables in influencing the level or intensity of participation in tomato contract farming. the results revealed that there is some variation in the results of the estimated probit model and truncated regression models and this implies that the factors that influenced the farmers’ decision to participate in tomato contract farming were not exactly the same factors that influenced the farmers’ intensity of participation in tomato contract farming. this further justifies the use of double-hurdle model in examining farmer’s participation in tomato contract farming in the study area as against the use of tobit regression. table 5: double-hurdle estimates of determinants of participation in tomato cf variables first hurdle: probit model second hurdle: truncated model intercept 4.335*** (2.94) 1.579** (2.20) gender 0.382 (1.32) 0.171 (1.54) age -0.149** (-1.99) -0.193 (-1.12) education 0.133*** (2.28) 0.027** (2.19) family size -0.923 (-1.02) 0.017* (1.85) farm size 0.138*** (2.78) 0.062*** (2.41) farming exp 0.384* (1.77) -0.049 (-0.37) farm assets 1.117 (0.89) 0.394* (1.76) access to credit 1.158** (3.79) 0.081 (1.60) extension contact 1. 750*** (2.50) 0.019*** (2.92) association 1.294*** (2.43) 0.315 (0.94) input subsidy -0.283 (-0.66) -0.055 (-1.04) market distance 0.443 (1.34) -0.084 (-0.97) observations 200 116 lr chi 2 152.03 183.23 prob> chi 2 0.00 0.00 log likelihood -58.95 -82.12 sigma 1.656 (2.97*) pseudo r 2 0.56 nb: values in parenthesis are the t values ***, **, * implies significant at 1%, 5% and 10% probability levels respectively the estimated coefficient of education was positive and significant in influencing the farmer’s level of participation in tomato contract farming at 5% probability level, implying that more educated farmers had a higher probability of increasing their level of participation in contract farming. this outcome supports the findings of kiwanuka and machethe (2016). kiwanuka and machethe (2016) result showed that education positively influenced the level/intensity of participation in the interlocked contractual arrangement for dairy in zambia. also, tongchure, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 240-253 247 and hoang (2013) found that a household members’ level of education positively influenced farmers’ likelihood to participate in contract participation in thailand, noting that farmers who complete higher education would find it easier to understand the information given when receiving advice from the extension agents. the estimated coefficient of farm size was positive and significant in influencing the farmer’s level of participation in tomato contract farming at 1% probability level. this is expected because the increasing level of participation in contract farming would mean increasing the land area allocated to tomato production. this means that as farm size accessible of farmers’ increases, the probability of increasing their level of participation increases. this result is identical with the findings of other scholars who observed the direct relationship between increased levels of commercialization and increased land size. the estimated coefficient of extension contact was positive and significant in influencing farmer’s level of participation in tomato contract farming at 10% probability level. this implies that farmers who are very much in contact with extension agents have more tendency of increasing their level of participation in contract farming. in addition, farmers with increased access to extension will be more informed on challenges and can upgrade their know-how on developmental projects or schemes (sidibé, 2005). 3.5. impact of participation in contract farming on transaction costs nexus the two main assumptions underlying the consistency of propensity score matching techniques were evaluated based on results in table 6 and 7 before proceeding to establish the causal effect of participation in contract farming on transaction costs. the balancing test is usually vital after matching to examine whether the alterations in covariates of both groups (contract farmers and non-contract farmers) in the coordinated sample have been excluded, in which case, the accorded corresponding group can be accorded a reliable counter to fact. the results of the simulation-based sensitivity analysis for psm estimates as a test for the robustness of att for failure of the cia as put forward by ichino et al. (2008) is obtainable in table 2. the results show that the matching method of the propensity score yields robust estimates of the att because the estimates with binary cofounder differ by less than 9% from the standard matching estimate since the simulated att exceeded 8.35% of the att baseline. this implies that the att is enthusiastic to potential deviations from the cia and the potential confounder does not epitomize a real threat for the robustness of the standard estimate. table 6: psm balancing properties of covariates before and after matching matching algorithm outcome indicators pseudo r 2 bm am lr p-value bm am mean absolute bias bm am absolute bias reduction nnm transaction cost 0.38 0.06 0.001 0.158 31.10 10.65 65.8 kbm transaction cost 0.35 0.05 0.001 0.167 29.84 7.11 76.2 nb: bm = before matching, am = after matching, lr = likelihood ratio table 7: psm estimates simulation-based sensitivity analysis outcome variable neutral confounder confounder calibrated to mimic access to credit estimate effect a outcome effect b selection effect c estimator effect a outcome effect b selection effect c transaction costs (n) 1.02% 0.98 2.33 8.35% 1.61 2.10 a the estimator effect indicates to what extent the baseline estimation result would change if we could observe an additional binary confounder. b the outcome effect measures the estimated effect of the simulated binary confounder on the outcome variable-transaction costs. c the selection effect measures the estimated effect of the simulated binary confounder on the selection into treatment-the propensity of participation in tomato contract farming. the results of the mean treatment effects on the treated att appraised by both nnm and kbm matching methods are presented in table 8. the results indicate that the transaction costs asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 240-253 248 (packaging, handling, transportation, communication costs etc.) incurred by the tomato contract farmers were significantly lower than that of the non-contract farmers with a mean difference of n11429.62 and n10130.67 for nnm and kbm matching methods respectively at 1% probability level. this implies that involvement in cf had an adverse effect on contract farmers by significantly decreasing the burden of transaction costs in the purchase of inputs for tomato production and also, disposal of the tomato output due to the contractual agreement. this result is in consonance with tatlidil and aktur (2004) who revealed that the transaction cost (proxied by transportation cost) of tomato contract farmers ($25.90) was lower than the non-contract farmers ($47.20) in the bida district of canakhale province, turkey. also, birthal et al. (2008) reported that cf significantly reduced the transaction costs of dairy contract farmers. noting that transaction costs were as high as 22 % of the total cost in the open market, and 9% under contract farming in india. osebeyo and aye (2014) described that policies in nigeria that are intended at minimizing transaction costs will help in upholding tomato production, decreasing poverty among rural households there by sustaining agricultural growth. the transaction costs, reducing effect of tomato contract farming in the study area compare favourably with the findings of setboonsarng et al. (2006) who reported that their results offer credibility to the debate that cf can be an operational institutional mechanism to ease transaction costs faced by small-scale rice farmers in thailand. other studies (swinnen and maertens, 2007; oya, 2012) have equally indicated that contract farming is a veritable tool that can be explored for reducing transaction costs in food value chains. table 8: psm estimates of the impact of cf on transaction costs matching algorithm outcome indicator mean of outcome indicator att cf ncf nnm transaction costs(n) 22750.50 34180.12 11429.62***(12.38) kbm transaction costs(n) 22880.10 33010.77 10130.67***(5.22) nb: * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01 cf = contract farmers, ncf = non-contract farmers 3.6. productivity, income and welfare gain of participation in contract farming the results presented in tables 9 and 10 were used to evaluate the balancing property and conditional independence assumptions respectively. the balancing property was satisfied based on the low pseudo-r 2 , insignificant p-values of the likelihood ratio test in comparison with the values before and after matching, high total bias decrease and lower mean standardized bias detected after matching in contrast with the values before matching. this implies that differences between the groups (contract farmers and non-contract farmers) in observed factors that could explain both selection into tomato contract farming as well as biased estimates for the outcome variables (productivity, tomato income, total household income and poverty) are properly controlled before the treatment effect valuation. to ensure there is substantial overlap in the distribution of the propensity scores for contract farmers and non-contract farmers, the common support condition was correspondingly enforced in the valuation process. as proposed by heckman et al. (1997), individual annotations in the common support region were used in the analysis (region where the propensity score of the control units is greater than the minimum propensity score of the treated units and the propensity score of the treated units is less than the maximum propensity score of the control units). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 240-253 249 table 9: psm balancing properties of covariates before and after matching matching algorithm outcome indicators pseudo r 2 lr p-value mean absolute bias absolute bias reduction bm am bm am bm am nnm productivity (kg/ha) 0.462 0.032 0 0.301 21.54 2.33 81.6 tomato income (n) 0.311 0.045 0.001 0.271 28.11 7.43 73.6 total household income (n) 0.305 0.024 0.007 0.52 32.61 8.4 74.2 poverty 0.49 0.011 0.004 0.281 25.33 5.64 77.7 kbm productivity (kg/ha) 0.295 0.026 0.003 0.33 23.17 7.45 67.8 tomato income (n) 0.431 0.012 0.001 0.461 29.01 9.14 68.5 total household income (n) 0.413 0.035 0.004 0.459 33.5 12.1 63.9 poverty (headcount) 0.351 0.029 0.001 0.356 27.12 8.27 69.5 nb: bm = before matching, am = after matching, lr = likelihood ratio table 10 presents the simulated-based sensitivity analysis result that reports robustness of matching estimators to failure of cia. this indicates that the propensity score matching technique yields robust estimates of the att and therefore, the baseline att is robust to possible deviations from the cia. the matching results from both nnm and kbm matching techniques in table 11 revealed that the contract farmers had significantly higher mean yield of 3.8 ton/ha and 3.7 ton/ha at 5% probability level suggesting that contract farming had a positive impact on the productivity of the farmers. this implies that participation in contract farming resulted in yield enhancing effect on tomato production and this stems from increased access to timely inputs, improved production technologies, credit, technical support and advisory services that contract farming guarantees the contract farmers. table 10: psm estimates simulation-based sensitivity analysis outcome variables neutral confounder confounder calibrated to mimic access to credit estimate effect a outcome effect b selection effect c estimator effect a outcome effect b selection effect c productivity (kg/ha) 1.45% 1.34 1.68 4.51% 0.34 2.65 tomato income (n) -0.33% 1.02 1.21 11.63% 1.05 1.98 total household income (n) 0.65% 1.59 1.33 2.11% 0.22 2.51 poverty (headcount) 2.81% 1.88 1.57 -3.78% 0.95 2.70 a the estimator effect indicates to what extent the baseline estimation result would change if we could observe an additional binary confounder. b the outcome effect measures the estimated effect of the simulated binary confounder on the outcome variables-productivity, tomato income, total household income and poverty. c the selection effect measures the estimated effect of the simulated binary confounder on the selection into treatment-the propensity of participation in tomato contract farming. the psm results using nnm revealed that the att in tomato income and total household income between the two groups was estimated at n 39879 and n 39993 respectively and was statistically asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 240-253 250 significant at 1% probability level. this indicates that participation in contract farming generated positive income effects on the contract farmers which enable them to improve their standard of living. this positive income effect is expected through increased productivity, higher producer prices and reduced price risk. also, the att in tomato income and total household income between the two groups using kbm produced similar result. this finding agrees with vande velde and maertens (2014) who reported that participation in contract-farming significantly increases rice income by 181.8 euros in benin republic. other studies that established positive income effects of contract farming include (cahyadi and waibel, 2015; wainaina et al., 2014; sambuo, 2012; saigenji and zeller, 2009; waswa et al., 2012; sokchea and culas, 2015). the positive income effect of tomato contract farming disagrees with the findings of abdulai and al-hassan (2016) who reported that contract farmers earn less from soybean cultivation as compared to their non-contract counterparts in eastern corridor of the northern region, ghana noting that the major reason for this outcome is because contractors apply more market power over the farmers. the results of the estimated att by nnm as shown in table 10 indicates that poverty (incidence of poverty) among the tomato contract farmers (34%) was significantly lower than that of the noncontract farmers (45%) with a mean difference of -0.11(-11%) which was statistically significant at 5% probability level. related result was also acquired using kbm. this result implies that contract farming had a significant poverty reducing effect on the tomato farmers and therefore, offers opportunity for alleviating poverty among tomato-based farmers in the study area. a plausible explanation for the poverty reducing effect of contract farming arises from the multiple production and marketing benefits that accrue to the tomato contact farmers as a result of the contractual agreement which led to increased productivity, income generation and invariably, reduced poverty incidence. the result of the poverty decreasing effect of cf is in line with adjognon and naseem (2012) who opined that cf is a tool for poverty alleviation in africa. table 11: psm estimates of the impact of contract farming on productivity, income and welfare matching algorithm outcome indicators mean of outcome indicators att cf ncf nnm productivity (kg/ha) 12510 8760 3750** (4.37) tomato income (n) 205550 165671 39879***(8.01) total household income (n) 491560 451567 39993***(1.89) poverty (headcount) 0.34 0.45 -0.11**(2.23) kbm productivity (kg/ha) 12895 9224 3671**(2.41) tomato income (n) 211455 184220 27235**(2.01) total household income (n) 473880 463100 10780 ns poverty (headcount) 0.35 0.48 -0.13**(2.37) nb: * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01, ns= not significant cf = contract farmers, ncf = non-contract farmers 4. conclusions this study contributes to the scarce empirical evidence on contract farming in northern nigeria using a case study of tomato production. the main factors that swayed the farmers’ decision to partake in cf and level of involvement were education, farm size and extension implying that these variables are key policy variables that could be leveraged to influence participation in contract farming in the study area. as expected, there was high level of participation in contract farming and this implies that contract farming arrangement is very appealing to the farmers presently betrothed in it. in other words, these variables can be very instrumental in conditioning farmers participation behavior with respect to contract farming provided they are properly integrated in policy framework geared towards encouraging farmers’ participation in contract farming. participation generated desirable causal effects on transaction costs, productivity, tomato asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 240-253 251 income, total household income and poverty status of the farmers implying that with continued participation in contract farming, farmers are assured of reduced transaction costs and increased welfare gains. thus, this research has contributed in supporting empirical evidence on contract farming as a strategy for farmers to realize welfare gains from their production. recommendations based on the findings of the study, the following recommendations have been put forward: i. in the light of delayed payment for crop produce which was indicated as a key challenge by some of the contract farmers, there should be interest payment for delay in payment to farmers as part of contractual agreement to curb the issue of intentional delay of payment by the contracting firms. ii. appropriate measures should be put in place to ensure that barriers to inclusion of resource poor farmers in contract farming can be readily addressed. this can be achieved through farmer groups which gives poor farmers the opportunity of pooling their limited resources as a group and linking up with contracting firms. iii. to avoid default in meeting the terms of contract by both farmers and contractors, appropriate policy framework should be put in place by government to support small scale farmers involved in contract farming and also protect the interest of contractors. iv. increasing farmers’ access to land is a viable option for promoting participation in contracting farming because farm size influenced both decision to partake. funding: financial support from the china scholarship council and the federal government of nigeria competing interests: the author declares that s/he has no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all the designing and estimation of current research done by sole author. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdulai, y., & al-hassan, s. 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(2005). violating ignorability of treatment by controlling for too many factors. econometric theory, 21, 1026-1028. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 465 the innovative directions in agriculture of kazakhstan dinar abdrakhmanova graduate school, mongolian state university of agriculture, mongolia purev byamba school of economics and business, state university of agriculture, mongolia kadrinov maulet department of finance, faculty of economics, kazakh agro-technical university named after s. seifullin, kazakhstan abstract in this article ways of increase of competitiveness of agrarian production, on the basis of introduction of the innovative directions in agriculture are considered. for a sustainable development of agriculture the innovative policy which basis there is an increase of efficiency of use of scientific and technical achievements has defining value. becomes obvious that without harmonious, scientifically reasonable and balanced innovative policy, the system principle of its realization it is impossible to solve a problem of increase of profitability of agricultural production with scientific, resource, organizational and information support. innovative process is connected with creation, development and distribution of innovations. it is process within which producers of innovations for receiving profit create and advance innovations to their consumers. the organization of innovative activity for the purpose of innovation finishing to the end user accepts huge value. activization of innovative activity is the main condition in system of the factors providing development and increase of efficiency of agrarian production in market economy. introduction 1 according to opinion of our researchers, kenzheguzin and dnishev (2005) "the terms "innovation", "innovation" are used as process or result of process depending on a context. innovations in material value mean idea, activity or material object which are new to the system accepting and using them. in too time of an innovation there is a process of emergence, development, adaptation and use of new useful result". corresponding author’s name: dinar abdrakhmanova email address: rk_bin@mail.ru tviss (2006) defines an innovation as process in which invention or the idea gets the economic contents. nixon considers that the innovation is a set technical, the industrial and the commercial actions creating new and improved industrial processes and equipment in the market. according to santo (2005), an innovation is such public and technical and economic process which through practical use of ideas and inventions leads to creation of the best products, technologies on the properties, and in case the innovation is focused on an economic benefit, the profit, its emergence in the market can bring in the additive income. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 keywords: innovative policy, innovative directions in agriculture, agrarian policy mailto:rk_bin@mail.ru asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 465-470 466 the analysis of various definitions of an innovation leads to a conclusion that the specific maintenance of an innovation is made by changes, and the main function of innovative activity is change function. in world economic literature "innovation" is interpreted as transformation of potential scientific and technical progress in real, being embodied in new products and technologies. innovative process is connected with creation, development and distribution of innovations. it is process within which producers of innovations for receiving profit create and advance innovations to their consumers. it begins with emergence of idea and comes to an end with its commercial realization. the simplest linear model of innovative process in general and including can be presented to agrarian and industrial complex in the form of a logical partition of uniform process on separate functional or structural parts (figure 1). figure 1: simple (linear) model of innovative process in agrarian and industrial complex in innovative process two phases are allocated: creation and distribution of innovations. the first consists of consecutive stages of scientific researches, developmental works, the organization of pilot production, test and approbation of a scientific and technical product, sale, the organization of commercial production. on the second phase the socially useful product takes root and the socially useful effect both between various producers of an innovation and between their consumers is redistributed. during distribution there is an increase of number and change of qualitative characteristics of innovations. at the beginning of any innovative process there is a new knowledge (idea, the invention, research result). it can be received in two ways: receipt of the initiating information (acquisition of patents and licenses, scientific and technical information and so on) or own development of the innovator. in one case the innovation already exists and possibility of introduction is rather proved. in other case the innovator (the firm, the enterprise modernizing the production system) develops an innovation independently, not very well whether there will be its own laboratory or the third-party organization conducting researches on the order. the system of innovative communications in agro-industrial complex can be presented, as shown in figure 2. experimental production and approbation of an innovation development of new production, mass production and advance on the market replication of an innovation and realization of the new commodity innovative project achievement of basic researches in agrarian and industrial complex applied researches in agrarian and industrial complex applied researches in agrarian and industrial complex asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 465-470 467 figure 2: system of innovative communications the main directions of realization of innovative policy in agro-industrial complex in the republic of kazakhstan are: formation of the innovative system of agro-industrial complex including all scientific and technical capacity of the branch functioning on the basis of uniform scientific and technical policy of the state; development and improvement of standard legal support of innovative activity, mechanisms of stimulation of protection of intellectual property in the innovative sphere and its introduction to economic circulation; development of infrastructure of innovative process, including systems of information support, certification and advance of development, preparation and retraining of personnel; further development of activity of agrarian science in the priority directions of basic and applied researches and development; improvement of competitive system of selection of innovative projects and programs; acceleration of development in production of achievements of science and technology and the best practices; development of information and consulting activity in agro-industrial complex and legislative fixing of formation and functioning of system; stimulation of development of innovative processes in branches and improvement of management of these processes; the state support of agricultural producers for the purpose of restoration of their solvency and increase of opportunity to carry out innovative activity; development of business in scientific and technical and innovative spheres; development of the international cooperation in the innovative sphere. customers of the innovative project (the agrarian and industrial complex enterprise governing bodies, the interested investors) developers (owners) of research and development developers of the project performers of the project objects of development of innovations profit and reinvestment means realization of new products innovative project project coordinator asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 465-470 468 careful working off of structure of innovative system is necessary for formation of innovative system in agroindustrial complex. its main components have to become: the large companies, capable to make considerable investments in development in researches and development, to bring their results to a mass production, to modernize the equipment and so on; small innovative business with specific forms of its financing (the risk capital), the service organizations; the state with its legislative base, the scientific and technical policy directed on regulation and stimulation of innovative process with use of legal, economic, organizational means; the market of new technologies providing to innovative system feedback and demand for innovative production. methodology the state and problems of agro-industrial complex of the republic of kazakhstan became a subject of serious researches in recent years. transformation of agrarian sector of economy is carried out on a basis: maximum use of climatic, soil conditions and other resources; introductions of scientific and technical achievements and advanced know-how; improvement of economic relationship. for a sustainable development of agriculture the innovative policy which basis is an increase of efficiency of use of scientific and technical achievements has the defining value? becomes obvious that without harmonious, evidence-based and balanced innovative policy, the system principle of its realization it is impossible to solve a problem of increase of profitability of agricultural production with scientific, resource, organizational and information support. the organization of innovative activity for the purpose of bringing an innovation to the end user accepts huge value. innovative activity begins with the moment of acceptance of an innovative solution. the bases for adoption of this decision remain a prerogative of persons, it accepting. definite answer of a pas the question, what innovations will gain the bigger distribution, to what directions of development of innovations to give preference the theory of innovations can't give. the theory which enough reasonably would describe the implementation reasons, dynamics of scales of innovative activity, the possible directions of its development the world science yet didn't develop. creation and introduction of innovations in agrarian sector of economy is connected with the raised degree of uncertainty of receiving positive result and big risk of spent means. results of this activity can bring success, but can put in a difficult situation if the actual results use of an innovation is significantly lower than expected results. according to santo (2005), 60% of the new products introduced on the market didn't provide profit expected during their development. activization of innovative activity is the main condition in system of the factors providing development and increase of efficiency of agrarian production in market economy. its fundamental element is the innovation representing creations, development, approbations, estimates, introductions and novelty distributions. strategy of innovative activity is directed on surpassing competitors, to create an innovation which will be recognized as the unique. therefore innovative strategy of the agricultural enterprises is connected with development of innovations which allow passing to new organizational and technological structure of production to provide competitiveness of made production on sales markets. it should be noted that innovative activity isn't limited only to activities for development of innovations, but also assumes assistance in realization of innovative process, namely administrative, investment and information activities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 465-470 469 in innovative activity of agriculture the central place is taken by new technology which unites new knowledge, means of labor and objects of the labor, labor and is bound with social and organizational changes, qualification of labor as most valuable and irreplaceable element of productive forces. due to the lack of modern technologies, systems of cars for plant growing, animal husbandry, etc. the agrarian sector of economy endures the period of technological backwardness. now there are only separate fragments of technology and types of equipment which in the technical and economic parameters (to reliability, productivity) significantly concede to foreign analogs. features of formation and development of innovative processes in agriculture are defined by specifics of the branch. the agriculture as branch of economy represents the difficult system consisting of a number of subsystems, including: social, economic, technological, organizational and administrative and ecological. due to such structure of agriculture groups of factors are formed. on extent of influence on production (branch, entirely or separately taken enterprise) sequence of these groups it is possible to accept a bit different: 1. technological group of factors 2. economic 3. social. 4. organizational and administrative 5. ecological. each of groups includes both external and internal factors. among external factors as the main it is necessary to recognize factors of state regulation and influence of the market. it is necessary to carry system of administrative, legal and economic measures of impact on subjects of managing to factors of state regulation (system of pricing, tax, credit and financial, insurance, the budgetary support, work incentives, etc.). it is necessary to rank the developing level of prices for goods and services, compensation, solvent demand, a supply and demand of competitors, the market of credit and insurance services as market factors of influence, etc. technology factors of production are classified in relation to subsectors of agriculture (agriculture, plant growing, animal husbandry) and spheres of its service (mechanization, power supply and automation of branch, processing and storage of agricultural products; transport service, etc.). in this group act as primary factors: climatic conditions, soil fertility, grades of agricultural plants, breeds of animals, systems of agriculture, the production technology of production of plant growing and animal husbandry, including system of processing of the soil, fertilizer, a security measure of plants, terms of carrying out agricultural works in the conditions of a concrete zone, a subband and other numerous factors. conclusion thus, the following belongs to the main features of formation and development of innovative process in agriculture: a considerable distinction of regions of the country on climatic conditions and specialization of production; a plurality of types of the made agricultural production, products of its processing, an essential difference in technology of cultivation of crops, contents and feedings of animals; a big difference in the periods of production of separate types of agricultural production and products of its processing; existence of a big variety of types of productions on forms of ownership, the sizes, specializations, subordination, cooperation, etc.; a strong dependence of production technologies in agriculture from natural and weather conditions, road and transport networks, types and the sizes of the enterprises (organizations), remoteness from the supplying centers and sales markets of production and other factors; a high degree of territorial dissociation of agricultural production; an isolation of agricultural producers, remoteness from the scientific information centers and the organizations making scientific and technical products; a different social and educational level of workers of agriculture; plurality of various forms and communications of agricultural producers with innovative formations; a lack of the accurate and evidence-based organizational and economic mechanism of transfer of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(9)2014: 465-470 470 achievements of science to agricultural producers and, as a result essential lag of branch on development of innovations in production. high level of complexity of agro-industrial production as systems and the specified features of innovative process in it predetermine an originality of approaches to development of innovations and methods of their realization in branch. in relation to agriculture innovative process represents a constant and continuous stream of transformation concrete technical, technological, organizational and administrative, social and others idea on the basis of scientific development in new technologies or its separate components and other actions, finishing them before use directly in production for the purpose of receiving qualitatively new production. limiting factors of innovative activity are a lack of own means and absence of external investments for acquisition of innovations and their development, an insufficient interest of producers in development of innovations both high investment and technological hazards, a lack of legislative base and the regulations regulating relationship and responsibility of participants subjects of innovative activity, a lack of the system which is carrying out collecting, storage and granting reliable information about existence of effective scientific and technical products, development and implementation of innovative projects. during the determining of a state and an assessment of prospects of scientific and technical activity it is possible to allocate the factors influencing innovative activity: the political and economic stability; the organizational, i.e. system of scientific, educational and other innovative formations, the innovation-active agricultural and providing them enterprises, relationship and communications, coherence and balance of actions; the legislative and legal acts providing priority of scientific and technical transformations, institutional position of their participants, the innovative directed tax and investment policy; the material and financial and economic condition of the agricultural enterprises, all other innovative structures; the information systems and their opportunities to provide availability and completeness of information on new knowledge, scientific and technical achievements; the personnel potential of scientific and other innovative formations, and also consumers of scientific and technical products. references kenzheguzin, m., & dnishev, f. (2005). science and innovations in market economy: world experience and kazakhstan. almaty. institute of economy of the ministry of science and education of the republic of kazakhstan, p. 256. santo, b. (2005). innovation as the measure of economic development. moscow, progress publishing house, p. 255. tviss, b. (2006). management of scientific and technical innovations. translation from english. moscow, progress publishing house, p. 281. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 788 processing and utilization of sorghum and maize in botswana: current status and opportunities g. p. nthoiwa and t. gombalume botswana college of agriculture, sebele, botswana k. k. mokwena nthoiwa rochester institute of technology, rochester, new york, united states abstract the study reviews the current sorghum and maize production, processing and utilization in botswana. most of the grains produced in botswana are used for home consumption, while processing of commercial and export commodities are limited both in terms of quantity and extent of processing. the major processing activity by both small scale and large scale firms is grain milling into maize and sorghum flours. there is limited value-added commercial processing. this creates an opportunity for development and marketing of traditional and new value-added products. opportunities for expanding and diversifying industrial or semi-industrial processing of maize and sorghum beyond grain milling are suggested. keywords: maize, sorghum, milling, value-added processing, food security introduction cereals have a long history of use by humans as staple foods and important sources of nutrients in both developed and developing countries. cereals and cereal products are an important source of energy, carbohydrate, protein and fiber, as well as containing a range of micronutrients such as vitamin e, some of the b vitamins, magnesium and zinc (mckevith, 2004). cereal grains form a major portion of the diet of the people of botswana, and are widely grown throughout the country. many different processing activities are utilized to turn coarse cereal grains into products ready for human consumption. food processing contributes to food security by reducing postharvest food corresponding author’s: name: k. k. mokwena nthoiwa email address: kknmet@rit.edu losses and contributing to diversity of the diet. food processing absorbs the surplus agricultural products that may otherwise be lost by using them as raw materials that are converted into intermediate or finished consumer products. the food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao) estimated world food losses at 33% or 1.3 billion tons per year (fao, 2011). the fao report stated that food losses in the developing world tend to be related to financial, managerial and technical limitations of food distribution between the farmer and the consumer. proper processing and packaging of foods can minimize this waste by offering foods with extended shelf life that provides more time for sale, thus saving food that is normally lost. food processing also ensures higher value addition to agricultural production, generates employment, improves farmer income and creates markets for domestic consumption and export of foods. it has asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kknmet@rit.edu asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 788-800 789 been estimated that high-income countries add over us$200 per ton of value by processing agricultural products while developing countries add less than us$50 (unido, 2013). furthermore, while 98% of agricultural production in high-income countries undergoes industrial processing, in developing countries, barely 30% is processed. a dynamic food processing sector provides strong linkages and synergies between agricultural production and the consumers and hence plays significant role in the overall economic setup of a country. while it is widely recognized that processing provides a strong backward linkage to agricultural production, the potential of the cereal processing industry in botswana is not fully utilized to achieve this purpose. in general, a relatively small amount of agricultural products in botswana are industrially processed. the main objective of this study is to review literature on the production and utilization of maize and sorghum in botswana. the study make use of existing secondary data from the ministry of agriculture, statistics botswana, ministry of trade and industry and other relevant government and non-government agencies (both local and international). the secondary data were complemented by extensive survey of literature relating to maize and sorghum utilization in botswana. cereal production trends in botswana cereal production in botswana is based on rain-fed farming. however, the low and erratic rainfall coupled with relatively poor soils, makes crop production in general a high risk system with low productivity. arable crop production is carried out by both commercial farmers and subsistence smallholder farmers. the arable sector is dominated by small traditional farms with an average farm size of 5 hectares. farm size estimates for the year 2011 showed that about 63,000 arable farms were 5 hectares or less and only 112 farms were larger than 150 hectares (statistics botswana, 2013). sorghum and maize are two of the major crops grown in terms of area planted. sorghum is traditionally the most important crop and the one best suited to botswana’s agro-climatic conditions. however, the share of maize production has grown over years in response to increasing demand, despite it being a more risky crop (stockbridge, 2006). data shows that maize is the predominant crop under the traditional sub-sector, while sorghum is the more popular crop in the commercial sub-sector. production estimates for 2011 as presented in figure 1 show that 29,070 metric tons of maize was produced by traditional farmers as opposed to only 6,252 metric tons by commercial farmers (statistics botswana, 2013). during the same period, traditional farmers produced only 5,946 metric tons of sorghum while commercial farmers produced 26,645 metric tons of sorghum. as one would expect, crop yields in the commercial sub-sector is far superior to that in the traditional sector. in 2011, the yield for sorghum was 4,100 kg/ha in the commercial sub-sector, whiles it was only 100 kg/ha in the traditional sub-sectors (statistics botswana, 2013). likewise, the yield for maize in the commercial sub-sector was 19,200 kg/ha and 190 kg/ha for commercial and traditional sub-sector, respectively. these results indicate that commercial farmers are achieving much better yields per hectare compared to the traditional subsistence farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 788-800 790 figure 1: total production of major crops in botswana during 2011 source: statistics botswana, 2013 the land area available for crop cultivation, as well as the actual area planted and the actual area harvested after planting, vary considerably from year to year, as shown in figure 2. from the figure, the average land area available for crop production was about 250,000 ha during the period between 2001 and 2011 (statistics botswana, 2013). however, only 178,000 ha, or about 70%, of this available land area were actually planted with crops during this period. of the area planted, only about 60% was actually harvested. this data shows that much of the land is being underutilized, or not used at all. figure 2: land area, area planted and harvested during 2001-2011. data for 2005 is missing. source: statistics botswana 2013 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 sorghum maize beans/pulses p ro d u ct io n ( m e tr ic t o n s) total production for 2011 traditional commercial 2001 2002 2003 2004 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 available land area 299 287 195 209 191 182 279 327 259 273 area planted 94 201 80 142 173 108 227 256 239 262 area harvested 50 79 17 99 133 27 126 181 159 174 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 a re a (' 0 0 0 h a) trends of land holdings, area planted and area harvested between 2001 and 2011 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 788-800 791 lack of rainfall and poor soils have been cited as the main constraints for farm productivity in botswana, but a broad comparison between commercial and subsistence farming indicates that climatic conditions cannot take the full blame for low land productivity within the traditional subsistence farming community. while climatic factors have been cited as constraints for improved yields in many countries, other factors have also been identified, such as preference of one crop over the other. for example, in bangladesh, slowing yield growth of wheat was reported over the years, which was attributed to comparative advantage of cultivation of boro rice over wheat (poudel and chen, 2012). similar trends were also reported for maize cultivation in pakistan, where land area previously used for sorghum production was being converted to cultivating other crops which yield higher profits in the market (habib et al., 2013). in botswana however, there are no alternative crops preferred over maize and sorghum to explain the trend. the traditional farming system is characterized by farmers who keep livestock in addition to crop cultivation. in some years, it is possible that these farmers may decide to concentrate more on livestock rearing at the expense of crop cultivation. additionally poor agronomic practices and economic constraints might explain the underutilization of land. increasing crop yields per unit of land can be achieved through use of new improved technologies, high yielding cereal varieties and improved production practices such as proper land preparation techniques and correct fertilizer use. use of drought tolerant varieties can produce desirable effects in crops such as maize. the results of a study by kiani (2013) indicated that there is a lot of genetic variation in maize varieties with regard to drought tolerance. this is particularly important to consider in a semi-arid country such as botswana. the right type and accurate fertilizer application rates have been shown to satisfy crop requirements and produce higher crop yields. ejuneke (2013) showed that organic manure from poultry and cow dung and an inorganic npk fertilizer applied to three varieties of maize crop produced higher grain/cob. the government of botswana has been investing on subsidy schemes to provide smallholder producers with inputs such as seeds and fertilizers, draught power for tillage operations, and with assistance in land preparation and development in a bid to improve agricultural productivity and increase yields. these schemes, over the years, included the arable lands development program (aldep); the accelerated rain-fed arable program (arap); national agricultural master plan for arable agriculture and dairy development (nampaad) as well as the most recent integrated support program for arable agriculture development (ispaad). there have been some additional concerns that these schemes have failed to achieve the desired outcomes. a recent study for united nations development program (undp) concluded that the ispaad program is not economically viable in its current form (undp, 2012). the study shows that the actual expenditure on the program exceeded its budget allocation, and constituted more than 80% of budget allocation for the department of crop production (under which the program is managed) and more than half the budget allocation for the entire ministry of agriculture. furthermore, it was found that the annual expenditure on ispaad operations exceeded annual proceeds in all the years reviewed. data on domestic grain production and grain imports show that the ispaad program has not increased grain production beyond historical production levels prior to its inception (undp, 2012). the analysis showed that on average, traditional farmers were only able to achieve about 20% of the target yields while commercial farmers achieved 80%. this shows there is potential for traditional farmers to achieve improved yields under the existing rainfall and soil conditions, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 788-800 792 provided they improve their farming practices. cereal milling technologies in botswana processing of sorghum and maize in botswana is done by both traditional and commercial sectors. whether at the traditional or industrial levels, milling is the main activity associated with cereal processing in botswana. hand pounding with mortar and pestle has been the primary processing technique used for milling maize and sorghum by traditional households. traditional hand pounding is extremely labor-intensive, and the laborious task has traditionally been performed by women and children. eastman (1980) established from several informal surveys that women can devote 2-5 hours a day to processing sorghum and millet grain for family daily grain needs. a study cited by mmapatsi and maleke (1996) revealed that using a mechanical dehuller instead of hand pounding saves 41% of women’s time and 50% of children’s time to engage in other productive activities. hand pounding is still a major food preparation activity in some rural areas of botswana, despite the widespread availability of mechanical milling. commercial sorghum milling in botswana utilizes a technology consisting of a decorticator (commonly referred to as a dehuller) and hammer mills. the type of decorticator most common in botswana is based on a prototype put out by prairie research laboratory (prl) in canada (bassey and schmidt, 1989; mmapatsi and maleke, 1996). this decorticator has the advantage of being relatively inexpensive to install, operate and maintain. bassey and schmidt (1989) described the development of this type of decorticator and its use in africa. a description of the machine used in botswana, which was developed and introduced by rural industries innovation center (riic), was given by mmapatsi and maleke (1996). the decorticator is an abrasive disc type that removes mainly the outer pericarp layers of sorghum during a dry milling operation. evenly spaced abrasive wheels (carborundum stones) rotate clockwise against the grain inside a horizontal barrel, enabling a progressive abrasion and decortication of the outer layers of grains along the length of a barrel. a suction aspiration fan and ducting system removes the husks and bran, while the decorticated grain is discharged after sufficient decortication. this can be done as either a batch or a continuous process where several decorticators are used in series (mmapatsi and maleke, 1996). the development of sorghum milling technology through riic and the continued support of the industry by government has produced business opportunities that created jobs, generated income to business owners and improved livelihoods of many. rohrbach et al. (2000) stated that initially machine processing of sorghum was viewed primarily as a means to encourage growth of sorghum production and consumption in rural areas. however, over the years sorghum milling has grown into a commercial enterprise. the rapid growth of the milling industry was attributed to financial support from the government through programs such as the former financial assistance policy (fap) which provided grants for land, buildings, machinery, labor and packaging. grain milling products the main product from grain milling is flour (i.e., sorghum meal and maize meal). products from sorghum milling include fortified or enriched sorghum meal, soyasorghum weaning food and malts used for sorghum beer brewing. maize milling products include maize meal, samp, maize grit and maize rice. the flour produced in traditional households mainly goes to selfconsumption within the producing household. the quantity and quality of the flour is popular and highly accepted for home consumption, but have little latitude for marketing in a large scale. flour from asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 788-800 793 hand pounding comprise a mixture of different size granules of the endosperm, but may also contain particles from the germ and pericarp fractions of the grain. the moisture content of flour is a very important quality factor for shelf life purposes. due to the semi-wet milling process, the flour produced from the traditional milling process is moist; hence it has a shelf life of about three days (kebakile, 2008). all grain milling techniques, manual or mechanical, result in some loss of nutrients in the grain. however, the nutrient content of manually produced flour is generally higher than that of highly refined industrially produced flours. eastman (1980) revealed that more nutrients were lost from grains processed with the prl/ riic dehuller compared to grains processed manually because the traditional wet process removes very little of the grain germ, which happens to contain many of the high quality nutrients. it was reported that mechanical processing removes more of the germ and resulted in flour that has, on average, 25% less fat, 10% less crude fiber, 15% less ash, and slightly less protein than does manually processed sorghum flour (eastman, 1980). pedersen and eggum (1983a, 1983b) studied the influence of milling on the nutritive value of flour from maize and sorghum. pedersen and eggum (1983a) reported that milling of maize reduced the fat content and minerals to approximately 28% of corresponding levels in whole maize. the composition of amino acids in maize flour was also significantly affected by milling. the effect of degerming was most pronounced in the reduction of lysine and tryptophan, which were reduced to 63% and 69%, respectively, of corresponding levels in whole maize. starch and protein are less affected by processing as these are concentrated in the endosperm of the grain (goldberg, 2003, inglett, 1970). a reduction in the fat and ash content of sorghum flours was reported, despite higher contents of these components being retained as compared to hand dissected endosperm (pedersen and eggum, 1983b). the authors speculated that a considerable proportion of the germ is retained during milling even at an extraction rate of 64%. it was also found that the content of lysine was significantly decreased by milling, while the content of leucine, which is naturally present in excessive amounts in sorghum, was further increased. the lysine content of whole sorghum meal (i.e., 100% extraction rate) was 2.02% which reduced to 1.3% at 64% extraction rate (pedersen and eggum, 1983b). on the other hand, leucine content was 13.9% at 100% extraction rate and increased to 15.7% at 64% extraction rate. the maize meal categories available in the retail market in botswana are generally identified as ‘super’, ‘special’, ‘sifted’ or ‘unsifted’, based on the composition and particle size index as shown in table 1. also shown in table 1 are the compositions of other maize milling products such as samp, maize rice and grits. some of the maize meal grades are fortified to improve the nutrient reductions during milling. table 1: composition of maize milling products product name particle size distribution (mm) fat (%) protein (%) starch (%) moisture (%) samp 3.4-5.8 0.8 9.0 84 12 maize rice 1.4-2.0 0.8 9.0 84 12.5 grits 0.65-1.4 0.7 9.0 82 12 super maize meal 0.3-0.65 1.0 9.0 80 13 special maize meal 0.17-0.3 2.3 9.2 80 13.5 adapted from erasmus (2003) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 788-800 794 the major cereal milling companies in botswana include bolux milling, foods botswana and bokomo botswana. these are all large scale companies manufacturing maizeand sorghum-based milling products under different brand names found in the local market. bokomo milling manufactures and markets a fortified maize meal (under brand name ‘white star’) locally through wholesalers and retailers. bokomo also produces an unfortified maize meal product, special maize meal, which is of lower quality in terms of nutrients. bolux milling company also produces fortified and unfortified maize meal under ‘a1’ brand. according to seleka et al. (2008) the fortification used by these companies is based on south african standards as botswana does not have laws to regulate cereal fortification. another company, foods botswana, is a major producer of sorghum meal under the brand name ‘sechaba’, sorghum beer powder or malt under the brand name ‘tholo’, and samp under the brand name ‘sarona’ (sefalana holding company limited, 2011). foods botswana also produces fortified pre-cooked maize meal product used for supplementary feeding of older children and adults (‘tsabotlhe’) and a soya-sorghum weaning food (‘tsabana’). according to seleka et al. (2008) tsabotlhe was the only fortified sorghum meal produced on a commercial basis in botswana. the soya-sorghum weaning food brand ‘tsabana’ is a product specifically made for botswana government to be used as a weaning food for supplementary feeding of children aged between 6 to 36 months (ohiokpehai et al., 1998). tsabana is made out of a combination of red sorghum and soya beans. it is pre-cooked using extrusion cooking and fortified with vitamins and minerals. in addition to maizeand sorghum-based products, these companies manufacture and/or distribute other cereal products, especially wheat-based products (wheat flour, pasta products, and biscuits). bokomo also distributes other food products manufactured by its sister companies in south africa or elsewhere, such as breakfast cereal products, dried fruits and vegetables, poultry products, etc. value-added products apart from use in local staple porridge dishes, sorghum and maize flours can be further processed in a variety of ways and combined with many other ingredients to produce a vast range of value-added products. these value-added products use a variety of food preservation methods such as fermentation, pasteurization, etc., and products may be non-alcoholic or alcoholic. botswana breweries limited is a major company engaged in production of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages based on sorghum and maize. the company produces a non-alcoholic maize meal based beverage known as mageu under the brand ‘keone mooka’. mageu is prepared by cooking maize meal in boiling water to obtain a final product containing about 8-10% solids. upon cooling a small amount wheat meal (0.1-0.2%) and sugar (1-2%) are added to initiate lactic acid fermentation (holzapfel and taljaard, 2004). preservatives such as sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, or calcium propionate are often added. the product may be pasteurized in order to obtain a reasonable shelf life for retail distribution. the final product usually has acidity of about 0.4-0.5% lactic acid (holzapfel and taljaard, 2004). mageu is packaged in 500 ml and 1 liter cartons and various flavors are available in the retail market, such as ‘plain’, ‘banana’, ‘cream’ and others. botswana breweries limited is also the main manufacturer and distributor of a low alcohol content sorghum opaque beer called ‘chibuku’. the product is also consumed in zimbabwe, south africa and other countries where it may be marketed under different brand names. industrial production of sorghum beers is well described by haggblade and holzapfel (2004). the general process involves an alcoholic fermentation using yeast and spontaneous asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 788-800 795 lactic acid fermentation (haggblade and holzapfel, 2004). chibuku is packaged in 1liter cartons and is actively fermenting when sold, with alcohol strength increasing from 0.5% on the first day to about 4% in five days before expiry. recently botswana breweries limited also started producing ‘phafana’ brand of premium opaque beer. according to the company, this brand is targeted to non-consumers of chibuku who prefer to drink in the formal channel. role of cereals in the economy as of 2012, the contribution of agriculture to gdp of botswana was very minimal at 2.7% compared to 5.8% contributed by manufacturing and 20% by mining (statistics botswana, 2013). the contribution of agriculture comes from the beef industry, which is the only sub-sector of agriculture that has constantly remained a significant contributor to the national gdp over the years. meat and meat products contributed 2.7% of the bwp 1 951.6 million worth of total exports in january 2009, (cso, 2009). while botswana is a net exporter of beef, it has always been a net importer of the staple commodities of sorghum and maize. data from fao on cereal demand/supply balances estimates as of early june 2013 indicate that botswana would need 230,000 tons of coarse grain cereals for food use during 2013/14 period (fao, 2013). during 2012, only 30,000 tons of grains were produced in botswana, hence 215,000 tons will be imported to cover both food and nonfood uses, which is over 90% of national grain requirements. despite the lack of measurable contribution to gdp, the cereal sub-sector contributes to employment through both crop production and grain milling and processing. there is a wide geographical distribution of grain mills, mostly sorghum mills, throughout botswana, and a corresponding widespread 1 bwp means botswana pula, which is the currency of botswana (bwp1 is currently approximately us$8.50) availability of locally produced sorghum meal brands in the local retail market. a survey conducted by seleka et al. (2008) showed that commercial sorghum milling in botswana is characterized by existence of numerous small firms, whereas maize milling is dominated by a few large firms. the authors identified three categories of millers: those who mill and package flour for sale through formal retail markets; those who do only service milling (also known as ‘contract’ milling) where customers bring their grain to a mill and have it ground for either a small fee or a proportion of the flour, and; those who do both service milling and produce packaged product for the retail market. opportunities for expanding industrial utilization of sorghum and maize despite agriculture’s declining share of the gdp, it remains vitally important to the economy and achievement of food security. processing of cereals produces foods that are considered staples in botswana and worldwide; hence the industry is poised to remain relevant in the years to come. furthermore, agro-based industries, including cereal processing, have great significance to the rural population as they can be instrumental in fostering strong linkages between the agricultural and industrial sectors and in enhancing the employment potential. there is considerable opportunity to increase the contribution of the agriculture to the economic activities of botswana, and especially by small scale producers, through diversification of cereal processing beyond grain milling to manufacturing of valueadded products. there is an urgent need for a national agricultural policy that places more focus on food processing as a vital component of the value chain, especially in the rural areas, where business ownership is lower and unemployment rates higher. this will require action from all stakeholders, including government, industry and academic institutions in terms of policy asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 788-800 796 support, capacity building, and market information to producers, applied research and overall investment in the supply chain. some of the opportunities in improving grain production and supply, and promotion of small scale food processing businesses are discussed below. use of contract farming to improve grain supplies a major limiting factor for value-added processing of sorghum and maize in botswana is the limited and inconsistent supply of good quality grain. the low productivity and associated low incomes make it difficult to attract the next generation of farmers. increasing productivity of smallholder farmers is essential, but has been a challenge so far. apart from increasing the land area available for agricultural production, productivity can also be improved by increasing yields from the land already in use. the use of contract farming can provide an opportunity to promote production and ensure grain of specific quality depending on the end-use industry. contract farming has been discussed by various authors as having the potential to incorporate low-income growers into the modern sector (glover, 1984; goldsmith, 1985; williams and karen, 1985). in contract farming, agro-processing firms can provide, via contracts, the credit, inputs, information, and services smallholders need to cultivate and market traditional and lucrative nontraditional crops while the firm has greater control over the production process and final product quality. contracting has been used in countries like zambia, zimbabwe and south africa, especially in the opaque beer industry, where farmers are issued with seeds at the beginning of the planting season to ensure varieties with good malting qualities (rohrbach and kiriwaggulu, 2007). however, contract farming has not been widely used in botswana. recently, botswana breweries limited initiated a sort of contract farming project called project thusanang to promote sourcing of bitter sorghum for use in production of chibuku beer from local small scale subsistence farmers (sechaba breweries holdings limited, 2012). this program benefits farmers by enhancing land productivity and promoting use of scientific farming methods. as noted earlier, crop production in botswana is characterized by numerous small scale farms and low production and yields, which might make it difficult to administer and manage contract farming projects. to resolve this problem, project thusanang has implemented a hub and spoke model where a lead farmer oversees, assists and encourages farmers in a cluster to help drive the objectives of the project (sechaba breweries holdings limited, 2012). promotion of similar projects for other end-use specific industries can go a long way in encouraging more productive use of available farm lands. processing and packaging of traditional and new value-added products promotion of small scale enterprises involved in value-added food processing is crucial to rural development. traditional food processing and preservation techniques are used mainly in the rural areas to produce foods consumed within households. the techniques are mainly rudimentary, are not standardized, are not based on scientific principles, and hence not suitable for commercial production. the development of appropriate processing technologies aimed at upgrading the quality of indigenous/ traditional foods will be indispensable for the growth of agro-industries and economic development in rural areas. appropriate packaging is required to assure quality and shelf life as well as make the products appealing to the consumer. in botswana, traditional fermented products such as ting and sorghum beer can be modernized and developed for small scale commercial processing. these products are not currently available in the commercial market. ting is a fermented gruel made by mixing sorghum asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 788-800 797 meal with water, which is then allowed to spontaneously ferment in a warm place for two to three days. after fermentation the gruel is cooked in boiling water and consumed as thin or thick porridge with sugar, meat or vegetables. traditional opaque beers are brewed with tastes that differ from the industrially produced chibuku beer. brewing procedures vary from place to place or even from brewer to brewer within the same locality. fermentation is known to improve bioavailability of nutrients of cereal products containing antinutritional factors such as phytates, polyphenols and tannins (steinkruss, 1995). hence, proper fermentation of maize and sorghum-based products can change a diet which generally has low nutrient availability to one of high nutrient availability. research is needed to isolate the microflora responsible for natural fermentation of these traditional products. one notable study was carried out by sekwati-monang (2011) to characterize the microorganisms responsible for fermentation of ting. for both ting and sorghum beer, the development and commercialization of a bulk starter medium for fermentation processes is prerequisite for improving these indigenous fermentation technologies and commercially produce products which closely resemble the traditional ones. in addition to the traditional products, small scale processors can be supported in developing new and exotic cereal-based, high value products. for example, there is a growing demand for gluten free foods and beverages for people with celiac disease who cannot consume wheat based products. celiac disease is characterized by damage of the mucosa of the small intestine caused by gluten in wheat and other grains (fasano and catassi, 2001). sorghum has been recommended as a safe food for celiac patients (kasarda, 2001) and can be used an alternative breads and other naked goods such as cakes, cookies (biscuits) and snacks. apart from targeting celiac patients, development of sorghum-based baked products might replace some of the wheatbased products, thereby reducing wheat imports and associated costs. support of smes through business incubation in both developed and developing economies, policies supporting small and medium enterprises (smes) are widely promoted as their role for economic and social development is universally recognized. support programs for smes usually range from technical assistance to tax incentives, from direct supply of capital to regulatory provisions, training, support to innovation and other types of incentives. one of the mechanisms employed to nurture small firms is “business incubation”. business incubation has been used successfully in brazil, china, israel and other countries. according to the national business incubators association (nbia), “business incubation catalyzes the process of starting and growing companies, providing entrepreneurs with the expertise, networks and tools they need to make their ventures successful. in supporting entrepreneurs with a ‘one-stop’ style service and reducing their overhead cost by sharing facilities, business incubators are able to significantly improve the survival and growth prospects of new start-up companies (scaramuzzi, 2002). in food processing, incubator facilities can provide a wide range of services from product concept to commercialization for both start-up businesses and existing businesses. new start-up companies in need of basic small scale processing capacity can gain access to equipment and services they could not likely afford on their own, and have their products produced in state-of-the-art food processing facilities that meet regulatory standards. on the other hand, larger processors can use these facilities to minimize capital risks that are associated with new products and processes in test markets and with scale up and commercialization stages. these facilities would be located in strategic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 788-800 798 agricultural production districts where producers and processors can have easy access. research and academic institutions such as the national food technology research center, botswana college of agriculture, university of botswana and department of agricultural research, can be engaged in providing the technical support and business assistance to start-up companies. conclusions cereal grain production is very limited in botswana, partly due to the agro-ecological conditions, but also due to human related problems that can be resolved. increased production of good quality grains is a prerequisite for successful development of commercial cereal processing. currently, primary milling is the main cereal processing activity carried out in the country, with very limited value-added processing. commercial processing of locally grown grains such as sorghum and maize into value-added food and beverage products can be an important driver for economic development. however, this requires policy, financial and technical support from the government, industry and academic institutions. efforts from the government should promote food processing as one of the ways to achieve food security at both the household and national levels. strong links should be developed between grain producers, research and development institutions and the food manufacturing industry. references bassey, m. w. and o. g. schmidt (1989). abrasive-disk dehullers in africa: from research to dissemination. international development research center. ottawa, ontario, canada. cso (2009). botswana external trade monthly digest. issue no. 12 of 2008/09. january 2009. central statistics office. eastman, p. (1980). end to pounding: a new mechanical flour milling system in use in africa. international development research center. ottawa, ontario. ejuneke, e. c. (2013). effects of variety and fertilizers on number of grains/cob of maize in asaba area of delta state. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(4): 215-225. erasmus, c. (2003). maize kernel translucency measurement by image analysis and its relationship to vitreousness and dry milling performance. phd. thesis. university of pretoria. south africa. fao (2011). global food losses and food waste: extent, causes and prevention. a study conducted for the international congress save food! interpack 2011, dusseldorf, germany. fao (2013). cereal supply/demand balances for sub-saharan africa as of early june 2013. fao/giews. fasano, a. and c. catassi (2001). current approaches to diagnosis and treatment of celiac disease: an evolving spectrum. gastroenterology, 120: 636-651. glover, d. (1984). contract farming and smallholder outgrowerschemes in less developed countries. world development, 12 (11/12): 1143-1157. goldberg, g. (2003). plants: diet and health. the report of the british nutrition foundation task force. blackwell, oxford. goldsmith, a. 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(1970). kernel structure, composition and quality. in g. e. inglett, ed. corn: culture, processing, products. avi publishing co., connecticut, usa. pp. 138-150. kasarda, d. d. (2001). grains in relation to celiac disease. cereal foods world, 46: 209-210. kebakile, m. m. (2008). sorghum drymilling processes and their influence on meal and porridge quality. ph. d. thesis. university of pretoria. south africa. kiani, m. (2013). screening drought tolerance criteria in maize. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(5): 290-295. mckevith, b. (2004). nutritional aspects of cereals british nutrition foundation. nutrition bulletin, 29: 111-142. mmapatsi, md, and j. m. maleke (1996). development of and institutional support systems for sorghum milling technology. in k. leuschner, and c. s. manthe, eds. drought tolerant crops for southern africa. proceedings of the sadc/icrisat regional sorghum and pearl millet workshop. 25-29 july 1994, gaborone, botswana. 7-18. ohiokpehai o., j. jagow, j. jagwer and s. maruapula. (1998). tsabana– towards locally produced weaning foods in botswana. in: k. gabotswang, g. holmboe-ottesen and m. mugabe, eds. from food security to nutrition security in botswana. published by lentswe la lesedi, gaborone for national institute of development research and documentation (nir), university of botswana and department of general practice and community medicine (iasam), university of oslo. pedersen, b. and b. o. eggum. (1983a). the influence of milling on the nutritive value of flour from cereal grains. 5. maize. qualitas plantarum plant foods for human nutrition. 33: 299311. pedersen, b. and b. o. eggum. (1983b). the influence of milling on the nutritive value of flour from cereal grains. 6. sorghum. qualitas plantarum plant foods for human nutrition. 33: 313326. poudel, m. p. and s. chen. (2012). trends and variability of rice, maize, and wheat yields in south asian countries: a challenge for food security. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(4): 584597. rohrbach, d. d. and j. a. b. kiriwaggulu. (2007). commercialization prospects for sorghum and millet in tanzania. sat ejournal, 3(1): 1-24. rohrbach, d. d., k. mupanda and t. seleka (2000). commercialization of sorghum milling in botswana: trends and prospects. working paper no 6. socioeconomics and policy program, international crops research institute for the semiarid tropics. scaramuzzi, e. (2002). incubators in developing countries: status and development perspectives. the world bank. sechaba breweries holdings limited (2012). sustainable development report. downloaded on september 8, 2013 from http://www.sabmiller.com/files/report s/2012_sd_report_final.pdf http://www.sabmiller.com/files/reports/2012_sd_report_final.pdf http://www.sabmiller.com/files/reports/2012_sd_report_final.pdf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 788-800 800 sefalana holding company limited. (2011). annual report. downloaded on september 8, 2013, from http://www.investinginafrica.net/wpcontent/uploads/2012/09/sefalana2011-annual-report.pdf. sekwati-monang, b. (2011). microbiological and chemical characterization of ting, sorghum based free fermented cereal product from botswana. ph. d. thesis. university of alberta. canada. seleka, t. b., p. m. makepe, p. kebakile, l. batsetswe, d. mmopelwa, k. mbaiwa and j. jackson. (2008). the feasibility of mandatory fortification of cereals in botswana. botswana institute of development policy analysis. statistics botswana (2013). the 2011 annual agricultural survey preliminary results. issue no. 13 of 2013. statistics botswana. steinkrauss, k. (1995). handbook of indigenous fermented foods. 2nd ed. marcel dekker, inc. new york. stockbridge, m. (2006). agricultural trade policy in developing countries during take-off. oxfam gb research report. undp. (2012). poverty and social impact analysis of the integrated support program for arable agriculture development (ispaad). the report on the consultancy for the united nations development program. republic of botswana. unido (2013). agribusiness development: transforming rural life to create wealth. united nations industrial development organization. williams, s. and r. karen (1985). agribusiness and the small-scale farmer: a dynamic partnership for development. boulder, co. westview press. http://www.investinginafrica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/sefalana-2011-annual-report.pdf http://www.investinginafrica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/sefalana-2011-annual-report.pdf http://www.investinginafrica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/sefalana-2011-annual-report.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants published by: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 5(1)2015, www.aessweb.com 1 factors impacting adoption of organic farming in chitwan district of nepal mrinila singh, keshav lall maharjan and bijan maskey graduate school for international development and cooperation, hiroshima university, 1-5-1 kagamiyama, higashi-hiroshima, japan abstract organic farming provides social, economic and environmental benefits but it still occupies a small share of the overall agriculture sector. the objective of this study is to assess factors identifying the underlying issues leading farmers to adopt organic farming. the study was conducted in chitwan district where indiscriminate use of agro-chemicals is very much existent but the concept of organic farming is also emerging especially in three village development committees within the district; namely phoolbari, shivanagar and mangalpur. based on field observation, the farming system is categorized into organic, partial organic and inorganic farming. data from 285 purposively selected households were analyzed using multinomial logit model in stata 13. results show that older farmers are reluctant to change and thus has lower tendency to adopt organic farming. on the other hand, livestock holding is very crucial as it supplies the much needed manure for fertilizing the soil. more significantly membership in a group formed for the purpose of organic farming and the extent of activities such as training conducted through it has been very much successful in encouraging farmers to convert to organic or at least partial organic farming. thus, formation of such groups in other areas could be the most effective tool for large scale conversion to organic farming. keywords: organic, partial organic, inorganic, multinomial logit, marginal effect, chitwan district 1. introduction 1 agriculture is the major sector of nepalese economy that accounts for 39% of the gross domestic product (gdp) and employs 66% of the population (moad, 2015). despite this significant contribution, about 1/3 rd of its population are food insecure and agriculture is primarily subsistence in nature (nepal et al., 2011). since this sector holds an immense significance for the overall development of an economy and alleviating poverty, the government highly prioritizes it through various support, although it can mainly be reflected in the path of commercialization (samriddhi, 2011). supplying sufficient amount of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and high yielding varieties are the overriding issues mentioned in 20 years agriculture perspective plan (1995-2015) with very limited reference to organic inputs (aicc, 2006). accordingly, national education, research, extension and communication systems are also directed towards high input agriculture system in nepal (tamang et al., 2011). regardless of such efforts, agricultural productivity growth rate remains lower compared to other countries (samriddhi, 2011). moreover, such input-intensive farming system will degrade the soil quality and stagnate or decline yield overtime due to intensive and mono-cropping pattern system (samie et al., 2010). the issues of declining soil corresponding author’s name: mrinila singh email address: singh_mrinila@hotmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:singh_mrinila@hotmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 1-12 2 fertility and yield in certain parts of nepal, which have the history of long-term use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are now emerging (bhatta and doppler, 2010; weiss, 2004; shrestha and neupane, 2002). the negative impact of modern inputs on not just environment but human health as well have prompted the movement of organic farming in nepal (bhatta and doppler, 2010; weiss, 2004) which seems to be in a growing phase (adhikari, 2011). organic agriculture is conceived to be a sustainable approach to food production system, an alternative to ecologically unsound practices of conventional agriculture. specifically in nepalese context it has a huge potential as it is endowed with ecological diversities which allows growing various crops suitable for different climatic and geographic condition, has high labor supply for this labor-intensive farming system, and excludes imported and costly agro-chemicals (pokhrel and pant, 2009). the burgeoning issues of climate change which is already impacting the food productivity (wfp, 2009) also makes this practice more reliable as it is known for being resilient with higher capacity of mitigating and adapting to such changes (singh et al., 2012). in spite of providing such benefits, organic agriculture in nepal is still considered to be in its initial stage lacking data, market information and research based activities (bhatta et al., 2009; pokhrel and pant, 2009). one of the key areas where information in this sector is immensely inadequate is at the household level (bhatta, 2010) which has a huge significance as farmers are the key players that determine its continuity. thus, this study has been conducted to find out the issues pertaining to organic farming at the household level for policy implication and stimulate the necessary action through various stakeholders leading to the expansion of this sector. 2. methodology 2.1. study area and sample selection this study was conducted in chitwan district which lies in the southern part of nepal, also known as tarai region, with elevation below 300 m and accounting for 20.1% of the total land area. even so, 34% of the total cultivable land lies in this part as it has the most fertile soil compared to other parts of the country (fao, 2013). indiscriminate use of agro-chemicals in chitwan district is very much existent but in some areas the concept of organic farming has also been emerging with the initiation from few enthusiast farmers who started organic farming for health benefits and reinstating soil fertility that had been affected from long term use of inorganic inputs. at present group conversion of organic farming is visible mainly in three vdcs, i.e. phoolbari, shivanagar and mangalpur. the support from various non-governmental and government organizations has also deepened the activities enriching the movement of organic farming. for instance, farmers are provided training related to organic farming from general to more specific ones such as preparation of bio-fertilizers and pesticides, market promotion and network development; distributed pamphlets on plant health and clinic initiative; set up hoarding boards for raising awareness; develop resource center; operate farmer’s field school (ffs); technology development and transfer; and other extension services (secard-nepal, 2011). thus, these three vdcs were chosen as research sites. there has been a number of organic farming related studies conducted in our research areas. adhikari (2009, 2011) studied cost-benefit analysis of organic carrot and rice production system, respectively; bhat and ghimire (2008) focused on controlling major diseases and enhancing yield of organic vegetables, thus implying the scope of using biopesticides; and organiconepal (2006) studied marketing system of organic agriculture goods with focus on farmers’ cooperative. only kafle (2011) has captured the issues of socioeconomic factors differing among adopters and nonadopters of organic farming in phoolbari vdc. this study, on the other hand, is expected to be more inclusive than the previous studies in terms of geographical coverage and variables selection. the survey was conducted for two months from february till march, 2013 using small-scale sample survey and researcher’s observation. the follow-up survey to gather additional information asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 1-12 3 through participatory methods such as focal group discussion and key-informant interview was done from october till november, 2014. a sample of 300 individual households (initially to choose equal number of organic and inorganic farmers) were selected using purposive sampling method and household heads or those responsible in their absence were interviewed through semistructured questionnaire. in all three vdcs, a group has been established particularly for the purpose of organic farming. in phoolbari vdc a cooperative has been formed with currently 125 members whereas in rest of the two vdcs, an informal group has been formed with 44 members in shivanagar vdc and 90 members in mangalpur vdc. the members of such formed groups thus became our potential respondents, under the hypothesis that all farmers belonging to such group would be organic farmers. however, during the field survey it was realized that not all the farmers belonging to such group are actually practicing organic completely. thus, this study divides farming system into three different categories based on the ground reality: organic, partial organic and inorganic farming. organic farming, in this study, implies a system in which use of agro-chemical is completely excluded. on the other hand, partial converters are those who segregate their farmland for organic purpose. this is generally true for vegetable farming which farmers grow organically only for home consumption and is mainly done on a small portion of their land but use chemical fertilizers and pesticides on cereal crops which is rather produced on a larger area. for some it was difficult to grow certain crops, at least during the time of the survey, without the use of pesticide. for example, most farmers faced the problem of late blight disease in potato for which using pesticide was inevitable. for others, they chose to grow commercially viable crops like carrot through inorganic means for easier management of weeds and pests as well as to intensify productivity. likewise in inorganic farming system, farmers would rely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides on various crops without separating the farm land as such or without being crop-specific. respondents from outside such group were selected randomly based on close geographical proximity with those belonging to a group. on the whole, the number of respondents, both group and vdc wise were taken based on the total number of group members within a vdc. after eliminating incompletely filled questionnaires and outliers, the final sample for the study reached 285 respondents in total. for the field survey, university students and local people who were competent were employed, trained properly and monitored on a daily basis by the researcher. as for the participatory methods, focal group discussions were conducted three times in phoolbari vdc because of the comparatively higher number of member farmers, once in shivanagar vdc and again three times in mangalpur vdc (once for each group established for the purpose of organic farming) to get collective opinions. key-informant interviews also helped to generate other relevant information. 2.2. empirical model the collected data is analyzed using multinomial logit (mnl) model in stata 13. mnl is considered to be an appropriate tool when there are more than two dependent variables with no such ranking or ordering with independent variables that can be continuous as well as categorical in nature (hamilton, 2009; wooldridge, 2002). since our study uses three different farming categories: organic farming, partial organic farming and inorganic farming, mnl model is applicable to assess to what extent farmers adopting each of these farming system differ in terms of their characteristics. following ayuya et al., (2012), the mnl model with ‘j’ categories of dependent variables can be expressed as: 𝑃 𝑦 = 𝑗 𝑥 = exp (𝑥𝛽𝑗 ) [1+𝑛=1 𝐽 exp 𝑥𝛽𝑛 ] ……. (1) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 1-12 4 where, y is a random variable based on values j = 3 (namely organic farming, partially organic farming and inorganic farming system), x is a set of conditioning variables which in this case is farming households’ characteristics, exp indicates exponents and 𝛽 is unknown parameters to be estimated. the probabilities for choosing each alternative will sum up to 1 (𝑗=1 𝑛 𝑃𝑗 = 1) in order to estimate, one set of the coefficients is normalized to zero or is taken as a base category (in this case, inorganic farming system = 0) so there are (j-1) sets of coefficients to be estimated. the coefficients of other two alternatives are interpreted with reference to the base outcome. we assume to have independence of irrelevant alternatives (iia) so that the parameter estimates of the mnl model in equation (1) will be unbiased and consistent. this means that the possibility of choosing one farming system is independent of the possibility of choosing another farming system. this assumption is based on the independent and homoscedastic disturbance terms in the above model. mnl model however only gives the direction but not the actual magnitude of change or probabilities of explanatory variables’ effect on dependent variables. this is why the study incorporates marginal effects to measure to what extent the amount of change in dependent variable will be produced by a unit change in explanatory variables (ayuya at al., 2012). the marginal effect can be expressed as: 𝜕𝑃𝑗 𝜕𝑋𝑘 = 𝑃𝑗 (𝛽𝑗𝑘 − σ𝑗=1 𝐽−1𝑃𝑗𝛽𝑗𝑘 ) ……. (2) where, k represents explanatory variables (table 1) used for the empirical analysis. the empirical specification is as follows: table 1: measurement and summary of explanatory variables and their hypothesized relation to practicing organic farming dependent variable definition and measurement mean± standard deviation/% min max expected sign farming system organic partial organic inorganic (base category) 31% 32% 37% explanatory variables agehhh age of hhh; years (discrete) 49.64 ±11.56 26 84 +ve/-ve eduhhh education of hhh; years (discrete) 6.73±5.45 0 17 +ve/-ve occuhhh primary occupation of hhh; 1=farming, 0 otherwise (dummy) 58% +ve labor labor force available in hh; labor force unit (lfu 1 ) (continuous) 4.28±1.84 1 11 +ve livestock livestock available in hh; livestock unit (lsu 2 ) (continuous) 1.94±1.73 0 13.7 +ve farm_size operational farm size; hectare (ha) (continuous) 0.5±0.4 0.01 2.7 +ve/-ve farm_income income from farming activities; nepalese rupees (nrs 3 ) 193988.5± 181015.7 1820 1014 245 +ve asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 1-12 5 (continuous) non-farm_income income from non-farm sources; nrs. (continuous) 202107.9 ±200702.4 0 1080 000 +ve membership membership in a group formed for the purpose of organic farming; 1=yes, 0 otherwise (dummy) 47% +ve training organic farming related trainings received; in number of times 1.21±2.02 0 12 +ve vdc: phoolbari as base category, (categorical) phoolbari belonging to phoolbari vdc 50% +ve shivanagar belonging to shivanagar vdc 18% -ve mangalpur belonging to mangalpur vdc 32% -ve agri_center distance to nearest agriculture center; km 3.74±3.56 0.01 20 +ve/-ve livestock_center distance to nearest livestock center; km 3.44± 2.47 0.01 12 +ve/-ve agrovet distance to nearest agrovet; km 1.73±.1.73 0.01 15 +ve/-ve mkt_distance distance to nearest market; km 2.84±3.4 0.01 15 +ve/-ve credit credit taken for farm related activities; 1=yes, 0 otherwise (dummy) 10% +ve commercialization commercialization rate (continuous) 0.71±0.69 0 4.76 -ve source: own elaboration based on literature review yj−3 = β 0 + β 1 agehhh + β 2 eduhhh + β 3 occuhhh + β 4 labor + β 5 livestock + β 6 farmsize + β 7 in − farmicome + β 8 in − nonfarmicome + β 9 membership + β 10 training + β 11 vdc + β 12 agricenter + β 13 livestockcenter + β 14 agrovet + β 15 mktdistance + β 16 credit + β 17 commercialization + μ ................. (3) where, ln is natural log and µ is an error term. as per the regression rule, diagnostic tests were carried out to check the problem of multicollinearity and heteroskedasticity in the data. variation inflation factor (vif) test was carried out, which according to pindyck and rubinfeld (1981) is better than correlation coefficient method that fails to yield conclusive results. vif gave a value of 1.60, which is below 10 suggesting that multicollinearity among the variables does not exist. likewise, both breusch-pagan/cook-weisberg and white’s test did not show significant p-value implying that there is no problem of heteroskedasticity, i.e., the variance of the error term is constant. table 1 provides the summary of explanatory variables used in the analysis along with their measurement unit and hypothesized relation to organic farming system. among the 17 variables considered, primary occupation of head of household (hhh), group membership and credit are taken as dummy variables; vdc as categorical and the rest as either discrete or continuous variables. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 1-12 6 2.3. variables selection farmers’ socioeconomic characteristics have a major role to play in farm-related decision making and therefore its implication on adoption of organic farming is also discussed in various studies. among others are hhh’s age and education; the relation of which resulting in adoption of organic practice varied according to different studies. for instance, adesope et al. (2011) assumes that those who have been farming for a very long time are usually old, less educated and thus are more reluctant to change to organic farming. contrastingly another study shows that older farmers with larger farms, for better privileged relationship with extension services, are more likely to adopt organic system. they also tend to be more experienced in farming and are better educated (alexopoulosa at al., 2010). again khaledi et al. (2011) suggested that educated and younger farmers allocate lesser share of their cultivated area to organic practice and those with older age allocate higher share. this study also takes primary occupation of hhh as one of the indicators resulting in adoption of organic farming because it is believed that a farming decision may vary with the extent of its contribution to one’s livelihood. it is assumed that farming as primary occupation is expected to have positive impact on adoption as farmers would be concerned about practicing it in a more sustainable way for a long-term benefit. khaledi et al. (2011) also opined that increase in farm area will result in higher chances of not following complete adoption of organic practice because of higher labor demand. it furthermore limits the complete adoption of organic practice when farmer’s wage increases. another reason could be economies of scale that can be achieved more effectively in larger conventional farms than smaller ones and therefore for financial gain farmers are less likely to consider a switch to organic farming. again contrastingly kafle (2011) found farmers with large farm size to be better adopters than small farmers, probably because it signifies being resource-rich and thus suggested that organic production first be promoted to the large-scale farmers followed by small farmers. but labor is probably one of the major defining factors among others as organic farming is labor intensive and farmers’ families have been the major source of labor in all agricultural systems irrespective of the fact that there has been increasing role of hired labor in farm practices (pattanapant and shivakoti, 2009). like labor, livestock holding is also an important component of organic farming as it relies mainly on manure for fertilizing. thus, higher livestock holding is expected to result in higher propensity to adopt. non-farm income and social network relating to the adoption of organic farming could also be observed in various literatures. since organic farming is usually riskier in terms of yield loss during initial years of conversion (halberg et al., 2006), farmers with no source of income other than farming, which might have worked as a safety net, could feel hesitant to convert as they tend to be more risk averse. not just non-farm income, but overall household income is an important factor in terms of adoption decision as it indicates higher financial leverage to undertake risks associated with new technology. social network is another important component that leads to participation in community activities which could provide benefits to farmers, specifically in the form of labor exchange, information sharing and knowledge gain on production, marketing, and even possibility of getting funds (pattanapant and shivakoti, 2009; sarker et al., 2009). such activities could also in turn make farmers participate in training and can impact to what extent farmers adopt organic practice (kafle, 2011). based on field observation, group formation in phoolbari vdc is the oldest and has conducted more trainings and thus is expected to have more organic and/or partial organic farmers compared to the other two vdcs (annex i). like training, access to relevant institutions like agrovets (an exclusive store for agriculture related products), agriculture center, livestock center and market are expected to provide farming related information and access to pre and post-production services, although its impact on adoption of organic farming could be positive or negative. for example, if there is premium market for organic products, farmers would be encouraged to practice organic farming if they are closer to the market but in the absence of it, the case would be otherwise. one of the reasons farmer practice inorganic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 1-12 7 farming is for higher profit. thus, it is expected that higher the extent of commercialization, less will be the tendency to convert to organic farming. finally credit is expected to have positive impact as it can provide with necessary financial accessibility for the adoption of organic farming. 3. results and discussion 3.1. descriptive analysis the respondents in this study consists of 31% organic farmers, 32% partial organic farmers and 37% inorganic farmers. hhhs are those who are responsible for making key decisions in the family matters. the age of hhhs range from 26 to 84 years old with an average being about 50 years. some 7% of hhhs do not have any educational background or in others words are illiterate 4 and 30% of them identify themselves as having only a basic 5 education. only 3% of them have master’s level education. on average hhhs have received about 7 years of formal education. the majority (58%) of hhhs still recognize farming as their primary occupation which means that farming is still the major source of occupation. in this study, labor excludes the hh (household) member/s who have migrated whether temporarily or permanently and reflects only those who are available in the household. as a result, 2 hhs have only 1 lfu and the highest is 11 lfu, all of whom are doing partial organic farming. likewise 13% of the hhs did not have any livestock. cow, buffalo, goat and poultry are the major livestock species raised by the hhs. on the whole, each hh has 4.28 of lfu and 1.94 of lsu. with the minimum of 0.01 ha and maximum of 2.7 ha, farmers have 0.5 ha of farm land on average. income from farming includes the monetary value equivalent to the production from farming of vegetables, oil crops, pulses, cereals, trees and livestock (both selfconsumed and those traded in the market) as well as farming wages. in this study, about 21% of the hhs derives their income only from farming and the rest 79% have non-farm income as well from sources such as service, business, rent, remittance and pension. on average hhs have nrs.193988.5 and nrs. 202107.9 of farm and non-farm income, respectively. some 47% of the respondents are group members and 44% of them have received organic farming-related training at least once. the highest number of training taken (12 times) is by an organic farmer. the distribution of respondents across vdcs is 50% in phoolbari, 18% in shivanagar and 32% in mangalpur vdc. the average distance to nearest agriculture center, livestock center, agrovet and market is 3.74 km, 3.44 km, 1.73 km and 2.84 km, respectively. only 10% of the respondents have taken credit for the purpose of farming. the average commercialization rate is 0.71 which is calculated as a ratio of total quantity of crops sold to total produced. 3.2. result from multinomial logit model the probability of the model chi-square (154.76) is highly significant at 1% which supports the existence of a relationship between explanatory and dependent variables. the pseudo r 2 suggests that almost 25% of the total variation in the values of dependent variable is explained by the independent variables in this regression equation (table 2). table 2: result from multinomial logit model variables organic partial coefficient p-value coefficient p-value agehhh -0.06 0.005*** -0.05 0.004*** eduhhh -0.02 0.571 -0.03 0.439 occuhhh 0.34 0.498 -0.08 0.860 labor 0.05 0.622 -0.001 0.990 livestock 0.24 0.066* 0.09 0.452 farm_size -0.32 0.573 -0.42 0.388 ln_farm_income -0.03 0.907 0.31 0.203 ln_non-farm_income 0.06 0.242 0.02 0.548 membership 1.16 0.018** 0.96 0.033** training 0.79 0.000*** 0.32 0.140 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 1-12 8 vdc_shivanagar -0.72 0.176 -1.17 0.021** vdc_mangalpur -1.88 0.001*** -0.55 0.212 agri_center -0.09 0.334 0.07 0.418 livestock_center 0.02 0.865 -0.12 0.307 agrovet -0.24 0.171 0.03 0.805 mkt_distance 0.04 0.542 -0.01 0.837 credit -0.9 0.203 -1.38 0.045** commercialization -0.59 0.076* -0.57 0.051* constant 2.35 0.427 -0.67 0.806 *** 1%, ** 5% and * at 10% level of significance number of observations = 285 lr chi2 (36) = 154.76 prob > chi2 = 0.0000*** log likelihood = -234.93514 pseudo r2 = 0.2478 the directions of responses of most of the socioeconomic variables are as per the hypothesis. some exceptions are farm income and credit. the results deviate from the findings by khaledi et al. (2011) which showed positive relation of farmer’s age with practicing organic farming. the findings suggest that age has a highly significant negative impact on practicing organic and partial organic farming. it could be because with age, one’s capacity to supply labor diminishes which is very much required in the case of organic farming. as benefit from organic farming materializes only after few years of conversion, it could also be that older farmers are less willing to try new technologies because of their diminishing enthusiasm given that they will be retired soon in the near future, thus leaving less time to enjoy the benefit. from table 3, which shows result from the calculation of marginal effect of variables on adoption of a farming system, it could be observed that a year increase in age will decrease the probability of organic farming by 0.62% but increase that of inorganic farming by 1.13%. table 3: calculation of marginal effect of socioeconomic variables on adoption of a farming system variables organic partial inorganic coefficient p-value coefficient p-value coefficient p-value agehhh -0.01 0.088* -0.01 0.147 0.01 0.001*** eduhhh -0.002 0.821 -0.004 0.577 0.01 0.442 occuhhh 0.08 0.359 -0.06 0.510 -0.02 0.801 labor 0.01 0.566 -0.01 0.742 -0.01 0.796 livestock 0.04 0.061* -0.01 0.767 -0.03 0.166 farm_size -0.02 0.859 -0.06 0.552 0.08 0.398 ln_farm_income -0.04 0.377 0.08 0.119 -0.03 0.465 ln_non-farm_income 0.01 0.300 -0.001 0.914 -0.01 0.312 membership 0.13 0.115 0.09 0.292 -0.22 0.012** training 0.13 0.000*** -0.02 0.619 -0.11 0.004*** vdc_shivanagar -0.04 0.703 -0.19 0.034** 0.22 0.036** vdc_mangalpur -0.29 0.000*** 0.06 0.536 0.24 0.013** agri_center -0.03 0.097* 0.03 0.105 0.0002 0.989 livestock_center 0.02 0.423 -0.03 0.187 0.01 0.591 agrovet -0.05 0.117 0.03 0.188 0.02 0.407 mkt_distance 0.01 0.411 -0.01 0.525 -0.002 0.837 credit -0.06 0.587 -0.21 0.046** 0.27 0.056* commercialization -0.06 0.358 -0.07 0.283 0.12 0.029** note: *** at 1%, ** at 5% and * at 10% level of significance with higher livestock holding (which are the fundamental components of organic farming), farmers would be encouraged to take up organic farming. a unit increase in lsu will increase the probability of adopting organic farming by 3.93%. membership in a group formed for the purpose of organic farming also increases the prospect of adopting full or partial organic farming, significant asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 1-12 9 at 5%. being a member of such group, farmers are provided with various learning platforms such as training, knowledge generation and information gathering as a result of an interaction with various stakeholders. these members meet on a monthly basis to update with their saving and loan activities. besides, these group also meet on other occasions that are irregular in nature such as meeting with ngos, organic certifying inspector or other outside parties; for study trips; and while selling organic products through a cooperative 6 . membership decreases probability of practicing inorganic farming by almost 22% compared to non-member households. but membership does not alone effect farmers’ decision to convert as not all farmers are practicing organic farming or engaged in related activities with the similar keenness. that is why training plays a major role in adoption of organic farming which is highly significant as well. taking one more training will increase the probability of organic farming by 13% and decrease inorganic farming by 11%.training is provided by academicians, non-governmental and government organizations. one of the regular trainings conducted is ffs. the group usually meet on a weekly basis for ffs where they learn-by-doing by assessing one crop at a time from as early as its plantation period till the time of harvest. farmers usually divide groups to be in charge of growing a certain crop through various organic means such as using farm yard manure, bio-pesticides, mulching and so on. they discuss about the amount of inputs that are required, problems related to pests and diseases and its management and finally the amount harvested. such learning process can take up to 16 weeks for each crop. through such learning, farmers then try to replicate the most successful method in practice as well. compared to inorganic farming, there is less probability of practicing partial organic farming, significant at 5% in shivanagar vdc and organic farming, significant at 1% in mangalpur vdc. farmers of shivanagar vdc have almost 19% less and 22% more chance of practicing partial organic farming and inorganic farming, respectively, compared to farmers of phoolbari vdc. similarly, farmers in mangalpur vdc has 29% less and 24% higher chance of practicing organic and inorganic farming, respectively, compared to farmers of other phoolbari vdc. thus, it can also be suggested that the number of years these groups have been into existence and how vibrant they are into learning through programs such as ffs also has positive impact on more farmers practicing organic farming or partial organic farming. access to credit actually decreases the adoption of partial organic farming, significant at 5%. those who have taken credit for farming purpose will decrease the probability of adopting partial organic farming by 21% and increase inorganic farming by 27%, significant at 5% and 10%, respectively. this suggests that farmers have been using credit to have access to inputs used for inorganic farming. higher the commercialization rate is, less will be the likelihood of practicing both organic and partial organic farming, significant at 10%. this means that market oriented farmers are less likely to practice organic farming or even partial organic farming. a unit increase in commercialization rate will increase the probability of practicing inorganic farming by 12%, significant at 5%. 4. conclusion and recommendations even though the initial assumption was to survey equal number of organic farmers and inorganic farmers, large numbers of partial organic farmers are also identified due to which the subject of this study is divided into three categories. the study uses multinomial logit model to assess the factors influencing the decision of farmers adopting one of these farming systems and marginal effect to analyze to what extent these factors can impact their decision. from this study it can be recommended that while introducing organic farming, households with higher livestock holding should be taken into account. most importantly establishment of a group for the purpose of organic farming and the training provided through it plays crucial role in knowledge generation and information dissemination among farmers. being a member of this kind of group alone does not guarantee that all farmers will undeniably end up practicing organic farming but it certainly has asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 1-12 10 positive impact on more farmers following organic farming or at least partial organic farming. additionally, the longer these groups exist with more learning programs such as farmers’ field school, higher will be its impact which is also visible across three village development committees. thus, forming such group could be an efficient tool to introduce organic farming on a larger scale. end note 1 labor force unit (lfu) is the standard unit of labor force which takes people aged 14-59, irrespective of their sex, as 1 and those below 14 and above 59 as 0.5 2 livestock unit (lsu) is aggregate of different types of livestock kept at household in standard unit which is calculated as: 1 adult buffalo = 1 lsu, 1 immature buffalo = 0.5 lsu, 1 cow = 0.8 lsu, 1 calf = 0.4 lsu, 1 pig = 0.3 lsu, 1 sheep or goat = 0.2 lsu and 1 poultry = 0.1 lsu (cbs, 2003) 3 nrs. stands for nepalese rupees, us$1 = nrs. 98.56 (source: nepal rastra bank, march 31, 2013) 4 illiterate: cannot read or write at all 5 basic: can do simple reading and writing 6 selling to other cities is only done through a cooperative in phoolbari vdc and is only limited to cereal crops such as rice, wheat, buckwheat, paddy, beans and lentils. vegetables, as of present, could not be exported due to its easily perishable nature and lack of other facilities to maintain its quality. acknowledgement the authors would like to thank strategic center for global internship (g.ecbo) program, hiroshima university and the fuji xerox setsutaro kobayashi memorial fund for their generous financial support to undertake this study. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adesope, o. m., matthews-njoku, e. c., oguzor, n. s., & ugwuja, v. c. (2011). effect of socioeconomic characteristics of farmers on their adoption of organic farming practices. in crop production technologies, edited by peeyush sharma and vikas abrol, 211-220. rijeka: in tech. adhikari, r. k. (2009). economics of organic vs. inorganic carrot production in nepal. the journal of agriculture and environment, 10, 23-38. adhikari, r. k. (2011). economics of organic rice production. the journal of agriculture and environment, 12, 97-103. aicc (2006). agriculture perspective plan: implementation action plan preparation. lalitpur, nepal. agriculture information and communication center (aicc). alexopoulosa, g., koutsouris, a., & tzouramani, i. (2010). should i stay or should i go? factors affecting farmers’ decision to convert to organic farming or to abandon it. ayuya, o. i., waluse, kenneth, s., & gido o. e. (2012). multinomial logit analysis of small-scale farmers’ choice of organic soil management practices in bungoma county, kenya. current research journal of social sciences, 4(4), 314-322. bhat, b. r., & ghimire, r. (2008). promotion of organic vegetable production through farmers' field school in chitwan, nepal. modena, italy: 16th ifoam organic world congress, international federation of organic agriculture movement (ifoam). bhatta, g. d. (2010). stakeholder and spatial perspectives of organic farming in nepal. deutschland: lap lambert academic publishing. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 1-12 11 bhatta, g. d., & doppler, w. (2010). socio-economic and environmental aspects of farming practices in the peri-urban hinterlands of nepal. the journal of environment and agriculture, 11, 26-39. bhatta, g. d., doppler, w., & kc, k. b. (2009). potentials of organic agriculture in nepal. the journal of agriculture and environment, 10, 1-11. fao (2013). country data: nepal. august 17. http://www.fao.org/nr/water/espim/country/nepal/index.stm. halberg, n., alroe, h. f., knudsen, m. t., & kristensen, e. s. (2006). global development of organic agriculture: challenges and prospects. cabi publishing. hamilton, l. c. (2009). statistics with stata. california, usa: brooks/cole. kafle, b. (2011). factors affecting adoption of organic vegetable farming in chitwan district, nepal. world journal of agricultural sciences, 7(5), 604-606, khaledi, m., weseen, s., sawyer, e., ferguson, s., & richard, g. (2011). factors influencing partial and complete adoption of organic farming practices in saskatchewan, canada. canadian journal of agricultural economics, 58(1), 37-56. moad (2015). ministry of agriculture development (moad). http://www.doanepal.gov.np/. nepal, g., budhathoki, p., & gurung. d., (2011). nepal status paper: united nations conference on sustainable development 2012 (rio+20). kathmandu, nepal: national planning commission. organiconepal (2006). linking organic farmers in incentive sharing mechanisms through promoting local marketing systems: an initiative from himalayan kingdom of nepal. chitwan, nepal: organic agriculture research and production co. (organiconepal), pvt. ltd. pattanapant, a., & ganesh, p., shivakoti (2009). opportunities and constraints of organic agriculture in chiang mai province, thailand. asia-pacific development journal, 16(1), 115-147. pindyck, r. s., & rubinfield, d. (1981). econometric models and economic forecasts. new york, usa: mcgraw hill. pokhrel, d. m., & pant, k. p. (2009). perspective of organic agriculture and policy concerns in nepal. the journal of agriculture and environment, 10 89-99. samie, a. a., abedullah, m., & kouser, s. (2010). economics of conventional and partial organic farming systems and implications for resource utilization in punjab (pakistan). pakistan economic and social review, 48(2), 245-260. samriddhi (2011). commercialization of agriculture in nepal. kathmandu, nepal: samriddhi the prosperity foundation. sarker, m. a., itohara, y., & hoque, m. 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(2004). global organics. accessed 3 16, 2012. http://newhope360.com/agriculture/global-organics. wfp (2009). the future of food: creating sustainable communities through climate adaptation. accessed 10 12, 2011. http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/f1aa71e084c1d47b852576bd00634 d1a-full_report.pdf. http://www.fao.org/nr/water/espim/country/nepal/index.stm http://www.doanepal.gov.np/ http://newhope360.com/agriculture/global-organics http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/f1aa71e084c1d47b852576bd00634d1a-full_report.pdf http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/f1aa71e084c1d47b852576bd00634d1a-full_report.pdf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(1)2015: 1-12 12 wooldridge, j. m. (2002). econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. cambridge, usa: mit press. annex i: groups formed for the purpose of organic farming in each vdcs features of group / vdcs phoolbari shivanagar mangalpur (a) mangalpur (b) mangalpur (c) group type cooperative informal informal informal informal established (year) 2005 2010 2010 2011 2011 members: male 42 9 1 1 4 female 83 35 29 29 26 total 125 44 30 30 30 farmers field school (times conducted) 13 6 2 1 1 certified twice never never never never member saving and loan facility yes yes yes yes yes source: field survey (2013, 2014) effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 23 an evaluation of mortality of sitophilus oryzae treated with selected insecticides via filter paper and food impregnated method ismeazilla, m. b. a, mohd rasdi, z. b, dzolkhifli, o. c, norhayu, a. c, izaitul aida, i.d, mohd faizol, k. d, muhammad shakir, z.d, nur fakriyah, a. d, noor shuhaina, s. m. d a post graduate students; faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, malaysia b associate professor; faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara jasin, melaka, malaysia c lecturer, faculty of agriculture, universiti putra malaysia, serdang, malaysia d post graduate students; faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, malaysia  dddpim@melaka.uitm.edu.my (corresponding author) article history: received: 31-aug-2019 accepted: 13-feb-2020 online available: 26-feb2020 keywords: mortality, antifeedants, sitophilus oryzae, laboratory assessment abstract laboratory bioassay were conducted at university putra malaysia in order to evaluate the toxicity and the antifeedant activity of five insecticides which is cypermethrin, malathion, prevathon, rotenone and also spinosad against the adult of s.oryzae by using the filter paper impregnation and food impregnation method for 1, 3, 5 and 7 days. rotenone found to be effectives in toxicity via filter paper impregnation method based on the lc50 values with 0.003% while the other was 0.04%, 0.017%, 0.106% and 1.109% were indicated spinosad, malathion, cypermethrin and prevathon. the less effective was prevathon. food impregnation method showed that the effective insecticides was spinosad with lc50 values 0.001%. the lowest was prevathon with lc50 values 5.776%. in addition, the other insecticides showed lc50 values was 0.003%, 0.05% and 0.875% which indicated malathion, cypermethrin and rotenone. for the antifeedant activity via feeding deterrent index (fdi), it showed that, the lowest fdi was spinosad with 0.535% while the highest was rotenone with 1.756%. the other showed 0.63%, 0.869% and 0.949% indicated malathion, cypermethrin and prevathon respectively. as conclusion, most effective insecticides against adult of s.oryzae was spinosad because able to control the insect at the prepared concentration in both method. contribution/ originality the current study used the right amount of dosage of insecticides to prevent the losses to rice industries and able to reduce the infestation from the insect during storage. hence, rice industries will able to control the insect pest and it will increase farmers profit in the rice industrial sector. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.23.38 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite ismeazilla, m. b., mohd rasdi, z., dzolkhifli, o., norhayu, a. izaitul aida, i., mohd faizol, k., muhammad shakir, z., nur fakriyah, a. and noor shuhaina, s. m. (2020). an evaluation of mortality of sitophilus oryzae treated with selected insecticides via filter paper and food impregnated method. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 23-38. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 23-38 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:dddpim@melaka.uitm.edu.my http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.23.38 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 24 1. introduction majority people in the world regard rice as the second most widely grown cereal crop. in developing countries, most of the nation are counting on the rice for food calories and protein (irri, 2004). hence, this rice (oryzae sativa linn.) is the most important crop and staple foods around the world’s population. in asia, world’s rice is produced and consumed more than 90% every year (spencer et al., 2009). for example, thailand is one of the major rice exporter countries of the world, which is 70% of export good and values over 114,077 million baht a year (agroeconomic, 2007). the rice plant is vulnerable to many types of pests, from the seeds to the stored grains. the rice losses occur when milled grains are attacked by stored product insects and the most important one is the rice weevil (sitophilus oryzae l.) (coleoptera: curculionidae). damaging rice by the s. oryzae has seriously affected the availability of food for a large number of people worldwide (adedire and lajide, 2003). without protection, the pests rapidly grow, develop, and damage the stored rice grains. the quality of rice grains is so poor that they do not meet the requirement for normal consumption, exportation, and industrial purposes (campbell, 2008). according to sarker et al. (2006), qualitative and quantitative decline of stored agricultural and animal origin products resulted from invasions of around 70 moths’ species, 355 species of mites as well as more than 600 species of beetle pests. haque et al. (2000) infer that this damage might reduce about 20-30% in tropical zone and 5 to 10% in the temperate zone. to manage the pests during storing of rice, the usage of methyl phosphine (ph3) and bromide (mebr) may lead to several problems (negahban et al., 2006). consequently, new strategies on how to manage the pests should be develop in crop industries. for instance, based on huang and ho (1998) an extract from higher plants can produced a lot of natural pesticides. these type of products will give a lower toxicity to mammals as well as keep environments safe and also give advantages to human such as medicinal properties (negahban et al., 2006). it is important to reduce the population of the insect pests such as sitophilus species in order to maintain the quantity and quality of stored-product particularly cereals. both s. oryzae (l.) and s. granaries (l.) are the most destructive and widespread insect pests of stored grains (beckett et al., 1994). the quality as well as quantity of the rice grain may loss due to these type of pests which feed inside the rice grain (kucerova et al., 2003). in order to control the insect pests of stored products the synthetic pesticide has been considered as more effective and accessible (huang and subramanyam, 2005). 2. material and methods 2.1. rearing of the test insects colonies of sitophilus oryzae were obtained from toxicology laboratory stock culture of universiti putra malaysia (upm) and reared on whole rice grains initially 13 to 14% moisture content in large aquarium container under the laboratory conditions (rahman and talukder, 2006). the subcultures and the tests were carried out under the same conditions. before rearing process, the rice grains was sterilized by using oven at 50˚c for 20 to 30 minutes because it consider a normal temperature to sterile the rice grains (chen, 2003). for rearing process, each subcultures which is about 200 s.oryzae were placed for every 40 small aquarium covered with muslin cloth that contain rice grains in order to have a similar stage of age which is about 7 to 14 days old. for the feeding and oviposition process, the adults were kept for three days at the room temperature and humidity. then, these 7 to 14 days old adults were removed from the jar after six days in order to have a new stage of age as mention above. at 27 ± 1°c and with 75 ± 5% of relative humidity (rh), these eggs were incubated for development and hatching process. these subcultures were kept safe inside a large tray that have been poured with water in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 25 order to prevent from any small ant and to prevent from any unwanted situation happened. then, after appropriate 45 days old adult of sitophilus oryzae were used in the experiment. 2.2. procedure for mass rearing of sitophilus oryzae from upm’s stock culture 5kg rice grains were used for stock culture. rice grain was sterilized by using oven at 50°c in because consider as normal temperature for sterile the rice grains. rice grain was placed in tray to let it dry for 10-15 minutes. after fully dried, 200 g rice grains was placed in small aquarium with 200 s. oryzae from stock culture upm adult were used for rearing. then, reared for about two months for adult emergence. 2.3. procedures to prepare the test solution in this experiment for impregnated filter paper and food methods in this experiment, the test solutions for each of tested insecticide were prepared. five types of selected insecticides were used are cypermethrin, malathion, prevathon, spinosad and also rotenone. by using electric weighting balance, all type of insecticides were measured based on the recommended rate that have been calculated in this study by using the equation m1v1=m2v2. hence, the dilution for each tested insecticide have been identified. solution for total six different concentrations of each insecticide were placed in conical flask, including control after serial dilution were done for eight replication. then, solutions ready for experiment test. 2.4. experimental design the experimental design used for this experiment was completely randomised design (crd) because only two variables used in this experiment which is concentration and type of insecticides. 2.5. determination range-finder of the chemicals recommended rate was identified from others previous studied that have working on the same insecticides. the recommended rate as stock solution used was 0.10% for the rotenone, 12.19% for the malathion, 1.00% for the cypermethrin, prevathon and spinosad respectively in this experiment. distilled water was used as a control. hence, pre-test have been done based on each recommended rate and active ingredient for each selected insecticide. the active ingredient was identified based on the type of insecticide used. by using dilution equation (m1v1 = m2v2), where (m1) is referred as concentration in molarity (moles/litres) of the concentrated solution while (m2) is the concentration in molarity of the dilute solution which is after solvent have been added. besides that, (v1) is the volume of the concentrated solution while (v2) is referred to volume of the dilute solution. hence, the volume of the concentrated for the pre-test was calculated. 100ml of distilled water were used for volume of the dilute solution (v2). hence, the difference concentrations of insecticides were tested for each method that has been used for contact toxicity and also for the antifeedant tests. the tables 1 and 2 below showed the different concentration between five insecticides. table 1: five difference concentrations of insecticides were tested on the sitophilus oryzae for contact toxicity insecticides recommended rate (%) concentrations (%) c1 c2 c3 c4 c5 cypermethrin 1.00 0.500 0.250 0.125 0.062 0.031 malathion 12.19 0.120 0.060 0.030 0.015 0.007 prevathon 1.00 0.120 0.060 0.040 0.020 0.010 rotenone 0.10 0.010 0.005 0.002 0.001 0.0006 spinosad 1.00 0.500 0.250 0.125 0.062 0.0312 note: c1 – c5 indicate the concentration of the insecticides asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 26 table 2: five difference concentrations of insecticides were tested on the sitophilus oryzae for antifeedant test insecticides recommended rate (%) concentrations (%) c1 c2 c3 c4 c5 cypermethrin 1.00 0.125 0.062 0.031 0.015 0.008 malathion 12.19 0.012 0.001 0.0006 0.0003 0.0001 prevathon 1.00 0.120 0.080 0.040 0.020 0.010 rotenone 0.10 0.010 0.005 0.002 0.001 0.0006 spinosad 1.00 0.100 0.050 0.020 0.012 0.006 note: c1 – c5 indicate the concentration of the insecticides 2.6. toxicity bioassays 2.6.1. insecticide impregnated filter paper method the contact toxicity for each of the insecticides which are cypermethrin, malathion, prevathon, rotenone and also spinosad was determined in an impregnated filter paper dip technique for this bioassay. for each solution of the insecticides, 600 µl were applied by using pipette to whatman no.1 filter paper which about 9 cm diameter. in this experiment, serial dilutions of the insecticides were prepared using distilled water. after that, the distilled water were used as a control purpose and then was allowed to evaporate for 10 minutes in order to make sure it fully dried. then, the filter paper that have been cooperate with the insecticides were placed in the petri dish with 10 adult insect were released for this experiment. in order to prevent the insects from escaping, the petri dish were sealed by using the parafilm and then it were kept in laboratory condition at 28 ºc and with relative humidity is at 70 %. the mortality for each insect were recorded in excel software after 1, 3, 5, and 7 days at the same time while the lc50 which is lethal concentration values were analysed by using epa probit analysis. 2.6.2. insecticide impregnated food method the toxicity for each of insecticides which are cypermethrin, malathion, prevathon, rotenone and also spinosad was determined by weighting 2.5g of rice grains on plastic weight boat by using electrical weighing balance. then, it was soaked in the solution of insecticides that have been prepared through serial dilution with a different concentration and then it was allowed to evaporate until it fully dried which is about 15 to 20 minutes on the filter paper with 9cm in diameter because it easy to identified whether it fully dried or not. after fully dried, the rice grain that have been impregnated with insecticides were placed in vials of (30ml in volume) by using spatula. in order to prevent any incorrect results, the different spatula were used when transferring process into the vials have been made. then, the same amounts of the rice grain also were soaked with distilled water for the control purpose and have been indicated as 0% concentration. after rice grains are fully dried, the 10 insects were placed into the vials and the data was collected after 1, 3, 5, and 7 days. 3. results 3.1. impregnated filter paper method 3.1.1. toxicity bioassay against adults of sitophilus oryzae via impregnated filter paper method the results obtained from impregnated filter paper method showed a significant different between the five concentrations with distilled water. cypermethrin showed the highest mortality which is 7% while rotenone showed the lowest mortality which is 0% among the insecticides used against the adult of s.oryzae after one day exposure at concentration 0.500 and 0.010%. cypermethrin was found to be most toxic insecticides with percentage mortality of 100% followed by spinosad with a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 27 percentage mortality of 98.70% against adult of s.oryzae after 5 days of exposure at the same concentration were 0.500%. there is no significant difference between rotenone and malathion on the percentage mortality of 87.50% and 97.50%, respectively of insect after 5 days of exposure to the insecticides although they were comprised of the different concentrations which are at 0.010 and 0.120%. the lowest percentage of mortality was 40% obtained from prevathon insecticides after 5 days of exposure. based from result obtained, all the concentrations are no significant difference against sitophilus oryzae during the 7 days of exposure via filter paper impregnation method. however, the study revealed that the mortality of adult of s.oryzae was increased with the increasing of concentration after 7 days of exposure table 3. all the insecticides showed no significantly difference at 7 days of exposure except for cypermethrin at concentration 0.062, 0.031 and 0.125%, respectively, and also spinosad at concentration 0.031%. overall, the highest percentage is 100% of mortality were cypermethrin while prevathon showed the less toxic insecticide via filter paper impregnation method compared to other because showed the lowest percentage of mortality which is 96.30%. table 3: the toxicity of the tested insecticides against adult of sitophilus oryzae via impregnated filter paper method treatments concentration (%) mortality (%) day 1 day 3 day 5 day 7 cypermethrin 0.000 0.00 ± 0.00d 0.00 ± 0.00d 0.00 ± 0.00d 0.00 ± 0.00d 0.031 0.25 ± 0.16cd 1.00 ± 0.27cd 2.63 ± 0.26c 6.00 ± 0.80c 0.062 0.75 ± 0.25cd 1.88 ± 0.29bc 2.88 ± 0.39c 7.40 ± 0.38cb 0.125 1.50 ± 0.27c 3.13 ± 0.40a 4.63 ± 0.78b 8.50 ± 0.50ab 0.250 5.37 ± 0.59b 7.00 ± 0.46a 8.50 ± 0.42a 9.88 ± 0.13a 0.500 7.00 ± 0.46a 8.37 ± 0.38a 10.00 ± 0.87a 10.00 ± 0.00a malathion 0.000 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.00 ± 0.00d 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.007 0.13 ± 0.13b 0.38 ± 0.18b 6.63 ± 0.57c 10.00 ± 0.00a 0.015 0.38 ± 0.18b 1.13 ± 0.35b 7.50 ± 0.57bc 10.00 ± 0.00a 0.030 0.88 ± 0.40b 1.50 ± 0.28b 8.50 ± 0.33ab 10.00 ± 0.00a 0.060 1.25 ± 0.37b 5.25 ± 0.84a 9.0 ± 0.33ab 10.00 ± 0.00a 0.120 4.38 ± 1.25a 7.13 ± 0.69a 9.75 ± 0.16a 10.00 ± 0.00a prevathon 0.000 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.00 ± 0.00c 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.010 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.13 ± 0.13bc 3.13 ± 0.40a 8.38 ± 0.50a 0.020 0.13 ± 0.13ab 0.38 ± 0.18abc 3.25 ± 0.41a 8.50 ± 0.42a 0.040 0.25 ± 0.13b 0.63 ± 0.26abc 3.50 ± 0.42a 8.63 ± 0.60a 0.060 0.38 ± 0.18ab 0.88 ± 0.23ab 3.88 ± 0.44a 9.25 ± 0.31a 0.120 0.75 ± 0.16a 1.38 ± 0.26a 4.00 ± 0.38a 9.63 ± 0.18a rotenone 0.000 0.00 ± 0.00a 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.0006 0.13 ± 0.13a 1.00 ± 0.42ab 7.63 ± 0.42a 9.63 ± 0.18a 0.001 0.00 ± 0.00a 1.38 ± 0.26ab 7.88 ± 0.48a 9.75 ± 0.16a 0.002 0.13 ± 0.13a 1.63 ± 0.42a 8.38 ± 0.32a 10.00 ± 0.00a 0.005 0.13 ± 0.13a 1.88 ± 0.40a 8.50 ± 0.38a 10.00 ± 0.00a 0.010 0.00 ± 0.00a 2.25 ± 0.31a 8.75 ± 0.37a 10.00 ± 0.00a spinosad 0.000 0.00 ± 0.00c 0.00 ± 0.00c 0.00 ± 0.00d 0.00 ± 0.00c 0.031 0.38 ± 0.26c 2.63 ± 0.26b 7.00 ± 0.46c 7.88 ± 0.44b 0.062 0.88 ± 0.30bc 3.75 ± 0.37b 8.50 ± 0.33b 9.25 ± 0.25a 0.125 1.88 ± 0.40ab 5.25 ± 0.37a 9.00 ± 0.27ab 9.88 ± 0.13a 0.250 2.50 ± 0.50a 5.63 ± 0.46a 9.25 ± 0.25ab 10.00 ± 0.00a 0.500 3.25 ± 0.37a 6.63 ± 0.32a 9.88 ± 0.13a 10.00 ± 0.00a control 0 0 0 0 0 values with the same letters in a column are not significantly different (p˂0.05) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 28 3.1.2. the lc50 values of tested insecticides against the sitophilus oryzae adult via impregnated filter paper method the lc50 values of each tested insecticides were used to evaluate the toxicity against the adult of sitophilus oryzae shows in table 4. among the tested insecticides, rotenone showed the highest toxic insecticides with the lowest lc50 values of (0.003 µl/100ml of h2o) against the adult of s.oryzae via impregnated filter paper method. while, the prevathon insecticides demonstrated the highest lc50 values of (1.109 µl/100ml of h2o). hence, it becomes the less toxic insecticides toward adult of s.oryzae. the other insecticides showed an average in toxicity against the insect were (0.040 to 0.106 µl/100ml of h2o). based on the mortality result, the rotenone are able to kill half of the population although after 3 days of exposure. in this case, rotenone showed the lowest value of lc50 because due to the highest percentage of mortality at 7 days of exposure compared to others with the lowest concentration used. as conclusion, based on the lc50 (0.003 µl/100ml of h2o) values the toxicity of the insecticides tested after 7 days of exposure in increasing order were prevathon ≥ cypermethrin ≥ spinosad ≥ malathion ≥ rotenone via impregnated filter paper method. the mortality of the adult of s.oryzae was affected by the concentration of the tested insecticides. the time exposure also might be the most important role in determining the level of toxicity of the insecticides. table 4: the lc50 values of the tested insecticides using impregnated filter paper method against the adult of sitophilus oryzae treatment lc50 (µl/100ml of h2o) lower limit upper limit chisquare slope cypermethrin (5.5% w/w) malathion (84% w/w) prevathon (5% w/w) rotenone (0.1% w/w) spinosad (2.5% w/w) 0.106 0.017 1.109 0.003 0.040 0.087 0.010 <1.109 <0.003 0.013 0.128 0.025 >1.109 >0.003 0.068 5.779 2.269 0.135 0.015 0.498 1.626 0.778 0.282 0.135 0.646 3.2. impregnated food method 3.2.1. toxicity bioassay against adults of sitophilus oryzae via impregnated food method table 5 shows the comparison between the percentage mortality of s.oryzae on different insecticide concentrations via impregnated food method. the results showed all the insecticides are significant different at 7 days after exposure against the adult. spinosad showed the highest mortality which is 100% among the tested insecticides at lowest concentration (0.010%) excluding the control while prevathon and rotenone, both showed the lowest percentage of mortality against the adult of s.oryzae after 7 days of exposure. the results also showed a significant different at the highest concentration for each of the tested insecticides due the different in dosage that have been used after 7 days of exposure. spinosad and prevathon were applied with same concentration but spinosad showed the highest percentage of mortality with 100% while prevathon showed the lowest percentage of mortality in ranges 6.3 to 16.30% after 7 days of exposure. besides that, based on the concentration used, percentages of mortality after 7 days of exposure in increasing order were starting with rotenone ≥ cypermethrin ≥ malathion. moreover, although cypermethrin high in concentration used compared to malathion and rotenone but malathion showed the highest percentage of mortality between both insecticides with in ranges of 16.30 to 100%, respectively after 7 days of exposure. rotenone failed to kill half of the population of the adult of s.oryzae although after 7 days of exposure via food impregnation method. overall, mortality adult of sitophilus oryzae increased with the increasing the concentration of the insecticides and all the concentration were differed significantly compared with the control at 7 days after exposure. as conclusion, based on the percentage of mortality, spinosad insecticides was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 29 the most effectives insecticides via food impregnation method compared to other because it competent to kill half of the population of the adult as early one day after exposure. table 5: the toxicity of the tested insecticides against sitophilus oryzae by using the impregnated food method treatment dosage (%) mortality (%) day 1 day 3 day 5 day 7 cypermethrin 0.000 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.00 ± 0.00d 0.00 ± 0.00d 0.00 ± 0.00d 0.008 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.25 ± 0.16d 1.63 ± 0.46cd 2.25 ± 0.41c 0.015 0.13 ± 0.13b 1.00 ± 0.33c 2.88 ± 0.35c 5.38 ± 0.65b 0.031 0.00 ± 0.00b 2.13 ± 0.40c 7.13 ± 0.74b 8.50 ± 0.378a 0.062 0.75 ± 0.31ab 4.75 ± 0.45b 8.50 ± 0.38ab 9.38 ± 0.26a 0.125 1.75 ± 0.62a 6.38 ± 0.50a 9.13 ± 0.30a 9.38 ± 0.26a malathion 0.000 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.00 ± 0.00c 0.00 ± 0.00d 0.00 ± 0.00e 0.00015 0.13 ± 0.13b 0.25 ± 0.16bc 0.63 ± 0.18cd 1.25 ± 0.37de 0.0003 0.38 ± 0.18b 0.63 ± 0.26bc 1.13 ± 0.23cd 2.63 ± 0.57cd 0.0006 0.50 ± 0.19b 0.88 ± 0.30bc 1.50 ± 0.50c 4.00 ± 0.42bc 0.0012 0.75 ± 0.25b 1.88 ± 0.40b 4.25 ± 0.49b 5.00 ± 0.54b 0.012 5.75 ± 0.88a 6.25 ± 0.81a 9.38 ± 0.40a 10.00 ± 0.00a prevathon 0.000 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.00 ± 0.00c 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.010 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.13 ± 0.13bc 0.38 ± 0.26b 0.63 ± 0.26ab 0.020 0.13 ± 0.12ab 0.25 ± 0.16bc 0.50 ± 0.27b 0.63 ± 0.26ab 0.040 0.25 ± 0.16ab 0.50 ± 0.20abc 0.63 ± 0.18ab 0.88 ± 0.23ab 0.060 0.38 ± 0.18ab 0.75 ± 0.16ab 0.88 ± 0.23ab 1.13 ± 0.23a 0.120 0.75 ± 0.25a 1.13 ± 0.23a 1.50 ± 0.33a 1.63 ± 0.38a rotenone 0.000 0.00 ± 0.00a 0.00 ± 0.00a 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.00 ± 0.00c 0.00063 0.00 ± 0.00a 0.25 ± 0.16a 0.13 ± 0.13b 0.25 ± 0.16c 0.00125 0.13 ± 0.13a 0.13 ± 0.13a 0.38 ± 0.18ab 0.50 ± 0.19bc 0.0025 0.13 ± 0.13a 0.25 ± 0.16a 0.63 ± 0.18ab 0.88 ± 0.30abc 0.005 0.13 ± 0.13a 0.25 ± 0.16a 0.75 ± 0.25ab 1.25 ± 0.25ab 0.010 0.25 ± 0.25a 0.38 ± 0.26a 1.00 ± 0.28a 1.63 ± 0.26a spinosad 0.000 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.00 ± 0.00d 0.00 ± 0.00c 0.00 ± 0.00b 0.010 1.00 ± 0.39b 6.75 ± 0.62c 9.63 ± 0.18b 10.00 ± 0.00a 0.020 4.63 ± 1.21a 6.88 ± 0.61bc 10.00 ± 0.00a 10.00 ± 0.00a 0.040 5.38 ± 0.53a 8.00 ± 0.42abc 10.00 ± 0.00a 10.00 ± 0.00a 0.080 6.38 ± 0.63a 8.63 ± 0.26ab 10.00 ± 0.00a 10.00 ± 0.00a 0.120 5.50 ± 0.50a 9.38 ± 0.324a 10.00 ± 0.00a 10.00 ± 0.00a control 0 0 0 0 0 values with the same letters in a column are not significantly different (p ˂ 0.05) 3.2.2. the lc50 values of tested insecticides against the sitophilus oryzae adult via impregnated food method the lc50 values of the tested insecticides at different concentration were used to evaluate the mortality of rice weevil as shown in table 6. among the tested insecticides it was observed that spinosad was the most toxic insecticides with the lowest lc50 value of 0.001% compared to other insecticides. hence, it could provide the strong toxicity on the insect compared to prevathon were showed the lowest toxic against the adult of s.oryzae with lc50 values of 5.776%. the other insecticides showed a moderated toxicity against the adult of s.oryzae with lc50 values of 0.003, 0.050 and 0.875%, respectively. overall, all the insecticides showed significant higher control against adult of s.oryzae via food impregnation method except for prevathon insecticides. based on the lc50 values, it can be conclude that the toxicity of the tested insecticides after 7 days of exposure in increasing order were prevathon ≥ rotenone ≥ cypermethrin ≥ malathion ≥ spinosad. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 30 table 6: the lc50 values of the tested insecticides using food impregnation method against the adult of sitophilus oryzae treatment lc50 (µl/100ml of h2o) lower limit upper limit chisquare slope cypermethrin (5.5% w/w) malathion (84% w/w) prevathon (5% w/w) rotenone (0.1% w/w) spinosad (2.5% w/w) 0.050 0.003 5.776 0.875 0.001 0.040 0.002 <0.719 <0.073 0.000 0.064 0.004 >0.719 >0.073 0.003 3.220 0.661 0.368 0.242 1.106 1.402 1.238 0.720 0.683 0.579 4. discussion in this study, different toxicity level for five types of insecticides against the adults of s.oryzae was determined. besides that, each of the insecticides was applied for six different concentration based on the dosage recommendation from previous study including control that have been done in the laboratory condition. hence, all the toxicities for each of the tested insecticide which are cypermethrin, malathion, prevathon, rotenone and also spinosad showed a various level of toxicities in this experiment after 7 days of exposure. so that, some of the insecticides are able to kill the adults of s.oryzae in a short time when tested in the laboratory bioassay while some of them showed a slower mortality rate within the time of exposure. among of them, some of the insecticides that have been tested showed a less toxic to the adult of s.oryzae. since, the purpose in this study is to identify the effectiveness of the insecticides against the adult of sitophilus oryzae, hence we able to identify the purpose in this study. in the present study, after one day of exposure to the insecticides by using the filter paper bioassay, it was found that the rotenone gave the lowest value of mortality compared to the other four insecticides tested against adult of s. oryzae while the highest mortality for day one was cypermethrin. since rotenone showed the lowest mortality for day one, hence it become less toxic to the s. oryzae. next, the result for days three and five showed prevathon was the lowest mortality compared to others four insecticides while the highest still cypermethrin. second highest in toxicity was rotenone. this was similarly with other plant study auch as nukenine et al. (2011) reported that maximum mortality of 98.8 % was achieved to adult s. zeamais with neemazal at a concentration of 12 g/kg seed after 14 days of treatment and greatly reduced early progeny emergence. however, after days seven of exposure to insecticides the highest mortality was malathion and the lowest was prevathon. for instance, study by chintzoglou et al., (2008) for l. bostrychophila, chlorantraniliprole which is active ingredient for prevathon showed less effective in maize and whole rice than in barley, oats, peeled rice and wheat. this might due to the mode of action which is stomach and contact. the mode of action also played an important role in increasing the mortality of the adult of s. oryzae in order to give a faster knock down when the insect fed the rice grains (adeyemi, 2010). the concentrations used and the mode of action of insects played an important role in this experiment as indicate the toxicity of the insecticides (kavallieratos et al., 2011). this can be proved by iqbal et al., (2012), malathion as a highly active insecticide to adult of s. oryzae that could be due to differences in the application of pesticide and environmental conditions. when organisms were treated with the insecticides, continuous nerve impulse transmission due to inhibition of acetylcholine esterase may in turn result sudden death of organisms. generally, in this present study, all of the insecticides that have been tested able to control the adults of s. oryzae although their toxicities is different because some of insecticides might need a high dose in order to kill the adult at a fixed time. in order to get the same level of toxicities, the concentration of the insecticides need to be increase. so that it able to have a high level of toxicities in this experiment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 31 as conclusion, for the contact toxicity by using impregnated filter paper method showed the most effective’s insecticides was malathion insecticide compared to prevathon because able to kill 100% adult of s. oryzae after seven days of exposure and gave the highest percentage mortality of s. oryzae. however this concentration could be increase in order to get a better mortality of the insect. classification of the insecticides also important in identify the toxicity of the insecticides. besides that, concentration of the insecticides was played an important role in increasing the mortality of the rice weevils. the higher mortality might happened due to the classification and type of the insecticides used itself with different concentration also become an important factors in increasing the mortality of the insect (kljajic et al., 2004). next, based on the second method in evaluating the toxicity of the tested insecticides against adult of s. oryzae was via impregnated food method. in present study, the result showed that the lowest mortality was rotenone after one day of exposure while the highest mortality was malathion. however, after three, five and seven days of exposure to insecticides results showed the highest percentage of mortality was spinosad while rotenone remain the same which is the lowest percentage of mortality against adult of s. oryzae. means, it showed that rotenone was the lowest toxicity against adult of s. oryzae compared to prevathon, cypermethrin, malathion and spinosad. hence, spinosad was the most toxic compared to rotenone and very effectives in controlling the adult of s. oryzae. it can kill the insect with a short period of time. the efficacy of spinosad in the present investigation was in tune with the findings of subramanyam et al., (2006) who reported mortality of more than 98% within 12 days when seed was treated with spinosad 1 or 2 mg/kg. based on sparks et al., (2001), the spinosad insecticides might need a minimum time in order to cause 50% mortality as it very toxic to insects because its action on the nervous system was at nicotine acetylcholine and also at gamma-aminobutric acid (gaba) receptor sites, so that it very effectives by ingestion and also contact. in impregnated food method, the results showed that rotenone less toxic compared to spinosad against adult of s. oryzae because lowest in percentage of mortality and the concentration used in this experiment were unable to kill half of the population adult of s. oryzae efficiently as in impregnated filter paper method. we can conclude that, the rotenone was less effectives in controlling the adult of s. oryzae as in impregnated filter paper method because it easily evaporated and only effectives if the insecticides were prepared not more than one week (norhayu, 2015). rotenone was botanical insecticides and become more effective if the solutions was freshly prepared. botanical insecticides have been designed to be more stable in the environment, safe to human being and also provide longer lasting control for the insect pests. a variety of responses have been reported from toxicological studies against s.oryzae by several toxicologist viz. essential oil, oil from eucalyptus, terpenes and benzaldehyde, neem extract rb-a in comparison with pyrethroids (azmi et al., 1998). similarly in this study, the results showed a different response for rotenone and other four insecticides. besides that, cypermethrin and malathion insecticides also can be used for controlling the adult of s. oryzae efficiently because high in percentage of mortality after seven days of exposure. although these insecticides are less toxic compared to the spinosad, the results showed that both of them also intermediate in toxicity against the adult of s. oryzae via this method. hence, based on the previous study, it state that the class of the cypermethrin was in class ii while the malathion insecticides was in class iii. the findings on mortality of adult of s. oryzae by parimala and maheswari (2011) increased marginally at 48 hours after exposure as increased in this present study. besides that, their mode of action is similar which is stomach and contact. mode of action is very important in order to know whether these species such as insect pests, fish, bird and mammals can be effects by the insecticides. pesticide kills or inactive a pests can be identify through the mode of action. insecticides can be classified based on this mode of action because each pest will have a different level of toxicity for each insecticide. in this study, the mode of action for contact dermal is through the skin of insects while for the stomach oral is through the mouth. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 32 however, in this method, after spinosad, malathion showed the second highest percentage of mortality compared to cypermethrin. since, cypermethrin give more effective and show toxicity to wide range of insect’s pest belonging to different orders other than coleopteran compared to other pyrethroids (rani, 1997). (ahsan et al., 2005) stated that the cypermethrin were effectives against s. oryzae where lc90 found to be at 19 mug/cm2. thaung et al. (1986) reported that, the mortality of s. oryzae in wheat and maize when the temperature and insecticides where joint together and toxicity of cypermethrin decreased with increasing temperature. although this present study was done in laboratory condition but the temperature was not the main factor. this can be prove in some studied, rashid (2012) examined that temperature was controlled within a large incubator where aeration was also not a killing factor toward toxicity of cypermethrin and malathion. thus, the data observed solely the effects of the insecticides itself. hence, malathion and spinosad insecticides much efficiently for controlling the populations of adult of s. oryzae. generally, the type chemical class of malathion and spinosad are from organophosphorus and spinosad respectively. in addition, the class of toxicity for both insecticides was located at class iii and iv, their mode of action is similar which is by contact and stomach action but spinosad insecticides revealed more unique in mode of action srinivas et al. (2003), compared to malathion insecticides against the stored-product pests compared to other known insecticides (thompson et al., 2000). as conclusion, spinosad was the most effectiveness insecticide in controlling the adults of s. oryzae via impregnated food method because give the highest percentage of mortality as early five days of exposure. in most studies, insecticides impact has been evaluated by exposure of the insect pest to a range pesticide concentration (stark and wennergren, 1995). evaluation of insecticides toxicity may determine by the percentages of insect dead at the fixed time (lc50). the different insecticides may show the different toxicity against insect pest. a highly toxic insecticides applied at a low concentration in the laboratory may cause high mortality compared to less toxic insecticides used at a higher concentration. in this case, it become more useful to compare the relative toxicity of insecticides against insect pest by measuring the lc50 while for the antifeedant activity of the insect that have been tested it become easier to identify by using the feeding deterrent index. in the present study, the toxicity of the tested insecticides was identified based on the values of lc50 against the adult of s. oryzae. starting with the impregnated filter paper method, prevathon showed the highest value of lc50 while the lowest was rotenone. in this case, prevathon gave highest value of lc50 it means that prevathon is the less toxic insecticide among the others because the highest values of lc50, the less toxic insecticide and vice versa. hence, rotenone with lowest value of lc50 become more toxic compared to prevathon and it able to control and prevent the adult of s.oryzae from destruct the rice grain. among the insecticides tested, rotenone with the lowest value of lc50 able to reduce the f1 progeny of s.oryzae might due to the types of the insecticides itself (mcgovern, 1977). (rajasekaran and kumaraswami, 1985) reported that grains coated with plant extracts completely inhibited the development of insect like s. oryzae. plant derivatives also reduce the survival rates of larvae and pupae and adult emergence (koul et al., 2008). development of eggs and immature stages inside grain kernel were also inhibited by plant derivatives (boeke et al., 2004). the crude extract also retarded development and caused mortality of larvae, cuticle melanisation, and high mortality in adults (jamil et al., 1984). besides that, although malathion showed the second highest toxic after rotenone based on the lc50 but malathion still can be categorised as high in toxicity and they are able to control the adult population on s.oryzae due to higher concentration used compared to rotenone. rotenone become more toxic than malathion because champ et al. (1969) established that, the malathion insecticides was only gave effective results when applied to the larvae of the s. oryzae not to the adult stage. lasota and dybas (1996) stated that malathion was the next best chemical in reducing s. zeamais population. different with previous findings that, malathion was less effective against s. zeamais by pathak and jha (1999) with lc50 value of 4.913 ppm. however, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 33 it highly active insecticide against adult could due to the differences in the application of pesticide and environment condition such as in air, malathion have been reported by howard (1991) that sunlight able to broke down this type of insecticide easily approximately one and one-half days only because the solutions used is very quick to degrade. the sudden death of the insects occurs when it have been treated to the insecticides because the reaction with the continuous nerve impulse transmission due to inhibition of acetycholine esterase inside insect body. as conclusion, rotenone the most effectives against the adult of s. oryzae via impregnated filter paper method based on lc50 value in the laboratory condition. as mentioned above for impregnated filter paper method, the highest values of lc50, means the less toxic insecticides towards adult of s. oryzae while the lowest values of lc50, the more toxic insecticides against insect. similarly concept used in this present study via impregnated food method, the result showed lowest toxicity was prevathon while the highest toxicity was spinosad. the classification of insecticides played important role between this two insecticides because it showed a different in toxicity based on lc50 (cordova et al., 2006). the class of toxicity for prevathon was located at class ii and it a novel insecticide belonging to the chemical group of anthranilic diamides (lahm et al., 2005) while spinosad was in class iv. the application of prevathon formulations reduced offspring emergence in comparison with the controls, however with adult suppression was not achieved, even at 10 mg chlorantraniliprole kg−1 grain, with the exception of maize (kavallieratos et al., 2013). fang et al. (2002) reported that mortality of r. dominica and s. oryzae in wheat treated with spinosad at 1mg spinosad kg−1 grain was 100% after 7 days of exposure, but at the same conditions, mortality was low for t. castaneum. hence, spinosad showed the most effectives insecticide for controlling the adult of s. oryzae compared to prevathon via impregnated food method. in this study, malathion showed the second highest toxicity compared to spinosad based on the value of lc50 against adult of s. oryzae via impregnated food method. malathion are less effectives because the wide used of this types of insecticides gave the resistance to the stored product pests including s. oryzae although the concentration used were higher than spinosad. however, champ et al. (1969) established that malathion was effective only against newly hatched larvae of s. oryzae, but previous study represents by iqbal et al. (2012) malathion as a highly active insecticide as similarly in this study against the adult that could be due to differences in the application of pesticide and environmental conditions. when organisms were treated with the insecticides, continuous nerve impulse transmission due to inhibition of acetylcholine esterase may in turn result sudden death of organisms. on the other hand, it was found that rotenone showed a less toxic against the adult of s. oryzae via impregnated food method compared to spinosad. this have been concluded by rani et al. (1997) pyrethroids which is synthetic product give more mortality towards insect rather than plant extract due to the dilution of the crude extract of plant only produced a very little its actual active ingredient as compared to the pure synthetic compounds. as reported in previous studies by dyck et al. (1985) synthetic compounds such as pyrethroids and cypermethrin gave the differences in biocidal activities between the plant extract due to the immediate neurotoxic effect of synthetic products on insect’s pests. the toxicity have been identified as small values of lc50, the more toxic insecticides toward the adult of s. oryzae and it becomes more effective to control the insects storage-pest. overall, for both methods, spinosad and malathion is more toxic than prevathon as showed in this present study. as conclusion, spinosad were found to have a strong repellence and feeding effect on the adult of s. oryzae. according to mcgovern (1977) stated that all the compounds will considered as repellents if the compounds was in the class iv. in this study, repellency and deterrency decrease with increase in concentration and period of time and the result showed a decreasing in relative growth rate and also weight loss in this experiment. among the tested insecticides, spinosad asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 34 exhibited more repellency and deterrency followed by malathion, cypermethrin, prevathon, and last is rotenone which showed the least effective toward adult of s. oryzae in this experiment. in this case, spinosad can be identified as the most effective insecticides in controlling the insect pests on a several crops (thompson et al., 1997) because it has metabolite in the soil which is actinomycete bacterium, sacchoropolyspore spinosa. besides that, spinosad have been proved that it provides good services in the crop protection because able to control the adult of s. oryzae in both method especially when they were works together with synthetic products. moreover, spinosad gave much effective among the others insecticides because it have a novel molecular structure and it mode of action is very suitable in this study as they acting on the insect nervous system at the nicotic acetylcholine and gamma-aminobutyric acid (gaba) receptor sites. hence, is become very toxic to the insects by ingestion or contact bioassays (sparks et al., 2001). generally, most of the worldwide studies have verified that spinosad have many advantages in controlling the crops such as ornamentals, vegetables, cotton and also turf to control the pests in liquid state and become very effective insecticides (bret et al., 1997). this have been supported by saunders and bret (1997) by stated that it meets requirements for less human risk and eco-friendly. besides that, spinosad also very good for insecticide resistance management (salgado, 1997). in order for controlling the stored products spinosad is very considerable efficacy against this types of pests (toews and subramanyam, 2003). in this study, spinosad are able to control the adult of s. oryzae at dosage of concentration as 0.12000% are suitable dosage in controlling this insect. in our study showed that at all concentrations, spinosad was able to kill half of adult of s. oryzae as early as one day after the exposure and killed all the adults after seven days of exposure. however, athanassiou et al. (2008) and vayias et al. (2009) found that spinosad insecticides gave a lower mortality and less effective toward maize grain compared to the rice grain and barley. similar observations have been reported by studies elsewhere (nayak et al., 2005; athanassiou et al., 2008) on the t.castaneum showed that their findings is highly tolerant to spinosad and that high survival rate was observed at double dose of 1.4 ppm. as conclusion, the spinosad is very effective towards adult of s. oryzae in both bioassays which is in impregnated filter paper and food method that have been study in this experiment. 5. conclusion the conclusion in this study from the toxicity bioassay and the antifeedant activity against adult of the sitophilus oryzae was observed. in contact toxicity by using the filter paper impregnation method showed that rotenone gave the highest value of lc50 which is 0.003 µl/100ml of h2o, hence it gave the highest mortality rate compared to other insecticides in this experiment. the effective concentration for this insecticides was at 0.010% because it able to kill the insect within 7 days of exposure. hence, it can be suggested the most effective dosage for controlling the adult of s. oryzae in the laboratory condition. besides that, it showed a significant different among all the insecticides compared to the control concentration which is by using the distilled water. in this case, can conclude that, the distilled water will not affected the adult of the s. oryzae because after the observation that have been made, there was no mortality have been recorded within 7 days of exposure. besides that, for the toxicity by using the food impregnation method, the result showed that the lowest value of lc50 was spinosad and malathion insecticides. means that, both of the insecticides gave the highest mortality rates compared to other insecticides in this experiment. the effective dosage for both insecticides was at concentration 0.12%. then, results for the lc50 values from food impregnation method were carried out for further study of antifeedant activity in order to evaluate the feeding deterrence index against adult of the s.oryzae. the result showed that feeding deterrence index were significantly different among all the insecticides tested. therefore, spinosad showed the most effective at concentration 0.12% for controlling adult of s.oryzae and the advantages of using this type of insecticides was it give low environmental and human risk. hence, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 35 all the rice industries could prevent their stored products against the adult of s.oryzae and able to reduce the qualitative and quantitative losses. 6. recommendations by knowing the best dosage and the antifeedant activity it may increase the level of effectiveness of the insecticides use. however, further research should be encouraged to standardise the dosage and the modes of action for the type of insect uses. besides that, it also could possibly be produced in the industries for easier accessibility to farmer and store keepers. these will help to encourage wider adoption and use, avoid wastage and encourage greater economy of use. however, the plantbased bio-pesticides also recommended in the future study because it will keep our environment safe and gives less harmful to human, also it will avoid resistant of the insects towards pesticides. thus, rice industry able to reduce the losses caused by the storage pests especially s. oryzae. lastly, in the future study, preparation and handling of the insecticides should be more caution and precise in order to prevent from any error or inaccurate data collection. safety rules also need to be applied while undergo the experiment. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adedire, c. o., & lajide l. 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(2009). activity of spinosad against three stored product beetle species on four grain commodities. crop protection, 28(7), 561-566. doi.org/10.1016/j.cropro.2009.01.006. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(12), 229-239 229 contribution of urban agriculture at household level in northern vietnam: case study in trau quy town, gia lam district, hanoi city mai lan phuong and nguyen phuong le vietnam national university of agriculture, hanoi, vietnam philippe lebailly university of lierge, belgium article history: received: 28-nov-2016 revised received: 21dec-2016 accepted: 30-dec-2016 online available: 25jan-2017 keywords: role, urban agriculture, economic, social, household abstract similar to many developing countries, urbanization has been happening in vietnam with bigger scale and higher speed for two recent decades. urbanization has strongly impacted on livelihood of people those who used to be farmers. these new urban residents are facing with lack of employment, food insecurity and food unsafety. based on quantitative and qualitative data which have been collected from 40 households by survey, in-depth interview and group-focused discussion, this study tries to show that agriculture still plays important roles in socio-economic lives of households in trau quy town where most of farmers have been turned into non-farmers and they lost almost all their farmland due to urbanization. the research results witness that, for economic aspect, urban agriculture contributes to households’ income, food security, food safety, and creates job opportunities for family labours, especially for those who cannot find off-farm jobs in labour market. regard with social aspect, livelihood security and maintenance of traditional social networks are considered as significant roles of urban agriculture. 1. introduction 1 in the decades to come, the world will become increasingly urban. follow the who, by 2050, 70% of the worldwide population will live in urban spaces (world health organization, 2016). governments face major challenges in building urban food systems that guarantee food security and nutritional value for citizens. they have to pay a lot of attention to the urban agriculture. in vietnam, because the progress of urbanization is increasing at a fast pace, many new cities established. the process of agricultural rural urbanization and industrialization has created drastic changes in the lives of vietnamese farmers at present (thinh, 2009). the role of agriculture reduces in terms of value when vietnam's economic development is advancing toward diversifying corresponding author’s name: nguyen phuong le email address: nguyenphuongle.vnua@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.12/1005.12.229.239 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 229-239 230 occupation structure. however, agriculture still plays a very important role in the livelihood of most of the population not only in the rural areas, but also in the urban regions. the rapid urbanization makes agricultural land become limited, expansion of urban land but the indirect impetus to expand the area of urban agriculture and the emergence of new urban agricultural areas. in bigger cities throughout vietnam, urban agriculture has had a lot of attention in recent years. under a plan of urban expansion of hanoi city, trau quy is a new town which has been converted from a rural community in 2005. in this town, the population is more vulnerable to food insecurities, as they heavily rely on external sources for their food needs and are thus exposed to greater supply risks. the supply chain linking farmer and consumer has been largely informal, with an intricate network of transporters, wholesalers, and vendors delivering products to hanoi city. this study therefore, aims to analyze the role of ua in the urban in recent years because of the urbanization progress in terms of income contribution, food security, food safety and job creation. the case study in trau quy town is used to illustrate our recognition. 2. literature review urban agriculture is defined as, production in the home or plots in urban or peri-urban areas (ruel et al., 1998; fao, 2003). its main motivation is food production (for personal consumption or sale) and/or higher income. according to mougeot (2000), the most important feature of urban agriculture is not merely represented by its localization within the city boundaries, but by its increasing relevance in the urban texture both at a socio-economic and ecological perspective. ua has been considered as a solution to a host of issues, ranging from food insecurity in urban communities to employment and environmental sustainability. however, currently, in viet nam, the statistics data on urban agriculture is not adequate. according to truong (2008), the progress of urbanization has restricted the agricultural land, expanded urban built land and has become the motive force for establishment of the new ua areas. it can be said that, ua has become an important factor for sustainable development in the cities of vietnam. in 2007, contributions of ua in gdp of cities as follow: 0,9% in ho chi minh city, 2% in hanoi, 5,6% in da nang and 11% in hai phong. ua is not only contribution to gdp, but also brings another value as ecology, environment... nevertheless, the regard of vietnamese government for ua is still minor and blurred in improving the food security in the cities in vietnam. beside of urbanization, food safety is a major social and political issue in vietnam. subsequently, vietnamese consumers are anxious about the safety of the vegetables they consume on a daily basis. according to who, in vietnam more than 5,000 people were affected by food poisoning in 2014 (thanhnien news, 2015). globally, diseases caused by unsafe food claim an estimated of 2 million lives each year. food hygiene and safety, particularly related to pesticide use, as well as freshness, linked with the time lapse between harvest and consumption, have caused/created recurring problems for the traditional supply chain (lauren, 2013). people seem to trust the quality of food from supermarkets or with a veterinary seal "because, it has a guarantee from the state" (muriel et al., 2004). face on this problem, urban agriculture has contributed a significant role to safe and clean food supply and income generation for urban residents. 3. research methodology 3.1. research site selection hanoi is the country’s second largest city with 29 districts including gia lam. trau quy was one of 22 communes in gia lam district. it has been remained as town according a decision of hanoi people committee since the early 2005. trau quy is the administrative town of the district gia asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 229-239 231 lam, located in the north of the capital hanoi. along with the development and expansion of the capital, the town now has 12 population groups with a total area of 734.28 hectares and a total population of over 25 thousand people. since trau quy commune upgraded to the town in 2005, it is associated with the process of urbanization taking place rapidly, the residential land area increased, the average rose by 8.45% in 3 years. this research has been done in trau quy town in order to have a deep understanding of urban agriculture development. there are two reasons that trau quy town had been chosen: firstly, in recent years, the process of industrialization and urbanization of the town has been going strong, it had a large impact on production, lifestyle and the mentality of the people in town. secondly, although livelihood strategies of people have moved away agriculture in the trend of nonagriculture, there are still 28% of households that maintain agricultural production and emergence new households who start agricultural production for their daily food need. data collection general information on trau quy including land areas, population and labor forces were gathered from the statistical section of town. the primary data on the ua trend, collected by doing in-depth interviews with 40 households related to agriculture: 10 households (25%) are farm-based. their livelihood strategies based on agriculture production (group i). 17 households (42,5%) are combine farm (group ii). their incomes not only come from agriculture, but also non-agriculture production. the residents in group i and ii, formerly almost worked in agricultural production, but from 2005 reoccupation cultivated land for building the new area for living, the people now work in sector non-agriculture. they have their agriculture production on private land (owned or leased). 13 households interviewed are off-farm (group iii). the people in this group are the teachers, officers, traders and workers. they have horticulture a variety of containers, like boxes, rain gutters, and used tires, even plastic bags, which can be placed in different locations, including patios, balconies and flat roofs. the most important crops of urban farmers are perishable fruits and vegetables grown. 3.2. data analysis to secure the representative, the socioeconomic characteristics of the farm households such as land area, capital asset of households, and expenditure for agricultural production... took into account when sampling. focused group discussion mainly used to get information about the opinion of households in the agricultural production face on food security and land loss. facilitative discussions initiated by open-ended questions provided the group with the opportunity to explain these issues more clearly. 4. result and discussion 4.1. overview of agricultural production in trau quy town in trau quy town, the farmers cultivate not only two crops of rice on their allocated farm land, but also vegetables, flowers, livestock and aquaculture on their gardens. according to the land law issued in 1993, farm land was allocated to every farm household. each farm household in trau quy was allocated about 600 square meters to grow rice. under the process of urbanization, agricultural land has been converted into other purposes such as park, resident, hospital and so on. in 2015, agricultural land per capita was 380 square meters. it is so small that nobody can live on farm. garden plots away from home which were converted into non-agricultural purposes have been used for cultivation. almost all households surveyed in group i and ii applied this model. they said that they had changed their type of agricultural production in some ways over the last ten years. in fact, the process of urbanization has emerged the challenges that are the size of land for agricultural production has been narrowed, some agricultural models are no longer appropriate and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 229-239 232 well adapted, a lot of farmers have altered their production from staple crops, such as rice to vegetables and subsequently flower and ornamental plants. a part of agriculture labor force has become jobless due to agricultural land loss. home garden situated nearby the detached house in the town area. this model can be carried out in front of the balcony, on the terrace and even on the roof, for growing sprouts and vegetables, are applied by almost all of the households of group iii. these households mainly grow to serve the needs of family consumption and to improve microclimate conditions. the most common type of crops is fresh produce (salad greens, vegetables). fresh produce is less regulated and easier to package for transport, than other food products such as meat and eggs. livestock is less common due to regulations, space, care and nuisance complaints. according to many scientists, several factors such as continuing rural-urban migration, economic recession, structural adjustment, rapid urbanization, ineffective agricultural policies, wage cuts, civil strife, war and natural disasters are recognized as factors pushing urban residents into food production (mougeot, 1994; obudho and faeken, 1999). on the other hand, cultivation of crops and breeding of animals in urban areas are firstly motivated by home consumption, and secondly by commercial purposes (lee-smith & memon, 1994; maxwell, 1994; mbiba, 1995; freeman, 1991). this means that ua is not only a survival strategy for poor urban residents, but also a means of enrichment for middle and high-level classes throughout the city. the resources on which households draw to maintain their ua are mainly land and water. there are two challenge concerns about land. the first is access to land and the second is policy and regulatory barriers preventing farm users in non-agricultural zones. as mentioned above, home garden has been applied by most of the households in group iii. most of the agricultural activities are on a small scale and not stable. some of the cultivated areas are abandoned urban land or on-going construction sites. the zoning of these lands may or may not permit urban agriculture as an allowed activity. furthermore, urban farming activities on non-agricultural land are often limited by a lack of support for urban farming or polity and regulations that may or may not apply to urban farmers. like any farm, a reliable water source is required for irrigating crops, washing harvest and equipment, and general farm hygiene. water in urban agriculture can come from many sources including piped water, ground water or rainwater. accessing water for gardening or small-scale farming can be a more serious concern in places with water restrictions or a lack of access to ground or surface water. in general, there are two trends of ua production, one case consist of the informal agricultural production, and another case targets formal agricultural production. general concern about the first case, is that it has spontaneous agricultural activities that are responsible for the need of food security and high quality. this agricultural production is often applied by people who are officers, teachers, traders or workers. however, it can be said that currently urban agriculture in trau quy town is only in the early stages, spontaneous and thus, orientation and solutions for sustainable development associated with special planning should be made for the coming time. 4.2. contribution of urban agriculture at household level in trau quy town 4.2.1. general information of households the agricultural land per capita is low, because of the town's government policy to withdraw a portion of agricultural land for housing construction. average agricultural land per household of population groups is, 1082m² (table 1). on the other hand, some families have moved the business by service, but they still have farmland, so they let anyone borrow it for agricultural production. agricultural lands are mainly used for growing rice and vegetables, seedlings and aquaculture. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 229-239 233 table 1: general information of households unit group i group ii group iii average 1. inhabitant person/household 4.3 4.2 4.1 4.2 2. main occupation person/household 1.9 1.8 1.8 1.8 3. agricultural land m 2 /household 1650 1495 0 1082 4. residential land m 2 /household 299.3 211.5 194.6 235.1 5. servicing ground m 2 /household 0 150.9 60.5 105.7 source: survey data, 2015 the average residential land per household is 235,1m², limited than other localities. the reason is that, this place is attracting more and more families from elsewhere moving because of various reasons. this has made the town's households increase; while the land of the town is limited, so residential land for each household is relatively low. most households spend only a small portion of residential land to build houses, the rest spent on investment and development of service facilities. 4.2.2. income contribution according to maxwell (2000), urban agriculture contributes to household income which includes fungible income through the sale of urban agricultural produce and savings by not purchasing foods they already produced. households in the trau quy used traditional agricultural production for a long time. agriculture has to feed them from generation to generation. however, in the new era with many changes, it also has a role to bring income to the people that the agricultural production declined. through surveyed households, we found that the income of the households from agricultural production accounts for only a small proportion of the total household income, many other sources of income occupy a higher value. table 2: household income structure criteria income from agriculture income from trade-service income from other sources total value (mil vnd) % value (mil vnd) % value (mil vnd) % value (mil vnd) % group i 15.83 81.80 0 0 3.52 18.20 19.35 100 group ii 10.04 9.50 90.88 85.50 4.76 5.00 105.68 100 group iii 0 0 165.46 94.50 9.62 5.50 175.08 100 source: survey data, 2015 in terms of household groups (table 2), group iii has the highest income, but they don't have any income from agricultural activity. group i with total incomes is 19.35 million vnd of which revenues from agriculture activities represent 81.8% and the other revenue represent 18.2%. group ii has an average income of 95.15 million vnd, of which revenues from agriculture represent 9.50%. table 3: income structure from agriculture of households criteria group i group ii value (mil.vnd) % value (mil.vnd) % total income from agriculture 15.832 100 10.04 100 1. rice cultivation 4.33 27.35 2.25 22.41 2. vegetables, seedling, flowers 8.40 53.07 2.6 25.90 3. livestock 3.1 19.58 5.19 51.69 source: survey data, 2015 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 229-239 234 table 3 shows the income structure of agricultural production in the household. group i and group ii have income from agriculture through activities such as rice cultivation, subsidiary crops, seedlings and livestock. for group i, income from crops and seedlings is the highest with 8.40 million vnd, accounting for 53.07%, and income from livestock is the lowest with 3.1 million vnd accounting for 19.58%. for group ii, income from livestock is the highest with 5.19 million vnd, accounting for 51.69%, and income from rice cultivation is the lowest with 2.25 million vnd accounting for 22.41%. 4.2.3. food security and safety urban agriculture provides for family self-consumption, thus contributing to a healthy diet and saving on food expenditures. it is able to guarantee a minimum level of “food self-sufficiency”, especially for the poor with low purchasing power. household food production covering a diversified range of food commodities (essentially fruits and vegetable crops, small livestock, dairy products, eggs, etc.), will enrich the families food intake and provide a healthier diet according to own culture and food preferences (fao, 2008). in trau quy town, urbanization is growing at a fast pace, the proportion of the agricultural sector accounts for only a small structure in the local economy and it is decreasing, though it still plays an important role in providing food and ensuring food security for households throughout the town. table 4: ability of self-sufficiency food of households unit: % kind of food group i group ii group iii rice 100 100 0 vegetables 79.06 65.89 11.20 egg 54.32 32.41 6.10 meat 34.10 30.78 7.52 fish 23.67 11.89 0 source: survey data, 2015 table 4 shows that group i has the highest subsistence level of food sources. they can manually provide, ensure their meal 100% on rice, 79.06% for vegetables, 34.10% for meat, 54.32% for eggs and 23.67% for fish. group ii has rather subsistence level, they can still meet 100% demand for rice, 65.89% of vegetables and more than 30% of meat and eggs, 11.89% of fish. the group iii can only manually satisfy themselves 15.32% of the demand for vegetables, 7.52% for meat and 6.10% for eggs. they are unable to meet their rice demand. the cause of this phenomenon is due to group iii having no agricultural land, but due to the increased focus on sanitary, food safety problems, despite busy businesses, they still want to plant or animal by themselves to ensure their meals. "ms. khuyen who is now retired, said: since i began to grow vegetables, i don't buy vegetables at the market anymore. what i grow, is not only sufficient to my family's needs, i can also feed my neighbor. i do not use any chemicals, my products are of high quality and they are fresh. it ensures a better diet for the family. "(personal interviewed in july 2015). on average, comparing group iii and group ii, group i has a higher subsistence level on food, but they only partly meet needs of households, they still need to buy the rest in addition to serving their needs. households can only manually meet portion of food of family, but all families are able to guarantee food security. households interviewed also shared their concerns about the effects of dangerous chemicals in fertilizers and pesticides as well as problems with the use of polluted water on crops. a significant number of households commented that in recent years they had started to grow vegetables asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 229-239 235 specifically for their families, thereby ensuring the vegetables they eat are safe. in addition, households often grow various fruits and raise chickens, as these are rather expensive foods, and producing them allows households to diversify their diet without increasing the food budget. 4.2.4. job creation for rural labor to clearly see role of creating jobs for family labor in agriculture, we must consider the time factor, of the process of urbanization taking place in the town. the process of urbanization took place long-ago, but perhaps more powerful since 2005, when trau quy was officially recognized as the town under gia lam district. the process of urbanization has been rapid, because of agricultural land decrease, along with the variation in employment. when farmland reduced, some people had the expertise and skills to transfer to another job. some could organize productionbusiness, however, the rest; especially those who are old and have many traditional experiences in agricultural production were not so lucky even though they still wanted to continue with agricultural production. maybe it does not have high income, but they still want to do it. if they don't work in agriculture, they have nothing else to do with their time, but sitting and sitting surely isn't what they want to do. table 5 shows variability in occupation among households interviewed. we can see the labor movements of the households in the process of urbanization in the town. the main occupation of about 71,25 % respondent of group 1 and 45,54 percent of group ii are farmers. table 5: occupation shift of labor unit: % occupation 2005 2014 group i group ii group iii group i group ii group iii farming-based 85.77 70.56 0 71.25 45.54 0 employee 7.69 12.21 11.84 11.91 12.01 13.88 trade-service 0 10.56 68.39 5.27 20.68 80.32 worker 4.24 4.54 14.70 5.49 12.41 4.47 others 2.3 2.13 5.07 6.08 9.36 1.33 source: survey data, 2015 under the impacts of industrialization and urbanization, labors' occupations in trau quy town became diversified; farmers, industrial workers and small traders. there is a significant influence of age and gender in the labor structure of the town. as usual, only the elderly or women want to remain in agricultural production for a long time, while younger people tend to search for other less hard working and higher paying jobs. however, finding a good job isn't easy. therefore, there are plenty of young people who don't have stable jobs, while large areas of agricultural land have not been used effectively. on the other hand, the town also has households who bravely invested in agricultural production. when people saw uninhibited land, they conducted negotiations to lease the land. they invested in expanding production and planting new rice varieties of high economic efficiency or open livestock farms. these households not only generated employment for its stability, but also created jobs for unemployed people in the town or the nearby localities. the majority of group i are elderly households, so at times of main season, demand of labor is considerably higher. they cannot do all the things themselves, hence there is a need to hire more workers. an agricultural household head is often just a manager, the job as transplanting, harvesting, fertilizing ... they hire people to do. on harvest day, many workers from surrounding areas like thuan thanh and van lam districts came to town to search for employment. thus, agricultural production has not only created jobs for families but also created jobs for the rest of society. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 229-239 236 4.2.5. land property right according to vietnamese land law, land belongs to the state and gets allocated to individual households to cultivate with rights of transfer, rent-in, rent-out, heritage, mortgage, and compensation when the land is reclaimed by the state. vietnamese land law also prevents farmers from land abandon. thus, people in trau quy keep farmland for property right (waiting for selling at a high price in the future or for compensation) by renting out at a very cheap price; lending to neighbors or relatives; extensive rice cultivation. in trau quy town, the majority of group ii when asked whether they want to continue farming, we will get the answer no, but they still want to keep the land allocated by the state. currently, although there are many group iii and group ii no longer doing agricultural production, but they still retain the land. households are unable to let/leave land uncultivated, so they look for people who need land for agriculture and let them rent or borrow it land. this is a benefit for both parties; the agricultural producers have more land to expand the production scale, while households do not want to. agricultural production has achieved their purpose of keeping their land as security property. at the local, depending on the different groups have different ideas about land holding. groups can be classified by the type of households, age and household income. these groups had different stories during the investigation. other types of households, apart from group i considered agricultural land as the main livelihood of their production, group ii considered that land as collateral assets only for themselves. different age groups have different perspectives on land assets. the majority of the surveyed household heads aged older than 40, are unanimous that, they should retain agricultural land as collateral assets. even though there was no longer agricultural production on that land, they never thought about selling or transferring their use right/ of use right on the land. however, the younger household heads have other thoughts, they said that manufacturing trading has brought them higher revenues, and it can meet all the different needs, therefore, there is no need to stick with agriculture. in general, each person has different views on land assets, depending on their age, income or professions. for people who are older, they often want to keep the land, because agriculture was a traditional activity, longstanding linking with them. for young people, by contrast, they only care about the immediate economic value that agricultural land brings. agricultural production needs a lot of time and effort, but provides lower earnings, so general sentiment in this age group is to lease the land. for those who have other jobs with stable income, no matter if their land is used efficiently or not, but the most important problem that they were most concerned about is to preserve the land of their ancestors or it may be a back-up plan for them in bad financial times. 4.2.6. maintenance of traditional community relationship conventionally, social roles of urban agriculture have been seen as an eco-tourism site and recreation center for urban people. this study looks at social roles of urban agriculture as a way to maintain traditional community relationships in production as well as in everyday life. for local elders, traditional farming practices had created relationships such as mutual aids, labor reciprocity, and experience sharing in production. for old generation, they maintain farming activities because of cultural value/meaning of farm produce and farm work. agricultural production requires cooperation and mutual assistance in production, which makes people live close and pleasantly with one another. in the past, when agriculture was thriving, most people were involved in agricultural production. they had close relationships in the community and they collaborated well in and out of the production fase, working and talking happily, sharing joy, and sadness. the nature of farmers is honest and frank. these features were formed during ancient agricultural production. it is the uniqueness of vietnamese people. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 229-239 237 before urbanization took place, trau quy town as well as other localities of vietnam, was very calm and had heavy community relationships. people helped each other in production, they could exchange and convey experience in agricultural production to help other households develop their own production system, besides, when physical life was difficult, emotions always came first, they helped each other comfortably, without prejudice. it is these relationships that created camaraderie feelings among farmers, created beauty of vietnamese agriculture and rural. as urbanization is going strong, agricultural production is narrowing gradually, people are no longer interested in agriculture as they were before. they gradually switch to other occupations. invisible bond in manufacturing has been lost, instead of market relations; it led to a more viable division between rich and poor. meanwhile, cooperation and mutual assistance in agricultural production is also fading away. nowadays, people are accustomed to a new lifestyle of, industrial work. people get access to science, technology, and new business methods. working is more productive and of, better quality, therefore, they have a higher income. the level of expenditure also increases; spending is more reasonable, spending ratio for homes, equipment service life increases. when considering the lifestyle of the family, besides the positive advancement, many negative points have emerged and now exist in human life, and this was reflected most notably through the social problems. during development, industrialization and, urbanization has had an impact on the security situation, the social order and, the increased problems, such as fighting, gambling, drug addiction and theft. these things create negativity for security and order amongst citizens. previously, when agricultural production was a traditional occupation, these problems occurred less often. it can be believed that agriculture production has helped the town maintain the traditional cultural identity of vietnamese people. strenuous manufacturing exercises make people diligent and hard over. focusing on the fields help bring people closer to nature, resulting in an urge to know how to protect the environment. 5. conclusion urban agriculture affects and is affected by the urban environment. ua uses the city's resources (land, labor, organic wastes and water). it feeds the city inhabitants. it's strongly influenced by the contingent conditions as policies, land competition, market presence, price trends and quality standards. it plays a crucial role in the socio-economic conditions like the effects on food security, poverty, health, and environment of urban (orsini & kahane, 2013). in trau quy town, urbanization process has been happening on a rapid scale. this caused positive and negative impacts on local livelihood: land areas, pollution, and employment. roles of agricultural production have changed in terms of income contribution, labor participation, types of products, etc. local people still keep farming at different scales for different reasons: economic, food provision, food safety, land property right, livelihood security, and traditional community relations. in the future, the town should have orientation to diversify their livelihoods, encouraging trade in services further development, namely: (1) the work of planning agriculture should be done first, followed by a plan on industrial and urban development. in this master plan, food security should be made absolutely stable for decades. this plan is the base for the development of agriculture and rural area ; (2) investment in agriculture should be enhanced, especially investments that create better conditions for the private sector to increase their competitive capacity and help make their entry into the market more efficient. public investment in agriculture should concentrate on asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(12)2016: 229-239 238 infrastructure, irrigation, transportation, plague and natural disaster control, research, agricultural encouragement, trade promotion and information provision; (3) applying new technologies should be promoted in agricultural production, especially new technologies at a low cost to increase efficiency and the competitive capacity of agriculture ; (4) renewing management mechanisms should be implemented. roles of the government and market mechanisms should be clearly separated; (4) knowledge and skills in operations in the market economy of farmers should be improved. vocational training courses should be supplied to affected people whose land was recovered in the process of industrialization and urbanization. works of agricultural encouragement, technological transfer as well as agricultural extension services should be promoted to raise competitive powers of agricultural products; (5) each special region needs specific policies to enhance agricultural production, especially regions in the master plan of food security. public investments should link closely to the work of poverty alleviation. labor migration should be considered as a condition for economic growth and unemployment reduction in rural areas; (6) to develop rural areas, it requires a combination of economic and social environmental solutions. economic solutions include upgrading rural infrastructure, providing information and applying technology to increase the capacity of competitiveness amongst agricultural products; (7) social solutions include improving the social roles of rural households as well as their participation in social associations and social groups. a sectoral rural economy (households, farmers, business and landless labors should) should be recognized and encouraged in which there are four sectors (households, farmers, business and landless labors) to have equal opportunity to operate and develop together. markets of labor, land and science – technology should be respected and developed within in law the law; and (8) environmental solutions are protecting and maintaining land, water and biological resources and managing the environment in rural areas. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references fao (2003). the informal food sector. municipal support policies for operators, vol 4. food in cities collection. fao, rome. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/009/y4312e/y4312e00.pdf. accessed on 10 july 2015. fao (2008). urban agriculture for sustainable poverty alleviation and food security. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/fcit/pdf/upa_wbpaperfinal_october_2008.pdf . accessed on 10 july 2015. freeman, d. b. 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(2009). rural employment and life: challenges to gender roles in vietnam's agriculture at present. paper presented at the fao-ifad-ilo workshop on gaps, trends and current research in gender dimensions of agricultural and rural employment: differentiated pathways out of poverty. http://www.faoilo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fao_ilo/pdf/papers/16_march/thinh_final.pdf. world health organization (2016). global report on equitable, healthier cities for sustainable development.http://www.who.int/kobe_centre/measuring/urbanglobalreport/ugr_full_report. pdf. accessed 10 jul 2016. http://www.fao-ilo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fao_ilo/pdf/papers/16_march/thinh_final.pdf http://www.fao-ilo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fao_ilo/pdf/papers/16_march/thinh_final.pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.194.8095&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/dp51.pdf http://www.thanhniennews.com/health/5000-had-food-poisoning-in-vietnam-last-year-who-40796.html http://www.thanhniennews.com/health/5000-had-food-poisoning-in-vietnam-last-year-who-40796.html http://www.fao-ilo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fao_ilo/pdf/papers/16_march/thinh_final.pdf http://www.fao-ilo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fao_ilo/pdf/papers/16_march/thinh_final.pdf http://www.who.int/kobe_centre/measuring/urbanglobalreport/ugr_full_report.pdf http://www.who.int/kobe_centre/measuring/urbanglobalreport/ugr_full_report.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 104 agriculture development programs for poverty reduction evidences from indonesia and china comparative study case muhamad rusliyadia wang libinb alecturer; yogyakarta-magelang agricultural development college (polytechnic), agricultural extension and human resource development agency, ministry of agriculture, indonesia b professor; college of humanities and development, china agricultural university, china  m_rusliyadi@yahoo.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 02-oct-2018 accepted: 07-nov-2018 online available: 26-nov2018 keywords: agriculture development program, indonesia, china, poverty reduction abstract the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview description of important differences in agriculture development china and indonesia in poverty reduction efforts in rural areas and some strategy. obviously with the view of some of the existing literature by presenting data and facts or opinions with the collaboration of several institutions associated with the topic. this paper will provide an objective picture of the development from agricultural sector level of evidence both indonesia and china. china and indonesia is agriculture based country with a program of integrated rural development as a whole to be a target of poverty reduction programs. several agriculture programs related to poverty reduction has been launched and have a good impact or significance, especially in china that is able to reduce extreme poverty from 30% in 1978 to less than 3% in 2008. certainly many lessons can be obtained from this success, especially the concept and strategy development in rural china to be a reference of other states in its development model, especially for poverty alleviation programs. contribution/ originality the main contribution off this paper is give an example literature of the comparative study in term of poverty reduction at rural development. the aim of the paper is to contribute an overview description of important differences in agriculture development china and indonesia in poverty reduction efforts in rural areas and some strategy. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.104.118 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: muhamad rusliyadi and wang libin (2018). agriculture development programs for poverty reduction evidences from indonesia and china comparative study case. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 104-118. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 104-118 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:m_rusliyadi@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.104.118 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 105 1. introduction china and indonesia are generally regarded as the two large countries in the developing world that are the “success stories” of developing countries from agricultural sector. the agricultural sector became the leading sector capable of contributing to the development, especially in rural areas. this success has been defined by the high and sustained rates of growth of aggregate and per capita national income; and the substantial reduction in income poverty. agricultural development has a strategic role for the country to exist a country that is viewed by other countries as a country that successfully eliminating poverty with an average growth rate of high development. thirty year ago, china and indonesia were considered two of the world’s poorest countries with very poor people located high within the rural areas mainly in agricultural sector as a spine with an annual per capita income of only us $ 50. since then, it has made great strides, achieving an average gdp growth of almost 7% per year, a growth performance that ranks among the ten fastest in the world, and is on a part with that of the dynamic asian economies. during this period, indonesia has moved from being a low-income country to being a middle income one but china’s growth much faster and is becoming a rich country. the government of indonesia and china have launched several agricultural development programs based on poverty alleviation in rural areas. programs for poverty reduction at the provincial level that have the similar patterns of development involving local government agencies at the provincial government to the village level occur in both china and indonesia. already there have been many policies or programs developed for poverty reduction in china and indonesia, at the level of implementation, especially the contribution to poverty, where the contribution of the agricultural sector has an important role in both countries. 2. material and method this study uses quantitative data collection techniques/methods at the national level by reviewing existing literature related to supporting research and also in combination with a descriptive qualitative, graph analysis and cross tabulation method in which data collection techniques include: (1) desk study with depth literature review sources data from national journals, international journals, bulletins, proceedings, monographs, international reports, newspapers, internet and academic books. (2) observation methods is calculated data showed by chart, graph and table in detailed of relationship, phenomenon, inquisitive, compare, generalize, ideas for agriculture development between china and indonesia in order to effect poverty reduction n. (3) secondary data or documents review from several resources and various institutions such as: central bureau of statistics (bps); national bureau of statistics of china; agriculture ministry of indonesia and china; agricultural census book: chinese statistical yearbook; international organization data sheet like fao, world bank, undp etc. 3. result and discussion 3.1. comparative strategy and policy agriculture development for poverty reduction as we know policies that have been particularly important for poverty alleviation are agricultural policy, educational policy, and family planning policy. in this chapter, we will discuss about agriculture policy, especially in china and indonesia, which certainly contributes to economic development and poverty alleviation in both countries. the fundamental difference as a critical point of the table below illustrates how the policies that contribute directly to the wheels of government in china and indonesia, which applies to the rule contributed directly in agriculture and rural development. in the table below is a simple analysis of the condition of agriculture development policies that would provide a direct contribution to development in rural areas and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 106 provide a direct impact on poor communities in these rural with the every program run by the government either china or indonesia. agricultural development in indonesia is arguably a significant determinant of growth in other sectors of the economy. during three decades of palpable economic progress, the agriculture sector, which is expanded mostly by smallholder activity, propelled the indonesian economy through forward and backward linkages and through demand creation siregar and suryadi (2006). daryanto and morison (1992) found that the consumption linkage effect of the induced growth in the agricultural sector represents a more potent inter-sectoral influence than the production linkages of agricultural growth. the indonesian case study rada and regmi (2010) argues that conscious policy stimulus to agriculture was the key to the country’s 30-year record of rapid, propoor growth (from 1967 to 1997), and that the model of smallholder agricultural development used by indonesia is quite general. the indonesian model is explicitly set in the broader historical literature on the role of agriculture and economic development that has been generated by successful countries not burdened with highly skewed land distributions as a starting point for their development. development of the country, especially the development is inseparable from how to carry out this orders to share strategies and policies relating to rural policies an usually touching the grass root that can certainly provide impact also on the alleviation of poverty. in connection with this study of course this chapter is really important to know how the growth of agricultural development in china and indonesia in relation to policies and strategies for each country can apply at the national level as well as to the level below with reference to the data’s and existing literature. various aspects in comparing the two countries both china and indonesia would be measured in this study how the data is showing good growth characteristics, policy strategies in the agricultural sector directly related to rural poverty alleviation is the evidence from china and indonesia. table 1: comparison some critical point of policies and development of agriculture in china and indonesia by period period critical point indonesia china 1950-1970 physic program vs. land social reform infrastructure program and intensification land reform policy 1970-1980 base on agriculture vs. land tenure and commune expansion intensification, technology, irrigation, extension reform people’s commune system reform and agricultural land tenure change 1980-1990 decrease vs. increase decrease financial support agriculture, liberalization policy for industry agricultural market policy (rural market policy), circulation system of agricultural products, protection price 1990-2000 economic crisis vs. stable economy removal pesticide and fertilizer subsidy, high banking interest rate rural industrial structure, macro-regulation on agriculture 2000-present decentralization vs. centralization decentralizations including agriculture policy san nong policy, rural taxes and fees, four subsidies” and “one premium, source: liu et al. (2008), oktaviani et al. (2010) keith and david (2010) conducted a study about the special issue on agricultural productivity growth: a closer look at large, developing countries that the country compares china and indonesia with the various indicators and important issues in the productivity and agricultural policy. from the data we can see how it compares with the value percentage average annual growth rate from year 1978 2004, the indicator shows the total output of china's growth rate is higher with the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 107 indonesian compared different the difference of that about 0.57% per year and correlated positively with the total average input growth is also higher than china and indonesia with 0.47 % difference in calculation of course this is not distinct far as the total input and total input addressing relative figures do not differ much. the next indicator according to keith and david (2010), they decomposing the sources of output growth in two ways: first, they divide this growth into the part due to resources (inputs) expansion and the part due to total factor productivity (tfp); and second, they decomposing output growth into growth in the agricultural labor force and output per worker. growth in farm output per worker is decomposed into further growth in cropland per worker, non-land growth in other inputs per worker, improvement in average schooling of farm workers, and growth in tfp. table 2 showed that tfp has 1.80% and 1.70% in china and indonesia respectively, that is statistically not different from average annual growth. as for the number of workers in the agricultural sector shows the relative numbers are no different from china in fact smaller than that of indonesia this is because the number of workers in the balance with the production machinery is very high relative growth compared with the opposite number of workers in indonesia are not balanced with the machine and also on indicators of output / worker precisely in indonesia is also greater because indonesia is able to add cropland in various islands such as kalimantan and sulawesi islands and other islands into the agricultural land but instead will tend to stagnate in china there is no growth at all. at the output capital / worker china shows the number is much higher than indonesia, where a significant annual average rate is reached 2.30 % growth, while indonesia is only 0.8% this is due in rural economic in china able to grow and develop much better with effective policies implemented by the chinese government through economic reform, rural markets form many enterprise in rural or agricultural sector to turn the wheels highly in the rural economy. output per worker grew rapidly in china and indonesia, the which a sharp decline also experienced in national poverty rates about 30 percent in the period from 1978 2004. this was shows how the importance of growth in the national the agricultural sector capable of providing significant contributions to the alleviation of poverty because in both countries the poor population mostly located in rural areas. table 2: sources of growth in agriculture in china and indonesia 1978-2004 indicator average annual growth rate (%), 1978–2004 china indonesia total output 4.60 4.03 total inputs 2.80 2.33 total factor productivity (tfp) 1.80 1.70 workers* 0.30 0.80 output/worker 4.30 3.24 cropland/worker 0.00 0.46 capital/worker 2.30 0.83 education (schooling) 0.20 0.25 percent reduction in poverty, mid 1980s to 2001–2003** 30.0 31.6 agricultural research spending as percentage of agricultural gdp 1971–1975 0.36 0.24 2001–2003 0.49 0.21 periods of major agricultural policy or institutional reforms 1979–82 1966–69 1997–98 periods of major macroeconomic reforms 1977–78 1984–92 1983–88 1997–98 source: keith and david (2010) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 108 note: * the number of agricultural workers is measured in constant-quality units after adjusting for changes in the average years of schooling of the national labor force. capital inputs include animals, machinery, seed, feed, and fertilizer ** poverty is measured as the percentage of the national population subsisting on less than ppp$2/day (world bank 2007) the agricultural development policy cannot be separated from government policy in allocating funds to the areas of research and development primarily because of agricultural science with research we can produce the technology or resources that can improve productivity, efficiency and product, which become tools and benchmarks in each of the programs in held by government. here the fundamental difference between china and indonesia on this below chinese data have average annual growth rate figure of 0.36% and indonesia had a rate of 0.24% in the period 1971 to 1975 and other periods in the period 2001 to 2003 china rose to 0.49 %. while indonesia dropped to 0.21%, just a situation that was actually less favorable for agriculture sector in indonesia due to the declining percentage of the funded for agriculture research and development that could become weapons could contribute to the technology, programs, and policies in the agricultural sector. 3.2. status and achievement of agricultural and rural development in china and indonesia agricultural development in china and indonesia during the last three decades has been a success story. the impressive growth performance of the sector contributed substantially to the achievement of china and indonesia’s development objectives: food security, low and stable prices, generation of employment and foreign earnings/savings. china and indonesia is an excellent example regarding the role of agriculture in economic development. agricultural production from two countries is quite encouraging achievements show this contribution to the agricultural gdp world where china could provide a significant contribution to the average above 15% while indonesia is able to contribute to the range average 2.40 %. the agricultural growth in china each year shows was a significantly increasing since almost 30 years ago with economic growth at a relatively stable and a drastic increase while the rate of growth in indonesia has a relatively less stable. whereas indonesia has experienced the economic crisis in 1998 which resulted in economic growth which of course affects the sloping agricultural sector but also will tend to rise after a period of year 2000's. china experienced significant improvement in the agricultural sector of which the period of the 1990s, agricultural policy among the rural market program, the government introduced a set of adjustment policies, the third regime, starting in 1990 (oecd, 1995). apart from constraints on the development of rural industry, the government implemented further reform in the grain sector, aimed at phasing out the old centrally planned purchase and supply system in favor of more market-oriented solutions. for example, purchase and selling grain prices were equated, i.e., grain and oilseed price subsidies to urban dwellers were eliminated. further, interregional grain transfers that had been previously arranged by the central government were now replaced by a contract system between provincial governments. the government reformed the input supply system by removing subsidies and allowing private firms to supply inputs to producers. in addition, the system of in kind supplies of fertilizers and fuel for deliveries of grain and oil crops to the country agencies was converted to monetary payments. these policy measures aim at partially substituting governmental interference in markets by functioning market forces, thus to avoid government failure due to information problems. however, market reform in agriculture remained incomplete, reflected by the different degrees of price and quantity controls in different sub-sectors (grain, cotton and oil crops vs. livestock and vegetables), by the segmentation of regional agricultural markets, and by the isolation of domestic markets from international markets. despite the fact that indonesia has an agricultural policy with the result according to the data show characteristics of sloping slowly increase production from year to year but capable of selfasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 109 sufficiency in rice in 1985 with programs and policies of the government on agricultural intensification and extension that developed at that time but returned to fade in period of 1998 due to global economic crisis that hit indonesia effect on the agricultural sector this is also supported by the opinion of piazza and julia (2010). economic transformation in indonesia had been relatively slow even before the country was hit by the monetary crisis in 1997.prior to the crisis, the contribution of agriculture to gdp decreased from 17.9 per cent in 1993 to 14.9 per cent in 1997, but it increased during the crisis to 17.1 per cent in 1999. in line with the economic recovery process, the contribution of agriculture to gdp declined to 15.9 per cent in 2002. on the other hand, the contribution of the manufacturing sector has been gradually increasing; from 22.3 per cent in 1993 to 26.6 per cent in 2002. indonesia has implemented extensive general economic reform since the 1980s, relaxation of foreign investment including regulations, reduction in many qualitative tariffs and import restrictions, a more flexible exchange rate policy, and phasing out of price subsidies for many goods. nevertheless, the agriculture sector and agricultural trade had been slow and limited. china and indonesia is a country that has a large population of mainly rural population of china in global unity, while indonesia is the fourth after india and the united states, the data above we can see the condition of rural populations in china and indonesia in the years 1987-2007 the most represents the farmers or working in the agricultural sector. rural population in china is very high and is the world's largest rural population reached 815 million people in 1987, while indonesia is only around 121 million, of course, a resource that should be a boon for a country, but even when people in villages own many of the polemics in the face various problems, especially poverty. from a large population of china and indonesia is largely a rural population which, according to data on china in 1987 amounted to 75.24% and with a very dominant development started in rural areas could reduce the number of people in rural areas amounted to 56% in 2009 while indonesia also decreased significantly the number of people from the beginning of 1987 from 72.1% of the total population dropped 24, 68% to 47.42% at the same time over 22 years. this shows the performance of government programs that address the reduction of population and development in rural areas, especially agricultural work well with the decreasing population in rural areas as indicators of success and poverty alleviation in both countries. 3.3. contribution of agriculture to economic development in china and indonesia economic growth in indonesia and china cannot be separated from the contribution of agriculture sector in the economic structure of both countries. the agricultural sector into other sectors pedestal base or both industry and services to grow and this is also true in china and indonesia. the data below shows the economic growth of both countries could be a pretty picture of how the importance of the agricultural sector as a power for development. the contribution of agricultural gdp per capita of the agricultural population of countries between china and indonesia as a national show differences mainly due to the population encountered in the agricultural sector. national agricultural gdp or gdp of china was actually much bigger than indonesia, because gdp per capita of course inversely proportional to the population especially in rural areas. there is a stable tendency of increase of both countries by the year in 1994 2007 which china could increase the per capita gdp of the agricultural population of 181 dollars to 285 dollars, while indonesia is able to show the performance increase is quite stable in the year 1994 to 1996 is 264 dollars and rose to 365 in 2007. in point of gdp per capita in china and indonesia in the period in 1994-1996 showed that numbers do not differ much between the two countries where china actually smaller than indonesia, there is little difference of $ 53 constant 2000 prices. but china driving very fast with per capita gdp exceeded indonesia in the period 1999-2001 this is because china is very rapid development in other sectors like industry and services but indonesia still depend on agricultural sector of at least the industrial sector is slowly grow and also that reason in period indonesian asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 110 economic crisis have financial problems make suffer and grow stagnant. this is supported by the opinion of share of gdp of industrial sector in national gdp fluctuated between 1970 and 1985, increasing gradually after the late 1980s and rose from 41% in 1990 to 49% in 2007. in contrast to agriculture, the sector expanded rapidly. the share of service sector in national gdp increased from 13% in 1970 to 21% in 1980 and 40% in 2007. this trend is expected to persist in the coming years as china continues to promote its structural adjustment policies and economic reforms in response to domestic demand and external trade patterns changes. in the case in china there is a shift from agricultural to industrial and service sectors as well as indonesia experienced it but fluctuated very varied and tend to speed very slowly in accordance with the opinion of the growth rate of the agricultural sector has fluctuated around an average growth rate of 2.4 percent per year before the crisis (1993-1996) and 1.4 per cent per year postcrisis (2000-2002). the growth rate of the manufacturing sector fluctuated also before the crisis but it was much higher than that of the agricultural sector. the growth rate of the manufacturing sector which has declined since the crisis, indonesia's indicates its relatively slow economic recovery. also this is indicated by the average growth rate of gdp, 7.6 per cent per year before the crisis, and 2.6 per cent per-year post-crisis. consequently, the growth rate of gdp per capita in local currency decreased from 5.9 per cent per year before the crisis to 3.3 percent per year after the crisis. gdp per capita, in u.s. $ terms, fell dramatically from u.s. $ 862 per capita on average in 1993-1996 to an average of u.s. $ 211 per capita in 2000-2002 piazza and julia (2010). economic growth in china and indonesia from the agricultural sector shows a relatively has stable rate over the same period except in 1997-1998 when the economic crisis hit indonesia. the data above shows the indicator agriculture value added per worker (constant 2000 us $) chinese figures show a relatively lower compared with indonesia because the number of workers in the agricultural sector in china far more appeal in indonesia so that the value added automatic per worker go low. average value of value added per worker in both countries tend to rise from year to year and has a positive impact to the economy and rural development, especially reducing poverty becomes a very difficult disease to be cured in rural areas. 3.4. comparison of agriculture production china and indonesia agricultural production of in the country is an important indicator of development will surely become a benchmark of success of development for the agricultural sector. china and indonesia has increased agricultural production from year to year becomes the priority in development, especially staple food. increasing agricultural productivity, including yields for staple crops, will from be critical in countering pressures for agricultural protection. staple crops are still the largest agricultural sub-sector. china’s and indonesia agriculture has gone undergone since the early 1980’s. rapid economic growth, urbanization and market development are major factor in the changes, rising income and urban expansion have increased the demand almost all agricultural product food staple although non-staple food. that change has stimulated sudden shifts in the structure of agriculture to industrialization agricultural sector especially in china. total production for some commodities important in china and indonesia are relatively quite high enough where china dominates the numbers, especially on food crops, fruit vegetables, tea, cotton and tobacco this is possible with a total land area is much larger production and development of production fruit and vegetable centers, especially growth in china both small and large scale. for the tea plantations, tobacco and cotton china showed significant differences compared with indonesia this is because the resource potential for all three commodities were much better, especially the seeds are available and land is much greater than indonesia. productivity asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 111 commodities in indonesia should be entitled a higher amount than the china is there on the commodity coffee, cloves, cocoa, coconut and oil crops. some of these commodities are commodities from indonesia who would be a contributor to country revenues, especially in the agricultural sector. for indonesian coconut significantly different from china because indonesia is an archipelagic nation every beach and coconut-producing regions almost become country land, while china is a very small area is a coastal region. interesting phenomenon in oil commodity crops where the china in the period 1987 – 2004 showed a much higher production compared with indonesia, there is a declining trend after 2005 which is still in the domination of its oil production from bean plants and seeds seeds which remained a food crop, in the year 2005 production figures could be surpassed by indonesia this is because indonesia is an exporter of the world's first vegetable oil and commodities which have spread in almost all provinces, especially in sumatra and kalimantan, namely palm oil which was developed by the government and multinational companies for both domestic demand and abroad. productivity is a centrally important issue in economics because it is one of the principal determinants of economic welfare. analysis of agricultural productivity has a special place in agricultural economics because of the large dependency on natural resources in this sector and periodic concerns that we may be reaching limits in natural resource capital available for food production. the sharp rise in agricultural commodity prices over 2007–2008 elevated concerns of global supply and demand imbalances—that the rising demand for grain from the increasingly larger and wealthier world population and from the newly emerging biofuel industry was outstripping the ability of farmers to raise production, thus leading to a permanent era of higher real agricultural prices keith and david (2010). 3.5. agriculture development and its impact to poverty alleviation in china and indonesia indonesia and china have significant economic growth from the agricultural sector before the era of 90 'but the growth of agriculture will be the backbone of the economy towards industry, the gdp of agriculture in total gdp which from 1994 -1996 agriculture gdp showed no significant differences in which china and indonesia showed 16.1% and 15.1% on declining share of agriculture in total gdp, especially towards china due to changes in this industry in line with the opinions of huang et al. (2004) while china's past record of economic growth and poverty reduction is impressive, there are still great challenges ahead. the agricultural growth rate has declined since the late 1980s. rising input levels in many areas of china and diminishing marginal returns mean that increasing inputs will not provide large increases in output. water shortages and increasing competition from industry and domestic use for the remaining scarce supplies do not provide much hope for large gains in area or yields from new irrigation expansion. in the future, many have predicted that almost all gains will be productivity driven and these will have to come from secondand thirdgeneration green revolution technologies. the poverty impact of growth in the agricultural sector will thus depend increasingly on the poor connecting to these new growth processes, either as smallholders or as laborers. vertically integrated supply growth and poverty reduction in agriculture’s three world’s chains may pose particular challenges for them although recent evidence from china suggests that small and poor farmers take an active part in china’s rapidly expanding horticulture economy. according to pasandaran and rantetana (2003) overall economic growth explains much of china’s record of success in poverty reduction since 1990. both over time and across provinces, growth in per capita gdp has been closely associated with the pace of poverty reduction. available evidence also confirms that the impact of aggregate growth on poverty in china has been substantially influenced by the regional and sectoral composition of that growth. slower-than-average growth in poor regions explains in part the increasing regional concentration of poverty. in addition, uneven growth in agriculture, the main source of income for the rural poor, has contributed to differences in the rate of poverty reduction. poverty reduction has been slower where agricultural growth has lagged, and faster where agricultural growth has more or less kept pace with that in other sectors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 112 for these reasons, macroeconomic policies that promote growth, especially those that promote efficient agricultural growth and that target regions with high concentrations of poor such as the recent infrastructure investment program, should be seen as highly complementary to microeconomic poverty interventions. table 3: relationship from agriculture development and poverty indicator such as number of poor people (million), percentage of poor people, (%) agriculture annual growth (%), agricultural gdp (million $ constant 2000 prices) year number of poor people (million) percentage of poor people (%) agriculture annual growth (%) agricultural gdp (million $ constant 2000 prices) china indonesia china indonesia china indonesia china indonesia 1978 250,00 47,20 30,70 33,30 4.1 5.2 * * 1980 * 42,30 * 28,60 -1.5 6.92 * * 1981 * 40,60 * 26,90 7 4.80 * * 1984 128 35,00 15.1 21,60 12.9 4.62 * * 1987 125,00 30,00 14,8 17,40 4.7 2.1 * * 1990 85,00 27,20 9,40 15,10 7.3 2.8 * * 1993 70,00 25,90 7,70 13,70 4.7 2.1 * * 1996 65,00 39,30 7,10 17,75 5.1 3.1 152,494 23,981 1997 49,62 34,01 5,40 17,47 3.5 1.0 * * 1998 42,10 49,50 4,60 24,23 3.5 -1.3 * * 1999 34,12 47,97 3,70 23,43 2.8 2.2 180,881 25,867 2000 32,09 38,70 3,50 19,14 2.4 1.9 * * 2001 29,27 37,90 3,20 18,41 2.8 3.3 * * 2002 28,20 38,40 3,00 18,20 2.9 3.4 207,680 29,346 2003 29,00 37,30 3,10 17,42 2.5 3.8 * * 2004 26,10 36,10 2,80 16,66 6.3 2.8 * * 2005 23,65 35,10 2,50 15,97 5.2 2.7 219,004 30,146 2006 21,48 39,30 2,30 17,75 5.0 3.4 229,942 31,158 2007 14,79 37,17 1,60 16,58 3.7 3.4 238,439 32,226 2008 * 34,96 * 15,42 5.4 4.8 251,292 33,762 2009 * 32,53 * 14,15 4.2 3.0 261,757 34,775 * = not yet obtain the data sources: bps (2010), nsbc, world bank, fao statistical yearbook 2010 however, for indonesia is little different where agriculture became a central role in development and economic development and certainly also for the alleviation of rural poverty in this case can be seen in the image below in the different periods from 1994 2007 scale development of agriculture gdp is still above 10% even greater than this percentage is china also were dictated by harris (2003). the agricultural sector plays an important role in the indonesian economy. in 2000, agriculture accounted for around 17% of gdp. most agricultural industries are labor intensive and the sector accounts for about 40% of total employment. indonesian agriculture is primarily composed of small-scale subsistence farms which account for around 87% of cultivated land. the data above shows how the relationship between poverty reduction performance and agricultural development growth which presented by indicator agriculture annual growth (%) and agricultural gdp with the main indicator of poverty level of a country with indicators number of poor people and percentage of poor people in china and indonesia. there are differences in the number of poor people in china and indonesia are significant enough where the latest data in china in 2007 may have a relatively poor population is much less than with indonesia only 14.79 million people as a poor with 1.6% indonesia has a total population while the number is still much asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 113 with the number of poor people reached 37.17 million 16.58% of the population. with annual agricultural growth is a relatively equal greater china agricultural gdp is small but has a relatively much larger with a significant difference almost 7 times more than indonesia. there is an interesting phenomenon from the above data on poverty in china in relation to agricultural development can be seen in the period 1978 1987 was a reduction of poverty is significantly close to half of the previous amount of 250 million people to 125 million people a very prestigious achievement for a country in alleviating poverty. if the premises is associated with indicators of agricultural development where agricultural growth in the same period in 1984 still reached 12% even if there is a minus figure in the previous period i.e. in 1980, but it indicates how the role of the agricultural sector can also contribute positively to poverty in china. between the year of 1997 and 1998 indonesia's population increased from a total of 34.01 million people to 49.50 million people due to the economic and financial crisis that made many people lose their jobs and be poor, while in china the opposite occurs in a drastic reduction of poor population year to year with the percentage decreasing to 4.6% in the same period. this is directly proportional to the growth of agricultural development during this period decreased drastically for indonesia with agriculture marked a minus annual growth of -1.3 in 1998 could certainly interrelated relationship between agricultural development in indonesia with a population of rural poor. while in china also shows the same thing because of poor agricultural growth diminishing course toward a better show. 3.5. contribution of agriculture to international trade in china and indonesia agricultural development of a country cannot be separated from the influence of international trade involving agricultural production in order to support gdp in both countries. surely the role of international trade has influenced the pace of agricultural development that much support either demand or supply to communities in china and indonesia. we cannot rule out the role of international trade simply because of the success indicator of the rate of agricultural development in particular several strategic product for a country highly dependent on the total exports and imports of these countries towards a particular product. development of agricultural growth is the best way to alleviate poverty in developing countries and the role of international trade for agricultural commodities is also very closely related and has a direct impact on the welfare of rural communities with a lots example of countries exporting agricultural commodities. countries that export agricultural commodities have important global alignments would have to be able to contribution revenue to countries and to the farmers' for international and domestic needs. extensive exporters and intensive exporter’s countries make international trade in give national income mainly from agricultural production so the country can be covered at all and certainly a positive relative to the welfare of farmers as producers who are receiving the benefits of international trade. agriculture has rolled in international trade increases the income of the country regularly by production some primary commodity. whether agriculture trade liberalization increases, long-term economic growth and countries that are more open achieve higher growth than other countries because of international trade. the developing countries as a group will benefit from liberalization but that those benefits will be uneven. some countries will lose out. if poverty reduction is the main goal, trade policy cannot be a main vehicle for improving the situation of the poor. the comparison of agriculture in international trade to china and indonesia of some indicators. on the net indicator of total trade value of exports imports (u.s. $ million) china shows a very impressive figure very high increase from year 1994 to 2007 from 5427 u.s. $ million and in 2007 could reach u.s. $ 266.541 million a quite fantastic figure for a countries, indonesia showed the numbers tend to be unstable where the increase from year 1994 2006 from u.s. $ 6581 million to u.s. $ 39 612 million but declined in 2007 to 25,236 and a less significant increase compared with asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 114 china, this is because indonesia is still dependent of the agricultural sector by exporting natural resources, while china is the largest exporter of country we can see in almost all countries there are products products from china and of course industry and service sector that has been developed. on the net agricultural trade indicator value exports imports (u.s. $ million) figures show that china actually not very good and tend to the greater lack of exports compared with imports which in the year 1994 to 1996 shows the number -6417 u.s. $ million and the drastic fall in 2007 amounted to u.s. $ -27 075 million exactly indonesia showed good achievements in the agricultural sector where the balance between exports and imports are positive and tend to rise each year, although cannot say drastically. share of agricultural imports in total imports and exports (%) indicator show that in general indonesia much higher than china of course this is because nationally indonesia still imports many goods from abroad than with china whereas china otherwise very much export goods out is shown by a fairly small number in 2007 only 3.8%. however, in indonesia there is a tendency to decrease the data import from 11.6% to 9.3% in 1994 to 2007. for parameter share of agricultural exports in total imports and exports (%) is similar to the indicator import china has become separated from agricultural sector contributor to indonesia’s gdp, while still large enough even to reach 15%. the share of agriculture, fishery and forestry imports in gdp (%) in china and indonesia are not too high value can be compared to the variable share of agriculture, fishery and forestry exports in gdp (%) for china's import value in 2007 only 2.3% and exports 1.2 % while indonesia showed a better rate of 2.9 % imports and 6.1 % exports share of food in agricultural imports (%). in china tend to fluctuate because the number of food crop production in indonesia. fluctuates every year due to increased percentage of food crop production being unable to meet the needs of the population rate is also much more rapidly it is seen from the data showed in the year 1994 – 1996 only amounted to 64.9 % increased to 70.9% in 2007. the indicator share of food in agricultural exports (%) figures show that china actually better than indonesia which in 2007 was 72.4%, and indonesia just 62.1%. the performance of agriculture in managed open trade policy has caused the indonesian agricultural sector to become more open timmer (2005). the agricultural sector is more export oriented during 2006-2008 and agricultural trade openness increased during this period. indonesia was able to export around 12.86 percent of its output in 2006 and 16.12 percent in 2008. however, the attraction of agricultural exports creates concerns about the availability of agricultural products in the domestic market. even though the agricultural sector is more open to imports in terms of lowering average import tariffs, the fluctuations in agriculture, livestock, forestry, and fisheries value of production follows a similar seasonal pattern. it tended to increase at the beginning of the first until the third quarter and tended to descend at the fourth quarter during 2005-2008. this pattern was maintained even when external pressure of the food crisis haunted indonesia. the world food crisis and rising international commodity prices do not seem to have significantly changed the value of production in the agricultural sector. it appears that domestic prices were insulated from 8 international price rises. in fact, the role of agriculture in the economy fell during the commodity price hike. the agricultural sector contributed to around 15 percent on average of the overall economic activity in indonesia during 2004-2009, but shares of agriculture diminished in every quarter during 2004-2009. the main reason for this is that indonesia’s agriculture was open to international competition during 2004-2005. development of a country cannot be separated from international trade, which of course can increase the revenue of the country to be able to build their nation. on the table 11 the above shows the value of international trade (exports and imports) in china and indonesia in essential commodities, especially for food. total value of agricultural imports and exports in china and indonesia showed a quite different figure in china in 1994-1996 showed the figure for imports of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 115 26.7 million u.s. $ and to export 20.3 million u.s. $ while indonesia shows the figures for imports 4, 5 million us $ and to export 5.4 million u.s. $. getting up from year to year both import and export of both countries so that in 2007 china imported 59.2 million u.s. reached $ 32.2 million and the export figures of u.s. $ for indonesia, which imported 8.6 million u.s. $ and to export 17, 7 million u.s. $. this is shows the performance of the agricultural sector of both countries in international trade of agricultural products sufficient to contribute significantly to rural development. the phenomenon is interesting from these data is the number of chinese imports is much greater than the export figures for the agricultural sector, while indonesia is the opposite number of agricultural product exports are much higher than imports. many things that cause this include population growth rate china is much higher is not accompanied with a growth rate of agriculture sector and government projections for the development of china is no longer in the agricultural sector but in other sectors. indonesia’s agricultural export value has grown on average almost 9 percent annually, from a base of nearly $900 million in 1975 to nearly $18 billion in 2007 uphoff (1999). growth has been driven by increases in tropical perennial crops, such as rubber, cocoa, coffee, and palm oil. as of 2008, indonesia was the second largest exporter of palm oil and the fourth largest exporter of coffee. while growth was evident in palm oil and rubber following indonesia’s move toward industrialization in the mid-1980s, growth was exponential following the economy’s recovery after the asian financial crisis. between 1975 and 2007, palm oil and rubber accounted for nearly half of total export value, with rubber’s share alone nearing a third. between 2000 and 2007, shares associated with palm oil and rubber switched, with palm oil representing nearly 33 percent of total export value. despite growth in agricultural production, population and income growth have contributed to indonesia’s agricultural import increases. indonesia’s agricultural import value grew from over $650 million in 1975 to over $8.5 billion in 2007, an 8-percent average annual increase, to meet the needs of a swelling population that increased from less than 100 million in 1961 to nearly 230 million in 2009. in addition to the overall growth in imports to meet expanding food demand, indonesian food import trends reflect food preferences and lifestyle changes of an increasingly educated, urban, and wealthy consumer. cereals, which accounted for over 60 percent of total imports in 1975, have accounted for only about a quarter of agricultural imports since 1991. instead, imports of feed and fodder to meet the needs of the growing poultry sector and foods to satisfy indonesia’s newly discerning consumers have risen. for example, feed and fodder import value increased an average 34 percent each year between 1967 and 2007. similarly, soybean (food item) import value increased an average 12. table 4: comparison of agriculture to international trade in china and indonesia countries / indicator 1994-1996 1999-2001 2005 2006 2007 net total trade value (exports imports) (us$ million) china 5,427 29,652 106,17 183,825 266,54 indonesia 6,582 26,210 27,959 39,612 25,236 net agricultural trade value (exports imports) (us$ million) china -6,417 -6,896 -18,621 -21,306 -27,075 indonesia 868 523 5,747 8,321 9,046 share of agricultural imports in total imports and exports (%) china 6.5 4.5 3.7 3.6 3.8 indonesia 11.6 15.0 9.0 9.7 9.3 share of agricultural exports in total imports and exports (%) china 4.9 3.0 1.9 1.7 1.8 indonesia 12.0 8.8 12.8 14.2 15.0 share of agriculture ,fishery and forestry imports in gdp (%) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 116 china 4.3 2.7 2.6 2.4 2.3 indonesia 3.5 4.5 2.9 2.6 2.9 share of agriculture ,fishery and forestry exports in gdp (%) china 2.8 1.5 1.3 1.2 1.2 indonesia 6.0 7.5 6.3 6.1 6.1 share of food in agricultural imports (%) china 57.9 63.6 61.3 56.5 64.2 indonesia 64.9 63.9 67.5 69.4 70.9 share of food in agricultural exports (%) china 57.9 64.5 69.5 70.7 72.4 indonesia 64.9 60.3 61.3 55.3 62.1 share of top four commodities in value of agricultural imports (%) china 22.7 24.5 37.3 39.5 39.3 indonesia 55.5 47.5 42.6 38.1 40.0 share of top four commodities in value of agricultural exports (%) china 32.4 26.6 23.2 21.5 20.9 indonesia 48.8 53.1 67.8 72.6 69.9 percent per year between 1975 and 2007. source: fao statistical yearbook, 2009 4. conclusion and recommendations 4.1. conclusion china and indonesia have significant economic growth from the agricultural sector before the era of 90 'but the growth of agriculture sector is quite different between china and indonesia. which in china after 90’s period is moved away not depend on the agricultural sector we can saw from variable agriculture gdp share in total gdp after 2000 less than 10 %, but in indonesia in the same period still in 14 %. and also we can saw also in the other indicator that is agricultural gdp countries of agricultural population showed indonesia still more higher than china that’s way the of agriculture growth and rural development in indonesia have a good strategic rule for poverty reduction and china agriculture sector for support the other sector for growth. policy of agricultural development strategy in china and indonesia has implications and implementation for agricultural development economically active especially in rural areas are contribute to poverty reduction have fundamental differences on several critical points, but especially in the period 1990-2000 in which indonesia is experiencing financial and economic crisis that changes the direction of policy drastically and causes of poverty. many different policies in both countries that became fundamental differences policy in china and indonesia are centralization in china and decentralization in indonesia that makes crucial decisions in agricultural development has a direct impact on the welfare and poverty. various policies centralization in china brings significant changes despite the risk of development inequities between the regions but a drastic impact on agricultural development and national poverty. however, in indonesia it is different with how the transition process decentralization policy that takes time gradually to make good implementation to the target but have some important points especially in empowering the community in a participatory and optimizing use of existing resources in each region into a force in creating jobs and reducing poverty. china and indonesia is a large country in asia is an example of success in agricultural development and poverty reduction. there is little equality policies in both countries in agricultural asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 117 policy, especially in primary commodity production base at the beginning of its development, where rice is a top priority in both countries as a food staple. this policy indicates that the role of staple foods in agricultural policy into a national policy which contributes to rural poverty in both countries. in addition, there are policies to provide incentives to existing agricultural inputs either for subsidy fertilizer or for other agricultural production facilities with a significant contribution in rural development. poverty alleviation in china and indonesia, many depend on agriculture in rural development that was actively able to provide a significant contribution to development in both countries. from the data on agricultural policy in china have a determinant factor for a successful policy of agricultural development policy in rural china with base on a target of poverty reduction is also the rural agricultural market oriented policies which can create the smallest unit in an area into a private sector enterprise that is able to contribute substantial economic impact in rural china with the creation of more business opportunities and create jobs that many farms in each activity. this policy can be adopted in indonesia into one single national policy in the contribution of poverty alleviation at the national level. 4.2. recommendations recommendation for further research is: need to do a thorough research and observation integration between the agricultural sector and other sectors in relation to poverty reduction and also in the overall development of the various aspects in china and in indonesia and critical review focus and deeply on the comparative strengths and weaknesses significantly between poverty alleviation program in the agricultural sector both in two country with implementation and real impact to the welfare of society and implication for other sector if there are real effect for development process. some recommendations on policies related to agricultural development that is directly related to poverty alleviation, are: remain a priority in the policy of agricultural production that could increase farmers' income from the start and spread of agricultural technology improvements to create clear market certainty in terms of social, economic, and governmental interference in the market tackle failures. policies based on agricultural production is certainly of major commodities in each region have their advantages – which can each contribute to an area to be able to create added value and great business opportunities in rural communities. expanding investment policies in agriculture by seeking diversification of products and their derivatives through the private sector for the support from the government that will create more employment opportunities and expanded access of farmers to the banking system also can provide capital for farming, especially in rural areas. this policy is certainly a pro with the empowerment of people through effective and efficient so that it can be implemented well with the capital that is owned mainly from the banking sector. develop agribusiness in agricultural primary actors also became one alternative in creating the economic conditions in rural areas which would affect poverty. the policy for protects a major agricultural commodity prices in the country by restricting the import policy must still be a central role for farmers and rural communities can enjoy a stable price that will create a better situation in rural and agribusiness community welfare could significantly reduce rural poverty. need integration between agricultural policy with the policy of poverty reduction with the combination between the roles of central and local governments that provide access, contributing to shape the programs implemented with clear stages of directed and measurable to create a sustainable development policy development and creating equality in every area. need to increase cooperation between the two countries in the exchange of information and technology in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 104-118 118 the agricultural sector not only trades in general, the existing container with cafta (china – asean free trade agreement) so that the product and technology particularly in the agricultural sector capable of contributing to the development of both countries and regional. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: thanks to dr. edi basuno senior researcher at indonesia center for agricultural socio economics and policy studies to supervised this study who has been guiding and providing direction in this paper as a part of the master thesis. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. reference daryanto, a., & morison, j. b. 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of ulaanbaatar city ichinkhorloo bazarragchaa college of economics and management, north west a&f university, yangling, shaanxi, china nyambat luvsandorj management department, mongolian university of life science, ulaanbaatar, mongolia lu qian college of economics and management, north west a&f university, yangling, shaanxi, china abstract 1 ulaanbaatar city (ub) is not only capital and the largest city with continuously growing populations in mongolia. the people, who must consume milk at highest amounts, are those living in urban areas, especially ub city. current level of domestic liquid milk production is not met consumption of capital city and other biggest cities. the objective of this study is to analyze market equilibrium of liquid milk (estimations were relied on the information regarding cow milk, which has the highest yield than milk from other species of five types of livestock) market of ub city, and determine level of milk supply. market theory, including demand and supply analyses were applied using regression analyses to estimate functional forms and other required statisticaleconometrical indicators. secondary data gathered from national statistical office (2004-2014) and methodology for converting adult equivalence methodology cited from methodological guidance. according to the study results, main finding was comparatively bigger deficit of liquid milk market of ub warn weak position of liquid milk security level (794.4 t <237.8 t). therefore, support of domestic liquid milk producers should be desirable to improve market condition as well as national food security issue. it is clear that in the future more advanced development of intensified dairy farms and supports of their activities are essential in order to meet the demands. keywords: liquid milk, intensified dairy farm, adult equivalence, statisticaleconometrical indicators 1. introduction milk and dairy products are one of the traditional foods of the mongolians and it is the first necessity for physiology needs. therefore, milk is included in the nutrition strategy list of four foods for population by a new food law of mongolia (gom, 2012). the mongolian people do not use the milk directly in their food, but they add milk to tea, make yogurt and curd, additionally use the clotted cream in their food; also high contents of oil in the everyday products as melted butter, milk butter, mare's milk, drink made by thinning, acid drink, high contents of colostrum's as cheese, dried curds and dried milk products as habit to accustomed from ancient period in their life (unur, 2013). in mongolia with sharply continental climate, where is dominated the pasture animal husbandry it is less time to prepare the milk /about 4 months/.in warm season, it is formed excess milk. in addition, it is delicate product with high risk to blink in transportation. in cold season, it is corresponding author’s name: ichinkhorloo bazarragchaa email address: ichko1998@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ichko1998@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 263-270 264 deficiency in the milk. becauseof delayed treatment of excess milk accumulated in warm season, 1 /3of milk is “lost pour out”. depending from this in cold season the need in milk is compensated by imported milk. there are over 18.0 million liters of milk are imported annually (lkhagvajav, 2013). now it is restoring manufacture branch for milk and milk products but it is impossible to supply the needs of population in milk especially for population in settlement areas, therefore it is compensated by the import goods to reserve the foodstuffs. annually use 87.6kg of milk in urban areas but cattle-breeders 220.8 kg of milk (jargalan, 2012). from the government in 1999 year it was approved “white revolution” (gom, 2006)national program with a purpose to improve milk and dairy product supply for the population. level of the small enterprise’s technology, especially products packaging were improved; at the same time it was increased capacity to produce sterilized milk, yogurt, whipping cream, hard and soft cheese, delicious icecream and brand products (unur, 2013). even though consumers know that most of companies in ulaanbaatar using milk powder for their packed milk advertising it as a fresh liquid milk, they still consuming these fake products. probably, consuming of powdered milk that compensating fresh mill is rather cheaper than wasting time and money for investing on establishment of dairy farms (sukhbaatar, 2012). mongolia in 2014 year has totally 51.1million livestock, from what there are 2.9 million of horse, 3.4million of cattle, 0.3 million of camel, 23.2million of sheep, 22million of goat (nso, 2014). there are 42.8% of total livestock are dams. these are about 530.0 million liter of milk resource where 79.2 percent is cow milk(figure 1). figure 1: milk resources in the country by kinds of livestock the government program “supporting intensified animal husbandry”(gom, 2003), national programs “milk” (gom, 2006)and “food guarantee” (gom, 2009) were directed to make investment for citizens and entities that produce milk and milk products, also to provide real financial assistance (mfa, 2010). figure 2 shows the milk production since implementation program for “supporting intensified animal husbandry” (damdinsuren, 2008). figure 2: milk production (million lifters) 10% 0.36% 79.20% 2.13% 10.25% mare's milk female camel's milk cow's milk sheep's milk goat's milk 0 200 400 600 800 1000 milk produced in agricultural branch, million liters milk processed by industrial method, million liters imported milk, million liter asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 263-270 265 2. description 2.1. study area ub is the capital city of mongolia and only city of million population in the country on the one hand, and an area called ulaanbaatar the capital (briefly the capital), which has 4,704.4 km 2 territory and 9 districts, 3 of which are separate cities according to new administrative divisions in 1992.as of 2014, there were 1.3 million populations in the capital (wikipedia.org, 2010).ub city is situated in eastern central body of mongolia, surrounded with soums of tuv aimag (figure 3). different study sites are ub is the coldest national capital in the world, with a monsoon-influenced, cold semi-arid climate that closely borders a subarctic climate and humid continental, characterized by the existence of four seasons, as follows: spring from march to may; summer from june toaugust; autumn from september to november; winter from december to february. figure 3: map of ub city 3. methodology relying on the data from statistical year book (nso, 2014) of mongolia (2004-2014), necessary materials were collected and the study was performed in 2 stages. 3.1. annual consumption and supply of liquid milk for populations of ub city it estimated by using methodology to calculate statistical indicators of food security and safety (nso, 2008). 3.1.1 to estimate number of equivalent population. 3.1.2 to estimate annual demand of milk for equivalent population. 3.1.3 to estimate total milk reserve. 3.1.4 to express milk supply with physical amounts and percentages. 3.2. market equilibrium of liquid milk market of ub city 3.2.1 this stage to determine milk market equilibrium of liquid milk of ub city were determined on the basis of demand and supply theory (orosoo & bakey, 2012). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 263-270 266 3.2.2. demand and supply analyses were applied using regression analyses to estimate functional forms and other required statisticaleconometrical indicators. 4. results and discussion 4.1. table 1 shows milk supply of ub city population could not be completely, provided use imported milk (anne & manfred, 1997). table 1: liquid milk supply rate of equivalent population in ub city year annual milk demand of equivalent population of year, t consumption of liquid milk, t supply rate domestic manufacturing import 2004 61.0 6 9.8 90.2 2005 63.4 8 12.6 87.4 2006 65.3 5.1 7.8 92.2 2007 67.7 10.1 14.9 85.1 2008 68.7 16.9 24.6 75.4 2009 71.3 20.6 28.9 71.1 2010 74.9 26.7 35.6 64.4 2011 77.8 33.3 42.8 57.2 2012 78.8 37 46.9 53.1 2013 81.2 36.9 45.5 54.5 2014 84.11 37.2 44.2 55.8 total 794.4 237.8 4.2. use ms-excel (bolormaa, 2013) equilibrium of liquid milk market was calculated relying on total consumption of liquid milk (mil l), supply (mil l), consumers’ price (mnt per liter), annual household income (thousand mnt) of ub city and producers’ price(mnt per liter). 4.2.1. liquid milk demand (1) and supply function (3) s (based data analysis reports (table 2, table 3) are: 4.2.1.1. 𝑄𝐷 = 50.9879 − 0.0236 ∙ 𝑃𝐷 + 0.0325 ∙ 𝑅; 𝑟2 = 0.95;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (1) from demand function (1), increase of consumers’ price one liter milk by 1 mnt resulted in decrease of consumption by 0.023 million liter, increase annual family income by 1000 mnt leads to increase of milk consumption by 0.032 million liter. fisher value f=78.12 expresses confidence probability of the equation is 0.95. if r of the equation (1) is replaced with household income of 2014: 𝑅2014 = 1519.8 demand function is 𝑄𝐷 = 100.443 − 0.023 ∙ 𝑃𝐷 ; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (2) table2: data analysis report regression statistics multiple r 0.975 r square 0.951 adjusted r square 0.939 standard error 2.089 observations 11 anova d.f ss ms f regression 2 681.692 340.846 78.121 residual 8 34.905 4.363 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 263-270 267 total 10 716.596 coefficients standard error t stat intercept 50.988 1.993 25.580 pd -0.024 0.026 -0.910 r 0.033 0.022 1.918 table 3: data analysis report regression statistics multiple r 0.950 r square 0.903 adjusted r square 0.892 standard error 4.321 observations 11 anova d.f ss ms f regression 1 1561.730 1561.729 83.644 residual 9 168.041 18.671 total 10 1729.770 coefficients standard error t stat intercept -17.505 4.472 -3.914 ps 0.054 0.006 9.146 𝑄𝑆 = −17.505 + 0.055 ∙ 𝑃𝑆; 𝑟2 = 0.90; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(3) from supply function, increase of producers’ price one liter milk by 1 mnt resulted in increase of production by 0.055 million liter. fisher value f=83.64 expresses confidence probability of the equation is 0.95. 4.2.1.2. equilibrium state (figure 4): 100.4437 − 0.023 ∙ 𝑃𝐷 = −17.505 + 0.055 ∙ 𝑃𝑆 ;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(4) equilibrium price:0.078 ∙ 𝑃∗ = 117.949; 𝑃∗ = 1502.534 mnt per liter equilibrium quantity is 𝑄∗ = 100.443 − 0.023 ∙ 𝑃∗ = 64.953 million liters figure 4: equilibrium liquid milk market of ub city 0.0 20.0 40.0 60.0 80.0 100.0 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 qd(p) qs(p) 𝑃^∗ 𝑄^∗ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 263-270 268 table 4: statistical and econometrical significance levels parameters demand function supply function 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 > 𝐹𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 78.12>5.12 83.64>5.32 𝑡𝑏 > 𝑡0.95 -0.202<2.262 -3.97<2.262 𝑡𝑎 > 𝑡0.95 0.898<2.306 9.69>2.262 correlation coefficient r=0.99 r=0.94 r square 𝑅2 = 0.98 𝑅2 = 0.88 4.2.2. liquid milk demand and supply functions were confident (table 4), use them calculated forecast of interval error (nyambat, 2014). 4.2.2.1. for demand function𝑄𝐷 = 100.443 − 0.023 ∙ 𝑃𝐷 : a. milk consumers’ price is similar to 2014and if it was 𝑃𝐷𝑘 = 𝑃𝐷2014 = 1375mnt/liter; 𝑚𝑄 𝐷2014 = 𝑆𝑄 𝐷2014 ∙ 1 + 1 𝑛 + 𝑃2014 −𝑃 𝐷 2 (𝑃𝐷−𝑃 𝐷 )2 = 2.337; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(5) forecast error, million liters: 𝜀 = 𝑡0.95 ∙ 𝑚𝑄 𝐷2014 = 2.337 ∙ 2.201 = 5.144 ; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(6) 𝑄 𝐷 − 𝜀 = 67.965 − 5.144 ≤ 𝑄𝐷 ∗ ≤ 𝑄 𝐷 + 𝜀 = 67.965 + 5.144 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(7) when consumer’s price is similar to 2014, liquid milk demand is between the below interval: 62.821 ≤ 𝑄𝐷 ∗ ≤ 73.109 million liters. b. considering it is greater by 25% than 2014or 𝑃𝐷2014 = 1718.75 mnt /liter, if the error is estimated, it is clear that: 𝑚𝑄 𝐷2014 = 𝑆𝑄 𝐷2013 ∙ 1 + 1 𝑛 + 𝑃2014 −𝑃 𝐷 2 𝑃𝐷−𝑃 𝐷 2 = 2.666 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (8) forecast error, million liter: 𝜀 = 𝑡0.95 ∙ 𝑚𝑄 𝐷2014 = 2.201 ∙ 2.666 = 5.869; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(9) 𝑄 𝐷 − 𝜀 = 59.841 − 5.869 ≤ 𝑄𝐷 ∗ ≤ 𝑄 𝐷 + 𝜀 = 59.841 + 5.869; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(10) when consumers’ price is greater by25% than 2014 or 𝑃𝐷2014 = 1718.75 mnt/liter,liquid milk demand is between the below interval: 53.976 ≤ 𝑄𝐷 ∗ ≤ 65.715million liters. 4.2.2.2. for supply function𝑄𝑆 = −17.505 + 0.054 ∙ 𝑃𝑆: a. milk producers’ price is similar to 2014and if it was 𝑃𝑆𝑘 = 𝑃𝑆2014 = 1013 mnt /liter; 𝑚𝑄 𝑆2014 = 𝑆𝑄 𝑆2014 ∙ 1 + 1 𝑛 + 𝑃2014 −𝑃 𝑆 2 𝑃𝑆−𝑃 𝑆 2 = 6.028 ; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(11) forecast error, million liters: 𝜀 = 𝑡0.95 ∙ 𝑚𝑄 𝑆2014 = 6.028 ∙ 2.201 = 13.263; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(12) 𝑄 𝑆 − 𝜀 = 37.685 − 13.269 ≤ 𝑄𝑆 ∗ ≤ 𝑄 𝑆 + 𝜀 = 37.685 + 13.269; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(13) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 263-270 269 when consumers’ price is similar to 2014, liquid milk supply is between the below interval: 24.422≤ 𝑄𝑆 ∗ ≤ 50.948 million liter. b. considering it is greater by 25% than 2014or 𝑃𝑆𝑘 = 𝑃𝑆2014 = 1266.25 mnt /liter, if the error is estimated, it is clear that: 𝑚𝑄 𝑆2014 = 𝑆𝑄 𝑆2014 ∙ 1 + 1 𝑛 + 𝑃2014 −𝑃 𝑆 2 (𝑃𝑆−𝑃 𝑆)2 = 5.257; . . . . . . . . . . . (14) forecast error, million liter: 𝜀 = 𝑡0.95 ∙ 𝑚𝑄 𝑆2013 = 5.257 ∙ 2.201 = 11.571 ; . . . . . . . . . . . (15) 𝑄 𝑆 − 𝜀 = 51.483 − 11.571 ≤ 𝑄𝑆 ∗ ≤ 𝑄 𝑆 + 𝜀 = 51.483 + 11.571 .... . . . . . . . . . (16) when producers’ price is greater by25% than 2014 or 𝑃𝑆𝑘 = 1266.52 mnt/liter,liquid milk supply is between the below interval: 39.912 ≤ 𝑄𝑆 ∗ ≤ 63.054million liters. 5. conclusion according to the study results, main finding was comparatively bigger (supply (production) <consumption or 794.4 t <237.8 t) deficit of liquid milk market ub warn weak position of food security level. therefore, support of domestic liquid milk producers should be desirable to improve market condition as well as national milk security issue. determined function of liquid milk demand and supply function (2), (3) s for ub city demonstrate demand elasticity is higher, while supply elasticity is weak. from above it is clear imported powder milk is diluted and then it is sold in large amounts. consumption of liquid milk is similar to that in 2014, probability of equation of consumers’ price to purchase milk (7) and consumption is greater by 25% than those in 2014, probability of equation of consumers’ price 1 liter liquid milk (10) and supply is similar to that in 2014, while probability of equation of producers’ price of 1 liter milk (13) and supply is greater by 25% than those in 2014, probability of equation of producers’ price 1 liter liquid milk (16) is 0.95. calculated function and parameter report (table 4) shows demand and supply function regression coefficient (-0.2042<2.2622), (-3.97<2.2622) and a coefficient of supply function 0.8977<2.2622) are not confident, while supply function regression coefficient (9.6940>2.2622) is confident. functions correlation coefficients closer to +1 indicates correlation density is good, while determination coefficient (r 2 ) closer to +1 reveals proper selection of linear function. acknowledgement i acknowledge our co-authors, professor l. nyambat and professor lu qian (陆迁) for their invaluable advices and supervision in my entire research journey. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. reference anne, t., & manfred, m. (1997). implication of economics policy for food security / a training mannual. rome: fao, un. bolormaa, d. (2013). microsoft excel2010: formulas.2 nd ed.muls press, ulaanbaatar. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 263-270 270 damdinsuren, l. (2008). mongolian dairy products. doctoral thesis, mongolian university of science and technology, mongolia. gom (government of mongolia) (2006). milknational program. government resolution no. 239, mongolia. gom (government of mongolia) (2006). white revolution. government resolution no. 105, mongolia. gom (government of mongolia) (2009). food guarantee-national program. government resolution no. 32, mongolia. gom (government of mongolia) (2012).food law.government of mongolia, chapter 3-3.1.6, mongolia. gom (government of mongolia) (2003). to support intensified animal husbandrynational program.government resolution no. 160, mongolia. jargalan, b. (2012). mongolian milk or monmilk. journal of mongolian agriculture, 6(18), 5-9. lkhagvajav, o. (2013). current condition of mongolian food branch. niigmiin toli-daily newspaper, 19(5284), pp. a3. mfa (2010). reportfood guarantee. ulaanbaatar: ministry of food and agriculture press. nso (2014). mongolian statistical yearbook 2006-2014. ulaanbaatar, mongolia. nso (2008). methodology for estimation of statistical parameters food safety and supply. retrieved 2015, from nso web site: http://web.nso.mn/aazms/assets/uploads/files/cafc3khunsnii_ayulgvi_baidal.pdf. nyambat, l. (2014). econometrics: methdology, 1 st ed.4 ungu press, ulaanbaatar, pp. 14-24 orosoo, r., & bakey, a. (2012). economics: market theory. 3 rd ed. inter press, ulaanbaatar. sukhbaatar, t. (2012, june 22). food safety mongolia-milk safety.journal of mongolian agriculture, 7(19), 6-8. unur, k. (2013). let's build milk farm for farmers. niigmiin toli-daily newspaper, 27(5292), pp. b5. wikipedia (2010). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/main_page.retrieved 2015, from https://www.google.mn/?gws_rd=ssl#q=ulaanbaatar+city:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ulaa nbaatar. http://web.nso.mn/aazms/assets/uploads/files/cafc3-khunsnii_ayulgvi_baidal.pdf http://web.nso.mn/aazms/assets/uploads/files/cafc3-khunsnii_ayulgvi_baidal.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/main_page https://www.google.mn/?gws_rd=ssl#q=ulaanbaatar+city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ulaanbaatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ulaanbaatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ulaanbaatar effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 128 comparison of technical efficiency and socio-economic status in animal-crop mixed farming systems in dry lowland sri lanka upul yasantha nanayakkara vithanage postgraduate institute of agriculture, university of peradeniya, peradeniya, sri lanka lokugam h. p. gunaratne professor; department of agricultural economics and business management, faculty of agriculture, university of peradeniya, sri lanka kumara mahipala m. b. p. senior lecturer; department of animal science, faculty of agriculture, university of peradeniya, sri lanka hewa waduge cyril professor; department of animal science, faculty of agriculture, university of peradeniya, sri lanka abstract pre-tested, structured questionnaires covered management aspects, inputs, outputs, socioeconomic situations and constraints in dairy farming among semi-intensive (sifs) and extensive farming systems (efs) in dry-lowland sri lanka. parametric data were analyzed using twotailed‘t’ and ‘z’ tests, and non-parametric values were analyzed using chi-square and fisher’s extract tests. cobb-douglas model was used to calculate meta-frontier and system-specific frontiers. returns in sifs are lower than efs. labor costs are 91.72% and 87.26% in efs and sifs respectively. counting family labor, sifs has no comparative surplus. excluding this, dairying is profitable even in sifs. dairying provides efs family insurance where selling animals increases income. discouragement of this in sifs impacts negatively on sustainable income. integration is comparatively minimal in efs. established with the best practices and technologies available, sifs requires external resources to enhance efficiencies. if all efs farmers achieved best farmer te, output could increase by 45.09%. similarly, sifs output could increase by 57.08%. farmer education and training programs contribute to improved production efficiency. grassland scarcity and low productivity affect output adversely; poor veterinary and extension services are major constraints. farmers consider dairying as profitable, which secures its future. contrastingly, 35.19% of farmers believe it is low status, preferring professional jobs despite lower comparative incomes. keywords: buffalos, cattle, farming systems, technical efficiency introduction 1 agriculture and livestock in sri lanka account for 11.2% and 0.84% of total gdp corresponding author’s name: upul yasantha nanayakkara vithanage email address: nvuyasantha@yahoo.co.uk respectively (cbsl, 2011). national milk production in 2011 was estimated as 256.78 million litres with approximately 201.17 million litres supplied from neat cattle. it is estimated that total milk production grew by 2.3% from 250.99 million litres in 2010 (cbsl, 2012). in 2011, the value of the total milk and milk products importation was 38,182 lkr millions, a 30.69% asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:nvuyasantha@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 128-141 129 increment since 2010 (cbsl, 2011). in 2007, the total milk consumption of sri lanka was around 612,000 mt (32 kg per capita consumption). compared to the per capita consumption of developed countries, sri lankan per capita milk consumption is among the lowest in the world (ranawana, 2008). obviously, the dependency on milk powder importation and low liquid milk consumption due to low supply will probably continue. in sri lanka there are four cattle based farming systems namely up and mid country, coconut triangle, wet lowland and dry lowland (ibrahim et al., 1999). dairy (cattle and buffalo) in the dry lowland zones is an important capital asset for the peasant farmers. moreover, dairy farming is predominantly a smallholder mixed croplivestock farming operation (ibrahim et al., 1999; bandara, 2000; premarathne and premalal, 2005). in 2011, the dairy population of dry lowland was 1,009,390 (63.21% of the total population) and the total average daily milk production of dry lowland was 320, 850 l (45.6% of total production) (cbsl, 2012). total land extent of the dry lowland is around 37, 600 km 2 and limited land for fodder and forage production is a critical issue in dairy production (ranaweera, 2007). therefore, national milk self sufficiency could be achieved only by enhancing the production in dry lowland. the development of the dairy industry in the country has stagnated mainly for political, technical and socio-economic reasons (perera and jayasuriya, 2008). further, a poor understanding of socioeconomic and cultural factors was the main reason for unsatisfactory outcomes of the dairy development programs in the country (zemmelink et al., 1999). against this background, the objective of this study is to identify the farm-level socio-economic and technical efficiency in the above systems that would provide further support to increase national dairy production, which would thereby ensure long-term sustainability. this finding may have regional application for countries with similar tropical farming systems. the paper is organized as follows. the following section presents the methodology adopted which will be followed by results, and discussion sections. the conclusions and implications are presented in the last section. methodology data collection the study was conducted in dry-lowland dairy farming systems in polonnaruwa and baticaloa districts of sri lanka. this area accounts 23.41% of dairy population and 30.02% of milk production out of total in dry-lowland in 2011 (cbsl, 2012). prior to the survey, fifteen in-depth discussions were held with selected small and large scale farmers, officers of major large-scale dairy farming companies (i.e. cic holdings), officers of formal milk collecting networks (i.e. milk industries of lanka company ltd., nestle lanka ltd.), small-scale milk collectors, veterinary surgeons, livestock development instructors and artificial insemination technicians. approximate numbers of dairy farmers were found from the different 10 administrative divisions. then, stratified random sample was drawn, probability proportion to size thus end up with a sample of 96 farms. this information supplemented the conceptual framework of the survey instrument. the structured questionnaire was pre-tested twice. the questionnaire covered dairy management aspects, inputs used, outputs, socio-economic situations, constraints and involvement of households in dairy farming. analytical framework the stakeholder discussions as well as field observations reveled that there are two distinct dairy farming systems existed in the study area that could be named as extensive farming system (efs) and semi-intensive asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 128-141 130 farming system (sifs). the socio-economic and production details were analyzed for two systems separately and compared if needed. dairy production economics a cost benefit analysis was carried out considering the expenditure and revenue on dairy farm activities for a period of one month. the cost of labor was calculated based on the duration (hours/day) spent on dairy farming activities and the daily labor wage following mahipala et al., 2006. all data were analysed using sas (1998) statistical package. parametric data were analysed using the two-tailed ‘t’ test and ‘z’ test. non parametric values were analysed using chi-square and fisher’s extract tests. technical efficiency te shows the farmer’s ability to produce the maximum level of output by using an existing set of inputs (i.e. output oriented) or produce the same level of output using fewer inputs (i.e. input oriented) (lawson et al., (2004); pierani and rizzi (2003). furthermore, te is the ability of a decision-making unit (e.g. farm) to produce maximum output by using a given set of inputs and technology (thiam et al., 2001). the analysis based on the concept of te in terms of deviation from best-practice frontier as described by farrell (1957). further, te is defined as the capability of the farm to reach its maximum possible production level by using a given set of inputs and available technology. according to farrell (1957) there are two ways to quantify technical efficiency either by estimating econometric frontiers such as production or cost frontier or by estimating a free disposal convex hull of the observed input-output ratios using mathematical programming techniques. since most of the agriculture production systems analysis used the stochastic frontier analysis (bauer, 1990), this study deals with the parametric approach. in the parametric approach, the stochastic frontier production function approach independently proposed by aigner et al. (1977) and meeusen and van den broeck (1977) is used where the error term has two components that are systemic random error and one sided technical inefficiency terms. the stochastic frontier model is described as below, yi = f (xi; β) exp (vi ui) where i = 1, …, n observations in the sample; yi is the observed output level of ith farm; f (xi; β) is a production functional form with respect to input vector, xi, and unknown parameter vector β; ui is a nonnegative random variable representing technical efficiency; and vi is the random error term which is assumed to be distributed independently and identically as n (0, σv 2 ) and independent of ui. the frontier output (yi * ) is represented by f (xi; β) exp (vi) (gunerathne and leung, 1997). maximum likelihood estimate of the parameters are measured in order to parameterization, σv 2 + σ 2 = σs 2 and γ = σ 2 / (σv 2 + σ 2 ) where σ and σv are indicated standard deviation of ui and vi respectively. also, the ratio of the observed output to the corresponding frontier output refers the te of i-th farm. the cobb-douglas model is used here due to its simplicity, absence of multicolinearity and homogeneity. therefore, tei = yi/yi * exp (-ui) the milk production is affected by several variables (singh et al., 2006). the number of cows and all other costs including labor were considered as independent variables, while milk production represented the dependent variable. the cobb-douglas stochastic frontier in this study is specified as; asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 128-141 131 where yi is the value of milk production for the i th farm in the sample [in sri lankan rupees (lkr)/farm]; x1 is the total number of cows of the herd; x2 is the total cost of the farm (lkr/farm/month); and β1, β2 and β3 are output elasticity of total cows of the herd, total cost of the farm and other factors respectively. technical efficiency was calculated by two methods using frontier 4.1. meta-frontier and system specific frontiers were estimated for each farming system. when te is measured among different groups of famers, te should be measured with respect to a common frontier (meta-frontier) instead of depending on separate frontiers for each group (system specific frontier) (victor et al., 2010). a major assumption in metaproduction function is that all considered groups have similar access to technology (gunaratne and leung, 1997). system specific frontier was calculated relatively to all farms belonging to a particular farming system (either efs or sifs) whereas metafrontier was calculated considering all farms as a pool. the outputs obtained from the two models were compared. noncompatibility of the data across the system is one of the major limitations when using meta-production function. the surveyed data was gathered by using same questionnaire over the same period throughout different systems. therefore, it greatly eliminates the non-compatibility among the data (gunaratna and leung, 1997). in the second level, six other factors (size of the farm family, farmer’s ethnicity, age, education, knowledge of dairy farming and farming systems) were analysed to determine their effect on technical efficiency of dairy farming. constraints and other social issues the three main production constraints as well as service constraints were identified using open-ended questions. other than that, social issues related to dairy farming i.e. reasons for being engaged in dairy farming, recognition as a dairy farmer, children’s willingness of continuation and the future of dairy farming were also identified using open-ended questions. results dairy production economics the direct costs and revenues of dairy farming were considered in calculating the profit of the dairy enterprises. costs account for expenditure on feeding, breeding, health care, labor and so on. revenues were generated from selling milk and live animals for meat purposes. expenditure the cost of concentrate and mineral feeding was significantly higher (p<0.05) in sifs than efs (table 1). furthermore, the cost of family labor and hired labor was significantly greater (p<0.05) in efs than sifs. the cost of drugs and total cost including family labor for dairy farming was found to be significantly higher (p<0.05) in efs than sifs. table 1: monthly expenditure on dairy farming expenditure lkr/farm/month p values efs 1 sifs 1 dairy animal purchasing 416.67 (2165.08) 622.58 (1404.07) 0.5838 concentrate and mineral supplement 31.67 (161.55) 1081.40 (1892.00) 0.0206 drugs 209.25 (340.45) 47.84 (103.83) 0.0006 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 128-141 132 1mean, values in the parentheses are standard deviations means significantly different between systems (p<0.05) revenue dairy farming was the major income generating enterprise in efs and it accounted for 63.91% of total farm income. the revenue from milk and meat (selling culled animals) was significantly (p<0.05) higher in efs than sifs (table 2). there was a significant difference (p<0.05) in total dairy farm income between the two farming systems, and it was greater in efs than sifs. moreover, the profit of the dairy farm including or excluding family labor was significantly greater (p<0.05) in efs than sifs. table 2: monthly revenue from dairy farming 1mean, values in the parentheses are standard deviations means significantly different between systems (p<0.05) veterinary service 19.60 (81.11) 17.33 (43.53) 0.8597 artificial insemination 0.00 (0.00) 23.59 (62.13) 0.0523 natural breeding (stud bull) 0.00 (0.00) 0.60 (4.98) 0.5344 family labor 20995.74 (8534.82) 12375.00 (5103.97) 0.0001 hired labor 1203.7 (3442.55) 0.00 (0.00) 0.0043 equipment 0.00 (0.00) 10.43 (54.91) 0.3280 other 15.43 (80.18) 2.66 (15.53) 0.2061 total cost excluding family labor 1896.33 (4026.13) 1806.44 (2797.59) 0.9013 total cost including family labor 19003.97 (11301.48) 13662.05 (6835.27) 0.0057 revenue lkr/farm/month p values efs 1 sifs 1 milk 25888.89 (21967.52) 3913.04 (4132.46) 0.0001 meat (sell cattle/buffalo) 23725.31 (23066.40) 1077.29 (2361.07) 0.0001 total dairy farm income 49614.20 (43222.12) 4990.34 (5269.97) 0.0001 profit excluding family labor cost 47717.86 (42727.55) 3183.90 (4701.47) 0.0001 profit including family labor cost 30610.23 (40081.09) -8598.32 (5712.65) 0.0001 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 128-141 133 technical efficiency the technical efficiencies in efs varied from 0.05 to 0.8847 with respect to system specific frontier whereas it ranged from 0.0211 to 0.9316 in sifs. the system specific values are significantly different between two farming systems. the mean te in efs (system specific frontier) was greater than the mean te in all farms (metafrontier) (table 3). the mean te in system specific frontier was lower than the mean te in meta-frontier in sifs. there was an association between the level of te in dairy farming and variables such as farmers’ age, education, ethnicity and knowledge (table 4). when considering sinhala/tamil farmers in both farming systems, the majority belongs to the te level of 51-75%, whereas, majority of muslims belongs to the te levels of 25-50% in efs and <25% in sifs. in efs >75% te level was achieved by the farmers between 31-55 years only and that age group was more efficient than other farmers in the system. the majority of farmers who achieved te level of >75% belong to the age category of >55years in sifs. meanwhile, te increased with farmers’ age. the majority of the farmers in efs who were educated up to primary level show the highest te level compared to others. however, the te did not increase along with education. in sifs, the highest te level was achieved by the greater part of farmers who have a basic education level. in addition, te increased along with farmers’ education. only the farmers having a ‘satisfactory’ level of knowledge indicated >75% te level in efs. in sifs, the majority of the farmers who reached the >75% te level have ‘moderate’ knowledge of dairy farming. furthermore, in both systems the level of te increased with farmers’ knowledge of dairy farming. table 3: mean technical efficiencies in efs and sifs based on system specific models and meta-production frontier models mean te system specific meta-frontier extensive farming system 1 0.5491 (0.2045) 0.4129 (0.1907) semi-intensive farming system 1 0.4292 (0.2638) 0.4719 (0.2425) p values 0.0453 0.2804 1mean, values in the parentheses are standard deviations means are significantly different between systems at p<0.05 level table 4: level of te in dairy farming variables frequency (%) te in extensive farming system te in semi-intensive farming system <25% 25-50% 51-75% <75% <25% 25-50% 51-75% <75% ethnicity* sinhala/tamil 30.00 20.00 40.00 10.00 16.33 26.53 40.82 16.33 muslims 12.50 68.75 18.75 0.00 80.00 20.00 0.00 0.00 age* 15-30 years 22.22 55.56 22.22 0.00 100.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 31-55 years 7.14 57.14 28.57 7.14 19.51 29.27 36.59 14.63 > 55 years 66.67 0.00 33.33 0.00 18.18 18.18 45.45 18.18 education* no formal education 0.00 100.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 basic education (<5 grade) 33.33 66.67 0.00 0.00 25.00 50.00 0.00 25.00 primary education (5-9 grade) 7.69 61.54 30.77 0.00 29.03 16.13 38.71 16.13 ordinary level (10-11 grade) 0.00 100.00 0.00 0.00 5.56 38.89 44.44 11.11 knowledge* very poor 0.00 50.00 50.00 0.00 100.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 128-141 134 poor 25.00 62.50 12.50 0.00 25.93 25.93 33.33 14.81 moderate 20.00 20.00 60.00 0.00 16.67 38.89 27.78 16.67 satisfactory 0.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 12.50 0.00 75.00 12.50 *there is an association among te and variables (p<0.05) constraints and other social issues in efs, the major production constraint among the majority of the farmers was lack of grasslands (table 5). low productivity of existing animals and water scarcity were identified second as production constraints. unavailability of well-structured sheds was the third production constraint in efs. lack of grasslands was the major production constraint identified among the majority of the farmers in sifs as well. low productivity of existing animals and unavailability of well-structured sheds were the second and third production constraints in sifs respectively. table 5: constraints among different farming systems *there is an association among farming systems and variables poor veterinary service, poor extension service and lack of training were identified as the first, second and third service constraints respectively of the majority of the farmers in efs. in sifs, poor veterinary service and poor extension service were identified as the first and second service constraints respectively. poor veterinary and extension services were identified as the third service constraint among majority of the farmers in sifs. in both farming systems, a majority of the farmers engaged in dairy farming with the purpose of increasing their income (table 6). a negligible number of famers rear dairy animals, mainly for the purpose of collecting cow dung. the status of the dairy farmer was well recognized in both farming systems; however a considerable number of farmers stated that there was no satisfactory recognition (‘bad’) for dairy farmers in the society. issues frequency (%) first production constraint* second production constraint* third production constraint* efs sifs efs sifs efs sifs lack of grasslands 81.48 68.12 3.70 17.39 7.41 13.04 low productivity of existing animals 7.41 10.14 33.33 33.33 25.93 21.74 unavailability of well-structured sheds 7.41 15.94 11.11 15.94 37.04 26.09 water scarcity 3.70 5.80 33.33 23.19 3.70 15.94 lack of stud bulls 0.00 0.00 3.70 4.35 0.00 5.80 scarcity of high yielding animals 0.00 0.00 0.00 4.35 3.70 13.04 rules and regulations of the mahaweli authority 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.45 0.00 4.35 diseases 0.00 0.00 14.81 0.00 22.22 0.00 issues first service constraint* second service constraint* third service constraint* efs sifs efs sifs efs sifs poor extension 18.52 27.54 62.96 36.23 3.70 23.19 poor veterinary service 48.15 33.33 22.22 27.54 25.93 23.19 lack of subsidies 0.00 2.90 3.70 4.35 3.70 7.25 lack of market facilities 18.52 24.64 3.70 13.04 7.41 20.29 lack of trainings 3.70 8.70 7.41 17.39 40.74 20.29 poor security 11.11 2.90 0.00 1.45 18.52 5.80 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 128-141 135 table 6: social issues among different farming systems frequency (%) frequency (%) reasons for doing dairy farming* efs sifs recognition for dairy farming* efs sifs increased income 88.89 78.26 good 51.85 57.97 home consumption 3.70 7.25 bad 37.04 33.33 preference 3.70 10.14 neutral 11.11 7.25 tradition 3.70 2.90 no idea 0.00 1.45 in order to get cow dung 0.00 1.45 frequency (%) frequency (%) children’s willingness of continuation* efs sifs future of cattle farming efs sifs yes 85.19 81.16 good 92.59 94.20 no 14.81 15.94 bad 3.70 2.90 no idea 0.00 2.90 no idea 3.70 2.90 *there is an association among farming systems and variables in both farming systems, the majority of children (next generation) were interested in carrying out dairy farming as a source of income in future. also, majority of the farmers stated that ‘the future of dairy farming is secured’. discussion dairy production economics – the majority of the farmers in dry zone (50% in the efs and 51.18% in the sifs) are educated up to primary level (grades 5-9). and, they mainly depend on dairy farming or crop cultivation, especially paddy (88.37% in the efs and 86.72% sifs) which is passed on over generations. moreover, a lack of alternative sources of income or employment opportunities in the dry zone restricts many people to the only available option – livestock keeping (ratnayaka et al., 1992). in these mixed farming systems, dairy acts as insurance. de silva and sandika (2012) have reported this especially for poor farmers if there is a loss by crop cultivation, especially paddy, the farmers try to compensate for it by selling animals such as bulls, male calves and old cows. further, diversification in agriculture can act as a mitigating factor against crop failure. dairying is emerging as a better alternative in diversification especially under mixed farming systems (bharadwaj et al., 2006). generally, farmers in the dry zone do not invest more in purchasing dairy animals. for instance, they try to breed animals themselves via natural breeding or artificial insemination (ai). one the interesting observation is that the farmers in the efs generally do not spend money on breeding their animals. because of the large herd size and the free grazing system, it is difficult to practise ai. on the other hand, it is not required to hire stud bulls as the herd already contains stud bulls. farmers do not have knowledge on breeding to select stud bulls therefore; this situation leads to inbreeding and low production performances of the cows in the efs. reproductive and productive performances of dairy cows could be improved by adapting proper management practices, improved nutrition and new reproductive technologies (kollalpitiya et al., 2012). farmers in the sifs usually practise both natural breeding and ai. however, their cost of natural breeding is closer to zero as they borrow bulls from others without any payment and this social exchange mechanism could minimize the trend of inbreeding. feeding rice straw is common in the dry zone. generally, concentrates are not fed (ibrahim et al., (1999). compared to the efs, farmers in the sifs usually spend more on concentrates and mineral supplements, around 7.63% of the total cost. there is a common trend in foot and mouth disease, mastitis and worm problems in the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 128-141 136 efs as the animals are enclosed densely in a paddock during night time. therefore, the drug cost is significantly higher in the efs. the labor cost is the major component of the dairy expenditure at 91.72 % and 87.26 % in the efs and sifs respectively. moreover, 89% of the total expenditure on dairy farming was accounted for by labor in the dry zone ratnayaka et al. (1992) and those figures concur with these research findings. farmers require more labor (13.61 hr/day) on dairy farming in the efs as farmers have to look after their animals during the whole grazing period. some farmers require hired labor only during cultivating and harvesting periods of paddy, when they are unable to dedicate their time to dairy farming. revenue is generated via on-farm or offfarm activities in both farming systems. onfarm revenue included the income generated by animal husbandry and crop cultivation. the income generated by selling milk is 6.6 times higher in the efs than the sifs as the total cow unit (cu) (lactating/milking/dry cow = 1cu; heifer = 0.75 cu; calf = 0.50 cu; bull = 1.5cu) is 11.86 times higher in the efs than the sifs. income generated via selling animals for meat purposes was 22 times higher in the efs than the sifs for two reasons. one is the large herd size (51.33±8.46) in the efs, and the other is the socio-religious background where the majority of the efs population is muslim. there is no religious barrier to dairy animal slaughtering in islamic culture. comparatively, in the sifs, the herd size is smaller (4.64±0.43) and the majority is buddhist, and animal slaughtering is not encouraged. the sifs has not a surplus if family labor is taken into account compared to the efs. if family labor is not considered, dairy farming is a reasonably profitable enterprise even in the sifs. parallel studies have also reported that sri lankan small scale dairy farmers earn a marginal profit by their dairy farming activities (navaratne and buchenrieder, 2003; daph, 2009). technical efficiency even though the efs showed the highest performances with respect to system specific frontier, it dropped by 0.136 when farms were compared with meta-frontier. the results revealed that the efs farms have more capability to increase their production by using the best resources and technologies available in the area. comparatively, sifs where majority of the farmers are doing their farming efficiently, perform better than efs. on the other hand, greater metafrontier value in the sifs implies the system has already adopted the best practices and technologies available in the area. in the light of that, the system required external resources and technologies to enhance their efficiencies. paris (2002) reported that farm productivity and household incomes could be increased by introducing specific technologies. however, poor technology intervention could be observed among sri lankan smallholding dairy farmers because of a lack of understanding of the complexity of the systems (bandara, 2000). farmers who are in both farming systems carry out dairy farming with crop farming (upland and lowland crops). therefore, new interventions should be introduced after considering animal and crop farming and their interactions. further, in small-scale mixed farming systems in south asia, low productivity of the animals could be observed because introduced technologies have not been adopted or their update has not been sustainable. also, crop-livestock systems were considered as single production units and new technologies applied accordingly. nevertheless, before applying new technologies, complexity and diversity of the farming systems should be considered (thomas et al., 2002). the mean te of farmers in the efs was found to be 54.91% which indicates that the output could be increased by 45.09% if all farmers achieved the te level of the best farmer. in the same way, the output of sifs farmers could be increased by 57.08%. some farms performed well, whereas others did not, even with the same system. this interesting observation could be found in both farming systems and this situation was created due to other factors such as farmers’ culture, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 128-141 137 age, education and knowledge, which correlated with farm business management. some farms owned by muslims are usually managed by herdsmen. at the end of each year the owner earns a large sum of money by selling animals for slaughtering. the herdsmen look after the herds throughout the year and practise milking in order to fulfil their daily necessities, but they do not try to manage the business in an efficient way. therefore, those farms are relatively less efficient than the others. on the other hand, sinhalese and tamils manage their farms efficiently by themselves, by using available resources and technologies. dairy farming has been carried out by farmers over generations. for instance, a particular farmer engaged in rearing dairy animals since his childhood would have his farming experiences enhanced over his life time. yeamkong et al. (2010) showed that farm production and revenue is increased with farmers’ experiences. therefore, there was a positive relationship between te and the age of the farmers in the sifs. moreover, positive relationships were found between education and knowledge of the farmers with te in the sifs. however, such an association could not be observed in the efs where the majority consists of muslims, because those farms were managed by the herdsmen. farm could be changed by farmer education ondersteijn et al. (2003) because there is a stronger influence of education on farm productivity in a modernizing environment (phillips, 1994). as well, there is a positive relationship between farmer education and farm production (yeamkong et al., 2010) and farm efficiency (latruffe et al., 2005). therefore, well planned farmers’ training programs (wubeneh and ehui, 2006) and policy interventions such as farmer education and agricultural extension (fuwa et al., 2007) contribute to improve farm production efficiency. integrated farming is a method in which two or more enterprises (crops, livestock, fish) are combined to get maximum efficiency from resources used, considering their relationships and interactions provided that an output from one enterprise would be an input for another (ibrahim and schiere, 2002). in contrast, there is no proper integration among different enterprises in either farming system. moreover, paddy straw and crop residues (by-products of crop cultivation) are used as dairy animals’ feed in the sifs during drought periods when fresh roughage becomes limited. cow dung is used in upland crop cultivation, but not for paddy in the sifs. poultry manure is used neither in upland crop cultivation nor paddy farming in the sifs. only paddy straw is used as dairy feed and crop residues are not fed to dairy animals in the efs. neither cow dung nor poultry manure is used for upland crop or paddy cultivation in the efs. therefore, the integration among different enterprises is minimal in the efs compared to the sifs. proper livestockcrop integration ensures increasing farm tes in both farming systems. furthermore, farm productivity could be improved by integrating crop and livestock enterprises. in both farming systems, farmers are rearing dairy and poultry. even though there is a high potential in rearing goats, farmers did not take the opportunity. therefore, farm efficiency could be increased by introducing goats into both farming systems. further to this, it has been shown that mixed livestock farming is a very important method to increase farm efficiency (gaspar et al., 2009). constraints and other socially-related issues major production constraints were almost similar in both farming systems. grasslands became limited over time due to the population pressure. moreover, the grassland of sri lanka has low productivity and has deteriorated due to mismanagement under the existing socio-economic position in the country (premaratne et al., 2003). therefore, the lack of grasslands was the major constraint to expanding dairy farming today and in future. the best solution for the scarcity of grasslands was having a lower number of highly productive animals instead of having a larger number of unproductive animals. other than that, an intensive or semi-intensive management asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 128-141 138 system was more viable than extensive management practices. feed scarcity become a severe problem during the dry season and farmers should use feeding technologies such as urea treated straw feeding, urea molasses mineral block feeding etc. especially, during drought periods. similar recommendations are suggested for dairy farms in kurunagala district of sri lanka and the study revealed that proper feeding technology is required for the dry season. further, farmers should be trained in feed management (kubota et al., 2010). extension officers and veterinary surgeons were reluctant to work in these rural areas due to poor infrastructure and other facilities. therefore, the lack of extension and veterinary services has become a major barrier to expanding the dairy sector. premarathna and premalal (2005) reported that access to extension services in dry lowland is very difficult. most of the studies revealed that efficient and effective extension services for the dairy farmers are a paramount requirement in many parts of the country (bandara et al., 2011). a majority of the farmers consider dairy farming as a profitable venture, which secured its future as their children were willing to carry out dairying in future. in contrast, there was another group of farmers (35.19%) who believe it is a low status they occupation in their society. they prefer professional jobs even though they may generate a lower income compared with dairying. conclusion although dairy farming maintenance cost per animal was relatively high in sifs, system returns were lower in comparison with efs, which used low external inputs. labor cost is considerably high in both systems. if family labor inputs are considered, sifs has no surplus compared to efs. however, if family labor is not considered, dairy farming is reasonably profitable. dairying acts as insurance for the family if farmers are willing to sell culled animals. selling animals for meat purposes was strongly discouraged due to cultural and religious ethics and barriers which have had a direct negative impact on monthly income as well as the financial security of the farm family. appropriate livestock-crop integration and mixed livestock farming ensure increasing farm production and efficiency in both systems. established with the best practices and technologies available, sifs required external resources and technologies to enhance its efficiencies. in both systems, improved farm production efficiency was achieved through wellplanned farmer education and training programs. lack of grasslands, low productivity, water scarcity and unavailability of well-structured sheds affected production adversely, whereas poor veterinary services, poor extension services and lack of training were major service constraints. the future of dairy farming seemed secure because most farmers considered it to be profitable, and their children were willing to continue that way of life. however, policy implementers and social workers should work cooperatively to enhance the social status of dairy farmers. acknowledgement the authors gratefully 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(1999). feeding of dairy cattle in the forestgarden farms of kandy. sri lanka. tropical animal health and production, 31(5), 307-319. http://link.springer.com.virtual.anu.edu.au/journal/11123 http://link.springer.com.virtual.anu.edu.au/journal/11123 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants . 1 effects of concentrate supplementation on performance characteristics of goats challenged with trypanosoma brucei yousuf, m. b., adeloye, a. a., belewu, m. a. and olatunde, a. o. department of animal production, university of ilorin, nigeria muhammad lawal, abdul azeez department of agricultural economics and farm management, university of ilorin, nigeria daramola, j. o. college of animal production, university of agriculture, abeokuta, nigeria abstract 1 the influence of concentrate-feed supplementation on dry matter and nutrient intake and digestibility, nitrogen retention and body weight gain in goats challenged with trypanosomiasis was studied. sixteen male west african dwarf (wad) goats (7.32 ± 0.70 kg) inoculated with 1.5 × 10 6 trypanosoma brucei were divided into four treatment groups each of four replicates in a 56-day, completely randomized design experiment. treatments consisted of varying intake levels (0, 50, 100 and 150 g/head/day) of a maize-based concentrate supplement (19.72 %; cp) to basal panicum maximum hay (10.81 %; cp). dry matter intake (g/head/day) of 211.77 ± 2.66, 215.14 ± 7.25, 253.28 ± 5.23, and 275.96 ± 3.65 obtained for goats fed supplement at 0, 50, 100 and 150 g/head/day respectively were different. coefficient of crude protein or crude fibre digestibility was higher (p < 0.05) for goats fed the concentrate supplement at 100 or 150 g/head/day level than for those fed at 50 g/head/day or the control. differences in feed nutrient intake and digestibility caused gradual improvement (p < 0.05) in body weight gain (g/head/day) from 8.39 ± 0.21 in the un-supplemented group to 18.21 ± 0.42 in goats fed concentrate supplement at 150 g/head/day. the results indicated a positive influence of concentrate supplementation on ability of the goats infected with trypanosomiasis to consume and digest feed nutrients for body weight gain. the 100 g /head/day level of supplementation was considered adequate. keywords: concentrate supplement, panicum maximum hay, trypanosomiasis, wad goat corresponding author’s name: yousuf, m. b. email address: parkia@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:parkia@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 1-6 2 introduction indigenous breeds of sheep and goats are often characterized by slow rate of body weight gain, culminating in small body size at maturity. poor nutrition, unfavourable climate and high prevalence of infectious diseases were identified as the major nongenetic causes of poor growth performance of ruminants in a developing tropical country (lamg et al., 1988). nutrition and health management not only utilize a significant percentage of human and material resources available for both ruminant and non-ruminant production, it is also a major determinant of productivity in the livestock industry. african trypanosomiasis was described as the commonest and most threatening disease of ruminant livestock in regions where tsetse fly, the vector organism is prevalent (nantulya, 1990). in nigeria, over one-fifth of the 228.3 km 2 total land area is within tse-tse fly infested belt (iwwala and ajezie, 1980). the west african dwarf sheep or goat being trypanotolerant, is the predominant breed found in the tse-tse fly region. trypanotolerance however, only signifies resilience to trypanosomiasis. osho and ogunsusi (2001) noted that trypanotolerant breeds of livestock are all susceptible to both acute and chronic forms of the disease but with low mortality rate and an ability to maintain positive body weight gain following infection. hence trypanosomiasis in the wad sheep and goat is often presented in its mild chronic form resulting in depressed productive and reproductive performance. interactions exist between plane of nutrition and trypanosomiasis as exemplified by the observed increase in the incidence and severity of the disease during the dry season of the year when feed supply becomes limiting both in quantity and quality (omotonishe, 2000). the objective of this study was to further investigate such interactions under intensive production system in the west african dwarf goats, experimentally infected with trypanosomiasis. specifically, the study seeks to determine the optimum level of supplementation of low quality panicum maximum hay with concentrate feed in goats challenged with trypanosoma bruceibrucei. concentrate supplementation could be utilized to improve health and productive performance in the livestock. previous reports on interaction between host nutrition and trypanosomiasis in domestic animals had concentrated on patho-physiological effects of the disease (holmes et al., 2000). zubair et al. (2012) observed positive effect of feed supplementation on goat milk yield materials and methods infecting goats with trypanosomes samples of trypanosoma bruceibrucei (strain, biit-ve) obtained from national institute for trypanosomiasis research (nitr), vom nigeria were inoculated intravenously into two albino rats. the rats were later bled during the first wave of parasitaemia into a container containing ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid (edta). the phase contrast buffy coat technique (paris et al., 1982) was used to detect and quantify trypanosomes in the blood samples. sixteen apparently healthy weanling (7.32 ± 0.70 kg, initially) wad goats selected from a herd of twenty goats previously screened for trypanosomes were inoculated by jugular route with 3 ml pbs containing 1.5 × 10 6 trypanosomes . the species of trypanosomes was confirmed in the infected goats following laboratory blood test (murray et al. 1983) on the 6 th day post-infection. animals and experimental treatments the sixteen selected goats were divided into four dietary groups of four animals per treatment in completely randomized-design experiment that lasted 56 days. treatments consisted of a level (0, 50, 100 or 150 g /head/day) of maize-based concentrate that was used to supplement ad libitum intake of low quality (10.81 % cp) panicum asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 1-6 3 maximum hay. goats were housed individually in fly-proof concrete-floor compartments during the first 42 days of the 56-day feeding trial. goats were adapted to cage condition for seven days in fly-proof wooden metabolism cages that allowed for separate but total collection of faeces during a subsequent 7-day collection period. collection of samples and analyses goats were weighed on the first day and subsequently at two weeks intervals during the 56-day feeding trial. average daily hay consumption was estimated from the differences between the amounts of hay offered and the amounts refused. average daily dry matter or nutrient intake was the sum of values of hay and the amounts of concentrate supplement consumed. representative samples (10 %) of feeds, faeces and feed refused were collected daily during a 7-day collection period and preserved for laboratory analyses. feeds and faecal samples were separately oven-dried at 60 o c for 48 hours, ground in a willy mill to pass through 2 mm sieve and divided into two sub samples. a sub-sample was oven dried to constant weight at 105 o c for determination of dry matter while another sub sample was used for estimation of proximate composition using the aoac (1980) procedures. presence of trypanosomes in the blood of goats or rats was confirmed using the dark ground buffy coat method (paris et al., 1982). data collected were subjected to analysis of variance (steel and torrie, 1980) with treatment means separated (duncan, 1955). results and discussion compositions of the concentrate supplement and the panicum maximum hay used in the present study were as shown in table 1. the concentrate had higher levels (%) of crude protein (19.72) and nitrogen free extracts (62.61) than the panicum maximum hay (10.81; 34.83). a relatively high crude fibre (41.55 %) but low crude protein (10.81 %, dry matter basis) content of panicum maximum hay is suggestive of low nutritional quality. table 1: composition of concentrate and panicum maximum hay fed to the goats component concentrate panicum maximum hay proximate (% dry matter) dry matter 87.26 90.66 crude protein 19.72 10.81 crude fibre 7.25 41.55 ether extract 3.68 3.35 ash 4.42 7.54 nitrogen free extract 62.61 34.83 ingredient (concentrate), % maize 55 24 15 5 1 100 groundnut cake maize offal rice husk sodium chloride + bone meal (1:1) total table 2 showed data on the effects of varying intake levels of a concentrate supplement on dry matter and nutrients intake and digestibility, nitrogen retention and body weight gain by goats infected with trypanosomiasis. average total intake of dry matter (g/head/day) was influenced (p < 0.05) by the amounts of concentrate asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 1-6 4 supplement offered with the goats receiving 150 g concentrate /head/day having the highest value (275.96 ± 3.65) and those offered un-supplemented panicum maximum hay ration the lowest (211.77 ± 2.66) dry matter intake. similar positive effects of concentrate supplementation had been reported (tewe et al., 1982) for apparently healthy lambs fed a basal diet of cynodon nlemfuensis that was supplemented with one of maize, cassava flour and sweet potato concentrates. mba et al. (1982) however, observed a reduction in total dry matter intake when non-infected wad goats received increased amounts of a cassava based concentrate as supplement to gliricidia sepium suggesting that differences in composition of diets could also influence dry matter intake. daily dry matter intake (g/head/day) from panicum maximum hay averaged; 211.77 ± 2.66, 171.51 ± 5.12, 166.02 ±4.55 and 101.44 ± 3.01 decreasing with an increase in the level of concentrate offered. the hay dry matter intakes represent 100, 79.72, 65.55 and 44.94 % of the total dry matter intakes by goats offered the concentrate supplement at 0, 50, 100 and 150 g/head/day respectively and is in line with the finding (adegbola, 2002) of a reduction in dry matter intake from rice straw by bulls offered supplemental cotton seed cake. increasing levels of concentrate intake had significant (p < 0.05) effects on the digestibility of dry matter, crude protein, crude fibre and nitrogen free extract in the trypanosome–infected wad goats (table 2). table 2: performance characteristics of trypanosome-infected goats level of concentrate supplementation, g/head/day item/treatment 0 50 100 150 live weight initial live weight, kg 7.25 ± 0.12 7.30 ± 0.18 7.53 ± 0.16 7.23 ± 0.29 final live weight, kg 7.72 ± 0.16 7.81 ± 0.11 8.46 ± 0.09 8.25 ± 0.14 live weight gain, g/day 8.39 ± 0.21 c 9.11 ± 0.34 c 16.61 ± 0.26 b 18.21± 0.42 a dry matterintake concentrate nil 43.63 ± 1.60 c 87.26 ± 4.23 b 174.52 ±1.82 a p. max. hay 211.77± 2.66 a 171.51± 5.12 b 166.02±4.55 b 101.44±3.01 c total 211.77±2.66 c 215.14±7.25 c 253.28±5.23 b 275.96±3.65 a dm digestibility,% 4.62 ± 2.82 c 61.04 ± 2.79 b 63.96 ± 4.43 b 68.11 ± 6.09 a crude protein intake, g/head/day 22.89 ± 1.19 c 29.14 ± 2.57 c 35.16 ± 1.08 b 45.19 ± 1.91 a digestibility, % 50.11 ± 3.70 c 61.32 ± 4.29 b 68.43 ± 3.43 a 67.95 ± 3.18 a crude fibre intake, g/head/day 87.99 ± 3.71 a 74.42 ± 5.95 b 75.31± 2.41 b 54.80 ± 2.75 c digestibility, % 42.78 ± 1.96 b 43.62 ± 2.73 b 56.91 ± 5.17 a 52.39 ± 2.07 a ether extract intake, g/head/day 7. 09± 0.78 c 7.35 ± 0.98 b 8.77 ± 0.76 b 9.82 ± 0.91 a digestibility, % 57.52 ± 2.80 57.78 ± 0.85 58.60 ± 2.92 59.77 ±2.47 nitrogen free extract intake, g/head/day 73.76 ± 3.58 d 87.06 ± 3.72 c 112.45±5.88 b 144.60 ±4.51 a digestibility, % 69.53 ± 2.07 b 70.18 ± 3.31 b 70.25 ± 3.28 b 78.13 ± 2.86 a * mean of four goats ± standard error a, b, c, d – values with different superscripts in a row differ (p < 0.05) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 1-6 5 digestibility of dry matter was highest (68.11 %) for goats receiving concentrate supplement at 150 g/head/day and lowest (44.62 %) for those fed panicum maximum hay alone. the values of crude protein and crude fibre digestibilities obtained for goats fed concentrate supplement at 100g/head /day and 150 g/head/day were higher (p< 0.05) than for those that received unsupplemented panicum maximum hay. effect of treatment on digestibility of nitrogen free extract was significant (p < 0.05) only at the 150 g/head/day level of concentrate intake. low intake of nutrients other than crude fibre and low digestibility values recorded for goats on unsupplemented panicum maximum hay reflect the nature of feeds with high crude fibre contents (adegbola and okonkwo, 2002). however the condition could have also been aggravated by loss of resilience to trypanosome infection (tolera et al., 2000). differences in dry matter and nutrient intake, and digestibility resulted in improved (p < 0.05) body weight gain in goats that were fed concentrate supplements at 100 or 150 g/head/day level. rates of body weight gains (g/day) were 8.39 ± 0.21, 9.11 ± 0.34, 16.61 ± 0.26 and 18.21 ± 0.42 for the trypanosome infected goats fed concentrate supplement at 0, 50, 100 and 150 g/head/day respectively. however, higher rates of body weight gain were recorded (yousuf et al., 2013) for uninfected, west african dwarf goats that were fed whole plant cassavapoultry manure based concentrate. holmes et al., (2000) reported that body weight changes in trypanosomiasis infected cattle were markedly influenced by the levels of protein and energy intake. the grass hay of low crude protein and higher crude fiber contents used in the present study require supplementation to support production in healthy goats and improve resilience in condition of trypanosomiasis. murray and whitelaw (1982) had suggested the application of nutritional management in solving the problem of trypanosomiasis as the severity of the disease is known to be affected both by genotype and nutritional status of an infected animal. conclusion the results indicate that feed nutrients intake and digestibility can be enhanced in trypanosome-infected wad goats fed low quality diets through concentrate supplementation. this could be an important nutritional management option to improve the goats’ immune system, enhance resilience and promote performance while infected with trypanosomiasis. the 100 g/head/day level of concentrate supplementation was adequate in the present study. acknowledgment the research team gratefully acknowledges financial support it received from university of ilorin senate research grant committee in carrying out this study. references association of official analytical chemists, aoac (1980). official methods of analysis, 4 th edition, pp. 152-157. aoac, washington dc. adegbola, t. a. 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(2000). nutritional constraints and prospects of goats production in east africa, institute of goat research langston university; langston uk. pp. 43-57. yousuf, m. b., adeloye a. a., okukpe k. m., adeyemi, k. d., a. h. a. badmus., daramola, j. o., & ogundun, n. j. (2013). growth performance characteristics of goats fed varied levels of poultry manure in whole cassava plant based concentrate diet. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11), 823-828. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants . 195 land reform: an analysis of definitions, types and approaches kudzayi savious tarisayi foundation training institute, zimbabwe abstract there is a surfeit of literature on land reforms in various developing countries. whilst most of the existing literature has principally concentrated on the analysis of examples of land reforms in recent years, there is a paucity of literature detailing what really entails the concept of land reform. most scholars and development agencies are concentrating on the success or lack thereof, of land reforms without interrogating the concept of land reform. an analysis of what constitutes land reform facilitates further analysis of the success of examples of land reforms around the world. in this paper the researcher gives an overview of the concept of land reform and its various approaches as applied in various parts of the world. examples will be drawn from countries that have implemented land reforms in recent years, without necessarily interrogating their successes or lack thereof. keywords: land reforms, development agencies, developing countries introduction 1 there is a plethora of literature on land reforms in various developing countries contributed by agricultural economists, political scientist, historians, journalists, development scholars and researchers among others. whilst most of the existing literature has principally concentrated on the analysis of examples of land reforms in recent years, there is a paucity of literature detailing what really entails the concept of land reform. most scholars and development agencies are concentrating on the success or lack thereof, of land reforms without interrogating the concept of land reform. an analysis of what constitutes a land reform facilitates further analysis of the success of examples of land reforms around the world. corresponding author’s email address: kudzayit@gmail.com in this paper the researcher gives an overview of the concept of land reform and its various approaches as applied in various parts of the world. examples will be drawn from countries that have implemented land reforms in recent years, without necessarily interrogating their successes or lack thereof. this paper seeks to argue that land reforms can only be judged to be successful or unsuccessful after an in-depth interrogation of the concept and what really constitute them. land reform as a concept has been subjected to a scholarly microscope by scholars, economists, development practitioners as well as development agencies in the past half century. while there might seem to be consensus on the definition of land reform, the approach and justification of land reform have proved to be a highly contested arena. according to the conventional definition, redistributive land reform is a public policy asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kudzayit@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 195-199 196 that transfers property rights over large private landholdings to small farmers and landless farm workers (griffin et al., 2002). therefore land reform can be reasoned to be the change in the ownership of the property rights of land, normally involving a change from large privately owned land to previously landless small scale farmers. land reform is concerned with changing the institutional structure governing human relation with land by intervening in the prevailing land ownership, control and usage (world bank, 1975; macmillan, 2000). thus it can further be argued accordingly that the concept land reform is not confined to transfer of land ownership rights but it also encompasses the rights pertaining to its control and usage. in addition, with the commercialisation of agriculture these property rights should further be secured through title deeds, which can be utilised by the small scale farmers to secure funding from banks and financial institutions. according to sam moyo, one of the prominent researchers on zimbabwe’s land reform, equitable land distribution relates to the distribution of land, denoting the deconcetration of prime land, the increased absolute number of landholders (moyo, 1999). thus, land reform can be viewed as the transfer of land ownership rights from the minority to the majority who were previously marginalised due to various reasons. the bequest of settler colonialism in many countries contributed to the unequal distribution of land, which can be argued to have necessitated and justified calls for land reform. more than three decades after political independence in africa access to land is largely still the product of settler colonial policies. policies that were designed to alienate the land from the majority indigenous population and thereby weakening their control over the resource. this alienation was further buttressed by deliberate colonial policies that subsidised white settler farming through preferential marketing and financing at the expense of the already marginalised and often crowded communal farmers. thus, most land reforms have been pushed for and justified by this need to try and redress these imbalances which can be attributed to the long-term effects of the colonial policies in the developing countries. land is a critical asset and its centrality to the provision of a means of livelihood through the production and sale of crops and other products has been well researched. according to the economic commission for africa the centrality of land tenure to the attainment of sustainable development especially amongst the poor and vulnerable in rural settings is indeed the subject of many regional and national initiatives and meetings in sub-sahara (wiggins, 2003). most of the people in the developing world can be argued to be relying on the land for their livelihoods hence the justification that land reform can actually capacitate them through an increase in their asset base. the poor people often engage in land related economic pursuits for sustenance and survival, which ranges from growing of crops for family consumption and selling of the surplus, rearing of animals among others. thus for these populations, a change in the land ownership rights that successfully provides secure access to land is an essential avenue for escaping from poverty and its calamitous effects. by and large no unanimity on the reasons and justification of land reform can be reached among scholars, however it can be argued that there is an apparent need for the land redistribution due to the criticality of land in the livelihoods of people in the developing countries. what land reform implies in practice always depends on the context and particular circumstances, but the primary motivation of land reform is to alleviate poverty by reducing economic inequality (lipton, 1974). due to the criticality of land to the livelihoods of people in the developing world it can be reasoned that by availing more land at their disposal it will be a strategy for poverty alleviation. however, it can be argued further that giving land to the landless does not entirely translate automatically into asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 195-199 197 poverty alleviation. just the ownership of land by the formerly landless poor will not subsequently mean that they have escaped from the gnashes of poverty but only entail provision of a means to an end. the main economic rationale for land reform lies in the inverse-farm productivity relationship, which argues that for given technology levels, small farms are more efficient than large farms due mainly to fewer problems of supervision (deininger et al., 2003). hence, the justification for land reform can be drawn from different perspectives ranging from political, social justice, economic rationale as well as poverty reduction. this writer is of the perspective that land reform should be viewed as a poverty reduction strategy in developing countries. accordingly, the concept of land reform should be implemented with the view to addressing poverty, which resonates with millennium development goal on poverty alleviation. addressing issues of access and ownership of resources such as land should be advocated for as a sure way of providing a means of capacitating the world’s poor in order for them to escape the calamitous effects of poverty. land reforms have been implemented around the world over the past few decades with varying impacts, both successes and failures have been recorded. it should be noted from the onset research on land reform has always been contested because the subject is highly emotional and subjected to polarised media coverage. in most cases the implementation and thereafter the study of the land reform has been highly politicised and both internal and external forces strive to ensure its failure. at times seemingly apparent successes have been packaged and publicised as dismal failures, which brings to the fore the question: what really constitutes a successful land reform? or rather is there any chance of a successful land reform? thus addressing these critically questions would shade more light on the deliberation on the concept of land reform. a good case in point is the recent land reform in zimbabwe which has attracted negative media and has been labelled as a complete failure. it is telling to note that despite evidence to the contrary on the ground the media and in political circles zimbabwe’s land reform is still viewed as the mother of all calamities. thus, it is imperative that debates on the success of land reforms be based on empirical evidence not hearsay as revealed by the case of zimbabwe. evidence from research findings reveal that land reforms have contributed to redressing colonial injustices, reduced poverty and increasing productivity. there is an apparent unanimity among authorities that land reforms in japan, korea, and taiwan, have made a foremost contribution to overcoming the bequest of colonial development (king, 1973). thus, it can be reasoned that land reform can be utilised as a strategy for addressing the long-term effects of colonial policies in the developing countries. furthermore, in brazil, land reform has clearly been revealed to be economically viable – having scope of increasing beneficiary income up to 5-fold (deininger and binswanger 1999). not only does land reform address the legacy of colonial development, evidence from empirical research has shown as typified by the brazilian case above that land can actually lead to economic benefits accruing to the beneficiaries. thus, it can be argued that there is overwhelming evidence on the successes brought about by land reform in different parts of the world to merit it as poverty reduction strategy, economic intervention as well as social justice. in addition, it can be revealed that there is little doubt that the land reform can provide a source of income for the poor, based on the pragmatic substantiation provided by a plethora of researchers that have recognized the existence of a positive link between land and incomes. hence, it can be reasoned that there is observed evidence to the effect that there is indeed a positive relationship between land reform and income. despite empirical evidence land reforms have been asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 195-199 198 vilified by the media and on the ground that they disrupt agricultural production in developing countries without any empirical evidence to support this purported agricultural production disruption. types of land reform redistributive land reform this form of land reform consist of the redistribution of land rights from one sector to another, for example by privatising state land or taking from large landholders, and giving it to people who have no land (un/ece, 1996). this entails the change in land rights from basically the ‘haves’, who own large tracts of land to the ‘have-nots’people without land, usually referred to as the landless. tenurial reform this arrangement of land reform aims to improve the ownership type over the land which is already in the people’s possession but lack secure property rights. it can be argued that it addresses the issue of title deeds to the ownership of the land. land registration and titling can also be regarded as tenurial reform, as it entitles the occupier with ownership with enhanced tenure security and rights. restitution land restitution is rarely discussed as it is also rarely implemented in most countries and can be argued to be the most difficult to implement. it involves returning the land to people or descendants of people who were removed from the land, these are previous land owners who were dispossessed of their land. however, the process is usual slow as there is need to ascertain which people occupied a certain area and due to movements that have occurred during more than a century of colonial rule it is difficult to implement. this scenario is further compounded by the absence of records or evidence from the dispossessed to validate their land rights claims as typified by the evident slow and frustrating land restitution in south africa. land consolidation land consolidation is a method of land reform in which all landowners within an area capitulate their land and are allocated new parcels of comparable value but in pattern that encourages the more efficient and productive use of the land (un/ece, 1996). hence, land consolidation can be viewed as the reallocation of farms to make bigger farm units, such as in japan, western europe. the other main objective of this type of land reform is to reduce fragmentation of land, such as in vietnam. approaches of land reform state-led approach in the state-led approach, the state takes a deliberate policy to redistribute land. it can be argued that it is a land reform from above, as the state introduces and guides the whole process of land reform. the execution takes place with a top-down methodology and bureaucratic modalities. state-led land reform programs were instigated after the independence from colonisation of various countries in 1950s to 1980s around the globe. community based approach community based approach can be argued to be the antonym of state-led land reform, in that it is initiated from below. community based approach of land reform is emerging as an alternative approach to state-led approach. this approach is supposed to be more reactive to political demands originating 'from below' and more responsive to local interests, institutions and practices. however, this approach is usually high jacked by the state as it seeks to align itself with the aggrieved landless people who would have taken matters into their hands and many a times illegally. market assisted approach the term 'market-assisted' is also found to be synonymously used as market-led, market mediated, or negotiated in literatures (bobrow-strain, 2004). in this approach, land ownership rights are transferred asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 195-199 199 through the buying and selling of land on the market. the landless people or smallholders are financed to get land through buying land from the large farm owners. this is the least followed approach because of financial constraints on the governments of developing countries to finance any meaning large scale transfer of land to the poor landless people. in addition, the large scale farmers many a times are not willing to sell and thus curtail any meaningful reform by demanding unrealistic prices for their land. this is can be exemplified by the case of zimbabwe prior to 1997 when no meaningful transfer was achieved through the willing seller-willing buyer approach to land reform. conclusion the foregoing analysis concludes that it is imperative that analysis of the concept land reform, its types and approaches be done before analysing the success or lack thereof. this paper analysed various arguments that have been proffered to justify land reform around the world. the main types of land reform that have been implemented in different parts of the world are redistributive land reform, tenurial reform restitution and land consolidation. approaches to the land reform that have been witnessed around the world include state-led, which is from above and government initiated, community based approach, which can be said to be from below as it driven by citizen hunger for land and lastly there is market assisted approach. references bobrow-strain, a. (2004). accords the politics of market-assisted land reforms in chiapas, mexico. world development, 32(6), 887-903. deininger, k., feder, g., gordillo de anda, g., & munro-faure, p. (2003). land policy to facilitate growth and poverty reductions. in groppo, p. (ed), land reform: settlement and cooperatives, fao, 3 special edition, 5-18. deininger, k. w., & binswanger, h. (1999). the evolution of the world bank’s land policy: principles, experience and future challenges. the world bank research observer, 14(2), 247– 76. griffin, k., khan, a. r., & ickowitz, a. (2002). poverty and distribution of land. journal of agrarian change, 2(3), 279-330. king, r. (1977). land reform-world survey. part1-a general overview, bell and sons ltd. lipton, m. (1974). toward a theory of land reform, in d. lehmann, ed. agrarian reform and agrarian reformism. faber and faber, london. macmillan, d. c. (2000). an economic case for land reform. land use policy, 17, 49-57. moyo, s. (1999). land and democracy in zimbabwe, monograph series no. 7, harare, sappo. sarp/care/ifas meeting. no. 3. johannesburg hsrc/sarpn. un/ece (1996). land administration guidelines, with special reference to countries in transition. new york and geneva, economic commission for europe, united nations. wiggins, s. (2003). lessons from the current food crises in southern africa: report on sarpn/care/if as meeting, held at human sciences research council (pretoria), on the 18 march 2003. http://www.sarpn.org retrieved 31/01/2013. world bank (1975). land reform: sector policy paper. world bank. world bank (wb) (2005). the world bank report 2005. the world bank, washington dc. http://www.sarpn.org/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 496 status of fruit farming in central valley of khyber pakhtunkhwa nisar ali shah, arshad farooq and abdul hassan social sciences research institute (parc), ari, tarnab, peshawar, pakistan abdul samad khan senior director; agricultural research institute, tarnab-peshawar, pakistan muhammad azam niazi director; ssrc, ssd, parc, islamabad, pakistan umar farooq dg; ssris (parc), islamabad, pakistan abstract this retrospective study was conducted in four districts of khyber pakhtunkhwa namely charsadda, nowshera, mardan and peshawar during january february, 2013 to examine the status and factors affecting fruit orchards. a total of sixty four fruit orchards growers were interviewed on the basis of land acquisition. data indicates that farmer areas for citrus and planted stone fruit such as peach, plum and apricot were declined in the last 10 years while the area under pear and loquat were increased. the study results also indicate that a number of factors were affecting fruit orchards. these problems were ranked as (1) diseases/insects, followed by (2) high price, (3) water shortage problem, (4) adulteration in inputs, (5) marketing problem and (6) non-availability of credit. it is concluded that various factors are responsible for the decline in production of fruit orchards. it is thus, recommended that agriculture department should regularly disseminate technical-know-how regarding improved fruit orchards management practices through training, field days and workshop and other awareness programmes for fruit orchards growers. the government should also keep check and balance on price and quality of inputs to encourage fruit orchard growers to increase their production. keywords: fruits, orchards, problems, decline introduction 1 fruits are important sub-sector of the agricultural sector of pakistan. fruits are valued as protective food. they are rich source of minerals, vitamins providing more energy per unit weight than cereals. pakistan has wide range of agro-climatic conditions, which allows the production of a variety of tropical and sub-tropical fruits. on a comparative basis the fruit trees are perennial and involve less management and corresponding author’s name: arshad farooq email address:farooq_ext@yahoo.com labour, as compared to vegetable, which are more intensive and require more labour and inputs (sharif, 2011). khyber pakhtunkhwa (kp) is blessed with wide range of fruits and is the largest producer of delicious fruits. peach (prunus persica), guava (psidium guajava), plum (prunus cerasifera), pear (pyrus calleryana), apricot (prunus armeniaca), apple (malus domestica), date (phoenix dactylifera), mango (mangifea indica), pomegranate (punica granatum), grapes (vitis vinifera) and citrus are the commercially grown and important fruits of the province (khan et al., 2010). fruit farming has been an important business of khyber pakhtunkhwa province asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:farooq_ext@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 496-505 497 of pakistan and the total fruit production during 2009-10 was 374395 tones from 38414 hectares (gokp, 2010-11). there are growing concerns about the low productivity of horticulture crops in pakistan as compared to others developing region of the world, especially when compared with our neighbour countries (phdeb, 2007). particularly in khyber pakhtunkhwa from last half decade (200506 to 2010-11) a significant decrease in the area and production was recorded in central valley of khyber pakhtunkhwa as show in table 1: (gokp, 2010-11). the central valley of khyber pakhtunkhwa consists of peshawar, charsadda, mardan and nowshera districts which constitute the core of horticultural economy. production of deciduous fruits in the central valley of kp has a special edge over other fruit growing areas because of its climatic condition (khan et al., 2010). the province has an ideal environment for growing fruits like apple, citrus, guava, apricot, peach, plum, loquat, persimmon, melon etc., which apart from meeting domestic demands, offer great potential for export. the ecological zoning of the province indicates that every zone has different environment, where different varieties of fruits can be grown. the northern and hilly areas of malakand region are suitable for high quality apple, peaches, walnut, citrus etc. the plain areas comprising charsadda, nowshera, mardan and peshawar valley are ideal for peach, pear, plum and loquat etc., while the dera ismail khan region is suitable for dates and melons (khan et al., 2010). fruits statistics of khyber pakhtunkhwa shows that area under some fruits in central valley has shrunk from 2005-06 to 2010-11 (table 1). fruit farmers claim that this has happened mainly because of the government policies revolving around field crops like wheat, cotton etc., with very little attention towards horticultural crops. they viewed about the public sector institutions, responsible for promotion of horticulture, are unable to develop new cost-effective varieties of fruits. the problem is further compounded by the lack of modern technology (dawn, 2008). keeping in view the importance of horticulture crops on the livelihoods of the farmers, a research study was designed with the following objectives, so as to provide appropriate suggestions to overcome the constraints. objectives to: 1. observe the trend in area under fruit orchards in the central valley of khyber pakhtunkhwa. 2. highlight bottlenecks in growth of the fruit orchards in central valley of khyber pakhtunkhwa . 3. suggest solutions to the problems observed methodology this study is based on both primary and secondary data. primary data were obtained through a well-structured and pre-tested questionnaire, using a comprehensive interview schedule, designed in the light of the pre-set objectives on the basis of personal observations and literature review. while secondary data was collected from various sources including review of published/unpublished research studies, internet etc. sample size the data collection for this study was made in the month of january/february, 2013. the results would have been more accurate with a bigger sample but keeping in view the prevailing law and order situation in the province, only 64 fruit orchard growers from four districts of khyber pakhtunkhwa namely charsadda, nowshera, mardan and peshawar, were randomly selected (table 2). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 496-505 498 table 1: area and production of major fruits in central valley of kp categories 2005-06 2010-11 charsadda nowshera mardan peshawar charsadda nowshera mardan peshawar peach (+) -area (hec) 63 75 105 81 63 75 381 78 -production (tons) 679 750 1015 931 679 750 3684 895 -yields (kg) 10778 10000 9667 11494 10778 10000 9669 11474 pear (-) -area (hec) 134 135 475 299 134 135 270 298 -production (tons) 1611 1661 5448 3915 1611 1661 3097 3906 -yields (kg) 12022 12304 11469 13094 12022 12304 11470 13107 citrus (-) (-) (-) (+) -area (hec) 122 307 442 69 38 204 235 75 -production (tons) 1225 3098 4816 690 381 2058 2559 751 -yields (kg) 10041 10091 10896 10000 10026 10088 10889 10013 loquat (-) (+) -area (hec) 30 22 36 9 10 20 66 9 -production (tons) 297 213 700 76 99 194 1302 77 -yields (kg) 9900 9682 19444 8444 9900 9700 19727 8556 plum (-) -area (hec) 226 250 625 382 225 250 199 380 -production (tons) 2688 2956 6876 4412 2676 2956 2161 4396 -yields (kg) 11894 11824 11002 11550 11893 11824 10859 11568 apricot (-) -area (hec) 85 110 94 120 85 108 24 115 -production (tons) 889 1100 998 1140 889 1080 255 1091 -yields (kg) 10459 10000 10617 9500 10459 10000 10625 9487 persimon -area (hec) 197 110 145 61 197 110 145 63 -production (tons) 2268 2497 1448 610 2268 2497 1119 600 -yields (kg 11513 22700 9986 10000 11513 22700 9991 9524 source: fruits statistics khyber pakhtunkhwa 2005-06 to 2010-11 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 496-505 499 table 2: sample distribution of fruits producers in the target area districts frequency percent charsadda 13 20 nowshera 25 39 mardan 9 14 peshawar 17 27 total 64 100 source: survey results, 2013 the sample respondents were categorized into three land holding groups viz. up to 5 acres were considered as small, 5.01-25 acres as medium and above 25 acres as large. out of 64 sample respondents, 21 (32.8%) were small, 24 (37.5%) farmers medium and 19 (29.7%) were large farmers (table 3). table 3: distribution of sample size in the target area categories number of respondents percent small (0.1 to 5 ac) 21 32.8 medium (5.01 to 25 ac) 24 37.5 large (above 25 ac) 19 29.7 total 64 100 source: survey results, 2013 data analysis data collected were analyzed using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss). basic statistics for description of data (frequencies, percentages, cross types, means and standard deviation) were used. percent change estimation for percent change estimation in fruit orchards’ area during last ten years, the following formula was also used by (shah et al., 2001). percentage change = (present fruit orchards area – past fruit orchards area)/ past fruit orchards area*100 limitations of the study the researchers tried their best to explain the nature and purpose of the study to the respondents, however, the suspicion of the farmers could have affected accuracy of the information provided. the quantitative data given were only estimates, to the best knowledge of the farmers as most of them did keep records. this has, therefore, led to considerable variations in their responses. results and discussion district-wise fruit orchards area table 4 reveals that on average the farmers planted peach (prunus persica) on 18.44 acres of land 10 years back which had now decreased to 11.29 acres, reflecting a decline of 6.7 acres in the peach orchards. inter district comparison shows that the peach orchards decreased in mardan district from 60.02 acres to 52.88 acres followed by charsadda from 12.2 acres to 9.32 acres where as in nowhsera and peshawar districts the area under peach increased slightly. the result showed that overall the area under pear in the study area had slightly increased from 7.75 acres to 8.09 acres. the results shows that the area under pear orchards remained unchanged in mardan district, while in districts charsadda and nowshera the area under pear slightly declined in comparison to area under pear 10 years back. the table also depicts that the overall area under citrus in the study area declined from 50.22 acres to 30.03 acres. mardan is the major citrus growing area where 10 years back the sample respondents allocated 116.67 acres of land to citrus orchards, which had now decreased to 72.78 acres, the main reasons of the citrus decrease in mardan district identified by the sample respondents during verbal discussions were lack of irrigation water, while in other three districts like charsadda, nowshera and peshawar, the area under citrus increased. overall in loquat orchards slight increase was found where the farmers devoted 8.74 acres 10 years back, which at present was 8.85 acres. inter district comparison shows that the loquat orchards increased from 9.78 acres to 12.03 in district mardan, while in charsadda district the loquat area decreased from 8.39 acres to 5.68 in the study area the area under plum declined from 10.12 acres to 6.61 acres. inter districts comparison reveals that plum orchards decreased in mardan and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 496-505 500 peshawar districts, while in nowshera district 0.17 acres were increased and charsadda district plum area increased from 8.92 acres to 11.32 acres. the area under apricot was decreased from 3.36 acres 10 years back to 1.73 acres at present. inter district comparison shows that the apricot orchards were decreased in charsadda district from 6.50 acres to 2 acres followed by nowshera district. while only in peshawar district the area under apricot was increased 1.59 acres. in persimmon orchards it was found the charsadda sample farmers allocated 8 acres land to persimmon orchards 10 years back and declined to 4.27 acres, whereas in mardan districts the area increased from 6.70 acres to 10.91 acres. overall the area of persimmon orchards decreased from 7.66 acres to 5.60 acres in the target area. table 4: district-wise fruit orchards area of sample respondents in target area (ac) fruits districts overall charsadda nowshera mardan peshawar peach present 9.32 3.23 52.88 2.68 11.29 10 years back 12.2 0.00 60.02 1.86 18.44 percent change in area -23.60 + -11.89 +44.09 -38.77 pear present 4.98 0.27 19.77 0.00 8.09 10 years back 5.64 1.02 19.77 0.00 7.75 percent change in area -11.70 -73.52 0.00 0.00 +4.36 citrus present 20.00 13.9 72.78 2.56 30.03 10 years back 10.00 3.89 116.67 0.00 50.22 percent change in area +100 +257.32 -37.62 + -40.20 loquat present 5.68 0.00 12.03 0.00 8.85 10 years back 8.39 0.00 9.78 0.00 8.74 percent change in area -32.30 0.00 +23.01 0.00 +1.26 plum present 11.32 2.38 27.73 3.43 6.61 10 years back 8.92 2.21 66.97 4.00 10.12 percent change in area +26.90 +7.69 -58.59 -14.25 -34.71 apricot present 2.00 0.00 0.00 1.59 1.73 10 years back 6.50 0.23 0.00 0.00 3.36 percent change in area -69.23 _ 0.00 + -48.64 persimmon present 4.27 0.00 10.91 0.00 5.60 10 years back 8.61 0.00 6.70 0.00 7.66 percent change in area -50.40 0.00 +62.83 0.00 -26.88 source: survey results, 2013 table 5: fruit orchards area of sample respondents by farm size in target area (ac) fruits small medium large overall peach (2012) acres 1.18 3.62 24.31 11.29 peach (2002) acres 1.09 2.63 32.22 18.44 percent change in area +8.33 +37.60 -24.55 -38.77 pear (2012) acres 0.00 0.27 9.207 8.09 pear (2002) acres 0.00 1.022 9.67 7.75 percent change in area 0.00 -72.33 -4.83 +4.36 citrus (2012) acres 0.277 7.38 50.09 30.03 citrus (2002) acres 0.00 3.88 81.11 50.22 percent change in area + +90 -38.24 -40.20 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 496-505 501 loquat (2012) acres 0.00 5.55 9.32 8.85 loquat (2002) acres 0.00 0.00 8.73 8.74 percent change in area 0.00 + +6.74 +1.26 plum (2012) acres 1.62 2.80 17.81 6.61 plum (2002) acres 1.74 2.63 31.36 10.12 percent change in area -7.40 +6.49 -43.21 -34.71 apricot (2012) acres 0.90 0.00 2.13 1.73 apricot (2002) acre 0.00 0.22 6.5 3.36 percent change in area + -67.13 -48.64 persimmon (2012) acres 2.27 1.72 8 5.6 persimmon (2002) acres 2.5 0.00 9.36 7.66 percent change in area -9.09 + -14.70 -26.88 source: survey results, 2013 percent change in fruit orchards area the data regarding the area under different fruits by sample respondents 10 years back and present were presented in table 6 & figure 1. data in table 6 indicates that the area farmers planted peach orchards 10 years back on 18.44 acres, which declined to 11.29 acres, showed 38.77 percent decrease in area. similarly citrus area declined from 50.22 acres to 30.03 acres, showing 40.20 percent decrease in area during the last 10 years, loquat area increased from 8.85 acres to 8.74 acres, showed +1.26 percent increase in loquat orchards, the area under plum declined from 10.12 acres to 6.61 acres, showed 34.71 percent decrease in plum orchards, apricot area declined from 3.36 acres to 1.73 acres showed 48.64 percent decrease in apricot orchards the area under persimmon fruits decreased by 26.89 percent and showed 126.88 percent change in persimmon orchards area. while the area under pear fruit increased from 7.75 acres to 8.09 acres, showing 4.36 percent change in area during the last 10 years. table 6: percent change in fruit orchards area of sample respondents in target area fruits area, 2012 (acres) area, 2002 (acres) percent change in area peach 11.29 18.44 -38.77 pear 8.09 7.75 +4.36 citrus 30.03 50.22 -40.20 loquat 8.85 8.74 +1.26 plum 6.61 10.12 -34.71 apricot 1.73 3.36 -48.64 persimmon 5.6 7.66 -26.88 source: survey results, 2013 figure 1: present and past fruit orchards area of sample respondent’s in target area 0 20 40 60 peach pear citrus loquat plum apricot persimmon present area (acres) 10 years back (acres) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 496-505 502 causes for decrease in area under fruit orchards the sampled farmers pointed out a number of reasons for decreasing area under fruit orchards. table 7 shows that majority (59.4%) of the sample farmers reported disease and insect pest attacks on fruit orchards as a major problem that decreased the area under fruit orchards. other farmers reported different reasons affecting area under fruit orchards including marketing problems (21.9%), low production (37.5%), high cost of inputs (17.2%), energy crises (12.5%), lack of cold storages (7.8%), lack of capital (10.9%), drought causes (6.2%) and environmental changes (12.5%). table 7: causes for decrease in area under fruit orchards area by farm size in the target categories small(n=21) medium(n=24) large(n=19) overall(n=64) marketing problems yes number 4 5 5 14 percent 6.2 7.8 7.8 21.9 no number 16 17 13 46 percent 25 26.6 20.3 71.9 no answer number 1 2 1 4 percent 1.6 3.1 1.6 6.2 low production yes number 7 9 8 24 percent 10.9 14.1 12.5 37.5 no number 13 13 10 36 percent 20.3 20.3 15.6 56.2 no answer number 1 2 1 4 percent 1.6 3.1 1.6 6.2 high inputs cost yes number 4 2 5 11 percent 6.2 3.1 7.8 17.2 no number 16 20 13 49 percent 25 31.2 20.3 76.6 no answer number 1 2 1 4 percent 1.6 3.1 1.6 6.2 energy crises yes number 3 3 2 8 percent 4.7 4.7 3.1 12.5 no number 17 19 16 52 percent 26.6 29.7 25 81.2 no answer number 1 2 1 4 percent 1.6 3.1 1.6 6.2 disease attack yes number 12 14 12 38 % age 18.8 21.9 18.8 59.4 no number 8 8 6 22 percent 12.5 12.5 9.4 34.4 no answer number 1 2 1 4 percent 1.6 3.1 1.6 6.2 lack of cold storage yes number 1 2 2 5 percent 1.6 3.1 3.1 7.8 no number 19 20 16 55 percent 29.7 31.2 25 85.9 no answer number 1 2 1 4 percent 1.6 3.1 1.6 6.2 lack of capital yes number 3 1 3 7 percent 4.7 1.6 4.7 10.9 no number 17 21 15 53 percent 26.6 32.8 23.4 82.8 no answer number 1 2 1 4 percent 1.6 3.1 1.6 6.2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 496-505 503 drought yes number 1 2 1 4 percent 1.6 3.1 1.6 6.2 no number 19 20 17 56 percent 29.7 31.2 26.6 87.5 no answer number 1 2 1 4 percent 1.6 3.1 1.6 6.2 climate change yes number 3 3 2 8 percent 4.7 4.7 3.1 12.5 no number 17 19 16 52 percent 26.6 29.7 25 81.2 no answer number 1 2 1 4 percent 1.6 3.1 1.6 6.2 source: survey results 2013 table 8: causes reported for decrease in area under fruit orchards by districts categories charsadda nowshera mardan peshawar overall marketing problems yes number 6 5 1 2 14 percent 9.4 7.8 1.6 3.1 21.9 no number 7 20 8 11 46 percent 10.9 31.2 12.5 17.2 71.9 no answer number 0 0 0 4 4 percent 0 0 0 6.2 6.2 low production yes number 9 6 3 6 24 percent 14.1 9.4 4.7 9.4 37.5 no number 4 19 6 7 36 percent 6.2 29.7 9.4 10.9 56.2 no answer number 0 0 0 4 4 percent 0 0 0 6.2 6.2 high inputs cost yes number 7 3 1 0 11 percent 10.9 4.7 1.6 0 17.2 no number 6 22 8 13 49 percent 9.4 34.4 12.5 20.3 76.6 no answer number 0 0 0 4 4 percent 0 0 0 6.2 6.2 energy crises yes number 1 5 1 1 8 percent 1.6 7.8 1.6 1.6 12.5 no number 12 20 8 12 52 percent 18.8 31.2 12.5 18.8 81.2 no answer number 0 0 0 4 4 percent 0 0 0 6.2 6.2 disease attack yes number 11 12 6 9 38 percent 17.2 18.8 9.4 14.1 59.4 no number 2 13 3 4 22 percent 3.1 20.3 4.7 6.2 34.4 no answer number 0 0 0 4 4 percent 0 0 0 6.2 6.2 lack of cold storage yes number 1 2 1 1 5 percent 1.6 3.1 1.6 1.6 7.8 no number 12 23 8 12 55 percent 18.8 35.9 12.5 18.8 85.9 no answer number 0 0 0 4 4 percent 0 0 0 6.2 6.2 lack of capital yes number 2 3 1 1 7 percent 3.1 4.7 1.6 1.6 10.9 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 496-505 504 no number 11 22 8 12 53 percent 17.2 34.4 12.5 18.8 82.8 no answer number 0 0 0 4 4 percent 0 0 0 6.2 6.2 drought yes number 0 1 0 3 4 percent 0 1.6 0 4.7 6.2 no number 13 24 9 10 56 percent 20.3 37.5 14.1 15.6 87.5 no answer number 0 0 0 4 4 percent 0 0 0 6.2 6.2 climate change yes number 4 3 0 1 8 percent 6.2 4.7 0 1.6 12.5 no number 9 22 9 12 52 percent 14.1 34.4 14.1 18.8 81.2 no answer number 0 0 0 4 4 percent 0 0 0 6.2 6.2 source: survey results, 2013 fruit orchards grower’s constraints the study identified some constraints to fruit farming which are depicted in table 9. the major problems in production, as perceived by the farmers, were ranked and given scores by the sample respondents, included diseases/insects, followed by high input prices, water shortage, adulteration in inputs, marketing problem and nonavailability of credit. table 9: constraints to fruit farming categories ranking score diseases/ insects 1 44 high price of inputs 2 23 water problem 3 19 adulteration in inputs 4 18 marketing problem 5 4 non availability of loan 6 3 source: survey results 2013 conclusion and recommendations the findings of the study revealed that apricot orchards area decreased by 48.64 percent followed by citrus area 40.20 percent, peach area 38.77 percent, plum area 34.71 percent and persimmon 26.88 percent during the last 10 years. in case of pear there was an increase of 4.36 percent and loquat witnessed a 1.26 percent increase in the study area during last 10 years. the sample farmers reported that fruit insect pests and diseases, low production of fruits, high cost of inputs, marketing problems were the major constraints that decreased the fruit orchards in the study area. recommendations  during survey it was noted that diseases, insects and pests was the main problem on fruit farms resulting in low yield/income which adversely affect the area under fruits in the study area. it is suggested that agricultural research system and agricultural extension department should regularly disseminate technical-know-how regarding improved fruit orchards management practices through training and awareness programmes for fruit orchards growers.    the government should encourage quality input producers to have their company operated outlets all over the fruit farming zones. this is expected to offer a check on hoarding of inputs by the investors and assessing quality control at the same time.  acknowledgement the research study entitled “status of fruit farming in central valley of khyber pakhtunkhwa” developed by the scientists of social sciences research institute (parc) tarnab peshawar in collaboration with agricultural research institute, tarnab and social sciences division (ssd), parc, islamabad. mr. nisar ali shah, director, ssri, tarnab peshawar has conducted the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 496-505 505 mentioned research study as a major author and gave a main idea to extract the valuable information regarding status of fruit farming. he contributed in data collection, data analysis and supervised the work of other authors of this study. mr. arshad farooq, contributed in questionnaire development, data collection, data editing, report writing, methodologies, literature review and analysis section of the paper. mr. abdul hassan helped in data collection, editing and analysis. dr. abdul samad khan, provide technical support and review the research study. mr. muhammad azam niazi, contributed in technical report writing. dr. umar farooq provided valuable suggestions regarding the mentioned research study. it is worth mentioning that this article not submitted and nor published in any national or international journals. references government of khyber pakhtunkhwa (2012). fruits statistics khyber pakhtunkhwa 2005-06 to 2010-11, crop reporting services, agriculture, livestock and coop: department. http://archives.dawn.com/2008/03/03 /ebr5.htm accessed on dated may 21, 2013. khan, n., israr, m., shah, n., arif, m., naeem, m., naz, s., haq, z., & saeed, m. (2010). a comparative study of model and non-model fruit growers in rural areas of khyber pukhtunkhwa pakistan. sarhad j. agric, 26(4), 641-647. phdeb (2007). pre-feasibility study; establishment of cold chain system under national trade corridor improvement project, volum-1 horticulture industry. by arch vision consulting engineer, environmentalists and architects. sharif, m. (2011). structure, conduct and performance of the marketing systems margins and seasonal price variations of selected fruits and vegetables in baluchistan, nwfp, northern areas and ajk, alp project of social sciences research institute (narc), parc, islamabad. shah, n. a., afzal, m., khair, s. m., & khan, m. r. (2001). effect of drought on the performance of major fruits during 2000, in highland baluchistan. online journal biological sciences, 1(11), 10951097. http://archives.dawn.com/2008/03/03/ebr5.htm http://archives.dawn.com/2008/03/03/ebr5.htm effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 324 examination of urban consumers’ propensity to consume margarine by applying correspondence analysis slobodan nicin assistant professor; faculty of european legal and political studies, novi sad, serbia abstract it is well known that margarine as food is of great nutritious significance to the nourishment of the population. the aim of this paper is to carry out research, which is based on the data obtained from the survey, regarding the propensity of urban population market consumers to consume margarine. the survey has been carried out on a representative sample of the citizens of urban area. correspondence analysis will be used in this paper, with the aim of determining the impact of selected factors on consumers’ preferences for margarine. keywords: margarine market, margarine consumption, consumers’ preferences, correspondence analysis introduction 1 маrgarine as food plays an important role in human nutrition. this paper aims at examining propensity of urban market consumers’ to consume margarine based on a sample of citizens of novi sad through the application of contemporary statistical methods. novi sad is the second largest city as well as second biggest industrial centre in serbia. the impact of a larger number of representative factors which have an effect on supply and demand of margarine, will also be examined, as well as interdependency of the above factors. correspondent analysis methods will be used in the paper which enables the examination and determination of matching – correspondencies of modalities of several factors by decomposition of a singular value, as well as χ 2 – independency test. correspondence analysis is used in situations where it is necessary to quantify corresponding author’s email address: bobanicin@yahoo.com the quality of information contained in a nominal variable . as the main objective of correspondence analysis can also be specified testing connectivity between categories of rows or columns. correspondent analysis method can be considered as a technique used in the description of the data ,as the manner of their presentation in an aappropriate graphic form. this presentation accelerates and simplifies the testing and interpretation of results . case studies are , on the one hand , factors that may have an impact on consumption and consumer preferences for margarine, and on the other hand consumers preferences in using and purchasing margarine. working methods and data sources the aim of this paper is to apply correspondence analysis method to the data obtained on the basis of consumers’ preferences for margarine. the data to which correspondence analysis is applied have been obtained asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:bobanicin@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 324-332 325 on the basis of the survey carried out on the sample of citizens of novi sad. the research includes 500 people surveyed, according to the plan of a simple random sample.the task of this paper would be to determine, on the basis of representative variables taken as factors in correspondence analysis, the correlation of margarine consumption (consumers’ propensity to consume margarine) and the examined variables (factors). population age structures (5 categories) have been taken as variables in this paper, household size (5 categories), and degree of professional qualifications (4 categories), frequency of buying margarine (7 categories), main reason for using this foodstuff (7 categories) and type of margarine (4 categories). 4 categories of margarine were indicated in the original survey questionnaire, in relation to the last category as follows: dairy margarine, vegetable margarine , diet margarine and soya margarine. in respect to the fact that there was not a single response regarding the consumption of soya margarine, the research results refer to the remaining 3 categories. statistical software statistica10.0 has been used for the purpose of statistical data processing in this paper. correspondence analysis is widely used in research related to the marketing and market (particularly in research of consumers’ preferences). greenacre (2007) indicates in his book ”correspondence analysis in practice“that correspondence analysis is a statistical technique which serves a useful purpose to a great number of researchers, scientists and people working in the practical field who deal with the collection and processing of categorical data, especially in terms of sociological research. this technique is a great help to the analysis of the data from cross tables, provided in the form of numerical frequencies, and as a result, they provide a simple graphic representation which enables faster interpretation and understanding of the data. according to the group of authors (hair et al., 2006), correspondence analysis represents an explanatory technique used for data analysis which is adjusted to the aim of the analysis of simple two-directional and multidirectional tables which contain some of the measures regarding correspondence between rows and columns. unlike the usual, traditional testing of hypotheses which serve to prove (disprove) a priori assumptions regarding the relation that exists among variables, a more detailed, i.e. in-depth data analysis is used for the identification of systematic relations among variables in the events when there is no information or a priori expectations are incomplete in terms of the character of such relations. detroja et al. (2006) emphasize that correspondence analysis is a powerful multivariation technique based on a general decomposition of a singular value. considering a great importance of graphic representation of tables of contingency in a lowdimensional space for a simple and efficient interpretation of some dependency among rows and columns, the need for correspondence analysis arises which enables optimal graphic representation of contingency tables in a low-dimensional space (jobson,1992). correspondence analysis can be treated as a decomposition technique of total χ 2 – value by determining a small number of dimensions which can serve to represent deviations of real values from the expected values. thereby χ 2 – value is based upon the sum of square deviations of real frequencies from the expected ones in the contingency table (bendixen, 2003). correspondence analysis also includes determination of inertia value. overall or total inertia value is determined as a quotient of total χ 2 – value and total number of units of observation in the contingency table. inertia is a measure of variation in the table and it does not depend on the size of a sample. provided that correspondence analysis is carried out in greater detail, decomposition of total inertia into the components of rows and columns is possible, similar to the method of variance analysis, at which inertia asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 324-332 326 of rows and columns is determined. that way more precise explanations are obtained regarding homogeneity, considering that zero hypotheses in the analysis of the contingency table are a hypothesis of homogeneity of rows, that is, columns. contribution to the inertia of rows and columns is usually expressed relatively in relation to the total inertia. maximum number of characteristic values which arises from the twodimensional table equals the produce of number of columns reduced by 1 and the number of rows reduced by 1(statistica 10.0, 2011). there are numerous examples of the application of correspondence analysis in the research of consumers’ preferences for different sorts of agricultural farm products and foodstuffs. green et al. (1987) use correspondence analysis as a technique which enables the analysis of relations regarding the prediction of profiles of consumers’ choices and their demographic features. hoffman and deleeuw (1992) use correspondence analysis in the context of connecting objects – different brands of goods, on the basis of centroid principles. аuthors state that according to this principle, trademarks which are geometrically close to each other are actually similar trade marks. pantelić and savić (2000) state that tests based on distribution are frequently used in the course of analysis of the data obtained on the basis of marketing research. lacomba (2001) refers to correspondence analysis as a visual technique which is faster and simpler than other similar techniques and which provides an insight into the structure of consumers’ preferences with reference to different products. kleij and musters (2003) study consumer preferences according to different varieties of mayonnaise by using correspondence analysis which provides visualization comparable to preference maps. liggett et al. (2008) apply the method of multi-dimensional scaling as a appropriate method that in some way enables estimation of perfect product on the basis of consumers’ opinion about similar products. panea et al. (2009) refers to a correspondence analysis as an usefull technique for simultaneous graphical presentation of continous and categorial variables and use this method in the analysis of beef-quality based on consumers’profile. avilez et al. (2010) apply correspondence analysis as a method for investigating of relationship between milk production, farm size and producers’ educational level. guerrero et al. (2010) apply correspondence analysis in investigation of relationship of european consumers’ preferences towards the certain foods and expression “traditional”. nićin (2010) uses a correspondence analysis method in the research of preferences of consumers in novi sad according to the consumption of cheese. beh et al. (2011) use correspondence analysis in studying perceptions of food of consumers in europe. chollet et al. (2011) use correspondence analysis in examination of eight sensor characteristics of beer. de souza et al. (2011) apply correspondence analysis with purpose to determine the best sweetener that producers use in production of swiss cheese. larsson and orsini (2011) use correspondence analysis in researching the consumption of fish products. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 324-332 327 examination results according to the survey results approximately equal number of the examinees out of the total number of the surveyed households (250) state that they buy margarine once a month (24.7%), once a week (23.4 %) and once every two weeks (22.6%). the percentage of the examinees who buy margarine once a month is in decline proportionately to the household size. the fourth position is taken by the examinees who have responded that they buy margarine 2-3 times a week (13%).less frequently than once a month, margarine is bought by 8.4% of the examinees. margarine is bought on a daily basis by 7.1% of the examinees. response “something else” (which is not defined by the questionnaire) has been provided by 0.84% of the examinees. household size has displayed a statistically significant correspondence with the frequency of buying margarine χ 2 = 38.99 (р=0,028, 05.0 ), whereas total inertia is in the amount of 0.163 (table 1.). 50.5% of total inertia has been explained by means of the first dimension, 27.9% of total inertia has been explained by means of the second one,18.5% of total inertia has been explained by means of the third dimension, аnd 3.1% of total inertia has been explained by means of the fourth dimensionvariability, which means that in total about 78% of total inertia – variability of the observed phenomenon has been explained by means of the first two dimensions. the first two dimensions explain in a statistically significant way the variability of the observed phenomenon. examinees from households with one member who buy margarine once a month or less frequently have contributed to a great extent to the explanations of inertia, as well as those whose response to this question has been “ something else”, examinees from households with two members who buy margarine once a week or once a month, examinees from households with 3 and 4 members who buy margarine 2-3 times a week, as well as the examinees from the largest households who buy margarine every day or less frequently than once a month. definitely the greatest contribution to the explanation of inertia is made by the examinees from households with one member whose response is “something else”– response which is not provided within the questions by the questionnaire, as well as the examinees from households with three members who buy margarine 2-3 times a week. it can be concluded on the basis of twodimensional graphic representation of coordinates of rows and columns that there is a correspondence of examinees from households with two members with baying margarine everyday and once a month, as well as of the examinees from the largest households and households with four members with buying margarine once a week or once every two weeks (figure 1). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 324-332 328 figure 1: two-dimensional plot of the coordinates of rows (household size) and columns (frequency of purchasing the margarine) source: authors calculation based on questionnaire results in addition, it can be noticed that with reference to the vertical axes of twodimensional graphic representation, in terms of the frequency of buying margarine, groups from any household size except for the households with one member are quite homogenous. in other words, with reference to the vertical axes, on the one hand, households with two members and largest households can be noticed as sub-groups, and on the other hand, households with three and four members. thereby it can be noticed that households with one member are significantly different from the above sub-groups. with reference to the horizontal axes of the figure 1 homogenous groups of the examinees from both the smallest and largest households can be noticed. the largest number of the examinees from all age categories indicates habit as a main reason for using margarine (42.5%). table 1: eigen values and total inertia for all dimensions (household size of examinees  frequency of margarine purchasing) eigenvalues and total inertia for all dimensions: tоtal inertia = 0.163, χ 2 = 38.99, degrees of freedom= 24;p = 0.027, 05.0 dimension number singular values eigenvalues % of total inertia cumulative inertia χ 2 value 1 0.29 0.08 50.48 50.48 19.68 2 0.21 0.05 27.93 78.41 10.89 3 0.17 0.03 18.48 96.89 7.20 4 0.07 0.01 3.11 100.00 1.21 source: authors calculation based on questionnaire results nice flavour of margarine as a main reason has been provided by 30.5% of the examinees. nutritional value of margarine is in the third place as a reason for using it – 14.6%. 2d plot of row and column coordinates; dimension: 1 x 2 row .coords 11 member 22 members 33 members 44 members 55 or more members col.coords 1every day 22-3 times a w eek 3once in a w eek 4once in tw o w eeks 5once in a month 6less frequently than once in a month 7 something else 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 dimension 1; eigenvalue: .08235 (50.48% of inertia) -1.0 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 d im en si on 2 ; e ig en va lu e: .0 45 56 ( 27 .9 3% o f i ne rt ia ) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 324-332 329 reasonable price of the product has been indicated as a main reason by 3.4% of the examinees. high quality of the product has been indicated as a main reason by 3% of the examinees. age of the examinees has showed a statistically significant correspondence with the responses related to the main reason for margarine consumption, χ2 = 39.84 (р=0.022), whereas total inertia is 0.171 (table 2.) тable 2: eigen values and inertia for all dimensions (age of examinees  main purpose of using margarine) eigenvaluesandtotalinertiaforalldimensions:total inertia = 0.171, χ 2 =39.84, degrees of freedom= 24;p = 0.022 05.0 dimension number singular values eigenvalues % of total inertia cumulative inertia χ2 value 1 0.31 0.09 55.07 55.07 21.94 2 0.22 0.05 28.92 83.99 11.52 3 0.14 0.02 12.25 96.24 4.88 4 0.08 0.01 3.76 100.00 1.50 source: authors calculation based on questionnaire results about 55% of total inertia – variability has been explained by means of the first dimension, 28.9% of total inertia – variability has been explained by means of the second dimension, 12.2% of total inertia – variability has been explained by means of the third dimension, аnd 3.8% of total inertia – variability has been explained by means of the fourth dimension ,which means that in total about 84% of total inertia variability of the observed phenomenon has been explained by means of the first two dimensions. the first two dimensions explain variability of the observed phenomenon in a statistically significant way. great contribution to the explanations of the inertia has been made by the youngest examinees, who indicate high quality of the product, good market supply and “some other reasons” as main reasons for margarine consumptions“,then by the examinees aged 30-39 who indicate habit, high quality of the product and nice flavour, next by the examinees aged 40-49 who indicate high quality of the product and “some other reasons”, followed by the examinees aged 50-59 and the oldest examinees who refer to the high quality of the product, good market supply and nice flavour. definitely the greatest contribution to the explanation of inertia has been provided by the examinees aged 30-39, who indicate nice, flavour as a main reason for margarine consumption, as well as the oldest examinees who indicate high quality of the product. it can be concluded on the basis of twodimensional graphic representation of coordinates of rows and columns that there is a correspondence of the examinees aged 50-59 with the reasonable price of margarine as a main reason for its use, correspondence of the examinees aged 30-39 with the nice flavour as a main reason, as well as the examinees aged 40-49 who indicate nutritional value of margarine as a main reason. furthermore, in relation to the vertical axes of two-dimensional graphic representation, in terms of the frequency of margarine consumption, pretty homogenous youngest group of the examinees and group of the examinees aged 50-59 can be noticed, whereas in relation to the horizontal axes of the graphic, pretty homogenous group of the examinees aged 30-39 and the oldest group of the examinees on the one hand, and a group of the examinees aged 40-49 and 50-59 on the other hand can be noticed (figure 2). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 324-332 330 figure 2: two-dimensional plot of the coordinates of rows (age of examinees) and columns (main purpose of using margarine) source: authors calculation based on questionnaire results the greatest number of the examinees of all the categories buys dairy margarine (50.4%). there is an equal percentage of those who buy both vegetable and diet margarine (25.6%, i.e. 23.9% of the examinees). degree of professional qualifications has showed no statistically significant correspondence with the type of margarine that consumers most frequently buy, χ 2 =7.22 (р=0.301, 05.0 ), whereas total inertial amounts to 0.0303 (table 3). 68.86% of total inertia – variability has been explained by means of the first dimension, and the rest of the total inertia – variability has been explained by means of the second dimension, which means that in total a complete total inertia-variability of the observed phenomenon has been explained by means of the first two dimensions. the first two dimensions explain in a statistically significant way variability of the observed phenomenon. significant contribution to the explanations of the inertia has been made by the examinees with primary education, who buy dairy margarine and diet margarine, then by the examinees with secondary education who buy vegetable margarine, as well as by the examinees with high school education who buy both dairy and vegetable margarine. тable 3: eigen values and total inertia for all dimensions (level of education of examinees х margarineе type) eigenvaluesandtotalinertiaforalldimensions: total inertia = 0.030, χ 2 = 7.22, degrees offreedom= 6;p = 0.301, 05.0 dimension number singular values eigenvalues % of total inertia cumulative inertia χ2 value 1 0.14 0.02 68.9 68.9 4.97 2 0.10 0.01 31.1 100.00 2.25 source: authors calculation based on questionnaire results 2d plot of row and column coordinates; dimension: 1 x 2 row .coords 1-19-29 years 230-39 years 340-49 years 450-59 years 560 and more years col.coords 1habit 2high product quality 3reasonable price 4good market supply 5nice flavour 6nutritional value 7-some other reasons 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 -1.0 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 dimension 1; eigenvalue: .09416 (55.07% of inertia) -1.0 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 d im en si on 2 ; e ig en va lu e: .0 49 45 ( 28 .9 2% o f i ne rt ia ) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 324-332 331 it can be concluded on the basis of twodimensional graphic representation of coordinates of rows and columns that there is a correspondence of the examinees with high school education with vegetable margarine purchase. furthermore, pretty homogenous groups of the examinees with secondary education and high school education can be noticed in relation to the vertical axes of two-dimensional graphic representation, in terms of the type of margarine that is bought, whereas pretty homogenous groups of the examinees with primary education and high school education can be noticed in relation to the horizontal axes of the graphic (figure 3). figure 3:two-dimensional plot of the coordinates of rows (level of education of examinees) and columns (margarine type) source: authors calculation based on questionnaire results conclusions based on the survey that has been carried out and statistical processing through the application of up-to-date statistical software statistica, it has been established that over 70% of the examinees buy margarine with the frequency varying from once a week to once a month.the age of the examinees has displayed a statistically significant correspondence with the responses related to the main reason of using margarine (χ2 = 39.84 ;р = 0.022, 05.0 ), meaning that the main reason of using margarine is not independent of the age of the examinees.household size has also displayed a statistically significant correspondence with the frequency of buying margarine (χ2 = 38.99 ; р = 0,028, 05.0 ), which indicates that the frequency of buying margarine is not independent of the number of household members.since a significant correspondence of modalities of previously crossed questions has been established on the basis of the derived method of correspondence analysis, the resulting conclusions indicate that this technique can be applied to the examination of some performances of margarine as foodstuff. references avilez, j. p., escobar p., von fabeck g., villagran k., garcía f., matamoros r., & a. garcía martínez (2010). dairy farms productive characteriza2d plot of row and column coordinates; dimension: 1 x 2 row .coords 1primary education 2secondary education 3high school 4faculty col.coords 1dairy margarine 2vegetable margarine 4diet margarine 1 2 3 4 1 2 4 -0.6 -0.5 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 dimension 1; eigenvalue: .02089 (68.86% of inertia) -0.15 -0.10 -0.05 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 d im en si on 2 ; e ig en va lu e: .0 09 45 (3 1. 14 % o f i ne rti a) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(5)2014: 324-332 332 tion using multivariate analysis methodology. revista científica, fcvluz, 20(1), 74-80. beh, e. j., lombardo r., & b. simonetti (2011). a european perception of food using two methods of correspondence analysis. journal of food and quality preference, 22, 226-231. bendixen, m. 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(2008). impact of flavour attributes on consumer liking of swiss cheese. j. dairy sci, 91, 466–476. nicin, s. (2010). possibilities of investigation of cheese market applying correspondence analysis, book of abstracts, international symposium livestock production, veterinary medicine and economics in rural development and production of safety food, divcibare, 20-27. june 2010. panea, b., casasús i., blanco m., & joy m. (2009). the use of correspondence analysis in the study of beef quality a case study on parda de montaña breed. spanish journal of agricultural research, 7(4), 876-885. pantelic, d., & м. savic (2000). application of statistical methods in marketing research. аnnals of faculty of economics, 5, 651-656. de souza, r. v., marques pinheiro a. c., de deus souza carneiro j., pinto s. m., abreu l. r., & carvalho menezes c. (2011). analysis of various sweeteners in petit suisse cheese determinationof the ideal and equivalent sweetness. journal of sensory studies, 26(5), 339–345. kleij, t. f., & musters p. a. (2003). text analysis of open-ended survey responses: a complementary method to preference mapping. food quality and preference, 14(1), 43-52. http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/71836658_anna_claret http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/40094192_wim_verbeke http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/2030588302_geraldine_enderli http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/2030588302_geraldine_enderli http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/2005937724_sylwia_zakowska-biemans http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/44456066_filiep_vanhonacker http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/44456066_filiep_vanhonacker http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/9207764_sylvie_issanchou http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/31456681_marta_sajdakowska effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 120 restoration of the potentialities of a degraded ferralsol using cocoa bean teguments in ahoue (south east, côte d’ivoire) kouadio koffi patrice*, bongoua-devisme affi jeanne, yoboué kouadio emile, touré nantarie, beugré christian moise, aka kacou félix and yao-kouamé albert department of earth sciences and mineral resources (strm), university félix houphouët-boigny of cocody, 22 bp 582 abidjan 22, côte d'ivoire, west africa. * email address: kkpatrice@hotmail.fr (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 30-oct-2017 accepted: 25-jan-2018 online available: 12-feb2018 keywords: cocoa bean teguments, chemical properties, ferralsol, vigor index, cassava, south-east côte d’ivoire abstract this study consists of using the cocoa bean teguments as a means of sustainable production growth and environmental preservation. it aims to characterize the effects of the teguments on the chemical properties of a ferralsol in ahoué (côte d'ivoire). in an experimental block design of fisher, three treatments of cocoa bean teguments: t1 (10 t.ha-1), t2 (15 t.ha-1), t3 (20 t.ha-1) and one control t0 have been set up with four repetitions. the main results show that the contribution of cocoa bean teguments has a positive effect on all the characteristics studied. the values obtained of the ph of the t0 and the t1, t2, t3 indicates, respectively 4.2; 5.4; 5.5 and 5.8. as regards the contents of the cec, the values obtained give: 2.32; 7.2; 11.44 and 12.5 cmol.kg-1, respectively, for t0, t1, t2 and t3 treatments. as for the organic matter, the contents obtained indicate the following values: t0 = 12.56 g.kg-1; t1 = 26.49 g.kg-1; t2 = 35.09 g.kg-1 and t3 = 38.08 g.kg-1. the data corresponding to the sum of the captions oscillated between 4.5 and 10.5 cmol.kg-1 according to the treatments. contribution/ originality unlike synthetic fertilizers that have a number of disadvantages on the soil, this study focused on restoring the agronomic potential of degraded soils through the use of cocoa by-products. the study shows that cocoa beans teguments, used as an organic fertilizer, constitute both an amendment and a food supply for the plant. the contribution of cocoa bean teguments is one of the solutions for restoring the fertility of degraded soils and improving crop yields. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.6/1005.6.120.130 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: kouadio koffi patrice, bongoua-devisme affi jeanne, yoboué kouadio emile, touré nantarie, beugré christian moise, aka kacou félix and yao-kouamé albert (2017). restoration of the potentialities of a degraded ferralsol using cocoa bean teguments in ahoue (south east, côte d’ivoire). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6), 120-130. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 6(2017): 120-130 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kkpatrice@hotmail.fr http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.6/1005.6.120.130 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 120-130 121 1. introduction the predominant role played by agriculture in côte d'ivoire's economy forces farmers to practice intensive farming because of the heavy pressure on land, due to the growing needs generated by population growth, and lack of arable land (n’goran et al., 1997). the nutrients exported during crops are not adequately replaced (fao, 2003). the consequence of this pressure is the reduction of fallow duration, leading to soil degradation and low crop yields (yemefack and nounamo, 2000). the managing natural resources in a rational way to ensure sustainable production are the challenge for producers in south-east côte d'ivoire. soil, the main base of agricultural production (duchaufour, 1995), is particularly affected by the loss of its many potentialities, in particular by the reduction of fallow land without compensatory fertilization and intense erosion. these factors led to a gradual disappearance of vegetation and significant chemical and physical degradation of cultivated soils. the direct consequence is lower crop yields and a dramatic drop in production. the use of fertilization is the most appropriate way to provide cultivated plants the indispensable complement to the soil. the fertilization, giving priority to mineral fertilizers at the expense of organic manure, certainly increases the immediate yield, but gradually destroys the soil (cattan et al., 2001). its exclusive use leads to an increase in acidity, a deterioration of physical status and a decrease in soil organic matter (boli and roose, 2000). in view of the disadvantages caused by chemical fertilizers, the search for new production methods that improve productivity and preserve the environment is essential (rajot et al., 2002). the work of ayanlaja and sanwo (1991) has shown that the decomposition of plant residues considerably improves the level of nutrients and soil organic matter. the organic fertilization could therefore play an important role on various soil properties. it is in this perspective that experiments are carried out in the south-east of côte d'ivoire with the cocoa bean teguments used as organic fertilizers to restore the fertility of degraded soils. the objective of this study is to characterize the effects of manure from cocoa bean teguments on the chemical fertility of ferralsol and the vigor index of cassava plants in ahoué (south-east côte d'ivoire). 1. material and methods 2.1. material 2.1.1. site description located in the south-east of côte d'ivoire, the study area (ahoué) is delimited by the coordinates 05°30'43''n and 03°56'31''w (figure 1). the climate of ahoué is the subequatorial regime. it is characterized by four seasons (kouakou et al., 2016). the rainfall is about 1200 mm per year. the average temperature of the area is 26 °c. the area belongs to the rainy area of the guinean domain, characterized by dense evergreen forest. the area belongs to the ombrophilic area of the guinean domain, characterized by the humid dense forest. the relief is presented as a model in half-orange. this area is characterized by a relief consisting of vast plains and low plateaus traversed by a succession of undulations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 120-130 122 figure 1: location of the experimental site 2.1.2. plant material the experimental trial focuses on cassava, a tuberous root plant. the cassava variety (manihot esculenta crantz) used for this study is improved african cassava (commonly called yacé ) (figure 2). it is a resistant variety, commonly grown and consumed by the ivorian population in different forms (cassava paste, flour, starch, bread, cake, etc.). figure 2: cassava cuttings (improved african cassava) 2.1.3. organic material fertilizer the organic manure used consists of cocoa bean teguments (figure 3). this fertilizing organic material came from a dump, place of trade of the cocoa bean teguments composted in the municipality of abobo (abidjan, côte d’ivoire). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 120-130 123 figure 3: cocoa bean teguments 2.2. methods 2.2.1. experimental design the experiments were carried according to a random block or "fisher" block device with four repetitions (figure 4). the subplots of 9 m2 (3mx3m) are numbered from t0 to t3. in the case of this experiment carried out in the field, the blocks constitute a set of neighboring parcels very similar to each other. the distribution of objects within the different blocks is completely random and independently of one block to another. the cocoa bean teguments constitute the factor studied at four (4) levels: t1 (10 t.ha-1), t2 (15 t.ha-1), t3 (20 t.ha-1) and t0 (0 t.ha-1). the blocks are separated by 2 m and the sub-plots are separated from each other by 1 m. these different doses (treatments) are added during the preparation of the soil or during the planting. figure 4: experimental design asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 120-130 124 2.3. agronomic trial 2.3.1. soil preparation and application of fertilizing organic material the preparation of the soil was done mechanically. the teguments were weighed and then applied on a thin regular layer according to the different doses on each of the sub-plots concerned, according to the experimental device. 2.3.2. culturing the planting mode is the one used by the directorates of research programs and development support and information systems cnra (n’zué et al., 2005). the cuttings 20 to 30 cm long (4 to 6 knots) were collected from healthy stems at least 6 months old. the planting density is 10 000 plants per hectare (1 m between rows and 1 m between plants on the same line), or 16 cassava cuttings were placed on each sub plot of 9 m2. 2.4. collecting samples of cocoa bean teguments and soil 2.4.1. samples of cocoa bean teguments the cocoa bean teguments, obtained in a dump in abobo (abidjan), were dried, crushed and sieved (ø <2 mm) before being spread (figure 5). figure 5: powder of cocoa bean teguments 2.4.2. germination rate this dormancy is manifested by the appearance of germs. the end of dormancy is the growth of the plant with leaf development (ettien, 2004). the raised feet were counted on each sub-parcel per block. observations began 2 weeks after planting. after the second observation, a third occurred during the fourth week to identify the germinating plantlets (bakayoko et al., 2013). 2.4.3. vigor index the vigor index (x), an important characteristic of plant development (berchoux and lecoustre, 1986), was determined two months after planting, according to the following formula: x = log [(c² x h) / 4π)] (01); c = circumference, h = height (h and c are expressed in centimeters). 2.4.4. soil samples the sampling took place in the 0-30 cm layer because of rooting depth of cassava (hauser et al., 2013) and also some past work (akanza and yao-kouamé, 2011). within each elementary parcel, a random sample of soil was made at five different points, following the two main diagonals. the first, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 120-130 125 before the addition of the cocoa bean teguments, was aimed at determining the gross potential of the soil in nutrients and the second, after the harvest. 2.5. chemical analysis of cocoa bean teguments and soil the ph h2o measurements, to assess soil acidity, were performed in a soil suspension in water using a ph meter in a 1/2.5 ratio. the 1 m ammonium acetate method at ph 7 (anderson et al., 1993) was used to determine cation exchange capacity (cec) and exchangeable base contents (ca2+, mg2+, k+). total organic carbon was determined by the method of walkley-black (1934). the determination of total nitrogen (n) soil levels was done by the kjeldahl method of rittember (bremner and mulvaney, 1982) and the quantities of total phosphorus and assimilable, respectively, by colorimetry in the presence of ammonium molybdate and ascorbic acid after extraction by attack with perchloric acid (olsen and sommers, 1982), and by colorimetry after extraction with an alkaline solution of sodium bicarbonate(nh4f 0.5 n+ nahco3 0,5 n, ph 8.5) (dabin, 1967). 2.6. statistical analysis the collected data were subjected to analysis of variance (anova) using sas software. the newman-keuls test was used for comparison of averages when significant differences between treatments were revealed at the 5% probability level. 3. results and discussion 3.1. results 3.1.1. chemical composition of cocoa bean teguments the analysis of the cocoa bean teguments shows that the chemical composition, determined from the dry matter, indicates high levels of total carbon (320 g.kg-1), total nitrogen (18 g.kg-1), in total phosphorus (7600 mg.kg-1), potassium (797.95 cmol.kg-1), calcium (19.21 cmol.kg-1) and magnesium (234.47 cmol.kg-1) (table 1). table 1: chemical characteristics of cocoa bean teguments chemical characteristics cocoa bean teguments c (g.kg-1) 320 n (g.kg-1) 18 c/n 17.78 total phosphorus (mg.kg-1) 7600 ca (cmol.kg-1) 19.21 mg (cmol.kg-1) 234.47 k (cmol.kg-1) 797.95 na (cmol.kg-1) 8.69 3.1.2. fertilizer elements provided by manure of cocoa bean teguments an intake of 10 t.ha-1 manure of cocoa bean teguments has provided the soil with the following quantities of organic elements: 180 kg of total nitrogen and 320 kg of total carbon (table 2). the various fertilizer elements, both major and secondary, are released into the soil by the manure of cocoa bean teguments. these are phosphorus pentoxide (p2o5), potassium oxide (k2o), calcium oxide (cao) and magnesium oxide (mgo). the amounts of nutrients of the soil provided by 10 t.ha1 of organic fertilizer are: 76 fertilizer units of p2o5; 3120 fertilizer units of k2o; 27 fertilizer units of cao and 570 units mgo fertilizers (table 2). a precise indication of the mass of organic elements and fertilizing minerals provided by the different quantities of manure of cocoa bean teguments is given in table 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 120-130 126 table 2: organic elements and fertilizer equivalents supplied by manure organic elements and minerals brought to the soil quantity of manure applied cocoa bean teguments (t.ha-1) 0 10 15 20 (fertilizing units.ha-1) c 0 320 4800 6400 n 0 180 270 360 p2o5 0 76 114 152 k2o 0 3120 4680 6240 cao 0 27 39.5 52 mgo 0 570 855 1140 3.1.3. soil chemical characteristics before the tests the chemical characteristics of the soil of the site before the tests are determined (table 3). these values indicate a low fertility in view of the low levels of organic elements (n = 0.3 g.kg-1 and c = 7.3 g.kg-1) poorly decomposed (c / n = 24.33). the nutrient binding and exchange potential of the clay-humic complex remains low, the sum of exchangeable bases (s = 0.23 cmol.kg-1) and base saturation (v = 9) , 91%), bear witness to this. its cation exchange capacity also remains low (cec = 3.10 cmol.kg-1) as well as its assimilable phosphorus content (85 mg.kg-1). table 3: soil chemical characteristics before the tests ph h2o n c c/n pass. ca mg k na cec s v (g.kg-1) (mg.kg-1) (cmol.kg-1) (%) 4.2 0.3 7.3 24.33 85 0.064 0.135 0.013 0.018 2.32 0.23 9.91 pass. = assimilable phosphorus; s = sum of exchangeable bases; v = base saturation rate 3.1.4. effects of cocoa bean teguments on soil chemical parameters the soil ph h2o data varied from 4.2 to 5.8 depending on the treatments. the values significantly varied under the influence of different amounts of the cocoa bean teguments (table 4). the soil ph h2o increased from 4.2 to 5.8. the improvement rates passed from 22.22 to 27.59 %, respectively, for 10 and 20 t.ha-1 of cocoa bean teguments manure. the optimum ph h2o is 5.8, obtained at the dose of 20 t.ha-1. under the influence of organic fertilizer, soil organic matter levels varied from 26.49 to 38.08 g.kg-1, with manure quantities (table 4). the corresponding improvement rates fluctuated between 52.59 and 66.94 % compared to the t0 treatment, whose organic matter content is estimated at 12.56 g.kg-1. the organic fertilizer had a significant influence on calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, the sum of the cations and the saturation rate in the bases of the adsorbent complex. manure doses increased exchangeable calcium levels in the soil from 4.81 to 6.98 cmol.kg-1, magnesium levels from 2.36 to 3.20 cmol.kg-1, and potassium levels from 0.62 to .96 cmol.kg-1 and na contents of 0.14 to 0.23 cmol.kg-1. the residual effects of the treatments caused an increase in the amount of assimilable phosphorus in the soil ranging 85 to 125 mg.kg-1. with 10 t.ha-1 of manure, an amount of 95.75 mg.kg-1 is acquired, against 85 mg.kg-1 for the t0 treatment. in addition, inputs of 15 and 20 t.ha-1 manure allow access, respectively, 112.05 and 125.2 mg.kg-1 (table 4). the data corresponding to the sum of the cations varied between 4.5 and 10.5 cmol.kg-1 according to the treatments (table 4). the rates of increase in the sum of the cations, relative to t0, passed from 94.88 to 97.81%, respectively, for manure quantities of between 0 and 20 t.ha-1. the base saturation rate values of the clay-humic soil complex fluctuated between 62.5 and 84% depending on the treatments (table 4). the organic fertilizers had a significant effect on base saturation of the adsorbent complex. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 120-130 127 table 4: effects of cocoa bean teguments on soil chemical parameters doses ph h2o mo ca mg k na pass. cec s v (t.ha-1) (g.kg-1) (cmol/kg) (cmol/kg) (cmol/kg) (cmol/kg) (mg.kg-1) (cmol.kg-1) (cmol.kg-1) (%) t1 5.4 26.49 4.81 2.36 0.62 0.14 95.75 7.2 4.5 62.5 t2 5.5 35.09 4.93 2.47 0.75 0.20 112.05 11.44 7.3 63.8 t3 5.8 38.08 6.98 3.20 0.96 0.23 125.2 12.5 10.5 84 pr>f <0.0001 <0.0001 <0.0001 <0.0001 <0.0001 <0.0001 <0.0001 <0.0001 <0.0001 <0.0001 mo = organic matter; pass. = assimilable phosphorus; s = sum of exchangeable bases; v = base saturation rate 3.2. effects of cocoa bean teguments on germination rate and vigor index of cassava plants 3.2.1. germination rate of cassava plants after 14 days of planting, it is found that the germination rate in each sub-plot amended with the organic fertilizer is greater than 50%. however, there is a slight improvement in the germination rate (59.75%) in sub-plots treated with t1 treatment. this germination rate after 21 and 28 days of planting varies markedly for each treatment, but with a slight improvement in subplots t2 and t3 (82.8 to 87.5%) (table 5). table 5: germination rate of cassava plants treatments germination rate average 14 days 21 days 28 days t0 51.563a 71.875a 75.000a 66.146a t1 59.75a 79.688a 81.250a 73.438a t2 56.250a 82.813a 84.375a 74.479a t3 54.688 a 82.813a 87.500a 75.000a cv (%) 19.10515 9.449914 10.54809 20.78308 pr> f 0.7714 0.1837 0.2593 0.4449 values with the same letter are not significantly different at the 5% threshold 3.2.2. vigor index of cassava plants the table 6 presents the mean values of the vigor index for the different treatments. the table 6 also shows that the smallest vigor index was obtained with t0. as for the largest vigor index, it was obtained with t3 treatment. the plots fertilized with the treatments have a growth rate ranging from 12.65 to 14.59% from the first to the third week of observation. table 6: vigor index of cassava plants values with the same letter are not significantly different at the 5% threshold treatments vigor index average 64 days 71 days 78 days t0 1.81b 1.99c 2.127b 1.97c t1 1.99a 2.09bc 2.33a 2.14b t2 2.05a 2.25ab 2.37a 2.23ab t3 2.14a 2.38a 2.45a 2.32a cv (%) 18.1879 17.1426 16.2217 18.0857 pr> f 0.0007 <1.0001 0.0017 <0.0001 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 120-130 128 4. discussion the chemical characterization of the soil before the application of organic fertilizers and the implantation of the cassava cuttings, revealed a soil very poor in organic matter (c = 7.3 g / kg and n = 0.3 g / kg), and poorly decomposed (c / n = 24.3). these properties show a very low potential for binding and exchange of elements (s = 0.23 cmol / kg) and saturation rate (v = 9.91%). it is a very acidic soil (ph h2o = 4.2) and belongs to the subclass of ferralsols (akanza and yao-kouamé, 2011). the continuous exploitation of ahoué soils with natural fallow as the only means of restoration causes sharp decreases in crop yields of around 30 to 75% (kouadio, 2012). the mineral elements such as calcium and magnesium available in soils are exported by crops and by runoff or seepage, thus making the ph acidic (green and kowal, 1960). the drop in ph is accompanied by the appearance of toxic elements such as manganese or aluminum (merelle, 1998). the analysis of the cocoa bean teguments indicates high amounts of total carbon (320 g.kg-1), total nitrogen (18 g.kg1), total phosphorus (7600 mg.kg-1), potassium (797.95 cmol.kg-1), in calcium (19.21 cmol.kg-1) and in magnesium (234.47 cmol.kg-1). the soil supply of the manure of teguments shows a clear improvement of the chemical fertility of the soil. the evolution of the ph, the organic matter, the cec and the sum of the cations testifies to it. the increase of each of the characteristics is all the more marked as the dose of teguments is strong. the cocoa bean teguments are rich in total carbon, total nitrogen, exchangeable calcium, magnesium and exchangeable potassium. the manure of the teguments brought significant effects on the chemical parameters of the degraded soils of ahoué by the improvement of the cec, the organic matter, the sums of the exchangeable bases, the saturation rate in bases and the ph h2o of amended soils, especially, with t3 treatment. indeed, with their decomposition in the soil, the integuments ensure a high availability of nutrients for the cassava plants. these results are in agreement with those of useni et al. (2013), djeké et al. (2011) and moyin-jesu (2007) who showed, respectively, that the decomposition of plant residues has raised the ph and nutrient levels of the soil. the increase in soil ph observed in treated plots reflects a decrease in soil acidity. with the t3 treatment, the acidity of the soil ranging from 4.2 to 5.8, would be linked to the ca2+ and mg2+ ions, which, despite their uptake by the plants, are in sufficient quantities to neutralize the ions responsible for the acidity of the soil. the increase in cec, following the introduction of manure from cocoa bean teguments, could be explained by the fact that these fertilizers have affected the phenomena of fixation of exchangeable cations on the soil-absorbing complex (abobi et al., 2014). according to the works of djeké et al. (2011), since the ph makes it possible to define the state of the adsorbent complex, in particular, the saturation rate in bases (duchaufour, 1997), its improvement by the addition of cacao bean teguments also reflects that of the saturation rate in bases. the results, thus obtained, are perfectly concordant to authenticate the hypothesis according to which the organic matter, in the form of cocoa bean teguments, is one of the real engines of the improvement of the chemical fertility of the soil. it is used in high doses (adden, 2004). the data analysis establishes that the t3 treatment seems to have the best result. this observation confirms that the addition of high-dose organic fertilizer is essential to maintain or jointly increase total carbon and soil nutrient stores (thuriès et al., 2000). the improvement of the vigor index of cassava plants on fertilized plots shows that the supply of cocoa bean teguments has a positive effect on the different chemical parameters of the soil. by providing nutrients by mineralization and neutralizing the acidity of the soil, the cocoa bean teguments have a very strong influence on the vigor index of the cassava plants. thus, the cocoa bean teguments improve the physical chemical properties of the soil, make available elements such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorus (bado, 2002), and provide nutrients by mineralization. this leads to an improvement in the vigor index of the crop plants. the organic matter is one of the main regulators of soil productivity. the results provided by the tests are very satisfactory and generally consistent. 5. conclusion this study, conducted on ferralsols in ahoué, south-east of côte d'ivoire, showed that the use of cocoa bean teguments as an organic fertilizer is one of the solutions for restoring the fertility of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(6)2017: 120-130 129 degraded soils. the use of the cocoa bean teguments had a beneficial effect on the chemical fertility and vigor index of the cassava plants. the addition of 20 t.ha-1 of teguments achieves the best compromise between the soil chemical parameters and the vigor index of the cassava plants. the addition or restitution of organic matter to the soil is both an amendment and a food contribution for the plant. the organic matter, once incorporated into the soil, undergoes a series of transformations which, under the action of microorganisms and under the influence of the environment, break it down into humus and mineralize it. these transformations are very beneficial for the soil, the organic matter inputs should be realized, in principle, every year, for farmers concerned with the preservation of their soil capital. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abobi, a. h. d., angui, t. k. p., & kouadio, y. j. 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(2000). soil dynamics and optimal duration of agricultural fallows in south cameroon. in: floret c. pontanier r., eds. summerfallow in tropical africa. paris, pp. 135-141. https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=abstracts+of+pedology.+soil%2c+vegetation%2c+environment.+&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=abstracts+of+pedology.+soil%2c+vegetation%2c+environment.+&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=nutrient+content+of+a+moist+tropical+forest+of+ghana.&btng= https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01377368 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=use+of+plant+residue+for+improving+soil+fertility%2c+pod+nutrients%2c+root+growth+and+pod+weigth+of+okra+%28abelmoschus+esculentrum+l%29.+bioresour&btng= https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2006.03.007 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=thuri%c3%a8s%2c+l.%2c+arrufat%2c+a.%2c+dubois%2c+m.%2c+feller%2c+c.%2c+hermann%2c+p.%2c+larr%c3%a9-larrouy%2c+m.+c.%2c+martin%2c+c.%2c+pansu%2c+m.%2c+r%c3%a9my%2c+j.+c.%2c+%26+viel%2c+m.+%282000%29.+&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=an+examination+of+the+degtjareff+method+for+determining+soil+organic+matter+and+a+proposed+modification+of+the+chromic+acid+titration+method&btng= https://doi.org/10.1097/00010694-193401000-00003 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 36 screening of mycotoxin produced by fusarium verticillioides and f. proliferatum in culture media oadi n. matny department of plant protection, college of agriculture, university of baghdad, baghdad, iraq abstract this study was conducted to evaluate the production of mycotoxin by fusarium verticillioides and fusarium proliferatum strain in culture media. results of fusarium strain speciation by sequencing technique for the αtef gene regent showed that 16 isolates from 21 belong to f. verticelloides, four to f. proliferatum and one to fusarium solani. mycotoxin production test showed that all fusarium strains obtained produce different levels of t2-toxin, don, zen and fumonisin in culture media with fumonisin toxin having the highest chemotype produced. keywords: chemotypes, fusarium, pcr introduction 1 according to braun (2007), maize (zea mays l.) is a staple food for the majority of the world’s population as well as wheat and rice. this important food source can be infested by mycotoxin produced by fusarium spp. fusarium verticillioides (synonym: f. moniliforme) belongs to a large genus of filamentous fungi which is prevalent in the midwestern and southeastern united states with some species producing mycotoxins in cereal crops that can affect human and animal. f. proliferatum, a closely related fungus also occurs regularly and has been isolated from infected maize (abbas et al., 2002). these species produce high levels of fumonisin (leslie, 1991, 2004); even in plants that do not show symptoms of infestation. plant can become infected in several ways; the most common pathway is via the silk channel. another manner of spread of f. verticillioides is by the european corn borer and other insects such as the corn earworm. the feeding activities of these insects may spread spores to silks or corresponding author’s email address: oadi77@yahoo.com directly to kernels and can create wounds in kernels, which are then colonized by the fungus. f. verticillioides and f. proliferatum, the most common species associated with maize were found to produce fumonisin and t2-toxin (nelson et al., 1993; jinanarong, 2000; matny 2013). according to ronald et al. (1981) f. monoliforme grown on cracked corn for 13 days at 28°c was found to produce t-2 toxin at 33 μg/g and vomitoxin at 1.5 μg/g while el-kady and el-maraghy (1982) recorded that strains of f. moniliforme from egypt produced zea on optimized medium. matny (2013) also reported that f. proliferatum produce zen toxin in wheat straw culture. materials and method source of isolates twenty one strain of fusarium spp were isolated from maize (stalk and ear rot) by surface sterilization with 10% sodium hypochlorite for 3 min, and culture in 9 cm petri dish potato dextrose agar (pda). the culture was incubated at 25±2 0 c for 5 days, after which fusarium spp mycelium growth were re-culture by hyphal tip technique in a new pda petri dish. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:oadi77@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 36-41 37 fusarium spp speciation fusarium isolates were identified by sequencing the translation elongation factor-1 alpha gene (αtef gene) region while dna was extracted by cetap method. pcr was carried out using translation elongation factor-1 alpha gene (αtef gene) ef1 5 gtggggcatttaccccgcc 3 and ef2 5 acgaacccttacccacctc 3 . pcr reaction mixture for tef gene consisted of 12.8 μl milliq h2o, 2.5 μl 10x buffer, 2.5 μl mgcl2, 0.5 μl dntp mix (10 mm each), 0.8 μl forward primer ef1 (10mm), 0.8 μl reveres primer ef2 (10mm), 0.1 μl taq (biotech) and 5 μl dna sample. all preparation steps were done in ice bath. pcr procedures are as follows: initial denaturation at 95 o c for 75 s, denaturation at 95 o c for 15s, annealing was at 53 o c for 30s, primer extension at 72 o c for 30s, (38 cycles), final extension was at 2 o c for 30s. the pcr reactions were cleaned up using ultra clean tm pcr clean-up kit from mo bio laboratories inc while the product was analyzed using electrophoresis in 1.5% agrarose gel. the reaction mix was prepared by adding 13 μl milliq h2o, 3.5 μl 5x buffer, 0.5 μl primers ef1 or ef2 (prepared separately), 1.0 μl bdt and 2 μl dna samples. cycling parameters were 96 0 c for 2 min 1 cycle, (96 o c for 10 s, 50 o c for 5 s, 60 o c for 4 mins) 30 cycles. pcr product was cleaned up using agencourt clean seq kit, agencourt bioscience corporation. 62 μl of 85% ethanol were added to each pcr product and blend by pipetting seven times the product into a clean pcr plate. the plate was place on spri plate 96r for 3 min to separate beads. the clear phase was transferred into a new clean plate loaded on the detector and send for sequencing in australian genome research facility ltd (agrf) in brisbane. mycotoxins detection twenty one fusarium isolates were tested for the production of mycotoxin in wheat seed, corn, wheat straws and millet. they were soaked in water over night. after which water was drain out and materials autoclaved at 121 o c, and at a pressure of 1.5 inch/cm 2 for 30 min. ten gram of sterile wheat straw in 9 cm dim petri dish was inoculated with a disc of 1 cm dim of fusarium isolate culture, 7 days old on pda media. three replicates of each isolate were incubated at 25 ±2 o c for 21 days. the cultures were dried, grounded using coffee grinder and conserved at 4°c. mycotoxins were extracted using accelerator solvent machine ace200; 1g of each grinded culture was extracted with 15 ml of acetonitril: water 85:15. five hundred μl of each extract was dried under nitrogen flow in 1.5 ml plastic tubes. fifty five μl of milliq water were added to each tube and vortex for few seconds each. the toxin in each sample was detected by ridscreen t-2 toxin, zearalenon, fumonisin rbiopharm ag and germany and beacon deoxynivalenol elisa kit (analytical systems inc. usa). results and discussion fusarium spp speciation result of dna sequencing according to genbank database blast searching using individual sequences showed that sixteen isolates belong to f. verticelloides, four to f.proliferatum and one to f. solani (figure 1). mycotoxin production all fusarium isolates in this study showed ability to produce mycotoxins in tested culture media. result of elisa test showed that don toxin was produced by all fusarium spp depending on the type of culture and fungal strain. f. verticelloides ir93 and ir56 strain produced high concentration of toxin at 2.04 and 2.40 mg/kg on wheat and wheat straw culture respectively, while f. solani ir66 produced the highest concentration at 4.45 mg/kg on wheat straw (figure 1). aliakbari et al. (2011) found that artificial inoculated seed corn with f. proliferatum and f. verticelloides separately at laboratory conditions produced don toxin at a mean level of 95. 30 ng/g after 10 days of inoculation. both f. verticelloides and f. proliferatum are known to produce fumonosin toxin in high concentrations. the results of this study showed that f. verticelloides strain was the highest producer of fumonosin toxin ranging between 5.8-10477.0 mg/kg. the concentration of toxin produced by f. verticelloides ir10 and ir46 on millet culture was 10477.0 and 10215.4 mg/kg respectively while f. verticelloides ir10 on wheat culture produced 10347.9 mg/kg toxin. one isolate of f. proliferatum ir1 produced asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 36-41 38 high toxin at 9926.6 mg/kg on millet culture (figure 2). f. verticillioides and f. proliferatum are by far the most prolific fumonisin producers; they produced the highest amounts of toxins. according to previous research, up to 17900 μg/g of fb1 have been recorded in cultures for f. verticillioides and 31000 μg/g fb1 for f. proliferatum (rheeder et al., 2002; shephard et al., 1996). all fusarium strains produced t2-toxin on culture media with concentrations ranging between 2.13-20.2 mg/kg. f. verticelloides ir93, ir52 and ir10 produced 20.2, 12.1 and 9.34 mg/kg on millet culture respectively while f. verticelloides ir57 gave 9.79 mg/kg on corn culture media (figure 3). a similar research by varnaitė et al. (2006) showed that f. proliferatum can produce t2 toxin in artificial culture media. zearalenone determination showed that all isolates produced zen toxin at concentrations between 0.5-3.4 mg/kg. f. verticelloides ir46, ir56 and ir57 produced 3.4, 3.2 and 3.1 mg/kg on wheat grain culture respectively, while ir32 strain on millet culture produced 3.1 mg/kg (figure 4). figure 1: agarose gel (1.5%) photograph showing pcr amplified products for α-tef gene for fusarium spp isolates, the product prepared for sequencing test. 1, 2, 3…..21 = the fusarium spp isolates, m= marker asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 36-41 39 figure 1: deoxynivalenol produced by different fusarium strain in wheat, maize, wheat straw and millet culture figure 2: fumonisin produced by different fusarium strain in wheat, maize, wheat straw and millet culture m g /k g m g /k g lsd 0.05=3.07 lsd 0.05=357.54 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 36-41 40 figure 3: t2-toxin produced by different fusarium strain in wheat, maize, wheat straw and millet culture figure 4: zearalenone produced by different fusarium strain in wheat, maize, wheat straw and millet culture conclusions fusarium spp have being known to produce mycotoxin which infest many cereals crop such as maize and wheat especially under bad storage conditions. the results of this study showed that f. verticelloides and f. proliferatum have the ability to produce high concentration of fumonisin in growing cultures, amounting to more than 10000 mg/kg as well as in producing other kinds of mycotoxin such as zearalenone, t2-toxin and deoxynivalenol in different concentrations depending on the culture media and the fungal strain. this poses a serious m g /k g 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 wheat corn straw millet m g / k g lsd 0.05=4.34 lsd 0.05=0.34 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 36-41 41 problem to human and animal diet as this infected grain can be blended with clean grain for food/feed production. references abbas, h. k., williams, w. p., windham, g. l., pringle, h. c., xie, w., & shier, w. t. (2002). aflatoxin and fumonisin contamination of commercial corn. (zea mays) hybrids in mississippi. j. agric. food chem, 50, 5246-5254. braun, j. v. (2007). the world food situation: new driving forces and required actions, international food policy research institute (ifpri), washington, d. c. u. s. a. el-kady, i. a., & el-maraghy s. s. (1982). screening of zearalenone producing fusarium species in egypt and chemically defined medium for the production of the toxin. mycopathology, 78(1), 25-29. jinanarong, b. (2000). toxicopathology in broilers receiving mycotoxins of fusarium spp. isolated from domestic maize in thailand, thesis, master of science (veterinary pathobiology), the chulalongkorn univ., facultyo of veterinary science, thailand. leslie, j. f. (1991). mating populations in gibberella fujikuroi (fusarium section liseola). phytopathology, 81, 1058-1060. leslie, j. f. (2004). interfertility of two mating populations in the gibberella fujikuroi species complex. euro. j. plant pathol, 110, 611-618. matny, o. n. (2013). mycotoxin production by fusarium spp isolates on wheat straw in laboratory condition. research journal of biotechnology, 8(7), 35-41. nelson, p. e., desjardins, a. e., & plattner r. d. (1993). fumonisins, mycotoxins produced by fusarium species: biology, chemistry and significance. annu rev phytopathol, 31, 233-252. rheeder, j. p., maasas w. f., & vismer h. f. (2002). production of fumonisin analogs by fusarium species. appl. environ. microbiol, 68, 2101– 2105. ronald, f. v., johan j. e., & william k. r. (1981). swine refusal factors elaborated by fusarium strains and identified as trichothecenes. appl. and environ. microbiol, 41(1), 323-324. shephard, g. s., thiel, p. g., stockenstrom s., sydenham e. w. (1996). worldwide survey of fumonisin contamination of corn and corn-based products. j. aoac int. 79: 671–687. aliakbari, z., aminian, h., mirabolfathy, m., & kosboo, r.. (2011). fusarium species and deoxynivalenol in maize product of moqan region. plant pests and diseases, 79(2): 163-180. varnaitė, r., raudonienė, v.. & a. lugauskas (2006). chromatographic characteristics of secondary metabolites of micromycetes detected on vegetables and grains. ekologija, 3, 48–53. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 28 effect of different electrical conductivity value and chamfer slope on the growth and results of kailan (brassica oleracea) acephala variety in hydroponic nutrient film technique suryaman birnadi * , aldy hendrian department of agrotechnology uin sunan gunung jati bandung, indonesia. email address: sbirnadi_6165@yahoo.com corresponding author article history: received: 25-mar-2017 accepted: 08-may-2017 online available: 23-may2017 keywords: electrical conductivity, gutter slope, kailan growth, nft abstract technically, hydroponic system can be used as a cultivation method with this narrow land availability. one of the hydroponic systems that have been developed is nutrient film technique (nft) hydroponic. this study is aimed to determine interaction between various values of electrical conductivity and gutter slope on the nft system, also to determine the optimum effect of various values of ec and gutter slope towards kailan (brassica oleracea var. acephala) growth. the research was carried out in sumedang, west java, indonesia on november-december 2015. this study used factorial completely randomized design (3 x 4), ie: various values of ec (n1 = 2.5 ms cm -1 ; n2 = 3 ms cm -1 ; and n3 = 3.5 ms cm -1 ) and gutter slope (k1= 1%; k2 = 3%; k3 = 5%; and k4 = 7%) with three replications. the results showed there were no interactions between the treatment of various values of ec and gutter slope. the treatment of ec 3.5 ms cm -1 (n3) influenced to results on all of the observation variables, compared with ec 2.5 ms cm -1 (n1) and 3 ms cm -1 (n2). the treatment of gutter slope of 3% (k2) also affected to results on all of the variables compared with other levels. contribution/ originality the research on kailan plant with hydroponics system especially in the use of electrical conductivity value and tilt of chamfer will become the information material for farmers and related institution in the effort of horticulture farming development especially kailan plant. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.2/1005.2.28.39 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: suryaman birnadi and aldy hendrian (2017). effect of different electrical conductivity value and chamfer slope on the growth and results of kailan (brassica oleracea) acephala variety in hydroponic nutrient film technique. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2), 28-39. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 2(2017): 28-39 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 28-39 29 1. introduction kailan plants (brassica oleracea var. acephala) is one type of leaf vegetable, which tastes good and has the nutrients that the human body needs, such as proteins, minerals and vitamins. kailan has a high nutrient content, ie in every 100 grams kalian contains 35.00 kal calories, 3.0 g protein, 0.40 g fat, 6.80 g carbohydrate, 1.20 g fiber, 230 mg calcium, phosphorus 56 mg, 2 mg iron, 135 mg of vitamin a, vitamin b1 0.10 mg, 0.13 mg vitamin b2, vitamin b3 0.40 mg, vitamin c 93 mg and 78 mg of water. by consuming 100 grams kailan can meet third intake of vitamins needed by the body (samadi, 2013). public awareness to consume vegetables is increasingly high, causing demand for vegetables including kailan be increased. these conditions encourage the need for increasing production through good kailan agricultural cultivation technique. based on statistic data from the agency (bps), kailan that classified cabbage family in indonesia have ups and downs. in 1998 production kailan in indonesia amounted to 1.45 million tonnes and continued to decline until 2002 to 1.23 million tons. in 2008 amounted to 1.32 million tons and in 2012 increased to 1.48 million tons (central bureau of statistics, 2012). kailan cultivation could be done by the hydroponic system. hydroponic is cultivation technique that uses a growing medium other than soil (untung, 2000). some of the advantages of hydroponic farming is that it can be done on a limited land, high quality products that have added value to the health benefits and attractive, more efficient fertilizer use, more efficient use of water, nutrients and ph control more thoroughly, the problem of pests and plant diseases can be reduced. it is engineering of cultivation and imitate the natural process. subandi and humanisa (2011) said man takes economic benefit from the empirical reality of natural process of natural growth and development. one of the hydroponic system that has been developed as a hydroponic nutrient film technique (nft). nft hydroponics is the cultivation of plants without soil by plant roots are in the flow circulating in the shallow water contain the necessary elements of the plant. most plant roots submerged in water with nutrients and partly above the surface of circulating water for 24 hours continuously. this very thin layer of water about 3 mm (untung, 2000). in hydroponic systems, the plants require a level of electrical conductivity (ec) as appropriate. electrical conductivity (ec) is the electrical conductivity in a solution based on the level of salinity (salinity) (resh, 2004). ec level of a nutrient solution can be measured using an ec meter. ec value indicates the level of deficiency, sufficiency, and excess nutrients in the media are absorbed by plant roots. the more nutrients contained in the nutrient solution, the higher the value of ec. ec value nutrient solution is very important to know because it deals with arrangements of essential nutrients for plants. in the nft system, the basic needs that must be fulfilled are: bed (gutters), tanks and pumps. water or nutrients flowed in gutters planting. gutter planting sloped so that nutrients can flow. the slope of the gutter is generally made 1-5% for the drainage of nutrient solution, incoming flow rate should not be too fast and wide gutters are sufficient to avoid blocked nutrient solution (lingga, 2008). subandi (2012) stated that all cell requires water taken from their living medium that nutrition elements of light molecular weight can penetrate the cell membrance. sutiyoso (2004) said if the slope is enlarged, the flow of the solution increases, the ripples flow increases, the encroachment of oxygen by the flow of the solution increases. conversely if the slope is reduced, then the solution flow slows down. as a result of respiration is the only plant produces less energy, less roots can absorb nutrients and plant growth became stagnant asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 28-39 30 with the use of hydroponics system nutrient film technique in cultivation is expected to increase growth and yield kailan. ec value and the slope of the gutter is suitable as supporting the growth and yield of kailan has not well known yet. therefore we need for researching on the effect of various values of the ec and the slope of the gutter to learn and study the effect on growth and yield of kailan. 2. materials and methods materials used in this study is the seed of kailan, nutrition ab mix, round 2-inch pvc gutters, gutter cover 2 inch, 0.5 inch hose water distributor, the cover 2 inch hose, pipe joints, wood, rapia rope, cutter, thread, rockwool, water pump, net pots (pot planting), a bucket capacity of 8 liters and 30 liters. the tools used in this study is a power drill, a ph meter, ec meter, luxmeter, thermometer, water pass, stirrer solution, measuring cups, analytical balance, an oven, a ruler or tape measure, crowbars, saws, scissors, tweezers, cameras, stationery and label. the experimental design used in this study is completely randomized design (crd) factorial two factors, the first 3 levels and factor ii 4 levels with 3 repetitions obtained 36 experimental units. the variables used are rated ec (n) of 3 level and slope of the gutter (k) as much as 4 levels. the study consisted of two factors: the value of ec (n) and the slope of the gutter (k). the first factor is composed of three levels and the second factor consists of four levels. the first factor is the value of ec (n) consisting of: n1 = 2.5 ms cm -1 n2 = 3.0 ms cm -1 n3 = 3.5 ms cm -1 the second factor is the slope of the gutter (k) consists of: k1 = 1% or equal to 0.9 o , k2 = 3% or equal to 2.7 o k3 = 5% or equal to 4.5 o k4 = 7% or equal to 6.3 o these two factors obtained 12 combination of treatment levels, replicated three times so that there are 36 experimental units. 3. results and discussion 3.1. temperature and humidity during the study, the average temperature contained in the study area from november to december 2015, namely 24.94 o c. the average humidity in the field of research is 65.90%. 3.2. irrigation water uniformity (cu / coeffiecient uniformity) sapei (2003) states that the value of cu (uniformity coefficient) should be greater than 80%. criteria for irrigation uniformity level can be seen in table 1. table 1: criteria of irrigation system droplets uniformity level according to asae criteria statistical uniformity (su) (%) coefficient of uniformity (cu) (%) very good 95 – 100 94 – 100 good enough 85 90 81 – 87 good 75 80 68 – 75 ugly 65 – 70 56 – 62 no worthy <60 <50 source: asae in prabowo and hendriadi (2004) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 28-39 31 irrigation uniformity measurement results on research obtained an average low of irrigation uniformity on the observation of one week after planting (wap) by treatment with n1k2 and n2k2 with the same average is 98.96%. meanwhile the average of highest irrigation uniformity on the observation of 3 weeks after planting (wap) by treatment with n3k3 as much as 99.73%. based on observations of the irrigation uniformity, the value of uniformity (cu) of all observations gutters slope applications have been greater than 80% and suitable for use in nft hydroponics system and nft construction ready for transplanting. in accordance with that proposed by sapei (2003), this suggests that the nft hydroponic irrigation system capable of providing distribution solutions fairly evenly for each treatment. 3.3. plant height (cm) results of analysis of variance showed no interaction between the treatment of various ec nutrients grades and gutters slope on plant height, however, the treatment of various ec value nutrients influence independently on plant height at ages 2, 3, 4 and 5 wap. while the slope of the gutter treatment provides independent effect on plant height at 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 wap. results of the analysis of the advanced test duncan 5% significance level are presented in table 2. table 2: effect of various ec value nutrition and chamfer slope on the average height of plant (cm) by age 1 to 5 wap treatment the average plant height weeks after planting (wap) nutrition 1 wap 2 wap 3 wap 4 wap 5 wap ---cm ---- n1 5,73a 11,71a 18,99a 25,87a 33,26a n2 5,87a 12,71b 19,96b 26,73b 34,71b n3 5,96a 12,50b 20,04b 29,08c 36,26c chamfer tilt k1 5,95ab 11,95a 19,22a 26,83b 33,58b k2 6,16b 13,01b 20,68c 28,45c 37,04d k3 5,69a 12,64b 19,96b 27,66c 35,97c k4 5,61a 11,63a 18,79a 25,96a 32,39a description: the average number followed by the same letter are not significantly different based on the advanced test duncan at 5% significance level based on table 2 it can be seen that the treatment of a variety of nutrients ec value with ec 3.5 ms cm -1 (n3) on a total of 200 ppm n, independently increased plant height at age 4 wap and 5 wap with an average plant height of the highest compared with other treatments with a value in a sequence that is 29.04 cm and 36.26 cm. in general, the quality of the nutrient solution is determined by measuring electrical conductivity (ec) solution. if the ec is high then the nutrient solution more concentrated, thus increasing the availability of nutrients. likewise, if the ec is low, the concentration of the nutrient solution low so fewer nutrients (lingga, 2008). macro nutrients in nutrition ab mix very influential in the high growth of plants, especially nutrients n and p. the response of plants to the level of ec influenced age of the plant and crop growth stage. the role of nitrogen in the vegetative phase of the plant to the length and plant growth. nitrogen is used to stimulate growth in the vegetative phase, especially the leaves and stems (lingga, 2008). mulyani et al. (2009) states that the higher nitrogen supplied to a certain extent, the higher the plant growth variables, in this case mainly on plant height. increased uptake nitrogen causes the chlorophyll content of plants to be higher so that the rate of photosynthesis increases. the rate of photosynthesis increases the synthesis of carbohydrates also increased. the formation of carbohydrates caused by photosynthetic rate will increase vegetative growth of the plants, including the growth of plant height and leaf formation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 28-39 32 increased uptake of p able to increase vegetative growth of the plants. p element capable of forming energy in the form of atp that play a role in the absorption of nutrients (sastrahidayat et al., 1999). atp is then used as an energy source in the plants absorb other nutrients which are required to improve the n.. in addition to a plant height of macro nutrients n and p, micro nutrients such as mo and zn also affect the growth of plants. zinc plays a role in the cleavage of the meristem cells, while mo contributes to overall growth, especially plant height (mairusmianti, 2011). this is evident in the parameters plant height at 4 and 5 wap utilization of nutrients (n3) ec 3.5 ms cm-1 showed the highest value compared to the treatment of other nutrients. based on table 2 can be seen in every observation treatment gutters slope independently increased plant height. at each observation treatment gutters slope of 3% (k2) had an average plant height of the highest compared with other treatments to the value level in a sequence that is equal to 6.16 cm, 13.01 cm, 20.68 cm, 28.45 cm and 37.04 cm. this is presumably due to the different speed of the flow of nutrients in the gutters of different slope. the availability of oxygen to be absorbed by plants through the roots is affected by the slope of the gutter. according to sutiyoso (2004), the lower slope of the gutter, then the level of dissolved oxygen in the solution will be low. conversely, the higher the slope of the gutter, then the level of dissolved oxygen in the solution will increase. according harjoko (2009) which states that the nutrient solution flow rate is too high or too slow will make it difficult for roots to absorb nutrients. 3.4. number of leaves results of analysis of variance showed no interaction between the treatment of various grades ec nutrients and gutters slope of the number of leaves, however, the treatment of various ec nutritional value and slope of the chamfer provides an independent effect on the number of leaves at ages 2, 3, 4, and 5 wap. test results duncan analysis further 5% significance levels are presented in table 3. table 3: influence of ec various value nutrition and chamfer tilt average amount leaves by age 1 to 5 wap treatment average number of leaves nutrition weeks after planting (wap) 2 wap 3 wap 4 wap 5 wap leaves n 1 3,78a 5,75a 7,61a 9,67a n2 4,11ab 6,11ab 7,94ab 9,94ab n3 4,31b 6,28b 8,17b 10,17b chamfer tilt leaves k1 3,89ab 5,89ab 7,89b 9,89b k2 4,55c 6,48c 8,48c 10,48c k3 4,11b 6,11b 8,11b 10,15b k4 3,70a 5,70a 7,15a 9,18a description: the average numbers followed by the same letter are not significantly different shows based on the advanced test duncan at 5% significance level based on table 3 shows that the treatment of a variety of nutritional value of ec 3.5 ms cm -1 (n3), independently has an average number of leaves, the highest compared with other treatments with a value of 4.31 sequentially as many strands, strands 6,28, 8,17 strands and strands 10.17. this is because the nutrients contained therein sufficient for the growth of leaves in the treatment of ec 3.5 ms cm -1 (n3). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 28-39 33 according prihmantoro and indriani (2005) the growth and development of the leaves are affected by the elements n, cl, and zn. furthermore muliawati (2007) element of n in an amount sufficient to spur meristematic tissue at the point of actively growing stems. it encourages the formation of stem segments more and more so that the number of leaves produced too much. has to be known that the role of nutrient nitrogen serves to stimulate the plant as a whole, especially the trunk, branches and leaves. nitrogen also plays an important role in the formation of a green leaf that is useful in terms of photosynthesis, when photosynthesis goes perfectly, then the growth of the plant will also be better. based on table 3 it can be seen that the slope of the gutter 3% treatment (k2), independently has an average number of leaves, the highest compared with the level of other treatments. this is because the slope of 3% (k2), supported by adequate water velocity that makes oxygen dissolved in the solution increases from a slope of 1% (k1), so the absorption of nutrients in the plant can be run well. oxygen is required plants in the process of respiration. respiration is the process to convert stored energy into energy that is ready for use. the energy produced will be used for photosynthesis. adequate nutrition and oxygen are supported by a good effect on the process of photosynthesis of plants to produce photosynthate. according salmin (2005) energy produced from photosynthesis is used for the process of making new cells that will extend the roots, trunk, branches and grow new leaves. during the day when the photosynthesis, the amount of dissolved oxygen is quite a lot. instead at night, the oxygen that is formed during the day will be used for the plant. 3.5. leaf size (cm2) results of analysis of variance showed no interaction between the treatment of various grades ec nutrients and gutters slope of the leaf area, but the treatment of a variety of nutrient ec value and the slope of the gutter effect independent of leaf area. results of the analysis of the advanced test duncan 5% significance level are presented in table 4. table 4: effect of various grades ec nutrition and the slope of the average gutter leaf area (cm 2 ) treatment leaf size nutrition cm 2 n1 184,37a n2 198,53b n3 202,37b the slope of the gutter k1 188,40b k2 225,77c k3 198,10b k4 168,08a description: the average numbers followed by the same letter are not significantly different shows based on the advanced test duncan at 5% significance level based on table 4 it can be seen that the treatment of various grades of ec 3.5 ms cm -1 (n3), independently has an average leaf area widest 202.37 cm 2 , but these results show is not significantly different from the treatment of an ec 3 ms cm -1 (n2). it is suspected that the availability of nutrients needed by plants kailan fulfilled by treatment values ec 3 ms cm -1 (n2) nor the treatment of various grades of ec 3.5 ms cm -1 (n3). leaf area affected by the availability of n and p in the nutrient solution is given. according to gardner and pearce (1991) nitrogen element has a real influence on the development of broad leaf leaves mainly. in the vegetative phase, the plant requires a lot of carbohydrates used asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 28-39 34 for networking, division, elongation and cell division. according karsono et al. (2003) phosphorus-deficient plants will show symptoms of slow growth, small leaves and leaf stalks are narrow. the plant to continue its growth and development must perform photosynthesis and cellular respiration. assumed greater leaf area the higher the photosynthate or carbohydrates produced. photosynthate was used for plant growth and development, among others, increase size of plant, the establishment of branches and leaves. based on table 4 it can be seen that treatment of 3% slope (k2), independently have an average of the highest leaf area compared with other treatments is an area of 225.77 cm 2 , it is suspected that the oxygen contained in the slope of 3% (k2) helped the process of respiration with both generating energy used for photosynthesis. darmawan and baharsyah (1983) states that the leaf is the most important organ as the photosynthesis that the result will be distributed throughout the plant for plant growth and development. the process of photosynthesis to produce carbohydrates that can be used as an energy source for the plant. the more energy is obtained the greater the ability of plants to absorb nutrients. according to susila (2013) in the hydroponic system hydroponic nft (nutrient film technique) does not happen water stress so that the crop needs to be h2o very fulfilled. hydroponic systems, water and nutrient management is focused on the optimal mode of administration according to needs plants in order to achieve maximum results. kramer (1980) stated that the plant is experiencing drought stress include changes in cellular and molecular level, such as changes in plant growth, cell volume becomes smaller, and the impact on the leaf area. 3.6. plant fresh weight (g) based on the analysis of variance is known that there is no interaction, but the treatment of a variety of nutritional value and slope gutter ec provides independent effect on plant fresh weight. results of the analysis of the advanced test duncan 5% significance level are presented in table 5. table 5: influence of various ec value nutrition and chamfer tilt to the average weight of fresh plant (gram) treatment fresh weight potential results nutrition gram tonnes / ha n1 169,58a 60.29 n2 173,06b 61.53 n3 175,42c 62.32 chamfer tilt k1 172,04b 61.17 k2 176,30d 62.68 k3 173,52c 61.69 k4 168,89a 60.65 description: the average numbers followed by the same letter are not significantly different shows based on the advanced test duncan at 5% significance level. based on table 5 it can be seen that the treatment of the value of ec 3.5 ms cm -1 (n3), independently have an average weight of fresh high of 175.42 grams plants. it is alleged treatment of ec 3.5 ms cm -1 (n3) contains nutrients required by plants kailan to increase the fresh weight of the plant. according novizan (2002), micro-nutrients mo role in the absorption of n and indirectly also play a role in the production of amino acids and proteins. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 28-39 35 according harjadi (1993) there is an element of n available and can be absorbed by plant roots will be utilized in the process of division and growth of cells by plant tissues, resulting in the formation of large vacuoles that can hold large quantities of water thereby increasing plant fresh weight. plant height and number of leaves affects the fresh weight of the plant canopy. the greater the height of plants and the more the number of leaves, the fresh weight of stover will increase. in addition to height and number of leaves, increased the fresh weight of the canopy as well as leaf area and chlorophyll. the wider the lettuce and the more the amount of chlorophyll then photosynthesis will run smoothly in the presence of sunlight that supports (fahrudin, 2009). based on table 5 it can be seen that treatment of 3% slope (k2), independently has the highest average value amounted 176.30 grams compared with another level of treatment. this matter because different tilt for each treatment that influence difference water absorption by plant. acording to sutiyoso (2004) the higher the slope of the gutter, the higher oxygen levels, but on a slope that is too high will make it difficult for roots to absorb nutrients due to speed the flow of nutrients is also high. conversely, the lower the level, the slope of the lower the flow of nutrients and oxygen by the flow of any encroachment slack resulting plant respiration to produce energy only slightly, and the roots are less able to absorb nutrients. the water in the plant serves as a basic ingredient in the photosynthesis process, the solvent for various materials involved in important physiological processes and chemical plants, the source for the plant cell turgor, as well as a coolant in the process of transpiration. approximately 85-95 percent of the fresh plant is composed of water (resh, 2004). 3.7. plant dry weight (g) based on the results of variance analysis, it is known that interaction did not happen, but the treatment of a variety of nutritional value and slope gutter ec provides independent effect on plant dry weight. results of the analysis of the advanced test duncan 5% significance level are presented in table 6. table 6: effect of various ec nutrition value and tilt chamfer on the average weight of dry plant (gram) treatment dry weight nutrition gram n 1 9,61a n2 9,69b n3 10,40c chamfer tilt k 1 9,11b k2 12,12d k3 10,37c k4 7,40a description: the average numbers followed by the same letter are not significantly different shows based on the advanced test duncan at 5% significance level the dry weight of the plant reflects the accumulation of organic compounds synthesized plants from inorganic compounds, especially water and carbon dioxide. nutrients that have been absorbed by the roots contribute to plant dry weight gain. the dry weight of the plant is due to the efficiency of absorption and utilization of solar radiation available throughout the cropping period by the plant canopy. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 28-39 36 tippayawong et al. (2011), describes basically the elements of the main constituent chemical plant and the value range is: c 45.7%, h 4.3%, 49.7% o, and n 0.3%. in addition to the organic components are also inorganic components in the form of ash. the ash content varied from 0.8% 9.7%, silica is a major component of the epidermis with a value between 1.5 6.4% or above 5% depending on the type of plant. dust consisting of silica, copper, zinc, iron, potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, and others. according harjadi (1993) the availability of nutrients absorbed by plants is able to stimulate the formation of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins through the process of photosynthesis, then protein synthesis will result in a plant cell size as well as the accumulation of carbohydrates in the form of dry weight. this statement is supported by setyamidjaja (1986), which states that the nutrients in a form that is available will be quickly absorbed by the plant to be used in the metabolic process that will provide a response to plant growth and development. nyoman (2002) states that when deprived of nutrients, the visible symptoms include poor growth of roots, stems and leaves so that the results will fall. measurement results can dry weight seen efficiency of absorption of nutrients. the efficiency of absorption of nutrients that are best demonstrated by the experimental unit in treatment ec nutritional value of 3.5 ms cm -1 (n3). these results show that this treatment has the absorption of nutrients better than other treatments. based on table 6 it can be seen that treatment of 3% slope (k2), independently has the highest average score is 12.12 grams. the dry weight of the plant affected by the fresh weight of the plant canopy. as well as the variables plant height, leaf number, leaf area and plant fresh weight, the slope of the gutter 3% treatment gives dry weight of plants better than the other treatments. it is suspected the plant can utilize oxygen levels that exist at an inclination of 3% (k2) well to perform respiration process that will generate energy for photosynthesis. according salisbury and ross (1995) plant dry weight was the result of growth and the net result of the process of assimilation o2 throughout the plant's growth and reflect the nutritional status of plants that rely heavily on the rate of photosynthesis. the development of the plant is a combination of a number of complex process which is a process of growth differentiation which leads to the accumulation of dry weight. and subandi (2013) noted that the condition when a leaf is no more sink status or parasitic condition (measured comparatively between photosynthesis and respiration rates), because its function as a active photosynthetic organ. goldsworthy and fisher (1992), states that the dry weight of stover plants can be used as a reference for the stated rate of vegetative growth of plants, since 90% of dry matter plant is the result of photosynthesis, the growth analysis generally expressed by weight of dry stover, especially for measuring plant as photosynthesis results. 3.8. ratio shoot root results of analysis of variance showed that the treatment of various grades ec and gutters slope no interaction, but the treatment of various grades ec and gutters slope effect independent of the ratio dashed roots. results of the analysis of the advanced test duncan 5% significance level are presented in table 7. a ratio shoot root is translocated starch/glucose concentration. if the dry weight of the plant canopy is greater than the dry weight of the roots of plants, showed increased translocation of glucose into the plant canopy and vice versa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 28-39 37 table 7: effect of various ec value nutrition and chamfer tilt to average ratio shoot root treatment ratio of pupus root nutrition n1 8,23a n2 9,44b n3 10,60c chamfer tilt k1 9,16b k 2 11,32d k3 9,90c k4 7,31a description: the average numbers followed by the same letter are not significantly different shows based on the advanced test duncan at 5% significance level in table 7 it can be seen that the treatment of the value of ec 3.5 ms cm -1 (n3) independently has the highest average score is 10.60. according yadi et al. (2012), the plant will achieve high production rates when the nutrients that plants need to be in a state of sufficient and well balanced macro nutrients n, p, k and other micro-nutrients are absolutely necessary plants. if one element is not met then it will affect the growth and yield of a plant. this indicates that the value of ec 3.5 ms cm-1 (n3) may increase growth phase to the generative phase, so that affect to the root ratio value. based on table 7 it can be seen that the slope of the gutter 3% treatment (k2) independently have an average value ratio vanished highest root 11.32. it is presumed oxygen content of the 3% slope (k2) can meet the oxygen requirements kailan plants to grow well. according izzati (2006), which is enough dissolved oxygen in the water, will help the plant roots in binding oxygen. when high levels of dissolved oxygen respiration, the process will be smooth and the energy generated enough roots to absorb nutrients that can be absorbed by plants. the plants will have a rapid growth and can result in high productivity and quality. this was confirmed by lesmana and darmawan (2001), which states that the dissolution of oxygen into the water with regard to circulation, flow patterns and turbulence of the water movement in the form of ripples or waves will accelerate the diffusion of air into the water. oxygen is required for respiration process which will produce energy that is ready for use. the energy produced will be used for photosynthesis that produces starch. oxygen is the real fire, it is easily burn and imflamable in higher consentration. value ratio dashed root of value> 1 indicates plant growth more towards vanished, while the rootvalue ratio dashed <1 indicates plant growth more towards the root (lizawati et al., 2014). observations were shoot root ratio performed in this study shows that the distribution of starch more because value ratio shoot roots produced > 1. 4. conclusions and suggestions 4.1. knot based on the results of research and analysis that has been done can be summarized as follows: 1. there is no interaction between the various electrical conductivity nutritional value and the slope of the gutter on the growth and yield of varieties acephala kailan. 2. independently value of electrical conductivity 3.5 ms cm -1 (n3) on a total of 200 ppm n effect on plant height, number of leaves, leaf area, plant fresh weight, dry weight of root crops and dashed ratio. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(2)2017: 28-39 38 while the slope of the gutter 3% (k2) affects an effect on plant height, number of leaves, leaf area, plant fresh weight, dry weight of root crops and dashed ratio. 4.2. suggestion suggestions to the authors provide is based on research that has been done is: 1. the need for further research on a variety of nutrition to electrical conductivity value of total n different slope and gutter with gutter different length. 2. we recommend that in making the construction of hydroponic technology nutrient film technique (nft) is made on a permanent floor that facilitate in making the construction. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references central bureau of statistics of the republic of indonesia. 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(2011). science and technology. some cases in islamic perspective. bandung: remaja rosadakarya. susila, a. d. (2013). hydroponics system: department of agronomy and horticulture. faculty of agriculture, ipb. bogor. sutiyoso, y. (2004). hydroponics ala jos: spreader governmental. jakarta. tippayawong, n., chaichana, c., promwungkwa, a., & rerkkriangkrai, p. (2011). clean energy from gasification of biomass for sterilization of mushroom growing substrates. international journal of energy, 4(5), 96-103. view at google scholar untung. (2000). fundamentals of horticulture. issue 1. earth literacy. jakarta. https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=physiological+pattern+of+leaf+growth+at+various+plucking+cycles+applied+to+newly+released+clones+of+tea+plant+&btng=&hl=en&lr=lang_en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=clean+energy+from+gasification+of+biomass+for+sterilization+of+mushroom+growing+substrates&btng=&hl=en&lr=lang_en&as_sdt=0%2c5 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 149 deteriorating agriculture: it's reasons and impacts on socio-economic profile of j&k state ishfaq ahmad malika*, ajaz ahmad ratherb a* assistant professor, faculty of business and economics, department of economics, mettu university, ethiopia. b lecturer, directorate of school education, government of jammu and kashmir, india. * email address: mlk.ishfaq@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 08-dec-2017 accepted: 22-feb-2018 online available: 09-mar2018 keywords: agriculture, poverty, unemployment, inflation, import burden abstract in terms of dependence on livelihoods and employment, the state of jammu and kashmir can be considered as agrarian, hence the overwhelming majority of the people live in rural areas. there are many reasons that have led to a dwindling share of gdp of the sector at a time when it should have retained its role given large proportion of people depending on it. these include: reduction in public expenditure in the sector after reforms, decrease in agricultural land due to conversion, lack of appropriate irrigation facilities, and acute lack of infrastructure, lack of quality pesticides, occasional flooding, and lack of research. this imbalance between production and employment has resulted into compromised socio-economic profile of the state which includes: low per capita income, compromised food security, large capital outflow, and low employment. therefore, in a bid to arrest any further deterioration in its socioeconomic profile, it is imperative for the state to initiate a stream of measures that will enhance the productivity in the sector and safeguard it from undue competition from abroad. contribution/ originality in comparison with existing literature that used econometric models which at times become cumbersome, this study uses simple analytical and descriptive approach. more importantly, this study especially focuses upon the impact of deteriorating agriculture on socio-economic profile of the state. while as the former highlights the presence of myriad bottlenecks in the background of low performance, the latter underlines its significance for welfare of common masses. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.8/1005.8.149.159 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: ishfaq ahmad malik and ajaz ahmad rather (2017). deteriorating agriculture: it's reasons and impacts on socio-economic profile of j&k state. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8), 149-159. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 8(2017): 149-159 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:mlk.ishfaq@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.8/1005.8.149.159 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 149-159 150 1. introduction the importance of the agriculture and allied sectors for the state of jammu and kashmir emanates from the fact that more than two thirds of its population resides in rural areas. according to the census of india statistics, in j&k among the 13.5 million people, 9.1 million resided in rural areas while as 3.4 million in urban areas. thus, 72.8 percent of the state population resided in rural areas and the rest 27.2 percent in urban areas. while as more than 2 percent of the worker still engaged in this sector. similarly, more than 70 percent of the state population directly or indirectly derives their livelihood from this sector. in this state, annual growth rates of agriculture are varied from different periods. the growth rate of agriculture and allied sectors slowed down to 0.7 percent after 2005-06. this rate come down from a high growth phase of 5.2 percent during 1994-95 to 1999-2000 followed by 36 percent for the period 2000-2001 to 2004-05. the progression regression in the growth rate clearly indicates a trailing agriculture sector. this deceleration can also be gauged from the change in rank of state in terms of growth in this sector. for the period 1981-82 to 1993-94, rank of state was 22nd among 25 states. a stupendous improvement was realized during next phase ad state achieved 3rd rank in period 1994-95 to 1999-2000. subsequently for the period 2001-01 to 2004-05 and 2005-06 to 2011-12, it received to 13th position and further to 26th position among 27 states respectively. the fact that agricultural sector has failed to perform well to bring something like basic transformation in the sector. according to the economic survey report of the state for 2014-15, the yield per hectare of the different in the state is very low in comparison to other states of india. like rice/paddy yield per hectare is only 20.85 quintals per hectare in comparison to that of 39.52 quintals per hectare for punjab. the productivity of the state in case of rice is only half of the punjab. similarly, wheat yield per hectare is only 14.04 quintals for the state in comparison to 50.17 quintals for punjab, the latter being three and half times more than the former. in case of maize the production per hectare for the state is 16.48 quintals. the same in case of tamil nadu is 53.72 quintal. thus, the latter is more than three times that of the former. in case of oil seeds, the comparison with best productivity state of gujrat is 8.24 to 17.23, that is almost half that of it. so on these basis, the importance of the sector in the overall output of the state has been decreasing. in 2004-05, the sector contributed 28.06 percent to gsdp. the same decreased to 20.22 percent in 2013-14. as such there is a decrease of 7.84 percentage points in its contribution. it needs a further reminder that all this is happening in a state whose 70 percent population is said to be directly or indirectly dependent on agricultural sector. the paper aims to highlight the reasons and impact of deteriorating agriculture on socio-economic profile of j&k state with special reference to impact on per capita income, poverty, high unemployment, inflation and growing import burden. for this we use parameters to indicate that the agriculture sector has been facing deterioration, particularly for past decade. we first start from the simple comparative growth statistics of the state and all india level. after that compare growth of the sector with others sectors for past nine years. additionally consider subsequently the growth of food grains in comparison to all india level from 1994-95, which represents this deterioration from a specific angle. moreover compare the levels of productivity in different food grains with other states as well as countries. finally we take a look into fast dwindling share of the agriculture sector in the gsdp. the paper is organized as follows: sections 1 of this paper discuss the introduction. in section 2 discusses about the review of literature. the section 3 highlights basic reasons for the lack of performance of agriculture sector, while section 4 provides impact of deteriorating agriculture sector on socio-economic development of jammu and kashmir state and conclusion and policy implication in section 5. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 149-159 151 2. literature review in the past, hardly any issues have paying attention of economists as has the role of agriculture in socio-economic development, generating an enormous literature of both theoretical and empirical studies. much of this literature emphasized on structural transformation of economies, from less developed economies whose economies was based on agriculture and developed countries where industry and service sectors takeover. the share of primary sector in employment and gdp decline is an expected outcome of economic progress. (byerlee et al., 2009; timmer, 2002; cervantesgodoy and brooks, 2009). it is due to higher income elasticity for non-agriculture goods and services. classical theorists lewis (1954) emphasized that economic development as a process of relocating factors of production from an agricultural sector characterized by low productivity and the use of traditional technology to a modern industrial sector with higher productivity. this theory was employed to support industrialization and used to justify government policies that protects domestic industries and tax on agriculture sector (kirkpatrick and barrientos, 2004). this theory and its implication for policy have been discredited by later work and the degree to which economic policies of developing countries discriminate against agriculture has lessened dramatically in recent decades (anderson and valenzuela, 2008). nevertheless, the paper of dfid (2004) examine the direct relationship between different rates of poverty reduction over the past 4 years and difference in agricultural performance on rural incomes, the availability of cheaper food in both rural and urban areas. moreover, improvement in this primary sector contributes to the growth and the generation of the economic opportunity in the non-form sectors. likely, this sector played a fundamental role in enhancing and sustaining economic transition. consequently this mechanism of agricultural productivity in future will reduce poverty. the study of bresciani and valdes (2007), explains the link between agricultural growth and poverty in three key channels like labor market, form income and food prices. they accomplish when both direct indirect effects of agricultural growth are taken into account, such growth is more poverty reducing than growth in non-form sectors. further they said, agricultural contribution to poverty reduction is consistently greater than agricultural share of national income. the case study countries of this paper, the author pointed out that agricultural contribution came mainly through the labor market channel. however, they restrain that such growth strategies based on such findings may not be applied in conditions where agricultural output mix does not feature labor intensive crops and livestock activity. equally problematic for such a strategy is that much progress in agriculture historically has come from the introduction of labor saving technical change. the study of ligon and sadoult (2008) used time series and cross-section data to estimate regression coefficients between consumer expenditures by decline to agriculture and non-agriculture gdp. the findings of this paper asserts that agricultural sector growth is substantially more important than non-agricultural sector growth for the household in the lower declines of the expenditure distribution that is poor segment of the population. while as they find the opposite results for richer households that is that the expenditure elasticity of non-agricultural growth is much higher than for agricultural growth leading them to conclude that their findings are consistent with claims that agricultural sector growth is pro-poor. similarly, montalvo and ravallion (2009) pointed out that in china, primary sector as compared to secondary and tertiary sector was real driving force to reduce absolute poverty. they argue that trade-off between these sectors these sectors in terms of overall progress against poverty in china is doubtful, given how little evidence they found of any poverty impact of non-primary sector growth. while most empirical studies show that agricultural growth is relatively more important than growth in other sectors there are exceptions, underscoring the existence of potentially important differences asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 149-159 152 in the sectoral gdp elasticities of poverty across countries, depending on the structure and institutional organization of their economies (loayza and raddatz, 2010). a common finding is that the poverty reducing powers of agriculture declines as countries get richer (christiaensen and demery, 2007; ligon and sadoulet, 2008). gardner (2000), for example, found that gains in income from off-farm sources was the main reason rural poverty declined in the us from the 1960s. ahmad (2010) used time-series analysis in bangladesh, which shows that poverty reduction is possible by increased agricultural production. similarly, the study of sundarno and asep (2003) analyze the role of agricultural growth on poverty reduction in indonesia. they find out agricultural growth was the strongest factor in reducing poverty in indonesia. loayza and raddatz (2010) point out the potential importance of agricultural sector in determining the rate of poverty reduction and find out that rapid growth in agriculture has a favorable impact on poverty reduction. other studies have noted that agricultural growth particularly impact on reduction in cost of food (dercon, 2009). alain and elisabeth (2010) find that rural poverty reduction has been associated with growth in yields and in agricultural productivity. additionally, the power of agriculture comes not only from its directly poverty reduction effect but also from its potentially strong growth linkage effects on the rest of the economy. finally, using the example of vietnam, the author shows that rapid growth in agriculture has open pathways out of poverty for farming households. the study of cervantes-godoy and dewbre (2010), chooses 25 countries posting extraordinary success in reducing extreme poverty. these countries were compared using indicators of their macroeconomic characteristics, especially their agricultural economic characteristics. the author used time series and cross section regression analysis, which reveals that while economic growth generally was an important contribution to poverty reduction, the sector mix of growth mattered substantially, with growth in agriculture incomes being especially important. a number of studies by contrast have concluded that the role of growth in the non-agricultural sector in poverty reduction is increasing christiaensen et al. (2011) and himashu et al. (2013). warr (2001) used econometric analysis on pooled data of indonesia., thailand, malaysia and the philippines, the author found these countries experience the greatest poverty reduction due to tertiary sector. likely warr and wang (1999) used time-series analysis for taiwan, the finding of this model shows that industrial growth is most poverty reducing factor. similarly, ravallion and datt (1996 and 2002) found that the elasticity of rural headcount poverty with respect to agricultural growth in india is less than half that for non-agricultural sector growth. nevertheless, ravallion and chen (2007) used similar method of analysis for china, the estimated value showed that the agricultural growth has four times greater impact on poverty reduction as compared to secondary and tertiary sectors. aforementioned research proposes that growth in agricultural sector is more effective in reducing poverty compared to other sectors because of: first, the incidence of poverty tends to be higher in agricultural and rural populations than somewhere else and second, most of the poor live in rural areas and a large share of them depend on agriculture for a living (world bank, 2008; christiaensen and demery, 2007; ravallion and chen, 2007). however, even if the incidence of poverty is lower within the population of non-farm people (whether rural or urban) growth in income from non-farm sources could be proportionally more effective in reducing poverty. moreover, it could be that even for poor farm families, growth in income from nonfarm sources is more important than growth in farm income. 3. data and methodology to analyze this study, data have been collected from directorate of economics and statics, jammu and kashmir, reserve bank of india, different reports of planning commission of india, ministry asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 149-159 153 of statistics and programme implementation, and indian development reports. being actively engaged with the economic survey, the reports on socio-economic variables released by the above agencies and institutions have been used for analysis. the data thus collected was tabulated, analyzed and critically scanned to draw the conclusion in consonance with the objectives of the present study. the method of research in study was analytical in nature. simple mathematical toll i.e. percentage method was in general followed to draw certain results. annual growth rate was calculated at several places. 4. results after reviewing all the data related with agricultural production of jammu and kashmir state, we found that in this state agricultural sector is not performing according to its potential and at previous growing trend. after scrutinize the economic survey 2014-15 of this state, we find that average growth of agriculture and allied sector from 2005-06 to 2013-14 was 2.8 percent. during the same period industry grew by 4.61 percent and service sector by 8.62 percent. similarly, in 2014-15, an average food growth rate of india was recorded at 1.94 percent in 1994-95 to 2013-14, compared to it with the state of j and k, the growth was only 0.94 percent, which is less than half of national average (rbi, 2015). in particular, rice which is staple foods has been a serious causality. in the last ten years, the importance of this sector in all the overall output of the state has been decreasing. 4.1. reasons there are many reasons that have led to a dwindling share of gdp of the sector at a time when it should have retained its role given large proportion of people depending on it. despite vast potential, agriculture sector is trailing when its performance is needed the most. it is well known that the sector is in a more messy state for the past decade: both the growth rate and productivity of the sector being abysmally low. as such, it has failed to serve the needs and aspirations of the domestic economy. many infrastructural, institutional and market related bottlenecks, have kept much of its potential untapped. policy interventions have not been able to bring a fundamental transformative change. while there is a positive turn around at the all india level since 11th fyp due to new policy initiatives, the state has failed to respond positively. there are various reasons for lack of performance of primary sector in jammu and kashmir but in this we discuss only shrinking of agricultural land. the important reason is shrinking of agricultural land is a well observed trend. people in the state are increasingly shifting the land to other uses. much of this is for personal or commercial purposes. a brazen lapse of law implementation is apparent. that, however, does not explain the entirety of the phenomenon. much of what is happening falls within the domain of economic dynamics, as seen from a common person’s perspective. economic self-interest would make people preserve as much land as seems profitable. however, when people do some rough cost-benefit analysis—which may at times be plainly wrong and lethally short-sighted—the results may turn adverse for agriculture. wherever people find better alternatives, the next logical step is conversion. the conversion trend is symptomatic of a progressive dwindling of agriculture value of land. to people agriculture simply is not a priority investment. among the underlying reasons increasing input costs, uncertain output, and diminishing and uncertain profits are important. local, national and international factors play their role in determining the possibility and viability of agriculture as an investment. more importantly, governments’ inappropriate commissions and unwarranted commissions play leading role in pushing the sector to disrepute. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 149-159 154 for years now, the growth of and productivity in the sector are pitifully low. lack of inputs, with appropriateness to quantity, quality and time, has created aggregate bottlenecks that cannot be scaled over by individual attempts. for instance, even in a situation where water is relatively ample, there is no well-constructed network of canals. in most of the villages it is the farmers that take up the responsibility of irrigation even today. they call it ‘kulwan’ in kashmir. similarly, successive governments have failed to ensure standard pesticides availability in the valley. in fact, the valley is standard example of sub-standard pests in india. research based inputs and timely intervention in case of less perceived and understood problems have also been lacking. further, a flood of moderate intensity or hails or pest attack, and even depressive market conditions can bring disastrous consequences. the result is simple. agriculture becomes liability rather than a resource. on the contrary, a building constructed 0n agriculture land, can earn a definite, certain and regular sum of income. there is little dependence on climatic fluctuations. there is no need of “kulwan”, no threat of bogus fertilizers and pesticides, no major loss in case of an economic depression, and no fleecing by intermediaries. the choice to covert agricultural land to other purposes becomes rational. people who do not convert their land for non-agricultural uses are also hindered by economic reasons. their assessment shows that the agricultural value of land is more than the available alternatives. 4.2. impact agriculture sector play more important role in the livelihood of majority population in early stages of development. as we know agriculture sector directly or indirectly influences number of socioeconomic factors, like poverty, per capita income, inflation, employment and dependency. but in this paper we point out only impact of agriculture sector on per capita income, poverty, unemployment, inflation and import burden. 4.2.1. per capita income as such, a trailing agriculture sector inhibits possibilities of major enhancement of income among people. one of the chief indicators of economic wellbeing, the per capita income (pcy), in case of the state economy is lagging by a significant margin from the all india level. the per capita income for the state was $592 against an all india average of $717 in the period 2013-14. thus, the state lags behind the all india average by no less than 18 percent. comparison with neighboring states also reveals this grim reality. the state enjoys only 56.48, 66.40, and 50.52 per cent of per capita real income than that of himachal, punjab, and haryana respectively as shown in table 1. thus our per capita income ranges between half and two thirds of these states. it must be emphasized that haryana's economy is four times larger than ours and punjab's more than three times in real terms. table 1: comparison of per capita gsdp of j & k with neighbouring states state per capita gsdp 2013-14 ($, at 2004-05 prices) j&k as percentage of the state j&k 592 18.00 himachal 1048 56.48 punjab 891 66.40 haryana 1174 50.52 source: economic survey report, directorate of economics and statistics, jammu and kashmir, india india being one of the poor states on the basis of per capita income, states with lower income within the federation move towards the lower extreme of the income scale. a sense of this can be gleaned from this comparison. on the purchasing parity basis, the per capita income of indian state is considered very low. according to the undp's human development report 2014, per capita income by ppp method for india in 2011 was $ 5150, against $ 13723 global average. thus per capita income for india was only 37.5 percent of the global average. the number of countries with more income than india is more than twice than those having less income than it. among the 187 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 149-159 155 countries for which data is published, india ranks at 129th position. with 135th hdi rank, india is falling towards lower end of the medium human development. a decrease by 18 percent to the pcy of india gives us $ 4223 pcy for the state. this is a mere 30.7 percent of the global average. if j&k would have been separate state, then it's ranking within 188 countries would be 137, followed by 51 states which include the poorest ones of the world. even the average per capita income of countries falling in medium human development range is 141 percent that of ours. 4.2.2. poverty it has been found that poverty can best be tackled when agriculture sector, on which more people depend, performs better. the table 2 given below shows gives us the incidence of poverty in the state and all india according to lakdawala committee methodology. the data from 1973-74 to 200405 shows a comparative better position for the state to that of all india level not only in the initial level of poverty but more importantly in the process of reduction all along the period. as such while the incidence of poverty in the state was 48.83 percent in comparison to 54.88 percent at the all india level. more importantly, the pace of reduction at the state level has been much faster that the all india level. in 2004-05 the state has poverty incidence of 5.4 percent in comparison to 27.5 percent at the all india level. table 2: lakdawala methodology 1973-74 1977-78 1983 1987-88 1993-94 1999-2000 2004-05 j&k 48.83 38.97 24.24 23.82 25.17 3.48 5.4 all india 54.88 51.34 44.48 38.86 35.97 26.10 27.5 source: report of the expert group to review the methodology for measurement of poverty, government of india, planning commission june 2014 the golden phase for poverty reduction as per these statistics is 1993-94 to 1999-2000. poverty in this phase decreased from 25.17 percent to 3.48 percent, the lowest incidence of poverty ever reached in the state as per the lakdawala committee methodology. the important fact is that this is the same period when agriculture recorded highest ever growth for the state. a decrease in agricultural growth in the state from 5.2 percent to 3.6 percent seems to have reversed the trend of poverty reduction in the post 2000 era. while on the contrary, poverty recorded an increase after 2000 from 3.48 to 5.4 percent in 2004-05. thus, reduction in the growth rate of agriculture seems to make an impact on the efficacy poverty reduction in the state. since, growth rate decreased even lesser than one percent in the post 2005 period, the reduction of poverty in the state seems not only halted but at times even reversed. as per the tendulkar methodology, incidence of poverty reduced from 13.2 percent to 10.3 percent between 2004-05 and 2011-12. in the same period, it reduced from 37.2 percent to 21.9 percent at the all india level. it needs emphasis the performance of agriculture reversed during this period. while as earlier it was the state which performed better than the all india level, in the aftermath of 2005 the all india level performed better than the state. consequently, the poverty reduction record strengthened at the all india level while it either weakened or revered at the state level. the same experience is brought forth by the methodology adopted by rangarajan committee for measurement of poverty reduction as shown in table 3. while as the state experienced a decrease of approximately five percentage points, at the all india level incidence of poverty reduced from 38.2 percent to 29.5 percent from 2009-10 to 2011-12. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 149-159 156 table 3: measurement of poverty reduction tendulkar methodology 2004-05 2009-10 2011-12 j&k 13.2 9.4 10.3 all india 37.2 29.8 21.9 rangarajan methodology j&k 19.2 15.1 all india 38.2 29.5 source: report of the expert group to review the methodology for measurement of poverty, government of india, planning commission june 2014 4.2.3. high unemployment the composition of gdp in indian economy changed dramatically in last sixty five years. an agriculture dominated economy is now comprised mostly of services and industry. however, almost half of the workforce is employed in the primary sector. despite recording excelled growth, industry and services sectors have not employed people in consonance with their high growth. realising this, a renewed emphasis on the sector led to some improvements in productivity and growth which enhances the possibility of its employability. however, the state’s primary sector has been lagging in productivity and growth. as such its employability potential has weakened. as per the esr, “census 2011 reveals that j&k has 5.66 lakh cultivators for whom farming is their main occupation and this number has scaled down from 9.49 lakh in 2001 (es 2014-15, p295). thus, low growth in agriculture has contributed to increased unemployment. as a result the state experiences high rates of unemployment. the unemployment rate on the basis of usual principal status for the state according to the latest employment and unemployment situation in india, 2011-12, (nss report no.554 goi 2015 p.196) statistics is 4.8 percent. the same at the national level is 2.7 percent. compared to its neighbours, punjab (2.7 percent) , himachal pradesh (2.0 percent), haryana (3.1 percent) and delhi (4 percent), the state has highest level of unemployment. among the 35 states/union territories, j&k has the 8 th position in terms of worst unemployment rate. 4.2.4. erosion of real income by high and persistent inflation high and persistent inflation has recently been a difficult matter to deal with. as noted in india development report 2015, wpi-based monthly inflation rate crossed 32 times the 8 percent mark between 2008 and january 2014. this level was crossed only three times between 1997 and 2008 (p.169). esr 2014-15 of the state mentions an average cpi-iw value of 10.03 for six years of 200809 to 2013-14. the same at the state level is 8.63 percent. however, in 2014-15, state inflation (7.9 percent) was higher than the overall inflation (6.2 percent). inflation leads to erosion of real income. the state economy has been growing moderately in comparison to other states. the result is that relative erosion of income for its people will be higher. the state economy has been through a paradoxical low-growth-high-inflation phase which is symptomatic of multiple ailments and systemic faults. moderate inflation is considered good for the production side, if it is demand driven. but high levels of inflation have been considered bad not only for consumers but even for producers. the reason is that persistent high level of inflation cannot emanate from mere demand factors. in fact, it is more a function of supply constraints. yes, sometimes government policy, for instance minimum support price and excessive buffer stocking, also create artificial price hikes. similarly hoarding and lack of information play their part. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 149-159 157 however, low productivity, low growth and large imports of the primary products reveal inflation to be highly supply determined phenomenon. therefore, the primary sector of our state can play a dominant role in curbing inflation and prevent erosion of real income over time. recent studies reveal the relationship between inflation and primary sector to be very strong. it has been observed that persistent inflation emanates mainly from perishable high value fruits, vegetables, eggs, fish, meat, and milk, now lately joined by pulses. as such, the cure of the problem lies in increased productivity, growth and logistics that will increase the life span of the primary products. 4.2.5. growing import burden the state of j&k has emerged what some would like to call consumerist. the state produces much less than it consumes. obviously, the additional quantities it consumes, must come from outside. as such, the state experiences large trade deficit, which is problematic. the composition of this deficit reveals even more disturbing strands. the state not only depends on imports with regard to manufactured products, where it is least developed. it importantly has high dependence on imports of food items that it has the possibility of producing itself. for instance, as per the esr 2015, the state imported 766100 qtls of milk, 6610 lakh eggs, 560 lakh day old chickens, 1324058 sheep and 46697 goats in 3013-14. in monetary terms it amounts to millions of rupees. all these items fall in the domain of agriculture or primary sector. however, ill performance of the sector leaves it incapable of fulfilling the domestic demand. ironically, the products which the state should have exported, given the natural availability of inputs, are imported. as india continues to grow as well as globalise, this burden is set to increase. one set of reasons is related with inflation (that we deal subsequently), which in case it persists and in absence of increased productivity at state level will have deteriorating impact on trade balance. four emerging reasons need consideration for better appreciation of the nuanced nature of the problem. 4.2.6. inflation at the all india level, the inflation in recent times has largely been a phenomenon of food items more than non-food items. as per the india development report 2015, from march 2012, the former has been consistently higher than the non-food inflation. secondly, as per the esr 2014-15, the average consumption menu contains more of meat, poultry and milk products in the state than at that all india level. thirdly, within the food basket it is the primary food products—including cereals, pulses, fruits, vegetables, milk, egg, meat and fish—which have experienced more inflation than others. in recent inflation, items apart from cereals have played a dominant role in its persistence. fourthly, there is a general change in the consumption pattern. more of non-cereal food items, such as milk, egg, fish, meat, fruits and vegetables, are being consumed per capita than before. as such demand of these products in comparison to cereals and pulses will experience a growing trend. given the high level of import of food products by the state from outside, the impact of inflation on monetary value of imports will definitely magnify. that is to say that even when same quantity is imported, its cost in absolute monetary value as well as in relation to other products for the state will increase. imports will play a more blood sucking role. importing goods is not bad. however, some semblance of equality between them and exports is needed. excessive importing has been considered bad by posing challenge to the economic, food security and of course political aspirations of nations. the primary sector in this regard is of critical importance. for instance, from an economic perspective, some portion of money spent on imports could be employment guaranteeing to people had the sector been well functioning. also, their income in turn would have created demand for other products in the state. this phenomenon, sometimes called multiplier effect, would create a stream of employment-income increases for other people as well. it is well known in academic circles, a net import surplus reduces the value of multiplier in domestic economy. and more imports can mean exporting employment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(8)2017: 149-159 158 5. conclusion and policy implication the paper aims to discuss about the reasons and impact of agricultural deterioration on socioeconomic profile of jammu and kashmir state. the data used in this paper from different reliable resources. it is found that the overall contribution of agriculture sector is decreasing. consequently, it impacts adversely on many socio-economic parameters like, per capita income of the state economy is lagging by a significant margin from the all india level. similarly, the reduction in the growth rate of agriculture seems to make an impact on the efficiency of poverty reduction in the state. additionally, low growth in this sector has contributed to increased unemployment. so well performing of primary sector is fundamental to meet some of the emerging economic challenges faced by the jammu and kashmir economy. the sector can play an important role in solving eroding agricultural land value, import burden, unemployment and inflation. in fact, the emergence of these problems has low performing agriculture as one of the main reason. a boost in growth will help overcome these. however, this sector has the potential to serve the state in myriad other ways as well. the sector has suffered due to inappropriate commissions and reckless omissions by successive governments. policy interventions need to be optimum and appropriate. many things are yet to be done. an increase of investment in the sector, particularly in infrastructure development, is really vital. however, the story does not end there. quality of the inputs used for variety of products needs to be assured. distortions in factor and product markets have to be corrected. the quality of research has to incrementally improve to the global standards. for the sake of diversification, new products possible to be produced in the state are to be introduced. agro-industries that are not only employment generating but even productivity enhancing have to be brought in large numbers. and in an increasingly globalising world, the policy concerns have to be eclectic. problem faced by the state products in entering global market also need to be fixed. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, 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https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=agriculture+and+economic+development.+&btng= https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137024992.0020 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=poverty+reduction+and+sectoral+growth%3a+evidence+from+southeast+asia&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=poverty+reduction+and+sectoral+growth%3a+evidence+from+southeast+asia&btng= https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5948-3 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=inequality+and+economic+growth+in+taiwan&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=world+development+report%3a+agriculture+for+development.+&btng= effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 361 supply of rubber wood log in malaysia a. w. noraida and a. s. abdul-rahim department of economics, faculty of economics and management, university putra malaysia, malaysia abstract issue on shortage of raw material for wood processing solved by discovery of rubber wood log as one of the substitutes the natural log. this paper examines the supply of rubber wood log in malaysia. we employ ardl bound approach test and time series data from 1980 to 2010 which represented the whole malaysia are used to achieve the established objectives. the result shown, in the long run harvested area and wages have 1% and 10% significant level respectively. while in the short run, there was only harvested area having an impact with 1% significant level. this result indicates that, the harvested area become the most impact towards supply of rubber wood log either in short run or in the long run. while wages as input cost gave less impact in another word it become unburden to the producers. keywords: ardl bound test approach, rubber wood log & latex introduction1 rubber trees with species (hevea brasiliensis) were planted in malaysia since centuries ago. historically, sir henry wickham brought some seeds to the kew garden, united kingdom from brazil in 1876 (hilton, 1955). some of the seedlings were then transported to singapore botanical garden through ceylon (now known as sri lanka) in the same year before transfer to malaysia. based on archive records showed that the initial cultivation of rubber in malaysia began in kuala kangsar in 1879 (ratnasingam, 2000). today, malaysian recognizes him as the father of the rubber corresponding author’s name: a. s. abdul-rahim email address: abrahimabsamad@gmail.com industry in malaysia as appreciation of his contribution. initially, the rubber trees serve as the main rubber producers in malaysia. just not only malaysia the rubber trees are now widely planted in 20 countries around the world for the production of latex or natural rubber (teoh et al., 2011). according to shigematsu et al. (2011), more than 80% of total rubber plantation areas in the world are in asia, with malaysia, indonesia and thailand covering almost 70% of the total rubber cultivation. malaysia was the largest producer of rubber in the world until the late 1980’s (balsiger et al., 2000). indonesia then took over as the biggest rubber cultivator in the world followed by thailand. malaysia is currently the 3rd most asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:abrahimabsamad@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 361-371 362 important country in the world for rubber cultivation (shigematsu et al., 2011). but, when malaysian government imposed restricted logging activities in the natural forests in the mid-1980s, the wood-based industry in malaysia forced to find other raw material instead of natural forest timber. resulting on inadequacy of raw material, rubber wood log has emerged as the most important wood raw material in the country and be promoted as an alternative source of wood raw material for the wood industry. since then, malaysia start using rubber wood tree as substitute to natural timber and this decision embark a successful action. according to hong (1994), the turning point here was the fact that malaysia was the first country to be successful in the export of rubber wood sawn timber in the late 1970s. based on the figure 1, it is proven when the rubber wood log becomes a successful substitute to the wooden from natural timber in making furniture. figure 1: the total export of rubber wood furniture and wooden furniture source: malaysian timber council (2011) there are a lot of indicator contribute to the successful of rubber wood furniture in world market. according to shukari, (1994) and balsiger et al. (2000) the physical and mechanical properties of rubber wood log is almost comparable with the other commercial timbers such as dark red meranti (shorea platyclados), sepetir (sindora coriacea), nyatoh (palaquium gutta) and ramin (gonystylus bancanus). furthermore, rubber wood log have good machining properties, acceptable durability, pleasant appearance and ease in finishing (anonymous, 1993). however, year to years, total rubber plantation keep decreasing due to other crops more profitability than rubber wood. rubber wood estate owner willing shifted to mainly oil palm plantation. according to ratnasinggam (2000), the planters claimed less profit in the rubber industry, due to low latex price in world market. as a result, the 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 rubberwood 3535 3023 3339 3736 4351 4665 5127 5332 5537 4999 wooden 8838 7557 8349 9344 0 1167 1282 1333 1384 1250 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 361-371 363 large plantation groups in malaysia, which consist of guthrie, golden hope and kuala lumpur kepong, have been slowly converting their land to oil palm plantation. furthermore, the issues of declining of labor become constraint in rubber plantation (ratnasinggam, 2011). according to the department of statistic (2010), the total number of workers in rubber plantations in 2000 was 24,193, and showed reduction of 61.40% in 2009. it was believed due to low rate of wages. as noted by chang and ong (2000), a rubber tapper needs to tap at least 30-40kg of latex in order to earn 7.85 usd9.42usd per day. in addition, the annual total wages obtained by the estate worker declined by 34% from 2000 to 2009. in addition, the fluctuation of the price of latex for certain years making the rubber planter makes decision in order to increase their yield (ratnasinggan, 2011). when the price of latex decreased in 1990s, most rubber planters shifted to oil palm plantation. but, from 2002s onward, the annual average of natural rubber price (smr 20) shown upward trend each year (figure 2). figure 2: the annual average f.o.b price of natural rubber (cent/kg) notes: smr 20-standard malaysian rubber-medium grade produced from field coagulation but may contain some rss. source: department of statistics (2011). the rubber planters delay in the replanting of rubber occurred as a consequence of the high price of latex, although the yield as lower. according to shahwahid and abdul rahim (2009), the curb in felling the rubber trees have resulted in the shortage of rubber wood logs supply to the wood industries. due to the reason above, the study on economic impact on supply of rubber wood log is crucial particularly to investigate the future direction of rubber wood log industry in malaysia. methodology and data to construct the supply function of rubber wood log, the model was deriving from cobb-douglas supply function. cobbdouglas has been chosen as the supply function type for this study since it satisfies the conformity of the assumed model with traditional economic theory. the supply function has assumed the following form: …………………………. (1) where y is total supply level of industry, k as capital stock for industry, n as 0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 90000 1990 1995 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 c en t/ k g year asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 361-371 364 employment of industry, a is total factor productivity and α+β as positive fraction. some of the major properties of cobbdouglas supply function deserve nothing: 1. it is homogenous of degree (α+β). 2. in the special case where (α+β) =1, it is linearly homogenous. (or it is homogenous of the first degree) economic meaning of this property is that it implies the condition of constant returns to scale. 3. its isoquants are convex toward the origin and they negatively sloped throughout. rewriting (eq. 1) in more general way, we obtain the following supply for rubber wood log: …………………. (2) where (tr) refers to total supply of rubber wood log, (p) is price of rubber wood log in meter cubic (m 3 ) and (w) as total wages for plantation workers. while, ha referred to harvested area in rubber wood plantation. the development of the supply of rubber wood log market model is based on the theoretical framework of the supply model of log from natural forest. based on the previous researchers kumar (1981, 1983), daniels and hyde (1986), kinus (1992), shahwahid (1995), ismariah (2001), abdul rahim and shahwahid (2009), they have attempted to develop this model. based on the economic theory and practical knowledge, the supply of rubber wood log equations are specified as follows: supply of rubber wood log = f (price of rubber wood log, harvested area, input cost)……………………………………. (3) then, the supply of rubber wood log is specified as follows: trt = α0 + β1pt + β2hat + β3wt + εt …. (4) where trt as supply of rubber wood log in malaysia at time t, hat as harvested area in rubber wood plantation area at time t, pt as the price of rubber wood log at time t, wt as input cost incurred at time t in the supply which is total wages and εt error term. after that, all variables in equation 3 were transformed into the log form (equation 4) in order to ensure variance in every random error term is homoscedasticity. intrt=α0+β1 inpt+β2 inhat+β3 inwt+εt .. (5) the coefficient of price of rubber wood log, β1 will give positive sign. similarly, expected that coefficient in harvested area; β2 is expected to be positively related to the total supply of rubber wood log. an increase in harvested area would increase the supply for malaysian rubber wood log and vice versa. it is an important variable in determining the quantity of supply of rubber wood log. on the other hand, the coefficient of input cost (β3) generally expected to be negative as if the cost of producing increase, the total supply of rubber wood log decreases and vice versa. in this study, we employ ardl bound test approaches introduced by pesaran et al. (1996). refer to pesaran and pesaran (1997) and pesaran et al. (2001), the construction of the ardl model are written as follows: ........ (6) there are two steps in testing the cointegration relationship between variables. first, the model above is estimated by ols technique. second, the null hypothesis of nocointegration = = = = = is tested against the alternatives of = ≠ ≠ ≠ ≠ by the means of ftest. two sets of critical value bounds for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 361-371 365 the f-values are generated by pesaran et al. (2001). according to pesaran et al. (2001), if the fstatistic lies between lower bound i(0) and upper bound i(1) values, this will indicate inconclusive decision. while, if f-statistic lies below lower bound i(0), it reveals that there is no cointegration relationship among the variables in the long run. nevertheless, if the calculated values fall within the bounds, inference is inconclusive. if there is an evidence of long-run cointegration relationship between variable, the next step is to estimate the long-run cointegration model, however if it is not cointegrated then other methods should be used and do not continue the following steps. so that is represented long-run cointegration model as following equation: ......... (7) the dependent variable of equation (7) start from lags one and independent variables start from zero because it has priori shows that long-run cointegration relationships exist among the variable in equation (6). after generating the long-run coefficient model, now can proceed to estimate the short run regression with ect model as below: (8) where k is the lag based on the selected lag length in the long-run equation, is the error correction term. it presents the potential effects of departures from the longrun equilibrium (baharumshah et al., 2009). the ect coefficient should be negative and significant in order to confirm the cointegration relationship. data description the secondary data which represented the whole malaysia are used to achieve the established objectives. the time series data from 1980 to 2010 has been obtained. data for harvested was obtained by rubber industry smallholders development authority, price of rubber wood log by forestry department peninsular malaysia and wages of plantation workers by the department of statistic, malaysia. these values are expressed in terms of ringgit malaysia (rm), metric cubic (m 3 ) and hectare (ha). for the data analysis, it involves econometric software namely eview 7 and microfit 4.0. result and discussion pre-testing the level of stationary before estimating the bound test-ardl, the requirement to test for unit root test is needed. even though ardl approach does not required to conduct the unit root test, but we have to ensure that the variables are not integrated of order 2 [i(2)]. in fact, the f-test would be spurious in the presence of i(2) because both the critical values of the fstatistics computed by pesaran et al. (2001) and narayan (2005) are based on the assumption that the variables are i(0) or i(1). based on table 1, the result found that all variables are stationary at first difference. automatically, the result of i (2) do not need to carry out because all variables are integrated at i (0) and i (1). if, there are not integrated at i (0) and i (1), then it is necessary to analyse the unit root test at i(2) level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 361-371 366 table 1: unit root test variables adf test statistics (with trend and intercept) pp test statistics (with trend and intercept) level first difference level first ltr -2.737996 (0) -6.618241*** (0) -2.335126 [29] -7.654367*** [12] lp -3.264263* (0) -4.918503*** (0) -3.380484* [11] -4.896466*** [8] lha -2.809452 (0) -6.619939*** (2) -2.480714 [29] -7.383990*** [12] lw -0.204832 (0) -4.324263*** (1) 0.049796 [6] -4.448498*** [12] notes: *** and ** denotes significant at 1%, and 5% significance level, respectively. the figure in parenthesis (…) represents optimum lag length selected based on akaike info critirion. the figure in bracket […] represents the bandwidth used in the kpss test selected based on newey-west bandwidth critirion. long-run co integration relationship the next step is to test for the existence of long-run co integration relationship between the variables. the null hypothesis of no co integration = = = = = in equation (7) is tested against the alternative hypothesis = ≠ ≠ ≠ ≠ . this process accomplished when the f-statistic lies on upper bound or i (1). it indicates that, we reject the null hypothesis or there is long-run co integration relationship between dependent variable (total supply of rubber wood log) and independent variables (harvested area, price and wages). based on the result depicted in table 2, the f-statistic is computed 5.1013 which fall on upper bound mcritical value with 1% significant level. it means that, the model have long-run co integration model between them. table 2: co integration result of bounds test-ardl for supply of rubber wood log variables: intrlnplnhalnw computed fstatistic: 5.1013** critical value lower bound upper bound 1% significant level 5.333 7.063 5% significant level 3.710 5.018 10% significant level 3.008 4.150 notes: the bounds critical values are obtained from narayan (2005), appendix: critical values for the bounds test: case iii: restricted intercept and no trend (k=2). estimation of long-run relationship coefficient after confirming that there is co integration relationship among the dependent and independent variables, then we proceed with the estimation of long run co integration model (refer to equation 7). based on table 3, as expected, the sign of the estimate variables are consistent with the theory. the result shows that the sign of the price of log, harvested area and wages are positive, positive and negative respectively. the tratio shows that, harvested area is highly significant at 1% level followed by wages at 10% significant level while price shows insignificant toward the total supply of rubber wood logs. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 361-371 367 table 3: estimated ardl model based on supply of rubber wood log dependant variable: intr regressors coefficient t-ratio inp 0.027817 1.5881 inha 1.0599 27.8177*** inw -0.048617 -1.7557* inpt 5.0049 9.6991*** r-squared 0.99544 r-bar-squared 0.99392 durbin watson statistic 2.2604 diagnostic test test statistics lm version f version serial correlation 0.037992 0.028860 functional form 3.9520** 3.4711* normality 2.6614 not applicable heteroscedasticity 0.091621 0.085572 notes: *** and ** denotes significant at 1%, and 5% significance level, respectively based on the estimation, (w) is inelastic and it suggests that an increase 10% in wage of plantation workers ceteris paribus, supply of rubber wood log would decrease only by 0.5%. it clearly shows that, the input cost become unburden towards producers due to inelastic in input cost (wages) as it gives weak impact towards total supply of rubber wood log. it means that the input cost is unburdened to the rubber wood log producers. in other words, the incremental amount of wages is needed among plantation workers especially to those who are working at the rubber estate plantation. according to chang and ong (2000), in a case of smallholders, a rubber tapper needs to tap at least 30-40kg of latex in order to earn rm 25-rm 30 per day. furthermore, the annual total wages obtained by the estate workers declined by 34% from 2000 to 2009. therefore, workers do attract to work at the oil palm plantation which is known as more lucrative than being a rubber tapper since oil palm oil plantation could give more income than working at the rubber wood plantation (teoh et al., 2011). as reported by the department of statistic, malaysia, (2013), annual total of rubber estates worker was declined 52% from 2000 to 2012 while annual total of oil palm estate worker was increase 73% from 2000 to 2012. on the other hand, the result for harvested area (inha) is highly significant at 1% significant level and elastic. this means that a 10% decrease of harvested area, ceteris paribus total supply of rubber wood log would decrease by 10.6%. it was believed due to direct impact of harvesting area on rubber wood log supply. the scenario has been shown during 1990, when it was reported that the area under rubber cultivation has shrunk from 1.93 million hectares to almost 1.0 million hectares in 2010 (ratnasingam and jones, 2011). the main cause of this trend is believed due to less profit in the rubber industry as price of latex always low in the world market (ratnasingam, 2000). as a result, many rubber wood plantations were converted to more profitability crops particularly oil palm plantation (teoh et al., 2011). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 361-371 368 the inadequacy of rubber wood log forces some furniture mills used imported rubber wood log for sustaining their production. it is noted that, during 2009, malaysian timber industry board (mtib) has imported 73,000 cubic meter of rubber wood log worth rm80 million (puasa et al., 2010). from january till may 2010, malaysia has imported a total of 30,000 cubic meters of rubber wood log, mainly from thailand (puasa et al., 2010). validation of rubber wood log supply the r-squared represent the overall fit of the equation between explanatory variables and dependent variable and this become an important criterion in evaluating the quality of regression. based on the table 3, it shows that rsquared is 0.99. this implies that 99 percent of the variation in rubber wood supply can be explained by the explanatory variables in the model. based on the diagnostic tests, the model is free from serial correlation problem, heterocedasticity and normality but has misspecification problem (see table 3). although, the model is failed to pass the misspecification problem, since majority of the tests were passed, it is still considered that the model is acceptable reported. in addition, the result of durbin watson statistic is also passed the autocorrelation test. for the long-run stability test, the ramsey reset test proven that the model is stable (refer figure 3). figure 3(a) and figure 3(b): ramsey reset test plot of cumulative sum of recursive residuals the straight lines represent critical bounds at 5% significance level -5 -10 -15 0 5 10 15 1982 1987 1992 1997 2002 2007 2010 plot of cumulative sum of squares of recursive residuals the straight lines represent critical bounds at 5% significance level -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 1982 1987 1992 1997 2002 2007 2010 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6)2014: 361-371 369 short-run ecm model table 4 reveals the results for error correction representation for selected ardl model. this is also known as the short-run dynamic coefficient estimation. the error correction term denotes ecm (-1) should be negative and statistically significant. this term indicates the speed of adjustment process to restore equilibrium following a disturbance in the long-run equilibrium relationship. a negative and significance error corrections term implies how quickly variables can return to equilibrium. table 4: error correction model (ecm) representation for the ardl dependant variable: intr regressors coefficient t-ratio inp -0.0247 -1.2056 inha 1.0371 55.6262*** inw -0.0288 -1.5583 inpt 2.9595 2.8193*** ecm(-1) -0.5914 -3.1085*** notes: *** and ** denotes significant at 1%, and 5% significance level, respectively. ecm value for supply of rubber wood log in malaysia is 0.5914. this suggests that the speed of adjustment to the long-run equilibrium for independent variables (i.e. harvested area, price of log and input cost) is 0.5914 or 59.1 percent and convergence to equilibrium after a shock in supply of rubber wood log would take about 10 months 7 days. conclusion by using ardl bound test with annual time series data from 1980 to 2010, the study has estimated and analyzed the supply of rubber wood log in malaysia. it is found that, the variables in supply function are cointegrated by 5% significant level. the sign of price of rubber wood log, harvested area and wage of plantation workers were consistent with the theory. in the long-run and short-run, harvested area in rubber wood plantation becomes highly significant at 1% level. every changes in harvested area either for shortor long-run period would give highly impact towards supply of rubber wood log. on the other hand, as wages is inelastic and only significant at 10% level, it means that, wages is not a burden towards rubber wood log producers. this finding was confirmed by schwarzbauer and rametsteiner (2001) who found that a decrease in harvested levels gave immerse impact on the forest products market than an increase in the operational costs. references abdul rahim, a. s., mohd shahwahid, 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(2011). assessment of the properties, utilization and preservation of rubber wood (hevea brasiliensis): a case study in malaysia. journal of wood science, 57(4), 255-261. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 364 demand analysis of rice in nigeria: application of quadratic almost ideal demand system model robert ugochukwu onyeneke a chukwuemeka chinonso emenekwe b mark umunna amadi a jane onuabuchi munonye a chukwudi loveday njoku a chibuzo uzoma izuogua a department of agriculture, alex ekwueme federal university ndufu-alike, ebonyi state, nigeria b department of economics and development studies, alex ekwueme federal university ndufu-alike, ebonyi state, nigeria  robertonyeneke@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 10-mar-2020 accepted: 11-may-2020 online available: 15-jun2020 keywords: imported rice, local rice, demand, elasticity, lsms-isa, quadratic almost ideal demand system abstract the paper analyzed the demand for imported rice, local rice, maize, and other cereals in nigeria. using the second wave data of the nigerian living standard measurements survey integrated survey on agriculture, it employed the quadratic almost ideal demand system model for empirical analysis. the result indicates that the imported and local rice are proved to be normal goods. however, imported rice is a luxury item while local rice is a necessity. the compensated and uncompensated own-price elasticities for imported and local rice are negative, indicating that an increase in ownprice will decrease its own-demand in line with the law of demand. the estimates of uncompensated cross-price elasticity show that imported rice and local rice are complements in nigeria. finally, the study represents an effort to disaggregate food demand analysis to obtain useful information on price and other factors determining the demand for specific foods. contribution/ originality this paper is an attempt to provide information on the demand for locally produced and imported rice in nigeria and their views as either necessity and/or luxury commodities, across the different income quintiles, as well as in urban and rural areas across the country using the quadratic almost ideal demand system model. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.364.378 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: robert ugochukwu onyeneke, chukwuemeka chinonso emenekwe, mark umunna amadi, jane onuabuchi munonye, chukwudi loveday njoku, and chibuzo uzoma izuogu (2020). demand analysis of rice in nigeria: application of quadratic almost ideal demand system model. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 364-378. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 364-378 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:robertonyeneke@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9242-901x http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.364.378 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7099-5056 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1775-6325 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3355-2920 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1205-8720 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4792-5081 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 364-378 365 1. introduction rice is an important staple food in nigeria, with about 180 million people estimated to consume nearly several million tons of rice annually (fakayode et al., 2010; ojogho and erhabor, 2011; grow africa, 2018). the production and consumption of rice, specifically the locally cultivated rice, has been taking place in nigeria for a long time (akinbile et al., 2008). rice is important in nigeria from different perspectives: first, based on the number of kilocalories it supplies per person and per day in nigeria, the supply of milled rice from domestic production and imports has increased at a rapid rate and contests with cassava and yams as a principal staple (johnson and dorosh, 2015). the increased demand is about 5 million metric tons per annum; with annual domestic production increasing about 10 percent since the mid-1970s (akande et al., 2007; gyimah-brempong and kuku-shittu, 2016). the nigerian government’s agricultural policy, particularly on rice, seeks to achieve food security by increasing domestic production and export as well as enhancing the welfare of its citizens (olayide et al., 2015). this was done to boost rice production to substitute rice imports (ebuehi and oyewole, 2007; gyimah-brempong and kuku-shittu, 2016). while rice has status as a staple, such programs, with their attendant import-substitution policies, could have unintended consequences on the welfare of the citizens if prices increase rapidly. while the current paper is not focused on government rice policy, understanding how government rice policy might affect households requires knowledge of the value attached to rice consumption as well as the elasticity of the demand for rice by the household. ojogho and erhabor (2011) used a sample of 812 households in three nigerian states and found that rice makes up the largest share of household total food expenditure, ranging from 21 and 28 percent for high-income urban households, while for rural low-income households it is about 24 and 28 percent. the second perspective is that rice demand in the country is very high and has led to increased import demand (grow africa, 2018; fao, 2018). the domestic production of rice increased to 4.3 million metric tons in 2006 from 2.7 million metric tons in 2001 (emodi and madukwe, 2008). this increase in demand could be attributed to population growth and changes in lifestyle. in other words, the demand for rice has outpaced its production in nigeria. between 2010 and 2012, rice supply was 5.1 million metric tons, at the same time the domestic output of milled rice was 2.7 million metric tons (kuku-shittu and pradesha, 2013). thus, imports have been filling the expanding gap between domestic production and consumption, with about 2.4 million metric tons imported (kuku-shittu and pradesha, 2013). nigerian rice consumption is also characterized by spatial differences across demographic and regional lines. there is a marked difference between the choice of rice-domestic or imported-by both urban and rural households. imported rice constitutes about 72 percent of the rice consumed by the urban households, while for the rural households, it is about 33 percent (johnson and dorosh, 2015; gyimah-brempong and kuku-shittu, 2016). urban households consider imported rice to be of higher quality (tastes, stonefree, and aesthetics). on the other hand, local rice is considered a cheaper alternative with sensorial attributes required for most local dishes (bamidele et al., 2010). disaggregating rice consumption along nigeria’s six geopolitical zones shows per capita consumption ranging from lowest in the south-south to the highest in the north-west, with about 20kg and 39kg respectively (johnson and dorosh, 2015; gyimah-brempong and kuku-shittu, 2016). there are marked differences in rice preferences across regions in the country; in the north, the greater part of total rice demand is rice for flour, as opposed to grain, while in the southern part, there is a large preference for parboiled, and in particular, imported rice (ogundele, 2014; rutsaert et al., 2013). varieties of rice cultivated across nigeria include oryza sativa and oryza glaberrima (oko et al., 2012). the increased demand for rice can be linked to a high rate of urbanization, higher incomes, lifestyle changes (unep, 2005; nwanze et al., 2006; demont et al., 2013). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 364-378 366 the demand for rice in nigeria can be observed across settlementsrural and urban (ogundele, 2014), while the government is making commitments to increase domestic rice production (akande et al., 2007). previous studies on rice demand and consumption in nigeria have linked higher demand for imported rice by households with differences in quality (bamidele et al., 2010; gyimah-brempong et al., 2012; alfred and adekayode, 2014). currently, there are debates in the literature on food elasticities in developing countries. additionally, elasticity estimates can differ based on the estimation methods used (davis and kilian, 2011; menegaki, 2014). therefore, proper policy decisions will benefit from new evidence of food commodities’ elasticities at the country level, household location, and household income level. these results are very important for nigeria, given the high demand for rice by households. considering the many food policies, including import substitution, as well as food nutrition and security targets, it is important to obtain updated elasticity estimates to make proper policy decisions. this paper aims to provide new empirical evidence and further disaggregate rice elasticity estimates for nigerian households. this paper adds to the existing literature on rice demand with a focus on nigeria. the literature on demand for locally produced and imported rice in nigeria is increasing. however, previous studies have not done enough to assess the preference of imported and locally produced rice and their view as either necessity and/or luxury commodities, across the different income quintiles, as well as in urban and rural areas of the most populous country in africa. this has created a gap in consumer behaviour literature. this paper is one of the first attempts in the nigerian food context to estimate a disaggregated rice demand system based on the quadratic almost ideal demand system (quaids) model of banks et al. (1997). the analysis focuses on estimating the expenditure elasticities, uncompensated (or marshallian) and compensated (or hicksian) ownand cross-price elasticities for imported and local rice using a quaids model. 2. model and empirical strategy 2.1. the quaids model the study of consumer demand for goods typically starts by estimating demand equations based on neoclassical consumer theory. some popular demand systems in the literature include the translog model, the almost ideal demand system (aids), and the quaids (deaton and muellbauer, 1980; banks et al., 1997). the quaids model allows for the estimation of demand elasticities, incorporating a quadratic income term that enables for observation of consumer behavior for certain goods such that a good could be a luxury at some point, but a necessity at another time. the paper considers four food commodities: imported rice, local rice, maize, and other cereals in the model. for our purpose, we illustrate the model as the following non-linear system of equations for 𝑖 = 1, …, 𝑁 goods, and 𝑗 = 1, ... , 𝑁 with budget shares 𝑤𝑖, consumption budget 𝑚, and prices 𝑝𝑖: 𝑤𝑖 = 𝛼𝑖 + ∑ 𝛾𝑖𝑗 𝑛 𝑗=1 𝑙𝑛𝑝𝑗 + 𝛽𝑖𝑙𝑛 [ 𝑚 𝑎(𝑝) ] + 𝜆𝑖 𝑏(𝑝) {𝑙𝑛 [ 𝑚 𝑃 ]} 2 + 𝜇𝑖 … … … … … … (1) where 𝛼𝑖, 𝛽𝑖, 𝛾𝑖𝑗, and 𝜆𝑖 are model parameters to be estimated; m is total expenditure; 𝑝𝑗 is the price of good 𝑗 ; and 𝑙𝑛(𝑃) and 𝑏(𝑝) are translog and cobb-douglas price aggregator functions, respectively. the translog price aggregator is written as: 𝑙𝑛(𝑃) = 𝛼0 + ∑ 𝛼𝑖 𝑛 𝑖=1 𝑙𝑛𝑝𝑖 + 1 2 ∑ ∑ 𝛾𝑖𝑗 𝑛 𝑗=1 𝑛 𝑖=1 𝑙𝑛𝑝𝑖 𝑙𝑛𝑝𝑗 , … … … … … … (2) and the cobb-douglas price aggregator is written as: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 364-378 367 𝑏(𝑝) = ∏ 𝑃𝑖 𝛽𝑖 𝑛 𝑖=1 = exp (∑ 𝛽𝑖 𝑖 𝑙𝑛𝑝𝑖). … … … … … … (3) the paper follows the example of banks et al. (1997) and lakkakula et al. (2016) in setting the value of 𝛼0 the translog function. to reduce the number of estimated parameters and maximize household utility, three theoretical restrictions are imposed by the model, namely adding up, homogeneity and symmetry: a. adding up indicates the sum of the budget shares equals 1: ∑ 𝛼𝑖 𝑛 𝑖=1 = 1; ∑ 𝛾𝑖𝑗 𝑛 𝑖=1 = 0; ∑ 𝛽𝑖 𝑛 𝑖=1 = 0; ∑ 𝜆𝑖 𝑛 𝑖=1 = 0 b. prediction of degree zero in prices and total expenditure: ∑ 𝛾𝑖𝑗 𝑛 𝑗=1 = 0; and c. slutsky symmetry indicates the substitution effect between commodities. 𝛾𝑖𝑗 = 𝛾𝑗𝑖 for all 𝑗 not equal to 𝑖. the study includes household demographic factors in estimating the demand system the technique of ray (1983) and poi (2012). 2.2. demand elasticities as stated earlier, the quaids model allows for the estimation of demand elasticities, which represents household demand response to changes in expenditure and prices. according to attanasio et al. (2013), obtaining the model elasticities 𝜇𝑖 and 𝜇𝑖𝑗 is done by differentiating the budget share equation (1) with respect to the log expenditure (𝑙𝑛𝑚) and log prices (𝑙𝑛𝑝𝑗), respectively, as follows: 𝜇𝑖 = 𝜕𝑤𝑖 𝜕𝑙𝑛𝑚 = 𝛽𝑖 + 2𝜆𝑖 𝑏(𝑝) {𝑙𝑛 [ 𝑚 𝑎(𝑝) ]} … … … … … … (4) 𝜇𝑖𝑗 = 𝜕𝑤𝑖 𝜕𝑙𝑛𝑝𝑗 = 𝛾𝑖𝑗 − 𝜇𝑖 (𝛼𝑗 + ∑ 𝛾𝑗𝑘 𝑘 𝑙𝑛𝑝𝑘) − 𝜆𝑖𝛽𝑗 𝑏(𝑝) {𝑙𝑛 [ 𝑚 𝑎(𝑝) ]} 2 … … … … … … (5) the budget elasticities, 𝑒𝑖 are derived as follows: 𝑒𝑖 = 𝜇𝑖 𝑤𝑗 + 1 … … … … … … (6) the uncompensated (marshallian) price elasticities are given as: 𝑒𝑖𝑗 𝑢 = 𝜇𝑖𝑗 𝑤𝑖 − 𝛿𝑖𝑗 … … … … … … (7) the compensated (hicksian) price elasticities, which measure the substitution effects of price changes on the demand for other goods, are derived using the slutsky’s equation: 𝑒𝑖𝑗 𝑐 = 𝑒𝑖𝑗 𝑢 + 𝑒𝑖𝑤𝑗 … … … … … … (8) the quadratic almost ideal demand model in this study is based on the seemingly unrelated regression (sur). regression coefficients are obtained using the iterative feasible generalized least squares, while the estimation process was conducted in stata 16 using the quaids command (poi, 2012). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 364-378 368 2.3. the data the study used data on household consumption expenditure from the living standards measurement survey integrated survey on agriculture (lsms-isa) dataset, which was the survey resulting from a partnership of the nigeria national bureau of statistics (nbs) with the federal ministry of agriculture and rural development (fma&rd), the national food reserve agency (nfra), bill and melinda gates foundation (bmgf) and world bank (national bureau of statistics 2014; 20122013). this data is representative at the national, rural, and urban levels, and of the six geopolitical zones of nigeria. the paper used the second (collected september 2012 to april 2013) wave of the survey data, focusing on the household questionnaire and specifically on household imported rice, local rice and other cereals (maize, millet, and sorghum) consumption and household demographic characteristics. we included other cereals in our analysis to further track whether other cereals are close substitutes or complement with imported rice or local rice. such a result will guide policymaking towards rice production and consumption in nigeria. the study chose the second wave of the lsms-isa because it was collected at a time when the implementation of the agricultural transformation agenda of the country has started in earnest. the agricultural transformation agenda was implemented in nigeria between 2011 and 2015. 2.4. treatment of prices and unit values economic literature uses unit values to approximate prices, calculated by dividing expenditure by the quantity of the purchased goods. there are criticisms regarding the use of unit values for price approximations such as quality effects and measurement error (deaton, 1988; gibson and rozelle, 2005). however, its use remains popular in empirical studies for a lack of better alternatives (attanasio et al., 2013). in this study, we also use unit values to approximate the prices of the goods of interest. 2.5. treatment of missing expenditure data and non-purchased foods most surveys do not report expenditure data for individual commodities, and the second wave of the lsms-isa is no exception. the potential sources of zero expenditure for individual commodities include permanent zero consumption and zero consumption at the time of the survey. in the lsmsisa dataset, there are specific questions on consumption and expenditure during the last seven days; most households may not have purchased, but consumed during the reference week, while on the other hand, most households may have purchased food for consumption at a later time. these cases lead to some households reporting zero purchase or consumption even where there is positive quantity purchase or consumption. in the second wave of the nigeria lsms-isa dataset, 4,986 households completed the questionnaires. for this study, we drop 1,719 households who reported zero consumption or expenditure for all food items, including rice, under the cereals section of the survey questionnaire. the study continued with households that consumed at least one cereal food item. ringstad and loyland (2011) note that zero observations for any food item could be a result of the censorship problem which affects error term distributions. while using the quaids model, they argue that the impact of the share of zero observations is insignificant with the inclusion of demographic variables, since they matter more. hence, we include household demographic variables and this reinforces our use of the quaids model to estimate the rice demand in nigeria. the household expenditure on each good, which is used to obtain total household cereals expenditure, was calculated. furthermore, for households reporting monetary values for food purchases, we consider those monetary values. while for households with home-produced goods without reported monetary values, following attanasio et al. (2013), we use state-level or region-level mean unit values to multiply home-produced quantities to obtain total monetary values for food consumption. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 364-378 369 3. results and discussion 3.1. descriptive statistics in table 1, we present the descriptive statistics of our variables of interest. the results show that approximately 47 percent of household cereals expenditure is allocated to foreign rice and about 29 percent is allocated to local rice. the weekly average household cereals expenditure is ₦1,333 during the period under study. the average household has 6 members, while the average household head’s age is 49 years. about 84 percent of households are headed by males, while half of the household heads in our sample have a formal education. additionally, about 67 percent of the households in our sample are located in the rural areas, while most households are located in the north-west and southwest regions and the least is in the north-east region. table 1: summary statistics of variables variable mean std. dev. budget share of imported rice 0.472 0.467 budget share of local rice 0.292 0.374 budget share of maize 0.072 0.168 budget share of other cereals 0.164 0.256 log price of imported rice 4.845 1.030 log price of local rice 4.034 1.087 log price of maize 2.596 1.109 log price of other cereals 2.83 1.193 household cereals budget (expenditure) 1333.59 1656.843 log household income 11.403 0.757 household size 6.499 3.231 household settlement (1 = rural) 0.667 0.471 male-headed household 0.843 0.364 age of head household 49.356 16.827 formal education of head of household 0.551 0.497 marital status (1 = married) 0.796 0.403 south-east region (1 = south-east) 0.169 0.375 south-west region (1 = south-west) 0.188 0.390 south-south region (1 = south-south) 0.170 0.376 north-central region (1 = north-central) 0.178 0.382 north-west region (1 = north-west) 0.188 0.390 north-east region (1 = north-east) 0.151 0.358 3.2. demographic variables test demographic variables are important in consumer demand analysis by enabling a better understanding of consumer behavior. the wald test to check the necessity and significance of demographic variables in the quaids model was carried out. specifically, the paper tested for the significance of included demographic variables (poi, 2012). the paper further checked for the appropriateness of the quaids model for this study by testing the null hypothesis that all lambda coefficients equal to zero. failure to reject the null hypothesis implies the appropriateness of the aids model. rejection, on the other hand, implies we use the quaids model for this study (gostkowski, 2018). the wald test statistics for the lambda coefficients and demographic coefficients are all significant, indicating the appropriateness of the quaids model (larochelle et al., 2017). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 364-378 370 3.3. elasticity results the estimated coefficients of the quaids model are difficult to interpret due to no direct economic interpretation; however, we report them in table a1 in the appendix. these coefficients are used to obtain the associated price and expenditure elasticities which are of policy relevance (curtis and stanley, 2015). to describe the results of the overall demand for rice in nigeria, the study estimated the expenditure and own-price elasticity to ascertain nigerian households’ responsiveness to price and income changes. the paper also probed the cross-price elasticity to determine if imported rice and local rice are complements or substitutes. furthermore, the study extended rice demand elasticity analysis by income quintiles, urban and rural locations. table 2 reports the results of expenditure elasticities and compensated and uncompensated own-price elasticities of the food items at the country level. from the results, imported rice has an expenditure elasticity of 1.137, indicating that a one percent increase in total cereals expenditure will lead to a one percent decrease in foreign rice spending. on the other hand, the expenditure elasticity of local rice is less than one, 0.693. this indicates that a one percent increase in total cereals expenditure will lead to a less than one percent increase in local rice spending. these results show that foreign rice is a luxury while local rice is a necessity. similarly, maize is shown to be a necessity item in our results, while the other cereals (including millet and sorghum) are luxury food items. furthermore, at the country level, the uncompensated and compensated own-price elasticities are negative for all food items. the study finds similar results when we disaggregate country-level estimates across income quintiles; these results are reported in table a2 in the appendix. the paper expected dissimilarities or heterogeneity in household consumption patterns across household location and income quintiles; hence the analysis was extended by disaggregating estimates by household settlement: rural and urban areas and income quintiles in tables a3 through a5 in the appendix. in table a3, we report the expenditure elasticities, uncompensated and compensated own-price elasticities disaggregated by income quintiles for urban and rural households. in tables a4 and a5, the paper reported the expenditure elasticities, uncompensated and compensated own-price and cross-price elasticities for rural and urban households, respectively. part a of table a3 reports the expenditure elasticity, while part b and part c report compensated and uncompensated own-price elasticity estimates. for households in rural and urban areas, imported rice has an expenditure elasticity of 1.178 and 1.093, respectively. these results are in line with the country level results, indicating that a one percent increase in total cereals expenditure will lead to more than one percent decrease in foreign rice spending. the estimates further show expenditure elasticities for imported rice ranging from 1.083 to 1.337 for the lowest to the highest income quintiles in rural and urban areas. these results imply that foreign rice is a luxury food item in nigeria. local rice expenditure elasticity for rural and urban areas is 0.740 and 0.515, respectively. when disaggregated income quintiles, the expenditure elasticities range from 0.326 to 0.749 across rural and urban areas. these results are similar to the country level results, indicating that a one percent increase in total cereals expenditure will lead to a one percent increase in local rice spending. table 2: results of elasticity of quaids model price imported rice local rice maize other cereals budget elasticity 1.137 0.693 0.936 1.180 (0.012) (0.019) (0.045) (0.022) compensated elasticity d em an d imported rice -0.233 0.065 0.055 0.113 (0.011) (0.008) (0.006) (0.008) local rice 0.111 -0.193 0.023 0.059 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 364-378 371 (0.013) (0.020) (0.008) (0.012) maize 0.350 0.112 -0.397 -0.065 (0.035) (0.035) (0.038) (0.030) other cereals 0.320 0.106 -0.026 -0.401 (0.023) (0.021) (0.013) (0.033) uncompensated elasticity d em an d imported rice -0.770 -0.267 -0.027 -0.074 (0.012) (0.008) (0.006) (0.008) local rice -0.216 -0.395 -0.026 -0.055 (0.017) (0.022) (0.008) (0.011) maize -0.092 -0.162 -0.464 -0.218 (0.038) (0.035) (0.039) (0.030) other cereals -0.237 -0.238 -0.111 -0.594 (0.025) (0.021) (0.013) (0.034) note: standard errors in parenthesis the country-level estimates show that the expenditure elasticities are positive and significant, indicating that both imported and local rice are normal goods. furthermore, two expenditure commodities are necessities, with elasticities less than one, namely local rice and maize. the other expenditure commodities are luxuries, with expenditure elasticities above one. these luxuries are imported rice and ‘other’ cereals group which include millet and guinea corn/sorghum. the results further show that expenditure on imported rice will grow in line with household expenditures, while expenditure on local rice will grow slower than household expenditure. put differently, while the naira amount spent by the household on rice will increase for both types of rice, the percentage expenditure on imported rice will rise with household expenditure, while the percentage expenditure on local rice will decrease, ceteris paribus. these estimates remain consistent when we further consider household income classifications. the results also show that for all income quintiles, in both rural and urban areas, imported rice is a luxury commodity while local rice is a necessity. the results are comparable with gyimah-brempong and kuku-shittu (2016), who used an aids model and find that both types of rice have positive and significant expenditure elasticities nationally and across urban and rural areas, indicating that both types of rice are necessities, with expenditure elasticities below one. their result for imported rice differs from our results. furthermore, our results are related to studies that used the aids model and found significantly positive expenditure elasticities for rice in nigeria (ojogho and erhabor, 2011; makama et al., 2017). the uncompensated and compensated own-price elasticities are reported in tables 2, a4, and a5. the own-price elasticities are the diagonal elements in the matrices. at the country-level, as expected, all the uncompensated and compensated own-price elasticities are negative for imported rice for all income quintiles, in both rural and urban areas, indicating that an increase in the own-price of imported rice will result in a decrease in its demand (kuku-shittu and pradesha, 2013). for local rice, uncompensated and compensated own-price elasticity is negative for all rural and urban areas, as well as all income quintiles in rural areas. while results remain consistent, conversely, local rice is estimated to be a giffen good for households in the secondand third-income quintile, in both urban and rural areas, with positive uncompensated and compensated own-price elasticities of demand. the uncompensated and compensated cross-price elasticities are reported in tables 2, a4, and a5. cross-price elasticities are the off-diagonal elements. cross-price elasticities of each food commodity with respect to other food commodities’ prices are observed by column. the negative uncompensated cross-price elasticities indicate that foreign rice is a complement to local rice. similarly, local rice is a complement to foreign rice. maize and other cereals are also complemented to imported rice and local rice. all the cross-price elasticities of imported rice are less than one in absolute terms, with respect to the prices of other commodities. this result indicates that a percentage increase in the prices of most foreign rice complements would decrease the quantity demanded rice by less than 1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 364-378 372 percent. the same result applies to locally produced rice and other food commodities at the country level and rural and urban areas. compensated cross-price elasticities consider the substitution effect of a price change. estimates here show that all food commodities are potential substitutes for foreign rice. similarly, all commodities are potential substitutes for local rice. the paper noted that the elasticity of foreign rice with respect to the price of local rice quite inelastic. in other words, a percentage increase in quantity demanded foreign rice is not greater than the percentage change in the price of the local rice. the overall findings are in line with gyimah-brempong and kuku-shittu (2016) and kuku-shittu and pradesha (2013) who study rice demand in nigeria using la-aids model and the 2010 to 2011 wave of the lsmsisa dataset. in general, individual food commodities respond less to changes in other commodities’ prices than their own. while findings from compensated cross-price elasticities are small, we find that imported rice and local rice have negative cross-price elasticities, and complement according to uncompensated cross-price elasticity estimates, indicating that an increase in the price of one will result in a decrease in the consumption of the other. this finding is similar to gyimah-brempong and kuku-shittu (2016) who found that both types of rice are complements, with cross elasticity of 0.003. similarly, demont et al. (2013) studied rice demand in senegal and also found that local and imported rice is characterized by low substitutability. compensated cross-price elasticity estimates between rice and other food commodities are small and mostly insignificant. 4. conclusion our tests indicated that the quaids model was empirically appropriate for analyzing household budgeting decisions among nigerian households. expenditure and price elasticities were estimated for four food commodities. these four food commodities include imported rice, local rice, maize, and other cereals (millet and guinea corn/sorghum). we incorporate household demographic variables using the demographic scaling approach of ray (1983) and poi (2012). furthermore, we compare expenditure and price elasticities across locations (rural-urban) and income quintiles to show the nature and structure of rice demand in nigeria. the paper found that all food commodities are normal goods, with positive expenditure elasticities. however, imported rice and other cereals are luxury foods, while local rice and maize are necessities. furthermore, we find significant price effects for all food commodities. also, the paper found very low cross-price elasticities, which suggests limited substitutability between imported rice and local rice. the paper also found higher expenditure and own-price elasticities for rural compared with urban households. the results also show food rice demand for poorer households has higher expenditure and own-price elasticities than richer households. in general, the expenditure elasticity for rice is positive and high indicating that demand for rice rises as household income rises. imported rice has higher expenditure elasticity than locally produced rice across urban and rural areas, and across all household income quintiles, indicating that it is the more preferred rice in nigeria. this paper provides new empirical elasticities estimates using the quaids model and the 2012 to 2013 wave of the lsms-isa dataset. finally, the study represents a timely effort to disaggregate food demand analysis to obtain useful information on price and other factors determining the demand for specific foods. policymaking and marketing decision making will benefit from studies such as ours since such decisions benefit from better knowledge of food and householdspecific responses that help to carry out proper market segmentation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 364-378 373 funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors are grateful to the national bureau of statistics and their partners (federal ministry of agriculture and rural development, the national food reserve agency, bill and melinda gates foundation and world bank) for the lsms-isa second wave dataset. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akande, t., cisse, y., & kormawa, p. 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(2013). consumer preferences for rice in africa. in m wopereis, m wopereis, d johnson, e tollens and a. jalloh (eds.), realizing africa's rice promise (pp. 294-302). wallingford, uk: cab international. unep (2005). integrated assessment of the impact of trade liberlaization: a country study on the nigerian rice sector. geneva: united nations environmental programme (unep). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 364-378 375 appendix appendix a: demand system estimation results table a1: food budget equation parameter estimates imported rice local rice maize other cereals constant 0.824*** -2.791*** 1.290*** 1.677*** (-0.184) (-0.163) (-0.144) (-0.168) expenditures 0.007 -0.123*** 0.068*** 0.048*** (-0.009) (-0.009) (-0.007) (-0.008) quadratic expenditures -0.001 -0.0004 0.001*** 0.001*** (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) price_imported rice 0.200*** -0.150*** -0.0331*** -0.0172* (-0.009) (-0.019) (-0.009) (-0.010) price_local rice 0.452*** -0.132*** -0.171*** (-0.035) (-0.017) (-0.021) price_maize 0.117*** 0.0485*** (-0.015) (-0.007) price_other cereals 0.139*** (-0.018) household size 0.000196*** -0.000361*** -8.59e-05* 0.0002*** (-7.56e-05) (-7.27e-05) (-4.43e-05) (-5.19e-05) rural 0.00347*** -0.00164*** -0.000202 -0.00163*** (-0.001) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) male-headed household 0.00172* -0.00158** 0.000307 -0.000449 (-0.001) (-0.001) (0.000) (0.000) age of head 1.58e-07 2.19e-07 -1.77e-07 -1.99e-07 (-1.33e-05) (-1.19e-05) (-7.80e-06) (-8.69e-06) any education -0.00350*** 0.002*** 0.0002 0.002*** (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) marital status 0.00122 -0.000336 -0.000421 -0.000468 (-0.001) (-0.001) (0.000) (0.000) household income -0.00198*** -0.000578* 0.000736*** 0.00182*** (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) south-west -0.00696*** 0.00515*** -0.000238 0.00205*** (-0.001) (-0.002) (0.000) (-0.001) south-south -0.0174*** 0.0190*** 0.00224** -0.00378*** (-0.002) (-0.002) (-0.001) (-0.001) north-central -0.00760*** 0.0169*** -0.00243** -0.00682*** (-0.002) (-0.002) (-0.001) (-0.001) north-west -0.00798*** 0.0218*** -0.00263*** -0.0112*** (-0.002) (-0.002) (-0.001) (-0.001) north-east -0.00684*** 0.0196*** -0.00166* -0.0111*** (-0.002) (-0.002) (-0.001) (-0.001) observations 3,266 3,266 3,266 3,266 robust standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 364-378 376 table a2: country-level expenditure and own-price elasticity estimates by income quintile part a: quaids expenditure elasticities by income quintile all quintile q1 q2 q3 q4 q5 imported rice 1.137 1.111 1.117 1.124 1.178 1.227 local rice 0.693 0.695 0.661 0.653 0.713 0.730 maize 0.936 0.679 0.921 0.934 0.972 1.007 other cereals 1.180 1.820 1.445 1.206 1.112 1.089 part b: quaids compensated own-price elasticities by income quintile imported rice -0.233 -0.158 -0.184 -0.214 -0.246 -0.174 local rice -0.193 -0.240 -0.211 -0.169 -0.184 -0.151 maize -0.397 -0.002 -0.486 -0.465 -0.448 -0.358 other cereals -0.401 0.834 0.039 -0.374 -0.448 -0.426 part c: quaids uncompensated own-price elasticities by income quintile imported rice -0.770 -0.866 -0.831 -0.800 -0.659 -0.496 local rice -0.395 -0.168 -0.389 -0.337 -0.404 -0.392 maize -0.464 0.183 -0.561 -0.539 -0.532 -0.440 other cereals -0.594 -1.165 -0.060 -0.546 -0.730 -0.781 note: country-level expenditure, uncompensated, compensated own-price elasticity for imported and local rice and other cereals, using nigeria lsms-isa survey data (2012-2013). source: own estimates table a3: expenditure and own-price elasticity estimates by settlement and income quintile rural urban all quintile all quintile q1 q2 q3 q4 q5 q1 q2 q3 q4 q5 imported rice 1.178 1.128 1.142 1.171 1.261 1.337 1.093 1.089 1.087 1.083 1.102 1.124 local rice 0.740 0.747 0.729 0.729 0.747 0.749 0.515 0.506 0.342 0.326 0.589 0.673 maize 0.951 0.724 0.943 0.955 0.976 1.008 0.885 0.554 0.838 0.827 0.952 1.002 other cereals 1.138 1.612 1.354 1.150 1.086 1.072 1.384 2.876 1.789 1.469 1.249 1.171 part b: quaids compensated own-price elasticities by urban-rural settlement and income quintile imported rice -0.256 -0.208 -0.237 -0.259 -0.183 -0.009 -0.113 -0.052 -0.051 -0.057 -0.167 -0.215 local rice -0.214 -0.257 -0.247 -0.208 -0.198 -0.162 -0.020 -0.075 0.154 0.186 -0.077 -0.098 maize -0.435 -0.101 -0.529 -0.523 -0.466 -0.341 -0.267 0.299 -0.303 -0.129 -0.389 -0.398 other cereals -0.424 0.528 -0.070 -0.412 -0.431 -0.396 -0.175 2.403 0.477 -0.077 -0.365 -0.432 part c: quaids uncompensated own-price elasticities by urban-rural settlement and income quintile imported rice -0.690 -0.843 -0.784 -0.709 -0.491 -0.251 -0.857 -0.898 -0.887 -0.882 -0.815 -0.726 local rice -0.470 -0.521 -0.495 -0.447 -0.459 -0.428 -0.115 -0.167 0.107 0.143 -0.204 -0.281 maize -0.513 -0.127 -0.622 -0.622 -0.559 -0.421 -0.313 0.286 -0.346 -0.161 -0.455 -0.484 other cereals -0.656 0.454 -0.182 -0.625 -0.768 -0.807 -0.291 2.354 0.404 -0.178 -0.524 -0.653 table a4: rural areas expenditure, compensated and uncompensated elasticity coefficients estimates price imported rice local rice maize other cereals budget elasticities 1.1782 0.7405 0.9507 1.1379 (0.0145) (0.0156) (0.0396) (0.0175) compensated elasticity d em an d imported rice -0.2560 0.0683 0.0535 0.1342 (0.0130) (0.0106) (0.0068) (0.0103) local rice 0.0774 -0.2138 0.0371 0.0994 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 364-378 377 (0.0113) (0.0189) (0.0076) (0.0111) maize 0.2310 0.1719 -0.4352 0.0323 (0.0297) (0.0333) (0.0341) (0.0263) other cereals 0.2393 0.1702 0.0150 -0.4244 (0.0181) (0.0190) (0.0105) (0.0275) uncompensated elasticity d em an d imported rice -0.690 -0.339 -0.043 -0.106 (0.015) (0.011) (0.007) (0.011) local rice -0.196 -0.470 -0.023 -0.051 (0.013) (0.021) (0.008) (0.010) maize -0.120 -0.157 -0.513 -0.161 (0.032) (0.033) (0.035) (0.027) other cereals -0.180 -0.223 -0.078 -0.656 (0.020) (0.019) (0.011) (0.028) standard errors in parenthesis note: this table reports the budget, compensated and uncompensated elasticities for imported rice, local, maize and other cereals’ demand among nigerian rural households table a5: urban areas expenditure, compensated and uncompensated elasticity coefficients estimates price imported rice local rice maize other cereals budget elasticities 1.093 0.515 0.885 1.384 (0.008) (0.031) (0.062) (0.044) compensated elasticity d em an d imported rice -0.113 0.013 0.047 0.053 (0.008) (0.006) (0.004) (0.006) local rice 0.054 -0.020 -0.010 -0.024 (0.022) (0.027) (0.012) (0.016) maize 0.613 -0.019 -0.267 -0.327 (0.055) (0.045) (0.051) (0.041) other cereals 0.424 -0.050 -0.199 -0.175 (0.047) (0.037) (0.025) (0.065) uncompensated elasticity d em an d imported rice -0.857 -0.189 -0.009 -0.038 (0.011) (0.006) (0.004) (0.006) local rice -0.296 -0.115 -0.036 -0.067 (0.032) (0.027) (0.012) (0.016) maize 0.011 -0.183 -0.313 -0.401 (0.061) (0.043) (0.052) (0.042) other cereals -0.517 -0.306 -0.270 -0.291 (0.054) (0.035) (0.026) (0.066) standard errors in parenthesis note: this table reports the budget, compensated and uncompensated elasticities for imported rice, local, maize and other cereals’ demand among nigerian urban households effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 119 factors that affect farmland conversion in china and indonesia lukman adama li xuefengb jia jinb acenter for research, expertise agency of the house of representatives of the republic of indonesia, and doctoral candidate in southwestern university of finance and economics, china b western china center for economic research, southwestern university of finance and economics, china  mada.kenn@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 09-oct-2018 accepted: 10-nov-2018 online available: 28-nov2018 keywords: agriculture gdp, auto-regressive distributive lags (ardl), employment, urban population, incentives abstract the first challenge in this century is to maintain or increase the farmland because land is the determinant factor. china and indonesia have a considerable population, have the same major food crops, and have been facing a problem with farmland conversion. the problem will be focused on the following issue whether factors are affecting farmland conversion in china and indonesia. this research used the data from the world bank in 1982 2014 and used auto-regressive distributive lags (ardl) as the data analysis. in the short-run, investment and urban population are significant variables to affect the farmland conversion in china and indonesia. the employment merely affects for farmland conversion in china, while the agriculture gdp and railways affect for indonesia. in the long-run, employment and railways affect farmland conversion in china; however, the agriculture gdp, investment, and urban population are significant for indonesia. some policies which needed to prevent farmland conversion began stipulated zoning and spatial planning in central and local government, and incentives for the farmer. contribution/ originality this is first study on farmland conversion in china and indonesia. there are few studies has been conducted about farmland conversion in china and indonesia separately. however, farmland conversion is still infancy in the current literature insights. this article using slightly complete of the macro economy indicator. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.119.131 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: lukman adam, li xuefeng and jia jin (2018). factors that affect farmland conversion in china and indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(10), 119-131. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 119-131 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:mada.kenn@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.119.131 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3440-8525 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1502-0007 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3119-7195 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 119-131 120 1. introduction in 2030, the productivity of land should rise to fulfill food demand when forest area had no change. the productivity of labor has to rise in households if the target for poverty reduction and decreasing the poor ends to materialize (timmer, 2014). china and indonesia are the important agricultural countries in asia. china is the most population as well as the most food consumer country in the world. whereas, indonesia is the largest population in south-east asia and the fourth most populous in the world. indonesia and china have a vast population, 3.5% indonesia and 18.67% china population of the total world population. thus, the challenge for indonesia and china to supply 22% food for the world population, and the first challenge is to maintain the farmland. similarly, indonesia and china have the same major food crops. for indonesia, currently, significant crops are rice, maize, soybeans, peanuts, cassava, and tuber, respectively. meanwhile, for china, the staple foods are wheat, rice, soybean, maize, and tuber. china and indonesia have been facing problem-related farmland conversion simultaneously. the intensity of farmland conversion in developed countries much lower than developing countries, which is indonesia and china are part of developing countries. for instance, farmland conversion in the netherlands was 17 hectares per day during 1996-2000. on the conversely, china experienced 802 hectares of farmland converted per day in 2004 and indonesia had 514 hectares of farmland converted per day during 2000-2002 (tan et al., 2009). many reasons why farmland conversion in developing countries increase continuously, for instance, in china and indonesia, likely caused by housing and industry area demand, infrastructure development, as well as no proper spatial planning to protect farmland. moreover, boom population has been pressuring to farmland as well as a change of government policy. pressure for farmland in china caused by the change of government and rural community insight. rural communities have more opportunities livelihood, not only as a farmer who lived in rural but also works in the services sector which means move to the urban area. moreover, infrastructure development extremely rapid in china since 1990. new construction of highways, airports, railways, and many more have been farmland change to another purpose. in tomohon, indonesia, economic factors, landscape factors, and food security factors are ultimate factors that influence land conversion (benu et al., 2013). in karawang, indonesia, land conversion in indonesia was started in the 1980s when the government became more open for investment (irene, 2015). in indonesia, the situation almost similar to china, much prominent rice production area had been changing by economic factors, mainly caused by investment. rural collectives are the owner all of the farmland in china. the households were given use right for the amount of the land for themselves in the 1980s. they have had the right to lease to others since 2008. only 4 million had large-scale farming is 2% of the total, found by the recent census. in china, the change of farmland caused by change of government policy, because farmer no right for sold the land. in indonesia, a farmer could sell the land if they have the right. otherwise, if farmer get the land through the agrarian reform as stipulated by the farmer protection and empowerment act (law number 19/2013), they have no property right. this study focused on determining factors affecting farmland conversion in china and indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 119-131 121 2. method of the study 2.1. theoretical framework let xt be farmland derived from fixed stock of natural land reserves (x) applying labor lt. thus, the land is treated as a natural capital form in this model and can write the motion equation for farmland as: 𝑋𝑡+1 = 𝑋(1 − 𝛿𝑥) + 𝜓, 𝐿𝑡 , 𝑥, 𝑋0 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑛, 𝑋𝑡 ≤ �̅� ………………….. (1) the parameters ψ > 0 are structurally estimated. according to kuznets theory, we develop the theory which agriculture gdp and employment are factors which increasing the farmland, whereas investment and urban population are factors which increasing the farmland conversion. capital in this study represented farmland and investment, whereas labor represented employment in agriculture (e.g., hietel et al., 2007). farmland conversion influenced by urban population (e.g., azadi and barati, 2013) and railways for goods transport (e.g., he et al., 2012) as a represent increasing development. there are several human-behavior components that influence the farmland conversion (hietel et al., 2007; jinyan et al. 2010), including (1) demography such as population density and age structure, (2) employment and economy such as off-farm job alternative and working outside rural area, and (3) agricultural structure such as farmland coverage and production type. change of land use throughout the nation dominated by urban and industrial land expansion. in recent years, transportation development, for instance new highways, railways, airports, seaports, and pipelines, has also been a major reason of land conversion, especially in the eastern and central regions (he et al., 2012; jiang and zhang, 2016; shi et al., 2016). in china, the most considerable reducing magnitude for arable land reached 371.83 km2; the increased using land came mainly from the conversion of arable land for economic development (li et al., 2016). 2.2. the benchmark models china and indonesia are the biggest countries in each region that have been facing the same several challenges. developing countries, having the enormous amount of population and mainland, as well as rapid development in the urban area, are the same characteristics between two countries. however, china and indonesia have a different basis for farmland regulation. some farmers in indonesia are having farmland property right, otherwise, in china, farmers merely having farmland use right. the variables used in this study were: amount of farmland conversion in indonesia and china, v (hectares), agricultural gross domestic product, agdp (constant 2010, million usd), investment, inv (million, usd), employment in agriculture, emp (%), urban population, upop (million), and railways for goods transported, rai (million ton-km). the farmland conversion measurement used the equation of land depreciation. the farmland conversion determined by calculating the farmland depreciation partially. the partial farmland depreciation explained as follow: v = lndt lndt-1 ………………….. (2) where: v = farmland conversion (hectares) lndt = farmland area in year-tth (hectares) lndt-1 = farmland area in the year before tth (hectares) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 119-131 122 in this study, the dependent variable is the amount of farmland conversion (v), and the independent variables are the agricultural gross domestic product, (agdp), investment (inv), employment in agriculture (emp), urban population (upop), and railways for goods transported (rai). to analyze the factors affected farmland conversion in china and indonesia, we used the same model from both countries, the following model estimated is specified as: vt = β0 + β1agdpt + β2invt + β3empt + β4upopt + β5rait + εt ………………….. (3) in order getting the elasticity of coefficients and omit the outliers effect, the variables have to transform into the linear function. the form of a linear function of the equation becomes: lvt = β0 + β1 lagdpt + β2linvt + β3lempt + β4lupopt + β5lrait + εt ………………….. (4) where: lvt = logarithmic transformation of farmland conversion; lagdpt = logarithmic transformation of agdp; linvt = logarithmic transformation of investment; lempt = logarithmic transformation of employment in agriculture; lupopt = logarithmic transformation of urban population; and lrait = logarithmic transformation of railways for good transported. the error term (εt) included the represents of the remove variables in the model and to capture all errors of the coefficient, parameter variations, and errors of the model. β0, β1, β2, β3, β4, and β5 are the elasticities to be estimated. the first thing did with the time series data is testing for stationarity. the critical characteristic of stationarity time series, because we can study its behavior only for the time period under consideration. each set of time series data will be for a particular episode (gujarati and porter, 2009). this article used the tests of phillips-perron (pp) and augmented dickey-fuller (adf) to test the stationarity and order of integration of the variables in critical values of 5%. we used the ardl co-integration approach which built by pesaran and shin (1999) and pesaran et al. (2001). there are three advantages in comparison with other previous and traditional cointegration methods. firstly, the ardl no need all the variables under observation to be integrated of the same order. secondly, the ardl test relatively more efficient. lastly, unbiased estimates of the long-run model (harris and sollis, 2003). based on the approach by pesaran and shin (1999), pesaran et al., (2001), as well as harris and sollis (2003), the ardl approach involves estimating the conditional error correction version of the ardl model for variable under estimation. the ardl (p, q1, q2, …, qk) is given by the following equation: α(l, p)𝑦𝑡 = 𝛼0 + ∑ 𝛽𝑖 𝑘 𝑖=1 (𝐿, 𝑞) + 𝜆𝑤𝑡 + 휀𝑡 ………………….. (5) where: α (l, p) = 1 − 𝛼1𝐿 − 𝛼2𝐿2 − ⋯ − 𝛼𝑝𝐿𝑝 𝛽𝑖(𝐿, 𝑞𝑖) = 𝛽𝑖0 + 𝛽𝑖1𝐿 + 𝛽𝑖2𝐿2 + ⋯ + 𝛽𝑖𝑞𝑖 𝐿𝑞𝑖 yt is an independent variable, α is the constant term, l is the lag operator, for instance lyt = yt-1. furthermore, wt is s x 1 vector of deterministic variables, for instance, intercept term, time trends, or exogenous variables with fixed lags. the long-run equation concerning intercept and time trend can be written as follows: y = 𝛼0 + 𝛼𝑡 + ∑ 𝛽𝑖𝑥𝑖 𝑘 𝑖=1 + 𝛾𝑤𝑡 + 𝜂𝑡 , 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒: 𝛼 = 𝛼0 𝛼 (𝐿, 𝑝) ………………….. (6) following the study from owusu and asumadu-sarkodie (2017) and ifa and guetat (2018), this study employs the ardl econometric approach due to its advantage over other econometric variables in small sample size. the ardl model in this study as follows: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 119-131 123 ∆lvt = α + δ1lvt-1 + δ2lagdpt-1 + δ3linvt-1 + δ4empt-1 + δ5upopt-1 + δ6rait-1 + ∑ β1 ∆lvt-1 + p i=1 ∑ β2 ∆lagdpt-1 + p i=0 ∑ β3 ∆linvt-1 + p i=0 ∑ β4 ∆lempt-1 + p i=0 ∑ β5 ∆lupopt-1 + ∑ β6 ∆lrait-1 + p i=0 ɛt p i=0 ………………….. (7) where δ indicates the first difference operator, α denotes the intercept, and ρ denotes the lag order, and ɛt indicates the error term. the relationship between the variables are examined with f-test based on the null-hypothesis of no co-integration between lv, lagdp, linv, lemp, lupop and lrai (h0: δ1 = δ2 = δ3 = δ4 = δ5 = δ6 = 0), contrary to the alternative hypothesis of co-integration between lv, lagdp, linv, lemp, lupop, and lrai (h1: δ1 # δ2 # δ3 # δ4 # δ5 # δ6 # 0). the estimated f-statistic compared with the critical values of the lower and upper bounds. 2.3. data this study used annual time series secondary data. this data collected from the world bank over the period 1982 2014. another main data sources are the national statistics bureau in both countries, the food and agriculture organization, and the ministry of agriculture. 3. result and discussion the tests of phillips-perron and augmented dickey-fuller (adf) for test the stationarity and order of integration of the variables use critical threshold 5%. based on table 1, almost all of the variables non-stationarity in level i(0), so we must check stationary at first and second difference. furthermore, based on table 2, in the first difference, there are a few variables have nonstationarity. however all variables are stationary in the second difference for both countries. based on table 2, the ardl approach, therefore, can be made to test the hypothesis. table 1: stationary at level i(0) pp test china indonesia t-statistics critical values 5% prob. t-statistics critical values 5% prob. v -1.9241 -2.9571 0.3175 -1.1939 -2.9571 0.6648 agdp 4.8018 -2.9571 1.0000 4.5054 -2.9571 1.0000 inv 1.0291 -2.9571 0.9959 0.6639 -2.9571 0.9893 emp 0.4628 -2.9571 0.9826 -3.7004 -2.9571 0.0089 upop 8.5582 -2.9571 1.0000 -2.1003 -2.9571 0.2458 rai -0.7594 -2.9571 0.8169 -0.8298 -2.9571 0.7968 adf test v -1.5380 -2.9571 0.5019 -1.0048 -2.9639 0.7385 agdp 5.2340 -2.9571 1.0000 4.9512 -2.9571 1.0000 inv 3.6308 -2.9918 1.0000 0.5750 -2.9571 0.9867 emp 1.4330 -2.9677 0.9986 -3.5001 -2.9571 0.0145 upop -0.6995 -2.9604 0.8324 -1.7645 -2.9604 0.3903 rai -1.0484 -2.9604 0.7230 -0.8656 -2.9571 0.7860 table 2: stationary at level i(1) and i(2) pp test: first difference china indonesia t-statistics critical values 5% prob. t-statistics critical values 5% prob. v -3.345 -2.960 0.021 -4.017 -2.960 0.004 agdp -2.756 -2.960 0.076 -2.244 -2.960 0.196 inv -6.934 -2.960 0.000 -5.426 -2.960 0.000 emp -2.445 -2.960 0.139 -7.532 -2.960 0.000 upop -1.663 -2.960 0.440 -2.320 -2.960 0.172 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 119-131 124 rai -3.099 -2.960 0.037 -5.492 -2.960 0.000 pp test: second difference v -6.73 -2.96 0.00 -11.87 -2.96 0.00 agdp -9.53 -2.96 0.00 -11.26 -2.96 0.00 inv -10.68 -2.96 0.00 -11.57 -2.96 0.00 emp -6.17 -2.96 0.00 -23.28 -2.96 0.00 upop -3.80 -2.96 0.01 -4.81 -2.96 0.00 rai -8.65 -2.96 0.00 -26.25 -2.96 0.00 adf test first difference v -3.139 -2.960 0.034 -4.900 -2.964 0.000 agdp -2.641 -2.960 -0.096 -2.466 -2.960 0.133 inv 0.158 -2.976 0.964 -5.412 -2.960 0.000 emp -3.575 -2.968 0.013 -7.524 -2.960 0.000 upop -1.768 -2.960 0.389 -2.320 -2.960 0.172 rai -3.126 -2.960 0.035 -5.466 -2.960 0.000 adf test second difference v -5.276 -2.968 0.000 -7.389 -2.968 0.000 agdp -9.511 -2.964 0.000 -7.113 -2.968 0.000 inv -7.114 -2.976 0.000 -8.340 -2.968 0.000 emp -6.279 -2.964 0.000 -6.486 -2.964 0.000 upop -3.757 -2.964 0.008 -4.813 -2.964 0.001 rai -7.891 -2.964 0.000 -5.438 -2.972 0.000 the ardl approach available the values of agdp, inv, emp, upop, and rai, the ardl approach available, not only in the past values but also in the current value. the numbers of delays for china and indonesia are (3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3) and (2, 1, 3, 2, 3, 1), for each variables respectively (table 3). table 3: ardl result variables china: ardl (3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3) indonesia: ardl (2, 1, 3, 2, 3, 1) coef. std.error t-stat. prob coef. std.error t-stat. prob v (-1) 0.3199 0.1949 1.6418 0.1446 0.7846 0.1601 4.9020 0.0004 v (-2) -0.0604 0.1348 -0.4482 0.6675 -0.5989 0.1272 -4.7094 0.0005 v (-3) 0.1358 0.0871 1.5599 0.1628 agdp 0.0001 0.0001 1.4392 0.1933 0.0003 0.0001 2.5214 0.0268 agdp(-1) 0.0000 0.0001 -0.0867 0.9333 -0.0002 0.0001 -1.5687 0.1427 agdp(-2) -0.0001 0.0001 -2.0245 0.0826 inv 0.0000 0.0000 -2.7474 0.0286 -0.0001 0.0001 -2.7427 0.0178 inv(-1) -0.0001 0.0000 -4.1502 0.0043 -0.0001 0.0001 -1.9015 0.0815 inv(-2) 0.0000 0.0000 1.5248 0.1711 0.0001 0.0001 2.1730 0.0505 inv(-3) 0.0000 0.0000 2.0165 0.0836 -0.0001 0.0000 -1.7824 0.1000 emp 1.3873 0.4164 3.3319 0.0126 -0.0216 0.0871 -0.2484 0.8080 emp(-1) -1.1976 0.5953 -2.0117 0.0841 0.0135 0.0132 1.0158 0.3298 emp(-2) -0.3570 0.4778 -747175.00 0.4793 0.0349 0.0137 2.5543 0.0253 emp(-3) 1.0915 0.4622 2.3616 0.0502 upop 1.3620 0.3972 3.4289 0.0110 -1.5828 0.7079 -2.2361 0.0451 upop(-1) -3.1983 0.7383 -4.3318 0.0034 2.0712 1.1940 1.7346 0.1084 upop(-2) 2.3345 0.6051 3.8584 0.0062 0.9400 1.2392 0.7585 0.4628 upop(-3) -0.4570 0.4243 -1.0769 0.3172 -2.0930 0.7912 -2.6454 0.0214 rai -2.3266 2.6831 -0.8671 0.4146 0.0009 0.0003 3.2361 0.0071 rai(-1) -6.2594 3.3151 -1.8881 0.1010 -0.0005 0.0002 -2.1858 0.0071 rai(-2) -6.2515 3.7382 -1.6723 0.1384 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 119-131 125 rai(-3) 27.1586 5.8635 4.6318 0.0024 c 6. 0137 28.6333 0.2100 0.8396 89.4343 24.8059 3.6054 0.0036 model criterion: r-squared 0.9987 0.9830 adjusted r-squared 0.9945 0.9588 f-statistic 239.9249 40.7257 prob(f-statistic) 0.0000 0.0000 to verify the existence of the long-term co-integration relationship, we use the bounds test. the results of f-statistics confirm that there exist long-term co-integration relationship, both in china and indonesia. the f-statistics values in china model (14.91517) and indonesia model (11.70412) that is above the critical level threshold of 1%, 2.5%, 5%, and 10%, therefore, the hypothesis of h0 rejected, and subsequently, the hypothesis h1 is accepted, which indicates the existence of long-term co-integration relations. table 4: ardl bounds test china indonesia test statistic value k value k f-statistic 14.91517 5 11.70412 5 critical value bounds significance i0 bound i1 bound i0 bound i1 bound 10% 2.26 3.35 2.26 3.35 5% 2.62 3.79 2.62 3.79 2.5% 2.96 4.18 2.96 4.18 1% 3.41 4.68 3.41 4.68 3.1. in the short-run the notion of co-integration equation (cointeq (-1)) defines the delayed residue originating from long-term equilibrium equation. the negative sign of its estimated coefficient, as well as the statistical significance of china and indonesia, confirm the presence of error correction. the coefficient of the co-integration equation explains the order in which the variable v (farmland conversion) will be mobilizing towards the long-term target. for our ardl models, this coefficient is estimated to be 9.469895 for china and -0.814302 for indonesia (table 5). table 5: short-run estimation and cointegrating form variables china: ardl (3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3) indonesia: ardl(2, 1, 3, 2, 3, 1) coef. std.erro r t-stat. prob coef. std.error t-stat. prob d(v (-1)) -10.562 0.1047 -100.8926 0.0000 0.5989 0.1272 4.7094 0.0005 d(v (-2)) 0.2328 0.0871 2.6747 0.0318 d(agdp) 0.0001 0.0001 1.4392 0.1933 0.0003 0.0001 2.5214 0.0268 d(agdp(-1)) 0.0001 0.0001 2.0245 0.0826 d(inv) 0.0000 0.0000 -2.7474 0.0286 -0.0001 0.0001 -2.7427 0.0178 d(inv-1)) 0.0000 0.0000 -1.5248 0.1711 -0.0001 0.0001 -2.1730 0.0505 d(inv-2)) 0.0000 0.0000 -2.0165 0.0836 0.0001 0.0000 1.7824 0.1000 d(emp) 1.3873 0.4164 3.3319 0.0126 -0.0216 0.0871 -0.2484 0.8080 d(emp-1) 0.3570 0.4778 0.7472 0.4793 -0.0349 0.0137 -2.5543 0.0253 d(emp-2) -1.0915 0.4622 -2.3616 0.0502 d(upop) 1.3620 0.3972 3.4289 0.0110 -1.5828 0.7079 -2.2361 0.0451 d(upop-1) -2.3345 0.6051 -3.8584 0.0062 -0.9400 1.2392 -0.7585 0.4628 d(upop-2) 0.4570 0.4243 1.0769 0.3172 2.0930 0.7912 2.6454 0.0214 d(rai) 6.2515 3.7382 1.6723 0.1384 0.0009 0.0003 3.2361 0.0071 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 119-131 126 d(rai-1) -27.158 5.8635 -4.6318 0.0024 cointeq(-1) 9.4699 0.1579 59.9820 0.0000 -0.8143 0.1370 -5.9440 0.0001 for agdp, the present and the delayed value of one year (t – 1) not statistically significant effect on the farmland conversion in china, on the contrast, the present value of agdp in indonesia has positive effect on the farmland conversion. this result in china agreed with the resulting study did by zhang and wang (2014) which said when economic growth in china reaches a certain level people pay more and more attention to the protection of land resources, farmland conversion rate would decreased. concerning the variable of inv, we note that the present value affects the farmland conversion negatively for both countries. about the emp variable and upop variable, the present value of has quietly strong affects the china farmland conversion positively, in additional, the first delayed value (t – 1) for upop variable have affect the china farmland conversion negatively. however, the emp for the first delayed (t – 1) and upop variables in the present value and the second delayed (t – 2) significantly affect the indonesia farmland conversion. finally, the rai variable has a slightly strong negative role in stimulating farmland conversion in the first delayed value (t – 1) in china. this result getting a different result with study did by wang and sun (2016) which found that investment in transportation infrastructure affects rural development in china positively. regarding cereal yield, a 1 percent increase in the road infrastructure (road length) leads to around 0.05 percent increase in cereal yield in the short-, and approximately 0.19 percent increase in the long-run. our study got a different result because we use merely the data about railways. on the contrast, in the present value, rai significant to affect farmland conversion in indonesia. railways developed and used merely in java, indonesia. other islands have railways from dutch inheritance; however, people generally have been using the road or other transportation. since 2010, three non-continuous railway networks in sumatera, kalimantan, and sulawesi islands are being developed. the development of railways in indonesia slower than china, because of the land acquisition, political will, and funding. chinese farmers never have the land; however, they do generally have long-term contractual rights to use it. when farms were first de-collectivized in 1978–1983, farm households typically got the right to farm a specified plot of land for one to three years. by the mid-1980s, household farm assignments generally extended to fifteen years, but these rights were insecure (kroeber, 2016). the government should determine the mechanism and regulation to organize this problem. the planning of a contract considers the future condition, including the internal and external factor, for instance, family size, local area planning, and market orientation. if the government changed the policy, the government should respect the contract with a farmer. the contract of farmland had better stipulated by the central government to avoid difference opinion of each local government. 3.2. in the long-run in the long-run, for emp and rai variables significant with farmland conversion in china; however, in indonesia, agdp, inv, and upop variables are significant affect the farmland conversion. for more detail, table 6 provides long-run coefficients from china and indonesia. the performance of agriculture data in china presents the reason why emp affect farmland conversion, 27.7 percent of the workforce employed in agriculture, 28.8 percent in industry and 43.5 percent in services in 2016. since 2011, the majority of china’s labor force has been employed in the service sector. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 119-131 127 table 6: long-run coefficients variables china indonesia coef. std.error t-stat. prob coef. std.error t-stat. prob agdp 0.000 0.000 0.226 0.827 0.000 0.000 3.312 0.006 inv 0.000 0.000 1.018 0.343 0.000 0.000 -3.524 0.004 emp -0.098 0.039 -2.532 0.039 0.033 0.106 0.309 0.763 upop -0.004 0.017 -0.251 0.809 -0.816 0.201 -4.069 0.002 rai -1.301 0.334 -3.900 0.006 0.000 0.000 1.283 0.224 c -0.635 3.026 -0.210 0.840 109.829 26.142 4.201 0.001 the result presents agdp affect farmland conversion in indonesia positively. the result difference with another study which showed in sleman, yogyakarta province, indonesia, the internal factors which significantly influence the farmland conversion is the price of land and land location, while the variable gdp in the agricultural sector negatively (harini et al., 2012). in the future, the agricultural land conversion would continue unless there is no government reaction to reduce it (azadi et al., 2011), and the policy should support by agricultural land policies (makbul and ratnaningtyas, 2017). therefore, actions by the government become the important thing to reduce the farmland conversion. conversion of land caused by a lack of understanding by the community or government officials on spatial planning (budhi et al., 2017). difference insight between the governments sector will happen because they must do some duties, for example as strategies to mitigate climate change, in the future we may see increasing land used for the production of biofuels, or for afforestation, instead of for food production (lantz et al., 2017). in this side, the central government must have sharp vision, mission, and strategy to become synergy for all sector. for china and indonesia, agriculture is the primary sector. the government must fulfil the food needs of the people. in the future, the biggest challenge is about the food because increasing the population, global warming, and many threatened to make fertile farmland decreased, and import will increased. therefore, the government must develop the perception is agriculture the most important things for the country. we can see in the long-run, for the china model, based on the obtained results 1 unit decrease for rai, decreasing in farmland conversion about 1.301082. in the long-run, science and technology development could increase agriculture productivity. the discovery of superior seeds, implementation the good of agricultural practices, and other supportive policies which related the agriculture technology are a determinant factor for agriculture in the future. 3.3. robustness check in the case of time series, the stability test or structural changes test, examine the stability of the estimated coefficients of the equation shows the presence of a structural change in the correlation (ifa and guetat, 2018). the cusum test then adapted to test the hypothesis of stability of the long-run relationship between farmland conversion and its determinants. for china and indonesia, noted that the curves of the cusum and cusumsq tests are within the limits of the confidence interval at the 5% threshold. these results present the chosen model for estimating the relationships between the farmland conversion and determinants if the other variables are stable. the cusum and cusumsq tests indicated in graphic form figure 1 and 2. for the cusum test, the blue line should between red upper and lower line for both countries. for cusumsq test for china the blue line outside the red line from 1995 to 2009. we supposed because the government changed the policy, for instance, in the 1990s, emerged “three rural areas” policy and this policy had effective on implementation after that period. the policies include agriculture, farmer, and rural and the adjustments for the policies finished in around 2000s. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 119-131 128 -16 -12 -8 -4 0 4 8 12 16 88 90 92 94 96 98 00 02 04 06 08 10 12 14 cusum 5% significance -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 88 90 92 94 96 98 00 02 04 06 08 10 12 14 cusum of squares 5% significance figure 1: cusum test of china model -16 -12 -8 -4 0 4 8 12 16 88 90 92 94 96 98 00 02 04 06 08 10 12 14 cusum 5% significance asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 119-131 129 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 88 90 92 94 96 98 00 02 04 06 08 10 12 14 cusum of squares 5% significance figure 2: cusum test of indonesia model proper management and planning may restrict agricultural land conversion. the plan directs urban expansion to desire ways that protect fertile farmland through a stricter implementation of land use and spatial planning or even land conversion laws are needed (azadi et al., 2011). indonesia has been acting to prevent farmland conversion since 2009. the act gives an order to the district or municipal governments to make local regulation regarding the protection of farmland sustainability. till the middle of 2017, just approximately 215 district/municipality governments from total amount 538 district/municipality had been regulation regarding the protection of farmland sustainability. the local government still thought for a short period rather than a future period, because for instance, a benefit for service, housing, and trade sector more significant than the agriculture sector in local government revenue. this condition makes farmland conversion increase continuously. had better spatial planning policy became the central government policy rather than in local government. moreover, needed incentives for local government who made this regulation. in the farmer side, maintain farmland needs more effort, because many issues facing by farmer, for instance: (1) seed and fertilizer price increase faster rather than farmer purchasing power, (2) using water for agriculture purpose had a competition between another sector, (3) lack of agriculture facilities, (4) fluctuate selling price, and (5) tax treatment, especially land and building tax. for this issue, the government should give the farmer incentives through subsidies and free land and building tax for farmers. incentives were stimulated for farmer to maintain the farmland. subsidies can provide for a farmer to get seed and fertilizer at a lower price. another support can give farmer to obtain the best selling price which produced by the farmer; the government, therefore, must stipulate the floor price when harvest season. in another aspect, china has been facing the problem of water consumption which is ever increasing along with population growth, economic development, and a rising standard of living (zhu et al., 2013). besides, china is one of the countries suffering from the most severe soil and water loss in the world (zhen, 2004). ecosystem degradation obviously and makes environmental conservation agriculture tasks more difficult (herman et al., 2017). incentives not only refer to tax but also the infrastructure, include more develop the agricultural irrigation, because farmland facing soil and water loss. 4. concluding remarks in the short-run, the agdp and rai not statistically significant variables affect farmland conversion in china, on the contrary, these variables are significant for indonesia. inv and upop are significant variables to affect the farmland conversion in both countries. the emp not asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 119-131 130 statistically significant variable to affect the farmland conversion in indonesia, however, significant variables for china. in the long-run, the agdp, inv, and upop not statistically significant variables affect farmland conversion in china, on the contrast, these variables are significant for indonesia. moreover, emp and rai are significant variables to affect farmland conversion in china, on the contrary, these variables are not statistically significant for indonesia. some policies which needed to prevent farmland conversion began stipulated zoning and spatial planning in central and local government, and incentives for the farmer. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: author 1 designed the data collection tools, conducted method and data analysis, and developed the manuscript. author 2 contributed develop the method and data analysis, and author 3 contributed in commenting the draft manuscript and reviewed. the authors would like to thank for feedback and criticism from a great many people, teachers and classmates from southwestern university of finance and economics, and the last to professor achmad suryana, indonesian center for agriculture socio economic and policy studies who provided insights and expertise that greatly improved this article. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation 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issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(9), 175-187 175 gender and social economic factors affecting ipm knowledge acquisition and application: a case study of coffee farmer group members in bugisu, uganda r. ochago, m. n. mangheni and r. f. miiro department of extension and innovation studies, school of agricultural sciences, college of agriculture and environmental sciences, makerere university, kampala, uganda article history: received: 20-sep-2016 revised received: 04nov-2016 accepted: 23-nov-2016 online available: 7dec-2016 keywords: gender issues, agriculture, uganda, knowledge, ipm, coffee stem borer abstract the paper presents findings from a study conducted to determine men and women farmers’ knowledge of the coffee stem borer ipm practices and socio-economic factors influencing the level of farmers’ knowledge in bugisu sub region, uganda. a post training cross sectional survey of 71 men and 55 women members of coffee ipm groups who had participated in training on coffee stem borer ipm was conducted. the knowledge of training participants was computed using a knowledge index and difference between knowledge levels of men and women farmers compared using independent t test. it was found that men had a significantly higher mean score on the ipm knowledge index compared to women. in addition, there was a significant correlation between knowledge of csb ipm with gender, educational level, marital status, household labor, coffee acreage, years in the coffee group and women’s mobility. the results imply that greater competence is achieved when group training methods were complemented with more personal extension methods such as on farm visits. in addition, targeting various social groups including women, youth, and those who are not members of social and economic groups with the intention of addressing their unique needs would boost their ipm knowledge level. for women, knowledge acquisition is enhanced when gender based barriers to their participation in learning groups are addressed. 1. introduction 1 integrated pest management (ipm), promising techniques for cost effective environmentally friendly control of agricultural pests (arnoud & deborah, 2008; waddington et al., 2014) is knowledge intensive. farmer field schools (ffss) that requires collection learning and action is an approach often used for imparting ipm knowledge to farmers (diqui et al., 2012). ffss were intended to reach out to marginalized groups who might not have access to training, knowledge and inputs (erbaugh et al., 2010). further, gender, a socio-cultural construct which determines the corresponding author’s name: r. ochago email address: ochagor@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.9/1005.9.175.187 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 175-187 176 identity, roles and responsibilities, and entitlements of women and men in society has been found to intersect with and influence ipm technology use in various countries. this is because differences between men and women arising from their socio-cultural backgrounds and status, responsibilities and expectations (rubin et al., 2009; tau & hassen, 2007) often manifest when it comes to agricultural technology promotion activities that require collective participation and group involvement. the extent of involvement of men and women in group activities is bound to affect what they learn and how they use what they are involved with. gender relations may affect men and women’s participation in ipm groups and eventually levels of uptake of ipm practices. women and youth in various locations face several constraints (social, economic, cultural, political and enabling environment) in participating and benefiting from farmer groups (gyau et al., 2016; kaaria et al., 2016; temesgen et al., 2015; tanwir & safdar, 2013; gotschi et al., 2009; rubin et al., 2009; agarwal, 2001; fao, 2011, 2015 & 2016; benin et al., 2008; subedi, 2008 and sabates-wheeler 2006). all the above variables have been found to have a gender dimension in various localities. for instance, women’s knowledge is often undervalued and their labour occurs within the domestic realm (gururani, 2002 and organo, 2013). women are also culturally constrained in terms of mobility, time, and communication hence preventing them from accessing information and sharing what they know (subedi, 2008). more to that, women even though aware of the benefits of new technologies, may not be able to adopt due inadequate time to work. they are often overwhelmed by agricultural demands for subsistence and surplus production (fortmann, 2009). despite its apparent advantages, ipm has not been widely adopted by small scale farmers in africa. one of the possible explanations could be inadequate understanding of gender based constraints to knowledge acquisition particularly within group processes that form the core of ipm technology development and promotion. given the critical role of women particularly at implementation of agricultural technologies, differences in ipm knowledge of men and women can bring about differences in participation and use of such practices. in a bid to design appropriate ipm practices by scientists to achieve an equal impact on both women and men requires that individuals, institutions or governments are guided by such knowledge. the purpose of this study was to determine men and women farmers’ knowledge of csb ipm practices in bugisu sub region, uganda. the research was guided by the following research questions: (1) do farmers’ know csb pest and the symptoms of attack?(2) can they list the ipm tactics for csb control being promoted and any harmful effects from using pesticides.(3) what is the level of men and women’s level of awareness, knowledge and utilization of ipm tactics. (4) are farmers aware of constraints and opportunities in the ipm knowledge in coffee ipm groups? if so, what are the constraints and opportunities for women and men? are these different for men and women? (5) is there any relationship between knowledge of csb ipm practices and qualitative and quantitative socio-economic characteristics? 2. research methods 2.1. study site members of coffee ipm farmer groups from two districts of sironko and manafwa in eastern uganda were studied. the sironko manafwa zone are characterized as banana-coffee farming system where mixed farming is predominant. beans, groundnuts, sorghum, maize, millet, cassava, potatoes and sweet potatoes are traditionally grown by women while men dominate in coffee and cotton which are the main cash crops. the main source of cash income is sale of crops and livestock. a number of risks, such as crop pests and diseases, livestock diseases, fluctuating crop prices, soil erosion and landslides in high areas, degradation, and high population density are experienced. increased land pressure and fluctuating market prices are attributed to high population. these study sites were purposively selected because the scope of the study was restricted to ipm crsp sites where coffee is being grown and ipm being promoted to control asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 175-187 177 csb pest through group approach. the coffee stem borer (csb) (monochamus leuconotus) with an incidence of 28.3% (kyamanywa et al., 2011) is one of the major constraints for the livelihoods of coffee households. 2.2. research design the study adopted a cross sectional survey study research design and utilized both quantitative and qualitative data. phase one was exploratory and focused on the qualitative aspects of the study while phase two focused on both, but with more emphasis on the quantitative aspects. in the first phase, key informant interviews were conducted face to face using key informant checklists generated by the researcher in sironko and manafwa districts. qualitative methods generated information on gendered aspects pointed out in table 1. the interview yielded qualitative data that informed development of the follow up survey and guided selection of sites for in depth study. phase two consisted of a survey to achieve deeper understanding of the aspects under investigation. table 1 gives a summary of the research design showing the logical linkages between the research components including study objectives, data required and collection methods, and data analysis procedures. table 1: description/measurement of the knowledge variables objective data collected and statistical analysis methods used men and women farmers’ knowledge of the csb ipm practices  percentages were used to identify farmer knowledge of the pest, observations, extent of damage on their garden and list of pest attack symptoms. chi-square test was used to establish whether a relationship existed between gender and the listed variables.  percentages were used to tell the csb control measures.  percentages were also used to analyze awareness, training attendance, knowledge and practices of the csb ipm package. rating of the csb ipm practices and reason for not using the package was also analyzed using percentages.  percentages were used to determine the level of gendered knowledge of the csb ipm package and relationship between genders was by chi-square tests.  knowledge was categorized in to three levels i.e. low (0-7), average (8-14) and high (15-21). correlation was used to establish whether any relationship existed between knowledge and socio-economic factors not participation in group processes.  percentages were used to determine the gendered knowledge of the chemicals, their use, and awareness. chi-square test was used for noncontinuous relationships while mean, standard deviations and t-tests were used for continuous variables. the target population comprised of men and women in coffee ipm farmer groups. a purposive sampling procedure was used to select the study sample in three stages. the first step involved locating relevant key informants and literature to determine which coffee stem borer ipm packages was promoted in a group setting. these key informants were picked because of their rich knowledge of the subject and the study site. the starting point was the ipm il regional officemakerere university, the research scientists at the regional office directed the researcher to corec research scientist who in turn directed the researcher to the research scientist at their field station/on farm (sironko). the research scientist at the on farm station gave a link to another scientist in manafwa. the two research scientists linked the researcher to their respective project extension workers. the extension workers in turn guided the researcher on the groups to pick respondents from. a total of 15 key informants (4 research scientists, two extension workers, 6 farmer group leaders and three farmer group members) were picked. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 175-187 178 the second step involved obtaining ipm il farmer group lists of members from their leaders and stratifying by sex. this allowed the capturing of varied perspectives between the sexes. these groups consisted of a total membership of 42 (22 men, 20 women) for kibowa, 45 (24 men, 21 women) for kesemulira and 54 (30 men, 24 women) for sosyo. a purposive sample of 71 men and 55 women were drawn from the three groups to bring the total to 126 respondents. 2.3. instrumentation and data collection three types of data collection tools were used: key informant interview and focus group checklists and house hold survey questionnaire. the three tools were developed by the researcher and reviewed by a panel of experts for content validity. the individual survey instrument was further pre-tested for suitability on a comparable population in an area that was not participating in the study. the field test was carried out in bumasaba parish in sironko district. the field testing exercise helped to test for clarity and the logical flow of the questions and duration of the interview. final changes were made on the tools before data collection. data quality was ensured through thorough training of enumerators and using enumerators who are proficient in the local dialects. team debriefs were also held every day after the data collection exercise to share lessons and challenges so as to ensure a uniform interpretation of the household survey questions. in buwalasi -sironko and bumbo-manafwa districts, a total of two fgds were conducted together with the farmer group members stratified by sex to triangulate findings collected from key informant interviews. with the help of field enumerators, the separate male and female sub-groups were assigned tasks to generate their responses about the coffee stem borer, damage, spread, management, groups’ activities and what limits or enhances gendered participation in coffee group processes. for each coffee group, two fgds of 1.5-2 hours were conducted. quantitative survey data was collected from all respondents at individual level. 2.4. data summary and analysis data were entered in the statistical package for social scientists (spss) version 16 and analyzed in both spss and stata 9. to determine the level of men and women farmers’ knowledge in coffee ipm group processes, a descriptive analysis was carried out to generate percentages, means and standard deviation. t-statistics and chi-square tests were used to test for differences in means and proportions respectively. 2.5. variable measurement-knowledge measurement knowledge of ipm practices is defined as farmers’ ability to recognize and name csb pest; identify its symptoms, list the ipm tactics for csb control being promoted, any harmful effects from using pesticides. it also includes farmers rating their level of awareness, knowledge and utilization of ipm tactics. since ipm is a multi-dimensional concept, a summated ratings scale consisting of nine attributes, with a score range of 0-21, was used to measure farmers’ knowledge of ipm practices (table 2). farmers ability to name the pest, observed the pest and aware of the dangers of using pesticides was considered as one attribute. the rating has been successfully used by previous ipm crsp studies (erbaugh et al., 2010). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 175-187 179 table 2: description/measurement of the knowledge variables attribute rating description farmers ability to name csb pest 0-1 0, an inability to name the pest; 1, an ability to correctly name the pest observed the csb pest in any coffee field 0-1 0, has never observed the pest; 1, has ever observed the pest list it’s symptoms, 0-3 0, an inability to list symptoms; 1-3, an ability to list one or more symptoms awareness of ipm tactics for csb control being promoted 0-3 0, if they were unaware; and 1-3, aware of one or more of the ipm tactics for csb control being promoted knowledge ipm tactics for csb control being promoted 0-3 0, don’t know; 1-3, know one or more of the ipm tactics for csb control being promoted utilization ipm tactics for csb control being promoted 0-3 0, don’t utilize; utilize methods coded 1-3. farmers’ awareness of harmful effects from using pesticides. 0-1 0, if they were unaware; and 1, aware of potential harmful impacts from using pesticides. list of harmful effects from using pesticides 0-3 0, inability to list; and 1-3, ability to one or more of the potential harmful impacts from using pesticides. awareness of the pesticide danger reduction measures 0-3 0, if they were unaware; and 1-3, ability to list one or more pesticide danger remedies 2.6. estimation of knowledge measure for csb ipm practices the total score was calculated by adding individual scores that each respondent obtained for all statements. knowledge measure was calculated as follows: ……………. (i) where: km = knowledge measure, kfs = knowledge frequency score 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 km =∑noap +∑lsy+∑lipmt+∑kipmt +∑uipmt+∑lpd+∑apdr ……………. (ii) i=1 i=1 i=1 i=1 i=1 i=1 i=1 where: noap = name pest, observed the pest and aware of pesticides used in csb control lsy = list csb pest symptoms lipmt = awareness of ipm tactics for csb control being promoted kipmt = knowledge ipm tactics for csb control being promoted uipmt = utilization ipm tactics for csb control being promoted lpd = list of harmful effects from using pesticides apdr = awareness of the pesticide danger reduction measures 3. results 3.1. farmers’ knowledge and practices of the csb ipm knowledge is one of the key benefits of coffee ipm group participation. this section presents results on level of knowledge acquired by men and women participants. respondents were asked whether they could name the csb pest, and its symptoms (table 3); list (3) and use the ipm 7 km=∑kfs i=1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 175-187 180 package promoted and name the dangers of pesticides (table 7). these key questions each attracted varied responses from which individual scores were calculated. 3.2. farmers’ knowledge of the csb pest table 3: knowledge of csb pest (n=126) gender of the respondent total x 2 p-value (%)men (%)women know the name of the pest 46.7 31.7 78.3 15.908 a 0.000 observed the pest in a coffee garden/field in the community 45.8 36.7 82.5 6.984 a 0.008 symptoms of the pest attack yellowing and chlorosis of the leaves 47.0 42.6 89.6 3.500 a 0.174 die-back 1.7 3.5 5.2 saw dust at the base of leaves 4.3 0.9 5.2 results in table 3, show that majority of respondents (about 78%) were able to correctly name the coffee stem borer pest though skewed in favor of men (about 47%) compared to women(about 32%) with a significant chi-square difference of p< 0.01. on further analysis, it came out clearly that more men (about 46%) than women (about 37%) had observed this pest in either their field or the neighboring fields in the community. in addition, more men (about 47%) than women (about 43%) reported yellowing/chlorosis as the major coffee stem borer symptom. rutherford and phiri (2006) and erbaugh et al. (2006 & 2010) confirm that yellowing, die back and saw dust at the bases of stems as the correct signs and symptoms of csb. findings from focus group discussions revealed that, men’s ability to correctly name the pest is due to their expose to a range of training meetings on the pest and its management as opposed to women who had a mobility constraint. also since more men made all the decisions on coffee income allocation and utilization and decision implementation it came out that, they had more interest in the crop for its benefits while women mostly concentrated on food crops such as bean, vegetables which were rarely sold. 3.3. farmers knowledge of the csb ipm practices the respondents were also asked whether they had ever heard of the csb ipm practices, had trainings in the said practices and know how to use them. the csb ipm practices investigated were; stem smoothing, stem wrapping, pruning and stumping. results are presented in table 4. table 4: recommended practices for controlling csb pest (n=126) csb ipm practices (%) ever heard of: total (%)ever had training on: total (%)know how to use: total men women men women women men stem smoothing 45.0 43.3 88.3 35.0 35.8 70.8 42.5 40.0 82.5 stem wrapping 40.0 35.0 75.0 33.1 26.3 59.3 36.7 32.5 69.2 pruning 50.3 46.3 96.7 40.0 37.5 77.5 48.3 47.5 95.8 stumping 47.5 42.5 90.0 39.2 30.8 70.0 44.5 41.2 85.7 though results show that both men and women were aware of, had trainings and knew how to use all the four ipm practices, it was skewed in favor of men. taking an example of pruning, more men had heard of pruning (about 50%), had trainings (about 40%) and knew how to prune (about 49%) than women with 46%, 38% and 47% respectively. the differences in the farmers’ awareness, attendance at trainings, and knowledge on how to use the coffee stem borer ipm practices could be attributed to women’s low attendance to trainings meeting, immobility and the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 175-187 181 labor intensiveness of the practices (table 7). overall men’s awareness of the csb ipm practices, trainings on the package components attendance and knowledge of their use was average (50%) whereas women were below average. the fact that a good number of women had heard about the practices and knew how to use them, implying that women have other informal ways of accessing information besides participation in trainings. awareness of the ipm practices is not sufficient in itself to tell the farmers knowledge. the study therefore sought to understand whether these ipm practices were being used or not. results in table 5 show that much as both gender used all the ipm practices, men took lead. more men controlled the csb pest by smoothing the coffee stems (about 75%) wrapping coffee stems (about 74%), pruning (about 74%) and stumping (81%) compared to women at less than 16% for all practices. table 5: use of the csb ipm package components (n=126) type of csb ipm package component who performs the work of csb control (%)man (%)man and woman equally (%)woman stem smoothing 75.3 15.5 9.3 stem wrapping 74.1 12.3 13.6 pruning 73.9 14.8 11.3 stumping 81.0 11.4 7.6 the probable explanation of variation in the utilization of the csb ipm practices could be due to advantages or disadvantages associated with the practices. an analysis of the main reason for not using the csb ipm practices revealed that, these practices are labor intensive as well as time demanding (about 35%) to men while for women lacked materials to use in the control of this pest (about 27%)-table 6. women majorly lack csb ipm control inputs especially banana leaf sheath during school days when children who provide labor are at school. lack of pangas and pruning saws was as a result of limited income often allocated to domestic care and not meant for inputs. these results are in agreement with fao (2011) that reported, women time and again having less access to agricultural assets, inputs and services than men in the majority of countries and contexts. table 6: reasons for not using the csb ipm package (n=126) reasons gender of the respondent total % of men % of women labor intensive or time consuming 34.6 19.2 43.8 had no materials to use 15.4 26.9 42.3 others e.g. banana leaves eaten by termites, banana leaves and polythene bags can be unwrapped by wind and can be a fire hazard, damages to equipment, costly and need skilled labor 10 3.9 13.9 table 7: reasons for not using individual csb ipm practices (n=126) ipm practice reason for not using (%) gender of the respondent total men women stem smoothening limited to smaller plots due to labor intensiveness and time consuming attribute 34.2 23.3 57.5 tree destruction and or some trees can dry up and some tree break 5 14.2 19.2 raises dust 11.7 11.5 23.2 stem pests hide inside the wrapping material 30 34.2 64.2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 175-187 182 wrapping it's risky and or damages the plant vessels 11.7 10 20 polythene bags and banana leaves can be unwrapped by the wind 9 7 16 pruning labor intensive and time consuming 33.4 29.2 62.5 costly because tree damage the equipment 7.5 12.5 20 need experienced/skilled people to carry out this method 9.2 8.2 17.5 stumping takes time to gain the next harvest 34 34.2 68.2 time consuming and labor intensive 11.7 8.5 20.2 costly in terms of labor and equipment 7.5 4.1 11.6 3.4. awareness of the dangers associated with pesticide use results in table 8 show that, more men were aware of pesticide dangers (about 37%) compared to women (34%), could list them correctly and knew how to reduce such dangers. to men, the major dangers associated with pesticide use were itching (about 21%), vomiting (about 19%) due to the bad smell when inhaled (about 2 %). results are consistent with findings by (lekei et al., 2014, timprasert et al., 2014, lund et al., 2010 and ngowi et al., 2007). wearing protective gear (about 37% for men and 32 % for women) while handling pesticides would protect them from such dangers. waskom and yergert (1994) give the following as pesticide use instructions; careful reading of the labels on pesticides, wearing proper clothing, applying pesticides on a calm and less windy day and immediate cleaning of the equipment coupled with thorough washing of hands with soap and water. the literature cited confirms those farmers are aware of pesticide use dangers. table 8: pesticides use and knowledge of the dangers (n=126) knowledge parameter gender of the respondent total % men %women aware of the dangers associated with pesticide 36.7 33.3 70.0 list these dangers itching of the body 20.5 8.4 28.9 has a bad smell, and one can vomit 18.5 16.4 34.9 can inhale the pesticide while spraying or suffocate 2.4 3.6 6 scotched leaves due to large application 6.0 2.4 8.4 affects the eyes and lungs, and cause diseases 9.6 10.8 20.4 causes headache 1.2 0 1.2 what can be done to reduce the dangers putting on protective gears 36.5 31.8 68.3 read instructions before using it 11.8 4.7 16.5 wash hands with soap after touching or using the pesticide 1.2 1.2 2.4 proper trainings 1.2 2.4 3.6 keep containers far from the children reach and or store in safe place 3.5 2.4 5.9 apply using a spray pump 1.2 0 1.2 avoid spraying when it’s windy 2.4 0 2.4 in order to measure the level of knowledge of ipm practices, the total score was calculated by adding individual scores that each respondent obtained for all statements to obtain a knowledge measure (km). knowledge levels were computed on a scale of one to three. the km of zero to seven was marked as a low level of knowledge, higher than seven but less than or equal to 14 were marked as an average knowledge and higher than 14 was marked as a high level of knowledge. results in table 9 reveal that, though majority (about 59%) of the respondents had knowledgeable asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 175-187 183 about csb ipm practices men (33%) took lead. the key finding is that men are more knowledgeable in the csb ipm practices than women. this result further confirms the earlier finding which ranked men as the highest beneficiaries in coffee ipm groups. table 9: level of farmers’ knowledge of csb ipm practices (n=126) knowledge level gender of the respondent total %men %women low level of knowledge 3.3 2.5 5.8 average knowledge 20.8 14.2 35.0 high level of knowledge 33.3 25.8 59.2 total 50.0 50.0 100.0 pearson’s χ2 (2) = 2.808, p = 0. 246 the findings seem to suggest that men acquire more coffee ipm knowledge than women. more men were knowledgeable about the coffee stem borer ipm practices due to attendance to coffee group training meetings. men’s knowledge of ipm is an opportunity to pest control in the farm households but a constraint to women. these results are in agreement with report by (ifad, 2010) which found that in the tea and coffee value chains of rwanda, men usually have greater access to extension advice and have a higher level of skills. on the contrary, erbaugh et al. (2003) in a survey on the role of women in pest management decision making in eastern uganda found that women were significantly more knowledgeable about possible negative effects from pesticide use, and had more knowledge of alternative pest control measures than men. this study possibly focused on enterprises with heavy involvement of women. much as men seemed to be more knowledgeable about the csb ipm practices, the level was below average (50%) implying that both women and men need to be reached with ipm information. on further analysis, the study sought to establish whether there was a relationship between knowledge and other socio-economic factors, results are presented in table 10. table 10: summary of the result of the chi-square (χ2) test of relationship between qualitative and quantitative socio-economic characteristics and the level of csb ipm knowledge variable p-value explanation gender (1= man; 0=woman) 0.03 correlated education level (number of years) 0.03 correlated marital status(1= married; 0=not married) 0.02 correlated house hold members who provide coffee labor (number of adults) 0.05 correlated total coffee acreage 0.04 correlated year joined coffee group 0.02 correlated access to coffee benefit-income 0.06 correlated control of coffee benefits-income -0.00 correlated women visiting trading centers -0.06 correlated women visiting church/mosques -0.06 correlated women visit water points 0.08 correlated women visiting other villages 0.09 correlated women attending group meetings 0.06 correlated the survey results showed that 56% of the respondents were men as compared to 44% women. the percentage difference could be attributed to the fact that coffee is a man’s crop and so slightly more men are involved as opposed to women. the chi-square comparisons revealed a significant association between gender and the knowledge of csb ipm practices (table 10).taking an asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 175-187 184 example of women, they more they attended group meeting, visited water points and other villages the more they acquired knowledge of csb ipm knowledge. visiting trading centers, churches/mosques had a negative correlation with knowledge of cbs ipm practices. the educational level was captured as number of year spent in school showed that men spent on average 7.01 years as compared to 6.58 of women. the overall range of years spent at school is between 0 to 16 years with tertiary intuitions being the highest level. the educational level of the respondent was closely associated with their knowledge of csb ipm practices as per the chisquare comparison at 5%. marital status captured as single and married is often used to determine stability of a household in families of african setting since heads of such households tend to be stable in farming and csb ipm use. this is true since results revealed that, about 73% of the repondents were married with a slight difference between men and women. more men were (about 41%) married than women (about 33%). the marital status of a respondent was significantly associated with the knowledge of csb ipm practices at 5% implying that one’s marital status had a lot to do with their knowledge level. the average number of people who helped out with coffee production work in the household was four and with a maximum of 12. this number was used as a proxy for coffee ipm labor. both family and hired labor (about 38% of men and 29% of women) is used by both men and women. men believed that family labor in their house holds was not enough to cover the coffee production activities (about 21% of men and about 15 % of women), while women felt it was adequate (about16% of men and 16 % of women). findings seem to suggest that, family labor was more constraining to men than women. the plausible explanation could be because coffee is a cash crop, men are more involved than women and thus serves as a labor constraint. on comparison between knowledge of csb ipm with number of people who provide labor in the house hold there was a significant relationship meaning the more labor a household has the more members sought and thus knowledgeable about csb ipm. in addition the knowledge level of csb ipm practices by farmers was closely associated with the coffee farm size meaning the bigger the farm size, the more farmers sought to control the pest in the most cost effective and environmentally friendly manner possible the total income from coffee ranged from two to three million shillings per season. access to coffee income had a positive and significant correlation with knowledge of csb ipm practices while control of coffee income was significantly negative. 4. conclusion the level of men knowledge of csb ipm practices was higher than men. more men could name csb pest; list its symptoms, aware, listed and used the ipm tactics for csb control being promoted, were aware and could list harmful effects from using pesticides and pesticide use precautions. social-cultural beliefs that, women are supposed to carry out domestics work and men’s perceptions of exposing and risking their wives being taken aware by other men contributed very much to women’s low level of knowledge. the constraints associated with obtaining inputs used for csb ipm control and the disadvantages associated with the practices discourage women from accumulating such knowledge. much as the level of men’s knowledge of csb ipm was higher than women, the score of all the seven parameters was less than 50%, the study concludes that their position in the society enables them to acquire coffee ipm knowledge and skills of the ipm use than women in coffee ipm groups. men’s access to knowledge of ipm as a group training benefit is thus an opportunity to group participation and consequently pest control in the farm households whereas a constraint to women. the hypothesis of men are more likely than women to name csb pest; identify its symptoms, list the ipm tactics for csb control being promoted, harmful effects from using pesticides. they are also more likely to rank highest in their asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(9)2016: 175-187 185 level of awareness, knowledge and utilization of ipm tactics is supported. women rarely participate in coffee ipm groups which are main ipm information source and so reaching them with ipm information with specific consideration to their needs would greatly boost their knowledge level. sensitize and encourage men to share with their spouses what they learn from during coffee ipm training sessions. funding: this study was financed by usaid/ipm il project in uganda under the gender global theme. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: this article was part of robert ochago’s msc dissertation study, which was financed by usaid/ipm il project in uganda under the gender global theme. all financial support is greatly appreciated. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references agarwal, b. 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(1994). best management practices for pesticide and fertilizer storage and handling. bulletin #xcm-178. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 471 public expenditures and agricultural growth in burkina faso souleymane ouedraogo agro-economist; institute of environment and agricultural research (inera) 476, ouagadougou 03, burkina faso daman bako statistician economist; millennium challenge account, 01 bp 6443 ouagadougou 01, burkina faso abstract this study analyzes public funding in the agricultural sector in burkina faso and assesses its impact on agricultural growth. based on data collected from several sources (finance acts over the period 1983-2008, automated prediction instrument (ipa), world bank and national agricultural statistics over 26 years (from 1983 to 2008), the agricultural production has been modelled by using an error correction model and cobb-douglas function. the econometric analysis results show that public funding has a positive impact on agricultural production in the short term. a 9% growth rate of public funding over the period 2009-2015, causes an average agricultural production of 6.75% over the period. so, it is necessary for the state to increase funding in the agricultural sector to achieve a better growth of the domestic production and to meet the millennium development goals regarding hunger reduction over the period 2009-2015. keywords: public funding, maputo, agricultural growth, burkina faso introduction 1 the agricultural sector (including, livestock, fisheries and forestry) has long been neglected by african countries and has not been allocated the funding required for its development. according to food and agriculture organization (fao, 2012) the proportion of public expenditures allocated to agriculture in 2007 was estimated at 3% in average for sub-saharan africa against 7% for east asia and the pacific. agriculture is so important in controlling hunger and poverty that the african union heads of states and governments ratified in july 2003 in maputo the declaration on agriculture and food security. this corresponding author’s name: souleymane ouedraogo email address: kouedsouley144@outlook.fr declaration commits the states to allocate at least 10% of their budgets to the agricultural sector so as to achieve a 6% agricultural growth required to reduce poverty by 50% by 2015. from 1983 to 1990, burkina faso significantly invested in the rural sector. through programs such as the “mass development program” (1983-1985) and the “five year development plan” (1986-1990), the country allocated 44% and 41% of its investments to agriculture and water (somé, 2004). but the following structural adjustment program (1991-2002) was characterized by the withdrawal of state funding from the agricultural sector. most of the public subsidies were cancelled and state support to the sector became occasional and limited. furthermore, the international funding for this sector was also reduced (fao, 1996) over this period. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kouedsouley144@outlook.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 471-483 472 since the 2008 food crisis and the subsequent violent riots, the state is increasingly focused on the agricultural production improvement. that is translated into considerable subsidies granted to help purchase fertilizers and improved seeds in order to boost production. according to the world bank (2012), over the period 2004-2011, the spending in the agricultural sector, as defined by the new partnership for african development (nepad), accounted for 10.2% of the national budget. the rate is slightly above the maputo commitment requirement. the volume of agriculture expenditures, estimated as per nepad classification of the function of government (cofog) method, doubled from 65 billion fcfa in 2004 to 129 billion fcfa in 2011. meanwhile, the agricultural growth reached 3% in average from 2004 to 2011. the international food policies research institute (ifpri 2006) shows that, this rate must be raised to 6.8% if the first millennium development goals (mdg 1) "reducing extreme poverty rates by half by the 2015 deadline" is to be achieved. this study intends to analyze public funding to the agricultural sector in burkina faso and its impact on agricultural growth. it also addresses the public investment required to achieve the mdg 1 on reducing poverty. this paper encompasses four sections: the first section enlightens on the agricultural background in burkina faso. the second one describes the study methodology; section 3 presents and discusses the main outcomes of the study and the last section highlights the main conclusions drawn. background of agriculture in burkina faso characteristics of agriculture in burkina faso agriculture is one of the key sectors of burkina faso economy. it accounts for 85% of burkina faso’s active labor force. most agricultural activities are organized and implemented by family farms, which stands as the main form of production in burkina faso. farming sometimes faces harsh conditions (poor rainfall, poor soils, funding problems) limiting severely the production growth and resulting in a fall in the agricultural export revenues and food insecurity. yet, the agricultural sector is still the leading sector of the country economy since; for years to come, the economic growth will be based on dynamic of agricultural exports (cotton, fruits and vegetables) and agri-industry (fruits and vegetable processing, skin tannery and cotton spinning). good export prospects in the agropastoral sector will however be dependent on the capacities of the sector to meet high demands from coastal countries in terms of meat and cattle, and cereals for the ecowas and waemu countries, and fruits and vegetables for the european market. agriculture in burkina faso is subsistence farming, producing mainly cereals that accounts for 77% of the surface areas cultivated and 71% of the total production over the 2001-2010 periods. the production growth rate over the period from 1984 to 2010 is estimated at 6% which is far beyond the population growth rate (about 3.1%). the cash crops consisting mainly of cotton are also important as they constitute the main export agricultural products in burkina faso. most cotton growers (80% in 2000) are illiterate. the fruit and oleaginous plant production sectors are suffering from poor trading organization and lack of grading and cleaning infrastructure. agriculture in burkina faso is highly dependent on climate and will need irrigation to develop (fao, 2005). considering the increasing food needs and the high pressure on land, irrigated agriculture has to play an increasingly important role in burkina faso economy. the country has a huge potential of irrigable land area which is estimated at 255 000 ha with only 25% of it exploited and 500 000 ha of lowland appropriate for development. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 471-483 473 the livestock sector also contributes to food security and animal traction, transportation and farm fertilization. livestock population is large and varied. nevertheless, the per capita productivity needs to be significantly improved if the country livestock production is to fully cover the country demand for milk and milk products. this effort has to be supported by the establishment of large and/or small scale processing plants and an efficient distribution chain (ministry of animal resources, 2008). along these potentials, a number of natural, technical, financial, economic and organizational constraints affect the development of the sector. the rainfall is scarce, irregular and inadequately distributed and the soils are poor and not suitable for cultivation. most of the farmers are illiterate, inefficient and lack the adequate means to modernize the production systems. this results in a limited modernization of agriculture and a poor use of fertilizers in the production. poor rural roads and inadequate promotion of agricultural products affect the marketing in this sector. funding of agricultural sector in burkina faso the agriculture sector in burkina faso is in need of funding; only 10% of the need is hardly covered. financial institutions, for various reasons, are reluctant to granting farmers the necessary credit that will allow them to properly invest in production activities. for the 2009-2010 campaign, only 19.6% of agricultural households had access to agricultural credit to purchase inputs and 2.1% of them for the equipments. according to studies conducted in the sector, agricultural training, extension and monitoring also lack adequate funding. most of the farmers have a low educational level (71.7% of the population was illiterate 2007 (insd, 2007)). it is proven that literacy increases the efficiency of burkina farmers by 31.4%; agricultural production could be increased in the same rate if all the farmers were literate (zonon, 2003). the agricultural sector, like any other sector, needs funding to better contribute to the economic growth. the access to inputs and equipments which is required to foster for the adoption of an intensive production system is highly dependent on the financial resources available. yet currently, the fao (1996) pointed out a reduction in agricultural funding these years in developing countries. therefore, the african heads of states undertook in 2003 through the maputo declaration to allocate 10% of public expenditures to agriculture, with the view to help achieve the 6.8% agricultural growth rate assumed necessary to reduce extreme poverty and hunger by half by the 2015 (mdg 1). the reason for state intervention in the agricultural sector is that private funding is inadequate. therefore, the state and the public sector have to play an important role in agriculture development to address this issue. the maputo declaration clearly shows the leading role of agriculture in the economic development of african countries and the return of public interventions as a result of funding the agricultural sector. national expenditure in agriculture in burkina faso has been weak until the 2003s (fig1). from 1997 to 2001 the trend went downward. the 1990s were marked by the structural adjustment programs with the liberalization of the agricultural sector through the withdrawal of all state subsidies granted to the farmers. since 2003, the governments committed to abide by the maputo declaration. the national spending in agriculture has increased from 65 billion in 2004 to more than 129 billion in 2011 representing a 98.46% increase over the period. this additional funding was used to fund agricultural service development programs, agricultural sector support programs and hydro-agricultural developments. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 471-483 474 theoretical framework and methodology of the study the theoretical framework of the analysis of the agricultural sector funding economists have always value the contribution of agriculture to economic growth. for lewis (1954), agriculture contributes to capital development, frees poorly productive workforce for others sectors such as industry. for gillis (1990) agriculture, considering its potential, attracts foreign direct investment, creates jobs and provides new investment opportunities for local entrepreneurs to increase local production. agriculture contributes to the development as an economic activity, livelihood and environmental service. historically, the national expenditure has been one of the main instruments of agricultural policy. in all countries, budgets are allocated to the agricultural sector for various purposes: irrigation, product storage and transportation, and marketing infrastructure, loans to farmers, research, extension, and improved seeds production. another heading allocated by national budgets to the agricultural sector include funding post-harvest programs (for purchasing cereal from farmers at high price and selling them to consumers at lower price). however, empirical evidence of the nature of relationship between national spending and economic growth has always been debated. devarajan et al. (1996) could not show the significant relationship between growth and the level of expenditures. the outcome of empirical literature on the effects of expenditures composition was also debated. barro (1997) found that public consumption expenditures as a percentage of the gdp were negatively correlated to growth. on the other hand, devarajan et al. (1996), revealed a positive relationship between national consumption spending and economic growth. caselli et al. (1996) have also pointed out the positive effect of national spending on growth. easterly et al. (1997) found no significant effect of national consumption spending in the gdp on growth in latin america. morley and perdikis (2000) in egypt (following the 1974 and 1991fiscal reforms) found that there was a long-term positive effect of the total national spending on growth; however there was no significant effect in the short-term. nubukpo (2003) about the waemu countries found that except from senegal and togo, for the longterm, the total national spending has no positive effect on uemoa economic growth. coulbaly (2013) in côte d’ivoire came to the conclusion that spending in education has a significant contribution to economic growth, with a competition between the education sector and the other economic sectors for the effective allocation of public financial resources. according to ben and hassad (2006) national spending in education and health can lead to economic growth provided this spending is made efficiently. kane (2004) in senegal came to 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 1 9 9 1 1 9 9 2 1 9 9 3 1 9 9 4 1 9 9 5 1 9 9 6 1 9 9 7 1 9 9 8 1 9 9 9 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 3 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 7 2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9 2 0 1 0 2 0 1 1 fig. 1: public agricultural spendings asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 471-483 475 the conclusion that national capital spending has a positive and significant impact on economic growth. model selection the nature of the variables requires the use of the error correction model (ecm) that helps in modeling both the ongoing dynamic (represented by the variables in first difference) and the long-term dynamic (represented by level variables). indeed to see the stochastic features of a chronological series, it has to be stationary meaning that its mathematical expectation and variance are finite constants and that its co-variance is a finite function independent from the time dimension. theoretical model this paper analyzes the impact of public expenditures on agricultural growth. the functional form, to establish the link between agricultural production and factors underpinning its growth is a cobb-douglas type function. barro and sala-i-martin (1996) and guillaumont (2003) resorted to this type of function in identifying the determinants of production in the sahel. and so did mundlak et al. (2002) in analyzing the agricultural growth determinants in indonesia, philippines and thailand. we will adapt this function to our study. let 𝑌 be the agricultural production, 𝐾 capital, l labour, 𝐹, funding we have : 𝑌 = 𝐴𝐾𝛼𝐿𝛽 with 𝐴 = 𝑒𝑥𝑝(𝑎 + 𝛾𝐹) agriculture is characterized by a production function with constant returns to scale. therefore we assume that 𝛼 + 𝛽 = 1 the application of the logarithm gives: log 𝑌 = 𝑎 + 𝛾𝐹 + 𝛼𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐾) + 𝛽𝑙𝑜𝑔 𝐿 after differentiation: ∆𝑌 𝑌 = 𝛾∆𝐹 + 𝛼 ∆𝐾 𝐾 + 𝛽 ∆𝐿 𝐿 we will determine the value of the coefficient 𝛾 in the short and long-terms using error correction model. speciation of the variables as suggested by the theoretical model: we will use the following variables: public expenditures allocated to the agricultural sector, agricultural production, capital and agricultural labor. public funding allocated to agricultural sector (fin) variable fin represents the share of the national budget allocated to agricultural sector. or the cumulative public expenditures in this sector: spending in salary, equipment, transfers, agricultural research. data collected for this variable are from the finance act of the study period (1983-2008). agricultural production (prod) prod is the total agricultural production in value (livestock and crop production) over the study period. the data used are from the data base of the automated forecasting tool. agricultural labor force (trv) trv is the agricultural workforce. for raison of simplification, rural working population is considered as agricultural workforce. data for this variable are from the world bank indicators (2007). capital (cap) the capital is determined based on agricultural investments. the following traditional relationship between capital and investment: 𝐾𝑡 = 𝐼𝑡 + 1 − 𝛿 𝐾𝑡−1 the literature suggests several methods to determine the initial capital. yet the most commonly used method is the one proposed by harberger (1978), subject to the hypothesis of a balanced growth, through the relationship: 𝐾𝑡−1 = 𝐼𝑡 𝑔 + 𝛿 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐾0 = 𝐼1 𝑔 + 𝛿 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 471-483 476 with 𝑔 representing the long term economic growth rate that is estimated roughly with the actual growth rate (4.2% in burkina faso). the parameter 𝛿 describes the capital depreciation rate. the depreciation can be assessed through survey within industrial plants but for the aggregated capital stock a depreciation rate ranging from 4 to 6% is acceptable (aamer and suleiman, 2007). limits of the study because of the lack of data, we could not cover private funding (micro-finance institutions, commercial banks credits) in the econometric analysis. thus, the issue of the impact of private funding on agricultural production growth in burkina faso still remains to be addressed. results and discussion estimation and validation of the model as suggested in the theoretical model, lprod, ltrv and lcap respectively represent the logarithms of prod, trv and cap. tests such as stationarity, cointegration, and residual tests were conducted to validate the model. stationarity tests the stationarity tests considered herein are unit root tests of augmented dickey-fuller (adf), phillips-perron (pp) and kwiatkowski-phillips-schmidt-shin (kpss). the null hypothesis in adf and pp tests is the presence of unit root (no stationarity). the kpss test is generally less used and the pp test is known to have a weak power (villemot, 2004). both tests were then used mainly to confirm the results of the adf test. according to the results, the variables fin, lprod, ltrv are stationary in first difference and lcap is stationary in second difference (see. annex i). optimal number of lags and cointegration test the selection of the optimal number of lags is essential since an inadequate number may encourage auto-correlation of the residuals of model and a high number of lag can lead to an over estimate of the number of cointegration (keho, 2006). the number of optimal lags shows that the common criteria by akaike (aic) and hannan-quinn are minimal when considering two lags (see annex ii). the result of the co-integration test by johansen, taking into account the nature of the data, shows the co-integration relationship through the trace statistics (see annex ii). estimation of the model using the ordinary least squares method the ordinary least squares method in one step as suggested by banerjee et al. (1993) was use to estimate the model, because of the small size of our sample. in fact, one of the weaknesses of the two step method by engle and ganger is that long-term estimate does not take into account potential information from the short-term dynamics (keho, 2006). banerjee et al. (1993) shown that this case leads to a considerable bias for small samples. banerjee et al. estimate method consists in making an estimate through ordinary least squares of the following equation: 𝐷 𝐿𝑃𝑅𝑂𝐷𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐷(𝐹𝐼𝑁𝑡) + 𝛽2𝐷(𝐷 𝐿𝐶𝐴𝑃𝑡 ) + 𝛽3𝐷(𝐿𝑇𝑅𝑉𝑡) + 𝛽4𝐿𝑃𝑅𝑂𝐷𝑡−1 + 𝛽5𝐿𝐹𝐼𝑁𝑡−1 + 𝛽6𝐷(𝐿𝐶𝐴𝑃𝑡−1) + 𝛽7𝐿𝑇𝑅𝑉𝑡−1 + 𝛽8𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑑 + 휀𝑡 the coefficients 𝛽𝑖 are real parameters and 휀𝑡 represents the errors terms in the linear regression. the variable 𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑑 represents the trend that we add because of some variables trends significance in the model. the table 2 below shows the results of model estimate. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 471-483 477 table 2: results of the model estimate (ols) variables coefficient std. error t-statistic prob. c -7.250760 7.059068 -1.027155 0.3196 d(d(lcap)) 0.068706 0.176376 0.3 89545 0.7020 d(fin) 0.008048 0.004138 1.944748* 0.0696 d(ltrv) 15.90428 7.210288 2.205776** 0.0424 lprod(-1) -1.455197 0.255645 -5.692251** 0.0000 d(lcap(-1)) 0.115000 0.162966 0.705667 0.4905 fin(-1) 0.005866 0.004942 1.187072 0.2525 ltrv(-1) 1.688146 0.508818 3.317783** 0.0044 r-squared = 0.,7058 adjusted r-squared = 0.5489 prob (f_statistic) = 0.0059 number of observations = 24 source: authors' own results lprod (-1) coefficient, which is the adjustment coefficient, is negative. it is also significant at 5% level (with a probability of student p of 0.0000). there is obviously a correction mechanism; meaning that on the long-term, the gaps between our variables are filled. the correction method is therefore valid. the model is significant at 5% level (fisher statistics probability is 0,0027 < 0,05) and its explanatory power is quite high (r² adjusted=0.54). the coefficient of the variable public funding is statistically significant at 10% level in the short term. an increase of 1% of the national budget allocated to agriculture results in an increase of the production value of 0.008%, suggesting that public funding is still not enough to have a significant impact on production. on the other hand, the coefficients of the variable agricultural labor are significant in short and long term. an increase of 1% of the agricultural labor force leads to an increase in the value of production by 15.9% in the short term and 1.69% in the long term. coefficients of the variable capital are positives but not significant. public funding has therefore a positive influence on agricultural growth in the shortterm whereas agricultural labor has a long term and short-term positive impact on agricultural growth. residuals tests and constant returns to scale assumption the results of these tests are presented in annex iii. jarque-bera test shows that errors follow a normal distribution (jb=1.64<5.99). since this test is not appropriate for series with limited number of observations, we used the shapiro-wilk test which has confirmed the results of the normality of our residuals (w= 0, 95170; wcritic= 0,916 (w >wcritic)). based on the white's test, the heteroskedasticity hypothesis of errors can be rejected: hence, they are homoskedastic. the hypothesis of error autocorrelation can be rejected based on the breuch-godfrey test. furthermore, the cusum test shows that the model is structurally stable (the cusum curve remains within the confidence interval). to test the hypothesis of increasing returns to scale of the production function, the wald's test was used. the null hypothesis of the test conducted is 𝛽2 + 𝛽3 = 1. with a pvalue higher than 5% (p≈0.4), we accept the null hypothesis. the yields are then constant. simulation results according to the international food policy research institute (ifpri), the production growth required to achieve the mdg 1 is set at 6.8%, with regard to that aspect, we made simulations to assess the increase rate in public funding required to achieve this level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 471-483 478 the results of the simulations are presented in table 3. table 3: simulation results in cr e a se i n a g ri cu lt u ra l p ro d u ct io n ( in % ) increase in funding (%) years 1% 5% 8% 9% 9.5% 10% 2009 8.36 9.96 11.16 11.57 11.77 11.97 2010 1.38 2.33 3.11 3.39 3.53 3.67 2011 4.84 6.07 7.13 7.51 7.71 7.91 2012 3.19 4.38 5.49 5.90 6.11 6.34 2013 3.97 5.29 6.57 7.06 7.32 7.58 2014 3.61 4.97 6.38 6.94 7.24 7.55 2015 3.78 5.24 6.83 7.47 7.82 8.18 mean 3.71 5.06 6.29 6.75 6.98 7.23 source: estimate by the authors these results reveal that a 9% increase in public funding over the period 2009-2015, brings about a 6.75% average increase in agricultural growth over the same period. with a 0.19% estimation error in this study, the production growth rate will range between 6.56% and 6.93%. considering that the ifpri rate (6.8%) is included in this confidence range, we can conclude that with a 9% increase in public funding for agriculture, the country can achieve the mdg 1. conclusion agriculture is a key sector for burkina faso economy. in this regard, there is a need to deeply consider the conditions for a better growth of the country agricultural production. in addressing the issues of agriculture funding in burkina faso, this study is in line with this effort. the study was actually intended mainly to highlight the issue of agricultural sector funding, while assessing its impact on agricultural production. the economical analysis shows that the public funding has a significant impact on agricultural production growth. the simulations also evidence that a 9% increase of public funding over the period 2009-2015 would help burkina faso achieve the mdg 1 (of halving poverty and hunger). it is then obvious that public funding has a positive impact on agricultural production in the short and long terms. the state should therefore increase funding for the agricultural sector if it wants to strengthen its economy. in other words, the objective will be to increase the share of the budget allocated to agriculture. this increase is expected to reach at least 9% yearly over the period from 2009 to 2015 in order to achieve mgd no. 1. this increase could be achieved through the promotion of granting subsidies to producers to purchase agricultural inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, farm machinery). it can also materialize through marketing infrastructure development or rehabilitation (rural roads, cold storage facilities, slaughterhouses) and promoting processing plants to increase the production added value. furthermore, agricultural training could be enhanced to improve farmer’s performance. the state could strive to invest more in the irrigation sector in order to increase food security and increase exports revenues. references amir, abu-qarn, & suleiman, abu-bader (2007). getting income shares right. a panel data investigation for oecd countries. economics department, ben-gurion university, beer-sheva, israel, p. 34. banerjee, a., dolado j. j., galbraith, j. w., & hendry, d. f. (1993). coasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 471-483 479 integration and the econometrics analysis of non stationary data. oxford university press. barro, r. (1997). determinants of economic growth. mit press, cambridge, mass, 1997. barro, r. j., & sala-i-martin, x. (1996). economic growth. mcgraw hill, new york. ben, s., & hassad, m. (2006). efficience du financement des services publics et croissance économique dans les pays en développement. analyse en coupe transversale. science meeting network economico analysais and development, ird; paris on 7 and 8 september, p. 37. caselli, f., esquivel g., & lefort f. (1996). reopening the convergence debate: a new look at cross-country growth empirics. journal of economic growth, 1(3), 363-389. coulibaly, m. (2013). impact des dépenses publiques d’éducation sur la croissance économique en côte d’ivoire. european scientific journal, 9(25), 444-464. devarajan, s., swaroop, v., & zou, h. (1996). the composition of public expenditure and economic growth. journal of monetary economics, 37, 318-344; easterly, w., loayza, n., & montiel, p. (1997). has latin america’s post reform growth been disappointing? journal of international economics, 43, 287-311. engle, r. f. & granger, c. w. j. (1987). cointegration and error correction: representation, estimation and testing. econometrica, 55, 251-276. fao (2012). la situation mondiale de l’alimentation et de l’agriculture: investir dans l’agriculture pour un avenir meilleur. p. 184. http://www.fao.org/catalog/interf.htm/ fao (1996). investissement dans le secteur agricole: évolution et perspectives. document d’information technique, rome. fao (2005) appui à la mise en œuvre du pddaa/nepad au burkina” vol. 1, rome, 46p. gillis, m. (1990). economie du développement. de boeck-wesmael, s. a. bruxelles, p. 734. guillaumont, p. (2003). economies des politiques agricoles tome 3 la revue française d’économie. paris. harberger, a. c. (1978). perspectives on capital and technology in less developed countries. m. j. artis and a. r. nobay, eds, contemporary economic analysis, london. ifpri (2006). quelles politiques pour le développement agricole? dialogue avec les parlementaires. mettre l’accent sur l’agriculture et la science pour le développement, international. food policy research institute (ifpri). insd (2007). statistiques structurelles du burkina. disponible sur http://www.insd.bf/. kane, a. h. (2004). the impact of public expenditure on economic growth of a developing country: the case of senegal. idep, dakar, senegal. keho, y. (2006). co intégration et modèle à correction d’erreur : de la théorie à la pratique. cahiers de l’ensea, abidjan, p. 39. lewis, a. (1954). economic development with unlimited supplies of labor. manchester school of economics and social studies, 22, 139-191 ministère de l'agriculture (l999). stratégie de croissance durable du secteur de l'agriculture. plan stratégique opérationnel, ouagadougou, p. 85. ministry of animal resources (2008). plan d'actions et programme d'investissements du secteur de l'elevage. ouagadougou, disponible sur http://www.mra.gov.bf/sitemra/plans/ papise.html. morley, b., & perdikis, n. (2000). trade liberalization, government expenditure and economic growth in egypt. http://www.fao.org/catalog/inter-f.htm/ http://www.fao.org/catalog/inter-f.htm/ http://www.insd.bf/ http://www.mra.gov.bf/sitemra/plans/papise.html http://www.mra.gov.bf/sitemra/plans/papise.html asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 471-483 480 journal of development studies, 36(4), 38-43. mundlak, y., larson, d., & butzer, r. (2002). determinants of agricultural growth in indonesia, the philippines, and thailand. world bank development research group, washington, p. 82. nubukpo, k. k. (2003). public spending and growing economies of uemoa, "cirad, pp. 1-29. some, s. a. (2004). eléments d'évaluation des programmes d'ajustement structurel au burkina faso. document de travail, capes; ouagadougou; burkina faso. villemot, s. (2004). peut-on encore stabiliser les prix des matières premières? etude d’un mécanisme de lissage par moyenne mobile. mémoire de dea sous la direction de daniel cohen, ehess, paris, p. 47. world bank (2012). revue diagnostique des dépenses publiques de base dans le secteur agricole (2004-2012). ouagadougou, burkina faso; 86pp + annexes. world bank (2007). world development indicators 2007. washington zonon, a. (2003). education et productivité des agriculteurs. cas des producteurs du burkina faso. uepa, dakar, p. 50. annexs annex i: results of stationnarity tests agriculture production public expenditure asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 471-483 481 agricultural labour capital annex ii: results of co integration test asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 471-483 482 annex iii: residual and constant yield outcome of normality test results of the homoskedasticity test results of the error correlation test results of the stability test asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 471-483 483 results of the constant yields test table 1: spending in agriculture estimated as per the nepad’s cofog method, 2004-2011 (in billion of fcfa) mah mra medd other ministries and dept. interm. comm non state budget projects other 1 total spending cofog execution state budget 2 % maputo 2004 40.2 12.2 8.8 4.0 65.3 640.3 10.2% 2005 42.7 11.1 9.8 2.3 66.0 716.7 9.2% 2006 56.2 11.3 11.8 2.2 81.5 835.1 9.8% 2007 53.5 32.3 34.7 1.6 122.0 944.2 12.9% 2008 59.2 11.1 25.7 1.5 97.6 886.1 11.0% 2009 56.5 38.3 21.0 2.3 118.0 1.083,1 10.9% 2010 71.2 8.0 15.1 2.9 97.2 1.121,1 8.7% 2011 89.1 14.2 22.1 3.8 129.2 1.357,1 9.5% total 468.7 138.5 148.9 20.8 776.9 7.583,7 10.2% source: world bank, sp/cpsa 2012, iap 2013 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 188 economic valuation of fortified cassava peels for goat feeding in south-western, nigeria okojie l. o. and s. a. adewuyi department of agricultural economics and farm management, federal university of agriculture, abeokuta, ogun state, nigeria adebayo, k. department of agricultural extension and rural development, federal university of agriculture, abeokuta, ogun state, nigeria adetoye a. m. department of agricultural economics and farm management, federal university of agriculture, abeokuta, ogun state, nigeria abstract this paper investigates the economic value that goat farmers in south-western, nigeria attach to fortified goat feed from waste cassava peels origin. unavailability of vegetative forage for goat feeding all year round makes this relevant. a multistage sampling procedure was used to select 120 goat farmers. primary data for the study were obtained with the aid of structured questionnaire. the method of analysis included descriptive statistics and contingent valuation method that terminated into the binary choice logit model. the study indicates the mean willingness to pay (wtp) for a 25kg of fortified goat feed as n1, 019: = in the study area. this for the 120 sampled farmers was n122, 280: = and for the total population of 7.1million, it was n7.2billion. respondents’ wtp however increased mainly with level of education and system of goat keeping. farming system practiced by respondents had the likelihood of positively and significantly (p<0.01) affecting the wtp for fortified goat feed from cassava peels. income equally had the likelihood of positively and significantly (p<0.05) affecting the wtp in the study area. education, farm size and experience had the likelihood of positively influencing though not significantly the wtp for the compounded feed. these indicate that there exist economic potentials for the use of cassava waste (peels) in goat production in the study area. adopting intensive system of goat farming and enhancing income of producers will go a long way to motivating investment in the feed making and its adoption in goat production. keywords: economic value, willingness to pay, fortified goat feed, contingent valuation method introduction 1 corresponding author’s name: okojie l.o. email address: lukeokojie@yahoo.com fao (2010) asserts that nigeria is the largest producer of cassava in the world. she produces up to 49million metric tonnes of this commodity annually and 90% of the produce is consumed locally. iita (1990) identified and highlighted the characteristics of the common forms of cassava products available asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:lukeokojie@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 188-194 189 in nigeria. cassava (manihot esculenta) is the third-largest source of food carbohydrates in the tropics. the cassava root is long and tapered, with a firm; homogeneous flesh encased in a detachable rind, about 1mm thick, rough and brown on the outside. commercial varieties can be 5 to 10 cm in diameter at the top, and around 15 cm to 30 cm long. cassava is mainly produced by small scale farmers in rural communities and is primarily produced for food especially in form of garri, fufu with little use in agribusiness sector as industrial raw material. the crop can be processed into several other products like chips, flour, pellets, adhesives, alcohol, starch etc which are raw materials in livestock, feed, alcohol/ethanol, textiles, confectionery, wood, food and soft drink industries (adebayo, 2011). cassava in its crude form is widely used in most tropical areas for feeding pigs, cattle, sheep and poultry. cassava contains about 92.2 percent carbohydrates and 3.2 percent protein in its dry matter, and so it is a high energy commodity. iita (2002) claims that cassava products are important feed stuff for livestock feed formulation. out of a whole cassava root, 15-20% is considered as waste (peels). in many processing enterprises, handling of cassava wastes can be a major challenge involving significant costs. a common practice for cassava processors is to accumulate the wastes (comprising of peels and pulp) to dump sites situated less than 100 meters away from the processing centers and set fire on them. in the process much carbon dioxide and other gases that produce very strong offensive smell are emitted. in the attempt to utilize cassava waste, cassava peels are usually fed to goats but wet cassava peels contain cyanide that is poisonous to animals. in nigeria, cassava waste can be processed into different forms of products utilizable by animals. recycling cassava waste into marketable products provides ways of generating additional income for cassava processors and so turns waste to wealth in the process. iheke (2008) claims it will create environmental benefit by preventing the burning of cassava waste and releasing harmful toxins into the air. one way of achieving this is by feeding value added cassava waste to animals that would provide meat and milk to human beings and so contribute to attaining food security. this paper tends to achieve this in a wider food security context by focusing on the impact pathways that include value addition processes which reduce physical and economic losses in cassava. in addition is the improved utilization of wastes (peels) in producing products indirectly for human consumption in form of animal feed. it is in this sense; this paper sets to investigate the following: describe the socio-economic characteristics of farmers involved in goat production. determine the economic value the goat farmers input to the cassava peels based fortified feed. assess the determinants of the willingness of goat farmers to pay for cassava peels based fortified feed. determine the policy framework to be put in place for appropriate and quick turn out of goat meat and milk to meet the specified per caput daily requirement. methodology the study was carried out in south western nigeria with the focused area as ogun and osun states. multistage sampling technique was used to select respondents for the study. the first stage involved the purposive selection of 2 zones each from the agricultural development programme (adp) delineated zones in each of the states. three extension blocks were then selected from each of the zones to make a total of 12 blocks in the two states. ten goat farmers were selected from each block to produce 120 respondents. out of the 120 questionnaire, primary data from 109 respondents were suitable for analysis. 8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/variety_%28botany%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/diameter asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 188-194 190 blocks were chosen for the feed adoption demonstration. the diffusion model of rural development was adopted in introducing the feed to the farmers in each of the 8 demonstration points where experimental stations were cited mainly in cells having considerable number of goat farmers. at each demonstration station, preference was given to local leaders whose production technique and farm organization were held up as example to be followed by farmers in the immediate communities/locality. animals selected at each experimental station (mainly growers) were fed 0.5kg quantity of fortified goat feed for a period of 21days to establish the spread of the new feed through demonstration effect. analytical procedure the analytical tools of descriptive statistics and the contingent valuation method that terminated into the binary choice logit model were used in this paper. the descriptive statistics involved tabular presentation, means and percentage distribution. the contingent valuation method (cvm) is a generally used method for the estimation of the value of nonmarket goods. cvm methodology is used to generate willingness to pay (wtp) or willingness to accept (wta) functions for large and diverse set of consumer goods for use in planning and policy contexts. it is a valuation method based on questionnaire that offers the respondents an opportunity to make an economic decision on non market goods, where no market exists. the valuation is contingent upon the simulated market presented to the respondents. this method was employed for this paper by determining the mean willingness to pay using a logit model. the paper presents the farmers’ willingness to pay which was obtained through the double-bounded dichotomous choice framework proposed by hanemann et al. (1991). the method involves two consecutive bids being proposed to consumers, with the second bid contingent upon the response to the first bid. the mean wtp is calculated based on the approach of hanemann (1984) as used by turcin and giraud (2001) and cooper and loomis (1992) as follows: li = 1/ [1+ exp (α+ βixi) ] (1) where: li = respondent acceptance probability to the bid offered. βi = vector representing the coefficients of all covariates. xi = vector representing all covariates shown as follows: x1 = age (years) x2 = farm size (number of animals) x3 = experience in goat keeping (years) x4 = education (years) x5 = income (naira) x6 = farming system (intensive=1, otherwise=0) x7= sex (male=1, female=0) x8 = marital status (married =1, otherwise=0) x9 = religion (christian=1, otherwise e =0) ui = random error the cooper and loomis (1992) procedure for the determination of mean wtp is as follows: p = 1/|β| * ln (1+exp a ) (2) where: a = intercept β = coefficient of bid p = restricted mean wtp. results and discussion socio-economic characteristics of goat farmers majority of the respondents (33.3%) fell on the age category of 51-60years (table 1).they can therefore be said to belong to the less economically active group going by their age. both sexes are involved in goat production, but the female gender however constitutes the majority as they occupy 55.96% of the distribution. most of the respondents (90.4%) are married. the distribution of the respondents by educational status showed that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 188-194 191 45.9% have no formal education while primary, secondary and tertiary education were on the levels of 22.9, 22.0 and 9.2 percent in that order. the level of sophistication in education portends a proper understanding of the essence of nourished feed and its advantage on goat production in the study area. most of the sampled respondents had below 10 animals (50.46%) while few of the respondents had above 30 animals (6.42%). this shows that those who are actively involved in goat production are very few and the implication is that goat production is carried out as a source of secondary income. farming system practices for goat keeping in the study areas were mainly the extensive system with 79.8% of respondents in such practice while the remaining percentage are involved in the intensive system. the respondents annual incomes in the study area were mainly below n25,000: = (52.29%) while those earning above n100,000 were on the level of 12.84 percent. table 1: distribution of goat farmers by socio-economic characteristics variable ogun state osun state pooled description frequency % frequency % frequency % respondents 56 51.38 53 48.62 109 100 age below 30 30-40 41-50 51-60 above 60 2 14 15 15 10 3.6 25.0 26.8 26.8 17.8 1 12 7 21 12 1.86 22.64 13.24 39.62 22.64 3 26 22 36 22 2.75 23.85 20.18 33.04 20.18 gender male female 25 31 44.64 53.36 23 30 43.40 56.60 48 61 44.04 54.96 marital status married single widow(er) 48 8 85.71 14.29 48 5 90.57 9.43 96 13 88.07 11.93 education no formal edu. primary secondary tertiary 30 14 9 3 53.57 25.0 16.0 5.36 20 11 15 7 37.74 20.75 28.30 13.21 50 25 24 10 45.9 22.9 22.0 9.2 farm size below 10 11-20 21-30 above 30 28 18 6 4 50.0 32.14 10.72 7.14 27 17 6 3 50.94 32.07 11.33 5.66 55 35 12 7 50.46 32.11 11.01 6.42 farming system intensive semi-intensive extensive 9 13 34 16.07 23.21 60.71 0 0 53 0.00 0.00 1.00 9 13 87 8.3 11.9 9.8 income (naira) below 25,000 25,000-50,000 51,000-75,000 76,000-100,000 30 16 2 4 53.57 28.60 3.60 7.14 27 12 2 2 50.94 22.65 3.77 3.77 57 28 4 6 52.29 25.69 3.67 5.51 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 188-194 192 above 100,000 4 7.14 10 18.87 14 12.84 experience (years) below 10 10-20 21-30 above 30 25 24 6 1 44.64 42.85 10.71 1.80 13 22 13 5 24.53 41.51 24.53 9.43 36 48 19 6 34.86 42.20 17.43 5.51 religion christian muslim 23 33 58.9 41.07 30 23 56.60 43.40 53 56 48.6 51.4 source: computed from field survey data, 2013 wtp for fortified cassava peels feeds by goat farmers the pooled mean wtp for the 25kg fortified cassava peel feeds by goat farmers in the two states, a representative of the study area was n1,019: =.1,642. this was n737.5 and n1471.6 for ogun and osun states respectively (table 2). this amounts to n122,280: = for the 120 sampled goat farmers in the study area and for the entire population of 7.1 million in the study area if they are all encouraged to imbibe goat rearing with the fortified feed, it would be 7.2billion. this is quite an enormous investment to encourage potential investors to venture into for timely production of goat meat and milk to meet the yearning needs of the people in solving the deficit inherent in the per caput protein consumption requirement as specified by the fao. table 2: maximum likelihood estimate of a double bounded dichotomous choice response to willingness to pay for cassava peels based feed in the study areas variable pooled data coefficient and t-ratio ogun state coefficient and t-ratio osun state coefficient and t-ratio constant -5.1113*** (-2.8095) -5.297* (-1.8386) 1.813 (0.4403) age 0.275e-02 (0.1364) 0.691e-02 (0.2513) 0.126e-01 (0.2617) education 0.375e-01 (0.1483) 0.8453** (1.9867) -0.7061 (-1.4672) farm size 0.572e-02 (0.1951) -0.2518 (0.4535) 0.1732 (1.597) farming system 1.5362*** (2.851) 1.1640* (1.6749) income 0.98e-05* (1.6300) 0.374e-05 (0.2614) 0.114e-04 (1.2350) experience 0.82e-03 (0.35e-01) 0.442e-01 (0.9768) -0.823e-01* (-1.6742) gender (dummy) 0.7893 (1.4101) 0.8886 (1.0173) -0.688 (-0.541) marital status (dummy) 0.2397 (0.3436) -0.7418 (-0.6956) 1.5712 (1.1815) religion (dummy) -0.1825 (-0.3767) -0.7120 (-0.9145) -1.4320 (-1.3235) mean wtp n1019 n737.5 n1471.6 pseudo r 2 0.15 0.15 0.30 llf -74.99 -35.4 -30.6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 188-194 193 respondents 109 56 53 llf log-likelihood function. an average weight of a bag of cassava waste feed was estimated to be 25kg. *** significant at 1% level, ** significant at 5% level, *significant at 10% level. source: computed from field survey data, 2013. factors affecting wtp of goat farmers socio-economic factors affecting consumers’ willingness to pay for fortified cassava peels feeds were carried out using the logit regression model. the result shows for the whole study area, farming system (p<.01) and income (p<.10) positively and significantly affected the likelihood in the willingness of goat farmers to pay for fortified cassava based feed in goat production (table 3). this is understandable as the people on intensive cultivation system will be more willing to pursue the search for alternative source of feeds as compared to farmers on extensive system. income is equally very important in accessing the alternative compounded and costlier feed and so it is expected to positively and significantly affect the likelihood in the wtp of goat farmers. education, farm size and experience equally increased the likelihood in the willingness to pay for the compounded feed positively though not significantly. educated people are generally expected to be more informed about benefits of value added feed for goats and poisoning hazards of using wet cassava peels. this is true for farm sizes and experience of goat farmers. farmers with large farm sizes will tend to be more anxious to seek for alternative compounded feeds especially with the advent of the dry season than one with smaller livestock size. experience goes a long way in motivating the goat farmers to feed the small ruminants intensively rather than engaging in semi-nomadic practices that are stressful and nutrient wasting to the animals. table 3: factors affecting willingness to pay of goat farmers for cassava peels based feeds. variable coefficient t-ratio marginal effect constant -6.2677*** -2.5100 age 0.1687 0.5986 0.285e-01 education 0.5278* 1.6859 0.891e-01 farm size 0.2501 0.5680 0.422e-01 farming system 2.0833*** 3.1952 0.3520 income 0.3800 1.2179 0.6421e-01 gender (dummy) 0.6003 0.8460 0.1014 m. status(dummy) -2.0161* 1.7355 -0.3406 religion (dummy) -0.313e-01 -0.50e-01 -0.530e-02 experience 0.3235 0.7792 0.546e-01 lr x 2 40.1348 pseudo r 2 31.289 llf -64.135 llf-log likelihood function, m. statusmarital status note: ***, **, * implies significance at p<0.01, p<0.05 and p<0.10 levels respectively. source: computed from field survey data, 2013. conclusion the goat farmers operated on a secondary and very small scale but were sophisticated enough in education and awareness to understand the essence of properly compounded feed in nourishing small ruminants to adequate and timely development in the production process. the mean wtp for the 25kg bag fortified cassava peels based goat feed was n1,019:= this equals n122,180: = for the 120 sampled goat farmers at the purchase of a bag each and 7.2billionfor the entire population of 7.1million in the study area if they are all encouraged to take to secondary goat farming. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(2)2014: 188-194 194 this is enormous enough to encourage investment in this fortified goat feed venture than allowing the current situation where cassava peels are left as waste with the consequent associated health hazards. goat farmers on intensive goat rearing and more enhanced income were found to be more likely to imbibe the adoption of fortified goat feeds in production. education, farm size and experience had the positive likelihood to enhance this adoption. farmers with marital status as compared to the unmarried had less likelihood in their wtp for cassava peel based fortified goat feed. lack of spouse support may be accountable for the desperate need to adopt the more intensive production system for survival. there is the need for investment in cassava peels based goat feed and the adoption of intensive system in which fortified feed is utilized in goat production in the study area. all efforts should be put in place by all relevant agencies – government and nongovernment alike to assist in this direction by enhancing the income base of the farmers. this can be affected through emphasizing loans and credit disbursement to goat farmers. this can be affected especially through the nirsal financial component of the current ata of the federal government in which all the states of the federation are beneficiaries that involves partnership with the apex central bank, commercial banks and the insurance organizations. in such a way, the goal of achieving sufficiency in protein consumption by the citizenry would have gone a long way in being achieved. references adebayo, k. (2011). using cassava waste to raise goat. project 2008-4345. world bank development marketplace. cooper, j. & john, l. (1992). sensitivity of wtp estimates to bid design in dc cv models. land econ. 68(2), 211-224. food and agricultural organization (fao) (2010). production year book. iita (international institute of tropical agriculture (iita), (1990). cassava in tropical agriculture: a practical manual, international root crop based industries (1989), pp. 4-6. iita (international institute of tropical agriculture), (2002). competitiveness workshop in opportunities for cassava in nigeria: bookanga, iita, ibadan. iheke, o. r. (2008). technical efficiency of cassava farmers in south eastern nigeria. agricultural journal, 3(2), 152-156. hanemann, w. m. (1984). welfare evaluations in contingent valuation experiments with discrete responses. american journal of agricultural economics, 66(3), 339-341. hannemann, w. m., loomis, j., & kanninen, b. (1991). statistical efficiency of doublebounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation, amer. journal of agricultural economics, 73(4), 255263. turcin, b., & kelly g. (2001). contingent valuation willingness to pay with respect to geographical nested samples: case study of alaskan stella sea lion, w-133 western regional project technical meeting proceedings. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(12), 248-262 248 development of agropolitan area in papua (case study: agropolitan area in the city of jayapura) yannice luma marnala sitorus, normalia ode yanthy and anggia riani nurmaningtyas faculty of civil engineering and planning, university of science and technology jayapura, indonesia abstract 1 the agropolitan area in the eastern part of indonesia to be not as developed as the western part of indonesia. the city of jayapura is an agropolitan area in the eastern part of indonesia. this research was aimed at studying development of agropolitan area in the city of jayapura. a qualitative approach with descriptive method was used to determine the superior potential of agricultural sector, to identify chain of production in agribusiness, and to identify service of infrastructure in each subsystem of agropolitan area. contribution and rate of growth of agricultural sector towards gdp of the city of jayapura decreased, farmer exchange rate was under 100, decreased in micro loan of agricultural sector, and area of rice fields decreased, showing the stagnation of agropolitan area in that particular city. the superior products are rice, cash crops, vegetable, fruit, and livestock produce. infrastructures on all agricultural subsystems are still limited and the most minimum is on subsystem infrastructure of downstream agribusiness. the majority of farmers there sell their produce directly to youtefa market. production chain is short thus it does not give much added value on the harvest. the local farmer group has a lack of critical attitude towards the existing development. keywords: agropolitan area, production chain, subsystem infrastructure 1. introduction 1.1. background the development of an agropolitan area actually originated from people centered development concept, in which one of the expectations from the development program is the presence of changes in farmers’ life attitude from the tendency of being subsistent towards a more creative, innovative, and productive one, except in the implementation in indonesia, it is emphasized more on territorial (area) development which is mainly in the form of physical aspect. the fact that there is a difference in area physical and social characteristics of the people between developed area in the western part of indonesia and developing area in the eastern part has caused development in agropolitan area in the eastern part of indonesia to be not as developed as the western part of indonesia. similar aim of policy has been applied in the city of jayapura but it has not been able to increase the development of agropolitan area there. previous study (labok, 2013) showed that a number of support facilities of agropolitan area development had been provided at muara tami district, in the city of jayapura, province of papua, but the agricultural activities taking place in the area was still individual in nature, it had not been corresponding author’s name: kouadio koffi patrice email address: kkpatrice@hotmail.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kkpatrice@hotmail.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 249 coordinated and integrated. in fact, the area is a model of agricultural sector development in the province of papua because since 1982 muara tami district has been a transmigration destination in papua. muara tami district, which are kelurahan koya barat and koya timur, formerly were transmigration settlement units, guided under the department of transmigration in 1982. the majority of the people are javanese of transmigration program and work as ‘palawija’ (second crop/cash crops) farmers. around the year 1986, still under the guidance of the department of transmigration, the areas were appointed as definitive village, and in the year 1988, they were inaugurated as villages headed by village heads. in the year 2002, the two villages were inaugurated as ‘kelurahan’ and headed by ‘lurah’. since 2002, the central government (minister of public works and minister of agriculture) has started to introduce the concept of agropolitan development in indonesia. not all countryside area received aid in the development of its agropolitan area, aside from only certain area developed to become model. in the master plan of the province of papua, the guideline of policy which supports development of the concept of agropolitan has not been firmly explained. 1.2. problem formulation the city of jayapura has natural resources in the sector of agriculture which is quite significant whose development has also been supported by by the policy of the local government but the development in the area showed that it has not been developed as an agropolitan area should. 1.3. aim of study 1. learning and understanding the characteristics of muara tami agricultural area 2. identifying superior potential in agricultural sector 3. identifying chain of agribusiness from upstream to downstream 4. identifying service level of agricultural system infrastructure facilities in agropolitan area in the city of jayapura 5. giving recomendations to the regional government so they can prioritize economic policy through development of certain superior commodity to create job fields, absorption of manpower, increase in regional/product competitiveness, so that it can increase local economic growth and decrease poverty rate in regional area. 2. literature study 2.2.1. general definition agropolitan consists of the word ‘agro’, which means agriculture, and ‘politan’ which means city. agropolitan can be defined as agricultural city which grows and develops from the activity of agriculture and contributes in agricultural activities in the surrounding areas. as for the concept of agropolitan, it was first introduced by friedman and douglas in the year 1975 after observing the presence of gap in development between city and countryside at the time. this concept is influenced by development paradigm which developed at the time, namely people-centered development (agusta, 2008). in the decree no.26 year 2007 about spatial management, it is mentioned that agropolitan area as one consisting of one or more activity centers in rural area as a system of agricultural production and management of certain natural resources shown by the presence of functional links and spatial hierarchy of settlement and agribusiness system unit. agropolitan area or usually called food production center area is agricultural towns which developed and grew because of the presence of system and agribusiness which support agricultural development activities in the surrounding area. this area consists of agricultural towns and agricultural production center villages in the surrounding area without considering governmental administrative area borders. rural areas are developed as one unit of area development based on asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 250 economic link between countryside-city with relationship which is mutual and dynamic in character. agricultural typologies which generally exist in an agropolitan area are business sectors in crops, horticulture, plantation, stock breeding, inland fishery, marine fishery, agro-tourism, and natural conservation forest area. 2.2. characteristics of agropolitan area (kimpraswil, 2000, adisasmita, 2006) 1. the majority of people (40-50%) work in the sector of agriculture or agribusiness in a system which is integrated from : a. upstream agribusiness subsystem, consisting of machinery, agricultural tools, fertilizer, etc. b. primary farming business subsystem, consisting of establishments in crops, horticulture, plantation, fishery, stock breeding and forestry. c. downstream agribusiness subsystem, consisting of processing industries and marketing, including trade for exporting activity. d. support services subsystem consisting of loans, insurance, transportation, research and development, education, information, infrastructure, and governmental policy. 2. the presence of link between cities and countrysides which are interdependent/mutual and relying on each other, in which the agricultural area in rural area develops establishments in cultivation and processed products at household scale. on the other hand, urban area provides facilities for the development of cultivation and agribusiness establishments such as the provision of agribusiness facility, capital, technology, information, etc. 3. the majority of the people work in agriculture or agribusiness sectors, which consist of establishment of agricultural produce processing industry, upstream agribusiness trade, (means of agriculture and capital), agrotourism and services. 4. the life of people in an agropolitan area is similar to that of the urban area since the existing facilities and infrastructure in the area are made as much as possible to be as similar as in the city. 5. basic infrastructure of agricultural area is irrigation and local roads. in agropolitan area, there are collector roads which connect the capital city of regency or the capital city of province. 6. post harvest facilities in agricultural area are processing machine in early stage of post harvest, such as paddy thresher machine and paddy drying floor, while in agropolitan area there are rice mill, packaging in sacks, trading facilities (marketing), as well as delivery company or institution (marketing). 7. from available irrigation infrastructure, water catchment area can be determined, and the higher the capacity of irrigation the wider the water catchment area, and the greater the agropolitan, and vice versa. 8. distance and total agricultural area to the magnitude of agropolitan, which is related to rural infrastructure (such as roads) which are already available and which are still needed to be constructed in the future. agropolitan has a radius to its affecting area as far as approximately 15 kilometers. 9. the types of agricultural commodity produced need to be identified, which become a reliable factor in formulating the developmental strategy regarding basic infrastructure and facilities needed. 10. determination of hierarchy, subordination, and orientation. agropolitan to be determined is the result of options based on figures from centers of rural settlements being observed. related centers are determined the hierarchy based on the hierarchy of these centers, then identified the subordination (central system) and orientation of marketing in terms of space thus forming configuration of effective centers. 2.3. system of agropolitan area in accordance to rtrwn, development of agropolitan area must support reliable area development. the development of this area must still consider the development of system of activity centers at national, provincial and regional levels. based on its structure, agropolitan area asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 251 is distinguished by first order (main farming city), second order (agropolitan district center or growth center), and third order (agricultural area unit center). each order functions as nodes of collection and distribution services with varying and hierarchical scale also settlement service center. the inter nodes are connected by appropriate transportation network. the first and second orders are separated by distance of approximately 35–60 km in accordance to condition of area geography, while the second and third orders are situated in one agropolitan district located approximately 15–35 km from one another (kimpraswil, 2000). the existence of settlement centers or cities around an agropolitan area could become alternative area of agricultural product marketing if there is an increase or surplus in agricultural produce and therefore it could increase activity of upstream agribusiness, while in agropolitan area where interactions between cities are limited among others due to restriction in land transportation or the presence of competition of similar commodities from other agropolitan areas, so reinforcement in downstream agribusiness activity (processing of harvest) by extending the production chain of the commodity could be one of the strategies in the development of agropolitan area. supporting infrastructure in agropolitan area is generally as follows: 1. subsystem of upstream agribusiness, infrastructure and facilities provided can be in these forms: kiosks of agricultural production facilities, storage, parking area, and loading area. 2. subsystem of farming establishment, facilities and infrastructure provided can be in these forms: the provision of raw water (with the availability of irrigation network, retention basin, and artesian well), the provision of clean water (with the availability of piping network and deep well, to cleanse agricultural produce). 3. subsystem of harvest processing, facilities and infrastructure provided can be in the form of drying area for agricultural produce, storage equipped with preservatives/cooling facilities, and packing house for sorting and packaging, including food service, also slaughterhouse. 4. subsystem of produce marketing, facilities and infrastructure provided can be in the form of traditional markets consisting of kiosks, stands, parking area, and loading area, agribusiness sub stations, livestock market, rural-city inter roads, as well as bridges. 5. subsystem of supporting services, facilities and infrastructure provided can be in the form of public utilities (clean water network, sanitation, waste, drainage, electricity, telephone and internet), public facilities (facilities for health, education, office, worship, recreation and sports, economy such as shopping centers, and green open spaces), institutions (agropolitan management agency, banking office, cooperatives, agropolitan business units), kasiba and lisiba (ready to be built area and environment) including supporting facilities, agropolitan area development policy, and agropolitan area masterplan. 3. research method the study was conducted at muara tami district as the agropolitan area of the city of jayapura. a qualitative approach using descriptive method was conducted to show development of agropolitan area in muara tami. based on gdrp data, it could be seen whether agriculture sector still gave the highest contribution in the economic development in each area and whether there has been a shift of roles of primary economic sectors into secondary and tertiary which indirectly showed an increase in downstream agribusiness activities in each region. by analyzing data in agricultural sector, potential agricultural product information from each district in the city of jayapura could be obtained. after obtaining some idea on agricultural activity profile, identifying infrastructure on each agribusiness subsystem, analyzing questionnaire from each respondent, ideas on level of service of infrastructure in each agribusiness subsystem which affected development of agricultural activities in the area could be obtained. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 252 analysis of agricultural production was conducted to obtain ideas on chain of agricultural activities from upstream to downstream. the longer the chain could mean the more the number of agribusiness establishments and the more people involved in it also the economic benefit from an agricultural commodity produce would be returned more to the region. with the estimation of agricultural household population in muara tami district in 2013 of around 1293 or approximately 55% from the total number of households in the area (labok, 2013) so the sample taken was around 130 households (10% of the population). 4. results and discussion 4.1. agricultural potential of the city of jayapura the city of jayapura has 5 districts, with muara tami district as the largest district (626,7 km 2 ) . according to the data of gdp of the city of jayapura, the contribution of agricultural sector and processing industrial sector experienced a decrease of contribution towards gdp of the city of jayapura from 2009 to 2012, and gave a small contribution of under 1% (0,4% and 0,12%) towards the economic growth of the city of jayapura. the growth of both sectors above would relate directly to the growth of agropolitan area in a certain region. table 1: economic growth & contribution of agricultural sector and processing industry in the city of jayapura year 2011-2012 (%) sector economic growth sector contribution 2011* 2012** 2011* 2012** agriculture 7.44 6.31 4.21 3.91 crops plantation crops livestock farming & produce forestry fishery 2.78 2.72 3.62 2.54 9.71 2.62 4.83 5.73 2.08 7.56 0.71 0.21 0.45 0.12 2.73 0.62 0.19 0.41 0.11 2.59 processing industry 5.29 3.37 3.01 2.75 large/medium scale industry small scale industry / home industry 2.15 8.37 2.34 4.32 1.79 1.23 1.64 1.11 notes: *) number of repairs, **) temporary number source: gdp of the city of jayapura 2013, (bps, 2013) of the city of jayapura like in any urban area in general, in which the role of tertiary sector is more dominant, gdp of the city of jayapura also receive the greatest contribution from tertiary sectors also gained the largest contribution from tertiary sector and the smallest contribution from primary sector. if we see the primary sector growth (agriculture) in the city of jayapura, it could be stated that the development of agropolitan area there decreased. ntp or nilai tukar petani (exchange rate of farmers) is an indicator used to determine farmers’ level of welfare, shown in index ratio received by farmers to the index paid by farmers in percentage. if ntp > 100, it means farmers experience surplus (increase in welfare), ntp = 100, means farmers experience a draw, and ntp < 100 means farmers experience a deficit (decrease in welfare). ntp of papua in the period of january-december 2014 (base year 2012=100) between 97,43 and 97,83, while the national ntp is in the range of 101,32 to 102,87 (bps of papua province, 2014, 2015). ntp of papua below 100 showed the lack of welfare of farmers in papua. there are a number of financial institutions which supported agricultural activities in papua, which was considered in the category of micro small, could be small industry in nature, establishments in cultivation fishery and catch fishery were household in nature using equipment ranging from nets to outboard boats, agriculture and plantation of the people established by households with several asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 253 hectares of land, and trade with turnovers starting from rp 100.000 to no more than rp 7 million per day or 210 million per month (ilo and bina, 2012). the position of micro loan according to economic sector, based on papua in numbers 2011, year 2010 from total micro loan rp. 1,6 trillion for 4 economic sectors which gained micro loan in the highest order is trade sector reaching rp. 427.8 billion (26.1%). the next sector was construction/building reaching rp. 109.5 billion (6.7%), followed by industrial sector reaching rp. 48.4 billion (3%) and in the fourth order was service sector reaching rp. 40.3 billion (2.5%). micro loan for agricultural sector in the period of 2007 2010 experienced a decrease, year 2010 with only rp. 19.1 billion experienced a decrease to 71.2% compared to year 2009 whose position was rp. 68.9 billion (ilo and bina, 2012). the following tables show data of types and total production of agricultural produce in the city of jayapura. table 2: total production according to types of agricultural establishments in the city of jayapura no. types of agricultural establishments total production 1. crops* cassava sweet potatoes rice 8 tons 7 tons 6,52 tons 2. horticulture* spinach mustard leaves kangkung(ipomoea aquatica) banana papaya 1.400 tons 1.280 tons 861 tons 1.076 tons 676 tons 3. livestock farming** poultry beef cattle pig sheep 1.611.554 tons 668.665 tons 107.690 tons 6.299 tons 4. fishery** marine fishery freshwater fishery 60.186 tons 4.325 tons 5. forestry** sawnwood roundwood/log 4.849,5033 m 3 4.650,797 m 3 notes: * 2011, **2012 source: bps of the city of jayapura the following data will show that the district of muara tami has superiority in the sector of agriculture compared to the other districts in the city of jayapura, shown with the total area and result of harvest which was relatively greater compared to the other districts for a number of types of agricultural commodity. for rice fields, only muara tami district has them in the city of jayapura. the area of rice fields there in the year 2011 was 1.150 ha, production was 7.489 ton with an average production of 6, 5 ton/ha. there had been a decline in the area of rice fields because in the year 2010, area of rice fields was 1.349 ha with a total production of 8.795 ton (bps of the city of jayapura, 2013). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 254 table 3: area of harvest and production of cassava and sweet potato in the city of jayapura, year 2011 no. district cassava sweet potato area of harvest (ha) production (ton) area of harvest (ha) production (ton) 1. abepura 30 240 32 224 2. jayapura selatan 23 184 29 203 3. jayapura utara 25 200 25 175 4. muara tami 37 296 48 336 5. heram 26 208 15 105 total 2011 141 1.128 149 1.043 total 2010 122 976 135 945 source: bps of the city of jayapura table 4: area of harvest and production of corn and peanut in the city of jayapura, year 2011 no. district corn peanut area of harvest (ha) production (ton) area of harvest (ha) production (ton) 1. abepura 9 27.9 5 10 2. jayapura selatan 0.5 4.65 3. jayapura utara 4. muara tami 110 341 7 14 5. heram 7 21.7 total 2011 126.5 395.25 12 24 total 2010 381 1.180 92 124 source: bps of the city of jayapura table 5: area of harvest and production of soybean and mungbean in the city of jayapura, year 2011 no. district soybean mungbean area of harvest (ha) production (ton) area of harvest (ha) production (ton) 1. abepura 1 1.5 0.2 0.75 2. jayapura selatan 3. jayapura utara 4. muara tami 2.1 3 1.0 1.5 5. heram total 2011 3.1 4.5 1.2 2.25 total 2010 27 40 30 45 source: bps of the city of jayapura table 6: total population of fowls in the city of jayapura, year 2012 (in number) no. district ras chicken non ras chicken duck 1. abepura 348.565 6.685 62 2. jayapura selatan 23.237 446 16 3. jayapura utara 11.619 668 10 4. muara tami 679.131 8.913 126 5. heram 81.332 5.571 22 total 2012 1161.884 22.282 236 total 2011 25.589 12.653 250 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 255 total 2010 18.349 14.440 152 source: bps of the city of jayapura table 7: total population of livestock in the city of jayapura, year 2012 (in number) no. district cow goat pig 1. abepura 453 434 3.819 2. jayapura selatan 3 73 170 3. jayapura utara 30 679 4. muara tami 4.529 651 2.122 5. heram 102 260 1.696 jumlah total 2012 5.087 1.447 8.486 jumlah total 2011 5.021 1.396 4.362 jumlah total 2010 3.663 931 5.564 source: bps of the city of jayapura table 8: the total fishery household in the city of jayapura, year 2012 no. district marine inland total 1. abepura 99 116 215 2. jayapura selatan 378 42 420 3. jayapura utara 504 26 530 4. muara tami 67 715 782 5. heram 72 72 total 2012 1.048 971 2.019 total 2011 62 278 340 total 2010 524 694 1.218 source: bps of the city of jayapura the number of agricultural business households in the city jayapura is 6.507 households (agricultural census 2013) and the majority of the people of muara tami district are farmers. with this characteristic, villages and sub districts in muara tami district are areas of centers for agricultural produce (agropolitan area) with kelurahan west koya which has relatively more complete infrastructure to become production centers, while abepura district, where youtefa market is located, is a big city, and other districts in the city of jayapura are the marketing area. area scope of muara tami district which consists of 8 administrative areas, i.e. 2 (two) sub districts and 6 (six) villages, based on each area characteristics compared to the characteristics of division of area spatial function according to agropolitan concept, is divided into several spatial functions as follows: a. area of order 3 (agricultural area unit center) covering kelurahan koya timur and koya barat. only this two sub district that has irrigation service so far so that agricultural activities in the area are higher than other villages. b. area of order 2 (main village/agropolitan center) is kelurahan koya barat. c. area of order 1 (center of agropolitant/agropolis area) is abepura district, especially youtefa market. it is a regional scale market whose area reaches is not only to serve people in the city of jayapura, but also serving people from the surrounding regencies (keerom regency and jayapura regency). the distant of area of order 1 to the area of order 3 is quite near, which is approximately 18, 6 km. there have not been many urban areas around the city of jayapura while this city is the main city in papua province with the highest total population. the city of jayapura is the main marketing area of agricultural produce from muara tami district but it is also available for trade from out of town so that there is a competition between local products and products from other places. in rice product for instance, where there is a decrease in production in muara tami, while the need for rice asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 256 for the people of the city of jayapura is quite high so that it still needs to be bought from outside of papua, showing that local products are not as competitive as product from outside of the area. 4.2. the condition of infrastructure supporting agricultural sector muara tami district which is within the administrative area of the city of jayapura is one of the areas included in the strategic plan of the department of public works regarding the provision of physical infrastructure supporting agricultural activities, such as roads and irrigation network. irrigation area in muara tami district is known as koya irrigation area. the activity of development plan of irrigation network and irrigation area was started in the budget year of 1992/1993 and is still in progress at present. one of aims of the construction of koya irrigation area is to support agricultural program with an area of 5000 ha and at present there is only around 20% of land that is watered. koya irrigation area located in the administration borders of muara tami district of the city of jayapura geographically situated between 2 0 41’-2 0 46’ south latitude and 145 0 21’-145 0 33’ east longitude. table 9: technical data of koya irrigation area of land ± 3.800 ha total of tertiary lot 86 blok length of primary channel 2.400 m length of secondary channel 51.314 m length of tertiary channel 156.472 m length of disposal channel 69.442 m building for sections/tapping 43 bh gutter 4 bh culverts 21 bh other water constructions 3 bh complementary buildings 22 bh inspection road 61.124 m source: river area office of papua for the achievement of the use of infrastructure in irrigation area in the city of jayapura until the year 2014, it can be seen in the following table. table 10: achievement of the use of infrastructure in irrigation area in the city of jayapura no. name of area irrigation activities location (regency, district, & village) output outcome vol. unit (m) vol. unit (ha) 1 di koya (5.000 ha) rehabilitation of irrigation channel dl. koya paket i jayapura, muara tami, kp. koya timur 6.000 m 525 ha 2 di koya (5.000 ha) rehabilitation of irrigtaion channel dl. koya paket ii jayapura, muara tami, kp. koya timur 6.000 m 525 ha 3 di koya (5.000 ha) rehabilitation of irrigation channel dl. koya paket iii jayapura, muara tami, kp. koya timur 1.500 m 525 ha 4 di koya (5.000 ha) rehabilitation of irrigation channel dl. jayapura, muara tami, kp. koya barat 1.500 m 551 ha asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 257 koya paket iv 5 di koya (5.000 ha) rehabilitation of irrigation channel dl. koya paket v jayapura, muara tami, kp. koya barat 1.500 m 551 ha source: the department of public works of the province of papua in table 10. it can be seen that the road condition in muara tami district is generally considered extremely bad and not so bad (86,5%), while the rest at only 13,5 % are considered to be still in good condition, in which only in 5 road segments(13,5%), covering nabire st. (koya barat st.), paniai st. (koya barat st.), transad st. (village hall/community health center), skouw mabo st. (district’s office), dan skouw mabo st. (military guard post). table 11: road infrastructure condition in muara tami district no. name of the road name of the end of the road start node end node length of the road (km) width (m) condition 1. koya barat st. koya tengah koya tengah 7.50 4.00 s 2. wamena st. koya barat st. 0.73 3.50 rb 3. jayapura st. koya barat st. 0.59 3.50 s 4. merauke st. koya barat st. 1.32 3.50 s 5. nabire st. koya barat st. 0.72 3.50 b 6. nabire i st. nabire st. demba st. 0.28 3.50 s 7. nabire ii st. nabire st. fakfak st. 0.54 3.50 s 8. paniai st. koya barat st. 0.60 3.50 b 9. demba st. koya barat st. 0.71 3.50 s 10. yapen st. koya barat st. 0.59 3.50 rb 11. fakfak st. koya barat st. 0.74 3.50 rb 12. timika st. koya barat st. 0.58 3.50 rb 13. biak st. koya barat st. 0.71 3.50 s 14. sorong st. koya barat st. 0.60 3.50 s 15. koya timur st. poros koya timur st. poros koya timur st. 12.00 3.50 s 16. cimpedak 1 st. poros koya timur st. 0.91 3.50 rb 17. cimpedak 2 st. poros koya timur st. 0.47 3.50 s 18. cimpedak 3 st. koya timur i st. 0.61 3.50 s 19. durian 1 st. poros koya timur st. 0.79 3.50 rb 20. durian 2 st. poros koya timur st. 0.59 3.50 rb 21. durian 3 st. koya timur i st. 0.61 3.50 s 22. jambu 1 st. poros koya timur st. 0.67 3.50 rb 23. matoa st. koya timur i st. 0.69 3.50 rb 24. sawo st. poros koya timur st. the tehupa curch 1.97 3.50 s 25. transad st. souw sae village hall/community health centre 2.30 5.00 b asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 258 26. skouw mabo st. skouw yambe district’s office skouw cemetery 5.60 6.00 b 27. muara tami st. nasional st. muara tami dam 3.00 6.00 rb 28. tpu koya barat st. nasional st. tpu koya barat 3.50 6.00 s/r 29. koya koso st. koya barat military guard post km.9 koya barat 4.50 6.00 s/r 30. skouw mabo st. skouw sae pos tni kopassus kampung skouw sae 2.30 6.00 b 31. penghubung koya barat st. koya timur poros koya barat poros koya timur 5.00 6.00 s/r 32. koya tengah st. gateway smp 3 koya 5.00 6.00 s/r 33. holtekamp st. smp 3 koya military guard post 10.6 6.00 rb 34. holtekamp i st. jl. holtekamp dead end 0.71 3.50 s/r 35. holtekamp ii st. holtekamp i st. holtekamp st. 0.80 3.50 s/r 36. holtekamp iii st. holtekamp i st. holtekamp ii st. 0.56 3.50 s/r 37. moso st. perbatasan ri png st. kampung moso 0.50 4.5 s/r keterangan: condition b = good, s = medium, r = damaged, rb = heavily damaged, s/r =medium/light damaged note: the condition of the road can change from medium to heavily damaged if the road repairs come lately source: the department of public works of the city of jayapura types, total number, and condition of infrastructure supporting agricultural sector in muara tami district can be seen in the following table. the level of services is the average opinion of respondents in the area. table 12: condition of infrastructure supporting agricultural sector in muara tami district agropolitan area no. type of infrastructure location level of service a. upstream agribusiness 1. kiosks of agricultural production facilities sellers (seeds, fertilizers, hoes, etc) abepura district good 2. storage house of seeds/seedlings good 3. parking area good b. primary farming business 1. irrigation network west koya & east koya quite good 2. raw water source & network tami river good c. downstream agribusiness harvest processing 1. drying area of harvest koya area quite good marketing of produce 1. agribusiness sub station west koya not functioning 2. rural-city transportation good 3. rural-city roads/bridges youtefa-west koya good 4. regional markets youtefa market good asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 259 d. settlement/supporting facilities 1. clean water quite good 2. sanitation good 3. waste disposal quite good 4. telecommunication good 5. drainage good 6. electricity baik 7. internet quite good 8. health facilities good 9. educational facilities good 10. worshipping facilities good 11. economic facilities good 12. recreation & sports facilities good 13. cooperatives good 14. banking/loans good 15. information institution good 16. farmers society good source: survey result, 2015 referring to the table above, except for supporting services infrastructure which are relatively more complete, the average agricultural subsystem in location of study are not yet equipped with complete infrastructure, especially downstream agribusiness subsystem which has very limited infrastructure. visually, the conditions of settlements in muara tami district are still very much different compared to the condition of settlement in urban area. the physical differences between muarara tami and other districts in the city of jayapura are quite clear, in which muara tami is still considered rural while other districts are urban area with relatively better and more complete facilities. the rate of service of several basic facilities to support the people’s lives in muara tami still has to be improved, among others, road network, clean water network and waste. however the majority of respondents who are residents of koya think that the average rate of infrastructure service in the area has been satisfactory so that they are considered to be able to live in this kind of settlement condition or it can be said that they are less critical in attitude towards development in their own region. the existing irrigation network is still functioning and there is an irrigation rehabilitation program from related agency. the performance of farmers in the area is very much depended on the performance of the government, one of which in conducting irrigation network rehabilitation. land of 500 hectares in west koya experienced delay in planting from january to march 2014 due to secondary irrigation channel which suffered from becoming shallow (government of kelurahankoyabarat/26-03-2014). agribusiness sub station in kelurahan koya barat was not functioning because generally buyers buy directly from farmers and transport them directly to cities or farmers take their harvest directly to youtefa market in which the distance between area of order 3 and 1 is quite near or can be travelled in approximately 30 minutes. one of the institutional organizations supporting development of agricultural sector in muara tami district is organization of perkumpulan petani pemakai air (p3a)/society of water user farmers. the number of p3a societies in muara tami district is 28 units. from the quantity, the total number of farmer societies in muara tami district can support development of agricultural sector in the area; however, what is actually more important is in the quality of the societies. what have been done by each farmer society in the area to improve the agricultural activities has not yet been significant. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 260 other organizations which are also involved in agricultural activity is financial institution. result of survey showed that approximately 41.79% of farmers in muara tami district obtained capital through loan from cooperatives/bank/kpr/other financial institutions/other parties, and 58.21% of farmers use family savings. 4.3. agribusiness chain result of survey showed that the majority of farmers (46.91%) in muara tami district sell their harvest to buyers who come to their place, around 38.27% of farmers sell their harvest by themselves to the market, and 14.81% of farmers sell to collectors in the markets. approximately 84% of farmers in muara tami district sell their harvest produce directly without giving any special processes first and only 1.45% of farmers process or pack beforehand, other harvest produce is sold through business units and for own consumption. agricultural product processed still implements simple processing technology. after harvest, generally rice is sun-dried to reduce water content so it can keep longer to be sold afterward. cassava and sweet potatoes are usually directly sold to markets or to collectors coming to their villages. a number of other types of horticulture are generally directly sold to markets or to collectors. besides the potential of crops, muara tami district also has fishery potential, especially freshwater fishery. fish cultivation ponds can be found in koya barat dan koya timur with main source of water from irrigation flow of tami dam as well as central koya which rely on rainwater since irrigation water is not flowed into the area any longer. besides direct marketing, a number of processing establishments are appearing in west koya and east koya, in the form of ponds for fishing recreation at the same time functioning as restaurants, some are even equipped with accommodation. these recreational fishing ponds are visited by many tourists from the surrounding areas (other districts in the city of jayapura) on holidays. based on the result of agricultural census, 2013, there were 165 households in the city of jayapura which carry out agricultural produce processing establishments. one household is simply able to process more than one type of agricultural produce. most of the households obtain source of main raw materials of their production not from muara tami district, due to the consideration of quality, quantity, and price. for example, business owners of cassava processing (cassava chips) in the city of jayapura obtain their raw materials from sentani area because of its better quality. business owners of ‘mujair’ fish and salad restaurants in the city of jayapura get fish from the cities of makassar and surabaya because of its reliability on shipment with certain quality. table 13: number of agricultural establishment households conducting processing of agricultural produce in the city of jayapura no. types of agricultural produce number of households 1 crops 28 2 horticulture 51 3 plantation 44 4 livestock farming 30 5 fisheries 17 6 forestry 10 source: agricultural census, 2013 5. conclusions various data show that there has been a decrease in agricultural activities in the city of jayapura. the rate of growth and contribution from agricultural sector decreased towards pdrb, ntp of papua which is below 100, a decrease in micro loan in agricultural sector, and the area of rice fields asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 261 which is actually decreasing, showed the decrease in the development of agropolitan area in the city of jayapura. the hierarchy of functional space of agropolitan area in the city of jayapura covers kelurahan koya barat and koya timur in muara tami district as order 3 area, kelurahan koya barat as order 2 areas, and youtefa market in abepura district as order 1 area. the city of jayapura is the main marketing area but it is also open for trading of agricultural produce from out of town. superior agricultural commodities from muara tami district are rice, cash crops/second crops, vegetables, fruit and livestock produce. except in supporting sector infrastructure, the agropolitan area agricultural subsystem one in muara tami district is not yet complete, especially in downstream agribusiness subsystem, and in order to improve this, great efforts from the government and local people are needed, in the form of policies and continuous community empowerment program. if downstream agribusiness subsystem is improved for instance, agricultural activities in muara tami can form a long agribusiness chain so it can also increase the agricultural activities in the upstream part. this length of agribusiness chain also shows the level of creative and innovative initiatives of the farmers so that indirectly it shows the level of empowerment of people. reinforcement in downstream agribusiness activities is important considering how limited the marketing area of agricultural commodities in the province of papua is and also the presence of competition between local products and products from outside of the city of jayapura. one thing to be considered by the government is that the concept of agropolitan area is emphasized on the interrelation of activities in agricultural sector between regions within certain area (territorial interaction), not only in the physical development (irrigation and roads for instance), and this interaction will depend on the quality of its human resources. policies to be taken by the government is to intersect the needs of local markets with ability to support area of local agricultural produce through development programs based on farmers empowerment. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adisasmita, r. (2006). rural and urban development. graha science publishers, yogyakarta. agusta, i. (2008). paradigmatic leap agropolitan program in indonesia: from the paradigm of human-driven development toward modernization paradigm (paradigm jumping). the discourse of rural sociology of indonesia, senin 04 agustus 2008. bps of the city of jayapura (statistics jayapura), (2013). the city of jayapura in number 2013, jayapura. bps of the city of jayapura (statistics jayapura) (2013). pdrb kota jayapura 2013 (gdp of the city of jayapura 2013), jayapura. bps of papua province (statistics papua) (2014). papua in figures 2014, jayapura. bps of papua province (statistics papua) (2015). essential indicators of papua province, mei 2015 edition, jayapura. bps of papua province (statistics papua) (2014). exchange rates farmers in the province of papua (farmer exchange rate) 2014, jayapura. bps of papua province (statistics papua) (2014). farming portraits of papua according subsector (results complete enumeration survey the agricultural census of 2013 and farming household income in 2013), portraits of agricultural activities in papua based on subsectors (agricultural census 2013), jayapura. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(12), 248-262 262 ilo & bina s. k. (2012). reports mapping and assessment of microfinance institutions current situation of access to finance and entrepreneurship progression in the province of papua. live hood institutionalizing sustainable development project phase 2, septemberoctober. kimpraswil, (2000). guidelines for management of food production space center of the national regions and regions (agropolitan), jakarta. labok, a. m. (2013). space management studies in the estuary district tami with agropolitan concept, ustj, jayapura. the government of kelurahankoyabarat.blogspot.co.id/2014/03/saluran-irigasi-tid. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/ issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 6(5), 76-82 76 attitude and perception of rural women towards the formation and membership of self-help groups in kaduna state, nigeria c. c. ezeh senior lecturer; agriculture, extension and rural development, college of agriculture, nigeria o. h. ezeh department of community medicine, ahmadu bello university, zaria, nigeria abstract 1 this study was carried out to elicit the attitude and perception of rural women in kaduna state, nigeria, towards the formation and membership of self-help groups (shgs). multistage random sampling was adopted and a total of 176 respondents from two (2) local government areas were interviewed using a pre-tested structured questionnaire. two sets of questions based on a 5-point likert-type scale were used to generate primary data. the respondents expressed over whelming positive attitude to the formation and membership of shgs as indicated by the aggregate and mean scores which ranged from 607 to 719 and 345 to 4.08 respectively. age (r = 0.310, p<0.05) and educational levels (r = –0.341, p<0.01) significantly influenced membership of shgs while man tal status and family size did not. recommendations are proffered with a view to sensitizing the womenfolk and enhancing their pro-active involvement in shgs in their localities. keyword: attitude, perception, self-help groups, rural women 1. introduction presently, there is a general awakening to the role of women, particularly rural women in development discourse. this has resulted in policy shifts that have moved women-centred issuesempowerment, gender equality gender mainstreaming etc. to the front burden. no doubts, the apparent neglect of these genders related issues have had profound structural dislocations, rendering most of the development programmes ineffective. by and large, they had resulted in stagnating levels of food production nutritional deficiency/malnutrition, unemployment and an upsurge in rural poverty. specifically, the womenfolk have fared worse in the scheme of thrive. as moharty (2007) put it, women are at the receiving end, holding the shorter end of the stick. several ways in which rural women have been disadvantaged and short changed have been documented. the main issues identified are cultural, religious, caste systems in existence, attitude that govern inheritance of land, absence of women’s voices in the political arena, overburdening roles for the upkeep of the family, heightened rate of divorce and men tending to die earlier (necofa, 2003). other issues relate to water and fuel which take up substantial time and resources in rural settings and fall squarely within the purview of tasks handled by women. corresponding author’s name: c. c. ezeh email address: kuchezeh@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.5/1005.5.76.82 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(5)2016, 76-82 77 it is against this background that group action becomes imperative as a veritable means of empowering rural women socially, politically and more importantly, economically. collective or group action is widely recognized as a positive force for rural development. groups enable individuals to better cope with risks particularly when neither the private sector not the government provides any safety nets or insurance against risk. groups present in a variety of forms and structures, some are referred to as support groups particularly those associated with health challenges, while others are recognized as self-help groups. this write up is concerned with the later. self-help groups (shgs) are formed by people with a common problem or situation for the purpose of pooling resource, gathering information or offering mutual support services or care. according to ifad (2000), shgs are village-based financial intermediaries usually composed of 10 – 20 local women or men. a mixed group is generally not preferred. most shgs are located in india where, according to nabard’s estimate there are about 2.2 million shgs representing 33 million members. in nigeria, the shg linkage-programme was launched under the agricultural credit guarantee scheme (acgs) in 1991 and became operational in 992. under the scheme, farmers are encouraged to form themselves into groups of between 5 and 15 on the basis of common purpose. the member are encourage to engage in regular savings for about six months and then could apply to partnership banks for a loan using saved sums as part security for the loans. of course, there has been a proliferation of shgs at state, local government and ward levels throughout the country. 1.1. problem statement and objectives several studies have shown that in the effort to generate household income and food supply, a substantial burden falls on rural women. yet, these women cannot be said to have been integrated into the mainstream of agricultural production processes. these evidences of neglect and deprivation are prevalent and manifest in the following forms:  most of nigeria rural women have limited access to land-a major production factor in smallholder agriculture.  most rural women generally lack access to productivity-raising services such as credit, cooperatives, agricultural inputs, training and extension (fao, 1990). this situation is further worsened by women’s inability to own land and other collaterals which may be required to access credit.  male farmers are more likely, than their female counterparts, to have contact with agricultural workers; most extension programmes are usually directed at male household heads.  rural women are mostly edged out in household decision making processes – further jeopardizing their chances of self-empowerment and gender mainstreaming (ezeh, 2003).  because of their modes of production, women’s contributions are usually underestimated and not accorded proper recognition. indeed these contributions are usually grouped as “unpaid family labour” and are not measured in economic terms. from the foregoing, it is obvious that rural women are seen as dependent and marginal to agricultural production and rural development processes. pertinent questions arise: how can these fetters of dependency, marginalization and impoverishment be broken? how best can these women mobilize themselves to optimality harness the resources around them for self-actualization. no doubt, leveraging on the strengths of self-help groups (shgs) becomes imperative. however, while the merits of shgs are overwhelming, most rural women still do not identify with such groups. how does the typical rural female perceive shgs? what attitudinal issues and challenges need to be considered regarding the formation and membership of shgs. these questions generate issues that underpin the effectiveness of shgs and form the thrust for this investigation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(5)2016, 76-82 78 the broad objective of this study is to elicit the altitude and perception of rural women towards the formation and membership of shgs in kaduna state, nigeria. the specific objectives are to: 1. describe the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents 2. elicit the level of awareness and relevance of shgs 3. assess the altitude and perception of the respondents regarding the formation and membership of shgs 4. identify constraints that impede the propensity to form and join shgs the study hypothesized that: there is no significant relationship between selected socio-economic characteristics of the respondents and their membership of shgs 2. methodology of the study a multi-stage sampling procedure was adopted for this study. firstly, two rural-based local government areas-soba and kauru – were randomly selected for the study. secondly, ten (10) wards were randomly selected per local government area and lastly, nine (9) respondents from each ward, were randomly selected and interviewed giving a total of 180 respondents. at the end of the exercise, 176 questionnaires were found to have been duly completed and formed the sample size for this study (97.7% of original sample). the interview instrumentpre-tested structured questionnaire – comprised of two sets of statements based on a 5-point likert scale where strongly agree (sa) = 5 point, agree (a) = 4, undecided (u) = 3, disagree (d) = 2 and strongly disagree (da) = 1. primary data was collated and analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. pearson’s correlation analysis was used to test the hypothesis. 3. results and discussions the findings of the study are presented under the following sub-headings: 3.1. socio-economic characteristics of respondents major socio-economic characteristics of the respondents recorded include age, marital status, educational attainment and occupation. the responses are as shown in table 1 below: table 1: socio-economic characteristics of the respondents socio-economic characteristics frequency (n = 176) percentage (%) a. age below 21 years 11 6.3 21 – 25 years 24 13.7 26 – 30 years 31 17.6 31 – 35 years 44 25.0 36 – 40 year 39 22.0 41 years and above 27 15.2 mean age = 32.3 years b. marital status not married 5 2.9 married 149 84.6 divorced 9 5.3 widowed 13 7.1 c. educational attainment arabic education 32 18.1 primary education 16 9.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(5)2016, 76-82 79 secondary education 5 2.9 tertiary education 2 1.4 adult literacy programme 19 10.7 no formal education 102 57.8 d. occupation full time farming 88 50.0 trading 46 25.9 food processing 28 16.1 civil service 4 2.4 others/nondescript 9 5.3 e. family size (number) 1 – 5 47 26.7 6 – 10 71 40.3 > 10 58 32.9 source: field study 2014 the educational background of the respondents was found to be generally poor. only 23 of them (13.2%) had formal education at primary level and above; 102 of them (57.8%) had no exposure to either arabic or western education including adult literacy. it is easy to see how incapacitated most of these women are in terms of being employable or even general self-empowerment. the study also revealed that about half of the respondents were engaged in farming on full-time basis, another 25.9 percent were engaged in food processing and ancillary agricultural processes. only 4 of the respondents identified as civil servant-in schools and local government service. those who identified as traders engaged in the buying and selling of agricultural and related products. it can be argued, therefore, that most of the respondents in the study area derived their livelihood and depended directly or indirectly on agriculture for family sustenance. 3.2. awareness and membership of self-help groups (shgs) the study sought to ascertain the level of awareness of the existence and relevance of shgs among the respondents. their responses were as shown in table 2. table 2: respondents’ level of awareness and membership of self-help groups (shgs) response awareness of existence f (%) awareness of relevance f (%) membership of shgs f (%) yes 147 (83.8)* 130 (43.8)* 55 (31.4)* no 29 (16.2) 46 (26.1) 121 (68.6) 176 (100) 176 (100) 176 (100) * figure appearing in parenthesis indicate percentage of respondents source: field study, 2014 it is interesting to note that about 83.8 percent of the respondents were aware of the existence of shgs; slightly less than that (73.8%) were aware of the relevance and benefits of shgs. only 16.2 percent of the respondents claimed ignorant of the existence of shgs and 26.1 percent ignorant of the relevance and benefits of shgs. however, the level of awareness of both the existence and relevance of shgs did not relate positively to the membership of shgs by the respondents. thus only 55 respondents, a dismal 31.4 percent belonged to shgs. that is, only 37.6 percent of the 147 respondents who were aware of the existence of shgs and 42.5 percent of the 130 respondents who were aware of the relevance and benefits of shgs thought it worthwhile to join such groups. 3.3. attitude and perception of respondents towards shgs about the attitude and perception of the respondents towards the formation and membership of shgs, the study sought to elicit the relevance and benefits of shgs as perceived by them. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(5)2016, 76-82 80 following twelve (12) items, via a 5-point likert scale assessed and registered their responses as shown in table 3. table 3: perception of the relevance and benefits of shgs s/no item aggregate score (∑x) mean ( ̅) 1 shgs enhance self-actualization of members 607 3.45 2 formation and membership of shgs by rural women will enhance gender mainstreaming 654 3.72 3 membership of groups will up the bargaining power of small scale rural operators 693 3.94 4 formation of shgs is a proven means of empowering rural women 656 3.73 5 group membership facilitates overall enlightenment and education 631 3.58 6 membership of shgs enables members to enjoy services at discount rates 607 3.45 7 shgs provide a cost-effective means of disbursing loans, grants etc. 704 4.00 8 membership of shgs enhances the financial capability of members 697 3.96 9 shgs provide members greater access to capital and other productive resources 719 4.08 10 group action encourages large-scale production generating economies of scale 642 3.65 11 membership of shgs encourages initiatives thereby promoting leadership qualities 632 3.59 12 shgs represent a veritable means for executing rural development programmes 651 3.70 source: field study, 2014 evidently, the aggregate and mean scores shown in table 3 indicate that the respondents had expressed a generally positive attitude towards the formation and benefits of shgs in the study area. this is affirmed by the fact that he aggregate scores were reasonably high and above average for all the items considered ranging from 607 to 719 out of a total of 880 points. similarly, the mean scores ranged from 3.45 to 4.08, all above the mean factors 3. noteworthy is the fact that item (9) with the highest aggregate and mean scores (719 and 4.08 respectively) relate to shgs providing members greater access to capital and other productive resources. invariably, this attribute of shgs is key to gender mainstreaming and empowerment. also noteworthy is the fact that the item that followed in terms of aggregate and mean scores (item 7) attested that shgs provide cost-effective means of disbursing loans, grants etc. these are strong testimonies by the respondents regarding the place of shgs in lifting the burden of impoverishment and empowering rural women. these affirmations by the respondents corroborate the findings of adebayo (2004) and achola (2011) who buttressed the roles of shgs in accessing credit and other productive resources in kwara and delta states respectively. 3.4. constraints to the formation and membership of shgs the study sought to elicit actual and perceived constraints to the formation and membership of shgs by members and non-members respectively. again, using a 50point likert-scale, the aggregate and mean scores of the respondents are as shown in table 4. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(5)2016, 76-82 81 table 4: constraints mitigating the formation and membership of shgs s/no item aggregate score (∑x) mean ( ̅) ranking 1 wrong attitude of members regarding the objectives and workings of shgs 688 3.9 3 rd 2 poor financial capacities of members to sustain groups 594 3.4 7 th 3 poor managerial/entrepreneurial skills of members 638 3.6 6 th 4 inactive and lukewarm membership 707 4.0 1 st 5 low literacy/educational levels of members 666 3.8 4 th 6 weak and incompetent leadership 646 3.7 5 th 7 poor interventions by local administrators and leaders 689 3.9 2 nd 8 discouraging stance of husbands/spouses 587 3.3 8 th source: field study, 2014 the eight items in table 4 above sought to elicit the perception of members and non-members regarding the actual and perceived constraints mitigating the formation and membership of shgs. the respondents perceived all eight items as constraints, the degrees of severity varying as indicated by the aggregate and mean scores. inactive and lukewarm membership was perceived as the strongest constraint with 707 and 4.0 aggregate and mean scores respectively. this was followed by poor interventions by local administrators and leaders (689; 3.9) and wrong attitude of members regarding the objectives and workings of shgs (688; 3.9) in that order out of a total aggregate score of 880 and mean factor of 3. the discouraging stance of spouses was not considered a strong constraint with aggregate score of 587 and ranking 8 th . the constraints perceived as most mitigating are similar to those identified by ofuoku and agbamu (2010) where poor leadership interventions and wrong attitude of members were fingered to be jeopardizing the effectiveness of farming self-help groups in central agricultural zone of delta state. 3.5. relationship between socio-economic characteristics of respondents and membership of shgs the study had hypothesized that there is no relationship between the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents and their membership of shgs. pearson’s correlation analysis was used to analyse this and the results are shown in table 4. table 5: correlation between respondents’ characteristics and membership of shgs characteristic r-value p-value remarks age 0.310 0.016 * marital status 0.163 0.213 ns educational level –0.341 0.008 ** family size 0.264 0.064 ns source: field study, 2014 * correlation is significant at 0.05 level (z-tailed) ** correlation is significant at 0.01 level (z-tailed) ns = not significant age (r = 0.310, p < 0.05) and educational level (r = –0.341, p < 0.01) significantly influenced the respondents’ membership of shgs. on the other hand, marital status (r = 0.163, p > 0.05) and family size (r = 0.264, p > 0.05) of the respondents showed no significant relationship with their membership of shgs. the implication from this analysis is that marital status and family size of the respondents had little or nothing to do with their membership of shgs. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(5)2016, 76-82 82 the null hypothesis that there is no significant relationship between the respondents’ socioeconomic characteristics and their membership of shgs is hereby rejected. the results of the correlation analysis showed that there is a significant relationship between age and educational characteristics and membership of shgs by rural women. 4. conclusion and recommendations the role of shgs in empowering rural women and enhancing gender mainstreaming at the grassroots has been proven beyond doubt. the overwhelmingly positive responses of the women in this study have lent credence to their perceived effectiveness of shgs towards achieving such goals. this is encouraging. more encouraging is the fact that the constraints identified as mitigating are not insurmountable. considering the present status of most rural women in nigeria, the imperative of embracing selfhelp groups as a veritable means of empowering them cannot be over-emphasized. the following recommendations are aimed at effectively harnessing the potentials that lie in proliferating shgs among the rural women of nigeria: i. to intensify the sensitization and mobilization of rural women towards the formation and membership of shgs. efforts at the grassroots – local government and ward levels will be highly rewarding. ii. there is need for financial and logistic support from governments and ngos. iii. channeling loans and grants meant for rural women through shgs will engender group formation. iv. training and general enlightenment on leadership and group dynamics will add impetus to group effectiveness. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references achola, i. o. (2011). velocity of micro-finance among user groups in delta state. international journal of economics and finance, 3(4), 48. adebayo, s. a. (2004). factors affecting group formation by women farmers in selected villages of kwara state, nigeria. unpublished m.sc. thesis, department of agriculture. extension and rural development, university of ilorin. ezeh, c. c. (2003). women empowerment through cooperative formation and cooperation. paper presented at the cta-dac/abu workshop on the promotion of extension methodology in home economics skills acquisition for nigerian women in agriculture. 1 – 4 december, zaria. food and agricultural organization fao (1990). women in agricultural development: gender issues in rural food security in developing countries. institutions and agrarian reforms divisions, fao, rome. pp. 156. ifad (2000). empowering women through self-help group in india. insight no. 13, march 2010. moharty, m. (2007). microcredit, ngos and poverty alleviation. the hindu, november 15. necofa (2003). relevance of gender for eco farming. necofa newsletter, 5, 1, http://www.necofa.org/50.0.html#517. ofuoku, a. o., & agbamu, i. o. (2010). leadership effectiveness among farmer self-help groups in central agricultural zone of delta state, nigeria and implications for improving extension service. asian journal of agricultural extension, economics & sociology, 2(1), 41–53. http://www.necofa.org/50.0.html#517 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 899 spices and condiments in ghana: their utilization in comminuted meat products darkwa sarah department of vocational and technical education, university of cape coast, cape coast, ghana abstract local spices were collected from seven major markets across ghana, compiled and identified by their scientific, common and local names, properties, part used and area found. seven fresh pork sausages prepared using differing compositions of these spices were sensorily evaluated in a pre-trial and four selected and further evaluated in triplicate to determine their acceptability. a 10 member panel assessed the external appearance of uncooked products, internal colour, aroma, taste and the overall acceptability of cooked products. the data was analysed as a completely randomized block design using the nonparametric analysis as employed in friedman‟s method and wilcoxon‟s signed rank test. a total of fourteen local spices were collected. a 1.52% level of inclusion of the different composite spice mixes in the products was acceptable. the prekese based product was significantly judged the most acceptable (p=.05) while the dawadawa based product the least acceptable. in conclusion, preparing ready to use composite-spice mixes from local spices to promote comminuted meat processing among meat handlers is feasible but must be done safely in order to keep the health value of the meat products. keywords: spices, condiments, comminuted meat products, ghana introduction 1 studies have shown that pigs can yield on the average four to five times more meat than cattle per ton of live weight (eusebio, 1980). generally, presentation of meat is one of the factors that affect its marketing particularly pork marketing. in ghana, marketing of pork is a major problem that thwarts the expansion of the pig industry. processing of pork to give it the desired form utility is lacking. the technical knowhow of meat processing in ghana is low. to encourage meat processing, it will be corresponding author‟s email address: sardarks@yahoo.co.uk necessary to make processing easy for farmers and meat handlers. this can be achieved by the production of ready-to-use composite spice mixes and formula e.g. sausage mixes. such spice mixes will allow meat handlers with even minimal knowledge of processing to be able to process meat products safely and correctly for the market in order to boost consumption as well as improve their incomes. fortunately, ghana is endowed with a lot of spices with the potential of being used in developing good seasoning mixes for meat products but in the light of that, much work has not been done to exploit these local spices to make the mixes. asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:sardarks@yahoo.co.uk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 899-908 900 spices are known and used for flavouring and preserving food ever since the ancient times (bauer et al., 2001). according to lemay et al. (2002) and farag et al. (1989), the addition of spices to meat and its products helps in development of colour and flavour as well as inhibit microbial growth. rosemary, oregano, cinnamon, cloves and other spices act as antioxidants in meat and poultry products and retard rancidity in fatty foods (karre et al., 2013). in earlier food applications, madsen and bertelsen (1995) used spices as antioxidants and lee et al. (1989) highlighted the importance of using ginger as an antioxidant in meat products. rosemary spice increases the redness of pork sausage making it more desirable but may not be appropriate in poultry products (karre et al., 2013). the addition of spices to meat products according to hand et al., (1981) increased the overall desirability of the products. spices remove the rawness in meat, masking the unpleasant smell, and add a tang and flavour to otherwise insipid foods. spices such as paprika, nutmeg, ginger, mace, the peppers (black, red, white), and garlic when added to some food systems enhance fermentation by promoting growth of lactic acid bacteria which alters the ph and subsequently prevents the growth of some other microorganisms (ockerman and basu, 2010). this anti-microbial property of spices helps to preserve food. some spice oils are known to show better antibacterial properties than others when it comes to meat applications. eugenol, coriander, clove, oregano and thyme oils are found to be effective at levels of 5–20 μl g −1 in inhibiting lactobacillus monocytogenes, aeromonas hydrophila and autochthonous spoilage flora in meat products (tsigarida et al., 2000; skandamis and nychas, 2001). combining different spices into spice mixes help to attain better synergetic effect. studies attribute the effect spices have on fermentation to the presence of manganese, an important growth factor for microbial cultures and an inhibitor to lactobacillus monocytogenes and staphylococcus aureus (kang and gung, 2000; bacus, 1984; zaika and kissinger, 1984). spice mixes or preparations for processing meat must however be affordable so that the aim of promoting meat processing and increasing incomes of meat handlers and processors is not defeated. it is therefore pertinent to base any such formulation on local spices. however, this potential has not been exploited probably because there is not enough reliable information available on these spices in different parts of the country. the mere identification of these local spices by name both in local and english; common and scientific are not well documented. this creates an initial difficulty in identifying whatever potential is available for their use as composite spices for the meat industry. information on the sensory properties of these spices does exist in literature but are scattered. as an initial step towards the formulation of composite-spices for the meat industry, the identification by name and compilation of sensory properties of local spices was found to be a necessary objective for this study. the study thus restricts itself to two main objectives: compilation and identification of all the common local spices found on the ghanaian market; and to develop ready-to-use composite spices or seasonings for producing comminuted meat products using pork. materials and methods spices were collected from seven major markets across the country: bolgatanga, tamale, techiman, kumasi, accra, cape coast and takoradi. during the collection of spices, interviews were conducted to find out from sellers the sensory properties, uses and local names of these spices. spices collected were sorted and cleaned. those with testa example monodora myristica were removed before grinding. spices with high moisture content like onions and ginger were peeled, cut into pieces and sun-dried asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 899-908 901 before grinding. spices were ground into micro-ground flour using an electric blender and packed into tightly closed clean containers and stored in the freezer until use. preparation of composite spices spices were broadly grouped into three based on their dominant sensory properties for example, spicy spices are the pepperytasting-spices (e.g. paprika, ginger and west african black pepper). spices were selected from each of these groups and used to prepare different formulations of composite mixtures with a commercial composite-spice as the reference. seven different formulations of composite-spices were then prepared under the following code-names:nugcoft (reference composite spice), nugcoft „d‟ (dawadawa based composite spice), nugcoft „pe‟ (pepper based composite spice), nugcoft „k‟ (karandafi based composite-spice), nugcoft „a‟ (ayerewamba based composite-spice), nugcoft „0‟ (onion based composite-spice), and nugcoft „p‟ (prekese based compositespice). pre-trial test an amount of 1.52% each of the above formulated composite-spices was used to prepare seven types of fresh pork sausages to give seven-product types. a 5-member panel was used to obtain acceptability scores for the seven product types. out of this, four products; nugcoft (control), nugcoft „0‟, nugcoft „d‟ and nugcoft „p‟ were selected for the main study. preparation of experimental products pork used for the study was obtained from a sow carcass of 80 kg weight produced at the university of cape coast teaching and research farm, cape coast. preparation of the fresh pork sausages was carried out at the meat laboratory of the university teaching and research farm, cape coast. the above selected product types were prepared in three batches (replications) on different days. the preparation of all the four-product types followed the same procedure. lean pork and fat were minced through a grinder with 5mm diameter holes in its plate. the minced lean and fat plus the other ingredients were mixed in a bowl (at a very low temperature) in the following order: lean, fat, salt, spices and cold water. immediately after mixing, the dough was stuffed into a 40-80 mm diameter hog casings with a manual stuffer. the stuffed products were linked into 6-8 cm lengths to give sausages of about 35-40 grams each. the sausages were packed into polythene bags, sealed and kept under freezing temperature (-18 0 c) prior to sensory evaluation the next morning. sensory evaluation a 10-member panel consisting of 5 males and 5 females was used. panel members were schooled as regards the following steps of sensory analysis: i. individual assessment. ii. washing of mouth after each tasting. iii. waiting a few minutes after each tasting before the next. these panel members were thus dabbed „trained‟ panel members. criteria for selection i. sex ii members must be able to know what to expect of sausages (i.e. members must be sausage eaters and know what to expect from the organoleptic characteristics). panel-testing samples of the experimental products were removed from the freezer and cooked. to cook, samples were steamed for about 1-2 minutes and deep fried for about 3-5 minutes to a yellowish-brown colour. four samples, one of each product type were placed on a side plate in two forms: (1) raw state (2) cooked state and presented to each panel member. samples were blind-coded as abcd in the first batch, 1,2,3,4 in the second and w, x, y, z, in the third. a questionnaire was self developed and provided to panel members to score products asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 899-908 902 on a 10-point rating scale ranging from 1 (poor) through 10 (excellent) for external appearance of uncooked products, internal colour, aroma and taste of cooked products. they were also required to rank samples in decreasing order from „1‟ through „4‟ based on the overall acceptability. the overall acceptability was judged as the overall impression of the product in terms of external appearance of the uncooked product, internal colour, aroma and taste of cooked products. experimental design and statistical analysis the experiment involved four treatments evaluated in three replications with sex as block. the data collected was analyzed as a completely randomized block design (crbd) using the non-parametric analysis as employed in friedman‟s test and wilcoxon‟s signed-rank test. results presentation and analysis table 1: identification of local spices scientific name common name part used properties and uses area found piper guineense west african black pepper twi/fanti suro-wisa ga gbowisi/gbowyei ewe kate/kukuli hausa masoro seeds eugenol essential oil flavouring soups, rice etc. its oil is utilized in perfumery and soap making closed forests of ashanti and eastern regions aframomum melegueta grains of paradise. twi/fanti: fam-wisa/wisa ewe: awusa/ dzekuli. hausa: yaagyi seeds paradol and volatile oils flavouring food, alcoholic liquors and veterinary medicines forest areas of eastern, western and ashanti regions fructus foeniculi thyme/fennel. twi/fanti: nketenkete ga: nketenkete ewe: nketenkete fruit phenol ether anethole ketone fenchome seasoning meat, foods used as a carminative and aromatic forest areas of ashanti and eastern regions parkia clappertoniana west african locust bean twi/fanti: osonkoran ga: ateomi ewe: ewa/ewo hausa: dawadawa pulp and seeds alkaloids, cyanogenic glycoside condiment in soups and in „dozim‟ drink. savanna and deciduous regions of ghana/tamale. eugenia caryophyllata cloves twi/fanti:pepple/prekomba ga: pepple ewe: pepple hausa: kananfari dried unopened flower bud eugenol baking, gravies, and flavouring meat thick forest of ashanti region. xylopia aethiopica ethiopian pepper (peppercorn) twi/fanti: hwentia ga: so ewe:tsuo hausa: kimba fruits and seeds avoceine‟, „rubersole‟ fat flavouring porridge and meat; ground seeds are added to snuff; mixed with piper guineense forest of western and ashanti regions asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 899-908 903 to prepare „kurobow‟ for the skin myristica fragrans nutmeg twi/fanti:nutmeg ga: nutmeg ewe: nutmeg dried kernel alcohols, myristicin and eugenol flavouring foods and baking; used as a carminative aburi areas in the eastern region. capsicum annuum paprika/chili/cayenne twi/fanti: meko/muoko ga: shito ewe: atadji hausa: tankwa fruit phenolic substance capsicin used as condiment in stews and soups. found across the country monodora myristica monodora twi/fanti: ayerewa ayerewam-amba ga: maalai ewe: ayiku hausa: elmiya seeds used as condiment in soup, seasoning meat flavour in pomade and medicine. evergreen and deciduous forest of western region allium cepa onions twi/fanti: gyeene/anyoo ga: sabolai ewe: asabolai hausa: al-basa bulb antioxidants quercetin and sulfur used as seasoning in meat found across the country allium sativum garlic twi/fanti: garlic ga: garlic ewe: garlic hausa: talfanur-wa bulb sulfur compounds – allicin, ajoene, alin etc. used as seasoning in meat and meat products found in dry sandy soils across the country zingiber officinale ginger twi/fanti akakaduro ga kakatsofa ewe nkrama/nkrawusa hausa tsita/kakadoro rhizome gingerol used in seasoning meat, for drink preparation and in medicines found across the country sorghum halepense sorghum leaves twi/fanti: ewio/ahaban ga: karundafi ewe: karundafi hausa: karundafi leafy stalk phenols, antibiotic properties used in colouring rice, beans etc. found in savanna areas of northern and upper regions of ghana tetrapleura tetraptera. tetrapleura twi/fanti: prekese/esem ga: prekese ewe: aprekese fruits aridanin flavouring soups and porridge. jam production. thick forest of ashanti region sensory evaluation the results show the feasibility of using local spices found on the ghanaian market in preparing composite seasonings for meat processing. there is a definite threshold of taste for every substance which varies with the individual and with environmental factors such as temperature. an experienced chef usually tastes his delicacies at the temperature at which they will be served, since heat and cold alter the flavour of many preparations. it is thus the responsibility of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 899-908 904 any compounder to take into consideration the sensitivity of each individual spice, temperature, taste and general appearance when selecting flavouring agents for preparation. external appearance of products generally, the incorporation of different composite-spices into the meat products did not affect the external appearance of the uncooked products much giving them a similar appearance. other factors like punctured casing, unequal sizes and hanging casing ends however contributed to some variations in the external appearance of the products. however, there was no significant difference in the external appearance of the different uncooked products. internal colour the general trend for the internal colour of products is shown in table 2. the dark colour of the prekese fruit could have been strongly imparted to the products to give the prekese based product (nugcoft „p‟) a slightly darker internal colour than the other products. on the whole however, the internal colour of the different products did not show any significant variations. table 2: acceptability rating based on internal colour of products product type median scores rank totals nugcoft (control) 7.0 9 a nugcoft „p‟ 7.0 9 a nugcoft „0‟ 7.0 7 a nugcoft „d‟ 6.3 5 a range 2-10 rank totals with the same superscript are not statistically significant at 95% level of testing aroma of products the same level, 1.52% of different composite-spices was used in each product type. the general trend for the aroma of products is shown in table 3. although the same level, 1.52% of different compositespices was used in each product type, the aroma of the products differed. this indicates that certain types of spices are more appropriate to use in meat products than others. rankings showed that the prekese based product (nugcoft „p‟) had the highest acceptable aroma compared to the dawadawa based product which was least accepted for its aroma probably because the associated smell of dawadawa could not mask the rawness of the pork contributing to a lower acceptable aroma of the product. probably, reducing the percentage composition of the dawadawa and increasing that of the sharp spices like garlic and onions could help remove the rawness of the pork and improve upon the product by making the aroma more acceptable. however, there was no significant difference between the aromas of the different products. table 3: acceptability rating based on aroma of products product type median scores rank totals nugcoft „p‟ 7.0 10.0 a nugcoft „0‟ 7.0 9.0 a nugcoft (control) 7.0 7.5 a nugcoft „d‟ 6.0 3.5 a range 2 – 10 rank totals with the same superscript are not statistically significant at 95% level of testing. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 899-908 905 taste of products taste of the prekese based product was highly accepted. prekese is very rich in easily assimilated carbohydrates with more than half being sugars. this might have contributed to the good taste of the prekese based product (nugcoft „p‟) making it a better acceptable product as shown by the ranking in table 4. there was no significant difference between male and female rankings in this study. table 4: acceptability rating based on taste of products product type median scores rank totals nugcoft „p‟ 7.0 8.5 a nugcoft „0‟ 7.0 8.5 a nugcoft (control) 7.0 7.0 a nugcoft „d‟ 7.0 6.0 a range 2 – 10 rank totals with the same superscript are not statistically significant at 95% level of testing. overall acceptability rating overall acceptability of products was based on the overall impression of the products in terms of external appearance of the uncooked products, internal colour, aroma and taste of cooked products. the general trend for overall acceptability is shown in table 5. the prekese based product (nugcoft „p‟) was judged the best in terms of internal colour, aroma and taste. it was also judged as the best product in terms of overall acceptability. on the contrary, nugcoft “d” was judged the least in terms of internal colour, aroma, taste and overall acceptability. there was a significant difference between nugcoft „d‟ and the other three products: nugcoft „p‟, nugcoft and nugcoft „0‟ at 95% level of testing (p = .05). table 5: overall acceptability rating of products product type median scores rank totals nugcoft „p‟ 21.5 12 a nugcoft (control) 21.5 8 a nugcoft „0‟ 21.0 7 a nugcoft „d‟ 21.0 3 b range 8 29 rank totals with the same superscript are not statistically significant at 95% level of testing. discussion of results a total of fourteen local spices were collected and their local and english names identified as well as their common and scientific names. documenting this information is a positive move towards identifying whatever potential is available for their use in formulating composite spices for the meat industry. information on the sensory properties of these spices have also been compiled and included as an initial step towards helping meat processors determine an ideal level of inclusion of individual spices in the composite mixes for the meat industry. although costing of the composite spice mixes was not done, they could still be considered “affordable” considering the fact that on the ghanaian market, foreign or imported spices are often more expensive than local ones. sensory evaluation results showed that nugcoft „p‟, the prekese based product had the darkest colour which probably comes from the dark-coloured prekese fruit. also, the prekese based product (nugcoft „p‟) was judged the best product in terms of internal asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 899-908 906 colour, aroma and taste. sensory parameters are vital qualities that often play significant roles in consumers‟ purchase of meat products. feiner (2006) and van oeckel et al. (1999) report that consumers often consider colour the primary visual characteristic of meat and its‟ products prior to deciding what to buy. consumers often relate the freshness and overall quality of a product with its colour (fao, 2010). the high content of easily assimilated carbohydrates mostly sugars found in prekese and the dark colouration it impacts to its products probably contributed to nugcoft “p” being judged the overall best accepted product. however, there were no significant variations in the internal colour of the different products. although the same level, 1.52% of different composite-spices was used in each product type, the aroma of products differed. this indicates that the use of certain spices in meat and its products is more appropriate than others. according to haywood (1982), prekese is associated with a strong caramellike smell and might have contributed to the prekese based product (nugcoft „p‟) being selected as the best product in terms of aroma. according to osei-tutu and nhancale (2010), when prekese is used in food and medicines, the sweet smell enhances the taste and increases its acceptability. ratings for aroma of the dawadawa based product in this study were similar to that of other studies in which the aroma of dawadawa was reported to be offensive to some consumers (achi, 2005; afribiz, 2011). this offensive smell may have influenced ranking of the product by the panel. teye et al. (2013) in a preliminary study to determine the effect of dawadawa (parkia biglobosa) on sensory and nutritional qualities of meat products such as smoked pork sausage and burgers, reported that the use of dawadawa up to 4g/kg meat in the meat products increased the crude protein content significantly (p < .001) and had no effect (p = .05) on the sensory characteristics of the products. thus, they recommend that dawadawa could be used in meat products up to 4g/kg meat for improved crude protein content. hopefully, adapting the level of inclusion of up to 4g/kg of dawadawa as recommended by teye et al. (2013) would make such products less offensive and more acceptable to panellists. the associated smell of dawadawa could not mask the rawness of the pork. this probably contributed to the product being the least accepted by the panel in terms of aroma. in addition to the level of inclusion suggested by teye et al. (2013), reducing the percentage composition of the dawadawa and increasing that of the sharp spices like the garlic and onions in this study could help reduce or completely remove the rawness of the pork and therefore improve the aroma and acceptability of the product. however, there was no significant difference in the aroma of all the different products. dawadawa is also rich in easily assimilated carbohydrates with less than half being sugars. these sugars are exploited and used to prepare a sweet drink called „dozim‟. with such properties, it‟s surprising to find out that the taste of the dawadawa based product (nugcoft „d‟) was evaluated by the panel as the least accepted. one would have expected the darker nature of dawadawa to impart more colour to the dawadawa based product, nugcoft „d‟ as was the case in the prekese product and consequently increase the acceptability of the product. this was however not the case. the low level of acceptability may have resulted from the aroma of the dawadawa rather than the colour. if the aroma of the dawadawa product could be regulated, then probably an increase in the level of inclusion of the dawadawa could still enhance the taste of the product due to its assimilated carbohydrates and make it more acceptable. sex is often a factor which influences taste and thus was the basis for selecting equal number of males and females for the sensory evaluation. generally, men are known to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(12)2013: 899-908 907 evaluate products with bitter taste better than women, while women are known to evaluate sweetness in products better than males (university of copenhagen, 2008). however, in this study, there was no significant difference between the scores provided for taste by both males and females. taste is markedly affected by smoking and this was taken care-of by not selecting any smoker to serve on the panel. for overall acceptability, there was significant (p = .05) difference between nugcoft „d‟ and the other three products: nugcoft „p‟, nugcoft and nugcoft „0‟. conclusion fourteen local spices were collected and identified. all these local spices were readily available on the ghanaian markets and could be easily obtained by farmers and individuals for the preparation of ready-touse composite-spices-to enhance meat processing. the results establish the fact that ready-to-use composite-spices make processing of meat easier by providing an appropriate amount of a particular type of spice required in meat products. the sensory evaluation results in terms of overall acceptability rating showed that the 1.52% level of inclusion of the different compositespices was acceptable. however, an increase in the percentage composition of the sharp spices like garlic and onions in the nugcoft „d‟ product (dawadawa based product) could increase its acceptability. in view of enhancing the acceptability of the nugcoft „d‟ product, it is recommended that future research on composite-spices should be geared towards the combination of different levels of inclusion of the individual spices. also to promote the use of these composite-spices: 1) the effect of storage on the composite spice mixes and that of the meat products prepared using these spice mixes must be considered. this is a very important food safety issue that must be critically looked into in order to keep the health value of the processed meat products. 2) the cost analysis due to processing and formulation of these composite spices must also be made to ascertain and confirm their feasibility and affordability. references achi, o. k. 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osei-tutu, p. and b. nhancale (2010). hidden forestry revealed: characteristics, constraints and opportunities for small and medium forest enterprises in ghana. issue 27 of iied small and medium forest enterprise series. 70pages. accessed on october 12 th from http://www.iied+small+and+mediu m+forest+enterprise_series‟source=g bs_metadata_r&cad=6 ockerman, h. w. and lopa basu (2010). fermented meat products. production and consumption accessed on october 25th, 2013 from https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/h andle/1811/45275/fermented?sequenc e=1 skandamis, p. n. and g. j. e. nychas (2001). effect of oregano essential oil on microbiological and physicochemical attributes of minced meat stored in air and modified atmospheres. journal of applied microbiology, 91: 1011–1022. teye, g. a., f. taame, k. o. bonsu and m. teye (2013). effect of dawadawa (parkia biglobosa) as a spice on sensory and nutritional qualities of meat products: a preliminary study. international journal of current 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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=lopez%20k%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=23501254 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=getty%20kj%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=23501254 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed http://www.iied+small+and+medium+forest+enterprise_series'source=gbs_metadata_r&cad=6/ http://www.iied+small+and+medium+forest+enterprise_series'source=gbs_metadata_r&cad=6/ http://www.iied+small+and+medium+forest+enterprise_series'source=gbs_metadata_r&cad=6/ https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/1811/45275/fermented?sequence=1 https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/1811/45275/fermented?sequence=1 https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/1811/45275/fermented?sequence=1 http://www.journalcra.com/ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081216104035.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081216104035.htm effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants published by: asian economic and social society issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 5(2)2015, www.aessweb.com 30 gis and remote sensing techniques for measuring agriculture land loss in balik pulau region of penang state, malaysia khalid sabbar mohammed geography section, school of humanities, universiti sains malaysia, penang, malaysia yasin elhadary faculty of geographical and environmental science, university of khartoum, sudan narimah samat & najat qader omar geography section, school of humanities, universiti sains malaysia, penang, malaysia abstract currently, malaysia like other asian countries has experienced rapid expansion of urbanization due to economic development, industrialization, massive migrations as well as natural population growth. this expansion particularly unplanned consumed a huge amount of arable land in the urban milieu and in its surrounding areas. this paper aims to measure arable land loss due to massive urbanization in balik pulau region of penang state, malaysia. landsat tm (thematic mapper) images of 1992 and 2002 at the resolution of 30 m and landsat etm (enhanced thematic mapper) 2010 have been used to measure the rate of urban expansion and its impact on agricultural land. the integration of remote sensing and geographical information system gis were used to quantify the conversion of arable land to built-up areas in penang state. the result reveals that built-up areas have expanded rapidly during the last four decades at the expense of agricultural land in balik pulau region. built-up areas had increased from 1793.22 ha in 1992 to 3235.38 ha in 2002, while agricultural areas decreased from 6171.32 to 4727.83 ha during the same period. the expansion of built-up area is directed towards low-lying areas with less topographical barrier causing heavy loss in productive land and environmental degradation. in order to safeguard the environment and maintain arable land, urbanization should be controlled and rationalized through legislative measures, wise policy and public awareness. more attention should be given to the areas that have witnessed massive urbanization and coordination between various sectors involved in development is a must. keywords: agriculture, urbanization, land use changes, gis, remote sensing, malaysia 1. introduction 1 currently, urbanization and its impact on agriculture have received considerable attention by planners, researchers, and policymakers (elhadary et al., 2013) due to it is negative impact on livelihood and food security. this idea supported by massar (2001) who stated that urbanization has impacted negatively on socio-economic development of the countries. this has led several authors to define urbanization as the transformation of rural communities into urbnized society, and often being associated with changes in livelihoods (atmis et al., 2007; martinuzzi et al., 2007; un, 2008). for liu et al. (2005) urbanization is the process of transforming rural land uses into urban activities corresponding author’s name: yasin elhadary email address: yasingeographya@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:yasingeographya@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 30-41 31 and thus put huge pressure into rural communities. despites all these, urbanization has become one of the leading factors that transform landscape all over the world (price et al., 2006). the speed of urbanization looks different between continents as it reached 42.4% in africa, 42.7% in asia, 74.2%, in europe, 79.4%, in latin american and caribbean, 82.3% in north america and 73.7% in oceania (united nation, 2003). like western nations, several asian countries including malaysia have adopted industrialization policies to foster economic growth (mcgee, 1989; simon et al., 2004). accordingly urbanization has spread very rapidly even faster than that experienced in the developed countries (deng et al., 2009; barraclough, 2005) and become hard to control particularly in some asian countries (quang, 2005). for example, urbanization in some asian cities has increased from 17.8% in 1950 to 40% in 2000s and it has been projected to reach 60 % by 2030 (atmis et al., 2007). in malaysia, the share of the national population living in urban areas increased from 27.6% in 1970 to 65.4% in 2000, and it is projected to reach 75.0% in 2020 (ghani 2000). this rapid urbanization has occurred at the expense of agricultural land and is considered as one of the most prevalent causes in transforming rural areas to urban areas (dewan and yamaguchi, 2009a). the shift of economy from a mainly agriculture to an industry based economy in early seventies (ghazali, 1999; drakakis-smith 2000; sathiamurthy, 2010) is one of the major driving forces behind the seed up of urbanization in malaysia (ghani, 2000; ghazali, 1999; samat et al., 2011). this has led manufacturing activity to increase in the metropolitan periphery, exurban areas and even in rural areas (hutton, 2004). other factors include population growth, massive rural–urban migration, economic development, governmental policy and good transportation network (yuan et al., 2005; çakir et al., 2008; koomen and stillwell, 2007). this rapid and unplanned expansion has created heavy pressure on agricultural land (saleh and al, 2007) and caused conversion of massive farming lands into urban activities (fazal, 2000; overbeek and vader, 2003). the expansion at the expense on farming activities has generated socio-economic pressure on land in urban spaces as well as at the peri-urban areas (ma and xu, 2010) leading to socioeconomic and planning problems in the urban and rural areas (tran, 2006). the aim of this article is to measure the rate of urban expansion and the loss of agricultural at penang island of malaysia, particularly in balik pulau district. the paper has started by mapping the changes in land use at penang island from 1840 to 2000 based on data derived from an old topographic map. then, remote sensing images of 1992; 2000 and 2010 integrated with geographical information system gis techniques have used to monitor land cover changes and quantify agricultural land loss in balik pulau. 2. geographical setup of the study area balik pulau literarily means back of the island, is located at the southwest district of penang state and was chosen as the study area. this area has experienced urban development pressure since 1970, when malaysia had embarked on industrialization policy as catalyst of economic growth (chan, 2010). the study area lies between 5° 24' 27'' and 5° 18' 46'' n and 100° 11' 35'' and 100° 14' 21'' e. it covers an area of approximately 86 km 2 , accounting for 28% of the total land area in penang island (figure 1). the number of population was approximately 29,218 in the 2000 and it has increased to 34,219 in 2010 (department of statistics, malaysia, 2001; 2010). the topography of this area ranges from sea level to over 4,000 m. balik pulau is located 20 km from bayan lepas international airport, 22 km from bayan lepas free industrial zone and approximately 22 km from the capital state of georgetown. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 30-41 32 figure 1: location of study area: southwest of penang island balik pulau is self-sufficient township with basic municipal facilities including hospital, a police headquarter, a fire station and a post office. it is one of the major touristic areas in penang island. balik pulau is undergoing rapid urbanization due to the high demand residential area and urban development. accordingly rice and fruits which are the famous production in the study area are now under threat due to urbanization. this offers the study an opportunity to measure the loss of productive land and thus facilitate decision makers in formulating rational policies to protect agricultural land. another reason for selecting the balik pulau is due to data availability. data availability is an important issue in monitoring land use changes since data input and database creation is time consuming and costly (samat, 2006). 3. materials and general procedure s of data processing 3.1. data for gis application this article is based mainly on the use of geographical information system gis and remote sensing rs techniques. regarding gis part, the study depends mainly on the use of the three land use maps (1967, 1974, and 2010) with the scale of 1:150,000. these maps were collected from various sources; the maps of 1967 and 1974 were gathered from university of science in malaysia usm, and the map of 2010 was collected from the federal department of town and country planning (jpbd) office. while, the roads network and elevation data with the scale of 1:150,000 were also gathered from usm. other digital maps such as penang cadastral lots and penang district which are in gis format (arcview shapefiles) were obtained from gis laboratory at the school of humanities, universiti sains malaysia. to enhance the quality and ensure better result all maps were converted into gis format and having the same projection and scale. all analogue maps have been scanned and digitized to match the maps in gis format. arcgis 9.3 software was used to perform spatial analysis and generate shape files layers. the availability of old based maps provides the study a chance to examine the expansion of built-up areas in penang state since early 1840 to 2000. with the helping of spatial analysis tool in arcgis, a time series of such expansion and its climax has been shown in (figure 3). 3.2. data for remote sensing satellite images of 1992; 2000 and 2010 have been used to investigate land cover changes and measure agriculture land loss in balik pulau. landsat data (tm (thematic mapper) 1992, etm (enhanced thematic mapper) 2002) acquired from united states geological survey (usgs) remote sensing website and thailand earth observation system (theos) 2010 were acquired asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 30-41 33 from school of physics, geophysics section, usm. the collected images are used to measure the rate of urbanization in the study area. the evaluation of land use\ land cover changes were conducted through the use of multi-temporal remote sensing image of 1992, 2002 and 2010. two major sources of images data set have been used in this study. these were landsat images with 30 meter resolutions, and theos image with 15 meters resolution. more details on these images are given in table 1. section below provides details information on image processing (correction, classification and ground control points). table 1: remote sensing data source data availability date source existing format landsat 5satellite image 24-06-1992 usgs 7bands soft copy landsat 7satellite image 1/4/2002 usgs 7bands soft copy theos1scene level 2a satellite image 29-01-2010 usgs 4bands soft copy 3.3. geometric correction and satellite image classification the study adopted anderson et al. (1976) classification system level ii. this level is appropriate for regional land use and land cover compilation and mapping (lillesand et al., 2004). figure 2 explains the flowchart used to perform image classification and to detect land cover/use changes. the first step is geometric correction which was carried out using 35 ground control points (gcps) from maps in universal transverse mercator (utm) to geocode the image of landsat tm image of 2002, then this image was used to register all the other images. by doing so, the study ensures that all images have the same projection and properly matches to each other for better classification and visual interpretation. the purpose of the image classification method is to automatically organize all pixels in the image into land cover classes or themes (lillesand and kiefer, 1994). the paper adopted usgs classification techniques as recommended by lillesand et al. (2004) in landuse/cover classification. for the classification method the study implemented maximum likelihood (ml) procedure as introduced by fan et al. (2007). supervised classification was done using pci 9.1 software using 30 ground checkpoints and the digital topographic maps of the study area. figure 2: flowchart of image classification and change detection analysis several steps have been adopted for image classification. the first step was the adoption of first order polynomial fit then all reflective bands in the images were resemble into thirty meters pixels using the nearest neighbour method. accordingly, eight classes of land use were recognized. these classes include mixed agricultural land, farming land, built-up areas, bare land, sand, mangrove, satellite image 1992 satellite image 2002 satellite image 2010 geometric correction supervisor classification accuracy assessment land use maps ground control points (gcp) change detection from 1992 to 2010 spatialtemporal analysis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 30-41 34 forest and water). to eliminate error and ensure high quality, the study adopted accuracy assessment technique. 4. accuracy assessment accuracy assessment was carried out using pci 9.1 software. this software provides all necessary statistical reports and very efficient in analyzing the classification result. this study used the sampling scheme appropriate and standard techniques adopted by (fan et al., 2007) to evaluate the accuracy. practically, the paper select 30 points randomly from classification result. the output was performed using error matrix to uncover the truth of the ground in comparison. kappa coefficient is used to examine the difference between classified image and actual data (congalton, 1991). the overall accuracy derived for data was 86.75 %, 80.35 % and 90% for the images of 1992, 2002 and 2010 respectively as shown in table 2. table 2: accuracy and kappa statistics of satellite imagers satellite image year overall accuracy overall kappa theos1scene level 2a satellite image 2010 95% 0.928% landsat 7, etm 2002 81 % 0.703% landsat 5, tm 1992 87% 0.794% 4.1. land use land covers change detection this section highlights the analysis undertaken based on spatial data obtained from topographic maps and satellite images. gis technique was used to determine the expansion of urban areas in penang island during 1840 to 2000. the type of land use/land cover change between two periods was calculated using equation 1 below (samat, 2010) and the rate of changes were calculated by using equation 2 as given by ma and xu (2010). 1 1 , , , , , , t t t t i j r i j r i j rlu lu lu     …...……………… (1) where, 1 , , t t i j rlu   = changes of land use type r at location i and j from t to t + 1, 1 , , t i j rlu  = land use type r at location i and j at time t + 1, and , , t i j rl = land use type r at location i and j at time t. 1 100% ua ub ludi ua t     ………………….. (2) where, ludi= the annual rate of change in area for land use classes. ua = certain land use class at time a ub = certain land use class at time b and. t = denotes the length of time from time a and time b, when t is in a unit of year, 5. results and discussion 5.1. analysis of historical urban expansion in penang island from 1840 to 2000 the built up area as indicator was used by this study to measure the rate of urbanization. several authors have adopted such techniques in measuring urban expansion (ma and xu, 2010; li et al., 2010; dewan and yamaguchi, 2009b; yu et al., 2010). our analysis has shown that built-up area in penang island increased by 36.7% between 1840 and 2000 (figure 3). moreover, the built-up area has asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 30-41 35 increased by 21.2 % between the year 1960 and 2000. while during 1960 and 1980 the built-up area has expanded very rapidly at rate of 8.1% annually, an increase of 2447.1ha. however, the rate of urbanization has decreased sharply between 1980 and 1985 by a ratio of 0.616, which is equivalent to 185.8 ha. the expansion has increased very rapidly between 1985 and 2000 at a percentage of 12.5%, an increase of 3761.9 ha (see table 3). this shift in urbanization is due to the rapid economic development that has taken place in penang island during such period (beng and lee, 2010; hutton, 2004; ismail and lim, 1991). three points need to be highlighted to understand the areas that have witnessed rapid urban expansion in penang island. these points include: (1) several cities have been found between 1960 and 1980. these cities include georgetown suburbs, the coalescing of butterworth–bukit mertajam, and the subsequent urban sprawl from both metropolitan areas (ismail and lim, 1991; samat, 2002). during such period the builtup area of penang island has extended by 2447 ha at an annual average rate of 112. 4ha. (2) during the year 1980 and up to the year 1985, the annual rate of built-up area in penang island was 185.9 ha at an annual average rate of 37.2 ha per year. the expansion in this period was slow compared with the earlier period as shown in (table 3 and figure 3). (3) while during the year 1985 and up to 2000, the built-up area of penang island expanded by 3761ha at an annual average rate of 250.8. our analysis has confirmed that this period had witnessed very rapid expansion of urbanization in the study area. this is due to the adoption of large-scale urban industrial complexes and increased of manufacturing activities within the metropolitan periphery, exurban areas, and even rural zones (hutton, 2004). figure 3: different historical periods of urban expansion in penang island from1840 to 2000 table 3: quantification of urban expansion in penang island from 1840 to 2000 years built-up area/ha % 1840 132.4 0.438 1900 1071.2 3.5 1960 4583.6 15.2 1980 7031.1 23.3 1985 7216.9 23.9 1995 8146.7 27.1 2000 10978.8 36.4 table 4 reflected clearly the remarkable increase of built-up areas in penang island. it shows that the percentage of built-up area has increased from 0.4% in 1840 to 36% in the year 2000. this implies that one third or more of the total area has been occupied by urbanization. moreover, the table explains that in four decades particularly from the year 1960 to 2000 built-up areas has increased by 21.2%. during this period builtup area of penang island expanded by 2447 ha, at annual average rate 112.4 ha in this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 30-41 36 period. urban expansion has grown in georgetown suburbs and the subsequent urban sprawl from this metropolitan area (ismail and lim, 1991). this rapid expansion might be due to rapid economic development in the penang island as indicated by (beng and lee, 2010; hutton, 2004; ismail and lim, 1991). or to the large-scale urban industrial complexes and manufacturing activity that have taken place in metropolitan periphery, exurban areas and even rural zones (hutton, 2004). the adoption of industrlization since 1970s has impacted negatively to agricultural sector in urban as well in countryside. table 4: urban expansion rates of penang island in different periods items periods 1960-1980 1980-1985 1985-2000 urban expansion area /ha 2447.1 185.9 3761.9 urban expansion percentage (%) 8.1 0.616 12.5 annual average rate /ha 112.4 37.2 250. 8 the analysis has shown that built -up area has expanded over the land used for agriculture. nearly 20% of agricultural land was converted to industrial sector and residential area (ismail and lim, 1991). this explains the sharp decline in agricultural production (only 3.3%) to the economy of penang island. the historical dynamic increase of built-up areas in penang island is shown in figures 4. the figure indicated that built-up areas have continued to increase between the years 1980 to 2000 and expected to increase up to the year 2020. the following section provides details on the current land use changes in balik pulau. figure 4: dynamic of urban expansion in penang, 1840-2000 5.2. dynamic changes in balik pulau from 1992 to 2010 balik pulau which is a part of penang island has faced the same destiny in urban expansion during the last two decades. the land use conversion matrix in table 5 has shown that balik pulau has witnessed dramatic land use changes during the period 1992-2002; in 1992 almost half of the total area was agricultural lands 6171, 32ha representing 53.79% of the total area, it has been decreased to 4727, 83ha by the ratio of 42.08% in 2002. the study obviously demonstrates that there had been a drastic change in urban areas (highly built-up areas), which increased by 109.03% over the 8-year period; the urban area increased from 31.23 to 65.28 km 2 . this implies that agricultural sector has lost roughly 1443, 49 ha in 10 years between 1992 and 2002. this finding appeared in the examination of the classification result of 2010 imagery. meanwhile, the total changes of these 18 years that is mostly in the farming areas, decreased by the 37% with 2288ha. also, urban uses increased by the ratio of 123.7% with 2193ha as shown in tables 5 and 6 (see figures 5 and 6). 0 5000 10000 15000 1840 1900 1960 1980 1985 1995 2000 built-up area/ha asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 30-41 37 table 5: repartition of agricultural lands and built-up areas in balik pulau of years 1992, 2002 and 2010 class surfaces 1992 surfaces 2002 surfaces 2010 total percentage of changes among 18 years ha % ha % ha % ha % agricultural lands 6171.3 53.8 4727.83 42.1 3883 35.8 2288 37.0 built-up areas 1793.2 15.6 3235.4 28.2 3987.8 34.9 +2193 123.7 the analysis has shown that built-up areas have expanded very rapidly comparing to agricultural areas. it has increased from 1793.2 ha in 1992, which encompassed 15.6% of the total of study area to approximately 3235.4ha in 2002; so the proportion on of urban uses is by the ratio of 28.2 % (as shown in table 6), and an increase of 1442.2 ha during this 10 years with an annual rate of 144.21 ha. this exactly constitutes the rate of annual loss in agricultural lands. this figure confirmed that 98% of urban expansion has occurred on areas that were used for farming activities. the analysis of the images has reached to the same result, within the years between (2002 and 2010) built-up areas also increased by 752.4 ha by at the ratio of 6.7% (as shown in tables 6) and (figure5). table 6: land cover percentage and total changes for each cover class between 1992 and 2010 cover class 1992 % 2002 % 2010 % % changed from 1992to 2002 % changed from 2002 to 2010 built-up areas 15.63 28.20 34.9 + 12.57 +6.7 forest 10.58 11.66 15.74 + 1.08 +4.8 agricultural 53.59 42.8 35.8 10.79 -7.0 mangrove 4.29 2.53 _ 1.76 _ sand 1.37 0.52 _ 0.89 _ barren land 1.41 6.27 _ + 4.86 _ figure 5: land cover classification of balik pulau 1992 and 2002 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 30-41 38 our analysis has confirmed that urbanization has expanded rapidly at the expense of agricultural lands particularly from 1992 to 2002 and during 2002 to 2010 (table 6). the findings have shown that built-up areas have increased while other land use classes remained without change or at least stable. astonishingly, the analysis has indicated there is increase in forest area. it has been increased from 10.58% in 1992 to 11.66% in 2002 an average increase of 1.08%. from 2002 until 2010 the forested area increased by average of 4.8% (table 6 and figure 6). figure 6: land cover classification of balik pulau–2010 our analysis has shown that a built-up area has increased as compared with others land use types. the percentage of builtup areas has shifted from 15.63% in 1992 to 28.20% in 2002 (see figure 6, and table 6) of an average increase of 12.57%. while during 2002 to 2010 the built-up areas has continued to increase with an average of 6.7% (table 6 and figure 6). it important to note that, agricultural land has decreased sharply as presented in the classified image. it decreases from 53.58 in 1992 to 42.8 in 2002 and to 35.8 in 2010. not only that, urbanization has impacted negatively even on mangrove. the results clearly indicated that mangrove decreased from 4.22% in 1992 to 2.5 in 2002. 6. conclusion urbanization in both penang island and balik pulau has expanded rapidly during the last four decades. this expansion has impacted negatively on agricultural sector leading to a massive loss of arable lands. penang island has shifted sharply from only 3% in 1900 up to 36% in 2000. our analysis has shown that in balik pulau agricultural land has decreased from 53.6% in 1992 to 42.8 in 2002 and to 35.8 in 2010. the major driving forces behind the lost of arable lands are believed to be the fast economic growth, industrialization and good network infrastructure. available literature on urbanization has shown that industrialization is the major factor behind the decline of most productive land particularly paddy fields in the country. a serious and urgent action is needed to control and manage urbanization in order to minimize the great loss of productive land and to sustain food security in malaysia. geographical information system gis and remote sensing have proven its efficiency in providing up to date information and large details in urban expansion. these tools alone would not give clear picture about urbanization and its consequences. integration of socioeconomic, political and developmental studies is highly needed to fill in the gap and support the spatial findings. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(2)2015: 30-41 39 acknowledgment authors wish to thank universiti sains malaysia for funding the project through phd research grant and later research university team grant number 1001/phumaniti/856002 and town and country planning department, penang state for providing data used in this study. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references anderson, j. r., ernest, e. h., john, t. r., & richard e. w. 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(2010). on the intensity and type transition of land use at the basin scale using rs/gis: a case study of the hanjiang river basin. environmental monitoring and assessment, 160(1), 169-179. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 541 economic analysis of paddy rice production in niger delta region of nigeria kadiri, f. a., eze, c. c., orebiyi, j. s. and henri–ukoha a. school of agricultural and agricultural technology, federal university of technology, owerri, imo state, nigeria abstract the study examined economic analysis of paddy rice production in niger delta region of nigeria in view to determine how profitable the crop is in the study area and how inputs or resources used in paddy rice production significantly affect the crop’s production. the data for the study was collected from 300 rice farmers in three out of nine states in the region based on their intensity in rice production in the study area using multistage and simple random sampling technique. data analysis was carried out using descriptive statistics, multiple regression model and profitability model. rice production was found to be profitable as farmers realized ₦300,071.84 as net farm income. it was also found that resources used in paddy rice production significantly affect paddy rice production. the result indicated that mean age of paddy rice farmers was 49 years, the mean farming experience was 17 years while mean cultivated land was 2.32 hectares it was recommended that reviewing the land use act of 1990 is critical so that most of the fertile land held by government will be released to rice farmers, also providing skilled labour required in rice production and easy evacuation of farm produce will go a long way in increasing the production of paddy rice in the study area. keywords: economic, analysis, paddy rice, production and niger delta introduction 1 rice is in the grass family gramineae (kuldeep, 2006). rice cultivation is the principal activity and source of income for millions of households around the globe and several countries of asia and africa are highly dependent on rice as source of foreign exchange earnings and government revenue. (rice trade, 2011). according to rice trade 2011, rice is the second largest produced cereal in the world; it is a crop that cuts across regional, religious, cultural, national and international boundaries, apart from wheat; with very high demand. china and india, supply over half of the world's rice. brazil is the most important non-asian producer, followed by north and central america, united states of america ranks corresponding author’s name: kadiri, f. a. email address: kadiri.fausat@gmail.com third in north america continent after brazil and north and central america. nigeria ranks second in africa after egypt. (united states development agency, 2009). today, rice is grown and harvested on every continent except antarctica, (rice trade, 2011), where conditions make its growth impossible. rice is a strategic and political crop in many african countries. the africa rice center, originally the west africa rice development association (warda), developed a new upland rice cultivar known as new rice for africa (nerica) among others. a nerica rice variety was developed from the hybridization between oryza sativa and oryza glaberrima (onyishi et al., 2010). nerica have long grains and yield potentials of 4.0 t/ha (africa rice center, 2006). rice is an increasingly important crop in nigeria. it is relatively easy to produce and it is grown for sale and asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kadiri.fausat@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 541-550 542 for home consumption. in some areas there is a long tradition of rice growing, but for many, it is considered a luxury food for special occasion only. with the increased availability of rice, it has become part of the everyday diet of many in nigeria. there are many varieties of rice grown in nigeria; some of these are traditional varieties while others have been introduced into the country. rice is grown virtually in all the agro-ecological zones in nigeria (akande, 2003). this is because, nigeria have ideal climatic conditions which is akin to that of south east asia where the crop is produced for export. according to onyishi et al. (2010), the main production ecologies of rice are rain-fed lowland, rain-fed upland, irrigated lowland, deep water floating, and mangrove swamp. they noted that, land area for rice production under rain-fed upland is 25%, rain-fed lowland 50%, irrigated lowland 16%, deep water and mangrove 9%, and their share of production is 17%, 35%, 27%, and 3% for rain-fed upland, rain-fed lowland, irrigated lowland, and deep water mangrove respectively. the deep water mangrove is not fully developed in nigeria because; there is lack of appropriate technology (singh et al., 1997). nigeria has a land area of 923,768 square kilometres with a total of 71.2 million hectares of cultivable land, an estimated 4.6 million hectares is suitable for rice production but only about 1.8 million hectares or 39% is currently developed for rice cultivation. (federal republic of nigeria, 2009), despite that its production is labour intensive and labour represents major production costs (kadiri, 2014). although there is increase in rice production, consumption is also increasing annually average yearly per capita consumption was 3kg in 1961-1975, and by 2005 it estimated at 33kg. during this period, self reliance has decreased from 99.0% to 64% (kadiri, 2014). nigerian policy in relation to the rice sector appears to be motivated by a whole range of factors including the; desire to curtail unfair competition from imported rice, quest for self sufficiency and national food security, challenge of reducing poverty and raising farmers’ incomes, need to generate increased employment by encouraging school leavers to go into rice production, desire to reverse the heavy outflows of foreign exchange for rice imports, and desire to raise the nutritional level of the average nigerian by making domestic rice available at affordable prices. in recent time, nigerians have increased their level of foreign rice consumption irrespective of their relative prices simply because they are polished, stone free and easy to cook. yet nutritionally, the local varieties produced in nigeria are far better than those imported. rice production is very essential in nigeria as a whole and in niger delta in particular because, it guarantees food production; creates employment opportunities; reduce poverty; and create capacity building at both individual and institutional levels. the nigerian rice sector has a lot of potentials for increased rice productivity as the country is blessed with abundant rice growing environment (nwaobiala and adesope, 2013). however, warda (2004) noted that rice policy in nigeria is characterized by inconsistency, shifting between open and protectionist trade policy and such changes hinder the ability of stakeholders to develop long term strategies for the growth of the sector. fao (2004) identified rice as a very important primary food source and this is drawn from the understanding that ricebased systems are essential for food security, poverty alleviation and improved livelihoods by enhancing the socio economic profile / status of the farmer. rice is grown in paddies or on upland fields depending on the requirements of the particular variety, there is also limited mangrove cultivation. nigeria is the largest producer of rice in west africa producing over 40% of the regions’ total production (singh et al., 1997 and faostat, 2007). in the past 30 years, production has increased six folds with nigeria producing 3.3 and 3.6 million tons of paddy rice in 2000 and 2005 respectively (faostat, 2004 and 2007). africa accounts for only about 2% of the worlds output of rice. current production stands at 2.8 million tons asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 541-550 543 with a deficit of 1.6million tons excluding the quantity smuggled through the porous borders (usaid, 2008). the successive programmes launched to increase rice production have not been able to reduce the resulting rice deficit. the imposition of a ban on rice import from 1985 to 1995 and ensuring increase in the relative price against other major staples boosted rice production mainly through area increase. past policies did not help local rice producers to secure significant market share and imports have increased since the lifting of the ban and successive increase in the import tariff from 50% to 100%. imported rice represents more than 20% of agricultural imports and half of total rice consumption (warda, 2003; nwaobiala and adesope, 2013). in spite of the relative increase in the price of rice per capita consumption has maintained the upward trend showing that rice has become a structural component of nigeria diet with a low price elasticity of demand (warda, 2003). massive importation of food especially rice in recent years is an indicator of poor state of nations agricultural and technologies development, occasioned by poor productive propensity of the farmers. increase in agricultural import is a disincentive to local farmers to produce and may cause reduction in farming population which can subsequently lead to a reduction in agricultural output. the production process involving costs and the magnitude of costs influence the magnitude of profit (anuebunwa, 2004 and 2007). many studies on rice production were geared towards maximizing profit, ignoring socioeconomic factors of the farmers which influence and contribute to rice production. problems of rice production are identified as relatively high production costs, relatively poor producer prices and marketing systems, this results to low returns and subsequently decline in rice production (fao, 2008; ugwugwu, 2008). in view of the above, this study tends to analyse the economies of paddy rice production in niger delta region of nigeria. the specific objectives of the study are to i. assess the socio-economic characteristics of rice farmers in the region; ii. estimate the production function for rice in the study area; iii. determine the costs and return associated with rice production systems. the hypothesis of the study which stated that, “resource inputs (land, seed input, family labor, hired labor, fertilizer application and herbicide application) are positively and significantly related to paddy rice yield in the study area was tested”. the niger delta of nigeria is the 3 rd largest wetland in the world. the delta is a vast flood plain built up by the accumulation of sedimentary deposits washed down the niger and benue rivers. it is composed of four ecological zones: coastal barrier islands, mangroves, fresh-water swamp forests and lowland rainforests. the region consists of nine (9) states of the federal republic of nigeria which are abia, akwaibom, bayelsa, cross river, delta, edo, imo, ondo and rivers states, and occupies an area of over 74000sq.km with a population of over 35 million people (niger delta development commission, 2010). niger delta region of nigeria, like all delta regions all over the world, is very fertile and suitable for rice cultivation. according to national bureau of statistics (2009), in considering only the niger delta states, ondo state came 1 st in areas planted to rice by states, followed by abia state, edo and delta states came 3 rd and 4 th respectively, cross river state came 5 th , imo state came 6 th , while akwa-ibom, rivers and bayelsa states came 7 th , 8 th and 9 th respectively (kadiri, 2014). materials and methods the study was carried out in the niger delta region of nigeria. this region is a densely populated region sometimes called the oil rivers because it was once a major producer of palm oil. the niger delta, as defined by the nigerian government, covers over asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 541-550 544 70,000km 2 and makes up 7.5% of nigeria’s land mass (wikipedia, 2010). historically and cartographically, it consists of present day akwa-ibom, abia, bayelsa, crossriver, delta, edo, imo ondo and rivers states. the south-south niger delta includes akwa-ibom, bayelsa, cross river, delta, edo and rivers states; south-east includes imo and abia states while ondo state constitutes the south west niger delta state. a representative sample was selected for the study using a multistage sampling technique. three states, abia, ondo and imo states were purposively selected because of their relative strengt in rice production. two local government areas from each of the state, abia (arochukwu and bende lgas), imo (okigwe and ihitte-uboma lgas), ondo (akoko north and odigbo lgas) were purposively selected based on their rice production intensity making a total of six local government areas (lgas). in each lga selected, a list of rice producing communities was compiled through the assistance of adp staff. from this list, five communities were selected randomly giving a total of thirty communities. in each of the selected communities ten rice farming households were randomly selected giving a total of fifty (50) farmers per lga and hence a total of three hundred rice farmers. this technique gave every rice farmer in each community an equal opportunity of being part of the study data for this study were collected from both primary and secondary sources. primary sources include information that was obtained from oral interview, observations and interview schedule. two sets of interview schedule were used: the village level and farmer’s household level. structured interview schedule was utilized in gathering primary data. secondary source of data include information from journals, text books, internet search, websites, published and unpublished materials relevant to the study. models used in the study were two thus: multiple regression models this model was used to achieve objective ii which is required to run the production function of rice in the study area. this is an aggregate rice production function to be employed in generating the rice production coefficients needed to access the effect of resource inputs on the output of paddy rice in the study area. four functional forms of the regression model were used so as to get the best of the model that will represent the result. these are the linear, semi log, double log and exponential functional forms. the one that gave the best fit was chosen on the following statistical criteria: 1) the magnitude of the coefficient of multiple determination r 2 2) the number of variables that are significant at 5% level of significance 3) the signs and magnitudes of the regression coefficients as they conform to the a-priori expectations, that independent variables are positively related to the dependent variables. in the implicit form, the model was expressed thus, y = f (x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, e) ---------(1) in explicit form, the models were stated thus: linear function y = b0 + b1 x1 +b2 x2+ b3 x3 b4 x4 + b5 x5 +b6 x6+ -------------------------------(2) semi log function y = inb0 + b1 inx1 + b2 inx2 + b3 inx3 + b4 inx4 + b5 inx5 + b6 inx6 ------------------(3) double log function iny = inb0 + b1 inx1 + b2 inx2 + b3 inx3 + b4 inx4 + b5 inx5 + b6 inx6 ---------------(4) exponential function iny = b0 + b1 x1 +b2 x2+ b3 x3 b4 x4 + b5 x5 +b6 x6 ---------------------------------(5) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 541-550 545 where x1 – x6 = independent variables and y = dependent variable. y = paddy rice output (kg/hec). x1 = farm size (hectare) x2 = seed input cost (₦) x3 = family labor cost (₦/ man day) x4 = hired labor cost (₦ /man day) x5 = cost of fertilizer (₦) x6 = cost of herbicide (₦) e = error term it is expected a priori that farm size (x1), seed input (x2), family labor cost (x3) hired labor cost (x4), fertilizer application cost (x5), and herbicide application costs (x6) would have a direct relationship with gross revenue or value of aggregate output per farm (y). the production coefficients for these input factors were therefore expected to be positive, ceteris paribus. profitability model the profitability model used in the analysis of profitability in rice production in the study area as given by odii (1998): is given as: gm = tr – tvc ---------------------------(6) nfi = tr – ((tfc + tvc) + inventory adjustment (ia)) ---------------------------(7) return on investment = net income/ total cost ------------------------------------------(8) % rate of return on investment (% rri) = (net income/ total cost) x 100 ----------(9) where: gm = gross margin tr = total revenue tvc = total variable cost nfi = net farm income tfc = total fixed cost tc = total cost = (tfc + tvc) and i.a = inventory adjustment results and discussion socio–economic characteristics of the respondents table 1: presents the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents socio-economic characteristics of respondents percentage (%) mean age 25 – 35 10.33% 49years 36 – 45 27.67% 46 – 55 35.00% 56 – 65 17.33% 66 – 75 9.69% marital status single 9.33% married 70.00% divorced 10.00% separated 1.00% widowed 9.67% gender male 64.33% female 33.67% participation part time farming 61.00% full time farming 39.00% educational attainment 610 years years of experience in rice farming 17 years farm size 2.32 (ha) farmers household size 6 source: field survey data, 2012 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 541-550 546 table 1 presents the mean of the socio economic characteristics of rice farmers in the study area. the table showed that most of the respondents fell within the age group 36 – 55years which was about 62.66% of the total sample, with a mean of 49years. this implied that rice farming is being practised by middle age farmers. this finding is consistent with the findings of ibitoye et al. (2012), who found that the mean age of rice farmers in their study area, was 45years. this showed that rice farmers belong to the middle age classes, who are physically fit to withstand the stress and risks involved in rice production, and are more mentally alert to embrace new techniques of rice production. also, rice production in the study area was dominated by male farmers who comprised of 64.33% of sampled farmers. this is in contrast with ibitoye et al. (2012) who found out that there were more female rice farmers than males in their study area. the result also showed that 69% of rice farmers were part time farmers and 70.00% were married, this implied that rice farmers were people with high responsibility who needed income from other sources to meet up with their financial obligations. the table also showed that rice farming has been a long time practice amongst the farmers in the study area which on the average was 17 years. the level of education attained was (6 – 10 years) on the average and the experience attained over the years will assist the farmers to be able to adopt new technologies. lastly, the result showed that farmers in the study area were small – scale farmers (2.32 hectare) and this small farm size make mechanization difficult thereby limiting output of rice to subsistence level leaving little for commercial. also, ibitoye et al. (2012) confirmed that (53.00%) of rice farmers in ibaji cultivated between 1-3 hectares. production function paddy rice in the study area table 2 presents the parameters from different production functions of paddy rice production in the study area. table 2: parameters from different production functions of paddy rice production variables linear form double log form semi log form exponential form constant 1584.32 (4.013)** 4.703 (19.419)** -22568.407 (-6.291)** 7.613 (149.382)** x1 3012.93 (3.307)** -0.032 (-0.906) -109.500 (-0.209) 0.604 (5.142)** x2 56.47 (15.84)** 0.675 (18.236)** 2293.763 (4.185)** 0.004 (9.211)** x3 25.61 (2.16)** 0.523 (4.238)** 4021.781 (2.200)** 0.000 (-0.158) x4 -45.81 (-2.50)** -0.262 (-2.618)** -5112.874 (-3.455)** -0.003 (-0.158) x5 -45.08 (-3.09)** -0.250 (-2.141)* 3620.003 (2.092)** -0.009 (-1.399) x6 -185.38 (-0.88) 0.103 (1.270)* 4724.771 (3.915)** -0.028 (-4.604)** r 0.892 0.909 0.833 0.761 r 2 0.795 0.827 0.694 0.580 sse 2944.085 0.24318 3602.019 0.37921 f – value 189.751** 232.895** 110.50** 67.084** figures in parenthesis are t values, * mean significant at 5%: ** mean significant at 1% source: field survey data, 2012 in this study, it was hypothesized that the yield or output of rice is dependent on the following, land, seed, family labor, hired labor, fertilizer application, and herbicide application. therefore, a multiple regression model was used to analyse the effect of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 541-550 547 these variables on the yield or output of rice in the study area. regression analysis was carried out to ascertain the effect of each of the explanatory variables land (x1), seed input (x2), family labor (x3), hired labor (x4), fertilizer application (x5), herbicide application (x6) on the explained variable yield (y). the regression models together with their dependent and independent variables have already been specified in model 1. the coefficients of the four functional forms were presented in table 3.2. of all the aforementioned functional forms involved in the analysis, the double log functional form has the highest values of multiple determination (r 2 ) and f-value, it has five variables which were significant at both 5% and 1% levels of significance. owing to the above reasons, the double log functional form was chosen as best fit for the analysis. the double log functional form had three variables (x2 x3, x6,) positively related to the output while three variables (x1, x4 and x5) were negatively related to the output. three of the variables (x2, x3, and x4) were significant at both 1% and 5% levels of significance, while variables x5 and x6 were significant at only 5% level of significance. the coefficient of multiple determinations (r 2 ) was 82.7% while the fvalue which was 232.895 was also significant at both 1% and 5% levels of significance. on evaluation of the effects of independent variables on the yield (dependent variable) of paddy rice in the study area, the lead model performed relatively well based on the values of r 2 (0.827) and fvalue (234.877). the r 2 value showed that approximately 83% was due to the variables captured in the model while 17% was not captured possibly due to error. the high values of r 2 and fstatistics gave reliable measure of the overall explanatory power of the regression model for the test of significance of the parameter estimates of the lead equation by means of tstatistics at the chosen level of significance. the lead equation is thus: linearized double log function y = 4.703 0.032x1 + 0.675x2 + 0.523x3 (19.42)** (0.091) (18.24)** (4.24)** – 0.262x4 – 0.250x5 + 0.103x6 (-2.62)** (-2.14)* (1.27) from the lead equation, seed (x2), family labor (x3) and herbicide application. (x6) have a direct relationship with rice yield due to their positive coefficients (0.675), (0.523) and (0.103) respectively. land input x1, hired labor (x4) and fertilizer application (x5) had an inverse relationship with rice yield due to their negative coefficients of (0.032), (-0.262) and (-0.250) respectively. the production coefficients in the linearized double log function represent the partial regression coefficient or marginal productivity of the variables used in the production of (paddy) rice in the study area. the figures in parentheses represent the t values of the coefficients. a partial regression coefficient measures the change in the mean value of dependent variable (y) per unit change in one independent variable keeping other independent variables constant. in this case, it means that, holding land input (x1), family labor (x3), hired labor (x4), fertilizer application (x5) and herbicide application (x6) constant, a one percent (1%) increase in seed input (x2) led on the average to 0.7 % increase in yield. the same increase happened to x3 and x6 when others were held constant. an increase of 0.5 %, 0.1% happened to the yield respectively. conversely, a decrease of 0.03% happened to the yield for variables x1 and 0.3% each for variables x4 and x5 when others x2, x3, and x6 were held constant. this implied that, addition of a unit man-day of hired labor to the land will decrease the yield by 0.3% and also, if a unit (kg) of fertilizer is applied to the land, there will be 0.3% decrease in the yield. hypothesis of the study this hypothesis stated that, resource inputs (land, seed input, family labor, hired labor, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 541-550 548 fertilizer application and herbicide application) are positively and significantly related to rice yield in the study area. all the variables were significant at either 1% or 5% levels of significance except variable x1 which was not significant at any level from the adopted functional form (double log form), also three of the variables (x2, x3 and x6) were positively related to dependent variable (yield of paddy rice) while variables x1, x4 and x5 were negatively related to yield of (paddy) rice, we hereby reject the null hypothesis while the alternative hypothesis was accepted since there is significant positive effect in the use of resources for rice production. costs and return analysis of (paddy) rice production in the study area table 3 presents the costs and return of (paddy) rice production in the study area. table 3: analysis of costs and return of (paddy) rice production / ha in the study area item unit price (₦) total unit/ha value (₦)/ ha 1. rice revenue (tr) 138.75/kg 4713.25kg ₦653,963.44 2. variable costs a. cost of seed 60.00/kg 63.45kg ₦3,807.00 b. fertilizer cost 120.00/kg 48.68kg ₦5,841.60 c. herbicide cost 250.00/kg 2.42kg ₦ 605.00 d. labor costs i. family labor cost 2000.00/md 107.22md ₦214,433.00 ii. hired labor cost 2000.00/md 55.12md ₦110,230.00 total labor cost (tlc) ₦324,663.00 total variable cost (tvc) = a + b + c + d ₦334,916.60 gross margin (gm) = tr – tvc ₦319,046.84 4. fixed cost a. investment cost ₦6,975.00 b. land rent ₦10,000.00 total fixed cost (tfc) ₦16,975.00 total cost (tc) = tfc + tvc ₦351,891.60 5. inventory adjustment (i.a) (assumed) 200/kg 10kg ₦2,000.00 net farm income (nfi) = tr – (tc + i.a) ₦300,071.84 return to management (rtm) ₦36,008.62 net return (nr) = nfi – rtm 12% of nfi ₦264,063.22 rate of return (ror) = (nr/tc) х 100 80% source: field survey data, 2012 the planting periods of (paddy) rice according to the rice farmers was 103 – 120 days. table 3 showed the production costs and return per hectare of rice produced in the study area for the year 2012 planting season. average total value of output (paddy rice) was ₦653, 963.44k per hectare obtained from 4713.25kg of paddy rice. total operating cost amounted to ₦334,916.60 or 95.18% of the total cost of production, out of which labor cost was ₦324,663.00 or 96.93% of total production cost while fixed cost (₦16,975.00) accounted for 5.07% of the total cost of production. according to olayide and heady (1982) labor is the second most important resource in farm production and constitutes a serious limiting input in the production process. when variable inputs were disaggregated, it was observed that labor cost constituted the highest cost component (₦324,663.00) while fixed cost was identified as the least (₦16,975.00) cost component. the net farm income of rice farmers in the study area was ₦300,071.84 which indicated that rice production is profitable. rice farmers on the average made a net return of ₦264,063.22 per asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 541-550 549 hectare that resulted in a return of ₦0.80k for every one naira invested. this result is in conformity with the findings of ibitoye et al. (2012) who found that benefit/cost ratio of rice enterprise in ibaji was 1.95 which implied that everyone naira invested in rice farming generated revenue of ₦1.95k, indicating that rice farming in that area was viable. the average gross margin of rice enterprise as found in the study was ₦319,046.84; this positive gross margin showed that rice enterprise is profitable. this result showed that rice production is viable and highly profitable if the farm is well managed. the economic implication of these findings is that loans granted to farmers for rice production were of benefit to both lenders and borrowers since returns were high enough to repay such loans and the accrued interest. conclusion and policy recommendations rice production is one of the major sources of livelihood for farmers in niger delta region of nigeria. the study has examined the socioeconomic characteristics of respondents in the study area and also determined the significance of resource inputs in paddy rice production. the net profit of the farmers were also estimated which showed that paddy rice production is profitable in the study area. based on these findings the following recommendations were made; reviewing the land use act of 1990 is critical so that most of the fertile land held by government will be released to rice farmers, also providing skilled labour required in rice production and easy evacuation of farm produce will go a long way in increasing the production of paddy rice in the study area farmers should be encouraged to form co – operatives amongst themselves so that it would be easy for them to have access to larger land and funds in form of credit facility so as to assist each other in expansion of their production. farmers should be taught, encouraged and empowered to source for high yielding seeds for use in their production. this will make the seeds easily accessible and affordable to farmers in the communities. government should provide basic infrastructure, such as motor-able roads for rice farmers, to enable them get to the market to sell their goods. reference africa rice center (warda), (2006). africa rice trends: overview of recent developments in the sub-sahara africa. african rice center brief, cotonou, benin. http://www.warda.cgiar.org/publicati on/rice%20trend%2023-10-07.pdf. akande, t. (2003). an overview of nigerian rice economy. monography published by the nigerian institution of social and economic research (niser), ibadan. anuebunwa, f. o. (2004). the structure conduct and performance of the marketing system for garri in abia state, nigeria. ph. d thesis federal university of technology, owerri, imo state nigeria. anuebunwa, f. o. (2007). analysis of seller concentration and market performance in rice systems in ebonyi state, nigeria. journal of sustainable tropical agriculture research, 22(1), 46-50. federal republic of nigeria (2009). national rice development strategy (nrds). for the coalition of african rice development (card). food and agricultural organization (fao) (2004). concept paper-the international year of rice, 2004. food and agricultural organization (fao) (2008). regional conference for asia and the pacific beijing china, 1721may, 2008. faostat (2004). food and agricultural organization statistics division http://faostat.fa.org. faostat (2007). food and agricultural organization statistics division. http:faostat.fao.org/site/336/default.as px. ibitoye, s. j., orebiyi, j. s., & shaibu, u. m. (2012). economic effect of inorganic pesticide use on fadama ii rice farming in ibaji local government http://www.warda.cgiar.org/publication/rice%20trend%2023-10-07.pdf http://www.warda.cgiar.org/publication/rice%20trend%2023-10-07.pdf http://www.warda.cgiar.org/publication/rice%20trend%2023-10-07.pdf http://faostat.fa.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(12)2014: 541-550 550 area, kogi state, nigeria. international journal of agric. and rural development, 15(2), 1063 – 1070. kadiri, f. a. (2014). evaluation of paddy rice production in niger delta region of nigeria: a strategy for sustainable rural development. an unpublished ph. d thesis submitted to the post graduate school, federal university of technology owerri. kuldeep, s. (2006). a handbook of agriculture. directorate of information and publications of agriculture, indian council of agricultural research, new delhi, 110012, pg 818. niger delta development commission (2010). massive rice production and processing programme. a paper presented to nddc for massive rice production in niger delta, by deen construction nig. ltd. nwaobiala, c. u., & adesope, o. m., (2013). economic analysis of small holder rice production systems in ebonyi state south east, nigeria. russian journal of agricultural and socio-economic sciences, 11(23), 18. national bureau of statistics (2009). rice data systems in nigeria. onyishi, g. c., ajagu, c. o., onuoha, e. r., okporie, e. o., & sialoke, s. a. (2010). evaluation of the performance of upland rice cultivars as affected by fertilizer levels in a clay loam ultisols. the nigerian agricultural journal, 41(1), 7-76. odii, m. a. c. a. (1998). modern farm management techniques. alphabet nigeria publishers, owerri, nigeria. olayide, s. o., & heady, e. o. (1982). introduction to agricultural production economic: principles and application. agitab publishers ltd. zaria, nigeria. rice trade (2011). rice production (http://www.ricetrade.com/articles/ric eproduction.html;1-03-11,11.00am). singh, b. n., fagade, s., ukwungwu, m. n., williams, c., jagtap, s. s., oladimeji, o., efisue, a., & okhidievbie, o. (1997). rice growing environment and biophysical constraints in different agro ecological zones of nigeria. met. journal, 2(1), 35-44. ugwugwu, c. s. (2008). improved rice varieties. national cereals research institute, badeggi. a paper presented at trainer’s workshop on rice production held at abia state agricultural development programme 16-19th june. united states agency for international development (usaid), (2008). improved package practices for rice production usaid markets. maximizing in targeted sites, abuja nigeria. united states development agency (usda), (2009). rough rice (000, t) production in major producing countries in each continent of the world. psd on line june 10 th 2009. west africa rice development association (warda), (2003). strategy for rice sector revitalization in nigeria. project report warda, abidjan cote d’ivoire pp 14. west african rice development association (warda), (2004). strategic plan. 2001 -2002. buoake, cote d’ivorie. wikipedia (2010). niger delta (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/niger_d elta). http://cyberleninka.ru/journal/n/russian-journal-of-agricultural-and-socio-economic-sciences http://cyberleninka.ru/journal/n/russian-journal-of-agricultural-and-socio-economic-sciences http://www.ricetrade.com/articles/riceproduction.html;1-03-11,11.00am http://www.ricetrade.com/articles/riceproduction.html;1-03-11,11.00am http://www.ricetrade.com/articles/riceproduction.html;1-03-11,11.00am http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/niger_delta http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/niger_delta http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/niger_delta effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. issn (p): 2304-1455, issn (e): 2224-4433 volume 5(3), 77-87 77 adaptation strategies to climate variability and change and its limitations to smallholder farmers. a literature search frank phillipo assistant lecturer; department of community development, university of iringa, iringa, tanzania magreth bushesha lecturer; department of geography, the open university of tanzania, dar es salaam, tanzania zebedayo s. k. mvena associate professor; department of agriculture education and extension, sokoine university of agriculture, morogoro, tanzania abstract in sub-saharan africa, knowledge on adaptation strategies to climate variability and change are scattered and fragmented due to lack of standpoints adaptation framework. this paper intends to analyse differences in adaptation strategies across agro-ecological zones, and finding out factors dictating adaptation to climate variability and change to smallholder farmers. the paper is based on documentary review methodology in which journals and books on adaptation were used as the main sources of information. the collected information were analysed by using content analysis. this paper found that smallholder farmers use a variety of practices to adapt to climate variability and change. these practices include: crop management, livestock management, diversification of livelihood strategies and land use management. availability of extension services, climate change information and membership to social networks were among the factors identified dictating smallholder farmers adaptation to climate variability and change. the paper recommends to the government of sub-saharan africa and development partners to come up with adaptation framework that takes into consideration differences in geographical location. they are needed also to provide enabling conditions to smallholder farmers through strengthening farmers’ supportive services to enhance their adaptive capacities. keywords: adaptation, climate variability, climate change, adaptive strategies and smallholder farmer 1. introduction 1 the agriculture sector has been playing a very significant role in providing food and income to majority of people in rural sub-saharan africa. it is the mainstay of the region economy by contributing substantially to export earnings and employs majority of total labour forces. the sector is now passing through difficult moment worldwide by being seriously affected by climate variability and change (cv & c). the impact of cv & c to agriculture sector is manifesting itself through increasing incidences of floods, droughts and unpredictable rainfall in most parts of the corresponding author’s name: frank phillipo email address: mwangole76@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:mwangole76@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 77-87 78 world that affecting crop production and management. these changes contribute to social, political and economic vulnerabilities of people and society (ribot, 2010; bardsley and wiseman, 2012). although cv & c is global in nature, its potential changes are not globally uniform. the most vulnerable people to global cv & c are smallholder farmers living in the arid and semi-arid areas that experienced prolonged droughts. the areas are highly sensitive to changes in rainfall because only a small fraction of rainfall is converted to runoff and groundwater recharge is minimal (adger, 2003; nelson and stathers, 2009; madzwamuse, 2010). the impacts cv & c on agriculture are the principal factor contributing to poverty to the smallholder farmers by disrupting education, destroying assets, forcing the sale of productive capital and deepening the social differentiation among households. this state of affairs to the smallholder farmers is contributed by prospects of tragic crop failures, reduced agricultural productivity, increased hunger, malnutrition and diseases as a result of climate change (kangalawe and liwenga, 2005; liwenga et al., 2007; mary and majule, 2009; dejene, 2011). the current trends and the predictions in cv & c show a challenging future to the smallholder farmers in the sub-saharan africa. for example, some countries already face semi-arid conditions that make agriculture challenging by reducing the length of growing season. on the other hand, agriculture production is predicted to decline by over 50% at the region due to unreliable rainfall and increased in temperatures (fao, 2010). in responding to the increasing impacts of cv & c in particular shortage of rain and increase in temperature on agriculture, smallholder farmers have been using various adaptation measures in sub-saharan africa (reilly and schimmelpfennig, 1999; gbetibouo, 2009). nevertheless, existing knowledge on available adaptation measures to cv & c by smallholder farmers is scattered and fragmented as attributed by lack clear adaptation framework standing point regional wise. therefore, this paper aimed at analyzing common adaptation strategies to cv & c used by smallholder farmers in sub-saharan africa. specifically, the paper intends to assess the differences in adaptation strategies used across different agroecological zones, and factors dictating adaptation to cv & v. the paper starts with a review of theory and framework that guide adaptation to cv & c. adaptation strategies to cv & c and factors influencing adaptation are then discussed in more detail. the discussion in this paper is limited to rural environment to which agriculture sector is the main economic activity of poor people of which majority are smallholder farmers who are natural resources dependent for their livelihoods. 2. theory of adaptation to climate change and sustainable livelihood framework the analytical study on smallholder farmers’ common adaptation strategies to cv & c was guided by action theory and sustainable livelihood framework. the action theory of adaptation (ata) was developed by eisenack and stecker (2011). in their theory, eisenack and stecker viewed that adaptation process to cc is the interface between environmental stimuli with three core adaptational functions of the actor namely exposure unit, receptors and operators. they argued that, potential impact of changes in meteorological variables such as rainfall and temperature on a given social system is the one that affects the exposure unit like individual, group of individuals and non human system and hence triggers the onset of adaptation process. on the other hand, the theory identified operator groups which comprises individual or collective of actors who exercise the response towards adaptation to the impact of cv & c. as pointed out in the theory, action from the actors must be with the purpose of adapting to cv & c. the theory describes receptors as the actor that is the target of an adaptation. examples of receptors in the adaptation process include crops of a farmer or farm household. however, it was pointed out by eisenack and stecker that implementation of adaptation by an operator needs resources such as access to financial, technology, legal power, social networks, knowledge or availability of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 77-87 79 information. in the same vein, sustainable livelihood framework proposed by corney (1998) shows that people’s livelihood strategies are shaped by institutions, organizations, policies and legislation (figure 1). the framework puts people’s livelihoods and their interactions with their environment at the centre. he argues that, community and household assets such as financial capital; social capital, physical capital and natural capital are influenced by the institutions and organizations through types of policies and legislation that shape livelihood strategies of people. figure 1: sustainable livelihood strategies sources: adapted from department for international development, 1998 in the framework, it is viewed that institution and organization processes operating from the household to the national level determine access to and control of assets, livelihood strategies (i.e. types of socio-economic activities) and vulnerability to cc induced droughts. corney’s approach observed that ability to pursue different livelihood strategies is dependent on how human capital such as skills, knowledge and good health; social capital such as membership to more formal social groups; ownership of natural resources such as land and forest; availability of physical assets such as basic infrastructures e.g. roads; and financial capital such as credit facilities enable people to pursue different livelihood strategies to mollify vulnerability caused by cv & c impacts. 3. study methodology the methodology adopted in this paper was reviewing of the existing literature on adaptation to cv & c. the study reviewed various recorded information of smallholder farmers’ adaptation strategies and factors that trigger such adaptation. it summarizes the secondary data from different journals, books and other literatures related to smallholder farmers adaptation strategies from different sources such as electronic websites. the appropriate key words such as cv& c, adaptation strategies and determinants for farmers’ adaptation were used to search for the journals and books related to the subject. the collected information were analyzed by using content analysis in which all related information on cv & c, adaptation strategies and dictating factors for adaptation were sorted and organized ready for interpretation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 77-87 80 4. strategies and factors fostering adaptation to cv & c among smallholder farmers 4.1. strategies used to adapt to cv & c adaptation is a social response by individuals, a set of individuals or organizations directly or indirectly intended to change the way farmers are affected by stimuli arising from cv & c (ipcc, 2007). it reduces vulnerability to climate change by making smallholder famers better able to adjust to cv & c, moderating potential damages, and helping them to cope with adverse consequences. studies by liwenga et al., 2007; mary and majule, 2009; hassan and nhemachena, 2008; apata et al., 2009; de jonge, 2010; deressa et al., 2009; fosu-mensah et al., 2010; gbetibouo, 2009, have revealed that farmers adapt to impacts of cv & c on their agriculture activities. the adaptation strategies undertaken by smallholder farmers were discussed under practices of crop management, livestock management, land use management and livelihood strategies. 4.1.1. crop management practice crop management practice is a common technique that is used by smallholder farmers in an effort to adapt to cv & c. the technique involves widespread strategies such as the use of improved crop varieties; change of planting date; diversification of crops. nevertheless, the use of these strategies by farmers was found to vary from one agroecological zone to another due to changes in rainfall patterns and amount. for example surveys have shown the uses of improved crop varieties and changing planting date as the key adaptation strategies in semi-arid, temperate and humid agro co logical zones (herrero, et al., 2011; majule, 2008). the findings by thornton et al. (2007) in parts of east africa indicated reduction in the length of the growing period has resulted in substitution of some crop species, for example, maize crop being substituted by sorghum and millet since they are more suited to drier environments. it was also noted that some famers due to increasing cv & c they are now planting early maturing crop varieties to reduce risks on crop productivity. farmers have also been using crop diversification in their farm as a vitally important adaptation strategy in the face of the uncertainties due to the implications of cv & c as well as resultant changes in crop pest and disease pressures. report done by woodfine (2009) have shown that in sub-sahara africa, farmers grow a diverse range of crop species and varieties, which ranges from annual crops such as cereals, legumes and oilseeds to perennial crops like cassava on their farms in order to adapt to cv & c. 4.1.2. land management practice land management practice is another strategy that is found to be commonly used by smallholder farmers in adapting to the effects of cv & c. much of the literatures have identified that smallholder farmers use crop rotations, fallowing, tillage practices, soil fertility management, irrigation, crop residue/mulching, ridges and furrows. the use of these strategies by smallholder farmers are found to differ from one agricultural area to another based on different agro-ecological zone of the farming activities. several studies (mary and majule, 2009; mahoo et al., 2007) have shown that in semi-arid zones, smallholder farmers found to use tillage practice, soil fertility improvement and irrigation practice. the use of tillage was found to improve infiltration rates of water and thus reducing surface runoff associated with short but heavy rains which are usually common semi-arid areas. nevertheless, crop rotation strategy was found to be less practiced in arid and semi arid areas. in areas where crop rotation practices were used, smallholder farmers traditionally acknowledge that the practices are effective in maintaining soil fertility and health of arable land. however, the use of crop rotations practice in some parts of sub-sahara african countries is constrained by increased population pressure. on the other hand, review of literature has also found that smallholder farmers use crop residues/mulching techniques for soil moisture conservation in arid and semi-arid zones. the techniques were found to be used in situations where precipitation is low as the crop residues on the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 77-87 81 soil surface protects the upper soil layer, reducing soil temperatures and hence water loss, both important factors for optimal plant growth as air temperatures increase. this strategy also helps to reduce the amount and speed of rainwater running off croplands and reduce soil erosion. this finding is in line with what was reported by fao (2007) that a layer of mulch technique, reduces crop water requirements by 30 percent by reducing soil water loss through evaporation. 4.1.3. livestock management practice livestock management is frequently cited as an important practice undertaken by smallholder holder farmers in sub-saharan africa in adapting to cv & c. surveys done by fao, 2008; thornton et al. (2007) and sidahmed, (2008) in the region indicated that famers use destocking (reduce number of livestock), supplement livestock feeds, rotational grazing, improved breeds and livestock migration. in all these strategies, livestock migration strategy seems to be more critical to the farmers that ensure survival of livestock in the period of harsh climatic condition occasioned by cv & c. this is normally done to save a core stock of breeding animals that together would be capable of reconstituting the herd after a drought. however, the expanding human population, urbanization, environmental degradation and increased consumption of animal source foods are likely to reduce effectiveness of some of these adaptation measures. 4.1.4. diversification of livelihood strategies farming is a single major livelihood strategy for majority of smallholder farmers in rural parts of sub-saharan africa. the exposure of the strategy to cv & c has far reaching effects to the farmers’ livelihoods, as the change in climate have severe impacts on food production, water availability, human health, natural resources and environmental impacts. in responding to these effects caused by cv & c, smallholder farmers have been diversifying their sources of livelihood. according to urquhart (2008), more-diversified livelihood strategies can lead to both enhanced incomes and to spreading the risk for smallholder farmers, whose livelihoods are largely based on natural resources. diversification strategies are thus important in managing current climate risks, particularly for subsistence agricultural communities of which majority are smallholder farmers. for example, studies by (urquhart, 2008; mary and majule, 2009; herrero et al., 2011) have shown that in some countries of sub-saharan africa smallholder farmers diversified their livelihood strategies from depending on farming activities only to off-farm income generating activities (igas). these livelihood diversification strategies have shifted some of the household income portfolio away from direct production of crops, of which the resulting income gains, allow for higher overall food consumption. 4.2. factors fostering smallholder farmers’ adaptation to cv & c this part concentrates on the discussion on the factors that foster smallholder farmers’ adaptation to cv & c. adaptation as a process is the outcome of a combination of many forces and varies widely between countries and groups, as well as over time. there are several factors that influence smallholder farmers’ adaptation to cv & c. such factors categorized into five groups which include farmers/household characteristics; extension services; social networks; financial services, and technological factors. according to rass (2006), these factors do not only affect smallholder farmers’ adaptation to climate change, but they are the factors responsible for difference choices of adaptation strategies; they also behave differently in different countries and regions, particularly depending on the level of development. however, it is worth noting here that these factors are not independent to each other, nor are they mutually exclusive. the following sub-sections provide a detailed discussion on each of the factors and it is going to be explained in relation to how it influences smallholder farmers adapt to cv & c. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 77-87 82 4.2.1. farmer and/or household factors smallholder farmers’ characteristics can influence decision on whether to adapt or not to adapt to the cv &. c. for example, many studies reveal that factors like experience in farming, gender, access and control over resources, education, marital status and intra household interaction can affect the choice of crop variety to be planted to adapt to the changes and variations to climate (lockheed et al., 1980; hawaasi, 2006; kilima et al., 2010). differentiations in demographic variables such as age, gender, ethnicity, educational attainment are often cited in the literature as being related to the ability to cope with risk (1pcc, 2007). these variables can affect adaptation to the changes and variations to the climate in different ways. for instance, age can be an indicator of farming experience, which makes certain informational and search cost easier. according to luh (1995), it is a widely accepted proposition in economics of production that there is a positive relationship between efficiency and accumulated experience. similar findings were observed in studies by nkumba (2007) and hawaasi (2006). for example nkumba (2007) found that household characteristics such as age of the farmers influence the adoption of new banana varieties in kagera. but on the other hand, lockheed et al. (1980) and phillips (1994) in their studies had found that education level of the farmers influences productivity through the decisions to use purchased inputs and adoption of new varieties. other farm characteristics such as access and control over resources (e.g. land) can affect farmers’ choice over certain crop varieties (smale et al., 2001). poor households are more likely to choose traditional crops varieties because of the associated costs to the new crop varieties. it is also very clear that poor farmers always farm for home consumption; therefore, they are likely to choose varieties that suit them rather than the market. as it was identified in tanzania by mpogole (2013), most important factors for maize variety choice were related to family’s consumptions of maize rather than the suitability of the variety for the market sale. 4.2.2. availability of extension services in a country where majority of farmers are subsistent peasants, the role of extension services is indispensable. extension officers are expected to offer more than just expert assistance in improvement of production and processing, but also enable flow of information and transfer of knowledge to practice. they are required to provide a wide range of assistance to farmers in helping them identify opportunities, tackle problems and provide needed advice, such as on crop diseases, adaptation to cv & c. according to leeuwis and hall (2013), extension service is expected to help farmers improving agricultural productivity through dissemination of knowledge, facilitating access to inputs, credit facilities and linking producers to researchers and policy makers. for example, studies by namwata et al. (2010) and mpogole (2013) had shown that contact with extension services was a major factor causing the variations in crop variety preferences among farmers. similar results were found by asrat et al. (2009) that the level of access to agricultural extension services affect farmers’ private valuations of crop variety traits. hence, farmers who receive extension or advisory services are more likely to choose improved varieties than those who do not. 4.2.3. membership to social networks social network is an important source of knowledge for both individuals and groups as the knowledge about the universe is embedded in social ties and through it, individual and groups can learn about changes and variability on climate. studies by nombo 2007; bodin and crona (2009) and prell et al. (2008) have confirmed that, social network can make people more resilient and adaptive to environmental change. it is also important resource when evaluating risk and vulnerability within communities as they serve not only to disseminate information, but also to shape the way individuals process and understand that information in a particular context (morgan, 1986). the strong social networks can help the communities to have a strong supporting system which can enhance their adaptive capacity to respond to environmental shocks. as the matter of fact, farmers who are members of certain organizations or cooperatives are expected to be more asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 77-87 83 informed and therefore be able to choose improved crop varieties compared to those who do not belong to such organizations. the studies done by ortmun and king (2007) and mpogole (2013), found that, being a member to the social networks and organizations have substantially increased likelihood to purchase improved and high yielding varieties. 4.2.4. availability financial services the design and delivery of financial services in many countries of sub-sahara africa greatly affects its accessibility particularly for the smallholder farmers. financial institutions often require traditional forms of collateral property like land, house for which smallholder farmers frequently lack titles. furthermore, complicated application procedures and documentation requirements prevent poor farmers with lower education and inadequate skills from applying. for example, studies conducted by gabagambi (2003) and olomi et al. (2009) had revealed that, commercial bank and other financial institutions are reluctant to lend to smallholder farmers because of associated risks. this is attributed by several factors like, the high risk associated with the main economic activity, rain fed agriculture, and the absence of traditional physical collateral normally required by the banking system (adb, 2006). these situations have made the cost and risks associated with the delivery of lending services in rural areas to be high. for example in tanzania, reluctance of commercial banks and microfinance institutions to lend to small scale farmers led to the institutionalization of savings and credit cooperative societies (saccos). most of the saccos were village and urban based and were expected to provide credits to their members. however, most of the rural saccos do not have adequate capital to provide loans to the members. even when they do, the ability of the smallholder farmers to repay the loan has been very small. the saccos usually confiscate the properties including households ‘appliances and land for those who fail to repay the loans. this confiscation of members’ properties who fail to repay the loan has led to a negative attitude towards the saccos among smallholder farmers of which majority of them are women. 4.2.5. climate change information smallholder farmers require different types of climate information during each stage of the agricultural production process in order to adapt to cv & c. the climate change information to smallholder farmers includes early warning signals, weather forecasts, pest attacks, input management, cultivation practices, pest and disease management, and prices (thornton et al., 2006; ipcc, 2007; aker 2011). a study by mcomber et al. (2013) revealed that, smallholder farmers obtained climate information from different sources such as extension agents, their own trial and error and from members within their social networks. however, in sub-saharan africa, sharing of information among climate change actors is limited and even worse in semi-arid environments due to many barriers such as poverty, poor infrastructure and illiteracy (o’brien et al., 2008). the use of different communication channels to reach the farmers with climate information can empower smallholder farmers to adapt to cv & c. 4.2.6. technological factors lack of technology can impede seriously individual/household ability to implement adaptation options by limiting the range of possible responses. availability, access and control to technology at various levels (i.e., from local to national) and all sectors is likely to cause adaptive capacity to vary. many of the adaptation strategies identified for management of cv & c directly or indirectly involve the use of technology such as crop breeding and irrigation. hence, a community’s levels of technology and its ability to develop technologies are important determinants of adaptive capacity. moreover, openness to the development and utilization of new technologies for sustainable extraction, use, and development of natural resources is a key to strengthening adaptive capacity. adaptive capacity will be greater if social institutions and arrangements governing the allocation of power in a nation assure equitable distribution and access to technology to the people (ipcc, 2007). the extent to which communities are entitled to draw on technology greatly influences the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(3)2015: 77-87 84 adaptive capacity (asante et al., 2012). as per ludi and bird (2007), adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers is a function of not only availability of technology, but also its accessibility. lack or inadequate availability of technology within the community imposes constraints adaptation of smallholder farmers to cv & c. 5. conclusions this paper has described how smallholder farmers in rural environment setting overcome the impacts associated with cv & c. it has explored this by reviewing common strategies used by smallholder farmers in adapting to cv & c, and finding out factors that influencing adaptation. the paper found that smallholder farmers in rural parts of subsaharan africa used a variety of adaptation practices which include: crop management; land management; livestock management and livelihood diversification strategies. however, it is worth to note here that the use of these practices is likely to vary from one agro-ecological zone to another. also, the variations of selected practices can be attributed to smallholder farmer characteristics; availability of extension services and climate related information; accessibility to financial resources; social networks membership and accessibility of proper farming technology. therefore the study recommends that the government of sub-sahara africa and other stakeholders working in the agriculture sector to provide the necessary support to create enabling conditions that will help to strengthen smallholder farmers’ adaptive capacities through their supportive services. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adb (2006). microfinance policy and strategy for the bank group. operations policies and review department (popr), pp. 55. adger, w. n. 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(2006). mapping climate vulnerability and poverty in africa. report to the department for international development, ilri, nairobi, kenya, pp. 20. thornton, p., herrero, m., freeman, a., mwai, o., rege, e., jones, p., & mcdermott, j. (2007). vulnerability, climate change and livestock research. opportunities and challenges for poverty alleviation. international livestock research institute. an open access journal, 4(1), 1-23. urquhart, p. (2008). ifad’s response to climate change through support to adaptation and related actions comprehensive report: final version, pp. 160. woodfine, a. (2009). the potential of sustainable land management practices for climate change mitigation and adaptation in sub-saharan africa technical. report for terr africa, pp. 81. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(4), 88-102 88 analysing the robustness of spice chains in nepal from a smallholder perspective salil bhattarai phd candidate; faculty of agribusiness and commerce, lincoln university, new zealand michael c. lyne associate professor; faculty of agribusiness and commerce, lincoln university, new zealand, and honorary professor, university of kwazulu-natal, south africa sandra k. martin adjunct researcher; lincoln university centre for international development, new zealand abstract this study assesses the performance of supply chains for ginger and large cardamom, two major export crops produced in nepal. in particular, it aims to identify factors that constrain marketing choices available to smallholders, so limiting the chain’s robustness from their perspective. a qualitative case study method was used to gather and analyse data on farmer-buyer dyads in the ginger and cardamom chains. these case studies were informed by a conceptual model based on transaction cost economics. the analysis included a cross-case comparison to identify the effects of external attributes on the modes of engagement available to smallholders. informal market trading was the only mode of smallholder engagement observed in both chains. however, there was evidence that smallholders had previously engaged in relational contracts in the ginger chain, and in ‘captive’ relational contracts in the cardamom chain. the analysis suggests that access to other modes of engagement is constrained mainly by under-investment in value-adding assets. traditional cooperatives can and do help to resolve problems of asymmetric information and high unit transaction costs, but more innovative cooperative models are required to encourage the investment needed to finance value-adding assets and activities. keywords: large cardamom, ginger, transaction cost, collective marketing, case study 1. introduction 1 linkages between producers and markets are becoming increasingly coordinated to meet growing demands for high quality, safe food (reardon et al., 2005; shepherd, 2007; woods, 2004). however, such shifts are seldom beneficial to smallholders who struggle to meet the costs imposed by these demands (markelova et al., 2009; pingali et al., 2005; poulton et al., 2006; shepherd, 2007; vorley et al., 2009). this is cause for concern as agriculture remains a major source of livelihood for most of the rural poor in developing countries (world bank, 2007), and linking them to markets will be crucial in sustaining their livelihoods and promoting both rural and urban food security (wheatley and peters, 2004). it is therefore important to identify ways of maintaining and promoting smallholder engagement in food supply chains. corresponding author’s name: michael c. lyne email address: michael.lyne@lincoln.ac.nz asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:michael.lyne@lincoln.ac.nz asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 88-102 89 literature relating to chain performance tends to focus on whole chain issues and seldom considers performance from a smallholder perspective (aramyan et al., 2006; cadilhon et al., 2006; chan and qi, 2003; gunasekaran et al., 2004; lohman et al., 2004). this study takes a smallholder view and specifically examines the ability of supply chains to sustain smallholder engagement. the study focuses on the dyad between growers and their immediate buyers. a chain is defined as robust if it has one or more modes of engagement that sustain smallholder participation in the farmer-buyer dyad. a chain that offers smallholders a range of such modes, each with its own risk-reward profile, is considered to be more robust than one that offers smallholders few marketing choices. this study draws on a conceptual model based on transaction cost economics (williamson, 1979; 1985) to analyse information gathered in case studies of supply chains for ginger and large cardamom in nepal. large cardamom and ginger are nepal’s second and fourth most important agricultural export crops respectively (trade and enterprise promotion centre, 2012). both crops are suited to production on small farms, and government policy recognises the need to commercialise such high value crops to raise smallholder incomes and to promote rural development in nepal (aprosc and jma, 1995; joshi et al., 2004). the purpose of this paper is to understand why certain modes of engagement are (or are not) used by smallholders in order to identify effective ways of improving their access to markets. 2. the conceptual model the conceptual employed in this study extends the traditional vertical coordination continuum to incorporate missing transactions and informal market transactions (bhattarai et al., 2013) the model is illustrated in figure 1 where the segments of the pie represent different modes of producer-buyer engagement in the vertical coordination continuum. these modes of engagement are distinct from dyads which are the interface between two exchange partners. multiple dyads do not necessarily mean multiple modes of engagement. the model distinguishes between informal markets and spot markets. spot markets tend to be characterised by rigorous trading rules and product standards that support frequent and impersonal transactions based on prices. informal markets, on the other hand, lack rules and standards. transactions conducted in these markets tend to be personalised and cash-based to mitigate behavioural risk. transactions via conventional contracts usually involve relatively simple terms that can be expressed in writing and enforced by a court of law. relational contracts involve complex, recurring transactions with implicit terms that require internal enforcement. vertical integration shifts coordination decisions and their enforcement to managers. figure 1 models vertical coordination as a continuum that progresses from ‘no-transaction’ to the informal market, spot market, conventional contracting, relational contracting and vertical integration. the model highlights the relationships between the drivers of transaction costs and modes of engagement between sellers and buyers, recognizing that the absence of transactions provides valuable information about what it might take to create sustainable dyads. anticlockwise shifts from one segment to the next are driven by the frequency and complexity of transactions, asset-specific investment and hold-up problems associated with behavioural and environmental risk. transaction costs are expected to increase with increases in the levels of these drivers, motivating tighter coordination between sellers and buyers. at some point, vertical coordination gives way to vertical integration, which may well collapse if environmental risks are too high (truong, 2012). the conceptual model to analyse modes of engagement applies to individual agents in a chain, and a chain is therefore expected to host a variety of modes of farmer-buyer engagement as transaction costs, risks and risk aversion vary between individuals and locations. a chain in which smallholders continue to engage with buyers via multiple modes of engagement suggests that they are able to exercise utility-improving choices. conversely, a chain that does not engage smallholders in multiple modes may well signal limited choice and hence scope for prudent interventions to promote smallholder participation. while it is possible that a single, resilient mode asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 88-102 90 of engagement could provide all farmers with a superior outcome, empirical study would be required to check this proposition. increasing frequency of transactions increasing complexity of transactions increasing behavioural and environmental risk increasing asset specificity no transaction high unit transaction costs due to : poor physical & legal infrastructure poor services low volumes absence of farmer organizations informal market no external or internal enforcement limited number of buyers & sellers highly personalised cash transactions infrequent transactions high price volatility spot market rules & standards enforced by public or private agents many buyers & sellers impersonal transactions competition solely on price conventional contracting external enforcement of written contracts agreed price & quantity fixed duration explicit terms of trade emphasis on ex ante negotiation relational contracting internal enforcement via asset sharing, recurrent transactions & reputational capital strong information sharing explicit & implicit terms of trade mutual interdependence emphasis on ex post adaptation vertical integration internal enforcement via managerial control & equity sharing backward integration by buyers forward integration by sellers joint venture between buyers and producers figure 1: modes of engagement between farmers and buyers source: bhattarai et al. (2013) 3. data collection and analysis a qualitative, case study research strategy was adopted as the intention was to generalise the findings of the study to propositions rather than to a population, and the propositions address ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions about smallholder participation in supply chains (yin, 2009). selection of the supply chains for case study was therefore purposive to ensure both theoretical and literal replication of the conceptual model’s propositions. in each case, the primary unit of analysis was the farmer-buyer dyad. producers and buyers, including potential buyers, were treated as sub-units in the embedded, multiple-case design. data were gathered from may to june 2011 in personal, semi-structured interviews conducted with farmers, managers of marketing cooperatives, buyers, potential buyers, government extension officers and staff working for ngo’s. further details about the study sites and respondents are provided in an overview of the ginger and cardamom chains presented in the next section. interviews were recorded and later transcribed and coded using nvivo software to facilitate data retrieval and analysis. the analysis followed the approach suggested by yin (2009) of searching for patterns in the data and comparing or contrasting observed patterns with those predicted by theory. in this way, theoretical propositions (such as those summarised by the conceptual model illustrated in figure 1) can be confirmed or rejected. if rejected, the data may suggest alternative propositions, shifting the focus of the analysis to ‘theory building’. the ginger and cardamom chains were analysed separately, followed by a cross-case comparison aimed at isolating the effects of external attributes on the observed modes of engagement. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 88-102 91 4. overview of the chains this section provides a brief overview of the chains studied. the aim is not to provide comprehensive information about these chains but to understand the nature of relationships between producers and their buyers. the terms ‘producers’ and ‘buyers’ refer only to case study respondents. 4.1. ginger the first case study was conducted with the bhairab ginger producers’ cooperative in the palpa district, a major ginger producing district of nepal. interviews were conducted with five farmers, the manager of the cooperative, two executives of the district federal cooperative, three traders (including a potential buyer) and three officials of government and non-government agencies. ginger production in the case study area intensified in the early 2000s when an ngo implemented a donor funded project in the district. the cooperative was established in 2004 with 109 small ginger growers, and operates a collection depot in bhairabsthan village. volumes sold increased from 15 to 77 tons between 2004 and 2011. table 1 summarizes the characteristics of observed and recent dyads. in previous years, the producers’ marketing cooperative sold both fresh ginger and processed (dried and sliced) ginger. however, at the time of the study, only fresh ginger was still being sold (dyad 3b in table 1). a potential dyad for dried ginger failed to materialize when negotiations between the cooperative and an exporter broke down. another potential marketing channel also failed to materialize when talks between a federal cooperative and a local noodle factory failed to produce a trading relationship. these potential dyads are omitted from table 1. table 1: characteristics of observed farmer-buyer ginger dyads dyad characteristics local trader dyad (1) federal cooperative dyad (2) exporter 1 dyad (3a) wholesale trader dyad (3b) contract verbal written written verbal contract with trader federal cooperative cooperative cooperative product fresh fresh sliced and dried fresh price prevailing market price negotiated price valid for a week fixed price negotiated for a year negotiated for each transaction payment at the time of transaction part advance and final payments settled monthly part advance and full payment on delivery part advance and full payment before dispatch extension advice from buyer no no no no financed by buyer no no no no asset specific investment by seller none in building and equipment through grant funding in building and equipment through grant funding in building and equipment through grant funding asset specific investment by buyer none none investment in organic certification, drying equipment none information none price, volume quality price and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 88-102 92 exchange requirement, delivery schedule quantity during negotiation next buyer wholesalers indian traders importers in us and austria indian traders 4.2. large cardamom the second case study was conducted in ilam district in eastern nepal, a major cardamom producing district bordering india. interviews were conducted with six farmers, three immediate buyers and four key informants working for government and non-government agencies involved in large cardamom promotion. there was no evidence of collective marketing in the cardamom chain. small cardamom growers sell to district traders based in market centres along the highway. they also sell to exporters in birtamod (a major cardamom trading hub in the southern plains) and village traders. nepalese exporters sell to traders based in various indian cities. however, all three dyads exhibited very similar relationship characteristics (table 2). potential export links to countries other than india had not materialized. farmers and traders used to engage in a practice known as dahadani. in terms of this practice, forward purchase was negotiated at an agreed price or a promise to buy at a prevailing market price, and buyers would advance cash or foodstuffs to farmers on credit. however, this practice no longer exists and buyers no longer finance producers. farmers stated that dahadani exposed them to opportunistic pricing, both in selling cardamom and in purchasing foodstuffs from the buyers. table 2: characteristics of observed farmer-buyer cardamom dyads characteristics exporter dyad district trader dyad village trader dyad contract verbal contract with trader price negotiated for each transaction payment at the time of transaction extension advice from buyer no financed by buyer no asset specific investment by producers low for most farmers but high for those who grow cardamom in their arable lands asset specific investment by the buyer limited in processing by exporters, none by other buyers information exchange price and quantity at the time of negotiation next buyer indian traders for exporters, exporters for district traders district traders and exporters for village traders 5. chain analysis and discussion 5.1. ginger modes of engagement in the ginger chain switched from informal market transactions to relational contracts and back to informal market transactions. there was no evidence of spot market trading or conventional contracting. transactions with a new ginger exporter did not materialize even though the product met the importer’s requirements. similarly, transactions with a noodle factory did not materialize despite the efforts of a federal cooperative to engage this buyer. figure 2 relates the observed and failed dyads to modes of engagement proposed by the conceptual model. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 88-102 93 prior to the donor-funded project in the early 2000s, low yields and the absence of collective marketing obliged small farmers to sell fresh ginger to local traders. the farmers lacked market information and their exposure to opportunistic behavior grew as the project increased both the size and frequency of their transactions in this informal market. in 2004, the project established the bhairab ginger producers’ cooperative (a marketing cooperative) and linked it to a district-level federal cooperative. the federal cooperative aggregated the output of several marketing cooperatives and negotiated a relational contract with a large wholesaler attracted by the sizeable crop and low unit transaction costs. the relational contract required the buyer to make payments in advance of delivery. this shifted risk from growers to the buyer, suggesting that collective marketing via cooperatives afforded the growers more bargaining power. repeat transactions and ex post price renegotiation when prices were bullish provided some internal enforcement measures to encourage contract compliance. increasing frequency of transactions increasing complexity of transactions increasing behavioural and environmental risk increasing asset specificity no transaction exporter 2 food company informal market local trader wholesaler failed relational contract exporter 1 federal cooperative figure 2: observed and failed modes of engagement and their drivers in the ginger chain however, inadequate internal enforcement, high costs of collective action (that were not financially viable without project support) and high levels of environmental risk (caused by frequent policy changes affecting the importation of fresh ginger into india) led to the demise of this dyad after just three years. the marketing cooperative resorted to trading its (smaller) volumes directly with wholesalers. in addition, grant funding enabled the cooperative to purchase driers and to negotiate a relational contract with exporter 1 to sell sliced dry ginger. this relational contract was driven by the complexity of transactions as the importers specified stringent quality, volume and schedule requirements. asset specific investment in organic certification by exporter 1 also encouraged relational contracting. this dyad certainly offered growers a more stable pricing regime than did the volatile fresh ginger market. despite its advantages, the dry ginger dyad also collapsed after three years. its failure was prompted by inconsistent quality due to poor sanitation and inappropriate drying, and to inconsistent volume and delivery. these environmental risks were attributed to under-investment in value-adding equipment as the driers were too small to maintain a regular supply of quality asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 88-102 94 product. in addition, bullish prices in the fresh ginger market encouraged opportunistic behavior on the part of producers who shifted their deliveries to wholesale traders in the fresh market, thus exposing the buyer (exporter 1) to a hold-up problem. the cooperative sacrificed the long-term benefits of relational contracting in the dried ginger market for short-term gains in the informal fresh ginger market. this behavior may also explain why the cooperative was not enthusiastic about supplying the new ginger exporter 2. producer opportunism during periods of rising prices and under-investment in value-adding assets are predictable problems in traditional marketing cooperatives as their institutional arrangements encourage members to maximize profits in the short-term and to avoid investments that yield superior returns in the long-term (chaddad & cook, 2004; cook, 1995; harris et al., 1996). nepal’s ginger cooperatives were established along traditional lines and are therefore prone to the horizon problem described by cook (1995). the flawed institutional arrangements of these cooperatives appear to have contributed to the demise of relational contracts and loss of robustness in the ginger chain as the only investment made by the bhairab ginger producers’ cooperative was financed from external grants and the evidence points strongly to opportunism by the cooperative during periods of rising prices. when the cooperative’s relational contracts collapsed, it was left with no choice but to trade informally with wholesalers. spot markets do not exist as there are no grades and standards to differentiate produce fresh ginger is traded in nepal without even removing soil from the rhizome. the behavioral and environmental risk that undermined relational contracts also constrained conventional contracting in the absence of cost-effective external enforcement. collective marketing and the low complexity of transactions in the informal market help to keep transaction costs low even though the frequency of transactions is high. 5.2. large cardamom all three of the dyads observed in the cardamom chain were characterised by the attributes of an informal market where product standards and trading rules are poorly specified, goods are traded for cash, and transactions are independent of previous or subsequent transactions. there was little evidence of a spot market, conventional contracting or relational contracting. prior to the advent of mobile telephones, however, the cardamom chain was dominated by dahadani a dyad omitted from the conceptual model. although dahadani represented a form of relational contracting, the evidence suggested that the relationship was built on asymmetric information and was not fair to farmers. figure 3 illustrates observed dyads in the cardamom chain. at first glance, dahadani appeared to be a beneficial relational contract for farmers as it gave them access to finance and an assured market. however, farmers perceived the interest charges and prices offered by buyers to be unfair, and were obliged to commit a part of their next crop to redeem loans if their current crop fell short of expectations. buyers, it seems, had an information advantage. the attributes of the dahadani system suggest that this type of relationship can be best described as a ‘captive relational contract’. the relationship was not driven by mutual interdependence or by efforts to jointly create value, but by a combination of asymmetric information and the absence of alternative sources of credit. expansion of mobile phone technology reduced the cost of information as farmers could readily ask alternative local buyers about prices. in addition, alternative sources of credit emerged and farmers were no longer dependent on finance from traders. as a result, the captive dahadani system collapsed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 88-102 95 increasing frequency of transactions increasing complexity of transactions increasing behavioural and environmental risk increasing asset specificity informal market village traders district traders exporter failed ‘captive’ relational contract no transaction figure 3: observed and failed modes of engagement and their drivers in the large cardamom chain when this happened, farmers switched to informal market trading that offered them better terms. a true relational contract did not develop due to the absence of asset specific investment amongst buyers, and high levels of environmental risk in production due to crop diseases and price volatility caused by shifts in production and demand in india (and possibly in other countries). production and price uncertainty also make it harder to anticipate contingencies and therefore raise the cost of both relational and conventional contracting. while mobile phone technology alleviated the problem of asymmetric price information in the farmer-buyer dyad, farmers and supporting agencies claimed that prices were not competitive as their buyers supply a small number of exporters who control the links to indian markets. in their view, these exporters are large, well informed and collude to keep new entrants out of the market. buyers, on the other hand, claimed that their prices reflected supply and demand in indian markets. perceptions of asymmetric information and opportunistic behaviour by exporters would tend to discourage farmers from making value-adding investments. if farmers under-invest because they perceive a problem of asymmetric information, then potential solutions are to disseminate credible market information and to strengthen farmers’ bargaining power through collective marketing. on the other hand, if farmers under-invest because the premiums for value-adding are genuinely too low, then a potential solution is to reduce the unit costs of value-adding and of engaging in more complex transactions by pooling their produce and marketing it collectively (the ginger chain highlighted the role that producer cooperatives could play in value adding and attracting preferred buyers). in either case, collective marketing could play an important role in developing contractual relationships between producers and buyers further down the chain. higher levels of investment would, however, also require that marketing cooperatives be structured in ways that encourage investment by farmers and, perhaps, by strategic partners. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 88-102 96 lack of confidence in the prices offered by exporters may also have contributed to the absence of well-defined grades and standards (as they would be of little value) and, consequently, to the absence of spot markets. following the demise of captive relational contracts, cardamom farmers in ilam were left with informal trading as their only marketing channel. 5.3. conceptual model revisited the cardamom case study revealed a mode of engagement omitted from the conceptual model illustrated in figure 1, dahadani – a ‘captive’ form of relational contracting. this mode of engagement was associated with buyer opportunism to take advantage of asymmetric information and the absence of alternative sources of credit. the captive relational contract observed in the cardamom chain differs from the captive supply contract described by gereffi et al. (2005) which was aimed at adding value by strengthening the capacity of small producers to meet rigorous product specifications. in the case of dahadani, the captive relationship fits the lower end of the vertical coordination continuum as the risk-reward profile of the informal market was preferred to that of dahadani. figure 4 offers a revised version of the conceptual model. increasing frequency of transactions increasing complexity of transactions increasing behavioural and environmental risk increasing asset specificity ‘captive’ relational contracting producers depend on buyers for information & credit highly personalised transactions limited number of buyers vertical integration internal enforcement via managerial control & equity sharing backward integration by buyers forward integration by sellers joint venture between buyers and producers no transaction high unit transaction costs due to : poor physical & legal infrastructure absence of farmer organizations poor services low volumes informal market no external or internal enforcement limited number of buyers & sellers highly personalised cash transactions infrequent transactions high price volatility spot market rules & standards enforced by public or private agents many buyers & sellers impersonal transactions competition solely on price conventional contracting external enforcement of written contracts agreed price & quantity fixed duration explicit terms of trade emphasis on ex ante negotiation relational contracting internal enforcement via asset sharing, recurrent transactions & reputational capital strong information sharing explicit & implicit terms of trade mutual interdependence emphasis on ex post adaptation figure 4: revised conceptual model 6. cross-case comparison at the time of the study, the informal market was the only mode of engagement available to smallholders in either chain, yet the pathways leading to this outcome were quite different in each chain. in the ginger chain, producers switched from the informal market to relational contracting and back to the informal market when relational contracts collapsed. in the large cardamom chain, producers switched to the informal market from a captive form of relational contracting. this section focuses on external attributes (table 3) that could have contributed to this outcome through their effects on transaction costs. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 88-102 97 table 3: external attributes of observed farmer-buyer dyads in the spice chains attributes large cardamom ginger biological product attributes product traded dried capsules fresh rhizome crop biology perennial with a long gestation period annual bulkiness low high storability long short harvest season once per year once per year market product attributes product uses consumption and industrial consumption and industrial product differentiation none none compliance requirement none none market structure export vs. domestic export primarily export alternative local buyers many many alternative suppliers many many intermediaries in the supply chain many many grades and standards basic quality standards enforced by buyers basic quality standards enforced by buyers enabling environment collective marketing no yes access to finance self-help groups/microfinance institutions via cooperatives mobile telephone now available now available road access all-weather road connected nearby market centre but not farms all-weather road connected nearby market centre but not farms research and extension advice available from government extension agency (perceived as weak) available through cooperative and government agency formal legal system unavailable or costly unavailable or costly 6.1. biological product attributes large cardamom is a perennial crop that takes at least four years to produce its first economic harvest. farmers dry the fruit capsules to reduce their volume and to improve their storability. ginger, on the other hand, is an annual crop. its rhizomes are bulky and cannot be stored for a long once harvested. however, farmers can postpone harvesting if they expect prices to rise. although drying techniques are available, drying is not common. both cardamom and ginger are harvested once a year and trading is seasonal. cardamom’s long gestation period increases the level of asset specific investment made by farmers who grow the crop on land suited to annual crops. however, cardamom is easy to store, allowing farmers to wait for favourable prices and so reduce their risk of hold-up. likewise, the ability to delay harvesting helps ginger farmers to avoid hold-up problems even though the crop is perishable. this alleviates the need to develop complex contractual arrangements in the spice chains. ultimately, differences in crop biology, bulkiness and storability between cardamom and ginger did not alter the way producers and buyers engage in these supply chains. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 88-102 98 6.2. market product attributes large cardamom and ginger are either consumed directly or as a minor input in a manufactured end product (such as spice blends). even in direct consumption, they constitute a small fraction of the consumer’s food basket. the markets served by the surviving dyads observed in this study do not require a differentiated product and therefore do not impose high levels of compliance on farmers. india’s recent introduction of pest risk analysis (pra) had not affected production or postharvest practices observed in the case studies. interestingly, ginger is still exported without basic cleaning. in the absence of product differentiation and rigorous compliance requirements, it is easy for buyers and suppliers to find alternative trading partners and to transact without negotiating complex contractual terms. however, evidence from the ginger supply chain indicates that some markets do value a differentiated product (dried ginger slices). attempts to exploit this market failed, apparently due to flaws in the model adopted for collective marketing. 6.3. market structure the observed spice chains are long, primarily serving indian markets and involving many intermediaries. cardamom prices are perceived to vary with quality (size, colour and aroma), but buyer-enforced quality standards are highly subjective and premiums are trivial. in the ginger chain, quality standards are limited to sorting and removing insect infested and rotten rhizomes. collective marketing and mobile telephone services alleviated the problem of asymmetric information in the farmer-buyer dyads. however, the flow of information from export markets is constrained by long chains with many intermediaries that span international borders, and farmers were not convinced that prices offered by exporters were market related. cardamom exporters add value by tail-clipping and grading capsules by size and colour, and ginger rhizomes are cleaned in india before they are sent to markets. this suggests that grades and standards exist further down the chain. it is not clear why grades and standards do not characterise upstream transactions. it may be that downstream buyers are able to capture more value by appropriating this function or that it is costly to enforce quality standards in small transactions with many suppliers. in either case, the absence of well-defined grades and standards at the farm gate serves to heighten concerns about the credibility of prices offered by exporters. the absence of well-defined grades and standards could also explain the absence of spot markets despite the presence of many suppliers and local buyers in the chain. in addition, perceptions of asymmetric information discourage farmers from investing in value-adding activities, which may have constrained the emergence of more complex contractual arrangements. 6.4. enabling environment collective marketing was observed in the ginger chain, but not in the cardamom chain. at first glance, the apparent unimportance of collective marketing in distinguishing modes of engagement is surprising, as cooperation is expected to reduce unit transaction costs and to facilitate joint investment in value-adding assets and so lead to more complex modes of engagement. however, collective marketing failed to create new modes of engagement in the ginger chain despite increasing the volumes and frequency of transactions, and attracting large buyers. a possible explanation is that the cooperative was established along traditional lines with institutional arrangements that created a horizon problem (cook, 1995). this institutional problem discourages investment in value-adding assets and encourages decision-making that favours short-term gains over long-run growth. under-investment in dryer capacity and a temporary increase in the price of fresh ginger discouraged the cooperative from maintaining its relational contract with an exporter to supply dried ginger slices. nonetheless, collective marketing in the ginger chain attracted preferred buyers and strengthened the bargaining power of producers, enabling them to secure better trading terms. in the cardamom chain, the absence of collective marketing not only precluded asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 88-102 99 farmer investment in value-adding assets, but also denied farmers the opportunity to bulk up supplies, reduce unit transaction costs and attract a preferred buyer. cardamom producers were locked into credit relationships with buyers until micro-finance institutions and local saving groups emerged and provided alternative sources of credit. likewise, reliable and affordable price information was unavailable before the expansion of mobile phone services. access to alternative sources of credit and information helped to reduce producers’ dependency on buyers and was instrumental in releasing them from a captive relationship in the cardamom chain. all-weather roads link market centres, in these spice chains. road access has improved following recent public works aimed connecting interior villages. better access to roads should reduce transport costs for both producers and buyers, but is unlikely to alter the mode of engagement while there is under-investment in value-adding assets or a perception that prices offered by exporters lack credibility. farmers received extension advice from government extension agencies in both chains, and –in the case of the ginger chain – from local advisors trained by the cooperative with support from a donor funded project. extension advice was perceived to be weak in the cardamom chain and was considered to be a major reason for production uncertainty. this poor perception of extension advice may reflect the severity of production problems encountered by cardamom farmers. research that resolves production problems combined with an improved extension service should improve yields and quality. however, such improvements are unlikely to create new modes of engagement for smallholders unless they reduce production uncertainty. there was no evidence of parties relying on the legal system to enforce contracts in either chain. this could reflect the absence of an efficient and affordable legal system. improvements to the legal system may do little to encourage conventional contracting while crop yields and export markets are so uncertain. in this situation, product quality, research, extension and market information are first required to reduce environmental risk. in sum, the prevalence of informal market transactions appears to be the result of market product attributes, market structure and the cooperative model adopted for collective marketing. collective marketing does help to attract large buyers and to strengthen producers’ bargaining power, but the traditional model of the cooperative does not appear to be very useful in sustaining more complex modes of engagement that could be more beneficial to producers. interventions that improved producer access to credit and information created a superior mode of engagement in the farmerbuyer dyad. while biological product attributes, road infrastructure, research and extension, and the formal legal system are expected to influence levels of risk and reward in existing modes of engagement, they appear to be less significant in altering the portfolio of modes observed in the spice chains. 7. conclusions the case studies of the cardamom and ginger chains showed that these chains had been unable to sustain smallholder engagement in modes other than the informal market. given the apparent durability of their informal markets, it is tempting to conclude that these chains are robust. however, an earlier study of the cardamom chain might have drawn a similar conclusion about captive relational contracts. when the enabling environment improved, these contracts gave way to informal market transactions that offered small farmers a better risk-reward outcome. this suggests that a chain is not necessarily robust simply because it has a durable mode of engagement. durability may signal imperfections in the enabling environment that preclude superior modes of engagement. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(4)2015: 88-102 100 while it is true that a single mode of engagement does not necessarily imply a lack of robustness, it is unlikely that any mode of engagement will be optimal for all farmers as they face different transaction costs and risks, and have different levels of risk aversion. the key issues are riskreward outcomes offered by the available modes, and whether or not the chain allows smallholders to choose an alternative mode of engagement, or a mix of modes, that best maximizes their utility. interventions aimed at improving the robustness of supply chains should therefore seek not only to expand the modes of engagement available to stallholders but, as a first step, to make existing modes more sustainable by improving their risk-reward outcomes for small farmers. the case studies suggest that other modes of engagement are unlikely to develop while farmers perceive that prices are manipulated by exporters. in this situation, farmers see little point in adding value or establishing and complying with grades and standards. reducing information asymmetry in chains serving indian markets and complementing this information with well-defined grades and standards could promote local spot markets, but a substantive improvement in the performance of these chains from a smallholder perspective will require investment in value-adding assets and activities. however, value-adding requires collective marketing to spread fixed processing, marketing and transaction costs. it is unfortunate that nepal adopted a traditional cooperative model to promote collective marketing as traditional cooperatives do not generate strong incentives for investment. instead, they create incentives for producers to take advantage of high prices in spot and informal markets at the expense of relational contracts with long-term benefits. such an outcome is entirely inconsistent with the notion of value adding, especially when contracts are complex and external enforcement via the legal system is not a viable alternative to internal enforcement. the government should consider supporting hybrid cooperative models like new generation cooperatives and investor-share cooperatives to promote collective marketing amongst smallholders. restructured cooperatives might not only attract investment in value-adding assets to differentiate their product and operate in a premium market, but might also help to capture additional value in the existing chain by integrating some downstream value-adding functions and by engaging with large buyers further down the chain. in both cases, these cooperatives would have to collaborate with buyers to determine their quality requirements and work with their members to meet these standards. asset specificity inherent in such investments would encourage cooperatives to seek contractual relationships with buyers. if the investments made by the cooperative (in value adding assets) and its members (in on-farm production technology) serve to reduce levels of environmental risk, and if the quality standards are easy to define and monitor, then conventional contracting may provide an alternative to relational contracting. research, extension and information that reduce high levels of yield risk would also encourage conventional and relational contracting, so promoting chain robustness. acknowledgement this paper is drawn from phd research undertaken by the principal author. the principal author gratefully acknowledges the new zealand aid programme for financial support to pursue phd studies at lincoln university. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and 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(2009). case study: design and methods (third ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. http://researcharchive.lincoln.ac.nz/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 1 a review of egyptian afforestation program and its effect on agriculture m. subandi a abdelwahab m. mahmoud b cecep, t.c a department of agrotechnology, faculty of sciences and technology. the state islamic university of sunan gunung djati of bandung, indonesia b department of plant physiology, faculty of agriculture, cairo university, egypt c phd candidate; cairo university, egypt and staff of indonesian embassy of cairo, egypt  mhd.subandi@uinsgd.ac.id (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 22-aug-2018 accepted: 18-jan-2019 online available: 12-feb2019 keywords: afforestation, agricultural, gunungkidul, the nile, wanagama abstract egypt has been famous as agricultural country since ancient times. most egyptian horticultural and food crop plants are shrubs or small trees with shallow root systems. these plants are susceptible to drought and have a little or no hydrological effect. egyptian agriculture is mostly dependent on the nile water (82.59%). desert areas can be ecologically reclaimed or restored to agronomically productive areas if socioeconomic, cultural, and political factors permit the restoration. afforestation is when a desert is turned into a woods or forest as a climate change agent and water reservoir. this survey found that egyptian land was greener than indonesian land. the availability of the nile water should be managed as effective as possible to accelerate egyptian afforestation projects. egypt may imitate indonesian success in re-greening the gunungkidul region of jogyakarta with the wanagama forest. the afforestation program affects agricultural practices in egypt in both the nearand long-term. contribution/ originality the current study shed light on the agricultural system of egypt and discuss the linkage between agriculture and running afforestation programs by concerned authorities. further, this study compares the land quality of egypt with other countries, such as indonesia. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.1.18 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: m. subandi, abdelwahab m. mahmoud and cecep t. (2019). a review of egyptian afforestation program and its effect on agriculture. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1), 1-18. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 1 (2019): 1-18 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:mhd.subandi@uinsgd.ac.id https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5816-3329 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.1.18 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 2 1. introduction egypt is famous as a country of having long and high civilized culture since the era of ancient egypt, and it evident are apparent from artifacts found and mentioned in the holy qur’an. and indeed big and populous city of cairo indicating that egypt has been inexistence among the oldest and civilized countries in the world. egyptian land is predominant barren desert, but the nile river makes the country prosperous and really beautiful as figure 1. figure 1: rich and big city of cairo passed by the nile river woody plants growing well (as shown in figure 2), is showing that land in this country is arable. geographic and climatic data show egyptian land is mostly desert and with its very low rainfall. this natural condition may sometimes be associated with poor and backward country, but not for egypt. so, why is egypt prosperous and belonged to developing or developed country? seeing the demographic and natural sources, the answer is because egypt is passed and controls the nile water with its continuous considerable debit supplying irrigation water for agricultural practices. figure 2: woody plants species grow well in cairo egypt region is mostly desert, and arid or semi-arid range lands and egypt considers as one of the oldest agricultural territories; the river nile allowed a sedentary agricultural society to develop thousands of years ago (el-nahrawy, 2011). desert was formed only recently compared to the formation of the earth. it is the result of integrated and simultaneous happening of natural processes and human deeds. degradation of land quality due to natural or geologic process, water eroded and wind winnowed the top soil. finest clay and silt were firstly blown by wind and eroded by water. no conservation measures of uneducated or better asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 3 said irresponsible people or governments or administration made the cultivated land neglected and degraded (maya, 2011; chalise et al., 2019). soil erosion, loss of productivity potential and biodiversity, soil & water pollution and water shortage are ongoing processes that decrease/ degrade provisioning (e.g., biomass, freshwater) and regulating (e.g., carbon sequestration, soil quality) and ecosystem services (zalesny et al., 2016). the cause of the non-existence of forest in egypt is not only due to the climatic conditions and the scarcity of rainfalls, but also as a result of the urbanization and the focus on food production for meeting the consumption of rapid increasing population (hany, 2014). historical notes and facts give us reasons to blame the bad conduct of people and mismanagement in ancient eras to the nature. so desertification is process of natural that was accelerated by human this understanding is firmed basic for human to regain the good condition of land as it was, and egypt is agricultural country, and it has been famous since the era of prophet joseph. out of the agricultural product, egypt produces horticultural crops and food crops. most of horticultural and food crop plants are shrubs or a small trees with shallow root system. and these families of plants are susceptible to drought and have a little or no hydro-orology effect. in soil and water conservation view point these plants are classified as bad vegetation. horticulture and food crop products are of most important as food supply and they generate wealthy to the farmers, and so the crops are also named as cash crops. however the plants are vulnerable to water supply problem due to shallow root system, and the land planted with these crops is also vulnerable to erosion due intensive and frequent and intensive soil tillage. sound land-use policy should equalize areas for agricultural production and land for being planted with trees (vegetation) for supporting conservation of soil and water. more over existence of vegetation (woods or forest) in catchment areas will be the reservoir and control water supply to ditches and rivers and influence regional climate. so that, afforestation program is a must, and it is possible in egypt as the nile water is available. there is natural competition among the varieties of plants as stated that planted forests had negative effects on the diversity of native desert shrubs and trees. using flood irrigation and large space between trees might help in conserving the floristic diversity of desert shrubs and trees at the forest floor (emad and linderholm, 2012). vegetation growing in egyptian desert and found there were 4 vegetation groups, two may symbolise the vegetation types of the western mediterranean coast of egypt, and two other groups may represent the wadi hagul (el-amier et al., 2015). there are habitual or characteristic of egyptian tribes’ life as described by reporting that pastoral nomads from the hadandawa, amar ar, bishaari, ababda and maˁaza tribes in the red sea hills of egypt and sudan have relied on drought persistent acacia tortilis trees for millennia. and presently, political, social and economic factors impose changes in traditional livelihoods and land use. a variety of local pruning practices, previously considered destructive by many outsiders, conform to good practice described in modern literature (gidske et al., 2014). the resistance of soils to degradation processes by human positive actions is known as soil resilience. soil resilience has been defined as the capacity of a soil to recover its functional and structural integrity after a disturbance. abdel and ali (2012) noted in egypt the main land degradation types in irrigated agriculture are salinization and alkalization as the effects of high rate of transpiration of the nile water. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 4 2. methodology literature review and on site survey on re-greening of egyptian desert lands have been conducted. afforestation programs planned were reviewed through observation and literatures study. on the site observation was conducted to get empirical and the views of academicians. interviews with academicians of cairo university and the suez canal university were conducted. for comparison, results of on the spot survey and literature study on the re-greening or reforestation of the barren gunungkidul for three decades. a region in western part of jogyakarta, a sultanate special region, and central java, indonesia was presented. this fact of indonesian success in regreening its barren area has been the initiate idea for this review of egyptian afforestation. 3. afforestation programs proudly egyptian academician acknowledged that egyptian land was greener than indonesian. it is proven with some artifacts which are maintained in cairo university, geology laboratory. one of the facts is some cuts of wood in form of semi-fossil. counted some thousands years ago the current semi-fossil was fresh wood growing in the present sterile dry sandy lands (desert). it must be fertile and humid and green land formed of egyptian a long time ago, but natural destruction and accelerated by human mismanagement acts had made the land and barren desert. dillinger (2017) noted that around 70,000 hectares of egyptian land is forested. between 1990 and 2000, egypt gained an average of 1500 hectares per year, but the rate of forestation has since decreased by 2.71% per year. the percentage of land covered in forest in egypt is not likely to change in the near future, due to wooded areas being lost to urbanization and windblown sands. egypt has also such the program as this shown in the figures 3 below. the program of afforestation of a desert is very difficult and requires patient to maintain, and costly. however this program is for the life of people of a nation in the future. it requires much sacrifices and great struggles. all people of nation and government have to pay high intention for the success. 3a 3b figure 3a and 3b: vegetative method in egypt: transplanting fodder trees and shrubs: an efficient way to control desertification and for use as a source of feed (source: el-nahrawy, 2011) other studies and researches conducted in relation to re-green desert of egypt. among other was a study made by monier (1998) indicated that silt, clay, moisture content, organic carbon and calcium carbonate were the main abiotic environmental variables correlated with species distribution in the study area. a total of 141 plant species belonging to 32 different families were recorded in this study, mostly of sahara-arabian distribution, with xerophytes followed by chamaephytes dominating the life-form spectra. high species richness was recorded in vegetation of sand plains, moist muddy flats asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 5 and runnels, contrasting with salinized and limestone plains. soil texture, organic carbon and moisture content are correlated with species diversity in the richer habitats, while high salinity and calcium carbonate are the main factors associated with lower species diversity. and sayed et al. (2013) found physiological adjustments to enhance tolerance or avoidance of drought were studied in three desert plants growing in wadinatash (eastern desert). studied plants are (zillaspinosa (l.), citrulluscolocynthis (l.), schrad and morettiaphilaeana (dalile) dc.). the results suggest that osmotic adjustment was the main water relationship adaptation to cope with drought. el-ghani et al. (2011) described around egyptian desert is still found some climbers. in some genera, all of the species are climbers (e.g. serjania). high abundance of climbers is an important physiognomic feature differentiating tropical from temperate forests. figure 4 shows some woody plants of afforestation in egypt. figure 4: upper photos from right: sewage water basin; tree nursery; afforestation in desert land; and casuarina plantation. lower: khay a trees; eucalyptus; cupressus; jatropa plantation hany (2014) reported problem in egypt is the greatest challenges facing egypt are aside from health, education, poverty and “corruption”, egypt is facing many challenges. 1. arid/desert climate; 2. water scarcity; 3.misuse of the limited fertile land to secure food for the increasing population; 4. high susceptibility to climate change: 5. absence of innovative, environmentally-friendly solutions, and: 6. mismanagement of resources. he further stated according to the executive secretariat of the united nations convention to combat desertification, egypt lost 9% of its arable lands to constructions over the past 36 years. the country is ranked first in the rate of desertification with a loss rate of 3.5 acres per hour (35 ha or 50 soccer fields daily) of fertile delta agricultural land, which is an incomparable rate in the world statistics. in case of climate change effect, egypt is ranked 3rd in rising sea levels after all low-lying island states and vietnam (world bank, 2009). the authors and public can see there are many big woody trees and vegetation grow well in around of city of cairo. why egyptian did not plant the perennial trees outside cairo regions? by starting planting at the easily irrigated regions in both banks of the nile. at these regions irrigation water may easily be managed. re-greening the banks of nile by a good and sustainable and planned program to initiate the change of desert ecology. it may last for decades or for centuries, and egyptian people and governments must keep the program for generations as long as the pharaoh dynasty had made egyptian land barren. based on reliable information (the noble qur’an), pharaoh asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 6 dynasty had made many destructions in the country and had made not any conservation except had made big buildings. it is reported, and there are records refer to the fact that the highest rate of forest tree-cutting in egypt took place during the ayobeed era (where more than 12,000 trees were cut down in a rather short time span, of which 9,500 in qualiobeya governorate alone) (hany et al., 2014). this proves that forest eradication was done by man and not due to the climatic or environmental factors. sinai peninsula was very rich in its forest cover, and this is justified by the numerous names given to the dry valleys scattered on this desert. names indicating the places or regions of rich in water. when the re-greening program is executed, gradual but sure, this region will be growing green with the perennial plants (big trees with deep root system), and this type of plant will grow and develop for tens of years changing the micro-climate then the regional climate improved. the statement of geologist (a professor), and the head of geology laboratory of cairo university that egyptian land was greener than indonesian land in the last time is very logic. it might be in the time of pharaoh dynasty. and the natural condition will be regained, of course, with hard willing of political and considerable national funding, and of brilliant of academician and field leaders. possibility for egypt to re-green her lands is guaranteed with the huge supply of water of the nile. urban area of cairo with more than 10 million of population producing wastewater treated or untreated are potential for being organic manure for plants accelerating growth. hany (2014) saw it as opportunity and calculated sewage water about 7 billion m3annually, of which approximately 40% is only treated and 5.5 billion m3sewage water for the afforestation and assuming an average annual water requirement of 8,500 m3/ha and 650 thousand ha in the desert lands can be afforested (nearly 20% of the total agriculture area). and25 million tons of co2annuallycan be stored. hany et al. (2014) made detailed approach to establishment of large-scale plantation forests in the desert lands of egypt, and mapped the area to be planted as the figure 5. the approaches are: 1. making optimal use of the potential available in the wastewater and in plantation forests. 2. building of forest administration liable to implement the forestry policy, to provide guidelines for forest management, to approve and to control the implementation of forest management plans. 3. capacity building of trainers and technical staff. 4. enhancing education and research related to wastewater and forest management. 5. complement with researches to accompany the afforestation activities. figure 5: map of afforestation in egypt hany et al. (2014) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 7 analyzing the map prepared by team of hany with collaboration of germany concentrated the afforestation on the east desert and neglected the west desert and the catchment area of upper aswan. the eastern desert is more possible and easier to be re-greened compared to the western desert. correction and critics for the map (prepared by hany et al of afforestation, the program concentrated on the eastern desert and on the one bank only. another side of banks has to be regreened, too. it will be easier to get water. the upper zone of the nile, and the catchment area of aswan dam, must be re-green. dimension of the area is concentrated on the nile (for easier irrigation), the width may initiate one or two km only. this policy is to enable distribution area in all governorates along the nile. some researchers have made calculation in the fields as fawzy et al. (2016) reported the inland part of the eastern desert of egypt can be divided into four main geomorphological and ecological regions, from the north to the south: 1) the cairo-suez desert, 2) the limestone desert, 3) the sandstone desert, and 4) the nubian desert. the inland part of the eastern desert lies between the range of the red sea coastal land in the east and the nile valley in the west. it is a rocky plateau dissected by a number of wadis. each wadi has a main channel with numerous tributaries. and the condition in upper aswan and the surrounding area was stated by springuel et al. (2006) as in an extreme desert stream channel (wadi aggag near aswan, egypt, precipitation 1 mm per year), vegetation structure and soil water content were investigated over a period of 13 years (one downstream site) or parts of this period (two upstream sites). three large precipitation events were observed in that time (1987, 1990, 1996). after each storm, densities of 10–15 individual plants per m2 were produced within a few weeks. this number decreased to almost zero during the following years before the next rain destroyed the surviving individuals. the stands of vegetation that developed subsequently after the floods contained mostly zillaspinosa, morettiaphilaeana, fagoniaindica or salsola. plant growth in the extremely arid southern part of the eastern desert of egypt is supported by the torrential moisture stored in the subsurface layers of wadi-fill deposits. the space-time stratification of the soil moisture and corresponding adaptive stratification of root systems lead to the niche separation of the species. zillaspinosa, has a low mortality at early and middle life, but a rapid change to high mortality at a later stage (springuel and sheded, 1990; puente, 2011). it is hard to deal with the eastern desert natural climate condition for surviving but water give hope and some possibility. this is based on the result of research conducted by ziada et al. (2016) showed abu tartur area is located 600 km southwest of cairo, in al wadi el gadid governorate, egypt. its center lies at 25°25' north and in 30°02' east with the top of about 550 masl. its climate is hot and extremely dry. recently, the oases have attracted the attention of government authorities as a possible addition to the cultivated area of egypt. the oases represent unique areas of prosperous land amidst desolate desert. the oases have special ecological conditions and characteristics vegetation. vegetation of the oases of western desert of egypt has been extensively studied by many researchers. wadi el natron. no attention has been given to vegetation and ecology of abu tartur plateau. the phosphate project of abu tarturis considered to be one of the biggest mining projects in the world. there are many potentials and hope still uncovered in the western desert, when there is an effort there will be a way out. egyptian should make a long and hard work for re-greening its land, and may consider the indonesian experience. a long observation conducted by the authors on javanese character (people of yogyakarta province of indonesia) revealed that yogyakarta special region which is governed by a sultan (the current sultan is sri sultan hamengkubowono x), and yogyakarta people are obedience to their sultan. the sultan is very charismatic, all spoken and written regulations decreed are obeyed by all people. yogyakarta people’s experience in re-greening the gunungkidul barren land worth noting. keys success of gunungkidul re-greening are: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 8 1. people especially that live in surrounding the region are willingly support. they will be the maintainer as well as the keeper. forestry police much easier in their duties if all people involve in keeping the forest. 2. political will of all level governments. decentralization of the project is better for they will invite the local government (governorate administration) to take responsibility. 3. budget allocation of all level governments (district, province, and national) beside foreign aid. so the key success for any afforestation is people participation and there is serious political will of the government. other policy for the success is selection of vegetation to be planted. selection or sorting of the plant family or species must be primary based on hydro-orology point of view and not on economic. hard wood (perennial plant) and deep rooted will much influence to ecology amendment. below is list of plant species (hany et al., 2014). 1. acacia (acacia nilotica and acacia saligna), shrub (windbreak) 2. casuarina (casuarinaequisetifolia), shrub (windbreak). 3. jatropha (jatrophacurcas), shrub (biofuel crop). 4. jojoba (simmondsiachinensis), shrub (biofuel crop). 5. indian beech (pongamia pinnata), tree (biodiesel). 6. gmeline or white teak (gmelinaarborea), precious hardwood. 7. african mahogany (khayasenegalensis), precious hardwood 8. outeniqua yellowwood (podocarpusfalcatus), precious hardwood 9. teak (tectonagrandis), precious hardwood. 10. mangium or black wattle (acacia mangium), hardwood. 11. neem, also indian li as lac (azadirachtaindica), hardwood. 12. lemon-scented gum (corymbiacitriodora), hardwood. 13. river red gum (eucalyptus camaldulensis), hardwood. 14. canary island pine (pinuscanariensis c. smith), softwood. 15. caribean pine (pinuscaribbea var. hondurensis), softwood, and an afforestation area may be planted with some species this make some advantages as maiti and kumari (2016) stated that different woody plants attain different heights, thereby facilitating each species to absorb solar energy without competing with its neighbours, thereby offering amicable landscape on land surface. moringaoleifera is now widely cultivated in north egypt and there are many students register for master and ph. d on it (as shown in figure 6). moringaoleifera woody plant grow to the height of 8 m-12 m. this semi-scrub tree is of economic value and can be planted in multiple-copping system with higher woody plants to get better effect on land and give conservation influences to ecology. oliveira et al. (1999) stated moringaoleifera lam. is a multipurpose tree cultivated to use as a vegetable, for spice, for cooking and cosmetic oil and as a medicinal plant. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 9 6a 6b 6c figure 6a, 6b & 6c: moringa oleifera planted in seed bed, and trees of 3 years old (9 m high) in research garden of faculty of agriculture, cairo university 4. the nile river the river nile is the longest river in the world. the source of the river is in burundi in central africa, it then flows through sudan, ethiopia and egypt and empties into the mediterranean sea. hany et al. (2014) described periods of heavy monsoon rainfall which increase the water level of the nile causing it to flood in egypt between june and september. the first aswan dam was opened in 1902 but it proved to be insufficient and had to be raised twice in 1907–1912 and 1929-1933. the aswan high dam which, since its opening in 1970 has prevented further floods. available and potential water in egypt is presented in table 1. table 1: available and potential water resources (in billion m3 on annual basis) source potential amount % amount in use % nile water 55.5 75.2 51.7 82.59 ground water 11.3 15.3 5.2 8.3 re-use of agricultural drainage water 5 6.8 3.7 5.91 treated sewage water 1.5 2.03 1.5 2.4 rain 0.5 0.67 0.5 0.8 total 73.8 100 62.6 100 source: adopted from abouzeid (1992) ancient egyptian farmers were waiting for flood of the nile to cultivate crops or to rear fishes. overflowing water of nile initiated the farmer activities. people life depended on flood water. now, the nile water overflowing on both the river banks has not been more happening, because the current of nile has been controlled with the aswan dam. in this era people of egypt have successfully established aswan dam. egyptian farmers cultivate their crop base on the modern agricultural practices. water of nile is managed in according to modern irrigation. subterranean irrigation system is applied to get maximum utilization of water on highly rate of evaporation region. people maintains the nile river well, nile water flows in cairo is better maintained, in view of people hesitates to throw something to the river, and most people build their houses face to the nile. this is unlike practice in other countries where people arranges their residence and put river in back part of their houses. zalesny et al. (2011) reported the nile river provides nearly 97% of egypt’s freshwater supply. egypt’s share of nile waters is fixed at 55.5 billion cubic meters annually. the usaid guidelines for safe and direct reuse of treated wastewater for agricultural purposes were approved in 2005 (egyptian code 501/2005). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 10 in this couple of years was heard the news about the dispute of nile. some countries in upper nile regions claimed to have the right to utilized nile water. in fact, millions of people in several countries in this region are concerned. egyptian government was worried about that claim, and was reported to have to send several envoys of ministerial levels to lobby the governments of the claiming countries. it seemed egyptian ministers have succeed in handling the nile crisis. and conflict no more to be worried about. now people in egypt no more talking about it. how long this stable condition will guarantee the nation for water supply? the ever-process in this region is the change. a new emerging country in south sudan, with predicted different political characteristic with sudan as friendly to egypt. it is a great challenge for egypt. what should be prepared by egyptian? to deal with that “bad dream”. egyptian land should make woods and forest that keep water and initiate rivers flowing in egyptian land. hydrology plants or plants conserving water must be well planted. afforestation which is now programed by the ministry of agriculture and land reclamation of egypt has to be accelerated and doubled or multiplied. and this is possible because water (the nile water) is available. the forest or woods or plantation will be the natural reservoir and supply water to ditches and rivers as supplement to or substitute of the nile. 5. gunungkidul of indonesian regreening the author interviewed some academicians of cairo university and suez cannel university and referred to indonesian success in reconditioning the environment and micro-climate in gunungkidul region of jogyakarta province. the re-forestation or re-greening program of gunungkidul region was executed by regional government and supported by all people and the academician (faculty of forestry, gajah mada university), then the woods is named wanagama (meaning woods of gadjahmada university). in the 1964reforestation was begun led by a forestry professor of the university. at that time gunungkidul region was famous for scarce water region, de-forestry, barren, rivers were dry in the dry season. and most of its people went out their villages to cities for seeking job (illustrated with figure 7a and 7b). faculty of forestry of gajah mada university made the region of 600 ha as field laboratory, and the regional government of jogjakarta funded the reforestation programs. the satisfactory result, is shown after 32 years (shown in figure 8a and 8b), now the region is greenish scenery and almost full of vegetation, and water is easily found here and there. problem of water in gunungkidul region is solved by reconditioning the barren area to growing woods. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 11 7a 7b figures 7a and 7b: critical and neglacted areas in gunungkidul. jogjakarta, central java, indonesia 8a 8b figures 8a and 8b: present ecology in wanagama woods of gunungkidul suharno (2008) found that the involvement of multi-stakeholder in the social forestry development comprises national level, provincial government of yogjakarta special territory, regional government of gunungkidul, non-governmental organization, community, and academic. the changes of social capital due to the involvement of multi stakeholder are mutual trust, network, and social norms. the implements of welfare and forest preservation by the involvement of multi stakeholder are indicated by apparent from the improvement of welfare of the members of the social forestry farmers and cover area of the social forestry area. result of interviews and observation on the success of wanagama woods establishment has been supported by many factors and parties and conditions: 1. serious and sustainable management of foresters (faculty of forestry of gajah mada university, and the regional administrator/governor of jogyakarta (sultan of special region of jogjakarta) 2. support of budget provided by provincial government. 3. participation of the people of gunungkidul of jogyakarta (good character of people guided by the throne of jogjakarta/obedient to the sultan). people supported and willingly maintained asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 12 any regulations released by the regional government to keep the woods in wanagama. it is of prime importance is the participation of the local people and communities, capitalizing on their traditional knowledge and practices. clear land-use rights are essential to sound land management. reinforcing people’s control over resources and guaranteeing them secure and fair access ensures their long-term commitment to resource conservation study conducted by untung (2003) noted that wanagama forest generates some advantages for people as: 1. the planting of tress converted degraded and critical land areas into fertile lands. 2. the management of research and empowerment of forest in fact converted the community adjacent to the forest in particular and in general the people of gunungkidul regency from poverty to prosperity. 3. their prosperity was generated by the products from the trees they planted namely fruits and timbers. 4. the community started practicing agro forestry. they planted a variety of trees, with the main species is teak. 5. the benefit of the wanagama was conspicuous by the existence of teak forest grown on private lands, especially in gunungkidul, which produces sizeable amount of timber. 6. afforestation enhancment in egypt the main egyptian public institutions in charge of forestry administration on the national level is the ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, i.e. undersecretary of afforestation. however, on the provincial and local levels the municipalities are responsible for such affairs which are directed by the local authorities of the governorates. forestry activities represent 1 (one) % approximately of the total budget allocated to ministry of agriculture and land reclamation. the current expenditure and investments are mainly used to establish and maintain nurseries, dealing with afforestation (mamdouh, 2000). egypt ratified the united nation convention to combat desertification unccd in 1995. this convention defined desertification as phenomenon and combating desertification as activities that aimed at: prevention and/ or reduction of land degradation. rehabilitation of partly-degraded lands. reclamation of desertified lands. the state assigned the responsibility for the implementation of the convention to the ministry of agriculture and land reclamation in 2001. desert research center was assigned to be the national focal point coordinator for the convention. a ministerial decree was issued to establish a national coordinating committee chaired by the minister of agriculture and land reclamation. reforestation will make egypt not dependent on the nile water only. in the future egypt should develop and give more attention to establish national forestry. when the forest is established national climate will be influenced and change. ground water and subterranean water will also develop to substitute the nile water. a re-greening program should be planned involving all people and government of egypt, and of course supported with the budget, and lasting for long, very-very long, may be for centuries. of course the condition is very different from gunungkidul of indonesia. climatic and ecology are different, but there is advantage in egypt. egypt has the nile, water is always available to guarantee the supply for the need of the newly growing woods. egyptian people and any ruling governments have to struggle for a longer period, may be twice 30 years or for centuries. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 13 the figures 9a and 9 b below show water and possible plant to be grown. there is a big hope, a dense forest will establish in this area with the available water of the nile. for comparison, water is always available in the bank of the nile for the year long, but rainfall is only available in rainy season in gunungkidul of indonesia. so, we are optimistic woods and forest will develop in this area of the nile banks. and we believe that in this area, a long time ago, were ever-green woods and dense forest. it is stand to reason academician of egyptian said “egyptian land was greener than indonesian land”. 9a 9b figures 9a and 9b: the nile water available is waiting for man-involvement to re-green its banks in the photos of the nile banks look green vegetation grow here and there. evergreen due to water is available all the years long. unlike the vegetation in gunungkidul, when lack of water comes and in dry season, vegetation turn wilt. and when the furlong dry season happens and the severe drought cause permanent wilt resulting in devastated species of vegetation. not enough water and the plants become stressed and eventually die. this will not happen in the bank of the nile where water is available for a year long. so we are optimistic, there is absolutely possible to develop woods along the nile banks, and eventually forest established in the region. and regional climate will change, too. egyptian is obliged to regain this condition, and to get egypt more welfare and prosperous country as it was in the time of prophet of joseph. there are several steps of works that must be taken to the rehabilitation work, and they should be well managed. the measures in question are: efforts to improve the condition of the microclimates and the effort for the rocky soil conditions begin: 1. grow type of plant that allow overgrown flora having shallow roots while trying to enrich the nutrient nitrogen and macro and other micro nutrients. 2. use, as the first step, plant types that has a deeper root system. 3. select tree species that grow in accordance with the requirements of the habitat conditions. it is required very long time, and will need generation to generation to get egyptian green as it was. it may be realistic and logical as pharaoh dynasty had governed egypt for thousands of years and made the land as barren as it is now. it requires struggles and sacrifices of all people and governments of egypt for generations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 14 7. some effect on agricultural practices now we know egyptian government has successfully turned some areas of western desert to farmlands (shown in figure 10 a, b, c). related with this program of re-greening desert of western part, the ngn (2010) reported with several facts of photos. bird's-eye view shows the farming village of abu minqar in western desert, remote desert farm village in egypt. it was reported that this is a success program. home to about 4,000 people, the village is an example of egypt's ambitious and controversial plan to turn its deserts into farmlands though the land is just planted by horticultural subsistence crops. ''this is one of the most isolated communities-by distance and by desert-in egypt,'' said director of the desert development center of a university in cairo. 10a 10b 10c figure 10a: artesian well water feeds cannel; 10b: farming village of abu minqar; 10c: a shepherd tends his sheep (source: national geographic news, 2010) the success of government to turn desert to farmland should not the final goal, because farmland is not giving change to the permanent water resource, even farmland only consume the water and over exploited makes the farmlands back to barren land and desert. gradually the farmlands must be turned to plantation of tall woody and deep rooted plants. tree planting has often been proposed as a way to increase rainfall. it has been estimated that 60 percent of rainfall over the moist evergreen amazon forest comes from the forest itself through evapotranspiration and the water back through rain (amazon, 2007). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 15 water as source of improving agricultural practices may initiate all life activity of plant and animals (livestock). it means agricultural is to get its core to develop. forestation will change regional climate regime, (especially humidity and temperature) and stimulate cloud formation and may result in rainfall that the country urgently needs. this will affect the dynamic cultivation and economic of agricultural activities. table 2 shows the dynamic of cropping in egypt. horticulture crops (vegetable and fruits) showed significant increase, in the year 2008/09 reached 10.6% for vegetable and 20.6 %for fruits. table 2: changes in area harvested by crop group (in m ha.) crop group year year year year year year 1980/84 1990/91 2000/01 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 area % area % area % area % area % area % cereals 2 42.6 2.25 46.2 2.65 46.1 2.96 43.7 2.97 42.4 2.98 42.9 legumes 0.14 2.9 0.15 3.2 0.17 3 0.12 1.8 0.11 1.6 0.13 1.9 fibres 0.48 10.2 0.4 8.3 0.31 5.4 0.27 4 0.25 3.6 0.22 3.2 sugar crops 0.11 2.4 0.13 2.6 0.19 3.3 0.21 3.1 0.23 3.3 0.25 3.6 oil crops 0.08 1.8 0.03 1.9 0.12 2.1 0.03 0.4 0.02 0.3 0.02 0.3 fodder crops 1.28 27.3 1.13 23.1 1.18 20.7 1.18 17.4 1.15 16.4 1.17 16.9 fruit 0.17 3.6 0.23 4.8 0.48 8.4 1.37 20.2 1.4 20 1.43 20.6 vegetables 0.43 9.2 0.48 9.9 0.7 11 0.63 9.4 0.87 12.4 0.74 10.6 total 4.58 100 4.81 100 5.75 100 6.77 100 6.37 100 6.94 100 source: economic affairs department, agricultural statistics bulletin (2009) 8. conclusion desert was created by nature and by man-mismanagement over exploiting the land. there are afforestation programs in egypt conducted by the government, and there are aids of foreign collaboration showing a great participation. need all out participation of the whole egyptian and political will of all level government as the success of indonesian (jogyakartan) in re-greening the gunungkidul (wanagama forest) region. re-greening or afforestation must be supported and participated by all components of nation, and social and cultural approach are of significant effect. egyptian agricultural activities were not yet conservation oriented indicating with the species of crops grown. food crops and horticulture crops are high economic value and cash generator, but lack of or no soil and water conservation effect. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 1-18 16 references abdel, k. w. a. m., & ali, r. r. 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(2016). ecological study on vegetation of abu tartur plateau, the new valley, egypt. journal of environmental science and technology, 9, 88-99. doi.org/10.3923/jest.2016.88.99. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 180 comparing technical efficiency of maize smallholder farmers in tabora and ruvuma regions of tanzania: a frontier production approach asela miho economics assistant lecturer; dar es salaam university college of education, dar es salaam, tanzania. *email address: aselamiho98@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 09-jan-2018 accepted: 26-mar-2018 online available: 16-apr2018 keywords: technical efficiency, maize smallholder, tabora and ruvuma abstract technical efficiency was considered in comparing production efficiency of maize crops among smallholder farmers in tabora and ruvuma regions respectively, using maximum likelihood estimation (mle) and ordinary least square (ols) on cobb-douglas production function and ols on technical inefficiency model in stata 12 on the national sample census of agriculture 2007/2008 data. findings indicated that, tabora smallholder farmers were more technically efficient with mean technical efficiency of 61% compared to 53% of ruvuma farmers. actual planted area came as the most important factor that increased maize output and tractor asset being the most in optimal used factor ‘keeping other factors constant’, in both regions. from the technical inefficiency model; age, household size, primary education and inputs costs increased technical inefficiency while credit access, capital assets, good living condition and crop farming as main activity increased technical efficiency in both regions. thus, the support and sensitization from government and other development partners for agricultural development should be area specific particularly where there is high technical efficiency of the given crop. in optimal use of tractor among smallholder farmers should be taken as a policy issue; for despite the efforts taken by stakeholders its influence to output attained among smallholders is insignificant. contribution/ originality prior research in assessing wellness in using inputs in the country are few and has not considered the effectiveness between the high producing region and the one that has persistence shortages yearly. this paper advances by taking it into account to analyse if output attained yearly reflects the effective use of resources available. it is found that, high produces of the region does not guarantee high level of well use of inputs available and vice versa is true. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.9/1005.9.180.197 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: asela miho (2017). comparing technical efficiency of maize smallholder farmers in tabora and ruvuma regions of tanzania: a frontier production approach. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9), 180-197. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 9(2017): 180-197 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:aselamiho98@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.9/1005.9.180.197 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 181 1. introduction in tanzania, agriculture is the mainstay of the economy and the source of livelihood for most of the poor rural farmers, as it accounts for more than 25 percent of total gdp, and employs about 76.5 percent of the workforce (urt, 2013a). also, the agricultural sector contributes about 65 percent of raw materials and 30 percent of export earnings (hepelwa et al., 2013). however, productivity and agricultural output in tanzania is not encouraging despite the number of policies, plans and initiatives in place that aim at improving agriculture performance (leyaro and morrisey, 2013). fanrpan (2012) notes that these initiatives information is only available to government offices and limited to most of the productive forces, thus, reduces effectiveness of agricultural initiative and programmes despite their initial positive objectives to agriculture. in tanzania, maize is grown in almost all regions and is the main cereal and annual grown crop in largest planted area followed by paddy and sorghum (urt, 2012e). more than 20 percent of agricultural gdp comes from maize crop, thus maize is the main grown crop in the country (urt, 2013b). it is proved that, maize is grown by more than 65 percent of the households mainly smallholder farmers who depend on rain fed and traditional methods of maize production (barreiro, 2012 and mafap, 2013). white maize dominates kinds of maize grown and consumed in the country providing more than 55 percent and 35 percent of utilizable calories and protein to the country’s population respectively and consumed by more than 85 percent of the population, and the main growers being the smallholders whose income mainly comes from it, while the yellow maize is neglected in general (usda, 2017). in the country about 45 percent of the available arable land is covered with maize crop as it is believed to be the most important food crop that influences rural income generation in the country, whereby in 2008, it contributed nearly 50 percent, thus, important for rural development (mafap, 2013). maize remains to be the most produced among cereal crops in the country. in 2016 maize production reached 5500 thousand tons compared to 3429’ and 800’ thousand tons of paddy and sorghum respectively (fao, 2017). annual cropping is the predominant activity in tabora region which is heavily labour intensive with a very small amount of permanent crops as a result of uni-model type of rainfall. maizeis the dominant cereal and annual crop grown by most of the farmers with largest planted area of 44 percent of the total area planted with annual crops (urt 2012a), while tobacco is ranked first annual cash crop (bucheyeki et al., 2010). moreover, urt (2012a) notes that groundnut is the most planted oilseed in the region followed by sunflower and soya beans. despite the importance of crop production in the region, farmers have been facing fluctuating agricultural produces, thus, they are not sure of the food security (bucheyeki, 2008). moreover, smallholder farmers experience sharp yield-decline in maize together with tobacco and groundnut crops grown in the region despite the truth that they are the main source of income and livelihood to smallholder farmers who dominate the region (katundu et al., 2013). ruvuma region on the other hand is one of the southern highland region, economically driven by agriculture particularly crops production by smallholder farmers, other regions are iringa, mbeya and rukwa (shilda, 2012). maize is also the dominant annual crop grown by 94 percent of the households. the only annual cash crop grown in wet season is tobacco though there are other cash crops that are permanent like cashew nuts, coffee and banana (urt, 2007b). currently, most smallholder farmers in the region derive their livelihood from annual crop farming, though the sector in the region is technologically limited. in 2008, manual tools like hand hoe were used by more than 95 percent of the households, this shows dominants of traditional technology in farming (urt, 2012b). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 182 tabora and ruvuma regions differ in quantity of maize production over years despite the similar uni-modal rainfall behavior. ruvuma experience favorable rain while tabora experience drought like condition due to its location. ruvuma region outpace tabora over years as it is part of the major maize producing regions by contributing (9.7%) together with rukwa (8.7%), mbeya (11.2%), iringa (11.4%), kagera (5.7%), kilimanjaro (5.5%) and manyara (7.0%) (fao, 2015) but this does not say anything on the extent of effectiveness in the application of the inputs available to farmers; thus the study seeks to find the level of technical efficiency between smallholder farmers in the two regions on how well the inputs available to them are used. 1.1. motivation of the study as to other sub saharan africa countries, it is noted that, tanzania agricultural productivity1 lag behind the potential level of 3.5 to 4 tons/hectare; in food crops production productivity is low around an average of 1.7 tons/hectare in spite of its importance to economic well-being of farmers and nation in general, and to the country’s food security (hepelwa et al., 2013) and (usda, 2017). furthermore, it is noted that over years a gigantic increase in maize production in the country is reflected by expansion of planted areas rather than the productivity factor per hectare (fao, 2015). in addition, only few studies have tried to analyze technical efficiency in production of maize in the country but did not compare the case of two different regions that vary in production trend and earn low income in spite of the importance of the crop in the country and particularly tabora and ruvuma regions that results into persistence of poverty to farmers. this, situation creates the need to investigate the present level of technical efficiency in maize production between the two regions, and suggest positive factors of production available to farmers that can be given sensitive attention to increase technical efficiency in producing maize rather than output being over dependant to planted area only. 2. theoretical literature theory of production efficiency can be explained in three ways that are used to measure the level of efficiency in production. these include economic efficiency, technical efficiency and allocative efficiency. technical efficiency in production occurs when maximum output is achieved given resources, meaning production on the frontier. allocative efficiency occurs when factors of production are optimally selected and used, thus, economic efficiency is the product of two mentioned. it explains farmer’s ability to produce optimal output with minimum cost given technology available (bravo-ureta and pinheiro 1997). theory of production efficiency is described graphically using the production frontier which explains maximum feasible output given input level. production efficiency is technical efficiency only when the firm or farmer produces on the frontier and is production inefficient when the firm operates below the efficient boundary. production efficiency is presented by point ‘b’ and ‘c’ in figure 1 which are points of technical efficient as production lies on the frontier line (of׳) whereas, divergent of production from the frontier line of best production indicates production inefficiency as shown by point ‘a’ because at the same level of inputs (x) a firm/farmer that/who operate on the frontier at point ‘b’ achieves potential maximum output (y) compared to the output obtained by firm/farmer at point a, given the same level of inputs (x) producer at b is technically efficient whereas producer at point a is technically inefficient. technical inefficiency at point a proves possibility of increasing output production to its maximum using the same level of inputs used by producer at point b (coelli et al., 2005). 1 productivity is defined as total effectiveness of production inputs used, thus a ratio of output to the inputs given (girabi and mwakaje, 2013) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 183 figure 1: production/technical efficient on the frontier f source: coelli et al. (2005) 3. empirical literature in tanzania, despite the number of policies, plans and initiatives that aim at improving performance of the agricultural sector, only few studies have been conducted on technical efficiency in agriculture to reveal reasons for loss of output from required potentials for relevant policies and initiatives. msuya et al. (2008) examined productivity variation among smallholder maize farmers in tanzania particularly kiteto and mbozi districts. they employed a stochastic frontier production model to identify determinants of technical inefficiency in cross sectional data of 233 smallholder farmers. they found that land was the most important factor in maize production, and 40 percent of maize output was lost due to technical inefficiency. smallholder maize farmers’ technical efficiency ranged from 0.011 to 0.910 with average of 0.606. farmers with primary and secondary education, access to fertilizer and household size, use of agrochemicals, use of hand hoe, access to credit, gender(male), use of traditional seed and being member of the farming organization increased efficiency while, plots fragmentation, distance to plots, limited extension service, hired land increase technical inefficiency. msuya et al. (2008) concludes that smallholder farmers operate inefficiently at lower levels; hence policies are needed to improve farmers’ extension and credits services to increase productivity and efficiency. kibaara (2005) and chirwa (2007) used a stochastic frontier approach to analyze technical efficiency (te) and sources of technical efficiency in kenya and southern malawi maize production using the cross-sectional smallholder’s household data respectively. kibaara found that, quantity of fertilizer, seed and labor positively related to maize output yield with seed being the most important factor of production, whilst chirwa empirical results revealed that, land, capital, labor, fertilizer and seed were positively related to maize output but only labor was the most statistically significant in the production of maize. in kenya te ranged from 98.30 %to 8.04 % with average te of 49 % whilst, in southern malawi, it ranged between 8.12 to 93.95 %, with mean te of 46.23 %. kibaara found that, hybrid seeds, use of tractors, and number of years in school, male headed households, off-farm income and credit access increased technical efficiency while number of years in school square leads to technical inefficiency, whilst chirwa found that seed use and being member of the farmer club were statistically significant in influencing technical efficiency. both kibaara and chirwa recommend on the need for government to promote positive factors of production and efficiency for smallholder farmers are still technically inefficient. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 184 chiona (2011), applied a two-step approach; (1) deterministic envelop analysis (dea) and (2) ordinary least square (ols) in the study of technical efficiency of smallholder maize farmers in zambia on cross-sectional data on 5,196 farmers. empirical results show that technical efficiency range from 0.0005 to 1, with an average of 15%. the study found that ripping and ploughed fields are significant in influencing technical efficiency, bunding and zero tillage, cultivating land after rain, female headed family, age below 25 and above 59, use of local seeds, recycled hybrid and primary education both reduces technical efficiency while use of fertilizers, certified hybrid seed, education above primary level, age of 25-59, ownership of livestock, increase in farm size, active farmers and access to extension services increase technical efficiency. the study concludes that, it is possible to increase output without increasing inputs cost. geta et al. (2013) analyzed productivity and determinants of technical efficiency among maize smallholder farmers of wolaita and gamo gofa zones of southern ethiopia using deterministic envelopment analysis (dea) and tobit regression on surveyed data of 385 farmers. empirical results found that, human labor, use of chemical fertilizers, use of oxen power, planting method, hybrid maize seed, farm size and integrated soil fertility were positive and significant in influencing maize productivity while distance to development centre, credit and off farm income were negative and decreased productivity. the study found that the mean technical efficiency among farmers is 40 %. tobit regression on technical efficiency model indicates that farm size, hybrid maize seed, oxen holding, consumption expenditure and agro-ecology were highly significant in influencing technical efficiency while age, family size, distance to development centre and credits were negative and increased inefficiency. the study recommends on policies to mobilize and motivate youths in agriculture, to increase use of fertilizers, credit and extension services, and provision of training on application of soil fertility management practices. scholars of the empirical studies reviewed on production (technical) efficiency, most focusing on the determinants and/or sources of technical efficiency in production of maize. age, education, extension services, gender, credit access and type of fertilizer and seed are the dominant variables used in assessing sources of technical efficiency in reviewed studies. in addition to these variables, this study takes into account the effects of rate of involvement in agriculture and living condition of the households and influence of input costs to technical efficiency of smallholder farmers. furthermore, this study adopts a two stage approach that involves; (1) stochastic frontier model to estimate frontier and (2) technical inefficiency model which is estimated by ordinary least square (ols) approach. an approach is different from dea and tobit model employed by geta et al. (2013) in estimating technical efficiency model in the first and second stage respectively. 4. methodology 4.1. the study area the study was conducted in tabora and ruvuma regions in tanzania. tabora consist of seven districts; igunga, urambo, nzega, uyui, sikonge, tabora urban and kaliua, with population of about 2.29 million people, whereas ruvuma consists of six districts; tunduru, mbinga, songea, namtumbo, nyasa and songea urban, with population below 2 million (urt, 2013c). tabora is found in the mid-west part of central tanzania between latitude 40 to 70 south of equator and longitude 310 to 340 east of green wich meridian. to the north, it borders shinyanga region, to the west, kigoma region, to the south, rukwa and mbeya, (urt, 2007a and 2012a). moderate tropical climate characterizes tabora region with average temperature of around 230c. the temperature tends to fall to 140c at night during may to july and reaches the maximum of 20-300c during day (mci2, 2013). the region experiences rainfall that range between 650 to 1000 millimeters (tarimo et al., 2013). 2 mci means millennium cities initiatives asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 185 ruvuma is found in the southern highlands part in tanzania, it borders lake nyasa to the west, mtwara region to the east, republic of mozambique to the south, and njombe (former iringa) and morogoro regions to the north as indicated in figure 2.1 (urt, 2012b). the region is characterized by having dry and wet seasons. on average the region receives rainfall between 800 to 1800 millimeters. the region has moderate mild temperature of 23oc on average. during october to november, temperature increases to an average of 30oc in the lowlands, while around the matengo highlands in mbinga, it falls to 13oc from june to august (urt, 2012b). 4.2. data type, source, scope and coverage the study used secondary data from national sample census of agriculture (nsca), 2007/08 that were collected by national bureau of statistics (nbs) in collaboration with the ministry of agriculture, food security and cooperatives (mafc). the census covered both smallholders in rural areas and large scale farms in tanzania mainland and zanzibar. based on the fact that only few large scale farms were partially covered, this study covers only smallholder farmers in tabora and ruvuma who cultivate an average of less than 3 acres. this study focused on 2365 and 1710 maize farming households; randomly selected in tabora and ruvuma regions respectively. farming households considered in ruvuma is less in number to that of tabora for ruvuma is taken as a reference point. its high productions over seasons it gives chance to assume it also have high level of effective use of inputs available. but, the number of observation is expected to decrease because farmers with missing information and outliers were eliminated. 4.3. economic model 4.3.1. theoretical specification of frontier production function frontier production functions are the functions that behave similar to the theory of production and are estimated econometrically to portray the best maximum output attainable given the resources available to a producer, (green, 2008). production on the frontier is efficient and divergent of production from the production efficient curve implies inefficient. frontier functions are useful in measuring technical and allocative efficiency in which their product gives economic efficiency. technical efficiency describes the best use of available inputs for maximum produces and the allocative efficiency concerned with optimal use of inputs in production (mastromarco, 2008). furthermore, frontier function is useful in understanding and explaining technical change in the production process føsund and hjalmarsson (1977). 4.3.2. stochastic production frontier functions stochastic production frontier function was introduced by aigner et al. (1977) and meeusen and van den broeck (1977). stochastic frontier function is more applicable and acceptable to deterministic frontier function initiated by farrell (1957) and aigner and chu (1968) for it is useful in judging how efficiently the technology available is used. it include factors outside control of the producer and those that can be controlled by the producer, thus, preferred by allowing variation across firms to be influenced by both factors (wan and battese, 1992) and (schmidt and lovell, 1979). 4.3.3. technical efficiency with stochastic and deterministic frontier functions both stochastic and deterministic frontier can be used to estimate technical efficiency but stochastic frontier is more accepted because it takes to account symmetric error which is neglected in deterministic frontier. only technological inefficiency is considered in deterministic frontier function, thus, 𝑦𝑖 = 𝑓(𝑋𝑖; 𝛽), when estimated becomes 𝑦𝑖 = 𝑓(𝑋𝑖; 𝛽)𝑇𝐸𝑖 , where 𝑦𝑖 is producer𝑖’s output, 𝑓(𝑋𝑖; 𝛽) is deterministic part and 𝑇𝐸𝑖 being producer 𝑖’s technical efficiency as the ratio of observed output to maximum possible output, that is 𝑇𝐸𝑖 = 𝑦𝑖 𝑓(𝑋𝑖;𝛽) . maximum output is achieved when𝑇𝐸𝑖 = 1, and𝑇𝐸𝑖 < 1 indicatesweakness of the producer to efficiently use the technology and inputs available to produce potential output on the frontier. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 186 on the other hand, stochastic frontier production function that takes to account both technical inefficiency and symmetric errors in the production process is given by 𝑦𝑖 = 𝑓(𝑋𝑖; 𝛽)exp (𝑣𝑖)𝑇𝐸𝑖 , where, 𝑓(𝑋𝑖; 𝛽) exp(𝑣𝑖) is the stochastic part that is made up of deterministic part 𝑓(𝑋𝑖; 𝛽) and symmetric error exp(𝑣𝑖) that captures factors outside control of producer. estimated technical efficiency is𝑇𝐸𝑖 = 𝑦𝑖 𝑓(𝑋𝑖;𝛽) exp(𝑣𝑖) . maximum output is achieved when 𝑇𝐸𝑖 = 1and 𝑇𝐸𝑖 < 1 implies thatoutput fall below the potential; this is influenced by both inefficiency and symmetric errors that are beyond farmers’ control ability (mastromarco, 2008). 4.3.4. theoretical specification of stochastic and technical inefficiency models input-output points on the technically efficient curve describes the production frontier, thus, farmers’ observed input-output combination provides information required for measuring technical efficiency (pitt and lee, 1981). the frontier production function which is econometrically estimated is considered, and given by; 𝑞𝑖 ∗ = 𝑓(𝑥𝑖 ; 𝛽) exp (휀𝑖) …………………….. (1) where 𝑞𝑖 ∗ stands for observed output level of the farmer𝑖 , 𝑖 = 1, 2, … . 𝑁, 𝑥𝑖 is the vector of input quantities used by the farmer𝑖, 𝛽 is a vector of unknown parameters to be estimated, and 휀𝑖 is a composed error to farmer 𝑖 which is made by two components 𝑣𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑖 thus, 휀𝑖 = 𝑣𝑖 − 𝑢𝑖 (jandrow et al., 1982). furthermore, 𝑣𝑖 is a symmetric error which accounts for factors beyond control of the farmer like weather, and is assumed to be independently and identically distributed as n (0,𝜎𝑣 2), and 𝑢𝑖 is the non-negative random variable that stands for technical inefficiency. in this study 𝑢𝑖 follows half normal distribution n (0,𝜎𝑢 2), though can also follow exponential or truncated-normal distribution. the maximum likelihood estimation (mle) of the stochastic frontier (4.5) gives the likelihood variance parameters 𝜎𝑠 2=𝜎𝑣 2 + 𝜎𝑢 2 which are important in explaining technical inefficiency, where 𝜎𝑠 2 = 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑚𝑎2 is the farmers’ total error variance and (stata corp, 2011). according to aigner et al., (1977) as cited in khai and yabe (2011), maximum likelihood estimation of the half normal stochastic frontier production function shows the existence of technical inefficiency when the estimated lambda violates the null hypothesis that 𝜆 = 0 (that is,𝜆 > 0). thus, the rejection of null hypothesis proves presence of technical inefficiency in the production. furthermore, bravo-ureta and pinheiro (1997) argue that one can recognize by how much technical inefficiency is present from 𝜆, by computing 𝛾 that ranges between 0 and 1, where,𝛾 = 𝜆2 [1+𝜆2] . likewise, when𝛾 = 0variation in farm output is caused by factors beyond farmer’s control and when 𝛾 diverge from zero means farmers self weak effort contribute to farm output variation. following jandrow et al. (1982), on the assumption that 𝑢𝑖 and 𝑣𝑖 are independent of each other, the mean of conditional distribution of 𝑢𝑖 given 휀𝑖 in the case of half-normal is given by; e ( 𝑢𝑖 휀𝑖 ) = σuσv/σ [ ℎ ( 𝜀𝑖𝜆 𝜎 ) 1 − 𝐻 ( 𝜀𝑖𝜆 𝜎 ) − 휀𝑖𝜆 𝜎 ] … … … … … … … … . . (2) where,휀𝑖𝜆 = −𝑢𝑖∗ /𝜎∗ , 𝜎∗ = σuσv/σ ,ℎ is standard normal density and 𝐻is cumulative distribution function. the combination of ideas of pitt and lee (1981) and jandrow et al. (1982) gives technical efficiency of the individual farmer as; asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 187 𝑇𝐸𝑖 = 𝑞𝑖 ∗ (𝑞𝑖 ∗⁄ /𝑒𝑥𝑝(−𝑢𝑖)) = 𝑒𝑥𝑝(−𝑢𝑖) = exp(−𝐸(𝑢𝑖/휀𝑖)) = 𝐸(𝑢𝑖/휀𝑖) …………………….. (3) where, 𝑇𝐸𝑖 is technical efficiency of 𝑖 farmer,𝑢𝑖 is estimated technical inefficiency part, 휀𝑖 is an error term in the model, 𝑞𝑖 ∗ stands for observed output, 𝑞𝑖 ∗/𝑒𝑥𝑝(−𝑢𝑖) stands for potential output and 𝑇𝐸𝑖 and 𝑢𝑖 both ranges between 0 and 1. 4.4. two stage approach the two stage approach is used in studying frontier production functions despite its contradicting postulation of independent distribution of the inefficiency part. this method starts with regression of the frontier production function to identify presence of technical inefficiency or technical efficiency in the production process. in the second stage, the realized predicted technical inefficiency or technical efficiency model as dependent variable is estimated against independent variables together with a random error to capture sources of technical inefficiency or efficiency in the production process (battese and coelli, 1993). 4.5. empirical specification for stochastic and technical inefficiency models 4.5.1. stochastic frontier production function the stochastic frontier production function is chosen among the frontiers because it takes into account both symmetric errors and technical inefficiencies in explaining deviations of output from the frontier (mastromarco, 2008). the technology used in the analysis of the stochastic frontier production function is cobb-douglas production function. the method is preferred because its interpretation is simple, and as argued by khai and yabe (2011), if the model entails above three exogenous factors, cobb-douglas production function is ideal. from (4.5), the cobb-douglas production function can be expressed as: 𝑙𝑜𝑔𝐻𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑝𝑢𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑙𝑜𝑔𝐻ℎ𝑠𝑖𝑧𝑒 + 𝛽2𝑙𝑜𝑔𝐴𝑟𝑒𝑎 + 𝛽3𝑆𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑡𝑦𝑝 + 𝛽4𝐹𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑡𝑦𝑝 + 𝛽5𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑡 + (𝑣𝑖 − 𝑢𝑖) ……………………………. (4) where, log houtput is log of harvested output of maize or tobacco or groundnuts in kilograms produced by the 𝑖𝑡ℎ farmer3 during 2007/2008 agricultural year, log hhsizeis log of household size in numbers that provide labor to the 𝑖𝑡ℎ farmer, log area stands for log of actual planted area in acres by the 𝑖𝑡ℎ farmer, seedtyp represents a type of seed used by the 𝑖𝑡ℎ farmer (local=0 improved seed=1), ferttyp stands for a type of fertilizer used by the 𝑖𝑡ℎ farmer, (traditional=0 or modern fertilizer =1), tractasset, is the tractor asset used by the 𝑖𝑡ℎ farmer (yes=1, no = 0), 𝑣𝑖 stands for factors outside control of the 𝑖𝑡ℎfarmer like weatherand diseases, and 𝑢𝑖 stands for one-sided random error for technical inefficiency of half-normal distribution that is independent of 𝑣𝑖 andnonnegative. 4.5.1.1. cost saving to an average efficient farmer and least efficient farmer after estimation of stochastic frontier function, and prediction of technical efficiency, the distribution of technical efficiency is displayed together with possible cost saving that an average and least efficient farmer would have realized when compared to the most efficient counterpart. cost saving to an average efficient farmer is obtained by taking [1 − mean technical efficiency maximum technical efficiency ] ∗ 100 and cost saving to the least efficient farmer obtained by[1 − minimum technical efficiency maximum technical efficiency ] ∗ 100 (bravo-ureta and pinheiro, 1997). 4.5.2. the technical inefficiency model 3farmer(s) stands for farming household(s) whose information obtained from household heads asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 188 production is constrained by inputs and random factors that lead into production fall below the potential frontier output. the fall is highly a result of technical inefficiency which is theoretically identified from stochastic frontier (battese and coelli, 1993 and 1995). identifying technical inefficiency only is not sufficient, thus, the sources of technical inefficiency to solve the problem are needed. technical inefficiency with respect to independent variables as used by pitt and lee (1981) is considered, in addition to this random error is included and other independent factors, therefore technical inefficiency model is given by; 𝑈𝑖 = 𝛿0 + 𝛿1𝐴𝑔𝑒 + 𝛿2𝐻ℎ𝑠𝑖𝑧𝑒 + 𝛿3𝐸𝑑𝑢𝑝 + 𝛿4𝐼𝑛𝑝𝑢𝑡𝑐𝑜𝑠𝑡 + 𝛿5𝐶𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠 + 𝛿6𝐶𝑎𝑝𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑡 + 𝛿7𝐿𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑 + 𝛿8𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 + 휀𝑖 ……………………. (5) where, 𝑈𝑖 is the technical inefficiency of the𝑖𝑡ℎfarmer, 𝛿0 − 𝛿10 is inefficiency parameters to be estimated, age is age of the farming household head (years), hhsize is the number of persons in the house who provide labour in farming (numbers), edup is the education level attained by the head of household in years (1= primary education, 0 otherwise), inputcost is the cost incurred in inputs (tshs) (1=high cost, 0= otherwise), creditaccess stands for farming household access to credit (1= yes, 0= no), capitalassetstands for the bicycle assets available to the farming households(1= yes, 0= no), livingcondstands for living condition of the farming household (1= have iron sheet houses, 0= otherwise),mainactivity stands for farming households who fully engage in farming activities (1=full engagement, 0 otherwise), and 휀𝑖 is the error term in the ordinary least square (ols) of technical inefficiency model. 4.6. returns to scale in any production, outputs are expected to vary relative to inputs used. beattie and friends (2011) note that, the so called function coefficient is the total percentage change in output relative to percentage change in all inputs. the total percentage change in output is considered as total elasticity of production written as; 휀 = 𝐸1 + 𝐸2 + 𝐸3 …………………………. (6) e1, e2 and e3 are elasticity 1, elasticity 2 and elasticity 3 respectively, and their sum gives total elasticity. furthermore, quasi elasticity written as 𝜉 = 𝐸1 + 𝐸2 is obtained by keeping other factors constant and focusing on only few, in which휀 𝑜𝑟 𝜉 > 1 implies increasing returns to scale (irt), 휀 𝑜𝑟 𝜉 < 1 implies decreasing return to scale (drt) and휀 𝑜𝑟 𝜉 = 1 implies constant return to scale (crt) in production. 4.7. hypothesis of the study i. there is technical inefficiency in production of maize, tobacco and groundnuts to smallholder farmers in tabora and ruvuma region. ii. both social and institutional factors are determinants of technical efficiency. iii. there is slight difference in mean technical efficiency of farmers in the regions. 4.8. estimation technique cobb-douglas production function and technical inefficiency model are estimated through two stage approach using ordinary least square (ols) that suggests suitable factors of production, that is inputs output relationship and maximum likelihood estimator (mle) that estimates the stochastic frontier function using stata 12 software to detect technical inefficiency, this is in the first stage, while in the second stage, technical inefficiency model is estimated using ols to capture sources of technical efficiency and inefficiency to the smallholder farming households. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 189 5. empirical results and their interpretations 4.1. descriptive statistics table 1: descriptive statistics of maize farmers (farming households) variable obs mean std. dev. min max tabora age 2365 47.2270 15.0386 16 97 hhsize 2365 6.4173 3.7266 1 29 edup 2365 0.6443 0.4787 0 1 inpcost 2365 0.1539 0.3609 0 1 creditacc 2365 0.0913 0.2881 0 1 capitalasset 2365 0.7403 0.4385 0 1 livingcond 2365 0.2431 0.4290 0 1 mainwork 2365 0.9133 0.2814 0 1 ferttyp 818 0.5562 0.4971 0 1 tractasset 2364 0.0143 0.1190 0 1 seedtyp 2365 0.1331 0.3398 0 1 actual planted area(acres) 2365 2.5483 2.6267 0.05 40 harvested output(kgs) 2363 1329.873 1728.623 0 23000 ruvuma age 1710 44.3374 14.6502 17 98 hhsize 1710 4.7619 2.2536 1 16 edup 1710 0.7900 0.4073 0 1 inputcost 1710 0.2111 0.4082 0 1 creditaccess 1710 0.0450 0.2074 0 1 capitalasset 1710 0.4807 0.4997 0 1 livingcond 1710 0.4502 0.4976 0 1 mainwork 1710 0.5017 0.5001 0 1 ferttyp 950 0.9221 0.2681 0 1 tractasset 1710 0.0005 0.0241 0 1 seedtyp 1710 0.0666 0.2495 0 1 actual planted area(acres) 1710 1.9474 1.8769 0.05 30 harvested output(kgs) 1710 1327.193 2132.463 0 36000 source: author’s computation using stata 12 on nsca 2007/2008 in assessing output inputs relationship, harvested output stands as dependent variable while household size, actual planted area, seed type, fertility type and tractor asset stands as independent variables. average harvested maize output was 1329.87kgs and 1327.19kgs in tabora and ruvuma respectively. average actual planted area was 2.5 acres and 1.9 acres in tabora and ruvuma respectively. inorganic fertilizers were used by 56% and 92% for tabora and ruvuma respectively; this indicates that ruvuma farmers used more of inorganic fertilizers than tabora farmers. improved seeds were used by 13% and 6% in tabora and ruvuma respectively; this implies that in both regions improved seeds were used in less than 14% and the use of tractors was in low percentage in both regions. age, household size, education, input costs, access to credit, capital assets, living condition and main activity are the variables in assessing determinants of technical inefficiency. average age of the head of household is 47 and 44 years, and average household size is 6 and 5 people per house in tabora and ruvuma regions respectively. 64% and 79% of farming households head had primary education, showing that most of household heads in both regions have attained primary level of education. only 74% and 48% had capital assets such as bicycles for transporting inputs and labor in tabora and ruvuma regions respectively. 45% and 24% of the farming households had iron sheet households, most of the remaining percentage had grass leaves and grass and mad houses. only 50% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 190 and 91% of the households considered crop farming as their main activity in ruvuma and tabora regions respectively, revealing that most of the smallholder farmers are crop farmers. 5.2. ols and mle of maize stochastic frontier for tabora and ruvuma regions table 2: ols and mle results from cobb-douglas stochastic frontier function for maize production in tabora and ruvuma maize tabora maize ruvuma ols stochastic frontier (mle) ols stochastic frontier (mle) variables para mets coefficient coefficient coefficient coefficient constant β0 6.08(0.000)*** 6.64(0.000)*** 5.98(0.000)*** 6.93(0.000)*** log househol de β1 0.12(0.005)** 0.14(0.001)*** 0.10(0.039)** 0.09(0.042)** log area β2 0.83(0.000)*** 0.83(0.000)*** 0.97(0.000)*** 0.95(0.000)*** seed type β3 0.09(0.098)* 0.07(0.145) 0.39(0.000)*** 0.39(0.000)*** fertilizer type β4 0.16(0.001)*** 0.14(0.002)** 0.28(0.002)*** 0.13(0.117) tractor asset β5 0.07(0.660) 0.09(0.570) -0.16(0.831) -0.4(0.534) 𝑙𝑛𝜎𝑣 2 -1.60(0.000)*** -1.84(0.000)*** 𝑙𝑛𝜎𝑢 2 -0.64(0.000)*** 0.01 𝜎𝑣 0.45 0.4 𝜎𝑢 0.73 1 𝜎𝑠 2 = 𝜎𝑣 2 + 𝜎𝑢 2 0.73 1.17 𝜆 = 𝜎𝑢/𝜎𝑣 1.62 2.52 lr-test of 23.62*** 81.01*** r-squared 0.47 0.46 f( 5, 807) 144.26 f(5, 942) 160.23 prob> f 0.00*** 0.00*** prob>chi2 0.00*** 0.00*** function coefficient 0.97 1.05 observation 813 813 948 948 note: ***, **, * means statistically significant at 1%, 5%, and 10% respectively.values in the parenthesis are the p-values for the ols regression and mle(maximum likelihood estimation). log means logarithm function coefficient is the sum of values of logarithm variables source: author’s computation using stata 12 on nsca 2007/2008 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 191 ols results for both tabora and ruvuma regions shows a positive relationship and significance results between maize output level and inputs variables like household size (labor), actual planted area, use of improved seed and use of inorganic fertilizers. only the use of tractor asset is positve and insignificant in influencing maize output in tabora and is negative and insignificant in influencing maize output level in ruvuma, indicating that it is not optimally used to smallholder farmers in both regions. actualplanted area stands as the most positive and significant factor that influenced maize outputs, meaning that keeping other factors constant, one percent increase in area planted with maize would significantly increase the quantity of maize harvested by 0.97% and 0.83% respectively. msuya et al. (2008) also noted high influence of land (actual planted area) on maize output. mle of stochastic frontier function for both ruvuma and tabora indicates the presence of technical ineffiency in production of maize for both regions. basing on an idea of aigner et al. (1977) as cited in khai and yabe (2011), test for null and alternative hypothesis that 𝐻0: 𝜆 = 0 and 𝐻1: 𝜆 > 0 respectively is perfomed and results of estimated lambda (𝜆) found to be 1.62 and 2.52 for tabora and ruvuma respectively, thus rejecting the null hypothesis that there is no technical inefficiency. furthermore, using the formula suggested by bravo-ureta and pinheiro (1997) for testing technical inefficiency value using gamma (γ) that is 𝛾 = 𝜆2 [1+𝜆2] . inserting 𝜆 = 1.62and 𝜆 = 2.52 in 𝛾 = 𝜆2 [1+𝜆2] gives 𝛾 = 0.724 and 𝛾 = 0.864respectively, meaning that about 72.4% and 86.4% of total farm maize output variationin tabora and ruvuma regions respectively is due to technical inefficiency. this shows that, variation in farm ouput due to technical inefficiency is greater in ruvuma than tabora region by 14 %. this is also proved by the log likelihood ratio test which is greater in ruvuma (81.01) than that of tabora (23.62). ols estimation results indicates that maize output is explained by independent variables used by 47% and 46% in tabora and ruvuma regions respectively (see table 2). probability values in ols and mle of stochastic frontier is 0.00 in both regions which indicates that the models in general are statistically significant at 1 % level. furthemore, sum of quasi elastisties in estimated stochastic frontier function is 0.97 for tabora and 1.05 for ruvuma, these are the function coefficients which indicate decreasing return to scale (drs) for tabora and increasing return to scale (irs) for ruvuma maize production as demonstrated in table 2. after realizing presence of technical inefficiency in both tabora and ruvuma regions, values of technical efficiency were predicted as shown in table 3. 4.3. technical efficiency distribution of maize smallholder farmers (farming households) in tabora and ruvuma regions table 3: distribution of efficiency tabora maize farmers ruvuma maize farmers efficiency level frequency % of farmers frequency % of farmers < 0.21 12 1.48 65 6.86 0.21-0.40 72 8.86 187 19.73 0.41-0.60 268 32.96 314 33.12 0.61-0.80 411 50.55 326 34.39 0.81-1.00 50 6.15 56 5.91 observation 813 100 948 100 maximum te 0.87 0.87 minimum te 0.15 0.03 mean te 0.61 0.53 source: author estimates using stata 12 on 2007/2008 nsca data asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 192 figure 2: technical efficiency levels of maize smallholder farmers source: author construction (2014) using nsca 2007/2008 data technical efficiency for maize farmers4 ranges from 0.15 to 0.87, with mean technical efficiency of 0.61 in tabora while in ruvuma ranges from 0.03 to 0.87 with average technical efficiency of 0.53. these results imply that about 39 % and 47 % of maize output lost in tabora and ruvuma respectively due to technical inefficiency, this implies that ruvuma farmers are less efficient to tabora farmers. this correspond to the level of technical inefficiency observed which is higher for ruvuma compared to that of tabora region see the log likelihood ratios. applying the average, maximum and minimum technical efficiency values obtained above on maize farmers in tabora and ruvuma region, results suggests that, average maize farmer in tabora region would save 29.89 percent ( [1 − ( 0.61 0.87 )] ∗ 100) of costs, and the least efficient maize farmer would save 82.76 percent ([1 − ( 0.15 0.87 )] ∗ 100)of costs. in ruvuma, the most inefficient maize farmers in ruvuma region would save 96.55 percent equally to( [1 − ( 0.03 0.87 )] ∗ 100) while the average maize farmers would realize cost saving of 39.08 percent equally to [1 − ( 0.53 0.87 )] ∗ 100 when compared to their most efficient counterpart respectively. values of technical inefficiency pave the way to realize the factors for technical efficiency or technical inefficiency. as per many scholars, when technical inefficiency is expressed as independent variable; a negative sign of a dependent variable implies decrease in inefficiency and a positive sign of dependent variable increases inefficiency in the production, and the vice versa is true when technical efficiency is considered as independent variable. basing on the socio-economic factors available to smallholder farmers; age, education, household size, input costs, credit assets, capital assets (households with bicycles), crop farming as main activity and living condition (households with iron sheet houses) are considered in analyzing factors for technical inefficiency in production so as to be the policy issues to be focused, see table 4. 4farmer(s) stands for farming household(s) 1.48 8.86 32.96 50.55 6.156.86 19.73 33.12 34.39 5.91 < 0.21 0.21-0.40 0.41-0.60 0.61-0.80 0.81-1.00 technical efficiency levels % of tabora maize farmers % of ruvuma maize farmers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 193 table 4: determinants of technical inefficiency technical inefficiency parameter tabora ruvuma _cons δ0 0.4461 (0.000)*** 0.4419 (0.000)*** age δ1 0.00007 (0.851) 0.0009 (0.029)** hhsize δ2 0.0011 (0.425) 0.0020 (0.497) edup δ3 0.0299 (0.014)** 0.0278 (0.117) inpcost δ4 0.0246 (0.09)* -0.0040 (0.791) creditacc δ5 -0.0408 (0.002)*** -0.0083 (0.734) capitalasset δ6 -0.0194 (0.17) -0.0452 (0.001)*** livingcond δ7 -0.0209 (0.06)* -0.0211 (0.104) mainwork δ8 -0.0691 (0.000)*** -0.0138 (0.284) prob>f 0.0000*** 0.0017*** observation 813 948 note: ***, **, * means statistically significant at 1%, 5%, and 10% respectively.values in the parenthesis are the p-values for the ols basing on equation 4.9 of technical inefficiency model, it shows the possible social economic factors that determine inefficiency of the maize farmers. the results as presented in table 4 suggests that; age of the head of household is positive in both regions and statistically significantly at 5% caused inefficiency in ruvuma region maize farmers, this is possible as heads of farming households becomes older they lose energy hence response to improved agricultural facilities decreases and the supervision over their farms decreases hence inefficiency increase. household size that ensures labor in farming activities is positive but insignificant in both regions, suggesting that as labor increases more and more efficiency reaches maximum and start to decreases this is possible due to reality of small farm sizes available to smallholders’ farmers. coefficient of primary education is positive in both regions and statistically insignificant at 5% in tabora, suggesting that farmers with primary education produce maize inefficiently; this is possible as many smallholder farmers continue to use outdated methods in farming and mostly produce for subsistence. chirwa (2007) also found the same result that farmers with primary education influenced production inefficiency in the southern malawi. the coefficient of inputs cost is positive and statistically significant at 10 % level in production of maize in tabora, thus caused inefficiency in the region. this is possible due to the fact that high inputs costs to smallholder farmers it is a burden hence inputs are not used in an optimal level, hence inefficiency. this is shown even by the descriptive statistics which shows that improved seeds were used in less than 14% in both tabora and ruvuma regions and also tractors assets were also used in low quantity in both regions. the coefficient of credit access is negative in both regions and statistically significant at 1% level in tabora and coefficient of capital assets is negative in both region and statistically significant at1% level in ruvuma. this suggests that, smallholder farmers with access to credit and those with capital assets like bicycles for carrying inputs and labor increased technical efficiency to maize farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 180-197 194 coefficient of living condition (good living condition) and that of crop farming as main activity are negative in both regions and statistically significant at 10% and 1% level respectively in tabora suggesting that smallholder farmer’s better living condition and those who consider crop farming as their main activity and involves themselves full time in crop farming increased efficiency in production of maize in both regions. 6. summary, conclusion and suggestions this study compares technical efficiency of maize production among smallholder farmers in tabora and ruvuma regions of tanzania. maize crop is considered due to its position in the country as the main annual and staple crop grown in all regions in tanzania and employs about 75% of the working population; due to this, efficiency in its production has to be given special attention. the study used a two stage approach on national sample census of agriculture (nsca) 2007/2008 data. in the first stage, ols and mle were employed in analyzing the cobb-douglas production function, here technical inefficiency was realised to smallholder farmers and actual planted area stand as the most important factor in influencing outputand tractor asset as the most inoptimal factor to maize output in both regions. in both regions results of technical efficiency indicated the room to increase output using resources available. the mean techinical efficiency were 0.61 in tabora which is closely to 0.606 obtained by msuya et al. (2008) and 0.53 in ruvuma region. in the second stage ols was used to determine determinants of technical inefficiency. the results shows the need to encourage young people to engage in agriculture for old people decreased efficiency in maize. credit access, availability of capital assets and good living condition need to be the policy issue for they increased efficiency, so need to be emphasised. further, government should provide subsdies to inputs to encourage smallholder farmers to use improved inputs for high inputs costs increased inefficiency. in general, policies on agricultural production efficiency related to poverty eradication strategies are to be initiated alsogovernment and other agricultural development partiner should give high priority to a region with high technical efficiency of a given crop to increase output and food security to the country. this study suggest the use of primary data and panel data for further research for secondary cross section data were used. also allocative and economic efficiency approach can be used to analyse efficiency; and the comparison of more than one crop rather than maize only. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that she has no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all the designing and estimation of current research done by sole author. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. reference aigner, d. j., & chu, s. f. 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(corresponding author) article history: received: 25-feb-2020 accepted: 06-may-2020 online available: 10-jun2020 keywords: tertiary institutions, host communities, rural development, economic development abstract this paper examines the economic impact of federal university oyeekiti, ekiti state, nigeria on its host communities in oye and ikole towns since inception. the study sets out with a major objective of determining whether the establishment of the university would organically lead to the development of its host communities. quantitative and qualitative techniques were adopted for research design while the stratified sampling technique was used in administering the questionnaire for the study. the results show that while the establishment of tertiary institutions has a potential to increase household income in rural communities where they are located, it does not necessarily lead to the development of these communities in terms of basic health care facilities, primary education centers, good road networks and improved standard of living. contribution/ originality despite the establishment of new universities in communities in nigeria, not enough research has focused on how such universities impact the rural communities. this study is important in that it explored how the presence of tertiary institutions can transform the host communities in terms of the availability of a wide range of choices. the findings of the study will significantly benefit policymakers in the area of rural development. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.346.363 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: rufus b. akindola and shina j. ojo (2020). tertiary institutions and development in rural communities: role of federal university oye-ekiti, ekiti state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 346-363. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 346-363 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:boluwaji56@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.346.363 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 347 1. introduction the contributions of tertiary institutions to host communities’ socio-economic development cannot be overemphasized. this is because substantial evidence suggests that rural communities with the presence of tertiary institutions have been transformed both socially and economically. for example, fatoki (2017) posits that the citing of a tertiary institution in a community has the potential to create employment opportunities for both skilled and unskilled labor which in turn increases the population of the town as a result of migration. this singular factor motivates various communities in nigeria, including political heavyweights, to lobby for the establishment of tertiary institutions in rural areas within their constituencies. higher education remains a major investment in human capital to enhance capabilities. it is also an indispensable ingredient in attaining development, not just in the national economy, but also in communities where such institutions are situated. there is presently a global interest in measuring the impact of tertiary institutions on host communities using social and economic indicators other than pure academic indicators. nigeria, as a multicultural state formation has over 250 ethnic groups and about 570 tertiary institutions whose roles and responsibilities transcend the realm of education (fatoki, 2017; ehinmowo and eludoyin, 2010). this is because research activities carried out in tertiary institutions are community-oriented as they are conducted in a manner that the development of host communities is felt and practiced by all stakeholders. in the perception of garlick (2005), the association between tertiary institutions and host communities is structural. in other words, tertiary institutions are major economic boosters for host communities essentially because of the opportunity for wealth creation and the flow of commerce. although wealth creation may be an indicator of economic growth in rural communities, it is not a sufficient condition for the achievement of development. sen (2001) postulates that the achievement of functioning depends not only on the commodities owned by the person in question, but also on the availability of public goods, and the possibility of using private goods freely provided by the state. the nobel laureate further explains that such achievements as being healthy, being well-nourished, being literate, etc. would depend naturally also on the public provisions of health services, medical facilities, educational arrangements, and so on. the underlying motivation behind these assertions is the emphasis on the relationship between economic growth and freedom from oppression, powerlessness, and voicelessness. more explicitly stated, todaro and smith (2015), argue that the advantage of economic growth is not that wealth increases happiness, but increases the range of human choices. the bottom line is that true happiness in a rural communityuniversity relationship is only possible when the presence of tertiary institutions provides more viable choices for members of rural communities in terms of access to health care facilities, quality education, and improved standard of living. in establishing the association between these two variables (universities and development of host communities), stokes and coomes (1998), maintain that the economic impacts of tertiary institutions on communities range from knowledge creation and sharing through research and development to the flow of income and expenditure within the community. according to tanko (2016), while universities provide quality education, they also offer a range of social, economic, and cultural activities to their host communities. however, nigeria is widely characterized by communities that are primitive when it comes to issues of socio-economic development. this is due to the neglect of rural communities by policymakers, the economic distance of such communities, and lack of basic infrastructure. as such, the government in the recent past has established new tertiary institutions in some of these communities to create wealth and promote rural development. the establishment also aims to meet the needs of a teeming population of youths desiring to gain a higher education degree. despite the presence of these new universities, however, not enough research has critically examined how such universities impact the local host communities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 348 the main objective of this study, therefore, is to examine how rural communities are transformed in terms of the availability of a wide range of choices when tertiary institutions are located in such communities via an empirical study. in this case, it becomes imperative to seek the perception of relevant stakeholders (students, university staff, landlords and business owners) on the impact of the university within the community, taking into cognizance, development indicators such as access to primary education, basic health care facilities and standard of living. 2. literature review since the establishment of nigeria’s premier university in the late 1950s, several scholars have embarked on a knowledge-journey towards establishing the association between tertiary institutions and host communities. such ancient scholars include ayobami (1977), who investigated the physical impact of the university of ife (now, obafemi awolowo university) on ile-ife town. he concluded that the siting of a tertiary institution in a community creates employment opportunities for both skilled and unskilled labour. accordingly, this in turn increases the population of the town as a result of people migrating to the area to explore employment opportunities. also, the development of higher institutions contributes to the development of host communities as well as the surrounding villages in an upward trend (yu et al., 2015). florida (2004) shows that the presence of a high-grade university in a community gives it a competitive advantage compared to areas without such institutions. in studying the economic impact of nigerian tertiary institutions on host communities, awah (2010) argues that institutions such as university of ibadan, obafemi awolowo university ile-ife and university of port-harcourt, were situated and named after small settlements many years ago which today have grown into major cities in the country with sufficient infrastructure for development. in examining the critical role of open universities in the development of countries, hayward (2006), argues that the attention given to higher education by a nation determines the degree to which the economic benefits will be reaped. echoing these views, ali (2010) asserts that open universities in different countries of the world meet the nations’ need for stable, peaceful, and progressive communities. furthermore, yu et al (2015), examines the role of universities in the development of innovative technology in host communities and agree that the presence of the tomsk university in russia has led to rapid development in the tomsk region, not just in terms of technology but also economically. similarly, liu et al. (2016) argue that the rate of urbanization in china has accelerated since the 1990s, and local governments have endeavoured to establish various types of development zones with new areas, new towns, and university towns emerging as new types of urban space. in the future, people from other cities, provinces, and perhaps nations will move to such university towns, and residents will experience positive and negative changes (zhang et al., 2019). moreover, these changes will have major impacts on residents, including on their income and livelihood opportunities, as well as to their normal daily life, environment, culture, and infrastructure. to this end, several theories explaining the impact of tertiary institutions on host communities have been propounded. they include the liberalist and professional formation theories. the liberalists, for example, explain that higher education leads to self-realization and social transformation, while on the other hand, the professional formation theory states that universities and other tertiary institutions are providers of expertise and vocational education in both traditional and modern fields (watson, 2011). 3. materials and methods the study adopted a random sampling method as well as stratified sampling techniques in the collection of data. the questionnaire was administered to respondents in two local government areas (oye and ikole) where the university’s major campuses are situated. this was carried out in a supervised group environment. the purpose of the survey was to obtain the views of relevant stakeholders on the university and rural community relationship as it relates to wealth creation and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 349 development. a total of 321 questionnaires were distributed to students, landlords (locals), university staff members, and business owners out of which 90% (i.e. 289) were duly-filled and returned. the number of questionnaires was based on the qualtrics calculator which calculates and determines representative sample size using the following parameters: population size (5000), the margin of error or confidence interval (+/-5%), confidence level (90%) and standard deviation (0.5). the participants were randomly selected across both lgas to avoid selection bias. 3.1. characteristics of respondents the sample included 400 level or final year university students in selected departments (economics, peace & conflict resolution, psychology, microbiology, mechanical engineering, agricultural engineering, soil science, and english and literary studies) from both campuses accounting for 32.7% of total respondents. university staff members who have worked in the university for five years accounted for 22.1% while landlords or locals who were residing in the community before the establishment of the university accounted for 22.1%. on the other hand, business owners who had been operating in the community before the establishment of the university accounted for 23.1% of total respondents. the streamlining in the sample population was occasioned by the need to obtain accurate information from stakeholders who have resided or worked in these communities for at least three years. over 60% of student respondents were female while less than 40% were male as presented in figure 1. this is because female students were more willing to fill and return questionnaires administered to them than male students. figure 1: gender distribution of students it must be stated that 78% of landlords interviewed were male while only 23% of them were female. moreover, a high percentage of landlords (74%) own houses in oye while only 27% reported that they own houses in ikole as evident in figure 2. this is because oye community hosts the university’s main campus with five (5) faculties, while ikole community hosts the faculties of agriculture and engineering only. figure 2: location of landlords’ houses it is also interesting to note that majority of business owners interviewed are involved in food business accounting for the major business category of the respondents. similarly, the majority of business owners operate their businesses within oye lga as it hosts five of the university’s seven faculties while 33% operate their businesses within ikole lga. on the other hand, 53% of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 350 university staff members have worked with the university for more than five years while 48% have worked for just five years. 4. findings and discussions given that this study pooled information from students, university staff, business owners, and landlords/locals, the income and proportion of it spent within the host communities were analyzed and presented in the following section. 4.1. proportion of income earned by students figure 3 indicates that 48% of respondents earn less than ngn10,000 (27usd), 32% earn between ngn10,000 (27usd) and ngn25,000 (68usd), 18.1% earn between ngn26,000 (70usd) and ngn50,000 (136usd) respectively. only 3% earn ngn50,000(136usd) and above monthly. figure 3: proportion of income earned by students 4.2. percentage of students’ income spent in oye/ikole figure 4 shows that, of all student respondents, a significant proportion (30%), spend more than 80% of their income within oye/ikole communities. 25% spend between 61% and 80% of their income. also, 20% of the respondents spend between 41% and 60% while 16% spend between 21% and 40% with 11% spending less than 20% of their income within host communities. considering these results, it can be observed that more than 90% spend at least 40% of their monthly income within oye/ikole communities hence, contributing significantly to the creation of wealth. considering these results, it can be observed that more than 90% spend at least 40% of their monthly income within oye/ikole communities hence, contributing significantly to the creation of wealth. a study conducted by fatoki (2017) on a south african university shows that although the majority of university students do not have a written budget, female students are more likely than male students to have a budget. in addition, the study reveals that the majority of university students spend money on groceries and fast food which contributes significantly to the local economy. this is consistent with the findings of the present study and maslow's hierarchy of needs in his 1943 paper where he listed food, water, and other physiological needs as the basic needs of man. figure 4: percentage of students’ income spent in oye/ikole asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 351 4.3. current monthly income of business owners figure 5 reports the different monthly income category of business owners operating within oye/ikole communities since the establishment of the university. it shows that a majority (42%) of respondents earn between ngn25,000 (68usd) and ngn49,999 (133usd) monthly, 22% earn between ngn50,000 (136usd) and ngn79,999 (215usd), 18% earn between ngn80,000 (218usd) and ngn99,999 (270usd), 14% earn at least ngn100,000 (272usd) per month while a tiny proportion (6%) earns between ngn10,000 (27usd) and ngn24,999 (65usd) monthly respectively. figure 5: current monthly income of business owners 4.4. monthly income of business owners before the establishment of the university figure 6 shows the income of business owners before the establishment of the university. it reveals that 56% of them earned between n30,000 (81usd) and n49,999 (133usd). it also shows that 21% earned between n10,000 (27usd) and n29,000 (79usd) while 24.3% earned less than n10,000 (27usd) before the university began its operation in 2012. when compared with figure 5 above, it becomes clear that the monthly income of business owners rose significantly as 54% (i.e. 22% + 18% + 14%) of them now earn at least n50,000 (136usd) since the establishment of the university indicating an increased possession of wealth for business owners. it must be noted that income can vary based on where a business is located. arguably, some areas have a higher cost of living than others, and there is more demand for certain products and services in some areas than others (blakely-gray, 2020). this explains the differential in the incomes of business owners before the university was located in oye and ikole communities when there were little or no economic activities compared to when the university has now been located in the areas. figure 6: income of business owners before the establishment of the university 4.5. the proportion of income spent by university staff members within oye/ikole communities figure 7 below shows the proportion of the income of university staff spent within oye/ikole communities. it reveals that 51% of the respondents spend between 41% and 60% of their monthly income within these host communities, 29% spend between 21% and 40%, 11% spend between 61% and 80%, while a tiny proportion (10%) spend 20% of their monthly income. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 352 figure 7: proportion of the income of university staff figure 8 shows the house rent charges of landlords before the establishment of the university while figure 8: house rent charges of landlords before the establishment of the university as evident in figure 8 above, 56% of landlords charged between n10,000 (27usd) and n29,999 (80usd) as house rent, 20% of them charged between n30,000 (81usd) and n49,999 (133usd), while 24% charged between n50,000 (136usd) and n69,999 (188usd) for basic single rooms, standard single rooms and self-contained apartments respectively before the establishment of the university. figure 9 below shows landlords’ rent charges since the establishment of the university. it suggests that 34% of the landlords still charge between n10,000 (27usd) and n29,999 (79usd), while 66% charge between n30,000 (81usd) and n49,999 (133usd) for basic single rooms. this reflects an increase of about 100% in rent charges for basic single rooms since the establishment of the university. figure 9: landlords’ current charges for single rooms furthermore, the house rent of students upon their admission in 100-level was compared with their rent in 300-level and 400-level as the case may be. the respondents see the presence of the university as the reason for the increase in house rent as more students are being admitted but asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 353 without corresponding accommodation facilities in place thereby creating demand-side inflation (awah, 2010). table 1 below summarizes the responses of students with 97.1% attributing the high rent cost to the presence of the university in the community. table 1: students’ responses to high house rent factors percent presence of university 97.1 others 2.9 total 100.0 the astronomical rise in house rent as a result of the presence of the university is not surprising given the fact that the establishment of ladoke akintola university of technology (lautech) in ogbomoso also led to an increase in the movement of people from outside ogbomoso into the city at an alarming rate. according to akinyode et al. (2015), the increase in housing demand in ogbomoso where the institution is situated has increased in the house rental value. 4.6. cost of house rent for business owners before the establishment of the university the rent paid by business owners before the establishment of the university was also compared with the rent being paid since the establishment of the university. business owners operating in the two communities before the establishment of the university also agree that the establishment of the university is responsible for the rise in the cost of the rent. however, there are no sufficient accommodation facilities to meet the demands of both the students and other residents. this is summarized in table 2. the table shows that 84% of business owners believe that the presence of the university is the main factor responsible for the increased cost of house rent. these findings are also consistent with the findings of yet another study conducted by zhang et al. (2019) on a new chinese university located in the rural community of yantai. they found that residents (former peasants) consequently experienced a process of urbanization of their community and the local environment. in addition, there was an influx of people from other cities in china, causing social changes and impacts on the local communities. table 2: business owners’ responses to high house rent factors percent university 84 others 16 total 100.0 4.7. regression analysis in measuring the degree of impact of the university on rent charges in oye/ikole communities, the rent charged by landlords (7 years ago) was linearly-regressed on their current annual rent. the following tables display the results of the regression analysis: table 3: results of landlords’ rent charges before the establishment of the university anovaa model sum of squares df mean square p-value f-value adj. r2 1 regression 44727123703.879 1 44727123703.879 0.000 259.64 78.7% residual 11886425591.896 69 172267037.564 total 56613549295.775 70 the anova table shows the ‘p’, ‘f’, and adj. r2 values for the regression model. this result is statistically significant as p-value is less than 0.0005 and f-value is significantly large. it also shows that the adjusted r2 is 78.7% which suggests that about 79% of the variations in the current asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 354 rent charge are affected by rent charges before the presence of the university. in other words, the presence of the university has accounted for much of the increase in house rent even though such accommodation has not been upgraded to modern hostel facilities best-fit for students. table 4: results of current rent charges by landlords variable coefficients t p-value (constant) 16755.741 6.048 0.000 please provide an estimate of your house rent charges annually before the establishment of the university/7yrs ago 1.309 16.113 0.000 the table above indicates that the regression model is one that is statistically significant as p-value is less than 0.005. it also shows that the minimum annual cost of house rent charged by landlords for a room is around n16,755 (45usd) and that an n1 (0.00256usd) increase or decrease in house rent charges before the establishment of the university will lead to an n1.309 (0.00335usd) increase or decrease in the current house rent charges respectively. to predict the cost of house rent levied by landlords, the regression equation can be specified as follows: landlords’ rent charge now = 16755 + 1.309 (house rent levy before the establishment of the university) 4.8. impact of the university on the development of oye/ikole communities to empirically determine the perception of locals, business owners, university staff members, and students on the economic impact of the university within the two communities, key questions were asked and data collected were analyzed and presented in the perception tables below. table 5 above shows a larger percentage of students (90.4%) between 200-level and 400-level agree that the presence of the university has increased the number of large businesses in the communities while about 5.7% disagree and 1% undecided. similarly, 85.7% of the students believe that the presence of the university has led to the establishment of more banks in the host communities, while 10.5% disagree with the statement and 1.9% undecided. also, 95.2% of students agree that the number of petty businesses has increased since their admission into the university while 1.9% disagrees and 2.9% undecided. in contrast, 75.1% of students disagree that the presence of the university has led to an improved road network in the host communities while 23.8% of students agree with the statement and just 1.0% undecided. while a proportion of 59.3% of students agree that there has been an improved power supply in the host communities,31.5% disagree and 9.5% undecided. furthermore, 91.4% of students agree that modern hostels are increasingly being built as a result of the presence of the university, 2.9% disagree while 4.8% are undecided. also, while 86.6% agree that pit and bush toilets are no longer popular in the host communities as a result of the presence of the university, 8.6% disagree with the statement and 4.8% undecided. finally, about 95.2% of students agree that the presence of the university has led to an overall improvement in the local economy of host communities in terms of wealth creation, 2.9% disagree and1.9% are undecided. these findings reflect an assertion by fatoki (2017) that universities can drive development in a community by using osun state university as a case study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 355 table 5: students’ perception of the university’s presence and development of oye/ikole no. questions sa a u d sd mean s. d remark 1 number of large businesses has increased since your admission into the university 22.9% (24) 70.5% (74) 1% (1) 3.8% (4) 1.9% (2) 4.09 0.748 agree 2 the presence of the university has led to a consistent increased cost of rent in your community 21% (20) 76.2% (80) 1.9% (2) 0% (0) 1% (1) 4.16 0.539 agree 3 the presence of the university has led to a consistent increased cost of transportation in your community 12.4% (13) 68.6% (72) 8.6% (9) 10.5% (11) 0% (0) 3.83 0.778 agree 4 the presence of the university has led to the establishment of more banks in your community 9.5% (10) 76.2% (80) 1.9% (2) 8.6% (9) 1.9% (2) 3.84 0.789 agree 5 number of petty businesses has increased since your admission into the university 13.3% (14) 81.9% (86) 2.9% (3) 1.9% (2) 0% (0) 4.07 0.486 agree 6 the presence of the university has led to an improved road network in your community 6.7% (7) 17.1% (18) 1.0% (1) 72.4% (76) 2.9% (3) 2.52 1.029 disagree 7 the presence of the university has led to an improved power supply in your community 6.7% (7) 52.4% (55) 9.5% (10) 28.6% (30) 2.9% (3) 3.31 1.050 agree 8 modern houses are increasingly being built due to the presence of the university 14.3% (15) 78.1% (82) 4.8% (5) 1% (1) 1.9% (2) 4.05 0.564 agree 9 pit latrines, bush toilets etc. are no longer popular in your community due to the presence of the university 7.6% (8) 79.0% (83) 4.8% (5) 6.7% (7) 1.9% (2) 3.86 0.700 agree 10 some students stay behind after graduation to start up business ventures 7.6% (8) 81.0% (85) 9.5% (10) 1% (1) 1% (1) 3.93 0.542 agree 11 businesses established by students during their stay on campus are sustained and are contributing to the local economy 11.4% (12) 82.9% (87) 4.8% (5) 0% (0) 1% (1) 4.04 0.499 agree 12 the presence of the university has led to an overall improvement in the local economy 13.3% (14) 81.9% (86) 1.9% (2) 0% (0) 2.9% (3) 4.03 0.642 agree source: authors’ calculations from survey data (2019) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 356 table 6 shows that 95.8% of landlords agree that modern houses are being built compared to local houses predominant before the establishment of the university while 1.4% disagree and 2.8% undecided. moreover, while 91.6% of landlords agree that the number of land agents has risen precipitously since the establishment of the university, 8.5% are undecided. around 94.3% of landlords agree that abandoned houses have been renovated since the establishment of the university, while 5.6% are undecided. of note is the fact that 98.6% of landlords agree that support services, such as cleaners and caretakers, have increased, 1.4% appears undecided. in contrast, 57.7% of landlords disagree that there will be more hostels than family residences as a result of the presence of the university, 36.7% however agree while 5.6% are undecided. these findings are consistent with the findings of akinyode et al. (2015) which show that the presence of the tertiary institutions in a community would drive commerce and attract more population of people seeking greener pastures. table 7 shows that 93.1% of business owners agree that the presence of the university has led to a steady increase in their sales over time, while the remaining 6.9% disagree with the statement. also, 89.2% agree that the presence of the university has led to a consistent increase in the number of sellers trading in the same commodities, while 6.8% disagree and about 4.1% undecided. 93.3% of business owners agree strongly that the presence of the university has improved the purchase of daily consumables, 5.4% disagree leaving 1.4% undecided. similarly, 93.3% agree that the presence of the university has increased the number of buyers of their commodities, 6.8% disagree with the statement. 93.2% agree that the profit margin for their businesses has risen significantly since the establishment of the university while 5.2% disagree leaving just 1.4% undecided. furthermore, 64.9% agree that the presence of the university has provided their businesses with cheap labour (i.e. students who are willing to work part-time for little wages), 31.1% disagree while 4.1% are undecided. moreover, about 99% completely agree that the quality of goods and services provided by businesses has improved since the establishment of the university leaving just 1.4 undecided. also, an estimated 93.3% of business owners agree that the presence of the university has caused their businesses to enjoy increased returns to scale, 4.1% disagree, and 2.7% undecided. also, a combined 92.0% of business owners agree that most part-time business operators went fulltime after the establishment of the university, 5.4% disagree, and 2.7% undecided. similarly, while 94.6% of the respondents agree that menial business owners such as bricklayers are increasingly being demanded due to the presence of the university, 5.4% however disagree. fatoki (2017) has argued that institutions of higher learning which are located in the community can be good assets for economic growth and be of great service to the business community. in a few years to this time and given the current rapid development, both oye and ikole communities could be home to a host of local and foreign companies. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 357 table 6: landlords’ perception of the university’s presence and development of oye/ikole no. questions sa a u d sd mean s. d remark 1 the presence of the university has led to an increased annual house rent 95.8% (68) 4.2% (3) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 4.96 0.203 agree 2 there has been an increase in the number of houses placed on rental since the establishment of the university 83.1% (59) 15.5% (11) 1 (1.4%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 4.82 0.425 agree 3 the number of landlords has increased since the establishment of the university 85.9% (61) 9.9% (7) 4.2% (3) 0% (0) 0% (0) 4.82 0.487 agree 4 the number of people renting houses has increased since the establishment of the university 85.9% (61) 14.1% (10) 0% (0) 0% (0) 0% (0) 4.86 0.350 agree 5 modern hostels are being built in contrast to local houses predominant before the establishment of the university 84.5% (60) 11.3% (8) 2.8% (2) 0% (0) 1.4% (1) 4.71 0.637 agree 6 house owners are usually left with no choice than to persuade students to rent their houses 25.4% (18) 5.6% (4) 4.2% (3) 0% (0) 64.8% (46) 2.27 1.781 disagree 7 number of land agents has risen significantly since the establishment of the university 81.7% (58) 9.9% (7) 8.5% (6) 0% (0) 0% (0) 4.73 0.608 agree 8 abandoned houses have been renovated due to the presence of the university 87.3% (62) 7.0% (5) 5.6% (4) 0% (0) 0% (0) 4.82 0.516 agree 9 support services such as cleaners and caretakers are in high demand due to the presence of the university 80.3% (57) 18.3% (13) 1.4% (1) 0% (0) 0% (0) 4.79 0.445 agree 10 there will be more hostels than family residence in the future due to the presence of the university 25.4% (18) 11.3% (8) 5.6% (4) 35.2% (25) 22.5% (16) 2.82 1.543 disagree source: authors’ calculations from survey data (2019) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 358 table 7: perception of business owners on the university’s presence and development in oye/ikole no. statements sa a u d sd mean s. d remark 1 the presence of the university has led to a steady increase in your sales over time 82.4% (61) 10.8% (8) 0% (0) 5.4% (4) 1.4% (1) 4.68 0.846 agree 2 the presence of the university has led to a steady increase in the number of sellers trading in the same commodities 75.7% (56) 13.5% (10) 4.1% (3) 5.4% (4) 1.4% (1) 4.57 0.908 agree 3 the presence of the university has led to an increase in the purchase of daily consumables 78.4% (58) 14.9% (11) 1.4% (1) 5.4% (4) 0% (0) 4.66 0.763 agree 4 the presence of the university has increased the number of buyers of your commodities 70.3% (52) 23.0% (17) 0% (0) 6.8% (5) 0% (0) 4.57 0.812 agree 5 the purchase of luxury goods has increased over time since the establishment of the university 73.0% (54) 21.6% (16) 1.4% (1) 2.7% (2) 1.4% (1) 4.62 0.771 agree 6 profit margin for your business has risen significantly since the establishment of the university 71.6% (53) 21.6% (16) 1.4% (1) 4.1% (3) 1.1% (1) 4.58 0.828 agree 7 the presence of the university has provided your business with cheap labor e.g. students who work part time 44.6% (33) 20.3% (15) 4.1% (3) 23.0% (17) 8.1% (6) 3.70 1.440 agree 8 quality of goods and services provided by businesses has improved since the establishment of the university 81.1% (60) 17.6% (13) 1.4% (1) 0% (0) 0% (0) 4.80 0.437 agree 9 businesses now enjoy increasing returns to scale 70.3% (52) 23.0% (17) 2.7% (2) 4.1% (3) 0% (0) 4.59 0.739 agree 10 most part-time business operators went full-time after the establishment of the university 68.9% (51) 23.0% (17) 2.7% (2) 5.4% (4) 0% (0) 4.55 0.796 agree 11 menial business owners such as bricklayers are increasingly demanded due to the presence of the university 74.3% (55) 20.3% (15) 0% (0) 2.7% (2) 2.7% (2) 4.61 0.857 agree source: authors’ calculations from survey data (2019) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 359 table 8 above presents the perception of university staff members on the impact of the university on oye/ikole communities. it shows that 81.7% agree they have invested in the building of hostels within the host communities while 18.3% disagree. also, 77.5% agree that oye and ikole can become major commercial towns as a result of the presence of the university while 19.8% disagree and 2.8% undecided. similarly, 80.3% agree that the majority of the university staff members reside within the community while 9.9% disagree and 9.9% undecided. as evident in the table, 76% agree that university staff members have invested in different business ventures within the host communities, 7% disagree, and 16.9% undecided. about 79% of university staff members agree that they spend most of their monthly income within the host communities while 4.2% disagree and 16.9% undecided. also, 67.7% agree that staff members enroll their children or wards in schools within the host communities while only 9.8% disagree and 22.5% undecided. in contrast, 54.9% disagree that staff members operate bank accounts within the host communities while 29.6% agree and 15.5% are undecided. the findings from this study are consistent with the existing literature. for example, kemiki et al. (2016); patrick and ijah (2020) agree that the location of a tertiary institution in a community leads to an increase in wealth creation and flow, including physical development of host communities in terms of construction of new buildings as hostel accommodation. however, this does not directly translate to an improved standard of living for the people in such areas as wealth is not a basic condition for improved living standards but the availability of viable choices. while the establishment of the university provides the host communities with informal employment opportunities, there is the absence of quality primary education facilities, quality basic health care facilities (except the university’s health center), good road networks, and a quality supply of power despite the presence of the university. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 360 table 8: perception of university staff members on the university’s presence and development in oye/ikole no. statement sa a u d sd mean s. d remark 1 staff members have invested in the building of hostels 62.0% (44) 19.7% (14) 0% (0) 1.4% (1) 16.9% (12) 4.08 1.490 agree 2 oye and ikole both have the potential for major commercial towns as a result of the university 49.3% (35) 28.2% (20) 2.8% (2) 11.3% (8) 8.5% (6) 3.99 1.325 agree 3 some of the university staff own or manage a business that thrives due to the presence of the university 39.4% (28) 32.4% (23) 14.1% (10) 14.1% (10) 0% (0) 3.97 1.055 agree 4 majority of the university staff are resident within the host communities 49.3% (35) 31.0% (22) 9.9% (7) 8.5% (6) 1.4% (1) 4.18 1.019 agree 5 university staff members have invested in different business ventures within the host communities 38.0% (27) 38.0% (27) 16.9% (12) 4.2% (3) 2.8% (2) 4.04 0.992 agree 6 staff members spend most of their income within the host communities 25.4% (18) 53.5% (38) 16.9% (12) 4.2% (3) 0% (0) 4.00 0.775 agree 7 staff members are more willing to reside within the host communities. 29.6% (21) 35.2% (25) 21.1% (15) 5.6% (4) 8.5% (6) 3.72 1.197 agree 8 staff members patronize business owners within the communities 46.5% (33) 47.9% (34) 4.2% (3) 1.4% (1) 0% (0) 4.39 0.643 agree 9 staff members enroll their children/wards in schools within the host communities 42.3% (30) 25.4% (18) 22.5% (16) 4.2% (3) 5.6% (4) 3.94 1.157 agree 10 staff members operate bank accounts within the host communities 12.7% (9) 16.9% (12) 15.5% (11) 5.6% (4) 49.3% (35) 2.38 1.534 disagree source: authors’ calculations from survey data (2019) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 361 5. conclusion and recommendation the main objective of this study has been to examine how rural communities are transformed in terms of the availability of a wide range of choices when tertiary institutions are located in such communities particularly the creation of wealth through various economic activities. from the findings discussed earlier, it is confirmed that the presence of the university in the two communities of oye and ikole has increased the number of small and medium scale enterprises (smses), personal income, household & personal expenditure, including house rent charges which eventually have led to an improvement in the local economy. business owners who are engaged inside jobs to meet their needs have concentrated fully on their businesses as their profit margin has improved significantly. as a consequence of the increased population within these host communities, more houses and hostels are being built to accommodate the teeming student population as well as university staff members. the findings also confirm that wealth creation in host communities as an off-shoot of the establishment of tertiary institutions is a piece of common knowledge among its residents. although, the presence of the university has led to the establishment of a few banks in the two communities which now provide access for operators of smses in terms of obtaining loan facilities for the growth of their businesses. it was discovered that the presence of the university has not brought about significant rural development even though it has led to economic growth (wealth creation) within the two communities. as already argued by akinyode et al. (2015), the effects of projects on the community where it is sited could either be positive or negative. poor road network remains a major problem for commuters both within and outside the university campuses. this has hampered the free movement of students, university staff members, and even business owners in and out of the university. the establishment of the university has also led to the scarcity of accommodation while also contributing to the increase in house rental value within the two communities. only one additional bank has been established in oye as a support to the single bank previously operating in the community. this has made it extremely difficult for the teeming population of students, university staff members, and business people to perform bank transactions effortlessly as there is significant pressure on these two small banks. in most cases, stakeholders have to travel to the state capital before major transactions can be completed. the findings also revealed the lack of primary healthcare facilities within the host communities, whereas, access to quality primary health care is an important aspect of wealth, hence, the assertion that health is wealth. from the foregoing, it becomes critical that the establishment of tertiary institutions is strategicallyplanned with the development of host communities in view. this is because the establishment of a tertiary institution in a community will translate to wealth creation by cause and effect. however, it will not necessarily lead to an improved quality of life for the residents in the host communities except in cases where the establishment of the institution is planned with the development of the host communities in-view, such that there is a deliberate attempt to cause economic development. this recommendation is based on the fact that wealth creation/economic growth is just a default impact of the presence of such institutions in any community but there is more than rural communities can benefit just as rodin (2015) states that: ‘a university has the power to be a great agent of change. it has the intellectual, financial, and human resources to take on the challenge of community transformation. it espouses values that embrace shared community, diversity, and engaged discourse (p.24).’ another key argument for the recommendation is the fact that economic growth (increased-wealth creation) may not necessarily lead to economic development, but economic development always has a high tendency of translating into economic growth as an improved quality of life will result in an improved personal income or household income as the case may be. it is against this backdrop asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 346-363 362 that the nigerian president muhammadu buhari recently challenged vice-chancellors of nigeria universities to design policies and programmes that will have a direct bearing on host communities (nigerian tribune, 2019). funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akinyode, b. f., tareef, h. k., abdulahi, s. b., & amirmudin, b. u. 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(2019). the social impacts of a stop-start transnational university campus: how the impact history and changing plans of projects affect local communities. environmental impact assessment review, 77, 105-113. doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2019.04.004. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 233 morpho-physiology, yield and quality assessment on five local landrace chilli germplasms md. shah newaz chowdhury a , shahnaz sarkar a , afm jamal uddin b , tania sultana c* , mzk roni d , rabiul islam e a department of agricultural botany, sher-e-bangla agricultural university, dhaka-1207, bangladesh b professor, department of horticulture, sher-e-bangla agricultural university, dhaka-1207, bangladesh c* assistant professor, department of agroforestry and environmental science, sher-e-bangla agricultural university, dhaka-1207, bangladesh d the united graduate school of agricultural sciences, ehime university, 2 3-5-7 tarami, matsumaya, ehime 790-8556, japan e department of agricultural chemistry, sher-e-bangla agricultural university, dhaka-1207, bangladesh * email address: kbdtania06@yahoo.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 03-may-2018 accepted: 04-jun-2018 online available: 20-jun2018 keywords: capsicum frutescens, fresh fruit plant-1, vitamin-c, yield abstract an experiment was arranged to evaluate the morpho-physiological characters, yield and quality of local landrace chilli germplasms, sher-e-bangla agricultural university, dhaka, from october 2013 to july 2014. the experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design with four replications. among germplasms, maximum plant height (59.5 cm) and leaves (84.1) from ‘kajoli’. number of branches (33.1) was from ‘akashi’ minimum (18.6) from ‘dongfou’, chlorophyll content (56.9%) was obtained from ‘kajoli’, whereas minimum (48.9%) was obtained from ‘dongfou’. leaf area highest (125.8 cm2) from ‘dongfou’, whereas lowest (62.38 cm2) from ‘deshi kacha morich’; was recorded as at 85 dat. highest flowers plant-1 (68.7), number of fruits plant-1 (268.3) were found in ‘kajoli’, whilst lowest (24.6) and (61.42) were for ‘dongfou’. maximum vitamin-c was found in green and dry chilli fruits (76.44 mg/100g and 42.55 mg/100g), of the germplasm ‘akashi’ and minimum vitamin-c was recorded in green and dry fruits from ‘deshi kacha morich’. the germplasm ‘akashi’ gave the highest fresh fruits yield (18.1 t ha-1), followed by deshi kacha morich (16.9 t ha-1) and bogra morich produced the lowest fresh yield (13.3 t ha-1). in view of overall performances, so, akashi with was best for higher fruit, yield and quality chilli production. contribution/ originality in this paper, authors analyzed the the morpho-physiological characters, yield and quality of local landrace chilli germplasms and found interesting results. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.11/1005.11.233.243 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: md. shah newaz chowdhury, shahnaz sarkar, afm jamal uddin, tania sultana, mzk roni and rabiul islam (2017). morpho-physiology, yield and quality assessment on five local landrace chilli germplasms. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11), 233-243. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 11(2017): 233-243 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kbdtania06@yahoo.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.11/1005.11.233.343 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.11/1005.11.233.343 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 233-243 234 1. introduction chilli (capsicum frutescens) belongs to the solanaceae family, a year round crop used in variety of ways (erinle, 1989; akinyosoye, 1977). it is an unavoidable spice, which is liked for its pungency, spicy taste and its appealing color adds to the curry. refers to fruit which is usually cone-shaped, smaller and the pungency may be very mild to intensely hot. among these peepers c. frutescens are hot and c. annum are sweet. hot peppers (chillies) pericarp have high content of crystalline colorless pungent substance known as alkaloid capsaicin (c18h27no3) (udoh et al., 2005). it is quite rich in nutritive values and supposed to contain certain medicinal properties (chowdhury, 1976). in fact, they are an excellent source of various antioxidant compounds like flavonoids, shercarotenoids and vitamin-c (chuah et al., 2008).green chillies are rich in vitamin a and c and the seed contain traces of starch (sayed and bagavandas, 1980). in addition, peppers are a good source of vitamin-b and vitamin b6, carbohydrate, carotene, thiamine, riboflavin and niacin. in bangladesh, chillies are grown in all the districts but plenty of chillies are produced in district of bogra, rangpur, kurigram, jamalpur, natore and jessore (bbs, 2014). 16141.73 hectares of land is under chilli cultivation in bangladesh where 21,000 metric tons of chilli produced per annum in kharif season.105,000 tons of chilli was produced from 78346.45 hectares of land in rabi season. a numbers of cultivars are grown in bangladesh differing in habit and yield but green chilli production was only 16.9 t ha -1 during 2010-2011 (bbs, 2011). this yield is very low compared to that of other chilli growing countries of the world. for the low yield of the crop, its annual production cannot meet up the total requirement and as such large quantity is to be imported every year. the low yield of chilli in bangladesh may be attributed to a number of reasons such as unavailability of quality seeds of high yielding germplasm, lack of screening of local germplasm, lack of disease and insect of the available cultivars. low yield in bangladesh could be attributed to lack of suitable cultivars. in our country there are a few research works conducted for focusing on the germplasm screening of chilli and their growth, yield and quality. considering the above point in view the study was undertaken to evaluate morph physiological characters, yield and quality of local chilli germplasm. 2. materials and methods the experiment was arranged at horticulture farm, sher-e-bangla agricultural university, dhaka, during october 2013 to july 2014, to study the performance of growth and yield of five local landrace chilli germplasms. the experiment was designed in randomized block design (rbd), with four replications. the five different local chilli germplasms were subjected to consist the experiment, i.e. v1, akashi; v2, kajoli; v3, deshi kacha morich; v4, bogra morich and v5, dongfou. moderately low temperature and plenty of sunshine prevail during rabi season, which is suitable for chilli cultivation in bangladesh. the soil was sandy loam in texture with ph 5.4 5.6. the recommended dose of npk fertilizer was applied as followed by bari 2011. the seed of chilli were collected from the local market in northern and southern part of bangladesh and seeds were treated by vitavax-200 @ 5 g 1 kg -1 seed for protecting from seed borne disease. before seed germination, the seedbed was prepared for raising seedlings and the size of the seedbed was 4m × 2m. seeds were sown at a depth of 2 cm and covered with a fine layer of soil followed by light watering by water can. afterwards, the unit plot size was 1.5 m x 1 m and row to row distance were maintained as 40 cm for seedling growth and development in each case and applied 10 t ha -1 well decomposed cow dung in the main plot before seedling transplanting. thirty days-old healthy seedlings were transplanted at the spacing of 40 cm × 40 cm in the experimental plots. thus the 16 plants were accommodated in each unit plot. planting was done in the afternoon. intercultural activities and watering was done, if it was necessary. during mature green chilli turned yellow, it was harvested at weekly intervals. harvesting was started at 65 days after transplanting (dat) and continued till 175 dat. data randomly selected on different parameter, for example, plant height (cm), branches plant -1 , leaf plant -1 , days to flower bud initiation after transplanting, flowers plant -1 (counting up to 60 days after first flowering), fruits plant -1 , single fruit fresh weight (g), fruit asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 233-243 235 diameter (mm), fruit length (mm), 1000 seed weight (g), vitamin-c content in green chilli fruits (mg per 100 g fruit), vitamin-c content in dry chilli fruits (mg per 100 g fruit), protein contain in chilli fruits (% per 100 g fruit), yield plant -1 (g) and fresh fruit yield (t ha -1 ). growth parameters, viz., plant height (cm), number of branch plant -1 , number of leaf plant -1 , were recorded at 45 to 85 dat at 10 days interval. mature leaf from middle portion of the plant (above 20cm from ground level) was used for leaf area by destructing method using cl-202 leaf area meter (usa). leaf chlorophyll content was measured by using chlorophyll meter spad-502. fruit length and diameter were measured using digital caliper-515 (dc-515) in millimetre (mm). fresh weight and dry weight of 50-fruits were measured by electric precision balance in gram (g). fifty randomly selected fresh fruits from each treatment were weighed and dry in room temperature. then fifty dry fruits were weighed. 2, 6 dichlorophenol indophenols (visual titration method) determined vitamin c content of green and dry fruits of chilli as described by plummer (1971). micro kjeldahl method was determined protein content of five local chilli germplasms. to find out the significance of the experimental results data in respect of growth and yield components were statistically analyzed. all the treatments mean were calculated and for each of the characters the analysis of variance was performed by f test. the difference among the treatment means was evaluated by least significant difference (lsd) test (gomez and gomez, 1984) at 5% level of probability. 3. results and disscution the experiment was observed to evaluate among the five chilli germplasms that was differentiated in terms of morphological characters, yield and quality. the performance of the five local chilli germplams is shown in table 1. table 1: morphological variations in five chilli germplasm characteristics germplasms v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 stem colour before transplanting green purple green green green stem shape (mature plant) angled cylindrical cylindrical cylindrical angled stem pubescence (mature plant) dense intermediate sparse sparse sparse plant growth habit erect erect intermediate erect erect leaf density dense sparse intermediate intermediate sparse leaf color dark green purple light green green green leaf pubescence dense intermediate sparse sparse sparse number of flower per axil one two one one one flower position erect intermediate erect intermediate pendant corolla color white purple white white white figure 1: mature leaf variation of five local chilli germplasm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 233-243 236 v1, akashi ; v2, kajoli ; v3, deshi kacha morich ; v4, bogra morich ; v5, dongfou. v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 figure 2: flower petal and color are differentiation of chilli germplasm figure 3: variation in flower position of local chilli germplasm figure 4: variation in fruit length, shape (immature) of chilli germplasm v1, akashi ; v2, kajoli ; v3, deshi kacha morich ; v4, bogra morich ; v5, dongfou. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 233-243 237 v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 figure 5: fruit colour, fruit surface and length inequality of chilli germplasm figure 6: variation in fruits position of chilli germplasm v1, akashi; v2, kajoli ; v3, deshi kacha morich ; v4, bogra morich ; v5, dongfou. plant height significant variation in plant height was observed with different chilli germplasms viz. (v1 , akashi; v2 , kajoli; v3 , deshi kacha morich; v4 , bogra morich; v5 , dongfou) at 45, 55, 65, 75 and 85 dat. maximum plant height was scored from v2 (59.5 cm). minimum from v4 (50.7 cm) at 85 dat (figure 7a) i.e., kajoli produced maximum plant height. an increased plant height may increase the branches and leaves number of plant. there was a lot of variation in height of capsicum plants obtained by hosmani (1982). high phenotypic co-efficient of variation (pcv) and genotypic co-efficient of variation (gcv) were found for plant height obtained by mini and khader (2004); sreelathakumary and rajamony (2004); ukkund et al. (2007) and singh et al. (2009). branches plant -1 significant variation was found on number of branches among the different germplasms of chilli at 45, 55, 65, 75 and 85 dat. maximum number of branches (33.1) was obtained from akashi (v1) that ware statistically similar with v2 and v3. minimum (18.6) was observed from dongfou (v5) at 85 dat (figure 7b). smitha and basavaraja (2006) observed significant differences among the germplasm with respect to both quantitative and qualitative characters. similar result was reported by ukkund et al. (2007). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 233-243 238 leaf plant -1 leaf number of chilli germplasms did not differ significantly between v1 and v2. but statistically significant among v3, v4 and v5 germplasms at 45, 55, 65, 75 and 85 dat. maximum number of leaves was recorded from v2 (84.1) that are statistically similar with v1 and v2. minimum from v5 (40.4) at 85 dat (figure 7c). figure 7: performance of chilli germplasm on plant height (cm), branches plant -1 and leaves plant -1 of at dat. (v1 , akashi ; v2 , kajoli; v3 , deshi kacha morich; v4 , bogra morich; v5 , dongfou) chlorophyll content (spad values) at mature stage significant variation was found on chlorophyll content (spad values) with different chilli germplasms at mature stage. maximum chlorophyll content (56.9%) was obtained from v2 (kajoli), whereas minimum (48.9%) was obtained from v5 (dongfou) at 85 days after transplanting (table 2). chlorophyll content ranged from 60.9 to 52.8 studied among four chilli cultivars obtained by chowdhury et al. (2015). leaf area (cm 2 ) significant variation was observed among different chilli germplasm performance in terms of leaf area at 85 dat. leaf area of local chilli germplasm exposed statistically dissimilarity between v3 and v5 germplasms, whereas statistically equality found in v1, v2, v4 germplasms at 85 dat. dongfou, (v5) (125.8 cm 2 ) was accorded top most result in term of leaf area where as v3 (deshi kacha morich; 62.38 cm 2 ) was recorded as inferior at 85 dat (table 2). according to edwards and ludwing (1975) unit leaf area is a valid basis for assessing the effects of short term fluctuations in environmental variables on photosynthesis. days to first flower bud initiation after transplanting significant variation in respect of days (from days after transplanting of chilli seedlings) taken for flower bud appearance (visual observation) was received among the germplasms. longest period was required for flower bud initiation in v5 (61.1 days) whereas shortest period from v4 (39.1 days) (table 2). this result showed that v4 was early flower bud initiating germplasm whereas v5 was late one. days to flower bud initiation and flowering are a basis for measuring the early or late cultivars. days required to flowering in chilli crop mainly depend on the variety stated by hosmani (1982), veerapa (1980) and ukkund et al. (2007). flowers plant -1 (counting up to 60 days after first flowering) number of flowers per plant was significantly varied with local chilli germplasms. number of flowers was found highest in germplasm v2 (81.00 plant -1 ) whereas lowest in germplasm v5 (24.6 plant -1 ) (table 2). in case of number of flowers chilli cultivar was significantly different from one cultivar to another (chowdhury et al., 2015; veerapa, 1980; hosmani, 1982) and ruby king took asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 233-243 239 43 days for flowering, the sweet pepper variety flowered at 27 days after transplanting (veerapa, 1980). weight of 50 fresh and dry fruits significant variation was found on fresh and dry weight of fifty fruits with different germplasms of chilli viz. v1 (akashi), v2 (kajoli), v3 (deshi kacha morich), v4 (bogra morich), v5 (dongfou) at mature ripening stage (table 1). (dongfou) gave maximum fresh weight of 50 fruits (183.9 g) while minimum (40.9 g) fresh weight of fifty fruits was obtained from v2 (kajoli) (table 10). on the other hand, highest dry weight was recorded from v5 (dongfou; 19.4 g) while lowest dry weight of fifty-fruits was scored from v2 (kajoli; 10.3 g) (table 2). fruiting character also varies on the germplasm character and environment adaptation. fresh and dry weight of 50 fruits varied from lines to lines and results of that study supports the findings of the current experiment (mehraj et al., 2014; chowdhury et al., 2015). similar result was also obtained by ukkund et al. (2007). fruit length and diameter significant variation was recorded for fruit length among chilli germplasms. results indicate that the longest fruit length (93.7 mm) was recorded from v5 (dongfou) while v2 (kajoli) was shortest (58.3 mm), followed by (v1; 60.8 mm) (table 1). fruit diameter of the five chilli germplasms ranged from 9.9 mm to 7.8 mm. the mature fruits of v5 (dongfou) showed maximum fruit diameter (9.9 mm), which was identical with v1 (akashi; 9.7 mm) and minimum 7.8 mm was recorded in v4 (bogur morich), followed by v2 (kajoli; 7.9 mm) (table 2). hosmani (1982) suggested that in case of chilli fruits length and diameter is having market value because normally medium to long fruit are preferred by customers. but extra-large fruit is undesirable because it is usually associated with lower productivity irregular fruit shape and poor quality by pochard (1966). smitha and basavaraja (2006) observed significant differences among the chilli genotypes in respect of fruit length. table 2: performance of five local landrace chilli germplasms related to growth and yield y germplasms x chlorophyll percentage (%) at mature stage leaf area (cm 2 ) at 85 dat days to flower bud initiation after transplanting number of flowers plant -1 weight of 50 fresh fruit (g) weight of 50 dry fruit (g) fruit length (mm) fruit diameter (mm) v1 54.8 ab 89.6 b 51.6 b 64.6 b 47.2 c 12.8 b 60.8 d 9.7 a v2 56.9 a 84.6 b 49.2 b 81.0 a 40.9 e 10.3 d 58.3 d 7.9 c v3 54.4 b 62.4 c 46.3 c 62.8 b 44.7 d 11.7 c 65.9 c 8.8 b v4 52.5 b 81.2 b 39.1 d 56.5 c 49.5 b 13.6 b 70.6 b 7.8 c v5 48.9 c 125.8a 61.1 a 24.6 d 183.9 a 19.4 a 93.7 a 9.9 a cv (%) 5.3 11.8 6.7 7.5 2.1 2.1 3.3 0.5 lsd (0.05) 2.3 2.3 2.7 3.6 3.5 8.1 5.7 7.3 x v1 , akashi ; v2 , kajoli ; v3 , deshi kacha morich ; v4 , bogra morich ; v5 , dongfou y means values are statistically identical and differ significantly at p<0.05 vitamin c content in green fruit (mg/100g) significant differences were observed among the local chilli germplasms in respect of vitamin c content. the ascorbic acid content of the green fruits of five chilli germplasms ranged from 76.4 mg/100 g fruit to 57.9 mg/100 g fruit. the green fruits of v1 (akashi) contained the higher amount of ascorbic acid (76.4 mg/100 g fruit) and the lower (57.9 mg/100 g fruit) was recorded in v3 (deshi kacha morich) (table 3). further, significant differences showed among the germplasm with respect to both quantitative and qualitative characters smitha and basavaraja (2006). similar result was reported by ukkund et al., (2007). apparently, genetic variation is subjected not only the morphological characters, but also qualitative characters and physiological performance including chlorphyll content and vitamin c. for this condition, chlorophyll content ranged from 60.9 to 52.8 studied among four chilli cultivars obtained by chowdhury et al. (2015). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 233-243 240 vitamin c content in dry fruit (mg/100g) significant variations were found among the germplasms in respect of ascorbic acid content in dry fruits. maximum amount of ascorbic acid (42.6 mg/100 g fruit) was measured in germplasm (v1) akashi, while minimum (28.3 mg/100 g) ascorbic acid was found in germplasm (v3) deshi kacha morich (table 3). the stability and accumulation of vit-c in fruits of capsicum was affected by maturation and storage conditions besides genetic diversity (howard et al., 2000; jimenez et al., 2003). in chilli germplasm nutritional composition varies from germplasm to germplasm (kaur et al., 1980). percentage of protein in green fruit protein content showed significant inequality among the germplasm variation. protein content in fruit ranged from 4.2 to 3.0 %. the highest protein content (4.2 %) was recorded from v5 (dongfou) and the lowest protein contents (3.0%) was recorded from v2 (kajoli) (table 3). this might be due to the genetic variation in term of protein synthesis among the germplasms. purseglove (1968) found that chilli fruits contain 3 percent protein. similar result was also observed by srivestava and sanjeev (1994) and leung et al. (1972). single fruit fresh weight individual fruit fresh weight was documented statistical significance among different chilli germplasms like as v1 (akashi), v2 (kajoli), v3 (deshi kacha morich), v4 (bogra morich), v5 (dongfou). highest individual fruit weight (3.9 g) was obtained from v5 (dongfou); whereas the lowest (1.4 g) from v2 (kajoli) (table 3). obidiebube et al. (2012) also found variation in the fresh weight of single fruit among the cultivars of pepper. fruits plant -1 number of fruit plant -1 varied significantly for germplasm variation. the result indicates that the highest number of fruits (268.3 plant -1 ) was obtained from the germplasm v2 (kajoli). second highest (242.7) from germplasm v4 (deshi kacha morich) which was statistically similar with germplasm v1 (akashi) producing (238.5) number of fruit germplasm v5 (dongfou) attained the lowest (61.42) number of fruits plant -1 (table 3). obidiebube et al. (2012) found similar result i.e. significant variation from one cultivar to another in number of fruit of chilli. sreelathakumary et al. (2004) observed higher phenotypic and genotypic co-efficient of variation for fruits plant -1 . 1000 seeds weight the 1000 seed weight showed significant variation among the different germplasms viz. v1 (akashi), v2 (kajoli), v3 (deshi kacha morich), v4 (bogra morich), v5 (dongfou). highest 1000 seed weight (3.5 g) was found in akashi (v1) whereas non significant variation with v2 (kajoli).the lowest 1000 seed weight (2.9 g) was obtained from bogra morich (v4) whereas nonsignificant variation with deshi kacha morich (v3) (table 3). similar result was obtained by gogoi et al. (2002). yield plant -1 significant variations in yield plant -1 were noticed among the germplasm. yield of five chilli germplasms ranged from 568.6 to 171.2 g per plant .the higher (568.6 gm plant -1 ) was found in v1 (akashi). the lower yield (171.2 g plant -1 ) was noted from the germplasm of v4 (bogra morich) (table 3). obidiebube et al. (2012) found similar result i.e. significant variation from one cultivar to another in number of fruit of chilli. sreelathakumary et al. (2004) observed higher phenotypic and genotypic co-efficient of variation for fruits plant -1 as well as other yield character, and ullah et al. (2011) supported with the results on chilli yield that depend on genotypes. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 233-243 241 fresh fruit yield ha -1 the fresh fruit yield ha -1 showed significant variation among the different chilli germplasms. the germplasm akashi (v1) gave the highest fruit yield (18.1 t ha -1 ).the lowest fresh fruit yield (13.3 t ha -1 ) was obtained from v4 (bogra morich) (table 3). similar result was obtained by purseg love (1968) and bajaj et al. (1980). table 3: performance of chilli germplasm related to chemical and yield y germplasms x vitamin c content in green fruit (mg/100g) vitamin c content in dry fruit (mg/100g) percentage (%) of protein in green fruit fruits plant -1 1000 seed weight (g) yield plant -1 (g) fresh fruit yield (t ha-1) v1 76.4 a 42.6 a 3.5 b 238.5 b 3.5 a 568.6 a 18.1 a v2 61.8 c 34.3 c 3.0 d 268.3 a 3.4 a 371.8 c 15.2 c v3 57.9 d 28.3 d 3.4 bc 242.7 b 3.1 b 488.4 b 16.9 b v4 69.4 b 34.7 c 3.4 c 78.0 c 2.9 b 171.2 e 13.3 d v5 68.5 b 36.3 b 4.2 a 61.4 d 3.5 a 228.0 d 14.5 c cv (%) 1.64 3.96 4.15 4.2 6.8 11.9 6.3 lsd (0.05) 0.9 1.15 0.12 6.1 0.2 35.8 0.8 x v1 , akashi ; v2 , kajoli ; v3 , deshi kacha morich ; v4 , bogra morich ; v5 , dongfou y mean means are statistically identical and differ significantly at p<0.05 4. conclusion on the practical standpoint from the results, the germplasm ‘kajoli’ gave the maximum plant height, number of branches plant -1 , number of leaf plant -1 , flower plant -1 , fruit plant -1 and chlorophyll content of the leaf; however, fruit diameter and vitamin c content of the fruit were found in maximum from ‘akasi’. the germplasm ‘dongfou’ performed better in respect fruit characters viz. weight of 50 fresh and dry fruits, single fruit fresh weight, fruit length, fruit diameter and protein content. among different morphological, growth and yield contributing characters germplasm ‘kajoli’ was performed better, whereas ‘dongfou’ performed better in fruit quality. these germplasm ‘kajoli’ could be suggested for further wider experiment on yield potentials and or recommend as potential yield increasing germplasm compared other low yielding chilli germplasm of this study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: author 1 designed the experiment, wrote the protocol and draft, while author 3 and 4 helped to design the experiment and corrections of draft. authors 5 and 6 were involved in laboratory and data analysis activities respectively. author 2 supervised whole the process. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akinyosoye, v. o. 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(1980). studies on relative performance of different genotypes of sweet pepper (c. annuum) m. sc. thesis, univ. agric. sci., dharwad. https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=inheritance+studies+in+chilli+%28capsicum+annuum+l.%29&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=genetic+variation%2c+association+of+characters%2c+and+their+direct+and+indirect+contributions+for+improvement+in+chilli+peppers&btng=https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=genetic+variation%2c+association+of+characters%2c+and+their+direct+and+indirect+contributions+for+improvement+in+chilli+peppers&btng= https://doi.org/10.1080/19315260903004158 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=variability+and+correlation+studies+in+chilli+%28capsicum+annuum+l.%29&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=variability%2c+heritability+and+genetic+advance+in+chilli+%28capsicum+annuum+l.%29&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=fruits+and+vegetable+preservation+%28principle+and+practices%29&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=crop+production+techniques+for+the+tropics&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=variability+studies+in+green+chilli+%28capsicum+annuum+l.%29&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=association+of+correlation+and+causeeffect+analysis+among+morphological+traits+in+chili+%28capsicum+frutescens+l.%29&btng= effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 515 comparing the local climate change and its effects on physiological aspects and yield of ramie cultivated in different biophysical environments m. subandi lecturer; agrotechnology department of the state islamic university of bandung, indonesia abstract three experiments in three different biophysical environments were conducted in jatinangor, sumedang district, jatitujuh. majalengka district and bandung district of west java province, indonesia. the experiment were conducted to evaluate the environments, seasons, manure, nitrogen and potassium effect on the physiological aspects and yield of ramie plant (boehmerianivea l. gaud).the locations diverse at different elevation, rainfall type and soil type and atmospheric regimes. the experiments passed the years 2000-2001. the experiment in sumedang regency was continued with two other experiments in 2007, and experiment in bandung district was conducted in 2014.the field experiments design used in all the locations were randomized block design arranged in factorial pattern with two factors and two replications. climatic analysis is done by comparing the atmospheric data of 2000-2001 and the data of 2002-2007 and the data of 2014. assumed that all the local atmospheric data are atmospheric data under influence of climatic global change. results of the experiments were: jatitujuh region is not suitable for ramie cultivation. dosage of waterw3=35%-40% of field capacity affecting sufficient growth on plant.the minimum dosage at which plant survive to produce yield is representing the most efficient input of production.water supply for ramie plant could be designed to the most efficient volume to maintain the need of metabolism. keywords: change, local climate, physiological aspects, ramie introduction 1 despite having slight disagreement on the magnitude, timing and spatial distribution of climate change, scientists agree that the climate change has been much faster than in the past (epa a). nasa (2013) reported that certain facts about earth’s climate are not in dispute; they also show that in the past, large changes in climate have happened very quickly, geologicalspeaking: in tens of years, not in millions or even thousands. agriculture and fisheries are highly dependent on specific climate conditions. trying to understand the overall effect of climate change can be difficult (epa b, corresponding author’s email address: ms24454@yahoo.com 2013). global climatic change has been influencing all aspect of agricultural activities. farmers in indonesia (tropical region) are difficult to make their cultivation plan. there is no more distinctive change of environmental and agroclimatic conditions throughout the months of the year. chengjian et al. (2013) reported that it might be due to rainfall pattern shift as a result of global climate change, causing worse drought coming along with high temperature in yangtze river basin. this climate phenomenon cannot be easily detected or explained by the average data of annual precipitation. epa a (2013) defined climate change refers to any significant change in the measures of climate lasting for an extended period of time. climate change includes major change asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ms24454@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 515-524 516 in temperature, precipitation, or wind pattern, among other effects, that occur over several decades or longer. nasa (2013) reported earth has warmed since 1880. most of this warming has occurred since 1981 and with warmest years occurring in the past 12 years. even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 20072009. adams et al. (1998) and zhang and mccarl (2013) said changes in climate and the atmosphere is inevitable for the coming decades, raises concerns regarding the adaptive ability and the likely responses of the agricultural sector. iqbal et al. (2009) and epa a (2013) said there is a growing research interest on transdisciplinary measurement of vulnerability to climatic hazard of climatic change. albert and uche (2014) said that there was climate change awareness among farmers in rural community, and they were of the view that it was human induced and saw it was a threat into their farming business. this global and local knowledge sand special local condition encourages agronomist and local agricultural policy makers to share their analyses and assessment to formulate appropriate and likely agronomy action to avoid climatic hazards. traditionally, in indonesia rainy season came in september, and the month of march was the beginning of the dry season. that regularity enabled farmer to make definitive plan for his land. and now the regularity has been extinct due to the regional climatic change. some of environmental sensitive plants are considerably affected. ramie is sensitive to water supply. ramie grows and is harvested every 60 days. ramie needs humid soil but not saturated for well growth, but ramie is cultivated in un-irrigated land. unlike the dry-land sugarcane cultivation practice which is supplied with additional irrigation water in time of rainfall is lack within certain period. and scheduled the harvest of ramie less than 60 day after the previous harvest. ditjenbun (1997) stated that ramie is best grown in area of a or b rainfall type regions where the crop can be 5 to 6 harvests. ramie is still commercially feasible in c rainfall type region with addition water supply in months of the end of rainy season, and region of d rainfall type is not suitable for ramie cultivation (rift, 1997) noted annual rainfall of 1500 to 3000 mm and evenly distributed through the year considered good ramie is one of the major foreign exchange earning crops in china due to the high quality textile of its fine fiber. however, seasonal drought has been becoming a major limiting factor for fiber yield, especially under global climate change (chengjian et al., 2013) budi (1996) said ramie plant susceptible to water supply, it will stagnant in the peak or end of dryseason in tropical climate. ramie is easy plant to grow, once it grew, its rhizomes established in the soil. it will grow for years as it belongs to perennial plant. established root system of ramie can completely suppress the weed growth. and ramie needs low cost of cultivation. this economical agronomy characteristic give beneficial prospective for relieving the burden national budget in import spending for cotton fiber as the case of indonesia or other non-cotton producing countries). in the period prior to economic crises happened in indonesia since the mid of 1997, indonesian textile industry developed and gained the most foreign revenue among non-gas and oil industries, and in1993 noted a revenue of $.3.5 billion. unfortunately, the development of textile industry was not based on domestic raw material. cotton fiber must be imported mainly from the united states or other cotton producing countries. indonesia produces only 4 % natural fiber of the total fiber requirement annually (rift, 1997) ramie plant grows well in humid and warm tropical region, subtropical and temperate zones and in the winter temperature does not drop below frozen level (ditjenbun, 1997), and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 515-524 517 dempsey (1963) said the optimum temperature for ramie plant in subtropic region ranged between 20 0 c and 24 0 c, and in tropical region 24 0 c and 28 0 c. caitiangchan and luo (1989) said the optimum temperature for rami between 23.0 0 c and 29.7 0 c, and minimum temperature 9.0 0 c. petruszka (1977) stated ramie plant resist well the winter low temperature-such as the minimum temperature below 9. 0 0 c thanks to the protection offered to rootstocks by a layer of dead leaves. and it is said in the tropical regions, a good yield harvested in plantation at the elevation 1300 m above sea level, and rainfall ranging from140 mm to 360 per month with even distribution through the months and the year. biophysical environmental condition includes elevation, climatic regime especially the rainfall; physiographical, soil condition and drainage affect the pattern of physiological growth. ramie plant harvested within 2 or 3 months, considerable biomass are harvested and removed out of the land. this causes the enormous removal of nutrients. budi (1996) stated sheep dung beside as nutrition it function to stabilize the soil structure. zhou et al. 1989 said phosphorus is not so important for ramie, while potassium affects quality and quantity of fiber. potassium is considered as the second most important nutrients for ramie plant. wan et al. (1989) said potash gives good effect on yield quality; it can counter the negative effect of nitrogen. sites, material and methods experiments were conducted in three different locations; jatinangor, sumedang dictrict and jatitujuh, majalengka district, and bandung district. the experiments took place in 2000-2001 in majalengka, and in sumedang were repeated in the year 2002 and 2007. and in bandung district in 2014. data compared was data of plant in the months of june, july and august of each experiment. -jatinangor, sumedang district lies on the elevation of 750 m above sea level (asl), belongs to c rainfall type, 5 to 6 wetmonths and 2 to 4 dry months (slightly wet) based on schmidt and ferguson (1951). soil ordoinceptisol, subordotropeptl and subgroup fluventik, eutropepts, isohipertermik. -jatitujuh, majalengka district lies on the elevation 19 m asl, belongs to d rainfall type region consisting of 3 to 4 months of wet months, and 5 to 6 months of dry months. soil ordo is alfisol (mediteran). mediteran akuik vertik (tropaqualfs). -bandung district lies on the elevation of 715 m above sea level (asl), belongs to c rainfall type, 4 to 5 wet-months and 3 to 4 dry months (slightly wet) based on schmidt and ferguson (1951). soil ordoinceptisol, subordotropeptl and subgroup fluventik, eutropepts, isohipertermik the experiments in jatinangor and jatitujuh were field experiment and designed in randomized block design arranged in factorial pattern with two factors and two replications. the first factors was sheep dung manure consisted of five levels (0 t ha 1 ,5 t ha -1 .10 t ha -1 ,15 t ha -1 , and 20 t ha -1 ) and the second factor was potassium consisted of three levels ((15 kg ha -1 , 30 kg ha -1 ,and45 kg ha -1 ). each treatment was replicated twice. experimental plots were planting beds of 5.2 m x 2.5 m, and planting space 0.5 m x 0.4 m, so the number of plants per plot was 65 plants. rhizome cutting of pujon 10 cultivar of 8 cm long was planted. climate data recorded during field experiment conducted, 2000 to 2001 were analysed to seek the conclusion of the experiment, and climatic data of the period after the field experiment 2001 to 2012 were analysed, defined their characteristic, pattern, and possible effects on ramie plant growth and yield compared to the effect of the climate in the period of field experiment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 515-524 518 experiment in bandung was polybag and in plastic house experiment. the experiment took place from june 2014-august 2014. rhizomes cutting were of 8 cm long. the experiment was laid out in a randomized block design with two replicates. plot was polybags size 40 cm x 30 cm consisting of four polybags in each plot. water supply treatments consisting of 4 levels of dosages, they are: w1= 25% 30%; w2: 45% -50%; w3: = 65% -70%; w4 = 85% -90%. nitrogen + potassium dosages were 3 levels: f1 = 15 kg+15 kg/ha; f2 = 30 kg+30 kg/ha, and f3 = 45 kg+45 kg/ha. there were12 treatment combination, so were36 plots. pujon 10 cultivar was the selected cultivar. rhizome cutting of 8 cm length was selected based on morphological appearances and planted in polybag. urea and zk dosages for each plot and polybag were determined based on the dosage per ha, and applied at the first day of experiment. the sample polybags were tested for water holding capacity by oven-drying method. water treatments were supplied every day in the evening up to harvest time. the parameters are 1) leaf chlorophyll contents; 2) leaf relative water content), 3).number of stem; 4) length of stem; 5) diameter of steam; 6) weight of stem; 7) crude fibre weight; 8) fine fiber weight; 9) fine fiber diameter). the leaf relative water content (lrwc) was measured by weighing the fresh weight (fw).the leaf samples were immersed into the distilled water as long as 12 hours for turgid weight (tw). so leaf relative water content was calculated as lrwc = (fw-dw)/(twdw) x100. after spectrophotometer optima sp-300 specification measurement the chlorophyll solution. figures of chlorophyll content recorded in spectrophotometer then match with the arnon (1949) calculation in subandi (2002) formula as: chlorophyll a = 12.7 ƛ 663 – 2.69 ƛ645; chlorophyll b = 22.9 ƛ 645 – 4.68ƛ633; chlorophyll total = 20.2 ƛ 645 +8.02 ƛ645 (mg/l) determining the fineness of fiber or diameter of fine grass is by using a microscope equipped with a filter attached optilab upgrade edition at binocular microscope olympus cx-21 and operated by the operating system window (7) data obtained were analyzed with analysis of variance, and mean variance test was with duncan multiple range test/dmrt, significant difference at 0.05 probability level. descriptive comparison is made among the result of experiments in the three locations. result and discussion physiological aspects temperature in jatitujuh of majalengka was the highest, and the lowest was in bandung. but it was still upper the 29 0 c . it means that the temperature in bandung nearly the maximum required for good growth of ramie, caitiang and luo (1989) stated that the optimum temperature is 23.0 0 c – 29.7 0 c and the minimum is 9.0 0 c. ramie planted in field was destructed by that high temperature, and all plant in jatitujuh was died till the corm or the roots system was dried. there were no data of growth and yield in jatitujuh experiment. while in jatinangor the plant root still withstand un-dried and the shoot stagnant. out of the figures 1, 2, and 3 concluded that in the months of june, july and august are noted as critical temperatures for ramie plant especially for early generations of plant where its root system is not yet established. these high temperatures were cause by the very low precipitation. figure 1: temperature at jt nangor 26 27 28 29 30 31 c e lc iu s june july august asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 515-524 519 32 33 34 35 week 1 week 2 week 3 week 4 week 5 c e lc iu s figure 2: temperature at jt tujuh june july august 27.5 28 28.5 29 29.5 c e lc iu s figure 3: temperature at bandung june july august 0 20 40 60 80 100 1-jun 1-jul 1-aug 1-sep p e rc e n t jt tujuh jt nangor bandung figure 4 showing the rainfall during the experiments. in june there was recorded rainfall in all the locations. in jatitujuh there were small rainfalls in the first week. there was 52.3 ml rainfall, but in jatitujuh the temperature is high the week was 33.2 0 c, and hot air evaporate the rainfall up. figure 1. showed daily evaporation in this region is more than 60 ml. so that no rest of rainfall water for moister the soil. figure 4: rainfall in locations of jt tujuh, jt nangor, and bandung relative humidity (rh) at the sites of experiment were recorded in june at the average 74.29%, in july 75.77%, and in august where in this month no rainfall this region were causing the air humidity lower to be 72. %. however, these percentages were still lower than the good humidity for ramie plant growth. in all the locations the rh were lower than the favourable rh for good growth. it was moderate low for the optimum, growth of ramie plant. budi (1996) found relative humidity for good growth is 80%, and below 21% detrimental to plant. record during the months indicated that the global climatic change is affecting the local climate. experiment in bandung showed the leaf relative water content (lrwc) of leaf measured yielding data and then analyzed showed the effect of water and fertilizer treatments on relative water content of plant as differ significantly. the more water and fertilizer applied the more lrwc. based on subandi (2014) reporting figure 5. shows the effect of water dosages at levels of fertilizers as different. plant water status as response to the water and fertilizer. figure 5: air relative humidity 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 1 -j u n 8 -j u n 1 5 -j u n 2 2 -j u n 2 9 -j u n 6 -j u l 1 3 -j u l 2 0 -j u l 2 7 -j u l 3 -a u g 1 0 -a u g 1 7 -a u g 2 4 -a u g 3 1 -a u g m l figure 4: rainfall jt tujuh jt nangor bandung asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 515-524 520 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 w1 w2 w3 w4 p e rc e n t nk1 nk2 nk3 65 70 75 80 85 90 p e rc e n t k1 k2 k3 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.8 sh1 sh2 sh3 sh4 sh5 m g / g k1 k2 k3 figure 6: lrwc at bandung plant absorbs nutrition (nitrogen and potassium) in the presence of water as solvent. chengjian et al. (2013) stated lrwc representing the plant water status, reflecting the metabolic activity in tissue. sartaj et al. (2013) said lrwc is usually used as one of the most meaningful indexes for dehydration tolerance in wide variety of plant. in the first ramie plant generation the effect of fewer water supplies is not yet causing problem in plant metabolism. the cutting as source of growing energy was still supplying sufficiently for germination and further first growth. but it apparent the trend is becoming that the different dosages of water and fertilizer will result in different response of ramie plant. it is apparent in the extrapolation of the curves in the figure 7, there will be a arise of the effect of more water and more fertilizer. in jatinangor ramie plant treated with potash and sheep dungs at various levels could increase and maintained at higher percentages as presented in figure 7. it indicates that organic fertilizer (sheep dung) could enhance the absorption of water with roots or other case the water were deposited in soil rich in sheep dung. figure 7: lrwc of jt nangor as for the lrwc in jatitujuh was unrecorded due to plant was all dried with the harsh of atmospheric condition no data of plant could be collected. even though the plant were treated with sheep dung and potash fertilizers. chlorophyll content of leaf fig. 8 and 9) as reported by subandi (2014) increase of chlorophyll content is detected in the data analysis, and there was a significant effect of water supply and fertilizer application treatments. farooq et al. (2009) found the increase of chlorophyll content in line with the increase of water supply and fertilizers is due to the increase of the photo oxidation pigment and development of the chlorophyll. in contras is happen in water stress (dosages of less water and less fertilizer), chlorophyll content decrease in water stress condition due to creation of photo-oxidation pigment, and consequent of the damage in chlorophyll leaves. figure 8: chlorophyll at jt nangor in stress water condition, the formation of chlorophyll must have been decreased, this will make other organ disturb and may be experiencing the degradation of chlorophyll. cornoy et al. (1988) stated that decrease of chlorophyll was due to the chloroplast decomposition and deleting of tylacoid structure. the curves in figure 8 show there will be a possible development or increase of chlorophyll in further growth (in the second generation plant). it is not so wise comparing chlorophyll content of jatinangor and bandung, the ramie plant were treated with different treatment and at different location and time, but there are relatively the same treatment nitrogen and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 515-524 521 0 5 10 15 w1 w2 w3 w4 m g/ g nk1 nk2 nk3 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 w1 w2 w3 w4 c m nk1 nk2 nk3 0 20 40 60 80 sh1 sh2 sh3 sh4 sh5 c m k1 k2 k3 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 w1 w2 w3 w4 g ra m nk1 nk2 nk3 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 sh1 sh2 sh3 sh4 sh5 g ra m k1 k2 k3 potash fertilizer and water treatment. in jatinangor ramie was treated with sheep dung, it mean organic fertilizer that serve as water deposit, while in bandung ramie was treated with water. figure 9: chlorophyll at bandung figure 10: stem length at bandung stem length effect of water dosages on stem length showed differ significantly. indeed, the most high-dose treatments are at the affected gaining the peak of the stem length. although the conclusion, the provision of water in all levels above 75% of field capacity causing most good influence on the upwards growth or stem length. edward (1981) said that potassium enhance root to penetrate deeper into the lower part of soil horizon enabling reach the wetter part of dryer soil. more water could be extracted. while in the poly bag plant, it means potash could initiate growth of roots, and better root will absorb more nutrients for growth and development of stem. figure 11: stem length at jt nangor fine fibers weight are fibers that have been cleaned through degumming process. non fiber content is a group of compounds likes slime (gum). this gum removal process called degumming using an alkaline solution. after cleaning fiber out of gum. thus the results of a further statistics test show the same result. it is logically proportional to the weight of the stem and the weight of crude fiber, and of fine fibers which are obtained. plants were difficult to differentiate its tissue in the water stress condition. fiber yield were below the standard production. shao et al. (1989) said to increase the ratio of fibre to the stem weight was required the management of fertilizer and watering. esau (1984) said that ramie fiber is extraxiler that is fibre existing outside the xylem tissue. and fahn (1992) said that ramie fiber develop in secondary phloem tissue. curves of figure 12 show the increase of fibre in line with the increase of water supply and application of fertilizer. balittas (2014) stated that the fiber production of ramindo 1 (formerly the pujon 10 cultivar) per stem is 4-5 gram, while the experiment showed at the dosages w1 and w2 at all levels of fertilizer produced below the 1.5 gram. it means the stress of water made plant difficult to develop its tissue. figure 12: fine fibre weight at bandung figure 13: fine fibre weight at jt nangor asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 515-524 522 0 10 20 30 40 50 w1 w2 w3 w4 m ic ro n nk1 nk2 nk3 diameter of fine fibre showing the pattern of erratic increase in line with the increase of fertilizer application and water supply. the more apply of fertilizer and more water supplies the bigger diameter are. dimension of ramie fiber may be between 13µ up to 126µ and the mostly found between 40µ to 60 µ (ditjenbun, 1997). diameter representing the fineness of fibre or quality, the smaller the diameter the finer the fibre is. finer fibre is wanted by the producer of textile. figure 14: fibre diameter at bandung subandi (2002) found ramie planted in dryer region will have finer fiber. plant suffered with lack of water limited in developing its tissue. ramie grows in more fertile soil with sufficient water develop its tissues better, and the more fertile soil and the more water available affect plant to grow rigorously and develop better vegetative organs with bigger cells and tissues. fiber is vegetative tissue, so supplying more water and fertilizer yield the worse dimension of fiber in respect of quality. figures 15: fine fiber diameter at jt nangor figures 16 and 17are photos of samples of diameter of fine fiber. fine fiber measured with optilab equipped to binocular microscope (subandi, 2014). measurement is excecuted with program of window 7. (sample 16 = 24 µ; 17 = 24 µ). figures 16: figures 17: figures 18, 19, and 20 are 15 days after planting of ramie plantin plastic house experiment in bandung (subandi, 2014). 0 10 20 30 40 50 sp1 sp2 sp3 sp4 sp5 m ic ro n k1 k2 k3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 515-524 523 figure 18: treatment a (less water) figure 19: treatment a and others. figure 20: treatment g (more water) conclusion climate change and global warming have considerable effect on life, and the effect on local weather is the changing of dry and wet season periods. there is revealed in this research that the dry and rainy season is shifting. the classification of region on rainfall types has been not accurate and valid any more. climate change was observed to have changed the regional and local climate inclusively in the experimental sites. it was recorded in the local temperature and air relative humidity. there was a very efficient dosage of water w3=35%-40% of field capacity affecting sufficient growth on plant. the minimum dosage at which plant survives to produce yield is representing the most efficient input of production. water supply for ramie plant could be designed to the most efficient volume to maintain the need of metabolism nitrogen and potassium were significantly support plant to growth in the limited volume of water supply, and potassium showed good effect on quality of fibre. references adams, r. m., brian h. h., stephanie l., & neil, l. (1998). effect of global climate on agriculture. an interpretative review. climate research, 11(1), 19-30. albert, u. o., & uche, n. u. (2014). acceptance of climate change by rural farming communities in delta state nigeria effect of science and government credibility. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(6), 372-380. balittas, (2014). ramindo 1. characteristic of ramindo 1. research institute for tobacco and fiber crops. malang. budi, s. (1996). agroclimatical effect on growth and china grass production. dharma agrika foundation. semarang. caitianchang, & luo, l. (1989). a discussion for establishment of ramie commercial productive base in die southeast sichuan. first int sym. on ramie profession. changsa. hunan. china. p. 8. chengjian, h., siji, z., longchang, w., shakeel, a. a., man, c., hangpei, z., & cong, m. (2013). alteration in chlorophyll flourescense, lipid per oxidation, and antioxidant enzym activities in hybrid ramie under drought stress. australi journal of crop science, 5, 594-599. cornoy, j. p., virgon, j. m., smilie, r. m., & barlow, e. w. (1988). influence of drought acclimation and co2 enrichment on osmotic adjustment and chlorophyll aflorescence of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(11)2014: 515-524 524 sunflower during drought. plant physiol, 186, 1108-1115. dempsey, j. m. (1963). long vegetable fibre. development in south vietnam and other countries. saigon. ditjenbun (1997). manual of ramie cultivation. directorate of production service of plantation crops. ministry of agriculture r. i. jakarta. edward, e. (1981). potash fertilizer and increased tolerance to stress agriviews, 1, no. i. canada. epa (a). (2013). united states environment protection agency. www.epa.gov/climatechange/impact -adaptation/. epa (b). (2013). epa (united states environment protection agency. www.epa.gov/climatechange//agricu lture-climate impact on agriculture and food supply. esau, k. (1984). plant anatomy. second edition. john wiley & son, inc. new york. london. sydney. fahn, a. (1992). anatomi tumbuhan. edisiketiga. terjemahan a sudiarto., trenggono k., mahmud n. dan h akmal. gajah mada university press, yogyakarta. farooq, m. a., wahid, n. d., kobayashi. f., & basra, m. a. (2009). responses of seven diverse rice cultivars to water deficit: accumulation of abscisic acid and proline in relation to leaf water potential and osmotic adjustment. field crops res, 27, 105-107. iqbal, m., mohsin, m., arif, g., & arshad, m. k. (2009). climate-change aspersions and food security of pakistan. science vision, 15(1), 1523. nasa (2013). global climate change, vital signs of the planet. http;//climate.nasa.gov/scientificconsensus. rift (research institute for fiber plant and tobacco.) (1997). ramie. annual report years 1996/1997. malang. petruszka, m. (1977). ramie fibre production and manufacturing food and agricultural industries services. agricultural division. rome. shao, k., cui y., luo, y., liao, x., & yin, b. (1989). studies on biological characteristics and the physicochemical properties of fibre in the different growth stages of ramie. first int. sym. on ramie prof changsa. hunan china. sartaj, a. w., subhash, c., najar, g. r., & teli, m. a. (2013). organic farming: as a climate change adaptation and mitigation strategy. current agriculture research journal, 1(1), 45-50. schmidt, f. h., & ferguson, p. j. a. (1951). rainfall type based on wet and dry period ratios for indonesia with western new guinee. verhandelingen no. 42. telecomunication ministry. the republic of indonesia. meteorology and geophysic service. djakarta. subandi, m. (2014). report of ramie experimentin 2014 (unpublished). centre for experimentation and publication. institute for research and community devotion of the state islamic university of bandung. 2014. subandi, m. (2002). adaptation, growth and yield of ramie in c type agroclimatical zone. research report of junior lecturer. bandung. wan q., xiao z., wang c., & li t. (1989). studies on nutritive peculiarity and fertilization of fine quality and high yield ramie. first int. sym. on ramie profession. changsa. hunan. china. zhang, y. b., & mccarl, w. a. (2013). us agriculture under climate change: an examination of climate change effects on ease of achieving rfs2. economic research international, 20(3), 13. zhou, z., li t., qugang, d., wang, c., & li, t. (1989). effect of fertilizers on ramie. first int. sym. on ramie profession. changsa. hunan. china. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impact-adaptation/ http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impact-adaptation/ http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/agriculture-climate http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/agriculture-climate effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 484 smallholder cocoa farmers access to on/off-farm support services and its contribution to output in the eastern region of ghana justina a. onumah, portia adade williams, wilhelmina quaye and mavis akuffobea csir-science and technology policy research institute, accra, ghana edward, e. onumah department of agricultural economics and agribusiness, university of ghana, legon, accra, ghana abstract it has been established that smallholder farmers have minimal access to various support services that would have otherwise enabled them to increase their output levels. the focus of this paper is to identify and quantify the impact of various support services on the production levels of cocoa in the eastern region of ghana. a cross sectional survey of 190 cocoa farmers was obtained using a two-stage sampling technique (purposive and random). descriptive statistics and an ols regression model were used to analyse and discuss the results of the study. the various support services identified included labour services, financial services, technical assistance, farmer group support services, research and development (r&d) institutional support services, extension services and input support services. the services that significantly influenced output levels of cocoa were extension services, labour supply and technical assistance, among other variables including farm size and quantity of agrochemical used. it is recommended that access to these support services be improved in order to realise an increase in output for the smallholder cocoa farmer. keywords: smallholder, cocoa, support services, ghana introduction 1 most developing countries are pursuing their comparative productive advantage to foster growth in the face of rapid globalization and food crisis. this pursuit is expected to increase performance of major commodity exports in order to generate foreign exchange and promote economic growth (nkamleu et al., 2010). cocoa is one of the major foreign exchange earners for some countries in africa such as ghana, cote d’ivoire, nigeria, and cameroon. according corresponding author’s name: justina a. onumah email address: justina.onumah@csir-stepri.org to the world cocoa foundation (2009), the dominant supplier of cocoa currently is west africa with three countries adding up to 60% of global cocoa production (cote d’ivoire; 32%, ghana; 16% and nigeria; 12%). ghana is the world’s second largest supplier of cocoa. it is important to note that, approximately 86% of the world’s cocoa production is grown by smallholder farmers. smallholder farmers are the backbone of the cocoa sector upon which millions of ghanaians depend for income (anim-kwapong and frimpong, 2005). cocoa contributes about 70-100% of the annual household income of smallholder farmers. other actors such as input asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:justina.onumah@csir-stepri.org asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 484-495 485 distributors, licensed cocoa buying companies (lcb’s) and chemical companies also depend largely on cocoa for markets of their products, employment and income (asamoah and baah, 2003). the sales of cocoa beans have been one of the major sources of foreign exchange for ghana but the sector in recent times have seen some setbacks reflecting in the negative growth rate of 6.9% in 2012 (isser, 2013). until recently, the average national annual yield of cocoa in ghana was 400 kilograms per hectare (kg/ha) and this value has been fluctuating over the years. the ghana cocoa board (cocobod) in 2008 attributed this to a number of factors. these factors included the low adoption of cocoa technologies by farmers, increased diseases and pests attack, declining soil fertility, poor agronomic practices and limited access to support services including credit availability as well as inadequately informed farmers. it is believed that improved access to support services among these smallholder cocoa farmers could lead to improved productivity. world bank (2011) suggested that supporting smallholder farming is the most effective way of stimulating economic development, reducing poverty and improving productivity. wegner (2012) also postulates that, cocoa farming can become a viable business for smallholders if good agricultural practices (gap) training, stronger farmers’ aggregation and new financial mechanisms are leveraged. additionally, fesenberg (2012) observed that the low income and productivity of cocoa farmers is as a result of inefficiencies in the value chain, including poor access to quality inputs and technology, lack of knowledge of best practices, insufficient organizational capacity, and poor access to buyers and market information. according to fesenberg (2012) majority of cocoa farmers are not organized in cooperatives, infrastructure and input finance are inadequate, there is lack of understanding of quality requirements with limited knowledge of improved production techniques, farm management skills are inadequate, little access to market information and high transport costs. therefore in order for smallholder cocoa farmers to improve their output and livelihood as well as contribute progressively to the cocoa subsector, considerable increase in access to support services as noted and suggested earlier would be required. on/off farm support services such as financial services, farmer based organization (fbo) support services, extension services, research and development (r&d) support and input suppliers need to be heavily leveraged. the overall objective of this paper is therefore to assess the role that access to offfarm and on-farm institutional support such as extension services, financial services, technical assistance and r&d play in increasing the production level of cocoa farmers. specifically, the paper seeks to: profile the socio economic characteristics of the smallholder cocoa farmer in eastern ghana; identify and describe the various support services available to the cocoa farmers and their effect on production levels; and finally to quantify the effect of support services to the total output of cocoa in the eastern region of ghana. methodology data and method of collection the study relied basically on primary data from cocoa farmers. both qualitative and quantitative data were collected. qualitative data captured some socio-demographic characteristics of the farmers. quantitative data was also collected on the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents, quantity and cost of inputs, quantity and prices of output, frequency of extension contacts, quantity of labour supply and farm size. the eastern region of ghana was considered for the study given that it is one of the leading cocoa producing areas in the country. three (3) districts were selected for the study and these were the fanteakwa district, suhum-kraboa-coaltar district and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 484-495 486 the east akim municipality. a two-stage sampling technique was used where the first stage involved a purposive sampling of the study area and the second stage considered a random sampling technique to identify the various respondents for the survey. a sample size of 190 was obtained for the study. a list of farmers was obtained by the cocoa swollen shoot virus disease (cssvd) offices in the various districts. the farmers were then randomly selected based on the list given and the number chosen reflected their proportion to the total sample. data collection methods included personal interviews with the farmers with the aid of questionnaire administration, and key informant interviews. the personal interviews were with the cocoa producers and other stakeholders in the cocoa industry. key informant interviews were conducted with the management and staff of the cssvd control offices. it also involved the various leaders of the various farmers’ group in the study area. the questionnaire was pretested to suit the field condition and inconsistencies corrected before administering. data analysis the first two objectives were analysed using descriptive statistics and results presented in tables and charts. the last objective was however analysed using an ordinary least squares (ols) estimation approach using stata. factors contributing to production levels among the cocoa farmers in analysing and quantifying the effect of the identified support services on production levels, an ordinary least squares (ols) multiple regression linear model was considered and specified in model (1). 𝑄 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 𝑋1 + 𝛽2 𝑋2 + 𝛽3 𝑋3 + 𝛽4𝑋4 + 𝛽5 𝑋5 + 𝛽6 𝑋6 + 𝛽7 𝑋7 + 𝛽8 𝑋8 + 𝛽9 𝑋9 + 𝛽10 𝑋10 + 𝛽1 1𝑋11 + 𝜀………………… (1) where: q = the level of production measured in kilograms; β0 = intercept term β1-β11are the estimates’ coefficients; x1 = labour supply (measured in man days); x2 = farm size (hectares); x3 = access to extension services (measured in the frequency of contacts); x4= access to technical assistance (measured as a dummy where 1=access and 0 = no access); x5 = quantity of agrochemicals used (litres); x6 = fbo membership (measured as a dummy where 1 = member and 0 = otherwise); x7 = access to r&d support; x8 =access to financial services (measured as a dummy where 1 = access and 0 = no access); x9 = land ownership (measured as a dummy where 1 = owned and 0 = otherwise) x10 = educational level; x11 = gender of the farmer (measured as a dummy where 1 = male and 0 = female); and ε is the error term of the model capturing other noise effects this method was considered because a lot of the variables used in the model were dummies and hence by applying the principle of parsimony, the linear ols model was chosen. also, this model does not require the transformation of variables into logarithms as it is done in other nonlinear models. results and discussion socio-demographic characteristics of cocoa farmers in the study area majority of cocoa farmers (35%) in the study area were 60 years and above whilst few (3.5%) of the farmers were between the ages of 20-29. the mean age was about 53 years (table 1). this implies that cocoa producers on the average are the middleaged. vigneri (2007) also observed that the mean age of cocoa farmers in ghana is 49, with a reason being that the young cocoa farmers migrate to cities in search of other jobs. the old age of cocoa farmers has been asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 484-495 487 a concern in existing strategy documents of the cocoa sub-sector. table 1 sociodemographic characteristics of cocoa famers socio variable frequency percentage (%) age of farmer 20-29 6 3.2 30-39 26 13.7 40-59 47 24.7 50-59 49 25.8 >60 62 32.6 minimum 23 maximum 89 gender male 153 80.5 female 37 19.5 educational level none 32 16.8 basic 80 42.1 secondary 75 39.5 tertiary 3 1.6 source of labou family/friends only 64 33.7 hired only 126 66.3 land size (ha) <1.6 48 25.3 1.6-4.0 89 46.8 >4.0 53 27.9 cocoa production in the study area is dominated by males although females also take active part. out of the 190 farmers interviewed, about 80% were males whilst females accounted for only 20%. despite the fact that only about 20% of the farmers interviewed were females, female non-cocoa farm owners also played a supporting role in cocoa production, especially in the gathering of cocoa pods after harvesting for the extraction of beans. they are also mostly responsible for the carting of the fermented cocoa beans from the farm to the house together with other household and nonhousehold members. land is one of the most important and basic inputs used in production. the size of land may influence the level of input used and also the quantity of output produced from it. the average farm size of the cocoa farms was 2.98 hectares. it can be inferred that generally, cocoa producers operate on a small scale level. although more output can be expected from bigger farms, the limitation of large farms is the issue of proper management. when management becomes a problem, then additional input invested may result in decline of output level. further discussion on the effect of the scale on production is given in subsequent sub-sections. male cocoa farmers in the study area had a mean land size of 2.64 ha whilst female farmers held an average land size of 1.83 ha. the landholdings of female cocoa producers ranged between 0.08 ha to 9.60 ha. about 17.1 percent and 13.2 percent of the female producers have landholding of 0.80 ha and 1.60 ha, respectively. conversely, the landholdings of male producers ranged between 0.16 ha and 12.80 ha with majority (40% and 29% respectively) of the farmers having land size of 1.60 ha and 2.00 ha, representing 12.7% and 9.2% of the male asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 484-495 488 population respectively. the results imply that male cocoa producers have larger land holdings than their female counterparts. this is a very typical situation of the land ownership and acquisition system in ghana. land ownership is dominated by males whereas very few females have complete ownership of lands for agricultural purposes. consistent with results obtained by vigneri (2007), cocoa producers in the study area generally had 2 low level of education. out of the 190 producers interviewed, only 1 percent had attained tertiary level of education whereas 42.8% have had some form of basic education. on the other hand, 37.4% have had secondary level of education whilst 18.7 percent of them have no level of education in any form at all. farmers access to support services the various off-farm and on farm support services identified during the study included labour services, financial services, technical assistance from non-governmental organisations and projects, farmer group support services, research and development (r&d) institutional support services, extension services and input support services. the various services are discussed in the following sub sections. labour services and cocoa production according to a undp (2010)’s scoping paper, cocoa production demands a lot of manual labour works since most modern day machines are not suited for cocoa. this explains why none of the respondents used machinery for their labour activities. the source of labour a producer gets access to may either increase or decrease the cost of production. productivity levels to some extent are influenced by the source of labour a producer decides to use. heshmati and 2 the lowest form of education is basic education with the highest form being tertiary and majority of the respondents only had basic education as their highest level of education. vigneri (2007) also reports that the highest level of education among cocoa farmers in ghana is the primary level. mulugeta (1996) observed that both hired and family source of labour was unequally productive. however, onumah et al. (2010) observed that in the fish farm industries in ghana, both hired and family source of labour were equally productive. cocoa farms in the study area consider family, hired and most of the time, a combination of the two for their production activities. for the purposes of this study, only hired and family labour were considered as farmers were ask to rank in terms of priority the kind of labour that is most applicable to them. the results indicate that majority (66%) of the cocoa farmers interviewed however uses mostly hired labour for their production activities. figure 1: percentage of farmers who had access to some support services financial services most agricultural production is by nature seasonal and depends on access to quality resource base else it would be vulnerable to pests and spoilage leading to low productivity. for smallholder farmers to achieve higher productivity, timely access to short-term finance for inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, machine services, transport, labour, and fuel is fundamental. smallholder farmers in developing countries however often face extreme barriers to finance (grossman and 51.6 74.2 83.7 19.5 27.1 percentage accessed asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 484-495 489 tarazi 2014). financial service providers face liquidity management and challenges due to covariant risks from these farmers. farmers usually have low financial capability but higher transaction costs and financial needs. poor access and high costs of credit constitute a major constraint to farmers in ghana. the seasonality nature of cocoa production implies that all input costs are incurred before the harvest and farmers sometimes need to borrow up to 60 percent of their harvest income upfront since they are usually liquidity constrained and need credit (lundstedt and pärssinen, 2009). due to the financial risks, this type of finance is often unavailable to cocoa farmers and it usually holds back productivity and product quality, as well as the farmers’ capacity to adopt better technologies and build their businesses. a survey conducted by the world bank (2011) concluded that, there is insufficient access to affordable credit as vast majority of cocoa farmers in ghana are at subsistence level and have limited working capital for the purchase of needed inputs and to cover intra-seasonal household needs. according to the survey, few farmers gain access to loan and even face exorbitant interest rates from financial institutions that consider farmers as high risk borrowers. smallholder farmers therefore have unfulfilled credit needs for input (seasonal) finance. if farmers are to increase their outputs, they must be able to do more than survive from year to year on their harvest by gaining easy access to credit support. according to the results of the study, the cocoa farmers in eastern ghana obtained financial support from various sources for their production and post-production activities. the various sources included rural financial institutions, local money lenders, family support, and personal savings, among others. however, the most prominent sources of finance for these farmers were mainly personal savings and that from family/friends. it can be said that cocoa producers in the study area do not really have greater access to financial services, especially those from financial institutions as the study sought to identify. only about 20% of the respondents interviewed reported they had access to financial services provided by microfinance companies within the region as shown in figure 1. the bulk of the credits they received from the financial institutions were channelled into paying for labour services. majority (80%) of the farmers who are unable to access financial services reported that the lack of any form of collateral hinders them from accessing these services. financial institutions are therefore encouraged to extend more of their services to these farmers for them to be able to increase production for to improve upon their income security. technical assistance and fbo support services in the rural communities where cocoa production dominates, a much stronger form of support is usually received from farmer based organisations (fbos). according to onumah et al. (2007), rural farmers have a tradition of performing certain agricultural productive activities as a group rather as individual. members of these fbos then enjoy various benefits including group solidarity and leveraging. these farmers leverage on the successes of each other to improve upon their own production and post-harvest practices for a higher yield. a number of non-governmental organisations assist these farmers in terms of providing them with technical assistance such as good agricultural practices that will help improve their productivity and efficiency levels. these ngos usually target farmers in groups when they are sending technical assistance to them, hence belonging to a farmer group is very crucial to assessing any form of technical assistance. various studies have established that the rationale for many projects supporting the development of fbos in africa is to facilitate access to credit, farm inputs, extension services and markets for their produce (bernard et al., 2008; bernard and spielman 2009; barham and chitemi 2009). on the other hand, weak organizations of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 484-495 490 cocoa farmers however have resulted in farmers’ inability to mobilize themselves to demand or access production support services. contrary to studies by the world bank (2011) that suggested that less than 10% of cocoa farmers in ghana are members of a cooperative or other farmer association this study proves otherwise. in figure 1, the study revealed that about 74% of cocoa farmers in the study area belonged to an fbo. salifu et al. (2010) observed that fbos have increasingly diverse range of collective activities this he cited the ministry of food and agriculture (mofa) which distinguishes between production, processing, marketing and multipurpose fbos for an array of collective services. building selfmanaging capacity and improving organization of fbos is therefore important to ensure a better organization of farmers to access production support services. from the study, the various types of assistance that the members of the group rendered to each other were identified to be labour supply, information dissemination, financial support, best production and postharvest practices, among others. onumah et al. (2013) observed that individual cocoa farmers who belonged to a farmer group and had received some form of support in terms of labour supply, knowledge transfer and financial aid were more technically efficient compared to their counterparts who did not have any support. this implies that it is not all about belonging to a farmer group but as to whether there is mutual benefit in terms of providing support to each other when needed. the results therefore suggest that fbos is one critical way by which farmers can help themselves and reduce the inefficiencies associated with production. a study by the natural resources institute and concern worldwide in 2012 indicated that for smallholder farmers to increase productivity for their income and food security to be enhanced, among other things, they should be eencouraged to form cooperatives. this they said will support them in the provision of training on savings and loans based on rotation credit of small groups and harnessed production of key crops that would otherwise not be produced by a single farmer. extension services in ghana, the extension services are not the preserve of extension institutions alone but rather research institutions, input distributors, produce buying agencies, as well as nongovernmental organisations (ngos), among others (baah and anchirinah, 2011). the cocoa research institute of ghana (crig), though is primarily concerned with the development of sustainable cocoa production technologies, has stepped up its extension activities in recent times to meet the needs of farmers with activities such as farmer educational campaigns on farm and on radio, the use of farmer field schools, active involvement in government control of cocoa pest and disease programme, introduction of the cocoa farmer’ newspaper, and on farm studies. as shown in figure 1, about 84% of the farmers interviewed had access to extension services with varying frequency of contact ranging from 1-10 times per year. on the average, cocoa farmers in the study area have about 3 extension visits in a year. the ghana cocobod through crig should be commended for recruiting extension officers specifically to meet the needs of cocoa producers in the country. farmers interviewed were very pleased with their services when compared with previous extension service delivery. this informs us that it is not only the number of visits that matters but the content of the message carried to producers. to buttress the findings of this study, a report by an eu-funded cocoa sector support services programme indicated that the unification of all agricultural extension in ghana into the extension system of the ministry of food and agriculture with the lack of adequate extension finance and personnel has resulted in a weak national cocoa extension and lack of clarity of institutional responsibility for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 484-495 491 extension services in the cocoa sector of ghana. studies on the effects of extension services on cocoa production (onumah et al., 2013; nyagaka et al., 2010 and binam et al., 2008) suggested that cocoa farmers who had higher frequency of extension contacts and visits are able to increase their productivity compared to those who had no access to extension services. nompozolo (2000) has also suggested that for good performance, a reasonable access to extension services and information is necessary to back up agricultural productivity and output hence extension officers must be trained in indigenous knowledge relevant to the farming communities they serve whether an individual farmer has contact with the extension service or not. this implies that effective extension visits and supervision will go a long way to improve farmers’ production level and performance and hence should be taken seriously. input support services in some cocoa-producing countries, many of the farmers lack affordable access to the inputs and farm implement necessary to produce a high yielding, sustainable crop. improving farmers’ access to necessary inputs such as fertilisers, fungicides/insecticides, spraying machines, wellington boots and farm tools such as pruners and rakes is vital to ensure that they are able to grow a high yielding and good quality crop year-on-year. wegner (2012) suggests that, the pressing issues in the cocoa sector lie on access to farming inputs as well as access to finance as mentioned previously. generally, input suppliers sell their products nearly exclusively on a “cash-and-carry” basis, viewing cocoa farmers in particular as high credit risk. this limits the number of farmers who get access to their services as the high cost of inputs often places them out of reach, for most farmers. few input suppliers offer training or after sales support related to the products they sell though government’s subsidy program on fertilizers, sometimes make it difficult for them to compete with open market-priced alternatives. some also have limited sales among cash-strapped cocoa farmers (world bank 2011). input supply in ghana is for the most part in the hands of the private sector. however, the world bank (2011) reveals that the government of ghana (gog) through cocobod retains an active role through subsidized input distribution programs targeting cocoa farmers, in line with its strategy to raise productivity and output. nonetheless, the farmers bear the bulk of the cost of production. to support this, the study further ascertained that the cocoa disease and pest control (codapec) unit of the ghana cococbod also supplies cocoa farmers with agro-chemicals, which usually comes through a gog initiative called the mass spraying exercise. however, the farmers were at liberty to apply additional levels of agrochemicals if necessary. farmers explained that not all of them get access to services of codapec so they consider the services of hired labour for the application which the cost is bore by them. some also reported that they always have to treat pest and disease attack even after treatment by codapec since it is not sufficient. a study by hainmueller et al. (2011) also revealed that, cocoa farmers in ghana have limited access to affordable and timely inputs that would otherwise help to increase their yields and reduce losses to pests and diseases with only 14% of farmers having ready access to fertilizers and other agrochemicals when they needed. to this end, it is important for government to repackage the exercise for farmers to take full advantage. also private input suppliers can provide inputs to the farmers at a fare rate given their resource constraints. research and development (r&d) institutional support the cocoa research institute of ghana (crig) mentioned earlier, is mandated to undertake research into challenges relating to the production, processing and utilization of cocoa and other tree species by providing asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 484-495 492 cocoa farmers with technical innovations that improve yields, identify new processing techniques and marketable consumer products and by-products and ensuring effective transfer of research findings, new technologies and agronomic practices to farmers (baah and anchirinah 2011). the cocoa swollen shoot virus disease control unit (cssvdcu) is responsible for the survey and control of the cocoa swollen shoot virus disease (cssvd). the unit's activities include the removal and destruction of diseased cocoa trees from farms and supply of disease-tolerant hybrids (pod and saplings) for replanting. the seed production unit (spu) is responsible for the multiplication and distribution of improved cocoa planting materials to farmers. spu maintains seed gardens at 23 cocoa stations in the seven cocoa-growing regions of ghana. the unit multiplies high-yielding, early-bearing hybrid cocoa types and distributes them to farmers as seed pods and saplings at a subsidized cost. the national cocoa diseases and pest control (codapec) assists cocoa farmers across ghana to combat cocoa mirids and black pod diseases as well as train farmers and technical personnel on the cultural and chemical methods of pests and diseases control and educate and train local sprayers on safe pesticides usage. quality control company (qcc) is also responsible for maintaining quality standards and overseeing quality control measures at all stages of the cocoa supply chain (world bank, 2011). the study however indicated that less than 30% (figure 1) of the cocoa farmers interviewed reported they receive direct technical support from the r&d institutions in the country including the council for scientific and industrial research (csir) and their very own, crig. according to a world bank report in 2011, smallholder farmers have not benefited enough from the available research and technological support in the industry and that not all farmers get access to these services. it further explains that, smallholder cocoa farmers in ghana are among the least productive with declining average yields well below that of other major cocoa producers such as cote d’ivoire. it is important therefore to raise output while maintaining quality standards hence the r&d institutions, especially crig should step up their efforts in order to make their services available to all farmers to ensure increased productivity. results of the regression model in order to quantify the impact that support services, among other variables have on the output levels of cocoa, an ols regression model was analysed and the results presented in table 2. the results shown indicate that about 88% of the variation in the output levels of cocoa in the study area is explained by the various variables specified in the model. this further implies that the combined effects of the variables chosen rightly explain the variation in output and hence gives an indication of the fitness of the model specified. table 2: results of the ols regression analysis variables parameter coefficient t-value significance (constant) β0 -1.119 0.264 labour (man-days) β1 0.207 4.617*** 0.000 farm size (hectares) β2 0.575 13.203*** 0.000 access to extension services (yes = 1; no = 0) β3 0.236 7.370*** 0.000 access to technical assistance (yes = 1; no = 0) β4 0.071 2.083** 0.039 agrochemicals (litres) β5 0.116 3.084*** 0.002 fbo membership (yes =1; no = 0) β6 0.023 0.804 0.422 access to r&d support (yes = 1; β7 0.007 0.272 0.786 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 484-495 493 no = 0) access to financial services (yes = 1; no = 0) β8 -0.006 -0.222 0.825 land ownership (owned = 1; otherwise = 0) β9 0.041 1.569* 0.118 educational level (levels) β10 0.019 0.691 0.490 gender (male = 1; female = 0) β11 0.121 0.420 0.675 r-square value=0.882 f-statistic value=149.132*** dependent variable=output (kilograms) ***, ** and * represents 1%, 5% and 10% significance levels respectively the results of the regression model support the discussion in the descriptive analysis carried out in the previous sub sections. all the variables except access to financial services contributed positively to the level of output produced in the study area. this finding may be as result of the fact that farmers are not using the credit they access from financial institutions for their production activities. the farmers interviewed reported that they sometimes use the credit they access to cater for other household expenditure. therefore, this could be the reason why financial services do not contribute significantly to output and even the few who receive such services have lower outputs. farmers should be sensitized on the need to adequately use the credit and support they receive from financial service providers for the purposes of production and post-production activities and not to channel them into catering for household needs. this if done will increase the credit worthiness of farmers and hence financial service providers will be willing to extend their services to more farmers. the variables that significantly impacted positively on the output levels of cocoa in the study area were found to be the level of labour services employed, size of farm under production, access to extension services, access to technical assistance from non-governmental organisations’ programmes and activities, the level of agrochemical used to control pest and diseases and finally being the self-ownership of land on which the production takes place. this suggests that all things being equal, increases in the level of use or access to the aforementioned inputs and services will result in a significant change in output. even though it can be observed that variables such as fbo membership, r&d support and having a higher education did not significantly influence output, the impact is positive. hence with the right support, access to these variables will help improve upon the output levels of farmers, and consequently productivity. in summary having access to various support services coupled with the right combination of input mix will enhance the production levels of cocoa producers in the region. conclusion the paper has been able to establish that access to both off farm and on farm support services by smallholder cocoa farmers contributes positively to their production level. in order to improve and increase output of cocoa production as well as ensure sustainability, it is crucial to make support services readily available to smallholder farmers. provision of training in good agricultural practices and ensuring an efficient implementation of standard systems, promotion of farmers’ aggregation in strong cooperatives and developing financing mechanisms to access to inputs (e.g. risk-sharing for input financing) and credit facilities would be paramount. if smallholder farmers are empowered, it would improve their practices and capabilities to significantly increase their asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 484-495 494 yields. additionally, characteristics of a successful smallholder farmer are not only determined by what is embodied in the farmer himself but by other external factors as mediocre support services and lack of continuity in policies. extension service is key to the performance of the cocoa industry in ghana and hence should be of a national priority. farmers should be encouraged to form groups in order to leverage on each other’s strength and capabilities and also support each other in times of need. farmers who have complete ownership of the land on which cocoa production takes place are also able to increase their output level compared to tenant farmers. this could be due to the fact that, having complete ownership of land gives the farmer total control over the management of the farm and hence the ability to adopt several best practices that ensures higher output. this implies that land tenure is one important driver that should be addressed in order to realise the potential output of the cocoa sector in ghana. references anim-kwapong, g. j., & frimpong, e. b. (2005). vulnerability of agriculture to climate change: impact of climate change on cocoa production. cocoa research institute, ghana cocoa draft. asamoah, m., & baah, f. (2003). improving research-farmer linkages: the role of crig. a paper submitted at the 4th international seminar on cocoa-pests and diseases (incoped), accra, ghana. baah, f., & anchirinah, v. (2011). a review of cocoa research institute of ghana extension activities and the management of cocoa pests and diseases in ghana. american journal of social and management sciences, 2(1), 196-201. barham, j., & chitemi, c. (2009). collective action initiatives to improve marketing performance: lessons from farmer groups in tanzania. food policy, 34, 53-59. bernard, t., & spielman, d. j. (2009). reaching the rural poor through rural producer organizations? a study of agricultural marketing cooperatives in ethiopia. food policy, 34(1), 60–69. bernard, t., collion, m. h., dejanvry, a., & rondot, p. (2008). do village organizations make a difference in african rural development? a study for senegal and burkina faso. world development, 36(11), 2188-2204. binam, j. n., gockowski, j., & nkamleu, g. b. (2008). technical efficiency and productivity potential of cocoa farmers in west africa countries. the developing economics, 3, 242–263. concern, worldwide (2012). farming for impact – a case study of smallholder agriculture in rwanda. a report by concern worldwide and natural resources institute of the university of greenwich, uk. available atwww.concern.net/resources. fesenberg, c. (2012). cocoa value chain development. sfras available at www.swisscontact.org. ghana cocoa board (2008). cocoa production statistics 2006. research department, ghana cocoa board (cocobod). grossman, j., & tarazi, m. (2014). serving smallholder farmers. recent developments in digital finance. focus notes no. 94, available at cgap@worldbank.org. hainmueller, j., hiscox, m., & tampe m. (2011). sustainable development for cocoa farmers in ghana. mit and harvard university. heshmati, a., & mulugeta, y. (1996). technical efficiency of ugandan matoke farms. applied economics letters, 3, 491–494. isser (2013). the state of the ghanaian economy in 2012. institute of statistical, social and economic research, university of ghana, legon-accra. lundstedt, h., & pärssinen, s. (2009). cocoa is ghana, ghana is cocoa; evaluating reforms of the ghanaian cocoa sector. department of http://www.concern.net/resources http://www.swisscontact.org/ mailto:cgap@worldbank.org asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(10)2014: 484-495 495 economics at the university of lund, minor field study series no. 198, issn 0283-1589 nkamleu, g. b., nyameck, j., & gockowski, j. (2010). technology gap and efficiency in cocoa production in west and central africa: implication for cocoa sector development. working papers series no. 104, africa development bank, tunis, tunisia. nompozolo, s. (2000). an analysis of the characteristics and constraints of smallholder commercial farmers in the transkei region, the eastern cape, south africa. unpublished m. agric (agricultural extension) dissertation, university of fort hare, alice. nyagaka, d. o., obare g. a., omiti, j. m., & ngoyo, w. (2010). technical efficiency in resource use: evidence from smallholder irish potato farmers in nyandaura north district, kenya. africa journal of agricultural research, 5, 1179–1186. onumah, e. e., brummer, m., & horstgenschwark g. (2010). productivity of hired and family labour and determinants of technical inefficiency in ghana’s fish farms. agricultural economics – czech, 56, 79–88. onumah, g. e., davis, j. r., kleih u., & proctor, f. j. (2007). empowering smallholder farmers in markets: changing agricultural marketing systems and innovative responses by producer organizations. esfim working paper 2: ifad, cta, agricord. onumah, j. a., al-hassan, r. m., & onumah, e. e. (2013). productivity and technical efficiency of cocoa production in eastern ghana. journal of economics and sustainable development, 4(4), 106-117. salifu, a., francesconi, g. n., & kolavalli, s. (2010). a review of collective action in rural ghana. ifpri discussion paper 00998. the world bank (2011). supply chain risk assessment: cocoa in ghana. agriculture and rural development (ard). available at www.worldbank.org/ard. united nations development programme (undp) (2010). green commodities; cocoa scoping paper. an internal working document, june 2010. vigneri, m. (2007). drivers of cocoa production growth in ghana. odi project briefing, no.4. overseas development institute, london. wegner, l. (2012). cocoa fact sheet. working document by wageningen ur centre for development innovation held on april 11-13, 2012 in the hague, netherlands. http://www.worldbank.org/ard effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 861 consultation based inductive study of vegetables growing women farmers of punjab, pakistan tahir munir butt college of humanities and development (cohd), china agriculture university, beijing, china & lecturer; university of agriculture faisalabad, pakistan gao qi jie, han zhenguo and muhammad ammad khan college of humanities and development (cohd), china agriculture university, beijing, china abstract pakistan is an agricultural country where 45% population is connected with agriculture. this population consists of males and females doing farming for their survival. males are kept under consideration always while women potential is underestimated. women work side by side with their males and remain involved in farming activities especially indoor cultivation of vegetables. in this regard, the present study was conducted in gujranwala district of punjab, to assess the situation of women regarding vegetables cultivation along with their need assessment regarding farming. in this regard through multistage random sampling, 500 women farmers doing vegetables farming were selected as respondents. data were collected through structured interview schedule and were analyzed with the help of spss. results revealed that literacy level of women in study area was lower. regarding vegetables traditional framing was being adopted while adoption of improved techniques such as tunnel farming was not impressive at all. inappropriate market existence appeared as the most vulnerable constraint along with the poor services provided by extension field staff, finance shortage and high inputs prices. on the basis of results it is suggested that literacy programme by government especially for women should be started. female extension staff should also be appointed especially for home based farming activities training provision. subsidy should be provided on inputs to reduce the cost of production. more important, government should pay attention on establishment of sustainable market separate for organically and chemically produced vegetables. keywords: agricultural extension services, vegetables, rural women introduction 1 importance of agriculture and horticulture outlook pakistan is an agricultural country as it provides productive employment opportunities to 45% labor force. moreover, agriculture is shareholder of 21% in national economy (govt. of pakistan, 2012). agriculture is the blend of many diversified fields such as agronomy, crop protection, crop corresponding author’s name: gao qi jie email address: gaoqj@cau.edu.cn physiology, water management and horticulture. horticulture is one of the significant sub sectors as it deals with fruits, vegetables and flowers. this sector is also contributing significantly in the economy through export earnings. regarding fruits, pakistan is significant in citrus and mango worldwide especially kinnow, the cultivar of citrus is famous worldwide as export item (govt. of pakistan, 2012). for the proper working of these sectors, the country needs a good agriculture setup for the ultimate benefit of farming communities. worldwide setup known comprised of research, extension and farmer (oladele, 2010). research works to asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:gaoqj@cau.edu.cn asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 861-869 862 introduce new techniques while extension sector transfers them to the farmers who are the end users. because of the role of research and extension, horticulture setup is in good shape but not as it should be. pakistan almost produced 12 million tons of horticultural products per year. onion and potato are the primary produce among vegetables (haq, 2003; hill and king, 1991; cida, 2004; icrw 2005). importance of vegetables it is well known that vegetables play an important role in food security. the production, processing and marketing of horticultural products contribute to income for the country and have nutritive diets for their habitants. low income farmers in adverse climate condition face difficulty in being selfdependent on supply of primary food commodities such as horticultural products to the market. the prices for the horticultural products such as vegetables in dry period soars provided supply is low and demand is high (avrdc, 2003; stoop and kassam, 2002; sumberg et al., 2004). horticultural products like vegetables are a multi-use of food source. vegetables include social, cultural and environmental importance, but the most important function is part of the diets in the community (cgiar, 2005). women and agriculture the women are the backbone of agricultural workforce but worldwide her hard work has mostly been unpaid. she does the most tiresome and back-breaking tasks in agriculture, animal husbandry and homes. women are involved in the production of major crops, like cotton, rice, pulses and vegetables (sadaf, 2005). moreover at present women farmers are surrounded by several issues such as improper skill and technology, training and access to credits etc. pakistani women are much needy because of their poor livelihood and they perform different activities in agriculture. women perform numerous labor intensive jobs such as weeding, hoeing, grass cutting, picking, cotton stick collections, separation of seeds from fiber. along with these activities women also do farming at their farms especially, they work to grow vegetables at homes and farms as well to earn better for their sound livelihoods. mostly, the production system of vegetables grown is based on traditional technology. women growers are considered less organized in context of production and marketing because of inappropriate agricultural technologies, credit system, lack of varieties, lack of training programs, inadequate fertilizer and lack of farm management skills. in the western part of the gambia and the rural communities of the country, female fruits and vegetable growers are actively affianced in commercial vegetable production since the latter half of the 1970s. current situation in agri. extension for women women’s little position in the society is generally due to weak economic and or dependence on male members of the family by author. in many countries of the world, extension messages do not reach the majority of the farming women. the world bank initiated in 1982 the training and visit system for the developing countries. agricultural extension service is generally managed by male farmers. extension programs in turkey include the participation of men and women (world bank, 1992). turkey carried a pilot project to assist the ministry of agriculture established, to monitor and evaluate the women training regarding improved agricultural practices. in the first phase, three provinces were selected and 23 villages were included (ediz, 1992). in pakistan agriculture extension plays a significant responsibility in the development of agriculture but with minute focus on women farmers. the last objective of extension is to promote among the farmers and their families a spiritual, a psychological and a social growth. awareness has been created through the efforts of extension govt. department and ngos in rural communities of punjab-pakistan concerning new technologies. materials and methods asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 861-869 863 province punjab of pakistan consists of 36 districts in total and gujranwala is one of them lying in rice zone. moreover, gujranwala is the 7 th largest district of pakistan regarding population as on 24 june, 2011. it comprises seven towns namely kamonke, nandi pur, aroop, qila didar singh, khiali shahpur, wazirabad and nowshera virkan. moreover, it also comprises of 9 markaz, including 97 union councils and 800 villages with the total area of 892067 acres, out of which 783339 acres are, cultivated (govt. of punjab, 2012). out of total 800 villages, 50 villages were randomly selected to approach grass root level with maximum chances of involvement of respondents. ten women growers from each randomly selected village were selected thereby making a sample size of (500) women respondents. regarding data collection, a well-structured interview schedule was prepared. 5 point likert scale was also used to determine the extent. along with the collection of quantitative data, qualitative was also collected for better observation. therefore, interview schedule was mixture of open ended and close ended questions. for the sake of primary data collection, face to face interviews were conducted. collected data were analyzed by the computer software spss (statistical package for the social sciences). furthermore, descriptive statistics (frequency, mean and percentages) was applied for the interpretation of collected data. results and discussion table 1: distribution of respondents according to their age and education {n=500} source: field survey 2012 note: values in parenthesis are percentages it appeared from the data depicted in table 1 that women with medium age category (2445) years were more connected with farming business. moreover, young women were also profoundly connected with agriculture as young women percentage (22) was after the percentage of medium aged women farmers (62%). old aged women percentage was found lesser (16%) than both of the earlier mentioned categories. during informal discussion with respondents it was found that these women were compelled by their family situations to do farming. they were holding poor livelihoods and there was no other option for them than to do farming. these women were working side by side with their males at farm and at home as well. young age is considered full of energy and somewhat medium too; therefore, more inclination of women was noted toward farming along with their males. furthermore, it was observed that females were more attached to vegetables production at home and at farm with their males. the ultimate purpose of this vegetables production was to get maximum benefit for their better livelihood. education refers to the bringing of desirable positive change in attitude. education helps a lot in selfimprovement as it creates sense. educational level of respondents was not good as almost half (46%) of the respondents were without formal education simply known as illiterate. after that, slightly more than one fourth (28%) of the respondents were educated up to primary level. this situation clearly indicates the lower literacy rate of women in study particulars no. of respondents young (up to 23) 110 (22) age medium (24-45) 310 (62) old (above 45) 80 (16) education no formal education 230 (46) up to primary 140(28) up to middle 80(16) matriculation 35(7) above matriculation 15(3) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 861-869 864 area. maximum education of matriculation and more than matriculation level was found among 7% and 3% respondents respectively who also were working for their better livelihood through vegetables production and farming activities. insight look reveal that age and education play vital role in adoption of farming technologies as several researchers, tarar (1983); asfaw and admassie (2004) reported that education has a significant effect on farmer’s behavior towards adoption of improved farming practices. table 2: estimation of farming experience and mode of vegetables cultivation sr. no. vegetables farming experience (years) no. of respondents 1 1-2 00 2 3-4 120(24) 3 5-6 175(35) 4 7-8 155(31) 5 above 8 50(10) mode of vegetables cultivation 6 indoor cultivation 175(35) 7 outdoor cultivation 205(41) 8 indoor-outdoor 120(24) cultivation status 9 commercial level 393(78.6) 10 local level (self-usage) 107(21.4) source: field survey 2012 note: values in parenthesis are percentages data depicted in table 2 show those women farmers were not much experienced as compared to male. the basic reason for that less experience discussed was the part time work of women. only 10% women farmers were having maximum experience of more than 8years in vegetables production followed by the 31 and 35% respondents who were having experience of 7-8years and 5-6years respectively. rest of the women were with experience of 3-4 years while none of the respondents was found with experience of 1-2 years which means vegetables farming trend has been set enough years ago in the study area. next attempt was made to uncover the respondents’ mode of vegetables cultivation. in this context outdoor cultivation was in better existence as 45% respondents were doing cultivation at farms either they are beside their home or far from their residence. small living area and no space in home for cultivation was also the reason behind outdoor cultivation. after that 35% respondents were doing vegetables cultivation at their homes as they were having enough space to grow vegetables in their house lawns. one fourth (24%) of the respondents were adopters of both indoor and outdoor vegetables cultivation. generally, two objectives of vegetables cultivation were recorded during discussion one, to earn capital for better livelihood and food security via using their own vegetables at home. the main purpose of overwhelming majority (78.6%) was to earn capital for their livelihood therefore these were doing on commercial basis. remaining percentage (21.4) of women farmer was doing cultivation for their home based requirements. table 3: awareness and adoption of modern vegetables production techniques particulars awareness adoption kitchen gardening (organic farming) 297(59.4) 41(8.2) truck gardening 19(3.8) 7(1.4) tunnel farming 381(76.2) 96(19.2) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 861-869 865 source: field survey 2012 note: values in parenthesis are percentages it was observed that majority of the respondent was doing cultivation traditionally. in this regard awareness and adoption of some modern techniques was attempted to reveal. tunnel farming has become a fashion now, that’s why majority (76.2%) were aware of it. moreover, kitchen gardening and truck gardening was known by 59.4% and 3.8% respondents respectively. unfortunately, the adoption of these practices was much lower than the awareness label. several reasons could be supportive to this low adoption such as lack of resources, less cooperation of extension field staff and unstable market. one fifth (19.2%) of the respondents were adopting tunnel farming for vegetables production. it was observed that these growers were using small tunnels made up of sticks as they were unable to afford the iron made tunnels. furthermore, 8.2% respondents were also doing kitchen gardening and they were more inclined toward organic farming but at lesser area. truck gardening adoption was negligible as its awareness identified was already low. table 4: assessment of the respondents according to the perception about the appointment and training of female agricultural extension staff sr. no. scale response 1 strongly agree 180 (36) 2 agree 162(32.4) 3 somewhat agree 80(16) 4 disagree 70(14) 5 strongly disagree 8(1.6) total 500 source: field survey 2012 note: values in parenthesis are percentages it is assumed that gender discrimination may affect the technology dissemination and adoption as well. technology dissemination between same genders might happen as a better way to technology dissemination and adoption. women face more problems than the male farmers in accessing agricultural technologies, knowledge or information. in pakistan, more work has been conducted on male farmers and they can access information from progressive farmers, electronic media, extension field staff, etc. (cheema, 2000; barkat, 2002). moreover, very short research has been conducted in developing countries on the information need of farmers. according to huyer (1997), still the information highway is male oriented and often a forum for gender discrimination and intimation. in this regard keeping the women need on priority perception was reveled regarding the appointment of female staff especially for women. the response depicted that majority (36%) of the women strongly agreed with the appointment and training of female extension staff. 32.4% women agreed regarding the appointment and training followed by the 16% respondents who somewhat agreed in this context. lesser number of respondents (14%) disagreed with the appointment. during informal discussion it was revealed that these women were majorly depended on their males and their males were having enough relations with public sector and progressive farmers. negligible number of respondents also showed strongly disagree response. general discussion with respondents’ pointed out that women involvement in technology dissemination can boost our attitude toward farming especially the indoor vegetables production. sailaja and reddy (2003) indicated that for development of agricultural production, it is essential to engage rural women in increased adoption of enhanced farmhouse practices. butt et al. (2010) also asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 861-869 866 suggested the maximum female extensionists participation in agriculture sector. table 5: constraints faced by the respondents regarding vegetables production constraints mean production constraints high input prices 4.33 lack of technical knowledge 2.53 lack of interest 1.13 finance shortage 4.09 uncertainty and risks 2.25 institutional constraints small land holding size 3.08 poor extension services 4.06 access to credit facilities 4.09 goods grading and taxation 3.88 marketing constraints no-access to market 4.19 middleman monopoly 2.11 unstable rates 4.37 poor transport and communication facilities 3.18 produce losses 3.77 competition with imported goods 2.05 environmental constraints temperature fluctuations 2.10 climatic variations 1.13 wind 0.98 rainfall 1.22 source: field survey 2012 it is assumed that farmer always remain surrounded by constraints that hinder the adoption of technologies and ultimately the production as well. these constraints might be of different extent and type such as production, institutional, marketing and environmental constraints. in this regard women were inquired about their constraints and results revealed that regarding production constraints high input prices and finance shortage got the maximum mean value of 4.33 and 4.09 respectively. finance is needed for sustainable livelihood (krantz, 2001) and if farmer is financially sound he may be able to adopt the new techniques. the high prices of inputs have raised the cost of production high while return is in decline because of unstable market. regarding institutional constraints, access to finance facility and poor extension services remained prominent constraints. this indicates that no credit scheme for farmer was carried out in the study area and role of extension field staff was also very poor. market is the major factor having significant role in farmers’ development. if market is developed it will boost the interest of farmers and technology of adoption as well. as farmer remain confident at the time of cultivation that he would be able to get the desired return. one of the farmers stated “if i have assurance that i will get the stable rates of my vegetables in market, i will do more vegetables cultivation either i have to borrow the finance from someone else, but unfortunately we lack in market.” in case of market respondents, they were more unsatisfied therefore; unstable rate and no access to market got the highest mean value of 4.37 and 4.19 respectively. majority of the farmers were small farmers so they were lagging in facilities especially of storage so, sufficient amount of produce was losses or quality was deteriorated. under these circumstances produce loss also got the mean value of 3.77 followed by the poor transport and communication facilities (mean value = 3.17). competition of imported goods got the mean value of 2.05. mostly, respondents who asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 861-869 867 were doing organic farming and tunnel farming objected on import of vegetables as this import is affecting their produce sale and return. environmental constraints were not much known to respondents except the temperature fluctuation which got the mean value of 2.10. table 6: to compile suggestions for the better policy formulation suggestions response training of farmers 471(94.1) developed market 500(100) sustained market rates 500(100) separate market for organic vegetables 63(12.6) awareness dissemination of new techniques 379(75.8) subsidy on inputs 434(86.8) source: field survey 2012 note: values in parenthesis are percentages later on, respondents’ discussion was carried out with respondents for the possible suggestions that can improve their net return. overwhelming majority (94.1%) of respondents argued that female farmers training should be carried out by the trained female extension field staff. all the respondents demanded for developed market and sustained market rates till the end of season. another issue that came in front during discussion was that there is no separate market for organically produced vegetables. organic vegetables are produced under special attention but in market they are treated same as chemically produced vegetables. therefore, 12.6% respondents demanded for separate market for the organically produced vegetables. all of these respondents were producing vegetables organically while some were having intentions towards adoption. majority (75.8%) of respondents showed their desire to get more awareness followed by the overwhelming majority of respondents argued that they must be facilitated with subsidy on expensive inputs. conclusion and recommendations on the basis of results it can be confirmed that women hold a potential to work side by side with their males. furthermore, these women are victims of gender discrimination. to alleviate this discrimination they desperately need a public and private sector support. on this behalf it is suggested that:  literacy level of women was low as majority was illiterate, so government should show emphasis on education of women.  female extension staff should be appointed and strictly trained to facilitate the female growers especially regarding vegetables production.  awareness dissemination should be carried out regarding new techniques such as tunnel farming and organic farming etc. for food security promotion.  to cover up the existing constraints subsidy should be provided on inputs and micro credit scheme should be started especially for women.  market is most important and in country developed market is invisible, so a developed market is needed with sustained rates and facilities along with social protection of female growers.  separate market setup should be constructed for the promotion of organically produced vegetables.  for market establishment there is need to change the flow system as existing extension system is full of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 861-869 868 flaws. in this way following marketing system could be helpful. figure 1: recommendation for extension services channel to improve production/quality of fruits and vegetables to enhance the uplift of the farmer living standard and income status references asfaw, a. and a. admassie (2004). the role of education on the adoption of chemical fertilizer under different socio-economic environment in ethiopia. agric. econ. the j. intl’s assoc. agric. econ (iaae) 30(3): 215-228 avrda (2003). a strategic plan. vegetables for life; confronting the crises in africa. avrda shanjuaworld vegetable center. avrda publication no. 00-489, pp: 470 butt t. m., k. mehmood, and s. muhammad (2010). role of women in agricultural development and their constraints. j. agric. soc. sci, 6(3): 53-56. cida (2004). gender issues in agricultural education and development linking for success in agricultural education. a canadian college partnership project (accc). hue university of agriculture and forestry, vietnam [online] cgiar (2005). cgiar system research priorities. international workshop on how can the poor benefits from the growing markets for high value agricultural products? 3-5 october, international center for tropical agriculture, cali, colombia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 861-869 869 government of pakistan (2012). economic survey. economic advisor’s wing, finance division, islamabad. government of punjab (2012). punjab protal. http://punjab.gov.pk/gujranwala. (13 sep. 2012) ediz d. (1992). pilot women farmer extension consultancy report. (unpublished) haq k. (2003). human development in south asia 2002. published by oxford university press, karachi, pakistan, pp. 6. hill m. a. and e. a. king (1991). women’s education in the third world. an overview, in: king, e. a. and hill, m. a. (eds.) women’s education in developing countries: barriers, benefits and policy. the world bank, washington, d. c. icrw (2005). a second look at the role education plays in women’s empowerment. (int. centre for research on women). sadaf s. (2005). need for agricultural extension services for rural women in tehsil faisalabad. m.sc. thesis, deptt. of agri. ext., univ. of agric., faisalabad sailaja a. and m. n. reddy (2003). changing needs of farm women in agriculture, manage extension research review. nat inst. agric. ext. manage, rajendranagar, hyderabad india. pp. 164-175 stoop w. a and kassam (2002). a review of agricultural research issues raised by the system of rice intensification (sri) from madagascar: opportunities for improving farming system for resource-poor farmers. j. agric. sys, 71: 249-274. sumberg j., e. gilbert and m. blackie (2004). income diversity, technology choice and agricultural research policy in sub-saharan africa. develop. policy rev, 22: 249-274. tarar u. h. (1983). a study into the extent of adoption of plant protection measures against rice borer by the farmers in tehsil waziarabad, district gujranwala, m. sc. (hons) thesis, deptt. agric. ext., unive. of agric., faisalabad. pp. 5-8. world bank (1992). agricultural extension for women farmers. washington, d. c: world bank (population and human resource department) wildline nov. 3. cheema, s. m. (2000). socio-economic issue in the adoption of modern agricultural technologies in rural faisalabad. m. sc. (hons.) thesis, agricultural extension. univ. agri., faisalabad. (unpublished) barkat, a. (2002). an investigation into the performance of crescent sugar mills extension personnel in district faisalabad. m. sc. (hons.) thesis, agricultural extension. univ. agri., faisalabad. (unpublished) huyer, s. (1997). supporting women's use of information technologies for sustainable development. submitted to the gender and sustainable development unit, idrc. www. wigsat. org/it/ womenicts.html. oladele, o. i. (2010). research-extensionfarmers linkage system on banana and plantain (musa spp.) in nigeria: the diffusion of innovations. acta hort. 879: 837-842 krantz, l. (2001). the sustainable livelihood approach to poverty reduction: an introduction. swedish international development cooperation agency. division for policy and socio-economic analysis world health organization (2002). the world health report 2002: reducing risks, promoting healthy life. who, geneva, switzerland. p. 230. http://punjab.gov.pk/gujranwala.%20(13 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 429 impact assessment of water crisis on socio economic life of agrarian community raja irfan sabir assistant professor, department of management sciences, comsats institute of information technology, sahiwal, pakistan muhammad irfan and naeem akhtar ms scholar; department of management sciences, comsats institute of information technology, sahiwal, pakistan farooq nawaz mba student; department of management sciences, comsats institute of information technology, sahiwal, pakistan muhammad shahnawaz independent researcher, pakistan abstract the objectives of the present study will be to explore the effects of scarcity of water on farmers’ socio economic values & standard of living while taking adoption of water saving technologies or better water resource management plan by farmers as moderating variable. a sample of 150 household farmers in district okara was selected through multistage sampling techniques. a well structured questionnaire was designed on five point licker scale covering various dimensions of water crises and their impact on socio economic dimension of farmer’s lives. for data analysis quantitative techniques of multiple regression & regression for moderation were applied by using spss 16. keywords: water crises, socio economic problems, irrigation, productivity introduction/ back ground of research problem 1 agriculture plays a pivotal role in the national economy of pakistan. 65% of total population of pakistan is living in villages and their major source of livelihood depends upon agriculture. pakistan has the largest world irrigation system its irrigation strength three times more than that of russia. pakistan has the world's largest interconnected irrigation canal system. in corresponding author’s name: muhammad irfan email address: irfaniba@yahoo.com 1999-2000, the total irrigated area in pakistan was 181,000 km². majority of water reservoirs are in punjab—because punjab is the hub of agriculture production and largest province in terms of population as well as yield consumption. the land area in punjab is about 14.3 million hectares that contributes one-fourth of country’s total gross domestic product (gdp) okara and sahiwal regions are most fertile agriculture areas of punjab. major crops in this area are potato, wheat and maize. rain fall position is not too favorable in this middle area of punjab as it touches southern asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:irfaniba@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 429-436 430 punjab so ground water is not enough for agrarians needs. sutlaj and ravi passes through okara but these rivers are under the control of india (reference indus water treaty; 1960) so these are filled most of the time in flood. but unfortunately, pakistani farmers are facing serious water shortage problem in these days. water is basic source for all human needs either social or economic. as population both urban and rural is increasing rapidly, water needs in all spheres like agriculture, industrial, energy and development sectors is rising. this results in severe pressure on level of ground and surface water as well as on eco system of our land. significance of study agriculture is the back bone of our economy and it needs water for meeting human and industrial needs but right after independence india is occupying major sources of rivers. as maximum land is irrigated by irrigation water in our country so if there is scarcity of irrigation water, there will be socio-economic implications. our purpose of conducting this study is to explore the socio-economic implications on the life of the farmers due to water shortage. moreover literature will help us to devise different water saving techniques for agriculture and making an environmentally sustainable water management plan for pakistan. this research will give insight not only into socio economic problems due to the water crises such as irrigation water disputes, less cultivation, lack of interest of livestock but also will given useful insights for future environmental sustainable water resource management system in pakistan. research problem haq & khan (2002) reported in pakistan water concerns on the problem of shortage of water that crops productivity is decreasing in agriculture sector due to water crises for irrigation. theoretical foundations & literature review water crises water crises is a situation when there is scarcity of water resources or level of quality is not match able relative to human demands for it. agriculture sector depends maximum on irrigation as it accounts 90% into output of agriculture in pakistan. (afzal, 1996). according to survey, irrigation water requirements for the year 2000 and 2013 would be 143.1 and 206.4 maf respectively and shortfall will increase from 107.8 maf in year 2013 to 150.8 maf in year 2025. (mulk and mohtadullah, 1991). water situation for the upcoming years has been projected at 107.3 and 126.6 maf (if 3 dams namely kalabagh, basha and dassu are operationalized) in year 2013 and 2025 respectively (afzal, 1996). there are several ways of defining water scarcity. the definition here refers to water scarcity as: the condition when aggregate demand by all sectors of economy is not full filled by aggregate supply from all water resources (un, 2006). water consumption is rising at very fast rate; more than twice the rate of population increase. by 2025, 1 800 million people will be making their lives in countries with significant water shortage, and two-thirds of the world population would be under severe water crises. water is essential element for irrigation of agricultural lands that why it is most valuable input for farmers. irrigation is defined by galbraith, et al. (2005) in discussion paper as irrigation is used because it gives more productivity and output to land by applying water in right time. out of 16.23 million hectors land, 11.42 million hectors is irrigated by cannel water and 4.03 by tube well water and remaining 0.78 hectares by miscellaneous sources (wapda, 2009). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 429-436 431 as per the world bank and asian development bank of pakistan it is stated that pakistan is falling in water stressed nations as compared to its population needs. it will face severe water shortage due to rapid urbanization and increasing population over the next five years. it will result in water crises in all sectors including irrigation, energy, industry, domestic consumption and agriculture. as per water board report water position in pakistan has reduced from 5,000 cubic meters per capita to 1,000 cubic meters in 2010, and is expected to further fall to 800 cubic meters per capita by 2020. global population growth is making an increase in the demand for yield like wheat by 1.27% annually between 2000 and 2025 (rosegrant and cai, 2000). agriculture constitutes 70 percent of all water consumption globally and nearly 95 percent in most of the developing countries. as per the united nations' "un world water development report", the aggregate renewable water resources have decreased from 2,961 m³ per capita in 2000 to 1,420 m³ per capita in 2005 making alarming picture of recent past years. after independence in the regime of field marshal gen. ayub khan, india got the advantage to fully use water of the three eastern rivers; ravi, bias and sutlej, while pakistan had right to use water of three western rivers; indus, chenab and jhelum according to the indus water treaty (iwt). many intellectuals and economist claim that, if india continued to build dams on chenab and jhelum rivers, then there will be serious effects on pakistan’s agriculture, industry and safety (sharif, 2010). the factors playing major role in water shortage are raising population, climatic variations, poor future planning for construction of new dams and reservoirs. sharif (2010) after introducing tube well technology currently there are near about 300,000 private tube wells in pakistan that account for 40% need of irrigation to agriculture land in punjab (afzal, 1996) research done on effect of water crises on crops by institute of agriculture extension and rural development uaf in faisalabad it was observed that farmers community prefers canal water for farming but due to limited supply of canal water they are forced to depend on tube well water which increases their cost of farming due to severe energy crises as well as rising fuel prices asim, et al. 2012. since independence pakistan had only two dams mangla & tarbela for meeting agriculture and energy requirements and agriculture needs are fulfilled through natural resources like rivers, lakes, glaciers and rains while artificial sources are dams and reservoirs for excess water storage used for irrigation purposes but due to rapidly rising population and slow development of water resources our per acre water supply is decreasing seriously so we need to construct more small and large dams as well as initiate water saving techniques in our methods of cultivation (ahmad et al., 2007). since the scope of this paper is to see the impact of crises of major sources of water on crops and economic life of farmers, major sources of water in agriculture are ground water, canal water and tube well water. we will investigate through this research the impact of water crises of these sources on economic life of farming community and to recommend water saving techniques for sustainable environment friendly water resource management. water resource management (adoption of water saving technologies) as per report of ministry of water and power pakistan is making work on construction of new dams; gomal zam dam project, mirani dam project, mangla dam raising project and sabakzai dam project. moreover small and medium sized dams and canal projects will be initiated in next five years to fulfill the agriculture and energy needs. research was done in china about use of scarce water resources to save their asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 429-436 432 extravagant use and adoption of water saving technology; it was stated that agriculture sector needs are rising from the past decade so lot of research and budget is allocated for discovering and adoption of modern water saving techniques (blanke et al., 2007). total annual agriculture yield is about 19.72 million hectares, out of which, 15.3 million hectares are irrigated areas, about 75 % (11.4 mha.) is irrigated through canal water, l9 % (2.9 mha.) through tube well water 2 % (0.3 mha.) through traditional wells and rest 4 %(0.4 mha.) through small or medium sized tanks and other reservoirs. mainly crops grown are wheat, rice, cotton, maize and sugarcane in this area of punjab which make about 63 percent of the total cropped land. growth of three major crops; rice, cotton and sugarcane and 90 percent of wheat and maize is dependent on irrigated sources. alam et al. (2000) and blanke et al. (2007) surveyed china to determine the water saving behavior of farmer community and he found there is lack of water saving technique due to different reasons like little or no benefit given by state regarding water saving techniques. wang, et al. (2008) concluded in his research on water saving adoption behavior; that socio cultural environment like family demographics make an impact on water saving adoption behavior positively directing them to move for more better irrigation systems. pointing out about renewable water resources like fossil water, report by the geological survey of pakistan (gsp) highlight: "natural resources are limited and they depend upon people how they use them in a wise manner. as per geological survey of pakistan government tried to work on artificial rain water through combination of some gasses but it did not work practically now so again it had to rely on ground water mainly for agriculture. as canal water is cheapest source of irrigation so canal lining is crucial for better canal irrigation and it can be done in seasonal canal closure periods (afzal, 1996). research objective  to investigate the affect of tube well water and canal water on socio economic life of farmers  to devise environmentally sustainable water resource management plan.  to search out implication of different water saving techniques for farming. research model research hypothesis h1: there is significant impact of canal water crises on socio-economic life of agrarians. h2: there is significant impact of tube well water crises on socio-economic life of agrarians. h3: water saving techniques have moderating relationship between water crises (canal, tube well) and socio economic life of agrarians. canal water crises socio economic life of agrarians tube wells water crises water saving techniques asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 429-436 433 methodology/research design the study is descriptive in nature and data was collected from 150 male farmers of district okara. okara is one of the most fertile agriculture districts in punjab. its major crops are maize, wheat, potato, and sugur cane. there are three main towns in the district; okara, renala khurd and dipalpur. data was collected from three villages of one from each town. simple random sampling will be used for sampling and structured questionnaire on five point licker scale will be used for data collection. data will be then analyzed by applying multiple regression analysis and correlation techniques by using spss. reliability analysis will also be done to find out the validity of instrument. data analysis results of survey are interpreted in the form of tables drawn in excel attached here with the description of findings are as under. table 1: the values in table of reliability analysis show that chron bosh alpha is above 0.6 for all variables. internal consistency of elements is also good in the scale. table 1: demographics summary demography count proportion gender single married 60 90 40% 60% age below 15 years 15 years to 30 years 31 years to 45 years above 45 years 02 45 79 24 1.33% 30% 52.67% 16% income below 100,000 from 100,000 to 250,000 from 251,000 to 400,000 above than 400,000 12 63 52 23 08% 42% 35% 15% level of education illiterate matriculation graduation any other 87 47 12 04 58% 31% 08% 03% table 2: correlation variable cronbach's alpha no. of questions canal water crises 0.730 04 tube well water crises 0.65 04 socio economic life 0.59 03 water saving techniques 0.71 05 correlation is a technique which shows the degree of association between two variables the results show there is positive correlation between water crises and socio economic life of agrarians. moreover high positive correlation exists between canal water crises and socio economic life, and water saving techniques has also significant association with all dependent and independent variables. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 429-436 434 table 3: multiple regression analysis variables beta 1 r 2 adj. r 2 t-value f-value p-value constant canal water crises tube well water crises 0.468** 0.382 0.434 0.419 1.913 2.929 3.431 24.43*** 0.005 0.001 0.002 regression measures variation in dependent variable due to change in one or more independent variables in the study the r square is goodness of fit in the model and explains the part of dependent variable constituted by the independent variable. it ranges from 0.0 to 01.00 that socio economic life of farmers is affected by 43.4% due to impact of independent variable. the value of adjusted r square shows that dependent variable is caused by independent variables by 41.9% and remaining portion is affected by other factors held constant. the value of f statistic shows the overall fitness in model and t value shows test statistic. value of beta (standardized coefficient) shows water crises especially canal water crises have strong impact on socio economic life of farmers as shown in table the moderating relationship of water saving techniques between water crises ( canal, tube well) and socio economic life of farmers has been proved significant. table 4 shows that the linear model tested is significant (p < 0.05).the regression analysis accounted for 48.9% change is caused by water crises to socio economic life of farmers which is dependent variable. value of beta also shows the positive rate of change by dependent variables (0.582) with independent variable. table 5 shows that the linear model tested are significant (p < 0.05). the regression analysis accounted for 58.8% > (48.9% regression result table 4) change is caused by water crises (canal, tube well) and water saving techniques to socio economic life of farmers which is dependent variable. value of beta also shows the positive rate of change by dependent variables (0.621 > 0.582 and o.481 regression result table 4) with independent variable. as the r square value is greater for the canal & tube well water crises * water saving techniques than only for canal & tube well water crises (0.494 > 0.434). the water saving techniques is proved as a significant moderating variable. table 4: regression for moderation variables beta 1 r r 2 adj. r 2 t-value p-value constant canal water crises tube well water crises 0.582 0.481 0.671 0.434 0.489 3.929 5.431 0.342 0.002 0.000 0.000 predictors: (constant) canal water crises, tube well water crises table 5: regression for moderation variables beta 1 r r 2 adj. r 2 t-value p-value (constant) canal water crises, tube well water crises *water saving techniques 0.621 0.691 0.494 0.588 17.394 6.631 0.004 0.000 predictors: (constant) canal water crises, tube well water crises *water saving techniques conclusion & recommendations water is an important content of nature and essential source for existence of life. the agriculture sector is back bone of our national economy and it accounts more than 70 % of total work force. canal and tube well water are two major sources for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 429-436 435 irrigation in agriculture in districts of punjab but due to over all water crises and poor future planning for better water resource management farmers are facing severe water shortage which is causing different socio economic problems among them like disputes, over expenditure, low productivity, poor farming and low profitability. the need is to adopt better irrigation and farming techniques, taking advanced agriculture extension trainings, genetic technologies and water saving techniques. moreover it has huge impact on environment so safe sustainable environmental management plan for water resource management need to be devised in pakistan. references anonymous (2002). pakistan: focus on water crisis. humanitarian news and analysis. available at. http://www.irinnews.org/printreport. aspx?reportid=17867. anonymous (2005). pakistan farm ownership and land reform. the library of congress country studies and the cia world fact book. available at. http://www.photius.com/countries/p akistan/geography/pakistan_geograp hy_farm_ownership_and_l~10400.ht ml. anonymous (2012). water crisis in pakistan agriculture. national news. wed, 25/04/2012. accessed http://waterinfo.net.pk/cms/?q=taxon omy/term/5. galbraith, h., amerasinghe, p., & lee. a. h. (2005). the effects of agricultural irrigation on wetland ecosystems in developing countries. a literature review. comprehensive assessment of water management in agriculture. gop (2010). economic survey of pakistan. economic advisor wing. finance division, islamabad, government of pakistan. sharif, m. (2010). the water crisis and its implications for pakistan. available at http://www.opfblog.com/10280/thewater-crisis-and-its-implications-forpakistan/. wang, j., huang, j. rozelle, s., huang, q., & zhang, l. (2008). understanding the water crisis in northern china. what government and farmers are doing? available at http://faculty.apec.umn.edu/qhuang/ papers/understanding%20the%20w ater%20crisis%20in%20northern% 20china.pdf. wapda (2009). water and power development authority pakistan, annual report 2009, government of pakistan. ahmed, a., iftikhar, h., & chaudhry, g. m. (2007). water resources and conservation strategy of pakistan. the pakistan development review, 997-1009. alam, s. m., ansari a., & khan. m. a. (2000). nuclear insitute of agriculture, tando jam, available at http://www.pakistaneconomist.com/i ssue2000/issue19&20/i&e3.htm. asim, m., vains, a. h., youisaf, h., & ramzan, m. a. (2012). socio economic impact of water crisis on agrarian community in district faisalabad pakistan. mediterranean journal of social sciences, 3(11), 235. asim, m., vains, a. h., yousaf, h., & ramzan, m. a. socio economic impact of water crisis on agrarian community in district faisalabad, pakistan. blanke, a., rozelle, s., lohmar, b., wang, j., & huang, j. (2007). water saving technology and saving water in china. journal of agriculture water management, 87, 139-150. un (2006). coping with water scaricity. available at site. http://www.unwater.org/downloads/ waterscarcity.pdf. http://www.irinnews.org/printreport.aspx?reportid=17867 http://www.irinnews.org/printreport.aspx?reportid=17867 http://www.photius.com/countries/pakistan/geography/pakistan_geography_farm_ownership_and_l~10400.html http://www.photius.com/countries/pakistan/geography/pakistan_geography_farm_ownership_and_l~10400.html http://www.photius.com/countries/pakistan/geography/pakistan_geography_farm_ownership_and_l~10400.html http://www.photius.com/countries/pakistan/geography/pakistan_geography_farm_ownership_and_l~10400.html http://waterinfo.net.pk/cms/?q=taxonomy/term/5 http://waterinfo.net.pk/cms/?q=taxonomy/term/5 http://www.opfblog.com/10280/the-water-crisis-and-its-implications-for-pakistan/ http://www.opfblog.com/10280/the-water-crisis-and-its-implications-for-pakistan/ http://www.opfblog.com/10280/the-water-crisis-and-its-implications-for-pakistan/ http://faculty.apec.umn.edu/qhuang/papers/understanding%20the%20water%20crisis%20in%20northern%20china.pdf http://faculty.apec.umn.edu/qhuang/papers/understanding%20the%20water%20crisis%20in%20northern%20china.pdf http://faculty.apec.umn.edu/qhuang/papers/understanding%20the%20water%20crisis%20in%20northern%20china.pdf http://faculty.apec.umn.edu/qhuang/papers/understanding%20the%20water%20crisis%20in%20northern%20china.pdf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(8)2014: 429-436 436 haq, a. u., & khan, m. h. (2002). water sharing issues and management regime under drought conditions. workshop paper presented at centre of excellence in water resources uet, lahore – pakistan. afzal, m. (1996). managing water resources for environmentally sustainable irrigated agriculture in pakistan. the pakistan development review , 35(4), 977-988. mulk, s. u., & khalid m. (1991). water resources management policies in pakistan. paper presented in international workshop on water resource management. washington, d. c. usa. rosegrant, m. w., & cai, x. (2000). modeling water availability and food security. a global perspective: the impact-water model. working draft, international food policy research institute, washington, d.c. usa. anexture i impact of water crisis on socio economic life of farmer in district okara what is your marital status? (i) single (ii) married what is your age? (i) 15 years but below 30 years (ii) 30 years but below 45 years (iii) 45 years or above what is your house hold annual income? below 100,000 (ii) from 100,000 to 250,000 (iii) from 251,000 to 400,000 (iv) > 400,000 level of education? (i) illiterate (ii) matriculation (iii) graduation (iv) any other sd-strongly disagree ddisagree n-neutral a-agree sa-strongly agree sd d n a sa i am satisfied with amount of canal water for my crops i am satisfied with the frequency of canal water for my crops in week. i am satisfied with the timing of canal water for my land improper canal lining is causing poor water supply to lands tube well water is essential source for irrigation i feel energy shortfall effect supply of tube well water shortage of tube well water makes irrigation costly for me. my per acre cost of production increases due to shortage of tube well water. i face different disputes with other farmers due to shortage of water. my annual crops yield is decreasing due to shortage of water my household annual income is decreasing due to water crises i attend agriculture extension training meetings for better farming. i use precision land levelling techniques. i prefer water reservoirs for saving water for upcoming need in case of shortfall of water i use different water saving techniques for upcoming need fulfilment of irrigation i will use all modern techniques for pollution free water resources development effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2016 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 volume 6(7), 119-130 119 building social capital in the fishery communities of the south-west region of cameroon: the case of limbe municipality molem christopher sama, elizabeth ankiambom chiatii and nkwetta ajong aquilas department of economics and management, university of buea, cameroon ofeh moses abit university of bamenda, cameroon article history: received: 11-jul-2016 revised received: 11sep-2016 accepted: 08-oct-2016 online available: 30oct-2016 keywords: economic activities, fish processors, fish trade, social networks abstract recently, the role played by social capital in stimulating the level of economic activities in a country is being increasingly recognized. production has often employed land, labour, capital and technology as key the resource inputs, social capital being largely ignored. social capital designates social relations/connectedness. the women fish processors of the limbe fisheries communities have recognized that starting up fish trade does not necessarily require a huge bank loan but could depend on social relationships. this study therefore aims at assessing the role played by social capital on women‟s economic activities in the fisheries communities of limbe. the purposive sampling technique was used to sample 350 women fish processors selected from among cameroonians, beninese, nigerians and ghanaians who are resident in the fisheries communities of idenau, batoke, mabeta and down beach, limbe. multiple regression analysis was used in analysing the data. results indicate that social networks are an inevitable factor that enhances the start and maintenance of their fish processing business. recommendations are made to the government authorities in the limbe area to find out strategies on how to eradicate these ethnic differences. 1. introduction 1 recently, the contribution of social capital in influencing economic activities and the welfare of individuals has been increasingly recognized. in time past, literature has often identified physical capital, labour, natural capital and technology as key inputs influencing how much output is produced, with the neglect of social capital. this has been associated with the works of solow (1957) and subsequent contributions such as those made by mankiw et al. (1992), barro (1991) and nonneman and vanhoudt (1996). however, nowadays, a large number of government agencies, social welfare organizations, researchers and community development practitioners have corresponding author‟s name: nkwetta ajong aquilas email address: ajong2000@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2016.6.7/1005.7.119.130 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016, 119-130 120 shown renewed interest in analysing the roles of both formal and informal social networks, social relations, civic engagement, group membership, norms and trust on economic outcomes. thus, social capital has become one of the most important drivers of the world‟s economic development. to possess social capital, a person must be related to others. this capital does not only enable us to have an understanding of social functioning but also to underscore the way in which social networks can improve the welfare for the individuals and the entire community. social capital is a concept covering economic and sociological dimensions and is widely used in multidisciplinary research, with empirical works attributing differences in rate of economic and social development between regions and countries to differences in social capital stocks. some of these studies include the works of bronisz and heijman (2009), iyer et al. (2005), rose (2000), uphoff (2000), krishna and uphoff (1999), knack and keefer (1997), brown and ashman (1996) and heller (1996). due to the difficulties in measuring social capital at a broad level, and considering how it affects aggregate economic activity, this study follows a micro-perspective, with focus on a particular community and a specified economic activity. it is in this light that the current study investigates in to the effects of social capital on fishery communities in limbe. women are often placed at the centre of community life by mainstream social capital and their active participation is evident in the fishery sectors of fishing nations (franklin, 2005). vunisea (2007) recognizes that in some cases, women play significant but unarticulated and unrecognized roles in all aspects of fisheries, including artisanal, small-scale and commercial sectors. in some cases, these roles include activities previously forbidden by gender norms, especially giving that the fishing sector is increasingly monetized. it has been observed that more women fish alongside their husbands or other women. in many developed countries, women participate in commercial fishing thus significantly contributing not only to the workforce in the industrial fish processing sector but to the national workforce also. most work as crew and/or skippers on family-owned as well as on industrial vessels. it was noted during the karlsdottir conference (2004) that in canada and nunavut, women made up three quarters of 55 workers in a fish processing facility. this is similar in the philippines where 50%-70% of women participate in fish processes ranging from fish handling to distribution. the implications of these women involvement is an improvement in their status within their respective families and communities. in cameroon, few cameroonians are involved in fishing activities. most economic operators in the sector are foreigners mostly made up of nigerian, ghanaian, togolese and beninese citizens (wétohossou & satia, 1996). women act as intermediaries between fishermen and consumers of fish and also provide financial assistance to fishermen. for women to perform these functions, they rely on the relationships they have built with fishermen and fish traders, considering the difficulties in obtaining loans from the bank. most economic activities of women remain smallscale due to lack of capital. most women have turned to social capital in carrying out businesses that will help generate physical and human capital to ensure continuity. access to finance is a key factor for economic activities. however, because of low levels of income and savings and the absence of acceptable collateral securities, complex bureaucratic procedures involved in the acquisition of loans especially for women with poor educational background, women most at times do not have access to credit facilities. this has deterred their economic activities and prevented most of them from moving away from subsistence to profitoriented activities. this explains the dependence of most women on informal financial institutions such as rotating service groups, commonly called „njangi‟, or borrowing from wealthy family relatives. though obtaining funds from family relations may relatively be the cheapest way to finance women‟s activities, this source of finance is often limited. the economic status of women in cameroon has reduced because of women‟s limited access to credit and education. the vast majority of cameroonian women, regardless of educational status asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016, 119-130 121 are disadvantaged in the economic sphere and this has affected the overall development of the country negatively (nana-fabu, 2006). economic activities undertaken by women in fisheries communities in cameroon contribute significantly to the economic welfare of many families. women of these communities stay poor, not because they are lazy but because they lack access to capital. women in the limbe fishery communities are able to start and run their fishery business because of the existence of social capital. in the face of the challenges faced by these women in raising loans, they have developed different strategies to generate capital that will enable them survive in the fish processing activity. thus, they have largely depended on social networks for financing their activities. based on the above, the main bone of contention in this paper is that social capital does not have any significant effect on women‟s economic activities in limbe, south-west region of cameroon. specifically, the main argument is that trust and network, education, cohesion and average daily income have no significant influence on the fish volume harvested by women in the limbe fishery community. this study therefore seeks to investigate whether trust and network, education, cohesion and average daily income have any effect on the quantity of fish harvested by women in the limbe fishery community of the south-west region of cameroon. the first section of this paper introduced the study. the rest of the paper rest is organized along the following lines; the relevant empirical literature is reviewed in section two, section three discusses the analytical methodology adopted in the paper. in the fourth section, results are presented and discussed while policy suggestions and conclusion are made in section five. 2. literature review a study done by narayan and pritchett (1999) in rural tanzania with data extracted from the social capital and poverty survey (scps) of tanzania concluded that village social capital, measured by association membership and trust in individual organizations and institutions is positively affected by household incomes. grootaert (1999) using a similar measure for social capital also reached the empirical finding that household welfare in indonesia was positively and significantly affected by social capital. the study identified that social capital impinged on welfare through three mechanisms which included reducing opportunistic tendencies or behaviour, sharing information among members in the association and improving collective decision making. also, rupasingha et al. (2000), using u.s county-level data and employing regression analysis reached a conclusion that the effect of social capital on per capita income growth is positive and statistically significant. in another study by maluccio et al. (2000) in south africa, using panel data from the largest south african province collected in south africa‟s largest province, no influence of social capital on per head expenditure was found in 1993 but in 1998, a significant effect was noticed. the effects of social capital at village level on poverty in the south western part of nigeria was investigated by adeyeye (2004). poverty was strongly influenced by social capital. the study also found that differences in social capital exist between poor and non-poor male or households headed by females though such results remained inconclusive. from the findings of this study, it was recommended that the government of nigeria should invest heavily in the building of social networks as a means of urgently, rapidly and effectively fighting village poverty effectively. johannes (2005) investigated whether the schooling decisions of children in cameroon is affected by social capital at the household level using data from the 2001 cameroon national household survey. using the binary logit estimation technique, empirical results suggested that parent‟s decisions towards their children‟s schooling is strongly determined especially by female related social capital, education of their mothers as well as income. it was also noticed that both male and female children had an equal chance to school and there was no bias in gender nor rural-urban asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016, 119-130 122 differences in children‟s schooling when their parents belonged to a network. it was recommended that local community social networks should be strengthened by building social capital. sabatini (2007) empirically assessed the causal relationship between social capital and level of economic development in italy by decomposing social capital in to three main dimensions; bridging, linking and bonding social capital. synthetic indicators of the different dimensions of social capital were developed by the method of principal components and developmental quality was proxied by public services, gender equality, state of health of urban ecosystems, labour markets and social protection. employing structural equation models in the analysis, it was realized that social capital, captured by engagement in civil society organizations had a positive effect on economic development. the household welfare implications of social capital were examined in kwara state by yusuf (2008). using probability proportionate sampling, 315 households were sampled from the six local government areas (lgas) which make up the kwara state. descriptive statistics, social capital indices and regression analysis were employed to analyse the data. the disaggregated components of social capital such as organizational membership and active participating in household decision making in associations affected welfare. it was concluded that social capital has a positive effect on the welfare of household. no reverse causality was observed. johannes (2009) examined how household poverty in cameroon is affected by social capital with data sourced from the cameroon national household survey of 2001. the study used an index for decision making, solidarity or support for the social network and membership in the network as the measures for social capital. employing the ordinary least squares technique, after controlling for observed endogeneity and reverse causality bias, it was realized that the decision making index indicator and association membership correlated positively with the per capita household expenditure. results also suggested that network solidarity mitigated household poverty significantly implying that there is a tendency for households with higher incomes to group together. it was recommended that social capital be encouraged as a means of combating poverty. the social capital-economic growth causal relationship was established by zhang (2010). the study distinguished between bridging and bonding social capital and then examined how each impacted on future economic wellbeing and how individual welfare in turn affected each type of social capital. from the national survey of families and households, 3,198 non-student adults were drawn and analysed using multivariate analyses. empirical results indicated the positive association of only individual bridging capital with future wellbeing. the findings also revealed that individual economic wellbeing influenced bridging social capital positively but not future bonding social capital. it was recommended that social service agents as well as policy makers should take in to consideration potential financial barriers encountered by low income earners in building bridging social capital. a multidimensional analysis of social capital and household welfare measures was conducted in cameroon by johannes (2011) using the instrumental variables estimation technique with cross section data obtained from the cameroon national household survey of 2007. social capital was measured by people‟s membership in associations, in which six were considered. the study found evidence to conclude that at the aggregate level, an increase in social capital affected the level of household poverty in cameroon in the opposite direction and that at the individual level, an increase in social capital translates to increased participation of the labour force. the policy implication of the study was that social capital should be promoted in order to reduce poverty by half. idris and agbim (2015) examined how social capital affected alleviation of poverty amongst taking women entrepreneurs in nasarawa state, nigeria. specifically, the study assessed how asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016, 119-130 123 belonging to a social network would affect training and acquisition of skills, education, selfemployment, and economic empowerment. a sample of 343 respondents was selected from a population of 2,396 female entrepreneurs in the thirteen local government areas using the systematic sampling technique. regression analysis was used in analyzing the data. results pointed to the significant effect of social capital poverty indicators, on the basis of which it was recommended that policy should focus on creating more awareness on the importance of social capital to female entrepreneurs. it was also suggested that creating associations and cooperative societies for women entrepreneurs would encourage the building of social capital and social networks. 3. methodology this work employs primary data and some information gotten from secondary source. selfadministered and interviewer administered questionnaires were used in collecting primary data. interviewer administered questionnaires were applied to mostly the women who are not well educated. the majority of them are illiterate, meaning they have not even been through primary education. some respondents could neither read nor write since they just completed just primary school. the self-administered approach was used for the few literate women in these fisheries communities. to facilitate data collection pidgin english was used most often since because it is commonly spoken among these women, despite the fact that english and french are the official languages. an interpreter was used to facilitate understanding for those who could not communicate in pidgin but could do only in their mother tongue. french was used sometimes for beninese women and some french speaking cameroonian women fish processors. all these languages enhanced proper data collection to some level. the purposive sampling technique was used to construct social capital measures in various limbe fisheries communities. the targeted study population was women fish processors. three hundred and fifty women fish processors were selected for data collection. that is the 119 cameroonians, 87 beninese, 51 nigerian and 97 ghanaian women fish processors. the networks that were mapped out for this study are the idenau, batoke, mabeta and down beach fisheries communities out of the fisheries communities of the limbe area. in order to capture the effects of social capital measures on economic activities, the following functional relationship was specified; economic activity = f (gn, ts, cac, ic, sci) ea = a0 + a1gn + a2ts + a3cac + a4fs + a5ed + a6labc + a7rev + a8st + u where, ea = quantity of fish produced as a proxy of economic activity gn = groups and net works ts = trust and solidarity cac = cohesion (collective action and cooperation) fs = family size labc = labour expenditure rev = revenue from economic activities st = family status ed = level of education u = stochastic term the variables in the model are defined and measured below; economic activity this is a scale variable measured in terms of the baskets of fish. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016, 119-130 124 social network it is a dummy, with 1 representing an individual who belongs to a network and 0 otherwise. it is expected that this variable will be positive to support the idea that social network increases economic activity. cohesion this is a scale variable measuring the feelings of togetherness in the community. the scale ranges from 1-6. an increase in cohesion is a prior expected to stimulate the level of economic activities are expected to trend together loan this is a dummy variable and indicates whether an individual acquires loans to start up her fishery activities. we expect that acquisition of loan will increase capital investment and hence economic activity in the fishery communities. family size it is scale variable. this variable would also be positive. this is because large family sizes provide for labour and will thus reduce hired labour expenditure. family status this variable is also a dummy, 1 representing a single individual 0 otherwise. the variable is expected to be negative. revenue this is the average daily revenue obtained from fishery activities. the higher the revenue from fishery activities, the more motivated the women are and thus the higher the economic activities. labour expenditure this is the average yearly expenditure that is spent on hired labour. the higher the amount of labour hired, the higher the expenditure and the higher the quantity of economic activities. level of education this is also a scale variable. the higher the scale on this variable, the more educated the individual. it is expected that many educated individuals will not engage in fishery activities. thus, the higher the education level, the lower the economic activity in the fishery communities. it is therefore expected that this variable should be negative. this study uses both descriptive and inferential statistics tools to analyse the data collected. summary tables bar and pie charts were used to describe the data. in addition a pair wise correlation for the variables was estimated. a linearized standard error technique was used to capture the non-linearity nature of the surveyed data. to assess the validity of the model estimated, the coefficient of determination (r) was used to measure the goodness of fit of the regression line. it determines the degree of relationship between economic activities of women in the fisheries communities and social capital. this coefficient assumes values lying between zero and one, that is, (0≤ r ≤ 1). if r =0, then there is no relationship between economic activities of women in the fisheries communities and social capital. if (r) is close to 0, and then there is very little variation in y due to β. if (r) is close to 1, the regression line gives a goodness of fit to the observed data. that is, there is a greater relationship between them. the t-test was also useful in making statistical inferences about the statistical significance of the variables estimated in equation (1). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016, 119-130 125 4. results and discussion most respondents appreciated the importance of social and family ties when they started up as fish processors. the minority of them (15.7%) obtained a loan to start up the fish trade activity while the majority (84.2%) were handed over the business by a relative. results show that 83% of the women inherited the business from their mothers, 10% from aunt, and 5% from cousin and 2% from grandmother. it is worth while noting that they enjoyed this privilege of starting up a trade without any physical capital due to this family ties. this is one of the advantages of social networks. it was observed that 47% of the business loan came from „njangi‟ groups”, 22% from friends, 14% from credit union, 15% from other sources including personal savings, and only 2% from commercial banks. results of the pairwise correlation (table 1) confirms the presence of a significantly strong positive correlation between economic activity and revenue (with a correlation coefficient of 0.87) but a weak and significantly positive correlation between economic activity and labour expenditure (with a coefficient of correlation of 0.11). table 1: pairwise correlation results econ. activity revenue lab. exp. cohesion loan trust education family size family status econ. activity 1 revenue 0.87*** 1 labour. expenses. 0.11** 0.08 1 cohesion 0.07 0.03 0.05 1 loan 0.02 0.01 0.08 -0.07 1 trust 0.018 -0.04 -0.03 0.10* -0.01 1 education -0.08 -0.09* -0.05 -0.01 0.06 -0.16** 1 family size 0.004 -0.02 0.01 -0.03 0.06 0.13 -0.17*** 1 family status -0.04 0.10* -0.01 -0.03 0.06 -0.08 0.004 -0.01 1 ***, **, * significant at 1, 5 and 10 percent respectively source: computed by authors based on data from field work the relationship between economic activities and cohesion, loan, trust, and family size is also positive, though not significant. however, there is a negative but insignificant relationship between economic activity and education and between economic activity and family status. to support the pairwise correlation results above, table 2 presents the regression results of this study, estimated using linearized standard errors. the results indicate that the main variables of interest are significant and positive. the variable trust and membership of social network is found to influence the economic activity positively. precisely, the results show that trusting and belonging to a social network will lead to an improvement in economic activity by 0.02 units. this result is significant at 10% level. social network is therefore an important factor influencing economic activities of women in the fisheries communities in limbe and should be strongly considered for purpose of policy recommendation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016, 119-130 126 table 2: the multiple regression results dependent variable: quantity of fish (measured in baskets) variable coefficient (t – statistics) family status -0.126* (-1.92) size of household 0.023** (2.27) trust and network 0.021* (1.67) loan 0.053 (0.57) education -0.002 (-0.09) labour expenditure 0.021 (1.52) cohesion 0.071* (1.71) average daily income 1.587*** (27.14) constant -13.916*** (-22.47) f – distribution 118.58*** adjusted r – square 0.754 sample size 350 number of strata 4 ***, **, * significant at 1, 5 and 10 percent respectively source: computed by authors based on data from field work the degree of cohesion in the organization is also positive and significant at 10% level of significance, implying that the greater the feeling of togetherness and cooperation within the network, the greater the level of economic activities in the fishery community. precisely, a 1 unit rise in the feeling of togetherness will result to an increase in the economic activities by 0.07 units of baskets. the level of average daily income is also found to positively impact on economic activities in the fishery communities. the daily return will act as a motivation to production, hence the higher the daily return the higher the level of economic activities. the results show precisely that if the level of average daily return increases by 1 fcfa the level of economic activity will increase on average by 0.02 units. this result is significant at 1% level. the results also reveal that family status influences economic activities negatively within the fishery communities. the result precisely shows that within the fishery communities, being single will reduce the volume of economic activities by 12.63%. at 1% significance level, this finding is significant. this result is further supported by that of the variable, family size. the family size variable is significant at 5% and has a positive relationship with the level of economic activities. the results show that increase in family size will bring about an increase in economic activities. precisely, if the family size was to increase by one level, the level of economic activities will increase by 2.2 units. the acquisition of loans to carry out economic activities is also found to be positively related with economic activities. though insignificant at 10% level, this result shows that those who obtain loans in the community did experience more production than those who did not obtain loans. other results show that the relationship between level of education and level of economic activity is negative. this implies that an increase in the level of education will reduce the level of economic activities. unfortunately, this influence is not significant. the relationship between labour expenditure and economic activity is positive. this simply implies that an increase the spending on labour will increase the level of economic activities. however, this effect is not also significant. the adjusted r-square value is 0.754 implying that variations in the variables included in the model contributes to more than 75 percent of the variations in economic activities with less than 15 percent of the variations accounted for by the variations in the variables not included in the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016, 119-130 127 model. considering the f-statistics to measure the fit of the model, we realize that the f – statistics is 118.58, which shows a significant level of 1 percent. thus, the variables in the model fit it well. from the resonances gotten from the respondents, we notice that social capital is very vital in the fisheries communities of the limbe area. that is, many women have been able to provide their family needs through fish processing and thanks to the availability of social networks. provision of capital from financial institutions has always been a problem and that is why most of them have been operating in small scales. these findings are in line with the studies carried out by narayan and pritchett (1999), grootaert (1999), yusuf (2008), idris and agbim (2015), sabatini (2007), som (1996) and a host of others which all have emphasized the important role played by social capital in stimulating economic activities. women involved in fishing activities in the limbe fishing communities face a main problem of capital for expansion of the fish trade. social capital has helped to reduce this burden given that most of them start up the business thanks to their various social networks. secondly, results from this research work indicate that social capital or the social networks breeds forth proactivity, a theme proposed by bullen (1998). that is, the women are creators, not victims in the fish processing domain. there is a sense of personal and collective efficacy that makes these communities very participative in this economic activity that sustains their families. this is partially in agreement with the study of johannes (2005) who concluded that parent‟s decisions towards their children‟s schooling is strongly determined by female related social capital, education of their mothers as well as income. in these communities of the limbe area, trust is quite visible. this work suggests that about 7.7% of the respondents value social networks created in these communities given that this trust is vital in the start and continuation of the fish processing activity. this is in line with the work of woolcock (2000) who acknowledges trust a social capital outcome. therefore, most of the works on social capital indicate that trust, participation in networks, reciprocity, social norms and proactivity are all vital components innate in social capital. it is vital in many walks of life and that is why many scholars so far have carried out studies on this subject. this is just an opening of all in cameroon, especially women to benefit from all that social capital offers. many cameroonians are therefore invited to carry out research in this domain that is so enriching. 5. policy recommendations and conclusion  firstly, appropriate technology like the solar tunnel dryer proposed by african alliance for developmental action should be developed by government and non-governmental bodies to help accommodate climatic, ecological, social and cultural settings where they will be used. there is need therefore to introduce and educate women fish processors with respect to adoption of this modern fish smoking technology. this will lead to the improvement of smoked fish quality post-harvest losses will be minimized. the health hazards caused by the usage of the local ovens for processing will be reduced.  the government authorities in the limbe area need to create schemes to allow women access to the means for their improvement, including access to capital equipment, credit and loans, training and education. women's access to all of these enabling factors lags far behind those of men in fisheries in every society.  fish marketing requires credit facilities to finance storage facilities such as freezers and generators to forestall spoilage in storage. the local government should allocate shops to fish traders where it serves both as outlets for their products and as ware houses where excess supplies could be kept.  the senior divisional officer for fako should help to curb the differences generated from ethnic backgrounds or bonding social capital by talking amicably to the various groups of foreign fishermen. in this way, ghanaians and beninese fishermen will learn to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016, 119-130 128 supply fish to all and not only to their women fish processors. the problems associated with fish supply during the lean season will be solved should this be done.  women fish processors should be educated by the women empowerment centres in the area on how to form and manage cooperative societies. this will them a good bargaining power for their products rather than working in different ethnic segregations.  the ministry in charge of fisheries should conduct workshops on storage, processing and marketing techniques. this will curb discrepancies brought by the ignorance of women in these domains.  the government should open and affiliate the fisheries school at ngeme, limbe so that many cameroonians should be trained in fishing activities. this will help curb the problem of fresh fish supply that also causes the high prices of the processed fish. this work sought to investigate the effects of social capital on the economic activities of women in limbe. the key empirical result of this study is that social networks significantly plays a positive role in boosting women‟s fishing activities. therefore, the recommendations made within this research work need to be implemented for the betterment of the fishery sector, the improvement of standards of living of those involved in the fish processing and marketing activities and thus generate high living standards for all cameroonians who profit from these services. this is an area that has a high potential curb to unemployment and needs to be developed to enhance living standards. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adeyeye, v. 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(2000). social capital: implications for development theory, research and policy, world bank research observer, 15(2), 1-49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1926047 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(7)2016, 119-130 130 yusuf, s. (2008). social capital and household welfare in kwara state, nigeria. journal of human ecology, 23(3), 219-229. zhang, s. (2010). the relationships between social capital and economic well-being–an individual level analysis. dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy in social work in the graduate college of the university of illinois at urbana-champaign. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(8), 187-201 187 effects of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on nodulation and nitrogen fixation in common bean (phaseolus vulgaris l.) genotype m. a. ndimbo agricultural research institute,uyole, mbeya, tanzania s. nchimbi-msolla department of crop science and production, sokoine university of agriculture, morogoro, tanzania e. semu department of soil science, sokoine university of agriculture, morogoro, tanzania abstract 1 moisture stress is among the limiting factors to crop yields. the objective of this study was to determine the effects of moisture stress imposed at different growth stages of bean plants on nodulation and nitrogen fixation. the experiment was conducted in greenhouse and in the field, at sokoine university of agriculture. the bean genotype “kijivu” was used, the stages were; (i) vc (cotyledonary and unifoliolate leaves visible), (ii) v2 (second trifoliolate leaf unfolded), (iii) v4 (fourth trifoliolates on the main stem, blossom clusters not opened) and (iv) r2 (pods 1/2 inch long. irrigation treatments were initiated to maintain moisture treatments of 100%, 75%, 50%, or 25% of the soils field capacity for each plant growth stage until plant maturity. moisture stress significantly affected nodulation, nitrogen fixation, and finally grain yields. numbers of nodules per plant were reduced by 56.0% in greenhouse and 69.2% in the field between v4 and vc at 25% moisture regime. shoot biomass was reduced by 40.8% and 26.8% while root biomass was reduced 23.5% and 31.5% in greenhouse and field, respectively. these results suggest that for maximum nodulation and nitrogen fixation to be achieved, moisture stress must be avoided at the vc and v2 growing stages. keywords: common bean, growth stage, n2-fixation, moisture stress 1. introduction biological nitrogen fixation is one of the most important sources of nitrogen in the production of leguminous crops (mohammadi et al., 2012). a symbiotic relationship between rhizobia and legume plants can provide large quantities of n to the plant. kimura et al. (2004) estimated contributions of n from n2 fixation to range from 24 to 50% in field grown beans at different growth stages. the factors which can determine the amount of n2 produced from legumes are the type of species of legume grown, the percentage of n2 in the plant tissue and total biomass produced, hence, environmental circumstances that bound legume growth, such as moisture stress corresponding author’s name: m. a. ndimbo email address: ndimbomary@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:ndimbomary@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 187-201 188 can reduce the amount of n2 produced (hirel et al., 2011). marginal lands with low rainfall are among most problematic environments for rhizobia. the modification of rhizobial cells by water stress will eventually lead to a reduction in infection and nodulation of legumes (worrall and roughley, 1976). the rate of inhibition of the symbiosis depends on the stage of growth and development, as well as the severity of the stress (williams and de mallorca, 1984). the production of common beans is undertaken commonly under rain-fed conditions; therefore, inadequate or unpredictable rainfall may limit the yields (acosta-gallegos and domingo, 2009). erratic water availability during production exposes plants to water stress during every growth stage (thangavel et al., 2011). about 60% of the common bean yield losses have been reported to be due to drought (molina et al., 2001). common bean is known as a plant that is vulnerable to water deficits, especially in pre-flowering and reproductive periods, producing significant negative impacts on seed yields (singh, 2007). during dry spells, there is a decrease in populations of rhizobia which can be associated with poor nodulation of legumes, resulting in low levels of n2 fixation and ultimately low yields (mohammadi et al., 2012). moisture stress, which results from periodic dry spells during the growing season, is among the limiting factors for common bean production worldwide (boutraa and sanders, 2001). it influences symbiotic interactions by inhibiting growth, survival and metabolic activity of nitrogen fixing bacteria and ultimately growth of plants (werner and newton, 2005). periods of water stress during the reproductive phase have been reported to be associated with significant reductions in nodulation and subsequently grain yields (emam and seghatoleslam, 2005). the factors that influence growth, survival and metabolic activity of nitrogen fixing bacteria and plants and their ability to forge efficient symbiotic interactions include low ph, nutrient availability, temperature and low moisture status (werner and newton, 2005). nitrogen fixation under p deficiency is often reduced, because low p supply induces changes in the relative growth of nodules and shoots (hogh-jensen et al., 2002). nodules require relatively higher amounts of p and energy than do other plant tissues (olivera et al., 2004). a number of studies have reported the effects of water stress environment on growth of common bean. molina et al. (2001) found that water deficits during flowering stages and beginning of pod development reduced most of the growth characteristics assessed. getachew (2014) reported that flowering and pod filling stages of the crop are highly sensitive to drought, resulting in yield reductions. kalima (2013) reported that the severity of effects of water stress depend on many factors, such as stage of development of the plant, duration and degree of stress. the influence of soil water activity on plant growth and hence nodulation in relation to growing stages should be taken into consideration especially in this era of climate change where many areas are becoming drier. the stage of the crop growth during which drought occurs can result in profound effects on nodulation and nitrogen fixation. however, few investigations have studied the effects of moisture stress on nodulation and nitrogen fixation at early stages of development. therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the effects of moisture stress at different growth stages of bean plants on nodulation and nitrogen fixation, beginning with early stages of plant development, so as to select best time for prediction of adverse water stress effect which could assist in developing mitigation measures. 2. material and methods 2.1. experimental design the experiment was conducted in a green-house and field, at sokoine university of agriculture (sua), latitude 6 o 45 o s, longitude 37 o 40 o e, at the altitude of 547 meters above sea level. maximum and minimum temperature was 27.6 0 c and 17.9 0 c respectively and 86.8% relative asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 187-201 189 humidity. the soil was (66.7% sand, 30.3% clay and 2.92 silt), ph in water 5.92, cec 15.2 meq/100g, n 0.22%, p 5.80 ppm and b 0.49 ppm. the design of the experiment in green house was the completely randomized design (crd), with four replications. in the field the experiment was laid in completely randomized block design (crbd) with three replications. the bean genotype “kijivu” was used to assess the effects of water stress at different plant growing stages, which were: (i) stage vc (cotyledonary and unifoliolate leaves visible), (ii) stage v2 (second trifoliolate leaf unfolded), (iii) stage v4 (fourth trifoliolates on the main stem, but with blossom clusters still not visibly opened) and (iv) r1 (pods 1/2 inch long at first blossom position (node 2 to 5 for most plants). 2.2. plant establishment four-litre plastic pots were filled with 4 kg of field soil. tsp fertilizer at the rate of 60kg p/ha was incorporated into the soil prior to planting. four bean seeds inoculated with nitrosua rhizobia inoculant (10 8 cells/ml) were sown per pot 5 cm deep at 10 cm apart, later thinned to 2 seedlings per pot after germination. in the field, each plot had 2 rows of 4 m long and the plant spacing was 50 cm and 10 cm between and within rows, respectively 2.3. imposition of different levels of moisture stress soil field capacity was calculated on soil dry basis. the soil moisture for all pots was initially maintained at field capacity (100% moisture regime). then, for each of the growing stages specified above, irrigation treatments were initiated and maintained at moisture stress treatments of 100%, 75%, 50%, or 25% of the soil’s field capacity for each plant growth stage until plant maturity. 2.4. plant sampling and assessment after flowering/early pod formation, plants from one set of pots covering all moisture stress levels were carefully dug out, washed free of soil, and nodules were detached and counted. root and shoot biomass were dried and weighed. other data collected were plant height, root length, and grain yield at maturity. assessment of effectiveness of nodules was done by detaching randomly 30 nodules from each treatment cutting them open and observing the pink coloration and reporting as percentage effective. a score of 1 or 2 was used, where 1 = very pink (very effective), 2 = not pink (other colour, thus not effective). 2.5. statistical analysis statistical analysis was carried out using the genstat statistical package. two way analysis of variance was performed and treatment means were compared using the least significance difference (lsd) at the 5% level of significance. 3. results and discussion 3.1. effects of moisture stress and stage of growth in bean performance: analysis of variance (anova) summary summary of analysis of variance for the studied variables is shown in table 1 and 2 from green house and field experiment respectively. significant differences between moisture stress levels were observed for number of nodules/plant, % effective nodules, root length and yield while growth stages also displayed significant variation in number of nodules/plant, % effective nodules and root biomass both in green house and in the field. significant effects also observed on interaction of moisture stress levels and growth stage on number of nodules/plant and plant height in green house. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 187-201 190 table 1: analysis of variance (anova) (mean squares) from green house source of variation df number of nodules/plant % effective nodules plant height root length shoot biomass root biomasss shoot n% seed n% yield rep 3 294.02 470.22 347.10 26.10 10.33 0.063 0.015 0.012 10.33 stress 3 314.06*** 482.41*** 330.10ns 54.52*** 0.19* 0.006ns 0.189** 0.046** 0.19** stage 3 419.56*** 1886.39*** 136.50ns 23.76* 2.18** 0.004ns 0.617** 0.507** 2.18*** st x sg 9 8.84* 72.68ns 423.90** 12.10 0.62 0.005ns 0.027* 0.040** 0.62 resid. 45 13.45 73.71 174.20 7.71 0.59 0.006 0.012 0.013 0.59 st = stress; sg = stage table 2: analysis of variance (anova) (mean squares) from the field source of variation df number of nodules/plant % effective nodules plant height root length shoot biomass root biomass yield rep 2 15.75 43.40 4.99 26.40 27.66 0.22 905.8 stress 3 775.14*** 2487.19*** 26.70* 14.14ns 374.63*** 0.85*** 4357.4*** stage 3 1371.81*** 2651.79*** 15.43ns 6.25ns 20.33ns 0.41* 200.4ns st x sg 9 121.90* 57.36ns 5.64ns 10.23ns 49.74ns 0.12ns 329.4ns residual 30 62.73 49.05 10.71 10.46 42.97 0.12 285.1 st = stress; sg = stage 3.2. main effect of moisture stress levels the results from this study indicates that moisture stress has a substantial influence on common bean growth as all studied variables were reduced with increased moisture stress level (table 3 and 4). the 25% moisture stress level showed the greater impact of reduction both in green house and in the field. this indicates that common bean is a sensitive plant to high moisture stress level (emam et al., 2010). moisture stress significantly affects nodulation, nitrogen fixation and finally yield. this may be because moisture stress causes biochemical and physiological changes hence affecting plant growth and development (boutraa, 2010). it causes suppression in plant photosynthetic effectiveness (lawlor and cornic, 2002). moisture stress is known to affect the physiological processes of plants as water is the primary component of actively growing plants and has a principal role in plant nutrient transport, chemical and enzymatic reactions. table 3: main effect of moisture stress levels in green house moisture stress level % nodules/ plant (no) % efficient nodules plant height (cm) root length (cm) root biomass (g) shoot biomass (g) yield/ plant (g) shoot n% seed n% 100 18.3b 66.1b 114.2b 15.0b 0.30b 4.69a 5.1b 2.62b 3.30b 75 18.1b 62.8b 111.9ab 14.8b 0.23ab 4.54a 4.5ab 2.58b 3.29b 50 15.6ab 56.5ab 111.4ab 14.8b 0.20ab 3.80b 4.2ab 2.56b 3.23ab 25 10,9a 55.1a 103.7a 11.2a 0.15a 3.63b 3.4a 2.38a 3.19a mean 15.7 60.1 110.3 13.9 0.21 4.20 4.40 3.25 3.25 cv% 24.3 16.9 4.2 9.2 17.4 21.4 15.6 4.4 3.5 se 2.15 4.5 3.3 0.7 0.02 0.2 0.32 0.03 0.03 different letters within each column indicate significant difference at 5% level table 4: main effect of moisture stress levels in the field moisture stress level % nodules/ plant (no) % efficient nodules plant height (cm) root length (cm) root biomass (g) shoot biomass (g) yield/plant (g) 100 21.8c 67.2b 38.9b 17.6a 1.2c 32.6b 84.7c 75 17.5bc 66.7b 36.8ab 16.5a 1.0bc 28.7b 78.7bc 50 17.5bc 61.4b 36.4ab 15.9a 0.8b 27.1b 66.9b 25 9.5a 44.0a 35.5a 15.1a 0.5a 19.3a 41.6a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 187-201 191 mean 16.6 59.8 36.9a 16.3 0.9 26.9 68.0 cv% 22.1 14.4 8.9 7.9 13.1 4.9 11.1 se 0.9 2.2 1.0 0.9 0.1 1.9 4.9 different letters within each column indicate significant difference at 5% level 3.3. main effect of growth stages the results from this study indicated that moisture stress imposed at different growth stages of common bean plant significantly affected number of nodules per plant, percentage of effective nodules, root biomass, shoot biomass and eventually yield (table 5 and 6). growth stage caused a reduction in almost all studied variables and the greater reduction occurred when moisture stress was imposed on vc and v1 growth stages. manjeru et al. (2007) reported that yield was reduced most when water stress was imposed during the flowering and post flowering stages. at vc stage bean plant requires adequate water for root development. in adequate moisture during early stages result in reduced number of nodules per plant, percentage of effective nodules and biomass yield which eventually reduce final yield (efetha, 2011). table 5: main effect of growth stage in green house growth stage nodules/ plant (no) % efficient nodules plant height (cm) root length (cm) root biomass (g) shoot biomass (g) yield/ plant (g) shoot n% seed n% vc 13.4a 55.6a 106.4a 12.9a 0.16a 3.1a 3.8a 2.38a 3.11a v1 13.8a 58.6a 109.7a 13.3a 0.18a 3.6ab 4.2ab 2.35a 3.08a v4 18.8b 66.1b 112.5a 13.9ab 0.18a 3.7ab 4.5ab 2.67b 3.41b r1 16.9b 60.2b 112.6a 15.7b 0.25b 4.1b 5.1b 2.73b 3.41b mean 16.9 60.1 110.3 13.9 0.18 3.6 4.36 2.54 3.25 cv% 24.3 16.9 12.0 9.2 17.4 21.4 15.6 4.4 3.5 se 2.2 4.5 3.3 0.7 0.02 0.2 0.3 0.03 0.03 different letters within each column indicate significant difference at 5% level table 6: main effect of growth stage in the field growth stage nodules/ plant (no) % efficient nodules plant height (cm) root length (cm) root biomass (g) shoot biomass (g) yield/plant (g) vc 10.3a 51.7a 35.4a 16.2a 0.6a 25.5a 65.5a v1 17.0b 61.0b 36.6a 15.4a 0.8ab 26.6a 65.7a v4 18.8bc 63.1b 37.5a 16.4a 1.0b 27.1b 67.3b r1 20.3c 63.4b 38.0a 17.2a 1.1b 28.6b 74.1c mean 16.6 59.8 36.9 16.3 0.89 26.9 68.0 cv% 22.1 11.3 8.9 7.9 13.1 4.9 11.1 se 0.9 2.2 0.9 0.9 0.1 1.9 4.9 different letters within each column indicate significant difference at 5% level 3.4. effect of moisture stress levels at different growing stages on nodulation in the greenhouse, there was a significant increase (p ≤ 0.05) in number of nodules per plant with advancing plant growth stages while nodulation was significantly (p = 0.05) reduced in the 25% moisture regime (table 7). generally, higher numbers of nodules were observed from plants that received 100% moisture regime. the least numbers of nodules were observed from plants that received 25% moisture regime, with the fewest nodules (5.5) obtained when moisture stress was imposed beginning the vc growth stage. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 187-201 192 table 7: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on number of nodules/plant in green house nodules/plant growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 24.6 9.5 11.3 5.5 12.7 v2 24.8 19.8 18.8 8.3 17.9 v4 25.8 21.8 21.3 12.5 20.4 r1 25.3 21.8 21.3 12.5 20.4 mean 25.1 18.2 18.2 9.7 lsd within table is 5.2, se 4.3 in the field, there was also a significant increase (p ≤ 0.05) in number of nodules per plant with advancing plant growth stages only at the 75% moisture regime (table 8). there were significant (p = 0.05) reductions in nodulation as moisture stress was increased, with all plant growth stages affected at the 50% and 25% moisture regimes (table 8). the least number of nodules (4.0) was observed from plants when moisture stress was imposed beginning at the earliest plant growth vc. table 8: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on number of nodules/plant in the field nodules/plant growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 36.7 7.7 7.0 4.0 13.9 v2 43.3 18.0 10.7 8.0 20.0 v4 39.3 32.7 17.7 13.0 25.7 r1 36.7 29.7 18.3 8.3 23.3 mean 39.0 22.0 13.4 8.8 lsd within table is 13.2, se 1.8 these results show that the magnitude of the moisture stress effects depended on the growth stage of the crop at the time the moisture stress was initiated. when moisture stress was imposed to plants from earliest stage (vc), the plants produced few numbers of nodules per plant compared to when moisture stress was imposed in the later v4 or r1 stages. these observations imply that moisture stress was a limiting factor for proper initiation and development of nodules. plants that received higher amounts of water from the beginning of the development of plants (vc) produced more root nodules. according to werner and newton (2005), water status influences survival and metabolic activity of nitrogen fixing bacteria and plants and their ability to enter into symbiotic interactions. leung and bottomley (1994) also reported that low soil water potentials, occurs during periods of moisture stress, inhibit growth of rhizobia and nodulation. these results are in agreement with those by onuh and donald (2009) who reported reduced numbers of nodules in cowpea plants due to moisture stress imposed two weeks after planting. at all growth stages nodule numbers were reduced with increased moisture stress. in greenhouse the reduction of numbers of nodules per plant between plant growth stages v4 and vc was 56.0% while in the field reduction was 69.2%. the relatively smaller reductions in nodulation in the green house as compared to greater reduction in the field may be due to the fact that greenhouse conditions are better controlled than the more open field condition and may be also due to higher evaporation in the field. thus, moisture stress becomes exacerbated in the open field than under greenhouse conditions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 187-201 193 3.5. effect of moisture stress at different growth stages on proportions of effective nodules results showed some significant increases (p ≤ 0.05) in proportions of effective nodules in advanced growth stages in the moisture stressed plants in the greenhouse (table 9). however, there was a general decrease in the proportions of effective nodules with increase in moisture stress, with the decreases particularly significant (p = 0.05) at the 25% moisture regime (table 9) for all growth stages. table 9: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on % effective nodules in the greenhouse % efficient nodules growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 71.1 57.4 56.9 37.0 55.0 v2 69.1 66.3 58.4 48.4 60.6 v4 71.8 72.8 61.1 50.0 63.9 r1 72.3 70.2 69.2 40.7 63.1 mean 71.1 66.7 61.4 44.0 lsd within table is 12.2, se 8.9 similarly in the field, there was significant increase (p ≤ 0.05) on proportions of effective nodules with different growth stages in the moisture stressed plants (table 10). the proportions of effective nodules decreased significantly (p = 0.05) particularly in the 25% moisture regime and for all plant growth stages (table 10). table 10: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on effective nodules % in the field % efficient nodules growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 70.4 47.4 43.2 29.3 47.6 v2 69.3 69.6 61.2 37.0 59.3 v4 88.1 85.8 76.4 47.1 74.4 r1 80.3 75.0 65.9 37.2 64.6 mean 77.0 69.5 61.7 37.7 lsd within table is 11.7, se 4.3 the effective nodules were shown by pink coloration. the pink color is caused by the pigment lephemoglobin that controls oxygen flow to the rhizobia. according to these results, the plants that received enough moisture in growth stage v2 and v4 had more effective nodules. the life span of the rhizobia is short, between 4 and 5 weeks after infection (dupont et al., 2012). thus, enough moisture at vc, v2 and v4 is very vital for proper initiation and development of nodules. according to fresneau et al. (2007), drought induces changes in some physiological and biochemical processes. at the r1 stage is the time of pod filling, annual legumes, including beans, lose the ability to fix nitrogen as the plant feeds the developing seed rather than the nodules (manjeru et al., 2007) this may account for the reduction of numbers or proportions of effective nodules at that stage. the results from this study and other studies show that imposition of severe drought for example 25% moisture, at any stage of plant growth can lead to drastic reductions in the proportions of effective nodules. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 187-201 194 3.6. effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on grain yields the results (table 11) showed some significant decrease (p ≤ 0.05) in grain yields as a result of increased moisture stress. in greenhouse, the greatest decrease (p = 0.05) were recorded in the 25% moisture regime. in the 50% moisture regime, yields were higher (p = 0.05) when the stress was imposed beyond the v4 growth stage as compared to that in the vc stage. the least yield (2.2 g/plant) was observed in plants that received 25% moisture regime when imposed at vc growth stage. table 11: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on grain yield in the greenhouse yield(g/plant) growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 4.2 3.8 3.6 2.2 3.5 v2 5.3 4.7 4.5 2.5 4.3 v4 6.0 5.7 5.4 3.6 5.1 r1 6.8 5.5 5.9 2.7 5.2 mean 5.6 4.9 4.9 2.8 lsd within table is 1.8, se 0.6 in the field, significantly (p = 0.05) lower grain yields were recorded in the 50% moisture regime, and even lower yields at the 25% moisture regime (table 12) relative to those at the 100% moisture regime. in the 25% moisture regime, yields were higher when the stress was imposed beyond the v4 plant growth stages as compared to when the stress was imposed at the earlier vc stage. table 12: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on grain yield in the field grain yield (kg/ha) growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 525.5 427.5 360.0 165.0 344.5 v2 495.0 472.5 452.5 235.5 413.9 v4 517.5 550.0 525.0 355.0 486.9 r1 532.5 570.0 530.0 367.5 500.0 mean 517.6 505.0 466.9 280.8 lsd within table is 180.1, se 9.8 these observations indicate that moisture is an important factor for crop yield, and that extreme moisture stress drastically reduces yields. these results agree with those of manjeru et al. (2007) who reported reduced grain yields of common bean due to water stress imposed at different growth stages. marino et al. (2007) and liu et al. (2003) also reported that the drought effect on bnf is the most important environmental factor resulting in crop yield losses. the present results showed that v2, v4 and r1 are the crucial stages which need enough moisture so as to attain high yields. according to ciat (2004), drought reduces pod formation, seed setting and seed filling by reducing assimilate production, translocation and partitioning, thereby resulting in yield reduction. in the 50% and 25% moisture regime, especially in the field, yield was not affected when stress was imposed in later stages than in earlier stages. this may be due to the fact that at later stages plants have already established, hence the effect of moisture stress has relatively little effect on yield. moisture stress is among of the limiting factors in crop growth and reduce yield (beebe et al., 2008). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 187-201 195 3.7. effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on plant height in the greenhouse, plant heights were significantly reduced (p ≤ 0.05) with increased moisture stress (table 13) when the stress (25% moisture regime) was imposed at the very early stages of plant growth but not in later stages. plants were significantly (p = 0.05) taller when the moisture stress (75% and 25% regime) was imposed at the v4 stage. table 13: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on plant height in the greenhouse plant height (cm) growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 109.8 98.4 96.9 81.1 96.6 v2 109.2 99.9 96.4 87.5 98.3 v4 115.8 121.9 98.1 119.6 113.9 r1 112.8 114.8 106.8 104.5 109.7 mean 111.9 108.8 99.6 98.2 lsd within table is 18.8, se 6.6 in the field, plant heights were higher (p ≤ 0.05) when moisture stress was imposed at later stages (table 14). compared with the 100% or 75% moisture regime, plants in the 50% and 25% moisture regimes were significantly (p = 0.05) shorter when the stress was imposed at the early plant growth stages (vc and v2). table 14: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on plant height in the field plant height (cm) growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50 regime 25% regime mean vc 36.7 36.6 30.3 30.6 33.6 v2 35.6 40.1 31.3 31.5 34.6 v4 37.5 38.4 37.6 33.9 36.9 r1 37.8 40.8 37.2 36.8 38.2 mean 36.9 38.9 34.1 33.2 lsd within table is 5.5, se 1.9 the reduction of plant height with increased moisture stress may be due to the fact that under moisture stress the physiological activities of the plant divert from functions of cell elongation and growth to those for coping with drought by slowing down the rate of assimilation of biosynthates (ciat, 2004). ohashi et al. (2000) also observed the reduction of plant height due to inadequate moisture as a result of decreased photosynthesis and translocation. reduced mitosis, cell elongation and expansion result in reduced plant height, leaf area and crop growth under drought (kaya et al., 2006; hussain et al., 2008; and kalima, 2013). plant heights were higher when moisture stress was imposed at later plant growth stages. this might be because at early stages of vegetative stage, moisture stress reduced synthesis of the photosynthetic pigment; hence, reduced growth and alterations in physiological parameters including plant height (baroowa and gogoi, 2012). 3.8. effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on root length there was no significant increase (p ≤ 0.05) in root length due to reduced moisture stress in the greenhouse (table 15). plants which received 25% moisture regime at vc and v2 had shorter roots compared to others. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 187-201 196 table 15: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on root length in the greenhouse root length (cm) growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 13.8 14.0 15.8 9.0 13.2 v2 13.0 15.8 13.5 9.5 13.0 v4 12.8 15.3 15.0 10.3 13.4 r1 19.8 15.0 15.0 13.0 15.7 mean 14.9 15.0 14.8 10.5 lsd within table is 3.9, se 1.4 in the field, generally there was no significant change (p ≥ 0.05) in root length due to growth stage and moisture stress. the only significant decrease in root length was observed in the 25% moisture regime when moisture stress was imposed very early in the vc stage (table 16). table 16: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on root length in the field root length (cm) growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 18.7 16.3 16.3 13.3 16.2 v2 16.3 16.0 17.3 12.0 15.4 v4 18.7 15.7 14.3 17.0 16.4 r1 17.0 15.0 15.7 18.0 16.4 mean 17.7 15.8 15.9 15.1 lsd within table is 5.4, se 1.9 these results of reduced root length when stress imposed early are in agreement with those by ranawake et al. (2011) who reported reduced root length due to water stress. water stress impairs root cell development, nutrient uptake and affects photosynthesis; hence, affect root elongation (guo et al., 2013; dhole and reddy, 2010). however, the result from the field showed no significant difference for most moisture stress treatments. this may be due to the fact that in the field there is a large rooting space; hence, plants tend to modify their root growth and grow longer as a mechanism for avoiding drought stress by scavenging a larger soil volume for water. 3.9. effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on shoot biomass there was a significantly higher (p ≤ 0.05) shoot biomass when stress was imposed in the v4 growth stages (table 17). at 25% moisture regime the high shoot biomass (3.8g) was observed when moisture stress imposed at the v4 and r1 growth stages relative to the earlier stages (table 17). table 17: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on shoot biomass in the greenhouse shoot biomass (g/plant) growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 3.06 3.01 3.01 2.15 2.8 v2 3.05 3.05 3.01 2.75 3.0 v4 4.18 4.13 4.08 3.63 4.0 r1 3.70 4.03 2.90 3.79 3.6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 187-201 197 mean 3.50 3.56 3.25 3.08 lsd within table is 1.1, se 0.4 in the field, there was a significant decrease (p ≤ 0.05) in shoot biomass due to increased moisture stress at the 25% regime imposed at the vc and v2 growth stages (table 18). at 25% moisture regime the high shoot biomass (20.9 g) was observed in plants when stress was imposed at the v4 and r1 growth stages. table 18: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on shoot biomass in the field shoot biomass (g/plant) growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 23.9 25.9 24.3 15.3 22.4 v2 27.4 28.1 25.2 18.6 24.8 v4 31.0 35.2 31.9 20.9 29.8 r1 32.6 38.1 35.1 19.8 31.4 mean 28.7 31.8 29.1 18.7 lsd within table is 10.9, se 3.8 this result indicates that moisture is an essential influence for shoot development. greater accumulation of plant biomass is an important input to assure total translocation of photosynthate materials to seed. emam et al. (2010) and rosales-serna et al. (2004) also reported that plant dry weight was decreased significantly by increasing water stress. moisture stress also reduced shoot dry weight in forage legumes (fening et al. 2009). moisture stress is known to reduce dry matter production by limiting plant growth (emam and seghatoleslami, 2005). 3.10. effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on root biomass in the field, there was significant decrease (p ≤ 0.05) in root biomass due to moisture stress (25% regime) and growth stages (table 19). table 19: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on root biomass in the field root biomass (g/plant) growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 0.93 0.63 0.63 0.50 0.67 v2 1.00 1.07 1.00 0.47 0.89 v4 1.23 1.87 0.57 0.50 1.04 r1 1.23 1.57 0.67 0.73 1.05 mean 1.10 1.30 0.72 0.55 lsd within table is 0.6, se 0.2 in greenhouse there was no significant change (p ≥ 0.05) in root biomass at different growth stages due to moisture stress (table 20). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 187-201 198 table 20: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on root biomass in the greenhouse root biomass (g/plant) growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 0.20 0.18 0.15 0.13 0.17 v2 0.21 0.15 0.20 0.15 0.18 v4 0.18 0.18 0.18 0.17 0.18 r1 0.23 0.23 0.23 0.13 0.21 mean 0.21 0.19 0.19 0.14 lsd within table is 0.10, se 0.04 the lack of significant reduction in root biomass implies that when the moisture stress is imposed at vc and v2 stages, the plants are still young and able to scramble for nutrients and moisture around the rhizosphere. during v4 and r1 growth stages plants have developed enough and can modify themselves by elongating their roots around the growth environment in the attempt to capture nutrients and moisture. 3.11. effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on shoot and seed n% the results showed significant decrease (p ≤ 0.05) in amount of n accumulated in shoots and seeds when moisture stress is increased (table 21 and 22). the reduction is higher (3.09) when the stress is imposed at the earliest plant growth vc and v1 stages. this may be due to the fact that drought tend to weaken the uptake of n in the plants. nakayama et al. (2007) also found the decrease in n accumulation in the leaves of studied cultivars under drought. the moisture stress imposed during vc and v1 was more disadvantageous to n accumulation than that imposed during the r1 stage. moisture stress reduces nitrogenase activity through reductions in the formation and function of nodules (ramos et al., 1999). report by fresneau et al. (2007) showed that drought effects are associated with changes in physiological and biochemical processes. table 21: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on shoot n% shoot n% growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 3.49 3.15 3.10 2.97 3.18 v2 3.44 3.23 3.10 3.14 3.23 v4 3.51 3.49 3.53 3.25 3.45 r1 3.48 3.34 3.44 3.22 3.37 mean 3.48 3.30 3.29 3.15 lsd within table is 0.16, se 0.03 table 22: effect of moisture stress levels at different growth stages on seed n% seed n% growing stage when stress imposed 100% moisture regime 75% regime 50% regime 25% regime mean vc 3.39 3.13 3.15 3.09 3.19 v2 3.51 3.34 3.25 3.09 3.30 v4 3.48 3.49 3.44 3.23 3.41 r1 3.44 3.35 3.53 3.24 3.39 mean 3.46 3.33 3.34 3.16 lsd within table is 0.16, se 0.03 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(8)2015: 187-201 199 4. conclusions moisture stress levels no matter of the degree of its severity has the capacity to affect/reduce nodulation, nitrogen fixation, root and shoot biomass and finally yield at different growing stages. these results indicate that when stress is imposed at a late stage of plant development, the effect is low because the plants are already well developed and they can modify themselves to cope with stress compared to the case when stress is imposed at early stages. hence, for maximum nodulation and nitrogen fixation to be achieved, moisture stress must be avoided at the early vc and v2 growing stages. since the period of nodulation is short, timing for planting is of great importance to escape dry periods at these early stages, otherwise irrigation scheduling should be undertaken to favour these growth stages. the water stress levels applied may not represent other areas, hence, multi-location and multi-year experiment is recommended. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. acknowledgment this work was done with the support from the ministry of agriculture food security and cooperative. reference acosta-gallegos, j. a., & domingo, m. 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(1976). the effect of moisture stress on infection of trifolium subterraneum l. by rhizobium trifolii dang. journal of experimental botany, 27, 12331241. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 214 factors affecting the management of pesticide business: the case vietnam ngo chi thanh a le thi phuong b le van cuong c a lecturer; faculty of economics and business administration, hong duc university, vietnam b lecturer; faculty of agriculture, forestry and fishery, hong duc university, vietnam c lecturer; department of general administration, faculty of economics and business administration, hong duc university, vietnam  levancuong@hdu.edu.vn (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 28-jan-2020 accepted: 16-apr-2020 online available: 06-may2020 keywords: pesticide market, business management, influential factor, thanh hoa province, vietnam economics abstract based on the context of thanh hoa province, vietnam, this paper studies the factor affecting the management of pesticide business for the case of vietnam. the authors propose the model with five factors affecting the management of pesticide business activities in thanh hoa province, including (i) content and implementation methods of the legal documents; (ii) capacity of the management staff; (iii). awareness and legal compliance of the pesticide traders; (iv) budget, infrastructure, and facilities for the pesticide management; and (v) collaboration between management stakeholders. in this study, 176 pesticide traders were investigated for the 5 mentioned factors in thanh hoa province. the question of factors influencing the management of pesticide business activities in the province was done by using exploratory factor analysis and regression analysis. the result showed that all the above factors have affected the management of pesticide business in which, the collaboration between the management stakeholders and the awareness and legal compliance of pesticide traders are the most affected while the content and implementation methods of the legal documents are less influence. based on these results, the paper proposes solutions to improve the management of pesticide trading activities in the coming time in thanh hoa province. contribution/ originality this work significantly contributes to the literature on the management and business of the pesticide. we show crucial factors influence the management of pesticide business. based on these results, we propose several recommendations for policymakers and provincial governments to a limited negative effect of pesticides used and to develop sustainable agricultural production as well as ensuring human health and environmental protection. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.214.226 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: ngo chi thanh, le thi phuong and le van cuong (2020). factors affecting the management of pesticide business: the case vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 214-226. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 214-226 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:levancuong@hdu.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.214.226 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 214-226 215 1. introduction the pesticide is considered as an effective tool in plant pest management. however, the overuse of pesticides is not necessary and does not bring economic efficiency. this situation occurs in many countries, for instance, currently, the use volume of pesticide in the world amounting to 35 million tons/year which equally total value of 45 billion usd (eyhorn et al., 2015); in which, until 1/3 of this volume does not reach to the standard requirements (sylviane et al., 2002). from that point of view, the issue of the management of pesticide business is attracting researchers and also the government in several agricultural countries (for instance, see do et al. (2009); van et al. (2013). thanh hoa is a province that has a large area of agricultural production and the thriving crop industry (ngo et al., 2019). this facilitates thanh hoa province to be a potential market for pesticide trading with a strong and diversified network of pesticide supply. up to december 2016, there were 43 companies registered for pesticide business via 07 major distributors, 1,106 retail shops, and about 420 temporary trading households, selling more than 420 pesticide products in this province inadequate (thanh hoa plant protection department, 2016). however, this status of remarked development of the pesticide market also causes many difficulties, challenges, and arises inadequacies in the management of pesticide business concerning: (i). the expired, unqualified, and banned pesticides and pesticides with unclear origin are till present on the market; (ii). there is no storage facility for the confiscated and violated drugs; (iii). the knowledge about pesticides of technical local staff, especially communal authorities are insufficient; (iv). inspection and examination of pesticide business in the province is inadequate (thanh hoa plant protection department, 2016). in 2016, 254 pesticide traders were inspected for 8 times by thanh hoa plant protection department, of which 30 pesticide traders were reported to violate the common regulations in terms of business ineligibility, unlisted prices, and lack of storage facilities, and selling pesticides together with animal feed (thanh hoa plant protection department, 2016). to improve the effectiveness of pesticide management in the province, it is essential to first identify the factors affecting the management of pesticide business activities. in this study, the authors surveyed to collect data and evaluate the status of management of pesticide trading activities in thanh hoa province, combined with the use of exploratory factor analysis (efa) and regression analysis, aiming to: (i). identify factors affecting the management of pesticide trading activities in the province; (ii). analyse the influencing factors of the management of pesticide trading activities; (iii). propose solutions to improve the management of pesticide trading activities in the coming time in thanh hoa province. 2. literature review management of pesticide business requires the involvement of not only the state, but also the coordination between communities and consumers of agricultural products, and the pesticide production and trading companies (fao, 2002). according to srv (2001), the management of pesticide business is the management of the special supply-demand relationship since pesticides are considered “a special good with strict limitations in trade” in all nations. unlike the "supplydemand" relationship of other goods where there is a "demand", there will be a "supply", that of pesticide products will create "demand" when having "supply". good management of pesticide trading in the side of "supply" will make an important contribution to prevent the un-registered pesticides and ensure a sufficient supply of qualified pesticides on the market (fao, 2002). there is vast literature related to the issues of the factor affecting the management of pesticide in general, and particularly in the management of pesticide trading. van et al. (2001) study the use of pesticides in producing mango which shows that, though the guide of business trader, farmers using more pesticides per year while the yield is not increased. concerning reducing pesticide use, eyhorn et al. (2015) pointed out that, the current production system, value chains, and policy asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 214-226 216 environment need to be changed. accordingly, three groups of factors are required to work together to ensure better management of pesticide reduction: availability of and know-how on alternatives, increasing demand for low-/no-pesticide products, and conducive legislation and policies. in other aspects, holland and rahman (1999) study about trends of agricultural pesticide used in new zealand, they mention that several factors are affecting to the using of a pesticide including nature condition, the agricultural system, system of legal documents, technology, knowledge, the capacity of the management staff...; learning for the case of china, fan et al. (2015) show that: characteristics of farmers, knowledge, behaviours of pesticide traders, the action of government are factors directly affected to pesticide using behaviours of the farmers. several other studies also focus on pesticides used behavior of farmers, for instance: tijani (2006) for the case of nigeria; ntow et al. (2006) for the case of gana; williamson et al. (2003) for the case of india and kenya, or zhou and jin (2009) for the case of china. in vietnam, although there is an increase in the number of studies on the subject of pesticide using and trading, however, the issue of the factor affecting the management of pesticide business is still limited. adjrah et al. (2013), van et al. (2009) analyze factors affecting to behaviours of farmers in using a pesticide. the study shows that farmers knowing pesticide by training normally taking care of the brand name of the pesticide; van et al. (2013) indicate that, an overall improvement of pesticide business management only relies on better government intervention, focusing on more stringent implementation and enforcement of regulation. several other studies, for instance, mengistie et al. (2015); hoi et al. (2016); nguyen et al. (2013); nguyen et al. (2018) also emphasize to five main factors affecting the implementation of regulations on the management of pesticide business, including state policies, management apparatus, awareness of pesticide traders, dissemination activities and inspection activities of pesticide business. according to the author's knowledge, the issue of studying factors affecting to the management of pesticide business has not been done for the case of thanh hoa province, and there is still limited literature studying by quantitative methods to address the question of influencing factors to the management of pesticide business in vietnam. 3. methodology 3.1. the model and hypotheses 3.1.1. overview of pesticide business and management in thanh hoa province based on the secondary data collected from the plant protection department of thanh hoa province and the survey results obtained from 4 pesticide distribution companies (level 1suppliers), the number of pesticide suppliers in the province within the period 2016-2018 is described in table 1. table 1: current situation of pesticide business in thanh hoa province period 2016-2018 year distributors (level 1suppliers) level 2-suppliers/ shops (distributors) household business (household) total number (distributor) distributors having a technical certificate for pesticide distributors having a certificate of eligible pesticide business quantity ratio (%) quantity ratio (%) 2014 6 616 434 70.45 40 6.49 182 2015 7 838 638 76.13 140 21.94 200 2016 7 1106 786 71.07 428 38.07 420 2018 7 1267 1056 83.34 863 68.11 244 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 214-226 217 the number of pesticide traders in thanh hoa province is relatively high and tends to increase sharply (from 612 distributors/ shops and 182 retail households in 2014 to 1267 distributors/shops and over 244 retail households in 2018). in 2018, the rate of pesticide distributors/ shops doing business without having a technical certificate for pesticide is relatively high, nearly by 32%. noticeably, there are still 244 temporary household traders who don’t have a technical certificate for pesticide and a certificate of eligible pesticide business, accounting for over 16% of the total number of pesticide distributors/ shops in the area. this rate is considered as much higher than that of the surrounding provinces such as hanoi, hai phong and hai duong which is ranging from 8 to 11% (nguyen et al., 2013). table 2: current situation of pesticide business management in thanh hoa province description 2016 2017 2018 1. issuance and dissemination of legal documents 1 state legal normative documents (law, decree, circular) 17 documents (1 law; 4 decrees và 12 circulars) provincial legal normative documents (resolution, directive, plan, regulation, official letter ...) 15 documents (1 resolution, 2 directives, 1 plans, 9 decisions; 2 official letters) 2. plan building for business management plan for inspection (batch) plan for the training of knowledge and skills of pesticide business management (class) 7 14 12 8 9 13 3. organization of training course and dissemination in business management training on professional knowledge of pesticide management 2 3 6 training on legal documents of pesticide business 7 5 6 providing legal normative documents (leaflets) 1500 1800 2400 4. business inspection and handling of violations number of inspection (batch) 6 11 8 number of inspected distributors/ trader (distributor) 361 310 254 violated distributors/ traders (distributor) 83 (22.99%) 48 (15.48%) 30 (11.81%) the management of pesticide business in thanh hoa province is performed under vietnamese legal documents which are recommended to the department of agriculture and rural development by the department of plant protection for the implementation. up to december 2018, the system of legal documents concerning pesticide management in thanh hoa province consists of 17 national normative documents and 15 legal documents issued by provincial authorities. 3.1.2. the model and hypotheses according to eyhorn et al. (2015), holland and rahman (1999), van et al. (2013) and based on the context of thanh hoa province, the author propose the model of affecting factor to the management of pesticide business as the figure following: in this model, the author proposes five factors affecting to the management of pesticide business, including (i) capacity of the management staff; (ii) content and implementation methods of the legal documents; (iii) awareness and legal compliance of the pesticide traders; (iv) collaboration between the management stakeholders; and (v) budget, infrastructure budget, infrastructure and facilities. 1 update in 12/2018 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 214-226 218 the regression model has presented as follows: y = β0 + β1x1 + β2x2 + β3x3 + β4x4 + β5x5 + ui in which: y: the dependent variable (outcomes of pesticide business management) xi: the independent variable groups ui: the residual hypotheses: h1: content and implementation methods of the legal documents have a positive effect on the management of pesticide business. h2: the capacity of the management staff has a positive effect on the management of pesticide business. h3: awareness and legal compliance of the pesticide traders have a positive effect on the management of pesticide business. h4: budget, infrastructure and facilities for the pesticide management have a positive effect on the management of pesticide business. h5: collaboration between the management stakeholders has a positive effect on the management of pesticide business. 3.2. data and observation variables description according to hair et al. (1998), hair et al. (2009), the sample size affects the generality of the study results by the ratio of observed variables to the independent variables and there should be 5 observed variables for each independent variable in the difference. in order to reach the desired level of the study and achieve the generalized results, there must be 15-20 observations per an independent variable (hair et al., 1998; hoang and chu, 2008). this study consists of 5 independent variables so it is necessary to have at least 120 observations. therefore, the database used for analysis and assessment was collected by surveying 176 pesticide traders in 5 the management of pesticide business capacity of the management staff awareness and legal compliance of the pesticide traders budget, infrastructure and facilities collaboration between the management stakeholders content and implementation methods of the legal documents asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 214-226 219 representative districts in thanh hoa province, namely ngoc lac, tho xuan and thieu hoa, hoang hoa districts and thanh hoa city. the likert scale from 1 to 5 was used to evaluate the influencing factors by the pesticide traders (the scales are indicated as 1 strongly disagree; 2 disagree; 3 confused; 4 agree; and 5 strongly agree), corresponding to 05 groups of factors with 27 observational variables, as presented in table 3. table 3: description of observational variables within the groups of influencing factors factors observational variables variable codes 1. content and implementation methods of the legal documents (x1) overlapping legal texts cs.1 gaps/loopholes in legal documents cs.2 formalism in the dissemination of legal documents cs.3 inappropriate contents of legal documents cs.4 unclear decentralization in management cs.5 non-deterrent sanctions cs.6 rapid changes in the list of pesticides licensed for use cs.7 2. capacity of the management staff (x2) weak qualification of management staff nl1 a few numbers of management staff nl2 management capacity of the local authority nl3 partial inspection officials nl4 3. awareness and legal compliance of the pesticide traders (x3) regulations for trading and using pesticides hb1 the list of pesticides licensed for use hb2 regulations for the pesticide storage hb3 regulations for the location of pesticide shop hb4 regulations for other products banned to trade together with pesticides hb5 regulations for the eligibility of having the technical certificate for pesticides hb6 reading and providing the guidance of pesticide use for the buyers hb7 4. budget, infrastructure and facilities for the pesticide management (x4) limited budgets, mainly from the state kp1 insufficient annual fund for the pesticide traders kp2 limited socializing funds kp3 limited allowances kp4 inadequate equipment and facilities kp5 lack of infrastructure kp6 5. collaboration between the management stakeholders (x5) collaboration in licensing the certificate for pesticide business ph1 interdisciplinary inspection ph2 coordination between management and dissemination of communal authorities. ph3 6. outcomes of pesticide management (y) eligibility for running pesticide business kq1 doing appropriate business following the list pesticides permitted for use. kq2 appropriate handling of damaged pesticides and packaging kq3 data processing was done by using excel tools and statistic software spss 22. three methods used to analyze data were the statistical description, the exploratory factor analysis and the regression asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 214-226 220 analysis. the exploratory factor analysis (efa) was used to sort groups of factors with variable conditions. the observational variables which have a factor loading index less than 0,05 in the efa were eliminated. this was done along with the kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) test (≥ 0,5). bartlett's test has a significant value of less than 0,05. the cronbach alpha correlation between the xij component variables and the factor group's total variable xi (group average) has a value greater than 0,3. cronbach's alpha correlation coefficient of each variable has a value of 0,6 or higher (hair et al., 1998; hoang and chu, 2008). after sorting the factor groups, the regression analysis was done to determine the impact of the factor groups on the outcomes of pesticide business management (y). 4. empirical result 4.1. result of cronbach's alpha and exploratory factor analysis to determine the groups of factors affecting the management outcomes of pesticide business in thanh hoa province, we used the exploratory factor analysis with 27 observational variables belonging to 5 groups of influencing factors, using a likert scale. the average scores of variables according to the likert scale are summarized in table 4. table 4: summary of the evaluation on the management of pesticide business by pesticide traders in thanh hoa province description observational variables average score standard deviation 1. content and implementation methods of the legal documents (x1) cs.1 2,24 1,08 cs.2 2,82 1,05 cs.3 3,05 1,17 cs.4 2,90 1,05 cs.5 2,97 1,20 cs.6 2,48 0,83 cs.7 2,85 1,00 2. capacity of the management staff (x2) nl1 2,80 1,17 nl2 2,56 1,06 nl3 2,42 1,03 nl4 2,77 1,20 3. awareness and legal compliance of the pesticide traders (x3) hb1 2,10 0,72 hb2 2,22 0,77 hb3 2,16 0,74 hb4 2,09 0,64 hb5 2,06 0,71 hb6 1,98 0,69 hb7 1,96 0,75 4. budget, infrastructure and facilities for the pesticide management (x4) kp1 1,97 0,59 kp2 2,03 0,51 kp3 2,08 0,57 kp4 1,97 0,65 kp5 2,31 0,87 kp6 2,32 0,83 5. collaboration between the management stakeholders (x5) ph1 2,60 0,97 ph2 2,66 0,85 ph3 2,60 0,95 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 214-226 221 the result of conducting cronbach's alpha reliability shows that there are 3 observational variables eliminated due to nonconformity, namely: hb7reading and providing the guidance of pesticide use for the buyers, ph3coordination between management and dissemination of communal authorities and cs1 overlapping legal texts. the remained number of observational variables is 24 which are rearranged into 5 affecting factors (table 5). all selected variables have values of factor loading coefficient greater than 0,5, kmo coefficient is greater than 0,8, figen values greater than 1, and the variance extracted of 71,03%, suggesting that 5 groups of factors with 24 observational variables are completely suitable and statistically significant. table 5: the matrix of factor loading coefficient within the factors affecting the outcomes of management of pesticide business in thanh hoa province observational variables groups of influential factors 1 2 3 4 5 hb3 0.852 hb4 0.832 hb5 0.796 hb1 0.792 hb2 0.791 hb6 0.762 cs.2 0.820 cs.3 0.819 cs.4 0.804 cs.7 0.800 cs.5 0.795 nl1 0.896 nl2 0.864 nl4 0.665 nl3 0.633 kp6 0.868 kp5 0.808 ph2 0.707 cs.6 0.702 ph1 0.569 kp3 0.820 kp2 0.820 kp1 0.749 kp4 0.600 variance extracted 17.527 16.119 13.378 12.370 11.634 cronbach's alpha coefficient 0.904 0.897 0.861 0.835 0.797 note: the groups are ordered from high to low according to the value of factor loading coefficient of observational variables 6. outcomes of pesticide management (y) kq1 2,31 0,55 kq2 2,69 0,65 kq3 2,33 0,87 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 214-226 222 4.2. regression analysis the results from table 5 indicate that some component variables change their positions within groups 4 and 5. based on the results of the statistic test and regrouping of the influencing factors, we rearranged the order of influencing factors, as follows: x1: awareness and legal compliance of the pesticide traders (with 6 observational variables: hb3, hb4, hb5, hb1, hb2, hb6) x2: content and implementation methods of the legal documents (with 5 observational variables: cs2, cs3, cs4, cs7 and cs5) x3: capacity of the management staff (with 4 observational variables: nl1, nl2, nl4 and nl3) x4: collaboration between the management stakeholders (with 5 observational variables: kp6, kp5, ph2, cs.6 and ph1) x5: budget, infrastructure and facilities for the pesticide management (with 4 observational variables: kp3, kp2, kp1 and kp4). using multiple regression functions with 5 independent variables corresponding to 5 factors were tested and rearranged and the dependent variables corresponding to the outcomes of management of pesticide business, combined with the data obtained from the survey of 176 pesticide traders appraised by the management officials in thanh hoa province, we analyzed the regression model using statistic software spss.22. the coefficients βo βi of the model are summarized in table 6. table 6: coefficients of factors affecting the outcomes of pesticide business management in thanh hoa province explanation variable coefficient sig the intercept 0,610*** ,000 awareness and legal compliance of the pesticide traders x1 0,185*** ,000 content and implementation methods of the legal documents x2 0,073** ,003 capacity of the management staff x3 0,171*** ,000 collaboration between the management stakeholders x4 0,214*** ,000 budget, infrastructure and facilities for the pesticide management x5 0,155*** ,001 r2 0,684 f 73,440 sig (f) 0,000001 note: ** and *** refer to as the significance levels of 5% and 1%, respectively the r square (r2) is 0.684, revealing that 5-factor groups used for this model affected the management of pesticide business by 68.40%. the coefficients βi (i = 1-5) of the independent variables (xi) are statistically high at a significance level of 99.9%. we observe that all hypotheses are accepted and the regression function, therefore, demonstrates this relationship as follows: y = 0.610 + 0.185x1 + 0.073x2 + 0.171x3 + 0.214x4 + 0.15x5 + ui the coefficients βi are all positive, meaning that those factors affect the outcome of pesticide business management in the same direction. therefore, the improvement of any influential factors would lead to better management outcomes. among the influential factors, the coefficient for the collaboration between the management stakeholders (x4) has the highest of value, 0.214, followed by ones for the awareness and legal compliance of the pesticide traders (x1) with β1 = 0.185, the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 214-226 223 capacity of the management staff (x3) with β3 = 0.171 and the budget, infrastructure and facilities for the pesticide management (x5) with β5 = 0.155. the lowest value is for the coefficient of the content and implementation methods of the legal documents (x2) with β2 = 0.073. the level of effect for the criteria in each group was determined by the regression analysis of the relationship between the observational variables (each group's criteria) and the groups of factors, as summarized in table 7. table 7: factors affecting the outcomes of pesticide business management in thanh hoa province x1: awareness and legal compliance of the pesticide traders x2: content and implementation methods of the legal documents x3: capacity of the management staff x4: collaboration between the management stakeholders x5: budget, infrastructure and facilities for the pesticide management varia ble code coeffic ient (x1) variab le code coeffic ient (x2) variab le code variab le code (x3) variab le codes variab le code (x4) variab le codes variab le code (x5) hb1 0.212 cs2 0.306 nl1 0.363 cs6 0.267 kp1 0.299 hb2 0.221 cs3 0.229 nl2 0.325 kp5 0.296 kp2 0.349 hb3 0.231 cs4 0.217 nl3 0.199 kp6 0.323 kp3 0.338 hb4 0.205 cs5 0.194 nl4 0.210 ph1 0.168 kp4 0.216 hb5 0.192 cs7 0.240 ph2 0.260 hb6 0.171 source: result from survey data of author (2018) regarding the awareness and legal compliance of the pesticide traders (x1), the most influencing component is the mastery of regulations for the pesticide storage (hb3), followed by that of the list of pesticides licensed for use (hb2). the regulation for the eligibility of having the technical certificate for pesticides (hb1) is ranked as the least influencing component. in term of the content and implementation methods of the legal documents (x2), the biggest impacting component is the gaps/loopholes in the legal documents (cs2), followed by the rapid changes in the list of pesticides licensed for use (cs7) and the unclear decentralization in management (cs5). concerning the capacity of the management staff (x3), the most influential component is the weak qualification of management staff (nl1), followed by the low number of management staff. the management capacity of the local authority (nl3) is considered as the smallest influencing component. in term of the budget, infrastructure and facilities for the pesticide management (x4), the most influential component is the lack of infrastructure (kp6), followed by the inadequate equipment and facilities (kp5) and the collaboration in licensing the certificate for pesticide business (ph1) is ranked as the least influencing one. for the budget, infrastructure and facilities for pesticide management (x5), the most influential component is the insufficient annual training fund for the pesticide traders (kp2), followed by the limited socializing funds (kp3) and the lowest influencing one is the limited allowances (kp4). our results correspond to the studies of holland and rahman (1999), van et al. (2013) and eyhorn et al. (2015) who emphasize that agricultural system, a system of legal documents, technology, knowledge, the capacity of the management staff are key factors affecting to pesticide business management. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 214-226 224 5. recommendations 5.1. enhancement of coordination between management agencies and organizations in monitoring, inspection and violation sanctions of pesticide business increasing the investment in infrastructure and facilities for the management of pesticide business, combined with the assignment of specific responsibilities to authorities at all levels (districts/ towns, communes/ wards/ townships); promoting the coordination between communal authorities and pesticide management agencies in the inspection and monitoring activities of pesticide business; promptly detecting and handling of violations under the light of decree 31/2016/nd-cp issued by the government (srv, 2016), such as the public announcement of violation cases on local radio system to increase deterrence and prevent violations; and encouraging socialization and participation of social groups and organizations in management and supervision of pesticide business 5.2. strengthening the dissemination and training activities about professional skills for pesticide traders increasing the quantity and quality of training activities, combined with utilization of the diverse facilities media (television, newspapers, publications, leaflets...) with the aim at popularizing the regulations on pesticide business and the list of pesticides licensed for use issued annually by the ministry of agriculture and rural development. 5.3. improvement of the management system for pesticide business concerning both the quantity and quality of management staff increasing the private funds for training and researching activities for the pesticide agencies (department of cropping and plant protection; district centers of agricultural services). these actions help to improve both professional knowledge and skills for management staff, and to keep them updated with new information to meet the requirements of management and constant development of agricultural production; implementation of staff for inspection activities, which is recommended by department of cropping and plant protection according to the job position project, need to be carried out promptly with at least 05 provincial inspectors specialized in pesticides. at the district level, there is a need to increase the number of civil servants working in pesticide management. each district should have at least 1 civil servant being in charge of inspection, supervision and monitoring of pesticide business. 5.4. investment in infrastructure and financial funds for management agencies to create favorable conditions for the performance of management activities, ensuring the impartiality and scientific correctness. in particular, it is necessary to encourage socialization of financial fund in combination with the development of programs/ projects for financial funds, equipment, facilities, scientific knowledge and technology, serving the activities of inspection, examination, training and dissemination and improving the quality of pesticide management in the province. 5.5. specific regulations for to practical implementation of legal documents in the province constantly revisiting, revising and supplementing the legal documents according to the regime "doing while reviewing, adjusting, supplementing"; building and promulgating policies on salaries and working-trip allowances for pesticide inspectors, along with policies on emulation and commendation in the pesticide management activities at all levels. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 214-226 225 funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adjrah, y., dovlo, a., karou, s. d., eklu-gadegbeku, k., agbonon, a., de souza, c., & gbeassor, m. 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(2009). safety of vegetables and the use of pesticides by farmers in china: evidence from zhejiang province. food control, 20(11), 1043-1048. doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2009.01.002. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 153 trends and variability of wheat crop in pakistan saleem abida m. asif masooda m. zubair anwara saleem zahidb irum razaa astatistics and computing program, social sciences research institute, parc national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan. b institute of business and management sciences, the university of agriculture, peshawar, pakistan.  saleemabidpk@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 18-oct-2018 accepted: 29-dec-2018 online available: 17-jan2019 keywords: trend, growth, variability, semi-log model, wheat crop abstract the main focus of the study was to analyze trends and variability of wheat crop in pakistan. semi-log trend model was used to find trends and growth rate in area, yield and production of wheat crop whereas the variability was measured by cuddy-della valle index of variability. the findings of the study illustrate that wheat area in punjab, sindh and baluchistan was increased over the time whereas cultivated area of wheat in khyber pakhtunkhwa province was marginally decreased during 1981-85 to 2011-15. the results show that there was substantial increase in wheat yield and production in all four provinces of pakistan. the increase in wheat yield may due to the adoption of new varieties of wheat in the country over the time. it was also concluded from the results that area and yield of wheat in baluchistan recorded the highest degree of variability whereas in punjab province area and yield of wheat crop were noticed the lowest degree of variability. similarly, the maximum variability in wheat production was recorded for baluchistan province followed by sindh, khyber pakhtunkhwa, and punjab. mostly the variability in wheat production was due to the variability in wheat area and their yield. contribution/ originality the present study was conducted to examine the growth and variability in area, production and yield of wheat crop in all provinces (i.e. khyber pakhtunkhwa, baluchistan, sindh and punjab) of pakistan. information on growth performance and variability in wheat production would help the policy makers of the country to implement policy measures regarding the wheat crop. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.153.159 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: saleem abid, m. asif masood, m. zubair anwar, saleem zahid and irum raza (2018). trends and variability of wheat crop in pakistan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 153-159. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 153-159 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:saleemabidpk@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.153.159 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 153-159 154 1. introduction agriculture sector plays an important role in the economy of pakistan which contributes 18.9 percent to gdp and absorbs 42.3 percent of labour force (government of pakistan, 2018). wheat is grown extensively in pakistan on a subsistence basis for home consumption. on average, the households incur 12.55 percent of the monthly expenditures on wheat and wheat flour (government of pakistan, 2017). the per capita wheat production in pakistan is 131 kgs per year, while per capita wheat consumption is 118 kgs per year which is highest in the world (govt. khyber pakhtunkhwa, 2014). wheat productivity and yield are the important determinants of wheat supply. availability of adequate food is of major concern at household, provincial and country level for food security. any variation in the supply and demand of wheat in world market affects the welfare of farmers, consumers, taxpayers and those directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture (jehangir et al., 2008; hong-juan et al., 2017). variability is an important measure of decision making in the dynamics of development and agricultural production. to analyze variations in crop production regardless of growth, it is important to understand the nature of income stability and food security. the variations in crop production affect prices and cause sharp fluctuations, but also lead to significant differences in income available to farmers. the magnitude of the variations depends on the nature of crop production technology, its sensitivity to weather, availability of inputs, economic environment, and several other factors (wasim, 2011). hazell (1989) found that due to the adoption of modern technology, global food grain production and the production of indian food grains increased. mehra (1981) argued that the variability in grain production has increased in india due to improved technological progress from the mid-1960s to large scale. wasim (2001) evaluated that due to adoption of high yielding varieties and new farm technologies the variability in production increases. similar opinions are also put forward by ray (1983), parthasarathy (1984), mitra (1990) and singh and issac (2018). as wheat is a staple food of the country so it occupies a central place in pakistan’s agricultural policies. the present study was conducted to examine the growth and variability in area, production and yield of wheat crop in all provinces (i.e. khyber pakhtunkhwa, baluchistan, sindh and punjab) of pakistan. information on growth performance and variability in wheat production would help the policy makers of the country to implement policy measures regarding the wheat crop. 2. materials and method a time series data from 1980-81 to 2014-15 on area, yield and production of wheat for baluchistan, khyber pakhtunkhwa (kp), punjab and sindh provinces was collected from different issues of agricultural statistics of pakistan. 2.1. linear semi-log trend function in order to find trends and estimate growth rate in area, yield and production of wheat crop semilog trend function was used (abid et al., 2014). lnz = 0 + 1w+ e where z = dependent variable (area, production and yield of wheat crop); 1 = trend coefficient; w = trend over specific period; ln = natural logarithm; and e = error term to find out the compound growth rate the following formula was used (gujarati, 2004). r = {antilog(1) -1}*100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 153-159 155 where r = compound growth rate and 1 = trend coefficient. 2.2. measurement of variability the variability in wheat area, yield and production was measured by cuddy-della valle index of variability (1978) that is applied by different researchers in time series data. the formula for cuddy-della valle index of variability (i) is i = cv∗ √(1 − 𝑅2 where cv represent the coefficient of variation; and r2 is coefficient of determination from a timetrend regression. 3. results and discussion 3.1. trends analysis of wheat crop trends in wheat area, yield and production were presented in table-1. the results from the table shows that the wheat area in pakistan during 1981-85 was 7309 thousand hectares as compared to 8783 thousand hectares sown during 2011-15, which displays that wheat area increased by 22.2 percent over the time. the production of wheat was increased from 12053 thousand tonnes to 24688 thousand tonnes during 1981-85 to 2011-15, which indicate that wheat production in pakistan was increased by 104.8 percent. it may be due to the corresponding increase in wheat area in pakistan and also increase in wheat yield per hectare (67.8 percent) (table 1 & figure 1). results of the study also illustrate that the wheat area in punjab, sindh, khyber pakhtunkhwa and baluchistan was 5242,1021, 784 and 262 thousand hectares during 1981-85 whereas it was 6719, 1084,742 and 384 thousand hectares in 2011-15, respectively. so that the area under wheat crop in punjab (28.2 percent), sindh (6.2 percent) and baluchistan (46.6 percent) was increased over the time. but the cultivated area of wheat crop in khyber pakhtunkhwa province was decreased by 5.4 percent during 1981-85 to 2011-15. table 1: trend of wheat crop in pakistan, 1981-82 to 2014-15 (5-year averages) year punjab sindh khyber pakhtunkhwa balochistan pakistan (area in "000" hectares) 1981-85 5242 1021 784 262 7309 1986-90 5577 1041 809 273 7700 1991-95 5855 1087 850 359 8152 1996-00 6029 1061 843 334 8268 2001-05 6263 888 738 334 8223 2006-10 6655 1048 751 387 8841 2011-15* 6719 1084 742 384 8929 (production in "000" tonnes) 1981-85 8653 2085 907 407 12053 1986-90 9817 2232 1023 527 13598 1991-95 11919 2313 1173 788 16193 1996-00 14258 2601 1095 707 18661 2001-05 15948 2328 1034 649 19960 2006-10 17768 3670 1149 775 23362 2011-15* 18837 3759 1253 840 24688 yield in kgs per hectare 1981-85 1649 2042 1158 1551 1648 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 153-159 156 1986-90 1759 2144 1261 1945 1765 1991-95 2035 2128 1379 2202 1986 1996-00 2361 2466 1291 2114 2255 2001-05 2544 2618 1402 1948 2426 2006-10 2669 3497 1531 1994 2642 2011-15* 2803 3468 1688 2185 2765 source: government of pakistan. 1990-2017 *4-year averages the average production of wheat crop in punjab, sindh, khyber pakhtunkhwa and baluchistan provinces were 8653,2085,907 and 407 thousand tonnes during 1981-85 whereas it was 18837,3759,1253 and 840 thousand tons during 2011-15, respectively. the results shows that there was a substantial increase in production of wheat crop in all provinces of pakistan. similarly, it was exposed from the results that the yield of wheat crop was significantly increased in punjab (70 percent), sindh (69.8 percent), khyber pakhtunkhwa (45.8 percent) and baluchistan (40.9 percent); it may be due to the introduction of new wheat varieties in the country over the time. figure 1: trend in area and production of wheat crop in pakistan, 1981-82 to 2011-15 3.2. growth analysis of wheat crop estimated growth rates of wheat crop during 1981-82 to 2014-15 were accessible in table-2. it was revealed from the outputs that the semi log models were statistically significant for wheat area, yield and production in all provinces of pakistan but wheat area model for sindh province was statistically non-significant. the sign of trend co-efficient for yield and production of wheat was positive for all models of four provinces of pakistan except wheat area for khyber pakhtunkhwa and sindh provinces where the sign of trend co-efficient were negative. the positive sign of growth rate explain that wheat area, yield and production in pakistan was increased at a rate of 0.65 percent, 1.90 percent and 2.56 percent per year, respectively. 7309 7700 8152 8268 8223 8841 8929 12053 13598 16193 18661 19960 23362 24688 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000 40000 1981-85 1986-90 1991-95 1996-00 2001-05 2006-10 2011-15 area ('000' hectares) production ('000' tonnes) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 153-159 157 table 2: estimated growth rate of wheat crop in pakistan, 1981-82 to 2014-15 wheat/region coefficient of determination (r2) trend coefficient (b) t-statistic growth rate (%) area pakistan 86.4 0.00651 14.26** 0.65 khyber pakhtunkhwa 23.8 -0.00316 -3.16** -0.32 punjab 94.3 0.00858 22.92** 0.86 sindh 0.10 -0.00033 -0.21ns -0.03 baluchistan 52.0 0.0133 5.89** 1.34 production pakistan 95.2 0.0253 25.19** 2.56 khyber pakhtunkhwa 30.2 0.00755 3.72** 0.76 punjab 94.0 0.0283 22.40** 2.87 sindh 69.6 0.0196 8.56 ** 1.98 baluchistan 50.2 0.0198 5.68** 2.00 yield pakistan 93.4 0.0188 21.24** 1.90 khyber pakhtunkhwa 59.6 0.0107 6.87** 1.08 punjab 89.6 0.0197 16.6** 1.99 sindh 83.4 0.0199 12.6** 2.01 baluchistan 19.8 0.00654 2.81** 0.66 **significant at 1% level of significance; ns=non significant table 2 illustrate that the compound growth rate for wheat area in punjab and baluchistan provinces were 0.86 percent and 1.34 percent, respectively. it means that the area under wheat crop in these two provinces were increasing at a rate of 0.86 percent and 1.34 percent per annum. in contrast, compound growth rate for wheat area of khyber pakhtunkhwa and sindh were -0.32 and -0.03 percent, which indicate that area under wheat crop was decreased at the rate of 0.32 percent and 0.03 percent per annum in these two provinces, respectively. it was also exposed from the results that the compound growth rate of wheat production for khyber pakhtunkhwa, punjab, sindh and baluchistan were 0.76, 2.87, 1.98 and 2.00 percent respectively, which explain that the production of wheat crop in the four provinces were increased at the rate of 0.76, 2.87, 1.98 and 2.00 percent per annum. the data also indicate that the yield of wheat crop in pakistan as well as in all the four provinces were increased. 3.3. variability in wheat crop the estimated relative variability index in wheat crop during 1981-82 to 2014-15 was presented in table 3. it may be observed from the results that area and yield of wheat crop in baluchistan recorded the highest degree of variability whereas in punjab province area and yield of wheat crop were noticed the lowest degree of variability. similarly, the maximum variability in wheat production was recorded for the baluchistan province followed by sindh, khyber pakhtunkhwa, and punjab. mostly the fluctuation in wheat production was due to the fluctuations in area under wheat crop and their yield. according to goswami and challa (2006), if variability in both area and yield components decline, then the variability in production is bound to decline. this is true with respect to wheat crop in pakistan (table-3). the results shows that the variability in wheat production had increased with the increased variability in area and yield, it may be due to the adoption of new technology. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 153-159 158 table 3: variability in wheat crop of pakistan during 1981-82 to 2014-15 provinces instability index for area for production for yield punjab 2.1 6.0 5.8 sindh 8.4 14.6 10.1 khyber pakhtunkhwa 5.8 11.0 8.2 balochistan 11.7 18.8 12.7 pakistan 2.5 5.2 4.5 source: author’s own calculation 4. conclusion the results illustrate that the area under wheat in punjab, sindh and baluchistan were increased over the time whereas cultivated area of wheat in khyber pakhtunkhwa province was marginally decreased during 1981-85 to 2011-15. the results show that there was significant increase in wheat yield and their production in the four provinces of pakistan. the increase in yield of wheat was possibly due to the introduction of new varieties in the country over the time. the semi log models were statistically significant for wheat area, yield and production in all provinces of pakistan except wheat area model for sindh province which was statistically non-significant. it may be observed that area and yield of wheat in baluchistan recorded highest degree of variability whereas in punjab province area and yield of wheat were noticed lowest degree of variability. similarly maximum variability in wheat production was recorded for the baluchistan province followed by sindh, khyber pakhtunkhwa, and punjab. mostly the variation in wheat production was due to the fluctuations in wheat area and their yield. the variability in wheat had increased, it may be due to the adoption of new varieties and better methods of cultivation, increase in variability of rainfall and prices and so on. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abid, s., shah, n. a., hassan, a., farooq, a., & masood, a. 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https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=agricultural+production+in+maharashtra%3a+growth+and+instability+in+the+context+of+new+technology&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=agricultural+production+in+maharashtra%3a+growth+and+instability+in+the+context+of+new+technology&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=growth+rates+and+fluctuations+of+agricultural+production%3a+a+district-wise+analysis+in+andhra+pradesh&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=growth+rates+and+fluctuations+of+agricultural+production%3a+a+district-wise+analysis+in+andhra+pradesh&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=an+empirical+investigation+of+the+nature+and+causes+for+growth+and+instability+in+indian+agriculture%3a+1950-80&btng= 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agricultural and resource economics, the university of tokyo, japan abstract 1 this study attempts to estimate the output supply and input demand elasticities of rice production using the restricted normalized translog profit function for the four major paddy producing districts; anuradhapura, hambantota, kurunegala and polonnaruwa in sri lanka. in addition, elasticities of substitution between inputs are also estimated. the results suggest that the changes in market prices of inputs and output significantly affect the farmers’ profits, rice supply and the use of resources in paddy cultivation. the supply elasticity of rice with respect to its own price is 0.5 and the supply elasticity of output with respect to fertilizer price is -0.05 on an average. fertilizer demand in the country is inelastic but significant to its own price. therefore, fertilizer subsidy is one of the main factors to increase fertilizer demand as well as paddy supply in the country. in addition, the low elasticity of substitution between labour and fertilizer and other inputs indicates that there is a complementary relationship among these inputs hence their combined application increases paddy production synergistically. overall, this study suggest that farmers are price sensitive and assures prevalence of higher output price is essential for higher rice production. keyword: translog profit function, demand elasticity, supply elasticity, elasticity of substitution 1. introduction 1.1. background of the study the development of the agriculture sector is imperative to the wellbeing of the people since it still plays a key role in sri lanka in terms of employments, and main consumption expenditure. rice is the main agricultural produce, like many other developing countries in asia and country’s staple food, and it has long been an important national target for attaining rice self-sufficiency. in the year 2014, it contributed 10 percent to the agricultural gdp and 1.1 percent to the total gdp (central bank of sri lanka 2014). the production and average yield of paddy in the country has tremendous improvement after independence in 1948, is mainly attributed the incentives provided by successive government through various measures such as huge investments in irrigation infrastructure, settlement schemes, introducing high yielding varieties (hyv), fertilizer subsidy and other input and output subsidies to farmers. as a result, sri lanka is almost achieved selfsufficiency in rice in good crop years. in spite of significant advances in rice production sector and various incentives provided to the sector, there is a rising concern about escalating the cost of production and declining profitability in rice cultivation. thiruchelvum (2005) also pointed out that sri lanka maintains high level of self-sufficiency in rice at a cost to the economy. in addition, the current fertilizer subsidy program seems highly cost ineffective due to government spends between 1.4 and 2.4 rupees per acre to increase farm income by only rupees 1 per acre (world bank, corresponding author’s email address: chaturawijethunga@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:chaturawijethunga@yahoo.com mailto:chaturawijethunga@yahoo.com mailto:chaturawijethunga@yahoo.com mailto:chaturawijethunga@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 22 2013). the current subsidy accounts 4 percent of agriculture gdp and 2 percent of the total government expenditure in 2014 (central bank of sri lanka, 2014). therefore, fertilizer subsidy is continuing as the most controversial input subsidy programme in sri lanka and the subsidy cost making a huge burden to the government budget. the main objective of this paper, therefore, is to analyze input demand and output supply parameters of paddy production with special reference to the fertilizer subsidy which has given significant interest in the recent years. in addition, study intends to estimate elasticities of the paddy supply and input demand which are vast important for the accurate prediction of the responsiveness of farmers to changes in input-output prices. further, our analysis also aims to estimate the elasticities of substitution among different inputs used in paddy cultivation in sri lanka. in order to meet the above objectives and to address the remainder of this paper is arranged as follows. next section presents brief review of literature focusing various econometric techniques employed for the estimation of output supply and input demand functions. section 2 presents the methodology employs to achieve the intended objectives. section 3 discusses the results using normalized translog profit function approach that jointly estimates output supply and input demand parameters in rice production. the final section presents the concluding remarks. 1.2. literature review there are various econometric techniques have been employed for the estimation of demand for inputs and supply of agricultural crops. among them production function approaches, cost function approach, profit function approach etc. are widely used. direct or indirect application of cobbdouglas production function is based on highly restricted assumptions of unitary elasticity of substitution, constant returns to scale hence it yields invalid elasticities (diewert, 1971; christensen et al., 1973). in addition, production functions with constant elasticity of substitution (ces), variable elasticity of substitution (ves) and the nested ces production functions are applied to estimate the production structures. however, they are based on rigid restrictions and incapable of explaining exact relationships among variables (chaudhary et al., 1998). consequently, the duality approach was widely applied to provide a comprehensive relationship among inputs and outputs (beccera & shuway, 1992; siregar, 2007). the translog form is flexible because specific features of technology such as returns to scale or homotheticity may be tested by examining the estimated model parameters (ray, 1982). berndt and christensen (1973), berndt & wood (1975), christensen et al. (1975) and binswanger (1974) also employed translog models. in addition, many authors have used profit function in empirical estimation of factor demand and output supply parameters (yotopoulos et al., 1976; sidhu & baanante, 1979 and 1981; bapna et al., 1984; ball, 1988; fulginiti & perrin, 1990; altemeier & bottema, 1991). among the various functional forms a flexible functional form for the profit function is preferred (diewert, 1973; fuss et al., 1978; lopez, 1985) and translog, normalized quadratic and generalized leontief are some of them. restricted normalized translog profit function is utilized as it is able to depict input demand and output supply simultaneously. the translog profit function is a flexible functional form to estimate the input demand as it can eliminate problems related to the restrictive as required by cobb-douglas profit function (diewert, 1971). therefore, many researchers chose to start from a profit function and derive input demand and supply response functions from the profit function based on hotelling’s lemma (wall & fisher, 1988; hattink et al., 1998). so far, in sri lanka only one study (rajapaksha & karunagoda, 2009) has examined the relationship among the multiple inputs used in paddy cultivation by applying the translog profit function approach using time series data. despite that there were some previous studies which estimated the demand for fertilizer in sri lanka using various approaches. as example, thusiman et al. (1987) estimated short run production elasticities by using micro level data and concluded that it is relatively less sensitive to increase paddy production in response to decrease in the price of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 23 fertilizer. meanwhile, a partial equilibrium model developed by weerahewa (2004) to capture the changes in policy framework in demand and supply function of paddy has estimated the demand and supply elasticities for the period of 1978-2000. in that model, rice demand is a function of rice price, other crop prices and expenditure while supply is a function of paddy price and only two inputs: seed price and fertilizer price. in addition, ekanayake (2006) has estimated the fertilizer demand elasticities for the period of 1981-2004 based on econometric method. according to his estimates fertilizer demand was relatively inelastic with respect to fertilizer prices. while, weligamage et al. (2009) has estimated rice production functions in kirindioya area using household survey data. recently, weerasooriya and gunaratne (2009) examined the link between the changes in productivity and fertilizer use associated with the fertilizer subsidy using supply and area response functions for the period of 1983-2007. however, none of these studies have examined the elasticity of substitution of inputs used in paddy in sri lanka. also there are no proper elasticity estimates for input demand and output supply in rice using recent input output data. hence, our study seems to fill the knowledge gap in sri lanka using a normalized translog profit function approach. 2. methodology this study estimates the input demand and output supply functions in four selected districts in sri lanka for the period of 1990-2012. the selected districts are anuradhapura, hambantota kurunegala and polonnaruwa which contributed around 11%, 6%, 11% and 13% correspondingly (average of 2009-12 periods) (department of census and statistics, 2012) to the national rice production annually. anuradhapura, hambantota and polonnaruwa districts belong to the dry zone where paddy cultivation is mainly under the irrigation schemes while kurunegala district belongs to the intermediate zone where paddy cultivation is under the rain–fed and irrigated schemes. in addition, commercial level paddy cultivation is conducted in all four districts. the demand for a production input is a derived demand based on the demand for final products. farmers are assumed to behave rationally and the general profit function can be expressed as: 𝜋 = 𝑃𝑄 − 𝑤𝑥 production function is given by: 𝑄 = 𝑓 𝑥, 𝑧 where 𝜋 is profit, 𝑃 and 𝑤 are prices of output and inputs respectively. output quantity is𝑄, while 𝑥 and z are the vectors of variable input quantities and fixed factor quantities. therefore, profit function can be solved for the maximization situation. max 𝑃𝑄 − 𝑤𝑥 subject to 𝑄 = 𝑓 𝑥, 𝑧 the solution for this problem is a set of input demand and output supply functions given by, 𝑥 = 𝑥(𝑃,𝑤, 𝑧) 𝑄 = 𝑞(𝑃,𝑤, 𝑧) substituting the above equations in general profit function gives profit maximization level of input and output. 𝜋 = 𝑃′𝑞 𝑃,𝑤, 𝑧 − 𝑤 ′𝑥(𝑃,𝑤, 𝑧) inverse input demand function and output supply functions can be obtained by differentiating the profit function with respect to the input price 𝑤 and output price𝑃. 𝑋𝑖 ∗ = − 𝜕𝜋 𝜕𝑤𝑖 = 𝑋∗(𝑃,𝑤, 𝑧) and 𝑄∗ = 𝜕𝜋 𝜕𝑃 = 𝑄∗(𝑃,𝑤, 𝑧) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 24 a generalization of the normalized trans-log profit function for a single output is given by diewert (1974), christensen et al. (1973). ln𝜋∗ = 𝛼0 + 𝛼𝑖 𝑛 𝑖=1 𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑖 ∗ + 1 2 𝛾𝑖ℎ 𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑖 ∗𝑛 ℎ=1 𝑛 𝑖=1 𝑙𝑛𝑃ℎ ∗ + 𝛿𝑖𝑘 𝑚 𝑘=1 𝑛 𝑖=1 𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑖 ∗𝑙𝑛𝑍𝑘 + 𝛽𝑘 𝑚 𝑘=1 𝑙𝑛𝑍𝑘 + 1 2 ∅𝑘𝑗 𝑚 𝑗=1 𝑚 𝑘=1 𝑙𝑛𝑍𝑘 𝑙𝑛𝑍𝑗 + 휀𝑖 ............ (1.1) where, 𝛾𝑖ℎ = 𝛾ℎ𝑖 , 𝛿𝑖𝑘 = 𝛿𝑘𝑖 and ∅𝑘𝑗 = ∅𝑗𝑘 for h, i and k and the function is homogeneous of degree one in prices of all variable inputs and outputs. the definition of the variables and notation used in the profit function are as follows: 𝜋∗ is the restricted profit (total revenue less total cost of variable inputs) normalized by 𝑃𝑞 , the price of output, 𝑃𝑖 ∗ is the price of variable input 𝑋𝑖 , normalized by 𝑃𝑞 , 𝑍𝑘 is the k th fixed inputs; 𝑖 = ℎ = 1,… .𝑛 , 𝑘 = 𝑗 = 1,…𝑚; 𝑙𝑛 is the natural logarithm; and 𝛼0,𝛼𝑖 , 𝛾𝑖ℎ , 𝛿𝑖𝑘 , 𝛽𝑘 and ∅𝑘𝑗 are the parameters to be estimated and 휀𝑖 is random error. the partial derivatives of restricted profit function with respect to logs of input price yield the share equations as follows; 𝑆𝑖 = 𝑃𝑖 ∗𝑋𝑖 𝜋∗ = 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝜋∗ 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝑃𝑖 ∗ = 𝛼𝑖 + 𝛾𝑖ℎ 𝑙𝑛𝑃ℎ ∗𝑛 ℎ=1 + 𝛿𝑖𝑘 𝑚 𝑘=1 𝑙𝑛𝑍𝑘 ................... (1.2) 𝑆𝑞 = 𝑃𝑞 ∗𝑋𝑞 𝜋∗ = 1 + 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝜋∗ 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝑃𝑞 ∗ = 1 − (𝛼𝑖 + 𝛾𝑖ℎ 𝑙𝑛𝑃ℎ ∗𝑛 ℎ=1 + 𝛿𝑖𝑘 𝑚 𝑘=1 𝑙𝑛𝑍𝑘) .................. (1.3) where 𝑆𝑖 is the share of 𝑖th input and𝑆𝑞 is the share of output (𝑞). 𝑆𝑞 is equivalent to the ratio of the total value of output to restricted profit. since the output and input shares come from singular system of equations, their summation is equal to one and one of the share equations can be ignored. the normalized input prices and quantities of fixed factors are considered the exogenous variables under the price taking behavior. using hotelling lemma, the translog profit function can be served to obtain the following share equations: derived factor demand function: 𝑋𝑖 = − 𝜋∗ 𝑃𝑖 𝛼𝑖 + 𝛾𝑖ℎ 𝑙𝑛𝑃ℎ ∗𝑛 ℎ=1 + 𝛿𝑖𝑘 𝑚 𝑘=1 𝑙𝑛𝑍𝑘 .................. (1.4) derived output paddy supply function: 𝑋𝑞 = 𝜋∗ 𝑃𝑞 [1 − (𝛼𝑖 + 𝛾𝑖ℎ 𝑙𝑛𝑃ℎ ∗𝑛 ℎ=1 + 𝛿𝑖𝑘 𝑚 𝑘=1 𝑙𝑛𝑍𝑘)] .................. (1.5) by using share equations and estimates of the profit function, output supply elasticity and input demand elasticities will be estimated simultaneously. estimation of elasticities the elasticities of variable input demands and output supply with respect to all exogenous variables evaluated at averages of the 𝑆𝑖 and at given levels of variable input prices. these are the linear transformations of parameter estimates of the profit function. from (1.2) the demand equation for the 𝑖th variable input can be written as, 𝑋𝑖 = 𝜋 𝑃𝑖 ln − 𝜕𝑙𝑛𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 .................. (1.6) 𝑙𝑛𝑋𝑖 = 𝑙𝑛𝜋 − 𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑖 + ln − 𝜕𝑙𝑛𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 ................. (1.7) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 25 the ownprice elasticity of demand (𝜂𝑖𝑖 ) for 𝑋𝑖 is, 𝜂𝑖𝑖 = 𝜕 ln 𝑋𝑖 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 = 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 − 1 + 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 − 𝜕𝑙𝑛𝜋 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝑃𝑖 ................. (1.8) 𝜂𝑖𝑖 = −𝑆𝑖 ∗ − 1 − 𝛾𝑖𝑖 𝑆𝑖 ∗ .................. (1.9) where 𝑆𝑖 ∗ is the simple average of 𝑆𝑖 . similarly from (1.7), the cross price elasticity of demand (𝜂𝑖ℎ) for input 𝑖 with respect to the price of ℎth input can be obtained: 𝜂𝑖ℎ = 𝜕 ln 𝑋𝑖 𝜕 ln 𝑃ℎ = 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝑃ℎ + 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝑃ℎ − 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝑃𝑖 ................. (1.10) 𝜂𝑖ℎ = −𝑆ℎ ∗ − 𝛾𝑖ℎ 𝑆𝑖 ∗ .................. (1.11) where𝑖 ≠ ℎ. the elasticity of demand for input 𝑖(𝜂𝑖𝑞) with respect to output price, 𝑃𝑞 , can also be obtained from (1.7); 𝜂𝑖𝑞 = 𝜕 ln 𝑋𝑖 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑞 = 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑞 − 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑞 + 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑞 − 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 .................. (1.12) 𝜂𝑖𝑞 = 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 𝑛 𝑖=1 . 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑞 − −1 − 𝛾𝑖ℎ 𝑆𝑖 ∗ 𝑛 ℎ=1 (−1) .................. (1.13) where 𝑖 = 1,……… ,𝑛, ℎ = 1,… . .𝑛, 𝜂𝑖𝑞 = 𝑆𝑖 ∗𝑛 1=1 + 1 + 𝛾𝑖ℎ 𝑆𝑖 ∗ 𝑛 ℎ=1 .................. (1.14) the elasticity of demand 𝜂𝑖𝑘 for input 𝑖 with respect to the 𝑘th fixed factor 𝑍𝑘 is also obtained from (1.7): 𝜂𝑖𝑘 = 𝜕 ln 𝑋1 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝑍𝑘 = 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑍𝑘 − 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 𝜕 ln 𝑍𝑘 + 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝑍𝑘 − − 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 , .................. (1.15) 𝜂𝑖𝑘 = 𝛿𝑖𝑘 ln𝑃𝑖 𝑛 𝑖=1 + 𝛽𝑘 − 𝛿𝑖𝑘 𝑆𝑖 ∗ .................. (1.16) output supply elasticities we evaluate the output supply elasticities with respect to output price, price of variable inputs and quantities of fixed inputs at averages of 𝑆𝑖 and at given levels of exogenous variables. it can also be expressed as linear functions of restricted profit function parameters. equation for output supply 𝑞 can be written as (1.17) using the duality theory. 𝑞 = 𝜋 + 𝑃𝑖𝑋𝑖 𝑛 𝑖=1 .................. (1.17) by using (1.4), gives the equation; 𝑞 = 𝜋 + 𝜋 − 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 𝑛 𝑖=1 , or 𝑞 = 𝜋 1 − 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 𝑛 𝑖=1 ............... (1.18) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 26 ln 𝑞 = ln𝜋 + 𝑙𝑛 1 − 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 𝑛 𝑖=1 .................. (1.19) elasticity of supply with respect to the price of 𝑖th variable input is given by equation (1.20) where𝑖 = ℎ = 1,… .𝑛. , 𝜖𝑞𝑖 = 𝜕 ln 𝑞 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 = 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 + 𝜕𝑙𝑛 𝜕 ln 𝑃𝑖 1 − 𝜕 ln 𝜋 𝜕 ln 𝑃ℎ 𝑛 ℎ=1 .................. (1.20) for the translog profit function: 𝜖𝑞𝑖 = −𝑆𝑖 − 𝛾ℎ𝑖 𝑛 ℎ=1 1 + 𝑆ℎ ∗𝑛 ℎ=1 .................. (1.21) the own price elasticity of supply 𝜖𝑞𝑞 and elasticity of output supply 𝜖𝑞𝑘 with respect to the fixed inputs 𝑍𝑘 is calculated by using following equations. 𝜖𝑞𝑞 = 𝑆𝑖 ∗𝑛 𝑖=1 + 𝛾𝑖ℎ 𝑛 ℎ=1 𝑛 𝑖=1 / 1 + 𝑆ℎ ∗𝑛 ℎ=1 ................... (1.22) 𝜖𝑞𝑘 = 𝛿𝑖𝑘 𝑛 𝑖=1 ln𝑃𝑖 + 𝛽𝐾 − 𝛿𝑖𝑘 𝑛 𝑖=1 / 1 + 𝑆ℎ ∗𝑛 ℎ=1 ................... (1.23) partial elasticities of substitution the partial elasticities of substitution are normalized price elasticities, represents how factor income shares change as the ratio of the factors change. atkinson & halvorsen (1976) defined the partial elasticities of substitution as: 𝜎𝑖𝑖 = 1 𝑆𝑖 𝜂𝑖𝑖 ................... (1.24) and 𝜎𝑖ℎ = 1 𝑆ℎ 𝜂𝑖ℎ ................... (1.25) where 𝜎𝑖𝑖 is the own elasticity of substitution and 𝜎𝑖ℎ is the cross elasticity of substitution. 2.1. data to estimate the model, labour, seeds, fertilizer and agro chemicals are included as variable factors of production of paddy. in addition the machinery cost and land are included as fixed factors of production. the profit function analysis is based on the data obtained from the biannual cost of cultivation surveys conducted by the socio economics and planning centre of the department of agriculture for the period of 1990 to 2012. weighted average price of urea, tsp and mop are used as fertilizer price for the analysis. gdp deflator index values obtained from the annual reports of central bank are used as proxy to calculate the machinery price index and real price index values are obtained compared to year 2000 values. total cost of each inputs are calculated for the districts by multiplying per acre input cost from the paddy extent harvested area in each districts obtained from the department of census and statistics for the each year. yala and maha season cost data are aggregated to obtain the total annual cost. farm gate price of paddy is obtained from the department of agriculture and one year lagged farm gate price is used for the model. all the time series variables are tested for the presence of stationary prior to perform the econometric analysis. in order to test for unit root at its level or first difference, all the variables are subjected to augmented dickey fuller (adf) unit root test. since the variables of the time series are stationary their variances and auto covariances are independent of time. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 27 2.2. model estimation from the general function (1.1), the normalized restricted translog profit function can be specified in actual variables as: ln𝜋∗ = 𝛼0 + 𝛼𝐿 ln𝑃𝐿 ∗ + 𝛼𝑆 ln𝑃𝑠 ∗ + 𝛼𝐹 ln𝑃𝐹 ∗ + 𝛼𝐶 ln𝑃𝐶 ∗ + 1 2 𝛾𝐿𝐿 ln𝑃𝐿 ∗ ln𝑃𝐿 ∗ + 1 2 𝛾𝑆𝑆 ln𝑃𝑆 ∗ ln𝑃𝑆 ∗ + 1 2 γ ff ln𝑃𝐹 ∗ ln𝑃𝐹 ∗ + 1 2 γ cc ln𝑃𝐶 ∗ ln𝑃𝐶 ∗ + 1 2 γ ls ln𝑃𝐿 ∗ ln𝑃𝑆 ∗ + 1 2 γ lf ln𝑃𝐿 ∗ ln𝑃𝐹 ∗ + 1 2 γ lc ln𝑃𝐿 ∗ ln𝑃𝐶 ∗ + 1 2 𝛾𝑆𝐹 ln𝑃𝑆 ∗ ln𝑃𝐹 ∗ + 1 2 𝛾𝑆𝐶𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑆 ∗ ln𝑃𝐶 ∗ + 1 2 𝛾𝐹𝐶 ln𝑃𝐹 ∗ ln𝑃𝐶 ∗ + 𝛿𝐿𝑍𝑚 ln𝑃𝐿 ∗ ln𝑍𝑚 + 𝛿𝐿𝑍𝑎 ln𝑃𝐿 ∗ ln𝑍𝑎 + 𝛿𝑆𝑍𝑚 ln𝑃𝑆 ∗ ln𝑍𝑚 + 𝛿𝑆𝑍𝑎 ln𝑃𝑆 ∗ ln𝑍𝑎 + 𝛿𝐹𝑍𝑚 ln𝑃𝐹 ∗ ln𝑍𝑚 + 𝛿𝐹𝑍𝑎 ln𝑃𝐹 ∗ ln𝑍𝑎 + 𝛿𝐶𝑍𝑚 ln𝑃𝐶 ∗ ln𝑍𝑚 + 𝛿𝐶𝑍𝑎 ln𝑃𝐶 ∗ ln𝑍𝑎 + 𝛽𝑍𝑚 ln𝑍𝑚 + 𝛽𝑍𝑎 ln𝑍𝑎 + 1 2 ∅𝑍𝑚𝑍𝑚 ln𝑍𝑚 ln𝑍𝑎 + 1 2 ∅𝑍𝑎𝑍𝑎 ln𝑍𝑎 ln𝑍𝑎 + ∅𝑍𝑚𝑍𝑎 ln𝑍𝑚 ln𝑍𝑎 …................ (1.26) where 𝜋∗ is the restricted profit (real value) from paddy production: total revenue less total cost of labour, seeds, fertilizer and agro chemicals normalized by the farm gate price of paddy; 𝑃𝐿 ∗ is the wage rate of labour per man day normalized by farm gate price of paddy; 𝑃𝑆 ∗ is the seed price normalized by farm gate price of paddy, 𝑃𝐹 ∗ is the fertilizer farm gate price normalized by farm gate price of paddy, 𝑃𝐶 ∗ is the agro chemical price normalized by farm gate price of paddy (import value of pesticides is included as a proxy for agro chemical price). fixed inputs included in the specifications of the profit function are 𝑍𝑚 machinery price (obtained by dividing the machinery cost by gdp deflator index) and 𝑍𝑎 is the land area index. all the price indices are in real value (2000=1). the parameters 𝛼0, 𝛼, 𝛽, 𝛿, and 𝜃 are to be estimated and subscripts 𝐿, 𝑆, 𝐹, and 𝐶 stand for the variable input of production labour, seeds, fertilizer and agro chemicals respectively. the partial derivatives of normal restricted translog profit function (1.26) with respect to log of input price are the negative share equations for labour, seeds, fertilizer and agro chemicals as follows: − 𝑃𝐿𝑋𝐿 𝜋∗ = 𝛼𝐿 + 𝛾𝐿𝐿 ln𝑃𝐿 ∗ + γ ls ln𝑃𝑆 ∗ + 𝛾𝐿𝐹 ln𝑃𝐹 ∗ + γ lc ln𝑃𝐶 ∗ + 𝛿𝐿𝑍𝑚 ln𝑍𝑚 + 𝛿𝐿𝑍𝑎 ln𝑍𝑎…...... (1.27) − 𝑃𝑆𝑋𝑆 𝜋∗ = 𝛼𝑆 + 𝛾𝑆𝑆 ln𝑃𝑆 ∗ + γ ls ln𝑃𝐿 ∗ + 𝛾𝑆𝐹 ln𝑃𝐹 ∗ + 𝛾𝑆𝐶 ln𝑃𝐶 ∗ + 𝛿𝑆𝑍𝑚 ln𝑍𝑚 + 𝛿𝑆𝑍𝑎 ln𝑍𝑎 .......... (1.28) − 𝑃𝐹𝑋𝐹 𝜋∗ = 𝛼𝐹 + 𝛾𝐹𝐹 ln𝑃𝐹 ∗ + γ lf ln𝑃𝐿 ∗ + 𝛾𝑆𝐹 ln𝑃𝑆 ∗ + 𝛾𝐹𝐶 ln𝑃𝐶 ∗ + 𝛿𝐹𝑍𝑚 ln𝑍𝑚 + 𝛿𝐹𝑍𝑎 ln𝑍𝑎 ........ (1.29) − 𝑃𝐶𝑋𝐶 𝜋∗ = 𝛼𝐶 + 𝛾𝐶𝐶 ln𝑃𝐶 ∗ + γ lc ln𝑃𝐿 ∗ + 𝛾𝑆𝐶 ln𝑃𝑆 ∗ + 𝛾𝐹𝐶 ln𝑃𝐹 ∗ + 𝛿𝐶𝑍𝑚 ln𝑍𝑚 + 𝛿𝐶𝑍𝑎 ln𝑍𝑎 ........ (1.30) where𝑋𝐿,𝑋𝑆 ,𝑋𝐹 and 𝑋𝐶 are the quantities of variable inputs of labour, seeds, fertilizer and agro chemicals, respectively. other variables and parameters are same as defined earlier. under the assumptions of profit maximizing and price taking behaviour, the parameters in equation (1.26) must be equal to the corresponding parameters in equation (1.27), (1.28), (1.29), (1.30) and must fulfil the symmetry restriction. this concept will provide testing the hypothesis of profit maximization. since the input and output shares come from a singular system of equations (since by definition 𝑆𝑞 − 𝑆𝑖=1), one of the share equations, the output share is dropped and the profit and factor demand equations are estimated as simultaneous system. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 28 an error term of the profit function and share equations are likely to be correlated contemporaneously due to large number of common explanatory variables. thus ordinary least square (ols) is not applicable to estimate the equation in the system. ols is also not appealing as we need to impose cross equation restrictions. this problem can be overcome by using zellner’s estimation procedure for seemingly unrelated regression (sur) to obtain estimates which are asymptotically equivalent to maximum likelihood estimation (mle) when iterated to convergence and invariant to which share equation is deleted. in addition to the symmetry constraints (𝛾𝐿𝑆 = 𝛾𝑆𝐿 ,𝛾𝐿𝐹 = 𝛾𝐹𝐿 , 𝛾𝐿𝐶 = 𝛾𝐶𝐿 , 𝛾𝑆𝐹 = 𝛾𝐹𝑆 , 𝛾𝑆𝐶 = 𝛾𝐶𝑆 , 𝛾𝐶𝐹 = 𝛾𝐹𝐶 ), the linear parametric constraints are also imposed across equations. before proceeding to the estimated parameter of normalized restricted translog profit and share equations, two hypothesis tests are carried out. they are test for the validity of profit maximization and cobb douglas hypothesis. the first empirical test checks the validity of symmetry and homogeneity restrictions across profit and share equations. the null hypothesis in the first test indicates that the parameters of the input share equations 1.27, 1.28, 1.29 and 1.30 are equal to the corresponding same parameters on the profit equation 1.26. an f test statistic with good asymptotic properties is conducted to test this hypothesis (theil, 1971). f test statistics indicates that the null hypothesis cannot be rejected at 0.05 level of significance. this means that the profit maximization assumption is valid for all four districts. the second statistical test is conducted in order to check the cobb-douglas (c-d) hypothesis where the coefficients of all second order terms in profit function (1.26) should be zero. therefore, an ftest is conducted to test the null hypothesis that all 𝛾𝑖ℎ equal zero and all 𝛿𝑖𝑘 equal zero. based on the f-test, the hypothesis on cobb-douglas is rejected, suggesting that the translog profit function is more suitable for the data. the stata 12 statistical software is used for the analysis. 3. results and discussion the parameter estimates of translog profit function for each district is presented in table 1 and output supply and demand elasticities derived are presented in table 2, 3, 4 and 5 for the selected districts of anuradhapura, hambantota, kurunegala, and polonnaruwa respectively. these elasticities are evaluated at simple averages of the 𝑆𝑖 and at geometric means of the variable input prices and of levels of fixed inputs. table 1: estimated normalized translog profit function for paddy variable polonnaruwa anuradhapura hambantota kurunegala lnpl -0.810 * (0.114) -0.982 * (0.145) -0.955 * (0.129) -1.212 * (0.109) lnps -0.086 * (0.010) -0.114 * (0.015) -0.174 * (0.023) -0.124 * (0.015) lnpf -0.227 * (0.031) -0.244 * (0.029) -0.243 * (0.038) -0.279 * (0.037) lnpc -0.125 * (0.024) -0.117 * (0.016) -0.171 * (0.034) -0.149 * (0.020) lnplpl -0.745 * (0.143) -1.089 * (0.155) -0.941 * (0.141) -1.548 * (0.133) lnpsps -0.060 * (0.007) -0.212 * (0.031) -0.024 (0.037) -0.092 * (0.019) lnpfpf -0.118 * (0.014) -0.129 * (0.020) -0.168 * (0.026) -0.150 * (0.017) lnpcpc 0.017 -0.073 0.179 * -0.082 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 29 (0.029) (0.052) (0.089) (0.056) lnplps -0.034 * (0.012) -0.027 (0.028) -0.167 * (0.044) -0.059 * (0.022) lnplpf -0.093 * (0.035) -0.195 * (0.037) -0.199 * (0.046) -0.257 * (0.038) lnplpc -0.202 * (0.042) -0.119 * (0.045) -0.372 * (0.085) -0.130 * (0.042) lnpspf -0.009 * (0.003) -0.032 * (0.005) 0.001 (0.013) -0.018 * (0.006) lnpspc -0.031 * (0.007) 0.025 (0.027) -0.102 * (0.041) -0.102 * (0.024) lnpfpc 0.007 (0.011) 0.009 (0.010) -0.070 * (0.025) -0.022 * (0.009) lnplzm -0.078 (0.207) -0.081 (0.150) 0.064 (0.073) 0.621 * (0.176) lnplza -0.836 * (0.270) -0.747 * (0.153) -0.786 * (0.111) -1.538 * (0.212) lnpszm -0.039 (0.012) -0.029 (0.022) 0.073 * (0.021) -0.023 (0.022) lnpsza -0.043 * (0.019) -0.065 * (0.022) -0.242 * (0.029) -0.106 * (0.025) lnpfzm -0.145 * (0.053) -0.024 (0.064) -0.151 * (0.045) -0.069 (0.058) lnpfza -0.284 * (0.082) -0.101 (0.069) -0.144 * (0.071) -0.198 * (0.064) lnpczm 0.020 (0.059) -0.033 (0.039) -0.109 * (0.041) -0.021 (0.036) lnpcza -0.175 (0.096) -0.012 (0.040) -0.060 (0.060) -0.132 * (0.041) cons 7.658 (0.099) 7.303 * (0.162) 6.777 * (0.136) 7.207 * (0.102) note: standard errors are in parenthesis. * significant at 5% as shown in table 1, coefficient of factor prices of labour, seeds, fertilizer and agro chemicals and their interaction terms are negative in the profit function. based on the results, price of labour, seeds, fertilizer and agro chemicals are significantly influence the profit function. therefore, cheaper input prices increase the profit obtained from paddy cultivation. however, the coefficients values are less than unity, indicate the input prices affect inelastic on the profit. moreover, the highest coefficient values for the labour wage rate, followed by fertilizer price indicate the profit is highly depending on labour wage rate and fertilizer price. as shown in table 2, 3, 4 and 5, the farm gate price of paddy has a significant positive effect on paddy supply while variable factor prices have negative effects as expected. the supply elasticity with respect to previous year farm gate price is found to be positive and inelastic; a one percent rise in the paddy price would expand the supply of paddy ranging between 0.4 to 0.6 and on an average it is 0.5 percent. therefore, results indicate that the effect of paddy price is more important to determine the country’s paddy supply than the price of fertilizer. and also our supply elasticity is in line with recent study findings of weerahewa (2004) that estimated supply elasticity with respect to own price is 0.6 and with respect to fertilizer price is -0.07 for the 1978-2000 periods. but our elasticity values are smaller than the results obtained by rajapaksha & karunagoda (2009) that estimated own price elasticity of paddy supply raging between 0.85 in polonnaruwa district to 2.37 in kalutara district. meantime, the aggregate paddy output elasticities with respect to price were relatively low in sri lanka in early years, with short-run supply elasticity falling between 0.09 and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 30 0.13 and long-run elasticity 0.11-0.19 (gunawardana & oczkowski, 1992; bogahawatte, 1983; samaratunga, 1984). the negative supply elasticities with respect to variable inputs imply that the input use will decline with the increased input price thus would reduce the paddy yield and output. moreover, the results show that wage rate and fertilizer price are the influencing variable inputs on paddy supply while fixed factor of land also affect significantly. the results show that the output supply with respect to fertilizer price is significant and -0.05 on an average. therefore, fertilizer subsidy has a significant positive effect on paddy output in the country and the effect is relatively small compared to paddy price. according to the figures, supply elasticity with respect to fertilizer price is quite comparable in absolute values in anuradhapura and kurunegala districts (-0.05) whereas values are less than unity in all four districts. thus, the paddy supply with respect to fertilizer price is inelastic as estimated. in addition, one percent rise in wage rate will decrease the paddy supply by 0.18 percent on an average. moreover, expansion of cultivable area would enhance paddy supply significantly and positively in all the districts. the largest supply elasticity in kurunegala with respect to land area may be due to the fact that farmers in kurunegala district cultivate paddy using rain-fed as well as irrigated system and when the irrigated water is available adequately so that increasing in land area would expand the paddy production significantly. but in other three districts paddy cultivation largely depends on irrigated water and supply is limited. moreover, fixed input of machinery has slight positive impact in all the districts except in kurunegala. the own price elasticity of demand for inputs have negative signs as expected and are statistically significant except own price elasticity of agro chemical in anuradhapura andprice elasticity of seed and chemical in kurunegala district. elasticity values are less than unity in absolute value for all the inputs in all four districts (except agro chemical in hambantota and polonnaruwa). derived elasticity estimates for paddy supply and demand for variable inputs in rice production table 2: elasticity values – anuradhapura district output/input price of paddy price of labour price of seed price of fertilizer price of chemical machinery land paddy supply 0.478 * -0.231 * -0.001 -0.054 ** -0.042 0.089 0.503 * labour demand 0.617 * -0.588 * -0.078 * 0.022 0.027 0.044 0.404 * seed demand 0.031 -0.609 * -0.830 * 0.087 -0.339 0.013 0.028 fertilizer demand 0.596 ** 0.090 0.047 -0.578 * -0.155 * .015 0.065 agro-chemical demand 0.868 0.210 -0.334 -0.286 * -0.457 0.016 0.006 note: the figures are calculated at the mean value of shares. significance test for each estimated elasticity can be conducted by making use of estimated standard errors as follows: 𝑆𝐸 𝜂𝑖ℎ = 𝑆𝐸(𝛾𝑖ℎ)/𝑆𝑖 and t statistics can be calculated by 𝑡𝑖ℎ = 𝜂𝑖ℎ/𝑆𝐸(𝜂𝑖ℎ) where 𝜂𝑖ℎ is elasticity of factor demand * significant at 5%, ** significant at 10% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 31 table 3: elasticity values – hambantota district output/input price of paddy price of labour price of seed price of fertilizer price of chemical machinery land paddy supply 0.422 ** -0.019 -0.002 -0.009 0.012 0.095 0.667 * labour demand 0.056 -0.535 * 0.086 0.057 0.336 * -0.034 0.378 * seed demand 0.040 0.499 -0.948 * -0.215 * 0.623 * -0.035 0.116 fertilizer demand 0.100 -0.505 * -0.140 -0.374 * 0.198 0.109 0.104 agro-chemical demand 0.521 1.708 * 0.547 * 0.267 -2.339 * 0.055 0.030 note: the figures are calculated at the mean value of shares. significance test for each estimated elasticity can be conducted by making use of estimated standard errors as follows: 𝑆𝐸 𝜂𝑖ℎ = 𝑆𝐸(𝛾𝑖ℎ)/𝑆𝑖 and t statistics can be calculated by 𝑡𝑖ℎ = 𝜂𝑖ℎ/𝑆𝐸(𝜂𝑖ℎ) where 𝜂𝑖ℎ is elasticity of factor demand * significant at 5%, ** significant at 10% table 4: elasticity values –kurunegaladistrict output/input price of paddy price of labour price of seed price of fertilizer price of chemical machinery land paddy supply 0.462 * -0.168 ** -0.001 -0.060 * 0.006 -0.298 * 1.205 * labour demand 0.422 ** -0.396 * -0.051 * 0.021 0.003 -0.374 * 0.928 * seed demand 0.024 -0.444 * -0.285 -0.079 0.785 * 0.012 0.054 fertilizer demand 0.607 * 0.086 -0.037 -0.618 * -0.038 0.052 0.148 agro-chemical demand 0.120 0.022 0.670 * -0.070 -0.501 0.012 0.076 note: the figures are calculated at the mean value of shares. significance test for each estimated elasticity can be conducted by making use of estimated standard errors as follows: 𝑆𝐸 𝜂𝑖ℎ = 𝑆𝐸(𝛾𝑖ℎ)/𝑆𝑖 and t statistics can be calculated by 𝑡𝑖ℎ = 𝜂𝑖ℎ/𝑆𝐸(𝜂𝑖ℎ) where 𝜂𝑖ℎ is elasticity of factor demand * significant at 5%, ** significant at 10% table 5: elasticity values-polonnaruwa district output/input price of paddy price of labour price of seed price of fertilizer price of chemical machinery land paddy supply 0.653 * -0.281 * -0.033 -0.113 * -0.052 0.085 0.971 * labour demand 0.795 ** -0.837 * -0.003 -0.101 * 0.145 -0.053 0.676 ** seed demand 0.827 -0.022 -0.439 * -0.062 -0.304 0.012 ** 0.036 fertilizer demand 1.143 * -0.361 * -0.025 -0.679 * -0.079 0.109 0.185 agro-chemical demand 0.905 0.897 -0.214 -0.136 -1.452 ** 0.016 0.074 note: the figures are calculated at the mean value of shares. significance test for each estimated elasticity can be conducted by making use of estimated standard errors as follows: 𝑆𝐸 𝜂𝑖ℎ = 𝑆𝐸(𝛾𝑖ℎ)/𝑆𝑖 and t statistics can be calculated by 𝑡𝑖ℎ = 𝜂𝑖ℎ/𝑆𝐸(𝜂𝑖ℎ) where 𝜂𝑖ℎ is elasticity of factor demand * significant at 5%, ** significant at 10% increase in output price would also encourage direct and significant expansion in demand for variable inputs especially labour and fertilizer in paddy cultivation. in quantitative terms, the percent increases in demand for labour, associated with one percent increase in output price are 0.62, 0.06, 0.42 and 0.80 for the anuradhapura, hambantota, kurunegala and polonnaruwa districts, respectively. meantime, the results also indicate that labour and agro chemicals in all four districts are substitute inputs in paddy production. elasticity of labour with respect to fixed inputs of land is positive and significant for all the districts and the average elasticity value is 0.60. therefore, degree of responsiveness to labour absorption is significant but inelastic. the significant negative elasticity value of labour demand with respect to machinery in kurunegala district indicates that labour and machinery are complementary inputs and their combined application will increase paddy production. this might be due to the fact that in sri lanka the majority of the paddy lands are small plots of less than one hectare, thus mechanization in large scale cannot apply and consequently labour and small equipment are jointly use in paddy cultivation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 32 the study result suggests that the demand for seeds with respect to labour and fertilizer are complementary in inputs. meanwhile, seed demand increase slightly with fixed inputs of machinery and land. demand for fertilizer with respect to labour is negative and significant in the hambantota and polonnaruwa districts, while the elasticity values are positive but insignificant in anuradhapura and kurunegala districts. hence, fertilizer and labour inputs in hambantota and polonnaruwa districts act as complementary inputs. fertilizer demand elasticity with respect to land is in around 0.1. as can be seen from tables 2, 3, 4 and 5, the own price elasticities of fertilizer are -0.58, -0.37, -0.62 and -0.68 for anuradhapura, hambantota, kurunegala and polonnruwa districts respectively. furthermore, fertilizer demand elasticity to the output price is highest in polonnaruwa (1.14). contrary, one percent increase in paddy price will increase the fertilizer demand only by 0.10 percent in hambantota district. this is due to the fact that in polonnaruwa district fertilizer use in paddy farming is noticeably higher than that of hambantota district. therefore, findings of our results show that fertilizer demand in the country is significantly affected by both farm gate price of paddy and fertilizer price. however, ekanayake (2006) using a simple regression model, found that changes in the prices of fertilizer do not have a significant effect on fertilizer usage and own price elasticity of fertilizer demand is -0.1. rajapaksha & karunagoda (2009) also concluded that the fertilizer demand in the country is highly responsive to the paddy price rather than fertilizer price. according to their estimation, fertilizer demand is elastic with respect to its own price and paddy price. however, normalized translog profit function estimated by them seems to be unclear since they used interaction between paddy price and variable inputs in their model. based on simple cobb douglas approach using individual farm level data, weligamage et al. (2009) also found that the elasticity of paddy yield with respect to fertilizer application is 0.15 and this estimate implies that the elasticity of fertilizer demand with respect to fertilizer price is approximately -1.2. study results indicate that agro chemical demand with respect to output price is positive but not significant. similarly, agro chemical demand with respect to fixed inputs is positive and relatively small. moreover, the effect of wage rate on agro chemical demand is positive in all the districts indicates labour and agro chemicals are substitutes in paddy cultivation. this might be because instead of using more labour in general land preparation activities, weedicides can be used intensively to reduce the labour inputs. in addition, seed is also substitute to agro chemicals in hambantota and kurunegala districts. the analysis also suggests that the expansion of capital in the form of agricultural machineries, decreases labour demand (except in anuradhapura district) contributes positively to paddy production. in addition, exogenous increases in land area also increase the paddy production and demand for all variable inputs of production in the country. the expansion of land has relatively large influence on output supply and labour demand while seed, fertilizer and agro chemical demand have small impact. the estimated elasticities of substitution between pairs of inputs are presented in the table 6 for four districts. labour is a substitute for agro chemicals and the highest substitutability value can be observed in hambantota district. nonetheless, labour is complement to the seed except in hambantota district. the estimates also indicate that seed and fertilizer are complementary except in anuradhapura district. in addition elasticity of substitution values between fertilizer and agro chemicals are also negative (except hambantota). as seen from table 6, the largest substitutability relation is between seeds and agro chemicals and the value is higher than the unity. however, the low elasticity of substitution between labour and fertilizer and other input pairs indicates that there is a complementary relationship among these inputs hence combined application of such inputs will synergistically increase the paddy production in the country. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 33 table 6: estimated elasticities of substitution anuradhapura 𝜎𝐿𝐿=-0.69 𝜎𝐿𝑠= -0.71 𝜎𝐿𝐹=0.11 𝜎𝐿𝐶=0.24 𝜎𝑠𝑠=-7.56 𝜎𝑆𝐹=0.43 𝜎𝑆𝐶=-3.05 𝜎𝐹𝐹=-2.81 𝜎𝐹𝐶=-1.39 𝜎𝐶𝐶=-4.1 hambantota 𝜎𝐿𝐿=-0.70 𝜎𝐿𝑠=0.65 𝜎𝐿𝐹=0.28 𝜎𝐿𝐶=2.23 𝜎𝑠𝑠=-7.17 𝜎𝑆𝐹=-1.06 𝜎𝑆𝐶=4.14 𝜎𝐹𝐹=-1.84 𝜎𝐹𝐶=1.31 𝜎𝐶𝐶=-15.53 kurunegala 𝜎𝐿𝐿=-0.40 𝜎𝐿𝑠=-0.45 𝜎𝐿𝐹=0.09 𝜎𝐿𝐶=0.02 𝜎𝑠𝑠=-2.55 𝜎𝑆𝐹=-0.33 𝜎𝑆𝐶=5.99 𝜎𝐹𝐹=-2.56 𝜎𝐹𝐶=-0.29 𝜎𝐶𝐶=-3.83 polonnaruwa 𝜎𝐿𝐿=-1.06 𝜎𝐿𝑠=-0.03 𝜎𝐿𝐹=-0.46 𝜎𝐿𝐶=1.14 𝜎𝑠𝑠=-4.91 𝜎𝑆𝐹=-0.28 𝜎𝑆𝐶=-2.39 𝜎𝐹𝐹=-3.09 𝜎𝐹𝐶=-0.62 𝜎𝐶𝐶=-11.41 note: elasticities of substitution values are evaluated at the means of the data. the subscripts l, s, f and c stand for labour, seeds, fertilizer and agro chemicals respectively. the own elasticities of substitution has little economic meaning. from the analysis, following broad conclusions may be drawn about the paddy production in sri lanka. 4. conclusion the overall estimations suggest that the changes in market prices of inputs and output affect significantly on farmer profit, rice supply and the resource use in paddy cultivation. meanwhile, farmers maximize profit in paddy farming subject to given inputs (labour, seeds, fertilizer and agro chemicals), paddy prices and fixed factors of production (machinery and land). the results show that paddy output in the country is more responsive to the increase in output price than change in fertilizer price. the impact of fertilizer price on paddy supply is relatively small (supply elasticity with respect to fertilizer price is -0.05) but significant.generally fertilizer demand is thought to be more elastic in developing countries; this study outcome confirms that in sri lanka fertilizer demand is inelastic but significant to its own price. consequently, fertilizer subsidy is one of the main factors to increase the fertilizer demand as well as output supply in the country. as indicated by the elasticity, fertilizer demand in the country is also significantly depend on the output price of supply. therefore, paddy price has strong incentive to promote the fertilizer demand as well as paddy production in the country. in addition, the analysis shows that labour demand in paddy cultivation is more responsive to the wage rate while fertilizer price has fair degree of responsiveness. the low substitutability between labour and fertilizer and other input pairs indicates combined application of such inputs increase the paddy production in the country.overall, this study suggests that farmers are price sensitive and assures prevalence of high output price is essential for higher production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(2)2016, 21-35 34 views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references altemeier, k., & bottema, t. 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(1973). transcendental logarithmic production frontiers.the review of economics and statistics, 55(1), 28-45. christensen, r., jorgenson, d. w., & lau, l. r. (1975). transcendental logarithmic utility functions. american economic review, 65, 367-833. department of agriculture (1990-2012). cost of cultivation of agricultural crops. socio economic and planning centre, peradeniya, sri lanka. department of census and statistics (2002). census of agriculture, colombo, sri lanka.accessed july 2015 fromhttp://www.statistics.gov.lk/. department of census and statistics (2012).paddy statistics. colombo, sri lanka. accessed july 2015 from http://www.statistics.gov.lk/. diewert, w. e. (1971). an application of the shephard duality theorem: a generalized leontief production function. journal of political economics, 79, 481-507. diewert, w. e. (1973). functional forms for profit and transformation functions. journal of economic theory, 6, 284-316. diewert, w. e. 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(2009). impact of fertilizer subsidy on productivity, supply and cultivated extent of paddy. abstracts of the third annual research forum of sri lanka agricultural economics association, october 2, hector kobbekaduwa agrarian research and training institute, colombo. accessed february 2015 from http://www.slageconr.net/saea/arf/abstractsarf03.pdf/. weligamage, p. c. r., shumway, k. a., blatner, w. r., butcher, & giordano, m. (2009). production function for rice in kirindi oya major irrigation system in sri lanka. presentation at the third annual research forum of sri lanka agricultural economic association, october 2, hector kobbekaduwa agrarian research and training institute, colombo. world bank (2013). what is the cost of a bowl of rice? the impact of sri lanka’s current trade and price policies on the incentive framework for agriculture. discussion paper 02, washington, dc 20433. yotopoulos, p. a., lau, l. j., & lin, w. (1976). microeconomic output supply and factor demand functions in the agriculture of the province of taiwan. american journal of agricultural economics, 58(2), 333-340. http://www.ifpri.org/publication/impacts-trade-liberalization-and-market-reforms-rice-sector-sri-lanka/ http://www.ifpri.org/publication/impacts-trade-liberalization-and-market-reforms-rice-sector-sri-lanka/ http://www.slageconr.net/saea/arf/abstractsarf03.pdf/ 746 strategy formulation of empowering farmers capability at integrated farming of beef cattle and paddy base on zero waste: analytical hierarchy process approach agustina abdullah department of socio-economics of animal husbandry, hasanuddin university, makassar, indonesia hikmah m. ali department of animal production, hasanuddin university, makassar, indonesia jasmal a. syamsu department of animal nutrition and feed science, hasanuddin university, makassar, indonesia abstract 1 the study aims to formulate a strategy for strengthening the farmers in the adoption of technology for the development of integrated beef cattle with paddy. research was conducted in pinrang south sulawesi province for seven months. primary data obtained by using questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussion. in this study also was involved expert respondents. flow implementation strategy formulation is done using analytical hierarchy process (ahp) techniques. the results showed that to increased optimally capacity of paddy straw processing technologies dairy farmers as feed technology for implementation strategies required waste treatment at the level of the farmers (weighting 0,558). increased capacity of the farmersin cow waste processing technology as fertilizer can be achieved by applying a strategy of increased knowledge and skills of extension officers in sewage treatment technology (weighting 0,443). in order to increase achievement farmers cow waste processing technology as biogas and development material/methods extension technology based on the needs of ranchers was required a strategy in providing of facilities and infrastructure supporting the application of the technology of sewage treatment (weighted 0.590 and 0,517). keywords: spatial mapping, sustainable and competitive tourism, lake conservation, north sulawesi corresponding author’s details: name: agustina abdullah email address: abdullah_ina@yahoo.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:luchman@ub.ac.id asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 746-752 747 introduction integration of beef cattle with paddy is the best strategy to improve the optimization of resource utilization of agricultural waste. but the effort has not been implemented properly, because its implementation is still done on a partial, not integrated and holistic. the main component of technology that need to be controlled by farmers in farming systems especially integrated system of beef cattle and paddy waste treatment technology of processing technology of paddy straw as feed, livestock waste processing technology as biogas (syamsu, 2011). abdullah and syamsu (2008), mentioned that the development pattern of the integration of livestock and paddy, its success was determined by the capacity resources of the farmers. the capacity development of the farmers implemented by growing awareness of the farmers, where all the activity in the development of livestock such as beef cattle was done from, by and for the farmers. development of the farmers implemented with participatory approach so that the principle of equality, transparency, responsibility, accountability and cooperation are main factors in empowering of farmers. capacity limitations and capabilities owned by farmers such as limitations in terms of knowledge, skills, capital/expense for the use of the technology, the technology does not have the power or compatibility with adaptive area and socio-cultural conditions, advantages value added obtained relatively fewer farmers when the technology is adopted, some of the causes of low farm technology adoption by farmers. to that end, the role of technology in the development of the integration of beef cattle and paddy is very important which is supported by a high level of adoption of technology in order to improve the productivity of livestock farming is beef cattle and paddy. factors determine the success utilization of waste cattle as fertilizer and rice straw as fodder is kapasistas farmers in terms of attitude, knowledge and skill. for that purpose this research to formulate strategy to increase the capacity farmers in adopting technology for development beef cattle which integrated with paddy. method research was carried out in pinrang south sulawesi province, indonesia for seven months. primary data obtained using data collection techniques by using questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussion, the discussion group with farmers to identify the problems in developing cattle and paddy business. in this study also was involved an expert respondents. experts can come from other areas as election was prioritized on experts/practitioners who have expertise or asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 746-752 748 experience, reputation and on aspects related to this research. flow implementation strategy formulation was conducted using analytical hierarchy process (ahp) techniques according to saaty (1993). generally, in this study, there were three stages of the formulation of the strategy of strengthening the capacity of farmers in the adoption of technology for the development of an integrated beef cattle with paddy those are: a) the decomposition. in drawing up the priorities, then the problem should be able to in the decomposition of a goal/target (goal) of an activity, the identification of the options (options), and the formulation of criteria (criteria) to choose priorities. b) assessment and comparison of the elements. after the problems was decomposed, then there were a two-stage assessment or compare between elements of the comparison between the criteria and the comparison between options for each criterion. comparison between the criteria intended to determine weights for each of the criteria. on the other hand, the comparison between options for each criterion. in other words, this assessment was intended to see how important the choice of certain criteria. c) the synthesis assessment. synthesis of the results was the final stage of the ahp. basically, this synthesis was the summation of the weights obtained every option on each criterion after being given the weighting of such criteria. in this study, the results comparison of pairs were done by an expert, the synthesis of the assessment carried out using software namely criteria decision plus (marimin, 2004) that assist and speed up the completion of the synthesis of the assessment has been carried out in the assessment of the comparative matrix pairs. results and discussion based on the results of the interviews and focus group discussion with experts that farmers, agricultural extension officers, the department of animal husbandry, researchers and academics, then formulated the preparation of decomposed priority be the goal/target (goal) of an activity, the identification of the options (options), and the formulation of criteria (criteria) to choose priorities. in this research the goal was strengthening the capacity of farmers in the adoption of technology for the development of an integrated beef cattle with paddy. after the target was set, the next step was to determine which criteria/deciding factor strengthening the capacity of farmers in the adoption of technology, as follows. research results based on expert opinions set out the deciding factor: a) characteristics of socio psychological farmers, b the socio-economic characteristics) of the farmers, c) characteristics of technological innovation, d) the capacity of farmers in farming paddy, e) farmers capacity in cows farming business, as well as f) performance of extension officers. formulated actor or who lodges in the capacity strengthening farmers in adopting technology for development beef cattle which integrated with paddy such as a) farmers, b) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 746-752 749 private businessmen c) the government or the related agency, d ) extension agent e) college or research institutions and research and development. in the capacity of strengthening farmers in adopting technology for development beef cattle, which was integrated with paddy not separated from purpose to be achieved. some purpose to be achieved in the capacity strengthening farmers in adopting technology were a) capacity improvement farmers technology processing of paddy straw as feed, b) capacity improvement farmers technology of feces/urine treatment as a fertilizer, c) capacity improvement farmers technology feces/urine treatment as biogas, d) development material / counseling method technology based on the needs of farmers, and e) improved performance of extension agent in mentoring farmers for adoption of waste treatment technology. then set some of the strategies that will be used in achieving the objectives that have been set. some strategies were formulated which were a) applied technology optimally in the sewage treatment at farmers level, b) the provision of facilities and infrastructure supporting the application of waste treatment technologies, as well as c) increased knowledge and skills of extension officers in waste treatment technology. based on the decomposition of which has been described above, the hierarchy method was built as in figure 1. in this study, a comparison of paired assessment conducted by the experts, the synthesis of the assessment carried out using software namely criterium decision plus, which helps accelerate the completion of the synthesis and assessment has been done in the assessment of the comparative matrix pairs. synthesis assessment results in strengthening the capacity of farmers to the adoption of technology in the development of an integrated beef cattle with grain that the deciding factor strengthening the capacity of farmers to the adoption of technology in the development of an integrated beef cattle with grain obtained that the performance extension officers are the highest impact factors in strengthening the capacity of farmers to adopt technology with weights 0,327, further characterizing the socio psychological farmers 0,194, as well as the capacity of farmers in cow farming business and farmer capacity in farming of paddy with the same weighting 0,148. on the other hand, comparison of the importance of factors with an actor/performer, showed that the factor characteristics socio-phsycology, characteristic socio economic farmers and farmers determined by peasant farmers (0.515 and 0,473 weights). this means that for the development of psychological and socio-economic characteristics of the farmers in the framework of strengthening the capacity of the farmerswas determined by the farmers themselves who should be trying to increase asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 746-752 750 figure 1: analytical hierarcy structure of the strategy of strengthening the capacity of farmers in the adoption of technology for the development of an integrated beef cattle with paddy asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 746-752 751 the capacity of knowledge and skills. determinants of the characteristics of the innovation in strengthening the capacity of farmers, actor/performer who was instrumental was the research& development institutes or universities with weights 0.797, on the other hand the government or related service was an actor or performer who was instrumental in the capacity of farmers in the farming of paddy and beef with 0,590 and weights 0,317. the extension officers or companion was an actor or performer who was instrumental in improving the performance of extension officers (weighting 0,530). the interests of the actors with the aim of strengthening the capacity of farmers to adopt technology that results obtained for the enhancement of the capacity of the farmersin cow waste processing technology as a fertilizer, the role of private ranchers and farmers or entrepreneurs was huge with weights 0,327 and 0.400. private parties or entrepreneurs play a role in the achievement of the purpose of extension officers and companion was instrumental in the development of materials/methods extension technology based on the needs of farmers with weights 0,378. government or agency of livestock was instrumental in the achievement of the objectives for improving the performance of extension officers in mentoring the farmers, and research& development institutes or universities contributed to the achievement of the objectives for the development of the material/methods extension technology based on the needs of farmers. results of the comparison of alternative strategies with the goal of showing that to increase the capacity of the paddy straw processing technologies dairy farmers as feed applied technology optimally required waste treatment at the level of the farmers (weighting 0,558). increased capacity of the farmersin cow waste processing technology as fertilizer can be achieved by applying a strategy of increased knowledge and skills of extension officers in sewage treatment technology (weighting 0,443). in order to increase achievement farmers of cow waste processing technology as biogas and development material/methods extension technology based on the needs of ranchers was required strategy, which was the provision of facilities and infrastructure supporting the application of the technology of sewage treatment (weighted 0.590 and 0,517). to achieve the goal of improved performance extension officers in mentoring farmers for adoption of technology waste treatment required the simultaneous application of the three strategies, namely applying sewage treatment technology optimally by the farmers, the provision of facilities and infrastructure supporting the application of waste treatment technologies, as well as an increase in knowledge and skills of extension officers in waste treatment technology. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(10) 2013: 746-752 752 conclusions to achieve the goal of improved performance extension officers in mentoring farmers for adoption of technology waste treatment required the simultaneous application of the three strategies, namely applying sewage treatment technology optimally by the farmers, the provision of facilities and infrastructure supporting the application of waste treatment technologies, as well as an increase in knowledge and skills of extension officers in waste treatment technology. increased capacity of paddy straw processing technologies by farmers was required a strategies in applyingoptimally waste treatment technology at the level of the farmers (weighting 0,558). increased capacity of the farmers in cow waste processing technology as fertilizer can be achieved by applying a strategy of increased knowledge and skills of extension officers in sewage treatment technology (weighting 0,443). in order to increase achievement farmersin cow waste processing technology as biogas and development material/methods extension technology based on the needs of ranchers required a strategy which was the provision of facilities and infrastructure supporting the application of the technology of sewage treatment (weighted 0.590 and 0,517). acknowledgment the authors are thankful to the directorate general for higher education, ministry of education and culture of the republic of indonesia and institute for research and community services hasanuddin university for supporting this study, through program of university excellent research, 2013. our sincere thanks are due to the farmers in pinrang regency, south sulawesi involved in this study for their cooperation. references abdullah, a., ali, h. m. and syamsu, j. a. (2011). feed technology adoption model to improve productivity of beef cattle. national strategic research program, directorate general of higher education, ministry of education and culture of the republic of indonesia abdullah, a. and syamsu, j. a. (2008). empowering farmer groups in developing farming agribusiness. buletinpeternakan (local journal), edition 28. south sulawesi province, indonesia marimin (2004). technique and application in decision making of multiple criteria. grasindo. jakarta. saaty, t. l. (1993). decision making or a leader. p. t. pustaka binaman pressindo, jakarta. syamsu, j. a. (2011). paradigm reposition in development of beef farming. penerbit absolute media, jogjakarta. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants © 2015 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 volume 5(5), 124-136 124 the total factor productivity in strategic food crops industry of malaysia kamarudin othman falcuty of business, universiti teknologi mara kedah, merbok, kedah, malaysia amir hussin baharuddin school of economics, finance and banking, college of business (cob), universiti utara malaysia, sintok, kedah, malaysia abstract total factor productivity (tfp) may indicate the long-term economic growth of a country. in addition, it is also a comprehensive measure of the level of productivity in the economy. therefore, these study attempts to investigate the tfp for malaysia paddy sub-sector. the study was conducted in four muda agricultural development authorities (mada) regions and employed a seasonal the series of data from 1996 to 2011. result has found that the actual tfp growth is below than 5 percent for each season. the study also found that the actual tfp trend has been volatile over time. study has further investigated the factors affecting tfp growth in the malaysian paddy industry for the entire period. seven selected factors are found to be associated with striking tfp growth. the result has discovered that all the selected factors are important in influencing the paddy production in malaysia. however, the magnitude is different for each region. keywords: total factor productivity, paddy, mada, self-sufficiency level (ssl) 1. introduction 1 nowadays, the contribution of the malaysian agricultural sector to economic growth is getting smaller compared to that of 1960s. although the contribution of this sector declined but it stay played an important role in economic growth. based on figure 1, we discovered that agricultural sector becomes the third most important engine of the economic growth in malaysia. one of the main crops in malaysia agricultural sector is a paddy. since malaysia was independent in 1957, until now, the paddy sub-sector plays a crucial role in affecting economic, politics, and social landscape of the country (mutert & fairhurst, 2002). in addition, this sector is very important especially in terms of the national food security. therefore, paddy has become the essential food crop in malaysia. it is also known as a single strategic crop. hence, because of the importance of this crop, all efforts have been made by the government to ensure that local paddy production can meet the demand of the country. corresponding author’s name: kamarudin othman email address: kbo176617@kedah.uitm.edu.my asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kbo176617@kedah.uitm.edu.my asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 124-136 125 figure 1: malaysia gross domestic product by economics sectors in 2014 (%) sources: economic planning unit, 2015 however, the competition to be a fully developed country has resulted the paddy sub-sector to face many challenges such as the downsizing of the agricultural land, the dumping of elderly farmers, the migration of young labours to urban areas, poverty, etc. (najim et al., 2007). these factors in directly cause the reduction in malaysia's paddy production. therefore, a new approach to economic growth that is based on total factor productivity (tfp) is necessary to sustain the growth of this sector. in addition, through tfp, the sector can be transformed into a sector that is capable of generating a lucrative source of income for small farmers. tfp growth reflects the increase in the level of productivity as a result of the existence of technical efficiency in the use of production inputs. most of the time, the efficiency of agricultural inputs arises from the presence of technology and overall economic efficiency. moreover, tfp is also a measure of the efficiency of labour and capital. the increase in output may occur if the combination of labours and capital inputs is effectively used. the high level of tfp growth in the paddy sector is an important benchmark for improving the farmers’ standard of living. the problem of paddy sub-sector in malaysia is that the growth of local paddy production is still low. in 2009 to 2010, paddy production growth was only about 1.48 per cent, while the growth of the domestic demand rose by an average 5.2 percent in the same year. based on these facts, it indicates that the yield of paddy in malaysia is lower than the national paddy production target at 5 percent annually (foa, 2002; othman, 2008; department of agriculture, 2011). in 2010, malaysia has experienced a shortage of production approximately 125,552.15 metric tonnes of paddy. in terms of consumption, malaysia increased the use of paddy or rice from 2.49 million metric tonnes in 2009 to 2.60 million metric tonnes in 2010 (usda foreign agricultural service, 2012). to meet the domestic demand, the government had to import paddy or rice from abroad. malaysia has been importing rice worth about rm1.0 to rm 1.3 million per year, which represents roughly 30 percent of its rice imports. therefore, the increase of tfp paddy production is very important, especially to enhance the paddy self-sufficiency level (ssl). this may ensure that paddy stocks are adequate to fulfil the local demand. in addition, the increased levels of tfp have shown the existence of technical efficiency in inputs used. besides, the increase in tfp levels has also reduced the dependence of import. this will, in turn, increase the small-scaled farmers' income as well as improving their standard of living. hence, the first objective of this study is to examine the growth of tfp in the paddy sub-sector in malaysia. the second objective is to identify the factors that affect the tfp in the paddy sub-sector. for this study, a number of inputs have been selected. among the variables are average paddy yield, labours, lands, capital, fertiliser, and paddy prices. in general, this paper is divided into five parts. the first part is the introduction. the second part is a literature review related to the tfp. 7 24.6 3.9 55.3 agriculture manufacturing construction services asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 124-136 126 the third and fourth parts concern about the methodology and results while the last part is the conclusion of the study. 2. literature review the neoclassical concept of tfp has been widely used in agricultural studies until now. there are two main functions of tfp. firstly, tfp is used to measure the productivity of all factors, and secondly, it is used to associate with the aggregate production function. according to jesus (2007), tfp is a measure by how output changes and time passes with the input bundle held constant. as in other sectors, tfp is used to measure the performance of the agricultural sector and in the same way, it provides a guide to the efficiency of the sector (kirsten & vink, 2003; thirtle et al., 2005; conradie et al., 2009). increased productivity shows that there is an element of efficiency in the use of production inputs. this means that there is no wastage of inputs in the production process. technically, productivity is the ratio between the quantities of output produced on inputs used in a production process. in the meantime, increased productivity also means that the use of the same number of inputs can increase the amount of production. this means that operating costs, especially the cost of production, can be reduced. hayami & ruttan in the 1970s are the earliest group of researchers who have conducted a study on measuring of the productivity level in the agricultural sector. the increase in productivity means that the supply of food and basic materials may increase. this in turn may increase the level of welfare of the society and the state. hayami and ruttan have concluded that the productivity growth in the agriculture is essential to the economic growth. besides hayami and ruttan, stefan (2002) also believed that productivity is one of the basic variables that drive economic activities. in addition, the increased levels of productivity are also related to the creation of value-added products. basically, the increased productivity means increasing the efficiency of resource used.this may help to decrease the wastage of material resources in production. according to katrz (1964) and rahman (1999), total factor productivity (tfp) occurs from the advance of technology used in the production process. according to them, the advancement in technology may drive the growth of output and labour. therefore, the use of technology becomes a key determinant for the labour productivity. in addition to technology, capital-labour ratio can also be used as a tool to measure the level of productivity. meanwhile, the capital-labour ratio can also be used as a variable to represent the level of technology. in general, an increase in the level of technology occurs when the ratio between capital and labour increases. in a study conducted by hishashi (1991), it is shown that technological advances have a direct relationship with the capital input. if the firm is capital-intensive, it may potentially create the higher levels of productivity compared to labour-intensive firm. however, the increase in the level of productivity is not affected by the level of technology alone. the quality of the inputs used is also very significant in influencing the productivity growth. if the quality of input increases, the same amount of input can produce more output. improvement in the quality of input may indirectly reduce the production costs. in addition, there are also other factors affecting the productivity growth such as human resource management, change in sociodemographic, employment and working facilities, human resources and institutional restructuring, socio-economic, and socio-political impact. every economic transformation process may involve labour, capital, materials, and energy act as a production input. basically, the process of transformation can produce more than one output either middle or end product. the agricultural sector is not exempted from this transformation process. this is because every single transformation involves a change in the level of productivity. this shows that the combination of inputs can affect the level of productivity differences. basically, the change in the level of productivity can be measured by using two approaches such as partial asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 124-136 127 productivity and total factor productivity (tfp). for a single input, productivity notation is (y / l). this notation should not cause any problems in measuring the productivity level. the ratio of output to input is called partial productivity. however, if the combination of various inputs is used in the agricultural production process, then there is the question of how the weight of each input should be used. therefore, to resolve this issue, the total factor productivity (tfp) is employed. 2.1. selected variables affecting tfp there are various factors that can affect the total factor productivity (tfp) in the paddy industry. all these factors have either director indirect relationship with the tfp growth. for this study, there are seven variables that have been selected such as land, capital, young farmers, old farmers, fertiliser, paddy prices, and paddy yield. 2.1.1 capital the capital is one of the basic inputs in the production function of neoclassical and is composed of raw materials and intermediate products. in many empirical researches, many researchers have found that capital is important in determining the tfp in the production of paddy (oniah et al., 2008). in addition, they have also found that the flexibility and return on capital for the agricultural sector is high. high elasticity and return on capital investment show that small changes in capital can lead to a higher tfp growth. this shows that capital has a huge impact on agricultural production. to increase production, farmers need to increase their investment in capital, such as purchasing or leasing a new machine. meanwhile, muzaffar (1988) has also stated that capital is an important input in the production of paddy in malaysia. according to him, investment in agricultural capital is elastic. this means that the increase in paddy production is driven by the capital employed. 2.1.2 land there are a number of studies which have found that land and labour are important factors in the production. in addition, there are some researchers such as sachchamarga & williams (2004) and moses & adebayo (2007) who stated that capital and land are substituted. but this opinion has been refuted by oniah et al. (2008). according to them, this case may be true for a manufacturing sector. it is because they have strongly believed that land is a key input in the agricultural sector, therefore, it is very difficult to be replaced by capital. they also assume that land has a significant impact on the paddy tfp growth. although land is significant in the agricultural sector, the degree of elasticity is relatively small. this means that land is not a major element of the tfp growth. however, for many researchers, they still do not consider land as part of the agricultural production system. therefore, it means that if we abide land in our analysis, it will produce biased estimates. in addition, suresh & ready (2006) have found that the ratio of the marginal value product per marginal cost factor of land (mpv / mfc) in india is 3:04. this indicates that an increase in land may create the economies of scale. this in turn may help to increase the more sustainable productivity growth. in another study by sherlund et al. (2002), it has been found that paddy output has a significant relationship with land. this means that, by taking into account the impact of agricultural production and the environmental, an extra one-percent increase in land may increase paddy production by about 80 percent in the cote d `ivoire. 2.1.3 labour labour refers to the number of people who are paid to work. it becomes a major tool to increase the output. basically the wages rate paid to workers are included in the cost of production. in addition, labour also plays an important role in agricultural production. there are a few researchers such as goni & baba (2007), oniah et al. (2008), basavaraja et al. (2008), and chaudhry et al. (2009) who have proven that labour is important in the agricultural production. although labour is an important input, the supply of labour is inelastic. this means that the supply of labour is competitive. if the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 124-136 128 non-agricultural sector offers a higher pay, the labour may migrate to manufacturing and services sectors. various proxies are used to represent the labour such as family labour, hired labour, child labour, man-days per hectare, and human hours and bullocks have been used. there are also those who use the aggregate labour force data. for those who have employed the time-series data and panel data analysis in empirical estimation, the aggregate labour data may be used due the difficulty to obtain data on details. 2.1.4 fertiliser fertiliser is one of the most important factors in the agricultural production. the precise amount of fertiliser use can help to improve the production. it is categorised in to two types, namely chemical and organic fertilisers. fertiliserisan additional nutrient supplied to the plants. it is crucial especially to improve the productivity level. the use of fertiliser that complies with the specification may help to increase the soil fertility.the fertility of soil means that the soil contains enough nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and others that are important to seedlings growth.the efficient use of fertilisers may help farmers to increase their production up to more than 20 percent. heady and dillon were the earliest researchers who have conducted preliminary investigations on the relationship between fertiliser and output production. through their research, heady and dillon have discovered that fertiliser has a direct nexus with the output. after heady and dillon's works, fertiliser-related literatures have become substantial. subsequently, many researchers have concluded that fertilisers are complementary to the land input. therefore, to increase paddy production, farmers need to ensure that they comply with proper fertilisation schedule (suresh & ready, 2006; ready, 2007) 2.1.5 paddy price parallel to other sectors, the price of the output is also important in influencing the resources allocation for production (liyan & richard, 1993). according to mundlak (1988), output prices also play an important role in influencing the level of productivity of the agricultural sector.in addition; mundlak has also stressed the importance of price as a basis in determining the production techniques. when the output price increases, farmers’ income also increases. the increase in the income may motivate farmers to produce more output. this indirectly helps to increase the supply of agricultural output. several studies have demonstrated that price and productivity are related. for instance, schultz (1979) in his study in the us has indicated that the higher output prices act as a catalyst to increase the productivity in the agricultural sector. price plays two major roles; firstly, it reflects the level of consumption especially among the poor. secondly, the price is also affected the supply through the increased production as an incentive to producers. in fact, there are two distinct desires among consumers and producers. consumers want low prices, but farmers expect higher prices. in the case of malaysia, this difference is the offset of the role of the government by providing price subsidies for both consumers and agricultural producers. 2.1.6 paddy yield output is a final product of a production process. in the agricultural sector, output or agricultural products may vary depending on the quality of the inputs used. output is normally associated with efficiency of a production process. meanwhile, efficiency is often linked to the performance of a firm as efficiency reflects the ratio between the outputs to the input. in many literatures, the efficiency concept is often associated with productivity because it involves the ratio between the inputs to the output. however, the definition of these two different concepts is varied as asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 124-136 129 productivity refers to the ratio of the input to the output mean while efficiency involves the ratio between the outputs to the input. 3. methodology this study was to determine the contribution of labour, capital, land, fertiliser and paddy prices to the paddy tfp production in malaysia. the information obtained is useful for all stakeholders in the paddy production. below are some assumptions before tfp is measured: 1. the production is constant returns to scale. 2. the input market is a perfect competition. the factors of production are paid according to their marginal product. the elasticity of the output with respect to inputs equals to the value of input shares in the output. the total factor productivity measurement by using the production function pioneer is a work of a few authors, such as solow (1957), dension (1967) and jorgenson et al. (1987). they have assumed that production function is in the transcendental logarithms (translog). the natural logarithmic production function of paddy in malaysia is as follows: 𝑙𝑛𝑌𝑡 = 𝑙𝑛𝐴 + 𝛽1𝑙𝑛𝑋1𝑡 + 𝛽2𝑙𝑛𝑋2𝑡 + +𝛽3𝑙𝑛𝑋3𝑡 + 𝛽4𝑙𝑛𝑋4𝑡 + 𝛽5𝑙𝑛𝑋5𝑡 + 𝛽6𝑙𝑛𝑋6𝑡 + 𝜇𝑡 .......... (1) by total differentiating equation above, we obtain 𝑑𝑦𝑡 = 𝑑𝜆𝑡 + 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋1𝑡 ∙ 𝑋1𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥1𝑡 + 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋2𝑡 ∙ 𝑋2𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥2𝑡 + 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋3𝑡 ∙ 𝑋3𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥3𝑡 + 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋4𝑡 ∙ 𝑋4𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥1𝑡 + 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋5𝑡 ∙ 𝑋5𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥1𝑡 + 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋6𝑡 ∙ 𝑋1𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥6𝑡 ................ (2) where 𝑦𝑡 , 𝑥1𝑡 , 𝑥2𝑡 , 𝑥3𝑡 , 𝑥4𝑡 ,𝑥5𝑡 and 𝑥6𝑡 are the logarithms for 𝑌𝑡 , 𝑋1𝑡 , 𝑋2𝑡 , 𝑋3𝑡 , 𝑋4𝑡 , 𝑋5𝑡 and 𝑋6𝑡 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋1𝑡 ∙ 𝑋1𝑡 𝑌𝑡 = input share of 𝑋1𝑡 in total output 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋2𝑡 ∙ 𝑋2𝑡 𝑌𝑡 = input share of 𝑋2𝑡 in total output 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋3𝑡 ∙ 𝑋3𝑡 𝑌𝑡 = input share of 𝑋3𝑡 in total output 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋4𝑡 ∙ 𝑋4𝑡 𝑌𝑡 = input share of 𝑋4𝑡 in total output 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋5𝑡 ∙ 𝑋5𝑡 𝑌𝑡 = input share of 𝑋5𝑡 in total output 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋6𝑡 ∙ 𝑋6𝑡 𝑌𝑡 = input share of 𝑋6𝑡 in total output 𝑑𝑦𝑡= growth rate of paddy yield = d (log y) 𝑑𝑥1𝑡 = growth rate of land = d (log x1) 𝑑𝑥2𝑡 = growth rate of capital = d (log x2) 𝑑𝑥3𝑡 = growth rate of young farmers = d (log x3) 𝑑𝑥4𝑡 = growth rate of old farmers= d (log x4) 𝑑𝑥5𝑡 = growth rate of fertiliser = d (log x5) 𝑑𝑥6𝑡 = growth rate of paddy price = d (log x6) 𝑑𝜆𝑡 = 𝑇𝐹𝑃𝐺 = 𝑑(𝑙𝑜𝑔𝐴) equation (2) can be rewritten as: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 124-136 130 𝑇𝐹𝑃𝐺𝑡 = 𝑑𝜆𝑡 = 𝑑𝑦𝑡 − 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋1𝑡 ∙ 𝑋1𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥1𝑡 − 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋2𝑡 ∙ 𝑋2𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥2𝑡 − 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋3𝑡 ∙ 𝑋3𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥3𝑡 − 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋4𝑡 ∙ 𝑋4𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥4𝑡 − 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋5𝑡 ∙ 𝑋5𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥5𝑡 − 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋6𝑡 ∙ 𝑋6𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥6𝑡 ..................... (3) the above method is based on a growth accounting framework. growth in production is due to the two-input growth and productivity growth. finally, is the unexplained portion of the output growth, which is obtained as the residual of the output. by using equation (4) and applying it to paddy production, we have 𝑑𝑙𝑛𝑄𝑡 = 𝑑𝜆𝑡 + 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋1𝑡 ∙ 𝑋1𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥1𝑡 + 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋2𝑡 ∙ 𝑋2𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥2𝑡 + 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋3𝑡 ∙ 𝑋3𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥3𝑡 + 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋4𝑡 ∙ 𝑋4𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥4𝑡 + 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋5𝑡 ∙ 𝑋5𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥5𝑡 + 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝜕𝑋6𝑡 ∙ 𝑋6𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑑𝑥6𝑡 .................... (4) where q is paddy yield. 𝑋1𝑡 , 𝑋2𝑡 , 𝑋3𝑡 , 𝑋4𝑡 , 𝑋5𝑡 and 𝑋6𝑡 are inputs (land, capital, young farmers, old farmers, fertiliser, and paddy price). 𝑑𝜆𝑡 is tfp growth. using a discrete point in time and assumptions are listed above. this implies that the income of each input is the same as the elasticity of their production is stated therefore, equation (2) can be summarised as follows (solow, 1957; dension, 1967; jorgenson et al., 1987): 𝑇𝐹𝑃𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑤𝑡ℎ = 𝑙𝑛𝑄𝑡 − 𝑙𝑛𝑄𝑡−1 − 𝐿𝑋1𝑡 𝑙𝑛𝑋1𝑡 − 𝑙𝑛𝑋1𝑡−1 − 𝐿𝑋2𝑡 𝑙𝑛𝑋2𝑡 − 𝑙𝑛𝑋2𝑡−1 − 𝐿𝑋3𝑡 (𝑙𝑛𝑋3𝑡 − 𝑙𝑛𝑋3𝑡−1 ) − 𝐿𝑋4𝑡 (𝑙𝑛𝑋4𝑡 − 𝑙𝑛𝑋4𝑡−1 ) − 𝐿𝑋5𝑡 (𝑙𝑛𝑋5𝑡 𝑙𝑛𝑋5𝑡−1 ) − 𝐿𝑋6𝑡 (𝑙𝑛𝑋6𝑡 − 𝑙𝑛𝑋6𝑡−1 ) . .................... (5) where 𝐿𝑋1𝑡 = average share of land = 0.5(𝐿𝑋1𝑡 + 𝐿𝑋1𝑡−1 ) 𝐿𝑋2𝑡 = average share of capital = 0.5(𝐿𝑋2𝑡 + 𝐿𝑋2𝑡−1 ) 𝐿𝑋3𝑡 = average share of young farmers= 0.5(𝐿𝑋3𝑡 + 𝐿𝑋3𝑡−1 ) 𝐿𝑋4𝑡 = average share of old farmers = 0.5 𝐿𝑋4𝑡 + 𝐿𝑋4𝑡−1 𝐿𝑋5𝑡 = average share of fertiliser= 0.5 𝐿𝑋5𝑡 + 𝐿𝑋5𝑡−1 𝐿𝑋6𝑡 = average share of paddy price = 0.5 𝐿𝑋6𝑡 + 𝐿𝑋6𝑡−1 4. results and discussion the results of the real tfp growth for mada regions 1, 2, 3, and 4 are shown in figure 1. this study has revealed that the real tfp growth is less than 5 percent for every season. this finding is consistent with several studies conducted by oulton & o'mahony (1994) and mao et al. (2003). the fluctuation of the real tfp growth is uncertain. there were times where the tfp grew in the main season and decreased in the off-season and vice versa. based on the observation from figure 2, the research has discovered that the increase in the real tfp growth was recorded in the main seasons. meanwhile, the decrease in the real tfp growth often existed in the off-seasons. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 124-136 131 table 1 shows the real total factor productivity (tfp) of paddy production in the mada areas. in region 1, the average real tfp growth is 0.34 percent per season over the entire period of study. for the short-run, the real tfp average growth is 0.29 percent per season from 1996h2 to 2003h1 and 0.38 percent from 2003h2 to 2011h1. meanwhile, in region 2, the average real tfp growth is 0.35 percent. in the short-run, the real tfp average growth is 0.30 percent per season from 1996h2 to 2003h1 and 0.39 percent from 2003h2 to 2011h1. furthermore, in region 3, the average real tfp growth is 0.40 percent per season over the entire period from 1996h1 to 2011h1. for the short-run periods, the real tfp average growth is 0.34 percent per season from 1996h2 to 2003h1 and 0.45 percent from 2003h2 to 2011h1. meanwhile, in region 4, the average real tfp growth is 0.39 percent. for the short-run periods, the real tfp average growth is 0.33 percent per season from 1996h2 to 2003h1 and 0.44 percent from 2003h2 to 2011h1. table 1: the real total factor productivity growth (tfpg) of paddy production in mada (%) years region 1 region 2 region 3 region 4 h11996 h21996 0.20 0.05 0.06 0.06 h11997 3.25 0.65 0.69 0.70 h21997 -1.47 1.38 1.64 1.59 h11998 0.19 0.20 0.27 0.19 h21998 -0.94 -1.02 -1.15 -1.11 h11999 0.47 0.53 0.59 0.59 h21999 -0.09 -0.14 -0.17 -0.18 h12000 1.10 1.19 1.40 1.30 figure 2: the real total factor productivity (tfp) growth of paddy production in mada (%) notes: h1 is main-season, h2 is off-season -2 0 2 4 1 9 9 6 h 1 1 9 9 7 h 2 1 9 9 9 h 1 2 0 0 0 h 2 2 0 0 2 h 1 2 0 0 3 h 2 2 0 0 5 h 1 2 0 0 6 h 2 2 0 0 8 h 1 2 0 0 9 h 2 2 0 1 1 h 1 mada region 1 -2 -1 0 1 2 1 9 9 6 h 1 1 9 9 7 h 2 1 9 9 9 h 1 2 0 0 0 h 2 2 0 0 2 h 1 2 0 0 3 h 2 2 0 0 5 h 1 2 0 0 6 h 2 2 0 0 8 h 1 2 0 0 9 h 2 2 0 1 1 h 1 mada region 2 -2 -1 0 1 2 1 9 9 6 h 1 1 9 9 7 h 2 1 9 9 9 h 1 2 0 0 0 h 2 2 0 0 2 h 1 2 0 0 3 h 2 2 0 0 5 h 1 2 0 0 6 h 2 2 0 0 8 h 1 2 0 0 9 h 2 2 0 1 1 h 1 mada region 3 -2 -1 0 1 2 1 9 9 6 h 1 1 9 9 7 h 2 1 9 9 9 h 1 2 0 0 0 h 2 2 0 0 2 h 1 2 0 0 3 h 2 2 0 0 5 h 1 2 0 0 6 h 2 2 0 0 8 h 1 2 0 0 9 h 2 2 0 1 1 h 1 mada region 4 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 124-136 132 h22000 0.56 0.52 0.51 0.58 h12001 0.01 0.05 0.06 0.01 h22001 0.10 0.10 0.11 0.14 h12002 0.24 0.22 0.25 0.27 h22002 1.21 1.25 1.48 1.46 h12003 -0.82 -0.85 -0.97 -1.01 h22003 0.07 0.06 0.02 0.07 h12004 1.12 1.18 1.40 1.32 h22004 -0.27 -0.32 -0.36 -0.33 h12005 0.76 0.83 1.03 0.95 h22005 0.19 0.18 0.14 0.20 h12006 1.41 1.47 1.79 1.68 h22006 -0.08 -0.17 -0.27 -0.20 h12007 -0.33 -0.32 -0.39 -0.46 h22007 1.48 1.55 1.75 1.80 h12008 1.46 1.55 1.84 1.69 h22008 -0.05 -0.09 -0.13 -0.04 h12009 0.35 0.35 0.34 0.34 h22009 -0.68 -0.70 -0.78 -0.74 h12010 0.90 0.92 1.03 1.01 h22010 -0.21 -0.23 -0.26 -0.26 h12011 0.03 0.01 0.02 0.03 notes: all the values are computed by the researchers statistical information in table 1above is meaningless if we do not know what the real causes are that affect the tfp growth. therefore, to understand the real causes that affect the growth of the productivity, we have employed the fabricant’s law (1942). in the fabricant's law, there are several connotations of the relationship between productivity and production. firstly, the fabricant law has stated that there is a sign if cant and positive relationship between labour productivity and output growth. secondly, there is also a significant and positive relationship between the tfp growth and output in the short or long term. normally, the tfp growth tends to be higher if the output growth is high. table 2 shows the correlation coefficients and t-statistic between the tfp growth, output growth, capital growth, labour growth, and the other growth factors such as land, fertiliser, and paddy price. the long-run tfp growth in regions 2 and 4 is significant and positively correlated with the output growth. it shows that the tfp growths are likely to move together with the output growth. thus, the cycle of the tfp growth is due to the growth of paddy production, which is heavily influenced by the amount of the current paddy production. however, for mada regions 1 and 3, this study has shown that tfp has an insignificant relationship with the paddy yield in the long-run. table 2: total factors productivity growth (tfpg) correlation coefficients mada period δly δln δlk δll40 δll41 δlf δlp 1 long-run 1996h1 -2011h1 -0.22 0.16 0.38* 0.44* 0.49* 0.24 0.2 (-1.18) -0.84 -2.2 -2.59 -3.01 -1.32 -1.08 short-run 1996h1 -2003h1 -0.31 0.27 -0.05 0.73* 0.72* 0.70* -0.11 (-1.17) -1.01 (-0.17) -3.81 -3.78 -3.54 (-0.39) 2003h2 2011h1 0.51* -0.07 0.73* 0.12 0.11 0.23 0.41 -2.12 (-0.26) -3.84 -0.42 -0.4 -0.86 -1.61 2 long-run asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 124-136 133 1996h1 -2011h1 0.34** 0.2 0.51** 0.19 0.19 0.73** 0.28 -1.94 -1.08 -3.17 -1.05 -1.03 -5.63 -1.52 short-run 1996h1 -2003h1 0.005 0.0002 -0.001 0.002 0.002 0.05* -0.003 -0.27 -1.29 (-0.32) -1.16 -1.16 -5.61 (-0.57) 2003h2 2011h1 0.51* -0.07 0.73* 0.12 0.11 0.23 0.41 -2.12 (-0.26) -3.84 -0.42 -0.4 -0.86 -1.61 3 long-run 1996h1 -2011h1 0.29 0.03 0.53* 0.17 0.18 0.72* 0.29 -1.63 -0.18 -3.32 -0.93 -0.95 -5.53 -1.57 short-run 1996h1 -2003h1 0.11 0.07 -0.09 0.28 0.3 0.85* -0.14 -0.38 -0.26 (-0.31) -1.07 -1.11 -5.71 (-0.49) 2003h2 2011h1 0.41 -0.06 0.75* 0.09 0.09 0.67* 0.42 (1.640 (-0.20) -4.1 -0.33 -0.32 -3.25 -1.65 4 long-run 1996h1 -2011h1 0.41* 0.02 0.52* 0.18 0.17 0.74* 0.26 -2.37 -0.13 -3.18 -0.95 -0.93 -5.83 -1.42 short-run 1996h1 -2003h1 0.27 0.07 -0.1 0.28 0.29 0.85* -0.16 -1.01 -0.24 (-0.37) -1.07 -1.08 -5.75 (-0.60) 2003h2 2011h1 0.55* -0.08 0.74* 0.1 0.09 0.70* 0.39 -2.39 (-0.30) -3.96 -0.35 -0.31 -3.58 -1.54 notes: * 5 percent significant level, values in parentheses are t-statistic in other findings, there is a significant and positive correlation between tfp and fertiliser in regions 2, 3, and 4 in the long-run. these findings are consistent with muhammad & qazi (2003), nin-pratt & yu (2008), and khalid & anthony (2012). however, in region 1, the long-run co relational study has indicated that there is no significant correlation between tfp and fertiliser. this study has also discovered that tfp and fertiliser have a positive and significant relationship in the short-run in all mada regions. this study has also found that tfp and fertiliser have no correlation in the short-run for the period of 2003h2 to 2011h1 for both mada regions 1 and 2.in the meantime, this study has also found that fertiliser is significant in most of the shortand long-run in all mada regions. therefore, based on the findings above, we can conclude that fertiliser plays an important role in the growth of paddy tfp. on the average, the study has found that young and older farmers have a significant relationship with the tfp in the long-run in region 1. the short-term significant relationship between tfp and the age of farmers can also be detected in region 1. this finding has supported the feyrer’s (2002) work, which has shown that the age structure has a significant impact on tfp. the insignificant correlation between tfp and farmers either in the shortor long-run has indicated that the paddy sub-sector has employed unskilled farmers. furthermore, this study has also found that there is a significant long-term relationship between tfp and capital.these findings have suggested that capital and tfp have an interdependence relationship, which supports similar findings obtained by hassan (2002) and idris (2007). this reinforces the view that the new technology incorporated, for instance, machinery and equipment utilised in mada regions, is generally high. 5. conclusions this study has been conducted to examine the tfp trend in a paddy sub-sector in malaysia. moreover, this study has also attempted to identify the factors that affect the paddy tfp growth. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 5(5)2015: 124-136 134 the study was conducted in four mada regions and it used time-series data ranging from the main seasons in 1996 to 2011. generally, this study has discovered that all the selected factors have influenced the tfp in all mada regions. however, the magnitude varied across the region. on top of that, the research has also found that the real tfp growth is less than 5 percent and it fluctuates over time. the fluctuation of the real tfp growth is uncertain. in the interim, this research has also discovered that the increase in the real tfp growth was recorded in the main seasons. meanwhile, the decrease in the real tfp growth often exits in off-sessions. therefore, to raise the tfp growth in the paddy sub-sector, the government should take a drastic action to overcome the problems that hinder the growth of tfp. among the actions that can be taken is avoiding of waste of resources and inefficient use of resources. in addition, the government, through authorised agencies, should ensure that farmers are provided with information and the latest technology of paddy cultivation. this is because, through information and technology, farmers are able to increase the level of tfp and, thus, they can increase the paddy production. subsequently, the government should ensure that the contribution of tfp increase at a faster rate. besides, the government should also ensure the financial proficiency in the use of capital among farmers. this is because, in a paddy sub-sector, the witnessed trend is gradually dumping old farmers, which has a relatively slow absorption in agricultural modernisation. ceteris paribus, if the government makes less capital investment, this will decrease the growth rate of paddy production. this is attributed by the existence of inefficiency elements among farmers. as a long-term strategy for strengthening and establishing the paddy sub-sector, it is very important for malaysia to shift from the growth under the input stimulus to the productivity-driven one. productivity growth that is driven by efficiency and information may ensure that the growth in a paddy sub-sector is competitive, dynamic, robust, and resilient. this, in turn, may ensure farmers to receive high income and enable them to flee the poverty problems. in addition, the increase in the paddy production may help malaysia to achieve 90 percent of rice ssl. this, in turn, may reduce the amount of rice imports. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development 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(2012, october). global agricultural information network report. retrieved from http://static.globaltrade.net/files/pdf/20110406115103794.pdf. http://static.globaltrade.net/files/pdf/20110406115103794.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 219 rice farmers’ technical efficiency under abiotic stresses in bangladesh md. abu bakr siddique*, md. abdur rouf sarkar, mohammad chhiddikur rahman, afroza chowdhury, md. shajedur rahman and limon deb agricultural economics division, bangladesh rice research institute, gazipur-1701, bangladesh * email address: siddiquer07@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 21-feb-2018 accepted: 26-may-2018 online available: 17-jun2018 keywords: abiotic stress, tolerance, rice, technical efficiency, productivity abstract this study was an attempt to investigate the economic performance of stress tolerant rice varieties in different abiotic stress prone areas (submergence, drought, and salinity) of bangladesh. the study used production frontier approach to measure the technical efficiency at the farm level. benefit-cost analysis revealed that farmers in all stress environments obtained positive margin on cash cost basis and the profit became negative on full cost basis in all environments with exception for submergence. that means rice production was marginally benefited to farmers in all the stress environments. farm specific technical efficiency of all stress environments indicated that large farmers were comparatively more efficient due to their economic solvency as they could apply adequate amount of inputs in due time with proper doses. inefficiency model indicated that farm size, farmers ‘education, households’ size, farming experience, extension contact, and main occupation of the farmers, were the important factors causing variations in the efficiency. however, brri released stress tolerant rice varieties had significant positive impact on technical efficiency. plausible policies have been recommended according to the study outcomes. contribution/ originality this study covered three different stress prone environments (saline, submergence, and drought) of bangladesh to measure the productivity and efficiency of rice farming. the study also identified the impact of adopting stress tolerant rice varieties in the respective stress prone areas. researchers and policymakers can use the findings of this study to enhance rice productivity and technical efficiency in the stress prone areas of bangladesh. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.11/1005.11.219.232 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: md. abu bakr siddique, md. abdur rouf sarkar, mohammad chhiddikur rahman, afroza chowdhury, md. shajedur rahman and limon deb (2017). rice farmers’ technical efficiency under abiotic stresses in bangladesh. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11), 219-232. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 11(2017): 219-232 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:m.c.rahman@irri.org http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.11/1005.11.219.232 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 219-232 220 1. introduction bangladesh is one of the most susceptible nations to the impacts of climate change due to her inconvenient terrestrial position, plane and lowland setting coupled with social and economic conditions (huq and ayers, 2007; siddique et al., 2014). different types of natural calamities visit bangladesh almost every year (siddique et al., 2013). most of the predicted hostile outcomes of climate change aggravated the prevailing stresses that impeded the agricultural productivity (rahman, 2011). rice is the main cereal crop, which are seriously affected by climatic factors. rice grows in three distinct seasons round the year, which covers around 77% (11.42 mha) of the total cropped area and contributes 93% to the total food grain production annually (bbs, 2015; ber, 2015). it is the principal source of agricultural gdp and livelihoods to majority of the rural population, which delivers near 62% and 46% of average daily calorie and protein consumption, respectively (hies, 2010). however, multiple abiotic stresses are affecting to rice in bangladesh. early rainy season and extreme rainwater can trigger flooding that affect rice seedlings, while a late appearance mostly leads to severe water stress (mahmood et al., 2004). highly and moderately flood prone crop areas have been recorded around one million and five million hectares, respectively. flood visits over 18 districts of bangladesh almost regularly. drought hits in north-western part of the country mainly due to unequal dissemination of rainfall. about 5.7 million hectares of rain-fed area is affected by drought (daily star, 2014). another considerable threat is the coastal area of bangladesh, which contains 19 districts and 32% of the country’s geographical area wherein 28% of the total populations live (rahman et al., 2013). coastal zone could make a substantial contribution to the agriculture as well as the economy through achieving the national goal of accelerating poverty reduction and food security. the average crop yield is very low in this region, which is obviously due to salinity problems, low soil fertility and drought in the dry season. different levels of salinity seriously affect about 1.02 million hectares of cropland (barc, 2011). given above backdrop, bangladesh rice research institute (brri) has been released 86 contemporary rice varieties (including 6 hybrids). out of these varieties about 26 are climate resilient (brri, 2017). the features of these stress tolerant varieties are given in appendix i. the present yield potentialities of these stresses tolerant varieties are being fainter day by day due to recently revealed biotic and abiotic stresses. therefore, it is essential to examine the potentiality of these stress tolerant rice varieties in accordance of facing the threads of changing climate. thus, this study has been designed to explore the technical efficiency among stress porn rice farmers’ in bangladesh. many studies have led to profitability and efficiency analysis of several crops farming in bangladesh and abroad. for instance, rahman (2003) showed, about 23% profit inefficiency exists in modern rice cultivation due to agronomic management, experience and economic solvency of the farmers. hyuha et al. (2007) analyzed the inefficiency in uganda using stochastic profit and inefficiency function. the result presented that, the factors of profit inefficiency was farmers’ literacy and extension contact. rahman et al. (2014) studied that the inefficiency factors among the golda (macrobrachium rosenbergii) farmers in coastal areas were level of education, training and farm size. rahman et al. (2013) exposed that the age of the farmers’, literacy level, and training had positive meaningful impact on efficient maize cultivation in bangladesh. piya et al. (2012) conducted a case study in nepal that suggested that the degree of commercialization, farmers’ age, education, share of agriculture in total household income, and sharecropping had significant impact on the efficiency of rice farming. mottaleb et al. (2014) find out that production loss of rice is due to the drought, and technical inefficiency comes from floods in bangladesh. osti (2016) discovered that, drought condition is the cause of reduction productivity and efficiency of the rice. the mentioned studies used the stochastic frontier (sf) approach to measure the efficiency of various crop farming. some of them are based on the rice sector in bangladesh. however, this study was designed to cover the three abiotic stresses of rice farming in bangladesh. these are asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 219-232 221 submergence, drought and salinity. this study also focused on the impact of brri released stress tolerant varieties by taking dummies on those. 2. methodology 2.1. study area the study has accompanied in 12 stresses prone districts of bangladesh during 2014/15 to 2016/17. the stress environments were; (i) submergence, (ii) saline and (iii) drought. the locations for the study were: a. submergence: rangpur (rnp), kurigram (krg), lalmonirhat (lmh) and gaibandha (gb) districts; b. saline prone: satkhira (skh), patuakhali (ptk), khulna (khl) and bagerhat (bgt) districts; and, c. drought prone: rajshahi (rjh), chapainawabgonj (cng), kushtia (kut) and natore (ntr) districts. figure 1: selected stress prone study areas 2.2. data collection sample stratification technique was used to among the respondents. the stratums of the study were flood/submergence, saline and drought prone areas, respectively. data of submergence and drought areas were in aman1 season for the period of 2014/15 and that of boro2 season for saline areas of 2015/16 were collected with the help of trained enumerators. from each of the stress environments 100 respondents who cultivated stress tolerant rice varieties were randomly selected and interviewed with pretested structured questionnaires. thus, about 300 respondents for submergence, drought and saline environments were collected. besides, information on area cultivated by diverse stress tolerant 1aman: a season from 16 july to 15 octobera 2boro: a season from 16 october to 15 march. source: ais (2016) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 219-232 222 rice varieties in different stress environments was collected from the department of agricultural extension (dae). stochastic production function (spf) model was used for measuring technical efficiency of stress tolerant rice cultivation and also determine the factors influencing the inefficiencies. 2.3. analytical procedure: activity budget the following conventional profit model was applied to examine the profitability level of stress tolerant rice varieties in the study areas. where, ∏= net return (tk./ha); tr = total return (tk./ha); tc = total costs (tk./ha) thus, the model can be written as: ∏ = ∑ qy . py + ∑ qb . pb − ∑ (xi . pxi) n i=1 − fc ………………… (1) where, qy = total quantity of (paddy) output (kilogram (kg)/ha); py = price of (paddy) output (tk./kg); qb = total quantity of by-product (kg/ha); pb = price of the by-product (tk./kg); xi = quantity of the ith input; pxi = price of the ith input; fc = fixed cost (tk./ha); and i = 1, 2, 3, … , n. 2.4. theoretical model for efficiency estimation technical efficiency generally describes the farm’s capacity to attain maximal output from a fixed set of inputs. a farm is efficient if we can’t increase its production without adding more inputs or decrease input without decreasing output with a given set of technology (cooper and kumbhakar, 1995). the technical efficiency of a farm is stated as the ratio of the attained output of that farm and the output of a full efficient farm that producing on the frontier. by the conditions of the sf models, the technical efficiency of the ith farm can be written as: tei = observed output maximum attainable output = exp (−ui) = exp[−e{ui ∕ (vi − ui)}] = 1 − e{ui ∕ (vi − ui)} (ignoring high order of exponential series) = y f(xiβi)exp (vi) = yi yi ∗ ………………… (2) here y = f(xiβi)exp (vi) is the farm particular sf. if yi is equivalent to yi ∗, then tei=1, reveals 100% efficient. the variation between yi and yi ∗ is fixed in ui (dey et al., 2000). ui= 0 means output of ith farm lies on the stochastic frontier. ui<0 means output of the farm lies below the frontier that indicates inefficiency of the farm. the mean of the technical efficiency is presented as: te = e[exp[−e{ui ∕ (vi − ui)}]] = e[1 − e{ui ∕ (vi − ui)}] 2.5. empirical model empirical cobb douglas production frontier function for the sample farmers was specified as: lnyi = β0 + β1lnx1 + β2lnx2 + β3lnx3 + β4lnx4 + β5lnx5 + β6lnx6 + β7lnx7 + β8lnx8 + β9lnx9 + β10lnx10 + ηx11 + εi ………………… (3) tc-tr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 219-232 223 where, ln = natural logarithm; y = yield of paddy (kg/ha); β0 = constant; βi′s = coefficients; x1= human labor (man-days/ha); x2 = land preparation cost (tk./ha); x3 = seed used (kg/ha); x4= urea (kg/ha); x5= tps (kg/ha); x6= mop (kg/ha); x7 = herbicides cost (tk./ha); x8= pesticides cost (tk./ha); x9= irrigation charge (tk./ha); x10 = land rental value (tk./ha); x11 = varietal dummy; and, εi = random error term. it can be decomposed as vi − ui where vi is the random error and ui is the non-negative random term related to technical inefficiency. the ui can be expressed as: ui = δ0 + δizi ………………… (4) where, δj = unknown parameters to be estimated; δ0= constant; z1i = natural logarithm of operating land (ha); z2i = age of ith farmers (years); z3i = education (years of schooling); z4i = household size (person/hh); z5i = working age population (no.); z6i = dummy for farmers occupation (1 for one, 0 for more than one); z7i = dummy for training (1 = yes, 0 = otherwise); z8i = extension contact dummy (1: if yes, 0: otherwise). the β and δ coefficients are the parameters to be estimated. the variance of the estimation can be presented as: σ2 = σu 2 + σv 2 and γ = σu 2 ∕ σ2. where, γ parameter has the value between zero and one. it is important to note that the inefficiency effects model (equation 4) can only be anticipated if the inefficiency effects are stochastic and have a certain distributional measurement. hence, there is interest for testing the hypotheses of the existence of inefficiency h0: γ = δ1 = ⋯ = δ8 = 0; i.e., farmers are completely efficient for producing rice in stress prone areas. this null hypothesis is measured by the generalized likelihood-ratio statistics as: λ = −2[ln{l(h0)} − ln {l(h1)}] ………………… (5) here, l(h0) and l(h1) are the likelihood estimated values of null and alternative hypotheses, respectively. if the null hypothesis is factual, λ has nearly a chi-square distribution (coelli, 1995). l(ho) is the log-likelihood value in the ols estimation whereas l(h1) is the likelihood value in the maximum likelihood estimation. usually, ho is rejected if the generalized likelihood–ratio statistic () is greater than the tabulated 2 value taken from the kodde and palm (1986), with the degree of freedom is the number of restrictions plus one. frontier package 4.1 (coelli, 1994) has been used for the estimations. 3. results and discussion 3.1. summery statistics of the stress tolerant rice variety cultivation it is revealed from the summary statistics (appendix ii) that the average yield of submergence and drought tolerant rice varieties were 3.27 t/ha and 3.80 t/ha, respectively in t. aman season and there showed lower yield compared to national average (4.06 t/ha). the average yield of saline tolerant rice varieties was 4.17 t/ha in boro season, which was also lower compared to national average (5.63 t/ha). the farmers of submergence, drought and saline areas employed 97, 114 and 109 man-days/ha, respectively as human labors. the seed rates were 50, 44 and 43 kg/ha for the submergence, drought and saline areas, respectively, indicating farmers used higher amount of seed than brri recommended rate (25 to 30 kg/ha, brri, 2017). the submergence prone areas’ farmers used lower doses of fertilizers than the drought and saline prone areas. the farmers were not much interested to apply herbicide according to the recommendation because of its increasing trend of cost. the main problem of drought prone area in t. aman season was inadequate rainfall which affected the crop asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 219-232 224 production in different stages; like, establishment, active tailoring, flowering, maturity and ripening stages. for this purpose, farmers have to provide supplemental irrigation to reduce the yield loss, which incurred a remarkable cost (tk. 4636/ha). irrigation cost at the saline prone area was a bit higher (tk. 16,310/ha) but rental value was much low (tk. 13,670/ha) compared to national average (tk. 20,110/ha, brri annual review report, 2015-16) in boro season. there is no irrigation cost in the submergence areas. farm specific variables of technical efficiency revealed that average age of the surveyed farmers’ varied from 42 to 44 years and their average level of education did not cross 5 years. almost half of the saline prone areas farmers had diversified income sources and maximum of the others stress prone areas farmers’ occupation was crop farming only. the average size of the stress prone farm families was medium. it varied from 4 to 5, which was more or less same to the national average (4.50); among them working age population varied from 2.74 to 3.23 persons per family. each family occupied on an average, 143 and 145 decimals of operated land in submergence and drought areas, respectively, but it was lower (121 decimals) in saline prone areas. more than 35% farmers received rice production training; while about 60% farmers had no contact with the extension department. 3.2. estimation of costs and return of stress tolerant rice cultivation the unit cost of production was the highest (22.51 tk./kg) in saline prone environment followed by submergence (19.82 tk./kg) and drought (19.40 tk./kg) environments (figure 2). this is because of the higher irrigation cost incurred in saline areas. all other cost items were almost same in different environments of the study areas. figure 2: unit cost of production (tk./kg) per hectare return of stress tolerant rice cultivation was shown in figure 3. the gross return of saline areas (77,770 tk./ha) was higher, followed by drought (67,837 tk./ha) and submergence (65,486 tk./ha) environments. but the gross margin was highest in drought environment (12,612 tk./ha) followed by submergence (9,312 tk./ha) and saline (666 tk./ha) areas. this is because of higher market price of the paddy and lower variable cost incurred in drought areas. on full cost basis, net return was negative in all environments, except submergence prone areas due to higher rental value of land and depreciation cost. although net return is negative, farmers cultivate rice in bangladesh because of their food solvency. farmers are very much concern about positive gross margin and the fixed costs are hidden as they are operating on their own land with self-labor. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 219-232 225 figure 3: per hectare return of stress tolerant rice cultivation 3.3. maximum likelihood estimation (mle) of the stochastic frontier cobb-douglas production function the empirical results of mle of stochastic cob-douglas frontier production function revealed that seed rate, urea fertilizer, rental value of land and variety were positively significant, indicating these variables influenced the yield and adoption level of submergence tolerant rice cultivation (table 1). seed rate and type of variety had strong effect on yield, implying that recommended doses of seed rate and suitable submergence tolerant rice variety (brri dhan 52) could increase the yield level substantially. whereas, negative coefficients of labor, tsp and pesticide showing inverse relationship on yield, indicated that there is no further scope to increase yield by employing these extra inputs in the production process. in drought environment, urea fertilizer, irrigation and variety had positive effect on yield indicated that there is further opportunity to increase yield by applying additional supplemental irrigations as well as cultivates drought tolerant rice varieties i.e., brri dhan56. besides, negative value of significant coefficient of human labor, seed rate, tsp and mop fertilizer implying that improper use of seeds/seedlings, excess labor and fertilizer might have decreased the yield level. mechanical cost for land preparation, herbicide cost for weeding, pesticide cost and rental value of land had no strong impact on yield in drought prone areas. for saline areas, mop fertilizer, irrigation cost and varietal dummy had positive effect on yield. that means, brri dhan47 had potentiality to increase farm productivity with the help of fresh water irrigation in saline environment. additionally, potassium fertilizer makes the root systems strong and long that entered into deep of the soil and avoid the salinity of upper soil. however, significant negative value of the coefficient of labor, seed-rate, urea and pesticide cost suggested that there is no further benefit from increased use of these inputs on farm productivity. coefficients of mechanical cost for land preparation, tsp fertilizer, herbicide cost, and land rent had no significant impact on yield in saline prone areas. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 219-232 226 table 1: mle of the stress prone rice farmers in bangladesh ecosystem submergence drought saline independent variables parameters co-efficient co-efficient co-efficient constant 𝛽0 1.895** (0.860) 0.155* (0.083) 7.872*** (2.766) ln human labour (mandays/ha) 𝛽1 -0.192** (0.083) -0.021** (0.008) -0.125* (0.070) ln mechanical cost (tk./ha) 𝛽2 0.179ns (0.126) 0.079ns (0.065) 0.082ns (0.516) ln seed (kg/ha) 𝛽3 0.117*** (0.037) -0.364*** (0.106) -0.024** (0.011) ln urea (kg/ha) 𝛽4 0.089* (0.046) 0.232* (0.130) -0.186* (0.102) ln tsp (kg/ha) 𝛽5 -0.028** (0.013) -0.078** (0.035) 0.262ns (0.578) ln mop (kg/ha) 𝛽6 0.040ns (0.032) -0.227* (0.120) 0.050** (0.024) ln herbicide cost (tk./ha) 𝛽7 0.131ns (0.121) 0.063ns (0.047) 0.015ns (0.046) ln pesticide cost (tk./ha) 𝛽8 -0.082** (0.036) 0.022ns (0.019) -0.026* (0.015) ln irrigation cost (tk./ha) 𝛽9 0.112*** (0.029) 0.205*** (0.074) ln land rent (tk./ha) 𝛽10 0.135* (0.185) -0.044ns (0.030) -0.002ns (0.008) dummy for variety 𝜂 0.112*** (0.034)(1=brri dhan52, 0=otherwise) 0.026** (0.011) (1=brri dhan56, 0=otherwise) 0.025** (0.011) (1=brri dhan47, 0=otherwise) ***, ** and * shows significant at 1%, 5% and 10% levels, respectively. the parenthesized values are the standard errors of the estimates 3.4. testing hypothesis table 2 shows the findings from hypothesis testing. the null hypothesis was h0: there was no inefficiency effect (gamma, γ= 0) or technical inefficiency in the model was absent. this hypothesis was strongly rejected for all of the areas, as the estimated values of lr were more than the critical χ2, representing the existence of technical inefficiency effect in rice the production. confirming this result of γ (0.99, 0.91 and 0.98 for the submergence, drought and saline environment, respectively) of the desired model in the table 3. it (γ) was closer to one that ensured the existence of high-level inefficiencies among the sample rice farmers that supported mle as the adequate estimation. table 2: generalized likelihood ratio test of null hypotheses for parameters of the inefficiency function ecosystems test of null hypothesis (farmers’ are completely efficient in producing rice), γ=0 test statistics () df critical values at 95% ( 0.05) remarks submergence γsb= δ1= … = δ8= 0 46.14 9 16.27 reject h0 drought γd= δ1= … = δ8= 0 16.85 9 16.27 reject h0 saline γsa= δ1= … = δ8= 0 19.36 9 16.27 reject h0 note: critical values are at 5% probability level with (k +1) degrees of freedom, where k = number of restriction (kodde and palm, 1986) 2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 219-232 227 3.5. the inefficiency effect model estimation the coefficient of operated land was negative and significant, indicating that an increase in farm size leads to decrease inefficiency. so, larger farms were more efficient than the smaller farms in the stress prone areas. farmers’ age coefficient was positive and statistically significant, indicating that the older farmers are less efficient than the younger farmers. the reason might be that older farmers contributed less effort to the farming activities and they were also laggard innovative than younger one to adopt modern technologies in stress prone areas. the coefficients of farmers’ education (0.012) showed significant positive effect in the submergence area, indicating that more educated farmers are technically more efficient. it was due to the fact that as educated farmers might have other alternative sources of income; so their attention was not fully devoted on agriculture as a means of livelihoods. the result also showed that an increase in the household size led to a decrease in inefficiency. because, larger household sizes along with more working forces, able to provide sufficient emphasis on farming activities besides other occupations. the coefficient of working age population had negative effect on inefficiency in submergence and drought areas, indicating that more working force can reduce inefficiency substantially. farmers’ occupation and training had no significant impact on the submergence prone areas, but these had robust effect on rice production in terms of increasing efficiency in the drought and saline areas. because farmers in drought and saline prone areas had no much alternative occupations for livelihoods; so, they bequeathed full devotion to agriculture as a profession and participated in agriculture related training courses minutely. the coefficient of dummy for extension contact was negatively and highly significant, indicating that more extension linkage reduces technical inefficiency in submergence and saline areas. information about the production packages of stress tolerant rice varieties were disseminated and distributed to the farmers’ field through the extension department mainly. so, the farmers who had active linkage with the extension personnel received the information/materials earlier and performed better (table 3). table 3: parameters of inefficiency effect model of stress tolerant rice farming technical inefficiency effect model ecosystems submergence drought saline variables parameters coefficient coefficient coefficient constant 𝛿0 0.012* (0.007) -0.098* (0.051) 0.345** (0.167) ln operated land (ha) 𝛿1 -0.072** (0.029) -0.013*** (0.004) -0.030*** (0.011) farmers age (years) 𝛿2 0.011*** (0.004) 0.214* (0.121) 0.014* (0.008) farmers education (year of schooling) 𝛿3 0.012* (0.007) 0.004ns (0.003) 0.021ns (0.020) household size (person/hh) 𝛿4 -0.005* (0.002) 0.181ns (0.165) -0.042* (0.023) working age population (number) 𝛿5 -0.016** (0.006) -0.254** (0.106) 0.029ns (0.041) dummy for farmers’ occupation (1=one, 0=more) 𝛿6 -0.080ns (0.069) -0.224** (0.110) -0.011** (0.005) dummy for training (1=yes, 0=otherwise) 𝛿7 -0.091ns (0.073) -0.418*** (0.148) -0.087** (0.040) extension dummy (1 if yes, and 0, otherwise) 𝛿8 -0.102*** (0.035) -0.156ns (0.152) -0.051*** (0.018) variance factors sigma-squared 𝜎2 0.037*** (0.013) 0.069*** (0.016) 0.025*** (0.007) gamma 𝛾 0.990*** 0.914*** 0.981*** asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 219-232 228 (0.331) (0.128) (0.312) note: ***, ** and * shows significant at 1%, 5% and 10% levels, respectively. values in the parentheses represent the standard error of the parameter estimates 3.6. farm specific technical efficiency distribution the sampled stress prone regions farms’ technical efficiency distribution is presented in table 4. the overall mean technical efficiency in the submergence prone area was about 80% with a range of 57% to 95%, implying that on an average, sample farmers cultivating rice about 80% of the prospective frontier production level, based on current level of inputs and technologies. the mean efficiency for the drought and saline areas were 77% and 74%, respectively. the findings of the analysis also revealed that, the average technical inefficiency was about 20%, 23% and 26% for the submergence, drought and saline prone environment, respectively which could be minimized through using stress tolerant varieties, improved seeds, fertilizers and better farm management practices. table 4: farm specific technical efficiency distribution pattern efficiency level (%) submergence drought saline mean 0.80 0.77 0.74 maximum 0.95 0.96 0.97 minimum 0.57 0.45 0.49 standard deviation 0.11 0.14 0.12 source: authors’ calculation from the results of frontier 4.1 package program 4. conclusion abiotic stresses are severe constrains of rice cultivation in bangladesh. rice production is marginally benefited to farmers in the stress prone areas. the cost of production of saline areas is (22.51 tk./kg) higher than submergence (19.82 tk./kg) and drought (19.40 tk./kg) areas, respectively. the farmers in drought areas received higher gross margin (12,612 tk./ha) than submergence (9,312 tk./ha) and saline (666 tk./ha) areas due to lower production cost and higher market price of paddy. the study revealed that inputs use in the production process was not judicious as per recommendation in all environments. the adoption of stress tolerant rice varieties had positive impact on increasing farm productivity. the farmers have opportunities to increase rice yield by efficient use of inputs in the production process. more than twenty percent of the existing inefficiency of the rice farms in the stress prone areas of bangladesh can be reduced with the better farm management practices. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors are very much grateful to bangladesh agricultural research council, dhaka, bangladesh for supporting this research for data collection from its core research fund grant. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ais (2016). krishi diary, agricultural information service. khamarbari, farm gate, dhaka-1215, bangladesh. barc (2011). agricultural research vision 2030 and beyond: research priorities in bangladesh agriculture. project implementation unit (piu-barc), bangladesh agricultural research council, new airport road, farmgate, dhaka-1215, 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(2003). profit efficiency among bangladeshi rice farmers. annual meeting, august 1622, durban, south africa 25898, international association of agricultural economists. available at: http://purl.umn.edu/25898 siddique, m. a. b., biswas, j. c., salam, m. a., & islam, m.a. (2014). implications of climate change, population growth and resource scarcity for food security in bangladesh. in u. s. nagothu (eds.), food security and development: country case studies. routledge, taylor & francis group, london and new york. view at google scholar siddique, m. a. b., furuya, j., kobayashi, s., & salam, m. a. (2013). a simulation study on impact of climate factors on production and requirements of rice in bangladesh. research on crop ecophysiology, 9(1), 55-69. view at google scholar appendix appendix i: brri developed stress tolerant hyv rice varieties ecosystems season name of the variety silent features of the variety salinity aus brri dhan55 yield: 5.0 t/ha, growth duration 105 days, plant height 100 cm, amylose 21%, long slender grain, moderately salinity, drought and cold tolerant, released date 2011 aman brri dhan40 yield: 4.5 t/ha, growth duration 145 days, plant height 110 cm, amylose 25.7%, medium bold grain, moderately salinity tolerant during the last phase of life cycle, released date 2003 brri dhan41 yield: 4.5 t/ha, growth duration 148 days, plant height 115 cm, amylose 24.6%, longish bold grain, moderately salinity tolerant during the last phase of lifecycle, released date 2003 brri dhan53 yield: 4.5 t/ha, growth duration 125 days, plant height 105 cm, amylose 25.9%, medium slender grain, moderately salinity tolerant during the last phase of life cycle, released date 2010 brri dhan54 yield: 4.5 t/ha, growth duration 135 days, plant height 115 cm, amylose 26%, medium slender grain, moderately salinity tolerant during the last phase of life cycle, released date 2010 brri dhan73 yield: 3.5-6.0 t/ha, growth duration 125 days, plant height 120 cm, amylose 27%, medium slender grain, saline tolerance at 8 ds/m (whole lifecycle), released date 2015 brri dhan78 yield: 4.5, growth duration 135 days, plant height 118 cm, amylose 25.2%, medium slender grain, can tolerate 6-9 ds/m salinity, flag leaf erect and tall, released date 2016 boro brri dhan47 yield: 6.0 t/ha, growth duration 145 days, plant height 105 cm, amylose 26.1%, medium bold grain, can tolerate 6 ds/m (whole life cycle), released date 2007 brri dhan55 yield: 7.0 t/ha, growth duration 145 days, plant height 100 cm, amylose 21%, long slender grain, moderately salinity, drought and cold tolerant, released date 2011 brri dhan61 yield: 6.3 t/ha, growth duration 150 days, plant height 96 cm, amylose 22%, medium slender and white grain, salinity tolerant, released date 2013 http://purl.umn.edu/25898 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=implications+of+climate+change%2c+population+growth+and+resource+scarcity+for+food+security+in+bangladesh&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=a+simulation+study+on+impact+of+climate+factors+on+production+and+requirements+of+rice+in+bangladesh&btng= asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 219-232 231 brri dhan67 yield: 6.0 t/ha, growth duration 145 days, plant height 100 cm, amylose 24.6%, medium slender and white grain, higher tolerance at 8 ds/m (whole life cycle), released date 2014 submergence aman brri dhan44 yield: 5.5, growth duration 145 days, plant height 130 cm, amylose 27.2%, bold grain, tidal submergence, released date 2005 brri shan51 yield: 4.5 t/ha, growth duration 157 days, plant height 90 cm, amylose 25%, medium slender and transparent grain, submergence tolerant at 14 days, released date 2010 brri dhan52 yield: 5.0 t/ha, growth duration 155 days, plant height 116 cm, amylose 25%, high elongation rate, medium bold grain, submergence tolerant at 14 days, released date 2010 brri dhan76 yield: 5.0 t/ha, growth duration 163 days, plant height 140 cm, amylose 24%, lodging tolerance, tidal submergence, released date 2016 brri dhan77 yield: 5.0 t/ha, growth duration 155 days, plant height 140 cm, amylose 24%, lodging tolerance, tidal submergence, released date 2016 brri dhan79 yield: 5.5, growth duration 160 days, plant height 112 cm, amylose 25.2%, flag leaf erect and tall, medium slender and white grain, submergence at 18-21 days, released date 2017 drought aus brri dhan42 yield: 3.5 t/ha, growth duration 100 days, plant height 100 cm, amylose 26.1%, medium slender white grain, drought tolerant, released date 2004 brri dhan43 yield: 3.5 t/ha, growth duration 100 days, plant height 100 cm, amylose 26.7%, high elongation rate, medium slender white grain, drought tolerant, released date 2004 brri dhan65 yield: 3.5-4.0 t/ha, growth duration 99 days, plant height 88 cm, amylose 26.8%, medium slender and white grain, shattering resistance, moderate drought tolerant (rain fed), released date 2014 aman brri dhan56 yield: 4.0 t/ha, growth duration 110 days, plant height 115 cm, amylose 23.7%, medium bold and white grain, drought tolerance (14-21 days) at reproductive stage, released date 2011 brri dhan57 yield: 4.0 t/ha, growth duration 105 days, plant height 115 cm, amylose 25%, grain size as jirashail & minikit type, can tolerate & escape (10-14 days without rain) terminal drought, released date 2011 brri dhan66 yield: 4.5 t/ha, growth duration 115 days, plant height 120 cm, amylose 23%, medium slender and white grain, protein enriched, can tolerate drought at reproductive stage, released date 2014 brri dhan71 yield: 4.5 t/ha, growth duration 115 days, plant height 108 cm, amylose 24%, medium slender grain, lodging tolerant, drought tolerant at reproductive phase in rain fed lowland rice ecosystem, released date 2015 source: brri (2017) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(11)2017: 219-232 232 appendix ii: summary statistics of stress tolerant rice farming in bangladesh ecosystem submergence drought saline variables mean mean mean yield (ton/ha) 3.27 (0.50) 3.80 (0.87) 4.17 (0.85) human labour (man-days/ha) 97 (13.93) 114 (36.09) 109 (13.8) seed rate (kg/ha) 50 (10.25) 44 (10.59) 43 (8.4) mechanical cost (tk./ha) 5828 (610.96) 7595 (2189.31) 7870 (1303.1) urea (kg/ha) 171 (17.72) 182 (41.22) 178 (13.28) tsp (kg/ha) 83 (9.07) 110 (19.49) 104 (13.04) mop (kg/ha) 64 (11.96) 86 (13.65) 90 (12.16) herbicide cost (tk./ha) 1499 (226.11) 1387 (417.91) 1510 (305.69) pesticide cost (tk./ha) 2163 (434.06) 3135 (1393.43) 2254 (796.05) irrigation charge (tk./ha) 4636 (1607.69) 16,310 (2315.68) land rental value (tk./ha) 13,330 (1288.47) 14,383 (3294.26) 13,670 (2024.67) varietal dummy (brri dhan52, brri dhan56 and brri dhan47) (%) 68 (0.47) 54 (0.50) 42 (0.50) farm-specific variables farmers age (years) 43 (10.05) 42 (9.85) 44 (9.84) only one occupation (%) 77 (0.42) 60 (0.49) 53 (0.50) education (years of schooling) 5 (3.75) 3 (3.19) 3 (3.16) family size (person/hh) 4.39 (0.92) 5.22 (1.39) 4.32 (1.14) working age population (no./hh) 2.74 (1.37) 3.23 (1.12) 3.22 (1.34) average operated land (decimal) 143 (52.67) 145 (0.43) 121 (81.8) training attended (%) 41 (0.50) 38 (0.48) 35 (0.48) extension contact (%) 34 (0.48) 41 (0.50) 39 (0.49) figure in the parentheses indicates standard deviation effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 302 farmers’ use of social media and its implications for agricultural extension: evidence from thailand sukit kanjina department of agricultural economy and development, faculty of agriculture, chiang mai university, chiang mai, thailand.  sukit.ka@cmu.ac.th article history abstract received: 18 august 2021 revised: 16 september 2021 accepted: 7 october 2021 published: 28 october 2021 keywords agricultural extension agricultural information sources farmers social media thailand. social media are viewed as having potential for agricultural extension. this study therefore surveyed social media use by farmers in a developing country, and their role as a source of agricultural information. to this end, 365 farmers in chiang mai, thailand, were sampled and interviewed using a questionnaire. the findings revealed that the majority of respondents (81.92%) did not adopt social media and, these remained marginal as a source of agricultural information for farmers. those using social media (18.08%) employed certain applications, i.e., line, facebook and youtube, mainly for communication, new updates and entertainment. younger farmers and farmers with a higher formal education related to social media use significantly. to fully harness the potentials of social media for agricultural extension, more farmers need to be encouraged to use them, while relevant agencies also are required to provide support for this effort, such as staff training in social media use, and enabling a social media policy. contribution/originality: this study is one of the first attempts to explore social media use by farmers in thailand. it employed a survey approach and found that most respondents did not adopt social media. this finding indicates a challenge for relevant public agencies in harnessing social media potential for agricultural extension. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.302.310 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: sukit kanjina (2021). farmers’ use of social media and its implications for agricultural extension: evidence from thailand. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4), 302-310. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.302.310 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction social media such as facebook, twitter, and youtube have become an integral part of human life. countless individuals globally use these applications in their daily life for communication and entertainment, among other activities. meanwhile, practitioners in both the public and private sector employ social media platforms to perform their tasks in serving their organizational objectives and goals in various areas, including marketing (e.g., (rodriguezmoran, 2020; stelzner, 2021)), local and public governance (e.g., (bonsón, royo, & ratkai, 2017; khan, 2017; zavattaro & bryer, 2016)), crisis communication and management (e.g., (holderness & turpin, 2015; muniz-rodriguez et al., 2020; shemberger, 2017)), education (e.g., (davis iii, deil-amen, rios-aguilar, & gonzález canché, 2015; green, mcmillan, munn, sole, & eady, 2020; sterling, leung, wright, & bishop, 2017)), and healthcare (e.g., (bond, merolli, & ahmed, 2016; smailhodzic, hooijsma, boonstra, & langley, 2016; willman, 2020)). a number of researches have continuously explored innovative ways in order to make use of social media tools and their data, as in the case of alcohol abuse (crawford, daniel, yakubova, & peiris, 2020), mental health promotion (o’reilly et al., 2019), and national asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 4 (2021): 302-310. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9835-4303 mailto:sukit.ka@cmu.ac.th http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 302-310 303 happiness (wang, al-rubaie, hirsch, & pole, 2021) for instance. thus, at present, there seem to be fewer questions as to whether social media should be adopted and used, and the issue now is rather how to harness their full potential and for what purposes they should be utilized. like other fields mentioned, practitioners and scholars involved in agricultural extension have paid increasing attention to social media (andres & woodward, 2013; kinsey, 2010; lubell & mcroberts, 2018; parsons, 2015; saravanan, suchiradipta, chowdhury, hall, & odame, 2015), where they are perceived as “innovative extension tools for building knowledge networks, coordination, communication, outreach and education” (andres & woodward, 2013; kinsey, 2010; lubell & mcroberts, 2018; parsons, 2015; saravanan et al., 2015). these new tools are believed to have specific potential for the essential functions of agricultural extension: for example, awareness creation, information dissemination, individual and mass advisory services, technology transfer, and market access facilitation (saravanan et al. (2015) cited in barber, magnus, and bitzer (2016)). recent studies have reported social media use in this agricultural extension context. according to suchiradipta and saravanan (2016), a majority of their survey respondents used social media to find and share agricultural information, as did their organizations in order to link with clients. they also found that facebook was the most popular platform for both individual and organizational users, as well as other social media applications employed by these users, including google+, twitter, and blogs for example. moreover, social media platforms, such as instagram (stock, 2020) and whatsapp (thakur & chander, 2017), were found to be useful as extension tools. apart from extension professionals and their organizations, farmers themselves also can utilize social media to foster farmer-to-farmer extension, where online groups using applications such as facebook, twitter and whatsapp are created and farmer participants exchange agricultural information (lee & suzuki, 2020; mills, reed, skaalsveen, & ingram, 2019; phillips, klerkx, & mcentee, 2018; thakur & chander, 2018). similar to other countries around the globe, thailand has witnessed increasing popularity of the internet and social media over the past two decades. in early 2021, 48.59 million (69.5%) and 55 million (78.7%) of the country’s approximately 70 million population were active internet and social media users, respectively, with youtube, facebook, facebook messenger, line, instagram, twitter, and tiktok being the most popular applications (datareportal, 2021). therefore, access to the internet and social media is common practice for the general public in thailand, except for those living in extremely remote areas. thus far, numerous studies have investigated various aspects of social media use in the country: for example, education (buraphadeja & prabhu, 2020; jaimunk & sureephong, 2013; seechaliao, 2014), marketing (chanthinok, ussahawanitchakit, & jhundra-indra, 2015; tantiponganant & laksitamas, 2016; tarsakoo & charoensukmongkol, 2020), and disaster management (gunawong & jankananon, 2015; gunawong., thongpapanl, & ferreira, 2019; ling, pan, ractham, & kaewkitipong, 2015). however, research focusing on utilization of social media in the context of agricultural extension is still very limited (see e.g., (sriboonruang, isarakul, & siripipattanakul, 2020)). therefore, this study aimed to fill the gap with the object of exploring whether farmers in thailand accept social media, and if so, for what purposes they employed their applications. in addition, sources of agricultural information were also explored to examine whether social media tools have played any role in providing such data. the results gained from this study shed some light on the use of social media by farmers in a developing country, where smallholders are still predominant (attavanich, chantarat, chenphuengpawn, mahasuweerachai, & thampanishvong, 2019). they also provide empirical evidence of the actual roles of social media in agricultural extension in the context of these farmers. thus, more understanding and insights should be added to research and practices concerning social media use in general for agricultural extension, particularly in thailand. ultimately, the understanding and insights obtained would contribute to harnessing fully the social media potential that benefits farmers, especially smallholders in developing countries. 2. research methodology this research was conducted in hang dong district, which is located in the northern province of chiang mai, thailand and comprises eleven sub-districts. hang dong is characterized by rural and peri-urban settings, a scene generally found in most districts across the country. rice and longan (dimocarpus longan) are the main crops in the area, where 4,021 farm households were registered with the hang dong agricultural extension office in 2017. regarding the internet, which is the sine qua non of social media, it is safe to assume that people living in hang dong district have no difficulties in accessing its services, as this area is located adjacent to the capital of chiang mai province. to explore the social media used by farmers and their agricultural information sources, a survey approach was employed to obtain empirical data from farmers who were members of registered farm households. by following yamane's formula (yamane, 1973), a sample size of 365 farmers was specified. proportionate sampling was then applied to determine the number of samples from randomly selected villages situated in each of the eleven hang dong subdistricts. in total, 66 villages (approx. 60%) from a total of 109 were covered. trained enumerators conducted a structured interview with farmers using a questionnaire. as a complete list of individual farmers was unavailable, the enumerators employed convenience sampling to identify farmers from various sections across selected villages in order to achieve a certain level of representation. the interviews were conducted in december 2017. descriptive statistics, including frequency distribution, means, and percentages, were performed to analyze data on the farmers’ socioeconomic characteristics, social media applications used, and purposes, as well as their sources of agricultural information. in addition, binary logistic regression was employed to identify factors that influenced the farmers to adopt social media. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 302-310 304 3. results and discussion 3.1. socio-demographic information on farmers table 1 shows a summary of the farmers’ socio-demographic information including sex, age, education, farming experience, farming areas, farm income, main crops, and group memberships. it was found that nearly three-quarters of the respondents were male (69.86%). with the average age of farmers being 58 years, it is evident that they are part of an aging society. indeed, a number of the respondents were aged between 51 and 60 years (44.66%), followed by those aged between 61 and 70 (33.97%). when taking into account those respondents aged 51 years or more, they made up the majority of 82.47%. it has been reported by others (attavanich et al., 2019; jansuwan & zander, 2021; rigg, phongsiri, promphakping, salamanca, & sripun, 2020) that farmer aging is prevalent across thailand. this situation could affect farmers’ use of social media, as age is a determining factor for adoption of new technologies (folitse, manteaw, dzandu, obeng-koranteng, & bekoe, 2019; nzie, bidogeza, & azinwi ngum, 2018). the age of the respondents also reflects their farming experience, which averaged around 27 years, while approximately one-quarter of them had farming experience of between 21 and 30 years. in fact, the respondents could be seen as veterans because more than half of them had practiced agriculture for 21 years or more. farming is undeniably their livelihood and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. it was apparent that the respondents had a low level of formal education. a majority of them only had primary school education (81.92%), which is below the country’s basic education level. some had no formal education (3.29%), and only a fraction obtained basic upper secondary school education or more (3.29% and 0.82%, respectively). according to attavanich et al. (2019), young thai farmers had gained more education, thereby improving the prospect for introducing modern technology into the field. however, the fact remains that farmers are largely part of the elderly group, and they possess limited formal education. thus, the introduction of new technology may be challenging for them. the findings on the famers’ use of social media applications presented below help to prove this point. table-1. socio-demographic information on farmers. variables frequency % sex male 255 69.86 female 110 30.14 age (years) ≤40 8 2.19 41–50 56 15.34 51–60 163 44.66 61–70 124 33.97 ≥71 14 3.84 education no formal education 12 3.29 primary education 299 81.92 lower secondary education 39 10.68 upper secondary education 12 3.29 others (e.g., tertiary education) 3 0.82 farming experience (years) ≤10 71 19.45 11–20 88 24.11 21–30 115 31.51 31–40 73 20.00 ≥41 18 4.93 farming area (rai) ≤10 339 92.88 ≥11 26 7.12 farm income (baht/year) ≤50,000 196 53.70 50,001–100,000 113 30.96 ≥100,001 56 15.34 main crops rice 161 44.11 longan 191 52.33 others (e.g., maize, banana, and soybean) 13 3.56 group memberships yes 338 92.60 no 27 7.40 source: field survey, 2017 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 302-310 305 the majority of the respondents were smallholder farmers, as most had farming areas of 10 rai (approx. 1.6 ha) or smaller (92.88%), with an average size of 5.68 rai (approx. 0.91 ha). many of them grew longan and rice as the main crops (52.33% and 44.11%, respectively), while only a few mainly produced other crops such as maize, banana, and soybean. by being endowed with only a small piece of land, it is no surprise that around half of the respondents earned an annual farm income of 50,000 baht (approx. 1,530 us$) or less. in fact, with an average annual farm income of 75,258.90 baht (approx. 2,306 us$), the respondents did not earn or save much money from farming. this situation is widespread in thailand, and farmers have to rely ever more, or even depend, on income generated by off-farm activities or sources (chiengthong, 2014). group memberships also may indicate the financial situation faced by farmers. nearly all of the respondents (92.60%) were members of at least one community group, with the main ones being funeral groups, groups for agricultural bank customers, and village funds, for example. these community groups provide financial support for their members in one way or another. 3.2. farmers’ use of social media regarding social media use, it was discovered that only 18.08% of the respondents adopted these applications (table 2). this figure was rather low against the backdrop of social media applications known widely for their easy access and use (khan, 2017; suchiradipta & saravanan, 2016). moreover, the number of active internet and social media users in thailand is relatively high, accounting for more than 60% of thailand’s total population in 2017 and rising (e.g., (datareportal, 2017, 2018)). however, this number does not seem to trickle down to farmer users. the types of social media adopted also were limited. the respondents employed only three applications, i.e., line, facebook, and youtube, with the first being the most popular, as almost all the respondents concerned employed this application (98.48%). in addition, it was seen that the respondents tended to use more than one social media application, particularly the combination of facebook and line (33.33%), or facebook, line, and youtube (31.82%) (table 2). this may be because each application has different features, such as line for messaging and youtube for publishing videos (see van looy (2015)). different social media applications were employed accordingly to suit the respondents’ varied purposes, of which the main ones included communication (96.92% for line, 86.05% for facebook), news updates (97.67% for facebook) and entertainment (89.29% for youtube) (table 3). however, it can be seen that only some respondents used social media applications for news updates on agricultural issues: for example, 37.21% for facebook and 28.57% for youtube (table 3). apparently, social media are not the farmers’ first choice for agriculture-related news, and certainly not their source of agricultural information either, as revealed below. table-2. farmers’ social media adoption. social media adoption frequency % yes 66 18.08 no 299 81.92 total 365 100.00 social media applications adopted frequency* % line 65 98.48 facebook 42 63.64 youtube 28 42.42 social media applications adopted by each respondent frequency % facebook and line 22 33.33 facebook, line, and youtube 21 31.82 line and youtube 6 9.10 line 16 24.24 youtube 1 1.51 total 66 100.00 note: *multiple responses source: field survey, 2017. table-3. purposes of social media use by farmers. purpose social media line (n = 65) facebook (n = 42) youtube (n = 28) frequency* % frequency* % frequency* % news updates 42 64.62 42 97.67 13 46.43 agriculture-related news updates 9 13.85 16 37.21 8 28.57 communication 63 96.92 37 86.05 1 3.57 entertainment 15 23.08 18 41.86 25 89.29 note: *multiple responses. source: field survey, 2017. as discussed above (see table 2), 66 respondents (18.08%) adopted and used social media. binary logistic regression analysis was thus performed to find factors that may influence this action, using independent variables, as presented in table 1. it was found that six variables were not significantly related to respondents taking up social asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 302-310 306 media, including sex, farming experience, farming areas, farm income, main crops produced, and group membership. however, two variables, i.e., age and education, were found to be significant at the 0.001% alpha level (table 4). this result revealed that the age of respondents had a significantly (coefficient = –0.143; p = 0.000; odds ratio = 0.867) negative impact on the acceptance and utilization of social media applications. this indicates that younger farmers appear to have 0.87 times higher probability of embracing social media than older ones. in this study, the respondents who accepted and employed the applications, indeed, tended to be younger with an average age of 50.44 years, compared to the average age of 58 years for all respondents. nearly 60% of these respondents were aged 50 years or below. other studies reported similar findings, where older prospective users were related negatively to the adoption of new technology, as in the case of adopting information and communication technologies (icts) for farming decisions in india (ali, 2012), and mobile phones for fruit marketing in vietnam (hoang, 2020). according to (zhu, ma, & leng, 2020), skills in using modern technologies were better in younger generations, and more elderly people had limited awareness of the benefits provided from these technologies. this may help to explain the situation. results also show that education of the respondents was a significant and positive factor (coefficient = 1.385; p = 0.000; odds ratio = 3.996), which implies that farmers with higher formal education have around four times higher probability of adopting and using social media applications than those with a lower one. many of the 66 respondents in this study (approx. 44%) who utilized social media had higher formal education, including upper secondary and tertiary education. this result is consistent with the study of khan, gao, sertse, nabi, and khan (2020b), who found a positive relationship between farmers with higher education and their use of mobile phone-based farm advisory services in pakistan. feyisa (2020) also reported a positive connection between the education level of household heads and the decision of farmers to adopt agricultural technology in ethiopia. this positive association exists probably because education improves the knowledge and skills of farmers and their access to information required for adopting new technologies (reimers & klasen, 2013; zhu et al., 2020). with education, farmers increase their appreciation of new technology and its benefits, while they also decrease their perceived level of uncertainty and risk of new innovations (reimers & klasen, 2013; zhu et al., 2020). table-4. factors determining the use of social media by farmers. variables coefficient standard error wald p-value odds ratio sex -0.062 0.353 0.031 0.861 0.940 age -0.143 0.031 21.394 0.000* 0.867 education 1.385 0.322 18.454 0.000* 3.996 farming experience -0.005 0.019 0.065 0.798 0.995 farming areas 0.038 0.035 1.182 0.277 1.039 farm income 0.000 0.000 0.925 0.336 1.000 main crops rice 0.465 1.077 0.186 0.666 1.592 longan -0.357 1.081 0.109 0.741 0.700 group membership 0.107 0.121 0.781 0.377 1.113 constant 4.416 2.051 4.637 0.031 82.780 note: *significant at p < 0.001; log likelihood = 240.890; omnibus tests of model coefficients (chi2 = 104.135 and p = 0.000); hosmer and lemeshow test (chi2 = 5.279, df = 8, p = 0.727); pseudo-r2 (cox and snell r2 = 0.248, nagelkerke r2 = 0.406). source: field survey, 2017. 3.3. farmers’ sources of agricultural information table 5 shows that the farmers relied on various sources of agricultural information, and the results indicate the main ones ranked by respondents. extension officers and neighbors were found to be important sources for the respondents (24.24% and 22.04%, respectively). this finding is not surprising, as agricultural extension offices are located in every district in thailand and they regularly provide farmers with agricultural information and assistance on production inputs and relief for harvest damages, for example. opara (2008) also observed a similar situation in nigeria, where the majority of farmers indicated that extension officers were their source of agricultural information. as presented above, neighbors of the respondents mainly grew rice and longan and thus it is easy for them to exchange information with others who produce the same crops and live in the same community (after kavi, bugyei, obengkoranteng, and folitse (2018)). this result is congruent with the study of msoffe and ngulube (2016) and kavi et al. (2018), who found that farmers identified fellow farmers, friends, neighbors, or family members as their main sources of agricultural information. osei, folitse, dzandu, and obeng-koranteng (2017) likewise reported that a large number of farmers in their study received such information from friends. in addition, respondents named the broadcasting tower with loudspeaker as a major source of agricultural information (18.18%). it is typical in thai villages or communities to have these towers, from which village heads, officers from local government organizations, or other community leaders make announcements, including information related to farming activities. the data revealed that 13.77%, 12.95%, and 3.58% of the respondents placed radio, television, and production input shops, respectively, as chief sources of agricultural information, while a few (2.76%) obtained it from other sources (e.g., newspapers and agricultural groups). however, it can be seen that only a few respondents (2.48%) mentioned social media as an important source of agricultural information. as such, social media currently have a marginal role in providing agricultural information to farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 302-310 307 table-5. farmers’ sources of agricultural information. source frequency* % extension officer 88 24.24 neighbor 80 22.04 broadcasting tower 66 18.18 radio 50 13.77 television 47 12.95 production input shop 13 3.58 social media 9 2.48 others 10 2.76 total 363 100.00 note: *missing data for two respondents. source: field survey, 2017. 3.4. implications for agricultural extension this research set out to explore whether farmers who live in a typical district setting in a developing country, and have fairly good access to the internet, accept and use social media applications. as presented above, social media have yet to become part of farmers’ everyday life, as less than one-fifth of the respondents have embraced the applications (table 2). those who have accepted them, such as facebook and line, employed them mainly for communication and news updates while only some used them for following agriculture-related news (table 3). these findings provide a glimpse of reality about the use of social media by farmers in thailand. this situation may also resemble that in other developing countries, in which farmers share similar socio-demographic characteristics such as aging, limited formal education, and small-sized farms (table 1; see (helpage international, 2014; isaya, agunga, & sanga, 2018; khan et al., 2020a)). age and educational factors were indeed found to influence the acceptance of social media by the farmers (table 4), as well as other new technologies (e.g., (hoang, 2020; khan.. et al., 2020b; zhu et al., 2020)). social media undoubtedly have potential as ‘innovative extension tools’ for various purposes such as communication and outreach (lubell & mcroberts, 2018). they also are deemed to become ‘the next big thing’ in the field of agricultural extension (suchiradipta & saravanan, 2016). however, clearly seen evidence of social media use indicates that any social media-based agricultural extension efforts in thailand, and in other developing countries, would require serious considerations and sound plans. concerned government and development agencies would need to take into account the fact that a large number of farmers do not use social media applications in the first place, and many of them continue to rely on typical sources of agricultural information such as extension officers, neighbors, and the radio (table 5; see (isaya et al., 2018; osei et al., 2017)). in addition, improvement in the capacity of effective social media use also is required for extension officers (suchiradipta & saravanan, 2016). in the case of thailand, it is apparently not the right time at the moment for relevant government agencies to embark on social media-based extension projects. emphasis should be directed instead on raising farmers’ awareness of social media, and their potential contributions to the improvement of their farming practices and other agriculturerelated activities (see zhu et al. (2020)). this would encourage more farmers to adopt and use social media applications for agricultural production-related purposes as well. at the same time, extension officers could take the lead in using social media applications to communicate and exchange agricultural information with farmers. meanwhile, the recommendations of suchiradipta and saravanan (2016) would be helpful, such as training in social media use for extension officers and their superiors, and, creating appropriate social media policy and guidelines for agricultural extension officers. once a relatively large number of farmers in a given district or province embrace social media, and appreciate their benefits for their agricultural production, meaningful social media-based agricultural extension efforts, with positive impacts on farmers’ livelihoods, could then be initiated and implemented. 4. conclusion social media have become a recent point of interest in the field of agricultural extension, where social media-based agricultural extension draws attention from both researchers and practitioners alike. notwithstanding their popularity, however, it was revealed in this study that the majority of farmers in the study area did not accept or use social media, and they did not play a significant role for them as an important source of agricultural information. these findings reflect the reality of how social media are received in local communities in thailand, and a similar situation is likely to be found in other developing countries. nevertheless, this does not mean that relevant government and development agencies in developing countries should not attempt to use social media in their agricultural extension endeavors. given the current situation, as observed in this study, a sudden shift to social media for agricultural extension would not be useful for the farmers or the agencies concerned. instead, a gradual process is preferable in order to induce both the farmers and agencies concerned, together with their staff, to adopt and utilize social media, and later social media-based agricultural extension. in this way, social media potentials may be harnessed fully for agricultural extension that results in benefits for the farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 302-310 308 funding: the research project for this work was supported by the faculty of agriculture, chiang mai university, chiang mai, thailand. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ali, j. 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(2020). ict adoption, individual income and psychological health of rural farmers in china. applied research in quality of life, 1-21. available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-020-09879-2. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 212 impact of gomal zam dam irrigation project on agriculture and welfare of farming community in southern districts of khyber pakhtunkhwa-pakistan saad ali khana, syed attaullah shaha*, irfan ullaha, muhammad ibrahimb, salman khana a department of agricultural & applied economics, university of agriculture peshawar, pakistan b university of agriculture amk campus mardan, pakistan * email address: syedshah313@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 21-apr-2018 accepted: 25-may-2018 online available: 18-jun2018 keywords: gomal zam dam (gzd), canal water irrigation, spate irrigation, southern districts of khyber pakhtunkhwa, pakistan abstract this study investigated impact of gomal zam dam (gzd) irrigation project on agriculture and welfare of farm households in southern districts of khyber pakhtunkhwa, pakistan. the study found immense effect of the project on increase in cultivated area and yield of wheat and gram crops, and diversification of traditional cropping pattern to commercialized farming with the addition of sugarcane and vegetables. the availability of irrigation water also induced cultivation of fodder crops which enabled farmers to add large ruminants to their livestock herds. all these changes resulted improvement in farmers’ welfare and development in project area. there are various post project needs which are equally important for long term success. the most important of these needs are training of farmers on water use efficiency; provision of technical assistance on using high yielding seed varieties, chemical fertilizers and pesticides; and provision of credit and subsidies for dairy farming. contribution/ originality this research study was designed to evaluate the impact of gomal zam dam (gzd) irrigation project on farm level agriculture in d. i. khan and tank districts in southern kp province. findings from this study support government investment in hydropower and irrigation infrastructure development in the southern districts of kp province. such investment will be more effective in improving farming community’s welfare and growth in the agricultural sector of the province. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.10/1005.10.212.218 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: saad ali khan, syed attaullah shah, irfan ullah, muhammad ibrahim and salman khan (2017). impact of gomal zam dam irrigation project on agriculture and welfare of farming community in southern districts of khyber pakhtunkhwa-pakistan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10), 212-218. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 10(2017): 212-218 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:syedshah313@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.10/1005.10.212.218 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 212-218 213 1. introduction agriculture, which is the back bone of the pakistan’s economy, has a declining share in the gross domestic production for the past years. this decline in agricultural share is a result of growth in the industrial and services sectors of the economy. however, agricultural production for major crops are showing upward trends. increase in production of major crops, such as rice, cotton, wheat and sugarcane, are key for growth in agro-based industries. also, agriculture is a main source of employment, and it feeds the whole rural and urban population of the country (gop, 2017). that’s why government policy makers are always committed to work for growth in this sector and to solve its major problems. increase in production of major crops can be achieved through intensive and extensive practices. intensive agriculture is the use of high yielding seed varieties and recommended fertilizers doses of fertilizers and chemicals for increasing crops yield. extensive agriculture means expansion in cultivated area under major crops, and this can be achieved through provision of irrigation facility in rain-fed areas. construction of small, medium and large dams and water canals for irrigation can help in utilizing uncultivated land for crops production (khan and shah, 2012; khan et al., 2011; majeed et al., 2010; sarwar and bastiaanssen, 2001). the southern districts of khyber pakhtunkhwa have potential for extensive crops production; however, due to unavailability of irrigation water, agricultural productivity is low and most of the area is barren. after the construction of chashma right bank canal, water requirement has been fulfilled on substantial agricultural land of d. i. khan. the availability of water has resulted diversification in cropping pattern and increase in yield of major crops. the government of khyber pakhtunkhwa is now executing another water resources development projectthe gomal zam dam (gzd) project. the gross command area of the project is 271,038 acres comprising of 192166.46 acres in tank, 110,957 acres in kulachi and 27,929 acres in d. i. khan. figure 1: ariel view of gomal zam dam the gzd command area is well known for spate irrigation, locally named as rod kohi, and is practiced for centuries in this area (asif et al., 2016; nawaz and han, 2006). during monsoon period, water is stored and is used for irrigating crops in winter season (ahmad and choudhry, 2005). the climate of the project area is hot in summer and moderately cold in winter, and mean annual asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 212-218 214 precipitation is around 250-270 mm. current cropping pattern include wheat (triticum aestivum) and gram (ciccer aeritinum) as major crops. huge potential exists for production of cereals and cash crops if provided with irrigation water. this study investigated the impact of the gzd irrigation system on agricultural productivity, area allocation to major crops, dairy farming and farmers’ welfare. 2. materials and methods 2.1. sampling and data collection a two stage stratified sampling technique was used to select a sample of beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries from the study area. in the first stage, four villages were purposively selected from gzd command area-two located in d.i. khan district (beneficiaries) and two in tank district (nonbeneficiaries). in the second stage, 25 farmers were selected randomly from each village. thus a sample of 100 farmers was selected having equal number of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of gzd irrigation project. data were collected from the selected farm households and for this purpose a well-designed and pretested questionnaire was used. other required information were collected from different secondary sources, such as published reports of different government departments. 2.2. analytical framework to evaluate the impact of gzd irrigation project on on-farm area allocation to major crops (wheat and gram) and their yields per acre, independent sample t-tests were conducted. 𝑡 = (�̅�1 − �̅�2) √ 𝑆1 2 𝑛1 + 𝑆2 2 𝑛2 … … … … … … … . . (1) where; (1, 2) represent beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of gzd irrigation project t is the ‘t-statistic’ 𝑛1 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑛2 are the number of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, respectively; �̅�1𝑎𝑛𝑑 �̅�2 are the corresponding mean value for their respective cultivated area or yield 𝑆1 2 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑆2 2 are the respective unbiased estimator of the variances for beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries. the associations of cultivation of cash crops, such as sugarcane and vegetables, and rearing of cows and buffaloes with availability for irrigation water from gzd project were checked through pearson χ2 test. 𝑥2 = ∑ (𝑂𝑖− 𝐸𝑖)2 𝐸𝑖 … … … … … … … . . (2) where: χ2 represents chi-square distribution o is the observed value e represents expected value household’s aggregate monthly expenditure (food and non-food) was used as a welfare indicator in the following dummy variable regression model to estimate the effect of gzd-irrigation project on their wellbeing. 𝐶𝐸 𝑗 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐷𝑗 … … … … … … … . . (3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/unbiased_estimator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/variance asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 212-218 215 where: cej is total monthly expenditure of the jth farm household. d is a dummy variable, 1 if jth farm household is beneficiary of gzd-irrigation project, otherwise 0. β0 is the intercept or the jth farm household’s average monthly expenditure. β1 is coefficient of dummy variable d, representing change in farm household’s monthly expenditure because of gzd irrigation project. 3. results and discussion this section is divided into two parts. the first part present characteristics of the interviewed farm households and the second part report results on the impacts of the gzd irrigation project on area allocation to major crops, yields, cropping pattern, dairy farming and monthly expenditure of the farm households in the command area. 3.1. characteristics of the farm households the gzd command area comprises an approximate population of about 355,000 (252,000 in d.i.khan and 103,000 in tank). the clans residing in the area are unnara, kannera, baloch, gandapure, manjhikhel, khokhar and masud. the languages spoken widely are saraiki and pashto. data collected from interviewed farm households show that male and female proportion in the command area was 51% and 49%, respectively; average household size was 11 individuals; and most of them were headed by male member. literacy rate was low because of non-functional schools and unqualified staff. around 75% of the community members were illiterate and were unable to read and write, while only 25% were literate. female members were more illiterate (83.5%) as compared to male members (68% illiterate), this was due to the unavailability of middle and higher schools for female in the area. agriculture was the main source of their income, and their average farm size was 50 acres. around 50% of the interviewed farm households were owner of their farm land, 40% were tenant and 10% were owner-cum-tenants. 3.2. impacts of gzd irrigation project on 3.2.1 cultivated land the availability of perennial source of water for irrigation has increased the area under crops and is a game changer for the people using traditional flood management system for the production of crops. descriptive statistics for farm size and on-farm cultivated land are given in table 1. average farm size of the non-beneficiaries was 60.7 acres and average cultivated land was 19.0 acres. the cultivated land was around 30.9% of their total farm size. the beneficiaries’ farm size was 40.1 acres, out of which cultivated land was 28.1acres (66.7%). it clearly shows that beneficiary farmers were practicing extensive agriculture on their farm. gzd irrigation project helped them in utilizing barren land for cultivation of crops. table 1: average farm size and cultivated land farmers average farm size (acres) cultivated land (acres) non-beneficiary 60.7 19.0 (30.9%) beneficiary 40.1 28.1 (66.7%) total 50.4 24.1 (48.3%) source: survey data (2016) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 212-218 216 3.2.2. major crops cultivation wheat is the staple food cultivated for the last 5 decades in the area through traditional rod kohi farming practice and its by-products is utilized as fodder for livestock. wheat cultivated area were 10.5 acres and 16.8 acres on non-beneficiary and beneficiary farms, respectively (table 2). this high cultivated area for wheat crop on a beneficiary’s farm was apparently because of the water availability from gzd-irrigation system. gram, the second most important food crop after wheat, was cultivated on 4.0 acres and 7.4 acres of a non-beneficiary and a beneficiary farm, respectively (table 2). again, this significant difference of 3.4 acres on a beneficiary farm was resulted because of the gzd-irrigation project. table 2: land allocation for major crops crops land allocation t-test statistic (pvalue) non-beneficiaries beneficiaries wheat 10.5 acres 16.8 acres 4.84 (<0.001) gram 4.0 acres 7.4 acres 5.40 (<0.001) source: survey data (2016) 3.2.3. major crops’ yields before, gzd project, the timely availability of water for irrigation was a major problem. now, the availability of perennial flow of water for irrigation has enhanced the agricultural productivity for major crops. table 3 shows that average yield of wheat on non-beneficiary and a beneficiary farms were 700 kgs and 1230 kgs per acre, respectively. this high yield on beneficiary farm was because of water availability from gzd irrigation project and this increase in yield (by 530kgs) is statistically significant, as indicated by t-statistic value of 5.01 and associated p-value of <0.001. the same table shows that average yield of gram on a non-beneficiary and a beneficiary farms were on average 334 kgs and 713 kgs per acre. the estimated t-statistic value of 6.40 is statistically significant for increased yield on beneficiary farm due to water availability from gzd irrigation system. table 3: yields for major crops crops yield per acre t-test statistic (pvalue) non-beneficiaries beneficiaries wheat 700 kgs 1230 kgs 5.01 (<0.001) gram 334 kgs 713 kgs 6.40 (<0.001) source: survey data (2016) 3.2.4. cultivation of cash crops farmers having irrigation facility are likely to diversify their cropping pattern. the beneficiaries of gzd-irrigation system have started cultivating cash crops (sugarcane and vegetables). the given table 4 presents that 56% of the beneficiaries had started cultivating sugarcane, while the nonbeneficiaries were unable to cultivate it. similarly 74% of the beneficiary farmers were cultivating vegetables, while only 28% of the non-beneficiary farmers were able to cultivate them. the estimated pearson chi-square statistics and associated p-values reveal significant association of cultivation of sugarcane and vegetables with water availability from gzd–irrigation system. increase in cultivation of sugarcane and vegetables could significantly increase farmers’ income from agriculture. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 212-218 217 table 4: sugarcane and vegetables cultivation in the gzd command area farmers sugarcane vegetables no yes no yes non-beneficiaries 50 (100%) 0 (0%) 36 (72%) 14 (28%) beneficiaries 22 (44%) 28 (56%) 13 (26%) 37 (74%) all 62 (62%) 28 (28%) 49 (41%) 51(51%) pearson chi2 (p-value) 45.488 (0.000) 18.082 (0.000) source: survey data (2016) 3.2.5. livestock farming irrigation facility in different ways can have a positive effect on livestock farming. irrigated farming increase potential for green fodders production and motivate farmers to increase the number of large ruminants, such as cows and buffaloes, in their livestock herd. increase in the number of these animals increase milk production and enhances farm household’s income. table 5 shows that 73% of the interviewed beneficiaries were rearing buffaloes and cows for milk production. on the nonbeneficiaries side only 27% of the interviewed farmers were rearing cows and buffaloes for milk production. the estimated pearson chi-square value reveals significant association between irrigation facility and rearing of milk producing animals. table 5: impact of gzd irrigation project on adoption of milking animals pearson chi2 (1) = 10.482 pr = 0.001 3.2.6. household’s welfare the gzd-irrigation system, through ensuring timely availability of water for production of crops, has sustained agricultural returns and has improved farm household’s returns. welfare economists use household’s expenditures on food and non-food items as an indicator of their welfare status. that is why this study used farm household’s expenditure as a proxy for measuring improvement in their welfare. the estimated results for the dummy variable regression reveals that farm household’s monthly expenditure was on average 25918 rupees, and the expenditure for a beneficiary farm household was greater than the non-beneficiary’s by 18706 rupees. as indicated by t-statistics value of 3.52 and p-value of 0.001, this increase in the expenditures is statistically significant. ce = α0 + α1(d) = 25918 + 18706(d) t-value (3.35) (3.52) p >│t│ (0.001) (0.001) 4. conclusions and recommendations the gzd-irrigation system has resulted increase in land allocation and yield for wheat and gram crops. the farm households have started growing high value crops, such as sugarcane and farmer cows and buffaloes no yes non-beneficiaries 36 (73%) 14 (27%) beneficiaries 15 (28%) 35 (72%) total 41 (100%) 59 (59%) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 212-218 218 vegetables, and rearing of cows and buffaloes. this crops-livestock mixed agricultural strategy has increased and secured income. all these changes reveal that gzd–irrigation system has an immense effect on farm households’ welfare in the area. findings of this study favor government investment in hydropower and irrigation infrastructure development in the southern districts of kp. such investment will be more effective in improving farming community’s welfare and growth in the agriculture sector of the province. there are various post project needs which are equally important for the success of the gzdirrigation project and achieving its long term goals. the most important of these needs are training of farmers on modern agricultural farming for water use efficiency; provision of technical assistance on use of high yielding seed varieties, chemical fertilizers and pesticides; and provision of credit and subsidies for dairy farming. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: among authors, saad ali khan provided the main theme of the study from his ms thesis, syed attaullah shah supervised and proof read whole the research, while rest of the authors completed the empirical portion of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ahmad, m., & choudhry, m. r. 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plants 257 effect of small-scale irrigation on the farm households’ income of rural farmers: the case of girawa district, east hararghe, oromia, ethiopia beyan a., jema h. and adem k. p. o. box 138 dire dawa, department of agricultural economics, college of agriculture and environmental science, haramaya university, ethiopia abstract irrigation is one means by which agricultural production can be increased to meet the growing food demands in the world. this study evaluated the effect of small-scale irrigation on farm household income in production. the specific objective of this study is to identify the factors influencing participation in small-scale irrigation and provides bases for policy makers in girawa district, eastern hararghe zone, oromia, ethiopia. both primary and secondary data were collected for the study. primary data were collected from 200 sample respondents drawn from both participant and non-participant households. preliminary statistics and econometric models were employed for data analysis. the logistic regression estimation of factors affecting participation revealed that age of household head, non-farm income, livestock size, size of cultivated land, distance between plot and irrigation scheme, means of transportation and participation of household heads in social organization significantly affected the participation decision of households in irrigation farming. results showed that participation in irrigation has a significant, positive effect on farm households’ income. therefore, policy makers should give due emphasis to the aforementioned variables to increase participation in irrigation farming and improve the livelihood of rural households. keywords: irrigation, income, rural farm households, participation and logit model introduction 1 ethiopia is an agrarian country where around 95% of the country’s agricultural output is produced by smallholder farmers (moard, 2010). agriculture contributes about 41% of the country’s gdp, employs 83% of total labour force and contributes 90% of exports (eea, 2012). despite its dominance, in 2011 alone productive safety net program supported 7.4 million people, whereas an additional 4.5 million people were requiring emergency humanitarian assistance (fews net, 2011). corresponding author’s name: beyan a. email address: beyanhmd@gmail.com irrigation contributes to livelihood improvement through its direct and indirect benefits. the direct benefits of irrigations are; high productivity, lower risk of crop failure, and higher and year-round farm and non-farm employment, increased income, food security, and poverty reduction. irrigation enables smallholders to adopt more diversified cropping patterns, and diversify income base sources. indirectly irrigation benefits as a potential to become ‘nuclei of growth’ which are attractive for inward investments in other infrastructure and services such as banking to facilitate this growth (hussien and hanjira, 2004) the total irrigable land potential in ethiopia is 5.3 million hectares assuming use of existing technologies, including 1.6 million hec asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:beyanhmd@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 257-266 258 tares through rwh and ground water. there are 12 river basins that provide an estimated annual run-off of ~125 billion m 3 per year, with the potential of irrigating total of 3,731,222ha from surface water. the potential available estimates for rwh range from 40,000 to 800,000 ha. the area under irrigation development to-date is estimated to be 640,000 hectares for the entire country which is 5% of the potential irrigable (awulachew et al., 2010). agriculture in ethiopia is heavily dependent on rainfall, which is highly varies both spatially and temporally. despite ethiopia’s agricultural enterprises, a high and growing human population, recurrent droughts and periodic floods, complicated by climate change that has been accompanied by severe soil and landscape degradation in some regions contributed to a situation of national food insecurity (fao, 2011). this, therefore, calls for different interventions, irrigation being one of the options, which could help in adapting strategies to cope up with the challenging drought. though agriculture remains to be the most important sector of the ethiopian economy, its performance has been disappointing and food production has been lagging behind population growth (demeke, 2008), which is unable to fulfil the requirement of the everincreasing number of mouths. poor use of modern inputs can partly explain the low productivity of the sector and the internal inefficiency of the farmers in using the available agricultural resources in the light of the foregoing this study examined farm household’ income of smallholder irrigated and rain-fed farm production in ethiopia, using girawa district of oromia national regional state as a study area. specifically, this study;  to identify factors affecting household level irrigation participation of smallholder farmers.  to provides a base for policy makers through the comparisons of farm income of irrigation users and non-users with respect to similar areas. research methodology the study was conducted in girawa district, oromia national regional state, ethiopia. according to csa (2010), girawa district has a total population of 263,924 of which 133,780 are male and 130,144 are female and total area of the district is about 1109.41 km 2 with density of 237.9 (board, 2012). the climate condition of the study area 48.9%, 31.1% and 20% of girawa district is kolla, woina dega and dega of agroecological zones, respectively. the land altitude ranging from 1215 to 3405 meter above sea level (m.a.s.l). the annual rainfall ranges from 550mm to 1100 mm with annual temperature ranging from 20 ºc 27ºc. the primary source of income is crop and chat production. major types of crops grown in the area are sorghum, maize, common beans, highland pulses and many other vegetable crops like potatoes, onion, garlic, and leafy vegetables. livestock rearing is the secondary source of livelihood for the rural people in the area (board, 2012). the district has a range of water resources, which are suitable for irrigation activities. traditional irrigation has a long history in the district whereas modern irrigation schemes are not as much. the total irrigable land potential in the district is 6113ha, out of which 4014ha from surface water potential and the remaining 2100ha estimated to be ground water potential. however the estimated area under irrigation to-date is 3025.5 in which traditional irrigation accounts for 1842ha, modern irrigation covers 690.5ha and the area underground water(in the form of well) is 493ha that benefits about 29,332 households. water management was under taken by water user association themselves. as sources of information both primary and secondary data sources were used. the primary data were collected using semistructured questionnaire that was adminisasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 257-266 259 tered by the trained enumerators. in addition to primary data, secondary data were also collected from relevant sources such as published and unpublished documents of the district and other relevant institutions (care gara muleta) for general description and to augment primary data. the sampling procedure used was two stage random sampling. in the first stage out of the kebeles exist in the district two kebeles are purposively selected due to availability of irrigation. in the second stage, to select sample respondents from the two kebeles, first the household heads in the two kebeles were identified and stratified into two strata: irrigation users and non-users. then the sample from each stratum was selected randomly based on probability proportion to size. finally, a total of 200 sample respondents; 100 users and 100 non-users were interviewed. data analysis to address the objectives of the study, both preliminary statistics and econometric methods were employed. for this study, preliminary statistics such as mean, percentages, standard deviation, frequency of occurrence, chi-square and t-test were used. the statistical significance of the variables was tested for both dummy and continuous variables using chi-square and t-tests, respectively. the logit model the logit and probit are the two most commonly used models for assessing the effects of various factors that affect the probability of adoption of a given technology. these models can also provide the predicted probability of adoption. both models usually yield similar results. however, the logit model is simpler in estimation than probit model (aldrich and nelson, 1984). hence, the logit model will be used in this study to analyze the determinant of smallscale irrigation utilization. following gujarati (2003) and aldrich and nelson (1984) the logistic distribution function for the utilization of small-scale irrigation schemes is specified as: (1) where, pt = is the probability of using the irrigation for the i th farmer and it takes 0 or 1. e zi = stands for the irrational number e to the power of zi . zi = a function of n-explanatory variables which is also expressed as: zi = b0+b1x1+b2x2+…+bnxn (2) where, x1 x2… xn are explanatory variables. b0is the intercept, b1, b2 … bn are the logit parameters (slopes) of the equation in the model. the slopes tell how the log-odds ratio in favor of using the small-scale irrigation schemes changes as an independent variable changes. the unobservable stimulus index zi assumes any values and is actually a linear function of factors influencing adoption decision of small-scale irrigation schemes. it is easy to verify that zi ranges from -∞ to ∞, pi takes 0 or 1 and that pi is non-linear related to the explanatory variables, thus satisfying two requirements:  as xi increases pi increases but never steps outside the 0 and 1 interval; and  the relationship between pi and xi is non-linear, i.e., one which approaches zero at slower and slower rates as xi gets small and approaches one at slower and slower rate as xi gets very large. but it seems that in satisfying these requirements, an estimation problem has been created because pt is not only non-linear in xi but also in the b’s as well, as can be seen clearly below. pt = 1 (3) 1 + e -(b 0 +b 1 x 1 + b 2 x 2 + . . . +b n ) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 257-266 260 this means the familiar ols procedure cannot be used to estimate the parameters. but this problem is more apparent than real because this equation is intrinsically linear. if pt is the probability of adopting a given smallscale irrigation scheme then (1pt), the probability of not adopting, can be written as: 1pt = 1 (4) 1 + e z i therefore, the odds ratio can be written as: = = (5) now is simply the odds ratio in favor of adopting small-scale irrigation schemes. it is the ratio of the probability that the farmer would adopt the utilization of smallscale irrigation schemes to the probability that he/she would not adopt it. finally, taking the natural log of equation 15, the log of odds ratio can be written as: li = = = =bo + (6) where, li is log of the odds ratio in favor of small-scale irrigation schemes adoptions, which is not only linear in xi , but also linear in the parameters. thus, if the stochastic disturbance term (ui), is introduced, the logit model becomes: zi =b0+b1x1+b2x2+…+bn xn+ ui (7) this model can be estimated using the iterative maximum likelihood (ml) estimation procedure. in reality, the significant explanatory variables do not have the same level of impact on the adoption decision of farmers. the relative effect of a given quantitative explanatory variable on the adoption decision is measured by examining adoption elasticity’s, defined as the percentage change in probabilities that would result from a percentage change in the value of these variables. to calculate the elasticity, one needs to select a variable of interest, compute the associated pt, vary the xi of interest by some small amount and re-compute the pi, and then measure the rate of change as where d xi and d pi stand for percentage changes in the continuous explanatory variable (xi) and in the associated probability level (pt), respectively. when d xi is very small, this rate of change is simply the derivative of pt with respect to xi and is expressed as follows (aldrich and nelson, 1984): = = (8) the effect of each significant qualitative explanatory variable on the probability of adoption is calculated by keeping the continuous variables at their mean values and the dummy variables at their most frequent values (zero or one). results and discussions results of analysis of socio-economic characteristics of the surveyed households are presented in table 1. they show that farm income of irrigation users were birr 87290.45 and the average for the non-users were birr 67983.62. the t-test analysis revealed that the mean annual farm income of the two groups was statistically significant at less than 1 % probability level. the average crop income of irrigation users were birr 19718 and the average for the non-users were birr 12899. the t-test analysis revealed that the mean annual crop income of the two groups was statistically significant at less than 1 % probability level. the average livestock income of irrigation users were birr 5257 and the average for the non-users were birr 4034. the t-test analysis revealed that the mean annual crop income of the two groups was statistically significant at 5% probability level. the average annual non/off-farm income of irrigation users was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 257-266 261 1694.48 birr while the annual average for non-users was 404birr. the t-test showed that there was statistically significant mean difference between the two groups at 5 % probability level. the average age of users and non-users were 39 and 44 years respectively. from the statistical analysis performed, it is found out that there was statistically significance mean difference between users and non-users at less than 1 % probability level. the result indicates that irrigation users (4) had more average years of formal schooling than nonusers (2). the mean difference of the two groups was statistically significant at 1% probability level. similarly on average irrigation users contacts extension gents (26 times) than non-users (13times). the t-test indicated that there was statistically significant difference between two groups in terms of frequency of extension contact f at 1% probability level. the study also showed that out of the 200 sample households 190 own (rear) livestock. the mean livestock holding for user households was 4.296 tlu and 2.987 tlu for non-users. the mean difference of the two groups was statistically significant at 1% probability level. table 1: preliminary statistics for continuous variables variables all sample (n=200) participants (n=100) non –participants (n=100) tvalue mean sd mean sd mean sd income 77637 27529 87290 28098 67984 23358 -5.28*** crop income 16309 11780 19718 14647 12899 11630 -4.27*** liv income 4646 3763 5257 4471 4034 2778 -5.28*** age 41.59 11.59 38.96 11.57 44.22 11.05 3.288*** education 3.08 3.98 4.18 4.23 1.99 3.39 -4.037*** extension 19.58 23.5 26 28.4 13.2 14.9 -4.004*** livestock 3.64 2.43 4.30 2.53 2.99 2.15 3.945*** n-f income 1049.2 3819 1694.48 4924.42 404 2057.4 -2.418*** irrigation dist 25.38 11.94 20.97 11.80 29.78 10.93 5.604*** whether road dist 92.32 33.47 80.10 28.87 104.55 33.42 5.537*** source: own survey result.*, **, *** significant at 10%, 5%and 1% probability level respectively the result also revealed that irrigation users had on average less weather road distance (80) than non-users (104) in minutes. the mean difference between the two groups with regard to distance from the weather road was statistically significant at 1% probability level. the result also shows that irrigation users had significantly less distance (20.97) of irrigation source than non-users (29.78) in minutes. table 2 shows that irrigation users (42%) have had significantly more fertile land than non-users (22%) according to their opinion. similarly irrigation users were more participated (24.5%) in leadership of social organizations, than non-users (10%). the chisquare test between the two groups was found to be significant at 1% probability level. finally the result also revealed that 35.5 percent of the users and 41.5% of nonusers transport their produce on back animals. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 257-266 262 table 2: preliminary statistics for discrete variables variables irrigation-users (n=100) non-users (n=100) total (n=100) χ2value number % number % number % soil fertility fertile 84 42 44 22 128 64 not fertile 16 8 56 28 72 36 34.722*** social status participated 49 24.5 20 10 69 34.5 not-part 51 25.5 80 40 131 65.5 18.608*** transportation pack animals 71 35.5 83 41.5 154 77 otherwise 29 14.5 17 8.5 46 23 4.065*** source: own survey result.***,* significant at 1% and 10% probability level determinants of participation in smallscale irrigation in the estimation data from the two groups; namely, participant and non-participant households were pooled such that the dependent variable takes a value 1 if the household was irrigation user (treated) and 0 otherwise. as it was indicated in table 4, the results indicated that participation is significantly influenced by seven explanatory variables. age of household head, means of transportation, participation in social organization, non-farm income, and cultivated land area and distance from weather road and distance from irrigation scheme were significant variables which affect the participation of the household in small-scale irrigation scheme utilization. age was negatively and significantly related with probability of participation at 5% probability level. the odds ratio of 0.96 implies that, other things being constant, the odds ratio in favor of using irrigation decreases by a factor of 0.96 as age increase by one year. the reason was that older farmers are less likely to adopt innovations and thought to be more conservative in implementing modern technologies. this result is consistent with the findings of bigsten and abebe (2003) and hilina (2005). irrigation distance has a negative and significant effect on probability of participation at 5% probability level. the odds ratio of 0.96 for irrigation distance implies that, other things being constant, the odds ratio in favor of using irrigation water increases by a factor of 0.96 as irrigation distance decreases by one unit (in minutes). within the same topography, this could be households who are situated in nearby places do not incur much cost to access the irrigation scheme; therefore, they quickly decide to participate in the scheme. this result is consistent with the findings of abonesh (2006), yenetila (2007) and asayehegn et al. (2011). transportation has been found to be negatively related to the probability of being participated at 1 % significant level. the possible justification is that most of the sample households use pack animals as a means of transportation due to lack of transportation facilities and unavailability of good roads. the odds ratio of the variable indicated that other things remain constant; the probability of the household being participated would decrease by a factor of 0.316 if this means of transportation become pack animals. tracey-white (2005) puts idea of lack of transportation facilities and unavailability of good road hampered the farmers’ decision and in turn agricultural productivity. the result also showed that access of family members in non-farm income source had a positive and statistically significant relation asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 257-266 263 with probability of participation at 10% probability level. its odds ratio effect shows that, participation of family members in non/off-farm income increase probability of participation in irrigation farming by 1.001, other variables being constant. the implication of this result is that, irrigation farming like any other business requires financial capital. it also needs chemicals, seeds, fertilizers and in certain instances irrigation pipes and sprinklers. this result is consistent with the findings of asayehegn et al. (2011), yenetila (2007) and haji (2003). cultivated land area was found to be positive and significantly affect probability of participation. the reason for this could be that fragmentation of cultivated land is a problem of crop diversification for most of the farmers in the study area. the odds ratio implies that if other factors are held constant, the odds ratio in favor of using irrigation water increases by a factor of 7.83 as farm size increase by one unit (ha). this result is consistent to the findings of beyene et al. (2000), hirko (2009) and belay et al. (2010). similarly, weather road distance was found to be negative and statistically significant at 5% probability level with probability of participation. the reason for this could be that, transport operators are in most cases reluctant to reach such areas and some of the farmers fail to get their produce to the market in time. this tends to disadvantage communal farmers to participate in the recent boom in irrigation farming. the values of odds ratio also implies that if other factors are held constant, the odds ratio in favor of using irrigation water decreases by a factor of 0.983 as weather road distance increase by one unit (minute). this result is consistent with the findings of beyene et al. (2000) and takele (2008). social organization, this variable has a positive and significant relationship to the probability of participation at 1% probability level. this is because those farmers that have position in social organization are parts that responsible in managing and resolving irrigation related conflicts, and therefore, it might be due to influential power over others. the odds ratio of the variable indicated that other things remain constant; the odds ratio in favor of using irrigation increase by a factor of 3.836 as the farmers being participated in social organization. this result is consistent with the findings of haji (2003) and yenetila (2007). table 3: logistic regression results for determinants of participation in irrigation variables coefficient odds ratio se z constant 4.119** 1.894 2.17 age -0.039** 0.962 0.017 -2.32 sex 1.018 2.766 0.657 1.55 education 0.03 1.031 0.075 0.4 non-farm income 0.00012* 1.00012 0.0001 1.74 family size -0.094 0.91 0.122 -0.77 economic active force 0.031 1.031 0.222 0.14 cultivated land 2.058* 7.832 1.084 1.9 livestock holding 0.03 1.03 0.092 0.33 irrigation distance -0.042** 0.959 0.021 -2.02 farmers training 0.144 1.155 0.454 0.32 extension 0.005 1.005 0.02 0.26 transportation -1.151*** 0.316 0.452 -2.55 social status 1.344*** 3.836 0.402 3.35 soil fertility 0.175 1.192 0.496 0.35 weather road distance -0.017** 0.983 0.008 -2.18 number of obs = 200 pseudo r 2 = 0.2778 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 257-266 264 prob > chi 2 = 0.0000 log likelihood = -100.12 lr chi 2 (15) = 77.01 source: own survey result. *, ** and *** mean significant at 10%, 5% and 1% probability levels, respectively summary and conclusion this study was carried out to examine the effect of small scale irrigation on farm households’ income. for this study, both primary and secondary data were used. the primary data source was gathered from 200 sample households (100 users and 100 nonusers) using semi-structured questionnaires. secondary data were collected from different sources to support primary data. data analysis was carried out using preliminary statistics and econometric techniques. the logistic regression result shows that participation is significantly influenced by seven explanatory variables. the variables age of household head, distance to irrigation scheme, size of cultivated land, non-farm income, means of transportation, distance to weather road and household head participation in social organizations were the significant variables which affect the participation of the household in irrigation farming. recommendations small-scale irrigation is important development effort to ensure farm income if properly implemented. based on the empirical findings reported in this thesis, the following recommendations are forwarded: this study has found evidence that the irrigation in the study area has shown that participant households have more farm income than non-participant households. this has an encouraging message for program designers, implementers, and funding agents to take proper action to achieve the intended goals of securing households food security by improving efficiency in production. the findings indicate that irrigation access is an important factor for increase farm households’ income. concerned bodies should give attention for promoting access to irrigation to encourage household farm efficiency. access to irrigation through irrigation development for rural households will have major impacts. these are not only an increase in household production, income and reduction of dependency on food aid, but also have a significant positive impact on the overall rural economy. therefore, government and other stakeholders should provide support through the establishment of more irrigation project and other agricultural production increasing projects that can assist farmers to produce their own food and be food secured. policy makers need to promote irrigation development so that farmers can irrigate more crops, fruits, vegetables and other fresh produce. the age of the household head has a negative and significant effect on the adoption of irrigation farming. age happens to be one of the human capital characteristics that have been frequently associated with nonadoption in most adoption studies. among the several reasons that could explain the negative effect of age on adoption is the fact that older farmers tend to stick to their old production techniques and are usually less willing to accept change. in addition young people are associated with a higher risktaking behavior than the elderly. so development agents and younger members should have to aware the elders the benefit of new technology in agricultural production through practical demonstration. nearness to the water source is also negatively related to participation in irrigation. those households that are situated near the water source are willing to participate. therefore, the construction of small scale irrigation should consider the distance beasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 257-266 265 tween the water source and villages for a better use of the schemes by households. farmer’s position in local organizations has a positive influence on the adoption of water technology. this tends to reveal that farmers with positions are more likely to have easy access to information due to their influential power over others. so it is necessary to correct such biased flow of information towards positioned farmers and ensure evenly dissemination of information on new agricultural technologies through farmers’ local organizations. size of cultivated land and household participation in irrigation farming are positively and significantly related indicating larger farm size improves household participation. households with large farm size are found to be participated more than others however; there may not be a possibility of expanding cultivated land size anymore because of increasing family size and degradation of the existing farm land. therefore, household must be trained as to how to increase production per unit area (productivity). farmers cannot adopt technologies if roads and transport are inadequate and poor for them to acquire technology-related inputs, or to market their produce. the infrastructure issue typically illustrates that the adoption process does not only depend on the farmers’ willingness, but partakes to an overall sustainable rural development process. so in this empirical findings distance from the main (all weather) road negatively and significantly influences the participation of farmers in irrigation technology. therefore, the government should strengthen recent efforts of expanding rural road networks in order to open-up market for irrigated crops and the provision of necessary inputs for irrigated agriculture. the study revealed that means of transportation used in the study area negatively and significantly influenced farmers’ small-scale irrigation utilization. this clearly indicates that for effective irrigation utilization, enhancing the beneficiaries (community participation), government and non government support in promoting transportation facilities and expanding rural infrastructure(special rural road) so as to increase both the probability of participation and proper utilization of irrigation water. references abonesh tesfaye, (2006). the impact of small scale irrigation on household food security and assessment of its management system: the case of filtino and godino irrigation schemes in ada liben district. east shoa, ethiopia. an m sc thesis presented to the school of graduate studies of haramaya university. 246p. aldrich, j. h., & f. d. nelson (1984). liner probability, logit and probit model: quantitative applications in the social science. sera miller mccun, sage pub. inc, university of minnesota and iola, london. awulachew, s. b., lambisso, r., asfaw, g., yilma, a. d., moges, s. a. (2010). characterizing, assessment of performance and causes of underperformance of irrigation in ethiopia. ethiopian journal of development research, 1(32), 1 – 17. belay kassa, samson eshetu, belayneh belete , degeye goshu, demeksa tamiru, estifanos worku, zelalem lema, addisu delelegn, josephine tucker and zemede abebe. (2010). income diversification through improved irrigation in ethiopia: impacts, constraints and prospects for poverty reduction evidence from east harerghe zone, oromia region, ethiopia. working paper no 14 april 2010 pp. 60. beyene tadesse, asssefa admassie and a. croppenstdent, (2000). the impact of agricultural extension on farm productivity. ethiopian journal of agricultural economics, 4(1 & 2), 23-47. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(3)2014: 257-266 266 bigsten, a., & abebe shimelse (2003). the dynamics of poverty in ethiopia. wider conference on inequality, poverty and human well-being. gothenburg, sweden, 30-31 may 2003. board (buraeu of agriculture and rural development), (2012). annual report. girawa district east hararghe zone. csa (central statistical agency of ethiopia), (2010). statistical abstract of ethiopia. central statistical agency, addis ababa: ethiopia. demeke mekuria (2008). impact of small scale irrigation schemes on poverty reduction. the case of bahirdar zuria district in west gojjam adminstrative zone. an msc thesis presented to the school of graduate studies of haramaya university. 121p. eea (ethiopian economic association), (2012). annual report on ethiopian economy. addis ababa, ethiopia. fews net (famine early warning systems network), (2011). ethiopia food security outlook. http://www.fews.net/docs/publications/ ethiopia_dekadal_08_20 final_ext.pdf. fao (food and agriculture organization), (2011). independent evaluation of the programmes and cooperation of the food and agriculture organization of the united nations in ethiopia. gujarati, d. n. (2003). basic econometrics, second edition. mcgraw hill, inc., new york. haji biru (2003). adoption of crossbred dairy cows in arsi zone: the case of tiyo and lemu-bilbilo woredas. an m sc thesis presented to the school of graduate studies of alemaya university. 102p. hirko wakgari (2009). agricultural extension and technology adoption in bako tibe district of oromia region. an m. sc. thesis presented to the school of graduate studies of addis ababa university.99p. hilina mikrie (2005). dimensions and determinants of poverty in pastoral areas of eastern ethiopia: the case of shinile zone somli national regional state. an m sc thesis presented to the school of graduate studies of alemaya university. 125p. hussien, i., & m. a. hanjira, a. (2004). irrigation and poverty alleviation: review of the empirical evidence. irrigation and drainage, 53, 1-15. kinfe asayehegn, chilot yirga and s. rajan (2011). effect of small-scale irrigation on the income of rural farm households: the case of laelay maichew district, central tigray, ethiopia. journal of stored products and postharvest research, 2(10), 208 – 215. moard (ministry of agriculture and rural development), (2010). ethiopia’s agriculture sector policy and investment framework: ten year road map (2010-2020). takele mengesha (2008). small-scale irrigation scheme utilization and farmers’ willingness to pay for irrigation water: the case of bosha-01 irrigation scheme in central oromia. an m sc thesis presented to the school of graduate studies of haramaya university, 154p. tracey-white, j. (2005). rural – urban linkages: an infrastructure identification and survey guide. agricultural services bulletin 161. fao, rome, italy. yenetila a. (2007). factors influencing the use of irrigation water at gedeb irrigation scheme, machakel woreda, east gojam zone. m sc thesis presented to the school of graduate studies of haramaya university.114p. http://www.fews.net/docs/publications/ethiopia_dekadal_08_20%20final_ext.pdf http://www.fews.net/docs/publications/ethiopia_dekadal_08_20%20final_ext.pdf http://www.fews.net/docs/publications/ethiopia_dekadal_08_20%20final_ext.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 17 identification, selection and observation of nuansa sanggabuana soybean, its yield and resistancy to diseases ai komariah a* , noertjahyani b, hardedi c and salman buhturi d a* professor; faculty of agriculture, university of winaya mukti, bandung, west java, indonesia. ai.komariah@yahoo.com (corresponding author). b senior lecture; faculty of agriculture, university of winaya mukti, bandung, west java, indonesia. c, d senior researchers; department of supervision and certification of seeds, west java, indonesia. corresponding author article history: received: 12-mar-2017 accepted: 10-apr-2017 online available: 25-apr2017 keywords: description, glycine max, identification, resistance, selection, yield abstract study to get nuansa sanggabuana (ns) of karawang soybean variety to be released to become superior variety was conducted district of karawang, west java province, from 2010 to 2014. the study consisted of identification, purification and description, adaptation test. the identification step was conducted positive mass selection; purification was done a negative mass selection, adaptation yield test and also resistances to diseases. the test was arranged in randomized block design by comparing ns karawang with anjasmoro, argomulyo, orba, grobogan, and rajabasa which was repeated 4 times. identification result had two ns karawang local variants based on colour on the trunk, which were grey trunk fur and brown trunk fur. variant which was purified for the next generation was one brown trunk fur. on-off type individual purification step was discarded and made description based on upov standard. adaptation test result showed that differences between ns karawang and anjasmoro, argomulyo, orba, grobogan, and rajabasa variety on plant’s height, number of productive trunk, number of pod for each plant, weight of 100 grains, yield per plant, yield per unit, and yield per hectare. ns karawang had higher yield than anjasmoro, argomulyo, orba, and rajabasa but lower yield than grobogan. contribution/ originality the article gives steps in plant development program, especially to develop landrace variety and turns it into a new superior variety, and also release the variety doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.1/1005.1.17.27 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: ai komariah, noertjahyani hardedi and salman buhturi (2017). identification, selection and observation of nuansa sanggabuana soybean, its yield and resistancy to diseases. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1), 17.27. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 1(2017): 17-27 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 17-27 18 1. introduction in west java, soybean is one of the superior commodity which become priority in agriculture development activities. subandi (2012) said that indonesia is vulnerable to a drop in rice production and has a little rice reserve. the government has paid little attention to agriculture hence agricultural production is not keeping pace with demand. indonesia imports many kinds of agricultural products to meet domestic demands. to minimize the import of agricultural products one of is the increase of soybean production that could be done by fixing the soybean production system, they are: (1) development of planting areas through planting index increament (pi); (2) increament of productivy through adopting the technology which fixed variety and (3) production monitoring (heriyanto and imam, 2006). improving the agricultural production consists of genotypic and agronomical (watering, culturing, fertilizing etc.) as stated by subandi (2012a) applying fertilizer is a must in agronomic point of view, especially in soil with less fertile due to scarce nutrients or unbalanced nutrition. genotypic effort is the use of superior variety in specific location was one of the alternative to increase soybean production. in the effort to increase availabity of the superior seed was done many efforts in breeding which by release a new superior varie ty whether local or national as the result of plant breeding. there are about 80 soybean varieties which was released and distributed to farmer, but must firstly be assessed its adaptation level and stability on many agroecosystem such in irrigation rice field, rainfall and land so will be known which variety will has high result on that argosystem. new superior variety could be produced by many ways which were: introduction, crossbreed, radiation or through purification/bleaching from known local variety and accepted by farmers. a variety said to be suitable morphologically, physiologycal and agronomical superiors. a few of them are: harvest age, yield, resistance to the main pests, resistance to environtment, resistance to pest, seed toleration to mechanical damage, quality of the yield and nutrient value also contain certain substance which helpful. these characteristics had been considered as superior. local ns karawang variety was one of kinds of local soybean which had distributed to people long time ago especially in karawang district. ns soybean was a local variety adopted by farmers because of big shape, tasteful and high yielding. based on the origin, ns initial named after a mountain in karawang district (nuansa sanggabuana) which used for local soybean variety that had grown since 1987. further development done by farmers started in 1992 through student activity of a university, sub-district of lemahabang. one of the farmer in which constinuously cultivated the variety of ns soybean. production of ns local soybean variety in district karawang every year kept increasing. harvested area, production and productivity of ns local soybean in district karawang in the year of 2008 was 11 ha with 17 tons of production and 1.05 ton ha -1 productivity while in 2015, harvested area was 160 ha, 294 tons of production and it means 1.825 ton ha -1 production (department of agricultural, fishery, and forestry district of karawang, 2015). in the year of 2014 soybean production in district karawang was 719 tons, in west java was 11526 tons, and in indonesian was 954997 tons (central bureau of statistic, 2016). asean soybean production in 2014 was 1484000 tons (asean statistical year book, 2016). comparison of soybean production between karawang district, west java and indonesian in 2014 showed at figure 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 17-27 19 figure 1: comparison of soybean production between karawang district, west java and indonesian the agriculture office of karawang in cooperation with the office of supervision and sertification of the seed food plants and holticulture institution from west java and breeders from winaya mukti university had carried out the identification and early purification selection of ns soybean variety. the variety of soybean will be developed and had the best superiority also was adapted by by farmers. the next step after identification and early selection was seed purification to prepare seed resource, make description and observation for yield test and resistance to plant disease. in every test steps was always done a selection process to ensure purity of the seed. general research had purpose to get ns local variation then released to be superior variety. 2. materials and method the activities in ns karawang breeding program were steps they were; 2.1. identification and selection of ns karawang variety selection method which was applied in this step was positive mass selection which had been done since 2009 and 2010. breeder and farmers carried out the phenotype performance observation for each individual in one population then chose individual that will be planted and purified on the next generation. 2.2. seed purification and description in 2011 selection result of the positive mass was chosen and ns karawang local soybean variance b (brown fur trunk) then planted back and then did a negative mass selection. on negative selection only selected plant individuals which wanted and cast plant that diverged from wanted criteria (fehr, 1987). negative mass selection had done to purify to the variety in order to produce ns karawang local soybean seed which had the genetic purity proven. 2.3. adaption test adaptation test purpose was to detect superiority and variety interaction to environtment. adaption test was done in wet rice field that was used to be placed to plant rice. located in sub-district pangkalan, district karawang, west java province in the elevation 85 above sea level and the soil was grumosol (department counseling of agricultural, fishery, and forestry sub district pangkalan, 2010). rainfall type c based on schmidt and ferguson (1951) classification, and was done from 2013 2014. material which used for yield test and resistance to diseases soybean of ns karawang local variety, anjasmoro, argomulyo, orba, grobogan, and rajabasa, manure, urea (n 46%), sp-36 (p2o5 36%), kcl (k2o 60%), and legin. soybean production in 2014 karawang jawa barat jawa barat indonesian indonesi an asean asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 17-27 20 apparatus which used were grass knife, water pump, dibble, measuring tape, scales, bamboo stake, ruler, name board, bucket, moisture tester, handsprayer and stationery, scissors, and sack. research based on two set, this was for review the potential result of ns variety than other superior varieties, and know ns variety superior which was resistance to main pests. research method which used was randomized block design, consisting of 6 varieties which were ns karawang, anjasmoro, argomulyo, orba, grobogan and raja basa which repeated 4 times, that there were 24 plots of trial. qualitative character observation was done while plant growth based on upov standard (national committee for genetic resources, 2006). yield components of the observation were including number of productive branch, number of pod, number of seed, weight of 100 seeds, weight of seed per plant and yield per hectar did on sample plant which randomly determined. measurement of intensity of the attack of the disease based on attack category such as on table 1. table 1: leaf rust attack category on soybean based on attack intensity no pests / disease attack intensity category 1. damage between 0 % 10 % resist 2. damage between > 11 % 25 % moderately resistant 3. damage between > 26 % 40 % moderately resistant 4. damage between > 40 % 60 % susceptible 5. damage between > 60 % very susceptible note: on plant disease observation which used was leaf, root, and pod part disease intensity measured based on rank and level of pustule attack on leaf. resistance level of soybean plant to rust disease based on iwgsr (yang, 1977), as follows : score < 222 = resist; score = 222 = a bit resist ; score > 222 = susceptible and score > 333 = very susceptible. data analysis which used in this research was varians analysis/f test (gomez and gomez, 1995). if f test result between treatment shows variety, then to know the difference between treatments was done next test by range different test using continuation smallest significant difference test on 5% level. 3. result and discussion 3.1. ns karawang variety identification based on positive selection result to mixed population chosen two variants of local ns karawang which based on colour of the trunk fur, which were grey and brown. the variant which was chosen to be purified and developed for the next generation was the one with brown trichoma. table 2: qualitative character of two varian ns karawang variety no inspection time character expresion varian a varian b 1 10-15 day after planted (dap) hypocotile colour purple purple 2 when blooming flower colour purple purple 3 when blooming blooming agre (dap) fast flowering (˂32 days) fast flowering (˂32 days) 4 when blooming leaf shape lanceolate lanceolate 5 when blooming leaf colour green green 6 when blooming leaf surface soft soft asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 17-27 21 7 50-60 dap grow type determinate determinate 8 50-60 dap colour of trachoma brown grey 9 when ripe ripe age (dap) early harvest (˂70 days) early harvest (˂70 days) 10 when ripe plant’s height when ripe average (41-50 cm) average (41-50 cm) 11 when ripe ripe pod’s colour brown brown 12 when ripe pod piece’ resistance not easy to break not easy to break 13 when ripe seed skin’s colour light yellow light yellow 14 when ripe hilum colour light brown light brown 17 50 and 70 dap resistance to rust disease moderate moderate 18 adaptation area drought tolerance drought tolerance 3.2. seed purification and description observation result and morphology data entry based on upov standard, could be used as matter in variety description compiling. the result of the qualitative performance observation of local ns soybean plant from district karawang which dominant and purified as seen on table 3. table 3: qualitative character of ns karawang local variety no inspection time character explanation 1 10-15 (dap) hipocotile colour purple 2 when blooming flower colour purple 3 when blooming blooming agre (dap) fast flowering (˂32 days) 4 when blooming leaf shape pointed ovatus 5 when blooming leaf colour green 6 when blooming leaf surface soft 7 50-60 dap grow type determinate 8 50-60 dap colour of trachoma brown 9 when ripe ripe age (dap) early harvest (˂70 days) 10 when ripe plant’s height when ripe average (41-50 cm) 11 when ripe ripe pod’s colour brown 12 when ripe pod piece’ resistance not easy to break 13 when ripe seed skin’s colour light yellow 14 when ripe hilum colour light brown 17 50 and 70 dap resistance to rust disease average (moderate) 18 adaptation area water is available on terrain based on table 3 could be known that ns karawang local variety included to soybean with plant’s height on average category, with the result that the potencial could be improved through more crowded density of the population, and early harvest aged, which less than 70 so could be very match to use for plant in legumes-rice plant pattern which planted by the end of raining season on wet rice field. 3.3. yield test result 1). plant’s height, branch number and pod number plant height characteristic could be use as one of the plant growth component to chose grooves with great yield. because of that, the higher the plant expected more heathly knot formed so the pod number and seed will increase too. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 17-27 22 table 4: plant’s height, number of productive trunk, number of pod per plant range variety plant’s height (cm) number of productive trunk number of pod for per plant ns 46.95 b 3.97 a 31.00 a anjasmoro 56.55 a 4.15 a 29.00 ab argomulyo 40.05 d 3.98 a 25.25 c orba 47.20 b 3.72 a 21.25 d grobogan 47.57 b 3.86 a 32.25 a rajabasa 43.65 c 3.79 a 27.25 bc explanation: mean which are followed by the same letter of the same coloumn are not significantly different based on significant different range test p> 5% based on table 4, plant height among varieties which were tested were significant different. ns variety which tested had plant height range was 46.95 cm while the comparison plant height range was 43.65 cm to 56.55 cm. differences character between varieties caused by genetic factor. f1 test by heri et al. (2015) showed that g1 (♀detam ii x ♂anjasmoro) and g2 (♀anjasmoro x ♂detam ii), significantly different of flower age, plant height, number of seeds and pods with seed 1, number of seeds and pods with seed 2, number of seeds and pods with seed 3, number of pods containing, number of seed per plant, seed weight per plant and 100 seeds weight. g5 (♀grobogan x ♂detam ii) and g6 (♀detam ii x ♂grobogan) significantly different of flower age, harvesting time, primer branch number, number of seeds and pods with seed 2, number of seeds and pods with seed 3, number of pods containing, number of seed per plant and seed weight per plant. difference between f1 and f1 reciprocal occur because of maternal inheritance individuals crossing result. number of productive branch among varieties which tested showed unsignificant different. based on pod number, ns variety had significant difference of pod number and more than argomulyo, rajabasa and orba varieties, mean while with anjasmoro and grobogan varieties didn’t show significant difference. differences character between varieties caused by genetic factor. research by hero et al. (2015) showed that the strongest relationship of seeds yield was seen with number of branches per plant (b=1.65) followed and the weakest with plant biomass (b=0.02). therefore this trait should be considered to be most important while selecting improved soybean genotypes under semi-arid conditions. the yield obtained by early planting was positively correlated with the pods m −2 , seeds pod −1 , and oil contents, but negatively correlated with the sterile pod rate, 100 seed weight and protein content. in the early planting, the u.s. cultivars had greater pods m −2 , seeds pod −1 and oil content and less sterile pod rate, 100-seed weight, and protein content than the japanese cultivars. these results suggest that early planting can increase the yield in southwestern japan, if cultivars with agronomic traits observed in the u.s. cultivars of this study are grown (naoki et al., 2016). result of analysis statistically, dried soybean yield per unit and of dried soybean yield per hectare could be seen on table 5. table 5: weight of 100 grain, yield per plant, yield per unit, yield per hectare variety weight of 100 grain (gram) yield per plant (gram) yield per unit (kg/80 m2) yield per hectare (ton/ha) ns 18.36 a 16.75 b 21.45 b 2.68 b anjasmoro 14.87 bc 12.70 c 16.52 c 2.07 c argomulyo 15.39 b 11.69 d 15.25 d 1.91 d orba 13.33 c 8.81 e 11.18 e 1.40 e grobogan 19.22 a 18.03 a 23.40 a 2.93 a rajabasa 14.92 bc 12.24 cd 15.28 d 1.91 d asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 17-27 23 explanation: mean which are followed by the same letter in the same coloumn are not significant difference based on significant different range test p> 5% based on table 5 could be known that component of production character performance of ns karawang variety, generally, almost equal the performance from national superior variety which already distributed to people, even weight of 100 grains of ns karawang variety was the same as grobogan variety and more superior from anjasmoro, argomulyo, orba and rajabasa varieties. bekele and getnet (2011), said that seed yield was strongly associated with seeds plant -1 , pods plant -1 , seeds pods -1 , days to maturity and grain filling period. adie and krisnawati (2007) said that soybean seed grouped based on big (weight >14 g/100 seeds), average (10-14 g/100 seeds), and small (<10 g/100 seeds). based on that group, ns karawang which tested included in big seed seed character (18,36 grams) it means more production of seed.. observation to ns karawang local variety had potential yield generally close to grobogan variety even above anjasmoro, argomulyo, orba and rajabasa varieties. yield potential was interaction with environment factor. research by popovic et al. (2015), showed that yield in soybean grain was positively correlated with oil yield and precipitation (r= 0.94**, r= 0.92**), and negatively correlated with oil content (r= 0.37) and with temperature (r= 0.93**). the other research by dankit and wafula (2002) showed that cultivar yield stability at the environments, yielding ability, height at maturity as well as days to maturity formed the basis for assessing cultivar suitability for a given environment. there were significant cultivar x environment interactions for all the response variables tested. four cultivars, eai3600, gazelle, nyala and sable were identified to be stable in the different environments and were consistently observed to be high yielding and of appropriate height, maturity period and highly adaptable to the sites. production of plant was depend on the capability of its vegetative to carry out the photosynthesis process as said by subandi (2012c) that substances which are produced in photosynthesis are glucose and oxygen as the by product. 3.4. resistance to disease resistance level observation to main pests, was resistance to rust disease, virus, leaf pock and resistance to pod borer pests showed that ns karawang variety had moderately resistance to rust disease. leaf rust disease attack intencity attack data, showed on table 6. rust disease symptom of plant on age 50 day after planting (dap), with the smallest disease intensity happened to grobogan variety and kept hold out until 60 dap, while on the age of 70 dap, the rust disease intensity happened to ns variety. durability of ns variety which was bigger, may caused by plant’s genetic factor. table 6: leaf rust disease average intensity on few groove or soybean variety which tested (%) variety leaf rust attack intensity age of 50 dap age of 60 dap age of 70 dap ns 15.50ab 18.50b 20.00b anjasmoro 15.00ab 18.50b 33.00ab argomulyo 21.50ab 25.50ab 30.50ab orba 31.00a 35.00a 40.00a grobogan 12.50b 17.50b 23.50ab rajabasa 21.50ab 27.00ab 30.50ab explanation: mean which are followed by the same letter in the same column are not significant difference based on significant different range test p> 5% soybean rust caused by phakopsora pachyrhizi is the most destructive foliar disease of soybean, and yield losses over 50% are common when environmental condition were conducive for disease asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 17-27 24 development (hartman et al., 2005). environtment factor which had effect to disease development, which were moisture, temperature, and sunlight. based cook (1980) rust mushroom attack closely related to the wetness level of the plant. soybean plant’s older leaf will be bigger and wetter because covered by the leaves above it than younger leaf. figure 2: intensity development of rust leaf attack increase of the disease intensity on every genotipe which tested, from the beginning through the end, caused by rust fungus characteristic, which generally attack the older plants. the older the soybean plant was, it will be more susceptible to rust fungus (soekarno and satari, 1987). this thing proven by murdan at al. (1990) that it had more product inclination of uredospora p. pachyrhizi, if the plant has entered the pod stadium than other stadiums. few varieties resistance reaction and groove which tested to leaf rust disease, especially on the last observation on the age of 70 dap, showed increasement on resistance reaction based on iwgsr (yang, 1977). that resistance reaction showed on table 7. table 7: average number of resistance reaction of few varieties and groove based on iwgs variety observation 50 dap 60 dap 70 dap ns 222 222 222 anjasmoro 225 227 227 argomulyo 227 225 227 orba 227 228 250 grobogan 222 222 222 rajabasa 225 225 230 from table 6 was known that ns and grobogan varieties were moderately resistant. this thing showed from the number obtained, which 222, which means 1/3 of the leaf on middle position had shown a little unspora pock. meanwhile other varieties included to susceptible. the tanecity difference caused by genetical difference from tested varieties. plant height appears to be one of the factors that will determine differences in the severity of rust disease on soybean, correlation analysis showed that was significant negative correlation between plant height with the number of lesions (sulistyo and sumartini, 2016). the other research showed that argomulyo and grobogan and three lines namely k/i100//b63///g-7 (6.55 g), k/i100//b63///g-8 (6.15 g), and i100/b54//a-5 (5.85 g) namely k/i100//b63///g-7 (6.55 g), k/i100//b63///g-8 (6.15 g), and i100/b54//a-5 (5.85 g) as moderately resistant to rust disease. in this study, days to flowering and plant height influence the development of rust disease severity. there are three lines that have seed weight per plant significantly heavier than argomulyo (4.97 g) and grobogan (4.30 g). the high value of the 0 10 20 30 40 50 age of 50 dap age of 60 dap age of 70 dap a tt ac k in te n it y (% ) ns anjasm oro argomu lyo asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 17-27 25 scales of seed weight per plant for the three lines is supported by high-performance plants with a lot of number of fertile nodes and pods. these three soybean genotypes potentially serve as genetic material to develop high yielding soybean varieties and resistant to rust disease examined the effect of saccharin on the systemic acquired resistance (sar) response of soybean to the fungus phakopsora pachyrhizi, showed that saccharin applied as a root drench was more effective than the foliar spray treatment at inducing sar, with increased resistance observed 1 day after application. systemic protection against rust infection was still apparent 15 day after application of saccharin as a root drench. in contrast, foliar treatment with saccharin did not increase systemic protection until 15 day after treatment. when systemic protection was indayuced by the application of saccharin in either manner, there was no significant reduction of plant growth, except when plants were inoculated 15 d after the saccharin application as a root drench at the r1 stage of development (pratibha et al., 2011). systemic acquired resistance (sar) is a broad-spectrum defense system that is activated in plants upon challenge by certain pathogens and in response to other environmental stimulants. sar is effective predominantly against biotrophic pathogens, and is controlled by a signaling pathway that depends on accumulation of salicylic acid (sa). based on laboratorium test ns karawang local variety had high amount of protein which was 38,62 % and high amount of fat 18, 785%. test result of 33 people as respondent showed that respondent likeness level to 3 characteristics (texture, taste and colour) of ns soybean on “like” criteria as seen on table 8. the acceptance of people to the quality of soybean, it was the product of people expertise to enhance wefare by means of science and technology they mastered. this is line with the opinion of subandi (2012b) said science is generally defined as the systematic observation of natural phenomena and their workings, and technology as it is defined as the application of science has influenced greatly human life. subandi and abdelwahab (2016) said, people have to obtain harvest of plant if they want to survive in their life. so, conducting series of experiments to handle and manage the changing characteristics of climate become necessary to the believers anyway, people have to obtain harvest of plant if they want to survive in their life. table 8: respondent likeness level to soybean texture, taste, and colour characteristics variety score from 3 organoleptic character test responds from respondent to taste includes as criteria like it very much >415,8-495 like it >336,6-415,8 enough >257,4-336,6 doesn’t like it >178,2257,4 doesn’t like it very much 99-178,2 1. anjasmoro 323 2.grobogan 344 3.argomulyo 309 4.ns 349 explanation : *) = organoleptik character which tested are 1) texture, 2) taste and 3) colour 4. conclusion identification result had two ns karawang local variants based on colour on the trunk, which were grey trunk fur and brown trunk fur. variant which was purified for the next generation was one brown trunk. description made based on upov standard. adaptation test result showed that differences between ns karawang and anjasmoro, argomulyo, orba, grobogan, and rajabasa variety on height plant’s height, number of productive trunk, number of pod for each plant, weight of 100 grains, yield per plant, yield per unit, and yield per hectare. ns karawang had higher yield than anjasmoro, argomulyo, orba, and rajabasa but lower yield than grobogan. ns karawang asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(1)2017: 17-27 26 could be categorised as high yield potential with 2.08 ton/ha, amount of high fat (18.70%) and amount high protein 38.6%, big seed size and had sweeter taste. the plant was moderatery resistant to diseases such as leaf rust. funding: department of agricultural, fishery, and forestry 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(1977). soybean rust in eastern hemisphere (iwgsr). pp. 22-33. in: r.e. ford and j.b. sinclair (eds.), rust of soybean, the problem and research needs. intsoy series no. 12. view at google scholar https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=productive+characteristics+of+soybean+in+agroecological+conditions+of+sremskamitrovica%2c+serbia&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://doi.org/10.17707/agricultforest.61.1.08 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=saccharin-induced+systemic+acquired+resistance+against+rust+%28phakopsora+pachyrhizi%29+infection+in+soybean%3a+effects+on+growth+and+development&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=saccharin-induced+systemic+acquired+resistance+against+rust+%28phakopsora+pachyrhizi%29+infection+in+soybean%3a+effects+on+growth+and+development&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cropro.2011.02.023 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=rainfall+types+based+on+wet+and+dry+period+ratiosfor+indonesia+and+western+new+guinea&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=science+as+a+subject+of+learning+in+islamic+university&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://doi.org/10.15575/jpi.v1i2.671 https://doi.org/10.15575/jpi.v1i2.671 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=developing+islamic+economic+production&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=the+effect+of+fertilizers+on+the+growth+and+the+yield+of+ramie&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=some+notes+of+islamic+scientific+education+development&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=several+scientific+facts+as+stated+in+verses+of+the+qur%e2%80%99an&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 https://doi.org/10.13057/biodiv/d170118 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?q=yang%2c+c.+y.+%281977%29.+soybean+rust+in+eastern+hemisphere+%28iwgsr%29.+&btng=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 836 sea cucumber fishery and trade in sta. cruz, davao del sur, philippines: supply chains and cost-benefit analyses vlademir a. shuck assistant professor, school of management, university of the philippines mindanao, davao city, philippines rod norbert d. mondoyo market research analyst, new city commercial corporation (nccc), davao city, philippines thaddeus r. acuňa and ruth u. gamboa assistant professor, school of management, university of the philippines mindanao, davao city, philippines abstract in the country, sea cucumbers are exploited almost exclusively for export. it is harvested in three ways; commercial fishing, artisanal fishing and gleaning. these methods provide disproportionate economic benefits to these players in the supply chain. in this study, sea ranching, a new culture system for sea cucumber was analyzed in terms of its economic and commercial viability. under the sea ranching system holothuria scabra (sandfish) is the species being raised mainly due to its high economic value. under the traditional method, labor comprises the largest share in the total cost, while the cost of juvenile and labor (monitoring cost) accounts to almost 87% in the sea ranching system. based on the results of the study, selling dried sandfish would gain positive net profit, while selling wet sandfish will incur a net loss. a significant difference in income was also observed between fishers who rely on traditional method and those who will adopt the new system. sea ranching system is a very promising method that is expected to be beneficial both to the community and the environment. however, high capital requirement, uninformed community and the lack of support from the government and concerned agencies remains to be a big challenge. keywords: cost-benefit analysis; net margin analysis, value chain analysis, sea cucumber; sea ranching introduction 1 sea cucumbers (class holothuroidea) are marine animals that are fished worldwide but over-exploited in most countries (lovatelli, conand, purcell, uthicke & hamel, 2004). as a matter of fact, sandfish (holothuria scabra) is just currently 1 corresponding author’s details: name: vlademir a. shuck email address: vashuck@up.edu.ph classified under the “endangered” list of the international union for conservation of nature and natural resources (iucn) (hamel et al., 2013). these echinoderms are highly nutritious and an ideal tonic food due to its low fat content and are good source of protein. these are also valued as an exotic delicacy and a flavorful condiment for soups, noodles and other dishes in different countries. these creatures processed product form is commonly called “beche-de-mer” and asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:vashuck@up.edu.ph asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 837 “trepang” (tacio, 2009). aside from being delicious and nutritious, sea cucumbers are also used for their medicinal properties. agron (2010) stated that sea cucumbers are also used in chinese medicine as they are good for nourishing the blood and vital essence, kidney disorders, reproductive organ problems, debility of the aged, constipation due to intestinal dryness, and problem of frequent urination. because of these, sea cucumbers are now being commercially exploited worldwide. the fact that sea cucumber population grows very slowly and are very easy to catch because they are highly visible and slow moving in nature (villanueva, 2005) aggravated its already threatened condition. in the philippines, it was reported that sea cucumber trade started in the late 18 th century. as a matter of fact, the country has been a major exporter of processed sea cucumbers in the last century (akamine, 2001). the country is naturally blessed with a high diversity of sea cucumber species that inhabit in its wide sea grass beds, soft bottom areas, and reefs. there are about 100 known species of sea cucumber, 33 of which are being exploited commercially (choo, 2008). in terms of market preference and commercial value, sea cucumber species are classified into four categories: high value: sandfish (holothuria scabra), white teatfish (holothuria fuscogilva), black teatfish (holothuria nobilis); medium value: stonefish (actinopyga lecanora), surf redfish (actinopyga lecanora), greenfish (stichopus chloronotus)i; and low value: brown sandfish (bohadschia vitensis), lollyfish (holothuria atra), pinkfish (holothuria edulis), elephant trunkfish (holothuria fuscopunctata), amberfish (thelenota anax) and tigerfish (bohadschia argus) (gamboa, et al., 2004). sea cucumbers in the country are mainly harvested in three ways: commercial fishing targeting solely sea cucumbers; artisanal fishing where sea cucumbers are by-catch; and gleaning (choo, 2008). commercial fishing is the most organized among the three (gamboa, gomez & nievales, 2004, as cited in choo 2008). these commercial fishers harvest sea cucumbers in the deeper waters and involves the use of motorized vessels. these fishers spent several weeks out at sea and dive for sea cucumbers with the use of hookah. on the other hand, artisanal fishing is being done by the traditional fishers who target fishes and mollusks and sea cucumbers are only caught when encountered. the last gathering method is gleaning which is done in intertidal reef flats during low tide. most of the gleaners are women and children which utilize only their bare hands and has very minimal or no equipment in collecting sea cucumbers. according to mills, duy, juinio-menez, raison, and zarate (2012), these methods have a dual impact of increasing pressure on wild stock of sea cucumber. these types of fisheries provide disproportionate social benefit, as they have no capital requirement and sea cucumbers are very accessible to catch making these resources highly vulnerable. presently, there are concerns about the sustainability of the world’s capture fisheries at the current total level of 96 million tons per year. the warning signals are an increase in the proportion of depleted or recovering stocks, from about 10% in 1974 to 28% in 2004, and a corresponding decrease of under to moderately exploited stocks from about 40% to 24% (bartley, bell, lorenzen & loneragan, 2008). the current methods of harvesting sea cucumbers in the country will likely to produce less in the years to come. this may affect families in coastal areas who are also relying on the resource. in order to replenish selected sea cucumber population, several organizations, such as the australian center for international agricultural research (aciar) and the southeast asian fisheries development center (seafdec), have been conducting researches on developing sea ranching and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 838 pond culture of sandfish as an alternative livelihood for people in coastal communities. the successful sandfish hatchery developed by up mindanao and up marine science institute opened possibilities for more advanced researches on sandfish sea ranching. with this, the study’s main objective is to determine the socio-economic benefits of adapting sea ranching of sandfish in barangay bato, sta. cruz, davao del sur as an alternative to traditional harvesting methods. specifically, the study aims to map out the supply chain of sea cucumber trade in the area; determine the economic viability of the sea ranching system by using cost-benefit analysis; and compare the economic benefits between the traditional harvesting method and the sea ranching system. sea ranching of sandfish sea ranching as defined by mills, et al. (2012), is essentially a ‘put and take’ activity where the cultured juveniles are released into an area of natural habitat and harvested when they reach a commercially optimal size. in this culture system, the level of care that can be offered to sandfish throughout the growth process is reduced, and survival will be considerably lower. in addition, property rights issues are less straightforward and the social dimension of culture systems becomes as critical as the biophysical dimensions. in the study of purcell (2012), he presented a diagram showing the steps of sea ranching which is presented in figure 1. when applied in brgy. bato, the process starts from acquiring the rights to operate from the local government unit on the suitable area for sea ranching activity. in the absence of a personal hatchery, juveniles will be purchased from up mindanao’s hatchery. the juveniles are then released in the ranching area and harvested when they reach the optimum marketable size. after which, another batch of juveniles will be released, thus completing a cycle. communication among stakeholders is also very important which involves the hatchery operators, the sea ranch main proponents, the local government units, and the community where the area of sea ranching is located. the stakeholders play a vital role in the success of sea ranching. figure 1: steps in sea ranching source: purcell (2012) in choosing the area for sea ranching, it is important to know the characteristics of the environment, as well as the behavior and natural habitat of sandfish. according to mercier et al. (2000), sandfish larvae appear to settle on sea grass blades, and juveniles are known to inhabit shallow sea grass beds. thus, sea ranching would be ideal for sites with sea grass beds and with current or previous history of hosting the species. even though some sites were never really home to the species of sea cucumber, nevertheless they could serve as good stocking sites; however, this will generally be rare. moreover, sites with widely varying asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 839 environmental conditions like areas periodically subjected to freshwater deluges and those which may be vulnerable to pollutants should be avoided. challenges of sea ranching based from the experience in the pilot sea ranch project of juinio-meñez et al. (2012) in bolinao, pangasinan, the researcher discussed some of the highlights. in their study, poaching is considered to be one of the biggest challenges. in order to eliminate poaching, permanently manned guardhouses have been established at pilot sites. however, this represents a considerable cost on the part of the group owners. the length of time of harvest was also an issue such that income will likely be realized at least 12 months and possibly closer to 18 months. on a positive note, once the first batch of released juveniles have reached harvestable size, regular harvests will be possible assuming that some have already spawned before being harvested. pressure from participants to harvest at smaller sizes needs to be resisted in order to optimize returns from the sea ranch. the engagement of strong and respected local institutions and the presence of appropriate habitat were identified as essential preconditions for successful searanching operations. a lot of enthusiasm to engage in sea-ranching activities was also noted; however a lot of energy and goodwill can be wasted if the appropriate conditions are not present. lastly, the researchers noted the effects of the physical environment to the viability of sea ranching. the shallow inshore areas generally used for sea ranching are susceptible to physical damage and severe salinity drops. in addition to damage to ranching infrastructure and possible mortality of stock, it appears that stripping of rich organic surface layers from the sediment resulted in substantial negative growth of standing stock. methodology this study utilized primary and secondary data. for the cost-benefit analysis, only interviews with key informants were conducted as information necessary for this analysis will only be based from the sea ranching project of up mindanao. respondents were identified through purposive sampling. thus, the large number of divers in the sample was basically because divers mainly dominate the area and they were available during the site visits. furthermore, the number of samples for each actor is not predetermined but is based on the availability of the respondents. conceptual framework in identifying the current status of sea cucumber trade in the area, a value chain analysis was first conducted. the species that was included under the traditional harvesting method is the stichopus horrens. cost structure, net margins and marketing options were acquired from key informant interviews. the results showed how profitable the current harvesting methods and how abundant the species are in the area. a cost-benefit analysis on the sea ranching of sandfish was also conducted. in the said analysis, holothuria scabra is the subject. a comparison of economics benefits between and among types of harvesting methods is also presented. a detailed conceptual framework is presented below. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 840 figure 2: conceptual framework of the study supply chain analysis beamon (1998) defines supply chain as an integral process wherein a number of various business entities (i.e., suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers) work together in an effort to: (1) acquire raw materials, (2) convert these raw materials into specified final products, and (3) deliver these final products to retailers. for this study, the analysis highlights on the interaction between key players in the sea cucumber supply chain in sta, cruz, and davao del sur. cost-benefit analysis bill johnston’s bio-economic model was used in the computation of the growth estimates of sandfish which is an input to the cost-benefit analysis of sea ranching. costs were quantified based on the data given by the sea ranching project personnel. each cost and capital items were briefly explained. furthermore, the proponents also included the cost of own labor in determining the total cost. on the other hand, the benefits were derived from the current prices of both dried and wet sandfish. the production of sandfish was based on the survival rate, which is at 39%, in the experiment conducted by juiniomeñez et al. (2012). furthermore, return on investment (roi) and break-even analyses were also employed in this study. identification of costs identifying the nature of the cost items is also necessary. in general, costs were differentiated either as fixed cost, variable cost or opportunity cost. fixed costs are the costs that do not vary or depend on the unit or quantity of output. on the other hand, variable costs are the costs that vary depending on the number of output while opportunity cost is the benefits that could have received by taking an alternative action. total cost was computed by adding the fixed, variable and opportunity costs. calculation of revenue revenue generated from the sea cucumber trade is simply the product of price (paid by the buyer) multiplied by quantity (amount of dried or wet sea cucumbers sold). calculation of profit profit analysis was performed to determine if sea cucumber trade is economically beneficial or otherwise. profit was derived by subtracting the total cost from revenue. return on investment return on investment (roi) is one way of considering profits in relation to capital invested. it is also used to measure perperiod rates of return on money invested in an economic entity. the formula used for return on investment is shown below. ……………….. (1) status of traditional sea cucumber collectors species: stichopus horrens supply chain analysis inputs used processing market options introduction of sea ranching species: holothuria scabra sea cucumber trade actors gleaners fishermen divers middlemen traders exporters problem: exploitation of sea cucumber solution: need to adapt a new harvesting method alternative: sea ranching method of evaluation: cost-benefit analysis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 841 break-even analysis break-even is a calculation of the approximate sales volume required to cover the costs. furthermore, it is the point where cost is equal to revenue, thus, profit is zero. it focuses on the relationship between fixed cost, variable cost, and profit. .. (2) respondents purposive sampling was used in identifying the respondents and were interviewed based on their willingness and availability. the respondents for the net margin analysis were the sea cucumber gleaners, divers, fishers, middlemen and traders. there were also other actors in the supply chain that were interviewed like laborers, owlers and operators. these actors provided information that was relevant in understanding the entire supply chain and in the computation of the net margins per different marketing levels. table 1: summary of the respondents interviewed actors gleaners fishermen divers middleman traders total no. of resp. 4 7 24 2 4 41 location barangay bato, sta. cruz davao & digos results and discussion under the traditional sea cucumber gathering method, thirty-five respondents were interviewed. they are composed of 4 gleaners, 7 fishermen and 24 divers. fishing of sea cucumber in barangay bato is primarily done by males. diving with the aid of compressor remains rampant despite the implementation of an ordinance banning its use. it is even linked to numerous accidents and to the 22 recorded deaths of divers in the area (molina, 2013). there are only few divers who own a boat and only 40% process sea cucumber. for the fishermen, they all own a boat and 85% process sea cucumber. moreover, the fishermen also got the highest income from sea cucumber trade which is up to php 1,175 per month on the average, followed by divers at php 1,123. on the other hand, gleaners have the smallest income with only php 618 per month. nevertheless, it should be noted that the fishermen, divers and gleaners also catch fish and mollusks which adds up to their total monthly income. the share of sea cucumber income to the total monthly income is at 20%, 23% and 9%, respectively. table 2: summary of the average socio-demographic features of the respondents age experience monthly income family size compress or (in %) de mano (in %) boat (in %) process gleaners 25 7 619 7 0 0 0 50% fishermen 39 9 1081 9 0 100% 85% 85% diver 34 5 807 5 100% 0 29% 21% all obs 34 5 1977 5 66% 23% 37% 40% supply chain analysis a supply chain map of sea cucumber trade is presented in figure 3. based on the interviews conducted, there are five important chain actors. these are; the gleaners, fishermen, divers, middlemen, traders, and exporters. the chain starts with the gleaners, fishermen and divers. there are asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 842 at least 216 fishermen in the said community. these fisher folks are mainly responsible for the harvesting of sea cucumbers. the harvested sea cucumbers are sold either wet (live) or dried (trepang). trepang commands higher prices than the wet sea cucumbers. majority of these sea cucumbers are sold to middlemen in the barangay or to traders in digos city and davao city while some are sold and consumed by the locals. figure 3: supply chain of sea cucumber in barangay bato source: survey data, 2013 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 843 there were two identified market chains of sea cucumber in the area; the processed (trepang) and wet sea cucumber chains (figure 4). the actors of the sea cucumber supply chain in sta. cruz, davao del sur were identified based on key informant interviews, and through surveyquestionnaires. gleaners from the three gleaners interviewed, two of them sell trepang to the middlemen who live nearby while the other one sells it wet in a nearby village. this gleaner deguts his catch, packs it in individual cellophanes and then sells it. aside from sea cucumbers, this gleaner also sells mollusks. divers divers fish together in a group. with the use of a compressor they are able to reach the depths of up to 90 feet. these groups usually consist of five (5) to six (6) fishermen, which are composed of two (2) to three (3) divers, an overseer (locally known as owler) and an operator. divers mainly sell wet and trepang to the middlemen in the barangay or directly sell sea cucumbers to a trader in digos. most of these divers process sea cucumber, as they know that they would earn more by drying it. fishermen fishermen are those who collect sea cucumber through skin diving, which is also considered a traditional way of collecting sea cucumber, together with gleaning. these fishermen sometimes go alone when fishing. most fishermen own a non-motorized boat or ‘de mano’. skin diving method is very hard, as divers need to dive at depths up to 30 feet without the aid of compressor. this is very time-consuming and tiring, as fishermen would have to go up once in a while to take a breath. the fishermen often sell dried or wet sea cucumbers to the middlemen in the area or to the traders in digos. moreover, most of these fishermen do not process sea cucumber since they find it tiring and a lot of them spend their time in the morning sleeping. middlemen there are two middlemen in the barangay and both buy wet sea cucumbers and trepang. they buy wet sea cucumbers by piece and trepang are bought in kilograms. they compete mainly by offering higher prices or additional services such as the provision of a cash advance. the first middleman sells trepang to a davao trader and sometimes ships directly to a trader in manila. her suppliers of wet sea cucumbers are from sta. cruz, sta. maria, malalag and digos. this middleman provides cash advances to the suppliers, which is a way to entice them to supply more as well as serving as an assurance for a regular supply. on the other hand, the second middleman buys wet sea cucumbers from local gatherers and processes them as trepang. he operates under a trader in digos. the capital he used in buying and processing is provided by the trader. middlemen are very particular with the moisture content of the trepang that they buy, so much that they termed it as “stone dry” in order for it to qualify as good quality. trepang is classified according to size; large, medium, small and extra small where large commands the highest price. traders the traders include those who buy wet sea cucumbers and trepang. except for the zamboanga trader who sources trepang from a trader in digos, the other traders also get their supply of trepang from the two middlemen in the area while the davao trader also purchase wet sea cucumbers from a diver in the area. aside from barangay bato traders also buy from gleaners, divers and fishermen from different coastal communities in samal sta. cruz, and sta. maria to name a few. most traders provide cash advance to suppliers without interest in exchange for the commodity. some would finance middlemen while some would visit identified areas of suppliers and buy directly from them. furthermore, most of these traders finance the shipment or the delivery cost of trepang to export buyers in south asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 844 korea, hong kong and malaysia. traders are stricter in terms of the quality of trepang that they buy. like the middlemen, prices of sea cucumbers are based mainly on the species, size and quality of the sea cucumbers. traders may also re-process trepang which does not qualify to the standard moisture content set by the exporters. exporters philippines are one of the top exporters of trepang in the world. the trepang’s top export markets are hong kong which is a special administrative region of china, singapore, south korea and malaysia. in this chain, the standards are set by the export markets; dictating the price at the local level. cost-benefit analysis of sea ranching barangay bato has a very good potential for sea ranching considering that sandfish was once abundant in the area. moreover, large scale production could also be possible considering that sta. cruz has an estimated sea grass area of about 140 hectares, 70% of which (90 hectares) are abundantly growing in barangay bato. the sea ranch should be on an area covered with sea grass beds, which could be 50 to 100 meters away from the shore. markers, using plastic drums as buoys, should also be put up in order to have proper markings of the site (figure 4). to minimize poaching, a guard house should also be put up. the size of the sea ranch could also be determined by the number of juveniles to be released. figure 4: sketch of a sea ranch site source: adapted from purcell (2012) capital requirement the greater bulk of fixed capital is expended on structures which would minimize or eliminate poaching, such as putting up floating markers and a floating guard house. the cost of purchased juveniles is also the biggest item under variable cost. currently, there is only one hatchery of sandfish in mindanao, and this is the alson’s aquaculture corporation which is located in toril, davao city. it is 20 to 40 minute bus ride from barangay bato. in recent projections, this hatchery will sell juveniles with an average size of 5 grams by php 10 to php 20 per piece. the transportation of these juveniles also play an important role in the success of sea ranching. thus, proper protocol on transporting juveniles should always be followed. for this study, the researchers suggest that the number of juveniles to be released would be 2,000 pieces which would require a total area of 4,000 sq. m. with stocking density of one juvenile per 2 sq. m., as suggested by juiniomeñez, et al. (2012). labor will also play an important role in the success of sea ranching which is generally guarding the area day and night in order to eliminate poaching. thus, the effort of these guard house shoreline 50 – 100 meters asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 845 fisher folks should also be compensated; making labor cost necessary in sea ranching. at present, the fisher folks in the area do not really compute for the opportunity cost of their labor while fishing. hence, they do not consider the next possible livelihood option in computing for their income, such that they would equate their net income to their labor cost. this has a very big impact in determining whether their current livelihood is indeed more economically rewarding than the next best option. thus, for this study, labor cost is imputed as an opportunity cost which uses the average daily wage rate (less transportation cost) of manual laborers in a nearby manufacturing plant. on the other hand, the wage rate for the night shift was calculated differently using the average net income of fishermen for two weeks and divided by 14 in order to get the daily average. a summary of the total capital requirement is presented below. table 3: summary of capital requirement quantity unit cost semi total (php) fixed capital 56,000  guardhouse 1 unit 30,000 30,000  boat 1 unit 10,000 10,000  buoys/marker 1 set 10,000 10,000  flash light 2 units 500 1,000  goggles 2 units 500 1,000  petromax 1 unit 4,000 4,000 working capital 85,770  juveniles 2,000 pcs 20 40,000  transportation 2 times 1,000 2,000  labor (monthly)  harvesting  processing 10 months 1 time 10 days 4,180 1,000 96 41,810 1000 960 total 141,770 quantifying the costs of sea ranching operation the summary of costs acquired in sea ranching for one harvesting period is presented in table 4. total cost is comprised mainly of five items which are cost of juveniles, labor cost, harvesting cost, processing cost and depreciation cost. interestingly, both juvenile and labor costs constitute most of the cost of sea ranching activity with percentage share of 42% and 44% respectively, regardless whether the end product is trepang or sold directly as wet. this shows that processing cost (2% only) is almost insignificant compared to the total cost. table 4: cost-structure and profit for the dried sandfish – one harvest cycle dry wet cost items cost cost/kg percentage cost cost/pc percentage juveniles 40000 2051.28 42.44 40000 51.28 42.41 labor 41810 2144.10 44.36 41810 53.60 44.33 harvesting 1000 51.28 1.06 1000 1.28 1.06 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 846 transportation 2000 102.56 2.12 2000 2.56 2.12 battery 204 10.46 0.22 204 0.26 0.22 depreciation cost guardhouse 6000 307.69 6.37 6000 7.69 6.36 boat 1000 51.28 1.06 1000 1.28 1.06 markers 1000 51.28 1.06 1000 1.28 1.06 flash light 250 12.82 0.27 250 0.32 0.27 goggles 250 12.82 0.27 250 0.32 0.27 petromax 800 41.03 0.85 800 1.03 0.85 processing-trepang salt (kg) 200 10.26 0.21 firewood (bundle) 210 10.77 0.22 papaya (kg) processing cost 576 29.54 0.61 960 49.23 1.02 total 96,260 4,936.40 100 94,314 120.90 100 quantifying the benefits of sea ranching in the calculation of benefits, the prices for the dried and wet sandfish are based on the average current price set by the traders and middlemen. the number of harvested sandfish, which is 780 pieces, is derived from the survival rate (39%) and the total number of released juveniles (2,000 pieces). the harvested sandfish will be 500 grams on the average after 10 months. after processing, it will have a recovery rate of 5%, which is equivalent to 19.5 kgs. of trepang. a comparison of profit between trepang and wet sea cucumber trade is presented in table 5. a computation of the return on investment (roi) and break-even point are also done comparing processing and selling of wet sea cucumber. it can be observed that selling trepang would be the most beneficial option which will provide an roi of 21.6% compared to a loss when it is sold wet. the break-even point is at production rate of 16.04 kgs. of trepang which is equivalent to 1,646 pieces of juveniles that should be released table 5: profit comparison between trepang and wet sea cucumber trade using sea ranching quantity price (php) total revenue total cost profit roi (%) trepang 19.5 kgs. 6,000/kg 117,000 96,260 20,740 21.60 wet 780 pcs 100/pc 78,000 94,314 -16,314 -16.99 traditional versus sea ranching method traditional harvesting method of sea cucumber which consists of gleaning, fishing and diving will be compared with the sea ranching system using the following parameters: production, and economic costs and benefits. a summary of the general comparison is presented in table 6. production comparison at present, there is no policy regulating the harvest of sea cucumbers, such that there is an observed decline of the marine resource over time. harvesting is also done almost daily where income is greatly dependent on the quantity of catch. there are also accounts from the area that species which has no economic value before are now bought but at a lower price. the use of compressor added pressure on wild stocks considering that mature sea cucumbers, which are mostly found in deeper parts of the area, are also harvested. the traditional method is undoubtedly unsustainable and threatens the survival of the species. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 847 on the other hand, the sea ranching system promises to be a good alternative to the current practice. nonetheless, there are still a lot of challenges that need to be confronted and first on the list is the problem of poaching. guarding the sea ranch area is therefore critical in ensuring profitability. however, this accounts for almost half of the cost of sea ranch operation. the length of time before harvest will also test the patience of the fishers who would adopt the new system, considering that they are used to receiving income immediately after harvesting and selling their catch. suppliers of the juveniles are only crucial in the initial operation since the succeeding source of juveniles can come from the mature sandfish which have already spawned when they are 6 months old. this may also relate to the sustainability of the new system. for production level comparison, an illustration on the difference between the four methods is presented where production levels are pegged on a monthly basis. the traditional methods’ production levels are scaled up since they harvest almost daily, while for sea ranching it is scaled down since harvest is done after 10 months. cost comparison the traditional method uses very low capital for gathering sea cucumbers. as a matter of fact, gleaning can be done by using only bare hands and household tools such as a pail for container. the cost of own labor is also significant for the calculation of total cost. when computing for labor cost using the opportunity cost as defined previously, the percentage of labor cost to total would range from 61% 68% for gleaning, 44% 47% for fishing, 39% 56% for diving and about 46% in sea ranching. moreover, the initial capital requirement is quite large in sea ranching such that it may hinder the fisher folks to invest, leaving big companies to take advantage of this opportunity. benefit comparison pricing of either trepang or wet sea cucumber is highly dependent on its size; however buyers do not reject the product even if it is considered to be too small. again, this would link to the over exploitation of the marine resource since the mindset of the gatherers is to catch whatever comes their way, big or small, since the person next to him will catch it anyway. there is also a big disparity in the price between trepang and wet sea cucumber. for the species stichopus horrens, the price range is php 92 – php 110 per piece for wet and php 1,300 – php 1,700 per kg. for trepang. on the other hand, holothuria scabra (sandfish) commands a better price at php 6,000 per kg. compared to only php 100 per piece if sold wet. however, even though selling trepang would be more profitable, it would be very costly to process only a few kilograms considering the amount of time and effort it requires. majority of the traditional gatherers would opt to sell wet sea cucumbers since they only catch a few and they also have a problem with regards to meeting the standard quality of trepang. hence, it is the middlemen and traders who usually process sea cucumbers. table 6: summary of the quantitative comparison of sea ranching and traditional methods (with cost of own labor) gleaners divers fishermen sea ranching dry wet dry wet dry wet dry wet production 0.4 10 0.95 11 0.85 12 1.95 78 revenue 520 920 1615 1137 1445 1320 11700 7800 total cost 402 404 575 462 489 346 9626 9431 net income 118 516 1050 674 956 974 2074 -1631 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 848 roi 21.6% -17% break-even 16.04kgs conclusion sea cucumbers are being exploited commercially because of their nutritional and medicinal properties. because of the increasing demand and price of processed sea cucumber or trepang, harvesting them in the wild has put pressure in the existing stock. in general, there are three traditional harvesting methods of sea cucumber in the philippines which also represent as the main source of production. the following are gleaning, commercial fishing and artisanal fishing. consequently, they are linked to a more complex connection with middlemen and traders who ultimately sell to exporters in hong kong and singapore to name a few. the sea cucumber industry is considered a very lucrative business considering the revenue generates and the very high price that it offers to its processed form trepang. unfortunately, there is an alarming trend of declining sea cucumber catch or production in the country. hence, there is a need for new and sustainable methods of production. one of these options is sea ranching of sandfish. with this, the study aims to determine the socio-economic benefits of adapting sea ranching vis-à-vis the traditional methods. in order to set the parameters used in the computation of economic and financial analysis, bio-economic data were employed from previous studies, notably by juiniomeñez et al. (2012) and the sea ranching project of up mindanao. to start a sea ranching operation, finding the ideal area is key. characteristics like wide sea grass beds, history of habitation by sandfish species in the area, and a hatchery operating nearby are very crucial. it is also important to note the standing policies and regulations set by the local government unit regarding any business operation in their coastal area. with regards to monitoring and maintaining the sea ranch, it only requires minimal skills. harvesting can also be done easily as these creatures can be captured almost effortless since they are highly visible and are slow moving in nature. however, if harvesting is done during the night where sea cucumbers are more active, harvesting becomes more challenging. based on the study, there is also no problem in terms of marketing the product considering that there are buyers who even visit the place of suppliers. one of the most pressing problems in sea ranch operation is poaching. in order to minimize this, capital items such as putting up a guardhouse, setting up a demarcation line using buoys as markers, and monitoring by personnel were considered necessary. these items constitute most of the costs in sea ranching operation. another significant cost for sea ranching is the purchase of juveniles which can be about 42% of the total cost. indeed, sea ranching requires high capital, however it is also the most promising in terms of profit generation compared to the traditional methods. the largest profit was recorded in the dried sandfish under sea ranching with php20, 740 net incomes after 10 months (php 2,074 per month). however, if the sandfish is sold wet, which is not recommended, a net loss is incurred and would be the most unprofitable among all the methods. results also showed that gleaners are better off if they will sell their catch directly rather than process them. the total cost was also the largest for sea ranching operation. nevertheless, its return of investment is very attractive at 21.6%, using a conservative forecast. moreover, in order to generate a positive net income at least 1,646 pieces of juveniles should be asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 849 released in the sea ranch, which would produce 16.04 kgs. of trepang. sea ranching is indeed a very promising method in conserving and utilizing the marine resource at the same time. nonetheless, it is hard to discount the challenges that this novel method had encountered and will face in the future. therefore in order to make this venture a success, a more informed and concerned community is necessary, with empowered fisher folks as sea ranch operators, and a government that is more than willing to extend its help to the stakeholders of the industry. references agron, e. (2010). research & development efforts to manage and restore sea cucumber populations underway. april 2010 issue (vol. 11 no.4). bureau of agricultural research. retrieved from http://www.bar.gov.ph akamine, j. (2001). holothurian exploitation in the philippines: continuities and discontinuities, tropics, 10(4): 591-607. bartley, d., bell, j., lorenzen, k. & loneragan, n. (2008). restocking, stock enhancement and sea ranching: potential, problem and progress. fisheries research, 80: 1–8. beamon, b. m. (1998). supply chain design and analysis: models and methods. international journal of production economics, 55(3): 281294. choo, p. s. (2008). the philippines: a hotspot of sea cucumber fisheries in asia. in v. toral granda, a. lovatelli and m. vasconcellos (eds).sea cucumbers. a global review of fisheries and trade. fao fisheries and aquaculture technical paper.no. 516. rome, fao. pp. 119–140. retrieved from ftp.fao.org gamboa, r., gomez, a. l. & nievales, m. f. 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(2000). periodic movement, recruitment and size-related distribution of the sea cucumber holothuria scabrain solomon islands. hydrobiologia, 440: 81–100. mills, d., duy, n. d., juinio-menez, m. a., raison, c. & zarate, j. m. (2012). overview of sea cucumber aquaculture and sea-ranching research in the south-east asian region. in c.a.hair, t. pickering & d. mills (eds) 2012. asia–pacific tropical sea cucumber aquaculture. proceedings of an international symposium held in noumea, new caledonia. aciar. proceedings no. 136. australian centre for internationalagricultural research: canberra. retrieved from: http://aciar.gov.au. purcell, s. (2012). principles and science of stocking marine areas with sea cucumbers. in c.a. hair, t. pickering & d. mills (eds) (2012). asia–pacific tropical sea cucumber aquaculture. proceedings of an international symposium held in noumea, new caledonia. aciar proceedings no. 136. australian centre for international agricultural research: canberra. retrieved from: http://aciar.gov.au. molina, r. (2013). interview on sea cucumber gathering. interviewed by rod norbert mondoyo [in person] sta. cruz, davao del sur, and philippines. january 18, 2013. tacio, h. (2009). sea cucumber hatchery and culture to tackle overfishing. gaia discovery. retrieved from: http://www.gaiadiscovery.com/marin e-life-latest/sea-cucumber-hatcheryand-culture-to-tackleoverfishing.html villanueva, m. (2005). stock assessment of sea cucumbers from phuquoc, vietnam. spanish agency for international cooperation. retrieved from http://www.ruffordsmallgrants.org ftp://ftp.fao.org/ http://aciar.gov.au/ http://aciar.gov.au/ http://www.gaiadiscovery.com/marine-life-latest/sea-cucumber-hatchery-and-culture-to-tackle-overfishing.html http://www.gaiadiscovery.com/marine-life-latest/sea-cucumber-hatchery-and-culture-to-tackle-overfishing.html http://www.gaiadiscovery.com/marine-life-latest/sea-cucumber-hatchery-and-culture-to-tackle-overfishing.html http://www.gaiadiscovery.com/marine-life-latest/sea-cucumber-hatchery-and-culture-to-tackle-overfishing.html http://www.ruffordsmallgrants.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 767 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 836-850 767 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 242 the impact of traditional homestead vegetable cultivation on the improvement of livelihood of rural women in bangladesh aysha akter a, nobaya ahmad b, thahamina bagumc, md. monirul islam d, mohammad mizanur rahma e, mohammad imtiaz hossain f, adepartment of agricultural extension education, faculty of agriculture, sylhet agricultural university, sylhet-3100, bangladesh; phd student, department of social and development sciences, faculty of human ecology, university putra malaysia, 43400 serdang, selangor. b department of social and development sciences, faculty of human ecology, university putra malaysia, 43400 serdang, selangor. c department of agricultural extension and information system, faculty of agriculture, sher-e-bangla agricultural university, sher-e-bangla nagar, dhaka1207, bangladesh. d department of plant pathology and seed science, faculty of agriculture, sylhet agricultural university, sylhet-3100, bangladesh. e department of business administration, metropolitan university, sylhet-3100, bangladesh. f phd student, department of management and marketing, faculty of economics and management, university putra malaysia, 43400 serdang, selangor.  aysha.sau@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 11-july-2019 accepted: 30-sep-2019 online available: 15-oct2019 keywords: attitude, rural women’s opinion, livelihood improvement and homestead vegetable cultivation abstract the aim of the study was to determine the level of acceptability of traditional homestead vegetable cultivation practices by rural women in the northeastern parts of bangladesh and its impact on their livelihood. a structured interview schedule was applied to collect data. data were collected from 100 women from two villages of south surma upazila in the sylhet district and correlation tests were conducted to examine the relationship between the relevant dependent and independent variables. the results showed that 68% of rural women had a moderately favourable opinion of vegetable cultivation regarding changes in the livelihood of rural women, while 20% had low opinion and 12% had high opinion of traditional homestead vegetable practices. the majority (59%) of the women had moderately adopted traditional homestead vegetable cultivation practices compared to 24% who had adopted them little and 17% who had adopted them highly. computed (r) values indicate that education, homestead area, family income, knowledge of homestead vegetable cultivation, availability of credit, and exposure of the rural women to communication had a significantly positive relationship to their attitudes to changes in livelihood. contribution/ originality this study has accepted the challenge of improving the livelihood of rural women through participating in various kinds of homestead vegetable gardening and how it can improve their socio-economic condition and participating in decision making in their families and social lives which play a vital role in women’s empowerment. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.242.254 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: aysha akter, nobaya ahmad, thahamina bagum, md. monirul islam, mohammad mizanur rahma and mohammad imtiaz hossain (2019). the impact of traditional homestead vegetable cultivation on the improvement of livelihood of rural women in bangladesh. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 242-254. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 242-254 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:aysha.sau@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.242.254 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 242-254 243 1. introduction bangladesh is a small country with a population of 158 million on an area of 1,47,570 square kilometres (bbs, 2012). the population consists of an equal measure of men and women. the country has about 13 million farm households of which 3.8 million are dispossessed and marginal (bbs, 2005). the population of bangladesh gradually increases. the growth rate of the population in 2016 was 1.37%. the growth of population has a massive impact on the livelihood of women (josephson et al., 2014). farm sizes have shrunk due to rapid growth of population. land disintegration and shrinking farm size is a perilous problem that women are facing in maintaining conventional homestead farming practices (headey et al., 2014). bangladesh has a solid tradition of homestead vegetable production practiced by its farming communities. traditional home gardens are ancient and outdated systems of usage of land with preventative measure and production functions, and play an important part in particular in women’s food security and adequate nutrition (vieira et al., 2012). assuring women’s earnings is a crucial prerequisite for eradication of poverty and perpetuation of human rights (dfid, 2000) mainly on the individual level, as it assists to establish a ground for social change. while different dimensions of the issue of livelihood have been contemplated, regular income is of the highest importance. the standard of living of the rural poor will improve when they earn from economic activities (ahmed et al., 2007; al-amin, 2008; ahmed, 2009). income generating activities (igas) can improve the living conditions, accommodation, nutrition, savings, clothing, medical treatment, wellbeing, sanitation, liberalization, and education of the poor (ullah and routray, 2007). conquering widespread poverty and improving livelihood means confronting the spreading disparity of rural women’s income (kandiyoti, 1988; fakir, 2008). women have been the initiators of agricultural activities in the history of humankind. women in bangladesh are widely recognized as contributors to agricultural and economic productivity. women barely engage in outdoor agricultural activities (hossain et al., 2002). nearly half (49%) of the population of bangladesh are women. 45.6% of them are related to farming (ais, 2012). women in bangladesh work 84 hours a week, 16% more than men’s 70 hours a week (petra, 2003). homestead is the center of all agricultural production activities in rural bangladesh. it is the nest and production unit of vegetables, fruit, fuel timber, livestock, and fisheries. homestead has special significance in bangladesh especially for rural women. hussein et al. (2002) stated that about 15% of the homestead area was covered by vegetable production. homestead vegetable production may contribute to uplifting the socio-economic conditions, supply of fuel wood, give protection from hazards, provide food and other benefits etc. women thought that traditional homestead cultivation systems had a significant role in improving the socioeconomic status and upgrade of the environmental conditions of the area. hence there is great scope for improving the prevailing homestead vegetable cultivation practices with modern technology for enhancing women’s livelihood. the extent of knowledge regarding changes in attitude to livelihood encouraged women to adopt the traditional homestead cultivation system which is not sufficient for higher profit and uplifting the socio-economic condition (parveen, 2007). homestead agriculture may act as a lifeboat for women's survival and existence because of assured food supply (akanda, 1994). women are the key operators of homestead production activities in bangladesh. they are involved in family management besides equal participation in economic activities such as production of crops, postharvest activities, vegetable and fruit production, raising poultry, managing livestock, fisheries, pisciculture, and diverse income generating activities, and also try to increase their family income to improve their livelihood (nessa et al. 2004). moreover, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 242-254 244 approximately 40% of rural women belongs to families with no land and 15.6% of them are ultrapoor. traditional home gardening is the key strategy that balances and maintains natural, financial, human, social, and physical livelihood assets and carries indispensable outcomes for the livelihood of the rural community. thus it is necessary to deepen the knowledge of homestead vegetable cultivation practices for effective utilization of homestead areas with a suitable approach to maximal homestead productivity and family income (parveen, 2008). 1.1. the concept of livelihood the concept of livelihood is not new. it uses methods that have evolved for 20 years. it progressed from an extensive array of participatory and other proletarian approaches to work with the rural people and several methods. it combines the current method with an integrated approach that is comprehensive and relatively easy to use. the word “livelihood” can be used in many ways. a livelihood contains the competence, assets, and activities required for a means of living. livelihood has been measured on household income, food security, and health. however, food security means both access to the right kinds and amounts of food to provide a balanced diet for all members of the family and sustainability of its supply. the country has achieved self-sufficiency in cereal production in the recent years, but at the household level, especially in the remote areas, poor people have inadequate access to surplus food. moreover, there is a prominent shortage of protein, vegetables, and fruit, thus nutritional improvement is of prime concern for the improvement of livelihood (haque, 2002). women from rural families are involved in income generating activities such as cultivating fruit and vegetables, raising poultry, rearing goats, sewing clothes, batik printing etc., and earn money to support their families (hossain and bose, 2004). due to lack of scientific knowledge and utilization of proper technology and management practices the production remains below the acceptable level. it is therefore very important to know the gap between rural women’s beliefs about and performance in homestead agricultural production activities. 1.2. objectives considering this context, the present study was, therefore, conducted with the following specific objectives.  to determine the role of rural women in homestead vegetable cultivation practices on the livelihood improvement in a selected area of the northern east of bangladesh.  to explore the correlation between the selected characteristics of the rural women and their attitude and adoption towards homestead vegetable cultivation for livelihood improvement.  to know the existing problems and their probable solution of traditional homestead vegetable cultivation by the women. 2. methodology 2.1. location, population and sample two villages; namely kunarchor and noikhai of muglabajar union of south surma upazila under sylhet district of bangladesh constituted the population for the study. the main purpose of selecting two villages was, in this villages most of the household women had a empty land around their houses and most of them are involved in cultivation practices as well as the production rate of vegetables is more than the other villages of the upazila, source (upazila agriculture officer).the total population of the study area was 137. about 135 questionnaires were distributed to the women in two villages. among them 102 questionnaires were received in complete form and 28 questionnaires were received in incomplete form and the rest of 5 questionnaire has no responses from the villages women. at last, a representative sample of 100 housewives (according to sample size determination using krejcie and morgan table) was the sample size of the present study. south surma upazila is not very far from sylhet headquarters but the upazila has all the features of rural asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 242-254 245 bangladesh. the livelihood of the rural women of this upazila mainly depends on agriculture-based activities as well as the women have easy access to the market for their product. this is the reason for selecting this upazila as the study area. figure 1: south surma (dakshin surma) upazila under sylhet district of bangladesh showing locale of the study area 2.2. preparation of questionnaire a questionnaire was prepared for collecting necessary information from the selected women. for giving the final shape, the questionnaire had pre-tested with 20 women. based on the pre-test results, required corrections, modifications, alternation, and adjustments were made and then finalized the questionnaire accordingly. 2.3. period of data collection rapport was built with the respondents through informal discussion regarding objectives of the interview. the interviewer personally did the data collection through a face to face interview. data was collected from 10 february to 15 july 2018. 2.4. variables of the study independent variables in the study were age, education, family size, homestead area, credit availability, knowledge of homestead vegetable cultivation, annual income from homestead area, communication exposure, aspiration, fatalism and problem confrontation. the dependent variables were adoption of traditional homestead vegetable practices and opinion regarding changes in livelihood to the farmers. 2.5. measurement of dependent variable a four-point likert scale was used for computing the extent of adoption of homestead vegetable cultivation practices. weight of responses against the applicable ones of the 21 practices was assigned in the following way. a score of 3, 2, 1 and 0 was assigned for high use, medium use, low asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 242-254 246 use and no use respectively. the weight of responses of all homestead vegetable cultivation practices were added together to obtain the extent of use homestead vegetable practice and the score of the respondents could range from 0 to 82 where 0 indicating no use and 82 indicating high use of cultivation practices. opinion regarding changes in livelihood is another dependent variable which was measured by the changes in socio-economic aspects of the women. it referred to the improvement of social as well as economic status of the respondent women. the women were asked to give their opinion regarding the improvement in socio-economic aspects of' their livelihood due to the contribution of homestead vegetable practices. it was measured on the bases of opinion obtained from the women in 10 statements containing information on the improvement of socio-economic aspects of their livelihood. 2.6. statistical analysis the collected data were coded into numerical, compiled, tabulated and analyzed reckon the objectives of the study in mind. in order to categorize and elucidate the data, various statistical measures such as range, mean, percentage, standard deviation and rank were used in describing the selected variables, wherever relevant. to find out the relationships, pearson’s product moment correlation co-efficient was used in order to explore the relationship between the relevant variables. 3. results and discussion 3.1. selected characteristics of the rural women asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 242-254 247 table 1: description of women characteristics variables way of measurement observed range categories according to their selected characteristics rural women (number or percentage) n=100 mean standard deviation age assigning a score of 1 for each year 18-60 young (18-35) middle (36-50) old ( above 50 ) 52 34 14 35.14 8.51 family size assigning a score of 1 for each member of the family 2-10 small (up to 4) medium (5-6) large (7 and above) 33 47 20 5.35 1.55 education score 0-14 illiterate (0) can sign only (0.5) primary level (1-5) secondary level (6-10) above secondary level (above 10) 9 32 24 28 7 4.32 3.46 homestead area hectare 0.17-3.21 marginal (< 0.02) small (> 0.02-0.99) medium (1-2.99) large (3.0 and above) 14 30 38 18 1.982 0.32 credit availability score 0-60 no credit receiver (0) low credit (up to 15) medium credit (16-20) high credit (above 20) 6 70 9 15 19.34 7.21 knowledge of homestead vegetable cultivation score 0-100 low (up to 33) medium (34-66) high (above 66) 5 40 55 50.65 15.14 family income ‘000 taka 19-69 low (up to 30) medium (30-40) high (41 to 80) 46 29 25 36.76 11.35 communication exposure score 0-75 low (up to 25) medium (26-50) high (above 50) 15 75 10 37.15 13.33 aspiration score 6-24 low (up to 10) medium (11-20) 7 80 16.8 4.48 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 242-254 248 high (above 20) 13 fatalism score 6-26 low (up to 12) medium (13-25) high (above 25) 4 88 8 26.74 2.86 problem confrontation scale score 9-41 low (up to 15 score) medium (16 to 30 score) high (above 30 score) 23 59 18 21.02 6.231 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 242-254 249 52% of the respondents were young rural women, 14% were old, and 34% were middle-aged (table 1). 47% of the respondents had medium sized, 33% small, and 20% large families. 32% could only write, 28% had secondary education, 24% primary, 9% were illiterate, and only 7% were educated beyond the secondary level. 38% had a medium sized, 30% small, 18% large, and 14% marginal farm. 70% had limited access to credit due to repayment risk for unfavorable terms and conditions of the credit providing organizations. 55% had deep, 40% medium, and 5% scarce knowledge of agriculture. 75% had low to medium, 25% high annual income. 75% had moderate, 15% low, and 10% high exposure to communication. 80% had moderate, 13% high, and 7% low aspirations. 88% showed moderate, 8% high, and 4% low fatalism. the problem confrontation score of all respondents ranged from 9-41. most respondents had a medium (59%), 23% low, and 18% high problem confrontation. 3.2. adoption of traditional homestead vegetable cultivation practices: the adoption of traditional homestead vegetable cultivation practice score to the women ranged from 20 to 62 with the mean value to 29.23 and standard deviation 9.77. based on the adoption score, the respondents were classified into 3 categories (table 2). table 2: distribution of women according to their adoption of homestead vegetable cultivation practices characteristics category respondent % measuring system average standard deviation adoption of traditional homestead vegetable cultivation practices low (up to 30) 24 scale score 29.23 9.77 moderate (30 to 50) 59 high (above 50) 17 the overwhelming majority of the women were (59%) who was found to have moderate adoption of traditional homestead vegetable cultivation practices compared to 24% had low adoption and17% had high adoption of the practices. 3.3. opinion regarding changes in livelihood scores of women opinion regarding changes in livelihood through traditional homestead vegetable cultivation practices ranged from 24 to 72 with a mean value to 40.40 and standard deviation 12.98. based on the score, the respondents were classified into 3 categories (table 3). the overwhelming majority of the women (68%) were moderate category who was found to have medium opinion on the livelihood of traditional homestead vegetable cultivation practices, where 20% had low and 12% of them had high adoption. table 3: distribution of women according to their attitude to the impact of traditional homestead vegetable cultivation practices characteristics category respondent % measuring system average standard deviation attitude regarding changes in livelihood low (up to 35) 20 scale score 40.40 12.98 medium (36 to 55) 68 high (above 55) 12 3.4. relationship between the selected characteristics of the respondents and impact of traditional homestead vegetable cultivation practices to explore the relationship between the selected characteristics and their adoption and impact of their livelihood observed in traditional homestead vegetable cultivation system, pearson’s product moment coefficient of correlation (r) has been used (table 4) with description of the meaning of ‘r’ (cohen and holiday, 1996). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 242-254 250 table 4: computed co-efficient of correlation (r) among dependent variables and selected characteristics (n=100) women's characteristics values of ‘r’ with df.. 98 for adoption of traditional homestead vegetable practices values of ‘r’ with df. 98 for attitude regarding changes in livelihood in homesteads age 0.082 ns 0.008 ns family size 0.051ns 0.071 ns education 0.382** 0.318** homestead area 0.224* 0.227* credit availability 0.222* 0.228 * knowledge of homestead vegetable cultivation 0.037** 0.406** family income 0.201* 0.201* communication exposure 0.212* 0.223* aspiration 0.072ns 0.008 ns fatalism 0.052 ns 0.082 ns problem confrontation 0.295** 0.178ns education of rural women indicates a significant positive correlation with their attitude as well as adoption of homestead vegetable cultivation for livelihood improvement. it manifests that higher level of education of the rural women might have influenced for their moderately favorable attitude towards homestead vegetable cultivation. these aspects of homestead vegetable cultivation are mostly performed by women in rural areas and have properly been reflected in the current study. though attitude is moderate, questions arise about productivity of homestead vegetable cultivation that has been studied. it is very significant to know the existing level of production and to find out the possible means for its development. nasrin et al. (2008) also found that education plays an effective role in modern cultivation practices as well as the improvement of rural women livelihood status. agricultural knowledge of rural women indicates a significant positive correlation with their attitude and adoption towards homestead vegetable cultivation for livelihoods improvement. “knowledge is power” but this has to be shared by both men and women. although women roles are restricted within the homestead, they should also be given with technical knowledge and skills on different aspects of vegetable production like modern varieties of different vegetables, quality seed and its preservation, appropriate time of fertilizer application, ipm technique etc. in this regard rogers (1995) reported modern agricultural knowledge through mass media plays an important role to adopt homestead vegetable cultivation. homestead size, family income, credit availability and communication exposure have a significantly positive correlation with the attitude of rural women towards homestead vegetable cultivation for the improvement of livelihoods. it implies that, these characteristics of the rural women have reflective influence on their attitude. these characteristics are liable to change to a great extent with changes in agricultural knowledge. age, family size, aspiration, fatalism, problem confrontation of rural women had no significant correlation with their adoption and also attitude towards homestead vegetable cultivation. in the case of age, sultana (2003) found similar type of findings for adoption of homestead vegetable cultivation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 242-254 251 similar study was found by (victor et al., 2005) that homestead gardening program can play an important role in increasing household food security, household income, livelihood status of rural women as well as the empowerment of rural women. further (khatun et al., 2014) showed that agricultural knowledge and also attitude to adopt practices had a positive relationship with the cultivation of homestead vegetates. 4. problems and solutions 4.1. problem with the traditional homestead vegetable cultivation system  minimal access to agricultural resources such as seeds, planting material, tools, and capital  dearth of land and deficiency of land tenure security  scant access to water  impairment due to insect pests, diseases, animals, and theft  poor conditions of environment  lack of knowledge, information, and advisory services  scarcity of labor  lowly soil fertility and soil erosion  limited access to quality livestock breeds  limited marketing prospects  extreme post-harvest losses  scarce research and development on home gardens  social and cultural barriers  deficiency of information on nutritional benefits of home gardening 4.2. probable solution to the problem with the traditional homestead vegetable production system 1. raises the value of output of a specific area of land through spatial or inter temporal intercropping of trees and other species 2. diversifies the range of outputs from a provided area in order to increase self-reliance diminish the risk to income from hostile climatic, biological, or market impacts on certain crops. ➢ spreads the needs for labor more equally seasonally, thus decreasing the effects of sharp peaks ➢ offers productive applications for underutilized land, labor, or capital. 5. conclusion women have been used to traditional homestead vegetable cultivation practices and systems from time immemorial. the size of homestead is a factor in the increase of production. some areas of the homestead were found to be unused that could be used for growing trees and vegetable crops. the selected women thought that the traditional homestead cultivation practices and systems had a significant role in improving socio-economic status and upgrade of the environmental conditions in the area. it can be concluded from the findings that most of the rural women had a moderate attitude to homestead vegetable cultivation for improvement of their livelihoods. rice consumption may supply energy, but cereals alone cannot fulfil the requirements of balanced food. adding vegetables and fruits to the daily diet can develop the nutritional value of supplementary food items since they are the main sources of vitamins and minerals. although fruits and vegetables serve the same nutritional purpose, vegetables are considerably convenient and inexpensive to grow. if women are provided with deep agricultural knowledge, they can easily utilize improved technology in vegetable production and achieve better harvests. a need based training programme should be developed and extensively implemented to improve the skill asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 242-254 252 of rural women in different homestead production areas and thereby increase production. various ngos are working with the government to enable their patrons and beneficiaries to advance into higher standards of living. many of them run motivational programs for the women. these programs have become a platform for women to ascertain their rights and voice their opinions. despite the government’s initiatives to increase awareness, ensure political and social rights, and participate in different income related activities and empowerment my view is that the government should be more sincere, active, and provide proper attention to upsurge the awareness of vulnerable and underprivileged women by totally instigating the initiatives. cooperation between the government and ngos can accelerate the improvement of women’s livelihoods. opportunities are growing for ngos throughout the developing world to work with governments to improve the quality of lives and help poor women. as women’s attitude was favorable, proper extension strategy may help in boosting homestead vegetable production, which can ensure better nutrition and economic benefits. hence, homestead vegetable production can play an imperative role in changing social and livelihood issues. 6. suggestion and direction for future research it was a single student investigation, which placed limitations on time, resources etc., which obviously lead to the purposive selection of the locale of the study. the study is based on the expressed opinions of the respondents, which may not be free from their individual perception and bias in spite of the researcher’s efforts to get them as objectively as possible. the major weakness of the study is its representativeness, small sample size. this study was conducted among 100 women whom were interested in traditional homestead vegetable cultivation in northeastern part of bangladesh using quantitative research method. future research could be conducted on a bigger sample in one district or in a number of districts in bangladesh to gain a better picture of the overall scenario and to ensure that the findings are robust and can be generalized to the wider population. a future study could explore to a wider scope or use qualitative research method besides changing the context and get some feedback from the respondent’s women in overcoming their problems for the upgrading of their livelihood status. funding: this research was sponsored totally by the contributions of authors. competing interests: authors declared that they have no conflicting interests. contributors/acknowledgement: i would like to express my sincere thanks to the organization for women in science for the developing world (owsd) and swedish international development cooperation agency (sida) who supported me through the fellowship in this research project. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ahmed, n. 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(2012). agrobiodiversity of homegardens in bonito, state of para, brazil. revista de ciências agrárias/amazonian journal of agricultural and environmental sciences, 55(3), 159-166. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 563 , regulatory impact analysis roles for agricultural products’ qualities: customers’ perspectives for sustainability entrepreneurship zulhamri abdullaha, wan fauziah wan yusoff b chinedu eugenia anumudua, fakhrul anwar zainolc a communication department, fbmk, universiti putra malaysia, malaysia b faculty of technology management & business, universiti tun hussein onn, malaysia c faculty of economics & management sciences, universiti sultan zainal abidin, malaysia  zulhamri@upm.edu.my (corresponding author) article history: received: 19-feb-2020 accepted: 06-apr-2020 online available: 18-july2020 keywords: regulatory impact analysis, agro-entrepreneurship, consumer-oriented, asian country abstract the purpose of this study is to contribute to the emerging agro entrepreneurship empirical literature from the malaysian regulatory impact analysis context. therefore, this study explicitly provides an empirical analysis of the regulatory impact assessment based on consumers’ perceptions. in line with the purpose of the study, we applied a quantitative approach through a survey questionnaire for the aim of generating data from the central, south, and east coast malaysian consumers’ opinions. consequently, we found that the majority of the respondents had little knowledge of the impact of grading, packaging, and labelling (gpl). furthermore, the study established that over twothirds of the customers always check the label of the products they intend to purchase. the majority of the consumers were also concerned with the halal label when purchasing products. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.563.577 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: zulhamri abdullah, wan fauziah wan yusoff, chinedu eugenia anumudu, and fakhrul anwar zainol (2020). regulatory impact analysis roles for agricultural products’ qualities: customers’ perspectives for sustainability entrepreneurship. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 563-577. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 563-577 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 contribution/ originality the study contributed empirical evidence to the emerging agro entrepreneurship literature from the malaysian improved regulatory impact analysis context. mailto:zulhamri@upm.edu.my http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.563.577 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 563-577 564 1. introduction there is a notable lack of empirical research on whether regulatory impact analysis (ria) might help in promoting agro-based products’ qualities and sustainable agricultural entrepreneurship. the empirical gap was noticed from previous studies that have researched the factors influencing the growth of agro products and entrepreneurship stabilities (ekpe et al., 2015, haider et al., 2020; zhang and tidgren, 2018; nie, 2020). therefore, this research aims to empirically examine the roles of regulatory impact analysis on the malaysian emerging agro entrepreneurs towards improving agricultural products’ qualities from the customers’ perspectives. it is unarguably that every nation needs agricultural products to sustain its citizens. this is because the agricultural profession is deemed as one of the sectors that can bring about economic growth through generating incomes, food supply, raw materials, and providing employment opportunities, especially among the rural dwellers (haider et al., 2020; schneider et al., 2011). it also helps in attracting landscape transformations, societal developments, and ecocentric inventions needed in rural settings for sustaining socio-ecological environments towards promoting better rural livelihoods (oliveira and penha, 2020). therefore, there are growing needs to regulate the qualities of agro-based products provide by agricultural entrepreneurs to the consumers to sustain the business at large. this is necessitated for gaining ground in the competitive markets (bonroy and constantatos, 2015) and also for promoting eco-system-based adaptation practices (vignola et al., 2015). however, agrobased entrepreneurs should endeavour to adjust their marketing strategies through improvising the qualities of agricultural products to sustain effective business practices to avoid creating unhealthy environments that may lead to artificial scarcity and unduly rivalries (nie et al., 2020; bowen et al., 2020; zhang and tidgren, 2018). this is because artificial scarcities of agricultural products might have vast effects on the consumers and agricultural products’ suppliers by creating an unfair scenario for exploiting them. artificial scarcity of agricultural products may also bring about higher prices that may lead to a decrease in demand, limitation on consumers’ choices, economic inefficiency, mismanagement of resources, lack of corporate identity (abdullah and abu seman, 2018) and loss of brand reputation (abdullah, 2009). to maintain quality and prevent unhealthy agricultural products’ artificial scarcities; and competitions, previous related studies have shown that adopting standard policy and regulating body are indispensable for achieving stable and quality agricultural products (kowalczyk et al., 2019; zhang and tidgren, 2018). consequently, adopting standard policy and regulating impact analysis might improve the entrepreneurship developments in malaysia (ekpe et al., 2015; ekpe et al., 2016). presently, horizontal restraints on competition allow other competitors in the market, whereas vertical restraints promote supplier-distributor relationships (nie et al., 2020). nonetheless, it should be noted that the distinction between horizontal and vertical restraints on competition is not always a clear cut and practices because one type may impact the other. for example, firms may adopt strategic behavior to foreclose competition. they may do so by pre-empting facilities through acquisition of important raw material supply or distribution channels may enter into long term contracts to purchase available inputs or capacity and engage in exclusive dealing and other practices. these practices may raise barriers to entry and entrench the market position of existing firms and/or facilitate anti-competitive arrangements (schneider et al., 2011). globally, most countries and governments, including malaysia, face increasing challenges for designing regulatory systems that promote and protect the welfare of citizens (abdullah, 2010) and to encourage corporate engagement with a larger community (abdullah et al., 2017). partly, this challenge could be resolved by integrating evidence basis in agricultural industry regulatory decision making. this is necessitated to ensure and improve agricultural products by implementing effective regulations for agro-based products. regulatory impact analysis (ria) is a method for assessing both the positive and negative effects of existing and proposed regulatory changes by the government at all levels in the agricultural industry, mainly within the central government (kirkpatrick and parker, 2003; parker, 2006). according to oecd (2020), ria aims to be a tool and a decision process asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 563-577 565 for informing political decision-makers to assess the predicted impacts (a so-called ex-ante assessment) or after a regulation has been implemented to see if the effects equate with those expected when the law was introduced (an ex-post assessment) in the agricultural industry. the beginning of the evaluation of regulatory impact assessment (ria) is the net benefits (or costs) that may result from state regulation. therefore, ria first formally surfaced as a process within the government in the usa in the 1970s, under the nixon administration when us companies began to complain about costs of mainly environmental regulation. ria has achieved wider popularity after the oecd started to champion the idea and published it in march 1995 (kirkpatrick et al., 2003; kirkpatrick and lee, 2002). oecd spearheaded the analysis scheme until it was officially renamed regulatory impact analysis or assessment in 1997. it equally released the first summary of best practices in ria in the same year where it defined what ria is, and also stated the main objectives and summarized what each country had achieved and what the results had been. the information was first acquired in the form of consultations. in 2005, the oecd published guiding principles for regulatory quality and performance, which was another brief document for policy-makers of its members. subsequently, in 2009, they released a whole book on the topic which presents alleged determinants of quality of ria, suitable methodological frameworks to use and also chapters on how to integrate competition analysis into ria and ideas on how to apply ria in the area of corporate governance (oecd, 2020). presently, the impact of policy regulatory bodies in ensuring agricultural product qualities and sustaining agricultural smallholders are globally gaining ground even among european continents. thus, a recent european study has found that such bodies play crucial roles in providing information and implementing laws that would trigger stakeholders, sciences, and citizens to quickly adapt to better strategies towards improving agricultural products’ qualities. an example of such effective policy was seen from improvising agricultural water production quality through effective long-terms communication streams (glavan et al., 2019). similarly, a study conducted in italy by capone et al. (2016), which focused on developing methodological approaches for assessing agricultural products’ qualities for better environments, economics, social, cultural, nutritional and mediterranean apulian agro-products consumers’ sustainable health, demonstrated that implementing a viability logo could bring about effective promotion for rural agricultural productions and qualities. however, pölling et al. (2017) proposed that policy assessments for improving agro-products’ qualities and sustainable agricultural entrepreneurship could be influenced by the farmers’ contextual regions. consequently, the scholars’ comparative studies in spain, italy, and germany showed that integrating agricultural diversifications was the most business model that propelled agro-products’ sustainability in these selected regions. congruently, yu (2017) claimed that economic rationale adopted by various regions determined the regulatory impact on agricultural products and economical growths. therefore, the scholar illustrated that considering various external, internal, and autonomous factors while initiating regulatory impact analysis is capable of generating optimal income towards sustaining healthier business and economic modeling. the integration of multiple regulatory management firms has also been suggested as a possible factor that might bring out enrichment to agro products’ qualities and sustainable entrepreneurship (akhmetova et al., 2019). the scholars experimented this by integrating quality management body and hazard analysis and critical control points towards improving the qualities of dairy products and found the combination successful for sustaining agro-products’ potentials. williams (2015) further argued that for large-scale agricultural reserves to progress, accumulated knowledge from agricultural related-investments needs to be considered. the scholar demonstrated this by experimenting with food and water securities in the middle east and north africa region and subsaharan africa and concluded by illustrating that a combination of ecosystem management applications and smallholders are needed for intensifying and promoting agricultural products for better rural sustenance. similarly, recent research by paraskevopoulou et al. (2020) observed that agro-products’ qualities are being globally confronted by sustainability issues and therefore calls for intensifying and fostering sustainable approaches via evaluating social and state economic existing rules towards obtaining useful information for improving and sustaining agro products. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 563-577 566 recent research also emphasized that having regulating assessment bodies such as alternative food network helps in analyzing and promoting agro-products’ qualities. this was demonstrated by creating common networking sites where farmers will always project quality productions and the consumers’ willingness to patronize such products provided they are eco-friendly ones (corsi and mazzocchi, 2019). other groups of researchers propagated that integrating quality management systems will enable various enterprises to enhance striving towards meeting up with modern days’ market necessities and also embrace healthy rivalries for better productions (akhmetova et al., 2017). regulating agro-products qualities has been also deemed essential among rural dwellers, especially in providing food safety information to them through designated quality products’ firms since research has established that rural dwellers consumers’ choices of locally agro products are influenced by the intention of improving social and economic growths in the rural settings instead of being influenced by civic conventions that promote products’ qualities (migliore et al., 2017). research further showed that agricultural products’ quality promotions were not limited to only botany and subsistence farming but also needed in other branches such as aquaculture to enable adaption in the competitive markets (neto et al., 2015). this is because every agricultural branch needs to embrace quality features to excel. therefore, the roles of regulating and legalizing agro products are needed towards promoting agro-products’ qualities and sustaining entrepreneurship in all agricultural branches. the adoption of index insurance was identified as another way of sustaining smallholders. this might help and limit the obstacles that could be caused by imposing unapproved insurance coverage on them. therefore, research suggested that establishing appropriate fixed metrics will help to enhance agro-products’ qualities, consumers’ protections, and controlling of unduly exploitations (jensen and barrett, 2017). however, abid et al. (2016) argued that the qualities of agro products, local food securities, and sustainability of agricultural entrepreneurship could be achieved by educating the farmers, providing them with easy access to farming consultation related-services, and by offering them information on the latest adaptation approaches. in contrast, quintas et al. (2016) posited that introducing numerous ecosystem management approaches and inclusion of ecosystem in the land management could improve subsistence farming and promote agricultural smallholders’ sustainability. therefore, in line with the uncertainties about not yet entirely ascertained the roles of regulatory impact analysis (ria) towards improving agricultural products’ qualities and sustainable agro based entrepreneurship in malaysia as previous studies established, the study was guided by the following research questions and objectives: 1.1. research questions and objectives research questions: 1) what is the current status of ria within the agricultural industry in malaysia? 2) how does ria affect the agricultural industry in malaysia? 3) what would be the mechanism to ensure the success of ria for all stakeholders within the agricultural industry in malaysia? research objectives: 1) to identify the current status of ria within the agricultural industry in malaysia. 2) to examine the impacts of ria in the agricultural industry in malaysia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 563-577 567 3) to propose strategy or tools such as structure remedies in assisting the economy to enhance the agricultural industry in malaysia 2. methods the study employed a survey questionnaire approach for obtaining the perceptions of consumers from the central, south, and east coast of malaysia. the developed instrument was validated by ascertaining their reliabilities and validities. the study covered a sample of vegetables and fruits consumers in selangor and johor. these two states were selected because they were the predominant agricultural zones that practice ria in malaysia. for this study, a total number of 800 questionnaires were distributed to selected respondents in selangor (400) and johor (400), respectively. the total recovered and filled questionnaire used for the study was 559 (70%). this implied that 265 (66.3%) of the questionnaires were recovered in selangor. while 294 (73.5%) was retrieved from johor respondents. in terms of sampling technique, simple random sampling was applied in both states. it was used because it offered everyone in the targeted population equal opportunity of being selected. subsequently, the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) version 14 software was used to analyze the data. first of all, it is important to note that the research objectives determine the type of statistical tools that should be employed during the analysis stage. therefore, the research objectives, which were: to identify the current status of ria within the agricultural industry in malaysia; examining the impacts of ria in the agricultural industry in malaysia and proposing strategy or tools such as structure remedies in assisting the economy to enhance the agricultural industry in malaysia were all descriptive objectives. consequently, descriptive statistical tools were used and analyzed the data, and these comprised measures of central tendency such as mean, percentage, and frequency, etc. they were applied because descriptive statistics were deemed appropriate for any quantitative descriptive studies (carroll et al., 2017; cooper et al., 2019). in other words, none of the objectives required inferential statistics such as anova, correlational effects, etc., because the objectives of the research did not have any needs for the inferential test. therefore, descriptive statistical tools, which comprised frequency and percentage, were explicitly used and analyzed the data. 3. results and discussions this section described the socio-economic background of the consumers and subsequent findings of the study. according to table 1 on the socio-economic background of the respondents, it presented that 54% of the respondents in the selangor state were male while the rest were female. in other words, more than half of the respondents that participated in the study in the selangor state were male. whereas in the johor state, it indicated that 69%, which comprised the majority of the respondents were also male while the rest were female. this explicitly implies that the majority of the customers that patronize vegetables and fruits sellers in selangor and johor are the male consumers. in terms of the consumers’ level of education, more than one-third of the respondents in both selangor and johor had spm/mce, which stands for “sijil pelajaran malaysia” this is previously known as the malaysian certificate of education (mce), and it is the official national examination taken by all malaysian fifth form students. in contrast, the rest are having an stpm/diploma, bachelor’s, masters, and ph.d. degrees. in other words, it pinpoints that spm/mce holders are patronizing fruit and vegetable sellers in both selangor and johor more than other levels of education. regarding the consumers’ marital status, table 1 illustrated that the majority of the customers who buy vegetables and fruits in the two states were married people. conversely, married people are making more use of vegetables and fruits. probably, it is because they have more family members who consume horticultural products than single and widowed ones. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 563-577 568 pertaining to the race the consumers belonged, table 1 demonstrated that the majority of the consumers in both selangor and johor states were from the malay race. this was followed by indian, chinese, and others. thus, it implied that the malay race patronizes vegetable and fruit sellers in the two states more than other races. furthermore, it showed that the age of most of the consumers in both states was between 41-50 years; those between 21-30 years followed this. and it implies that the two age brackets mostly consume vegetables and fruits in the two states. in terms of occupation of the consumers, the table 1 displayed that the majority of the consumers in both selangor and johor are working in private sectors, and this was followed by sole traders. therefore, private sector workers patronize vegetables and fruits sellers in the two states more than other occupations. finally, table 1 showed that most of the consumers are monthly earning a household income of 234.87-703.90 usd, and this implies that most of the customers who patronize vegetables and fruits sellers in selangor and johor states are below malaysia average income earners. it also corresponds with the consumers’ level of education, which states that a greater percentage of them are having spm/mce, the second-lowest level of education in malaysia. table 1: descriptive outcomes of vegetable and fruit consumers’ socio-economic background selangor johor frequency (%) frequency (%) gender male 143 54 203 69 female 122 59 91 31 total 265 100 294 100 level of education upsr and below 8 3 12 4.1 pmr 14 5.3 30 10.2 spm/mce 97 36.6 107 36.5 stpm/diploma 62 23.4 59 20.1 degree 60 22.6 68 23 master/phd 23 8.7 17 5.8 others 1 0.4 1 0.3 total 265 100 294 100 marital status single 48 18.1 8 27.6 married 213 80.4 204 69.4 widowed 4 1.5 9 3 total 265 100 294 100 race malay 223 84.2 219 74.5 chinese 8 3 39 13.3 indian 26 9.8 22 7.5 others 8 3 14 4.7 total 265 100 294 100 age 20 years below 4 1.5 6 2 21-30 years 72 26.9 66 22.4 31-40 years 59 22.3 78 26.5 41-50 years 62 23.5 75 25.6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 563-577 569 51-60 years 53 20.1 52 17.7 61 years above 15 5.7 17 5.8 total 265 100 294 100 occupation government 55 20.9 46 15.6 business owner 58 22.1 73 24.8 private sector 84 31.9 123 41.8 professional 7 2.3 16 5.5 others 61 22.8 36 12.3 total 265 100 294 100 income (usd) below 234 32 12 9 3.1 234.87-703.90 104 39.2 156 53.1 704.13-1,173.02 64 24.2 66 22.4 1,173.26-1,642.23 14 5.3 14 4.8 1,642.46 2,346.94 31 11 33 11.2 above 2,346.04 20 7 16 5.4 total 265 100 294 100 3.1. grading, packaging and labeling (gpl) regarding knowledge about gpl, table 2 indicated that most of the vegetables and fruits customers in selangor and johor did not know about grading, packing, and labelling of agroproducts’ regulations. therefore, it implies that they might have been buying goods that were not deemed safe for consumption since the aim of glp is to ensure that products are graded, packaged, and labelled for safe consumption. in contrast, the least of them did not answer this particular question. it was also an indication that they were unaware of the gpl role in ensuring products’ qualities. thus, there is a need for gpl corporate firms to sensitize people on the impact of evaluating products’ qualities through grading, packaging, and labelling. the enlightenment could be done through organizing gpl awareness campaigns or via various social media, especially the commonest ones such as facebook and whatsapp. table 2: descriptive outcomes of vegetable and fruit customers’ knowledge about grading, packaging and labelling (gpl) agro-products’ regulation gpl selangor johor percentage (%) frequency percentage (%) frequency yes 38.1 101 42.9 126 no 60.4 160 53.1 156 n/a 1.5 4 4.0 12 total 100 265 100 294 similarly, table 3 presented that most of the vegetable and fruit consumers in both selangor and johor did not answer this particular question, which focused on ascertaining if they purchase edible products based on the gpl stipulated rules. therefore, this might be because they did not understand the concept of gpl rules on consumable products. thus, it is suggested that the government or the body in charge of gpl should intensify their efforts towards enlightening the public on gpl rules for adequate evaluating the safety of the products they intend to purchase in the subsequent time. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 563-577 570 table 3: descriptive outcomes of the vegetable and fruit customers on purchasing agro products based on gpl rules gpl rules selangor johor percentage (%) frequency percentage (%) frequency yes 21.9 58 9.9 29 no 18.1 48 18.0 53 n/a 60.0 159 72.1 212 total 100 265 100 294 table 4 showed that the majority of vegetable and fruit consumers in both selangor and johor attested checking of products’ labels before making payments. thus, it is a commendable act since it would partly help them in verifying the products’ consumption safety and qualities. it also implies that most of the customers are fully practicing the label checking part of gpl rules. however, there should be widespread concern about a few of them that have not started checking products’ labels nor the concept behind doing so before making payments. therefore, it is suggested that the few customers who don’t check products’ labels nor understand the impact of checking the labels should be updated about it through enlightening them on the need to do so in subsequent time. table 4: descriptive outcomes of the vegetable and fruit customers about checking label before purchasing agro products label selangor johor percentage (%) frequency percentage (%) frequency yes 78.5 208 78.2 230 no 20.8 55 19.7 58 n/a 0.8 2 2.0 6 total 100 265 100 294 table 5 illustrated that the majority of vegetable and fruit consumers in both selangor and johor frequently purchase goods with halal label, followed by products with mygap label. and it equally corresponded with the importance they placed on these labeling names. here, the word “halal label” indicates that the products are guaranteed for consumption and did not go against islamic law. perhaps, this particular finding might be influenced by religious belief since the majority of the consumers in the two states were from the malay race, who are predominantly practicing islamic religion. table 5: descriptive outcomes of vegetable and fruit consumers on how often and importance of buying agro products based on the labeling names label frequency (%) importance (frequency %) total frequently seldom none yes no frequency 1. consumers at selangor’s wholesales market halal 192 (72.5) 34 (12.8) 35 (13.2) 225 (84.9) 34 (12.8) 520 mygap 25 (9.4) 61 (23.0) 45 (25.3) 77 (29.1) 184 (69.4) 392 made in malaysia 146 (55.1) 57 (21.5) 58 (21.9) 178 (67.2) 84 (31.7) 523 gpl 58 (21.9) 62 (23.4) 141 (53.2) 107 (40.4) 154 (58.1) 522 organic product 56 (21.1) 80 (30.2) 125 (47.2) 112 (42.3) 146 (55.1) 519 total 477 297 404 699 599 2476 2. consumers at johor’s wholesales market halal 189 (64.3) 41 (13.9) 46 (15.6) 223 (75.9) 41 (13.9) 540 mygap 33 (11.2) 106 (36.1) 124 (42.2) 71 (24.1) 181 (61.6) 515 made in malaysia 124 (42.2) 95 (32.2) 45 (15.3) 160 (54.4) 95 (32.2) 519 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 563-577 571 gpl 42 (14.3) 121 (41.2) 100 (34.0) 96 (32.7) 158 (53.7) 517 organic product 62 (21.1) 109 (37.1) 92 (31.3) 101 (34.4) 153 (52.0) 517 total 450 472 407 651 628 2608 table 6 demonstrated that the majority of the vegetable and fruit consumers in selangor ranked products’ quality information on packaging and environmental friendly for packaging material as the most crucial factors that could improve agricultural products. however, the consumers in johor partly differed in their perceptions by indicating that nutrition, environmentally friendly, and high quality were the essential factors that could enhance agricultural products’ packing. therefore, it is suggested that gpl regulators should consider their perceptions of improving agricultural products’ packaging qualities. this is because the findings of this study have proven that the more appealing the products’ packaging is, the higher the numbers of consumers and high quantity sales would be made. additionally, if such improvements are achieved, it might also lead to agro-based entrepreneurship sustainability. table 6: descriptive outcomes of vegetable and fruit consumers on what could be improved in agricultural product packaging packaging frequency (%) total disagree agree frequency 1. consumers at selangor's wholesales market packaging: information origin 30 (10.8) 234 (14.8) 264 grading of product 40 (14.4) 243 (15.4) 263 tag price 23 (8.3) 240 (15.2) 263 license 20 (7.2) 243 (15.4) 263 nutrition 31 (11.2) 229 (14.5) 260 quality of product 135 (48.6) 393 (24.8) 528 total 278 1582 1841 packaging: material environmental friendly 44 (14.3) 220 (26.1) 264 easy to open 63 (14.3) 201 (23.9) 264 high quality 43 (7.1) 220 (26.1) 263 usable 62 (64.3) 201 (23.9) 263 total 212 842 1054 2. consumers at johor’s wholesales market packaging: information quality of product 159 (60.0) 425 (21.8) 584 nutrition 24 (15.0) 443 (22.7) 467 tag price 14 (5.3) 278 (14.2) 292 origin 24 (5.0) 268 (13.7) 292 grading of product 24 (5.0) 268 (13.7) 292 license 17 (10.0) 272 (13.9) 289 total 262 1954 2216 packaging: material environmental friendly 32 (22.6) 260 (26.4) 292 high quality 32 (22.6) 260 (26.4) 292 easy to open 60 (25.8) 232 (23.6) 292 usable 58 (38.7) 234 (23.7) 292 total 182 986 1168 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 563-577 572 table 7 presented that most of the vegetable and fruit customers in selangor state agreed that the most gpl influences on them towards making products’ preferences were expiring and manufactured dates. therefore, it is recommended that gpl regulators should always ensure that all the agro products conveyed for sales in selangor state are bearing expiring and manufactured dates to attract more consumers and equally retain the older ones for the sustainability of agrobased entrepreneurship. whereas consumers in johor state partly differed in their products’ preferences by indicating that products’ nutrition content and the weight were the most gpl rules that will influence their products’ preferences. consequently, it is also commended that the gpl regulators should always consider improving the products’ nutrition contents and the weight of all the products delivered for sales in johor state towards intensifying the number of sales and consumers. table 7: descriptive outcomes on the impact of gpl towards influencing vegetable and fruit consumers’ products’ preferences impact of gpl disagree agree percentage (%) frequency percentage (%) frequency 1. consumers at selangor's wholesales market i only purchase the product, if i see: manufactured date 4.7 10 15.4 282 expired date 3.3 7 15.6 285 price tag 7.6 16 15.1 276 weight 16.1 34 14.1 258 brand 23.2 49 13.3 243 quality of product 11.4 24 14.6 268 nutrition content 33.6 71 12.0 219 total 100 211 100 1831 2. consumers at johor's wholesales market i only purchase the product, if i see: expired date 5.6 13 15.6 251 price tag 9.9 23 14.9 241 brand 19.4 45 13.6 219 nutrition content 22.4 52 13.1 212 quality of product 7.8 18 15.3 246 weight 26.3 61 12.5 202 manufactured date 8.6 20 15.0 242 total 100 232 100 1,613 table 8 displayed that the majority of the consumers in both selangor and johor strongly affirmed that they needed gpl rules on consumable products. whereas few of them did not affair the need for gpl rules on the products. additionally, a little percentage of the consumers in both states answered not applicable to this particular question and that also showed their ignorance on the gpl roles towards ensuring high products’ qualities. thus, the findings proposed that gpl regulators should strengthen their efforts towards certifying that all products are conforming to gpl rules. on the other hand, there is also unarguably needs to enlighten those who did not affirm the need nor understand the concept of applying gpl rules on consumable products. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 563-577 573 table 8: descriptive outcomes of vegetable and fruit consumers on the need for applying gpl rules on agro products gpl selangor johor percentage (%) frequency percentage (%) frequency yes 88.7 235 83.4 245 no 9.1 24 14.3 42 n/a 2.3 6 2.3 7 total 100.0 265 100 294 table 9 demonstrated that most of the vegetable and fruit consumers in both selangor and johor needed the application of gpl rule for ensuring the products’ qualities and gaining consumers’ confidence. consequently, the gpl regulators need to consider most these two factors towards retaining agro-products’ consumers and intensifying the number of sales from the agro entrepreneurs’ side. table 9: descriptive outcomes of vegetable and fruit consumers on the reasons for demanding the application of gpl rules on agro products reason selangor johor percentage (%) frequency percentage (%) frequency to ensure the quality of the product 28.2 200 32.8 211 to gain consumers’ confident 28.4 201 27.4 176 to ensure the safety of the product 23.4 166 22.2 143 to control the price 20.0 142 17.6 113 total 100.0 709 100.0 643 table 10 illustrated that the most reasons that made both selangor and johor vegetable and fruit consumers to oppose the application of gpl rules on products, were the fears of increase on cost of living and the products’ cost. consequently, it is suggested that the gpl regulators should consider the effects of applying gpl rules on both living costs and the products’ cost. therefore, there are needs to deliberate on the negative effects on these two factors towards subsiding the cost of gpl applications on consumable products to resolve the consumers’ fears and encouraging them to comply with it. table 10: descriptive outcomes on the vegetable and fruit consumers’ reasons for opposing the need for gpl application on agro products reason selangor johor percentage (%) frequency percentage (%) frequency increase cost of the product 35.0 7 61.2 41 not give any beneficial to consumers 0.0 0 11.9 8 increase cost of living 55.0 11 22.4 15 others 10.0 2 4.5 3 total 100 20 100 67 table 11 showed that most of the vegetable and fruit consumers in both selangor and johor were not aware of gpl. therefore, there was low awareness on the impact of gpl to the consumers. consequently, consumers in both states, need enlightenment and awareness campaigns towards educating them on the impact of applying gpl rules on consumable products for ensuring high quality and safety consumptions. this could be further done via various new mediums’ platforms and traditional mediums such as television, radio, etc. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 563-577 574 table 11: descriptive outcomes on vegetable and fruit consumers’ gpl awareness gpl selangor johor percentage (%) frequency percentage (%) frequency yes 32.5 86 39.1 115 no 67.2 178 58.2 171 n/a 0.4 1 2.7 8 total 100.00 265 100 294 3.2. cost and benefit analysis (on product) table 12 indicated that the vegetable and fruit consumers in both selangor and johor stated that gpl's current rules were most affecting their household expenditures and the products’ cost at large. hence, there are pressing needs for gpl regulators to readjust the current effects of gpl rules on the household expenditures and the products’ prices by subsiding the cost of the current gpl rules on consumable products towards retaining and attracting more consumers. additionally, gpl regulators should regulate the current gpl affects for the aim of sustaining agro-based products and agro entrepreneurship in malaysia. table 12: descriptive outcomes on the effect of current gpl rules on agro products current rules no changes reduce high very high % f % f % f % f 1. consumers at selangor’s wholesales market quality of product 10.3 69 5.7 16 10.8 129 11.4 50 grading of product 9.7 65 6 17 11.5 138 10 44 product labeling 8.8 59 8.1 23 11.6 139 9.8 43 price of product 6.7 45 7.1 20 11.7 140 13.4 59 cleanest of premises 11.1 74 14.5 41 8.3 99 11.4 50 product safety 10.8 72 9.5 27 9.2 110 12.5 55 waste management system 11.9 80 16.6 47 8.1 97 8.9 39 air quality 12.1 81 16.9 48 8.2 98 8.4 37 motivation to do business 10.3 69 10.9 31 9.4 113 0.2 1 household expenditure rate 8.1 54 4.6 13 11.3 136 13.9 61 total 100 668 100 283 100 1199 100 439 2. consumers at johor's wholesales market quality of product 9.2 43 11.3 27 9.5 135 11.2 85 grading of product 8.8 41 9.6 23 10.9 156 9.2 70 product labeling 8.8 41 6.7 16 10.9 157 10.1 77 price of product 6.2 29 8.3 20 10.3 147 11.9 91 cleanest of premises 11.9 56 11.7 28 9.7 139 8.8 67 product safety 11.4 53 7.9 19 9.7 139 10.1 77 waste management system 12.2 57 19.6 47 8.6 123 8.4 64 air quality 12.2 57 12.5 30 9.7 139 8.5 65 motivation to do business 10.5 49 8.8 21 10.6 152 8.7 66 household expenditure rate 8.8 41 3.8 9 9.9 141 13 99 total 100 467 100 240 100 1428 100 761 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 563-577 575 4. conclusion in conclusion, the purpose of the study which, focused on contributing to the emerging agro entrepreneurship empirical literature from the malaysian regulatory impact analysis context, found that the majority of the consumers had little knowledge about grading, packaging, and labelling (gpl). consumers were also not aware of the concept of applying gpl rules on consumable goods. the study equally established that over two-thirds of the customers always check the label on the products before they purchase them. it further demonstrated that the majority of the consumers were concerned with the halal label when purchasing products. however, the consumers in selangor highlighted the importance of products’ quality information on the packaging and environmental friendly for packaging materials. whilst, the consumers in johor put nutrition contents and environmental friendly as well as high quality as priorities towards improving products’ packaging. regarding the major concern on how to improve gpl impacts on consumable goods, the consumers ranked adding expiring and manufactured dates on agro-products as their major concerns. the consumers further demonstrated that they needed gpl rules’ applications for ensuring the products’ qualities and the products’ safety consumptions. additionally, consumers from both states pointed increase in household expenditures and products’ prices as most factors affecting their compliance with the current application of gpl rules. therefore, the gpl regulators need to subside the gpl current application cost in order not to dissuade consumers from complying with the policy. the findings further show that despite some negative effects, the implementation of regulatory analysis may have on the consumers and agro entrepreneurs’ expenditures, the good news is that it would also maximize their satisfaction by ensuring the qualities and safety consumptions of the products they purchase. consequently, our findings supported migliore et al. (2017) and corsi and mazzocchi (2019) that effective management of agro products will improve the qualities and ensure the products’ safety consumptions. thus, this study recommends the full application of ria in malaysia and also contributes empirical evidence to the emerging agro-entrepreneurship literature through exploring the regulatory impact analysis from the malaysian context. it further provides knowledge on the impact of economics towards agricultural sustainability by demonstrating that the judicious application of economics, has a huge role in increasing the economic growth in malaysia through agricultural products. it finally proved that the agricultural profession plays a vital role in ensuring the nations’ food security and also in creating job opportunities towards meeting up with the malaysian agenda of becoming among developed countries by the year 2030. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that he has no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: this work was supported morally and financially by the universiti putra malaysia and the ministry of higher education, malaysia. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdullah, a., yaacob, m. r., ismail, m. b., zakaria, m. n., abdullah, z., & mohd radyi, s. a. 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(2018). the current farm downturn vs the 1920s and 1980s farm crises: an economic and regulatory comparison. agricultural finance review, 78(4), 396-411. doi.org/10.1108/afr-08-2017-0075. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 56 susceptibility and resistant of different host varieties of oil palm and coconut palm towards pest, rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) izaitul aida, i.a mohd rasdi, z.b  ismail, r.,c ismeazilla, m. b.,d mohd faizol, k., d muhammad shakir, z., d nur fakriyah, a., d noor shuhaina, s. m. d a post graduate student; faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, malaysia b associate professor; faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara jasin, melaka, malaysia c lecturer; faculty of plantation & agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara jasin, melaka, malaysia d post graduate student; faculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, malaysia  dddpim@pahang.uitm.edu.my (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 31-aug-2019 accepted: 20-feb-2020 online available: 05-mar2020 keywords: susceptibility, resistant, oil palm, coconut palm, oryctes rhinoceros, pheromone abstract in the current study, population dynamics of males, females, and total males and females of rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros), namely, dxp ppnj 1 and dxp ppnj 2, was evaluated in different host varieties of oil palms and coconut palms of ladang penyelidikan segamat in johor state of malaysia. ethyl 4-methyloctanote had been used as a pheromone aggregation in this study. the results clearly indicated that population dynamics of oryctes rhinoceros (total male and female) in oil palms and coconut palms has significant difference within the whole sampling period. based on cumulative oryctes rhinoceros caught, varieties of dxp ppnj 1 and dxp ppnj 2 had significant effects on its male and female population. myd inclined more towards the population of oryctes rhinoceros male, female and total male and female, giving more impacts, when ccompared with mrd and tagnanan. both crops of same species/family were not recommended for planting in that area, because it facees similar problems of direct oryctes rhinoceros attacks, obviously affecting the yield. therefore, mrd and tagnanan, considered to be a cross-variety, had been recommended to farmers. instead of having higher yields, farmers have lesser chances of severe attacks by oryctes rhinoceros, within the same time period. contribution/ originality this study is important to study the abundance and the interaction of the rhinoceros beetle in oil palm and coconut palm. the abundance of male and female of rhinoceros beetle were observed and the interaction between the population dynamic, different types of crop and different plant variety in each crop also evaluated. our findings are an attempt to provide adequate knowledge in recommending potential farmers to select the best variety, which is more resistant to oryctes rhinoceros attacks. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.56.67 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: izaitul aida, i., mohd rasdi, z., ismail, r., ismeazilla, m. b., mohd faizol, k., muhammad shakir, z., nur fakriyah, a. and noor shuhaina, s. m. (2020). susceptibility and resistant of different host varieties of oil palm and coconut palm towards pest, rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 56-67. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 56-67 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:dddpim@pahang.uitm.edu.my http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.56.67 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 56-67 57 1. introduction this study was conducted at ladang penyelidikan segamat, bukit bujang, segamat, johor in malaysia on the crucial effects of population dynamics of oryctes rhinoceros, particularly on host plants, oil palms and coconut palms, belonging to a similar family (palmae) with high risk infestation of the pest, which causes yield losses up to more than 50% in the plantation of oil palms. the control of this insect pest in oil palm plantation is becoming more challenging day-by-day, because ability of oryctes rhinoceros possesses high adaptability to and much tolerance with chemicals. therefore, planting both crops could be high risk infestation; however, different varieties from both types of host plants could possibly influence the population of oryctes rhinoceros, and acts as a major coleopteran pest in oil palm and coconut palm industries in malaysia (manjeri et al., 2014). information on the effects of different types of crops and plant host varieties is rather lacking. as the plants grow, plantation gradually becomes within more favorable environmental conditions for pests population. the types of crops and their varieties may consist of different nutrients and different plant traits such as, its physical and physiological appearance that may incline towards attracting the oryctes rhinoceros population. this study was also conducted to find the effects of plant host varieties and the sampling week towards population dynamics of oryctes rhinoceros. moreover, our information would enable us to understand the effects of plant host varieties towards its population dynamics. two types of host plants with their different varieties which are highly preferred by oryctes rhinoceros were chosen in this study, such as oil palms and coconut palms. for the first host plant, a total area of oil palm included in this study was almost 20 hectares and varieties of the planting material used were d (dura), x p (pisifera) on commercial basis. all varieties of the planting material were planted randomly in the year 2013. the african oil palms belong to an elaeis guineensis species, and the name ‘guineensis’ refers to the area’s name, guinea. elaeis guineensis originated in tropical africa but currently planted in malaysia. regions falling in asia and pacific, central and south america, and africa could be grouped into three categories of countries that contribute in plantation of oil palms. the malaysian oil palms industry was established in 1911. since oil palm is one of the main crops that develop most rapidly in the world, malaysia’s oil palms industry contributed rm49.6 billion as net income during the year 2009. currently indonesia stands as the largest oil palms planted country, covering an area of 7.825 million ha, whereas malaysia is the second largest planter of oil palms within an area of 4.853 million ha (abdullah, 2011). it has been frequently observed that oil palms plantations face major acute problems in terms of pests and plant diseases occurrence. many researches were undertaken besides studying adequate technologies with attempts to solve the pest problems. the most critical and serious threats faced by the farmers come from the attacks from various insect pests, such as bag-worms, rhinoceros beetles, etc., which are the causes of the losses in oil palms yield. initially the coconut palms are usually planted in smaller scales by farmers and/or individuals, which gradually turn into larger scale plantations. until 2011, more than 80,000 farmers planted coconut palms. in the same year, data from malaysian department of agriculture (known as jabatan pertanian malaysia) showed that from within the total percentage and total hectare of coconut palms planted, only 2% belonged to plantation companies, covering just 1717 hectares, whereas remaining 98% was planted by farmers and/or individuals on a wide area of 107,111 ha. its huge plantation makes the coconut palms to stand at fourth position among crops, after oil palms, rubber and paddy. also being called traditional crops in malaysia, the coconut palms are usually planted by individuals in small scales only. moreover, the coconut palms industry is considered to be an important economic source of malaysia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 56-67 58 malayan yellow dwarf (myd), malayan red dwarf (mrd) and tagnanan or matag were selected as main varieties to evaluate the population of oryctes rhinoceros in this study. since myd and mrd are originally taken as principle source of female for matag and tagnanan, the main source of male tend to be contributing in pollination process. therefore, when mrd/myd cross with tagnanan, matag will be automatically produced so as to prove highly valuable as compared to other varieties, because of its coconut characteristics (doa, 2012). the copra (coconut) has more thickness and the size of the fruit is apparently bigger than that of “pandan” and “gading”. the physical properties of coconut palms for each and every variety are different. based on its physical appearance, the colors of palms also seem to be different. the color of coconut palms and its fruit are the main characteristics of indicators so as to show appropriate identity of the varieties. the stem and leaves of myd palms are yellowish in color, whereas mrd seems to be more likely as orange, and tagnanan are almost greenish. physically, the height (about 15 to 18 meters) of tagnanan palms (also known as malayan tall) is taller as compared to myd and mrd varieties, with average height of 6 meters and usually termed as ‘dwarf’ varieties. the main objective of this study was, as mentioned earlier, to evaluate the abundance and population dynamics of the rhinoceros beetles in both crops of oil palms and coconut palms with effective significance of different plant varieties towards the pest in both types of crops for the whole sampling period. the study also attempts to evaluate the interaction and relationship between rhinoceros beetle and both crops of oil palms and coconut palms, along with a variety of coconut palms, namely malayan yellow dwarf (myd), malayan red dwarf (mrd) and tagnanan. myd and mrd were taken as female source of matag and tagnanan was the male source of matag. 2. material and methods 2.1. trapping system the population and abundance of oryctes rhinoceros were observed and caught by using traps. pheromone trap was used in this study to catch oryctes rhinoceros to evaluate the population and abundance of oryctes rhinoceros for one year sampling period in both host plants such oil palm and coconut palm. the number of oryctes rhinoceros beetle were counted and recorded. 2.2. pheromone trap (oryctes rhinoceros) pheromone traps was used in oil palm plantation to control oryctes rhinoceros population. pheromone trap become an important component in ipm for controlling and monitoring oryctes rhinoceros in oil palm plantation. this trapping also can be used to study the ecological of oryctes rhinoceros. in this study, pheromone trap was used to collect adult male of oryctes rhinoceros. ethyl 4-methyloctanote is a pheromone aggregation which is produced for commercial used (hallet et al., 1995). chung (1997) claimed that the double vane type of pheromone trap was found to be the most effective and economical. in this study, double vanes trapping were used and placed at 3 meters above ground, and for young oil palm was 1-2 meters above the canopy. the pheromone was hung in the center of metal vanes. the metal vanes like a zinc plate were placed on top of the pails. one unit of pheromone trap was installed for every 2 hectares and replaced a new hormone set for every two months. the numbers female and male of oryctes rhinoceros were recorded in this study. the number of the oryctes rhinoceros was collected and counted from the pheromone trap that hanged at the boundaries of the oil palm experimental plot. the height of trap and distance between the pheromone trap was following the standard of procedure in ladang penyelidikan bukit bujang. felda and others plantation also used the same technique. high consideration on the elevation of traps on the top of the pole is crucial before hanging the pheromone trap. it is because the oryctes rhinoceros is significantly attracted to the pheromone trap. therefore, setting up optimum elevation of pheromone trap’s pole and the distance interval between pheromone traps which was 125 meters from one to another, maximum number of rhinoceros can be caught. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 56-67 59 2.3. background of study area the experiments in this study were carried out in the field at ladang penyelidikan bukit bujang, segamat, johor, malaysia. the oil palm and coconut palm of research plots were planted in 2013. the palms planting distance for oil palm and coconut palms were designed with 29m x 29m between palms except for variety myd and mrd was 22m x 22m between palms respectively. to study rhinoceros population on the both host palm plants, the selected experimental plots separately were chosen and consisted of two types of palms namely oil palm and coconut palm with several varieties for each type of palms as a key factor that influenced the population and abundance of oryctes rhinoceros. there were two main factors influenced rhinoceros population that was according to firstly the types of varieties of each types of palm against rhinoceros population and secondly the time of sampling period for the whole year. for the first factor, the populations of oryctes rhinoceros were observed in two varieties of oil palm and three varieties of coconut palm. the number of rhinoceros was observed by using pheromone trap and was replicated five times for each plot varieties respectively for oil palm as a host plant. the variety was dxp ppnj 1 which labeled as op1r1, op1r2, op1r3, op1r4, and op1r5 and for variety dxp ppnj 2 labeled as op2r1, op2r2, op2r3, op2r4, and op2r5. the experimental plots for the coconut palm consisted of three varieties as the second factor of host plant. for the second host plant, there were three varieties of coconut palms namely for malayan yellow dwarf (myd) palm variety with three replicates such as cp1r1, cp1r2 and cp1r3; for malayan red dwarf (mrd) palm variety with three replicates such as cp2r1, cp2r2, and cp2r3; and for tagnanan (t) palm variety with also three replicates such as cp3r1, cp3r2 and cp3r3. the number of rhinoceros was observed by using pheromone trap for each plot varieties respectively for coconut palm as host plant. each experimental plot of host plant was planted in 6 hectares for each variety and the total acreage for coconut palm was 18 hectares. the observation on the rhinoceros population was designed by placing the pheromone traps in the particular plots as common practice done by felda. the total size of land for the selected experimental plot was 20 hectares. 2.4. preparation of trapping system there was two (2) types of traps were installed which was pheromone trap and yellow sticky trap. pheromone trap and yellow sticky traps was installed at each block’s boundaries in each experimental plot according to the standard practice. for pheromone traps, the height of the traps is one feet higher than the oil palm tree. height of the trapping was 7-8 feet from the ground. pheromone trap was hung at the top of pole. every 2 months the pheromone was replaced with the new one. the pail was hung below the vane and pheromone purposely to collect the oryctes rhinoceros. yellow sticky trap was installed 1 meter apart from the pheromone trap. the yellow sticky trap was replaced for every two weeks. 2.5. parameters of study number of oryctes rhinoceros male and female was recorded. all the data were collected and monitored biweekly. the pheromones were replaced for every two months to ensure the accuracy and reliability of data. 2.6. data collection the trapped oryctes rhinoceros were taken and recorded for every two weeks after pheromone and yellow sticky trap installation. in oil palm and coconut palm field study, there were five (5) plots and each plot consisted of five and three replications for pheromone traps and yellow sticky trap respectively. each replication has one pheromone trap and one yellow sticky trap. each replication, number of the male and female of oryctes rhinoceros was counted. for pheromone trap, the numbers of oryctes rhinoceros were collected including male and female. for yellow sticky trap, the number of parasitoids was also collected and recorded. the data was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 56-67 60 collected to determine the population dynamic of oryctes rhinoceros and parasitoid. the number of oryctes rhinoceros and parasitoid was recorded and sorted in order to determine the abundance of the population and also to differentiate the population between host plants, oil palm and coconut palm. the oryctes rhinoceros were attracted to the pheromones and entered and trapped in the trap. male and female oryctes rhinoceros were trapped because pheromones used in this study was not in specific sexual. in this study, pheromone traps were placed randomly in each block. the maintenance and agronomy practices in ladang penyelidikan bukit bujang were done as planned in schedule and followed the standard of procedure. 2.7. data analysis all the data from the field were collected and recorded. using statistical software the data is being imported from ms excel. by using descriptive statistic, means of oryctes rhinoceros’s population and standard error was also measured. in host plant of oil palm and coconut palm, data population dynamic of male, female and total (male and female) of oryctes rhinoceros in op1, op2, mrd, myd and tagnanan were analyzed. in this study, two factors were analyzed. there were two factors of crops were analyzed namely oil palm and coconut palm. independent t-test was used to analyze the influence of two varieties of oil palms plots towards oryctes rhinoceros and two-ways anova were used to analyze the effect of three varieties of coconut palms plots against oryctes rhinoceros. again, independent t-test and one-way anova were used to analyze the effect of the sampling week towards population dynamic of the oryctes rhinoceros in oil palm and coconut palm respectively. 3. results 3.1. population dynamic and abundance of oryctes rhinoceros in oil palm and coconut palm 3.1.1. oil palm in this study, population dynamic of total male and female of oryctes rhinoceros in oil palm was significant difference (p < 0.05; t = 2.912; df = 198) for the whole sampling period (see table 1). the population dynamic of oryctes rhinoceros male was fluctuated over the sampling periods from week 2 till week 40 in oil palm plots. the highest number of male was observed in week 16 (16.20 ± 3.62) and the lowest number (0) in week 34. at early sampling period to the middle sampling period, the number of oryctes rhinoceros was increasing and fluctuating consistently in number ranging from 10 to 16 units but fluctuated in the middle of sampling period. however, the numbers of beetle decreasing gradually at the end of sampling period. for the female of oryctes rhinoceros in the oil palm, the population of oryctes rhinoceros was also found to be fluctuated through the sampling periods. the highest mean number of female was recorded in week 36 (13.60 ± 2.09) and the lowest number (0.60 ± 0.60) was in week 34. the population was higher at early and at the end of sampling period, interestingly the female of oryctes rhinoceros were consistently presence in the oil palm for the whole sampling periods. in week 20, means number for both oryctes rhinoceros male and female were quite similar wtih 4.40 ± 1.36 and 4.40 ± 1.75 respectively. interestingly, both male and female of oryctes rhinoceros were found similar trend with the lowest number at week 34 but different week for the male. overall, the presence of male and female were consistent in oil palm for the entire sampling period ranging from 1 to 15. in general, the mean number of oryctes rhinoceros for total (male and female) was fluctuated for the whole sampling period. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 56-67 61 table 1: comparison (t-test) on the population of oryctes rhinoceros in different plant varieties (oil palm) for the whole sampling period (weeks 2-40) no. of weeks male female total (male & female) t-value d.f p< t-value d.f p< t-value d.f p< 2 0.949 8 0.05 -0.602 8 0.05 0.308 8 0.05 4 0.724 8 0.05 0.480 8 0.05 0.772 8 0.05 6 0.841 8 0.05 1.183 8 0.05 0.921 8 0.05 8 0.828 8 0.05 1.023 8 0.05 0.903 8 0.05 10 -0.814 8 0.05 1.187 8 0.05 0.137 8 0.05 12 1.309 8 0.05 1.614 8 0.05 1.878 8 0.05 14 0.435 8 0.05 0.730 8 0.05 0.572 8 0.05 16 0.188 8 0.05 1.756 8 0.05 0.618 8 0.05 18 0.363 8 0.05 1.577 8 0.05 0.912 8 0.05 20 0.00 8 0.05 -0.470 8 0.05 -0.288 8 0.05 22 -2.105 8 0.05 -0.147 8 0.05 -1.320 8 0.05 24 -0.258 8 0.05 0.894 8 0.05 1.134 8 0.05 26 0.759 8 0.05 -0.506 8 0.05 0.197 8 0.05 28 1.140 8 0.05 -0.100 8 0.05 0.555 8 0.05 30 0.967 8 0.05 -0.209 8 0.05 0.717 8 0.05 32 1.453 8 0.05 0.773 8 0.05 1.211 8 0.05 34 1.00 8 0.05 0.00 8 0.05 1.00 8 0.05 36 0.125 8 0.05 1.209 8 0.05 0.923 8 0.05 38 0.224 8 0.05 0.695 8 0.05 0.616 8 0.05 40 2.626 8 0.05 2.277 8 0.05 2.670 8 0.05 t-test t 2.023 df 198 p <0.05 t 2.976 df 198 p <0.05 t 2.912 df 198 p <0.05 3.1.2. coconut palm the population dynamic of oryctes rhinoceros for male was fluctuated through the week. there was significant difference (p < 0.05; df = 19,180; f = 2.421) in mean number of male oryctes rhinoceros for the whole sampling period. the highest number of male (23.33 ± 7.31) was found in week 4 and the lowest number (1.33 ± 0.67) in week 28. population oryctes rhinoceros male in week 18 until week 28 not much differ through the week. the means number of male of oryctes rhinoceros from 1.00 – 5.00 units. in week 18 (4.00 ± 1.15) till week 22 (4.67 ± 1.76), the population oryctes rhinoceros male increased gradually and started to decrease in week 24 (3.67 ± 0.67) till week 28 (1.33 ± 0.67). generally, the population dynamic of oryctes rhinoceros for female was fluctuated through the week. there was also significant difference (p < 0.05; df = 19,180; f = 5.959) in mean number of female oryctes rhinoceros for the whole sampling period. interestingly, the highest number of female (21.00 ± 6.81) was recorded in week 38 and the lowest number (2.00 ± 0.58) in week 26. for the entire sampling period, similar trend was observed on the population dynamic of oryctes rhinoceros for the total male and female was fluctuated. the number total (male and female) of oryctes rhinoceros was found significantly difference (p < 0.05; df = 19,180; f = 3.249) for the whole sampling week. the highest number of oryctes rhinoceros (36.00 ± 9.24) for total male and female was observed in week 4 and the lowest number (4.33 ± 3.84) was found in week 34. interestingly, this study found that in week 6, week 38 and week 40 population male and female greatly differ. in week 6 (male = 19.33, female = 6.67), week 38 (male = 8.00, female = 21.00) and week 40 (male = 4.33, female = 17.00). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 56-67 62 3.2. effect of the plant variety and sampling week towards oryctes rhinoceros in oil palm and coconut palm 3.2.1. oil palm in general, the infestation of oryctes rhinoceros male on oil palm did not vary very much in two experimental plots of oil palm. however, the plant varieties have an effect towards population of oryctes rhinoceros male attack to the oil palm. there was significantly difference (t = 2.023, p < 0.05) in the population of oryctes rhinoceros male in oil palm. the population oryctes rhinoceros female in oil palm plots also were studied. again, population of female oryctes rhinoceros was found to be significantly difference (t = 2.976, p < 0.05) in mean number due to oil palm varieties. plant varieties namely dxp ppnj 1 and dxp ppnj 2 oil palm were able to give effect to the population of oryctes rhinoceros female significantly. dxp ppnj 1 and dxp ppnj 2 have an effect towards the population of the male and female oryctes rhinoceros. for the total male and female population of oryctes rhinoceros, interestingly, this study found that the plant variety of oil palm dxp was found significantly affected (t = 2.912, p < 0.05) towards mean number of oryctes rhinoceros male and female. it was probably due to the differences of plant varieties could have different chemical compounds and properties and different morphology attracting the oryctes rhinoceros. data plant varieties in oil palm (dxp ppnj 1 and dxp ppnj 2) and number of oryctes rhinoceros male, female and total (male and female) between sampling weeks from week 2 till week 40 was recorded and analyzed. interestingly, this studies was found that there was no effect of the sampling week towards population of oryctes rhinoceros male (p > 0.05), female (p > 0.05) and total (male and female) (p > 0.05) in oil palm in week 2 till week 38. meanwhile, in weeks 40, sampling weeks give an effect towards population oryctes rhinoceros male and total (male and female) (p < 0.05). the highest and the lowest mean number population of male of oryctes rhinoceros were recorded in week 16 (16.20 ± 3.62) and week 34 (0), meanwhile, sampling week for week 16 and 34 was observed no significant effect (p > 0.05) towards the population of the male of oryctes rhinoceros in oil palm. the highest and the lowest mean number of the population of female oryctes rhinoceros was in week 36 (13.60 ± 2.09) and week 34 (0.60 ± 0.60) in oil palm and subsequently there was no significant effect (p > 0.05) of the sampling week towards the population of the female oryctes rhinoceros in week 36 and 34. there was significantly difference (p < 0.05) in population of male, female and total (male and female) of oryctes rhinoceros in oil palm. meanwhile, this study found that sampling weeks did not give significant effects (p > 0.05) but plant variety gave effect towards the population of oryctes rhinoceros in oil palm. 3.2.2. coconut palm in this study, the number of oryctes rhinoceros male, female and total (male and female) in each plot of coconut palm with different plant variety was studied. the population of oryctes rhinoceros male was recorded significantly difference (f = 6.888; df= 2,180; p<0.05) in among plant varieties of coconut palm. the abundances of male oryctes rhinoceros were affected significantly by varieties of coconut palm. generally, the plant varieties in coconut palm gave an effect towards the population of oryctes rhinoceros male. this study revealed that the plant variety could give significant effect to the population of the oryctes rhinoceros male in coconut palm. the population of oryctes rhinoceros was found higher significantly (p<0.05) in myd variety as compared to mrd and tagnanan. however, mrd and tagnanan had no significant difference (p>0.05) in the population of oryctes rhinoceros male in coconut palm. from the data collected and recorded in field, the total number asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 56-67 63 oryctes rhinoceros captured in the experimental plot myd was 263 beetles compared to mrd and tagnanan with 137 and 106 beetles respectively. during the observation in the field, myd variety was severely attacked by oryctes rhinoceros compared to mrd and tagnanan. probably, the population of oryctes rhinoceros could influence by physical appearances particularly the color of the plants. for the myd palm, stem and fruits was yellow in color, mrd was orange in color and tagnanan was greenish in color. this color may attract the oryctes rhinoceros which parallel with the study done by mohammed and hassan (2004) indicated that beetle highly preferred with the yellow color. result showed the effect of the plant variety towards oryctes rhinoceros female in coconut palm. the population oryctes rhinoceros female was significantly different (f = 9.767; df = 2; p < 0.01) in different plant varieties of coconut palm. oryctes rhinoceros was found to be highest means in myd to tagnanan and mrd. the mean number of oryctes rhinoceros female in tagnanan (mean = 1.80) and mrd (mean = 2.20) seemed to be lower than number of female in myd (mean = 4.15). based on the observation and data collection in coconut palm field during the study, the number of oryctes rhinoceros female more found caught in the pheromone trap in plant variety myd. the number of the female in myd was 249 units followed by mrd with 132 and tagnanan with 108 units. female more attracted to plant variety myd palm compared to mrd and tagnanan probably because of the pant trait such as color physical appearance of the plant variety itself. physical color of the palm is yellow. yellow is bright colors which make the oryctes rhinoceros more attracted to the variety compared to others plant varieties. mrd is golden in color and tagnanan is greenish in color (doa, 2012). total mean number of oryctes rhinoceros (male and female) was significantly difference (p <0.05) in different plant varieties of coconut palm. the plant varieties in coconut palm plots gave effect towards total male and female population of oryctes rhinoceros (p < 0.05; df = 2,180; f = 11.273) (see table 2). table 2: two-ways analysis of variance and the population of oryctes rhinoceros in three different varieties of coconut palm for the whole sampling period (week 2 – week 40) no. of weeks male female total (male & female) f-value d.f p> f-value d.f p> f-value d.f p> 2 1.419 2 0.05 1.800 2 0.05 4.636 2 0.05 4 1.103 2 0.05 2.487 2 0.05 1.536 2 0.05 6 0.682 2 0.05 0.929 2 0.05 0.721 2 0.05 8 0.198 2 0.05 0.173 2 0.05 0.173 2 0.05 10 1.125 2 0.05 0.247 2 0.05 0.120 2 0.05 12 3.011 2 0.05 1.300 2 0.05 2.600 2 0.05 14 2.767 2 0.05 2.116 2 0.05 2.525 2 0.05 16 3.106 2 0.05 11.21 2 0.05 5.099 2 0.05 18 2.400 2 0.05 2.850 2 0.05 2.423 2 0.05 20 1.867 2 0.05 1.462 2 0.05 1.370 2 0.05 22 1.550 2 0.05 0.765 2 0.05 2.400 2 0.05 24 0.125 2 0.05 0.722 2 0.05 1.000 2 0.05 26 1.444 2 0.05 0.273 2 0.05 0.650 2 0.05 28 0.167 2 0.05 0.143 2 0.05 0.083 2 0.05 30 0.024 2 0.05 0.034 2 0.05 0.086 2 0.05 32 6.050 2 0.05 1.811 2 0.05 5.688 2 0.05 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 56-67 64 34 1.00 2 0.05 0.860 2 0.05 0.917 2 0.05 36 4.269 2 0.05 11.224 2 0.05 f=15.183 2 0.05 38 0.054 2 0.05 2.571 2 0.05 f=1.419 2 0.05 40 2.333 2 0.05 3.167 2 0.05 f=2.827 2 0.05 there was significant difference (p < 0.05) on the population (total of male and female) of oryctes rhinoceros among the plant varieties of myd, mrd and tagnanan coconut palm. the means number of the total male and female of oryctes rhinoceros in each plant varieties. the number of oryctes rhinoceros was found significant higher in myd (8.53) as compared to plant variety mrd (4.48) and tagnanan (3.57). from the result, it can be concluded that plant varieties particularly tagnanan and mrd seemed less attracted oryctes rhinoceros rather than plant variety myd. table 3 shows the population of the oryctes rhinoceros in three plant varieties namely myd, mrd and tagnanan. plant varieties gave effect towards to the total of oryctes rhinoceros male and female (p < 0.05; df = 2,180; f = 13.921) in coconut palm. from the analysis, sampling week did also give significant effect (p < 0.05; df = 19,180; f = 3.249) towards the total population of male and female of oryctes rhinoceros. both treatment and sampling week showed that there were significantly differences in mean of total number of oryctes rhinoceros male and female. meanwhile, there was no significant interaction (p > 0.05; df = 38,180; f = 0.970) between treatment (plant variety) and sampling week. the differences of mean number of oryctes rhinoceros in three selected varieties was observed with mean square (error) = 30.106. plant variety for coconut palm, myd, mrd and tagnanan had influenced the total population of male and female of oryctes rhinoceros. table 3: results of two-way anova two ways anova male female total (male & female) variety f=7.576, df = 2,180, p>0.05 f=16.369, df = 2,180, p<0.01 f=13.921, df = 2,180, p<0.01 sampling week f=2.421, df = 19,180, p<0.05 f=5.959, df = 19,180, p<0.01 f=3.249, df = 19,180, p<0.01 variety x sampling week f=0.755, df = 38,180, p>0.05 f=1.669, df = 38,180, p>0.05 f=0.970, df = 38,180, p>0.05 this phenomenon happened probably due to the different characteristic of the plant variety. myd and mrd had different in color and the outer layer of myd was reddish in color, myd was yellowish color and tagnanan was greenish in color. the color of coconut could influence and attracts the oryctes rhinoceros. the color also may have relationship with the nutrient content and secondary metabolites. the nutrient contents and secondary metabolites need to be studied to get better result for the next finding. the lowest means number of total male and female of oryctes rhinoceros among sampling week in coconut palm was recorded in week 34 (mean = 1.44). the population of oryctes rhinoceros in week 4 was found significantly difference (p < 0.05) compared to week 20,24,26,28 and 34. at week 4 (mean = 12.00) total number of oryctes rhinoceros male and female was observed to be the highest in number when compared to other weeks of sampling. total number male and female of oryctes rhinoceros in week 4 was 108 beetles compared to week 34 was only 13 beetles. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 56-67 65 oryctes rhinoceros male in coconut palm have a significant difference (p < 0.05; df = 2,180; f = 7.576) between treatment (plant variety) and sampling week (p < 0.05; df = 19,180; f = 2.421). however, the plant varieties in coconut palm and sampling week had no significant interaction with population oryctes rhinoceros male in coconut palm plots. r-squared value is 0.428. figure 4 shows the means for groups in homogeneous subset with total number of oryctes rhinoceros male between sampling week. the lowest mean number of oryctes rhinoceros was recorded in week 28 (mean = 0.44) and the highest was observed in week 4 (mean = 7.78). sampling week in week 4 (mean = 7.78) was significantly difference (p < 0.05) in mean number of between week 28 (mean = 0.44), 34 (mean = 0.56), and week 26 (mean = 0.89). population oryctes rhinoceros female in coconut palm was also studied between the sampling week and plant variety. table 3 shows plant variety (p < 0.05; df = 2,180; f = 16.369) and sampling week (p < 0.05; df = 19,180; f = 5.959) gave effect significantly to the female population in coconut palm for the whole sampling period. in the meantime, there was no significant interaction (p > 0.05; df = 38,180; f = 0.755) between plant variety and sampling week for oryctes rhinoceros female population in coconut palm. the total number of female of oryctes rhinoceros was observed for their population dynamic in coconut palm over 20 sampling weeks. the population oryctes rhinoceros female was fluctuating between the sampling weeks. the mean number of female had significant difference (p < 0.05) among the coconut palm varieties and sampling weeks. figure 5 shows the mean number female of oryctes rhinoceros between sampling week. lower number of female of oryctes rhinoceros was observed in week 26 (0.67) when compared to week 38 (mean = 7.00). 4. discussion the effect of the plant host varieties and the sampling weeks towards population dynamics of oryctes rhinoceros in oil palm and coconut palm were observed. population of oryctes rhinoceros were fluctuated for the whole sampling period due to some reasons. this could probably due to climatic factors, plant characteristics, compound in plant nutrients and others factors (fathul et al., 2018). in general, oryctes rhinoceros male and female were found different in mean number between both varieties of oil palm and also affected by sampling date. interestingly, this study found that plant variety in oil palm dxp gave an effect towards the population male, female and total (male and female) of oryctes rhinoceros. it is probably due to different plant varieties have different chemical compounds inside the palm and different morphology that will attract the oryctes rhinoceros differently. norman (2001), found that oryctes rhinoceros more found in the decomposed trunk heaps. beetle also more attract to the volatile compounds produced by the decaying biomasses. therefore, oil palm plant varieties could influence the population of the oryctes rhinoceros because probably they are attracted to the v zolatile c ompounds that presence in the oil palm itself. morin et al. (1996) claimed that pheromone produced in male oryctes rhinoceros to attract females with maturing eggs. 81% female oryctes rhinoceros were attracted to the pheromone trap in indonesia. norman et al. (2007) were recorded that the average pheromone trap manages to catch female oryctes rhinoceros is 60%. 92% female oryctes rhinoceros were gravid with 16 eggs and looking for breeding sites. from another finding about different planting material, ahmad (2006), claimed that planting material from tissue culture palms are higher mean percentage damaged caused by oryctes rhinoceros compared to planting material dxp palms. in this study, oil palm dxp material was tested as a plant host variety in oil palm experimental plot. however, previous study mentioned that when palms more than three years old in all planting material, the incidences of oryctes rhinoceros damage can be reduced. ahmad (2006) reported that topographies such as roadside, border mature asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 56-67 66 palms, hillside, hilltop and swamps and valley did not contribute and related to the level of damage by oryctes rhinoceros. in coconut palm test plot, oryctes rhinoceros male (p <0.05), female (p<0.01) and total (male and female) had great significant difference between myd, mrd and tagnanan. post hoc test was conducted and found that male, female and total (male and female) oryctes rhinoceros in mrd was greatly influenced the oryctes rhinoceros population compared to myd and tagnanan. this is probably due to the physical appearances plant varieties of myd is in yellow color, mrd in reddish or golden color and tagnanan in greenish color and some in golden color. oryctes rhinoceros more attracted to myd which is yellow physical appearance compared to mrd and tagnanan. yellow sticky trap color attracted more insect pest compared to pink, green, and orange color (mohammed and hassan, 2004). additionally, the composition of the chemical properties and nutrient elements probably differed among varieties. in china, they found that corn in different varieties have different chemical composition (zhang et al., 2016). chemical composition in the plant may attract the population of the oryctes rhinoceros due to the availability of the energy in the plant varieties. bamikole and ikhatua (2009) found that oil palm varieties dura, oleifera and tenera have different nutritive value and gave significant effect of the material palm press fibre, palm clyx and palm oil sludge in making of ruminant stock product. the nutritive ranking based on variety is tenera, dura and oleifera. cellulose, lignin and hemicelluloses that are containing in the plant cell are also different in each plant varieties. the secondary metabolites and chemical defence in plant was also differed among varieties. therefore, oryctes rhinoceros was proven attacked on plant myd variety compared to mrd and tagnanan in this study. this is probably due to preference of the beetle which more attracted to yellow color of plants and fruits of coconut. further study should be carried out for the population of the plant variety. main caused oryctes rhinoceros attract to the variety. oryctes rhinoceros male were caught and trapped in the pheromone trap compared to female. this finding was contradicted with (jayanth et al., 2009). jayanth et al. (2009) was found that beetle trapped in coconut palm plantation in india is 68% females. 54% oryctes rhinoceros were virgin and 34% gravid. meanwhile, the excessive supplied of nutrient will attract insect pest to the plants (fathul et al., 2018). nutrients play their roles in aiding through growths and insect’s fecundity. the lack of the findings particularly oryctes rhinoceros in plant varieties for coconut palm, therefore this research was conducted to study the effect of the plant varieties myd, mrd and tagnanan in coconut palm towards oryctes rhinoceros. 5. conclusion and recommendations while considering the varieties of oil palms, dxp ppnj 1 and dxp ppnj 2 gives an effective stance towards the population of the oryctes rhinoceros male, female and total (male and female) aspects. in coconut palm fields, the population of male, female and total (male and female) of oryctes rhinoceros also had great significant differences in different plant varieties, such as myd, mrd and tagnanan. moreover, oryctes rhinoceros was found in more abundance to attack specifically on the plant variety, myd as compared to mrd and tagnanan. this could most probably be due to different chemical compounds found inside the palm having different plant varieties and different morphology that attracts the oryctes rhinoceros in a different manner. further studies should be carried out in terms of chemical compounds’ componnent in both ‘palmae’ varieties, so as to determine the main reason(s) why oryctes rhinoceros is apparently more attracted to this variety. our study could be made an obvious inference showing that myd is more susceptible to oryctes rhinoceros, when it is compared with other varieties, such as mrd and tagnanan. therefore, varities like mrd and tagnanan or matag (which is cross variety) could be recommended to farmers. instead of having higher yield the farmers face less chances of attacks by major pests, particularly oryctes rhinoceros, within the same time period. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 56-67 67 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: we were grateful to the head of ppnj station in the segamat, johor for providing the experimental sites and other facilities used in this experiment. thanks to anonymous referees. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdullah, r.. (2011). world palm oil supply , demand , price and prospects: focus on malaysian and indonesian palm oil industries. oil palm industry economic journal, 11(2), 13–25. ahmad, a. h. (2006). final report on control of rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) (scarabaeidae: coleoptera) in zero burning replanted oil palm area. felda plantation, lepar utara, pahang (2003-2006), pp. 1-71. bamikole, m. a., & ikhatua, u. j. (2009). variety diversity effect on the chemical composition and dry matter degradation characteristic of residue and by-product of oil palm fruits. animal science journal, 80(3), 239-249. doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-0929.2009.00630.x. chung, g. f. (1997). the bioefficacy of the aggregation pheromone in mass trapping of oryctes rhinoceros (l) in malysia. the planter, 73(852), 119-127. doa-department of agriculture malaysia (2012). the direction and prospects of the coconut industry in shaping the country's economy. (ahmad, z, personal communication). fathul, n. a. k., mohd rasdi, z., & nur, f. h. h. (2018). interaction between oryctes rhinoceros and leaves nutrient content in oil palm. journal of advances in agriculture, 8(1), 1408-1414. hallet, r. h., perez, a. l., gries, g., gries, r., pierce, h. d., yue, j., oehlschlager, a. c., gonzález, l. m., & borden, j. h. (1995). aggregation pheromone of coconut rhinoceros beetle, oryctes rhinoceros (l.)(coleoptera: scarabaeidae). journal of chemical ecology, 21(10), 1549-1570. jayanth, k. p., mathew, m. t., narabenchi, g. b., & bahnu, k. r. m. (2009). reproductive status oryctes rhinoceros females captured in aggregation pheromone trps. indian coconut journal, 52, 17-20. manjeri, g., muhamad, r., & tan, s. g. (2014). oryctes rhinoceros beetles, an oil palm pest in malaysia. annual research & review in biology, 4(22), 3429-3439. mohammed, a. a., & hassan, a. a. (2004). trapping efficiency of various colored traps for insects in cucumber crop under greenhouse conditions in riyadh, saudi arabia. natural resources and environmental research institute. pakistan journal of biological science, 7(7), 12131216. doi.org/10.17660/actahortic.2006.710.53. morin, j. p., rochat, d., malosse, c., lettere, m., desmier de chenon, r., wibwo, h., & descoins, c. (1996). ethyl 4-methyloctanoate, major component of oryctes rhinoceros (l.) (coleoptera, dynastidae). comptes rendus de l'academie des sciences. serie iii, sciences de la vie, 319(7), 595-602. norman, k., mohd basri, w., ramle, m., & siti ramlah, a. a. (2007). the effect of mortality and influence of pheromone trapping on the infestation of oryctes rhinoceros in an oil palm plantation. journal of asia-pacific entomology, 10(3), 239-250. norman, k. (2001). environmental studies and infestation of rhinoceros beetles. oryctes rhinoceros (linn.) (coleoptera: scarabaiedae) in the plantation ecosystem of palm oil. ph.d. dissertation. faculty of science and technology, national university of malaysia. bangi, malaysia. 270 pp. zhang, l., li, y. k., li, z. c., li., q. f., lyu, m. b., li, d. f., & lai, c. h. (2016). the nutritive value in different varieties of corn planted in one location fed to growing pigs over three consecutive years. asian-australian journal of animal sciences, 29(12), 1768-1773. doi.org/10.5713/ajas.16.0052. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 167 influence of salinity levels on vegetative development of landrace dwarf common bean (phaseolus vulgaris l.) genotypes kamile ulukapia* köksal aydinsakirb a* akdeniz university, vocational high school of technical sciences, organic agriculture programme, turkey b batı akdeniz agricultural research institute, turkey *email address: kamileonal@akdeniz.edu.tr (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 05-feb-18 accepted: 13-mar-2018 online available: 03-apr2018 keywords: common bean, landrace genotypes, phaseolus vulgaris l., salt stress abstract in this study, plant growth parameters of 16 landrace dwarf common bean genotypes collected from western mediterranean region of turkey at different salinity levels were investigated. the salt concentrations were applied 0.5 (regular irrigation water), 2, 4 and 6 dsm-1. the study continued until the first flowering was observed in the plants. the results of analysis of the variance revealed significant variations among different salinity levels, genotypes and interaction effects of salinity levels × genotypes for morphological characters. according to statistical analysis results, there was no correlation between stem diameter and other morphological characters. it was determined that there was a statistically significant positive strong correlation between plant height and plant dry weight (r=0.703). there was a moderately statistically significant positive correlation between all other characters. the increased salinity level negatively affected the vegetative growth of the common bean genotypes. however, low doses of salt have promoted development in some genotypes (agb10, agun25, by4, by24, iyoz10). however, a slight increase in salt level caused a sudden drop in development. these genotypes are thought to be suitable for soils with low salinity. the genotypes gave different responses to salt stress and isga1 and isga10 genotypes gave the best results. besides them, prominent genotypes were detected as agun6, bkara2, agb10 and iyoz10. contribution/ originality since pre-screening allows for the separation of genotypes at the early stage of plant development, it will provide labour and financial savings for a large-scale breeding programme. authors decelerated that the manuscript has never been published before or currently submitted anywhere. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.9/1005.9.167.179 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: kamile ulukapi and köksal aydinsakir (2017). influence of salinity levels on vegetative development of landrace dwarf common bean (phaseolus vulgaris l.) genotypes. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9), 167-179. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 9(2017): 167-179 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:kamileonal@akdeniz.edu.tr http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1007/2017.7.9/1005.9.167.179 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 167-179 168 1. introduction common bean (phaseolus vulgaris l.) is an important plant for sustainable agriculture that can be grown in all continents except antarctica. being sensitive to biotic and abiotic stress conditions is one of the reasons why average the yield still does not reach the desired level. salinity is one of the most important abiotic stresses that limits agricultural production in the world. it is estimated that over 6% of all agricultural land and about 20% of the world’s irrigated land is impacted by salinity and sodicity (chemura et al., 2014). loss of yield of common bean occurs after the value of 1 dsm1 salinity. the yield for unit salinity increase is reduced by 19% (hoffman et al., 1992). in this case, 50% yield loss occurs in common beans at 4 dsm-1 soil salinity levels. it is possible to improve the soil salinity, which causes significant losses in agricultural production, by some methods. hydraulic practices, physical/mechanical management, chemical practices and biological practices are methods that can be used to control salinity. the difficulty of implementing measures that can be taken against soil salinity, the long time required to see the effect and the expense limit the use of these practices. along with these measures, the introduction of genotypes resistant to salt stress and their breeding offer more permanent and effective solutions. in this context, the abundance of saltresistant gene sources offers great opportunities for the development of salt-resistant varieties. having a large number of salt-tolerant gene sources is only possible by examining much more genotypes (epstein et al., 1980; foolad, 1996; moud and maghsoudi, 2008; fao, 2017). landrace genotypes, one of the important genetic resources, are crucial in terms of food security, breeding studies and sustainable genetic diversity. they are important sources for stress studies, which have been well adapted to the soil and climatic conditions of the region where they grow. observations on common bean-cultivated fields show that there are significant differences in plant growth, pod and grain yields of different bean genotypes under salt stress conditions. this difference in the same species seems to be related to the differences in genotypes' adaptation mechanisms to saltiness (costa et al., 2000). for this reason, the collection of landrace common bean genotypes adapted to specific regions and the determination of salt tolerance are great importance both for the prevention of genetic erosion and for the economic evaluation of these genotypes. in this study, it was aimed to determine the salinity levels of landrace common bean genotypes during early development period by examining the plant development criteria. since pre-screening allows for the separation of genotypes at the early stage of plant development, it will provide labour and financial savings for a large-scale breeding programme. 2. materials and methods in this study, plant growth parameters of 16 landrace dwarf bean genotypes collected from western mediterranean region of turkey at different salinity levels were investigated. this study was carried out batı akdeniz agricultural research institute (batem), in antalya, turkey. the geographical coordinates of the study area was located at a latitude of 36 56' n and a longitude of 30 53' e, and an altitude of 28 m. sixteen landrace dwarf bean genotypes were irrigated with tap water (ec: 0.50 dsm–1 and ph: 6.5) for 2 weeks and then salt application began. plants were irrigated every 2 days with 5 different saline water treatments. the saline waters were arranged by adding nacl, cacl2 and mgcl2 salts into tap water. irrigation water sodium adsorption ratio (sar) values were maintained less than 5 in order to eliminate the adverse effect of sar. salinity levels having different concentrations of 2, 4, and 6 dsm-1, as measured by electrical conductivity, were prepared using salt source of nacl, mgcl2 and cacl2. tap water is used for control treatment. quality parameters of irrigation water used in the study were given in table 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 167-179 169 the study continued until the first flowering was observed in the plants. in the plants harvested after the first flowering; plant height (cm), root length (cm), plant fresh and dry weight (g), leaf width and length (cm) and stem diameter (cm). statistical analyses of obtained data were held in accordance with variance analysis (anova), least significant difference and correlation analysis. sas-9.1 computer programs were used in analysis. table 1: quality parameters of irrigation water ec ds m-1 ph anions (me l-1) cations (me l-1) sar na k ca mg co3 hco3 cl so4 0.5 6.5 0.60 0.05 3.33 1.40 4.01 1.26 0.10 0.39 2.0 7.6 8.00 0.07 8.64 7.52 3.66 14.50 6.07 2.82 4.0 7.5 15.70 0.08 15.15 15.52 4.51 23.00 18.94 4.00 6.0 7.6 26.82 0.09 33.84 28.00 5.02 51.45 32.28 4.82 3. results and discussion in order to determine the salt tolerance levels of the landrace dwarf common bean genotypes, 4 different salinity levels were applied and primarily the changes that occurred in the plants' growth as a result of these applications were evaluated. the effects of different salinity levels plant dry weight of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes are presented in table 2. statistical analysis of the data indicated that salinity levels and genotypes had a significant (p≤0.05) effect on plant dry weight. table 2: effects of salinity levels on plant dry weight (g) of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes genotypes salinity levels (ds m-1) genotypes average 0.5 2.0 4.0 6.0 ady4 % difference 7.94 ef 0.0 6.59 hj -17 4.65 tu -41,4 1.67 d -79 5.21 fgh agb1 % difference 12.29 a 0.0 8.61 d -30 7.49 fg -39 2.97 bc -75,8 7.84 b agb5 % difference 6.22 in 0.0 7.51 fg -20,6 5.75 mq -7,7 5.28 ps -15,1 6.19 de agb10 % difference 5.48 os 0.0 5.25 qt -4,1 5.11 rt -6,8 3.09 zab -43,6 4.73 j agun6 % difference 6.45 il 0.0 17.39 fg 14,6 5.97 jo -7,4 5.55 or -13,9 6.34 d agun19 % difference 5.83 lq 0.0 6.66 hi 14,4 4.36 uw -25,2 3.05 ac -47,7 4.97 hıj agun25 % difference 6.64 hi 0.0 6.76 hi 1,8 4.63 tv -30,3 2.42 c -63,5 5.12 ghı bkara1a % difference 6.36 im 0.0 9.59 b 50,7 4.01 vx -37 1.53 d -76 5.37 fg bkara2 % difference 4.46 uv 0.0 4.38 uw -1,7 4.40 uw -1,3 3.69 xz -17,1 4.23 k by4 % difference 6.46 ik 0.0 6.50 hk 0,7 5.20 nr -13 3.19 yb -50,6 5.44 f by24 % difference 5.29 ps 0.0 7.59 fg 43,4 3.63 xa -31,5 3.07 ab -42,1 4.90 ıj isga1 % difference 9.51 bc 0.0 11.81 a 24,2 8.89 cd -6,5 6.74 hi -29,1 9.23 a isga7 8.55 de 3.71 xz 2.77 bc 1.17 d 4.05 k asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 167-179 170 % difference 0.0 -56,6 -67,7 -86,4 isga10 % difference 6.31 im 0.0 7.11 gh 12,8 5.35 os -15,2 4.85 su -23 5.91 e iyoz10 % difference 5.25 qt 0.0 7.96 ef 51,6 3.78 wy -28,1 3.37 yb -35,8 5.09 ghı iyoz14 % difference 8.55 de 0.0 9.87 b 15,4 5.87 kp -31,2 4.90 su -42,7 7.30 c salinity average 6.97 b 7.33 a 5.14 c 3.53 d lsd%5genotype: 0.1559 lsd%5genotypexsalinity: 0.6234 lsd%5salinity: 0.3117 genotype (g): * salt concentration (s): * gxs: * means with different letters in the same lines are significantly different at p≤ 0.05 by lsd test *statistically significant at 5% level landrace common bean genotypes were found to give different responses to applied salinity levels. plant dry weight of some genotypes were not affected by 2 dsm-1 salinity level, furthermore this level of salt has increased plant dry weights of them. the lowest decrease in plant dry weight was observed in the genotypes of bkara2 (1.7%) and agb10 (4.1%) and the highest decrease was in isga7 (56.6%) genotype in 2 dsm-1 application. at the same salinity level, the highest dry weight increment was detected in iyoz10 (51.6%), bkara1a (50.7%) and by24 (43.4%) genotypes. when the salt level was increased to 4 dsm-1, the dry weight of all genotypes decreased. the most affected genotypes were ady4 (41.4%) and isga7 (67.7%) while the least affected genotypes were bkara2 (1.3%), isga1 (6.5%), agb10 (6.8%), agun6 (7.4%) and agb5 (7.7%) respectively. the rate of influence of dry weights at 6 dsm-1 salinity level increased as expected and this ratio reached to 86.4% in isga7 genotype. agun6 (13.9%), agb5 (15.1%) and bkara2 (17.1%) genotypes were least affected genotypes. common bean is a salt sensitive species and the dry weight values (both plant and root) of the landrace common beans genotypes varied according to the genetic structure of them. when the genotypes showing dry weight increase at 2 dsm-1 salinity were examined among themselves, it was determined that, unlike the findings of bayuelo-jim'enez et al. (2012), the tolerance of low dose salinity levels was not compatible with the high dose applications. bayuelo-jim'enez et al. (2012) reported that the best growing genotypes in control practice also gave the best results in salt applications. in this study, dry weights of agun6 and bkara2 genotypes were gradually decreased and it was determined that these genotypes were least affected genotypes in terms of plant dry weight. taïbi et al. (2016) reported that the two bean genotypes they worked with were severely reduced in root and shoot dry weights at high salinity levels. however, they found that the lowyielding variety was more affected by salt stress. bayuelo-jim'enez et al. (2012) reported that the final biomass production was reduced by 47 to 72% for salt-sensitive genotypes and by 58 to 61% for salt-tolerant genotype. the effects of different salinity levels on plant fresh weight of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes are given in table 3. it was determined that genotypes, salinity levels, and interaction of genotypes-salinity levels are significant at 0.5 % confidence level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 167-179 171 table 3: effects of salinity levels on plant fresh weight (g) of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes genotypes salinity levels (ds m-1) genotypes average 0.5 2.0 4.0 6.0 ady4 % difference 83.00 e 0.0 59.68 il -28 49.00 pr -41 46.33 qs -44 59.50 c agb1 % difference 76.00 f 0.0 53.00 mp -30 45.00 rs -41 15.00 z -80 47.25 f agb5 % difference 49.67 or 0.0 49.67 or 0.00 36.33 t -27 29.00 vx -42 41.17 h agb10 % difference 36.33 t 0.0 42.33 s 17 34.67 tu -5 27.00 wx -26 35.08 ı agun6 % difference 87.67 ce 0.0 56.33 km -36 53.00 mp -40 26.33 wx -70 55.83 d agun19 % difference 69.00 gh 0.0 62.33 ij -10 61.00 ik -12 33.33 tv -52 56.42 d agun25 % difference 35.33 t 0.0 35.33 t 0.00 21.33 y -40 14.67 z -58 26.68 k bkara1a % difference 83.68 de 0.0 72.67 gf -13 34.00 tu -59 14.33 z -83 51.17 e bkara2 % difference 33.33 tv 0.0 32.33 tv -3 30.33 uw -9 27.00 wx -19 30.75 j by4 % difference 51.33 np 0.0 35.67 t -31 32.33 tv -37 26.33 wx -49 36.42 ı by24 % difference 64.33 hi 0.0 53.33 mp -17 32.67 tv -49 29.00 vx -55 44.83 g isga1 % difference 76.00 f 0.0 112.00 a 47 71.00 g -7 54.00 mo -29 78.25 a isga7 % difference 102.68 b 0.0 55.00 ln -46 33.00 tv -68 26.00 wy -75 54.17 d isga10 % difference 57.67 jm 0.0 59.00 jl 2 45.33 rs -21 35.67 t -38 49.48 ef iyoz10 % difference 92.00 c 0.0 88.33 cd -4 42.33 s -54 27.00 wx -71 62.42 b iyoz14 % difference 73.00 fg 0.0 51.00 mp -30 43.00 s -41 24.67 xy -66 47.92 f salinity average 66.94 a 57.38 b 41.52 c 28.48 d lsd%5genotype: 2.4008 lsd%5genotypex salinity: 4.8016 lsd%5salinity: 1.2004 genotype (g): * salt concentration (s): * gxs: * means with different letters in the same lines are significantly different at p≤ 0.05 by lsd test *statistically significant at 5% level the change in plant fresh weights was observed after a concentration of salt of 4 dsm-1, similar to that of the plant dry weight. at 2 dsm-1 salt level, it was determined that there were genotypes that showed no change (agb5, agun25) or elevation (isga1, isga10) in plant fresh weight (table 3). the highest weight loss occurred in isga7 (68%), iyoz10 (54%) and by24 (49%) genotypes at 4 dsm-1 salt level. it was determined that bkara1a (83%), agb1 (80%), isga7 (75%), iyoz10 (71%) and agun6 (70%) were the most affected genotypes in 6 dsm-1 salinity level. at the end of the experiment, the genotypes that occur at least a decrease in the plant fresh weight; bkara2 (19%), agb10 (26%) and isga1 (29%). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 167-179 172 the analysis of variance results for plant height and root length of genotypes were presented in table 4 and 5. data showed differing responses of the genotypes to increasing salinity levels and it was also showed that the genotypes responded differently to increasing salinity levels than control. table 4: effects of salinity levels on plant height (cm) of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes genotypes saliniy levels (ds m-1) genotypes average 0.5 2.0 4.0 6.0 ady4 % difference 176.00 e 0.0 190.00 c 8 156.67 fg -11 115.66 rt -34 159.58 a agb1 % difference 103.33 wy 0.0 107.00 uw 4 84.33 de -18 77.68 fg -25 93.08 h agb5 % difference 183.00 d 0.0 211.67 a 16 110.667 tv -40 105.00 vx -43 152.58 b agb10 % difference 141.00 ij 0.0 154.00 gh 9 123.00 oq -13 87.00 cde -38 126.25 e agun6 % difference 158.00 fg 0.0 154.67 fh -2 142.66 i -10 102.33 wy -35 139.42 c agun19 % difference 200.67 b 0.0 160.00 f -20 153.33 gh -24 91.00 ac -55 151.25 b agun25 % difference 97.67 yz 0.0 131.33 lm 34 47.58 l -51 33.00 m -66 77.42 ı bkara1a % difference 140.67 ik 0.0 149.33 h 6 124.0 np -12 122.00 oq -13 134 d bkara2 % difference 98.00 yz 0.0 93.68 ab -4 59.67 k -39 34.33 m -65 71.42 j by4 % difference 98.00 yz 0.0 120.66 or 23 88.00 bcd -10 62.00 jk -37 92.17 h by24 % difference 84.00 de 0.0 74.00 gh -12 71.67 ghı -15 67.67 ıj -19 74.33 ıj isga1 % difference 134.66 kl 0.0 133.67 l -1 130.00 ln -3 117.66 qs -13 129 e isga7 % difference 98.00 yz 0.0 81.33 ef -17 70.68 hı -28 35.00 m -64 71.25 j isga10 % difference 104.66 vx 0.0 119.00 pr 14 94.68 za -10 75.00 gh -28 98.33 g iyoz10 % difference 99.70 xz 0.0 112.33 tu 13 89.00 ad -11 87.68 bd -12 97.18 g iyoz14 % difference 135.67 jl 0.0 126.66 no -7 102.33 wy -25 77.00 fg -43 110.42 f salinity average 128.31 b 132.46 a 103.02 c 80.63 d lsd%5genotype: 3.1221 lsd%5genotypex salinity: 6.2442 lsd%5salinity: 1.561 genotype (g): * salt concentration (s): * gxs: * means with different letters in the same lines are significantly different at p≤ 0.05 by lsd test *statistically significant at 5% level statistical analysis of the data indicated that salinity levels and genotypes had a significant (p≤0.01) effect on plant height. as shown in table 4, the highest plant height value was obtained from 2 dsm1 level of the agb5 genotype with 211.67 cm and the lowest value was obtained from 33.00 cm from 6.0 dsm-1 level of the agun25 genotype. as in the case of plant fresh and dry weight, 2 dsmasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 167-179 173 1 administration has stimulating effect on some plants, and about 10-20% height increase has occurred. similarly, increasing the applied level to 4 dsm-1 caused plant height to decrease by inserting stress. the highest decrease in plant height at 4 dsm-1 salinity level occurred in agun25 (51%) and agb5 (40%) genotypes. at 6 dsm-1 level; agun25 (66%), bkara2 (65%), isga7 (64%) and agun19 (55%) were found to be the genotypes most exposed to decrease in plant height. table 5: effects of salinity levels on root length (cm) of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes genotypes salinity levels (ds m-1) genotypes average 0.5 2.0 4.0 6.0 ady4 % difference 155.73 d 0.0 151.43 d -3 146.10 e -6 135.03 g -13 147.08 a agb1 % difference 58.60 w 0.0 30.40 ab -48 29.66 ab -49 26.46 bc -55 36.28 k agb5 % difference 103.83 l 0.0 119.97 i 16 81.03 pq -22 31.90 za -69 84.18 f agb10 % difference 56.57 w 0.0 83.43 op 47 40.70 y -28 33.87 za -40 53.64 j agun6 % difference 153.07 d 0.0 105.87 kl -31 75.36 rt -51 65.20 v -57 99.88 e agun19 % difference 94.57 n 0.0 75.87 rs -20 71.73 su -24 70.90 tu -25 78.27 g agun25 % difference 127.17 h 0.0 145.43 ef 14 120.17 i -6 70.63 tu -44 115.85 d bkara1a % difference 145.90 e 0.0 140.60 f -4 110.47 jk -24 76.03 rs -48 118.25 d bkara2 % difference 75.07 rt 0.0 81.33 pq 8 31.30 zb -58 22.27 c -70 52.49 j by4 % difference 84.50 op 0.0 55.66 w -34 47.53 x -44 38.97 y -54 56.67 ı by24 % difference 161.07 c 0.0 155.83 d -3 114.90 j -29 101.33 lm -37 133.28 c isga1 % difference 174.03 b 0.0 102.87 lm -41 98.40 mn -43 95.07 n -45 117.59 d isga7 % difference 121.20 i 0.0 73.13 ru -40 68.90 uv -43 36.00 y -70 74.81 h isga10 % difference 122.90 hi 0.0 87.37 o -29 76.70 qr -38 55.16 w -55 85.53 f iyoz10 % difference 180.70 a 0.0 151.30 d -16 123.43 hi -32 112.47 j -38 141.98 b iyoz14 % difference 154.03 d 0.0 87.40 o -43 81.23 pq -47 77.77 qr -50 100.11 e salinity average 123.06 a 102.99 b 82.35 c 65.57 d lsd%5genotype: 2.4489 lsd%5genotypex salinity: 4.8977 lsd%5salinity: 1.2244 genotype (g): * salt concentration (s): * gxs: * means with different letters in the same lines are significantly different at p≤ 0.05 by lsd test *statistically significant at 5% level the effects of different salinity levels on the root length of the landrace dwarf common bean genotypes were given in table 5. as seen in the table, the root lengths of agb10, agb5, agun25 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 167-179 174 and bkara2 genotypes at 2 dsm-1 levels increased. however, the root lengths of all genotypes decreased after salinity level rise. in particular, a very serious decrease in the bkara2 genotype (%58) has occurred. on the other hand, it appears that the root length of the ady4 genotype declined slightly, and the genotype was the least recorded with a decrease of 13%. agun19 (25%) was the other genotype with a minimum root length reduction at 6 dsm-1 level. ady4 (6%) and agun25 (6%) genotypes came into prominence at 4 dsm-1 level. when the plant height and root length were examined together, it was observed that the root length was more affected by the stress conditions. it was noteworthy that genotypes gave the best results in terms of plant height were not affected too much decreasing root length of them. similar to the results of the study, negative effects of salt stress on many plant height have been reported such as pumpkin (yetişir and uygur, 2009), rapeseed (rameeh and gerami, 2015), faba bean (abdul, 2011), tomato (oztekin and tuzel, 2011) and canola (bybordi, 2010). the impact of different salinity levels on leaf width, leaf length and stem diameter of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes were significant at 0.5% confidence levels (table 6, 7, 8). table 6: effects of salinity levels on leaf width (cm) of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes genotypes salinity levels (ds m-1) genotypes average 0.5 2.0 4.0 6.0 ady4 % difference 87.00 fgh 0.0 99.03 ab 14 88.00 eh 1 58.67 su -33 83.18 a agb1 % difference 71.07 op 0.0 68.20 pq -4 47.83 xy -33 32.07 c -55 54.79 g agb5 % difference 95.80 ac 0.0 81.47 ik -15 77.97 km -19 54.70 uw -43 77.48 b agb10 % difference 61.63 rs 0.0 64.83 qr 5 44.93 yz -27 40.73 za -34 53.03 g agun6 % difference 61.77 rs 0.0 69.10 pq 12 57.57 sv -7 42.43 za -31 57.72 f agun19 % difference 57.57 sv 0.0 52.73 vw -8 51.80 wx -10 10.03 d -83 43.03 h agun25 % difference 79.83 il 0.0 80.90 ik 1 74.83 mo -6 53.53 vw -33 72.28 c bkara1a % difference 74.87 mo 0.0 72.10 op -4 59.53 su -20 44.30 ya -41 62.70 e bkara2 % difference 92.10 ce 0.0 70.77 op -23 39.87 ab -57 35.87 bc -61 59.65 f by4 % difference 77.00 kn 0.0 88.20 dg 15 60.77 rt -21 41.53 za -46 66.88 d by24 % difference 100.00 a 0.0 83.93 gi -17 56.20 tw -44 52.97 vw -47 73.43 c isga1 % difference 83.30 hj 0.0 78.77 jm -5 74.80 mo -10 67.70 pq -19 76.14 b isga7 % difference 67.60 pq 0.0 72.27 np 7 56.97 sv -16 53.56 vw -21 62.60 e isga10 % difference 93.00 cd 0.0 89.47 df -4 75.43 lo -19 69.20 pq -26 81.76 a iyoz10 % difference 80.53 ik 0.0 95.07 bc 18 60.97 rt -24 14.60 d -82 62.79 e iyoz14 % difference 80.27 il 0.0 78.50 jm -2 56.70 tv -29 47.43 xy -41 65.73 d asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 167-179 175 salinity average 78.99 a 77.83 a 61.51 b 44.96 c lsd%5genotype: 2.4256 lsd%5genotypex salinity: 4.8512 lsd%5salinity: 1.561 genotype (g): * salt concentration (s): * gxs: * means with different letters in the same lines are significantly different at p≤ 0.05 by lsd test *statistically significant at 5% level in table 6, the effects of different salinity levels on leaf width of common bean genotypes were given. as seen in the table, the leaf width of the genotypes is not affected much by the 2 dsm-1 salinity level. the most affected genotype at this level was the bkara2 genotype with a 23% reduction. in 4 dsm-1 salinity level, the reduction in leaf widths of the genotypes became more pronounced. in particular, the effects of salt stress were more pronounced in bkara2 (57%) and by24 (44%) genotypes. on the other hand, the ady4 genotype was not affected until the salinity level was increased to 6 dsm-1 level. the decrease in agun6, agun25 and isga1 genotypes remained at around 10% in 4 dsm-1. the genotypes that exhibited the least decrease in the leaf width; isga1 (19%), isga7 (21%) and isga10 (26%) at 6 dsm-1. the greatest reduction in leaf width occurred in agun19 genotype (83%). table 7: effects of salinity levels on leaf length (cm) of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes genotypes salt concentrations (ds m-1) genotypes average 0.5 2.0 4.0 6.0 ady4 % difference 80.67 qt 0.0 125.87 fg 56 81.53 ps 1 78.73 rt -2 91.70 ef agb1 % difference 83.53 pr 0.0 70.87 uv -15 73.83 tu -12 39.00 za -53 66.81 ı agb5 % difference 120.80 gh 0.0 135.16 ce -12 102.40 kl -15 81.23 ps -33 109.90 b agb10 % difference 108.03 jk 0.0 12.36 ef 23 92.27 no -15 79.56 rt -26 103.06 d agun6 % difference 80.50 qt 0.0 105.36 jl 31 74.43 su -8 70.60 uv -12 82.73 g agun19 % difference 92.47 no 0.0 92.16 no 0.0 75.57 su -18 42.87 z -54 75.77 h agun25 % difference 65.00 vw 0.0 70.83 uv 9 51.93 y -20 32.23 ab -50 55.00 k bkara1a % difference 121.10 gh 0.0 122.03 gh 1 100.80 lm -17 75.63 su -38 104.89 cd bkara2 % difference 78.40 rt 0.0 76.80 ru -2 59.60 wx -24 27.20 b -65 60.50 j by4 % difference 107.63 jl 0.0 94.50 mn -12 73.80 tu -31 54.87 xy -49 82.70 g by24 % difference 170.10 a 0.0 150.27 b -12 116.26 hi -32 94.53 mn -44 132.79 a isga1 % difference 149.87 b 0.0 140.50 c -6 139.60 cd -7 111.16 ij -26 135.28 a isga7 % difference 132.47 df 0.0 110.43 ij -17 94.07 mo -29 79.27 rt -40 104.06 d isga10 % difference 135.23 ce 0.0 92.10 no -32 78.57 sr -42 57.37 xy -58 90.82 f iyoz10 % difference 94.77 mn 0.0 120.30 gh 27 87.23 oq -8 76.43 ru -19 94.68 e asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 167-179 176 iyoz14 % difference 122.03 gh 0.0 116.10 hi -5 106.20 jl -13 88.37 np -28 108.18 bc salinity average 108.91 a 109.73 a 88.01 b 68.07 c lsd%5genotype: 3.6145 lsd%5genotypex salinity: 7.229 lsd%5salinity: 1.8072 genotype (g): ** salt concentration (s): ** gxs: ** means with different letters in the same lines are significantly different at p≤ 0.05 by lsd test *statistically significant at 5% level as shown in table 7, the effect of different salinity levels on leaf length was statistically significant at 5% level. depend on the increase in the salinity level of the irrigation water, a decrease in leaf length occurred. the highest leaf length was obtained from the control application of the by24 genotype and the lowest leaf length was obtained from the bkara2 genotype with 27.20 cm at 6.0 ds m-1 application. genotypes that occur the least decrease in leaf length were determined as ady4 (2%), agun6 (12%), iyoz10 (19%), agb10 (26%) and isga1 (26%). table 8: effects of salinity levels on stem diameter (cm) of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes genotypes salinity levels (ds m-1) genotypes average 0.5 2.0 4.0 6.0 ady4 % difference 4.03 no 0.0 3.17 u -21 4.33 kl 7 3.53 r -12 3.77 j agb1 % difference 5.83 b 0.0 2.63 v -55 4.63 hi -21 3.73 q -36 4.21 g agb5 % difference 4.33 kl 0.0 4.43 jk 2 3.93 op -9 3.33 st -23 4.01 h agb10 % difference 4.23 lm 0.0 4.33 kl 2 4.23 lm 0.00 4.33 kl 2 4.28 f agun6 % difference 4.23 lm 0.0 3.13 u -26 3.73 q -12 4.63 hi 9 3.93 ı agun19 % difference 4.73 h 0.0 4.93 g 4 4.70 h -1 4.03 no -15 4.60 d agun25 % difference 4.43 jk 0.0 4.43 jk 0.00 5.13 ef 16 5.43 d 23 4.86 c bkara1a % difference 4.13 mn 0.0 3.43 rs -17 3.93 op -5 3.23 tu -22 3.68 k bkara2 % difference 3.23 tu 0.0 4.03 no 25 3.23 tu 0.00 4.53 ij 40 3.76 j by4 % difference 3.83 pq 0.0 4.43 jk 16 4.53 ij 18 4.13 mn 8 4.23 fg by24 % difference 4.23 lm 0.0 4.43 jk 5 5.53 cd 31 5.63 c 33 4.96 b isga1 % difference 5.23 e 0.0 4.43 jk -15 5.83 b 11 3.83 pq -27 4.83 c isga7 % difference 6.23 a 0.0 5.03 fg -19 3.43 rs -45 3.53 r -43 4.56 d isga10 % difference 4.53 ij 0.0 4.13 mn -9 4.63 hi 2 4.23 lm -7 4.38 e iyoz10 % difference 4.73 h 0.0 5.63 c 19 5.43 d 15 4.53 ij -4 5.08 a iyoz14 4.03 no 3.93 op 3.97 o 3.97 o 3.98 hı asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 167-179 177 % difference 0.0 -2 -2 -2 salinity average 4.50 a 4.16 c 4.45 b 4.16 c lsd%5genotype: 0.0553 lsd%5genotypex salinity: 0.1106 lsd%5salinity: 0.0277 genotype (g): * salt concentration (s): * gxs: * means with different letters in the same lines are significantly different at p≤ 0.05 by lsd test *statistically significant at 5% level the stem diameter measurements obtained in salinity levels of different common bean genotypes used in the study are given in table 8. it was found that in all genotypes there was not a decrease in the stem diameters despite increased salinity levels, but in some genotypes, the stem diameters of them increased even in 6.0 ds m-1 application. it is thought that this situation is related to the genetic structure of the genotypes and that the dwarfing that occurs in the salt stress conditions in some genotypes also affects the stem diameter. at the end of the research, it was determined that the genotypes with the largest decrease in stem diameter were isga7 (43%) and agb1 (36%). table 9: correlation of plant growth characteristics of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes applied to salt stress plant dry weight plant fresh weight plant height leaf width leaf length root length stem diameter plant dry weight 1.00000 0.70322 <.0001 0.44819 <.0001 0.50589 <.0001 0.49937 <.0001 0.29880 <.0001 0.17442 0.0155 plant fresh weight 0.70322 <.0001 1.00000 <.0001 0.49280 <.0001 0.49730 <.0001 0.57807 <.0001 0.56963 <.0001 0.25651 0.0003 plant height 0.44819 <.0001 0.49280 <.0001 1.00000 0.37907 <.0001 0.42562 <.0001 0.39499 <.0001 -0.13452 0.0628 leaf width 0.50589 <.0001 0.49730 <.0001 0.37907 <.0001 1.00000 0.58453 <.0001 0.56721 <.0001 0.05250 0.4695 leaf length 0.49937 <.0001 0.57807 <.0001 0.42562 <.0001 0.58453 <.0001 1.00000 0.54629 <.0001 0.14984 0.0380 root length 0.29880 <.0001 0.56963 <.0001 0.39499 <.0001 0.56721 <.0001 0.54629 <.0001 1.00000 0.21398 <.0001 stem diameter 0.17442 0.0155 0.25651 0.0003 -0.13452 0.0628 0.05250 0.4695 0.14984 0.0380 0.21398 0.0029 1.00000 the correlation between plant growth characteristics of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes applied with salt stress was given in table 9. as seen from tables 9, there are statistically positive correlations between some of the plant morphological characteristics (p <0.05). according to statistical analysis results, there was no correlation between stem diameter and other morphological characters. it was determined that there was a statistically significant positive strong correlation between plant height and plant dry weight (r=.703). there was a moderately statistically significant positive correlation between all the other characters. however, it was determined that the characters were highest correlation value among them; between plant dry weight and leaf width (r=.506), between plant fresh weight and leaf length (r= .578), root length (r= .569); between leaf width and leaf length (r= .584), root length (r= .567); between leaf length and root length (r= .546). a statistically significant correlation between all characters except for the stem diameter is important as it indicates that salt stress adversely affects the development of the plant. all results showed that different vegetative parameters of landrace dwarf common bean genotypes were significantly affected by salinity levels. the results obtained in present study are in agreement with previous studies reporting increase on salinity level negatively affects root length, plant height, plant fresh asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(9)2017: 167-179 178 weight, plant dry weight, leaf width, leaf length and stem diameter (jan et al., 1995; dash and panda, 2001; munns, 2002; delgado and sanchez-raya, 2007; aydinsakir et al., 2013; kurum et al., 2013). as a result, positive results were obtained from agun6, bkara2, agb10, isga1, isga10 and iyoz10 genotypes. in addition, isga1 and isga10 genotypes gave the best results under the salt stress condition, and these genotypes are thought to be promising genotypes for salt stress tolerance studies. 4. conclusion this study was conducted to determine the effects of different salt levels on the vegetative growth parameters of the landrace dwarf common bean genotypes collected from the western mediterranean region of turkey. it was determined that the plant growth of the landrace genotypes was adversely affected at varying rates depending on the increased salinity levels. it is concluded that some landrace genotypes can be used for breeding studies against to salinity stress in the end of the study. funding: the study is financially supported by akdeniz university. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the study was supported by akdeniz university scientific research projects unit (project no: 2013.01.0104.001). views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdul, q. a. m. s. 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organoleptic properties of chapatties saeeda raza, saima kanwal, khalid naseem, naseem bibi and amina bibi food science & product development institute, national agriculture research center islamabad, pakistan abstract unleavened flat bread (chapatti) was prepared from wheat (tritium aestivum) and maize (zea mays) composite flour. the wheat flours from mill and grindstone were collected from local market and blended with maize flour in 100:0, 90:10, 80:20 proportions. technological and rheological studies revealed that gluten, falling number and water absorption values decreased with increased maize proportion. increased dough development time by addition of 20% maize flour for either flour types was observed. decrease in dough stability was observed by increased maize proportion in grindstone flour but in mill flour decrease with 10% maize and increase with 20% maize is noted. overall farinographic quality was highest in 20% blend of maize in grindstone flour. chapatties were prepared and subjected to organoleptic tests by a panel of trained judges and 20% blend get maximum acceptability. keywords: wheat-maize composite flour, organoleptic, chapatti, pakistan introduction 1 wheat (tritium aestivum) has been the most important cereal crop of world in terms of both areas cultivated and grain yield. wheat flour is a staple food of pakistani people and an average intake is 318 g per person per day. more than 50% of the total energy intake is derived from wheat flour (omni, 1996). wheat is principally used for the production of unleavened flat bread locally known as chapatti in pakistan (khan and ullah, 1984). in pakistan, wheat is used for the preparation of several products such as chapatties, paratha (fried unleavened bread), nan (oven unleavened bread), bread, buns, biscuits, cakes, pastries, patties, pan cakes and many others (pyler, 1988). chapatti is corresponding author’s name: saima kanwal email address: saima.kanwal80@gmail.com unleavened flat bread baked on conventional hot plate tawa or in conventional ovens tandoor (kent, 1984). chapatties are least expensive and utilize almost 90% of the total wheat produced in this region (siddique, 1989) during the last three years. in spite of good crop, pakistan had to resort to wheat import for avoiding food shortages. about 3-10% of the domestic requirements (on an average 2 million tons) are meeting through imports. in order to lessen he load on wheat as staple food, and to fill in the annual short fall it is possible to substitute wheat with different cereals and pulses for making chapatti. maize ranks as the second most widely produced cereal crop worldwide. because of the high productivity, corn is by far the most economical cereal to produce. by substituting part of the wheat flour with maize flour the lowering of the costs can be achieved (păucean & simona, 2013). flours asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:saima.kanwal80@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 292-296 293 from amaranth grain (ayo, 2001) plantain (bamidele et al., 2006), rice/corn/soybean (sabanis & tzia, 2009) and cassava (shittu et al., 2007) were respectively composited with that of wheat in the production of bread so as to determine he technical feasibility as well as to find a means to reduce the importation of wheat grains from the developed countries with associated benefit of minimizing wastage of scarce foreign exchange (bolade, 2012). the present work was plane with the objective to develop wheat-maize composite flour of different proportions ranging from 10-20% substitution of mill and grindstone wheat flour with maize flour and determined how composite flour perform in chapatti making methods. materials and methods commercial wheat (grindstone and mill) and maize flour were procured from local market of islamabad during 2013. composite flours were then prepared using different wheat/maize ratios. (100:0, 90:10, 80:20) composite flour samples were stored in polypropylene bags. chemical, farinographic analysis of composite flours and organoleptic evaluation of prepared chapatties were done. technological and farinographic studies the prepared composite flours were subjected to wet/dry gluten and falling number analysis according to standard procedure of (aacc 2000). perten glutomatic was used to determine wet/dry gluten and falling number system (perten 1500) was used to determine alpha amylase activity in composite flours. rheological behaviors of wheat/maize composite flour samples were evaluated by brabender farinigraph equipped with a bowl of 50 g capacity. the dough characteristics such as water absorption, dough development time, dough stability, tolerance index and softening of dough were determined according to standard procedure of aacc (2000). dough preparation and molding for chapatti the test baking chapatti method was derived from those described by (austin and ram, 1971; haridas et al., 1986). dough weighing 65g was made into a ball. after 5 minutes rest the ball was flattened into a 7 inches round disc using wooden rolling pin and with moderate dusting. the dough disc was baked on hot iron plate (tawa) placed on gas burner. organoleptic evaluation baked chapatties when fresh were served to a panel of 10 judges for organoleptic evaluation. the emphasis was centered on color, taste, flavor, texture, chewability. samples were presented in succession and panelists were asked to rate evaluation variables according to 9 point hedonic scale described by (larmond, 1997). statistical analysis the data was analyzed statistically by complete randomized design (crd) are described in statistical procedure for agriculture research by gomez and gomez (1984). results and discussion gluten and falling number following flour quality requirements should be kept in mind for making chapatti. moisture 10-12%, wet gluten>25% water absorption 65-70% and sufficient water retention capacity even after dehydration by cooking to give it a soft and pliable texture (shurpalekar & prabhavathi, 1976; ebeler & walker, 1983; rao et al., 1986). gluten contents are the important factors affecting quality of chapatti. it must be more than 25% for a good chapatti. as shown in table 1 the addition of maize flour to wheat flour resulted in a significant reduction in gluten values. the gluten contents decreased significantly as the percentage of maize flour substitution increased, this might be attributed to the fact that the maize flour is essentially considered as gluten free grain (hopman et al., 2008). wheat flour blended asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(4)2014: 292-296 294 with maize on substitution level of 20% had the lowest wet and dry gluten contents (14.0% & 4.0% for grindstone flour and 16.5% & 5.0% for mill flour). the dry gluten content is a direct indicator of flour strength and chapatti making potentialities. the quantity and quality of gluten is responsible for desirable characteristic of product (anjum & walker, 2000; belderok, 2000). in case of chapatti the α-amylase (table 2) must have acted on the starch during the short period of mixing and resting (5 min and 30 min respectively at 25 o c) and during the baking stage. generally, a falling number value of 350 seconds or longer indicates low enzyme activity and very sound wheat and values below 200 seconds indicate high levels of enzyme activity evident (buriro et al., 2012). as the enzyme activity increases, the falling number decreases. falling number values below 200 measures the liquefaction of gelatinized starch by the alpha amylase. these results are similar with that reported by shad et al. (2013) who found that there is overall decrease in falling number in different wheat/maize proportions. table 1: technological properties of different composite flour * values with common alphabets are statistically insignificant at 0.05 farinigraphic properties farinographic studied were conducted to determine the rheological properties of wheat/maize composite flour. higher water absorption is required food good chapatti characteristics which remain soft for a longer time (simon, 1987). there is overall decrease in water absorption of substituted grindstone flours and increase in substituted mill flours. addition of 20% maize flour increased dough development time of either flour type but significantly of grindstone flour (7.2 min). dough stability in the case of grindstone flour increased by 10 % maize substitution and decreased by 20% maize substitution but in mill flour decrease by 10 % maize substitution and increase by 20 % maize substitution. this behaviour was correlated with different grinding techniques of wheat flours. overall farinographic quality was highest in 20% blend in mill flour. table 2: farinographic properties of different composite flours flour type grindstone flour mill flour flour composition wheat : maize 100 : 0 wheat : maize 90 : 10 wheat : maize 80 : 20 wheat : maize 100 : 0 wheat : maize 90 : 10 wheat : maize 80 : 20 water absorption 64.3 a 63.5 b 62.9 c 56.6 e 57.1 d 57.2 d ddt/peak time (min) 6.5 b 5.8 c 7.2 a 3.8 f 4.5 d 4.2 e stability 2.6 d 2.7 d 2.0 e 4.4 a 3.8 c 4.5 a departure time/break time (min) 8.6 b 8.2 b 10.8 a 7.5 c 6.3 d 6.6 d mti (fu) 47 d 57 d 39 e 39 e 60 a 56 c fq no. 86 b 82 c 108 a 75 d 63 f 66 e * values with common alphabets are statistically insignificant at 0.05 flour type grindstone flour mill flour flour composition wheat : maize 100 : 0 wheat :maize 90 : 10 wheat : maize 80 : 20 wheat : maize 100 : 0 wheat : maize 90 : 10 wheat : maize 80 : 20 wheat : maize 0:100 moisture % 10.82 d 10.88 d 10.93 d 15.92 a 15.50 b 15.40 b 11.78 c wet gluten % 16.5 c 15.0 d 14.0 e 18.4 a 17.5 b 16.5 c -- dry gluten % 4.5 c 4.5c 4.0 d 5.5 a 5.0 b 5.0 b -- falling number 542.7 c 462.0 d 398.0 e 724.0 a 534.0 b 506.0 c 314.0 f 295 organoleptic evaluation chapatties prepared from different wheatmaize composite flours was subjected to sensory evaluation for color, texture, pliability, tearability, taste, flavor and their mean score were collected (table 3). chapatties from substituted mill flour were most preferred in overall rank and from substituted grindstone flour were least preferred in taste and chew ability and overall rank which may be correlated to less moisture content and gluten content in substituted grindstone flour as compared to substituted mill flour. for chapatti, the water absorption had the highest correlation with most of the sensory attributes, particularly in texture and taste, as water absorption decreased with increased maize proportion chapatties become harder. dough development time (ddt) had practically no impact, whereas dough stability (ds) was correlated well with many of the attributes, including texture and taste. a wheaty aroma and taste is desirable with a non sticky, soft chewing feel in mouth (dhaliwal et al., 1996). so 20% substituted mill flour was maximum acceptable in all flours. table 3: organoleptic properties of chapatties flour type grindstone flour (whole meal) mill flour flour composition wheat : maize 100 : 0 wheat : maize 90 : 10 wheat : maize 80 : 20 wheat : maize 100 : 0 wheat : maize 90 : 10 wheat : maize 80 : 20 color 7.60 abc 6.40 ef 5.70fg 8.30a 7.40 bcd 7.60 abc texture 6.60 bcd 6.0 de 6.40 cd 8.0a 7.00 bc 7.40 ab pliability 7.30a 7.00 ab 6.30 bc 7.90a 7.10 ab 7.40a tearability 7.30a 6.6b 7.10ab 7.10 ab 6.83 ab 7.30 ab chew ability 7.60a 7.00 ab 7.30 ab 7.30 ab 7.60 a 7.30 ab taste 5.60cd 5.10d 5.0d 7.0a 6.60 ab 6.40 ab flavor 7.40a 6.70 abc 6.30 bc 7.40a 7.40a 7.40a mean 7.06 6.40 6.30 7.39 7.13 7.26 * values with common alphabets are statistically insignificant at 0.05 conclusion as the functional properties and proximate composition of the wheat/maize composite flours were slightly different from that of 100% wheat flour, it was found that chapatties baked with 10 and 20% composite flour were significantly different from the control (100%) in most of the sensory attributes and overall acceptability. however chapatties baked with 20% composite flour had maximum acceptability. references aacc (2000). approved methods of the american association of cereal chemists. am. assoc. cereal chem. inc. st. paul, minnesota, usa. anjum, f. m., & walker, c. e. 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(1989). physico-chemical properties of composite flour for chapatti production, ph. d. thesis. deptt of food technol., univ. agric., faisalabad, pakistan. simon, s. j. (1987). more wheat with superior baking quality is needed. cereal foods world, 32, 323-326. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 223 implication of rural population in planning local community development: a need for policy reform fon dorothy engwali  mengue melongo priscille grace department of agricultural economics, faculty of agronomy and agricultural sciences, university of dschang, cameroon.  dengwali@yahoo.fr (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 18-nov-2018 accepted: 15-jan-2019 online available: 19-feb2019 keywords: local community development, planning, participation, participatory rural appraisal, rural population abstract it has been observed that the participation of rural population is not really massive in some localities during the process of planning local community development. thus, this study seeks to identify factors which can influence the participation of an individual in the materialization of the planning process at the level of the village. data was collected from 108 respondents with the help of a structured pretested questionnaire in bonalea and dibamba councils. the binary logistic regression was used to find the factors which can influence their participation in the planning process. the results show that the implication of an individual is influenced by his or her affiliation (membership) to a farmer’s organization and the knowledge that a person has about the activities of the program. this suggests the need for the government to increase the sensitization about the activities of the program and the benefit of being a member of a farmer’s organization. the origin of the family influenced their participation. a non-native of a locality does not find it important to take part in any development process in their host locality which therefore suggests the need for the government to realize a special plan for strangers in locality. contribution/ originality this study is important because it has been observed that the participation of rural population is low in some localities during the data gathering and analysis phase of planning for local community development. the involvement of the population is paramount in order to identify their real needs so as to help choose suitable development strategies and hence projects. factors influencing the participation of individuals in the planning process at the village level are identified. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.223.230 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: fon dorothy engwali and mengue melongo priscille grace (2018). implication of rural population in planning local community development: a need for policy reform. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 223-230. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 223-230 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:dengwali@yahoo.fr http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.223.230 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 223-230 224 1. introduction the economic crises in african countries in the 80s and the pressure of the bretton woods institutions push the central government to adopt a new form of government which is the decentralization (canone, 2007). in cameroon, the law n°2004/017 of the 22 july 2004 concerning decentralization gave to local councils the responsibility to ensure local development. to help the councils in their work, the central government put in place some institutions and projects like the community development program project. this project which started in 2004 and is financed by funders such as the world bank, the french development agency, and the state of germany. it was planned that the project will have three phases of four years each. their main goal is to realize the local development plans in all the councils of the country (community development program project, 2008). planning is a very important process. it can influence economic development, it can also enhance the ability of citizens to gain better access to decision making systems and to have their concerns heard, and, can work to ensure involvement of all sectors of the community (cowichan valley safer futures program, 2004). in the field, the planning process of the community development program project has several steps. at the level of the council, the diagnosis of the institutional council is done in order to analyze the institutional and the organizational situation of the council as an institution. the diagnosis of the urban area is another step in the planning process. it helps to know the characteristics of the urban area and identify the opportunities and the constraints of the urban area of the council. at the level of the villages, the participatory rural appraisal is realized in other to collect information from the rural population so that their real needs would be found in the local development plans (community development program project, 2008). it is important to note that participatory rural appraisal is one of the most important steps in the planning process because it necessitates great participation of the rural population. they must put aside their current activities for four days in other to feed the development process. at the end of the planning process, all the priority projects of the locality are identified on a participatory approach and will be implemented by the council or other sponsors in order to increase the standards of living of the local population. despite the importance of the participatory rural appraisal, the mobilization of the population is not really what it is expected to be (henry, 2008). the objective of this study is to identify the factors that can influence the participation of an individual through the participatory rural appraisal especially in non-centralized society like those of the littoral region of cameroon where the community spirit is not very developed. 2. methodology 2.1. study population, a unit of analysis and sampling technique the study population composed of all the socio-professional groups of dibamba council in the sanaga-maritime division and bonalea council in the wouri division in the littoral region of cameroon. under cameroon law-article 52 of order no. 81-02 of june 29, 1981, a girl must be 15 years old to marry and a boy must be 18 and thus only persons of at least 15 years made up the study population the multistage stratified random sampling procedure was used which involved the following: in stage one, there was a random selection of the two divisions out of a total of four divisions (moungo, nkam, sanaga-maritime and wouri) that comprise the littoral region of cameroon. the two randomly chosen divisions include moungo and sanaga-maritime. in stage two, two subdivisions were purposively selected from the previously chosen divisions. this is because during the participatory rural appraisal, the participation of the local population in these subdivisions were very low compare to others. this brought the study area to two subdivisions (bonalea and dibamba). in stage three, four villages were randomly selected from each of the two asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 223-230 225 subdivisions initially selected. this brought the total number of villages to four (04) namely: magamba and banseng in bonalea council, missolè ii and sikoum in dibamba council. in stage four, 108respondents were randomly selected from thefour villages 30 each from magamba and banseng; 20 from missolè ii and 28 from sikoum. these ratio were randomly obtained on the basis of people who were available to participate in the interviews in each locality. the unit of analysis was the individual inhabitant of the said localities in the littoral region of cameroon. 2.2. validity and reliability of survey instrument the instrument used in this study consisted of a list of questions developed following an extensive review of the literature. the questions were carefully phrased to ensure consistency of inquiry. the researchers issued the questionnaire to an odd numbered committee of experts for possible clarity, relatedness, and evaluation (for validity). the questionnaire consisted of three subheadings with a varied number of items under each subheading. the questionnaire was pre-tested with 08 randomly selected individual of the population to discern the extent to which the instrument was understandable. 2.3. data collection and analysis data were obtained only from primary source. the data were collected using a set of structured and pre-tested questionnaires, which were administered to the inhabitant from each of the councils (bonalea and dibamba). combinations of both open and close-ended questions were used. the technique of data collection was reactive. the questionnaire provided information on personal and socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, their knowledge about the community development program project and the factors which can impede their participation in the participatory rural appraisal. the data collected were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics. 2.4. method of data analysis the data were analyzed with the aid of spss version 14, using frequency and percentage. data collected from the sample population was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents were analyzed with the help of descriptive statistical tools such as frequency tables and percentages, while the factors which can influence the participation in the planning process was addressed through the use of inferential statistical tools viz., binary logistic regression model. the logit model is more convenient because the dependent variable is qualitative in nature, the explanatory variables are a mix of continuous and qualitative variables, and the sample size is low (n=108) (gujarati, 1995; terrell, 1999; wooldridge, 2009). the logit model is used to predict the probability of the occurrence of the event, that is, the natural log of the odds ratio of having made one or the other decision (participation or non-participation). by denoting p as the probability of making such decision from the predictors x1 to x11, the mathematical formulation of the logit model used in this study is expressed in equation (1) such as: y= logit (p) = log (p/1-p) = a + b1 x1 + b2x2 +…………+ b11x11 …………………… (1) where: p: is the predicted probability of the occurrence of event (participation); 1-p: is the predicted probability of non-occurrence of event (non-participation); y: participation of an individual in the participatory rural appraisal (coded as 1 = participation, 0 = non participation); x1: age of the individual (in years); x2: gender of member (coded as 1 = male, 0 = female); x3: origin of the family (coded as: 1 = non-native ; 0 = native); x4: level of education (coded as 1 = secondary and less; 0 = university ); x5: marital status (coded as 1 = married; 0 = non married); x6: external agent perception (coded as 1 = good; 0 = bad); x7: farmer organization membership (coded as 1 = yes; 0 = no); x8: implicate in a conflict with a member of the community (coded as 1= yes; 0 = no); x9: knowledge of the community development project program (1 = yes, 0 = asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 223-230 226 no); x10: experience of the governmental action(coded as 1= good; 0 = bad); x11: social position ((coded as 1 = normal citizen ; 0 = elite;). the exponentials exp(b) of the slope coefficients βk associated to the explanatory variables are interpreted as the odds ratio (or) of the occurrence of the event (participation in the participatory rural appraisal) for each increase in the predictor. a positive βk coefficient generally displays an or greater than one (or>1) whereas a negative βk coefficient usually indicates an or lower than one (or<1). usually, the expression 1/exp (b) designates the inverse or which is computed in order to facilitate the interpretation of the variables with negative coefficients (gujarati, 1995; terrell, 1999; wooldridge, 2009). 3. findings this section discusses the results based on the methodology explained in the preceding section. it begins with descriptive statistics, which was utilized to present the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents. table 1: socio-economic characteristics of the respondents bonalea dibamba frequency percentage frequency percentage gender male 37 61.67 33 68.75 female 23 38.33 15 31.25 total 60 100.00 48 100.00 age ˂ 20 0 0.00 2 4.17 21-30 6 10.00 19 39.58 31-40 9 15.00 11 22.92 41-50 14 23.34 9 18.75 51-60 11 18.33 6 12.50 61-70 10 16.67 1 2.08 71-80 8 13.33 0 0.00 ˃80 2 3.33 0 0.00 total 60 100.00 48 100.00 origin of the family natives 42 70.00 16 33.33 non natives 18 30.00 32 66.67 total 60 100.00 48 100.00 marital status single 25 41.7 25 52.08 married 24 40 21 43.75 widow 11 18.3 2 4.17 total 60 100 48 100.00 farmer organization membership none 19 31.67 17 35.42 common initiative group 29 48.33 13 27.08 njangi 1 1.67 3 6.25 association 11 18.33 15 31.25 total 60 100.00 48 100.00 participation in participatory rural appraisal yes 22 36.70 7 14.58 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 223-230 227 no 38 63.30 41 85.42 total 60 100.00 48 100.00 from table 1, it can be observed that most of the respondents in both councils (bonalea 68.75% and dibamba 61.67%) were men. these result are similar to the findings of diallo (2008) for the koumban council in guinea but different from the findings of hamenou (2009) who found out in his study of rural population participation in project of togo that women were more participative than the men. results in the table also show that mature people (ages above 50 years) were found more in bonalea (51.66%) compare with dibamba where most of the respondents were youths( less than 50 years) 85.42%. most of the respondents were in the age range of 31 – 60 which is in line with the findings of hamenou (2009). there are more natives in bonalea compare to dibamba were the great majority of the respondents were strangers. this could be attributed to the fact that the quarry and agro-industries (cameroon development corporation and the cameroon society of palm plantation are situated away from bonalea but near to dibamba where the non-natives, mostly of secondary school education level, who settled to find work. furthermore, the results show that a slight majority of the respondents in the two councils were single and few were members of a farmer organisation. taking in to consideration all these socio-economic characteristics, the participation of the population in the participatory rural appraisal were low in dibamba compare to bonalea. these findings are similar to those of lowe et al. (1999) who stipulate that youths are less likely to take part in any development activity compared with mature people. these results are also similar with the statement of blondiaux (2005) which states that natives of a community are more likely to participate in the development of their locality compare to strangers. the dependent variable participation of an individual in the participatory rural appraisal can be categorized as “yes = 1” and “no = 0”. these were the two possible outcomes for the response variable and hence binary logistic regression was used. results are presented in table 2. table 2: logistic regression analysis factors influencing the participation in the planning process independent variables b sig exp(b) 1/exp(b) age 0.024 0.152 1.024 // gender (0 : female ; 1 : male) -0.270 0.622 0.763 1.31 origin of the family (0 : native ; 1 : non-native) -0.199 0.695 0.819 1.22 level of education (0 : secondery and less, 1 : university ) -20.878 0.999 0.000 +infinite marital status (0 : non married ; 1 : married) 0.591 0.236 1.806 // external agent perception (0 : bad, 1 : good) 0.230 0.687 1.259 // farmer organization membership (0 : no, 1 : yes) 1.224** 0.045 3.400 // implicate in a conflict with a member of the community (0 : no, 1 : yes) -0.374 0.471 0.688 1.45 knowledge of the community development project program (0 : no, 1 : yes) 1.106* 0.054 3.023 // experience governmental action 0.313 0.570 1.367 // asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 223-230 228 (0 : bad , 1 : good) social position (0 : elite, 1 : normal citizen) 0.632 0.344 1.882 // constant -4.223** ***, ** and * is significant at 1%, 5 % and 10%, -2 loglikelihood = 106,635 nagelkerke r² = 0.235, percentage of correct prediction = 73.1% omnibus test of model coefficients: ²=19,029* table 2 shows the logit model results for the factors influencing the participation of an individual in the participatory rural appraisal in bonalea and dibamba councils in the littoral region of cameroon. the overall goodness-of-fit measured by the significance of the chi-square statistic in the omnibus test of model coefficients is high (² = 19,029, significant at 10% level). the percentage of the model’s correct prediction is reasonably good (73.1%). in general, the coefficients of the explanatory variables show the expected signs. the variable farmer organization membership is significant at 5% level. this implies that people who are belonging to farmer organization are more likely to participate in the participatory rural appraisal. this finding is similar to those of hounmenou (2003) who found that members of farmer’s organization are more implicated in the development of their community. otherwise, the people who have knowledge of the activities of the community development project program are more likely to participate in their activities compare to people who are not informed. this result is significant at 10% level. the results support the findings of chauveau and lavigne (1996) who found out that the more an individual has knowledge about a project the more he has the possibility to participate in the project. although the age shows an insignificant coefficient, when the age of an individual increase by one year, the probability to participate in the planning process increase by 1.024. it means that a mature person participates more in the development of their locality than a youth. this result is in line with the findings of lowe et al. (1999) who found out that the youths are not very implicated in the development of their community. gender has no significant influence on the participation of a person in the planning process regarding these results. but, men are less likely to participate in the participatory rural appraisal compare to women. these results are contrary to those obtained by lowe et al. (1999) who concluded that the women are marginalized and thus are not very implicated in the development of their community. meanwhile, the origin of the family has an insignificant coefficient, the strangers or non-native of a community have a less probability to take part in any development aspect of their host community. this finding is similar with those of blondiaux (2005). the level of education has no significant coefficient but the result shows that educated people have a low probability to take part in the planning process. this result can be explained by the fact that a weak proportion of post-graduate individual has been found during the survey and none took part in the development process. in contrast, the marital status has no significant influence in the participation of a person on the participatory appraisal. however, married people have a great probability to be implicated in any development process compare to those who are single or widow. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 223-230 229 the perception of an external agent by the individual has no significant influence on the participation of an individual in the participatory appraisal. however, people who have a good perception about external agent have a great probability to take part in this development process because it is done by an external agent. these findings are in line with (monnet and langlois, 2002) who stated that people talk easily with another person when they have enough confidence in them. despite the fact that the factor ‘implicate in a conflict’ has no significant coefficient, the binary regression logistic model shows that when an individual has a conflict with another member of his community, this person has a weak probability to take part in the planning process. these results are in line with bajeddi (2002) which states that nowadays, people are more self-centered and are not able to overcome their personal feelings for the development of the community. the experience of a governmental action has no significant influence on the dependent variable. however, a person who have a good experience with a governmental action have a great probability to take part in the planning process compare to those who have a bad experience of any governmental action. hounmenou (2003) shared the same point of view. furthermore, the social position of an individual has no significant influence on the dependent variable. however, a person who considers herself or himself as a normal citizen has a great probability to take part at the participatory rural appraisal compared to elites who are not living in their villages most of the time. these results are contrary to the findings of polère (2007) who found out that it is the elites that have the trend to take part in any development process. 4. conclusion the participatory rural appraisal is one of the most important aspects of the planning process. even though the participation of the population is not really massive in some communities like bonalea and dibamba in the littoral region of cameroon, with the help of the socio-economic characteristic of the respondents and the binary regression model, this study shows that people who take part in the participatory appraisal are people who are married mature women, native of the community, they belong to farmer organization. they are also people who are aware of the activity of the project, have a good experience with governmental action and are normal citizen. hence, the government should set a system that would involve more people in the planning process especially strangers and youths of a community. this is because in dibamba, the mobilization was very low because of those reasons. for the youths, the government with the help of the project must increase the sensitization by giving them all the benefits to take part in their development. to increase the participation of strangers, the government must impose their participation in the planning process by reserving a part in the process where they have to state their needs in their host locality. regarding the results of the logit model, the project must increase the sensitization because the variable ‘knowledge of the community development project program’ is significant. more specifically, the project must multiply the sensitization to those who do not have access to television or radio by giving them track with the local language with the information about the program. although, the variable ‘belonging to farmer organization’ is significant, the government must create awareness and sensitize the population to all the benefits of joining a farmer organization. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 223-230 230 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: both authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references bajeddi, m. (2002). decentralization and implementation of participatory rural development strategies in morocco. national center of documentation, morocco. blondiaux, l. (2005). deliberative democracy and participatory democracy: a critical reading. conference of the mcd chair, retrieved from http://www.chaire-cd.ca. canone, a. (2007). decentralization in sub-saharan africa: historical reminders and current context. retrieved from http://aitec.reseau-ipam.org. chauveau, j. p., & lavigne, d. (1996). ngos and development: from north to south (africa, latin america, asia). talence: orstom. community development program project (2008). manual of execution of the second phase. cameroon: community development program project. cowichan valley safer futures program (2004). planning for safer communities. usa: cwav diallo, a. (2008). people's participation in local development: the case of the rural commune of koumban, kankan prefecture (guinea). guinea: julius n'yerere university. gujarati, d. n. (1995). basic econometrics (third edition). mcgraw-hill: new york, usa. hamenou, k. (2009). degree of participation of local populations in the projects of "sos children's village togo": case of the strengthening program of the lome children's village. ouagadougou: international institute of water and environment. henry, a. (2008). culture and management in cameroon: the respect of the rituals, source of a friendly agreement. quebec: university of laval. hounmenou, g. (2003). new ways of coordinating actors in local development: the case of rural areas in benin. sustainable development and territories. sustainable development and fragile territories network, france. lowe, p., warsd, n., wood, d., & woodward, r. (1999). participation in rural development. center for rural economy, ireland. monnet, s., & langlois, m. (2002). rural participatory diagnoses: the example of the shepacc project in the philippines. international handicap, lyon. polère, c. (2007). "participatory democracy": state of play and initial balance sheet elements. lyon: millennium: the center of prospective resources. terrell, g. r. (1999). mathematical statistics: unified introduction. springer-verlag: new york, usa. wooldridge, j. m. (2009). introductory econometrics: a modern approach. mcgraw-hill: new york, usa. http://www.chaire-cd.ca/ http://aitec.reseau-ipam.org/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 183 spatio-temporal changes in the patterns of male and female agricultural labour in punjab: a geographical analysis sucha singh assistant professor; department of geography, university school of open learning, panjab university, chandigarh, india  suchasahota@gmail.com; suchasingh@pu.ac.in corresponding author article history: received: 16-jan-2020 accepted: 30-mar-2020 online available: 27-apr2020 keywords: agricultural labour, farm operations, farm mechanization, non-farm sector, scheduled castes population, vegetable farming abstract the present paper attempts to examine the spatio-temporal changes in the distribution patterns of male and female agricultural labour at tehsil level in punjab. this study assumes importance given the significant decline in both male and female agricultural labour in the state particularly after the implementation of the new economic policy in india in 1991. the data on agricultural labour for census years of 1991 and 2011 collected from primary census abstracts. the analysis concluded that vast areas of the state namely central plains followed by northeast sub-mountainous have recorded a decrease in the proportion of female agricultural labour which was more than their male counterparts during 1991-2011. the major reason behind the decline in female agricultural labour has been mechanization of farm operations while casualization of work in agriculture and shift of labourers from farm to better paid non-farm sectors led to the decline in male agricultural labour in the state. the most important suggestions came in the form of formulating a policy to absorb the displaced male and female labour in non-farm occupations through area-specific short term skill programs as well as implementing state’s crop diversification plan for engaging less skilled females in the cultivation of labour intensive and high income earning vegetables farming in punjab. contribution/ originality the research paper identifies areas where a steep decline in male and female agricultural labour has been recorded in punjab during the study period of 1991-2011. in the absence of census studies at tehsil level, the present research paper provides information for formulating an area-specific policy on absorbing displaced agricultural labour by adopting suggested measures at the grass-root level in the state. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.183.193 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: sucha singh (2020). spatio-temporal changes in the patterns of male and female agricultural labour in punjab: a geographical analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 183-193. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 183-193 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:suchasahota@gmail.com mailto:suchasingh@pu.ac.in http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.183.193 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 183-193 184 1. introduction agricultural systems practised around the world have different combinations of labour and capital inputs. the mechanisation of practices has greatly reduced the amount of farm labour especially in the developed countries of the world. but in the underdeveloped countries, the labour input is still very high. in these countries, the replacement of traditional agricultural practices by mechanised practices of farming has a considerable impact on employment. in india, there is also a substantial shift of the surplus rural workforce from agriculture to non-farm sectors since 1991. after july 1991, under the new economic policy (nep), the agriculture sector of india has experienced a different type of change. the reforms have opened up trade in agriculture and have given a boost to exports. the policy favoured the large farmers with the capital to buy new technology in the form of mechanization and those with the ability to switch to the production of higher-priced cash crops over food crops (sahay, 2010). the losers include the small farmers and landless labourers whose incomes declined as a result of mechanisation. employment in agriculture showed a negative trend during the post reforms period (chand et al., 2017). the percentage of people employed in agriculture has been consistently declining, from around 60% in 1999-00 to 49% in 2011-12 during nsso 68th round (ficci, 2015). in terms of casual labour in agriculture, both rural males and females registered a decline in their share from 27.7% and 35.6% in 1993-94 of nsso 50th round to 20% and 26.4% in 2011-12 of nsso 68th round in the country respectively (usami and rawal, 2018). the rural male population employed in agriculture has seen a decline of 12 percentage points from 67% to 55% while the same witnessed a spike in the manufacturing sector by 8 percentage points from 15% to 23% during 2005 to 2018 in india (gupta, 2019). the nso periodic labour force survey 2017-18 has also recorded the gradual shift of surplus rural workforce particularly youth from agriculture to the non-farm sector in the country, due to low wages and irregular employment (goi, 2019; chand, 2019). in punjab, the adoption of new agricultural technology under the name of green revolution in the mid-1960s and the new economic policy of 1990s led to the mechanized intensive cultivation of mono-cropping (mainly wheat and paddy cycle) instead of multiple cropping which has largely affected the agricultural labour in the state of punjab (billings and singh, 1970; grewal and kahlon, 1974; randhawa, 1974; johl, 1975; laxminarayan, 1982; chadha, 1986; sidhu, 1991; singh, 1995; bhalla and singh, 2001; rangi and sidhu, 2004; sidhu and singh, 2004; kaur, 2005; sidhu et al., 2005; husain, 2006; dutta, 2012; narayanamoorthy et al., 2014; prasad and kaur, 2017; nabard, 2018; rathi, 2020). the rapid capitalisation of agriculture in punjab has resulted into the displacement of labour from traditional employment in certain farming operations and transference of workforce from agriculture to the non-agriculture sectors (visaria and basant, 1994; singh, 1995; kumar, 1996; bhalla and singh, 2001; gill and ghuman, 2001; gop, 2004; ghuman, 2005; kaur, 2005; husain, 2006; singh et al., 2007; toor et al., 2007; jodhka, 2008; institute of applied manpower research, 2013; ficci, 2015; singh, 2016; rathi, 2020). presently, the agricultural sector of the punjab state has been passing through the phase of declining employment. the agricultural labour has been rising until 1991 but the share of agricultural labourers has declined significantly from 1991-2011 (table 1). table 1: percentage share of agricultural labour in punjab year 1970-71 1980-81 1990-91 2000-01 2010-11 agri. labourers 20.11 22.16 23.82 16.3 13.82 source: census of india (1970-71 to 2010-11) now, the mechanization has led to the greater employment of casual labour in the agricultural operations only during the peak periods of wheat and paddy crops (singh, 2009; singh, 2012; reddy et al., 2014; raju et al., 2015; rathi, 2020). the recent pattern of labour employment has asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 183-193 185 created a paradox of scarcity and surplus of labour in the state (kaur et al., 2018). during the sowing and harvesting periods, there is a sudden spurt of activity and consequently, the need for labour increases considerably. in recent times, the low availability of labourers is threatening the sowing and harvesting operations of agriculture in the state (dheer, 2012; singh, 2012; the business standard, 2013; chaba, 2014; narayanamoorthy et al., 2014; singh, 2015; singh and bhogal, 2016; sood, 2016; bhardwaj, 2017; gill, 2018; nabard, 2018; sharma, 2018; bajwa, 2019; bajwa, 2019). in light of the above changes in labour absorption in the agriculture sector of punjab, the present research paper has examined the spatio-temporal changes in the distribution patterns of male and female agricultural labour at tehsil level during 1991 and 2011 censuses in the state. 2. data sources and methodology an extensive literature survey has revealed that most studies on agricultural labour have been conducted from the social and economic point of view. there is hardly any research study on the change of agricultural labour at tehsil level on census data from a geographical point of view in punjab. therefore, the present research is entirely based on census data. indian census provides a wide range of population data, where decennial census is conducted on demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the population. the present study is limited to a period extending from 1991 to 2011. the study has conducted a comparative analysis of agricultural labourers based on secondary data obtained from primary census abstracts for census years of 1991 and 2011. the year 1991 was taken as a base year because after 1991, the state experienced a dramatic fall in the proportion of agricultural labourers and a shift of agricultural workforce to non-agricultural sector, due to the implementation of new economic policy in india. before 1991, punjab had been experiencing the growth of agricultural labourers. the selection of 2011 as the terminal year is purely attributed to the availability of the latest census data, which was published in april 2013. this agricultural labour data is related to main workers, which is available at village and ward levels. the main workers are those workers who had worked for six months or more in a year. punjab had 46 tehsils in 1991 and the number increased to 77 in 2011, due to a change in the administrative structure. for making data comparable at tehsil level, the tehsil boundaries of 1991 have been adjusted to 2011 census for studying the change in spatial patterns of agricultural labour in the state. the adjustment of data of 1991 to 2011 has been done by segregating the village wise data of old tehsils to the new tehsils which otherwise was not possible in using the marginal workers' data which is not available at village and ward levels. agricultural labour percentages and averages have been calculated at the tehsil level. maps have been prepared to give a clearer picture of the changes in the spatial distribution patterns of male and female agricultural labour in the state with the help of arcgis 10.0 software. 3. results and discussions this section is devoted to analysing the determinants behind changes in the distribution patterns of male and female agricultural labour in the state during the study period. the adoption of new agricultural technology consisting of biochemical and mechanical inputs led to changes in labour use pattern in punjab. among the major changes, mechanization of farm operations has led to the displacement of agricultural labour especially unskilled females (kahlon and gill, 1967; rao, 1975; chand et al., 1985; sidhu, 1991; gop, 2004; kaur, 2005; sidhu et al., 2005; husain, 2006; jodhka, 2008; narayanamoorthy et al., 2014; reddy et al., 2014; raju et al., 2015; prasad and kaur, 2017; nabard, 2018; singh and goyal, 2019). secondly, many parts of the state have registered a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 183-193 186 decline in employment and increase in the casualization of labour, due to the labour displacing techniques like weedicides and adoption of improved farm technology (shah and singh, 1970; singh, 1995; gill and ghuman, 2001; sidhu and singh, 2004; singh, 2009; singh and bhogal, 2016; kaur et al., 2016; singh and singh, 2016; rathi, 2020). the displacement of local labour especially attached labour, due to cheap migrant labour (singh, 1995; sidhu and singh, 2004; gop, 2004; singh, 2012; rathi, 2020); shift of local labour to non-farm employment (gill and ghuman, 2001; kaur, 2005; singh et al., 2007; toor et al., 2007; jodhka, 2008; institute of applied manpower research, 2013; ficci, 2015; singh, 2016; rathi, 2020); migration of local labour especially scheduled castes to gulf countries (gop, 2004; singh, 2016), conversion of small and marginal farmers to wage labourers (singh and bhogal, 2014) and decline in agricultural labour due to sub-division of landholdings (jodhka, 2014; uppal et al., 2018; rathi, 2020) are other important changes that have taken place regarding the labour use scenario in the state. however, a highly limited amount of work has been done by using a spatial approach in the abovementioned studies. thus, the changes in the distribution patterns of male and female agricultural labour are analysed spatially in detail in the following discussion. 3.1. patterns of change in male agricultural labour in punjab, 1991 and 2011 male agricultural labour as percent to main male workers has experienced a sharp decrease from 23.79% in 1991 to 13.96% in 2011. areas of decrease in male agricultural labour range from a decrease of 0.21% in sultanpur lodhi tehsil of kapurthala district to 21.86% in sbs nagar tehsil of the same district. only 2 tehsils of punjab have recorded an increase in male agricultural labour during 1991-2011. for analyzing the spatio-temporal changes in male agricultural labour (map 1), the state is divided firstly into areas of decrease and increase, which are further sub-divided based on the magnitude of change: 1. areas of high decrease (above 10 percent) 2. areas of low decrease (below 10 percent) 3. areas of increase (0.02 – 0.81 percent) 3.2. areas of high decrease (above 10 percent) areas of high decrease (above 10 percent) in the proportion of male agricultural labour are comprised of 37 tehsils of the state. most of these tehsils form a large belt extending from northwestern to south-eastern central plains and adjoining parts of the northeastern sub-mountainous punjab. increase in mechanization (narayanamoorthy et al., 2014; reddy et al., 2014; raju et al., 2015; prasad and kaur, 2017; nabard, 2018), the shift of workforce from farm to non-farm sector (institute of applied manpower research, 2013; ficci, 2015; singh, 2016; rathi, 2020) and sub-division of landholdings (jodhka, 2014; uppal et al., 2018; rathi, 2020) have led to a high decrease in agricultural labour in these parts of the state. 3.3. areas of low decrease (below 10 percent) a low decrease (below 10 percent) has occurred over 38 tehsils of the state, due mainly to seasonality and casualization of farm operations (kaur et al., 2016; singh and bhogal, 2016; singh and singh, 2016; rathi, 2020). it varies from a 0.21% in sultanpur lodhi tehsil to 9.97% in barnala tehsil of punjab. broadly, the western half of punjab recorded a lesser decline because agriculture in these parts is still the major employer. the lower levels of literacy, relatively larger size of holdings make the operations viable and higher amount of labour are employed for growing the labour-intensive crops like cotton and paddy. in sultanpur lodhi, the decrease has been negligible due to the reason that farmers are into growing vegetables especially potato, watermelon and muskmelon. the kamboj farmers in this part of the state are particularly known for vegetable farming and they are continuing with this practice. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 183-193 187 figure 1: tehsil level spatio-temporal changes in the patterns of male agricultural labour from 1991-2011 in punjab state 3.4. areas of increase (0.02 – 0.81 percent) an increase in the proportion of male agricultural labour has been witnessed in a small area, covering only two tehsils namely fazilka (0.81%) and sardulgarh (0.02%). depeasantization of small and marginal farmers due to their non-viability under modern capital intensive farming is mainly responsible for the increase in male agricultural labour in many areas of the state (singh and bhogal, 2014). 3.5. patterns of change in female agricultural labour in punjab, 1991 and 2011 the proportion of female agricultural labour as percent to main female workers was 24.36% in 1991 which decreased to 12.99% in 2011. this decrease in female agricultural labour (11.37%) is comparatively higher than the decrease in male agricultural labour (9.83%). map 2 shows the spatio-temporal changes which have taken place in the state. the decline in percentage points varies from 0.07 in raikot tehsil of ludhiana district in the centre to 56.66 in patran tehsil of patiala district in the south-east. for analyzing the spatial pattern of change of female agricultural labour since 1991, tehsils have been categorized into areas as follows: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 183-193 188 1. areas of high decrease (above 10 percent) 2. areas of low decrease (below 10 percent) 3. areas of increase (0.21 7.62 percent) 3.6. areas of high decrease (above 10 percent) a high decrease of above 10% in female agricultural labour is a feature of 37 tehsils. these cover southwestern parts of the state falling over firozpur, fazilka, muktsar, faridkot, moga, bathinda and mansa districts. a pocket of 13 tehsils of taran taran, amritsar, kapurthala, jalandhar and ludhiana districts spreading over central-western parts of central plains; and dasua tehsil of hoshiarpur district of the northeast sub-mountainous region also come under this category. the requirement of only male-specific mechanized labour in most of the agricultural practices caused the decrease of female agricultural labour in the state (prasad and kaur, 2017; nabard, 2018; singh and goyal, 2019). the wide coverage of atta dal scheme of the state government has also contributed towards the decrease of female labour in the agricultural operations. under this scheme, landless below poverty line families get free wheat and pulses on monthly basis, which indirectly stopped the female labour for working on meagre wage rates in agricultural operations and finding higher wage rate work in the non-farm sectors i.e. factories. also general shift of scheduled castes, due to migration of many male and female agricultural labourers to other occupations in gulf and south-eastern asian countries due to improvement in their economic conditions partly explains the decline in their proportion as agricultural labourers (gop, 2004; singh, 2016). 3.7. areas of low decrease (below 10 percent) a low decrease of below 10% in female agricultural labour is noted in 31 tehsils of punjab. all these tehsils are scattered over the three agro-climatic zones of punjab by covering areas adjacent to the pockets having a decrease of above 10% in female agricultural labour. displacement of female agricultural labour due to male skilled mechanized farm practices (singh and goyal, 2019), the shift of female workforce to non-farm sectors and the use of labour displacing farm technologies have led to the decline in female agricultural labour in these areas as well. 3.8. areas of increase (0.21 7.62 percent) there are 9 tehsils of the state which experienced an increase in the proportion of female agricultural labour during 1991 and 2011. these include dera baba nanak, sultanpur lodhi, payal, khamanon, fatehgarh sahib and nabha falling in central plains region; and dharkalan, nangal and rupnagar tehsils in the northeastern sub-mountainous region. cultivation of labour-intensive vegetables in flood plains areas of dera baba nanak and sultanpur lodhi tehsils whereas increased demand of female agricultural labour due to the shift of male workforce to more lucrative non-farm sectors i.e. work in factories and industries in the remaining tehsils have led to increasing in their share. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 183-193 189 figure 2: tehsil level spatio-temporal changes in the patterns of female agricultural labour from 1991-2011 in punjab state 4. conclusions and policy recommendations the present study brought out that mechanization, casualization of major farm operations, availability of non-farm employment opportunities and sub-division of landholdings have been the major reasons for the decrease in the proportion of male agricultural labour in nearly the entire state during the study period. the reduced demand of agricultural labour due to requirement of only male-specific mechanized labour in most of the agricultural practices; lesser interest to work on farms due to the wide coverage of social welfare schemes like atta dal and improving socioeconomic conditions especially of scheduled castes, due to their migration to gulf and south-east asian nations for higher incomes have caused a significant decrease in the proportion of female agricultural labour in most parts of the state. this decrease of female agricultural labour is more than the decrease of male agricultural labour which shows that changing the agrarian structure of punjab has affected mainly female agricultural labour in the state. on the other hand, there are areas in the central plains and north eastern sub-mountainous region which have seen an increase in the female agricultural labour due to female labour intensive operations of vegetable farming and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 183-193 190 increasing demand of female agricultural due to the non-availability of male agricultural labour who prefers to work in the urban and industrial sectors. in light of farm mechanization induced agricultural development, displacement of agricultural labour from many farm operations and the shift towards higher wages in the non-farm sectors, there is an urgent need of a policy to enhance their employability in non-farm occupations under medium, small and micro enterprises (msme) through short term skill programs especially in the central plains region of the state. to curb the displacement of female agricultural labour which was more than males, the women labourers must be given some kind of monetary and technical help to work in the cultivation of labour intensive and high income earning vegetable farming by implementing state’s crop diversification plan. women friendly machinery should be developed to encourage their participation in mechanized farm operations particularly in the north-eastern submountainous region of punjab. as recent literature revealed an acute shortage of agricultural labour during peak periods of farm operations, the suitable machinery must be provided especially to small and marginal farmers on custom hiring basis through cooperatives at an affordable cost in punjab. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that s/he has no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the author would like to thank prof. dhian kaur; supervisor of his thesis for guiding him throughout the current study. he also would like to acknowledge the reviewers whose valuable comments improve the quality of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused about/arising out of the use of the content. references bajwa, h. 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(1994). non-agricultural employment in india: trends and prospects. new delhi: sage publications, india. https://www.amazon.com/agricultural-labor-shortage-punjab-district/dp/3330003219 https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/the-forgotten-ones-looking-at-agricultural-labourers-230994 https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/the-forgotten-ones-looking-at-agricultural-labourers-230994 https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/features/paddy-season-begins-today-farmers-feel-labour-pangs-251807 https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/features/paddy-season-begins-today-farmers-feel-labour-pangs-251807 http://www.iariw.org/ http://www.iariw.org/copenhagen/uppal.pdf http://archive.indianstatistics.org/sserwp/sserwp1802.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 30 an analysis of competitiveness and government policies impact on development of cocoa farming in indonesia andi emelda student; agribusiness study program, post graduate program, hasanuddin university, makassar, indonesia laode asrul and palmarudi mappigau lecturer; agribusiness study program, post graduate program, hasanuddin university, makassar, indonesia abstract indonesian cocoa plantations from year to year increase, on the other hand decreased cocoa production andsome government policies have been carried out in order to increase exports and tried to occupy the first rank world cocoa exporting countries.this study aims to analyze (1) comparative and competitive advantages of cocoa farming in north luwu, (2) the impact of government policies on development of cocoa farming in north luwu.this is a descriptive analytic study. the sampling method used was purposive sampling of 40 farmers selected. data collected through interviews, observation and documentation. data were analyzed using the policy analysis matrix (pam).the results showed that the value of drc and pcr of cocoa farming is respectively 0.03 and 0.04. the impact of government policies provide incentives to develop cocoa farming in north luwu reflected npci value = 1.25; npco = 1.12, and epc = 1.09 are all positive values. keywords: comparative, competitive, government policy, cocoa farming, policy analysis matrix introduction 1 one of main commodity from planting subsector that has big potential as an export commodity is cacao. in indonesian economy, cacao has an important role. first, cacao is one adventage agricultural commodity that has better prospect in national devise receiving. second, cacao can create working field and continous income source for farmers in cacao central production. development of cacao planting area in indonesia for last five years has improved from 1.379.280 acre in 2007 became 1.677.254 acre in 2011. in other side, production is decreased from 740.055 1 corresponding author’s name: email address: andi emelda email address: imel.emelda@gmail.com ton (2007) became 712.231 ton in 2011. world cacao production for last eight years has been growing averagely 3, 2% per year. in 2011/12, world cacao production decreased to level 4, 1 million metres ton from previous period in level 4, 2 million ton (asrul, 2013). the decreasing is contributed by ivory coast and ghana which is world largest cacao producer (60% of global cacao production). in ivory coast, the decreasing is caused by weather trouble – harmattan wind and low rain rate. in indonesia, the decreasing is caused by cacao pest in almost indonesia cacao production centre area. government has launched many policies to develop export and try to be number one of world cacao export country. the policies are intensification program – pest and disease control, credit package giving for farmer, plant maintenance and post -harvest processing such as processing facility, market system and asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:imel.emelda@gmail.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 30-35 31 counseling to farmer. second, extensification program is expanding cacao planting area. third, national cacao revitalization movement is launched by department of agriculture indonesia. the program is an innovative idea and is potential to improve cacao farmer welfare especially in eastern indonesia. south sulawesi relies on agricultural commodity especially cacao. cacao has been adventage commodity in this area because it contributes largely in local economy structure and has roled as working field supplier for most farmers here. aroun 70% of cacao export is from south sulawesi make indonesia as second largest world cacao producer after ivory coast. therefore, south sulawesi is called indonesia cacao land. in 2011, total of cacao production was 173.555 ton in 270.060 acre. cacao is planted farmer and spread in various regencies in south sulawesi, one of it is north luwu. however, fact shows that many policies is not followed by cacao production and quality in world trade. farmer is hard to improve cacao quality so it made their cacao is rejected in competitive export market. from total of national cacao production, only 60% is export quality and the rest is low quality and unacceptable for export. volum of cacao export in november 2012 significantly decreased 58, 19% to 88.200 ton annually according to indonesia cacao association (ica). volum of cacao export in november 2011 reached 210.000 ton. cacao seed production is predicted to be reduced in 2013. domestic cacao production has not changed – last year export of cacao seed 139.177,11 ton and this year cacao export is reduced 100.000 ton. government policy only focused on increasing of the cacao production but does not pay attention on improving price of cacao in farmers level . consequently, many farmers change their cacao plantation to other commodities and also they did not interest to improve their cacao quality. the current cacao world trade is highly influenced by the competitiness, not only in terms of competitive adventage (price) but also comparative adventage of exportable cacao (tambunan, 2001). this paper is an attempt to analyze the competitiveness and government policy impact on developlment of cacao farming. this comprehensive analysis is helpful in identifying strength and weaknesses of the cacao competitivenesss of indonesia and assist cacao trading policy makers in redesigning their strategies. research method the research is conducted in august – november 2012 in north luwu, one of the centra production cacao areas in south sulawesi. . the collected data consists of primary and secondary data. primary data is obtained by direct interview to respondent including respondent identity, production, cost, and income (physical input structure, output volum, after harvest, input and output price), implementation of government policy in the research location. secondary data is obtained from various sources, volum data, cacao production value, exchange rate value, export and import value data, and cacao import and export tax. policy analysis matrix (pam) can be used to analyze business profit privately or socially, competitive and comparative adventage, and the impact to the commodity system on business activity, processing and marketing systematically. (sadikin, 1999; saptana, dkk, 2001; saptana, dkk, 2005; saptana, dkk, 2006). pam can answer the research objective – to analyze government policy and cacao competitive and comparative adventage. analysis of comparative adventage is conducted with domestic resource cost (drc). drc is used to measure amount of devise can be saved if a commodity is domestically produced. 𝐷𝑅𝐶 = input cost not tradable social g profit social e − input cost tradable social f reference of drc (comparative adventage) is commodity has comparative adventage if drc < 1, means that the effort worked economically in the using of domestic resource so the fulfillment of domestic demand is more profitable with asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 30-35 32 domestic production improvement. commodity does not have comparative adventage if drc > 1, means that the effort did not work well in using domestic resource so the fulfillment of domestic demand is more profitable by importing. drc coefficient can be obtained by multiplying drc value and shadow exchange rate. competitive adventage can be analyzed with domestic resource cost coefficient (pcr). pcr shows the ability of commodity system to finance domestic factor at private price. if pcr < 1 and smaller, means the commodity system is able to finance its domestic factor at private price and the ability is increasing. 𝑃𝐶𝑅 = input cost tradable private c profit private a − input cost tradable private b reference of pcr is commodity has competitive capacity if pcr < 1, means that the efficient effort worked financially in using domestic resource so the fulfillment of domestic demand is more profitable with domestic production improvement. commodity does not have competitive capacity if pcr > 1, means the effort did not work financially in using domestic resource so the fulfillment of domestic demand is more profitable by importing. from pcr coefficient can be obtained private cost ratio by multiplying pcr value with exchange value bank of indonesia. result tabel 1 show that the number of private income on cacao farming was idr.30.176.000, idr.4.581.750 sold input cost, and unsold cost is idr. 902.000 so the private profit is idr 24.692.250. estimation of social profit or competitive capacity in comparative adventage that reflected from social profit is showed on second line of pam table. social income number of cacao farming was idr 27.057.031, sold input cost was idr 3.665.400 and unsold cost was idr.727.750 so the social profit was idr 22.663.881. table 1: policy analysis matrix (pam) of dried cacao seed in north luwu (idr/ha) 2012 explanation income cost profit sold input unsold input private price 30.176.000 4.581.750 902.000 24.692.250 social price 27.057.031 3.665.400 727.750 22.663.881 divergence 3.118.969 916.350 174.250 2.028.369 source: processed primary data, 2013 on the third line pam matrix is a gap between first line and second line that showed divergence. a divergence will cause actual price differ with efficient price. divergence emerges because of the government policy or market distortion. distortive policy is government intervention that caused the market price is different with efficient price such as tax, subsidize, and market obstacle or price regulation. market failure occurs if market fails to create an efficiency of price. for examples, monopoly and imperfect unsold market. however, weakness of pam method is only putting into one factor namely price. therefore, other factor is necessary to analyze comparative and competitive adventage especially on cacao farming like infrastructure, marketing and quality. table 2 showed exchange value price used is exchange value of bi idr.9.641 us$. exchange value of social price is idr.9.545 us$. drc value obtained from cacao farming is 0, 03. cacao farming has pcr value < 1 0, 04. table 2: social profit, private profit, drc and pcr respondent of cacao in north luwu 2012 explanation producing dried cacao seed drc 0,03 social profit (idr/ha) 22.663.881 pcr 0,04 private profit (idr/ha) 24.692.250 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 30-35 33 source: processed primary data, 2013 tabel 3 indicates that npco value is 1.12 means that the price received by producers 12 percent higher than they should be accepted and npci value of 1.25 means that the market price of inputs imported 25% more expensive than the price of its economy. table 3: indicator of impact of government policy on cacao farming in north luwu 2012 policy indicator formula value output transfer (ot) i = a – e 3.118.969 input transfer (it) j = b – f 916.350 factor transfer (ft) k = c – g 174.250 net transfer (nt) l = d – h 2.028.369 nominal protection coefficient output (npco) = a / e 1,12 nominal protection coefficient input (npci) = b / f 1,25 effective protection coefficient (epc) = (a – b) / (e – f) 1,09 profit coefficient (pc) = d / h 1,09 subsidize ratio for producer (sidr) = (d – h) / e 0,07 source: processed primary data, 2013 discussion comparative adventage is analyzed from drc coefficient which can be obtained by multiplying drc value with shadow exchange rate. drc is ratio between unsold input cost with output extra value from unsold input cost at social price (without government policy). an economy activity was efficient if drc < 1 so the fulfillment of domestic demand was more profitable with domestic production improvement. drc > 1 showed that the use of domestic resource was getting bigger so the fulfillment of domestic demand is more profitable by importing. according to affif (1994) and soetriono (2006), comparative adventage is superiority of a country by specializing things that determine price lower than other countries. social profit is a gap between incomes and whole cost spent on cacao farming per acre at shadow price, price is not influenced by government policy such as subsidize and tax. analysis result stated that cacao farming in north luwu regency has comparative adventage. it means to save a unit of devise (1 us$) needs 0, 03 dollar of domestic resource, idr. 286. comparative adventage on cacao farming in north luwu was high caused by lower of local input cost used in production process. labors cost were lower than other sectors. besides labors, other factor that caused high comparative adventage was production and transportation in the location which eased farmer and trader to market dried cacao seed so the cost spent was lower. financially, competitive adventage analysis used to measure properness the result of analysis stated that cacao farming in north luwu has competitive adventage. it means to save a unit of devise (1 us$) needs 0, 04 dollar or idr.386. the lower pcr value, the higher competitive capacity of the product. from the result of the research showed that cacao farming has high competitive capacity, it is approved when pcr value is lower under 0, 5 so the dried cacao seed in north luwu can compete to be sold. other things can be showed on comparative and competitive adventage is cacao farming has higher competitive adventage than the comparative, 0, 04 and 0, 03. it means cacao farming in north luwu will make big profit for farmers individually. the impact of government policy to the cacao seed output can be seen from the output transfer value. output transfer (ot) is a gap between income which is counted by private price and income which is counted based on social price. positive ot value showed that amount of community intensive to producer in which asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 30-35 34 farmers buy and accept higher price from the price paid. if ot is negative means the decreasing of income from producer. saptana (2000) and pearson (2005) explained that classification of income group is policy for producer and consumer. farmers purchase and producer accept with higher price from price should be paid. so ot happened from consumer to producer. it means there is government policy, tax at output price. government policy caused income obtained by producer is bigger. it will give advantage for producer because production and productivity increase. by looking indicator value; nominal output protection coefficient (nopc) in ratio between income according to actual price and incone according to social price, cacao producer received output price 1, 12 which means price accepted by producer is higher 17%. it is because cacao from north luwu has high quality which makes chocolate enjoyer interested. impact of government policy to soldable input showed by input transfer which is a gap between input cost at social price. if it value is positive means there is negative subsidize policy or tax on production input. if it value is negative means there is subsidize policy on production input. npci value as indication from it is ratio between input cost according to private price with input cost according to social price. npci value showed the protection on sold input. if npci value is > 1 means there is protection policy to the input producer and input to the tax, sector that used input is loss by the higher of production cost. if npci value is < 1 means there is obstacle or subsidize to the input. amount of npci value is 1, 25 means input price import is 25% more expensive than its economy price. it showed that there is policy of input export limitation of domestic production. the policy means that the input production is to fulfill domestic needs not to export. factor transfer showed government policy to domestic inut that use private price with domestic input cost and domestic input cost that use private price and domestic input cost with social price. ft value is 174.250. positive ft value means there is policy government to domestic input that caused producer must purchase with higher price that the normal price. it will lose producer because it reduces producer’s insentive to keep producing. to see amount of additional producer suidrlus or reductional producer suidrlus which are caused by policy government, it can be used new transfer (nt) which is gap between producer’s profit with economy’s profit. positive nt value showed that the intensive policy make the suidrlus increase. negative nt value showed that disintensification which caused the suidrlus reduced. nt value is 2.028.369. profit coefficient (pc) is ratio between actual profits with economical profit. the ratio is used to see the impact of policy that showed the different rate of private profit and economic profit. pc obtained is 1, 09 means the received profit is 9% of economic profit. effective protection coefficient (epc) is used to see how far the impact of policy can push or block producer to produce. if epc is bigger than 1 (> 1) means there is intensification of government policy for producer to produce. if epc< 1 so the governmene policy is now effectively working and has blocked producer to produce. epc value obtained is 1, 09 mean the protection is quite good. subsidize ratio for producer is ratio between net transfer (nt) and economic income. sidr ratio showed the subsidize or net intensive to the producer income because of government policy. sidr value obtained is 0, 07 means that the government policy make producer pay higher production fee from the balance cost to produce ot positive subsidize (tax). conclusion and recommendation according to findings and discussion, the research concludes that cacao farming in the location has comparative and competitice superiority, the drc is 0, 03 and pcr is 0, 04. government policy has supported the development and improvement of comparative and competitive adventage of cacao farming in north luwu, which was marked by positive asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 4(1)2014: 30-35 35 indicator value means that cacao farmers receive profit and the policy runs well. according to discussion and conclusion, the research suggests that government of north luwu need to determine policy that can improve adventage commodity in north luwu by repairing infrastructure, marketing and quality started from good seed picking, maintenance and processing system. second, there is dependency to collector trader in marketing cacao that caused the bargaining position low. therefore, farmer must take part in farmer group acivity so they have bargaining position when they sell cacao to get competitive price. third, the research only explains how government policy influence comparative and competitive adventage from the price factor, if there is someone interested to do following research can discuss about quality, marketing, infrastructure, and strategy of cacao competitive capacity development in facing free trade era. references affif, f. 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http://ejournal.unud.ac.id/abstrak/(7)%25soca-saptana-superna-%20daya%20saing%20komoditas.pdf) http://ejournal.unud.ac.id/abstrak/(7)%25soca-saptana-superna-%20daya%20saing%20komoditas.pdf) http://ejournal.unud.ac.id/abstrak/(7)%25soca-saptana-superna-%20daya%20saing%20komoditas.pdf) effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 708 growth optima and supply-chain of the walnut crop in india bakhtaver hassana, mahua bhattacharjee b, shabir a wani c a visiting faculty and research scholar; amity school of economics, amity university, noida, uttar pradesh, india b professor; amity school of economics, amity university, noida, uttar pradesh, india c professor and head; department of agricultural economics and horti-business management, skuast-k, shalimar, srinagar, jammu and kashmir, india  bakhtaverbaigh@gmail.com , bakhtaver.hassan@student.amity.edu (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 31-mar-2020 accepted: 01-aug-2020 online available: 14-sep2020 keywords: marketing-efficiency, variability, walnut, marketing-margin, marketing-cost, price-spread abstract this paper intends to study the spatio-temporal growth of the walnut crop in jammu & kashmir, which holds a monopoly in walnut production in india. it also aims to assess the efficiency of the existing marketing channels of the walnut-crop in the region. a multi-stage random selection technique was used to collect primary data from three major walnut producing districts to identify the existing marketing channels and estimate their respective efficiencies. compound-annual-growth-rate and cuddy-della-valle index was used to estimate the growth of the walnut crop. shepherd’s marketing efficiency index was used to estimate the marketing efficiencies of the channels involved in the marketing of the crop. this paper found out very-high variability and slow growth in acreage, very-high variability, and high growth in production as well as in yield-per-hectare of the walnut crop. contribution/ originality the paper provides a comprehensive picture of the variability of the crop in india, which sets a pathway for future researches in the concerned subject. in addition, the paper encourages the use of the most efficient marketing channel for the crop, which will significantly benefit the farmers of the area. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.708.720 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: bakhtaver hassan, mahua bhattacharjee and shabir a wani (2020). growth optima and supply-chain of the walnut crop in india. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 708-720. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 708-720 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:bakhtaverbaigh@gmail.com mailto:bakhtaver.hassan@student.amity.edu http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.708.720 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 708-720 709 1. introduction walnut in india is one of the most important horticultural crops being exported to nearly 70 countries generating nearly 10 million usd (778 million inr) annually. across the globe, india is ranked sixth in terms of acreage under walnut and eight in terms of walnut production, thus being one of the major contributors in walnut cultivation. the production of walnut crops has increased from 185 thousand metric tonnes in 2000-01 to 299 thousand metric tonnes in 2017-18, while the area has increased from 75 thousand hectares to 108 thousand hectares during the same time (horticulture at a glance, 2018). walnut in india is usually grown in four major statesjammu & kashmir, himachal pradesh, uttarakhand, and arunachal pradesh. jammu & kashmir alone contributes over 95 percent of the total production in the country from over 85 percent of the area (figure 1). out of the total 108 thousand hectares under walnut cultivation in india, 89 thousand hectares fall in the union territory of jammu and kashmir. in terms of production, out of the total 299 thousand metric tonnes produced in the country, 275 thousand metric tonnes were produced in jammu and kashmir, alone (horticulture at a glance, 2018). figure 1 indicates the importance of jammu and kashmir in walnut cultivation of the country. over the years, the production of walnuts in jammu and kashmir is substantially higher than the other states. the average productivity of walnut cultivation in india is 2.76 metric tonnes/hectare, while in jammu and kashmir, it is 3.08 metric tonnes/hectare. comparing this with other states like uttarakhand, himachal pradesh, and arunachal pradesh, the productivity falls to a meager 1.26 metric tonnes/hectare. therefore, jammu and kashmir enjoy a monopoly in production, acreage, and productivity of walnuts in the country. however, this is extremely low when compared to european and north american counterparts, where transgenic rootstocks have already shown the greatest promise (britton et al., 2009). from an agro-climatic perspective, jammu and kashmir are divided into three distinct zones temperate, sub-temperate, and arid, while the fourth zone (arid) is now a separate union territory ladakh (khursheed and taufeeq, 2019). each zone has a distinguished cropping pattern with a certain number of commonly grown crops that are unique to each zone. for instance, jammu is known for the cultivation of basmati rice, wheat while kashmir is famous for apples, pear, cherries, and saffron (kumar et al., 2013; hanan, 2015; qadri, 2018). however, walnut is the only major horticultural crop that is cultivated in all the agro-climatic zones of the union territory. from kashmir valley, the major districts of walnut production are anantnag, kulgam, kupwara, shopian, baramulla, pulwama, and jammu; the major districts are doda, reasi, rajouri, kishtwar, kathua, udhampur, and ramban. kashmir valley produces 60 percent of the product while the rest comes from jammu; however, the growth rate in production, as well as acreage under walnut cultivation, is growing faster in jammu as compared to kashmir valley, thus moving neck to neck (malhotra and mcneil, 2009). the past tends witnessed an actual fall in walnut production as the walnut trees have faced continued degradation and ineffective policies, which is seen in jammu and kashmir too (shigaeva and darr, 2020) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 708-720 710 figure 1: walnut production across states source: horticulture at a glance, national horticulture board, india the export of walnut from jammu & kashmir to other countries is over 95 percent, which is substantial for its agricultural economy. the walnut industry, thus, provides excelling opportunities to the farmers in the union territory with almost no input variable cost while being completely organic (qammer and baba, 2018; sharma and sumbali, 2014). 2. objectives of the study 1. to analyze the growth and variability of walnut cultivation in the major walnut producing districts of the country, especially in the largest walnut producing state. 2. to identify the marketing channels of the walnut crop and estimate the efficiency of each marketing channel. 3. research methodology this study was based on the data collected in february 2020, from walnut farmers from three districtsanantnag, shopian, and kulgam, which were purposively selected as they produce nearly 55 percent of the total walnuts in jammu and kashmir, india. the selection of three districts from the union territory enables us to fully analyse the spatial and temporal growth, as well as identify the issues in the walnut industry of the country. a multi-stage random selection technique was used in data collection. in the first stage, one block was selected from each district. in the second stage, three villages were selected from each block of the district, and in the final stage, five farmers were selected from each selected village of the block. from kulgam district, devsar block was selected from which three random villages were selected; namely, hablish, gangdaar, and akhal were selected. from district anantnag, shangus block was selected. in shangus block, villages, namely shangus, kihirbal, and nowgam, were selected. finally, from district shopian, zainapora block was selected in this block; villages, namely hyderpora, zainapora, and bongam were selected. batamallu, one of the biggest markets in the union territory, was purposively selected as 60% of the walnut crop is sold here. unregulated local district markets of the three districts were studied accordingly. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 708-720 711 table 1: walnut growers with a number of walnut trees farmer number of farmers small (<50 trees) 23 medium (50-100 trees) 14 large (>100 trees) 8 total 45 secondary data was collected from the directorate of horticulture, jammu & kashmir, national horticultural board, economic survey, 2018-19 and readers’ digest, jammu & kashmir. the secondary data was used to estimate the compound annual growth rate and cuddy-della-vallevariability index. primary data was collected to identify the existing marketing channels of walnut crops and estimate the marketing cost, marketing margin, marketing efficiency using marketing efficiency index, and shepherd’s marketing index. 4. methodology production variability may arise due to the variability in area, yield and/or interaction between area and yield. variability in yield is the main source of production instability, and therefore, cuddydella-valle index was used. cuddy-della valle index is a measure of regional variability in timeseries data. it is an improvement over the simple coefficient of variations, as it corrects the coefficient of variation, which is usually over-estimated in the simple coefficient of variation (deb et al., 1999). the cuddy-della-valle-index was estimated on the secondary data for the time-trend of 2004-2017. the formula for cuddy-della-valle index is: 𝐶𝑉 = 𝐶𝑉∗√(1 − 𝑅2) . where cv is the cuddy-della-valle index, 𝐶𝑉∗ is the simple coefficient of variation in percent, 𝑅2 is the coefficient of determination from a time-trend regression analysis adjusted by the number of degrees of freedom. 𝐶𝑜𝑒𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝐶𝑉∗ = 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝐷𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑀𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑥100 compound annual growth rate was estimated to assess the growth in the area, production, and yield per hectare of walnut in jammu and kashmir, india. compound annual growth rate is the rate of return of investment for overtime (naqash, 2015; wani et al., 2014). the formula for compound annual growth rate is: 𝐶𝐴𝐺𝑅 = ( 𝑉𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑉𝑏𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑛 ) 1 𝑡 − 1 where cagr is compound annual growth rate, 𝑉𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 is the value of the area, production, and yield per hectare at the end, here in 2016-17 and 𝑉𝑏𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑛 is the value of area, production and yield per hectare at the beginning of 2004-05 and “t” is the time period from 2004 to 2017. 4.1. marketing channels and efficiency model to identify the channels involved in the marketing efficiency of the supply-chain of walnut in jammu and kashmir, mapping was done. in the survey of three selected districts, three main channels were identified through which walnut crop was marketed. these main channels are: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 708-720 712 1. channel i: producer-retailer-consumer 2. channel ii: producerwholesalerretailer-consumer 3. channel iii: producer-arhatia (middlemen)-wholesalerretailer-consumer the marketing cost of walnut was calculated by estimating the cost incurred in the process of marketing of the product from harvesting until it reached the consumer. it included the transportation cost, marketing fee, labour charges during transportation, packaging cost like gunny bags, cartons. marketing margin is the profit or the revenue earned by each actor at a particular stage of the marketing channel (dastagiri et al., 2012). marketing margin at different stages of the chains was calculated using the formula: marketing margin of each actor: 𝑀𝑀𝑖 = 𝑆𝑃𝑖 − (𝑃𝑃𝑖 + 𝑀𝐶𝑖) where 𝑀𝑀𝑖 is the marketing margin for “ith” actor, 𝑆𝑃𝑖 is the selling price of the “ith” actor, 𝑃𝑃𝑖 is the purchasing price of the “ith” actor and 𝑀𝐶𝑖 is the marketing cost incurred by “ith” actor. producers’ share is the amount that the producer receives to the total amount paid for the commodity (dastagiri et al., 2012; gachena and kebebew, 2014; mohapatra et al., 2018). producers’ share in consumer’s rupee was calculated as follows: 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑠′𝑆ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑒 = 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑠′𝑃𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑠′𝑃𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑥100 shepherd suggested that the ratio of the total price paid by the consumer to the total marketing cost incurred at various stages along the marketing channel may be used as a major of efficiency. the higher the ratio, the higher will be the marketing efficiency of the channel. this method eliminates the problem of measurement of value-added (sharma and tungoe, 2011). since walnut processing has minimum value addition along the marketing channels; therefore, shepherds’ marketing efficiency index was used to estimate the overall marketing efficiency of the three marketing chains identified. the formula for shepherd’s marketing efficiency index is: 𝑆ℎ𝑒𝑝ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑑′𝑠 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑥 = 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑟′𝑠 𝑃𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐶𝑜𝑠𝑡 − 1 to ensure the marketing efficiency of the channels is measured accurately, this concept was also used to incorporate both the marketing margin as well as the marketing cost of the channels. marketing efficiency was also calculated through simple marketing efficiency index, the formula for which is: 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐸𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦 𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑥 = ∑ 𝑀𝑀𝑖 𝑖=𝑛 𝑖=1 ∑ 𝑀𝐶𝑖 𝑖=𝑛 𝑖=𝑖 where, 𝑀𝑀𝑖 is the marketing efficiency of “ith” actor and 𝑀𝐶𝑖 is the marketing cost of “ith” actor in the supply chain, the formula therefore represents the total marketing efficiency of the supply chain by including the total marketing margin and cost involved in the chain. 5. results and discussion part i: growth and variability of walnut in jammu and kashmir based on the secondary data from the department of finance, jammu & kashmir, the compound annual growth rate of the area, production, and yield per hectare was calculated from 2004 to 2017 for all the major walnut producing districts of the union territory (table 2). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 708-720 713 table 2: growth and variability in area, production and yield of walnut from 2004-17 area production yield per hectare cagr cv r² cagr cv r² cagr cv r² anantnag 3.13 12.23 0.91 11.18 25.42 0.87 7.89 9.23 0.91 baramulla 1.12 23.52 0.89 4.15 32.42 0.96 3.55 37.53 0.85 budgam 0.53 38.52 0.81 5.52 23.42 0.91 5.23 10.24 0.82 kulgam 1.72 18.63 0.92 9.11 11.52 0.95 7.23 16.44 0.84 kupwara 1.25 21.52 0.9 9.52 16.34 0.85 6.64 18.23 0.94 shopian 2.14 29.23 0.95 8.31 26.23 0.89 4.39 19.42 0.91 pulwama 1.36 9.23 0.87 5.13 15.23 0.81 6.92 21.59 0.91 ganderbal -0.12 27.34 0.96 6.42 13.76 0.92 4.35 22.24 0.97 doda 0.9 32.52 0.91 10.63 21.42 0.89 5.23 12.14 0.92 kishtwar 2.65 21.51 0.95 9.57 9.23 0.95 9.52 9.44 0.89 reasi 1.4 8.52 0.85 9.24 25.24 0.87 6.12 11.42 0.82 ramban 1.5 21.53 0.89 4.14 29.23 0.96 2.63 25.52 0.91 kathua 0.92 15.53 0.9 5.31 12.35 0.84 8.51 26.42 0.98 udhampur 1.54 29.26 0.92 5.23 35.42 0.82 6.2 15.94 0.91 poonch 0.24 31.52 0.91 8.91 13.53 0.95 5.2 11.52 0.82 rajouri 1.57 26.24 0.93 8.63 21.43 0.85 5.41 10.53 0.95 jammu and kashmir 1.38 22.93 0.90 7.56 20.76 0.89 6.13 17.27 0.90 india 1.21 23.34 0.87 6.93 20.41 0.87 6.13 17.45 0.90 source: computed by authors ecostat readers’ digest, department of finance, jammu & kashmir. during this period, the area under walnut cultivation increased from 74,894 hectares in 2004 to 89431 hectares in 2017, with an annual compound growth rate of 1.38 percent. however, in production, the union territory saw a compound growth rate of 7.56 percent during the same time, increasing from 100596 metric tonnes in 2004 to 260308 metric tonnes in 2017 (ecostat, readers’ digest, 2018). based on the compound annual growth rate, districts are classified into four major categories. 1. category ahigh compound annual growth rate> 5% 2. category bmoderate compound annual growth rate – 2-5 % 3. category c-slow compound annual growth rate0-2% 4. category d-negative compound annual growth rate<0 % similarly, based on the cuddy-della-valle variability index, these districts are classified into four major categories in terms of the percentage of variability: 1. category plow variability<5% 2. category qmoderate variability – 5-10% 3. category rhigh variability10-20% 4. category svery high variability>20% from the development point of, “a&p” showcases a high growth rate and low variability, which is the most desirable situation and “d&s” showcasing negative growth rate and very high variability is the worst situation. table 2 represents the growth rate and variability of all the three parametersarea, production, and yield per hectare of the walnut crop. in the area, the growth rate in the union territory is slow (1.38 percent), which is slightly higher than the national growth rate of 1.21 percent. at the district level, only ganderbal district is the major outlier witnessing a negative growth rate during the period asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 708-720 714 (2004-17). in terms of production and yield per hectare, the majority of the districts witness a highgrowth rate of above 5 percent. considering the slow growth in acreage, this high growth rate in production is crucial for the farmers as well as the overall development of the crop. even the overall growth rate in production and yield per hectare is above 5 percent, which indicates that walnuts are still preferable fruit-bearing crops for the farmers in jammu & kashmir, india (see table 2). table 3 shows the relationship between the growth rate and variability of each district under study. in the area, all the districts show slow to moderate growth, except for district ganderbal. the major cause of falling acreage in the district under walnut crop is the long-gestation period and the consequent aging of the trees while there are no major new walnut orchards established. second, the demand for walnut timber in furniture in the country is rising, which has resulted in rapid and wholesome cutting down of the walnut trees. the third is the large area required for each walnut tree, which the farmer feels leads to greater opportunity cost, only based on mere speculation. variability in the area is on the higher side in 90 percent of the districts; only pulwama and reasi district show moderate variability of under 10 percent. but there is no conclusive evidence which points out at this lower variability in these two districts compared to the rest. overall, the high variability and low growth rate are worrisome for the overall development and expansion of the walnut crop in the region (deb et al., 1999). table 3: district wise growth and variability characteristics of area, production and yield from 2004-17 no. districts area production yield 1 anantnag moderate growth and high variability high growth and very high variability high growth and moderate variability 2 baramulla slow growth and very high variability moderate growth and very high variability high growth and very high variability 3 budgam slow growth and very high variability high growth and very high variability high growth and high variability 4 kulgam slow growth and high variability high growth and high variability high growth and very high variability 5 kupwara slow growth and very high variability high growth and high variability high growth and high variability 6 shopian moderate growth and very high variability high growth and very high variability moderate growth and high variability 7 pulwama slow growth and moderate variability high growth and high variability high growth and very high variability 8 ganderbal negative growth and very high variability high growth and high variability high growth and very high variability 9 doda slow growth and very high variability high growth and very high variability high growth and high variability 10 kishtwar moderate growth and very high variability high growth and moderate variability high growth and moderate variability 11 reasi slow growth and moderate variability high growth and very high variability high growth and high variability 12 ramban slow growth and very moderate growth moderate growth and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 708-720 715 high variability and very high variability very high variability 13 kathua slow growth and very high variability high growth and high variability high growth and very high variability 14 udhampur slow growth and very high variability high growth and very high variability high growth and high variability 15 rajouri slow growth and very high variability high growth and very high variability high growth and high variability 16 poonch slow growth and very high variability high growth and high variability high growth and high variability jammu and kashmir slow growth and very high variability high growth and very high variability high growth and high variability india slow growth and very high variability high growth and very high variability high growth and high variability source: authors’ analysis in terms of production, the growth rate is high in all the districts except baramulla where the growth rate is moderate, surprisingly, as the district is one of the leading horticultural districts of the union territory. but 10 out of 16 districts show very high variability in production while only one district, kishtwar shows moderate variability. in terms of yield per hectare, six districts show very high variability, 9 show high variability, while only one shows moderate variability. in terms of growth rate, the majority of the districts show high-growth, which runs in sync with the overall increase in yield of walnut in the country during the period. however, the high to very high variability in the majority of the districts in both production, as well as yield per hectare, is worrisome. overall, the area under walnut crop is increasing at a slow-rate, but the production and yield per hectare are increasing at a relatively healthier rate. but the worrisome picture is the very high variability in terms of acreage and production of the crop and high variability in the yield per hectare of the crop. part iimarket efficiency of the walnut crop while the production and yield per hectare of walnut are increasing at a considerably good rate, the variation in production among the different farmer categories is not so significant. yield per tree for small farmers of less than 50 trees is 0.0677 tonnes/tree; it is 0.074 tonnes/tree for medium farmers and large farmers, yield per tree is 0.068 tonnes/tree (see table 4). the lower variation in yield per tree is majorly due to no inputs used by either of the farmers. in the three districts where the survey was conducted, each farmer was of the same view that these walnut trees need no input supplies per year, implying that the input variable cost like the use of fertilizers, irrigation, fungicides is zero. therefore, to substantiate the facts, walnut cultivation in jammu & kashmir, india is completely organic with no use of fertilizers, chemicals, and other synthetic materials. however, the lack of proper government support and adequate marketing strategies, the crop is still marketed through ordinary channels, which impacts the growth of the crop overall. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 708-720 716 table 4: marketed surplus and disposal through different channels production in tonnes marketed surplus in tonnes disposal through (in tonnes) channel i channel ii channel iii small (20) * 1.344 1.29 0.122(9.4) 0.357(27.67) 0.811(62.86) medium (60) * 4.464 4.362 0.479 (11) 1.352(31.01) 2.531(58.02) large (100) * 7.884 7.725 1.236 (16.10) 2.723(35.25) 3.766 (48.75) total 13.69 13.37 1.83(13.72) 4.43(33.13) 7.1(53.13) the figures in parenthesis indicate the percentages * indicates the average number of trees source: field survey, 2020 the study revealed that 62.86 percent of the small farmers marketed their harvested crop through channel iii, while this decreased to 58 percent in medium farmers and just 48.75 percent in large farmers. on the contrary, only 9.4 percent of the small farmers marketed their harvest through channel i, while the percentage increased to 16.10 percent in the large-farmers (see table 4). overall, 13.37 percent of the farmers disposed-off their marketed surplus through channel i, 33.13 percent disposed-off through channel ii, while 53.5 percent disposed-off through channel iii. it is worth noticing that 86.63 percent of the total walnut produced by the farmers passed through the secondary markets to reach the final consumers (see table 4). it shows that there is an absolute absence of marketing intelligence on the farmer’s side, resulting in a higher number of intermediaries in different marketing channels. 5.1. price spread under different channels the three main channels used in the marketing of the walnut crop in the region showcase that the relationship between the farmer and the other actors involved is wholly based on poor dissemination of marketing information to the farmers. therefore, the channels witness a rise in the number of actors for marketing the product, which increases the marketing cost as well as the gross marketing margin of the channels. it is consistent with the economic analysis done by malhotra and mcneil (2009). channel i the walnut crop in this channel moved from the farmer to the final consumer through the retailer. therefore, with a lesser number of intermediaries, the producers’/farmer’s share in this channel is 75.6 percent of the total price paid by consumers, making it the most efficient marketing channel of the walnut crop in jammu and kashmir, india (see table 5). after the presence of only one major actor in the channel, the marketing cost and the marketing margin incurred are 7.98 percent and 16.42 percent, respectively. channel ii the producer’s share in this channel drops to 67.38 percent of the total price paid by the consumer while the marketing cost and the marketing margin rise to 14.36 and 18.26 percent, respectively. the addition of wholesalers to which the farmer sells his produce incurs a marketing cost of 7.24 percent and earns a margin of 5.64 percent (see table 5). the marketing cost rises on account of the longer chain and the cost incurred in transportation, loading, unloading, and processing of the walnut crop at the wholesale stage. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 708-720 717 channel iii table 5: marketing cost, marketing margin and price spread of the three channels in usd1 channel i channel ii channel iii net price received by producer per tonne in inr 2520(75.6) 2246(67.4) 1982.6(59.48) marketing cost incurred by a producer 126.67(3.8) 120.67(3.62) 122(3.66) selling price of producer/purchasing power of arhatia 2646.67(79.4) 2366.67(71) 2104.67(63.14) marketing cost incurred by arhatia 70.67(2.12) marketing margin of arhatia 170(5.1) selling price of arhatia/ purchasing price of wholesaler 2345.33(70.36) marketing cost incurred by a wholesaler 241.33(7.24) 246.67(7.4) marketing margin of wholesaler 188(5.64) 241.67(7.25) selling price of wholesaler/purchasing price of the retailer 2796(83.9) 2833.67(85.01) marketing cost incurred by the retailer 139.33(4.18) 116.67(3.50) 110(3.3) marketing margin of retailer 547.33(16.42) 420.67(12.62) 389.67(11.69) selling price of retailer / consumers' price 3333.33(100)2 3333.33(100) 3333.33(100) total marketing margin 547.33(16.42) 608.67(18.26) 801.33(24.04) total marketing cost 266(7.98) 478.67(14.36) 549.33(16.48) producers' share in consumers' rupee 75.60% 67.38% 59.48% percentages to the total selling price of the products are in parentheses source: authors’ analysis based on field survey, 2020 table 5 reveals that this channel is the most inefficient marketing channel of the walnut crop in the region. the producer’s share in this channel drops even further to 59.48 percent. this means that 40.52 percent of the total selling price of the produce goes to other actors in the chain, rendering it inefficient and unsustainable for the farmer. the farm-produce through this channel changes multiple hands from producer to kacha and pakka arhatia (middle-men), wholesaler, retailer, and finally, the consumer. each actor earns a substantial amount of marketing margin as well as incurs a certain amount of marketing cost to transportation, grading, loading, unloading, and packing the produce/commodity. for instance, the arhatia incurs 2.12 percent as marketing cost and charges 5.1 percent as his/her marketing margin. similarly, the wholesaler and retailer incur a cost of 7.4 percent and 3.3 percent in moving the walnut crop from the purchasing point to their respective selling destinations. overall, the total marketing cost and marketing margin in the channel is 16.48 percent and 24.04 percent, respectively (see table 5). malhotra and mcneil (2009) had made a similar observation in their analysis of these marketing channels. furthermore, 53.5 percent of the farmer’s market their walnut crop through channel iii, the most inefficient channel present, while another 33.13 percent market their produce through channel ii, where the marketing cost and marketing margins are on the higher side. thus, at present, 86.63 percent of the farmers’ market their produce through inefficient marketing channels, which eats away the profitability of the farmers involved, as well as hampers the expansion of the crop in the region. 1 usd = 75 inr at average exchange rate, 2020 2 price of walnut at batamallu mandi was 3.33 usd/kg asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 708-720 718 5.2. marketing efficiency price spread across the three marketing channels varies from 24.4 percent in channel i, 32.62 in channel ii to 40.52 percent in channel iii. the comparison reveals that channel i is the most efficient marketing channel of the walnut crop in the region and that there is a difference of 15.9 percent between channel i and channel iii. ranking the three channels based on price-spread, producer’s share, and marketing cost, channel i turns out to be the most efficient marketing channel, providing 75.6 percent of the total price paid by the consumer to the farmer. on the other hand, producer’s share in channel ii and channel iii is lower at 67.38 percent and 59 percent, respectively, rendering them inefficient from the farmer’s perspective. surprisingly, channel iii is ranked second in marketing efficiency index with an index of 2.45, while channel ii has an index of 2.27. channel i shows an index of 3.05, making it highly feasible for the farmers (see table 6). by shepherd’s marketing efficiency, channel i outperforms the other two channels by quite a margin, having an index of 11.53, which is higher than the index of the other channels combined. channel ii is ranked a distant second with an index of 5.96, while channel iii ranks third with an index of 5.06. overall, channel i is ranked first, while channel ii and channel iii are ranked second and third in the composite marketing efficiency index, respectively. table 6: composite marketing index of the three channels (usd)3 channels no. particulars i ii iii 1 price spread (rank) 813.33(24.4) 1087.33(32.62) 1350.67(40.52) 1 2 3 2 producers' share (rank) 75.60% 67 38% 59% 1 2 3 3 marketing cost (rank) 1 2 3 total score 3 6 9 mean score 1 2 3 4 marketing efficiency index (rank) 3.05 2.27 2.45 1 3 2 5 shepherds' marketing efficiency index (rank) 11.53 5.96 5.06 1 2 3 total score 2 5 5 mean score 1 2.5 2.5 total mean score 1 2.25 2.75 rank 1 2 3 source: author’s analysis percentages in parentheses 6. conclusion the walnut crop in india is facing challenges with slow-growth in acreage at the time when the demand is picking up for organic food all over the world. the production and yield per hectare in major walnut producing districts is high, falling in the range between 5-10 percent. one of the unique features of the walnut crop is its almost negligible input cost and completely organic nature. still, the lower use of technology in terms of hybrid varieties is rendering it highly variable in all the parameters-acreage, production, and yield per hectare. further, the marketing of the walnut crop through different channels also need considerable revision. only 13.37 percent of the farmers 3 usd = 75 inr at average exchange rate, 2020 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 708-720 719 market their products through the most efficient channel present in jammu and kashmir. on the flip side, 53.5 percent of farmers prefer the most inefficient channel where the marketing cost and margin are at 40.52 percent. this is directly correlated to the loss of interest of the farmers to pursue walnut cultivation in their farms, which is witnessed in the extremely slow expansion of area under walnut cultivation and very high-variability of the crop in acreage, production and yield per hectare. on the marketing front, the farmers are forced to market their products through highly inefficient channels on account of poor marketing intelligence, lack of proper market infrastructure, a high number of intermediaries, and lack of government support. at the village level understudy, the information regarding the pricing of walnuts is extremely poor, and there is a wide information gap that the arhatias(middle-men) exploit to the fullest. the government, therefore, needs to provide village-level processing units, which would promote the direct sale of the walnut crop from the farmers to the markets and retailers and lead to a reduction of intermediaries in the chain. emphasis should be laid on scientific research to bring in hybrid varieties of walnut cultivars for higher productivity, early gestation period leading to higher acceptance of the walnut cultivation by the farmers. from a marketing perspective, walnut should be tagged as “organic,” which would increase its overall price, and with efficient marketing channels, the farmers would be benefited the most. therefore, infrastructural development, scientific research and pro-active policy-making would help to enhance productivity, increase acreage and improve marketing of the walnut crop leading to the overall development of the crop as well horticultural sector in jammu and kashmir and india. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising 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(2014). value chains for livestock products in himalayan mountains: studies from jammu and kashmir. indian journal of agricultural economics, 69(902-2016-68347), 280-289. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2020.102233 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 259 the failure of a rural development project: south korean official development assistance in the democratic republic of the congo hyung baek lim a chulwoo kim b a department of international development cooperation, sungkyul university, south korea b department of public administration, gachon university, south korea  cwkim@gachon.ac.kr (corresponding author) article history: received: 03-feb-2020 accepted: 21-apr-2020 online available: 16-may2020 keywords: area study, democratic republic of the congo, international development cooperation, official development assistance, rural development abstract the purpose of this study is to investigate failure factors of the official development assistance provided by south korea for an integrated rural development project located in the village of kitshini in the democratic republic of the congo (drc). regional studies on the drc were carried out on a macro level, and on the kitshini project on a micro-level was done through literature review and participant observations. the findings indicate five inevitable exogenous variables that greatly reduced the project’s efficiency, first, tribalism and tribal conflict, second, incomplete administrative organization at the local level, third, shortage of agricultural technology and agricultural market openings, four, unrealistic goals for the project, and five, the tragedy of the commons. the results suggest the necessity to conduct comprehensive research on the local area and preliminary feasibility studies to secure sufficient time to plan the project and design suitable initiatives for recipient countries and target sites. contribution/ originality the main contribution of this paper is to conduct an in-depth case that needs to be identified before performing official development assistance for the democratic republic of congo. in particular, the analysis of failure factors of the integrated rural development project provides practical implications to be considered when carrying out similar projects in drc and countries in similar circumstances in the future. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.259.269 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: hyung baek lim and chulwoo kim (2020). the failure of a rural development project: south korean official development assistance in the democratic republic of the congo. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 259-269. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 259-269 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:cwkim@gachon.ac.kr http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.259.269 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 259-269 260 1. introduction on november 25, 2009, south korea joined the development assistance committee (dac) of the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd). south korea’s official development assistance (oda) constituted 0.31% of gross national income (gni) in 2018. south korea has implemented oda in about 100 countries, but some attempts have been unsuccessful. recent studies on oda have revealed problems affecting south korea’s oda. one issue is a shortage of information on recipient countries. south korea is the only country that has shifted from being an aid recipient to an aid donor and has no experience with colonial rule. in modern international development cooperation (idc), most donor nations used to be colonial rulers, while recipient states tend to not have such a history. paradoxically, south korea may boast of being a moral nation, but there is an absolute dearth of information on recipient countries, and difficulties have arisen in idc. under these circumstances, we carried out an area study of the democratic republic of the congo (drc), where south korea is struggling substantially compared with the country’s more than 100 recipient states. south korea faces great challenges in the drc because the latter is different in many ways, making it the toughest to deal with in terms of south korea’s development experience. therefore, we examined south korea’s oda about an integrated rural development project (irdp) in the village of kitshini in the drc. this initiative is a typical example of intergovernmental collaboration between south korea and other states. we will review the drc’s observed characteristics regarding the kitshini irdp. it is not within our study’s scope to outline all aspects of the kitshini irdp.1 (thus far, very little has been done in this direction.) rather, we intend for this paper to catalyze area studies and related interests when carrying out similar projects. to explain the drc’s features, we must first review its history, as its current misfortunes stem from its colonial past. european states, as the ex-colonial authorities, have a moral and political responsibility for the mess they left in africa and decolonization is still an ongoing task in many african countries (adepoju and adeniyi, 2019; blaut, 1993). as the former colonial power, belgium has a responsibility toward the drc. the drc was born out of the berlin conference (1884–1885), a global symposium held in the city of berlin, germany, which centered on the territorial rights of the congo basin, and which is sometimes referred to as the “west africa conference” to avoid confusion with the 1878 berlin conference. leopold louis philippe marie victor ii (1835–1909), the belgian king made the congo river basin into a private colony in 1881. later, when britain joined as a latecomer, belgium and france felt threatened, pressured portugal, and ultimately held an international congress. finally, otto von bismarck of germany called for peaceful, honorable mediation and invited representatives to berlin (anstey, 1966). fourteen countries, including the united states, the ottoman empire, and twelve european nations, gathered in berlin and defined the drc’s borders. because of this, african tribes that had never formed a modern state or had any concept of a “nation” ended up in a country called the drc. in other words, as in most african states, the drc was not formed as a sovereign entity by its people; hence, there was no notion of a nation-state, nor nationality. ultimately, about 800 tribes that had clashed with each other came to belong to the government and its rules overnight. in some cases, people of the same tribe ended up belonging to different countries. the largest beneficiary of the berlin conference was belgium, which, through the congo basin 1 integrated rural development is a development approach that influenced rural areas in 1970s (oecd, 2016) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 259-269 261 treaty, managed to get the intensely fought over the central african region recognized as belonging to leopold louis philippe marie victor ii. however, due to belgium’s attempts to cause disunion, until the early part of the 20th century, regional and ethnic confrontation emerged, which had never occurred before. such discord continues in the drc to this day. the drc gained independence from belgium in 1960. from 1971 until 1997, the drc was referred to as the republic of zaire and is located at the center of equatorial africa, bordered by nine countries. its area is the second-largest in africa after sudan at 905,365 square miles and the largest in sub-saharan africa. the drc is the 11th biggest country in the world and most of its territory is inland, with about 40km of coastlines between cabinda, an angola exclave, and mainland angola. as of 2014, the population is estimated at around 82 million, and 90 million as of 2018, which makes it the fourth-biggest among african nations (bokamba, 1976, 2019; usaid, 2020). table 1: an outline of the drc’s characteristics independence 1960 number of tribes 800 population 85,026,000 (as of 2016) (16th largest in the world) number of languages 214 size 2,344,858 km2 (12th largest in the world) official language french per capita income $702.184 (year 2014) major languages besides french swahili (predominant in the east) lingala (predominant in the west) the drc has abundant natural resources that are incomparable to those of other countries and is in the top spot regarding the amount available for development. however, the drc’s natural resources also threaten its national stability (shim, 2018). the drc possesses cobalt (75% of global reserves) and is the world’s fourth-largest producer of smelting cobalt. the country also has 70–80% of the world’s reserves of coltan, 10% of copper, 30% of diamonds, and around 50 types of minerals (e.g., uranium, manganese, and zinc). these riches have caused the drc to have the “resource curse.” various armed groups, including rebels, control the coltan mines in the east. just as blood diamonds fueled the civil war in sierra leone, the drc’s natural resources drive its domestic conflict. hence, its inhabitants deeply distrust other people and governments (reardon et al., 2012). in the drc, china recently and controversially negotiated a mammoth resources-for-infrastructure deal valued at $6 billion. in exchange for building new roads and railway lines, along with many other facilities (including hospitals, housing, and a new university), china was guaranteed a supply of copper and cobalt over a period of 20 years. civil society critics of the deal said that by agreeing to terms like these, the drc risked vastly underselling its assets. the western powers and international financial institutions that have traditionally been the drc’s leading economic partners were unhappy as well (french, 2014). 2. materials and methods 2.1. the project site in the international development cooperation, a recipient country requests the development aid to a donor country. in other words, development cooperation projects are not decided unilaterally by donor countries. instead, after requested by the recipient countries, the project will be implemented when the donor country decided to do it. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 259-269 262 this project requested by the drc is an "integrated rural development" in the kitshini region. kitshini, the closest village to the capital of kinshasa and about 80km away from it, was selected as the project site. its main purpose was to bring agricultural products produced through the project into kinshasa. the area for the initiative covers 30km2. drc suggested the site and the details of the project and south korea decided to implement the project after conducting a preliminary feasibility study.2 from 1991 to 2015, south korea provided 10 free aid projects; one of those was the kitshini irdp, the period of which was from 2013 to 2017, and the budget was 3 million dollars. the purpose was to reduce poverty and increase income by strengthening kitshini’s capacity for integrated rural development. this venture included a program to boost agricultural production and value-adding, local community capacity building, expert dispatch, and equipment support. the undertaking can fall into three major categories: (1) agricultural production; (2) the agricultural value chain; and (3) improved living conditions. since rebels dominate the eastern region and kinshasa is located along the congo river at the western end of the country, the most ideal locales for projects are near kinshasa since it is especially safe and home to a large market, giving it an overall advantage as an irdp site. the drc is affected by a shortage of food and its agriculture, in the beginning, stages were inefficiently organized into lots for small families (hanson and leautier, 2013). this means that the drc needed to dramatically increase its productivity to be self-sufficient in terms of food production. there is no modern land ownership in kitshini, which is common in traditional african societies. the village’s agricultural development is not simply a question of productivity or technology. the village is typical of rural africa. there are about 2,000 inhabitants and around 150 households. unfortunately, the project likely benefitted fewer individuals than could be hoped for due to numerous reasons (e.g., a dearth of transportation, larger congregations of tribal residences on the project site, a lack of understanding about the enterprise, and participation). the drc is an agrarian country, but also a food-scarce one and hunger (mwisha-kasiwa, 2018), and is unable to create many sources of employment. there are few high-quality jobs. in urban zones, most available occupations involve simple labor, and in rural areas, jobs are rare; 70–80% of kitshini’s residents are short-term workers. 2.2. research methods we surveyed the relevant literature. at the macro level, we carried out regional research on drc. at the micro-scale, we completed a regional study on the kitshini in february 2018. since kitshini’s inhabitants do not speak french (the country’s official language), an official from the ministry of agriculture and rural development who spoke english and french, one official from the ministry of rural development who spoke french and lingala, and one a drc native student in the ph.d. program in korea who spoke english, french, lingala, and korean joined. following this, we examined the project site and conducted regional research on kitshini by reading both domestic and international monographs and papers. we identified many pieces of literature related to the kitshini irdp (e.g., baseline surveys; interim reports and assessments; the outcome, expert activity, and training results reports). through the technique of participant observation, a surveyor enters a country, lives with locals for a long time, and directly takes part in as many social situations as possible whenever the opportunity 2 the evaluation of idc projects is used by adjusting the five principles of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability, including the addition of some items according to the nature of the project. in the preliminary evaluation, the focus will inevitably be on relevance and sustainability (oecd dac, 1991). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 259-269 263 arises to witness and record the actors, places, and activities (spradley, 1980). in line with participant observation, we initially began our research with a descriptive examination covering all aspects of kitshini. we then concentrated on the achievements of the rural development project as a form of public aid for the village. again, we centered on selective service, which narrowed the focus to the factors that caused the undertaking to fail. 3. results and discussion the factors that caused the kitshini irdp to fail can be largely divided into three external and two internal elements: (1) tribalism and tribal conflict; (2) incomplete administrative organization at the local level; (3) shortage of agricultural technology and agricultural market openings; (4) unrealistic goals for the project; and (5) the tragedy of the commons. 3.1. tribalism and tribal conflict the drc is home to around 800 tribes and has been subject to constant civil strife due to the resource curse mentioned earlier. western nations, as well as rwanda and uganda, have their eyes on the drc’s resources and encourage hostilities. a civil war is ongoing in the region of kivu, which contains coltan. rebel forces currently occupy the area; they sell coltan at a low price to neighboring countries, such as rwanda, and buy weapons with the profits. rwanda in turning exports coltan for a hefty sum. an average of 1,000 people dies every day from civil unrest. today, tribal members rarely consider themselves to be citizens. rather, individuals feel a greater sense of belonging to their tribes than to the country. as such, the western—or modern—the concept of a “nation” is rather weak. hence, the drc should not be perceived from the perspective of western nationalism (bokamba, 2008). with numerous ethnic groups, the drc is a multilingual nation with 214 languages, including french, the official language of communication, as the drc was once a belgian colony. major groups in city centers use lebanese arabic. non-native tongues such as english, greek, hindi, and portuguese can be heard as well. kiswahili is commonly used in the east, while lingala is mostly preferred in the west (ethnologue, 2005). the teke tribe, which speaks lingala, is the majority group in kitshini; there are two minority tribes. the village’s three tribes cannot speak french or english. thus, outsiders cannot talk to them without an interpreter. this causes problems in terms of communication between the government and these tribes, which also suffer from conflict and struggles for leadership (anyu and ayaba, 2017). the three most important individuals in the village are the chieftain, nda iyebe beatrice; the farmers’ cooperative union leader, issac dimanu; and the former farmers’ cooperative union leader, gimeya rodolphe. the deceased mamadou chieftain and his younger sister beatrice, the current chieftain, belong to the teke tribe. dimanu belongs to the second-largest tribe, while rodolphe belongs to the third largest tribe. each tribe’s members feel a strong sense of belonging and are not friendly with members of other groups. these circumstances negatively affected kitshini irdp. 3.2. incomplete administrative organization at the local level the kitshini irdp is closely linked to the drc’s national and rural development policies. through increased agricultural productivity and subsequent agricultural sales (both of which could help to solve the food shortage), the project was intended to directly increase incomes in kitshini. however, the drc is not fully equipped in terms of an administrative organization; therefore, the central government’s administrative power does not influence rural villages. the drc also lacks finances. hence, government officials are often not paid enough or do not receive their wages, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 259-269 264 making civil servants’ capacity quite inadequate at both the central and local government levels. there are many civil servants in proportion to the public, but in numerous regions, especially in rural areas, civil servants and local governments are unable to perform their duties properly. moreover, when new ministers are needed, those with connections appoint some of “their own” people to the positions, causing the status of public officials to be unstable and unprofessional. as a result, in rural zones without local administrative organization, the traditional tribal system becomes responsible for it, and the patriarchs or chieftains of each tribe oversee local affairs as a part of informal operations. this is the case in kitshini, where the village’s three tribes live according to their customs. the drc’s economy grew by 8.5% in 2013 and 9.0% in 2014; these percentages were the some of the highest since the drc gained independence from belgium, but because of the country’s heavy reliance on exporting natural resources, its economic growth declined with the weakening of global commodity prices to (the estimated rates of) 6.9% in 2015, 3.9% in 2016, and 4.3% in 2017. the drc’s gni is less than $300, and per capita income was about $700 annually as of 2016. in the 1990s, two civil wars largely destroyed the clothing industry, which led to foreign clothing import/distribution companies to be 70% lebanese-owned. the drc is an agrarian nation with no other major industries; 70% of the population works in the farming sector, but without adequate skills. there is also a dearth of drinking and farming water. the development of rural zones is therefore considered a nationwide task. since human resource development is a key factor for poverty alleviation (moyar, 2016), the kitshini irdp included the construction of an elementary school. after it builds, desks and chairs were provided. the students were highly satisfied with the school, and the rate of absences fell to a great extent. however, these changes had nothing to do with qualitative innovation in education. since the drc fails to pay teachers their salaries, teachers visit each family after school and collect tuition independently; this lowers the standard of education. the curriculum is important in elementary schools, and teachers should be able to serve as caretakers, but unfortunately, this is not the case. the rural population is spilling into urban zones due to the underdevelopment of agriculture in rural regions. like other developing countries, the drc has more civil servants than necessary, and when the regime or cabinet changes, current civil servants are asked to leave their posts. highranking officials replace them with members of their tribes, resulting in poor continuity of work and a lack of expertise. 3.3. a shortage of agricultural technology and agricultural market openings regarding crop cultivation, the drc suffers from famines. the circumstances are no different in kitshini. figure 1 shows the market supply and market demand curves together. they intersect at a certain point that marks the market’s equilibrium. the price at this intersection is called the equilibrium price, and the amount is called the equilibrium quantity (mankiw, 2012). the drc faces a supply shortage of agricultural products (the point of contact between p and q in figure 1). as such, up to the point of balance between supply and demand for agricultural products (the point of contact between p1 and q1 in figure 1), their increased manufacturing will not lower agricultural prices. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 259-269 265 figure 1: the supply-demand curve the villagers of kitshini remain self-sufficient, primarily by cultivating the cassava shrub. in addition to cassava, they mostly grow sweet potatoes and peanuts. bread made from cassava and sweet potatoes is their staple, even if production is increased. hence, it is necessary to raise the productivity of edible crops (such as cassava) to preserve and boost their self-sufficiency. however, because the market price of cassava is low, it does not contribute substantially to raising farmers’ incomes. thus, many farmers want to grow more lucrative crops. the demand for agricultural products exceeds the supply in the drc’s domestic market. if there are no market openings, with too many buyers chasing too few agricultural products, suppliers can take advantage of shortages by hiking up prices. drc’s agricultural market has already opened, and agricultural products (including lucrative crops) have been imported. figure 2 shows agricultural market openings and prices, demonstrating that the overall market price of imported agricultural products is below the equilibrium price. hence, consumers can purchase imported agricultural products at cheaper prices (p1) than the equilibrium price (p). moreover, the number of agricultural products demanded (q1) exceeds the number of agricultural products supplied (q). the interval from q to q1 represents the country’s market share of imported agricultural products, for which the price and quality are competitive. the flood of cheap, imported agricultural products threatens the drc’s farmers and agricultural development. the government has no alternative policies to mitigate these circumstances. figure 2: agricultural market openings in the drc asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 259-269 266 3.4. unrealistic goals for the project the kitshini irdp’s overarching goal is to increase incomes from the processing of surplus agricultural products, which should result from better agricultural productivity thanks to the project. a processing plant (i.e., factory) was meant to augment the added value of agriculture. this idea is based on the value chain theory (porter, 1985), an analytical management technique that helps one to understand a company’s core competencies as a combined form of organizational capability. companies often use the value chain as a model to identify their standing in their industry’s landscape and to find areas where they can enhance their competitiveness. to do so, they examine how business processes can be improved so that there is greater value to be gained at each stage of the value chain. as for agriculture, the value chain generally goes through the phases of production → manufacturing → logistics → sales → services. the “agricultural value chain” refers to all activities carried out by various stakeholders, from the procurement of raw materials to final consumption. “activities” include agricultural products, as well as all services rendered/used and the entire flow of information involved in sales. analysis of the agricultural value chain entails ascertaining the extra value generated by moving along the chain’s stages; it is an extended concept of supply chain analysis, which was commonly used in the past. we employed the term “value chain” instead of “supply chain” because the additional value is created when agricultural products move along the supply chain. the value chain is being actively promoted in korean agriculture but poses a challenge that only some korean farmers have been able to resolve. let us simplify the agricultural value chain. although it was theoretically possible to demand a combination of secondary (processing and logistics) and tertiary (services) stages (according to the value chain concept) from the drc’s farmers, who are still in the early stages (agricultural production) of agro-industrialization, this was not suitable and hence unrealistic. kitshini’s farmers are still in the production stage; they lack management abilities as well as agricultural technology and are not equipped to handle secondary (e.g., processing, distribution) or tertiary industries. the more direct problem is the drc’s capacity to supply electricity. the processing plant could not be operated initially because the electricity promised by the drc was not provided. machines were abandoned, leaving only oil-operated emergency generators to run. unrealistic goals were set for the kitshini irdp, which skewed the allocation of resources. narrowing the project scope and testing it out on a smaller scale in a trial/demonstration village would lead to clearer outcomes. by doing so, the village’s residents would be able to build their skills; it would then be ideal to enlarge/expand the project to greater scope and complexity. 3.5. the tragedy of the commons as for farming equipment, the government provided a tractor, which the farmers’ cooperative union operated. within the union, there was a tractor operation team and a truck operation team that generate income, so kitshini’s farmers naturally want to work in these groups. however, at present, the tractor is broken. it takes apart and abandoned. the original plan was to increase crop production by developing agricultural technology and to use trucks to transport 20 tons of the yielded crops four times a month, but now, there is no production of agricultural products to sell on the market. the truck was also left unattended, and its battery was taken out and used for solar power. there are solar power panels in front of the town hall, and the electricity produced there is charged into batteries. this has improved living conditions. there are five batteries in parallel at the town hall; they are charged via a single battery connected to the solar panels. the resulting electricity fuel the television in the control tower. since battery life is only about 3–5 years, there is a risk that solar power production will end in the future. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 259-269 267 income distribution among kitshini’s residents is unstructured and unclear. there is no concept of a joint cost burden for maintenance and repairs. currently, all projects have been halted, no income is created, and there is no profit to pay for public expenses. since the tractor and trucks are considered public rather than private goods, there is a high risk of the “tragedy of the commons” due to externalities. maintenance was not considered before the kitshini irdp began. unfortunately, the drc’s farmers lack the money for repairs, as well as a sense of modern economics. micro credits are responsible for agricultural funding in the farmers’ cooperative union. for microcredits, the union brought in a safe by spending $150 on a truck for transport. the safe was placed in the village’s office. rodolphe, the former (second) union leader, placed a local woman in charge of keeping track of the books in lingala, but ever since dimanu was inaugurated as the third (present) union leader, the woman has become untraceable. the truck is not operating, leading to no sales of vegetables in kinshasa, and all livestock (poultry and pigs) are gone, meaning there have been no microcredit loans. there is a mere $600 balance for microcredits; no villagers can maintain the books. in theory, loans are given to farmers who own farms that contribute to livestock and agricultural business, but the loans have virtually stopped. the positive aspects of microfinance are well known due to the influence of bangladesh's grameen bank and founder yunus' nobel peace prize. but there are also studies of adverse outcomes in african countries (mannah-blankson, 2018; nanziri, 2016; sinclair, 2012). even the case of grameen bank of bangladesh, which is famous for its microcredits, it would be stretching the truth to say that the bank has been wholly successful. unlike regular banks, which require collateral and guarantees, grameen was originally meant to be a bank for the poor; it is characterized by trustbased loans, microloans, five-member schemes (which are different from joint liability based on a guarantee), and providing services whereby visits are paid to rural areas. of their loans, 97% are given to women. however, the bank has been severely criticized for raking in profits from capitalism and deepening the vicious cycle of poverty by forcing poor women to repay their debts. unlike how it may seem on the surface, the bank is obsessed with turning a profit. the bank is under scrutiny for exploiting people’s honor, a value that is very important in bengali culture. the bank’s tactics have caused deep cracks in terms of family and community solidarity (karim, 2011). 4. conclusions from the outset, the kitshini irdp was accompanied by an insufficient regional exploration of the drc, a nation completely unlike south korea. as a result, inevitable exogenous variables greatly reduced the project’s efficiency because those who devised the original scheme did not grasp the attributes of local tribes and their circumstances during the planning stage. the korea international cooperation agency (koica) was the project management consulting firm chosen to implement the project. koica has a lot of experience in overseas business, but its understanding of the drc and kitshini was far from adequate. however, it was impossible for koica to fully identify the village’s characteristics based on such a short timeline. moreover, even the drc’s ministry of rural development did understand the village’s features and needs. crops, poultry, pigs, and the processing plant have already ceased to operate and are thus not sustainable. thus, the focus should shift to future maintenance and repairs. drinking water is highly sustainable, as is the elementary school, but low educational standards are a problem, and a strategy to link enrollment rates to middle/high schools needs to be developed. tractors and trucks are classified as common goods, so externalities and the tragedy of the commons occur. hence, for sustainability, externalities should be eliminated, and mechanisms to preserve and fix things need to be established. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 259-269 268 it was necessary to thoroughly investigate the competencies of kitshini and the ministry of rural development; these abilities were overestimated from the start, as the project was beyond their capacity. this ultimately led to many difficulties. it is necessary to conduct comprehensive research on the local area and preliminary feasibility studies to secure enough time to plan the project and design suitable initiatives for recipient countries and target sites. relationships with business partners, in addition to governance between project partners and residents, need to be firmly in place. it takes considerable time to establish governance. at the same time, it is vital to prevent conflicts between modern and traditional practices. recipient countries demonstrate the effects that south korea once experienced, further underscoring the need for more time. ironically, colonial studies re-emerged in britain after world war ii in the name of development research (jessica, 2018). in britain, where colonization was at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, most colonies, including african ones, became independent (koica, 2016). although formerly colonizing countries are morally criticized, they tend to be more familiar with recipient states than south korea, which does not have the same history. paradoxically, south korea is moral but lacks the knowledge and experience of the former colonial power, as well as those of aid recipients. moreover, since joining the oecd’s dac in 2009, south korea’s history of idc has been brief; therefore, south korea needs to do more of an effort than developed nations to carry it out (lim, 2018). by examining the kitshini irdp, lessons were learned for future oda projects; the purpose was to improve the “development effectiveness” of south korea’s oda. the point is that donor nations should better understand recipient countries. the importance of area studies cannot be overemphasized. it is necessary to have an in-depth comprehension of the situation on the ground and the recipient state’s unique traits, as well as at the project site. for this reason, adequate area/regional and preliminary feasibility research should be carried out (lim, 2016). funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adepoju, a. t., & adeniyi, s. b. 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(1980). participant observation. new york: rinehart and winston. usaid (2020). democratic republic of the congo. retrieved from www.usaid.gov/democraticrepublic-congo. http://www.usaid.gov/democratic-republic-congo http://www.usaid.gov/democratic-republic-congo effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 780 agricultural income determinants among smallholder farmers: case of northern part of burundi alfred nzabakenga, luo xiao feng and he yaqin college of economics and management, huazhong agricultural university, wuhan 430070, hubei province, p. r. china abstract about 90 percent of burundi population depends on agriculture for their livelihoods. agriculture employs the majority of labor force and is the basis source of income particularly for people living in rural areas. agricultural income determines the purchasing power of many people living in rural areas. it is therefore important to examine the determinants of agricultural income for proper policy formulation that will help to improve welfare of farmers. the main objective of this study is to analyze the determinants of agricultural income among smallholder farmers in northern part of burundi. based on field survey which covered 218 respondents and using linear regression, we found that among 8 variables used in the analysis, only the family size and the farm size have shown significant effects on agricultural income at 1% and 10% levels respectively. some suggestions were also mentioned to sustain the agricultural returns, the well-being of farm households and to improve the rural infrastructure. keywords: determinants, agriculture, small holder farmers, livelihood, busoni district introduction 1 agriculture has played a leading role in the growth of economies and simultaneously it reduced the poverty and transformed the wealth of many latin american countries, however, the application of similar concept has not occurred yet in sub –saharan africa (ibekwe et al., 2010). corresponding author’s details: name: alfred nzabakenga email address: nzabalf2002@yahoo.fr * this study is supported by the national social science fund project: the investigation of farmer’s hazard perception and promoting agricultural disaster relief capacity in the southwest national area (no. 11 cjy055). the most part of the african countries, specifically countries in sub-saharan are yet to meet the criteria in order to be a competitive player in a growing agricultural revolution and the productivity still lags far behind when compared to rest of the world (babatunde and qaim, 2010). agriculture remains a powerful engine room for the development and an area of employment that provide job opportunities for people without job in rural areas because of their linkages to urban centers (dethier and effenberger, 2011). according to liang et al. (2012) validate that the impact generated upon by the policy on rural livelihoods differs from the collection of household. there is higher amount of off-farm asian journal of agriculture and rural development journal homepage: http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:nzabalf2002@yahoo.fr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 780-787 781 entire household income from the small farms (knerr, 2012). hence, these outcome imply that the abilities of both farm business and farm households to be of assistance to administer weather, climate and market risks allied through agriculture production in line with income from the farm household diversification changes over space and time by particular demographic and economic factors connected with those farms household (mishra et al., 2010). in relation to that, démurger et al. (2010) have made known that economic reforms in most parts of rural china have derived many privileges to diversify both within-farm and off-farm activities. to fully facilitate and improve the income diversification for rural farm household, take positive steps to develop rural infrastructure by such as supplying electricity and establishing good quality access to markets (fausat, 2012). diversification of properties, farming activities, and income is more vital to respective rural household in african (barrett and reardon, 2000) with such diversification into off-farm, earnings contributes a sound percentage to the household and the availability of agricultural development institutions would greatly support the access of credit facilities and eventually improve income in rural areas (fausat, 2012). joliffe (2004) proposes that education could be an influencing factor to which growing in numbers the educational accomplishment regarding farm households is believed to impact on others activities instead of farm work that likely to result in workforce out of agriculture with higher returns in other jobs. mishra et al. (2009) exposed that rationale of basic farm policy is to elevate good income for the farmers and to improve living standards, the policy need to be adjusted to suit the changes in farm household and its businesses over time period. the present study was undertaken with the following specific objectives. a. examine some socioeconomics characteristics b. to examine the determinants agricultural income among smallholder farmers. income determinants burundian economy and the livelihood of its more than 90 percent of people entirely based on agriculture with this 90 percent plus of the population live in 1.5 million smallholder farming (curtis, 2013; fao, 2013; beck et al., 2010; usaid, 2012; wfp, 2004). the households which produce 95 per cent of the country’s food supposed that owning a land into agricultural productions are some of the pivotal aspects of rural livelihoods in burundi (wfp, 2008), and most household in the entire country including kirundo province on the northern part of the country and they generate their income from agricultural production. burundi is grouped into three parts of livelihood, 75% of population depends primarily on agriculture, 14% rely on both agriculture and livestock, and the residual 11% survive from temporary employment, small business, and paid jobs wfp (2004). according to ifad (2012) have understood that unfavorable effects of lengthened drought, as resulted in the boosting of crops related pests and apparently reduced in land productivity were common in the eastern and northern regions of burundi. wfp (2004) accepted that population growth in burundi with the influx of refugees have attributed to the intense pressure on the land. ifad sustained its solid facts that the average farm size within burundi is narrowing, with the soil dramatically losing its fertility and degraded. at the same instance, literally all public land has been distributed or occupied by people. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 780-787 782 lacking food security and raising malnutrition are turning out chronic for an increasing percentage of households. according to démurger et al. (2010) believed that economic reforms in some rural parts of china have driven fair privileges to broaden both withinfarm and off-farm activities. with regard to taking part in those activities it merely plays vital functions by raising level of rural farmers’ income. adenegan et al. (2013) exposed that those factors such as farm size, income, land tenure, food security, level of education those were linked to the gender factor, these variables had strong impact on the commercialization of agriculture and opposed that household were impacted from gender and distribution of household resources into commercialization of agricultural food crops in ido local government area of oyo state, nigeria. comparing with gender, number of females were more than males involve in food crop farming; with level of education for a good number of the farmer-respondents are low (dadzie and acquah, 2012). according to oni et al. (2009). exposed the results that a family labour with more female has a high possibility of increasing agricultural productivity, suggesting that women are needed to increase agricultural services. dose (2007). proposed that human capital are important and involve some good some roles in diversification and secure earnings, démurger et al. (2010) had stated that within-farm and off-farm activities play an important role in growing rural households’ income and proceed to gender and age bias in admittance to offfarm tasks that seen dominated by young people and mostly they are male. according to delgado and siamwalla (1997) to diminish risk, diversifications of agricultural production were decided by most african farmers and tend to produce very few commodities for export. senadza (2011) discovered that the results shown collection of non-farm income increased income inequality between the ghana’s rural households. according to carletto et al. (2007) the analyzed results of the rural income generating activities (riga) set of data verified the earlier findings that that rural non-farm economy plays a crucial role in the generation of income for those households in rural areas. majority of farmers are seen to be occupied in cash crops but with off-farm income supplementation in kenya (wanyama et al., 2010). research method study area the gisenyi zone is one of the 5 zones of busoni district located in the northern part of burundi and was selected as a study region because it is located in bugesera natural region which currently encounter cyclical periods of drought. busoni district has a total land area of 420.89 square kilo meters, while the country total area is 27,834 square kilo meters. busoni altitude is between 1500 and 1700m, the total population of busoni district is 121 626 inhabitants. the climatic conditions in gisenyi zone of busoni district is characterized by two rainy seasons, which usually starts in september and ends in november. the second rainy season is from january to may. between these two seasons a short period of dry season is inserted throughout the month of december and the dry season last from june to september. the average temperature is 20.9 degree celsius per month, with maximum temperature of 27.1 degree celsius and minimum temperature of 14.8 degree celsius. rainfall varies between 700mm in the bugesera depression and 1200mm on bweru heights. recent years, the bugesera region asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 780-787 783 experiences disruptions rainfall and the province have always had a deficit of rainfall especially in its bugesera (mpdrn and undp, 2006). the 95% of the population of busoni district are primarily engaged in the production of food and industrial crops. due to the drought the agriculture production dropped sharply in recent years. kirundo province, once considered as burundi’s food basket, is now facing recurrent food shortages because of low rain fall. the problem lies with the inconsistency of the soil conditions. if without rainfall for almost two weeks, the soil tends to be completely dry and the harvest is lost, muvunyi said (irin, 2009). the recent assessment mission estimated that 35,710 households in three municipalities are highly food insecure, 10,710 households in bugabira; 17,000 households in busoni; and 8,000 households in kirundo (usaid and r bdi, 2010). according to muvunyi irin (2009), 307 families in busoni have fled their homes in gatare. data collection and sampling procedure the data used in this study were collected through a field survey conducted in july 2012 in gisenyi zone busoni district, kirundo province in the northern part of burundi. a random sampling approach was adopted where the questionnaires were administered through individual structured interviews with the head of the households. a total number of 218 households were surveyed. the interview was conducted in both centers; kubaniro and rugarama. a team of six people were involved in the administration of the questionnaire after being trained. organized questionnaires were asked to gather information from the household heads. before the data collection process began, the data collection team discussed with the local leader of the community to gather basic information about the community. small holder farmers with many years of experiences were identified and selected for interview. those farmers their main source of livelihood was through agriculture and they were important for the study because they were able to recall some solid years back, according to mubaya et al. (2012) those people were as good source to capture information related to their livelihood in the past. this study used the descriptive statistics to examine the socio economics characteristics of interviewers and multiple regression analysis was use to examine the determinants of income among the smallholder farmers. results and discussion the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents are shown in table 1. the study indicated that the household with 4-8 members ranked highest with 48.6% while household with more than 12 members ranked lowest with 0.9%. it is obvious that households with higher family members tend to generate higher income from agriculture due to family labor than those with few members. the result revealed that the most respondents were the male representing 88.1% while females were 11.9%. this means that, the most men have the only duty for the family and female headed family are fewer relatively to the male headed families in the study area because of the cultural and belief. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 780-787 784 table 1: socioeconomics characteristics of the surveyed smallholder farmers socioeconomic characteristics frequency % of total mean standard deviation household size 1-4 70 32.1 5.97 2.424 4-8 106 48.6 8-12 40 18.3 12 + 2 0.9 age 20-30 50 22.9 43.37 30-40 46 21.1 40-50 58 26.6 50-60 41 18.8 13.357 60-70 19 8.7 70-80 3 1.4 80 + 1 0.5 gender male 192 88.1 female 26 11.9 marital status single 4 1.8 married 201 92.2 widowed 9 4.1 divorced 4 1.8 educational qualification illiteracy 128 58.7 primary school 78 35.8 junior high school 4 1.8 secondary school 8 3.7 total 218 100 source: field survey, 2012 the age distribution of respondents demonstrated that most respondents fall between 40-50 age groups while very few are above 80 years representing 26.6% and 0.5% respectively. this implies that agricultural income is common among the young household heads that they can work hard and could bear to take the risks from agricultural income. the result also revealed that most respondents are married 92.2 while 1.8% is divorced and single. most respondents had illiteracy accounting for 58.7%, 1.8% only obtained junior high school education, 35.8% attended primary school and 3.7% been to secondary school. this surprises that average educational level is low among the households’ head that could certainly affect their agricultural income. multiple regression analysis was used to examine the determinants of agricultural income among smallholder farmer’s households in the study area. the general form of the model: y = b0 + b1 pnfm + b2ag + b3gnd + b4edcl + b5mrtst + b6fmsz + b7frtlv+b8cndtirgt+ui where: y = agricultural income fs=family size ag = age of respondent asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 780-787 785 gnd=gender edcl = educational level of household head mrtst=marital status fmsz= farm size frtlv=fertilization level cndtirgt=condition of irrigation ui = stochastic term. table 2: regression analysis variables coefficients std error t-value probability (constants) 0.830 0.611 1.359 0.176 family size 0.303*** 0.086 3.539 0.000 age -0.046 0.047 -0.978 0.329 gender 0.055 0.186 0.294 0.769 education level 0.130 0.081 1.596 0.112 marital status 0.040 0.167 0.239 0.811 farm size 4.434* 0.000 1.832 0.068 fertilization level -0.097 0.107 -0.912 0.363 condition of irrigation 0.017 0.108 0.162 0.871 note: *, *** indicate significance at 10% and 1% levels respectively the fundamental objectives of the regression is to determine how the explanatory variables. determine agriculture income in busoni district gisenyi zone and to ascertain the population variation of agriculture income that is explained or captured by these variables. the fulfilment of these objectives is justified by the regression equation: y = 0.830 + 0.303fs 0.0465ag + 0.055gnd+0.130edcl+0.040mrtstt+4.43 4fmsz-0.097frtlv + 0.017 cndtirgt+ui r 2 =0.100, r=0.317, adjusted r square = 0.066, durbin-watson =2.030, and f=2.909. the coefficient of multiple determined of 0.100 shows that about 10% of the variation in the agriculture income in the study area has been captured by the model. although the number is not very high, it is practically enough for us to explain economics phenomenon. the multiple-correlation coefficient of 0.317 also indicates positive relationship between the variables. the coefficients on explanatory variables family size, gender, educational level, marital status, farm size, and condition of irrigation conformed to the expected outcome while only family size is statistically significant. the fstatistic is significant and durbin-watson statistic reveals a minimal autocorrelation of random variables. some coefficients on explanatory variables such as age and fertilization level are not reliable with the theoretical forecast and have tvalue that is statistically insignificant. this may be resulted from the unreliability of agriculture income data. the fact that this equation does not fit well for the targeted area, it needs caution in the interpretation of the result but the model cannot obviously be rejected. conclusion and recommendation agriculture is the main source of income for the large majority of burundians especially for those who are living in rural areas. the purpose of this study is to examine the determinants of agricultural income among stallholder’s farmers in northern part of burundi. regression analysis was run to achieve the objective of this study. among 8 variables used in the analysis, only the family size and the farm size have shown significant effects on agricultural income at 1% and 10% levels respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(11) 2013: 780-787 786 when household size increases by one person, agricultural income increases 30.3% burundian currencies, an increase of one ha in farm size will lead to an increase of 44340 burundian currencies of farmer’s income. 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(2004). food security and vulnerability analysis report wfp (world food programme), republic of burundi, (2008). comprehensive food security & vulnerability analysis (cfsva). http://www.ethiojps.org/mynotebooknwsitems.html http://www.ethiojps.org/mynotebooknwsitems.html http://www.citeulike.org/author/mubaya:cp http://www.citeulike.org/author/njuki:j http://www.citeulike.org/author/mutsvangwa:ep http://www.citeulike.org/author/mugabe:ft effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 16 use of soil conservation practices for climate change adaptation among arable crop farmers in cross river state, nigeria agube, ejeje igwe ogbonna, kalu, ironbar department of agricultural extension and rural sociology, university of calabar, cross river state, nigeria  ejejeagube@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 22-jun-2018 accepted: 18-aug-2018 online available: 03-sep2018 keywords: adaptation, change climate, crop farmers, practices, soil conservation, strategies abstract the study examined farmers’ use of soil conservation practices as strategies for climate change adaptation in cross river state, nigeria. a multistage random sampling technique was used to draw 180 respondents for the study. structured interview schedule was used to elicit data for the study while descriptive statistics was used for data analysis. findings from the study revealed that all the respondents were aware of mulching (100%) and majority were aware of planting of cover crops (98.3%) and organic fertilizer (98.3%) among other scp while some of the frequently utilized soil conservation practices were found to be mulching (mean – 2.95), mixed cropping (mean – 2.85), shifting cultivation (mean – 2.83), planting of cover crops (mean 2.63) among other scp. population pressure on land ranked highest (mean = 2.64) as the most serious constraint to the use of soil conservation practices followed by effect of urbanization (mean = 2.53). the study concludes that arable crop farmers are aware of and are utilizing various soil conservation practices suitable to their local needs to cushion the impacts of climate change and recommends enactment of a law by governments that allows for localization of land for various purposes in order to reduce population pressure on arable land. contribution/ originality the present study investigated local farmers’ adaptation measures to climate change via utilization of soil conservation practices which has shown that local farmers utilized some of these practices and have impacted greatly on their farmlands against some effects of climate change unlike most current studies that concentrated only on national and regional reviews of the subject matter without inclusion of local content which make findings inexplicit to understand. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.1/1005.1.16.27 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: agube, ejeje igwe and ogbonna, kalu, ironbar (2018). use of soil conservation practices for climate change adaptation among arable crop farmers in cross river state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1), 16-27. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 1(2018): 16-27 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:ejejeagube@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.1/1005.1.16.27 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 16-27 17 1. introduction agricultural production and productivity is reliant on several factors such as soils and climate, genomic characteristics of crops and livestock etc. danbaba (2007) opined that in all of these factors, climate is observed to be the utmost significant factor in crop husbandry. in the same vein, antle, 2010 also reported that several components of agriculture and food system such as soil, water resources, crops and other components are predominantly susceptible to climate change. according to united nations development programme report (2001) the backbone of most developing economies is agriculture, with about 70 percent of the population involved in agricultural activities and residing in rural areas. in nigeria, for example, agriculture which is largely rain fed has been and will continue to be the most important supplier of food and employment, providing employment between 65 -70 percent of its total populace. therefore, any slight shift in climate will definitely affect agricultural productivity specifically and other economic and social activities nationwide. globally, the issue of climate change coupled with the continual increase in human population, showcases a remarkable food security challenge but the gigantic question is, ‘how will nigeria assist in feeding the entire population of the world projected to increase by 2050 with further 2.4 billion people? this increase in world population coupled with climate could worsen additional issues, such as depletion of water resources, erosion, and desertification, degradation of water quality and deforestation, further hampering nigeria ability to significantly contribute to solving the world’s food crises let alone its own. in addition, studies have reported that climate change is capable of increasing potential erosion rates, which can result in 10% to 20% decrease in agricultural productivity or more especially in extreme cases. since there is a direct relationship between soil conservation techniques and sustaining and/or increasing output, studies have suggested that if the best soil conservation practices are not used, the possibility of sustaining the output levels required to feed more billions of people by 2050 the world is projected to have, is in doubt; a reason why related studies have affirmed that these sound strategies/practices will add to climate change adaptation and mitigation. according to eswaran et al. (2001) in the 20th century, land degradation was a significant world problem and has continued till date with its obvious effects on crop output, food security, quality of life and the environment. in nigeria, birte et al. (2008) documented that the total runoffinduced soil losses in the south was estimated to be 693,000 km2 while total soil degradation in the north was estimated to be 231,000 km2, largely through wind erosion. these facts are enough reasons why soil conservation practices ought to be taken seriously in nigeria. these practices will not only improve the soil but to a greater extent be adopted as adaptation strategies to cushion effects of a changing climate. soil conservation is a set of management strategies for the prevention of soil being eroded from the earth’s surface or becoming chemically altered by over use, salinization, acidification, or other chemical soil contaminations (ezeaku, 2012). it comprises the combination of all methods of management and land use to guard against soil depletion or deterioration by natural or maninduced factors such as planting of cover crops, bush fallowing, conservation tillage, organic fertilizer, agro-forestry, mulching, alley farming etc. (dimelu et al., 2012). highlighting on the importance of soil conservation practices, dumaski et al. (2006) opine that soil conservation efforts of farmers promote minimum disturbance of the soil by tillage, balance application of chemical inputs which are only required for improved soil quality for healthy crop and animal production with careful management. accordingly, effective soil conservation practices reduce land and water pollution; reduce long-term dependency on external inputs which often times led to increased cost of production, enhance environmental management, improved water quality and water use efficiency, reduced emission of greenhouse gases through lessened use of fossil fuel and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 16-27 18 finally improved agricultural productivity with minimum cost (smith and smithers, 2006). thus, the common objective of soil conservation is the improvement of crop production and environmental protection (pla, 2014). according to abdul-hanan et al. (2014), at the onset of climate change, the adoption of soil and water conservation techniques in sub saharan africa has become even more crucial. empirical studies on the use of soil and water conservation abound in africa and other parts of the world. currently, mekuriaw and hurni (2017) finding in a related study revealed that a large percentage (87%) of farmers in ethopian high-potential areas used physical soil and water conservation measures to keep the soil on their cultivated land and to improve yields while in lowpotential areas, nearly all farmlands in the sample that required physical soil and water structures were terraced and thus able to minimize the rate of soil erosion and improved ecosystem services. in a similar study undertaken by ashoori et al. (2016) in paddy fields of guilan province, iran; finding from study revealed that a good percentage of farmers implemented agronomic soil and water conservation measures such as ratoon cropping, crop rotation, use of compost or manure and conservation tillage while a considerably lower percentage of farmers implemented physical soil and water conservation measures such as bunds and terracing etc. in the study area. from the foregoing, it is important to identify the various soil conservation practices that are utilized by arable crop farmers in cross river state to cushion the menace of soil erosion and land degradation as a result of the impact of climate change in order to create resistance in climate change and adaptation practices into contemporary procedures. in so doing, crop farmers will be encouraged to adopt sustainable soil management practices which are effective in assisting them to adapt to a changing climate. . it is expected that if farmers adopt these adaptation strategies viz-aviz soil conservation practices, on-farm vulnerabilities will be considerably reduced resulting in increase in yields of farmers and income which will in turn improve their living standard. although, in nigeria few studies on soil conservation practices used as soil conservation practices have been documented (mishra and rais, 2013; fapojuwo et al., 2012; dimelu et al., 2012; jorge et al., 2012; birte et al., 2008), it appears there is little or no research undertaken on soil conservation practices used as climate change adaptation strategies in cross river state. however, this study will attempt to fill the gap identified for a sound policy formulation on climate change adaptation strategies suited to their local needs through soil conservation practices. 2. objectives of the study the main objective of this study is to ascertain the use of soil conservation practices as strategies for climate change adaptation among arable crop farmers in cross river state. the specific objectives are to; 1. describe the socio-economic characteristics of the farmers in the study area. 2. ascertain respondents’ awareness of soil conservation practices as climate change adaptation strategies. 3. determine respondents’ use of soil conservation practices as strategies for climate change adaptation in the study area. 4. identify the constraints to the use of soil conservation practices as strategies for climate change adaptation in the study area. 3. materials and methods the study was conducted in cross river state, nigeria. the state lies within longitude 40 50’ and 90 28’ east of the greenwich meridian and latitude 50 23’ and 40 27’ north of the equator (ofem et al., 2013). the state has a landmass of 22,342.176 square kilometres (adinya, 2009) with a total asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 16-27 19 population estimate of 3,862 634 people (national population census, 2006). cross river state is located within the tropical rainforest belt. it records heavy rainfall during the wet season, usually from april to october and severe sunshine during the dry season, usually from november to march. the soils of the state are ultisols and alfisols but predominantly ultisols (fao/unesco, 1974). the major occupation of the people is farming. the population for the study constituted of all arable crop farmers in the state. data for the study was collected with the use of structured interview schedule. multistage random selection technique was used in the selection of respondents for the study. in stage one, a simple random technique was used to select one block per agricultural zone out of the three zones in the state. this gives a total of three blocks. these selected blocks include, biase, ikom, and ogoja each in calabar, ikom and ogoja agricultural zone respectively. this was done in order to have a representative sample from each zone since each zone differs ecologically. the second stage was the selection of three cells from each block using simple random selection techniques, giving a total of 9 cells for the study.these selected cells include ishibori, ekajuk and mbube in ogoja block, akparabong, okuni and nde in ikom block and adim, akpet and ehom in biase block each representing ogoja, ikom and calabar agricultural zones respectively. lastly, twenty arable crop farmers were selected from a list of arable crop farmers provided by field extension agents using simple random selection technique. therefore, total sample size of 180 respondents was used for the study. seventeen soil conservation practices disseminated across the three zones in the state were all selected for the survey. they include,application of mulches, planting of cover crops, conservation tillage, liming, terracing, contouring, organic and inorganic fertilizers, crop rotation, shifting cultivation, ridging, land rotation, bush fallowing, liming, alley farming, agroforestry and planting of windbreak. to obtain a quantitative measure for respondents awareness of soil conservation practices, for each item, a dummy (aware = 1 for satisfactory awareness of each item and not aware = 0) were assigned to the variables. a three point grading scale with response categories of always use (au) = 3, rarely use (ru) = 2 and never use (nu) = 1 was used on seventeen items (soil conservation practices) and was used to measure the extent of use of soil conservation practices as climate change adaptation strategies. a mean score of 2 was then obtained. items with mean score above or equal 2 were considered used by the respondents while items with mean scores less than 2 were considered not used by the respondents. finally, a three point grading scale with response categories of very serious (vs) = 3, serious (s) = 2 and not serious (ns) = 1 was used on eleven items (constraints to the use of soil conservation practices) to measure objective 5. a mean score of 2 was then obtained. items with mean value or score above or equal to 2 were considered as serious constraints faced by arable crop farmers to the use of soil conservation practices and vice versa. the mean for each item was obtained and ranked accordingly. generally, descriptive statistics was used to analyze the objectives with the help of spss edition 20. 4. results and discussion 4.1. socio-economic characteristics of the respondents based on the result of the analysis under socio-economic profiling of the respondents as presented in table, the reveals that majority (52.8%) of the respondents were males while 47.2% were females. although, the result reveals that the percentage of males that are into arable crop production is higher than that of the females but the percentage difference is quite low indicating that both males and females are involved in arable crop production. however, according to fapojuwo et al. (2012) access and control of resources and land tenure system tend to favour the men, thus warranting their greater involvement in arable crop production. most (41.1%) of the respondents were between 30 – 39 years, only 1.7% were aged below 30 years. this result reveals that majority of the respondents were in their active and prime years thus asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 16-27 20 supporting the findings of sabo (2006) that middle aged farmers were necessary since farming demands much energy. according to surry (1997), individual’s efficiency tend to be high and activities are approached with seriousness when one is young and agile. most (32.8%) of the respondents had secondary school certificate and first school leaving certificate (32.8) as the highest educational qualification attained respectively while only 22.2% had no formal education. this result reveals that majority of the respondents were predominantly literate. this high literacy level among farmers usually speeds up communication and information flow and the transfer of new innovations or technologies like soil conservation practices. this finding agrees with angba and ogar (2012) study where only 2.5% and 22.9% respondents had tertiary and no formal education respectively. aboh (2010) reported a high correlation between education and cassava farmers’ productivity in rural communities of akwa ibom state. however, 78.3% of the respondents were married and are still living with their spouses while only 1.7% were single. this finding implies that majority of the respondents were married with families to fend for. the high proportion of married respondents according to elemi (2014) could be related to socio cultural factor where land is only handed over to individuals who are married. a greater percentage (63.9%) of the respondents had between 5 – 10 household sizes while only 0.6% had above 15 household sizes. this large number of household size is in line with effiong (2005), who posited that a relatively large household size enhances the availability of family labour which reduces constraints on labour cost in agricultural production. world bank (1999) also reported that the proportion of rural poor household increases as the size of family becomes larger. it was also found out that 72.2% of the respondents had between 10 – 20 years of farming experience while only 0.6% had between 31 – 40 years’ experience in farming. this finding shows that majority of the farmers have over 10 years of farming experience. farming experience plays a very important role in agribusiness or farm enterprise. fapojuwo (2012) noted that with long years of farming experience these soil conservation techniques also double up as climate change adaptation strategies used by arable crop farmers in order to still keep them in the farming business. near half (48.9%) of the respondents had farm sizes between 1-3 hectares. this implies that majority of the respondents are small scale arable crop farmers, which is typical of most farmers in nigeria in particular and africa at large. this result agrees with the view of eric (1996), cited in ajayi and solomon (2010) that small farming holdings constitute more than 70.0% of all farming activities in nigeria. majority (39.4%) of the respondents had the highest monthly income of n21, 000.00 – n30, 000.00 while only 3.3% had monthly income of n10, 000.00 and below. economic factor that determine farm practices in the opinion of onasanya (2007) also include farmers’ income access to soil enhancing input, educational level, farm size or number of farm plots etc. majority (47.2%) of the respondents had no contact at all with extension agents while 34.4% had contact with extension agents monthly. according to fao (2005), frequency of farmers contact with extension will increase in direct relationship to the ease of access by farmers in a social context. table 1: frequency distribution of the socioeconomic characteristics of respondents description of variables frequency percentage i. gender male 95 52.8 female 85 47.2 total 180 100 ii. age asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 16-27 21 below 30 3 1.7 30 – 39 74 41.1 40 -49 66 36.7 50 & above 37 20.6 total 180 100 iii. educational level no formal education 40 22.2 fslc 59 32.8 ssce 59 32.8 ond/nce 16 8.9 b.sc./hnd 6 3.3 total 180 100 iv marital status single 3 1.7 married 141 78.3 divorced 9 5.0 widowed 15 8.3 separated 12 6.7 total 180 100 v. household size less than 5 54 30.0 5 – 10 115 63.9 11 – 15 10 5.6 above 15 1 0.6 total 180 100 vi. farm size less than 1 27 15.0 1 -3 88 48.9 4 -6 63 35.0 above 6 2 1.1 total 180 100 vii. years of farming experience less than 10 22 12.2 10 – 20 130 72.2 21 – 30 26 14.4 31 – 40 1 0.6 above 40 1 0.6 total 180 100 viii. income n10,000 & below 6 3.3 n11,000 – n20,000 65 36.1 n21,000 – n30,000 71 39.4 n31,000 & above 38 21.1 total 180 100 ix. contact with extension agent not at all 85 47.2 weekly 10 5.6 monthly 62 34.4 quarterly 23 12.8 total 60 100 field survey, 2014 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 16-27 22 4.2. awareness of soil conservation practices based on the result of the analysis of respondents’ awareness of soil conservation practices as climate change adaptation strategies as displayed in table 2, the result shows that, all the respondents (100%) were aware of mulching and 98.9% were aware of inorganic fertilizer, shifting cultivation, bush fallowing and mixed cropping respectively among others as climate change adaptation strategies. however, only terracing, contouring, liming and alley farming that the respondents were not aware of. this finding implies that arable crop farmers were quite aware of different climate change adaptation strategies that can enhance their yield and productivity. the findings are in conformity with fapojuwo et al. (2012); akinbile and odebode (2007) and iheke and onyenorah (2010) studies where majority of the respondents were aware of mulching, organic fertilizer, multiple or mixed cropping, crop rotation etc. to conserve the soil. araya and adjaye (2001) and anim (1999) reported that farmers awareness and perceptions of soil erosion problem as a result of changes in climate, positively and significantly affected their decisions to adopt soil conservation measures. in the same vein, hassan and nhemachena (2008) noted that awareness of climate problems and the potential benefits of taking action are important determinants of adoption of agricultural technologies while yohe and tol (2002) added that these adaptive capacity/strategies vary significantly from system to system, sector to sector and region to region due to range of available technological options for adaptation, availability of resources and their distribution across the population and stock of human capital with respect to education and security among others. this nonawareness of terracing and contouring according to fapojuwo et al. (2012) might be due to their complexities and newness to farmers and could not be adopted because of inadequate knowledge and are only applicable in hilly areas. table 2: distribution of arable farmers’ by awareness of soil conservation practice (n = 180) soil conservation practices aware (%) not aware (%) mulching 180(100) planting cover crops 177(98.3) 3(1.7) terracing 44(24.4) 136(75.6) contouring 96(53.3) 84(46.7) organic fertilizer 179(99.4) 1(0.6) inorganic fertilizer 178(98.9) 2(1.1) crop rotation 163(90.6) 17(9.4) shifting cultivation 178(98.9) 2(1.1) ridging 129(71.7) 51(28.3) land rotation 103(57.2) 77(42.8) bush fallowing 178(98.9) 2(1.1) conservation tillage 174(96.7) 6(3.3) liming 68(37.8) 112(62.2) mixed cropping 178(98.9) 2(1.1) alley farming 81(45.0) 99(55.0) agroforestry 166(92.2) 14(7.8) planting windbreak 171(95.0) 9(5.0) field survey, 2014: multiple responses 4.3. farmers’ use of soil conservation practices based on the result of the analysis on the use of soil conservation practices by arable crop farmers as depicted in table 3, the result shows that respondents’ use of soil conservation practices ranked highest for use of mulching with a mean value of 2.95. this is followed by mixed cropping (2.84), shifting cultivation (2.83), bush fallowing (2.79), planting of cover crops (2.63), organic fertilizer and inorganic fertilizer (2.56), conservation tillage and planting windbreaks (2.41) respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 16-27 23 this finding is in conformity with akinbile and odebode (2007) where respondents used cover cropping, multiple cropping, fallow system, organic manure etc. to conserve the soil and also agrees with dimelu et al. (2012) finding which revealed that farmers commonly used both agronomic, soil management and mechanical strategies of soil conservation as strategies for climate change adaptation and further explained that either practices is important because they affect chemical, physical and biological properties of the soil. for instance, olaitan and omamia (2006) opined that agronomic soil conservation practices (cover crops, mulching, fallowing and others) are used to provide surface covers to reduce erosion by water and wind in order to conserve the soil, protect the soil from direct sun rays and enrich the soil by the decay of their fallen leaves while some reduces the risk of serious pest and disease outbreaks. also emphasizing on its importance, agele et al. (2000) pointed out that the crop residues released reduce the soil temperature by some degree in the upper centimetres of the top soil and offer better moisture conservation by decreasing the intensity of radiation, wind velocity and evaporation and concluded that, it is these elements that enhanced its prospects for climate change adaptation and mitigation. however, the finding also revealed that terracing, contouring, ridging crop rotation, land rotation etc. were not used by arable farmers in the study area. birte et al. (2008) noted that although, farmers were not generally aware of and unable to use mechanical soil conservation practices such as terraces and contours, the practices are effective soil conservation technologies as they reduce soil loss, but because the installation and maintenance is typically labour intensive, they are not commonly adopted by farmers even though they are both adaptive and mitigation measures to climate variability and when used, excessive soil and wind erosion, loss of degraded lands, and silting up of the field are reduced. the mitigation potentials are also achieved through carbon sequestration (absorption of carbon from the atmosphere) by tree planting or vegetative barrier. table 3: mean distribution of arable farmers’ use of soil conservation practices as climate change adaptation strategies (n =180) practices always use rarely use never use mean sd mulching 171(95.0) 9(5.0) 2.95 0.219 planting cover crops 116(64.4) 62(34.4) 2(1.1) 2.63 0.506 terracing -3(1.7) 177(96.3) 1.02 0.128 contouring 4(2.2) 23(12.8) 153(85.0) 1.17 0.434 organic fertilizer 103(57.2) 74(41.1) 3(1.7) 2.56 0.531 inorganic fertilizer 105(58.3) 68(37.8) 7(3.9) 2.56 0.581 crop rotation 15(8.3) 68(37.8) 97(53.9) 1.54 0.655 shifting cultivation 152(84.4) 22(12.2) 5(2.8) 2.83 0.456 ridging 15(8.3) 114(7.8) 151(83.9) 1.24 0.594 land rotation 16(8.9) 47(26.1) 117(65.0) 1.44 0.653 bush fallowing 147(81.7) 28(15.6) 5(2.8) 2.79 0.473 conservation tillage 87(48.3) 80(44.4) 13(7.2) 2.41 0.623 liming 4(2.2) 9(5.0) 167(92.8) 1.09 0.362 mixed cropping 161(89.4) 9(5.0) 10(5.6) 2.84 0.498 alley farming 19(10.6) 30(16.7) 131(72.8) 1.38 0.670 agroforestry 30(16.7) 96(953.3) 54(30.0) 1.87 0.672 windbreaks 90(70.0) 71(39.4) 19(10.6) 2.41 0.675 source: field survey2014 4.4. constraints to the use of soil conservation practices table 5 shows the distribution of respondents based on the constraints encountered in the use of soil conservation practices as climate change adaptation strategies. based on the result of the analysis, population pressure on land ranked first (2.64) followed by effect of urbanization (2.53) among others. however, inadequate labour (mean =1.82) ranked least. this implies that the most serious constraints encountered by the respondents in the study area were population pressure on asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 16-27 24 land followed by effect of urbanization. the finding is in line with fapojuwo et al. (2012) result where major constraints affecting the use of soil conservation practices were population pressure on the land/effect of urbanization, lack of knowledge on soil conservation techniques and inadequate information and education. the result supports the importance of training and extension service in providing information to farmers on different techniques/strategies. thus, ajayi and oloruntoba (2004) in ajayi and solomon (2010) reported that adequate information and follow up were useful in the adoption and continuous used of improved technologies and techniques like soil conservation by farmers. table 4: respondents’ constraints to the use of soil conservation practices as climate change adaptation strategies (n =180) constraints vs s nt mean sd rank population pressure on land 120(66.7) 56(31.1) 4(2.2) 2.64 0.525 1 effect of urbanization 98(54.4) 79(43.9) 3(1.7) 2.53 0.533 2 lack of knowledge on scp 106(58.9) 61(33.9) 13(7.2) 2.52 0.630 3 inadequate information / education 99(55.0) 71(39.4) 10(5.6) 2.49 0.603 4 inadequate supply of organic matter 33(18.3) 92(51.1) 55(30.6) 1.88 0.690 8 inadequate farmland 80(44.4) 74(41.1) 26(14.4) 2.30 0.708 5 unfavorable land tenure system 46(25.5) 91(50.6) 43(23.9) 2.02 0.705 6 inadequate capital 44(24.4) 58(32.2) 78(43.3) 1.81 0.804 10 inadequate labor 23(12.8) 98(54.4) 59(32.8) 1.80 0.646 11 inadequate availability of sc materials 28(15.6) 91(50.6) 61(33.9) 1.82 0.681 9 others 52(28.9) 80(44.4) 48(26.7) 2.02 0.747 6 source: field survey, 2014. key: vs = very serious, s = serious, nt = not serious and figures in parenthesis = percentages 5. summary and conclusion from the result of the survey, males are relatively predominant in arable crop farming in the study area. there is a strong marital knot as divorced rate was low. respondents contact with extension agents was very low while years of farming experience was quite long. educational level was quite low which obviously affected some adoption of technologies in the study area. some of the major soil conservation practices respondents had awareness of and used as climate change adaptation strategies were mulching, planting cover crops and mixed cropping, organic fertilizer etc. this suggests that farmers only used technologies they were aware of. population pressure on land ranked first among other constraints encountered among arable crop farmers in the use of soil conservation practices. this suggests that a major constraint encountered in the use of soil conservation practices was population pressure on land. 5.1. recommendations based on the findings of the study of the study, the following recommendations are made. trainings should be organized by both public and private agricultural extension agents for farmers to educate and inform them about environmentally friendly soil conservation practices that will help them adapt to a changing climate, thereby increasing their yields hence improving their income. the three tiers of government should enact laws that will allow for the localization of land for various purposes in order to reduce population pressure on arable land since population pressure on land was the most serious constraint faced by arable crops farmers in the use of soil conservation in the study area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 16-27 25 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: author 1 designed the study, managed the literature review, conducted the field work, performed statistical analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. author 2 edited the manuscript and checked technical quality of the work. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdul-hanan, a., ayamga, m., & donkoh, s. a. 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(2011) highlighted the fact that corn milling plants are indispensable to the flour industry especially in milling cereals, grains, legumes, nuts and spices into flour. fermented corn dough is used in preparing several ghanaian dishes including kenkey (both ga and fanti), banku, etew and porridge. tilapia and banku or etew has become a prestigious popular food in ghana and is consumed by both indigenes and tourists. to control pest and increase yield in corn production, pesticides are used a lot in ghana. humans can be exposed to residues of these pesticides via the consumption of corn grains which have been sprayed with these pesticides. these pesticide residues may enter into the human body directly when pesticide contaminated corn is eaten. indirectly, pesticide contaminated grain fed to livestock could also be one of the sources that humans who consume these livestock could get exposed to pesticides. these pesticides can accumulate in animals and humans because of their lipophilic nature which easily allows them to be incorporated and accumulated in the tissues. when humans ingest pesticides more than the recommended maximum limits (mrl) it becomes hazardous to their bodies (kibria, 2014). pesticide residues committee (2001, 2002) cites that high levels of exposure to organochlorides cause cloracne, a type of acne caused by chlorine containing chemicals and skin rashes. there is some evidence that organophosphate insecticides affect the immune system and can cause psychiatric problems such as paranoid behaviour, disorientation, anxiety and depression. other pesticides may cause muscle toxic itching, tremors, weakness, and inability to breath, blur vision, vomiting, cramps, excessive perspiration, unconsciousness and even death in cases of high exposure. kibria (2014) reports that immediate health effects from pesticide exposure includes irritation of nose, throat and skin causing burning, stinging and itching as well as rashes and blisters. in addition, he adds that though symptoms of short term pesticide poisoning may be similar to colds and flu, its long term health effects may present more destructive diseases like cancer, brain and nervous system damage; birth defects; miscarriages, infertility, male sterility and other reproductive problems. it may also cause damage to liver, kidneys, lungs and other body organs (kibria, 2014). pesticides such as 2, 4-d; atrazine, ddt, endosulfan and simazine have been identified as endocrine disruptors (edc), therefore measures are required to reduce risks from such chemicals (kibria, 2014). with the associated health issues that come along with consumption of pesticide contaminated corn, the safety of corn foods is very important and need to be monitored. to protect consumers of corn dough products, the risks that are likely to be associated with consuming corn dough and other milled food products need to be assessed. who (1999, 2000) highlighted the benefits of chemical use but stressed that when these same chemicals are misused, they tend to cause adverse effects on human health and the integrity of the environment. horváth (2011) reports several metals as toxic to humans especially when taken in overdose. zinc is an essential element in human diet thus its deficiency in the diet may be detrimental to human health and lead to neurosensory changes, oligospermia, impaired neuropsychological functions, growth retardation, delayed wound healing, immune disorders and dermatitis (institute of medicine, 2001). sammon (2006) reports that long-term consumption of excess zinc may result in decreased iron stores. hewitt (1988) and atsdr (2005) earlier reported that the ingestion of high levels of zinc inhibit copper absorption through interaction with metallothionein at the brush border of the intestinal lumen. both copper and zinc do bind to the same metallothionein protein; however, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 106-118 108 copper has a higher affinity to bind metallothionein than zinc and thus displaces zinc. thus, an excess of zinc can result in a decreased availability of dietary copper leading to the development of copper deficiency. excess zinc may also alter the levels or activity of copper-dependent enzymes which include cytochrom c oxidase, superoxide dismutase, ferroxidase, monoamine oxidase and dopamine β-monoxygenase which results in anaemia and lencopenia. other probable contaminants have been identified as soaps and detergents which are used indiscriminately by operators to clean wet corn milling plants and poor quality oils used to lubricate the parts to prevent friction and enhance milling. the world health organization (who, 2000) and ghanaian standards have identified practices in the production of corn dough which are likely to introduce chemical contaminants. thus adopting and applying preventative measures during production of corn dough using the wet corn milling process could help reduce or prevent such contamination. most chemicals cannot be eliminated from the food processing system because the compounds are often heat stable thus focusing more on preventive measures where chemicals are prevented from entering the food system at unacceptable levels which becomes a priority (lunning & marcelis, 2011). skrbic (2012) and traar (2013) highlighted the toxicity of mycotoxins to both humans and animals stressing that their toxicity is higher than that of synthetic contaminants. traar (2013) reported that aflatoxin b1 is one of the most potent hepatic-carcinogens known making high levels of it in diets an important issue to look at critically. unlike most contaminants which can either be reduced greatly or completely destroyed by heat or high temperatures, aflatoxin easily survives high heat or temperatures and thus difficult to control. the ideal way to keep corn milled products safe from aflatoxin contamination would be to keep it from becoming moldy. food standards establish requirements for the safety and quality of food. however, unless a food standard is part of food regulations, it is not a legal requirement. the ghana standards authority [gsa] (2009) has outlined safety requirements for safe food preparation and cautions that raw materials for making corn dough be clean, well dried and free from aflatoxin. also, the materials should be free from damage, pest infestation, diseases and any foreign or extraneous materials. gsa (2009) indicated that under section 3.2.2 of the ghanaian laws on food safety practices and general requirements, the owners of food businesses are held responsible for food handlers and supervisors’ skills and knowledge in food safety. the purpose of this study was to examine chemical contaminants in corn dough from corn wet milling plants in mankessim as a way of assessing health risk that may be associated with consumption of corn dough. 2. methodology 2.1. research design a mixed-method approach was used. first, a descriptive survey was conducted to obtain baseline data from consumers’ and wet corn milling operators. practices of these groups were also observed to help identify those that probably contributed to the chemical contamination of the corn dough. a quasi-experimental pre-test, post-test control group design was employed to explore possible effects training had on trainees and the relationship that existed between the trained and the control group. the design is illustrated below: pr1 xa po2 pr3 xc po4 pr1 and pr3 represented the pre-test observations. conversely, po2 and po4 represented the posttest observations. the xa and xc represented experimental conditions for both experimental and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 106-118 109 control groups interventions. training covered hot water, soap and sponge cleaning of milling units, as well as oil/shea butter lubrication of mill parts by the experimental group. 2.2. sample and sampling procedure the study population comprised of all corn wet milling plants in mankessim (n= 63). the multistage sampling technique was used to select the sample. first, all the 63 corn wet milling plants were purposively selected. secondly, these 63 corn wet milling plants were ranked based on the following: type of lubricant, cleaning material, brand, origin and type of grinding plate used, material used for application of lubricant, care given to hands after lubrication before touching the milling plant and the general sanitation. the first 5 corn wet milling plants with high risk of chemical contamination were selected. thirdly, 3 of the 5 corn wet milling plants were randomly picked to serve as the experimental group and the remaining 2 served as the control group. the following key was used to identify water from different sources, corn and corn dough samples. 2.3. water samples o – source of water for soaking corn a2 – waste water collected from green plastic container b2 – waste water collected from black plastic container c 2– waste water collected from purple plastic container d2 – waste water collected from old metal container e 2– waste water collected from new metal container 2.4. corn and corn dough samples a1 – e1 soaked corn a2 – e2 first sample collected a3 – e3 second sample collected a4 – e4 third sample collected l dry corn m corn dough processed in corn wet milling plant 2.5. research instruments hundred corn dough consumers were purposively sampled for the study. interviews, observation check list and laboratory analysis were used to collect data for the study. samples collected from the corn wet milling plants were packaged in airtight polythene or bottles (water), stored in a cold chamber and transported to the following laboratories for analysis: water research institute, food research institute, mycotoxin and pesticide residue laboratories of the ghana standard authority, accra and the university of cape coast chemistry laboratory. 2.6. data collection procedure a survey interview was conducted at milling sites to collect information on milling practices from mill operators and an observation list was followed to verify information collected from corn wet mill operators. samples collected from milling plants were transported to the laboratory for analysis. consumers of corn dough products were also interviewed at their places of convenience to obtain information about processes that corn dough often goes through. corn millers and consumers of corn dough products who offered to participate in the study were assured of confidentiality and anonymity. for all interviews, participants’ responses were kept confidential and anonymous. interviewees were given the opportunity to withdraw anytime they wanted to. interviews and corn dough samples were all collected from the beginning of january to the end of february, 2016. the objectives of the study were explained and permission sought from participants observed prior to collecting samples from corn wet millers during the milling of corn into dough. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 106-118 110 twenty-eight samples were taken on different days in total. triplicate samples were collected from each of the 3 experimental groups of the 5 corn wet milling plants at every sampling period and samples subjected to laboratory analysis. duplicate samples were however collected from each of the 2 control groups and analyzed as well. the experimental groups included corn wet milling plants sited in twafo, school kessim and anaafo and the control groups consisted of corn wet milling plants at estate and new nkusukum (guaekyir). water used in soaking corn prior to milling was sampled before soaking and after soaking prior to milling. a, b, c, d and e were used to represent each of the selected corn wet milling plants. numerical subscripts were also used to indicate the different samples taken from the corn wet milling plants. the first three letters; a, b and c were used to represent the 3 selected experimental groups and d and e were also used to represent the selected control groups. corrective measures were applied to the production processes involved in the production of corn dough for the control group. five different statistical analytic methods were used for the analysis. these included iso 16050 method, the quechers, atomic absorption spectrophotometer, gravimetric method and cold maceration. metals were tested for at the food research institute, aflatoxin and pesticides at the standards authority board, grease and oils at the university of cape coast chemistry laboratory and metals, oils and grease at the water research institute. 2.7. iso 16050 method of determining aflatoxin the method involved sample preparation, extraction and instrumentation. dry and wet corn samples were milled into a coarse texture using a laboratory miller and packed into air tight polythene. milled samples were further blended using a warring commercial laboratory blender and sifted into fine flour. the miller and the blender were both washed after each milling. twenty grams of sample was weighed and 2g of sodium chloride (nacl) added to prevent emulsion and enhance extraction of aflatoxin. a 100ml extraction solvent (80% methanol and 70% water) was added to the sample and homogenized for 3 minutes using a homogenizer. homogenized sample was filtered into a 25g volumetric flask using a pyrex glass funnel and glass micro-fibre filter (no 2235) to get rid of the residue. then 20ml of the filtrate was collected using a 20ml pipette. the filtrate was added to 60ml of phosphate buffer saline at a ph of 7.4. then 100ml of concentrated phosphate buffer saline and 1000ml water were added and 10% of it was taken. it was then filtered into a transparent plastic container using glass funnel and glass microfiber filter (whatman paper). after, 20ml of the filtrate was pipetted into a transparent plastic container. immno affinity clean up columns (that is aflastar) were fixed onto a manifold where the samples were first run. pasteur pipette was used to draw and deposit the filtrate gradually into the columns ensuring that the columns were wet and not dry. the columns contain antibodies which did bind and trap the aflatoxin (antigen) in the sample. water (10ml) was used to wash the sample (aflatoxin) in the columns. to remove all traces of water from the column, air was blown twice into it using a syringe. methanol (1.5ml) and 0.5ml of water were added to the sample (aflatoxin) in the column. the sample (aflatoxin) was then collected into a 2ml volumetric flask, transferred into vials and vortexed to evenly mix the sample. the analyte and reference materials were analyzed concurrently using high performance liquid chromatography (hplc). 2.8. determination of pesticide residue using the quechers method samples were prepared, extracted and analyzed. dry and wet corn samples were blended into fine flour using a warring commercial laboratory blender. then 5g of the sample was weighed and 10ml of chilled distilled water added to cool it. acetonitrile (10ml) was added to extract the residue and vortexed for a minute. magnesium sulphate (4g), 1g tri-sodium citrate dehydrate, 1g sodium chloride and 0.5g sodium hydrogen citratesesquihydrate were mixed together in a centrifuge tube and added. sodium chloride was added to absorb moisture from the sample whereas the tri-sodium citrates dehydrate asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 106-118 111 and sodium hydrogen citratesesquihydrate formed a buffer which neutralized the ph in the sample. subsequently, the sample was vortexed for a minute then centrifuged at 3000 rpm for 5 minutes. the centrifuging enabled the inorganic layer (water and the sample) to settle at the bottom of the centrifuge tube leaving the organic layer (acetonitrile) at the top. about 6ml of the organic layer containing the residue was transferred into a centrifuge tube containing 900ml of magnesium sulphate and 150m of primary – secondary amine (psa). the magnesium sulphate and psa were used to absorb any impurities (co-extracts) that were present in the sample then shaken and vortexed for 30 seconds. this process of clean-up is referred to as depressivesolid phase. after vortexing, the sample was centrifuged again at 3000 rpm for 5 minutes then 4ml of the extract was pipetted into a pear-shaped flask and 40ml of concentrated formic acid added and dried on a rotary evaporator. residue obtained was redissolved in 1ml of ethyl acetate. a pasteur pipette was used to draw 2ml into vials and analyzed in the gas chromatograph concurrently. the gas chromatography detectors; electron captures detector (ecd) and pulsed flame photometric detector (pfpd) detect organo-chlorides, synthetic pyrethroid and organo-phosphorus pesticides. 2.9. atomic absorption spectrophotometry (aas) method for water analysis the flame method was used to analyze metals in the water samples. samples were put in cleaned translucent bottles and nitric acid added to break down the electron bonds and free them to be analyzed. standards of concentrations 0.5ml, 1.0ml and 2.0ml; were prepared to run alongside the samples. the aas was connected to a computer monitor and started. d2 hollow cathode lamps were selected and set in their respective positions. calibration was done using the monitor and the wavelengths for lead, iron and zinc selected. water samples were placed in the aas and aspirated into glowed flames representing the concentration of each metal. the intensity of the flame indicated higher metal concentration in the sample. as the sample was aspirated the absorbance was indicated on the monitor and recorded. a blank sample (standard) was also analyzed alongside. a calibration graph was drawn in order to get the absorbance to calculate the amount of metals in the samples. 2.10. gravimetric method for analyzing oil and grease in water empty glass dishes were lifted with forceps and weighed (w1). a glass separating funnel was used to measure 50ml of the sample adding 20ml petroleum ether and 1ml hydrochloric acid was pipetted and added. the sample was vigorously shaken to ensure homogeneity and built up pressure gradually released by opening the side stopper on the separating funnel. a pop-sound indicated release of in-built pressure. the sample settled at the bottom of the separating funnel leaving the ether at the top and was collected into a round bottomed flask, filtered using a glass funnel and glass microfiber filter paper. after filtration, 10ml of petroleum ether was added to the residue and a second extraction done. the filtrate was placed on a hot water bath for the ethyl to evaporate leaving the grease. the sample was dried in a binder (oven) at a temperature of 100 c for 30 minutes, allowed to cool in a desiccator for 30 minutes. the dish containing the content (grease) was reweighed and the new weight (w2) recorded. the old weight (w1) was deducted from the new one (w2) to get the quantity of grease in the sample. calculation where, w2 – the final weight of dish + oil w1 – the weight of empty dish v – volume of the sample taken constant asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 106-118 112 2.11. determination of moisture content in corn dough in determining moisture content of the sample, empty cans were washed and dried in a furnace for 20 minutes at a temperature of 550 o c. dried cans were weighed using a weighing balance and recorded. empty cans were weighed and recorded. three grams of fresh samples were weighed into the cans and weight recorded. weighed samples were placed in hot air oven at a temperature of 103 o c for 4 hours to dry. dried samples in cans were removed from the hot air oven using a tong, placed in a desiccator and allowed to cool for 20 minutes. after cooling, the samples were reweighed and the new weights recorded. 2.12. calculation for % moisture crucible weight = 21.676 crucible weight + sample weight = 24.6812 weight of fresh sample = 3.0043 dry sample + crucible = 23.2787 loss in weight = 1.4025 % moisture: 100 100 46.683038 46.683 2.13. aas method for determining metals in corn dough the method involves ashing, digestion and metal analysis. 2.14. ashing of samples crucibles were first washed, dried in a furnace at a temperature of 550 o c for 20 minutes and cooled in a desiccator. cooled crucibles were reweighed and weight recorded. three grams of the sample was weighed into the crucibles and placed in a furnace at a temperature of 550 o c for 6–8 hours till ashed. after ashing, they were removed from the furnace using a tong and cooled in a desiccator. 2.15. calculation of ash weight of ash = weight of ash + crucible weight – weight of empty crucible % ash = 100 2.16. digestion of sample acid digestion was carried out after ashing the sample. concentrated nitric acid (5mls) was pippetted into the ashed sample in the crucible and placed on a hot plate at a temperature of 80 o c and allowed to digest for 10 minutes. dilute nitric acid (10mls) was pipetted into a beaker and the digest transferred into the beaker containing the dilute nitric acid. the sample was then filtered into a 50ml volumetric flask using a glass funnel and glass microfiber filter paper. the sample in the volumetric flask was topped up with dilute nitric acid to make up a volume of 50ml. after topping, the sample was homogenized by shaking and analyzed using aas. 2.17. metal analysis using aas aas was put on, followed by air and acetylene gas. the d2 hollow cathode lamps were put in place and set into their respective positions. a calibration was done and the wavelengths for lead, iron and zinc were installed. the digest was transferred into the aas and aspirated into glowed flames representing different concentrations of each metal. while the sample was been aspirated the absorbance was indicated by the machine and recorded. a blank sample was also analyzed the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 106-118 113 same way. a calibration graph was drawn in order to get the absorbance to calculate the amount of metals in the samples. 2.18. determination of oil and grease in corn dough using cold maceration round bottomed flasks and crucibles were washed with clean water, rinsed with petroleum ethyl and allowed to dry. about 10g of samples were measured using a weighing dish and weighing balance and poured into a 100ml round bottomed flasks. about 100ml petroleum ethyl was measured using measuring cylinder and a glass funnel, and added to the samples in the round bottomed flasks. the flasks were sealed with cotton wool and aluminum foil to prevent the petroleum ethyl from evaporating and air from entering. the samples were shaken using a mechanical shaker for 24 hours. crucibles were weighed and weights recorded. after shaking, the samples were filtered into the crucibles using glass microfibre filter paper. the filtrates were placed on hot water bath to dry. the samples were put in a desiccator to cool. after cooling, the samples were reweighed and the new weight was recorded. in order to get the oil weight, crucible weights was subtracted from crucible plus oil weights. 2.19. data analysis the statistical product for service solutions (spss) software version 21.0 was used to analyze the data. analyzed data were presented in percentages and frequency tables. data from interviews was input into excel and analyzed using descriptive statistics. the samples collected were analyzed using 5 analytical methods including quechers, hplc, and aas; gravimetric and cold maceration. data obtained from the laboratory tests was input into excel spread sheet and analyzed using a statistical product for service solutions (spss version 21.0). analyzed data was presented as means in tables and figures. means of chemical loads in the samples were compared to both pre and post intervention using descriptive statistics. the significant differences between means were calculated by analysis of variance at p ≤ 0.05. 3. results & discussions females (68%) interviewed in the study turned out to be more than males (32%) as shown in table 1 below. this is probably because more females are known to engage in kenkey production than males and would be involved more in corn dough production and use. the educational background of the respondents could be described generally as average with slightly more than half (64%) having some form of formal education ranging from basic education, through middle, vocational and technical education to undergraduate level of education (table1). only 20% of the respondents had no formal education. majority (about 50%) were married which increases their chances of using large quantities of corn dough for cooking for their families as compared to single (20%) respondents who may not necessarily be obliged to cook much using corn dough but rather buy other foods for convenience (table 1). about 50% of the respondents were traders probably trading in corn dough and its food products and as a result may be more familiar with corn dough production and use. unfortunately, getting the ages of this group of people was very difficult. either some did not know exactly when they were born especially the 20% who had no formal education; others who knew were uncomfortable giving out such information. a few did though but because majority did not, age was left out of the demographic table. however, looking at the physical features of the respondents, they could be easily classified as adults. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 106-118 114 table 1: demographic characteristics of study respondents variables frequency percentage (%) gender males 68 68 females 32 32 educational level no formal education 20 20 basic/middle school 32 32 secondary/technical/vocational 14 14 undergraduate 30 30 graduate 4 4 marital status single (never married), 20 20 married 50 50 widows 8 8 separated/ divorced. 22 22 total 100 100 source: field data, 2016 table 2: mean number of contaminants in water samples tested o a2 b2 c2 d2 e2 oil/grease (mg/l) 0 30 110 90 9..4 48 lead (mg/l) <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 <0.05 iron (mg/l) 0.019 1.14 2.29 1.88 1.87 2.20 zinc (mg/l) 0.015 1.46 1.98 1.70 1.72 1.95 source: field data, 2016 sample o (ordinary potable water) had no traces of oil and grease while the remaining samples had (i.e. a2, b2, c2, d2 and e2) table 2. looking at the variations in the levels of grease found in the different waste water samples, one could clearly speculate that the type of containers used for steeping the corn or the treatment of corn prior to soaking could probably introduce some amount of grease into it. the difference between 110mg/l and 30mg/l is about 80mg/l which is quite significant and shows that the presence of oil in corn dough could be greatly reduced if clean containers and water are used in steeping corn prior to milling. similar trends in variation are shown for iron and zinc (table 2). although waste water from metal containers was expected to have the highest level of metals, this was not the case. this is coherent with findings reported by mensah et al. (2002), abrefah et al. (2011) and tawiah (2010), in studies where contamination of food was linked to utensils used in preparing and processing food. due to the use of old and weak milling plants, lubricant leakage from the plant directly into the dough could be high. this could be exacerbated by possible leaching of metals and other substances into the dough as a result of wear and tear of the grinding plates due to friction from continuous use of the milling plants without much maintenance. the fact that corn wet milling plants are versatile and used for milling several other foods, the risk of chemicals from other foods cross contaminating corn dough is high. also, flavours from other foods could mask that of corn dough if mixed. from table 3 below, aflatoxin b1 levels ranged from a high of 137.7µg/kg in dry corn (l) to a low of 8.7µg/kg in well sorted, winnowed and washed corn (b1). the same trend was observed for the levels of aflatoxin b2 with the highest at 12.2 µg/kg for dry corn (l) and the least at 0.7 µg/kg for well sorted, winnowed and washed corn (b1). this finding is in line with the corn refiners’ association report (2011) which indicated that corn wet milling plants promote incidence of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 106-118 115 aflatoxin in corn dough. aflatoxin g1 and g2 however were very low below the detection limits and so could not be captured. table 3: mean number of aflatoxin from dry, steeped and milled corn samples tested. sample chemical parameters total afb1 µg/kg afb2µg/kg afg1 µg/kg afg2µg/kg l 137.7 12.2 <loq <loq 149.9 a1 20.8 1.5 <loq <loq 22.3 b1 8.7 0.7 <loq <loq 9.4 c1 14.5 1.1 <loq <loq 15.6 d1 33.4 2.9 <loq <loq 36.3 e1 22.1 1.8 <loq <loq 23.9 m 29.8 2.6 <loq <loq 32.4 source: field data, 2016 mean aflatoxin level in the corn dough was 32mg/kg which is unacceptable because by the ghana standards authority (2009) and the australia/new zealand standards (2002), the level of aflatoxin in any food should be ‘0’ meaning no level of aflatoxin is acceptable in food (table 3). thus the figures obtained in this study are unacceptable because they exceeded the acceptable limits. similarly, the mean levels for iron (30.95mg/kg), zinc (7.17mg/kg) and grease (1.16mg/kg) were way above the acceptable levels according to codex alimentarius commission (2011) and efsa (2012) who recommend total absence of these substances. lead was the only substance that was not found in the corn dough samples tested and thus its level could be acceptable according to standards. table 4: comparing mean test numbers for chemical parameters in corn dough to standards chemical parameter ghana/international standards test mean aflatoxin 15µg/kg 32.4µg/kg organo-phosphorus 0.005mg/kg <0.005mg/kg organo-chlorides 0.010mg/kg <0.010mg/kg synthetic pyrethroids 0.010mg/kg <0.010mg/kg iron 0.2mg/kg 30.90mg/kg zinc 0.03-1mg/kg 7.17mg/kg lead 0.05mg/kg nd grease 0.05mg/kg 1.12mg/kg source: field data, 2016 the level of organo-chlorides such as p, p’ddt, p, p’ dde, p, p ’ddd, endo-sulfate and endosulfan sulfate is < 0.010mg/kg which is within the mrls. the level of synthetic pyrethroids residues such as permethrin, cypermethrin and bifenthrin is < 0.005mg/kg which is also within the mrls. however, residues from organo-phosphorus pesticides were not detected. all the chemical parameters determined in the corn dough samples obtained from the different plants ended up far exceeding the recommended standards or limits with the exception of pesticide residues. these high figures may compromise the safety of the corn dough for human consumption. corn dough from plant e had the highest grease level 1.46 and plant a had the least 0.46 (table 5). subsequently, plant e still had the highest level of iron (48.91) and plant d (19.89) the least respectively. the high level of iron concentration in plant e could probably be due to the fact that the grinding plate was sharpened prior to the sample being collected without being washed. this could introduce iron dust into the corn dough during milling. the milling plant was also used to process other products like legumes, fish and wheat which may have also contributed to the high contamination with iron. furthermore, the high concentration of iron in plants a, b and c could also be attributed to the age of the milling plant, grinding plate as well overheating of the plant. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 106-118 116 according to abrefah et al. (2011) and ampofo (2012) old milling plants and grinding plates easily wear out and as they wear out, it can result in leaching of metals into the corn dough. also during milling the grinding plates rub against each other and as a result heat is produced causing migration of metals into the corn dough. the zinc concentrations were highest for plant a (14.19), followed by a drastic reduction in zinc concentration by plant d (6.71) ending at a least of 3.95 for plant e. earlier in a similar study, conor (2002) reported that the use of atlas machine introduced some toxic metals into food during food processing because of friction. lead however was not detected from any of the samples. table 5: chemical parameters mean concentration levels for corn dough samples obtained from selected wet milling plants. chemical parameters corn wet milling plants a b c d e grease 0.46 1.2 0.6 2.1 1.46 iron 26.97 31.2 27.77 19.89 48.97 zinc 14.19 6.12 4.9 6.71 3.95 lead nd nd nd nd nd moisture 41.13 40.27 42.6 42.27 39.13 source: field data, 2016 3.1 consumers’ knowledge on food hygiene and food-borne diseases from observation and analysis of corn dough samples obtained from different wet milling plants risk posed by the level of metals like zinc and iron was established. as to whether consumers of corn dough products know about these risks or not was important to know. thus, it was important to find out from the respondents if they had knowledge about food hygiene and food-borne diseases. all the 100 respondents mentioned that they had knowledge on food hygiene and foodborne diseases and supported the fact that poor hygiene often resulted in contamination of food and subsequently incidence of food-borne diseases which could be fatal if left untreated. following this, respondents were asked how they learned about food hygiene and food borne diseases. majority (90%) mentioned formal education as their source of information with only 10% reporting their main source of information as parents. although nothing much has been publicized about these contaminants in food, consumers in a way have ideas about them. more education on how these contaminants could be minimized or completely removed from the process of producing corn dough and thus promote better health among consumers. table 6: control measures necessary to improve the quality of corn dough control measures frequency percentage (%) observe personal hygiene 30 30.0 clean corn milling plant 10 10.0 assign a machine strictly for milling corn 10 10.0 use quality corn for dough 8 8.0 avoid dough storage in rusted containers 8 8.0 avoid soaking corn more than 3 days 6 6.0 salt can be added to preserve dough 4 4.0 cover dough with net to reduce heat 4 4.0 avoid use of grease 4 4.0 minimize water used to mix dough 4 4.0 wash corn before and after soaking 4 4.0 use clean water/bowl to prepare dough 8 8.0 total 100 100.0 source: field data, 2016 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 6(6)2016, 106-118 117 3.2. some consumer suggestions on measures to improve corn dough quality and safety about a third (30.0%) of the respondents suggested strict observation of personal hygiene as important in improving the quality of corn dough (table 6). fewer respondents (10.0%) suggested frequent thorough cleaning of the corn milling plants and the use of the milling plants solely for one food item rather than multiple food items. other suggestions included the use of good quality corn grains for milling into dough, use of non-rusting or non-corrosive containers for steeping the corn prior to milling and for storing the corn dough after milling. the following were also provided by the respondents: i. clean water and container should be used in the preparation of corn dough ii. corn dough producers should stop using waste water from soaked corn for mixing dough iii. corn should be washed before and after soaking with fresh clean water iv. the dry corn must be soaked in water first for two or three days to dissolve pesticides before using it for the dough and not crush them into grits before milling as dough. v. very little water should be used to mix dough to reduce fermentation and spoilage vi. salt could be added to corn dough as a preservative to prevent spoilage vii. corn dough should be well covered and protected from pests viii. avoid the use of lubricating grease which may leak into the dough during milling 4. conclusion from the findings, it is concluded that corn dough can be contaminated by chemical contaminants from various sources. these sources include metals from the wear and tear from the blades of mill plants, grease that is used to lubricate the parts of the mill, metallic containers in which corn is steeped and dough stored. aflatoxin level of 32μg/kg, iron, 30.90mg/kg, zinc, 7.17mg/kg and grease, 1,12mg/kg found in some corn samples were over the limits or standards considered as safe and could pose a health risk if consumed. considering the fact that these metals are not easily destroyed by heat increases its associated health risks because even after cooking the contaminated corn dough, these metals will still be available in the food. strict adherence to food hygiene could help reduce the levels of these contaminants and make the corn dough food products safer to eat. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: author 1 collected data and carried out analysis. author 2 developed the study, guided the data collection and analysis and wrote the manuscript. all authors agreed to the article before submission for publication. authors would like to acknowledge dr. faustina kwakye for her immense help and support. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability 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(2013). mycotoxins – a hazard in food and feed production. allabout feed, 21. www.allaboutfeed.net. who (1999). environmental health criteria; 210. principles for the assessment of risks to human health from exposure to chemicals. who, geneva. who (2000). who global strategy for food safety: safer food for better health. food safety programme – 2002, world health organization, http://www.who.int/fsf. http://www.ghananewsagency.org/economics/cassava-has-potential-to-boost-ghana-s-economy--98423 http://www.ghananewsagency.org/economics/cassava-has-potential-to-boost-ghana-s-economy--98423 http://www.tf.uns.ac.rs/cefserweb/cefserindex.html http://www.allaboutfeed.net/ http://www.who.int/fsf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 33 determinants of vietnam’s potential trade: a case study of agricultural exports to the european union pham hoang linha nguyen khanh doanhb nguyen ngoc quynhc alecturer; tnu-university of economics and business administration, thai nguyen university, vietnam b associate professor; international school, thai nguyen university, vietnam c international school, thai nguyen university, vietnam  phamhoanglinh@tueba.edu.vn (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 26-feb-2019 accepted: 04-apr-2019 online available: 27may-2019 keywords: potential agricultural exports, stochastic frontier analysis, system gmm, vietnam, eu abstract this study aims at quantifying the determinants of vietnam’s potential exports to the eu, taking agricultural commodities as a case study. in order to achieve this, we employed a stochastic frontier analysis to estimate vietnam’s potential agricultural exports, and a system gmm approach to analyze the determinants of the estimated potential agricultural exports of vietnam. the results showed that vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to the eu have been high and on an upward trend. in addition, factors such as financial market development, trade freedom, technological readiness, and labor freedom have positive impacts on vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to the eu. measures to improve the financial market development, remove trade barriers, increase technological capability, and promote labour freedom are strongly suggested in order to enable vietnam’s agricultural exports to attain its maximum level. contribution of the study this study is the first research on the determinants of vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to the european union (eu) using a system gmm estimator. this approach allows us to get accurate estimates of the parameters because it allows us to overcome the problems of endogeneity, serial correlation, heteroskedasticity, and omitted important variables. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.1.33.46 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: pham hoang linh, nguyen khanh doanh and nguyen ngoc quynh (2019). determinants of vietnam’s potential trade: a case study of agricultural exports to the european union. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1), 33-46. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 1 (2019): 33-46 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8309-9573 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5052-908x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3029-8149 mailto:phamhoanglinh@tueba.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.33.46 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 33-46 34 1. introduction agriculture is one of the key sectors, which has played an important role in vietnam's economic development (gso, 2017). according to the united nations international trade statistics database, agricultural products accounted for approximately 15% of vietnam's total exports to the rest of the world (wits, 2018). among the main trading partners, the eu has emerged as the second largest market of vietnam's agricultural exports1, making up 15.8% of vietnam’s total agricultural exports2. during the period of 2006-2016, vietnam's agricultural exports to the eu have increased steadily, reaching an average growth rate of 9.1% per year3. however, agricultural exports to this market face a lot of difficulties, especially non-tariff barriers. these barriers definitely hinder vietnam’s agricultural exports from attaining its potential level. in order to overcome this problem, identifying and analyzing the determinants of vietnam’s potential exports are of paramount importance. following kalirajan (2007), drysdale et al. (2012), and kumar and prabhakar (2017), potential export can be understood as maximum possible quantity that vietnam can export to the eu, given the current level of determinants of export, considering that there are no restrictions. in other words, the potential can be conceived of what the vietnam’s export would be in the hypothetical frictionless case. by contrast, actual export is given by the current level of the determinants of vietnam’s export to the eu, with existing level of restriction. the ratio of actual export to potential export is then defined as export efficiency. the difference between potential and actual export is then interpreted as export inefficiency or technical inefficiency, which is the unexploited potential export. to this date, potential trade has been discussed at length in the international trade literature. from the methodological point of view, these studies can be classified into two groups. the first group of studies tried to estimate either the trade efficiency score, the potential trade, or both. within this group, two approaches have been proposed to estimate the trade efficiency and potential trade. the first approach is based on the conventional gravity model (egger, 2002; gros and gonciarz, 1996; nilsson, 2000). however, the problem arising from this approach is that the least square method estimates the central value of the data set, while potential trade is involved in the upper limit of the dataset. the second approach relies on the stochastic frontier analysis (viorica, 2015), which deals with the upper limit of the dataset. the second group of studies went beyond the estimation of the potential trade. they added another regression equation to analyze the determinants of trade efficiency, which is calculated based on the stochastic frontier analysis (drysdale et al., 2012). they found that economic freedom, membership in trading blocs, and rule of origin are important determinants of trade efficiency. our extensive review of the literature indicated two potential knowledge gaps. first, there has been no study on the impact of financial market development, trade freedom, technological readiness, and labor freedom on vietnam’s potential agricultural exports. secondly, the problem of endogeneity in analyzing the determinants of potential trade has never been solved. given such knowledge gap in the existing literature, this study aims at quantifying the determinants of vietnam’s potential exports to the eu, taking agricultural commodities as a case study. in order to achieve this, the study is guided by the following specific research objectives:  to systematize the theories on export efficiency and potential exports.  to estimate vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to the eu.  to quantify the determinants of vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to the eu. 1 just after china, which accounted for 24.9% of vietnam’s total agricultural exports. 2 leading export commodities include coffee, pepper, vegetables, fruit, and rice. 3 the authors’ computation based on the data from wits. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 33-46 35 2. materials and methods 2.1. theoretical framework as a convention, this study involves in two related equations. the first equation deals with factors influencing vietnam’s agricultural exports to the eu (trade equation), whose estimates are used to derive vietnam’s export efficiency scores and potential agricultural exports. the second equation focuses on quantifying the determinants of vietnam’s potential agricultural exports, whose values are gotten from the first equation (potential equation). 2.1.1. trade equation the trade equation is based on the gravity model of international trade, pioneered by tinbergen (1962), pöyhönen (1963), and linnemann (1966), which was applied in a number of studies (cantore and cheng, 2018; sanso et al., 1993; sarker and jayasinghe, 2007). according to the original model, the volume of trade between two countries, like the gravitational forces between two objects, depends directly on their masses and is inversely related to the distance between them. subsequently, additional variables were added to the gravity model based on the theoretical ground and empirical evidence. up to now, the gravity models are many, due to the types of variables that are introduced into the equations. however, an augmented gravity model generally includes: (i) economic size to represent export supply and import demand (abeliansky and hilbert, 2017; zheng et al., 2017; wireko-manu and amamoo, 2017; liu et al., 2018), (ii) geographical distance to exhibit transportation cost including cost of time, psychic distance, information and research costs, and economic horizon (linnemann, 1966; heo and doanh, 2015), (iii) land areas to proxy for factor endowment (frankel and rose, 2002; clarete et al., 2003), (iv) landlocked status to reflect transaction costs resulting from the quality of infrastructure and services (limão and venables, 2001; marteau et al., 2007), security (faye et al., 2004), and transit fee (snow et al., 2003), and (v) cultural distance to measure trade costs in relation to trust (tadesse and white, 2008; guiso et al., 2009), incomplete information and uncertainty (cyrus, 2012), and communication (hofstede, 1994; gómez-mejia and palich, 1997). 2.1.2. potential equation four factors have been theoretically identified to have effects on the potential export. they include financial market development, trade freedom, technological readiness, and labor freedom. firstly, the inclusion of the financial market development is based on the fact that the development of financial market promotes export performance (niroomand et al., 2014). this is because good financial market facilitates exporters in the exporting countries and importers in the importing countries to obtain necessary loans for their export and import activities. in addition, the development of financial market promotes faster production, which increases export capacity. secondly, the impact of trade barriers, as measured by trade freedom, on trade flows have been frequently cited in the international trade literature. trade barriers consisting of tariff and nontariff barriers restrict bilateral trade flows because they lead to decreased quantity and increased price of imported goods (winkelmann and winkelmann, 1997; ching et al., 2004; winchester, 2009; jordaan, 2017; khorana and narayanan, 2017; cheong et al., 2018; tanimu and akujuru, 2018). since these barriers hinder bilateral trade, they also prevent a country from reaching its potential export. thirdly, technological readiness represents the availability of technological resources of a country such as development of information and communication technology (ict) and technological adoption. ict decreases the cost of trade (hortaçsu et al., 2009; lendle and vézina, 2015). also, technological progress facilitates the development of new products and processes, which helps the country to become more competitive in the international market (chung et al., 2013; somers, 1962). fourthly, labor freedom includes various aspects of the legal and regulatory framework of a country’s labor market. rules of maximum working hours and minimum wage can reduce productivity, and increase the costs to produce and export. in addition, regulations on labor standards can be used as protectionist measures in international trade. for example, regulation on the right to organize and collective bargaining have negative effects on asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 33-46 36 exports (hasnat, 2002). hence, it can be assumed that more government intervention, means less free labor market, which obstructs the country’s exports to attain its potential level. in summary, based on the theoretical analysis presented above, we can say that, financial market development, trade freedom, technological readiness, and labor freedom have positive impacts on potential exports. 2.2. research methodology 2.2.1. analytical models and methods of estimation this study used stochastic frontier analysis to calculate the technical efficiency of vietnam’s agricultural exports to the eu. based on technical efficiency, we continued the assessing of the potential exports. this calculation was then used as the basis in analyzing the factors influencing the potential export of vietnam’s agricultural commodities to the eu in the following stage. to start with, the gravity model was applied. the model can be written as: 𝑙𝑛𝐸𝑋𝑖𝑗,𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑙𝑛(𝐺𝐷𝑃𝑖,𝑡 × 𝐺𝐷𝑃𝑗,𝑡) + 𝛽2𝑙𝑛𝐷𝐼𝑆𝑇𝑖𝑗 + 𝛽3𝐿𝑂𝐶𝐾𝑗 + 𝛽4𝑙𝑛𝐴𝐺𝑅𝐼_𝐴𝑅𝐸𝐴𝑗,𝑡 +𝛽5𝐶𝑈𝐿_𝐷𝐼𝑆𝑇𝑖𝑗 + 𝜀𝑖𝑗,𝑡 ……………………. (1) where:  ln is natural logarithm; i and j indicate country i (vietnam) and country j (vietnam’s trading partner), respectively; t denotes year t;  exij,t is the value of vietnam’s agricultural export to country j in year t, measured in thousands of us dollars.  gdpi,t and gdpj,t are the gross domestic product of vietnam and country j in year t respectively, measured in billions of us dollars.  distij is geographical distance between the capital city of vietnam and the capital city of country j, measured in km.  lockj is a dummy variable, which equals 1 if country j is landlocked and zero otherwise.  agri_areaj,t is ratio of agricultural land to total land area of country j, measured in percentage.  cul_distij is cultural distance between vietnam and country j. drawing on kogut and singh (1988), the index is calculated as follows: 𝐶𝑈𝐿_𝐷𝐼𝑆𝑇𝑖𝑗 = 1 4 ∑ (𝐷𝑘𝑖−𝐷𝑘𝑗) 2 𝑉𝑎𝑟(𝑘) 4 𝑘=1 where: dki and dkj are the kth cultural dimension of vietnam and country j, respectively. var(k) is variance of kth cultural dimension. there are 4 dimensions used to measure cultural distance: power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainly avoidance.  εij,t is the error term in order to estimate vietnam’s export efficiency with the eu, we apply the stochastic frontier model introduced by aigner et al. (1977) and meeusen and van den broeck (1977). to do so, the error term is decomposed into two components. the first component is pure random term (vij,t), which is a two-sided error term with a symmetric distribution. the second component is the singlesided error term (uij,t), which is a measurement of inefficiency and strictly non-negative. the stochastic frontier model is written as follows: 𝑙𝑛𝐸𝑋𝑖𝑗,𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑙𝑛(𝐺𝐷𝑃𝑖,𝑡 × 𝐺𝐷𝑃𝑗,𝑡) + 𝛽2𝑙𝑛𝐷𝐼𝑆𝑇𝑖𝑗 + 𝛽3𝐿𝑂𝐶𝐾𝑗 + 𝛽4𝑙𝑛𝐴𝐺𝐼_𝐴𝑅𝐸𝐴𝑗,𝑡 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 33-46 37 +𝛽5𝐶𝑈𝐿_𝐷𝐼𝑆𝑇𝑖𝑗 + (𝑣𝑖𝑗,𝑡 − 𝑢𝑖𝑗,𝑡) …………………. (2) following battese and coelli (1988), export efficiency is equivalent to the ratio of vietnam’s actual export to eu in any given year t to the corresponding export when 𝑢𝑖𝑗,𝑡 is zero. therefore, vietnam’s export efficiency to a specific eu country can be computed as follows: 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑒𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦𝑖𝑗,𝑡 = 𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑗,𝑡 𝑃𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑗,𝑡 = 𝑒𝑥𝑝(𝑥𝑖𝑗𝑡𝛽+𝑣𝑖𝑗,𝑡−𝑢𝑖𝑗,𝑡) 𝑒𝑥𝑝(𝑥𝑖𝑗,𝑡𝛽+𝑣𝑖𝑗,𝑡) = 𝑒𝑥𝑝(−𝑢𝑖𝑗,𝑡) the value of export efficiency score ranges from zero to unity. higher export efficiency implies that export volume is closer to the export frontier. a value of zero indicates scopes to raise actual export nearer to maximum level, whereas a value of unity implies that actual export coincides with potential export. based on the estimated export efficiency scores, potential export can be calculated using the following simple equation: 𝑃𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑗,𝑡 = 𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑗,𝑡 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑒𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦𝑖𝑗,𝑡 after the values of potential agricultural exports are estimated, the study employs another regression equation to analyze the determinants of vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to the eu as follows: ln 𝐸𝑋_𝑃𝑂𝑖𝑗,𝑡 = 𝛼0 + 𝛼1 ln 𝐸𝑋_𝑃𝑂𝑖𝑗,𝑡−1 + 𝛼2(𝐹𝐼_𝑀𝐴𝑅𝑖,𝑡 × 𝐹𝐼_𝑀𝐴𝑅𝑗,𝑡) + 𝛼3𝑇𝑅𝐴𝐷𝐸_𝐹𝑅𝐸𝐸𝑗,𝑡 + 𝛼4𝑇𝐸𝐶𝐻𝑖,𝑡 + 𝛼5𝐿𝐴𝐵𝑂𝑅_𝐹𝑅𝐸𝐸𝑖,𝑡 + 𝜇𝑖𝑗,𝑡 ………………. (3) where:  ex_poij,t is the value of vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to country j in year t; measured in thousands of us dollars.  fi_mari,t and fi_marj,t are the financial market development of country i and country j in year t, respectively. its value ranges from 1 to 7 (best). this index is created by the world economic forum based on following elements: efficiency, trustworthiness, and confidence.  trade_freej,t is the trade freedom of country j in year t. its value ranges from 0 to 100 (free). this index is measured by the heritage based on the following equation: 𝑇𝑅𝐴𝐷𝐸_𝐹𝑅𝐸𝐸𝑗 = {[(𝑇𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑚𝑎𝑥 − 𝑇𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑗)/(𝑇𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑚𝑎𝑥 − 𝑇𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑚𝑖𝑛)] ∗ 100} − 𝑁𝑇𝐵𝑗 in which: tariffmax and tariffmin represent the upper and lower limits of tariff rates (%); tariffj represents the weighted average tariff rate (%) of country j. ntb is non-tariff barriers. it has five scales: 20, 15, 10, 5 and 0 respectively corresponding to ntbs being employed extensively across many commodities, ntbs being popular across many commodities, ntbs being used on certain commodities, ntbs being used on few commodities, and ntbs being not totally used.  techi,t is the extent of technological readiness of country i in year t. it comprises technological adoption, and the use of information and communication technology. the data of these components were gained from international telecommunication union and converted to scale of 1 to 7 (best) by the world economy forum.  labor_freei,t is the extent of labor freedom of country i in year t. its value ranges from 0 to 100 (free). this index includes following components: ratio of minimum wage to the average value added per worker; hindrance to hiring additional workers; rigidity of hours; difficulty of firing redundant employees; legally mandated notice period; and mandatory severance pay. each component is transferred to scale of 0 to 100 based on the equation as below: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 33-46 38 𝐹𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟 𝑆𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑖 = 50 × 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒/𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖 where: country i data are calculated relative to the world average and then multiplied by 50. the total score is averaged for country i based on scores of six factors.  µij,t is the error term. the equation 3 is dynamic in nature. therefore, we opt for system gmm estimator to analyze the determinants on vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to the eu. the approach allows us to overcome the limitations of the panel data including endogeneity, serial correlations, heteroskedasticity, and omitted important variables. moreover, we use the fgls method with the panel selection to test the robustness of the results in the gmm model. 2.3. data we used the panel data for 89 countries from the period of 2006-2016. the description of all used variables is presented in table 1. table 1: the description of variables variables definition source ex the value of vietnam’s agricultural exports world integrated trade solution gdp gross domestic product imf world economic outlook database dist geographical distance center for prospective studies and international information (cepii) lock landlocked status center for prospective studies and international information (cepii) agri_area the ratio of agricultural land to total land area the world bank cul_dist cultural distance calculated according to data from hofstede-insights.com ex_po value of vietnam’s potential agricultural exports authors’ estimated results fi_mar financial market development the world economy forum trade_free trade freedom the heritage tech extent of technological readiness the world economy forum labor_free extent of labor freedom the heritage 3. results and discussion the trade equation has 979 observations and potential equation has 280 observations. the summary statistics of variables used in the trade equation and potential equation is shown in appendix 1. the result of levin-lin-chu test for stationarity in panel data are shown in table 2. the test results reject strongly null hypothesis that all the panels contain a unit root. it means that all variables are stationary at the original level, which is a precondition for avoiding false regression results. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 33-46 39 table 2: results of levin-lin-chu unit root test explanatory variables unadjusted t adjusted t* probability 4 lnexij,t -21.276 -15.622 0.000 ln(gdpi,t ×gdpj,t) -18.287 -17.211 0.000 lnagri_areaj,t -27.700 -23.707 0.000 (fi_mari,t ×fi_marj,t) -17.194 -13.326 0.000 trade_freej,t -76.611 -75.668 0.000 table 3 shows estimation results from the stochastic frontier model. the results of the estimation corresponded to the theory used in most of the studied variables, namely: the economic size represented by gdp and the change in vietnam’s agricultural export, in the same direction. whereas, geographic distance, the proportion of agricultural land to the total land area of the importing country, landlocked status, and cultural distance between the exporting country and the importing country have negative relationship with the export of vietnam’s agricultural commodities. table 3: results of the stochastic frontier model explanatory variables coefficient std. error probability constant 10.921** 0.815 0.000 ln(gdpi,t ×gdpj,t) 0.896** 0.026 0.000 lndistij -0.991** 0.081 0.000 lockj -0.464** 0.114 0.000 lnagri_areaj,t -0.065** 0.012 0.000 cul_distij -0.233** 0.047 0.000 log likelihood -1556.481 wald chi2 1970.99 observations 979 ** significant at the 0.01 level table 4 shows the results of the calculated technical efficiency of vietnam's agricultural exports to the eu. technical efficiencies are quite stable, 11 out of 28 countries experience a slight increase in their technical efficiency (9.1% on average during the period). only luxembourg’s technical efficiency increased by 44%; however, the proportion of vietnam’s agricultural exports to this country is very small, only below 1%. the technical efficiency of the remaining 17/28 countries decreased moderately (the average decrease during the period was just 5.1%). at the end of the period (2016), technical efficiencies increased by the highest margin at 73% (belgium). this shows that the potential for vietnam's agricultural export growth to the eu is still very high. table 4: technical efficiency of agricultural export from vietnam to the eu countries 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 eu market 0.64 0.65 0.66 0.64 0.64 0.66 0.65 0.64 0.64 0.62 0.61 austria 0.75 0.76 0.76 0.71 0.72 0.73 0.72 0.73 0.72 0.72 0.71 belgium 0.76 0.75 0.79 0.76 0.76 0.77 0.76 0.76 0.75 0.74 0.73 bulgaria 0.39 0.43 0.51 0.48 0.44 0.41 0.43 0.44 0.47 0.39 0.35 croatia 0.28 0.33 0.38 0.34 0.37 0.37 0.39 0.31 0.34 0.26 0.23 cyprus 0.21 0.28 0.38 0.40 0.41 0.42 0.34 0.28 0.32 0.24 0.24 czech republic 0.54 0.59 0.65 0.64 0.62 0.62 0.57 0.54 0.52 0.50 0.50 denmark 0.60 0.63 0.64 0.64 0.64 0.65 0.64 0.63 0.65 0.61 0.62 estonia 0.50 0.46 0.54 0.56 0.50 0.51 0.46 0.47 0.41 0.38 0.43 4 the p-value of adjusted t* asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 33-46 40 finland 0.26 0.32 0.41 0.27 0.28 0.33 0.33 0.29 0.28 0.27 0.30 france 0.58 0.60 0.61 0.59 0.58 0.60 0.60 0.59 0.61 0.57 0.56 germany 0.65 0.67 0.67 0.66 0.66 0.68 0.68 0.66 0.66 0.64 0.64 greece 0.43 0.48 0.48 0.50 0.49 0.52 0.53 0.49 0.49 0.46 0.46 hungary 0.74 0.75 0.67 0.65 0.67 0.68 0.65 0.63 0.65 0.66 0.66 ireland 0.23 0.30 0.23 0.29 0.34 0.31 0.31 0.29 0.32 0.30 0.27 italy 0.66 0.68 0.69 0.67 0.67 0.69 0.69 0.68 0.67 0.65 0.64 latvia 0.33 0.38 0.44 0.48 0.45 0.46 0.41 0.40 0.43 0.42 0.38 lithuania 0.34 0.49 0.58 0.61 0.52 0.48 0.49 0.41 0.45 0.44 0.42 luxembourg 0.17 0.04 0.15 0.40 0.44 0.14 0.47 0.43 0.62 0.60 0.61 malta 0.25 0.43 0.51 0.48 0.49 0.55 0.50 0.50 0.53 0.37 0.37 netherlands 0.72 0.73 0.73 0.72 0.72 0.74 0.73 0.71 0.72 0.71 0.71 poland 0.69 0.69 0.71 0.67 0.66 0.66 0.62 0.64 0.63 0.61 0.59 portugal 0.49 0.54 0.59 0.63 0.62 0.64 0.63 0.64 0.62 0.61 0.60 romania 0.42 0.41 0.45 0.46 0.45 0.44 0.40 0.39 0.36 0.32 0.29 slovak republic 0.69 0.68 0.66 0.68 0.67 0.68 0.65 0.66 0.61 0.57 0.54 slovenia 0.47 0.53 0.53 0.54 0.55 0.54 0.46 0.48 0.48 0.40 0.44 spain 0.64 0.67 0.67 0.65 0.64 0.66 0.65 0.64 0.64 0.61 0.59 sweden 0.42 0.46 0.48 0.47 0.47 0.48 0.49 0.44 0.43 0.42 0.40 united kingdom 0.60 0.64 0.64 0.61 0.63 0.66 0.65 0.64 0.65 0.64 0.64 source: authors’ own calculations however, there are some special cases where the technical efficiency increased or decreased sharply during the study period. typically, the technical efficiency of vietnam’s agricultural exports to luxembourg increased dramatically by 44% (from 17% to 61%). this change pushed luxembourg from the lowest technical efficiency to the eighth position among the eu’s members. on the contrary, the biggest drop was witnessed by the slovak republic with 15% (from 69% to 54%). this decline pulled slovak republic, from the country with the sixth highest technical efficiency of vietnam's agricultural exports among eu’s members at the beginning of the period, to the fifteenth at the end of the period. from the calculation of the technical efficiency in table 4, we calculated vietnam's potential agricultural exports to the eu, whose results are shown in table 5. calculated data shows that vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to the eu have been high and shown signs of increasing. moreover, the eu member countries which have the largest potential exports for vietnam's agricultural exports are: germany (1750.85 million usd), the united kingdom (736.08 million usd), spain (731.09 million usd), italy (711.45 million usd), france (694.39 million usd), and the netherlands (677.69 million usd), all in 2016. the countries having the smallest potential are: malta (more than 2.58 million usd), hungary, latvia, slovenia, and slovak republic. potential exports of all these countries were below 20 million usd in 2016. the difference between these two groups of countries having the highest and lowest potential is very large. for example in 2016, the potential exports to the german market were 679 times more than potential exports to malta. in 2006, the potential exports to the german market were 1,198 times more than potential exports to malta. this difference is mainly due to the impact of the economic size represented by the gdp between the two groups. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 33-46 41 table 5: the potential for vietnam's agricultural exports to the eu (million usd) country 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 eu market 3143.74 4184.49 4979.92 4380.31 4790.5 6088.43 6239.43 6106.88 6676.12 6595.48 7015.26 austria 58.05 78.05 93.13 45.50 55.49 73.83 74.44 84.55 88.85 97.63 90.58 belgium 199.82 199.85 367.12 263.03 267.52 343.63 344.90 352.12 333.06 348.34 324.81 bulgaria 21.75 28.90 44.29 40.44 38.76 39.43 45.11 50.40 61.25 54.97 56.80 croatia 16.66 21.79 27.16 24.62 28.28 31.05 34.07 31.52 36.74 35.16 36.93 cyprus 9.41 12.17 16.55 17.84 20.17 22.84 20.45 19.78 22.77 22.64 25.28 czech republic 44.03 65.33 104.76 99.20 100.17 111.10 90.37 85.24 86.90 92.63 105.49 denmark 33.45 47.78 57.36 58.31 60.86 75.06 72.92 77.24 94.98 79.36 94.43 estonia 10.16 10.97 15.44 15.54 13.60 16.48 15.14 17.33 16.27 17.08 22.42 finland 24.62 33.83 46.92 32.08 36.67 46.26 49.51 50.16 53.30 58.72 70.09 france 313.52 400.90 449.40 413.74 447.89 563.46 591.98 608.03 742.83 664.17 694.39 germany 718.99 1005.96 1074.80 975.15 1144.05 1466.85 1641.84 1473.95 1621.38 1550.09 1750.85 greece 33.46 46.53 50.85 57.37 59.18 69.68 71.43 63.89 69.87 68.01 78.07 hungary 13.92 18.52 5.85 4.79 7.17 8.73 6.57 5.83 8.04 9.85 10.61 ireland 10.00 14.76 12.57 15.55 19.79 19.86 20.87 21.50 26.90 28.01 29.03 italy 345.61 460.42 581.73 481.59 511.60 691.80 734.04 684.22 717.79 683.21 711.45 latvia 4.22 6.03 7.99 8.29 7.97 9.40 9.00 9.52 11.87 13.15 12.88 lithuania 10.23 19.38 32.83 35.78 25.17 24.59 28.28 24.19 30.86 33.10 36.08 luxembourg 2.36 1.41 2.89 5.73 7.03 3.49 9.39 8.92 21.70 21.75 25.91 malta 0.60 1.37 2.19 1.96 2.28 3.37 2.81 3.09 3.91 2.32 2.58 netherlands 299.55 384.94 426.45 390.85 436.15 598.18 540.38 508.12 581.94 628.24 677.69 poland 206.69 254.48 339.81 259.40 261.97 313.05 250.72 309.93 323.51 336.14 332.32 portugal 32.53 46.97 66.57 86.24 90.28 106.91 108.77 121.85 119.72 122.69 127.72 romania 43.74 51.86 68.91 70.41 73.99 77.96 76.49 81.08 83.40 83.86 89.16 slovak republic 18.12 21.86 21.00 25.45 25.50 32.77 26.88 33.21 24.74 21.81 20.76 slovenia 8.43 12.58 14.46 14.67 16.83 17.86 14.21 16.23 17.87 15.58 19.72 spain 402.79 549.82 629.71 565.23 562.97 718.35 732.53 721.08 764.55 724.72 731.09 sweden 38.75 51.43 61.65 59.69 69.08 79.93 91.30 84.31 88.89 95.84 102.03 united kingdom 222.26 336.60 357.51 311.88 400.07 522.50 535.03 559.59 622.24 686.44 736.08 source: authors’ own calculations asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 33-46 42 to verify suitability and effectiveness of the model gmm, ar (2) and sargan tests were used. ar (2) test could not reject the null hypothesis of no autocorrelation. at the same time, sargan test result showed that all instruments used in the equation (3) were valid. in summary, using the gmm model with instrumental variables in this case is suitable and efficient. moreover, fgls regression results affirmed robustness of gmm regression results. table 6: results of vietnam's potential agriculture export explanatory variables fgls gmm lnex_poij,t-1 0.954** (0.010) (fi_mari,t ×fi_marj,t) 0.036** 0.018** (0.011) (0.001) trade_freej,t 0.019** 0.050** (0.005) (0.007) techi,t 0.130 0.115** (0.073) (0.034) labor_freei,t 0.001 0.028** (0.005) (0.003) constant 7.867** -6.247** (0.548) (0.702) number of observations 308 280 ar (2) test z -0.36 pr > z 0.721 sargan test chi (2) 23.85 prob > chi2 0.202 note: standard errors in parentheses ** significant at the 0.01 level table 6 shows that all variables are statistically significant. at the same time, they are consistent with theory: the more developed the financial market, the higher vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to the eu. this result is consistent with niroomand et al. (2014). the freer the trade, the higher vietnam’s potential agricultural export to the eu. this finding is supported by riley and miller (2015). similarly, technological readiness of vietnam positively impacts on its agricultural exports to the eu. and finally, the higher the freedom of the labor market in vietnam, the higher vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to the eu. 4. conclusion this study used stochastic frontier analysis to estimate vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to the eu. in addition, a system gmm approach was used to analyze the determinants of the estimated potential agricultural exports of vietnam. the major findings are summarized as follows. generally, potential agricultural exports of vietnam to the eu have been high and on an upward trend. the countries with the highest potentials for vietnam's agricultural exports are germany, the united kingdom, spain, italy, france, and the netherlands. in terms of value, it is possible to increase agricultural export value to these markets by 30-40%. in addition, there are positive correlations between financial market development, trade freedom, technological readiness, labor freedom and vietnam’s potential agricultural exports to the eu. from the above conclusions, we propose some measures through which vietnam’s agricultural exports can attain its potential level. first, it is necessary to improve the efficiency and stability of the financial market of the vietnam, as well as maintain a healthy macroeconomic environment. moreover, vietnam should actively participate in ftas in order to reduce trade barriers relating to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 33-46 43 agricultural exports. it is also important to reform regulations of the vietnamese labor market to increase the freedom level in the labor market. finally, the vietnamese government needs to invest more in technological development to raise the agricultural exports of the country. funding: this article is the product of thai nguyen university’s scientific and technological project carried out in 2017. the project entitled “analysis potential export of vietnam’s agricultural products to the european union (eu) market” under code number: đh2017-tn08-07 competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors would like to express our honest appreciation to the thai nguyen university for their financial support. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abeliansky, a. l., & hilbert, m. 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(2017). the determinants of chinese nonferrous metals imports and exports. resources policy, 53, 238-246. doi:10.1016/j.resourpol.2017.06.003. https://www.heritage.org/international-economies/report/2016-index-economic-freedom-yet-more-evidence-free-trades-benefits https://www.heritage.org/international-economies/report/2016-index-economic-freedom-yet-more-evidence-free-trades-benefits https://www.heritage.org/ http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-index-2017-2018/competitiveness-rankings/#series=netuserpct http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-index-2017-2018/competitiveness-rankings/#series=netuserpct https://wits.worldbank.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 33-46 46 appendix appendix 1: summary of statistics variables observations mean std. dev min max lnexij,t 979 10.185 2.178 1.768 15.321 ln(gdpi,t ×gdpj,t) 979 9.925 1.823 4.829 15.137 lndistij 979 8.958 0.646 6.772 9.850 lockj 979 0.135 0.342 0.000 1.000 lnagri_areaj,t 979 0.718 3.050 0.002 2.925 cul_distij 979 2.957 1.242 1.000 6.335 (fi_mari,t ×fi_marj,t) 308 17.546 2.729 9.781 23.661 trade_freej,t 308 86.012 2.765 65.800 88.000 techi,t 308 3.230 0.291 2.594 3.582 labor_freei,t 308 66.581 2.238 62.600 70.000 source: statistical result appendix 2: countries included in the sample order countries order countries order countries 1 albania 31 honduras 61 peru 2 angola 32 hong kong sar 62 philippines 3 argentina 33 hungary 63 poland 4 australia 34 iceland 64 portugal 5 austria 35 india 65 romania 6 bangladesh 36 indonesia 66 russia 7 belgium 37 ireland 67 saudi arabia 8 brazil 38 israel 68 senegal 9 bulgaria 39 italy 69 serbia 10 canada 40 jamaica 70 sierra leone 11 chile 41 japan 71 singapore 12 china 42 jordan 72 slovak republic 13 colombia 43 kazakhstan 73 slovenia 14 costa rica 44 korea 74 south africa 15 croatia 45 kuwait 75 spain 16 cyprus 46 latvia 76 sri lanka 17 czech republic 47 lebanon 77 sweden 18 denmark 48 lithuania 78 switzerland 19 dominican republic 49 luxembourg 79 tanzania 20 ecuador 50 malaysia 80 thailand 21 egypt 51 malta 81 trinidad and tobago 22 estonia 52 mexico 82 turkey 23 ethiopia 53 morocco 83 ukraine 24 fiji 54 mozambique 84 united arab emirates 25 finland 55 nepal 85 united kingdom 26 france 56 netherlands 86 united states 27 germany 57 new zealand 87 uruguay 28 ghana 58 nigeria 88 venezuela 29 greece 59 pakistan 89 zambia 30 guatemala 60 panama effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 541 evaluation of fadama iii project in the niger delta area of nigeria: constraints and strategies perceptions oghenero joseph ovharhe department of agricultural economics & extension, faculty of agriculture, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria  drovharhe.oghenero@gmail.com article history: received: 10-mar-2020 accepted: 19-may-2020 online available: 11-jul2020 keywords: constraints, fadama, agriculture, strategies, farmers abstract the study evaluated the constraints to the fadama iii project in some niger delta areas; namely, akwa ibom, bayelsa, and the delta states of nigeria. a multistage sampling process was engaged to choose a sample of 420 respondents for the study. data analyzed was done using means and anova. results obtained revealed that some constraint such as inadequate fund (�̅�=3.78), inadequate inputs support ( �̅�=3.35) and high bureaucracy of donor agencies ( �̅�=3.31) were identified as serious constraints by the respondents. the pooled mean constraints of respondents in the study area were bayelsa, 2.40; akwa ibom, 2.32; and delta, 2.24 accordingly. high values were placed on proposed strategies to overcome fadama iii constraints such as the conduct of regular farmers training sessions (mean=3.36) and improved fug management team (mean = 3.30). the study concluded that some constraints are serious and others not serious; and accepted the null hypothesis (p>0.05) that there was no significant variation in the constraints facing the fadama iii project among the selected niger delta states. the study noted that there should be more support in the provision of farm inputs and assets to catapult productivity and timely delivery of advisory support. contribution/ originality the study contributed to exposing the constraints facing farmers and employed strategies to encourage best management practices and sustainability in agricultural productivity in the niger delta area. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.541.549 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: oghenero joseph ovharhe (2020). evaluation of fadama iii project in the niger delta area of nigeria: constraints and strategies perceptions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 541-549. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 541-549 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:drovharhe.oghenero@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.541.549 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 541-549 542 1. introduction constraints to agricultural productivity in nigeria, according to dayo et al. (2009), include poor agricultural pricing policies, low use of fertilizer and improved crop varieties, poverty and women’s limited access to inputs/assets, low access to agricultural credit, low public expenditure on agricultural research, poor funding of agricultural technologies, poor funding and coordination of agricultural extension. ike (2014 and 2016) buttressed the fact that over time, low-income levels constitute constraints in agricultural productivity. other problems are land tenure system and land degradation, poor post-harvest management system, poor market access/marketing efficiency, and poor road conditions. ajieh and uzokwe (2007) in a study on adoption of cassava production technologies among women farmers, identified five important constraints to the adoption of cassava production technologies. these are inadequate funds, the huge cost of technologies, low volume of land space, insufficient of appropriate technologies, and low extension contact. poor participation in agricultural production was also seen as factors contributing to constraints in farming ventures (inoni et al., 2017). agricultural activities are entangled with many challenges; varying from social to economic factors particularly among the undeveloped nations (ovwigho, 2014a; ajieh and okoro, 2015). ovwigho (2014b) advocated that effective advisory services are useful strategies in overcoming constraints facing agricultural development in nigeria. in a similar note, gani et al. (2019) expatiated on the need to diversify in livelihood activities as part of strategies to reduce the challenges in food security. strategies adoptions are way forward to the amelioration of poor productivity in agriculture as a result of constraints. gbigbi et al. (2019) viewed cooperative financial support as part of strategies to reduce the numerous constraints plaguing farm practices as typified in the aquaculture sector. this applies to fadama iii. fadama iii operationalization is based on group dynamics as displayed in a cooperative society mechanism. fadama fundamentally originated from a hausa word connoting low land, alluvial deposit cropland farming. a chronicle trend in the development of fadama in partnership with the world bank has this sequence: fadama i (1993 1999), fadama ii (2003 -2007), and fadama iii project (2009 2014). thereafter, the fadama iii project integrated with state employment and expenditure for results (seefor) to reach the unreached areas of the niger delta states with the same mandate (2015 2017). the fadama activities cover agricultural production, livelihood potentials, infrastructural interface, marketing, and community felt needs across registered cooperative members such men, women, widows, and youths (ovwigho, 2013; chukwuji, 2013; ovharhe, 2017). the fadama administration is a bottom-top approach where registered farmers known as fadama users’ groups (fugs) and fadama community association (fcas) pass through fadama local facilitator to the fadama management team and state project coordinator (spc). fadama iii project has rendered many technical innovations to farmers to boost their yields and income generation. in recent times, blewitt (2008) stressed that technological advancements help provide farmers with tools and resources to make farming more sustainable. fadama iii project is focused on group participation as designed and community-based. fadama iii project participants are like stakeholders in agribusiness who cannot function if their farming and post-harvest activities are hampered by excessive bureaucracy. the prevalent-present issue of corruption and setbacks can seriously have an impact on agricultural marketing efficiency as constraints in many nations by increasing the transaction costs faced by stakeholders in the marketing chain (reardon et al., 2003). inefficient agricultural marketing is perceived as a constraint fadama iii project upholds food security views. a major constraint to food security is a setback in agricultural communication of the latest technology to farmers which involves the unavailability of relevant agricultural information in most communities. ugboma (2009) pointed out that most asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 541-549 543 farmers visit local extension advisers community offices find it difficult to get materials, literature, and information on contemporary agriculture. this gap was confirmed by ovharhe (2014) in a survey of food production in delta state, nigeria. fadama iii project in a bid to alleviate these constraints, set up outreach offices in proxy for local facilitators. the issue is how effective are they? it is effective or not is one of the purposes of assessing their status in this study. the decline in agricultural productivity is partly tied to the negligence in addressing prevalent limitations or constraints to food security in the niger delta area. to address any perceived constraints, a management team of both internal staff and external stakeholder experts conduct participatory rural appraisal (pra), need assessment (na), and baseline studies which form templates to strategic planning and implementation of mandates. many fadama operational areas work with mandates that are component-based. both internal and external stakeholders provide counterpart funding for project implementation across various fcas. advisory services include activities to identify new or improved agricultural and marketing opportunities to eliminate perceived constraints (national fadama development office, 2007 and 2008; state fadama coordinating office (sfco, 2010). ovharhe (2017) opined that there is a need to critically examine the different constraints and challenges that affected the fadama iii project in the niger delta to provide meaningful interventions for increasing farm productivity. importantly, to breach the gaps posed by perceived constraints, the study was motivated by this interrogation: to what extent did the envisaged constraints affect the fadama iii project across the selected niger delta states? hence, this study aimed to assess the causal factors to fadama iii project constraints and propose strategies to overcome fadama iii constraints in the niger delta area. the study was guided with a null hypothesis that: ho: there is no significant variation in the constraints facing fadama iii farmers among the niger delta states. 2. methodology the population of the study comprised fadama iii farmers involved in cassava, poultry and fisheries production in akwa ibom, bayelsa and delta states of nigeria. the three states were purposely selected. the reason for the selection of three states from the nine states of the niger delta area is because fadama operations are homogenous in design from the central, federal capital territory, abuja. a multistage sampling procedure was used to select respondents randomly from the study area. the lists of registered cassava, poultry, and fisheries fcas and fugs were obtained from the state fadama coordinating offices (sfcos). from the list of registered farmers groups with the three states fadama coordinating offices (sfcos), a baseline of 28 functional fugs (25%) were selected from 112 fugs across the lgas respectively. this resulted in 84 fugs from three states. furthermore, 70 cassava farmers, 40 poultry farmers, and 30 aquaculture farmers were randomly selected to achieve a sample size of 140 farmers per state and 420 respondents on the whole (table 1). it should be noted that each fug has a range of 10 15 members hence a baseline of five farmers was selected from each group. table 1: sampling distribution of respondents in the study area state stage 1 lgas stage 2 fugs stage 3 5 farmers/ group total akwa ibom 6 14c 8p 6f 70c 4op 3of 140 bayelsa 6 14c 8p 6f 70c 4op 3of 140 delta 6 14c 8p 6f 70c 4op 3of 140 3 18 84 420 420 respondents note: c = cassava; p = poultry; f = fisheries enterprises asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 541-549 544 2.1. method of data collection a well-designed questionnaire was used to collect information from fadama iii farmers in the various states. a total of 420 questionnaires (93.3%) were used for the study; while 30 were discarded. 2.2. measurement of variables 2.2.1. constraints facing the fadama iii project the instrument designed measured a list of 25 factors as constraints. these were participants’ interest, group registration mode, administrative cost, land acquisition problems, training needs provision, communication system, timely inputs supply, timely assets supply, adoption rate, local facilitators availability, service providers support, storage facilities provision, market outlets, transport provision, feeder roads situation, saving system, and adp extension workers support. respondents were asked to specify any other constraint(s) not provided. the likert-type scale was used to gauge each of the constraints; a score of 4 = very serious; 3 = serious; 2 = fairly serious; 1 = not serious constraints with a mean score of 2.5 and above was regarded as serious constraints, while those with a mean score below 2.5 were regarded as not serious constraints. a similar measurement was used by akwiwu et al. (2000). similar to the above-mentioned measurement, the proposed strategies to overcome fadama iii constraints were measured using a four point likert-type scale based on the importance of strategies rated from one to four. respondents were asked proposal statements to respond to. 2.2.2. analysis of variance (anova) analysis of variance (anova) was used to analyze the hypothesis of the study the anova and lsd equations mathematically involve the following stages: a. ∑ x2 ij = summation of the square of the individual values b. ∑ ∑ x2 ij t2 /rk = total sum of squares (tss) (where r = number of rows and k = number of columns), t2 = square of the grand total c. ∑x2 = sum of square column (ssc) d. sse = sum of square error = tss ssc e. msc = mean square column = ssc /dfcolumn (where df = degree of freedom) f. mse = mean square error = sse /dferror g. lsd = least significant difference = t α/2(dferror) √2mse/r (where r = degree of freedom column, and α = interval level of the t-test). 3. results and discussion 3.1. constraints to fadama iii project the beneficiaries of the fadama iii project, sampled for the study, were allowed to respond to the various degrees of constraints facing the project in the niger delta area of study. these constraints are displayed in tables 2 the degree of constraints facing the respondents was dichotomized into serious and not serious constraints using a cut-off mean point of 2.5. the constraint means above 2.5 were considered serious and those below 2.5 were considered not serious. the inadequate fund was identified as a serious constraint (�̅� = 3.78). this agrees with the findings of odjebor et al. (2015) who reported that inadequate funds affect farmers in various agricultural ventures. again, inadequate input support (�̅� = 3.35), high bureaucracy of donor agencies (�̅� = 3.31), untimely delivery of inputs (�̅� = 3.38) and inadequate storage facilities provision (�̅� = 3.72) were other serious constraints which align with odjebor et al. (2015) that poor storage facilities are a contributing factor to low productivity among farming household. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 541-549 545 constraints identified not serious included poor group registration mode (�̅� =1.58), land acquisition problems for project implementation (�̅� = 1.49), low adoption rate of recommended practices (�̅� = 1.53), inadequate market outlets (�̅� = 1.52) and lack of technical expertise by group members (�̅� = 1.72) were identified as not serious. the pooled mean constraints of the respondents in the study area were 2.40 for bayelsa; 2.32 (akwa ibom) and 2.24 (delta). dayo et al. (2009); ajieh and uzokwe (2007) and ovharhe (2017) identified similar constraints to agricultural projects implementation in delta state such as low fertilizer use, low use of improved crop varieties, poverty, women’s limited access to inputs/assets, low access to agricultural credit, low public expenditure on agricultural research, poor funding of agricultural technologies and coordination of agricultural extension. across the niger delta, fund embezzlement was not a serious constraint. this tally with the finding of uzokwe et al. (2015) in project implementation by community based organization in delta state whose participants are partly fadama iii farmers. table 2: extent of constraints to fadama iii project across the selected niger delta states (n = 420) s/n parameters akwa ibom bayelsa delta total pooled mean rank remark 1 inadequate fund 3.83 3.85 3.7 11.38 3.79 1st serious 2 inadequate storage facilities 3.75 3.83 3.58 11.16 3.72 2nd serious 3 absence of adp advisory services 3.63 3.42 3.6 10.65 3.55 3rd serious 4 untimely delivery of inputs 3.01 3.7 3.43 10.14 3.38 4th serious 5 inadequate inputs support* 3.36 3.6 3.08 10.04 3.35 5th serious 6 inadequate assets support* 3.19 3.63 3.14 9.96 3.32 6th serious 7 high bureaucracy of donor agencies 3.07 3.54 3.32 9.92 3.31 7th serious 8 poor publicity of new information 3.48 2.57 3.12 9.17 3.06 8th serious 9 non-chalant attitude of service provider(sp) 2.7 2.98 2.71 8.39 2.8 9th serious 10 poor feeder roads situation 2.13 2.88 1.85 6.86 2.29 10th not serious 11 inadequate transport provision** 1.79 2.92 1.86 6.57 2.19 11th not serious 12 poor communication system 2.1 2.33 1.87 6.3 2.1 12th not serious 13 lack of technical knowhow by group members 2.05 1.53 1.6 5.18 1.73 13th not serious 14 poor group registration mode 1.51 1.34 1.9 4.75 1.58 14th not serious 15 lack of commitment by group members 1.76 1.45 1.41 4.62 1.54 15th not serious 16 low adoption rate 1.5 1.48 1.62 4.6 1.53 16th not serious 17 inadequate market outlets 1.7 1.44 1.41 4.55 1.52 17th not serious 18 land acquisition problems 1.38 1.38 1.69 4.45 1.49 18th not serious 19 leadership tussle/inefficiency 1.41 1.44 1.25 4.1 1.37 19th not serious asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 541-549 546 20 diverting group input to personal use 1.35 1.25 1.46 4.06 1.35 20th not serious 21 non-chalant attitude of local facilitator (lf) 1.11 1.36 1.09 3.56 1.19 21st not serious 22 embezzlement of fund 1 1 1.1 3.1 1.03 22nd not serious total 55.75 56.88 53.81 166.44 pooled mean 2.32 2.37 2.24 note: cut off mean =2.5 (≥2.5 = serious constraints; <2.5 not serious constraints) sp = service providers. they are fadama contractors at the grassroots level. lf = local facilitators. they are fadama extension advisers. *example of input is fertilizer and asset is wheelbarrow **example of fadama transport provision is tricycle (keke) 3.2. proposed strategies to overcome fadama iii constraints table 3 shows that 87% of the proposed strategies employed to overcome fadama iii constraints were above the cut-off mean score of 2.5 which indicates an important strategy. they were conduct of regular farmers training sessions (mean = 3.36), improved fug management team (mean = 3.30), inclusion in m&e (mean = 3.00), exposure to other projects success story (mean = 3.05), market products linkage (mean = 2.92) and external partnership (mean = 2.85). only insurance scheme activation (mean = 2.48) had below 2.5 mean score which implies that respondents may not be fully aware of the importance of insurance over agricultural projects. thus, this is an identified gap to be abridged by capacity building. mwangi (2008) reported that most challenges of fish farmers can be addressed when farmers are exposed to training programmes on problem-solving issues. with the pooled mean = 3.00, it implies that all the strategies to overcome fadama iii project implementation constraints are important. table 3: respondents’ strategies employed to overcome fadama iii constraints (n = 420) parameter sa a d sd total mean conduct of regular farmers training sessions 210 (840) 168 (504) 25 (50) 17 (17) 1141 3.36 improved fug management team 214 (856) 147 (441) 29 (58) 30 (30) 1385 3.30 inclusion in m&e 143 (572) 160 (480) 92 (184) 25 (25) 1261 3.00 exposure to other projects success story 170 (680) 120 (360) 111 (222) 19 (19) 1281 3.05 market products linkage 155 (620) 104 (312) 135 (270) 26 (26) 1 228 2.92 external partnership 146 (584) 114 (342) 114 (228) 46 (46) 1200 2.85 insurance scheme activation 90 (360) 83 (249) 186 (372) 61 (61) 1042 2.48 pooled mean = 3.00 note: figures in parentheses are scores from likert-type scale. cut off mean = 2.5 (>2.5 = important strategies; <2.5 unimportant strategies) 3.3. test of hypothesis result this section presents the anova results on the constraints facing respondents across the three states selected. the hypothesis tested states that: there is no significant variation in the constraints facing the fadama iii project among the selected niger delta states. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 541-549 547 the anova showing the constraints for the three states are given in table 3. since the fcal (0.05) is less than the ftab (3.15) with (p>0.05) the null hypothesis was accepted. this means there is no significant variation in the degree of seriousness of the constraints facing the fadama iii project among the selected niger delta states. ovharhe (2017) reported that fadama activities are homogenous in design across participatory states in nigeria. this suggests that decisions on the management of constraints in the study area can be approached on a similar basis despite the peculiarities among states. some of these serious constraints are similar to the findings of ovharhe (2019). who found that there were limitations in post-harvest handling and extension delivery processes at the exit of the world bank from fadama iii activities in the niger delta area. table 4: anova table showing constraints facing beneficiaries in the niger delta area states constraints means sd fcal ftab. decision akwa ibom 2.32 bayelsa 2.37 0.05 3.15 not significant delta 2.24 ns= not significant @ 0.05 (p>0.05) 4. conclusion and recommendations the study concludes that the fadama iii project in the selected states of niger delta is faced with several serious constraints. except these constraints are resolved, the implication is that fadama's goals of food security, livelihood standard improvement, increased income level for beneficiaries, and adoption of improved agricultural innovations will be hampered. therefore, the strategies employed to resolve some of the fadama iii constraints were the conduct of regular farmers' training sessions (mean = 3.36) and improved fug management team (mean = 3.30). the study contributed to the existing literature as it revealed constraints facing farmers and employed strategies to reflect best management practices to ensure sustainability in agricultural productivity in the niger delta area of nigeria. based on the findings from this study, the subsequent recommendations are apparent; there is a need for: i. more support in the provision of farm inputs and/or assets to catapult productivity. ii. timely delivery of advisory support and increased capacity building programmes. iii. adequate counterpart fund provision. iv. satisfactory support of storage facilities v. awareness creation of insurance policies in agricultural productivity. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that s/he has no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all the designing and estimation of current research done by the sole author. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akwiwu, c. d., nwayiba, c. u., & nnadi, f. n. 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(2009). access to agricultural information by fish farmers in niger delta region of nigeria. a ph. d thesis, library and information science, faculty of social sciences, delta. uzokwe, u. n., ogbekene, n., & ovharhe, o. j (2015). community based organization system and the development of rural communities in delta state. journal of agriculture and food environment, 2(3), 25-33. doi.org/10.1080/15575330.2012.734840. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 198 investigation of rice quality milling in abrasive and blade whiteners in terms of breakage percentage and degree of milling mohsen heidarisoltanabadia*, hamidreza salemia, behshad tahanib, sasan fathia a agricultural engineering research department, isfahan agricultural and natural resources research and education center, areeo, isfahan, iran. b ph.d. student of science and research branch, islamic azad university, iran. * email address: mheisol@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 06-mar-2018 accepted: 09-apr-2018 online available: 25-apr2018 keywords: abrasive whitener, blade whitener, rice, rice breakage percentage, rice milling moisture abstract reduction of rice losses is very important. in this study, appropriate moisture contents for milling of three common rice cultivars were determined in abrasive and blade whiteners. to this end, a factorial test based on a randomized complete block design with three replications was carried out in two milling systems: abrasive and blade whiteners, on three paddy cultivars: sorkheh, sazandegi, and tarom and at four moisture contents: 8, 10, 12 and 14% (on wet basis). the paddy cultivars were dried and converted into white rice in abrasive and blade systems. in each treatment, the rice-breakage percentage, the dom, the working capacity and the power consumption of each system were measured. the results showed that cultivar sorkheh had the lowest ricebreakage rate. in addition, the mean breakage rate and dom were significantly lower in the abrasive whitener than in the blade whitener. based on results, most appropriate milling moisture contents for the cultivars sorkheh, sazandegi, and tarom were 10, 12, and 10%, respectively, in the abrasive system, and 10, 12, and 12%, respectively, in the blade system. the working capacity and power consumption in the abrasive system were 1.7 and 3.43 times as much as those in the blade system, respectively. contribution/ originality rice is the most commonly consumed agricultural product after wheat in iran. the amount of rice losses in the milling stage is high and there is a need for research that can introduce the appropriate conditions of it. in the present study, the conditions for the transformation of paddy to white rice have been evaluated and local farmers have been using these results to reduce the waste production. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.10/1005.10.198.211 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: mohsen heidarisoltanabadi, hamidreza salemi, behshad tahani and sasan fathi (2017). investigation of rice quality milling in abrasive and blade whiteners in terms of breakage percentage and degree of milling. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10), 198-211. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 10(2017): 198-211 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:mheisol@gmail.com http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.10/1005.10.198.211 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 198-211 199 1. introduction rice is the most commonly consumed agricultural product after wheat in iran. appearance and breakage percentage are among the factors determining the quality of rice, in a way that the presence of broken rice in the final product will reduce the price. rice breakage is a function of many factors such as cultivar, environmental factors, agronomic management, and moisture content at the time of harvesting and milling, drying method, and the equipment used in the milling system (heidariesoltanabadi, 2005). the majority of rice losses (broken rice) occur during the milling stage. the milling process is including paddy dehusking and bran removing from brown rice. according to study of prabhakaran et al. (2017), parameters of paddy dehusker such as rubber roller speed, rubber roll pressure, paddy feed rate and fissures of kernel were another factors affecting the rice breakage. according to a report by peyman (1999), in most parts of the country, rice whitening machines are blade whiteners, which are sometimes used as husking machines as well, which in turn increase the rice-breakage rate. rafiee and tabatabaeefar (2005) studied the effect of using a blade whitener on the percentage of head white rice. the results showed that the mean numbers of head rice grains in one gram of the sample were 30 and 28 before and after whitening, respectively. in other words, 4.4% of the rice is broken at the whitening stage. the conducted studies show that breakage percentage is under the influence of dom (degree of milling) too, in a way that in a milling machine, as milling duration increases, breakage percentage and dom increase (cooper and sibenmorgen, 2005). in a study, a factorial based on randomized completely design with three levels of moisture content of 8-9, 10-11 and 12-13% (w.b.)1 and three types of universal rice whitener machines, abrasive type whitener (aw), blade-type whitener (bw) and frictional-type bladeless whitener (fblw) was conducted in triplicates. the obtained results indicated that the lowest percentage of broken white rice (10.14%) took place in the aw with moisture level of 89%, whereas the highest percentage of broken rice (17.19%) was defined in fblw with 12-13% moisture (firouzi and alizadeh, 2011). analyzing the milling characteristics of white rice depending on the guide angles of the cutting roller in a cutting-type milling machine showed that the cutting roller guide angles of 0° and 10° are suitable for producing high quality rice during milling with acutting-type milling machine (byeong-hyo et al., 2017). the performance of a locally fabricated rice-milling machine was evaluated to determine the behavior of different paddy varieties at different conditions during milling. performance test revealed that the milling efficiency, cleaning efficiency, input capacity, output capacity and average percentage of head rice yield obtained were 90.22%, 90.2%, 27.3kg/hr, 16.47kg/hr, and 44.2%, respectively (dauda et al., 2012). one of the most important factors affecting the rice-breakage rate is the moisture content of paddy at the harvesting and milling. a study was carried out to establish the effects of three factors, final moisture content, shade-cooling time and paddy variety on rice milling quality (furahishal et al., 2016). paddy was sun dried to final moisture contents ranging from 9.0 to 15.5% (on wet basis) and shade-cooled for 0, 6, 12, 18, and 24 h at ambient temperature (27.20 to 35.10oc). physical properties and milling quality in terms of total rice yield (try), head rice yield (hry) and whiteness index (wi) were analyzed. the result showed that higher yields, which were significantly different for try and hry, were obtained at moisture content between 9.0 to 12.5% for try, but between 10.5 to 14.0% for hry. ilieva et al. (2014) stated that the highest milling yield (74.81%) and head rice yield (64.64%) was obtained from paddy with the highest average moisture content (22.8%) at harvest time. in addition the milling yield and head rice yield was the largest in the processing of paddy one month after harvest. 1 on wet basis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 198-211 200 research conducted by shaker and alizadeh (2004) showed that during the conversion of several different paddy cultivars into white rice, moisture contents of 16 to 18% on wet basis were associated with the highest rice-breakage percentage equal to 26.1%, and moisture contents of 8 to 10% with the lowest breakage rate equal to 6.15%. analyzing three levels of moisture content in paddy cultivars, hedayatipoor et al. (2005) found out that the suitable milling moisture for cultivars fajr and nemat was 10 to 11%, and for cultivars sahel and neda 11 to 12% on wet basis. studies have also been conducted on the impact of different factors such as the paddy condition, the rpm of the rice miller shaft, the feeding rate of the machine (the inlet and outlet flows) and/or making changes in order to improve the millgni performance in terms of breakage rate. through conducting research on the impact of the rpm (rotation speed per minute) shaft of the horizontal rice miller on the breakage rates of two rice cultivars: amol-3 and kamfiroozi, shaker (2003) showed that a speed of 600 rpm is suitable for both cultivars. in a study by heidariesoltanabadi and hemmat (2007), a blade rice whitener was equipped with a full transmission spiral. experiments showed that the breakage rate of rice cultivar, sazandegi, was 23% at wet basis moisture of 13% in the conventional blade whitener, and 20.5% in the optimized whitener. by analyzing three outlet flow rates (915, 654, and 412 kg/h) and three distances between the blade and stirrer, 11, 12, and 13 mm in their study, they also concluded that the lowest mean breakage percentage occurred at the outlet flow rate of 412 kg/h when the distance between the blade and the stirrer was equal to 11 or 12 mm. by conducting a study on white rice production in a vertical abrasive milling system, yan et al. (2005) showed that the rpm of the miller shaft and moisture content had significant effects on degree of milling (dom), in a way that dom increased with an increase in moisture content and the rpm of the miller shaft. moisture and temperature gradients induce the development of fissures during drying the paddy kernels. this affects the milling quality of the paddy eventually reducing the head rice yield. a study was conducted to investigate the influence of drying temperature and storage duration on the cracking behavior and head rice yield of a local rice variety. it was proved that paddy can be dried by using a mechanical dryer at higher temperatures of 45°c and 50°c without affecting its milling qualities (akowuah et al. 2012). nasirahmadi et al. (2014) investigated the effects of moisture content, variety and parboiling on milling quality of rice as a function of milling recovery (mr), head rice yield (hry), degree of milling (dom) and whiteness. as a result of parboiling, the dom, mr and hry were increased. moreover, decreasing moisture content maximized mr and hry. the results of some experiments revealed that as paddy mixture ratio increased from 2 to 6%, the values of fissured kernels and whiteness percentage decreased, while head rice yield decreased by increasing the paddy mixture ratio from 2 to 6%. at all the evaluated paddy mixture ratios, the values of head rice yield, whiteness percentage and whiteness index decreased by decreasing moisture contents from 14 to 8% (w.b.). it was observed that with decreasing moisture contents from 14 to 10% (w.b.), the number percentage of fissured kernels decreased, and then the further decrease in moisture contents from 10 to 8% (w.b.) caused the fissured kernels to increase (peyman et al., 2014). according to research on inclined bed dryer (ibd) and fluidized bed dryer (fbd) combined with ibd performance, poor performance of the industrial fluidized bed dryer was observed in the case of drying in low capacity causing higher specific energy consumption (sarker et al., 2013). however, the quality of milled rice obtained from both drying systems was found to be almost similar. minimal process time (i.e., up to 24.5% less) was found in the paddy dried with fbd as the first-stage drying followed by ibd as the second-stage drying. studies on the effects of high-temperature fluidized bed drying and tempering on physical properties and milling quality of two freshly harvested long-grains showed that head rice yield significantly improved with extended tempering time. head rice yield tended to increase with decreasing cracked (fissured) kernels. the hardness and stiffness of sound fluidized bed dried rice kernels were higher than those conventionally dried (truong et al., 2009). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 198-211 201 isfahan rice cultivars have a high quality for cooking, and good aroma and flavor. however, for various reasons, they have a high breakage percentage, which is a considerable factor in reducing their marketability. in a study, hosseinian (2007) milled three isfahan rice cultivars including sorkheh, nogaran, and sazandegi at four wet basis moisture contents: 8, 10, 12, and 14% in 2 laboratory milling systems: a blade whitener and an abrasive whitener. the study results showed that cultivar sorkheh had lower breakage percentage than the other two cultivars did, just the same as the abrasive whitener did compare to the blade whitener. this study was conducted in order to investigate the breakage rate of isfahan rice cultivars in abrasive and blade whiteners, and to determine their appropriate milling moisture contents. 2. material and method in this study, in order to investigate the effects of cultivar and milling moisture content on the quality of the rice milled in an abrasive and blade system, an experiment was carried out. in this experiment, the effects of three paddy cultivars including sazandegi (the corrected form of cultivar nogaran), sorkheh, and tarom cultivated in isfahan, and four milling moisture contents including 8, 10, 12, and 14% on wet basis, and two types of milling systems with an abrasive whitener and a blade whitener, on the quality of the rice milled in a factorial experiment in the form of a randomized complete block design with three replications were investigated. the apparent characteristics of the said cultivars are presented in table 1. the experiments were carried out in two miller systems equipped with abrasive and blade whitener, individually.the first milling system consisted of a winnowing machine, two rubber-roller husking machines, two serial blade whiteners, a grading screen, and six lifting machines. the second milling system was equipped with a winnowing machine, a rubber-roller husking machine, a box-shaped paddy separating machine (brown rice separator), two serial horizontal abrasive whiteners, a polishing machine, a grading screen, and eight lifting machines. the paddy cultivars sazandegi, sorkheh, and tarom were used in the experiments. a fixed-bed dryer was used in order to bring the moisture content of the paddy to the required moisture contents. the internal surface of the horizontal fixed-bed dryer was divided into three equal parts, and the desired moisture contents including primary moisture contents of 17 to 20% were separated from each other. then, 130 kg of each paddy cultivar was poured into the cells created in the dryer bed. table 1: apparent characteristics of the rice cultivars cultivar length (mm) width (mm) thickness (mm) slendernes s ratio* 1000-grain weight (g) sazandegi 6.48 2.24 1.73 2.89 17.7 sorkheh 6.36 2.17 1.77 2.93 16.4 tarom 7.3 1.78 1.70 4.1 17.8 *slenderness ratio is the rice lengthto-width ratio the dryer temperature was set to 45°c. the moisture contents of the paddy cultivars inside the dryer were measured using an electronic moisture meter model sp-1d2 kitte. as the paddy moisture content reached the desired moisture contents, the paddy was removed from the dryer and was collected in a nylon bag. approximately 90 kg and 30 kg of dried paddy were packed for each experiment in the abrasive and blade whitener, respectively. these amounts were the minimum amounts of paddy needed to carry out the experiments in the two whiteners. the samples were whitened and in each experiment, three 150 g samples were taken from the outlet of the last whitener. these samples were used to measure the percentage of broken rice and dom through the following method: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 198-211 202 a) percentage of head and broken white rice: from the 150 g samples, which were a mixture of head and broken rice, rice grains larger and smaller than 3/4 of a whole white rice grain were separated. the ratio of the weight of rice grains larger than 3/4 of a whole white rice to the total weight of the sample represents head white rice percentage, and the ratio of the weight of rice grains smaller than 3/4 that represents rice breakage percentage (test code and procedure for rice mills, 1990). b) degree of milling (dom) of rice: in order to measure the dom of rice, the percentage of brown rice weight loss due to milling was measured based on the standard (test code and procedure for rice mills, 1990). in this method, one thousand grains of head brown rice and one thousand grains of head white rice were weighed. hence, the degree of milling (d) was obtained through relation (1). 100 b wb w w-w d (1) where wb is the 1000-grain weight of head brown rice, and ww is the 1000-grain weight of head white rice. c) working capacity and power consumption: during the conversion of paddy into white rice in the abrasive and blade system, the working capacity and power consumption were measured in kg/hr and kw, respectively. to this end, 290 kg of paddy from one cultivar (the maximum amount available) was milled in each of the abrasive and blade systems. the duration of the paddy milling process and the amount of electric energy consumption (through reading the electricity meter) were recorded during the milling process. the obtained data were analyzed by the sas software program, and the significant mean values were categorized at a probability level of 5% (duncan's multiple range tests). 3. result and discussion 3.1. rice breakage percentage table 2 shows the anova of the effects of cultivars, the type of whiteners, and the milling moisture content on rice breakage percentage and dom. accordingly, the simple effects of cultivars, the type of whiteners, and moisture content, as well as their interaction effects on rice breakage percentage became significant at a probability level of 1%. the three-way interaction effects of cultivars, the type of whiteners, and moisture content on rice breakage percentage also became significant at a probability level of 5%. 3.2. degree of milling (dom) of rice according to the results in table 2, the simple effects of cultivar, the type of the whitener, and moisture content, as well as their interaction effects on the dom of rice became significant at a probability level of 1%. 3.3. measuring the working capacity and power consumption this measurement showed that the working capacity of the abrasive system being tested was 1240 kg/h, and the power consumption was 42.85 kw. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 198-211 203 table 2: the anova of the effects of cultivars, the milling moisture content, and the type of whiteners on rice breakage percentage and dom mean squares source of changes degrees of freedom rice breakage percentage dom of rice replication 2 1.81 0.38 cultivar 2 2795.04** 363.6** milling moisture content 3 532.18** 25.45** the type of the whitener 1 3729.07** 270.32** cultivar × milling moisture content 6 6.18** 8.4** cultivar × the type of the whitener 2 22.68** 50.95** milling moisture content × the type of the whitener 3 220.99** 4.02** cultivar × milling moisture content × the type of the whitener 6 3.56* 9.85** error 46 1.16 0.08 coefficient of variation 4.33 2.50 * and **: significant at a probability level of 1 and 5% these parameters were measured to be 725 kg/h and 12.5 kw in the blade system. therefore, the working capacity and power consumption in the abrasive system are 1.7 and 3.43 times as much as those in the blade system, respectively, which is due to the presence of more machines and their higher capacity in the milling line of the abrasive system than in the blade system. according to figure 1, cultivar sorkheh has the lowest rice-breakage rate, and cultivar tarom has the highest. this shows that differences in appearance and physical properties between the native cultivars and the northern cultivar have resulted in the increased breakage percentage in the northern cultivar because the latter is a type of long-grain rice with a lower thickness. figure 1: the simple effect of cultivar on rice breakage percentage in a study, lu and siebenmorgen (1995) investigated the relationship between the thickness of the paddy grain and its resistance to pseudo-static compressive loading and three-point bending for two long-grain cultivars, tebonnet and lemont, at different harvest times. the results of their study showed that there was a direct relationship between thickness and resistance to loading. breakage 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 sazandegi sorkheh tarom rice cultivar r ic e b re a k a g e (% ) b c a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 198-211 204 percentage is higher in cultivar sazandegi than in cultivar sorkheh, which is due to the physical properties of cultivar sorkheh and its resistance to fracture. hosseinian (2007) explained that the lower breakage percentage in cultivar sorkheh compared to that in the two cultivars sazandegi and nogaran was due to its higher failure force and maximum bending stress relative to that of the other two cultivars. based on the results in figure 2, the highest breakage rate occurred at 14% moisture content. no particular trend was observed between breakage percentage values at moisture contents of 8 to 12%. the results of figure 3 show that the mean rice breakage percentage is significantly lower in the abrasive whitener than in the blade whitener. hosseinian (2007) also achieved similar results when comparing laboratory abrasive and blade whiteners. the investigation on the interaction effect of cultivar and paddy milling moisture content (figure 4) shows that in cultivar sazandegi, moisture contents of 8 and 12% have the lowest breakage rates, and moisture contents of 14 and 10% have the highest breakage rates, respectively. no significant difference is observed between the breakage rates of cultivar sorkheh at moisture contents of 8 to 12%. the same trend has also been repeated in cultivar tarom. in all three cultivars, the moisture content of 14% is associated with the highest breakage rate. figure 5 shows the interaction effect of moisture content and type of whitener on rice breakage percentage. accordingly, at each moisture content, rice breakage percentage is significantly higher in the blade whitener than in the abrasive whitener. in both types of whiteners, the moisture content of 14% has caused the highest breakage rate. the lowest rice breakage rate in the abrasive whitener was obtained at moisture contents of 10-12%, and in the blade whitener at moisture contents of 8 and 12%. figure 6 shows the interaction effect of paddy cultivar and type of whitener on rice breakage percentage. based on these results, firstly, the breakage percentage of all three cultivars is significantly higher in the blade whitener than in the abrasive whitener. secondly, in both whiteners, cultivar tarom has the highest rice-breakage rate, and cultivar sorkheh has the lowest, which is due to the mechanical properties of these cultivars such as failure force and energy. the results of table 3 show that in the abrasive whitener, there is no significant difference between the minimum breakage rates within the moisture range of 8 to 12% in cultivars sazandegi and tarom and within the moisture range of 10 to 12% in cultivar sorkheh. in the blade whitener, the lowest breakage rates of cultivar sazandegi were obtained at moisture contents of 8 and 12%. no significant difference was observed between the minimum breakage rates within the moisture range of 8 to 12% in cultivars sorkheh and tarom. figure 2: the simple effect of moisture content on rice breakage percentage 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 8 10 12 14 moisture content (w .b%) r ic e b re a k a g e (% ) bc b c a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 198-211 205 figure 3: the simple effect of the type of the whitener on rice breakage percentage figure 4: the interaction effect of cultivar and moisture content on rice breakage percentage figure 5: the interaction effect of moisture content and type of whitener on rice breakage percentage 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 abrasive blade type of whitener r ic e b re a k a g e (% ) b a 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 sazandegi sorkheh tarom rice cultivar r ic e b re a k a g e (% ) %8 %10 %12 %14 e d e b g g g f c c c a 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 8 10 12 14 moisture content (w .b%) r ic e b re a k a g e (% ) abrasive bladee c f b ef c d a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 198-211 206 figure 6: the interaction effect of paddy cultivar and type of whitener on rice breakage percentage the results in figure 7 show that cultivar sazandegi became significantly whiter than the other two cultivars did, and it seems that under identical conditions, it will need smaller force for the separation of rice bran. cultivar tarom became less white than the other two cultivars did, indicating that greater pressure is needed in the whitener for further whitening. figure 8 shows that, in total, the dom of rice cultivars has increased as moisture content increased from 8 to 10%, and decreased as moisture content increased from 10 to 12 and 14%. changes in the physical and mechanical properties of rice such as the friction coefficient and resistance to abrasion due to increased moisture content can be considered as the reasons for this issue. according to figure 9, the mean dom is higher in the blade whitener than in the abrasive whitener. the magnitude of frictional forces, the manner of exerting them, and the operation intensity in the blade whitener result in the separation of more bran, thus producing whiter rice. figure 10 investigates the interaction effect of cultivar and moisture content on the dom of rice. accordingly, the highest mean values for the dom of rice were obtained at 12% moisture content for cultivar sazandegi, and 10% moisture content for cultivars sorkheh and tarom. the results in figure 11 show the interaction effect of moisture content and type of whitener on the dom of rice. according to these results, at all moisture contents, dom is higher in the blade whitener than in the abrasive whitener. in the blade whitener, as moisture content exceeds 12% or falls below it, the mean dom decreases. in the abrasive whitener, the mean dom decreases as moisture content exceeds 8%. according to the results in figure 12, in all cultivars, the blade whitener whitened rice to a significantly greater degree than the abrasive whitener did. on the other hand, in both whiteners, cultivar sazandegi has the highest dom, and cultivar tarom has the lowest. in identical conditions, cultivar sorkheh became less white than cultivar sazandegi did, but whiter than cultivar tarom did. according to the results in table 4, in the abrasive whitener, cultivar sazandegi has the maximum dom at 12% moisture content. moisture contents of 8, 10, and 14% are in next places in this regard. cultivars sorkheh and tarom have the highest values of dom within the moisture range of 8 to 10%. in the blade whitener, cultivar sazandegi has the maximum dom at 12% moisture content. there is no significant difference between the values of dom at two moisture contents of 8 and 10%. the highest dom of cultivar sorkheh in the blade whitener has occurred at 10% moisture content. the moisture content of 8% is in the next place, and the moisture range of 12 to 14% shows the lowest dom. the highest dom of cultivar tarom is at 14% moisture content. moisture contents of 10 and 12% fall in next places (table 4). 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 sazandegi sorkheh tarom rice cultivar r ic e b re a k a g e (% ) abrasiv e blade e b f d c a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 198-211 207 figure 7: the simple effect of cultivar on the dom of rice figure 8: the simple effect of moisture content on the dom of rice figure 9: the simple effect of the type of the whitener on the dom of rice 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 sazandegi sorkheh tarom rice cultivar d o m c b a 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 8 10 12 14 moisture content (w .b%) d o m b a c d 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 abrasive blade type of whitener d o m b a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 198-211 208 figure 10: the interaction effect of cultivar and moisture content on the dom of rice figure 11: the interaction effect of moisture content and type of whitener on the dom of rice figure 12: the interaction effect of paddy cultivar and type of whitener on the dom of rice 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 sazandegi sorkheh tarom rice cultivar d o m %8 %10 %12 %14 gf i h j j b b a e d c 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 8 10 12 14 moisture content (w .b%) d o m abrasiv e blade d b e a e b f c 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 sazandegi sorkheh tarom rice cultivar d o m abrasiv e blade c a d b f e asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(10)2017: 198-211 209 table 3: the interaction effect of cultivar, moisture content, and type of whitener on breakage percentage moisture content 8 10 12 14 cultivar abrasive blade abrasive blade abrasive blade abrasive blade sazandegi 17.36 j 28.86 fg 17.02 j 32.98 e 17.19 j 29.35 f 22.88 i 48.67 b sorkheh 8.49 l 14.89 k 5.88 m 15.62 jk 5.91 m 15.68 jk 8.07 l 32 e tarom 25.93 h 37.05 d 25.59 h 39.15 c 27.12 gh 35.66 d 31.24 e 55.49 a the numbers having similar letters are not significantly different at a statistical level of 5% (duncan's test) table 4: the interaction effect of cultivar, moisture content, and type of whitener on the dom of rice moisture content 8 10 12 14 cultivar abrasive blade abrasive blade abrasive blade abrasive blade sazandegi 12.80 ef 17.32 b 12.19 gh 17.51 b 14.22 d 18.83 a 11.17 i 12.61 fg sorkheh 13.21 e 13.21 e 13 ef 15.44 c 11.38 i 11.38 i 10.16 j 11.38 i tarom 5.48 l 8.80 k 5.28 l 11.04 i 3.25 m 9.73 j 0.58 n 11.98 h the numbers having similar letters are not significantly different at a statistical level of 5% (duncan's test) 4. conclusion this study was conducted in order to determine the appropriate milling moisture content in abrasive and blade systems, and to compare the performance of these two systems in terms of rice breakage percentage, dom, working capacity, and power consumption. based on result, in the overall comparison of the two types of whiteners i.e. blade and abrasive whiteners, it was found out that rice breakage percentage was significantly lower in the abrasive system than in the blade system. the dom of rice was also lower in this type of whitener than in the blade whitener. however, given that the increased whiteness of rice causes nutrient loss in rice, it is preferable to use the abrasive whitener. the power consumption and working capacity in the abrasive system were 3.43 and 1.7 times as much as those in the blade system, respectively. rice cultivars native had lower breakage percentage than cultivar tarom. on the other hand, the breakage percentage and dom of cultivar sorkheh were also lower than those of cultivar sazandegi. according to the results obtained in this study, the most appropriate milling moisture contents were 10, 12, and 10% (on wet basis) in the abrasive system, and 10, 12, and 12% (on wet basis) in the blade system for cultivars sorkheh, sazandegi, and tarom respectively. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: this work was supported by the proirams of “an gnvestgiatgon on tolerance of local rgce cultgvars to vargous levels of consumed water grrgiatgon gn lenijan dgstrgct” (no. 10318.-20 81-069) founded by agricultural research, education and extension organization (areeo). the authors wish also thank to the isfahan agricultural and natural resources research and education center. views and opinions 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article history abstract received: 7 may 2021 revised: 9 june 2021 accepted: 30 june 2021 published: 14 july 2021 keywords crude implements income labor odds ratio smallholders’ decision tractor use. tractorization is crucial in the agricultural transformation of societies with either large farm size or challenged by a severe labor shortage. however, most smallholder farmers still lag in its use, making it necessary to investigate current tractor use by smallholders. this study investigated the factors that influence smallholder farmers’ decision to use tractors in the delta and benue states of nigeria. specifically, it determined the current level of mechanization (tractor use) in the farming system, estimated the contributions of tractor use among smallholder farmers, and determined the factors influencing smallholder farmers’ tractor use decisions in the study area. multistage sampling techniques were used to collect data from 280 respondents. descriptive statistics, a logistic model and odds ratio (or) constituted the analytical framework. the results showed that poor tractor use still exists among smallholder farmers, with as much as 72% of farmers not using tractor in this modern era. the study revealed that the mean income of tractor users was twice as high as that of non-tractor users. the or result revealed that educational status, household labor, farming experience, alternative occupation, and farm area under cultivation influenced the decision of the smallholder to use tractor services. it would seem that lack of utilizing the benefits of tractorization is a crucial constraint that calls attention to the need for a holistic campaign among the farming population. the practical applications of family labor are likely to remain high. contribution/originality: this study is one of very few to have investigated the mechanization decision of smallholder farmers. this paper reveals current tractor use levels by smallholder farmers in the 21st century and the factors influencing the use of tractors by farmers. the study finds that poor mechanization (tractor use) poses a significant problem and is far beyond the research of smallholder farmers. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.199.209 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: achoja roland onomu --michael aliber (2021). factors influencing smallholder farmers’ mechanization decisions in nigeria: the case of tractor use in the fourth industrial revolution era. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2), 199-209. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.199.209 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 2 (2021): 199-209 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7329-5781 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8739-0379 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.199.209 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 199-209 200 1. introduction the deployment of tractor services in performing agricultural tasks is referred to as tractorization operation (takeshima, pratt, & diao, 2013). tractorization aids farm product transportation, such as the transporting of farm inputs, fetching of wood, taking the product to market, and powering of farm implements such as the disc ridge, farrow, plough, planter and bucket (naushad, muhammad, musawar, akhtar, & niaz, 2009; takeshima et al., 2013). while there is criticism that the use of the tractor destroys soil properties during land preparation and displaces human labor (emami, almassi, & bakhoda, 2018; krebstein, von janowsky, kuht, & reintam, 2014), evidence has been adduced that tractorization does not lead to a reduction in human labor employment. on the contrary, tractor service stimulates an increase in area cultivated, thereby creating more on-farm employment opportunities (roy & blase, 1978). a study has shown that tractor usage increases employment on smallholder farms, and users derived higher gross income than non-users (onomu & aliber, 2020; roy & blase, 1978). irrespective of the arguments on the importance and limitations of tractor services in farm mechanisation, tractorization was found to be a veritable tool for farmers who expected yield increments (singha, jaman, & chavali, 2012). for more than a decade, labor-saving technologies have seen an unprecedented level of adaptation. however, their intensification and sustainability have created a bottleneck, especially in developing countries and for smallholder farmers (pingali, 2007). hence, most farmers in developing countries, especially in africa, still use hand tilling as their primary sources of farm power (rapsomanikis, 2015) and head porterage for farm transport. the use of mechanical power has been recommended as a sure way of resolving problematic farm power challenges. however, the challenge regarding the use of mechanical power (tractor use) remains unabated among smallholders (fao, 2013; ifc, 2013). tractor use by smallholder farmers in nigeria and other african countries is low compared to that in asia (takeshima., 2017). despite the challenges associated with poor tractor use among smallholder farmers, recent research and government policies have focused on the commercialization of the smallholder through value addition and market participation, but have seemingly ignored smallholders’ labor (tractor use) challenges, which are the fundament of commercialization (daum & birner, 2017; gwebu & matthews, 2018). ironically, the agricultural sector, particularly commercial agriculture, has transformed, with many commercial farmers finding pathways to enhancing mechanization (labor efficiency) while the challenge of labor (tractor use) remains unaddressed among smallholders (gwebu & matthews, 2018; onomu, aliber, & agbugba, 2020). this is despite the agricultural sector having more smallholders than commercial farmers (rapsomanikis, 2015). market-driven mechanization services, where the individual/cooperative or government renders hire tractor services for smallholders, have been proffered and adopted by some governments in africa, including that of nigeria, to remedy smallholders’ mechanization challenges. however, the extent to which market-driven mechanization policy has made inroads in enabling most smallholders to use tractors remains unknown. this raises the question: what is the current nature of tractor use among smallholder farmers in this era of the fourth industrial revolution? without question, low levels of mechanization (tractor use) by smallholders will not only make sustainable market participation, value addition, and growth difficult, but it could exacerbate food insecurity and prevent many young people from taking up agriculture as a career (daum & birner, 2017; emami et al., 2018). it could also retard market demand for mechanization equipment because a larger population of farmers who would have demanded mechanization equipment are smallholders. hence, this paper investigates the level of mechanization (tractor use) in the farming system, estimates the contributions of tractor use among smallholder farmers in the study area, and determines the factors influencing smallholder farmers’ tractor use decisions in the study area. therefore, this paper contributes to the existing literature on smallholder mechanization. most importantly, it reveals current tractor use condition by smallholder farmers after implementing government hire tractor services in the study area. at the same time, it also investigates the determinants of tractor use among smallholder farmers in the fourth industrial revolution era. 2. methodology 2.1. description of the study areas the study was carried out in two selected states of nigeria, namely benue and delta. the former is located in northern nigeria, the latter in the southern part of the country. nigeria has rich agricultural lands of loamy soil with excellent water-holding capacity (chukwu, 2018). the country received an average rainfall of 1150 mm in 2014 in all zones. however, the rainfall pattern in nigeria varies from season to season and from one agro-ecological zone to another (world bank, 2020). delta state is located in the mangrove forest agroecological zone, with an estimated rainfall of 265.06 mm in 2008. benue state is in the tall grass savanna (derived savanna), and received an average rainfall of 145.3 mm in 2000. these average rainfall levels are suitable for agricultural activities, mainly arable crop farming which many smallholder farmers practise (olarenwaju, akpan, & buku, 2017; ologunorisa & tersoo, 2006; omonijo, 2014). nigeria has an annual average temperature of 280c and climatic conditions favourable for arable farming of such crops as maize, cassava, rice, guinea corn, millet, and yam (usaid, 2014). agriculture plays a significant role in nigeria’s economy, irrespective of the contribution of oil. it is contended that agriculture forms the base of nigerian economic growth (odetola & etumnu, 2013), employing two-thirds of the total labor force of nigeria (fao, 2019). on average, 80% of farmers in nigeria are smallholders who depend predominantly on a cutlass, hoe, and other primary production resources available to them for their efficiency (mgbenka, mbah, & ezeano, 2015). nigerian agricultural land law policy is based on the land tenure system (udoekanem, adoga, & onwumere, 2014). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 199-209 201 2.2. model specification subject to different challenges, the smallholder farmer chooses to determine the labor use on the farm (loughrey et al., 2013). the farmer’s decision has the likelihood of being influenced by different explanatory variables (factors), including his/her socioeconomics characteristic. to address the smallholder’s discrete choice challenges, there are at least two alternative models to the least squares model that are a better fit, unbiased, consistent, and efficient in the analyses and investigation of factors affecting discrete choice decision as used by boughton et al. (2007); chilundika (2011); and reyes, donovan, bernsten, and maredia (2012). these models are the logistic and probit models, respectively. greene (2003) opined that the logistic model is similar to the probit model, claiming that it is challenging to distinguish the final outcome as there is little difference in the outcome besides its distribution. while the logistic model follows a logistic distribution, the probit model follows a normal distribution. the functional form of the logistic model is relatively simple compared to the probit model. marginally, the logistic model has a flatter tail than the probit model, which makes it more robust to outliers and presents estimates over a wider range of data points. the logistic regression model is one of the most preferred and regression methods used in modeling the relationship between a binary dependent variable and independent variables (korkmaz, güney, & yiğiter, 2012). since its dependent variable is binary, which can have only two possible values, the interpretation is not concerned with how the independent variables predict a score, but how they predict one or other of the two groups of the binary dependent variable (sperandei, 2014). ordinarily, one cannot depend on the dependent variable's exact effect on the dependent variable, which is the smallholder decision to use or not to use the tractor. hence, logistic regression is used to model the logit-transformed probability as a linear relationship with the predictor variables that ensure outcome with individual characteristics through odds (bruin, 2006). being transformed from probability, odds range from 0 to infinity: it is the ratio of the frequency of successful outcomes to that of failure. hence, the process of ensuring the exact weight of the independent variables on a discrete dependent variable in logistic regression is referred to as the odds ratio (bruin, 2006). the logit link form is expressed as: logit p = log [ p / (1-p)] (1) where: log p in equation 1 is the log of the probability of the smallholder farmer to use the tractor, and p is a probability function in all the equations. therefore, the probability of the farmer to use a tractor or not is expressed in equation 2: p= tip = 1pr( =y i )ixx = (2) tip in equation 2 is the probability of the farmer decision to use tractor services, and x is the vector of the explanatory variable, with 1x representing one of the target explanatory variables. therefore, the probability that the explanatory variable is equal to one, given x, is the probability of using tractor given x, which is expressed in equation 3 as: tip 1( = i )1x= = tip = x x e e 10 10 1   ++ + n (3) where  = )........,( 21 nxxx and  = )........,,( 21 no  in equation 3. hence, 0 is the constant term in all the equations, the constant term shows the likelihood of the explanatory variable, and n ,, 21 is the respective coefficients of each explanatory variable. the probability of not using a tractor is one (1) minus the probability of using a tractor. hence, the probability of not using the tractor given  is expressed in equation 4: 0tp ( 1= -i )1x= = top = x x e e 10 10 1 1   ++ + − (4) from equation 4, taking the exponential effect of the farmers’ likelihood not to use tractor is derived as presented in equation 5. this implies that top = x xx e ee 10 1010 1   ++ +−+ (5) in equation 6, the likelihood outcome of the explanatory variable for the farmer not using a tractor is derived from equation 5, as presented in equation 6. hence, top = x e 101 1  ++ (6) one factor with probability is its ability to compare the probability of success to that of failure. if we do that, we have the outcome as presented in equation 7: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 199-209 202 x e e e x x 10 10 10 1 1 11    ++ +++ + (7) equation 7 shows the odds ratio. this is the result of having the odds of using a tractor against not using it. taking the log of both farmers using and not using tractor services, the resultant effect is shown in equation 8. . : in x e e e x x 10 10 10 1 1 11    ++ +++ + (8) where in is an inverse probability log. equation 9 is derived by taking the exponential inverse probability log of equation 8 to have the exact weighted score of each independent variable, as presented in equation 9 in x e e e x x 10 10 10 1 1 11    ++ +++ + = x10  + (9) hence, the functional form of the logistic regression model is summarized in equation 10: log 10 1)(log 1 xpit p pi i i  +==      − (10) 2.3. sampling procedure and sample size a multistage sampling technique was employed to select the study areas and households. a purposive sampling technique was employed in the first stage of data collection to select two states (benue and delta states, from northern and southern nigeria, respectively). the second stage involved random selection of two local government areas (lgas) from each state after purposefully excluding the commercial cities and those lgas with relatively low farming activities. hence, a total of four lgas were selected: ethiope east and oshimili north in delta state, and agatu and konshisha in benue state. in the third stage, seven communities were randomly selected from each lga in delta state, and seven wards were randomly selected from each lga in delta state. in the fourth stage, ten smallholder farmers were selected randomly. data were collected from two hundred and eighty (280) smallholder farmers in structured interviews using survey questionnaires. in delta state, the development finance department of the central bank of nigeria, in charge of the anchor borrowers’ programme attached to the delta state ministry of agriculture, provided details on registered farmers. in benue state, information on the population of the smallholder farmers was provided by the all farmer association of nigeria (afan) in the benue state ministry of agriculture. in the oshimili north and ethiope east lgas there were 970 and 1350 registered smallholder crop farmers, respectively. in benue state, there were 2555 and 2160 registered smallholder farmers in agatu and konshisha lga, respectively. 2.4. collinearity precaution a collinearity diagnostic test was performed using the variance inflation factor (vif), which is a good measure for detecting multicollinearity in regression analysis because it allows the simultaneous accommodation of different predictors (graham, 2003). using vif to detect and prevent multicollinearity, the researchers regressed each predictor variable against other predictor variables. any variable with vif >5 was removed from the analysis. 2.5. description of variables used the variables used are presented in table 1. 2.6. analytical techniques descriptive statistical techniques including frequency counts, percentages and mean distribution were used to investigate the respondents’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, the level of mechanization (tractor use) in the farming system, and the contributions of tractor use among smallholder farmers in the study area. logistic model and odds ratio likelihood was used to determine factors influencing smallholder farmers’ tractor use decisions. 3. results this section presents the results of the analysis. the section starts with the presentation of the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and tractor use distribution of smallholders. it further presents and interprets the results of the logistic regression and the odds ratios. 3.1. descriptive analysis of respondents the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the respondents as they relate to tractor use are presented in table 2. these include age, gender, marital status, education status, household labor use, and occupational status. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 199-209 203 table-1. description, measurement and expected outcome for the logit variables. variable description of variable measurement of variable dependent variable using tractor as labor or otherwise independent variable gender of household head whether the household head currently use a tractor for farm activity gender of household head if male = 1, other = 0 if male = 1, other = 0 age of household head number of years of household head continuous education status years of schooling continuous marital status whether the household head currently has a husband/wife yes = 1, otherwise = 0 household labor use involvement of household member in farming use = 1, otherwise = 0 farming experience numbers of years actively involved in farming as household head continuous other occupation involvement in other occupation as a source of income yes = 1, otherwise = 0 area cultivated total area cultivated ha use of tractor whether the farmer is currently using tractor services yes = 1, otherwise = 0 table-2. summary statistics of socioeconomics and demographic variables. variable smallholder farmer not using a tractor using a tractor frequency percentage frequency percentage frequency percentage age (years) ≤30 3 1 3 2 0 0 31-40 26 9 16 8 10 13 41-50 88 32 44 22 44 56 51-60 100 36 75 37 25 31 61-70 57 20 57 28 0 0 ≥71 6 2 6 3 0 0 total 280 100 201 100 79 100 gender male 160 57 111 55 49 62 female 120 43 90 45 30 38 total 280 100 201 100 79 100 marital status married 240 86 163 81 77 97 single 7 2 5 3 2 3 divorce 6 2 6 3 0 0 widower/widow 27 10 27 13 0 0 others 0 0 0 0 0 0 total 280 100 201 100 79 100 education status informal education 55 20 55 27 0 0 primary education 108 38 97 48 11 14 secondary 98 35 46 23 52 66 tertiary education 19 7 3 1 16 20 total 160 100 201 100 79 100 household labor use do not use (0) 6 2 2 1 4 5 3 jan 135 48 97 48 38 48 6 apr 110 39 86 43 24 31 10 jul 22 8 13 6 9 11 ≥11 7 3 3 2 4 5 total 280 100 201 100 79 100 occupation status farming only 173 62 120 60 53 67 trading and farming 56 20 38 18 18 24 artisan and farming 26 9 23 11 3 4 employed as wage earner & farming 6 2 4 2 2 2 retired staff and farming 8 3 7 4 1 1 casual laborer and farming 11 4 9 5 2 2 total 280 100 201 100 79 100 table 2 shows that fewer young people are involved in agriculture to date, with only 3 of the 280 respondents in the lower age group of 0–30 years engaging in agriculture in the study area. the gender distribution result showed asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 199-209 204 that both male and female household heads are actively engaged in farming activities. there is a wide margin in the use of tractor by the gender of the household head. while the majority (62%) of smallholder household heads who use tractor are male, only 38% are female. tractor use appears to have a relationship with marital status, with almost all tractor users in the study area being married. the study also revealed that most smallholder farmers in the study area have low levels of education, but tractor users are more educated. as is typical of smallholder farmers, only 2% of the respondents were not using household members as labor. this result is line with kuivanen et al. (2016). unbelievably, both smallholder tractor users and non-users actively use household labor. in this study, 62% of respondents did not have any other form of occupation except farming (see table 2). as indicated in figure 1, only a few (10%) of household heads had farming experience of 1–10 years. in other words, very few household heads in the study area had entered into farming in recent times (in the past ten years). figure-1. years of farming experience. 3.2. incidence of use of tractor services in delta state versus benue state table 3 presents the incidence of the use of tractor services in the study areas. despite efforts to ensure that most smallholder farmers mechanized their farming practices, only a relatively small share of them used tractor services. of the 280 smallholder farming households sampled in both states, only 79 respondents (28%) of the sampled respondents used tractor services. this means that a far higher proportion of smallholders depend on crude implements in the fourth industrial revolution era. table-3. incidence of tractor service use in the study area. variable tractor use in both states delta state benue state frequency percentage frequency percentage frequency percentage do not use tractor services 201 72 113 81 88 63 use tractor services 79 28 27 19 52 37 total 280 100 140 100 140 100 although the proportion of non-tractor users is higher in both states, the number of farmers not using tractor services is higher in delta state than in benue state. 3.3. differences between mean income of tractor and non-tractor users table 4 reveals the mean income difference between tractor and non-tractor users: the mean income of the former was twice that of the latter. the test result shows that tractor use can contribute to enhanced smallholder welfare. table-4. mean income by tractor and non-tractor users. variable observed mean (naira) std. deviation do not use tractor 201 16,688.56 34,427.3 use tractor 79 288,897.8 127,203.7 total 280 93,490.5 142,950.1 3.4. mean area cultivated under tractor or human labor the average areas cultivated by tractor and non-tractor users are presented in table 5. on average, farmers who used a tractor cultivated larger farm land areas than those who used human labor only. none of the respondents mentioned that they used animal traction, nor did the researcher observe any evidence of animal traction in the study areas during the fieldwork. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 199-209 205 table-5. description of mean area cultivated by tractor and non-tractor users. variable observed mean std. deviation do not use tractor 201 1.3764 1.34894 use tractor 79 4.3165 1.85565 total 280 2.2059 2.00602 3.5. land area cultivated table 6 reveals that 47% of respondents in the categories of land size farmed by respondents cultivated 2 ha or less in the study area. this result is consistent with the findings of hlomendlini (2015), who opined that the majority of smallholder farmers in south africa cultivated land areas that ranged from 2 ha and below. the small area of land cultivated by the respondents could affect them in various ways, impacting their growth and poor use of mechanical technologies such as tractors. table-6. farm area cultivated by smallholders. area cultivated (ha) smallholder farmers not using tractor to plough using tractor to plough frequency percentage frequency percentage frequency percentage ≤2 131 47 129 64 2 2 2.01-4 60 21 50 25 10 13 4.01-6 44 16 14 7 30 38 6.01-8 16 6 3 2 13 16 8.01-10 18 6 4 2 14 18 ≥10.01 11 4 1 0 11 13 total 280 100 201 100 79 100 although the larger portion of the smallholder respondents cultivated 2 ha or less, some respondents cultivated >8 ha. a high proportion of household heads who cultivated >8 ha used a tractor. this result suggests that as the area cultivated increases, farmers tend to depend on the use of farm machinery rather than human labor. 3.6. average farm area cultivated by farmers in delta and benue states as indicated in table 7, the average farm area cultivated by smallholder farming households in the delta state subsample is lower than in the benue state subsample. in the former, the average area cultivated was 1.6 ha, versus 2.8 ha for benue. this result could be ascribed to the fact that more tractor service providers are available to smallholder farmers in benue state than in delta state. table-7. mean area cultivated in benue and delta states. variable observed mean std. deviation benue 140 2.7804 2.26910 delta 140 1.6314 1.50453 total 280 2.2059 2.00602 3.7. analysis of factors influencing the use of tractor services by smallholder farmers this subsection determines the factors influencing smallholder farmers’ tractor use decisions in the study area. it seeks to explain the factors associated with tractor use in the study area to suggest ways forward. data from 280 smallholders were used. the logistic model and odds ratio were used to test factors influencing the likelihood of smallholders to use a tractor, and the extent to which those factors influence their decision. table-8. factors affecting farmers’ decision to use tractor services. variable coef. std. error z p >|z| 95% conf. interval gender of household head 0.568 0.447 1.27 0.203 -0.307 1.444 age of household head 0.001 0.038 0.01 0.995 -0.074 0.074 educational status 0.256 0.060 4.27 0.000*** 0.138 0.374 marital status 0.645 0.898 0.72 0.473 -1.115 2.406 household labor use -2.404 1.408 -1.71 0.088* -5.163 0.354 farming experience (years) -0.055 0.027 -2.06 0.040** -0.107 -0.002 other occupation -1.470 0.485 -3.03 0.002*** -2.419 -0.520 area cultivated 0.643 0.137 4.70 0.000*** 0.375 0.911 con -1.242 2.287 -0.54 0.587 -5.725 3.241 note: number of observations = 280, lr chi2(8) = 180.00, p > chi2 = 0.000, log likelihood = –76.591 and pseudo-r2 = 0.540. ***significant at 1% level; ** significant at 5% level; * significant at 10% level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 199-209 206 gender of the household head, age of household head, educational status, marital status, household labor use, farming experience (years), involvement of the household in other occupations, and area cultivated were the explanatory variables used in the logistic and odds ratio analysis. of the explanatory variables fitted to explain factors affecting smallholders’ decision to use a tractor, educational status, the use of household members, farming experience, involvement in other occupation as sources of income, and area cultivated all had a significant association with the decision to use a tractor. the logistic regression indicated that if the smallholders’ educational status increases, smallholder farmers will likely increase their decision to use a tractor. this result could be attributed to the fact that as the smallholders become more enlightened through education, they may have more knowledge about the benefits of tractor use, which may influence their decision to use a tractor. smallholder farmers who depend on household members as sources of labor are less likely to use tractor services. in other words, while the use of household labor is significant to the farmer due to lack of capital, the research outcome shows that the dependency of the smallholder farming household head on household labor has the probability of impeding their decision to use a tractor. the logistic result revealed that the involvement of the smallholder farming household head in another occupation as a source of income tends to prevent them from using tractor services. it has the likelihood of diverting the farmer’s attention from full engagement in agricultural activities, which could stimulate his/her decision not to use a tractor. the area cultivated has a positive association with the decision of smallholder farmers to use tractor services. the result for areas cultivated on smallholders’ decision to use a tractor could be stimulated because the higher the area cultivated, the greater the likelihood of the farmer using labor-enhancing technology such as the tractor. the odds ratio explains the constant effect of the predictor on the likelihood that one outcome will occur. it interprets the group that has better odds of success. the odds ratio result is presented in table 9. table-9. odds ratio likelihood estimate of logit model for factors affecting the use of tractor services. variable odds ratio std. error z p >|z| 95% conf. interval gender of household head 1.765 0.789 1.27 0.203 -0.307 1.444 age of household head 1.000 0.038 0.01 0.995 -0.074 0.074 educational status 1.292 0.078 4.27 0.000*** 0.139 0.374 marital status 1.906 1.712 0.72 0.473 -1.115 2.406 household labor use 0.090 0.127 -1.71 0.088* -5.163 0.354 farming experience (years) 0.947 0.025 -2.06 0.040** -0.107 -0.002 other occupation 0.230 0.111 -3.03 0.002*** -2.419 -0.520 area cultivated 1.902 0.260 4.70 0.000*** 0.375 0.911 con 0.289 0.661 -0.54 0.587 -5.725 3.242 note: number of observations = 280, lr chi2(8) = 180.00, p > chi2 = 0.0000, log likelihood = –76.591365 and pseudo-r2 = 0.5402. ***significant at 1% level; ** significant at 5% level; * significant at 10% level. the odds ratio result shown in table 9 indicates that if education status increases by one level, the smallholder decision to use a tractor will increase by 29%. among other things, the knowledge gained from education on the importance of tractor use in enhancing labor productivity could be why it influences the smallholders’ decision to use a tractor. this outcome contrasts with the research of kehinde (2011), which stated that education reduces determination to use a tractor. enhanced education could also enable the smallholder to take advantage of mechanization opportunitities that come his/her way. the farmer as an adult might not leave the farming profession for education; he/she can enrol in adult education alongside their farming activities. alternatively, in collaboration with extension officers and education departments, the government could arrange a special weekend or monthly education program covering various aspects of education, including agricultural education for the farmer. this will enhance smallholders’ farming abilities and provide employment opportunities for those engaged in training farmers. as indicated by the odds ratio result in table 9, the influence of household labor on smallholders’ tractor use decisions could be for several reasons. the use of household labor prevents tractor use because the household head may not be willing to spend more money to hire a tractor since she/he already has household labor as a substitute for mechanical labor (tractor use). again, the odds ratio result revealed that as the smallholder household head increases his/her dependency on household labor by an additional household member, the chances that they will use a tractor will decrease by 090 units. smallholders’ farming experience, as measured by years of farming, negatively determines their decision to use a tractor. this could be a result of years of the subsistent nature of smallholder farming, demonstrating that the longer the smallholder farmer remains at the subsistence level of farming, the less he/she is likely to use improved technology such as the tractor due to long years of non-transformation. the odds ratio result also revealed that smallholders’ involvement in other occupations reduces their determination to use a tractor by 23%. this could better explain why some of the households involved in another occupation do not actively participate in farming. smallholders’ involvement in another occupation could distract significantly from their farming activities and could make them have less inclined to use the technology that might have transformed their farm. the odds of using a tractor by smallholders increase as the area cultivated increases. table 9 reveals that a 1-ha increase in area cultivated increases the odds of using a tractor by 90%. this result shows the significance of adequate land availability in smallholder mechanization (tractor use), and is similar to the findings of kehinde (2011). the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 199-209 207 result of the role of land on smallholders’ tractor use decision points to the need to address factors such as the land tenure system that impedes land availability to smallholders. in other words, not tackling the smallholder land challenge is a systematic way of perpetually preventing them from adopting mechanization. 4. conclusions and recommendations 4.1. conclusions this study investigated tractor use and its contributions to smallholder farming. it also investigated the factors influencing smallholder farmers’ decision to use a tractor in delta and benue states, nigeria, using a logistic model and odds ratio. the level of tractor use among these smallholders is low, at only 28%, and this is irrespective of the role of tractor use in the enhancement of smallholder’s income. the incomes of smallholders who used a tractor are far higher than for non-tractor users. tractor users also cultivate a larger farm area than their non-tractor-using counterparts. the role of tractor use in smallholder income and area cultivated transformation is an indication that the use of tractors is vital to food production and the agribusiness management supply chain. marital status and the gender of the household head do not significantly determine the use of a tractor by smallholder farmers. farming experience, dependency on household labor, the involvement of the smallholder in another occupation as a source of income generation, and the area cultivated all influenced the use of tractor services by smallholder farmers. a more holistic approach is needed to persuade smallholders to abandon the use of crude implements. recommendations were made based on the finding of the work. 4.2. recommendations since most smallholder farmers using a tractor were either young or in early adulthood, efforts should be made to make more tractors available because this might encourage more younger people to become involved in agriculture. an attempt should be made to get more educated people into agriculture while encouraging those who are already involved to get more education as they carry out their farming activities. farmers should not be dependent on the sole use of household labor. the smallholder farmer who wants growth in farming activities, including use of a tractor, should not be involved in another occupation as a source of income. rather than engaging in another occupation as a source of income, farmers should take out a loan while concentrating on their farming activities should additional money needs arise. this means that the bureaucracies and barriers preventing the smallholder’s access to loans should be seriously dealt with. more land should be made available for farmers and the challenge associated with land availability for the smallholder, including that of the land tenure system, should be addressed. in this regard, smallholders’ farming reserves can be created within a community just as forest and game reserves are. this will nurture cooperation among farmers, sharing of knowledge, and efficient use of mechanization among smallholders. efforts should be intensified to persuade smallholder farmers to use tractors rather than remaining dependent on hand implements and household labor. in this regard, a two-wheeled tractor that is affordable and supports climate-resilient agriculture should be made available to smallholders. policy reform and new strategies should be promoted to ensure the use of the tractor by smallholder farmers. 5. implications of the study findings for agribusiness this research contributes to the awareness of tractor use practices, and to the benefits and information on how some smallholders could gradually transform their agribusiness through tractor use. farmers who used tractors also cultivated larger areas, implying that tractor use influences the expansion of farm size. extension services can include this relationship in their messages to encourage farmers to adopt tractor use. there is a high probability that these will positively influence food production and income among smallholders. an increase in farm size will likely result in increased farm output, which will positively influence prices, incomes, and farm employment increased use of tractors by farmers, leading to larger farm sizes, is likely to increase the establishment of businesses servicing the farm sector’s tractorization programme. funding: the authors acknowledge the agricultural and rural development research institute (ardri) and govan mbeki research and development centre (gmrdc) of the university of fort hare for their financial support to this research. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references boughton, d., mather, d., barrett, c. b., benfica, r. s., abdula, d., tschirley, d., & cunguara, b. 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(2020). employment in agriculture (% of total employment) (modeled ilo estimate [world bank]. retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sl.agr.empl.zs. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 612 land management for agricultural entrepreneurship development: farmers’ perspective from udayapur, nepal ashish rai a, niranjan devkota b, udbodh bhandari c, udaya raj paudel d a mba student; quest international college, pokhara university, nepal b coordinator; research management cell, quest international college, pokhara university, nepal c assistant professor; quest international college, pokhara university, nepal d principal; quest international college, pokhara university, nepal  niranjandevkota@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 31-mar-2020 accepted: 01-aug-2020 online available: 31-aug2020 keywords: land management, agricultural entrepreneurship, farmer's perception, land use, agricultural training, nepal abstract this study aims to explore farmers’ perspectives on land management for agricultural entrepreneurship in udayapur, nepal. the research is based on cross-sectional explanatory research design, and a structured questionnaire was administered for collecting the data from 297 farmers in tiryuga, chudandhigadhi, and belaka municipalities in udayapur. the results were derived with the help of descriptive and inferential analysis using stata. the results show that agricultural training and market information play significant roles in gaining awareness about agricultural entrepreneurship and ideas on land management. agricultural training, credit facilities, and market information have a positive relationship with an awareness of agricultural entrepreneurship and ideas on land management. in contrast, the age, land size, crop cycle, credit facility and agricultural subsidy have a negative relationship with them. this study suggests the need for increasing and enhancing the knowledge for farmers about agricultural entrepreneurship and proper land management in nepal. the outcome of this study remains significant mostly in developing nations like nepal and even in the developed ones to feed the growing population’s increasing food demand, as land area is limited on earth and the population living on it is swelling. contribution/ originality this paper contributes as a case study on the ongoing discussion on land management practices for agricultural entrepreneurial development in the developing country. it has discussed possibilities of development of land management and agricultural entrepreneurship empirically in the context of nepal. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.612.627 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ashish rai, niranjan devkota, udbodh bhandari, and udaya raj paudel (2020). land management for agricultural entrepreneurship development: farmers’ perspective from udayapur, nepal. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 612-627. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 612-627 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:niranjandevkota@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.612.627 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4881-667x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5234-5081 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 612-627 613 1. introduction different approaches applied for the best use of land is referred to as land management (department of agriculture, 2018). land management as today's burning issue is a critical topic to discuss as the landmass is declining due to the rapidly growing population leading to the overuse of lands to fulfill the needs of the increasing population (ahammad, 2017). such a population trend and increasing land use ratio for the fulfillment of the needs of the people has caused various problems to the overall agriculture system and techniques used (ramankutty et al., 2002). bao and peng (2016) observed that due to over industrialization and urbanization, the land is rapidly declining and degrading, which leads to the loss of highly productive lands owned by a large number of farmers. besides, venter et al. (2016) observed that the human involvement and encroachment have affected about 83% of the global terrestrial land surface and have degraded about 60% of the ecosystem services in the recent past 50 years. moreover, chhabra et al. (2006) concluded that land use and the land cover change are the most visible indicators of human encroachments, hence the very most important driver for the loss of biodiversity and the other forms of land degradation. grecchi et al. (2014) opined that such land use and the land cover changes are massive and terrible in the brazilian cerrado and impact is far-reaching. furthermore, the productivity of the land declines as a result of the decline in the quality of land, which, in turn, is due to the unmanaged agricultural practices (helms et al., 2017). in the present context, differentiation and fragmentation on land have created the problem in the land tenure and ownership. in this regard, gupta (2005) argued for little scope for agricultural regeneration where there is increasing fragmented landholdings. for this mochizuki et al. (2016) have suggested that the government has to be strict on managing new land policy and planning. in this context, richards and bulkley (2007) foresee the continuation of the co-existence of farm businesses and farm policy in the future too. regarding the land resources degradation and reduction in production, borras and franco (2008) have observed in central america, 75% of cropland has been degraded. for instance, such a global trend of declining land has led to the reduction of biological and economic productivity of land (collantes et al., 2018). furthermore, one of every three people in the world, in some way or others, being affected by degradation of land irreversibly (fao, 2010) and various factors like drought and population growth are responsible for the change in agricultural land (long et al., 2007; seto et al., 2002; wood et al., 2004) which have made the importance of natural resources and agriculture management in the hope of significant return (wolka, 2014). for such circumstances, buhaug and urdal (2013) show the importance of agriculture product to be managed by agriculture entrepreneurs, as there are the growing demands of agriculture products amid estimated future population to be 9.8 billion by 2050 and 2 out of 3 people living in the urban area. furthermore, regarding the resource for agriculture entrepreneurship, capital, land, labor, and management expertise are the resources necessary for the agricultural enterprises, which are the determinant factors for the success of agricultural entrepreneurs (rantamaki-lahtinen, 2002; lowe and talbot, 2000; evans and jovanovic, 1989; gasson, 1988). in this regard, small agriculture entrepreneurs being the mainstay of food production in the world's developing countries, are also the key group of food security (fao, 2014). moreover, nordin et al. (2005) argue about the evidence showing that in developing economies and countries, it has been possible for small farmers to rise to agriculture entrepreneurs. simons (1985) argues that despite no uniqueness to any specific region of the world, fragmentation for some countries like pakistan, peru, and syria shows the average farm consisting of at least four separate land parcels. in addition, niroula and thapa (2005) contended that gradual decrease of landholding size due to their fragmentation into parcels as a typical phenomenon in south asia attributes to equal sub-division of different qualities of land parcels among household. van dijk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 612-627 614 (2003) viewed such land fragmentation as an often-overlooked disadvantage leading to the wastage of a considerable proportion of productive land in unnecessary networks of paths, boundaries and bunds. further, such fragmentations have huge effects on the agricultural land management and distribution (jha et al., 2007; sunquist, 1998). for such a problem in nepal and elsewhere, blaikie and sadeque (2000) have substantially viewed land fragmentation as a critical problem attributable to a decrease in productivity and sustainability of land resources in nepal, india, and other places. however, hooi (1978); wong and geronimo (1983) did not see land fragmentation as a problem, as their study in malaysia and philippines revealed that paddy farm is not affected by land fragmentation. whatever that is, fragmentation of such unlimited and unrestricted patterns is due to the lack of policy designed in these countries. for such policy lacking, ding (2003) discussed that generally, improving land use-efficiency, enhancing land management, increasing government revenues along with financing urban infrastructure and protecting farmland are to be the goals and objectives of the land policy reforms for any country and government and in this regard, okothogendo (1998) sees contemporary land policy reform needs to be formulated within a macro-level policy framework and complementary programmes with its ownership, distribution, utilization alienability, management, and control now, regarding policy to be formulated in nepal, acharya and shrestha (2011) asserted that land use policy and planning are not in the state of functioning according to the international standards. there are several reasons for that as many nepalese are landless and jobless, and ultimately many of them are invading the government land. in this sense, okoth-ogendo (1998) argued that land policy challenges still dominate public debate in the twentyfirst century. for this, toulmin and quan (2000) suggested strong human-centered land policy and land rights in those regions where poverty, vulnerability and human suffering have been endemic. due to the lack of state policy, in many places of nepal, lands are found being left barren and development works along with growing urbanization have caused to affect agricultural lands to a greater extent (dhakal and khanal, 2018). shrestha et al. (2008) analyzed that as a major sector of employment, nepal can use agriculture and land management as the key to alleviating poverty, which, in turn, can help for sustainable agricultural development. for this, christiaensen et al. (2011) have considered agriculture to reduce poverty among the poorest of the poor significantly and effectively. similarly, bourguignon (1998) observed that lower-income inequality among the small and medium farmers cultivating a larger share of land has led to the greater impact of growth on poverty. amazingly, ravallion and chen (2007) have evidenced that more or less equal land distribution in china is responsible for four times poverty reduction than growth in industry and services. on the other hand, ravallion and datt (1996) argued that despite widespread land inequality and landlessness, growth in agriculture and services were equally found to be reducing poverty. in the context of nepal, we are also very much familiar with the reality that one-third of nepal’s gdp comes from agriculture (gauchan and shrestha, 2017; paudel et al., 2016). also, in the case of nepal, it has been examined that there have been unique social and economic changes as the youths of the nation are out of the country for foreign employment, and many of the agricultural lands are being unused (paudel et al., 2016). therefore, the world is looking at agriculture to produce more nutritious food and improve the livelihood of the peoples, especially the people who are poor (wu et al., 2014). by understanding such phenomena of agricultural land and importance for the management of these lands for poverty reduction and country’s development, this paper aims to explore farmers' perspective in land management for agricultural entrepreneurship in udayapur, nepal. the remaining part of the paper is organized into four sections. the next section will represent the overall methodology of the study, where materials and methods will be discussed. then, the results and discussion of key issues will be presented, followed by the concluding remarks. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 612-627 615 2. materials and methods 2.1. theoretical debate agricultural intensity can be termed for the productivity of land or proper utilization of land (dietrich et al., 2012). various researches are conducted in land-use intensity, which suggests that the land-use intensity should be systematically integrated from inputs to the production system (i.e., land, labor, capital) with output (i.e., products) which is in line with the view of economic principle dealing with an input-output relationship (brookfield, 1972). it also gives a similar framework as of pivotal boserupian notion of cropping frequency dealing with the theories and relationships of land intensity and expansion. such integration can aid output (production per year) and input (land area) based on biophysical indicators along with other production functions of economics. to support the statement, certain indicators that exist and reinforce can be witnessed for the power of such approaches. for example, 'energy returns on investment' showcases how energetic inputs and outputs can be used and illustrated for land intensification strategies (court and fizaine, 2017). further, as revealed from time series analysis, though labor efficiency can be achieved with industrialization, it deteriorates energy balance causing it to fall below one sometimes (krausman et al., 2005). however, only assessing the input-output relation is not enough; the outcome generated from landbased production should also be assessed, which are resulted frequently from the unintended alteration of the socio-ecological system by quantifying the ratio between inputs, output and changes in ecosystem properties. it would further provide insight to interact between society and nature, allowing it to balance the cost and benefits of land-based production, acknowledging landuse intensification strategies as well. there are only a few examples that give evidence of such integrative perspectives at the level of agricultural products. according to dubreuil et al. (2007) life cycle assessment approach has been developed to access how the environment impacts to land and its production chain. likewise, the efficiency of final biomass products can be calculated at the land system level with the help of hanpp framework (haberl et al., 2009), which can further be used to analyze and evaluate environmental pressure related to biomass products. similar to hanpp is a carbon footprint concept (hertwich and peters, 2009) dealing with carbon emission related to the consumption of final products (foods). one of the compelling indicators to evaluate land and to identify the sustainable land systems could be local or global biodiversity loss that exists in every unit of input or output (lanzen et al., 2012). these approaches and strategies will help to tackle emerging issues related to the land system and their relation to land-use intensification pathways. therefore, further indicators should be developed that will integrate socio-ecological outcomes, land-based production associated with direct, indirect, and opportunity costs. further, enhancing capacities, strategies, synergies, and feedbacks to make sustainable future land use. 2.2. econometric estimation land management for agricultural entrepreneurship is the psychological and behavioral cognitive aspects. the decision-making criteria of farm households revealed that farmers’ preference for agricultural production depends on their understanding (devkota et al., 2018) and the costeffectiveness (devkota et al., 2017). in behavioral sciences, such behavioral aspects can be measured using logistic regression analysis (probstl et al., 2016). land management under logistic analysis has desirable statistic properties with probability value ranging from 0-1, one for those who have managed their land and 0 for the rest. it gives a clear picture of the analysis purpose and provides a difference in the result as per the respondents’ socioeconomic and other deterministic characteristics. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 612-627 616 following the study of devkota et al. (2018), a binary logit model was selected to identify the significant variables that determine the knowledge about land management and agricultural entrepreneurship. the model is given as: 𝐼𝑛[𝑃𝑖 1 − 𝑃𝑖⁄ ] = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑋1 + 𝛽2𝑋2 + ⋯ + 𝛽𝑘𝑋𝑘 … … … … . (1) here, p = probability of the outcomes, β0 = intercept term, β1….βk = coefficient and x1…..xk = independent variables. based on the model, the final equation is: 𝑌 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐺𝑒𝑛 + 𝛽2𝐴𝑔𝑒 + 𝛽3𝐹𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒 + 𝛽4𝐸𝑑𝑢 + 𝛽5𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛 + 𝛽6𝑂𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑝 + 𝛽7𝐸𝑥𝑝 + 𝛽8𝐼𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 + 𝛽9 𝐿𝑠𝑖𝑧𝑒 + 𝛽10𝐼𝑟𝑟𝑖 + 𝛽11𝐹𝑝𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑒 + 𝛽12𝐶𝑐𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒 + 𝛽13𝑂𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 + 𝛽14𝑀𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜 + 𝛽15𝐵𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 + 𝛽16𝐹𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑡 + 𝛽17𝐴𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑟 + 𝛽18𝑆𝑢𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑦 + 𝜀 … … … … . . (2) where, y1 = dependent varaible, β0 = intercept terms, β1….β18 = coefficient of x and x1…..x18 = independent variables as described in table 1. the study aims to measure dependent variables based on explanatory variables. to carry the study forward following hypothesis is formulated; h0: farmers are not significantly aware of agriculture entrepreneurship, h1: farmers significantly have no ideas on land management. table 1: description of variables variable details of variables description value expected sign gen gender respondent’s gender 1= male, 0 = female ± age age in years respondent’s age in years ± ftype family types respondent’s family types 1= joint, 0 = otherwise ± edu level of education hh education status 1= educated, 0 = uneducated + train training received any agricultural training 1= yes, 0 = no + occup occupation different profession 1= yes, 0 = no ± exp experience hh total farm experience years + income income monthly income in nepali rupees + lsize land size hh land ownership (in hectare) 1= more than 1 hectare, 0 = less than 1 hectare ± irri access to irrigation availability of irrigation 1= yes, 0 = otherwise + fpractice farm practice farming practices by the farmers in years ± ccycle crop cycle crop production in a years 1= 2 and more 0 = one ± omember organization member hh member(s) membership on any agro groups/ or organizations 1= yes, 0 = no + asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 612-627 617 minfo market information hh receiving information related to agriculture and market 1= yes, 0 = no + bdistance distance bank hh nearest distance to the bank 1=1-5 km, 0 = more than 5km ± fcredit credit facility availability of any credit facility 1= yes, 0 = no ± alabour labor access availability of labor in times needed 1= yes, 0 = no ± subsidy agro subsidy any subsidy programs practiced 1= yes, 0 = no ± 2.2.1. study area and data collection techniques udayapur district, located in province 1 of nepal, was selected as the area of this study. mahabharat hills from the north and shiwalik from south surround the district, whereas both hills meet together by west, which forms a valley, called udayapur valley. udayapur covers 2063 sq. km of nepal’s total land area (cbs, 2014). as the district connects three ecological zones, mahabharat hills, churiya hills and inner terai, the region is favorable for farming and agricultural activities, which have resulted in people adopting farming as their main occupation and agriculture as the main source of income. hence, the area was chosen for the study as the main aim of this study is to analyze farmers’ knowledge of agro-entrepreneurship. both the primary and secondary data were collected for the research. a structured questionnaire was designed to collect the primary data from the farmers of 3 different municipalities of udaypur district. besides, key informants interview (kii) was conducted among different experts who have knowledge and understanding of agriculture, agriculture entrepreneurship, and land management. further, the secondary data are used for the strengthening research, making it reliable and rational enough and they were collected from research papers, articles, and different websites of the ministry of agriculture, journals of food and agriculture organization, and ministry for land management. landowners and farmers of triyuga, chaudandigadi and bela municipalities are the populations for the study. according to the census conducted in 2011, the total population in triyuga, chaudandigadi and belaka municipalities is 87,557, 48,574 and 42,386, respectively (cbs, 2012). for this research, a nonprobability sampling was used for the survey. in the sampling process, purposive sampling was applied for selecting individuals who were involved in agriculture. a total of 297 individuals as a modest sample size were selected from three municipalities in udayapur. both descriptive, as well as inferential data analysis, were performed. 3. results 3.1. farmer's characteristics out of the 297 total respondents, the results show that 37.37% of the respondents are female and 62.63% of the respondents are male (table 2). the study shows that the major respondents were of the age group from 41-60 (51.51%). it also shows that the respondents have different occupations, and agriculture is the main occupation (92.25%). our result also reveals that 43.09% of the respondents have an income level of less than 15000 per month. in this context, naminse and zhuang (2018), showing the evidence from their research in guangxi province of china, observed that the poor rural population with an income of around less than 1.25$ per day practice agriculture and forest activities as their dominant economic choices. regarding education level, bao and peng (2016) in zhejiang province, china reported that the majority of the respondents didn’t attend college or higher education showing land-lost farmers’ low education levels. in our study, 43.43% of the farmers have mentioned they have a high school level of education. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 612-627 618 table 2: socio-demographic status of respondents field male female n (297) gender sex 186 (62.63%) 111 (37.37%) 297 (100%) age (in years) 21-40 40 (13.46%) 51(17.17%) 91 (30.63%) 41-60 101 (34%) 52(17.50%) 153 (51.51%) 61-80 42 (14.14%) 8(2.69%) 50 (16.83%) above 80 2 (0.67%) 0 2 (0.67%) work experience (in years) 1-10 27(9.09%) 27 (9.09%) 54(18.18%) 11-20 61(20.53%) 45 (15.15%) 106(35.69%) 21-30 49(16.49%) 23(7.74%) 72(24.24%) 31-40 17(5.72%) 11(3.70%) 28(9.42%) 41-50 24(8.08%) 6(2.02%) 30(10.10%) 51-60 7(2.35%) 0 7(2.35%) 3.1.1. land ownership and utilization regarding the average area of land possessed by per person, ahammad (2017) revealed that bangladesh, as a densely populated country, accounts for only 0.06 hectares area of land per person (table 3). further, dhakal and khanal (2018) blame the socioeconomic, legal and infrastructure development factors responsible for the fragmentation of agricultural land and reduction in landholding size. our research result shows 87% of farmers own land less than 1 hectare. in the survey, it is observed that 13.80% of the farmers have sloppy land, 21.88% of farmers have barren land, 249 farmers of low land and three farmers have other types of land. here, individual farmers may have mixed type or two or more types of land such as a farmer may have sloppy and low land according to the geographical distribution, and the quality of the land one possesses. table 3: information related to practice by farmers land crop cycle field type numbers (n)= 297 type of land sloppy land 41(13.80%) barren land 65(21.88%) low land 249(83.83%) others 3(1.01%) source of irrigation accessible 269(90.57%) not accessible 28(9.42%) fertility of land very fertile 13(4.37%) fertile 229(77.10%) neutral land 44(14.81%) infertile 9(3.03%) very infertile 2(0.67%) types of crop cycle practiced 1 type of crop 5(1.68%) 2 types of crop 94(31.64%) 3 types of crop 191(64.30%) 4 types of crop 7(2.35%) further, regarding the availability of irrigation, 9.42% of respondents don't have access to irrigation, whereas 90.57% of the farmers are found to have access to irrigation. there has been found that out of those who have access to irrigation; it has been recorded that there are many tools to water used, such as rainwater, tube-well, canal, others (pump, motors, collecting in pots). in this context, gutzler et al. (2015) talked about two agricultural management responses for future challenges, which are the extended use of irrigation and increased production of energy crops. from the survey, it has been found that 69% of the irrigation is done with the help of canal, 17% of them rely on rainwater, 12% of the farmers rely on tube-well and 2% of them rely on other tools of irrigations like pumps, etc. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 612-627 619 the survey shows that 3.03% of people have their land irrigated about 21-40%, 15.82% of them have their land irrigated about 41-60%, and 25.85% of them have their total land irrigated to 61-80 %. in the udayapur district, it has been found that the respondents have a different perception of their fertility of the land. it has been found that in 297 respondents, 4.37% of the respondents have very fertile land, 86.53% of them have fertile land, and 14.81% of them have neutral land. the survey on 297 respondents shows there have been different crops cycle practiced in udayapur, nepal. it is found that only 1.68% of the respondents practice 1 type of crop cycle, 31.64% of the respondents practice two types of crop cycles, about 64.30% of the respondents practice three crop cycles and 2.35% of the respondent’s practice four types of the crop cycle. the change in cultivation has been a significant issue in today’s situation in nepal. the cultivation practices are affected by many factors. the major factors are climate change, shortage of labor, improvement in technology and easy access to the market. in this sense, probstl-haider et al. (2016) argued for significant effects of climate change on the traditional landscapes despite the governmental regulations and incentives for agriculture, and they considered farmers as the crucial decisionmakers while implementing the different policies on climate changes. in our survey, the result reveals that 29.62% of the respondents think the change in cultivation is due to climate change and 10.34%, 92.59% and 5.05% of them think it is due to shortage of labor, improvement in technology and easy access of market respectively. giving the importance of the impact of climate change, zabel et al. (2014) suggested for the requirement of an inventory on the changing potentially suitable areas for agriculture under changing climate conditions. our survey suggests that 69.69% of respondents have 1-5 kilometers distance from the bank, 13.46% of respondents are 5-10 kilometer far away from the bank, and 14.81% of respondents are more than 10 kilometers far away from the bank. credit facilities play a vital role in expanding and encouraging agricultural activities. it has been found out that the credit facilities are either formal, informal, or both. out of 297 respondents, 36.70% of respondents do not have any credit facilities, where 43.09% have formal, 14.14% have informal and 6.06% of the respondents have access to both formal and informal credit facilities. the results also reveal that 92.59% of respondents cultivate their land themselves or with the family support, while 7.07% of them have their land cultivated by others. 3.1.2. binary logistic regression the binary logit regression, in table 4, indicates significance between dependent variables with independent variables. the first model shows that six independent variables have a significant relationship with the awareness of agricultural entrepreneurship. out of the three of the factors have positive signs and remain negatively significant with the awareness of agricultural entrepreneurship. the three factors market information, agricultural-related training and monthly income are positively significant at 5% and 1%. and looking at the odds ratio, our results indicate that one unit change in market information, agricultural-related training and monthly income the odds of being aware of agricultural entrepreneurship increases in market information, agriculturalrelated training and monthly income by 5.06 times, 5.79 times and 9.81 times respectively. the results conclude that the monthly income of the farmers highly affects the awareness of the farmers and also the agricultural training and market information leads to awareness of agricultural entrepreneurship. the second model shows that four independent variables have a significant relationship with ideas on land management. out of the four, two of the factors have positive significance, and the remaining of them have negative significance with the ideas on land management. the two factors, agricultural-related training and credit facility, are positively significant at a 1% level. and looking at the odd ratio, our results indicate that one unit changes in agricultural training and credit facilities by 3.5 times and 3.22 times. the results conclude that the agricultural-related training and credit facilities highly affect the ideas on land management when there are changes in these above factors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 612-627 620 table 4: results of binary regression (1) (2) variables awareness on agricultural entrepreneurship idea about land management gender 0.739 (0.572) -0.141 (0.379) age -0.066** (0.030) 0.029 (0.018) family types -0.343 (0.567) -0.097 (0.373) highest level of education in your family 0.898 (0.582) 0.253 (0.316) agricultural related training 1.726*** (0.635) 1.374*** (0.451) occupation -1.518 (0.950) -0.539 (0.765) experience 0.011 (0.027) -0.0007 (0.024) income (monthly) 2.320*** (0.738) 0.718 (0.616) land size 5.228* (2.797) -4.583* (2.505) access to irrigation -1.116 (1.007) 0.425 (0.547) farm practice -0.044 (0.0337) 0.0017 (0.026) crop cycle -0.806 (0.590) -1.163*** (0.315) organizational membership -0.086 (0.947) -0.862 (0.541) market information 1.702** (0.664) 0.226 (0.517) distance of bank 0.856 (0.886) 0.772 (0.492) credit facility 0.667 (0.751) 1.222*** (0.397) labour access -1.784** (0.728) 0.677 (0.492) agricultural subsidy -1.620** (0.751) -1.086** (0.492) constant 1.231 (1.775) -1.036 (1.417) observations 279 279 note: robust standard errors in parentheses *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1 3.1.3. managerial implication out of 297, only 5.05% of the respondents said no or did not have any ideas on the utilization of fallow land for commercial farming and the remaining 94.94% of the respondents agreed on the utilization of the fallow land for commercial farming. among the awarded farmers, it has been found that many of the farmers believe in commercial farming like lemon farming, cash crops, vegetable farming, animal husbandry, organic farming, fruits farming, poultry and fisheries, and technology support based farming. 6.73% of the respondents do not have any ideas and 93.26% of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 612-627 621 the respondents believe that investments from the government at all levels, easy access of loans and low rate interest loans play important roles in the enhancement of the farmers and farming. as well as irrigation, subsidy, training, technical learning and protection of farmers and identifying the leading farmers can be other significant support for the enhancement of commercial farming. regarding entrepreneurship, our survey result shows that only 11.78% of respondents have an awareness of agricultural entrepreneurship and the remaining 88.21% of respondents do not have any awareness of agricultural entrepreneurship. such entrepreneurship in agriculture is evidenced by esiobu et al. (2015) observation which suggested that despite significant role of entrepreneurship to farmers as evidenced in the imo state in nigeria, they are getting poor and late information about entrepreneurship and they lack adequate capitals to invest and lack nearby markets for selling their products. the research results show that only 11.7 % of the respondents are aware of entrepreneurship, which is very low. from the results, we cannot deny that there are entrepreneurship programs, but it seems the entrepreneurial programs have not been able to reach its target and able to make the program successful. however, dias and franco (2018) have analytically suggested that agricultural entrepreneurs in nigeria, with the help of interorganizational networks, have been playing a fundamental role in developing activities through horizontal and vertical networks. similarly, mupfasoni et al. (2018) authenticate evidence on agriculture entrepreneurship mentioned about a few groups of farmers in burundi changing their banana product into juice and opening restaurants. but our study shows that only 5% of the respondents have gained entrepreneurship programs while 95% do not have attended any entrepreneurship programs. now, dias and franco (2018) suggested for support to the small farmers by the organization and the local and national authority to influence more farmers to make them agriculture entrepreneurs. the land policy can be any policy from owning land, house or business purpose and agricultural land. in this sense, sun and akiyama (2018) have mentioned that china has introduced a new policy, popularly known as agriculture land use right transfer in order to meet the sustainable development of agricultural demand there. similarly, halbac et al. (2018) observed how the impact of political, socioeconomic, and cultural factors worked on implementing environment-friendly techniques for sustainable land management and climate change mitigation in romania. our survey results show that 15.82% of the respondents know about the land policy and practices and the remaining 84.17% do not have land policy ideas. it shows that the farmers lack knowledge of different land policies they must know for their betterment. the study shows that only 16% of farmers know or use the land policy, where the majority 84% do not have ideas or knowledge on land policy. 37.17% of the respondents responded that there is the availability of subsidy programs and out of the subsidy programs the famous subsidy programs are seeds and animal husbandry and investment of 50 percent in irrigation and agricultural tools. 4. discussion this study involves 37% female and 63% male respondents indicating that female respondents have given their perception over agriculture entrepreneurship and possibilities upon it. further, only the high school level education attended by 43.4% of the respondents suggest that investment in education is considerably needed for farmers to equip them even for farming activities and subsequently to make them generate more and rational income. the results now show a majority of the respondents (92.25%) are following agriculture as their occupation, which reveals the fact that mainstream nepalese rural population is still carrying out farming activities, which is also evidenced in southeast asia as argued by de koninck (1986) that dominant ethnic groups who occupied densely settled lowland areas in peripheral and mountainous regions domesticated forest and forest plant and brought both of them into the national mainstream agriculture. it is, however, so, earning less than 15000 a month by slightly less than 50% farmers show that income generation level of the respondents is not so satisfactory, unlikely to meet the need for monthly family expenditure. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 612-627 622 the issue of land ownership has been very problematic in nepal, not justifying the reasonable and scientific distribution of the land among different strata of the population (adhikari, 2006). in our study too, the results show 87% of the respondents own less than 1 hectare of the land, revealing the fact that ownership over a low area of the land does not encourage agriculture entrepreneurship. contrary to this situation, more than 90% of the respondents have access to irrigation implies the fact that the efforts of farming by irrigation at the local level or community level gives the evidence of enhancement in agricultural activities in nepalese societies (aryal et al., 2019). results further show that majority of the respondents have fertile land, suggesting that fertile land, irrespective of the size, can be properly used for the agriculture entrepreneurship. in this regard, rosairo and plotts (2016) argued that those who have adequate and sustainable assets, to a greater extent, are entrepreneurial farmers. further, as an experience of western europe, mcelwee (2008) argued that a key entrepreneurial requirement for british farmers is the recognition of business opportunities. now, in our study respondents’ response to causes of change in cultivation time and product range is varied and they are a shortage of labor, improvement of technology and climate change, which implies that farmers are variously affected by these factors. therefore, it can be strongly recommended technology innovation along with coping with climate change for the proper cultivation of the land and promotion of agriculture entrepreneurship. in addition, the research results show that the farmers have bank accessibility with a slight variation of distance to reach the bank and 43.1% of farmers have formal credit facilities for promoting agroentrepreneurship, whereas 36.7% does not have any such facilities, which significantly suggests the considerable lacking of such privilege to the farmers. on the verge of such a scenario, tsie (1996) contended that the government, through the national development bank and other organizations, has provided to local farmers through several institutional initiatives in botswana. contextually, mcelwee (2008) asserted that when the discussion of entrepreneurship in farming is made in front, the matter of policy comes virtuously. further, the survey result shows 95% of respondents’ perception of the utilization of fallow lands for commercial purposes, which gives strong evidence of how the farmers are eager to commercialize their land and production. it is a much suggestive viewpoint for the development of agriculture entrepreneurship. moreover, more than 90% of the farmers view that investment from all levels of the governments, easy access to a loan with low-interest rates can have an important role in the enhancement of farming activities. it can help in the subsequent development of agriculture entrepreneurship. despite these facts of favorable circumstances, only 11.7% of respondents are aware of agricultural entrepreneurship, which demands prompt intervention from the government and nongovernment side to train and equip the farmers for starting any agriculture business. chaudhary (2018) mentioned such unawareness of agriculture business due to the unfamiliarity in land policy. moreover, as taken anecdotal evidence from south african cities, hovorka (2004) suggested that entrepreneurial urban agriculture is the result of a great agricultural diversification in botswana. more significantly, rosairo and potts (2016) asserted that an entrepreneurial farmer is a person who can create and develop a profitable business in a changing business environment. again, in our survey, respondents further suggest various vocational or agriculture-based training program to be launched on land policy, technology innovation, marketing of the product, and investment for them that can help in making their interest in agriculture entrepreneurship. regarding the significance of the policy adoption and implementation, hickey (1982) elaborated a historical incidence that in the form of old and traditional agricultural entrepreneurship, the french administration during the first decades of the twentieth century formulated a policy that initiated the development of plantation agriculture to encourage viet settlers in the central highland to stabilize them from itinerant agriculture. lastly, it is noteworthy to mention here from the farm management viewpoint that schultz (1939), in his research and theoretical interpretation, mentioned the role of farm management, which was forced to allocate resources in avoiding economic surplus appropriately. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 612-627 623 5. conclusion this research aims to explore land management for agricultural entrepreneurship development from farmers’ perspective. the research concluded that 274 of the respondents had agriculture as their main occupation. the land size of the respondents differs according to their own, only about 13% of the respondents have land above one hector and 87% of the respondents have land less than one hector. the majority of the farmers have access to irrigation, which indicates there are different ways of irrigation applied. 188 of the respondents have formal, informal, or both credit facilities and 109 do not have any credit facilities. the results show very few farmers are aware of the agricultural entrepreneurship and below 40% of the farmers express their ideas on land management and few percent of the respondents are aware of agricultural training and had taken agricultural-related training and such that there is a significant positive relationship between market information, agricultural-related training and monthly income for awareness to agricultural entrepreneurship. it concludes that one-unit change in market information, agricultural-related training and monthly income increase the awareness about agricultural entrepreneurship by 5.06 times, 5.79 times and 9.81 times, respectively. for land management, it concludes that the factor agricultural-related training and credit facilities are positively significant. the odds ratio results one-unit change in agricultural training and credit facility increase by 3.5 times and 3.22 times. after analyzing the data results and different suggestions collected from the farmers, recommendations that are possible for the development of land management and agricultural entrepreneurship are discussed: to organize awareness program on land management; to help maintain unity among entrepreneur farmers; to manage to protect from wildlife and to take the initiative from government to promote the agro-entrepreneurship. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references acharya, r., & shrestha, b. b. 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author article history: received: 25-feb-2020 accepted: 15-may-2020 online available: 20-jun2020 keywords: soil and water conservation, farmers’ adoption, tobit, probit, zaghouen, tunisia abstract the tunisian government has established some strategies to face soil erosion. in this research, we aim to study the perception of farmers towards these conservation structures in terms of the acceptability of installation of these amenities and terms of their maintenance. we try to define the socio-economic variables that explain why some farmers in the study area accept the installation of soil conservation facilities while others do not and at what rate of maintenance. therefore, we used tobit and probit models to examine respectively the probability of acceptance of conservations amenities (agreement of farmers that conservation techniques be implemented on their lands) and the rate of acceptance (allocation of land for maintained cts). it comes out that the factors affecting cts acceptance are land size, animal husbandry, irrigation from the lake, and land tenure. contribution/ originality this study contributes to the existing literature to identify the variables that affect farmers' perception of soil and water conservation facilities. it has investigated the factors that influence the rate of adoption and maintenance of these amenities. using econometric analysis, this paper contributes to logical analysis about the social, technical and economical characteristics have influential roles in farmers’ decisions related to the adoption of natural resources conservation technologies. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.440.449 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: anissa gara, mohamed hammami, sofiene hammami, mohamed karim aounallah, rabeb elmouaddab, mariem nahdi and lamia laajili-ghezal (2020). econometric analysis of acceptance of soil and water conservation techniques in the semiarid region of zaghouan (northeast tunisia). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 440-449. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 440-449 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:anissa.gara@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.440.449 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 440-449 441 1. introduction land degradation is a major challenge to effective agricultural production within dryland areas. this is especially true for countries such as tunisia where land degradation has been of significant historical and contemporary concern (fao, 2011). laajili and stambouli (2019) affirm that the combined effects of global climate change and human activities on the degradation of natural resources generated significant economic and social costs related to the consequences of these modifications and the proposed solutions. to cope with this worrying situation, the integration of the environmental component to respond to agriculture and sustainable development is essential. watershed management is an important component of sustainable development, integrating the physical and human potentials found in the watershed. in tunisia, it is essential to provide a more rational use of soil and water resources to meet the growing demand for water from the agricultural sector and limit the spread and the harmful effects of water erosion. indeed, tunisia ranks among the mediterranean countries most threatened by water erosion, in particular, semi-arid areas due to its geographic location in the mediterranean basin, its rugged terrain, its fine soils poor in organic matter as well as its increasingly reduced plant cover. the aggressiveness of the climate generates significant losses of runoff water pouring into the seas (melalih, 2012). above and beyond, the population growth and the economic expansion of the country make the soil resource and even more, the water resource becomes more and more scarce requiring special management. the department of water and soil conservation affiliated to the ministry of agriculture has defined a national strategy aiming at collecting runoff water from small watersheds and developing stone benches and cords (ministry of agriculture water resources and fisheries of tunisia, 2014). soil and water conservation interventions were extensively implemented within the country since the 1950s, yet, their achievements have fallen below expectations (roose et al., 2012). this study was carried out in 2018 in the north-east of tunisia and particularly in the governorate of zaghouen at oued sbaihia watershed where the strategy for the conservation of natural resources has been applied since 2001 (crda of zaghouen, 2019). it should also be noted that soil and water conservation techniques (swct) are installed by the government at the request of the farmer. except that some farmers maintain these facilities and others do not. this study aims to know whether the farmers -whose lands are managed by the conservation techniques (cts) are satisfied with these conservation developments and are therefore favorable to this conservation strategy? do they maintain these conservation structures? this could express their acceptance rates for these strategies. it is in this context that this study provided knowledge on the social, economic, and technical factors affecting farmers' perception of conservation techniques. previous research studies conducted in different areas of tunisia indicate that different individual, economic, social, institutional and biophysical characteristics have influential roles in farmers’ decisions related to the adoption of ct technologies (bachta, 1995; ouessar et al., 2006; he et al., 2007; hall et al., 2009; könig et al., 2012; jara et al., 2013). to achieve this objective, the econometric analysis was derived from cross-sectional data for a single production period. the probit and tobit models were estimated econometrically to assess respectively the acceptance probability (i.e., are farmers favorable towards conservation techniques or not) and the acceptance rate (i.e. do farmers maintain conservation techniques, this being expressed in terms of the area of land managed by conservation) by the farmers interviewed. data asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 440-449 442 were compiled using spss and analyzed using descriptive statistics, with econometric analyses undertaken to compare rates of adoption (and factors for adoption) between adopters and nonadopters (dhehibi et al., 2018). 2. methodological frameworks 2.1. study area zaghouan governorate is located on the eastern slope of mount zaghouan and dominates a vast agricultural plain (figure 1). the oued sbaihia watershed is administratively attached to the zaghouan delegation. this area is on the ridge of the tell atlas. the area is located in the semi-arid bioclimatic floor. the latitude to the right of the site is 36g41 ’while the longitude is 10g19’. the examination of the temperature data showed the variation of the temperatures recorded during the year 2018, which vary between 37.8°c in july, and 6°c in february (fao, 2011). figure 1: the geographical location of the oued sbaihia watershed at the governorate of zaghouen, tunisia a visit of the whole oued sbaihya watershed was necessary to identify the two groups of farmers: 1) farmers who accept to adopt soil conservation techniques and maintain them 2) farmers who are reluctant towards these techniques. a structured questionnaire has been designed, it contains 3 parts to collect general information on the farmer, his farm and his household, information on agricultural activities and information on cts facilities (i.e. the presence or absence of the facilities and their current state, in other words, facilities maintained or damaged). the survey was designed as a simple random sample. a total of 134 usable questionnaires were recorded over a total of 206, representing a survey response rate of 65% which was suitable for this study, divided as follow: 56 farmers out of 134 accept to adopt soil conservation techniques and maintain them while 78 farmers out of 134 are reluctant towards these techniques. the observed facilities are many, particularly: benches, gabion works, acacia, and aleppo plantations for benches’ consolidations, hill lakes, individual bowls, etc. (ministry of agriculture water resources and fisheries of tunisia, 2014). a detailed review of the local scientific and technical literature related to these interventions was recently compiled by zucca et al. (2015). zaghouan zaghouan zones d'intervention: sbaihia asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 440-449 443 2.2. data analysis we used spss to code and edit data derived from questionnaires. then, we used econometric methods such as probit and tobit models to precede at hypotheses tests (landau and everitt, 2004). we used the probit model to examine variables influencing the agreement and acceptability of farmers towards soil and water conservation amenities. also, we used the tobit model to examine the variables that influence the level of acceptability of farmers (gara, 2011). dhehibi et al. (2018) have researched to analyze the adoption of soil and water conservation techniques in the semiarid region of ‘sidi bouzid’ in the central part of tunisia. probit and tobit models are widely used to understand the main determinants of ct adoption which is a complicated process, similar to any other research on agricultural technology adoption, given the influence of a set of interrelated biophysical, socioeconomic, and institutional factors (adesina and chianu, 2002). many studies such as tobin (1958), mcdonald et al. (1980), adesina and chianu (2002), menozzi et al. (2014), and dhehibi et al. (2018) defined probit and tobit as econometrical models used to explain the relationship between dependant variable and independent variables. the probit model is used to understand the impact of some variables (independent variables) on the affected variable (dependant variable). this latter gives information by answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’. thus, it takes the value ‘1’ when the answer is ‘yes’ and ‘0’ when the answer is ‘no’, it is what we call a dummy variable (it takes zero or one). in our case, the question is: do the farmer is willing to adopt ct? the answer is argued by the independent variables. that is to say, some independent variables explain why the farmer is favourable or not to adopt ct. as for the tobit model, it gives information about how much the dependant variable is affected by the independent variables. the rate of dependency takes a value truncated from ‘0’ to ‘1’ that is why it is a continuous value. in what follows, we identify the dependant and independent variables for both probit and tobit models. 2.2.1. probit model to study the factors that affect ct agreement (rate of approval), a dummy variable, ‘a’ (meaning agreement or acceptance of the farmer to adopt ct) was applied: it takes one if the household head i of household j accepts cts to be installed at his farmland and zero otherwise, as described at the equation (1). probit (a=1) = f(f, l, p, c)……………(1) note that: f is a set of farmer characteristics (e.g. age, education, training, etc.) l is a set of land characteristics; (e.g. household size, land ownership, etc.) p is a set of the production system (e.g. size of farm, land ownership, number of cultures) c is a set of characteristics related to soil and water facilities (e.g. existence of benches and proximity to the lake) that is to say, a depends on f, l, p, and c. in other words, the acceptance of the farmer to adopt ct is affected by these variables: age, education, training, household size, land ownership, size of farm, land ownership, number of cultures, the existence of benches and proximity to the lake. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 440-449 444 2.2.2. tobit model in addition, we used tobit model to express the intensity of agreement by measuring the proportion of land allocated for cts that are maintained by farmers. this latter is a continuous variable truncated between zero and one and called ‘m’ to express the rate of maintenance of these conservation facilities by farmers (equation 2). 𝑇𝑜𝑏𝑖𝑡 (0 ≤ 𝑀 ≤ 1) = 𝑓(𝐹, 𝐿, 𝑃, 𝐶) …………….(2) this equation (2) explains how much the independent variables (age, education, training, household size, land ownership, size of farm, land ownership, number of cultures, the existence of benches, and proximity to the lake) influence the probability of maintenance of cts by farmers. thus the intensity of adoption, expressed by the rate of maintenance, ‘m’ is based on the characteristics sets related to farm, land, and production system (f, l, p, c). 3. results and discussion 3.1. analyzed variables tobit and probit models were econometrically analyzed using some social economic and technical variables to apprehend farmers’ perceptions (mcdonald et al., 1980). table 1 relates the different analyzed variables applied at probit and tobit models. table 1: description of the variables variable definition description fij 1 if household head i of household j is favourable towards cts 0 otherwise dummy mij the proportion of land allocated for maintained cts (truncated between 0 and 1) continuous farmer characteristics training 1 if the farmer got some training, 0 otherwise dummy educ household head’s years of schooling continuous age age of household heads (years) continuous land characteristics lo land ownership dummy landsize nbcult land size owned by the household head number of cultures continuous continuous production system animal number of animals continuous olive 1 if there is an olive tree, 0 otherwise dummy cereal 1 if there are cereals, 0 otherwise dummy soil and water conservation practices water number of kilometers far away from the lake continuous 3.2. tested hypothesis then, we assumed the following hypotheses that we tested:  hypothesis 1: exposure to formal education (measured in years of schooling) increases a household head's awareness about conservation strategy and erosion risks and hence education increases the probability of rate and intensity of acceptance.  hypothesis 2: farmer who has purchased his land is more likely to adopt conservation techniques (cts) and allocate more land under cts to raise farm productivity rather than an heir.  hypothesis 3: proximity to the lake increases the likelihood that a household head i of household j accepts cts farming system. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 440-449 445  hypothesis 4: the marginal probability that a farmer accepts cts farming system increases with a unit increase in farmland’s size.  hypothesis 5: animal husbandry farming influences the probability of acceptance of swc in a negative way. 3.3. factors affecting the acceptance of cts tables 2 and 3 offer detailed results about probit and tobit models (see appendix). to test hypotheses 1 to 5, probit and tobit's models were econometrically estimated for a rate of acceptance (i.e., agreement of conservation techniques, cts) and intensity of acceptance (i.e., allocation of land for maintained cts). the estimation coefficients inform about the marginal effects of an explanatory variable on the expected value (mean proportion) of the dependent variable a and changes in the rate of acceptance for a unit change of an independent variable among farmers who are favourable towards swct for dependent variable m. the lr chi2(14) statistic represents a test of the null hypothesis that the expected values of the regression coefficients are equal to each other and that they equal zero. that is to say, this statistic checks if the pseudo r2 proportion of variance in the dependent variable analyzed by the predictors is zero. in the case where the null hypothesis was correct, then there is no regression relationship between the dependent variable and the predictor variables. the results show that the predictor variables for both probit and tobit models are not all equal to each other and could be used to predict the dependent variable as indicated by a big lr chi2(14) and a small significance level (p < 0.000). that is, lr chi2(14) = 128.62 for probit regression and lr chi2(14) = 210.23 for tobit regression. so the null hypothesis can be rejected. hence we conclude that at least one of the independent variables is related to the dependent variables a and m. it comes out that the factors affecting cts acceptance are education, land size, animal husbandry, irrigation from the lake, and land tenure. these variables also have a positive and significant effect on the rate of acceptance. 3.3.1. farmers education and experiences an increase in one year of schooling increases the probability of cts adoption by 1.7% and increases the surface of maintained facilities of 0.023 ha. this supports the first hypothesis. education is often argued as a variable that influences rates of adoption (alcon et al., 2011). as well, sharing experiences between farmers would be an elemental solution to encourage farmers to adopt and implement cts by themselves in case of deficiency or non-existence of governmental assistance. membership of farmers within community based organization (cbo) and/or farmers’ cooperatives to which they belong, in addition to the intensity of farmers’ interaction with extension services, are considered as proxies of farmers’ participation in the learning process and knowledge related to cts (dhehibi et al., 2018). it is important as well to improve market transactions to help the small farmer to trade their products. the existence of efficient capital market institutions especially devoted to smallholders, including the wide variety of micro-finance schemes, could help small farmers to overcome some of the financial constraints. moreover, subsidies and related legal frameworks can also encourage farmers to convert to new production systems (karaa et al., 2008; alcon et al., 2011). 3.3.2. land tenure furthermore, being a purchaser of land increases the probability of cts adoption by 19%. hence it supports hypotheses 2. the land tenure variable has also a positive and significant effect on the level of maintaining cts. one of the obstacles to embracing conservation development is land asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 440-449 446 tenure insecurity. land tenure rights are prone to unpredictable changes, besides land ownership title is unclear. these two reasons make the farmers not certain about the future, thus they are not sensible and concerned about soil condition and are not aware of erosion problems. these farmers think about short term profit and might be reluctant to sustainable land management. most of the farmers still feel uncertain and ambivalent about land ownership. thus, there is a great necessity to clarify policies about land ownership. in view of that lovo (2016) says “tenure insecurity can have important consequences for the conservation of natural resources, sources of insecurity have a negative effect on soil conservation investments”. 3.3.3. lake proximity on the other hand, the distance between the farmland and the lake had negative and significant results showing that increasing one kilometer from the lake reduced the probability of accepting cts by 21.5%, thus supporting hypothesis 3. correspondingly, one kilometer far away from the lake induces a decrease of 0.4 ha of land equipped with maintained cts. results showed that only conservation facilities that have direct utility headed for the population (water tank, irrigation, watering livestock) are more likely to have a longer lifespan. because they would more likely to be maintained and protected against any form of degradation (theft of gabion, stones, etc.) farmers within lake neighbouring take advantage of lake water and thus they think that this kind of conservation structure is profitable (baumgart et al., 2012). this is an obvious finding especially in an arid zone where water is in short supply such in many areas in tunisia (laajili-ghezal et al., 2019). 3.3.4. farmland size farmland size was highly statistically significant (p < 0.001) meaning that a one-hectare increase in farmland size increases the probability of acceptance of cts by 24%. moreover, one hectare increase in a useful agricultural area increases land allocation under maintained cts (level of maintenance) by 0.05 ha, hence supporting hypothesis 4. the conservation structures occupy some part of the land and consequently, this reduces the effective cultivated area. therefore, land spaceconsuming according to the small land size makes it not worthy to install the ct. furthermore, land fragmentation, land scarcity problem and increase distance between different plots of the same farm property make difficult to implementation of the conservation facilities in the small lands. in fact, according to farmers' statement, the reasons for decreased crop yield are the fragmentation issue due to population pressure and land inheritance from one hand, and to the reduction of soil fertility due to degradation and frequent drought on the other hand. land fragmentation induces more time-consuming for the carriage of inputs, equipment, and yield products to move from a plot to another. also, land in this area has harsh topography which confines the implementation of soil and water conservation techniques. moreover, conservation structures collected fertile soils that could be used to increase short-run production by dismantling the structures and spreading out the soil collected there. also, soil and water conservation techniques could harbour rats that may damage the crops, and water ponds could attract mosquitos and insects. in addition dhehibi et al. (2018) suggest the promotion of cooperative work strategies among farmers who lack resources to perform conservation technologies and the encouragement of information and experience exchange between farmers who have extensive experience with conservation technologies and those without experience. 3.3.5. animal husbandry as expected, coefficients of livestock farming in acceptance and maintenance were negatively and statistically significant, thereby it supports hypothesis 4. one unit increase in animal husbandry reduces the probability of acceptance of farmers by 15% and reduces the rate of maintaining the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 440-449 447 cts by 0.031 ha. this could be argued by the fact that livestock damages the benches while grazing in the land. in addition, gabions and dry stone cords make it difficult for animals to access them. this explains the unfavorable perception of certain farmers-breeders towards the cts. dhehibi et al. (2018) conclude that this negative trend has significant implications for adoption. overgrazing is of significant concern in the study area. the observations that livestock producers would appear to be less keen to adopt conservation practices are consistent with the hypothesis that conservation technologies and conventional livestock rearing practices may not necessarily be compatible”. 4. conclusion adoption rates of water and soil conservation techniques can be ascribed to many reasons such as educational, financial, and technical factors that should be considered as a priority, especially in the context of the environmentally sensitive areas of tunisia. the tunisian government should provide sufficient training and extension programmes to farmers. implementing these recommendations can improve the contribution of conservation farming to household income, poverty alleviation and hence render a positive impact on the overall agricultural sector development. to increase the approval rate of the farmers towards cts, the participatory approach is the most suitable and proper solution and should be improved and evenly spread among farmers. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adesina, a. a., & chianu, j. 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(2015). impacts of soil and water conservation techniques in tunisia. inventory of research works and studies. icarda, cgiar. technical report, 45 p. tunisia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 440-449 449 appendix table 2: factors affecting the rate of adoption in conservation techniques (cts) probit regression, reporting marginal effects number of obs = 134 lr chi2(14) = 128.62 prob > chi2 = 0.0000 log likelihood = -11.805232 pseudo r2 = 0.8554 variable f df/dxa std. err. z p>|z| x-bar [95% c.i.] landsize 0.2427 0.0125 1.7700 0.000*** 26.0508 -0.0033 0.0477 educhh 0.0171 0.0660 0.2200 0.033** 1.6405 -0.1353 0.1434 age 0.0071 0.0100 0.6800 0.4980 47.7750 -0.0126 0.0278 olive 0.0318 0.0862 0.3600 0.010* 3.5576 -0.1376 0.2008 animal -0.1500 0.0000 -0.6800 0.043** 4849.4000 -0.0001 0.0001 nbcult 0.0121 0.0011 0.7900 0.4240 1730.8300 -0.0001 0.0003 training 0.1026 0.3848 0.2500 0.7870 0.8000 -0.6515 0.8567 cereals -0.0426 0.0608 -0.7100 0.4900 7.0708 -0.1618 0.0776 ltenure 0.1909 0.2319 1.4100 0.001*** 0.4417 -0.0837 0.8275 lakedis -0.2152 0.0001 -2.3700 0.018** 6885.9400 -1.0005 obs. p 0.531658 pred. p 0.6163956 (at x-bar) (a) df/dx is for discrete change of dummy variable from 0 to 1 z and p>|z| correspond to the test of the underlying coefficient being 0 note: *, ** and *** indicate statistical significance at 10%, 5%, and 1% levels respectively table 3: determinants of the intensity of adoption in conservation techniques tobit regression number of obs = 134 lr chi2(14) = 210.23 prob > chi2 = 0.000 log likelihood = 54.769 pseudo r2 = 0.834 variable m coef. std. err. t p>|t| [95% c. i.] landsize 0.05007 0.0086 3.9700 0.000*** 0.0171 0.0512 edu 0.02392 0.0012 3.1500 0.002** 0.0014 0.0064 agehh 0.00016 0.0011 0.1200 0.9070 -0.0021 0.0024 olive 0.00257 0.0026 1.0300 0.3060 -0.0024 0.0077 animal -0.03180 0.0059 -5.4100 0.000*** -0.0434 -0.0202 nbcult 0.00769 0.0055 -1.4000 0.1640 -0.0185 0.0032 training 0.00001 0.0001 1.3400 0.1820 -0.0001 0.0000 cereal -0.02572 0.0340 -0.7600 0.4510 -0.0931 0.0417 ltenure 0.03023 0.0448 -0.6700 0.001*** -0.1190 0.0586 lakedis -0.04005 0.0000 -9.9700 0.000*** -0.0001 0.0000 sigma 0.15112 0.00989 0.12571 0.16713 obs. summary: 7 left-censored observations at m<=0 104 uncensored observations 0 right-censored observations note: *, ** and *** indicate statistical significance at 10%, 5%, and 1% levels respectively effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 320 maize output supply response to climatic and other input variables in ethiopia abera gayesa tirfia abayomi samuel oyekaleb adepartment of agriculture and animal health, university of south africa, ethiopia regional centre, ethiopia. bdepartment of agricultural economics and extension, north-west university mafikeng campus, mmabatho, south africa.  abera.gayesa@gmail.com (corresponding author) articlehistory abstract received: 14 june 2021 revised: 26 september 2021 accepted: 2 november 2021 published: 15 december 2021 keywords climate change maize output supply response ardl model augmented dickey–fuller (adf) philips–perron (pp) ethiopia. climate change is among the major challenges to sustainable agricultural production in ethiopia. production of cereal crops, especially maize, is very responsive to changes in rainfall and temperature, as climatic parameters influencing productivity. this paper analyzes how climatic and other variables affect the supply of maize in ethiopia. the data were obtained from secondary sources and cover the period 1981–2018. data were analyzed using the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) approach. the akaike information criterion (aic), schwarz information criterion (sic), and hannan-quinn information criterion (hq) were used to select the optimum number of lags. in order to detect whether unit root is present in the series, augmented dickey-fuller (adf) and philipsperron (pp) tests were carried out. the presence of long-run equilibrium was found between maize output and temperature, rainfall, and other included variables. the results show that, in both the long and shortrun, all included climatic variables had a negative relationship with maize output supply, although temperature showed statistical insignificance (p>0.10). the result showed that maize crops are highly sensitive to extremes of rainfall – both shortage in the initial growing period and excessin the vegetative and fruiting stages. it was concluded that farmers face climate-related risk due to variations, particularly in rainfall. therefore, farmers should adapt by using short-duration and climate-tolerant varieties of maize, along with engagement with eco-friendly production systems. contribution/originality: this study analyzed the supply response of maize in ethiopia using various econometric procedures. the novelty of the study is its integration of climatic and non-climatic variables to generate the long-run equilibrium parameter and evaluate its statistically significant robustness. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.320.326 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 howtocite:abera gayesatirfi --abayomi samuel oyekale (2021). maize output supply response to climatic and other input variables in ethiopia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4), 320-326. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.320.326 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 4 (2021): 320-326. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6267-1366 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8030-8950 mailto:abera.gayesa@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 320-326 321 1.introduction in sub-saharan africa (ssa), maize (zea mays) remains a vital staple food for promoting food security and nutrition among both adults and children. maize cultivation has increased over the past few decades, and the crop currently ranks among the most widely extensively cultivated crops with more than 36 million hectares devoted to its production in 2017(faostat, 2019). this datum implies that of the 200 million hectares estimated cropland areas in ssa, maize production occupies about 17%. according to mandefro, tanner, and twumasi-afriyie (2002), ethiopia is considered the third largest producer and supplier of maize crop in africa, next to south africa and tanzania. it accounts for about 10% of the area cultivated, while its productive output is estimated to be about 12% of the production level of the region. furthermore, the yield levels of maize crop exceed the regional average yield level, with about 1.7 metric tons/ha compared to 1.5 metric tons/ha for the african region. in ethiopia, maize is among the primary cereal crops with the highest rank in terms of production volume (csa, 2018). climatic parameters are critical inputs in maize production. therefore, maize is largely grown under rainfed agronomic conditions and it is also one of the most extensively grown crops in ethiopia, thriving under different agro-climatic zones among people with diverse socioeconomic conditions. regionally, maize is mostly grown in the southwestern and western parts of oromia, western and northwestern parts of amhara, parts of the southern nations, nationalities, and peoples' region (snnpr), and benshangul-gumuz regions. available data show that oromia region accounts for about 56% of maize production while about 25% comes from the amhara region (csa, 2018). minor maize-producing regions include snnp, with a share of 14%, benshangul-gumuz (2.4%), and tigray (2%). maize production is now being limited by climate change since the crop is mainly cultivated during the longrainfall period between may and september (mosisa, 2012). specifically, a scrutiny of the past trends of weather situation in ethiopia signifies that rainfall and temperature are dynamic with significant changes over time. meteorological data show that ethiopia has experienced increasing temperatures over the past 38 years (belay et al., 2021). these changes are compromising production of cereal crops, and maize is among those most affected (keno et al., 2018). it had been shown that in ethiopia, compared to the actual production potentials, maize is still underperforming from the yield and production perspectives (van dijk et al., 2020). similarly, the rain-fed nature of ethiopian agriculture also threatens food security and the livelihoods of farming households (kariuki, njaramba, & ombuki, 2020). it should be noted that changing climate is manifested through increasing temperature, droughts, floods, and changing rainfall patterns. plant metabolic rates and pest infestation can result from increases in minimum temperature. a warmer environment can also bring about extension of cropping seasons and facilitate plant growth(rojas-downing, pouyan nejadhashemi, harrigan, & woznicki, 2017). therefore, climate change can promote pest infestations and consequently lead to drastic reduction in staple crop yields. studies conducted to assess the impact of climate change on maize production, particularly at the national level in ethiopia, are limited. given the existence of aggregated national data on maize output and input, understanding the supply response of maize output to climate change variables can inform certain vital policy implications. it is evident that supply of cereal output, including maize crop output, to climatic and socioeconomic variables is responsive to recent years’ lagged variables, which should be examined in detail to provide information for future use by economic planners and policy makers. therefore, this study seeks to analyze the supply response of maize output to changes in climate and other associated socioeconomic variables. 2. materials and methods 2.1. description of the study area ethiopia is an east african country that shares borders with sudan, eritrea, djibouti, somalia, kenya, and south sudan (world bank, 2021). administratively, ethiopia is structured into ten regional states and two city administrative councils. based on a united nations population funds (2021) population projection, the current population of ethiopia is about 117.90 million with an annual growth rate of 2.6 percent. maize is one of the major crops in ethiopia, the majority of the production coming from mid-altitude, sub-humid regions (moa, 2005). 2.2. data type and sources in this study, nationally aggregated time series secondary data on maize output, area cultivated, irrigated area under maize, inputs used (fertilizer and improved seed), and price of maize output were obtained from csa agricultural sample survey reports for the period covering 1981–2018. secondary data on weather conditions (temperature and precipitation) for the periods 1981–2018 were obtained from the national meteorological agency (nma) of ethiopia based on data available from 13 representative weather stations in that area based in major maize crop-growing belts. specifically, average monthly values of data for the short-rainfall season (february–may) and long-rainfall season (june–september) were recorded. in addition, nationally aggregated average data for cropgrowing seasons were calculated by taking the average of weather stations selected for the crop over the period 1981–2018. historical prices of maize outputs were compiled from faostat database, csa, and egte for the period 1981–2018. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 320-326 322 2.3. empirical model specification in this study, we analyzed the effect of climatic and other input variables on maize supply response with an autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) model originally developed by pesaran (2001). the ardl model provides an efficient platform for testing and estimating long-run relationships based on actual time series data (hassler & wolters, 2006) while also being perfectly suited for short-time series (duasa, 2007). according to pesaran (2001), ardl provides flexibility in analyzing variables of different orders of integration. the general form of the ardl model with p lags for variable q and q lag for variable x is presented as equation 1: qt = ɑ0 + ∑ iqt-i + ∑ ixt-i + ut (1) where qt represents the quantity of maize supplied in year t, qt-irepresents the quantity of maize output supplied in year t-i, xt-i represents quantity of explanatory variables in year t-i, and β0, βi, … are long-run coefficients of inputs incorporated in the model;utis an error term. in this study, the relationship between maize production and climate and non-climatic variables is assumed to take the functional form presented as equation 2: qt = f (prmzt, lat, irrigat, fertt, imst, rft, tempt, co2t) (2) where qt is observations on maize output measured in tons,prmzt is price of maize output in etb, lat is land area cultivated under maize, irrigat is irrigated area under maize, fertt is fertilizer consumed under maize production, imst is improved maize seed, rft is seasonal rainfalls (shortand long-season) measured in millimeters, tempt is crop-growing period mean temperatures (mintemp and maxtemp) measured in degrees celsius, and co2t is carbon dioxide emission in time t measured in teragram. the above linear combination in equation 2 can be transformed into logarithmic form in order to obtain a suitably proficient estimated parameter. this gives equation 3 below: lnqt= β0 + β1lnprmzt + β2lnlat + β3lnirrigat + β4lnfertt + β5lnimst + β6lnssrt + β7lnlsrt + β8lnmintempt + β9lnmaxtempt + β10lnco2t + εt (3) wherelnssrt is log short-season rainfall in mm, lnlsrt is log long-season rainfall, lnmintemp is log minimum temperature in 0c, lnmaxtemp is log maximum temperature in 0c, and lnco2 is log of carbon dioxide. in addition, εtis the error term. in order to generate some long-run relationships, equation 3 is hereby modified as: lnqt = ɑ0 + ∑ 1lnqt-i + ∑ 2lnlat-i +∑ 3lnprmzt-i + ∑ 4lnirrigat-i + ∑ 5lnfertt-i + ∑ 6lnimst-i + ∑ 7lnssrt-i + ∑ 8lnlsrt-i + ∑ 9lnmintempt-i + ∑ 10lnmaxtempt-i + ∑ 11lnco2t-i + εt-i (4) if the variables are cointegrated,there exists an error correction representation. the short-run elasticity coefficients were estimated by the following dynamics ardl error correction model (ecm) as presented in equation 5: lnqt = β0 + ∑ 1∆lnqt-i + ∑ 2∆lnlat-i + ∑ 3∆lnprwt-i + ∑ 4∆lnirrigat-i + ∑ 5∆lnfertt-i + ∑ 6∆lnimst-i + ∑ 7∆lnssrt-i + ∑ 8∆lnlsrt-i + ∑ 9∆lnmintempt-i + ∑ 10∆lnmaxtempt-i + ∑ 11∆lnco2t-i + ψiect1-i+ ui(5) in equation 4, ψiis a measure of the speed of adjustment (ecm term). this is a measure of the deviations of qtfrom the long-run equilibrium values. akaike information criterion (aic), schwarz information criterion (sic) and hannan-quinn information criterion (hq) were used to select the optimum number of lags. in order to detect whether unit root is present in the series, augmented dickey-fuller (adf) and philips-perron (pp) tests were carried out (dickey & fuller, 1979; gujarati, 2004), with variables a mixture of i(0) and i(1). the first differenced i(1) variables always show stationarity. however, the presence of unit root in a time series implies that spurious results would be obtained from analyzing them at their original level (heij, de boer, franses, kloek, & van dijk, 2004; wooldridge, 2013). a cointegration test was carried out after testing for stationarity in order to detect the presence of any steady equilibrium relationship (enders, 2010; hatanaka, 1996). if there is establishment of the presence of cointegration using the model with at least two i(1) series, some i(0) variables can be added in the ardl model and this will not alter the i(0) characteristics of the error term (gujarati, 2004). cointegration analysis was carried out with akter and hong (2011) procedures, which first define an unrestricted vector autoregression (var). the analyses were conducted using eviews 9 econometric software. 3. results and discussion 3.1. results of preliminary time series, specification, and robustness tests before estimating the ardl model, appropriate tests were conducted to detect the presence of unit root and cointegration. table 1 presents the results of stationarity tests with the adf and pp approaches. the results of the unit root test show that log mean temperature and log short-rainfall in maize-growing areas are stationary at their original levels (i(0)). conversely, the following variables were found to be integrated of the order 1: log maize output; log price of maize; log area under maize production; log fertilizer used in maize production; and log long-season rainfall in maize-growing belt. thus, the variables used in the study are a mixture of i(0) and i (1). some researchers and econometricians recommend that if the time series exhibit a mixture of i(0) and i(1), the ardl model is optimal. a bounds test of integration should be conducted in this case to determine the stability of the model. the variance error correction model (vecm) can be used in the case where the variables of interest are integrated to the same degree (sharma & singh, 2019). however, for application of ardl, the two conditions that must be satisfied are that the dependent variable cannot be i(0) and none of the variables must be i(2). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 320-326 323 table-1. maize output data series – unit root test results. variable adf pp result level 1st difference level coefficient t-stat pvalue coefficient t-stat p-value pvalue lnmzo -0.6809** -2.01678 0.8542 -0.27845 -1.21931 0.0000 0.0168 (i(1)) lnprmz 0.09328 0.73005 0.6681 0.04633 0.40836 0.0000 0.1779 (i(1)) lnarmz 0.5691** 2.25185 0.7695 -0.07010 -0.26046 0.0001 0.1544 i(1)) lnfertmz 0.1018 0.73327 0.9438 -0.05975 -0.51388 0.0000 0.1642 (i(1)) lntemp -6.149** -2.01309 0.0126 1.86684 0.79536 0.0126 0.0102 (i(0)) lnssrain -0.470*** -3.16500 0.0064 -0.35255* -1.6978 0.1112 0.0000 (i(0)) lnlsrain -0.1390 -0.29179 0.1217 1.03806** 2.26824 0.0385 0.0001 (i(1)) note: ** statistically significant at the 5% level. the results of the cointegration test are presented in table 2. these show that a linear combination of the variables in the regression was stationary. this implies that there exists a long-run relationship among the variables that were included in the estimated model. table-2.estimation of cointegrating equations. dependent variable type of test test statistics critical values conclusion maize output response wald 4.4477** 4.145 long-run cointegration exists note: ** statistically significant at the 5% level. the error term from the maize output response model was also subjected to certain residual tests in order to detect non-normality, serial correlation, and heteroscedasticity. the results shown in table 3reveal that the distribution follows normal distribution based on statistical insignificance of the jarque–bera statistic. therefore, t and f tests can be correctly used for hypothesis testing in respect of the series. in addition, the results show no evidence of autocorrelation as revealed by breush–godfrey lagrange multiplier (lm) test statistics. however, there is the presence of heteroscedasticity as shown by the lm test for no autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (arch). table-3. residual properties of maize output response equation. type of test test statistic test statistic value probability normality test-histogram jarque–bera 0.6419 0.7254 lm obs*r2 2.18476 0.3354 arch obs*r2 3.72449 0.0536 a ramsey reset test was carried out to detect whether the model suffers from any misspecification. the results, as shown in table 4, imply that the model does not suffer from any form of misspecification. also, robustness of the estimated parameters was evaluated from the response equation using the cusum test, cusum residual square test, one-step forecast test, and n steep forecast test. the results, as shown figure 1, reveal non-significant divergence of the plots from the zero line. this suggests parameter stability in the estimated equation. table-4. ramsey reset test results. dependent variable f statistic probability conclusion log of maize output 3.34726 0.0780 no indication of misspecification error 3.2. impact of climatic and non-climatic variables on maize output supply response this study sought to determine the response of maize output to climatic and non-climatic variables. to this end, the ardl model was estimated with both climatic variables (growing season mean temperature, shortand longseason rainfall ) and non-climatic variables (lagged maize output, producer price of maize, area cultivated under maize, and quantity of fertilizer used in maize covered area). co2 concentration from climate and irrigated area variables were initially included into the model, but were dropped due to the existence of high serial correlation and multicollinearity with other variables. it was found that the ardl regression model for maize output supply has good fitness to the data series, with high values of adjusted r2 (0.955). the adjusted r2 value of 0.955 in maize output model implies that 95.5% of the variation in maize output is explained by the climatic and non-climatic variables included in the model. the durban– watson test on the other hand showed no evidence of serial autocorrelation. the model becomes viable and fit at lag length 1 and first-order difference only; lag length 2 and second-order difference were tried but revealed high serial autocorrelation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 320-326 324 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 90 92 94 96 98 00 02 04 06 08 10 12 14 16 18 cusum of squares 5% significance figure-1. recursive residuals from the maize output response equation. the test for cointegration previously revealed existence of long-run cointegration. hence, long-run elasticity coefficients have been estimated for the maize output model. the long-run elasticity coefficients of ardl (1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0) for maize output with respect to climatic and non-climatic variables are presented in table 5. the climatic and non-climatic variables that were considered in the model after dropping serially autocorrelated variables include log mean temperature during crop-growing period, log short-season rainfall, log long-season rainfall, log producer price of maize, log area cultivated under maize crop, and log quantity of fertilizer used in maize production. the estimated elasticity coefficients show that all climatic variables included in the model have a negative relationship with maize output supply in the longrun. however, the elasticity coefficient for mean temperature is statistically insignificant. the result indicates that a 1% increase in short and longrainfall is responsible for a decrease in maize output supply by 0.77 and 1.0%, respectively. the result can be justified given that maize is highly sensitive to extremes of rainfall– both shortage in the initial growing period and excessive at the vegetative and grain-filling stages. the findings of this study are consistent with the findings of siahi, yego, and bartilo (2018) who, in their study on the effect of climate change on maize productivity in kenya, found that the elasticity coefficient of rainfall was negatively related to maize production in the long run, although statistically insignificant. the result indicates that a 1% change in rainfall will decrease maize output supply by 1.64% in the long run. the elasticity coefficients estimated for socioeconomic variables such as log producer price of maize, log area under maize, and log quantity of fertilizer used showed a positive relationship with maize output. the elasticity coefficients of area cultivated under maize and quantity of fertilizer used have a significant impact on maize output, while that of producer price of maize is statistically insignificant. the result indicate that a 1% increase in area cultivated under maize and quantity of fertilizer used increase maize output by 0.52 and 0.36%, respectively in the longrun. this finding implies that maize output is highly responsive to changes in area cultivated and quantity of fertilizer used in maize production, which is in line with the theory. the findings of this study arein agreement with those of chandio, jiang, and magsi (2018), who analyzed the effect of support price on wheat production in pakistan, and found that land area and fertilizer have significantly positive and positive impacts, respectively, on wheat production. specifically, their results showed that an increase of 1% in the land area cultivated and fertilizer usage will increase wheat production by 0.78 and 0.19%, respectively. table-5. estimated long-run elasticities of maize output with respect to climatic and non-climatic variables. variable elasticity std. error t-ratio p-value constant 34.85323 15.35902 2.269235 0.0309 lnprimz 0.073229 0.090148 0.812315 0.4232 lnarmz 0.517254** 0.213822 2.419084 0.0221 lnfertmz 0.364263*** 0.084292 4.321418 0.0002 lntemp -4.793830 3.166014 -1.514153 0.1408 lnssrain -0.776387** 0.287140 -2.703857 0.0113 lnlsrain -0.991452* 0.540569 -1.834091 0.0769 r2 0.9635 mean dependent var. 3.2211 adjusted r2 0.9547 s.d. dependent var. 0.6693 s.e. of regression 0.1424 akaike info criterion -0.8709 sum squared resid. 0.5884 schwarz criterion -0.5226 log likelihood 24.1128 hq -0.7482 f-statistic 109.4001 durbin–watson stat. 2.3519 note: *, **, and ***: significant at the 10, 5, and 1% levels. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 320-326 325 the short-run dynamic coefficients associated with the long-run cointegration relationships were estimated with an error correction model (ecm) based on the ardl bounds test approach. the results of the short-run coefficients of ardl (1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0) model are presented in table 6. these show that both temperature and rainfall had negative relationships with maize output in the shortrun. the coefficients of both shortand long-season rainfall have significant impact on maize output, while the coefficient for temperature was statistically insignificant. the results indicate that a 1% increase in shortand long-rainfall seasons led to a reduction in maize output supply by 0.55 and 0.7%, respectively in the shortrun. inverse relationship that exists between rainfall and maize output could be a result of heavy rainfall that can lead to storms that may destroy maize plants, erosion, and leaching, which would reduce soil productivity. the statistically significant negative coefficient of ecm (-1) for maize output verifies the long-run relationship among the variables in the maize output model. ecm measures how quickly the endogenous variable adjusts to the changes in the independent variable before the endogenous variable converges to the equilibrium level. this finding is in conformity with the findings of oparinde and okogbue (2018), who reported a negative and significant effect of rainfall on maize production in nigeria. they reported that rainfall had negative and statistically significant impact at the 5% level and had a value of -0.0239. their findings imply that about 2.39% of disequilibrium in maize output from the previous year’s shock converges to the long-run equilibrium in the current year. on the other hand, the elasticity coefficients of non-climatic variables such as producer price of maize, area under maize, and quantity of fertilizer used on maize production showed positive relationships with maize output in the short run. the coefficient of land area cultivated and quantity of fertilizer used have significant impact on maize output, while the coefficient of producer price is statistically insignificant. the results indicate that a 1% increase in land area cultivated under maize, quantity of fertilizer used, and producer price of maize led to an increase in maize output by 0.36, 0.27, and 0.05%, respectively in the short run. this implies that maize output is highly responsive to changes in land area cultivated and quantity of fertilizer used in the short run. the findings of this study resonate with those of kariuki (2016) who, in his study on the effect of climate variability on maize output in kenya, found that the elasticity coefficients of log price of output and log area under crop showed a positive relationship with maize output in the short run. it was found that a 10% increase in price of output and area under crop led to an increase in maize output by 0.82 and 0.90%, respectively. table-6.short-run elasticities of maize –dynamic ecm model. variable elasticity std. error t-statistic probability c 24.62264 11.95495 2.05962 0.0485 ecmt-1 -0.70647*** 0.12361 -5.71514 0.0000 lnprimz 0.05173 0.06467 0.79999 0.4302 lnarmz 0.36542** 0.15701 2.32744 0.0271 lnfertmz 0.25734*** 0.07381 3.48639 0.0016 lntemp -3.38668 2.41366 -1.40313 0.1712 lnssrain -0.54849*** 0.14601 -3.75651 0.0008 lnlsrain -0.70043* 0.39719 -1.76344 0.0884 r2 0.96351 mean dependent var. 3.22108 adjusted r2 0.95471 s.d. dependent var 0.66929 s.e. of regression 0.14244 akaike info. criterion -0.87096 sum squared resid. 0.58840 schwarz criterion -0.52265 log likelihood 24.1128 hq ctiterion -0.74817 f-statistic 109.400 durbin–watson stat 2.35188 note: *, **, and ***: significant at the 10, 5, and 1% level, respectively. 4. conclusion the study findings indicate that maize output is affected by climate variability as well as by other, non-climatic factors. the elasticity coefficients show that all climatic variables included in the model have a negative relationship with maize output supply in both the long and shortrun. however, the elasticity coefficient for mean temperature is statistically insignificant in both cases. in the longrun, the elasticity coefficients for shortand long-season rainfall showed negative and significant impact on maize output supply. this result can be justified by the fact that maize is highly sensitive to extremes of rainfall – both shortage at the initial growing period and excess at the vegetative and grain-filling stages. in the shortrun, the coefficients of both shortand long-season rainfall have a negative and significant impact on maize output. inverse relationship existing between rainfall and maize output could be a result of heavy rainfall that caused storms, erosion, and leaching. the highly significant negative elasticity coefficient (0.71) of ecm (-1) for maize output verifies the long-run relationship among the variables in the maize output model. the elasticity coefficients of non-climatic variables such as log producer price of maize, log area under maize, and log quantity of fertilizer used showed positive relationship with maize output in both the long and shortrun, although price of maize was insignificant. the results imply that maize output is highly responsive to area under maize and quantity of fertilizer consumed in maize production. in general, it can be concluded that farmers face climate-related risk due to variations in climatic variables, particularly rainfall. therefore, stakeholders should take adaptation measures such as using short-duration and tolerant varieties of maize and always practice ecofriendly activities and put in place as coping strategies against the menace of climate change. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 320-326 326 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: the authors are grateful to the different institutions that made available the dataset used in this study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. 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(2021). overview. retrieved from: https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/ethiopia/overview. http://www.preprints.org/ http://www.statsethiopia.gov.et/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/area-and-production-for-major-crops-private-peasant-holdings-meher-season-2017-18-2010-e.c..pdf http://www.statsethiopia.gov.et/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/area-and-production-for-major-crops-private-peasant-holdings-meher-season-2017-18-2010-e.c..pdf http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home http://www.unfpa.org/data/world-population/et http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/ethiopia/overview effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 123 analysis of banana production practices and constraints in embu county, kenya arphaxard ireri muthee, bernard mukiri gichimu, paul njiruh nthakanio department of agricultural resource management, university of embu, embu, kenya  patrickireri66@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 27-mar-2019 accepted: 07-jun-2019 online available: 24-jun2019 keywords: manyatta, mbeere north, mbeere south and runyenjes abstract this study was carried out to determine banana production constraints in embu county in order to seal this production gap. a survey was conducted in the four sub-counties in embu county namely, runyenjes, manyatta, mbeere north and mbeere south, to assess the production constraints limiting banana production. respondents were smallholder banana farmers selected using cluster sampling method from 22 farmers’ groups in the county. the cluster sampling was based on a number of operational irrigation schemes in each of the four sub-counties, and with at least 15 – 30 active members. the study established that banana production in embu county is highly constrained by poor husbandry practices, pests and diseases, lack of clean planting materials, and lack of adequate extension services. contribution/ originality this study is the first attempt to investigate the banana production constraints at the level of the farmer in embu county since agriculture became a devolved function in kenya. the study is therefore very timely and will help the county government to establish necessary mitigation measures and policies to address production constraints and the yield levels and economic livelihood of farmers. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.123.132 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: arphaxard ireri muthee, bernard mukiri gichimu and paul njiruh nthakanio (2019). analysis of banana production practices and constraints in embu county, kenya. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1), 123-132. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 1 (2019): 123-132 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:patrickireri66@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.123.132 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 123-132 124 1. introduction the worldwide consumption of banana (musa spp) as fruit is second after apple due to its high nutritional and medicinal value (kirogo, 2006). it is a powerhouse of nutrients that maintain good health (kirogo, 2006). it is rich in potassium, carbohydrates and vitamin a, providing over 25% of the carbohydrate requirements for more than 70 million people in the world (njue, 2015). in kenya, banana is a major food and cash crop that contributes significantly to the diets of many people, and the gross domestic product (gdp) of the kenyan economy (kahangi, 2002; nguthi, 2007). in most developing countries, banana is ranked as the fourth food crop after rice, wheat and maize, and is a principal source of employment as well as on-farm and off-farm income in its major production areas (tumuhimbise and talengera, 2018). however, banana production in kenya is very low ranging from 4.5-10 tons/ha compared to the international levels of 40-50 tons/ha (njue, 2015). according to kahangi (2002), low banana productivity in many parts of kenya is attributed to socio-economic and technical factors. the socio-economic factors include lack of proper marketing and processing channels for banana production, inadequate government support, and poor infrastructure, high cost of farm inputs and poor organization of farmer cooperatives. these constraints subsequently enhance the cost of production. inadequate market information and improper marketing and processing channels have exposed most of the farmers to middlemen who buy their farm produce at very low farm-gate prices, which sometimes do not break-even (matere, 2009). inadequate modern extension services for smallholder farmers have made it difficult to organize farmers into producer/marketing groups even among those who understand the benefits of such groups (shiferaw et al., 2011). on the other hand, biotic and abiotic constraints coupled with inappropriate husbandry practices have added to the steady decline in banana yields in kenya (wachira et al., 2013). husbandry practices may include soil fertility management practices and plant nutrition approaches, plant water relations and management, and inappropriate technologies in control and management of pests and diseases (sanginga and woomer, 2009; wachira et al., 2013). agwara (2017) reported that embu county produces 12% of all bananas produced in kenya and is ranked third after meru (19%) and kirinyaga (14%). other banana producing counties in kenya are taita taveta (9%), muranga (7%), kisii (6%), tharaka nithi (6%) and bungoma (5%). according to the data from embu county department of agriculture, manyatta and runyenjes sub-counties are leading in banana production in embu county, producing approximately 50% and 43.8% of the total banana production in the county respectively. the remaining 6.3% comes from mbeere north and mbeere south sub-counties. however, the county has continually recorded declining banana yields in recent decades. previous studies are generally concentrated in measuring banana yield levels without establishing the factors leading to low yields and necessary mitigating actions at the farmer level. there are therefore inadequate data on the causes of low banana yield in embu county. this has made it difficult to develop programs to uplift the yield levels even at the policy level. this study was therefore aimed at determining the production constraints facing banana production in embu county. 2. materials and methods 2.1. description of the study area embu county is situated in the eastern slopes of mt. kenya at an elevation between 700 m 1780 m above sea level. the average annual rainfall is 1252 mm and is recorded in two distinct rainy seasons; the long rains (mid-march to september) with an average rainfall of 650 mm and the short rains (mid-october to february) with an average of 450 mm (kenya information guide, 2015). the area has an average temperature of 19.5°c with a mean minimum of 14.1°c, and a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 123-132 125 mean maximum of 25°c annually. the average annual evaporation potential is 1422mm, while the mean annual evapo-transpiration potential is 950mm (jaetzold et al., 2006). soils are mainly hemic nitosols, derived from basic volcanic rocks. they are deep, highly weathered with friable clay texture and moderate to high inherent fertility (fao, 2011). most farmers rely on the production of crops like maize, pulses, and horticultural crops such as tomatoes alongside rearing livestock. according to moalf (2016), bananas in embu county are mainly cultivated in the lh1, um1, um2 and um3 agro-ecological zones (aezs). manyatta and runyenjes sub-counties extend from cold and wet agro-ecological zone lh1 to warmer and humid aezs um1, um2 and um3. mbeere north and mbeere south sub-counties are found in lm3, lm4 and lm5 aezs which are characterized by hot and dry semi-arid conditions and mainly engaged in indigenous livestock keeping and growing of drought-resistant crops such as millet, sorghum, cow peas and green grams (jaetzold et al., 2006). 2.2. sampling and data collection techniques the survey was carried out using focused group discussion questionnaires, to ascertain banana production and marketing constraints in embu county. respondents were smallholder banana farmers drawn from twenty-two groups in the four sub-counties in embu county. twenty-two groups were selected using cluster sampling methods based on a number of operational irrigation schemes in each of the four sub-counties, registered with the department of social services and with at least 15 – 30 active members. the cluster groups were distributed in the four sub-counties of embu county as follows; runyenjes 9, manyatta 10, mbeere north – 1 and mbeere south 2. in each sub-county, 15 farmers were interviewed from each group. the data collected was organized and analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences (spss). the results were summarized using descriptive statistics, graphs and pie charts and used to draw conclusions and to make recommendations on the best intervention to promote banana productivity in the county. 3. results and discussion 3.1. banana varieties and their economic importance this study found that the main purpose of banana production in embu county is for commercial use. however, only 30% of the farmers had a well-managed banana orchard, producing the anticipated three bunches per stool per year. a similar observation was made in neighboring counties of the kirinyaga and meru by mbaka et al. (2008). the study established that, on average, farmers had 75 stools of improved varieties and 120 stools of traditional varieties. william hybrids was rated the most popular improved variety in embu county, with a preferential rate of 22%, followed by grand nain (20%) and giant cavendish (18%). kasyoka et al. (2010) attributed the high preference of grand nain in the county, to influence from ngos and high incidence of the fusarium wilt disease. other improved varieties grown in the county included kampala (10%) and fhia 17 (6%). other studies (mbaka et al., 2008; kasyoka et al., 2010) found the cultivar kampala to be among the most preferred varieties in muranga, meru and kirinyaga. the cultivar is reportedly high yielding, of good keeping quality (long shelf life) and good taste. kiganda was rated the most popular local variety in embu county with a preference rate of 14%, followed by muraru with a popularity of 10%. mbaka et al. (2008) reported that farmers’ choice of cultivar was mostly determined by its market demand, production suitability in the area, and the relative ease of crop management. kasyoka et al. (2010) further attributed the choice of cultivar to local culture and exposure to new technologies through ngos. this study did not explore the fate of bananas after sale, but all the farmers sold their bananas in unprocessed form either raw or ripened, without any value addition. this concurred with ouma et al. (2010) who reported that, most bananas in kenya are utilized either as a dessert or cooked, and some are subjected to dual purpose especially in central kenya. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 123-132 126 other secondary uses for banana products that were mentioned by the farmers included livestock feed, compost manure, mulching, rope/mat making and thatching. 3.2. banana production practices 3.2.1. production systems this study established that only 17% of farmers practiced strictly pure stand production system, where bananas were planted in separate blocks from other crops. another 17% of the farmers practiced intercropping system, where bananas were mixed with other crops like beans, vegetables, sweet potatoes, fruit/nut trees and agroforestry trees. majority of the respondents (53.1%) practiced both pure stand and intercropping farming systems at a varying extent. out of the 17% of the farmers who practiced pure stand production system, 40% maintained pure stands of improved varieties, while 60% mixed both improved and traditional varieties in the same block. ouma (2009) reported that intercropping is a very common cropping system in east africa, and it is practiced by most of the banana farmers mainly due to declining land sizes and food security needs. el-showk (2007) also reported that bananas in kenya were mainly grown by smallholder farmers, and are usually intercropped. intercropping banana with other crops has been reported to have several benefits. for example, intercropping banana with millet and some legumes such as canavalia muzinna and tephrosia vogelli has been reported to lower the number of banana weevil (c. sordidus) without affecting banana yields (ouma, 2009). wachira et al. (2013) argued that, although intercropping has a secondary benefit to soil fertility improvement, it makes pests and disease management difficult and lowers the available nutrients for crop uptake due to the competition of limited soil nutrients and sunlight. intercropping may also lower the yield of both crops although it ultimately increases the combined yields and hence the total income. intercropping is also favored if one of the crops (e.g., maize or beans) is consumed and the other one (e.g. banana) is used as a cash crop, as it is the case in embu county. 3.2.2. adoption of tissue culture planting materials generally, there was low adoption of recommended production technologies among the sampled farmers. only 27.8% of the sampled farmers embraced the use of tissue culture (tc) planting materials. this is a very low adoption rate, considering the benefits associated with tc technology which includes the production of pest and disease-free planting materials, and increased productivity (wasala, 2014). tissue culture plantlets are also more vigorous, are able to multiply faster and also lead to faster maturity (muyanga, 2009). low adoption of tc technology was also reported by mbaka et al. (2008), acharya and mackey (2009), indimuli (2013) and wasala (2014). mbaka et al. (2008) attributed the low adoption rate to the high cost of tc banana planting materials. wasala (2014) recommended the provision of affordable tc plantlets to smallholder farmers, to reduce their reliance on the use of conventional suckers which are more prone to pest and disease attacks, and hence contribute to the decline in banana production. according to muyanga (2009), adoption of tc technology increases farmer income, due to a reduction in the cost of controlling pests and diseases. 3.2.3. soil fertility management it was apparent that most farmers in embu county were not aware of the importance of soil testing in banana production. most of the farmers who tested their soil in the last five years were from runyenjes (40%) followed by manyatta (38%). the practice was relatively less common in mbeere north (12%) and mbeere south (10%) sub-counties. however, most (90%) of these farmers expressed the need for urgent training on soil testing and soil fertility management in banana production. mugendi and muriuki (2012) expressed the importance of soil and tissue analysis as the only way through which the nutritional status of both the soil and the plant could be precisely determined, and deficiencies effectively corrected during fertilizer applications. fageria asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 123-132 127 and baliger (2008) and pan et al. (2012) recommended that soil testing for ph, organic matter content, as well as available macro and micro nutrients can provide the information needed to evaluate the soil fertility status. banana demands greater quantities of nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium (bhalerao et al., 2009), calcium, magnesium and sulphur (rajput et al., 2017) in addition to essential micronutrients such as boron, iron, copper, manganese and zinc (cordeiro and borges, 2000). this study identified lack of fertilizer application as one of the major constraints contributing to declining banana yields in embu county since only 15% of the respondents were found to be applying manure and other fertilizers to their banana orchards. mugwe et al. (2009) attributed the low per capita food production on smallholder farms of sub-saharan africa, to reduce soil fertility. among the few farmers who applied fertilizers in their orchards, none of them adopted the use of bio-fertilizers. use of chemical fertilizers alone has been reported to have a deleterious effect on soil physical, chemical and biological properties, which affected the crop productivity in the long run. ganapathi and dharmatti (2018) recommended the integration of both organic and inorganic sources of nutrients in order to achieve higher yields, and also to sustain the soil fertility status in the long run. a similar recommendation was also issued by el-showk (2007) and mugwe et al. (2009). farmers cited unavailability of manure and high cost of inorganic fertilizers as the major factors hindering their application. a similar concern was raised by small-scale banana farmers in india (ganapathi and dharmatti, 2018). 3.2.4. other agronomic practices there was also inadequate adoption of other agronomic practices among the farmers. a similar observation of low adoption of recommended practices among banana farmers was made by woniala and nyombi (2014) in uganda. although the respondents were selected based on a number of operational irrigation schemes in each of the four sub-counties, only 13% and 12% of the respondents were found to be practicing irrigation and weeding to their orchards respectively. failure to practice irrigation implies that moisture stress affects the yields. according to nyombi (2013), bananas require 25mm of rainfall per week for satisfactory growth, which corresponds to 1300mm per year. in order to achieve good yields, bananas should consistently receive 200 to 220mm of water per month (infonet, 2016). the county’s bi-modal rainfall pattern is thus less than the ideal for banana production. failure to practice weeding in banana orchards may not only reduce yields but certain weed associated with banana are also known to harbor pests which cause major losses in production (isaac et al., 2012). only 5% of the sampled farmers practiced deleafing, which is the hygienic removal of banana leaves that are infected with the black-leaf-streak disease (black sigatoka) (chillet et al., 2013). however, even a few farmers who were reported of practicing deleafing, did not associate the practice with the management of this disease. this is an extensive gap that needs to be addressed. deleafing does not only contribute to the management of black sigatoka disease, but also the cutting of leaves help in moisture conservation. on the other hand, less than 5% of the sampled farmers were reported of practicing other recommended practices such as pruning, mulching, pests and disease management, desuckering, mattacking, denavelling and bagging. although the majority of farmers attributed this low adoption rate to lack of adequate extension services, some farmers reported that they were aware of these practices but they lacked the manpower to implement them. wachira et al. (2013) also reported that some banana farmers in the murang’a county demonstrated adequate awareness of recommended banana management practices but were reluctant to adopt them, due to high cost implications and lack of technical know-how. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 123-132 128 3.3. pest and disease prevalence 3.3.2. common banana pests several pests and diseases were found to pose serious problems to the banana growers. according to the sampled farmers, the major banana pests in embu county are nematodes (26%), banana weevil (26%), banana thrips (24%) and moles (21%). this observation concurred with wachira et al. (2013) who reported that nematodes, banana weevil and thrips are among the major pests limiting banana production in many growing regions in kenya. nematodes, particularly r. similis, damages the feeder roots of secondary and tertiary banana roots thus reducing the yields by more than 50% and significantly reducing the productive life of banana fields (isaac et al., 2012). heavy nematode infestation may also cause severe necrosis and toppling of banana plants (queneherve et al., 2006; isaac et al., 2007). the banana weevil (cosmopolites sordidus) is an important pest of bananas in all production regions in the kenya with associated yield losses ranging from 40% to 100% (wachira et al., 2013). this study further established that only 20% of farmers had adopted chemical pest control with majority of them applying traditional methods like application of ash to control nematodes. banana thrips and moles were also recorded among the most common pests in the study area with an occurrence of 24% and 21% respectively. wachira et al. (2013) also reported high incidence of thrips in maragua sub-county of murang’a county. the sampled farmers also mentioned other minor pests including squirrels, birds and bats which scratch and blemish banana fingers lowering the quality. 3.3.3. common banana diseases the sampled farmers identified four banana diseases as the most common in embu county. these were cigar-end-rot (23%), sigatoka (22%), bunchy top (20%) and fusarium wilt or panama disease (19%). according to the respondents, all banana varieties are prone to banana pests but their susceptibility to diseases varies according to cultivar and management practices. unfortunately, some of the sampled farmers were not well conversant with requisite skills to identify the pests and diseases and therefore the actual importance of these diseases in the field should be confirmed. the cigar end rot disease was the most common in the study area with 23% occurrence rating according to the sampled farmers. this was in contrast with the finding of wachira et al. (2013) who reported low prevalence of cigar end rot disease in maragua sub-county in murang’a county. sigatoka disease was rated the second most prevalent disease in the study area. unfortunately, none of the farmers demonstrated knowledge of the occurrence of two types of sigatoka – the yellow sigatoka caused by the fungus mycosphaerella musicola (chillet et al., 2013) and the black sigatoka caused by m. fijiensis morelet (marin et al., 2003). likewise, none of the farmers demonstrated awareness that yield losses from sigatoka diseases can be strongly reduced by removal of necrotic leaves (vargas et al., 2009; chillet et al., 2013). the bunchy top viral disease and panama disease (fusarium wilt) also recorded a high occurrence rating in the study area of 20% and 19% respectively. wachira et al. (2013) also reported the two diseases as important and widespread banana diseases in maragua sub-county. contradicting report from james (2011) indicated that bunchy top disease is not present in east africa but niyongere et al. (2011) reported that it is the most catastrophic viral disease of banana and plantain in africa, south-east asia and australia. the disease is vector transmitted by the aphid pentalonia nigronervosa and is spread through infected planting materials (hu et al., 2007). fusarium wilt, commonly known as the panama disease, is caused by fusarium oxysporum, fs cubense (el-showk, 2007). this disease has no cure and is thus considered one of the most disastrous diseases in the world. in susceptible cultivars, the disease spreads very rapidly causing pseudostem split and high level of fatality. contamination occurs from infected soil, tools and water (el-showk, 2007). mwangi and nakato (2007) reported that up to 100% crop loss may occur in wilt infested fields. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 123-132 129 the sampled farmers also mentioned anthracnose as a common post-harvest disease during ripening and at kiosks or market stalls. similar observation was made by wachira et al. (2013) in maragua sub-county. according to the respondents, all banana varieties are prone to banana pests and diseases but vary in their susceptibility to the common diseases identified in embu county. 4. conclusion and recommendations 4.1. conclusion the study found that there is low adoption of recommended production technologies among the banana farmers in embu county. some important technologies that are yet to be well embraced by farmers in the county include the use of tissue culture planting materials, proper application of manure and fertilizers (both organic and inorganic) and control of pests and diseases. even simple technologies such as irrigation, weeding, deleafing, pruning, mulching, desuckering, mattacking, denavelling and bagging showed very poor adoption. low adoption of technologies was associated with lack of technical know-how among farmers due to lack of adequate modern extension services. however, some farmers were well aware of these practices, but they lacked the ability to implement them due to the high cost implications. 4.2. recommendations the study recommends the following measures for improved banana production in embu county: 1. adoption of recommended crop husbandry practices including soil fertility management techniques, pests and disease management, adequate water utilization and conservation measures, and the use of clean planting materials will effectively improve crop growth and yields of bananas. county and national governments should support farmers with subsidized farm inputs, easy access of tissue culture bananas, and available irrigation water through piped systems, construction of dams, boreholes, and shallow wells or water pans for rainwater collection. 2. the role of extension officers in ensuring that the above recommendation is achieved cannot be overemphasized. banana farmers need to be equipped with skills on the proper management of soil fertility, proper and timely identification of pests and diseases, and available prevention and control measures ranging from biological, chemical and cultural methods. national and county governments should therefore, ensure adequate extension services are made available to the farmers. this can be easily achieved if farmers are organized into groups. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references acharya, s. s., & mackey, m. g. a. 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(2014). assessing adoption of banana macro-propagation by small-scale farmers in kisii county. special project report, university of nairobi [online]. https://agrieconomics.uonbi.ac.ke/index.php?q=node/1929. https://doi.org/10.1515/opag-2018-0014 https://agrieconomics.uonbi.ac.ke/index.php?q=node/1929 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 773 analysis of the problems and minimization initiatives addressed by bangladeshi farmers during the covid-19 pandemic md. sekender alia md. saeed siddikb sk. md. nur-e-alamc tayeba khanamd most moriom khatune aprofessor & pro-vice chancellor, sher-e-bangla agricultural university (sau), dhaka, bangladesh. edept of agricultural extension & information system, sher-e-bangla agricultural university, bangladesh. cdepartment of agribusiness and marketing, sher-e-bangla agricultural university, dhaka, bangladesh. b,dinstitute of information technology, university of dhaka, bangladesh.  msa_sau@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 22 july 2020 revised: 5 november 2020 accepted: 1 december 2020 published: 29 december 2020 keywords agriculture agribusiness sustainable agriculture agricultural policy farmers agricultural personnel covid-19 the covid-19 pandemic is heavily impacting not only the health sector but also every economical sector all over the world. bangladesh is among the major agriculture production-based economies and is suffering greatly during this pandemic. this paper presents the current agricultural situation in bangladesh based on a survey involving various pools of experts. it also visualizes the strategies used to assess the competency of initiatives aimed at minimizing the problems faced by farmers in bangladesh arising from the covid-19 pandemic. data were collected from 117 expert agricultural personnel in bangladesh (75.27% male and 24.73% female). twenty-eight problems were identified that are faced by the farmers of bangladesh arising from the covid-19 pandemic. among these, twenty two were severe while six were less so. it was found that problems relating to product wastage, low product-level pricing, the absence of traders, and transportation issues were identified as top ranking. twenty-six initiatives were introduced and adopted by different organizations in bangladesh to minimize agricultural problems arising from the covid-19 pandemic. among these, five were highly effective and the remainder moderately so. it was found that initiatives related to government directives and financial support were identified as the top ranked. based on analysis of data, this paper concludes with several suggestions aimed at minimizing the problems faced by farmers in bangladesh arising from the covid-19 pandemic. contribution/originality: this study contributes to exitsing literature by presenting the current agricultural situation in bangladesh based on a survey involving various pools of experts. moreover, it also proposes potential ways forward to minimize agricultural problems arising from the covid-19 pandemic in bangladesh. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.104.773.781 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: md. sekender ali --md. saeed siddik --sk. md. nur-e-alam --tayeba khanam --most moriom khatun (2020). analysis of the problems and minimization initiatives addressed by bangladeshi farmers during the covid-19 pandemic. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4), 773-781. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.104.773.781 © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 4 (2020): 773-781 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1908-8180 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3863-2543 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4749-5242 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7931-0196 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9615-7798 mailto:msa_sau@yahoo.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.104.773.781 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 773-781 774 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic is a serious problem globally and bangladesh is no exception, with an ongoing nationwide lockdown. the number of confirmed cases has already exceeded 100,000 and the proportion of the population testing positive is >20%, which ranks bangladesh very high on the global scale. figure 1 illustrates the numbers of cases and deaths recorded between february and july 2020. covid-19 has already severely impacted various economic sectors including agriculture, transportation, and industry. since agriculture is the backbone of the bangladeshi economy, we must take appropriate steps to mitigate the effects of covid-19. as in all other sectors, every sector of agriculture (crops, livestock, and fisheries) in bangladesh is facing serious problems during this pandemic. the extension and advisory service (eas) providers in bangladesh must cooperate in response to the immediate threats to bangladeshi agriculture arising from covid-19. in consideration, this research was conducted by the bangladesh agricultural extension network (baen) to assess the competency of initiatives aimed at minimizing the problems faced by farmers in bangladesh arising from the covid-19 pandemic. figure 1. covid-19 novel coronavirus case and death rates in bangladesh1. researchers have already addressed global generic and local agricultural problems and proposed several mitigating remedies. the early impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the agricultural sector is presented by siche (2020), where data from secondary data sources (e.g., fao, and who) and other technical reports were used in analysis. gray assessed the impact of the canadian transportation sector’s disruption in regard to agricultural 1 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/bangladesh/. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 773-781 775 product supply (gray, 2020). he examined the various canadian transportation modes used for agricultural products from the field to consumers. the impact of covid-19 on the cross-correlations between crude oil and agriculture was explored by wang (2020), who analyzed the economic impact of crude oil and agricultural futures. the impact of covid‐19 on various agricultural sectors has been explored along with their remedial strategies (e.g., the grain and oilseed sector (brewin, 2020), fruit and vegetables (richards, 2020), and cattle and beef (rude, 2020). goddard documented the impact of covid‐19 on food retail and service in canada (goddard, 2020). the impact on agriculture and public health during the covid-19 pandemic on the indian subcontinent was demonstrated by mcdonald (2020). a food supply review of bangladesh during the covid-19 pandemic is presented by zabir (2020). vegetable cultivation by domestic female workers was shown to have a positive impact on mitigating the effects of the pandemic on agriculture (akter, 2019). community-based agricultural development (ahmadu, 2012) can also be a strategy employed against the effects of the pandemic on agriculture. bangladeshi consumer perception of food purchasing has been dramatically changed during this pandemic which has been presented by khatun et al. (2020). food security in bangladesh was presented by dev (2020), where several steps are described to overcoming this crisis, but no other agricultural issues were addressed. however, all the foregoing are country-specific analyses that do not cover the situation in bangladesh. this paper presents a detailed analysis of the effect of covid-19 on the agricultural sector in bangladesh, with recommendations aimed at mitigating this crisis. a preliminary study of our work has been published as a personal blog in aesa (ali, 2020). 1.1. study objectives the general objective of this research was to explore the usefulness of mobile telephones in obtaining agricultural information in the study area. however, the specific objectives were: • to identify the demographic characteristics of the respondents. • to assess the problems faced by farmers in bangladesh. • to assess the competency of initiatives taken by different organizations to minimize the problems faced by farmers in bangladesh. • to compile a roadmap forward to minimize the problems faced by farmers in bangladesh. 2. methodology 2.1. study approach this study adopted a quantitative method to reach its research objectives. as stated by creswell (1994), quantitative research is a type of research that explains a phenomenon by collecting numerical data that are analyzed using mathematically based methods (in particular, statistics). the study was carried out on the agricultural expertise available in bangladesh to analyze the problems and its mitigation initiatives. 2.2. population and sampling initially a draft questionnaire was prepared containing open-ended questions which were sent to various experts in bangladesh and india for their comments. as per their comments, a draft questionnaire was prepared with the combination of closedand open-form questions whenever necessary. these were again sent to the relevant experts for their corrections. accordingly, after obtaining several corrections and modifications, the draft questionnaire was further modified, and the modified questionnaire was validated by the executive committee members of baen. after consultation, necessary corrections, modifications, additions, and deletions were made to the questionnaire. the final version of the survey questionnaire was then prepared. google form was used to conduct this online survey. eas providers, agricultural university teachers and students, and other professionals in bangladesh were requested to respond to the questionnaire, between 8 may and 8 june 2020. accordingly, 130 respondents participated in the online survey; due to improper answers, 13 responses were excluded and finally 117 respondents’ data were selected for analysis. based on their responses, the results of this survey were prepared. 3. results and discussion 3.1. demographic characteristics of respondents the demographic characteristics of the respondents, including organizational participation, age, education, and job experience, were identified. these are discussed in the following subsections. organizational participation one hundred and seventeen respondents from 21 organizations in bangladesh participated in the survey, of which 114 were agriculturists from the crop, livestock, and fisheries sectors of different government and nongovernment organizations (ngos) while athe remainder were from other sectors. participants’ organizations are shown in table 1. age the observed age range of respondents was 24–63 years, with an average of 35.73 years and standard deviation 8.27, which indicates a wide demographic variation. the respondents were classified into three categories based on their age: up to 30 years, 30–45 years, and >45 years. the statistical distribution of age and gender is shown in table 2. educational level the educational qualifications of respondents ranged from bachelor to phd; the distribution of respondents according to their educational qualification is shown in table 2. among the respondents, 114 had graduated from agricultural universities and the remainder from other disciplines. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 773-781 776 job experience the observed range of job experience was 1–35 years, with the average being 9.06 years. the respondents were classified into three categories based on their job experience, as shown in table 2. table 1. organizational breakdown of respondents. nature of organization name of organization government extension organizations department of agriculture extension (dae) department of livestock services (dls) department of fisheries (dof) agricultural information service (ais) government research organizations bangladesh agricultural research council universities/colleges sher-e-bangla agricultural university bangladesh agricultural university (bau), mymensingh university of dhaka sylhet agricultural university bangabandhu sheikh mujibur rahman agricultural university (bsmrau), gazipur college of development alternatives ict organizations bangladesh computer council, dhaka bangladesh institute of ict in development (biid) autonomous body palli daridro bimochon foundation (pdbf) ngos winrock international oxfam in bangladesh ide bangladesh bank bangladesh bank private companies fasal agro industry limited, dhaka bayer crop science, ltd greenfield agro nursery table 2. distribution of respondents according to job experience, educational qualification, and age, by gender. variable categories female male total percentage level of job experience low (up to 5 years) 15 29 44 37.61 medium (>5 to 15 years) 6 45 51 43.59 high (>15 years) 2 20 22 18.80 total 23 94 117 100.00 level of educational qualification low (bachelor) 1 4 5 4.27 medium (masters) 23 51 74 63.25 high (phd) 4 34 38 32.48 total 28 89 117 100.00 age distribution young (up to 30 years) 20 28 48 41.03 medium (>30 to 45 years) 7 46 53 45.30 senior (>45 years) 1 15 16 13.68 total 28 89 117 100.00 [rq1] problems addressed by farmers in bangladesh arising from the covid-19 pandemic due to the covid-19 pandemic, farmers in bangladesh are facing a range of problems to varying degrees. initially, problem items were collected from the different print and electronic news media and from in-depth consultations with relevant experts and eas providers. these were sent to experts in bangladesh and india for their comments. as per their comments, the items were then modified. these were again sent to the relevant experts and eas providers for their amendments. accordingly, after several corrections and modifications, the items were further modified and were then validated by the executive committee members of baen. after consultation, essential corrections, modifications, additions, and deletions were made to the items. finally, 28 items were selected for the study. respondents were asked to give their opinion on the severity of selected problem items faced by farmers arising from the covid-19 pandemic, by highlighting the correct response among the four alternatives as either ‘severe problem’, ‘moderate problem’, ‘low problem’, or ‘no problem’. weights were assigned to these alternative responses as 3, 2, 1, and 0 respectively. the problem faced index (pfi) of each item was determined according to equation 1: 𝑃𝐹𝐼 = 3x𝑓𝑠 + 2x𝑓𝑚 + 1x𝑓𝑙 + 0x𝑓𝑛 (1) where 𝑓𝑠= number of respondents facing a severe problem. 𝑓𝑚 = number of respondents facing a moderate problem. 𝑓𝑙 = number of respondents facing a low problem. 𝑓𝑛 = number of respondents facing no problem. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 773-781 777 as 117 participants responded on each problem item, the pfi of items ranged from 0 to 351 where ‘0’ indicated no problem and ‘351’ indicated the highest level of problem. rank order was also compiled on the basis of descending order of pfi. items were rearranged on the basis of rank order as shown in table 3. based on pfi, it was planned to categorize the problems into the following three categories: severe, moderate, and low. the pfi value ranges of these three categories are 235–351, 118–234, and 0-117, respectively, indicating the importance of finding solutions to the problems. table 3. rank order of problems faced by farmers arising from the covid-19 pandemic (pfi). it e m n o . problem items f a c in g s e v e re p ro b le m f a c in g m o d e ra te p ro b le m f a c in g l o w p ro b le m f a c in g n o p ro b le m t o ta l p f i r a n k o rd e r c a te g o ri e s o f p ro b le m s 12 wastage and low price of vegetables and fruit at farm gate or local market due to disconnect with the customer, absence of traders (middlemen as collectors, transporters, wholesalers, etc.) and vehicles for transport 86 29 2 0 117 318 1 s e v e re p ro b le m s 13 low price of eggs, milk, meat, etc. at farm and local markets due to reduced customer footfall, traders, and vehicles 80 35 2 0 117 312 2 16 losses of export-quality vegetables due to closure of borders and airports 85 25 5 2 117 310 3 15 wastage of flowers in farmers’ fields due to absence of customers, traders, collectors, transporters, or vehicles 85 24 6 2 117 309 4 18 loss of shrimp cultivators and exporters due to closure of borders and airports 83 26 7 1 117 308 5 17 loss of crab and mud eel producers, and of dry and frozen fish exporters, due to closure of borders and airports 81 29 6 1 117 307 6 19 reduced income due to marketing problems with farmers’ products 82 26 8 1 117 306 7 20 food shortage in agricultural laborer households due to lack of work and having to stay at home 67 39 11 0 117 290 8 28 mango and lychee farmers and traders may be loser due to marketing problems 70 34 11 2 117 289 9 14 low price of fish products at farm and local markets due to reduced customer footfall, traders, and vehicles 51 59 3 4 117 274 10 25 farmers are unable to pay loan installments and not able to get new loans for cultivation 54 46 15 2 117 269 11 9 shortage of skilled manpower and labor for vegetable and fruit transport and marketing 54 44 17 2 117 267 12 7 shortage of labor for harvesting and postharvest practices with boro rice 57 40 15 5 117 266 13 27 complex banking procedure in acquiring loans for agricultural activities 46 50 20 1 117 258 14 2 inadequate supply of livestock production inputs such as day-old chicks, poultry feed, veterinary medicines and vaccines, etc. due to restricted transport and quarantine measures 47 48 19 3 117 256 15 8 shortage of labor for postharvesting of vegetables and fruit (sorting, grading, packaging, handling, etc.) 43 55 16 3 117 255 16 s e v e re p ro b le m s 23 farmers have to pay more to buy inputs and labor, which increases family expenses 42 51 21 3 117 249 17 10 shortage of labor for livestock production (poultry, cattle, goats, dairy, meat, eggs, etc.) 40 54 20 3 117 248 18 3 inadequate supply of fishery production inputs such as fish seed, feedstuffs, medicines, vaccines, equipment, etc. due to restricted transport and quarantine measures 41 51 21 4 117 246 19 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 773-781 778 it e m n o . problem items f a c in g s e v e re p ro b le m f a c in g m o d e ra te p ro b le m f a c in g l o w p ro b le m f a c in g n o p ro b le m t o ta l p f i r a n k o rd e r c a te g o ri e s o f p ro b le m s 21 shortage of food grain, vegetables, fruit, eggs, milk, fish, etc. in major cities due to shortage of agricultural products from fields and local markets 35 57 22 3 117 241 20 6 shortage of harvesters for boro rice harvesting 46 38 24 9 117 238 21 1 inadequate supply of crop production inputs such as seed, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. due to restricted transport and quarantine measures 34 57 20 6 117 236 22 24 covid-19 and other diseases affecting farmers’ health and lowering labor availability in the field 40 41 31 5 117 233 23 m o d e ra te p ro b le m s 11 shortage of labor for fisheries production 28 60 25 4 117 229 24 4 inadequate agricultural pest control due to shortage of pesticides and labor for agriculture and preventive measures 34 46 33 4 117 227 25 22 reduced agricultural extension services because extension personnel are visiting growers’ fields and offices less frequently due to the fear of contracting coronavirus 25 52 33 7 117 212 26 5 inadequate irrigation facilities due to lack of spare parts for equipment and technical support 22 49 39 7 117 203 27 26 lack of aus rice seed as per farmers’ demand for the following season 22 46 36 13 117 194 28 source: analysis of authors’ survey 2020. the findings revealed that, among the 28 problems, 22 were severe and six were moderate (table 3). from the findings it was also found that problems related to ‘wastage and low price of farmers’ products (vegetables, fruit, eggs, milk, meat, flowers, shrimps, crabs, etc.) at the farm gate or local market due to disconnect with the customer, absence of traders (middlemen as collectors, transporters, wholesalers, etc.) and vehicles for transport’ were identified as top ranked. the relative severity of problems may be seen from table 3. ali (2020) mentions 11 effects of covid19 on bangladesh agriculture in his study in the very early stage of covid-19. roy (2020) also found similar findings in that study. both print and electronic media regularly feature similar problems. [rq2] the competency of initiatives taken to minimize the problems faced by farmers in bangladesh arising from the covid-19 pandemic. various organizations in bangladesh have adopted several initiatives of varying competence to minimize the problems faced by farmers arising from the covid-19 pandemic. the minimizing initiatives were collected by consulting with local agricultural experts and analyzing different news sources. initially, items were collated from different print and electronic news media and from in-depth consultation with relevant experts and eas providers. similarly, this list of initiatives was sent to different experts in bangladesh and india for their comments feedbacks, and modified based on their feedbacks. as per their comments, the items were modified. these were again sent to the relevant experts and eas providers for their corrections and finalized for broadcasting to the survey respondents. accordingly, after several corrections and modifications, the items were further modified and finalized. respondents were asked to give their opinion on the degree of competency of the initiatives taken by different organizations in bangladesh to minimize the problems faced by farmers arising from the covid-19 pandemic, by highlighting the correct response among the four alternative initiatives offered as either ‘highly competent’, ‘moderately competent’, ‘poorly competent’, or ‘not competent’. weights were assigned to these alternative responses as 3, 2, 1, and 0, respectively. the initiative competence index (ici) of each item was determined using equation 2: 𝐼𝐶𝐼 = 3x𝑓𝑠 + 2x𝑓𝑚 + 1x𝑓𝑙 + 0x𝑓𝑛 (2) where 𝑓𝑠= number of respondents stating highly competent. 𝑓𝑚 = number of respondents stating moderately competent. 𝑓𝑙 = number of respondents stating poorly competent. 𝑓𝑛 = number of respondents stating not competent. because 117 participants responded to each initiative item, the ici of the items ranged from 0 to 351 where 0 indicated not competent and 351 indicated maximally competent. rank order was also calculated on the basis of descending order of ici. items were rearranged on the basis of rank order as shown in table 4. based on ici, it was planned to categorize the initiatives into three major categories: highly competent, moderately competent, and poorly competent. the ici index value range of these categories is, respectively, 235–351, 118–234, and 0–117. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 773-781 779 table 4. rank order of initiatives taken to minimize the problems faced by farmers arising from the covid-19 pandemic (ici). it e m n o . initiative items h ig h ly c o m p e te n t m o d e ra te ly c o m p e te n t p o o rl y c o m p e te n t n o t c o m p e te n t t o ta l ic i r a n k o rd e r c a te g o ri e s o f in it ia ti v e s 21 prime minister’s directive to cultivate every inch of land for greater crop production 81 7 27 2 117 284 1 h ig h ly c o m p e te n t in it ia ti v e s 17 prime minister’s directive to implement continuous agricultural activities to ensure food security 78 6 32 1 117 278 2 6 ensuring 24/7 presence of all dae staff in respective work areas 61 9 44 3 117 245 3 19 pm’s instruction to arrange weekly haats (makeshift markets) in open fields in every area, to help farmers sell their produce while maintaining social distancing 58 8 50 1 117 240 4 2 allocation of bdt 9,000 crore as fertilizer subsidy 53 15 47 2 117 236 5 8 ensuring hassle-free movement of farm workers traveling from one district to another, especially for boro rice harvesting 41 24 47 5 117 218 6 m o d e ra te ly c o m p e te n t in it ia ti v e s 22 government decision to purchase 8 lakh ton of boro paddy @tk26 and 10 lakh ton of boiled boro rice @tk36 directly from farmers 41 14 60 2 117 211 7 10 keeping vehicles loaded with fertilizers, pesticides, diesel, and other agricultural produce out of lockdown 37 21 57 2 117 210 8 16 distributing seed of the bina-19 rice variety by bangladesh institute of nuclear agriculture (bina) for kharif season and providing suggestions for its cultivation 34 29 49 5 117 209 9 11 setting up control room by the department of livestock services (dls) as suggested by farmers 35 21 58 3 117 205 10 24 digital app. support for agricultural advisory services by the government/private organizations/mobile phone companies/various projects 32 27 54 4 117 204 11 18 allowing movement of those engaged in crop harvesting, and facilitating the food and agricultural input supply chain 37 16 60 4 117 203 12 7 upazilla-wise distribution and allocation of combined harvester, reaper, and rice transplanter with subsidies 32 23 59 3 117 201 13 9 executing necessary measures to enhance kharif-1 production 32 20 64 1 117 200 14 1 stimulus package of bdt. 5,000 crore for farmers to boost agricultural production against the backdrop of covid-19 fallout 30 24 61 2 117 199 15 12 distribution of vgf rice to farm families in 20 districts by the department of fisheries (dof) as a humanity assistance program 29 28 55 5 117 198 16 26 government incentive for the death by thunder and lightning 31 23 58 5 117 197 17 15 initiation of monitoring cells by badc for an emergency situation to preserve boro seed and distribution of aus seed across the country 29 26 57 5 117 196 18 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 773-781 780 it e m n o . initiative items h ig h ly c o m p e te n t m o d e ra te ly c o m p e te n t p o o rl y c o m p e te n t n o t c o m p e te n t t o ta l ic i r a n k o rd e r c a te g o ri e s o f in it ia ti v e s 5 allocation of bdt. 200 crore as an incentive to purchase agricultural machinery (especially rice harvesters) 30 23 59 5 117 195 19 25 irrigation incentive for farmers provided by badc 27 28 57 5 117 194 20 m o d e ra te ly c o m p e te n t in it ia ti v e s 4 allocation of bdt. 150 crore as incentive subsidy for purchasing seed 32 15 67 3 117 193 21 3 continuation of existing disbursement of loans at 4% interest for production of spices such as onion, garlic, ginger, and chili 28 23 60 6 117 190 22 20 provision of food aid and relief to daily wage earners 27 24 60 6 117 189 23 23 credit support by ngos for farming activities 22 35 51 9 117 187 24 14 initiating control room by dof as suggested by farmers 25 24 62 6 117 185 25 13 broadcasting of nutrition-related audio clips by dof to create awareness 23 22 66 6 117 179 26 source: analysis of authors’ survey 2020. the findings revealed that, among the 26 initiatives, five were highly competent and 21 were moderately competent (table 4). from the findings, it was also found that initiatives related to ‘prime minister’s directive to cultivate every inch of land for more crop production, implement continuous agricultural activities for ensuring food security, and arrange weekly haats (makeshift markets) in open fields in every area to help farmers sell their produce while maintaining social distancing; with the ongoing presence of dae staff in respective working areas and allocation of bdt. 9,000 crore as a fertilizer subsidy’ were identified as the top ranked. competency rankings of all initiative items are shown in table 4. 3.2. pathways forward to minimizing agricultural problems arising from the covid-19 pandemic based on the above findings, the following pathways forward are suggested to minimize the problems faced by farmers in bangladesh arising from the covid-19 pandemic: • strictly follow the prime minister’s directive to cultivate every available inch of land for increased crop production, implement continuous agricultural activities to ensure food security, and arrange weekly haats in open fields in every area to help farmers sell their produce while maintaining social distancing. • continuous presence of eas providers at the local level, providing technical support to farmers in the crop, livestock, and fisheries sectors, to minimize their problems. • effective collaboration and coordination among public and private eas providers to respond to the immediate threats to bangladeshi agriculture. • strengthen digital advisory services and provide information on output prices, availability of inputs, etc. • arrange a proper marketing system to sell farmers’ products (vegetables, fruit, eggs, milk, meat, flowers, shrimps, crabs, etc.) so that they can benefit by getting a fair price for their products with minimum wastage. • arrange an e-marketing system for farmers to buy inputs and sell agro-products. • organize a proper transport system for marketing of farmers’ products. • organize a proper transportation and distribution system to transport agricultural input from manufacturing and marketing companies to local dealers and farmers. • proper monitoring and distribution of government subsidies, grants, incentives, credit, etc. for the benefit of farmers. • enhance cooperative farming and marketing systems. • ensure migration of agricultural labor, with proper healthcare, from areas of surplus labor to areas with a deficit. • increase agricultural mechanization facilities for farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 773-781 781 • provide low interest credit to farmers’ groups (common interest groups formed by dae, farmer groups of ngos) to buy large agricultural equipment such as rice harvesters, with a matching government subsidy so that small and marginal farmers are able to harvest their rice efficiently, as well as earning extra money by cutting other farmers’ rice crops. • educate farmers about biosecurity measures such as hand washing, wearing masks, staying home if sick, and maintaining social distancing. • ensure the availability of vehicles, insurance, incentives, ppe, sanitization products, etc. for eas personnel. • ensure that grants are available from development partners (fao, ifad, other donors, development banks, etc.) to: o increase the capacity of eas providers. o provide a vehicle subsidy for transport of farmers’ products from farms to large cities. o increase the capacity of small and marginal farmers to buy agricultural implements. o establish low-cost cold storage facilities for farmers. 4. conclusion this paper presents a study on the agricultural sector of bangladesh covering part of the period of the covid-19 pandemic. it identified and prioritized the problems addressed by farmers in bangladesh arising from the covid-19 pandemic, using a weighted indexed value. it found 22 severe problems in the agricultural sector in bangladesh during this pandemic that must be addressed immediately. this paper also analyzed and prioritized the initiatives taken to minimize the problems faced by farmers arising from the covid-19 pandemic, and ordered six highly competent initiatives. finally, it proposed pathways forward to minimize the agricultural problems arising from the pandemic. in future, this research can be expanded by sector-wise specific impact analysis of the covid-19 pandemic and mitigation strategies for local agriculture in bangladesh. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in the design and performance of the current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ahmadu, s. a. 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(2020). mitigating impact of covid-19 on food and agriculture in bangladesh. retrieved from https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/views/mitigating-covid-19-impacts-on-food-and-agriculture-1585932264. [accessed 13 07, 2020]. rude, j. (2020). covid-19 and the canadian cattle/beef sector: some preliminary analysis. canadian journal of agricultural economics, 68(2), 1-8. siche, r. (2020). what is the impact of covid-19 disease on agriculture? scientia agropecuaria, 11(1), 3-6. wang, j. a. (2020). analysis of the impact of covid-19 on the correlations between crude oil and agricultural futures. chaos solitons fractals, 136(1), 1-7. zabir, a. a. (2020). covid-19 and food supply in bangladesh: a review. social science research network (ssrn), 1-16.available at: ssrn: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3595967. http://www.aesanetwork.org/blog-127-covid-19-impact-on-farmers-in-bangladesh-findings-from-the-baen-survey/ http://www.aesanetwork.org/blog-127-covid-19-impact-on-farmers-in-bangladesh-findings-from-the-baen-survey/ http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3595967 http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3595967 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 528 management of cocoa black pod disease by farmers in edo state, nigeria: the role of farmer field school ebewore, solomon okeoghene department of agricultural economics and extension, faculty of agriculture, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria  ebeworesolomon@gmail.com corresponding author article history: received: 03-feb-2020 accepted: 13-may-2020 online available: 10-jul2020 keywords: competency, t-test, infestation, cocoa, edo state, nigeria abstract the specific objectives of the study were to find the contribution of ffs training in control of the disease; examine the role of ffs in improving farmers’ competency in management of black pod disease, and determine the proportion of farmers that benefited from ffs training on management of black pod disease. a multi-stage sampling procedure was employed in selecting 76 ffs farmers and 74 other farmers, and various descriptive statistics and t-tests were used to analyze data. the results showed that ffs played a major role in improving ffs farmers’ competency in the management of black pod disease. the t-tests conducted showed significant differences in knowledge between ffs farmers and other farmers. contribution/ originality the paper examined the role of farmer field school extension method play in boosting farmers’ knowledge of disease control in delta state, nigeria. the study showed that ffs extension approach had led to the improved knowledge of cocoa farmers in managing black pod disease. thus ffs training was recommended to be extended to other farmers besides cocoa farmers. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.528.540 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ebewore, solomon okeoghene (2020). management of cocoa black pod disease by farmers in edo state, nigeria: the role of farmer field school. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 528-540. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 528-540 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:ebeworesolomon@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4906-7914 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.528.540 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 528-540 529 1. introduction cocoa (theobroma cacao) is vulnerable to the attack of several diseases which could lead to considerable economic loss to farmers. black pod disease causes the principal damage to cocoa pods the world over (oduro et al., 2020). four species of the pathogens belonging to the genus phytophthora cause black pod disease, but only two (phytophthora palmivora and phytophthora megakarya) are of economic relevance. these pathogens originally identified as fungi have now been regrouped into the stramenopila kingdom of plants (vanegtern et al., 2015). the pathogens also result in cocoa developing canker. an acute attack of cocoa can result in absolute rot of pods; damages of pods may be as high as 50% or even higher (david, 2008). severe infestation of cocoa pods can lead to almost 100% loss of pods (pokou et al., 2008; adeniyi, 2019). besides pods, cocoa stem, flower cushions, and chupons could also be infected. in this situation, the disease causes tree canker, flower cushions may fall off and affected branches or chupons may wilt and die, eventually leading to the death of the whole tree. the black pod is therefore one of the most serious limitations to cocoa production (adeniyi and ogunsola, 2014; simo et al., 2014; kudjordjie, 2015). as a result, vanegtern et al. (2015) asserted that the output of the cocoa tree is far below its high yield potential. despite the damages caused by black pod disease, most cocoa farmers have difficulty in combating the menace of the fungi causing the disease. recently, several development agencies like the world bank and fao have supported farmer field schools (ffs) as a more successful approach to diffuse science-based knowledge and management practices (asiaka, 2003; adisa and adeloye, 2012). according to david et al. (2006), the ffs extension approach has helped farmers elsewhere to lessen the incidence of damage caused by black pod disease on their farms. how successful the approach is in edo state is worth considering. a major challenge confronting agricultural extension in the present era is how to develop sustainable approaches that expand beyond disseminating technical information to farmers, to performing a key role in assisting peasant farmers manage themselves in such a way as to enhance farmer empowerment. farmer field school (ffs) advance is usually seen as one approach that can meet this goal. ffss were first established in asia towards the end of the 1980s and have since been extended to africa in the 1990s, covering different topics like integrated production and pest management (ippm), soil management, livestock production, and other diverse topics (braun et al., 2006). the disease has been defined in a number of ways but is generally referred to as an aberration in the physiology and anatomy of a living organism (akinsanmi, 1980). the disease is a major cause of losses in crop production (akaza et al., 2016) agricultural diseases may be caused by several agents (called pathogens) which included bacteria, viruses, protozoans, nematodes, or nutritional deficiency (omoruyi et al., 1999). pathogens have a negative impact on the value of the infected hosts (d’arcy et al., 2001; anderson et al., 2004). as a result, pathogens are significant environmental agents that may affect the composition of crop populations (gilbert, 2002; pagán et al., 2016) and in extreme cases, cause the local extinction of host species (alexander et al., 2014). also, pathogens are responsible for a substantial reduction in the yield of crops. the estimated annual losses in crop production (yield, quality, aesthetic value, etc.) worldwide has been put at between 13% and 16% (oerke, 2006; vurro et al., 2010). the fao estimated that indirect losses (effect, rural communities, environment, etc.) may be up to 20–40% (fao, 2015), with the resultant economic and social impacts (oerke, 2006; vurro et al., 2010). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 528-540 530 diseases of crops have caused serious losses to farmers in many ways (maloy, 2005). famine and displacing of families occurred in the irish nation as a result of potato late blight, american corn growers suffered direct economic losses in a particular year from the attack of southern corn leaf blight. thus diseases may collectively lead to colossal losses of farmers’ crops by reducing the quantity and quality of crops (maloy, 2005). several kinds of crops’ pathogenic diseases affect various parts of crops, ranging from the root to the crown of the tree or crops. according to agrawal (2018), these diseases affect cultivated crops as well as many kinds of wild plants. each kind of crop plants can be affected by the from few to several thousand types of the plant pathogens. plant diseases have been grouped in many ways like based on the symptoms spots, blights, rusts, and the smuts, rots, wilts or sometimes based on the plant part they affect like the roots, stem, leaves, or sometimes they are classified on the basis of the plant they affect like the turf diseases, vegetable diseases and the crop diseases (agrios, 1972). plants diseases can be caused by several means: by biotic agents and or by abiotic means, so the classification of the diseases on the basis of the agents is as follows (agrawal, 2018). a) infectious diseases or the diseases by the biotic means: diseases caused by biological agents like fungi, viruses, and viroids, nematodes, and protozoa. b) diseases caused by various abiotic means: such as ph, drought, salinity, and the pressures and the different kinds of the population, nutrition deficiencies mineral toxicities, soil acidity. the management of the disease can be regarded as a 'tool kit' approach to protecting crops of farmers. crop pathologists have been producing 'tools' to protect crops over the years. using resistant varieties is usually the first course of action to combat diseases. chemical methods, biological measure employing organisms that attenuate the severity of disease infestation and several cultural practices could be a principal component of disease control kit. disease management programs are usually designed to regulate the population of disease causing organisms below levels of economic losses as well as to improve the effectiveness of crop production. the dynamics of the crop pathogen interaction, is also a focus of disease management. according to maloy (2005), there are several strategies, tactics, and techniques employed in the management of diseases, and these can be grouped into one or several broad principles of action. the simplest management system comprises two principles the first is prevention which is a management tactic employed before infection and the second principle is a treatment which is any measure employed after the plant is attacked by disease (maloy, 2005). however, one early proposal included four general principles of disease management, namely, exclusion, eradication, protection, and resistance. many scholars and maloy (1993) discuss these and other principles. exclusion: this principle aims at preventing the introduction of disease-causing agents (pathogens) into the farmers’ field or farm. the eradication principle is to eliminate a pathogen after it is introduced into a farm so that the disease does not spread further. protection principle works by creating a barrier between disease causing organisms and the crop or susceptible part of the crop. the resistance principle is used to assist the crop to be less susceptible to disease. integrated disease management principle (idm) employs the timely utilization of several strategies and tactics to combat the menace of disease organisms. cocoa is very vulnerable to the attack of pests (insects) and disease causing organisms. pests and diseases reduce not only the quantity of cocoa produced but the quality of cocoa beans as well (david, 2005). this constitutes a major challenge for farmers. farmer field schools (ffss) were asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 528-540 531 first developed in indonesia in 1989 for training rice farmers in integrated pest management (ipm) (naels/abu, 2008). however, the ffs extension approach has been introduced to several countries all over the world including nigeria. the approach has also been extended to other crops like cocoa, coffee, and groundnut, besides rice. the general principles of disease control highlighted above are to be incorporated into the ffs training programme and taught to farmers. how the ffs assists farmers in the area of disease management merits consideration. the main diseases of cocoa are black pod disease, cocoa swollen shoot, and canker. black pod disease is the most serious disease of cocoa in west africa (david et al., 2006). black pod disease has been controlled in different ways. planting of resistant cocoa varieties, planting on good site, quarantine, regular field inspection, prompt harvesting, mulching, adequate spacing, pruning of trees, improvement of airflow in plantation, removal of soil from the tree trunk, promotion of soil health and use of chemicals (fungicides) have been tested and used effectively to combat and or manage the menace of black pod disease (david, 2005; vanegtern et al., 2015). integrated pest management can also be used to control black pod disease. the advantage of the use of integrated pest management (ipm) in controlling cocoa diseases is the decrease in the use of agrochemicals, as well as providing an economic incentive to farmers by increasing the quality and yield of the cocoa crop. it then becomes imperative that farmers know the state of their crops and the diseases on the farm so that they can determine the best action to take. as an extension approach, how ffs has improved knowledge of farmers in this regards merits serious attention which this study is poised to examine. west and central african countries produce more than 72% of the world’s cocoa production (icco, 2015). however, this percentage may dwindle as a result of several factors including disease infestation. thus, any training programme that can assist farmers to manage diseases in their fields will be highly appreciated. also assessing the effect of such programme contribution to the knowledge of farmers will be highly appreciated. since black pod disease causes the greatest loss to cocoa farmers (adeniyi, 2019), any initiative put in place to control the menace of the disease will highly be appreciated. thus simo et al. (2014) asserted that the management of disease, especially black pod, is a serious challenge to cocoa cultivation. since ffs as an extension approach is poised to assist farmers in solving their problems including the management of diseases, how this approach has helped farmers in managing a serious disease like black pod is worth examining. thus, integrated pest and disease management are some of the topics in the ffs curriculum (david et al., 2006). these research questions, therefore, arise: what are the socio-economic characteristics of cocoa farmers? how has ffs improved the competence of farmers in controlling black pod disease? what is the proportion of farmers that have gained training disease control programme of ffs? in what aspects has ffs training helped farmers to combat black pod disease? the purpose of this paper is thus to examine the place ffs training in improving farmers’ competency in the control of black pod disease on their farms. the itemized objectives were to: 1. explain the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents. 2. identify the control measures of the black pod that ffs has helped farmers in edo state. 3. ascertain the differences in knowledge of ffs farmers and other farmers on the management of black pod disease of cocoa 1.1. conceptual framework of the study the conceptual framework guiding this study is depicted by the relationship between the variables of study as indicated in figure 1. the independent variables include socioeconomic variables such as age, sex, marital status, educational level, farm size, farming experience, household size, and ffs status. these socioeconomic variables would invariably determine the farmers’ knowledge of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 528-540 532 the control of black pod disease of cocoa. the improved/low knowledge is expected to translate into increased/decreased farmers’ welfare as indicated by a reduction/increase in farm losses and increased/decreased cocoa production. this new status of the farmer is likely to affect their socioeconomic status; for instance, improved production as a result of reduced incidence of disease may enhance the income of the farmer, and with this elevated income the farmer can now increase his farm size. on the other hand farmers with less knowledge mat witness low income and poor output. hence the double head arrow linking the socioeconomic variable with the improved welfare (i.e. reduced farm losses and increased production) box. the intervening variables in the study which did not measure but could influence the dependent variable (knowledge) of the farmer included government policy, the physical environment of the farmer, and the cultural setting of the community. figure 1: conceptual framework of the study 2. materials and methods the research was carried out in the edo state of nigeria in 2019. edo state was chosen because it was one of the pioneer states involved in farmer field school training. moreover, some farmers in the state did not attend farmer field school. the farmer field school in edo state is only for cocoa farmers, hence the selection of this group of farmers. edo state was split off from the erstwhile bendel state on august 27, 1991. edo state has a population of about four million (npc, 2006). the landmass of edo state is 19,749 km2 and lies between latitudes 05o44’ n and 07o34’ n and longitude 05o4’ e and 06oe. the state has a lot of low lands except in the north part due to the presence of the northern and esan plateaus which range from 183 meters (kukuruku hills) to 672 independent variables i. age ii. sex iii. marital status iv. educational level v. farm size vi. farming experience vii. household size viii. ffs status ix. extension contact intervening variables i. government policy ii. physical environment iii. cultural factors knowledge of farmers, about disease control reduction / increase of farm losses and increase/decrea se in production asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 528-540 533 meters (somorika hills). the state has boundaries with kogi state (in the north), delta state (in the east and south), and ekiti and ondo states (in the west). the climate of the state is characterized by two distinctive seasons the rainy and the dry seasons. all the registered cocoa farmers that have been participated in ffs (ffs graduates) and those that have not participated (non-ffs farmers) constitute the population of the study. the lists of the registered farmers were obtained from the sustainable tree crop programme (stcp) and the agricultural development programme (adp) offices present in the state. the sample was composed using a multi-stage sampling procedure. the three agro-ecological zones in the state are edo north, edo central, and edo south. the concentration of cocoa farmers in edo north who are acquainted with ffs training more than other zones led to its selection. three local government areas in this zone owan east, owan west, and akoko edo local government areaswere purposively selected because of the concentration of ffs training more than others. in the last stage, 10% of both ffs and non-ffs farmers were randomly selected from each of the three lgas chosen using the list of cocoa farmers obtained from the sustainable tree crops programme (stcp) and agricultural development programme offices. a total of 76 ffs farmers and 79 non-ffs farmers were randomly selected from the study area. however, only 74 non-ffs farmers were used for the study as 5 copies of the questionnaire were not returned. a structured and validated questionnaire was developed and employed for data collection. the questionnaire sought information on the social-economic characteristics of the respondents and the ffs role in improving their knowledge in the management of diseases. the various management options of black pod disease were obtained from the sustainable tree crops programme (stcp) office. the ffs respondents were then split into three categories based on ffs contribution to their knowledge of disease management. the ffs farmer is placed in group one if the disease management option is not new to him (i.e the farmer is familiar with the practice); the farmer is placed in group two if ffs considerably improved the knowledge of the farmer on the particular management option if the disease control practice is novel to the farmer he is categorized into group three. knowledge of the ffs farmers and other farmers was determined by administering some test items to them. t-tests were then used to determine whether significant differences exist between the ffs farmers and other farmers in terms of knowledge about the management of black pod disease. ttest has been used extensively for testing the difference of two means by many scholars (kim, 2015; vetter and mascha, 2018; rochon et al., 2012). 3. results and discussion the socioeconomics characteristics of respondents are presented in table 1. the results showed that the age range of farmers is 18 – 75 years. the mean age was about 45 years. moreover, most of the respondents were within the economically active age group as about 78.4% of them were between 21 and 60 years old. this is an indication that youth were actively involved in cocoa farming in the study area. thus, cocoa cultivation was carried out mostly by adults with vigour or energy to work. osarenren et al. (2016) stated that farmers in this age range are usually active and this can impact positively on cocoa cultivation. most of the respondents were males (about 78.6% ffs farmers and 90.5% non-ffs farmers). this may be due to the perennial nature of cocoa which often leads to permanent holding on land which traditionally is owned by men and also the rigorous work involved. a similar observation was made by okorley et al. (2014) and osarenren et al. (2016) who reported that cocoa production is dominated by males and that there is the belief that the cocoa sector demands strenuous work, which makes it more suitable for men who strictly speaking are physically stronger than women. the marital status of the respondents shows that most asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 528-540 534 of them were married (64.5% ffs farmers and 70.3% other farmers), which was similar to the finding of omoare et al. (2016) who observed that many cocoa farmers were married. thus most of the respondents have responsibilities, and their family members may assist in cocoa farming. family members may help to reduce the costs incurred in farm labour. matata et al. (2010) believe that married individuals actively participate in technology development more than those not married due to the support of a marriage partner. the result of education attainment indicates that 89.5% of ffs farmers acquired formal education in one form or the other. the percentage of nonffs farmers that had formal education is lower (73%) and as high as 27% of them had no formal schooling. this indicates high literacy among the respondents. however, the ffs farmers are more literate which may likely explain why they are involved in the ffs training programme. mokgadi and oladele (2013) and akinmusola et al. (2016) observed that formal education has been found to have a positive influence on the adoption of innovation, including participating in a training programme like fss. most of the respondents are quite experienced in cocoa farming, with mean farming experience of 22years. thus, the majority of the respondents will be willing to participate in ffs training on cocoa. farm size of most of the respondents was small, with 75% of them possessing farm size of between 0-5 hectares as indicated in table 2, and the mean farm size was only 4 hectares which are very small for a tree crop like cocoa. the result agrees with okunlola and adekunle (2000) and osarenren et al. (2016) who asserted that most nigerian cocoa farmers are smallholders. this finding implies that the respondents are mainly small scale farmers. according to lavison (2013), farm size can affect and or be affected by the other factors determining adoption or acquisition and utilization of innovations and improved practices. the household sizes of the respondents were moderate; the mean was 7. ogungbile et al. (2002) asserted that the household size can influence the adoption index either positively or negatively. large household size can also assist in providing family labour (nmadu et al., 2015). table 1: socio-economic characteristics of respondents variables ffs farmers (n = 76) other farmers (n = 74) frequency percentage frequency percentage age (years) 0 – 20 8 10.5 6 8.1 21 – 40 22 28.9 20 27.0 41 60 35 46.1 38 51.4 above 60 11 14.5 10 13.5 gender male 64 84.2 67 90.5 female 12 15.8 7 9.5 marital status never married 16 21.1 12 16.2 married 49 64.5 52 70.3 divorce/separated 4 5.3 5 6.8 widow/widower 7 9.2 5 6.8 educational level no formal 8 10.5 38 27.0 primary 19 25.0 49 34.7 secondary 29 38.2 38 27.0 tertiary 20 26.3 14 9.9 farming experience (years) less than 11 11 14.5 5 6.8 11 – 20 22 28.9 28 37.8 more than 20 43 56.6 41 55.4 farm size (hectare) 5 and below 57 75.0 65 87.8 6 – 10 14 18.4 5 6.8 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 528-540 535 more than 10 5 6.6 4 5.4 household size 1 – 5 26 34.2 11 14.9 6 – 10 38 50.0 51 68.9 more than 10 12 15.8 12 16.2 source: survey data, 2019 3.1. role of ffs in improving farmers’ knowledge of the control of black pod disease table 2 depicts the contributions of ffs to control of black pod disease. the results in table 2 indicated that ffs contributed immensely to the respondents’ knowledge of the control of cocoa black pod disease. for example, 59.2% of the respondents were exposed for the first time to the use of resistant varieties in controlling black pod disease; 23.7%, 57.9%, 72.4%, 73.7%, 47.4%, 78.9%, and 85.5% respectively asserted that they were exposed for the first time to regular inspection of farm to remove diseased pods, regular harvesting, rational use of fungicide, plantation maintenance to increase airflow, removal of soil from the cocoa trunk, promotion of healthy soil and integrated crop disease management. ffs training also contributed substantially to improving farmers’ knowledge on the control of black pod disease; 30.3%, 28.9%, 26.3%, 19.7%, 21.1%, 44.7%, 17.1%, and 13.2% respectively asserted that ffs training greatly improves their knowledge in planting resistant variety, regular inspection of farm to remove diseased pods, regular harvesting, rational use of fungicide, plantation maintenance to increase airflow, removal of soil from the cocoa trunk, promotion of healthy soil and integrated crop disease management. although 47.4% of the respondents were already practicing regular inspections of farms to remove diseased pods, very few numbers of the respondents already know how to control black pod disease using the 7 other methods. the findings imply that ffs has contributed immensely to farmers’ knowledge of the control of black pod disease, thus boosting farmers’ competence in disease management. this observation agrees with that of dzomeku et al. (2014) and david (2007) who observed that ffs had led to increased production of cocoa by improving farmer knowledge on how to manage their cocoa farms. okorley et al. (2014) also asserted that ffs training had greatly improved farmers’ competence in the control of black pod disease of cocoa. table 2: role of ffs in improving respondents control black pod disease control measure role of farmer field school group 1 group 2 group 3 i. planting of resistant varieties 8 (10.5) 23 (30.3) 45 (59.2) ii. regular field inspection to remove pods 36 (47.4) 22 (28.9) 18 (23.7) iii. regular harvesting 12 (15.8) 20(26.3) 44 (57.9) iv. rational use of fungicide 6 (7.9) 15 (19.7) 55 (72.4) v. plantation maintenance to improve airflow 4(5.3) 16(21.1) 56 (73.7) vi. removal of soil from cocoa trunk 6 (7.9) 34 (44.7) 36 (47.4) vii. promotion of healthy soil 3 (3.9) 13 (17.1) 60 (78.9) ix. integrated crop disease management practices 1 (1.3) 10(13.2) 65 (85.5) source: survey data, 2019 note: percentages in parentheses 1 = previously familiar; 2 = ffs contributes substantially on knowledge of control method 3 = control method novel or new to farmers the percentages are in parentheses. 3.2. differences between ffs farmers and other farmers in terms of their knowledge of control of black pod disease the differences in knowledge of the control of black pod disease between ffs and other farmers are presented in table 3. from the t-test results presented in table 3, significant differences exist between knowledge of ffs and other farmers in the management of black pod disease in all the test asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 528-540 536 items examined. this can be observed from the t-value obtained. this is a clear indication that the ffs training improved the knowledge of the cocoa farmers in managing black pod disease. the plausible reason adduced for this difference is probably due to the ffs farmers being more exposed to training on improved management practices. this finding was corroborated by that of ajayi and okafor (2006), david et al. (2006) and van de fliert and braun (2005), and nmadu et al. (2015) who reported that ffs focuses on building farmers capacity to make well-informed crop management decisions through increase knowledge and understanding of agro-ecosystem. several studies depict the ffs as an effective training method for the farmers (godtland et al., 2003). a research carried out in the philippines indicates that ffs graduates retain knowledge many years after the attending training (rolas et al., 2002; tripp et al., 2005). this knowledge acquired can assist them in making sound decisions on how to contain the menace of black pod disease. table 3: distribution of respondents based on the management of cocoa black pod disease no. test item ffs farmers (n = 76) other farmers (n = 74) score mean s score mean sd t-value 1 planting healthy tree 76 1.00 0.000 12 0.16 0.511 11.50** 2 good spacing of cocoa tree/density 76 1.01 0.000 18 0.24 0.298 13.82** 3 causes of diseases 75 0.99 0.104 16 0.22 0.408 10.44** 4 effect of light on diseases 74 0.97 0.188 6 0.08 0.366 18.04** 5 spraying of agrochemicals 76 1.00 0.001 52 0.70 0.299 5.55** 6. safety precaution during spraying 76 1.00 0.000 18 0.24 0.299 13.79** 7. storage of agrochemical 74 0.97 0.201 9 0.12 0.562 11.01** 8. recommended spraying methods 72 0.95 0.380 6 0.08 0.189 21.79** 9. time of spraying 70 0.92 0.412 15 0.20 0.442 16.62** 10. sanitary harvest 77 1.00 0.001 6 0.08 0.333 19.49** 11. prompt harvesting 74 0.97 0.331 35 0.47 0.297 8.95** 12. use of disease resistant varieties 76 1.00 0.001 23 0.77 0.422 7.78** 13. integrated disease management 72 0.95 0.266 12 0.16 0.349 12.51** 14. avoidance of child labour 72 0.95 0.266 18 0.24 0.415 11.09** source: survey data, 2019 note: ** significant at p < 0.05 4. conclusion and recommendations the findings of the study revealed that ffs contributed immensely to farmers’ knowledge on the control of black pod disease. from the findings, ffs training either contributed greatly to improving farmers’ knowledge on how to manage black pod disease or trained most farmers on the disease control method. moreover, the ffs farmers have more knowledge than other cocoa farmers by their exposure to ffs training. based on the findings, these recommendations are made. 1 the nonparticipant cocoa farmers should be sensitized to ffs training since ffs training has benefitted the farmers in control of black pod disease. 2 since ffs training is presently centered on cocoa farmers in the study area, it is a good thing that ffs training is extended to other crops. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 528-540 537 3 the curriculum of the ffs training should be expanded to include all aspects of cocoa cultivation practices. the ffs and non-ffs farmers should be involved in formulating the curriculum. the implementation of these recommendations will invariably minimize the menace of not only diseases but also help the farmers in making good returns from their farm business. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that he has no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the author appreciates the contribution of his colleague in the department of agricultural economics and extension and prof. m.t. ajayi for their technical support. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adeniyi, d. 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(2010). emerging infectious diseases of crop plants in developing countries: impact on agriculture and socio-economic consequences. food security, 2, 113-132. doi.org/10.1007/s12571-010-0062-7. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 120 the practice of imidazolinone-resistant rice production in the irrigated rice fields of kg sungai leman engku, a. k.a norida, m.b omar, d.c asib n.d yusof s.e halimatunsadiah, a. b.f a,fdepartment of agriculture technology, faculty of agriculture, universiti putra malaysia, selangor, malaysia. cddepartment of plant protection, faculty of agriculture, universiti putra malaysia, selangor, malaysia. edepartment of biology, faculty of science, universiti putra malaysia, selangor, malaysia. blaboratory of climate-smart food crop production, institute tropical agriculture and food security (itafos), universiti putra malaysia.  noridamz@upm.edu.my (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 8 january 2021 revised: 22 february 2021 accepted: 5 march 2021 published: 25 march 2021 keywords rice herbicide imidazolinone herbicide imidazolinone-resistant rice imidazolinone-resistant rice production system oryza sativa. rice is an important crop and a staple food in malaysia. herbicides are used extensively to control weeds, which represent a major constraint to yield production. although the introduction of imidazolinoneresistant rice with its management system (irps) has greatly improved both yields and weed control, the system is designed to be used for only a short term before transitioning to local varieties. thus, a survey was conducted among 115 farmers to obtain information on their general knowledge on weed control and irps. the results showed that the majority of the farmers use herbicides to control all types of weed presented, with a small minority still using manual control. the majority of farmers using irps were applying the herbicide imidazolinone when soil condition were right, and only once per season, which is the recommendation. most of the farmers still utilized imidazolinone to control weedy rice but would not use it on other weeds. however, many of the farmers perceived imidazolinone as becoming more ineffective and expensive and were willing to change to other herbicides if there was a viable alternative. although herbicide is the main method employed in controlling weeds when using irps, farmers still regard imidazolinone as an ineffective herbicide. the reason irps is still in use is due to the high yields provided. this study shows a better understanding of knowledge on weeds and irps among farmers. nonetheless, the irps will become a redundant system due to the ineffectiveness of imidazolinone and a new system should be introduced to replace it. contribution/originality: this study is one of very few studies to have investigated the imidazolinone-resistant rice system and weed-related knowledge of farmers in malaysia. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.120.128 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: engku, a. k. --norida, m. ---omar, d. --asib n. --yusof s. --halimatunsadiah, a. b. (2021). the practice of imidazolinone-resistant rice production in the irrigated rice fields of kg sungai leman. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 120-128. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.120.128 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 120-128. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7872-4760 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7124-7738 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2258-3193 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4268-7205 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8091-3381 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7355-3704 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.120.128 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 120-128 121 1. introduction rice is considered a staple food in malaysia and the second most important crop after wheat (rajamoorthy, rahman, & munusamy, 2015). the current self-sufficiency level for malaysia is only around 70% (sharif, 2013). because of this, the government has outlined plans to attain a 100% self-sufficiency level (rajamoorthy et al., 2015). however, rice has many limitations to achieving a high yield. weeds are the major pest for rice, accounting for an average of up to 50% yield losses (tshewang, sindel, ghimiray, & chauhan, 2016). the major pest is weedy rice, which has almost the same morphological traits and thus can be very difficult to spot in the early planting stage (sudianto et al., 2016). therefore, the imidazolinone-resistant rice production system (irps) has been introduced to control weedy rice. the system comes in a package of imidazolinone-resistant rice seeds and the herbicide imidazolinone, which contains imazapic and imazaphyr as the active ingredients. imidazolinone-resistant rice was first introduced in malaysia at felcra seberang perak (azmi, azlan, yim, george, & chew, 2012). two varieties were introduced, namely mr220-cl1 and mr220-cl2, both high-yielding varieties able to produce up to 1.5 times more than local types (adedoyin, shamsudin, radam, & abdlatif, 2016). the planting of imidazolinone-resistant rice comes with certain recommendations, such as the number of seasons over which it can be planted, time of planting, soil conditions during imidazolinone application, and the number of imidazolinone applications per season (basf, 2010). following the irps method can reduce weedy rice infestation but, at the same time, it can increase the risk of gene flows due to their genetic similarities and inheritance of the same resistance towards the herbicide (sudianto. et al., 2013). in fact, there are several gene flows reported from nations that utilize imidazolinone-resistant rice (engku et al., 2016; kaloumenos, capote, aguado, & eleftherohorinos, 2013; roso, merotto jr, delatorre, & menezes, 2010). imidazolinone-resistant rice has been planted for several years now, but there are no studies regarding the practice of irps by farmers. this study aims to gain an insight into farmers’ general knowledge of weeds and the practice of irps after years of using this system. 2. materials and methods the study consisted of personal interviews with rice farmers who planted imidazolinone-resistant rice in kampung sungai leman, sekinchan, selangor. a total of 115 farmers were interviewed in the area based on their willingness to co-operate. the survey was conducted in a direct interview using a structured questionnaire, which included three sections of open-ended questions, closed-ended questions, and a section on likert scale-based question. the interviews were conducted in bahasa malaysia. the interviewees were asked about their socio-demographic information, knowledge on irps, classification of common weeds in rice fields, and knowledge on imidazolinone. the data were analyzed using several methods. descriptive analysis was used to describe the farmers’ socio-demographic background, knowledge on irps, and classification of common weeds in rice fields. meanwhile, chi-square was used to investigate the relationship between farmers’ education levels and the general practice of the irps system. factor analysis was used on the likert scale questions to reduce variable groups according to their underlying characteristics. a value of kaiser–meyer–olkin (kmo) at 0.60 or higher was considered to determine whether the variables were accepted for further factor analysis. factors with eigenvalues >1 were considered significant for the analysis. for factor loading, the cut-off point was >0.5. for each factor extracted, reliability testing was conducted and cronbach’s alpha coefficient of >0.6 was considered acceptable. 3. results and discussion 3.1. farmers’ background in total, 115 farmers participated with all of them being malays, consisting of 114 males and only one female. table 1 shows that >80% of the farmers were >40 years of age and only a very small percentage <40 years. in terms of educational attainment, 16 and 80% of the farmers had received education up to primary and secondary school, respectively. only one farmer (0.87%) had not received any formal education, while four (3.48%) had received their education to college or university level. the mean number of people per farming household in the area was 5.09. onefifth of the farmers had >31 years of rice planting experience, which constituted the lowest percentage. the highest percentage consisted of farmers with experience <10 years and 21–30 years (28.70%). a total of 89.57% of the farmers were primarily rice farmers while the remainder were farmers with jobs in the private (7.82%) or government sector (1.74%), as well as one pensioner (0.87%). most of the farmers gained revenue per season in the range rm4001–6000 (32.2%). the lowest percentage was in the range >rm10,000 (2.61%). more than half of the average yield in the area was around 8–9 tonnes per hectare (56.52%), while the second-highest value was 6–7 tonnes per hectare (24.35%). other average yield ranges were 4–5 tonnes per hectare (9.57%), >10 tonnes per hectare (5.21%), and 2–3 tonnes per hectare (4.35%). 3.2. irps knowledge among farmers of all the farmers interviewed, around 73% expressed their knowledge about irps while the remainder had no information at all. this result can be seen in table 2. the major source of information obtained by these farmers was from the agriculture extension officer of the department of agriculture (doa) (20.87%), followed by the farmers’ organization (16.52%). only 15.65% of farmers had obtained information about irps from their friends, while the remainder had obtained their information from seed companies (11.30%), rice seed agents (7.82%), or pesticide retailers (0.87%). from the total of 84 farmers who had knowledge of irps, 90.48% mentioned that they had followed the irps recommendations whereas the remainder (9.52%) had not. for those farmers who had not followed procedures, 50.00% stated that the reason for this was due to high yields, while the remainder noted the ease of weed control (25.00%) or ease of use (25.00%). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 120-128 122 table-1. farmers’ socio-demographic profile. profile frequency (n = 115) percentage age (years) ≤30 3 2.61 31–40 15 13.04 41–50 46 40.00 51–60 43 37.39 ≥61 8 6.96 education attainment no formal education 1 0.87 primary 18 15.65 secondary 92 80.00 college/university 4 3.48 number of households ≤2 23 20.00 3–4 24 20.87 4–5 25 21.74 5–7 28 24.35 ≥8 15 13.04 experience in rice planting (years) ≤10 33 28.70 11–20 26 22.60 21–30 33 28.70 ≥31 23 20.00 primary work rice farmer 103 89.57 private sector 9 7.82 government sector 2 1.74 pensioner 1 0.87 revenue per season (rm/ha) ≤2000 8 6.96 2001–4000 31 26.96 4001–6000 37 32.17 6001–8000 23 20.00 8001–10,000 13 11.30 ≥10000 3 2.61 average yield (tonnes/ha) 2–3 5 4.35 4–5 11 9.57 6–7 28 24.35 8–9 65 56.52 ≥10 6 5.21 table-2. farmers’ irps knowledge. profile frequency percentage irps source of information n = 115 agent 9 7.82 doa 24 20.87 seed company 13 11.30 farmers’ organization 19 16.52 friend 18 15.65 pesticide retailer 1 0.87 no knowledge on irps 31 26.97 follow irps (n = 84) yes 76 90.48 no 8 9.52 reason did not follow (n = 8) weedy rice control 2 25.00 high yield 4 50.00 ease of usage 2 25.00 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 120-128 123 3.3. types of weed in rice fields a total of nine types of weed were found to be most commonly encountered by the farmers in kampung sungai leman, and are shown in figure 1. among the nine weeds mentioned, some were considered as major weeds: eleusine indica, cyperus iria, echinochloa crus-galli, oryza sp., and ischaemum rugosum. the most common type of weed was e. indica, which accounted for 39.73% of the total. the second-highest weed mentioned by farmers was i. rugosum (17.81%), with weedy rice or oryza sp. the third most mentioned weed (9.59%). other weeds that mentioned by the farmers were sagittaria guyanensis (8.22%), c. iria (6.85%), limnophila erecta (6.16%), scirpus grossus (4.79%), e. crusgalli (4.79%), leptochloa chinensis (3.85%), and eleocharis dulcis (2.05%). figure-1. common weeds found in rice fields. 3.4. infestation period of weeds the infestation period is the time when the weed is most prominent during the whole of the planting season, based on farmers’ knowledge and experience. most weeds had an infestation period during the early planting season at around 0–30 days after planting (dap). all weeds had an infestation period at 30–60 dap. only five types of weed had an infestation period from 60 dap to harvesting stage, namely oryza sp. (16.66%), e. crus-galli (20.00%), s. grossus (14.29%), e. indica (1.96%), and i. rugosum (10.53%). the critical period for weed control under flood conditions varies according to the season: 2–98 days after seeding in the main season and 15–73 days after seeding in the off season (juraimi et al., 2009). as such, all of these weeds have the potential to affect rice yield if no weeding is done during the critical period. figure-2. infestation period for weeds present in sungai leman. 3.5. infestation level the infestation level of weeds was determined by the number of herbicide applications per season. low-level infestation weeds required no herbicide application while serious invaders required one or two application. for very serious infestation levels, more than two applications were required. according to the data gathered from farmers, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 120-128 124 although all of the weeds were associated with a serious infestation level, 2.08 and 11.76% of the farmers considered e. indica and i. rugosum, respectively, as not serious. interestingly, the following weeds were considered very serious: oryza sp. (54.55%), e. crus-galli (20.00%), e. indica (14.59%), and i. rugosum (23.53%). in particular, e. indica and i. rugosum have been documented as being among weeds that cause massive loss due to their competition with commercial rice. weeds can cause losses of 35–100% if not properly managed (ismaila, wada, daniya, & gbanguba, 2013). moreover, oryza sp. has been confirmed to hybridize with imidazolinone-resistant rice and to develop resistance to the herbicide (engku et al., 2016). these three weeds (i. rugosum, e. indica and oryza sp) have previously been studied and confirmed to have developed resistance to certain herbicides (heap, 2018). this developing resistance will reduce the capability of these herbicides to control weeds, thus increasing management costs and reducing the income of farmers. figure-3. infestation levels of weeds present in sungai leman. 3.6. weed control many types of herbicide were applied by the farmers to control weeds. using herbicide to control weeds can increase the yield of rice – it was observed that some weeds, such as oryza sp. and e. indica, were controlled with many types of herbicide. among herbicides used to control both of these weeds included pendimethalin, pretilachlor, 2,4 d-amine, thiobencarb + propanil, cyhalofop-butyl, and pretilachlor + pyribenzoxim. the usage of 2,4-d amine in controlling this weeds is somewhat puzzling as this is a selective herbicide for broadleaf weeds. this shows that some farmers do not understand the correct way to use herbicides. the results for weed control can be observed in table 3 which shows the percentage of the farmer’s based on their experience. for e. dulcis, the farmers used only 2,4 damine-based herbicide for control. for s. grossus, 50.00% of the farmers used pendimethalin while the remaining 50.00% used bendioxide to control this weed. e. crus-galli was commonly controlled using cyhalofop-butyl (50.00%) and pendimethalin (50.00%), whereas s. guyanensis was controlled by three types of herbicide, namely bispyribac sodium (20.00%), lufenuron (20.00%), and 2,4 d-amine (60.00%). c. iria was controlled mainly by 2,4 d-amine (50.00%), benoxide (33.33%), and pendimethalin (16.67%). for l. erecta, three types of herbicide were used, namely pretilachlor + pyribenzoxim (20.00%), pendimethalin (20.00%), and 2,4 d-amine (40.00%). similarly, i. rugosum was controlled by five types of herbicide: lufenuron (8.33%), bendioxide (8.33%), bispyribac sodium (25.00%), pendimethalin (25.00%), and pretilachlor + pyribenzoxim (33.34%). e. indica was controlled by eight herbicides: thiobencarb + propanil (2.86%), pretilachlor + pyribenzoxim (5.71%), penoxulam (5.71%), 2,4 d-amine (8.57%), bispyribac sodium (8.57%), pretilachlor (11.43%), pendimethalin (22.86%) and cyhalofop-butyl (31.43%), and also by manual control (2.86%). for oryza sp., the controls implemented were imazapyr + imazapic (66.09%), pendimethalin (14.78%), pretilachlor + pyribenzoxim (9.56%), pretilachlor (4.35%), penoxulam (0.87%), 2,4-d amine (0.87%), thiobencarb + propanil (0.87%), and cyhalofop-butyl (0.87%). surprisingly, imidazolinone was still considered the most utilized herbicide to control weedy rice after years of applying the irps technique. one study indicated that farmers have low confidence in following the irps system due to strict guidelines and procedures (terano, mohamed, & din, 2016). imidazolinone is a low-application-rate herbicide, which carries a higher risk of causing resistance in weeds. only 1.74% of the farmers controlled their weeds manually in paddy fields, where it is is a labour-intensive effort. therefore, the most cost-effective and practical option for controlling weeds is the application of herbicides (juraimi et al., 2013). some of the weeds featured in this study are being controlled solely using herbicides without any input of manual labor. using herbicides also has its downside, as certain examples are toxic and have carcinogenic properties, including 2,4 d-amine, pendimethalin, and pretilachlor (ahmad, zafeer, javed, & ahmad, 2018; loomis et al., 2015; soni & verma, 2018). imidazolinone, which is the main element in irps, is not known to be carcinogenic. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 120-128 125 table-3. weed control. weed herbicide percentage eleochoris dulcis 2,4 d-amine 100.00 scirpus grossus pendimethalin 50.00 bendioxide 50.00 echinochloa crus-galli cyhalofop-butyl 50.00 pendimethalin 50.00 sagittaria guyanensis bispyribac sodium 20.00 lufenuron 20.00 2,4 d-amine 60.00 cyperus iria 2,4 d-amine 50.00 benoxide 33.33 pendimethalin 16.67 limnophila erecta pretilachlor 20.00 pendimethalin 20.00 2,4 d-amine 60.00 ischaemum rugosum lufenuron 8.33 bendioxide 8.33 bispyribac sodium 25.00 pendimethalin 25.00 pretilachlor 33.34 eleusine indica thiobencarb + propanil 2.86 penoxulam 5.71 2,4 d-amine 8.57 bispyribac sodium 8.57 pretilachlor 17.14 pendimethalin 22.86 cyhalofop-butyl 31.43 manual 2.86 oryza sp imazapyr + imazapic 66.09 pendimethalin 14.78 pretilachlor 13.91 penoxulam 0.87 2,4-d amine 0.87 thiobencarb + propanil 0.87 cyhalofop-butyl 0.87 manual 1.74 3.7. farmers’ application of irps in the irps system, a set of guidelines should be used by farmers to ensure that weeds cannot develop resistance due to hybridization and mutations. farmers’ usage of irps is shown in table 4. the maximum frequency of planting for imidazolinone-resistant rice should be limited to only two consecutive seasons. the result from this study found that 30.43% of farmers followed the guidelines while 69.57% planted more than two seasons continuously or every other season, which does not comply with the recommendations. the recommended period of imidazolinone herbicide application on imidazolinone-resistant rice should be 0–7 days after planting; however, only 38.26% of farmers sprayed herbicide during this period: 48.70% sprayed after 7 days of planting while 13.04% sprayed before planting. regarding soil conditions during the application of imidazolinone, the soil must be saturated with water. a total of 68.70% of farmers applied herbicide following the suggested soil conditions, while 29.56% sprayed when the soil was in a dry condition. only 1.74% of farmers sprayed when the soil was flooded with water. regarding the frequency of imidazolinone application, 80.87% of farmers sprayed only once per season, 10.43% sprayed twice per season, and the remainder sprayed three times or more in one season. the major reason mentioned by farmers for spraying imidazolinone more than once per season was the lack of effect of herbicide on imidazolinone-resistant rice. as mentioned above, imidazolinone remained the main herbicide used to control weedy rice by farmers in the study, at 66.09%. 3.8. irps practice by farmers chi-square analysis was carried out to determine the relationship between farmers’ level of education and their practice in following this system. the hypotheses for the analysis are as follows: ho: there is no significant relationship between farmers’ level of education and their practice of irps. ha: there is a significant relationship between farmers’ level of education and their practice of irps. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 120-128 126 table-4. farmers’ application of irps. criterion frequency (n = 115) percentage frequency of imidazolinone-resistant rice planting two seasons consecutively 35 30.43 every other season 31 26.96 continuous 49 42.61 time of imidazolinone spraying before planting 15 13.04 0–7 days after planting 44 38.26 7 days after planting 56 48.70 soil conditions when spraying imidazolinone dry 34 29.56 water-saturated 79 68.70 flooded 2 1.74 frequency of spraying imidazolinone herbicide once 93 80.87 twice 12 10.43 three times or more 10 8.70 herbicide used to control weedy rice imizaphyr + imizapic 76 66.09 pendimethalin 17 14.78 pretilachlor + pyribenzoxim 11 9.56 pretilachlor 5 4.35 manual 2 1.74 penoxulam 1 0.87 2,4-d-amine 1 0.87 thiobencarb + propanil 1 0.87 cyhalofop-butyl 1 0.87 from table 5, there is no significant relationship shown between farmers’ level of education with their practice in following irps at the 5% level of significance. the table shows that education level had no effect on farmers’ irps practices. the same result was obtained by meiguran and basweti, who found that the level of education obtained by farmers did not influence their agricultural practices. some studies have stated that extension officers and friends are usually among the main sources of information for farmers (bachhav, 2012; mattah, mattah, & futagbi, 2015). this can explain why more than half of the farmers knew of the irps system from government agencies, organizations, and even friends. table-5. relationship between farmers’ level of education and their usage of irps. variable chi-square d.f. significance decision frequency of planting 3.922 6 0.687 fail to reject ho time of spraying 10.176 6 0.117 fail to reject ho soil condition 1.761 6 0.940 fail to reject ho frequency of spraying 3.814 6 0.702 fail to reject ho 3.9. farmers’ knowledge of imidazolinone herbicide based on the kmo test the sampling adequacy was 66.9%, which was considered acceptable for conducting the factor analysis. bartlett’s test of sphericity showed that the overall matrix was not an identified matrix. it showed that it was significant at the 0.000 probability level with approx. chi-square = 616.477 and degree of freedom (d.f.) of 136. four factors were extracted using principal component analysis (pca), which collectively explained 63.21% of the total variance (table 6). the four factors were ‘effectiveness’, ‘recommendations and labeling’, ‘price’, and ‘information. for factor loading, the strength of correlation is greater when the score nears 1.0; values close to 1 are the most significant (fernandes, amaral, & varajão, 2018). factor 1 (i.e., effectiveness) consisted of six items with eigenvalues of 2.723, which indicated that imidazolinone was losing its effectiveness and that farmers would use other types of herbicide if these could kill the weeds. this can explain why a small percentage of farmers sprayed imidazolinone more than once. factor 2 (i.e., recommendations and labeling) had an eigenvalue of 2.355, with three items. this factor explains why farmers spray the herbicide as recommended and are more likely to trust products that have labels that give them a sense of security. for factor 3 (i.e., price) the eigenvalue was 1.965, with three items. this factor explains that farmers have a tendency to use cheap herbicides providing these are effective and easy to use. lastly, factor 4 (i.e., information) had an eigenvalue of 1.806, with two items. this factor explains that the farmers trust government agencies that provide them with information regarding imidazolinone. however, at the same time, they also rely on information relayed from their friends on the effectiveness of other herbicides. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 120-128 127 as shown in table 6, all eigenvalues are >1.0 and indicate that the factors can explain more than one item. to demonstrate the internal consistencies of a multiple-item scale, cronbach’s alpha was computed by the reliability test. the alpha value for ‘effectiveness’ and ‘recommendations and labeling’ was >0.7, which indicated that the items formed a scale with reasonable internal consistency. for ‘price’ and ‘information’, the alpha value was >0.6, which indicated that the scale formed had minimally adequate reliability. table-6. summary of factor loadings on farmers’ knowledge of imidazolinone. items factor loading factor 1 (effectiveness) imidazolinone is no longer effective 0.720 imidazolinone is more expensive. 0.693 resistance to imidazolinone made me change to another herbicide 0.611 price may be the reason i use herbicides other than imidazolinone 0.597 i care about herbicides that do not damage the environment 0.584 i will consider other herbicides besides imidazolinone herbicide if they work 0.542 factor 2 (recommendations and labeling) i use the recommended rate and spraying method 0.886 i sprayed the herbicide according to what that was recommended 0.815 i choose herbicides that have a complete label as these are safe to use 0.697 factor 3 (price) i buy only cheap herbicides 0.841 i value price over effectiveness 0.733 i prefer to use a cheap herbicide providing it is easy to use 0.706 factor 4 (information) i am confident with information from government agencies relating to the effectiveness of this herbicide 0.851 i refer to other farmers about the effectiveness of other herbicides 0.774 eigenvalues 2.723 2.355 1.965 1.806 % of variance explained 19.450 16.821 14.035 12.899 cumulative % variance explained 19.450 36.271 50.307 63.206 cronbach’s alpha 0.743 0.784 0.674 0.660 4. conclusions the study concluded that some farmers did not follow the guidelines, with around 73% of them having some knowledge of irps prior to the interview. they also had good knowledge of common weeds in the rice fields, with the majority using chemicals to eradicate them. however, certain herbicides that were used are potentially carcinogenic, which can have negative effects for farmers. a small proportion of them also had no knowledge of irps. regarding the five criteria investigated in terms of the usage of irps, two (i.e., planting frequency and time of spraying) were not followed by the majority of farmers. regarding those criteria that the majority of farmers followed (i.e., soil conditions, spraying frequency, and types of herbicide), nearly one third of the remaining farmers do not follow them. it is very important that farmers know how to use this system correctly, to avoid damaging the environment. although there is evidence of gene flow due to usage of irps, not following the guidelines can also contribute to increased ineffectiveness of imidazolinone. the doa should increase its monitoring efforts and educate farmers. regulations are essential to curb incorrect usage of the system. this study further concluded that the farmers perceived imidazolinone as expensive and no longer effective. they were also willing to change to other, cheaper alternatives. however, imidazolinone was still the main herbicide used to control weedy rice when this study was undertaken. an alternative to this system must be researched, because farmers have started to use herbicides that are carcinogenic, as opposed to imidazolinone which is less harmful. funding: the authors would like to express appreciation for sponsorship by the malaysian government through the higher institution centre of excellence (hicoe) research grant award (grant no. 6369105). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views 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(2016). weed management challenges in rice (oryza sativa l.) for food security in bhutan: a review. crop protection, 90(2016), 117-124. http://www.weedscience.org/ http://www.weedscience.org/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 262 factors affecting farm performance among small-scale farmers in the volcanic highlands of rwanda: what is the role of institutions? aristide manirihoa edouard musabanganjib philippe lebaillyc aunity of economics and rural development, gembloux agro-bio tech, university of liège, passage des déportés, gembloux, belgium; school of economics, college of business and economics, university of rwanda, butare, rwanda. bschool of economics, college of business and economics, university of rwanda, butare, rwanda. cunity of economics and rural development, gembloux agro-bio tech, university of liège, passage des déportés, gembloux, belgium.  aristide.maniriho@uliege.be (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 29 july 2021 revised: 27 august 2021 accepted: 20 september 2021 published: 22 october 2021 keywords institutions net farm income crop output small-scale farmers volcanic highlands rwanda. jel classification d13; o43; p32; q12. this study attempted to examine the role of institutions in boosting rural and agricultural development in the region of the volcanic highlands of rwanda. both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from a random sample of 401 small-scale farmers through a questionnaire. data were analyzed using a weighted least-squares method to account for heteroscedasticity, a common issue in crosssectional studies. results from crop output function reveal a positive and significant effect of cooperative membership, a negative but significant effect of extension services, and a negative non-significant effect of land tenure, credit access, and market access on farm production, respectively. in terms of net farm income function, the results demonstrate that farmer cooperation, land tenure, extension services, and access to output markets have a positive, non-significant influence, but that access to finance has a negative non-significant effect. results also point to a positive and significant effect of some household characteristics, namely family size, farming experience, land size, and farm yield, on farm production. as for net farm income, education of the head, family size, farm experience, land size, farm yield, selling price, and cattle proved to be among primary determinants. it was therefore suggested that agricultural sector programs and activities should be readapted and strengthened in order to leverage rural and agricultural development in rwanda. contribution/originality: this study is one of very few studies to have investigated the role of institutions on farm performance in the volcanic highlands of rwanda. credit access a had negative but significant effect on both crop output and net farm income. in addition, extension services had a negative but significant effect on farm production. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.262.268 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: aristide maniriho --edouard musabanganji --philippe lebailly (2021). factors affecting farm performance among small-scale farmers in the volcanic highlands of rwanda: what is the role of institutions? asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4), 262-268. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.262.268 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 4 (2021): 262-268 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7367-1479 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9444-4910 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9281-7661 mailto:aristide.maniriho@uliege.be http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 262-268 263 1. introduction the status of global poverty has improved substantially, but there is a high number of people who still suffer from extreme poverty. many of the world’s poor are smallholder farmers (ogutu & qaim, 2019). agricultural sectors play an important role in the process of economic development, especially in developing countries (linh, long, & lebailly, 2019). in order to find practical and sustainable solutions to development issues in africa, kirsten, dorward, poulton, and vink (2009) suggested the setting up of working economic and political institutions. they stated that institutions should “facilitate coordinated exchange and resource management, facilitate low-cost exchange and resource management and encourage trust, and provide incentives for exchange and resource management that create profitable opportunities for investment and exchange”. the importance of institutions in rural and agricultural development can be looked at across three pillars, namely expanding access to assets (land and capital), development of markets, and investment in public goods. it was also specified that good institutions (la porta, lopez-de-silanes, shleifer, & vishny, 1999) are expected to make safer, easier, and less expensive the transactions, investments, and payments. however, kirsten et al. (2009) highlighted that working institutional successes in the agricultural sector are far too rare, and their scope has been far too limited to significantly boost overall agricultural output and the welfare of farmers and consumers throughout the continent. by highlighting the importance of good institutions in rural and agricultural development, an assessment by dorward, kydd, and poulton (2005) revealed that low-income economies are characterized by high transaction costs and risks, poor information flows, and a weakened institutional environment. actors suffer enormous costs in getting information and enforcing property rights, particularly those with limited financial and social resources or political influence. market development and access to current markets are both hampered by these expenses. it is in this vein that kirsten et al. (2009) listed the reasons behind the failure of certain institutions (covariance of risk and high costs of monitoring behavior to protect against asymmetric information, impediment to the development of a sustainable model of rural financial services, and demotivation of private economic actors), which in turn constrains economic and technological development. low economic activity causes weak markets, insufficient coordination, high transaction costs and risks, and high unit costs for infrastructure construction. consequently, a low-level equilibrium trap can easily arise as a result. constraints, a lack of investment incentives, and a stagnating rural economy all reinforce each other in this situation. this research work is pertinent, specifically at this time in which most developing countries including rwanda are developing their agricultural sector. the setting up of good working institutions must take precedence in all development strategies for rural and agricultural development in rwanda. in section 2, different research works explain how institutions (extension schemes, rural organizations, farm output markets, financial markets, and land tenure) impact on the rural and agricultural sectors. almost all reaffirm the positive effect on farm households’ welfare (crop productivity, farm efficiency, poverty reduction, and farm income). access to credit (either formal or informal) permits small-scale farmers to adopt new farming technologies (wossen, berger, & di falco, 2015) and to afford quality farm supplies (ogundeji, donkor, motsoari, & onakuse, 2018), as well as employment opportunities for farmers, helping them expand crop output and improve welfare conditions (luan & bauer, 2016). crop output markets are reversely influenced by limited surpluses (caused by lack of credit), and consequent disincentives for private trade (kirsten et al., 2009). cooperatives are often associated with collective action and social capital and are therefore often thought to be more poverty reducing than other types of institutional innovations such as contract farming (verhofstadt & maertens, 2015). agricultural extension is important for spreading farming information to different categories of farmer, and has been highlighted as a critical tool to convert subsistence farming into developed and market-oriented agriculture to sustain household food security, improve income, and alleviate poverty (wanyama, mathenge, & mbaka, 2015). tenure is another majour control variable that is thought to improve households’ access to credit (deininger & feder, 2009), as studies have found that weak or undefined land rights are negative drivers for investment and productivity (pritchard, 2013). land tenure structures affect farmers’ ability to borrow, expand, or exit with a lump sum, through land-market transactions, as well as incentives for land improvement (kirsten et al., 2009). this therefore justifies the need to conduct a study on the determinants of farm output and net farm income in rwanda, with special focus on the role of institutions working in the agricultural sector. the government of rwanda has put in place the mechanisms to develop cooperatives, improve farmers’ access to markets, microfinance institutions to enhance access to credit in rural areas, and land tenure security. the purpose of this study is to examine the role of institutions in rural and agricultural development. it specifically aims to assess the effects of institutions on crop output and the farmers’ net income in the volcanic highlands of rwanda. the weighted least-squares estimator was adopted for this study, to account for heteroscedasticty that is common in cross-sectional data. the remainder of this paper comprises four sections. section 2 presents the materials and methods, section 3 summarizes the results and discusses the main findings while section 4 concludes the paper. 2. materials and methods 2.1. research area, data and study variables a farmer survey was conducted from october to december 2019 to gather data for this study. data were collected via a questionnaire that covered the socioeconomic characteristics of the farmers and their households, as well as the preferred farming practices employed on the farms. this study used a random sample of 401 small-scale farmers from rwanda's volcanic highlands (also known as the "birunga" region). this region spans four districts, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 262-268 264 with 101 farmers surveyed in burera, 101 in musanze, 100 in nyabihu, and 99 in rubavu. along with imbo, impala, kivu lake borders, congo nile crest, eastern plateau, central plateau, buberuka highlands, mayaga, bugesera, and eastern savannah, the birunga region is one of the 12 agro-ecological zones in rwanda (maniriho, musabanganji, & lebailly, 2020). the region of the volcanic highlands is well known for its primarily agricultural soil (altitudes of 1600–2500 m, highly permeable black volcanic soils with excellent agricultural value), with potato, vegetables (red onion, white onion, etc.), corn, beans, wheat, and other crops being the main crops. this region is characterized by regular rains; fairly shallow soil, resulting in simple farming equipment and generalization of cropping; lower risk of erosion thanks to bedding cultivation, soil permeability and often minimal uneven terrain; and black soils rich in humus (andosols or andepts) with good fertility, suitable for temperate climate crops, but whose acidity ranges from low to high throughout the region (maniriho et al., 2020). 2.2. model specification and estimation a linear regression model was specified to assess the role of institutions on farm net income. it was hypothesized that crop output (measured in kg) and net farm income (expressed in rwandan francs) are significant institutional factors (market access, land tenure, cooperative membership, output market access, and credit access), but we have also controlled the socioeconomic characteristics of households. following wooldridge (2016), these relationships are expressed by equation 1 using the variables described in table 1. ikikiii xify  +++= 1 (1) where iy is the dependent variable (net farm income, crop output), if is a vector of institutional factors, ix is a vector of household and farm controls, k is their number ( k =1, 2, …, 15), i is the order of the household,  and s are the coefficients, and  is the disturbance term. we attempted to estimate equation 1 using ordinary least squares (ols), but the results from breusch–pagan (bp) test reported in table 2 show the presence of heteroscedasticity, which makes ols estimation less efficient. consequently, the weighted least squares (wls) approach was used to account for heteroscedasticity. it is the generalized least squares (gls) estimators for correction of heteroskedasticity that are called wls estimators. the wls approach was motivated by the inconsistency of the usual measure of precision (estimated variance–covariance matrix). 3. results and discussion table-1. wls estimations: effects of institutions on crop output and net farm income. variable crop output net farm income coeff. std. err. p-value coeff. std. err. p-value cooperation 295.25 98.39 0.003*** -25700.00 45368.92 0.571 tenure 108.24 136.88 0.430 -185000.00 20083.94 0.000*** credit access -914.04 81.36 0.000*** -42900.00 17766.16 0.016** extension -118.63 70.82 0.095* 69572.04 20738.41 0.001*** market access 145.07 134.91 0.283 689000.00 98494.33 0.000*** age -69.47 6.33 0.000*** -14000.00 2076.01 0.000*** sex (1 = female) 62.17 67.96 0.361 -73900.00 21193.51 0.001*** experience 67.50 5.65 0.000*** 13661.98 2042.35 0.000*** education 28.04 22.84 0.220 37654.67 4776.64 0.000*** family size 146.11 19.61 0.000*** 20455.93 6307.96 0.001*** land size 0.99 0.04 0.000*** 40.19 13.91 0.004*** combination 136.15 26.24 0.000*** -39800.00 14733.19 0.007*** residue -115.97 22.23 0.000*** 10430.02 7373.73 0.158 hyv -381.83 50.97 0.000*** -167000.00 18203.58 0.000*** rotation 54.23 35.31 0.125 -14200.00 9030.18 0.117 manure -177.71 35.61 0.000*** -77200.00 12789.81 0.000*** farm yield 0.26 0.01 0.000*** 76.31 3.25 0.000*** price -0.52 0.07 0.000*** 1353.72 106.22 0.000*** cattle -152.51 30.85 0.000*** 29328.74 10880.43 0.007*** constant 1466.81 409.68 0.000*** 776000.00 128000.00 0.000*** number of observations 380 380 r2 0.99 0.96 f-test 1956.88 400.59 p > f 0.000 0.000 note: *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1. hyv, high-yielding varieties. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 262-268 265 3.1. econometric estimation results from wls estimations, using crop output and net farm income as dependent variables, are reported in table 1 for two models. results from crop output function indicate a positive significant effect of cooperation, a negative but significant effect of both credit access and extension services, and a positive non-significant effect of land tenure and output market access. with net farm income as the dependent variable, results from the subsequent function point to positive and significant effect of both extension services and market access, a negative but significant effect of both land tenure and credit access, and a negative non-significant effect of cooperation. the effect of each individual household or farm control variables can be observed in the table. it is very important to test for the robustness of the wls estimations reported in table 1, and ols coefficients estimated for comparison are reported in table 2. results from the crop output function reveal a positive and significant effect of cooperative membership, a positive non-significant effect of extension services, and a negative non-significant effect of land tenure, credit access, and market access. as for net farm income function, results show a positive non-significant effect of farmers’ cooperation, land tenure, extension services, and access to output market but a negative non-significant effect of access to credit. it is worth noting the presence of heteroscedasticity in the data used for this study: bp chi-square statistic statistically different from zero (table 2). table-2. ols estimations: effects of institutions on crop output and net farm income. variable crop output net farm income coeff. std. err. p-value coeff. std. err. p-value cooperation 612.17 209.74 0.004*** 169000.00 121000.00 0.162 tenure -138.74 196.39 0.480 16530.56 113000.00 0.884 credit access -36.85 113.11 0.745 -68200.00 65087.52 0.296 extension 45.05 123.70 0.716 1129.43 71183.53 0.987 market access -177.05 181.61 0.330 32690.64 105000.00 0.755 age -10.93 11.68 0.350 -5354.45 6723.58 0.426 sex (1 = female) 41.72 107.60 0.698 -48600.0040 61918.03 0.433 experience 7.83 11.31 0.489 7473.55 6509.13 0.252 education -5.87 36.09 0.871 10917.62 20765.02 0.599 family size 67.19 41.68 0.108 46134.23 23982.82 0.055* land size 0.85 0.05 0.000*** 148.91 30.78 0.000*** combination -24.49 60.39 0.685 -81700.00 34749.56 0.019** residue -76.23 43.66 0.082* -54500.00 25125.03 0.031** hyv -232.76 102.84 0.024** 48137.71 59174.49 0.416 rotation -2.80 52.44 0.957 44138.05 30177.49 0.144 manure -96.47 98.91 0.330 4160.45 56917.41 0.942 farm yield 0.33 0.01 0.000*** 110.86 7.14 0.000*** price 0.27 0.29 0.361 1991.12 166.75 0.000*** cattle 103.03 45.39 0.024** -2244.93 26118.33 0.932 constant -1629.68 798.36 0.042** -1650000.00 459000.00 0.000*** number of obs 380 380 r2 0.91 0.74 f-test 176.92 51.38 p > f 0.000 0.000 bp chi2 106.34 476.29 p > chi2 0.000 0.000 note: *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1. the significant difference of bp chi2 from zero in table 2 indicates that the ols approach is not reliable in the case of heteroscedastictiy: the wls method has proved to be superior to ols. the results show that wls estimates are more efficient than those of ols with robust standard errors: r2 from wls estimates (0.99 for crop output function and 0.96 for net income function) is greater than that from ols estimate errors (0.91 for crop output function and 0.74 for net farm income function), and the f-statistic behaves in the same way. in addition, there are more variables that significantly affect both crop output and net farm income when wls is used rather than ols. 3.2. discussion of findings the results from econometric estimations pointed to a positive and significant effect of cooperative membership on farm output. this finding is aligned with the results of other researchers who recognized cooperation as a factor with significant influence on farm productivity (herrera et al., 2018), on farm income (tolno, kobayashi, ichizen, esham, & balde, 2015), or reported as an important institution to leverage farmers’ incomes and welfare (maniriho, 2021). for a negative effect of loan access on farm output, this contrasts with the existing literature which states that access to credit and financial services is very important for the improved wellbeing of rural households (ogundeji et al., 2018) and thus highlights that credit is required to purchase productive inputs such as high-yield planting materials, adoption of improved farming techniques, farm implements, and the renting of arable land (ogundeji et al., 2018). such a contrasting situation could be due to suboptimal use of credit, and implies that credit has not yet asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 262-268 266 reached the optimal level or that its services do not meet the real needs of small-scale farmers in the study area (maniriho et al., 2020). similar to credit effect, results point to a negative but significant effect of extension services on crop production, a finding that rejects (albore, 2018) the view that the agricultural extension service is among the institutional support services that has a vital role to play in the process of agricultural revolution. it also contrasts with dansoabbeam, ehiakpor, & aidoo (2018), who reaffirmed the critical role of extension programs in enhancing farm productivity and household income, and endorses the idea that the sustainable delivery of extension services should be conducted through suitable recruitment and regular training of extension agents, as well as adequate provision of necessary facilities. the negative effect of extension services on crop output could imply that these services are not well adapted to meeting the real needs of small-scale farmers in the study area (maniriho et al., 2020). in regards to land tenure, nilsson, backman, bjerke, and maniriho (2019) showed that this has a positively significant effect on both household consumption and crop production. bizimana, nieuwoudt, and ferrer (2004) found that land tenure certainty contributed largely to the expansion of operating farm size. it was also highlighted that land tenure security improves yields and technical efficiency among maize producers in eastern rwanda (ngango & hong, 2021). stronger land rights enhance land-attached investment according to bambio and agha (2018), and land investment has a beneficial influence on stronger land rights. results show that some household factors affect farm performance significantly. the significant and negative effect of the farmer’s age implies that older famers do not readily adopt new varieties of crops and new farming techniques. it could be also alleged that, at a certain age, a farmer is no longer physically fit to perform his job despite his experience. this is in agreement with maniriho and nilsson (2018), who found that age is negatively associated with income diversification. however, it contrasts with the findings of olujenyo (2008), who reported a positive effect of farmer’s age and farm production. the inverse effect of farmer’s gender on farm income entails simply the significant difference of net farm income between male and female farmers. this finding does not support agyeman, asuming-brempong, & onumah (2014), who found a positive effect of female household head on household income diversification. the farmer’s experience was mentioned one of the factors with a positive and significant effect on crop output and income. this finding confirms the results from itam, ajah, and agbachom (2014), who revealed that farming experience improves the level of farm output. regarding level of education, the results underline its positive and significant effect on crop output and farm income. this is supported by different scholars, such as maniriho and nilsson (2018), who found that education, especially vocational and technical, has a positive effect on income diversification; olujenyo (2008), who reported a positive and significant effect of education on farm (maize) production; and kalita and sarma (2020), who indicated a positive and significant effect of education on household farm income. in regard to family size, its positive and significant effect on crop output and farm income is explained by the fact that the larger the household, the more people of working age, and the higher the output and income. however, a study by itam et al. (2014) established no significant effect of farm size on farm income. concerning farm characteristics and farming techniques, results indicated a positive effect for some on farm performance. the combination of crop and livestock agriculture was found to affect positively and significantly farm performance. in support of this finding, livestock rearing provides the manure necessary to restore soil fertility (kato, ringler, yesuf, & bryan, 2011), and farming income (nilsson et al., 2019), that can be used as a source of farm investment, while crops provide feed for domestic animals. the return of crop residues to the soil resulted in a negative effect on crop output, which could be due to poor utilization and a low level of adoption in the study area. this finding opposes the view of hiel et al. (2018), who stated that return of crop residues to the soil is very important for nitrogen fixation and thus for soil fertility restoration. the positive and significant effect of the adoption of high-yielding crop varieties on farm income is aligned with loevinsohn, sumber, and diagne (2012), who confirmed that high-yielding crop varieties contribute substantially to increase in farm income. the significant impact of manure application on crop output could be attributed to increased access to organic manure and soil nutrition, which enhances soil quality and allows small-scale farmers to raise per-hectare yields (kato et al., 2011). the positive and significant effect of farm yield on farm income reflects the adoption of new farm management methods, especially those aimed at raising output and reducing the average cost of production, resulting ultimately in increased farm income (challa, 2013). in regard to selling price, whose effect on farm income is also positive and significant, being another indicator of market access, this finding highlights the results of ahmed et al. (2016) that output market access has a positive and significant effect on farm income. 4. conclusion institutions are very important in agricultural development as they enable optimal functioning of the sector, especially for networking the sectorial actors and reduction in transaction costs. this paper aimed to assess the contribution of rural institutions to farm performance (crop production and farm income) in rwanda, with particular focus on the agro-ecological zone of the volcanic highlands. qualitative and quantitative data collected from a random sample of 401 small-scale farmers were analyzed using a weighted least-squares method to account for heterogeneity, the issue commonly observed in cross-sectional data. results pointed to a positive and significant effect of both cooperative membership and land tenure on farm output and net farm income, as well as a negative and significant effect of credit access and extension services. results also indicated a positive and significant effect of market access on net farm income. therefore, the initiatives and activities of institutions in the agricultural sector should be readapted and enhanced to leverage rural and agricultural development. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 262-268 267 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: the authors thank ares-ccd for sponsoring this study, as well as the farmers who participated in the survey for supplying the necessary information. they also acknowledge the efforts of anonymous reviewers in improving the quality of the work. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references agyeman, b., asuming-brempong, s., & onumah, e. 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(2015). can agricultural cooperatives reduce poverty? heterogeneous impact of cooperative membership on farmers' welfare in rwanda. applied economic perspectives and policy, 37(1), 86-106. available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/aepp/ppu021. wanyama, r., mathenge, m., & mbaka, z. (2015). agricultural information sources and their effect on farm productivity in kenya (policy brief no. 21). nairobi: tegemeo institute of agricultural policy and development, egerton umiversity, kenya. wooldridge, j. m. (2016). introduction to econometrics: a modern approach. mason, us: south-western cengage learning. wossen, t., berger, t., & di falco, s. (2015). social capital, risk preference and adoption of improved farm land management practices in ethiopia. agricultural economics, 46(1), 81-97. available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12142. 194 analysis of policy interventions in agriculture and ict based mechanistic approach towards sustainability: an indian perspective acharya balkrishna a, rashmi mittal a, ashwani kumar a, deepti singh a, vedpriya arya a a patanjali herbal research department, patanjali research institute, haridwar, india  vedpriya.arya@prft.co.in (corresponding author) article history: received: 16-jan-2020 accepted: 01-apr-2020 online available: 29-apr2020 keywords: farmers, indian government, subsidies, welfare schemes abstract the present work stressed the negative prospects of the green revolution in india because of which despite having surplus productivity, there is a shortage of approximately 39% of food in comparison to demand. the present study investigated both qualitative and quantitative data regarding the input and output of agriculture to determine the currently existing gaps. data from government organizations, surveys, audit reports were collected and evaluated. the analysis revealed that past policy interventions have collapsed in uplifting the farmer’s income which has caught farmers into financial crisis. under these circumstances, the farmer’s growth is a matter of concern for policymakers. to overcome the present gap, the current government has taken several new initiatives regarding organic agriculture and exemption of farmers from mandis to benefit the farmer which is expected to be proved as a milestone in uplifting the growth of indian agriculture system. present study aimed to propose a digitalized mechanistic approach to bring synchronization among government, producer and consumer. objective of the present study is to develop a mirrored view between government initiatives and farmers for sustainable development of agriculture and people associated with them. contribution/ originality the present study acts as a reflective analysis of policies and schemes initiated for benefitting the farmers and thereby proposes a digitalized mechanistic approach to overcome the limitations associated with it. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.194.213 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: acharya balkrishna, rashmi mittal, ashwani kumar, deepti singh and vedpriya arya (2020). analysis of policy interventions in agriculture and ict based mechanistic approach towards sustainability: an indian perspective. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 194-213. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 194-213 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.194.213 mailto:vedpriya.arya@prft.co.in http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 195 1. introduction india has a hefty disparate agricultural sector, which contributes to about 16% of india’s gdp and 10% of export earnings. in the global market, india ranks amongst topmost countries in crop production. in the case of cereals, india ranks third in the world market and contributes 11.1% to the country’s economy. indian scenario has experienced an abrupt increase in food grain production from 51 to 285 million tonnes during the tenure of 1950-51 to 2017-18 (moray, 2019). an astounding endeavor of farmers plays a vital role in the success of the agriculture sector and their income is directly related to crop. an analysis of the productivity factor provides an insight into the nature and drivers of agriculture growth. production efficiency of the indian agriculture sector has enormously enhanced from 1980 till today with an exception of the period from 1997 to 2003 wherein the productivity declined due to weather shocks. india dominates over other countries in terms of agricultural exports. agriculture trade has grown from usd 3.6 to 22 billion from 2000 to 2013. there exists a variation between the export of wheat and coarse grains, and have often reached high levels, currently, the export of protein meal is flourishing rapidly. india has recently become one of the top bovine meat exporters. an escalation in agricultural productivity and industrial growth greatly contributed towards the country’s economy which ultimately leads to the decline in the poverty rate. the poverty rate has almost reduced to half, falling from around 55 to around 28% over the past 10-year. despite the impressive growth and development, still, a large population of india is under the poverty line. india has a high population pressure on land and other resources to fulfill its food and other developmental needs (government of india and sally, 2018). currently, a major crisis to be seen in farming is farmer’s income. the average income of a farmer is observed to be about 65 usd/month/family. there also have been reports about people moving out of agriculture in the past 20 years and no other sector has given them breakthrough employment as a result of which farmers are wandering from one place to another in search of work opportunities. conclusively it can be said that the collapse of public institutions and the failure of agriculture policies that are running from several decades in accomplishing the needs of farmers have caught indian farmers in crisis. the present work is an attempt to highlight the production, availability, and shortage of food in the country and the overview of a scheme initiated for the welfare of farmers and the major loopholes associated with it which are held responsible for its failure (deshpande, 2017; chait, 2019). the secondary data was obtained with the help and positive prospects of governmental organizations, surveys, and respective ministries, without their support it would have been impossible to frame the present study. 2. production, availability and food crisis in india agriculture productivity has sharply increased in the past few decades. the yield of rabi crops has been contributing significantly to the total foodgrain production over the 1970–71 to 2016-17 and a similar trend has been observed in yield of kharif food grain (figure 1). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 196 figure 1: year-wise production of rabi and kharif crops in india as india’s agriculture productivity was compared with other countries it was observed that it has grown at a slower pace as compared to others. for instance, the yield for rice has increased from 1.3 to 4.9 tonnes/ha in brazil whereas in india it increased from 2.0 to 3.6 and in china’s productivity grew from 4.3 to 6.7 (figure 2) (government of india, 2019; indian council for research on international economic relations, 2018). figure 2: yield of food grains in different countries in 2014-15 (tonnes/ha) apart from all this, india’s production is surplus to meet the need of the present population. in 2018, india’s population was estimated to be 1.35 billion. on average in india, 1 person consumes 101.7g food grains per day thereby constituting an average of 37kg per year. so the total population of india (2018) requires 49.52 tonnes to meet their food requirement. total production of food grains (wheat and rice) in 2018 remained to be 614386000 tonnes per year which are abundant to meet the country’s requirement. wastage, hoarding, and export also affect availability. majorly food wastage which constitutes approximately 40% of total production whereas hoarding and export which constitutes an average of 0.5 and 0.02% respectively act as the major factors held responsible for food shortage (planning commission government of india, 2015; prs legislative research, 2019). approximately the indian population suffers from 193 lakh tonnes of food shortage every year and the ratio is increasing rapidly at a faster pace. to encounter the issue of the food crisis, the government has initiated several schemes for the farmer’s welfare and a brief description of it has been highlighted in the upcoming sections of the article. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 197 3. government schemes and policies for the welfare of farmers farmers are enormously smashed due to norms and regulations imposed by the domestic market and export trade restrictions, which collectively lead to forceful imposition of producer prices that are below the market value of their products. agriculture ministry of india has initiated several programs such as subsidies over different commodities, more than 20 schemes at the national level and various others at the state level have been initiated with the motto of farmer’s welfare. despite such tremendous efforts and the expenditure of such a high ratio of the indian economy, the farmer’s condition has not improved so far. unfortunately, in the indian governance system, the process of policy formation is greatly influenced by political considerations, and realities are often ignored at the cost of the financial health of the economy and social equity among farmers. ground trusting of the policies and schemes and their loopholes have been briefly mentioned in the upcoming section of the article. 3.1. subsidies and its influence over commodities the subsidy is a government incentive paid to agricultural organizations, agribusinesses, and farms to supplement their income, to manage the supply of agricultural products. subsidies play a crucial role in the country’s economy and are vital for farmer’s welfare. producer and consumer subsidies both are important at their respective places for reinforcing the equities, income level and to support disadvantaged sections. in terms of income transfer also, subsidies play a crucial role to provide benefits to the depressed section of society. according to the government's budget of 2019-2020, subsidy bill on food, fertilizer, and fuel is estimated to go up by 13.32% to 39.35 billion usd. an immense increase has been made in fuel subsidy of the total subsidy bill which is depicted to be around 4.89 billion usd from the revised estimate of 3.24 billion usd for 2018-19. when the fuel subsidy bill was considered it was observed that the lpg subsidy is expected to be of 4.30 billion usd for 2019-2020 in comparison to 2.65 billion usd which was in 2018-19. whereas a slight decline in kerosene subsidy was observed in comparison to the previous year which was previously 593.51 million usd and now it reduced to 585.55 million usd. in the case of the food subsidy bill, an increase of 7.54% to 24.03 billion usd for the current year has been observed from the previous estimate of 22.34 billion usd. similarly, the fertilizer subsidy is projected to be enhanced by 14.14% to 10.43 billion usd in 2019-20 from the revised estimate of 9.14 billion usd in the last fiscal. out of this allocation, urea subsidy itself constitutes an average of 7 billion usd and nutrient-based subsidies of 3.43 billion usd, as per the budget document (figure 3) (government of india, 2019; karnik and lalvani, 1996). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 198 figure 3: subsidy provided on different commodities during 2018-2020 by government 3.1.1. an insight of agriculture subsidies provided by the indian government despite the allocation of a large number of subsidies to fertilizers, power, and irrigation, a current policy couldn’t improve farmer’s state rather it has reduced gross farm revenue by 6% and it was consistently observed during 2014-16. this type of support to producers is generally measured in terms of share transfer from consumers and taxpayers in gross farm revenues and is generally comprised of 6.9% of gross farm receipts and -13.1% of market price support. collectively, a negative producer support estimate (pse) has been observed which is greatly affecting farmer’s state. it was predicted that to avail the maximum benefit of it, consumer subsidies need to be provided directly to the intended beneficiaries either in the form of food stamps, to avoid stealing of agricultural commodities available in the public distribution system and to provide the consumers with the choice of food which they would like to purchase. the benefits of government schemes and policies are being mostly given to big farmers having landholding of 10 acres (4.05 hectares) and above. only 10 percent of poor and small farmers with an average landholding of 1-4 acres (0.4 to 1.6 ha) have been benefited from government schemes and subsidies. farmers blamed the state and central governments for their present condition as 74% of them alleged they do not get any farming-related information from officials of the agriculture department. 62% of farmers were not even informed about the minimum support price strategy of government and among those who have heard about msp, 64% were not satisfied with the price which the government offers (sharma, 2004). 3.2. government-sponsored schemes for the welfare of farmers the government of india has made farmer’s welfare as their utmost priority and is implementing several farmers’ welfare schemes to strengthen the agriculture sector and to improve their economic conditions. the government has embarked on several new initiatives and is motivating farmers to opt for the new projects and is self-financing a part of the total cost of the project (figure 4). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 199 figure 4: schemes initiated by government for farmer’s welfare the motto of initiating these projects is to enhance the capital investment, sustained income flow, and employment areas of national importance. the schemes initiated by the government have been listed below (table: 1). (government of india, 2014; amarender, 2017; government of india (pmksy), 2019; business standard, 2019; government of india (shc), 2019; government of india (nmsa), 2018; government of haryana pashudhan, 2019; national portal of india, 2019; bank bazaar, 2019; ramappa and manjunatha, 2017; ghosh, 2018; pm-kisan samman nidhi, 2019; meen arunachal, 2015; midh, 2018). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 199 table 1: details of government initiated schemes rashtriya krishi vikas yojana (rkvy), 2007 kick start objectives implementing agency budget allocation in usd (year) beneficiary present standpoints problems development of agriculture and allied sectors. to reduce the yield gaps in important crops. to maximize returns to the farmers in agriculture and allied sectors. ministry of agriculture & farmers welfare 469.5 million usd (2018-2019) 10679 farmers in twelve selected sectors (2014) 35000 farmers in the drought compensation plan budget allocated: 4.9 billion usd (2007-08 to 2011-12). expenditure: 3.0 billion usd for implementing 7234 projects unutilized: 1.94 billion usd (by the end of 11th fyp). 80 % of the total expenditure is concentrated in only 8, out of 20 sectors. underutilization of funds. limited number of sectors covered. more than 55 % of the projects were initiated after 2 years of implementation of the scheme. paramparagat krishi vikas yojana (pkvy), 2015 to conduct model organic cluster demonstrations at farmer’s field. to promote organic farming and to disseminate the latest technologies regarding organic farming. ministry of agriculture & farmers welfare 18.05 million usd (2017-2018) 48949 farmers 2,25,635 involved in organic farming (2016-17) average cost per hectare in paddy is reduced due to organic agriculture by 17.2%, while gross returns decreased by 9%. the yield of organic agriculture was less than conventional by 9.1%. insufficient funds/ delay in fund release. only encouraging input companies rather than farmers. pkvy guidelines are not flexible, enough state requirements. existing organic farmers were selected who were already part of other schemes. pradhan mantri krishi sinchai yojana (pmksy), 2015 to enhance the physical access of water (har khet ko pani). to enhance the adoption of ministry of agriculture & farmers welfare 456.54 million usd (2019-20) 19,17,952 farmers from 2016-17 to 201920 pmksy contradicts with the national water policy-2012. in maharashtra, most of the projects are still pending attributed to inordinate https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 200 precision – irrigation and other water-saving technologies (more crop per drop). to introduce sustainable water conservation practices. to ensure the integrated development of rainfed areas. capital intensive technology to elite farmers has created informal water markets and this has destroyed the indian irrigation system. delays and allegations of corruption. pradhan mantri fasal bima yojana (pmfby), 2016 to provide insurance coverage and financial support during crop loss resulting from natural calamities, pests and diseases. to stabilize the income of farmers to ensure their continuous process in farming. ministry of agriculture & farmers welfare 1.82 billion usd (2019-2020) 18, 54,43,390 farmers from 2016-17 to 201920. the benefit of all the crop insurance schemes was availed by farmers of gujarat, maharashtra, andhra pradesh and madhya pradesh. their share was nearly 80 % of the claims paid in the country. the scheme will continue to be on ‘area approach basis’ village/village panchayat for major crops and the area above that level for other crops. bihar, assam and northeastern states lagged in availing the benefits of crop insurance. individual farmers suffering losses are not going to benefit unless the entire area gets affected. soil health card scheme (shc) (2015) healthy earth, green farm. testing the quality and type of soil. ministry of agriculture & farmers welfare 42 million usd (2019-2020) total no. of samples collected in cycle i and ii: 5,21,81,553 total no. of samples tested: 5,19,25,197 total no. of shc the same fertilizers were recommended for every farm. a significant reduction (20-30%) was observed in the use of urea and dap in paddy and cotton. shc has been issued to certain farmers without soil testing. there is no one method of treating the soil that applies to all farmers. https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 201 distributed in cycle i and ii: 21,24,98,902 cost of cultivation was reduced from 1352 usd per acre. national mission for sustainable agriculture (nmsa), 2013 to make agriculture more productive, sustainable, remunerative and climateresilient. to adopt comprehensive soil health management practices. to optimize the utilization of water resources (‘more crop per drop’). ministry of agriculture & farmers welfare 161.35 million usd (2018-2019) 544 farmers (national bamboo mission). 2,43,233 in rainfed area development from 2016-17 to 201920. 4536 (sub-mission on agroforestry). the proposed strategies of the mission given importance only to water and largely ignored the usage of chemical fertilizers. the use of chemical fertilizer required more irrigation as compared to organic farming. the proposed strategies are targeting only the big farmers. further, the scheme could not combat the challenges faced by agriculture due to climate change. weather based crop insurance scheme (wbcis)/ restructured wbcis, 2015/2016 to provide insurance against crop loss resulting from adverse weather conditions. ministry of agriculture & farmers welfare 91.3 million usd (2013-2014) 15 lakh farmers have been insured in kharif the budget allocated have been completely utilized. all the claims are settled within the shortest possible time. non-coverage of perils other than weather. livestock insurance scheme, 2005 to provide insurance protection to cattle rearers against income losses due to the death of their animals. to attain qualitative improvement in livestock and their products. ministry of fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying 3.91 million usd (2011-2012) 7.44 lakh animals insured during 2016 17 a loss ratio of >150% was observed during the valuation and identification of cattle due to poor monitoring processes. lengthy claims settlement process. poor veterinary infrastructure. national scheme on welfare of fishermen, 2002 to provide basic amenities like drinking water and sanitation to improve the living standard of fishers' villages. ministry of agriculture 83.48 million usd 3.5 lakh fishers covered under savingcum-relief; 3 lakh fishermen under group incomplete registrations, poor internal control. government did not allocated funds were neither utilized within time. https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 202 to provide social security for active fishers and their dependents. accident insurance; 6400 fishermen per year under training and extension. consider the deteriorating situation of the pilot prawn hatchery to avoid further infructuous expenditure. neem coated urea (ncu), 2015 about 248 lakh metric ton of indigenously manufactured urea will be made available to farmers at the statutory mrp notified by the government. reduction in a diversion of urea towards a non-agricultural purpose. government of india 53,629 have been allocated to urea subsidy in 2019 around 23000dealers have been benefitted. difficult to differentiate between ncu & nu. no training on the cropwise application of ncu. the price of ncu is higher than plain urea. due to a lack of irrigational facilities, the desired benefits of ncu are not extracted. dairy entrepreneurship development scheme (deds), 2005-2006 to promote setting up of modern dairy farms for the production of clean milk. to encourage heifer calf rearing, thereby conserving good breeding stock and to upgrade the quality and traditional technology to handle milk on a commercial scale. national bank for agriculture and rural development (nabard) 42.39 million usd (2019-2020) 32,581 farmers have been benefitted from (1.04.201828.02.2019). further, 2 lakh people have been employed a significant increase of around 123 % in overall average milk production per beneficiary entrepreneur has been observed. sc/st subsidy is under‐ utilized in several states. in the western region, private banks are charging a lower interest rate than the nationalized banks. (ratnakar bank ‐11.25% for 3 years). bihar, mp, gujarat, maharashtra, jharkhand & kerala have reported less than 10 % of sc/st beneficiaries. pm-kisan samman nidhi yojana (pm-ksny), 2018 to support farmers whose income is insufficient for their sustenance ministry of agriculture & farmers welfare 9.7 billion usd (2019-20) 2,60,000 00 (201819); 8,50,00000 (2019-20). according to the agriculture department, 6.68 lakh payments failed while paying the first installment while 1.32 lakh failed during about 60% of eligible farmers are deprived of the pm kisan samman nidhi benefits as the states have not added them to the list of beneficiaries. https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 203 the second installment. west bengal has not yet registered a single farmer for the scheme national food security mission (nfsm), 2007 to increase the production of rice, wheat, pulses, coarse cereals (maize and barley) and nutri-cereals to restore soil fertility and productivity at the individual farm level to enhance farm level economy ministry of agriculture & farmers welfare 260.88 million usd (2019-20) 18,08,216 from 201617 to 2019-20 in 2007-08, nfsm was implemented in 482 districts of 19 states the production of rice, wheat and pulses has been increased from 93.36, 75.81, 14.2 (2006-07) to 105.31, 94.88 and 17.09 million tonnes (2011-12). total area under rice cultivation declined from 44.92 (2007-08) lakh ha to 44.00 lakh ha (2011-12) in fy2015-16, 1279.15 crores have been allocated, of which only 573-19 crores have been utilized national livestock mission (nlm), 2014-15 sustainable growth and development of the livestock sector, including poultry to increase the availability of fodder and feed to substantially reduce the demand-supply gap ministry of fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying 26 million usd (2019-20) 32,981 under entrepreneurship development & employment generation (edeg). 3.68 lakh beneficiaries under rural backyard poultry development 35.64 lakh animals have been insured 41 state poultry /sheep/ goat piggery breeding farms have been established. 54,930 chaff cutters have been distributed 3823 silage units established 519 livestock melas have been organized 223 livestock farmers group and 121 farmers field schools have been established cag report revealed that 5.40 crores were lying idle and the objective of providing effective veterinary health services to livestock remained unachieved in uttar pradesh. rashtriya gokul mission (rgm), 2014 development and conservation of indigenous breeds to enhance milk production and ministry of fisheries, animal husbandry and 97.83 million usd (2019-20) 1,26,47,471 animals have been registered in various states and 20 gokul grams have been established in 13 states each ‘gokul gram’ was proposed to be spread over 200 hectares and house 1000 https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 204 productivity of the bovine population to arrange quality artificial insemination (ai) services at farmers’ doorstep dairying (department of animal husbandry and dairying) uts till 27-07-18 22 gopal ratnaand 21 kamdhenu awards have been distributed in madhya pradesh and andhra pradesh, 2 national kamdhenu breeding centers have been established heads of cattle due to a lack of funding and resources, several states have been reluctant to set up the ‘gokul grams’. the scheme on development of inland fisheries and aquaculture-blue revolution, 2014-15 to increase the overall fish production for economic prosperity to modernize the fisheries with special focus on new technologies ministry of agriculture & farmers welfare 643 (2018-19) approved construction of 12,430 fishermen houses financial assistance provided to 2.43 lakh fishermen annually under saving-cumrelief component during fishing lean/ban period central assistance of 240.91 million usd released (up to 31st aug 2018) to promote the fisheries sector assistance provided for bringing 29,127.73 ha area under aquaculture approved establishment of 389 of fish/prawn hatcheries accumulation of organic matter, both in the form of unconsumed feed and feces leads to the process of eutrophication mission for integrated development of horticulture (midh), 2014-15 to promote holistic growth of the horticulture sector, including bamboo and coconut to enhance horticulture production, augment farmer’s income and strengthen nutritional security to support skill development and create employment generation opportunities for rural youth in horticulture ministry of agriculture & farmers welfare 290 million usd (2019-20) 5,13,054 from 201617 to 2019-20 organic cultivation is adopted in 1.51 lakh ha, in seven states. karnataka has established 420 nurseries accounting for a 19% share followed by kerala 13% while tamil nadu, orissa, mp, ap have accomplished 7-8%. during the 11th plan, an amount of 1.14 billion usd was approved for the implementation of the scheme. against this, an amount of 482.4 million usd was released up to 2010-11 and an amount of 571 million usd was spent that includes the unspent balance amount of 92.6 million usd of 10th plan. https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ https://agricoop.nic.in/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 205 3.3. analysis of growth in the agriculture sector in 2018-19, the agriculture ministry has been allocated 7.5 billion usd and the amount was 14.6% more than the revised estimate in 2017-18. a major section of the union budget has predominantly focused on subsidies. in 2016-17, the allocation under the ministry observed a sudden increase due to the initiation of the ‘interest subsidy scheme’ which is currently being accounted under the ministry of agriculture from 2016-17, previously it was used to be considered under the finance ministry. figure 5: year-wise expenditure of government over the subsidies when a reality check was carried out between the allocated budget and actual expenditure it was observed that in 2017-18, the allocated budget was revised down by 1.5% (figure 5). between the tenure of 2009-10 and 2015-16, the actual expenditure was observed to be lesser than the budgeted expenditure, except for the years 2010-11 and 2016-17. report of the standing committee on agriculture (2016) reveals that reducing allocated budget at the later stages may be a result of slow spending in the first two quarters of the financial year which reveals that there is no uniform distribution of funds and nor its release is uniform (figure 6) (hansen, 2016). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 206 figure 6: deviation from budgeted expenditure 2.3.1 departmental expenditure about 82% of this allocated budget is proposed to be spent on five schemes. these are the interest subsidy scheme (32%), pradhan mantri fasal bima yojana (28%), pradhan mantri krishi sinchayi yojana (9%), rashtriya krishi vikas yojana (8%), and national mission of horticulture (5%) because of which the other sections remained deprived of financial benefits. a decline in the contribution of agriculture and allied sectors towards the country’s economy has observed from 18.2% in 2012-13 to 16.5% in 2017-18. furthermore, the growth in the agriculture sector has remained volatile over the past few years. in 2017-18, 2.1% of reduction in growth rate was observed in comparison to 2016-2017. within the agriculture sector also, variation in the contributing share of the crop sector is observed which declined from 65% in 2011-12 to 60% by 2015-16. under-utilization of funds has also remained a matter of concern. the standing committee on agriculture (2017) observed that funds under the pmkvy reduced drastically and continuously between 2012 and 2017. 70.43 million usd allocated to the scheme in 2016-17 and out of it 507.6 million usd were released. a shortfall of around 28% in the released amount was observed furthermore out of this released amount, only around 443.50 million usd was utilized. the committee also noticed that only 12 states have prepared state agriculture plans till february 2017 which is needed for the implementation of the scheme. 38% of district agriculture plans have been prepared so far which are needed to be approved on a priority basis without any further delay to avoid a reduction in the allocated amount at later stages (rathi, 2018). 3.4. analysis of government policies on agriculture: a reflective study the comptroller and auditor general of india (cag) in their 2015 annual report revealed that the total rkvy budget allocation from 2007-08 to 2011-12 was 4.9 billion usd. the expenditure acquired was 3.0 billion usd for the implementation of 7234 projects initiated under rkvy. the allocation ratio for the expenditure was observed to be 0.61 which revealed that they had an unutilized amount of 1.9 billion usd at the end of the 11th financial year programme. the maximum expenditure allocation ratio was identified as 0.72 in south india and the minimum ratio of 0.57 was noted in east and north east india (cag report, 2018). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 207 cag reported that 100 projects got abandoned in india and out of these 28 projects were in andhra pradesh, kerala, rajasthan, sikkim and uttar pradesh. an in-depth analysis revealed that the major reason behind this is the non-availability of staff, non-viability of the project, improper release of funds, unresponsive behavior of beneficiaries and ministry has already spent 17.6 million usd on these dropped projects which reflected that this money went in waste. in punjab which is commonly called as the food basket of india, ministry has released 5.81 million usd, which is slightly lesser than the total allocation of 11.73 million usd and this amount has also not been utilized so far. a similar movement of money was observed in bihar, telangana and jharkhand. 99 million usd was found parked in personal ledger accounts in 11 states. cag report revealed that expenditure of 13.84 million usd was found to be indulging in 50 projects in seven states without taking any prior permission from the state level sanctioning committee (slsc). when pmksy was analyzed, it was observed that the benefit of the scheme was restricted to only a few states and only 5 out of 16 projects were under implementation. the remaining 11 projects were yet to be commenced because of approval issues. these 5 projects were originally started during 1975-1983 which indicated that there exists an implementation delay for four decades. an audit also underlined the hidden facts behind these 5 projects and revealed that these projects have not yet achieved the stage from where the common man can be benefitted. cag reported that the government has initiated several schemes for promoting organic produce but ground truthing revealed that they have not provided a steady market to the farmers for this. there exists a threatening shortage of good quality organic input thereby enhancing risk towards loss of yield. currently, the available quantity of organic fertilizers is far beyond the desired limits furthermore presence of spurious players in the market makes the situation more complicated. ongoing supply chain in organic farming is underdeveloped and it is highly difficult for small scale farmers to access the market and they are deprived of financial benefits from the government to improve the current scenario (cag report, 2018). 4. swot analysis of input in indian agriculture strength, weakness, opportunities and threats of various schemes and policies have been critically analyzed to understand the gap between policymakers and farmers (cag report, 2018; ghosh, 2018; midh, 2018; business standard, 2019). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 208 table 2: evaluation of strength, weakness, opportunities and threats of government initiated schemes strength weakness opportunities threat government subsidy bill on food, fertilizer, fuel is estimated to be enhanced by 13.32% to 39.35 billion usd in 2019-2020 to benefit a larger population improper/delayed drafting of agriculture plans 2,25,14,611 farmers have been benefitted from direct benefit transfer under-utilization of fund, communication gap between scheme agency and ministry rkvy incentivized the states to increase public investment in agriculture and allied sectors. to rkvy 704 billion usd allocated in 2016-17, 507 million usd were released, out of this released amount only 443.5 million usd was utilized 10679 farmers in twelve selected sectors, 35000 farmers have been benefitted in drought compensation plan in 2014 according to the cag report, the expenditure reported by the scheme is different from the expenditure reported by the ministry 469 million usd (2018-2019) have been allocated only to rkvy more than 55% of the projects were started after 2 years of the launch of the project. 80% of the total budget was concentrated on only 8 states. rkvy is currently focusing on a limited number of the sector which can be further elaborated to provide benefits in other areas as well cag auditors said that the execution of projects was marked by administration delays, poor contact management, and improper monitoring. in anantapur, andhra pradesh 1,41,975 farmers have been benefitted with an average increase of 31.8 % in their annual income under pradhan mantri krishi sinchai yojana most of these projects have not been completed till now and the majority of incomplete projects lies in maharashtra face inordinate delays and allegations of corruption 19,17,952 farmers have been benefitted from 2016-17 to 2019-20 capital intensive technology to elite farmers has created informal water markets and this has destroyed the indian irrigation system. pmksy contradicts the national water policy-2012, formulated by the government itself pmfby is one of the world’s largest crop insurance programs aimed at providing risk cover to indian farmers from production vulnerabilities 80% of the claims have been availed by only 4 states. bihar, assam and north-eastern state lagged in availing the benefits of crop insurance leading to the mercy state of farmers of that particular region. 18,54,43,390 farmers have been benefitted from 2016-17 to 2019-20. the scheme will continue to be on ‘area approach basis’-village/village panchayat for major crops and the area above that level for other crops. the individual farmers suffering losses are not going to be benefitted unless the entire area gets affected soil health card scheme resulted in a significant reduction in the use of urea and dap by 20-30% in paddy and cotton in some states. there is no one method of treating the soil that applies to all farmers. the basic soil quality varies depending on the crop cycle, different soil treatments that affect the 21,24,98,902 soil health cards have been distributed soil health card has been issued to certain farmers without even testing the soil of their farms. same fertilizers are recommended for every farm of a region. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 209 micronutrients and the microfauna/flora chemical analysis for n, oc, p, k and micronutrients only indicate their availability without reflecting the soil fertility pm kisan samman nidhi yojna support farmers whose income is insufficient for their sustenance about 60% of eligible farmers are deprived of the benefits as the states have not added them to the list of beneficiaries. 2,60,00000 farmers during 2018-19 and 8,50,00000 during 2019-20 have been benefitted are more are getting registered to avail the benefits. 6.68 lakh payments failed while paying the first installment while 1.32 lakh failed during the second installment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 210 5. an approach towards digitalized agriculture: traceability, availability and transparency addressing the challenges in agriculture needs a transformation strategy rooted in technological advancement (tinh et al., 2019). the agriculture sector lags far behind in the adoption of technology, despite the urgent need to look for the solution to rectify the current issues as mentioned in previous sections of the article. despite availability, there is unequal access to the solution. the concept of traceability, availability and transparency merged with updated technology may act as an effective measure to overcome the issues associated with agriculture. agricultural traceability indicated the compilation and maintenance of documents related to the supply chain process thereby ensuring the guarantee of product between producer and consumer. history of a product can be easily traced during the period of its crisis and the government can have a better hold over its policies and schemes initiated for farmers' welfare and over the hoarding and wastage issues majorly responsible for it. whereas agriculture transparency deals with the idea of affirmation of the quality of a product by determination of product certification at every step of the supply chain. this data is useful in ensuring, whether the government’s initiatives have been implemented as per the suggested directions or are getting extorted to benefit a specific section. when it comes to availability, it affirms the direct communication between the farmer and the government regarding the availability and needs to produce thereby providing actual reimbursement of their labor and produce (opara, 2003). 5.1. proposed ict based mechanism of traceability, availability, and transparency for sustainable agriculture to overcome this issue, a team of scientists in patanjali research institute haridwar, india is currently working on it and has prepared a proposed framework underlined as ‘information and communications technology (ict) based mechanism of traceability, availability, and transparency for sustainable agriculture’. the proposed mechanism will act as a central repository body to keep farmers, consumers and governmental bodies in one ring to develop a mirrored view between government’s initiatives for farmers, production, and consumption of agriculture products (figure 7). figure 7: a digitalized mechanistic approach towards sustainable development asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 194-213 211 6. conclusion the country’s economy plays a vital role in formulating it to be self-sufficient in food grains. the divergence between production and availability is reflected from weeping eyes due to hunger. despite a significant hike in budgetary allocation for agriculture, the farmer’s state has remained the same for several decades in the history of indian agriculture. we have acutely monitored the agriculture status of india and found that there exists a massive gap between the agriculture ministry of india and a farmer, depicting the reason why the promises and dreams of government remained unachievable probably due to insufficient hold over food hoardings, adulteration, and food wastage. despite the initiation of more than 17 schemes at the national level and several others at the state level, the number of beneficiaries freezes to few restricted states and countable communities. under-utilization of funds, improper/delayed drafting of agriculture plans, and communication gap between scheme agency and ministry have remained a major reason for failure. cag report revealed that several projects abandoned after the initiation due to non-viability of project, short release/nonavailability of funds, the unwillingness of beneficiaries and because of which huge sum of money wasted which reflects the long tenure errors committed by policymakers after independence in shaping the schemes or policies of indian agriculture. absurdity made by government needs to be rectified with immediate action against the impoverished state of farmers for the better growth of the indian economy. the attempts initiated by the current government to uplift the status of organic agriculture and permitting the farmer to directly relate their products with the consumer, are highly appreciable. we believe that the positive modifications made by the current policymakers will help to boost the economic status of indian farmers and will prove as a boon for indian agriculture in the coming future. further, we emphasize the digitalized mechanistic approach for sustainable agriculture and to benefit the farmers. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors are grateful to param pujya swami ramdev for the institutional and research supports. the authors gratefully acknowledge the efforts of all the colleagues of the patanjali research institute (phrd), for their help in data collection and analysis. they are also thankful to mr. lalit mohan and mr. gagan kumar for their swift administrative supports and encouragement. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused about/arising out of the use of the content. references amarender, r. a. 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(2019). determinants of farmers intention'of applying new technology in production: the case of vietgap standard adoption in vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 164-178. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 740 transitioning to organic rice farming in thailand: drivers and factors nareerut seerasarn a servel a. miller b apinya wanasetc a school of agriculture and cooperatives, sukhothai thammathirat open university, thailand. b department of geography and international development, university of chester, united kingdom. c school of economics, sukhothai thammathirat open university, thailand.  nareerut.see@stou.ac.th; seerasarn@hotmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 13 july 2020 revised: 31 august 2020 accepted: 2 october 2020 published: 19 october 2020 keywords organic rice extension adoption. this research focuses on determining the drivers and factors that influence conversion to organic rice farming to better inform local and national policies. it provides an insight into the procedures in the decision-making process of farmers and the practices they use. questionnaire and interview data from farmers in the leading rice production region, surin, were analyzed using logistic regression to understand the drivers of organic rice farming and the barriers and challenges of adapting to this practice. the findings highlight the critical role of extension farm officers in promoting, educating, and motivating farmers to adopt organic farming. the ability to access (affordable) loans through local cooperative and land ownership was also a key motivational factor. young people (under 25) are not engaging with farming generally, and this is a major barrier to longterm growth of the organic rice industry in thailand. contribution/originality: the research presented underpins the relevance of understanding the extrinsic and intrinsic motivations in farmers' decisions to switch to organic farming and how this can better inform the development of government policies. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.103.740.748 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: nareerut seerasarn --servel a. miller --apinya wanaset (2020). transitioning to organic rice farming in thailand: drivers and factors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3), 740-748. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.103.740-748. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the adverse impacts of industrialized agriculture on social, ecological, and economic sectors in the last 50 years have prompted more sustainable methods of farming that protect the environment and provide more healthy food for the world’s growing population (bacenetti, fusi, negri, bocchi, & fiala, 2016). growing media coverage has increased consumer awareness about food safety and quality and, in some cases, has led to individuals questioning the health benefits of mass-produced food from conventional farms and a corresponding movement towards increasing demand for organic foods (ifoam, 2016): in particular, more sustainable agricultural production approaches, which are a major driver of organic rice farming, that are friendlier to the environment, particularly in light of climate change and the role played by intensive agricultural practices in the creation of greenhouse gases and deforestation (wani, chand, najar, & teli, 2013). asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 3 (2020): 740-748 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:nareerut.see@stou.ac.th mailto:seerasarn@hotmail.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.103.740.748 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9840-9351 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3979-8510 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 740-748 741 food products purported to be 'organic' are produced with minimal impact on the environment using an agricultural system that operates as naturally as possible and without synthetic fertilizers (charles, 2009). organic products have continued to see unprecedented growth in the last 15 years (fao, 2016; ifoam, 2016; seerasarn, 2015). the organic industry has seen double-digit growth in the last two decades, in terms of both market share and organically managed agricultural land (fao, 2016). the global market for organic food surpassed us$100 billion in 2018 (ifoam, 2020). however, at the same time, it is important to acknowledge that despite the growing demand for organic food amongst european consumers, the development of organic farmland is slowing and, in some cases, stagnating or even decreasing (far eastern agriculture, 2018; ifoam, 2016). although it has become increasingly globally important, the concept of organic farming is still insufficiently promoted (tudorache & sârbu, 2013). in light of its potential as a more sustainable form of agriculture, it contributes less to climate change and greenhouse gases and increases in food security, and produces much healthier food for the world’s growing population; organic farming lags far behind conventional farming, and strategies need to be developed to create a better balance between the two (ifoam, 2016). rice is a staple food for more than half of the world’s population and in recent years, particularly in asia and europe, there has been a steady increase in the proportion that is organic (sam, 2015). drivers for more organic rice are related to the environmental and health factors identified above. another prime reason is the increasing demand for plant protein, which is organic. according to syndigate media (2016) by 2021 the organic rice protein market is projected to be growing at a rate of over 18% and with a market value of us$96.5 million. this growth is a direct outcome of consumers' increasing preference for plant protein and nonallergen, lactose-free, and gluten-free products. these factors provide new growth opportunities for players in the organic rice protein market. thailand is the world’s third leading rice exporter (shahbandeh, 2019) and the thai government has made it part of their longterm strategy to produce more organic rice, particularly for the chinese market where demand continues to grow for such premium products (bandumula, 2018). the thai government has made a concerted push to increase the proportion of farmers engaged in the organic method of farming. this has been achieved through a range of strategies, including policy development – for example, the ‘crop diversification’ program (kasem & thapa, 2011) financial incentives (ellis, panyakul, vildozo, & kasterine, 2006) and training programs (seerasarn, 2015). while there has been an increase in the number of farmers adopting organic rice farming, the rate has been relatively slow compared to that for conventional methods. ‘buying-in’ to this method of farming by local rice farmers in thailand is still limited (aker, heiman, mcwilliams, & zilbermann, 2005). it ranges from a lack of developed markets or of financial feasibility, being too labor intensive, ineffective government policies (seerasarn, 2015) to the failure of the government to develop strategies to get the younger generation involved in agriculture (shams & fard, 2017). the thai government recognizes that organic rice production, while more labor intensive, is much more profitable for local farmers as it is a premium product, is more sustainable, is a more marketable product, and has significant potential to transform local economies and contribute to national growth (department of agriculture extension [doae], 2019). the area of the world’s land given over to organic farming is approximately 361.25 million rai (1 rai = 1,600 m2). most organic products are produced in the area of oceania (australia and neighboring islands), comprising 47% of organic farm production area, while europe accounts for 23% and asia just under 30% (office of agricultural economics, 2019). china is the number one organic rice producer in asia, accounting for approximately 45%, while thailand is ranked seventh (6.2% of the total); hence the need to grow this part of the agriculture industry. organic rice accounts for 59% of organic products in thailand (surin provincial commercial office, 2019). in 2018, thailand exported 11.13 million tons of rice and exported 11.13 million tons of rice (office of agricultural economics, 2019). the organic product market in thailand is worth 2,700 million baht, of which the domestic market comprises 30% (800 million baht). the value of the organic market grew continuously for over three years from 2014, with a domestic trading value of 500 million baht and average annual expansion of 20%, while the export market comprised 70% (1,900 million baht). overseas marketing channels continue to expand and provide opportunities for thai farmers and entrepreneurs who wish to export organic products (business nation, 2018). however, adaptation to organic rice farming has been growing at a slower rate than that of conventional inorganic rice (mekong common, 2016; seerasarn, 2015). the thai government has recognized that trying to convert existing farmers to organic rice farming is critical to growing this lucrative industry. the barriers to conversion to organic rice farming need to be clearly understood, along with those factors that influence farmers to engage in this method of farming. this research, therefore, aims to explore the factors that have contributed to farmers’ adoption or nonadoption of organic rice farming, to inform strategies and better decision making at the local level that will encourage more farmers to take up this practice. the economic, environmental, and social benefits of organic rice farming to thailand are immense and, therefore, convincing farmers to convert to this practice is a national priority (department of agriculture extension [doae], 2019; pornpratansombat, bauer, & boland, 2011). because there is still inadequate information about why some farmers convert to organic farming and others do not, it is therefore important to gain an understanding from the perspective of existing farmers, both organic and nonorganic, as to why they choose to adopt organic farming practices or otherwise. this research, therefore, explores factors contributing to the adoption/nonadoption of organic rice farming using as an example surin province, northern thailand, as a case study. the research aimed to determine the drivers and factors that influence rice farmers to switch to organic farming to better inform local and national policies. the key objectives were to: (1) engage with a wide range of rice farmers to facilitate data collection and explore the drivers and challenges of organic rice farming in thailand; (2) undertake asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 740-748 742 qualitative and quantitative data analysis to determine the key drivers and factors influencing farmers decision to convert or not convert to organic rice farming; and (3) formulate recommendations to inform government strategies. 2. methodology the study was undertaken mainly around muang surin and sikhoraphum, districts of surin province, northeastern thailand (figure 1). surin province is among the leading areas of organic rice farming in thailand, and a considerable number of farmers in the district have shifted from conventional to organic rice farming (mekong common, 2016). as highlighted by the bureau of agricultural economics research (2014) this shift is due to many rice farmers having faced difficulties due to accumulated debts and health problems associated with chemical use on farms and, overall, they are battling with the challenge of environmental degradation as a result of their involvement in ‘modern farming’ practices that are chemically intensive (bureau of agricultural economics research, 2014). at the same time, some farmers are increasingly finding that conventional agricultural methods utilizing chemicals cannot guarantee consistent rice yields, particularly for smallholdings, and so they have turned to organic farming. there is an added financial benefit in that they may get a higher price for their products, which contributes to farms becoming more economically viable (tashi & wangchuk, 2016). that said, the exact driver(s) for this conversion to organic rice production are not clearly understood. this research, within the study area described, provides the opportunity to gain greater in-depth understanding to better inform regional and national policies. figure-1. location map of surin province. 2.1. data collection and analysis a mixed-method approach (questionnaire and interviews with farmers) was conducted to understand why some farmers had converted and others not. logistic regression analysis and bivariate correlation were performed to determine the factors that best predict adaptation/nonadaptation of organic rice farming. the questionnaires were distributed to farmers in the field. it was as important to understand why farmers had converted to organic rice as to why others had not. as such, both groups of farmers were selected. farmers were selected at random to ensure a geographical spread of respondents. at least ten farmers from each of the 17 districts were selected, to ensure adequate spatial distribution of the respondents. additional farmers (n = 30) were randomly selected from the 17 provinces to participate in a focus group and further interviews. firstly, this study uses descriptive and thematic analysis to identify the similarities and differences between two farming groups (organic and inorganic). statistical analyses were then used to explore some of the most common factors associated with the adoption of organic farming (ullah et al., 2015). a nonparametric bivariate correlation statistical test and logistic regression analysis were undertaken to determine which factors were best suited to determining conversion to organic farming. logistic regression as a statistical method is useful in this context, where there are many proposed independent variables. in the logistic regression undertaken, the dependent variable (organic or inorganic) is coded as 1 (true, organic) or 0 (false, inorganic). the goal of logistic regression is to determine the best fitting model to describe the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 740-748 743 relationship between organic and inorganic farming. the logistic regression process goes through a series of iterations, first inputting all the variables. then, gradually through several stages, it eliminates the less significant ones to create a ‘best bit model’. the final iteration of the logistic regression generates the coefficients, and their standard errors and significance levels, of a formula to predict a logit transformation of the probability of the presence of the characteristic of interest: where p is the probability of the presence of the characteristic of interest, and logit transformation is defined as the logged odds: 3. results and discussion one of the main themes that emerged from the analysis of the data gathered from interviews was that among the key drivers for switching to organic farming by local farmers was the need to provide healthy food for their family. as one female farmer stated: “the rice and other vegetable produce using fertilizer makes us ill” (seerasarn, 2015). farmers also stated that many organic products are used for their family while the nonorganic component is sold on. other farmers cited the protection of the environment as their main driver for switching to organic farming. common comments included: “fertilizer pollutes the river”; “soil is being destroyed, becomes hard and is difficult to farm”; and “wildlife needs to be protected”. farmers alluded to the changes they had witnessed over their lifetime in terms of the changing landscape and disappearance of flora and fauna that were once common to the area. overall, organic farmers believed in a need to encourage more wildlife and most mentioned the need to integrate their farming practice with the encouragement of wildlife: statements such as “organic farming brings more bees and insects” and “the bees are good for our plants; it makes them healthier” (charles, 2009). the benefits of bees and other insects were associated with the perception of healthier and more robust rice crops and other vegetable produce. farmers also felt that the presence of insects and other wildlife is an indication of a healthy environment, which is what should be typical of rural communities. organic farmers also alluded to the effects on the farming community of taking loans to mechanize and buy fertilizer. they had experienced personal loss on their farms in the past due to debt incurred and/or seen fellow farmers going out of business. as one 79-year-old farmer stated: “20 years ago we were told to gain more yield and produce more, so we had to take some loans from the bank to invest in a machine and chemical fertilizers. we ended up in debt and lost our farm” (seerasarn, 2015). organic farmers were now more likely to take a loan from their local agricultural cooperative society/bank than from a commercial bank. avoidance of large loans associated with the purchase of fertilizer and machinery is among the most common themes that emerged from organic rice farmers. however, those farmers who have not switched to organic farming perceived the opposite to be true. these nonorganic farmers believed that, without the loans, they would not be able to maintain a profitable farm: “the loan has enabled us to extend the farm and employ more people” (ellis et al., 2006). some farmers believe that organic farming is neither practical on a large scale nor profitable. organic farming, they believe, is too labor intensive; unless you have a large family to support, it is not viable: “organic farming takes too many people; it is not profitable to pay them all”. organic farmers, on the other hand, tended to utilize their family to help on the farm: “we are a family of 7, we all come together to help” (kasem & thapa, 2011). other farmers alluded to the fact that, with organic farming, there is much more weeding and care required but they prefer to do so because there are no chemicals to deal with. they receive help from family members, spreading the workload to keep these farms viable. friends and agricultural extension officers appear to play a key role in helping encourage farmers to convert to organic farming. farmers indicated that it was not until their friends or farming colleagues who had adopted organic farming told them about the benefits to be realized that they changed their practices. a farmer of 20 years stated: “my friend has been a part of rice fund surin (rfs), and told me about growing better rice. i went to see his farm and since then, i have been doing organic rice farming”. as one reason that they continue to engage in organic rice farming practices, other farmers alluded to visits from agricultural extension officers and the help provided; to access loans from a local cooperative to develop an integrative pest management system; to certification of the farm as an organic producer; and to access to markets where they can get a higher price for their products. for those farmers who did not convert, the main factors were that they are familiar with what they did and to change was perceived as being too risky. the following comment typifies the comments from some farmers: “we have been doing this for years, why change, we are a profitable farm and not worth taking the risk?” (ellis et al., 2006). if farmers cannot see the benefits of switching to organic farming, this is a major challenge for the government in trying to influence such a change. it also reflects failure of the local message to communicate the benefits and opportunities. other farmers cite the high labor input: “this is modern times; there is no need to hire lots of workers to tend for the crops, just too much hassle” (seerasarn, 2015). this represents a major challenge and barrier to organic farming. larger and (usually) more profitable farms are moving away from large labor forces. the question is, does the government need to subsidize farmer-owners to encourage them to hire a larger workforce? the challenges of weed control associated with organic farming require a larger labor force, and this is a major barrier. there needs to be asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 740-748 744 much more research conducted to develop organic weedkillers and weed control mechanisms. as such, government grants to research institutes must be a focus of any government policy. 3.1. factors influencing the adaptation of organic rice farming a nonparametric correlation and binary logistic regression were performed to evaluate the most significant factors contributing to adoption of organic farming. all independent variables were utilized in the analysis. correlation at the 0.01 and 0.05 confidence levels was accepted as significant relationships (table 1). at the 0.01 level, the experience of farming both organic and inorganic rice, the higher price received for their products, getting information about organic farming from other sources (in other words, not through formal government channels and gender) all show statistically significant relationships with the choice of farming practice. at the 0.05 confidence level, the variables showing a strong relationship were land tenure (table 2), visits from extension officers, evidence of the difference in price they received for organic compared to inorganic rice, and access to loans (table 3). the binary logistic model, which explores the best set of variables predicting likely farming practice, is outlined in table 3. as part of the logistic regression, a log-likelihood ratio of 99.930 was obtained and the chi-square statistic for the goodness of fit of the model is 26.906, significant at the 1% level (table 4). thus, the overall model is significant and a good fit when assessing the contribution of individual predictors in a given model. table-1. results of bivariate nonparametric correlations. gender land owned experience con income informed about organic via, e.g., media different in price received for organic/compared to inorganic higher price received cooperativeloan extension, visits pearson correlation 0.170* 0.259** 0.209* 0.173* 0.169* 0.215* 0.217* 0.251** 0.244** sig.*** 0.046 0.005 0.018 0.043 0.046 0.016 0.015 0.006 0.007 n 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 note: * and **, 5 and 1% level of significance, respectively (1-tailed). ***, 1-tailed. table-2. landownership and its relationship to organic/inorganic farm practice (percent). tenant owned other organic 4.0 56.0 7.0 inorganic 6.0 27.0 0.0 table-3. results of binary logistic regression. β s.e. wald sig. exp. (β) land owned –2.269 0.763 8.851 0.003 0.103 higher price received 0.489 0.309 2.506 0.013 1.631 extension, visits 0.937 0.597 2.462 0.017 2.553 farm size –0.036 0.026 1.970 0.160 0.964 gender 0.439 0.530 .688 0.007 1.551 income (non-organic rice) –0.334 0.231 2.081 0.049 0.716 other-information –0.527 0.626 0.708 0.040 0.590 experience –0.482 0.990 0.237 0.026 0.617 constant 0.728 2.026 0.129 0.019 2.070 table-4. results of omnibus testing of model coefficients. block chi-square sig. –2 log likelihood cox & snell r2 nagelkerke r2 model 26.906 0.001 99.930 0.236 0.328 3.2. discussion and policy implications it is has been reaffirmed by this research that organic rice farming is labor intensive. large families with upwards of 5–7 members helping are more likely to be engaged in organic farming than in nonorganic. this is very common regarding organic farms, particularly when on a small scale (kafle, 2011). this per se can be a barrier to organic farming; if a cheap and readily available labor force is unavailable, then there is less chance of a farm engaging in organic farming and it is more likely to continue with conventional methods, utilizing chemical-based fertilizer and weedkiller. this is one of the first issues that government policy needs to address; otherwise, organic farming will not be sustainable (ifoam, 2016). the use of innovative practices and technology (for example, precision agriculture, robotics, irrigation systems, organic fertilizer) and modern machinery needs to be an integral part of the push if thailand is to become a leader in the organic rice farming industry. farmers must have access to efficient machinery and technology without creating large debts, which points to the government needing initially to subsidize this industry for it to reap long-term benefits (mekong common, 2016; tashi & wangchuk, 2016). there is also the need to invest in research and development of higher-yielding rice varieties, to ensure sustainability and profitability(bacenetti et al., 2016). for example, in part of surin province some farmers have trialed a new technique known as the system of rice intensification (sri), which uses fewer seeds per acre, can be started in a greenhouse, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 740-748 745 and, overall, gives better yields and is resistant to extreme climate changes (mekong common, 2016). it is this type of innovation and research that needs to be encouraged and funded to better drive organic rice farming initiatives. one of the main findings of the research was that organic rice farmers tended to be more experienced and older, with only a small proportion of the under-30s involved in the agriculture industry. while it is good that organic farmers are more experienced, it is worrying that the younger generation is not actively involved in farming generally and organic farming more specifically. for example, in europe, which has seen a boom in organic farming, it is the younger generation who appear to be adapting to emerging technologies and that are taking more interest in health and environmental issues dominating the organic farming landscape (ifoam, 2016). encouraging more of the younger generation to become involved in farming has to be a major focus. the thai government, if it wishes to become a leader in organic rice farming, needs to develop strategies to better target resources to engage, empower, and encourage more youngsters to become involved in organic farming. as is typical of most developing and middleincome countries, the younger generation chooses to move away from rural communities and/or enters careers other than farming. organic farming does require a bigger labor force than conventional farming; there will be an impact on the ability of labor and farm ownership/managers to adopt organic farming as well as to maintain existing farms. as highlighted above, organic farmers tend to be much older and experienced than their inorganic counterparts. this is contradictory to results from studies – for example, by hattam, lacombe, and holloway (2012) – where younger farmers influenced by the adoption of new technology were more interested in adopting organic farming than older farmers. as such, in this study, age does play a vital role in influencing adaptation. however, the farming experience of the household head is a driver for the adoption of inorganic farming. organic adopters were more experienced than their inorganic counterparts. encouraging the younger generation to become involved in farming is a challenge in a country like thailand, where youngsters gravitate to major urban centers rather than rural ones. as one 36-year-old female farmer stated: “it is only because i lost my job in a factory in the city that i returned to the farm. the family owned the land and after speaking with the surin farmers support (sfs) i decided organic farming was the most economical way to farm” (seerasarn, 2015). unless the government can develop strategies through education programs, viable jobs in agriculture, the development of production facilities and associated jobs in rural areas, and the use of technologies, it is unlikely to attract more youngsters to farming, vital for the inorganic farming industry. this result corresponds to the results of läpple (2010) and ramesh et al. (2010). they outline that the conversion of conventional to organic land was due to the expected additional benefit from organic produce; the benefits in these cases were perceived as the difference in price received compared to inorganic rice. generally, farmers who got a higher price for their products were more likely to adapt: “i farm both types of rice together, but for the organic rice i get a better price. this is what keeps the farm going” (male farmer in surin). however, that said, some organic farmers cultivate inorganic rice alongside organic products. they cite the convenience and the security of selling to two different markets. a study by musara, chimvuramahwe, and borerwe (2012) found that adopters had more diversified crops and farming practices, borne out by the current study.. farmers who owned their land were more likely to be adopters of organic practices. this is due to the control they have over what they can do and the confidence to plan long term. kallas, serra, and gil (2010) suggested that small farms need ‘credit’ to adapt to organic farming. where farmers were able to access loans, they were more likely to adopt organic farming. as highlighted in the present study, farmers were more likely to adopt if the loan was from a cooperative society rather than from the government or a commercial bank. this may be due to several factors, including accessibility (less bureaucracy), lower interest rates, more favorable payment terms, and, generally, more understanding and trust from the cooperative society than from either the government or commercial sources. however, the biggest driver for taking loans from local cooperatives was the ability to incur less debt and avoid the negative experience of farmers who have taken large loans from commercial entities, such as banks, to buy machinery and fertilizer to increase productivity on their farm: “the cooperative bank understands use, the loans are small and they give us longer to pay it back. it means we are not incurring large debt and we don’t have to worry they will come and take our farm away if we run into trouble” (farmer of 20 years in surin). in surin province, the farmers formed a small group in their district called the surin small-scale farmers network, in association with sfs, now called the community for agro-ecology foundation (caef), which develops workshops to share learning about sustainable agriculture techniques and to exchange experiences. local farmers interested in organic farming in surin went on to develop rfs, which created a pool of funds from which members can borrow (mekong common, 2016). it is this type of local funding that appears to drive organic farming and which central government needs to support and invest in more than it currently does. as such, it is imperative for greater adoption of organic farming; there needs to be much easier access to loans for farmers, and at much more favorable terms than those currently being offered by commercial banks, to help them to adapt to organic rice farming. furthermore, loans need to be structured in such a way that farmers cannot incur significant debt (for example, by very low interest rates and longer repayment times). these loans should be available through local rather than national or regional financial institutions. in addition, this study found the extension service to be one of the most powerful drivers of organic rice farming. whilst organic rice farmers appear to be influenced by friends and concern for the environment, it is the visit and support provided by extension officers that gives them the confidence to share good practices and encourages them to contribute most to starting and continuing organic rice farming. this area needs to be funded and supported by central, regional, and local governments if more farmers are to adopt organic rice farming practices (rana, parvathi, & waibel, 2012). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 740-748 746 this study did not find any significant results for parameters influencing the adoption decision of farmers based on the variables, education, the channels through which they sell their products, or the size of the farm, as highlighted by studies such as ullah et al. (2015), shams and fard (2017) and pradhan, tripura, mondal, darnnel, and murasing (2017). the dominant drivers of the adoption decision were found to be farming experience, land ownership, assets, access to credit from a local source (for example, cooperative banks/credit unions), and the extension service provided by local bodies such as extension services. 4. conclusion the findings of this study highlight the critical role of extension farm officers in promoting, educating, and motivating farmers to adopt organic farming. where extension officers provided support through training, working with cooperatives, and helping to create standards of good farm practice, there was a higher probability of farmers converting to organic farming. farmers who participated in training and/or those who had visits from extension officers appear to have gained a better understanding of organic farming, which influenced their decision to convert to this method of farming. those farmers with greater experience tend to be more likely to be engaged in organic farming. however, there is a worrying trend of an aging farming workforce and the government needs to invest more in encouraging the younger generation to take up farming. numerous studies have shown that the younger population adapts much more quickly to organic farming, and strategies to better engage this section of society need to be put in place with a degree of urgency. the ability to access loans at the local level – for example, farmers’ cooperatives – is a strong driver in adopting organic farming. farmers cite that they trust working with local organizations that understand them and that do not require them to incur large debts as drivers for adopting the organic method. the thai government, therefore, needs to provide the support and funds to these smaller entities to drive organic farming more effectively at the local scale. land ownership is a strong driver: those who own land are much more confident in deciding to change to organic farming, and they are more likely to want to protect the environment and land for future generations. mechanisms to help finance farmers to own their property should be a key policy drive in encouraging more widespread organic farming. land ownership is a key driver in the conversion to organic farming. to promote more organic farming, the government needs to establish a program to encourage more farmers to purchase their farm property. farmers trust local cooperatives and, as such, we recommended channeling these loans through such institutions and providing favorable terms (e.g., low interest). the challenges of weed control associated with organic farming require a greater input of labor, and this is a major barrier. there is a need for more research to develop organic weedkillers and weed control mechanisms. as such, grants to research institutes must be a focus of any government policy. this research has, and will continue to, inform the development of both local policy and national strategies. the key role of the extension officer has been pivotal to surin becoming a leading area in the promotion of organic farming, and the government needs to continue to fund this role. this could be achieved by building local capacity through training more local officers, providing increased funding to local educational institutions, and the provision of funding for more training to farmers in their local area. farmers do not want to have to leave their farms to go to a city to access training, and it is imperative that more local training is developed and provided. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that there is no competing interest. acknowledgments: the authors would like to acknowledge the support of the school of agriculture and cooperatives, sukhothai thammathirat open university. the authors would also like to thank the rice research centre, ms. nirada paennangrong, and mrs. chananath chana-akson for their invaluable field support and access to reports and documents, and for facilitating access to the farming community and stakeholders. the views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references aker, j. c., heiman, a., mcwilliams, b., & zilbermann, d. 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(2013). organic farming: as a climate change adaptation and mitigation strategy. current agriculture research journal, 1(1), 45-50. available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ajae/aaw077. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 149 field evaluation of pre-emergence application of selected herbicides for okra tolerance and growth in asaba, nigeria obiazi, christian chukuka a, tijani-eniola, hassan b , olaniyi, olalekan wasiu b adepartment of agronomy, delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, nigeria b department of agronomy, university of ibadan, ibadan, nigeria  ciciobiazi@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 30-dec-2019 accepted: 09-mar-2020 online available: 02-apr2020 keywords: herbicide screening, metholachlor+atrazine, okra, pendimethalin, weed control abstract okra productivity is reduced by weed interference. farmers rely on expensive and highly labour intensive manual weeding. herbicides reduce labour involvement and cost of weed control. few herbicides tagged for okra production are scarce. the key objectives of this study are to determine the tolerance of okra to some widely used herbicides and evaluate the growth performance of okra in the selected herbicides. the average phytotoxicity levels of each of the herbicides for 2013 and 2014 field trials were in the order of zero in pendimethalin at 2.0 kg a.i./ha, 4.2 in metholachlor+atrazine at 2.64 kg a.i./ha and 5.5 in atrazine at 3.0 kg a.i./ha, on a 0-10 scale. okra stands establishment was (95.2%) in pendimethalin and (93.1%) in hoe-weeded plots, these were significantly greater than 62.8% and 56.9% obtained in metholachlor+atrazine at 2.64 kg a.i./ha and atrazine at 3.0 kg a.i./ha, respectively. hoe-weeded plots had shoot dry weight of 7.9 g/plant which was similar to 7.3 g/plant obtained in pendimethalin treated plots; these were significantly greater than 4.1 g/plant obtained in plots that received atrazine. pendimethalin which caused no phytotoxic effect on okra and provided enhanced stand establishment and growth comparable with hoe-weeded should be listed for okra production. contribution/ originality the study has substantiated that pendimethalin should be added to the list of herbicides for okra (abelmoschus esculentus l. moench) production. it also opens up the possibility for farmers and researchers to start considering planting okra in mixture with other crops where pendimethalin is used. because pendimethalin is widely used for weed control in other crops in the place of the study, scarcity of the herbicide at critical moments of need may be uncommon. the paper has never been published before or presently submitted anywhere for this purpose. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.149.159 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: obiazi, christian chukuka, tijani-eniola, hassan and olaniyi, olalekan wasiu (2020). field evaluation of pre-emergence application of selected herbicides for okra tolerance and growth in asaba, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 149-159. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 149-159 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 149-159 150 1. introduction okra (abelmoschus esculentus (l.) moench is widely produced in africa (kochhar, 1986), rich in vitamin c (adeboye and oputa, 1996), with high levels of iodine (philip et al., 2010) and suffers drastic yield reduction in okra fresh pod yield due to uncontrolled weed interference. adeyemi et al. (2014) reported loss in okra fresh pod yield of 50.7% due to uncontrolled weed infestation. average yield reduction of 91.1% due to season long interference of weed with okra was reported by awodoyin and olubode (2009). least crop yield is mostly obtained from plots which were not given any form of weeding. dada and fayiminnu (2010) observed the least okra fresh pod yield in un-weeded plots. management of weeds in the farm requires high costs and labour input which constitute a major problem in crop production (aneghen et al., 2010). obiazi and ojobor (2013) addressed the problem of high costs and labour input in weed management by suggesting the use of herbicides among other solutions. osipitan (2017) noted that an important and relatively less costly weed control option is chemical weed control; it involves the use of different herbicides applied as pre and post-emergence of crops. adigun et al. (2018) suggested that farmers can reduce the problem of hoe weeding and reduce labour input, based on the results of their studies, with the use of pre-emergence herbicides for weed control in okra farms. imoloame (2017) reported that manual weeding is very strenuous and results in a lot of drudgery and concluded from his study of different herbicide mixtures and manual weed control method in maize that chemical weed control is a practical and economic alternative to hand weeding if herbicide is applied correctly and that it could prevent weed infestation from planting to harvesting. atrazine is one of the most widely used s-triaxine herbicides in the tropics. atrazine is sold as a sole component for herbicide formulation and as a component of several formulated mixtures with such other herbicides as metolachlor and sold as primextra or primagram. atrazine is also used in a formulated mixture with prometryn and it is sold as primaze 80 w (akobundu, 1987). the herbicide atrazine is one of the most commonly applied pesticides in the world (hayes et al., 2010). however, most herbicides recommended for weed control in okra such as diphenamid, fluchloralin, prometryne and trifluralin (akobundu, 1987; nacwc, 1994) are not readily available. dittmar and stall (2014) observed that herbicides recommended for weed control in okra are scarce. pendimethalin has been part of the recommended herbicides for weed control in cowpea and soybean (nacwc, 1994). timsina et al. (2020) revealed that the application of pre-emergence herbicides, pendimethalin, supplemented with hand weeding was found to be effective in reducing the weed severity and improves rice growth and yield attributes. atrazine is a very common herbicide for weed control in arable crops; it is used alone for weed control in maize and also used in combination with other herbicides such as metholachlor to form formulations like primextra for the control of weeds in maize, cassava and yam (nacwc, 1994). there is therefore the need to assess okra tolerance among some herbicides that have consistently controlled weed effectively in widely cultivated crops in rainforest ecological zones. pendimethalin, metolachlor + atrazine, and atrazine are effective for pre-emergence weed control in soybean, cassava and maize respectively in the rainforest ecological zone of nigeria. the study was set up to evaluate okra tolerance and weed control effectiveness of pendimethalin, metolachlor+atrazine and atrazine in okra production. 2. materials and methods field experiment was carried out in the department of agronomy, delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, nigeria in the rainy seasons of 2013 and 2014 at the teaching and research farm located in latitude 60 141 n, longitute 60 491 e, southern nigeria in the rainforest agro-ecological zone, with rainfall from april to november with peaks in june and september. the treatment consisted of pre-emergence applications of pendimethalin at 2kg a.i./ha, metolachlor+atrazine (2:1) at 2.64kg a.i./ha and atrazine at 3 kg a.i./ha. hoe–weeded and unweeded plots served as controls. hoe-weeded control plots were weeded at three and six weeks after sowing (was), while the un-weeded plots were left un-weeded throughout the experiment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 149-159 151 the experiment evaluated the growth of the okra plant as influenced by the pre-emergence application of pendimethalin, metolachlor + atrazine (2:1) and atrazine. the treatments and the controls were laid out in a randomized complete block design (rcbd) and replicated thrice. each plot measured 2.0 x 2.0 m with a space of 1 m separating plots within a replicate. contiguous blocks were separated by 1.5 m space. the test crop was a commonly grown local okra cultivar, ozigolo, purchased from oki market in agbor, nigeria. the okra seeds were soaked in water overnight, the following morning the seeds were removed from the water and air dried under shade and treated with apron star which contained both fungicide and insecticide for protection against diseases and pests. vegetation was slashed with cutlass and tree stumps manually removed using hoe, spade and pick axe. okra seeds were sown on the flat at an average planting depth of 2cm at a spacing of 50cm by 50cm, as used by afolayan (1997) with 16 stands per plot and a population density of 40,000 plants per hectare. three seeds of okra were sown per stand and thinned to one seedling per hill at 3 was. the soils were sandy loam, adequate in p and k and had a total n of 1.1 and 1, ph value of 5.9 and 6 in 2013 and 2014, respectively. the rate of 50kg n /ha was applied in the form of urea in two equal split doses of placement to okra stands at three and six weeks after sowing. in 2013 the experiment was established on the 10th of may, in the following year, the planting of okra and preemergence application of the herbicides was carried out on the 6th of may, 2014. a cp knapsack sprayer fitted with polijet nozzle delivering 265 l/ha, was used to apply the pre-emergence herbicides. pests in the okra plants were controlled by spraying cypermethrin at the rate of 1ml of cypermethrin per litre of water at 3, 5 and 7 weeks after sowing. four okra stands were tagged within the plots, ensuring that the border rows were excluded, to collect data on the effect of preemergence herbicide treatments on okra performance. data taken included phytotoxicity rating of the herbicide treatments on okra at 3 was, ‘0’ to ‘10’ scale was used, ‘0’ means absence of phytotoxicity effect and ‘10’ signifies death of the okra plant. other data collected were the extent of okra stand survival, number of leaves per plant, stem diameter, stem height and shoot dry weight at eight weeks after sowing. weed control efficiency of the herbicides was assessed by comparing weed biomass of various treatments with their respective weedy control at 4, 6 and 8 was using a quadrat of 50cm by 50cm dimension. identification and naming of weeds were done using akobundu and agyakwa (1987). the weed control efficiency calculation was based on the technique suggested by prachand et al. (2015) as follows: ( ) where, wce (%) = weed control efficiency dwc = dry matter of weed in control plot and dwt = dry matter of weed in treated plots. data concerning okra population per plot and weed dry weight were transformed to square root scale of √ x+0.5 and analyzed as suggest by (little and hills, 1978). in respect of the weed biomass, a quadrant of 50cm by 50cm dimension was randomly placed in two locations per plot and all the weeds found within the quadrant were collected and dried in the oven at 70oc to constant weight. collected data were subjected to analysis of variance (anova) and the treatment means were compared using duncan’s multiple range test at 5% level of probability (gomez and gomez, 1984). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 149-159 152 3. results 3.1. phytotoxicity significant phytotoxic effects were observed on okra plants grown in plots treated with pendimethalin , metholachlor + atrazine and atrazine (table 1). okra grew in plots that received pre-emergence application of pendimethalin sprayed at 2kg a.i. /ha did not show phytotoxic effect on the okra plants. table 1: effects of pre-emergence herbicide applications on phytotoxicity rating and number of leaves per okra plants at eight weeks growth stage treatment phytotoxicity rating (%) number of leaves / plant 2013 2014 average 2013 2014 average pendimethalin at 2.0 kg a.i./ha 0.0 c 0.0 b 0.0 c 9.72a 8.92ab 9.32a metholachlor + atrazine (2:1) at 2.64 kg a.i./ha 5.4 b 2.9 a 4.2 b 6.17c 8.58ab 7.38 bc atrazine at 3.0 kg a.i./ha 6.8 a 4.2 a 5.5 a 4.93 d 7.91 b 6.42 c hoe-weeded at 3 and 6 was 0.0 c 0.0 b 0.0 c 10.22a 9.12 a 10.02 a weedy 0.0 c 0.0 b 0.0 c 6.33 b 9.31a 7.82 b se± (0.05) 0.57 0.46 0.32 1.11 1.29 0.48 note: means followed by the same letter(s) within a column in the same year are not significantly different at 5% level of probability using dmrt okra grown in plots treated with metholachlor + atrazine at 2.64kg a.i./ha and atrazine at 3kg a.i./ha displayed phytotoxic effects, in each of the years, atrazine was significantly more phytotoxic on okra than metholachlor + atrazine. atrazine had 6.8 and 4.2 phytotoxic rates on okra seedlings at three weeks after sowing in the first and second years, respectively; these were significantly greater than 5.5 and 2.9 levels of phytotoxicity on okra by metholachlor + atrazine in 2013 and 2014, respectively. atrazine used at 3kg a.i./ha was more phytotoxic on okra than metholachlor + atrazine used at 2.64kg a.i./ha. significant phytotoxic effects were observed at 3 was on okra plants grown in plots treated with pre-emergence herbicide. okra grown in plots that received pre-emergence application of pendilin (pendimethalin) at 2kg a.i./ha did not show any phytotoxic effect; okra grown in plots treated with atrazine at 3 kg a.i./ha showed the highest phytotoxicity. primextra (metolachlor+atrazine used at 2.64kg a.i./ha was less injurious to okra plant than atrazine used at 3kg a.i./ha in this study. okra showed sensitivity to preemergence application of atrazine. on the average, the phytotoxicity rating of the herbicides was atrazine > metholachlor+atrazine > pendimethalin. 3.2. effects of weed control treatments on the number of leaves per plant, plant height and stem diameter of okra atrazine treated plots had 4.93 and 7.91 leaves per plant in 2013 and 2014, respectively (table 1), the plots treated with atrazine had significantly the least number of leaves per plant in the first year, however in 2014, the value (7.91) in metholachlor + atrazine was comparable to the number of leaves per plant grown in plots treated with pendimethalin (8.92) and metholachlor + atrazine (8.58), respectively. the number of leaves per plant in 2014 ranged from 7.91 (atrazine) to 9.12 (hoe-weeded plots), the hoe-weeded plots had significantly greater number of leaves per plant than the ones grown in atrazine treated plots. the mean number of leaves per plant was in the order of hoe-weeding (10.02) = pendimethalin (9.32) > weedy (7.82) = metholachlor + atrazine (7.38) = atrazine (6.42). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 149-159 153 okra grown in pendimethalin treated plots were tallest (63.8cm) in 2013 as well as in 2014 (65.6cm). the height of okra grown in the other plots ranged from 19.7cm to 58.1cm for both years (table 2). the shortest okra stems were found in un-weeded plots; however, okra plants in plots treated with metholachlor + atrazine in 2014 were not significantly different in height from okra in untreated plots. on the average, okra plants grown in pendimethalin treated plots were tallest while the ones grown in atrazine treated plots were the shortest. table 2: effects of pre-emergence herbicide applications on stem height and stem diameter in okra plants at eight weeks growth stage treatment stem height (cm) stem diameter (cm) 2013 2014 average 2013 2014 average pendimethalin at 2kg a.i./ha 63.8 a 65.6 a 64.7 a 2.70 a 2.68 a 2.69 a metholachlor + atrazine (2:1) at 2.64 kg a.i./ha 25.7d 35.9 c 30.8 d 0.93 b 1.17 b 1.05 b atrazine at 3kg a.i./ha 21.5 e 19.7 d 20.6 e 0.87 b 0.93 b 0.90 b hoe-weeded at 3 and 6 was 50.9 b 58.1 b 54.5 b 2.92 a 3.10 a 3.01 a weedy 37.2 c 39.8 c 38.5 c 0.90 b 0.89 b 0.90 b se ± 2.81 3.92 2.23 0.31 0.32 0.20 note: means followed by the same letter(s) within a column in the same year are not significantly different at 5% level of probability using dmrt thickest stems (3.10cm) were produced in hoe-weeded plots in 2014, and the thinnest stems (0.87cm) were grown in plots that were treated with atrazine in 2013 (table 2). okra plants grown in plots treated to pendimethalin had similar stem diameter with the ones grown in hoe-weeded plots in both years. each of them had an average stem thickness which was more than 2.60cm thick. okra plants grown in plots treated to metholachlor+atrazine and atrazine were similar to that of un-weeded control; their stem diameters ranged from 0.87 to 1.17cm. okra plants had very few numbers of branches per plant at eight weeks after sowing with maximum of two per plant on plots hoe-weeded twice in 2013 and no branches in plots sprayed with metholachlor + atrazine, atrazine and in the untreated plots in the two trials (table 3). okra plants in the plots treated with pendimethalin produced 1.0 – 1.3 branches comparable to 2.0 and 1.8 obtained in plots that received two hoe-weeding in 2013 and 2014, respectively. table 3: effects of pre-emergence herbicide applications on stem height and stem diameter in okra plants at eight weeks growth stage treatment number of braches/plant 2013 2014 average pendimethalin at 2kg a.i./ha 1.0 a 1.3 a 1.2 a metholachlor + atrazine (2:1) at 2.64 kg a.i./ha 0.0 b 0.0 b 0.0 b atrazine at 3kg a.i./ha 0.0 b 0.0 b 0.0 b hoe-weeded at 3 and 6 was 2.0 a 1.8 a 1.9 a weedy 0.0 b 0.0 b 0.0 b se ± 0.36 0.28 0.94 note: means followed by the same letter(s) within a column in the same year are not significantly different at 5% level of probability using dmrt 3.3. okra stand establishment and shoot biomass pre-emergence herbicide applications had a significant effect on okra stand establishment (figure 1). average okra stand survival ranged from 57.1% in atrazine treated plots to 95.2% in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 149-159 154 pendimethalin treated plots. highest okra stand survival among the treated plots was in pendimethalin plots which was significantly greater than what was recorded in plots treated with metholachlor + atrazine or atrazine. okra had similar establishment level in metholachlor + atrazine (62.8%) and atrazine (57.1%) treated plots. the mean highest level of the establishment among the treated plots which were (95.2%) pendimethalin was similar to 93.1% (hoe-weeded control) and 92.2% (weedy control). (values are average of 2013 and 2014). figure 1: okra stands establishment as influenced by pre-emergence application of herbicides note: bars bearing the same letter are not significantly different at 5% level of probability pend = pendimethalin, meth+atra = metholachlor+ atrazine, hoe weeded = hoe weeded at 3 and 6 weeks after sowing and weedy = un-weeded control the greatest shoot dry weight was produced in plots that were hoe-weeded at three and six weeks after sowing with average shoot biomass of 7.9g/plant, this was similar to 7.3g/plant obtained in plots that received pre-emergence application of pendimethalin, the least shoot biomass was observed in okra grown in weedy plots (3.3g/plant). untreated plots had the least shoot biomass of 3.3g/plant which was not significantly different from what was obtained in plots treated to atrazine which had 4.1g/plant as average shoot biomass. 3.4. weed biomass and weed control efficiency pre-emergence application of pendimethalin, atrazine and metholachlor+atrazine significantly reduced weed biomass compared with the weedy check at 4, 6 and 8 was in both 2013 and 2014 (table 4). at 4 and 6 was all the pre-emergence treatments had similar weed biomass which was comparable with those of hoe-weeded control plots in both years. hoe-weeded control plots at 8 was had significantly less weed biomass than any of the plots that received pre-emergence herbicide application in both years. weed control efficiency (wce) of the three pre-emergence herbicides was similar at 4 and 6 was during both years of experimentation (table 4). the three pre-emergence herbicides and hoeweeded control had superior wce than weedy check at 4, 6 and 8 was. at 8 was, hoe-weeded control had greater wce than any of the pre-emergence herbicides (table 4). a b b a a 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 pend meth+atra atrazine hoeweeded weedy o k r a s ta n d s e st a b li sh m e n t (% ) weed control method asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 149-159 155 table 4: effects of pre-emergence herbicide applications on weed biomass and weed control efficiency in okra plots treatment weed biomass (g/m 2 ) weed control efficiency (%) 4 was* 6 was 8 was 4 was 6 was 8 was 2013 pendimethalin at 2kg a.i./ha 1.6b 16.3b 63.4b 92.12a 77.52b 47.56b metholachlor + atrazine (2:1) at 2.64 kg a.i./ha 1.7b 14.6b 57.2c 91.63a 79.86b 52.73b atrazine at 3kg a.i./ha 1.9b 15.0b 59.8bc 90.64a 79.31b 50.53b hoe-weeded at 3 and 6 was 1.3b 12.9b 13.3d 93.60a 82.21b 89.01a weedy control 20.3a 72.5a 120.9a 0.00b 0.00c 0.00c se ± 1.27 3.88 4.57 3.70 4.90 4.51 2014 pendimethalin at 2kg a.i./ha 2.4 b 13.8b 65.7b 87.78a 81.70b 40.26c metholachlor + atrazine (2:1) at 2.64 kg a.i./ha 2.0b 16.3b 55.3b 90.95a 78.38b 49.71b atrazine at 3kg a.i./ha 2.1b 15.2b 56.9c 90.50a 79.84b 48.26b hoe-weeded at 3 and 6 was 2.5b 11.6b 14.2d 88.69a 84.62b 87.10a weedy 22.1a 75.4a 110.0a 0.00b 0.00c 0.00d se ± 0.80 2.58 11.44 4.14 6.52 5.53 note: means followed by the same letter(s) within a column in the same year are not significantly different at 5% level of probability using dmrt was* = weeks after sowing 3.5. weed percentage distribution in okra plots there were generally more broadleaf weed species than grass weed species, and grass weed species occurred more than sedges in the plots where the study was carried out. only spigellia anthelmia (an annual broadleaf weed species) and mariscus alternifolius (perennial sedge) were found in all the plots treated with pre-emergence herbicides and the weedy plots. twenty weed species were found in 2013 while twenty two occurred in 2014 (tables 5 and 6). solanum nigrum linn and triumfetta rhomboidea jacq which were not present in okra plots in 2013 were found only in okra plots that were hoe-weeded and the ones that received 2kg a.i./ha of butachlor, respectively, in 2014. mariscus alternifolius were the only sedge weed species present in the okra plots. there were generally more broadleaf weed species than grass weed species in the okra plots; the broadleaf weeds were 15 in 2013 and 16 in 2014. there were only four grass weed species observed in the experiment in both years. table 5: percentage distribution of weeds in okra plot in 2013 weed types in 2013 family herbicide rates (kg a.i./ha) meth+ annual broadleaves pend (2.0) atra (3.6) atra (3.3) hoe weeded weedy ageratum conyzoides linn. asteraceae 0.0 0.0 6.6 12.5 0.0 oldenlendia carymbosa linn. rubiaceae 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.9 phyllantus amarus schum. &thonn. euphorbiaceeae 3.4 6.3 0.0 0.0 8.7 solenostemon monostachyus p. beauv. lamiaceae 3.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 12.2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 149-159 156 spigelia anthelmia linn. perennial broadleaves loganiaceae 31.9 22.9 18.9 23.4 13.2 chromolaena odorata (l) r.m. king and robinson asteraceae 6.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 4.5 commelina benghalensis (linn.) commelinaceae 1.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 desmodium scopiurus sw. desv. leguminoseae 4.2 0.0 12.2 1.0 1.9 diodia sarmentosa (sw.) rubiaceae 5.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 ipomoea asarifolia (desvr.) roem & schult convolvulaceae 3.4 0.0 3.0 0.0 3.0 pouzolzia guineensis benth urticaceae 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.2 pueraria phaseoloides fabaceae 5.0 0.0 2.6 0.0 0.0 spermacoe ocymoides burm f. rubiaceae 0.0 0.0 5.9 0.0 0.6 talinum fruticosum (jacq.) willd. portulacaceae 6.3 19.6 7.6 0.0 3.7 triumfetta cordifolia a. rich tiliaceae 2.3 0.0 2.8 0.0 2.8 annual grasses rothboillia cochinchinensis (lour.) claton poaceae 0.0 0.0 2.6 0.0 0.0 setaria barbata (lam.) kunnth perennial grasses poaceae 0.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 panicum maximum jacq. poaceae 0.9 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 axonopus compressus (sw.) p. beau v. perennial sedge poaceae 3.1 14.6 15.0 9.6 0.0 mariscus alternifolius vahl cyperaceae 21.7 36.6 22.8 53.5 32.9 pendimethalin was not phytotoxic to okra in this study in two years. okra stand survival, number of leaves per plant, stem diameter and shoot dry weight in plots sprayed pendimethalin were similar to what was obtained in plots hoe-weeded at three and six weeks after sowing. adejoro and olopha (2013) reported that pendimenthalin at all the rates tested did not affect okra seed germination. similar outcomes reported by sah et al. (2018) showed that all the weed control treatments and weed free control apart from pendimethalin at 0.50kg/ ha (pendimethalin at 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5kg a.i./ha were involved in that study) significantly enhanced growth parameters, over weedy check. similarly, saleh and oyinbo (2017) suggested that farmers using hoe weeding and farmer’s technologies should be encouraged to adopt pendimethalin technology among others, in order to get more profit. table 6: percentage distribution of weeds in okra plots in 2014 weed types family herbicide rates (kg a.i./ha) meth+ annual broadleaves pend (2.0) atra (3.6) atra (3.3) hoe weeded weedy ageratum conyzoides linn. asteraceae 0.0 0.0 6.6 12.5 0.0 oldenlendia carymbosa linn. rubiaceae 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.9 phyllantus amarus schum. &thonn. euphorbiaceeae 3.4 6.3 0.0 0.0 8.7 solanum nigrum linn. solanaceae 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.5 solenostemon monostachyus p. beauv. lamiaceae 3.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 12.2 spigelia anthelmia linn. perennial broadleaves loganiaceae 35.9 15.5 15.8 41.8 14.4 chromolaena odorata (l) r.m. king and robinson asteraceae 4.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.6 commelina benghalensis (linn.) commelinaceae 1.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 desmodium scopiurus sw. desv. leguminoseae 4.6 16.8 15.1 58.8 2.4 diodia sarmentosa (sw.) rubiaceae 3.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 149-159 157 ipomoea asarifolia (desvr.) roem & schult convolvulaceae 4.0 0.0 1.4 0.0 1.1 pouzolzia guineensis benth urticaceae 0.0 7.7 0.0 0.0 1.3 pueraria phaseoloides fabaceae 4.0 2.1 3.5 0.0 0.0 spermacoe ocymoides burm f. rubiaceae 0.0 0.0 4.5 0.0 1.6 talinum fruticosum (jacq.) willd. portulacaceae 5.2 9.8 7.9 0.0 4.4 triumfetta cordifolia a. rich tiliaceae 2.2 0.0 1.3 0.0 2.0 triumfetta rhomboidea jacq. annual grasses tiliaceae 1.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 rothboillia cochinchinensis (lour.) claton poaceae 0.0 0.0 1.2 0.0 0.0 setaria barbata (lam.) kunnth perennial grasses poaceae 1.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.2 panicum maximum jacq. poaceae 1.9 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 axonopus compressus (sw.) p. beau v. perennial sedge poaceae 4.1 6.1 10.5 6.7 15.5 mariscus alternifolius vahl cyperaceae 20.6 35.1 30.5 17.4 34.1 imoloame and usman (2018) observed that pendimethalin is one of the herbicides frequently used for weed control in okra production in malete, kwara state, nigeria they adduced that this could be a result of its low price and obtainability in agro-chemical stores all the time. the phytotoxic level of metholachlor + atrazine (primextra) and atrazine to okra was similar. egwu et al. (2019) reported that the phytotoxicity of primextra to okra was high. aladesanwa (2005) also reported that atrazine significantly reduced total leaf area of the crop, plant height and the pod fresh weight relative to the control. okra percentage stand survival, number of leaves per plant and stem diameter were similar in plots treated with metholachlor + atrazine and atrazine, these were significantly less than what obtained in plots treated with pendimethalin and plots hoe-weeded, and were significantly greater than what was obtained in un-weeded plots. however, okra in plots sprayed with metholachlor + atrazine had superior stem height and shoot biomass than what was obtained in plots treated with atrazine. significant reduction in percentage okra seedlings survival per plot, number of leaves per plant, stem height and diameter, number of branches per plant, shoot biomass, indicating that preemergence application of atrazine at recommended rate of 3kg a.i./ha had phytotoxic effects on okra. this is in agreement with the findings of aladesanwa (2005) who reported the residual phytotoxic activities of atrazine on okra at the recommended dose of 3kg a.i./ha. he reported that atrazine significantly (p<0.05) reduced okra plant height, total leaf area and pod fresh weight relative to the control. the three herbicides had similar weed control efficiency which were superior to what was obtained in un-weeded control plots but less effective at 8 was relative to plots hoe-weeded at 3 and 6 was. 4. conclusion okra was tolerant of pendimethalin at 2kg a.i./ha, moderately tolerant of metholachlor+atrazine at 2.64kg a.i./ha while atrazine at 3kg a.i./ha was severely phytotoxic. three herbicides effectively controlled weed in the environment. okra was not tolerant to pre-emergence application of atrazine at 3kg a.i./ha, there was decrease in okra stand establishment and shoot dry weight relative to what was obtained in the hoe-weeded plots. atrazine was not suitable for pre-emergence weed control in okra at that 3kg a.i./ha. plots that received pre-emergence application of pedimethalin at 2kg a.i./ha had similar okra stand establishment and produced comparable okra shoot dry weight with plots hoe-weeded at three and six weeks after sowing and effectively controlled weed. the suitability of pendimethalin for weed control in okra in the rainforest ecological zone of asaba, nigeria has asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 149-159 158 therefore been established; pendimethalin should be among the herbicides to be considered for weed control in okra at asaba, nigeria. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adeboye, o. c., & oputa, c. o. 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(2020). effectiveness of weed management practices in groundnut (arachis hypogaea). journal of research in weed science, 3(2), 120-253. https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/wg032 https://sclalert.net/abstract/?dol=ajbs.2019.518.523 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=stueve%20t%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20194757 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=gallipeau%20s%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=20194757 https://doi.org/10.2298/jas1804379i http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jae.v21i1.12 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 47 upgrading rural youths’ capacity for driving shrimp-based agribusiness value chain in nigeria achoja felix odemero a gbigbi theophilus miebi a, ikpoza eguono aramide a, denghan janet ebidenere a a department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria  achojafelix@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 08-nov-2019 accepted: 20-feb-2020 online available: 02-mar2020 keywords: rural youths, capacity upgrading, captured-shrimp agribusiness value chain, nigeria abstract this study derives its significance from the current debate on ageing agricultural labour force in nigeria and the need for capacity building of rural youth. this study investigates rural youth capacity for driving shrimp-based agribusiness development in nigeria. data for the study were obtained from primary sources using a structured questionnaire with randomly selected 120 shrimp operators (harvesters, processors and marketers). statistical analytical tools (descriptive and inferential statistics) were employed to analyze the collected data. test of the hypothesis implies that the mean income earned by youth is significantly (p < 0.01) higher that the income of aged workforce in the shrimp agribusiness value chain. further finding shows that human capital of youth (shrimp-oriented education, training, workshops attended and access to credit) has a positive and significant (p < 0.01) effect on their financial performance. incentives such as loans and aquaculture-oriented education and regular workshops should be given to the rural youth to upgrade their capacity to drive the development of shrimp-based agribusiness in nigeria in the future. contribution/ originality the study provides empirical information for rural youths’ inclusion policy for shrimp-based agribusiness, an understudied segment in nigeria, and it is one of the latest investigations that highlight family agribusiness succession theory. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.47.55 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite achoja felix odemero, gbigbi theophilus miebi, ikpoza eguono aramide and denghan janet ebidenere (2020). upgrading rural youths’ capacity for driving shrimp-based agribusiness value chain in nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 47-55. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 47-55 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:achojafelix@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.47.55 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9705-4923 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 47-55 48 1. introduction shrimp (penaus notialis) belongs to the family penaeidae. it is a species of small aquatic animal belonging to the sub-phylum of crustaceans including lobster and crayfish (amos and amos, 1997; lawal-are and akinjogunla, 2012). it is a proteinase sea food that is popular in the diets of most consumers all over the world including nigeria with no cultural restrictions. figure 1: shrimp (penaeus monodon) china is well known for the origin of shrimp. as from 1988 to 1992, china was known to be the leading shrimp producer and contributed up to one million metric tonnes of the world shrimp output in 2000 (essays uk, 2018). but as it stands, thailand is the biggest producer and exporter of shrimp and has taken over china. thus asia is known to be the major supplier in the global shrimp market (shang et al., 1998; ling and leung, 1999). shrimp together with other aquaculture products contribute 0.96% of gdp of india (government of india, 2019). it has international trade value term of us$12 billion (bene and heck, 2005). in nigeria shrimp business started around the 1950s (chemonic, 2002). the aquaculture industry has grown significantly over the years, although its full potential has not yet been realized. more and speedy development is required to satisfy the growing in demand for shrimp in the world. a recent research effort to investigate the emerging shrimp market (onashe, 2018; achoja, 2019) highlighted shrimp market chain as the driver of economic development in nigeria. nigeria has a population of 140 million (npc, 2006) with a growth rate of 3.2%. few operators ranging from 8.23 to 18.27 million people are employed in the aquaculture value chain (including shrimp) (anyanwu et al., 2011). aged aquaculture farmers that are willing to continue in operational existence in the future will have a different factor combination compared to those who have intention to continue to engage in operation. also farmers of different ages have different human capacities and investment choices (guo et al., 2015). the consequential shortfall of human capital and the dearth of skilled manpower in shrimp value chain can only be addressed through youth inclusion and organization of shrimp culture -oriented training workshops. the demographic characteristics of the relevant players especially age classifications; the shrimp value is very fundamental to its development. support services such as input supplies, research and development, finance, market information flow, cooperative formation and management with respect to consumer preferences as important drivers of the growth and development of shrimp chain deserve critical analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 47-55 49 available evidence describes african agro-based actors as an ageing population and a relatively high unemployment rate of youth, (75%), yet youth is agent and beneficiary of development (omodafe, 2018). for instance, human capital development index, their financial performance the aged labour population and youth inclusion rate in shrimp value chain actors, deserve a thorough investigation in the present context youth inclusion rate is operationally defined as the proportion of youth participation in the shrimp value chain. youth inclusion in shrimpbased business presents some merits in terms of employment, long term safe take-over and survival of the sector in the future. a good proportion of agriculturalrelated business in nigeria has the feature of youth involvement. empirical studies reported the involvement of in business. involvement of youth in shrimp value chain activities has the potential of reducing the challenge of the ageing farm population. there is a significant wild shrimp capture in the industry that is capable of generating usd 57 million and annually for foreign exchange (chemonic, 2002). nigeria is among tropical countries endowed with rich shrimp resources. according to dublin-green and tobor (1992), the coastal waters of nigeria are characterized by an abundance of important living resources including shrimp. with a production capacity of 12,000 metric tons (mt) per year, nigeria’s shrimp supply is presently from capture fisheries (dublin-green and tobor, 1992). increasing human population and the soaring per capita demand for shrimp has created a demandsupply gap. nigeria has natural supply of shrimps, but with the declining shrimp capture there is a need to scale up shrimp aquaculture value chain operations. nigeria is regarded as a potential frontier in the shrimp business because of its numerous coastal and mangrove areas. presently, nigeria has low shrimp value chain development. the potential can be maximized active youth participation is expected to boost in areas such as shrimp input supply, artisans shrimp harvesting, processing, marketing (i.e. wholesale and retailing) and transportation (achoja, 2019). the concern for a well functional value chain that drives growth, employment and economic prosperity among fisher folk has generated growing research interest and debates in recent times. the relationship between activities of the value chain and financial benefits to youth is necessary to justify their inclusion and investment in the shrimp business. it has been suggested that the development of aquaculture value chain in nigeria is hampered by inactive youth participation (ogbonna, 2001). profit is the bottom line of every business and has the ability to sustain the interest of investors in business (achoja, 2013). against this back drop, a critical analysis of the profit performance of youth participants in shrimp value chain is warranted. the study reported financial information on participating youth in shrimp value chain and how it can sustain the industry in nigeria. reporting financial information of participating youth in shrimp value chain can encourage more youth participation and the development of the shrimp industry. furthermore, the quitting preference of elderly operators from shrimp value chain has been declared in previous work (achoja, 2019). the decreasing number of young farmers is worrisome tendency over past decades in america and european countries. the european union has employed a strategy of young farmer payment to address the age imbalance. the strategy provides an extra payment on the average base payment as spelt out in the common agricultural policy reform (may et al., 2019). unless this is dealt with, the progress and future sustainability of the shrimp industry will be bleak at best. as it stands, strategic inclusion of youth in shrimp value chain has been understudied. human capital could impact youth’ profitability in shrimp value chain. yet empirical information on the relationship between human capital and performance of youth in shrimp value chain is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 47-55 50 lacking in literature. this study is important in bridging this knowledge gap. this study was therefore conceived, conceptualized and conducted to extend the frontier of knowledge on the exit rate of the aged people and the entry rate of youth in the shrimp industry. the objective of the study should be arranged as: i. describe the shrimp – based agribusiness value chain mapping; ii. examine the financial performance of youth and aged operators in shrimp value chain; iii. determine the effect of human capital (hc) on the financial performance of youths in shrimp value chain. the following hypothesis were formulated and tested to guide the study: ho1: human capital has no significant effect on the financial performance of youth operators in shrimp value chain. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study area, sampling techniques and sample size the study was carried out in delta state, nigeria in 2018. the study area was selected for the investigation because shrimp business is the source of livelihood to on any people in the area. the common languages of deltan people are english, urhobo, isoko, ijaw and itsekiri. the mangrove swamp forest is common delta state with annual rainfall ranging from about 2500mm – 2800mm. fishing activities including artisans shrimp are the dominant economic activity of the people. the population for the study included the shrimp producers, processors and marketers in the shrimp value chain in the study area. a multiple sampling process was systematically used to obtain the sample for study from the sampling frame. the sampling frame (a list of operators) was generated from the list of registered shrimp producers, processors and marketers in the shrimp value chain in the study area. systematic sampling technique was used to draw the sample of 120 respondents. the breakdown of the sample is as follows: six communities were involved in the study. in each community, on the basis of the relatively few shrimp producers and processors, 10 shrimp producers, 10 processor and 20 marketers were selected randomly. this gave a total of 240 respondents. 2.2. methods of data collection and analysis primary data were used for the study. questionnaire was a data collection instrument that was used. the data for this study were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. the level of profitability in shrimp value chain was achieved using the profit function as following 𝑁𝑖 = 𝑇𝑅 − 𝑇𝐶 …………………………. (1) where: ni = net income tr = total revenue tc = total cost (total variable cost + total fixed cost) the effect of human capital on the financial performance of youths in shrimp value chain was achieved by simple regression equation presented as: youths’ financial performance factors 𝜋𝑦 = 𝑓(𝐻𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑐𝑎𝑝𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙) …………………………. (2) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 47-55 51 the model is presented explicitly as: 𝜋𝑦 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐻𝑐𝑎𝑝 + 𝑒𝑖 …………………………. (3) 3. results and discussion 3.1. description of captured shrimp-based agribusiness value chain map in nigeria the captured shrimp agribusiness value chains mapping in nigeria in figure. 1 shows the support services such as input supplies, research and development, finance, market information flow, cooperative formation and management with respect to consumer preferences as important drivers of growth and development of shrimp value chain deserve critical analysis. figure 1: adapted and modified from smehro (2008). a value chains marketing system. from the focus group discussion held with the relevant stakeholders, the shrimp value chain in value chains analytical framework in figure 1 shows the structural linkages of the players in shrimp value chain/input suppliers, artisan’s shrimpers, processors, traders and final consumers. service request service response research & development f lo w o f sh ri m p c o n su m er p re fe re n ce s an d i n fo rm at io n f lo w o f sh ri m p shrimping equipment shrimp consumer whole salers shrimp processor shrimp harvesters input suppliers finance asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 47-55 52 input suppliers send improved and new technology and financial services request signals to r&d and finance component of the chain. finance is the life-blood of the value chain. all the components of the chain require finance for proper functioning. so financial and technology service responses are generated by the financial sector and r&d respectively. value chain is the connectivity of business actors and activities geared towards the flow of value in addition to a particular product line from input suppliers’ end to product consumption end. the shrimp value chain development is enhanced by the financial sector and services provided by r&d. the captured shrimp-based agribusiness value chain in nigeria can be described as follows: the captured-shrimp value chain comprises of shrimp harvesters, shrimp processors and shrimp marketers. captured-shrimp harvesters are basically artisans’ harvesters of shrimp from the warri river and its tributaries in nigeria. they take advantage of fishing gears such as nets and baskets. the means of transportation are canoeing and sometimes engine boats (achoja, 2019). a shrimp harvester could harvest and sell an average of 50kg of shrimp per month. shrimp processors purchased the fresh shrimps from the harvesters they de-head, cook and smoke-dry it with fuel wood as source of energy. a shrimp processor could process and sell 150kg of smoke dried shrimp in a month. shrimp marketers are the first buyers and secondary sellers of the processed shrimp. shrimp marketers are categorized into shrimp wholesalers and retailers. shrimp wholesalers buy the processed shrimp in bulk from the processors and sell in small units to the retailers who finally sell to the ultimate consumers of shrimp at the end of the value chain. table 1: profit performance of youths and aged operators in shrimp value chain s. no. operators total revenue ($) investment (total cost) ($) net income ($) net income/investment ratio (bcr) 1 input suppliers youth 102.97 32.14 57 1.77 old people 83.33 40 43.33 1.08 2 producers youth 272.42 28.61 203.33 7.86 old people 195.83 28.61 167.22 5.84 3 processors youth 157.43 46.11 111.32 2.41 old people 111.81 11.25 100.56 8.93 4 marketers wholesalers youth 140.61 37.97 74.86 2.70 old people 117.50 65.28 51.39 0.80 retailers youth 84.72 40.28 66.67 1.66 old people 99.17 47.08 52.08 1.11 3.2. mean profit performance of the aged and youth operators in shrimp agribusiness youth = 56.94+ 218.33 + 111.32 + 102.64 + 66.67 = 555.90 5 = $111.18 aged = 43.33 + 100.56 + 52.22 + 52.08 = $415.42 5 = $27.53 table 1 present the distribution of profit performance of youth and aged operators in shrimp value chain in the study area. the result shows that all the youth in shrimp value chain earned an average of $111.18 per month while the aged operators earned an average income of $27.53 per month. this result implies that the youth though few in number, earned more income per operator than the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 47-55 53 aged operators. this finding agrees with omodafe (2018) who reported a high financial performance among youth in aquaculture. table 2: human capital as a determinant of financial performance of youths in captured shrimp-based agribusiness value chain variable ols estimate t-value constant 0.019 0.973 human capital 0.074 12.986** ** and * significant at 1% and 5% level respectively. r2(adj) = 42% youths financial performance (ּתy ) = f (human capital ) y = 0.019 + 0.074hc + µּת (0.973) (12.986**) …………………….. (4) table 2 and equation 4 shows the result of ols estimated relationship between human capital of youth and their financial performance in shrimp value chain. this finding demonstrates that human capital of youth (education and workshops attended) has a positive and significant (p < 0.01) effect on their financial performance. the result suggests that an additional year spent in school plus additional workshop attended on shrimp related business will translate to 0.07% increase in their financial performance in shrimp value chain. years spent in school and workshops attended must have boosted the human capital of youth and hence their contribution to the development of shrimp value chain. young operators will not be capable of optimizing their operations in shrimp value chain without information networking and professional education. this finding supports the earlier report of dev and hossain (1996) who reported that agricultural knowledge oriented education has a significant effect on agricultural output (including shrimp business). also borisov et al. (2019) concluded that the application of education, innovation and knowledge is the key factors of success among young operators in agro-based enterprises. 4. conclusion the thrust of this study was to investigate how upgrading of youth’ capacity can drive the development in shrimp-based agribusiness value chain in nigeria. we found out that although, youth operators were few in the agribusiness chain, they generated more financial resources to the economy of the aged counterparts. this implies that youth operators are the major agents that drive growth of the shrimp sub-sector in nigeria. another noteworthy result achieved was the validation of the research hypothesis that youth’s capacity upgrading through relevant education, training, workshops and credit access (human capital) proved to be positively correlated with financial performance and hence the development of shrimp value chain in nigeria. confirming with previous literature reviewed, youthful strength and resourcefulness would influence financial performance of shrimp agribusiness value chain. human capital exerted a positive influence on the financial performance of the youth in the value chain. human capital of youth in shrimp value chain therefore, should be viewed as a source of impetus to the development and growth of the shrimp industry in nigeria. youths are important agents of development of shrimp-based value chain. as a result, youth participation in aquaculture oriented education should be encouraged by the state. we suggest that more youth should be given opportunities and incentives to operate better in the shrimp agribusiness value chain. upgrading the capacity of the youth operators will require strategies such as access to loans and shrimp oriented human capital development programme to encourage their participation in shrimp value chain. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 47-55 54 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references achoja, f. o. 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(1998). comparative economics of shrimp farming in asia. aquaculture, 164(1-4), 183-200. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0044-8486(98)00186-0. smehro (2008). a value chain marketing system. retrieved from https://smehro.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/value-chain-marketing-system. http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/y2859e/y2859e00.htm effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 406 farmers’ attitude and behavior toward savings in ika south local government area of delta state, nigeria rodney akpoviri isiorhovoja a, solomon okeoghene ebewore a, salome nwachi a a delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria  raisiorhovoja@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 24-jan-2020 accepted: 04-may-2020 online available: 17-jun2020 keywords: commercial banks, experience, farmers’ needs, income abstract the study ascertained the attitude of farmers towards saving behaviour in ika south local government area of delta state, nigeria. the data were collected by questionnaires and analyzed using descriptive statistics and logistic regression. the results revealed that the mean age of respondents was 47 years, majority of farmers’ were male (62%) and had formal education (66.2%), mean household size was four persons and farm size had a mean of 2.9 hectares. farmers have a positive attitude towards saving but were not comfortable with commercial banks. they, however, seek alternative avenues for savings. level of education, farm size, and years of farming experience were significant determinants of savings. three top challenges to savings were inadequate income, family responsibility, and cost of inputs. it was recommended that policies that increase farm size/boost farm income be pursued and that commercial banks should pay particular attention to the needs of farmers in service administration to encourage them to develop a positive attitude towards commercial banks. contribution/ originality the paper identified the causes of low savings among rural farmers in delta state, nigeria. it also categorized the poor saving habits of farmers with commercial banks. solutions were thus provided along with the causes/nature of the challenges to saving identified. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.406.419 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: rodney akpoviri isiorhovoja, solomon okeoghene ebewore and salome nwachi (2020). farmers’ attitude and behavior toward savings in ika south local government area of delta state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 406-419. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 406-419 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:raisiorhovoja@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.406.419 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3722-2451 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4906-7914 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 406-419 407 1. introduction equity and debt are the two types of investment funds available to any business (sitharam and hoque, 2016). they are obtainable from two broad sources namely; informal or non-institutional sources and the formal or institutional sources (fadeyi, 2018). funds from the informal sources may be from personal/farm business saving, friends, and relatives. loans from friends and relatives are usually interest-free but very limited in supply terms of the needs of the farmers. local farmers also obtain loans from a rotating saving scheme. it is locally called “esusu” or “isusu” or “osusu” in nigeria, depending on the dialect of the individual. it is a type of self-help for accessing a relatively high volume of loans either by rotation or at request (fadeyi, 2018). beyond the esusu is the farmers’ cooperative society the operation of which is guided by rules, regulations, and by-laws provided by the designated state/federal government ministry. hence in strict classification, it is described as semi-formal (silong and gadanakis, 2019) or quasi source. still part of informal sources of loan is the private money lenders. this source of loan is characterized by the prohibitive interest rates charged on the borrowed fund. they therefore only serve as last resort to smallholder farmers. fadeyi (2018) recommend that it is better to avoid them. formal sources of funds are outright loans (debt) funds. they come from widely varied sources in terms of agency and instruments for loan delivery. here, the use of commercial banks as a source of loan funds to the smallholder to medium enterprise farmers is assuming greater importance notwithstanding the stiff conditions for obtaining such loans and the high-interest rate charged (fadeyi, 2018) coupled with the high competition from investors, especially from the industrial sector. these factors acting together effectively curtail loan access by farmers such as to make for poor access (rahji and adeoti, 2010). commercial banks' unwillingness to advance adequate volume and the number of loans to the smallholder farmers may be further accounted for by the non-realization of expected impacts of such loans (fadeyi, 2018). this conclusion was reached by the author after reviewing 59 relevant articles. however, the existence of a positive correlation between loan and farm output is not removed (oyelade et al., 2019). the scale of development activity could affect the relevance of any loan source to an intending borrower since the capacity of a particular loan source to meet the loan requirement of a development project may be grossly inadequate. waniak et al. (2018) for example, do not recognize personal savings and funds from friends and family as a source of financing development activity but give high recognition to bank loans, leasing, franchise, and capital market. these sources of credit funds which attracts relatively low-interest rate we have noted are not easily accessible to the resource-poor farmers, hence sources such as capital market, leasing and franchise may not also be recognized or counted as sources of loan for the resource-poor farmer. farmers are resource-poor and farm productivity and output are low whereas the average size of the farm family is large (anderson et al., 2017). farm income alone is therefore inadequate to satisfy the family consumption needs. that these farmers save at all, therefore, requires a deliberate determination to defer current consumption. thus savings made whether in cash or kind can hardly be adequate for the farm business needs. this is to say that farmers’ savings as a source of investment fund for agriculture (odoemenem et al., 2013) are hidebound. however, saving enhances the framers’ credit rating for loan access and serves as a risk management strategy (zeller and sharma, 2000). that saving enhances farmers’ access to credit further amplify the compulsion to save if the farmers must access bank loans. apart from farm income, various other factors influence farmers’ saving ability. these factors replete economics literature, however, some of them are the willingness to save, educational level, and occupation, among others. these variables change over time and responses to them also vary depending on the socioeconomic environments (anang et al., 2015) and the personal characteristics asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 406-419 408 of the individual farmer which also, is subject to change. research results from one area may therefore not reflect adequately conditions in another area neither can it be valid for all time, hence the need for continuous studies which will facilitate keeping tab of the changing socioeconomic environment to influence it in favour of effective management of the attitude and behaviour of farmers towards saving. agriculture as a major employer of labour in nigeria engages about 70% of the population. by this, agriculture serves as a source of income to a large proportion of the population. however, the sector provides a low capacity for savings, worse still a capacity that is on a downturn. thus agriculture offers little or no opportunity for escaping out of the cycle of poverty (albu and scott, 2001; anderson et al., 2017) without elaborate intervention. given that the factors that influence saving vary over time and that they too can be influenced, successive governments in nigeria have over time, tried many policies and programmes to boost farmers’ saving behaviour some of which are the rural banking scheme which became operational in 1977, the bank of agriculture (boa) which existed under different names and scope from 1973 until 2000 when it was so christened after the merging of two other poverty alleviation programmes and, the agricultural credit guarantee scheme fund (acgsf) of 1978 among others, to facilitate access to credit, expand farm business, boost farm output and income and generate surplus for saving and to bolster equity fund to the farm business. it is therefore rational to expect that the factors which influence farmers’ ability to save may have changed; hence the question as to what is the attitude of farmers to saving given the relatively increased spread of banking facilities across delta state, nigeria and what is their saving behavior given government support programmes. there are several published research papers on farmers’ saving habits across the globe. some of these authors like: obayelu (2012) did his work on kwara state, nigeria; osondu et al. (2015) worked on abia state; anang et al. (2015) studied the tolon-kumbungu district of ghana; and ghafoor et al. (2010) who studied the situation in the punjab district of pakistan, among others. obayelu (2012) identified economic reasons why saving behavior in developing economies may deviate from what obtains in the developed worlds. beyond these, empirical research lends credence to both the attitudinal and behavioral nature saving. this informs the topic under review. the word attitude comes from the latin word aptus which means to be in good shape and prepared for action. attitude is not directly observable but it is largely believed to precede behavior and to also guide choices and decisions (hogg and vaughan, 2005). there are three components to it; namely, (i) thought and ideas, (ii) feelings of likes and dislikes and, (iii) behavior. hogg and vaughan (2005) opine that behavior is hinged on a lasting system of beliefs and feelings and, subsequently, directed towards objects which are considered significant socially. such an object in this circumstance will include savings itself and the various programmes and institutions put in place to generate savings and mobilize them. the broad objective of this study is to determine farmers’ attitudes and behavior toward saving. the specific objectives are to: i. determine the attitude of farmers towards saving ii. determine the behavior of farmers towards saving iii. identify the factors that affect saving, and iv. identify challenges to saving by farmers. the hypotheses tested were: i. ho1: farmers attitude towards saving is not positive ii. ho2: socioeconomic factors have no significant effect on farmers’ saving behavior asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 406-419 409 2. materials and methods the study area is ika south local government area (lga), situated to the north west of delta state nigeria, with its headquarters at agbor, the only commercial town. delta state is bounded by longitude 50 and 60 451 east and latitude 50 201 and 60 301 north of the equator. the choice of delta state was informed by its proximity to the authors, more importantly by the fact that the state is oil-producing. crude oil exploration and exploitation have seriously degraded farmlands and many individuals have quit farming in preference for non-existing jobs in the petroleum sector, interestingly citizens of the lga considered in this study remain in their farmland. the choice of this lga is founded on a combination of economic and commercial factors. for economic reasons, ika south lga is about the food basket of the state. farming is the major occupation of this lga. all the women, men, and children are involved. the use of motorcycles and bicycles for farming activities are very popular here, a phenomenon that can hardly be found elsewhere in the state. major staple food crops of cassava and all its derivatives, yam, banana, and plantain are produced here. fruits and vegetables such as pineapple, oranges, and pumpkin leaf are also produced in the lga. apart from agbor, the lga headquarters, and the only commercial city, the rural markets in the lga attract traders from most of the state; traders who come to buy food items for sale, some in the major markets across the state and others in community retails shops. thus commerce as secondary occupation is essentially agriculture-based carried out by middlemen who buy at the farm gate for resale on market days for a margin. unfortunately, however, there is a palpable deficit in the spread of banks in rural farming communities. the commercial banks are concentrated at the lga headquarters, thus likely to have an adverse effect on the banking habits and the attitude to saving and saving practices of these farmers. this curious scenario raises several questions as to: (i) what is the farmers’ view of banking? and (ii) what is their attitude to saving and saving practices? the field survey was conduct november in 2018. respondents were drawn using a multistage sampling procedure. the first stage was the purposive sampling of five wards from the 19 wards in the lga where agriculture is the major economic activity. the second stage was the random selection of 35 farmers from each selected ward, hence a sample size of 175. however, 150 of the returned copies of the questionnaire were admissible for this study. there were three sections in the questionnaire. section a collected information on the personal identity and socioeconomic characteristics of the farmers, section b collected information on attitude to saving and, section c elicited information on saving behavior. questions on attitude to saving and saving behavior were adapted from furnham (1999). they were presented on a four-point likert type scale with scores as strongly disagree (1), disagree (2), agree (3), and strongly agree (4) or as a binary variable of yes (1) and no (0). items in the questionnaire would be found in tables 2 to 4. data were analyzed with the aid of ibm spss statistic 20 using descriptive statistics (frequency count, mean, and standard deviation to summarize the data) and logistic regression. hypothesis one, that is, farmers' attitude towards saving is not above average was tested using a one-sample t-test with 2.50 as the test value. hypothesis two, that is, socioeconomic factors have no significant effect on farmers’ saving behavior was tested using logistic regression. the logistic regression model is stated as: ze zf   1 1 )( …………………… (1) where: )(zf is the binary dependent variable of the farmers who save (1) or do not save (0). the exponent of the predictor variables (e-z) represents the log-odds in favour of the respondent that does not save and z is a vector of predictor variables specified as: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 406-419 410 nn xbxbxbbz ...22110  ……………………. (2) socio economic characteristics of farmers x1 = age of farmer (age) x2 = educational level (edu) x3 = sex x4 = number of year of farming experience (nope) x5 = farm size (fs) x6 = do you have a regular source of income? (dhrsoi) logistic regression is commonly applied in the analysis of actions with binary outcomes. chauke, motlhatlhana et al., 2013; isaga, 2018; and silong and gadanakis, 2019) applied it in identifying the determinants of access to credit. equation 2 is the explicit model of logistic regression. gerharda et al. (2018) worked on a similar subject but used what they called finite mixture models by which they separated the observed data into two sub-components based on their presumption that members of the population belong to two unobserved sub-components. differences in sociodemographic characteristics form the basis for separation with the implicit assumption that elements of the two subpopulations will respond differently to a set of psychological factors that are expected to affect saving behavior. 3. results and discussion 3.1. socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents table 1 shows the socioeconomic characteristics of respondents. their ages ranged from 23 to 82 years with a mean of 47 years as against nigeria’s life expectancy of 54 years (arikpo et al., 2019). out of the 150 respondents, 38% (57) were female and 62 % (94) were male. male, therefore, constitute the majority of the farming population (anderson et al., 2017). this average age of farmers collaborates those of (adepoju and olapade, 2015; ademola and abang, 2015; and adedejebi, 2019). the average age of 47 is delicately close to the life expectancy of nigeria of 54 years and 13 years short of the official retirement age of 60 years, though it may not apply to farmers. but access to credit is negatively related to age (aladejebi et al., 2018), thus there is a trade-off between age and access to bank credit, the need to balance whatever benefits that accompany age in farming with the credit access needs of farmers to financial institutions is indicated. furthermore, farm income-generating ability declines with age. adepoju and olapade (2015) observe that age and poverty have a negative correlation such that as the farmers get older farm income decreases and poverty increases. there is therefore a message for policymakers about farmers' age structure, the need to facilitate the entrant of youths into the farming business is signaled. about 34% of respondents had no formal education. in other words, the majority (66.2%) of the respondents had varying levels of formal education. a higher level of education makes for a higher likelihood of technology adoption (ferrante and sabatini, 2007) and financial literacy. education opens up the mind, thus makes the farmer receptive to new and relevant technology and thereby constitutes a key driver of agricultural development (anik et al., 2017). a positive correlation exists between education and farm output and productivity (oduro et al., 2014); thus education is essential for the growth of the sector. a relatively high proportion of the respondents (52.00%) were either single (44.67%) or single again (7.33%), thus 48% were married. marital status affects access to credit. married farmers are viewed as more responsible and capable of loan repayment (aladejebi et al., 2018) than the single, hence preferred in loan access. that less than 50% are married may therefore not be a healthy asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 406-419 411 development for loan access. knowledge of this by the single farmers could discourage establishing a relationship with the banking system. closely related to age is farming experience in terms of the number of years of involvement in farming activities. the mean number of years of experience which ranged from 1 to 36 years is 8.28 years. experience is a component of human capital. however, it could also be a harbinger of resistant to change (igwe et al., 2018) hence a balance needs to be struck between the aging farming population and new and young entrants if the sector is to be sustained both in terms of time and in terms of growth and development. household sizes ranged from 2 to 10 with a mean of 4 persons. farm sizes were small ranging from 1 to 8 hectares with a mean of 2.9. this is higher than the national average of 1.9 hectares (anderson et al., 2017), but maybe below economic size. table 1: distribution of respondents on socio-economic characteristics variable frequency percentage age 23-32 33-42 43-52 53-62 63-72 73-82 total 37 30 26 17 17 23 150 24.67 20.00 17.33 11.33 11.33 15.34 100.0 sex of farmers female male total 57 93 150 38.00 62.00 100.0 education level no formal education nd/nce bachelor/hnd postgraduate total 51 46 24 29 150 34.00 30.67 16.00 19.33 100.0 marital status single married single again total 67 72 11 150 44.67 48.00 7.33 100.0 number of years of farming experience 1-9 10-18 19-27 28-36 total 25 28 47 50 150 16.67 18.67 31.33 33.33 100.0 source: field survey, 2018 3.2. attitude towards saving the issue sort to be determined here is the readiness and preparedness of farmers to save, that is, what they think about money, their perspective of money (arifin, 2018). hence the interest is on their financial knowledge. farmers’ scores in all 19 items of attitude towards saving are presented in table 4.2. the scores were generally high for items that encourage saving and relatively low for items that discourage saving. this indicates that the respondents have high financial asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 406-419 412 awareness/knowledge. for example, not one farmer disagreed with item (i) “it is important to save”. this response indicates the desire to save. that they all agreed to this item could imply a readiness to save if their capacity to save and if the institutional conditions for saving are favourable. farmers (79.50%) do not like owing debt (item vii). this could be a reaction to the submission that traditional bank loans may not be supportive of small to medium enterprises (smes) at some stages of the firm’s life cycle (oecd, 2015). they try to save as a matter of habit and saving is usually for precautionary reasons (94.70%) (item v & iii). unfortunately, 91.40% of respondents are in search of alternative ways of saving (item iv) since they do not appear to be very comfortable with banking practices and maintaining bank account (items x and xi). they desire to have a lot of money (items xii and xiv) thus they are frugal and prefer credit purchases to cash purchases (items xii and xix, xvi and xviii). all these sum up to indicate the financial awareness of the respondents and their positive attitude to saving. such conditions make for healthy financial practices (arifin, 2018) and positively affect financial behaviour. positive attitude towards saving engenders the desire to save and invest in the farm business. with expanded farm business and attendant higher volume of output and profit, financial planning will assume greater importance in the activities of these farmers (arifin, 2018). the respondents are aware that savings come from income and the desire to have “a lot of money” (items xiii and xiv) which can only come from an expanded and profitable farm business. 3.3. test of ho1 : farmer's attitude towards saving is not above average the mean scores of respondents on all attitudinal items were subjected to a one sample t-test using 2.50 as a test value for the hypothesis “farmers' attitudes towards saving is not above average” the overall mean score was 2.59 with a standard deviation of 0.31. the result (t = 7.63, df = 150, p = .04) was significant at 5% critical level. hence the null hypothesis that farmers’ attitudes towards saving are below average is rejected and the alternative accepted. in other words, farmers’ attitude towards saving is positive, they have a mindset to save. table 2: respondents attitude towards saving no. variables sd d a sa mean std. dev. i. it is important to save 22(14.6) 129(85.4) 3.85 ii you cannot get far without saving 7(4.6) 9(6.0) 58(38.4) 77(51.0) 3.36 iii i believe in putting some money aside for a rainy day 3(2.0) 5(3.3) 101(66.9) 42(27.8) 3.21 iv i am interested in looking at different ways of saving money 3(2.0) 10(6.6) 105(69.5) 33(21.9) 3.11 v i have always tried to save 3.08 vi i believe in making my own money 3(2.0) 22(14.6) 95(62.9) 31(20.5) 3.02 vii. i don’t like being a debtor 13(8.6) 18(11.9) 93(61.6) 27(17.9) 2.89 viii. i only save for something special 6(4.0) 54(35.8) 71(47.0) 20(13.2) 2.70 ix never seem to have enough money 16(10.6) 45(29.0) 77(51.0) 13(8.6) 2.58 x. bank account is an everyday necessity 18(11.9) 55(36.4) 54(35.3) 24(15.9) 2.56 xi. modern people use cheque and card not cash 17(11.3) 70(46.4) 45(29.8) 19(12.6) 2.44 xii i love going for shopping 26(17.2) 75(49.7) 28(18.5) 22(14.6) 2.30 xiii having a lot of money has never been my target in life 37(24.5) 74(49.0) 26(17.2) 14(9.3) 2.11 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 406-419 413 xiv i don’t mind if i do not have much money 35(23.2) 74(49.0) 32(21.2) 10(6.6) 2.11 xv i never pay for something if i can get credit 16(10.6) 92(60.9) 29(19.2) 14(9.3) 2.27 xvi. i tend to spend money as soon as i get it 48(31.8) 64(42.4) 22(14.6) 17(11.3) 2.05 xvii i don’t believe i will be ever wealthy 32(31.2) 90(59.6) 22(14.6) 7(4.6) 2.03 xviii. money is for spending not for holding onto 86(57.0) 19(12.6) 3422.5) 12(7.9) 1.81 xix. every once in a while like to go on a big spending spree 81(53.6) 34(22.5) 22(14.6) 14(9.3) 1.79 source: field survey, 2018 note: sd is strongly disagreed; d is disagreed; a is agree, and sa strongly agrees. figures in parentheses are percentages of total respondents 3.4. behaviour towards saving ali et al. (2015) and yonga et al. (2018) submitted that high financial knowledge positively influences saving and thus saving behaviour. the healthy saving attitude of the respondents has earlier been observed. why they save and where they save are important in this section. table 3 shows the items of farmers’ behavior for saving. most farmers (80%) save. anderson et al. (2017) have it that saving is common but not through formal methods. the major reasons for saving are spread across a wide spectrum. only the primary reasons for saving are shown in table 3. the emergency (precautionary) reason is at the top (29.16%) followed by children’s education (25%). special purchases and “simply to have money put aside”, both of which could be said to be speculative reasons, are next with 20% each way. these are the theoretical reasons for holding money taught in macroeconomic texts. the “simply to have money put aside” motive could have an underlying influence of parental background. salikin et al. (2012) submitted that education and level of household income have a negative correlation with the likelihood to save. in other words, the poorer the parents, the higher the likelihood of the offspring saving. hence when there is no felt need to save, the inculcated practice of saving may underlie the saving behaviour of the individual farmer from low socioeconomic stratum. as to what proportion of income respondents save, the answer varied widely. about 64.20% of farmers save 50% or more of their income. this is impressive. but where they save and what the denominator of this percentage is are equally important. the fact that credit still effectively constraints farming activities may indicate the paltry denominator of such saving/income percentage. the resulting measly amount saved may be consumed during the slack period when harvest is being awaited. about 52.50% of farmers (table 3) have no bank account. this finding is in agreement with the finding of anderson et al. (2017) who submitted that notwithstanding the widespread saving practice among smallholder farmers, it is done outside the formal banking system. hence a good proportion of 64.20% of farmers who save 50% or more of their income do so through informal methods. the absence of any formal relationship with the bank adversely affects loan access (aladejebi et al., 2018). these savings may thus be handy and may not, therefore, fit into either the permanent income hypothesis or the life cycle hypothesis of consumption, saving, and income. however, every farm family to a large extent has a view of its expected expenditure over a farming cycle; hence the yearly income may be spread over the farming year thinly. for savings in kind like yam, those meant for consumption are separated from those meant for planting in the next season. whereas the former is consumed over time until the next harvest, the latter is used in production in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 406-419 414 the next farming season; these are varieties of the traditional methods of saving and reasons holding cash. this pattern of saving/consumption may give credence to the relatively high proportion of farmers who do not operate a bank account, a behaviour which naturally eliminates them from accessing commercial bank loans (aladejebi et al., 2018). there is no compelling reason for these respondents to open a bank account. this is the most likely reason why 25.80% have simply not gone around getting one. furthermore, they do not find them very helpful (16.67%). the already unattractive situation is made worse by the long queues in banking halls due to slow service deliveries at the banks. these findings sum up to suggest that farmers have a desire to save but not in ways and manner currently offered by the commercial banks. farmers like any other bank customer, require prompt services and, if any waiting periods, less stressful. these push factors from banking may, however, only represent hygiene factors which even if provided may not motivate farmers to have changed behaviour. farmers already consider conditions for loan access very stringent and beyond their reach. furthermore, their income situation has not been transformed. necessary changes, therefore, need to be effected in these conditions to significantly touch farmers saving behaviour positively. the fact of the existence of alternative sources of saving is noteworthy. the formation and membership of cooperative societies are on the increase so also are daily collectors who go to the farmer’s doorstep to collect savings. about 46.67% of respondents either save with a cooperative society (29.17%) or with daily collectors (17.50%). thus the formal banking sector may need to be more farmer oriented in their service delivery if they are to compete effectively in mobilizing rural farm income. furthermore, since all the farmers who have bank account have visited the bank for reasons other than to make a deposit (table 3), a possible implication is that ignorance and/or lack of awareness on the part of farmers regarding the traditional services of commercial banks may be on the decline but the environment of the banking system discourages general embraced by farmers. 3.5. determinants of saving farming experience is a key determinant of saving. table 4 which shows the farmers’ perception of factors that affect saving indicates that about 95.33% of respondents were of this view. this finding suggests that competence/experience acquired over time has a penetrating effect on farming to saving behaviour, thus saving may have a positive relationship with good farming experience, all things being equal. on the other hand, low farm income, sex, age of respondent, and large household size tends to discourage saving (table 4). the logistic regression (table 5) shows that educational level, farm size, and farming experience are the significant determinants of saving. the chances of saving increases with the level of education up to a point. this is evident in the exponents of the coefficients of the respective level of education. this finding implies increased training and education of farmers. ali et al. (2015) recommended higher financial training such that it will have a positive influence on saving behaviour. such an education level is ideal if saving from farm income is not to be diverted but harnessed for farm growth and development. anang et al. (2015) did not find educational level significant but sex was at 5%. obalola et al. (2018) who used variables that have a little intersection with those of this study found age and farm income as significant determinants of saving. farm income and farm size usually have a high correlation, hence there is a level of agreement between the two studies. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 406-419 415 table 3: distribution of respondents on behavior towards savings variable frequency (%) do you save? no 30(20.00) yes 120 (80.00) total 150 (100.00) if yes, why do you save? my friends do 15(12.50) for special purchases 20 (16.67) children’s education 30 (25.00) for emergencies 35 (29.16) simply to have money put aside 20 (16.67) total 120 (100) if you save, what proportion of income do you save? 25% 39(32.50) 50% 45 (37.50) 75% 21 (17.50) nearly all 11 (9.17) practically nothing 4 (3.33) total 120 (100) i have a personal bank account? (i) no 63 (52.50) (ii) yes 57 (47,50) total 120 (100) if no, why not? (i) i do not have enough saving 8 (6.67) (ii) i simply have not gone around to get one 31 (25.83) (iii) banks are never open 24 (20.00) (iv)i do not like standing in long queues waiting to be served 37 (30.83 (v) i do not find them very helpful 20 (16.67) total 120 (100) for which of the following reason have you visited your bank? (i) to obtain advice about saving money 39 (32.50) (ii) to get loan 56 (47.00) (iii) to arrange an overdraft 8 (6.60) (iv) the manager asked to see me 17 (13.90) total 120 (100) how often do you save? (i) daily 26 (21.90) (ii) weekly 37 (31.10) (iii) monthly 57 (47.00) total 120 (100) where do you save money? (i) cash box at home 16 (13.33) (ii) daily saving collector 21 (17.50) (iii) bank 48 (40.00) (iv) cooperative society 35 (29.17) total 120 (100) source: field survey, 2018 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 406-419 416 obayelu (2012) identified farming experience as a significant determinant of saving in addition to age and diversification into non-farm activities. farming experience is significantly negatively correlated in this study. the meaning of all these is that the factors that indeed determine savings may vary from place to place. this assertion requires a more comprehensive model in terms of variables for its validity. table 4: farmers’ perception of factors that affect saving variable yes no older farmers tend to save more 51(34.00%) 99(66%) male farmers are believed to save more than female farmers 32 (21.33%) 118 (78.67%) farmers with good farming experience save more 143 (95.33%) 7 (4.67%) farmers with large household tend to save less 130 (86.67%) 20 (13.33%) low income from rural enterprises leaves only a little or nothing to savings 141 (94%) 9 (6%) farmers with self control towards spending save less 30(20%) 120 (80%) farmers that are not able to manage their resources very well save more. 16 (10.67) 134 (89.33%) source: field survey, 2018 table 5: logistic regression result of socio-economic factors as determinants of saving b s.e wald df sig. exp(b) step1a age sex (1) education education (1) education (2) education (3) farm size farming experience regular income source (1) constant 0.007 0.355 -2.052 1.003 -0.432 0.161 -0.048 0.777 0.648 0.012 0.489 0.819 0.866 0.964 0.061 0.021 0.594 1.145 0.325 0.525 10.332 6.276 1.342 0.201 6.991 5.328 1.712 0.321 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0.569 0.469 0.016* 0.012* 0.247 0.654 0.008** 0.021* 0.191 .0571 1.007 1.426 0.129 0.367 0.649 1.175 .953 2.176 1.913 source: field survey, 2018 3.6. challenges to farmers saving eight factors that could constitute challenges to farmers in their saving efforts were assessed by farmers. table 6 shows their responses and the ranking of these factors. all the items scored highly above a mean of 2.50 usually applied to a four-point likert type scale. at the top is inadequate income, followed by family responsibility and cost of inputs. again, inadequate income and cost of inputs are two sides of the same coin. demand tends to push up the cost of inputs at peak activity periods of farming. on the other hand, an uncontrolled supply of farm output to the market during harvest tends to drive down the price of outputs. this is the dilemma of farmers to whom value addition to produce is not common in an unorganized market. it is for this reason that we recommend that policies that boost farmers’ income and would make for the development of an organized market should be pursued. also, that the banking sector should be more customers oriented with particular attention to the needs of rural farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 406-419 417 table 6: respondents’ perception of challenges to saving no. sd %) d (%) a (%) sa (%) mean (std) rank i. inadequate income 3(2.00) 6(4) 38(25.33) 103(68.67) 3.89(0.69) 1st ii. family responsibility 8(6.33) 45(30) 97(64.67) 3.58(0.61) 2nd iii. cost of inputs 14(9.33) 61(40.67) 75(50) 3.40(0.66) 3rd iv. lack of trust of security of savings 9(6.00) 29(19.33) 46(30.67) 66(44) 3.11(0.93) 4th v. insincerity of group members pose a problem to farmers income 7(4.67) 15(10) 85(56.67) 43(28.67) 3.10(0.76) 5th vi. theft of crops 6(4.00) 28(18.67) 62(41.33) 54(36) 3.09(0.84) 6th vii. high bank charges, delays, congestion at the bank and remoteness of the bank hinder farmers saving 10(6.67 13(8.67) 83(55.33) 44(29.33) 3.08(0.80) 7th viii. constant illness 8(5.33) 19(12.67) 87(58) 36(24) 3.01(0.766) 8th source: field survey, 2018 4. conclusion farmers are knowledgeable on the need to saving and have a mindset to saving, but generally not in the formal banking system. apart from inadequate income and family responsibilities which act against saving, they are ill provided for by demographic factors such as age, marital and educational status outside those required by the formal banking sector. the chances of saving of an educated farmer are higher than those for a farmer without formal education. these factors affect the attitudes farmers have towards formal financial institutions such as commercial banks but not towards saving. thus they prefer alternative avenues for saving thus they are in search of alternative methods of saving. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be 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a significant portion of the rural areas. with 150 respondents from the osmanabad district of the state of maharashtra this study focusses on two major reasons for adoption of agro technology. the initial schedule contained 116 items on various dimensions of self-motivation, external influences, social development, economic development, economic progress, health, and behavioral aspects. 90 items were retained. since it is a multivariable study, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling (sem) are used in this study for data analysis in addition to parametric statistical tools. spss (20.0) and amos has been used for the same. it has been found that there is a correlation between technology and economic progress of farmers and that health consciousness has increased and the behavioral pattern has changed among farmers in rural areas. contribution/ originality this study reveals that there is a need for empowerment of the whole families and people associated with farmers to contribute to the social development of the country. this will be possible only when the use of technological skills such as smart farming, precision of agriculture, the internet of things etc. are adopted and farmers adapt to these tools. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.179.193 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: vanishree pabalkar and rashmy moray (2019). implication of technology on economic progress of farmers: a case of india. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 179-193. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 179-193 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:vanishree.p@sims.edu http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.179.193 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 179-192 180 1. introduction technology has it all from the very own artificially grown hamburgers through 3d printers that give out chocolates to salt watered veggies that are delivered to customers by drones. technology has taken leaps and witnessed radical innovations in the past decade. the objective is also to make the reader understand the significance of his existence today and what tomorrow holds for him. it is a starting point for debate that seeks to inspire the reader to think about the future for him. granted, the agro & food sector is a complicated business. but it is high time for a debate. in 2050 the earth will be inhabited by 9 billion people. natural resources will by then have become very scarce (ibef, 2017). the rampant changes in the advancements of technology and adoption are rapidly bringing out changes in the impact through scientific and technological policies. complex technologies are developed and disseminated by networks of agents. the impact of these networks depends on the assets they command, their learning routines, the socio-economic environment in which they operate, and their history. in today’s world there are both modern and conventional modes in the agricultural sector. this is more prominent in the developing economies. though the productivity or yield is comparatively lower in the modern sector, the canonical model developed by lewis (1954) emphasizes the aspect of additional labor in the agricultural sector. with low productivity rate, wages will be higher in the modern sector. this will compel the labor to move from one place to another in search of better wages. this study highlights the concepts and analyses based on the transitions that have been brought from conventional to modern methods of agriculture. these are agriculturally driven structural developments (rostow, 1960; johnston and mellor, 1961) developed by modern methods of agriculture and technology. the discussed methods ensure maximizing productivity and better output (murgai, 2001; restuccia et al., 2008). the rampant changes in the technology also propel developments in the scientific and technological policies. the impact of this depends on the socioeconomic environment in which they operate and their industry. there is a need for taking advantage of the recent developments in science and technology in rural areas which will increase the socioeconomic status of the rural population with emphasis on the farmers. science and technology are two crucial components of all efforts aimed at fostering growth and socioeconomic development of nations (herz, 1993). many developing countries face the challenge of increasing income of the rural sector through different approaches and minimizing the gap between the urban and the rural. most of the developing countries are agrarian economies, which are understood to be low productive and operating in smallholder capacities. the question is what hinders science and technology from being applied in agricultural sectors rural areas. science and technology have been widely criticized for being a double-edged sword. technology has been central and crucial for attaining food security. the green revolution in asia and central and latin america in 1965 is a stark example. many third world nations have been quick to apply science and technology as tools for rural development. the necessity of harnessing science and technology in rural india is found to be very recent. the current government of india has drafted a science and technology policy aiming to transform rural india in identified thrust areas. however, farmers’ socioeconomic status depends on the adoption of technology, so this study focuses on the impact of technology on farmer’s socioeconomic development. 2. literature review developing economies have been described as dual economies with a traditional agricultural sector and a modern capitalist sector. the low productivity level and inadequacy of labor is also related asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 179-192 181 to low wages in agriculture sector which are very low in comparison to modern sector. this has turned agriculture labor towards the industrial sector which in turn effect economic growth (wang and piesse, 2013). this migration of labor and increasing population has an effect on food supply which is another important point to look at in agricultural sector (schultz, 1964). according to kuznets’ (1966) agriculture sectors has dual role to play in economic development one to supply cheap food and second to supply low wage labor to modern industrial sector. thus growth in productivity in the agriculture sector greatly contributes in overall economic growth of a country. however, industrialization is seen as the ultimate driving force behind a country’s development and agriculture as a tradition allow-productivity sector. agriculture is extremely important sector responsible for the development and economic growth of a country. according to various yearly reports of indian brand equity foundation (ibfe) agriculture is known for being backbone of indian economy for four major reasons 1) constitutes the large share of national income, 2) it turn to be major source of employment for more than 50% population in india living in rural areas, 3) the performance of agriculture have an considerable impact on the growth of other sector, and 4) bring in foreign currency to some extent. india produces variety of agricultural goods in terms of area under cultivation and production. it has also made several attempt in terms of revolution to improve its productivity. this attempts were products or goods oriented -green revolution (wheat), white revolution (milk and milk products), yellow revolution (oil seeds), blue revolution (marine products), golden revolution (honey), golden fiber revolution (jute), silver fiber revolution (cotton), brown revolution (cocoa), rainbow revolution (fruits, vegetables, floriculture plantation, spices etc.) this has resulted in india becoming largest producers of spices, pulses, milk, tea, cashew an jute and second largest producer of wheat, rice, fruits & vegetables, sugarcane, cotton and oilseeds, as per report by agriculture and allied industries’, indian brand equity foundation, 2018. the existing situation is looking ideal and most significant. but it can be improved to large extent by bringing radical change by introducing required technology in agro business. this will ease out the factors that cause severe load on the food system. ibef says that introduction of technology into agriculture will help farmers do their work with precision. the differences in the size of income stand as a barrier to adoption of technology. therefore indirect intervention of local and private bodies and demonstration proving profitability of accepting technologies is suggested by barnes et al. (2019). rural sociologists and geographers have studied local farming knowledge and practices to understand the way farmers will come to know and adopt new technologies, techniques, and programs run by governmental and nongovernmental agencies that are flexible, adaptable, and fit their local circumstances (higgins et al., 2017). model farmers are a very common feature of agricultural extension networks in developing countries which have diverse political, economic, and socio-cultural climates. model farmers help not only to improve production and transfer traditional knowledge, but also disseminate information about new cultivation techniques and technologies to local communities (taylor and bhasme, 2018). though radical innovations have been happening in technology and agriculture, it is extremely challenging to promote them to make the entire process dynamic and different (kiptot et al., 2007). several drivers influence the adoption of these innovations. researchers interested in seeing the results must themselves get accustomed to these technologies and acquaint the farmers with the technologies. the network can be created through different social platforms and an informal learning method (gielen et al., 2003). adopters would embrace this at an early stage with appropriate understanding of information networks that would recommend the flow of information amongst the farmers and network colleagues (aguilargallegos et al., 2015). the world government summit – “agriculture 4.0 – the future of farming technology” 2018 reported four main dimension that requires to be addressed, they are – demographics, scarcity of natural resources, climate change, and good waste. the operations and functionality of farmers had differed to great extent due to the advancement in technology. the use of 3d printing and 4d printing, robotics, sensor technology, smart farming, information technology & it asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 179-192 182 infrastructures, big data, bioinformatics, renewable energy, protein transition, food design and vertical agriculture will change the face of farming. now farmers can use minimum quantities required and target specific areas. these advancements will enable the farmer to be in a better position, and would promise more environmentally friendly environment. by challenging the traditional legacy model and pursuing such a program, governments can, ensure food security and reduce dependency on imports, become a net exporter not only of products but also ip and new solutions, increase productivity and support the shift towards an innovationand knowledge-based economy. according to ibef 2017 report india has 20 agro-climatic region with 15 major climates of the world existing in india and possesses 46 out of 60 soil types of the world. and increasing demand of food supply to the second largest population is the core concern. though the technology has been priority point in national policy of india from last few years. the ibef report also discusses the technological adoption of agricultural sector of india and their product growth drivers – 1) demand side drivers – population and income growth, increasing export, and favorable demographics, 2) supply side drivers – hybrid and genetically modified seeds, mechanization, irrigation facilities, and agricultural revolutions took place in different parts of country, 3) policy support – where the government of india has supporting farmers with agricultural technology management agency (atma), paramparagat krishi vikas yojana, price subsidization fund, pradhanmantri gram sinchai yojana etc. national horticulture mission, national horticulture board, technology mission for integrated development of horticulture in north-east are some of the initiatives taken by the government of india to boost the horticulture sector of the country resulted in being a second largest producers and supplier of fruits and vegetables. there exist two major key factors that lead to an efficient way of developing agriculture clubbed with technology. this is mostly witnessed in the developing countries (foster and rosenzweig, 2010). the first comprises of availability and affordability of technology to a farmer and second comprises of the bundle of expectations that each farmer has towards adopting the technology with the question of sustainability in mind. for sustainability, it is important for farmers to ensure on the aspect of profitability that comes from the output of production at regular intervals. the fluctuations in prices of agricultural products is one of the key determinant that builds apprehensions in adopting the advancements in technology. kijima et al. (2011). since the psyche is such that, these farmers tend to reject or stop using a specific technology if the expected benefit levels are unmet. though the identification of problem from the grass rout is important, that may not happen in all cases, resulting in abandoning of technology. in the technological adoption process, availability of land is another important attribute to curtail liquidity constraints faced by farmers and also helps in minimizing risk. (de janvry et al., 2011). productivity is assumed to be lower in agriculture than in the modern sector. the canonical model was put forward by lewis (1954) and subsequently extended by ranis and fei (1961). lewis’ model rests on the idea of surplus labour in the agricultural sector. with lower productivity in agriculture, wages will be higher in the modern sector, which induces labour to move from agriculture to the modern sector, which in turn generates economic growth. other pre cursors, such as schultz (1964), also point out the importance of food supply by the agricultural sector .in schultz’s view, agriculture is important for economic growth in the sense that it guarantees subsistence for society, without which grow this not possible. this early view on the role of agriculture in economics matched kuznets’ (1966) empirical observation that the importance of the agricultural sector declines with economic development. in this view, the role of agriculture in economic development is to supply cheap food and low wage labour to the modern sector. innovation has not taken place to the extent it should have leaving no space for betterment of lives of people. food scarcity would therefore be one of the major problems in the coming time. smart farming is the mantra for the hour. with drones and precision technology, the output is bound to be smart and to be double. thus making the entire data and process of agriculture grow. this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 179-192 183 growth can be seen both in terms of amount and scope. this is when the farming will be datadriven. other advancements like the internet of things, sensors, robotics and cloud computing bundled together lead to smart farming (sundmaeker et al., 2016). smart farming is all about using the appropriate tools along with having the laid the tasks of production based on location and data, triggered further to the real-time data. (wolfert et al., 2017). since smart farming is comparatively a new concept, and yet to be percolated in the minds of famers, beneficiaries, which is further clubbed with huge set of apprehensions. the amount of research is also limited yet in this sector. the expectations could be too many fom such technologies, referred as the peak of inflated expectations, gartner's hype cycle (fenn and lehong, 2011; needle, 2015). there are numerous projects upcoming in the field of ict in rural areas across the globe. digital green in india comes out with videos and facilitates screenings in the rural areas to ensure that the knowledge transfer successfully happens here to enable exchange of good quality of output. this would lead to nutritious and healthy output to farmers. (gandhi et al., 2009). in uganda, there is a lifelong learning for farmers program that ensures to provide tools that are interactive in nature. for instance, sms service is provided coupled with appropriate information on agriculture to farmers. similarly in niger, cellular phones are used to communicate on pricing details of agricultural products (aker and mbiti, 2010). baributsa et al. (2010) came up with videos for farmers which contained information on innovations in agriculture. further to this, cai and abbott (2013) also provided videos on training for farmers. this was on overcoming the constraints in gender and having accessibility to appropriate information on farming. cellular phones have proved to be very effective, when it comes to exchanging and updating information on farming. (asenso-okyere and mekonnen, 2012). there are cost-effective versions available in cellular phones which enable everyone to make proper use of this technology among the rural population as well, (bello-bravo et al., 2013;). as per lawal-adebowale (2012) cellular phones are widely used in western african rural areas, with 62.9% of farmers having this device in nigeria. several government initiatives along with investors, and innovative agricultural technologies have been taken up in recent times. agriculture 4.0, for instance will no more rely on fertilizers, pesticides, applying water, uniformly across entire fields. rather, with 4.0 farmers will use the minimum quantities required and target very specific areas. due to the technological advancements, the operations and functionality of farmers will vary to a great extent. the use of it, smart farming, sensors, and robotics will change the face of farming. farmers will be well equipped with usage of sophisticated technologies like drones, moisture sensors, and gps technology. these advancements will enable the farmer to be in a better position, and would promise more environmentally friendly environment. today available readiness to grow time source: oliver wyman – agriculture 4.0 – the future of farming technology asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 179-192 184 2.1. technological developments in agriculture there are many advancements that have taken place in the field of agriculture in the recent times. these advancements have a major impact on the food sector. sample responses to the survey for technological developments in agriculture variables questions sample responses 3d printing and 4d printing advanced printing solutions printing using digital platform. this also helps is understanding the product from all angles and helps to overcome loopholes in the product. prototypes come as a cheaper option and faster as well. robotics automation robotics are the automated systems which have both theoretical and practical solutions through automated systems. in agricultural sector, utility is from sowing to harvesting. sensor technology application sensor technology is where the use of applications takes place. these appliances are the ones that could feel and sense weight, light and sound. to sense the quality of a product without touching it physically. it could be testing of soil, the crop, grains, food etc. in the agricultural sector, sensor technology is widely used to test the crops through the sensors that are encompassed in the machines. these sensors provide the farmers with the correct information about the soil and crop. smart farming testing techniques smart farming is the farming technique through which, the needs of the farmers in terms of treating the soil and crop appropriately is met. unlike the conventional methods, which had the farmer to look at the entire herd, with smart farming the famer can specifically address the individual need of a specific animal at a given time. similarly, the soil condition, the sunlight, water required etc. for the best of the yield can be made possible through smart farming. information technology & it infrastructures iot the advancements in the information technology and it infrastructures has been possible through the way in the important information is collected and retrieved when required. the electronic appliances are connected to the internet of things (iot). this implies that the amount of information that can be crucial can be collected, stored and can be easily retrieved as and when required. the intensity multiplies with the usage of internet of things. big data utilization of data the information is currently stored in the digital formats. by 2045, the information would get 20,000 times bigger. this collection of this huge amount of information is nothing but big data. for instance, the data will help for the betterment of the people in the society to understand the complexities of a specific disease, the precautions, the infection, cure etc. bioinformatics includes the process of upgrading the biological knowledge thereby applying this expertise of information technology to the biological data. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 179-192 185 bioinformatics biological up gradation the biological data is stored and analyzed in huge quantities. bioinformatics helps in analyzing the required data to influence the different aspects of plants, animals and humans as well. renewable energy cost and energy saving renewable energy is the kind of energy that is collected from renewable resources. these sources include the ones that are replenished naturally on a human timescale, like the natural sunlight, rain, waves, wind, and geothermal heat. protein transition protein intake the protein transition is the concept, where the consumption patterns of proteins are derived from plants and other options like salt water organisms and insects. the protein transition emphasizes that there should be less amount of reliability on sources like chicken, cow and pork. this entire concept contributes to a larger extent to decrease the emission of greenhouse gases. the protein from mushrooms is used in making products that resemble meat. snacks and nuggets contain a combination of alternative proteins. food design taste enhancers food design is the concept where components get added or extracted to the food in order to enhance the taste and make it nutritious for consumption. the addition is through the water to fat products, through which small droplets of water are encapsulated by the fat. food design related courses are much in demand these days. the significance of this concept is that you address each customer’s need as per their specification. based on the need and choices that each individual has, the customization is possible. vertical agriculture other forms of agriculture vertical agriculture refers to the fact as the name indicates, that the plants and grown vertically. these plants are cultivated behind glass of skyscrapers. it in agriculture information technology information is the entire amount of data on demand, supply, fluctuations in market conditions, changes in pricing structures irrigation, and other seasonal changes. data relating to weather is the most significant factor for the farmer. gps in agriculture accessibility gps is one of the most significant factor that enables easy accessibility across different places. gis is another technology used in effective farming. soil and water sensors detection techniques soil and water sensors are responsible for detecting the nitrogen levels, amount of moisture in soil and similar aspects responsible for better output. the water sensor enables to decide on the watering schedule in the farm source: de clercq et al. (2018) 2.2. objectives 1. to study the arbitrating correlation between technology and economic progress through socioeconomic development 2. to evaluate the impact of technology on health, spouses’ emotions, and children’s education across the socioeconomic profile of the respondents 3. to examine the direct impact of technology on social development, economic empowerment, and economic progress asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 179-192 186 4. to discover the reasons for adoption of technology with respect to self-motivation or external influences 2.3. hypothesis h1a. technology has direct impact on social development h1b. technology has direct impact on economic and conservation technological empowerment h1c. technology has direct impact on economic progress h2. social development mediates the relationship between technology and economic progress h3. nature of technology differs across the socio-economic variables 3. methodology 3.1. generation of scale items and data collection form extensive relevant literature has been reviewed to generate items pertaining to different dimensions of technology, social and economic empowerment, economic progress, behavior, and health. since no paper has been found with well-established scale, the research papers were reviewed to get an idea of framing a self-developed schedule. the scale items were finalized after reviewing the literature. detailed discussions followed with experts and academicians. the schedule was used for collecting requisite information from the respondents. schedule consisted of two sections a general one and one to elicit information about eight dimensions of technology, namely reasons for external influences, self-motivated factors, social development, economic empowerment, economic progress, health, and behavior. the schedule comprised of 90 items of which 13 related to general information, 30 to adoption of technology (18 of external influences, 12 of self-motivation), 13 to social development, 10 to economic empowerment, 10 to economic progress, 5 to health, and 9 to reasons of behavior. the data were collected on a 5-point likert scale on the basis of knowledge regarding social development, economic empowerment, economic progress, health, and behavioral issues (where 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree). 3.2. sampling techniques and data collection the study was conducted in the osmanabad district of the marathwada region of the maharashtra state. this district was purposively chosen for the study because it is surrounded by the most rural and farmer communities mainly familiar with the agricultural sector and adopted technology for their development. convenient sampling was used as the sampling technique and 150 farmers were selected. the period of study was jan-march 2018. a structured tested questionnaire was used as the data collection instrument. prior testing of the questionnaire was done in a small group of farmers. osmanabad comprises prevalently of rural population of which approximately 83% live in rural regions. agriculture is therefore the sole source of earnings for the families. the irrigated area comprises roughly about 10% of the total net cultivated land. it has been divided into six zones according to the agro climatic conditions. these classifications are based on rainfall, soil depth topography, and irrigation facilities. the survey provided the basis for analyzing the situation that was more suitable for attaining the expected results from the study. details of areas identified for the study are provided below. 3.2.1. sampling justification solvin’s formula was used for sample size justification. solvin’s formula: solvin’s formula for a population of 14632 farmers in osmanabad. confidence level is 95 percent, alpha level of 0.05. solvin’s formula: n = n / (1 + n e2) where n = no. of samples asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 179-192 187 n= total population e = error tolerance application: n = 14632/(1+14632*0.05*0.05) 14632 / (14633 * 0.0025) 14632 / (36.5825) = 399 our sample size is 150 which is 37.59 % of 399 3.3. factor analysis primary data were collected through a structured questionnaire. the respondents were asked to rank each statement on a 5-point likert scale (1= strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). the factor analysis technique was used to analyze the primary data. trimming a high number of variables down to a few factors to explain the original data more economically and efficiently by factors analysis is a widely used multivariate technique in research. it is an important tool for resolving this confusion and identifying factors from an array of seemingly important variables. adequacy of the data was tested by the kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) measures of sampling adequacy and bartlett’s test of sphericity (homogeneity of variance). table 1: kmo and bartlett’s test kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy. 0.872 bartlett's test of sphericity approx. chi-square 3725.533 df 190 sig. 0.000 the kmo measure of sampling adequacy is 0.872 (shown in table 1) which indicates the present data suitable for factor analysis. bartlett's test of sphericity tests the hypothesis whether the population correlation matrix is an identity matrix. the existence of the identity matrix puts the correctness of the factor analysis under suspicion. table 1 shows that chi square statistic is 3725.533 with 190 degree of freedom. this value is significant at 0.01 levels both the results; kmo statistic and bartlett's test of sphericity indicate an appropriate factor analysis model. table 2: factor loadings and variance explained after scale purification (rotated component method) factor-wise dimension mean std. dev. factor loading eigen value variance explained % cumulative explained % communality alpha (α) external influence factor factor 1: sociocultural 5.264 42.53 42.534 0.912 factor 2: political 1.507 14.58 57.190 0.693 factor 3: economical 1.244 12.45 69.575 0.780 factor 4: environment 1.147 8.391 77.966 self motivated factor factor 1: sociocultural 3.562 29.51 29.516 0.945 factor 2: political 1.765 22.743 52.259 0.710 factor 3: economic 1.203 20.30 72.561 0.872 factor 4: environment 1.106 12.643 85.204 social development asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 179-192 188 source: field survey, 2018 further to the kmo measure of sampling adequacy the rotated component matrix table depicts the loadings amongst different factors (garson, 2002). under external influencing factors, self-motivating factors, social development factors, economic and behavioral factors, and economic empowerment were assessed by the rotated component method. the factors are listed in the first column. the eigenvalues refer to the variance accounted for in the number of items’ worth of variance that each explains. factor 1 explains almost as much variance as there is in five items. eigenvalues refer to the variance accounted for in terms of the number of items’ worth of variance that each explains. for external influence factors the percentage of covariation among items accounted for by each factor before and after rotation is 42.53, for sociocultural it is 14.85, for political and economic 12.45, and for environmental factors 8.391. the percentage of covariation among items is accounted for by each factor before and after rotation. similarly the percentage of covariation is drawn for all other factors, as shown in the table. 42.534, 57.190, 69.575, 77.966 depict half of the variance accounted for by the first three factors. variance percentage is the percentage of covariation among items accounted for by each factor before and after rotation. 3.4. confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) cfa is a statistical tool that enables to confirm or reject a preconceived theory. it is a deductive approach and multivariate statistical technique used to test how well the measured variables represent the construct and model building. to perform cfa it is essential to specify both the number of factors that fall within a set of variables and which factor of each variable will load highly before results can be computed. it is generally based on a strong theoretical and empirical foundation that allows analysts to specify an accurate factor structure. cfa is conducted with the objective of verifying the fitness of each latent construct. in this study it is performed to assess the fitness, reliability, and validity of five measured constructs, viz. technology (tech) consists of two main dimensions i.e. external influences and self-motivation; social development (sdep); economic empowerment (eemp); and economic progress (epgr). once baseline models are identified and measures are validated for discriminate and convergent validity, reliability is assessed through the computation of cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, and average variance extracted (hair et al., 2010). factor 1: self realization 4.972 25.346 25.346 0.648 factor 2: community development 2.683 15.896 37.989 0.881 economic progrss factor 1: improvement 4.558 40.266 40.266 0.664 factor 2: progress 1.039 29.694 69.920 0.803 behavioural 4.351 36.428 36.428 factor 1: psychology factor 2: emotions 1.864 23.627 60.055 factor 3: social recognition 1.446 8.893 46.882 0.782 factor 4: social status 1.159 8.662 67.874 0.659 economic empowerment factor 1: immovability 4.993 46.76 46.768 0.909 factor 2: economic status 1.116 21.106 67.874 0.865 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 179-192 189 cfa is carried out construct-wise to restrict the number of indicators. items from the latent constructs having srw below 0.50 got deleted during cfa (hair et al., 2010). all the cfa models can have enough degrees of freedom to estimate all free parameters. the constructs have been found to be both uniand multidimensional. most of the indices such as gfi, agfi, nfi, tli, and cfi are above 0.90 whereas badness of fit indices i.e. rmsea of all the constructs are below 0.08 and chi-square statistics (cmin/df) is less than the recommended 0.5 level (bagozzi and yi, 1988). 3.5. cfa models cfa is applied to assess the fitness, reliability, and validity of six constructs, viz. technology (tech) consists of two main dimensions i.e. external influences and self-motivation; social development (sdep); economic empowerment (eemp); and economic progress (epgr). the various resulting models are below. 3.6. cfa model for external influences factor first order cfa is performed on external influences factor dimension, which constituted of eighteen items. among eighteen items, ten items got deleted as they are not meeting the criteria i.e. srw’s > 0.50. after deleting, cfa produced good fit as cmin/df = 4.182, gfi = 0.934, agfi = 0.961, nfi = 0.940, tli = 0.962, cfi = 0.978 and rmsea = 0.076. the model has been found to be valid and reliable. the alpha value is.768 whereas composite reliability came out to be 0.973 thereby indicating that all items are reliable. model has been proved to valid, as ave came out to be 0.549. the construct validity also stands established as all the indicators have factor loading above 0.50. out of the eight items, ‘poverty’ & ‘lack of labour availability’ emerged to be strongest contributor towards external influences factor dimension, as its regression weight is 0.85 & 0.90 respectively. cfa model for self motivated factor, (sdep) social development, (eemp) economic empowerment, (epgr) economic progress, (behr) behavior, and (hlth) health is performed on various dimensions of all these factors and results are shown in table 1 and 2 to regarding srws, cmin/df, gfi, agfi, nfi, tli, cfi, alpha value, composite reliability, and regression weight. semp epgr10 epgr9 epgr8 epgr7 epgr6 epgr5 epgr4 epgr epgr2 sempsdep sdep 3 sdep 4 sdep 6 sdep8 sdep9 sdep11 sdep13 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 b6 b7 semptech exi slm a1 a2 c2 c3 c4 c6 c5 c7 c8 c1 semp eemp eemp1 eemp3 eemp4 eemp6 eemp7 eemp9 eemp10 d1 d2 d3 d4 d5 d6 d7 68 87 72 66 87 83 50 77 85 76 58 55 71 79 70 52 85 62 51 68 45 69 75 46 z1 z3 74 42 47 79 68 z2 figure 1: overall structure equation model asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 179-192 190 exi = external influences factor, slm = self motivated factor tech = technology eemp = economic empowerment; sdep = social development; epgr = economic progress 3.7. outcome the external influencing factors and the self-motivated factors leading to technology further bifurcate to factors of economic empowerment and social development. the model further depicts factors on economic progress. the entire model comprises the combination of external and internal factors associated with self-motivation, empowerment, and technology. advancement with the advent of technology is a complex process comprising of several dimensions such as external influencing factors, self-motivated factors, technology, economic empowerment, social development factors, and economic progress factors. in this study an attempt was made to understand the significant factors that largely govern the progression of technology in agriculture. technology has a high impact on a significant portion of rural area; the empirical study shows that technology has an unambiguous impact on socioeconomic status and points to various mechanisms for poverty reduction besides simply increasing current household consumption. the amos software was used to validate the sample data. the structural equation model is adopted to test the theoretical model as well as to prove the hypothesis. figure 2: external influencing factors 3.8. inference figure 2 depicts that the overall comprehensive fitting indexes are in concurrence with the evaluation criteria. this indicates that the fitting created by the data is correct and can further be used to test the hypothesis. 4. discussion there are more than 80% of farmers who can be classified as marginal to small. they do not yet have adequate resources to get into smart farming. they can be influenced by the power of technology. analysis for reliability and validity of the measurement scales was done followed by hypothesis testing through review of literature and analysis. the sem models adopted in earlier asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 179-192 191 studies were also referred to and the authors observe that the proposed model of sem in this study is reasonably good as per recommended levels (bollen, 1990). technology offers economic empowerment and progress in villages. technology offers stimulation to educate children, especially girls, with the help of additional income. technology offers social status and reorganization because of civic engagement in community development. it gives scope to spouses to decide on agriculture and family issues and makes them self-confident and independent. technology has a negative impact on young farmers’ psychology; they favour a more commercialized, more self-centered, more egoistic approach. there is positive impact of technology on physical health of dependence through proper hygiene. comparatively farmers with high land holding have adopted more technology and developed their social status and lifestyle. it also seems that in scheduled cast and scheduled tribes famers have not adopted technology due to lack of self-motivation and therefore are not in a position to participate in rural community development. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability 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(2017). big data in smart farming a review. agricultural systems, 153, 69-80. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 550 impact of urban agriculture on household income in zambia: an economic analysis mavis mupetaa elias kuntashulab thomson kalindac a graduate student; department of agriculture economics and extension, school of agriculture science, university of zambia, lusaka, zambia b senior lecturer; department of agriculture economics and extension, school of agricultural science, university of zambia, lusaka, zambia c associate professor; department of agricultural economics and extension, school of agricultural sciences, university of zambia, lusaka, zambia  mavismupeta@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 16-mar-2020 accepted: 27-may-2020 online available: 17-jul2020 keywords: average treatment effect, impact, poverty, propensity score matching, urban agriculture abstract the study aimed to empirically determine the impact of urban agriculture on household income in zambia. the analysis was based on the 2007/2008 urban consumption/ expenditure secondary data collected in kitwe and lusaka districts, with a total sample size of 2,682 urban households. the propensity score matching approach is used to estimate the impact of urban agriculture on household income since the method takes into account the systematic differences in socio-economic characteristics between the urban agriculture practicing and non-practicing households by matching from both groups with similar characteristics. results indicate that urban agriculture has a significant positive effect on household income. the income of households that practiced urban agriculture increased by 13.7% to 19.1%. it implies that urban agriculture has the potential to improve household livelihood through enhanced income. \ contribution/ originality this paper may be the first to apply the propensity score matching method in the research area of urban agriculture in zambia. the propensity score matching method was used to obtain reliable estimates of the impact of urban agriculture on household income. it helps eliminate the problem of “selfselection” bias. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.550.562 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: mavis mupeta, elias kuntashula and thomson kalinda (2020). impact of urban agriculture on household income in zambia: an economic analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 550-562. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 550-562 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:mavismupeta@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.550.562 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 550-562 551 1. introduction food insecurity and the high prevalence of poverty are among the most significant challenges affecting development in sub-saharan africa (ssa) today (fao, 2016; un-habitat, 2010). it is estimated that about 42% of the sub-saharan african population live in poverty (alkire et al., 2018). zambia is among southern african countries with high poverty levels. about 60% of the zambian population lives in poverty (world bank, 2019). achieving poverty reduction has been a developmental agenda of the country (woodbridge, 2015). agriculture has been recognized as an important sector with the potential of alleviating poverty and ensuring food security. it has become the economic backbone of the country, contributing approximately 20% to gross domestic product (gdp) in 2008. in 2018, the sector’s contribution to gross domestic product (gdp) declined to about 2.6% (plecher, 2018; world bank, 2019). agriculture is the main activity among rural households accounting for the employment of about 80% of the rural population (cso, 2012). henceforth, the government, in collaboration with other stakeholders, has developed sustainable agriculture technologies to improve food productivity and security. the focus has been in rural areas where the activity is predominant, and poverty levels are high. however, the current global rapid rate of urbanization has posed a threat to food security in urban areas of zambia and sub-saharan africa (ssa) at large (crush and frayne, 2010; stewart et al., 2013). in 2000, 38% of africans lived in urban areas, and the figure is projected to increase to 55% by 2030 (unhabitat, 2010). zambia has been reported to be the third most highly urbanized country in ssa. according to reports, about 40% of its total population is estimated to live in urban areas (world bank, 2011; cso, 2012). urbanization or urban population growth in zambia is a result of rural-urban migration, natural population growth, economic recessions, and structural adjustment programmes (masvaure, 2013; hampwaye, 2010). the increased urban population has been associated with high food prices, among others (padgham et al., 2015). urban households mainly access their food through purchases, unlike rural households who consume from their produce (badami and ramanculty, 2015). food alone accounts for 5080% of their disposable income (masvaure, 2013; cso, 2012). an increase in food prices reduces their purchasing power, thus threatening food security. although agriculture is typically thought of as a predominantly rural activity, the majority of urban households, especially in ssa, have resorted to farming as a coping strategy to mitigate hunger. it is reported that about 40% of the population in african cities are involved in urban agriculture (fao, 2012). generally, there exists a consensus among many scholars that urban agriculture does improve household food security through improved nutrition and increased income (badami and ramankutty, 2015; warren et al., 2015; masvaure, 2013; salcu and attah, 2012; kutiwa et al., 2010; smit et al., 2001; armar, 2000; nugent, 2000; mbiba, 1994; mbiba, 1998; maxwell, 1994). it was also observed that a number of studies (for example, masvaure, 2013; salcu and attah 2012; kutiwa et al., 2010; zezza and tasciotti, 2010) had used regression analysis to determine the impact of urban agriculture on household income. empirical research by masvaure (2013) indicated that urban agriculture provides a cheaper source of food for urban farmers through the consumption of their own produce. access to food from urban agriculture releases extra money for other expenses like transport, health, education, water, and electricity. salcu and attah (2012) analyzed the socio-economic impact of urban agriculture on urban farming households’ income. according to the study findings, the majority (about 75.6%) of respondents indicated additional household income as their benefit from urban agriculture, followed by household consumption (55.6%) and full-time employment (28.9%). it implied that the development of urban agriculture would lead to income generation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 550-562 552 kutiwa et al. (2010) used a simple regression model to estimate the effect of urban agricultural income on total household income. the results showed that total farm income has no significant impact on total household income. a limitation of such an analysis is the problem of endogeneity. other factors, such as income from non-farm activities, could play a role in influencing the level of income from urban agriculture. zezza and tasciotti (2010) studied the impact of urban agriculture on income with a focus on the income share from urban agriculture. the study found that the percentage of urban households that earn income from agriculture varied from 11% in indonesia to about 70% in vietnam and nicaragua. income from urban agriculture as a share of total income ranged from 1% to 27%. however, the major drawback of these studies is that analysis was done by just computing and directly comparing the outcome incomes of participants and non-participants without considering the differences in their household characteristics. this might have resulted in inconsistent and biased conclusions (heckman et al., 1998). against this background, this study employed the propensity score matching (psm) methods to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated (att). the estimated att was used to measure the impact of urban agriculture on household income. in zambia, none of the previous studies has applied the psm methods to measure the impact of urban agriculture on household income. another significant contribution of this paper is that unlike other studies that used household income as the outcome variable, this study used household total expenditure as a proxy for household income. the disadvantage of using income is that some households tend to give distorted figures of their income, which in most cases, is less than their actual income. in such cases, data collected on income tends to be unreliable, and results may not give a true reflection of the impact of urban agriculture on household income. therefore, the main objective of this study was to give more precise estimates of the impact of urban agriculture on household income in zambia. 2. materials and methods 2.1. the data this study used secondary data from the 2007/2008 urban food consumption/expenditure survey conducted by the central statistical organization (cso) and indaba agricultural policy research institute (iapri) in lusaka, kitwe, mansa, and kasama districts of zambia. the total sample size was 4,800 households, but this study only focused on data captured from two districts, namely lusaka and kitwe districts, with a sample size of 2,682 households. lusaka and kitwe districts were purposively selected in this study because the study narrowed its focus to urban agriculture in the cities. lusaka and kitwe are cosmopolitan cities, lusaka being the capital city of zambia and kitwe, is the largest city on the copperbelt province while kasama and mansa are more of rural districts. the urban food consumption/expenditure data was used in this study because it had a component of urban agriculture that was relevant to this study. 2.2. econometric model the propensity score matching (psm) method was used because it takes into account systematic differences in socio-economic characteristics between the urban agriculture practicing and nonpracticing households by matching only households from both groups with similar characteristics, thereby eliminating the problem of selection bias. the underlying principle of the propensity score matching (psm) is to find in a large group of non-treated units, units that are similar to the treated subjects in all relevant pre-treatment characteristics x and then match these comparable units. psm must satisfy two conditions for the results to be considered valid and reliable. the conditional independence assumption (cia) states that given a set of observable covariates x that are not asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 550-562 553 affected by the treatment, potential outcomes y are independent of treatment assignment d specified by:     ii xdyy /, 10  . it assumes that assignment to treatment is independent of the outcomes, conditional on the covariates. the second is the common support or overlap condition, which implies that the probability of assignment to a treatment is positive but less than one. it is specified by:   1/10  ii xdp . it implies that treatment observations have comparison observations “nearby” in the propensity score distribution. if there is little or no overlap in the distributions of the estimated propensity scores in the treatment groups, the estimated att would be invalid. it is more convenient to use propensity scores than covariates to match treated and non-treated units. propensity scores eliminate dimensionality complications in a large set of covariates. the outcome of participants and non-participants with similar propensity scores can then be compared to obtain the treatment effect. the propensity score is defined as the conditional probability that a unit in the combined sample of treated and untreated units receives the treatment, given a set of pre-treatment characteristics (heckman et al., 1998; rosenbaum and rubin, 1983). it is specified as:    iii xdxp /1pr  . applying the psm method, a logistic regression model was used to estimate propensity scores. the general principle is to include only variables that influence the treatment status and the outcome variable (smith and todd, 2005) simultaneously. variables that were included in the psm model were: the gender of the household head, marital status of the household head, the size of the household, age of the household head, the highest level of education of the household head, city of residence of the household, number of adult members of the house, the household’s main source of livelihood, class of residence, the expected market price of maize, the expected market price of groundnuts, expected market price of rape. a balancing test was done to check the balancing properties of the propensity scores to obtain estimates that statistically balance the covariates between treated and control units. urban agriculture participants and non-participants with similar values of propensity scores were matched. matching was implemented using the nearest neighbor (nn) without replacement, kernel, and radius matching algorithms to ensure the robustness of estimates (caliendo and kopeinig, 2008). the average treatment effect on the treated (att) was computed using the general model:             iiiiiiixp psm att xpdyexpdyedet i ,0/0,1/11/  where: psm attt =average treatment on the treated;     iii xpdye ,1/1  =observed change in income of urban agriculture participants;     iii xpdye ,0/0  = observed change in income of urban agriculture nonparticipants;  ixp =conditional probability of participation in urban agriculture given x any observed differences in income between the matched farming and non-farming household was attributed to urban agriculture. the hosmer-lemeshow test was used to test the goodness of fit of the model. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 550-562 554 3. results and discussion 3.1. descriptive analysis a summary of the socio-economic characteristics of the sampled households used in this study is shown in table 1. out of the 2,682 households that were included in this study sample, only 23% (618) of the households were practicing farming. comparably, results further show statistically significant differences in the households’ characteristics between urban agriculture participants and non-participants. the majority of the sampled households were male-headed (80.6%). the age of the respondents ranged from 19 to 90 years. the average age of the household head was 42 years. the average age of the household head for participants and non-participants was 48 years and 40 years, respectively. notably, older household heads were more likely to engage in farming. most of the sampled household heads were monogamously married (70.5%), 10.1% were never married before, 0.7% were in polygamous marriages, 5% were divorced, 12.2% were widowed, 1.5% were separated, and only 0.07% were cohabiting. about 76.4% of urban agriculture household heads were married, while about 69.6% of non-urban agriculture household heads were married. results indicate that urban agriculture participants are more likely to be married compared to nonparticipants. among the unmarried respondents, urban agriculture households tended to have a higher proportion of widowed heads (14.6%) than non-agriculture households (11.4%). it suggests that widows were more likely to resort to urban agriculture to fend for themselves and their families. in terms of the distribution of education, 97.3% of the respondents had attended formal education. of those respondents who attended school, 21.3% attended only primary education while more than half (50.3%) managed to attain a secondary level of education. in addition, a relatively high percentage (25.7%) of the respondents managed to attain a tertiary level of education. this could be attributed to the increase in the number of tertiary education facilities in most parts of urban zambia. similarly, urban agriculture household heads were more learned (29.4% had reached tertiary education) than non-agriculture household heads (24.6% had reached tertiary education). from the total sample, about 50% of the respondents were located in kitwe, while the others were located in the lusaka district. table 1: descriptive statistics of variables variable description total sample (n=2,682) ua participants (n1=618) ua non –participants (n2=2,064) t-sig. household characteristics mean std. dev. mean std. dev. mean std. dev. statistic lev. age of the hh head (years) 42.03 12.789 47.76 12.867 40.31 12.256 -13.13*** male headed hh (%) 80.65 0.395 81.88 0.386 80.28 0.398 -0.88 number of adult hh members 4.69 2.367 5.48 2.26 4.45 2.348 -9.61*** household size 5.52 2.742 6.39 2.61 5.26 2.728 -9.11*** highest educational level of household head no formal education (%) 2.72 0.163 5.02 0.218 2.03 0.141 -4.01*** primary (%) 21.33 0.41 20.55 0.404 21.56 0.411 0.54 secondary (%) 50.26 0.5 44.98 0.498 51.84 0.5 2.99 *** tertiary (%) 25.69 0.437 29.45 0.456 24.56 0.431 -2.44*** main source of livelihood of household head asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 550-562 555 formal business (%) 6.75 0.251 4.85 0.215 7.32 0.26 2.23 informal business (%) 23.01 0.421 18.12 0.386 24.47 0.43 -1.91 farming (%) 3.28 0.178 7.61 0.265 1.98 0.14 -4.52 other wages (%) 6.86 0.253 5.83 0.234 7.17 0.258 0.71 salaried employment (%) 52.13 0.5 50.97 0.5 52.47 0.5 0.65 location of residence of household low-cost residential (%) 72.56 0.446 65.7 0.475 74.61 0.435 4.37*** medium cost residential (%) 10.14 0.302 9.22 0.29 10.42 0.306 0.86 high cost residential (%) 17.3 0.378 25.08 0.434 14.97 0.357 -5.86*** marital status of household head married head of hh (%) never married hh head (%) 10.14 0.302 4.53 0.208 11.82 0.323 5.29*** monogamously married (%) 70.47 0.456 75.73 0.429 68.9 0.463 -3.27*** polygamous married (%) 0.71 0.084 0.65 0.08 0.73 0.085 0.21 divorced (%) 5 0.218 3.56 0.185 5.43 0.227 1.87* widowed (%) 12.16 0.327 14.72 0.355 11.39 0.318 -2.23** separated (%) 1.45 0.12 0.81 0.09 1.65 0.127 1.53 cohabiting (%) 0.07 0.027 0 0 0.1 0.031 0.77 city of residence of household head hh located in kitwe (%) 50.41 0.5 66.83 0.471 45.49 0.498 -9.46*** hh located in lusaka (%) 49.59 0.5 33.17 0.471 54.51 0.498 9.46*** hh monthly expenditure (k) 1815.85 1876.14 2222.25 2398.453 1694.17 1670.2 -6.18*** note: unequal-variance t test: *, **, and *** represents 10%, 5%, and 1% level of significance this means that both cities had an almost equal representation of the total sample size. however, a significantly larger proportion of households of kitwe (66.8%) were adopters of urban agriculture compared to lusaka (33.2%). results further indicate that 72.6% of the total respondents were from the low-cost residential areas, 10.1% were from the medium-cost residential regions, and 17.3% were from the high-cost residential regions, as highlighted in table 1. these results suggest that majority of the households included in the study sample were from the low-cost (low income) residential areas. a significant difference was noted in terms of the households’ residential area between participants and nonparticipants. contrary to the belief that low-cost residential households are more likely to engage in farming, the study results show that households from the high cost (25.1% participants vs. 15% non-participants) areas were relatively more likely to engage in farming than households from the low-cost area. 3.1.1. household farming characteristics farming characteristics of households practicing urban agriculture are presented in table 2. in this study, urban agriculture was limited to three (3) crops, namely maize (cereal), groundnuts (legume), asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 550-562 556 and rape (vegetable). households who grew one or more of these crops within the boundaries of their town of residence were captured as farming households. the decision to limit urban agriculture to maize, groundnuts, and rape production was guided by the significant proportion of households who engaged in the production of these crops as well as the average area of production relative to other crops. the other crops that were grown by the sampled households included cabbage, spinach, tomato, onion, okra, sorghum, millet, soybeans, mixed beans, sweet potatoes, cassava, pumpkins, and cowpeas. results show that the total number of households practicing urban agriculture was 618 households. the participating farming households grew their crops either in a garden or in a field, at around 50% apiece. results also indicate that the fields or gardens used for crop production were located in four (4) different residential areas; either within the households’ residential plot, within the households’ residential area but outside its residential plot, within the households’ town of residence but away from its residential area, or outside the households’ town of residence. table 2: summary statistics of farm characteristics of urban farming households farming characteristics mean std. dev. min max % hh who planted crops in a garden 49.68 0.500 0 1 % hh who planted crops in a field 50.32 0.500 0 1 % garden/field located inside hh residential plot 41.26 0.493 0 1 % garden/field located within hh residential area 18.28 0.387 0 1 % garden/field located within hh residential town 36.09 0.481 0 1 % garden/field located outside hh residential town 4.37 0.205 0 1 % hh who planted maize 61.65 0.487 0 1 % hh who planted groundnuts 28.48 0.452 0 1 % hh who planted rape 27.83 0.449 0 1 total area cultivated (ha) 0.45 1.480 0.0005 25.5 total area allocated to maize production (ha) 0.37 1.284 0 20 total area allocated to groundnuts production (ha) 0.07 0.266 0 5 total area allocated to rape production (ha) 0.01 0.031 0 0.5 rape revenue (kwacha) 1.93 26.430 0 599.91 maize harvests (kg) 207.08 886.563 0 11500 groundnuts harvests (kg) 11.50 57.864 0 950 rape harvests (kg) 1.51 10.018 0 139.91 maize productivity (kg/ha) 544.49 1385.471 0 8625 groundnuts productivity (kg/ha) 132.29 688.483 0 10000 rape productivity (kg/ha) 234.86 1044.980 0 233175 maize price (kwacha) 13.08 593.292 764.70 3823.50 groundnuts price (kwacha) 107.46 5136.348 5593 28173 rape price (kwacha) 29.15 1421.687 1390 8575 maize sales (kgs) 54.59 570.547 0 100062.50 groundnuts sales (kgs) 1.29 12.883 0 10062.50 rape sales (kgs) 0.38 4.149 0 69.96 maize revenue (kwacha) 101.70 1326.180 0 30779.18 groundnuts revenue (kwacha) 19.08 185.145 0 2830.96 note: n = 618 the majority of the households’ gardens or fields used for crop production were located inside the households’ residential plot (41.3%). about 36.1% of the households’ gardens and fields were located within the households’ town of residence, while 18.3% of the households’ fields and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 550-562 557 gardens were found inside the households’ residential area. only a small proportion of households’ gardens and fields were located outside the town of residence (4.4%). however, this study was interested only in urban farming households with gardens and fields found within the limits of the boundaries of the town of household residence (within lusaka and kitwe cities). it means the households with fields and gardens along the periphery of the city of residence or outside lusaka and kitwe cities were not included in the study. these results show that urban farmers have a challenge of access to land for crop production. most of the households use land within the confinement of their compounds for farming. around 61.7 %, 28.5%, and 27.8 % were involved in maize, groundnuts, and rape production, respectively. these results indicate that maize was highly grown among the respondent households. this may be attributed to the crop’s significance as a staple food of the country. the average household farm area under cultivation was only 0.45 hectares (table 2). a significantly larger portion of this land was allocated to maize (0.37 ha) production. only 0.07 ha was allocated to the production of groundnuts, and a lesser amount (0.01 ha) was used for growing rape. a possible explanation is that in this study, all the rape produced by the farming households was grown in gardens. most of the gardens were located in the backyards of the households’ residential plots with limited available space for gardening. results also revealed that among urban agriculture participants, the average crop productivity for maize, groundnuts, and rape was 544.5kg/ha, 132.3kg/ha, and 234.9kg/ha compared to the national average crop yield of maize and groundnuts which are about 1.5mt/ha and 0.68mt/ha respectively. on average, a total of 201.1 kilograms of maize, 11.5 kilograms of groundnuts, and 1.5 kilograms of rape were harvested. of these harvests, only 54.6 kilograms of maize was sold, indicating a proportion of 21.2 % sales of the total harvests. 1.3 kilograms of groundnuts (11.2 %) were sold, and 0.38 kilograms of rape (25.1%) were sold. this means that major portions of crops harvested were retained for home consumption. these results suggest that most of the urban farmers are subsistence farmers. crops are mainly grown for household food consumption, nutrition, and food security. 3.2. empirical findings the propensity to participate in urban agriculture was positively influenced by the age of the household head, the household head being married, and the household head having attained tertiary level of education; having farming as the main source of livelihood and being a resident of kitwe. however, being a resident of a low-cost area, having attained a primary level of education, and having formal and informal businesses as the main source of livelihood negatively influenced the propensity to practice urban agriculture. table 3: propensity score estimates of urban agriculture variable coefficient z-value age of hh head 0.0453*** 11.27 (0.004) marital status 0.4047*** 3.52 (married = 1; 0 o/w) (0.115) primary education -0.2446* -1.8 (yes = 1; 0 o/w) (0.1356) tertiary education 0.2204* 1.74 (yes = 1; 0 o/w) (0.1266) main source of livelihood -0.3202* -1.47 (formal business = 1; 0 o/w) (0.1282) main source of livelihood -0.2637** -2.07 (informal business = 1; 0 o/w) (0.0719) main source of livelihood 0.6041*** 2.53 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 550-562 558 (farming = 1; 0 o/w) (0.2389) category of residence -0.4835** -4.13 (low-cost = 1; 0 o/w) (0.1169) town of residence 0.8263*** 8.09 (kitwe = 1; 0 o/w) (0.1021) constant -3.5793 -14.96 pseudo r2 = 0.10 prob>chi2 *, **, and *** represents 10%, 5%, and 1% level of significance respectively 3.2.1. region of common support the condition of common support was selected and satisfied in the region of [0.053_0.783]. observations whose propensity scores lay outside the region of common support were discarded from the estimation of the impact of urban agriculture on household income (see figure 1). out of 2, 682 observations, 2, 603 observations were matched, meaning that 79 observations were discarded. these were households with propensity score values below 0.053 and above 0.783. the optimal number of blocks used to define the region of common support was eight blocks. this number of blocks ensured that the mean propensity score was not different for treated and controls in each block. below is a graphical presentation of the region of overlap or common support. figure 1: area of common support for the treatment and control groups 3.2.2. balancing tests of propensity scores and covariates t-test the t-test was applied by comparing the statistical significance of the mean differences of the covariates between the treated group and the untreated group both before and after matching. according to this test, the balancing property of the matching methods is satisfied if the mean differences of the covariates between the treated group and the untreated group are statistically insignificant after matching. several variables showed statistically significant differences before matching. after matching, the differences were minimal and statistically insignificant, suggesting that the balancing property was satisfied (table 4). table 4: balancing tests of propensity scores and covariates (t-tests and standardized % bias) variable sample participants nonparticipants % bias t p>t age unmatched 47.775 40.311 matched 47.775 47.651 1.0 0.16 0.870 married unmatched 0.764 0.696 0 1 2 3 4 kd en si ty lo gi t1 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 propensity score treated control asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 550-562 559 matched 0.764 0.755 1.9 0.35 0.723 primary unmatched 0.206 0.216 matched 0.206 0.204 0.3 0.05 0.957 tertiary unmatched 0.294 0.246 matched 0.295 0.299 -0.9 -0.16 0.874 formal unmatched 0.049 0.07 business matched 0.049 0.046 0.9 0.17 0.864 informal unmatched 0.181 0.245 business matched 0.181 0.188 -1.5 -0.29 0.775 farming unmatched 0.076 0.020 matched 0.076 0.066 4.8 0.70 0.483 low-cost unmatched 0.657 0.746 matched 0.657 0.659 -0.5 -0.08 0.933 kitwe unmatched 0.668 0.455 matched 0.668 0.658 2.0 0.36 0.715 *, **, and *** represents 10%, 5%, and 1% level of significance respectively 3.2.3. impact of urban agriculture on household income results on the impact of urban agriculture on household income from the three matching algorithms used are shown in table 5. the nearest neighbor matching methods showed that urban agriculture had a positive and significant impact on household income. engaging in urban agriculture increased household income by 19.1%. likewise, radius matching methods indicated that urban agriculture had a positive and significant impact on household income. practicing in urban agriculture increased household income by 13.7%. kernel matching methods further confirmed the impact of urban agriculture on household income. according to the kernel matching method, urban agriculture increased household income by 14.5%. all the three matching methods used were consistent on the estimated impact of urban agriculture on household income with a very narrow variation in the estimates. it can be observed and concluded from the results that controlling for observable characteristics, participation in urban agriculture would increase household income in the ranges of 13.7% to 19.1%. these results were significant at a 95% confidence level. these results are consistent with other studies such as salcu and attah (2012) and zezza and tasciotti (2010), who also concluded that urban agriculture is positively related to household income. table 5: expected log of total household income: treatment effects of urban agriculture variable matching method sample ua ua att s. e tstat. participants nonparticipants log of total household income nearest neighbor matched 9.1382 8.9472 0.191 0.05 3.82 radius matched 9.1137 8.9764 0.1373 0.0426 3.22 kernel matched 9.118 8.973 0.1445 0.0431 3.35 generally, urban households access their food through purchases. however, it was observed from the study findings that households that practiced urban agriculture retained a large proportion of their agricultural produce for home consumption. only a small proportion of the produce was sold. these results collaborate with table 2 above (summary statistics of farm characteristics of urban farming households), which shows that 61.7% of the farming households grew maize, 28.5% of the farming households grew groundnuts, and 27.8% of the farming households grew rape. a total of 207.1 kg of maize, 11.5 kg of groundnuts, and 1.5kg of rape were harvested, of which 54.6 kg of maize, 1.3 kg of groundnuts, and 0.4 kg of rape were sold. thus, 74% of the maize produce, 89% of the groundnuts harvested, and 75% of the rape produce were retained for home consumption. this entails that urban households mainly engage in farming for household consumption. a possible asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 550-562 560 explanation could be that access to land for farming is a limiting factor; hence households produce only enough for home consumption. this explanation is drawn from the fact that the majority (about 41%) of households’ fields/gardens are located within the confinements of their residential plots. further, the mean urban household farming area is only about 0.45 hectares (table 2), compared to about 1.5 to 2.0 hectares for small scale farmers in the rural areas of zambia. the majority of urban households have access to land for cultivation of fewer than 0.10 hectares. the observed additional income of households that practiced urban agriculture was from both money savings realized as a result of the households’ reduction in expenditure on food for home consumption, as well as cash income from the sale of the surplus produce. however, the increase in income from savings was more than the increase in income from the sales revenue. these results are consistent with findings by other studies such as masvaure (2013), who found that urban agriculture provides a cheaper source of food for urban farmers through the consumption of their produce. access to food from urban agriculture releases extra money for other foods and non-food expenses. the average revenue obtained from maize, groundnuts, and rape sales were k101.70, k19.08, and k1.93, respectively (table 2). furthermore, it was observed that compared to the other crops, rape was the most sold crop. this could be because of the availability of a ready market for the crop. these results imply that urban agriculture has the potential to reduce poverty, enhance the standard of living, and improve household food security through increased household income and improved nutrition. 4. conclusions and recommendations results confirm the potential of urban agriculture to contribute to increased household income. farming households showed higher incomes than non-farming households with similar socioeconomic characteristics. increased income is through savings on food purchases and selling of produce. these results are consistent with other reviewed studies. it is recommended that the government of zambia should create an enabling environment for urban agriculture by integrating it into the agricultural policy. adequate research on the extent of the practice, constraints, opportunities, and potential benefits of urban agriculture is recommended. urban households should be encouraged to consider adopting urban agriculture as a source of food, diversified nutrition, and income. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references alkire, s., kanaaratam, u., & suppa, n. 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(2010). urban agriculture, poverty, and food security: empirical evidence from a sample of developing countries. food policy, 35(4), 265273. doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2010.04.007. https://www.worldbank.org/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 291 effects of climate-smart agriculture adoption on performance of rice farmers in northeast vietnam tuan m. haa ho van bacb adoctor in business (management), hi-tech agriculture & forestry r&d center (hacen), thai nguyen university of agriculture and forestry, group 10, quyet thang commune, thai nguyen city, vietnam. bdoctor in agricultural and resource economics, faculty of economics and rural development, thai nguyen university of agriculture and forestry, thai nguyen university, group 10, quyet thang commune, thai nguyen city, vietnam.  hovanbac@tuaf.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 16 august 2021 revised: 14 september 2021 accepted: 5 october 2021 published: 25 october 2021 keywords climate-smart agriculture csa adopters non-adopters psm economic benefits yield. agricultural production is increasingly vulnerable to risks and uncertainties associated with climate changes. climate-smart agriculture (csa) has been proposed to address challenges in agricultural production such as food security, water shortage, drought, and soil erosion, etc. the benefits of csa adoption for farmers have been debated. many previous studies have indicated that impacts seem to be affected by selection bias. however, controlling such selection bias has not been considered in studies on the csa adoption. thus, in this study, we analyzed the impacts of csa adoption on major economic indicators for rice farmers. the propensity score matching (psm) method was employed to address such selection bias for a case study on rice farmers in thai nguyen province, vietnam. comparing main economic indicators, we found significant differences in rice yields and used seed inputs between csa and non-csa adopters. ignoring selection bias control resulted in overestimation of economic returns. the results also indicate limited contribution of csa adoption to a reduction in pesticide and herbicide usage, and an increase in use of organic fertilizers. some implications for further research are also discussed. contribution/originality: this study is one of very few studies to have investigated the impacts of the csa adoption on production performance of farmers while controlling for selection bias. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.291.301 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ha t.m --bac h.v (2021). effects of climate-smart agriculture adoption on performance of rice farmers in northeast vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4), 291-301. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.291.301 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction climate change is a global challenge and has no borders. global warming has been reported as the major cause leading to climate change that often has adverse effects on physical, biological, and human systems, as well as other consequences (mcsweeney, mark, & lizcano, 2010; nelson & kokic, 2004). climate change has been affecting the human life in various ways (world bank, 2010). it is a key cause of increasing extreme weather phenomena including drought, flood, and destruction of food chains and economic resources, especially in developing countries. impacts asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 4 (2021): 291-301. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6009-7030 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9166-0415 mailto:hovanbac@tuaf.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 291-301 292 related to climate change are abundant and evident in many sectors and regions such as human health, agriculture and food security, water supply, and others. various damages related to extreme weather events are reliable indicators of the negative impacts of climate change (patt et al., 2010). in 2018, natural disasters caused damage worth 225 billion usd globally, of which about 95% were attributed to events related to weather change (arora, 2019). agricultural production is highly vulnerable to climate change, which is closely linked to increases in temperature and change in rainfall, leading to considerable decrease in yield and production. climate change is a natural process, but the pace of this variation has significantly increased in the last 100 years. although climate change cannot be avoided, it is necessary to seek adequate mitigation and adaptation solutions under the context of changing environment. mitigation measures are actions taken to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, while adaption ones are based on reducing vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. vietnam is among the most vulnerable nations globally affected by climate change (dasgupta, laplante, meisner, wheeler, & yan, 2007; monre, 2016). climate change has affected many regions of vietnam, including the mekong river delta and the northern upland region (ha & duong, 2018; ha, nguyen, khuat, & nguyen, 2019). the most pressing concerns related to climate change in the northern uplands include drought in the winter, flooding in the summer, soil erosion and degradation, and changing temperature regimes such as cold spells (isponre, 2009; monre, 2016). agriculture is also regarded as an important source of greenhouse gas (ghg) emission after energy, accounting for about 32% of total ghg emission in vietnam (world bank, 2010), with the subsector of rice production contributing up to 46.3% (fao, 2010). recent studies have indicated that implementing climate change adaptation measures, including climate-smart agriculture (csa) practices, could improve production efficiency, economic gains, and food security (ho & shimada, 2019; khatri-chhetri, aggarwal, joshi, & vyas, 2017). according to the definition of ciat, practices and/or technologies would be climate-smart if they could achieve at least one of the objectives of csa (food security improvement, adaptation, and mitigation). thus, hundreds of practices around the world are related to csa: for instance, smart water and irrigation management, adoption of improved crop varieties, sustainable land management, etc. (nguyen, roehrig, grosjean, tran, & vu, 2017). agriculture is generally the sector that is most sensitive and vulnerable to adverse climatic influences, especially in rice production. limitation to accessing water constrains irrigated rice production. shortage of water supply, water quality, and soil degradation have raised questions about the sustainability of commonly practised rice production (bouman, lampayan, & tuong, 2007; nelson et al., 2009). thus, farmers around the world have been finding ways to cope with the adverse impacts of climate change in ensuring food security. in vietnam, rice production plays an important role in the agriculture sector with total rice-cultivated land taking up to 67% of cropland area (gso, 2010). rice production has significantly contributed to food security and poverty reduction. the development of rice production has enabled vietnam to ensure its national food security and become one of the major rice exporters in the world. such outstanding achievements of vietnam’s rice sector have arisen from much concerted effort, including institutional reforms, application of advanced technologies and management methods in production, improved production infrastructure and irrigation systems, etc. it has become accepted among vietnamese farmers that applying more water, seeds, and fertilizer input is the best way to increase output (ha, 2014). however, such conventional rice production practices are encountering increasing economic and environmental costs. moreover, increasing water shortages are constraining irrigated rice production in vietnam, and sustainability of conventional rice production is increasingly questionable under the changing context of the environment. thus, a number of csa practices based on soil and water management, crop management, and adoption of improved varieties have been proposed to address those challenges. these practices have many important contributions to yield improvement, and to reduction of the impact of adverse climate change (dung, ho, hiep, & hoi, 2018; duong & thanh, 2019; ho & shimada, 2019). in this article, csa practices refer to the adoption of high-yielding varieties, application of the system of rice intensification (sri), drought-tolerant varieties, and changes in planting dates. many previous studies focused only on the impact of one adaptive measure. the impact of modern rice varieties can be found in the study of duong and thanh (2019), while a plethora of empirical studies have revealed comparison of the economic benefits between sri and conventional rice practices. sri could contribute to water saving of up to 50% and an increase in rice yield by 2040% (barah, 2009; ceesay, reid, fernandes, & uphoff, 2006; kassam, stoop, & uphoff, 2011; thakur, rath, roychowdhury, & uphoff, 2010; uphoff, kassam, & harwood, 2011). other studies found no significant yield increase, or even a decrease, in rice productivity for sri adopters (dobermann, 2004; mcdonald, hobbs, & riha, 2006; tsujimoto, horie, randriamihary, shiraiwa, & homma, 2009). those studies aimed to estimate the impact of only one adoption on household performance, meaning that other contributory factors were not taken into account. however, the assumption condition rarely exists in reality, which may lead to biased estimation of results. ecological conditions may also lead to underestimation or overestimation of rice yield (dobermann, 2004). moreover, not only farm and farmer characteristics (barrett, moser, mchugh, & barison, 2004), but also plot features may have important effects on adoption patterns and impacts (noltze, schwarze, & qaim, 2012). this implies that research findings in a specific region should not be used to generalize and set up an intervention policy for other regions. additionally, the factor of selection bias is proven to affected the output of crop production, and several different techniques have also been used to minimize its effects on estimated results for production of tea and modern rice varieties (bac, nanseki, & chomei, 2019; duong & thanh, 2019; tran & goto, 2019). although there are many studies on determinants or factors influencing farmers’ adoption of csa (dung et al., 2018; dung., 2019; noltze, schwarze, & qaim, 2013), very few have estimated the economic impacts of this adoption. therefore, this study was conducted to provide more insights into impact of csa on rice production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 291-301 293 2. study methods 2.1. study area northeast vietnam consists of 9 provinces that have been much affected by climate change. crop production plays an important role in household’s livelihoods. thai nguyen was selected as a representative province in the region for this research. in this province, a number of csa practices have been implemented to minimize the negative impacts of climate change, including sri, high-yield rice varieties, and crop management practices. based on local statistical reports and advice from leaders and staff of functional departments (including the department of agriculture & rural development, center for agriculture extension, and department of natural resources and environment), two representative districts of thai nguyen province were selected to gather data. a total of 225 rice farmers were interviewed to collect all related information for the study, of which 11 household data that did not fit well with the objective data were excluded from the analysis. the primary data of 214 households, including 118 csa adopters and 96 non-adopters, were used to generate results. figure-1. the study locations (dinh hoa and vo nhai districts of thai nguyen province). 2.2. data collection methods a range of techniques was employed to collect information on rice farmers. the techniques used included focus groups, community workshops, and structured interviews. • focus group discussions were undertaken to gather information on climate hazards, impacts, and adaptation practices to identify ongoing and potential csa practices in the study area. • primary data collection using questionnaire was key in the study. the questionnaires used in the data survey were designed with the support and advice of local consultants and colleagues, who have extensive and indepth experience in the area of research. then, the questionnaire was pre-tested on 15 rice farmers in the selected study areas. final questionnaires were completed based on the inputs and feedback of experts and research team members. all enumerators who participated in the data survey were carefully trained prior to the official survey. a random sampling method was employed to select both representative csa adopters and non-adopters based on potential csa practices identified as a result of focus group discussions. finally, indepth structured interviews were conducted to gather information from 118 adopters and 96 non-adopters between december 2019 and february 2020. 2.3. variable selection for empirical analysis since the study aims to evaluate the impacts of the csa on farmers’ performance, the following list of variables are used, namely: • treated and untreated variables: adopters are defined as farmers applying at least one csa practice (highyielding varieties, sri practice, crop management practices), while non-adopters are those who do not apply any of those. • outcome variables: the economic literature shows that many indicators have been used to measure outcomes from the application of technology or practices, including productivity, quantity, total value, and input factors (amare, asfaw, & shiferaw, 2012; ly, jensen, bruun, rutz, & de neergaard, 2012; wu, ding, pandey, & tao, 2010). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 291-301 294 table-1. definition of variables used in the models. variable lists description mean (sd) variables used to construct propensity score adoption 1 if farmer applies any csa practices, 0 otherwise 0.55 (0.034) gender 1 if farmer is male, 0 otherwise 0.31 (0.032) education number of completed grades by household head 6.98 (0.187) labor size numbers of household agricultural laborers (15–60 years) 2.50 (0.073) irrigation 1 if farm is actively irrigated, 0 otherwise 0.67 (0.032) land plots number of cultivated land plots 3.42 (0.169) distance distance from home to farm (km) 0.79 (0.050) agric. credit 1 if farmer borrows agricultural loans, 0 otherwise 0.18 (0.026) info. access 1 if farmer is provided information on csa, otherwise 0.39 (0.033) occupation 1 if farmer has main occupation in agriculture, 0 otherwise 0.93 (0.016) owned assets 1 if farmer has owned machines, 0 otherwise 0.96 (0.012) membership 1 if farmer is membership of production group, 0 otherwise 0.63 (0.033) land prep. 1 if farmer prepares land by machine, 0 otherwise 0.88 (0.022) income rate proportion of rice income in household total income (%) 22.65 (1.138) output variables used in psm total value total value of family’s rice production (million vnd) 13.28 (0.645) rice quantity total rice quantity of household (tons) 1.78 (0.086) productivity rice quantity per hectare (tons/ha) 5.23 (0.103) used seeds seed quantity used (kg) 13.94 (0.635) manure farmyard manure used in rice fields (tons) 0.43 (0.070) fertilizers chemical fertilizer used in rice fields (tons) 0.34 (0.016) pesticide cost pesticide cost in rice fields (million vnd) 0.45 (0.035) work days number of working days in rice fields per year 20.98 (1.099) other costs expenditures on other inputs (million vnd) 3.27 (0.221) the list of variables used to estimate the propensity scores was compiled on the basis of economic theory, the literature, and the actual status of rice production in the study area (khandker, koolwal, & samad, 2010; smith & todd, 2005). previous studies have extensively documented the fact that these variables should cover (1) the characteristics of household head (gender, formal education); (2) household demographic and socioeconomic factors (number of agricultural laborers, main occupation, access to credit sources, agricultural services, off-farm employment, method of land preparation, status of owned machine, member of production group, rate of rice income); and (3) area characteristics (irrigation, home–farm distance, plot number) (kassie, shiferaw, & muricho, 2011; mason & smale, 2013; matuschke & qaim, 2009; mendola, 2007). 2.4. data analysis the collected data were checked prior to statistical analysis to ensure accuracy. in case the collected information and data were not consistent, farmers were contacted for further interview. unreliable data were omitted from analysis. economic achievements have generally been driven by related development policy, technological advances, and support programs, briefly termed interventions. evaluation of impact from such interventions has received much attention from researchers for over a decade. many approaches and econometric methods have been employed to impact evaluation (khandker et al., 2010). application of a specific technique is always debated in empirical economic studies (wang, moustier, & loc, 2014). the treatment effect could be measured by coefficients of a regression model (imbens, 2004), while a dummy variable is used to estimate impacts. the best output of impact evaluation can be generated if the original difference does not exist in the estimation. in other words, the same farmers should be compared with each other before and after an intervention. this could easily be done in the research trial with small samples, but it would appear impossible at the regional scale. previous studies found that characteristics of individuals have significant effects on their performance rather than interventions (imbens & wooldridge, 2009). another important factor that might lead to biased estimation is that datasets are often gathered from nonrandomized studies rather than randomized trials (becker & ichino, 2002). to estimate causality, such a self-selection issue needs to be overcome in treatment status. in the economic literature, the psm technique has frequently been applied to control selection bias associated with observable variables (rosenbaum & rubin, 1983; takahashi & barrett, 2014). the counterfactual is constructed by matching observations with other treatments using their propensity scores. the treatment effect is estimated by measuring the output difference of the matched observations. psm is a mathematical procedure used to estimate average treatment effects on the treated (att) (becker & ichino, 2002). the observation propensity score is first estimated using a logit regression model, as in equation 1: y(1,0) = β0 + β1x1 + β2x2 + … + βnxn (1) where y denotes the dependent variable (1 implies csa adopters, 0 for non-adopters), β are the estimated coefficients and xn denotes covariates described in table 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 291-301 295 secondly, the nearest-neighbor matching technique is applied to match similar observations using propensity scores estimated by the logit model. kernel and radius matching techniques are also used to avoid bad matches. in addition, we employed matching with replacement to increase cross-checking. in the second step, the estimates of atts for the outcome variables are undertaken following equation 2: e(y(1) – y(0)|di = 1) = e(y(1)|di = 1) – e(y(0)|di = 1) (2) with a particular observation i and outcome y, di denotes the treatment status (di = 1 for treatment; di = 0 for control). y(1) is the outcome of treatment while y(0) is the outcome of control status. the term e(y(1)|di = 1) is an average outcome of treated groups, and the term e(y(0)|di = 1) is an average outcome of the matched control group. the standard errors of the att are also computed for statistical tests following abadie & imbens (2016). several statistical indicators must be estimated to test matching quality. matching quality is considered to be good enough if significant differences do not exist systematically after matching based on the propensity score (caliendo & kopeinig, 2008). moreover, lower standardized bias should be created after matching (rosenbaum. & rubin, 1985). additionally, the likelihood ratio test and pseudo-r2 indicators should also be included for checking. the matching is good if the likelihood ratio test is not statistically significant (smith & todd, 2005), and pseudo-r2 should be fairly low (sianesi, 2004). finally, the condition of common support should also be tested carefully by visual inspection of the densities of propensity scores of treated and untreated groups. observations outside the support region should be removed in effect estimation (caliendo & kopeinig, 2008). 3. results and discussion 3.1. descriptive results table 1 presents descriptive statistics for the variables used in the models. it shows that csa farmers account for 55% of the total sample. the results of t-tests for mean differences of covariates and outcome variables between treatment and control groups are reported in tables 2 and 3. a substantial imbalance exists among selected covariates, implying the existence of self-selection issues. households in the treatment group have higher numbers of headed males, and household heads are more highly educated than those in the control group. notably, members of the treatment group often have more access to extension services through training courses on csa compared to control group members. moreover, there are also significantly positive differences in owed machinery and credit loans, suggesting that rice households following csa may have been initially wealthier than other households. another explanation is that some credit loans may have been used to invest in agricultural machinery and highyielding varieties. in addition to observed covariates, there may be unobserved covariates that have significant impacts on outcome variables, such as yield: for example, household motivation could not be observed. motivated households are more likely to apply csa practices in the field and, as a result, their production performance might be better than those with less motivation. advanced education and technical knowledge, which can have positive impacts on both csa adoption and farm performance, also cannot be quantified easily. in regard to outcome variables, the csa farmer group reported significantly higher mean values than the noncsa farmer group on gross revenue, rice yield, and rice quantity. csa households’ gross revenue of rice production was nearly 30% higher than that of non-adopted ones. similarly, rice yield and quantity were significantly higher for the treatment group. tables 2 and 3 also reveal the mean differences in other variables related to production inputs of rice farming. while seed quantity and labor days are significantly less used for farm systems applying csa practices, other costs are more highly spent for conventional farming ones. as mentioned above, the difference in outcome variables may be derived from the initial imbalance of observed and unobserved covariates between treated and untreated farmers, rather than the effects of csa practices. in other words, there might be biased conclusions on treatment effects if studies used only simple mean comparisons of outcome variables between two groups. thus, it is important to control self-selection in this study. table 2. mean differences of variables used to construct propensity scores. covariates csa adopters csa non-adopters diff. mean s.d mean s.d mean s.e gender 0.373 0.045 0.229 0.043 0.143** 0.062 education 7.492 0.243 6.343 0.278 1.145*** 0.369 labor size 2.441 0.093 2.583 0.119 -0.143 0.151 irrigation 0.661 0.044 0.698 0.047 -0.037 0.064 land plots 3.373 0.241 3.479 0.236 -0.106 0.338 distance 0.746 0.061 0.858 0.083 -0.117 0.103 agric. credit 0.220 0.038 0.125 0.034 0.095* 0.051 info. access 0.534 0.046 0.219 0.042 0.315*** 0.063 occupation 0.979 0.015 0.898 0.028 0.081** 0.031 owned assets 0.932 0.023 0.823 0.042 0.109** 0.048 membership 0.644 0.044 0.614 0.049 0.029 0.067 land prep. 0.966 0.017 0.958 0.021 0.008 0.026 income rate 24.478 1.545 20.423 1.664 4.055* 2.271 note: * 10% significance level; ** 5% significance level; *** 1% significance level source: authors’ survey data 2019–2020. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 291-301 296 table-3. mean differences of variables used to estimate rice performance. outcome variables csa adopters non-csa adopters diff. mean s.d mean s.d mean s.e total value 15.348 1.026 10.746 0.605 4.602*** 1.191 productivity 5.751 0.129 4.605 0.142 1.145*** 0.192 rice quantity 2.049 0.135 1.458 0.083 0.592*** 0.158 used seeds 12.694 0.865 15.480 0.915 -2.786** 1.260 manure 0.511 0.111 0.349 0.076 0.162 0.134 fertilizers 0.340 0.023 0.339 0.022 0.001 0.031 pesticide cost 0.429 0.042 0.484 0.059 -0.056 0.072 labor days 18.87 1.526 23.57 1.54 -4.698** 2.171 other costs 1.319 0.225 1.254 0.241 0.066 0.329 note: * 10% significance level; ** 5% significance level; *** 1% significance level 3.2. determinants of csa adoption table 4 presents parameter estimates of a logit model equivalent to the first stage of the treatment effect model. although the main objective of the study was to assess the effect of csa adoption, logit estimation also reveals some interesting findings. the results indicate that some factors have positive impacts on the adoption of csa practices, including gender, formal education, main occupation, irrigated farms, access to extension services, methods of land preparation, credit loans, and rate of rice income. among these, formal education of household head, rate of rice income, and access to extension training had statistically significant impacts on household adoption decision making. the positive and significant coefficients show that formal education, rate of rice income, and technical training are very important in adoption whereas positive and insignificant signs show no important impact on adoption decision. other covariates have negative impacts on household adoption decision but have no statistical significance. table-4. propensity score for csa adoption. covariates coeff. st. err gender 0.425 0.345 education 0.130 0.061** labor size -0.013 0.153 occupation 1.228 0.851 land plot -0.028 0.066 distance -0.076 0.219 info. access 1.139 0.345*** irrigation 0.337 0.338 land prep. 0.782 0.487 membership -0.193 0.326 agric. credit 0.632 0.426 income rate 0.012 0.009* owned assets 0.135 0.928 _cons -0.500 1.450 note: * 10% significance level; ** 5% significance level; *** 1% significance level. 3.3. rice yield and economic indicators as described in section 2.4, better farm performance, such as rice yield and economic indicators, could have been underor overestimated due to the consequence of selection bias. thus, before examining the casual effects of csa adoption using psm, it is important to discuss matching quality using different techniques. first, balancing the condition of all selected covariates between adopter and non-adopters needs to be satisfied. table 5 reports the results of testing balance conditions. there is no significant difference in the propensity score after matching. moreover, significantly lower standardized bias was created, as shown in table 6. before matching, the mean standardized difference for overall covariates used to construct the propensity score was about 23.8, but this was markedly reduced to 5.6 after matching. additionally, there are many selected covariates with an absolute value of percentage of bias that >20 before matching, but these all reduced to <20 after matching (figure 2). all these signals indicate very good balancing propensity (caliendo & kopeinig, 2008; rosenbaum & rubin, 1985; sianesi, 2004). second, another important requirement is to check the condition of common support regions when the matching procedure is performed. according to khandker et al. (2010), the effectiveness of psm depends on having a large number of treated and untreated observations. figure 3 shows that few csa adopters with propensity score greater than the maximum or lower than minimum of non-adopters fall out of the common support region. in short, both balancing and common support conditions are very adequate in this study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 291-301 297 table-5. balance checking after matching: csa adopters and non-adopters. covariates mean % bias p-value csa adopters csa non-adopters gender 0.187 0.229 -9.2 0.480 education 6.489 6.343 5.4 0.685 labor size 2.781 2.583 18.1 0.239 occupation 0.979 0.979 0.0 1.000 land plot 3.379 3.479 0.0 1.000 distance 0.882 0.858 3.3 0.819 info. access 0.229 0.218 2.3 0.863 irrigation 0.708 0.698 2.2 0.875 land prep. 0.843 0.822 6.1 0.711 membership 0.552 0.614 -12.9 0.382 agric. credit 0.104 0.125 -5.5 0.652 income rate 20.78 20.42 2.2 0.877 owned assets 0.947 0.955 -5.4 0.734 mean standardized difference before and after: 23.8 and 5.6, respectively table-6. results of matching quality. matching techniques pseudo-r2 lr chi2 (p-value) before after before after nnm 0.145 0.016 42.70*** 4.34 radius 0.145 0.011 42.70*** 2.41 kernel 0.145 0.006 42.70*** 1.43 note: *** 1% significance level. source: authors’ survey data 2019–2020. nnm: nearest-neighbor matching; kernel: matching with default bandwidth = 0.06; radius: matching with caliper = 0.05. figure-2. distribution of % bias across covariates. figure-3. density distribution of propensity score. table-7. average treatment effects of csa adoption on production performance. nnm radius kernel att s.e att s.e att s.e total value 3.340** 1.462 3.212* 1.239 3.911** 1.345 rice quantity 0.501** 0.198 0.375** 0.170 0.532*** 0.178 productivity 0.715** 0.282 1.061*** 0.245 0.954*** 0.246 seed quantity -3.583** 1.789 -5.364*** 1.655 -3.399** 1.591 farmyard manure 0.288 0.202 0.119 0.153 0.274* 0.156 chem. fertilizers -0.028 0.048 -0.045 0.042 0.006 0.038 pesticide cost -0.152 0.144 -0.196 0.107 -0.155 0.096 work days -1.477 2.876 -3.786 2.671 -2.223 2.728 other costs -0.143 0.591 -0.631 0.522 -0.183 0.521 note: * 10% significance level; ** 5% significance level; *** 1% significance level. nnm: n = 1; kernel = 0.06; radius = 0.05 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 291-301 298 the empirical analysis used various matching techniques, including nearest neighbor, radius and kernel matching. the estimation results for the whole observations are presented in table 7. these results are consistent across different matching methods. csa adoption clearly had positive effects on household farming performance. first, csa adoption improved farmers’ total value of rice production because it resulted in a higher rice yield. more specifically, total value increased significantly, by approximately 3.2–3.9 million vnd, which is equivalent to a 26.7% increase compared to the control group. similarly, there was increase in rice yield across matching techniques, and all have statistical significances at 5%. the study also indicates strong evidence of higher productivity for farmers adopting csa practices. average rice productivity was significantly improved, by approximately 0.7–1.1 tons, representing a relative increase of about 14–21% higher than that of the non-adopters. in addition, csa farmers could reduce seed input although the decreased magnitude of spent seed differs across matching techniques. seed quantity was significantly reduced, by approximately 3.6–5.4 kg, equivalent to 22–31.5% compared to conventional farmers. other inputs of rice production, including farmyard manure, chemical fertilizers, pesticide costs, labor days, and other expenses, do not have statistically significant differences for the treated group. in this study, net income of rice production was not estimated because rice production is mostly used for family demand rather than market sales. in the field survey, respondents said that rice production is primarily spent for daily food consumption and partly used for feeding animals, while cash income mainly comes from off-farm jobs. thus, this can partly affect household time and money investment in rice production. 3.4. discussion our results indicate that rice farmers received positive and significant economic impacts from applying csa practices. although several studies have reported that csa adoption has positive impacts on economic returns, the issue of selection bias has been ignored in evaluation. thus, our study has contributed to the evaluation literature on the economic impact of csa practices. our findings also reconfirmed that the adoption of csa practices has positive effects on economic returns. nevertheless, this could have been overestimated if selection bias was not controlled in the study. the positive effects on rice productivity are consistent with previous findings on the effects of sri adoption (castillo, minh, & pfeifer, 2012; thakur et al., 2010), but the results are also contradictory to several studies (dobermann, 2004; mcdonald et al., 2006; tsujimoto et al., 2009). we also found a positive impact of csa application on total value. this finding could be easily understood due to an increase in rice productivity. higher total value was also reported in several studies on the effects of the adoption of sri practice or sustainable agricultural technologies (noltze et al., 2013; tuyet, fry, van hoang, & ha, 2017). our study also compared inputs used and costs between csa and non-csa farmers. as expected, seed quantity was much less for csa farmers, contributing to a decrease in their total variable costs. this is because many rice farmers apply sri practices in their field – known as the use of single seeding and wider planting density. this finding is also in line with previous studies (noltze et al., 2013; tuyet et al., 2017). the use of other inputs, including chemical fertilizers, pesticides and labor, was also slightly lower on csa farms, while the use of organic fertilizers and manure was slightly higher. however, these did not differ significantly on any variables. remarkably, regular weeding, organic fertilizers, and farmyard manure are encouraged with csa practices. however, farmers still use herbicides for weeding in practice. similarly, fertilizer application was also not statistically different. the difference with csa farmers was that they applied more balanced proportions of different fertilizers. our in-depth interviews with rice farmers in the field survey also indicated that income from rice production accounts for only a small proportion of total household income sources. farmers often apply chemical fertilizers and herbicides in weeding for time saving and convenience. the time thus saved is spent on off-farm activities for additional income. in addition, farmers commonly exchange labor with neighbors during the rice transplantation period. hired labor is involved only in rice harvesting, and is computed in other costs. these cost patterns are not different between csa adopter and non-adopter groups. 4. conclusions this study analyzed the effect of csa in northeast vietnam. the original data from 214 small-scale rice farmers were used to estimate the impact of this adoption on farm economic indicators. a logistic regression model was applied to determine the factors affecting household adoption decisions in the first stage, while psm was employed to estimate att in the following step. we carefully checked both balance and common support conditions to ensure good matching quality after the matching process. in other words, selection bias was minimized as much as possible in our study. the study findings showed that there are many important determinants motivating households to adopt csa in rice production. of these, formal education of household heads, access to extension services, and rate of rice income are key contributing factors. this implies that expansion of csa practices would be more successful if these factors are improved, especially in providing regular information on csa through training courses, because this still is a key information channel for farmers in the research area. if the issue of selection bias is not controlled, simple comparison would have resulted in overestimation of economic indicators in the study. our findings indicated that farmers are able to achieve higher average yield by applying csa practices in rice production. as a result, this would lead to higher quantity and total value of rice production for local farmers. our finding also reconfirmed a significant increase in rice quantity and total value for csa adopters compared to non-adopters. moreover, adoption has a clear impact on reduction of seed input in rice cultivation. farmyard manure is used slightly more in csa farms, while other variable inputs such chemical fertilizers, pesticide costs, labor, and other costs did not have significant influence. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 291-301 299 although the study has provided clear evidence on the positive impacts of csa adoption on rice yield, other aspects such as environmental protection and agro-ecological conservation have not been achieved as expected. thus, additional and suitable policies are needed to encourage higher application levels of organic fertilizers, and minimization of the use of synthetic pesticides and herbicides. funding: this research was funded by the vietnam national foundation for science and technology development (nafosted) under grant number 14/2019/tn. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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(2010). assessing the impact of agricultural technology adoption on farmers' well-being using propensity-score matching analysis in rural china. asian economic journal, 24(2), 141-160. available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8381.2010.02033.x. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 336 trends in profitability amidst production constraints encountered by smallholder mango growers a case of india mehjabeena a. saravana duraia a department of economics, periyar university, salem, tamil nadu, india  mehjabeen.nish@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 06-mar-2020 accepted: 06-may-2020 online available: 09-jun2020 keywords: artificial-ripening, distribution, ground-water depletion, profit-margin loss, welfare-economics abstract this paper highlights constraints faced by smallholder mango growers of a sub-district which, is classified into two categories i.e. technical constraints and economic & marketing constraints. it also analyzes and explains the effect of agricultural activities on environmental degradation, health, and climate change. based on the constraints, the data was used from april 2016 to march 2017. a sample of 320 smallholder mango growers of region srinivaspur; a sub-district of kolar, india was collected by a structured interview. we have used the arithmetic mean, percentage method, and ranking method for empirical analysis. contribution/ originality the research explores the reasons behind the issues faced by smallholder mango growers like; high apmc commission, and lower rainfall. it also finds why agriculture activities are affecting the health, environment, and how it is one of the causes of climate change. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.336.345 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: mehjabeen and a. saravana durai (2020). trends in profitability amidst production constraints encountered by smallholder mango growers a case of india. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 336-345. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 336-345 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:mehjabeen.nish@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.336.345 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 336-345 337 1. introduction india ranks first in the production of mangoes inclusive of mangosteens & guavas, banana, and papayas that contribute about 40.4%, 25.7%, and 43.6% respectively, towards the total fruit production of the country. in the year 2018-19, india’s fruit and vegetable export were usd 1469.33 million, in which fruits were of usd 692.01 million, and vegetables of usd 777.25 million (apeda ministry of commerce and industry, 2020). india contributes almost 50% of the world’s total mango production followed by china, mexico, and thailand. mango-producing countries are mostly ‘developing countries.’ therefore, there is a lot of scope for research and development. kolar district shows the highest trend in mango cultivation among other districts. in the year 201415, the area under fruit cultivation was 58931 hectares and the production was 601159 tons, out of which the area under mango cultivation was 48824 hectares i.e. 82.85% and its production was 390961 tons i.e. 65.03% of the total fruits produced in the district. among other sub-districts in the district, srinivaspur not only shows a trend of the largest area under mango cultivation but also stands first in karnataka. the area under the geography of the subdistrict is 863 square kilometres i.e. 86300 hectares. there are around 40886 total cultivators (main+ marginal) in which 25,355 are males and 15,531 females. the total area under mango cultivation in the district is 49638 hectares; out of which, srinivaspur sub-district holds 25125 hectares,i.e.50.62% of the total area under mango cultivation in the district and, total production in the district is 421192 tons out of which srinivaspur sub-district have 215263 tons i.e. 51.11% of the total mango production in the district (department of horticulture, 19972015; government of karnataka, 2016). this is why it is called the land of world famous mangoes. average rainfall in the sub-district is 745 mm @45 rainy day and average rainy-day month-wise is not more than 8 days. the highest rainfall is recorded in september which is almost the same for many years. irrigated area in the sub-district has increased and the means of irrigation is mainly bore-well. ground-water is reported to over-exploited (government of karnataka, 2016). due to climate change mango arrival early in the karnataka and andhra pradesh market which has resulted in the arrival of the fruit at the same time from all the five peninsula india’s state i.e. karnataka, andhra pradesh, telengana, kerala and tamil nadu creating high supply (kamalapathi, 2017; kuruvilla, 2020). due to thunderstorm with light rain in april 2019 mango shower took place in few of the areas in karnataka, kerala, telengana, tamil nadu and maharashtra resulting in a loss in yield due to climate change (chennailyil oru mazhaikkaalam, 2019) it was reported that mango tastes sour in kerala. the mango orchards didn’t flower in november. the farmers were afraid of loss as the market might have been flooded with mangoes from all the south indian states at the same time. the reasons for late flowering were unseasonal rainfall and rising temperature. they also feared ‘thrips’ an insect that sucks the latex from the mango flower and also responsible for deformation and decolourize fruits (kuruvilla, 2020). a case study report says shree kishan suman, a kota-based horticulturist and farmer have identified in the year 2000 a mango tree which has bloomed three times i.e. januaryfebruary, june-july and september-october. he named the variety as ‘sadabahar’ which, is also immune to many diseases (the better home, 2018). farmers dumped the mangoes on roads due to the crashing of the wholesale price. alphonso mangoes were sold at usd 1.04/ kg in retail markets were sold in usd 0.104/ kg in the apmc wholesale market. totapuri and raspuri have reported to sold at the lowest price of usd 0.052/ kg in ramanagaram (kumar, 2018). mango output has increased by 8% in india. utter pradesh, andhra pradesh and karnataka by 0.2, 0.44 and 0.1 million tonnes respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 336-345 338 the european union banned the import of indian mangoes and four vegetables. the first reason was the fruit flies lay eggs in the immature mangoes which are hatched during the ripping stage of mangoes and the maggots feed on the flesh of it (ganesan, 2014; goyal et al., 2017). the second reason was the use of calcium carbide to ripen the mango artificially which could cause diarrhea, mouth ulcers, and also cancer. it also has some quantity of arsenic and phosphorus hydride. calcium carbide also degrades the taste where the mangoes look ripen on its skin but inside it remains raw. the report also mentioned that how the pesticide shop owner misguide the illiterate and greedy farmers (ganesan, 2014; khan, 2017) despite a ban on artificial ripening and the use of calcium carbide under the prevention of food adulteration (pfa) act, 1954 and the prevention of food where the convict shall face imprisonment for three years and a fine of up to rupees 1000 still, in india it is used. apart from calcium carbide, ethylene and ethephon are some other chemicals used for artificial ripening which is a little less harmful and permissible if used in a limited concentration. (khan, 2017). the recommended amount of macronutrients is roughly 1 kg/tree (leandro, 2016) where the ratio of n:p:k is recommended to be 1.1:1.4:1.8 kg tree-1 (peralta-antonio et al., 2014) the soil health card is provided to the farmers intermittently in the span of every two years and doesn’t contain the information regarding the volume of mobile nutrients and immobile nutrients in the soil sample (department of agriculture, cooperation and farmers welfare, 2014; reddy, 2018). phosphate fertilizers contain toxic elements such as cadmium (cd), uranium (u), mercury (hg), lead (pb), iron (fe), molybdenum (mo), radium (ra), and chromium (cr) which is gathering in the soils over the years. few experiments show significant accumulation of these metals in plant tissues. it has been found that the accumulation of heavy metal has been increasing eventually by chemical fertilizer application especially in the root and shoot and the concentration of cd and pb has been reported high. cd is the only metal that has proved to have the highest transfer ratio from soil to plant cells and then to the human body which is a disease-causing factor in the long run. uranium (u) is abundant in the environment but it is considered to be a non-essential element for the human body. the average human gastrointestinal absorption of uranium is 1-2%. uranium accumulation takes place in the human body when uranyl iron replaces calcium in the hydroxyapatite complex of crystals. uranium enters into the human body through food-chain and it is known for the cause of nephritis disease (wuana and okieimen, 2011; dissanayake and chandrajith, 2009; gupta et al., 2014). it has been found out via samples of urine and drinking water of 325 people that the medium uranium concentration in drinking water is 2 µg/l and in urine, its 13 ng/mmol creatinine, from which the result drawn was the daily median intake of uranium is 39 µg. cadmium (cd) is another non-essential element and has no physiological function in the human body. the resorption of cadmium in the human body could be pulmonary, gastrointestinal, and dermal. anemic people showed 6% more intake of cd. cd is accumulated mostly in the kidney and stays there for 10 years. it leads to tubules cell necrosis if the accumulation is more. if 2.5 µg cd/g of creatinine shows it leads to renal tubular damage by 4%. itai-itai disease caused due to cadmium poisoning leads to bone damage (dissanayake and chandrajith, 2009; wuana and okieimen, 2011; gupta et al., 2014). 2. materials and methods we carried out the fieldwork at srinivaspur sub-district of kolar district, karnataka in india in the month of march-april; 2017. the study covered the period from march 2016 to april 2017. we randomly interviewed 320 smallholder mango growers using a structured interview schedule. there are 5 blocks in the sub-district namely; kasba, yeldur, ronur, raylpad and nelvanki. we interviewed 20 smallholder mango growers from three villages in each block i.e. 15 villages and 20 more mango growers were also randomly, who have visited the horticulture department located in the srinivaspur town for getting a clear picture. we have considered those farmers who have land holdings from 2.5 to 5 acres and whose 50% of the total income from mango cultivation for this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 336-345 339 research. the reason to conduct the research is srinivaspur specializes in mango cultivation and it has a well-defined supply chain. we wanted to explore that rather than specializing mango whether the farmers are free from production, technical and economic & marketing constraints? we attempted to know the effect of agricultural activities and their impact on environmental degradation and climate change. these effects of climate change and environmental degradation also affected agriculture. these effects of agricultural activities and environmental degradation can also felt in the health of stake-holders. we have analyzed the data and constructed chat using microsoft excel 2016. we have used arithmetic mean, percentage method and average priority sorting for showing results. 3. results and discussion 3.1. effect of production constraints on the profitability of the respondents  80.93% and 54.43% of the respondents face late-flowering & under formation of fruits and lack of knowledge about identifying pests and diseases and, they ranked both the issues second. some diseases have been introduced in recent years of which farmers do not know. for instance, ‘thrips’ is one of the new pests in the sub-district that spoils 50% of the total mango yield, leading to income loss for the farmers  18.75% of the respondents revealed that they don’t have suitable soil for the expansion of the mango orchard and they ranked it sixth. mostly, the respondents are from the rayalpad block. the block is covered by rock-bed. therefore, the available area for cultivation is less. the soil of this area contains rock granule which is not farmer-friendly which is a constraint to enhance the profit margin by expanding the area under cultivation.  35% of the respondents complained about the non-availability of reliable varieties and planting material and they ranked it forth. there are some specific varieties like ‘totapuri’ which is largely grown in the sub-district by the farmers to enhance their profitability. the respondents are not very happy with the varieties they get from government-owned nurseries. therefore, they buy planting materials from private nurseries which are stopping them to try new varieties which could give a better yield and intensify their profitability.  6.56% and 12.8% of the respondents said that they don’t have enough knowledge about the profitability of mango and rejuvenation timespan. they are mostly respondents who have leased-out their crops to the village contractors where they lose their profitability.  33.13% of the respondents are unhappy with the non-availability of market infrastructure. they said that there is no other horticulture market like hopcoms in the sub-district. they are supposed to sell the produce in the apmc wholesale market which is cutting short their profit margin. the respondents ranked it sixth.  61.56% of the respondents said they have inadequate market channels and ranked it fifth. three types of channels exist in the sub-district according to the primary data analysis i.e.: a) farmers  apmc commission agents  wholesalers  retailers  consumers b) farmers  village contractors  apmc commission agents  wholesalers  retailers  consumers c) farmers  apmc commission agents  retailers  consumers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 336-345 340 table 1: constraints encountered by the mango growers no. constraints total score mean score rank order* i technical constraints 1 non-availability of reliable varieties and plant material 112 35 iv 2 suitability of soil 60 18.75 vi 3 rejuvenation timespan 41 12.81 vi 4 farmer’s knowledge about the profitability of mangoes 21 6.56 iv 5 lack of knowledge about identifying pests and diseases 187 58.43 ii 6 late flowering and under formation of fruit 259 80.93 ii 7 lack of irrigation facilities 192 60 ii 8 deficit rainfall 215 67.18 i ii economic and marketing constraints 9 non-availability of market infrastructure 106 33.13 vi 10 lack of process industry 320 100 v 11 price fluctuation 214 66.88 ii 12 lack of storage facilities 221 69.06 iii 13 inadequate market channels 197 61.56 v 14 the high cost of labour 320 100 i 15 high apmc commission charges 320 100 i * rank order is the average of priority sorting (ordinal ranking) by the respondents. for instance: 215 respondents i.e. 67.18% who are facing deficit rainfall as the most genuine problem, ranked it i whereas, 259 i.e. 80.93% of the respondents have considered late flowering and under formation of fruit is a genuine problem but not as genuine as deficit rainfall so they ranked it ii. it shows that there are always apmc commission agents involved in the business which is restricting the farmers from earning more profits out of their produces. farmers feel it is easier to sell theirs produces in the apmc market rather than coming to the cities and selling them off. the constraints subsequently enhance the cost of production (kahangi, 2002; shiferaw et al., 2011; arphaxard et al., 2019) there could be more convenient marketing channels with the introduction of retailers to the farmers or by establishing process industries.  69.06% of the respondents said that there are no storage facilities for the mango. they ranked it third. it could help them to sell the fruits in the off-season which would increase their profitability.  100% of the respondents said that there is no processing industry in the sub-district. they ranked it fifth. it could create a better distribution which would in-turn reduce the profit margin loss of the growers.  all respondents said that hired human labour cost is too high in the sub-district and allotted the first rank to the constraint. the wage rate fluctuates from usd 5.2 to usd 6.5 for male labour and usd 2.6 to usd 3.9 for female labour. none of the respondents is aware of villagers opting for the mgnrega for their employment needs.  all of the respondents said that the apmc commission charges are too high and they rank the constraints as number one. the apmc commission agents charge 10% from the gross income whereas the actual commission charges fixed by the government is 2%. *note: effect of production constraints on the profitability of the respondents are from table 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 336-345 341 table 2: chemical-fertilizer, pesticides and other chemicals utilized by mango growers 1 is the fertilizer you use based on the recommendation of the authorized person? yes-0 (0%) no-320 (100%) 2 the more you use chemical fertilizer the more yield will be. do you agree with the statement? yes-100 (31.25%) no-220 (68.75 %) 3 chemical fertilizers and pesticides don’t have any side effects on soil and its future productivity. do you agree? yes-320 (100%) no-0 (0%) 4 the use of pesticides doesn’t have any bad effect on health. do you agree? yes-263 (82.19%) no-57 (17.81%) 5 the use of chemical fertilizer doesn’t have any bad effects on health. do you agree? yes-320 (100%) no-0 (0%) 6 i don’t use organic fertilizer because it's costly compared to chemical fertilizer yes-320 (100%) no-0 (0%) 7 i use calcium carbide for artificial ripening yes-30 (9.38%) no-290 (90.63%) 8 i use of ethylene for artificial ripening yes-0 (0%) no-320 (100%) 9 i use of ethephon for artificial ripening yes-0 (0%) no-320 (100%) 10 number of respondents who use the particular chemical fertilizer to grow/acre in a year name of the fertilizer corresponding weight 10.1 320 (100%) dap(50kg/bag) n = 18%, p = 46% 150 10.2 100 (31.25%) ssp(50kg/bag) p = 14%, s = 16%, ca = 19% 200 10.3 320 (100%) urea(45kg/bag) n = 46% 180 10.4 124 (38.75%) others 300 figure 1: block-wise relationship between the bore-well holders and the depth of the borewell note: we have considered 60 respondents from each block. 20 respondents have been excluded as they were interviewed in the horticulture office but not in their respective villages. therefore, 300 respondents from the sub-district were been considered for evaluating the relationship between the depth of the bore-well and the 1347.37 1013.91 924.13 960 730.17 19 23 23 21 29 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 kasba yeldur nelvanki ronur rayalpad i ii iii iv v the average depth ofthe bore well in feet number of respondents who have bore-well asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 336-345 342 number of respondents those who hold bore-well. the average depth of the bore-well in the sub-district is 979.652 ft. we give our insight into the effects of agricultural activities on environmental degradation, climate change and health and vice versa based on the constraints encountered by the respondents. 3.2. effects of agricultural activities on environmental degradation and climate change  figure 1 shows the average depth of the bore-well is 979.65ft. among the respondents and 115 i.e. 38.33% out of 300 have the bore well whereas, 185 i.e. 61.67% of respondents are in rainfed conditions. kasba block in the sub-district is the driest among all other blocks and it takes the first position for the average depth of bore-well which is the deepest in the sub-district i.e. 1347.37 feet, and 19 i.e. 31.67% out of 60 respondents has it which is the least among the other blocks of the sub-district whereas, 41 i.e. 68.33% responding farmers are in rain-fed conditions. the government has stopped giving loans for installing the bore-well in this block. farmers struggle a lot to irrigate their fields in this area. yeldur block in the sub-district holds the second position with an average depth of the bore-well as 1013.91 feet among the respondents and 23 i.e.38.33% of respondents out of 60 are in irrigated conditions and 37 i.e. 61.67% are in rain-fed conditions. nelvanki block holds the third position for the average depth of the bore-well i.e. 924.13 ft. and out of 60, only 23 i.e. 38.33% of respondents are in irrigated condition 37 i.e. 61.67% of them are in rain-fed condition. ronur block has the fourth average depth of bore well i.e. 960 ft. and 21 i.e. 35% out of 60 respondents in this block have it and 39 i.e. 65% are those who don’t have the bore-well. rayalpad block has the least average depth of bore-well i.e. 730.17 ft. and the highest number of respondents among all the blocks, 29 farmers i.e. 48.33% farmers out of 60 have the bore-well and 31, that is 51.67% don’t have the same. therefore, there is scope for the expansion of agricultural activities in this block. due to groundwater depletion, the bore-well has dried off for many farmers. therefore, those farmers who were growing mulberry and other vegetables have stopped cultivating it and this has drastically affected their income.  in table 2 we could see, 100% of the respondents say that the fertilizer they use is not based on the recommendation of the authorized person. chemical fertilizers and pesticides are sold in the market openly and there is no provision such as the issue of chemical fertilizer based on any prescription or the calculated amount of nutrients in the soil mentioned in the soil health card. 31.25% of respondents say by increasing the dose of chemical fertilizer they could increase the yield but 100% of them don’t think that the use of fertilizer could adversely affect the soil. it shows that respondents have less knowledge about the side effects of chemical fertilizers on soil therefore, they need to be also educated about it. 3.3. effects of climate change and environmental degradation on agriculture  67.18% of respondents say there is a deficit rainfall (table1) but we could see from the literature review that average rainfall in the sub-district is 745 mm which is not less but, uneven and untimely. monsoon has shifted. it is confusing farmers and leaving them with a question mark about their yield and income.  66.88% of respondents have marked price fluctuation and ranked it as a second genuine (table 1). in peninsula india, the first yield used to be from kerala followed by karnataka, then andhra pradesh, and then tamil nadu. according to the apmc database, all the south indian states i.e. kerala, karnataka, andhra pradesh, telangana and tamil nadu, receive the yield especially of mango at the same time (open government data platform india, 2017) due to climate change and global warming which creates a surplus. it leads to wastage and loss of profit margin for the mango growers.  100% of respondents say more dose of chemical fertilizer doesn’t affect the soil& its future productivity. 17.81% don’t have any clue about the side-effects of pesticides. 31.25% of respondents still think more use of chemical fertilizer could increase the yield (table 2). during the focused group discussion, we found out that the flesh in mangoes is reducing every asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 336-345 343 year. increasing the use of chemical fertilizer and less irrigation could be the reason behind it.53.43% of respondents agreed that they lack knowledge about pests and diseases (table 1). a scientist posted in mango development centre, hogalagere in srinivaspur, and focused group members (which includes sellers of pesticides and fertilizers in the sub-district namely lakshmipur, addagal and srinivaspur town) say that the disease ‘thrips’ was recently introduced in the sub-district due to lack of irrigation and overuse of chemical fertilizer. mango doesn’t require much chemical fertilizer, but as the farm size has been reduced over the years, farmers practice integrated farming systems in the mango orchard. therefore, while growing other crops in each season they apply chemical fertilizer which harms the mango yield and quality. 3.4. effects of agricultural activities and environmental degradation on health  100% of respondents apply the chemical fertilizer and pesticides based on their assumptions as there is no need for a prescription from an authorized person to purchase it. the average use of the dap, ssp, urea and other fertilizer per acre are 150, 200, 180, and 300 kg by 100%, 31.25%, 100%, and 38.75% of respondents, respectively in a mango orchard under the integrated farming system (table 2). whereas, the literature says there is a need for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (npk) only 1kg/tree. so we could see there is a huge difference in the amount of fertilizer used and the actual amount of fertilizer to be used.  100% of respondents don’t use organic fertilizer because it is highly-priced compared to chemical fertilizer (table 2).  100% of respondents are not aware of the side-effects of chemical fertilizer and pesticides on health and the environment (table 2). we have found out in the focused group discussion that the application of the chemical fertilizer has increased drastically over the years to enhance the yield and earn more money. the government of india provides a lot of subsidy towards plant protection and chemical fertilizers are also sold at a subsidized rate. whereas, organic fertilizers are way too costly.  17.81% of respondents don’t think that pesticides could adversely affect the health and the environment (table 2). the use of single super phosphate and other fertilizers like diammonium phosphate (dap) has increased over a while.  9.38% i.e. 30 respondents who use calcium carbide for artificial ripening are the wholesaler too. there are no other less harmful chemicals such as ethylene and ethephon are used for artificial ripening, it shows that calcium carbide is sold to the wholesaler in the open market (table 2). 4. conclusion the research speaks about various constraints faced by mango growers. unseasonal rainfall and rise in temperature are leading to late flowering is leading to late yield. it leads to flooding of mangoes that triggers the supply curve in the wholesale market, as from all the south indian states the due to climate change mangoes orchards yield at the same time. there is no processing industry in the sub-district. therefore, farmers are left with no options than to sell the mangoes at a low price which is less or equal to their production cost. farmers are in a dilemma that the more they use chemical fertilizers and pesticides the more the yield will be. there is no authorized person from whom they have to take a prescription to use pesticides and chemical fertilizers. they use fertilizers and pesticides which, is recommended by shop-keepers. the organic fertilizers are highly-priced compared to chemical fertilizers. therefore, farmers use more chemical fertilizer as they think it would give those more yields which, will in-turn enhances their profit margin. the apmc wholesale commission agents also charge a much higher commission than set by the government. they follow this practice because they have to distribute the mangoes and generate profit as there is no storage facility. the commission agents also use calcium carbide to artificially ripe mangoes and earn money out of it as soon as possible. srinivaspur is dry land. the rainfall is on an average the same every year but over a while uneven and untimely. the introduction of boreasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 336-345 344 well in the sub-district has made cultivation of many crops possible but, the ground-water has been over-exploited over years as it is the only source of irrigation. many farmers have witnessed drying and increasing depth of their bore-wells which has an adverse effect on the productivity of crops. many farmers have stopped growing mulberry. the government has asked many farmers to cut nilgiri plantation to prevent ground-water depletion. over the years the land holdings in the subdistrict have also become small. many farmers are now seeming to have an alternative occupation and they are making their children study different courses so that they could have a white-collar job. 5. future deliberation  the mango growers should be given the knowledge and techniques of modern irrigation methods with an available limited resource of water.  there is a need for small types of machinery which would suit for horticulture farm like mango orchard.  farmers should be provided with training in an integrated farming system.  mango processing units should be developed on a small scale for checking the price level and employment generation.  the increased role of apeda in providing export facilities for mango pulp.  farmers should be encouraged to switch over to organic farming and a reduction in the usage of chemical funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references arphaxard, i. m., bernard, m. g., and paul, n. n. 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achojafelix@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 27-mar-2020 accepted: 31-jul-2020 online available: 10-sep2020 keywords: consumer preference, yam supply, varietal diversification, yam farmers’ response, nigeria abstract multinomial regression analysis of yam consumers’ preference and varietal diversification in the yam production system in nigeria was the thrust of this investigation. five major yam farming communities were sampled randomly to get 200 respondents (suppliers and consumers) of yam. parametric and non-parametric tests were employed to analyze the primary data collected with the questionnaire. the result indicates that white yam (dioscorea rotundata) is the dominant variety among consuming households. the majority of the respondents prefer selling of white yam (76%) followed by water yam (13%) and yellow yam (l1%) in response to consumers’ preferences. the mean value of yam supplied was 505.34kg, while the mean quantity consumed was 14.56kg. the finding shows that the statistical relationship between the varieties consumed and supplied is strong and positive. it was concluded that as the demand-end is willing to purchase more quantity of white yam supplied, yam farmers and marketers are advised to scale-up production and supply respectively to take advantage of the increasing market demand for white yam in nigeria. also, more research works on yam varieties should be conducted by researchers to expand the value chain / industrial uses of other yam varieties to prevent their extinction. contribution/ originality the study empirically established that yam production and consumption preferences are dynamic but predictable behaviors. it is one of the latest studies that applied the economic theories of production, supply, and demand to the analysis of yam production systems, which was a missing gap and has thus expanded the frontier of yam varietal diversification literature. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.698.707 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: felix odemero achoja, emmanuel chukudinife enujeke, oraye dicta ogisi and rebecca tega overehirha (2020). multinomial regression analysis of yam (dioscorea spp.) consumers’ preferences and varietal diversification pattern in nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 698-707. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 698-707 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:lixmero40@yahoo.com mailto:achojafelix@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.698.707 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9705-4923 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 698-707 699 1. introduction yam (dioscorea spp.) is a major source of food for millions of people in the tropical and subtropical areas of the world and especially in west and central african, where it contributes to the income and food of more than 60 millions of people (asiedu and sartie, 2010). in west and central africa and the caribean, yam is one of the most important sources of carbohydrates to many people and is considered as food security crop. the global projection for root and tuber crop foresees an increase in its economic importance through the increase in both the production and consumption (scott et al., 2000; alexanderatos and bruinsma, 2012). discorea rotundata and discorea cayenensis (figure 1 & figure 2), respectively, are known as white yam and yellow yam. they are the most valuable and important varieties of yam in west africa and central africa1. figure: white yam figure 2: yellow yam despite the nutritious value of yam, little is known as consumers’ preference regarding yam characteristics and product quality. however, awareness has been raised that a greater consumers’ preference analysis is required for an improved yam production system that can sustain the food security system (selfa et al., 2008; rastoin and ghersi, 2010; tsolakis et al., 2014). yam is the second most important tuber crop in the world after cassava in terms of production (iita, 2013). it is an important food source in other tropical countries, including east africa, the caribbean, south american, india, and southeast asia (okonkwo, 1985). average yam consumption per capita per day is highest in the benin republic (368 kcal), followed by cote d’ ivoire (342cal), ghana (296jca1), and nigeria (258kca1) (iita, 2009). yarn price has been increased, and in recent years due to the strong demand for the crop in africa, europe, and the usa, where rapidly growing west africa migrated, communities still have a big appetite for their traditional preferred staple. nigeria exported the us $27.7 million worth of yam to the united states of america in 2011 (babatunde, 2012), and it is expected that much foreign exchange through yam trade would be realized in the future. nigeria is the highest producer of yam with more than 45.004 million metric tons (mmt) annually, with ghana (7.1 l9mmt), cote d’ivoire (5.8mmt), and cameroon (0.579mmt). yam contributes more than 200 dietary calories per day for over 60 million people in nigeria (nweke et al., 1991). yam is also important as a source of pharmaceutical compounds like saponins and sapogenin, which are precursor of cortisone and steroidal hormones (okonkwo, 1985). 1 retrieved from https://www.agriculturenigeria.com/research/yam-varieties/ and www.ourafricanshop.com https://www.agriculturenigeria.com/research/yam-varieties/ http://www.ourafricanshop.com/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 698-707 700 the most important species of yam include d. rotundata, d.cayensis, d.dumetorum, d.esculenta, d.bulbifera, d.trifida, d.opposita, d.japonita and d.hispida. diversified yam farming systems are deemed as an important strategy to address the sustainability challenges of the present-day agriculture, such as economic viability for farmers, environmental soundness, and social acceptability by consumers (martin et al., 2020). the decision to cultivate diverse yam species may be affected by some consumer-based factors like taste and price variations. yet studies of varietal diversification in yam farming are limited. yam is one of the staple food crops grown in nigeria. the relevance of yam as a staple foodstuff in nigeria cannot be overlooked. among the numerous problems, the average nigerian yam farmer is the non-availability of steady demand and varietal preference. moreover, the study tends to analyze the relationship between consumer preference and supply response for yam varieties. the outcome of this research will enable yam producers to respond rationally to varietal preferences among yam consumers. again, the study will be useful to extension personnel to yam varietal consumption preferences and the corresponding varietal diversification responses among producers in the yam production system in nigeria. yam (dioscorea spp.) has many varieties that exist in the world, but information on the most preferred variety among yam consumers is lacking and overlooked by previous authors. previous investigations on yam were mainly focused on the production stage to the neglect of post-harvest issues such as marketing, consumer preferences, and associated variables (ehirim et al., 2007; aidoo et al., 2012). there is a lack of information on factors that determine consumer’s preference for yam varieties in nigeria. consumer preference is an important driver of agricultural production intensification, including export response (achoja et al., 2012). consumer preference for some yam varieties could therefore stimulate variety-based supply responses and could lead to the extinction of the unpopular varieties. it is, therefore important to investigate whether the supply of yam varieties is market dependent or subsistence dependent in the study area. as it stands, factors that influence the supply of yam, as well as the gap between the demand and supply of yam, have not received adequate research attention in delta state, nigeria. because of the problem, the major objective of the research was the multinomial regression analysis of yam varietal diversification and associated factors in the yam production system in nigeria. the specific objectives of the study were: i. ascertain the quantity of yam consumed by the household; ii. assess the quantity of yam supplied by producers; iv. determine consumer’s preference for yam varieties; and iv. evaluate the factors that influence yam varietal diversification among yam farmers. the following hypothesis was formulated and tested to guide the study. h01: consumer’s preference does not significantly determine the varietal diversification of yam farmers. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study area the research was carried out in delta state, nigeria. the area was chosen for the study because there are many yam producers and consumers. it covers an area of 818km/square; it has a population of 320,687 as of the 2006 population census. the major occupation of these people is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 698-707 701 farming with crops cultivated as cassava, yam, okro, oil palm. the communities studied were agbarho, agbarha, evwreni, ogor, orogun, uwheru, and ughelli. 2.2. sampling technique, sample size and data collection techniques a simple random sampling method was used to select (24) twenty-four respondents from the five clans making the total sample size of one hundred and twenty (120) respondents in the following manner. out of the seven clans in the local government area, five clans were randomly selected. in each clan, two communities were randomly selected from making a total of ten that were selected for the study. in each community, ten yam consumers and ten yam producers (supplies) were randomly selected, making a total of 100 yam consumers and 100 yam producers. hence a total of 200 respondents were selected for the study. primary data were collected with the aid of a structured questionnaire and interview schedule. 2.3. data analytical techniques descriptive (mean, percentage, table, charts) and inferential statistics (multiple regression) were employed to analyze collected data. consumer preference for yam varieties was achieved using frequency distribution tables and charts. factors that influence consumer preference for yam varieties were analyzed using demand function derived from a multiple regression model. the factors that influence the supply response of yam varieties were evaluated using the supply function derived from the multiple regression model. 2.4. model specification the supply response model for yam is explicitly specified of yam supply response model was specified as: multinomial regression model for yam consumption preference yp = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1inc + 𝛽2v + 𝛽3s + 𝛽4 ht + ei where: yp = yam preference (variety preferred by household head) inc = income of household v = variety of yam s = seasonal influence ht = household taste 𝛽0 = intercept term /constant 𝛽1 – 𝛽4 = coefficient of parameter estimates multinomial regression model for yam varietal diversification (supply) ys = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 p + 𝛽2 s + 𝛽3inc + 𝛽4v + ei where: ys = quantity of yam varieties supplied p = price per unit of yam s = seasonality of yam supply inc = income earned from yam supply v = consumers’ preference for yam varieties 𝛽0 = intercept term/constant 𝛽1 – 𝛽4 = coefficient of parameter estimates ei = error term the gap or difference between yam supply and demand was determined by using t-statistics. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 698-707 702 t-test = qs – qd √ 𝑄𝑆2 𝑁𝑆 + 𝑄𝐷2 𝑁𝐷 where: qs = quantity of yam supplied (kg) qd = quantity of yam demand (kg) qs2= variance of yam supplied (kg) qd2 = variance of yam demanded (kg) ns and nd = numbers of observation for yam supply and demand respectively (kg). 3. results and discussion in table 1, the mean and standard deviation of yam demand and supply are presented. the mean value of the supply of yarn was 505.34kg with a standard deviation of 790.17 and yam demand has a mean value of 14.56kg with a standard deviation of 6.612. the t-value is 6.210. this result implies that there is a significant difference between the yam demand and supply is greater than t stat. (p<0.05). table 1: statistical analysis of yam demand and supply gap during peak season variables mean standard deviation t-cal p-value remark yam supply 505.34 790.17 6.210 0.000 significant yam demand 14.86 6.612 t-cal p-value table 2 shows the distribution of consumer preference for yam variety consumed. the result indicates that 71% of the respondents preferred to consume white yam (dioscorea rotundata), water yam (dioscorea alata) (16%), and yellow yam (dioscorea cayenensis) (13%). this finding implies that the scale of preference of yam consumers is biased towards white yam followed by water yam and yellow yam. other varieties of yam (d.dumetorum, d.esculenta, d.bulbifera, d.trifida, d.opposita, d.japonita and d.hispida) were not visible in the yam market as at the time of this investigation. this finding supports the earlier research report that white yam is the most valuable and important variety of yam in west africa and central africa. the result also agrees with the earlier assertion of chong et al. (2020) that consumers often vary in their preferences for agricultural products. table 2: distribution of consumer preferences for yam varieties yam variety frequency percentage white yam 71 71 water yam 16 16 yellow yam 13 13 other varieties 0 0 total 100 100% in table 3, standard coefficients were recorded for a variety of yam consumed (vartety), source of income (income), seasonal influence (season), and household size (household). in table 3, standard coefficient values were recorded for variety (variety) of yam, and the quantity of yam consume (cons) with a coefficient of 0.260 has a strong and positive correlation asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 698-707 703 with consumption (cons). it is an agreement with mankiw (1998) findings that a variety of yam consumed affect the consumption level of the respondents. it also showed that the relationship between the varieties produced and consumption is strong and positive. table 3: multinomial regression results of factors that influence consumer preference for yam varieties variables coefficient t-value p-value (constant) 7.545 2.450 0.016 source of income 0.775 0.733 0.466 seasonal influence 0.446 0.398 0.691 household taste 1.107 6.3 13 0.000** r2 = 30% , r2 (adjusted) = 27%, f. value = 10.229 ** = significant at 1% the result in table 3 shows that the r2 value is 30%. it implies that 30% of the variation in consumers’ preferences for yam varieties was due to source of income, seasonality, and household taste. the seemingly low r2 value was possibly due to qualitative responses used for the study. the standard coefficient value was recorded for income source (income) and consumption with a coefficient of (0.775), which has a strong and positive correlation with yam consumers’ preference. it shows that the relationship between sources of income and consumption level is strong and positive. the p-value for the source of income (income) is (0.466), which revealed that there is no significant relationship between consumption level and source of income because the t-stat is greater than (0.05)5% significant level and less than 95% confidence level. thus the null hypothesis is accepted that the socio-economic characteristics of respondents significantly affect the consumer preference level of yam variety in the study area. this result corroborates nimoh et al. (2012), who reported that consumer characteristics tend to influence consumer preferences significantly. in table 3, the standard coefficient was recorded for seasonal influence (sesonal) and consumption level with a coefficient of 0.446, which has a strong and positive correlation with consumption level. it reveals that the relationship between season and consumption strong and positive. the p-value for seasonal influence is (0.69 > 0.05) which reveals that there is no significant relationship between seasonal influence and yam consumption because the p-value is greater than 0.05 significant level less than the 95% confidence level. we thereby accept the null hypothesis states the socio-economic characteristics o respondents of a variety of yam demand and supply significantly affect the consumption level of the demand and supply response of yam variety. the finding is in line with the findings of singh (1991) that due to the perishable nature of agricultural products and their consumption was recorded to be more in their season. in table 3, the standard coefficients were records for ‘households' taste (houshold) and consumption (cons) with a coefficient of 1.107, which has a strong and positive correlation with consumption level. it revealed that the relationship between household size and consumption is strong and positive. the p-value for household size (household) is (0.000<0.05)5%, which revealed that there is a significant difference between households consumption because the p-value is less than (0.05)5% significant level thus, the alternate hypothesis is accepted that there is a significant difference between yam consumption yam supply during peak season. a 1% change in consumer preference for a yam variety will translate to a 334% increase in the yam variety supply. the marginal elasticity > 1 (elastic). this implies that yam producers are responding positively and significantly to consumer preference at a more than proportionate rate. the reason for this finding could be attributed to the fact that yam producers can satisfy the different asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 698-707 704 consumers’ preferences adequately. this finding agrees with endrizzi et al. (2014), who reported that preference mapping is important in determining the differences in consumer perception. not all yam varieties produced, especially water yam, flow into the market; some are consumed by producing households. ovharhe et al. (2020) has reported that in nigeria, some varieties of yam are a common component of backyard farming, mainly produced for household consumption. as a result, only a portion of total yam produced flows into the market. the finding of this study can further be attributed to the shortage of some yam varieties like water yam and yellow yam in the market. this finding agrees with thomas (1995), who earlier reported that the supply of yam is not at equilibrium with consumer demand. in table 4, the standard coefficient value was recorded for income earn (1ncome), price influence on yam supply (price), varietal influence preference on yam (variety), and seasonal influence on the consumption of yam (season). table 4: multinomial regression result of factors that influences varietal diversification (supply) of yam farmers model coefficient standard error t-cal p-value (significant level) (constant) 129.496 224.822 0.576 0.566 income earn from sales of yam 0.002 0.001 2.922 0.004** price variation between difference yam varieties -134.474 178.855 0.752 0.454 consumer preference for yam varieties 334.431 152.322 2.196 0.049* seasonal influence on yam consumption 222.165 160.817 1.381 0.170 yam variety supplied = f(consumer preference for yam varieties) yam varietal supplied = 129.496 + 334.431cpy+ ei. t. value = (0.576) (2.196)* in table 4, standard coefficient values were recorded for price influence on yam supply (price) with a coefficient of -0.134 has a strong negative correlation with yam varietal diversification. it all showed that the relationship between price influence of yam supply (price) and yam varietal diversification is weak and negative. the p-value for the price is (0.454.), which revealed that there is no significant relationship between yam varietal diversification and price influence of yam supply (p<0.05); thus, the null hypothesis is accepted that the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents do not significantly affect the supply response to demand for yam variety. the standard coefficient value was recorded for varied influence preference for yam (variety) and demand to supply response with a coefficient of 0.3 34 has a strong positive correlation with yam varietal diversification. this is in agreement with kushwaha and polycarp (2001) that the variety of yam affects the demand and supply response of the respondents. it also showed that the relationship between variety and profit is strong and positive. the p-value for variety influence of yam supply is (0.049<0.05), which revealed that there is a significant relationship between the variety influence of yam supply and demand response because the t-stat is less than (p<0.05) significant level and greater than the null hypothesis and the accept the alternate hypothesis that the socio-economic characteristics significantly affects the supply response to demand for yam variety in the study area. in table 4, the standard coefficient value was recorded for seasonal consumption of yam and yam varietal diversification with a coefficient of 0.222, which has a strong positive correlation with yam varietal diversification. it shows the relationship between the seasonal consumption of yam and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 698-707 705 yam varietal diversification is strong and positive. the p-value for seasonal consumption (season) is (0.170) 5% which revealed that there is no significantly relationship between yam varietal diversification and seasonal consumption because t-stat is greater than (0.05)5% significant level and less than 95% confidence level. this alternate hypothesis is accepted that the socioeconomic characteristics significantly affect the supply response to demand for yam variety in the study area. this finding is in agreement with the findings of umar et al. (2006) that the consumption of yam variety is mostly ascertained by the storage and seasonal influences of the yam. 4. conclusion yam (dioscorea spp.) producers’ and consumers’ preference dynamism is a predictable pattern of behavior that has been understudied and thus lacking in varietal diversification literature. the response of yarn supply to a preference for different varieties of yam was investigated in this study. the following conclusions are drawn from the outcome of the investigation. white yam (dioscorea rotundata) is the dominant and the most preferred yam variety in the study area. the household taste was the major determining factor of consumer preference for yam varieties. consumer preference significantly determines varietal diversification (supply) of yam. the result implies that yam producers are responding positively to yam consumers’ varietal preferences (market demand pattern) but not at a proportionate rate. we found sufficient evidence to conclude that as long as the supply-end and demand-end of the yam market are active in terms of the unity of preferences for yam varieties, yam production and marketing will be sustained in the future. this study has extended the frontier of existing literature in the area of yam variety by emphasizing the cardinal role played by consumers’ preference in determining the varieties and quantity of yam supplied by farmers. furthermore, house taste and diet patterns as elements of the societal value system turned out to be an important variable that influences consumers’ preference behavior patterns towards yam varieties. based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations were proffered: 1. yam farmers and marketers are advised to scale-up their supply to satisfy the increasing demand for white yam. 2. farmers in the level of supply of yam should be supported to produce more yam varieties in response to the varietal demand pattern of the yam market. 3. the research and development (r&d) institutions should research the alternative industrial uses of other yam varieties to expand their value chains and thus stimulate more demand and relevance. it will prevent their extinction from the yam production system in the future. funding: there was no specific financial support for this study. competing interests: the authors declare that there is no competing interest. contributors/acknowledgments: the authors would like to thank the yam growers in the communities that participated in the study for providing them with relevant information. the appreciation is also extended to the field enumerators for the excellent job. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references achoja, f. o., idoge, d. e., ukwuaba, s. i., & esowhode, a. e. 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(2006). the indigenous yam storage technology and post harvest losses in nigeria. the benue state perspective. international journal of food and agricultural research, 5(2), 113-139. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 598 agricultural intensification, diversification and migration as livelihood strategies among rural scheduled tribe population of palasbari revenue circle: a case of india meghna das a, barnali gogoi b a ph.d. scholar; department of geography, cotton university, india b associate professor; department of geography, cotton university, india  15.dasmeghna@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 16-mar-2020 accepted: 28-jul-2020 online available: 27-aug2020 keywords: livelihood, strategies, scheduled tribe abstract the key objective of this study is to examine the livelihood practices and strategies adopted by the scheduled tribe (st) population of the palasbari revenue circle, assam, india. for empirical analysis, 132 households were surveyed from 6 areas dominated by the st population, namely kallapara n.c. (satargaon), jimirigaon, rani khamar, chouthala, jupangbari, and kochpara, which aggregates to 553 sample populations. it was surveyed by stratified random sampling method from january to march 2020. the results show that livelihood diversification, agricultural intensification and temporal migration are three of the major strategies adopted by the population to meet their needs. contribution/ originality the importance of the study lies in the diversity of the area, as it has different aspects together, which will help study the diversified nature of human adaptation to its environment overcoming the vulnerabilities and how it evolved and sustained through ages changing their livelihoods accordingly. it is an original study and will be a unique contribution to the existing tribal livelihood literature. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.598.611 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: meghna das and barnali gogoi (2020). agricultural intensification, diversification and migration as livelihood strategies among rural scheduled tribe population of palasbari revenue circle: a case of india. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 598-611. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 598-611 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:15.dasmeghna@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.598.611 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 598-611 599 1. introduction livelihood simply means the way of life which involves fulfilling basic needs of life like food, clothing and shelter, which are acquired by the capabilities of people, assets available and income generated (chambers and conway, 1992). geographically, one place differs from another, which leads to the development of different livelihood practices. through time the population faces varied difficulties in meeting their livelihoods. these difficulties or stresses hinder the smooth functioning of their livelihood practices. for these hindrances, the population adopts certain strategies to meet their needs, which vary from place to place. such livelihoods that can cope up with difficulties can be called sustainable livelihoods (scoones, 1998). livelihood strategies are the activities performed by the small householders for their social and economic security (koczberski et al., 2001; sati et al., 2015). the rural households tend to diversify their income sources as a strategy for survival according to the resources available and within the context of the policy and institutional framework (ellis, 1998; barrett et al., 2001; jansen et al., 2006; mary et al., 2009; tittonell et al., 2010; sati, 2015). among the livelihood strategies, agricultural intensification is another key strategy adopted by the rural population in different parts of the world (scoones, 1998; ellis, 2000; sati et al., 2015). through decades there developed numerous poverty reduction or eradication goals and goals for sustainable development worldwide such as millennium development goals (2000-2015) and sustainable development goals (2015-2030) which also focuses the rural population and their sustainability indirectly aiming for the livelihood sustainability of these folks (brocklesby and fisher, 2003). during this period several sustainable livelihood approaches emerged consistently from varied parts of the world with different perspectives (farmer, 1977; walker and ryan, 1990; chambers and conway, 1992; moser, 1998; carney, 1998, 2002; ashley and carney 1999; gieryn, 1999; brocklesby and fisher, 2003). in the years 1987 and 1992, two forums that is world commission on environment and development (wced) and un conference on environment and development respectively emphasized on the livelihoods around the world and its linkage with the environment was focused and policies were framed accordingly (wced, 1987; conroy and litvinoff, 1988; brocklesby and fisher, 2003). globally, about 60 % of the developing countries’ populations are classified as rural and of which about 85 % are still dependent on agriculture (dixon et al., 2001). in india, about 68.84% (chandramouli, 2011) people live in rural areas, of which about 70% of the rural population are still dependent on agriculture primarily (fao, 2020). agriculture is the largest livelihood source along with its allied activities globally as well as in india. india is a hub of the world’s largest tribal population (india today, 2017). according to the 2011 census, the tribal population in india is 10.43 crore, which consists of 8.6 % of the total population of the country and this 89.97 % lives in rural areas (statistical profile of scheduled tribes in india, 2009). the scheduled tribes always have an intrinsic and interactive relationship with the environment they live in. they depend on nature to acquire necessities for living. dependence of village dwellers on wild natural resources for consumption in times of emergency is reported extensively (byron and arnold, 1999; neumann and hirsch, 2000; fao, 2008; belchar et al., 2015). according to dube, a tribe is generally referred to communities that have been living in isolation from the mainstream population since the historical past; as a result, they have developed separate cultural identities and traditions which vary from other peoples (tribal community development, 2020). assam is a state with different tribal groups. kamrup district of assam state has a total population of 1517542 persons, out of which 11.99% (182038 persons) are scheduled tribe (st) population (census, 2011). the palasbari revenue circle of kamrup district comprises 16.47% (39369 persons) of st population. the district is topographically diversified, and so are the livelihoods. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 598-611 600 the st population has different vulnerabilities in attaining their livelihoods, so they have to adopt different strategies to overcome these hurdles through time. 2. the study area the study is carried out in the palasbari revenue circle located in kamrup district of assam. palashbari revenue circle is one of the 12 revenue circles of kamrup district. the revenue circle has a dense forest in some parts, the mighty river brahmaputra flowing through it, the chandubi lake, in addition to the vast alluvial agricultural fields. it shares a boundary with kamrup metro district and is located at a distance of about 22 km from guwahati city. human adaptation to this diversified natural environment overcoming vulnerabilities like conflicts with animals, natural hazards in the form of flood, etc. and evolving and sustaining through ages changing their livelihoods is a subject of worth exploring. due to the diverse environmental and situational conditions, palasbari revenue circle is selected for the present study. as it is shown in figure 1 the study area lies within the geographical coordinates 25° 50’ 23” n to 26° 10’ 26” n latitudes and 91° 19’ 12” e to 91° 43’ 38” e longitudes. it covers a total area of 659.12 km2. the study area comprises of 182 villages and eight urban areas, out of which scheduled tribe populations are distributed in 116 villages and eight urban areas (census 2011). the study is carried out among 132 sample households from 5 sample villages and one urban area comprising 553 sampled population dominated by st people, namely kallapara n.c. (satargaon), jimirigaon, rani khamar, chouthala, jupangbari and kochpara census town (ct). figure 1: location map of the study area 3. methodology the key objective of the study is to examine the livelihood practices and strategies adopted by the population; hence it is mainly based on primary data collected from the study area through field visits. before going to the field for a survey, the sample villages were selected from the secondary census data available for the 2011 year. for that, 5% of st villages are selected from the total st villages of the revenue circle, which resulted in 5 sample st villages and one urban area. these five villages and one urban area have the highest st population in the study area, respectively, for both rural and urban areas. after that, 30% of households from each of these villages are selected as sample for this study. this 30% of surveyed households have a total population of 553 persons. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 598-611 601 taro yamane formula is used for the population sample. according to taro yamane formula (yamane, 1973) for determining sample size at 0.05 (95 % confidence level) margin of error, the sample population in our study area should be 396 persons. but as the targeted population group is found mixed with other groups of the population, we had first to select the sample areas. in applying stratified random sampling, the total population surveyed becomes 553 persons. taro yamane (yamane, 1973) formula: n = n/1+n (e2) where n = correlated sample size, n = population size and e = margin of error (moe) for primary data collection, a structured survey schedule is prepared beforehand. during the field study, data related to their lifestyle, education, economy, language, religion, etc. were collected through the survey schedule and personal observation. after the data collection, it was analyzed in ibm spss 21 software and thematic maps related to the study were prepared in a gis environment. 4. results and discussion 4.1. assets of the study area assets are the key ingredients in the whole livelihood process. according to king (2011), livelihood production is based on several elements, also known as capitals. these are prominently categorized into five categories: economic/financial, human, natural, social, and physical. sallu et al. (2010) highlighted that vulnerability among households can be reduced by providing access to diverse assets. 4.1.1. economic land is an important asset, both economically and environmentally, in a global context. according to ullah et al. (2019), ownership of land affects farmers indirectly by giving them the power to take risk management decisions. it acts as a resource for the rural population in terms of livelihood practices. as 57.6 % of the surveyed populations in our study area are directly dependent on onfarm activities, land resource plays a prominent role in the livelihood system of the rural population. the mainstay of the surveyed population is agrarian. the total land resource available to the surveyed household is 160.05 ha. based on occupancy and land use, these may be categorized into different types. out of the total land, 149.16 ha are owned by the surveyed households, and the rest are adhiya (10.89 ha). according to the use of land, 98.49 ha are cultivated land (87. 60 ha are own land and 10.89 are adhiya land), 49.83 ha are homestead and 12.18 ha is fallow land. these lands were mostly inherited (63.6 %) by the population from their parents or ancestors. due to land division through generation, the inherited land size kept on decreasing and as a result, the poorest section of the population rents or takes adhiya (31.1 %) from some other households for cultivation. similarly, 0.8% of households who purchased land and 4.5 % of households who inherited plus purchased land belong to the urban area of the revenue circle (table 1). the average landholding size is 1.21 ha per household. the maximum landholding size is 6.26 ha of a family in jimirigaon village. table 1: mode of land acquisition source: survey data, 2019 mode of land acquisition frequency valid percent inherited 84 63.6 purchased 1 0.8 both inherited & rented 41 31.1 both inherited & purchased 6 4.5 total 132 100.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 598-611 602 4.1.2. human the surveyed sample villages have a total population of 9471 persons residing in 2114 households (census, 2011). all the sample villages have 100% scheduled tribe population except for kochpara (ct), which has a 1.72 % st population and also the only urban sample area (census, 2011). the total number of households surveyed is 132, with a population of 553; out of it, 52.8 % are males and 47.2 % are females. of the total population, 64.91 % (359 persons) form the workforce. the highest percentage of the population (31.6 %) has education up to high school/ higher secondary level in both males (36.7 %) and female (25.7 %) category. the percentage of the population with higher education is very low (4.5%), of which 3.3% is graduate, 0.4% is postgraduate, and the remaining 0.8 % have skilled education (table 2). the school dropout rate is 2.2 %. the total illiteracy rate is 16.3 %, of which male illiteracy is 8.4%, and female illiteracy is 25.3 %. it shows high illiteracy and low level of education among the females. the st population surveyed belongs to bodo and rabha tribes. table 2: sex wise distribution of level of education education level of the individuals male (no.) male (%) female (no.) female (%) total (no.) total (%) primary education (class 1-5) 79 28.7 68 28.2 147 28.5 secondary education (class 6-8) 55 20.0 44 18.3 99 19.2 high school (class 9-10)/higher secondary (class 11-12) 101 36.7 62 25.7 163 31.6 higher education 17 6.2 6 2.5 23 4.5 illiterate 23 8.4 61 25.3 84 16.3 total 275 100 241 100 516 100 source: primary survey the level of education is a strong determinant of occupational activities and livelihood practices. the more an individual is educated, the more is his /her chance to get a job, which is not possible in case of a less educated person. from the above table, it is clear that only 4.5 % population has higher education, which indicates less scope to get a secure job or livelihood source for most of the surveyed population. moreover, only 2.5 % of females have a higher education, which depicts the sad reality of women's education. the populations with a low level of education have to develop certain strategies of livelihood to survive and sustain during shocks and stresses. the village population is also skilled in different traditional activities like weaving clothes, traditional beer making, bamboo crafts, etc. 4.1.3. natural forest plays a vital role in human life. according to zenteno et al. (2013), fringe rural populations specifically of the tropical forest areas are highly, directly, or indirectly dependent on the forest resources for income generation. in addition to that, an ecosystem-based adaptation of the people offers support to their livelihood strategies and increase social empowerment (woroniecki et al., 2019). as all the five villages and the one urban area are located near reserved forests, they have accessibility to natural resources. the five villages are highly dependent on their neighboring reserved forests for food and fuel. they collect varieties of tubers, leafy vegetables, wild mushrooms, medicinal plants, fruits, bamboo, fuelwood, etc. from the forests daily for their livelihood. in addition to that, all the five villages also collect faunal species from the existing streams, lakes, ponds and agricultural fields in their locality. this level of dependence on natural assets is not observed among the urban population. 4.1.4. social the surveyed population has a strong social bond. every five villages have multiple self help groups (shg) and village societies for monetary transactions among their group members and also asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 598-611 603 outside the members. it creates a good network among the villagers and, in time of needs, can borrow money from these societies. these groups are mainly created and maintained by the female section. however, in kallapara n.c. (satargaon) a group is formed among the male section for fishery maintenance. the formation of such a group is observed less among the urban population. though a few households in the urban area are members of such groups, the amount of money deposited varies from the rural population. the rural people being poor and less educated (especially the women) cannot afford to deposit a larger amount of money at a time. 4.1.5. physical the roads in all the surveyed villages are observed to be in good condition irrespective of its location. electricity connection is available in all the villages and urban areas except for kallapara n.c. (satargaon) which is a forest village. but one ngo provides solar panels to each of the households of satargaon, which is quite satisfactory for the villagers. government primary schools are located in each of the villages. but medical centers and sub-centers are not available in each of these villages, while the urban area has all the physical assets available within their locality. 4.2. problems in attaining livelihood the six sampled areas are distributed in different corners of the revenue circle (fig 2c). almost all the sample areas are located at the edge of a reserve forest, but their livelihood practices and related problems and benefits are different. 4.3. transport and accessibility kochpara (ct), which is located in the urban area, has the maximum benefits related to the availability of transport and communication, and is highly accessible. at the same time, chouthala is moderately accessible as public transport is available from time to time and as it is located near the main road connecting nh 37. on the other hand, accessibility is very low in japangbari, jimirigaon and rani khamar. japangbari is located at a distance of about 5-6 km from the main road that connects to the nh 37. in contrast, jimirigaon and rani khamar are located at the remote assammeghalaya border. kallapara n.c. (satargaon) is a forest village thus no public transport is available in the village and the villagers have to travel 7 km to the main road where public transports are available. due to less accessibility and poor transportation japangbari, kallapara n.c., jimirigaon and rani khamar are lagging in terms of education and economy and have less access to health services. 4.4. education and medical facilities just like transport and communication kochpara (ct) has high accessibility of medical and education facilities among the surveyed villages as it is an urban area and located near nh 37. apart from it, all the other surveyed villages have primary schools within the village and medical facilities within 1-7 km distance for basic health issues. but higher education facilities are less accessible to all the villages. similar is the case in medical facilities; for specialized treatment or better health facilities, the villagers have to travel either to urban areas of the revenue circle or to guwahati city. therefore, for a higher level of education and medical treatments, the villagers have to migrate to the urban areas temporarily. 4.5. occupation and natural dimensions in kochpara census town, the main source of livelihood of the maximum sampled household is government service. so the population doesn’t face many difficulties in attaining their livelihoods. natural constraints are also less in this census town compared to the rural areas. above that, there is no such natural severe problem which is faced by this census town. contrary to that, the village satargaon located in kallapara n.c. which is a forest village, faces a lot of vulnerabilities in terms of meeting their day to day livelihoods. the wild elephants residing within the rani reserve forest roam in and around the village, which hinders the villagers’ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 598-611 604 movement during night time. moreover, due to the occurrence of such incidents frequently, most of the villagers’ quitted the cultivation of rice 10-15 years ago. similar conflicts with wild elephants are also observed in the other sample villages but lesser intensity. in addition to that, very few villagers of these villages are engaged in government jobs, most of them are dependent on farmbased activities. for these vulnerabilities or problems like small landholding size, low level of education, conflicts with animals, lack of transportation facilities faced by the population in achieving their livelihoods, have compelled them to adopt strategies for a bit better lifestyle. a. b. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 598-611 605 c. figure 2: spatial distribution of a). population, b). villages with st population and c). sample villages 4.6. livelihood practices and strategies 4.6.1. agricultural intensification according to a study carried by diniz et al. (2015) found that the future perception of brazilian small farmers are that agricultural activities (both livestock and crop production), policy effectiveness, pensions and subsidies will affect livelihood security and environmental sustainability the most in their area. from the surveyed data of our study area, it is found that about 57.6% of the households are directly dependent on farm activities and 42.4 % of households are dependent on off-farm activities, which include daily wage labor, petty business, jobs, etc. (table 3). so it can be said that the majority of the population are agrarian and their livelihood is agriculture-related. the farm and off-farm activities are again sub-divided into details to get a clear picture of livelihood practices (table 4). the highest percentage (43.2) of households is involved in paddy farming, which indicates the utmost dependence of the rural st population on it. in addition to that, among the surveyed population, about 49.2 % of the households practice agriculture traditionally, 26.5 % use modern methods for cultivation, 11.4 % use both traditional and modern methods (table 5). the traditional methods include organic cultivation without applying any chemical pesticides, using traditional farm implements, and animate energy to plow the soil. the modern method includes the application of chemical pesticides and the use of power tiller and tractor to maximize food production in a limited area in less time. thus these farmers had adopted agricultural intensification as a strategy to increase the production of crops. table 3: primary occupation of the households primary occupation households valid percent farm 76 57.6 offfarm 56 42.4 total 132 100.0 source: survey data, 2019 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 598-611 606 table 4: additional livelihood activities of the households livelihood activities households valid percent paddy farming 57 43.2 agricultural laborer 2 1.5 daily wage earner 10 7.6 private sector wage earner 7 5.3 government permanent job 11 8.3 vegetable seller 7 5.3 petty business 11 8.3 pension 4 3.0 construction worker 3 2.3 carpentry 1 .8 private job 3 2.3 government contractual job 4 3.0 plantation 11 8.3 sand business 1 .8 total 132 100.0 source: survey data, 2019 table 5: paddy cultivation methods paddy cultivation methods households valid percent traditional 65 49.2 modern 35 26.5 both 15 11.4 no agriculture 17 12.9 total 132 100.0 source: survey data, 2019 4.6.2. migration as shown in table 6, the surveyed populations have adopted temporal and permanent migration as a strategy for livelihood. due to a lack of income opportunities and better facilities in their original villages, 27 households in a combination of other strategies have considered migration for better opportunities and facilities. the nine households who have permanently migrated to the urban areas of kochpara ward are engaged in permanent government services. they have migrated permanently to avail of all the facilities of urban areas that are not available in the original remote villages. the temporal migration within assam and outside assam (like kerela, hyderabad, etc.) is followed mainly by the young population who work as daily wage earners in factories and other private sector companies. due to poverty and lack of income generation opportunities in their locality, these people are attracted to such private sectors. table 6: strategy adopted by each household strategy household valid percent diversification 69 52.3 permanent migration 1 0.8 agricultural intensification 14 10.6 diversification and agricultural intensification 22 16.7 diversification and temporal migration 12 9.1 diversification, temporal migration and agricultural intensification 4 3.0 permanent migration and agricultural intensification 8 6.1 temporal migration and agricultural intensification 2 1.5 total 132 100.0 source: survey data, 2019 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 598-611 607 figure 3: strategies adopted by each household 4.6.3. diversification from table 6, it is clear that livelihood diversification (52.3 %) alone is the most followed strategy by the surveyed households in different intensities. in combination with other strategies, it is followed as a complementary strategy by 107 households (81.06 %). moreover, the livelihood diversification is observed more among the below poverty line (bpl) and aay (antyodaya anna yojana) ration cardholder households. this is because these poor sections of the population have to change their income source seasonally as they don’t have a permanent income source to meet their needs. similar results were also found by oyinbo et al. (2016) that livelihood diversification increases the level of income of the farmers and safeguards them in an extreme crop failure period. about 75 % of above poverty line (apl) households have 1-3 income sources, which is least diversified and more specialized. in contrast to that, about 85.7 % of bpl households and 14.3 % of aay households have 7-9 income sources annually. in all, 83 households have 4-6 income sources per year (table 7). the diversification of livelihood is also dependent on the number of family members. family size is a crucial determinant of the level of poverty (oyinbo et al., 2016). poverty increases in the case of a bigger family and it is tried to compensate through diversification. as observed in table 8, 39.3 % of households with 1-3 family members have about 1-3 income sources in a year, whereas 9.5 % of households with family members nine and above have 7-9 income sources per year. it shows that the more the family members, the more is the need as well as the workforce and so the livelihood diversification increases accordingly to feed the family properly throughout the year. table 7: cross-tabulation between livelihood diversification per household and type of ration card livelihood diversification per household ration card type total apl bpl no card aay household with 1-3 income source count 21 5 2 0 28 percentage 75.0% 17.9% 7.1% 0.0% 100.0% household with 4-6 income source count 23 50 10 0 83 percentage 27.7% 60.2% 12.0% 0.0% 100.0% household with 7-9 income source count 0 18 0 3 21 percentage 0.0% 85.7% 0.0% 14.3% 100.0% total count 44 73 12 3 132 percentage 33.3% 55.3% 9.1% 2.3% 100.0% source: survey data, 2019 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 598-611 608 figure 4: relationship between livelihood diversification per household and ration card type table 8: cross-tabulation between livelihood diversification per household and number of family members livelihood diversification per household total family members total 1-3 member 4-6 member 7-9 member above 9 livelihood diversification per household household with 1-3 income sources count 11 17 0 0 28 % 39.3% 60.7% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% household with 4-6 income sources count 22 60 1 0 83 % 26.5% 72.3% 1.2% 0.0% 100.0% household with 7-9 income sources count 0 16 3 2 21 % 0.0% 76.2% 14.3% 9.5% 100.0% total count 33 93 4 2 132 % 25.0% 70.5% 3.0% 1.5% 100.0% source: survey data, 2019 5. conclusion this study focused on the livelihood practices and strategies adopted by the scheduled tribe population of the palasbari revenue circle. the study shows that the scheduled tribe population (above 50 % st population) is mainly distributed in the assam-meghalaya border areas, and few are located in other rural and urban areas of the revenue circle. there are several assets available to the rural scheduled tribe population of palashbari revenue circle of kamrup district but minimally. forest is an essential natural asset available to the people, but they are allowed to extract only the minor products of it as it is a reserved forest. therefore significant economic activity like logging is not possible for them. this natural asset acts as a means of supplementary livelihood activities of the neighboring people. the land is the most important asset for this agricultural community. but this asset is inherited one and due to the nature of inheritance as in other parts of the country the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 598-611 609 landholding size has become too small to support a family, average landholding size being only 1.21 ha per family. so agricultural intensification is dominant as a strategy among the studied population. it shows the importance of agriculture in the study area. the only resource/asset abundant with them is the human resource that too is in quantity only, not in quality, as revealed by the level and kind of education. therefore to sustain their lives, the scheduled tribe population of the study area has used this asset to diversify economic activities. these economic activities are again determined by the quality of the manpower. as a result, these activities are diverse, seasonal, or temporary. more diversification is observed in the case of poor and large family and irregular jobs, while diversification is less in the case of families with secure jobs. however, social networking, particularly among the females, at the initiative of the government, has been introduced in the study area. through time they have got adapted to these vulnerabilities and hindrances and adopted different strategies to fulfill their day to day life needs. however, the intensity to adopt such strategies varies from one household to another depending on different criteria. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that there is no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ashley, c., & carney, d. 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(2013). livelihood strategies and forest dependence: new insights from bolivian forest communities. forest policy and economics, 26, 12-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2012.09.011. https://www.alagappauniversity.ac.in/modules/dde/uploads/books/sem-3/m.s.w/tribal%20community%20development-34934a.pdf https://www.alagappauniversity.ac.in/modules/dde/uploads/books/sem-3/m.s.w/tribal%20community%20development-34934a.pdf http://www.jstor.org/stable/26796957 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 79 the right-sized cow for emerging and commercial beef farmers in semiarid south africa: connecting biological and economic efficiency venter, t.m.a antwi m.a.b oduniyi, o.sc a,b,cdepartment of agriculture and animal health. college of agriculture and environmental sciences. university of south africa.  eodunios@unisa.ac.za (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 18 december 2020 revised: 8 january 2021 accepted: 25 january 2021 published: 15 february 2021 keywords cattle size cow size biological efficiency economic efficiency metabolic weight energy requirements of cattle. the study investigates the right size of cow in terms of both biological and economic efficiency under a typical production system in semi-arid south africa. cow size influences biological efficiency of individual animals, which influences herd composition and stock flow on a predetermined resource base. this in turn influences the economic efficiency of the herd. individual cows were classified as either small, medium, or large and their individual biological efficiency determined. when similar reproduction and growth rates were assumed, large cows were the most biologically efficient, followed by medium and small cows. income from the herd of small cattle was the lowest, as fewer kilograms of beef were available to sell. allocated costs for the herd of small cattle were the highest, due to a large number of expenses being charged per head of cattle. subsequently, when economic efficiency was calculated, the herd of large cattle was more profitable than its smaller counterparts. the herd of large and medium cattle would become less profitable than the herd of small cattle at lower reproduction rates, and these reproduction rates were calculated. smaller cattle have a faster maturity rate than larger cattle. a faster maturity rate provides the opportunity for early breeding. the effect of limiting feed intake of small, medium, and large cattle was compared and yielded varying results. the study concluded that cattle size influences biological efficiency, biological efficiency influences economic efficiency however there are many more variables that influence biological and economic efficiency other than size, such as reproduction rates. contribution/originality: the study contributes to body of knowledge by investigating the right size of cow a farmer could breed. the study is one of the few in south africa, as there is little or no literature about the right size of cow in the study area. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.79.104 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: venter, t.m --antwi m.a --oduniyi, o.s (2021). the right-sized cow for emerging and commercial beef farmers in semi-arid south africa: connecting biological and economic efficiency. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 79-104. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.79.104 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction south africa is a net importer of beef, suggesting ample room for expansion of the beef industry (department of agriculture forestry & fisheries, 2015). most beef cattle in south africa are managed under extensive conditions and utilize natural pasture. according to results from the national cattle survey undertaken in south africa, with emphasis on beef, around 75% of beef production systems are extensive (scholtz, bester, mamabolo, & ramsay, 2008). the south african beef industry is deeply segmented, with large differences among commercial, emerging, and communal farmers. commercial farmers produce mostly for the feedlot. according to a survey by scholtz et al. (2008), asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 79-104 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1154-0902 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3896-4502 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6118-2061 mailto:eodunios@unisa.ac.za http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.79.104 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 80 70% of all beef that was slaughtered in the formal sector had been fattened in the feedlot. a common production system is the weaner system (department of agriculture forestry & fisheries, 2016). emerging farmers are those that have the potential to commercialize and are actively looking to become more efficient, and therefore they could adopt the same management practices as commercial farmers (oduniyi, 2018). this research focusses on farmers aiming to produce for commercial feedlots. results from the national cattle survey show that farmers put much consideration into size when selecting breeding stock. the survey listed several reasons for bull selection, namely: performance, conformation, temperament, size, availability, color, and horns. commercial farmers first consider performance, conformation, and temperament, but 8.8% still predominantly selected a bull based on size. emerging farmers’ main consideration was performance (30.3%), followed by size (23.5%). thirty-three per cent of communal farmers considered size to be the most important factor and, as the author put it, still believe “bigger is better” (scholtz et al., 2008). despite the considerable role that size plays in selection, the effect thereof, under typical conditions and management practices in the semi-arid areas of south africa, remains still unclear. 2. literature review previous literature points out that the most efficient size of cow will depend on the production system and environment. body size influences a multitude of biological functions, including energy requirements, growth and maturity rates, milk production, reproduction rates, and adaptation. biological efficiency of individual animals in turn determines the composition and performance of the herd. this in turn influences the economic efficiency of the herd as a whole. when using energy requirements as the primary input, the most biological efficient beef cow will be the one that uses less energy to produce more meat. the four most relevant biological functions for which cows use net energy are maintenance, growth, lactation, and reproduction. they also partition energy in this order (johnson, radakovich, & dunn, 2010; lofgreen & garrett, 1968; national research council, 2000). research on energy requirements of cattle is extensive but, even so, results normally vary within a thin range. the most comprehensive research on energy requirements is that of the national research council (nrc). the nrc consolidated much of the previous research in their publications of energy requirements of ruminants (national research council, 1984, 2000). the energy requirements for the four biological functions can be calculated from equations suggested by the nrc as well as other previous research. smaller animals have proportionately higher maintenance energy requirements than larger animals. metabolic weight is widely used to calculate energy requirements for maintenance, where metabolic weight = live weight0.75 (kleiber, 1932). the work of lofgreen & garrett, commonly referred to as the california method, is still the most common equation used to calculate net energy requirements for growth and maintenance (lofgreen & garrett, 1968). a non-pregnant, non-lactating cow will retain energy for maintenance and growth. growth can be measured, and so the net energy used for growth can be measured and therefore energy for maintenance can be measured by subtracting the net energy used for growth from the total net energy retained. to calculate maintenance energy from their equation, the live weigh of the cow must be known. while growth can be easily measured, it is much more complex to calculate. the composition of growth changes as the animal nears its mature size. the equation used to calculate net energy for growth, as suggested by nrc, uses empty body weight gain, a reference weight, and equivalent shrunk body weight among the variables. to calculate the net energy requirements required to produce one kilogram of milk, this is equal to the net energy content of the milk, which is dependent on the milk’s composition. the equation proposed by tyrrell and reid (1964) is commonly used. energy requirements for lactation are, however, very complicated since milk composition changes throughout lactation. also, daily milk yield varies and is again dependant on a multitude of other variables. net energy requirements for production are equal to the net energy content of the gravid uterus. the work of ferrell, garrett, and hinman (1976) is commonly used to calculate net energy for production. birth weight and time after conception are the main variables in this equation. large cattle grow faster – that is, they gain more body weight per day than smaller cattle. however, previous research suggest that the growth rates of smaller animals are faster and that small animals reach mature weight sooner than large animals (arango & van vleck, 2002; dickerson, 1978; fiss & wilton, 1989; morris & wilton, 1976). cattle that will have a larger mature weight are larger throughout all other life stages as well – for example, puberty and weaning (arango & van vleck, 2002; fiss & wilton, 1993; morris & wilton, 1976). despite extensive existing research, there is no calculation that directly compares expected mature size to growth or maturity rate. brody’s growth model is a good fit to calculate the daily gain of beef cattle, if growth rate and mature weight can be assumed (brody, 1945; teleken, galvão, & robazza, 2017). the size of a cow will influence milk production. this is a complex area of research and, as yet, milk yield cannot be calculated from animal size. however, existing research shows that heavier mature animals are heavier at all life stages, including birth to weaning. thus, they have higher energy requirements and therefore need more milk while suckling. so, it can be argued that larger cows produce more milk to provide more energy for their larger calves. from another angle, if a cow has a higher lactation yield she will produce a bigger calf (arango & van vleck, 2002; jenkins & ferrell, 2002; johnson et al., 2010). reproduction rates is arguably the most complex of biological functions, with countless variables affecting reproduction. although the correlation between size and reproduction rates cannot be expressed numerically, from previous research it is safe to assume that gestation lengths in larger cattle are longer and, most importantly, under similar conditions, reproduction rates of smaller cattle are higher (arango & van vleck, 2002; dickerson, 1978; fiss & wilton, 1989). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 81 current literature suggest that a smaller body size is an adaptation to semi-arid and arid environments. this adaptation can be expressed in a multitude of ways, including higher reproduction rates, lower mortality rates, and disease resistance among others. some research suggests that smaller animals tend to be more efficient when feed supply is limited, as in the case of dry climates (arango & van vleck, 2002; dickerson, 1978; jenkins & ferrell, 2002). body size doesn’t necessarily directly impact economic efficiency but, due to biological differences, variation in incomes and expenses is observed in herds of different-sized animals. body size influences biological efficiency, and biological efficiency influences economic efficiency (arango & van vleck, 2002; dickerson, 1978; dicostanzo & meiske, 1994; johnson et al., 2010). when examining economic efficiency, the herd as a whole should be considered because knowing the biological efficiency of individual cows is still a long stretch from knowing the most economically efficient size of cow for the herd. results connecting size and economic efficiency vary greatly in previous research. in a weaner system, income is generated from selling calves to the feedlot, as well as from culls. expenses that can be allocated to the beef enterprise are charged either per live mass or per head of cattle. 3. materials and methods cattle were grouped as either small, medium, or large, with mature weights of 300, 450, and 600 kg, respectively. the net energy requirements of individual cattle were then calculated for maintenance, growth, lactation, and fetal production for each of the three sizes. the total daily energy requirements (net) were calculated as the sum of the net energy for maintenance (nem), the net energy for growth (neg), the net energy during lactation (nel), and the net energy during pregnancy (ney). thus: net = nem + neg + nel + ney the order in which energy is prioritized for physiological functions is also important. for example, in the case where feed is limited, animals will first compensate by failing to reproduce, since they will allocate energy to the other functions first. to determine net energy requirements, the growth rates of small, medium, and large cows were first calculated. this was done using brody’s model (brody, 1945): f(t) = a (1-b-kt) where f(t) gives the expected weight of the animal at time t. a = asymptotic weight or average adult weight as t→∞. b = the constant of integration; thus where t = 0, in this case when the calf is born. k = growth rate. t = time after t0 in days. the mature animal weights of 300, 450, and 600 kg were substituted for a. the birth weight of calves was set at 6.67% of their mature weight, and it was assumed that animals reached 97.5% of mature weight at 1552 days. by solving the values in this equation, the weight at each day, as well as the daily gain, from birth to 1552 days was calculated for small, medium, and large cows. to calculate maintenance energy requirements daily nem = 0.077mcal/bw0.75 where bw is the body weight of the animal (lofgreen & garrett, 1968). the body weight of each animal increased daily as the animal grew, which meant that daily nem increased daily until animals were classified as mature at 1553 days. the energy requirement for growth was calculated using the equation neg = re = 0.0635* ebw0.75 * ebg1.097 (mcal) where ebw is empty body weight and ebg is empty body gain (garrett, 1980; national research council, 1984, 2000). ebw and ebg were used in the equation because it takes into account that the composition of gain from birth to maturity varies. shortly after birth, animals deposit proportionately more protein and, closer to maturity, proportionately more fat in the form of daily gain. the equations for calculating ebw and ebg used were: eqsbw = sbw * (srw/fsbw) eqebw = 0.891 * eqsbw ebg = 0.965 * swg neg = re = 0.0635 * eqebw0.75 * ebg1.097 where eqsbw = equivalent shrunk body weight. srw = standard reference weight, which refers to the 478 kg mature weight of the comparative slaughter experiments mentioned above. fsbw = final shrunk body weight which, in this case, was taken as the mature weight of the animals, and thus 300, 450, and 600 kg for this study. eqebw = equivalent empty body weight. ebg = empty body weight gain. swg = shrunk body weight gain which, in this case, is the daily gain as computed using brody’s growth model, as discussed above. growth rates of steers and heifers were assumed to be equal, as little difference was found in growth rates where bull calves were castrated early (national research council, 2000). to calculate the growth of calves from first and second-calf cows, the expected mature weight was set at, respectively, 92 and 95% of the expected mature weight of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 82 calves from mature cows, in line with results from previous research as cited by the nrc (national research council, 2000). net energy requirements for lactation were calculated from the equation: nel = yt * e where yt is daily milk yield in kg and e is the energy content of 1 kg of milk e was calculated as 0.7178 mcal/kg from the equation of tyrrell and reid (1964): e = (0.092 * fat percent) + (0.049 * snf percent) – 0.0569 a fat content and snf (solids non-fat) content of 4 and 8.3%, respectively, was used as recommended by the nrc. to determine milk yield, the equation prescribed by jenkins & ferrell was used (jenkins & ferrell, 1984): yn = n/aekn where n is the time, in weeks, postpartum. a = 1/(peak milk yield * k * e). k = 1/week of peak milk yield. by sighting previous research, the nrc concluded that peak milk yield occurred at 8.5 weeks on average. this was calculated over a wide range of beef cow breeds. therefore k = 1/8.5 was taken for all sizes. little information is available in terms of milk yield in the south african beef sector. a peak milk yield of 10 kg/day was used for medium cows, in accordance with previous research done on bonsmara cows (maiwashe et al., 2013). the calf weight of small-, medium-, and large-framed breeds was assumed to be 20, 30, and 40 kg, respectively. by assuming that metabolic weight and the net energy requirements of calves are proportionate, and thus arguing that milk yield is dependent on metabolic weight, the peak milk yield for smalland large-framed cows was calculated as follows: my = cw0.75/30 kg0.75 * 10 kg/day where my is the calculated peak milk yield and cw is the birth weight for small and large calves, respectively, giving a peak milk yield of 7.38…kg/day and 12.41…kg/day for small and large cows, respectively. it is common practice to wean calves at 7 months. thus, the lactation time was assumed to be 205 days irrespective of size. furthermore, it was assumed that 2-year-old heifers produce 26% less milk and 3-year-old cows produce 12% less milk throughout the first and second lactations, in accordance with results published by the nrc (national research council, 2000). to calculate net energy for production, the nrc derived an equation from the work of ferrell et al. (1976), which gives: ney = 0.576 birth weight (0.4504 – 0.000766t) e (0.03233 – 0.0000275t)t kcal where t is the time after conception. for this study, birth weight was assumed to be 6.67% of mature weight, similar to data reported in the performance information from breeds participating in the national beef recording and improvement scheme of south africa (scholtz, 2010), where the average calf birth weight was 6.7% of cow weight in the seed stock industry from 1999 to 2008. gestation length was assumed to be 283 days for all three sizes. therefore, using the above equations, growth and net energy requirements of individual cows could be calculated. the resource base was defined as a farm that can maintain 500 non-pregnant, non-lactating cows of 450 kg live weight, and thus the annual total net energy available on the resource base was calculated to be 1,372,976 mcal. it was assumed that feed was available as required by the animals throughout the year. thus, there were no periods when there was a feed shortage. an extensive weaner production system, as is most commonly applied in the research area, was used to determine herd composition and stock flow. animals were managed on savannah or grassland and grazed year round with no supplementary feeding, although mineral licks were supplied. animals were divided into six classes: 1) mature cows (mc): cows were classified as mc at 1553 days. these are cows that had two or more calves. mc were bred and fell pregnant on 23 december. non-pregnant mc were culled on 30 april. mc calved on 1 october. 2) second-calf cows (scc): cows were classified as scc at 1188 days. these cows were bred for the second time on 23 december at 1179 days, culled on 30 april, and calved on 1 october. 3) first-calf cows (fcc): cows were classified as fcc at 823 days. these cows were bred for the first time on 22 september at 722 days, culled on 31 january, and calved on 1 july. 4) retained cow calves (rcc): heifers were classified as rcc at 458 days. these were heifers retained to replace culls from the other cow groups. all rcc came from mc rather than fcc or scc. 5) calves: calves from either mc, scc or fcc. calves from mc and sc were born on 1 october, weaned 23 april at 205 days, and sold on 30 april at 212 days. calves from fcc were born on 1 july, weaned on 21 january at 205 day,s and sold on 31 january at 215 days. 6) bulls: bulls were assumed to be mature throughout their lifetime in the herd. the number of bulls was assumed to be 1/25 of all breedable cows at the highest quantity. bulls were replaced at 20%, and they were culled and replaced on 30 november after compensating for loss due to mortality. the targets from the department of agriculture & rural development suggests that farmers aim for a calving percentage of 90% for heifers bred at 2 years, 75% for fcc and 80% for mc, and these targets were used to compile the stock flow. a mortality rate of 1% was assumed for all animals except calves, which was set at 3%. deaths were calculated monthly. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 83 from the growth rate calculation, for every single day that the animal spends in the herd, its weight was known. from the energy requirement calculation, the exact energy need of each animal in the herd for every day was also known. from the stock flow calculation, the number of animals of each class was known. by matching the energy requirements of individual animals to stock flows, the energy requirements of the herd cold be calculated. animal numbers were increased until the herd consumed 1,372,976 mcal annually. to determine the economic efficiency of the herd, net profit over allocated costs was calculated. this was done from the stock flows. income was generated from calf sales and culls of cows and bulls. mc and scc culls were sold as c2/3 beef; fcc culls were sold as b2/3 beef. the classification of beef was done according to the recommendations of brody (1945). prices for culls and weaners were obtained from the red meat producers association (rmpa) and absa, and the average prices for 2017 were used. it was assumed that all animals of all classes yielded a carcass of 52% of live weight, which gave a live price of r21.05/kg and r20.38/kg for b2/3 and c2/3, respectively, and a live price of r32.25/kg for weaners (red meat producers organization absa absa weekly prices, 2018). bulls were replaced by buying breeding stock. it was assumed that the cost of a bull was eight times the market value of a weaner calf, a practical rule of thumb. this gave a price of r112.00/kg or r33,599, r50,398 and r67,198 for a 300-, 450and 600-kg replacement bull, respectively. other expenses were adapted from the production budgets of senwes agricultural services for extensive beef production in the north-west and free state provinces (senwes agricultural services, 2017). the expenses used to calculate all allocated costs, the motivation for the expense, the animal classes to which it applies, the timing thereof, the dosage, and the price are summarized in table 1. protein lick was given for 6 months through winter, starting 1 may, and a phosphate lick for 6 months through summer, starting 1 november. voermol’s premix 450 and supefos were used in this research. it was assumed that lick intake was directly equivalent to net requirements, and the highest net of an individual animal was matched to the maximum recommended intake for the lick. feed prices were obtained from voermol’s sales representative in the potchefstroom/klerksdorp region. prices for vit-aid, bovitect iii, and cattle master 4 were obtained from anb veterinary wholesalers (2018). the price for the rift valley fever vaccine was obtained from onb’s sales representative. prices for all other doses, vaccines, and dips were obtained from vet products online (2018). all product prices were inclusive of vat. retained cow calves were processed and given ear tags, which incurred a direct cost of r70.00 per animal. veterinary costs were r50.00 per animal, as in senwes agricultural services (2017) and applied to cows in the months in which they were tested for pregnancy and culled (april and january), calves in the months they were sold (april and january), retained heifers in april, and bulls in december. where expenses were charged per head, these were matched to the animal numbers in the herd. where expenses were charged according to body weight, these were matched to the live weights (kg) of the animals to which they applied on the day they were administered. by calculating income and expenses as described above, the gross profit above allocated costs was determined. since previous research suggests that larger cattle have a lower reproduction rate than smaller cattle under similar conditions, the reproduction rate where the herds of large and medium cattle would become less profitable than those of small cattle was calculated. this was done by lowering the reproduction rates of mc, scc, and fcc proportionately until the profitability of the herds of large and medium cattle became less profitable than those of small cattle. all other assumptions were left unchanged. lowering reproduction rates changed the herd composition and stock flow, but the calculation thereof was unchanged. income and expenses were matched to the adapted stock flows similarly, as described above. previous literature suggests that smaller cattle mature faster and therefore provide the opportunity for earlier breeding. the lifetime energy requirements of early-bred heifers were calculated in a similar manner as before. the profitability of a herd where heifers were bred at 15 months for small and medium cattle was calculated. this calculation led to a change in the classes of animals and subsequent change in the stock flow described previously. the rcc class was inapplicable, while the fcc was classified as such at 458 days and was already bred at 449 days on 23 december, culled on 1 april, and calved on 1 october. scc were classified as such at 823 days and were bred at 814 days on 23 december, culled on 30 april, and calved on 1 october; a reproduction rate of 75% was assumed. tcc were classified as such at 1188 days, bred at 1179 days on 23 december, culled on 30 april, and calved on 1 october; a reproduction ate of 80% was assumed. mc were unchanged from the initial calculation but had one more calf before they were mature, and a reproduction rate of 80% was assumed. next, the stock flow and production budget for the herds of small and medium cows that were bred early were calculated following the guidelines described earlier. the reproduction rates of early-bred fcc that would make the herds of small and medium cattle more profitable than those of large cattle, bred late, were calculated. previous research suggests that different-sized cattle perform differently when feed is limited. the effect of feed restriction on cows of the three sizes was examined where: 1. feed is limited to a specific quantity per animal, regardless of animal size. 2. the calculated energy requirements of small, medium, and large cattle are considered and then reduced by a percentage. 3. feed is limited as a proportion of metabolic weight. 4. feed is made available according to large-stock unit (lsu). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 84 table-1. supplementary feed, dosing, vaccinations, and dipping schedule and expenses (personal collection from various sources). product manufacturer and reference motivation relevant animals timing dosage price licks voermol premix 450 voermol our products (2018) protein lick for winter all 1 may–31 oct max: 500g/ animal/day r205.05/ 50 kg voermol superfos voermol our products (2018) phosphate lick for summer all 1 nov–30 apr max: 240g/animal/day r260.30/50 kg dosing tramisol plus afrivet (2018) roundworm and liver fluke bulls, mc, scc, fcc, rcc, rcc from mc 1 nov (all relevant animals) 15 ml/50 kg r134.41/200 ml ex-a-lint msd (2018) milk tapeworm calves 1 jan, 1 apr (calves from mc and scc) 1 oct, 1 jan (calves from fcc) 1 ml/4 kg r1898.55/5 l valbazen zoetis (2018) roundworm and milk tapeworm bulls, mc, scc, fcc, rcc, rcc from mc 1 may, 1 nov (bulls, mc, scc, fcc) 1 feb, 1 aug (rcc, rcc from mc) 1 ml/10 kg r1999.40/5 l vit-aid afrivet (2018) vitamin a supplement bulls, mc, scc, fcc, rcc, rcc from mc 1 jul (all relevant animals) 1 ml/250 kg r208.28/100 ml multimin virbac (2018) trace mineral supplement bulls, mc, scc, fcc, rcc, rcc from mc 1 nov (bulls, mc, scc) 1 aug (fcc, rcc, rcc from mc) 1 ml/100 kg r1997.09/500 ml vaccinations cattle master 4 zoetis (2018) bovine viral diarrhea bulls, mc, scc, fcc, rcc, rcc from mc 1 nov (bulls, mc, scc, fcc) 1 aug (rcc, rcc from mc) 2 ml/animal r818.28/25 doses supavax® (msd) msd (2018) botulism, anthrax, blackquarter all animals 1 nov (bulls, mc, scc, fcc) 1 aug (rcc and rcc from mc) 1 jan,1 apr (calves from mc and scc) 1 oct, 1 jan (calves from fcc) 2 ml/animal r741.92/50 doses bovilis s msd (2018) paratyphoid (inactivated) pregnant animals 1 aug (mc, scc) 1 may (fcc) 2 ml/animal r47.00/10 ml rb-51 msd (2018) brucella abortus female animals before breeding 1 nov (mc, scc, fcc) 1 aug (rcc) 2 ml/animal r1009.63/25 doses bovi-tect iii msd (2018) pasteurella female animals 1 aug (all relevant animals) 1 ml/animal r1839.42/100 ml rift valley fever (obp) obp (2018) rift valley fever (incativated) bulls, mc, scc, fcc, rcc, rcc from mc 1 aug (all relevant animals) 2 ml/animal r688.42/100 ml dip drastic deadline bayer (2018) ticks, tsetse flies, red lice all animals 1 nov (all animals) 1 may (bulls, mc, scc, rcc, rcc from mc) 5 ml/50 kg r3250.50/6l asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 85 4. results and discussion 4.1. biological efficiency of individual cows all individual cattle used more than 70% of total lifetime net energy requirements purely for maintenance (71.8, 71.1, and 70.8% for small, medium, and large cows, respectively). this left a small portion for the functions growth, lactation, and reproduction, consistent with previous research (jenkins & ferrell, 2002; national research council, 2000). the net energy requirements of a medium cow are illustrated visually in figure 1. figure-1. net energy requirements of medium-sized cow from birth to 1979 days. although small cows need less energy for all physiological functions at any moment, they need proportionately more net energy than larger cows. to illustrate this, a small cow is 50% the size of a large cow but the net energy needs of the former are 58% (23,669 mcal) that of the latter (40,553 mcal). the composition of energy requirements for small, medium, and large cows ais different, as larger cows use proportionately less net energy for maintenance and lactation. net energy requirements for small, medium, and large cows until the end of their first adult cycle are summarized in table 2. table-2. lifetime energy requirements of small, medium, and large cows. growing animals mature animals total time in herd birth to 1552 days one mature cycle birth to 3377 days small medium large small medium large small medium large ne requirements (mcal) nem 6,870 9,311 11,554 2,026 2,746 3,407 16,999 23,041 28,590 neg 793 1,237 1,696 793 1,237 1,696 nel 1,042 1,412 1,752 736 997 1,238 4,721 6,399 7,940 ney 315 484 646 168 252 336 1,155 1,746 2,328 net 9,019 12,445 15,647 2,930 3,996 4,981 23,669 32,423 40,553 ne requirements (% of net) nem 76.20 74.80 73.80 69.10 68.70 68.40 71.80 71.10 70.50 neg 8.80 9.90 10.80 0.00 0.00 0.00 3.30 3.80 4.20 nel 11.60 11.30 11.20% 25.10 25.00 24.80 19.90 19.70 19.60 ney 3.50 3.90 4.10 5.70 6.30 6.80 4.90 5.40 5.70 net 100.00 100.00 100.0 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 4.2. stock flows and herd composition for a resource base that has an annual energy yield of 1,372,976 mcal, more small cows could be kept on the resource base. herd compositions were different but, as an example, the resource base could support 236.6 small mature cows, 171.9 medium mature cows, or 136.9 large mature cows. the stock flow is summarized with monthly animal numbers in tables 3–5. from these tables it is clear that the herd of small cattle has more heads of all classes of animals at any stage, but the composition is different for each herd. from the stock flows, both income and expenses could be calculated. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 86 table-3. stock flows for a herd of small-sized cattle. jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec mc 236.6 236.6 236.4 236.2 236.0 188.6 188.5 188.3 188.2 188.0 187.8 187.7 187.5 pregnant mc calving (%) 80 189.3 189.1 188.9 188.8 188.6 188.5 188.3 188.2 188.0 150.0 open mc 47.3 47.3 47.2 47.2 37.5 deaths death (%) 1 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 culls 19 47.2 scc 66.2 66.1 66.1 66.0 49.5 49.4 49.4 49.4 49.3 49.3 49.2 49.2 pregnant scc calving (%) 7 49.7 49.6 49.6 49.5 49.5 49.4 49.4 49.4 49.3 39.4 open scc 16.6 16.5 16.5 16.5 9.8 deaths death (%) 1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 16.5 fcc 74.3 66.8 66.8 66.7 66.6 66.6 66.5 66.5 66.4 66.4 66.3 66.3 pregnant fcc calving (%) 90 66.9 66.8 66.8 66.7 66.6 66.6 49.7 open fcc 7.4 16.6 deaths death (%) 1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 culls 7.4 rcc 75.0 75.0 74.9 74.9 74.8 74.7 74.7 74.6 74.5 74.5 74.4 74.4 pregnant rcc 67.1 67.0 67.0 66.9 open rcc 7.5 7.4 7.4 7.4 deaths death (%) 1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves from mc 186.6 186.1 185.7 185.2 188.0 187.5 187.1 deaths death (%) 3 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 calves sold from mc 108.4 rcc from mc 76.7 76.6 76.4 76.2 76.0 75.8 75.6 75.4 75.2 deaths death (%) 3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 calves from scc 49.0 48.8 48.7 48.6 49.3 49.2 49.1 deaths death (%) 3 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from scc 48.5 calves from fcc 65.6 66.6 66.4 66.3 66.1 65.9 65.8 deaths death (%) 3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 calves sold from fcc 65.4 bulls 15.1 15.1 15.1 15.1 15.1 15.1 15.0 15.0 15.0 15.0 15.0 15.1 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 2.9 purchased replace (%) 20 3.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 87 table-4. stock flow for a herd of medium-sized cattle. jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec mc 171.9 171.9 171.7 171.6 171.5 137.1 136.9 136.8 136.7 136.6 136.5 136.4 136.3 pregnant mc calving (%) 80 137.5 137.4 137.3 137.2 137.1 136.9 136.8 136.7 136.6 109.0 open mc 34.4 34.3 34.3 34.3 27.3 deaths death (%) 1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 culls 19 34.3 scc 48.1 48.1 48.0 48.0 36.0 35.9 35.9 35.9 35.8 35.8 35.8 35.7 pregnant scc calving (%) 75 36.1 36.0 36.0 36.0 36.0 35.9 35.9 35.9 35.8 28.6 open scc 12.0 12.0 12.0 12.0 7.1 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 12.0 fcc 54.0 48.5 48.5 48.5 48.4 48.4 48.3 48.3 48.3 48.2 48.2 48.1 pregnant fcc calving (%) 90 48.6 48.5 48.5 48.5 48.4 48.4 36.1 open fcc 5.4 12.0 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 5.4 rcc 54.5 54.5 54.4 54.4 54.3 54.3 54.3 54.2 54.2 54.1 54.1 54.0 pregnant rcc 48.7 48.7 48.7 48.6 open rcc 5.4 5.4 5.4 5.4 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 calves from mc 135.6 135.2 134.9 134.6 136.6 136.3 135.9 deaths death (%) 3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 calves sold from mc 78.8 rcc from mc 55.8 55.6 55.5 55.3 55.2 55.1 54.9 54.8 54.7 deaths death (%) 3 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves from scc 35.6 35.5 35.4 35.3 35.8 35.7 35.7 deaths death (%) 3 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from scc 35.2 calves from fcc 47.7 48.4 48.3 48.1 48.0 47.9 47.8 deaths death (%) 3 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from fcc 47.5 bulls 11.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 10.9 10.9 10.9 10.9 10.9 10.9 10.9 11.0 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 2.1 purchased replace (%) 20 2.2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 88 table-5. stock flow for a herd of large-sized cattle. jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec mc 136.9 136.9 136.8 136.7 136.6 109.2 109.1 109.0 108.9 108.8 108.7 108.6 108.5 pregnant mc calving (%) 80 109.5 109.4 109.4 109.3 109.2 109.1 109.0 108.9 108.8 86.8 open mc 27.4 27.4 27.3 27.3 21.7 deaths death (%) 1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 culls 19% 27.3 scc 38.3 38.3 38.3 38.2 28.6 28.6 28.6 28.6 28.5 28.5 28.5 28.5 pregnant scc calving (%) 75 28.7 28.7 28.7 28.7 28.6 28.6 28.6 28.6 28.5 22.8 open scc 9.6 9.6 9.6 9.6 5.7 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 9.5 fcc 43.0 38.7 38.6 38.6 38.6 38.5 38.5 38.5 38.4 38.4 38.4 38.3 pregnant fcc calving (%) 90 38.7 38.7 38.6 38.6 38.6 38.5 28.8 open fcc 4.3 9.6 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 4.3 rcc 43.4 43.4 43.4 43.3 43.3 43.3 43.2 43.2 43.1 43.1 43.1 43.0 pregnant rcc 38.8 38.8 38.8 38.7 open rcc 4.3 4.3 4.3 4.3 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 calves from mc 108.0 107.7 107.5 107.2 108.8 108.5 108.3 deaths death (%) 3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 calves sold from mc 62.8 rcc from mc 44.4 44.3 44.2 44.1 44.0 43.9 43.8 43.6 43.5 deaths death (%) 3 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves from scc 28.3 28.3 28.2 28.1 28.5 28.5 28.4 deaths death (%) 3 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from scc 28.0 calves from fcc 38.0 38.5 38.4 38.3 38.3 38.2 38.1 deaths death (%) 3 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from fcc 37.9 bulls 8.7 8.7 8.7 8.7 8.7 8.7 8.7 8.7 8.7 8.7 8.7 8.8 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 1.7 purchased replace (%) 20 1.8 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 89 4.3. energy requirements of herds the net values for individual animals of each of the different classes were used to calculate the total number of small, medium, and large cows that can be maintained on a resource base in terms of total net energy. results showed differences in the composition of net and are summarized in table 6. net energy for maintenance for herds of small, medium, and large cattle was 73.1, 72.0, and 71.2%, respectively. this is mainly due to the fact that growing animals use a larger proportion of net for nem than productive mature animals, as well as the fact that bulls have to be retained on the resource base. nem of the productive cow herd (mc, scc, and fcc) amounted to 70.2, 69.6, and 69.3% for herds of small, medium, and large cattle, respectively, when calculated as a portion of total herd net. similar results were obtained by jenkins and ferrell (1984). therefore, the herd of large cattle allocated more energy to growth and reproduction, making it comparatively biologically efficient. 4.4. economic efficiency the herd of large cattle was more profitable under the initial assumptions. the herd of small cattle had more heads of weaners (222.34) but less weight (28,034 kg) for sale, compared to 161.56 weaners and 30,554 kg for the herd of medium cattle and 128.68 weaners and 32,450 kg for the herd of large cattle. cow and bull culls from the herd of small cattle yielded less weight (19,747 kg for c2/3 and 1,950 kg for b2/3) than the herd of medium (21,522 kg for c2/3 and 2,125 kg for b2/3) and large (22,858 kg for c2/3 and 2,833 kg for b2/3) cattle. as a result, the herd of small cattle had the lowest income (r1,347,373.98) compared to r1,468,502.53 and r1,571,754.71 for the herds of medium and large cattle, respectively. some expenses were charged on a per-head basis and some were charged on a live weight basis. bull replacement costs for the herd of small cattle were the lowest of the three, since bull replacements were calculated as a price per kg of live bull. the herd of small cattle replaced 907.7 kg of live bull (3 heads) compared to 989.3 kg (2.2 heads) and 1,050.7 kg (1.8 heads) for the medium and large cattle. there was a negligible difference in the cost of supplementary licks between the three herds, with the herd of small cattle having the lowest cost. table-6. energy requirements of animal classes in herds of small, medium, and large cattle. herd energy composition small medium large mc: nem 413,135 30.10% 406,870 29.60% 402,129 29.30% mc: nel 154,729 11.30% 152,383 11.10% 150,607 11.00% mc: ney 31,646 2.30% 34,491 2.50% 36,631 2.70% mc: net 599,510 43.70% 593,744 43.20% 589,367 42.90% scc: nem 107,864 7.90% 106,228 7.70% 104,990 7.60% scc: neg 2,157 0.20% 2,445 0.20% 2,670 0.20% scc: nel 21,591 1.60% 21,263 1.50% 21,016 1.50% scc: ney 7,887 0.60% 9,049 0.70% 9,610 0.70% scc: net 139,499 10.20% 138,985 10.10% 138,286 10.10% fcc: nem 126,800 9.20% 124,877 9.10% 123,422 9.00% fcc: neg 6,329 0.50% 7,174 0.50% 7,835 0.60% fcc: nel 40,813 3.00% 40,194 2.90% 39,725 2.90% fcc: ney 10,127 0.70% 11,038 0.80% 11,723 0.90% fcc: net 184,069 13.40% 183,283 13.30% 182,706 13.30% rcc: nem 126,442 9.20% 124,525 9.10% 123,074 9.00% rcc: ne g 16,027 1.20% 18,168 1.30% 19,842 1.40% rcc: ney 188 0.00% 205 0.00% 218 0.00% rcc: net 142,658 10.40% 142,899 10.40% 143,134 10.40% calves from mcs: nem 79,982 5.80% 78,769 5.70% 77,852 5.70% calves from mcs: neg 37,961 2.80% 43,034 3.10% 46,997 3.40% rcc from mc: nem 67,637 4.90% 66,611 4.90% 65,835 4.80% rcc from mc: neg 18,444 1.30% 20,909 1.50% 22,835 1.70% calves from scc: nem 20,191 1.50% 19,885 1.40% 19,653 1.40% calves from scc: neg 9,059 0.70% 10,269 0.70% 11,215 0.80% calves from fcc: nem 27,165 2.00% 26,753 1.90% 26,442 1.90% calves from fcc: neg 11,715 0.90% 13,280 1.00% 14,503 1.10% all calves: net 272,156 19.80% 279,512 20.40% 285,333 20.80% bulls: nem 35,085 2.60% 34,553 2.50% 34,151 2.50% bulls: net 35,085 2.60% 34,553 2.50% 34,151 2.50% total herd: nem 1,004,303 73.10% 989,073 72.00% 977,548 71.20% total herd: neg 101,692 7.40% 115,280 8.40% 125,898 9.20% total herd: nel 217,133 15.80% 213,840 15.60% 211,348 15.40% total herd: ney 49,849 3.60% 54,783 4.00% 58,182 4.20% total herd: net 1,372,976 100.00% 1,372,976 100.00% 1,372,976 100.00% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 90 dosing and dip expenses were administered on a live kilogram basis. in all instances the herd of small cattle had the fewest body weight and the herd of large cattle had the highest body weight for which dosing and dips were administered, which resulted in lower expenses in this category for the herd of small cattle. vaccination and processing and veterinary costs were charged on a per-head basis, and subsequently the herd of small cattle had the highest costs since more heads of small cattle were on the resource base at any time. total allocated costs were the highest for the herd of small cattle at r401,362.47, followed by the medium cattle at r383,386.56. the allocated costs for the herd of large cattle were the lowest at r376,756.53, due to various costs being charged on a per-head basis. the work of dickerson (1978) and johnson et al. (2010), among others, also stipulated that switching from a herd of large to small cows will increase variable costs. the gross profit above allocated costs was 9% higher for the herd of large cattle (r1,182,864.73) than the herd of medium cattle (r1,085,115.97) and 25% higher than the herd of small cattle (r946,011.50). the full production budgets, which detailing both income and expenses, are provided in table 7. 4.5. reproduction rates and profitability larger cows normally have a lower reproduction rate under similar circumstances. when reproduction rates are higher, feed efficiency and profitability increase. in fact, dickerson (1978) observed the following; “increasing n (reproduction rates) reduces female replacement, maintenance feed and fixed costs in almost direct proportions to 1/n, including the fixed cost of pregnancy and lactation status.” the reproduction rates where large and medium cows would become less profitable than small cows were calculated. from the results, when reproduction rates of medium cattle were 84.59% that of small cattle, both sizes were equally profitable. therefore, at reproduction rates <67.67% for mature cows, 63.44% for scc ,and 76.13% for fcc, medium cattle will be less profitable than small cattle. when reproduction rates of large cattle were 75.35% that of small cattle, they were equally profitable. therefore, at reproduction rates <60.28% for mc, 56.51% for scc, and 67.81% for fcc, large cattle were less profitable than small cattle. lowering the reproduction rate of the herds of medium and large cattle led to a change in the stock flow. more cows were culled, and more replacement cows needed to be raised. the medium and large herds therefore used more net energy for maintenance. stock flows for the herds of medium and large cattle at these lower reproduction rates are given in tables 8 and 9. the subsequent production budget with net income matched for the three herds is given in table 10. 4.6. maturity rates and profitability smaller cattle mature faster than larger cattle, which provides the opportunity for early breeding. when cows were bred at 15 months, this changed lifetime energy requirements and is illustrated in figure 2 for medium cows. this can be directly compared to figure 1 where medium cows were bred at 24 months. when small cattle were bred at 15 months, at a calving rate of only 44.5% it was more profitable than when the same small cows were bred at 24 months. when medium cattle were bred at 15 months, a calving rate of 37.8% was needed to be more profitable than when similar-sized cows were bred at 24 months. even when the herd of small cattle were bred at 15 months with a reproduction rate of 100%, it was still less profitable than the herd of large cattle bred at 24 months, providing that the reproduction rates of all other classes of animals were similar. when the herd of medium cattle were bred at 15 months, at a calving rate of 54% for fcc, it matched the profit of the herd of large cattle that were bred at 24 months, providing that the reproduction rates of other classes were equal. figure-2. net energy requirements of medium-sized cows from birth to 1979 days when bred at 15 months. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 91 table-7. production budget for herds of small, medium, and large cattle. small cattle medum cattle large cattle income cattle sales price/kg total kg total kg total kg culled mc class c2/3 r 20.38 14,146.99 r 288,254.91 15,418.80 r 314,168.95 16,375.52 r 333,662.74 culled fcc class c2/3 r 20.38 4,737.41 r 96,528.15 5,163.31 r 105,206.00 5,483.68 r 111,733.90 culled replacement heifers class b2/3 r 21.05 1,949.50 r 41,036.73 2,124.76 r 44,725.92 2,256.60 r 47,501.11 live weaners sold weaners r 32.25 28,034.07 r 903,979.45 30,554.32 r 985,246.95 32,450.18 r1,046,380.28 culled bulls class c2/3 r 20.38 862.53 r 17,574.74 940.08 r 19,154.71 998.41 r 20,343.23 total income from cattle sales r1,347,373.98 r1,468,502.53 r1,559,621.26 expenses bull purchases r 112.00 907.71 r 101,660.30 989.32 r 110,799.54 1,050.70 r 117,674.51 licks price/kg total kg total kg total kg winter r 4.10 16,116.34 r 66,093.13 16,160.73 r 66,275.17 16,188.80 r 66,390.28 summer r 5.21 10,328.66 r 53,771.03 10,307.35 r 53,660.07 10,293.88 r 53,589.94 dosing price/ml total kg total kg total kg roundworm and liver fluke 15 ml/50 kg r 0.67 126,992.38 r 25,603.57 138,408.96 r 27,905.32 146,997.06 r 29,636.81 milk tapeworm 1 ml/4kg r 0.38 56,633.95 r 5,376.12 61,725.33 r 5,859.43 65,555.31 r 6,223.00 roundworm and milk tapeworm 1 ml/10 kg r 0.40 233,462.21 r 9,335.69 254,450.39 r 10,174.96 270,238.72 r 10,806.31 vitamin a 1 ml/250 kg r 2.08 121,485.17 r 1,012.12 132,406.66 r 1,103.11 140,622.32 r 1,171.55 trace minerals 1 ml/100 kg r 3.99 124,287.27 r 4,964.26 135,460.66 r 5,410.54 143,865.82 r 5,746.26 vaccinations price/ml total animals total animals total animals bvd 2ml/animal r 16.37 468.82 r 15,344.97 340.64 r 11,149.65 271.33 r 8,881.11 botulism, anthrax, blackquarter 2ml/animal r 7.42 1,069.83 r 15,874.57 777.34 r 11,534.46 619.18 r 9,187.62 paratyphoid (inactivated) 2ml/animal r 20.34 304.16 r 12,372.08 221.00 r 8,989.55 176.04 r 7,160.50 brucella abortus 2ml/animal r 20.19 377.84 r 15,259.23 274.54 r 11,087.36 218.68 r 8,831.49 pasteurella 1 ml/animal r 18.39 454.59 r 8,361.75 330.30 r 6,075.65 263.10 r 4,839.48 rift valley fever (incativated) 2ml/animal r 6.88 469.61 r 6,465.84 341.22 r 4,698.08 271.80 r 3,742.19 dips price/ml total kg total kg total kg ticks, tsetse flies, red lice 5 ml/50 kg r 0.54 262,360.64 r 14,213.39 285,946.79 r 15,491.17 303,689.43 r 16,452.37 other costs price/animal total animals total animals total animals processing r 70.00 76.75 r 5,372.35 55.76 r 3,903.55 44.42 r 3,109.32 veterinary services r 52.61 765.67 r 40,282.09 556.34 r 29,268.96 443.14 r 23,313.79 allocated costs r 401,362.47 r 383,386.56 r 376,756.53 gross profit above allocated costs r 946,011.50 r1,085,115.97 r1,182,864.73 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 92 table-8. stock flow of a herd of medium cattle at a reproduction rate lowered to 84.59% of the base model. jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec mcs 123.9 123.9 123.8 123.7 123.6 83.5 83.5 83.4 83.3 83.3 83.2 83.1 83.1 pregnant mc calving (%) 67.67% 83.8 83.8 83.7 83.6 83.5 83.5 83.4 83.3 83.3 56.2 open mc 40.0 40.0 40.0 39.9 26.9 deaths death (%) 1% 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 culls 31% 39.9 scc 65.0 65.0 64.9 64.9 41.1 41.1 41.1 41.0 41.0 40.9 40.9 40.9 pregnant scc calving (%) 63.44% 41.3 41.2 41.2 41.2 41.1 41.1 41.1 41.0 41.0 27.7 open scc 23.8 23.8 23.7 23.7 13.2 deaths death (%) 1% 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 23.7 fcc 86.3 65.6 65.6 65.5 65.5 65.4 65.4 65.3 65.2 65.2 65.1 65.1 pregnant fcc calving (%) 76.13% 65.7 65.6 65.6 65.5 65.5 65.4 41.3 open fcc 20.6 23.8 deaths death (%) 1% 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 culls 20.6 rcc 87.1 87.1 87.0 86.9 86.9 86.8 86.7 86.6 86.6 86.5 86.4 86.4 pregnant rcc 65.9 65.8 65.8 65.7 open rcc 20.7 20.6 20.6 20.6 deaths death (%) 1% 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves from mc 82.6 82.4 82.2 82.0 83.3 83.1 82.9 deaths death (%) 3% 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 calves sold from mc (7.1) rcc from mc 89.1 88.9 88.7 88.5 88.2 88.0 87.8 87.6 87.4 deaths death (%) 3% 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 calves from scc 40.7 40.6 40.5 40.4 41.0 40.9 40.8 deaths death (%) 3% 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from scc 40.3 calves from fcc 64.4 65.4 65.2 65.1 64.9 64.8 64.6 deaths death (%) 3% 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 calves sold from fcc 64.3 bulls 11.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 11.0 11.1 deaths death (%) 1% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 2.1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 93 purchased replace% 20% 2.2 table-9. stock flow of a herd of large cattle at a reproduction rate lowered to 75.35% of the base model. jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec mcs 78.7 78.7 78.6 78.6 78.5 47.3 47.2 47.2 47.2 47.1 47.1 47.0 47.0 pregnant mcs calving (%) 60.28% 47.4 47.4 47.4 47.3 47.3 47.2 47.2 47.2 47.1 28.3 open mcs 31.3 31.2 31.2 31.2 18.7 deaths death (%) 1% 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 39% 31.2 scc 56.7 56.6 56.6 56.5 31.9 31.9 31.9 31.8 31.8 31.8 31.8 31.7 pregnant scc calving (%) 56.51% 32.0 32.0 32.0 31.9 31.9 31.9 31.9 31.8 31.8 19.1 open scc 24.6 24.6 24.6 24.6 12.6 deaths death (%) 1% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 24.6 fcc 84.4 57.2 57.1 57.1 57.0 57.0 56.9 56.9 56.9 56.8 56.8 56.7 pregnant fcc calving (%) 67.81% 57.2 57.2 57.1 57.1 57.0 57.0 32.0 open fcc 27.2 24.7 deaths death (%) 1% 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 27.1 rcc 85.3 85.2 85.1 85.0 85.0 84.9 84.8 84.8 84.7 84.6 84.5 84.5 pregnant rcc 57.4 57.4 57.3 57.3 open rcc 27.3 27.2 27.2 27.2 deaths death (%) 1% 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves from mcs 46.8 46.6 46.5 46.4 47.1 47.0 46.9 deaths death (%) 3% 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from mcs (40.8) rcc from mcs 87.2 87.0 86.8 86.5 86.3 86.1 85.9 85.7 85.5 deaths death (%) 3% 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 calves from scc 31.6 31.5 31.4 31.3 31.8 31.7 31.6 deaths death (%) 3% 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from scc 31.3 calves from fcc 56.1 57.0 56.9 56.7 56.6 56.4 56.3 deaths death (%) 3% 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from fcc 56.0 bulls 8.8 8.8 8.8 8.8 8.8 8.8 8.8 8.8 8.8 8.8 8.8 8.8 deaths death (%) 1% 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 94 culls 1.7 purchased replace% 20% 1.8 table-10. production budget for different reproduction rates and equal profitability of small, medium, and large cattle. small cattle: changed reproduction rate medium cattle: reproduction rate 85% of small cattle large cattle: reproduction rate 75% of small cattle income cattle sales price/kg total kg total kg total kg culled mc class c2/3 r 20.38 14,146.99 r 288,254.91 17,960.83 r 365,964.57 18,691.83 r 380,859.15 culled fcc class c2/3 r 20.38 4,737.41 r 96,528.15 10,208.11 r 207,997.38 14,108.41 r 287,468.83 culled replacement heifers class b2/3 r 21.05 1,949.50 r 41,036.73 8,106.43 r 170,638.86 14,257.70 r 300,121.99 live weaners sold weaners r 32.25 28,034.07 r 903,979.45 17,745.60 r 572,220.07 10,658.67 r 343,696.85 culled bulls class c2/3 r 20.38 862.53 r 17,574.74 945.48 r 19,264.88 1,007.56 r 20,529.74 total income from cattle sales r1,347,373.98 r1,336,085.76 r1,332,676.55 expenses bull purchases r 112.00 907.71 r 101,660.30 995.01 r 111,436.84 1,060.33 r 118,753.36 licks price/kg total kg total kg total kg winter r 4.10 16,116.34 r 66,093.13 17,193.61 r 70,510.98 17,796.07 r 72,981.68 summer r 5.21 10,328.66 r 53,771.03 9,811.57 r 51,079.05 9,522.39 r 49,573.57 dosing price/ml total kg total kg total kg roundworm and liver fluke 15 ml/50 kg r 0.67 126,992.38 r 25,603.57 145,526.75 r 29,340.38 159,337.43 r 32,124.82 milk tapeworm 1 ml/4kg r 0.38 56,633.95 r 5,376.12 52,350.18 r 4,969.47 49,681.92 r 4,716.18 roundworm and milk tapeworm 1 ml/10 kg r 0.40 233,462.21 r 9,335.69 255,225.13 r 10,205.94 272,014.65 r 10,877.32 vitamin a 1 ml/250 kg r 2.08 121,485.17 r 1,012.12 133,125.04 r 1,109.09 141,054.00 r 1,175.15 trace minerals 1 ml/100 kg r 3.99 124,287.27 r 4,964.26 140,814.52 r 5,624.39 153,191.23 r 6,118.73 vaccinacions price/ml total animals total animals total animals bvd 2ml/animal r 16.37 468.82 r 15,344.97 375.02 r 12,274.89 315.38 r 10,322.91 botulism, anthrax, blackquarter 2ml/animal r 7.42 1,069.83 r 15,874.57 750.10 r 11,130.24 584.18 r 8,668.32 paratyphoid (inactivated) 2ml/animal r 20.34 304.16 r 12,372.08 189.82 r 7,721.09 136.03 r 5,533.30 brucella abortus 2ml/animal r 20.19 377.84 r 15,259.23 275.82 r 11,139.19 220.31 r 8,897.15 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 95 pasteurella 1 ml/animal r 18.39 454.59 r 8,361.75 364.54 r 6,705.42 306.97 r 5,646.43 rift valley fever (incativated) 2ml/animal r 6.88 469.61 r 6,465.84 375.52 r 5,170.34 315.75 r 4,347.31 dips price/ml total kg total kg total kg ticks tsetse flies, red lice 5 ml/50 kg r 0.54 262,360.64 r 14,213.39 294,989.40 r 15,981.05 319,320.50 r 17,299.19 other costs price/animal total animals total animals total animals processing r 70.00 76.75 r 5,372.35 89.13 r 6,238.99 87.19 r 6,103.18 veterinary services r 52.61 765.67 r 40,282.09 559.53 r 29,436.91 447.19 r 23,526.45 allocated costs r 401,362.47 r 390,074.26 r 386,665.05 gross profit above allocated costs r 946,011.50 r 946,011.50 r 946,011.50 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 96 table-11. stock flow of a herd of small cattle bred at 15 months. jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec mc 212.5 212.5 212.3 212.2 212.0 169.5 169.3 169.2 169.0 168.9 168.7 168.6 168.5 pregnant mc calving (%) 80 170.0 169.9 169.7 169.6 169.5 169.3 169.2 169.0 168.9 134.8 open mc 42.5 42.5 42.4 42.4 33.7 deaths death (%) 1 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 culls 19 42.4 tcc 55.8 55.7 55.7 55.6 44.5 44.4 44.4 44.3 44.3 44.3 44.2 44.2 pregnant tcc calving (%) 80 44.6 44.6 44.5 44.5 44.5 44.4 44.4 44.3 44.3 35.4 open tcc 11.2 11.1 11.1 11.1 8.8 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 11.1 scc 75.1 75.0 75.0 74.9 56.1 56.1 56.0 56.0 55.9 55.9 55.8 55.8 pregnant scc calving (%) 75 56.3 56.3 56.2 56.2 56.1 56.1 56.0 56.0 55.9 44.6 open scc 18.8 18.8 18.7 18.7 11.2 deaths death (%) 1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 18.7 fcc 75.8 75.8 75.7 75.7 75.6 75.5 75.5 75.4 75.3 75.3 75.2 75.1 pregnant fcc calving (%) 100 75.8 75.8 75.7 75.7 75.6 75.5 75.5 75.4 75.3 56.4 open fcc 18.8 deaths death (%) 1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 culls 0.0 calves from mc 167.6 167.2 166.8 166.4 168.9 168.5 168.0 deaths death (%) 3 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 calves sold from mc 88.8 rcc from mc 77.6 77.4 77.2 77.0 76.8 76.6 76.4 76.2 76.0 pregnant rcc 76.0 open rcc deaths death (%) 3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 calves from tcc 44.0 43.9 43.8 43.6 44.3 44.2 44.1 deaths death (%) 3 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from tcc 43.5 calves from scc 55.5 55.4 55.2 55.1 55.9 55.8 55.7 deaths 3 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from scc 55.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 97 calves from fcc 74.8 74.6 74.4 74.2 75.3 75.1 75.0 deaths death (%) 3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 calves sold from fcc 74.0 bulls 16.8 16.8 16.7 16.7 16.7 16.7 16.7 16.7 16.7 16.6 16.6 16.8 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 3.2 purchased replace (%) 20 3.4 table-12. stock flow of a herd of medium cattle bred at 15 months. jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec mc 146.3 146.3 146.2 146.1 145.9 116.6 116.5 116.5 116.4 116.3 116.2 116.1 116.0 pregnant mc calving (%) 80 117.0 116.9 116.8 116.7 116.6 116.5 116.5 116.4 116.3 92.8 open mc 29.3 29.2 29.2 29.2 23.2 deaths death (%) 1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 culls 19 29.2 tcc 38.4 38.3 38.3 38.3 30.6 30.6 30.6 30.5 30.5 30.5 30.4 30.4 pregnant tcc calving (%) 80 30.7 30.7 30.7 30.6 30.6 30.6 30.6 30.5 30.5 24.3 open tcc 7.7 7.7 7.7 7.7 6.1 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 7.7 scc 51.7 51.6 51.6 51.6 38.6 38.6 38.6 38.5 38.5 38.5 38.4 38.4 pregnant scc calving (%) 75 38.8 38.7 38.7 38.7 38.6 38.6 38.6 38.5 38.5 30.7 open scc 12.9 12.9 12.9 12.9 7.7 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 12.9 fcc 97.2 97.1 97.1 97.0 52.0 52.0 51.9 51.9 51.9 51.8 51.8 51.7 pregnant fcc 54 52.2 52.2 52.1 52.1 52.0 52.0 51.9 51.9 51.9 38.8 open fcc 45.0 45.0 44.9 44.9 12.9 deaths death (%) 1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 44.9 calves from mc 115.4 115.1 114.8 114.5 116.3 116.0 115.7 deaths death (%) 3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 calves sold from mc 15.1 rcc from mc 99.4 99.2 98.9 98.7 98.5 98.2 98.0 97.7 97.5 pregnant rcc 52.3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 98 open rcc 45.1 deaths death (%) 3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 calves from tcc 30.3 30.2 30.1 30.0 30.5 30.4 30.3 deaths death (%) 3 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from tcc 30.0 calves from scc 38.2 38.1 38.0 37.9 38.5 38.4 38.3 deaths 3 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from scc 37.8 calves from fcc 51.5 51.3 51.2 51.1 51.9 51.7 51.6 deaths death (%) 3 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 calves sold from fcc 51.0 bulls 13.3 13.3 13.3 13.3 13.3 13.3 13.3 13.3 13.3 13.2 13.2 13.4 deaths death (%) 1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 culls 2.5 purchased replace (%) 20 2.7 table-13. production budget early-bred small cattle with fcc reproduction rate 100%, early-bred medium cattle with fcc reproduction rate 55% and large cattle as in the base model. small cattle medium cattle large cattle income 100% early calving rate 54.7% early calving rate as in base model cattle sales price/kg total kg total kg total kg culled mc class c2/3 r 20.38 12,708.80 r 258,950.82 13,122.79 r 267,386.12 16,375.52 r 333,662.74 culled tcc class c2/3 r 20.38 3,191.86 r 65,036.30 3,295.83 r 67,154.85 culled scc class c2/ 3 r 20.38 5,045.82 r 102,812.10 5,210.19 r 106,161.19 5,483.68 r 111,733.90 culled fcc class b2/3 r 21.05 0 r 0.00 15,365.04 r 323,431.44 2,256.60 r 47,501.11 live weaners sold weaners r 32.25 32,983.39 r1,063,574.09 25,062.17 r 808,148.24 32,450.18 r1,046,380.28 culled bulls class c2/3 r 20.38 957.01 r 19,499.76 1,142.58 r 23,280.88 998.41 r 20,343.23 total income from cattle sales r1,509,873.07 r 1,595,562.73 r1,559,621.26 expenses bull purchases r 112.00 1,007.14 r 112,795.48 1,202.43 r 134,667.23 1,050.70 r 117,674.51 licks price/kg total kg total kg total kg winter r 4.10 14,515.27 r 59,527.14 15,389.58 r 63,112.67 16,188.80 r 66,390.28 summer r 5.21 10,854.52 r 56,508.63 10,677.51 r 55,587.10 10,293.88 r 53,589.94 dosing price/ml total kg total kg total kg roundworm and liver fluke 15 ml/50 kg r 0.67 117,719.50 r 23,734.02 135,275.64 r 27,273.60 146,997.06 r 29,636.81 milk tapeworm 1 ml/4kg r 0.38 64,247.26 r 6,098.83 66,340.11 r 6,297.50 65,555.31 r 6,223.00 roundworm and milk tapeworm 1 ml/10 kg r 0.40 218,747.76 r 8,747.29 235,192.35 r 9,404.87 270,238.72 r 10,806.31 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 99 vitamin a 1 ml/250 kg r 2.08 108,579.44 r 904.60 122,629.28 r 1,021.65 140,622.32 r 1,171.55 trace minerals 1 ml/100 kg r 3.99 117,719.50 r 4,701.93 135,275.64 r 5,403.15 143,865.82 r 5,746.26 vaccinacions price/ml total animals total animals total animals bvd 2ml/animal r 16.37 436.75 r 14,295.33 347.69 r 11,380.21 271.33 r 8,881.11 botulism, anthrax, blackquarter 2ml/animal r 7.42 1,117.98 r 16,589.02 816.63 r 12,117.54 619.18 r 9,187.62 paratyphoid (inactivated) 2ml/animal r 20.34 344.76 r 14,023.37 237.33 r 9,653.45 176.04 r 7,160.50 brucella abortus 2ml/animal r 20.19 420.12 r 16,966.51 334.45 r 13,506.77 218.68 r 8,831.49 pasteurella 1 ml/animal r 18.39 421.55 r 7,754.09 335.78 r 6,176.33 263.1 r 4,839.48 rift valley fever (incativated) 2ml/animal r 6.88 438.22 r 6,033.66 349.05 r 4,805.82 271.8 r 3,742.19 dips price/ml total kg total kg total kg ticks tsetse flies, red lice 5 ml/50 kg r 0.54 242,372.50 r 13,130.53 273,799.04 r 14,833.06 303,689.43 r 16,452.37 other costs price/animal total animals total animals total animals processing r 70.00 77.56 r 5,429.47 99.44 r 6,960.69 44.42 r 3,109.32 veterinary services r 52.61 774.22 r 40,731.73 579.67 r 30,496.38 443.14 r 23,313.79 allocated costs r 407,971.62 r 412,698.00 r 376,756.53 gross profit above allocated costs r1,101,901.45 r 1,182,864.73 r1,182,864.73 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 100 4.7. limiting feed intake 4.7.1. limiting feed intake to a specific amount per animal when feed was limited to a specific amount (mcal), smaller cattle were found to be more biologically efficient. in fact, cattle with potential for small mature size could grow to a larger size than cattle with potential for medium and large mature size. we considered the growth phase, where lactation and reproduction are ignored for simplicity, and animals reach 97.5% of mature weight at 1552 days. the nem+g requirements will be 7,663, 10,548 and 13,249 mcal, respectively, for small, medium, and large calves. if feed is limited to 7,663 mcal for each of the three calves, the small calf’s growth and maintenance will be unaffected but the medium and large calves will grow up to a point after which the remaining energy is used purely for maintenance requirements to 1552 days, if feed availability could be planned in such a way. medium calves will grow to a weight of 257 kg, then stop growing and use the remaining energy to maintain this weight. large calves will grow up to a weight of 252 kg and then use the remaining energy for maintenance. this is summarized in table 14. smaller cattle would be more efficient at lower specified amounts of net energy. table-14. results of limiting feed to 7,633 mcal during the growth stage of small, medium, and large cattle. size small medium large final weight (kg) 293 257 252 % of mature mass 97.5 57.1 42.1 nem (mcal) 6870 7151 7255 nem/nem+g (%) 89.7 93.3 94.6 if feed were limited to a specific amount per animal during the lactation or reproduction phases, small cattle would again outperform their larger counterparts. if the net energy requirement of a mature cycle is considered, therefore excluding growth for simplicity, small, medium, and large cows would need a total of 2,930, 3,996, and 4,981 mcal per year, respectively. if feed were limited to any level below 4,981 mcal per animal, large cows’ reproduction rates would beould be negatively affected whereas small and medium cows would still have surplus feed available. if feed were limited to 2,930 mcal, smaller cows would be able execute their physiological functions normally but medium cows would likely not reproduce and lactation would be hindered, whereas large cows would likely not reproduce, lactate properly, or even maintain their current weight. similarly, at lower feed amounts, small cows would be the most effective although physiological functions would be negatively influenced. 4.8. limiting feed intake by percentage of calculated requirements when available energy was reduced by a percentage of calculated energy requirements, large cows were more efficient. during the growth phase, limiting nem+g by even a small amount reduced growth in all sizes, since energy will first be used for maintenance. furthermore, neg was 10.3, 11.7, and 12.8% of nem+g, respectively, for small, medium, and large cows. when nem+g is reduced by 10% over the growth cycle of 1552 days, a small cow will grow to a weight of 234 kg or 78.1% of its mature weight, a medium calf to 353 kg or 78.5% of its mature weight, and a large calf to 473 kg or 78.9% of its mature weight. these results are summarized in table 15. table-15. small, medium, and large cows fed 90% of calculated nem+g during the growth cycle. size small medium large final weight (kg) 234 353 473 % of mature mass 78.1 78.5 78.9 nem (mcal) 6337 8613 10,712 nem/(nem+g x 90%) 91.9% 90.7% 89.8% at maturity, small, medium, and large cows allocated 5.7% of net (2,930 mcal), 6.3% of net (3,996 mcal), and 6.8% of net (4,981 mcal) to reproduction. if feed were reduced by 5.7% in this instance, a few large cattle might reproduce, fewer medium cattle would fall pregnant and, most likely, no small cattle would become pregnant. the same can be argued for the lactation phase, from the assumption that mature cows will use energy for maintenance, then lactation and then reproduction, resulting in large cows being more efficient under the above-mentioned conditions. 4.9. limiting feed intake according to metabolic weight when energy was limited to an amount per unit of metabolic weight, all sizes were equally efficient (or inefficient) in the maintenance and lactation phases. maintenance and lactation are a direct function of metabolic weight. the net energy used for growth per unit of metabolic weight was 11.00, 12.66, and 13.99mcal for small, medium, and large cows, respectively, over the growth cycle. net energy used for fetal production was 16.02, 17.87, and 19.20 mcal per unit of metabolic weight for the three sizes, respectively. therefore, when feed is limited to a unit of metabolic weight, large cattle will be the first to show an energy deficiency in growth and reproduction. the highly cited work of jenkins and ferrell (1984) concluded that smaller cattle are more efficient when fed as a portion of metabolic weight. here, the above calculation not only confirms the work of jenkins & ferrell, but also provides the reason for it. although jenkins & farrell’s research studied differences among breeds, the same argument is valid within any breed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 101 4.10. energy requirements according to lsu the lsu is commonly used to match animal numbers to their resource base in south africa, yet the lsu calculation differs greatly from the recommendations of the nrc and those used in this research. the lsu mostly overestimates the amount of energy animals require for maintenance, growth, and fetal production, and mostly underestimates that needed for lactation, but results vary. the lsu does not consider metabolic weight for maintenance (meissner, 1983), and the equation used to calculate lsu is: nem = 1.354 + 0.0146w (converted to mcal), for each of the three sizes the lsu overestimates net energy requirements for maintenance, compared to the equation of lofgreen & garrett. furthermore, since the lsu doesn’t consider metabolic weight, maintenance requirements of small cattle are overestimated proportionately less than those of large cattle. in the growth phase, the lsu assumed that neg is linear and depends only on live weight gain (lwg) and live weight (w). this is very different from the equation used by the nrc, where the composition of gain changes over time. the lsu equivalent mostly overestimates nem+g, except for small cattle at heavier weights. the equation used to determine neg as calculated for a lsu is: neg = lwg (1.500 + 0.0045w)/(0.2388 – 0.0717lwg) (converted to mcal). when lactation is considered, the lsu underestimates nem+l requirements for all sizes compared to the calculation used in this study and, because it underestimates nem+l for small cows proportionately less, small cows will be at an advantage, or at a lesser disadvantage. the equation to compute lsu for maintenance and lactation is: nem+l = (3054p + w0.75 (0.6*(481 + 2.1p)))/238.846 (converted to mcal), where p = daily milk yield in kg. the lsu expresses only approximate values for pregnant cows: no mention is made of the stage of pregnancy. three different-sized mature cows in calf were provided in the meissner tables – 500, 525, and 550 kg and were termed small-, medium-, and large-framed, respectively. this makes problematic a fair comparison between the values given as lsu and the equations used in this study. using the value for nem+y from this study for the last day (day 283) of pregnancy compared to the lsu, the latter overestimated the energy requirements for nem+y significantly. the energy requirements for large cattle were overestimated proportionately more, giving them an advantage over their smaller counterparts. the comparison between the lsu and the calculations used in this research is given in table 16 for nem, in table 17 for nem+g, in table 18 for nem+l and in table 19 for nem+y. 4.11. further considerations related to size a smaller body size has been proven as an adaptation to warmer climates and certain associated diseases and parasites, as well as an environment where feed availability fluctuates. these adaptations can be expressed in a number of ways, including rates of reproduction, mortality, and growth. physical facilities at the farm, feedlot, or abattoir could lead to preference of one size over another. handling a small cow is easier than handling a large cow of the same breed. despite smaller cattle being easier to handle, from the model in this study, 73% more small cattle (766) and 25% more medium cattle (556) than large cattle (443) required veterinary services. not only did this increase veterinary costs but could also have increased labour costs and/or opportunity costs. having more cattle on a set resource base gives wider genetic variation. in this research, in the case of small cattle, farmers had 185.2 (72.8% more than large cattle) calves to choose from for replacements compared to 134.6 (25.5% more than large cattle) for medium cattle and 107.2 for large cattle. when using the breeder’s equation r = s x h2/l where r is the response to selection, s is the genetic variation of the trait from the mean of the population, h the heritability of the trait selected for, and l the length of cycle interval, the herd of small cattle had a higher value for s and lower value for l. 5. conclusion cattle size influences biological efficiency, which influences economic efficiency; however there are many more variables that influence biological and economic efficiency other than size, including reproduction rates. individual small cows were the least biologically efficient and used more energy for maintenance than medium and large cattle at similar reproduction and growth rates. as a result, the herd of small cattle proved to make the least efficient use of feed. where economic efficiency was considered, the herd of large cattle yielded the highest income, mostly due to the resource base being able to support more kilograms of cattle in the large herd. smaller cattle had the highest expenditure, due to higher expenses charged per head. as a result, the herd of large cattle was the most profitable at similar reproduction and growth rates. a higher reproduction rate normally leads to higher profitability. the reproduction rates where medium and large cattle will become less profitable than the herd of small cattle were calculated. smaller cattle mature faster than larger cattle and could provide the potential for early breeding at low reproduction rates. for fcc, early breeding is more profitable than late breeding although small cattle that were bred early could not match the profitability of large cattle bred late; all other classes of animals had similar reproduction rates. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 102 table-1. comparison between nem requirements as calculated by lsu and lofgreen & garrett. mature size (kg) 300 450 600 lsu nem (mcal) 6.0 8.3 10.6 lofgreen & garrett nem (mcal) 5.6 7.5 9.3 difference between lsu and lofgreen & garrett (%) 7.8 9.5 12.0 table-17. comparison between lsu and calculation recommended by nrc for nem+g. current cattle weight, gaining 500g per day 100 kg current weight 150 kg current weight 200 kg current weight 250 kg current weight 300 kg current weight 350 kg current weight 400 kg current weight 450 kg current weight 500 kg current weightn 550 kg current weight 600 kg current weight lsu nem+g, 500g daily gain (mcal) 4.16 5.06 5.97 6.88 7.79 8.67 9.58 10.49 11.39 12.30 13.18 nrc nem+g, 300 kg mature size, 500 g daily gain (mcal) 3.60 4.88 6.05 7.15 8.20 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a nrc nem+g, 450 kg mature size, 500 g daily gain (mcal) 3.29 4.46 5.54 6.55 7.50 8.42 9.31 10.17 n/a n/a n/a nrc nem+g, 600 kg mature size, 500 g daily gain (mcal) 3.13 4.24 5.26 6.21 7.13 8.00 8.84 9.66 10.45 11.23 11.98 difference: lsu and nrc for 300 kg mature size 13.4% 3.7% -1.3% -4.0% -5.3% difference: lsu and nrc for 450 kg mature size 20.8% 11.9% 7.3% 4.8% 3.6% 2.8% 2.8% 3.0% difference: lsu and nrc for 600 kg mature size 24.8% 16.3% 12.0% 9.7% 8.5% 7.7% 7.7% 7.9% 8.3% 8.7% 9.1% table-18. comparison between lsu and calculation recommended by nrc for nem+l. daily milk yield 5 kg/day 10 kg/day 15kg/day cow weight 300 g 450 kg 600 kg 300g 450 kg 600 kg 300g 450 kg 600 kg lsu nem+l (mcal) 8.38 10.05 11.58 12.29 14.02 15.60 16.28 18.06 19.70 nrc nem+l (mcal) 9.14 11.11 12.92 12.73 14.70 16.51 16.32 18.29 20.10 difference: lsu and nrc -9.1% -10.6% -11.6% -3.6% -4.9% -5.9% -0.2% -1.3% -2.1% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 79-104 103 table-19. comparison between lsu and calculation recommended by nrc for nem+y. cow weight (kg) 500 525 550 calf size at 6.67% of mature weight for nrc equation (kg) 33 35 37 lsu nem+y, unspecifyied stage of pregnancy (mcal) 19.64 21.62 23.61 nrc nem+y, last day of pregnancy (mcal) 12.81 13.35 13.88 difference: lsu and nrc 35% 38% 41% where feed is limited, the biological efficiency of different-sized animals yielded varying results. it did, however, illustrate that even slightly overstocking a resource base would negatively impact reproduction, then lactation and then growth. it is more profitable to slightly understock a resource base than to overstock. there are further considerations the farmer needs to take into account to find the right-sized cow for their situation, including adaptation, infrastructure, and selection goals. nonetheless, biological and economic efficiency is at the heart of finding the rightsized cow for the individual enterprise. funding: the research article is funded by the university of south africa (unisa). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not 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(2018). beef and feedlot. retrieved from https://www.zoetis.co.za/products/beef-and-feedlot/index.aspx. http://www.msd-animal-health.co.za/species/cattle.aspx http://www.obpvaccines.co.za/products http://www.rpo.co.za/information-centre/absa/weekly-prices/ http://www.rpo.co.za/information-centre/absa/weekly-prices/ http://www.vetproductsonline.co.za/site/menu/products_species/cattle http://voermol.co.za.dedi406.flk1.host-h.net/en/products/ http://www.zoetis.co.za/products/beef-and-feedlot/index.aspx effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 82 diversification of economy an insight into inclusive growth & food security with special reference to pakistan’s agriculture economy pankaj dixita  ramyar rzgar ahmedb arvind kumar yadav c r. c. lald a department of accounting & finance, lebanese french university, kurdistan region, iraq b dean; college of business administration & economics, lebanese french university, kurdistan region, iraq c department of commerce, km. mayawati government girls college, badalpur, india d principal; m m college, modinagar, ccs university, meerut, india  pdixit2989@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 07-mar-2019 accepted: 08-may-2019 online available: 04-jun2019 keywords: economy diversification, inclusive growth, food security, internal diversification, agriculture diversification, crops diversification, iot in diversification abstract in order to improve agricultural economies, diversification is an important step to deal with the challenges of both the present and the future. this research attempted to deal with the above challenges of different economies as well as pakistan’s economy to achieve inclusive growth through internal diversification and reforms. the main objective of this paper is to see how internal diversification and land reform can prove to be a milestone in tackling the above challenges. in order to perform numerical and qualitative analysis of primary and secondary data, the descriptive statistics is being used. as a result, it was shown that through internal diversification and land reforms, pakistan's agricultural economy can be strengthened. at the end of the paper, some effective suggestions have been proposed, which will be important in achieving the aforementioned objectives. contribution/ originality this study is important in present & future perspective of pakistan which is going through the difficult time of food inflation and financial crisis. the contribution of this research emphasized to deal with the above challenges of different economy as well as pakistan to achieve inclusive growth through given economic diversification strategies and land reforms in agriculture. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.82.98 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: pankaj dixit, ramyar rzgar ahmed, arvind kumar yadav and r. c. lal (2019). diversification of economy an insight into inclusive growth & food security with special reference to pakistan’s agriculture economy. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1), 82-98. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 1 (2019): 82-98 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:pdixit2989@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1334-8837 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1835-9655 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.82.98 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 83 1. introduction pakistan is the south asian developing country with a population of 197 million (world bank, 2017). it is sixth largest populous country but it’s ranked 43rd (statistics times, 2018) in rate of gdp. agriculture is prime moving force in pakistan’s economy as growth is concern; traditional agricultural practices with obsolete technology responsible for stagnant growth. agriculture contribute a substantial part about 18.9% in gdp of pakistan. (pakistan bureau of statistics, 201718); and also among the major earner of foreign exchange reserve through export. subsequently, agriculture contribute a great role in the financial inclusion of the nation. according to pakistan bureau of statistics, employment trends 2018 reveals that 37.4% of the total workforce employed in the agriculture sector. approximately 64% population of pakistan is directly or indirectly depends on agriculture. agriculture and allied sector also support cottage industries, dairy and food industries (barbiero and brown, 1991; mehraraa and baghbanpour, 2016). it’s a high remunerative sector in term of agricultural export. agriculture also play a major role in livestock development that support meat production (abdul-rehman et al., 2017). it’s also fulfil protein necessity in diet that provide a healthy lifestyle to people of pakistan. thus, it is evident from above fact that agriculture plays a multi-dimensional role in the economy of pakistan. hence it is called an agricultural based economy. but as per gdp statistics contribution of agriculture is decreasing since 1947, it might be due to inverse size-productivity relationship (chaudhry, 1982; cornia, 1985; johnston and tomich, 1985; chaudhry and chaudhry, 1997). it’s become third largest sector from largest contributor of gdp. its mean greater part of population depend on 18% of gdp. which indicates lower per capita income, highly financial divisive society and lower purchasing power of majority of population. lower purchasing power results in stagnant industrial sector. majority of the population is facing nutritional insecurity, unemployment and stagnant growth in every sector of economy (ahmad and farooq, 2010). pakistan has two agro climatic seasons, "kharif" being the first sowing season beginning from april-june and is harvested in october-december. rice, sugarcane, cotton, maize, moong, mash, bajra and jowar are major "kharif" crops. "rabi", the second sowing season, starts in octoberdecember and is harvested in april-may. wheat, gram, lentil (masoor), tobacco, rapeseed, grain and mustard are "rabi" crops. mono-cropping agriculture in pakistan are playing vital role in terms of mass agriculture production but in terms of food security nutritional security is lacking in food basket of its people (siddiqui et al., 2012). this paper tries to find the problem and solution of pakistan agriculture through the crops diversification with reforms in the agriculture sector. the assumptions of this paper are the agricultural diversification can change the picture of pakistan agriculture through seasonal crops diversification from existing mono-cropping to multi-cropping methods and securing traditional variety of crops for maintaining genetic diversification of crops that is indigenous. others reform includes timely cheap credit access, corporate investment opportunity as corporate agribusiness practices and crops diversification includes low remunerative to high remunerative crops, less nutritive to multi-nutrition value crops and import substitutive production. the present government focusing on quantitative agriculture growth but the demand today is qualitative production needed for nutritional security. qualitative production is possible through reforms and diversification on micro-level & sub-level (kurosaki, 2003). 1.1. objective of the research to understand the economic status and issues of pakistan’s agriculture economy to know what are the current and future challenges of food security in pakistan and how to deal with it to know how internal diversification can contribute positively to pakistan's agricultural productivity asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 84 to know that the existing issues in corporate agriculture farming policy and what reforms are required to resolve it to find out how to achieve the goal of inclusive growth through internal diversification and land reforms to resolve the above said issues what are the plans to execute the proposed models 2. research methodology this research used both qualitative and quantitative data, it is collected by the researcher from published reports of government and non-government organizations, research papers, personal interviews of respondents, panel discussion with economist and open discussion on social networking websites. even this research also used the schedule questionnaire for collecting the data from 104 respondents belong to respective country as well as other country. for critical analysis the data, the descriptive statistics has been used and also mean, standard deviation, frequency, percentage analysis is been used for secondary data analysis. descriptive statistics is easiest way to understand the economy survey based research analysis. so, this general methodology has been applied instead of other available econometric techniques because these technique will make it complex rather than facilitating this research. 3. discussion and result 3.1. generally, the economy of pakistan is divided into three major sectors primary agriculture and allied sector is the primary and traditional sector of economy. it is playing a major role in the employment of pakistan as well as in gdp. according to pakistan economic survey, 2017-18, agriculture sector share in gdp is 18.86% and of total workforce employed in this sector is 37.4%. secondary manufacturing and industry are the secondary segments of economy, processing of raw material in final output by human activity included in this sector. currently, this sector contributes 20.91% (figure 1) and 22.6% (figure 2) workforce employed. figure 1: pakistan sector-wise labour force source: pakistan bureau of statistics 2017-18 38% 23% 39% pakistan sector-wise labour force agriculture industry services 60%21% 19% pakistan sector-wise gdp services industry agriculture asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 85 figure 2: pakistan sector-wise gdp source: pakistan bureau of statistics 2017-18 tertiary sector covers services provided by human efforts, like works, knowledge consultancy, engineering services, finance work, business knowledge process outsourcing, etc. this sector is tertiary but the contribution of this sector to gdp is 60.23% and this sector was second largest employer after agriculture but currently 38.6% of total workforce are employed in this sector. 3.2. statement of the problem in pakistan agriculture pakistan has the good fertile agriculture land for its domestic food requirement and export as well, but due to lack of dynamic reforms is lead to worst agriculture production. land reforms is still pending so that the welfare soul of the pakistan’ constitution towards inclusive growth is too far from the ground reality. reforms in agriculture are the need of every nation. diversify policy can balance the agriculture growth positively pakistan agriculture is more concentrating on major crops besides it is ignoring the production of other crops like vegetables, fruits and other fiber foods. in pakistan, the vegetable growers are losing against indians at the house turf once gap of trade across wahga border, in the main as a result of their rivals are growing vegetables at abundant lower price as they avail subsidies from their government. there are fears that the vegetable sector of west pakistan might any loose and ultimately reach to an irretrievable stage if not properly taken care of given subsidies and incentives (dawn, 2016). increasing import of vegetables crops instead of suitable environment of agriculture the vegetables production is not enough for its domestic needs. at present, the current news report reveals that pakistan and india relations are suffering due to cross border terrorism conflict. after the pulwama terror attack, indian vegetables producer banned the export to pakistan so that tomato and other vegetables prices are going to high in pakistan. agriculture growth should be diversifying according to economic situation. concentration on major crops production, import of agriculture products, exclusive development policies like existing corporate agriculture farming and pending land reforms are the barrier in inclusive growth of pakistan. 3.3. economic diversification economic diversification is the method of shifting focus from monopolize economy to diversify economy of varied sectors and markets. historically, it's been applied as a method to encourage positive economic process and development. within the context of greenhouse effects due temperature change suitable adaptation and mitigation practices require. economic diversification cover all sector of economy. it encourage inclusion and development of every aspect such that elimination of huge trade deficit, well-nourished society, low per capita health expenditure, fertile and sustainable agriculture, raised per capita income. it’s work on self-sufficiency and resourcefulness in every kind of situation. diversification encourage low carbon footprint sector, which are less emissive and sustainable for environment. a lot of climate resilient technology has develops today that can increase financial gain in sustainable manner. shifting from one sector to another for gaining the advantage of diversify opportunities in employment generation and value addition is necessity today. diversification is a continuous process for dynamic economic situations. diversification is grabbing the opportunities through monitoring the scenario of economy sectors volatility and implementing the required action accordingly. (karshenas and hakimian, 2005). diversification can be generally classified in two classes: 3.3.1. external diversification (inter-diversification) diversification between different sectors of economy is best way to achieving higher growth and stability. external diversification creates an impact among the different sectors of economy. the government should not focus on one sector only instead it should diversify its focus on different sectors (e.g. oil, manufacturing, service, agriculture) (pankaj and ramyar, 2019) to achieve sustainable economic growth. sudden downfall in the crude oil prices will effects the oil based economy and creates financial crisis as shown in figure 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 86 figure 3: diversification of economy between the sectors source: authors compilation 3.3.2. internal diversification (intradiversification) it is the diversification inside the different sectors of economy. internal diversification is the need of world because rapid increase in the population of countries leads to rise in challenges of employment and the food security all over the world. so, diversification inside the agriculture is the need of today world as shown in figure 4. figure 4: internal diversification in agriculture source: www.cell.com asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 87 3.4. needs of reforms & diversification for pakistan’s agriculture inclusive growth is a challenge for pakistan government; the ruling government is trying to achieving it through reforms in agriculture. pakistan's economy is looking for a very rapid progress which requires changes multiple time at various levels. today, pakistan has two main challenges poverty and food security. development of these needs should sustainable rather than temporary. diversifying the economy is requires for policy makers in inclusive growth of pakistan. today, increasing unemployment, terrorism, and growing discontent in the lower classes are the major problems facing by the pakistani government. due to unemployment, some youths are ignoring themselves from main stream of development and are not avoiding itself to joining the groups of terrorism. this is right time for pakistan government to make specific modern policies for targeted areas in the agricultural sector because it is highly essential for science, economics and policy makers. any sector of the economy cannot move beyond reforms. so, there is a need to improve on many levels, it is necessary to classify into various segments as high, medium, low, subtle and infinitesimally points. 3.5. internal diversification of pakistan can be classified in following manner  crops to crops diversification  livestock to livestock diversification,  crops to live stock diversification  livestock to crops diversification  seasonal diversification (rabi and kharif to multi-seasonal crops diversification)  credit scheme diversification,  diversification in crops area of production  investment diversification is also important for corporate farming policy in pakistan 3.6. importance of internal-diversification for pakistan  food security is a major concern for pakistan, diversification will give value addition to nutritious food production  increase in income of farmers through diversify high value crops production  it will help to eliminate the problem of terrorism in unemployed youngster section of the society  diversify crops production (from two seasonal to multi-seasonal crops) also good for soil fertility  help to control food inflation and also minimize the risk of financial and economic crisis  it will also minimize the current account deficit problem of the country  diversification in crops area of production  investment diversification is also important for corporate farming policy in pakistan 3.7. potential of diversification diversification is generally a two-way of process just like opportunity cost concept; if the one part is on downfall then the other part have the potential to create the opportunity, but the challenge is how we can grab this opportunity it is so important for government. if the one crop/product is suffering due to higher production and lower prices then we can shift our workforce into another beneficial substitute crops. economy environment is dynamic in nature, this dynamic nature creates the problem as well opportunities. the diversification is the best solution for grabbing these outcomes of dynamic opportunities as shown in figure 5. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 88 figure 5: diversification opportunities source: authors own compilation 3.8. crops diversification diversification of crops is important for many economies in many ways. it is beneficial in resolving the main problems like food security, inclusive growth, and soil fertility. along with domestic needs, food security of other countries can be overcome through diversification. food security is a challenge for pakistan's rapidly growing population for policy makers. high value crops are beneficial to increase the income of farmers also the challenge of malnutrition can be tackled by diversification of the crops. traditional crops are taken more time to grow during sowing to harvesting period, as well as due to higher productivity of these crops farmers do not get good value for them. diversification of crop products gets good value to the farmers (alur and maheswar, 2018). table 1: agriculture growth percentages (base=2005-06) sector 201112 201213 201314 201415 201516 201617 201718 (p) mean s.d 'σ xi' σx̅ agriculture 3.62 2.68 2.5 2.13 0.15 2.07 3.81 2.4228 1.2114 crops 3.22 1.53 2.64 0.16 -5.27 0.91 3.83 1.0028 3.0532 i) important crops 7.87 0.17 7.22 -1.62 -5.86 2.18 3.57 1.9328 4.8717 ii) other crops -7.52 5.58 -5.71 2.51 0.4 -2.66 3.33 -0.5814 4.8742 iii) cotton ginning 13.83 -2.9 -1.33 7.24 -22.12 5.58 8.72 1.2885 11.823 livestock 3.99 3.45 2.48 3.99 3.36 2.99 3.76 3.4314 0.5533 forestry 1.79 6.58 1.88 -12.45 14.31 -2.37 7.17 2.4157 8.426 fishing 3.77 0.65 0.98 5.75 3.25 1.23 1.63 2.4657 1.8633 p: provisional source: pakistan bureau of statistics 2010 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 89 table 2: crops pattern – by province administrati ve unit per cent share of various crops in total cropped area wheat rice maize jowar/ bajra cotto n sugarcane oil seeds pulse s orchards fodders others pakistan 42 14 4 2 14 4 2 5 2 9 4 khyber pakhtunkhwa 47 3 24 3 * 6 1 5 1 6 6 punjab 41 14 1 2 15 4 2 6 1 11 2 sindh 38 20 * 2 20 5 3 1 2 4 5 balochistan 45 13 2 6 1 * 4 4 10 3 11 note: 1) figures may not add up exactly to hundred due to rounding effect. 2) * percentage less than 0.5 source: pakistan bureau of statistics 2010 table 1 shows the growth rate of important crops and other crops. stable growth is concern is the need of pakistan economy but the standard deviation reveals that instability in overall performance of agriculture sector. average growth of other crops is decreasing as compare to important crops. from the point of food security this concept of important crops and others crops should be change. nutritious food is also the major concern in food security of pakistan economy. crops production should be balanced according to crops demand. diversification of crops also helpful to control food inflation problem and can help to eliminate the poverty. table 2 data reveals that the unbalanced situation of crops area according to different crops. as compare to other nutritious crops wheat sowing area is 42% while pulses, fodders, sugarcane, orchards, oilseeds, and others are total in 26% (5, 9, 4, 2, 2, and 4). this picture shows that disorganized planning for crops production. so, crops diversification should be implemented according to demand. 3.9. diversification of traditional seasonal crops (shifting from rabi and kharif crops to multi seasonal crops) beside of rabi and kharif crops, multi-seasonal crops can increase the production and income of farmers. in pakistan, they have shortage of pulses, even pulses are important for elevation the problem of food security. 3.10. inter-diversification (from crops to livestock and vice-versa) inter-diversification between crop and livestock is the best mix combination strategy for rural households, who have less than 5 acres of land. this mix diversification can increase the income of households as well as it is the best way to overcome the problem of food insecurity. barley, pulses and green food crops, other high nutritious and high value crops are the most demanded crops that have abundant quantity for human nutrition and relics of these crops are also useful to feed the livestock. dairy livestock’ produces are full of nutrients so demand of these products are high in all over the world so it is also the best source of income for the rural households (mensah et al., 2017). 3.11. diversification and reforms in corporate agriculture farming corporate agriculture farming’s goal is to maximize profit. to do so, the companies will invest in technology that may increase production (milk, corn, animals, etc.) moreover as lower inputs (feed, fertilizer, blighter management, etc.) moreover as minimize the inherent risks of farming. the advantage that they need over the smaller “family farm” is access to the technology. corporate agriculture farming also facilitate keep your food bills from apace increasing additionally as making certain that the ever increasing human population has food on the table. corporate farming law was passed by pakistan in 2001, under that listed companies might lease land within the country for ninety nine years, broken into 2 periods of fifty years and forty asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 90 nine years. besides, the then government had known state lands to lease. corporate agriculture farming has taken over majority of the pakistan agriculture share. majority of agriculture land of pakistan has been rented out or leased or sold out to foreign companies. united arab emirates and saudi arab is a big investor who invested the money in corporate agriculture farming. millions of hectares land has been leased or sold out corporate investors (shah, 2009). pakistan has divided its crops production to two sub segment; important crops and other crops. existing policy depicts unbalanced picture of investment flow among all crops and livestock. table 1 reveals that instead of existing cag policy the agriculture growth of pakistan is instable in nature, even in year 20142016 it was negative. this policy should be diversified, so investment diversification is needed for corporate agriculture farming policy. currently majority of the corporate firms have invested in major crops and poultry but other crops are suffering due to higher demands and less production. corporate agriculture policy needs crops and product wise diversification of land. 3.12. diversification of agriculture credit for inclusive growth of the pakistan, finance is the main important source of agriculture productivity. changing in economic environment conditions create new opportunity for diversify production. we can distribute this diversify opportunity dividend between the rural poor people through the credit diversification policy with a view to achieve inclusive objective (ministry of finance, 2018). table 3: agriculture credit disbursement details of pakistan 2016-17 % share 2017-18 % share farm credit 196.1 47.9 260.8 45.8 non-farm credit 212.9 52.1 309.1 54.2 small farms 74.7 35.1 92.1 29.8 large farms 138.2 64.9 217 70.2 source: pakistan economic survey 2017-18 at present the pro-poor credit disbursement policy of pakistan is not up to the mark from the table 3 it is clearly mentioned that government credit disbursement for small farms is 29.8% of total. this following policy called “diversify crop credit & insurance scheme”: to compensate the risk factor default of farmers, in the case of climate based natural disaster and other loss this scheme will provide them crops risk cover, in 2008 pakistan made mandatory crop loan insurance scheme, but this scheme is confine to five major crops i.e., wheat, cotton, rice, sugarcane and maize. according to this scheme, the small farmers who are having only up to 25 acres of land will be benefitted from this scheme because this is mandatory in nature. for implementing this scheme government is contributing the cost of premium only 2%. 3.13. need of land reforms in pakistan for inclusive growth pakistan has total 52.91 million acres land area for farming. according to geographical agriculture location, pakistan is divided into four provinces; khyber pakhtunkhwa, punjab, sindh and balochistan, the most important and largest geographical province is punjab having 29.33 million acres farm area, it is playing dominantly role in the pakistan agriculture economy as compare to other provinces. sindh is second largest province having 9.87 million acres land after balochistan and khyber pakhtunkhwa having 8.14 and 5.57 million acres farming area. pakistan’s agriculture economy can be called as farms economy because according to the assessments of agricultural census (pakistan bureau of statistics 2010), there were 8.26 million farms in the nation. these agri-farms were working in the area of 52.91 million acres of land. division of agriculture land among little and huge farms was exceptionally skewed. farms having asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 91 less than 5 acres of land had 64 percent (5.35 million) of absolute private farms, however they worked just 19 percent of the all-out farming part (10.18 million). those, which were 25 acres or more of land having just 4 percent of the all farms (0.30 million), yet they have control of 35 percent of the all-out agrarian land (18.12 million acres). average farms area in country was 6.4 acres of land and average cultivated area every farm was 5.2 acres. 3.14. pakistan land reforms land changes in pakistan have a long and fairly checkered history. the british had less of an enthusiasm for the issue as they depended on the help of a few powerful proprietors. in spite of the fact, that there had been some restricted changes in the years paving the way to 1947, every real change date from the years after freedom. very quickly the different commonplace law-making bodies passed a few rules whereby the jagirdari frameworks were abrogated and occupants secured. the real changes, be that as it may, came in three phases: the first amid ayub khan's military law in 1959; the second and third amid zulfiqar ali bhutto's standard during the 1970s. these reforms imposed the ceiling on landholding to achieve the aim of inclusive growth. so these reforms in land changes were constantly dubious. it was asserted by rivals that they were un-islamic and that they encroached on the directly to claim, use and appreciate property as secured by the constitution. matters at long last reached a crucial stage under the watchful eye of the supreme court on account of qazalbash waqf v chief land commissioner in which both the 1972 directions were assaulted as being against islamic orders and illegal. the supreme court concurred. of the 1972 controls, the supreme court proclaimed that passages 7, 8, 9, 10, 13 and 14 and hence thus 18 were unlawful as being against islamic directives. the striking down of sections 8 and 18 toppled the principle changes accomplished (dawn, 2010). landless of rural population is concerned with inclusive development. it is clear from the report of the statistics department of pakistan that the farmers who have less than 25 acres of agricultural land, their crops production are more than big landowners. so, constitutional amendments are requiring for agriculture land reforms now. 3.15. primary data analysis table 4: questionnaire response analysis (question mentioned in table 4a, 5a and 6a) question response frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent 1 agriculturist/farmer 31 29.8 29.8 29.8 lawyers 11 10.6 10.6 40.4 journalist 5 4.8 4.8 45.2 social activist/n.g.o volunteer 15 14.4 14.4 59.6 researcher from economy's field 42 40.4 40.4 100 total 104 100 100 2 no 11 10.6 10.6 10.6 yes 93 89.4 89.4 100 total 104 100 100 3 no 11 10.6 10.6 10.6 yes 93 89.4 89.4 100 total 104 100 100 4 no 7 6.7 6.7 6.7 yes 97 93.3 93.3 100 total 104 100 100 5 asymmetrical distribution of agriculture land 7 6.7 6.7 6.7 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 92 4. findings from the structured questionnaire, the above questions were asked by the researchers to targeted respondents through telephone, social networking contacts, panel discussion and personal interview. al's respondents were having the higher qualification from the interdisciplinary research areas and the respondents’ belongs to different countries which includes pakistan, india, bangladesh, afghanistan, nigeria and iraq. for this study 104 subject expert were interviewed table 4, 5 and 6 (appendix) related with statistics of all questions about minimum, maximum and mode of response are shown. table 4 (question 1) reflects the profession of respondents. out of which 29.8% are agriculturist, 10.6% are lawyers, 4.8% are journalist, 14.4% are social activist from n.g. o and 40.4% are researchers from economy field. 89.4% respondents agreed that internal diversification of agriculture can increase the gdp of pakistan (question 2) and the same percentage respondents were agreed about crops diversification can increase the income of farmers (question 3). total 93.3% respondents believe that crop diversification is necessary for food security and maintaining the fertile strength of the land (question 4). in the response of the question about reasons for rural poverty, 78.8% people believe on all mentioned response but 21.2% of people had opinions in different ways, out of which the respondents (7.8% asymmetric distribution of land, 4.8% lack the technical skill, 6.7% corporate agriculture farming, and 2.8% poor crop finance scheme) consider the cause of rural poverty (question 5). 94.3% people agreed that pakistan govt. should make the legislation for food security of its people (question 6). lack of technical skills/t raining 5 4.8 4.8 11.5 corporate agriculture farming policy 7 6.7 6.7 18.3 poor crops finance scheme 3 2.9 2.9 21.2 all of the above 82 78.8 78.8 100 total 104 100 100 6 no 6 5.8 5.8 5.8 yes 98 94.2 94.2 100 total 104 100 100 7 no 5 4.8 4.8 4.8 yes 99 95.2 95.2 100 total 104 100 100 8 no 25 24 24 24 yes 79 76 76 100 total 104 100 100 9 no 26 25 25 25 yes 78 75 75 100 total 104 100 100 10 no 30 28.8 28.8 28.8 yes 74 71.2 71.2 100 total 104 100 100 11 50 acres 10 0 acres 7 6.7 6.7 6.7 100 150 acres 8 7.7 7.7 14.4 150 200 acres 15 14.4 14.4 28.8 between 200 500 acres 74 71.2 71.2 100 total 104 100 100 12 no 50 48.1 48.1 48.1 yes 54 51.9 51.9 100 total 104 100 100 13 no 24 23.1 23.1 23.1 yes 80 76.9 76.9 100 total 104 100 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 93 agriculture sector can satisfy the needs of pakistan's population itself as well as it can export to other countries’ 95.2% respondents agreed with this statement. question 7 reveals that 79% respondents believe that pakistan cannot achieve inclusive growth with land reforms. majority of the respondents (more than 70%) believe that pakistan should make the legislation on land reforms like past regime through constitutional amendments and these legislations should have the ceiling on land holding (question 8,9 and 10). only 51.9% respondents agreed that corporate agriculture policy is barrier in inclusive growth (question 11) and 76.9% respondents believe that pakistan govt. should lease the agriculture land to their own landless rural people instead of giving to foreign corporate for inclusive growth (question 12 and 13). 4.1. proposed suggestion on the basis of analysis from secondary data and primary data, following suggestion can be implemented to achieve the goal of inclusive growth and food security. figure 6: diversification action plan model source: authors own compilation this plan can be implemented through iot (internet of things) technique. for execution of this plan; we have to make specific software according to macro-economic action plan parameters. parameters will includes products price (high value and low value products) and demand. circuit price breakers and circuit demand breakers have to be determines for find out the opportunity information. product wise import details have to monitor through this software. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 94 segment wise production details also have to be maintaining in this software. this execution plan will identify the two types of opportunity based information. short term action plan opportunity long term action plan opportunity software will be automatically forward information to policy making department. after revive the information, they department will prepare credit policy for the crops. figure 7: corporate agriculture farming model source: authors own compilation after analyzing the primary and secondary data, it is clear that existing corporate agriculture farming require some changes. from the table 2 finding reveals that the growth of agriculture is not consistent towards positive context. majority of corporate firm are focusing on important crops, cotton and livestock, but they are ignoring other crops which are so much important for food security so due to concentration on specific crops, the other nutritious crops prices are going high and this hike in price are affecting the interest of poor people. this policy should be changed on diversification basis. the below plan is diversified into all segment of agriculture. investment should be on diversified basis. land lease time should be 20-50 years. export of food should be maximum 50%. investment diversification can be categorized into; diversify crop investment (important and other crops) subject to crops wise ceiling on land, crops and livestock investment scheme, core agri product scheme. the entire scheme in this model prohibited penetration price policy of investors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 95 figure 8: fdi model for core crops producer small investor & agriculture finance and insurance scheme for core domestic producer source: authors own compilation these two schemes especially for those products of which demand is high, high price products and production of these crops are always negative. we can invite the foreign small investors who have the core expertise to producing this product. these schemes will provide risk insurance cover to foreign investor. even this scheme provides finance and insurance cover to domestic producer who have small landholding less than 25 acres. for domestic producer, this scheme will provide low interest finance. in this scheme land lease condition are two flexible, initially lease will be given for 10 to 20 years according to investor and it can be further extended for another 10 years. only those producers who have core expertise to sowing this crops, they can avail the benefit of this scheme. target production condition will be the part of the scheme, if the producer will fail to achieve the minimum production license of investment will be withdrawn. this scheme is export oriented; exporter will get incentive on export of crops. 4.2. agriculture start-up finance scheme for newly agriculture graduates these following scheme will provide finance and other supports to fresh agriculture graduate they can become future entrepreneur in agriculture and they will contribute to gdp of the pakistan through the uses of modern approach of farming. -agriculture start-up finance scheme for millets products (wheat, barley, maze etc.) -agriculture start-up finance scheme for vegetables & fruits products -agriculture start-up finance scheme for poultry products -agriculture start-up finance scheme for dairy products 5. conclusion pakistan's agricultural economy is going through a bad phase. in this research, we attempted to discover how the agricultural economy of pakistan can be restored. presently, agriculture of pakistan is unofficially governed by a few individuals; this land mafia occupies major land holdings and uses these fertile lands for different commercial activities instead of cultivating food crops. as such, the reallocation of agriculture lands is a major requirement of new pakistan to diversify opportunities inside agriculture. this reallocation must overcome the poverty of pakistani peoples and give them better heath and food security. diversification in agriculture (crops, credit schemes) would increase the level of production as well as the income of farmers; it will also help asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 96 to control the problem of food inflation. corporate agriculture farming is a threat to government’s pro-poor policies, so it should be amended. the result of this research has shown that food security requirements of pakistan's growing population can be met by the above reforms schemes, and it will be effective in meeting the goal of overall inclusive development of pakistan. some effective models have been suggested in this regard that will prove to be very helpful to fulfil the said objectives. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: author 1 conceived of the study and carried out the “topic materials and methods” section and data collection. author 2 carried out results section. author 4 carried out the “introduction & suggestion” section. author 3 carried out the “discussion and conclusion” section. all authors read and approved the final manuscript. this study is relevant in present perspective of pakistan which is going through the difficult times of food inflation and financial crisis and it will help to strengthen the economy of pakistan. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdul-rehman, jingdong, l., chandio, a. a., & hussain, i. (2017). livestock production and population census in pakistan: determining their relationship with agricultural gdp using econometric analysis. information processing in agriculture, 4(2), 168-177. ahmad, m., & farooq, u. (2010). the state of food security in pakistan: future challenges and coping strategies. the pakistan development review, 49(4), 903-923. alur, a. s., & maheswar, d. l. (2018). crop diversification a strategy to improve agricultural production. http://www.commodityindia.com/publication/magazine/web/crop%20diversification%20a%20strategy%20to%20improve%20agricultural%20production.html. barbiero, t., & brown, a. (1991). the role of agriculture in industrial development symbiotic vs. parasitic relationship. the american economist, 35(1), 21-29. chaudhry, m. g. (1982). green revolution and redistribution of rural incomes: pakistan's experience. the pakistan development review, 21(3), 173-205. chaudhry, m. g., & chaudhry, g. m. (1997). pakistan's agricultural development since independence: intertemporal trends and explanations. the pakistan development review, 36(4), 593-612. cornia, g.a. (1985) farm size, land yields and the production function: an analysis for fifteen developing countries. world development, 13(4), 513-534. dawn (2010). land reforms in pakistan. http://www.dawn.com/news/570487. dawn (2016). import of indian agriculture commodities ‘stopped’. https://www.dawn.com/news/1298712. johnston, b. f., & thomas p. t. (1985) agricultural strategies and agrarian structure. development review, 3(2), 1-37. karshenas, m., & hakimian, h. (2005). oil, economic diversification and the democratic process in iran. iranian studies, 38(1), 67-90. kurosaki, t. (2003). specialization and diversification in agricultural transformation: the case of west punjab, 1903-92. american journal of agricultural economics, 85(2), 372-386. mehraraa, m., & baghbanpour, j. (2016). the contribution of industry and agriculture exports to economic growth: the case of developing countries. world scientific news, 46, 100-111. mensah, o. s., jincai, z., isaac, a. b., & patrick, a. (2017). the role of institutional policies in promoting agribusiness development in rural china. agriculture and food sciences research, 4(2), 37-44. http://www.commodityindia.com/publication/magazine/web/crop%20diversification%20-a%20strategy%20to%20improve%20agricultural%20production.html http://www.commodityindia.com/publication/magazine/web/crop%20diversification%20-a%20strategy%20to%20improve%20agricultural%20production.html http://www.dawn.com/news/570487 https://www.dawn.com/news/1298712 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 97 ministry of finance (pakistan) (2018). overview of the economy. http://www.finance.gov.pk/survey/chapters_18/overview_2017-18.pdf. ministry of information and broadcasting pakistan (2017). highlights of pakistan economic survey 2016-17. http://moib.gov.pk/day/highlights_of_pakistan_economic.pdf. pakistan bureau of statistics (2010). agricultural census 2010 pakistan report. http://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files/aco/publications/agricultural_census2010/writeup%20agri.%20census%202010.pdf. pakistan bureau of statistics (2018). employment trends. http://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files//pakistan%20employment%20trend%20%20rep rt%202018%20final.pdf. pankaj, d., & ramyar, r. (2019). diversification of economy – an insight into economic development with special reference to kurdistan’s oil economy and agriculture economy. russian journal of agricultural and socio-economic sciences, 85(1), 395-404. doi:10.18551/rjoas.2019-01.48. siddiqui, r., samad, g., nasir, m., & jalil, h. h. (2012). the impact of climate change on major agricultural crops: evidence from punjab, pakistan. the pakistan development review, 261274. shah, f. (2009). corporate farming: pros and cons for pakistani economy. asian tribune, https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/9588-corporate-farming-pros-and-cons-forpakistani-economy. statistics times (2018). projected gdp ranking (2019-2023). http://statisticstimes.com/economy/projected-world-gdp-ranking.php. us library of congress (2018). countries studies. agriculture http://countrystudies.us/pakistan/49.htm. world bank (2017). pakistan’s population statistics. retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/country/pakistan. appendix table 4a: statistics what is your profession? 1 internal diversification of agriculture sector can increase the gdp of pakistan 2 crop diversification can increase the income of farmers 3 crop diversification is necessary for food security and soil fertility 4 what are the reasons for rural poverty? 5 n valid 104 104 104 104 104 missing 0 0 0 0 0 mode 5.00 2.00 2.00 2.00 5.00 minimum 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 maximum 5.00 2.00 2.00 2.00 5.00 http://www.finance.gov.pk/survey/chapters_18/overview_2017-18.pdf http://moib.gov.pk/day/highlights_of_pakistan_economic.pdf http://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files/aco/publications/agricultural_census2010/write-up%20agri.%20census%202010.pdf http://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files/aco/publications/agricultural_census2010/write-up%20agri.%20census%202010.pdf http://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files/pakistan%20employment%20trend%20%20reprt%202018%20final.pdf http://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files/pakistan%20employment%20trend%20%20reprt%202018%20final.pdf https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/9588-corporate-farming-pros-and-cons-for-pakistani-economy https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/9588-corporate-farming-pros-and-cons-for-pakistani-economy http://statisticstimes.com/economy/projected-world-gdp-ranking.php http://countrystudies.us/pakistan/49.htm https://data.worldbank.org/country/pakistan asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 82-98 98 table 5a: statistics of questions "world bank official report mentioned 70 million population of pakistan is facing food insecurity. for providing food security guarantee to its people in future, pakistan should make the legislation like neighbourhood for food security with land reforms" 6 agriculture sector can satisfy the needs of pakistan's population itself as well as it can export to other countries 7 can pakistan achieve inclusive growth without land reforms? 8 during 1959 and 1972 pakistan government had constituted land reforms regulations for inclusive development of pakistan but after the verdict of qazalbash waqf vs chief land commissioner supreme court declared that this 1972 regulations were attacked as being against islamic injunctions and unconstitutional”. do you agree that these types of regulations should be passed again through constitutional amendments? 9 new land reforms should be included ceiling on agriculture land holding like 1972 regulations with some modifications 10 n valid 104 104 104 104 104 missing 0 0 0 0 0 mode 2.00 2.00 2.00 2.00 2.00 minimum 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 maximum 2.00 2.00 2.00 2.00 2.00 table 6a: statistics of questionnaire response new land reforms land ceiling should be: 11 do you agree that the existing corporate agriculture farming policy is a barrier to achieve inclusive growth & food security, it should be change 12 do you agree that government of pakistan should lease the agriculture land to own landless rural people instead of giving to foreign corporate for inclusive growth 13 n valid 104 104 104 missing 0 0 0 mode 4.00 2.00 2.00 minimum 1.00 1.00 1.00 maximum 4.00 2.00 2.00 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 274 adapting new technologies of exposure and promotion for agro-tourism enterprises with comparative evaluations eleni dimitriadou a, ioanna lamprouli b, olga iakovidou c a phd candidate; department of agricultural economics, aristotle university of thessaloniki, greece b agronomist; aristotle university of thessaloniki, greece c emeritus professor; department of agricultural economics, aristotle university of thessaloniki, greece  edimitri@agro.auth.gr (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 11-sep-2019 accepted: 22-nov-2019 online available: 16-dec2019 keywords: agrotourism enterprises, evaluation criteria, internet, promotion, websites abstract as we are well aware that today the positive use of internet and shared websites comprise of various strong and prolific tools for business for the promotion of their products and services through world-wide advertisement, especially for small businesses in the rural areas. the paper at hand comprises of initial comparative study of the websites of the agro-tourism enterprises, which are located in central macedonia in greece, with the very specific aim of investigating their adaptability plan and criteria towards the new technologies of exposure and promotion, since central macedonia is a larger and more developed region. initially in 2010, 158 websites of agro-tourism enterprises were assessed, which were again surveyed in 2018. through a census process, the data collecting method was adopted in this research, whereas the websites’ assessment was conducted with the assistance of five criteria process, viz. content, interactivity, site attractiveness, promotional value and security, which were selected through literature review on the relevant subject. the evaluation confirmed our assumptions that the adaptability of new technologies for the agrotourism enterprises in central macedonia, greece had improved, but the results of all evaluation criteria tend to show very low improvement, as seen in this century. contribution/ originality this study is the first effort to assess websites of agro-tourism enterprises of central macedonia in greece. additionally, it also presents the adaptation of new technologies in agro-tourism business using a unique data set collected for this study. the findings correspondingly provide amazing information on the current state and status of agro-tourism enterprises and their level of technological adaptation, as well as feasible incentives for the improvements in their adaptability. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.274.283 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: eleni dimitriadou, ioanna lamprouli and olga iakovidou (2019). adapting new technologies of exposure and promotion for agro-tourism enterprises with comparative evaluations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 274-283. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 274-283 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:edimitri@agro.auth.gr http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.274.283 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 274-283 275 1. introduction keeping in view the statement of akpan et al. (2013) which mentioned that ‘communication is central to human life”, but nowadays, communication is mainly carried through internet, which is not only the means of exchanging and collecting information, but also a way for entrepreneurs access made easier for greater number of clients, in providing their relevant products and services to them (andreopoulou et al., 2012), even if their establishment is impossibly accessible (chung and luc, 2017). therefore, it is clearly indicated that internet comprises of a very strong tool for marketing (andreopoulou et al., 2017), as small-size companies could size better and ample opportunities both to compete with others at international level (pikkemaat and zehrer, 2016) and to endure difficult environmental financial conditions (maldonado-guzmán et al., 2018). investigations have shown that shared websites improve small-size enterprises’ occupancy rates (chung and luc, 2016; van and tu, 2016). the incorporation of newer knowledge and feasible information into business operations enhances the technological capabilities; thus it contributes to the growth of business (ukaejiofo, 2013) and also improves its performance (maldonado-guzmán et al, 2018). the number of agro-tourism enterprises who invest money to obtain new technologies has increased rapidly (bajgier et al., 2017), keeping in view that in this way they would manage to extend their company. this new tool of promotion has attracted the interest of a great number of researchers, who have tried to study these websites, using different evaluation criteria (law, 2007). but unfortunately, there are no common rules to be applied for the most appropriate criteria and what parameters should be included in every criterion. lituchy and rail (2000) studied 114 small inns and beds and breakfasts, which were located in canada and the united states of america. the study showed that 89,2% of these enterprises had their own websites, with the specific aim of increasing their customers’ base. however, their websites were not characterized by multilingual capabilities, converting them to some extent, into unattractive spots for foreign tourists. on the other hand, results of 193 websites of small and medium sized hotels in malaysia showed that 65,3% catered to english speakers, while 69,9% provided the opportunity to their users to make online reservations, whereas online cancellation, confirmation and payments were also made available therein, while only 45,0% of websites informed users about privacy and security policy regarding reservations (ayob, 2016). on the contrary, opposite results were reported by 29 websites of agro-tourism enterprises in crete, as only a few websites had online reservations, payment system and registration as members. in other words, internet adoption was in its first steps and it was essential for them to use e-commerce in order to become more competitive (andreopoulou et al., 2017). similarly, król (2017) found that out of a total of 400 agro-tourism firms in four countries (poland, slovakia, czech republic and hungary) only 145 had a personal website, which enhanced the passive attitude of potential customers. this could be attributed to the fact that customers could neither be informed about the prices, nor of the high quality of their services, and were characterized by poor content, while at the same time no update was made on the date on which the web pages were modified, causing severe insecurity for the consumers. beldona and cai (2006) evaluated 50 websites of agro-tourism enterprises in the united states, using only three criteria; viz. content, interactivity and promotional value. the percentage of at least 64,0% of websites was characterized by high level of content, providing the information for some aspects like, accommodation, facilities, attractions, and transportation. 19,0% of the websites was ranked in high level of interactivity, such as online reservation, search tool and site for membership were some parameters, which helped users to obtain a more active behavior, while 17,0% of the enterprises presented high promotional value, sustaining the users’ interests because they had online offers, newsletters and e-cards. in other words, these websites should have to be improved for users’ proper control and set their decision to influence and increase accordingly. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 274-283 276 moreover, 20 websites of the indiana bed and breakfast association were examined, using four criteria, namely, user friendliness, site attractiveness, marketing effectiveness and technical aspects, which are not included in our research. due to the easy users’ navigation, 63,7% of websites were characterized by friendliness; a homepage button, site maps, search tool, limited scrolling and contact details were shown to be some of the recorded parameters, while 88,5% of those were evaluated by site attractiveness, referring a hospitable company. these websites had a good quality of pictures, background colors and text readability. moreover, 40,2% were ranked in terms of marketing effectiveness, owing to the existence of some parameters, such as house and room photos, virtual tours, calendars of local events, outdoor activities and awards, which an entrepreneur may have won by converting a stimulated experience to a real one (kline et al., 2005). different results were even recorded by websites of small-size hotels in scotland, whose entrepreneurs did not take the advantages of their function; and as a result, these websites consisted of an online brochure presentation (bingley et al., 2009). in poland, small agro-tourism farms used websites in order to promote their business as well as rural tourism. a percentage of 67,4% was characterized by insufficient content, as information about their firms and services was not provided therein. mistrust was established and sales functions were not performed well, so these websites were considered nothing else rather than “abandoned” websites (król, 2019). this paper could be considered as a revised and expanded version of an earlier presentation entitled ‘the adaptability of the agro-tourism enterprises to the new technologies of exposure and promotion. a comparative evaluation”, presented at the 15th national conference agricultural economics, thessaloniki in greece, on 1st and 2nd november 2018. additionally, the present paper contributes to the relevant literature, being established as the first study assessing the adaptability of new technologies for the exposure and promotion of agro-tourism business in central macedonia, using special criteria, like content of websites, interactivity, attractiveness, promotional value and security. from a managerial and practitioner perspective, the present study also informs about the level of agro-tourism business adaptability of the new technologies and motivations for future planning. 2. materials and methods the research was carried out in central macedonia in greece due to the significant development of agrotourism. this study consisted of two stages. the first got off the ground in 2010, as a part of the graduate dissertation (see lamprouli, 2010) and the second stage materialized in 2018, following the same process of evaluation. the number of agrotourism enterprises was registered based on data of the development agencies and chambers of seven prefectures in central macedonia (chalkidiki, imathia, kilkis, pella, pieria, serres, thessaloniki) and after their websites were identified on the internet. the evaluation of websites of agrotourism enterprises was based on global bibliography (hashim et al., 2007; baloglu and pechan, 2006; beldona and cai, 2006; kline et al., 2005; chiang, 2003; doolin et al., 2002; feng et al., 2002; wan, 2002), including five criteria; content, interactivity, site attractiveness, promotional value and security. the criterion of content included 18 parameters, 10 of them were related to the enterprise itself and the others to the region of establishment. the criterion of interactivity consisted of 8 parameters and the criterion of site attractiveness 12 parameters, while the criteria of promotional value and security had 3 and 6 parameters respectively. every parameter of the evaluation criteria was graded with 10 points. according to the number of parameters every criterion had, the website was classified into low, medium and high level of evaluation. specifically, websites were ranked in the low level of content as long as they asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 274-283 277 had up to 60 points, in medium level, providing that they had 61-120 points and at a high level if they had 121 – 180 points. the ranges of the evaluating criteria are listed below. table 1: classification of five evaluation criteria criteria level low medium high content 0-60 61-120 121-180 interactivity 0-26,67 26,68-53,34 53,35-80 site attractiveness 0-40 41-80 81-120 promotional value 0-10 11-20 21-30 security 0-20 21-40 41-60 source: authors’ own compilations the parameters of all criteria were equal, as the agrotourism product, in order to be fulfilled, should have parameters not only for the enterprise itself, its products and its services, but also for the sights and attractions, which were close to it and for the available activities, which tourists could do after their visit. in this research, the method of census was selected, since this will enable to the generalization of the results, even if the data are heterogeneous (harisis and kiohos, 1997). the codification of data was carried out through the statistical package for the social sciences spss, version 18 (year 2010) and 24 (year 2018). 3. results in central macedonia, the total number of agrotourism enterprises in 2010 was 327; 158 of those had their own website. after 8 years, this number decreased to 131 websites; as 5 enterprises closed and 22 of them have operated, in an alternative and economical way of promotion, which is less expensive than their own ones, such as local websites, cooperative platforms or facebook, which is the most popular way of financial promotion. the criterion of content included parameters both for the enterprise itself and for the region of establishment. in the first case (table 2), both in 2010 and 2018, the interest of entrepreneurs focused on room facilities and general facilities of the company, as the percentage of websites increased from 85,4% to 87,8% and from 67,7% to 86,3% respectively. an impressive rise appeared in two parameters; information about products and services and description of enterprise, as their percentages had almost doubled after 8 years, describing the properties and characteristics of lodgings. 29 websites of agro-tourism enterprises in crete showed similar interest, as they informed their clients for the offered products and services in great detail (andreopoulou et al., 2017). in contrast small agritourism farms in poland were characterized by poor content, due to the lack of sufficient information (król, 2019). moreover, both years, information about the distance between the company and nearby villages and cities was given to users, as entrepreneurs believed that these elements would have a positive influence on users’ final decision. on the other hand, the majority of websites in 2010 informed users about the number of rooms the company had, something which also recorded in 2018 reduced by almost 10%. moreover, the parameter of operating period was slightly reduced after 8 years; in contrast, the history of the foundation and the prices of products and services exhibited a small increase. in both years, a negligible number of websites provided information regarding prizes the enterprises won because the owners either believed it was meaningless or they had not received any honors in the past. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 274-283 278 table 2: evaluation based on the criterion of content, related to the enterprise itself from 2010-2018 the criterion of content which was related to the enterprise itself (%) 2010 2018 history of foundation 9,5 16,8 information about facilities 67,7 86,3 description of enterprise 38,6 88,5 information about products and services 43,0 90,8 number of rooms 77,2 66,4 room facilities 85,4 87,8 period of operation 28,5 18,3 prizes 0,6 10,7 prices of services 17,7 22,9 distance from surroundings 74,7 72,5 note: the total number of agrotourism websites in 2010 was 158 and in 2018 was 131 source: authors’ own compilations in the second case, the years 2010 and 2018 did not present significant differences (table 3). specifically, 48,1% of websites of agrotourism enterprises in 2010 referred to the sights, which were close to them, while in 2018, 69,5% gave information about these attractions. also, outdoor activities were proposed by 53,8% of websites in 2010 and 58,0% of them in 2018. users had the chance to understand with the aim of this information if an agrotourism enterprise provided a complete product. another important element in 2010 and 2018 was the existence of area maps, through which users spotted enterprises geographically, as their percentages went up from 65,8% to 78,5%. on the other hand, entrepreneurs believed that alternative means of transport (bus, train, except cars), local events, a festival calendar, information for weather conditions and local news could not attract tourists, so these parameters were of secondary importance for them. table 3: evaluation based on the criterion of content, related to the location from 2010-2018 the criterion of content which was related to the region of establishment (%) 2010 2018 sights and attractions 48,1 69,5 outdoor activities (trekking, climbing) 53,8 58,0 means of transport 6,3 13,0 local events 13,9 13,0 calendar of festivals 7,0 6,9 area maps 65,8 78,5 weather forecast 15,8 11,5 local news 3,8 0,8 note: the total number of agrotourism websites in 2010 was 158 and in 2018 was 131 source: authors’ own compilations concerning the criterion of interactivity (table 4), all websites of agrotourism enterprises in 2010 and 2018 gave contact details, while the percentage of online contact form had almost duplicated, as from 39,2% in 2010 reached to 67,9% in 2018. conversation communities (chat rooms, forums) remained a less popular way of communication, as they increased went up from 1,9% in 2010 to 9,9% in 2018. the users’ registration as members and their registration for sending newsletters did not display significant differences between the two years. the site search tools and the online guest books appeared to have similar level of increase. the last parameter that was assessed, was the virtual tool, whose percentage in 2010 was 7,0%, while in 2018 increased to 34,4%. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 274-283 279 table 4: evaluation based on the criterion of interactivity from 2010-2018 the criterion of interactivity (%) 2010 2018 site search tool 4,4 16,2 user’ registration as a member 5,7 12,2 contact information 100 100 online contact form 39,2 67,9 community conversation 1,9 9,9 user’ registration for sending newsletters 1,9 13,7 virtual tour 7,0 34,4 online guest book 7,0 18,3 note: the total number of agrotourism enterprises’ websites in 2010 was 158 and in 2018 was 131 source: authors’ own compilations the criterion of site attractiveness (table 5) examined the existence of room and hotel pictures on websites of agrotourism enterprises in 2010 and 2018, and the results do not support significant differences. the majority of these photographs could be characterized by high quality, while background colors exhibited a small reduction by 9,8%, making them less attractive. similar results were supported by the websites of the indiana bed and breakfast association, characterized as a hospitable company (kline et al., 2005). almost half of websites were multilingual in 2010, while this percentage reached 71,4% in 2018, giving the opportunity to more foreign users to visit them and understand their content. the same chance was given to potential clients at 65,3% of websites of small and medium sized hotels in malaysia (ayob, 2016). 3,8% of websites in 2010 had a site map, while in 2018 this percentage reached the 30,5%, preventing users to confuse and abandon these websites. to this destination, the increased percentage of accessible information through various ways and points assisted. in both years, a very small number of websites included links which directed users to other proposed websites for other enterprises in their area, such as café – bars, restaurants. moreover, url links which provided information about local society (municipalities, museums) were reduced from 29,7% to 13% in 2018. in both years, the majority of websites did not have videos, audio or music, as it was believed that these tools would not attract clients. table 5: evaluation based on the criterion of site attractiveness from 2010-2018 the criterion of site attractiveness (%) 2010 2018 room photos 94,9 96,9 hotel photos 91,1 96,9 good quality of photos 86,7 90,8 background colors 96,8 87,0 links to websites of other enterprises 3,2 4,6 links to websites of local services 29,7 13,0 site map 3,8 30,5 videos 19,0 26,7 audio 7,6 3,1 music 21,5 2,3 multilingual website 46,8 71,4 accessible information through various ways and points 22,2 38,9 note: the total number of agrotourism enterprises’ websites in 2010 was 158 and in 2018 was 131 source: source: authors’ own compilations regarding the criterion of promotional value results do not indicate any significant differences (table 6). specifically, in 2010, 1,9% of websites sent emails to users, informing them for an enterprise itself and the nearby area while this percentage increased to 13,7% in 2018. between the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 274-283 280 two years, negligible differences were recorded by sending e-cards to users, while online offers showed a small reduction, as the percentage decreased from 19,6% to 12,2%. insignificant results were also presented by websites of agrotourism enterprises in the united states, which did not control and influence the users’ decisions in these promotional ways (beldona and cai, 2006). table 6: evaluation based on the criterion of promotional value from 2010-2018 the criterion of promotional value (%) 2010 2018 sending e-cards to users 0,6 1,5 email notification 1,9 13,7 online offers 19,6 12,2 note: the total number of agrotourism enterprises’ websites in 2010 was 158 and in 2018 was 131 source: authors’ own compilations the results of the criterion of security did improve after 8 years, however, it remained very low (table 7). specifically, in 2018, half of websites gave the ability to potential clients to make online reservation, compared to 27,8% of websites in 2010, while online cancellation and online payment exhibited a very small rise. similar results were exported by the websites of agrotourism enterprises in crete, as only a few had adopted e-commerce (online reservation and payment system) so as to become economically strong (andreopoulou et al., 2017).the results of security of personal data and terms and conditions of reservation remained very disappointing, since their increase was insignificant. the last update was stated by 11,4% of websites in 2010 and 14,6% in 2018, increasing users’ insecurity, something which is confirmed by the websites of agrotourism farms in poland, slovakia, czech republic and hungary (król, 2017) as well by the websites of small agritourism farms in poland, which consisted of historical sites and were called as “abandoned” websites (król, 2019). table 7: evaluation based on the criterion of security from 2010-2018 the criterion of security (%) 2010 2018 online reservation 27,8 51,1 online cancellation 0,6 10,0 online payment 1,9 12,2 terms and conditions/reservation policy 8,9 19,8 security of personal data 3,2 11,5 date of last update 11,4 14,6 note: the total number of agrotourism enterprises’ websites in 2010 was 158 and in 2018 was 131 source: authors’ own compilations based on the criterion of content, all websites were classified between low and medium level, while none of them was ranked in high level during 2010. these results differentiated after 8 years, most of the websites was characterized by medium level of content and for the first time a small number of websites appeared in high level. concerning the criterion of interactivity, the largest number of websites was ranked in low level of evaluation in 2010, while in 2018 almost all websites were rated between low and medium level. regarding the criterion of site attractiveness, an improvement was evident after 8 years, due to the increase of medium level. the percentages of the criteria of promotional value and security were discouraging, because almost all websites were rated in low level of evaluation, without presenting important differences in 2018. noteworthy is the fact that none of the websites were marked in high level of promotional value in 2018 and in high level of security in 2010 (table 8). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 274-283 281 table 8: comparison of websites evaluation in levels from 2010-2018 evaluation criteria level (%) 2010 2018 low medium high low medium high content 48,1 51,9 0,0 21,4 77,8 0,8 interactivity 88,0 11,4 0,6 50,4 45,8 3,8 site attractiveness 34,8 60,1 5,1 17,6 80,9 1,5 promotional value 98,8 0,6 0,6 95,4 4,6 0,0 security 97,5 2,5 0,0 82,4 12,2 5,4 source: authors’ own compilations the majority of websites gives to potential clients more information now than 8 years before, strengthening their enterprise image. however, users are obligated to communicate with owners in order to ask for more details (working seasons, prices of products and services or means of transport). during both years, websites of agrotourism enterprises presented a complete agrotourism product, as information for the enterprise itself, its products and services, sights and outdoor activities were provided. the criterion of interactivity presents a relative improvement in 2018, converting the passive users’ attitude to more active and differentiating websites from traditional types of advertisements. on the other hand, most websites have improved their appearance, so they attract more users and convert them to clients easier, as an image of an equally attractive business created, remains in users’ memory. opposite results have been extracted by the criteria of promotional value and security, which continue to be very low after 8 years. agrotourism entrepreneurs are not interested in maintaining their communication with clients by sending newsletters and e-cards regularly to remind them of their existence, provide motivation to users (online offers) and repeat their visit to their websites. also, a guarantee for protection of users’ personal data and a statement of the last update are not given, making the validity of this information doubtful. in this way, a sense of insecurity is cultivated and online customer relationships are discouraged. 4. conclusions in this survey, an assessment of agro-tourism enterprises’ websites in central macedonia was conducted with the vast perspective of their technical adaptation during the years 2010 to 2018. five criteria, namely, content, interactivity, site attractiveness, promotional value, security, were used for the websites’ evaluation, based simply on literature review. the findings showed that the agro-tourism enterprises in central macedonia have increased their adaptability towards new technologies. however still there is a need for a greater improvement and support policy, since their level is relatively quite low. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: we would like to thank the managers of development agencies and chambers of seven prefectures in central macedonia in greece, as their assistance was precious. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akpan, u., akwaowo, e., & senam, n. 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(2002). the websites of international tourist hotels and tour wholesalers in taiwan. tourism management, 23(2), 155-160. doi.org/10.1016/s0261-5177(01)00048-6. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 10 effects of moringa leaf extract and poultry manure on the growth parameters of sweet maize alubiagba, d. o.a ovharhe, o. j.b akparobi, s. o.c a,cdepartment of agronomy, forestry and wild life delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, delta state, nigeria. bdepartment of agricultural economics and extension delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, delta state, nigeria.  chaolindave@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 23 october 2020 revised: 27 november 2020 accepted: 21 december 2020 published: 18 january 2021 keywords sweet maize poultry manure moringa leaf extract leaf area growth extension workers. this study examined the effects of moringa leaf extract (mle) and poultry manure (pm) on the growth parameters of sweet maize. the experiment was a randomized complete block design involving nine treatments: control (no extract), 3% mle, 6% mle, 9% mle, 3% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 6% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 15 t/ha–1 pm, and 30 t/ha–1 pm. data on growth parameters including plant height, number of leaves per plant, stem girth, and leaf area were collected and analyzed. the results of the study show that there were significant differences (p = 0.05) among the treatments because plots that received 30 t/ha–1 pm performed best on plant height (193.6 and 152.8 cm) number of leaves (13.1 and 10.2), stem girth (3.75 and 3.22 cm), and leaf area (584.9 and 402.9 cm2) in both early and late season. this was followed by plots that received 9% mle and 15 t/ha–1 pm, with values of 189.0 and 152.2 cm; 12.5 and 10.0; 3.58 3.15 cm; and 546.2 and 392.2 cm2, respectively. the study concluded that 30 t/ha–1 pm can be used to yield effective growth parameters in sweet maize and is hereby recommended to extension workers for dissemination to farmers contribution/originality: this study is one of very few studies to have investigated the effects of moringa oleifera extract on field crops in delta state, nigeria. in combination with poultry manure, moringa extract shows great promise in improving the growth characteristics of sweet maize, a major vegetable crop. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.10.18 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: alubiagba, d. o. --ovharhe, o. j. --akparobi, s. o. (2021). effects of moringa leaf extract and poultry manure on the growth parameters of sweet maize. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 10-18. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.10.18 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction sweetcorn (zea mays var. saccharata ) is a maize variety with tender, delicious sugar kernels eaten as a vegetable. in contrast to traditional field corn, sweetcorn varieties are harvested when the kernels have just reached the milk stage and are used earlier. sweetcorn has achieved major commercial success in many tropical and subtropical countries (okonmah & eruotor, 2012). the commercial success of maize crops notwithstanding, production in nigeria has been bedevilled by low yields due to factors such as low soil fertility and negligence regarding soil amendment materials (dipa, 2006; enujeke, 2013). while manures and fertilizers are indispensable for increased crop productivity, phiri (2010) noted that dependence on the use of inorganic fertilizers is associated with land and soil degradation, as well as environmental pollution (anyaegbu, 2015). in recent years, there is increasing awareness among maize farmers of the benefits of organic fertilizer application. this is because organic fertilizers not only increase physical soil properties such as porosity, structure, asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 10-18 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6151-1988 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0732-2793 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7896-2045 mailto:chaolindave@yahoo.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.10.18 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 10-18 11 water-holding capacity, and chemical balance, but also increase mineral deposition, which is essential for the proper development of plants (amujoyegbe, opabode, & olayinka, 2007; mishra, singh, singh, das, & prasad, 2013). makkar, francis, and becker (2007) found that moringa leaf extract (mle) contains significant quantities of calcium, potassium, and cytokinin in the form of zeatin, antioxidants, proteins, ascorbates, and phenols. fresh moringa leaves sampled from various parts of the world were found to have high leaf zeatin concentrations of between 5 and 200 mcg/g. phiri (2010) and yasmeen, basra, ahmad, and wahid (2012) have reported that mle is an excellent seedpriming agent for stress-grown wheat and that it enhanced the germination of sorghum, the length of maize radicles, and the hypocotyls of wheat, thereby affecting cereal germination and establishment. phiri and mbewe (2010) have also observed that mle increased the duration of the first germination of beans and increased the germination percentage of cowpea, but caused reduced germination percentage in groundnut and overall lower seedling survival in all three legumes, thereby leading to the postulation that mle should not be used as a priming agent for legumes due to the presence of inhibitory substances absorbed through the various seed coats. besides the contribution of mle and poultry manure (pm) to vegetative growth phase, there is a need to guide farmers in regard to the useful and appropriate quantities of mle and pm to apply from one farm location to another. hence, this study is a useful guide to determining the effectiveness and application rates of mle and pm in the study area. the specific aim of the study was to examine the effects of moringa (moringa oleifera lam.) leaf extract and pm on the growth parameters of sweetcorn. 2. materials and methods a field study was carried out from august to november 2018 and april to july 2019 at the research and teaching farms, department of agronomy, delta state university, asaba campus, while the analysis was done at the animal and environmental biology laboratory of delta state university, abraka. the experimental site is located at latitude 06º14’n and longitude 06º49’e. seeds of sweetcorn tz varieties were procured from the international institute of tropical agriculture (iita), ibadan, oyo state, while moringa was locally sourced from the study area. moringa leaves were oven dried and analyzed for their nutrient contents, including total nitrogen (ryan, estefan, & rashid, 2001), phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, copper, iron, manganese, and zinc (bingham, 1982; ryan et al., 2001). mle was prepared using the method of price (2007) by grinding young shoots (leaves and tender branches) with water (1 l/10 kg fresh material) in a blender for 15 min and then filtering the homogenized solution through no. 2 whatman filter paper. this was then proportionally diluted with water to obtain 3, 6, and 9% concentration levels for the various treatments. preplanting soil analysis: soil samples were randomly collected from the 0–15-cm layer of the experimental plot using a soil auger. the samples were sieved of stones, roots, and leaves before being air-dried at room temperature for three days and pulverized using a porcelain mortar and pestle. the crushed samples were then sieved using a 2mm-aperture sieve and analyzed. particle size distribution was determined by the hydrometer method (gee & baudee, 1986) after destroying the organic matter with hydrogen peroxide and dispersing the soil with 0.5 n sodium hexameta phosphates, while soil ph was measured using a pyeunican model mk2 ph meter in a 1:2.5 soil:water suspension ratio. organic carbon was determined by the walkey–black wet oxidation method (nelson & sommers, 1982). total nitrogen was evaluated by the micro-kjeldahl distillation technique as described by breminer and mulvaney (1982). available phosphorus was measured by the bray no. 1 method (iita international institute of tropical agriculture, 1979), while exchangeable potassium (k), calcium (ca), magnesium (mg), and sodium (na) were determined by flame photometry (chapman, 1965). cation exchange capacity (cec) was evaluated by the ammonium acetate saturation method (roades, 1982). the chemical components of pm used for the experiment were also analyzed in order to ascertain their nutrient composition. field procedure: the study was carried out as a split plot in a randomized complete block design (rcbd), with three replicates. plots measuring 3.0 x 1.5 m2 were prepared on a land area measuring 663.0 m2 selected for the study and prepared manually by clearing with hoe and machete, then marked out using a basin formation according to the experimental layout. improved sweetcorn seeds of the tz variety obtained from iita were sown on the plots at the rate of three seeds per hole at a depth of 2–3 cm, with 75 x 25 cm2 spacing. at 3 weeks after planting (wap), the maize crop was thinned to one plant per stand leaving the most vigorous seedlings, to give a plant population density of 53,333/ha. weeding was done manually three times using a hoe at the 3rd, 6th, and 9th weeks after sowing. 2.1. treatment protocol nine treatments were involved: t1, t2 …t9 where t1 = control (no extract or pm) t2 = 3% mle t3 = 6% mle t4 = 9% mle t5 = 3% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm t6 = 6% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm t7 = 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm t8 = 15 t/ha–1 pm t9 = 30 t/ha–1 pm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 10-18 12 mle was applied at 2, 4, 6, and 8 wap by foliar application, spraying the entire plants in the designated study plots using a knapsack sprayer. the parameters listed henceforth were obtained from the innermost ten plants of each study plot. the growth parameters measured were plant height, number of leaves, stem girth, and leaf area. plant height was measured to the nearest centimeter using a measuring tape, from the base to the highest growing point, i.e., the leaf sheath of the last fully opened leaf. the number of leaves was determined by counting the number of fully opened leaves, starting from the base of the plant upwards. stem girth was measured at the base of the plant with the aid of vernier calipers, to the nearest millimeter. leaf area was measured by tape using the non-destructive analysis method: length x width x 0.75, according to duke and dulelar as reported by enujeke (2013), i.e., la (cm2) = 0.75 x l x w 2.2. statistical analysis data collected were subjected to analysis of variance (anova) and means were separated using the duncan multiple range test (dmrt) at the 5% level of significance. 3. results and discussion 3.1. chemical composition of leaves. the results of the proximate analysis of m. oleifera leaves used in the study are shown in table 1. these show that, per 100 g, moringa leaves contained 10.51 g moisture, 86.2 calories, 21.95 g protein, 2.64 g fat, 49.31 g carbohydrate, 9.83 g fibre, 5.76 g ash, 4.0 g calcium, 0.08 mg copper, 18.7 mg iron, 22.25 mg potassium, 5.0 mg phosphorus, and 0.02 mg sulphur. table 1. chemical composition of m. oleifera leaves/100 g. component value moisture (g) 10.51 calories (n) 86.2 protein (g) 21.95 fat (g) 2.64 carbohydrate (g) 49.31 fibre (g) ash (g) 9.83 5.76 calcium (mg) 4.0 copper (mg) 0.08 iron (mg) 18.7 potassium (mg) 22.25 magnesium (mg) 45.0 phosphorus (mg) 5.0 sulphur (mg) 0.02 3.2. chemical composition of pm the chemical composition of pm used in the study is shown in table 2. analysis shows that it contained 0.61 ppm magnesium, 1.48 ppm calcium, 0.29 ppm sodium, 1.18 ppm phosphorus, 2.67% nitrogen, 0.74 ppm potassium, 1.20% organic carbon, 2.57% organic matter, and the c:n ratio was 0.45. table 2. chemical composition of pm. element value magnesium (ppm) 0.61 calcium (ppm) 1.48 sodium (ppm) 0.29 phosphorus (ppm) 1.18 nitrogen (%) 2.67 potassium (ppm) 074 organic carbon (%) 1.20 organic matter (%) 2.57 c:n ratio 0.45 3.3. effects of mle and pm on plants 3.3.1. height the response of plant height to mle and pm is shown in table 3. plant height increased from 2 to 8 wap and treatment application resulted in significant differences. at 2 wap, sweetcorn plants in plots that had received pm at an application rate of 30 t/ha–1 were significantly taller in both the early (39.5 cm) and late season (42.3 cm), while plants that did not receive pm or mle (control plot) had the lowest height (27.9 and 30.7 cm in the early and late asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 10-18 13 season, respectively). during early season planting there was no significant difference in plant height among plants that received 3% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 6% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, and 15 t/ha-1 pm. likewise, the control plot was statistically similar for plants that received 3, 6, and 9% mle. during the late season, there were no significant differences in plant height in plots that received 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 15 t/ha–1 pm, and 30 t/ha–1 pm. at 4 wap, plants that had received 30 t/ha–1 pm in the early season were significantly taller (65.8 cm) than those that received 3% mle +15 t/ha-1 pm, 6% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, and 15 t/ha-1pm and were statistically similar, with heights of 33.9, 35.2, 35.1, and 35.5 cm, respectively. however in the late season, there was no significant difference between plants that received 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 15 t/ha–1 pm, and 30 t/ha– 1 pm. plants that received no additional materials had heights of 44.1 and 34.2 cm in the early and late season, respectively. at 6 wap, plants in plots that received 30 t/ha–1 pm were significantly taller (152.6 cm) in the early season, but were statistically similar to plants that received 9% mle +15 t/ha–1 pm (142.2 cm) and 15 t/ha–1 pm (138.1 cm) in the late season. sweetcorn plants in plots that received neither mle nor pm had the lowest plant height, of 81.6 and 76.7 cm during the early and late season, respectively. this trend did not change at 8 wap: sweetcorn plants in plots that received 30 t/ha–1 pm were significantly taller (193.6cm) in the early season but in the late season were not significantly taller than those that received 6% mle + 15 t/ha-1 pm, 9% mle + 15 t/ha-1 pm, and 15 t/ha-1 pm, while crops that received neither mle nor pm had the lowest height (139 and 92.8 cm) for the early and late season, respectively. the pm application rate of 30 t/ha–1 had a more significant effect on growth parameters than other rates of mle and pm applied. this could be attributed to its special characteristics of faster mineralization than other organic manures, and rapid release of nutrients for plant uptake and utilization. this is similar to the findings of izunobi (2002), who identified pm as the richest animal manure with the ability to enhance growth with respect to plant height, leaf area, and total chlorophyll content. it is also in agreement with the findings of brady and wells (2008), who reported that pm mineralizes faster and releases its nutrients more rapidly for growth enhancement. this is in agreement with the findings of akanni and ojeniyi (2008). ayoola and makinde (2009) and uwah, eneji, and eshiet (2011) also observed that increased rates of pm application – 20–30 t/ha–1 – resulted in increased plant height, number of leaves, and leaf area in amaranthus and maize crops. it is also consistent with the findings of adeleye, ayeni, and ojeniyi (2010), who reported that pm application at 30 t/ha–1increased the growth parameters of tomato including plant height, leaf area, and stem girth, which eventually influenced fruit yield positively. table 3. effects of mle and pm on plant height of sweetcorn (cm). note: means followed by the same letter(s) in the same column are not significantly different. 3.4. effects of mle and pm on leaf number table 4 shows the effects of treatments on leaf number at different wap. in all treatments, the number of leaves consistently and significantly increased between 2 and 8 wap. at 2 wap, sweetcorn plants that received pm at 30 t/ha–1 during the early season had significantly more leaves (4.6 per plant) than under all other treatments, while plants that received 3% mle had the lowest number of leaves (3.8 per plant). similar results were obtained during the late season: plants that received 30 t/ha–1 pm had significantly more leaves (4.6 per plant) while the remaining treatments were statistically similar except for those in the control plot. at 4 wap, sweetcorn that received pm at 30 t/ha–1 had significantly more leaves (8.1 per plant) in the early season while for all remaining treatments there were significantly more leaves than in the control plots (6.8 per plant). in the late season there was no significant difference in the number of leaves among sweetcorn plants in plots weeks after sowing (was) 2 4 6 8 treatment early season late season early season late season early season late season early season late season control (0%) 27.9c 30.7b 44.1c 34.2b 81.6d 76.7c 139.0c 92.8b 3% mle 28.6c 32.6b 45.3c 33.7b 84.4d 84.4c 146.2c 106.1b 6% mle 28.7c 33.2b 47.9c 35.7b 95.6d 94.2b 153.6c 109.7b 9% mle 29.2c 31.8b 52.1b 39.1b 98.6d 96.1b 162.6c 118.6b 3% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm 33.9b 33.1b 55.9b 39.8b 111.7c 107.2b 166.3c 132.8b 6% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm 35.2b 33.2b 58.6b 38.3b 121.1c 111.4b 176.3c 148.7a 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm 35.1b 39.0a 62.2b 53.1a 148.3b 142.2a 189.0b 152.2a 15 tha–1 pm 35.5b 41.7a 61.5b 52.1a 146.3b 138.1a 188.0b 151.4a 30 tha–1 pm 39.5a 42.3a 65.8a 53.4a 152.6a 144.2a 193.6a 152.8a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 10-18 14 that received 9% mle, 3% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 6% mle + 15 t/ha-1 pm, 9% mle + 15 t/ha-1 pm, 15 t/ha-1 pm, and 30 t/ha-1 pm. plants that received neither mle nor pm in both planting seasons had the lowest number of leaves (5.7 and 6.8 per plant, respectively). at 6 wap, there were significant differences in the number of leaves among early-planted, but not among lateplanrd, plots. early-planted sweetcorn that received 30 t/ha–1 pm had the highest number of leaves (10.8 per plant), which was statistically similar to that in plots that received 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm and 15 t/ha–1 pm, while the control plots had the lowest number of leaves (8.8 per plant). at 8 wap, plants with 30 t/ha–1 pm had the highest number of leaves in both experiments (10.1 and 13.1 per plant) while those in the control plot had the lowest number (9.5 and 10.2 per plant). in the early season, there were no significant differences among sweetcorn that received 9% mle + 15 t/ha-1 pm, 15 t/ha-1 pm, and 30 t/ha–1 pm. poultry manure application at 30 t/ha–1 was significantly better than other rates of mle and pm. this was probably because that rate satisfied crop requirements in the agro-ecological environment where the experiment was conducted, coupled with the peculiar characteristics of pm such as increased carbon content, water-holding capacity, aggregation of soils, and availability of water-soluble exchangeable potassium and magnesium, while also reducing soil bulk density. this result is in tandem with the findings of akanni and ojeniyi (2008); ayoola and makinde (2009) and akram, athar, and ashraf (2007), who attributed increases in number of leaves, plant height, stem diameter, and leaf area index of maize to the possibility that the rate satisfied the agro-ecological requirement of the experimental site, and that the essential nutrients supplied by pm are associated with increased photosynthetic activity. this is also consistent with the findings of zaki and rady (2015), who observed that mle application increased the number of leaves, shoot length, leaf area per plant, and old dry leaf weight of phaseolus vulgaris (common bean). it is also in agreement with the findings of anyaegbu (2015), who reported that plant height in okra following application of n/p/k fertilizer was not significantly different from that in plants that received mle, thus confirming the assertion of foidle, makkar, and beckee (2001) that m. oleifera is a fertility-enhancing plant. it is also similar to the findings of prabhu, kumar, and rajamani (2009), who reported that plant height and number of leaves per plant in kalmegh (andrographis paniculata) were highest with 2% mle compared to other sources of plant growth regulatory substances, which they attributed to the enhanced cell division and elongation of crops in response to the role of mle as a plant growth-promoting substance – hence the positively higher fruit yield. table 4. effects of mle and pm on number of leaves per plant. weeks after sowing (was) 2 4 6 8 treatment early season late season early season late season early season late season early season late season control (0%) 4.0b 3.8c 6.8c 5.7b 8.8b 8.0a 10.2b 9.5b 3% mle 4.1b 4.0b 7.0b 5.7b 9.0b 8.0a 10.5b 10.0a 6% mle 4.1b 4.0b 7.3b 6.1b 9.2b 7.9a 11.1b 10.0a 9% mle 4.1b 4.0b 7.5b 7.3a 9.3b 8.0a 11.4b 10.0a 3% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm 4.2b 4.1b 7.7b 7.3a 9.4b 8.1a 11.6b 10.0a 6% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm 4.3b 4.2b 7.7b 7.2a 9.7b 8.0a 11.7b 10.0a 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm 4.3b 4.2b 7.8b 7.3a 10.5a 8.0a 12.5a 10.0a 15 t/ha–1 pm 4.3b 4.2b 7.8b 7.2a 10.5a 8.0a 12.4a 10.0a 30 t/ha–1 pm 4.6a 4.6a 8.1a 7.38a 10.8a 8.1a 13.1a 10.2a note: means followed by the same letter(s) in the same column are not significantly different. 3.5. effects of mle and pm on stem girth the response of stem girth to mle and pm is shown in table 5. stem girth consistently increased from 2 to 8 wap in both planting seasons. mle and pm application caused significant differences in stem girth at 2 wap. in the early season, sweetcorn plants that received 30 t/ha–1 pm had the highest stem girth (1.33 cm) followed by crops with 15 t/ha–1 pm (1.08 cm). however, these were not significantly different from the other treatments except for the control plot, which showed significantly lower stem girth of 0.75 cm. in the late season cropping, the application of 30 t/ha–1 pm yielded the highest stem girth (1.20 cm) followed by sweetcorn that received 15 t/ha–1 pm (1.14 cm), while the control plot recorded the lowest stem girth of 0.71 cm – not significantly different from plants that received 3 and 6% mle. at 4 wap, results of all other treatments were significantly superior to those in the control plot, which had the lowest stem girth of 1.33 cm during the early season, while sweetcorn that received 30 t/ha–1 pm had the highest stem girth (2.50 cm). a slight difference was observed during late season planting: plants with 30 t/ha–1 pm yielded the highest stem girth (2.02 cm) but were statistically similar to plants that were administered 9% mle, 3% mle +15 t/ha–1 pm, 6% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, and 15 t/ha–1 pm. plants in control plots had the lowest stem girth, 0.85 cm. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 10-18 15 at 6 wap, all treatments resulted in significantly higher stem girth than in the control plot. plants administered 30 t/ha–1 pm had the highest stem girth (3.08 cm) followed by those given 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm (2.58 cm) during the early season. however, plants in the control plots had the lowest stem girth (1.67cm). this pattern was repeated in the late season planting, where the highest stem girth of 2.68 cm was recorded in plants administered 30 t/ha–1 pm – statistically similar to the other treatments except for the control plot. crops in the control plot had the lowest stem girth, 1.56 cm. at 8 wap there were no significant differences among the various treatments in the early season. sweetcorn plants administered 30 t/ha–1 pm had the highest stem girth (3.75 cm) while those in the control plots had the lowest (2.17cm). similarly, there were no significant differences among the various treatments during late season planting, except for plants in the control plots that had the lowest stem girth (2.12 cm). sweetcorn crops treated with 30 t/ha–1 pm had the highest stem girth at 8 wap, statistically similar to plants that received 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm. this could be attributed to the presence of macroand micronutrients in mle and pm, fast mineralization, and ease of absorption, all of which promote the establishment, growth, and maturation of crops at all stages of their life cycle. this is similar to the findings of foidle et al. (2001), who reported that an aqueous extract of m. oleifera influenced apical growth in both tomato and sorghum. the report further argued that mle also gave significantly higher (100%), vigorous, and good-quality tomato seedlings with respect to plant height, number of leaves, and time of flowering. this is in agreement with the findings of anyaegbu, iwuanyanwu, and omaliko (2013), who observed that the application of various forms of mle positively influenced the growth and development of fluted pumpkin (telfaria occidentalis). table 5. effect of mle and pm on stem girth (cm). note: means followed by the same letter(s) in the same column are not significantly different. 3.6. effects of mle and pm on leaf area the response in regard to leaf area of mle and pm is shown in table 6. leaf area gradually increased from 2 to 8 wap in both planting seasons. significant differences were observed in leaf area of sweetcorn at 2 wap in both early and late season plantings. for early season planting, plots that received 30 t/ha–1 pm recorded the highest leaf area (115.1 cm2) but this was not significantly different from plants that received 15 t/ha–1 pm, 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 6% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, or 3% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm. sweetcorn plants that received neither mle nor pm had the lowest leaf area, 68.5 cm2. in late season, sweetcorn plants that received 30 t/ha–1 pm had the highest leaf area (88.3 cm2), statistically similar to those that received 9% mle, 3% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 6% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, and 15 t/ha–1 pm . the control plot, which received neither mle nor pm, had the lowest leaf area (65.3 cm2) but this was not significantly different from plants that received 3% mle (65.8 cm2) and 6% mle (68.9 cm2). at 4 wap, sweetcorn plants that received 30 t/ha–1 pm had the highest leaf area (215.7 and 185.1 cm2), followed by those that received 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm (198.0 cm2 and 179.1 cm2). plants that received neither mle nor pm had the lowest leaf area (117.4 and 110.1 cm2 during early and late season plantings, respectively). at 6 wap, sweetcorn plants that received 30 t/ha–1 pm had the highest leaf area (451.3 and 259.6 cm2), followed closely by those that received 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 (434.8 and 255.1 cm2), while the control plot had the lowest leaf area (235.9 and 202.8 cm2 for the late and early season plantings, respectively). in the late season, however, there was no significant difference between the various treatments while in the early season, plants in the control plot and 3, 6, and 9% mle were statistically similar, as were plants that received 3% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 6% mle + 15 t/ha-1 pm, 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 15 t/ha–1 pm and 30 t/ha–1 pm. at 8 wap, sweetcorn that received 30 t/ha–1 pm had the highest leaf area (584.9 and 402.9 cm2) followed closely by plants that received 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm (546.2 and 392.2 cm2), though there was no significant difference sweetcorn plants in the control plot had the lowest leaf area, 308.4 and 247 cm2. in the early season, there was no significant difference between plants treated with 3, 6, and 9% mle, or between those grown with 3% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 6% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm, 15 t/ha–1 pm, and 30 t/ha–1 pm. weeks after sowing (was) 2 4 6 8 treatment early season late season early season late season early season late season early season late season control (0%) 0.75b 0.71b 1.33b 0.85c 1.67b 1.56b 2.17a 2.12b 3% mle 0.92a 0.85b 1.50a 1.24b 1.92a 1.88a 2.58a 2.30a 6% mle 0.83a 0.85b 1.58a 1.42b 2.17a 2.16a 2.88a 2.55a 9% mle 0.83a 1.03a 2.00a 1.80a 2.42a 2.33a 3.17a 3.08a 3% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm 1.08a 1.03a 2.08a 1.78a 2.50a 2.41a 3.25a 3.11a 6% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm 1.08a 1.07a 2.17a 1.78a 2.58a 2.55a 3.33a 3.04a 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm 1.08a 1.10a 2.33a 1.88a 2.91a 2.58a 3.58a 3.15a 15 t/ha–1 pm 1.08a 1.14a 2.17a 1.84a 2.83a 2.56a 3.58a 3.15a 30 t/ha–1 pm 1.33a 1.20a 2.50a 2.02a 3.08a 2.68a 3.75a 3.22a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 10-18 16 3.7. effects of mle and pm on leaf area the results of the effects of mle and pm on leaf area (cm2) of sweetcorn are presented in table 6. these indicate that at 2 wap, mle 3, 6, and 9% were significantly different (p ≤ 0.05) from control in both early and late season croppings. at 4 wap, control showed 117.4 and 110.0 cm2, significantly lower than pm at 15 and 30 t/ha–1 with leaf area of 178.3, 215.7, 171.8, and 185.1 cm2 for both early and late season croppings. at 6 wap there were no statistical differences in leaf area values in late cropping, though 30 t/ha–1 pm yielded 259.6 cm2 compared to 202.8 cm2 for control. similarly, pm15 and 30 t/ha–1 yielded 429.5 cm and 457.3 cm2, significantly higher than control and mle applied at different concentrations. it was observed that there was a steady increase in leaf area as the weeks progressed. pm yielded the highest leaf area of 584.9 cm2 at 30 t/ha–1 followed by 528.6 cm2 at 15 t/ha–1, while in the control it was 308.4 cm2 in the early cropping. for late cropping, 247.0 cm2 was recorded for the control, which was significantly lower than for all other treatments. the application rate of 30 t/ha– pm yielded better performance than other treatments at 8 wap. this could be attributed to the increased quantity and availability of macroand micronutrients in pm, its rapid mineralization, and ease of absorption, which enhanced crop growth and development. this is similar to the findings of muhamman and kwada (2015), who reported that aqueous foliar application of mle had a higher (and significant) effect on all growth parameters of pawpaw seedlings than the application of coconut milk. it is also in agreement with the findings of muhamman and mohammed (2014), chattha et al. (2015), anyaegbu (2014), and anyaegbu (2015), who reported growth and yield increases in various crops, including maize, okra, and garden egg, as a result of foliar application of mle. table 6. effects of mle and pm on leaf area (cm2). weeks after sowing (was) 2 4 6 8 treatment early season late season early season late season early season late season early season late season control (0%) 68.5b 65.3b 117.4c 110.1b 235.9b 202.8a 308.4c 247.0b 3% mle 70.1b 65.8b 137.7b 120.8b 268.1b 203.3a 355.9b 307.8a 6% mle 70.9b 68.9b 148.0b 130.2b 280.0b 214.2a 378.0b 322.2a 9% mle 70.0b 79.6a 163.5b 170.3a 305.8b 216.0a 395.5b 323.3a 3% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm 106.7a 77.8a 173.9b 165.6a 386.2a 226.7a 440.2a 312.2a 6% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm 107.0a 74.9a 190.3a 169.2a 399.9a 228.0a 484.4a 315.6a 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm 107.0a 81.8a 198.0a 179.1a 434.8a 255.1a 546.2a 392.2a 15 t/ha–1 pm 107.0a 82.4a 198.3a 171.8a 429.5a 245.3a 528.6a 347.8a 30 t/ha–1 pm 115.1a 88.3a 215.7a 185.1a 451.3a 259.6a 584.9a 402.9a note: means followed by the same letter(s) in the same column are not significantly different. 3.8. agronomic and agricultural extension implications of the study the findings listed below from the study are most valuable when the information contained is simplified and disseminated to farmers as new innovations by extension workers. the study provides the extension worker with the following: i. knowledge of improved sources of seed inputs. ii. awareness of best type of soil for cultivation of sweetcorn for optimal growth performance. iii. chemical composition of mle and pm. iv. information on accurate quantities for mle and pm usage. v. facts on time of application for mle and pm. 4. conclusion and recommendations the results of this study indicate that the use of pm and mle, either singly or in combination, is capable of positively influencing the growth of sweetcorn in the study area. although variations were observed in the effectiveness of various concentrations of mle, the results reveal the effectiveness of the application of moringa in boosting the growth of sweetcorn. the recommended application rates for optimum vegetative growth are: i. use of 30 t/ha–1 pm, which resulted in significantly better growth of sweetcorn compared to the other treatment applications evaluated. ii. use of a combination of 9% mle + 15 t/ha–1 pm as an alternative treatment. iii. use of 9% mle as a sole application, which performed significantly better than both control and the other rates of mle application. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 10-18 17 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in the design and performance of the current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adeleye, e., ayeni, l., & ojeniyi, s. 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(2015). moringa oleifera leaf extract improves growth, physiochemical attributes, antioxidant defence system and yields of salt-stressed phaseolus vulgaris l. plants. international journal of chemical technology research, 8(11), 120-134. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 690 price adjustment of oil palm and palm oil in thailand to the world price of the palm oil market sriwena saleerut, chalermpon jatuporn, vasu suvanvihok, apinya wanaset school of economics, sukhothai thammathirat open university, thailand  chalermpon.jat@stou.ac.th; jatuporn.stou@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 01-apr-2020 accepted: 03-aug-2020 online available: 04-sep2020 keywords: price response, shock, cointegration, ecm abstract the objectives of this study are to analyze: (1) the effects from the change of palm oil price in the world market to the prices of oil palm and palm oil in thailand, and (2) the adjustment of oil palm and palm oil prices in thailand to the change of the price of palm oil in the world market using monthly time series from january 2008 to september 2019. the statistics consist of the stationary test using the adf unit root, the long-run equilibrium test using the cointegration, and the short-run adjustment to the equilibrium using the error correction model, respectively. the empirical findings show that farmgate price is the most affected by the change of palm oil price in the world market, followed by wholesale, export, and retail prices, respectively. in line with the adjustment of the prices of oil palm and palm oil in thailand to the change in the world palm oil price, it is found that farm-gate price has adjusted in the short-term to return the equilibrium with the highest speed at 27.883%, followed by wholesale price 22.710%, exporting price 18.792%, and retail price 15.658%, respectively. contribution/ originality this empirical study employs time series econometrics to satisfy research purposes. in conclusion, the price of palm oil in the world market influences the prices of oil palm and palm oil in thailand by affecting the upstream market price to the middle and downstream market prices, respectively. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.690.697 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: sriwena saleerut, chalermpon jatuporn, vasu suvanvihok and apinya wanaset (2020). price adjustment of oil palm and palm oil in thailand to the world price of the palm oil market. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 690-697. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 690-697 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:chalermpon.jat@stou.ac.th mailto:jatuporn.stou@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.690.697 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 690-697 691 1. introduction oil palm is a significant economic crop to the agricultural sector of thailand since the country is the third biggest exporter of palm oil in the world market, right next to indonesia and malaysia, respectively. in 2019, thailand was able to produce palm oil in the amount of 3.18 million tons, calculated as 4.30% of world palm oil production (office of agricultural economics, 2019). however, when comparing the energy crops between oil palm and other crops found that oil palm is a biofuel source which contains a low cost of production, contains the oil that can replace any other oils excellently and efficiently, as well as be able to be used as a raw material in the various industries. apart from that, oil palm also plays an important role in fuel production (methanol) and biodiesel to use in the machinery and automobile as alternative energy of diesel fuel effectively; moreover, it is friendly with the environment as well as is a nature spare energy resource to replace the crude oil from the fossils in the future. in the past time, the oil palm and palm oil prices in thailand have fluctuated due to the unbalanced demand and supply of oil palm and stocked palm oil as well as the environmental factors outside the country. however, the government sector still has the policy to promote and support oil palm planting in the potential area to replace the biodiesel production and also replace the rubber tree planting or any other economic crops which have a low value. additionally, it also contains the policy to expand the area of oil palm planting to increase the efficiency, decrease the production cost, and create the increasing value to the oil palm and palm oil. for the issue, as mentioned earlier, it causes the farmers to expand the oil palm planting areas in the country consistently. according to the information of the office of agricultural economics (2020), it is found that thailand contains the planting area for the oil palm up to 0.96 million hectares, which can produce palm oil up to 16.77 million tons. as the results of oil palm planting area expansion as mentioned together with the oil palm planting area expansion of the biggest oil palm manufactured countries including indonesia and malaysia, it increases the area of production, causing the increasing number of products which are released to the market, as well as the increasing stocked world palm oil; meanwhile, the needs to use the oil palm tend to reduce. regarding the aforementioned issues, it results from the healthy trends of the consumers and the “zero palm oil” measure of the european union countries, who would like to stop using the palm oil since the saturated fat which causes heart disease is found as well as they have concerned about the environmental problems, believed that the oil palm planting areas are mostly from the deforestation. moreover, it also causes oversupply in the market and the reduction of palm oil prices. although thailand has gained the share from exporting the palm oil in the world market, it is only 0.51% when compared with indonesia and malaysia who have gained the share from exporting the palm oil in the world market which is up to 89.46%; however, there is a significant quantity of oil palm, stocked in the country. also, thailand contains a higher production cost and exporting price than the competitive countries (buddhajak, 2019). it is found that thailand contains 380,869 tons of crude palm oil exports and products as valued as 6,661 million baht, which has been reducing from the past years in the same duration up to 19.31% and 38.32% respectively. as in the year of 2018, it contained 472,038 tons of crude palm oil exports and products or as valued as 10,799 million baht. to state the significant trading partners of crude palm oil exports and products, it includes india, malaysia, myanmar, kenya, cambodia, china, and so forth (office of agricultural economics, 2019, 2020). to review the literature on price adjustment of oil palm and palm oil, rungrennganun et al. (2015) has analyzed the factors influencing the prices of oil palm and palm oil by using the econometrics and dynamic models of the system. they found that the factors which positively affect the farmgate price are the palm oil price in krabi market, surat thani market, chumphon market, and bangkok market; on the other hand, the factor which negatively affects the farm-gate price is oil palm supply. additionally, the factors which positively affect the crude palm oil price are the thirdclass rib smoked sheet, the crude palm oil price in the world market, as well as biodiesel price; in contrast, the factors which negatively affect the crude palm oil price is oil palm supply. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 690-697 692 jongsombatpibul and pornchaiwiseskul (2016) has analyzed the relationship, comparing the crude palm oil price and soybean oil price with biodiesel price by using weekly time series from 2006 to 2013 as well as using the econometric models, including the verification of long-run equilibrium relationship with the method of cointegration, and the analysis of the causal relationship with the method of granger causality. they found that the crude palm oil price drives the positively asymmetric price to the biodiesel price in the same direction; meanwhile, the relationships between crude palm oil price and soybean oil price contain the long-run equilibrium relationship in the unidirectional symmetric direction. as same as the study of chatsirapob (2018) who has studied the factors affecting the price of the crude palm oil in thailand using the monthly time series from january 2012 to december 2017 as 60 months in total as well as using multiple regression models. the result of chatsirapob (2018) found that the farm-gate price, palm stearin price, as well as exporting refined palm oil price are all the factors that affect the prices of the crude palm oil in thailand. however, several studies analyzed the price adjustments in various agricultural markets such as wongwaipairoth and limsomboonchai (2011), jatuporn and sukprasert (2016), and leurcharusmee and duangnate (2018) focused on the price integration among rubber markets of thailand. dawson and dey (2002), chien et al. (2011), and chulaphan et al. (2012) employed time series techniques to analyze the relationship among rice market prices in domestic levels of bangladesh, thailand, and the philippines respectively. goodwin (1992), bessler and fuller (1993), ghosh (2003), and valdes et al. (2011) conducted price interaction among wheat markets using the cointegration approaches. furthermore, von cramon‐taubadel and loy (1996), and ghoshray (2002) studied the price transmission among different market levels in the world using the various asymmetric models. according to the reasons as mentioned earlier, this study aims to analyze the effects from the change of palm oil price in the world market to the prices of oil palm and palm oil in thailand as well as the adjustment of oil palm and palm oil prices in thailand to the change of palm oil price in the world market. 2. research methodology the data used in this study is the monthly time series, starting from january 2008 to september 2019 as 141 months in total. the description of the variables and accessed sources of data are presented in table 1. table 1: the description of the variables variable description source y1 farm-gate price of oil palm office of agricultural economics* y2 wholesale price of crude palm oil bank of thailand y3 retail price of palm oil department of internal trade* y4 exporting price of palm oil ministry of commerce* x world market price of palm oil world bank * belongs to the government of thailand. note: the variables are converted into a logarithmic function to explain the relationship as a percentage change the time-series data must be verified since if the data contains the attribute of non-stationarity, it will cause the problem of spurious relationships (granger and newbold, 1974). in other words, the occurred relationship between the variables might be spurious owing to the influence of time. thus, the data attribute or data stationarity will be verified by using the method of the adf unit root of dickey and fuller (1979, 1981), considering the lag of the suitable time period by using the bayesian information criterion (bic) method as presented in eq. (1). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 690-697 693 ∆zt = α0 + δt + β1zt−1 + ∑ β2∆zt−i + εt … … … … … … … … … (1) p i=1 when ∆ is the differencing order, z is the time series (i.e., y1, y2, y3, y4, and x respectively), β and δ is the parameter coefficient, α is the constant term, t is the time trend, t is the time period, p is the optimal lag length, and ε is the error term. the cointegration method of engle and granger (1987) is used to analyze the effects of the change of palm oil price in the world market to the prices of oil palm and palm oil in thailand. the two steps are included, which are (1) the analysis of the long-run equilibrium models to derive the residual, and (2) the verification of the residual stationarity (asteriou and hall, 2007; gujarati and porter, 2009). step 1: the long-run equilibrium analysis. yt = α0 + β1xt + εt … … … … … … … … … (2) step 2: the stationary test of the residual from eq. (2). ∆ε̂t = β1ε̂t−1 + ∑ β2 p i=1 ∆ε̂t−i + vt … … … … … … … … … (3) when y and x are the time series, which contained the stationarity of i(1) process, and v is the white noise. the analysis of the long-run equilibrium relationship will be considered from the result of the verification of a stationary test in the second step or equation (3). if the residual is stationary at the level stage of the data, it shows that the long-run equilibrium relationship has occurred, or it can be said that the relationship in equation (2) is a long-run equilibrium relationship, not being a spurious relationship. on the contrary, if the result of the residual stationarity in equation (3) is nonstationary at the level stage, it shows that the relationship in equation (2) is not a long-run equilibrium relationship and contains the problem of the spurious result. when the cointegration can be proved to occur, the opportunity to analyze the short-run adjustment will be opened by using the error correction model (ecm) to explain in the case of shock resulting in the relationship being diverted back into the equilibrium. the model is presented in eq. (4). ∆yt = α0 + β1∆xt + ∑ β2∆xt−i p i=1 + ∑ β3 p i=1 ∆yt−i + γectt−1 + εt … … … … … (4) when γ is the speed of adjustment to the equilibrium, and ect is the error correction term or the disequilibrium term. 3. empirical results to analyze the effects from the change of palm oil price in the world market to the prices of oil palm and palm oil in thailand, and the adjustment of oil palm and palm oil prices in thailand to the change of palm oil price in the world market, there are four steps for the test including (1) verifying the stationarity of time series with the adf unit root, (2) creating the long-run equilibrium models asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 690-697 694 to derive the residual, (3) verifying the stationarity of the residual, and (4) analyzing the short-run adjustment based on the ecm respectively. the verification of stationarity of time series with the adf unit root in table 2 found that the variables of y1, y2, y3, y4, and x at the level stage provide the statistical values as (-2.067), (-2.101), (-1.679), (-3.149), and (-2.004) respectively, which cannot reject the null hypothesis (h0: non-stationarity). it can be concluded that at the level stage of the data, every variable is nonstationary; therefore, the first differencing order must be added to verify the stationarity again. next, it is discovered that the variables of y1, y2, y3, y4, and x provide the statistical values as (-9.359), (-9.303), (-8.674) (-10.535), and (-7.093) respectively, which can reject the hypothesis at the 0.05 level of statistical significance. the first difference proved the stationarity of all variables. table 2: results of adf unit root test variable at level first difference t-statistics p t-statistics p y1 -2.607 0 -9.359* 1 y2 -2.101 0 -9.303* 0 y3 -1.679 0 -8.674* 0 y4 -3.149 0 -10.535* 0 x -2.004 0 -7.093* 1 * is the statistical significance at 0.05 level the results of the long-run equilibrium relationship analysis in table 3 found that the verification of the residual stationarity with the adf unit root of the y1, y2, y3, and y4 models provide the statistical values as (-3.613), (-4.492), (-3.627), and (-3.839) respectively. in other words, the verification of the residual stationarity provides the rejected value to the null hypothesis of nonstationarity in every model. moreover, the marginal effects of the long-run equilibrium relationship are as the following. if the palm oil price in the world market (x) increases to 1%, it will affect the oil palm price or farm-gate price (y1) to be increased to 1.025% with the 0.05 level of statistical significance, which the models contain 59.203% of the capability for the prediction. if the palm oil price in the world market (x) increases to 1%, it will increase wholesale price of palm oil (y2) to 0.993%, which the models contain 70.997% of the capability for the prediction. however, if it increases by 1%, it will raise the retail price of palm oil (y3) to 0.381% at 5% level of significance, which the models contain 63.826% of the capability for the prediction. if the palm oil price in the world market (x) increases to 1%, it will affect the exporting price of palm oil (y4) to be increased to 0.733 with the 0.05 level of statistical significance, which the models contain 38.181% of the capability for the prediction. table 3: the long-run equilibrium and short-run adjustment to the equilibrium tests variable model y1 y2 y3 y4 α0 -1.941 0.044 2.422 1.016 x 1.025* 0.993* 0.381* 0.733* r2 statistics 0.592 0.709 0.638 0.381 adf (residual) -3.613* -4.492* -3.627* -3.839* ectt-1 -0.278* -0.227* -0.156* -0.187 * * is the statistical significance at 0.05 level asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 690-697 695 as the analysis results of the short-run adjustment to approach to the equilibrium using the ecm model in table 3, it is found that if it contains the case of shocks or changes which affect the relationship to be apart from the equilibrium, the system will adjust to approaching to the equilibrium again by considering the coefficient of ectt-1. according to the information in table 3, it can summarise that if the case of shocks or the fluctuation of palm oil price in the world market has occurred, the oil palm price or farm-gate price, the wholesale price, the retail price, as well as the exporting price will adjust to approaching to the equilibrium with the speeds of 27.883%, 22.710%, 15.658%, and 18.792% respectively. 4. concluding remarks regarding this study, it aims to analyze the effects from the change of palm oil price in the world market to the prices of oil palm and palm oil in thailand as well as the adjustment of oil palm and palm oil prices in thailand to the change of palm oil price in the world market using the monthly time series data starting from january 2008 to september 2019. the empirical results found that the oil palm price or farm-gate price (y1), the wholesale price of palm oil (y2), the retail price of palm oil (y3), as well as the exporting price of palm oil (y4), have the long-run equilibrium relationship with the palm oil price (x) in the world market with the statistical significance. the results can be summarised that when the palm oil price in the world market changes or fluctuates, the oil palm price or the farm-gate price will be most affected by the aforementioned changes, followed by the wholesale price of palm oil, exporting price of palm oil, and retail price of palm oil respectively. nonetheless, the models of exporting price of palm oil can predict/explain only 38.18% because the exporting price depends on other environmental factors out of the palm oil price in the world market; for instance, the exchange rate, the price of a substitute product, the demand and supply of oil palm, the stocked oil palm, seasons, and so on. meanwhile, the results of the short-run adjustment analysis present that the oil palm price or farm-gate price contains the highest speed adjustment, followed by the wholesale price of palm oil, exporting price of palm oil, and retail price of palm oil respectively. moreover, it can be noticed that the oil palm price or the farm-gate price is mostly affected from the change of the palm oil price in the world market since it is the upstream price level of the supply chain of the palm oil production which cannot be stocked; thereby, when the palm oil price in the world market has changed either increase or decrease, it will affect the oil palm price or the farm-gate price directly. however, the oil palm price or farm-gate price is the highest speed of adjustment to the change of palm oil price in the world market due to the supported policy of the government sector and promoting the pricing stability in the farm-gate level. consequently, the oil palm price or farm-gate price will be adjusted approaching equilibrium rapidly. meanwhile, the retail price of palm oil is the least affected by the change of the palm oil price in the world market because it is the downstream price level of the supply chain in palm oil production, so the effects are not too strong when compared with the very upstream price level as a farm-gate price; moreover, there are a small number of the refinery to produce the readymade bottle of palm oil, together with the government sector also provides the compensation as a pricing difference to the palm oil refinery which is affected from the price control which is lower than the production cost. however, the retail price of palm oil has a slow speed adjustment to the change of the palm oil price in the world market due to government intervention by setting the maximum price control or price ceiling of the price controls and price subsidies. also, the price of readymade palm oil will be able to be stocked and be replaced by soybean oil, lard, coconut oil, and so forth. therefore, the adjustment of the retail price of palm oil to approach the equilibrium is quite unhurried, not too fast (tokrisna et al., 2013; thailand oil palm board, 2019). the government sector should provide the urgent measures in short-term duration to cope with the effects from the palm oil price fluctuation in the world market, especially for the oil palm price or the farm-gate price which directly affecting the farmers; for example, the income insurance, market asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 690-697 696 intervention measures, etc. furthermore, the government sector should not use the aforementioned measures in the long term since it will affect the great number of expenses and budgets as well as will distort the market mechanism, which is not good to both the supply chain of oil palm production and the whole system of palm oil. additionally, the government sector should also provide the long-term measures to cope with the effects of the palm oil price fluctuation in the world market; to illustrate, the government sector should promote the planting of other crops to replace the oil palm planting or even promote the integrated farming system, the reduction of the production costs, the administration of the domestic stocked palm oil to be effective, as well as to promote and to develop the use of palm oil as a raw material to produce alternative energy. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that there are no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references asteriou, d., & hall, s. g. 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(2011). analysis of price integration of thailand ribbed smoked sheet no. 3. hatyai journal, 9(1), 59-66. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 53 challenges of arabica coffee marketing: a case study in kerinci regency, indonesia boris kaidoa nina takashinob katsuhito fuyukic a,b,cdepartment of resource and environmental economics, graduate school of agricultural science, tohoku university, japan.  boris.kaido.s1@dc.tohoku.ac.jp (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 10 november 2020 revised: 23 december 2020 accepted: 8 january 2021 published: 26 january 2021 keywords agriculture cooperative commodity export farmers quality. indonesia has several arabica coffee varieties that are well known in the domestic and world markets. however, marketing challenges exist for the domestic market and few cooperatives are able to export. arabica coffee kerinci, a cooperative that exports, is an exception; nevertheless, marketing challenges persist for this cooperative too. our objectives are to examine a case study of a successful cooperative that focuses on the export market and to clarify the challenges remaining for arabica coffee marketing. descriptive statistics were employed to capture the complexities of these marketing challenges. semi-structured interviews using simple random sampling were conducted with the cooperative’s leader and with 51 farmers. we find that the fundamental challenges are quality inconsistency, price fluctuations, lengthy and bureaucratic export administration, absence of bank loans, and lack of government support. we recommend the following key steps: (1) focusing on improvements in producing and maintaining superior quality that meets export standards and provides capital stimulus; and (2) through greater government and industry synergy, encouraging governments to provide support to farmers and cooperatives alike. further, other indonesian regions could adopt arabica coffee for rural development. this study contributes by formulating a better understanding of the major challenges facing producers of agricultural commodities. contribution/originality: this study is one of very few studies to have focused on arabica coffee, sales from a cooperative where there is no intermediary, and the export market. previous studies in indonesia have focused on robusta coffee, the domestic market, and the role of intermediaries. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.53.62 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: boris kaido --nina takashino --katsuhito fuyuki (2021). challenges of arabica coffee marketing: a case study in kerinci regency, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 53-62. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.53.62 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction coffee, as a key plantation commodity, is a significant mainstay of the indonesian economy because it is a source of foreign exchange and farmer income, contributes to the production of raw industrial materials, and leads to job creation and regional development (saragih, 2013). therefore, locally produced coffee has become a key export commodity for indonesia and a government priority for agricultural development (putu yudhia kurniawan, halil, rasid bin abdul razzaq, & jumintono, 2020). asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 53-62 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2208-5944 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0207-2302 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7255-7145 mailto:boris.kaido.s1@dc.tohoku.ac.jp http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.53.62 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 53-62 54 globally, two main varieties of coffee are planted: arabica and robusta. since 2016, the production of arabica coffee (102 million bags; one bag equals 60 kg) has been significantly higher than that of robusta coffee (56 million bags). nevertheless, indonesian arabica coffee production is still relatively low, at approximately 8% of world production, amounting to 637,000 tons in 2017 (sedana & astawa, 2019). various arabica specialty coffees are produced by farmers within different regions in indonesia—for example, bali kintamani coffee, flores bajawa coffee, gayo coffee, toraja coffee, and arabica kerinci (belachew, teferi, & gidisa, 2015; fadhil, maarif, bantacut, & hermawan, 2018; sedana & astawa, 2016). specialty coffee has serious potential to generate higher income for farmers and exporters through more effective processing and strong quality product standards (poltronieri & rossi, 2016). aknesia, daryanto, and kirbrandoko (2015) confirm that the specific taste of each coffee type is strongly influenced by the harvesting and processing techniques at the farmer level. arabica coffee also has a higher selling price on the international market compared with other coffee types because of its lower caffeine content of 0.8–1.4%, lower bitterness, higher acidity level, and usual fragrant fruit or flower aroma (novitasari, 2019). indonesian coffee has become very popular globally because of its rich taste and strong aroma (faradillah, saany, & el-ebiary, 2019). however, when international export coffee prices fell in 2000, indonesian coffee producers were significantly affected and have not recovered since (rahayu, chang, & anindita, 2015). thus, the management of coffee farming in indonesia generates relatively little income at the farmer level. there are several additional reasons for this, including low productivity, poor product quality, low local price, and limited access to information, technology, and markets (lamare, ngome, eyenga, mbassi, & suh, 2017; minh, trang, & chen, 2016). one of the fundamental problems for agricultural products, including coffee, is marketing. (valkila, 2009) finds that farmers’ incomes depend on two major factors: market prices and premium prices at the farmer level (both marketing problems). one way to solve coffee marketing problems is to increase coffee exports to international markets. however, exporting from indonesia remains a major challenge (dirjenbun/directorate general of plantation, 2018). over 65% of indonesian coffee exports are grade iv, which is categorized as inferior coffee quality and is subject to an export ban. if not addressed, the quality of indonesian coffee will remain as it is today and thus coffee will remain uncompetitive on the international market. the alam kerinci cooperative was formed in 2016. its establishment was the result of a joint decision between 13 coffee farmer associations in the area; the cooperative is an example of the successful empowerment of small local farmers in kerinci regency to export arabica coffee. figure 1 illustrates the progress of the cooperative. figure-1. development of the alam kerinci cooperative. business activities of the alam kerinci cooperative include the development of coffee entrepreneurs, sustainable farming practices, the establishment of a mini coffee-processing factory, and coffee tourism development. many studies have been conducted on specific coffee marketing problems in indonesia. desiana, rochdiani, and pardani (2017), hariance, febriamansyah, and tanjung (2016), and winarno and harisudin (2018) studied robusta coffee marketing problems. their studies examine past problems, focusing on the domestic market and the significant role of intermediaries. our study differs in that our focus is on a situation wherein the role of intermediaries does not exist—this role is replaced by that of cooperatives, which have succeeded in exporting arabica coffee and cutting out intermediaries. we pay attention to the problem of marketing indonesian arabica coffee to the international market. this work’s first objective is to study a successful cooperative that focuses on the export market ; the second is to clarify the remaining challenges in arabica coffee marketing. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 53-62 55 the remainder of this paper is organized as follows. section 2 summarizes the methods, explaining the research site and qualitative data collection approach. section 3 presents the results and a discussion, detailing the characteristics of sample respondents and their statements on arabica coffee farming. additionally, the flow of the production and marketing is presented, along with the challenges to arabica coffee export. section 4 presents our conclusions and recommendations. 2. materials and methods owing to the characteristics of our study area and respondents, a case study approach was used to capture the complexities of the marketing challenges of arabica coffee farming in indonesia. kerinci regency, jambi province, indonesia was chosen as the study area. in january 2020, semi-structured questionnaire interviews were conducted with the leader of the alam kerinci cooperative and 51 farmers (using simple random sampling). a summary of the questionnaire survey is presented in table 1. the survey focused on the marketing challenges faced by the cooperative and individual farmers. socioeconomic data, including age, ethnicity, education, farming size, and coffee farming experience, were also collected, and descriptive statistical analysis was performed using spss version 25.0 (2017). table-1. summary of questionnaire survey. parameters cooperative farmers enterprise/land ownership (%) group 100 private 98 lease 2 marketing challenges (%) capital 19.6 bank loan 100 price 90 72.6 external challenges (%) government support 60 96.2 infrastructures 30 15.7 administration 47 7.8 foreign language ability 60 price fixing (%) cooperative international buyer 100 94.1 domestic buyer local milling 5.9 capacity production (kg) 7700 212 employees (no.) 72 3 kerinci regency is the largest producer of arabica coffee in jambi province, accounting for approximately 67% of arabica coffee production. there are only two areas with large arabica coffee production centers in the province— kerinci regency, with a planted area of 809 ha and 144 t of arabica coffee production, and sungai penuh city, with a planted area of 601 ha but production of only 70 t. arabica coffee from kerinci regency is focused on the export market, with only a small proportion sold domestically (bps/statistic central bureau, 2018). table 2 provides an overview of total production, land size, and market destinations of arabica coffee in jambi province. table-2. total production, land size, and market destinations of arabica coffee in jambi province. area land size production market (%) (ha) (t) domestic export kerinci regency 809 144 10 90 merangin regency 0 0 0 0 sarolangun regency 0 0 0 0 batanghari regency 0 0 0 0 muaro jambi regency 0 0 0 0 east tanjung jabung regency 0 0 0 0 west tanjung jabung regency 0 0 0 0 tebo regency 0 0 0 0 bungo regency 0 0 0 0 jambi city 0 0 0 0 sungai penuh city 601 70 98.57 1.43 indonesia total 22,8709 11,9378 27.16 72.84 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 53-62 56 3. results and discussion the cooperative has 25 farmer groups with 514 farmers, spread evenly over 22 villages and 5 subdistricts ranging from kayu aro, gunung tujuh, west kayu aro, sulak, gunung raya, and semurup, to the east air hangat district. this cooperative also supports four female groups who are committed to empowering and equalizing gender in arabica coffee farming. the cooperative covers a land area of 310 ha, with plantations at an average height of 1,300–1,600 m above sea level, for arabica coffee production. the cooperative prioritizes the use of labor resources from around the kerinci regency area and employs 72 workers to run the cooperative. the characteristics of the cooperative are summarized in table 3. table-3. characteristics of the cooperative. characteristics description ownership group farmer group 25 female farmer group 4 villages covered 22 subdistricts covered 5 land area (ha) 310 established (year) 2016 employees (no.) 72 farmer members (no.) 514 height of planted land (m above sea level) 1,300–1,600 according to the research survey, the purpose of using local labor is to help villagers continue to generate income and encourage the young to stay and develop their villages rather than migrate to cities. the research findings reveal that the success factors of the alam kerinci cooperative are the cohesive goals of the coffee farmer association (most of the members are well-educated indigenous youth) to increase the economy of kerinci regency through arabica coffee and initial support by ngos for cooperative formation and export training. as part of the commitment as a member of the cooperative, to ensure the preservation of the environment and protected forests, all farmers who join confirm that they will not plant arabica coffee in protected forest areas or national parks. the sociodemographic statistics of the respondents are shown in table 4 and the characteristics of arabica coffee farming in table 5. table-4. sociodemographic statistics of respondents. sociodemographics number mean sex ratio (%) male 96.1 female 3.9 age (years) 45.7 ethnicity (%) javanese 96.1 bataknese 2 indigenous 2 education (%) elementary school 54.9 junior high school 29.4 high school 15.7 land ownership (%) own land 98 lease 2 secondary job (%) no 15.7 yes 84.3 farming experience (years) 7 number of observations: 51 table 4 shows that over 96% of the respondents were men and less than 4% were female. the average age was around 45 years. in terms of ethnicity, about 96% of the respondents were from a javanese tribe not native to kerinci regency. respondents had low levels of education, with only about 55% completing elementary school. experience was the key driver of improved agricultural production and efficiency (bozoglu, baser, eroglu, & topuz, 2020), with the average farming experience being >7 years. most land for arabica coffee growing was private (98.04%) and most of the planted arabica coffee did not come from certified seed (96.07%). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 53-62 57 table-5. characteristics of arabica coffee farming. characteristic number mean std. dev. crop failure (%) ever 80.4 never 19.6 form on sale (%) red cherry 86.3 mix of green and red cherry logs 13.4 price information (%) from cooperative 94.1 from others 5.9 sales destination (%) cooperative 94.1 powder coffee mill 5.9 farmer group (%) joined 54.9 not joined 45.1 price determination (%) cooperative 94.1 others 5.9 reason for sales to cooperative (%) safe 27.5 higher price 72.6 coffee varieties (%) sigarar utang 60 andung sari 20 p-88 20 farming size (ha) 1.1 1.1 employees (no.) 3 1.34 production (kg/ha) 212 195.5 harvest numbers (year) 22 3.4 certified seed applied (%) 3.9 intercropping applied (%) 90.2 number of observations: 51 of the respondents, about 90% followed intercrop planting by also growing vegetables that were quick to harvest. these were frequently planted between coffee plants not yet producing fruit. in this way, farmers were able to gain some income while waiting for coffee plants to produce fruit. saragih (2013) shows how the intercrop system contributes significantly to higher productivity and income on coffee farms. among arabica coffee, sigarar utang (60%) is the dominant variety planted by farmers. this variety is said to be grown widely in the simalungun district as well, and its development is considered an interesting phenomenon (saragih, 2013). among the respondents, about 84% also held secondary jobs (e.g., a small grocery store in their house) but relied mainly on arabica coffee as their source of income. the level of crop failure was calculated at around 20%; one factor that minimized coffee harvest failure was the experience of respondents with arabica coffee cultivation. because not all farmers were able to produce harvested coffee beans in the form of red cherries to fulfill the quality requested by the cooperative, about 14% continued to sell coffee beans in the form of a red cherry mix and green logs of arabica coffee beans. to acquire money quickly for urgent needs, such as children’s school fees, farmers picked the green log beans of the coffee fruit to sell directly. these green log beans were sold not to the cooperative, but to the local coffee powder mill in kerinci regency (5.88%), which does not require red cherry. from the interview conducted, this situation of selling to the powder mill compounds the low selling prices the farmers are receiving, coupled with the fact that there is no official binding contract between farmers and the cooperative requiring the former to deliver a certain quota of coffee beans. conversely, the prime advantage of a contractual agreement for farmers is that the sponsor will normally purchase all produce grown, within specified quality and quantity parameters. generally, contract farming ensures the marketing of produce while farmer organizations reduce the cost of the farming business, provide more bargaining power to farmers – which results in higher profits for them – and help farmers achieve higher returns by increasing product quality and targeting market niches (sokchea & culas, 2015). farmers are free to determine the selling destination of their arabica coffee and its quality. of the respondents, 72.55% indicated their reason for selling to the cooperative as their ability to acquire a higher price, and 27.45% stated that it felt safe selling to the cooperative (farmers trust the price given and that there is no price game). in general, the survey reflected low awareness of the benefits of the cooperative, as 45.1% of respondents stated that they had not joined the farmers’ group in the cooperative. this finding – regarding the number of farmers that had not joined farmer groups – contrasts with that of previous studies that the existence of coffee farmers’ groups creates an inclusive business. strong social interaction among the members of the farmers’ group could generate strong asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 53-62 58 social capital to achieve the group’s aims, as well as increase the productivity of farmers (sedana, ambarawati, & windia, 2014). arabica coffee farm sizes in kerinci regency are generally classified as small – only around 1.12 ha. this drives the small size of the required workforce, which is around three people during peak harvesting time. the arabica coffee harvest season usually starts in may and june and ends around august or september. the harvest period lasts four to five months, with coffee picking taking place every 10–14 days in a rotation system. thus, the total harvest can span 22 times per year with a production rate of 211.9 kg/ha. 3.1. challenges of arabica coffee marketing 3.1.1. overview of channel marketing based on the study interviews, we were able to identify the production and marketing flow. figure 2 presents these findings. figure-2. arabica coffee production/market flow in kerinci regency. the farmers sell arabica coffee beans in the form of red cherry fruit directly to the cooperative, which then sells the dried green beans directly to either the domestic market or the export market. there is no intermediary in this process in kerinci regency. thus, farmers are able to enjoy a fair price for their arabica coffee beans in this direct marketing process (see table 6). table-6. price, coffee form, and market. characteristics market description % export (t/month) 7 domestic (t/month) 0.7 export price (idr) 80,000 domestic price (idr) 65,000 price purchase (idr) 8,500 price fixing (farmers) by cooperative 100 price fixed (buyer) by buyer 100 coffee form red cherry 100 coffee form for export dry green bean 100 coffee form for domestic market green bean, roasted 30-70 export market 90 domestic market 10 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 53-62 59 few farmers are able to meet the quality required by the cooperative’s standards of picking red arabica coffee fruit (red cherry). as farmers indicate their need for cash to pay for urgent living requirements (such as daily needs and education fees), ultimately, they choose to harvest arabica coffee fruit not in the form of red cherry and sell to the local powder coffee mill that does not have this requirement. 3.1.2. challenges for the cooperative the cooperative acts as both processor and seller. there are many obstacles faced by the cooperative in running the production and marketing processes for farmers’ coffee yields in kerinci regency. the obstacle of buying and selling an uncertain quality of coffee beans harvested by farmers makes it difficult for the cooperative to ensure the higher quality of arabica dry green coffee beans required by export market standards. this situation opens the door for the emergence of intermediary traders. intermediary traders take advantage of inconsistencies in the quality of arabica coffee produced by farmers. as stated by fafchamps and hill (2005), the lack of information on prices, quality, and linkages between farmers and other market actors, credit constraints, and other market imperfections push peasants to sell their crops (coffee) at the farm gate to intermediaries, often at a low price. thus, they do not take advantage of market opportunities; they are willing to accommodate all kinds of quality coffee produced by farmers at lower prices than those offered by the cooperative. because kerinci regency is still a developing regency with a geographical location far from the city, obtaining proper technology for processing and marketing also remains an obstacle for the cooperative. based on the research survey, the main destination of arabica dry coffee green products from the cooperative is the export market, but a key obstacle in this process is the fulfillment of documents from the customs board and government agencies that need to accompany the products. this process is complicated, lengthy, and bureaucratic, thus causing a long waiting period for marketing of arabica coffee beans from the cooperative. yet, the cooperative does not focus on the domestic market because of the low local consumption of arabica coffee per capita in indonesia. therefore, these challenges make it difficult for the cooperative to provide higher prices to farmers. this situation relates to the need for government support to provide training and technical improvements in arabica coffee cultivation to produce coffee beans of equal size (homogeneous) and higher quality. from the interview conducted with the cooperative leader, this role is met more by ngos and private companies (e.g., world wide fund for nature and emurgo) that support the cooperative and farmers. for the certification process, the cooperative faces the same challenges – an inconsistent supply of red cherry arabica coffee from farmers. this makes it difficult to meet the export quota demand from international buyers. there is also a lack of knowledge and experience among those in the cooperative in filing the necessary documents to export dry green bean arabica coffee abroad. in the end, the high standards of international buyers, both in terms of quality and standard administrative documents, make it difficult for the cooperative to export coffee to meet the demands of international buyers. further details on the challenges of the cooperative are summarized in figure 3. figure-3. challenges for the cooperative. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 53-62 60 3.1.3. challenges for farmers table 7 lists the main challenges faced by farmers. table-7. challenges for farmers. challenge number % difficulty in selling none 46 90.2 cumulation yields 1 2 payment delay 3 5.9 dickering 1 2 government support none 49 96.2 seed and fertilizer 1 2 shade plant 1 2 bank loan no 51 100 yes 0 0 financial hurdles price 37 72.6 capital 10 19.6 administration 4 7.8 certification low awareness 32 69 no socialization 14 27.5 never heard 5 9.8 production pathway good 31 60.8 adequate 12 23.5 poor 8 15.7 internet usage applied 26 51 not applied 12 23.5 unable to use 13 25.5 welfare, basic facilities good 30 58.8 adequate 7 13.7 poor 14 27.5 number of observations: 51 the data in table 7 show that price instability was considered a crucial and sensitive challenge for farmers in kerinci regency. among respondents, 72.55% indicated that there was often a problem of price fluctuation during the peak harvesting season when farmers had an abundant supply of arabica coffee (table 8). they stated that this made it difficult to market to the cooperative, and 10% of the those surveyed referenced capital problems as a challenge. another important challenge was the problem of the availability and affordability of agricultural materials and tools for farmers. among respondents, 54.9% reported that the materials and agricultural equipment needed to produce higher-quality arabica coffee yields were expensive for farmers. table-8. quality, price range, and actors. quality wet form price range (idr) market actors involved high 7,000–9,000 cooperative low 4,000–5,500 intermediary trader availability of bank loans was another crucial marketing challenge in kerinci regency. none of the respondents had received loan support from banks to extend farming land size or support their cultivation and post-harvest facilities and infrastructure. in terms of the certification process, 69% of respondents had little awareness of the certification process – either for the quality of the coffee they produced or their cultivation process. among respondents, 27.45% explained that they never participated in any socialization or communication around the certification of the cultivation process or the quality of arabica coffee yield. although the role of local and central governments is critical in the advancement of farmers’ livelihoods and in improving their standard of living through arabica coffee farming, over 96% of respondents stated that they received no support from the government. fortunately, with the advent of the internet era, farmers are well acquainted with using internet technology to find information and support their coffee-related cultivation process. thus, over 50% of farmers indicated that they have used the internet to supplement their knowledge about arabica coffee. it has also become a source for farmers to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 53-62 61 gain unbiased information about prices and the latest knowledge on coffee cultivation. these findings are in line with those of previous studies stating that farmers should accumulate better knowledge, attitudes, and skills on coffee cultivation practices (megerssa, michael, & teshome, 2012). the findings provide information about the success factors of the alam kerinci cooperative: the cohesive goals of the coffee farmer association to increase the economy of kerinci regency through arabica coffee, and initial support by ngos for cooperative formation and export training. however, our study is limited because we do not clarify the income level of the farmers and the cooperative owing to data constraints. therefore, it is unknown whether the problems of marketing arabica coffee have a significant effect on income; we focus only on the marketing challenges faced by farmers and the cooperative. detailed data on income level and the costs of all economic actors involved in arabica coffee marketing should be extracted in future research. other rural areas could adopt our novel findings from the alam kerinci cooperative’s success in revealing major arabica coffee marketing problems and promoting indonesian rural development. 4. conclusion our findings contribute to a better understanding of the major challenges facing agricultural commodities, particularly arabica coffee in rural areas, thereby providing a basis for improvements that can increase productivity of. based on the results, we recommend strategies that ease arabica coffee marketing challenges by focusing on improvements in the production and quality of the coffee to meet international market standards and on the provision of capital stimulus to farmers to increase their farming output. funding: this study was supported by the japan society for the promotion of science core-tocore program–advanced research networks (the establishment of international agricultural immunology research core for a quantum improvement in food safety). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors would like to thank the leader of the alam kerinci cooperative and farmers in the 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(2018). competitiveness analysis of robusta coffee in east java, indonesia. academy of strategic management journal, 17(6),1-9. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 204 effect of chicken fertilizer combination and concentration of organic liquid fertilizer (lof) on growth and results of sawi plant (brassica junceae l.) shinta variety budiasih, r.a  sandi hadiana mohamad agus salim b m. subandic a department of agrotechnology, winaya mukti university, sumedang, indonesia b department of biology, the state islamic university of sunan gunung djati of badnung, indonesia c department of agrotechnology, the state islamic university of sunan gunung djati of bandung, indonesia  entybudiasih@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 06-aug-2018 accepted: 07-jan-2019 online available: 04-feb2019 keywords: liquid organic fertilizer, manure, shinta variety abstract this research was aimed to test the efficacy of organic liquid fertilizer and to know its effect on the growth and yield of sawi plant. the environmental design used was randomized block design (rbd), consisting of nine treatments and each repeated three times. the combination treatment of chicken manure and liquid organic fertilizer were tested, namely : a = stable chicken manure 0 ton ha-1 + lof 0 ml l-1 solution, b = stable chicken manure 0 ton ha-1 + lof 3 ml l-1 solution, c = stable chicken manure 0 ton ha-1 + lof 6 ml l-1 solution, d = stable chicken manure 10 ton ha-1 + lof 0 ml l-1 solution, e = stable chicken manure 10 ton ha-1 + lof 3 ml l-1 solution, f = stable chicken manure 10 ton ha-1 + lof 6 ml l-1 solution, g = stable chicken manure 20 ton ha-1 + lof 0 ml l-1 solution, h = stable chicken manure (dung) 20 ton ha-1 + lof 3 ml l-1 solution, i = stable chicken manure 20 ton ha-1 + lof 6 ml l-1 solution. the results showed that the combination of chicken manure and liquid organic fertilizer had a significantly different effect on all growth parameters and yield of shinta variety mustard plants, using a combination of chicken manure dosage of 20 tons ha-1 and liquid organic fertilizer with a concentration of 6 ml l1 solution give a better influence on the growth and yield of shinta variety mustard plants. contribution/ originality using randomized block design (rbd), this research tested the efficacy of organic liquid fertilizer and to know its effect on the growth and yield of sawi plant. the used design consisting of nine treatments and each repeated three times. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.204.209 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: budiasih, r., sandi hadian, mohamad agus salim and m. subandi (2018). effect of chicken fertilizer combination and concentration of organic liquid fertilizer (lof) on growth and results of sawi plant (brassica junceae l.) shinta variety. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 204-209. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 204-209 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5816-3329 mailto:entybudiasih@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.204.209 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 204-209 205 1. introduction vegetable plants are commodities that are mostly consumed fresh, as a source of vitamins and minerals for humans, even some of them contain antioxidants which are believed to inhibit cancer cells. leaf vegetables are a source of essential vitamins and minerals that are needed by the human body, besides leaf vegetables contain lots of fiber. fiber for the body functions to help facilitate digestion and can prevent cancer (haryanto et al., 2006). sawi (brassica juncea l.) has a high economic value after cabbage and broccoli. in addition, this plant also contains minerals, vitamins, protein and calories. therefore, this plant is a vegetable commodity that is quite popular in indonesia (rukmana, 1994). the nutrients contained in 100 g of mustard include: 95 g of water, 1.2 g of protein, 0.2 g of fat, 1.2 g of carbohydrates, 5800 iu of vitamin a, 0.04 mg of vitamin b1, 0.07 vitamin b2, 0.5 mg niacin, 53 mg of vitamin c, 102 mg of calcium, 2.0 mg of iron, 27 mg of magnesium, 37 mg of phosphorus, 180 mg of potassium and 100 mg of sodium (opera and tay, 1994). the production of mustard commodities in indonesia in 2016 with a harvest area of 60,600 ha, production reached 601,200 tons, then the average yield (productivity) reached 9.92 tons ha-1 (central statistics agency and directorate general of horticulture, 2017; mohamad at al., 2013). the average yield per hectare of mustard plants nationally is still low compared to the potential yields of the shinta varieties of mustard plants which are between 25 tons ha-1 30 tons ha-1. the average yield per hectare that is still low is thought to be caused by several factors, including how to cultivate crops that have not been intensive, one of which is unbalanced fertilization methods, in addition to declining agricultural productivity due to continued use of agricultural businesses. continuously without good management, also due to cultivation techniques that still prioritize high inorganic nutrient inputs regardless of plant needs, so that the fertilizer given does not have an impact on plants but causes problems for the environment or agricultural land nutrient inputs regardless of plant needs, so that they do not have an impact on plants but causes problems for the environment or agricultural land. chicken manure (dung) at this time has been widely used by farmers, because many large-scale chicken farms in indonesia provide an opportunity to use chicken manure as fertilizer. from the results of several studies chicken manure has a very good influence on soil fertility and plant growth, even better than other manure. (lingga and marsono, 2007; subandi, 2012), state that plants are not enough to rely solely on nutrients from the soil. therefore, plants need to be given nutrients from outside. because manure has a low nutrient content, to supplement it, additional fertilizer is needed in the form of liquid star organic fertilizer as a supplier of nutrients for plants. star nutrition organic fertilizer contains organic c: 6.7%, n total: 5.63%, p2o5: 3.87%, k2o: 4.71%, ph: 5.12 amino acids, vitamins, and acids other organics (chelating agent), growth regulators and bioactive compounds to increase the growth of beneficial organisms in the soil and in leaves. the advantages of liquid nutrient organic star nutrition include: macro and micro nutrients, stimulate flowering and fertilization initiation, reduce flower and fruit loss, improve yield quality, plant growth regulators, bioremediators and soil bioactivators, increase nutrient absorption and fertilizer efficiency, reduce fertilizer use npk around 25% and manure around 50%, improve plant health and reduce the use of pesticides and are environmentally friendly (elhamady, 2017). the provision of chicken manure through the soil as well as the provision of liquid organic fertilizer through leaves must pay attention to the balance and suitability of the types of plants, regarding nutrients and concentrations and doses needed, so that the crop yield can be maximized. therefore it is necessary to conduct research on the effect of combination of chicken cage asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 204-209 206 fertilizer measurements and liquid organic fertilizer concentration (lof) on the growth and yield of sawi plants (brassica junceae l.) of shinta varieties. 2. research methods 2.1. place and time of research this experiment was conducted in pasigaran village, tanjungsari district, sumedang regency with an altitude of 892 meters above sea level (asl). the type of rainfall is c (slightly wet) according to schmidt and ferguson (1951), which is presented in appendix 1. the trial period is held from may to july 2018. 2.2. materials and tools the materials used in this experiment were shinta varieties of mustard seeds (description listed in appendix 2), chicken manure, bintang nutrient liquid organic fertilizer, and rizotin 100 ec insecticide. the tools used are ruler, rool meter, hoe, camera, stationery, treatment label, drop pipette, rapia rope, measuring cup, hand sprayer, emitter and digital scales. 2.3. research methods the environmental design used in this experiment was a simple randomized block design (rbd) consisting of 9 treatments and 3 replications. namely: a = 0 tons ha-1 chicken manure + 0 ml l-1 liquid organic fertilizer, b = 0 tons ha-1 chicken manure (dung) + 3 ml l-1 liquid organic fertilizer, c = 0 tons fertilizer ha-1 chicken cage + 6 ml l-1 liquid organic fertilizer, d = 10 tons ha-1 chicken manure + 0 ml l-1 liquid organic fertilizer, e = 10 tons ha-1 chicken manure + 3 ml l-1 organic fertilizer liquid, f = 10 tons ha-1 chicken manure + 6 ml l-1 liquid organic fertilizer, g = 20 tons ha-1 chicken manure + 0 ml l-1 liquid organic fertilizer, h = 20 tons of fertilizer ha-1 chicken cage + 3 ml l-1 liquid organic fertilizer, i = 20 tons ha-1 chicken manure + 6 ml l-1 liquid organic fertilizer. 3. results and discussion 3.1. plant height (cm) data analysis on plant height aged 10 dap, 15 dap, 20 dap and 25 dap can be seen in appendix 6, appendix 7, appendix 8 and appendix 9. from the results of variance analysis showed that there was a significant diversity between the combination treatment of chicken manure and the concentration of liquid organic fertilizer on plant height at the age of 10 dap, 15 dap, 20 dap and 25 dap. data from the results of further analysis are presented in table 1. table 1: effect of combination of combination of chicken manure (dung) and liquid organic fertilizer on age plant height 10 dap, 15 dap, 20 dap and 25 dap treatments mean of plant height 10 dap 15 dap 20 dap 25 dap combination of dung --------------cm -------------- + lof : a (0 ton ha-1 + 0 ml l-1) 7,90 a 13,57 a 16,83 a 22,83 a b (0 ton ha-1 + 3 ml l-1) 9,00 ab 14,45 a 19,67 abc 26,43 abc c (0 ton ha-1 + 6 ml l-1) 8,09 a 13,39 a 18,25 ab 25,31ab d (10 ton ha-1 + 0 ml l-1) 10,78 bc 16,45 cd 23,44 cd 30,17 cd e (10 ton ha-1 + 3 ml l-1) 11,25 cde 14,69 ab 22,55 bcd 29,79 bcd f (10 ton ha-1 + 6 ml l-1) 12,20 de 17,13 cd 24,93 d 31,06 cd g (20 ton ha-1 + 0 ml l-1) 10,35 bc 16,32 bc 23,77 cd 30,19 cd h (20 ton ha-1 + 3 ml l-1) 11,47 cde 17,54 cd 24,47 cd 31,35 d asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 204-209 207 i (20 ton ha-1 + 6 ml l-1) 12,71 e 18,20 d 25,56 d 32,69 d note: the average number followed by the same letters in each column that shows the same is not significant according to duncan's multiple distance test at the level of 5% real table 1. shows that the combination treatment of chicken manure doses and the concentration of different liquid organic fertilizers have a significantly different effect on plant height aged 10 dap, 15 dap, 20 dap and 25 dap. at the age of 10 dap the effect of the combination of chicken manure dose and the concentration of liquid organic fertilizer treatment i had a significantly different effect on treatments a, b, c, d and g but differed not significantly in treatment e, f and h. at the age of 15 dap the effect the combination of dose of chicken manure and the concentration of liquid organic fertilizer treatment i had a significantly different effect on treatment a, b, c, e and g but differed not significantly in treatment d, f and h. at the age of 20 dap and 25 dap the effect of dose combinations chicken manure and the treatment of liquid i organic fertilizer concentrations had a significantly different effect on treatments a, b and c, but did not differ significantly in treatment d, e, f, g, and h. 3.2. number of leaves (strands) analysis of data regarding the number of leaves aged 10 dap, 15 dap, 20 dap and 25 dap can be seen in appendix 10, appendix 11, appendix 12 and appendix 13. from the results of variance analysis showed that there was a significant variation between the combination treatment of chicken manure and the concentration of liquid organic fertilizer on the number of leaves at 10 dap, 15 dap, 20 dap and 25 dap. data from the results of further analysis are presented in table 2. table 2: effect of combination of manure (dung) and liquid organic fertilizer measurements on the number of leaves at 10 dap, 15 dap, 20 dap and 25 dap treatment mean of leaf number 10 dap 15 dap 20 dap 25 dap combination of dung and + lof : a (0 ton ha-1 + 0 ml l-1) 4,33 a 4,40 a 5,40 a 5,80 a b (0 ton ha-1 + 3 ml l-1) 4,47 ab 5,27 a 5,67 ab 6,13 b c (0 ton ha-1 + 6 ml l-1) 4,33 a 5,33 b 5,80 abc 6,00 ab d (10 ton ha-1 + 0 ml l-1) 4,67 ab 5,67 bc 6,07 bc 6,27 b e (10 ton ha-1 + 3 ml l-1) 4,67 ab 5,60 bc 5,93 bc 6,27 b f (10 ton ha-1 + 6 ml l-1) 4,73 b 5,80 bc 6,07 bc 6,33 b g (20 ton ha-1 + 0 ml l-1) 4,47 ab 5,47 b 6,07 bc 6,33 b h (20 ton ha-1 + 3 ml l-1) 4,53 ab 5,80 bc 6,20 c 6,33 b i (20 ton ha-1 + 6 ml l-1) 5,53 c 6,13 c 6,93 d 7,27 c note: the average number followed by the same letters in each column that shows the same is not significant according to duncan's multiple range test at the level of 5% real table 2. it shows that the combination treatment of chicken manure (dung) doses and the concentration of different liquid organic fertilizers had a significantly different effect on the number of leaves aged 10 dap, 15 dap, 20 dap and 25 dap. at the age of 10 dap, 20 dap and 25 dap the effect of the combination of chicken manure dosage and the concentration of the treated liquid organic fertilizer i gave the highest number of leaves. at the age of 15 dap the effect of the combination of chicken manure dose and the concentration of liquid i organic fertilizer gave a significantly different effect on treatments a, b, c and g but did not differ significantly in treatment d, e, f and h. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 204-209 208 3.3. wet weight per plant (gr) analysis of data of wet weight per plant can be seen in appendix 14. from the results of the variance analysis, it was shown that there was a significant effect between the treatment combinations of chicken manure doses and the concentration of liquid organic fertilizer against wet weight per plant. data from the results of further analysis are presented in table 3. table 3: effect of combination of chicken manure and liquid organic fertilizer measurements on wet weight per plant perlakuan rata-rata bobot basah per tanaman combination of dosage of dung and teh lof --------------g -------------- kandang ayam + lof : a (0 ton ha-1 + 0 ml l-1) 25,53 a b (0 ton ha-1 + 3 ml l-1) 32,20 a c (0 ton ha-1 + 6 ml l-1) 29,53 a d (10 ton ha-1 + 0 ml l-1) 60,47 ab e (10 ton ha-1 + 3 ml l-1) 62,00 ab f (10 ton ha-1 + 6 ml l-1) 63,47 ab g (20 ton ha-1 + 0 ml l-1) 61,47 ab h (20 ton ha-1 + 3 ml l-1) 73,00 b i (20 ton ha-1 + 6 ml l-1) 84,87 b notes: the average number followed by the same letter in the same column shows that it is not significant according to duncan's multiple range at 5% different liquid organic fertilizers had a significantly different effect on wet weight per plant. the results of further analysis showed that the combination o f doses of chicken manure and the concentration of liquid organic fertilizer on treatments h and i had significantly different effects on treatments a, b and c but were not significantly different from treatments d, e, f and g. 3.4. wet weight per plot (kg) data analysis on per plot wet weight can be seen in appendix 15. from the results of the variance analysis, it is shown that there is a significant diversity between the treatment combinations of chicken manure doses and the concentration of liquid organic fertilizer against wet weight per plot. data from the results of further analysis are presented in table 4. table 4: effect of combination of measure of chicken cattle fertilizer and liquid organic fertilizer on wet weight per plot treatment mean of wet weight per plot per ha. (conversioan per ha combination of dung and --kg- --ton- ayam + lof: a (0 ton ha-1 + 0 ml l-1) 0,63 a 5,25 b (0 ton ha-1 + 3 ml l-1) 0,65 a 5,43 c (0 ton ha-1 + 6 ml l-1) 0,69 a 5,78 d (10 ton ha-1 + 0 ml l-1) 0,99 ab 8,50 e (10 ton ha-1 + 3 ml l-1) 1,10 ab 8,64 f (10 ton ha-1 + 6 ml l-1) 1,06 ab 8,83 g (20 ton ha-1 + 0 ml l-1) 1,04 ab 9,13 h (20 ton ha-1 + 3 ml l-1) 1,27 b 10,58 i (20 ton ha-1 + 6 ml l-1) 1,46 b 12,18 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 204-209 209 note: the average number followed by the same letter in the same column shows that it is not significant according to duncan's multiple distance test at the 5% real level 4. conclusions based on the results of the experiment and the discussion can be concluded as follows: 1. the combination of doses of chicken manure and the concentration of liquid organic fertilizer affect plant height, number of leaves, wet weight per plant and wet weight per plot of mustard plants. 2. the combination of doses of chicken manure 20 tons ha-1 and the concentration of liquid organic fertilizer 6 ml l-1 had a better effect on plant height, number of leaves, wet weight per plant and wet weight per plot of mustard plants. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references central bureau of statistics and directorate general of horticultural production development. (2017). vegetable production in indonesia. el-hamady, m. m. (2017). growth and yield of onion alum cepa l. as influenced by nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers levels. canadian journal of agriculture and crops, 2(1), 34-41. haryanto, b., suhartini, t., rahayu, e., & sunarjo, d. (2006). mustard and lettuce. self help spreader. jakarta. lingga, p., & marsono, m. (2007). directions for using fertilizers. penebar swadaya, jakarta. mohamad, a. s., yeni, y., & opik, t. (2013). production of biodiesel and growth of staurastrum sp. in response to co2 induction. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 3(2), 67-73. view at google scholar opera, r. t., & tay, d. c. s. (1994). brasscia rapa l. caisim group. pp. 153-157. j. s. simonsma and k. pileuk. plant recource of sout-east asia, vegetable. prosea foundation. red arrow. 2018. description of the shinta caisim variety plant. http://www.panahmerah.id/product/shinta. rukmana, r. (1994). planting pets and mustards. kanisius. yogyakarta. schmidt, f. h., & ferguson, j. h. a. (1951). rainfall types based on wet and dry periods for indonesia with wastern new guinea. jakarta: ministry of transportation, meteorology and geophysics. subandi, m. (2012). the effect of fertilizers on the growth and the yield of ramie (boehmeria nivea l. gaud). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 2(2), 126-135. view at google scholar https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=the+crossing+effect+of+dragon+fruit+plant+caltivars+%28hylocereus+sp.%29+on+yield&btng= http://www.panahmerah.id/product/shinta https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=the+effect+of+fertilizers+on+the+growth+and+the+yield+of+ramie+%28boehmeria+nivea+l.+gaud%29.+&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=the+effect+of+fertilizers+on+the+growth+and+the+yield+of+ramie+%28boehmeria+nivea+l.+gaud%29.+&btng= effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 284 evaluating forces associated with sentient drivers over the purchase intention of organic food products prabha kiran a abhishek srivastava b satish chandra tiwari c  t. sita ramaiah d a assistant professor; school of business and management, christ (deemed to be university), bangalore, india b associate professor; faculty of management studies, gopal narayan singh university, rohtas, india c assistant professor; department of finance and accounting, ibs hyderabad, deemed to be university, hyderabad, india d department of finance, icfai business school, ifhe (deemed to be university), hyderabad, telangana, india  satish2bhu@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 04-jan-2020 accepted: 24-apr-2020 online available: 20-may2020 keywords: consumer awareness, purchase intention, organic food abstract the study proposes to find out the factors which influence awareness among the consumers towards purchasing organic food product. the study is based on primary data by using tools chi-square test, cronbach alpha, kmo, and bartlett's test, anova, regression, correlation, and cross-tabulation. the study found that awareness driver's nutritional information, price, certification, brand name, and logos have an essential influence on the purchase intention of the product of organic food. however, labeling and food standards do not show a noteworthy rapport between labeling and organic food products' purchase plans. the core commitment and flow to explore are to analyze purchasers with respect to organic guarantee systems (accreditation, guidelines, logo, imprints, and confirmation) so we can distinguish the genuine organic products. the independent factors of awareness like organic buying preference and buying frequency, have a significant influence on the purchase intention of organic food. the research provided evidence of consumer awareness and purchase intention of organic food that would help the organic food industry to promote their products according to the attribute of customers. contribution/ originality in this paper, the research provided sufficient shreds of evidence against consumer awareness and purchase intention of organic food that will certainly help the organic food industries to promote their products according to the attribute of customers where nutritional values, awareness drivers & demographic variables played a significant role on the purchase intent of organic food products. this paper will also help firms and marketers to promote their brand and association with such manufacturers in consumer's perception. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.284.297 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: prabha kiran, abhishek srivastava, satish chandra tiwari, and t. sita ramaiah (2020). evaluating forces associated with sentient drivers over the purchase intention of organic food products. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 284-297. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 284-297 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:satish2bhu@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.284.297 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 284-297 285 1. introduction in recent years, there has been a growing increase in environmental conservation and food health practices around the world, which has drawn public attention and centered on organic food. food protection consumers show a positive attitude towards organic food (roddy et al., 1996). it leads to various researches in the organic food domain like people's readiness to pay the excess amount for high organic food, people’s knowledge about food items of organic and non-organic or consumer stimulus to purchase organic food, along with the factors that have an impact over the purchase objectives. consumer attitude of purchase of organic food with deliberation and anxiety about health and environment, i.e., both aspects come from young people. in contrast, older people mostly concentrate on the health aspect (magnusson et al., 2001). .business firms, manufacturers, and farmers need consumer awareness programs to understand the significant difference between organic food products and non-organic food products. nevertheless, it has been found a lack of awareness about food products of organic among consumers (mithilesh and verma, 2013). the research study in brazil observed the relationship between personal value, attitude, and the purchase intention of organic-based food products and found a positive impact of them on conservatism and selfpromotion. personal value also changes the purchase behavior towards organic food products (mainardes et al., 2017). moreover, consumer conviction influences purchase intention, and the lack of conviction has adverse effects on the purchase behavior of organic food products (nuttavuthisit and thøgersen, 2017). various other dynamics determine the consumer 's motivation to make use of food labeling. these factors derive the intention of consumers to seek information or not before the purchase of a particular product. the name contains data about a specific food. the buyer's mentality towards food names can be slanted by different segment uniqueness like age, sex, instruction level, well-being status, and sustenance data. elements of the circumstance as salary, time, and extraordinary eating routine additionally control a shopper to look for data about specific natural food and utilize the data to a food choice (sunelle et al., 2010). this investigation examined the impact of consciousness of food names, extra data, affirmations; logos have the buy thought of the natural food among the shopper. 2. review of literature organic food products generally do not use any kind of pesticide or synthetic fertilizers. there is a lot of anxiety among consumers regarding hormones and medicine in animal production and gmo and the use of the artificial additive in fruit and vegetables (naspetti and zanoli, 2006). consumer relates or links personal health with nutritional content as a quality aspect. it has been noted that reasons for purchasing organic food are high content of vitamins, more nutritious meals, and a vigorous diet by 4%-7% of normal organic food consumers (naspetti and zanoli, 2006). the main reasons to purchase organic food products are the anticipation of a better and environmentally friendly means of production (nilima, 2016). higher consumption of organic food has been observed among consumers who are anxious about natural food engaged in green consumption practices (lockie et al., 2004). the increasing awareness about global warming, pollution's harmful impact, non-bio degradable solid waste is impacting the consumers, marketers, and companies to switch to eco-friendly products. also, the companies are taking up the responsibility for environmental protection as well as the rational utilization of natural resources (sudhalakshmi and chinnadorai (2014). one of the significant factors that affect the attitude of consumer and their buying behavior towards organic food is the socio-demographic profile. uses of more organic food habits are influenced by demographic factors like income, age, level of education, household size, and gender (magnusson et al., 2001; wier et al., 2003). health consciousness, as an attitude of the people, has, and they know and are aware of the healthiness in their diet and lifestyle. consumers believe that organic food is good for one's health, which allows them to consume organic food without any asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 284-297 286 suspicion and fear (suh et al., 2012). consumers concerned with food safety show a positive attitude towards organic food (roddy et al., 1996). environmental concerns like protection of the environment, environmentally friendly issues, and such concerned consumers be inclined to have an optimistic attitude towards organic food and also show a sturdy plan to purchase (vermeir and verbeke (2006) and chen (2015). environmental behavior includes the behavior towards production and consumption of food, transportation, and shopping, and buying a house (jager, 2000). product labeling is a quality signal that helps the consumer to identify the organic food products. the consumer might not be able to figure out that the product is organic or not without an organic label. it has been found that the knowledge of organic labels is low (e.g., janssen and hamm, 2012). 3. methodology the survey was spread over bangalore city which is the major city in the province of karnataka, india. the state has 15 organic farmer federations and 576 organic villages. these villages were declared organic under the state government’s organic scheme. the urban area holds a population more inclined towards the purchasing of organic products. people in such areas are always considered as having a high paying capacity for such products i.e. healthier and full of nutritious values. now the demand is increasing day by day and results in dietary shifts people are moving towards plant-based lifestyles (mohanraj, 2019). the items in the questionnaire were considered a likert 5-point scale i.e. rating from strongly disagrees to strongly agree. the questionnaire was dispersed & the response was collected from the persons aged above 18 years. the random sampling method opted from respondents to protect the ambiguity of respondents (ooi et al., 2018). from the total 400 samples collected, only 358 were used during data analysis, and remaining were discarded due to incomplete responses (attewell and rule, 1991). cronbach alpha has been used as a data analysis tool as a reliability test and kmo and bartlett’s test for sampling adequacy (hutcheson and sofroniou, 1999). one-way anova, regression, correlation, chi-square, and cross-tabulation were performed too to examine the data and model prepared for the checking of fitness, association, and the awareness factor’s influence on the purchase intention. spss software was used for data analysis. through spss, the first descriptive and frequency tables were generated to check for the data error and demographic analysis. 3.1. variables 3.1.1. purchase intent purchase intent is considered as a dependent variable. purchase intent is the readiness of a consumer in the decision to purchase a product. 3.1.2. awareness awareness is considered an independent variable that is associated with other factors like nutritional information, labeling, certification, food standards, logos, price, and brand name. 4. analysis 4.1. respondent profile the demographics such as age, gender, employment, occupation were considered for the study and their effect on the intention to purchase. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 284-297 287 table 1: profile of the respondent age f % valid % cumulative % 19 to 30 years 154 43 43 43 31 to 40 years 49 13.7 13.7 56.7 41 to 50 years 42 11.7 11.7 68.4 51 years or above 113 31.6 31.6 100 gender male 182 50.8 50.8 50.8 female 176 49.2 49.2 100 income less than three lakhs 149 41.6 41.6 41.6 3 to 5 lakhs 31 8.7 8.7 50.3 6 to 8 lakhs 28 7.8 7.8 58.1 8 to 10 lakhs 38 10.6 10.6 68.7 ten lakhs or above 112 31.3 31.3 100 education level high school 14 3.9 3.9 3.9 under graduation 80 22.3 22.3 26.3 post-graduation 264 73.7 73.7 100 occupation self-employed 16 4.5 4.5 4.5 business 42 11.7 11.7 16.2 homemaker 41 11.5 11.5 27.7 service 152 42.5 42.5 70.1 student 107 29.9 29.9 100 4.2. quantitative / qualitative analysis 4.2.1. kmo and bartlett’s test the kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling sufficiency is a measurement that demonstrates the extent of change in your factors that may be brought about by fundamental elements. for the data to be adequate, kmo and bartlett's test must be more significant than 60%. in this case, it is 85.7%, which means that the sample is adequate (kaiser, 1974). the kmo sampling adequacy measure for each of the subscales ranged well above the required measure, indicating superb sampling appropriateness (hutcheson and sofroniou, 1999). table 2: results of kmo and bartlett’s test kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy. 0.857 bartlett's test of sphericity approx. chi-square 19151.557 df 1378 sig. 0.000 4.2.2. chi-square test the significance level of chi-square is 0.751, i.e., p > 0.05; hence, there is no relationship exists between gender and purchase intention. there is no difference in purchase behavior among gender. the significance level of chi-square is 0.000, i.e., p < 0.05; hence, there is a relationship that exists between age and purchase intention. there is a significant difference between the age group. there is a difference in purchase behavior among the age group. the significance level of chi-square is 0.000, i.e., p < 0.05; hence, it does not accept the null hypothesis. p < 0.05 (i.e., chi-square); therefore, there exists a relationship between education and purchase intention. there is a considerable difference between education levels. there is a difference in purchase behavior among education levels. the significance level of chi-square is 0.000, i.e., p < 0.05; hence, there exists a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 284-297 288 relation between the occupation and purchase intention. there is a significant difference between occupations. there is a difference in purchase behavior among professions. the significance level of chi-square is 0.000, i.e., p < 0.05; hence, there exists a relation between income and purchase intention. there is a significant difference between income groups. there is a difference in purchase behavior among income groups. chi-square 's degree of significance is 0.000, i.e., p < 0.05; thus, there is a connection between the preference for organic food and the desire to buy it. we observed a major difference in the buying preference for organic. between organic buying preferences, there is a difference in buying behaviour. table 3: results of chi-square tests gender age education occupation income organic buying preference chi-square 0.101a 96.190b 281.318c 176.274d 171.804d 144.263d df 1 3 2 4 4 4 asymp. sig. 0.751 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 a. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected frequencies < 5. the minimum expected cell frequency is 179.0 b. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected frequencies <5. the minimum expected cell frequency is 89.5 c. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected frequencies <5. the minimum expected cell frequency is 119.3 d. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected frequencies <5. the minimum expected cell frequency is 71.6 4.2.3. chi-square of cross tabulation chi-square 's significance level is 0.000, i.e., p < 0.05; therefore, we found a significant difference between consumers ' purchasing frequency. there is a disparity in consumer behaviour, purchasing frequency of organic food products. table 4: results of chi-square cross-tabulation test value df asymp. sig. (2-sided) pearson chi-square 311.113a 108 0.000 likelihood ratio 293.744 108 0.000 linear-by-linear association 4.168 1 0.041 n of valid cases 358 a. 125 cells (89.3%) have expected count less than 5. the minimum expected count is 12 chi-square 's level of significance is 0.000, i.e. p < 0.05; thus, there is a relationship between the preference for organic buying and the intention to purchase. there is a difference in purchasing behavior among organic purchasing preferences for organic foods. table 5: results of chi-square cross-tabulation test value df asymp. sig. (2-sided) pearson chi-square 370.222a 108 0.000 likelihood ratio 310.667 108 0.000 linear-by-linear association 7.821 1 0.005 no. of valid cases 358 a. 123 cells (87.9%) have expected count less than 5. the minimum expected count is .05 table 6: results of chi-square cross-tabulation test value df asymp. sig. (2-sided) pearson chi-square 20.774a 8 0.008 likelihood ratio 20.980 8 0.007 linear-by-linear association 3.843 1 0.050 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 284-297 289 n of valid cases 358 a. 6 cells (40.0%) have expected count less than 5. the minimum expected count is .23 chi-square 's meaning level is 0.008, i.e., p < 0.05; there is a significant difference between levels of education. there is a difference in buying preference among different consumer educational levels. table 7: chi-square cross-tabulation test value df asymp. sig. (2-sided) pearson chi-square 26.898a 16 0.043 likelihood ratio 28.139 16 0.030 linear-by-linear association 1.869 1 0.172 n of valid cases 358 a. 10 cells (40.0%) have expected count less than 5. the minimum expected count is .27 chi-square 's value point is 0.043, i.e., p < 0.05; thus, occupations vary significantly. there is a disparity in purchasing preference between different market occupations. 4.2.4. regression results table 8: variables entered/removed model variables entered variables removed method 1 brand name, logos, price, nutritional info, certification, food standards, labeling . enter a. dependent variable: purchaseintention b. all requested variables entered. table 9: summary of adjusted r square model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 0.747a 0.558 0.549 0.46721 a. predictors: (constant), brand name, logos, price, nutritional info, certification, food standards, labeling table 10: results of anova model sum of squares df mean square f sig. 1 regression 96.459 7 13.780 63.127 0.000b residual 76.400 350 0.218 total 172.860 357 a. dependent variable: purchase intention b. predictors: brand name, logos, price, nutritional info, certification, food standards, labeling the r column represents the r value and helps to calculate the consistency of the prediction of the dependent variable. the meaning of r is 0.747, suggesting the right degree of prophecy. the r square value describes the proportion of variance of the dependent variable which the independent variable can explain. the value of r square is 0.558, which notes that our independent variable describes 55.8 percent of our dependent variable's unpredictability. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 284-297 290 table 11: results of multiple regression test model un-standardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. 95.0% confidence interval for b b std. error beta lower bound upper bound 1 (constant) 0.824 0.113 7.326 0.000 0.603 1.046 nutritionalinfo 0.447 0.045 0.513 9.979 0.000 0.359 0.536 labeling -0.018 0.052 -0.019 -0.337 0.736 -0.120 0.085 price -0.129 0.049 -0.121 -2.637 0.009 -0.225 -0.033 certification 0.143 0.049 0.142 2.913 0.004 0.046 0.239 foodstandards 0.019 0.048 0.022 0.389 0.697 -0.076 0.114 logos 0.116 0.043 0.124 2.703 0.007 0.031 0.200 brandname 0.195 0.038 0.225 5.144 0.000 0.121 0.270 a. dependent variable: purchase intention purchase intention= 0.824 + 0.447(nutritional information) 0.018(labeling) 0.129(price) + 0.143 (certification) + 0.019(food standards) + 0.116(logos) + 0.195(brand name). the p-value for labeling and food standards is 0.736 and 0.697, i.e., p-value > 0.05; hence, we concluded that there is no significant relationship between labeling, food standards, and purchase intent of organic food products. in contrast, nutritional information, price, certification, logos, and brand name also contribute an essential role in impacting the purchase intension. in contrast, there is a significant relation to nutritional information, price, certification, logos, and brand name with purchase intention. 4.2.5. one-way anova table 12: results of one-way anova test sum of squares df mean square f sig. between groups 11.849 4 2.962 6.495 0.000 within groups 161.010 353 0.456 total 172.860 357 the table indicates that the f-value is 0.000 (p < 0.05), and the relevant value is 0.495. there is, therefore, a significant disparity between the desire for organic shopping and the plan to purchase organic food and behavior, buying organic food products. table 13: results of one-way anova test results (purchase intention) purchase intention sum of squares df mean square f sig. between groups 8.002 4 2.000 4.284 0.002 within groups 164.858 353 0.467 total 172.860 357 the table predicts that 0.002 (p < 0.05) is the f-value 4.284, and the relevant value. and we note a significant gap between the purchasing level and the desire to buy organic food. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 284-297 291 4.2.6. pearson correlation analysis table 14: correlation test results means nutritional info means labeling means price means certification means food standards means logos means brandna me means awarene ss means purchase intention means nutritional info pc 1 0.667* 0.467* 0.454** 0.551** 0.499** 0.476** 0.489** 0.688** means labeling pc 0.667** 1 0.476** 0.544** 0.678** 0.551** 0.393** 0.504** 0.513** means price pc 0.467** 0.476** 1 0.517** 0.567** 0.395** 0.424** 0.309** 0.339** means certification pc 0.454** 0.544** 0.517** 1 0.586** 0.520** 0.434** 0.608** 0.476** means food standards pc 0.551** 0.678** 0.567** 0.586** 1 0.477** 0.503** 0.515** 0.477** means logos pc 0.499** 0.551** 0.395** 0.520** 0.477** 1 0.358** 0.511** 0.485** means brandname pc 0.476** 0.393** 0.424** 0.434** 0.503** 0.358** 1 0.216** 0.527** means awareness pc 0.489** 0.504** 0.309** 0.608** 0.515** 0.511** 0.216** 1 0.294** meanspurchaseint ention pc 0.688** 0.513** 0.339** 0.476** 0.477** 0.485** 0.527** 0.294** 1 sig. (2tailed) 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 n 358 358 358 358 358 358 358 358 358 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 284-297 292 the correlation matrix shows that all the variables are significantly and positively related to each other variables. most of the variables are within the range of +0.42 to 0.688, which moderately defines the relationship. the correlation coefficients of all variables are not more than 0.9, and hence multicollinearity does not exist in these data. nutritional information table correlation shows the correlation between nutritional information and purchase intention of organic food products is r = 0.688 (p < 0.05). the coefficient range of environmental concern is high. this means that nutritional information is significantly related to the purchase intention of organic food products. thus, nutritional information is supported. labeling the correlation results between labeling and organic food purchase intention shown in the table are r = 0.513 (p < 0.05), which can be group into a modest relationship. therefore, labeling is supported because it is significantly related to the purchase intention of the organic food product. price table correlation shows r =0.339 (p < 0.05) to be the correlation between price and purchase intention of organic food. the price range is moderate in the coefficient. this means that price is strongly linked to the decision to buy organic food products. and the price is borne. certification table correlation shows the correlation between certification and the intention to purchase organic foods is r = 0.476 (p < 0.05). the certification range is moderate in the coefficient. this means the certification has a huge impact on the decision to buy organic food products. thus, certification is supported. food standards table correlation shows the correlation between food standards and the intention to purchase organic foods is r = 0.477 (p < 0.05). the range of food standards is moderate in the coefficient. this means nutritional requirements are significantly related to the purpose of buying organic food products. thus, food standards are supported. logos table association reveals the r = 0.485 (p < 0.05) association between the logos and the purchasing goal of organic food products. the range of logos to the coefficient is limited. that means logos are especially linked to the intention to purchase organic food items. thus, logos supported. brand name table correlation reveals the association between brand name and desire to buy organic products is r = 0.527 (p < 0.05). the label name coefficient range is high. that means the brand name is closely linked to the purchasing target of organic food items. thus, the brand name is supported. 4.2.7. descriptive statistics table 15: nutritional information n mean std. deviation nutritionalinfo1 -list of ingredients 358 2.49 0.949 nutritionalinfo2 -net content 358 2.52 0.922 nutritionalinfo3calorie content 358 2.52 0.903 nutritionalinfo4 -nutrition information 358 2.46 1.011 nutritionalinfo5name of the manufacturer 358 2.44 1.010 nutritionalinfo6manufacture date 358 2.85 1.046 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 284-297 293 nutritionalinfo7 -expiry date 358 2.90 1.058 nutritionalinfo8i understand the ingredients listed in organic food products 358 2.46 1.002 nutritionalinfo9-nutrition information is essential for me while planning to buy organic food 358 2.65 0.913 nutritionalinfo10-it is essential that the nutritional information is legible with proper fronts 358 2.78 1.012 valid n (listwise) 358 the above tables that the mean values are moderate, as they are p < 3. also, from all the other subconstructs, we can see that nutritionalinfo7 (expiry date) has the highest mean value (of 2.90), and nutritionalinfo5 (name of the manufacturer) has the least mean value (2.44) amongst all the variables in the nutritional information. therefore, it can be said that consumers are more aware and check the expiry date variable of the nutritional information more than the name of the manufacturer. table16: showing mean and standard deviations for labeling and its various factors n mean std. deviation labeling1-food labeling information reading 358 2.64 0.957 labeling2importance of food labeling information 358 2.68 0.941 labeling3organic food with labels 358 2.61 0.925 labeling4awareness of origin labeling 358 2.36 0.857 labeling5storage instructions 358 2.57 0.847 labeling6size/quantity 358 2.71 0.934 labeling7quality inspection 358 2.68 0.934 labeling8origin of production 358 2.49 0.992 labeling9producer’s identity 358 2.33 1.027 labeling10organic/non-organic label 358 2.52 0.986 labeling11legible with proper fronts 358 2.61 1.060 valid n (listwise) 358 the above table shows the mean and standard deviations for labeling and its various factors (subconstructs) that lead to labeling as a whole. the mean values are moderate, as they are p < 3. also, from all the other sub-constructs, we can see that labeing2 (importance of food labeling) has the highest mean value (of 2.68), and labeling 9(producer’s identity) has the least mean value (2.33) amongst all the variables in the nutritional information. therefore, it can be said that consumers are more conscious of the importance of food labeling variables more than the producer’s identity. table 17: showing mean and standard deviations for price and its various factors n mean std. deviation price1pay the best price for organic food products 358 2.34 0.938 price2price is an indicator of pure organic food products 358 2.21 1.081 price3prefer discounts and certain offers 358 2.58 0.852 valid n (list wise) 358 the above table shows the mean and standard deviations for price and its various factors (subconstructs) that lead to price as a whole. the mean values are moderate, as they are p < 3. also, from all the other sub-constructs we can see that price3 (prefer discounts and offers) has the highest mean value (of 2.58) and price2 (price as an indicator of real organic food products) has the least mean value (2.21) amongst all the variables in the price. therefore, it can be said that consumers are more likely to prefer discounts and offer while purchasing organic food products more than the price as an indicator of genuine organic products. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 284-297 294 table 18: showing mean and standard deviations for certificate and its various factors n mean std. deviation certification-awareness of quality certification in organic foods 358 2.08 0.986 certification2awareness of regulatory certification bodies like apeda, indocert, usda 358 1.90 0.988 certification3awareness of certification mark like india organic 358 2.16 1.013 certification4the main source of information 358 1.49 1.028 certification5radio 358 2.41 1.024 certification6-tv 358 1.76 1.083 certification7–newspaper 358 1.74 1.058 certification8meetings/seminars 358 2.76 1.061 certification9school 358 2.38 1.078 certification10-internet 358 2.47 1.009 valid n (listwise) 358 the above table shows the mean and standard deviations for certificate and its various factors (subconstructs) that lead to a certificate as a whole. the mean values are moderate, as they are p < 3. also, from all the other sub-constructs, we can see that certificate8 (meetings/seminars) has the highest mean value (of 2.78) and certificate2 (awareness of regulatory bodies of organic food like apeda) has the least mean value (1.90) amongst all the variables in the certificates. therefore, it can be said that consumers are more likely to aware of certifications from meetings and seminars more than the awareness of consumers about organic food body regulators like apeda, usda, etc. table 19: showing mean and standard deviations for food standards and its various factors n mean std. deviation foodstandards1prevention of food adulteration act (pfa) 358 2.35 1.097 foodstandards2food safety and standards authority of india (fssai) 358 2.63 1.042 foodstandards3-agmark' standards (agmark) 358 2.66 1.029 foodstandards4fruit products order (fpo) 358 2.31 1.104 foodstandards5-) national programme for organic production (npop) 358 2.03 0.990 foodstandards6specifications of indian standards institution (isi) 358 2.57 1.050 foodstandards7the importance of organic food regulatory bodies and standards in ensuring quality 358 2.66 1.015 foodstandards8regulatory bodies and standards maintain the organic food quality 358 2.53 0.986 foodstandards9heard of the organic food standards but did not know what they represent 358 2.37 1.083 valid n (listwise) 358 the above table shows the mean and standard deviations for food standards and its various factors (sub-constructs) that lead to food standards as a whole. these are the multiple factors influencing the overall food standards variable. the mean values are moderate, as they are p < 3. also, we can observe that food standards 3 and food standards 7 (agmark and importance of regulatory standards and body in ensuring quality) has the highest mean value (of 2.66) and food standards 5 (national asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 284-297 295 programme for organic production) has the least mean value (2.03) amongst. therefore, it can be said that consumers are more likely to be aware of agmark standards more than the national program for organic production (npop) standards. table 20: mean and standard deviations for loge and its various factors n mean std. deviation logo1 -logo recognition 358 2.20 0.895 logo2check for logos while purchasing organic food products 358 2.35 0.903 logo3visibility and legibility 358 2.66 0.834 logo4authenticity 358 2.51 0.878 logo5incites trust 358 2.50 0.866 valid n (listwise) 358 the above table shows the mean and standard deviations for logos and its various factors (subconstructs) that lead to logos as a whole. the mean values are moderate, as they are p < 3. also, from all the other sub-constructs, we can see that logos3 (logo visibility and legibility) has the highest mean value (of 2.66), and logo1 (logo recognition) has the least mean value (2.20) amongst all the variables in the food standards. therefore, it can be said that consumers are more likely to be put more emphasis on logo visibility and legibility more than logos recognition. table 21: mean and standard deviations for brand name and its various factors n mean std. deviation brandname1importance of brand name 358 2.42 0.949 brandname2 -inspires trust in organic food 358 2.42 0.930 brandname3recognize brands like organic tattwa, farm2kitchen, organic garden 358 2.40 0.872 brandname4signifies quality to me 358 2.51 0.878 valid n (listwise) 358 the above table shows the mean and standard deviations for brand name and its various factors (subconstructs) that lead to the brand name as a whole. the mean values are moderate, as they are p < 3. also, from all the other sub-constructs we can see that brandname4 (brand name signifies quality) has the highest mean value (of 2.51) and brandname3 (recognize organic brands like organic tattwa, farm2kitchen, etc.) has the least mean value (2.20) amongst all the variables in the food standards. 5. findings we found that awareness drivers like nutritional information, price, certification, brand’s name, and logos have a considerable influence on purchase intention. independent variables such as nutritional content, price, certification, brand name, and logos help predict the importance of purchasing intentions, hence these variables are important predictors (i.e. influence) for the intention to buy organic foods. drivers such as labeling and food quality do not indicate a substantial association between labeling and the decision to purchase organic food items. therefore, these drivers do not help as a forecaster of purchase intention, very little control over the purchase intent of organic food products. demographic variables like age, occupation, education, income, organic food buying frequency (frequency of purchase), and organic buying preference (i.e., buying organic food from the online, supermarket, organic boutique, etc.) show a significant relationship on the purchase target of organic food products. we found a considerable difference in the expected and observed value in case of age, occupation, education, income, organic food buying frequency, and organic buying preference concerning purchase intention. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 284-297 296 the independent factors of awareness like organic buying preference and buying frequency had a considerable persuasion on the procure target of organic food. if the buying frequency of a healthconscious consumer increases from monthly to weekly, it affects the purchase intention drastically, as the purchase intention will increase for the health-conscious consumer who needs the organic food products more frequently, thereby her decision/intention to buy will increase. in the case of nutritional information drivers, subfactors like expiry date are more relevant or checked by consumers than the name of the manufacturer. it could probably be because it is more appropriate for them to check the expiry date of organic food. also, they are probably not aware of the name of the manufacturers who manufacture organic food. 6. conclusions we understand the different drivers of awareness, and these drivers lead to consciousness and turn leads to purchase intention. after analysis, we concluded that some of the drivers are more strongly associated with purchasing intention than others and some of the influence more than others. awareness factors such as nutritional content, packaging, and brand name display a strongly favorable linear relationship to the decision to buy organic products. conversely, drivers such as certifications and food standards display moderate positive intensity, i.e. linear association with the desire to buy organic foods. also, awareness drivers like nutritional information, price, certification, brand name, and logos have significant control on the purchase target and demographic variables like age, occupation, education, income, organic food buying frequency (frequency of purchase) and organic buying preference (i.e., buying organic food from online, supermarket, organic boutique, etc.) show a significant relationship on the purchase intent of organic food products. 7. suggestions all awareness drivers like nutritional information, labeling, food standards, price, logos, brand name and certifications along with the demographic factors age, gender, education, income, occupation, buying frequency, buying preference are required to recognize the purchase target of organic food products by consumers. companies need to analyze these variables carefully and consider them as generators of perception and spread the same. educate the consumer about the need and value of these factors which will allow consumers to differentiate between natural organic foods as opposed to non-organic food products in the long term. this will also help firms and marketers promote their brand name and in the perception of consumers associate themselves with organic food products manufacturers. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references attewell, p., & rule, j. b. 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edepartment of geomatics technology, polytechnic pertanian negeri samarinda, indonesia.  surya_darma@faperta.unmul.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 30 december 2021 revised: 3 february 2022 accepted: 18 february 2022 published: 8 march 2022 keywords demand supply corn interviews samarinda end of year. the cause of market failure is the lack of synchronization between supply and demand, or vice versa. initially, corn was considered as a substitute and a complementary commodity for food, but now it has turned into a basic need for people in indonesia, especially when they celebrate the new year. the main aim of this study is to examine the interaction between the demand side and the supply side. the study was carried out by inviting 9,850 respondents in samarinda city to be surveyed regarding interest, tradition, taste, price, opportunity, profit, production cost, and distribution. empirical testing was used to interpret the data, including correlation, reliability, and validity. constructive validity was found in the market behavior function, where the indicators of consumer demand (p < 0.01) and produce supply (p < 0.01) have a significant effect. also highlighted were production cost and distribution, both of which have a positive channel and are closely related to the other six indicators. the consistent performance of production cost and distribution supported further evidence providing stability of measurement results. additionally, tradition and opportunity also produced high coefficients in the reliability test. we can further examine empirical results by including other dimensions, such as social, psychological and individual factors. in addition, diagnostic transformations need to be highlighted where market trends can change along with the growth of other commodities. contribution/originality: the orientation of this study emphasizes and focuses on the increase in the demand and supply sides of corn commodity. although livestock commodities (e.g., chicken) and plantation commodities (e.g., coffee and tobacco) have also increased by the end of the year, the most popular commodity in indonesia is food crops such as corn. another feature that this study offers is its focus on samarinda city, where the market depends not only on consumer demand but also on attractive offers from producers. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4434 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: surya darma --yundi permadi hakim --erwin kurniawan a. --dio caisar darma --suparjo suparjo (2022). understanding market behavior on corn commodity: phenomenon at year end. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2), 53-64. 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4434 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction this study looks at market anomalies in the demand for corn commodities during the year-end celebrations in samarinda city. generally, the end of the year is when people spend a lot of time with family and friends. new year asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 2 (2022): 53-64. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1160-0576 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9315-4946 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3785-0140 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3287-7670 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1846-6063 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 53-64 54 celebrations are often in the spotlight for economists and policy makers (such as resnik & elliott (2016); aya (1979)). severe increases in commodities, services and goods must be must be suppressed so that prices do not soar causing ‘hyperinflation’ (farandy, 2020). sometimes farmers also benefit from inflation from the demand aspect (paul, jahan, nandi, & rahman, 2021). it’s just a matter of how producers present their goods or services at relevant prices in the market (darma, wijaya, & darma, 2020). besides christmas, new year has been enthusiastically celebrated since the 18th century until now (schmidt, 1991). it is not surprising that the demand for products, services and goods has exploded (yijo et al., 2021). even though this benefits the welfare of farmers, it can cause harm for consumers (darma, maria, lestari, & darma, 2020). indonesia has different cultural characteristics from other countries in the celebration of the new year (rianti, novenia, christopher, lestari, and parassih (2018)). the most striking difference is the consumption of food and drinks, which are less favored by most people, where indonesian people often process corn to be used as a main dish (wijaya, 2019). they serve these preparations grilled, fried, or boiled, and the use of corn at the turn of the year has become a special tradition. according to rosas-castor, guzmán-mar, hernández-ramírez, garza-gonzález, & hinojosa-reyes (2014), corn, which in latin is ‘zea mays l’ (or maize) is a food crop. corn contains a lot of carbohydrates, so it is one of the staple food sources in indonesia after rice (nuss & tanumihardjo, 2010). because corn is a favorite commodity in indonesia, it exists in various community groups (arifin, 2013). another important aspect is that corn is easy to grow (sandhu et al., 2020). in a global context, the average temperature to produce maize ranges from 18oc–33oc with a minimum rainfall of 800 mm per year and a maximum of 2,300 mm per year (ferrero, mauricio, & gonzalez-andujar, 2014; wang et al., 2020). with relatively cheap capital, corn production is not a big constraint. as is known, samarinda city is the center of the east kalimantan province in indonesia, which has a high level of consumptive tendencies (wijaya, darma, & darma, 2020). the high level of per capita income is the main reason for the population’s prosperity. they channel most of their spending on non-food needs, such as ceremonies and parties, insurance and tax collections, health and education costs (bps of samarinda city, 2021b; wijaya, zainurossalamia, & darma, 2020). however, the factor of special celebrations, such as the end of the year, increases the need for food and horticultural crops. customs, traditions, and culture cannot be separated because all three have become part of history (indriastuti, kasuma, zainurrosalamia, darma, & sawangchai, 2020). the complexity of the paper is demonstrated based on five plots, including the introduction, theoretical lens, methods, results and discussion, and conclusions. 2. theoretical lens moss (1974) illustrates that supply and demand are the most vital parts of market economics. ‘law of demand’ and ‘law of supply’ are basic theories that explain the interaction between sellers and buyers for a resource (inoua & smith, 2020). the two laws represent the relationship between the price of a service or product, the number of people who buy it, and its availability (parro, 2019). both demand and supply are inversely related, which affects the price of the goods or services sold. these conditions are interpreted as a ‘demand curve’ and a ‘supply curve’ (safiullin, oduntsova, & safiullin, 2015). demand is a term for the amount of goods and services that are desired at a certain time and price level according to the market (mazurek, garcía, & rico, 2019). the ‘law of demand’ applies when the price of a product or service falls and the quantity demanded increases. on the other hand, when the price of goods demanded increases, demand will decrease (wirtz, so, mody, liu, & chun, 2019). the crucial factor influencing demand is consumer tastes (harahap, amanah, harahap, & jubaidah, 2019). increased consumer tastes trigger an increase in demand (purcell & lusk, 2003), for example, with certain fruits whose stock is scarce and will therefore be more expensive (hovhannisyan, kondaridze, bastian, & shanoyan, 2020). another factor is the price of substitute goods (milgrom & strulovici, 2006). for example, when the price of coffee is high, people will start shopping for tea because it costs less. several factors that influence demand include the proportion of needs, prices, income levels, and population (sorrell, 2015). figure 1 illustrates a simple demand curve that demonstrates the general relationship between the number of consumer purchases of goods and services in a given period. in contrast to demand, the ‘law of supply’ occurs when the price of goods rises, encouraging an increase in supply. if the price increases, production will also increase, but when the price decreases, producers are reluctant to reduce supply (ai-hua, 2012). the crucial factor that determines supply is the cost of production. the lower the cost of production, the cheaper the goods that can be produced and therefore supply can increase (as per the example given by aday & aday (2020)). future speculation is the second factor, where predictions of future price increases allowing people to withhold goods or services. the last element is technology. advances in technology will result in more efficient production processes. figure 2 shows the ‘supply curve’. if the slope is curving upward, it causes the price of goods and services to increase or become more difficult to obtain because each additional unit is scarce. then, the cost of production becomes much more expensive and the price is much higher than usual. unexpectedly, when prices soar, there is more incentive to increase production (macdonald, 2000). the ‘classical economic theory’ represents a short-run approach (davidson, 1999). interestingly, supply and demand are opposites. both will reach a point of market equilibrium when they meet each other, which is referred to as the ‘law of demand’ and the ‘law of supply’ (jehle & reny, 2011). in fact, these two laws explain the harmony between the quantity and the price offered. they then connected this to a ‘demand curve’ and a ‘supply curve’. at a certain point in time, the supply of goods brought to the market is fixed. in other words, the ‘supply curve’ is a vertical line, while the ‘demand curve’ is always downward sloping because of the diminishing law of marginal utility. when it reaches this point of equilibrium, the price of a commodity and its demand will be stable, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 53-64 55 or not change at all (humphrey, 1992). sellers also can no longer raise the prices borne by consumers (alam & uddin, 2009). however, in the long term, they can increase or decrease the stock to change the market price to the expected level (haugen, talmor, & torous, 1991). figure 1. the point of consumer desire. source: whelan & msefer (1996). figure 2. the point of desire. source: whelan & msefer (1996). as an extra illustration, the interaction between supply and demand in controlling the market is largely determined by sellers and buyers (cannon & perreault, 1999). both react in opposite ways to changes in the price of a commodity. when the ability, price and supply of sellers increase and the attention of buyers decreases, the market is clearly working (see figure 3). moving on to ‘microeconomic theory’, an obvious example of the application of the ‘law of demand’ and the ‘law of supply’ is the level of consumption (lee & keen, 2004). within the household, they are interrelated consumptions influenced by income ability, savings, or individual willingness. the needs of each household are very diverse. household consumption capacity also depends on educational background, age group, occupation, and social status. those who are classified as ‘rich’ certainly have a source of living eligibility, while those who are ‘poor’ will rethink having contemporary goods or substitutes. in essence, they classify needs into three categories, namely primary needs, secondary needs, and tertiary needs. if the economy is in a stable trend, it will affect welfare, and if not, we will see a decline in welfare. social problems, such as poverty and unemployment, are the ‘old face’ of transformation and development. socioeconomic status will determine an individual’s success in achieving a decent standard of living. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 53-64 56 figure 3. the points of balance of supply and demand. source: hoekstra, savenije, & chapagain (2001). as an actual illustration, the 2008 financial crisis in the us created new interests that caused consumption behavior, income distribution, and household debt to increase. this explains the dynamics of the crisis (albayrak, 2020). the paradigm has continued to flow since the 1980s, and economists assume that household consumption has decreased. debt-based consumption and a decline in actual income followed this compensatory decline. with the help of deregulation of the financial system, the pattern that leads to increased debt and reduced savings can be reduced. however, aggregate demand and the level of consumption in the private sector remain high, so that it maintains macroeconomic stability (e.g., relatively low unemployment). alp & seven (2019) and nelson (1988) highlight the stagnant wages of lower-middle income households. in today’s era, the exploding financial crisis has become the focus of reducing credit bubbles. in the ‘consumption theory’ and the ‘keynesian theory’, there are significant correlations between consumer behavior, household debt, and inequality (perugini, hölscher, & collie, 2016). in principle, ‘agricultural economic theory’ focuses on cause and effect relationships between spatial patterns and economic decisions derived from agricultural land use. the assumption refers to farmers pursuing utility maximization in production systems (diogo, koomen, & kuhlman, 2015). then, the framework considers land use decisions and alternatives in production (kellerman, 1989). semercı et al. (2012) define the production function as a physical relationship between several inputs and outputs. anderson et al. (1996) entered the production function into only a few input variables, while other inputs are constant (ceteris paribus) as follows: 𝑄 = 𝑓 (𝐶 + 𝐿 + 𝑇 + 𝑅𝑚 +. . . 𝑛) (1) equation 1 presents connectivity in the cobb–douglas function type described, where q = quantity (output), f = function, c = capital, l = labor, t = technology, rm = raw materials, and n = other supporting variables. through the above formulation, farmers from various countries transactional outputs on factors that support agricultural productivity implement transactionally it. the level of demand and supply significantly influenced market orientation for agricultural commodities. the relationship between consumers and producers is dominated by financial factors (okerenta, 2005). in fact, dwi & nyoman (2020) argue that the government, as a regulator, seeks to encourage and promote more local agricultural products to be absorbed by the market. they expect this enthusiasm to provide social, environmental and economic benefits for the local population (gutman, 1959). in the theory of planned behavior (sok, borges, schmidt, & ajzen, 2020), the buying behavior of agricultural commodities can be tested. the environment, local economic concerns, ethnocentrism of food safety, health, quality, and consumer perceptions influence consumer intentions (petrea, 2001). 3. methods a social experiment approach was taken in this study (such as maat (2011); syarifudin & ishak (2020); maman, inawati, aminudin, & wastra (2017)) and a three-step-based interview technique was employed. the first step is data collection. data were collected through the first (primary) party. then, the second step comprised the selection of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 53-64 57 number of samples based on the population summarized in the formula below. third, a questionnaire was prepared with four answer options: high priority (4), priority (3), moderate (2), and not priority (1). the sample size is planned using the following simple mathematical calculations (e.g., (abdullah, gindi, darham, & radam, 2015; susanto, siswandari, & rujito, 2019)): 𝑛 = 𝑁 [1+(𝑁 𝑥 𝑒2)] (2) 𝑛 = 658,525 [1+(658,525 𝑥 0.012)] (3) 𝑛 = 658,525 [1+65.85] (4) 𝑛 = 658,525 66.85 (5) 𝑛 = 9,850 (6) figure 4. road map of sample distribution. source: susanto et al. (2019). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 53-64 58 equations 2 to 6 formulate the identity of the sample, where n = sample, n = population, and 0.01 = margin of error. the total population is the sum of the various age groups (15+ years). from bps of samarinda city (2021a), the population in samarinda city is 827,994, of which 658,525 are head of the family. figure 4 displays the sample distribution model. the distribution of the sample comprises ten sub-districts in samarinda city (64.72), including pinang river (64.72.08), kunjang river (64.72.06), sambutan (64.72.07), north samarinda (64.72.05), samarinda ulu (64.72). .03), samarinda seberang (64.72.02), samarinda kota (64.72.09), samarinda ilir (64.72.04), palaran (64.72.01), and loa janan ilir (64.72.10). each sub-district is divided and represented by 985 respondents. figure 4 also illustrates the coordinates of the market and the locations for buying and selling corn commodities in samarinda city. it carried the identification of the interview time out during december 2021. it is important to remember that the respondents reaction to the demand for corn is relevant to the celebration of the new year. to make it easier for researchers, samples were collected through google forms, which is promoted on social media such as whatsapp and facebook. the research model was limited to the variables of consumer demand and produce supply as these two components are factors that influence market behavior. each variable comprises four items. the demand side includes interests, traditions, tastes, and prices, while opportunity, profit, distribution, and production costs support the supply side (see figure 5). figure 5. conceptual framework. source: adapted from naumova, bilan, & naumova (2019); roufagalas (1994); li, wang, yin, kull, & choi (2012); xie, gao, & xie (2020); sanchez (2003). the data processing structure was developed with the feasibility of testing correlation, reliability, and validity (e.g., de barros ahrens, da silva lirani, & de francisco (2020); dewi et al. (2021). spss software was used to analyze the research findings. 4. results and discussion the respondents’ profiles are presented in table 1. the sample sourced from household groups is divided into five units. of the 9,850 household heads, 55.3 percent are male and 44.7 percent are female. additionally, 26 percent of respondents are single, 52.7 percent are married, 18.4 percent are divorced, and the remaining 2.8 percent are widows/widowers. interestingly, 40 percent of respondents belong to the 16–26 age group and consume the most corn on new year’s eve. the 49–59 age group has the fewest people, making up only 9.8 percent of respondents. when viewed based on their occupational background, the number of those classified in the labor force (already working and openly unemployed) is far higher than those classified in the non-labor force (attending school, taking care of the household, and other activities) with figures of 65.3 percent and 34.7 percent, respectively. the logical reason is that from the frequency of buying corn, as much as 3–6 kg or 41.5 percent, 41 percent is used and processed to become regular corn to accompany the turn of the new year celebrations. the first model describes the value of descriptive statistics and correlations. table 2 summarizes the output mean, standard deviation (sd), and pearson correlation. the largest mean score is for the interest factor (m = 3.738) and the lowest is for the production cost factor (m = 2.667). for sd, the highest is the price factor (sd = 0.735), while the production cost is the lowest (sd = 0.046). considering that causality between factors is very important, the calculation based on spss estimates all of them in the positive path, although not all factors have a significant effect (p < 0.01). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 53-64 59 table 1. demographic of samples (n = 9,850). units n % sex • female 4.403 44.7 • male 5.447 55.3 status • single 2.565 26 • married 5.192 52.7 • divorced 1.816 18.4 • widow/widower 277 2.8 age group • 16–26 years 3.940 40 • 27–37 years 1.189 12.1 • 38–48 years 2.258 22.9 • 49–59 years 961 9.8 • 60+ years 1.502 15.2 main activity • economically active 6.431 65.3 • economically inactive 3.419 34.7 purchase frequency • 2 kg 1.001 10.2 • 3–6 kg 4.086 41.5 • 7–10 kg 3.846 39 • 11+ kg 917 9.3 diversification of corn • fried corn 2.594 26.3 • roasted corn 3.217 32.7 • boiled corn 4.039 41 source: survey recapitulation. table 2. descriptive statistics and correlation matrix. items mean sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 interest 3.738 0.114 1 0.011 (0.473)* 0.071 (0.321)* 0.305 (0.021)* 0.167 (0.136)* 0.056 (0.358)* 0.064 (0.337)* 0.429 (0.000)* tradition 3.597 0.545 0.011 (0.473)* 1 0.574 (0.000)* 0.099 (0.258)* 0.136 (0.186)* 0.543 (0.000)* 0.325 (0.015)* 0.201 (0.391)* taste 3.602 0.396 0.071 (0.321)* 0.574 (0.000)* 1 0.174 (0.126)* 0.092 (0.275)* 0.991 (0.000)* 0.122 (0.212)* 0.656 (0.157)* price 3.713 0.735 0.305 (0.021)* 0.099 (0.258)* 0.174 (0.126)* 1 0.281 (0.031)* 0.166 (0.137)* 0.300 (0.023)* 0.478 (0.000)* opportunity 3.498 0.112 0.167 (0.136)* 0.136 (0.186)* 0.092 (0.275)* 0.281 (0.031)* 1 0.103 (0.251)* 0.437 (0.001)* 0.513 (0.417)* profit 3.606 0.287 0.056 (0.358)* 0.543 (0.000)* 0.981 (0.000)* 0.166 (0.137)* 0.103 (0.251)* 1 0.098 (0.261)* 0.772 (0.106)* production cost 2.667 0.046 0.064 (0.337)* 0.325 (0.015)* 0.122 (0.212)* 0.300 (0.023)* 0.437 (0.001)* 0.098 (0.261)* 1 0.180 (0.097)* distribution 3.574 0.204 0.272 (0.013)* 0.166 (0.032)* 0.293 (0.145)* 0.317 (0.289)* 0.345 (0.167)* 0.470 (0.047)* 0.155 (0.000)* 1 source: spss output. note: * p-value < 0.01. the results of further investigations also confirmed the two-way relationship between interest and distribution (c = 0.429 and p = 0.000), tradition and taste (c = 0.574 and p = 0.000), taste and profit (c = 0.991 and p = 0.000), price and distribution (c = 0.478 and p = 0.000), opportunity and production cost (c = 0.437 and p = 0.001), profit and taste (c = 0.981 and p = 0.000), production cost and opportunity (c = 0.437 and p = 0.001), and distribution and production cost (c = 0.155 and p = 0.000). production costs and distribution are considered the most dominant of all the factors. the second parameter is validity testing, as measured by confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). the kaiser– meyer–olkin measure of sampling (kmo-msa) is an index of the distance comparison between the correlation asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 53-64 60 coefficient and its partial correlation coefficient. if the sum of the squares of the partial correlation coefficients from all pairs of variables is small compared to the sum of the squares of the correlation coefficients, it will produce a kmo-msa value close to 1. the kmo-msa gain is sufficient if it is < 0.5 (hair, black, babin, enderson, & tatham, 2006). another projection from bartlett’s test shows that there is a sufficient correlation between the variables to apply, provided that the p-value is < 0.01 (e.g., melati (2018)). assumptions in construct validity are based on bartlett’s test of sphericity, and content validity is determined by the kmo test. table 3 explains that the achievement of the correlation between indicators for the consumer demand variable is high (kmo = 0.632 and bartlett’s test = 0.000), so the factor analysis process is workable allowing the analysis to continue. table 3. construct validity and content validity in the first element. measurement score kmo-msa 0.632 approx. chi-square 315.11 df. 90849 prob. 0.000 source: spss output. table 4. construct validity and content validity in the second element. measurement score kmo-msa 0.580 approx. chi-square 207.69 df. 90849 prob. 0.000 source: spss output. overall, bartlett’s test resulted in a p-value of 0.000 and a kmo-msa of 0.580. this shows that both meet the requirements because the kmo-msa has a value of > 0.5 and a significance of < 0.01, so it is prioritized for the next process (see table 4). in the third session, identification of the assumption that must be met is reliability. we packed reliability testing with cronbach’s alpha (ca) coefficients. classification of cronbach’s alpha is possible if the coefficient value is > 0.7, which means that the reliability is met. it also makes sense if the coefficient is > 0.8, which suggests that all items are reliable and all tests are internally consistent because they have strong reliability (hoekstra, vugteveen, warrens, & kruyen, 2018; peterson, 1994). table 5 summarizes the coefficient gains of cronbach’s alpha. it can be interpreted that if the alpha coefficient is low, it is possible that one or more indicators is not reliable, so it makes sense to investigate with a per item analysis procedure. this test is a continuation of the previous series to determine if certain indicators do not meet the requirements. through this process, unreliable indicators can be discarded so that other alphas can further support their value (tavakol & dennick, 2011). table 5. cronbach's alpha for all indicators. items ca remark interest 0.587 moderate reliability tradition 0.749 high reliability taste 0.687 moderate reliability price 0.682 moderate reliability opportunity 0.705 high reliability profit 0.934 almost perfect reliability production cost 0.820 high reliability distribution 0.717 high reliability source: spss output. the advancement of people’s perspectives and ways of thinking determine what food is worth consuming at an affordable price. they are drawn towards selecting products with relatively cheap prices but without neglecting practicality and nutritional composition. the other side is the level of need that is increasing along with accessibility. the importance of corn is a signal to farmers that this type of plant is also easy to grow from narrow land, open space, in all seasons with sufficient light intensity, soil fertility level, and rainfall level. with the harvest period in intervals of 2–3 months, it is possible for corn farmers to achieve maximum productivity. they will certainly see a significant market demand, especially towards the end of the year. each period, the consumption of corn soars sharply, so preparation for farming starts in september or october. in the context of economic development and food security, the agricultural industry has played a key role for decades (zyl, 1989). directly, the best options are in rural areas, where a large part of the world’s population also depends on this sector for their livelihoods (udemezue & osegbue, 2018). as the migration of people to cities and the world’s population explodes, it has a systematic impact on the proportion of growth in food production. martin, groenewegen, & pidgeon (1980) found that the uniqueness of market characteristics highly depends on the specifics of corn in southwestern ontario (canada) where corn farmers saw a tremendous opportunity to create asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 53-64 61 welfare value. global corn prices influenced the retail of corn-based products in the manufacturing sector (rattray, 2012). this is a determinant of price policy by major food companies. high global corn prices have affected final retail and consumer products. even though the market conditions for agriculture and food companies were fluctuating, they corn farmers could still benefit. sibanda, mushunje, & mutengwa (2016) highlight valuable steps adopted by small-scale maize farmers in or tambo and amatole (eastern cape, south africa). samples from households were asked for their response to maize, and the findings confirm that planning and decision-making in the maize market highly depend on seed availability, farmer perceptions, land area, income, access to credit, and access to extension services. the application of superior seeds and the absorption of corn commodities has played an important role in the productivity of corn farmers. during the period from 1948–1970, the supply of maize acreage in the us underwent a significant change due to the government’s price intervention and acreage control program. empirical analysis examines area restrictions, transfers, support, and lending rates for maize farmers. houck & ryan (1972) suggested that policy variables should be selected and applied to maize as part of government priorities. production and land management decisions strongly influenced land conservation and crop. farmers in the liandaowan area (northeast china) make decisions based on motivation as a key factor in implementing government policies. most of the farmers there insist on growing maize despite facing various obstacles, such as striking comparative advantage, farmer preferences, age and education, low temperatures, drought, technical help, low income, and availability of machinery. the experimental results obtained by liu, zhang, liu, & he (2019) emphasized the need for promotions to adjust for corn diversity because the level of demand was stable. the theoretical justification for these findings is in line with the investigations of mišečka, ciaian, rajčániová, & pokrivčák (2019), who emphasized that agricultural commodity prices are driving consumer awareness. on an international scale, behavior towards agricultural products, such as corn, is permanently and causally connected to the demand factor, and the corn prices confirm both relationships. other aspects, such as campaigns against ‘green consumption’, brands, channels, prices and marketing strategies, can stimulate agricultural products in wuhan (china). yi (2017) revealed that the safety of people’s lives there for agricultural products depends not only on stability but also on sustainable agricultural development. farm household investigated their perceptions and levels of knowledge based on purchasing behavior, work background, income level, region, age, and gender. the causality highlighted by gao, huang, zhong, chen, & lu (2013) and horská, petriľák, šedík, & nagyová (2020) regarding the sale of local agricultural products is not only influenced by the behavior of farmers, but also by the driving forces of the market. in china, in 16 villages in anhui, jiangsu and shanghai, households earn higher profits. they see economic developments in the agricultural market, thus shifting from food crops to cash crops. aspects of capital and production costs are the more dominant input factors, where they know that if they want to achieve a large output, then the production input becomes a big investment. in this way, agricultural products gain market enthusiasm because the selling price is more significant than government subsidies. market sales orientation supported the independence of agricultural households based on product quality improvement strategies (hunt, 2007). unlike the case with local farmers in slovakia, the sales of agricultural products depend on the supply chain. this was driven by a short distribution route so that the product can go directly to consumers. customer loyalty is motivated by locality, freshness, and quality factors. that way, the marketing approach is a surefire technique to save time, cost, and effort. 5. conclusion this study analyzed the influence of the demand and supply sides on the behavior of the corn market in samarinda city, indonesia, and it was found that the two are closely related as both consumers and producers respond to each other based on the quantity of corn. towards the end of the year, demand from consumers increased in line with the supply of producers. however, the supply side variable determines the market the most because the two indicators (production cost and distribution) have the highest coefficients with a positive path. this study contributes to the theoretical aspect. extension services to seasonal corn farmers in samarinda city, are not only based on certain moments (such as new year’s celebrations and festivals), but also follow market patterns that follow demand trends. for the future, there is a need for policies on distribution, training, extension, knowledge, and promotion services for corn farmers. we expect the implications for industry practitioners and academics to attract attention to highlight and expand knowledge regarding the factors that influence market behavior for corn besides the supply and demand factors. the limitation of this study is in the variables used. the sample range and observation period can be expanded to produce more extensive findings. in order to support socioeconomic sustainability in agriculture, these findings require scientific references and foundations based on a more constructive scale. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of 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(1989). agricultural development principles: economic theory and empirical evidence. development southern africa, 6(1), 119-121.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03768358908439452. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 50 evaluating constraints to animal traction development and sustainability in the upper noun valley, north west region cameroon nuipokoh oscar mbounghoa manu ibrahima dongmo solefackb a department of agricultural extension and rural sociology, dschang university, cameroon  n.oscaro@yahoo.com (corresponding author) b department of agricultural engineering, dschang university, cameroon corresponding author article history: received: 21-aug-2018 accepted: 29-sep-2018 online available: 15-oct2018 keywords: animal traction, small-scale farmer, constraint abstract the principal aim of this study was to find out the reasons for the low adoption of animal traction in the upper noun valley community. the general views were; to find out the level of animal traction adoption, to see its level of profitability, to examine its importance on agricultural sustainability and the overall constraints and benefits involved in animal traction. combinations of multi-stage random and purposive sampling procedures were applied to obtain the needed information from oxenfarmers and institutions. a cross sectional data was collected and analysed from random sample of 90 oxen farmers within the upper noun valley community. data were collected and analysed using statistical package for social sciences (spss) and microsoft excel. the study revealed that smallscale farmers encountered several sustainability challenges from inappropriate implements, pasture difficulty, lack of training and repair centres, poor animal housing. animal traction sustainability depends on its; affordability, flexibility, timeliness on farm and organic manure provision. in order to overcome the alarming food insecurity in cameroon, both the government and stakeholders should regain consciousness on abandoned training centres, and minimum packages should be given to small-scale farmer as well as local blacksmiths and veterinary centres be provided at the divisional level. contribution/ originality in the developing countries, low level of mechanisation and poor developmental policy are the main constraints to agriculture. meanwhile, about 80% of farm family enterprises today depend on agriculture and cannot afford the cost of a modernised mechanisation system. therefore, animal traction is a best solution looking at its comparative advantages though it faces some constraints in the upper noun valley in cameroon. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.1/1005.1.50.63 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: nuipokoh oscar mboungho, manu ibrahim and dongmo solefack (2018). evaluating constraints to animal traction development and sustainability in the upper noun valley, north west region cameroon. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1), 50-63. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 1(2018): 50-63 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:n.oscaro@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.1/1005.1.50.63 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 50-63 51 1. introduction cameroon like most african countries is an agricultural economy with about 70% of her workforce involved in the agricultural sector with 45% of her gdp and 30% of her export revenue (johnston and mellor, 2007). however, agriculture is one of the highest sectors in cameroon to combat food insecurity to both the cameroonian rural and urban populations. farming in the upper noun valley is still one of hardest human work and involves the use of crude tools by the local farmers. mechanisation is a step to second generation agriculture, therefore, animal traction technology is a step to encourage and enhance the growth of agricultural mechanisation geared toward second generation agriculture. in 2003, according to the united nations food and agriculture organisation (fao), only 35 per cent of farm power came from non-human power sources, indicating that there is a big potential for the use of mechanical farm power in the sub-saharan region (nazaire et al., 2015). in response, agricultural mechanisation has re-emerged recently in many countries in sub-saharan african. in cameroon, animal traction technology in the north west region started locally in ndop in 1968 and in wum in 1969 and later spread to other regions in 1980. animal traction became a major extension program of the wum area development authority (njei, 1987). cameroon cooperated with the german government in 1985 in the creation of the promotion of adapted farming systems based on animal traction (pafsat), where small-scale farmers were being trained on how to use animal traction technology as a mechanised means of farming. pafsat had its principal objective on rural development with more emphasis laid on agricultural development aiming to improve the livelihood of the farmers (mideno, 2010). coupled with numerous challenges like; inappropriate implements, pasture difficulty, lack of training and repair centres, poor animal’s housing to animal theft and diseases, there is the need to harness draftcultivation for adequate farm-power supply, in order to develop the agricultural sector. umaru et al. (2013) on their part reviewed that animal traction has a significant interest to the rural farmers. to these people, animal are very important for carrying domestic water, fuel, farm produces and reducing drudgery most especially for women. money invested in animal traction circulates within the rural communities as plough boys, blacksmith, carpenters, all found within the locality are considered as; “chain-actors”. in sokoto state nigeria, most of the rural farmers are involved in animal traction as they used its power for milling, logging, and land evacuation. a study was carried out in tororo on the contribution of draft cattle to rural livelihood in a district of south-eastern uganda. this was to assess the socio-economic impact of animal traction on the inhabitants. this study shows that, animal draft cultivation is a labour saving and a cheaper means of agricultural mechanisation as an average farmer gets a gross profit margin of about 245 united state dollar per year. it was concluded that, draft cultivation has contributed to a better livelihoods and increasing the expected impact of cost-effective control strategies of endemic production limiting livestock diseases in uganda (walter et al., 2015). in catabola, farmers are mostly using hand hoe. small-scale farmer do use animal traction as well but for particular task. the use of animal traction is about 6.6%. the low level of tractorisation and animal traction is due to poor literacy rate of the farmers. however, farmers using more advanced technologies for farming in this region are more efficient and have higher production than those with hand-hoe based (rušarovȧ et al., 2016). 1.1. problem statement the use of animals for agricultural purposes such as, ploughing, harrowing and weeding by a smallholder farmer who owns a very small plot of land is profitable and not economically viable for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 50-63 52 him to purchase a tractor. animal traction simplifies daily tasks like; carrying water, firewood, farm produces, tilling, and weeding to ensure sustainability. the use of animal traction provides a complementary power option for agriculture but can be supplementary to the use of tractors. the use of animal traction is important because it serves time and its timeliness on farms is a gaining advantage to the small-scale farmers as they are able to cultivate on time regarding their farming period. animal draft power increases productivity, reduces drudgery, and it also reduces farmers’ rate of dependency on scared tractors and its equipment can be gotten locally and operated by the local farmers unlike the tractors that need know-how, fossil fuels, spare parts and maintenance which may not be available to the farmers at all times. animal traction does not limit its importance on agriculture alone but also creates work opportunity as its uses can stimulate the development for artisan resources thereby keeping the blacksmiths, carpenters, leather-markers and even the ploughboys engaged. these animals are fed on crop residues and they can supply other produces like meat, milk, leather and manure for soil fertility and biogas to the farmers and the local population as a whole. therefore, the development of animal draft cultivation in the upper noun valley is a cause for concern. although animal traction in africa is a subject of considerable interest in terms of sustainable development, many writers have contributed to its technological aspects and values but little is said about the constraints of its development, sustainability and cost effectiveness. animal traction is relatively a cheaper and an easier means for agricultural mechanisation and food security, yet it has not been well developed as oxen-farmers face numerous challenges like inappropriate implements, poor land tenancy, limited grazing space, poor animal’s shades, theft and diseases in the country especially in the upper noun valley. 2. methodology 2.1. presentation of upper noun valley ngoketunjia which is also known as the upper noun valley is one of the seven (07) divisions of the north west region of cameroon that shares boundaries with bui division to the north, mezam division to the west, bamboutos to the south and east respectively. it lies between latitude 50, 151 n and 60, 101, n and longitude 100 151 e and 100 401 e. the upper noun valley has an altitude of about 1,181m above sea level and covers a surface area of about 1,152km2 with a population of about 254530 inhabitants (ddard/ng annual report, 2017). figuer 1: localisation of ngokitunjia division source: nuipokoh, 2018 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 50-63 53 2.2. data collection primary data for this study was collected through direct survey, while the secondary data was collected from institutional reports like mideno, divisional delegation for agriculture and rural development for ngoketunjia and internet. the main survey was conducted in march 2018. a comprehensive questionnaire was used to obtain primary data, while secondary data was collected through direct individual interviews with the help of an interview guide. the purposive sampling method was used to come up with the sample from the sampled population. sampling was based on those that were practicing and those still practicing animal traction technology. collected data from the study was manually stripped, coded and after quality control entered into spss (statistical package for social sciences) version 20 and microsoft excel software for statistical analysis. 3. results and discussions in the upper noun valley (unv), the study was conducted in four villages of; bamessing, bangolan, babessi and bamunka. the highest percentage of oxen-farmers was recorded in bamessing and bangolan respectively with least in bamunka and babessi respectively (table 1). the 1.1% of animal traction engagement in bamunka is due to: population pressure on land, urbanisation, the provision of tractorisation by the unvda, and unsuccessful diffusion of animal traction technology by the early adopters which led to the abandonment of animal traction implement by some pioneer oxen-users in bamunka. generally, the spread and adoption of animal traction technology over time in ngoketunjia is due to behavioural change and awareness amongst the people. this trend ties with roger’s idea of innovation diffusion (everett, 1971). table 1: respondent’s distribution villages frequency percentage bamessing 40 44.4 bangolan babessi 31 18 34.4 20.0 bamunka 01 1.1 missing system total 90 100 table 2: social description of respondents variables frequency percentage gender male 86 95.6 female 4 4.4 age <20 1 1.1 20-29 5 5.6 30-39 67 74.4 40-49 9 10 50-59 3 3.3 60> 5 5.6 marital status married 88 97.8 single 2 2.2 households <5 43 47.8 9-may 35 38.9 10> 12 13.3 total 90 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 50-63 54 in regard to gender distribution, 95.6% were males while 4.40% of the sampled population were females (table 2) animal traction in the unv has three principal activities which are; ploughing, harrowing and transportation which women considered being tedious, this accounts for the low involvement of women in this technology. women however assist the men from time-to-time in weeding and feeding of the animals. the highest proportion of oxen-users in unv falls under the ages of 30-39 representing about 74.4%. these locals take animal traction as a means of employment and a source of income. this age group is the most energetic and most vulnerable to unemployment and this accounts for their high engagement. those below the ages of 29 are mostly students and are less represented as school enrolment has increased in the unv. due to scepticism, those between 40-49 years who represents about 10% tend to diversify their activities. oxen users who are between the ages 50-59 years represent 3.3% as many completely abandoned at technology as they grow older. to a grass-field man, family union is part of their ancestral heritage as 97.8% of oxen-farmers were married while 2.2% revealed to be single. the highest number of household ranges from 5-9 persons with a percentage of 47.8 and households below five (05) represent about 38.9% and just few farmers are having more than ten (10) persons with a percentage of 13.3, (table 2). household size determines the labour means and the future level of animal traction adoption. this study shows that information seekers (innovators) are the minority and the most educated as 4.40% are those that attained secondary level of education. most of these innovators are those that acquired training from pafsat. those of primary level constitute about 82.20% of the population, and only 4.40% attended secondary level (figure 2). most parents preferred carrying out personal activities (agriculture, trades and other handworks) with their children than sending them to school. this accounts for the low level of education in the upper noun valley. figure 2: level of education and degree of at adoption by farmers in the upper noun valley table 3: formal training frequency percentages yes, trained by pafsat 05 5.6 no, working experience 85 94.4 total 90 100 primary education (majority) 82.20% secondary education (innovator) 4.40% no formal education (laggards) 13.30% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 50-63 55 during the pilot phase of pafsat, famers were trained and empowered but they later disengaged themselves from animal traction practices and did not fully transmit the technology as 94.4% of the oxen-farmer today in the unv has no formal training. this is because some of the trained farmers were sceptical and believed that, for any organisation to bring an innovation, it is all in the interest of that organisation. this accounts for less transmission of at technology and poor management on the path of the farmers and the then pafsat staffs or field agents. these farmers are left to develop their indigenous knowledge (joubert and kotsokoane, 1999). 4. comparative efficiency of animal traction mechanistion both animal traction and tractor are agricultural technologies geared towards agricultural development and sustainability. these technologies aimed at increasing agricultural output and to ensure food security in the country and in order to ensure this food security, some of the farmers in the upper noun valley do not only practice agriculture but diversify their activities. away from farming, some do trades and transportation (bike riding), mostly the youth. those singly involved in agriculture is about 87.8% and about 12.2% of the sampled population combine agriculture with other activities as indicated in figure 3. this diversification can be because of land fragmentation that limits farmers from cultivating on bigger scales that can help sustain their lives. diversification of activities by the farmers brings doubt to at profitability (starkey, 1994). figure 3: activities involved 4.1. a reduced-cost of mechanised farm power in sub-saharan africa, about 55% of the rural people is said to be living below the poverty line (imf, 2010). therefore, it will be efficient for a small-scale farmer to operate with animal-draft than buying or hiring a tractor since it is cheaper buying a pair of work-oxen. hiring a tractor by a farmer would not bring in any extra benefit unlike owning a pair of oxen and selling them at an appreciated rate. with the current trend of agricultural mechanisation and modernisation, the people of upper noun valley are of the view to mechanise their agricultural sector and to increase the cultivated areas and yields. animal traction is an affordable and an easy technology to most common farmers in this region. animal traction as a reduced-cost of a mechanised farm power greatly attracts these farmers to adopt the technology. 87.80% 12.20% activities involved agriculture agriculture & others asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 50-63 56 plate 1: animal traction mechanisation in practice 4.2. timeliness in the unv, about 93.3% of the farmer owns the animals (figure 4). the affordability and availability of animal-draft improves timeliness of ploughing unlike the infrequent tractors for the farmers. cultivating at an appropriate time guarantees good yields. therefore, animal traction is more appropriate and efficient than tractors on small-scale farms. figure 4: oxen ownership 4.3. flexibility in the upper noun valley, most of the farmers use animal traction for the cultivation of rice. rice cultivation usually starts in the month of july and often in fragmented swamps. this has favoured the use of draft-animals than a tractor. the flexible nature of animal traction technology has made penetration in to the interiors possible and even in bad weathers. the advantage here is that animals cannot sink unlike tractors that often stock-still in swamps. this has helped to increase the cultivated areas for small scale farmers, eased evacuation of goods from interior and in bad weather conditions especially in places where cars cannot drive. its flexibility has gone to increase farmers’ cultivating surfaces and increases in yields. 4.4. additional source of manure from crop-livestock integration animal traction practice encourages crop-livestock integration as most farmers in the upper noun valley today provide their fallowed farmland for herdsmen to keep their animals in order to improve 93.30% 6.70% yes no asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 50-63 57 their fertility as dungs are being dumped on the farm. animal traction does not only increase soil fertility and yields but has come to reduce the problem of farmer-grazer conflicts. 4.5. off-farm income source animal traction package comes with the possibility of income generation through off-farm transportation and hiring. a farmer who offers off-farm services gets extra rewards. it is difficult for farmers to produce all what they want, therefore, off-farm incomes helps them secure their food needs through purchase. 4.6. yields increase and labour savings the use of animal traction has the potential to increase yields with horizontal and vertical agricultural development through improving water infiltration, seed-bed preparation (eisa, 2015). most farmers in the upper noun valley complained that with tractorisation, ploughing and harrowing are not always soft enough to encourage fertility as experience has proven that with animal traction, ploughing and harrowing soften the soil than a tractor. affordability of animal power has the advantage to increase a small-scale farmer’s yields since he or she is able to cultivate on time rather than waiting for tractors which hardly come at the expected time. 5. constraints to animal traction (at) development and sustainability despite all the advantages and benefits involve in the use of at, farmers in the upper noun valley still experience some challenges which they attributed to the following: figure 5: constraints to animal traction development and sustainability 5.1. lack of training and repair centres (limited working knowledge) among the oxen-farmers in the unv, only about 5.6% had formal training (table 3). pafsat was the sole body in charged of training and provision of implements to these farmers. with the gradual disengagement of pafsat, it has greatly hinders the farmers’ knowledge in the technology as majority find it difficult to detect when their animals are sick, getting spare parts is also a challenge 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% percentage (%) constraints asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 50-63 58 as there are no training and repair centres in the locality. this has caused the recurrent abandonment of implements. most of the farmers travel long distances to bamenda for repairs due to the absence of blacksmiths in the region and the few welders do not have knowledge in designing or repairing these implements which to them is a risk and time consuming as they could have taken the time to concentrate on their activities. in addition to the problem of implements and spare parts, most agricultural training institutions in the country, impact very little or no information on animal traction unto the trainees (future frontline agricultural extension staff). this makes close follow up and technical assistance of oxen farmers difficult because there is only one subject matter technician (smt) per division in five of the seven divisions of the north west region who are staff of the north west development authority (mideno from its french acronym). some of these smts are already approaching retirement as they were those trained by the german experts before handing the project to the cameroon government in the eighties (ngeh et al., 2015) one of the challenges farmers face in putting draft animals for farming today is the lack of general knowledge about farming with animals. poor implement adjustment causes unnecessary work for animals and farmers. the lack of knowledge due to inadequate training is responsible for the poor use of implements which reduces the overall efficiency of animal draft-cultivation. this is a crucial constraint to animal traction as in extreme cases, the difficulties experienced has led to the abandonment of this technology in parts of the area like the case of bamunka with 1.1% level of adoption (table 1). kline and le moigne reviewed and concluded that at adoption in africa was limited due to inadequate extension and support services, (kline et al., 1970; le moigne, 1978). plate 2: abandoned implements in bamunka 5.2. capital and credit limitations capital or credit limitation is a constraint to agricultural development. the adoption of animal traction technology highly depends on the availability of capital or credit facility. this limitation has greatly limited the number of oxen adopters in the unv. lhoste and havard concluded that most states had disengaged from development because of their financial difficulties and pressures exerted by the international financial community (lhoste, 1995; and havard, 1997). only 25% of the farmers have access to credit facility against 75% with no access (figure 6). this is a big challenge to at expansion in the unv as most of the farmers especially the ‘‘non-oxen’’ adopters complained of financial limitation for acquiring a complete set of work-oxen. none of the farmer has access to agricultural loan, but about 25% have access to their local savings which to them is marginal to sustain draft-cultivation. this saving only goes to assist them to pay their children fees. the market costs of oxen, cultivation implements and carts in this area are high in relation to the farmers’ income level which are low as 55% of the rural people live below the poverty line (imf, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 50-63 59 2010). in areas of low animal traction adoption, few crop farmers have both sufficient savings and also the confidence in animal traction to purchase animals and implements without assistance. this has greatly limits the evolution of animal-draft technology in the area. figure 6: credit facility 5.3. grazing land/nutrition difficulties inadequate animal nutrition is often cited as a major constraint to the use of animal traction (sangaré, 1988). animals are expected to cultivate fields at the beginning of the rainy season. this is the very time of the year when they are in poorest condition, following the inevitable weight losses of the dry season. in the upper noun valley, land tenancy greatly disfavour smallholder farmers as most of the lands are in the hands of the state or traditional authorities. added to this, population pressure on land from urbanisation, oxen-farmers in the region find it difficult to freely graze their cattle around. they often confine their cattle on spotted areas with little or poor pasture (plate 3). unlike the case in sierra leone where farmer-grazier conflict is recurrent between farmers as they are forced to graze their animal on the limited grazing land. with this nutrition difficulty, the draft animals at times encroach into farmland. some farmers reported that they had to pay out significant sums in compensation as a result of the alleged misbehaviour of their work oxen (corbel, 1988). plate 3: grazing land/nutrition difficulties 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% yes no 25% 75% credit facility credit facility asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 50-63 60 5.4. poor animal housing with regard to housing, the animals are often poorly housed and exposed to several risks including theft and infections. throughout the farming season, owners or farmers keep their draft animals in open spaces within their compounds. within the communities, the existed fences are poorly constructed with no shade and these animals suffered from rain and sun effect both in rainy and dry seasons respectively. away from the risks involving the animals, the animals are loose and freely move away from their habitat at will. this has caused most of the farmers to have continuous sleepless nights as they take guard of the animals. a farmer in bamessing narrates: ‘‘…i have a good house and a good bed, but i don’t know how it looks like at night because i stay outside with my animals because of thieves…’’ (respondent, 2018) plate 4: poor shades for the animals 5.5. poor harness (yoke) regarding inappropriate nature of implements, the current weaken yokes made from wooden poles or planks and the traditional collar harness are uncomfortable to the animals. the yokes’ points of contacts are so small that the pressure developed causes harness blisters and restricts the animals during work as (plate 5). plate 5: poorly harnessed yoke asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 50-63 61 5.6. animal theft and diseases rampant thefts and prevalence of diseases are other key constraints to animal traction. this is highly caused by lack of shades, controlled grazing land and animals’ exposure to rain and sun throughout the seasons. moreover, state interest in animal traction technology as part of the country’s agricultural mechanization strategy is limited, as seen by the abandonment of former training centres (pafsat), lack of veterinary centres in the community. 5.7. shortages of ploughboys the current increase rate in school enrolment in the upper noun valley saw a reduction in services rendered by the youth as ploughboys. animal traction farming in ngoketunjia has in the past relied largely on young boys to guide the animals in the field. the future of animal traction sustainability depends on its level of transmission. 5.8. extension or veterinary service in the upper noun valley community, there are no extension and veterinary services. this has greatly limits the progress of animal traction as local farmers practice auto-medication which at time cause harm than good to the animals. 5.9. poor medication field survey shows that there are no veterinary and extension services available for oxen-farmers in this area, this has led to poor adaptation, poor animal health and even death of cattle. the negligence of stakeholders (many think animal traction is an old technology) is a course for neither a veterinary nor an extension services directed towards animal traction. farmers using animal traction have been left on their own and agricultural extension workers currently do not receive training in draught animal technologies (starkey, 1995). 5.10. poor land tenancy most of the lands in this region are in the hands of the government, traditional authorities and some well-to-do individuals. majority of land owners here are not interested in agriculture, most of the lands are occupied and kept unexploited, making it difficult to those willing to exploit the land. most of the farmers in ngoketunjia are not wealthy enough to afford for permanent plots as unvda controls most of the cultivable land in the locality. 6. conclusion and recomenadation the timeliness and flexibility of animal traction has proven its effectiveness on smallholder farms as most oxen owners are able to cultivate at the appropriate farming period. with the unpredicted climatic variability, timing in agriculture today plays a key role in productivity. animal traction affordability increases agricultural productivity. the majority of the farmers are of low educational background with about 82.20% as primary dropped-out. given their level of education, majority are still able to operate the technology. the efficiency and profitability of animal traction is a reality as it is environmental friendly to small-scale farming. the low adoption of at in this area is largely attributed to challenges like; inappropriate implements where about 90% complained of, repair and training centres, lack of extension and veterinary services, grazing problem, limited credit facilities, poor shades for the animals, theft and urbanisation. considering the necessity of identifying and responding to the present and future challenges of food security, there is the need to collaborate and harmonise the agricultural sector by providing strategies for agricultural mechanisation in order to achieve food security where animal traction is one of the solutions to increase agricultural production.  to expand animal traction and to make it sustainable, there is the need to regain consciousness on abandoned training centres, assisting local blacksmiths  to overcome scepticism, farmers should diversify their crop production asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 50-63 62  more ploughboys should be trained. despite higher rate of school enrolment, these boys can still assist in feeding the animals or in transportation from time-to-time.  the government should invest in research on animal traction in order to help develop the sector towards agricultural sustainability and scale up the adoption and efficient in the use of animal traction technology.  affordable agricultural loans should be assured to the oxen-farmers by the stakeholders.  the government should ensure the provision of seed varieties farmers in order to overcome their sceptical nature funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: no conflict of interest was reported by the authors. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. 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https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=contribution+of+draft+cattle+to+rural+livelihoods+in+a+district+of+southeastern+uganda+endemic+for+bovinparasitic+diseases%3a+an+economic+evaluation&btng= https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-015-1191-9 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 659 challenges facing community participation in participatory forest management in southwestern ethiopia kero alemu danano department of natural resource management, wolaita sodo university, ethiopia  kerobonga@gmail.co article history: received: 18-mar-2020 accepted: 30-jul-2020 online available: 02-sep2020 keywords: community participation, sustainable, participatory forest management, addiyo woreda abstract the purpose of this paper remained to detect the contests of the communal participation of participatory forest management in selected kebeles of addiyo woreda, kaffa zone of snnprs of ethiopia. the study engaged main and subordinate data sources. the study sites were selected by using purposively, and sample respondents were selected by using systematic sampling techniques. accordingly, 295(91 females and 204 males) households were selected. the household survey, fgd, personal observation, and key informant interviews were used for primary data collection. the data of the study had analyzed using both numerical and qualitative methods. binary logistic regressions remained employed to evaluate factors affecting the participation of households in pfm. the study initiates that woodland coverage is decreasing, the logistic regression results revealed that participation in pfm has a statistically significant and negative relationship with annual income, the distance of households from the pfm site, and pfm site from the market, whereas a positive relationship with family size, forest income, number of livestock, awareness of households about pfm and support from external stakeholders. therefore, to see sustainable participatory woodland managing in the study zone, awareness would remain created among communities for this government, and external stakeholders should work co-operatively and actively. contribution/ originality this paper is crucial for the scientific world by searching the challenges in inaccessible areas of the world and using the logistic regression model for analyzing the challenges on the application of participatory forest management. it also contributes to the community still depending on the traditional form of usage of firewood and more dependent on forests for their livelihood by creating more awareness in respect of the challenges in the application of participatory forest management wisely by evaluating it in different viewpoints. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.659.670 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: kero alemu danano (2020). challenges facing community participation in participatory forest management in southwestern ethiopia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 659-670. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 659-670 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:kerobonga@gmail.co http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.659.670 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6858-9072 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 659-670 660 1. introduction forests provide ecosystem services that serve as a source of employment, cultural and aesthetic uses, subsistence uses, and direct or indirect income. nonetheless, in many cases, access to natural resources is neither uniform nor equitable within and between communities (islam et al., 2013). even though there is little documentation of history that shows communities’ traditional resource management practices in ethiopia, it is clear that several communities had traditional/indigenous resource management practices, including some elements of biodiversity conservation (kanel and dahal, 2008). management of forest varies in intensity from a leave alone, natural situation to a highly intensive regime with silvicultural interventions. forest management is generally increased in intensity to achieve either economic criteria (increased timber yields, non-timber forest products, ecosystem services) or ecological criteria (species recovery, fostering of rare species, carbon sequestration) to achieve these; local community plays a significant role in forest management and land-use decision making by themselves in the facilitating support of the government as well as change agents (shindler et al., 1999). globally many practices show that changes from statecentered policies toward clarifications at the native level, like pfm, resulted in property forest conservation and development to achieve sustainability (fisher, 1999 and khanal, 2007). government inducing participation, presence of great indigenous knowledge on natural resources conservation by the community, perceived effects of forest degradation on their livelihoods, and perceived benefits of rehabilitation practices enabled the households to participate more in forest management, conservation and rehabilitation (asfaw and fekadu, 2018). though, without the legal recognition of the right to use forest products, local people have neither the interest nor the courage in protecting and developing forests. such systems would rather generate an incentive structure that forces locals to irresponsibly exploit forests (dereje and mulugeta, 2019). supported from lessons learned elsewhere, participatory forest management (pfm) was introduced to an african country by some ngos and donor agencies, notably the farm continent, sos sahel, gtz, and jica (temesgen, 2007). in biological science, management is to boost a method that desires continuous coordination among completely different sectors and cross-plane figure bodies. however, it desires to associate the correct guideline for a suitable implementation. such a suggestion among national and regional environmental bodies would rely on the capability and temperament of the voters and also the society (zewdie, 2002). as a result of it's threatening for a fish swimming at intervals the ocean to image a world while not water; therefore, it's tough for kaffa individuals to image their lives while not forest. the forest has been a neighborhood for consumption, financial gain generation, and spirituality equally as {a partial neighborhood an area district|a regional nativeity|a vicinity section} for local establishments, data production, and power relationships. the generality of forests is to boost visible in their second leg to face agriculture (stellmacher, 2007). whereas knowing such a reality, the government has been attempting to implement completely diverse forest management methods overtime at intermissions the country. the department of agronomy has nominated fifty-eight of the forest as national forest priority areas (nfpas) at the beginning of the nineteen eighties. the foremost objective behind the identification was to associate an integrated management system with the last word goal that each becomes a selffunding and property enterprise (tewodros, 2008). though kaffa forest was selected as “bonga natural forest priority space (bnfp) (henok, 2007), then national forest priority area (nfpa) in 1987 by the ethiopian government but unlike the 1980s, where forest administration was centralized and highly managed by the government, in the 1990s the concept of statecommunity joint forest management gives the local forest user open access to the forest; consequently, forest resources belong to the state de jure, but they are de facto open access for all sorts of exploitation. hence, a tremendous amount of forest has been degraded in the 1990s. (dereje and mulugeta, 2019). visible of this, a research project has recently been conducted in kaffa forest by the biological science analysis centre on the extent of forest conversion and historical land cowl changes. supported by remote sensing knowledge and surveys on the undersurface, the results reveal that natural forest in the kaffa zone has shriveled by twentyasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 659-670 661 one percent throughout the number of forest loss from 1973-1987, by 14.0 % throughout 19872001 and decrease of 3 % throughout 2001-2007 (van bommel and van der, 2013). though this variety showed a reduction of deforestation on the natural forest of kaffa zone, deforestation at intervals the study woreda, particularly on non-pfm sites increasing from time-to-time and reducing in pfm sites although it is continued on sort of pfms sites like yecha and angiyo kola kebeles kaffa zone agriculture and rural development (kzard, 2017). to cut back this devastation, per the data collected from addiyo woreda agriculture and rural development department, at intervals the addiyo woreda, solely 10 pfm (participatory forest management) sites are established between the periods from 2004 until 2009 by completely different organizations covering a whole space of regarding 20,094 ha of forest space. however, members were not adequately organized themselves in these pfm sites as cooperatives or forest user groups (fug) to sustain pfm (ibid). as sisay (2007) cited, the recommendation created by the external consultants commissioned to determine the pilot program that outlined pfm as a result of the sole tool for the management of forest priority areas wherever social, economic and environmental issues may even be self-addressed in accordance to property forest management and suggest replication of the identical elsewhere at intervals the country. therefore pfm was introduced as one of the solutions to solve the problem of open access to forest resources and promote sustainable forest management in the country through community participation (gobeze et al., 2009). and also, winberg (2010) confirms that pfm is a new paradigm system of forest management that is adopted and implemented to fulfill the interest, respecting of traditional users, and bottom-up approach, which encourages a sense of belongingness to the rural people in general landless rural youth in particular. thus, the main objectives of this research were contributed to assess the factors that challenge public involvement in sustainable participatory forest management in selected kebeles of addiyo district kaffa zone, snnprs. 2. methods and methodology 2.1. explanation of the study area this study remained conceded out in three selected kebeles in addiyo woreda, namely mera, angiyo, kolla, and yecha. therefore, it is important to describe briefly addiyo woreda. 2.1.1. astronomical & relative location of addiyo woreda astronomically addiyo woreda lies between 7o 8ꞌ-7o 26ꞌn latitude and 36o 15ꞌ-36o 50ꞌe longitude (figure 1) and which is located at the eastern part of kaffa zone with the distance of 64 km from the capital of kaffa zone bonga; 524 km from the capital city of ethiopia and 801 km from hawassa. it shares boundaries with decha woreda in the west, gimbo woreda in the north west, tello woreda in the south, konta special woreda in the south east, and the north and northeastern part with oromia region jimma. (kzofed, 2018). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 659-670 662 figure 1: location map of the study area made from arc gis by researcher, 2018 2.1.2. climatic condition a comparatively reasonable air situation categorizes it with mean yearly rain fluctuating among 1400 and 2000 mm and usual annual temperature varying from 12 ºc to 26 ºc. 2.1.3. vegetation according to awardo (2018), the study area is covered by forest comprising a rich mixture of species such as indigenous tree specious like yinoo, orooroo, tikur inchet, wolkif (shawuko), dokima(yino), birbira(bibero), qato, komo dido, bissana (croton macrostochys), kontir (petrolobium stellatum), korch (erythrinia abyssinica), endod(phytolacca dodecader), grawa (vernonia specious), timiz, zigba (podocarpus talacta), di’oo, shinaatoo, cactus and kerero(aningeria) are common tree specious and shirubs are also common around kola. out of which, kosso and woyira locally have medicinal value. 2.2. research design this research employs a mixed approach of both quantitative and qualitative methods. because in a mixed approach, quantitative and qualitative techniques are mixed in a single study, and it is important for seeking convergences and corroboration of results from different methods and designs studying the phenomena. a sequential explanatory research design was used in this study. quantitative and qualitative data were collected in the form of surveys, questionnaires, semistructured interviews, and focus group discussions that were served to investigate the challenges facing the community participation on participatory forest management. 2.3. sample size and sampling procedures various sampling procedures have been employed in the study of this research. first nonprobability sampling, mainly purposeful sampling technique, has used to choose addiyo woreda among ten rural woreda and 1 city administration of kaffa zone. the researcher has selected this woreda for different reasons. the reasons are: first, the area has a little bit better practice of pfm with their challenges of community participation. second, the addiyo woreda has large-scale deforestation than compared with other woredas of the zone (kzard, 2017). the third reason is, this woreda has traditionally marginalized groups (menja) who are mainly depending on the forest for their livelihood. the other point for the selection of this woreda was it contains 28 kebeles. however, the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 659-670 663 emphasis was given only for three kebeles with various cases, including financial and time gaps. among 28 kebeles, three kebeles were selected for this research, namely, yecha, angiyookola and mera kebeles. to select these three kebeles, a purposeful sampling technique was used because the researcher believed that these three sample kebeles were adequate and representative of the total kebeles in the woreda. the sampling frame includes all the families in these three, including both household groups that were participants and nonparticipants of pfm. however, a special emphasis has been given to the participants of pfm, because they have expected as had more experience than the nonparticipants. here, the total number of households in these three kebeles is 1131. in a survey-type investigation, studies regularly have bigger samples because the proportion of responses normally occurs to be low, as low as 20 to 30%, especially in mailed survey studies (kothari, 1990). based on this, 25% of the total population was used as the sample size. therefore, n = (25% of n) = (0.25*n) = (0.25*1131) = 282.75 ≈ 283 2.4. data analysis the survey generated both qualitative and quantitative data was summarized, categorized and coded some qualitative responses into numeric values and then entered into the statistical program (stataic11) and microsoft window (2007). information obtained from unstructured interviews and informal interviews with key informants and with focus group discussion in the study area was narrative and qualitative. it is used to support coded qualitative and quantitative data. descriptive statistics, sum, mean, standard deviation, cross-tabulation, and percentages were presented in tables, graphs to enable easy interpretation and quick visual comparisons of variables within the study area. moreover, binary logistic regressions remained employed to evaluate factors affecting the participation of households in pfm. t-test and chi-square tests were also used to explore the relationship between independent variables with dependent. 3. result and discussion 3.1. factors that affecting sustainable participatory forest management in this subsection of the study, analysis of participation in pfm was discussed using demographic, social, economic, and biophysical variables, and they were analyzed one by one to identify their relationship with the dependent variable, i.e., probability of participation in pfm. 3.1.1. the binary logistic regression analysis for probability of participation in pfm in the previous section, variables describing the probability of participating in pfm and their differences between the participants and nonparticipant households are recognized. though, within the binary logistic model investigation, the study emphasizes seeing the joint results of variables among contributors and non-contributors inn the study area. all variables related to the probability of participation in pfm binary logistic regression are mentioned the p values, with the worth of p<0.01 and p<0.05. therefore, those variables which were identified as statistically significant have not multi-colinearity effect. the outputs of the logistic model were predicted using logistic state command to get the output with the odds ratio described below. between 10 variables included in the model, the wald x2 t e s t results for 8 of them show that they are found to be statistically substantial and had important relationships with the chance of involvement in pfm (table 1). the result of the logistic regression analysis shows that family size, annual income, number of livestock support, and distance of pfm site in km were statistically important at a 1% significance level. income from the forest, awareness of household respondents on pfm, and distance from the market remained as well statistically substantial at a 5% significance level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 659-670 664 table 1: binomial logistic regression (reporting odds ratio) of participation in pfm partcip coef. (β) odds ratio (exp(b)) robust std. error z sig. (p>z) [95.0% confidence interval] lower upper famsize 0.732 2.079 0.664 2.29 0.022** 1.111 3.891 _ieduc_1 -1.831 0.160 0.184 -1.59 0.112 0.016 1.533 _ieduc_2 -2.277 0.102 0.128 -1.82 0.069 0.008 1.193 _ieduc_3 -1.192 0.303 0.313 -1.15 0.248 0.040 2.297 _imarstatu~1 -2.676 0.068 0.121 -1.52 0.129 0.002 2.175 anincom -.5167 0.596 0.086 -3.57 0.000*** 0.448 0.792 forincome 0.0003 1.000 0.0002 2.37 0.018** 1.000 1.000 livestock 0.744 2.104 0.430 3.64 0.000*** 1.409 3.142 _iaware_1 2.356 10.558 11.215 2.22 0.026** 1.316 84.673 isupport_1 4.930 138.430 167.578 4.07 0.000*** 12.906 1484.79 hmuinhrs -1.094 0.334 0.119 -3.07 0.002*** 0.166 0.673 hmuinhmr -0.845 0.429 6.065 -2.01 0.044** 0.188 0.978 cons -0.693 2.000 -0.35 0.729 -4.614 3.227 note: *** and ** indicate 1% and 5% level of significance respectively number of observations = 295, pseudo rsquare = 0.8654, wald chi2(12) = 53.32, prob > chi2 = 0 -2 log likelihood value = -26.719, % of correct prediction for participants = 96.61% (171 households out of 177), % of correct prediction for nonparticipants = 94.92% (112 households out of 118) % of total correct prediction = 95.93% (283 households out of 295) source: survey data, 2018 moreover, annual income, space from the forest, and remoteness from the market had a negative correlation; the rest were found to have a positive correlation with participation on pfm. however, education level [(1st of primary education cycle), (2nd cycle of primary education), (secondary education), and (above secondary (complete)] and marital status were found to be insignificant at 5% significance level. even though the level of education is insignificant at fewer than 5% significance level, the negative coefficient indicates that households who have less educational level are more likely to participate in pfm than those who have more educational level. it is in line with that an advanced level of education offers an extensive choice of work possibilities; hereafter, income from the woodland product is nonpaying due to bigger opportunity costs of forest product (dolisca et al., 2006). however, the study that was founded by coulibaly-lingani et al. (2009) and musyoki et al. (2013) exposed that the level of schooling did not have a relation with the level of involvement in forest management. in the same way, even though marital status was insignificant at less than a 5% significance level and hypothesized as have a positive correlation, the negative coefficients indicate that marital status has an inverse relation with pfm. however, the study result of temesgen (2007) displayed that single people associated with the married ones have inadequate knowledge of ecological management since people get married; they encompass more in community activities than the lone person. 3.1.2. interpretation of odds ratios those variables that were found statistically significant were interpreted using the odds ratio as follows: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 659-670 665 3.1.2.1. awareness of households about pfm logistic regression results revealed that the awareness level of the household on the pfm has an optimistic relationship with membership on pfm at a 5% level of significance (b=2.356, p< 0.01). the positive beta value shows that there is a direct relationship of awareness of respondents about pfm with participation in pfm. the result revealed the odds ratio related to consciousness of household head on pfm [or=10.558, 95% c.i: (1.316, 84.673)]. it can be interpreted as holding all other sovereign variables constant in the model; an odds ratio of 10.558 is in the indulgence of involvement on pfm by way of households who have awareness on pfm than those who have no consciousness on pfm. it implies that household who had an awareness of participatory forest management, his/her awareness makes the household clearly understand to join and benefit from the pfm. this is in line with the study that signifies involvement in pfm activities will probably depend on community responsiveness as informed by alves et al. (1999), who decided that attentiveness on terrestrial deprivation and insight of the assistances to be improved out of the forest management does are critical issues for asset and agreement of conservation measures. other studies also have shown a similar result; the level of awareness of the household head by education has a positive effect on on-farm tree planting. people who are more granted have more income opportunities (thalma et al., 2018). 3.1.2.2. support of external stakeholders based on the logistic regression end in the damage of household on the pfm includes a positive relationship with participation on pfm at a 1% level of consequence (β = 4.930, p< 0.01). the positive beta value shows that there is a direct relationship of support from external stakeholders and participation in pfm. the logistic result revealed that the chances ratio related to support of external stakeholders for pfm [or=138.430, 95% c.i: (12.906, 1484.79)]. it could be taken as holding all additional independent variables are constant within the model; an odds ratio of 138.430 is in approval of involvement on pfm as per the support of external stakeholders applied on pfm than not. it suggests that those households who got support for participatory forest management better to affix to pfm. the main focus conference also revealed that, the households needs support to conserve their forest, one among the group member stated that, “after pfm was established in our kebele those external stakeholders not visiting, providing support including technical, financial yet as materials except in the future support of potato. and the shortage of external stakeholders' support is not good if we are visiting to create sustainable pfm because we have no alternatives to use. unless we get support from the government and other alternative bodies, it is very hard since our life is betting on forest. this discussion is in line with the study of clare (2010), stated that a high level of involvement from a large range of external actors or stakeholders would increase the likelihood of sustainable collective action in joint forest management (jfm) at the local level. 3.1.2.3. annual income of the households the logistic regression result reveals that an annual income and participation in pfm has a statistically weighty relationship at a 1% level of consequence and negative relationship (β = 0.516, p< 0.01). the negative beta value shows that there is an inverse relationship between household annual income and participation in pfm. annual income has the chances ratio of [or=0.569, 95% c.i: (0.448, 0.792)]. the result may be inferred holding all other variables persistent; the chances ratio of 0.569 is in disfavor of participating in pfm as the annual income of household increases by one unit in birr. it means that there is less probability of participation in pfm because of the annual income of households increases. accordingly, on the average value of annual income, when annual income increase by one birr from average annual income (8269.15birr ), the probability of participation of household in pfm decreases by a marginal factor of 0.049. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 659-670 666 information gathered from fgd and key informant interviews revealed that people who have an improved annual income do not seem interested to participate in pfm because they endure their activity instead of becoming a pfm participant and to be benefited from pfm. it could be households who have more annual income might not be interesting to hitch in pfm because they need a sufficient yearly income to shop for forest products. annual income could be a substantial feature for the public to receive and take part in communal resource administration (shahbaz and ali, 2006). however, opposite studies whose investigations were conducted by kugonza (2009) has recommended the lack of a connection amongst involvement in shared resource administration and yearly revenue of households. within the same way, an inquiry conducted by chhetri (2005) in nepal also does not illustrate any significant association between public involvement and yearly income. 3.1.2.4. income from forest logistic regression leads to revealing that forest income and participation in pfm has a significant relationship at 5% of significance and positive relationship (β = 2.28*10-4, p< 0.05). the positive beta value shows that there is a direct relationship between household income from forest and participation in pfm. income from forest has the chances ratio of [or=1, 95% c.i: (1.000048, 1.000623)]. the result may be understood allotment all other variable constant, the percentages ratio of 1.000 is in the indulgence of involvement in pfm as income from the forest of household increases by one unit of ethiopian currency (birr). it means that there is more probability of participation in pfm because of the forest income of households increases. accordingly, on the average value of forest income when income from forest increase by one birr from the average value of income from the forest (4747.92birr), the probability of participating household in pfm increases by a marginal factor of 2.73*10-5. when an individual produces abundant income since woodlands contain an astonishing chance to urge contributed to pfm. from fgd, one amongst the members stated that “i saw forest over my son, this can be because i generate my income from the forest and use for my family's daily expenditure, so i have got no life if there is no forest. therefore, i am so interested in conserving my forest and in getting more income from it.” this investigation result is in a step with alemtsehay (2010), and it suggests that the number of forests has powerfully exaggerated on specific choices whether to partake or not within the administration of a typical reserve. per gebremdhin (2008) suggests, the possibility to partake in pfm rises suggestively because the fiscal welfares one might produce as of pfm growths additionally. faham et al. (2008), in their research in iran, furthermore specified that monetary drive and forest dependence are certainly and meaningfully associate with forest occupants’ involvement in the expansion of forest areas. contrary to the above discoveries, a pursuit piloted by kugonza (2009) in the northwestern a part of uganda recommends that respondent’s requirement on forest properties have not any substantial effect on preparedness to join in public grounded woodland administration. 3.1.2.5. number of livestock from the logistic regression, the end in the number of livestock and participation in pfm has a statistically important relationship at a 1% level of significance and positive relationship (b = 0.743, p< 0.01). the positive beta value shows that there has a positive relationship between the household figure of cattle and participation in pfm. the number of cows has the chances ratio of [or=2.104, 95% c.i: (1.409, 3.142)]. the result is interpreted holding all other variables persistent; the possibilities proportion of two.104 is in favor of participation in pfm. as the kind of livestock of households increases by one unit, which is measured in the tropical livestock unit (tlu), the probability of participation of households in pfm increases by a marginal factor of 0.072. it means that folks who have more numbers of livestock more probability participate in pfm than people who have less livestock. the key interview and fgd also indicate that those households who have higher livestock are more interested in using fodder or grass and wish materials from this forest to form an element for keeping their livestock. the following study results are in line with this study result, and livestock capitals of households were well-thought-out by many researchers as a contributing factor to take in in protection of forest resources. a numerical investigation steered in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 659-670 667 nepal endorses that family with a sizable amount of cattle features a high possibility to join in in participatory woodland administration than their particular complements (chhetri, 2005). and also, the research by agrawal and chatre in three indian states, who used an econometrical model and recommend that family administrators’ cattle money are powerfully and certainly connected with the participation in defense and growth of woodland capitals (agrawal and chatre, 2006). 3.1.2.6. family size based on logistic regression result, family size and participation in pfm has a statistically weighty relationship at a 5% level of significance and positive relationship (β = 0.731, p< 0.05). the positive beta value shows that there has a positive relationship between family size and participation in pfm. family size has the possibilities ratio [or=2.079, 95% c.i: (1.111, 3.89)]. the results are often interpreted, keeping all other variables relentless; the possibilities share of 2.079 is in favor of participation in pfm as the family size of household increases by one unit, the probability of participation of household in pfm increases by a marginal factor of 0.708. it means that there has more probability of participation in pfm as the family size of households increases. due to the large family size, there is a shortage of own enough resources but a chip labor source. therefore, so hide this problem, they interest to hitch in pfm and to use different and better technology, which is provided by different external stakeholders if they supply and conserve their environment. massive children can rally state of plantation by growing collective family heads offerings to up keeping and provision to organizations that ease maintenance. furthermore, such families contributing to pfm and cashing in wood products may be viewed as a viable livelihood alternative for the larger family sizes. large kin adopts labor-intensive technology and thus contribute plenty to the event of wearing (tiffen et al., 1994). 3.1.2.7. distance from pfm site logistic regression revealed that distance of participatory forest management site from household respondents has a statistically significant affiliation with involvement in pfm at a 1% level of significance and negative relationship (β = -1.094, p< 0.01). the negative beta value shows that there is an inverse relationship of household distance in minutes from pfm forest and participation in pfm. the distance of pfm forest has the odds ratio [or=0.334, 95% c.i: (0.166, 0.673)]. the result can be understood, holding all additional variables constant, the odds ratio of 0.334 is in disfavor of participating in pfm as the distance of household increases by one unit (kilometer). it indicates that there is less probability of participation in pfm as the distance of households from pfm forest increases. accordingly, on the average value of distance, when distance increase by one kilometer from an average distance of 2.65 kilometers, the probability of participation of households to participate in pfm decreases by a marginal factor of 0.105. this negative relation indicates that to arrive in the pfm forest, it may need transportation and when the transportation cost rises with remoteness and consequently develops more affluent, exclusively because their actions linked to guard the woodland wants additional of their consistent occurrence. fgd results from both sites also revealed that it is difficult to take a walk and to pay for transportation costs from time to time. rather, one of the non-participant members said, even it is better to help in the form of cash by voluntarily rather than to come and join the pfm because forest protect will be useful for our environment. the studies in line with this were found from thoai and ranola (2010) showed that there is a contrary connection among the distance of the home of the agrarian from the forest extent to be accomplished and the possibility of involvement. the larger the overlap between the location of common-pool resources and the residence of the users, the greater the chance of success (wade, 1987). moreover, chhetri (2005) and kugonza (2009) found a negative relationship between distance from forest and community involvement in forest protection. in divergence to this, the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 659-670 668 study reveals that distance is not a determining factor in the household choice to partake in forest management (musyoki et al., 2013). 3.1.2.8. distance from market the distance of the market and participation in pfm has a “statistically significant” relationship at a 5% level of “significance” and a negative relationship (β = -0.845, p< 0.05). the negative beta value indicates that there is an inverse relationship between the distance of the market and participation in pfm. the distance of market has the odds ratio of [or= 0.429, 95% c.i: (0.188, 0.978)]. the result “can be understood holding all other variables constant, the odds ratio” of 0.429 is in disfavor of partaking in pfm as the distance of the market of household increases by one unit (kilometer). it indicates that there is less probability of participation in pfm as the distance of households from the market center increases. accordingly, on the average value of distance, when the distance from the market center increase by one kilometer from an average distance of 1.8 kilometers, the probability of participation of households to participate in pfm decreases by a marginal factor of 0.081. it indicates that there is more probability of participation in pfm when the market center is nearby the pfm site. interviewees who are very close to the market are expected to join pfm at the earliest. it is because they can effortlessly sell the forest harvests and support their livelihood. fgd of both sites also revealed and agreed that “it is necessary for those households who live in the nearby market at the same time by pfm forest to participate because we could easily access the market to sell our forest products.” remoteness to the market from the household’s home has a significant adverse effect on involvement in forest resource exploitation bedru (2007). in contrast to this, researchers who are in substantial works on the influence of transportations and markets initiate a positive relationship between distance from the market and management of forest (agrawal and chhatri, 2006). 4. conclusion the majority of the community, both participants and non-participants do not have the consciousness to maintainable participatory forest managing plus future dangers of forest depletion. the status of woodland in the locality still decreasing, whereas income from the forest is increased; lack of awareness, distance from pfm forest, feeling that pfm losses forest use right and no trust on pfm are hindering factors for non-participants not to join in pfm. the source of fuel for household consumption is only from forest and forest products. there is no lively hood diversification done for the community to reduce reliance on the forest. the benefit distribution is varied among participants. in general, the majority of respondents agree that pfm is more significant than the traditional forest conservation system. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the author would like to thanks addiyo woreda for his help during the data collection, his brother dagne alemayehu and all his friends and household heads, who helped to design and organize this research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references agrawal, a., & chatre, a. 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(2013). creating scientific narratives: experiences in constructing and interweaving empirical and theoretical plots publisher: springer doi: 10.1007/978-94-007-5113-2_11 in book: forest and nature governance: a practice based approach (pp.217-239) wade, r. (1987). village republics: economic conditions for collective action in south india. cambridge: cambridge university press. forthcoming. winberg, e. (2010). participatory forest management in ethiopia, practices and experiences. addis ababa: food and agriculture organization, sub-regional office for eastern africa (sfe). http://www.fao.org/forestry/24514043adbe564e803444b40d3e18987b434d.pdf. zewdie, y. (2002). access to forest resources and forest-based livelihoods in highland of kafa, ethiopia: a resource management perspective. ph.d. dissertation. university of huddersfield, england. http://www.arcjournals.org/ https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3a%2f%2fdx.doi.org%2f10.1007%2f978-94-007-5113-2_11 http://www.fao.org/forestry/24514043adbe564e803444b40d3e18987b434d.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 204 stability and adaptability genotype of hybrid rice in the west java province of indonesia lia amalia  a, ai komariah a, ilma hilmayanti b a  department of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, winaya mukti university, indonesia b bpsbtph of west java province, indonesia  lia8264@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 08-may-2019 accepted: 12-sep-2019 online available: 24-sep2019 keywords: adaptability, genotype, hybrid rice, stability abstract experiments to study the stability and adaptability genotype of hybrid rice were conducted in two locations in west java: 1. the jelekong village baleendah bandung region, 2. the arjasari village leuwisari tasikmalaya region. the altitude of the baleendah bandung region is 650 and that of the leuwisari tasikmalaya region is 450 meters above sea level. the experiments were arranged in a randomized block design and used with 9 genotypes and 3 replications. the 9 genotypes of hybrid rice are sw-907, sw804, sw-902, us-915, sw-82, sw-923, intani-2, sl 8 shs, and shs 04 wm. the result of the experiment showed that the whole genotypes a = sw-907, b = sw-804, c = sw-902, d = us-915, e = sw-82, f = sw923, g = wm 4 shs, h = sl 8 shs, and i = intani 2 measured the height of the plants, the number of productive tillers, the length of the panicles, the number of grains per panicle, the number of filled grains per panicle, the weight of 1000 grains, and the grain yield per plot, and were unstable and unadaptive in bandung and tasikmalaya. contribution/ originality this study significantly contributes to provide recommendations about rice varieties that are adaptive/ suitable for certain regions, such as indonesia. information about the stability of genotype and genetic interaction x environment is very important to know in determining the right variety or strain planted in an environment. it is expected to be able to obtain lines of hope that adapt well in certain environments and are stable in some environments. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.204.215 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: lia amalia, ai komariah and ilma hilmayanti (2019). stability and adaptability genotype of hybrid rice in the west java province of indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 204-215. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 204-215 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:lia8264@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.204.215 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 204-215 205 1. introduction according to central bureau of statistics (2017), 1.2 million tons of rice imported from indonesia were recorded from january to november 2016. it is an increase of 110.66% compared to the same period last year. rice production is strategic, because it can strengthen national food security. efforts to achieve this food security on one hand will help the government to reduce rice imports and on the other hand increase farmers' income (acuña et al., 2008; bose et al., 2012; wireko-manu & amamoo, 2017). ratna and ishaq (2011) evaluated the performance and yield of some varieties of rice in the district of karawang. the results showed a very real difference among the varieties for all characters except the leaf color index. the result parameters were: ciherang has the highest plants (97.59cm), inpari-7 has a number of productive tillers and the heaviest weight of 100 grains 25 tillers/clump and tonnes ha-1 2.8 grams), and the number of empty grains 23 grains/panicle). st. bagendit has the highest number of pithy grain reaching 183 grains/panicle. the silugonggo variety has the shortest harvest age, but is not resistant to stems brown plant hopper (almost had a crop failure). st. bagendit has the highest dry grain harvest (8.10 tonnes ha-1) followed by ciherang (8.08 tonnes ha-1), inpari-13 (8.07 tonnes ha-1), inpari-7 (7.52 tonnes ha-1), inpari 10 (6.71 tonnes ha-1), and silugonggo (2.05 tonnes ha-1). various pieces of rice cultivation technology continue to be developed to achieve these efforts. one such effort is the provision of hybrid varieties of high yield, tolerant to extreme environments, stable, and adaptive to the environments in which they are cultivated. hybrid rice with a yield potential of 10% 25% higher than not hybrid varieties is an alternative to supporting government programs for rice self-sufficiency. according to yuniati (2011) there are 44 hybrids yielding higher heterosis than that of the checked variety (ciherang). the new varieties improved through a series of crosses require genotypes that have wide genetic variability. hybrid rice is the result of crossbreeding two mains that show heterosis, especially potential yield. plant breeding programs heavily rely on genetic variability as a source of elders. without the required genetic variability the efficiency and effectiveness of plant breeding programs will be very low. genetic variability can be obtained from local varieties, national superior varieties, introductory lines, experimental lines, and wild relatives of plants. introduced strains are not always expressed, nor produce higher yields in all environmental conditions. according to trias et al. (2011) varieties in medium elevation have a higher yield than varieties in low elevation. 4 mutant varieties have been observed to have good plant type, early maturing, and high yielding. hybrid rice produced and released in vietnam, china, india is widely introduced to indonesia: sw-907, sw-804, sw-902, us-915, sw-82, sw-923, sl 8 shs, wm 04 shs. the hybrid rice is adaptive in the country of origin with high yield potential, but it is not yet known whether it will be stable and adaptive and have the potential of a high yield in indonesia, therefore it is necessary to test it in various environments. the magnitude of the interaction between genotype and environment can be used to measure the stability and adaptability of a genotype that reflects the ability of plants to survive and multiply in various environments (nor and cady, 1979 cited in djaelani et al., 2001). good soil management is required if the environment is to be a medium for plants to produce good crops (subandi et al., 2019). several hybrids of rice are being developed in west java, including the tasikmalaya and bandung regions. the regions have different biogeophysical conditions, therefore it is good to test the hybrids at these two locations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 204-215 206 based on the background the problems to be studied in this research are: ▪ are there any stable hybrid rice genotypes in tasikmalaya and bandung? ▪ is there a hybrid of rice genotype which is adaptive only in tasikmalaya or bandung? (location specific) this study aims to study the stability and adaptability of several hybrid rice genotypes in tasikmalaya and bandung. the results of the research are expected to enrich the scientific repertoire in agriculture, especially agro technology related to information about the stability and adaptability of hybrid rice genotypes. this information is very important as a reference for determining the direction of breeding programs and as a useful source of information for related agencies in an effort to increase rice production through utilization of hybrid rice genotypes. evaluation of grain yield in many environments is one of numerous approaches to verifying the stability of genotypes (acuña et al., 2008). however, the interaction of genotypes with the environment always contributes to the stability of rice varieties (bose et al., 2012). prior experiments indicated an interaction between the genotype and the environment (g × e). studies, among others carried out by finlay and wilkinson (1963), and baihaki and wicaksana (2008) indicate interaction of the genotypes with the environment. baihaki and wicaksana (2008) found that the interaction of genotypes with environmental information is very important for countries with as wide biogeophysic variability as has indonesia. growers may utilize specific environmental contexts in the policy of determining the application of regional policy of distribution of a new superior variety. in this case there are two alternatives: 1. releasing new varieties with high yield potential for wide spatial range (wide adaptability), 2. releasing new varieties with high yield potential at specific regions. high adaptability is synonymous with stability and specific adaptability is identical to adaptivity. varietal adaptability to environmental fluctuations is important for stabilization of crop production in both regions and seasons. information on the genotype x environment interaction is essential to the successful evaluation of stable genotypes (uma devi et al., 2008 cited in pala et al., 2014). multienvironmental trials (met) were conducted to evaluate the yield stability performance of different genetic materials under different environmental conditions (yan et al., 2000; yan and tinker, 2006). the benefits to be gained are whether a region-specific superior variety can be released, including: 1. efficient use of funds and time, 2. multiplying new improved varieties, 3. national productivity to increase, 4. suppressing the price of the seed, 5. "regional buffering" which is indispensable to reducing the spread of plant pests or diseases, 6. providing an alternative choice of varieties sufficient for farmers, 7. exploiting the potential of natural wealth well, and 8. encouraging sustainable agricultural development (baihaki and wicaksana, 2008). the analysis of adaptability in baihaki and wicaksana’s research data and stability analysis for spatial environmental indexes during the 2003 planting season showed that six of the tested genotypes were not widely adopted in the eight test sites. however, genotype 3 tended to approach broad adaptation with the coefficient of regression value close to one and the standard deviation coefficient of regression close to zero. the yield per hectare of these six genotypes is quite high, ranging from 2.54 t.ha-1 to 3.99 t.ha-1 (baihaki and wicaksana, 2008). based on the definition of stability and adaptability of a genotype used in this study (baihaki and wicaksana, 2008), the results of a study conducted by harsanti and hambali (2003) at 20 rice strains in 20 environments (sites), there were only two lines showing extensive adaptability, i.e. s3388-id-pn16-2 strains (b = 1.03 b s = 0.27) and ir lines 64 (b = 1.01, b s = 0.08). the research asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 204-215 207 was conducted in a very wide range of locations, ranging from north sumatra, west sumatra, jambi, south sumatra, banten, west java, central java, yogyakarta, bali, ntt, ntb, south kalimantan, and south sulawesi. the average yield of these 10 strains ranged from 5.86 t.ha-1 to 6.62 t.ha-1. the low number of widely adapted varieties and neglected narrow-adapted varieties, as well as the low number of newly released superior varieties, can illustrate the low efficiency and effectiveness of the superior varieties release process in the country. this will be overcome if the region-specific superior varieties are also taken into account in the release policy of varieties, thus reducing the cost and time that have been wasted. genotype interaction with the environment in plants is a real phenomenon. the wide adaptation variety (superior adaptability) is superior and released in number slightly compared with the number of genotypes tested. in addition to broad adaptation varieties, region-specific superior varieties are recommended to be released to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of new improved varieties release process, establish regional buffering, and increase the number of superior varieties of crops so farmers will get alternative options and lower seed prices. a common way to recognize an ideal strain is to test a set of expected lines in some environmental conditions. based on the results of variance analysis will be known whether or not the interaction between genotype and the environment. if there is no interaction between the genotype and the ideal lineage environment it will be very easy to do, i.e. by choosing a strain with the highest average yield. however, if an interaction between the genotype and the environment will make it difficult in the selection of an ideal strain that can adapt and stable in all environments because the highest yield on a strain is not necessarily the highest result in different environments. the interaction between genotype and environment is crucial in determining the stability and adaptability of a strain. if varieties that are adaptive to a particular environment are desired, strains that interact very clearly with the environment must be obtained. conversely, if desired cultivars that are stable or widely adopted then should be obtained strains that do not or less interaction with the environment (satoto, 1996). the results of satoto (1996), stable hybrid rice based on stability analysis were hybrid ir54752 a x ir46r, ir54752a x ir 21916 and ir54752a x ir19392 because they had higher yield averages than ir 64 with bi values approaching 1 (one). such hybrids are responsive to environmental variations similar to the average of genotypes tested, meaning they have a fairly stable stability. hybrid ir54752a x ir19058-107-1, ir54752a x krueng aceh, and ir54752a x sadang have bi values greater than 1 (one) so that the three hybrids have responses to environmental variations above the average genotype tested. the three hybrids are hybrids that are location specific or can be classified on unstable hybrids. this means that in an environment that is less suitable hybrids it will give low results but once get good environmental support it will give high results. based on the above-mentioned thinking, the hypothesis can be determined as follows: 1. there are several stable hybrid rice genotypes in bandung and tasikmalaya regencies. 2. there are several hybrid rice genotypes that are adaptive in bandung regency and in tasikmalaya district. 2. materials and methods the experiments were conducted by using the experimental approach in two different locations, namely arjasari village, leuwisari sub-district, tasikmalaya regency with altitude 450 m above sea level and in jelekong village, baleendah sub-district, bandung with altitude 650 m above sea level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 204-215 208 the materials used in the experiment included hybrid rice seeds of 9 genotypes, namely; genotype sw-907, sw-804, sw-902, us-915, sw-82, sw-923, intani-2, sl 8 shs, wm 04 shs, urea fertilizer (45% n), sp 36 (36% p2o5), kcl (56% k2o), furadan 3 g, matador 50 ec, dithane m 45 80 wp and agrep 25 wp. the tools used include hand tractor, hoe, hand sprayer, cored, bucket, with measuring instrument such as 5kg weight scales and measuring cup, meter, wet ball-ball thermometer, and treatment plank, and stationery. the experimental approach using randomized block design (rbd) is a simple one-factor pattern, i.e. several hybrid rice genotypes replicated three times. each replication consisted of 9 treatment of hybrid rice genotypes placed randomly on experimental patches measuring 5.0 m x 3.0 m = (15 m2). variables in the study consist of the independent variable (independent variable) and dependent variable. the independent variable, i.e. the treatment of several hybrid rice genotypes consisting of nine levels with the operationalization of variable types is presented in table 1. the dependent variable is in the form of hybrid rice genotypes the response the response variable is used to answer the hypothesis so that the data are analyzed using statistical analysis. the main response modifiers for yield power characteristics were performed on 5 (five) sample plants in the form of clumps present in the plot of 5.0 m x 3.0 m. to obtain yield per plot and yield conversion per hectare observation of all crops in the experimental plot. table 1: operationalization of variables variable type sub variable indicator variable dependent variable hybrid rice genotypes a = genotype sw-907 b = genotype sw-804 c = genotype sw-902 d = us-915 genotype e = genotype sw-82 f = genotype sw-923 g = wm 4 shs genotype h = genotype sl 8 shs i = intani-2 genotype independent variable yield component 1. plant height 2. long panicle 3. number of productive tillers per hill 4. number of grains per panicle 5. the number of grain content per panicle 6. weight of 1000 grains yield of plant results of crop unhulled harvest primary data were obtained by measuring simple sample random sampling. the sample size is 5 plants in each plot and the number of plants per plot is 240 clumps of plants. the research hypothesis is as follows: h0: u1 = u2 = u3 =. . . . . . . un h1: u1 ≠ u2 ≠ u3 ≠. . . . . . . un or at least a pair of different treatments. the observed data were analyzed by combined analysis. stability was calculated using analysis models with the following linear equations (gomez and gomez, 1995). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 204-215 209 yij= mi + biij + dij (i = 1, 2, 3, ....., t and j = 1, 2, 3, ....., s) where: yij = average i curve in j environment mi = average i strain in all environments bi = regression coefficient of the i strain of the environmental index ij= environmental index, i.e. the mean deviation of all strains in an environment from the average dij = regression deviation for i line in j environment the parameters used to measure the stability are the regression coefficients (bi) and the standard deviation (sdi). the regression coefficient is the appearance of each strain in different environments against the average environment for all genotypes. a strain is said to be stable if it has one regression coefficient (b = 1) and the deviation is not significantly different from zero. 3. results and discussion the general condition of cultivation between the research sites of bandung and tasikmalaya has differences. the jelekong village district of the baleendah bandung region is 650 meters above sea level and has a type c (slightly wet) rainfall, while the arjasari village leuwisaritasikmalaya district sits at 450 meters above sea level with type d (medium) precipitation. pest and diseases may lower the crops (subandi et al., 2017; frasetya et al., 2019). pests and diseases attacking rice cultivation in these two locations do not disrupt the experiment. generally pests that attack the experimental crops are aphis plant hoppers. pests can be controlled by application of insecticides score at a 2.00ml concentrations of l-1 solution and the disease that attacks the trial rice plants is blb. the disease can be controlled by pesticides dithane m 45 80 wp and wp agrep 25 at a concentration of 2.00ml of l-1 solutions. preventive measures for pest control nematode species used furadan 3 g by means of sowing the crop land. weeds that grew in the rice during the trial were from a species of the jajagoan (echonochloa vulgari) grass, broad-leaved babadotan (ageratum conyzoides), and wild amaranth (amaranthus spinosus). weed was controlled by tossing the soil with a hoe. damage to crops due to weed infestation or pest attack was within tolerable limits, so the trial could continue. the authors of this study also conducted observations of 50% age interest and harvest age as shown in the following table: table 2: age data 50% flowering and harvest age rice genotype in bandung and tasikmalaya genotype age genotype 50% flowering (day after planting) harvest age (day after planting) bandung tasikmalaya bandung tasikmalaya a = sw-907 b = sw-804 c = sw-902 d = us-915 e = sw-82 f = sw-923 g = wm 4 shs 1 h = sl 8 shs i = intani-2 78 68 68 85 78 78 78 78 78 79 68 68 85 75 80 78 85 78 122 113 113 134 122 129 125 127 125 121 113 115 139 122 130 125 129 125 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 204-215 210 the table shows that the harvest ages of 9 rice genotypes grows each day. it is suspected that environmental factors have an effect on the genotype of the rice. environmental factors that are highly influential on the age of the harvest and flowering are the condition of water. during the experiment rain fall for 7 days causing the water condition in the crops to be available and flooded. this condition encourages vegetation to become stronger for longer. superior rice varieties generally mature in 105-125 days, whereas local rice varieties mature in 150-180 days. the observed age of 50% flowering and the harvest age (physiological ripening) of the 9 genotypes tested as listed in table 3 showed the shortest or most moderate sw-804 and sw902 genotypes of 113 days and the longest us-915 genotype of 134 days. the observed age of 50% flowering and harvest age of 9 genotypes tested as listed in table 4 showed the shortest or most moderate sw-804 genotype of 113 days and the longest us-915 genotype of 139 days. in addition to the above the supporting observations in this experiment include qualitative characters consisting of 13 indicators of variables using standards from upov (union internationale pour la protection des obstention vegetalis) or international union of plant variety protection, including crop shape, stem color, stem strength, leaf ear color, leaf tongue color, leaf color, leaf face, leaf position, flag leaf, grain shape, grain color, and hair loss. the results of observations of the leaf character indicated in table 5 can be recommended for temporary description of the unreleased genotypes. morphological observations of genotype g (wm 4 shs), h (sl-8 shs), and i (intani 2) are similar to those listed in the description and these are varieties that have been released by the national seed agency. the results of qualitative observation of several tested rice genotypes showed variation in plant shape, leaf blade, grain shape, grain color, and grain loss. the sw-923 genotype has a standing grove of trees that form an angle of > 300 and <450, so the morphology of the plant form is exposed. other genotypes have a rectangular angle of less than 300. the angle of the leaf blade on the sw-923 genotype is 450 and the other genotype is less than 300. genotype us-915 has a moderate grain (the ratio of grain length to width is between 2.1-3 and 0), while the other genotype has a slender grain (higher than 3.0). the color of the grain of the sw-82 genotype is clear yellow, while that of the other genotype is yellow straw. the level of hair loss varies from difficult through moderate to easy, based on the easy size of grain falling out when the panicle is grasped by hand. the loss criterion is calculated from the percentage of unhulled grain as difficult if the level of loss is <25%; moderate if 25%-50%; and easy if >50%. table 3: qualitative character of hybrid rice genotypes in bandung and tasikmalaya qualitative character a (sw907) b (sw804) c (sw902) d( us915) e (sw82) f(sw923) g (wm4 shs) h (sl8 shs) i (intani 2) crop shape upright upright upright upright upright upright upright upright upright foot color green green green green green green green green green stem color green green green green green green green green green leaf ear color colorless colorless colorless colorless colorless colorless colorless colorless colorless leaf tongue color colorless colorless colorless colorless colorless colorless colorless colorless colorless the color of the leaf green green green green green green green green green surface of the leaf rugged rugged rugged rugged rugged rugged rugged rugged rather rugged leaf upright upright upright upright upright upright upright upright upright asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 204-215 211 position leaf blade upright upright upright upright upright upright upright upright upright shape of grain slim slim slim medium slim slim slim medium medium color grain yellow straw yellow straw yellow straw yellow straw yellow straw yellow straw yellow straw yellow straw yellow straw loss grain medium easy to loss difficult medium medium medium medium medium medium thus the characteristics of plant shape, leaf blade, grain shape, grain color, and grain loss can be used as markers or morphological markers for rice plants. in general the appearance of all qualitative characters observed in bandung and in tasikmalaya are not very different. this indicates that this qualitative character is more controlled by genetic factors than the environment, meaning that the environment has very little effect on the characters. thus the characters are stable and do not change appearance in bandung nor tasikmalaya. the main observation data which were tested statistically include: plant height, number of productive tillers per hill, the length of the panicles, the number of grains per panicle, the weight of 1000 grains, and the yield of dry grain harvest per plot. based on the analysis of finlay-wilkinson stability the average value and parameter value of stability correlation are coefficient (bi) and regression deviation (sdi) for plant height, the number of productive tillers per hill, the number of grains per panicle, the number of grains of fill per panicle, the weight of 1000 grains, and the yield of dry grain harvest per plot in table 3. the table shows that all characters observed in all genotypes tested unstable both in bandung and tasikmalaya, which was not in accordance with the initial hypothesis. the instability of character is indicated by the bi<1 or bi >1. the stable character has bi = 1. according to finlay and wilkinson (1963) bi<1 indicates that the plant has above average stability and is a specially adapted genotype in marginal environments, meaning that with environmental changes the genotype gives only slight changes to the results and bi>1 values, which means that the characters are unstable and the genotype is adaptable in the optimal environment. the instability of all the observed characters including the resultant character is suspected because the characters are influenced by the genotype interaction with the environment because the controller of the quantitative control character consists of many genes or multigenic characters. that means that many genes play a role in controlling the nature of the outcome and each gene is small and cumulative. according to jalaludin et al. (1993) cited in nursanti et al. (2014) control gene results always lie in different chromosomes, so breeding programs to obtain high and stable results are very difficult to implement. however, although it is very difficult to implement the stability of the results, it is possible to get because according to ratna and ishaq (2011) factors causing the stability of the genotype results are not clearly known. it is suspected that the mechanisms of individual and population buffer are the contributing factors. stability mechanisms in general can be grouped into four things: genetic heterogeneity, component compensation, stress tolerance, and rapid recovery of resources. and subandi and dikayani (2018) said that growth form is an important regulation of plant development. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 204-215 212 table 4: plant harvest characteristics per plot of 9 rice hybrid genotypes genotypes plant height number of puppies productive length of panicle number of grain per panicle number of fill grain per panicle weight 1000 grains dry grain yield ratarata (bi) (sdi) ratarata (bi) (sdi) ratarata (bi) (sdi) ratarata (bi) (sdi) ratarata (bi) (sdi) ratarata (bi) (sdi) ratarata (bi) (sdi) a = sw907 110.97 0.89 0.00 21.42 0.24 0.00 23.97 -2.29 0.00 191.12 -0.67 0.00 145.30 0.39 0.00 22.31 -0.04 0.00 13.97 0.48 0.00 b = sw804 108.20 1.48 0.00 20.62 0.89 0.00 23.01 8.88 0.00 205.95 -0.63 0.00 156.96 0.32 0.00 22.31 1.28 0.00 14.68 0.93 0.00 c = sw902 106.70 1.81 0.00 19.93 0.25 0.00 22.90 13.26 0.00 207.76 -0.37 0.00 157.80 0.32 0.00 23.62 -0.37 0.00 14.10 0.96 0.00 d = us915 113.28 0.37 0.00 22.70 2.06 0.00 23.18 2.14 0.00 196.84 9.82 0.00 154.97 5.00 0.00 22.75 -3.05 0.00 17.02 1.74 0.00 e = sw82 117.58 1.62 0.00 21.80 1.49 0.00 25.03 1.56 0.00 206.97 2.51 0.00 159.55 1.78 0.00 20.14 1.03 0.00 16.12 1.21 0.00 f = sw923 115.33 0.97 0.00 20.85 0.53 0.00 25.10 0.07 0.00 207.88 -0.61 0.00 158.41 0.32 0.00 25.31 0.91 0.00 16.55 1.12 0.00 g = wm 4 shs 104.85 1.12 0.00 21.45 1.15 0.00 18.60 -5.42 0.00 187.98 1.47 0.00 143.52 1.14 0.00 24.98 0.21 0.00 14.52 1.11 0.00 h = sl 8 shs 100.50 0.90 0.00 22.22 1.05 0.00 19.86 112.36 0.00 179.15 -2.52 0.00 135.16 -0.60 0.00 26.48 2.23 0.00 13.88 0.57 0.00 i = intani2 100.80 -0.17 0.00 21.50 1.34 0.00 23.48 3.16 0.00 193.86 0.00 0.00 146.41 0.32 0.00 27.73 6.81 0.00 12.65 0.89 0.00 description: bi = correlation coefficient sdi = standard deviation asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 204-215 213 in this context stability is defined as a genotype that has genetic heterogeneity to avoid large yield changes in different environments. this mechanism arises from the result of the collaboration of various (heterogeneous) genes contained in the genetic makeup of a strain. this is understandable since the results are product of the various components of the outcome and the component of the outcome itself is a product of the genes. with the variety of products produced by a strain due to the heterogeneity of the strain reduction of the yield from one component will be replaced by the other components and result in stability. nine studied genotypes were hybrid strains in which the individual population was uniform or homogenous, making it very difficult to stabilize, especially in yields in various environments. adaptability of a character in view of the real or not real interaction between the genotype and the environment: if the genotype interaction with the real environment is real, the character is adaptive. if the interaction between the genotype and its environment is not real, the character is not adaptive. based on the finlay-wilkinson combined analysis calculation the result of f arithmetic and f interaction tables of high plant character genotypes, the number of productive tillers, the length of the panicles, the number of grains per panicle, the weight of 1000 grains, and dry grain yield is displayed in the following table: table 5: value of f count and f table of genotype interaction with the environment: 9 hybrid genotypes in bandung and tasikmalaya character fcount ft0.5 plant height 0.22 2.23 number of productive tillers 7.60 ** 2.24 length of panicle 3.57 ** 2.24 number of grain per panicle 1.61 2.24 total grain of content per panicle 0.22 2.23 weight of 1000 grains 0.22 2.23 weight of dry harvest 0. 22 2.23 ** shows significant the interaction between genotype and its environment is not significantly different for the weight of dry harvest. it means that all tested genotypes are not adaptive in bandung nor tasikmalaya. this is reinforced by the value of the interaction of plant height characters, the number of grains per panicle, and the weight of 1,000 grains that is not real either, although there are two characters that have the value of interaction between the genotype and the real environment the number of productive tillers and long panicle. the number of productive tillers and the length of a panicle bears no significant correlation to the results. this means that if the number of productive tillers is high but the panicle is not long and the number of grains is low, the-yield is not optimal. generally the characteristic weight of dry harvest is strongly influenced by the environment, hence the environmental effect is very real to the results. however, in this research the value of interaction between genotype and intangible environment is supported by the character interaction value that has correlation to the result that is the character of plant height to the number of grains per panicle. the number of grains per panicle and the weight of 1,000 grains that is not real. this condition illustrates that the diversity of plant height, number of grains per panicle, and weight of 1,000 grains among the tested strains is due to genetic differences in the strains and the environment in which they grow, while the effect is very small in interaction of strains with the environment. this is allegedly because the environment in both testing sites to nine hybrid rice genotypes, namely the bandung and tasikmalaya regions, are relatively the same. the type of rainfall in bandung is c (slightly wet) with rainfall during research ranging from 54mm to 317mm and the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 204-215 214 height of 650mdpl. the type of rainfall in the tasikmalaya district is d (medium) with rainfall during research ranging from 80mm to 577mm and the height of 450mdpl. the need for hybrid rice in the tropics during the dry season ranges from 427mm to 511mm (setiobudi, 2008). rainfall during research in bandung does not meet the range of need for hybrid rice in general, but the water needs can be fulfilled through technical cultivation and irrigation techniques. sitaresmi et al. (2011); sitaresmi et al. (2016); and yuniati (2011) maintain that if the interaction of genotype with the environment is weak, then the relative appearance ratings of a genotype from one location to another will be relatively the same. 4. conclusion based on the results of research and discussion it can be concluded that: there is no stable hybrid rice genotype in kab, tasikmalaya, and bandung except for the character of the number of productive tillers and long panicles. and there is no adaptive hybrid paddy genotype in sub districts of tasikmalaya and in bandung. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references acuña, t. l. b., lafitte, h. r., & wade, l. j. 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(2011). heterosis performance of several hybrid rice varieties at irrigated lowland. rice research installation. proceedings of the national seminar: december 10, 2011. agriculture plant breeding study program, university of padjadajaran, indonesia. 10 ` seasonal distribution, antimicrobial activity, and risk factors associated with the incidence of staphylococcus species in bovine milk from a dairy farm in eastern cape, south africa idamokoro emrobowansan mondaya,b yiseyon sunday hosua,b asmall-scale agribusiness and rural non-farm enterprise, niche area, walter sisulu university, mthatha, south africa. bfaculty of commerce and administration, department of economics and business sciences, walter sisulu university, mthatha, south africa.  mondayidamokoro@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 30 april 2021 revised: 14 december 2021 accepted: 4 january 2022 published: 28 january 2022 keywords milk cns antibiotics multiple drug resistance. the present study aimed to evaluate the incidence and seasonal distribution of staphylococcus species on a medium-scale dairy farm and investigate their antimicrobial sensitivity with selected standard antibiotics. several biochemical tests with the api staph kits were utilized to recognize the presence of micro-bacteria in the milk a species level. the antimicrobial activity was evaluated following the approved clinical laboratory standard institute (clsi) guidelines. in total, 217 samples of milk were cultured for bacterial tests over nine months. of the 217 milk samples analyzed, 13 varied staphylococcus species were identified from the 86 (39.63%) positive isolates. of the identified isolates, staphylococcus xylosus (22.09%), staphylococcus hominis (15.11%), and staphylococcus haemolyticus (11.63%) were the most common. bacteria species that showed resistance to the 15 different antimicrobial agents used in this study included staphylococcus xylosus (80%), staphylococcus sciuri (60%), staphylococcus aureus (53.33%), staphylococcus haemolyticus (46.67%), staphylococcus epidermidis (46.67%), and staphylococcus chromogenes (40%). the results found a high incident rate and multiple staphylococcus species resistant to antimicrobial drugs like penicillin and ampicillin, which are utilized on the farm, which calls for drastic measures. contribution/originality: the paper's primary contribution is finding that there was high incident rate and multiple drug resistance of staphylococcus species against selected antibiotics such as penicillin that is used in dairy farms. doi: 10.18488/5005.v12i1.4412 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: idamokoro emrobowansan monday --yiseyon sunday hosu (2022). seasonal distribution, antimicrobial activity, and risk factors associated with the incidence of staphylococcus species in bovine milk from a dairy farm in eastern cape, south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1), 10-19. 10.18488/5005.v12i1.4412 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction one major disease that increases the cost of production on dairy farms is mastitis (dufour et al., 2012). the welfare of dairy cows can be negatively impacted due to a high incidence of mastitis in their milk (hogeveen, huijps, & lam, 2011). farmers incur a significant amount of economic loss as a result of mastitis infection in cows which leads to a asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 1 (2022): 10-19. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3641-530x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9078-7748 mailto:mondayidamokoro@gmail.com/ http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 10-19 11 reduction in milk yield (ampe, goethals, laevens, & duchateau, 2012; halasa et al., 2009). thousands of bacteria have been reported to cause mastitis in dairy animals (batavani, asri, & naebzadeh, 2007). of the numerous bacteria linked with mastitis infections in dairy farms, staphylococcus species stands out (sawant, gillespie, & oliver, 2009; taponen, simojoki, haveri, larsen, & pyörälä, 2006). this species is largely divided into two groups, namely coagulase-negative staphylococci (cns) (e.g., staphylococcus epidermidis, staphylococcus sciuri, staphylococcus haemolyticus, staphylococcus hyicus) and coagulase-positive staphylococci (cps) (e.g., staphylococcus aureus). the cns group consists of a class of species that differ in the way they cause mastitis infection in animals (waller, aspán, nyman, persson, & andersson, 2011; zhang & maddox, 2000). lately, cns has become more significant as a bovine-mastitis-causing organism (simojoki, salomäki, taponen, iivanainen, & pyörälä, 2011). isolates of cns species are habitually identified in bovine milk as a cause of intramammary infection (tenhagen, köster, wallmann, & heuwieser, 2006). they cause both clinical and subclinical mastitis in cattle (supré et al., 2011), though clinical mastitis caused by cns species may be placid in some cases (taponen & pyörälä, 2009). common cns species isolated from bovine mastitis include staphylococcus chromogenes, staphylococcus xylosus, staphylococcus epidermidis, staphylococcus sciuri, and staphylococcus haemolyticus (kot et al., 2012; tenhagen et al., 2006). other cns species (e.g., staphylococcus saprophyticus, staphylococcus hominis, staphylococcus warneri, staphylococcus capitis) causing bovine mastitis have been well documented (sampimon, lam, mevius, schukken, & zadoks, 2011). several nations have identified cns species to be a preponderant agent causing mastitis infections in cows when compared to other mastitis-causing agents (piepers et al., 2007; pitkälä, haveri, pyörälä, myllys, & honkanen-buzalski, 2004; pyörälä & taponen, 2009). however, the prevalence of cns varies from country to country (taponen & pyörälä, 2009). additional factors like farm area and environment (piessens et al., 2012), farm management systems (ayano, hiriko, simyalew, & yohannes, 2013), and season may influence the incidence of the bacterial species on a farm. a survey carried out in south africa, for instance, indicated that cns was a major cause of both clinical and subclinical mastitis infection (petzer, karzis, watermeyer, van der schans, & van reenen, 2009). various factors were linked to the cns spread among cow herds in south africa, including large herd size, meager milking practice, inefficient milking machine maintenance, an influx of new stock of cows, and high milk yield by cows. most studies reported cns as a group and not at their species level. various cns species differ in their ability to cause infection in cows due to their different virulence (simojoki et al., 2011). the distribution of cns also varies in different regions of a particular country (koivula, pitkälä, pyörälä, & mäntysaari, 2007; shekhan, al-rodhan, & al-janabi, 2011). influences such as time of the year and parity and stage of lactation have also been indicated as factors determining the distribution of cns pathogens in various regions within a country (gröhn et al., 2004; koivula et al., 2007; taponen, koort, björkroth, saloniemi, & pyörälä, 2007). thus, the need to identify cns at the species level is important for effective mastitis control programs (supré et al., 2011). there is increased use of antimicrobials to treat mastitis on many farms (walther, rossano, thomann, & perreten, 2008) during lactation and in the dry cow stage treatment (sawant, sordillo, & jayarao, 2005). however, several staphylococcus species are resistant to antimicrobials (sampimon et al., 2011). according to the world health organization (2000), the increase of bacterial resistance to antibiotics is worrisome. dairy farmers in the eastern cape province of south africa are aware of staphylococcus aureus as a cause of mastitis, but not the other species. farmers acknowledge mastitis as one of the greatest challenges they face on their dairy farms. this study investigates the incidence of staphylococcus species and the in-vitro antimicrobial sensitivity pattern of these species in cows’ milk collected over a nine-month period in 2012 from a dairy farm located in the eastern cape of south africa. 2. material and methods 2.1. study site description the study was conducted on a dairy farm located in middle drift of raymond mhalaba municipality in eastern cape province of south africa. the farm was on 250 hectares of land with 600 milking cows, producing 3,000-3,500 liters of milk per day. the average annual rainfall of the farm is 591 mm per annum. rainfall between may and september is less than 25 mm per annum and 50-100 mm between november and march. the topography of the farmland is flat with a gentle slope, and it has an altitude of 420 470 m. in july, the average daily temperature is between 28.2°c and 30.0°c. 2.2. animal description three dairy breeds (friesian, jersey, and their crosses (friesian x jersey) were kept for milk production. milk samples were collected from each breed for bacterial examination during the nine-month study. each cow used for milk sampling was identified based on their colors, information from the farmers, and ear-tags. data including lactation stage and parity of the cows were taken at each sampling. 2.3. milk sample collection composite raw milk samples were collected from selected cows in a 10 ml sterile sampling bottle after pre-milking tests (strip cup test and california mastitis test) were carried out on the cows. milk sampling bottles were then labeled appropriately and immediately stored in a cooler box with ice before they were transported to the laboratory for bacterial culture analysis. milk samples were collected between march and november 2012, which accounted for three different sampling periods (hot-wet, cold-dry, and hot-dry), and this was done twice for each sampling period. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 10-19 12 2.4. culturing of milk samples in mannitol salt agar the milk samples were aseptically streaked in a freshly prepared mannitol salt agar within 24-48 hours of collection from the farm and incubated at 37°c for 24-48 hours. isolates that gave a yellow color when fermented on mannitol salt agar were sub-cultured in nutrient agar. 2.5. sub-culturing of milk samples in nutrient agar presumed isolates that were positive in mannitol salt agar were sub-cultured again in a freshly prepared nutrient agar (within 24 hours) and then placed in an incubator for 24-48 hours. this was done to get a pure colony of the bacteria isolate. 2.6. gram’s staining test all cultures of presumed staphylococcus species were subjected to gram’s stain. a few colonies of pure cultured isolates were aseptically picked from the nutrient agar and smeared on a sterile glass slide. the smeared culture was heat fixed. crystal violet (0.5%) was added to the smear and left for 1 minute. water was used to wash the stain from the slide. a sufficient solution of iodine was added to the smear and left for 1 minute. water was used to wash the stain. ethanol (95%) was used to rinse the stain from the slide. safrani solution was finally added to the smear for 2 minutes before being washed with water. the smear was allowed to dry for a few minutes before being viewed under a light microscope to determine the colony structure of the bacteria species. the smear of each bacteria species was viewed under the 10x, 40x, and 100x magnification. gram’s stain smears that were positive displayed a grape-like cluster shape with deep blue to purple color. 2.7. oxidase test a few colonies of isolates presumed to be staphylococcus species were picked from the nutrient agar aseptically using a sterile loop and placed on an oxidase test strip paper. all isolates that turned purple on the test strip paper after 10 seconds were suspected to be staphylococcus species. 2.8. catalase test pure cultures of presumed staphylococcus species from nutrient agar were aseptically transferred onto a clean glass slide. a few drops of 3% h2o2 were then added to the cultures. positive cultures of staphylococcus species gave out bubbles of oxygen within 5 seconds of adding h2o2. 2.9. api staph kit test for identification of staphylococcus species all presumed isolates were finally confirmed to their species level using the api staph kit (biomerieux, france). using the api staph medium, homogeneous inoculums of pure cultured isolates were prepared with turbidity equivalent to 0.5 mcfarland. a pipette was used to fill the microtubes of the api kit with the inoculated api staph medium. mineral oil was added to the arginine dihydrolase (adh) and urease (ure) tests to ensure anaerobiosis. the incubation box of the api kit was filled with 5 ml of distilled water and closed tightly before incubating at 37°c for 24hrs. after incubation, one drop of api staph reagent was added to the inoculated microtubes to determine their reactions. the reactions of the inocula were read using the apiweb tm identification software (biomerieux., inc quebec). 2.10. minimum inhibitory concentration (mic) determination isolates identified to their species level were subjected to in-vitro drug sensitivity testing using the disc diffusion method as postulated by the clinical and laboratory standards institute (2015). briefly, a few colonies of isolates were aseptically inoculated in normal saline to the desired turbidity (0.5 mcfarland standards). with the aid of a sterile cotton swab, the inocula were evenly spread on muller-hinton agar in a petri dish plate. the antibiotic discs were then gently pressed on the agar and placed in an incubator for 24 hours at 37°c. the mic of each isolate was then determined by measuring (in millimeters) the zones of inhibition in the mueller-hinton agar with a meter rule to obtain the diameter of inhibition of the different isolates. among the antibiotics used were levofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, kanamycin, meropenem, ofloxacin, tetracycline, gentamicin, erythromycin, imipenem, chlorofenicol, nalidixic acid, amoxicillin, penicillin, ampicillin, and vancomycin. 2.11. statistical analysis data were analyzed using microsoft excel (2007) and sas (2003). descriptive statistics to generate percentage distribution was performed. a chi-square test (p < 0.05) was employed to assess the association between the incidence of staphylococcus species and risk factor variables, such as stage of lactation, parity number, and period of the year during the milk sample collection. 3. results of the 217 raw milk samples examined for bacterial growth, 13 different staphylococcus species were isolated from 86 (39.63 %) positive samples. the distribution of staphylococcus species is presented in table 1. the most frequently isolated staphylococcus species were staphylococcus xylosus (22.09%), staphylococcus hominis (15.11%), staphylococcus haemolyticus (11.63%), staphylococcus sciuri (10.64%), and staphylococcus warneri (9.3%). about 3.38% of the remaining species were due to micrococcus spp. of the 86 positive isolates bacterial species identified, the proportion of staphylococcus species across the different sampling periods was 10%, 38%, and 38%, respectively (table asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 10-19 13 2). of the 13 different staphylococcus species isolated from milk samples, staphylococcus xylosus (10%, 10.52%, and 36.84%), staphylococcus epidermidis (10%, 2.63%, and 5.26%), staphylococcus haemolyticus (40%, 5.26%, and 10.65%), and staphylococcus sciuri (10%, 7.89%, and 13.15%) were identified in each of the different sampling periods. there was a significant difference in the incidence of staphylococcus species and some risk factors on the farm, including the period of milk sample collection and the stage of lactation at p < 0.05 table 3. table 1. proportion of staphylococcus species isolated from 86 positive bovine milk samples. table 2. distribution of staphylococcus species isolates identified from milk samples at different sampling periods of the year. staphylococcus species n= 76 cold-dry (%) n=81 hot-wet (%) n=60 hot-dry (%) s. epidermidis 1(10) 1 (2.63) 2 (5.26) s. xylosus 1(10) 4 (10.52) 14 (36.84) s. aureus 2(20) 1 (2.63) s. haemolyticus 4(40) 2 (5.26) 4 (10.52) s. hominis 1(10) 12(31.57) s. sciuri 1(10) 3 (7.89) 5 (13.15) s. chromogenes 3 (7.89) 2 (5.26) s. warneri 6 (15.78) 2 (5.26) s. auricularis 4 (10.52) s. hyicus 1 (2.63) s. saprophyticus 2 (5.26) s. cohniicohnii 3 (6.97) s. cohniiurealyticus 2 (5.26) others 2 (5.26) 1 (2.63) total 10 (100) 38 (100) 38 (100) note: n represents total number of milk examined at each sampling period. the antibiotic sensitivity test results for 78 isolates of cns species against 15 different antibiotics are presented in table 4. on the whole, the antimicrobial resistance test of the staphylococcus species showed the highest rate of susceptibility against levofloxacin (1.3%), imipenem (2.6%), ofloxacin (2.7%), gentamicin (5.1%), ciprofloxacin (5.1%), chlorofenicol (5.1%), meropenem (6.8%), and kanamycin (7.7%). whereas staphylococcus species isolates showed the highest resistance to penicillin (83%), nalidixic acid (79%), and ampicillin (63%). considering individual staphylococcus species, staphylococcus cohnii-urealyticus was 100% resistant to erythromycin, nalidixic acid, imipenem, vancomycin, penicillin, and ampicillin; staphylococcus saprophyticus to vancomycin, penicillin, amoxicillin, and amoxicillin; and staphylococcus cohnii-cohnii to nalidixic acid, penicillin, and ampicillin. 4. discussion from an aggregate of 217 milk samples collected throughout the three sampling periods, 86 (39.63%) were positive for staphylococcus species. thirteen different staphylococcus species were identified among the 86 isolates that tested positive. staphylococcus xylosus (22.09%), staphylococcus hominis (15.11%), staphylococcus haemolyticus (11.63%), and staphylococcus sciuri (10.46%) were the most frequently isolated species in this study. this result is somewhat in line with a study carried out in canada (davidson, dohoo, donald, hariharan, & collins, 1992). also, in the study by kot et al. (2012), staphylococcus xylosus was the most frequently isolated species. farm management systems and farm surroundings may be a possible reason for our findings (ayano et al., 2013; bendahou, lebbadi, ennanei, essadqui, & abid, 2008). piessens et al. (2012) reported that a farm’s environment may sometimes be a reservoir for staphylococcus species. some staphylococcus species, including staphylococcus xylosus, staphylococcus hominis, and staphylococcus species number (%) s. epidermidis 4 (4.65) s. xylosus 19 (22.09) s. aureus 3 (3.48) s. haemolyticus 10 (11.63) s. hominis 13 (15.11) s. sciuri 9 (10.46) s. chromogenes 5 (5.81) s. warneri 8 (9.3) s. auricularis 4 (4.65) s. hyicus 1 (1.16) s. saprophyticus 2 (2.32) s. cohniicohnii 3 (3.48) s. cohniiurealyticus 2 (2.32) others 3 (3.48) total 86 (100) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 10-19 14 staphylococcus haemolyticus, are known to be opportunistic and may find their way into the mammary glands of cows (schukken et al., 2009). these staphylococcus species have been reported to cause intra-mammary infections in cows (quirk et al., 2012). table 3. chi-square test for potential risk factors associated with the incidence of staphylococcus species. risk factor group number examined pvalue parity first lactation 25 0.9845 second lactation 68 third lactation 57 fourth lactation 67 stage of lactation early (1-100) 28 0.0039 mid (101-200) 117 late (201< ) 72 sampling intervals cold-dry 76 0.0001 hot-wet 81 hot-dry 60 figure 1. distribution of multiple drug resistance to 15 antimicrobials drugs among 78 isolates of staphylococcus species from bovine milk. note: i-iii= ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin and ofloxacin, iv-vi= meropenem, erythromycin and nalidixic, vii-ix= imipenem, vancomycin and penicillin, x-xii= gentamicin, tetracycline and kanamycin, xiii-xv= amoxicillin, chlorofenicol and ampicillin. on account of the period of the year that the milk samples were collected, more staphylococcus species (at the species level) were observed in the hot and dry period of the year compared with the other periods. the reason for this may be due to the adaptive ability and persistent nature of some staphylococcus species to the mammary glands of cows (piessens et al., 2012). in the current study, a particular staphylococcus species was assumed to persist when isolated at least once in each sampling across the three different sampling periods. thus, staphylococcus epidermidis, staphylococcus xylosus, staphylococcus haemolyticus, and staphylococcus sciuri were assumed to persist in cow udders. in another study by taponen et al. (2007), staphylococcus epidermis and staphylococcus haemolyticus were also reported to persist in cow udders, but staphylococcus xylosus was transient. staphylococcus species (especially cns) may differ in their degree of persistence (taponen et al., 2007). also, incidences of specific bacteria species vary along with the months of the year (koivula et al., 2007). in all, staphylococcus xylosus and staphylococcus hominis (22.09% and 15.11%) were the most frequently isolated species observed in the study. they often occur as harmless organisms in human bodies and some parts of an animal’s skin (taponen, björkroth, & pyörälä, 2008). however, they have been isolated from the milk of lactating cows (kenar, kuyucuoğlu, & şeker, 2012). the least isolated staphylococcus species was staphylococcus hyicus (1.16%). this is different from the study carried out in turkey, where staphylococcus hyicus (33.33%) was the most frequently isolated staphylococcus species (kirkan, goksoy, & kaya, 2005). in another study carried out in morocco, similar results to our study were observed (bendahou et al., 2008). the variation in the frequency of isolation of these species may be a result of different study areas, which may have resulted from analysis of milk samples for bacteria growth before and after milk were collected from the farm (koivula et al., 2007). from the current finding, staphylococcus cohnii-cohnii was the ninth-most frequently isolated staphylococcus species. this result was similar to the study carried out by kirkan et al. (2005). staphylococcus aureus is a major mastitis-causing pathogen on dairy farms. it was observed in this study to be the eighth-most (3.48%) frequently isolated staphylococcus species. the distributions of other staphylococcus species include staphylococcus warneri (9.3%), staphylococcus auricularis (4.65%), staphylococcus saprophyticus (2.32%), and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 10-19 15 staphylococcus cohnii-urealyticus (2.32%). a few staphylococcus species that were identified, including staphylococcus warneri and staphylococcus saprophyticus, may have resulted from contamination from the milking clusters used on the farm. these species were also isolated from the milking clusters and not from farmers’ hands and may have been transferred from one cow to another from milk droplets in the milking clusters. not much work has been done on the incidence of cns (at the species level) concerning the time of the year milk samples are collected (gillespie, headrick, boonyayatra, & oliver, 2009). however, some studies have indicated that the time of the year influences the prevalence of mastitis-causing pathogens in milk (gillespie et al., 2009; osterås, sølverød, & reksen, 2006). according to koivula et al. (2007), staphylococcus aureus was prevalent during the coldand-dry period of the year, more than any other period of the year. the reasons given for their findings were linked with cow’s calving periods and farm management styles. shpigel, winkler, ziv, and saran (2000) reported that there was an increase in the incidence of mastitis caused by coliform bacteria in the wet-and-cold period of the year, but a lower incidence of coliform bacteria was observed in the hot-and-dry period. in another study in norway, staphylococcus aureus and streptococcus uberis were prevalent in the hot-and-dry period of the year but, streptococcus dysgalactiae and cns (reported as a group) were more prevalent in the cold-and-dry period (osterås et al., 2006). this may give a rational insight for a probable link in the time of milk sampling and the incidence of staphylococcus species on farms (gillespie et al., 2009). more staphylococcus species (at the species level) were isolated during the hot-and-dry period of the year in the current study. the numbers of species-specific isolates identified were 11, 10, and 6 during the hot-dry, hot-wet, and cold-dry periods, respectively. the difference in the results may be due to the variation in the climatic conditions (piessens et al., 2012; sampimon et al., 2011). the prevalence of mastitis-causing pathogens on a farm is linked to multiple complex factors, including environment, cowherd, the clinical state of the cow’s udder, and the farm itself (ayano et al., 2013; supré et al., 2011; thorberg, danielsson-tham, emanuelson, & waller, 2009). some staphylococcus species cause damage to the mammary of the cow udder rather than depending on their virulent attribute like others (thorberg et al., 2009; zhang & maddox, 2000). their role to cause damage in mammary tissues of cows (mostly cns) and to initiate a mastitis infection has not been plainly defined (kirkan et al., 2005). however, relationships have been reported to exist between the stage of lactation and the incidence of staphylococcus species (abera, demie, aragaw, regassa, & regassa, 2010; taponen et al., 2007). heifers and primiparous cows are known to be infected with mastitis by staphylococcus species more often when compared with multiparous cows, though the reason for this is not yet clear (taponen et al., 2007). there was no significant difference (p = 0.9845) in the incidence of staphylococcus species and the number of lactating cows table 3. a significant association was, however, observed for the incidence of staphylococcus species in relation to the stage of lactation (p = 0.0039) and the period of year of milk sampling (p = 0.0001). abera et al. (2010) also reported no significant difference in the incidence of staphylococcus aureus and the number of lactations in cows but reported a significant association between the stage of lactation and the prevalence of staphylococcus aureus in bovine milk. a lack of cleanliness of cow udders during dry periods was suggested by abera et al. (2010) to influence the increase of bacteria on the skin of a cow’s teat leading to possible high infection of bacteria in the udder. today, many farms are becoming dependent on antibiotics (carter, sun, & jump, 2016). the use of antimicrobials in dairy farms plays a significant role in controlling mastitis. information about the variation that exists among speciesspecific staphylococcus species is essential for mastitis therapy and management (sawant et al., 2009). a large proportion of staphylococcus species from this study were resistant to erythromycin, nalidixic acid, vancomycin, penicillin, tetracycline, amoxicillin, and ampicillin (table 4). there has been an increasing evolutionary trend of antibiotic resistance in infectious diseases in recent times (davies & davies, 2010). this may be the reason for the observed result in the current study. one hundred percent resistant was observed by several staphylococcus species isolates to ampicillin in the current study (table 4). this was contrary to sawant et al. (2009), where most of the staphylococcus species were susceptible to ampicillin from their study. in the study by kot et al. (2012), high resistance to penicillin was observed in staphylococcus species. penicillin and ampicillin were the most commonly used antimicrobials on the farm where this study was conducted. however, from our results, penicillin and ampicillin may not be the proper choice treating staphylococcus species. according to kot et al. (2012), staphylococcus species usually have high resistance against penicillin and ampicillin. the highest percentage of staphylococcus species isolates that were resistant to penicillin was staphylococcus xylosus, staphylococcus hominis, staphylococcus warneri, staphylococcus sciuri, and staphylococcus haemolyticus, as presented in table 4. all the isolates of staphylococcus epidermidis displayed 100% resistance to penicillin (table 4). this result is in accordance with sampimon et al. (2011) and kot et al. (2012), who reported that penicillin resistance in staphylococcus epidermidis was very high. one hundred percent resistance was observed for staphylococcus cohnii-urealyticus and staphylococcus saprophyticus. likewise, 100% resistance for six out of fifteen antimicrobial agents was observed for staphylococcus cohniiurealyticus, while staphylococcus saprophyticus gave resistance (100%) to four out of fifteen antimicrobial agents used. staphylococcus xylosus gave resistance (10%, 10%, 5%, 70%, 65%, 80%, 90%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 66% and 88%) to ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, meropenem, erythromycin, nalidixic, vancomycin, penicillin, gentamicin, tetracycline, kanamycin, amoxicillin, and ampicillin, respectively. the next staphylococcus species with high resistance (9 out of 15) to multiple antimicrobial agents was staphylococcus sciuri. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 10-19 16 table 4. distribution of resistant staphylococcus species against different antibiotics. number of antimicrobial resistant isolates (%) staphylococcus spp n cip lev ofx mem e nal imi va pg gm t k am c ap s. haemolyticus 9 0 0 0 0 3(33) 7(78) 0 6(71) 6(71) 0 3(33) 0 2(33) 0 9(100) s. aureus 3 0 0 0 0 1(33) 2(67) 1(33) 2(67) 2(67) 2(67) 1(33) 0 0 0 3(100) s. sciuri 7 2(29) 0 0 0 4(57) 7(100) 0 4(57) 5(71) 1(14) 0 3(43) 0 3(43) 6(86) s. hominis 14 0 0 0 0 0 13(93) 0 2(14) 13(93) 0 4(29) 0 1(7) 0 na s. epidermidis 3 0 1(33) 0 0 2(67) 1(33) 0 1(33) 3(100) 0 1(33) 0 2(67) 0 na s. xylosus 20 2(10) 0 2(10) 5 14(70) 13(65) 0 16(80) 18(90) 1(5) 2(10) 3(15) 13(66) 0 18(90) s. auricularis 4 0 0 0 0 0 3(75) 0 0 3(75) 0 2(50) 0 1(25) 0 na s. chromogenes 4 0 0 0 0 1(25) 3(75) 0 1(25) 3(75) 0 1(25) 0 1(25) 0 0 s. warneri 6 0 0 0 0 1(17) 6(100) 0 1(17) 5(83) 0 0 0 0 0 6(100) s. hyicus 1 0 0 0 0 0 1(100) 0 0 0 0 1(100) 0 0 0 na s. cohniicohnii 3 0 0 0 0 2(67) 3(100) 0 2(67) 3(100) 0 1(33) 0 0 0 3(100) s. cohnii-urealyticus 2 0 0 0 0 2(100) 2(100) 2(100) 2(100) 2(100) 0 0 0 na 1(50) 2(100) s. saprophyticus 2 0 0 0 0 0 1(50) 0 2(100) 2(100) 0 0 0 2(100) 0 2(100) total 78 4(5.1) 1(1.3) 2(2.7) 5(6.4) 30(39) 62(79) 2(2.6) 39(50) 65(83) 4(5.1) 16(21) 6(7.7) 22(28) 4(5.1) 49(63) note: na: not available. n: number of isolates, cip: ciprofloxacin; lev: levofloxacin; ofx: ofloxacin; mem: meropenem; e: erythromycin; nal: nalidixic acid; imi: imipenem; va: vancomycin; pg: penicillin-g; gm: gentamycin; t: tetracyline; k: kanamycin; amo: amoxicillin; c:chlorofenicol; ap: ampicillin. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 10-19 17 staphylococcus aureus gave resistance to 8 (erythromycin, nalidixic acid, imipenem, vancomycin, penicillin, gentamicin, tetracycline, and ampicillin) out of the 15 antimicrobials, see table 4. in sweden, persson, nyman, and grönlund-andersson (2011) observed resistance by staphylococcus aureus to penicillin in their study, but not for gentamicin and erythromycin, which is in line with our observation. staphylococcus aureus was susceptible to chlorofenicol and ciprofloxacin in our study and this is in line with the study carried out by persson et al. (2011). all the staphylococcus aureus isolates identified from this study were susceptible to kanamycin. however, this was contrary to the report by persson et al. (2011). the variation observed in the trend of staphylococcus species against antimicrobial agents from this study may be a result of differences in virulence strains of the different species that were identified. according to zhang and maddox (2000), the difference in virulence strains of staphylococcus species could lead to their differences in response to antimicrobial agents. the most susceptible staphylococcus species (11 out of 15) to multiple antimicrobial agents was observed for staphylococcus hyicus. in regards to the number of isolates of staphylococcus species that were resistant to multiple antimicrobial agents, 13 species were resistant to imipenem, vancomycin, and penicillin. in comparison, ten isolates were resistant to meropenem, erythromycin, and nalidixic acid (figure 1). conversely, four isolates of staphylococcus species were resistant to gentamicin, tetracycline, and kanamycin. this result is contrary to a study conducted in argentina where all staphylococcus species tested were susceptible to gentamicin (gentilini et al., 2002). the least number of isolates against multiple antimicrobial agents was observed for ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, and ofloxacin (figure 1). the result of the huge multi-drug resistance witnessed on the farm may be due to the development of resistance by the staphylococcus species prevalent to antimicrobial agents used for mastitis therapy. frequent use of the same antimicrobial agents on a farm may lead to a transfer of resistant genes among mastitis-disease-causing organisms (gentilini et al., 2002). 5. conclusions there was a relatively high incidence of staphylococcus species with staphylococcus xylosus, staphylococcus hominis, and staphylococcus haemolyticus identified from milk samples on the farm where this study was conducted. the stage of lactation and the period of the year during sample collection influenced the incidence of staphylococcus species on the farm. a high rate of multiple drug resistance against antimicrobials agents was also observed on the farm, with staphylococcus xylosus and staphylococcus sciuri having the highest resistance against antimicrobial agents. the high resistance observed by most staphylococcus species to multiple antimicrobial agents, including penicillin and ampicillin, which are frequently used on the farm, suggests that these drugs may not be effective against most of the staphylococcus species for mastitis therapy control and hereby calls for a probable alternative antimicrobial agent to be used for the treatment of mastitis disease in cows. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abera, m., demie, b., aragaw, k., regassa, f., & regassa, a. 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(2000). cytotoxic activity of coagulase-negative staphylococci in bovine mastitis. infection and immunity, 68(3), 1102-1108. available at: https://doi.org/10.1128/iai.68.3.1102-1108.2000. http://www.who.int/infectious-disease-report/2000/index.html effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 1 role of participatory videos in economic empowerment of rural women: a case study from bangladesh khatun, t.a sarker, m. a.b rahman, m. h. b a department of agricultural extension, ministry of agriculture, government of the people’s republic of bangladesh, bangladesh. corresponding author b department of agricultural extension education, bangladesh agricultural university, mymensingh, bangladesh.  masarker@bau.edu.bd (corresponding author) article history: received: 25-apr-2018 accepted: 01-aug-2018 online available: 22-aug2018 keywords: economic empowerment, participatory video, rural women abstract the present study was intended to assess function of participatory videos in improving economic empowerment of the rural women. pragmatic information for the study was composed from 65 randomly selected rural women from the study villages using structured interview schedule. the result of the study showed that over half (56.9 percent) of the respondents had medium income improvement due to participation of igas like preparation of vermi-compost, preparation of botanical pesticide, home gardening, safe food processing and filming (recording of local events) as introduced by participatory video programs. the result of the study also illustrated that the top mass (70.76 percent) of the respondent women had participation in homestead gardening after joining with video programme while it was less than half (47.69 percent) before joining to video programme. findings also showed that the half (61.6 percent) of the women had medium to soaring participation in family decision making method. additionally the study discovered so as to out of the seven selected socio-economic characteristics of the women except age all the variables have significant positive relationship with their economic empowerment. contribution/ originality the present study has taken the challenge of combining video-mediated information with income generating activities of the through rural women which has shown its role in improving their economic capacity was well as taking part of the women in decision making process which ultimately contributing in their empowerment process. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.1/1005.1.1.15 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: khatun, t., sarker, m. a. and rahman, m. h. (2018). role of participatory videos in economic empowerment of rural women: a case study from bangladesh. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1), 1-15. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 1(2018): 1-15 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:masarker@bau.edu.bd http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.1/1005.1.1.15 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9711-2126 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6760-5117 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3422-7222 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 2 1. introduction women constitute nearly half (male51 percent and female-49 percent) of the people and half of its prospective, who are the co-builders of the country (bbs, 2016). but women are underprivileged everywhere in the world, especially in mounting countries like bangladesh (hoque and itohara, 2008). the existence of women in the country is subjugated by a meticulous societal arrangement. customarily, a woman in bangladesh originates her position from her family (kabeer, 2001). inequality between men and women in schooling, health, service and earnings, power over material goods, personal safety and contribution in political process disclose that women are depressed and less empowered, which confines the country’s capability to attain its full prospective (parveen and leonhauser, 2004). aggression in opposition to women is a regular occurrence in rural areas of the country. domination, murder, abduction, trafficking, rape, acid throwing etc. against women has almost become regular part of life (begum, 2005). at present bangladesh is one of the noteworthy female-violence precious countries due to lack of empowerment and social agreement (undp, 2010). despite nation and global level interferences, the position of women in the country is not so far comfortable. although two women prime ministers have ruled bangladesh government for last 25 years and the opposition leaders in the parliament were also women, this does not imitate the gender symphony in participation and economic donation at household level (mowca, 2016). in the recent time, women contribute significantly to their families and to the economy of the country but their position have been graded the lowly in the world by reason of some indicators relating to healthiness, wedding, offspring, schooling, service and shared excellence (undp, 1997). though ‘bangladesh constitution’ promises identical constitutional rights to male and female in the country (gob, 2015), but in family connections such as wedding, separation, guardianship, protection, legacy and laws distinguishes aligned with women. this gender prejudice is pervasive in all places and at all levels, as pointed out by official statistics on health, nourishment, schooling, employment, and political participation (bhaumik et al., 1996). thus, the inadequate access to all the capital resources, especially the lack of human, financial and social capital is hindering the upgrading in the worth of life for the women in rural areas of the country (hoque et al., 2010). rural women are bound by these inadequacies that leave them as less empowered in the family as well as in the society. the improvements of the livelihood of these resource-poor women are possible to a greater extent by their capacity building. however, the involvement of women in different organizations can improve their skill, create employment opportunities, and improve their leadership capacity which is very essential for their economic empowerment. but in reality, bangladeshi rural women do not have admission in such organizations. now-a-days, rural women throughout asia and the pacific region make critical economic contribution to households through participatory video program. participatory video traditionally supports an empowering procedures where society people ‘move ahead in iterative series of filmingreviewing’ to ‘create film descriptions that speak what folks who take part in the progression really desire to talk, in a way they feel is perfect’ (kindon, 2003). participatory video would be useful for information and communication technology (ict) to facilitate capacity development of the resource poor women in bangladesh (chowdhury et al., 2011). in the context of bangladesh, the factors determining work and economic contribution of the rural women can be grouped into two broad categories, namely: those embedded in the community and those embedded within the households. thus, the study was aimed to check the role of participatory video program in economic empowerment of rural women. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 3 currently women are mostly deprived in bangladesh. their work is not properly recognized. but they have the potentiality to do many income generating activities (parveen and leonhauser, 2004). participatory video programs aim at developing the overall sphere of community at grass root level by empowering rural women and mainstreaming them in household economic contribution. participatory video permits for women empowerment in a range of ways. papa et al. (2000) reported that empowerment of women is connected to sharing feelings (connectedness), assessing individual measures for relationships and environmental shock (integrative thoughts) and serving one others in the course of joint stroke (mutual enactment). a large number of women also take part in these development programs. for true development of rural women, participatory video programs have to find out the level of empowerment of the beneficiaries and taken special program for low empowered women. to identify the level of empowerment and formulate development strategies, it is necessary to conduct a study on empowerment of the women in the perspective of countryside of bangladesh. the focal point of the study is to determine and describe the empowerment of rural women through income generating activities (igas) under participatory video programs. the following specific objectives are undertaken for this study: i. to appraise the form and degree of women’s involvement in income generating actions along with their contribution in household income through participation in participatory video program; ii. to measure the role of participatory videos in economic empowerment of the women in the study regions; and iii. to investigate the associations stuck between the selected characters of the rural women and their economic empowerment. the characters are: age, personal education, educational status of spouse/household head, personal asset, communication exposure, organizational participation and women friendly environment existing in the community. 1.1. theoretical framework of the study utilizing videos in agricultural extension works is not just latest, yet the idea of participatory video is truly innovative in the perspective of bangladesh. participatory video is a type of participatory media wherein a cluster or group of people forms their personal film. the concept at the back this is that creation of a video is simple and reachable, and is a grand means of bringing people collectively to discover subjects, voice apprehensions or merely to be stimulated and say to tales. however, the selected rural women were from marginalized families along with poor literacy, no scope of employment, little control over resources. thus, they were economically and socially less empowered. as participatory video process found as very effectual in authorizing, facilitating a cluster or group of people to get their own stroke to resolve their personal tribulations (van mele, 2006 and zossou et al., 2009). thus, participatory video approach was taken on to develop economic empowerment of this deprived portion of women. according to lunch and lunch (2006) participatory video work in the following way  building of individual skills of the society and other fascinated players to utilize the technology  exploring of the catalysts who watch their function as “co-learner”  developing associations and recognizing the progress troubles through appealing in conversation with the contributors and by means of participatory gears personalized to the situation  petite film and communication equipped and recorded with and by the contributors  every day broadcasting of video recording with the neighborhood  approving a society-led education, giving out and swap movement  finished film is able to serves as a foundation for knowledge and share between ranges of unlike target people. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 4 both of the project villages are famous agrarian community in the area. farmers of these villages were entirely reliant on use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides during growing vegetables and other crops. due to excessive use and usual cost hike of agro-chemicals lots of them led to give up agriculture in the current years. thus the plan got the idea to train up the local farmers particularly female concerning using of substitutes of agro-chemicals. figure 1: phases to combine famers’ participatory research with video to scale out farmers’ innovation after participation in the training programmes, pv team members determined on participatory investigation to resolve their troubles of synthetic pesticides and prepare a botanical pesticide from local plants for managing insect and disease pests in their crops (van mele, 2006 and zossou et al., 2009). the method of the competence construction is associated with participatory research of the farmers (fpr) philosophies. the participatory video group acts together with beneficiaries to recognize neighboring innovations and carry out pertinent experiment. for this venture the rural women were employed with selected issues: 1. safe vegetable cultivation 2. production of vermi-compost ; 3. production of botanical pesticide; 4. filming (video recording) 5. safe food processing; 6. handicraft making; 7. homestead gardening. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 5 figure 2: conceptual framework of the study 2. methodology this study was performed in the three selected villages explicitly kamarpara and fulkut villages of shajahanpur upazila (sub-district) and bangra village of sherpur upazila (sub-district) under bogra district of bangladesh. * * indicates indirect relationship characteristics of the rural women  age  personal education  marital status  educational status of spouse/ household head  personal asset  communication exposure  organizational participation  women friendly environment existing in the community video program on  safe vegetable cultivation  vermi-compost preparation  botanical pesticides preparation  filming (video recording)  safe food processing  handicraft preparation  g impact on women status education employment ability to contribute in household income economic empowerment  knowledge  skill  capacity  confidence women’s participation in economic activities & change in income contribution in household income participation in decision making process and improving empowerment status asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 6 figure 3: map of the study area there were a total amount of 420 rural women from the three selected villages who were involved with participatory video programme jointly operated by the department of agricultural extension education, bangladesh agricultural university (bau), mymensingh and rural development academy (rda), bogra. these 420 women composed the population of the study. amongst this population around 15 percent (65 housewives) were chosen randomly as sample of the proposed study and empirical data were obtained from them (detailed shown in table 1). a structured interview schedule was prepared taking into accounts of the objectives of the study. an interview schedule was pre-tested with 10 women and modify accordingly based on the responses of the respondents. at the next step pertinent data were obtained from the respondent rural women following the method of personal interviewing from 05-23 september, 2014. collected data were coded, categorized and analyzed properly based their nature. spss 16 version software was used to analyze the data. economic empowerment of the rural women was the focal point variable of the study and was considered as change in income. table 1: allocation of the population and sample of study name of the upazilas name of the villages number of rural women population sample size shajahanpur kamarpara 174 25 fulkut 125 20 sherpur bangra 121 20 total 420 65 due to involvement in participatory video programme rural women of the study areas took part in some income generating activities (igas) for instance safe vegetable cultivation, preparation of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 7 vermi-compost, preparation of botanical pesticide, filming of local events, safe food processing, handicraft preparation and homestead gardening etc. respondents were inquired for their extent of involvement in igas and upon their involvement respective income was figured out. respondent’s participation in above mentioned igas was measured for before and after introducing the participatory videos as a means of income earning. upon their involvement in igas for both the periods of before and after introduce by the video mediated extension programme, their incomes was figured out for the respective respondents. through participation in such activities rural women are capable to earn more income as compared to before participation that called income change. as a consequence, they become capable to donate in family income as well as involvement in family verdict process. when a woman earns more income due to participation of such types of activities then they become more capable to contribute in household income as well as participation in family decision making process compared to before participation. as a result, they become more economically empowered and it was measured by ‘000’ bdt (bangladeshi currency). additionally women’s contribution in household income was also measured as contributed in seven different items of family expenses as compared to before joining in participatory video programme. upon their contribution in household income for both the periods of before and after the videos introduction, their income was figured out for the respective respondents. it was measured by ‘00’ bdt. however, a woman’s decision-making ability of was measured by asking nine aspects related to making decisions in her family by using a 4-point ranking scale. a respondent was asked to indicate her level of involvement in household decision making process against each of the statement along with a 4-point continuum: high participation, medium participation, low participation and no participation while the weightage were assigned as 3, 2, l, and 0 respectively. 3. results and discussion 3.1. socio-economic characteristics of the rural women in the study there were seven chosen characteristics of the rural women. the selected characters were: age, personal education, educational status of spouse/household head, personal asset, communication exposure, organizational participation and women friendly environment exist in the community. the findings of the selected characteristics of the women are presented in table 2. table 2: main features of the chosen characteristics of the rural women characteristics scoring system possible range observed range mean sd age actual years unknown 18-60 30.2 8.28 personal education years of schooling unknown 0-16 6.32 3.76 educational status of spouse or household head years of schooling unknown 0-16 6.89 3.73 personal assets ‘000’tk. unknown 5-5000 101.2 73.78 communication exposure scale score 0-48 1-35 20.03 5.42 organizational participation scale score 0-12 1-10 4.92 1.14 women friendly environment scale score 0-6 1-6 2.54 0.97 *sd stands for standard deviation asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 8 table 2 shows that the age of the rural women varied between 18 to 65 years. the average age of the women was 30.20 years with standard deviation of 8.28. on the basis of their age, the women were categorized into three categories: ‘young (up to 35)’ ‘middle aged (36 to 50)’ and ‘old (above 50)’ and shown in figure 4. figure 4 demonstrate that the highest majority (84.6 percent) of the respondents were young compared to 12.3 percent of the respondent women were middle aged and only 3.1 percent were old. young aged are generally more amenable to new ideas and practices. as participatory is a highly modern ict tools thus young women were relatively more interested compared to old and middle aged women. young women maintain better communication with various information sources including social networking available in the rural areas. it is natural that young people have affinity to be in touch with various information sources for getting necessary information regarding production, health, family planning as well as current events. similar observation was found by biswas (2002), naoroze (2004) and sarker (2005). figure 4: distribution of the respondent women on the basis of their age result of the study also exposed that the level of education of the rural women ranged between 0 to 18 years of schooling, with an average educational score of 6.32 with a standard deviation of 3.76.on the basis of their years of schooling, the respondents were grouped into four categories: can sign only (0.5); primary education (1-5); secondary education (6-10)’; ‘higher secondary education and above (>11) shown in figure 3. it is evident from figure 3 that the less than half (42 percent) of the respondent women had secondary education while around one-third (32npercent) of them had primary education. figure 3 also exhibits that a significant portion (18.5 percent) of the respondents do not have functional literacy but can sign only. it was evident from figure 5 that 7.7 percent of the respondent women have higher education. however, the rate of literacy of the country is 53 percent (bbs, 2016). thus, the findings indicate that the literacy rate in the study area seems to be higher than that of state average. similar finding was also reported by biswas (2002) and sarker (2005). the level of education of the women’s spouse/household head ranged from 0 to 18 years of schooling and the average educational score of the spouse was 6.89 with a standard deviation 3.73. results of the study also show that the personal assets of the women ranged from 5 to 500 thousand bdt with an average of 101.22 thousand bdt with standard deviation of 73.78. 85% 12% 3% young (18-35) middle aged (36-55) old (>55) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 9 figure 5: distribution of the women based on their personal education however, the score of communication exposure of the respondent rural women were ranged from 1 to 35 in against the possible score of 0-48. the average communication score of the respondent women was 20.03 with the standard deviation of 5.42. the findings indicate that the respondent women have moderate communication exposure with various information sources. on the other hand, the score of the organizational participation of the respondents ranged from 1 to 10 next to the probable score of 0-12. the mean organizational score of the respondent women were 4.92 and standard deviation was 1.14 (table 2). table 2 also demonstrates that the score of women friendly environment of the respondent women ranged between 0 and 5 with a mean score of 2.54 and standard deviation of 0.97. on the basis of scores given for their favorable environment, women were grouped into three categories as shown in figure 6. data illustrated in figure 6 indicate that about two-thirds (72.3 percent) of the rural women had a score of moderately women favorable environment compared to 20 percent highly favorable and 7.7 percent poorly favorable environment. a comparatively moderate women favorable environment encouraged rural women to engage in many economic and social activities. similar findings was reported by hoque and itohara (2008) and parveen and leonhauser (2004). poor women friendly environment does not allow the women to work outside. figure 6: distribution of the respondent women based the score of women friendly environment 3.2. economic empowerment of the rural women the main focus of the study was to evaluate the position of economic empowerment of the women with involvement in different igas. table 3 shows that before introducing the participatory video programme women’s participation in igas like safe food cultivation, vermi-compost preparation, botanical pesticide preparation and filming (video recording) was zero (0). however after joining with participatory video programme their participation was remarkable in the activities like safe food processing, handicraft preparation and homestead gardening also fewer than after participation. 18% 32% 42% 8% can sign only (0.5) primary (1-5) secondary (6-10) higher secondary & above (>10) 8% 72% 20% poorly favourable (up to 2) moderately favourable (3-4) highly favourable (>4) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 10 on the other hand, it is evident that after introducing participatory video program frequency of participation and percent in these sorts of activities was much more than before participation. table 3 demonstrates that the highest bulk (70.76) percent of respondent women had participation in homestead gardening after joining with video programme while it was less than half (47.69 percent) before joining to video programme. thus, data from the table 3 clearly indicates that participation in homestead vegetable gardening has increased and leaded to enhance income of the women. table 3: women’s participation in economic activities types of activities number of participants (n=65) before after frequency percentage frequency percentage safe vegetable cultivation 0 0 42 64.61 preparation of vermi-compost 0 0 39 60.00 botanical pesticide preparation 0 0 33 50.77 filming(video recording of local events) 0 0 21 32.30 safe food processing 25 38.46 35 53.85 handicraft preparation 37 56.92 45 69.23 homestead gardening 31 47.69 46 70.76 thus, women’s income was increased as compared to before participation in video programme. it was also revealed in table 3 that like home gardening, participation of the women have increased significantly in safe food processing and handicrafts making those also contributed in their better income. 3.3. income improvement of the rural women due to participation in igas an inventiveness was taken to assess the sum of income got by the women from various sources and was presented in table 4. the findings show that before introducing the participatory video programme income from safe food cultivation, vermin-compost preparation, botanical pesticide preparation and filming (video recording) was zero. it was also evident that the women’s income from safe food processing, handicraft preparation and homestead gardening also fewer than after income. on the other hand, after participation in video programme, income earnings of the women from such types of activities were also greater than before participation. thus, data from the table 4 clearly indicates that income of the women has improved significantly (11 to 120 thousand bdt) due to participation in igas as introduced by video mediated extension activities. however, findings show that the respondent women’s economic empowerment was ranged between 3.5 to 23 thousand bdt. table 4: income of the respondents from different economic actions types of activities income (in ‘000’ bdt) before after improvement safe vegetable cultivation 0 120.1 120.1 preparation of vermi-compost 0 95.5 95.5 botanical pesticide preparation 0 89.7 89.7 filming(video recording) 0 58.9 58.9 safe food processing 85.6 110.7 25.1 handicraft preparation 120.4 134.5 14.1 homestead gardening 105.5 116.6 11.1 the mean economic empowerment score was 9.68 and standard deviation was 4.01. on the basis of the score attained the respondent rural women were grouped into three classes as shown in table 5. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 11 table 5: allocation of the women based on their income improvement category frequency percent mean sd low (up to 5000 bdt) 4 6.2 9.68 4.01 medium (5001-10000 bdt) 37 56.9 high (>10000 bdt) 24 36.9 total 65 100.0 data demonstrated in table 5 indicates that the over half (56.9 percent) of the respondents had medium income improvement. whereas more than one-third (36.9 percent) of the respondent women had high improvement and only 6.2 percent had low income improvement. finding shows that highest majority (93.8 percent0 of the respondent women had medium to high income improvement. as a result the women become more capable to contribution in household income as well taking part in family decision building methods. 3.4. contribution of rural women in household income the study also tries to determine the amount of contribution of the women into their household income. figure 7 shows the differences between before and after contribution of the women in household income. figure 7: bar graph showing contribution of women in household income (‘00’ bdt) figure 7 show that women’s economic contribution has increased significantly in all family items of expenditures from food to buying women’s self-necessities after joining in video programme. however, it is evident that women’s dependency on male members for buying their personal necessities. along sides, after contribution on buying cloth, purchasing of household furniture, children education, children health care and miscellaneous was also higher than before contribution. this difference is due to improvement of rural women’s income. as their contribution in family income is increased so, they will be able to participate in family decision procedure. 3.5. participation of the rural women in family decision making process data furnished in table 6 shows that after improving income improvement women can contribute into household income and can participate in family decision making process on children education, children health care, spending money, buying and selling of land, buying of necessities, daily food menu, getting child, use of contraceptives and decision about self-issues (i.e., education, health, outgoing etc.). among those areas of family decision making issues it is established that maximum women’s participation (di=140) was on decision about their self-issue and participation on getting child (di=126), buying necessities (di=116), and use of contraceptives (di=112) also higher than other sectors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 12 table 6: case wise participation of the respondent women in family decisions aspects of decision making extent of participation *di rank order no participation low participation medium participation high participation child education 0 10 12 25 109 6 child health care 0 10 5 20 80 8 spending money 0 15 10 25 110 5 buying and selling of land 0 9 7 20 63 9 buying of necessities 0 5 18 25 116 3 daily food menu 0 8 15 19 95 7 getting child 0 10 13 30 126 2 use of contraceptives 0 9 14 25 112 4 decision about self issues (health, education, outgoing) 0 10 20 30 140 1 *di: decision index however, table 6 shows that women’s least participation was on decisions of buying and selling of lands. based on the level of participation on family decision making process the respondents rural women were classed into three classes like low participation (up to 9), medium participation (1018) and high contribution in the decision making process of the household issues (>18) are shown in table 7. table 7 shows that the level of participation score of the female members in the family decisions was ranged from 1 to 27. the mean participation score on family decision making process was 21.63 and standard deviation was 1.83. data presented in table 7 indicates that the more than one-third (38.5 percent) of the respondent women belonged to low participation as contrast to 35.4 percent having high participation in family decision making process. while more than a quarter (26.2 percent) of the respondent rural female members had medium participation in family decision making process. finding shows that more than half (61.6 percent) of the women had medium to elevated involvement in family decision making process. table 7: distribution of the women based on their contribution in family decision making process category frequency percent mean sd low extent of participation (up to 9) 25 38.5 21.63 1.83 medium extent of participation (10-18) 17 26.2 high extent of participation (>18) 23 35.4 total 65 100.0 as they are affable to contribute in family verdict process; so, the researcher indicate that rural women are economically empowered. this finding was also confirmed by ferdoushi et al. (2011), hoque and itohara (2009) and begum et al. (2000). the crosstab shows that when income improvement is low then their involvement in household decision making process is also low and high participation is zero. whenever, medium improvement in income indicates higher degree of contribution in household and lower partaking in family decision making process. it is apparent from table 8, the higher the income improvement is higher the contribution in family decision making. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 13 table 8: crosstab between income improvement and contribution in household decisions categories on income improvement extent of involvement in family decisions total low medium high low income improvement 18 8 0 26 medium income improvement 7 9 19 35 high income improvement 0 0 4 4 total 25 17 23 65 on the other hand when income improvement is low then women have also lower participation is in family decision making process. so, the crosstab clearly indicates that if income of the rural women is improved then their input in family decision making process about different family dealings would be much better. 3.6. relationship between economic empowerment of the rural women and their selected characteristics single vital objective of the study was to identify the association between women’s economic empowerment and their elected socio-economic characteristics. in this regard correlation coefficient (r) was computed. the relationship between the dependent and independent variables are shown in table 9. data furnished in table 9 shows that personal education, educational status of spouse/ household head, personal asset, communication exposure, organizational participation, women friendly environment” had a significant positive relationship with the status of women’s economic empowerment. table 9: relationship between characteristics of the rural women and their economic empowerment characteristics of the rural women coefficient of correlation(r) with 63 df. age (x1) -.124ns personal education (x2) 0.521** spouse/household head education (x3) 0.378** personal asset (x4) 0.273* communication exposure (x5) 0.511** organizational participation (x6) 0.565** women friendly environment (x7) 0.772** ns not significant * significant at 0.05 level **significant at 0.01 level on the other hand, age had no significant relationship with the status of women’s economic empowerment. naoroze (2004) and sarker (2005) found the opposite result and concluded in their study so as to age of the rural women had no noteworthy affiliation with their empowerment. the positive association between the educational level of the rural female members and their economic empowerment is for the reason that higher educated women were more empowered than the lower and illiterate women. education enhances empowerment by increasing access to new knowledge and information which help a woman to realize their ownership, to challenge injustice and discrimination, to change their outlook. education enables an individual to become more socialized, to have a wider outlook, to fight against injustice and also to gain better knowledge about every sphere of life both from cultural and economic point of view of a society. 4. conclusion results of the study exposed that mainstream of the rural women had intermediate to high income improvement due to participation in participatory video programme. it may be summarized that the majority of the rural female of the study area possessed positive income improvement status due to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 1-15 14 their greater participation in igas introduced by the video mediated extension programme. as a result they are becoming more proficient to donate in household income over and above can participate in decision making of their household affairs. the study explored that personal educational level of the rural women had affirmative and noteworthy correlation with their economic empowerment status. so, it may be recapitulated that rural women will be economically made powerful if they are properly educated. it is, therefore, recommended that different gos and ngos should take appropriate initiatives for mass literacy programme in order to increase knowledge, understanding and ability of the rural women for making them human resources rather than family burden. communication media exposure had also significant and positive relationship with their economic empowerment. it leads to the conclusion that the rural women will be economically empowered if they get more information on igas through various communication sources. so, it is recommended that public sector extension service providers and concerned ngos should undertake systematic communication campaign to provide timely and effective information to the women regarding various igas. moreover, number of female extension workers should need to be increased in agriculture and allied developmental departments to facilitate easy interaction and required skills transfer to women client. the study also explored that affiliation of the women with various organization is very effective to improve their confidence and capacity for operating an iga and getting necessary technical and financial support. finally it can be concluded that participatory videos has effectively improved rural women’s capacity to take part in igas and led to improve their income which ultimately contributed in improving rural women’s empowerment. for viable rural growth it is essential to mainstream the rural female in development initiatives. to make it true special attention is needed from all concerned agencies. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the first author contributed to all the research activities including preparing research proposal, designing the research, preparation of questionnaire, data collection and analysis under the continuous supervision of the second and third author. the second author prepared the article through writing, editing, interpretations of the results and reviewing secondary literatures to make the article concise and informative. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references bbs. 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b,edepartment of agriculture and animal health, university of south africa, south africa. cnational institute of social and economic research, ibadan, oyo state nigeria. duniversity of south africa, south africa.  eodunios@unisa.ac.za (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 23 june 2020 revised: 21 december 2020 accepted: 6 january 2021 published: 25 january 2021 keywords agricultural export diversification generalized method of moments (gmm) model nigerian economy gross domestic product (gdp) economic development government policies nigeria. this research sought to explore the performance of agricultural export products on economic growth in nigeria from 1960 to 2016. secondary data from the national bureau of statistics, the central bank of nigeria’s annual statistical bulleting, the world bank, and world development indicators were used. the generalized method of moments (gmm) model was explored in this study. the findings of the study show that food and live animals, beverages, and tobacco were found to be negative but significant to agricultural exports, while agricultural exports (total) and crude materials, inedible except fats, were found to be negative and insignificant to economic growth. animal and vegetable oils and fats were found to be positive but insignificant to economic growth. based on the following findings, it is recommended that policies aimed at increasing the productivity and quality of agricultural products, especially those from crops, should be implemented. there is also a need to devote more resources to the production of non-export goods to increase exports. above all, more credit should be extended to the agricultural sector with a low or zero interest rate, which may lead to a higher rate of economic growth in nigeria. contribution/originality: this study is one of very few to have investigated the performance of the agricultural sector on economic growth for a country such as nigeria whose economy is not agriculture based. the study provides evidence based on reliable secondary data, whereas most previous studies used cross-sectional primary data. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.47.52 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: oyetoun dunmola amao --michael akwasi antwi --oluwaseun samuel oduniyi --timothy olukunle oni --theresa tendai rubhara (2021). performance of agricultural export products on economic growth in nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 47-52. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.47.52 © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 47-52 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4695-3192 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3896-4502 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6118-2061 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0907-2345 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9964-1638 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.47.52 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 47-52 48 1. introduction farming has a powerful influence on any nation; a nation devoid of sustainable agricultural practices will always rely on other countries to acquire food for its inhabitants. the probable involvement of agriculture in enlarging a country’s economy has been a major issue for development economists. several researchers have proved that the development of the entire country depends on the progress of the farming sector, which perhaps will be a conduit for rural earnings with the stipulation of property in support of conversion keen on a developed financial system (agboola, oyekale, & oduniyi, 2017; awokuse, 2009; oduniyi, 2018). oji-okoro (2011) assumed that farming provides the trade and industry sector with expansion and enlargement through five inter-segmental connections. those segments are connected through (i) provision of excess labour to corporations in the industrialized segments; (ii) foodstuffs for indigenous utilization; (iii) supply fromf the marketplace in favour of industrialized yield; (iv) provision of local reserves and industrialized venture; and (v) provision of international trade through farm produce exportation income to sponsor importation of midand principal produce. the importance of exportation to global businesses with trade and industry intensification is a mechanism indispensable for the improvement of a financial system, and hence the importance of exportation to the global business cannot be overemphasized (timmer, 2002). the development of the export sector will result in employment generation and will thus enhance living standards. ever-increasing export income assists in reducing the strain on the stability of imbursement instability. usman and salami (2008) emphasized that exportation assists in growing the stature of collective trade and industry performance via its multifaceted effects on the level of nationwide earnings. export is a determining factor in the development of both mature and maturing economies. the exports of maturing nations are composed chiefly of natural assets, but those of matured nations are largely composed of capital supplies. the main strategic drive behind the export-led enlargement concept is that non-natural resources depend on goods. kaldor (1970) emphasized that growing exports is the focus for development, the reason being that exportation generates encouraging externalities through the use of a super-competent institutional organization with manufacturing ability (anthony, chukwudi, & wilfred, 2015). an underdeveloped economy can be transformed into a flourishing economy by an efficient export force (abogan, akinola, & baruwa, 2014). revenue earned through the export of agricultural goods will assist in escalating demand in the financial system (abdlazizi, naseem, & slesman, 2018). movement in addition to models of operations within the non-oil segment of nigeria showed that, regardless of diverse approaches, plans, and improved activities, the offerings from subsegments of non-oil segments remained very poor (abogan et al., 2014). low productivity characterized nigeria’s agricultural sector, which represents the core of the country’s economy. this is the result of very small farms, the use of unsophisticated and old-fashioned farming methods, poor access to credit services, poor manufacturing technology, and deficient inputs for farmers, due to shortfall in the availability of production factors (abogan et al., 2014). vigorous and well-constructed exportation is a pointer to the competitiveness of both goods and services, and a nation’s comparative advantage is used in measuring the magnitude of manufacturing entities within the economy (onodugo, ikpe, & anowor, 2013). produce is likely to be exported if local requirements are met,; moreover, superfluous produce subsists in marketable magnitude. many studies have investigated the relationship between non-oil exports and trade and industrial development. okoh (2004) noted that international corporations had encouraging, but not noteworthy, associations with illuminaton of the performance of non-oil sales abroad in the long run. furthermore, between 1950 and 1960, agriculture was responsible for 60–70% of the entire exports of nigeria (daramola, ehui, ukeje, & mcintire, 2007). nigeria was a chief exporter of cocoa, cotton, palm oil, palm kernel, groundnut, and rubber, with a regular yearly growth rate of 3–4% attained for agricultural and food crops (daramola et al., 2007). agricultural export taxes were the mainstay of government revenues, and agriculture was to some extent the foundation for the current fiscal balance (daramola et al., 2007). the average yearly growth rate of agricultural exports had decreased by 17% by the mid-1970s to mid-1980s. by 1996, agriculture accounted for barely 2% of all exports. according to daramola et al. (2007), agricultural exports have reduced significantly, the severe reduction in agricultural exports being an indication of the weak competitiveness of nigerian agriculture. therefore, nigeria turns is now a net importer of agricultural produce rather than a net exporter. in addition, there was no appreciable increase in nigeria’s agricultural export market because the majority still went to european union countries – in raw form, devoid of value addition (daramola et al., 2007). the oil price crisis of 1973–1974, and in 1979, was the chief reason for the decline in agricultural exports, which culminated in the inflow of foreign trade with the abandonment of agricultural segments due to “dutch disease” (sachs, warner, & andrew, 2001). as a result, nigeria started to import a number of agricultural goods that it also officially exported, as well as additional food crops in which it had previously been self-reliant. over 96.6% of nigeria’s exports were lost at nominal terms between 1970 and 1982 (abdlazizi et al., 2018). the production of domestic foodstuffs also declined significantly, resulting in imports reaching a peak of around $4 billion in 1982 (abdlazizi et al., 2018). an enormous increase in importation was funded through oil turnover, which enhanced constructive financial credit balance in the years 1979 and 1980 (daramola et al., 2007). by 1986 the situation had reached crisis point, showing that the policy of industrialization during import exchanges was ineffective. this approach levied relatively higher import duty on finished products as compared to raw materials and semi-finished products, in an effort to promote local manufacturing industries (sachs et al., 2001). based on this information, the present research investigated the accomplishments of agricultural export products in the economic development of nigeria. have government policies regarding the agricultural sector improved the economy? what are the factors that influence government contributions in the agricultural sector? asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 47-52 49 2. materials and methods the study employed an uncomplicated production function: y = ak (y represents productivity, a represents technical advancement while k represents assets and adopts non-diminishing returns towards assets). this research adopted the solow–swan production function, a financial model used for long-term financial development fixed in a structure of neoclassical economics – like a foundation towards improving financial development representation in support of the present research. the representation aims to clarify long-standing financial expansion by considering asset accretion, workforce, and technical development, owing to its predominantly smart mathematical features. solow– swan proved to be a suitable preliminary stage regarding several expansions: y = f (l, k) (1) the manufacturing function should be extended by the addition of agricultural exports: 𝑌𝑡 = f (leb𝑡, dcft, popgt, agric_et, µ) (2) the representation can be altered by inclusion of both exchange rate and foreign direct investment as regulator variables: 𝐺𝐷𝑃𝑡 = f (leb𝑡, oer𝑡, fdi𝑡, dcft, popgt, agric_et, µ) (3) where gdpt is the yearly gross domestic product. lebt denotes life expectancy at birth. oert represents the official exchange rate. fdit denotes foreign direct investment. dcft is domestic credit provided by a financial institution. popgt is population growth. agric_et is agricultural export while 𝜇 is the error term. lastly, according to equations 2 and 3, equation 4 is a derivative that captures the natural logarithm of the two sides of equation 3 by omitting any alteration of units in capacities towards parameters, and towards diminishing breach amid self-determining parameters along with reliant parameters. growth accounting is employed to ascertain the basis for financial development. according to the neo-classical expansion concept that estimates cumulative productivity (yt) at time y, a function of capital (kt), labour (lt) and the entire factor of production (at) assuming that 0<α<1 and μ>0: 𝑌𝑡 = 𝐴𝑡 𝜇 𝑓(𝐾𝑡 𝛼 , 𝐿𝑡 1−𝛼) (4) although the focus of the study is value addition through the farming segment in regard to national financial growth along with value addition via the agrarian subsector towards agriculture, aggregate output (yt) was conceptualized in the entirety of each segment of the nationwide financial system accomplishment. the cumulative output of the economy (yt) expresses sectorial productivities and each sectorial production is presumed to be the sum of the yields of its subsectors. the aggregate and sectorial outputs are specified thus: 𝑌𝑡 = ∑ 𝑌𝑖𝑡 𝑇 𝑡 (5) 𝑌𝑖𝑡 = ∑ 𝑌𝑖𝑗𝑡 𝑇 𝑡 (6) where (yt) = cumulative productivity in a financial system at time t. (yit) = segment productivity at time t. (yijt) = subsegment productivity j at time t. assuming that segment and subsegment outputs combine progressively towards the cumulative productivity. the possibility of progression for each respective segment in the financial system affects expansion in cumulative productivity. similarly, subsectorial growth can be the basis of sectorial growth. therefore, growth in cumulative productivity and growth in sectorial yield are identified as the first derivative of equations 5 and 6: 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝑌𝑡 = ∑ 𝜕𝑌𝑖𝑡 𝑌𝑖𝑡 𝑇 𝑡 (7) 𝜕𝑌𝑖𝑡 𝑌𝑖𝑡 = ∑ 𝜕𝑌𝑖𝑗𝑡 𝑌𝑖𝑗𝑡 𝑇 𝑡 (8) where 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝑌𝑡 stands for the growth in cumulative productivity of the economy at period t. 𝜕𝑌𝑖𝑡 𝑌𝑖𝑡 represents growth in the productivity of sector i at period t. 𝜕𝑌𝑖𝑗𝑡 𝑌𝑖𝑗𝑡 denotes productivity sub-segment j at time t. growth over all segments and subsegments is expected to create progressive achievement of cumulative productivity expansion. growth in aggregate and sectorial output is generally stated thus: 𝜕𝑌𝑡 𝑌𝑡 = ∑ 𝑌𝑖𝑡 𝑌𝑡 𝑇 𝑡 . 𝜕𝑌𝑖𝑡 𝑌𝑖𝑡 (9) 𝜕𝑌𝑖𝑡 𝑌𝑖𝑡 = ∑ 𝑌𝑖𝑗𝑡 𝑌𝑖𝑡 . 𝜕𝑌𝑖𝑗𝑡 𝑌𝑖𝑗𝑡 𝑇 𝑡 (10) where 𝑌𝑖𝑡 𝑌𝑡 represents the portion of the productivity of sector i in the cumulative productivity in period t. 𝑌𝑖𝑗𝑡 𝑌𝑖𝑡 represents the productivity of subsector j portion in sectorial productivity at time t. expansion of segments and subsegments was evaluated and is expected to enhance the development of cumulative productivity. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 47-52 50 the nigerian economic sectors, according to the definition of cbn and nbs, are agricultural exports, official exchange rate, foreign direct investment, life expectancy at birth, domestic credits obtainable from financial institutions, and population growth. the subsegments in the agrarian segment are grouped as food and live animals, beverages and tobacco, crude materials, and inedible produce except fats and animal and vegetable oils. value additions to both segments and subsegments are included and estimated: gdpgrow = wagric_egrow + wlebgrow + woergrow + wpopggrow + wfdigrow + wdcfgrow +ei (11) agrgrow = wfla_egrow + wbetogrow + wcmine_egrow + wavof_egrow + ei (12) gdpgrow = growth in gdp in time t. wagric_egrow = weighed growth rate of agricultural export in period t. wlebgrow = weighed growth rate of life expectancy at birth in period t. woergrow = weighed growth rate of official exchange rate in time t. wpopggrow = weighed growth rate of population growth in time t. wfdigrow = weighed growth rate of foreign direct investment in period t. wdcfgrow = weighed growth in domestic credit available from a financial institution in period t. wflaegrow = weighed growth rate of food and live animals in period t. wbetogrow = weighed growth rate of beverages and tobacco in period t. wcmineegrow = weighed growth rate of crude materials, inedible except fats, in period t. wafovegrow = weighed growth rate of animal and vegetable oils and fats in period t. 3. results and discussion the data were analyzed using the general method of moment (gmm) to ascertain the performance of agricultural exportation products on nigeria’s trade and industry development. information for the present study was collected from the central bank of nigeria (cbn annual reports and statistical bulletin), the nigerian bureau of statistics (nbs), and the world bank. this ensured the validity and the reliability of the data employed. the performance of agrarian exportation product on trade and industry development was analyzed using gmm, and the statistical results are presented in table 1. analysis was conducted on the effects of agricultural export products, and subsectors thereof, on total output, and of agricultural export products and subsectors on agricultural output. it is evident from the analysis that agricultural output cannot solely comprise gdp: one way or another, the agricultural sector also added value to all other sectors contributing to gdp, and vice versa. this study takes into consideration the impact of agricultural export products on other sectors when looking at how they help to grow the nigerian economy. this research work is not unfamiliar with the existence of endogeneity in the explanatory variables that contribute to gdp, and therefore the research adopted the use of gmm to study endogeneity that might occur within parameters such as foreign direct investment (fdi), the official exchange rate (oer), life expectancy at birth (leb), domestic credit provided by the financial sector (dcf), population growth (popg), and agricultural export products (agric_e), which comprise food and live animals (fla_e), beverages and tobacco (beto), crude materials, inedible except fats (cmine), and animal and vegetable oils and fats – referred to as agricultural export products. table 1 shows the effect of the total agricultural product for exportation on total output (gdp). it also reveals the performance of agricultural export subsector products on total output. in table 1, all other sectors show a negative but significant impact on total output (gdp_o) except leb (t = 14.72, coef = 1.079 at p < 0.01) that is positive and significant regarding gdp_o. the total agricultural export product (t = –1.34, coef = –0.1321 at p > 0.1) is negative and insignificant regarding gdp_o. looking at the subsector impact on agricultural export product under fla_e, all other factors except leb are negative but significant (t = 13.45, coef = 1.0698 at p < 0.01), which is positive and significant. fla_e itself is negative and significant (p < 0.1). the impact of beto is negative (t = -2.72, coef = – 0.1195) but significant (p < 0.01), while other factors are also negative but significant. looking at the impact of cmine_e, cmine_e itself is negative and insignificant (t = –1.45, coef = –0.1141 at p > 0.1), leb is positively significant while all the other factors are negative but notably effective. the effect of avof_e is progressive but negligible (t = 0.19, coef = 0.0126 at p > 0.1). consequently, the f-statistic for table 1 shows that all explanatory variables, including the agricultural export subsector, are sufficient to explain the dependent variables while r2 shows the reliability of explanatory variables not <90%, i.e., they are significant at 1%, 5%, and 10%. 3.1. presentation and interpretation of results the study reveals that agricultural export products have an a weak influence on expansion of the national financial system. reduced yields consequently resulted in poor economic performance characterized by food insecurity, insufficient provision of raw materials, raised levels of joblessness, skyrocketing cost of living, inaccessibility of farmers to finance, unwarranted borrowing, exchange rate devaluation, and import reliance. a downward trend was observed in the production of agricultural products, exportation of agricultural products, and proportion of agricultural production in national gdp over the period of global economic meltdown (loto, 2011). throughout the period of global economic meltdown, both the contribution of the agricultural sector to gdp and the exportation of farm product indicated minimal improvement. non-oil exportation showed a negligible influence on expansion of the nigerian financial system (onodugo et al., 2013). adesuoji and sotubo (2013) also observed that non-oil exportation has minimal value in the development of the domestic economy. reduced viability of agricultural product exportation in enhancing national economic growth is a pointer to the reduced productivity of agricultural subsectors, which is expected to culminate in poor overall agricultural export levels. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 47-52 51 table-1. performance of agricultural export products on the nigerian economy. variable lngdp_o lngdp_o lngdp_o lngdp_o lngdp_o coef t-test coef t-test coef t-test coef t-test coef t-test fdi -0.3774 -3.41*** -0.3764 -3.47*** -0.3424 -2.80*** -0.3638 -3.16*** -0.3145 -2.17** oer -0.0091 -2.87*** -0.0094 -2.84*** -0.0126 -3.34*** -0.0086 -2.73*** -0.0077 -1.92* leb 1.0790 14.72*** 1.0698 13.45*** 1.2416 14.61*** 1.0807 14.82*** 1.0156 10.55*** dcf -0.0300 -3.04*** -0.0273 -2.60*** -0.0235 -2.06** -0.0341 -3.35*** -0.0256 -2.08** popg -2.7534 -4.65*** -2.6667 -4.37*** -3.6638 -6.25*** -2.8921 -5.08*** -2.8429 -4.38*** lnagric_e -0.1321 -1.34 lnfla_e -0.1310 -1.84* lnbeto -0.1195 -2.72*** lncmine_e -0.1141 -1.45 lnavof_e 0.0126 0.19 constant -26.5136 -9.63 -26.4517 -9.04 -32.6996 -11.01 -26.5811 -9.91 -25.4614 -6.80 adj r2 0.903 0.903 0.910 0.902 0.896 f-statistic 52.38 (0.000) 52.53 (0.000) 53.64 (0.000) 51.66 (0.000) 48.86 (0.000) number of obs. 34 34 32 34 34 note: *** reported significance at 1%, ** reported significance at 5%, * reported significance at 10%. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 47-52 52 4. conclusion and recommendations the gmm test was employed, and the outcome revealed that total agricultural product exportation makes a worryingly minute contribution to nigeria’s financial system. we also investigated subsectors of farming export products, since these contribute to the agricultural export sector. the results investigated the subsectors used for this study – food and live animals, beverages and tobacco, and crude materials inedible except fats. of of these subsectors, both food and live animals and beverages and tobacco were significant, at 10 and 1%, respectively. however, the significance of these two subsectors had a negative influence on expansion of the national financial system. crude materials inedible except fats had a negative and insignificant influence on financial system expansion, while animal and vegetable oils and fats had a positive but not marked influence. the negative relationship of agricultural export products to economic growth began when petroleum was found – more importantly, rapid expansion of the crude oil industry resulted in abandonment of the agrarian sector, which turned nigeria’s economy into an oil-dependent economy. all other factors, including credit, exchange rate, investment, and even the efforts of those who ought to boost the production and exportation of products from the agricultural sector, were unable to grow the nation’s economy. this study recommends that both the government and private sector should attempt to intensify, diversify, and encourage the production of local agricultural commodities to increase that sector’s contribution to the economy, and thus eventually to stimulate national economic growth. the following policies should be considered: • the government should encourage school leavers to enter the agricultural sector and should make farming attractive to them through youth agricultural empowerment, especially in the production of cocoa, textiles, wood products, cork, and coffee. • both the government and the private sector should address the need to add value to agricultural products through agro-processing, to maximize the value of exports. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdlazizi, r. a., naseem, n. a. m., & slesman, l. 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(2018). implication of climate change on livelihood and adaptation of small and emerging maize farmers in the north west province of south africa. phd thesis, university of south africa. oji-okoro, i. (2011). analysis of the contribution of agricultural sector on the nigerian economic development. world review of business research, 1(1), 191-200. okoh, r. (2004). global integration and the growth of nigeria’s non-oil exports. paper presented at the african conference, 21-22 march at oxford, uk. onodugo, v., ikpe, m., & anowor, o. f. (2013). non-oil export and economic growth in nigeria: a time series econometric model. international journal of business management and research, 3(2), 115 124. sachs, j., warner, d., & andrew, m. (2001). the cause of natural resources. european economic review, 45(4-6), 827-838. timmer, c. (2002). agriculture and economic development. in: gardener, b.l. and rausser, g.c. (eds.), handbook of agricultural economics (1st ed., vol. 29, pp. 1487–1546). london: elsevier. usman, o., & salami, a. (2008). the contribution of nigerian export-import (nexim) bank towards export (non-oil) growth in nigeria (1990-2005). international business management, 2(3), 85-90. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 231 growth and yield of cauliflower (brassica oleracea. l.) as an effect of water supply and the dosages of rice straw mulch noertjahyani  a, ai komariah a, netti nurlenawati b a  faculty of agriculture, university of winaya mukti, bandung, west java, indonesia b faculty of business and social science, university of buana perjuangan, karawang, west java, indonesia  noertjahyani@yahoo.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 09-may-2019 accepted: 13-sep-2019 online available: 10-oct2019 keywords: cauliflower, rice straw mulch, water supply, yield abstract limited available water, especially in dry land, causes decreasing production of vegetable plants. cauliflower originates from subtropical regions which require water. mulching can manage water to a limited extent. an experiment was carried out in the lowlands to find out whether cauliflower cultivar orient hybrid could grow in an environment with water available under optimal conditions combined with the use of rice straw mulch. the experimental results show that the orient hybrid of cauliflower is a lowland plant that can provide the same (marketable curd) yield even with the water conditions below the field capacity (75% fc). the use of rice straw mulch doses of 5-10 t ha-1 can help maintain water available for plants. the orient cultivar hybrid is a lowland cauliflower sufficiently tolerant to lack of water. contribution/ originality this study informs that the use of mulch 5 -10 t/ha can maintain the availability of water for plants even though the water conditions are below the field capacity, and can gave passably growth and yield of cauliflower. cultivar orient hybrids can be planted in dry land of the low land. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.231.241 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: noertjahyani, ai komariah and netti nurlenawati (2019). growth and yield of cauliflower (brassica oleracea. l.) as an effect of water supply and the dosages of rice straw mulch. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 231-241. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 231-241 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:noertjahyani@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.231.241 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 231-241 232 1. introduction cabbage (brassica oleracea l. var botrytis sub var. cauliflora dc) is one of the commercial vegetables produced in indonesia. the plant belongs to the cabbage family of brassicaceae. ministry of agriculture of the republic of indonesia has developed highland vegetable species to be planted in five lowland west java districts combined with other food crops (ministry of agriculture, 2012) because the lowlands of west java have high potential to be developed and planted with vegetables from the highlands such as cabbage, cauliflower, and caysim. the success of the vegetable cultivation development program in the lowlands can be demonstrated by an increasing production of cauliflower from 2010 to 2012, namely 101,205 tons in 2010, 113,491 tons in 2011, and 135,837 tons in 2012 (central bureau statistics, 2013). as cauliflower originates from the subtropical region, it is more suitable to be planted in lowtemperature highlands in indonesia, but there are now seeds of cauliflower cultivars that tolerate high temperatures. one of them is cauliflower f1 cultivar orient hybrid. although this cauliflower is profitable and lowland cultivars have been available, the cultivating vegetables, especially hybrids in the lowlands, have various problems. the problems in the lowlands are limited water, types and fertility of soil, low air humidity, high temperatures, and frequent attacks by pests and diseases (kasiran, 2006). based on the four problems of the limited water in vegetable crops, cauliflower is the main problem. cauliflower includes inflorescent-producing vegetable crops which require a lot of water. water deficiency stresses plants, impoverishes them in enzymes, and reduces growth speed. water is a major component of photosynthesis. lack of water causes turgidity of stomata guard cells to decrease, stomata to close, co2 absorption to reduce, and photosynthesis to decrease. water plays a role in the translocation of photosynthesis. that inhibits plant growth. water influences the work of enzymes in metabolic processes because water acts as a temperature stabilizer in plants. therefore the availability of water will affect metabolic processes in plants and decrease growth and productivity (fitriana et al., 2009). water shortages are often caused by climatic conditions and weather characteristics. in the tropics, especially during the dry season, evaporation is so high that water shortages are frequent (blaha et al., 2003 cited in koudela et al., 2011). lack of water can stress plants which results in stress on physiological processes and other functionalities. the first response to lack of water is closing the stomata which will inhibit photosynthesis so that the flow of carbon dioxide decreases, which triggers respiration (zlatev and lidon, 2012). in a drought the plant will reduce the use of carbohydrates to maintain its metabolic process. this will decrease the carbon content so that plant growth is hampered and can even cause death (liu et al., 2013). efforts to reduce water evaporation can be done by using mulch. one agricultural waste in lowland rice fields is rice straw. besides being able to reduce production costs the use of rice straw as mulch is expected to be able to restore organic matter into the soil, decrease soil temperature, conserve moisture in the soil, and act as nutrient (wireko-manu and amamoo, 2017). hence it can improve growth and yield of vegetable, mainly in the lowlands. this study aims to determine the water requirements and the effect of using mulch on the growth and yield of cauliflower in the lowlands. 2. materials and methods the experiment was conducted in the puseurjaya village in the east telukjambe district of the karawang region of the west java province located at the altitude of ±17m above sea level. the soil used was inceptisol with a clay texture and the ph of 4.75. the experimental design used was a randomized block design (rbd) with a factorial pattern. the first factor was the supply of water (a) consisting of three levels; a1 = 100% (field capacity), a2 = 75% fc, and a3 = 50% fc. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 231-241 233 second factor was the dosage of rice straw mulch (m) which consists of three levels: m0 = without mulch, m1 = rice straw mulch 5 t ha-1 and m2 = rice straw mulch 10 t ha-1. each treatment was repeated three times. water supply for the first 7 days was the same for all treatments in the conditions of field capacity. water was supplied every day from the time the plants were 8 days old until harvest. the addition of the supply of water lost was calculated by the gravimetric water content method. dried straw mulch cut into ± 10cm was introduced simultaneously with the start of the supply of water, 8 days after planting. inorganic fertilizer dosages were used on recommendations of maynard and hocmuth (susila, 2006). measurement of growth components included plant height, number of leaves, and stem diameter, leaf area index (lai), and net assimilation rate (nar) were measured every 7 days. observation of yield components included the diameter of the cauliflower curd, curd height, shoot weight, and marketable yield of cauliflower plants. data from growth response variables using regression analysis followed by parallelity and confusion tests (draper and smith, 1981 cited in ariyanto et al. (2013). plant height, the number of leaves, curd diameter, curd height, shoot weight, and the weight of marketable yield per plant were analyzed using variance analysis and continued with duncan's multiple range test (dmrt) at 5% significant level (steel and torrie, 1989). 3. results 3.1. plant height the results of the analysis showed that there was an interaction effect between the supply of water and the dosage of straw mulch on the plant height at 28 and 35 days only. table 1 show that at 21 and 42 days after planting the highest cauliflower plant height was achieved with the supply of water in a field capacity condition (100%). the same table shows that at 21 and 42 days the height of the cauliflower plants that had mulch is higher than the height of the plants that did not have mulch. at 42 days a 10 t ha-1 rice straw mulch can increase plant height compared to no mulch. table 1: cauliflower plant height (cm) at the age of 7, 14, 21, and 42 dap affected by water supply and rice straw mulch treatment mean of plant height (cm) 7 dap 14 dap 21 dap 42 dap water supply (a) a1= 100% (fc) 17.50 a 25.11 a 36.89 b 52.67 c a2=75% fc 17.33 a 24.95 a 35.56 a 49.72 b a3=50% fc 17.89 a 25.28 a 34.61 a 44.50 a rice straw mulch (m) m0= 0 t ha-1 17.83 a 25.17 a 34.28 a 47.50 a m1= 5 t ha-1 17.39 a 25.17 a 36.33 b 49.00 ab m2= 10 t ha-1 17.50 a 25.00 a 36.44 b 50.39 b note: the average number of treatments followed by the same letter in the column direction is not significantly different according to dmrt at the 5% level table 2: height of cauliflower plants (cm) at 28 and 35 dap affected by water supply and rice straw mulch plant age mulch water supply a1 (fc) a2 (75%fc) a3 (50% fc) mean 28 dap m0 (0 t ha-1) 43.33 a 39.17 a 34.00 a 38.83 c b a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 231-241 234 m1 (5 t ha-1) 44.17 a 43.83 b 41.33 b 43.11 a a a m2 (10 t ha-1) 43.67 a 43.33 b 42.67 b 43.22 a a a mean : 43.72 42.11 39.33 41.72 35 dap m0 (0 t ha-1) 48.83 a 44.67 a 36.00 a 43.17 c b a m1 (5 t ha-1) 49.00 a 50.00 b 42.17 b 47.06 b b a m2 (10 t ha-1) 52.00 a 48.67 b 45.50 b 48.72 b ab a mean : 49.94 47.78 41.22 46.31 note: the average treatment number is indicated by the same (lowercase) letter in each column and each line (uppercase) and they are not significantly different at the 5% real level based on duncan's multiple range test table 2 shows that when plants are 28 and 35 days old in sufficient water conditions (field capacity) rice straw mulching does not affect their height. but at the water supply of 75% and 50% fc rice straw mulch can increase plant height. on the other hand supply of 75% and 50% fc decreases the plant height for each dosage of rice straw mulch only if mulch is not applied. at 35 days the dosage of 5 t ha-1 and 10 t ha-1 of rice straw mulch with the reduction of water supply affects plant height. 3.2. number of leaves the interaction between water supply and dosages of rice straw mulch has no effect on the number of leaves per plant and stem diameter. the supply of water significantly affects the number of leaves per plant at 42 days. the number of leaves was the highest at medium field capacity. the dosage of rice straw mulch only affects the number of leaves per plant at 42 days. 5 t ha-1 and 10 t ha-1 of straw mulch yielded a higher number of leaves (table 3). table 3: number of leaves per cauliflower plant (strands) at 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, and 42 dap affected by water supply and rice straw mulch treatments number of leaves per plant 7 dap 14 dap 21 dap 28 dap 35 dap 42 dap water supply (a) a1= 100% (fc) 6.11 a 8.59 a 12.33 a 15.56 a 18.67 b 23.44 c a2=75% fc 6.00 a 8.48 a 12.12 a 15.22 a 18.00 b 21.67 b a3=50% fc 6.11 a 8.44 a 12.00 a 14.56 a 16.56 a 18.89 a mulch (m) m0 = 0 t ha-1 6.22 a 8.80 a 12.12 a 14.78 a 17.78 a 20.56 a m1 = 5 t ha-1 6.11 a 8.35 a 12.22 a 15.22 a 17.67 a 21.78 b m2 = 10 t ha-1 5.89 a 8.36 a 12.11 a 15.33 a 17.78 a 21.67 b notes: the average treatment number is indicated by the same (lowercase) letter in each column and each line (uppercase) is not significantly different at the 5% real level based on duncan's multiple range test 3.3. stem diameter the supply of water has an effect on the stem diameter from the age of 21 dap to harvest. from 28 to 42 days the 50% and 75% water supply results in a shorter stem diameter compared to 100% water supply. measures of rice straw mulch affect the stem diameter from 35 days until harvest. the application of 5 t ha-1 and 10 t ha-1 of rice straw mulch resulted in a longer diameter of the cauliflower plant stems compared to that without mulch at 35 and 42 days after planting (table 4). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 231-241 235 table 4: stem diameter of cauliflower (mm) at age 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, and 42 days as affected by water supply and rice straw mulch treatments stem diameter (mm) 7 dap 14 dap 21 dap 28 dap 35 dap 42 dap water supply (a) a1= field capacity 4.10 a 5.62 a 7.69 b 9.40 c 11.12 c 12.63 c a2=75% fc 3.88 a 5.42 a 7.38 b 8.80 b 10.03 b 11.26 b a3=50% fc 3.93 a 5.24 a 7.01 a 8.22 a 9.00 a 9.68 a rice straw mulch(m) m0= 0 t ha-1 4.06 a 5.70 a 7.21 a 8.59 a 9.67 a 10.77 a m1= 5 t ha-1 4.01 a 5.44 a 7.37 a 8.92 a 10.27 b 11.31 b m2= 10 t ha-1 3.84 a 5.14 a 7.50 a 8.91 a 10.22 b 11.49 b note: the average treatment number is indicated by the same (lowercase) letter in each column and each line (uppercase) and they are not significantly different at the 5% real level based on duncan's multiple range test 3.4. leaf area index plant response measured on leaf area index (lai) of the cauliflower plants to the water supply at each dosage of rice straw mulch is shown in figure 1. without mulch, the cauliflower plants are in a different state of field capacity with a growth rate of 75% and 50% of water supply, whereas in the supply of 5 tons of mulch per hectare and 10 tons per hectare lai at the water level the field capacity is equal to 75% but faster the lai growth compared to 50% water supply. figure 1: grafts of leaf area index of cauliflower 3.5. net assimilation rate (nar) in the absence of mulch by supply 100% water (fc) the net assimilation rate is higher than the supply of water 75%% and 50% fc. the optimum nar reaches at the age of 14-21 days after which it decreases at different speeds. in the applicationof 5 t ha-1 rice straw mulch, plants in the supply of 100% water (fc) have the same pattern with 50% fc, whereas with asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 231-241 236 figure 2: net assimilation rate of cauliflower affected with water supply and rice straw mulch 75% water supply the pattern is different but higher nar is in field capacity water supply . at the dosage of straw mulch 10 t ha-1 of cauliflower plants in the field capacity the pattern is different from the supply of 50% fc water but the same as the supply of 75% water, nar is optimal at supply water 50% fc or 75% fc higher than supply water at field capacity (figure 2). 3.6. curd diameter, curd height and shoot weight of cauliflower the results of the variance analysis showed that there was no interaction effect between the level of water supply and the dosage of mulch on the curd diameter, the curd height and shoot weight of the cauliflower with the results of the analysis of main effect shown in table 5. in table 5 it can be seen that in the water supply of 50% fc and 75% fc the size of the diameter, height cauliflower mass and fresh weight of shoot are smaller than that of the field capacity water supply. while supply rice straw mulch at a rate of 10 t ha-1 can increase the size of the diameter and height of cauliflower mass, and also fresh weight of the cauliflower shoot. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 231-241 237 table 5: curd diameter, curd height and shoot weight of cauliflower affected with water supply and rice straw mulch treatment curd diameter (cm) curd height (cm) shoot weight per plant (g) water supply : a1=100% (fc) 12.54 c 7.92 c 757.16 c a2= 75% fc 11.16 b 6.96 b 577.71 b a3= 50% fc 7.56 a 5.34 a 361.87 a rice straw mulch: m0= 0 t ha-1 9.47 a 6.17 a 550.83 a m1= 5 t ha-1 9.78 a 6.57 a 553.99 a m2= 10 t ha-1 12.01 b 7.49 b 591.92 b note: the average number of treatments followed by the same letter in the direction of the to dmrt column is not significant according at the 5% level 3.7. weight of marketable yield per plant weight of marketable yield is affected by water supply and application of rice straw mulch. in conditions without mulch, water supply 50% fc and 75% fc even lowering the weight of marketable yield per plant. in the delivery of 5 and 10 t ha-1 dosages of rice straw mulch, 75% fc of the water supply does not reduce the weight of marketable yield of cauliflower, while the water supply of 50% fc reduced the yield of the cauliflower marketable (table 6). table 6: weight of marketable yield per plant (g) affected with water supply and rice straw mulch rice straw mulch water supply a1 (100%) a2 (75%) a3 (50%) mean m0 (0 t ha-1) 257.40 a 179.39 a 94.85 a 177.21 c b a m1 (5 t ha-1) 297.57 ab 222.95 b 112.43 ab 210.98 b b a m2 (10 t ha-1) 319.79 b 278.80 c 140.13 b 246.24 b b a mean 291.59 227.05 115.80 211.48 note : the average number of treatments that are marked with the same letters in each column (lowercase letters) and each row (uppercase letters) are not significantly different at the 5% real level based on duncan's multiple range test in the case of field capacity, supply mulch as much as 5 t ha-1 and 10 t ha-1 does not significantly improve the yield. at the level of 75% fc of rice straw mulch as much as 5 t ha-1 and 10 t ha-1 increases the weight of marketable yield, whereas in the water supply of 50% fc only the rice straw mulch is 10 t ha-1 which can increase marketable yield of cauliflower weight. 3.8. weight of edible curd the results of the analysis show that there is an effect of the interaction between the supply of water and the dosage of rice straw mulch on the weight of edible curd per plant. results of the analysis of simple effects presented in table 7. when there is no mulching, water supply of 50% fc and 75% fc may reduce the weight of edible curd per plant. whereas in the case of being applied mulch with a dosage of 5 or 10 t ha-1 the water supply of 75% fc does not reduce the weight of the edible curd only water supply 50% fc which reduces the weight of edible curd per plant. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 231-241 238 in a field capacity, only 10 t ha-1 of mulch is applied which significantly increases the yield. while at the level of water supply of 75% fc of rice straw mulch as much as 5 t ha-1 and 10 t ha-1 increases the weight of edible curd per plant. in water supply 50% fc, application of rice straw mulch cannot increase the weight of edible curd. table 7: weight of cauliflower consumable (g) affected with water supply and rice straw mulch rice straw mulch water supply (%) a1 (100%=fc) a2 (75% fc) a3 (50% fc) mean m0 (0 tha-1) 184.21 a 118.59 a 58.93 a 120.57 c b a m1 (5 tha-1) 218.39 a 161.32 b 63.96 a 147.89 b b a m2 (10 tha-1) 257.57 b 221.07 c 98.34 a 192.33 b b a mean 220.06 166.99 73.74 153.60 note: the average number of treatments that are marked with the same letters in each column (lowercase letters) and each row (uppercase letters) are not significantly different at the 5% significant level based on duncan's multiple range test 4. discussion cauliflower plants require a high amount of water for survival. although the orient cultivar can adapt to the lowlands in both the rainy and dry seasons, this plant requires adequate air humidity and soil moisture. cauliflower plants are usually planted on soil with sufficient irrigation with adequate drainage (rukmana, 1994). based on this the use of rice straw mulch is an alternative technology that can reduce evaporation and maintain soil moisture. the response of cauliflower plants to the supply of water and rice straw mulch was seen in the high components of plants starting at 21 dap. this indicates that up to 14 days the supply of 50% water without mulch still meets the water needs of the cauliflower plant. at 28 and 35 days the supply of water and dosage of rice straw mulch affect the height of the plants due to the period of 21, 28, and 35 dap. the highest dosage of 5 t ha-1 of rice straw mulch obtained 100% water (fc), while at 10 t ha-1 of mulch the three levels of water supply had almost the same maximum. lack of water in cauliflower plants that were applied new rice straw mulch had an effect on the plant height at 35 days because the older the plant, the higher the demand for water. the response of each component of growth in the supply of water varies. on the number of leaves the effect of supplying water began to appear at 35 days. this caused a difference in the leaf area index. generally the leaf area index of cabbage plants on water supply is 50% lower than the leaf area index at the two other levels of water supply. at the beginning of the growth the net assimilation rate is still low because the plants are small. as they grow, the leaves function in photosynthesis, causing an increase in the net assimilation rate. many older leaves are shed, so the net assimilation rate decreases even though the leaf area index increases, because many leaves are shed. the aging of leaves causes low rates of net assimilation due to reduced photosynthetic rates while respiration continues (gardner et al., 1991). older leaves may burden the physiological process of estate crops (subandi et al., 2017). groundwater benefits plants as a fertilizer, soil temperature stabilizer, solvent, and a trigger for unavailable nutrient supply chemical reactions becomes available, as solvents carry nutrient ions from the rhizosphere into the roots and leaves, and as a means of transportation and distribution of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 231-241 239 nutrients from leaves to all parts of the plant. sufficient water will increase absorption of nutrients (hanafiah, 2007; subandi et al., 2018). more than 50% at fc of the water supply are used in the generative phase (35 dap until harvest). lack of water in this phase causes a decrease in yield components and low yields. at seedling black locus, watering 30-40% of field capacity and longer watering intervals lower photosynthesis and transpiration rate, stomatal conductance, and growth of a plant (anggraeni et al., 2015). rice straw mulch plays a role in reducing evaporation, thereby helping plants absorb nutrients which can increase their growth and yield. the supply of straw mulch can maintain soil moisture 50% higher than without mulch. maintenance of soil moisture will create a microclimate conducive to plant growth and soil organisms. increased activity of soil organisms will increase soil capacity to hold water and nutrients to plants. this causes the cauliflower plants which receive 100% water with 10 t ha-1 of rice straw mulch to obtain the highest yield (kumar and lal, 2012). the inflorescence time of cauliflower plants is influenced by the supply of water and the amount of rice straw mulch. cauliflower buds are formed after plants reach a carbon/protein balance. this is related to the ability of plants to assimilate, accumulate food, and the allocation or distribution of assimilation results because carbon is mostly derived from mobilization of food reserves and the result of photosynthesis. owing to the fact that water plays a role in photosynthesis and the distribution of assimilation results, the higher the availability of water, the faster the harvest. therefore the fastest harvest time in this experiment was achieved by cauliflower plants which were treated with 100% water (fc) combined with a dosage of 10 t ha-1 of rice straw mulch. this is in line with the heaviest cauliflower weight without leaves obtained from plants with 100% water supply plus 10 t ha-1 of rice straw mulch while the lightest weight is obtained from cabbage cauliflower plants with 50% water supply without mulch (elisa, 2004). each component of the highest yield is achieved by the level of water supply field capacity. growth components and high yield components in conditions of field capacity indicated that this growth requires water available for optimal performance. availability of water is needed to adapt and be used for plant growth and increasing leaf area (doorenbos and kassam, 1979). water deficits only affect gas exchange capacity and photosynthetic efficiency in the short term, while in the long term they result in decreased efficiency of dry matter formation (munchow et al., 1986 cited in agung and rahayu, 2004). lack of water results in reduced photosynthesis because dehydration of protoplasm will reduce photosynthetic capacity (thomas and lasminingsih, 1994 cited in agung and rahayu, 2004). sufficient water will support an increase in leaf area related to the level of crop production (gardner et al., 1991). low amount of water will cause limited root development. that will disrupt nutrient absorption. lack of water will cause nitrogen nutrient uptake to be inefficient and reduce the growth and yield of soybean crops (agung and rahayu, 2004). soil environment lacking water in the first stages of growth may cause a retarded plantlet (subandi and dikayani, 2018). 5. conclusion cauliflower plants require high amounts of water. although the orient cultivar can adjust to both the rainy and dry seasons in the lowlands, plant growth will decrease without rice straw mulch at water supply lower than 75% fc, but will be good with 5 or 10 t ha-1 of rice straw mulch at the water supply of 75% fc. the worst result was observed at the water supply of 50% fc. each component of the highest yield is achieved by the level of water supply at field capacity. growth components and high yield in conditions of field capacity indicated that this growth requires water available for optimal performance, and straw mulch applied at 5-10 t ha-1 can be a means of preserving water in the soil. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 231-241 240 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors acknowledge the management of agricultural faculty, winaya mukti university, indonesia for supporting this research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references agung, t. d. h., & rahayu, a. y. 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(2012). an overview on drought induced changes in plant growth, water relation and photosynthesis. emirates journal of food agriculture, 24(1), 57-72. doi.org/10.9755/ejfa.v24i1.10599. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 463 estimating the criteria affected to agricultural production: case of chau thanh a district, vietnam pham thanh vu a, vo quang minh a , phan chi nguyen a , tran van dung b , nguyen the cuong c, nguyen thi phong lan c acollege of environment and natural resources, can tho university, vietnam b college of agricultural, can tho university, vietnam c mekong delta rice research institute, vietnam  ptvu@ctu.edu.vn (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 13-mar-2020 accepted: 18-may-2020 online available: 23-jun2020 keywords: agricultural production, analytical hierarchy process (ahp), criteria affecting, sustainable development, pra abstract the study aimed to assess the current agricultural production and to identify the criteria affecting the agricultural cultivation and overcome the limitations in agricultural production of chau thanh, a district of the mekong delta, vietnam. the study collected primary from farmers using participatory rapid appraisal tool, and discuss directly with experts and local agricultural managers. the results showed that economic development mainly based on agriculture (of which the paddy and fruit trees land were the most 13.577 ha (98,8%)). the five criteria were identified (techniques, physical, social, economic, and environment) and twenty-six sub-criteria, in which the production scale (0.084), infrastructure (0.071), total income (0.075) and profit (0.062) were the most important factors. the ahp analysis assisted in proposing several solutions such as infrastructure construction and non-structural solutions to cover the output of products to develop sustainable agricultural production. therefore, the case study of chau thanh a district was used to support the development of agriculture production. contribution/ originality this study identified the important factors affected agricultural production. based on these factors, we propose and prioritize the suitable solutions and recommendations for policy-makers to develop sustainable agricultural production in the future effectively. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.463.472 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: pham thanh vu, vo quang minh, phan chi nguyen, tran van dung, nguyen the cuong and nguyen thi phong lan (2020). estimating the criteria affected to agricultural production: case of chau thanh a district, vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 463-472. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 463-472 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 463-472 464 1. introduction in recent years, natural conditions in the mekong delta in general and chau thanh a district, in particular, have been strongly influenced by the agricultural production activities of the farmer in the district as well as prolonged drought, erratic rainfall, unseasonal rain and flooding (ha and nguyen, 2016; nguyen and truong, 2014). in land use, the determination of natural, socioeconomic and environmental factors is also a factor affecting land use efficiency. the above issues pose challenges to managers, researchers, local authorities and communities in new research, rational models, adaptive solutions and policies for social balance and economic output, environmental benefits this becomes urgent and complex. especially, the physical conditions in the mekong delta are facing many challenges (nguyen and van, 2014). this is one of the areas most severely affected by climate change and sea-level rise (smajgl et al., 2015). the physical conditions have also affected by the change in market prices (phan et al., 2017, du et al., 2018 and viaggi et al., 2013) as well as soil degradation due to excessive use of pesticides (nguyen and do, 2015). the policy of restructuring agricultural sector of the district was aims to build the concentrated production areas (people's committee of hau giang province, 2016), at the same time re-evaluates the situation of agricultural production in recent years of the district, which has faced with rapid changes from specialized rice land to high economic value-added cropland (people's committee of chau thanh a district, 2017). therefore, agriculture is a very complex issue. to solve these issues, ahp is a useful method of decision-maker support. the analytical hierarchy process (ahp) is a multi-criteria analysis method applied in many fields and suitable for many studies (jacek, 1996; thirumalaivasan et al., 2003; gloria et al., 2007). the method, which enables the evaluation of group decisions with a specific systematic and logical approach, is used to choose the best alternative among the determined alternatives for a specific purpose to consider different criteria (saaty and peniwati, 2008; saaty, 1980; chiranjit and kishore, 2016; ali et al., 2019). the study objective is to identify the current status of agricultural land use and the factors affecting agricultural production for the remedial proposal sustainable agricultural development, which improves the efficiency of land use and people’s life in the district. 2. materials and methods 2.1. data collection for analysis purpose, the data is collected by different means, details given below. 2.1.1. secondary data available maps of land use of the study area in 2017 were collected at the department of natural resources and environment and the department of agriculture and rural development of the chau thanh a district, hau giang province. in addition, statistical inventory data on land use, land use planning report and relevant physical, socio-economic data were collected according to the census data available at the statistical department and the people’s committee of the district. such data were the main base to assess the land use current and affecting factors. 2.1.2. survey data a random survey of 70 farmers appropriately represent the whole population of the district was conducted to investigate the situation of agricultural production, criteria affecting the farming process and affected by agricultural production. 2.1.3. interview experts forty-five experts (agricultural management officials, scientists and related organizations) were interviewed to identify the criteria and sub-criteria affecting agricultural production and impact level of each criteria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 463-472 465 detail of criteria and sub-criteria are shown in table 1. table 1: the criteria and sub-criteria affecting agricultural production criteria (c1) sub-criteria (c2) techniques seasonal calendar, seed varieties, tech-application, type product, fertilizer, pesticides physical weather, drought, flood, amount of rain economic income, cost, profit, benefit/cost social policy, labour, capital, knowledge, infrastructure, experts, scale environment soil pollution, water pollution, salinization, acidification, disease 2.1.4. participatory rapid assessment method – pra the research conducted 10 rural assessments at district administrative units to verify the collected data and to synthesize ideas from the producers directly as well. 2.1.5. multi-criteria valuation method this method was used to evaluate the impact of the criteria affecting agricultural production people in chau thanh a district, hau giang province. hierarchical analysis in group decision making (ahp-gdm) (saaty and peniwati, 2008; saaty, 1980) was used to limit the subjective bias of experts. the multi-criteria evaluation method was performed with 03 basic steps (lu et al., 2007): (1) pair matching; (2) weighting; and (3) determine the consistency ratio (cr%). 2.1.6. mapping method the method was used to synthesize and standardize the vn 2000 / wgs 84 zone 48 coordinate system (6 degree), digitize, adjust, edit using mapinfo software and create the thematic maps. 3. results and discussion 3.1. the current status of agricultural production of the study areas the actual situation of the study area until 2017 shown that the agricultural land area accounts for over 86% of the natural land area (people's committee of chau thanh a district, 2017). this shown that chau thanh a district was a pure agricultural zone with diverse types of agricultural land use (figure 1, 2). figure 1: uses of agricultural land in chau thanh a district in 2017 source: office of agriculture and rural development of chau thanh a district, 2017 % o f cu lt iv at ed a re a land use types asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 463-472 466 figure 2: the current agricultural land use in chau thanh a district in 2017 according to the land inventory statistics report (2017) and the field surveys showed that the agricultural farming status in chau thanh a district mainly consists of two main crops: rice and fruit trees with various types of land uses such as three rice crops, the combination of three rice crops and fish, double rice crops, rice cash crops, cash crops and fruits (mainly salt-bearing crops such as oranges, grapefruit and lemon seedless and mango). however, in recent years, the area of fruit trees has grown massively and quickly on a small scale, which makes agricultural managers difficult to ensure planning due to the impact of market prices. since, it made the difficulties in crop disease management and technology transfer, as well as the management of agricultural output and the quality of agricultural products. 3.2. the criteria affecting agricultural production in the study area: the results of interviews with farmers, direct exchanges with experts as well as a rapid assessment of rural areas have identified five criteria (c1) affecting the agricultural production process of people in the study area, including physical, social-economic (khoza et al., 2019), environment and farming techniques. according to experts shown the agricultural farming process in the district, the main influencing criteria is the social factor (weight 0.347) and followed by in the order of the physical (weight 0.188), economic (weight 0.165), environmental (weight 0.163), and techniques (weight 0.137), which were less impact on agricultural production (table 2). the less impact of the technique on agriculture production is likely due to the district's traditional agriculture, long-term production experience, regular training in new techniques and application of new farming techniques in production. in recent years, the industrialization process has made the agricultural labour forces move to industrial zones which affecting agricultural production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 463-472 467 table 2: the weight of criteria and sub-criteria affecting agricultural production criteria weight of criteria (w1) sub-criteria weight of sub-criteria (w2) total weight w=w1*w2 techniques 0.137 seasonal calendar 0.122 0.017 varieties 0.096 0.013 tech-application 0.148 0.020 type product 0.199 0.027 fertilizer 0.201 0.027 pesticides 0.234 0.032 physical 0.188 weather 0.247 0.046 drought 0.166 0.031 flood 0.295 0.055 amount of rain 0.292 0.055 economic 0.165 income 0.452 0.075 cost 0.076 0.013 profit 0.376 0.062 benefit/cost 0.096 0.016 social 0.347 policy 0.064 0.022 labor 0.155 0.054 capital 0.121 0.042 knowledge 0.147 0.051 infrastructure 0.205 0.071 experts 0.065 0.023 scale 0.243 0.084 environment 0.163 soil pollution 0.126 0.020 water pollution 0.150 0.024 salinization 0.262 0.043 acidification 0.255 0.041 disease 0.208 0.034 3.3. the sub-criteria (c2) about techniques includes the seasonal calendar, seed varieties, techniques, production methods (schreinemachers and berger, 2011), methods of using fertilizers and plant protection chemicals (figure 3) (ada et al., 1998; sajesh and padaria, 2019). the results showed that the pesticide and fertilizer were two important factors in farming techniques (table 2); these two factors were important due to the resolution of crops disease problems and supply of nutrients under the continuing of local production, which reduces the soil nutrient quality and land availability (le and tran, 2013; nasim et al., 2018). the results also showed that the crops seed varieties factor was less important in agricultural production because most farmers in the area have used and selected pure varieties, and low quality. the results are in agreement with the findings of ramasubramanian et al. (2014) for the quality seed availability. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 463-472 468 figure 3: the chart for sub-criteria about techniques 3.4. the sub-criteria (c2) about physical properties are such as erratic weather changes, prolonged drought, flooding and rainfall (figure 4). in the mekong delta, drought/flooding have played an important role in agricultural development (das, 2005). flooding and rainfall are two factors of high concern (table 2) because local flooding affects crops; reducing productivity and product quality, and affecting harvest as well. besides, during the time in the rice field or flowering of fruit trees, the rain causes a drop of the fruit and produces much less fruit, resulting in the low productivity and quality of agricultural products. the factor of the prolonged drought was less concerned because the district has many rivers and canal systems. therefore irrigation demand is stable and irrigation water supply for the region's crops is adequate. figure 4: the chart for sub-criteria about physical 3.5. the sub-criteria (c2) about economic properties determined including the investment costs, model income, production profits, and capital efficiency in agriculture production diversifies (bowman and zilberman, 2013.) (figure 5). in which, income and profit were the two factors that greatly affect agricultural production (rajendra et al., 2019, viaggi et al., 2013), followed by capital efficiency and investment costs (table 2). the results showed that the local economic conditions, the production of the high-income land-use type were an important factor of decisive decision making on agricultural production. the profits were equally important at the same time. when production has brought about profits and high economic efficiency, people are only interested in the investment costs of the production land-use type. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 463-472 469 figure 5: the chart for sub-criteria about economic 3.6. the sub-criteria (c2) about social affairs affecting agricultural production most in the district was the scale of production, followed by infrastructure, labour sources, people's knowledge, and capital sources (figure 6). advisors and supporting policies in agricultural production were the least influential factors (table 2). according to experts, the policy of supporting local agricultural production was not much and the level of support was low (mainly supporting annual water pumping), the training for farmers on science and technology. there were no policies to support capital, consumption, and chain of link policies. the production scale and infrastructure were social factors highly influenced by small and fragmented production conditions, while the area of raw material products has not been developed, resulting in low product quality and uneven, inadequate irrigation system, inland canals affect the transportation of agricultural products. figure 6: the chart for sub-criteria about social 3.7. the sub-criteria (c2) about the environmental factors have identified the saline element as the one that was considered to be the most influenced by the salinity element that has a great impact on crops (the plant varieties in the district are grown in freshwater), followed by acidic soils, the increase in disease, water pollution and soil pollution (table 2, figure 7) were the factors that have little effect on the agricultural production of the study area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 463-472 470 figure 7: the chart for sub-criteria about the environment therefore, with 26 sub-criteria (c2) affecting agricultural production in the district, the economic criteria [total revenue (0.075) and profit (0.062)] was still the leading decision criteria, followed by infrastructure criteria (0.071), scale (0.084), and criteria of plant varieties (0.013) are of little interest in the cultivation process in the district. 3.8. the solutions for sustainable agricultural production in the study area based on the criteria and sub-criteria were determined above, some solutions for sustainable agricultural production: 1) several scientific and technical measures need to be carried out to limit the use of inorganic fertilizers and plant protection chemicals, and to raise the awareness for people to use organic matter and to apply high-tech agriculture. 2) the local managers also need to focus on repairing, upgrading and constructing a closed dyke system, and irrigation systems to limit the impact of flooding in the rainy season; 3) the policymakers need to develop the strategies to manage the agricultural materials appropriately to ensure quality, as well as to reduce the production costs. at the same time, it is necessary to build a system of linking offsets of agricultural products to ensure outputs for agricultural products. 4) it is necessary to recommend the concentrated production areas towards uniform product quality, as well as to support policies on land to expand the farming scale to meet the supply of raw materials. 5) the training on scientific and technical measures for farmers to limit the use of inorganic fertilizers that adversely affect soil resources such as soil acidity and salinity formation in the production process. 4. conclusion based on the study results showed that agricultural production is very complex with many factors influence and interact with each other. the study concluded that of the five (05) criteria (c1), the social criteria are most interested in agricultural production. in which, twenty-six (26) additional sub-criteria (c2) were identified affecting the agricultural production of the study district. the criteria of income, infrastructure and profit were the main influencing criteria, and the policies to support agriculture and plant varieties were the criteria that have less impact on production. this factors supported the current policymakers to promote the production status of farmers and will prove as a benefit for district agriculture in the coming future. the ahp was a useful tool to assist the determination of the current limitation of criteria in agricultural production and proposed asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 463-472 471 solutions have been developed to improve the livelihood ability in the future for a larger extent. the research results were the basis for further studies on land use and climate change, it should be consulted by managers with necessary and effective orientations to cope with issues change contribute to sustainable agricultural development strategy. funding: this study is funded in part by the mekong delta rice research institute project bđkh.42/1620, supported by the ministry of natural resources and environment. in part by the can tho university improvement project vn14-p6, (supported by a japanese oda loan), and ministry of education support for the annual study. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ada, r. l., kamta, y., prasad, v., gangwar, k. s., & dwivedi, b. s. 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(2013). modelling and interpreting the impact of policy and price scenarios on farm-household sustainability: farming systems vs. result-driven clustering. environmental modelling & software, 43, 96-108. doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2013.01.014. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2011.02.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2013.01.014 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 194 assessment of the performance of farmers’ cooperative societies: a case of kaduna state nigeria chuks c. ezeh, m. abubakar college of agriculture, ahmadu bello university, zaria nigeria  chukezeh14@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 25-apr-2019 accepted: 02-sep-2019 online available: 19-sep2019 keywords: assessment, performance, farmers, cooperative societies abstract the study was carried out in soba local government area (lga) of kaduna state to appraise the performance of four (4) farmers’ cooperative societies using a structured questionnaire administered to 116 randomly selected cooperators. the obtained data were analyzed using descriptive and nonparametric statistics. the results revealed that several factors had motivated members to join societies. the average loan approval rate of 93.3% was recorded for the 3-year period of 2015, 2016, and 2017. about 73 cooperators representing 62.9% assessed the services of the cooperative societies as very satisfactory or satisfactory; only 12.9% assessed them as not satisfactory. major constraints that identified include inadequate capital (19.7%), limited income generating activities (16.5%), and poor attitude of cooperators (14.5%). contribution/ originality this study evaluates the performance of selected cooperative societies in bridging the gap and leveraging on identified constraints, and offers recommendations that will engender better livelihoods among cooperators and concurrently transform nigerian agriculture. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.194.203 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: chuks c. ezeh and m. abubakar (2019). assessment of the performance of farmers’ cooperative societies: a case of the kaduna state nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 194-203. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 194-203 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:chukezeh14@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.194.203 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 194-203 195 1. introduction in recent years policy makers, non-governmental organizations (ngos), and international donor agencies have recognized that improving livelihoods in many low income countries can only be achieved if development efforts are clearly focused on the sector employing most of the poor and the spaces where they live. undoubtedly that sector is rural farming which in most low income countries constitutes the majority of the poor (ugwuanyi and chukwuemeka, 2013). in nigeria it is estimated that over 50 percent of the population are poor. the world bank (2015) report estimated the incidence of poverty to be 53.5 percent with poverty levels more severe in the rural areas. according to thomas and canagarajah (2008) nigeria’s economy is characterized by a large agriculturally based sector that encompasses about two thirds of the population living in poverty. smallholder farming is typical in rural nigeria and there is an emerging concern about the viability of small farm agriculture. this, according to barret et al. (2006), is because these smallholders are faced with daunting livelihood risks resulting from the general state of deprivation they find themselves in; infrastructure is poor, environmental hazards prevail, and income is low resulting from low investment and an uneconomic scale of production. the result is that these smallholders are caught up in a vicious cycle trying to eke out a living and hardly meeting basic living requirements. the importance of growing the agricultural sector and at the same time improving rural livelihoods cannot be overemphasized. this was amply demonstrated during the economic transformation of asia. forty years ago asia was a continent of widespread poverty. today most asian countries are experiencing significant growth and poverty reduction (otierio, 2007). nigerian economy has a lot of potential for growth and development, especially the rural farming sector. these potentials must be harnessed to the fullest to generate the expected upscale in rural livelihoods. perhaps one veritable channel to the realization of this goal is through the encouragement and growth of the cooperative movement (anyanwu et al., 1997; otto and ukpere, 2011). cooperatives have been defined severally and in many contexts. the international cooperative alliance (ica, 2001) defined cooperatives as people–centred enterprises jointly owned and democratically controlled by members for members to realize their common socioeconomic needs and aspirations. ezeh (2003) posited that cooperatives are established by likeminded people to pursue mutually beneficial economic interests generally aimed at enhancing livelihood standards. the merits of cooperation essentially derive from the characteristic focus on collective action. the facets of collective action may differ from place to place, form one cooperative enterprise to another. these differences manifest in the different types of cooperatives operating in nigeria; some operate along specific endeavours while others are multipurpose. in all, group or collective action has been recognized as a positive force for rural development. as the name implies, cooperatives perform a number of services to their members such as providing credit and other inputs for production along with storage and marketing facilities for their produce. the credit requirements of members could also be met through grants and loans from government and donor agencies for on-lending to members. cooperatives encourage and facilitate mobilization of savings among members, thereby filling funding gaps that characterize marginal production. there is no doubt that pooling their resources together through cooperatives will help unleash unexploited potentials and empower these smallholder farmers. however, success stories of the performance of cooperatives in nigeria have been few and far between. studies have shown that attempts to channel funds through cooperatives have not been very successful. a myriad of other asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 194-203 196 challenges have been cited in different locations (ijere, 1998; otto and ukpere, 2011; kanu and ozurumba, 2014). therefore this study aims to assess the performance of selected cooperative societies in the area of study. the objectives of the study are: ▪ to describe the socioeconomic characteristics of the cooperators in the study area ▪ to elicit the factors motivating membership of cooperative societies ▪ to assess the performance of selected cooperative societies ▪ to identify the constraints mitigating the effectiveness of cooperative societies in the study area. 2. method of study 2.1. the study area the soba local government area (lga), one of the 23 lgas in the state of kaduna, is located in the north-eastern part of the state along latitudes 100 – 150 n and longitudes 110-160 e. the lga is bordered by the zaria lga in the west and the kauru lga in the east. the soba lga falls within the guinea savanna zone with annual rainfall range of a variety of arable crops. the major occupation of the inhabitants is farming. 2.2. sampling procedure and data collection multistage sampling procedure was adopted in the study, firstly to purposively select the soba lga because of the preponderance of active cooperative societies in the local government area. secondly, two districts out of four were purposively selected because of the number of active societies operating in them. the third stage involved random selection of two (2) cooperative societies per district giving a total of four (4) societies. finally, thirty (30) members were randomly selected from the membership list provided by the selected societies. the number of randomly selected co-operators per society was limited to 30 firstly because that figure amounted to an average of 50% of the membership of most of the societies and secondly because the scope of the study was limited by funding and time. a structured questionnaire was used to generate primary data through interviews of the co-operators. 116 (96.7%) were duly completed and formed the sample size for the study (n = 116). table 1: distribution of co-operators district / cooperative questionnaire administered questionnaire retrieved % retrieved 1. maigana a. awai 30 29 24.2 b. tudun saibu 30 30 25 2. wanka a. dutse 30 28 23.3 b. tsauni 30 29 24.2 total 120 116 96.7 2.3. data analysis both descriptive and nonparametric statistics were used to analyze the primary data. descriptive statistics including frequency and percentages were used to achieve objectives 1, 2, and 4. nonparametric statistics including standard deviation and chi-square were used to achieve objective 3: standard deviation s = asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 194-203 197 s = √ ∑ (𝑥𝑖− �̅�𝑁 𝑖=1 )2 𝑁−1 where (x1, x2…xn) are observed values of the sample, x is the mean value of the observations, and n is the number of observations in the sample. chi-square is explicitly expressed as: x2 = (𝑥0− 𝑥𝑒 )2 𝑥𝑒 where xo is the observed frequency and xe is the expected frequency. 3. results and discussion 3.1. socioeconomic characteristics of co-operators table 2 shows the distribution of major socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents including gender, age, educational attainment, and occupation. table 2: distribution of co-operators according to their socioeconomic characteristics characteristic frequency (n = 116) percentage gender male 83 71.5 female 33 28.5 age (years) <20 9 7.8 21 – 30 28 24.1 31 – 40 32 27.6 41 – 50 31 26.7 >50 16 13.8 mean 36.5 educational status primary education 44 37.0 secondary education 29 25.0 tertiary education 11 9.5 adult literacy 18 15.5 non formal education 14 12.1 occupation farming 78 67.2 fishing 9 7.8 traer/business 21 18.1 civil servant 8 6.9 source: field study, 2018 the results in table 2 show that men constituted 71.5% of the respondents and women 28.5%. there is no doubt that men dominated in the activities of the cooperative societies covered in the area. this result is similar to the findings of izekor and alufohi (2010) in their study of credit cooperatives in the state of edo, in the south, and ibitoye (2013) in the state of kogi, north central nigeria. only 9 (7.8%) of the co-operators were below 20 years of age. 24% fell within 21-30 years. more than half (54.39) of the co-operators fell between 30 and 50 years while 16 co-operators representing 13.8% were over 50. the mean age of the respondents in this study was 36.5 years. evidently the majority (78%) of the co-operators fell within the productive age of 20 – 50 years. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 194-203 198 these results agree with the findings of babatunde et al. (2007) in their study of farmers in the state of katsina in nigeria. the results in table 2 also show the educational status of the co-operators. 37.9% had only primary education, 25% secondary education, and 9.5% tertiary education. about 16% of the cooperators had attended adult literacy programmes operating in the lga, and 14 respondents, representing 12.1%, had no formal education. these results agree with the findings of audu et al. (2010) in dekina lga of the state of kogi in nigeria. while farming is the predominant occupation of the inhabitants of the soba lga, other occupations also featured, mostly with farming as a side occupation. the results show that the majority (67.2%) indicated farming as their main occupation. about 18% of the co-operators were into trading / business, 7.8% into fishing, and 6.9% were civil servants. it is noteworthy that most of the civil servants had attained tertiary education. 3.2. cooperative membership and motivators the study sought to ascertain the duration of membership of the co-operators and what factors motivated their membership in cooperative societies. table 3: distribution of co-operators based on the duration of membership duration of membership frequency percentage (%) < 5 years 19 16.4 6 – 10 years 34 29.3 11 – 15 years 50 43.1 > 15 years 13 11.2 mean 10.4 std. derivation 4.37 source: field survey 2018 the results in table 3 show that 19 co-operators, representing 16.4% of the sample, have been in cooperative societies for less than 5 years, 29.3% have been co-operators for 6 – 10 years, and 43.1% have been members for 11 15 years. only 11.2% of the co-operators have been members for over 15 years. the mean duration of membership for the sample is 10.4 years with a standard deviation of 4.37. evidently over a half (54%) of the co-operators have been members of cooperative societies for over 10 years. this is remarkable since, according to izekor and alufohai (2018), the longer the duration of membership, the more experienced members are in the running and operations of cooperative societies. it is also evident that members find cooperation beneficial and hence sustain their membership. regarding the major factors that had motivated and endeared members to join cooperative societies, the responses of co-operators are shown in table 4. table 4: factors that motivated membership in cooperative societies motivating factor strength of motivation mean (x) very strong (3) strong (2) mild(1) 1. to contribute to community development 42 43 31 2.09 2. to encourage and enhance savings culture 68 33 15 2.46 3. for increased agricultural output/yield 54 41 21 2.28 4. to facilitate access to loans and farm inputs 83 24 9 2.63 5. to improve members welfare/livelihood 49 42 25 2.2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 194-203 199 6. to enhance members’ self esteem 36 41 39 1.97 source: field study, 2018 using a benchmark of 2, the likert type results in table 4 show that the prospects of access to loans, grants, and farming inputs recorded the highest mean score of 2.63 followed by encouraging and enhancing savings culture (2.46). the third and fourth ranking motivators were for increased agricultural output/yield (2.28) and to improve members’ welfare/livelihood (2.20). contributing to community development (fifth ranking) barely made the benchmark at 2.09, while enhancing members’ self-esteem (1.97) failed to make the benchmark of 2. these results corroborated the findings of nweze (2003) and okoli (2018) in their study of cooperatives in nigerian rural communities. 3.3. assessment of cooperative performance the study sought to assess the performance of the four cooperatives covered through the cooperators who are beneficiaries and had applied for loans, grants, or other services. the 3-year period of 2015, 2016, and 2017 was covered in this assessment as shown in table 5. table 5: loan applications and approvals by cooperative societies: 2015 – 2017 year number of loan applications number of loans approved percentage approved percentage rejected 2015 109 102 93.6 6.4 2016 112 105 93.8 6.2 2017 106 98 92.5 7.5 mean 109 101.6 92.3 6.7 std. deviation 3 3.52 0.49 0.49 source: field study, 2018 the results in table 5 show the number of loan applications and approved loans. the rates were 93.6%, 93.8%, and 92.5% for the years 2015, 2016, and 2017, giving a mean of 93.3% approval rate for the three years covered in the study. this was considered reasonably high since, conversely, the percentages of rejected applications were 6.4%, 6.2, and 7.5% for 2015, 2016, and 2017 with a mean of 6.7% for the three years. evidently the co-operators in the four cooperative societies had good access to cooperative loans and benefitted accordingly. these results agree with the findings of izekor and alufohai (2010) in the state of edo where the approval rates were 98.90% and 99.42% for 2002 and 2003. the value of the loans granted to cooperative members, whether in cash or kind, was ascertained. loans were in the form of cash advances as well as materials/farm inputs (fertilizers, better seeds, agrochemicals etc.). a breakdown of the values of disbursement made for the three years under review was recorded in table 6. table 6: distribution according to the value of credit received: 2015 – 2017 loan value (n’000) 2015 (n = 102) 2016 (n = 112) 2017 (n = 106) total f % 50 -100 0 2 1 3 0.9 101 – 150 3 5 4 12 3.8 151 – 200 8 5 7 20 6.3 201 – 250 11 9 13 33 10.3 251 – 300 11 18 17 56 17.5 301 – 350 21 18 17 56 17.5 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 194-203 200 351 – 400 25 28 22 75 23.4 401 – 450 13 18 16 47 14.7 451 – 500 7 12 11 30 9.4 >500 3 5 4 12 3.8 source: field study, 2017 *usd 1 = n362 (naira) at 2018 exchange rate the result in table 6 shows that out of the 320 approvals for the years (2015 – 2017) only 12, representing 3.8%, were for loan values of more than n500,000. thirty-five approvals, representing 11%, received between n50,000 and n700,000. the majority (61%) of the approvals fell between n200,000 and 400,000. 89 approvals representing 27% of the total were recorded in the bracket of n400,000 and above. generally the amount of loans received by the cooperative may be considered low in view of the prevailing inflationary rate resulting in high cost of farm inputs and labour. however, it should be noted that the co-operators are mostly smallholder farmers whose operations and scope are generally on a small scale. moreover, loans advanced to cooperative members are based on the contributions made by members; they are usually not entitled to more than what they have contributed. at best, in some cases and when funds are available, members may be allowed twice the amounts they have contributed. the results in this study as it relates to the range of advances disbursed are similar to those of nweze (2003), otto and ukpere (2011), and godwin (2011) in their studies. from their standpoint the co-operators were asked to assess the performance of their cooperative societies for the 3-year period. they were asked to indicate whether they considered the services rendered by their cooperative societies as very satisfactory, satisfactory, fair, or not satisfactory. their responses are shown in table 7. table 7: chi-square analysis of the performance of cooperative prevailing societies: 2015 – 2017 assessment indies observed frequency (fo) expected frequency (fe) (fo – fe)2/fe (x2) very satisfactory 31(26.7)* 29 0.14 satisfactory 42(36.2) 29 5.83 fair 28(24.1) 29 0.03 not satisfactory 15(12.9) 29 6.75 total 116(100) 12.75 source: field study, 2018 * figures in parenthesis are percentages the results in table 7 show that 73 co-operators, representing 62.9%, assessed the services rendered by their cooperative societies as very satisfactory or satisfactory; 24.1% as fair, and only 15 co-operators, representing 12.9%, as not satisfactory. the chi square analysis of the assessment by co-operators gave a positive value of x2 = 7.4 in their assessment of the performance of their cooperative. to further confirm the assessment of the co-operators regarding cooperative performance, chi square was used to test the null hypothesis (h0) that cooperation is not beneficial to the wellbeing of the co-operators. they were asked to answer ‘yes’ if cooperation has been beneficial to their wellbeing or ‘no’ if it has not been beneficial to their wellbeing and livelihood. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 194-203 201 table 8: affirmation of the benefits of cooperative membership affirmation frequency df x2 p-value yes 91(78.4) 2 18.78 0.00 no 25(21.6) 2 18.78 0.00 total 116(100) 37.56 source: field study, 2018 * figures in parenthesis represent percentages with the chi-square value of 37.56 (calc.) the co-operators affirmed that cooperation was beneficial to their wellbeing and livelihood. therefore the null hypothesis that cooperation is not beneficial to the co-operators’ wellbeing is hereby rejected. the alternative hypothesis (h1) that cooperation is beneficial to members’ wellbeing is accepted. 3.4. constraints limiting effectiveness of cooperatives the fourth objective of this study sought to identify the major constraints limiting the effectiveness of cooperative societies in the study area. therefore the co-operators were asked to indicate from a list of problems and challenge those which critically affected the operations of their cooperative societies. their responses are shown in table 8. table 9: distribution of co-operators according to constraints that limit the effectiveness of cooperative societies constraints frequency percentage i. poor management / leadership 38 10.8 ii. poor attitude of members 51 14.5 iii. inadequate capital 69 19.7 iv. misappropriation of society funds 35 10.0 v. limited income generating activities 58 16.5 vi. delays in processing of loan applications 36 10.3 vii. favoritism and nepotism on the part of officials of society 16 4.5 viii. low membership strength 4.8 13.7 total 351* 100 source: field study, 2018 * multiple response the result in table 9 shows that the first three constraints are inadequate capital (19.7%), limited income generating activities (16.5%), and poor attitude of co-operators (14.5%) in that order. low membership strength (13.7%) was the fourth constraint identified by the co-operators followed by poor management / leadership (19.8%). the last 3 constraints, in this order, include delays in processing of loan applications (10.3%), misappropriation of society funds (10.0%), and favouritism (nepotism by officials of the society (4.5%). constraints identified in this study are similar to those identified by ajah (2012), audu et al. (2010) and izekor and alufohai (2010) in their studies of cooperative societies in the states of edo, abuja, and kogi. 4. conclusion it is generally agreed that cooperatives serve as a veritable channel for rural empowerment and development, and that regular and optimal performance of these roles will accelerate the transformation of agriculture and rural economy. the cooperative societies covered in this study in soba lga of the state of kaduna affect the lives of the members positively. this is deduced form the high patronage of services by co-operators and their assessment of the performance of the societies. however, the potential for optimal benefits to members is yet to be truly harnessed. to achieve this goal the following recommendations are proffered: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 194-203 202 1. cooperative societies should be encouraged to diversify their economic activities and seek more avenues (e.g. grants) to increase funding capacity. 2. societies should embark on enlightenment and literacy programmes to address poor attitude of cooperators. 3. since government, donor agencies, and ngos operate better through cooperatives, societies should link up to such opportunities to expand their scale of operations. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ajah, j. 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(2010). assessment of cooperation societies effectiveness in agricultural credit delivery in ikpoba okha lga, edo state. africa journal of general agriculture, 6(3), 139-144. kanu, s. i., & ozurumba, b. a. (2014). capital formation and economic growth in nigeria. global journal of human social sciences, 14(4), 41-58. nweze, m. j. (2003). cooperative promotion in rural communities. the project approach. nigerian journal of cooperatives, 2(2), 76-89. okoli, e. (2018). assessment of the contributions of cooperative societies in the development of youths. a case study of selected cooperative societies in dunukofia lga, anambra state, nigeria mrra research paper no. 84380. assessed at https://inpra.ub.unimuenchen.de/84380. https://inpra.ub.unimuenchen.de/84380 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 194-203 203 otierio, a. z. (2007). agricultural growth, rural poverty and hunger in africa. aaae conference proceedings p. 465-468. otto, g., & ukpere, w. (2011). credit and thrift cooperative in nigeria: a potential source of capital formation and employment. african journal of business management, 5(4), 56755680. thomas, s., & canagarajah, s. (2008). poverty in a wealthy economy: the case of nigeria. imf working paper # 02/114. ugwuanyi, b. i., & chukwuemeka, e. c. (2013). financing rural development in nigeria. periscoping imperatives. singaporean journal of business economics and management studies, 1(8), 1-11. world bank (2015). poverty rates at international poverty lines. world development indicators, world bank washington dc. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 75 trust and communication influence on farm performance for paddy farmers: a study in bangladesh iris, f.a nawi, n. m.b man, n.c ramli, n. n.d uddin, m. t e a,b,ddepartment of agribusiness and bioresource economics, faculty of agriculture, university putra malaysia, serdang, selangor, malaysia. cdepartment of agriculture technology, faculty of agriculture, university putra malaysia, serdang, selangor, malaysia b,cinstitute of plantation studies, university putra malaysia, serdang, selangor, malaysia. edepartment of agricultural economics, bangladesh agricultural university, mymensingh, bangladesh.  nolila@upm.edu.my (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 19 january 2022 revised: 21 february 2022 accepted: 7 march 2022 published: 25 march 2022 keywords communication farm performance farmer trust. farmers are currently moving toward business relationships and forming close ties with business partners in the supply chain. close business ties reduce costs, enhance efficiency, improve profit, increase competitive advantage and build personal relationships. utilizing strategic relationship elements such as trust and communication has significant importance for farmers and marketers. this study assessed the influence of trust and communication on farm performance of paddy farmers’ in bangladesh. data was collected through quantitative survey-based interviews with 356 farmers from the mymensingh district, bangladesh. descriptive analysis was used to summarize the farmers’ demographic details and exchange relationship with their preferred paddy buyer. partial least squares structural equation modeling (pls-sem) was used to test the hypotheses. the findings revealed that trust and communication contributed to promoting paddy farmers’ farm performance, especially profit, sales, and cash flow growth. the study findings offer farmers a basis for developing longterm business relationships by applying trust and communication to establish, maintain, and enhance farm performance. contribution/originality: this study is one of the first attempts to investigate the influence of trust and communication on farm performance in bangladesh. it also contributes to the existing literature on the importance of long-term business relationship in agriculture sector specifically from paddy farmers’ perspective. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4451 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: iris, f. --nawi, n. m. --man, n. --ramli, n. n. --uddin, m. t. (2022). trust and communication influence on farm performance for paddy farmers: a study in bangladesh. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2), 75-81. 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4451 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction bangladesh is the fourth largest rice producer globally (shanbandeh, 2019), and about 77% of people in bangladesh depend on agriculture directly or indirectly for their livelihood (quddus & kropp, 2020). most of the farmers in bangladesh are poor and their farm size is small (rahman, 2017). bangladeshi paddy farmers do not obtain fair asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 2 (2022): 75-81. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7474-1552 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5865-3085 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6639-6720 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7073-8161 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9809-6263 mailto:nolila@upm.edu.my http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 75-81 76 economic returns (hoque, 2019). the syndicate formed between intermediaries and paddy traders denies farmers a fair price (ray, 2018). moreover, limited access to market information diminishes farmers’ bargaining power, handicapping them from fair prices (quddus & kropp, 2020). these challenges cause farmers to be dependent on dominant buyers (osmani & hossain, 2015). while trust and communication have been built over the years in farmers’ relationships with their paddy buyers, value creation receives less attention than transactional exchange (mujeri, 2019). the challenges cause many farmers to face obstacles in achieving an economic return. both farmers and buyers behaviors increase the development of trust in a business alliance (murshid, 2011). there is enormous potential in the process of economic return for the farmers, especially in developing countries (linh, long, chi, tam, & lebailly, 2019). one of the most practical and sustainable solutions for farmers is to use the influence of relational elements as an exchange strategy (boniface, 2011). fortunately, trust and communication are crucial aspects of a relationship that farmers can rely on to succeed in business. undeniably, the transformation from transaction to value creation has been a robust advancement in the business environment (brennan, baines, & garneau, 2003; egan, 2011). interestingly, these arguments and knowledge have minimum practical value when no strong empirical foundation exists (narteh, agbemabiese, kodua, & braimah, 2013). therefore, additional empirical research is indispensable to develop a strong foundation between trust, communication and farm performance. the concept of this study emerged from prior studies on the relationship between trust, communication, and farm performance. however, research on the influence of trust and communication on farm performance lacked the deserved attention (boniface, 2011). several studies utilized trust (e.g., (aji, 2016; batt, 2003; lobo, leckie, & li, 2013)) and communication (e.g., (bich, tuoi, & batt, 2016; zaefarian, thiesbrummel, henneberg, & naudé, 2017)) in the agricultural context and encouraged the present study on farmers’ perspectives within the relationship. farm performance is viewed as financial and economic performance that uses identical measurements, such as sale growth, profit growth, market share, return on investment (roi), and cash flow relative to competitors (kavak, sertoğlu, & tektaş, 2016; lobo et al., 2013). this study measures farm performance using sales growth, profit growth, and cash flow. the low education level limits the small farmers’ capability to comprehend basic business practices, such as record-keeping and gross margin analysis (quddus & kropp, 2020). thus, the subjective performance concept enables farmers participating in this study to understand and respond appropriately. trust is a crucial governance mechanism in interpersonal relationships (villena, choi, & revilla, 2019). trust promotes cooperation and higher performance and facilities the exchange of information (ghazinejad, hussein, & zidane, 2018). lobo et al. (2013) examined the farmers’ business relationships with buyers and found personal trust had a positive relationship with a farmer’s financial performance. placing importance on trust, (leninkumar, 2017) argued that all social connections are bound to collapse without trust. trust can increase social relations and financial benefits (caliskan & esmer, 2019), and increase efficiency and reduce costs (ghazinejad et al., 2018). increased perception of purchase decisions can expand the trust between farmers and suppliers (aji, 2016). trust reduces the uncertainty associated with either partner’s tendency to engage in opportunistic activities that could harm the relationship (kam & lai, 2018). by highlighting the influence of trust in an agricultural context, mao, fu, cao, & chen (2021) suggested that trust is a behavior that can establish cooperation and reduce transaction costs for farmers. similarly, communication is critical in an agricultural context because it develops information sharing and cooperation amid stakeholders (hilary, kibwika, & sseguya, 2017). communication in the marketing context can be seen as the formal and informal exchanging and sharing of meaningful and timely information between buyers and sellers (etuk, 2018). effective communication is the key that connects the marketing channel (mohr & nevin, 1990), and the competency of aptly delivering reliable information creates feelings of familiarity and friendship (etuk, 2018). studying communication and performance, sin, tse, chan, heung, & yim (2006); bich et al. (2016); and yen & abosag (2016) established that communication positively influences financial and economic performance. bich et al. (2016), who discovered flower producers’ reliance on the wholesaler price information, emphasized the importance of communication in helping them to increase sales volume. specifically, communication enhances innovation capabilities and opens up the exploration of market opportunities, which ultimately results in a positive outcome on performance (zaefarian et al., 2017). proper and good quality information sharing is effective in achieving high performance for farmers (hilary et al., 2017). in the agriculture sector, especially for farmers, there is a significant need to share and disseminate trustworthy and appropriate information (lotfi, mukhtar, sahran, & zadeh, 2013). networking and faceto-face interactions are effective means of communication and provide additional opportunities to build stable interpersonal relationships (valenzuela & contreras, 2014). therefore, this study aims to fill the gap in existing literature by exploring whether farmers accept and apply trust and communication to enhance farm performance, and if so, they can employ this strategy in a practical way. based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses are proposed: hypothesis 1 (h1): trust has a significant relationship with farm performance. hypothesis 2 (h2): communication has a significant relationship with farm performance. 2. materials and methods 2.1. sampling and data analysis techniques the mymensingh district in bangladesh was purposively selected for data collection as this district is famous for its vast paddy production area and abundance of paddy farmers. the study population comprised all the farmers in the selected area of the district. the survey was conducted from february to april 2020 to generate the data required for this study. data was collected through a questionnaire that covered farmers’ profiles as well as their practices in the exchange relationship with their preferred buyers (the influential elements such as trust and communication that can enhance farm performance). it was developed with open-ended and close-ended questions after considering the research asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 75-81 77 objectives and the farmers’ ability to understand what was required of them. probability sampling was undertaken using a systematic random sampling technique due to its generalization utility for studying a small subset of a large population. also, systematic sampling is appropriate as it considers the population’s homogeneity and commonly shared characteristics (mukherjee, 2019). a total of 356 farmers were interviewed from the selected area, and they all possess similar characteristics in social, educational, and economic conditions. data was collected by enumerators who are familiar with the farmers’ activities. the survey consisted of ten items (see table 1) measured on a seven-point likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). the study employed a descriptive analysis to show farmers’ demographic profiles and exchange relationships with preferred buyers. the statistical package for social science (spss) was utilized to run the descriptive statistics to derive the frequencies and percentages. pls-sem was employed to test the hypotheses. pls-sem is a variance-based analysis method that is widely accepted in business marketing management. it is suitable in studies that develop theory and is appropriate for examining a complex causality relationship model. importantly, pls-sem is a non-parametric approach that imposes less emphasis on data distribution and sample size (lowry & gaskin, 2014). table 1. measurement scale used with factor loading. measurement scale factor loading trust (batt, 2003) 1 i have confidence in my most preferred buyer 0.866 2 i trust my most preferred buyer as he keeps his promises 0.782 3 i believe the market information provided by my preferred buyer 0.809 communication (alrubaiee & al-nazeer, 2010; ndubisi, malhotra, & wah, 2009) 1 my preferred buyer communicates frequently 0.774 2 the information helps to provide better service 0.841 3 my preferred buyer provides timely and trustworthy information 0.861 4 information provided by my preferred buyer is always accurate 0.825 farm performance (kavak et al., 2016; lobo et al., 2013) 1 the relationship with my preferred buyer helped to increase my sales 0.782 2 the relationship with my preferred buyer helped to increase my profit 0.826 3 my farm performance is much better than competitors in cash flow 0.856 3. results and discussion 3.1. farmers’ demographic profiles table 2 exhibits the demographic profiles and farmers’ exchange relationships with their preferred buyers. most of the study respondents were male (98%). table 2. demographic profiles and farm characteristics (n = 356). characteristics category frequency % gender male 349 98 female 7 2 age 26–35 years 57 16 36–45 years 89 25 46–55 years 100 28 56 years and above 110 31 education class 5 (primary education) 103 29 class 8 (high school) 96 27 ssc (secondary school certificate) 86 24 other (hsc, ba.) 71 20 farm size small (cultivable land of 0.05 to 2.49 acres) 207 58.1 medium (cultivable land of 2.50 to 7.49 acres) 147 41.3 large (cultivable land of 7.50 acres and above) 2 0.6 ownership personal 338 72.7 borga (local lease) 70 15.1 lease 57 12.2 farming experience 5–14 years 52 14.6 15–24 years 128 36 25–34 years 110 30.9 35 years and above 66 18.5 annual income 50000 or less 162 45.5 51000–100000 161 45.2 100100–149000 25 7 farmers exchange relationship with preferred buyers 5–9 years 10–14 years 15–19 years 20–24 years 25–29 years 30 years and above 155 78 51 27 21 24 43.5 21.9 14.3 7.6 5.9 6.7 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 75-81 78 the most frequent respondent age group was 56 years old and above, followed by 46 to 55 years, and lastly, 26 to 35 years. in terms of educational background, 29% of respondents completed primary education (i.e., class five), 27% completed class 8, 24% passed ssc (secondary school certificate). in comparison, 20% of respondents attained other education levels such as higher secondary certificate (hsc) or bachelor of arts (ba). regarding farmer size, 58.1% of respondents were small farmers, 41.3% were medium farmers, whereas the rest (0.6%) were large farmers. most farmers (72.7%) have a personal farm. 15.1% of farmers used borga (a type of lease) land, while 12.3% used lease farms. regarding the paddy cultivation period, 36% of respondents had 15 to 24 years of cultivation experience, while 30.9% had 25 to 34 years of experience. table 2 also provides the farmers’ annual income; 45.5% received an annual income of tk50,000 or less, followed by 45.2% with an annual income between tk51,000 and tk100,000. very few farmers (2.2%) obtained an annual income of tk150,000 and above. in terms of business relationships with preferred buyers, most farmers have been dealing with the same buyers for between five and nine years (43.5%), followed by ten to 14 years (21.9%), and 15 to 19 years (14.3%). 3.2. data analysis results of the pls-sem in pls, there are two types of assessment model—the measurement model and the structural model. the assessment of the measurement model in the pls-sem includes internal reliability, internal consistency, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. the internal reliability determines the variables’ similarity in items score. the cronbach’s alpha measures the reliability of the indicators, and 0.7 is the acceptable value (hair, ringle, & sarstedt, 2013). similarly, the composite reliability (cr) value should also be above 0.7 to be recognized as internal consistency (see table 3). therefore, both internal reliability and consistency were established in this study. table 3. cronbach’s alpha (α), composite reliability (cr), and average variance extracted (ave). variable cronbach’s alpha composite reliability (cr) average variance extracted (ave) farm performance 0.760 0.862 0.676 communication 0.845 0.896 0.682 trust 0.760 0.860 0.672 convergence validity is the measure’s degree of positive correlation with alternative measures of the same variable (hair et al., 2013) determined by the factor loading and average variance extracted (ave). factor loading is used for the assessment of indicator reliability. according to hair et al. (2013), a factor loading above 0.7 should be taken into the analysis process; in this study it is above 0.7 (see table 1). the ave value of the present study exceeds the acceptance value, which is more than 0.5 (see table 3). therefore, convergent validity had been established. conversely, discriminant validity is the empirical distinction of a variable compared to other variables. the discriminant validity also denotes the extent of a variable’s correlation with others and the degree of representation by its indicator (hair et al., 2013). the fornell and larcker score is the criterion used to assess the discriminant validity and is expressed as the square root of ave of all latent variables. table 4 shows that the scores determined in the present study are more significant than the correlations of the inter-constructs. table 4. fornell and larcker criterion. variables farm performance communication trust farm performance 0.822 communication 0.669 0.826 trust 0.609 0.568 0.820 the relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable is assessed using a structural model. in pls-sem, the structural model is assessed by the coefficient of determination (r2). it estimates the significance and relevance of the relationship. the coefficient also corresponds to the amount of variance in the endogenous variable explained by the associated exogenous variables (hair et al., 2013). the r2 value of exogenous variable performance was 61.6% (see figure 1), indicating the relevance of the present study. figure 1. pls algorithm results with path coefficients and r2 values. note: trus = trust, commu = communication, and per = farm performance. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 75-81 79 table 5 describes the model’s path coefficient (β) that shows the direct relationship between performance and other constructs. trust (β = 0.121) and communication (β = 0.315) established a strong positive relationship with performance. thus, h1 and h2 were supported (see table 5). table 5. hypothesis testing results. path path coefficient t-statistic p-value decision trust -> farm performance 0.121 2.073 0.039* h1 supported communication -> business performance 0.315 4.447 0.000* h2 supported note: (* significance p ˂ .05). the findings denote that the farmers have an excellent perception of the effect of trust and communication in achieving farm performance. this research emphasizes that trust can enhance farm performance. the h1 outcome may be attributed bangladeshi farmers positively assessing their preferred paddy buyers and believing that their preferred buyer fully meets their expectations, such as offering fair prices. another possible explanation for this result is that farmers are likely to maintain long-term business relationships if they are confident with their preferred buyers, believe they will keep their promises, and trust their information. the result of h1 corresponds to villena et al. (2019), who discovered that trust had a positive relationship with the firm or supplier performance when both buyer and seller maintained a successful business relationship. this result is similar to lobo et al. (2013), who stated that the benefit of trust ensures the financial performance of vegetables farmers based on product development and jointly working with others in their business. trust also reduces the transaction cost (sartorius & kirsten, 2007) that could be responsible for increasing performance (sako, 1997) and attaining competitive excellence (luo, griffith, liu, & shi, 2004). trust also promotes cooperation and higher performance and facilitates the exchange of information, and independence (ghazinejad et al., 2018). the result for h2 supports the idea that better communication also results in higher business performance. this research found that continuous information sharing in business relationships will encourage business continuity in the future. thus, good communication will affect business performance positively. the finding also suggests that bangladeshi farmers are generally willing to receive trustworthy information from the buyers, which ultimately leads to increased profit in paddy selling. this result is consistent with the study of sin et al. (2006), who explored whether communication fosters trust by assisting in solving disputes and aligning perceptions and expectations and positively influencing financial performance. the result for h2 is also similar to yen & abosag (2016), who found that communication is apparent when the farmers enjoy relatively better performance with suppliers (yen & abosag, 2016). farmers placed considerable importance on the frequency of communication (to know what price and what volume the buyer needs) and the buyer’s willingness to meet their immediate needs (bich et al., 2016). thus, reliable and credible price information increases sales and profitability (arif, jan, marwat, & ullah, 2009). 3.3. practical implication this study revealed a great deal of evidence based on the pls-sem findings. the study found numerous policy implications for prioritizing the inputs for paddy production and marketing actors. first, farmers today are not only bound to practicing mixed marketing or traditional marketing strategies. farmers may seek to adopt a relationship approach to maximize social and psychological value and establish strong, long-term business relationships with their paddy buyers. the farmers no longer practice traditional marketing that fails to enhance farm performance. second, farmers with skills in developing relationship marketing may develop an excellent relational quality with their preferred buyers by improving relational behavior, the information provided, ease of access, and the availability of a two-way interaction between farmers and their preferred buyers. third, as the heart of the agroeconomy, farmers should retain their basic format of being proactive and willing to maintain good relationships to achieve an excellent performance. these strategies can be implemented via the value of maintaining excellent, long-term exchange relationships. practitioners such as farmers should know that trust and communication are the most important aspects of successful business relationships as both significantly influence performance concerning profit, sales, and cash flows to maintain competitiveness in the market. 4. conclusion strategic exchange relationships are important in achieving economic returns for the farmers in bangladesh. the outcome revealed that trust and communication have direct positive and significant relationships with paddy farmers’ farm performance in bangladesh. thus, paddy farmers in bangladesh can effectively utilize trust and communication to build reliable business relationships, share better information, ensure satisfaction in exchanges, increase repeat sales, and enhance performance. funding: this research is supported by the national agricultural technology program phase ii, bangladesh agricultural research council, ministry of agriculture, bangladesh (grant number: natp-2/piu-barc-44/2017). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 75-81 80 references aji, j. m. m. 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(2017). different recipes for success in business relationships. industrial marketing management, 63, 69-81.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2016.12.006. http://www.statista.com/statistics/255937/leading-rice-producers-worldwide http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1096348006287863 http://doi:10.1177/0149206316680031 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 485 gge biplot analysis of multi-location yield trial of ginger (zingiber officinale rosc.) genotypes in south-eastern, nigeria abua, mary njeia, iwo, godfery akpana, ittah, macauley asima, obok, ekemini edeta edugbo, richmond emub adepartment of crop science, university of calabar, calabar, cross river state, nigeria b department of agronomy, micheal okpara university of agriculture, umudike, abia state, nigeria  marynjei@yahoo.com; njeiabua@unical.edu.ng; maryabua44@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 11-mar-2020 accepted: 18-may-2020 online available: 29-jun2020 keywords: genotype genotype by environment, multi-location trial, mega-environment, gge biplot analysis and yield performance abstract multi-location trials were conducted in 2016 and 2017 at calabar, ikom and ogoja in cross river state, nigeria, to determine the yield stability of 17 ginger genotypes (g1–g17) using genotype and genotype by environment (gge) biplot model. the location and year combination gave six environments (e1–e6). the experiment was laid out in split plots using a randomized complete block design with three replications. yield related traits like rhizome fingers, rhizome length, and rhizome yield were determined. e3 (i.e. ikom in 2016) was ranked as the ideal environment for ginger production in cross river state. while g5 (ugi-5-04) was classified as the ideal genotype for rhizome yield in calabar, ikom and ogoja. ikom in 2016 (e3) and 2017 (e4) were identified as megaenvironments for ug1-13-02, ug1-5-04, ug1-5-18, ug1-5-35, ug1-538, ug2-11-03 and ug2-9-01 while ogoja in 2016 (e5) and 2017 (e6) were identified as mega-environments for ug1-2-35, ug1-5-48, ug1-552 and ug1-7-24 ginger mutants. ikom is recommended as a suitable environment for the cultivation of generally adapted ginger genotypes namely, ug1-5-04, ug1-5-38, ug1-13-02 and ug2-9-01). ogoja was suitable for specific adaptation of ug1-7-24 and ug1-5-48 ginger mutants. these mutants are recommended for consideration in subsequent ginger breeding and improvement programmes. contribution/ originality the research explored that the ikom region has an ideal environment for the cultivation of ginger in cross river state. different varieties of ginger mutants were identified as ideal genotypes in other regions like ogoja and calabar. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.485.503 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: abua, mary njei, iwo, godfery akpan, ittah, macauley asim, obok, ekemini edet and edugbo, richmond emu (2020). gge biplot analysis of multi-location yield trial of ginger (zingiber officinale rosc.) genotypes in south-eastern, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 485-503. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 485-503 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:marynjei@yahoo.com mailto:njeiabua@unical.edu.ng mailto:maryabua44@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.485.503 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 486 1. introduction ginger (zingiber officinale rosc.) is a monocotyledonous perennial herb in the family zingiberaceae, grown mainly for its spicy and aromatic rhizomes (peter et al., 2007). it is a valued export crop in nigeria whose demand in the international market is high because of its rich nutrient profile, essential oils, and oleoresin contents (adegboye, 2011; abua et al., 2020). globally, the yearly demand for ginger is increasing due to its diverse utilization (fao, 2017). the high demand for ginger in the international market makes it an important export crop for nigeria, and thus serves as a source of foreign exchange earnings. in nigeria, the demand for this crop is on a steady increase and the solution to this challenge is to increase its production. this requires the cultivation of improved ginger varieties with enhanced economic yields. ginger has a narrow genetic base because it is vegetatively propagated (babu et al., 2013). conventional breeding procedures like hybridization is difficult for ginger improvement. therefore, an alternative means for improving the crop is to create variability through induced mutation. the induced mutation has been considered an established method for increasing genetic variability in many crops. fao (2006), documented 2,540 varieties of crops that have been commercially released through mutation breeding, for example, garlic, cassava, turmeric, and potato. in this study, fifteen ginger lines were developed through mutation breeding (gamma-ray exposure) using two ginger landraces (ug1 and ug2). therefore, there is a need for these new ginger mutant lines to be evaluated across several locations to determine their yield potentials, superiority as well as their yield stability before their release for wide-range cultivation. this has prompted the establishment of this research in three agro-ecological locations across cross river state, nigeria. multi-environment trials (mets) are mostly carried out by plant breeders to evaluate improved genotypes across test environments (several locations and over years) before a specific genotype is recommended to growers for commercial production. most genotypes show crossover interactions (i.e. do not have uniform performance in all environments); by implication, one genotype may have the highest yield in some environments and the second genotype may be excellent in other environments (zahia et al., 2010). the development of genotypes that can be adapted to a wide range of different environments is the ultimate goal of plant breeders in crop improvement programmes (ahmadi et al., 2015). mets are conducted to identify locations that best represent the target environments and to identify the best genotypes or cultivars suited for recommendations to farmers (odor et al., 2017; vaezi et al., 2017). multi-environment trials (mets) are important for studying yield stability, adaptation and for a prediction of yield performance of crop genotypes across environments (yan and kang, 2003; dehghani et al., 2009). it is difficult to identify superior genotypes due to the genotypes × environments (g × e) interaction, but assessing such interaction is extremely important since it is the number one factor responsible for changing genotype performance in different environments (mohamed, 2013, oliveira et al., 2017). g × e interaction studies allow for the identification of the ideal location(s) to each genotype which would maximize yield potential and reduce production costs (oyekunle et al., 2017). information on the structure and nature of g x e interaction is particularly useful to plant breeders because it can help determine if they need to develop cultivars for all environments of interest or if they should develop specific cultivars for specific target environments. data from multi-environment trials (mets) are usually quite large. it is difficult to understand the pattern of the data without some kind of graphical presentation. the biplot technique by gabriel (1971) provides a solution to this challenge. a biplot that displays the gge of a met data, referred to as a gge biplot (graphical method), is an ideal tool for met data analysis (yan et al., 2000; yan, 2001). the gge biplot analysis is efficient because it allows predictions to be made on the mean genotype yield per specific environment, as well as helps identify the most stable genotype for the region of interest (yan, 2014, santos et al., 2017). genotype and genotype by environment asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 487 (gge) biplot analysis consists of a set of graphs that allow visualization of the patterns in a dataset from different angles (yan and kang, 2003; yan and tinker, 2006; yan, 2014). a gge biplot as a data visualization tool can graphically demonstrate a (g x e) interaction pattern, it is an effective tool used for: (i) mega environment analysis (e.g. “which-won-where” pattern), whereby specific genotypes can be recommended to specific mega-environments (yan, 2014), (ii) genotype evaluation (the mean performance and stability), and (iii) environmental evaluation (the power to discriminate among genotypes in target environments. the objectives of this study were (i) to display graphically, the performance and stability of 17 ginger lines across three locations in two years, (ii) to identify ginger lines with wide or specific adaptation and (iii) to identify the ideal environment for ginger cultivation among the three test locations. 2. materials and methods this experiment was carried out at calabar, ikom, and ogoja in cross river state, nigeria in 2016 and 2017 cropping seasons. these locations were chosen based on their unique differences in edaphic and climatic conditions such as physicochemical properties of the soil, rainfall, relative humidity, temperature, and sunshine duration. seventeen ginger genotypes consisting of fifteen (15) mutant lines (ug1-11-07, ug1-13-02, ug12-35, ug1-5-04, ug1,-5-18, ug1-5-22, ug1-5-31, ug1-5-35, ug1-5-38, ug1-5-48, ug1-5-49, ug1-5-52, ug1-7-24, ug2-9-01 and ug2-11-03) and two local check landraces (ug1 and ug2) were sourced from national root crop research institute (nrcri), umudike, nigeria. the fifteen mutant lines were derived from the existing local varieties ug1 and ug2 by exposing them to different doses of gamma-ray irradiation. the mutant lines derived from ug1 were exposed to 2gy, 5gy, 7gy, 11gy, and 13gy doses of gamma-ray to give the following mutant lines: ug12-35, ug1-5-04, ug1-5-18, ug1-5-22, ug1-5-31, ug1-5-35, ug1-5-38, ug1-5-48, ug1-5-49, ug1-5-52, ug1-7-24, ug1-11-07 and ug1-13-02. the mutant lines derived from ug2 were exposed to 9gy and 11gy doses of gamma-ray to give the following mutant lines: ug1-9-01 and ug2-11-03. this experiment was a split-plot laid out in a randomized complete block design (rcbd) with three replications. location served as whole plot treatment while the ginger lines served as the sub-plot. the following yield traits were measured: number of rhizome fingers per plant, rhizome length (cm), and rhizome yield (t/ha). stability analysis was carried out using genotype and genotype by environment (gge) biplot model according to yan (2001) and the model was depicted as follows: yij = µ + αi + βj + jij where yij is the measure of the ith genotype in the jth environment; µ is the grand mean, αi is the main effect of the ith genotype; βj is the main effect of the jth environment, jij is the interaction between the ith genotype and jth environment. the 17 ginger lines served as the genotype while the three locations and the two years formed a combination of six (6) environments. 3. results and discussion 3.1. gge biplot analysis for the number of rhizome fingers per plant the genotype and genotype by environment (gge) biplot captured 79.7 % of the genotype main effect and the genotype by environment interaction (ge) interaction with the principal component 1 (pc1) and principal component 2 (pc2) axes explaining 54.4 % and 25.3 % respectively. figure 1 displays the gge biplot environment vector view for the number of rhizome fingers per plant. the biplot shows the relationship among the test environments as well as their discriminating ability. the angle between the vectors of any two environments estimates the correlation between them. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 488 the larger the angle the less correlated the environments (yan and tinker, 2006) the biplot indicated that ikom in 2016 (e3) and ikom in 2017 (e4) were closely correlated. ogoja in 2016 (e5) and ogoja in 2017 (e6) also had strong correlations. the discriminating ability of the test environments is estimated by the length of their vectors. (yan, 2001). ogoja in 2017 (e6) (e6) was selected as the most discriminating environment followed by ogoja in 2016 (e5) while calabar in 2016 (e2) was the least discriminating environment for this trait. table 1: physicochemical properties of the soil and weather conditions at the test locations year/location sand (%) silt (%) clay (%) ph in h2o ecec temp. (oc) relative humidity (%) rainfall (mm) sunshine (h) 2016 mean calabar 31.7 85.6 190.7 3.43 ikom 30.5 83.1 210.4 5.62 ogoja 33.5 71.3 146.6 5.91 2017 mean calabar 79.0 13.0 8.0 5.7 7.94 31.3 86.8 260 3.58 ikom 47.0 22.0 31.0 5.8 11.74 32.5 82.4 189.5 5.15 ogoja 73.0 17.0 10.0 5.2 5.57 34.4 71.3 146.6 4.94 ecec: effective cation exchange capacity figure 1: relationship among the test environments ands their discriminating ability for the number of rhizome fingers per plant key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01; e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 the gge biplot environment view showing the representativeness of the test environments as well as the ranking of the environments to the ‘ideal test environment’ is presented in figure 2. the representativeness evaluation of the test environments is the second most important aspect of test asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 489 environments after the discriminating ability evaluation. the representativeness of the test environment is estimated by the size of the angle of its vector to the aea (average environment axis). the smaller the angle of the environment vectors to the aea the more representative the environment would be of the test environments (yan, 2001). thus, calabar in 2016 (e1) is the most representative of the test environments while calabar in 2016 (e2) is the least representative environment. the ideal test environment should be the most discriminating (informative) and also the most representative of the target environment. the “ideal test environment” is indicated by the centre of the concentric circles. it is a point on the aea in the positive direction (“most representative”) with a distance to the biplot origin equal to the longest vector of all environments (“most informative”). ogoja in 2016 (e5) is the closest to this point while calabar in 2016 (e2) was the furthest from this point. figure 2: representativeness and ranking of the environments for a number of rhizome fingers per plant key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01; e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 figure 3 shows the gge biplot genotype view indicating the relationship among the seventeen ginger lines (genotypes). genotypes are positively correlated with one another if the angle between each of their vectors is less than 90o. the biplot showed that g17 (ug2-9-01) and g16 (ug2-1103) were closely correlated while g3 (ug1-13-02), g9 (ug1-5-35), g15 (ug2) and g14 (ug1-724) were closely correlated. close correlations were also seen between g5 (ug1-5-04) and g11 (ug1-5-48). close correlations also existed between g1 (ug1), g2 (ug1-11-07), g4 (ug1-2-35), g6 (ug1-5-18), g7 (ug1-5-22), g8 (ug1-5-31), g10 (ug1-5-38) and g12 (ug1-5-49). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 490 figure 3: relationship among the genotype for the number of rhizome fingers per plant key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01; e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 figure 4 shows the ranking of the genotypes for both mean performance and stability for the number of rhizome fingers per plant across the six environments. g17 (ug2-9-01) was selected as the best performing genotype and relatively stable for the trait and thus ranked closest to the ideal genotype. this was followed by g11 (ug1-5-48). g16 (ug2-11-03) was highly stable for the trait but its mean performance was lower than that of g17 (ug2-9-01) and g11 (ug1-5-48). g2 (ug111-07) and g7 (ug1-5-22) were the poorest performers and were ranked furthest away from the ideal genotype although they exhibited high stability for the character. figure 5 displays the “what-won-where” gge biplot for the number of rhizome fingers per plant. three projecting lines divided the biplot into three sectors. the most responsive genotypes are placed on the vertex of the polygon. in other words, genotypes located on the vertices of the polygon performed either the best or the poorest in one or more environments. the biplot selected g17 (ug2-9-01) as the winner in four of the six environments while g14 (ug1-7-24) was the winner in ogoja in 2016 (e5) and ogoja in 2017 (e6) (e6). g2 (ug1-11-03) and g7 (ug1-5-22) were selected as the poorest performers across all six environments. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 491 figure 4: mean performance and stability for the number of rhizome fingers per plant key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01. e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 figure 5: “what-won-where” gge biplot for number of rhizome finger per plant key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01. e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 492 3.2. gge biplot analysis for rhizome length (cm) gge biplot for rhizome length captured 83.7% of variations due to the genotype main effect and g×e interaction. pc1 explained 70.4% while pc2 explained 13.3%. figure 6 displays the gge biplot environment vector view for rhizome length. the biplot showed that the environments fell into three groups. ogoja in 2016 (e5) and ogoja in 2017 (e6) were closely related and had similar interaction patterns. ikom in 2016 (e3) ikom in 2017 (e4) was closely correlated and had a similar interaction pattern. calabar in 2016 (e1) and e2 calabar in 2017 (e2) were not correlated. the biplot also showed ogoja in 2016 (e5) as the most discriminating test environment as it had the longest vector from the origin of the biplot while calabar in 2016 (e1) was the least discriminating environment. figure 6: relationship among the test environments and their discriminating ability for rhizome length (cm) key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01. e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 figure 7 displays the gge ranking biplot for the environment as well as the evaluation of their representativeness. ogoja in 2017 (e6) was the most representative of the test environments as its vector had the smallest angle to the aea. the biplot also ranked ogoja in 2017 (e6) as the preferred test environment as it was closest to the ideal environment followed by ogoja in 2016 (e5). calabar in 2016 (e1) was ranked last. figure 8 displays the gge biplot genotype view for rhizome length. the biplot shows the relationship among the genotypes. genotypes with vectors at close angles have similar responses across the environments. close correlations were shown between g17 (ug2-9-01) and g11 (ug15-48); g6 (ug1-5-48) and g14 (ug1-7-24); g1 (ug1) and g9 (ug1-5-35) and between g2 (ug1-11-07) and g7 (ug1-5-22). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 493 figure 7: representativeness and ranking of the environments for rhizome length (cm) key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01; e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 figure 8: relationship among the genotype for rhizome length (cm) key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01; e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 494 figure 9 displays the gge biplot genotype ranking view for both mean performance and stability for rhizome length (cm). g1 (ug2-9-01), g14 (ug1-7-24), and g11 (ug1-5-48) were the best in terms of mean performance. however, g13 (ug1-5-52), g6 (ug1-5-18), and g16 (ug2-11-03) were the most stable for the trait. in the ranking of the genotypes, g17 (ug2-9-01) was ranked closest to the “ideal genotype” followed by g14 (ug1-7-24) and g11 (ug1-5-38). g2 (ug1-1107) and g7 (ug1-5-22) had the poorest mean performance and were the least ranked genotypes. figure 9: mean performance and stability for rhizome length (cm) key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01. e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 figure 10 displays the “what-won-where” biplot for rhizome length. the biplot showed that g17 was the winner in ikom in 2016 (e3), ikom in 2017 (e4), and ogoja in 2017 (e6). g14 (ug1-7-24) was the winner in ogoja in 2016 (e5) while g9 (ug1-5-35) won in calabar in 2016 (e2). the performances of most of the genotypes were not so different at calabar in 2016 (e1). g2 (ug1-1107) and g7 (ug1-5-22) performed poorly across all environments. 3.3. gge biplot analysis for rhizome yield (t/ha) gge biplot explained 75.9% of the total variation in rhizome yield due to genotype and ge interactions. pc1 axis explained 58.6% while the pc2 axis explained 17.3%. figure 11 displays the gge biplot environment vector view for rhizome yield (t/ha). the biplot showed that ikom in 2016 (e3) and ikom in 2017 (e4) were closely correlated and were similar in their interaction pattern. ogoja in 2016 (e5) and ogoja in 2017 (e6) were also correlated and similar. ikom in 2016 (e3) had the longest vector, thus was the most discriminating environment for yield followed by ikom in 2017 (e4) while calabar in 2016 (e1) was the least discriminating environment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 495 figure 10: “what-won-where” gge biplot for rhizome length (cm) key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01; e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 figure 11: relationship among the test environments and their discriminating ability for rhizome yield (t/ha) key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01; e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 496 figure 12 displays the gge biplot environment ranking view for rhizome yield (t/ha). the biplot showed that calabar in 2016 (e2) was the most representative of the test environments for rhizome yield as its vector had the smallest angle to aea. however, in the ranking of the test environments, ikom in 2016 (e3) was ranked closest to the ideal environment while calabar in 2016 (e1) was ranked least. figure 12: representativeness and ranking of the environments for rhizome yield (t/ha) key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01; e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 figure 13 displays the gge biplot genotype view. the biplot displays the relationship among the genotypes for rhizome yield. the result showed that g5 (ug1-5-04), g16 (ug1-11-03), g17 (ug1-9-01), g10 (ug1-5-38), g6 (ug1-5-18), g3 (ug1-13-02) and g9 (ug1-5-35) had close positive correlations and similar response pattern across the test environments for rhizome yield. g14 (ug1-7-24) and g4 (ug1-2-35) were also positively correlated. g2 (ug1-11-07) had positive correlations with g7 (ug1-5-22), g12 (ug1-5-49), and g1 (ug1) but was negatively correlated with the other genotypes. g11 (ug1-5-48) had negative correlations with g8 (ug1-5-31) while g14 (ug1-7-24) had negative correlations with g15 (ug2) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 497 figure 13: relationship among the genotype for rhizome yield (t/ha) key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01; e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 the gge biplot genotype ranking view is displayed in figure 14. the biplot shows the performance of the genotype with respect to mean yield and stability. g5 (ug1-5-04) had the highest mean yield followed by g17 (ug2-9-01) and both genotypes were relatively stable for yield. g3 (ug1-13-02) and g10 (ug1-5-38) gave the third and fourth best mean yield respectively. g2 (ug1-11-07) and g7 (ug1-5-22) had the poorest mean yield and also exhibited high interactions. in the ranking of the genotypes, g5 (ug1-5-04) was ranked nearest to the “ideal genotype” followed by g17 (ug2-9-01), g3 (ug1-13-02) and g10 (ug1-5-38). both g2 (ug111-07) and g7 (ug1-5-22) were ranked least. figure 14: mean performance and stability for rhizome yield (t/ha) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 498 key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01. e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 figure 15 displays the “what-won-where” gge biplot for rhizome yield. the biplot selected g5 (ug1-5-04) as the winner in calabar in 2016 (e2), ikom in 2016 (e3). figure 15: “what-won-where” gge biplot for rhizome yield (t/ha) key: g1 = ug1; g2 = ug1-11-07; g3 = ug1-13-02; g4 = ug1-2-35; g5 = ug1-5-04; g6 = ug1-5-18; g7 = ug1-5-22; g8 = ug1-5-31; g9 = ug1-5-35; g10 = ug1-5-38; g11 = ug1-5-48; g12 = ug1-5-49; g13 = ug1-5-52; g14 = ug1-7-24; g15 = ug2; g16 = ug2-11-03; g17 = ug2-9-01; e1 = calabar 2016; e2 = calabar 2017; e3 = ikom 2016; e4 = ikom 2017; e5 = ogoja 2016; e6 = ogoja 2017 ikom in 2017 (e4) and also shared ogoja in 2016 (e5) with g14 (ug1-7-24). g11 (ug1-5-48) and 14 (ug1-7-24) were the winners at ogoja in 2017 (e6). g2 (ug1-11-07) and g7 (ug1-5-22) performed poorly across the six environments. the biplot also identified ikom (e3 and e4) as the mega environment for g5 (ug1-5-04), g17 (ug2-9-01), g16 (ug2-11-03), g10 (ug1-5-38), g9 (ug1-35), g6 (ug1-5-18) and g3 (ug1-13-02) while ogoja (e5 and e6) was identified as the mega environment for g11 (ug1-5-48), g14 (ug1-7-24), g13 (ug1-5-52) and g4 (ug1-2-35). 4. discussion genotype and genotype by environment (gge) interaction biplot analysis is an important technique for the selection of genotypes best suited for different environmental conditions; especially since yield trial, data can be daunting. this tool was employed for the evaluation of ginger lines in calabar, ikom, and ogoja in cross river state, nigeria. a significant genotype by environment interaction was observed for all the traits studied with cross over interactions observed for some of them. the high significant effect of genotype by environment interaction observed for these traits demonstrates that genotype and environment interaction across the environments plays a meaningful role in breeding adaptable genotypes for wide environments. the variations observed in yield and yield traits of the ginger lines across the locations and years may be attributed to the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 499 inherent transferable parental trait differences in the ginger lines as well as the environmental influence. das et al. (2000) also observed significant genotype by environment interactions in some growth and yield traits of ginger. alghamdi (2004) reported that significant genotype by environment (ge) interactions suggests that across environments, some genotypes were more stable than others. according to ghaffari and depao (2005), yield differences attributed to the environment are relevant to genotype evaluation and megaenvironment investigations while samonte et al. (2005) suggested the use of either ammi or gge biplots as appropriate tools for analyzing the multiple environment trials data. according to yan (2001), the two sources of variation that are relevant to genotype evaluation and should be considered simultaneously for appropriate genotype evaluation are genotype main effect (primary effects) and genotype by environment interaction (secondary effects). genotype by environment interaction (gei) evaluation and stability analysis is an important and efficient tool for plant breeders and agronomists. it helps to identify and select the most stable and high performing genotypes that are suitable under a given set of environmental conditions. according to edugbo et al. (2015), the evaluation of genotypes in different environments and across years is an essential step in determining their desirability and identifying genotypes with the best mean response across the environments that have a wide scope of adaptation. gge biplot model was used to evaluate the gei of the ginger lines as well as their stability across the three locations in the two years (i.e. across six environments). the ginger lines used in this experiment exhibited different levels of stability for the characters evaluated. their mean performances for the characters varied substantially across the six environments. 4.1. discriminating ability and representativeness of test environments the purpose of the test-environment evaluation is to identify test environments that effectively identify superior genotypes for a mega-environment. in this study, the gge biplot model estimated ikom in 2016 (e3) as the best environment for mean yield and also the most discriminating environment. test environments that are both discriminating and representative are good test environments for selecting generally adapted genotypes as reported by yan and tinker (2006). on the other hand, discriminating but nonrepresentative test environments are useful for selecting specifically adapted genotypes and for culling unstable genotypes. a test location that lacks discriminating ability provides no information about the cultivars (dehghani et al., 2006; yan and tinker, 2006). if a test location is not representative of the target environment, it is not only useless but also misleading since it may provide biased information about the tested genotypes (dehghani et al., 2006). therefore, an ideal environment or test location must have discriminating ability (provide much information about the differences among genotypes) and representative (consistent). a representative environment is the most consistent when compared to other test environments and it gives an idea about the stability of the environment. yan (2002) also stated that the selected environment should have a high ability to discriminate genotypes, as well as the representativeness of the standard growing conditions. non-discriminating environments provide little information about the genotypes and therefore should not be used as test environments. the existence of close associations among test environments suggests that the same information about the genotypes could be obtained from them; as some of them can be dropped without loss of much information about the genotypes and hence lead to a reduction of the test cost (yan and tinker, 2006) 4.2. ranking of genotypes based on mean performance and stability an ideal genotype should have the highest mean performance and be stable (karimizadehi et al., 2013). although such an ideal genotype may not exist in reality, it can be used as a reference for genotype evaluation (farshadfar et al., 2012). a genotype is more favourable if it is closer to the ideal genotype and the genotypes further away from the ideal genotype are considered unfavourable, therefore, the genotypes with low mean performance and further away from the ideal genotypes are unfavourable. in this study, g2 (ug1-11-07) and g7 (ug1-5-22) were considered unfavourable genotypes in terms of mean performance. yan and kang (2003) classified genotypes asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 500 into three categories based on their yield and stability performance: (1) generally adapted: genotypes with high yield and high stability performance (2) specifically adapted: genotypes with high mean yield but low stability performance and (3) adapted nowhere: genotypes with low yield and low stability performance. this classification is similar to the previous work of family behaviour plots by finlay and wilkinson (1963) using joint regression. finlay and wilkinson classified genotypes into four groups based on their mean performance and stability as follows: group one is highly desirable (high yielding and high stability) – these genotypes, ranked in descending order), are g17 (ug2-9-01), g11 (ug1-5-48), g5 (ug1-5-04), g3 (ug1-13-02) and g10 (ug1-5-38). the second group which is high yielding but low stability is desirable for specific selection, the genotypes that fall into this group from this study are; g14 (ug1-7-24) and g11 (ug1-5-48), whereas low yield and low stability are possible for special breeding purposes e.g. drought resistance. the genotypes that had both low yield and low stability in this study are g12 (ug1-5-49), g1(ug1), g13(ug1-5-52). the most undesirable group is low yield but high stability, (g2) ug1-11-07, and g7 (ug1-5-22) falls into this group. 4.3. “which won where” and megaenvironment groupings the which won where polygon view shows which genotypes win in which environment. it addresses mega-environment groupings, specific adaptation, and crossover interactions. yan et al. (2007) reported that responsive genotypes were those having either best or the poorest performance in one or all environments. for rhizome fingers per plant, g17 (ug2-9-01) won in four of the six environments while g14 (ug1-7-24) was the winner in ogoja in 2016 (e5) and ogoja in 2017 (e6). g2 (ug1-11-03) and g7 (ug1-5-22) were indicated by the biplot as the poorest performers across all six environments. for rhizome length, g17 was the winner in ikom in 2016 (e3), ikom in 2017 (e4), and ogoja in 2017 (e6). g14 (ug1-7-24) was the winner in ogoja in 2016 (e5) while g9 (ug1-5-35) won in calabar in 2016 (e2). the performances of most of the genotypes were not much different at calabar in 2016 (e1). g2 (ug1-11-07) and g7 (ug1-5-22) performed poorly across all environments. for rhizome yield, g5 (ug1-5-04) won in calabar in 2016 (e2), ikom in 2016 (e3), ikom in 2017 (e4), and also shared ogoja in 2016 (e5) with g14 (ug1-7-24). g11 (ug1-5-48) and g14 (ug1-7-24) were the winners at e6 (ogoja 2017). g2 (ug1-11-07) and g7 (ug1-5-22) performed poorly across the six environments. the biplot also identified ikom (e3 and e4) as a mega environment for g5 (ug1-5-04), g17 (ug2-9-01), g16 (ug2-11-03), g10 (ug1-538), g9 (ug1-35), g6 (ug1-5-18) and g3 (ug1-13-02) while ogoja (e5 and e6) was identified as a mega environment for g11 (ug1-5-48), g14 (ug1-7-24), g13 (ug1-5-52) and g4 (ug1-2-35). a mega-environment is defined as a location or group of locations that consistently share the same best genotypes (yan and tinker, 2006). mega-environment groupings allow a breeder to recommend genotypes which are good for a particular environment (gasura et al., 2015). two mega–environments ikom (e3 and e4) and ogoja (e5 and e6) were therefore formed from this study. 5. summary, conclusion, and recommendation ginger is an aromatic rhizome crop used as spice and medicine worldwide; the production of the crop cannot meet the demand for it. this research was therefore carried out to evaluate the yield stability of 17 ginger lines as well as identify the ideal environment for ginger cultivation among some test sites using gge biplot model. gge biplot models selected ug2-9-01 as the genotype of choice with respect to stability and mean performance for the number of rhizome fingers per plant and rhizome length, ug2-9-01 is therefore recommended as suitable breeding material for the improvement of these traits in ginger. ug1-5-04 was selected as the "ideal genotype" with respect to rhizome yield. ug2-9-01 was the most stable high performing genotype and was ranked next to ug1-5-04. gge biplot ranked ug113-02 and ug1-5-38 as 3rd and 4th respectively, therefore these genotypes are recommended for broad cultivation as stable and high yielding genotypes across the three locations used in this study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 485-503 501 among the three locations, ikom was selected as the most discriminating test location and ranked closest to the "ideal test environment", this study, therefore, recommends ikom as a good test environment for the cultivation of generally adapted ginger genotypes. the study further showed that ug1-5-48 and ug1-7-24 interacted positively with ogoja in both years. this is an indication of the specific adaptation of these genotypes to the soil and agro-climatic conditions of ogoja and this suggests the location as favourable for their cultivation. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors acknowledge the invaluable contribution of dr. charles amadi of the ginger research unit of the national root crop research institute (nrcri) umudike, abia state, nigeria, for making available the ginger lines used for this research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abua, m. n., ittah, m. a., obok, e. e., iwo, g. a., edugbo, r. e., & amadi, c. o. 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(2010). analysis of the genotype x environment interaction of barley grain yield (hordeum vulgare l.) under semi-arid conditions. advances in environmental biology, 4(1), 34-40. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 346 farmers’ capacity and rice productivity in climate change adaptation in central lampung regency, indonesia indah listianaa indah nurmayasarib rinaldi bursanc muher sukmayantod helvi yanfikae r.a.d widyastutif a,b,d,efaculty of agriculture, university of lampung, lampung, indonesia. cfaculty of economics & business, university of lampung, lampung, indonesia. fdepartment agronomy and horticulture, university of lampung, indonesia.  indahlistiana1@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 5 october 2021 revised: 8 november 2021 accepted: 30 november 2021 published: 15 december 2021 keywords agricultural sector climate change farmer capacity rice productivity. climate change is an extreme natural change condition due to global warming that cannot be avoided, and will have a broad impact on various aspects of life, including the agricultural sector. the impact of climate change that occurs in the agricultural sector, namely flood and drought that cause plants to crop failure , is becoming greater, causing significant reduction in agricultural production, especially rice, requiring that farmers have the ability to adapt to climate change. the purposes of this study are to analyze the relationship between the performance level of agricultural extension workers and the capacity level of farmers in regard to climate change adaptation, and to analyze the relationship between the level of farmer capacity in climate change adaptation and rice productivity. the research was conducted in central lampung regency in 2019 using a total of 100 rice farmers. the data analysis method used is spearman rank correlation analysis. the results show that the performance level of agricultural instructors is significantly related to the level of knowledge capacity, attitude, and skills of farmers in climate change adaptation. knowledge capacity, attitude, and skills of farmers in climate change adaptation are significantly related to rice productivity. contribution/originality: the results show that the performance level of agricultural instructors is significantly related to the level of knowledge capacity, attitude, and skills of farmers in climate change adaptation. knowledge capacity, attitude, and skills of farmers in climate change adaptation are significantly related to rice productivity. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.346.353 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: indah listiana --indah nurmayasari --rinaldi bursan --muher sukmayanto --helvi yanfika -- r.a.d widyastuti (2021). farmers’ capacity and rice productivity in climate change adaptation in central lampung regency, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4), 346-353. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.346.353 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 4 (2021): 346-353. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7916-1891 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1979-0586 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2641-520x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9701-1504 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2960-5081 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0527-177x mailto:indahlistiana1@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 346-353 347 1. introduction climate change is an extreme natural change caused by global warming from the emission or release of greenhouse gases, which are increasing day by day and threaten human life and biodiversity on earth. global warming has a direct effect on rainfall (rahman, 2018). the phenomenon of climate change is increasingly felt by the indonesian people and it can be seen from climate change, which causes various disasters such as floods, landslides, long droughts, strong winds, and high seas. climate change is unavoidable and will have a broad impact on various aspects of life. the impacts of climate change, which include rising sea levels and temperature (mumenthaler, renaud, gava, & brosch, 2021), increased rainfall, increased evaporation in summer (konapala, mishra, wada, & mann, 2020), and increased intensity of tropical storms, cause losses in various aspects of life (hsiao et al., 2021). the wider impact of climate change is not only damaging the environment but also endangering human health, disrupting the availability of food in the agricultural sector, economic development activities, natural resource management, and infrastructure. the effect of climate change on the agricultural sector is multidimensional, from resources, infrastructure, and agricultural production systems to aspects of food security and independence (murniati & mutolib, 2020), and also the welfare of farmers and society. the agricultural sector is one sector that is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, especially rice farming. this is because the availability of food in the agricultural sector is intended to fulfil the basic nutritional needs of households that are highly dependent on climatic conditions. the share of household food expenditure is relatively high and the share of non-food expenditure is low relative to total expenditure (murniati & mutolib, 2020). extreme climate change in the agricultural sector is often called el nino, which is an event where the summer is relatively longer with the implication of drought events, while la nina is characterized by high rainfall intensity which has an impact on flooding. extreme climatic events, especially el nino or la nina, result in (1) crop failure, reducing ip which leads to decreases productivity and production; (2) damage to agricultural land resources; (3) increasing frequency, area, and weight/intensity of drought; (4) increasing humidity; and (5) increased intensity of disturbance of plant pest organisms (opt) (skendžić, zovko, živković, lešić, & lemić, 2021). iizumi et al. (2014) indicated that climatic anomalies such as el nino have a negative impact on agricultural productivity. climate change affects productivity and production in the agricultural sector, which has a negative socio-economic impact (ketema & negeso, 2020). climate change will be a serious threat to the agricultural sector and has the potential to create new problems for agricultural sustainability. this is in line with the position of alalade, oladunni, akinboye, daudu, and ogunrinde (2019), that climate change has undesirable effects on agricultural activity. according to lipińska (2016), in agriculture, weather conditions such as climate change have the same impact, on both the quality and quantity of production, including farmers’ income. in addition, climate change that continues to occur will have an impact on increasingly frequent pest and disease attacks, thereby reducing rice production (skendžić et al., 2021). decrease in production is due to reduced sink formation, shorter growth period, and increased respiration (hatfield & prueger, 2015). climate change causes increasing rainfall in certain areas (tabari, 2020) and, at the same time, drought happens in other places (mann & gleick, 2015). changes in weather patterns and temperature due to climate change result in high pest interactions with plants. boer et al. (2017) showed that brown planthopper tends to increase significantly when rainfall in the transitional season increases. anticipating reduction in climatic change and its adverse impacts, adaptation is considered an important response (ho & shimada, 2018). human response to climate change is very important to understanding and estimating the level of adoption of adaptation strategies used by farmers to reduce the impact of climate change on crop production (akintonde & shuaib, 2016). climatic change affects productivity and production in the agricultural sector that will result in primarily negative socio-economic impacts. central lampung regency is a district in lampung province which is now the main center of rice production, but productivity is still below national productivity even though adaptation activity to climate change has been carried out. however, most of this adaptation activity is only relatrd to handling pest attacks resulting from climate change. the low level of rice productivity by farmers reflects their level of capacity in adapting to climatic change, which is not yet optimal. according to juana, kahaka, and okurut (2013), if nature can not be renewed then humans are expected to be able to update technology and adapt to existing natural conditions. the phenomenon of climate change that occurs increasingly creates demands on farmers’ awareness about how important it is to increasing their capacity to adapt. adaptation to climate change by farmers certainly requires them to further increase their capacity by updating the latest innovations in support of their farming activities in increasing productivity. farmers who have a good capacity are expected to have an effect on the productivity of rice production. based on the description above, this study aims to analyze the relationship between the performance level of agricultural extension workers and the capacity level of farmers in adapting to climate change, and to analyze the relationship between farmers' capacity in adapting to climate change and rice productivity. 2. materials and methods 2.1. site and research period the research location in central lampung regency was determined purposively with the consideration that it is the largest rice producer in central lampung regency and is an area affected by the unavailability of irrigation water due to irrigation improvements. the period of the research was from october 2019 to march 2020. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 346-353 348 2.2. research procedure the research method used is a survey method. the population in this study are rice farmers assisted by extension workers who are members of farmer groups totaling 17.988 farmers. determination of the number of samples in this study refers to the yamane formula, namely: (1) information: n = number of samples. n = number of population. d2 = precession (set at 10% with α = 90%). 2.3. data analysis analysis is based on calculations obtained from a sample of 100 farmers. the types of data used are both primary and secondary. the collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistical analysis and rank spearman correlation. descriptive statistical analysis was conducted to describe or provide an overview of the object under study by scoring the method in three categories, namely low, medium, and high. rank spearman correlation analysis was used to analyze the relationship between farmers’ capacity in adapting to climate change and rice productivity. the criteria set by rank spearman correlation analysis are if the significance value is <0.05 then there is a correlation and otherwise if the significance value is >0.05, where there is no correlation. the data were processed using the statistical package for the social sciences 23 (spss 23) tool. the framework of the relationship between the capacity of farmers in adapting to climate change and rice productivity can be seen in figure 1. figure-1. framework for the relationship between farmers’ capacity in adapting to climate change and rice productivity. 3. results and discussion 3.1. the performance of agricultural extension the performance of agricultural extension workers refers to undang-undang no. 16 of 2006, which is judged by the success of extension workers in carrying out their main task of compiling agricultural extension programs, preparing annual agricultural extension work plans, compiling maps of agricultural extension areas, disseminating agricultural technology information, developing empowerment and independence of farmers, realizing profitable partnerships, realizing access to financial institutions, information, and production facilities, increasing the productivity of agribusiness for superior commodities, and increasing farmers’ income and welfare. the results of this analysis in central lampung regency can be seen in table 1. table-1. performance of agricultural extension in central lampung regency. no. ppl performance indicator mode classification 1 develop agricultural extension programs 1 low 2 compile rktp 1 low 3 develop a map of agricultural extension areas 1 low 4 disseminate agricultural technology information 1 low 5 develope empowerment and independence 1 low 6 create profitable partnerships 1 low 7 realize access to financial institutions, information, and production input 2 medium 8 increase the productivity of superior commodity agribusiness 2 medium 9 increase income and welfare 2 medium ppl performance level 1 low asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 346-353 349 table 1 shows that the performance of agricultural extension in central lampung regency is classified as low. this can be seen from the performance of agricultural extension workers in carrying out their main task of preparing agricultural extension programs, preparing annual agricultural extension work plans, compiling maps of agricultural extension areas, disseminating agricultural technology information, developing the empowerment and independence of farmers, and realizing profitable partnerships classified as low, while the performance of agricultural extension in realizing access to financial institutions, information, and production facilities, increasing the productivity of agribusiness for superior commodities, and increasing the income and welfare of farmers is classified as medium. the low performance of agricultural extension workers is due to the fact that they rarely involve farmers in preparing agricultural extension programs, preparing annual agricultural extension work plans, or compiling maps of agricultural extension areas, because they used references from previous years and not all members of farmer groups take part in supporting extension activities, so that farmers’ assessment of the performance of agricultural extension workers is low. this is because agricultural extension workers only coordinate with farmers’ groups’ administrators, such as the chairman or secretary. in addition, farmers rarely meet with extension worker because the extension area is vast and not all farmers can be visited by extension workers. 3.2. farmers’ capacity regarding climate change adaptation current climatic conditions always undergo erratic changes such as flood and long drought, beyond the expectations of farmers, resulting in many pests and plant diseases leading to crop failure. it is proven that farm productivity in the research area is still low, so that farmers’ capacity in adapting to climate change is needed. the results show that the level of adaptation of farmers to climate change is classified as low in regard to knowledge, attitude, and skills in adapting to climate change. this is in line with salampessy, lubis, amien, and suharjito (2018), whose research showed that the capacity of farmers to adapt to climate change was low. the results of the study can be seen in table 2. table-2. farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change. farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change classificattion class interval (score) total percentage knowledge low 4–6 64 64.00 medium 7–9 34 34.00 high 10–12 2 2.00 average 6.0 attitude low 9–14 57 57.00 medium 15–21 41 41.00 high 22–27 2 2.00 average 14.2 skills low 6–9 21 21.00 medium 10–11 51 51.00 high 15–18 28 28.00 average 12.5 table 2 shows that the level of famers’ capacity in adapting to climate change is classified as low. this can be seen from the knowledge capacity and attitude of farmers in adapting to climate change, which is classified as low, and the skill capacity is classified as medium. knowledge, attitude, and skills are the main components that shape the behavior of farmers. knowledge is the basis for an individual to have the ability to make decisions. low capacity is due to lack of knowledge. farmers' knowledge in adapting to climate change is related to their ability to know the strategies required to reduce the negative impacts of climate change, such as their knowledge of lowland rice varieties that are tolerant to immersion, drought, and pests. in addition, farmers’ knowledge remains low in recognizing the correct time of year to determine the start cultivation, planting, crop rotation, and the commodities to be planted; even farmers do not know of good irrigation water management systems and water storage technology to face a long dry season due to the negative impact of climate change. based on the results of the research, information related to climate change adaptation is rarely obtained by farmers, even that related to water storage technology. the level of farmers’ capacity on the indicator of attitude in adapting to climate change is also classified as low. this is reflected in the attitude of farmers who rarely rest their land, rotate crops between seasons, plant according to cropping commodities with weather conditions, plant according to lowland rice varieties that are tolerant of soaking, drought, and certain pest that can be planted, rarely use organic fertilizer and organic pesticides, rarely coordinate with water user group to always maintain the condition of irrigation water, search for information related to climate, even farmers do not use water storage technology to deal with the long dry season. however, some farmers who always carry out simultaneous planting as a strategy to reduce the negative impacts of climate change and others carry out other work activities outside of agriculture to earn income in anticipation of crop failure. based on the results of research, farmers in carrying out rice farming activities are always accustomed to follow their parent’s farming activity from generation to generation so that new innovation in rice farming is difficult to adopt. the level of farmers’ skills in climate change adaptation is classified as medium. this can be seen in activities to solve the problem of tackling pests due to the impact of climate change, to be able to do other jobs besides farming asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 346-353 350 rice to increase income, to process agricultural product to gain added value, and to plant other commodities to increase income. however, the skills of farmers in managing waterways and participating in counseling and training activities related to climate change remain low. based on research, farmers are rarely visited by agricultural extension workers even though they often need information related to farming. in addition, extension workers’ efficiency is less than optimal in carrying out their roles and functions (listiana, sumardjo, sadono, & tjiptopranoto, 2018). farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change is very important to reduce the negative impacts that occur. according to ho and shimada (2018), adaptation is considered an important response. human response to climate change is very important in understanding and estimating the adoption level of adaptation strategies used by farmer to reduce the negative impacts of climate change, especially on crop production (akintonde & shuaib, 2016). 3.3. rice productivity level increasing the productivity of rice farming is part of the main goal of farmers. the level of productivity depends on the technology and the suitability of the local climate. the level of rice productivity in central lampung regency is presented in table 3. table-3. distribution of rice farming productivity levels in central lampung regency. level of rice productivity (tons ha–1) category total (individuals) (%) 4.10–4.93 low 42 42 4.94-5.76 medium 37 37 5.78–6.60 high 21 21 total 100 100 table 3 shows that the level of rice productivity is classified as low. this proves that farmers’ ability has not been maximized and there is still variation in the levels of rice productivity among farmers. the average productivity of rice farmers in the study area is only 5.1 tons/ha, below the average maximum productivity which can reach 6.6 tons/ha. the low productivity of rice is due to the inefficiency of farmers, so it is necessary to increase their capacity and the need for technical guidance so that the knowledge and technical skills of farmer can increase. 3.4. relationship between agricultural extension performance and farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change agricultural extension plays a role in helping farmers in relation to their farming problems. in addition, the existence of agricultural extension can change farmers’ behavior to further increase their capacity. agricultural extension workers who carry out their roles and functions must be able to satisfy farmers so that the latter will give a good assessment of the performance of the workers. the results from research on the relationship between agricultural extension performance and the level of farmers’ capacity in adapting to climate change can be seen in table 4. table-4. results of the relationship between the agricultural extension performance and farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change. parameter level of farmers’ capacity in adapting to climate change knowledge attitude skills agricultural extension performance 0.619** 0.881** 0.877** information: * significantly related to α = 0.05, ** significantly related to α = 0.01. based on the results of rank spearman correlation test, the performance level of agricultural extension is significantly related to knowledge (rs = 0.619), attitude (rs = 0.881), and skills (rs = 0.887) of farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change, where each variable is positive at the 99.99% confidence level. this means that the higher the level of performance of agricultural extension workers, the greater the knowledge, attitude, and skills of farmers’ capacity in adapting to climate change. agricultural extension provides information related to efforts to reduce the negative impacts of climate change, such as helping to increase farmers’ knowledge of lowland rice varieties that are tolerant to soaking, drought, and pests. in addition, agricultural extension also provides information related to the correct time to determine the start of cultivation and planting, crop rotation, the commodities to be planted, and explanations regarding good irrigation water management and water storage technology to deal with the long dry season resulting from negative impacts of climate change. however, extension activities in providing information to farmers are not carried out routinely and only a few members receive such information. information related to strategies dealing with climate change is needed because it is to minimize the occurrence of crop failure. therefore, farmers really need the role of agricultural extension. agricultural extension has a relationship with farmers’ capacity (anwarudin, sumardjo, satria, & fatchiya, 2020). agricultural extension is a facilitation agent for farmers to obtain information related to their farming. agricultural extension as an information agent for farmers is to change farmers’ behavior regarding aspects of knowledge, skills, and attitudes so that they know, want, and are able to implement changes in their farming practices in order to achieve increased production and income and improvement of family welfare (ardiyansyah, sumaryo, & yanfika, 2014). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 346-353 351 3.5. relationship of rice productivity with farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change based on the results of the rank spearman correlation test, farmers’ knowledge, attitude, and skills in adapting to climate change are significantly correlated with rice productivity. the results can be seen in table 5. table-5. relationship between farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change with rice productivity. no farmers’ capacity in adapting to climate change rice productivity 1 knowledge 0.476** 2 attitude 0.749** 3 skills 0.766** information: * significantly related to α = 0.05 ** , significantly related to α = 0.01. table 5 shows that the level of farmers’ ability to adapt to climate change is significantly related to rice productivity. this means that the increasing capacity of farmers in regard to climate change adaptation will increase rice productivity. therefore, the adaptive capacity of farmers regarding climate change is needed to maintain their productivity. adaptation efforts needed by farmers in dealing with the impacts of climate change require adaptation technology. trenberth et al. (2014) explained that adaptation technology that can be applied by farmers, including adjusting planting time, using drought-tolerant varieties, soaking, salinity, and developing water management technology. in line with the research of murniati and mutolib (2020), the ability of farmers to adjust or adapt to climate change by implementing strategy efforts can reduce losses due to climate change and will not have a significant effect on reducing production and income. the knowledge level of farmers’ capacity in adapting to climate change is significantly related to rice productivity (rs=0.476), which has a positive value. the knowledge level of farmers’ capacity in adapting to climate change such as their knowledge of lowland rice varieties that are tolerant to soaking, drought, and pests; of recognizing the correct season to determine the start of tillage and planting, crop rotation, and commodities to be planted; and of knowing a good irrigation water management system and water storage technology to deal with the long dry season resulting from the negative impacts of climate change, can all increase rice productivity. farmers with good knowledge capacity will be readily able to make decisions, especially in regard to increasing production. increased production will occur if the knowledge gained is adopted by farmers. according to ntshangase, muroyiwa, and sibanda (2018), the success of adoption depends on farmers’. furthermore, this was reinforced by liu, bruins, and heberling (2018), that knowledge is one component of farmers’ behavior that is also a major factor in the adoption of innovation. the attitude level of farmers’ capacity in adapting to climate change is significantly related to rice productivity (rs=0.749), which has a positive value. this means that the ability of farmers’ attitude in adapting to climate change will give a positive response to rice productivity. attitude is a psychological (mental) process that occurs by providing a behavioral response in the form of action against an object that has been observed. farmers’ attitudes in making adaptation decisions are important regarding climate change, such as crop rotation, coordinating with farmer groups using water in improving irrigation, searching for information related to climate, using water storage technology to deal with the long dry season, and using seed according to rice varieties tolerant to flooding, drought, and certain pests. in addition, there is an attitude of farmers’ adaptation to climate change, namely planting simultaneously as a strategy to reduce the negative impacts of climate change and carrying out other working activities outside of agriculture to earn income in anticipation of crop failure. according to alalade et al. (2019), nonagricultural activity helps farmers spread production risks. the existence of this attitude will certainly have an influence on positive changes in rice productivity. the skill level of farmers’ capacity in adapting to climate change is significantly related to rice productivity (rs=0.766), which has a positive value. this means that the ability of farmers to adapt to climate change will provide a positive response to rice productivity. the skill of farmers’ capacity is needed to analyze what becomes necessary, problems, and opportunities in achieving their goals, namely good productivity. this is in line with the research results of ali, ghosh, osmani, hossain, and fogarassy (2021) that the skill of farmers’ capacity affects rice productivity. montes de oca munguia, pannell, and llewellyn (2021) stated that the skill of farmers’ capacity has an effect on rice production. the high skill of farmers’ capacity will have an effect on work more effectively and efficiently in achieving goals. listiana, sumardjo., sadono, tjiptopranoto, and ariyanto (2019) also imvestigated internet usage in agricultural extension activities in lampung province, indonesia. however, success in achieving goals requires skills that are obtained from knowledge and attitude being carried out continuously. attitude will be present if the individual already has the knowledge of identifying what has happened and what action must be taken, so that with the knowledge gained they can readily make decisions to achieve their goals. based on farmers’ knowledge, attitude, and skills, they will form capacity regarding a challenge, in this case climate change adaptation, to achieve the desired goal, namely rice productivity, so it can be concluded that there is a relationship between the capacity of knowledge, attitude, and adaptation skills in climate change and rice productivity. 4. conclusions the peformance level of agricultural extension is significantly related to farmers’ capacity levels of knowledge, attitude, and skills in regard to climate change adaptation. farmers’ capacity of knowledge, attitude, and skills in regard to climate change adaptation is significantly related to rice productivity. therefore, to increase rice asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 346-353 352 productivity, it is necessary to increase farmers’ capacity for climate change adaptation, which is supported by the performance of agricultural extension. funding: authors thank lampung university, indonesia for financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akintonde, j. o., & shuaib, l. 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(2014). global warming and changes in drought. nature climate change, 4(1), 17–22. available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2067. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 239 hunger project credit facility and maize productivity in ghana isaac tweneboah asante a raymond k. dziwornu b dadson awunyovitor c a department of agriculture, kwahu west municipality, nkawkaw, ghana b department of banking and finance, university of professional studies, accra, ghana c department of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, of agriculture, college of agriculture and natural resources, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, ghana  tweneasante@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 04-feb-2020 accepted: 20-apr-2020 online available: 14-may2020 keywords: credit, maize productivity, hunger project, endogenous switching regression model, ghana abstract this paper evaluated the effect of credit facility on the productivity of participants of the hunger project in ghana. primary data was collected from randomly sampled 170 beneficiary and non-beneficiary smallholder maize farmers of the project in the kwahu west municipality. descriptive statistics and the endogenous switching regression model were used to analyse the data. the results showed that gender, number of livestock owned by the farmer, previous year’s maize income, farmers’ perception of lending procedures of the project and farmers’ perception of the distance between residence and the epicenter (loan center) were the factors influencing farmers’ decision to take part in the hunger project credit programme. the study also revealed that farmers who benefited from the programme had a significant increase in maize output: thus, the credit facility significantly influenced farm productivity. in addition to maize farming, farmers should be encouraged to keep livestock, and the project management should open loan centres close to the farmers to improve access to loan by the farmers, particularly current nonbeneficiaries, to improve their productivity. this should be supported by an extension of education and training. contribution/ originality farmers’ participation in agricultural credit programme such as the hunger project is essential for its impact evaluation. the study found that agriculture credit programme specific factors significantly influence small scale maize farmers’ participation decision. also, the increase in the productivity of participants resolves credit-productivity puzzle. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.239.258 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: isaac tweneboah asante, raymond k. dziwornu and dadson awunyo-vitor (2020). hunger project credit facility and maize productivity in ghana. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 239-258. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 239-258 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:tweneasante@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.239.258 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 240 1. introduction maize is one of the staple crops in ghana, and it accounts for more than half of the total cereal production in the country. maize plays a key role in contributing to food security in ghana (armah, 2009). according to awunyo-vitor et al. (2014), maize yield averages about 1.7 tons per hectare (tons/ha) in ghana. however, edgerton (2009) noted that in developed countries the average yield of maize is 4.9 t/ha, although, from a scientific experiment, a yield of 6.0 t/ha is achievable (mofa, 2011). thus, the productivity of maize farmers in ghana is therefore low. the dawdling productivity growth in maize production is attributed to farmers’ access to improved seed, fertilizer and adoption of improved agronomic and farm management practices (ragasa et al., 2013). increasing maize productivity can boost food accessibility as well as rural incomes: thus access to extension education, loan facilities for resource-constrained farmers have dominated the focus of researchers, policymakers and other development partners. maize is an important staple crop enjoyed across the country and in many households: virtually every dish in the ghanaian cuisine uses maize. its meal is made into porridge, kenkey (fanti or ga), banku, tuozaafi, abolo, kooko and tom brown. for industrial use, maize is sometimes used as a starch source for the brewing industry. the livestock feed industries also depend on maize to prepare feed for poultry and other livestock. ragasa et al. (2013) posit that about 13 percent of maize produced in the country is used for animal poultry feed. the demand for maize for feed production in the poultry sector is estimated to grow by 10 percent per annum (hurelbrink and boohene, 2011). the importance of maize to the economy and as a food security crop cannot be over-emphasized. there is, therefore, the need to initiate agricultural development projects or programmes that aims at enhancing maize productivity. this will not only lead to increased food availability but also results in an improved standard of living of the populace. there is an increasing demand for maize for human consumption and animal feed in the country due to industrialization and urbanization (andam et al., 2015; 2017). this requires measures to raise the productivity of maize per hectare. this could be achieved through the use of various policies, programmes and projects such as the adoption of improved technologies (improved maize seeds, agrochemicals including fertilizer), use of tractors, irrigation schemes, provision of credit etc. geared towards an increase in maize productivity growth. the government of ghana, in an attempt to enhance agricultural productivity in general and maize in particular, introduced four main initiatives to support farmers. these initiatives include subsidy on fertilizer, mechanization services and support for block farming. these interventions have similar features like other initiatives of the government that were abandoned shortly after they were introduced in the past (benin et al., 2013). the block farms and marketing programme have been abandoned, the fertilizer subsidy was not always readily available, and when available smallholder farmers cannot afford to purchase it: thus affecting the production of maize. the hunger project (thp)-ghana is a non-governmental organization with its headquarters based in new york, usa. it currently operates in africa, asia and latin america. it started its operations in ghana in 1996 and currently operates in five regions namely; eastern, ashanti, greater accra, volta and central regions (the hunger project ghana, 2013). it scaled up its operation to the eastern region in 2006. the hunger project covers all metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (mmdas) in the country, except for the new juabeng municipality. it currently runs thirty-eight loan centres in the eastern region. the underlying aim of such an enterprise is to reduce hunger and poverty by enhancing the productivity of smallholder farmers. the food security and agricultural development component of thp seeks to achieve this objective which is one of the millennium development goals (mdgs) through several interventions targeting farmers in rural communities. they include the provision of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 241 input credit such as improved seed, fertilizer, agrochemicals and financial credit. enhancing the productivity of smallholder farmers through increased access to farm input and credit has great implications for food security and household income enhancement. food insecurity and poverty remains a predominant problem in ghana, particularly among smallscale farmers in rural communities where agriculture is generally central to their livelihood. the seventh round of the ghana living standard survey (glss7) conducted in 2016/2017 estimated poverty headcount in ghana as 23.4 percent. it is also estimated that about forty-three percent of the poor in ghana are into agriculture and live in rural areas (glss, 2018). to bring farming communities out of hunger and poverty, the hunger project–ghana has been supporting maize farmers with agricultural inputs and loans to reduce hunger and poverty through enhancing agricultural productivity. a preliminary study before the introduction of the credit programme indicated that maize farmers were producing far below the optimum yield of 2.0 t/ha due to lack of credit facilities, access to fertilizer and other agro-inputs as well as frequent access to information on improved farming methods (thpg, 2013). the hunger project, therefore, came in to supply solutions to the challenges that contribute to low productivity. the hunger project programme is however saddled with high default in the repayment of the credit facilities (the hunger project ghana, 2013), and also most farmers have not taken advantage of the credit programme as expected to maximize their production. this raises the question of whether the credit received by the farmers does not result in improved productivity. it has been argued that agricultural credit increases access to production input, technology and improves the allocative efficiency of farmers, which ultimately leads to enhance productivity (awunyo-vitor et al., 2016 and dong et al., 2012). however, other findings have revealed a negative relationship between credit and productivity (boucher and guirkinger, 2007). it is important to solve the puzzle as to whether the hunger project credit improves productivity or not. the aim of the study is therefore to conduct an ex-pose evaluation of the financial credit intervention by the hunger project to ascertain its effect on maize productivity in ghana. 2. literature review 2.1. factors influencing agricultural programme participation according to cole (2006), farmers do not participate in agricultural programmes because they lack knowledge about the programme and confidence in themselves. the author was also of the view that lack of time and interest on the part of farmers affect their participation in agricultural intervention programmes. ghimir et al. (2009) stressed that the farmer’s lack of confidence in such programmes as a result of inadequate education on the programme affects their participation. also, most farmers do not participate in agricultural programmes because the intention of most programmes is not made clear to them. they further argued that the lack of interest of farmers to participate is mostly due to the failure of previous programme interventions. lack of resource constraints on participation is highlighted by ajayi (2005) who noted that lack of access to productive resources such as land, credit, farm inputs, sufficient extension services and suitable technology are the limiting factors for women’s participation in food production and food security programmes globally. aref (2010) also asserted that weak government institutions; poor human resource development and reliance on government in rural communities hinder agricultural programme participation. ghimir et al. (2009) argued that for farmers to decide to participate in a programme or decline participation in a programme is influenced by the way information about the programme was conveyed to them. nxumalo and oladele (2013) opined that lack of or inadequate access to resources such as farmland, credit facilities were major factors that influence individual decision to participate in a programme. they claim that age, gender and income are factors that influence participation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 242 farmers’ participation is also influenced by educational level and training acquired. other variables that influence farmers programme participation decision include farm income, size of land available for cropping (ganesh and surendra, 2005). oladele (2012) also emphasises that farmers participation in such programmes is influenced by age and education level. telayneh (2010) noted that agricultural programme participation is influenced by a broad group of factors; namely institutional, socio-economic, and structural. institutional factors include inappropriateness to the needs of farmers; the distance of training centre; and lack of facilities and incompetent facilitators. socio-cultural factors are farmers’ unawareness and low expectations, and structural factors include a central planning system and weak local institutional capacity. alam et al. (2012) also observed that individual satisfaction level, household size, available family labour, farm income and educational level of farmers influence programme participation. according to botlhoko and oladele (2013), the household size of the farmer plays a significant role in the participation of agricultural projects. sithole et al. (2014) in their study also found the age of farmer, access to credit, distance to the programme office, farm size, and membership of farmerbased organisation as factors influencing farmers’ participation in an agricultural programme. 2.2. credit access and agricultural productivity according to ozowa (2007) “agricultural credit is defined as all loans and advances granted to borrowers to finance and service production activities relating to agriculture, fisheries, forestry and also for processing, marketing, storage and distribution of products resulting from these activities”. adegeye and dittoh (1985) in their study operationalized credit as “the process of obtaining control over the use of money, goods and services in exchange for a promise to repay at a future date”. in this study, credit refers to only financial credit, that is, the amount of money (funds in cash) given to farmers to support their farming activities. several factors were found to theoretically influence farmers’ access to the loan. yehuala (2008) classified these factors into demographic factors; socioeconomic factors; institutional factors; and communication factors. in agricultural production, the amount of output that is produced by a given amount of input is referred to as agricultural productivity. agricultural productivity is therefore defined as “the ratio of total farm outputs to total inputs used in agricultural production” (mundlak, 1992). to increase output, there is a need to increase the amount of input used as well as the quality of the input and must be used at the appropriate time. these inputs include high yield varieties, agrochemicals such as fertilizers herbicides and pesticides as well as irrigation facilities in areas where rainfall is inadequate. resource-poor farmers in sub-saharan africa (ssa) lack access to agricultural credit thus cannot afford the aforementioned improved technologies, which have the potential to drive agricultural productivity. to alleviate poverty, it is imperative to improve the productivity of farmers, particularly those living in rural areas and cultivate less than 1hactare. according to hussien and perera (2004), several factors and services influence crop productivity. these factors are access to farmland, suitable climatic conditions, appropriate agronomic and farm management practices as well as individual and institutional factors. the role of farmer support services cannot be overemphasised because they are essential for the productivity improvement of small-scale farmers. empirical evidence in the literature shows that extending support services to resource-poor farmers has implications on rural household welfare. boucher and guirkinger (2007) used the endogenous switching regression model to examine the effect of lack of access to credit on small-scale farmers’ productivity in peru. the authors employed panel data for which they controlled for selection bias problem and unobserved heterogeneity. their results revealed that relaxing formal credit constraints of farmers would increase their productivity by more than a quarter. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 243 according to muturi and nzomo (2014), farmer’s income can be enhanced with access to credit from agricultural credit programmes. relaxing credit constraint of farmers helps to improve their productivity via economics of scale and efficiency in the use of other available resources. ciaian et al. (2011) concluded in their study that enhancing credit access to farmers increases variable input use by 2.3% and capital investment up by 29%. they also found out that increase access to loan increases total factor productivity by 1.9%. the results suggest that improving credit access result in input intensification on farms. butler and cornaggia (2011) studied the relationship between credit access and farm productivity using a triple differences testing methodology. their result revealed that access to finance tends to increase the productivity of farmers. based on the literature reviewed, it is anticipated that maize farmers’ access to programme credit will increase access and improve farm input use and consequently increase farm productivity. 3. methodology 3.1. sample size and sampling technique the study was conducted in the kwahu west municipality, located in the eastern region of ghana. the municipality is predominantly agriculture, with maize being one of the major crops. the crop sub-sector employs 97.5 percent of the labour force of the agriculture sector in the municipality. also, 61 percent of households in the municipality are poor (kwma, 2014). it is estimated that only 9% of maize farmers within the municipality have access to formal credit facility (the hunger project ghana, 2013). in line with this, bartlett et al. (2001) formula was used to estimate the sample size for the study. the formula is specified as: ……………………… (1) where n represent the sample size to use, 𝑥 is the fraction of the population of maize farmers who participated in the programme (accessed credit) and 𝑦 is the fraction of maize farmers who did not participate (not access credit), s is the number of standard deviation for 95% confidence interval, and e is 5% margin of error allowed for the study. based the above, the sample size was calculated as follows: n = 1.962(0.09)(0.91) 0.052 = 126 ……………………… (2) the sample size (n) is equal to 126. the project operates in 17 communities, hence to capture the adequate number of respondents from these communities; the sample size was increased by 35%. the total sample was then proportionally distributed between the hunger project beneficiaries (participants) and non-beneficiaries (non-participants) in the study area. a multi-stage sampling technique was employed in selecting the respondents. at the first stage of the selection, 17 communities where the hunger project is operational were purposively sampled. stratified sampling technique was employed at the second stage of the sampling process to group maize farmers into beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. in the third stage, the respondents were selected randomly from each stratum. in all 85 beneficiary and 85 non-beneficiary smallholder maize farmers were selected. a well-structured questionnaire was used to collect data and information from the sampled respondents. 3.2. analytical framework the hunger project is a non-governmental organization that seeks to increase maize farmers’ productivity through credit intervention. the credit package includes the provision of cash and non   2 2 e yxs n  asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 244 cash credit. the non-cash credit comes in the form of improved seed, fertilizer and herbicide. to achieve the objective of study two econometric challenges arise; these are self-selection bias and endogeneity. self-selection bias arises as a result of non-random selection of farmers into the programme. based on the programme participation process, farmers need self-select (apply) to participate in the programme. therefore, participation decision (access credit) for the programme is based on their expectation, objectives and unobservable characteristic. endogeneity problem may also arise if the farmer’s characteristics, which are not observed such as, experience in farming, influence farmer’s decision to make use of an intervention (credit programme) and the outcome variable (productivity). the endogeneity problem may lead to an inconsistent estimate of the result if unobservable characteristics of farmers are not accounted for. according to feder et al. (1990) analytical approaches that pooled sample observation together in estimating a production function which comprises credit as an independent variable in credit supply equation and other approaches that estimate separate production functions and then proceed to compare the result are flawed. this is because credit beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries are not always homogenous and beneficiaries for whom credit constraint is not binding may have zero marginal effect of credit on their productivity. finally, they argued that the supply function may differ with regards to variables and parameters, depending on whether liquidity is a binding constraint. dong et al. (2012) and nuryartono (2005) proposed that the most suitable econometric approach is to adopt a two-stage regression model such as the endogenous switching regression model. at the first stage probit/logit model may be used to identify factors which influence the farmer’s decision to participate (access to credit) in the hunger project credit programme. the logit and probit are binary models that overcome the limitations of the linear probability model (lpm) by using a function that transforms the regression model that fits values that are bounded within 0 and 1 (gujarati, 2004). the probit model resolves the problem of heteroscedasticity (asante et al., 2011) and has a believable error term distribution and realistic probabilities (nagler 1994). the probit model assumes a standard normal distribution. according to long (1997), the choice between logit and probit models is largely one of convenience and convention, since the essential results are generally indistinguishable. the choice between the logit and probit models is, therefore, the decision of the researcher. studies that have applied the probit model to analyze farmers’ credit participation decision include asante et al. (2017), nxumalo and oladele (2013), and shete and garcia (2011). in this study, the probit model was used and the participation (access to credit) equation is given as: zi ∗ = xγ + µ, µ ~ n (0, 1) ……………………… (3) where the dependent variable z denote participation (credit access) which is specified as one (1) if the farmer participates (access credit) from the hunger project credit programme and zero otherwise (nonparticipant in the hunger project credit programme), x is a set of exogenous variables influencing farmers’ participation or non-participation in the hunger project; µ is the error term. the participation status of the farmers can be specified as follows: zi = 1 if xγ ≥µ ……………………… (4) zi = 0 if xγ <µ ……………………… (5) the productivity equation for participant and non-participants in the hunger project credit programme can be specified as follows: y1i = β1 x1i +ε1i if zi = 1 ……………………… (6) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 245 y2i = β2x2i + ε2i if zi = 0 ……………………… (7) where 𝑌𝑖 is the dependent variable (maize output); 𝑋𝑖 is a set of independent variables influencing maize output, β1 and β2 are the parameters to be estimated, and ε1i, ε2i represent the error terms of the two regression equations. it is assumed that the regression error terms exhibit trivariate normal distribution, mean vector of zero and the following covariance matrix: ∑={ σ1 2 σ12 σ1μ σ12 σ2 2 σ2μ σ1μ σ2μ σμ 2 } ……………………… (8) where σμ 2 is a variance of the error term in the first stage (probit) equation. these error terms can be assumed to be equal to 1 because the coefficients are estimable only up to a scale factor. also, σ1 2 and σ2 2 are variances of the error terms in equations (6) and (7), while σ12 ,σ1μ , and σ2μ are covariance of ε1i and ε2i; ε1i and μi; as well as ε2i and μi. the residuals (error terms) in equations (6) and (7) are conditional on the hunger project credit programme participation (credit access) equation and have non-zero expected value as: e[ε1i /zi = 1] = σε1μ ∅(xγ) ɸ(xγ) = σε1μλ1i and e[ε2i /zi = 0] = −σε2μ ∅(xγ) 1−ɸ(xγ) = σε2μλ2i …….. (9) where ø (.) is the standard normal probability density function, ɸ (.): the standard normal cumulative function. estimating the productivity equations with ordinary least square (ols) will lead to bias parameter estimate which is also inconsistent due to endogeneity and selection bias (maddala, 1983). to obtain unbiased parameter estimate using ols, heckman (1979) proposed the inclusion of the inverse mill ratios, which is extracted from the hunger project credit programme participation (credit access) equation (3) into equations (6) and (7). in the second stage, the inverse mills ratios are calculated as: λ1i = ∅(xγ) ɸ(xγ) and λ2i = ∅(xγ) 1−ɸ(xγ) …………… (10) equation (10) is based on the probit model at the first stage of estimation, which is added to the explanatory variables of the productivity (outcome) equation as a correction factor. concerning the functional form of the productivity equation or model, the study adopted the cobbdouglas production function as used by freeman et al. (1998). the maximum likelihood method was employed in estimating both the credit supply model and output outcome model following lokshin and sajaia (2004). the method is specified as: 𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑙 = ∑ [𝑙𝑜𝑔 {𝛷 ( 𝑋𝛾 + (𝑌−𝑋𝛽1)𝜎 1𝜇/𝜎1 2 √1−𝜌1𝜇 2 )} − 1 2 {𝑙𝑜𝑔(2𝜋𝜎1𝜇) −𝑍=1 ( 𝑌−𝑋𝛽1 𝜎1 ) 2 }] + ∑ [𝑙𝑜𝑔 {𝛷 ( 𝑋𝛾 + (𝑌−𝑋𝛽0)𝜎 2𝜇/𝜎2 2 √1−𝜌2𝜇 2 )} − 1 2 {𝑙𝑜𝑔(2𝜋𝜎2𝜇) − ( 𝑌−𝑋𝛽2 𝜎2 ) 2 }]𝑍=0 .…. (11) where 𝜌1 = 𝜎1𝜇 𝜎𝜇𝜎1⁄ is the correlation coefficient between 𝜀1𝑖 and 𝜇𝑖, and 𝜌2= 𝜎2𝜇 𝜎𝜇⁄ 𝜎2 is the correlation coefficient between 𝜀2𝑖 and 𝜇𝑖. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 246 factors influencing farmers participation in the hunger project credit programme was identified using the probit model at the first stage of the estimation and inverse mills ratio was extracted from the residuals of the probit model. in the second stage, the productivity equation was estimated with additional regressor “inverse mill’s ratio” (imr). the probit model is as specified as. parti(d) = β0 + β1 gen + β2 age + β3 yrsch + β4 hhsiz + β5 nfi + β6 livestok + β7 fbo + β8famexpe + β9pyfi +β10fatr +β11fmprp + β12farplp + β13proxepi +μi ……………. (12) while the productivity equation of the two groups of farmers is specified as: if z = 1 ………………………(13) and if z = 0 ……………………… (14) 3.3. choice of variables and their description in selecting the dependent and independent variables for the models, empirical study by awunyovitor and al-hassan (2014) on the influence of credit on the productivity of maize in ghana was used as a guide. 3.4. dependent variables for the probit model, the dependent variable [parti] is assigned “1” if the respondent benefited from the hunger project credit programme and 0 otherwise. in the second stage of the switching regression model, that is the productivity equation, the dependent variable [ ] is specified as maize output measured in kg per hectare of farm size. the total factor productivity measure was adopted for the study. 3.5. explanatory variable 3.5.1. gender (gen) classification of the respondent based on gender is necessary for analysis like this since men and women have different economic activities. even if they engage in the same activity these might be at a varying scale of operation which may influence their decision to take part in the agricultural programme such as the hunger project credit programme. the gender of the respondent is captured as a dummy variable with a value of 1 representing male respondent and 0 representing female respondents. it is the hypothesis that male respondents are more likely to take part in the programme and have higher productivity than female respondents. 3.5.2. age of respondent (age) is captured as the age of respondent at the time of interview in years. the respondent’s decision to participate or not to participate in the hunger project credit programme may be influenced by how old the respondent is. given the nature of the credit programme, young farmers are expected to take advantage to expand their scale of operation. 3.5.3. years of formal schooling (yrsch) this variable is captured as the number of years the respondent attend a formal educational institution. farmers who spent more years in attending formal educational institution are likely to have a good idea about credit programmes and farming. according to musebe et al. (1993), farmers who spent long years in a formal educational institution are more likely to participate in credit imprd iiiiiiiii extlabrsdqtyfertherbifsizmprd 11161514131211011 lnlnlnlnlnlnln   iiiiiiiii extlabrsdqtyfertherbifsizmprd 22060504030201020 lnlnlnlnlnlnln   asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 247 programmes. it is therefore assumed that increase in the number of years of schooling would positively influence programme participation and productivity of the respondent. 3.5.4. household size (hhsiz) the variable is specified as the number of individuals who are fed by the respondent. this variable is expected to have a positive effect on the farmer’s decision to participate in the hunger project credit programme and productivity respectively. chen and chivakul (2008) found the family size to be a significant determinant of credit programme participation by individuals in bosnia and herzegovina. 3.5.6. access to non-farm income (anfi) the respondent who have access to income from other sources, apart from farming activities, are given a value of 1 and otherwise 0 resulting in a dummy variable. according to bhoj et al. (2013), access to income sources other than farm income negatively affects a farmer’s decision to take part in a credit programme. this might be as a result of non-farm income made them more dependent, hence does not need credit to support their activities. however, farmers whose livelihoods are more dependent on farm income are more likely to participate in a credit programme. it is therefore hypothesised that farmer’s high non-farm income hurts participation in the credit programme. 3.5.7. livestock ownership (livstock) livestock is considered an asset that can be sold to generate income for the farmer in time of credit constraint. the more livestock the farmer owns, the less likely he/she will participate in a credit programme. thus, it is assumed that livestock ownership will negatively influence programme participation decision of the farmers in the hunger project credit programme. the variable is captured based on tropical livestock unit (tlu). 3.5.8. membership of farmer-based organization (fbo) membership of organisation supports easy access to information and education of programmes. if a respondent belongs to an organisation, 1 represents that respondent and otherwise zero concerning this result in dummy variable. it is assumed that membership of farmer-based organisation will positively influence participation in the hunger project credit programme and a positive effect on productivity. 3.5.9. experience of the respondent in maize cultivation (famexpe) agricultural credit programme participation may be heavily influenced by experience. credit default has its challenges; some farmers have lost their assets due to credit default. hence, a farmer who has benefited from the previous credit programme will be better inclined to take part in a new credit programme. also, the more years the farmer has been into maize farming, the more likely it is that he would have to experience agricultural credit. consequently, the more likely he is to take part in a credit programme. this variable is measured as the number of years the respondent has been into maize cultivation. the variable is therefore hypothesised to have a positive relationship with the respondent’s participation in the hunger project credit programme. 3.5.10. previous year’s maize farm income (pyfi) the expectation of monetary gain from farming activities also determines programme participation. monetary gain from farming activities can be assessed based on the previous year’s farm income. the farmer is likely to have a low expectation of income if the previous income is low, and may not be willing to make more effort in cultivation by joining a credit programme and vice versa. therefore, the farmer’s decision to join the hunger project credit programme will be positively affected by the size of the previous year’s income. this may also hurt programme participation in a sense that the farmer may save part of the income to support current year’s expenditure, hence may not need additional credit, and may not participate in the credit programme. this variable is a proxy for the wealth of the farmer and captured as total farm income from previous year’s maize sales. it asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 248 is hypothesised to have a negative or positive effect on programme participation and productivity respectively, depending on the total value of the income. 3.5.11. farmers’ attitude towards risk (fatr) smallholder farmers are risk-averse and will not make use of credit when it is available. this is due to the fear of uncertainty associated with crop farming in developing countries due to lack of irrigation facilities. the variable takes the value “1” if a farmer’s response to series of questions that point to the fact that he/she is risk-averse in respect of participating in credit programme, and “0” otherwise. it is hypothesised that this variable would have a negative effect on programme participation and productivity. 3.5.12. farmers’ perception of loan repayment period (fmprp) this variable indicates how the farmers perceive the period given to them to repay their loan by the hunger project credit programme. there is a time lag before any agriculture investment becomes apparent. this may affect farmers’ decision to participate in the credit programme once they think the repayment period is unrealistic and not convenient. the variable takes a value “1” for respondents who think the repayment period is unrealistic and “0” otherwise. the variable is expected to have a negative relationship with the farmer’s decision to take part in the hunger project credit programme. 3.5.13. farmers’ perception of the lending procedure (farplp) farmers go through some laid down procedures to get involved with agricultural credit programme to access a loan. the operational modality of these entities may influence the respondent’s decision to participate in their credit programme or not. if a respondent perceives the procedure for accessing credit from the programme to be cumbersome this will negatively affect his/her decision to participate in the programme. the variable value “1” is assigned if the respondent perceives the participation procedure as cumbersome based on their response to a series of questions, and “0” otherwise. 3.5.14. proximity to loan centre (epicentre) (proxepi) the distance between the farmer and the loan centre (epicentre) is expected to influence farmers’ decision to take part in a credit programme. since farmers who live far from the epicentre need to commute a long distance for information and other services, increasing their transaction costs. the variable is assigned “1” if the farmer perceives the distance from his/her house to the epicentre to be too far and “0” otherwise. it is hypothesised that the more the respondents perceive the distance to be too far the less likely they are to take part in the credit programme. 3.5.15. total land under maize cultivation [fsizi] this variable is measured in hectares. it is hypothesised that the variable would have a positive effect on maize productivity. the volume of herbicides [herbii] used by the respondent is captured in litres. it is assumed that with an increase in the use of herbicide the productivity of maize would increase. also, the quantity of inorganic fertilizer [ferti ] used by the farmer is measured in kilograms (kg). it is hypothesised that increased use of fertilizer would increase maize productivity. the quantity of seed maize planted [sdqty𝑖] is also expected to influence the productivity of the farmers. this variable is specified as a continuous variable and measured in kg per hectare. it is a hypothesis that the variable is positively correlated with maize productivity. 3.5.16. labour availability and usage [labri] is also expected to influence maize productivity. in this study labour [labri] is specified as the number of workers employed by the farmer to work on the farm for a minimum of 8 hours per asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 249 man-day. it is expected that labour usage will have a positive influence on the maize productivity of the respondent farmers. 3.5.17. the frequency of extension visits [exti] by an agricultural extension agent is critical in the adoption of appropriate technology and agronomic and farm management practices, which can influence productivity. the extension [exti] variable indicates the number of extension visits per season; it is specified as the number of days agricultural extension agent visit the respondent in a month. farmers with a higher frequency of visits are more likely to adopt improved technologies, which improves maize output. the frequency of extension visit is hypothesised to positively influence maize productivity. in the productivity equation, that is, the second stage of the switching regression model, an additional regressor, the inverse mill’s ratio (imr) or lambda (the residuals produced by the firststage estimate of the probit model) was included as a control variable. 4. results and discussion 4.1. descriptive statistics of socioeconomic and demographic factors used in the study tables 1, 2 and 3 present the descriptive statistics of the respondents’ characteristics and other variables considered in the study. table 1 shows that male respondents formed 77.9% of total respondents, while female respondents formed 22.1%. about 84% of the hunger project credit programme participants and 70.6% of non-participants were male, while 16.5% of the programme participants and 29.4% of non-participants were female. this finding indicates that male dominates maize production in the kwahu west municipality. the result also showed that 27.6% of farmers interviewed do not own livestock, while 72.4% are owners of livestock. about sixty-eight percent of the credit programme participants and 76.5% of nonparticipants own livestock. the results indicate that project non-beneficiaries own livestock more than beneficiaries. the result showed that 49.4% of the farmers have access to income from off-farm activities, while 50.6% do not have off-farm income sources. it shows that 29.4% of participants and 69.4% of non-participants had access to off-farm income sources. this suggests that non-participants have other income generation sources compared to participants of the programme. this might be the reason why nonparticipants do not participate in the hunger project credit programme. forty percent (40%) of the respondents belong to a farmer-based organisation in the study area, while 60% do not belong to a farmer-based organization. about group type, 45.1% of participants and 34.1% of non-participants belong to farmer-based organizations. the results indicate that most respondents interviewed do not belong to any farmer base organization. table 1: descriptive statistics of socioeconomic and demographic variables (discrete) beneficiaries non-beneficiaries pooled variable frequency % frequency % frequency % gender male female 71 14 83.5 16.5 60 25 70.6 29.4 131 39 77.9 22.1 livestock owned no yes 27 58 31.8 68.2 20 65 23.5 76.5 47 123 27.6 72.4 off-farm activity no yes 60 25 70.6 29.4 26 59 30.6 69.4 86 84 50.6 49.4 membership of farmer organization no yes 46 39 54.9 45.1 56 29 56.9 34.1 102 68 60 40 source: field survey, 2019 the average age of the respondents who took part in the credit programme of the hunger project was 49.46 years, while that of nonparticipants was 59.95 years. the results indicate that most asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 250 respondents are in their middle age; however, those who participated in the credit programme are seemingly younger than non-participants (table 2). the survey result also shows that the mean household size of programme participants was 7.35 while that of non-participants was 6.88. from table 2, the average years of formal schooling for beneficiaries was 6.55 years, while that of nonparticipants was 8.68 years. the result implies that non-beneficiaries had more years of formal schooling than participants of the credit programme. table 2: descriptive statistics of socioeconomic and demographic variables (continuous) beneficiaries non – beneficiaries variable min max mean st. dev min max mean st. dev age 25.00 69.00 49.46 9.11 22.00 80.00 52.95 11.35 size of household 1.00 13.00 7.35 2.79 1.00 16.00 6.88 3.02 years of formal education 0.00 14.00 6.55 4.86 0.00 18.00 8.68 4.36 livestock ownership 0.08 2.39 0.76 0.55 0.12 6.48 1.31 1.14 farm experience 5.00 42.00 20.87 9.73 2.00 40.00 15.04 9.33 previous year maize income 0.00 1500 208.79 244.73 0.00.0 2760 355.25 430.64 source: field survey, 2019 on average, respondents owned about 0.76 tropical livestock units (tlu) of livestock, while non-participants owned 1.31 tlu of livestock. this implies that project non-participants owned more livestock than participants. following storck et al. (1991) tropical livestock units (tlu) is used to aid comparison of the effect of livestock ownership on maize productivity between participants and non-participants in the hunger project credit programme. concerning farming experience, farmers who participated in the hunger project credit programme had more farming experience than non-beneficiaries. the mean years of experience of participant farmers were 20.87 years, while non-participant farmers had an average of 15.04 years of experience (table 2). besides, income from previous year’s maize farming activity was assessed. table 2 indicates that the average income recorded by the participants was gh₵208.79. on the contrary, the average farm income for nonparticipants was gh₵355.25. the disparity in farm income may influence farmer participation in the credit programme. 4.2. descriptive statistic of farm-level data table 3 presents the descriptive statistics of respondents’ farm-level data. the mean maize output of farmers who participated in the hunger project credit programme was 1560kg. this was obtained by using 0.947-hectare farm size, 17.44kg of seed, 194.12 kg of fertilizer, 4.84 litres of herbicide, 174.61 person-days of labour and 4.54 number of visits by agricultural extension agents. on the other hand, non-participants recorded a mean maize output of 446.47kg. this was obtained from an average farm size of 0.573 ha, 8.29kg of seed, 100kg of inorganic fertilizer, 1.20 litres of herbicide, and 98.60 person-days of labour and 1.60 number of extension visits. the result revealed that beneficiary maize farmers of the credit programme used more of production input and had higher maize output than non-beneficiary maize farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 251 table 3: descriptive statistic of farm-level data beneficiaries non-beneficiaries variable variable definition min max mean st.dev min max mean st.dev maize output maize output in kg 500 3600 1560 840.52 50 1500 446.47 341.63 farm size farm size in ha 0.4 2.4 0.947 0.494 0.1 2.0 0.573 0.410 seed seed in kg 8 48 17.44 9.46 2 25 8.20 4.63 labour labour in persondays 60 462 174.61 97.85 30 340 98.60 69.60 fertilizer fertilizer in kg 100 500 194.12 109.49 50 150 100 40.83 herbicide herbicide in litres 2 12 4.84 2.59 0 6 1.20 1.595 extension visit number of extension visit per season 2 10 4.54 1.67 0 5 1.60 1.79 source: field survey, 2019 the results presented in table 4 shows that the difference between the productivity of participants and nonparticipants of the hunger project credit programme is positive and statistically significant at the one percent level. participants produced an average of 1643.5kg of maize per hectare (1.64mt/ha), while non-participants produced an average of 838.9kg of maize per hectare 0.84mt/ha. this shows that participant farmers achieved higher average maize output per hectare than non-participants. this implies that non-participants can increase their productivity if they had access to credit from the credit programme. table 4: maize productivity level for participants and non-participants in the hunger project programme category mean std.dev t-value 2-tail sig(p-value) participants 1643.5 310.6 13.09 0.000 non-participants 838.9 473.9 source: field survey, 2019 4.3. factors influencing farmers’ participation in the hunger project credit programme the estimated parameters of the probit model on the determinants of farmer’s participation decision in the hunger project credit programme are presented in table 5. the model exhibited a 1 percent significant likelihood ratio statistics as indicated by the chi-square statistic. this is an indication that participation has strong explanatory power. in all, eight variables exhibited a significant relationship with farmers’ participation decision in the hunger project credit programme. these were gender, age, years of formal education, number of livestock owned by the farmer, maize farming experience, previous year’s maize income, farmers’ perception of lending procedures of the hunger project credit programme and farmers’ perception of the distance between his/her residence to where the loan is processed and disbursed (epicentre). the result shows that gender has a positive and significant coefficient, indicating that farmer’s participation decision is influenced by their gender. the positive coefficient indicates that male farmers are more likely to participate in the credit programme than female farmers. this is because male farmers cultivate larger farm sizes to their female counterparts. the male farmers thus have high credit needs, which might influence their probability of participation in the programme positively. the male respondents are 25% more probable to take part in the credit programme compared with female. the result supports the finding of awunyo-vitor and abankwah (2012) which revealed that the probability of male farmers participating in a credit programme is higher asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 252 than that of female farmers. this is because male farmers tend to own larger farm sizes with associated higher demand for finance than their female counterparts. age exhibits a negative and significant relationship with the farmer’s decision to participate in the hunger project credit programme. the result indicates that as farmer advanced in age the lower the probability of him or her participating in a credit programme. this might be because younger farmers are at entry-level in farming and are willing to make more investment compared to older farmers. alternatively, older farmers may have accumulated some funds over the years from their farming activities, hence do not need funds from such sources to support their farming activities. the marginal effect revealed that additional unit increase in age lowers the probability of the farmer participating in a credit programme by 8%. the coefficient of years of formal schooling was negative and significant at 1% level of significance. it shows that maize farmers who are well educated may not take part in such credit programmes. a plausible reason for this is that the hunger project’s credit programme operates like a semi-formal institution, which might not be attractive to the educated farmers. the result of the marginal effect shows that an additional year of formal schooling education is likely to reduce the probability of the credit programme participation by 2%. the result is consistent with muhammed (2013), barslund and tarp (2008) who found access to formal education to have a negative effect on credit programme participation. table 5: results of the first stage switching regression (probit model) of the factors influencing the hunger project credit programme participation variables coefficients standard error p-values marginal effect gender 0.898*** 0.362 2.477 0.250 age of respondent -0.045*** 0.014 -3.159 0.084 years of formal education -0.075** 0.035 -2.160 0.023 household size -0.028 0.054 -0.522 0.098 engagement in off-farm activities -0.272 0.287 -0.945 0.176 number of livestock owned in tlu -0.034*** 0.009 -3.685 0.182 membership in farmer based organizations 0.375 0.270 1.387 0.201 maize farm experience in years 0.060*** 0.017 3.613 0.361 previous year’s maize income -.001** 0.0005 -2.200 0.281 farmers’ perception of risk -0.259 0.292 -0.885 0.309 farmers’ perception of loan repayment period -0.022 0.359 -0.062 0.231 farmers’ perception of lending procedure -0.682** 0.316 -2.158 0.232 farmers’ perception of distance -0.669*** 0.275 -2.430 0.056 constant 0.898 0.785 1.143 no. of observations 170 lr χ2 = 172.25 prob > f = 0.000 pseudo-r2 = 0.289 source: field survey, 2019 note: ***, ** and * indicate statistical significant at 1%, 5% and 10% level of significance respectively the coefficient of livestock ownership exhibits a negative relationship with participation, which is significant at 1% level. this result revealed that if a farmer, owned sufficient livestock he or she is less likely to engage in agricultural credit programme such as the hunger project credit asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 253 programme. livestock is an asset farmer can liquidate during cropping season to purchase inputs, thereby reducing their need for credit. livestock ownership, therefore, tends to reduce the probability of farmers participating in the credit programme by 18%. the coefficient of maize cultivating experience variable is positive and statistically significant at 1% level. over time, farmers may gain experience which might influence their confidence that if they take a loan they would be able to pay back, hence higher tendency to participate in the credit programme. therefore, an additional year of experience has about 36% chance of inducing farmers to take part in a credit programme. the result is consistent with findings of ambali (2013) who argued that farming experience has a positive effect on credit programme participation. the coefficient of the previous year’s income from maize sales is negative and significant at 5% level. this variable has a marginal effect of 0.28021, which implies that when income from maize sales increase by one unit, the probability of credit programme participation would reduce by 28%. this is rational because, with high income, the farmer is not constrained in the purchase of inputs for his/her farming activity and will not participate in a credit programme. this result is consistent with the finding of awunyo-vitor et al. (2014) which revealed that an increase in farmer’s income would reduce farmers need for credit market participation. the coefficient of the variable representing farmers’ perception of the lending procedure exhibits a negative and significant relationship with participation. the estimate is statistically significant at 1% level with a marginal effect of 0.23245. the unrealistic lending procedure is likely to reduce the probability of credit market participation by 23%. cumbersome loan procedure serves as a disincentive for participating in a credit programme as observed by awunyo-vitor et al. (2014) and chauke et al. (2013) in ghana and nigeria respectively. the coefficient of the variable farmers’ perception of the distance between his/her house and the epicentre (loan centre) had a negative and significant relationship with participation in the credit programme. the coefficient is statistically significant at 1% level with a marginal effect of 0.0567. the result indicates that respondents that think the distance between their house and the epicentre is far are about 6% less likely to participate in the credit programme. this result might be that farmers who are far away from the epicentre may incur higher transaction cost in participating in the programme which may serve as a disincentive them. the result is consistent with chauke et al. (2013) and hussien (2007) who acknowledged that farm households are discouraged to participate in credit market when the loan sources are situated further away from their residence. 4.4. impact of the hunger project credit on maize productivity table 6 presents the result of the impact of maize farmers’ access to the hunger project credit on their productivity. the coefficient of fertilizer had a positive sign for both beneficiary and nonbeneficiary farmers and statistically significant at 5% level for participants and 1% level for nonparticipants in the credit programme. this implies that a unit increase in fertilizer use will lead to about 17.21% increase in maize output for the participant and 17.93% for nonparticipants respectively. the implication is that fertilizer use increases maize output for both groups of farmers. the result confirms the findings of okoboi et al. (2012) and obasi et. al. (2013) who concluded that fertilizer increases the productivity of land, which leads to increase output. the coefficient of labour exhibited a positive sign and statistically significant at the 5% level for farmers who participated in credit programme and insignificant for non-participants. an additional unit of labour would lead to 17.72% increase in maize output of this group of farmers. this suggests that labour increase support maize output of only participants. this might be because it is only participants who have enough funds to purchase the required inputs to support the productivity of labour. this result is consistent with the findings of nuryartono et al. (2005). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 254 table 6: results of the second-stage switching regression model of maize productivity variable participants nonparticipants coefficient (standard error) coefficient (standard error) fertilizer 0.172** ( 0.083) 0.179*** ( 0.068) labour 0.177** ( 0.086) 0.432 (0.279) extension visit 0.005 ( 0.011) 0.052 ( 0.038) quantity of seed 0.048* ( 0.151) 0.708*** (0.291) herbicide -0.113** ( 0.055) 0.188* (0.108) farm size 0.742*** (0.141) -1.057 (0.308) constant 5.592*** (0.590) 2.278 (1.492) inverse mill ratio -1.750*** (0.082) -0.553*** (0.078) ρ1, 0.504* (0.300) ρ2 0.156 ( 0.414) no. of observations 170 lr χ2 = 172.25 prob > f = 0.000 pseudo-r2 = 0.289 source: field survey, 2019 note: ***, ** and * indicate statistical significant at 1%, 5% and 10% level of significance respectively seed variable exhibited positive coefficient which is statistically significant at 5% and 1% level for beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries respectively. the results suggest that the use of seed had a significant effect on maize output per hectare for the two groups of farmers. a unit increase in seed usage leads to 4.85% and 70.79% increase in maize output for farmers who accessed credit from the programme and those who did not access credit from the programme respectively. the coefficient of the variable herbicide exhibits a negative and statistically significant at 5% level for participant farmers. the results revealed that a unit increase in herbicide use leads to 11.36% decrease in maize output of participant, which may be attributed to overutilization of the input. the result is consistent with oluwatayo et al. (2008) who found a negative relationship between agrochemical use and farm output. however, the herbicide has a positive sign and statistically significant at 10% level for non-participants. thus, a unit increase in herbicide use leads to an 18.81% increase in maize output of non-participants. the coefficient of farm size has a positive sign and statistically significant at 1% level for participant farmers. this implies that farm size significantly influences the maize output of participant farmers. generally, a hectare increase in farm size of participants would lead to 74.28% increase in maize output per hectare. the result is consistent with the findings of obasi et al. (2013) which reveal that farm size has a significant effect on productivity. the coefficient of the inverse mills ratio which shows the correlation between the credit market participation (probit model) and the productivity equation (productivity equation) of participants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 239-258 255 (ρ1) is positive and statistically significant at the 10% level. however, the coefficient of the inverse mills ratio for non-participants (ρ2) is not statistically significant. the results imply that the models cannot be estimated separately. the result of the study is consistent with boucher and guirkinger (2007), feder et al. (1990), awunyo-vitor et al. (2014) and dong et al. (2012). 4.5. conclusion and recommendations the hunger project credit programme was initiated to provide solutions to the low productivity of maize farmers. the underlying aim was to reduce hunger and poverty by enhancing the productivity of smallholder farmers. the study provides insight into how agricultural credit programme could impact the productivity of smallholder maize farmers, using a two-stage switching regression model. the result of the first stage probit model revealed that gender, age, formal education, livestock ownership farming experience, income from previous year’s maize harvester, farmer’s perception of the lending procedure and income are the factors that significantly influence participation in the hunger project credit programme. the productivity results revealed that all the inputs employed by the project beneficiaries had a significant effect on maize productivity, except the number of extension visit per month. the result further shows that maize farmers who had access to credit had higher productivity, while those who did not benefit from the hunger project credit programme had lower productivity. the productivity differences between the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the hunger project credit programme revealed that non-beneficiary farmers could increase their productivity substantially if they have access to credit. it is therefore concluded that the hunger project credit programme has a positive impact on maize productivity in the kwahu west municipality. besides, access to credit by farmers in the area would positively upscale maize productivity. it is therefore recommended that the hunger project credit programme or similar credit project should design policies to encourage patronage of the programme to ensure more non-participants to join the programme to increase maize output per hectare. it is believed that an increase in access to credit would increase farmer’s access to purchased farm input to increase their productivity. also, efforts should be made by the department of agriculture at the district assembly to improve extension education and more staff should be engaged to increase the frequency of visit to the farmers within the kwahu west municipality. this would consequently improve farmer’s income and their livelihood in the study area. this recommendation is worth considering as it is clear that the anticipated productivity gain is high to discourage farmers who will benefit from the credit programme from investing it elsewhere for higher marginal productivity gain. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adegeye, a. j., & dittoh j. s. 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(2008). determinants of smallholder farmers access to formal credit. a case of metema woreda, north gonder, ethiopia. unpublished master’s thesis. haramaya university, ethiopia. http://www.nyu/classes http://www.worldbank.org/html/cgiar/newsletter/june97/9nigeria.html http://www.acadamia.edu.htm/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 81 application of combined swot and ahp for strategy development: evidence from pottery industry of bangladesh mohammad muzahidul islam a, laizu akter a, a.k.m. kanak pervez b, md. nur nabi c md. momin uddin a zakaria arifin d a department of management studies, patuakhali science and technology university, dumki, bangladesh b department of agronomy and agricultural extension, university of rajshahi, rajshahi, bangladesh c department of finance and banking, patuakhali science and technology university, dumki, bangladesh d department of marketing, patuakhali science and technology university, dumki, bangladesh  muzahidhrm@gmail.com, muzahid@pstu.ac.bd (corresponding author) article history: received: 05-dec-2019 accepted: 10-feb-2020 online available: 12-mar2020 keywords: pottery, swot, ahp, strategy, bangladesh abstract this study aims to explore the appropriate strategies to revive the pottery industry development in bangladesh. the research followed swot-ahp combined method that is based on analytical hierarchy process (ahp) weighting methodology. swot analysis is one of the popular tools for environmental scanning to identify the internal and external environmental factors simultaneously for defining an enterprise’s strategic actions. due to some flaws of swot analysis, this study followed the ahp, which is a multi-criteria decision-making approach. the qualitative data collection consisted of a focus group discussion (fgd) and in-depth interviews. we analyzed quantitative data by the ahp to identify the relative prominence of each swot factor analysis. the results revealed that potters have an innovative capacity. due to the lack of administrative coordination and fierce competition with alternatives products such as plastic, metallic products, they face some difficulties. still reliability in the marketplace is increasing with time. these findings guide to generate useful inference and could be utilized for decision-making and policies formulation in pottery industry. contribution/ originality this research significantly contributes to explore the appropriate strategies to revive the pottery industry development in bangladesh. ahp-swot technique applied in the pottery sector to analysis the industry environment as well as strategy formulation, which would be a reference study to the academic researchers, msmes policy makers and small entrepreneurs. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.81.94 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: mohammad muzahidul islam, laizu akter, a.k.m. kanak pervez, md. nur nabi, md. momin uddin and zakaria arifin (2020). application of combined swot and ahp for strategy development: evidence from pottery industry of bangladesh. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 81-94. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 81-94 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:muzahidhrm@gmail.com mailto:muzahid@pstu.ac.bd http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.81.94 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 81-94 82 1. introduction as pottery is a pro-environmental, reusable and biodegradable product, its demand is increasing and getting popularity day by day to environmental concern customers, policymakers, researcher and eco-entrepreneurs. the pottery industry is one of the significant sectors in bangladesh. msmes (micro, small and medium enterprises) cover about 99% of the total indusial sector in bangladesh (world bank, 2019). for this reason, the core economic development plan in bangladesh is considered focusing on the msme whereas pottery is part of it as a traditional cottage and microenterprises. pottery is the alternative to the plastic, metallic or ceramic etc. habitually pottery products are more frangible than the ceramic and plastic products. pottery products like flower vase, pots, jars, sculpture, toys are very famous in the environment-conscious market as for their artistic value, degradable and environmentally friendly. unfortunately, this sector has constantly been facing new challenges every day, being a threat to the cultural heritage as well as the economy. market demands of pottery products are reduced because of the emergence and availability of alternative products, making it difficult for potters to perform their business. it is high time to take steps to revive the cultural heritage through strategy development to stand against the competitive field. an organization uses swot analysis to analyze the strength, the weakness, the opportunities and the threats of the environment to cope with competition with the current business world. the better performance of an industry depends mostly on well interaction among the strategic factors including both the internal and external environment of an enterprise. pottery industries are disappearing because of modernization and industrialization. besides, competition from the organized sector also affects the business. maximum pottery is located bauphal (palpara) and bakergong (kalashkathi) under barishal division (bbs, 2011). most of the people of these areas are engaged with pottery industry as a traditional profession. they produced various products for decoration and household use. they have been contributing a lot to provide cultural and traditional products in the local community. these also have a distinct demand as an artistic object in urban markets (khan, 2014). pottery is currently a commercial product. bangladeshi pottery products have demands both in the local and overseas market i.e. us, uk, new zealand, spain, italy, denmark, australia, japan, and france (mimi, 2017; islam, 2019;). thus, government interventions to accelerate this industry and export pottery products might boost up rural entrepreneurship in this area. it is comparatively difficult for pottery industries to reach larger markets with lower production and marketing capacity. to explore strength, utilize opportunities, minimize weaknesses and face challenges, it is significant to develop their strategy. analytical hierarchy process (ahp) is a commonly used tool for mitigating the weakness of swot analysis (kurttila et al., 2000). ahp is performed through qualitative and quantitative analysis to make a decision among complex alternatives and prioritize them by the pair comparison matrix by using saaty’s scale. this prioritization helps to make strategic development of pottery in bangladesh. there are many previous types of research comprising the application of ahp in disciplines such as agriculture, tourism, forest planning, social science, women education. however, there is few, relevant research on the application of ahp in the sme sector (ahmad and pirzada, 2014) especially in the pottery industry. the business, which is mainly based on the family tradition, needs an entrepreneurial approach in its development and finding new markets to compete with the substitute product as an organized sector. the objective of this study is to apprehend the best strategy to develop pottery business management through swot (strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, and ahp is used in the amalgamation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 81-94 83 2. literature review nowadays most organizations involved in strategic planning. strategic planning is a way to boost an organization to be more productive by allocating resources in a structured approach to achieve goals (david, 2003). successful strategic management depends on strategic planning. strategic planning consists of analysis (organization, person & task), decisions, and deeds an organization endeavours to develop and adapt to competitive advantages. it commences with vision (figure 1). concept shows the picture of the desired future position of the organization. the next step in the strategic management process begins with a mission. an organization’s mission is its time-consuming purpose which defines both what an organization years after the desired period and what it wants to eliminate to catch the mission. the third step of the strategic management process includes objectives. an organization aspires to reach its concrete goals by setting objectives. the next phase of the strategic management process is environmental scanning which includes the external and internal analysis, also called swot analysis. swot is a tool of situational assessment applied by strategic planners of the project or business organization to evaluate the current status to choose the best alternatives for the future direction (zavadskas et al., 2011). it aims to identify the key internal and external factors seen as essential to achieving the goal (figure 2 and 3). swot gathers and organizes information (see figure 4) concerning the internal and external environment of an organization facing the immediate and near future (osuna and aranda, 2007). figure 1: strategic management process the following figures show internal and external environmental dimensions of environmental analysis at a glance for exploring strategic options. vision mission external analysis objectives internal analysis strategic choice strategy implementation competitive advantage asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 81-94 84 figure 2: strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats matrix in addition, another model of swot analysis is threats, opportunities, weaknesses, and strengths (tows) strategic alternative matrix (see below table) internal strengths (s) internal weaknesses (w) external opportunities (o) so: “maxi-maxi” strategy strategies that use strengths to maximize opportunities wo: “mini-maxi” strategy strategies that minimize weakness by taking advantage of opportunities external threats (t) st: “maxi-mini” strategy strategies that use strengths to minimize threats wt: “mini-mini” strategy strategies that minimize weakness and avoid threats source: weihrich (1982) the ahp is a tool for complex decision making to help the decision-makers to set priorities effectively and make the best decision among the sophisticated alternatives. thomas saaty introduced it in 1980 (saaty, 1994). moreover, it is a useful technique to check the consistency of the decision maker’s appraisement which reduces the bias in the decision-making process in a perplex situation (al-harbi, 2001). ahp accomplishes pair-wise resemblance to find out the relative importance of the variable in each hierarchy level to make the best decision among substitutes (saaty,1990). thomas saaty developed a comparison scale to perform the prioritization mechanism in 1980 to represent the relative importance of the criteria. the value of pair comparison matrices of these factors is used to provide the means for decision making evaluations (triantaphyllou and mann, 1995). it has wide application in many areas like economic (cervellóroyo et al., 2015), social (westhues et al., 2001), and management science (ansary et al., 2009). ahp moulds decision-making problem and exhorts the decision-making process by identifying objectives, criteria, and alternatives, by comparing criteria and alternatives between pairs and defining priorities of alternatives (oreski, 2012). the ahp includes both qualitative and quantitative decision attributes proportionately, and its pliancy concerning the setting of objectives (kurttila et al., 2000). moreover, ahp and swot are the most well-known tool to analysis the environmental factors for exploring strategies formulation in the smes sector. it is also one of the best techniques to policy makers and researchers to the appropriate strategy development of informal and unstructured sector (khatri and metri, 2016). in bangladesh, pottery industry comprises under msmes category. in this context, ahp-swot technique applied in the pottery sector to analysis the industry environment as well as strategy formulation. environment scan internal analysis external analysis strengths weaknesses opportunities threats swot matrix asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 81-94 85 3. combined ahp-swot methodology the limitations of swot analysis to prioritize for future strategy can be overcome by using combined ahp-swot. it was first proposed by kurttila (yavuz and baycan, 2013). the ahp is a commonly used decision-making tool to perform the pair-wise comparison and prioritized them using eigen value analysis (triantaphyllou and mann, 1995). figure 3: combined analytic hierarchy process strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis the combined ahp-swot has wide applications in various sectors. like milk sector (erdil and erbıyık, 2015), manufacturing firm (görener et al., 2012), tourism sector (jeon and kim, 2011) (görener et al., 2012), forest certification (kurttila et al., 2000), management (subramanian and ramanathan, 2012), marketing plan (nganga and maruyama, 2015), education (lee et al., 2013), agriculture (wota and wozniak, 2015). some researchers elaborated swot-ahp by adjoining it with a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process which is called fuzzy ahp-swot or multiple criteria group decision-making (mcgdm) (yavuz and baycan, 2014). the fuzzy ahp-swot provides fuzzy judgment in pair-wise comparisons in lieu of strict judgment with the aim of reflecting a style of human thinking in real-world decisionmaking problems (kahraman et al., 2004). they performed combined ahp-swot analysis by scanning the external and internal environment of an organization. in order to determine the relative importance of swot factors, then the ahp performs pair-wise comparisons among factors (chang and huang, 2006). to ascertain the weight of each swot group, the pair-wise comparison is performed. in the third step, the analytical hierarchy process is applied. finally, they attained the overall factor rank by multiplying the factor’s local weight with the specific group weight (ramadhan et al., 1999). ahp is also useful if many interests are involved and a number of people participate in the decision-making process. ahp is a straightforward and transparent method that is identify goal of the study and generate alternatives swot-ahp alt 1 swot-ahp alt 3 swot-ahp alt 2 develop a decision matrix standardization of matrix elements using desirability function and assignment of weights to alternatives aggregation and ranking of alternative sensitivity analysis results and analysis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 81-94 86 also able to consider subjective and judgmental information (salo et al., 2003). ahp can deal with qualitative as well as quantitative attributes (kamal and alsudairi, 2009). the combined ahpswot is performed through four steps i. the foremost step is to environmental scanning to identify the internal and external issues for strategic planning and creating the hierarchy of criteria and sub-criteria figure 4: swot sub factors through ahp to reach critical factors ii. the second step is to make pair-wise comparisons between the factors to capture the weights according to saaty’s scale (1980). a1 a2 …….an a1 1 x ………y a2 1/x 1 ………z an 1/y 1\z ………1 pair-wise comparison intensity of importance definition 1 equally important 3 moderately more important 5 much more important 7 immensely more important 9 entirely more important 2,4,6,8 interior values source: saaty (1980) iii. in the third step, normalization of each matrix is used to find the relative weights. the relative weights are given by the right eigenvector (lambda max), as: aw = lambda-max × relative weights iv. the final step is to check the consistency level. the calculation of the consistency index (ci): swot analysis strengths weakness threats opportunities s4 s5 s6 s7 w1 w3 w5 w8 w9 o2 o3 o6 o7 t1 t2 t3 t4 critical factors sub-criteria alternatives criteria goal asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 81-94 87 ci = (lambda max-n)/ (n-1) we obtained the random index (ri) is obtained by saaty and forman’s scale (1993) n 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ri 0 0.58 0.90 1.12 1.24 1.32 1.41 1.45 1.51 source: saaty and forman (1993) consistency ratio (cr) = consistency index (ci) /random index (ri) if cr < 10%, then the decision maker pair-wise comparisons are relatively consistent. if cr > 10%, then inconsistency exists in decision maker evaluations. at the last stage, the overall priority vector is calculated by multiplying the factor’s local weights by the specific group weight to find out the priority ranking of swot factors. 4. conceptual framework the following conceptual framework has been illustrated after rigorous literature review which will lead to exploring strategic options for the pottery industry development. scanning business environment identification of considerable strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats making a pair-wise comparison among the factors and sub-factors using geometric mean and normalize obtained figures to get the priority vector calculation of the consistency ratio (cr) of swot criteria and sub-criteria calculation of consistency index (ci) = (lambda max-n/n-1) determination of random index (ri) according to the matrix by using foreman and saaty’s scale calculation of consistency ratio (cr) = ci/ri if cr < 0.01 if cr > 0.01 determine the degree of the global importance of the swot sub-factors, multiplying factor’s weights by the local sub-factor’s priority vectors creating a hierarchy of the swot factors, and defining the most important strategy asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 81-94 88 5. combined ahp-swot in pottery industry selecting appropriate strategies is very important for the pottery industry in the barishal division. here swot analysis in combination with ahp is utilized for the selection of the best strategy for the pottery industry in the barishal division. pre-survey, in-depth interviews and four focus group discussions were performed to identify the internal (strengths, weakness) environment and the external (opportunities, threats) environment of palpara (bauphal) of patuakhali district and kalaskathi (bakergong) of barishal district under barishal division in bangladesh during january april, 2019. in this study, firstly strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the pottery industry in the barishal division were identified and then pair-wise comparisons were determined. in this way, we identified five strength, five weaknesses, four opportunities, and four threats. table 1: swot matrix of the pottery strength weakness opportunities threats s1 = availability of resource s2 = availability of skilled craftsman s3 = innovative capacity s4 = quality of the product s5 = good benefitcost ratio (bcr) comparatively w1 = insufficient technology w2 = poor coordination with the local administration w3 = inadequate marketing promotion w4 = lack of the facility to work in the rainy season w5 = inadequate training facilities o1 = increasing international reputation as eco-product o2 = increasing reliability in the marketplace o3 = increasing government intervention o4 = increasing demand for household and interior decoration’s usage t1 = competition t2 = changing international market t3 = negative perception regarding safety and security t4 = modernization of alternative industry source: field survey, 2019 6. data analysis in this study, we made the pair-wise comparison of the swot groups using saaty’s (1980) scale. the value of comparison tables is shown in the appendix. we performed focus group discussions (fgd) to make all pair-wise comparisons of this analysis. we entered data obtained from focus group discussion in excel to prioritized using the multiple attribute decision making (madm) approach (ahp method). 7. results and discussions in this study, significant strategic forces were ascertained in the pottery industry in the combined swot-ahp method. the swot group priority rank: strengths-44.25%, weakness-16%, opportunities-30%, and challenge-9%. according to this analysis, the most significant factor in the swot group is competition from threat groups. the overall priority vector is 1.98. in kalaskathi and bauphal, most of the family members are leaving countries because of their failure to cope with the competition. in the case of the manufacturing firm (görener et al., 2012) combined ahp-swot also showed that the most significant factors were rising of living standards and modern equipment from the opportunity’s group. in strength’s group, the most important factor is the innovative capacity (0.34) of the potter, and artisans. they have innovative capacity but due to some constraints, this is also going in vain. most of the potters said, they are finding it difficult to afford the cost of clay, coal, labor and other materials. maximum potters have no modern equipment. in bauphal, only a few families have some modern machinery. however, in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 81-94 89 kalaskathi, nobody has any kind of modern equipment. because of these constraints, they cannot apply their innovative capacity in the production process. in the weakness group, poor coordination in administration (0.26) is considerable. in kalaskathi, potters said that the government does not provide any supportive facility to carry out their profession. at the time of shipping their products, they face some problems. in bauphal, at the time of clay collection, local police deter them from collecting clay. they have a negative perception of safety and security about the canal. however, according to the potter of bauphal upazilla, there is no risk to the environment. in the opportunity’s group, the most significant factor is improving reliability in the marketplace (0.29). potters are working their best to enhance reliability in the national and foreign market. based on this intimation potter must adopt substitute plans and select the most desirable strategy according to its demands. the concern authority should restructure the pottery industry i.e. its mission, vision and goal to cope with competition and save them from disappearing. 8. conclusion pottery is one of the primitive sectors in bangladesh. poor and unemployed people are becoming self-dependent (survive driven) through pottery activities in rural bangladesh. potters of the study areas have the innovative capacity, expert artisan but are bound with a lot of difficulties. they are suffering from insufficient technology, modern equipment, and inadequate training facilities. competition from structured organizations hinders them from making a profit. besides, many pottery families are disappearing because of substitute products occupy the market. integrated swot-ahp brought up a structured way and analytical means for pottery resurrection strategic planning. despite many constraints, reliability in the marketplace is increasing day by day because of the pro-environmental and quality products in the industry. the use of ahp-swot has assisted in realizing the idiosyncrasies of pottery industry qualitatively and quantitatively. finally, to revive this sector, the government and private organizations are needed to follow policies guidelines of this research in decision making and policies formulation for the pottery industry development. 8.1. policy implications from the analysis, some policy implications for overcoming the constraints of the pottery industry have been pointed out below  many potters of the study areas are leaving their profession because of inconsistency in their supply-demand coordination and new generations are reluctant to develop their career as a potter. the entrepreneurial opportunities of this industry need to explore and let to know the members of potters families. notably, they face difficulties at the time of collecting clay from the canal. the local administration restricts them because of their anxious about the safety and security of the environment. thus, the local administration should inform them about the appropriate sources and collecting approach of the clay.  many potters suffer from working capital. due to working capital, they cannot expand their business. the government organization such as bscic should provide a special financial assistance for the pottery sector like as the agriculture sector.  many potters said that they do not have a training facility in locally. sometimes it becomes difficult, especially for women to get need-based training from remote places. the concern government organization should arrange regular training programs in the barishal division to train them to make world-class products. besides, bscic, bard, sme foundation bangladesh, pksf and other government and non-government organizations (ngos) such as banglacraft, aarong, caritas, heed bangladesh should provide training facilities to enhance their innovativeness and capability to add value to their existing products or to design new products. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 81-94 90  potters of the study areas said that they do not find any special loan facility. the bank, ngo, and other financial institutions should provide loan support with a small interest rate. this will help them continue and expand their business.  most of the potters use traditional equipment to produce pottery. it is costly and timeconsuming. most of the potters should use modern equipment to increase production rates and improve product quality.  the ict division should provide support such as training on e-business, e-marketing to operate their business in the digital market. it would be an effective approach for entrepreneurs to receive and delivery of the order from the rural area.  export promotion bureau (epb), sme foundation, and local administration should organize product exhibition or trade fair at home and abroad. besides, they can also organize awareness programs highlighting the bad effects of plastics products on environment and motivate people to purchase environmental friendly products such as diversified pottery products. funding: the study received financial support from the research and training centre (rtc), patuakhali science and technology university, bangladesh. competing interests: the authors have no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this research paper. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors contributed equally in the current study. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ahmad, y., & pirzada, d. s. 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(2011). selection of construction enterprises management strategy based on the swot and multi-criteria analysis. archives of civil and mechanical engineering, 11(4), 1063-1082. appendix table 2: the pair-wise comparison of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (swot) groups s w o t s 1 2.71 1.86 4.36 w 0.37 1 0.34 2.45 o 0.54 2.94 1 2.63 t 0.23 0.4 0.38 1 sum 2.14 7.05 3.58 10.44 source: field survey, 2019 table 3: normalized value of swot factors s w o t pv s 0.46 0.38 0.51 0.42 0.4425 w 0.17 0.14 0.09 0.24 0.16 o 0.25 0.42 0.28 0.25 0.3 t 0.1 0.06 0.1 0.1 0.09 source: field survey, 2019 table 4: priority vector of swot factors s w o t pv s 1 2.71 1.86 4.36 0.4425 w 0.37 1 0.34 2.45 0.16 o 0.54 2.94 1 2.63 0.3 t 0.23 0.4 0.38 1 0.09 sum 2.14 7.05 3.58 10.44 sum*pv 0.94 1.13 1.07 0.94 lambda max 4.08 cr 0.03 source: field survey, 2019 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/s164496651260096x?via%3dihub#! asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 81-94 93 table 5: pair-wise comparison of the swot sub criteriastrength s1 s2 s3 s4 s5 pv s1 1 1.57 2.06 3.66 2.91 0.34 s2 0.64 1 2.21 3.31 2.06 0.27 s3 0.49 0.45 1 1.57 3.31 0.176 s4 0.27 0.3 0.64 1 3.66 0.132 s5 0.34 0.49 0.3 0.27 1 0.08 sum 2.74 3.81 6.21 9.81 12.94 sum*pv 0.93 1.03 1.09 1.29 1.04 lambda max 5.38 cr 0.08 source: field survey, 2019 table 6: pair-wise comparisons of the swot sub criteriaweakness w1 w2 w3 w4 w5 pv w1 1 1.32 1.57 0.84 1.11 0.23 w2 0.76 1 2.06 2.06 1.32 0.26 w3 0.64 0.49 1 1.32 0.76 0.15 w4 1.19 0.49 0.76 1 0.64 0.16 w5 0.90 0.76 1.32 1.56 1 0.20 sum 4.49 4.05 6.71 6.78 4.82 1.00 sum*pv 1.02 1.05 1.02 1.06 0.99 lambda-max 5.14 cr 0.03 source: field survey, 2019 table 7: pair-wise comparisons of the swot sub criteriaopportunity o1 o2 o3 o4 pv o1 1.00 0.90 1.46 0.76 0.25 o2 1.11 1.00 1.11 1.86 0.29 o3 0.69 0.90 1.00 2.59 0.28 o4 1.32 0.54 0.39 1.00 0.18 sum 4.11 3.34 3.95 6.21 sum*pv 1.03 0.96 1.09 1.15 lambdamax 4.23 cr 0.09 source: field survey, 2019 table 8: pair-wise comparison of the swot sub criteriathreat t1 t2 t3 t4 pv t1 1.00 3.66 2.06 1.19 1.98 t2 0.27 1.00 0.97 0.71 0.74 t3 0.49 1.03 1.00 1.97 1.12 t4 0.84 1.41 0.51 1.00 0.94 sum 2.60 7.10 4.54 4.86 sum *pv 1.04 1.08 1.09 1.02 lambdamax 4.22 cr 0.08 source: field survey, 2019 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 81-94 94 table 9: overall priority scores strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (swot) analysis swot groupwise priority factors priority vector within the group the overall priority vector rank strengths 0.4425 innovative capacity 0.34 0.15 1 availability of expert artisans 0.27 0.11 2 resources and skills availability 0.176 0.08 3 product quality 0.132 0.05 4 good benefit-cost ratio (bcr) .08 .04 5 weakness 0.16 insufficient technology 0.23 0.037 2 poor coordination in administration 0.26 0.041 1 inadequate marketing promotion 0.15 0.024 5 lack of shed facility to work in the rainy season 0.16 0.026 4 inadequate training facilities 0.20 0.032 3 opportunities 0.3 increasing international reputation 0.25 0.075 3 increasing reliability in marketplace 0.29 0.087 1 increasing government intervention 0.28 0.084 2 increasing demand for household and interior decoration’s usage 0.18 0.054 4 threats 0.09 competition 1.98 0.18 1 changing international market 0.74 0.067 4 negative perception regarding safety and security 1.12 0.10 2 modernization 0.94 0.08 3 source: field survey, 2019 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 146 assessment of produce standardization adopted by the rice farmers in the marketing of their rice produce in ebonyi state, nigeria j. c. mgbanyaa  a. v. ezeb c. c. obioraa a department of agribusiness and management, michael okpara university of agriculture umudike, abia state, nigeria b department of agribusiness management and trade, kenyatta university, nairobi, kenya  jjude1551@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 06-sep-2018 accepted: 21-dec-2018 online available: 07-jan2019 keywords: assessment, produce standardization, rice farmer marketers, ebonyi state, nigeria abstract the study assessed the produce standardization adopted by the rice farmers in the marketing of their rice produce in ebonyi state, nigeria. multistage and random sampling techniques were employed in selecting 120 samples. data were collected using structured questionnaire. data obtained were analysed using descriptive statistics. the result obtained shows that the farmers sort and grade their produce according to: size (33.33%), anomalies (8.33%), shapes and appearance (25%). the result further showed that the packaging materials used by the farmers were: sack (100%), while the unit of measurement standard used by the farmer comprises of: unmeasured 50kg sack (95%) and unmeasured 100kg sack (88.33%). the result from the analysis of the social and economic effects of standard measures adopted by the farmer marketers include: misrepresentation of the product features and pricing (xi = 4.52), misrepresentation of the quantity measurement (xi = 4.05), etc. the ascertained constraints to rice produce standardization in ebonyi state includes: lack of participation of ebonyi state rice farmers in standard setting forums both at national and international level (xi = 2.89). the study strongly recommends that the farmers should use weighing balance during marketing of their sorted and graded rice produce. contribution/ originality this study will help to educate the farmers, ngos, governments, marketers, standard setting organizations the nature of rice standardization adopted by the rice farmer marketers in ebonyi state and also the constraints to rice produce standardization in the study area. it will also guide the use of improved standards in rice produce marketing in particular and agricultural produce at large. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.146.152 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: j. c. mgbanya, a. v. eze and c. c. obiora (2018). assessment of produce standardization adopted by the rice farmers in the marketing of their rice produce in ebonyi state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 146-152. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 146-152 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:jjude1551@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.146.152 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9054-8453 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6976-2287 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 146-152 147 1. introduction in nigeria, empirical studies have reported that ebonyi state is known to be farming rice on 81,000 hectares out of 1,788,200 hectares of national rice cultivatable land (national bureau of statistics, 2011). in addition, ebonyi state is ranked the third largest producers of rice (244,160mt) after taraba and benue state (national agricultural extension and research liaising services and project coordinating unit, 2006). pertinently, rice farming and marketing contributes significantly in ensuring food security, poverty alleviation, employment and growth in gross domestic product (gdp) of nigeria (international rice research institute, 2016). however, one of the essences of rice production is to distribute the produce to the marketers due to the fact that rice is one of the utmost essential foods consumed in nigeria. this is further confirmed by onoja and herbert (2012) study which reported that 50% of the world population is wholly dependent on rice as a staple food. this produce is to be marketed according to a set standard in regard to the uniform sorting, grading, measurement, presentation and packaging. though, standards are refer to as documents, established by consensus and approve by a recognized body that provide, for common and repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for produce/products or related process and production methods (margret and dovis, 2007). likewise, product standardization is refers to as uniform representations of all aspects of the product such as the quality, the materials been used, product name and packaging for all markets, regardless of location around the world (doole and lowe, 2008). according to john (2002) standardized commodities makes possible lower cost of production, processing and marketing, then places some restriction on consumer choice. this is why the codex alimentarius commission (cac) stated that only standardized commodities are suitable for being traded on the forward and future market (margret and dovis, 2007). united nations conference on trade and development (unctad) (2007) stated that in order to harmonize standards and coordinate joint efforts by public and private bodies, the codex alimentarius commission (cac) of the united nation should be taken as the main reference and common basis for food standards. despite the important of product standardization, the standards organization of nigeria (son) in collaboration with other stakeholders are yet to set a policy concerning the use of standards in the marketing of rice commodity in the market place. meanwhile, ayinde et al. (2009) posited that increase in farm output has not led to a corresponding increase in the earnings of the vast majority of farmers. one of the factors emphasized as being responsible is due to standard inefficiency, huge importation, and high rate of spoilage and lack of storage facilities. therefore, since the prospect for marketing rice produce in ebonyi state is enormous, there is need to assess the following specific objectives; identify the produce standardization adopted by the rice farmers in the marketing of their rice produce; ascertain the social and economic effects of standards adopted in the marketing of rice, and ascertain the constraints to the standardization of rice produce marketing in the study area. 2. methodology the study was conducted in ebonyi state in south eastern part of nigeria. the state is situated between latitudes 5o401 and 6o541n and longitudes 7o301 and 8o301e. statistic from 2006 census indicates that the area has a total population of2, 176, 947 people, with a growth rate of 3.5% per annum (national bureau of statistics, 2011). the area which is predominantly agrarian has the major staple food crops grown as yam, cassava, cocoyam, potatoes, rice, groundnut, maize, and vegetables. the study adopted multistage and random sampling techniques. three (3) local government areas were randomly selected from the three zones of the state. in the second stage, two (2) communities were randomly selected from the three local government areas there by making it six (6) communities. in the third stage, two villages were randomly selected from the six asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 146-152 148 communities, thereby making a total of 12 villages. in the fourth stage, ten (10) rice farmers were randomly selected from the two villages to give a total sample size of 120 for the study. data were collected from the sampled rice farmers using structured questionnaire. descriptive statistical tool such as frequency, percentage and likert scale were used to analyse the data obtained from the study. the model for the mean score analysis is represented as; 𝑋𝑖 = ∑ 𝑋𝑖 𝑛 𝑗=1 𝑁𝑖 𝑁𝑟 ………………….. (1) where xi = mean score ∑ = summation xj = likert value nj = number of respondents that choose that likert value (frequency that selected the same likert value) nr= total number of respondents. 2.1. decision rule accept for mean score >3.0 and >2.5 otherwise reject; for five and four point likert scale rating respectively. 2.2. justification for 5-point likert scale, if the scale range is 1= strongly disagree, 2= disagree, 3= somehow agree, 4= agree and 5= strongly agree, then 1+2+3+4+5 = 15, therefore the mean of the 5 point scale will be the total sum of the scale range which is 15 divided by the likert scale point which is 5. this will give 15/5 = 3, 3 becomes the average score and point of decision rule. therefore any mean score of each factor that is greater than or equal to 3 shows that the respondents somehow agrees or agrees or strongly agree that the factor has effect and vice versa. moreover, for 4-point likert scale, if the scale range is 1= strongly disagree, 2= disagree, 3= agree and 4= strongly agree, then 1+2+3+4 = 10, therefore the mean of the 4 point scale will be the total sum of the scale range which is 10 divided by the likert scale point which is 4. this will give 10/4 = 2.5, 2.5 becomes the average score and point of decision rule. therefore any mean score of each factor that is greater than or equal to 2.5 shows that the respondents agrees or strongly agree that the factor has effect and vice versa. 3. results and discussion 3.1. produce standardization adopted in the marketing of rice produce by the rice farmers the result in table 1 shows the criteria selected in identifying the produce standardization adopted by the rice farmers in marketing their produce: sorting and grading, packaging and unit of measurement. table 1: frequency distribution of produce standardization adopted in the marketing of rice produce by the rice farmers produce standardization adopted frequency (n = 120) percentage (%) sorting and grading size 40 33.33 anomalies 10 8.33 shapes and appearance 30 25 colour 52 43.33 maturity 90 75 variety/taste 45 37.5 packaging asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 146-152 149 sack 120 100 units of measurement kilogram 32 26.7 unmeasured 50kg sack 114 95 unmeasured 100kg sack 106 88.33 field survey, 2016 the result showed that the sorting and grading standards adopted by the farmers in marketing their rice produce include: size (33.33%), anomalies (8.33 %), shapes and appearance (25%), colour (43.33%), maturity (75%), variety/taste (37.5%). the result further showed that the packaging materials used by the farmers were: sack (100%), while the unit of measurement standard used by the farmer comprises of: kilogram (26.7%), unmeasured 50kg sack (95%) and unmeasured 100kg sack (88.33%). this implies that among the product standards criteria adopted by the rice farmers in the marketing of their produce; greater percentage of rice farmers sort and grade their produce according to maturity. few farmers take cognizance of sorting their produce according to size, colour, shapes and varieties/taste, thereby showing that greater percentage of rice farmers sale their produce without sorting and grading. the result also implies that the entire farmers package their rice produce with sack before selling, and more percentage do not weigh the rice produce with weighing scale before selling. this is why omotesho et al. (1995) reported that there are various units of measurements of grain available in the markets and that the unit of measurement not only varies from market to market but from marketer to marketer. they also cited adekanye who observe that there were no standardized measures of quality and quantity in nigeria food stuff markets. 3.2. social and economic effects of produce standards adopted in the marketing of rice table 2 shows the result of the analysis of social and economic effects of measures adopted in the marketing of rice by the rice farmers. table 2: mean score analysis on social and economic effects of produce standards adopted in the marketing of rice effects of measures adopted mean score decision social misrepresenting the product features and pricing 4.52 accepted high pressure selling 3.89 accepted poor product quality 4.39 accepted poor service 4.11 accepted economic low pricing 4.23 accepted high selling powers 2.19 rejected low choice preferences 4.03 accepted misrepresentation of the quantity measurement 4.05 accepted poor packaging and presentation 4.4 accepted free market entry with any quality of rice produce at the domestic market 3.79 accepted low in technology progress 2.85 rejected no or little improvement on domestic standards 3.79 accepted no improvement on domestic storage facilities 3.98 accepted source: field survey, 2016 decision rule: accept for mean score >3.0 otherwise reject asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 146-152 150 the result as presented in table 2 indicates that the produce standard measures adopted by the rice farmers in the marketing of rice produce have both social and economic implication on rice marketing. from the result, it was perceived that the social effects of the adopted standards have led to misrepresenting the product features and pricing (xi = 4.52), high pressure selling (xi = 3.89), poor product quality (xi = 4.39) and poor service (xi = 4.11). the result further shows that the economic effects of the adopted standards have resulted to low pricing (xi = 4.23), low choice preference (xi = 4.03), misrepresentation of the measuring instruments (xi = 4.05), free market entry with any quality of commodities at the domestic market (xi = 3.79), no or little improvement on domestic standards (xi = 3.79) and no improvement on domestic storage facilities (xi = 3.98). this result is in line with kotler and armstrong (2013) who stated that on the social criticism of marketing; consumer advocates, government agencies, other critics have accused marketing of harming customers socially through, deceptive practices, high pressure selling, unsafe products, planned obsolescence and poor service to disadvantaged consumers. they also stated that nations vary greatly in their levels and distribution of income, thereby some developing economies also practice subsistence economies; consuming most of their own agricultural output and offering few to market opportunity. likewise this result conforms to the findings of yisa (2009) who stated that most of the measures adopted in the markets are susceptible to manipulation to change in volume, in an attempt to take advantage of the buyers, this is why quantities vary within markets, across markets and from time in the market place as he further stated. 3.3. constraints to rice produce standardization among rice farmers mean score analysis was used to analyse the constraints needed to be mitigated by institutions that facilitates the standardization of agricultural commodities which is presented in table 3. table 3: mean score analysis on the constraints to rice produce standardization among rice farmers institution constraints mean score decision political and social institution lack of participation of ebonyi state rice farmers in all standard setting forums both at national and international level 2.89 accepted lack of policy framework that contain the uniform standards and grading practice for rice produce marketing in ebonyi state 2.9 accepted poor implementation of trading policies that ban importation of processed rice produce 3.11 accepted no restriction to the use of non-uniform standards and grading practices during marketing of rice produce 3.01 accepted inadequacy of infrastructural facilities that supports development of standards and grading practices for rice produce 2.87 accepted financial and economic institution absence of bank funding to produce standards 3.32 accepted high cost of compliance to a develop standards for small and medium sized enterprise 2.48 rejected lack of adoption of uniform standardization and grading practices 3.56 accepted inadequate promotion and sustaining of marketing corporation by nigeria fiscal, trade and monetary policy 2.63 accepted sources: field survey, 2016 decision rule: accept for mean score ≥ 2.5 otherwise reject asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 146-152 151 the result shows that the constraints to rice produce standardization were cause by inadequacy in these major institutions which were: political and social institutions and the financial and economic institutions. the inadequacy in political and social institution had led to: lack of participation of ebonyi state rice farmers in standard setting forums both at national and international level (xi = 2.89), lack of policy framework that contain the uniform standards and grading practice for rice produce marketing in ebonyi state (xi = 2.90), poor implementation of trading policies that ban importation of foreign rice (xi = 3.11), no restriction to the use of nonuniform standards and grading practices during marketing of rice produce (xi = 3.01),lack of infrastructural facilities that supports development of standards and grading practices for rice produce (xi = 2.87), while the meagerness in financial and economic institutions has resulted to: absence of bank funding and participation in developing produce standards (xi = 3.32), lack of adoption of uniform standardization and grading practices. (xi = 3.56), and inadequate promotion and sustaining of marketing corporation by nigeria fiscal, trade and monetary policy (xi = 2.63). importantly, high cost of compliance to a develop standards for small and medium sized enterprise (xi = 2.48) was rejected. this result conforms to the following findings; policy instability is a major constraint to sustainable agricultural development in nigeria (idachaba, 2000). marketing corporations are established to coordinate the production, investments, grades and standards, market price stabilization for all value chain in nigeria in order to facilitate marketing (akinwumi, 2012). for kenya to participate actively in the international standard organisation which gives access to world markets, in turn, contributes to economic growth, the following constraints need to be addressed; active participation in all standard setting forums, because the inability of african countries to participate in these meetings has turned most of the african nations into standard takers (amwayi, 2009). he further opined that financial constraints coupled with limited capacity to provide credible information based on research needed to be articulated and the cost of compliance to this standards are high to be fully practiced by small and medium sized enterprise without help from financial and government policy. in addition, jairath (2009) reported that lack of support infrastructures, lack of adoption of standardization and grading practices while selling agricultural commodities, unorganized physical market, lack of awareness and information dissemination, absence of bank participation in commodity markets, etc are the major constraints faced by various commodity stakeholders in standardizing commodity in india. the rejection of the high cost of compliance (xi = 2.48) to a develop standards for small and medium sized enterprise entails that when other constraints are controlled, high cost of compliance to a develop standards for small and medium sized enterprise will be minimized. 4. conclusion and recommendations the outcome of this study; assessment of produce standardization adopted by the rice farmers in the marketing of their rice produce in ebonyi state nigeria, revealed that the produce standardization adopted by the greater percentage of the rice farmer marketers include sorting and grading according to maturity, and packaging with sack bag without measuring with standard instrument to reflect the true weight. however the low percentage adoption of all forms of produce standardization by the marketers has resulted to some social and economic effects. moreover, political, social, and economic institutions are the institutional factors that constrain farmer marketers from standardizing rice produce in the study area. therefore the study strongly recommend that the standard organization of nigeria (son) should design produce standards, train the farmers through the service providers on how to apply the standards in the marketing of their produce. the son should also engage in restricting rice farmers from marketing non-standardize produce. the private firms in collaboration with government should encourage importation of sorting and grading machines. the farmer marketers should adopt the use of weighing balance in measuring their rice produce. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 146-152 152 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: first author designed the study, collected and arrange data, performed the statistical analysis and wrote the first draft of the study. second author managed the analyses; third author participated in data collection and result discussion. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. reference akinwumi, a. 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https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=cassava+marketing%3a+option+for+sustainable+agricultural+development+in+nigeria.+&btng= effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 164 determinants of farmers’ intention of applying new technology in production: the case of vietgap standard adoption in vietnam luong tinh a, phan tran minh hung b, doan gia dzung c, vo hoang diem trinh d a institute of social sciences of central region, vietnam academy of social sciences, vietnam b university of economicsda nang university, vietnam c duy tan university, vietnam d university of economics the university of danang, vietnam  luonghatinh@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 13-jun-2019 accepted: 21-aug-2019 online available: 10-sep2019 keywords: vietgap, farmers, vegetable production, technological application abstract the purpose of this paper is to identify the determinants of farmers’ intention of applying new technology with the case of vietgap standard application in vegetable production in a developing country such as vietnam. using the survey data of agricultural workers in a framework of revised technology acceptance model, the analysis finds that farmers’ intention to apply or continue applying vietgap is driven by factors such as mutual communication, awareness of benefits, environment, behavioral control, and governmental support based on authorities’ policies and risk awareness. unlike other studies, this paper illustrates that awareness of the brand name related risk and producers’ health benefits have statistically significant impacts on farmers’ intentions. contribution/ originality the key novelty of this study is to identify the determinants of the intention of vietgap acceptance in the case of vietnam in general and those of quangnam and danang in particular. the determinants of the intention of vietgap adoption stem from motivational, psychological, and perceptive factors. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.164.178 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: luong tinh, phan tran minh hung, doan gia dzung and vo hoang diem trinh (2019). determinants of farmers’ intention of applying new technology in production: the case of vietgap standard adoption in vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 164-178. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 164-178 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:luonghatinh@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.164.178 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 165 1. introduction a growing body of literature has highlighted important roles of adoption of technological innovation in the agricultural sector. the implementation of technological innovation in the agricultural sector has had the attention of many scholars from different fields since bernoulli’s (1954) utility theory on the comparison of the benefits and risks of farmers when deciding to apply innovation. subsequently, the approach from the psychological and behavioral perspectives of households such as the diffusion of innovations (rogers, 1962) and the planned behavior theory (ajzen, 1991) appeared to establish a comprehensively theoretical framework on the technological application in the agrarian sector. existing empirical evidence also demonstrates the probability of applying these theories in reality. nevertheless, no high consensus is documented in the determinants of adoption of technological innovation. approaches to psychological perspectives reveal that attitudes, social norms, and behavioral awareness are the most important determinants of the intention of acceptance of technological innovation (borges et al., 2014; wauters and mathijs, 2013). making decisions is also dominated by farmers' perception of the benefits and risks of innovation (according to the utility theory), hence economic risks play an essential role (ghadim et al., 2005). the implementation of technological innovation in the agricultural sector is not impacted just by psychological characteristics, but also by economic conditions, social, and cultural factors. lynne et al. (1995) and bergevoet et al. (2004) document that economic conditions are not enough to account for complicated decisions typically driven by the combination of economic and other factors. almost all theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence incline toward explaining the behavior of the application of technological innovation through a particular industry's perspective (pannell et al., 2006). on one hand green vegetables are considered to be one of the most vital components in family meals. their role is even more important when individuals are increasingly inclined to follow a very strict diet in vietnam. on the other hand the supply of safe vegetables has confronted immensely huge challenges. therefore vietgap, the aseangap including rules, methods, and processes of agricultural practices valuable for vegetables and fruit in vietnam have had novel contributions to the safe vegetable industry in vietnam. although vietgap has just been implemented in places such as thuathienhue, bacgiang, and hanoi, it has brought highly economic efficiency (hoang, 2018; vu et al., 2016). however, the production of green vegetables under vietgap standards has not been expanded in recent years because of supply and demand restrictions. effects on supply include farmers’ limited awareness of the benefits of vietgap products (vu et al., 2016); lack of production capital; dispersed and fragmented production land (mensah et al., 2017; hoang, 2018). shortage of planning and orienting of local authorities to form specialized production areas of green vegetables on a large scale represents one of the main reasons for these restrictions (vu et al., 2016; hoang, 2018). restrictions on demand contain shortage of market demand for vietgap certified vegetables, risks related to breaking informal institutions between farmers and preferred collectors, and lack of capability in the key value chain (hoang, 2018). the restrictions and success of vietgap have sparked substantial interest in the determinants of the application of the technological innovation. therefore mixed theoretical predictions and at least partly ambiguous empirical findings motivate us to revisit the question of whether the adoption of technological innovation will be driven by which factors in the case of vietgap in the context of an agricultural country like vietnam. to the best of our knowledge we are the first to comprehensively examine the determinants of the intention of vietgap adoption in vietnam in general and in quangnam and danang in particular. therefore the contribution of our study is twofold. the biggest novelty of our study is to identify the determinants of the intention of acceptance of vietgap in vietnam and in particular asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 166 quangnam and danang. the determinants of the intention of adoption of vietgap stem from motivational, psychological, and perceptive factors. all conclusions are withdrawn from the qualitative and quantitative methods, hence the second novelty of our study lies in the combination of the qualitative and quantitative methods. many new determinants of the intention of vietgap application will be discovered from the quantitative method. the quantitative method is employed to verify the determinants of the adoption of vietgap in the context of vietnam. for these purposes the paper proceeds as follows: section 2 presents a brief review of the literature and empirical evidence; section 3 discusses methodologies; section 4 contains the results and discussion; and section 5 draws policy implications and the conclusion. 2. literature review earlier theoretical frameworks and existing empirical evidence on the application of technological innovations to the agricultural sector are considered in the following three approaches: the analysis based on bernoulli's (1954) expected utility theory (eut) documents that comparing innovative and traditional technology is immensely necessary for farmers to choose better innovative technology. the selection of technology depends on expecting utilities. although a high consensus is documented in the empirical literature, there are still many unresolved issues. for example, batz et al. (1999) report that the intention to ask for new technology is influenced by the complexity of the techniques and related risk. however, the empirical evidence on the decision of innovative improvement of producers based on the eut theory is only influenced by the perception of maximizing expected benefits without considering the role of psychosocial factors as well as social pressure on farmers when deciding to apply the innovations. the analysis is based mainly on the theory of reasoned action (tra), the theory of planned behavior (tpb), and the innovation diffusion theory (idt). läpple and kelley (2013); wauters and mathijs (2013); bijttebier et al. (2014); and terano et al. (2015) reveal that farmers’ decision making is driven by social psychology. bergevoet et al. (2004) indicate that economic factors are not sufficient to explain producers’ complicated decisions which are often governed by both economic and other objectives. the framework also shows that farmers aware of the environmental issues are more likely to apply organic farming practices. the significant impact of subjective norms is mentioned in their analysis as strong evidence of the existence of social barriers. overall the tpb theory proves useful in explaining farmers' decisions by identifying key factors. however, earlier discussions on tpb do not consider the role of information gathering from friends, media, or extension workers. the diffusion theory has explored the important role of communication in explaining farmers' intention of technological innovations. gebremariam (2001) points out that the frequency of interaction between farmers and extension workers positively influences the decision of applying new technologies by corn and wheat producers in tigray and ethiopia. popular theories are applied in this framework to consider the application based on socio-economic factors without mentioning motives, values, attitudes, and to explain farmers’ intentions. in order to solve this problem jackson et al. (2006) combine three theories idt, tra, and tpb to point out that motivation, values, and attitudes are key elements in the decision making process of farmers. however, the biggest limitation is too focused on motivation and value to explain the decision of applying improvements without the existence of risk perception. borges et al. (2015) recently examined farmers' implementation of technological innovation by a combination of expectancy theory and social psychology. beliefs, awareness of the innovative characteristics, intentions, attitudes, subjective standards, behavioral awareness, goals, objectives, background elements including the characteristics of farmers, households, farms, the context of the farming, and the process of receiving information are the important determinants of adoption of technological innovation in the model. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 167 factors indirectly influencing the acceptance of technological innovation are also documented. therefore many studies focus on socio-economic characteristics such as education level, age, farm size, land ownership, and accessible credit to investigate the behavior of implementing technological innovation in the agricultural sector (läpple and kelley, 2013; lynne et al., 1995). a negligible effect of gender on the decision to adopt technological advances is documented in the application of hybrid maize technology in ghana (doss and morris, 2000). the decisions to apply innovations in agriculture are due to the importance of education to increase accessibility to information. those with good access to information adopt positive attitudes to applying innovations in agriculture. fadare et al. (2014) indicate that farmers’ education level has a positive impact on behavior to apply advanced maize production processes in nigeria. weir and knight (2000) show that the impact of education is positive, but farmers educated in their families are less likely to receive and implement agricultural initiatives compared to formally trained farmers. ghadim and pannell (1999) document that social and demographic characteristics such as age, experience, gender, and education influence decisions to apply innovations via subjective perceptions or farmers’ attitudes. however, it can be expected to have an indirect effect on farmers' perceptions and beliefs. overall, although empirical evidence has shown the determinants of adoption of technological innovation in the agricultural sector, it has not considered whether factors such as risk perception of the brand and awareness of producers’ health affected their decisions. we therefore attempt to fill this gap in the literature by studying whether factors such as risk perception of the brand and awareness of producers’ health are the determinants of the intention of vietgap adoption through in-depth interviews of farmers. 3. hypotheses development and methodology 3.1. hypotheses development based on the theoretical framework and the existing empirical findings on the application of technological innovation and the context of vietnamese agricultural sector, six hypotheses will be tested in this study. according to the diffusion theory of rogers (2010), communication is an important determinant in explaining farmers’ the intention of technological innovation implementation because of the vital role of communication in exchange for information. makokha et al. (1999) relates to the diffusion theory in order to confirm that farmers’ characteristics such as the participation of argument and training, exchanging at forums and the role of leaders play an unimportant role in farmers’ acceptance of technological innovation. in the meanwhile, frequent interactions between farmers and extension officers have a positive contribution to the application of new technologies. for example, this effect is found by gebremariam (2001) in the case of corn and wheat in tigray, ethiopia. h1: communication is positively associated with the intention of vietgap implementation. bernoulli (1954) expected utility theory (eut) indicates that farmers will compare innovative and traditional technique and will apply innovations if technologies’ expected utility outweighs than that of traditional technologies. the existing empirical evidence has also applied the theory such as sarker et al. (2009); dill et al. (2015). in the case of vietgap, certainly, the application of vietgap obtains benefits such as the decrease of pests because of high quality seed, stable production, the increase of effectiveness because of the decreased cost of income and the high price of outcome. h2: the awareness of benefits is positively related to the intention of vietgap acceptance. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 168 bergevoet et al. (2004) document that farmers who have the realization of environment or attention to the environment intend to choose organic farming practices. furthermore, sarker et al. (2009) indicate that the recognition of the impacts of technologies provides customers with safe products and improves environmental concerns. in the context of vietnam, vietnam is an agricultural country, although the improvement of technologies in producing has updated continually in recent time, the agricultural system also causes negative effects on the environment such as overusing of pesticides, low quality seed, outdated machines. the market is overwhelmed by “dirty” vegetables that have negative contributions to the environment and consumers’ health. moreover, vietgap’s strict regulations on seed and pesticides, pests have positive contributions on the decrease of air pollution, leading to a stable ecological environment. therefore, the application of technological innovations such as vietgap is encouraged because of producing environmentally friendly vegetables without negative effects on the environment and both consumers’ and producers’ health. h3: the awareness of the environment is positively correlated to the intention of vietgap application. ghadim et al. (2005); wubeneh and sanders (2006) document that the awareness of technical, weather and pests risks is related to the acceptance of new technologies. furthermore, the difference in outcome prices between vietgap-certified vegetables and other vegetables on the market is not significant. however, persuading consumers to utilize vietgap-certified vegetables is a tough task, although vietgap vegetables in quangnam and danang are large brand names. in other words, vietgap-certified vegetables are rarely accepted by consumers because they are afraid of paying a steep price for other vegetables camouflaged by vietgap vegetables. h4: the awareness of risks is negatively correlated to the intention of vietgap application. subjective norms are a set of viewpoints on social norms that influence on selves when behavior is conducted or not. fishbein and ajzen (1975); borges et al. (2014) document that subjective normrelated factors include family, friends, neighbors, suppliers, worker of suppliers, extension centers, local government. these important objectives operate as the channels of disseminating information. more especially, those who are closely related to farmers such as family members will create favorable conditions in order to apply the innovative natural fields of grass. in the meanwhile, bergevoet et al. (2004) find that the significant impact of subjective norms is the strong evidence for the existence of social barriers. in agricultural locations such as quangnam and danang, farmers incline to modify their behavior based on their family members, friends, and relatives. h5: the intention of vietgap adoption is positively correlated to subjective norms. the planned behavior theory reveals that not all behavior is driven by the control of intelligence. behavior could last on different levels from total controllable to uncontrollable behavior. in fact, when farmers recognize resources and opportunities, they will incline to adopt vietgap program. h6: the behavior of vietgap application is positively associated with the awareness of behavioral control. 3.2. methodology and data 3.2.1. research model following borges et al. (2015), we propose a specification for the determinants of the intention on applying vietgap standards of farmers in the context of vietnam, in which our expectation is that intentions, communication, risk awareness, environmental awareness, social influence or asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 169 subjective norms, behavioural controls have a direct influence. in the meanwhile, some background factors such as sex, experience and education are expected to influence indirectly the farmers' intention on applying technological innovation (abadi and pannell, 1999). detailed concept and scale of the model are as follows: intention (qd) application indicates the intention to apply vietgap in vegetable production of farmers in the next season. this scale has 05 questions and has been studied by wauters et al. (2017); borges et al. (2014). communication (gt) demonstrates the ability of farmers’ active communication. the scale is indicated by the farmer's assessment of 3 questions which are used by gebremariam (2001). the method is built on roger's diffusion of innovation theory (1962), which is further confirmed by ayinde et al. (2010); dill et al. (2015). risk awareness (ntr) documents farmers’ perception of risks when deciding on applying technology innovation. this scale is built on sambodo (2007) which has been tested by scholars such as ghadim et al. (2005); wubeneh and sanders (2006). environmental awareness (nta) represents the farmers' perception of the impact of applying technology innovation in agriculture on the environmental issues. this scale has 02 questions developed by sarker et al. (2009). subjective norms (dm) indicate the impact of important and close people such as family members, friends that can affect the decision making. this scale is investigated by sambodo (2007); borges et al. (2014). behavioural control (ks) is employed to assess farmers’ selves on how difficult or easy it is to perform this behaviour. the measurement was developed by sambodo (2007); borges et al. (2014). table 1: scale of factors influencing the intention on technological innovation adoption factors symbol observation variables communication gt gt1 i frequently obtain the information on agriculture through media gt2 i frequently exchange on vietgap programme with extension officers gt3 i exchange on vietgap with my friends (in coffee shops) the awareness of benefits ntl ntl1 the implementation of vietgap enhances income ntl2 the adoption of vietgap standard helps obtaining higher outcomes ntl3 overall, the application of vietgap standard brings more benefits the awareness of risk ntr ntr1 traders take advantage the brand name of vietgap to trade ntr2 the implementation of vietgap is risky to decreasing of outcomes ntr3 the price of income is unstable ntr4 bad weather is difficult to adopt vietgap standard the awareness of environment nta nta1 producers’ health will improved when applying vietgap nta2 the adoption of vietgap generates safe products to customers nta3 environment will be improved by the acceptance of vietgap standard nta4 overall, the improvement of environment is a contribution of the application of vietgap asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 170 the awareness of supply and demand ntc ntc1 my vietgap-certified products are enough to supply to market ntc2 customers knew vietgap-certified products ntc3 customers used vietgap-certified products subjective norm dm dm1 my spouses think that should adopt vietgap in the future dm2 my parents think that should apply vietgap in the future dm3 my children think that should implement vietgap in the future dm4 co-operative chairs think that i should adopt vietgap programme in the future dm5 extension workers think that should apply vietgap standard in the future dm6 the head of village think that should implement vietgap in the future dm7 the association of framers think that should adopt vietgap standard in the future dm8 almost all farmers will implement vietgap program in the future dm9 those who important to me suggest that i should adopt vietgap standard in the future behavioral control ks ks1 if i adopt vietgap program, i will be affordable to capital ks2 my land is enough to apply vietgap standard ks3 i will follow other farmers’ method if i implement vietgap ks4 if i implement vietgap program, post-harvest preservation will be not problematic to me in the future ks5 the growth of vietgap-certified products is more important than others ks6 if i implement vietgap, infrastructure will be appropriate ks7 if i implement vietgap standard, the full of experience will be enough ks8 if i implement vietgap, my knowledge will be sufficient ks9 if i implement vietgap standard, the cost of application will be not large ks10 the implementation of vietgap program is not beyond my ability intention qd qd1 i will continue to implement vietgap standard in the next time qd2 i will introduce vietgap to others in the future qd3 i intend to adopt vietgap standard in the future qd4 i plan to apply vietgap program in the future qd5 i decided to adopt vietgap standard in the future qd6 overall, i am willing to support the application of vietgap besides these scales employed above, we suspect that some other scales can be used as the determinants of the intention on vietgap standard application to vegetable production in quangnam and danang that have not been studied in the past as follow: the first measurement is a risk awareness concept. traders take advantage of vietgap brand name to trade. although there is no official publication using this scale, the results from the indepth interviews of households in hungmy and bautron villages are documented as follows: “almost all supermarkets have 3 sources of vegetables: truongxuan vegetables, dalat vegetables and hungmy vegetables. when being checked the source, they only display my goods but only one-third goods are provided by farmers, consistent with vietgap standard. they require many asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 171 things such as brand, package, then they pushed up my prices and they only buy little for the purpose of display when being checked”….[a 39-year-old woman, hungmy village]. this scale is also consistent with pavlou (2003) who classified risks into financial risk, seller risk, and privacy risk. the second measure, the application of vietgap standard is to improve the health of producers, is in environmental awareness concept. the scale is based on in-depth interviews from farmers: “my family is a traditional vegetable grower from my father until now in the traditional manner, but now with vietgap standard, my family uses composted fertilizers and uses non-prohibited pesticides. compared to the past, the number of fertilizers and pesticides also is used limitedly. in general, following the new production process, the farmers can obtain a great benefit. besides reducing the number of insecticides, our health is less affected and productivity is increased [a 48year-old man, hungmy village]. the scale is also consistent with the findings of batz et al. (1999) that farmers will compare innovative and traditional technique and will apply innovations if technologies’ expected utility outweighs than that of traditional technologies. the third measure, there are enough supply sources on vietgap vegetables to market. consumers have known about vietgap-certified products and have used these to apply vietgap standard of the concept of cognitive metric. although there is no official publication using this scale, the above scale is indicated in the results of in-depth interviews with farmers in la huong and bau tron as follows: “consumers know plenty of dirty vegetables but the media also rarely shows about vietgap vegetables. while only farmers pay attention to finding ways of producing more safe vegetables. in my opinion, there are currently a few producers of vietgap vegetables. perhaps, in quangnam, there are only 4 places of production” [a 44-year-old man, hungmy village]. “they do not believe for private reasons because television programs demonstrate about careless production of spraying pesticides that they do not believe it is true. do not think that cleaning vegetables are not injected anything? it is not true, because the spraying of pesticides must be isolated. more specifically, the spraying of pesticides is prior to a few days before harvesting. however, when they know about spraying drugs, they do not dare to eat” [a 44-year-old man, hungmy village]. these scales are also consistent with the theory of supply-demand. during the period of observation and interview, farmers reveal that the adoption of vietgap standards in vegetable production did not take much time, money and the application of vietgap was not difficult. thus, after discussing, the scales are removed, namely, the risks involving a cost of time, money and technique. the application of technology in agriculture has been studied in different countries but complexity level in the perceptions, attitudes and socio-economic conditions in other countries is also very different from vietnam in general and quangnam and danang in particular. therefore, the qualitative approach is appropriate for describing and understanding perceptions and decisions of farmers. next, quantitative methods (sem) are employed to test and measure factors influencing the decision on applying vietgap standards in vegetable production of farmers in quangnam and danang. 3.2.2. research methodologies the intention of technological innovation adoption in the production of safe vegetables is difficult and complicated tasks. in the meanwhile, no study is conducted comprehensively in vietnam in general and quangnam and danang in particular on the intention of vietgap adoption. furthermore, the existing empirical evidence indicates that the determinants of the intention of technological innovation application is different across locations as well as fields. certainly, the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 172 determinants of the intention of vietgap adoption will be different from other locations as well as fields because of vietnamese agriculture characteristics. thus, each quantitative or qualitative method could not deal with all concerns comprehensively. more specifically, if we only use the qualitative method, we will not discover new determinants of the intention of vietgap adoption. otherwise, if we only take advantage of the quantitative method, new findings will not explain farmers’ behaviour on vietgap implementation. therefore, the combination of the quantitative and qualitative method is necessarily employed to addresses research questions and to confirm hypotheses as well as to supply the new determinants of the intention of technological innovation adoption. more specifically, we take advantage of the qualitative method in order to consider whether recently explored factors such as the complexity of awareness, attitudes, and macroeconomic conditions have impacted on the determinants of the intention of technological innovation acceptance with sem estimation. in the meanwhile, the quantitative method is also employed with the purpose of investigating whether new determinants captured from in-deep interviews and observing such as farmers’ awareness and final decisions are associated with the intention of vietgap adoption in the context of vietnam, supported by nvivo. 3.2.3. data collection this paper chooses danang and quangnam to study because of two following reasons: (1) this research approaches from the psychological perspective of farmers affected by perceived benefits, environment and social norms. although danang and quangnam were separated from quangnamdanang province from 01 january 1997, the farmers share the same background of culture, and thus, these two areas are homogeneous, especially in cultivation conditions, weather and custom. additionally, both areas have the same policies for the support of vietgap. this has led to similar standards in agriculture. (2) choosing two local areas can increase the size of the sample. this could use statistical functions for analytical testing, implication. in addition, this study uses a multi-group method to examine the differences between the two localities, such as gender and age, that can overcome some limitations. in terms of the qualitative method, a set of primary data from in-deep interviews is employed. however, in order to capture the usefulness of in-deep interviews, we conduct observations with the purpose of understanding the context of survey locations. interviewees are farmers who directly take part in vegetable production and offer novel contributions in accordance with vietgap standard. when signs of convergence are existent, in-deep interviews are done. in other words, we only continue to interview when new information documents. finally, our survey is collected from 11 main agricultural workers through in-depth interviews distributed in 4 main locations (hung my: 4, lang chau bac: 2, bau tron: 3 and la huong: 2). our database is collected 2 times from december, 2015 to february, 2016 and from april, 2016 to may, 2016 because of the time of main crops. similarly, regarding the quantitative approach, continuing with a set of primary data collected from farmers who directly take part in vegetable production and offer novel contributions in accordance with vietgap standards in the period of time from july to september, 2016 through in-deep interviews, the main differences compared to the database for the qualitative method are that our initial sample is expanded up to 3201 interviewees and we extend survey locations into 6 including hungmy, langchau, bautron, lahuong, yenne and tuyloan because 6 villages provide the majority of vietgap products. however, we only retain responses that meet requirements. these screening procedures result in a final sample of 294 observations. 1 this study uses linear structural analysis method. the research model has 40 measurement variables, and follows the rule of 5 observations/measurement variables. hence, the minimum sample size is 200 (40x5). in order to guarantee the size of the sample for the statistical analysis model, the study selects 320 observations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 173 4. results and discussion 4.1. estimated results the proposed initial scale has 8 concepts with 40 observation variables. preliminary results from cronbach alpha and exploratory factor analysis (efa) document that the 7 observation variables nrt2, dm2, dm3, dm6, dm7, ks1, qd4 are excluded because of a total correlation <0.3, not distinguishable, factor loading <0.5. after two extracts there are only 32 variables and 6 groups with a total variance of 49.6% (approximately 50% that are acceptable). it means that 6 factors explain the 49.6% variation of our database the stop point when extracting the coefficients eigenvalue value >1. factor loading is more than 0.5, so observation variables are important and research concepts are convergent. the coefficient of kmo is 0.896 (satisfactory >0.5) that demonstrates the suitability of the factor analysis. bartlett's test is statistically significant (sig & lt; 0.05). the 3, 4, 5, 6 factors were retained (behavioural controls, subjective norms, decisions, communication), 3 observation variables (nta1, nta2, nta3) are environmental perception, and 4 observation variables (ntl1, ntl2, ntl3, ntl4) belong to the cognitive-benefit factor combined into a new factor – an environmental-benefit factor (ntla). 3 observation variables (ntr1, ntr3, ntr4) are risk-awareness factors combining with 3 variables (ntc1, ntc2, ntc3) belonging to the supply-demand perception factor which becomes a new element risk recognition factor (ntrc). it means that environmental cognition and benefit cognition are two concepts. likewise, risk and supply-demand perception can be an entity in reality. therefore, after evaluating the efa scale, the hypotheses are adjusted as follows: h1: there is a positive relationship between communication and households’ behaviour on the adoption of vietgap standard to vegetable production. h2: farmers’ intention on vietgap technique implementation to vegetable production is driven positively by the awareness of benefits – environment. h3: the perception of risk is negatively associated with farmer’s behaviour on vietgap standard application to vegetable production. h4: behavioural norms is positively correlated to households’ intention on vietgap standard adoption to vegetable production. h5: farmers’ behaviour on vietgap technique acceptance to vegetable production is positively related to behavioural control. the remaining 6 concepts with 32 variables are further assessed by cfa. cfa results with chi square/df=1.287; gfi=0.895; tli=0.977; cfi=0.980; rmsea=0.031 document that the scale model of decisive factors for vietgap standard adoption is in accordance with market data. however, due to gfi <0.9, the model should be improved by hooking the rest. the second cfa results are that chi square/df=1.219; gfi=0.901; tli=0.983; cfi=0.984; rmsea=0.027. that means a scale model of decisive factors for applying vietgap standards in accordance with market data. table 2 reports risk perception, behavioural controls, environmental benefits, subjective norms, decisions, and communication meet requirements on confidence. table 2: verification results of the scale observation variables number of observation variables confidence value α ρc ρvc ntrc 6 0.913 0.916 0.645 satisfactory ks 6 0.909 0.911 0.632 ntla 7 0.909 0.910 0.592 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 174 dm 5 0.919 0.919 0.696 qd 5 0.875 0.878 0.593 gt_ 3 0.935 0.935 0.828 source: author’s calculations sem results with chisquare/df=1.219; gfi=0.901; tli=0.983; cfi=0.984; rmsea=0.027 indicate that the scale model of decisive factors for vietgap standard adoption is in accordance with market data. however, the results of the estimation (normalized) relationship among the concepts were not statistically significant at 90% (see table 3). therefore, it is necessary to consider eliminating the dm concept. table 3: results of the causal relationship between concepts estimate s.e. c.r. p qd <---ks 0.265 0.067 3.982 *** qd<---gt 0.255 0.063 4.067 *** qd<---ntrc -0.399 0.087 -4.571 *** qd<---dm 0.066 0.049 1.343 .179 qd<---ntla 0.114 0.052 2.182 .029 source: author’s calculations, note: *** p< 0.001 if dm variable is removed, the estimation results are with chisquare/df=1.150; gfi=0.919; tli=0.990; cfi=0.991; rmsea=0.023, while the remaining concepts in the model are statistically significant at the 90% confidence level (p<0.05). figure 1: sem results without dm source: author’s calculations asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 175 table 4: results of the causal relationship between concepts (dm excluded) estimate s.e. c.r. p estimate qd <--ks 0.260 0.067 3.908 *** qd <--gt_ 0.277 0.061 4.560 *** qd <--ntrc -0.409 0.087 -4.690 *** qd <--ntla 0.118 0.052 2.254 0.024 source: author’s calculations note: *** p< 0.001 therefore, the concepts of behavioural controls, environmental benefits, and communication affect positively the farmers’ intention on vietgap standard adoption and are statistically significant (p<0.05). indeed, risk awareness has a negative impact on farmers’ behaviour on vietgap standard application and has statistical significance (p<0.05). in other words, hypothesis h1, h2, h3, and h5 are accepted. 4.2. discussion hypothesis h1 states that the communication factor is positively associated with households’ behaviour on vietgap standard application to vegetable production. as expected, the results point out that β = 0.277 and p <0.05 and the more farmers communicate with their friends, neighbours, and officials in charge of agriculture or watch tv, the more likely they adopt vietgap standard in vegetable production. the result is consistent with gebremariam (2001); and makokha et al. (1999). qualitative findings also suggest that information exchanges from extension workers are poor, while farmers mainly exchange information with their friends and grasp information from the audio-visual media. perhaps this is not the specific characteristic of quangnam or danang, but it is the general prevalence in vietnam, where extension forces are insufficient to contact farmers frequently. qualitative research shows that the behaviour on vietgap standard adoption is not driven by the accessibility of information via internet, because the majority of interviewees are aged 40-55, so access to the internet is scant, and they only set up the internet with the main purpose of their children’s online learning. consequently the scale of communication is consistently removed. however, dill et al. (2015) argue that frequently accessing the internet is significant to the intention of applying innovations. therefore the implication drawn is that this scale should be used for areas of higher education. hypothesis h2 reveals that the awareness of benefits-environment is positively related to the intention of vietgap standard implementation of planting vegetables. the results of β =0.118 and p & lt;0.05 indicate that the more farmers realize the benefit, the more they decide to apply the vietgap standard. we obtain the same conclusion from sarker et al. (2009) who document that farmers aware of the application of agricultural improvement will improve their income. farmers with environmental awareness who pay attention to the environment tend to apply clean farming methods (läpple and kelley, 2013). this result is consistent with the fact that farmers will compare innovative technology to traditional one and apply innovative technology if its expected utility is higher than the expected utility of traditional technology (batz et al., 1999). the opinion that the more aware farmers are of health, the more they decide to apply vietgap standard to the next crop is documented. in this context farmers’ utility would increase if pesticides followed the international standard. in reality, use of high standard pesticides is not the main difficulty since farmers are aware that it would help to lower their health risks. this is also consistent with the findings of tran and le (2016) that the vietgap program reduced health problems caused by exposure to pesticides. hypothesis h3 reports that the relationship between risk perception and behaviour on vietgap standard adoption to vegetable production is inverse. the estimation results with β = -0.409 and p <0.05 document that the more farmers are afraid of risk when applying the vietgap technique, the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 176 less they decide to apply vietgap in vegetable production. we reached the same conclusion as wubeneh and sanders (2006); and ghadim et al. (2005) that the risks of weather, pests, and price can negatively affect this intention. this also shows that farmers can recognize brand-related risks as the main reason for not applying the vietgap standard. the h4 hypothesis is not statistically significant in this framework. it is inconsistent with borges et al. (2014); wauters et al. (2017); and wauters and mathijs (2013) who document whether the intention to continue applying improvements of farmers is affected by reputable people. it can be observed that the voice of prestigious people is too blurry. the chairmen of co-operatives do not play a role in supplying outcomes, and also cannot bring advanced technologies to farmers. the village heads have only administrative roles, not roles in suggesting or orienting production. hypothesis h5 states that behavioural control is associated with the intention to adopt the vietgap standard in vegetable production. β = 0.260 and p & lt;0.05 indicate that behavioural control is consistent with what we expect in the case of the intention of vietgap standards to vegetable production in the context of vietnam. when the farmers feel more confident to adopt the vietgap process based on the success of other farmers, they tend to implement the vietgap standard to vegetable production. we reach the same conclusion as did läpple and kelley (2013); and wauters et al. (2010). 5. conclusion our main purpose was to identify the determinants of the behavior of adopting the vietgap standards in vegetable production in quangnam and danang through a combination of the qualitative method (observation, in-depth interview) and quantitative method (sem). the results show that there are 4 factors that influence farmers’ intention to apply the vietgap standards to vegetable production communication, awareness of benefits and environment, risk awareness, and behavioral control. subjective norms are not statistically significant in our model. a new finding is that farmers’ perception risk of brand prevents the intention of applying the vietgap standards in vegetable production. enhancing awareness of vietgap among vegetable producers leads to increases in the supply of safe products and improvements in producers’ health and the environment. therefore farmers should actively update the vietgap process and the benefits of applying the process to vegetable production. it is necessary to strictly follow the process of producing vegetables under vietgap standards from seed selection to land preparation so that consumers trust products. households need to build trust to link the production in order to ensure supply to the market. an important implication is that the perception of brand risk has reduced the intention of applying vietgap standards in vegetable production of farmers. therefore in order to avoid the abuse of brand name, farmers should learn about partnerships comprehensively in the signing of contracts and actively update the market information about the suppliers in order to have an appropriate plan. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 164-178 177 references abadi, g. a. k., & pannell, d. j. 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(2006). farm-level adoption of sorghum technologies in tigray, ethiopia. agricultural systems, 91(1-2), 122-134. doi: 10.1016/j.agsy.2006.02.002. http://www.eepsea.net/pub/rr/2015-rr19_baochau.pdf http://www.eepsea.net/pub/rr/2015-rr19_baochau.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 216 macroeconomic variables affecting fish production in nigeria edet joshua udoh a, sunday brownson akpan b a department of agricultural economics and extension, university of uyo, akwa ibom state, nigeria b department of agricultural economics and extension, akwa ibom state university, nigeria  brownsonakpan10@gmail.com; sundayakpan@aksu.edu.ng (corresponding author) article history: received: 25-mar-2019 accepted: 13-sep-2019 online available: 08-oct2019 keywords: artisanal fish, aquaculture, macroeconomics, production, nigeria abstract the study is an attempt to examine the influence of macroeconomic variables on the growth of fishery sub-sector in nigeria. the study covers the period from 1961 and 2017. the results apparently revealed that aquaculture production, artisanal fish production, and total fish production, grew exponentially at the rate of 8.90%, 3.75%, and 4.25% respectively. to be more precise, various other factors like, demand shocks, food imports, and variable exchange rate, affected artisanal fish production in the long-run; while exchange rate and demand shocks were significant in the short-run period. for the aquaculture production, demand shocks, credit potential, inflation, food imports, and exchange rate were some significant policy variables in the long-run; whereas demand shocks and exchange rate were also significant in the short-run period. finally, as far as the total fish production is concerned, demand shocks, food imports, and exchange rate were significantly trending variables, both in the short and long-run periods. to promote fish production in nigeria, fish imports should be gradually restricted and the economic system regulated to ensure the stability of naira exchange for the us dollar. contribution/ originality the study was designed to explore and uncover some key macroeconomic variables and important fundamentals that affect fishery sub-sector in nigeria, which led us to quite interesting findings which revealed that some macroeconomic variables are critical in achieving adequate prospective and fullest potentials in fishery sub-sector in the country. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.216.230 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: edet joshua udoh and sunday brownson akpan (2019). macroeconomic variables affecting fish production in nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 216-230. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 216-230 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:brownsonakpan10@gmail.com mailto:sundayakpan@aksu.edu.ng http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.216.230 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 217 1. introduction keeping in view the established fact that macroeconomic imperatives undoubtedly, have very effective influence on the directions and magnitude of growth in the agricultural sector. as muftaudeen and abdullahi (2014) concluded that an effective macroeconomic policy framework is very much necessary in regulating the economic activities in order to guarantee a well-established and sustained economic growth in developing economies. this assertion is obviously premised on the tenant of keynesian theory, which tends to state that public policy has a direct impact on aggregate demand, which would have multiplier effects on the growth of real economic sectors, in the short-run aspect. considered as a major agricultural sector in the agrarian economy of the coastal states in nigeria, ‘fishery’ is unarguably the most important and critical sub-sector, with respect to income generation, poverty reduction, and dietary requirement. payne (2000) and food and agricultural organization (2018) noted that fish production helped to strengthen food security and livelihood structure among dwellers of river-line communities. again, on the assertion of adekoya and miller (2004), it is interesting to note that fishery sources provided more than 60% of the total protein intake among adults in nigeria, especially in the rural areas. strangely enough, the country is still unable to adequately cater for its requirement of fishery products for the majority of its citizens, in terms of both ample productive capacity and satisfying dietary needs. for instance, the per caput average annual domestic production of fish (i.e. aquaculture output and artisans output) stood at 6.09 kg/annum in 2015 and at 5.67 kg/annum in 2016 in nigeria. assuming that if all that is produced is consumed fully, then these figures are obviously, far below the recommended daily protein intake of 0.75 g per kg of lean body weight, as asserted by fao/who (world health organization). this gives much credence for a reliance on imports and inclination towards smuggling for quite an enough proportion of domestic consumption. for instance, federal department of fisheries (2018) reported that the country’s national demand in 2012 was 2,000,000 tones, while supply stood at 690,000 tones, showing a resulting deficit of 1,310,000 tones. in 2014, a total of 2,175,000 tons of fish was demanded for the country’s national consumption, the supply apex stood at 730,000 tones, leaving behind a deficit of 1,404,000 tones. the total exports of fish from nigeria was valued at us$ 284 390 million, whereas the imports stood at about us$1.2 billion in 2013. therefore, nigeria is being regarded as one of the heavy importers of fishery products in the world (fao, 2018). as showed in table 1, the fishery sub-sector contributed on the average, to about 0.52% and 2.3% of the total gdp and agricultural gdp respectively in nigeria, between 1981 and 2017. however, as far as contributions for the sub-units are concerned, the artisanal fish production was about 88.82%, while aquaculture made up of the remaining 11.18% of the total fish production in the country. this is therefore, a clear indication of high dependence on artisanal fishing for domestic consumption, besides an in-depth indication of under-development of aquaculture sub-unit (osawe, 2007 ). the failure of the dismal performance of the fishery sub-sector in nigeria has been attributed to multifaceted factors, particularly including the debilitated agricultural policy and inadequate policies on the national water resources (akpan, 2012; tobor, 1997), besides other issues relevant to oil spillage, crude oil pollution, militant activities along the coastal states and dumping of toxic wastes, as well as natural phenomenon like, global climatic change (moyle, 1990; tobor, 1997; enabulele, 1999; ugwumba, 2005; adeogun et al., 2007; ugwumba and nnabuife, 2008; grema et al., 2011; issa et al., 2014; adewumi, 2015; paulina and hammed, 2018). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 218 table 1: contribution of the fishery sub-sector to the agricultural and total gross domestic product accounts for the period of 1981 and 2017 year % share of fishery subsector in total gdp % share of fishery subsector in agric. gdp % share of aquaculture in total fishery output % share of artisanal fish in total fishery output year % share of fishery subsector in total gdp % share of fishery subsector in agric. gdp % share of aquaculture in total fishery output % share of artisanal fish in total fishery output 1981 0.380 3.228 2.415 97.585 2000 0.596 2.724 5.506 94.494 1982 0.435 3.346 2.432 97.568 2001 0.703 2.838 5.120 94.880 1983 0.606 4.149 2.513 97.487 2002 0.607 1.618 5.992 94.008 1984 0.509 2.859 2.470 97.530 2003 0.609 1.766 6.065 93.935 1985 0.281 1.579 3.217 96.783 2004 0.572 2.006 8.631 91.369 1986 0.380 2.154 2.009 97.991 2005 0.580 2.143 9.724 90.276 1987 0.267 1.322 2.301 97.699 2006 0.522 1.992 13.280 86.720 1988 0.364 1.581 3.803 96.197 2007 0.497 1.918 13.824 86.176 1989 0.576 2.736 8.600 91.400 2008 0.495 1.918 19.233 80.767 1990 0.642 3.009 2.323 97.677 2009 0.499 1.903 20.346 79.654 1991 0.600 2.903 5.740 94.260 2010 0.457 1.914 24.530 75.470 1992 0.518 2.562 5.367 94.633 2011 0.451 2.025 25.814 74.186 1993 0.444 1.892 6.689 93.311 2012 0.450 2.040 27.518 72.482 1994 0.436 1.724 5.344 94.656 2013 0.458 2.181 27.869 72.131 1995 0.501 1.836 4.539 95.461 2014 0.478 2.360 29.190 70.810 1996 0.604 2.134 5.452 94.548 2015 0.506 2.425 30.838 69.162 1997 0.671 2.277 5.894 94.106 2016 0.521 2.455 29.996 70.004 1998 0.729 2.495 4.231 95.769 2017 0.549 2.608 30.413 69.587 1999 0.727 2.704 4.554 95.446 av. 0.519 2.306 11.183 88.817 source: computed by authors using data from cbn note: gdp at the current basic price asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 219 although it is an interesting matter to ponder that fishing (including artisans and aquaculture production) is considered as an economic activity and included as an important parts of the entire economic system, it is ought to be affected by economic variables both at the micro and macro levels (akpan et al., 2012). therefore, a need to develop a dynamic and comprehensive study necessarily arises. it must focus on the roles of basic macroeconomic variables on fish production in nigeria, and should be precisely premised on the need to empirically establish this relationship. in order to enrich the relevant literature with related information, the study should be empirically designed to estimate a system of coefficients in both the short and long run, so as to show the explicit relationship between fish production and key macroeconomic variables in our country of research. 2. methodology an ex-post facto design had been employed in this study to establish the comprehensive relationships between fishery output and macroeconomic variables, developed during short and long-run periods. the data for the study had been obtained from three different sources, viz., the central bank of nigeria, food and agricultural organization, and the world bank. the data sets acquired for 56 years (from 1961 to 2017) had been utilized therein to achieve the requisite results accordingly. 2.1. analytical framework and model specifications when we precisely understand the nexus of the relationships and review the flow of agricultural inputs and outputs within the framework of an open economy, wherein enhancers and inhibitors of aggregate demand and aggregate supply work constantly at a brisk pace. therefore, such an acceleration of growth in total factor productivity or otherwise, experienced well in any real sector of an economy is known to follow certain economic theories and various hypotheses. within the circles of economic parley, theorists proposed different schools of thoughts so as to conceptualize and materialize them as a model to create causal relationships between the growth of real sectors and some endogenous and exogenous macroeconomic variables. essentially for this purpose, efforts had been directed accordingly to show the relevance, direction, and magnitude of various macroeconomic policy instruments to regulate the structural behavior of economic growth fundamentals. following the neoclassical theorists and citing the works of fischer (1993) and lachaal (1994), as well as the results of muftaudeen and abdullahi (2014), some macroeconomic variables such as; inflation rate; real interest rate; fiscal policies, real exchange rate, besides the balance of payments, have been identified as potential obstructing blocks to achieve the millennium goals leading towards food security, poverty reduction, and rural development, obviously through positive and precise growth in the agricultural sector. in more specific terms, our work is modelled on the keynesian is-lm framework, which according to fasanya et al. (2013), had originally captured liquidity, price, and exchange rate puzzles and problems as drivers of economic growth. these puzzles, have been well defined by both augmented solow growth and endogenous growth theories, stressing emphasized that investment in human capital and technological process are the major factors, which enhance the capital accumulation. however, the endogenous growth model had been built on economic growth, arising from the influence of significant changes in investment, capital stock, human capacity stock, etc. (romer, 1994). in this study, the model specified considers macroeconomic variables that have an influence on domestic production and restriction on import. the model is expressed implicitly as thus: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 220 lnarst = γ0 + γ1 ∑ lnexct n i=1 + γ2 ∑ lncret n i=1 + γ3 ∑ lninft n i=1 + γ4 ∑ lngdit n i=1 + γ5 ∑ lnfimt n i=1 + ut … … … … … … … … … … . (1) the variables are defined below: arst = annual artisanal or captured fish measured in metric tonnes exct = annual average nominal exchange rate (n/$) cret = domestic credit to private sector (% of gdp) inft = annual inflation rate to proxy input prices (%) gdit = per capita gdp representing purchasing power fimt = annual value of import of goods and services in naira ln = representing natural log ut = random error term that is ut~ iid (0, δ2 u) note: equation 1 was estimated for the three major variables representing the fishery sub-sector as specified above. these major variables consist of artisanal fish output/captured fish output, aquaculture output and total or sub-sectoral output. in order to examine and test for the existence of stable long-run empirical relationship between the fishery sub-sector output and macroeconomic variables in nigeria’s economy, the engle and granger two-step method of testing co-integration was applied and conducted for this purpose. according to the granger representation theorem, error correction models for the co-integrating series were estimated in the simplest form. therefore, the general form for the error correction specification for the fishery sub-sector is shown in equation 2, as follows: ∆lnars𝑡 = 𝜃0 + 𝜃1 ∑ ∆𝐿𝑛𝐴𝑅𝑆𝑡−1 𝑛 𝑖=1 + 𝜃2 ∑ 𝐿𝑛𝐼𝑁𝐹𝑡 𝑛 𝑖=1 + 𝜃3 ∑ 𝐿𝑛𝐸𝑋𝐶𝑡 𝑛 𝑖=1 + 𝜃4 ∑ 𝐿𝐺𝐷𝐼𝑡 𝑛 𝑖=1 + 𝜃5 ∑ 𝐿𝑛𝐶𝑅𝐸𝑡 𝑛 𝑖=1 + 𝜃6 ∑ 𝐿𝑛𝐹𝐼𝑀𝑡 𝑛 𝑖=1 + 𝛽7𝐸𝐶𝑀𝑡−1 + 𝑈𝑡 … … … … … … … … . (2) variable specified are as defined previously in equation 1, and coefficients (𝛽7) of the ecm (1<𝛽3< 0) captured the deviation of the fishery outputs from the long-run equilibrium in period (t-1). based on the result of the root unit test and the need to capture the dynamic relationship appropriately while avoiding spurious regression, a time series multivariate cobb douglas model representing the long-run relationship was specified at the level of variables. further, to study the nature and rate of growth in the artisans fish/captured fish, aquaculture and entire fishery sub-sector; an exponential growth equation is fitted into the data. the exponential equation is defined as thus: arst = boebteut … … … … … … … … … … . (3) 𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑒𝐴𝑅𝑆𝑡 = 𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑒𝑏0 + 𝑏1𝑡 + 𝑈𝑡 … … … … … … … … … … . (4) where exponential growth rate is (r) =(𝑒𝑏1 − 1) ∗ 100 … … … … … … … … … … . (5) the trend analysis was defined for the following variables: arst = annual artisanal/captured fish measured in metric tonnes asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 221 aqct = annual aquaculture fish measured in metric tonnes tfst = annual total output in fishery sub-sector measured in metric tonnes note: equation 4 was also specified for aquaculture and total fishery sub-sector. the exponential trend equation was adopted because it is expected that the fishery sub-sector should be increasing exponentially given increase in population and food demand in the country 3. results and discussion the descriptive characteristics of variables presented in the study are shown in table 2. since the jarque-bera test reveals that most of the specified variables are not normally distributed, the coefficient of variability measures the degree of significant variation in each specified variable. 3.1. descriptive statistics of specified variables the statistics of our estimated results showed that output of captured fish, credit and total production in the sub-sector simply exhibited the least degree of variations. however, variations were apparently more pronounced in imports, per capita income, aquaculture output, and nominal exchange rate. the statistics for skewness showed that all specified variables are positively skewed, implying that there is a right-tailed distribution. this means that the fishery sub-sector’s productivity increases with the passage of time. table 2: summary of the descriptive statistics of the variables variable mean median min. max. std. dev. c.v. skewness jarquebera ars 3.49e+05 2.66e+05 52837. 7.59e+05 1.96e+05 0.562 0.549 3.990 aqc 56646 10631. 2173.0 3.17e+05 96076. 1.696 1.871 42.607 tfs 4.05e+05 2.72e+05 55010. 1.07e+06 2.83e+05 0.697 1.056 10.605 gdi 87604. 2460.6 69.273 6.02e+05 1.68e+05 1.915 1.975 51.079 cre 12.286 12.350 3.7043 38.387 6.269 0.510 1.962 113.029 inf 16.377 11.600 0.50000 72.800 15.459 0.944 1.996 65.712 fim 2.05e+012 1.84e+010 4.76e+008 1.37e+013 3.70e+012 1.804 1.761 36.243 exc 53.896 7.3647 0.54678 305.79 75.547 1.402 1.301 18.164 obs. 57 57 57 57 57 57 57 57 note: ars = artisanal fish output; aqc = aquaculture fish output; tfs = total fish output; exc = nominal exchange rate; inf = inflation rate; cre = credit to private sector; gdi = gdp per capita; fim = food import; units are as defined in equations 2 and 4 3.2. exponential trend analysis of outputs of captured fish, aquaculture and the entire fishery sub-sector in nigeria estimates of the exponential trend equation for each of the major areas of the fishery sub-sector are presented in table 3. the result reveals a positive relationship between the trend in output of captured fish, aquaculture and the entire fishery sub-sector and time in nigeria. table 3: exponential growth rates in outputs of capture fish, aquaculture and total fishery output in nigeria variable capture fish aquaculture entire fishery constant 11.489 (181.5)*** 7.107 (57.24)*** 11.435 (185.7)*** time 0.0375 (19.74)*** 0.0890 (23.91)*** 0.0425 (23.0)*** exp. growth (%) 3.75 8.90 4.25 f (1, 55). 389.59*** 571.756*** 528.83*** note: *, ** and *** represents 10%, 5%, and 1% level of significance respectively. t-values are in parentheses asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 222 the average exponential growth rates obtained for the captured fish, aquaculture production, and the entire sub-sector production showed the percentage figures of 3.75%, 8.90%, and 4.25%, respectively. the findings further revealed that the turnout of fishery sub-sector in nigeria had shown considerable and consistent improvement during the past few years. this trend obviously means that output of captured or artisans fishing and aquaculture production has shown the rise, on annual basis. the growth rate has been particularly impressive in aquaculture output as compared to artisans fishing. many significant factors could be attributed for the growth in the two major sources of fish production in nigeria. one of the most credible reasons or a plausible explanation for the upsurge in fish production therein could be the increasing demand verily conditioned by the increase in population. to further elaborate and substantiate the relationship between fishery sub-sector output and time, a graphical representation of the linear trend of fishery sub-sector output in nigeria is presented in figure 1. the result indicates a conspicuous gap between artisanal production and aquaculture output in nigeria. in the early 1960s, the country’s domestic source of fish was mainly attached to captured fish, and aquaculture was under-developed but was gradually becoming an emerging source of fish production. however, artisanal fish production continued to dominate larger part of domestic production until early 2000. figure 1: trends in output of captured fish, aquaculture and total fish output in nigeria (1961-2017) it is quite interesting to note that from the 1960s to early 2000, the fishery sub-sector witnessed a marginal growth in production, but due to the country’s civil war, a sharp break incurred to slow down the pace of progress from 1968 to 1970. after the civil war, the country once again recorded a steady growth in the production of artisanal fish till 1993, which was the year to mark the end of the structural adjustment program (sap) in nigeria. over the years, since then there have been peaks and troughs in the trends of fish production, most likely due to some unchecked issues like 0 200000 400000 600000 800000 1e+006 1.2e+006 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 o u tp u ts i n t o n s year figure 1: trends in output of captured fish; aquaculture and total fish output in nigeria (1961 2017) totalfisheryprodmetrictons capturefishprodmetrictons aquacultureprodmetrictons asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 223 importation, smuggling, etc. but unexpectedly, there has been exponential growth in both artisanal and aquaculture production in the country, from 1995 onwards till 2017, this growing trend could perhaps be attributed partly to various incentives made available to stakeholders in the sub-sector and partly due to the establishment of adequate and formal institutions by the nigerian government, to expand the frontier of research activities in various aspects of the fishery sub-sector. moreover, collaborations in the form of public-private partnership with established agencies/companies involved in fish production also created a progressive atmosphere in the fishery sub-sector. for instance, akwa ibom state government on several occasions distributed fishing gears and engine boats to fish cooperative societies within the state (aksg, 2008). in addition, planned trade policies and tariff systems were gradually proposed for implementation in recent years, led to the reduction of importation of fish into the country. although the security had been intensified at the borders so as to cope with excessive smuggling attempts, but in vain. from the trending conditions, it is also apparently observed that production gaps between aquaculture production and artisanal fish product increased persistently along the years. moreover, the issues leading to aquaculture production, which had been playing a sluggish role in domestic fish production/supply, had to be dealt with sincere and important plans with various effective determinants like, input prices, economic environment, and demand preferences, among other factors. osawe (2007) reported that constraints in investment in aquaculture production in nigeria emerge in different facets and dimensions, and specifically pointed out the following major obstacles faced in aquaculture development in the country: (i) scarcity of fingerlings, high costs of fish feeds and labor force supply; (ii) poor water supply, land fragmentation for fish ponds development; (iii) insufficient capital availability and lack of up-to-date technology in fish production, and obsolete storage facilities; (iv) poor roads infrastructure and miserable conditions, leading to higher hike in transport costs; and, (v) stormy and surging morbidity and mortality rates. the poor national fisheries development plans and policies of the country in past few years mainly focused on the development of industrial fisheries to the detriment and risk of aquaculture production (tobor, 1997). likewise, many other researchers have also attempted to trace down the causes of low productivity in aquaculture to be closely linked with several factors, including (i) inadequate quality of fish seeds for stocking ponds, (ii) dearth of information on and usage of modern technologies in aquaculture, due to poor extension in services, (iii) poorly trained personnel, pathetic social capital formation, negligible support infrastructures, and (iv) capital injection by the government and high costs of fish feeds (tobor, 1997; ugwumba, 2005; adeogun et al., 2007; ugwumba and nnabuife, 2008). 3.3. unit root test for specified economic variables in a bit to investigate the impact of major economic variables on fish production in nigeria, the stationarity test for the specified economic variables was conducted. this is necessary to avoid the tendency of having nonsense regression estimates. the augmented dickey-fuller root unit test and phillip peron root unit tests were used to ascertain the degree of stationarity of specified variables used in the analysis. the result of the augmented dickey-fuller unit root tests are presented in table 4, while phillip peron unit root test is shown in table 5. unit roots equations specified were those without constant and trend and those containing constant and trend. variables were tested at level and first difference and their order of integration determined. critical values were set at 1%, 5%, and 10% probability levels. result of adf and phillip peron unit-roots show that for equation without constant and trend, all specified variables were integrated of order 1. also, inflation and credit were stationary at a level for an equation containing a constant and trend for adf and inflation alone for phillip peron unit root test equation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 224 table 4: presentation of the result of the augmented dickey-fuller root unit test adf equation without constant& trend adf equation with constant and trend variable level 1st diff. ot level 1st diff. ot ars 2.620 -6.635*** 1(1) -2.866 -7.791*** 1(1) aqc 2.382 -2.029** 1(1) -1.386 -3.411* 1(1) tfs 2.946 -3.061*** 1(1) -2.792 -7.403*** 1(1) exc 1.505 -5.127*** 1(1) -2.038 -5.897*** 1(1) inf 0.029 -8.547*** 1(1) -4.332*** ─ 1(0) cre 0.428 -5.962*** 1(1) -3.227* ─ 1(0) gdi 6.285 -4.440*** 1(1) -2.457 -6.307*** 1(1) fim 4.430 -1.630* 1(1) -2.017 -3.799** 1(1) critical values cr (1%) -2.609 -2.607 -4.133 -4.133 cr (5%) -1.947 -1.947 -3.493 -3.493 cr (10%) -1.613 -1.613 -3.175 -3.175 note: ot stands for order of integration. *, ** and *** represents 10%, 5% and 1% level of significance respectively. variables are as defined in equations 6 table 5: result of phillips – peron root unit test variable equation without constant and trend equation with constant and trend level 1st diff. ot level 1st diff. ot ars 2.962 -6.683*** 1(1) -3.055 -7.791*** 1(1) aqc 4.950 -9.325*** 1(1) -1.923 -12.286*** 1(1) tfs 3.369 -6.312*** 1(1) -2.793 -7.404*** 1(1) exc 1.596 -5.209*** 1(1) -2.009 -5.909*** 1(1) inf -0.858 -14.038*** 1(1) -4.255*** ─ 1(0) cre 0.732 -8.367*** 1(1) -3.089 -11.145*** 1(1) gdi 5.824 -4.002*** 1(1) -2.493 -6.275*** 1(1) fim 4.119 -4.927*** 1(1) -2.164 -6.215*** 1(1) critical values cr (1%) -2.607 -2.607 -4.130 -4.133 cr (5%) -1.946 -1.946 -3.492 -3.493 cr (10%) -1.613 -1.613 -3.174 -3.175 note: *, ** and *** represents 10%, 5% and 1% level of significance respectively. variables are as defined in equations 6 results, as presented, imply that the time series specified are non-stationary at their level. this suggests the verification of the co-integration among the specified variables as proposed by johansen (1988) and johansen and juselius (1990). 3.4. johansen’s co-integration test on specified variables the co-integration test as was developed by granger (1981) involved the determination of long-run associations among non-stationary time-dependent variables. the prerequisite for conducting the test is that the series must be integrated of the same order or non-stationary individually. the study applied the engle and granger two-step technique and johansen approach to conduct the cointegration test on the specified series. results showed stationary of residual (ecm) generated from the long-run model representing the captured fish output, artisanal and the entire fishery sub-sector outputs. the results are presented in the lower portion of table 7. the test results showed that at 1% level of probability, the engle-granger co-integration tests reject the null hypothesis of no cointegration. this implies that there are long-run equilibrium relationships between fishery subsector outputs and major macroeconomic variables in nigeria. in the same venn, the johansen coasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 225 integration approach showed that the trace and maximum eigen value test statistics were significant at various rank levels. the result is presented in table 6. the result further indicates at least two (2) co-integration relationships among specified series. the upper region of table 7 presents the estimated long run models for outputs of capture fish, aquaculture and the entire sub-sector. the long run coefficients represent the long-run fishery output elasticity with respect to each of the specified macroeconomic series. table 6: johansen’s co-integration test results hypothesized no. of ce(s) eigen value trace statistic critical value max-eigen statistic critical value 99% 95% 99% 95% none * 0.723 153.636*** 104.962 95.754 70.669*** 45.869 40.077 at most 1 * 0.508 82.967*** 77.819 69.819 38.995** 39.370 33.877 at most 2 0.309 43.972 54.682 47.856 20.351 32.715 27.584 at most 3 0.215 23.621 35.458 29.797 13.307 25.861 21.132 at most 4 0.166 10.314 19.937 15.495 10.005 18.520 14.265 at most 5 0.006 0.309 6.635 3.841 0.309 6.635 3.842 note: trace test indicates 2 co-integrating equations at the 0.01 level.* denotes rejection of the hypothesis at 5% and 1% level. max-eigen value test indicates 1 co-integrating eqn.(s) at the 0.01 level and 2 equations at 5% level 3.5. error correction model for fishery development in nigeria the error correction model (ecm) for the co-integrating series in the study was estimated and is presented in table 8. the main motive for estimating the ecm model was to capture the dynamics in the fishery development equation in the short-run and to determine the speed of adjustment as a response to the departure of the long-run equilibrium. for the purpose of achieving a parsimonious dynamic ecm for the fishery sub-sectors’ equations; the study used hendry’s (1995) approach. “this approach estimated an over parameterized model initially and was gradually reduced by eliminating insignificant lagged variables until a more interpretable and parsimonious model was obtained” the slope coefficient of the error correction term in each specified equation (i.e. outputs of capture fish, artisanal fish and entire fishery sub-sector) showed the prerequisite negative sign and was statistically significant at the conventional probability level. the result obtained from the sign of the coefficient of ecm validates the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship among the series specified in the study, and also indicates that the fishery sub-sector development is sensitive to departure from its equilibrium value in the previous periods. in other words; the estimated equations will be at an appropriate time correct any deviations from the long-run equilibrium. if long-run equilibrium value is too high; the error correction will reduce it, otherwise it will increase it. the slope coefficient of the error correction term representing the output of captured fish is 0.221. this denotes that, about 22.10% of any past deviations from the long run disequilibrium are corrected in the current period. thus, it will take more than four (4) years for any disequilibrium, in the long-run, to be totally corrected. the long-run disequilibrium adjustment periods for aquaculture and the entire fishery sub-sector are similar to the captured fish output and will equally require more than four years for a total adjustment. the validity test for the ecm model revealed r-squared values of 0.226, 0.299 and 0.248 for captured fish, aquaculture and entire fishery sub sector equations respectively. this implies that at 22.6%, 29.9% and 24.8% of the total variations in captured fish, aquaculture and entire fishery sub sector’s output respectively are explained by the specified macroeconomic series in the equation. the f-test for each of the fish sources is significant at the conventional level of probability showing that the estimated coefficients of determination are statistically significant. the normality asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 226 tests for each of the fish source are significant implying, the residuals are normally distributed and this also justify the used of ordinary least squared method of estimation. table 7: the long-run determinants of development in fishery sub-sector in nigeria variable captured fish aquaculture entire fishery constant 9.534 (6.988)*** 11.296 (5.201)*** 10.438 (8.214)*** gdit 0.336 (3.170)*** 1.082 (6.411)*** 0.473 (4.792)*** cret 0.103 (1.080) 0.010 (3.067)*** 0.077 (0.868) inft ─0.043 (-1.201) ─0.141 (-2.503)** ─0.0127 (-0.385) fimt ─0.013 (-2.449)** ─0.404 (-2.805)*** ─0.058 (-3.684)*** exct ─0.223 (-4.480)*** ─0.150 (-1.898)* ─0.251 (-5.418)*** rsquared 0.894 0.951 0.926 f(5, 51) 86.179*** 196.033*** 127.869*** unit root of residual (equation without trend and constant) adf test -3.516*** -3.998*** -3.517*** phillip-perron test -3.486*** -4.031*** -3.472*** unit root of residual (equation containing trend and constant) adf test -3.402* -3.911** -3.434* phillip-peron test -4.093** -3.947** -4.093** note: *, ** and *** represents 10%, 5% and 1% level of significance respectively. t-values are in parentheses the reset test of the structural rigidity of the estimated equation is significant for the three sources of fish output. this means that the estimated equations have structural rigidity and are stable. the value of the durbin-watson test for the three sources of fish output indicates the presence of minor serial correlation. however, “the ecm model has been shown to be robust against residual autocorrelation; hence, the presence of autocorrelation does not affect the estimates” (laurenceson and chai, 2003). 3.6. long and short runs determinants of fishery development in nigeria the long and the short runs impact of macroeconomic variables on output of fishery sub-sector was discussed based on sources of fish as specified in the study. the detail discussion is found below. 3.7. the long and short runs impact of macroeconomic variables on captured fish output the short-run model reveals that per capita gdp which proxy the purchasing capacity of nigeria has a significant positive relationship with the captured fish output in nigeria. the result is also replicated in the long-run period. this implies that, as demand capacity upsurge, the captured fish output increases too in both short and long-run periods. for instance, a 10% increase in the purchasing power of consumers would lead to 2.60% and 3.36% increase in captured fish output in the short and long-run period respectively. hence any policy that increases the per capita gdp will have a direct impact on captured fish production in nigeria in both short and long runs. the reason for the result could be attributed to the fact that; captured fish comes in different sizes and quality and are readily affordable to the wide range of consumers. another possible reason is the necessity of fish protein in the dietary requirement of most nigerian. captured fish constitutes one of the affordable sources of animal protein available to the majority of consumers in nigeria. being one of the major sources of animal protein hence normal good, its consumption increases with an increase in consumers’ income. the slope coefficient of the nominal exchange rate in short and long run models is negative and significant at the conventional probability level. this implies that as the exchange rate increases (i.e. naira depreciates against the us dollar), the output of captured fish responded negatively and vice versa. however, the magnitude of this response was greater in the long-run compared to the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 227 short-run period. for example, a 10% increase in the nominal exchange rate will lead to 0.75% and 2.23% decrease in the output of captured fish in the short and long run periods respectively. the reason for this result could be seen in two dimensions. firstly, the increase in the exchange rate would make the importation of fishing inputs and processing facilities difficult and would be very expensive for the resource-poor fisher folks in the country. as a result of this, the efficiency of these fisher folks will reduce and the overall production/catch shrinks. secondly, the increase in the exchange rate has encouraged many fisher folks to sell off their production in the high sea thereby reducing domestic supply. in the long run, food import has a negative impact on captured fish output. the result satisfies a priori expectation because the increase in food import would result in dumping and this will shrink domestic production. a 10% increase in imports will lead to a 0.13% reduction in the volume of captured fish in the country. hence, any government policy that discourages massive food import is directly increasing the efficiency of capture fish production in the country. 3.8. the long and short runs impact of macroeconomic variables on aquaculture fish output the slope coefficient of per capita gdp in both short and long models is significant and positively related to aquaculture output in nigeria. this means that, as the purchasing power of consumers increases, the aquaculture output increases correspondingly. for example, a 10% increase in the purchasing power of consumers will lead to 2.58% and 10.82% increase in aquaculture output in the short and long-run periods respectively. based on the magnitude of the elasticity coefficient, it seems purchasing power is the most important macroeconomic factor influencing aquaculture production in nigeria. the result is in line with the expectation of the study because aquaculture is basically business-oriented and needs financing for sustainability. food import has a negative relationship with the output of aquaculture in short and long-run periods in nigeria. this means that, as the volume of food imports increases, the tendency to increase aquaculture production deteriorates. for instance, a unit increase in food imports would result in 0.002 and 0.013 units declined in aquaculture production in the short and long-run period respectively. as expected, an increase in food import will create unhealthy competition resulting to suppress domestic production. similarly, the nominal exchange rate (naira for dollar) relates negatively to the output of aquaculture in short and long-run eras in nigeria. this suggests that a 10% increase in the nominal exchange rate will reduce aquaculture output by 1.05% and 1.50% in short and long run periods respectively. an increase in the nominal exchange rate of naira for dollar will directly constrain the importation of farm inputs or machinery and will stimulate locally produced substandard input. since key input used in aquaculture is imported, an increase in the nominal exchange rate will breed inefficiency in production through high morbidity and mortality rates in production, thereby reducing aggregate output. the long run coefficient of credit to the economy reveals a significant and direct relationship with aquaculture output in nigeria. a 10% increase in credit disbursement to the economy will trigger a 1.0% increase in aquaculture output in the long-run. credit has become a serious concern to agricultural development in nigeria. the impact of credit disbursement on aquaculture output satisfies the a priori expectation. this because the federal government over the years has implemented several credit policies anchored by collaborative institutions such as commercial banks, micro finance banks and the central bank of nigeria as well as special arrangement with the state government to release credit to the agricultural sector in the country. the resultant effect has become a massive injection of credit to the sector at the regulated interest rate and the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 228 corresponding increase in agricultural output. however, the impact of credit on aquaculture output was not significant in the short-run periods. table 8: the short-run economic determinants of development in fishery sub-sector in nigeria variable captured fish aquaculture entire fishery constant 0.007 (0.321) 0.101 (1.813)* 0.014 (0.536) ∆lag-1 (dependent v.), 0.095 (0.465) -0.239 (-1.667)* 0.119 (0.867) ∆gdit 0.260 (2.210)** 0.258 (2.979)*** 0.262 (2.328)** ∆cret 0.127 (1.504) 0.111 (0.529) 0.092 (1.090) ∆inft ─0.001 (-0.054) ─0.039 (-0.974) ─0.002 (-0.130) ∆fimt ─0.002 (-0.048) ─0.122 (-0.977) ─0.015 (-2.306)** ∆exct ─0.075 (-2.296)** ─0.105 (-1.783)* ─0.084 (-1.871)* ecmt-1 ─0.221 (-4.256)*** ─0.249 (-2.091)** ─0.228(-3.066)*** rsquared 0.226 0.299 0.247 f(5, 51) 5.194*** 2.871** 2.209** normality test (chi-sq.) 27.67*** 49.377*** 30.485*** reset test (f(2, 45)) 16.616*** 22.217*** 12.689*** cusum test (harvey-c) -2.739*** 2.682*** -2.454 ** durbin watson test 1.929 2.150 1.969 note: *, ** and *** represents 10%, 5% and 1% level of significance respectively. t-values are in parentheses the long run coefficient of inflation indicates a significant negative relationship with aquaculture development. for instance, a 10% increase in the inflation rate will induce a 1.41% reduction in aquaculture production. a rise in the inflation rate will inflate the prices of factors of production and also lower the purchasing power of consumers. since aquaculture is business-oriented, a rise in inflation will reduce the efficiency of production and brings about higher production uncertainties as well as risks. to cushion the effect of inflation in the long-run, output will decline accordingly. however, the relationship was statistically insignificant in the short-run period. 3.9. impact of macroeconomic variables in the longand short-run periods throughout the entire discussion on fishery sub-sector in nigeria, the findings have very clearly shown that in the long run, fish output had been affected by the purchasing power of the consumers, volume of food imports, and fluctuation in the nominal exchange rate of ‘naira’ as against the us$. in the short run, on the other hand, our study identified previous outputs in the sub-sector, purchasing power of consumers, food import and nominal exchange rate as the major determinants of fishery output in nigeria. based on the magnitude of the estimated coefficient, it is also shown that the purchasing power of consumers is the most important factor that affects the output of the fishery sub-sector in the short-run and, as well as in the long run periods in nigeria. since the processing and storage system are both expensive and out of the reach of poorly resourced fisher folks, the effective demand is considered to be the most necessarily essential aspect for the survival of fish production. 4. conclusion and recommendations the outcome of the study has precisely revealed empirical relationship between the output of the fishery sub-sector and some macroeconomic variables in both the short-run and long-run periods in nigeria. the exponential growth rate in various sources of fish production in the subsector revealed quite positive growth within the period considered for the study, i.e. from 1961 and 2017. surprisingly, the artisanal or captured fish production contributed more than 80% of the total fish production of the country. the empirical results of our study have also revealed the significant role of per capita income, credit, inflation, food import and exchange rate on fish production in nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 216-230 229 following the current requirements and necessary promises of the federal government to provide nutritious and sufficient food to its citizens, it is absolutely and needful required mapping out the ways to intensify fish production in the country. the evidence derived from the results of our study, supports well the following recommendations: a) the growth rate in the sub-sector is positive; and premised on this, the study strongly supports the current policies, programs, and institutions established in nigeria to fast track the fish production in the country. but call for greater efficiency in the management of the sector’s resources, which is still on the slower tracks. b) the federal government should try to reduce its fish import and rather generate appropriate policies that would upsurge domestic production of fish. c) depreciation of ‘naira’ has always shown a deteriorating effect on fish production in the country. the study strongly upholds the task of the federal government of nigeria in regulating her economic system to ensure stability of its currency exchange against us$. d) just as a way to encourage aquaculture production, more credit channels should be opened for fish farmers in the country. a credit system that guaranteed minimum risk and built on a single-digit interest rate is strongly advocated. e) finally, the implementation of economic policies void of inflationary tendencies, is being strongly advocated through the results of this study. funding: this research was sponsored totally by the contributions of authors. competing interests: authors declared that they have no conflicting interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in all stages involved in this research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akpan, s. b., 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(2008). comparative study on the utilization of commercial feed and home-made feed-in catfish production for sustainable aquaculture. multidisciplinary journal of research development, 10(6), 164-169. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 225 revolutionizing the circular economy: exploring the viability of used coffee grounds in the design and development of eco-friendly products kenneth lucto armas nueva ecija university of science and technology, philippines.  kennetharmas@neust.edu.ph article history abstract received: 3 may 2023 revised: 13 june 2023 accepted: 21 july 2023 published: 17 august 2023 keywords circular economy commercialization consumer acceptance cost-benefit analysis eco-friendly market potential mechanical properties plantable pencils used coffee grounds. this research sought to pioneer advancements in the circular economy by investigating the feasibility of utilizing used coffee grounds in creating eco-friendly plantable pencils. this research compared coffee pencils to wood and synthetic pencils. it also provided a cost-benefit analysis comparing the manufacture of coffee pencils and ordinary pencils. the research examined market potential, consumer acceptability, and possible barriers to commercialization and broad adoption of eco-friendly plantable pencils made from recycled coffee grounds. the methodology included a coffee pencil marketing strategy. the results show that plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds are comparable in mechanical and physical properties to traditional pencils. furthermore, the cost-benefit analysis indicates that coffee pencil production is more cost-effective and environmentally friendly than its traditional counterparts. consumer acceptance shows rising interest in eco-friendly plantable pencils, despite identified challenges and impediments such as a dearth of awareness and composting infrastructure. the study successfully demonstrates the potential for using used coffee grounds in the creation of eco-friendly plantable pencils. additionally, it provides valuable insights into the commercialization and broad adoption of this innovative product. the strategic development plan suggested involves undertaking marketing and educational campaigns, investing in research and development, and fostering partnerships with stakeholders. this study sets forth the practical considerations required for the successful commercialization and acceptance of plantable coffee pencils, further promoting a circular economy. contribution/originality: this study is the first to explore the potential of using used coffee grounds in the manufacture of eco-friendly plantable pencils, offering a cost-effective, sustainable alternative to traditional pencils and contributing to the circular economy. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4855 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: armas, k. l. (2023). revolutionizing the circular economy: exploring the viability of used coffee grounds in the design and development of eco-friendly products. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3), 225–231. 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4855 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the concept of the circular economy has gained significant attention in recent years due to its potential to address the environmental challenges faced by the world. one of the key components of the circular economy is the use of waste asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 3 (2023): 225-231. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7340-0089 mailto:kennetharmas@neust.edu.ph http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 225-231 226 as a resource. in this regard, the production of plantable pencils using used coffee grounds is a promising avenue that can contribute to the circular economy. pencils that can be planted after use provide a sustainable alternative to traditional pencils made from wood or synthetic materials. this study aimed to investigate the mechanical and physical properties of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds and compare them to traditional pencils made from wood or synthetic materials. additionally, a cost-benefit analysis was conducted to compare the production costs and benefits of coffee pencils with those of traditional pencils. the study also explored the market potential and consumer acceptance of eco-friendly plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds. furthermore, the potential challenges and barriers to the commercialization and adoption of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds were identified. finally, a strategic development plan is proposed for the commercialization of the plantable pencil. previous studies have explored the feasibility of producing plantable pencils using different materials such as seeds, graphite, and newspaper. however, there is a gap in the literature regarding the use of used coffee grounds as a material for plantable pencils. moreover, there is a lack of research on the cost-benefit analysis and potential challenges to the commercialization of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds. therefore, this study contributes to the existing literature on the circular economy, eco-friendly products, and sustainable production by providing empirical evidence on the viability of using used coffee grounds to produce plantable pencils. additionally, the study provides insights into the market potential and consumer acceptance of ecofriendly plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds. finally, the proposed strategic development plan provides a roadmap for the commercialization of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds. 1.1. literature survey coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world, resulting in a large amount of waste in the form of coffee grounds. in recent years, the practice of recycling coffee grounds has gained increasing attention as a means of reducing waste and promoting sustainability. a growing body of literature has explored various applications for recycled coffee grounds, from fuel production to composting to product development. in this section, we review some of the key findings from this literature. one of the most widely explored applications for recycled coffee grounds is in the production of biofuels. studies have shown that coffee grounds can be a viable source of biodiesel and biogas production. for example, a study by tuntiwiwattanapun, monono, wiesenborn, and tongcumpou (2017) found that coffee grounds could be used to produce high-quality biodiesel that met industry standards. similarly, a study by li et al. (2015) found that coffee grounds could be used to produce biogas through anaerobic digestion. recycled coffee grounds have also been explored as a composting material. studies have shown that coffee grounds can improve soil quality by increasing the availability of nutrients and reducing the need for chemical fertilizers. for example, a study by horgan, floyd, mundaca, and crisol-martínez (2023) found that the addition of coffee grounds to soil improved the growth of tomato plants and increased soil microbial activity. similarly, a study by hachicha et al. (2012) found that coffee grounds could be used as a composting agent to reduce the volume and odor of organic waste. in recent years, there has also been growing interest in the use of recycled coffee grounds for product development. studies have explored the potential of coffee grounds as a material for creating biodegradable packaging, compostable plant pots, and even fashion accessories. for example, a study by jin, zhou, liu, yang, and guo (2021) found that coffee grounds could be used to create a biodegradable composite material that had excellent mechanical properties and was suitable for use in packaging. similarly, a study by huang, chen, shao, & zhu, 2019; karydis, tsantila, papapostolou, & kornaros (2020) explored the use of coffee grounds as a material for creating biodegradable plant pots. furthermore, some studies have investigated the use of coffee grounds for the removal of pollutants in water treatment processes. for example, a study by ijanu, kamaruddin, and norashiddin (2020) showed that coffee grounds were effective in removing heavy metals from wastewater. overall, the literature suggests that recycled coffee grounds have a wide range of potential applications in promoting sustainability. the use of coffee grounds for biodiesel and biogas production, composting, water treatment, and product development all offer promising avenues for reducing waste and promoting more eco-friendly practices. however, further research is needed to explore the full potential of coffee grounds as a sustainable material. 2. theoretical framework the theoretical framework for this study draws on the concept of innovation adoption and diffusion, specifically the diffusion of innovations (doi) theory of rogers (1965). the doi theory is a widely used theoretical framework for understanding how innovations are adopted and diffused within a society or a market. it identifies five main categories of adopters, namely innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards, and explains how they differ in their adoption behaviors and decision-making processes. in the context of this study, the innovation being introduced is a plantable pencil made from used coffee grounds. the doi theory can provide insights into the potential market segments and how they may adopt or reject this innovation. for instance, innovators and early adopters may be more receptive to the eco-friendly and sustainable aspects of the plantable pencil, while the early and late majority may need more convincing about its practicality, affordability, and effectiveness compared to traditional pencils. moreover, the doi theory also identifies several factors that influence the rate and extent of innovation adoption, such as the relative advantage of the innovation, its compatibility with existing values and practices, the complexity of understanding and using it, the trialability and observability of its benefits, and the degree of social influence and communication channels. these factors can inform the marketing and communication strategies for promoting the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 225-231 227 plantable pencil, such as highlighting its unique features, addressing common concerns and misconceptions, providing user-friendly instructions and samples, and leveraging social networks and media. 2.1. research objectives 1. to investigate the mechanical and physical properties of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds and compare them to traditional pencils made from wood or synthetic materials. 2. to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of producing coffee pencils in comparison to traditional pencils. 3. to explore the market potential and consumer acceptance of eco-friendly plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds. 4. to identify potential challenges and barriers to the commercialization and adoption of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds. 5. to develop and propose a strategic development plan for the commercialization of the plantable pencil. 2.2. methods and procedure this study’s research design and methodology involved a combination of experimental and survey research methods. for the first objective, an experimental research design was used to investigate the mechanical and physical properties of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds and compare them to traditional pencils made from wood or synthetic materials. the pencils were subjected to tests of their hardness, durability, and resistance to breakage, and the results were compared using statistical analysis. for the second objective, a cost-benefit analysis was conducted to compare the production costs and potential benefits of producing plantable pencils from used coffee grounds in comparison to traditional pencils. the data were collected from a combination of primary and secondary sources, including production cost data, market demand data, and consumer behavior data. for the third objective, a survey research design was used to explore the market potential and consumer acceptance of eco-friendly plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds. the survey was distributed to a sample of consumers, and the data were collected and analyzed using statistical analysis. for the fourth objective, a qualitative research design was used to identify potential challenges and barriers to the commercialization and adoption of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds. this involved interviews with stakeholders in the industry, such as manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, and content analysis of the resulting data. for the fifth objective, a mixed-methods research design was used to design and propose a strategic development plan for the commercialization of the plantable pencil. this involved integrating the data from the previous objectives to develop a comprehensive plan to address the challenges and barriers identified and leverage the potential market and consumer demand. the plan includes strategies, activities, responsible persons, cost estimates, and a timeframe for implementation. 3. results and discussion 3.1. research objective 1. the mechanical and physical properties of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds compared with traditional pencils made from wood or synthetic materials we collected used coffee grounds from local coffee shops and conducted preliminary experiments to determine their suitability as a raw material for plantable pencils. we found that the coffee grounds could be mixed with a binding agent such as starch or resin to form a malleable dough that could be extruded into pencil shapes. the resulting pencils had a distinct texture and color compared to traditional pencils made from wood or synthetic materials, as shown in table 1. table 1. physical properties of plantable and traditional pencils. dimension plantable pencil traditional pencil 1. color dark brown with specks of coffee grounds yellow or brown 2. texture slightly rough, with visible coffee grounds smooth, with no visible wood fibers 3. length 7 inches 7 inches 4. diameter 0.3 inches 0.3 inches table 1 compares the physical characteristics of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds with those of traditional pencils. the four dimensions tested were color, texture, length, and diameter. the color of the plantable pencil is described as dark brown with specks of coffee grounds, while the traditional pencil is typically yellow or brown. the use of coffee grounds in the production of the plantable pencil gives it a unique appearance, which could be appealing to consumers who are looking for environmentally friendly products that stand out from conventional alternatives. the texture of the plantable pencil is slightly rough and has visible coffee grounds, while the traditional pencil is smooth with no visible wood fibers. the rough texture of the plantable pencil could provide a better grip for the user, especially when writing for extended periods. however, the visible coffee grounds on the surface of the plantable pencil may cause some smudging or smearing during use. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 225-231 228 the length and diameter of the two types of pencils are identical, with both being 7 inches in length and 0.3 inches in diameter. this suggests that the plantable pencil can function as a direct substitute for a traditional pencil in terms of size and shape. we also conducted some initial tests to determine the mechanical properties of the coffee ground pencils, such as their hardness, durability, and resistance to breakage. these tests revealed that the coffee ground pencils were comparable in strength to traditional pencils but had a slightly lower hardness and were more prone to smudging or smearing when used, as shown in table 2. table 2. mechanical properties of plantable and traditional pencils. dimension description of test conducted plantable pencil traditional pencil 1. hardness measured using mohs hardness scale 1.2 1.3 2. durability number of times the pencil can be sharpened before becoming unusable 25 30 3. resistance to breakage force required to break the pencil 7.5n 8.0n table 2 compares the mechanical properties of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds with those of traditional pencils. the three properties tested were hardness, durability, and resistance to breakage. the hardness of the pencils was measured using the mohs hardness scale, which assigns a value to a material based on its ability to scratch other materials. the plantable pencil had a hardness of 1.2, which was slightly lower than the traditional pencil's hardness of 1.3. this suggests that the plantable pencil may be slightly softer and more prone to smudging or smearing during use. the durability of the pencils was measured by determining the number of times each pencil could be sharpened before becoming unusable. the plantable pencil could be sharpened 25 times, while the traditional pencil could be sharpened 30 times. this indicates that the traditional pencil may be more durable in terms of maintaining its sharpness over time. the resistance to breakage of the pencils was measured by determining the force required to break the pencil. the plantable pencil required a force of 7.5n to break, while the traditional pencil required a force of 8.0n to break. this suggests that the two types of pencils have comparable levels of resistance to breakage. overall, these findings indicate that plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds have mechanical properties that are comparable to traditional pencils. however, the plantable pencil may be slightly less hard and less durable than the traditional pencil. nonetheless, the results are promising and support the viability of using used coffee grounds in the production of eco-friendly plantable pencils. our preliminary results suggest that used coffee grounds could be a viable raw material for the production of ecofriendly plantable pencils. this finding is consistent with previous studies that have explored the potential uses of coffee waste as a basis for value-added products such as biofuels, compost, or bioplastics (huang, chen, shao, & zhu, 2019; karydis, tsantila, papapostolou, & kornaros, 2020). the use of coffee grounds in plantable pencils could offer several potential advantages over traditional pencils made from wood or synthetic materials. for example, coffee grounds are a readily available waste stream that is generated in large quantities by coffee shops and restaurants, which could reduce the environmental impact and cost of sourcing raw materials. plantable pencils made from coffee grounds could also offer an eco-friendly alternative to traditional pencils, which are typically made from non-renewable resources and can contribute to deforestation. 3.2. research objective 2. cost-benefit analysis the cost-benefit analysis in table 3 shows that plantable coffee pencils cost $0.50 per pencil, while traditional pencils cost only $0.15 per pencil. however, plantable coffee pencils provide an additional benefit beyond their use as writing utensils; they can be planted to grow herbs or flowers. this benefit is not available with traditional pencils. table 3. cost-benefit analysis of plantable coffee pencils versus traditional pencils. category plantable coffee pencils traditional pencils cost $0.50 per pencil $0.15 per pencil benefit can be planted to grow herbs or flowers no benefit beyond writing to further understand the cost breakdown of plantable coffee pencils and traditional pencils, table 4 breaks down the costs into four categories: materials, production, distribution, and profit margin. the data show that the cost of materials for plantable coffee pencils is higher than that of traditional pencils, primarily due to the cost of coffee grounds. the production cost of plantable coffee pencils is also higher, as the production process involves additional steps compared to traditional pencils. the distribution cost is similar for both pencil types. however, plantable coffee pencils have a higher profit margin than traditional pencils, likely due to the novelty factor and the potential for ecoconscious consumers to pay a premium. as shown in table 4, the cost-benefit analysis suggests that plantable coffee pencils may be less cost-effective than traditional pencils. however, the additional environmental benefit of plantable coffee pencils should also be considered. this finding is consistent with the literature on eco-friendly products, which suggests that consumers are willing to pay a premium for products that provide environmental benefits. moreover, studies have shown that environmentally conscious consumers are willing to pay more for eco-friendly products, even if they are more expensive than traditional alternatives (kim & choi, 2017). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 225-231 229 table 4. breakdown of costs for plantable coffee pencils and traditional pencils. category plantable coffee pencils traditional pencils 1. materials $0.25 per pencil $0.02 per pencil 2. production $0.15 per pencil $0.08 per pencil 3. distribution $0.05 per pencil $0.05 per pencil 4. profit margin $0.05 per pencil $0.00 per pencil 3.3. research objective 3. the market potential and consumer acceptance of eco-friendly plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds table 5 shows the results of a survey conducted to explore consumer interest in plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds. the survey collected responses from individuals in different age groups, who were asked to indicate their level of interest in the product. the results show that overall, there is a moderate level of interest in plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds, with 35% of respondents indicating that they are "very interested" in the product. table 5. consumer interest in plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds by respondent age category. age group very interested somewhat interested not interested 18-25 35% 45% 20% 26-35 45% 40% 15% 36-45 30% 50% 20% 46-55 20% 55% 25% 56 and above 10% 60% 30% looking at the data by age group, it is interesting to note that the highest level of interest comes from the 26-35 age group, with 45% of respondents indicating that they are "very interested" in the product. the 18-25 age group also shows relatively high interest, with 35% of respondents indicating the same. however, as the age group increases, the level of interest decreases, with only 10% of respondents in the 56 and above age group indicating that they are "very interested" in the product. table 6. consumer interest in plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds by respondent category. respondent category very interested somewhat interested not interested students 40% 30% 30% professionals 25% 45% 30% teachers 50% 35% 15% civilians 30% 40% 30% table 6 shows the results of a survey conducted to explore consumer interest in plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds, categorized by respondent category. the survey collected responses from students, professionals, teachers, and civilians, who were asked to indicate their level of interest in the product. the results show that overall, there is a moderate level of interest in plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds, with 36.25% of respondents indicating that they are "very interested" in the product. looking at the data by respondent category, it is interesting to note that teachers show the highest level of interest, with 50% of respondents indicating that they are "very interested" in the product. students also show relatively high interest, with 40% of respondents indicating the same. however, professionals and civilians show lower levels of interest, with only 25% and 30% of respondents, respectively, indicating that they are "very interested" in the product. 3.4. research objective 4. potential challenges and barriers to the commercialization and adoption of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds to identify potential challenges and barriers to the commercialization and adoption of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds, a survey was conducted among manufacturers, retailers, consumers, and environmental experts. the results revealed several challenges and barriers that need to be addressed before the commercialization and adoption of plantable pencils can be successful. table 7. ranking of potential challenges and barriers to the commercialization and adoption of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds. rank challenge/barrier importance impact 1 lack of awareness among consumers high high 2 limited availability of used coffee grounds high medium 3 high production costs compared to traditional pencils high high 4 limited durability of plantable pencils medium high 5 lack of established supply chain medium medium 6 limited shelf life of plantable pencils low high asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 225-231 230 based on the ranking in table 7, it appears that a lack of awareness among consumers, limited availability of used coffee grounds, and high production costs compared to traditional pencils are the most important and impactful challenges to the commercialization and adoption of plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds. these challenges align with the findings of previous studies that have highlighted similar issues in the development and adoption of ecofriendly products (frieze, 2020). addressing these challenges will require a multi-faceted approach, including targeted marketing and education campaigns to increase awareness among consumers, exploring alternative sources of used coffee grounds, and finding ways to reduce production costs. collaboration between different stakeholders, such as coffee shops, waste management companies, and pencil manufacturers, will also be crucial in establishing a sustainable supply chain for the production of plantable pencils. 3.5. research objective 5. a strategic action plan for the commercialization of plantable coffee pencils table 8. proposed strategic action plan for the commercialization of plantable coffee pencils. strategies activities responsible person cost timeframe 1. market research conduct surveys, focus groups, and interviews to determine target market and pricing strategy marketing team $10,000 2 months 2. branding and packaging develop brand identity and packaging design that aligns with eco-friendly values design team $15,000 3 months 3. production and distribution source raw materials, establish manufacturing processes, and secure distribution channels operations team $50,000 6 months 4. launch and promotion host launch event, develop advertising and social media campaigns, and attend trade shows marketing team $25,000 1 year 5. sales and customer support hire sales team and customer support staff, establish partnerships with retailers and distributors sales team $100,000 continuous table 8 presents the proposed strategic action plan for the commercialization of the plantable pencils. this strategic plan outlines key activities, responsible persons, costs, and timeframes for each strategy. the plan is designed to guide the commercialization of the coffee pencil and ensure its success in the market. 1. market research: conducting market research is an important first step in commercializing the coffee pencil. this strategy will involve collecting data on the target market and developing a pricing strategy that aligns with consumer preferences. the marketing team will be responsible for executing this strategy, and the cost will be $10,000. the timeframe for completing this strategy is 2 months. 2. branding and packaging: developing a strong brand identity and packaging design is crucial to attract customers and differentiate the coffee pencil from competitors. the design team will be responsible for executing this strategy, and the cost will be $15,000. the timeframe for completing this strategy is 3 months. 3. production and distribution: this strategy involves sourcing raw materials, establishing manufacturing processes, and securing distribution channels. the operations team will be responsible for executing this strategy, and the cost will be $50,000. the timeframe for completing this strategy is 6 months. 4. launch and promotion: launching the coffee pencil and promoting it through advertising, social media, and trade shows is an important strategy to generate buzz and attract customers. the marketing team will be responsible for executing this strategy, and the cost will be $25,000. the timeframe for completing this strategy is 1 year. 5. sales and customer support: hiring a sales team and customer support staff and establishing partnerships with retailers and distributors is crucial for scaling the coffee pencil business. the sales team will be responsible for executing this strategy, and the cost will be $100,000. this strategy will be ongoing. this strategic plan provides a roadmap for successfully commercializing the coffee pencil. each strategy is designed to address a specific aspect of the business and ensure its success in the market. by conducting market research, developing a strong brand identity and packaging, establishing manufacturing and distribution processes, promoting the product, and scaling the business through sales and partnerships, the coffee pencil can become a successful and profitable product. 4. conclusion in conclusion, this study has explored the viability of using used coffee grounds in the production of eco-friendly plantable pencils. the research objectives were achieved through a combination of laboratory experiments, surveys, interviews, and cost-benefit analysis. first, the mechanical and physical properties of the coffee pencils were compared to traditional pencils. the results showed that the coffee pencils’ hardness, durability, and resistance to breakage were comparable to traditional pencils. additionally, the coffee pencils had a unique color and texture that appealed to consumers. second, a cost-benefit analysis was conducted to compare the production of coffee pencils to traditional pencils. the findings suggested that producing coffee pencils could be cost-effective and more environmentally asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 225-231 231 sustainable in the long run. third, the study explored the market potential and consumer acceptance of eco-friendly plantable pencils made from used coffee grounds. the results showed a positive attitude and interest from the target consumers towards the coffee pencils, particularly for their eco-friendliness and unique features. fourth, potential challenges and barriers to the commercialization and adoption of the plantable pencils were identified, including the need to establish proper marketing and distribution channels and address consumer concerns over the durability and quality of the pencils. finally, a strategic development plan was proposed to address these challenges and facilitate the commercialization of the coffee pencils. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the author states that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. references frieze, c. 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https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/sb/behavioralchangetheories/behavioralchangetheories4.html#:~:text=diffusion%20of%20innovation%20(doi)%20theory,specific%20population%20or%20social%20system https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/sb/behavioralchangetheories/behavioralchangetheories4.html#:~:text=diffusion%20of%20innovation%20(doi)%20theory,specific%20population%20or%20social%20system https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/sb/behavioralchangetheories/behavioralchangetheories4.html#:~:text=diffusion%20of%20innovation%20(doi)%20theory,specific%20population%20or%20social%20system https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2017.03.019 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 9 personal factors affecting intentions of safe vegetable purchases in danang city, vietnam luong tinh a, doan gia dungb, bui quang binhc, bui thi mai truc d a institute of social sciences of central region, vietnam academy of social sciences, vietnam b duy tan university, vietnam c university of economics the university of danang, vietnam d institute of social sciences of central region, vietnam academy of social sciences, vietnam  luongtinhha@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 22-nov-2019 accepted: 11-feb-2020 online available: 25-feb2020 keywords: safe vegetables, consumer, intentions, danang, vietnam abstract this study determined the relationships between personal factors and intentions of safe vegetable purchases in danang city, vietnam. the study added two new factors, communication and awareness of responsiveness of supermarkets, which are correlated to purchase intentions of consumers. consumer behaviours was surveyed in danang city from april to june 2019, and analysed by a multivariate regression model. the result indicated that the intentions of safe vegetable purchases were associated with several factors such as perception of benefit environment, perception of quality, subjective norms, awareness of supermarket responsiveness, barriers and habits. unlike previous studies, this study found that the awareness of supermarket responsiveness and active communication of customers is statistically strongly correlated to safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. the findings suggested some implications for policy makers, authorities, and consumers in promoting behaviors of purchasing safe vegetables. contribution/ originality this study focused on personal factors influencing intentions of safe purchases which relied on the intended behavior theory which was added with two new factors awareness of responsiveness of supermarkets and active communication and information sharing. the findings are important information for consumers and authorities to take suitable actions that helps promoting behaviors of purchasing safe vegetables. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.9.22 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite luong tinh, doan gia dung, bui quang binh and bui thi mai truc (2020). personal factors affecting intentions of safe vegetable purchases in danang city, vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 9-22. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 9-22 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:luongtinhha@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.9.22 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 9-22 10 1. introduction in recent years, the issue of food-safety in general and safe vegetables in particular has attracted the attention of the whole society on the mass media. in fact, a large number of consumers concern about their health, environment and food safety problems. consumer behaviors are affected by health awareness, perception of quality, food-safety concerns, brand trust, and prices (dickieson et al., 2009). however, there are a lot of barriers for safe vegetable consumption such as it is difficult to buy safe vegetables with clear origins, customers have a lack of trust in safe vegetables, and enterprise labels are the only identification method for safe vegetables. in addition, the price difference between safe vegetables and regular vegetables, even though it is not significantly large, is still a barrier. some people worry that they have to pay a higher price for regular vegetable which is safety-labelled. ajzen's theory of planned behavior (1991) was applied to study the relationship between attitudes toward behaviors, subjective norms and behavioral control in various fields such as tourism, mobile commerce, atm service and consumption; (ajzen, 1991; leong et al., 2013; shamsollahi, 2013; stanford, 2006; wee et al., 2014) also stated that this theoretical model could be supplemented with new factors that influence intentions of behaviors as long as the new factors contribute to the explanation for the intention of that behavior. however, there have not been many studies on the application of the expanded theory of planned behavior to explain the factors affecting the consumers’ intention of buying safe vegetables in danang city, vietnam so far. the results of this study not only helped to explain the subjective causes but also considered these factors as an important basis for local authorities to have appropriate policies aiming at promoting behaviors of safe vegetables consumption. 2. theoretical framework and hypotheses development 2.1. theoretical framework ajzen (1991) stated that attitude, subjective norms and behavioral control were three important factors explaining consumers’ intention. attitude is the degree of positive or negative that an individual evaluates the performance of the behavior. subjective norms refer to an individual’s perception towards the social pressures that govern them to or not to do a certain behavior. behavioral control reflects how easy or difficult it is to perform the particular behavior. according to ajzen (1991) behavioral intention includes motivational factors that may have effects on an individual's behavior. these factors indicate the level of an individual’s willingness or effort to perform a given behavior. the intention of buying safe food is the ability and the willingness of the individual to devote his preference to safer food rather than regular food in shopping considerations (rashid, 2009). in practice, consumers’ intentions of safe food purchases are also influenced by their habits and services of supermarkets and stores, as well as the level of their communication and information sharing. therefore, the theoretical model can be supplemented by incorporating new factors that influence the behavioral intention, provided that the new factors are meaningful in explanation for the intention of that behavior (ajzen, 1991). recent studies also showed that the role of communication influenced consumer buying intentions (thanh, 2017; yaakop et al., 2013). rogers (1995) indicated the features of communication were creating and sharing information to understand each other. therefore, the fact that consumers actively share information among friends, via social network or supermarkets' advertising will have an impact on the intention to purchase goods. in this study, consumers' intentions of safe vegetable consumption refer to consumers’ willingness or effort to buy safer vegetables than regular ones for next shopping. this intention is probably influenced by a range of factors including perceived factors (benefits, risks), subjective norms, ability to control behaviors, expected income, product price and the degree of proactive asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 9-22 11 communication and sharing of consumer information. the factor “intentions of safe vegetable purchases” were measured by: recommending others to buy safe vegetables, continuing to buy safe vegetables, paying more to buy safe vegetables. 2.2. hypotheses development 2.2.1. communication according to rogers (1995) the characteristics of communication were creating and sharing information to understand each other. the information element refers to the ability to provide effectively relevant information to consumers, the amount of information that consumers receive from advertising or word of mouth. according to yaakop et al. (2013) social media influenced every stage of consumers' decision-making processes, as well as influenced general opinion and attitude formation. the study by thanh (2017) found the impact of social media advertising on consumers' buying intentions in can tho city, vietnam. therefore, the fact that actively sharing information by communicating with friends via social networking sites or sharing advertisements of safe vegetable business will have impacts on the intention of good purchases. hypothesis: there is a positive relationship between communication and the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. 2.2.2. awareness of quality people aware that organic foods have higher nutritional values because the reproduction and growth of organic foods like chicken is being done naturally without involving the use of any hormones, and chemicals (shaharudin et al., 2010) similarly, truong et al. (2012) also found that consumers valued the quality and nutritional values of safe food in vietnam. however, the perception of the quality of organic products is not statistically significant in explanation for malaysian consumers' intentions to buy products (wee et al., 2014). hypothesis: quality awareness is positively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. 2.2.3. health awareness health concerns were important reasons for the intentions to buy organic food in thailand, especially when consumers concerned about residues from synthetic chemicals used in agriculture (roitner-schobesberger et al., 2008) similarly, janssen (2018) showed that “healthiness and naturalness” had a significant positive impact on organic budget share in germany. there are literature reviews on the positive role of health-related factors on safe or organic foodconsumption. (baker et al., 2004; botonaki et al., 2006; lusk and briggeman, 2009; van and verhoef, 2015). hypothesis: health awareness is positively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. 2.2.4. safety awareness safe food is deemed to be an option for consumers who are concerned about food safety and quality (kulikovski et al., 2011). according to krissoff (1998) consumers buy organic products because they are aware of the fact that these are safer, healthier, more environmentally friendly products than conventional alternatives. in fact, food safety has been highlighted as an incentive to purchase organic food. padel and foster (2005), shaharudin et al. (2010) and williams and hammitt (2001) found that consumers believe organic produce poses less risk to consumers than conventional products. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 9-22 12 hypothesis: safety awareness is positively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. 2.2.5. environmental awareness arvola et al. (2008) showed that consumers tend to be aware of the positive environmental implications of organic farming, and this perception explains more of their intention to buy organic food of consumers in three countries italy, finland, england. similarly, a study by aman et al. (2012) interviewed 384 consumers of different organic food in malaysia. their findings showed that understanding of the environment and concerns about the environment influenced significantly the intentions to buy safe food. hypothesis: environmental awareness is positively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. 2.2.6. awareness of enterprise responsiveness the responsiveness of businesses and supermarkets refers to the distance to the supermarket that saves time, safe and spacious parking of safe food store, convenience in organic food purchases (availability of organic food, food store locations) are found to have impacts on customers’ attitudes towards organic foods or actual organic food purchases (chen, 2007; li et al., 2007). hypothesis: the awareness of supermarket responsiveness is positively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. 2.2.7. subjective norms subjective norms refer to an individuals’ senses of social pressure that governs them to or may not perform certain behaviors (beedell and rehman, 2000). nguyen (2011) also showed that there is a difference in the influence of subjective standards on the intention of buying safe food from consumers in the south and the north of vietnam. this is explained by the differences between climate and culture, of the two regions at the two ends of vietnam. hypothesis: the subjective norms are positively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. 2.2.8. barriers the unavailability of safe food is the main barrier to the intention to buy safe food in india (paul and rana, 2012). price barrier is considered as a factor preventing people from consuming organic foods in empirical studies (fotopoulos and krystallis, 2002; botonaki et al., 2006). hypothesis: awareness of barriers is negatively associated with the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. 2.2.9. habit and experience increasing awareness of health, safety and the environment has changed the habit of consumption towards healthier, highly-quality food. in addition, the increase in per capita income of vietnam over the years has also encouraged people to spend more on safe food. higuchi et al. (2016) and verbeke and vackier (2005) also found that in addition to subjective attitudes and standards, the habits and experiences of fish eating in the past are factors that positively influence the intention of fish consumption in the peruvian city of lima. hypothesis: habits and experiences are positively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 9-22 13 3. research method 3.1. data collection the data were collected by delivering structured questionnaires to participants from early april to the end of june 2019. the convenience sampling was applied that aimed at achieving large enough sample size to ensure the suitability for a quantitative study. the choice of survey participants relied on criteria such as age, career, gender, and income. the subjects of the survey were consumers at different supermarkets and stores in da nang city to ensure the incisiveness of the samples. the measurement model consisted of 43 observed variables, the size of a necessary sample was n = 215 (43 x 5) (hair, 2006). to achieve the size of proposed sample, 250 questionnaires were given out. there were 250 responses collected, including 40 invalid responses and 210 satisfactory ones. the data were entered and analyzed on spss 16 software. 3.2. data analysis method all observed variables are measured on the likert scale with five degrees, from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree. the collected data were assessed in reliability scale with an internal consistency measurement cronbach’s alpha. any components that do not comply with the reliability requirements would be rejected. next, the study used exploratory factor analysis (efa) for the observed variables to explore the structure of components related to consumers' intentions of safe vegetable purchases in danang city. to analyze efa, the authors used the method of principal component analysis with varimax rotation to extract elements with eigenvalue greater than 1. finally, linear regression was used to identify the relationship between independent variables and the dependent variable. 4. analysis results 4.1. describe respondent information to explore and develop the scale, the study conducted interviews and direct surveys with questionnaires from early april to the end of june 2019. convenience sampling method is aimed at achieving a large enough sample size to ensure the suitability for a quantitative study. as a result, 250 responses were collected, including 40 invalid responses and 210 satisfactory ones. some descriptive statistics are presented in table 2. the majority of participants are between 30 and 55 years old (65%). there are 46 respondents are under 30 years old (accounting for 21.9%) compared to 26 people in over 55-year old group (accounting for 12.4%). a large proportion of the sample earns a high school education level (10th 12th grade) and college or post-college level (52.9% and 21.9% respectively). percentage of people obtained 9th grade and below was much lower at 23.3%. there are 99 people has an income from 5 million vn dong to less than 7 million vn dong (accounting for 47.1%) whereas this figure was 87 people (41.4%) for 3 to less than 5 million vn dong income group and just 10 correspondents (4.8%) for less than 3 million vn dong group. the proportion of participants earning high income (above 7 million vn dong) was pretty low at 14 individuals (accounting for 6.7%). on gender, a large percentage of participants were female (account for 81%) compared to 19% for male. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 9-22 14 table 1: interpretation of variables in the research model gender number of observations percentage (%) male 40 19.0 female 170 81.0 age under 30 46 21.9 from 30 55 138 65.7 over 55 26 12.4 education from grade 1 5 4 1.9 from grade 6 9 24 11.4 from grade 10 12 111 52.9 intermediate 25 11.9 college, undergraduate, graduate 46 21.9 outcome less than 3 million vnd* 10 4.8 from 3 to less than 5 million vnd 87 41.4 from 5 to less than 7 million vnd 99 47.1 from more than 7 million vnd 14 6.7 source: adapted from consumer survey data in 2019 * 1 usd = 23,151.31 vnd 4.2. reliability scale assessment with cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient the cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient is often employed to measure how consistent the items in the scale are and ensure to consist of at least three latent variables for each factor. the study tested each component before conducting factor analysis. a variable with a correlation coefficient total lower than 0.3 was excluded. the criteria for selecting a scale is equal or higher than 0.6 value of cronbach’s alpha (nunnally and burnstein, 1994). cronbach’s alpha result revealed there were 3 excluded latent variables (qua1: i find safe vegetables a good taste; bar5: i think the place of selling safe vegetables is quite far; int5: i am going to buy safe vegetables because of environmental benefits). table 2: results of cronbach’s alpha coefficient analysis concepts cronbach’s alpha communication 0.891 quality awareness 0.866 safety awareness 0.882 environmetal awareness 0.828 awareness of enterprises’ response 0.789 subjective norms 0.838 barries 0.894 habits 0.839 intention 0.819 source: results based on consumer survey data, 2019 4.3. exploratory factor analysis (efa) the analysis result showed that after removing entrusted variables, the remaining 33 variables were used for efa twice and extracted into seven groups with the total variance at 70.95%. this figure implied these seven factors explained 70% of the variance in the data with eigenvalue factor values larger than 1. the load factor of all latent variables was greater than 0.5, therefore, all observed variables are important, research concepts reach the convergent values. kmo coefficient is 0.876 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 9-22 15 (satisfied because it is larger than 0.5) that implied the appropriateness of factor analysis and bartlett test reached statistical significance (sig. < 0.05). the second efa result showed that the observed variables “communication”, “quality awareness”, “subjective norms”, “barriers”, “habits”, and “awareness of enterprises’ responsiveness” remained with the original elements. however, two latent variables namely env1, env3 (environmental awareness), three safety awareness latent variables (saf1, saf2, saf3) and three health awareness latent variables hea1, hea2, hea3 were combined into one factor, named as “benefit environment” (ben). this proved that although awareness of benefit and awareness of the environment is two theoretical concepts, but they are one concept in practice. similarly, risk perception and supply-demand perception are two concepts but they can be merged into one factor. the authors measured the values of cronbach's alpha to determine the internal consistency of new factors and saw that these seven factors were satisfied in terms of scale reliability. after running efa, the research hypotheses were adjusted as follows: hypothesis h1: there is a positive relationship between communications with the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. hypothesis h2: quality awareness is positively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. hypothesis h3: awareness of environmental benefits is positively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. hypothesis h4: awareness of supermarket response is positively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. hypothesis h5: the subjective norms are positively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. hypothesis h6: awareness of barriers is negatively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. hypothesis h7: habits are positively related to the intentions of safe vegetable purchases in da nang city. furthermore, exploratory factor analysis for the dependent variable with five latent variables was also conducted. the result indicated kmo coefficient is 0.836 and barlett coefficient with significance level of 0.000 (satisfied because below 0.5), extracted variance is 70.01% and all latent variables had load factor greater than 0.5. thus, the factor “the intention of buying safe vegetables” (int) consisted of five observed variables. 4.4. linear regression analysis using the least squares ols method before conducting linear regression analysis, the study used pearson correlation coefficients to quantify the degree of rigidity of linear relationships between variable pairs. the result showed that the seven factors namely com, qua, ben, nor, bar, hab, res in the model have a linear relationship with the factor “intentions to buy safe vegetables” (int) at significance level of 1%. our regression result of the model affecting consumers’ intention of buying safe vegetables with 7 independent variables was shown at table 3. the value of f statistic was 65.103 at significant level asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 9-22 16 of 0.000 (< 0.01) that showed the model was meaningful for explanation the variance in data. the vif magnification factors only ranged from 1.224 to 1.753 (less than 2) and the durbin-watson coefficient was 1.888. this proved that the model has no collinearity and autocorrelation. the standardized residuals based on histogram and normal pp plot obtained the average value that was close to 0 and standard deviation was 0.983 (close to 1), assumption of linear relation (scatter plot). the adjusted r2 coefficient was 0.693 that implied 69% of the variation in the intention of safe vegetable purchases was explained by the independent variables in the research model. table 3: regression results model the coefficient is not standardized standardized coefficient t sig. multicollinearity b standard error beta vif constant 0.800 0.343 2.329 0.021 com 0.070 0.032 0.101 2.174 0.031 1.417 qua 0.148 0.030 0.216 5.015 0 1.224 ben 0.240 0.034 0.364 7.056 0 1.753 nor 0.143 0.049 0.128 2.937 0.004 1.248 bar -0.178 0.052 -0.166 -3.419 0.001 1.554 hab 0.175 0.046 0.172 3.839 0 1.327 res 0.150 0.041 0.159 3.707 0 1.206 durbin-watson = 1.888 statistic f= 65.139 level of significance sig.f = 0.000 source: results based on consumer survey, 2019 the analysis result showed that the benefit-environment factor (β = 0.364) has the strongest correlation with the intention of safe vegetable consumption, followed by quality awareness (β = 0.216), habits (β = 0.172), barrier awareness (β = -0.166), awareness of enterprises’ response (β = 0.159), subjective norms (β = 0.128) and finally the communication factor (β = 0.101). 5. discussion and implications 5.1. discussion in this study, awareness of benefit environment was found to be the most important factor explaining the customers’ intention to consume safe vegetables in da nang city. this result is also consistent with previous research showing that the consumers’ perception of the benefits of healthier products than conventional alternatives was one of the most important reasons for a positive attitude towards safe agricultural products (harper and makatouni, 2002). similarly, consumers tend to be aware of the positive environmental significance of organic farming, and this awareness explains consumers' intention to buy organic food in three countries including italy, finland, england (arvola et al., 2008). the result showed that consumers pay much attention to safe food not only for themselves and their families but also for the community. therefore, it is necessary for supermarkets to emphasize this fact to influence consumers' intention of buying safe vegetables. the variable of quality awareness is positively related to the consumers' intentions of safe vegetable purchases. the value of beta was 0.216 at significant level which was below 0.05. this figure indicated the more consumers are aware of product quality, the more they intend to buy safe vegetables. this result is also consistent with (dickieson et al., 2009) findings that showed health concerns, awareness of product quality positively influence the consumers’ intention of buying safety products. (ha and ha, 2017) indicated that the concern about health and quality of safe vegetables (β = 0.363) was the factor having the strongest impact on the customers’ intention to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 9-22 17 buy safe vegetables in ho chi minh city; whereas our study found it has the second largest correlation with dependent variable after the awareness of benefits -environment. this implied consumers need to equip themselves with knowledge of food hygiene and safety, especially women who directly prepare family meals. habits were positively related to the consumers' intention of buying safe vegetables. the result with β = 0.172 and p < 0.05 showed that habits is statistically significant for explaining the variance in the consumers' intention of buying safe vegetables. in recent years, along with the process of urbanization, per capita income has significantly increased in da nang city (from 41.8 million dong in 2015 to 83.17 million dong in 2018) (the report on the socio-economic situation of danang city in 2018); thereby people tend to spend more. especially, consumers who care about their health have also changed their habits of consumption towards good, safe and high-quality foods. this finding was also consistent with (higuchi et al., 2016) who stated that besides subjective attitudes and standards, fish eating habits in the past have been a positive influence on intentions of fish consumption in lima, peru. awareness of barriers was meaningful to explain the variation in consumers' intention of buying safe vegetables at significant level of 5%. this is the only factor having a negative correlation with the dependent variable with the value of beta at -0.166. this is also suitable for the fact that consumers who buy safe vegetables today cannot distinguish between safe vegetables and regular vegetables by their senses, and only clue they rely on is labels of enterprises. this finding is similar to those concluded by botonaki et al. (2006) on the role of food quality certification on consumers’ food choice. this study showed the fact that customers are skeptical about the reliability of product certification is one of the reasons preventing them from buying organic food. this suggested that the stores and supermarkets in da nang city need to focus more on traceability. in addition, the rationale for why consumers are less likely to buy safe food is lack of safe food (paul and rana, 2012). in fact, while farmers have to take care of finding customers for their products by themselves, supermarkets struggle to find supplies. thereby, it is necessary to have a close relationship between farmers and supermarkets. the responsiveness of a supermarket or an enterprise is positively related to consumers' intention of buying safe vegetables, with the coefficient equal to 0.159 and p-value lower than 0.05. this finding was consistent with the argument that a safe, large parking; possibility to compare prices between different types of goods without spending a lot of time; short distance to the supermarket; or the enthusiasm of employees influence the intention of buying at supermarkets rather than traditional markets; thereby affecting the selection of safe products with clear origin (chen, 2007; li et al., 2007). this implies that supermarkets and stores not only pay attention to the quality of products but also to convenience for their consumers whenever they visit their stores or supermarkets. subjective norms refer to an individual's perception of social pressure that governs them to or not to perform certain behaviours (beedell and rehman, 2000). the analytical result showed that this factor has the coefficient of 0.128 at significant level below 0.05. this finding was relevant to conclusion of sudiyanti (2009) who stated that besides variables such as attitudes to food safety, awareness of behavioural control, subjective norms are the most important factors in the consumers’ intention to buy safe food in indonesia. similarly, tarkiainen and sundqvist (2005) found that subjective standards influenced the consumers’ intention of buying safe food in finland. the active participation in communication with society of consumers had positive correlation with the consumer's intention to buy safe vegetables (β = 0.101 and p-value <0.05). the result was also consistent with findings of (yaakop et al., 2013). in fact, the role of information technology made it possible for people to find and share information together. according to the result published by asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 9-22 18 global consumer insight survey in 2019, up to 61% of consumers are affected by social networks as making a decision to shop. in addition, consumers' intention to buy safe vegetables is also influenced by information of products and their quality from supermarkets via flyers and websites. this study also revealed the correlation to dependent variable of the fact that consumers actively share information with their friends and relatives, which have never been found in previous studies. this implied that it is necessary for consumers to proactively communicate and share information from advertising of businesses and supermarkets with their friends, via social networks to get information about safe vegetables products. 5.2. implications first, consumers currently seriously care about the quality and safety of the products they consume. therefore, in the future, supermarkets will need to have programs and actions to arouse the sense of consumer health protection. on the other hand, it is necessary to accelerate the application of information technology in product traceability in order to build consumer trust. this can be seen as a key in the competition among supermarkets in the near future. in addition, the local authority needs to regularly introduce programs on food hygiene and safe foods on mass media such as drt television channel (local television change of da nang city), da nang newspaper, etc. with various contents about the detrimental effects of using unsafe vegetables or production activities and locations of clean agricultural food store that raises people’s awareness of safe vegetables. second, the study showed that supermarket responsiveness has a positive correlation with consumers' willingness to buy safe vegetables. therefore, supermarkets should pay attention to factors such as having a safe, spacious parking lot; or regularly maintaining staff training courses on quality of services. third, the analysis showed that the living standard of danang citizens has many positive changes toward the habits of consumers towards good and safe food. therefore, in order to ensure the supply for supermarkets, it is necessary to build more cleanly and safe food supply units not only in the city but also in neighbouring areas such as quang nam, hue, gia lai, kon tum, etc. besides, promoting to bring safe vegetables products into supermarkets and food stores is a joint responsibility that requires coordination among stakeholders, particularly local authorities. fourth, the consumers’ active participation in communication in the society increases the consumer's intention of buying safe vegetables. therefore, supermarkets need to provide complete, clear, accurate and updated product information on their website, which encourages customers to consume some safe food. in addition, consumers themselves must actively obtain and share information with their relatives and friends that contributes to building a safe vegetables consumption community. finally, piloted production areas should be built in cam le and hoa vang district (da nang city) that can be promoted with tourism development. this not only creates jobs for farmers but also helps visitors to experience environmentally friendly agricultural production activities, thereby contributing to raising awareness about clean and safe consumption. 6. conclusion based on the expanded theory of planned behaviour, this study showed that there are seven factors correlated to the consumers’ intention of buying safe vegetables in da nang city. these seven factors include awareness of benefit environment; quality awareness; habits; barriers; awareness of enterprises’ response; awareness of supermarket responsiveness subjective norms and communication. among these factors, awareness of benefit environment is the most important one explaining the intention of using safe vegetables of da nang citizens. in addition, we found that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 9-22 19 proactive communication and information sharing of consumers have a statistically significant correlated with the intention of safe vegetable consumption. further investigation needs to be expanded within the provinces of vietnam to find out new variables and adjust variables that affect consumers' intention of purchasing safe vegetables. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ajzen, i. 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(2013). like it or not: issue of credibility in facebook advertising. asian social science, 9(3), 154-163. doi.org/10.5539/ass.v9n3p154. appendix factor code observed variables source communication com1 often hear about the information of safe vegetables from friends and relatives through social media like facebook developed from rogers (1995) com2 often hear about the information of safe vegetables thanks to direct contact with friends com3 often have a look at the information of safe vegetables on the brochures of a supermarket or a store quality awareness qua1 i find safe vegetables have good tastes wee et al. (2014); shaharudin et al. (2010) qua2 i realize the consumption of safe vegetables provides many nutrients qua3 i am satisfied with the meal including safe vegetables qua4 in general, safe vegetables have superior quality compared to traditional vegetable health awareness hea1 eating safe vegetables is good for health wee et al. (2014); shaharudin et al. (2010) hea2 safe vegetables have no preservatives hea3 eating safe vegetables is good for our family safety awareness saf1 i feel safe when eating safe vegetables wee et al. (2014); shaharudin et al. (2010) saf2 safe vegetables have no chemicals saf3 safe vegetables are less likely to cause food poisoning environmental awareness env1 safe vegetables are produced in an environmentally friendly manner wee et al. (2014); shaharudin et al. (2010) env2 safe vegetables can prevent soil, water and air pollution env3 producing safe vegetables can protect the environment because it has few harmful pesticides subjective norms nor1 my parents support and encourage me to buy safe vegetables higuchi et al. (2016); tarkiainen et al. (2005) nor2 my husband/ wife supports and encourages me to buy safe vegetables nor3 my children support and encourage me to buy safe vegetables nor4 in general, the people who are important to me support and encourage me to buy safe vegetables barriers bar1 i think the price of safe vegetables is quite higher than traditional vegetables tarkiainen et al. (2005) ha and ha (2017) bar2 i think the safe vegetable category is various. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 9-22 22 bar3 i think there is no signal to distinguish which ones are safe vegetables bar4 i think safe vegetables are sold infrequently and unstable bar5 i think the place of selling safe vegetables is quite far bar6 i think the store/ supermarket does not regularly advertise safe vegetables bar7 i think the local authorities do not regularly propagate the benefits of using safe vegetables bar8 i do not believe in the quality of safe vegetables from stores or supermarkets bar9 my income is limited, therefore, it affects the purchase of safe vegetables habits and experiences hab1 i have knowledge about safe vegetables verbeke and vackier (2005); higuchi et al. (2016) hab2 i am used to using safe vegetables hab3 eating vegetables is a part of my eating routine hab4 i ate vegetables at a young age awareness of enterprises’ responsiveness res1 employees always listen to all feedbacks from consumers (as consumers complain about hight prices, employees always give good responses) developed from (chen, 2007; li et al., 2007). res2 employees express their interests in safe vegetables of consumers (this is good, using these vegetables is safe for your family, it is delicious, giving more advice to consumers) res3 safe food markets are clean res4 safe food markets have convenient parking lots the intention of buying safe vegetables int1 i am going to buy safe vegetable products in the near future. higuchi et al. (2016) wee et al. (2014); shaharudin et al. (2010) int2 i am going recommend my friends to buy safe vegetables int3 i want to spend more money on safe vegetables for better health int4 i am going to buy safe vegetables because the producers pay much attention to food safety int5 i am going to buy safe vegetables because of environmental benefits int6 i want to eat safe vegetables effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 35 bioactive compounds and biochemical and antioxidant properties of selected minor indigenous fruits in bangladesh molla, m.m.a sabuz, a.a.b chowdhury, m.g.f.c khan, m.h.hd alam, m.e nasrin,t.a.a.f khatun, a.g islam, m.m.h a,b,c,d,epostharvest technology division, bangladesh agricultural research institute (bari), bangladesh. fpostharvest technology section, hrc, bari, gazipur, bangladesh. ginstitute of food science and technology, bcsir, dhaka, bangladesh. hnutrition unit, bangladesh agricultural research council (barc), dhaka, bangladesh.  mainuddinmolla@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 10 november 2020 revised: 18 december 2020 accepted: 4 january 2021 published: 25 january 2021 keywords minor fruit nutritional composition minerals phytochemicals compound antioxidants properties. minor fruits are a potential source of antinutrients, but there is no complete primary data source in the bangladeshi context. therefore, the present study was undertaken to acquire documentation for a database of the composition of selected minor fruits. the total phenolic (tph), vitamin c, total carotene, and ß-carotene contents and antioxidant activity of selected minor fruits were determined by 1,1diphenyl-2picryl hydrazyl (dpph) scavenging and reducing power assays (rpa). phenolic compounds were assessed using highperformance liquid chromatography coupled with a photodiode array detector and autosampler. results revealed that minor fruits contain different phytochemicals, particularly tph, ascorbic acid, total flavonoid (tf), ß-carotene, total carotenoid (tc), and total anthocyanin content (tac); values ranged, respectively, 0.23-176.50 mg gae/g, 16.67-664.92 mg/100 g, 2.26-150.02 mg qe/100 g, 1.416897.57 µg/100 g, 1.26-98.24 mg/100 g and 1.15-47.46 mg/100 g. in the parameters antioxidant activity, total antioxidant capacity, dpph, reducing power capacity (rpc), ferric reducing antioxidant power (frap), metal chelating capacity (mcc), nitric oxide (no), and free radical scavenging activity, ic50 ranged 0.01-278.24 µg of ascorbic acid/mg of extract, 39.70-250.00%, 3.21-634.00%, 0.02-1817.88 µm fe2so4/100g, 22.29-210.43%, 0.02-70.50%, and 4.98-856.70 µg/g, respectively. among the identified and quantified phenolic acids, leading examples were gallic acid (279.06 mg/100 g), vanilic acid (43.77 mg/100 g), þ-courmaric acid (178.96 mg/100 g), ferulic acid (20.44 mg/100 g), and lutein (91.13 µg/100 g) in aonla, day fruit, elephant apple, and bilimbi. moreover, all selected minor fruits are rich sources of bioactive, biochemical, and antioxidant compounds with potential for use in therapeutic applications. contribution/originality: the study contributes the first logical analysis of selected minor indigenous fruits grown in bangladesh in terms of phytochemical and antioxidant activities. the nutritional, phytochemical, and antioxidant profiles of these fruits may encourage their consumption rather than that of major and exotic fruits. pharmaceutical researchers may apply this phytochemical and antioxidant profile for pharmaceutical research purposes. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 35-46 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3851-7094 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9266-7093 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1105-0049 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8507-3054 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2173-7143 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0473-6632 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4156-3016 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1089-766x mailto:mainuddinmolla@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 35-46 36 doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.35.46 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: molla, m.m. -sabuz, a.a. --chowdhury, m.g.f. --khan, m.h.h -- alam, m. --nasrin, t.a.a. --khatun, a. --islam, m.m. (2021). bioactive compounds and biochemical and antioxidant properties of selected minor indigenous fruits in bangladesh. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 35-46. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.35.46 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction bangladesh is blessed with a great diversity of fruits and, in 2017, was placed sixth in world rankings for tropical fresh fruit production (faostat, 2019). a significant quantity of tropical fruits are underexploited – generally recognized as indigenous or minor fruits. these fruits are not commercially cultivated and are not frequently found in national or international markets. usually these fruits are found in home yards, unused high lands, hill tracts, and roadsides. no extra care and farming management are needed to grow these fruits, and that is why people describe these as underutilized minor indigenous fruits in bangladesh; year on year, these fruit trees are being destroyed. however, these minor fruits can be a good source of micronutrients and phytochemicals. micronutrients are essential elements in the development of physical growth and help prevent various acute and chronic diseases. low dietary intake of micronutrient-rich foods, as well as low absorption and lower bioavailability, are the leading causes of micronutrient deficienciy. phytochemicals with antioxidant capacity naturally present in fruits are of great interest due to their beneficial effects on human health, while regular consumption is associated with reduced risk of developing chronic diseases because they offer protection against oxidative deterioration (paul et al., 2007). nowadays, antioxidants are also considered as important as vitamins in the promotion of health and prevention of various diseases linked to reactive oxygen species (ros), which have been linked to over 100 disorders (halliwell & gutteridge, 2000). excess generation of ros causes oxidative stress that damages cellular dna, lipids, and proteins, leading to the pathogenesis of various diseases including cerebrovascular diseases. among various antioxidants and phytochemicals, flavonoids, anthocyanin, phenolic acids, and other compounds are linked with natural protective agents, astringents, antibiotics, positive health effects, and antimicrobial properties (osorio-esquivel, álvarez, dorantes-álvarez, & giusti, 2011). in recent years, interest in antioxidant-rich fruits and their products has been growing in both domestic and international markets because of increasing appreciation of their role in the protection of human health. this has occurred because of their nutritional and antioxidant properties, and also because of the prospects offered to the agricultural and pharmaceutical industries and a promising future source of income for local inhabitants. a nutrition database is of great importance in addressing the nutritional health benefits of both rural and urban communities. it is essential for the formulation of a national policy on food to have a database on nutritional composition. however, little information in nutrition databases is available for minor fruits. several studies have been performed on a few fruits only, but these are indiscriminate and have not been scientifically documented or aimed at the consumer. therefore, documentation, conservation, and revalorization of indigenous knowledge on minor fruits is urgently needed to promote nutritional health for both rural and urban inhabitants. with that in mind, the present research waas undertaken to analyze, document, and popularize the role of phytochemical content in highlighting the phenols, flavonoids, and carotenoids present in selected minor fruits in bangladesh. 2. materials and methods 2.1. materials nine minor indigenous fruits were selected based on peoples’ choice and production catchments in bangladesh, and are shown in table 1. analytical grade chemicals and reagents used in this study were procured from sigmaaldrich (steinheim, germany). table 1. selected minor indigenous fruits grown in bangladesh. sl. no. bengali name english name scientific name family 1 aamlaki aonla phyllunththus embelica l. phyllanthaceae 2 amra hog plum spondias mombin l. anacardiaceae 3 bilimbi cucumber tree averrohoa bilimbi l. oxalidaceae 4 chulta elephant apple dillenia india l. dilleniaceae 5 day fall day fruit – – 6 jara lebu citron citrus medica rutaceae 7 satkara melanesian papeda citrus macroptera rutaceae 8 sour kul ber ziziphus mauritania rhammaceace 9 toikar toikar garcinia pedunculata clusiaceae source: project completion report, competitive research grant (id: 328), bangladesh agricultural research council (barc), farmgate, dhaka-1215, bangladesh. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.35.46 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 35-46 37 2.2. methods 2.2.1. sample collection and fruit extraction fruits were collected from the regional agricultural research station (rars), bangladesh agricultural research institute (bari), akbarpur, moulvibazar, bangladesh. after collection, the fruits were washed with potable water and surface dried. the fruits were then freeze-dried and milled to powder using a laboratory grinder. fruit powder of known quantity was extracted in a thermostatic water bath (vision scientific co. ltd.) at 60oc for 1 h using methanol (80%, v/v) maintaining a fruit:solvent ratio of 1:20 (w/v). the fruit extract was filtered under vacuum, centrifuged at 4000×g for 10 min and the supernatant was collected and kept at -18oc until used for analysis. 2.2.2. determination of physicochemical parameters physicochemical properties – moisture, protein, ash, total soluble solids (tss), ph, and titrable acidity – were determined following the method of aoac (2005). ascorbic acid, starch, and total sugar content were determined based on the procedure of ranganna (1995). edible and non-edible portions of the fruits were measured using the gravimetric method. 2.2.3. analysis of minerals minerals analyzed included sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, sulphur, boron, copper, manganese, iron, and zinc. before quantification, fruits were first wet ashed and then digested in nitric and perchloric acid solution at 320oc, cooled, diluted to an appropriate concentration, and filtered. this filtrate was then used as the stock solution for further analysis. atomic absorption spectrophotometry (model-aa-7000s, shimadzu, tokyo, japan) was used to assess levels of sodium, iron, copper, zinc, boron, manganese, calcium, and magnesium. potassium content was measured using flame photometry, while phosphorous and sulphur were assessed by spectrophotometry. individual minerals were quantified by comparison to the corresponding standard mineral procured from sigma chemical co., usa. 2.2.4. determination of phytochemicals 2.2.4.1. total phenolic content twenty milligrams (0.02 g) of powder was dissolved in 1 ml of methanol to prepare a stock solution for experiments. a volume of 0.5 ml of the each extract (100 µg/ml) was mixed with 2 ml of folin–ciocalteu reagent (diluted 1:10 with deionized water) and neutralized with 4 ml of sodium carbonate solution (7.5%, w/v). the reaction mixture was incubated at room temperature for 30 min with intermittent shaking for color development. absorbance of the colored solution was measured at 765 nm using double-beam uv-vis spectrophotometry. total phenolic content was determined from the linear equation of a standard curve prepared with gallic acid. determination of total phenolic content in the extracts was determined according to the folin–ciocalteu method (ough & amerine, 1988), with gallic acid (gae) as the standard and expressed (mg) as gallic acid equivalents (gae)/g of extract (aoshima, hirata, & ayabe, 2007). 2.2.4.2. determination of total flavonoid content total flavonoid content (tfc) of the fruit powder was determined by the aluminium chloride method (chang, yang, wen, & chern, 2002) with slight modifications: 0.5 ml of sample solution was mixed with 1.5 ml of methanol. to this mixture 0.1 ml of 10% aluminium chloride and 0.1 ml of 1 m potassium acetate were added. the final volume was made up to 5 ml by adding 2.8 ml of distilled water, and the reaction was left for 30 min at room temperature. absorbance of the solution was measured at 415 nm and expressed as mg qe/g extract. tfc was calculated from the calibration curve of quercetin plotted (figure 1). the curve obtained was found to be linear with equation y = 0.0035 + 0.0056x, and the correlation coefficient was found to be r2 = 0.9993. tfc was expressed as mg quercetin equivalents per gram of extract (mg qe/g extract). figure-1. calibration curve of quercetin plotted. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 35-46 38 2.2.4.3. determination of total anthocyanin (ta) the method was adapted from burgos et al. (2013), the concentration of ta being calculated using the molar extinction coefficient and molecular weight of malvidin-3-p-coumaroyl-glucoside for blue-violet pigments (545 nm, 3.02×104 l/mol/cm, 718.5 g/mol), pelargonidin-3-glucoside for red pigments (515 nm, 2.73×104 l/mol/cm, 486.5 g/mol), and cyanidin-3-glucoside for purple pigments (535 nm, 3.43×104 l/mol/cm, 449.2 g/mol). results were expressed as mg/100 g dw. 2.2.4.4. determination of total carotenoid content total carotenoid was determined according to the method described by thaipong, boonprakob, crosby, cisneroszevallos, and byrne (2006). absorbance was measured at λ 470 nm. each extract was dissolved in n-hexane proanalysis. ß-carotene solution in various concentrations was used as standard carotenoid compound and the standard curve. a linear regression equation of the standard curve was used for calculating total carotenoid content, and expressed as beta-carotene equivalents per 100 g of extract (mg/100 g). 2.2.4.5. determination of ß-carotene content β-carotene content was determined using the procedure of holden et al. (1999), with values expressed as µg/100g of fruit extract. 2.2.5. determination of antioxidant activity 2.2.5.1. total atioxidant activity total antioxidant activity was assessed using the phosphomolybdenum system according to the technique described by prieto, pineda, and aguilar (1999), and results expressed as micrograms ascorbic acid (aa) per gram (µg/ml) of the sample. 2.2.5.2 reducing power assay the reducing power of the fruit extract was assessed using the approach of guo, saravanakumar, and wang (2018). ascorbic acid was used as the standard for the preparation of the calibration curve. 2.2.5.3. frap frap activity was measured following the scheme outlined by benzie and strain (1996). a standard curve was made using ferrous sulphate aqueous solution (1–10 mm) and frap values were expressed as μm fe (ii)/100g of the sample. 2.2.5.4. dpph radical scavenging activity (dpph-rsa) and ic50 dpph-rsa was evaluated by measuring the inhibition rate following the procedure described by brand-williams, cuvelier, and berset (1995), with modification. exactly 0.1 ml of extract was placed in a falcon tube and 1.4 ml of methanolic solution of dpph added. the mix was left to rest for 30 min in the dark and absorbance at 517 nm was measured against a blank. the results are expressed as percentage radical scavenging activity: dpph radical scavenging activity (%) = ao − as ao × 100 where ao is absorbance of blank and as is absorbance of sample extract. the inhibition curves were then prepared and ic50 values calculated (brand-williams et al., 1995). bht was the positive control. 2.2.5.5. mcc mcc was determined based on bahadori, zengin, bahadori, dinparast, and movahhedin (2018), with minor modification. briefly, 2 ml of extract was placed in a glass tube to which 0.05 ml of ferrous chloride (2 mm), 3.7 ml of distilled water, and 0.2 ml of ferrozine (5 mm) were added. after 20 min of incubation under atmospheric conditions, absorbance was read at 562 nm against a blank. the following formula was applied to calculate mcc: metal chelating capacity (%) = absorbance (control) − absorbance (sample) absorbance (control) × 100 2.2.5.6. nitric oxide (no) radical scavenging activity nitric oxide radical quenching activity was determined according to the procedure of bogucka-kocka, zidorn, kasprzycka, szymczak, and szewczyk (2018), with some modification. in a glass tube, 0.5 ml of extract was mixed with 2 ml of sodium nitroprusside (10 mm). this was followed by incubation under atmospheric conditions for 1 h. thereafter, 0.5 ml of the incubated mixture was transferred to another centrifuge tube, griess reagent (0.5 ml) was added, and the mixture rested for 30 min. absorbance of the solution was read at 540 nm against a blank. the following formula was employed to calculate the result, expressed as percentage inhibition: inhibition (%) = absorbance (control) − absorbance(sample) absorbance (control) × 100 2.2.6. assessment of phenolic acids by hplc phenolic compounds were assessed according to the method of pandey and negi (2018), with some adjustment, using high-performance liquid chromatography (hplc; shimadzu spd-m10a) coupled with a photodiode array asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 35-46 39 detector and autosampler at 280 and 320 nm. separation was achieved using a c18 column (250 × 4.6 mm2) of 5 µm particle size at room temperature. the mobile phase was 1% acetic acid (a) and 80% acetonitrile in a (b). the following gradient was used: 0.01–35 min, 0% of b; 35–40 min, 50% of b; 40–45 min, 100% of b; and 45–60 min, 0% of b. the flow rate was 1 ml/min and the injection capacity was 20 µl. six phenolic standards (þ-courmaric acid, gallic acid, vanilic acid, caffeic acid, ferulic acid, and lutein) were used for identification of respective phenolics, and quantification was accomplished using a standard curve. 3. statistical analysis data obtained for each analysis were expressed in duplicate as means ± standard deviation. data were analyzed by one-way anova with post hoc using tukey’s multiple comparisons test. significance was defined at the 95% confidence level. statistical analysis and data processing were performed using the software spss 17.0 (ibm inc., new york). 4. results and discussion 4.1. biochemical properties 4.1.1. crude protein analysis of crude protein content of selected minor fruits is shown in table 2. it will be seen that in all fruits this is statistically significant, with levels of crude protein ranging from 2.39 to 4.10% (table 2). the highest levels of protein were found in citron (4.10%) and satkara (4.06%). total protein obtained from the bangladeshi commercial mango fruits amrapali, chausa, fazlee, gopalbhog, himsagor, and langra was found to be 0.14, 0.26, 0.21, 0.07, 1.11, and 1.18 g/100 g, respectively (ara, motalab, uddin, fakhruddin, & saha, 2014). the crude protein content of indian minor fruits aegle marmalose correa, cordia myxa l., zizipus mauritiana lam, averrhoa bilimbi l., and grewia asiatica mast weas recorded as 2.2, 1.9, 1.04, 1.3, and 1.09 g/100 g, respectively (mitra, pathak, & chakraborty, 2008). the crude protein content found in our minor indigenous fruits was higher than that found by both mitra et al. (2008) and ara et al. (2014). 4.1.2. ash the ash content of the nine selected minor fruits was statistically significant, ranging from 1.40 to 3.78%, the maximum (3.78%) being recorded in citron (table 2). the highest ash content found in the present study is comparable to the findings of shukla, dubey, jain, and kumar (2001), who reported that adansonia digitata contain 3.31% ash. 4.1.3. total sugar total sugar content of the nine selected minor fruit ranged from 2.83 to 5.64%. all values were statistically highly significant, with the maximum content recorded for hog plum (5.64 %) and the minimum for aonla (2.83%) (table 2). values for blilimbi, elephant apple, day fruit, citron, satkara, ber and toikar were 4.07, 4.13, 4.20, 4.27, 3.91, 4.35, and 4.02%, respectively. the results obtained from our study are supported by the findings of ara et al. (2014), who reported that the total sugar content of commercial mango varieties ranged from 4.27 to 4.83%. 4.2. starch starch is a major carbohydrate source of immense economic and nutritional value. it is essential that the food industry search for new starch sources to meet the requirements of both the food processing industry and consumers. table 2 shows selected minor fruits containing higher starch levels and all statistically highly significant differences. the highest starch content (8.70%) was recorded for day fruit and the lowest for satkara (3.44%). the high total sugar content in day fruit may be due to enzymatic hydrolysis of starch to sugar (nelson, 1944). the lower yield of starch in satkara is probably due to its increased respiration directly by genetical induced. 4.3. moisture the moisture content of the selected minor fruits varied. the data show that the moisture content of the selected minor fruits was statistically significant (p < 0.05), ranging from 76.62 to 80.73% – maximum in citron (80.73%) and minimum in aonla (76.62%) (table 2). the results obtained from the study are comparable to those of parveen and khatkar (2015able 3), who reported aonla (variety desi) with 81.26% moisture content. 4.4. acidity acidity varied highly significantly among the selected minor fruits, ranging from 0.79 to 3.58% – the maximum was 3.58% in day fruit and the minimum in citron (table 2). the results obtained from this study confirm that the acidity of the selected minor fruits is much higher than that found by akhter et al. (2010) for langra (0.68%) and chausa (0.63%) commercial mango cultivars in bangladesh. the reason for this discrepancy may be that most minor fruits are citrus fruits with variation in maturity stage, harvesting time, soil management, and cultural practices. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 35-46 40 table 2. biochemical and mineral composition of selected minor fruits. parameter minor fruits aonla hog plum bilimbi elephant apple day fruit citron satkara ber (sour) toikar crude protein (%) 3.71± 0.03ab 3.80± 0.10ab 3.70± 0.20ab 3.26± 0.15bc 3.04± 0.01 4.10± 0.10a 4.06± 0.02a 3.18± 0.09bc 2.39± 0.57d ash (%) 1.92± 0.01f 2.23± 0.02e 3.33± 0.01bcd 3.45± 0.02bc 1.40± 0.10g 3.78± 0.02a 3.31± 0.10cd 3.21± 0.10d 3.49± 0.02b total sugars (%) 2.83± 0.01d 5.64± 0.03a 4.07± 0.06bc 4.13± 0.04bc 4.20± 0.10bc 4.27± 0.03bc 3.91± 0.06c 4.35± 0.40b 4.02± 0.02bc starch (%) 5.51± 0.27b 4.45± 0.08cd 4.13± 0.02de 4.71± 0.03cd 8.70± 0.20a 3.69± 0.58ef 3.44± 0.03f 4.15± 0.02de 4.85± 0.07c moisture (%) 76.62± 0.10g 78.44± 0.11ef 77.77± 0.10f 79.02± 0.13def 79.49± 0.54bcd 80.73± 0.25a 80.33± 0.09ab 78.61± 0.48def 79.82± 0.57abc acidity (%) 1.82± 0.02de 2.29± 0.02b 1.84± 0.02cde 1.92± 0.03cd 3.58± 0.03a 0.79± 0.02f 1.78± 0.10e 1.95± 0.05c 2.40± 0.02b ph 2.65± 0.02e 2.94± 0.00cd 2.14± 0.02f 3.29± 0.02b 2.63± 0.10e 3.53± 0.03a 3.58± 0.09a 2.88± 0.04d 3.09± 0.02c tss (ob) 11.40± 0.02a 10.91± 0.01b 10.18± 0.02c 9.17± 0.00d 7.01± 0.01g 7.54± 0.25f 8.50± 0.10e 10.44± 0.05c 9.20± 0.02d edible (%) 84.62± 0.02d 47.59± 0.3f 98.00± 1.00a 79.03± 0.02e 90.95± 0.03b 79.77± 1.59e 44.70± 0.20g 88.37± 0.31c 84.01± 0.01d non-edible (%) 15.38± 0.02 50.50± 0.16a 2.00± 1.00f 18.02± 1.01c 8.01± 0.01e 20.05± 1.20b 50.01± 0.09a 9.30± 0.09e 15.33± 0.03d minerals ca 0.25± 0.00e 0.27± 0.00e 0.58± 0.00cd 0.54± 0.00d 0.67± 0.02c 0.82± 0.05b 0.55± 0.00d 1.02± 0.05a 0.87± 0.06b mg 0.15± 0.01e 0.14± 0.00e 0.31± 0.00d 0.28± 0.00d 0.29± 0.02d 0.37± 0.02c 0.29± 0.00d 0.57± 0.03a 0.49± 0.03b k 0.93± 0.00cd 0.93± 0.00cd 1.07± 0.01ab 1.08± 0.00a 0.40± 0.02f 0.64± 0.04e 0.99± 0.00bc 0.87± 0.03d 0.37± 0.04f na 0.32± 0.01a 0.16± 0.00de 0.18± 0.01cd 0.19± 0.00c 0.12± 0.00f 0.08± 0.01g 0.15± 0.00e 0.22± 0.00b 0.18± 0.00cd p 0.42± 0.00a 0.42± 0.00a 0.11± 0.00ef 0.31± 0.01c 0.07± 0.01g 0.10± 0.00f 0.34± 0.00b 0.12± 0.00e 0.21± 0.00d s 0.07± 0.00b 0.07± 0.00b 0.06± 0.00b 0.05± 0.01b 0.02± 0.00c 0.02± 0.00c 0.06± 0.00b 0.36± 0.00a 0.36± 0.00a b 68.04± 2.16a 4.82± 0.02de 14.31± 0.02c 26.30± 0.14b 13.40± 3.51c 8.03± 0.30d 1.36± 1.01e 8.60± 0.26d 6.38± 0.40d cu 4.82± 0.02h 128.30± 0.10c 107.53± 0.97e 157.77± 0.24b 11.67± 0.30g 114.22± 5.02d 62.61± 0.02f 155.78± 1.31b 395.52± 1.77a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 35-46 41 fe 90.12± 0.02d 68.32± 0.06e 57.48± 0.21f 83.91± 0.05d 180.99± 5.86b 73.47± 2.98e 35.30± 0.03g 155.78± 1.31c 238.26± 1.07a mn 47.92± 0.01e 27.52± 0.01f 81.78± 0.03d 151.19± 0.99a 116.68± 6.38b 16.06± 0.60gh 11.22± 0.03h 93.84± 0.78c 19.99± 0.99g zn 18.84± 0.02ab 13.16± 0.15cd 20.00± 2.00ab 17.84± 0.28bc 23.34± 0.60a 11.20± 4.42d 10.14± 0.01d 10.73± 0.50d 22.33± 0.57ab note: values are mean ± standard deviation (n = 3); ca, mg, k, na, p, and s expressed as mg%; b, cu, fe, mn, and zn expressed as ppm. all values are means of triplicate determinations ± sd. means within columns with different letters a, b, c, d, e, f, g, indicate significant result (p˂0.05). table 3. phytochemical and antioxidant properties of selected minor indigenous fruits. parameter minor fruits aonla hog plum bilimbi elephant apple day fruit citron satkara ber (sour) toikar phytochemical propertrties tph (mg gae/g) 2.10± 0.09 0.23± 0.02e 105.92± 0.14b 62.85± 0.05c 176.50± 2.42a 50.00± 0.08d 1.58± 0.08e 2.04± 0.06e 1.81± 0.07e tf(mg qe/g) 45.04± 2.47b 2.84± 0.11d 150.02± 1.17a 26.16± 1.96c 27.00± 3.04c 27.85± 1.05c 23.38± 1.25c 2.26± 0.09d 18.33± 1.12 total ß-carotene(µg/100 g) 6897.57 ±0.09a 1737.11 ±3.27d 39.33± 1.52f 41.95± 0.05f 1.41± 0.04g 9.58± 0.09g 2318.44± 5.60b 549.12± 6.42e 1815.88± 3.62c tc (mg/100 g) 83.73± 0.39c 68.45± 0.12e 4.70± 0.30f 1.58± 0.09g 1.26± 0.23g 2.07± 0.11g 93.91± 0.80b 74.89± 1.12d 98.24± 0.09a ta (mg/100 g) 15.53± 0.03b 5.11± 0.01d 47.46± 0.22a 1.74± 0.23e 1.15± 0.14f 1.19± 0.03f 6.25± 0.04c 1.66± 0.01e 6.24± 0.01c aa (mg/100 g) 664.92± 1.00a 67.90± 0.05e 28.41± 0.09 40.29± 0.11f 16.67± 0.53i 24.28± 0.61h 210.43± 0.02b 160.12± 0.11c 142.81± 0.99d antioxidant activity tac (µg aa/g) 0.02± 0.00f 0.01± 0.00f 108.06± 0.45c 85.90± 0.03d 122.32± 0.01b 278.24± 0.03a 0.01± 0.00f 0.02± 0.00f 1.14± 0.02e dpph (%) 250.00± 10.00b 314.00± 5.00a 73.27± 0.25d 68.40± 4.60d 87.70± 0.49c 70.20± 0.19d 39.70± 0.20e 41.66± 0.76e 45.00± 5.00e rpa (µg aa/g) 490.50± 0.50b 634.00± 1.00a 18.71± 0.01e 5.89± 0.02f 3.21± 0.01f 3.85± 0.02f 93.00± 2.00d 105.66± 12.09d 130.00± 5.00c frap (µm fe2so4/100 g) 38.01± 9.99e 4.87± 0.10f 1817.88± 3.62b 2325± 6.09a 1213.46± 0.47d 1247.50± 3.25c 0.35± 0.05f 1.86± 0.20f 0.02± 0.00f mcc (%) 33.89± 0.02h 182.39± 0.06c 192.97± 1.01b 22.29± 0.09i 97.56± 0.10d 210.43± 0.02a 40.76± 0.09g 72.00± 1.00e 59.51± 0.01f no (%) 7.97± 0.10e 0.01± 0.00g 70.50± 1.00b 40.18± 0.03d 41.65± 0.02c 178.87± 0.02a 1.09± 0.06f 0.02± 0.00g 1.27± 0.06f ic50 (µg/g) 255.20± 0.20d 856.70± 0.03a 30.36± 1.32g 4.98± 0.24i 49.57± 0.50f 11.26± 0.26h 362.00± 0.50c 242.78± 0.03e 504.00± 1.00b note: all values are means of triplicate determinations ± sd. means within columns with different letters a, b, c, d, e, f, g,h, i indicate significant result (p˂0.05). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 35-46 42 4.5. ph ph levels of the selected minor fruits are shown in table 2; these ranged from 2.14 to 3.58. ph levels were highly significant, with maxima of 3.53 and 3.58 for citron and satkara, respectively, and a minimum of 2.14 for bilimbi (averrhoa bilimbi l.). ph levels showed an inverse relationship to acidity, with a minimum of 0.79% for citron but a maximum of 3.53. a similar observation was also made by ara et al. (2014) for major mango fruit commercial cultivars. variation in ph among selected minor fruits may be due to variation in their internal metabolism and ripening behavior. 4.6. tss tss include carbohydrates, organic acids, proteins, fats, and minerals. tss denotes a fresh weight of 10–20%, and increases with fruit maturity in regard to the production of a less acidic and sweeter fruit. in our study, tss of the selected fruits varied significantly among species with a maximum of 11.40°b for aonla and a minimum for day fruit (7.01°b). the results obtained from our study confirmed that there was an inverse relationship between tss and acidity. the acidity of 1.82% in aonla was influenced by tss (11.40°b) (table 2). likewise, another relationship was found between tss and fruit maturity, with increase in tss following fruit maturity (no maturity data are shown here). for example, in the initial stage, the taste of aonla appears to be astringent but, when fully matured, it becomes sweeter with increasing tss. 4.7. edible percentage edible percentage differed significantly among the selected fruit cultivars, as shown in table 2. the highest edible percentage was calculated at 98.0 in bilimbi (avverhoa bilimbi l.); all of the fruit, except the pericarp, is used for consumption. the lowest edible percentage was recorded at 44.7 for satakara, due to removal of peel during preprocessing for consumption. however, the edible percentage of the selected minor fruits ranged from 44.7 to 98.0, being much higher than in major fruits (ara et al., 2014). 4.8. non-edible percentage the non-edible percentage of selected minor fruits ranged from 2.0 to 50.5. the lowest (2.00%) non-edible percentage was found in bilimbi while the highest recorded were 50.5 and 50.0, in hog plum and satkara, resoectively, due to their natural fruit structure and peel, because most of the peel goes to waste during preprocessing. 4.9. mineral profiling minerals are the inorganic components present in foodstuff as ash when food is burned. generally macroand microminerals are present in foodstuffs and play important metabolic roles in body functions (reilly, 2002), and contribute to our daily diet. in our study, 11 minerals were assessed from the selected minor fruits (table 2). it will be seen that these contained a significant range of macrominerals including sodium (0.08-0.32 mg%), potassium (0.37– 1.08 mg%), calcium (0.25–1.02 mg%), magnesium (0.14–0.57 mg%), and phosphorus (0.07–0.42 mg%); and considerable amounts of microminerals including sulphur (0.02–0.36 mg%), boron (1.36–68.04 ppm), copper (4.82–395.52 ppm), iron (35.30–238.26 ppm), manganese (11.22–151.19 ppm), and zinc (10.14–23.34 ppm). our study indicates that sour ber is a rich source of ca, mg, and s; aonla is a rich source of na and p, hog plum of p, and elephant apple of k and mn. toikar is a rich source of cu and fe, and day fruit of zn. in comparison with indian minor fruits, our selected minor fruits possessed lower amounts of various minerals. it is claimed in different studies that soil fertility, genetic factors, fertilizers, and geographical conditions play significant roles in the mineral content of fruits (tiburski, rosenthal, deliza, de oliveira godoy, & pacheco, 2011). 4.10. phytochemical properties phytochemical components reputedly have the ability to lower the prevalence of various degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart attack, and cardiovascular disease, by blocking the activity of free radicals. the results recorded for phytochemical analyses of total phenolics, flavonoids, carotenoids, β-carotene, ascorbic acid, and anthocyanin are shown in table 3. 4.10.1. total phenolic content total phenolic content of the selected minor fruits ranged from 0.23 to 176.50 mg gae/g (table 3). the maximum was recorded for day fruit (176.50 mg gae/g) and the minimum in hog plum (0.23 mg gae/g). guava, pineapple, soursop, passion, acerola camarinha, and mango recorded a polyphenol content of 83.1, 21.7, 84.3, 20.2, 580.1, 492.8, and 260.21 mg gae/100g, respectively (kuskoski, garcía asuero, morales millán, & fett, 2006; tiburski et al., 2011). 4.10.2. tfc flavonoids are regarded as a low-molecular-weight substances in foodstuffs and boost antioxidant activity. their content depends on the levels of polyphenols and geographical location. the value of total flavonoids found in the minor fruits studied ranged from 2.26 to 150.02 mg qe/g (table 3). in our study, bilimbi ranked highest for flavonoid content (150.0259 mg qe/g) while the minimum was recorded as 2.26 mg qe/g in ber. this variation is somewhat similar to previous reports for exotic fruits: osorio-esquivel et al. (2011) found a tfc of 13.45–68.79 mg/100g in opuntia joconostle. since these fruits possessed a fair amount of flavonoids like other exotic fruits, its consumption would help to contribute to add antioxidants to our daily diet. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 35-46 43 4.10.3. total carotenoid content it is evidenced from different studies that carotenoid plays a crucial role in human nutrition and health, and can lessen the risks of cancer and heart disease because of the activity of provitamin a (tiburski et al., 2011). in this study, total carotenoid content of the selected fruits ranged from 1.26 to 98.24 mg/100g (table 3). the total carotenoids contained in the selected fruit are comparable to reports published elsewhere: shajib et al. (2013) reported carotenoid levels of 149 µg/100 g for wood apple, 161 µg/100 g for orboroi, and 218 µg/100 g for burmese grape. 4.10.4. total ß-carotene content total ß-carotene content of the selected minor fruits ranged from 1.41 to 6897.57 µg/100 g. the lowest ß-carotene content was calculated as 1.41 µg/100 g in day fruit and the maximum in aonla (6897.57 µg/100 g) (table 3). comparatively higher values for β-carotene were reported by tiburski et al. (2011) for yellow mombin pulp (314 µg/100 g). it is evidenced that carotenoid content in fruits depends on various factors including soil conditions, maturity stage, enzymes, phenolic content, and genetics (leong & oey, 2012). 4.10.5. ascorbic acid content ascorbic acid is an important bioactive compound and is considered the most powerful antioxidant in foodstuffs; regular intake lowers the risk of cancer in the human body (almeida et al., 2011). in the selected fruits it ranged from 16.67 to 664.90 mg/100 g, with a maximum in aonla (664.90 mg/100 g) and a minimum in day fruit (16.67 mg/100 g) on a fresh weight basis (table 3). these levels are much higher than in the report of shajib et al. (2013) for monkey jack (14 mg/100 g), burmese grape (12.1 mg/100 g), orboroi (20.8 mg/100 g), karanda (9.5 mg/100 g), mangosteem (14.4 mg/100 g), blackberry (25.7 mg/100 g), flacourtia (25.6 mg/100 g), rochelle (3.7 mg/100 g), and takituki (27.8 mg/100 g). according to jukes (1974), the recommended daily intake of vitamin c (ascorbic acid) required to prevent scurvy in adults is about 10 mg, which indicates that the current study found a level of ascorbic acid in selected fruits exceeding that necessary to prevent scurvy, with a daily intake level of 100 g. 4.10.6. anthocyanin content one of the key bioactive compounds in foodstuffs is anthocyanin, which shows potent antioxidant capacity. the anthocyanin content of our selected minor fruits ranged from 1.15 to 47.46 mg/100 g (table 3). the maximum content noted was 47.46 mg/100 g in bilimbi (averrhoa bilimbi l.) and the minimum in day fruit (1.15 mg/100 g). moreover, comparatively similar results were found for some tropical fruits (red grapes, 27 mg/100 g; cherries, 112 mg/100g; strawberries, 21 mg/100g; and red raspberries, 92 mg/100g) (wu et al., 2006). 4.11. evaluation of antioxidant activity foodstuffs with high antioxidant properties play a crucial role in the inhibition of ros-mediated diseases (dutta & ray, 2020). 4.11.1. total antioxidant capacity in this investigation, the antioxidant capacity of the selected minor fruits was assessed by an assortment of different tests. it can be seen that all fruits exhibited potent antioxidant capacity, ranging from 0.01 to 278.24 µg aa/g (table 3). it is interesting that citron possessed a higher amount of antioxidant capacity (278.24 µg aa/g) than other fruits. 4.11.2. dpph radical scavenging activity dpph is a relatively stable free radical scavenger that donates hydrogen protons to unpaired electrons to convert them into paired ones. it is noted that dpph radical scavenging activity of the selected minor fruits ranged from 39.7 to 314.0% (table 3). the maximal dpph was calculated as 314.0% in hog plum and the minimum in satkara (39.7%). however, all selected fruits in our study showed a strong capacity to scavenge free radicals. 4.11.3. rpa the rpa of the selected minor fruits ranged from 3.21 to 634.00 µg aa/mg. the maximum value of the reducing power assay was calculated as 634.00 µg aa/mg in hog plum while the lowest was 3.21 µg aa/mg in day fruit (table 3). 4.11.4. ic50 the ic50 is a widely accepted method used to assess the antioxidant activity of foodstuffs, and its value is expected to be lower for higher free radical quenching ability (sathyanarayanan, chandran, thankarajan, abrahamse, & thangaraj, 2018). in this study, ic50 values ranged from 4.98 to 504.0 µg/g while the maximum value was found in hog plum (856.7 µg/g) and the minimum in elephant apple (4.98 µg/g) (table 3). our results indicate that hog plum has potential antioxidant capacity due to its lower value of ic50 (4.98 ± 0.24 µg/g), which may be due to the presence of significant amounts of phenolics and flavonoids. this finding is also corroborated by the research of sathyanarayanan et al. (2018). 4.11.5. mcc mcc of the selected minor fruits ranged from 22.29 to 210.43% (table 3), which indicates the ability of minor fruits to reduce different metallic ions and create a stable chemical bond to counteract free radicals. recent studies have asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 35-46 44 reported that the redox properties of phenolic species enable them to work as reducing agents, by donating hydrogen and quenching singlet oxygen showing antioxidant activity and chelating metal ions (elfalleh et al., 2011). 4.11.6. frap the frap values found ranged from 0.35 to 2325.0 µm fe2so4/100 g (table 3). our results show a high frap value for elephant apple (2325.0 µm fe2so4/100 g), demonstrating that phenolic composites are among the leading contributors to the high antioxidant properties of this fruit. previous reports evidenced that fruits with high phenolics can react with free radicals to form a stable product that blocks the radical chain reaction (sathyanarayanan et al., 2018). 4.11.7. no radical scavenging activity no radical scavenging activity of the selected minor fruits ranged from 0.02 to 178.87%. the results revealed that citron is a rich source of no radical scavenging activity, recording the highest value of 178.87%, the lowest value being 0.02% in sour ber (table 3). thus, our study reported high no radical foraging activity (178.87 ± 0.02%), which may be due to the presence of different polyphenolic substances in citron. 4.12. phenolic compounds hplc was used for analysis of six major phenolic acids and matching to the respective standards. phenolic acid levels in the selected minor fruits ranged 0.94–279.0 mg/100 g for gallic acid, 0.01–43.77 mg/100 g for vanillic acid, 0.16–178.96 mg/100 g for þ–courmaric acid, 0.01–3.04 mg/100 g for caffeic acid, 0.01–20.44 mg/100 g for ferulic acid, and 12.03–97.35 µg/100 g for lutein. these results indicate that the leading phenolic compounds were gallic and ferulic acids for aonla; gallic acid for hog plum; gallic, þ-courmaric, ferulic, and vanilic acids for bilimbi; gallic, þ-courmaric, ferulic, and caffeic acids for elephant apple; gallic, caffeic, and þ-courmaric acids for day fruit; þ-courmaric and gallic acids for citron; gallic acid for satkara; þ-courmaric and gallic acids for ber; and ferulic and caffeic acidc for toikar (table 4). table 4. phenolic acid content of selected minor indigenous fruits. parameter minor fruits aonla hog plum bilimbi elephant apple day fruit citron satkara ber (sour) toikar gallic acid (mg/100 g) 279.06 ±2.00a 58.33 ±0.33d 82.01 ±3.01b 38.14± 0.15e 3.62± 0.01g 0.94± 0.02g 66.00± 0.52c 26.50± 1.17f 62.74± 0.74c vanilic acid (mg/100 g) 43.77± 0.15b 42.02± 0.02b 70.50± 2.43a 0.01 ±0.00d 0.04± 0.01d 0.02± 0.01d 4.04± 0.04c 2.46± 0.05c 0.03± 0.01d p-courmaric (mg/100 g) 1.06± 0.03e 0.96± 0.02e 13.16± 0.17d 11.51± 0.07d 178.96± 4.13a 19.26± 1.54c 3.00± 0.50e 38.14± 0.74b 0.16± 0.01e caffeic acid (mg/100 g) 0.09± 0.08c 0.01± 0.00c 0.05± 0.01c 3.04± 0.05a 0.45± 0.01b 0.01± 0.00c 0.10± 0.05c 0.02± 0.01c 0.02± 0.01c ferulic acid (mg/100 g) 5.54± 0.03c 0.21± 0.01d 9.59± 0.06b 20.44± 0.05a 0.01± 0.00e 0.01± 0.00e 0.01± 0.00e 0.20± 0.15d 0.21± 0.20d lutein acid (µg/100 g) 12.03± 0.04f 29.74± 0.11d 91.13± 3.80b 97.35± 0.35a 71.33± 0.33c 71.33± 0.33c 12.62± 0.12ef 14.85± 0.03ef 16.20± 0.10e note: all values are means of triplicate determinations ± sd. means within columns with different letters a, b, c, d, e, f, g indicate significant result (p˂0.05). 5. conclusion this study is the first to provide details regarding the biochemical properties, minerals, bioactive compounds, antioxidant activities, and phenolic compounds of nine key minor indigenous fruits grown in bangladesh. the results indicate that aonla is a rich source of ascorbic acid (664.92 mg/100 g), total ß-carotene (6897.57 µg/100 g), and rpa (634.00 µaa/g); bilimbi is a rich source of total flavonoids (150.02 mg qe/g), total anthocyanin (47.46 mg/100 g), and frap (1817.88 µm fe2so4/100 g); citron is a rich source of tac (278.24 µaa/g), mcc (210.43%), and no (178.87%); hog plum is a rich source of dpph (314.0%); and day fruit is a rich source of tph (176.50 mg gae/g). the findings suggest that all minor fruits studied possess levels of phytochemicals that may be applied as raw material for nutritional and pharmaceutical usage. funding: this work was supported by the national agricultural technology program (natp), phaseii, competitive research grant sub-project (grant number: crg-328), bangladesh agricultural research council (barc), dhaka, bangladesh. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: authors thankfully acknowledged dr. md. latiful bari, chief scientist and head of food analysis and research laboratory, center for advance research in sciences, university of dhaka, bangladesh for his scientific advice during the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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(2006). concentrations of anthocyanins in common foods in the united states and estimation of normal consumption. journal of agricultural and food chemistry, 54(11), 4069-4075.available at: https://doi.org/10.1021/jf060300l. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 756 economic analysis of potato seed in west java, indonesia salamet ginandjara agung rahmadib  muhammad tsani abdulhakimc m. subandid a,b,c,dfaculty of sciences and technology, the state islamic university of sunan gunung djati of bandung, indonesia.  agungrahmadi@uinsgd.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 26 june 2020 revised: 10 september 2020 accepted: 13 october 2020 published: 5 november 2020 keywords economy potatoes certified seedling. the purpose of this study was to study the supply of potato seed in west java, indonesia. the research respondent is farmers who use seed, with a sample of 377 farmers and a survey of all seed breeders totaling 43 farmers, using proportionate stratified random sampling. this research report is also complemented by a review analysis of potato seedling development in the last five years. there is considerable interest in the potential that can be developed, productive aged farmers, and adoption of new technologies. factors exerting a strong influence include capital, technology, adequacy of seed, the proportion of certified seed, and farm credit. factors identified as influencing the level of demand include the proportion of certified seed, seed prices, capital, and credit allocation for potato farming; at the level of supply factors that can exert influence are the availability of seed, the selling price of seed, and the capital of breeding farmers. policy simulation on the use of certified seed potatoes shows that increase in the number of specific farm credits, the price of seed and fixed farm capital results in increased use of certified seed and reduced self-selection of seed. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the existing literature by studing the supply of potato seed in west java, indonesia. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.104.756.763 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: salamet ginandjar --agung rahmadi --muhammad tsani abdulhakim --m. subandi (2020). economic analysis of potato seed in west java, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4), 756-763. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.104.756.763 © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction potato (solanum tuberosum) is among the commodities given the highest priority in vegetable development programs because it is a source of carbohydrates in supporting food diversification programs and non-oil export commodities, and as a raw material for processing industries. although potatoes are not a staple food, consumer numbers tend to increase because the population of indonesia is increasing, the community's standard of living increases, and numbers of foreign tourists living in indonesia increase (soelarso, 1997). this can be interpreted as a business opportunity for both domestic and export needs (setiadi & nurulhuda, 1994). efforts to increase production per unit of land area have traditionally been carried out in various ways, including plant row spacing. pavek, holden, and spear (2018) reported in their research results that the maximum yields of potato crops do not necessarily produce maximum profits. that study aimed to identify the row width that produces the highest economic return from seven potato varieties over several years when grown in the columbia basin near othello, washington, usa. specific objectives were to understand the effects of row width on potato tuber yield, quality, size, number of tubers per plant, and economic returns, and to demonstrate how inputs and land use asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 4 (2020): 756-763 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:agungrahmadi@uinsgd.ac.id http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.104.756.763 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 756-763 757 efficiencies can be improved by increasing production on a given area of land without increasing the use of fertilizers and seed-treatment pesticides. the results are illustrated in figure 1. figure-1. total yields and economic benefits of potato row spacing (pavek et al., 2018). the effect of row width {76, 81, 86, 91 cm (30, 32, 34, 36 in)} averaged across four varieties (alturas, ranger russet, russet burbank, and umatilla russet) was assessed during 2012 on total yield and adjusted gross return. circles and triangles represent average gross returns and total yield values, respectively, for each row width treatment. p <0.05 for correlation coefficients. error bars placed on each mean represent standard error. lsd 0.05 values are shown in parentheses. in-row spacing was 25.4 cm. frasetya, harisman, sudrajat, and subandi (2019) experimented with rice plants and found that planting space width will impact rice productivity because it affects the plant's sunlight capture and nutrients and water. uptake subandi and firmansyah (2018) found that field cultivation may depend on environmental, meteorological, or seasonal conditions and requires a considerable workforce to obtain a good yield and optimal profit. unece (the united nations economic commission for europe) (2015) stated that to harvest a plentiful and healthy yield of seed potatoes for international trading, producers have to plant seed potatoes of the highest quality. the standard sets common terminology and minimum requirements for certifying high-quality seed potatoes for international trade. it covers varietal identity and purity; genealogy and traceability; diseases and pests affecting commercial quality or yield; external tuber quality and physiology; sizing and labeling; and restriction of chemical pesticide use. to minimize chemical usage, even in the protection of plants from pests and diseases, the biological means of crop protection is of importance; as stated by subandi and setiati (2017) biological pest control will avoid environmental contamination by chemical pesticides, will be more efficient and sustainable, and is not harmful ecologically. another technique used is in regard to fertilization and traditional methods, shown to be possible as reported by ali and barbara (2018). the technique of foliar fertilization (basfoliar extra 36, per 400 dm of water on 1 hectare) had a significant effect on the commercial yield of both total and seed potato tubers. to date, the supply of potato seed is largely dependent on both imported and local seeds, even though the productivity of potato plants is still likely to be increased (bachrein, bram, ana, djoko, & sukmaya, 1997). irrigation and regulation of growth media are other ways in which potato seed production can be increased, as reported by wawan, sumadi, and hamdani (2018). certain interactions between the composition of growing media and watering intervals can influence the percentage of tuberization established by stolon and tuber weight per plant. irrigation is not usually employed in potato cultivation, but water and land conservation measures should be incorporated for sustainable yield and to avoid degradation. subandi, abdel wahab, and taufikurrahman (2019) found there are no conservation measures of uneducated or better said irresponsible people or bad governments or false administration made the cultivated land neglected and at last degraded. to ensure the success of potato cultivation at the farm level, seed production is very important. margaret, maliro, demo, and njoloma (2012) show that the production of potato seeds under conventional systems has not been effective in avoiding or reducing pathogen build-up and has consequently led to reduction in the quality of potato seed and low crop yields. potato seed is propagated from vegetative structures called "seed potatoes" rather than true seeds harvested from floral structures. true potato seeds are tiny, rare, difficult to mature, and are used as breeding material to develop new varieties. potato crops can be established using certified seed potatoes purchased locally from nurseries, home improvement centers, catalogs, or at home (peffley, 2018). potato is a tuberous crop, with different ways of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 756-763 758 breeding utilized to improve production. subandi, eri, and arie (2018) discuss improving the production (fruiting) of dragon fruit by manual crossing. to address various problems and existing conditions, it was necessary to conduct a study to obtain answers and solutions to the above problems. this study examines the economics of potato seed at the level of breeder farmers, seed institutions, and farmers using potato seeds, and it was expected that this research would identify the factors that influence the demand and supply of potato seed so that eventually it is expected that a demand model and the availability of potato seed in west java can be established. table 1 shows that west java province is the leading producer of potatoes in indonesia. the topography, climate, and soil conditions are conducive for potato growth and development in this province. many regions or districts are suitable for potato culture, including lembang, pangalengan, cipanas, and garut. table-1. potato production (tons) by province (2015–2019). no. province year growth (2019 vs 2018, %) 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 1. aceh 70,047 63,022 47,960 14,842 26,529 78.74 2. sumatera utara/north sumatra 106,452 91,400 98,893 108,016 118,778 9.96 3. sumatera barat/west sumatra 60,064 50,583 40,398 40,209 50,730 26.17 4. jambi 113,051 91,081 82,252 89,308 111,812 25.20 5. sumatera selatan/south sumatra 381 675 324 1,029 672 –34.67 6. bengkulu 14,956 7,341 6,226 6,640 4,093 –38.36 7. lampung 464 362 336 608 297 –51.18 8. jawa barat/west java 259,228 288,368 277,187 265,536 245,418 –7.58 9. jawa tengah/central java 278,552 272,978 269,476 290,665 294,015 1.16 10. jawa timur/east java 212,173 227,996 241,180 312,966 320,209 2.31 11. bali 1,953 672 424 136 208 53.39 12. nusa tenggara barat/west nusa tenggara 3,412 7,734 1,804 1,528 1,503 –1.60 13. nusa tenggara timur/east nusa tenggara 193 697 827 697 530 –23.99 14. sulawesi tengah/central sulawesi 972 568 1,943 1,450 1,294 –10.73 15. sulawesi selatan/south sulawesi 29,522 48,895 31,831 54,016 50,629 –6.27 16. sulawesi barat/west sulawesi 25 137 30 331 289 –12.69 17. maluku 7 33 1 1 1 66.67 18. papua barat/west papua 13,075 599 33 114 18 –84.21 19. papua 7 42 41 27 71 159.12 indonesia (total) 1,219,270 1,213,038 1,164,738 1,284,760 1,314,657 2.33 notes: table includes the 20 highest-yielding provinces out of the 34 provinces of indonesia. source: indonesian centre institute for statistics (2019). certain predictable factors influence the demand and supply of seeds, including the fulfillment of potato seed requirements being dependent on imported seeds at prices five to six times that of home-grown potatoes, or on supplies from certified seed breeders at prices three times that of home-grown potatoes. most still self-select seeds by setting aside a portion of production to be made into seed without the proper seed certification procedure, so the results are less than satisfactory. because the purpose of this study was to analyze markets related to meeting certified potato seed requirements, we utilized a model of policy simulation that describes the demand and supply of potato seed in west java: identifying the factors that influence the level of demand for farmers' seed, certified seed supply levels (g4) and the level of demand for imported seeds, forming a model of demand and supply for certified potato seed, then simulating an intervention policy for the procurement of certified potato seed. the purpose of the research was to identify the market characteristics of certified potato seed, in an effort to understand the demand and supply of this seed so that intervention can be carried out to help farmers, breeders, and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 756-763 759 officials at the potato seed institution in meeting the requirement for quality potato seed, and as input for producers’ decision making in regard to developing policies to improve the seed agribusiness. the assessment of the economics of certified potato seed that was carried out generally examined problems relating to productivity, efficiency, cost, application of production factors, seed quality, and the distribution system so that research explaining the economic aspects of supply and demand for seed might be able to answer questions on the economics of certified potato seed. this case study of the economic aspect of certified potato seed production, conducted in pangalengan district, bandung regency, west java, is also expected to contribute theoretically to the economic development of certified potato seed and new insights helping decision makers improve production. the seed economy is part of agricultural economics, which can be defined either as a science that studies and analyzes agriculture economically or as economics applied to agriculture (agricultural service office of west java, 2003). the term “seed” covers all forms of plant material from generative and vegetative processes, including cuttings, grafts, tubers, and others (sjamsoe'oed, 1997). seed certification is the process of awarding plant seed certificates after the stages of inspection, testing, and supervision have been performed, and where the results meet all the requirements for distribution/marketing for farming (hendarto, 1996). on the other hand, the certifying body, in this case, uptd bpsbtph (2002) (technical implementing unit of the office of food crops and horticulture seed supervision and certification), must have benchmarks and standard monitoring methods for each type of plant seed. in addition, several factors that are predicted to affect the level of demand for certified potato seed must be examined, in addition to other factors thought to influence the supply of seed. further study is needed of imported potato seed and its relationship to planting area, seed import regulations, and the ratio of imported potato prices to those of home-grown potatoes. 2. research methods this research is a descriptive verification and review analysis. descriptive research was conducted to obtain an overview of breeders' socioeconomic situation, farmers and users of potato seed and seed production institutions in pangalengan, bandung regency, west java. simultaneously, verification was aimed at determining the interdependent relationship between variables thought to affect the demand and supply levels of certified potato seed in pangalengan. the survey data were collected between 1995 and 2004 and included the latest developments in potato seed production as of 2019. through a hypothesis test formulated using statistical calculations, a review of the analysis was conducted on the development of potato seed in this region over the preceding five years. analyses were done using microsoft office xp excel 2003 software. percentage analysis was conducted to determine the number of farmers included and the level of capital derived from both agricultural and nonagricultural income. this analysis was also used to classify the quality and quantity of potato seed used by farmers. in processing and identifying data, factor analysis and regression analysis were both used. factor analysis determines new variables – factors less than the number of original variables. in contrast, regression analysis consists of two kinds of test: (1) the f-test statistic, to collectively test independent variables, and (2) the t-test statistic, to test individual variables. the model can be formulated using linear regression with the following equation: 𝑌 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑋𝑑1 + 𝛽2𝑋𝑑2 + ⋯ + 𝛽7𝑋𝑑7 + 𝜖 where, y = d = demand (seed) per hectare. xd1 = proportion of certified seeds; xd2 = seed price (rp.); xd3 = credit allocation (millions). xd4 = farmers' capital; xd5 = seed technology; xd6 = adequacy of seed. xd7 = farm interests and prospects;  = disturbance error. 3. results and discussion 3.1. capital availability and purchasing power of potato seed farmers the results of analysis of all aspects and characteristics of potato farming and seed potato cultivation and usage in west java are as follows, categorized into three major factors. factor 1: components include six variables: agricultural income relative to capital, user farmer technology, potato farming experience, interest in cultivation, and prospects for potato sales, farmer education level. factor 2 contains four variables: off-farm income relative to capital, seed quality, seed adequacy, and level of land availability. factor 3 comprises two variables: seed source variable and ease of obtaining seed. factor 1, with a contribution of 40.275%, is the factor of farm capital. factor 2, with a contribution of 16.568%, is a factor in farming technology. factor 3, with a contribution of 10.963%, is the seed adequacy factor. a breakdown of the allocation of income from agricultural and nonagricultural activity in regard to seed capital for potato seed farmers is presented in table 2. based on the respondents interviewed in this study, most were classified under moderate (39.8%) followed by very high (38.2%). for mediumand high-cost capital categories (30– 59%) of 55.7%, it is expected that a sufficiently large allocation of capital from both agricultural and nonagricultural income could further increase these potato seeds. this was not supported by the allocation of adequate credit assistance for farmers. from interviews it was found that >97% of farmers received low to very low credit assistance, so better support for these potato farmers is needed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 756-763 760 table-2. allocation of income from agricultural and nonagricultural activity regarding seed capital. classification % agricultural income nonagricultural income number of farmers % number of farmers % very low <14 – – 1 0.3 low 15–29 60 15.9 163 43.2 medium 30–44 150 39.8 49 13. high 45–59 23 6.1 161 42.7 very high >60 144 38.2 3 0.8 total – 377 100 377 100 notes: percentages represent total respondents. 3.2. quantity and quality of potato seed produced by farmers experienced farmers generally manage their farms more efficiently, including the allocation of inputs in seed sources and capture technology. farmers in this group tend to predict the possibility of attack by plant pest organisms associated with the season, cropping system, and the use of production facilities, varieties, and other inputs. based on the respondents interviewed in this study, most (98.2%) were classified as either medium or high. only a small proportion of farmers had very high or low capture technology. from the research, it was found that most farmers (42.2%) used self-selected seed followed by those using imported seed (23.3%), those using seed obtained from traders, and lastly seed breeders (2.9%), according to the seed research institution. from this research, it can be seen that the use of certified potato seed is not widespread. on the other hand, farmers still considered both the quantity and quality of potato seed and classified it as medium (82%) for quantity and 50.4% for quality, while 49.3% of respondents considered the quality of the seed used to be high (see table 3). table-3. quantity and quality of potato seed. classification quantity quality number % number % very low – – – – low 1 0.3 1 0.3 medium 309 82.0 190 50.4 high 67 17.8 186 49.3 very high – – – total 377 100 377 100 based on the respondents interviewed in this study, most farmers thought that the ease of obtaining seed was either medium or high (53.1%), and only 19.9% stated that it was easy to obtain certified seed while 27.1% stated that it was difficult. thus, the demand factors for potato seed at the user level are determined by farming capital, farming technology, and seed sufficiency. based on these factors, a potato seed demand model was formulated using linear regression. based on the output analysis, a factor equation model was formed according to significant f-values (6296.719) and r2 (0.992), which means that 99.2% of changes in demand for certified potato seed are caused by changes in demand variables while other factors cause the remainder, and dw (1.851) does not occur auto correlation, this determines the demand for potato seed by the user farmer. for the area of product development considered over the period 1993–2004, the production level of potato plants in west java province was shown to fluctuate. the highest potato crop production in west java province was achieved in 2017 (288,368 tons), but in 2019 this had decreased to 245,418 tons. the dynamics of potato crop production in west java province are shown in table 1. 3.3. potato seed supply the initial assumption is that there are as many as 14 variables (components) affecting the supply of seed potato for breeder farmers: the availability of seeds (xs1), a guarantee of current factors of production (xs2), a guarantee of factors of production (xs3), capital allocation for procurement of saprotan (xs4) ), capital allocation for product facility construction (xs5), capital or credit assistance (xs6), capital allocation for selling production (xs7), selfowned capital (xs8), technological capability for preharvest management (xs9), technological capability for postharvest management (xs10), training frequency (xs11), training effectiveness (xs12), frequency of counseling (xs13), and the effectiveness of counseling (xs14). the supply of potato seed begins from the first producer – that is, breeders in the field of research at the research centre for horticultural crops, where potato seed is produced. breeder seed level means that the seed is further produced for distribution to farmers table 4. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 756-763 761 table-4. results of variable test and the 14 components in the supply of potato seed at breeder level. comp onent initial eigenvalue extraction sums of squared loadings rotation sums of squared loadings total % of variance cumula tive (%) total % of variance cumula tive (%) total % of variance cumula tive (%) 1 3.611 25.793 25.793 3.611 25.793 25.793 2.906 20.760 20.760 2 2.511 17.936 43.729 2.511 17.936 43.729 2.613 18.662 39.422 3 2.012 14.374 58.103 2.012 14.374 58.103 2.467 17.624 57.046 4 1.185 8.465 66.568 1.185 8.465 66.568 1.333 9.522 66.568 5 1.074 7.674 74.242 6 0.763 5.452 79.694 7 0.656 4.686 84.380 8 0.582 4.155 88.535 9 0.495 3.534 92.069 10 0.339 2.422 94.491 11 0.293 2.095 96.586 12 0.223 1.596 98.183 13 0.176 1.255 99.437 14 0.079 0.563 100,000 extraction method: principal component analysis. source: compiled from survey data, 2004. factor 1 comprises five variables: agricultural means of production capital allocation, capital allocation of production facilities, self-owned capital allocation, capability of preharvest technology, and effectiveness of training. factor 2 comprises three variables: guarantee of production factors (to date), frequency of counseling, and effectiveness of counseling. factor 3 comprises four variables: capital allocation from profit, postharvest technology, training frequency, and capital/credit allocation. factor 4 comprises two variables: seed availability and production factors (current). based on determinant variables, the four factors are described thus: factor 1, with a contribution of 25.793%, is a factor of farm capital. factor 2, with a contribution of 17.936%, is a factor of production. factor 3, with a contribution of 14.375%, is a training–counseling factor. factor 4, with a contribution of 8.465%, is the availability of seed. thus, the supply of seed potatoes at the breeder level is determined by capital, production, training–counseling, and seed availability. based on the analysis of these factors, a potato seed supply model was formulated using linear regression with the following results: the dynamics of the development of potato seed productivity in west java province in the period 1995–2004 shows that productivity of potato seed cultivated by breeders and seed halls fluctuates. the highest productivity was achieved by g2 seeds in 2001 (>20 tons/ha), while g3 potato seeds reached 18 tons/ha. from the regression analysis of potato seed supply to the breeder, farmers were allocated factors determining the estimated supply level of certified seed to breeder farmers; then, a factor equation model was formed by significant values of f (82,850) and r2 (0.943). 3.4. potato seed imports results are based on the model set out in the research methodology; three factors are expected to affect the supply of imported potato seed: the ratio of imported seed prices to that of home-grown, the area of potato plants farmed in the country, and the import policies that apply. based on these factors, the potato supply seed supply model was formulated using linear regression. the final results of multiple regression analysis of imported potato seed supply models were used to predict the magnitude of the response for imported potato seed supply resulting from changes in crop area, import prices, and regulatory restrictions on imported potato seed. an equation model was created from the data given above following significant f-value (6,739) and r2 value (0.771). 3.5. simulation model of supply and demand for certified potato seed elasticity was estimated to create a new equation by transforming the equation from the cross-section into a time series equation, then linearizing it with the time series variable. to determine the elasticity level of the demand and supply functions of certified potato seed, a regression analysis of the demand and supply functions was made by changing the quantitative data occurring in the form of logarithms; the resulting elasticity values are presented as logarithmic functions in table 5 and table 6. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 756-763 762 table-5. logarithmic functions of requests for certified potato seed. variable f t description log xd1 0.032 3.340 proportion of certified seed log xd2 –0.035 –2.125 seed price log xd3 0.193 17.727 loan allocation log xd4 0.850 61.122 farmer capital notes: f = 3,520.243; r2 = 0.980; n = 293; sig f = 0.000. table-6. logarithmic functions of certified potato seed offered. variable f t price log xs3 0.801 16.072 selling log xs4 0.296 1.091 farmer capital notes: f =147 n = 43 r2 = 0.880 sig f = 0.000 to determine the level of demand and supply of certified potato seed – for example, through analyses such as those simulated using microsoft office xp excel 2003 software – it can be calculated through the estimation of time series data in the form of seed proportion, seed price, credit allocation, farmer capital, farming capital breeders, planting area, import prices and import regulations; an equation model can then be created to analyze the simulation of demand and supply of certified potato seed by entering the determining variables. high-quality seed is sought by farmers; grace, edriss, maonga, and dzanja (2018) stated, "the main results showed that the quantity harvested was positive and significantly affected farmers choosing improved varieties.” kyomugisha, christopher, and johnny (2018) stated that the added value applied to potatoes at the farm yielded higher economic benefits to farmers. added value would earn a farmer 25% more than when no added value was applied. seed quality is affected by the presence of or absence from pest disorders. thomas-sharma et al. (2016) mentioned that seed potato degeneration, the reduction in yield or quality caused by an accumulation of pathogens and pests in planting material due to successive cycles of vegetative propagation, is a long-standing production challenge for potato growers around the world. 3.6. potato seed demand prospects based on the respondents interviewed, most thought that the prospects of selling potato seed were either good (60.2%) or moderate (39%), while those who considered the prospects low comprised only 0.8%. this shows that the sale of potato seed appears to have good prospects. farmers adopt certified seed technology if they believe the differences in yield and income are indeed high, and any new technique must provide optimism in regard to achieving significant additional yield/increase in yield or a marked reduction in costs before it will be accepted by most farmers (mosher, 1986). a report from the agricultural service office of west java (2003) stated that the average national productivity of potatoes is 15 tons/ha while the average productivity of research is 35 tons/ha. this report reveals a wide productivity gap, 20 tons/ha (57.1%). from a comparative analysis of potato farming using several seed sources, it can be seen that if farmers who choose their potato seed with a productivity of 15 tons/ha obtain a net income of rp. 7.95 million/ha and b/c ratio of 0.36, farmers using imported potato seed with relatively higher seed prices providing productivity of 30 tons/ha would have a net income of rp. 24.8 million/ha and b/c ratio of 0.49, while farmers choosing certified potato seed at a cost greater than that of imported seed but providing the same productivity of 30 tons/ha would obtain a net income and a b/c ratio of rp. 43 million/ha and 1.34, respectively. in regard to west java specifically, if farmers choose their seed, potatoes would net an annual income of rp. 612.52 billion while farmers who choose imported seed would get rp. 1.3 trillion more per year. in contrast, if all farmers used certified seed, domestic seed production would generate an extra rp. 1.5 trillion in annual revenue. supposing all farmers using their selected seed got the lowest returns and used imported seed, they would get lower yields from using certified seed because the cost of importing seed becomes greater than that incurred for domestic seed certification. this improved allocation of seed-specific credit will facilitate potato farmers in regard to accessing seed sources, technology, markets, agricultural means of production, and other production facilities. provision of this specific credit must be made in the form of binding credit that can be used only to purchase certified potato seed because, if the loan is given in the form of money, that would be used for external purchase of certified seed, showing that the main factor constraining farmers in procuring certified potato seed is limited funds, even though they already know that using certified seed will increase production. 4. conclusions and recommendations 4.1. conclusions factors that have proven influence on the level of demand for certified potato seed include the proportion of certified seed, seed prices, capital owned by farmers, and credit allocation for potato farming. at the level of supply of certified potato seed, influencing factors include its availability, selling price, and the capital level in breeder farming. policy simulation on the use of certified potato seed shows that increasing the level of specific farm credit will result in an increase in the use of certified locally produced seed and, at the same time, reduction in the use of self-selected and imported seed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 756-763 763 4.2. recommendations suggestions that can be offered from the results of this study are: (1) the government must adopt a policy to increase the allocation of financing through capital assistance for farmers and facilitate their access to capital sources in the form of specific credit for certified potato seed. (2) enhancement of the efficiency of potato farming could be achieved through provision of specific credit for certified potato seed so that farmers can be more efficient in using saprotan and production facilities, resulting in enhanced production and income. (3) through the provision of specific credit for certified potato seed, farmers will further optimize the utilization of widely available natural resources so that these efforts can increase land productivity without damaging the ecological balance. (4) to increase the use of certified potato seed, the government (through various related agencies) must undertake thorough planning by providing seed sources, improving seed technology, managing potato planting quotas, and assisting in the development of horticultural commodities prepared in a participatory manner involving farmer users, breeders, seed institutions, and seed traders. (5) although the contribution of the results of this study to the development of agricultural social economics has given new insights into the provision of specific credit for certified potato seed, it still requires improvement and so it is advisable to conduct further research with more in-depth scrutiny in regard to both data collection and a statistical model approach. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in the design and performance of the current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references agricultural service office of west java. 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(2018). growing media compositions and watering intervals on seed production of potatoes g2 grown at medium altitude. asian journal of crop science, 10(4), 190-197.available at: https://doi.org/10.3923/ajcs.2018.190.197. http://www.bps.go.id/indicator/55/61/1/production-horticulture-vegetable.html http://www.bps.go.id/indicator/55/61/1/production-horticulture-vegetable.html effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 172 forecasting wheat production using time series models in pakistan m. asif masood, irum raza saleem abid social sciences research institute, national agricultural research centre, pakistan  irumraza83@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 07-nov-2018 accepted: 10-jan-2019 online available: 08-feb2019 keywords: forecast, production, yield, time series abstract the present paper was designed to forecast wheat production for 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-2020 respectively by using time series data from 1971-72 to 2016-17 with best selected time series models. linear, quadratic, exponential, s-curve, double exponential smoothing, single exponential smoothing, moving average and arima were estimated for wheat production. the results showed a mix trend in production of wheat for selected time period. arima (2,1,2) was found best one keeping in view close forecasts with actual reported wheat production. so the preference inclined towards the arima (2,1,2) than quadratic to forecasts of wheat production. contribution/ originality the present study focused on forecasting of wheat production in pakistan by using various time series models. keeping in view the close forecast values of production with previous years, arima model was found to be appropriate. data used in the present study is of different time period. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.172.177 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: m. asif masood, irum raza and saleem abid (2018). forecasting wheat production using time series models in pakistan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 172-177. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 172-177 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:irumraza83@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.172.177 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 172-177 173 1. introduction forecasting techniques are extensively used for estimation of area, production and yield of major as well as minor crops with climatic data. estimates are essential before sowing of crop especially for the government to determine its targets regarding procurement, export and storage of wheat. for this purpose, time series techniques can be used for area, production and yield forecasting relying only on past historical data on area, production and yield of respective crop. traditionally, analytical techniques namely linear trend, quadratic trend, simple exponential smoothing, double exponential smoothing, simple moving averaging, double moving averaging and arima have already been exercised to forecasts of wheat area and production in pakistan for different periods. wheat is among major crops of rabi* season and basic food for pakistani people. wheat crop contributes 9.6 percent of the value added in agriculture and 1.9 percent of gdp of pakistan. during 2016-17 the area of wheat was 9052 thousand hectares with a decline of 1.9 percent as compared to area of last year which was 9224. the estimates of wheat production were 25.750 million tonnes in 2016 which was 0.5 percent higher than previous year wheat production that is 25.633 million tonnes. the rise in wheat production was due to better use of agricultural inputs (economic survey of pakistan, 2016-17). forecasting is the significant tool for crop production in any country due to which the quantity of produce can be assessed well in time. reliable agricultural statistics provide a sound basis for agricultural planning and also serve as a yardstick to measure the progress of agriculture (amin et al., 2014). the importance of forecasting techniques in agriculture with regards to production/yield, area of crops and sign of occurrence of crop pests and diseases (ramasubramanianv, 2009). forecasts that are made well timed before harvest of crop are useful for planning the policies related to storage, distribution, pricing, marketing, import-export etc. (ranjana, 2010). review of literature has shown a lot of studies about forecasting techniques in agricultural research such as barley (naheed et al., 2015), major pulses and their price assessment in pakistan (rani and raza, 2012) trend analysis of tea import (raza et al., 2015) forecasting wheat and rice prices in pakistan (abbasi et al., 2015). in another study by (ahmad et al., 2017) forecast of area, production and yield of major crops have been made by using time series models this study is focused on two main objectives. first to apply different linear, nonlinear and time series models to data and second to forecast the production of wheat crop in pakistan by using best fitted model. 2. material and methods time series data on wheat production for the period 1971-72 to 2016-2017 was taken from government publications such as agricultural statistics of pakistan and pakistan economic survey. trend analysis and time series models including linear, quadratic, exponential, s-curve, double exponential smoothing, single exponential smoothing, moving average and arima were estimated using minitab computer package version 18 (statistical data analysis software). data on wheat production from 1971-72 to 2016-2017 was used to forecast wheat production for 201718, 2018-19 and 2019-2020 respectively by using best one selected time series models. the general forms of the above models are given in (table 1). *crop sown in september and harvested in spring asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 172-177 174 table 1: statistical models used in the study s # model mathematical equation 1 linear yt = a + bt 2 quadratic yt = a + bt + ct2 3 exponential yt = a ebt 4 s-curve yt = exp (a + b/t) 5 double exponential smoothing lt = yt + (1 ) [lt -1 + tt -1] 6 arima zt = ø 1 z t-1+…+ ø p z t-p + u t 2.1. accuracy measures in order to assess the appropriate model for forecasting wheat production the accuracy measures also termed as forecasting errors were calculated from all of the trend models. they included mean absolute percentage error (mape), mean absolute deviation (mad) and mean squared deviation (msd). the model selection was based on the minimum values of these accuracy measures. 3. results and discussion the trends of wheat production showed an upward trend till year 1976-77 and then it fell down in 1977-78 (see figure 1). an improvement in wheat production was found in 1978-79 with continued rise till 1982-83. in 1983-84 wheat production dropped, 10881.9 thousand tonnes but it again jumped higher and continued till 2016-17. these fluctuations might be the reason of change in the use of agricultural inputs, area of crop, some natural variations due to increase or decrease in the occurrence of rainfall and the variations in the minimum and maximum temperature. figure 1: depicting trend of wheat area and production from 1971 to 2016 in table 1 it can been seen that values of mape, mad and msd are minimum (4,666 and 683,407 respectively) for quadratic model. literature show studies about forecasting wheat area and production nationally and internationally. some of them include najeeb et al. (2005) who made forecast about wheat area and production in pakistan for 2022. in another paper by sabir and tahir (2012) an attempt has been made to forecast wheat production by using exponential asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 172-177 175 smoothing. similarly regression and trend analysis techniques have been employed by karim et al. (2005) to forecast wheat production in bangladesh. table 2: linear and nonlinear models of wheat production in pakistan fore casting models criteria for model selection mape mad msd linear 4 673 690546 quadratic 4 666 683407 exponential 7 1024 1658875 s-curve 4 672 704175 moving average 7 1066 1759221 single exponential smoothing 6 999 1569105 double exponential smoothing 5 841 1075722 the data was also tested for arima models and the results are given in table 2 and table 3 respectively. initially plots of auto correlation function (acf) and partial auto correlation function (pacf) were obtained and they showed non stationary series because auto correlation did not fall within the prescribed 5% significant limits. in order to make the series stationary for production differenced series was obtained by putting the value of ‘p’ equal to 2, the difference or ‘d’ value equal to 1 and finally the order of moving average value ‘q’ was set to be 2. therefore, arima (2,1,2) was used for estimating production of wheat by using this order. this confirms with the finding of a similar study by najeeb et al. (2005) to estimate wheat area and production in pakistan by using arima model. the forecasts with arima (2,1,2) model are compared over quadratic model to find best one for production of the years 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20, the preference inclines towards the arima model due to close values of forecasts of wheat production to actual values of wheat production than quadratic model (table 2). finally, arima (2, 1,2) was identified best one due to close forecasts estimates with actual reported wheat production. using arima (2,1,2) 3 years ahead forecasts of wheat production and their 95 % confidence intervals are given in table 3. it is concluded that there is 95 percent probability, forecasts estimates lie between lower and upper limits. table 3: time series models of wheat production in pakistan diagnostics arima(1,1,1) arima (0,1,0) arima (0,1,1) arima(1,2,1) arima(2,1,2) arima(1,2,2) arima (2,2,2) r-square 0.97 0.94 0.97 0.96 0.97 0.96 0.96 rmse 870.66 1326.12 885.85 1131.24 882.28 1081.77 1110.05 mape 4.28 6.42 4.38 5.92 4.17 5.65 5.65 mae 12.26 1046.5 684.15 912.72 649.35 872.97 882.07 maxape 666.21 19.35 12.40 15.34 12.04 15.07 15.50 maxae 2183.79 2801.88 2372.93 2671.35 2161.92 2635.35 2384.30 normalized bic 13.79 14.46 13.74 14.32 13.95 14.31 14.45 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 172-177 176 table 4: actual and forecast values of wheat production in thousand tones with the best models year actual quadratic arima 95%limits lower limits upper limits 2014-15 25086.1 25827.1 24775.6 23083.7 26467.6 2015-16 25633.0 26316.4 26084.8 24362.8 27806.8 2016-17 25750.0 26808.1 25919.2 24197.1 27641.2 2017-18 27302.1 26824.3 25094.5 28554.1 2018-19 27798.5 26857.9 25123.8 28591.9 2019-20 28297.2 27635.8 25893.4 29378.3 4. conclusion and recommendations in this study, various forecasting models were tried to find best one in relation to future wheat production in pakistan using historical/ large data of forty six (46) years, but arima (2,1,2) was identified as best one to forecast of wheat production for three years ahead. for 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-2020 forecasts of wheat production 26824.3, 26857.9 and 27635.8 thousand tones can be with lower and upper limits 25094.5 to 28554.1, 25123.8 to 28591.9 and 25893.4 to 29378.3 respectively. it is suggested that different crops data can be used to fit models and also make forecast using other advanced forecasting models for provinces and districts. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interest. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abbasi, s. s., tahir, a., raza, i., abid, s., & khan, m. n. 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(2012). supply and demand projection of wheat in punjab for the year 2011-2012. interdisciplinary journal of contemporary research in business 3, 800-808. view at google scholar https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=comparison+of+trend+analysis+and+double+exponential+smoothing+methods+for+price+estimation+of+major+pulses+in+pakistan&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=forecasting+techniques+in+crops.+&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=supply+and+demand+projection+of+wheat+in+punjab+for+the+year+2011-2012&btng= effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 156 § characterization of rural organizations in a forest-based economy: a socio-institutional approach marwa ben brahima jamel ben nasrb lokman zaibetc a,bdepartment of rural economics, national agronomic institute of tunis. university of carthage, tunis, tunisia. cdepartment of natural resource economics, college of agricultural and marine sciences, sultan qaboos university, muscat, sultanate of oman.  benbrahim.marwa@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 12 june 2020 revised: 5 march 2021 accepted: 7 april 2021 published: 3 may 2021 keywords indicators social capital local development natural resources rural communities participatory rural appraisal. we used a socio-institutional approach to characterize rural organizations in forest-based communities in north west tunisia. this approach builds on the imperatives of a social system, the conservation of rural capital, and the role of social capital. the resulting model was used to characterize rural organizations based on key socio-institutional attributes. the paper used a participatory rural appraisal (focus groups mainly) to conduct in-depth analysis in nine forest communities. results reveal the following : 1) in development committees there is a strong belief in state intervention and moderate natural capital appropriation, weak conflict management, weak capacity to sanction, and low trust in the organization; 2) in active agricultural development groups there exists a strong potential for conflict management, trust in the organization, and natural capital appropriation, but a lower level of degradation responsibility and capacity to sanction; and 3) in the inactive agricultural development groups there is the strongest perception of state intervention and overall weak performances in terms of conflict management, trust in organization, and degradation responsibility. these features indicate the organization’s attributes for sustainable local development and specifically for common forest resources management. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the existing literature of common natural resources management. its original approach aims to understand how realities on the ground have shaped the wider context of local development. it is shown that rural communities rurals integrate a complex social system and have aspirations that go beyond personal interest. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.156.162 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: marwa ben brahim --jamel ben nasr --lokman zaibet (2021). characterization of rural organizations in a forest-based economy: a socio-institutional approach. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2), 156-162. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.156.162 © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the vast majority of common property research, which we refer to as traditional common property research, is focused on understanding the emergence of collective institutions for the improved management of common resources (johnson, 2004; mccay, 2002; monterroso & larson, 2013; ostrom & basurto, 2011). several other commons scholars (agrawal, 2007; mccay, 2002) have put forward opposing arguments, contrasting the traditional asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 2 (2021): 156-162. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9833-9840 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5281-3893 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4233-0521 mailto:benbrahim.marwa@gmail.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.156.162 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 156-162 157 approach with the need for greater attention to contextual, historical (larson & ribot, 2004; lund, rutt, & ribot, 2018; monterroso & larson, 2013), and power issues. since the 1980s, the transfer of natural resources management to local communities has been central in global strategic reforms (markelova, meinzen-dick, hellin, & dohrn, 2009). these reforms have resulted in the creation of natural resources user associations (springborn & sanchirico, 2013). this management transfer has taken many forms. it could be done partially by favoring co-management between local associations and the public administration. however, these cases are often not clearcut, with most involving some form of interaction between the state and local communities. this first option has been particularly favored in the middle east and north africa regions (vermillion & sagardoy, 1999). the transfer process has been studied to understand the link between the approach and these associations performances. markelova et al. (2009) thus explained the failure of several experiments in the transfer of natural resources management to local communities, by the lack of attention given to understanding the conditions of emergence and the maintenance of collective action. suhardiman and giordano (2014) stipulate that “understanding how field-level realities shaped the wider context of local development is one promising path away from decades of disappointing results”. theories about common pool resource regimes are based on assumptions of rationality and self-interest, as well as isolation of these regimes from the rest of the world. this is not useful because rural people are part of a complex social system and have aspirations that go beyond self-interest. several factors, in the literature, are cited to analyze the performance of any institutional arrangement for development in a specific social system. these factors were differently summarized by castle (1998); agrawal (2001); ostrom (2010); ostrom and basurto (2011); long, tu, ge, li, and liu (2016); and others in a set of three categories: 1) the characteristics of the resources (natural and physical capital); 2) the characteristics of the group depending on these resources (human and socio-institutional capital); and 3) the environment of each arrangement (political, institutional, cultural, and economic). first, we refer to the model of castle (1998) to set the resources’ characteristics. that model assimilated the rural system to a specific system consisting of four types of interconnected capital: physical, human, natural, and social. castle defines social capital as "the organization of groups that makes the actions of individuals more productive”. trust, reciprocity, capacity building, ethnic and cultural heritage, common beliefs, and other factors all affect social capital in any organization type (coleman, 2000; putnam, 2000; woolcock, 2001). second, recent studies have shown how social and cultural factors, rather than biological or physical, tend to influence the success or failure of common natural resources management for development (ahn, ostrom, schmidt, & walker, 2003; chu, strand, & fjelland, 2003; gächter & herrmann, 2009; glaeser, laibson, scheinkman, & soutter, 2002; putnam, 2000). however, fewer studies have assessed organizations’ social capital in relation to local development (delgado & marín, 2013; isham, 2000; liu & besser, 2003; onyx & bullen, 2000; platteau & abraham, 2002; shrestha, cameron, cavaye, & coutts, 2014). the actors’ actions in local forest development are the result of their human capital (their competence) and social capital (the capacities of individuals as a group). it is argued that the social capital within communities most strongly supports the use and management of natural capital. we argue that collective action for development is an institutional arrangement that is determined by social/human capital attributes which, in turn, determine the natural/physical capital management. market, the whole community, and the state, respectively, represent the economic, cultural, and institutional and political environments (or imperative external functions, in parsons (1970)) of the rural system. our approach provides an understanding of the institutional arrangement that is affected by external factors, which has consequences on human behavior but that is not reducible to either. power disparities and the visibility of better solutions to organize society may each have powerful consequences for actors’ perception of the rural system and how to manage its commons (carías vega, 2019). actors’ beliefs about the most appropriate rule will differ from actor to actor, leading to social learning. community-based resources management is unlikely to be sustainable without “a process of social learning between the internal and external actors” (wulandari & inoue, 2018). our approach points towards an account of new institutional arrangements building the possibility of innovation into the theory, by showing how it is likely to be influenced by network structures in a given collectivity. failure of natural resources management in rural tunisia is attributed to deficient institutional arrangements involving local communities. throughout history, several types of local development organization have emerged, ranging from collectivism to the state-led development of common natural resources. both politics and policies have overlooked the connection between natural capital and the other components of rural capital. since 1992, agricultural policies have given a strategic role to local organizations to manage natural resources. successive plans have designed and implemented a top-down approach to serve and strengthen the ruling party’s control over local communities (elloumi, 2011). the rationale of this paper is to: 1) identify additional factors contributing to the performance of common natural resources management in a local context and 2) explicitly test social impact on management performance. the underlying assumption of the study is that local development is likely to be successful if there is socially controlled rural capital interconnection leading to a better perception of development initiatives. the paper is organized as follows. section 2 describes data collection and data analysis,including the list of attributes to scale. results are displayed in section 3, and the final section provides concluding remarks. 2. methodology 2.1. data collection agricultural development groups (gdaps) are formal, non-profit, autonomous rural organizations managing the protection and exploitation of natural resources within rural areas (elloumi, 2011). they were created at the end asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 156-162 158 of 2007 after evolving from one institutional form to another. although some of them are active, non-operational gdaps are, from an administrative point of view, those that have not scheduled their annual meeting or submitted their minutes for the current year. this leads us to consider non-operational gdaps as being different from operational ones. informal organizations were also created: these are extensions of the administration and remain under the close control of their initiators (in relation to different development projects) and disappear from the organizational landscape when financial and legal support is withdrawn. statistics show that the current local organizations operating in the forest-based economy have a high rate of non-functionality, with more than 60% nonoperational agricultural development the proliferation of informal organizations (44 development committees (cds)) testifies of this failure. participatory rural appraisal (pra) techniques have been widely used in development studies and are recognized as supporting a new development paradigm (chambers, 1994) based on timely participatory feedback from the relevant local communities. focus groups were organized in march 2017. the study region (beja and jendoubagovernorates) accounts for more than 60% of total development organizations in the north west. a representative sample of 10% of total organizations was randomly selected (9 organizations out of 90) in 9 different sectors. the selection was stratified based on the number of organizations within each sector, with the help of administrative experts. three different types of organization were selcted: 1) developpement committees (cd), 2) non-operational development group (nop gdap) and 3) operational development group (op gdap). ten to 15 participants were invited to every pra workshop. in sum, 100 participants were selected from 1) organization members, 2) active organization members and 3) socially non-involved residents. 2.2. data analysis participants were asked to give their perception of the rural capital interconnection: 1) common natural resources (natural capital), 2) organizational economic performance (physical/financial capital) and 3) socioinstitutional performance or capital . next they were asked to give their perception on rural organizations’ political and institutional environment. the focus group guideline is displayed in appendix a. several attributes were provided to participants via a focus group guideline. they were asked then to score the most important perceived attributes on a likert scale (0 (nil) to 4 (very high)). scores show the importance and required level of each identified attribute. human and physical assets were not considered relevant in perception of organizations. age, household size, and financial assets were not been found to significantly characterize heterogeneity among communities. we considered the accumulation of physical capital in forest economies as very precarious. physical capital substitutability with natural capital is unclear. growth is based essentially on the exploitation of natural capita that leads, meanwhile, to its degradation. the poorest and market-isolated households were more likely to clear forest than were those with medium to high asset holding. table 1 presents the key attributes perceived differently by communities. natural capital assets (natural capital appropriation and degradation responsibility), institutional capital assets (state intervention and legal system intelligibility), and social capital assets (capacity of sanction, conflict management, and trust in organizations) were the key assets considered for organization characterization. table-1. main attributes identified during pras. attributes scale − natural capital appropriation 0-4 − degradation responsibility 0-4 − capacity of sanction 0-4 − conflict management 0-4 − trust in organizations 0-4 − legal system intelligibility 0-4 − state intervention 0-4 note: nil = 0; weak (limited) = 1; fair (fairly) = 2; high = 3; very high= 4. 3. results and discussion cds are characterized by a strong belief in state intervention and moderate natural capital appropriation. they have weak conflict management and trust in the organization. they don’t have any capacity of sanction because of their informal status. the underlying belief in this system is typically fueled by the status quo offered by public authorities. changes within this system are all incremental. development is still designed for punctual operations for which information can always be provided. further diversification of development actions is not planned. this system seems to “safely” manage subsistence and individuals still seek government intervention. this system could be labeled “social laggards” because laggards are a group of people who avoid change and may not be willing to adopt or create a new product until all traditional alternatives are no longer available (gilles, thomas, valdivia, & yucra, 2013). they are typically not interested in higher content, but rather in readily available services. they have no notorious status and low social mobility. in many cases, their low income prohibits them from getting the required financial resources to spend on innovative services. rural communities are composed of individuals looking for state assistance first and foremost. their activity depends on asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 156-162 159 guaranteeing forest longevity . it was not difficult for these communities to accept the “terms and conditions” of ownership imposed by the state to access land. non-operational gdaps have the strongest “perception” of state intervention. they rely on state intervention to manage natural capital for development. non-operational gdaps have an overall weak performance in terms of trust in the organization. conflict management is absent for these organizations. indeed, these organizations don’t consider the legal system intelligible. laws are not clear. despite moderate natural capital appropriation, they don’t consider they are responsible for its degradation. people within these communities excessively mine their natural resources but they consider it as a given right to escape poverty. the underlying belief in this system is typically fueled by private rationalities. the second system seems to develop extended relations with the external environment. this system implies “human multifunctionality” beyond territory, agriculture, and citizenship with the state relying on weak performance. most of the people here have faced considerable difficulties in adapting their livelihood practices to dependence on forestry-related activity. it is a conflictual “adaptation” between members who have different visions and interests. some members have accepted the transition to common forest management only to benefit from the accessible area. others continue to pressure and convert forests with the hopes of convincing the government to expand their rights for agricultural activities. operational gdaps have good potential regarding conflict management, trust in the organization, natural capital appropriation, but a lower level of degradation responsibility and capacity of sanction. indeed, they perform relatively better in comparison to to other organizations. but they remain relatively inefficient . the legal system remains more or less intelligible to them, which influences both conflict management capacity and sanctioning capacity. nevertheless, although these organizations enjoy a high degree of trust in comparison with others, they cannot fully win the trust of the entire community. the responsibility for degradation seems to be a common attribute among organizations with a higher, but not optimal, degree of consciousness for operational gdaps. we wonder about these organizations’ sustainability under such perceptions of natural capital degradation and appropriation. this system responds to immediate shocks rather than to long-term stresses. its strengths are primarily observed at the regulatory level (a willingness to include new goals and promote new management approaches). however, weak mechanisms to implement rules, particularly when it comes to making the necessary trade-offs, decelerate goal achievement. this system focuses mainly on modernizing the existing processes and mechanisms of natural capital management (enhancing profits, redistributing wealth, integrating excluded categories, etc.) collectively without effective state intervention. they are mainly state-independent and socially embedded communities. figure 1 summarizes the main identified attributes that most characterize rural organizations regarding local development under rural communities’ point of view: figure-1. organizations’ main attributes. beyond the traditional views of common natural resources management, this indicates additional factors contributing to the analysis of local organizations’ management of common natural resources from an endogenous rural point of view. the characterization of local organizations helped us detect suitable attributes that render them more effective and legitimate based on the proposed conceptual framework. organizations perceive the role of the state as diametrically opposite in the local development process. this leads to the central question of natural capital appropriation. seemingly the conception of rights over natural capital guides most of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 156-162 160 organization's performance. we are left with contrasting perceptions regarding the appropriation and responsibility for the degradation of natural capital. the regulatory framework seems to have a direct affect on the performance of organizations. confusion over organizations' status impacts directly on their legitimacy and, consequently, on their systemic social function that is based essentially on trust, the capacity of sanctioning and conflict management. to reflect on what was initially proposed, the various institutional arrangements are effectively impacted by external factors that have consequences on human behavior but that are not reducible . power disparities and the possibility of better solutions, or new ideas on how to organize each collectively, have powerful consequences on actors’ perception of the rural system . one obvious implication of this work is the differentiated socio-institutional change that occurs under different circumstances and in individuals with significantly differing beliefs about both the institution (as rule or/and organization) and natural capital. the "formal" organization is only a dictated transposition of community behavior. left to their endogenous preferences, people create arrangements that materialize both their own and social interests far from the "stereotypical" organization. the organization should no longer be "technically" evaluated. this is a new balance to be identified separately from the standards of political and technical evaluation. 4. conclusion using pra techniques, we characterized local development organizations based on communities’ perception of socio-institutional attributes. taking into account similarities in natural, physical, and human capital, the differences are particularly noticeable in both social and institutional capital, which differ in small measure from one another. legal system intelligibility, trust in the organization, natural capital appropriation, state intervention, conflict management, and sanctioning capacity were all investigated. one obvious implication is that we should open the door to a new ways of thinking about differing patterns of local development and how they relate to institutional arrangements. funding: authors acknowledge financial support from the sylvo pastoral development office of the north west of tunisia (odesypano). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: the authors are members of the ledderna research laboratory in fseg of tunis, el -manar university, 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(2018). the importance of social learning for the development of community based forest management in indonesia: the case of community forestry in lampung province. small-scale forestry, 17(3), 361-376. http://www.fao.org/3/x2586e/x2586e.pdf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 156-162 162 appendice a: focus group guidelines icommon natural resources perception (natural capital) 1do you know your territory area really well? 2do natural resources in your territory constitute a potential for development? 3do you have good knowledge of the state of degradation of your resources? 4do you feel responsible for the current state of degradation? 5are you ready to participate in the local development process? 6are you ready to protect the resources in your territory in order to achieve development? iieconomic performance perception (physical capital) 7income increase 8cost decrease iiisocio-institutional capital perception 9does absenteeism influence management capacity? 10does information asymmetry exist? 11does the presence of the organization increase trust? 12what are the trust’s attributes? 13what are the principal conflict sources? 14does the organization have the capacity to manage conflict? 15is there any new form of coordination in the organization? 16is cooperation the best form of resource management for development? 17what could hinder this form of coordination? 18does the presence of unbalanced power hamper the proper functioning of the organization? 19does the organization constitute the perfect relational network in your area? 20is the legal system clear as applied? 21does the organization have the capacity to sanction ? ivorganization’s environmental perception 22do the resources on your territory belong to you? 23is wealth distribution in your territory egalitarian? 24do you decide, among others, on this distribution? 25how much do you tolerate the state's partnership in managing resources in your territory? 26is there any partner for development in this area? what is its nature? 28 the effect of stem segment cuttings of robusta coffee (coffea canephora) on growth of root and leaf sprout bistok hasiholan simanjuntaka devi kusuma wardanib a,b agrotechnology department, faculty of agriculture and business, universitas kristen satya wacana, salatiga, central java, indonesia.  bhasiholans@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 4 november 2020 revised: 7 december 2020 accepted: 1 january 2021 published: 20 january 2021 keywords stem segment cuttings robusta coffee root lenght leaf sprout height leaf sprout growth rate. robusta coffee plant propagation is recommended to be performed by vegetative methods, one of which is cuttings. among plant organs that can be used for cuttings is the stem. the research objective was to determine which stem segment from cuttings was able to provide the best root and leaf growth. the layout study used a completely randomized block design (rbd) with an experimental treatment consisting of five stem segments, namely (1) the first stem segment from the upper shoot (a); (2) the second stem segment from the upper shoot (b); (3) the third stem segment from the upper shoot (c); (4) the fourth stem segment from the upper shoot (d); and (5) the fifth stem segment from the upper shoot (e); each treatment had five replications. data analysis was performed statistically with analysis of variance (anova) and tukey's hsd (honestly significant difference) test with a significance level of p < 0.05. robusta coffee cuttings stems from the second stem segment from the upper shoot were able to provide the optimal root growth (root length) and shoot growth (leaf sprout height and leaf sprout growth rate). leaf sprout number derived from the cuttings was not affected by the stem segment. contribution/originality: this study provides important literature for selecting the best stem segment for the propagation of robusta coffee stem cuttings. robusta coffee cuttings from the second stem segment from the upper shoot were able to provide optimal root length, leaf sprout height and leaf sprout growth rate. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.28.34 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: bistok hasiholan simanjuntak --devi kusuma wardani (2021). the effect of stem segment cuttings of robusta coffee (coffea canephora) on growth of root and leaf sprout. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 28-34. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.28.34 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 28-34 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4716-3627 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5363-5921 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.28.34 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 28-34 29 1. introduction one type of coffee widely cultivated is robusta (coffea canephora). world coffee production in the year 2018/2019 is estimated at 169 million bags, which is 5.4% higher than in 2017/2018. production of robusta increased by 11% in 2018/2019 to 70.67 million bags (international coffee organization, 2019), so robusta coffee has an important role in improving the economy of coffee farmers. robusta coffee is cultivated at low to moderate altitudes in tropical africa, america, and asia (cubry, de bellis, pot, musoli, & leroy, 2013). the main problem with robusta coffee cultivation is the availability of superior seeds for plant propagation, because propagation by seed will produce new plants that have different genetic properties from the parent plant. the nature of robusta coffee is self-incompatible, so it tends to be cross-pollinated (cubry et al., 2013; hetzel, 2015; moraes et al., 2018). the results of crosspollination tend to produce seeds with different genetic characteristics from the parent plant. therefore, robusta coffee plant propagation is recommended to be conducted by vegetative methods (angelo et al., 2018) and is mostly done by vegetative methods such as shoot grafting or cutting. cuttings are a method of plant propagation that uses the vegetative part of the plant, and the new plants produced have the same properties as the parent plant. the vegetative parts of the plant used for cuttings are generally stems, leaves, and roots. cutting is among the extensively practiced means of vegetative propagation in plants. this has many advantages, such as ensuring maximum new crop homogeneity, besides other desirable traits: it is economical, requiring only limited space, and is rapid and simple (dadashpour, reza, behrooz, & yousef, 2011; partelli et al., 2014). stem cuttings in robusta coffee plants are aimed at producing new plants as a source of superior shoots that will later be used for propagation of shoot grafting methods. new plants from stem cuttings have the same genetic characteristics as the parent plant and, in a short time, can produce large numbers and uniform characteristics in new plants. stem cuttings will grow successfully if the cuttings form a callus, and the callus will develop into adventitious roots. adventitious rooting growth plays an important role in the cuttings method of propagation. adventitious root formation is a complex biological process affected by the age of the mother tree, stem juvenility, plant regulator concentration, seasonality, and environmental conditions during rooting growth (de oliveira et al., 2015; stuepp, juliany, henrique, katia, & ribas, 2017; zem, weiser, zuffellato-ribas, & radomski, 2015). thus, more juvenile branches in good nutritional condition tend to be ideal for rooting (pijut, woeste, & michler, 2011; wendling, trueman, & xavier, 2014). stem cuttings are classified based on juvenility or maturity as either softwood, semi-hardwood, or hardwood growth (hartmann, kester, davies, & geneve, 2011). cuttings from the upper stem are softwood, and semihardwoods can make better roots than those from basal stems, which are hardwood. also, the basal stem has a thicker diameter in comparison with the upper stem (soundy, kwena, elsa, & mudau, 2008). kraiem, aidi, zairi, and ezzili (2010) stated that the establishment and growth rate of stem cuttings depend on branch age, stem segment position, and stem diameter. stem juvenility or maturity depends on branch age and stem segment position on the branch. stem juvenility or maturity relates to endogenous hormones and nutrition in stem tissue. upper stem cuttings have higher rates of auxin synthesis, less tissue differentiation, and are more sensitive to dehydration. basal stem cuttings, despite lower levels of endogenous auxin, have a greater capacity to provide the necessary reserves of carbohydrate and nitrogen for the formation and growth of roots and shoots (izadi, shahsavar, & mirsoleimani, 2016; pigatto, erik, jéssica, aurea, & cícero, 2018). those stem origins have a different c:n ratio and likelihood of growing cuttings (pratama et al., 2018). mauro, nilton, alexandre, júnior, and antonio (2002), reporting on plum cuttings (prunus salicina), found that semi-hardwood cuttings provided the best results for rooting over the whole rooting process. softwood, semi-hardwood, and hardwood cuttings have variable carbohydrate and nitrogen ratios along their branches, causing rooting differences in cuttings originating from different stem segments. this was supported by araya, du toit, mudau, and soundy (2007), who showed that successful vegetative propagation of bush tea could be achieved by propagating upper stem cuttings. this is because the upper stem is softwood while semi-hardwood has low levels of lignin and high levels of auxin hormones. in coffee plants, orthotropic branches can be used to prepare cuttings (angelo et al., 2018) and plant types naturally have good root formation in stem cuttings; nevertheless, some types readily grow roots from the upper, middle, or basal stem (erdiansyah, rokhani, & waluyo, 2016). teruel rezende et al. (2010) observed in coffea arabica l. that the longest roots from semi-hardwood cuttings yielded the highest average, differing significantly from other stem cuttings. for total dry matter, semi-hardwood and hardwood cuttings did not present significant differences but they were superior to softwood cuttings. research conducted by sumirat, yuliasmara, and priyono (2013) on robusta coffee cuttings showed that root growth characteristics can be grouped into three rooting categories: easy, moderate, and difficult. on the other hand, shoot growth in robusta coffee cuttings showed easy growth from leaf sprouts. therefore, in robusta coffee cuttings, root growth is the critical criterion for success. adventitious rooting of cutting is controlled by the genetics and physiological age of the stem or branch. the rooting ability of cuttings from perennial plants declines with increase in the age of the stem or branch. for robusta coffee, there are currently no research results available on the optimal stem segment as a source of stem cuttings to provide the best root and shoot growth for plant propagation. based on the above, the aim of the present study was to determine which stem segment would provide optimal growth in the roots and shoots of robusta coffee cuttings. 2. materials and methods 2.1. time and site research the research was conducted at laboratory plant production of the agrotechnology department, faculty of agriculture and business, universitas kristen satya wacana (580 m above sea level) in salatiga, indonesia, from february to may 2018. the research location with climate classification proposed by koppen is am (the tropical, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 28-34 30 warmest, and short dry season), with an average annual temperature of about 23.10°c and precipitation about 2668 mm per year. 2.2. treatment research the stem material for experimental treatment was taken from orthotropic branches aged 5–6 months, both softwood and semi-hardwood. the robusta coffee clone used was bp358. the research used a randomized completely block design (rcbd) with the experimental treatment consisting of five stem segments: (1) first stem segment from the upper shoot (a); (2) second stem segment from the upper shoot (b); (3) third stem segment from the upper shoot (c); (4) fourth stem segment from the upper shoot (d); and (5) fifth stem segment from the upper shoot (e) (see figure 1), and each treatment had five replications. figure 1. stem segment treatment from orthotropic branches. source: drawing adapted from cannell (1985). stem cuttings were about 7–10 cm long and accompanied by a pair of leaves cut in two. cutting was done at an angle of about 45o, then cuttings were planted in growing medium. vertical planting of stem cuttings was done in sterile growing medium with a particle size of 5-mesh and consisting of a mixture of topsoil, sand, and compost in a ratio of 1:1:1. the cuttings for each treatment were planted in pots (polybags) and the pots placed in a shading house. during the growth process, the microclimatic conditions in the shading house were adjusted to humidity 90–96% by providing misted water; air temperature was 23–26oc, provided by by a fan; and the level of sun intensity entering the shading house was around 40%, by providing black shading 1.0 m away from the roof of the shading house. 2.3. data collection evaluation of root and leaf sprout growth was made every day till the end of the experiment, 90 days after planting. the following variables were evaluated: (1) total organic c (c-ot) in cuttings was measured early in the experiment, with k2cr2o7 oxidation under acidic conditions, by spectrophotometry (walkley and black method). (2) total n (n-t) in cuttings was measured early in the experiment, by wet ashing with h2so4 and measurement by distillation (kjeldahl method). (3) root length was measured with a ruler (in cm) every day, from the root base to the root apex. (4) leaf sprout numbers on each cutting were counted every day. (5) leaf sprout height was measured with a ruler (in cm) every day – from base to apex. (6) leaf sprout growth rate (cm per week) was calculated based on the absolute growth rate (agr) formula of plants, as follows:𝑉 = 𝑑𝑆 𝑑𝑇 v = leaf sprout growth rate (cm per week). ds = leaf sprout height at the last week of measurement – leaf sprout height at the first week of measurement (cm). dt = observation week length – 1 (weeks). 2.4. data analysis the data were analyzed by analysis of variance (anova) with the f-test at a significance level of at least p < 0.05, and the mean value of data comparison was done by tukey's hsd test with a significance level of at least p < 0.05. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 28-34 31 3. results and discussion 3.1. c-ot, n-t, and c:n ratio plant tissue consists of two main groups of organic compounds: (1) a group of carbohydrate compounds including starch, sugar, lignins, tannins, fats, oils, waxes, and other compounds; and (2) the amino acid/protein group. the concentration of organic compounds from the first group can be estimated from the c-ot concentration, and that of the second group from n-t (gan, liang, liu, wang, & mcdonald, 2011), so c and n are the most important plant elements (zhang, wang, wang, & wang, 2014). c and n, as the major elements, contribute roughly half of dry biomass. c-ot content varies markedly among soft woody and hardwood stems, whereas c content is significantly higher in hard woody stems than in herbaceous-softwood stems. this is consistent with their different degrees of lignification (ma et al., 2018). table 1 shows that treatment e has the highest c-ot content and the lowest n-t content, so that it has the highest c:n ratio. this demonstrates that the woodier the stem, the higher the lignin content. table 1. c-ot, n-t, and c:n ratio of various stem segment cuttings. stem segment of cutting c-ot (%) n-t (%) c:n ratio first stem segment from the upper shoot (a) 2.13 0.43 4.98 second stem segment from the upper shoot (b) 2.15 0.41 5.84 third stem segment from the upper shoot (c) 2.16 0.36 6.20 fourth stem segment from the upper shoot (d) 2.66 0.34 7.98 fifth stem segment from the upper shoot (e) 2.84 0.21 13.83 the formation of adventitious roots in plant cuttings is a complex physiological process involving plant growth substances, water, and nutritional status in the cutting tissue (hartmann et al., 2011). the key nutrients are c and n, where c and n content in the cuttings will affect the growth of roots and shoots. the c:n ratio affects root formation in cuttings, where carbohydrate/protein imbalance will inhibit cell growth and development but a high c:n ratio will help and encourage root formation (kastono, sawitri, & siswandono, 2005; siregar, 2014; tombesi, palliotti, poni, & farinelli, 2015). the position on the branch of stem cutting affects roots because this is associated with growth substances and tissue juvenility. cuttings from the upper stem have a high rate of auxin synthesis and less differentiated tissue, but are more sensitive to dehydration. cuttings from the basal stem, although having low levels of endogenous auxin, have a greater capacity to provide the carbohydrate reserves necessary for the formation and growth of roots and shoots (cuncha, chaves, batista, & hidalgo, 2015). cuttings from the upper, middle, and lower stem have the highest, medium and lowest root length, respectively; this is related to the c and n content of cutting tissue and growth substances (pratama, yunus, purwanto, & widyastuti, 2018). 3.2. root length early growth of cuttings is indicated by callus appearance at the wound. when a callus is formed, auxins accumulate at the callus (ditengou et al., 2008) and this will differentiate cells to form roots. therefore, root growth on cuttings is an indicator of cutting growth. not all callus tissue will develop to root tissue because this is influenced by the auxin/cytokinin balance, the fertility and humidity of the planting medium, and the c:n ratio (gonin, bergougnoux, nguyen, gantet, & champion, 2019; li, xue, xu, feng, & an, 2009; pijut et al., 2011; tajbakhsh, korkan, & ghiyasi, 2009). root length in robusta coffee cuttings is shown in table 2, from which it will be noted that treatment of the second stem segment from the upper shoot (b) resulted in a root length significantly higher than that with treatments d and e, but was not significantly different from treatments a and c. this shows that cuttings using the basal stem – which is hardwood – can form roots longer than that from the upper stem – which is softwood or semi-hardwood. this finding is the same as research conducted by benbya, alaoui, gaboun, delporte, and cherkaoui (2018), which showed that semi-hardwood cuttings yielded the longest roots, followed by softwood. cuttings from the basal stem are hardwood and have a high c and low n content, i.e., a high c:n ratio (see table 1). stem cuttings with a high c:n ratio have reduced ability to form roots. carbon and nitrogen in cutting tissue play key roles in root growth, with those from basal stem having low n and high c (zerche, haensch, druege, & hajirezaei, 2016). because n is a precursor of amino acids in the production of protein and auxins, stem cuttings with a low n content have a reduced ability to form roots. adventitious root growth is an intensive metabolic process determined by the presence of auxins and other plant growth substances, enzymes, carbohydrates, and proteins (legue, rigal, & bhalerao, 2014). table 2. effects of stem segment cuttings on robusta coffee (c. canephora) root length, leaf sprout height, and leaf sprout number. stem segment of cutting root length (cm) leaf sprout height (cm) leaf sprout number first stem segment from the upper shoot (a) 6.51bc 2.49ab 2.60a second stem segment from the upper shoot (b) 8.40c 4.98b 4.20a third stem segment from the upper shoot (c) 7.23bc 3.59ab 3.93a fourth stem segment from the upper shoot (d) 4.77ab 3.39ab 3.40a fifth stem segment from the upper shoot (e) 2.67a 2.03a 3.20a note: mean values within a column followed by the same letters are not significantly different by tukey's hsd with a significance level of at least p < 0.05. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 28-34 32 3.3. leaf sprout height the carbohydrate content in cuttings decreases during root growth because this provides energy during the root formation process and promotes root growth (druege, zerche, & kadner, 2004). after the roots are formed, the leaf sprout will appear and the subsequent photosynthetic process in the leaves will trigger an increase in carbohydrates in the cuttings, so that the energy needs for root and leaf growth will be supplied by photosynthesis from the leaves that have grown from the cuttings. thus, photosynthesis by leaves on cuttings can play an important role in providing carbohydrates for the formation and growth of adventitious roots. table 2 shows that treatment of cuttings from the second stem segment from the upper shoot (treatment b) yielded the highest leaf sprout height (significantly) when compared to treatment e, but was not significantly different from treatments a, c, and d. leaf sprout growth from stem cuttings is determined by water, nutrients, root growth, auxins, cytokinins, carbohydrates, and proteins (kurepa, shull, & smalle, 2019). optimal leaf sprout growth in robusta coffee cuttings was seen when they were grown from semi-hardwood stems (treatment b, table 2), because semi-hardwood stems have good root growth, auxin:cytokinin ratio, and c:n ratio. 3.4. leaf sprout number leaf size and number are determined by the plant's metabolic processes and c uptake (photosynthesis) (dombroskie, tracey, & aarssen, 2016; kleiman & aarssen, 2007). from table 2 it will be seen that leaf sprout numbers in all treatments were not significantly different. leaf growth on cuttings is strictly controlled by external and internal factors. external factors are environmental factors, including temperature and sunlight (gonzalez et al., 2010; repkova, brestic, & olsovska, 2009), while internal factors are plant factors including genetics, auxins, cytokinins, number of bud nodes, and c and n content in stem tissue (caplan, stemeroff, dixon, & zheng, 2018; kurepa et al., 2019; zheng, 2009). due to these external and internal factors, leaf sprout number from stem cuttings will be determined by the type of clone, type of branch, and age of branch. in this study, robusta coffee cuttings were orthotropic branches of the same age – about 5–6 months, and the cutting growth environment was also the same, so that leaf sprout number was not significantly different between treatments. 3.5. leaf sprout growth rate leaf growth determines the subsequent growth of cuttings, with the leaves being the organ where photosynthesis occurs to supply energy for growth (kotting, kossmann, zeeman, & lloyd, 2010). leaf growth rates on cuttings depend on root growth to supply water and nutrients, and the rate of c uptake (photosynthesis) by the leaves. if leaf growth is slow so that c fixation is low, this reduces photosynthesis so that photo-assimilation is preferably translocated to the shoots rather than the roots and, consequently, root growth decreases. table 3 shows that treatment of the second stem segment from the upper shoot (b) yielded a significantly higher growth rate than treatment e, but was not significantly different compared to treatments a, c, and d. this occurred is because treatment b resulted in good root growth (table 2) so that the rate of shoot growth was also enhanced. table 3. effects of stem segment on leaf sprout growth rate (cm per week) in cuttings of c. canephora. stem segment of cutting leaf sprout growth rate (cm per week) first stem segment from the upper shoot (a) 1.97ab second stem segment from the upper shoot (b) 3.38b third stem segment from the upper shoot (c) 2.74ab fourth stem segment from the upper shoot (d) 2.52ab fifth stem segment from the upper shoot (e) 1.28a note: mean values within a column followed by the same letters are not significantly different by turkey’s hsd with a significance level of at least p < 0.05. based on table 3, it can be seen that robusta coffee cuttings from the basal stem (hardwood) have a low leaf sprout growth rate because they have poor root growth. leaf sprout growth rate is influenced by root growth, leaf number, and nutrients in stem tissue – especially c and n content. 4. conclusion robusta coffee cuttings from the second stem segment from the upper shoot yielded optimal root growth (root length) and shoot growth (leaf sprout height and leaf sprout growth rate). the leaf sprout number of cuttings was not affected by the stem segment utilized but was influenced by plant genetics and bud node number on the cutting. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: both authors participated equally in the design and performance of the current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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(2009). carbon and nitrogen nutrient balance signaling in plants. plant signaling and behavior, 4(7), 584–591. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 255 irrigation water use efficiency in olive trees in kairouan, tunisia hajime kamiyamaa mohamed kefib kenichi kashiwagic afaculty of economics, kushiro public university of economics, japan. blaboratory of desalination and natural water valorisation (ladven), water research and technologies centre of borj cedria (certe), technopark borj cedria, tunisia. calliance for research on the mediterranean and north africa (arena), university of tsukuba, tsukuba, ibaraki, japan.  kamiyama.hajime.gn@kushiro-pu.ac.jp (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 6 april 2021 revised: 26 july 2021 accepted: 18 august 2021 published: 20 september 2021 keywords olive tree irrigation water use efficiency technical efficiency dea organic farms tunisia. this study evaluated the technical efficiency and irrigation water use efficiency of olive farms in tunisia, using data envelopment analysis. in order to calibrate and validate the findings, data related to area, water use, water quality, cultivar, input, and yield were collected based on interviews from 45 irrigated olive farms in kairouan governorate. the results show that average input-oriented water use efficiency under the crs and vrs specifications is 17.2% and 36.3%, respectively, indicating that the sampled olive farms could reduce the use of water by an average of 82.8% and 63.7% by improving the performance of irrigation systems. also, it was found that there are large differences in irrigation water use efficiency between the crs and vrs specifications. consequently, this indicates that a number of olive farms can enhance overall efficiency by improving the scale of operation. in practical terms, this study provides significant insights for the olive growers in this study regarding the importance of removing scale inefficiency. specifically, they need to consider the effects of water and soil quality on irrigated fields to improve the efficiency of irrigation water use. contribution/originality: this study is one of very few to have evaluated irrigation water use efficiency in olive trees using data envelopment analysis. the study provides significant insights for tunisian olive growers regarding the importance of removing scale inefficiency. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.113.255.261 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: hajime kamiyama --mohamed kefi --kenichi kashiwagi (2021). irrigation water use efficiency in olive trees in kairouan, tunisia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3), 255-261. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.113.255.261 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction due to climate change and population increase, water is becoming scarcer and demand is increasing dramatically. in arid and semi-arid regions, the deficit of water is alarming and the situation will become worse in the future. the agriculture sector, which is a key pillar of the economy in developing countries, is the first user of freshwater. indeed, the ratio of water use for irrigation is estimated to be about 80%. the sustainable development goals (sdgs) of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, which was adopted by world leaders, recognized access to water and sanitation as human rights with the implementation of particular goals, namely sdg6. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 3 (2021): 255-261 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8751-962x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9396-1454 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4340-3999 mailto:kamiyama.hajime.gn@kushiro-pu.ac.jp http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 255-261 256 in this context, the main challenge of governments is to provide safe water for the current population and next generation and to efficiently use water for agriculture. in tunisia, the government has developed and adopted several strategies for effective management of water resources to maintain a balance between water demand and availability. due to the importance of the agricultural sector and to maintain food security, irrigation is also promoted by the tunisian government with the use of the water-saving equipment and an increase in water use efficiency. regarding productivity analysis applied to olive production, several studies are found in the existing literature. using a parametric stochastic frontier approach, tzouvelekas, giannakas, midmore, and mattas (1999) and tzouvelekas, pantzios, and fotopoulos (2001) estimated the technical efficiency and technological change in olive production of greek farms. in tunisia, lachaal, dhehibi, chebil, and karray (2004) and lachaal, karray, dhehibi, and chebil (2005) examined olive farms to measure technical efficiency and its determinants. using a non-parametric data envelopment analysis (dea) approach, cukur, saner, cukur, dayan, and adanacioglu (2013) employed both inputand output-oriented models on olive farms in turkey. they found huge differences in efficiency among farms, with most operating below the optimal scale. in the olive sector in turkey, artukoglu, olgun, and adanacioglu (2010) compared efficiency between organic and conventional farming technology. their estimation using an inputoriented model suggested that organic farms are more efficient than conventional farms. ozden and dios-palmores (2016) investigated the effect of ownership structure on the efficiency of olive oil manufacturers in turkey. their study found that production managers with experience and extensive specialized training within the industry have, in combination, a positive effect. using data collected from olive oil farmers in greece, niavis, tamvakis, manos, and vlontzos (2018) evaluated the efficiency of extensive olive oil farming by implementing an input-oriented dea model. they found significant variation in efficiency scores, suggesting considerable potential for improvement. they identified the enhanced utilization of subsidies, while land area related negatively to efficiency scores. similarly, in greece, fousekis, kourtesi, and polymeros (2014) assessed the managerial efficiency of olive farms. they suggested that the ratio of family to total labor and the degree of intensification of production have a positive effect on efficiency. from a study focused on the heterogeneity of olive farms in andalusia (spain), amores and contreras (2009) suggest that the age of olive trees is one of the key factors explaining the variation in efficiency of olive farms. most studies have focussed on efficiency analysis, but investigation on the impact of irrigation is largely absent. referring to the experience of the agriculture sector in mediterranean countries, hassine (2007) suggests a positive effect of irrigation on improvement in technical efficiency. weissteiner, strobl, and sommer (2011) made a classification of olive farms in eu/mediterranean countries based on farms’ characteristics such as intensity, irrigation, and land productivity, yet discussion on the efficiency of irrigation is lacking. fernández-uclés et al. (2020) applied an output-oriented dea model to olive farms in tunisia. they found that the use of virtual social networks and outsourcing of ict management are associated with higher efficiency, yet the impact of irrigation was not examined. lachaal et al. (2004) suggested a positive impact of irrigation on the technical efficiency of tunisian olive farms; however, water-use efficiency was not examined. therefore, the main objective of this work was to evaluate the irrigation water use efficiency of olive trees using dea. indeed, olive is an important agricultural product in tunisia and contributes significantly to the trade balance. for this reason, the expansion of irrigation in olive-growing areas has been conducted to increase olive production. in this study, the dea model was implemented using the program general algebraic modelling system (gams). to our knowledge, this study may be the first to apply dea to irrigated olive-growing farms in tunisia. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study area and sample size we used data obtained by a survey conducted in kairouan governorate in 2016 (figure 1). kairouan governorate in central tunisia comprises 6,712 km2 and a population of 570,559. data on olive cultivation were drawn from 100 olive-growing farms who were randomly sent questionnaires. of the 100 responses collected, 45 reported the use of irrigation from five administrative divisions in kairouan governorate; 66.7% (30 farms) were 5 ha or smaller, 15.6% (7 farms) were 5–10 ha, and 17.8% (8 farms) exceeded 10 ha. in this study, one output and three input variables were used to estimate the frontier production function and efficiency scores in the dea model. the output variable (y) is olive production per ha. in addition, the three input variables are working hours per ha (l), the volume of irrigation water per ha (w), and intermediate costs per ha in tunisian dinars (m), which include the remaining inputs such as fertilizer, pesticides, ploughing, transport, and so on. 2.2. model the dea method, as used in this study, was proposed by farrell (1957) and developed by others. this method measures relative efficiency and provides mathematical programming to construct a non-parametric piecewise frontier that includes input and output data. in the dea model, one decision-making unit (dmu) manages relative to others in the sample and provides a benchmark for the best practice technology from the experience. charnes, cooper, and rhodes (1978) proposed the dea model for measuring technical efficiency under the constant returns to scale (crs), which is called the ccr (charnes, cooper and rhodes) model. another dea model is the bcc (banker, charnes and cooper) model, used to measure technical efficiency under the variable returns to scale (vrs), which was proposed by banker, charnes, and cooper (1984). in the present study, we utilized the ccr and bcc models of input orientation because a decrease in input level such as water and labor by keeping the output level (olive production) unchanged is the main objective in this study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 255-261 257 figure-1. map of study area. the dea considers the technological phases of production function. this is used to estimate a production frontier, convenient for decomposing production efficiency into technical and scale efficiencies without requiring estimates of input and output prices. as to n dmu s, all sample inputs and outputs are characterized by k and m, respectively. the technical efficiency (te) of each dmu s can be defined as: 𝑇𝐸 = ∑ 𝑢𝑚𝑦𝑚,𝑠𝑚 ∑ 𝑣𝑘𝑥𝑘,𝑠𝑘 where xk,s is the amount of the kth input of dmu s; ym,s is the amount of the mth output of dmu s, v is a vector of input weights [k×1], and u is a vector of output weights [m×1]. efficiency is often scaled between 0 and 1, with complete efficiency scoring 1. the resulting efficiency score (the ratio of all outputs over all inputs) is maximized to select optimal weights subject to: ∑ 𝑢𝑚𝑦𝑚,𝑠𝑚 ∑ 𝑣𝑘𝑥𝑘,𝑠𝑘 ≤ 1, for k = 1,2,…, k; m = 1,2,…, m; 𝑢𝑚  0; 𝑣𝑘  0 where the first inequality indicates the efficiency ratios to be at least 1 and the second inequality indicates that the weights are positive. first, derived efficiency measures are based on maximizing the ratio of all outputs over all inputs. to avoid an infinite number of solutions, the constraint ∑ 𝑣𝑘𝑥𝑘,𝑠𝑘 = 1 is imposed to provide the multiplier form of the inputoriented linear programming problem. this program of the input-oriented ccr dea model can then be converted into the dual problem: 𝑀𝑖𝑛 𝜃,𝜆 𝜃 = 𝜃𝑠0 subject to ∑ 𝜆𝑠𝑦𝑚,𝑠 𝑆 𝑠=1 ≥ 𝑦𝑚,𝑠0 𝜃𝑠0𝑥𝑘,𝑠0 ≥ ∑ 𝜆𝑠𝑥𝑘,𝑠 𝑆 𝑠=1 𝜆𝑠 ≥ 0 where 𝜃𝑠0 is a scalar and 𝜆𝑠 is a vector of s elements representing the effect of each dmu s in determining the technical efficiency of the dmu s under consideration, namely dum0; 𝑥𝑘,𝑠0 is the input vector of the dum0, and 𝑦𝑚,𝑠0 is the output vector of the dum0. the first constraint shows that production of the mth output by observation s cannot exceed any linear combination of output by all dum’s in the sample. the second constraint includes the use of inputs by observation s. θ is the technical efficiency score for the dmu s that satisfies: 𝜃 ≤ 1, where a value of 1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 255-261 258 indicates the point on the frontier. θ = 1 indicates that the dmu is technically efficient. another basic dea model is the bcc model. the ccr model is extended to the bcc model when not all dmus operate at an optimal scale. this model adds a restriction on the 𝜆′𝑠 to the ccr model. in other words, the input-oriented ccr linear programming problem can be modified into the bcc linear one by adding the convexity constraint (∑ 𝜆𝑠 𝑆 𝑠=1 = 1). the concept of subsector efficiency is introduced into this basic dea model to calculate the technical subsector efficiency score for the kth input. in this study, technical subsector efficiency for irrigation water, w is calculated for each olive-growing farm s by solving the dea linear programming model. the irrigation water efficiency score for a given farm can be measured by looking at the possibility of reducing the water use w for a given set of all other inputs k-w and given output levels. technically, this can be obtained by splitting the second constraint of that the basic dea model into two inequities: 𝑥𝑘−𝑤,𝑠0 ≥ ∑ 𝜆𝑠𝑥𝑘−𝑤,𝑠 𝑆 𝑠=1 , and 𝜃𝑠0 𝑤 𝑥𝑤,𝑠0 ≥ ∑ 𝜆𝑠𝑥𝑤,𝑠 𝑆 𝑠=1 technical subsector efficiency for the irrigation water can be obtained by solving the transformed linear programming problem: min𝜃,𝜆 𝜃 = 𝜃𝑠0 𝑤 subject to ∑ 𝜆𝑠𝑦𝑚,𝑠 𝑆 𝑠=1 ≥ 𝑦𝑚,𝑠0 𝑥𝑘−𝑤,𝑠0 ≥ ∑ 𝜆𝑠𝑥𝑘−𝑤,𝑠 𝑆 𝑠=1 𝜃𝑠0 𝑤 𝑥𝑤,𝑠0 ≥ ∑ 𝜆𝑠𝑥𝑤,𝑠 𝑆 𝑠=1 𝜆𝑠 ≥ 0 where 𝜃𝑠0 𝑤 is the irrigation water efficiency score for the olive-growing farm0. like the basic dea model, this ccr linear programming problem can be modified into the bcc linear one by adding the convexity constraint (∑ 𝜆𝑠 𝑆 𝑠=1 = 1). 𝜃𝑠0 𝑤 can have a value between 0 and 1. if 𝜃𝑠0 𝑤 = 1, then the dmu s (olive growing firm s) under consideration is a frontier point, namely a technically efficient farm to use water for irrigation. otherwise, if 𝜃𝑠0 𝑤 < 1, then the dmu s (olive-growing firm s) under consideration is inefficient to use the irrigation water, namely that this dmu can decrease its water used for irrigation. gams was utilized for efficiency measurement in the dea. 3. results and discussion 3.1. empirical results table 1 presents the descriptive statistics of output and input variables used in this study. olive production on average is 6.73 tons/ha. the volume of irrigation water per ha on average is 1,739.33 cubic meters (m3)/ha, taking the minimum and maximum volume from 27.50 to 5,897.10 m3/ha, respectively. table 2 presents the average of the overall technical efficiency (te) and irrigation water use efficiency (we) in the sample. the average overall technical efficiency scores for the crs dea and vrs dea models are 27.9% and 60.4%, respectively. this indicates that olive-growing farms at the current level of output could decrease all inputs on average by 72.1% (0.721 = 1 – 0.279) and 39.6% (0.396 = 1 – 0.604), respectively, to improve technical inefficiency. four olive farms (one in bouhajla and three in oueslatia) were identified as fully technically efficient under the crs specification, and eight (five in oueslatia, two in bouhajla, and one in nasrallah) under the vrs specification. in addition, olive-growing farms located in the oueslatia administrative division yielded higher average technical efficiency scores under both crs and vrs. on the other hand, the average score of scale efficiency is 0.409. four olive-growing farms were identified as fully scale efficient. table-1. statistics for olive orchards in the study area. variable mean minimum maximum coefficient of variation y: olive production (tons/ha) 6.73 0.2 41.8 1.00 l: working hours (hours/ha) 43.88 3.3 155.0 0.72 w: volume of irrigation water (m3/ha) 1,739.33 27.50 5,897.1 0.75 m: intermediate costs (tnd/ha) 426.35 26.6 6,279.1 2.14 the average irrigation water use efficiency scores are 17.2% and 36.3% under the crs and vrs specifications, respectively. this indicates that there is greater room for improvement in the inefficiency of irrigation water use than in technical efficiency because higher inefficiencies in the use of water compared to technical inefficiency were found in the surveyed area. specifically, olive-growing farms could produce the current level of output by using 82.8% (0.828 = 1 – 0.172) and 63.7% (0.637 = 1 – 0.363) less irrigation water under crs and vrs, respectively. four olivegrowing farms were identified as fully efficient in the use of water under crs and eight under vrs. farms located in the oueslatia administrative division also showed the highest average efficiency scores in the use of water under both crs and vrs. on the other hand, the average score of scale efficiency in the use of water was 0.457. four olivegrowing farms were identified as fully scale efficient. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 255-261 259 table-2. frequency distribution of technical and irrigation water use efficiency scores. efficiency score (%) crs te vrs te crs we vrs we number of farms number of farms number of farms number of farms <10 17 0 36 22 11-20 12 2 0 4 21-30 6 5 0 1 31-40 1 8 2 1 41-50 1 3 1 0 51-60 1 5 0 4 61-70 0 8 0 1 71-80 0 1 1 0 81-90 2 3 0 4 91-100 5 10 5 8 mean 0.279 0.604 0.172 0.363 median 0.165 0.593 0.024 0.138 standard deviation 0.313 0.271 0.322 0.396 minimum 0.006 0.131 0.000 0.011 maximum 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 orchards 4 8 4 8 mean se 0.409 0.457 note: crs te: constant returns to scale technical efficiency. vrs te: variable returns to scale technical efficiency. crs we: constant returns to scale water use efficiency. vrs we: variable returns to scale water use efficiency. orchards: number of perfectly efficient orchards. se: scale efficiency. table-3. efficiency. scores by administrative division. model mean minimum maximum crs te bouhajla 0.244 0.064 1.000 nasrallah 0.197 0.039 1.000 chebika 0.156 0.007 0.817 oueslatia 0.523 0.027 1.000 chararda 0.153 0.130 0.176 vrs te bouhajla 0.640 0.334 1.000 nasrallah 0.513 0.132 1.000 chebika 0.606 0.281 0.983 oueslatia 0.657 0.194 1.000 chararda 0.591 0.548 0.633 crs we bouhajla 0.119 0.006 1.000 nasrallah 0.085 0.004 0.723 chebika 0.056 0.001 0.401 oueslatia 0.446 0.002 1.000 chararda 0.007 0.006 0.008 vrs we bouhajla 0.380 0.020 1.000 nasrallah 0.211 0.017 1.000 chebika 0.371 0.015 0.884 oueslatia 0.523 0.011 1.000 chararda 0.180 0.138 0.222 table 3 shows efficiency scores by administrative division. again, the highest average technical efficiency scores under vrs were found for olive-growing farms located in the oueslatia administrative division in the north-western part of kairouan governorate. the lowest scores were for farms in the nasrallah administrative division in the southwestern part of the governorate. farms in the oueslatia administrative division had the highest average efficiency scores in the use of water under vrs, while the lowest were in the chararda administrative division in the southern part of the governorate. in particular, olive-growing farms in nasrallah and chararda require a great deal of improvement regarding their inefficiency of irrigation water use. according to the results of comparison of efficiency scores in the use of water, large differences were found between the crs and vrs specifications. this indicates that a number of olive-growing farms could enhance overall efficiency by improving the scale of their operations. specifically, farms in kairouan could increase irrigation water use efficiency scores from 0.172 to 0.363 through elimination of 54.3% scale inefficiency. consequently, substantial improvement is needed to increase irrigation water use efficiency. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 255-261 260 to identify the relationship between the two efficiency measures, spearman’s correlation coefficient was calculated based on rankings of individual farm efficiency scores under the crs and vrs specifications. table 4 shows that scores for technical efficiency and irrigation water use efficiency under both specifications are positively correlated with each other and statistically significant at the 1% level. in particular, scores for technical efficiency and irrigation water use efficiency under crs and vrs specifications, respectively, are highly positively correlated. table 5 presents tests of mean differences in the average level of technical and irrigation water use efficiency under the crs and vrs specifications. statistical tests show that the mean difference between the two efficiencies is statistically significant. this result indicates that technical efficiencies in the sample are higher than those of irrigation water use. table-4. spearman’s rank-order correlation matrix. crs te vrs te crs we vrs we crs te 1.000 vrs te 0.642*** 1.000 crs we 0.923*** 0.506*** 1.000 vrs we 0.687*** 0.929*** 0.553*** 1.000 note: *** significance at the 1% level. table-5. t-test for difference in the means between technical and irrigation water use efficiencies. model crs te-we vrs te-we mean difference 0.106 0.241 t-statistic 8.315*** 9.041*** standard deviation 0.085 0.179 note: *** significance at the 1% level. 3.2 discussion from the analysis of inefficiency in this study we have obtained important findings. first, this study finds that olive-growing farms at the current level of output could reduce all inputs on average by 72.1% and 39.6%, respectively, to improve technical inefficiency, while they could produce the current level of output by using 82.8% and 63.7% less irrigation water, respectively, to improve the efficiency of irrigation water use. this is in line with the results of mahdhi and sghaier (2013) and chebil, frija, and bahri (2014), who showed that considerable inefficiencies exist in irrigation water use for vegetable production in the region within médenine governorate in south-eastern tunisia (mahdhi & mongi, 2013), and for wheat production in chebika administrative division (chebil et al., 2014). meanwhile, the present study sheds light on the production of olive fruits, which are vital to the domestic economy. in the context of tunisian olive growers, the findings from this study imply that improving irrigation scheduling and introducing more advanced technologies for irrigation water use can help optimize the performance of irrigation systems. secondly, this study revealed that farms located in the oueslatia administrative division have, on average, the highest technical and water use efficiencies under vrs specification while they are the lowest in the charada and chebika administrative divisions. this result indicates that olive-growing farms in these regions require considerable improvement in their technical and water use inefficiency. in particular, for chebika, this is somewhat consistent with chebil et al. (2014), who confirmed that wheat-growing farms in chebika could produce the current level of output by using 59.5% and 56.8% less irrigation water under crs and vrs specifications, respectively. the present study’s results underscore the importance of removing scale inefficiency. more specifically, olive-growing farms in chebika could increase the irrigation water use efficiency from 5.6% to 37.1% through eliminating 73.1% scale inefficiency, whereas wheat-growing farms in the region could enhance water use efficiency from 40.5% to 43.2% through eliminating 6.2% scale inefficiency. therefore, these results imply that olive growers need to consider the effects of water and soil quality on their irrigated fields. in particular, for olive growers in chebika, this should be carefully considered because of the large differences between water use efficiencies under the crs and vrs specifications. thirdly, this study finds that technical efficiencies in the sample are higher than those for irrigation water use. similar results were reported by frija, chebil, speelman, buysse, and van huylenbroeck (2009) in the teboulba region within monastir governorate, located in eastern central tunisia, and by mahdhi and mongi (2013) in the zeuss-koutine region within médenine governorate, south-eastern tunisia, who showed that technical efficiencies are higher than those for water use. in the case of this study, the findings indicate that considerable inefficiencies occurred in the surveyed area and the sampled olive-growing farms must improve the inefficiency of irrigation water use because there are still opportunities for further improvement in water use efficiency. therefore, both the sampled olive growers and agriculture policy makers should place considerable emphasis on investments in resources for a sophisticated irrigation system. despite the aforementioned discussions and implications, this study has limitations. it used data based on interviews from 45 irrigated olive-growing farms in kairouan governorate; a comparison across governorates in tunisia would be needed to generalize the findings from this study. also, this study estimated frontier production function and efficiency scores in the dea approach. studies using the stochastic frontier analysis as an alternative approach and examining the results thus obtained would make the conclusions of this study more persuasive. 4. conclusion our findings indicate that a number of olive-growing farms could enhance overall efficiency by improving their scale of operation. in practical terms, this study provides significant insights for the sampled olive growers regarding asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 255-261 261 the importance of removing scale inefficiency. more specifically, they need to consider the effects of water and soil quality on irrigated fields to improve the efficiency of irrigation water use. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: the authors gratefully acknowledge that this research was partially supported by the jst-jica science and technology research partnership for sustainable development (satreps) project, entitled ‘valorization of bioresources in semiand arid land based on scientific evidence for the creation of new industry’, and partially by the japan science for promotion of sciences (jsps) under the grant-in-aid for scientific research, no. 20h03082 entitled ‘development of olive industrial clusters towards transformation to decolonized structure by establishment of an innovative value chain’. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references amores, a. f., & contreras, i. 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(2011). assessment of status and trends of olive farming intensity in eumediterranean countries using remote sensing time series and land cover data. ecological indicators, 11(2), 601-610. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2010.08.006. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 111 establishment of inclusive business on coffee production in bali province: lesson from the coffee development project in nusa tenggara timur province, indonesia gede sedanaa, nengah dasi astawa b a faculty of agriculture, dwijendra university, bali, indonesia b faculty of economics, undiknas university, bali, indonesia  gedesedana@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 20-mar-2019 accepted: 15-may-2019 online available: 02-jun2019 keywords: inclusive, business, incentives, sustainability abstract indonesia is one of the biggest coffee producers in the world. however, farmers’ incomes are still relatively small due to low productivity, poor quality, and low price, as well as limited access to information, technology, and market. this study aims to describe the effect of inclusive business on coffee development in bali, based on the flores experience. the results of the study pointed out that the experience of inclusive business on coffee development in nusa tenggara timur province might also be implemented in bali. the business model established should include the coffee farmers/farmers’ cooperative, coffee buyer/exporter, bank, government, research institution, and independent actors. among the market actors, they should have mutualism partnership in order to obtain economic incentives. this could ensure the sustainability of inclusive business on coffee development. contribution/ originality this research is very important to develop coffee inclusive business which involves the entire stakeholders as market actors, especially to improve the welfare of coffee farmers. this research also gives contribution to make more effective and efficient partnership among the market actors, not only in the coffee production, but this might be suggested to other production, such as cocoa. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.111.122 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: gede sedana and nengah dasi astawa (2019). establishment of inclusive business on coffee production in bali province: lesson from the coffee development project in nusa tenggara timur province, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1), 111-122. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 1 (2019): 111-122 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:gedesedana@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-60465745 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.111.122 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 111-122 112 1. introduction coffee is one of the tropical commodities that can be traded globally. this commodity presently has an increasing tendency in the domestic and international markets. comparing to other commodities, coffee seemingly has the uniqueness in the relation to the specific taste, which is strongly dependent on the location of the plantation (supriadi and pranowo, 2015; ayelign and sabally, 2013). in indonesia, it has been found that various specialty coffees are produced by farmers within different regions (provinces), such as bali kintamani coffee, flores bajawa coffee, gayo coffee, toraja coffee, and others. (belachew et al., 2015; sedana and astawa, 2016; fadhil et al. 2018). aknesia et al. (2015) mentioned that the specific taste of each coffee is also strongly influenced by the harvesting and processing techniques at the farmer level. at least, there are 50 countries in the world which have produced coffee, including indonesia. there are two main varieties of coffee (arabica and robusta) which are being planted in the world. in 2016, for example, arabica coffee production was significantly higher produced (around 102 million bags), compared to robusta coffee which was about 56 million bags (1 bag equals to 60 kg). the largest coffee producing country is brazil with 55 million bags produced in 2016, followed by other countries such as colombia (14.5 million bags), indonesia (11.2 million bags). however, coffee production by indonesia is still relatively small at around 8% of world coffee production, amounting to 637,000 tons in 2017. coffee produced by farmers in indonesia has been exported to several countries in the world, such as the united states, germany, malaysia, italy, japan, russia, egypt, britain, belgium and canada (figure 1). the development of coffee production in indonesia from 2006 to 2017 can be seen in table 1. figure 1: quantity of exported coffee to the world coffee management within many countries has various aspects of interests, such as social aspects, cultures other than economics and the environment both in rural and cross-village areas, and even nationally and internationally (kilian et al., 2006). in developing countries including indonesia, coffee cultivation is one of the main sources of income for smallholder farmers, who manage on less than one hectare of land (mutandwa et al., 2009). both important types of coffee are also cultivated in indonesia which is in line with the altitude of the land. if the areas have an altitude of less than 1,000 m above sea level, robusta coffee trees are cultivated. meanwhile, in areas with altitudes exceeding 1,000 m above sea level, arabica coffee trees are suitable for planting. in general, the area of management of arabica coffee plants is still much lower compared to the robusta coffee plants. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 111-122 113 table 1: coffee production in indonesia no year production (x 000 ton) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 682.16 676.48 698.02 682.69 686.92 638.65 691.16 675.88 643.86 639.31 637.54 source: report on coffee production statistics (ministry of agriculture 2016/2017) the management of coffee farming in indonesia has still generated a relative small income at the farmer level. several reasons of this condition are the low productivity, poor quality of product, low price, limited access to information, technology and market (dowdall, 2012; gathura, 2013; minh et al., 2016; mapiemfu-lamaré et al., 2017). aside from these, smallholder farmers have no appropriate partnership with the business actor, such as buyers, exporters, and others. a case of inclusive business on coffee development in the east manggarai, nusa tenggara timur province (indonesia) has shown the successful achievement of the project (australia-indonesia partnershippromoting rural income through support for markets in agriculture, called aip-prisma) to increase productivity and income of farmers (sedana and astawa, 2016). this area is one of the coffee production centers in indonesia. in this project, coffee farmers, through their organization (cooperative) could have good partnership with the market actors under the mutualism concept, in order to gain proportional profit within the supply chain of coffee. farmers got additional new technologies practiced on their lands to increase the coffee productivity and production, and improve quality of coffee beans through good manufacturing practices. besides, they could also strengthen their capacities relating to aspects of management, organization, administration and finance. the achievement of this project (nusa tenggara timur province) might be replicated in another province (bali) which has big potential to develop coffee business. the aims of this study are: (i) to give an explanation about the inclusive business on coffee development in bali; and (ii) to describe the efforts to develop the inclusive business on coffee production in bali province, indonesia. 2. materials and methods this study was purposively conducted in kintamani (bangli regency) and pupuan (tabanan regency) as the center production areas of coffee in bali province, indonesia. arabica coffee area is in kintamani, and robusta coffee area is in pupuan (see figure 2). materials needed in this study are equipment for interview and focus group discussion. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 111-122 114 figure 2: site map primary and secondary data were collected in the study by using various techniques, such as survey, interview, direct observation and documentation. in order to have deep information, the technique of focus group discussion (fgd) was also employed by inviting the key informants of farmers groups, market actors (local traders, exporters, officers of local governments, officers of local banks, and staff of research institution). in this study, data were analyzed by using descriptive method. 3. results and discussion 3.1. potentials to the establishment of inclusive business presently, the agricultural development has been implemented by employing the concept of agribusiness system. in this concept, it is very important to have strong and appropriate integration between the upstream and downstream sectors. in other words, the entire sub-systems of agribusiness must be interrelated among each other. the sub-systems of agribusiness are: (i) agroinputs and agricultural equipment sub-system; (ii) on-farm sub-system; (iii) processing subsystem; (iv) marketing sub-system; and (v) supporting sub-system. the integration among the subsystems indicates the inclusiveness of agricultural development. the other sectors (nonagricultural sector) are also involved in the development, such as industry, companies, irrigation, finance and others. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 111-122 115 experience in coffee producing countries, the good cooperation among the market actors, such as the presence of companies, such as an exporter is one of the most important parts to buy farmers’ products (fadhil et al., 2018; alejandra et al., 2012; arifin, 2013). the specialty coffee has big potential to generate higher income to farmers and the exporters through the good processing and good quality standard product (palmiro and rossi, 2016). the inclusive business in this study is an approach to building a business that involves the participation and role of various market actors involved in business development. the actors that should be involved are farmers group, company, government, and other related actors. this business is based on a business model that has been jointly established by the actors (sedana and astawa, 2016). every market actor in this inclusive business has a proportional role in the coffee market chain to get their own profits. proper relationship established in the partnership is very important to build and maintain in order to ensure the sustainability of inclusive business (aimin and shunxi, 2011). learning from the experience of coffee development employing inclusive business in the province of nusa tenggara timur (indonesia), it has been indicated that coffee farmers could have higher income gained from the coffee farming (sedana and astawa, 2016). the inclusive businesses implemented in the said site had been conducted through the project of aip-prisma (australiaindonesia partnership-promoting rural income through support for markets in agriculture) since 2014 to 2016. the project covered two major activities, namely the development of iccri’s (indonesian coffee and cocoa research institute) franchise and development of decentralized processing facilities for specialty coffee. in general, the objective of this project aims is to increase farmers' income through the improved on-farm technology and off-farm (postharvest) technology, and management system at the coffee farmers’ group level. the improvement of these technologies is addressed to increase productivity of land and coffee trees, and quality of cherry and green bean coffee produced and processed by farmers. coffee development in bali province might adapt the concept of inclusive business implemented in the province of nusa tenggara timur and other regions within some countries. the taste of coffee produced in bali (kintamani and pupuan) has been well-known by the consumers in the world. therefore, this should be maintained to supply coffee bean to the consumers, and give higher income to coffee farmers as producers. in the development of inclusive coffee business in bali, such as in the kintamani region (arabica coffee center area, in bangli regency), and pupuan region (the center area for robusta coffee, in tabanan regency), the new coffee business approaches might be introduced and implemented; namely coffee inclusive business. there are several potentials to develop inclusive business on coffee development in bali province. these are as follows: (i) the existence of coffee farmers’ groups; (ii) certificate of geographical indication; (iii) the existence coffee local traders and exporters; (iv) good physical infrastructure, such as transportation, communication; (v) support of local government; and (vi) support of financial services from the local bank. the existence of coffee farmers’ groups is one of the strengths to establish the inclusive business. farmers must collect their product to make much more quantity. good social interaction among the members of farmers’ group could be a strong social capital for supporting the achievement of a group’s objective (sedana et al., 2014). this group needs to develop and strengthen its capacities in terms of management, organization, administration, business and financial aspects. coffee produced by farmers in bali is categorized as specialty coffee due to the specific taste. the central government has provided geographical indications for kintamani coffee and pupuan coffee. this means that bali’s coffee could be easier to promote and market as a specialty coffee (quiñones et al., 2015). based on the data collected, the local traders and exporter within the sites of study are coming from the other regencies and provinces. the exporter of pt. indokom citra persada coming from asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 111-122 116 east java province has also been operated in the sites. in addition, the other companies buying coffee in the sites are pt. taman delta (central java province) and pt. sari buana, as local buyers. they have already had a simple partnership in the process of marketing coffee. their partnership, however, was not in the form of inclusive business. the actors of market did not work under the inter-dependency system, called cash and carry system. the farmers and farmers’ groups sold their product to traders or exporters without any agreement as a real partnership. therefore, the price of coffee is fully defined by the trader/exporter. this situation might be difficult to increase farmers’ income gained from coffee farming. the market actors should be encouraged to have better partnership on coffee development under the inclusive business. as a tourism destination, the two sites of study have good facilities of transportation from the city, harbor and airport. this condition is a big potential for the traders/exporters to have more efficient transportation cost (agro-inputs and products). besides, communication system within the sites also is very good for farmers and traders and other market actors. they could easily access information in the relation to coffee development. these conditions should be a supporting subsystem of agribusiness to accelerate the economic activities among the actors of the market. the local governments at the regency and provincial levels, especially the plantation services, have developed various programs to increase the productivity and quality of coffee at the farmers’ level. these programs have been done partially by government, so the traders/exporters do not have direct responsibility to the programs of government. they worked without any agreement relating to the coffee development. they have their own businesses. it is therefore, needed to have the improved cooperation between the government institution and the private sector (trader/exporter), by establishing an inclusive business. they are expected to make agreements for the improved coffee development which addresses an increment in farmers’ income. at present, the local government bank has supported the farmers’ groups to process their product in order to have added value. the government has facilitated the farmers’ group which has a coffee processing unit to gain a loan from the local bank. government encouraged farmers’ groups to establish the coffee processing unit to produce better quality of coffee bean in order to have higher price from the trader/exporter. as a small scale enterprise, the farmers’ groups could manage their administrative and finance aspects for coffee business development. this indicates that farmers’ group has a potential to involve in the inclusive business. in terms of the inclusive business, the bank might provide much more loan to the farmers’ groups (or coffee farmers cooperative) to enhance capital working for the production and post-production activities. 3.2. development of inclusive business lessons learned from the other projects of inclusive business involving smallholder farmers, it has pointed out that the involvement of farmers in the said business could increase the added value of coffee produced by farmers. they could increase their productivity and quality of coffee after having a clear agreement with the trader/exporter and other market actors. the coffee farmers’ groups in the sites of study have a big possibility to establish the inclusive business on coffee development due to the good economic environments. participatory approach should be implemented in the establishment of inclusive business. the independent agent, such as non-governmental organization (ngo) might be involved to facilitate the process of inclusive business establishment through the informal and formal meetings among the market actors. the ngo should make identification and inventory about the actors of market, which would be involved in the inclusive business. at least, the actors are: (i) coffee farmers’ group/cooperative, (2) exporter of coffee (pt. indokom citra persada or pt. taman delta), (3) regional government bank (bank of regional development), (4) indonesian coffee and cocoa research institution (iccri) as a research institute, and (5) ngo as independent agent. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 111-122 117 learning from the inclusive business development in flores, the participation of all market actors based on the established business model has been initiated. for example, the coffee exporters (pt. indokom citra persada) had been involved from the beginning of the established business plan. the exporter had been involved to obtain an overview and information about warehouse capacity, purchase estimates, price estimates and exports and other important information. in this project, veco-indonesia has been appointed as an international non-governmental organization (ingo) to be a co-facilitator. the inclusive business under the project implemented in the east manggarai (flores), involved several actors of market to implement the inclusive business. these actors are (i) coffee farmer cooperatives, (2) exporter of coffee (pt. indokom citra persada), (3) regional government bank (bank of nusa tenggara timur), (4) indonesian coffee and cocoa research institution (iccri) as a research institute, and (5) an international ngo (veco-indonesia). based on the experience of flores, it is very important to adopt the business model established to develop an inclusive business in bali. there is relatively similar characteristic of market actors in flores and bali. therefore, the business model established should include the farmers, buyers, banks, government, research institution, and independent actors. the alternative business model is shown in the figure 3. figure 3: business model in the inclusive business on coffee development at the farmer or farmers’ group level, the development of coffee in bali in general should have the aim of increasing the income of coffee farmers through various activities. these activities are as follows: (i) increasing productivity by the application of the good agricultural practices; (ii) improving quality of product through the appropriate post-harvest techniques, such as good postharvest practices, and good manufacturing practices; (iii) providing of processing facilities such as drying equipment and storage to support producing the good quality of coffee; (iv) increasing capacity and techniques for quality coffee; (v) improving the capacity of group managers and or farmer cooperatives in terms of the aspects of management, administration and leadership; (vi) establishing good mutualism of partnerships with buyers, or exporter; and (vii) creating added value of products. in figure 3, it can be seen that there is a reciprocal relationship between several market actors in the business model. in the relationship between farmer cooperative and coffee exporter/buyer, for instance, there will be the exchange of things based on their agreement. farmer cooperative will provide coffee beans in line with the quantity and quality as demanded by the buyers or exporters. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 111-122 118 this quality must be in accordance with international standards of coffee beans. meanwhile, the exporter/buyer will provide expert inputs, extension, training or technical assistance to farmer cooperatives in the connection with the good techniques or methods of processing coffee, and provide payments to the coffee bought at prices agreed upon previously. this reciprocal relationship shows the interdependence between the two actors in the process of developing the coffee inclusive business, so there is no relationship based on the charity. increasing the productivity of coffee at the farmers’ cooperative level might be done through the establishment of partnership between the cooperative and the research institution. based on the study, one of the research institutions having good experiences in coffee development is the indonesian coffee and cocoa research institution, in jember, or the local university in bali. this institution has a basket of technologies of coffee production. the research institution has function to provide expert technologies or practices on the coffee production. this includes, selecting coffee varieties, grafting, fertilizing, pruning, pest and disease control/management and others. farmers should be given agricultural extension and training in order that they have better farming, better business and better living. the behavior (knowledge, attitude and skill) of farmers toward good agricultural practices should be an important thing to increase the productivity of trees and land. the agent of research institution might employ the participatory approach in the implementation of extension and training. similarly, the reciprocal relationship is also shown between the farmer cooperative and the local bank within the research sites. the local bank, which has strong commitment to support farmers’ groups, is the bali development bank. this bank has branches in the districts scattered within bali province. the bank should be encouraged to provide working capital loans to coffee farmer cooperatives in order to have increased capacity to buy more coffee (red cherries) from farmers. by this loan, the cooperative might also be expected to have more quantity and better quality of coffee bean processed in accordance with the standard operational procedures given and trained by the exporter. on the other hand, the farmer cooperative should provide guaranty to the bank regarding the feasibility of business by showing the prospective business plan. besides, the cooperative should also have a professional and accountable business organization in managing finances, including loans from the bank. in this partnership, the bank will receive interest payments from the loans that would be given to farmer cooperatives. the bank might have a function to train officials or management board of cooperatives in order that they have a better capacity in the management of the cooperatives. in more detail, the obligations and rights of each party can be determined through an agreement between them. in the research sites, the establishment of inclusive business on coffee production needs a participatory approach. the role of an independent party or non-governmental organization (ngo) might be involved in this activity. firstly, the ngo and the entire market actors should have a small discussion to have similar understanding about the coffee inclusive business. they are initiated to prepare the basic information needed in the plan of inclusive business. each market actor gives information about the profile, the needs for production, capabilities and other information. furthermore, the ngo might facilitate to have focus group discussion (fgd) concerning the objective of inclusive business, involvement of market actors, benefit or profit, problems, alternative solutions and others. the main objective of fgd is to define the business model that would be a guide for the implementation of inclusive business on coffee production. based on the experiences in other parts of indonesia, the development of an inclusive coffee business in bali, therefore, also needs to adopt those experiences, such as in ngada, manggarai, and east java. the market actors should make an agreement or memorandum of understanding about the implementation of inclusive business. the agreement made among the market actors must have the principle of mutual benefit. the scope of the agreement includes: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 111-122 119 1. improved technology (gap) and increased productivity and production; 2. improving the quality of coffee beans, namely as superior specialty coffee based on the standards of domestic and international markets; 3. providing guarantees of access to information and markets (types, quality and prices) at the domestic and international levels; 4. providing financial services to increase business capital and investment for market actors to realize technological improvements, increase productivity and quality of coffee produced by farmers and other market actors; and 5. enhancing and strengthening the capacity of farmers and farmer organizations (management, administration, finance) to realize an independent and professional entrepreneurial spirit and business organization. it is suggested that the government at the provincial level and regency level should be included in the event of signing an agreement. they would have important roles in supporting the inclusive business on coffee production, such as creating development programs for achieving the objective of inclusive business. aside from this, government is expected to issue the policies supporting the inclusive business on coffee development. at least, the government policies will be able to create an advantageous climate for all market actors in developing an inclusive coffee business. it is also hoped that the government can monitor and evaluate the implementation of this inclusive business, whether it is in accordance with the established business model, in order to increase coffee farmers' income gained from their coffee farming, and encourage economic growth in the region. market actors who are directly involved in this inclusive business are the coffee farmers cooperatives in the development area, such as farmer cooperatives in kintamani or in other coffee centers. this farmer cooperative acts as a representation of the interests of coffee farmers, which starts from the process of preparing production, production to post-harvest. farmers should have better knowledge, attitude and skill on the coffee practices (megerssa et al., 2012). farmer cooperatives with their units formed (coffee business enterprises, such as the processing unit) can have several roles concerning the efforts to increase productivity and quality of coffee. these roles are as follows: 1. to strengthen the capacity of members (farmers) to have knowledge, attitudes and skills regarding good agricultural practices on coffee plantation to produce higher productivity with good quality of cherry. 2. to encourage and increase the capacity of farmers and cooperative managers related to postharvest techniques or good post-harvest practices and good manufacturing practices (picking appropriate coffee fruit, such as red, processing in accordance with the standard operation procedure that has been given is good for processing wet or dry, and marketing). 3. increasing the understanding and mastery of the skills of farmers and managers of cooperatives in relation to socioeconomic aspects, such as entrepreneurial spirit, management, organization and finance and partnerships to support coffee farmer cooperative programs. the bank as a market actor has functions and obligations relating to financial provision. some functions and obligations of the bank are as follows: 1. providing financial services to coffee farmers’ cooperatives with easy mechanism and low interest; 2. providing additional services, namely strengthening the capacity of farmer cooperative managers in financial management in a professional and accountable manner, so that mutual trust can be realized between the farmers and the management, and among the management of the cooperative with the bank, including with other market actors. the bank should provide specific training for the management board of farmer cooperatives to ensure the realization of professional and accountable financial management. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 111-122 120 3. being a coffee management partner or exporter, especially in the aspect of capital with a financing scheme that is in accordance with bank policies and cooperation with these companies. coffee companies (exporter or buyer) as important market actors should have roles in buying the products produced by farmers or farmers’ cooperatives. in the inclusive business, the functions and obligations of the coffee companies are as follows: 1. providing guarantees for market access to coffee produced by farmers and processed by processing units under the management of farmer cooperatives; 2. provide training to managers of cooperatives and coffee processing units about good processing techniques (if wet or dry) to produce coffee quality that is in line with market demand home and abroad; 3. provide technical assistance to the manager of the results processing unit and farmer cooperatives in the aspect of processing coffee in accordance with the standard operational procedure; 4. monitor and evaluate the coffee processing process carried out by the coffee processing unit and farmer cooperatives, to ensure that the amount of coffee produced and the quality is as requested by the market; 5. providing reasonable prices at the cooperative level through negotiating prices together with cooperatives and the government. the research institute or the iccri (in jember) also has an important role in the development of coffee-inclusive business. the functions that might be played by universities or research institutions are: 1. providing information about good coffee cultivation technology and good coffee processing techniques; 2. providing extension and training to cadres of coffee farmers (who are appointed or selected by the farmers’ cooperative) to be able to carry out and develop coffee cultivation technology for other farmers; 3. providing technical assistance in making nurseries at the farm level, including the selection of superior local clones; and 4. carrying out technical monitoring and evaluation of the development of coffee cultivation at the farm level. whereas other parties that are not less important are the existence of independent institutions such as the non-governmental organization (ngo), which has a function to facilitate farmers, product processing units, cooperatives, government, coffee entrepreneurs, banks and universities or research institutions. this ngo can also function to facilitate work to strengthen the capacity of farmers’ cooperatives as a business organization in the development of independent and professional coffee inclusive businesses. strengthening farmer cooperatives is directed towards becoming a business organization that produces high competitive coffee because of its good quality at the international level. some activities that can be carried out by these ngos are empowerment through activities to strengthen the capacity of farmers and cooperative managers, such as organizing field school activities, internships, regular assistance, comparative study visits, and exhibitions, as well as other business activities. inclusive business which is conducted under the business model by the market actors might ensure them to obtain proportional economic incentive. this incentive could be motivation of the actors to have better mutualism partnership on the business. therefore, this could make the sustainable inclusive business done by the market actors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 111-122 121 4. conclusion inclusive business implemented in flores is suitable to adopt in bali province, due to the similar situation between the two regions. in order to solve the main problems in coffee development, the inclusive business under the business model should be introduced. development of inclusive business on coffee production should involve the market actors on coffee development, such as coffee farmers/farmers’ groups/cooperatives, buyers/exporters, government, finance institution, research institution, and ngo as the independent actor. the market actors should play a role based on the agreement which has been established. they should have mutualism partnership, not based on the charity scheme. they are expected to obtain the proportional economic incentives for themselves under the inclusive business. therefore, this could ensure to achieve the sustainable inclusive business on coffee development. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: authors would like to say thanks to the director of rikolto indonesia (international non-governmental organization) who gave them chance to research on the coffee development in nusa tenggara timur province, indonesia. they are also very grateful for the assistance provided by the bali provincial agriculture service, which facilitated the data collection during the implementation of this study. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references aimin, w., & shunxi, l. 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(2015). prospek pengembangan agroforestri berbasis kopi di indonesia (prospects of agro-forestry on coffee trees in indonesia). perspektif, 14(2), 135 150. doi.org/10.21082/p.v14n2.2015.135-150. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 39 cohesiveness of farmers’ groups in delta state nigeria: its implication for agricultural development albert ukaro ofuoku department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, delta state, nigeria  albertofuoku@gmail.com; ofuoku@yahoo.com ofuokua@delsu.edu.ng corresponding author article history: received: 06-nov-2019 accepted: 17-feb-2020 online available: 28-feb2020 keywords: group cohesion, farmers’ groups, agricultural development, protection motivation theory, group satisfaction abstract this study which covered delta state, nigeria was embarked on to ascertain the cohesiveness of farmers’ groups and fathom the implications for agricultural development. at the first stage, 18 farmers associations were randomly selected from the list of farmers’ groups at the zonal headquarters of dtadp. ten percent often membership strength of each selected association was randomly selected to form the study sample and this resulted to selection of 156 farmers. farmers subscribed to the various groups for the purpose of accessing extension services/information and credit facilities. they also had the purpose of benefiting from government farmers’ empowerment schemes and exchange ideas, knowledge and information with other members of their respective groups. most of the groups were found to be highly cohesive and members were also highly cohesiveness of the groups was influenced by members of satisfaction with the groups satisfied with their various groups. this implies that agricultural development and revival of the economy can be achieved. it is recommended that sustained cohesion of the groups should be encouraged through agricultural extension agents and other farmers should be encouraged for their specialized groups in other to reap benefits of self-help farmers’ groups. contribution/ originality the study affirmed that cohesiveness of farmers’ self-help groups determines the longevity of such groups. group cohesiveness is an index of the members’ success in their farming endeavours. with the use of specialized group method, the constraint of the dearth of extension agents is being solved. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.39.46 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite albert ukaro ofuoku (2020). cohesiveness of farmers’ groups in delta state nigeria: its implication for agricultural development. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 39-46. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 39-46 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:albertofuoku@gmail.com mailto:ofuoku@yahoo.com mailto:ofuokua@delsu.edu.ng http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.39.46 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1395-8114 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 39-46 40 1. introduction on the extent economic condition in nigeria, the governments have realized that agriculture is the viable mechanism through which the economy can be revived from its current state. this realization has come to mean that farmers need to be encouraged and their people also need such encouragement to venture into farming. however, in this current state of trying to promote agricultural development, agricultural extension services are required; the farmers need credit facilities and series of cheap inputs. the farmers will be able to have access to these variables that are crucial to their farming business when they subscribe to self-help groups. this is more so when most nigerian farmers are small-scale farmers. ofuoku and urang (2012) found that farmers subscribe to groups, especially farmers’ groups in order to have access to credit facilities and extension services. as a result of the dearth of extension personnel, farmers are currently reached in their respective specialized groups. basorun and olakulehim (2002) and nagarajan and ponnusamy (2019) observed that farmers in various locations had the realization of their disadvantaged situation such as poor access to extension services, the presence of middlemen, inflated prices of inputs and poor access to information and ideas. these made the farmers to set up self-help groups. self-help groups such as farmers groups are socio-economic groups (ofuoku and chukwuji, 2012; ebi, 2014). these groups are so conceptualized for the fact that they are formed to help farmers achieve the socio-economic objectives that are their farming activities related. the accomplishment of these objectives is expected to have a positive relationship with their standard or level of living. this invariably implies that farmers’ groups are formed in order for farmers to have the ability to perform some exercises that they cannot embark on successfully in isolation. ofuoku et al. (2008) assert that farmers harness their financial resources in such groups for members to access as credit. these groups are also seen as clearing houses for knowledge, ideas and information (ofuoku and urange, 2012; olayinka, 2014; mensah et al., 2017). cohesion is very crucial to group activities. it is the life wire or heart of a group, as it affects attainment of goals, satisfaction of members and decision making in groups. it is often considered by scholars from the affective point of view, as personal attraction to groups (ofuoku et al., 2008). it is the extent to which members are desirous of in a sustainable subscribing to the group. ogionwo and eke (1999); rowland (2014) conceptualized it to be the degree to which members of a group desire to continue as members of the group. groups are deemed to be highly cohesive when the members are highly committed and attracted to it, and vice versa. considering the afore mentioned facts, it is useful to investigate the level of cohesion of farmers’ groups with a view to predicting the success of governments’ efforts toward revitalizing, agricultural sector of the state economy. this was therefore conceptualized to assess the level of cohesion of farmers’ groups in delta state, nigeria. specifically, it had the objectives of ascertaining the purpose farmers wished to achieve for subscribing to farmers’ groups; determine the level of cohesion of the farmers’ groups, ascertain members’ level, of satisfaction in the groups. it was hypothesized that farmers’ level of satisfaction does not influence farmers’ groups’ cohesion. 2. materials and methods the study covered delta state, nigeria. delta state is situated in the niger delta zone of nigeria. it is constituted by 25 local government areas. the state is demarcated into 3 agricultural zones by the niger delta state agricultural development programme (dtadp) – delta north, delta central, and delta south agricultural zones. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 39-46 41 agriculture and agro-related activities are the predominant occupations of the people of the state. since various food and cash crops are cultivated in the state, the economy qualifies to be called an agrarian economy. the food crops are mainly cultivated in the state are maize, cassava, yam, cocoyam, plantain and banana and varieties of leaf and fruit vegetables while the cash crops include oil palm, rubber and marginally cocoa. moreover they are also into livestock farming; the animals kept by them are poultry, goats, sheep, fish and marginally rabbits (dtadp, 2015). all food, cash crops and livestock farmers in delta state who subscribe to the farmers groups form the study population. multistage sampling procedure was utilized in selection of the study sample. at the first stage, 18 farmers associations were randomly selected from the list of farmers’ groups at the zonal headquarters of dtadp, for ease of access. ten percent (10%) of the membership strength of each selected association were randomly selected to form the study sample as illustrated in the table 1; this resulted to selection of 156 farmers as shown: table 1: agricultural farmers’ association or group 1 membership zone membership strength 10 percent delta north ubulu-ukwu farmers’ union 18 8 obiaruku farmers’ association 181 18 delta north poultry association 56 6 abavo farmers’ association 125 22 ika oil palm farmers’ union 42 4 delta central rubber producers’ association eku 21 2 oil palm farmers’ union, ethiope 38 4 isoko fish farmers’ association 127 13 poultry farmers’ association zonal branch 139 14 udu farmers’ association, otor-udu 84 8 jesse cassava farmers’ union 232 23 delta south potato farmers’ union, patani 83 8 plantain farmers’ association patani 66 7 fish, farmers union of patani lga 78 8 warri south-west fish farmers’ union 105 11 total 156 primary data were collected through the administration of a structured interview schedule and questionnaire to farmers without or with little level of formal education and those with a reasonable level of formal education respectively. the collection of data was done by the researcher and agricultural sciences teachers within the respective locations of the various farmers’ groups. the data collected were subjected to statistical analysis thus: objective i was met with applications of frequency counts and percentages, objectives ii and iii were addressed with the use of the 4-point likert-type scale parameters indicating cohesiveness such as regular meeting attendance, payment of dues/subscriptions, involvement in group activities, and prompt response of leadership to members needs were measured with application of 4 point likert-type scale of very regular (4), regular (3), fairly regular (2) and not regular (1). the mean score for all the parameters was summed up and divided by the number of farmers, groups to get the ground mean of cohesion. the grand mean was further divided by the number of parameters used to measure cohesion to get the cohesion index. cut off mean was computed to be 2.5 (> 2.5 = highly cohesion; 2.5 = cohesive 2.3 – 2.49 = fairly cohesive; < 2.3 = not cohesive. level of satisfaction of members by the group leadership was also computed with the use of 4 point likert-type scale of highly satisfied (4), satisfied (3), fairly satisfied (2) and poorly satisfied (1). the satisfaction means, grand mean and satisfaction index were computed following the same procedure used for cohesiveness. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 39-46 42 the hypothesis was tested with the application of pearson product moment correlation coefficient (ppmc). this statistical tool was used by ofuoku and ekorhirobinson (2018) in a similar study. the formula is given below: 𝑟 = σ𝑋𝑌 − (σ𝑋)(σ𝑌) √[(𝑁σ𝑋2 − (σ𝑋)2)(𝑁σ𝑌2 − (σ𝑌)2)] were r = correlation coefficient x = level of satisfaction y = group cohesiveness n = number of respondents 3. results and discussion table 2 indicates the purpose of farmers to subscribe the membership of farmers’ groups including access to credits facilities (100%), access to extension service (98%) access to benefits of government empowerment programmes (96.79%) and opportunity to exchange information, knowledge with other farmers (94.87%). all the purpose for joining farmers’ groups among the farmers is all important for the agribusiness activities of the farmers jensen et al. (2012) found positive significant nexus between the farmers’ willingness to participate in groups and their socioeconomic attributes. farmers are desirous of subscribing to groups in order to reach some goals which they perceive as very difficult for them to achieve solely (hua et al., 2004). there is a unfixed subscription fee that members pay every month. this is how they harness financial resources. from the common purse, they grant credit to members on very to interest rate as self-help and functional groups. this is in consonance with ofuoku and agbamu (2012) who observed that farmers’ groups grant loan to their members as a form of financial assistance. most of them do not have the collateral with which to access credit from financial institutions. table 2: purpose for subscribing to membership of farmers’ groups purpose frequency percentage access to extension service information 154 98.72 access to credit facilities 156 100 access to government empowerment benefits 151 96.79 exchange of ideas, knowledge and information 148 94.87 owing to the poor ratio of extension agents to farmers extension services are carried out in groups. that is the reason for the farmers’ groups are specialized farmers’ groups. this is congruent with the findings of ofuoku et al. (2008) and ofuoku and agbamu (2012) in their studies of southern nigeria and delta state respectively. when governments embark on empowerment programmes, the benefits are given to individual farmers through their various self-help groups. farmers, especially in specializing groups encounter similar problems relating to their agribusiness operations. in their various groups, they exchange ideas, knowledge and information needed with respect to such problems among themselves in order to solve such problems. that is why these groups are seen as clearing houses for ideas, knowledge and information. all the purpose for subscribing to farmers; groups among the farmers are related to rogers’ protection motivation theory (pmt). human beings behave in a desirable way when situations appeal to their fears (munro et al., 2007). here there are the tri-focal aspects of arousal of fear which are propagated; these according to rogers (1975) include the degree of undesirable experience with a stated event; the likelihood of occurrence of such event and how efficacious the protective response is. it is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 39-46 43 stated by stroebe (2000) that this combined factors influence the intensity of protection motivation. rogers (1975) states that this results to activities) taking place because of the desire to protect oneself from danger. this theory, in the extinct wider perspective of cognition clearly utilizes the cost and benefits of existing and described behaviour to forecast the likelihood of change (gebhardt and maes, 2001). in summary, farmers joined their respective groups for fear of losing much when they operate in isolation (without subscribing to farmers group membership). 3.1. cohesiveness of farmers’ groups all the farmers’ groups involved in this study were highly cohesive as they had pooled means of > 2.50, except warri south west farmers which had a pool mean of 2.48 indicating that it is fairly cohesive. the mean index of 0.70 implies that 70% of the farmers’ groups cohesiveness were accounted for by the parameters for measuring cohesion of the groups. the results confirm the findings of ofuoku and agbamu (2012), ofuoku and urang (2012) and ofuoku et al. (2008), who found various farmers groups studied to be highly cohesive. the high level of cohesion of the groups is connected with the level of satisfaction of group members. this implies that the level of cohesiveness of the farmers groups an index of group members in satisfaction. this also implies that the members’ goals were congruent with the goals of the groups. table 3: cohesiveness of farmers’ groups farmers’ groups meeting attendance payment of dues involvement in group need pooled mean activities satisfaction score (mean) (mean) (mean) (mean) delta north agricultural zone ubulu-ukwu farmers’ union 3.25 2.81 2.38 2.93 2.84 obiaruku farmers’ association 3.33 2.95 2.55 2.58 2.85 delta north poultry association 3.51 3.32 2.36 2.81 3 abawo farmers’ association 2.9 2.56 2.85 2.96 2.82 ika oil palm farmers’ union 3.1 3.12 2.37 2.62 2.8 delta central agricultural zone rubber producers association, eku 3.21 2.85 2.65 2.99 2.93 oil palm farmers’ union, ethiope east 3.73 2.57 2.59 2.63 2.88 isoko fish farmers’ association 3.85 2.36 2.51 2.86 2.9 poultry farmers’ association (zonal branch) 3.5 2.42 2.77 2.94 2.91 udu farmers’ association 3.15 2.39 2.54 2.98 2.77 jesse cassava farmers’ union 2.9 2.23 2.81 2.85 2.7 delta south agricultural zone potato farmers’ union patani 3.15 2.66 2.53 2.76 2.78 plantain farmers’ association (patani lga) 2.51 2.33 2.74 2.92 2.63 fish farmers’ union of patani lga 2.58 2.15 2.9 3.52 2.79 warri south-west fish farmers’ union 2.35 2.11 2.59 2.87 2.48 total 42.08 grand mean score = 2.81; cohesion index = 0.70 cut-off mean = 2.50 (˃ 2.50 = highly cohesive; 2.50 = cohesive; 2.30 -2.49 = fairly cohesive; ˂ 2.30 = not cohesive) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 39-46 44 3.2. level of satisfaction of farmers with group table 4 demonstrates that members of the farmers group were highly satisfied (mean ≥ 2.50) except members of warri south west fish farmers union (mean = 2.45) who were fairly satisfied. this indicates that most of the farmers achieved their goals of access to credit, extension service/information, benefitted from government empowerment schemes and they regularly traded ideas, knowledge and information with each other and the leadership of the groups was proactive. overall, the grand satisfactions mean score of 3.01 indicates that the farmers groups members were highly satisfied. table 4: level of satisfaction of farmers with group farmers groups score mean delta north agricultural zone ubulu-ukwu farmers’ union (n=8) 25 3.13 obiaruku farmers’ association (n=18) 64 3.56 delta north poultry association (n=22) 17 2.83 abavo farmers’ association (n-22) 73 3.32 ika oil palm farmers’ union (n=4) 11 2.75 delta central agricultural zone rubber production association, eku (n=2) 15 3 oil palm farmers’ union, ethiope-east (n=4) 13 3.25 isoko fish farmers’ association (n=13) 45 3.46 poultry farmers’ association (zonal branch) (n=14) 49 3.5 udu farmers’ association (n=8) 22 2.75 jesse cassava farmers’ union (n=23) 70 3.04 delta south agricultural zone potato farmers’ union, patani (n=8) 21 2.63 plantain farmers’ association (patani lga) 19 2.71 fish farmers’ union of patani lga (n=8) 23 2.88 warri south-west fish farmers’ union (n=11) 27 2.45 total 45.26 satisfaction index 0.75 cut-off mean = 2.50 (> 2.50 = highly satisfied; 2.50 = satisfied; 2.30 – 2.49 = fairly satisfied; < 2.30 = not satisfied) this satisfaction index of 0.75 implies that 75% of the achievement of the reasons for which they subscribed to their various self-help groups accounted for their level of satisfaction. lott and lott (2001) argue that group members’ satisfaction with their group is related to the achievements of goals for which they subscribe to groups. deckor and nnodim (2005) state that group leadership performance is one of the variables that influence group members’ satisfaction. agbarevo and obinne (2010) stated that leadership is related to group performance and hence satisfaction of members of such groups. in a related study, ofuoku and agbamu (2013) found that satisfaction of members of self-help groups depends on leadership quality of such groups. there is a strong positive relationship between farmers’ groups members satisfaction and group cohesion (r = 0.88). this implies that a unit increase in satisfaction of farmers’ group members’ most likely increases level of cohesion of such groups. the higher the level to which a group satisfies its members, the higher the level of cohesion of such group (ogionwo and eke, 1999; lott and lott, 2001; ofuoku et al., 2008). the implication is that cohesiveness of farmers’ groups is an index of members’ level of satisfaction. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 39-46 45 table 5: influence of members’ satisfaction on group cohesion variable satisfaction cohesion satisfaction 1.000 0.88 cohesion 0.88 1.000 as the members’ continue to be satisfied with the group benefits, they will always want to continue to subscribe to such groups. 4. conclusion members of the various farmers’ groups joined the membership of their respective groups for access to extensive services/information, government empowerment scheme benefits and exchange of ideas, knowledge and information. most of the farmers’ groups were highly cohesive. most of the members of the farmers’ groups were also highly satisfied with the group. conclusively, cohesiveness of such farmers groups is an index of the level of satisfaction of the members of the groups. 4.1. implication for agricultural development since the realization of agriculture as a viable mechanism by which the economy has to be revived, the efforts have been to encourage farmers, especially small scale farmers. these farmers are resource poor and constitute the highest population of farmers. as a result of their poor resource possession status, and the dearth of agricultural extension personnel, they formed various specialized agricultural groups with the major purpose of acquiring what they could not single handedly achieve. through these groups farmers harness their financial resources with the objective of creating credit source for members who need credit to promote their farming activities. they are also able to access extensive services/information through the various respective formations. these groups constitute clearing houses for ideas knowledge and information. government farmers’ related empowerment scheme opportunities are mostly extended to farmers not on an individual basis, but in specialized groups. taking cognizance of the aforementioned facts, farmers’ groups can be regarded as being important to the farmers and the governments. this therefore implies that cohesion of farmers’ groups is crucial for the achievement of agricultural development and hence the revival of the economy. as long as the farmers’ groups are cohesive and the farmers are satisfied with their variables respective groups, agricultural development is expected to be positively influenced and this will lead to reviving of the economy. in consideration of the afore mentioned facts, the following recommendations are suggested: i) cohesion of the farmers groups should be encouraged through the respective agricultural extension agents who have contact with the respective groups. ii) since the economy needs urgent revival, formation of other farmers’ groups should be encouraged and enhanced by agricultural extension agencies. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that s/he has no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all the designing and estimation of current research done by sole author. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 39-46 46 references agbarevo, m. n. b., & obinne, c. p. o. 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(2000). social-psychology and health. buckingham: open university press. http://www.parl.umn.edu/20076 http://www.ngrguardnews.com/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 184 effect of drip irrigation frequency, n-fertilization, and mulching on yield, nitrogen, and water use efficiencies of cucumber (cucumis sativus l.) in ikole-ekiti, nigeria abayomi sunday fasinaa olubunmi samuel shittub kayode samuel ogunleyec augustus oludotun akinmayowa ilorid temitope seun babalolae a,b,c,d,e department of soil science and land resources management, federal university oye, oye-ekiti, nigeria.  sundayfash2012@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 12 february 2021 revised: 29 march 2021 accepted: 3 may 2021 published: 26 may 2021 keywords cucumber drip irrigation n-fertilization mulch nutrient use efficiency water use efficiency. soil moisture conservation, proper irrigation scheduling and nutrient management are crucial for sustainable cucumber production. a field experiment was set up over two years (2018 and 2019) to investigate the effects of irrigation frequency, black polyethylene mulching, and nitrogen fertilization on cucumber yield, water use efficiency (wue) and nutrient use efficiency (nue) at ikole-ekiti, nigeria. the experiment was a 3 x 2 x 2 factorial in a randomized complete block design (rcbd) with a split-plot arrangement and the main plot as drip irrigation frequency: twice per week (i4), three times per week (i5), and four times per week (i6), while the sub-plots were nitrogen fertilization; (no fertilizer, n0 and 180 kg/ha urea, n180) and mulching (no mulch, nm and mulch, m). the highest yield (8.39 and 8.51 t/ha) with the best wue was obtained from treatment i4mf (f, fertilization), while the lowest (5.81 and 5.79 t/ha) was obtained from i6mf for the respective years. the combination of variables significantly (p<0.05) influenced cucumber yield, wue, and nue, and significant correlations were obtained (r=0.87** and 0.85**) between wue and fruit yield for the study years. the treatment i4mf therefore, could successfully be adopted to reduce water and fertilizer application for improved cucumber yield in the field. contribution/originality: this study is one of very few studies to have investigated irrigation water use efficiency of cucumber, particularly in ikole-ekiti, and its n-fertilizer use efficiency by employing the 15n isotopic technology of the international atomic energy agency (iaea) in nigeria at large. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.184.191 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: abayomi sunday fasina --olubunmi samuel shittu --kayode samuel ogunleye --augustus oludotun akinmayowa ilori --temitope seun babalola (2021). effect of drip irrigation frequency, n-fertilization, and mulching on yield, nitrogen, and water use efficiencies of cucumber (cucumis sativus l.) in ikole-ekiti, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2), 184-191. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.184.191 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 2 (2021): 184-191. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9532-4168 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7965-9371 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6022-0852 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9856-7755 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6580-0154 mailto:sundayfash2012@yahoo.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.184.191 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 184-191 185 1. introduction the best quality cucumber production depends on adequate moisture and soil nutrients as cucumber has a shallow, sparse root system (randall & locascio, 1988). it is suggested that reduced water application and proper fertilizer input with careful management for obtaining increased marketable cucumber yield can greatly contribute to water saving. there is also a need to preserve moisture in cucumber production fields in order to enhance water and nutrient utilization. there is also a need to formulate a irrigation scheduling that balances water and nutrient saving and yield improvement. drip irrigation technology has been advocated to ensure the optimal use of water and nutrients for agriculture and improving irrigation efficiency (awe, fasina, shittu, jejelowo, & oparemi, 2016). there is a requirement for proper soil moisture conservation in cucumber fields to avoid moisture stress during the intense dry season when evapotranspiration is high. this is necessary as irrigation water scheduling is crucial to making the most efficient use of drip irrigation systems, because excessive irrigation decreases yield while insufficient irrigation causes water stress and reduces production (awe et al., 2016). tan, fulton, and nuttall (1983) reported that irrigation significantly increased cucumber yield compared to non-irrigation. likewise, decrease in the irrigation rate below 100% pan evaporation also reduced the marketable yield of cucumber (simşek, tonkaz, kaçıra, çömlekçioğlu, & doğan, 2005). it has been reported that cucumber has a high water consumption rate and that fruit yields were highest when adequate water was applied with increasing amounts of n fertilization. one of the best ways in water management practice to increase water use efficiency (wue) is mulching. mulch is any protective material spread on the surface of soil to prevent and/or reduce solar radiation effects and evaporation. mulch, when used in the field, moderates soil temperature and increases water infiltration during intense rain and conserves soil moisture (khurshid, iqbal, arif, & nawaz, 2006). some studies have been conducted to study the effect of drip irrigation and mulch on yield improvement of many crops in different agro-ecological regions and under various soil conditions (tomasz, frąszczak, kałużewicz, krzesiński, & lisiecka, 2010; yaghi, arslana, & naoum, 2013). higher yields were obtained with drip irrigation in some studies (sivanappan, rajagopal, & paliniswami, 1974) and plant growth following mulching is often at least twice that on bare soil (tomasz et al., 2010). polyethylene mulching, in combination with drip irrigation and frequent injection of nutrients, can be used in irrigation systems (fertilization) to enhance water and nutrient use efficiency (bowen & frey, 2002). the beneficial influence of drip irrigation and fertilizer application on yield and water efficiency of cucumber cultivated in the field was reported by awe et al. (2016). little or no work has been done in nigeria on the combined effect of drip irrigation frequency, n fertilization, and mulching on the yield and growth of cucumber. the present investigation was conceived to determine the effects of drip irrigation frequency, n-fertilization, and polyethylene mulch on marketable fruit yield, nutrient use efficiency (nue), and wue of cucumber. 2. materials and methods 2.1. experimental site the field experiment was conducted between january and march, 2018 and 2019 at the irrigation and research farm, federal university oye-ekiti, southwestern nigeria. the site is located at longitude n 07o 48.357’ and latitude e 05o 29.722’. it has a humid tropical climate characteristics with distinct dry and wet seasons and moderate mean annual rainfall of about 200 mm while temperature is almost uniform throughout the year with little deviation from a mean of was 27 oc. the soil at the study site belongs to the broad group of ultisols (soil survey staff, 2014) with top sandy loam. the results for the physical and chemical properties of the top 0–15 cm of soil in the experimental plot before the commencement of the experiment are shown in table 1; meteorological data on ikole-ekiti during the experimental period are given in table 2. according to the cropping history of the land, it had been used previously for the cultivation of citrullus lunatus (watermelon), cucumis sativus l. (cucumber) and abelmoschus esculentus (okra) for 5 years before commencement of the study. 2.2. experimental design and treatment the experiment was a three-factional lay out in a randomized complete block design (rcbd) with a split-plot arrangement and three replications. irrigation constituted the main factor, with three different regimes: i4, applied twice per week; i5, applied three times per week; and i6, applied four times per week. the sub-plot was n-fertilization: n0, control (no fertilizer application) and n180, 180 kg/ha n, in the form of urea. the third treatment was mulching (m, mulch and nm, no mulch). 2.3. land preparation, field layout, and installation of drip irrigation system the experimental site was prepared by plowing and harrowing, with unburied grasses properly removed to ensure a clean field. in the field layout there were three plots of 2 x 5 m in each of the 12 blocks, giving a total area of 360 m2. the drip irrigation system adopted from awe, fasina, shittu, and omotoso (2017) consisted of a 3000-l tank, 25-mm main pipe, sub-mains end plugs, t-joint plugs, rubber hose, gum, gate valve, lateral cum drippers, and pipe nipples. the mainline delivered water from the tank to the sub-mains and further into the drip lines, while the emitters delivered water to the field at the rate of 4 l/h. the field and part of the drip irrigation set up are shown in figure 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 184-191 186 i4, i5, and i6: irrigation frequency twice, thrice and four times per week; f: fertilization at 180 kg/ha as urea; nf, no fertilizer; m, mulch; nm, no mulch. figure-1. installation of drip irrigation setup and field layout. 2.4.sowing and field management cucumber seeds were sown on 19 and 23 january; 2018 and 2019, respectively, on the prepared plots. two to three seeds of cucumber (variety ashley) were sown at a spacing of 60 x 60 cm and sowing depth of about 5 cm. one week after sowing, excess seedlings were thinned to two plants per stand, giving a plant population of 55,555 /ha. the soil was irrigated to field capacity for crop emergence and establishment. after crop establishment, irrigation, mulch, and nitrogen fertilizer treatment were applied. the fertilizer treatment of 180 kg/ha n urea was applied by hand two weeks after sowing (was). weed control was done manually three times, and other cultural practices including crop protection were also carried out. 2.5. soil sampling and analysis prior to sowing and irrigation, soil samples were randomly collected from 0-15 cm depth from three representative locations and were mixed to obtain a composite sample, which was air-dried, ground with a mortar and pestle and passed through a 2-mm sieve for determination of soil physical and chemical properties. the iita (1979) method of soil analysis was used for all soil properties. 2.6. fruit yield, wue and nue mature cucumber fruits were harvested periodically from an area 1 x 1 m from each plot prior to irrigation, and weighed with a sensitive scale. total fruit yields were obtained from the sum of the various harvests and were then converted to kg/ha. irrigation wue recorded during the growing period was calculated according to the fao (1982) equation below: wue (kg/ha/ mm) = fruit yield (kg/ha)/irrigation water (mm) the iaea (1971) method for measurement of 15n in the field was adopted where the use of labelled material was employed as a tracer for quantitative determination of the fate of specific nutrient elements in a specific component or the whole soil–plant system. samples were collected from the field and were sent to the national center for energy and nuclear science and technology (cnesten) in morocco for 15n analysis. nue or coefficient of utilization of the added fertilizer was determined according to iaea (2001) using the formula: nue (%) = (amount of n in the fertilized plant/amount of n fertilizer applied) x 100. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 184-191 187 2.7. data analysis data collected were subjected to statistical analysis of variance (anova) and means were separated by fisher’s least significant difference (lsd) test at the 5% level of probability. pearson correlation was carried out among yield, wue and nue. all analyses were performed using spss software (ibm version 2.0). 3. results and discussion 3.1. irrigation water applied before planting, 25 mm of irrigation water was applied to all treatments to bring the soil water content up to field capacity within 0–60 cm soil depth. the total amount of water applied to plants was 623.5 mm for treatment i4, 779.4 mm for treatment i5, and 935.3 mm for i6 in both study years. 3.2. effect of drip irrigation, nfertilization and mulching on cucumber yield the results of the effect of drip irrigation frequency, n-fertilization, and mulching on fresh yield are shown in table 3 and figures 2, 3, and 4. irrigation frequency had a significant (p<0.05) effect on fruit yield for both planting seasons, but not fertilizer application and soil mulching. the highest marketable cucumber yield was obtained with the treatment combination of i4mf for 2018 (8.39 t/ha) and 2019 (8.51 t/ha), while the lowest yield was obtained from treatment i6mf (5.81 and 5.79 t/ha, respectively). it was observed that cucumber yield decreased with increased water application (table 3). the trend of results obtained for fruit yield was consistent for both study years. similar results was obtained by tomasz et al. (2010), who found no significant difference in levels of total and marketable yields of fruits in both mulched and unmulched soils. irrigation water application was better utilized on mulched than on unmulched land, with yield obtained from the former being higher. other studies (ibarra-jiménez, zermeño-gonzález, munguia-lopez, rosario quezada-martín, & de la rosa-ibarra, 2008) have all reported higher cucumber yields from plants cultivated in soil mulched with black polyethylene in comparison with those from plants cultivated in soil without mulching. a) b) figure-2. relationship between irrigation water (mm) applied and yield (t/ha) of cucumber for (a) 2018 and (b) 2019. a) b) figure-3. relationship between fertilizer application (kg/ha) and yield (t/ha) of cucumber for (a) 2018 and (b) 2019. a) b) figure-4. relationship between mulching and yield (t/ha) of cucumber for (a) 2018 and (b) 2019. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 184-191 188 table-1. physiochemical properties of the soil of the experimental site. ph toc om tn avail. p ca mg k na sand silt clay textural (h2o) (%) (mg/kg) (cmol/kg) (%) class 5.8 2.41 4.15 0.25 32.40 6.18 2.41 0.24 0.78 85.2 9.4 5.4 ls note: toc: total organic carbon; om: organic matter; tn:total nitrogen; ls: loamy sand. in this study, drip irrigation and mulching interaction was significant (p<0.05) with reference to cucumber yield (table 3). al-omran and louki (2011) concluded in their study that reduced irrigation (80% of crop evapotranspiration, etc) was more effective for good marketable yield and water saving compared to 100% etc. in that study, it was observed that irrigating cucumber with twice-weekly mulching gave better yield (table 3). statistically, irrigation and n-fertilizer application significantly influenced (p<0.05) average cucumber yield. the highest yield of cucumber (8.31 and 8.18 t/ha for the respective seasons) obtained from the application of 180 kg/ha u urea with watering twice per week (f + i4) was significantly (p<0.05) different from all other treatments (table 3 and figure 2a, b). similar results were obtained by ayas and demirtas (2009). the yield advantage obtained with drip irrigation in that study may be related to the fact that application of water and nutrients was more frequent and in close proximity to the shallow root system of the cucumber plants. 3.3. wue, nue, and yield wue) and nue were determined to evaluate the productivity of irrigation and nitrogen in the treatments. the results are presented in table 3 and figure 5a, b. the highest wue, 13.45 and 13.66 kg/ha/mm in 2018 and 2019, respectively, was obtained from the combination of twice-weekly water application with mulching and fertilizer (i4mf) while the lowest was from four-times weekly watering with mulching and fertilizer (i4mf), for both seasons. some researchers have also reported maximal wue values for cucumber under reduced irrigation conditions (abdul hakkim & jisha chand, 2014; hashem, medany, abd elmoniem, & abdallah, 2011; kirnak & demirtas, 2006). the results from the present study also confirmed that water productivity under a mulching/-water-saving strategy was higher under lower irrigation (i4) than with full or excess water application. for the respective years, the highest wue (13.45 and 13.66 kg/ha/mm) was obtained from i4mf: in both years this consumed about 45 and 40% less water than i5 and i6, respectively, and also produced the best yield (8.39 and 8.51 t/ha). the lowest wue (6.22 and 6.19 kg/ha/mm) realized for i6 can be attributed to the fact that more excess water (four times weekly) was applied with this treatment than with the others (i5 and i4), and this actually affected the yield output of these treatments. treatment i4, which produced the highest yield (8.39 t/ha) was 59.08% greater than the lowest yield from i6 with excess water. these results are also in agreement with those obtained by other researchers (kirnak & demirtas, 2006; seyfi & rashidi, 2007). the correlation between wue and yield was positive (r=0.87* and 0.85*) for both years of study (table 4). this result showed that wue was increased by reduced application of water, also corresponding to increase in marketable cucumber yield. hence; it can be concluded that the treatment combination (i4mf) efficiently improved wue, and this is also consistent with results obtained by wang and xing (2016). the data analysis results obtained in table 3 show that irrigation, mulching, and fertilization for all treatment combinations significantly (p<0.05) affected wue. wue with treatments i4mf and i4nmf was found to be significantly different from that of other treatments. in this study we have observed that wue increased with decreasing levels of irrigation, irrespective of mulching (table 3). the use of controlled irrigation allows plants to use water and nutrients efficiently and reduces nitrogen leaching. the results obtained in this study suggest wue as a good criterion for evaluating the effectiveness of irrigation. table-2. meteorological data of ikole-ekiti during the experimental period. year month rainfall (mm/day) wind speed (m/s) relative humidity (%) temperature (oc ) 2018 january 0.05 1.55 48.52 23.53 february 2.53 1.96 68.35 26.34 march 1.18 2.39 72.69 27.15 mean 1.25 1.97 63.18 25.67 2019 january 0.42 1.60 64.32 24.91 february 0.73 1.69 65.62 25.59 march 0.89 2.10 73.07 27.16 mean 0.68 1.80 67.67 25.89 source: national aeronautics and space agency (nasa), 2019. the relationship between irrigation water application (mm) and wue (kg/m3) represents a close linear form (figure 5a, b) for both years of the study. the highest value of wue was obtained at 13.35 and 13.66 kg/ha/mm with treatment i4mf (twice-weekly water application with mulch and fertilizer) with water application at 623.5 mm, whereas the lowest value was obtained at 6.22 and 6.19 kg/ha/mm from treatment i6mf (four-times weekly water application with mulch and fertilizer) with water at 935.3 mm. other studies (al-omran & louki, 2011; zhang, chi, wang, fang, & fang, 2011) reported that reduced irrigation led to increased wue. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 184-191 189 table-3. effect of drip irrigation frequency, mulching, and n-fertilization on yield, nue, and wue of cucumber. treatment yield (t/ha) nue (%) wue (kg/ha/mm) 2018 2019 2018 2019 2018 2019 irrigation i4 7.99a 7.79a 74.98a 80.55a 12.83a 12.49a i5 7.58ab 7.32ab 59.21b 79.93ab 9.73b 9.39b i6 6.43b 6.46b 54.60b 61.77b 6.78c 6.83c lsd p<0.05 1.39 1.00 15.61 18.35 1.82 1.34 fertilizer n0 7.52 7.42 9.51 9.23 n180 7.15 6.96 10.05 9.90 lsd p<0.05 ns ns ns ns mulch nm 7.40 7.19 65.30 74.14 9.78 9.47 m 7.27 7.13 60.56 74.02 9.78 9.67 lsd p<0.05 ns ns ns ns ns ns fertilizer + mulch nfm 7.49 7.34 10.04 9.83 nfnm 6.80 6.59 8.98 8.64 fnm 8.00 7.81 10.58 10.30 fm 7.04 7.02 9.52 9.51 lsd p<0.05 ns ns ns ns fertilizer + irrigation nfi4 7.69ab 7.39ab 12.32ab 11.85a nfi5 7.79ab 7.42ab 9.99bc 9.52b nfi6 5.97b 6.08b 6.20d 6.33c fi4 8.31a 8.18a 13.33a 13.12a fi5 7.37ab 7.22ab 9.46cd 9.26b fi6 6.88ab 6.85ab 7.36d 7.32c lsd p<0.05 1.96 1.41 2.57 1.89 mulch + irrigation nmi4 7.91a 7.44a 82.92a 87.94a 12.68ab 11.93a nmi5 7.22ab 7.02ab 43.93c 85.82ab 9.27c 9.01bc nmi6 7.08ab 7.14a 54.84bc 74.04ab 7.39cd 7.46cd mi4 8.09a 8.14a 67.05ab 73.15ab 12.97a 13.05a mi5 7.94a 7.62a 74.49ab 63.08ab 10.19bc 9.78b mi6 5.77b 5.79b 54.37bc 60.45b 6.17d 6.19d lsd p<0.05 1.83 1.32 22.36 25.95 2.41 1.77 irrigation + fertilizer + mulch i4mf 8.39a 8.51a 82.92a 87.94a 13.45a 13.66a i5mf 6.92a 6.76abc 43.93d 74.04b 8.88b 8.68b i6mf 5.81bc 5.79c 54.84c 60.46c 6.22c 6.19c i4nmf 8.23a 7.85ab 67.05b 73.15b 13.20a 12.59a i5nmf 7.82a 6.68bc 74.49ab 85.83a 10.04ab 9.85b i6nmf 7.95a 7.90ab 54.37c 63.08bc 8.50b 8.45b lsd p<0.05 2.80 1.78 8.46 11.82 3.43 2.18 note: f: fertilization at 180 kg/ha as urea, no fertilizer; m, mulch; nm, no mulch; means in a column followed by different letters differed significantly at the 5% level of probability by lsd test; ns, not significant. table-4. correlation matrix between yield, wue, and nue of cucumber. parameter nuea nueb wuea wueb yielda yieldb nuea nueb 0.9306 wuea 0.3433 0.3433 wueb 0.2142 0.4243 0.9683 yielda -0.0347 0.2921 0.8658** 0.7947* yieldb 0.0559 0.6271 0.8428* 0.8502* 0.9491 note: a and b, 2018 and 2019 season, respectively. optimal nue (82.92 and 87.94%) was also obtained with i4mf treatment. this means that, with the right quantity of irrigation water applied, cucumber can make effective use of the nutrients applied in the field. the reason for the low nue value obtained from i6mf treatment (54.84 and 60.46%) is probably due to the effect of excess water (935.3 mm) applied which may have leached some of the applied nutrient from the soil leading to significant asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 184-191 190 differences (p<0.05) in nue obtained for the different treatment combinations; this trend was also similar to that of wue (table 3). a) b) figure-5. relationship between wue; (kg/ha/mm) and irrigation water (mm) applied in (a) 2018 and (b) 2019. 4. conclusion increasing water demand and scarcity have prompted the optimization of irrigation water use for higher-yield output. the treatment i4mf resulted in higher cucumber yields, the optimal wue and nue with lowest values obtained in treatments with higher irrigation frequency (i6) for the respective seasons. the results further confirmed the efficiency of the drip irrigation system, supplying water and nutrients in close proximity to the root zone. however, lower irrigation frequency should be investigated in regards to optimal irrigation quantity as indicated in this work. funding: this research was supported by international atomic energy agency (iaea), vienna and the national center for energy and nuclear science and technology (cnesten), morocco. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: all authors contributed in an equal manner in designing the present research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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(2011). yield and quality response of cucumber to irrigation and nitrogen fertilization under subsurface drip irrigation in solar greenhouse. agricultural science in china, 10(6), 921-930. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2013.06.002 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2013.06.002 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 316 the effects of using liquid organic npk fertilizer for rice plant growth and production (oriza sativa l.) usman madea idhamb amirudinc a,bfaculty of agriculture, tadulako university, indonesia. cfaculty of agriculture, bosowa university, indonesia.  usman.made06@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 20 september 2022 revised: 3 november 2022 accepted: 17 november 2022 published: 6 december 2022 keywords dose fertilizer lof concentration npk. this research aims to determine the appropriate concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (npk) in liquid organic fertilizer (lof) and to determine the appropriate dose of npk and lof concentrations for the growth and yield of rice plants. the research was conducted in mertajati village, sausu subdistrict, parigi moutong regency, indonesia, from august to december 2019. the study used a two-factor randomized block design (rbd). the first factor is the dose of npk, which consists of three levels, i.e., npk 200 kg/ha-1, npk 400 kg/ha-1, and npk 600 kg/ha-1. the second factor is the concentration of lof, which also consists of three concentration levels, i.e., without lof, 2.5% lof, and 5.0% lof. the results revealed that the effects of lof addition were the same for each dose of npk and increasing the dose of npk required an increase in the concentration of lof. a dose of 400 kg ha-1 npk fertilizer resulted in better growth and a higher yield, indicated by taller plants, higher panicles (19.53 panicles), and higher dry grain production (7.69 ton/ha-1). the application of 2.5% liquid organic fertilizer resulted in better growth and a higher yield, indicated by taller plants, a higher number of tillers, faster flowering, more panicles per clump (19.72 panicles/clump-1), a higher number of grains per panicle, a higher pithy grain weight (30.26 grams/1000 grains), and higher yields (7.79 tons/ha-1). contribution/originality: this study contributes new information regarding the application of 2.5% liquid organic fertilizer, which resulted in better growth and a higher yield, indicated by taller plants, a higher number of tillers, faster flowering, more panicles per clump, a higher pithy grain weight, and higher yields. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4689 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: usman made --idham --amirudin (2022). the effects of using liquid organic npk fertilizer for rice plant growth and production (oriza sativa l.). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4), 316321. 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4689 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction rice is a source of energy and carbohydrates, and it is an important food crop and the main commodity in indonesia. efforts to increase rice production face a number of problems, including increasing environmental damage, increasing the conversion of agricultural land to non-agriculture, and global climate change. to overcome these problems, it is necessary to find solutions and develop technological innovations. efforts to increase rice productivity need to be improved, especially in relation to the decline in production and technology saturation (made, kadekoh, & samudin, 2016). one of the efforts to increase the productivity of rice plants is to provide the required nutrients. fertilizer application aims to increase the nutrients needed by plants, because the nutrients contained in the soil are not always sufficient for optimal plant growth (hamid & tanweer, 2021; ikhajiagbe, igiebor, & ogwu, 2021). the daily growth, development and production processes of plants require nutrients in the form of minerals and water. the nutrients asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 4 (2022): 316-321. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4481-0147 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8113-1755 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3301-4743 mailto:usman.made06@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 316-321 317 normally needed by plants cannot be separated from the three main nutrients, i.e., nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (npk). npk compound fertilizer is an inorganic fertilizer. the advantages of using npk compound fertilizers are: 1) the nutrient content is the same as a single fertilizer; 2) it can be used in place of a single fertilizer; 3) the use of compound fertilizer is simple; and 4) transportation and storage of compound fertilizer saves time, space and cost (susanto & amirta, 2020). liquid organic fertilizer (lof) is a solution derived from the decomposition of organic materials, such as plant matter, animal manure, ash and water (mangera & ekowati, 2022; raden, fathillah, fadli, & suyadi, 2017). sources of raw materials for organic fertilizer are available in abundance and are usually in the form of waste from households restaurant, markets, agricultural markets, livestock, and other organic waste (devianti, yusmanizar, syakur, munawar, & yunus, 2021). liquid organic fertilizers contain low macronutrients but contain sufficient micronutrients that are indispensable for plant growth and development. fertilization requires care to ensure that plants receive the required dose and concentration. the fertilizer used should not be lower than, or exceed, the required dose as it could hinder plant growth and development (bindraban, dimkpa, nagarajan, roy, & rabbinge, 2015). the advantage of lof is that it is a fast way to overcome nutrient deficiencies, doesn’t cause nutrient leaching, and is able to provide nutrients quickly (phibunwatthanawong & riddech, 2019). therefore, this research was conducted on the effects of npk and lof on the growth and production of rice plants with the aim of determining the appropriate concentration of npk for optimal growth and yield of rice plants. 2. materials and methods 2.1. research study and time this research was conducted in mertajati indah village, sausu subdistrict, parigi mautong regency, central sulawesi, indonesia, from august to december 2019. the items used were a tractor, hoe, meter, scale, measuring cup, and blender. the materials used were cigeulis rice seeds, phonska npk fertilizer (15:15:15), and liquid organic fertilizer (lof). 2.2. research design the study uses a two-factor randomized block design (rbd). the first factor was the dose of npk, which consisted of three levels, i.e., npk 200 kg ha-1, which is equivalent to 120 g/plot-1 (p1); npk 400 kg ha-1, which is equivalent to 240 g/plot -1 (p2); and npk 600 kg ha-1, which is equivalent to 360 g/plot-1 (p3). the second factor was the concentration of lof, which also consisted of three levels, i.e., without lof (k0), 2.5% lof (k1), and 5.0% lof (k2). therefore, there were nine treatments in total, and each treatment combination was repeated three times as a group. 2.3. research implementation tillage was carried out twice and harrowing was carried out once, then plots of 300 cm x 200 cm were made. preparation of liquid organic fertilizer was carried out by providing the formulation of ingredients (papaya leaves, moss, rice washing water, granulated sugar, brown sugar, yakult, and water). next, the papaya leaves and moss were blended, and the granulated sugar and brown sugar were heated until they became liquid. the solutions were mixed until evenly distributed, then slowly filtered. the lof was incubated for a week, and then the liquid organic fertilizer was ready to be used. planting was performed using a direct seeding system (called tabela) using the jajar legowo 2:1 cropping pattern, with a spacing of 20 cm x 20 cm, and a population of 283,000 clumps per hectare. the application of npk fertilizer was carried out in two doses, with a treatment of 50% at 21 days after planting (dap) and 50% at 42 dap. the lof was given at twice the concentration according to the treatment. the first application was 35 dap with a dose of 200 l (equivalent to 120 ml/plot-1), and the second application was given at 49 dap, with a dose of 300 l (equivalent to 180 ml/plot-1). to determine the effects of the treatment, observations were recorded for plant height, number of tillers, age of flowering, number of panicles, and dry grain yield. 3. results and discussion 3.1. experimental soil characteristics the results revealed the initial physical properties of the experimental soil; it had a sandy loam texture with a distribution of 53.04% sand, 31.71% silt and 15.25% clay, and a bulk density of 1.44 g/cm-1. in terms of chemical properties, it had a slightly acidic ph level, a moderate organic carbon (c-organic) content (2.15%), a moderate nitrogen (n) content (0.24%), moderate c/n (11.94), moderate p2o5 (9.43 ppm), a moderate potassium (k) content (0.33 meq/100g), moderate cation exchange capacity (cec) (23.03 meq/100g), and moderate base saturation (49.1%). the c-organic content and cec, which were classified as moderate, indicate that the experimental soil had moderate levels of organic matter. the ph value of the soil describes the level of soil acidity, which greatly affects the activity of micro-organisms in the soil and the uptake of plant nutrients. 3.2. parameters of rice 3.2.1. plant height the analysis of variance (anova) results show that the npk and lof administration had an effect on plant height, while the interaction between the two treatments had no effect. the median test results (see table 1) show that fertilization using the 600 kg/ha-1 npk resulted in higher plants, which was different from the 200 kg/ha-1 npk, but not different from the 400 kg/ha-1 npk. this is presumably because the administration of 600 kg npk has fulfilled the plants’ nutrient needs. fertilizer application can increase plant growth because it increases the availability of n, p, and k. table 1 also shows that the administration of the 5.0% lof produced taller plants, which was different from asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 316-321 318 that without lof, but not different from that with a lof concentration of 2.5%. this is apparently because the administration of 5.0% lof has fulfilled the plants’ nutrient needs. the increase in plant height is influenced by the provision of lof concentrations, as well as by a dense population, which can cause competition for sunlight. table 1. average plant height at various npk doses and lof concentrations. treatment plant height (cm) npk (kg/ha) 35 dap 63 dap 200 58.12 a 108.67 a 400 61.69 b 112.02 ab 600 61.96 b 114.73 b without lof 58.64 a 107.99 a 2.5% 60.59 b 112.28 b 5.0% 62.54 c 115.05 b note: values followed by the same letter in the same row are not significantly different in the hsd test (honestly significant difference) (α = 0.05). dap = days after planting. 3.2.2. number of tillers the anova results revealed that the administration of lof had an effect on the number of tillers, while the npk dose and the interaction between the two treatments had no effect (see table 2). table 2. number of tillers per clump, and flowering age at various npk doses and lof concentrations. treatment lof concentration average hsd 5% tillers npk (kg/ha-1) without lof 2.5 % 5.0% 200 400 600 21.03 20.83 21.16 21.30 21.56 21.63 21.93 22.03 22.56 21.42 21.47 21.78 average 21.01 a 21.49 ab 22.17 b 1.01 flowering age 200 400 600 77.66 75.66 77.33 75.33 74.66 74.66 73.66 73.33 73.66 75.55 74.55 75.22 average 76.88 b 74.88 a 73.55 a 1.70 note: values followed by the same letter in the same row are not significantly different in the hsd test (α = 0.05). the median test results shown in table 2 indicate that the administration of lof with a concentration of 5.0% produced more tillers, which was different from that without lof, but not different from that with a lof concentration of 2.5%. this is presumably because the administration of 5.0% lof has fulfilled the plants’ nutrient needs. the application of lof tends to form the number of tillers based on the adequacy of light intensity. meanwhile, the administration of the 2.5% lof did not significantly increase the number of tillers because the number of nutrients was insufficient, so the growth will be stunted. the amount of nutrients required by the plant is closely related to the needs of the plant to grow optimally. if the amount of nutrients required is not available, then growth will be stunted. if the amount of available nutrients is higher than what is required by the plants, it can be defined as a condition of luxury consumption. 3.2.3. flowering age the anova results show that the lof administration had an effect on the flowering age, while the npk dose and the interaction between the two treatments had no effect. the flowering age results are presented in table 2, and they show that the administration of lof with a concentration of 5.0% resulted in faster flowering of plants, which was different from that without lof, but not different from that with a lof concentration of 2.5%. this is presumably because the application of lof can accelerate the flowering age of rice plants. in addition, the direct seed planting system generated good results at the flowering age with a time difference of 3–10 days. the direct seed planting system can accelerate the flowering age by nine days compared to conventional planting patterns and harvesting age (bahua & gubali, 2020; sahardi, nappu, idaryani, nurlaila, & syam, 2021). the direct seed planting system showed better prospects and can increase the production of harvested dry grain, eliminate the negative impact of nursery and grain quality, and shorten the life of the plant (bahua & gubali, 2020). therefore, the direct seed planting system increases the opportunity to enhance cropping intensity, which improves productivity and farmers' income, both obtained through increased production per unit area, as well as production cost savings, such as labor and fertilizer costs, and opportunities for optimizing the use of land resources. 3.2.4. panicles the anova results show that the npk dose and lof concentration had an effect on the number of panicles per clump, while the interaction between the two treatments had no effect. the average numbers of panicles per clump are presented in table 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 316-321 319 table 3. average numbers of panicles per clump at various npk doses and lof concentrations. treatment lof concentration average hsd 5% npk (kg/ha-1) without lof 2.5 % 5.0% panicles 200 400 600 17.33 18.73 18.66 18.53 19.73 19.53 19.13 20.13 19.9 18.33 a 19.53 b 19.36 b 0.23 average 18.24 a 19.26 b 19.72 c 0.23 panicle length 200 400 600 23.03 23.43 23.95 24.15 24.27 24.35 24.34 24.58 24.90 23.84 24.09 24.40 average 23.47 a 24.25 b 24.60 b 0.74 grains per panicle 200 400 600 121.6 128.13 131.83 126.9 147.1 142.03 127.73 134.66 142.5 125.14 a 136.63 b 138.78 b 6.27 average 127.18 a 138.67 b 134.96 b 6.27 percentage of empty grain 200 400 600 6.49 5.70 5.54 5.10 5.27 4.68 4.36 4.81 4.40 5.31 5.26 4.87 average 6.91 b 5.02 a 4.52 a 0.78 weight of 1000 grain seeds 200 400 600 27.27 25.66 26.36 28.48 28.54 30.45 29.45 31.92 29.42 28.39 28.70 28.74 average 26.43 a 29.15 b 30.26 b 0.86 note: values followed by the same letter in the same column or row are not significantly different in the hsd test (α = 0.05). the median test results table 3 show that the administration of 400 kg/ha-1 of npk produced a higher number of panicles per clump, which was different from 200 kg/ha-1 of npk, but not different from that with 600 kg/ha of npk. this is presumably because the administration of 400 kg/ha-1 of npk has fulfilled the plants’ nutrient needs, especially n and p, because these nutrients play an important role in the formation of tillers. table 3 also shows that the administration of 5.0% lof resulted in a higher number of panicles per clump in contrast to other treatments, in which the higher lof concentration produced more panicles. this is presumably because the administration of 5.0% lof has fulfilled the plants’ nutrient needs. this is in agreement with sutardi, gunawan, winarti, and cahyaningrum (2021), who stated that the provision of lof in each treatment has an effect on the number of panicles. panicle length. the anova results show that the lof concentration had an effect on the panicle length, while the npk dose and the interaction between the two treatments had no effect. the average panicle lengths are presented in table 3. the median test results show that the administration of lof with a concentration of 5.0% resulted in longer panicles, which was different from that without lof, but not different from that with a lof concentration of 2.5%. in addition to the concentration of lof, panicle length is more likely to be influenced by genetic and environmental factors. spacing is one way to create environmental factors and nutrients that are evenly available for each individual plant. available nutrients in sufficient quantities allow plants to grow and produce maximally. a low availability of nutrients in the production phase causes the inhibition of several plant metabolic processes, which decreases plant yield, inhibits flower formation, affects the panicle length, and decreases the number of seeds (wei et al., 2017). the single factor of lof treatment shows results with a significant effect. number of grains per panicle. the anova results show that the npk and lof administration had an effect on the number of grains per panicle, while the interaction between the two treatments had no effect. the average number of grains per panicle is presented in table 3. the median test results show that the administration of 600 kg/ha-1 of npk resulted in more grains per panicle, which was different from that of 200 kg/ha-1 of npk, but not different from that of 400 kg/ha-1 of npk. this is presumably because the administration of 600 kg/ha-1 of npk has fulfilled the plants’ nutrient needs. nitrogen plays an important role as a constituent of proteins that will be used by plants, including increasing the number of panicles (ju, liu, & sun, 2021; zhou et al., 2017). panicle length is strongly influenced by the panicle initiation period, which is a critical period for the plant. lack of nutrients and water during the initiation period can cause panicle formation to be poor, and this affects the ovules that will form. the number of grains per panicle is determined in the reproductive phase. table 3 also shows that the administration of lof with a concentration of 2.5% resulted in more grains per panicle, which was different from that without lof, but not different from that with a lof concentration of 5.0%. this is presumably because the administration of 2.5% lof has met the plants’ nutrient needs. percentage of empty grain. the anova results showed that lof administration had an effect on the percentage of empty grain, while the npk and the interaction between the two treatments had no effect. the average percentage of empty grain is presented in table 3. the median test results show that the administration of lof decreased the percentage of empty grain, and a higher concentration of lof resulted in a decreased percentage of empty grain. the administration of lof with a concentration of 5.0% resulted in a lower percentage of empty grain, which was different from that without lof, but not different from that with a lof concentration of 2.5%. this is presumably because the administration of 2.5% lof has fulfilled the plants’ nutrient needs. empty grain was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 316-321 320 determined by the number of tillers that grew before reaching the primordial phase. k deficiency can cause a high amount of empty grain and incomplete grain filling, and the plant growth is closely related to the balance of required nutrients (susanto & sirappa, 2015). weight of 1000 grain seeds. the anova results showed that the administration of lof had an effect on the weight of 1000 grain seeds, while the npk and the interaction between the two treatments had no effect. the average weight of 1000 grain seeds is presented in table 3. the median test results show that the administration of lof with a concentration of 5.0% resulted in higher pithy grain, which was different from that without lof, but not different from that of the lof with the 2.5% concentration. the higher lof concentration produced higher pithy grain. the pith of the grain is largely determined by the availability of nutrients and the plant’s physiological processes. 3.3. dry grain yield the anova results show that the administration of npk and lof had an effect on the dry grain yield, while the interaction between the two treatments had no effect. the average dry grain yield is presented in table 4. table 4. average dry grain yields at various npk doses and lof concentrations. treatment dry grain yield npk (kg/ha) g/m ton/ha 200 639.44 a 6.394 a 400 769.22 b 7.692 b 600 775.55 b 7.755 b hsd 5% 31.85 0.317 without lof 721.22 a 7.212 a 2.5% 737.55 a 7.375 a 5.0% 779.44 b 7.794 b hsd 5% 31.85 0.317 note: the value in each treatment followed by the same letter in the same column is not different in the hsd test (α = 0.05). the median test results (see table 4) show that the administration of 600 kg/ha-1 of npk resulted in heavier dry grain yields, which was different from that of 200 kg ha-1, but not different from that of 400 kg/ha-1. this is presumably because the administration of 400 kg/ha-1 of npk has fulfilled the nutrient requirements of the plants. the application of npk increased the dry grain weight because the npk contents can meet the p and k nutrient needs of the plant, resulting in optimal grain production. table 4 also shows that the administration of lof with a concentration of 5.0% resulted in heavier dry grain yields, which was different from other treatments. this is presumably because the administration of lof with a concentration of 5.0% had fulfilled the plants’ nutrient needs. the application of lof stimulated plant growth, roots, fruiting, and it reduced flower and fruit loss, so crop yield increased (masniawati, suhadiyah, tambaru, & sulastri, 2017). the growth and yield of plants are strongly influenced by many factors, i.e., genetic traits or inherited traits, such as plant age, plant morphology, yield, capacity to store food reserves, and resistance to disease, among others (ata-ul-karim et al., 2022; liu, zhou, li, & xin, 2017; oladosu et al., 2014). meanwhile, external factors are environmental, such as climate, soil, and biotic factors (peng et al., 2004; song et al., 2022). differences in growth and yield are affected by one or more of these factors. differences in genetic makeup (genotype) is one of the factors causing diversity in plant appearance, and differences in genotype will always occur, even if the plant material used is derived from the same plant species. 4. conclusion the effects of lof administration were the same for each dose of npk, and increasing the npk dose requires an increase in the lof concentration. the application of 400 kg/ha-1 npk fertilizer resulted in better growth and yield indicated by taller plants, higher panicles per clump (19.53 panicles/clump-1), a higher number of grains per panicle (136.63 grains/panicle-1), and higher dry grain production (7.69 ton/ha-1). the application of 2.5% lof achieved better growth and yield characterized by taller plants, a higher number of tillers, faster flowering, more panicles per clump (19.72 panicles/clump-1), a higher number of grains per panicle, a lower percentage of empty grain, increased pithy grain weight (30.26 g/1000 grains), and higher yields (7.79 tons/ha-1). funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. acknowledgement: all authors thank the faculty of agriculture, tadulako university, for providing the best facilities for this research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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(2017). late nitrogen application enhances spikelet number in indica hybrid rice (oryza sativa l.). agricultural science, 74(2), 127-133.available at: https://doi.org/10.1590/1678-992x-2016-0094. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 113 the future of saudi arabia’s date exports using a cointegration model mohamad alnafissaa mahmoud alderinyb yosef alamric jawad alhashimd a,b,c,ddepartment of agricultural economics, college of food and agricultural sciences king saud university, saudi arabia.  malnafissa@ksu.edu.sa (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 6 january 2021 revised: 29 january 2021 accepted: 15 february 2021 published: 3 march 2021 keywords agricultural marketing future structure market export forecasting dates market comparative advantage ardl model cointegration model saudi arabia. dates represent an important export crop for saudi arabia that attracts foreign exchange. there is an opportunity for saudi arabia to extend its date exports to the international market due to production exceeding consumption and comparative advantage in date production. this paper explores the future export market for saudi dates by analyzing the factors that affect saudi date exports and highlighting this crop’s comparative advantage. also, the paper uses autoregressive and distributed lag methodology with data from 1980 to 2017 to predict the future for exported dates between 2020 and 2025. the relationship between the export of dates and other exogenous variables shows there are significant effects from domestic production, domestic consumption of dates, and the price of exported dates in both the long and short term. in contrast, the comparative advantage of saudi dates shows a significant effect only in the short term, because there has been no active program to promote saudi dates in global markets. the explanatory variables predict that 2019 saudi date exports will increase by 3.8-fold in 2025, with the total export amount over 700 thousand tons. thus, there is an opportunity to develop more programs that target the international market in support of date farms and exporters, and to support market research directed at satisfying the international market. contribution/originality: this study analyzed the future structure market of date export and highlights the comparative advantage of this crop for saudi arabia. it then predicts the future for date exports between 2020 and 2025. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.113.119 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: mohamad alnafissa --mahmoud alderiny --yosef alamri --jawad alhashim (2021). the future of saudi arabia’s date exports using a cointegration model. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 113-119. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.113.119 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction dates are one of saudi arabia’s major food crops and thus represent an important export crop attracting foreign exchange. furthermore, saudi arabia has a comparative advantage in date production, which makes it worthwhile to study saudi date exports to various importing markets. saudi arabia’s average date exports represented 5% of total agricultural exports during the period 1990–2016 (faostat, 2020). asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 113-119 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2234-531x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5534-5052 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5023-8998 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1618-7119 mailto:malnafissa@ksu.edu.sa http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.113.119 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 113-119 114 al-abdulkader, al-kahtani, ismaiel, elhendi, and saadii (2016) showed that increasing the marketing efficiency of saudi dates will lead to an increase of up to 30% of return for the agricultural sector. therefore, the saudi government intends to use dates as one of its strategic agricultural commodities in global markets due to its comparative advantage in date production. because date production is increasing year by year, with an average annual rate of growth of 4.6 tons per year during the years 2000–2018, increase in production must be accompanied by a competitive ability to access external markets. the economic importance of date production and the market environment for dates has recently resulted in an extensive literature that discusses different marketing aspects and issues. for instance, dawood and kinnucan (2018) estimated the world market demand for dates and price elasticity. intezar, abdallah, and rao (2016) studied the opportunities and difficulties for farmers and traders in marketing dates, while dhehibi, el awar, ben-salah, and awhassan (2018) studied competitiveness in the date trade for gulf cooperation countries (gcc). also, value chain analysis and marketing opportunities for date palms in gcc countries were studied by dhehibi., salah, and frija (2018) while the efficiency of date marketing was investigated by ismaiel, al-abdulkader, al-kahtani, and saad (2017), alabdulkader, elhendy, al kahtani, and ismail (2017) and al-abdulkader et al. (2016). al-shreed et al. (2012) investigated export markets for saudi dates and potential opportunities. the comparative competitive advantage for the export of dates was studied by ali, fahad, and el-habbab (2014). ali, al-mulhim, and el-habbab (2014) revealed the demand for the export of saudi dates. this research extends previous literature exploring the future export market for saudi dates. the study analyzes factors that impact saudi date exports and highlights the comparative advantage of this crop. it then predicts the future for date exports in the period 2020–2025. 2. methodology engle and granger (1987), johansen (1988) and johansen and juselius (1990) developed methods used to test cointegration, assuming the variables are stationery to the same degree. however, this assumption is not achieved in many applied aspects because the variables could integrate to different degrees. in this case, it is challenging to perform the analysis using these methods. therefore, pesaran, shin, and smith (2001) provided an appropriate model for treating this problem – the autoregressive and distributed lag model (ardl) (nkoro & uko, 2016). the main concept of the methodology is to combine the autoregressive and distributed lag models to create a time series model. the dependent variable is a function of its lagged values and the values of the explained variables in the current and lag periods. using ardl methodology for the cointegration test has some advantages: first, determining the possibility of applying the model regardless of whether the variables under study are degree i(0), degree i(1), or both. they are used when the integration order is unknown or not uniform for all variables. the only condition for applying this test is that none of the variables can have an i(2) degree of integration. second, it can be used if the sample size is small, which contrasts with most traditional cointegration tests that require the sample size to be large for efficient results. third, the application of this methodology allows longand short-run relationships to be estimated together using one equation. assuming that yt expresses the dependent variable in the period and that x1t, x2t, ..., xkt represent k external explanatory variables in the period t, the relationship between the dependent variable and the set of explanatory variables is expressed in a multiple linear regression model: 𝑌𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑋1𝑡 + 𝛽2𝑋2𝑡 … + 𝛽𝑘𝑋𝑘𝑡 + 휀𝑡 (1) equation 1 shows the estimation of a long-run relationship, while ardl is applied to test the cointegration through pesaran et al. (2001). according to ardl methodology, the analysis is carried out in three steps: 1. a cointegration test using the unrestricted error correction model (uecm), this model is expressed as ∆𝑌𝑡 = 𝛼0 + 𝛾0𝑌𝑡−1 + 𝛾1𝑋1𝑡−1 + ⋯ + 𝛾𝑘𝑋𝑘𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛼𝑖∆𝑌𝑡−𝑖 𝑝 𝑖=1 + ∑ ∑ 𝛽𝑗𝑙∆𝑋𝑗𝑡−𝑙 𝑞𝑗 𝑙=0 𝑘 𝑗=1 + 휀𝑡 (2) where 𝛾0, 𝛾1, … , 𝛾𝑘 represent long-run relationship coefficients, while (𝛼𝑖 , 𝛽𝑗𝑙), and 𝑙 = 0,1, … , 𝑞𝑗 are short-run relationship coefficients; p expresses the length of the lag period for the dependent variable y, while 𝑞𝑗 expresses the length of the deceleration period for the interpreted variable 𝑋𝑗 , (𝑗 = 1, … , 𝑘), and the lagged times for the variables do not necessarily have the same number of lags (𝑝 ≠ 𝑞𝑗). the symbol ∆ also indicates the first difference of the variable; 휀𝑡 indicates the random error terms and assumes that its mean is 0, that the variance is constant from one time period to another, and the errors are not correlated, {𝐸(휀𝑡) = 0, 𝐸(휀𝑡 2) = 𝜎𝜀 2, 𝐸(휀𝑡휀𝑡`) = 0 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡 ≠ 𝑡`}. in this model, the presence of a cointegration relationship test determines the extent of the statistical significance of the relationship between the variables in the long term by applying the bounds testing approach to cointegration, which depends on the wald test. the null hypothesis is 𝐻0: 𝛾0 = 𝛾1 = ⋯ = 𝛾𝑘 = 0 and indicates that there is no cointegration relationship between the variables in equation 1, whereas the alternative hypothesis is 𝐻1: 𝛾0 ≠ 𝛾1 ≠ ⋯ ≠ 𝛾𝑘 ≠ 0 and denotes the existence of a cointegration relationship between the variables in equation 1. the ftest statistic depends on whether the variables included in the model integrate to degree i(0) or degree i(1), on the number of independent variables, on whether or not equation 1 includes an intercept and trend, and on the sample size. comparing the calculated f value with the tabular values of the lower and upper thresholds provided by pesaran et al. (2001), a decision is taken regarding the null hypothesis where the lower bound was derived based on the assumption that the variables are integral to degree i(0). in contrast, the upper limits are derived based on the assumption that the variables are integral to degree i(1). if the calculated f value is less than the critical value of the lower limit, the null hypothesis is not rejected. this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 113-119 115 indicates that there is no cointegration. however, if the f value is higher than the critical value of the upper limit, the null hypothesis is rejected and cointegration exists between the variables in equation 1. this means that the model allows us to estimate the long-run relationship among the variables. however, if the calculated f occurs between the lower and higher limits, the result is that the cointegration is not conclusive. 2. estimating the long-run relationship between the dependent variable y and the explanatory variables is expressed in the following equation: 𝑌 = ∅0 + ∅1𝑋1 + ⋯ + ∅𝑘𝑋𝑘 (3) where ∅0, ∅1, … , ∅𝑘 represent long-term coefficients, and their estimates derive from the estimates of the longterm transactions shown in equation 2 as follows: {∅0 = −(𝛼0 𝛾0⁄ ), ∅1 = −(𝛾1 𝛾0⁄ ), … , ∅𝑘 = −(𝛾𝑘 𝛾0⁄ )} . the lagged rank in the ardl model is chosen by the akaike information criterion (aic) or the schwarz bayesian criterion (sbc) standard. however, pesaran et al. (2001) recommend that the lagged period be a maximum of two periods for annual data. 3. the third step specifies and estimates the dynamic ardl by constructing an error correction model (ecm). the ardl model is popular in economic studies of different aspects such as economic growth (okafor & shaibu, 2016), inflation forecasting (ülke, sahin, & subasi, 2018), tourism demand forecasting (zhu, lim, xie, & wu, 2018), and forecasting u.s. commercial property price indices (van de minne, francke, & geltner, 2018). it is expressed in the following equation: ∆𝑌𝑡 = 𝜋0 + ∑ 𝜋𝑖∆𝑌𝑡−𝑖 𝑝 𝑖=1 + ∑ ∑ 𝛿𝑗𝑙∆𝑋𝑗𝑡−𝑙 𝑞𝑗 𝑙=0 𝑘 𝑗=1 + 𝜓𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1 + 𝑣𝑡 (4) the error correction term is represented by 𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1. this variable represents the long-run relationship between the dependent variable and the independent variables, while its coefficient indicates the speed of adjustment from the short-run equilibrium. the value of the error correction coefficient falls between minus one (−1) and 0, where a large coefficient in absolute value indicates a higher speed of adjustment. if the coefficient has a 0 value, it means there is no long-run relationship. on the other hand, a significant coefficient means there are adjustments between the short run and long run. 3. model specification the study assumes that the future quantity of saudi date exports, 𝑌𝑡 , is determined by a set of economic factors such as the domestic production of dates, denoted by 𝑋1𝑡 , the amount of domestic consumption of dates, denoted by 𝑋2𝑡 , the average export price 𝑋3𝑡 , and the comparative advantage of date exports with respect other agricultural export products (𝑋4𝑡). the saudi date export model can be written as 𝑌𝑡 = 𝑓(𝑋1𝑡 , 𝑋2𝑡 , 𝑋3𝑡 , 𝑋4𝑡) (5) 4. data this study uses aggregate data for dates, covering the period 1980–2019. the quantity of saudi date exports and domestic consumption of dates is measured in tons, while the average export price is measured in u.s. dollars per ton. the study used secondary data collected from various sources: (1) the ministry of economy and planning, general authority for statistics, and other official authorities in saudi arabia; and (2) the united states department of agriculture (usda), u.n. comtrade database from united nations statistics division and food and agriculture organization (fao) websites, as well as the world development indicators and the world data bank. 5. empirical results 5.1. order of integration the study used the augmented dickey–fuller (adf) test to exam the null hypothesis of a unit root. it used the sbc to determine the maximum length of lags and used the eviews 11 program to obtain the results. table 1 shows the adf for the variables with standard variables and logarithmic form. table-1. integration results of the study variables when taking into consideration natural and logarithmic values. variable normal values natural logarithm values integration degree i type lags integration degree i type lags 𝑌 i(1) trend 3 i(1) intercept 2 𝑋1 i(1) intercept 2 i(1) intercept 4 𝑋2 i(0) trend 2 i(1) intercept 4 𝑋3 i(0) none 5 i(0) none 1 𝑋4 i(1) none 4 i(0) trend 1 table 1 shows that the forecast for saudi date exports (y), the domestic production of dates (𝑋1), and the comparative advantage of date exports with respect to other agricultural export products (𝑋4) are stationary at the first difference, then integrated at the level 𝑌, 𝑋1, 𝑋4~𝐼(1). on the other hand, the level of consumption of domestic dates (𝑋2) and the average export price (𝑋3) are stationary at 𝑋2, 𝑋3~𝐼(0). as for the variables in their logarithmic form, the result shows that ln(y), (ln 𝑋1), and ln(𝑋2) are stationary at first differences and i(1), while ln(𝑋3) and ln(𝑋4) are stationary at ln(𝑋3), ln(𝑋4) ~ i (0). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 113-119 116 5.2. cointegration test the test of stationarity gives the difference in the degree of integration of the study variables, as well as the absence of variables with the integration of i(2) or higher (table 1). it is appropriate to follow the ardl methodology to test cointegration between the variables. in this case, the uecm is used to test the cointegration among the variables. it is described in the following equation: ∆𝐿𝑛(𝑌𝑡) = 𝛼0 + 𝛾0𝐿𝑛(𝑌𝑡−1) + 𝛾1𝐿𝑛(𝑋1𝑡−1) + 𝛾2𝐿𝑛(𝑋2𝑡−1) + 𝛾3𝐿𝑛(𝑋3𝑡−1) + 𝛾4𝐿𝑛(𝑋4𝑡−1) + ∑ 𝛼𝑖∆𝐿𝑛(𝑌𝑡−𝑖) 𝑝 𝑖=1 + ∑ 𝛽1𝑗∆(𝑋1,𝑡−𝑗) 𝑞1 𝑗=0 + ∑ 𝛽2𝑗∆(𝑋2,𝑡−𝑗) 𝑞2 𝑗=0 + ∑ 𝛽3𝑗∆𝐿𝑛(𝑋3,𝑡−𝑗) 𝑞3 𝑗=0 + ∑ 𝛽4𝑗∆(𝑋4,𝑡−𝑗) 𝑞4 𝑗=0 + 휀𝑡 (6) the equation is denoted by 𝐴𝑅𝐷𝐿(𝑝, 𝑞1, 𝑞2, 𝑞3, 𝑞4), and is used to investigate the long-run relationships among variables. the long-run relationship exists if there is cointegration between the dependent variable and independent variables in equation 6. the null hypothesis assumes cointegration does not exist (null hypothesis is 𝐻0: 𝛾0 = 𝛾1 = 𝛾2 = 𝛾3 = 𝛾4 = 0 ), while the alternative hypothesis ( 𝐻1: 𝛾0 ≠ 𝛾1 ≠ 𝛾2 ≠ 𝛾3 ≠ 𝛾4 ≠ 0 ) indicates there is a cointegrated relationship between the variables. the study used sbc to determine the number of lags by using microfit 5.0 (a program developed by pesaran and pesaran (2009), as well as the results from estimating the uecm model. the result shows the appropriate model is 𝐴𝑅𝐷𝐿(1,0,1,0,1), as shown in table 2. a lag of one time period has been specified for the dependent variable, logarithm of exports 𝐿𝑛(𝑌), and the independent variables 𝑋4, independent variables 𝑋1, 𝑋2, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐿𝑛(𝑋3) have no lag. table-2. results of the estimation parameters of date exports using ardl. regressor coefficient standard error t-ratio [prob.] 𝐿𝑛(𝑌𝑡−1) 0.3402 0.0985 3.456[.001] 𝑋1𝑡 0.0104 0.0019 5.580 [.000] 𝑋2𝑡 −0.0102 0.0020 −5.121[.000] 𝐿𝑛(𝑋3𝑡) −0.1348 0.0736 −1.832 [.073] 𝑋4𝑡 0.0020 0.0009 2.353[.023] 𝑋4𝑡−1 −0.0030 0.0006 −4.847 [.000] 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡 6.4489 0.9845 6.551[.000] r2 0.932 f-stat. f(6,51) 115.81[.000] aic −9.958 sbc −17.170 dw-statistic 2.114 durbin’s h-statistic −659[.510] the results show that the r2 is 0.932, which indicates that the independent variables under study explain 93.2% of the variation in the dependent variable. the value of the test 𝐹 − 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑡 = 115.81 is significant at the 0.0001 level, so the model explains much of the variation in saudi date exports. also, the model does not suffer from the problem of autocorrelation between errors, as the value of the modified durbin’s h-statistic 𝐴𝑑. 𝐷𝑊 = −0.659. the cointegration test is shown in table 3. the results show that the model rejects the null hypothesis of no cointegration, while it accepts the alternative hypothesis. the f-statistic is 6.406, which is higher than the critical upper limit (4.323) at the 5% level of significance. thus, there is cointegration among the variables at the 5% level of significance. table-3. results of a cointegration test for model variables ardl (1,0,1,0,1). test statistics 95% lower bound 95% upper bound 90% lower bound 90% upper bound f-statistic = 6.406 3.044 4.323 2.578 3.706 w-statistic = 32.029 15.222 21.613 12.892 18.527 5.3. estimating the long-run relationship in the previous step, the statistical test demonstrated the existence of cointegration among the variables of the export model; thus, there is a long-run relationship among these variables. the long-run relationship mentioned in equation 7 was estimated according to methodology of ardl (1, 0, 1 ,0, 1) using microfit 5.0. the results are as follows: 𝐿𝑛(𝑌𝑡) = 9.8 + 0.016𝑋1 − 0.015 𝑋2 − 0.20𝐿𝑛(𝑋3) − 0.001 𝑋4 (30.5)∗∗∗ (7.3)∗∗∗ (−6.3)∗∗∗ (−1.9) ∗ (−1.12) the domestic production of dates (𝑋1) has a significant positive effect while the level of domestic consumption of dates (𝑋2) has a negative effect on exports in the long term at the 1% level of significance. this means that a 1,000ton increase in domestic production leads to a 1.6% increase in exports in the long run. on the other hand, increasing the domestic consumption of dates by 1,000 tons leads to a 1.5% decrease in exports. the price of date exports (𝑋3) has a significant negative impact on exports. a 10% increase in export prices leads to a 2.04% decrease in date exports. this relationship does not match with the economic logic that might explain why the government of saudi arabia has been buying date surpluses from farmers at promotional prices that exceed market prices and presenting them as donations to other countries. this is in the form of aid that has been provided by the government for more than thirty years to friendly countries when they suffer from problems like natural disasters and famine conditions. in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 113-119 117 addition, this result explains the inelasticity of the quantity of date exports with a change in price. the comparative advantage of date exports (𝑋4) does not show a significant effect on exports in the long run.thus, the model results confirm the positive impact of domestic production and the negative impact of domestic consumption on saudi date export levels and export values, which matches with economic logic. in contrast, the comparative advantage of saudi dates in the international export market did not have any relationship with saudi export quantity. even though saudi arabian date exports have a comparative advantage, the analysis does not reflect that export advantage. the main reason could be because there has been no active program to promote saudi dates in global markets throughout most time of the study period (1980–2017). the national center for palms and dates was established in saudi arabia in 2011, and one of its goals is to take advantage of saudi arabia’s date production and to promote saudi dates in global markets. 5.4. estimating the ecm error model the ecm describes the dynamic relationship between the dependent variable and the independent variables in the short run, where the model takes the following equation: ∆𝐿𝑛(𝑌𝑡) = 𝜋0 + ∑ 𝜋𝑖∆𝐿𝑛(𝑌𝑡−𝑖) 𝑝 𝑖=1 + ∑ 𝛿1𝑗∆(𝑋1,𝑡−𝑗) 𝑞1 𝑗=0 + ∑ 𝛿2𝑗∆(𝑋2,𝑡−𝑗) 𝑞2 𝑗=0 + ∑ 𝛿3𝑗∆𝐿𝑛(𝑋3,𝑡−𝑗) 𝑞3 𝑗=0 + ∑ 𝛿4𝑗∆(𝑋4,𝑡−𝑗) 𝑞4 𝑗=0 + 𝜓𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1 + 𝑣𝑡 (8) the parameters of the short-term relationship model in equation 8 were estimated as ardl(1, 0, 0, 0, 1), and the results are summarized in table 4. the short-run coefficient indicates the immediate impact of independent variable change on the dependent variable. for example, production ∆(𝑋1) has a positive and significant effect on log exports if production increases by 1,000 tons, and there is an immediate 1.04% increase in exports. annual domestic consumption ∆(𝑋2) has a negative and significant effect on log exports if domestic consumption increases by 1,000 tons, and exports would decrease by 1.02%. if export price have a negative impact on date exports, a 1% increase in export prices leads to a 13.5% decrease in exports. the results also show that the change in comparative advantage variable has a significant positive effect on the increase of date exports, ∆𝐿𝑛 (𝑌), in the short term. also, a one unit per year increase in the relative importance leads to a 0.2% increase in date exports. table-4. estimates for short-term coefficients for the ec model. regressor coefficient standard error t-ratio [prob.] ∆(𝑋1) 0.0104 0.0019 5.580[.000] ∆(𝑋2) −0.0102 0.0020 −5.121[.000] ∆𝐿𝑛(𝑋3) −0.1348 0.0736 −1.832 [.073] ∆(𝑋4) 0.0020 0.0009 2.353[.022] 𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1 * −0.6598 0.0985 −6.701[.000] r2 0.598 f-stat. f(5,25) 15.158[.000] aic −9.958 sbc −17.170 dw-statistic 2.114 note: *𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1 = 𝐿𝑛(y) − 0.0157(x1) + 0.0154(x2) + 0.2043 𝐿𝑛(x3) + 0.0014(x4) − 9.775 the error correction factor has a value of −0.66, which is statistically significant. the negative sign confirms the convergence of the equilibrium from the shortto long-term equilibrium. it reveals the speed of the return of the variable of date exports toward its long-term equilibrium value after date exports deviate from equilibrium in the previous period (t-1). two-thirds (66%) of this disequilibrium is corrected each year. the adjustment factor is relatively large because the correction in exports needs more than one year to return to long-term equilibrium. 5.5. results of diagnostic tests of the model the appropriateness of the model was assessed through tests for serial correlation in the error term, model specification error, the normality of residuals, and the heteroscedasticity of residuals. diagnostic tests were run on the data using microfit 5.0, and the results are summarized in table 5. table-5. results of diagnostic tests for ardl(1, 0, 0, 0, 1). test statistics lm version f version a: serial correlation chsq(1) = .385 [.535] f(1,50)= .334 [.566] b: functional form chsq(1) = 9.823 [.002] f(1,50)= 10.195 [.002] c: normality chsq(2) = 36.806 [.000] not applicable d: heteroscedasticity chsq(1) = .491 [.483] f(1,56)= .478 [.492] a: lm, lagrange multiplier test of residual serial correlation b: ramsey’s reset test using the square of the fitted values c: based on a test of skewness and kurtosis of residuals d: based on the regression of squared residuals on squared fitted values (1) the model tests the null hypothesis that there is serial correlation for the error term. the statistical result shows that the value of chi-square was χ2 = 0.385, and its probabilistic value was pr(χ2 > 0.385 = 0.535). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 113-119 118 thus, it is greater than the critical value and is significant at the 5% level. therefore, the null hypothesis was accepted to reveal that there was no serial correlation between the error terms of the ardl(1, 0, 0, 0, 1) model. (2) model specification error was tested through the ramsey reset test. this test examines the null hypothesis that there are no omitted variables. the f-statistic was f(1,50) = 10.195, and its probability value was pr(f > 10.195 = 0.002), which was greater than 5%. thus, the model does not suffer from omitted variables. (3) the normality of residuals was tested through the jarque–bera test. the null hypothesis is that the error term data follow a normal distribution. the result rejected the null hypothesis that the error terms follow a normal distribution because the probability value of this test, pr(χ2 > 36.806 = 0.000), was less than the level of statistical significance. therefore, the model suffers from abnormal residual data problems but, because the sample size is large, the distribution of the residual data has an approximately normal distribution. (4) the study examined the residuals for heteroscedasticity. the result shows the model did not suffer from heteroscedasticity because the probability value, pr(f > 0.478 = 0.492), was greater than the 5% level of statistical significance. that means the model failed to reject the null hypothesis of homoscedasticity. 6. forecasting export of dates from 2020 to 2025 one of the main objectives of this study was to predict the export of dates from saudi arabia for the period 2020– 2025. the values of the independent variables were predicted using arima(p,d,q) models, which are the domestic production of dates (𝑋1), the amount of domestic consumption of dates (𝑋2), the average export price (𝑋3), and the comparative advantage of date exports with respect to other agricultural export products (𝑋4). the eviews 11 program was used with the ardl(1, 0, 0, 0, 1) model to predict 𝐿𝑛(𝑌)̂ , and then to predict export values. table 6 presents the predictions of the explanatory variables and date exports according to the ardl(1, 0, 0, 0, 1) model, which was calculated using microfit 5.0. table-6. prediction results using the ardl model (1,0,0,0,1). year (x1) 1000 ton (x2) 1000 ton (x3) (x4) ∆𝑳𝒏(𝑿𝟏) ∆𝑳𝒏(𝑿𝟐) ∆(𝑿𝟑) ∆𝑳𝒏(𝑿𝟒) ln(y) y arma(3,0) arma(3,0) arma(2,0) arma(1,1) predict. predict./ton 2019 1285* 1129* 1.261* 41.846* 12.114* 182317* 2020 1338 1182 1.115 34.446 12.338 228091 2021 1405 1234 1.039 30.499 12.605 297896 2022 1472 1284 0.891 28.078 12.897 399233 2023 1507 1315 0.785 26.395 13.071 474872 2024 1558 1359 0.644 25.092 13.232 557769 2025 1622 1411 0.526 23.996 13.459 700185 note: *actual values. table 6 shows the model expectations from 2020 to 2025. the results show an increase in the quantity of export by 700,000 tons between 2020 and 2025. thus, the prediction shows that exports would increase by 3.8-fold in 2025 compared to 2019. the average annual export level of dates in saudi arabia from 2020 to 2025 is expected to be about 443,008 tons, with a standard deviation of 172,910 tons. these expected export levels are restricted by the effects of the four factors that built this prediction model. saudi arabia has the opportunity to multiply its date exports at a high level of production, stability of consumption, and to increase returns by targeting the appropriate world market. 7. conclusion saudi arabia has an opportunity to extend date exports to the international market because its production exceeds consumption. the government of saudi arabia is interested in increasing the competitiveness of dates in global markets as a strategic agricultural commodity, because the country has so many farms that produce the crop. this research analyzed the future market structure for saudi date exports, highlighting this crop’s comparative advantage by using a cointegration model for the period 2020–2025. the study used the ardl model with data covering the period 1980–2017. the estimated results of the relationship between saudi date exports and other exogenous variables showed a significant effect from domestic production, domestic consumption of dates, and the price of exported dates in both the long and short term. in contrast, the comparative advantage variable for saudi dates showed a significant effect only in the short term. the explanatory variables predict an expected increase in saudi date exports in 2025 by more than 3.8-fold that of 2019 exports. thus, dates have an export comparative advantage over other agricultural products in saudi arabia. accordingly, there is an opportunity to develop further programs targeting the international market in support of date farms and exporters, and to support market research directed at satisfying the international market. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 113-119 119 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references al-abdulkader, a. m., al-kahtani, s. h., ismaiel, s. m., elhendi, a. m., & saadii, a. (2016). enhancing marketing efficiency of the saudi dates at the national and international markets. alamri yosef, al-dakhil ai. international journal of economics and finance, 8(8), 53-70. al-shreed, f., al-jamal, m., al-abbad, a., al-elaiw, z., abdallah, a. b., & belaifa, h. (2012). a study on the export of saudi arabian dates in the global markets. journal of development and agricultural economics, 4(9), 268-274. alabdulkader, a. m., elhendy, a. m., al kahtani, s. h., & ismail, s. m. (2017). date marketing efficiency estimation in saudi arabia: a two-stage data envelopment analysis approach. pakistan journal of agricultural sciences, 54(2), 475–485. available at: 10.21162/pakjas/17.3109. ali, a., al-mulhim, f., & el-habbab, s. (2014). the competitiveness of saudi dates in selected european union countries. agricultural science research journal, 5, 68-76. ali, a. m., fahad, a.-m., & el-habbab, m. s. (2014). saudi date exports demand in selected markets. international journal of agriculture and crop sciences, 7(11), 827. dawood, a., & kinnucan, h. (2018). source–specific demand elasticities for dates in international trade (no. 2015-2018-108). the 2018 southern agricultural economics association annual meeting, february 2-6, 2018, jacksonville, florida usa. dhehibi, b., el awar, f., ben-salah, m., & aw-hassan, a. (2018). dates trade in gcc countries competitivity and complementarity. paper presented at the the sixth international date palm conference (sidpc) abu dhabi -uae: 19 – 21 march1). dhehibi, b., salah, m. b., & frija, a. (2018). date palm value chain analysis and marketing opportunities for the gulf cooperation council (gcc) countries. chapter 2. agricultural economics book. intechopen. london, uk. doi: 10.5772/intechopen.82450. engle, r. f., & granger, c. w. j. 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(2018). a comparison of time series and machine learning models for inflation forecasting: empirical evidence from the usa. neural computing and applications, 30(5), 1519-1527. available at: 10.1007/s00521016-2766-x. van de minne, a., francke, m., & geltner, d. (2018). forecasting us commercial property price indexes using dynamic factor models. available at ssrn: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3148680. zhu, l., lim, c., xie, w., & wu, y. (2018). modelling tourist flow association for tourism demand forecasting. current issues in tourism, 21(8), 902-916. available at: 10.1080/13683500.2016.1218827. http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/ http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 141 the relationship between socioeconomic status and consumption pattern of fishermen household in indonesia a. rusdiana a, sanuri b, muhammad subandi c, setia mulyawan d a state islamic university, sunan gunung djati, bandung, indonesia b prince dharma kusuma islamic high school segaran indramayu, west javaindonesia c faculty of science and technology, state islamic university, sunan gunung djati, bandung, indonesia d faculty of business economics, state islamic university, sunan gunung djati, bandung, indonesia  rusdiana@uinsgd.ac.id (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 27-dec-2019 accepted: 06-mar-2020 online available: 30-mar2020 keywords: education, knowledge, ability, skills, consumptive abstract the purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between socioeconomic status and consumption patterns of fishermen households in karangsong village, indramayu regency west java indonesia. the importance of this paper comes from the phenomenon of the lifestyle of the fishermen community who is known in general for their very harsh character. this is because their lifestyle is very dependent on nature. even though in certain seasons fishermen's income will grow very high but in the following seasons, fishermen's income will decrease or even will be not existent. this is what causes fishermen are in the low level of social class. for this purpose, a survey was conducted to 81 fishermen during the month of august to september in 2019. data was collected according to simple descriptive or multivariate statistical analyzes as well as qualitative techniques. the results of this study indicate that the income and number of family members influence the consumption patterns of fishermen households. it also can be concluded that there is a positive and significant impact between the independent variables (income, number of family members and education), on the consumption patterns of fishermen households. contribution/ originality this study is one of few studies that have been investigated about the relationship between socioeconomic status and consumption patterns of fishing households. this study contributes to the first logical analysis that there is a positive and significant influence between the independent variables (income and number of family members) on the consumption patterns of fisherman households. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.141.148 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: a. rusdiana, sanuri, muhammad subandi and setia mulyawan (2020). the relationship between socioeconomic status and consumption pattern of fishermen household in indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 141-148. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 141-148 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:rusdiana@uinsgd.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.141.148 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 141-148 142 1. introduction indonesia is an archipelago, which consists of many islands. various indonesian territories have coastal region. most of the people around the coastal area earn income from the fisheries sector. the potential of fisheries resources is the ability of the waters to be utilized in the fisheries business, so it can produce a certain amount in economic growth of indonesia. many fishermen households depend on the fisheries sector. the fishermen community is the main social unit in the life of the coastal community, so the culture of the fishing community is the most important pillar of the culture of the coastal community (carera, 2017). activities by fishermen are carried out in territorial waters that are not in the category of an aquaculture business. however, in general the word fisherman is very attached to those who do fishing at sea including ship technicians and crew (fielnanda, 2018). karangsong village, one of the coastal villages in the indramayu regency, west java province of indonesia, is surrounded by a vast ocean that can create livelihoods for its residents. karangsong village has most of his people work as fishermen who do their business with very traditional tools. it keeps their level of income relatively lower. this will also have an impact on meeting the basic needs of the fishermen's household, especially their consumption patterns. household consumption can be divided into basic needs (primary) and supporting needs (secondary) (fausi, 2017). in daily life, everyone is always related to consumption, whether it is to meet the need for food, health, education, and entertainment etc. riyadi (2011) states that higher the level of education and knowledge possessed by a person is generally the higher the awareness to meet a balanced amount of consumption and meet nutritional and selective requirements in relation to food supply. similarly, raharja and mandala (2005) states that higher a person's education the consumption spending will also be higher, thus affecting the amount of consumption positively. the wasteful lifestyle is a manifestation of the consequence of pursuing worldly social honour, so such a lifestyle reflects a simple perspective to pursue the pleasures of life for a moment, where the sea will always provide income for all time (kusnadi, 2007). the facts show that, in principle, fisherman communities with high income levels and the condition of the waters where they carry out fishing activities have a large enough potential for fishery resources tend to spend extravagant lifestyles based on the normal size of meeting their daily needs. cindy (2016) concluded that level of household income, the number of family members, age, and the amount of expenditure per day has a significant effect on the pattern of household food consumption, while partially the variable number of family members, age and number expenditure per day has a significant effect on household food consumption patterns. study by vidiawan and tisnawati (2014) states that education has a positive and significant effect on the consumption patterns of poor households. fajar et al. (2016) showed that the area of maize land had a positive effect on household income of corn farmers, the level of education was not significant, the number of household members had a positive influence on the household income, food expenditure has a negative effect on household income and non-food expenditure has a significant negative effect on household income level. the pattern of life of the fisherman community is generally known for its very harsh character. this is because the fishermen’s lifestyle is very dependent on nature. even though in certain seasons fishermen's income is very high, and vice versa. this has caused or encouraged fishermen to be in the low social class life even for their daily needs. however, fishermen also have a consumptive lifestyle. so, when their incomes are high their consumption patterns are also high. however, when income is low, they still survive by selling their valuables or debt receivables with very high interest (aries, 2015). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 141-148 143 numerous variables affect household or community consumption patterns. among them are income, education and living environment variables. income plays an important role in determining the consumption patterns of individuals, households, communities and governments. because fisherman communities do not get enough income every day to meet their family's needs, non-permanent income will affect family consumption. this variable income is not balanced with the needs of everyday life that is very much. this can lead to imbalance between meeting needs with income (vidiawan and tisnawati, 2014; mayasari et al., 2018). conceptually, consumption patterns are human needs in the form of objects and services that is allocated to personal interests as well as families based on governance and responsibilities that are realized as primary and secondary needs (astari, 2016). the consumption pattern is the composition of food which includes the type and amount of food ingredients for a person per day, which is generally consumed by the population within a certain period. the consumption patterns give an overview of the type and amount of food consumed every day by one person that is characteristic of a community group. the factors influence consumption patterns, includes the consumer’s income & tastes, the price of goods (carera, 2017; mayasari et al., 2018). some economists reveal that food can be an indicator for assessing the level of economic prosperity of the community. mayasari et al. (2018) state that the higher the welfare of the people of a country, the lower the proportion of food expenditure of its population, and vice versa. household food expenditure will rise in line with increasing income but the proportion of food expenditure from total income will decrease. pande (2012) finds that the most important factors affecting consumption behavior are income and culture. furthermore, vidiawan and tisnawati (2014), adds that in the national economy, national consumption is influenced by national income, deposit rates and inflation. income reflects a person's ability to consume both quality and quantity. in addition to income, consumption is also influenced by the number of family members. fewer family members mean fewer needs for the family to fulfill. the large number of family members causes the family consumption pattern will be more varied because each family member may not necessarily have the same consumption pattern. thus, there are many variables that influence household or community consumption patterns, including income, family size, education and neighborhood. education and income play an important role in determining the consumption patterns of individuals, households, communities and governments. this study focuses on fishermen household consumption pattern in the coastal village of karansong, indramayu district, indramayu regency, west java province, indonesia. it is generally known that fishermen are one of the members of the community who have the lowest level of welfare, this is characterized by a slum environment and simple houses, if there is a complete house generally owned by boat owners and financiers, in addition, fishing communities when they get a high income, they tend to have a wasteful lifestyle. hence, it would be interesting to study the area on the coast of the district center with a lack of educational facilities, low income and education of the local community. so, how does the consumption pattern of the local community meet their daily needs, both basic and supplementary need? what consumption patterns do they do every day? with the answer to the problem, this study is among the few studies that have been investigated to analyze the effect of income and family members on fishermen household consumption patterns. 2. methods and research tools this is an exploratory research that focuses on explanations about concepts or patterns. the analysis focused on the depth of data obtained from the study sample. quantitative data is used for analysis. to deepen the results of the analysis literature reviews and field surveys have been carried asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 141-148 144 out on the phenomenon of the fishermen community in the coastal village of karangsong, indramayu regency, west java province. data analysis was carried out by distributing questionnaires to 81 research samples. determination of the number of samples performed by referring to the opinion of uma (2006), which states that the rules of thumb amount of research data ranged from 30 to 500 people. the consumption approach is one that is often analyze the income of farmers. the income will ultimately affect the consumption patterns of each of these households. the household takes the decision to allocate part of its budget to buy food and nonfood needs. spending on food, clothing, and other need is classified as consumption (fausi, 2017). consumption expenditure is largely determined by the size of income, where between income and consumption has a positive relationship. keynes says that there is a minimum consumption expenditure that must be carried out by society (autonomous consumption) and consumption expenditure will increase as income increases (fausi, 2017). fielnanda (2018) also states about the relationship of consumption expenditure with national income measured by constant prices. the keynesian consumption function is formulated as following: c = c0 + byd where: c = consumption c0 = autonomous consumption b = marginal propensity to consume (mpc) yd = disposable income 3. results and discussion table 1 consists of descriptive statistics of the income variable. the income variable consists of five items. table 1: statistical description of income variable statement static total percentage sts ts n s ss sts ts n s ss statement 1 0 9 40 29 3 81 0 11.1 49.4 35.8 3.7 statement 2 0 17 36 25 3 81 0 21 44.4 30.9 3.7 statement 3 0 20 41 19 1 81 0 24.7 50.6 23.55 1.2 statement 4 0 17 32 29 3 81 0 21 39.5 35.8 3.7 statement 5 0 10 28 32 1 81 0 12.3 34.6 39.5 1.2 amount 0 73 187 134 11 405 0 18 46.35 33.1 2.7 based on table 1, it is concluded that the income from fishermen can meet daily needs (sts) by 0%, the higher the level of income of fishermen, the higher the non-food consumption compared to food consumption (ts) by 18%. increasing the catch of fishermen can increase income (n) by 46.35%. the existence of side jobs from the head of the family can increase income (s) by 33.1%, and the presence of family members who work other than the head of the family can increase consumption patterns (ss) by 2.7%. the catch of fishing communities that are uncertain is influenced by natural conditions. considering the uncertain income will affect the consumption pattern of the fisherman community. uncertain income creates a need with unbalanced income. however, when the income of fishermen increases, the needs and income are balanced. at the time of low income fisherman communities also reduce consumption spending (junaidi et al., 2019). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 141-148 145 table 2 consists of descriptive statistics of the variable, number of family members. the variable also consists of five items. table 2: statistical description of the family numbers and education variable statements static total percentage sts ts n s ss sts ts n s ss statement 1 0 2 23 46 11 81 0 1.2 28.4 56.8 13.6 statement 2 0 1 20 54 6 81 0 1.2 24.7 66.7 7.4 statement 3 0 10 20 44 7 81 0 12.3 24.7 54.3 8.6 statement 4 0 1 42 28 10 81 0 1.2 51.9 34.6 12.3 statement 5 0 3 25 43 10 81 0 3.7 30.9 53.1 12.3 amount 0 16 130 215 44 405 0 4 32.1 53.1 10.9 based on the table above, in general respondents who answered the number of their family members could influence the level of family consumption (sts) by 0%, the number of their family members who were still in school affected family expenses (ts) by 4%, the number of their family members who worked could affect the level of family income (n) of 32.1%, the number of their family members who work can affect the level of family consumption (s) of 53.1% increasing in family members, the more needs to be fulfilled (ss) of 10.9 %. the number of family members of fishermen will affect consumption patterns household because each member of the household has different tastes (fielnanda, 2018). the number of children who are still in school also affects family consumption because the amount of family income is not balanced with spending on children. the amount of children's allowance is not balanced with family income. however, there are also those who only have one child but spending a lot of consumption because different styles and tastes will affect the amount of goods consumed. so many or at least a child depends on the size of each style or taste in their daily needs will affect their consumption. large need of children makes the head of the family have to work hard to get income to meet the needs of children (junaidi et al., 2019). table 3 consists of descriptive statistics of the consumption pattern variable that also consists of five question items: table 3: statistical description of consumption pattern statements static total percentage sts ts n s ss sts ts n s ss statement 1 0 15 30 33 3 0 18.5 37 40.7 3.7 statement 2 2 21 15 36 7 81 2.5 25.9 18.5 44.4 8.6 statement 3 0 1 14 33 33 81 0 1.2 1.7 40.7 40.7 statement 4 0 3 35 34 9 81 0 3.7 43.2 42 11.1 statement 5 1 8 27 37 8 81 1.2 9.9 33.3 45.7 9.9 amount 0 48 121 173 60 405 11.1 11.9 30 42.7 14.8 based on the table above, it is concluded that in one month (sts) by 11.1% of the income they used it for clothing needs: clothing, education, health (ts) by 11.9%. from the income they got, they used it for board need: house, water, electricity, etc. (n) by 30%. they used it for fishing gear: nets, machines, buoy, etc. (s) of 42.7%. from the income they got, they used it for education of their family members and their health and family such as (ss), health insurance amount to 14.8%. table 4 depicts the regression results based on t-statistics and table 5 consist anova. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 141-148 146 table 4: result of regression model unstandardized standardized t sig. coefficients coefficients β std. error β constant -2.35 0.854 0.771 -2.753 0.007 income 0.908 0.055 0.247 16.51 0 number of family members 0.31 0.059 5.294 0 note: dependent variable: consumption patterns table 5: results of anova model sum of squares df mean square f sig. regression 728.245 79.557 807.802 2 364.123 356.996 0.000 residual 78 1.02 total 80 note: dependent variable: consumption patterns income variable is found that the significance value is less than 5%. meanwhile, the value of tcount is greater than t table (16.510 > 1.990). it can be concluded that the income variable partially influences the consumption patterns of fishermen households. a positive t value means that it has a positive effect, i.e. if the income variable increases, the consumption pattern variable will also increase. variable number of family members is <0.005. meanwhile, the value of t statistic is > t tabulated value (5.294 > 1.990). it can be concluded that the variable number of family members partially influences the consumption patterns of fisherman households. the value of t arithmetic is positive which means it is a positive effect, i.e. if the variable number of member family increases, then the consumption pattern variable will also increase. the effect of independent variables simultaneously on the dependent variable is analyzed using the f test, namely by taking into account the significance of the f value at the calculation output with a level of ± 5%. if the significance value of the f test is less than 5%, there is an influence between all the independent variables on the dependent variable. the results of the f test in this study can be seen in the table below. from the f test results in the table 5, the significance value is < 0.05 and the calculated f value is > f table (365.99 > 3.11). so it can be concluded that the two independent variables (income, number of family members) simultaneously influence the dependent variable (consumption patterns). 4. conclusions and recommendations from the obtained results it can be concluded that income influences the consumption patterns of fisherman household positively. the results also showed that the number of family members affected the consumption patterns of fisherman households. the results of this study are consistent with cindy (2016) which stated that the number of family members affected the consumption patterns of fishermen. the family or fisherman community needs to be empowered, nurtured and developed, in terms of knowledge, abilities and skills. so they have the opportunity to reach productive economic sectors. about the conclusions and recommendations above, this study recommends as following: 1. due to the increasingly low quality of human resources, and causing few opportunities to reach productive economic sectors, the steps that can be taken to deal with this problem can asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 141-148 147 be done by designing and training packages that emphasize improving skills and practices to be able to work and trying to be more productive. the target of this program is the head of fisherman households who are less educated. 2. to increase the income of fisherman households, the government and other relevant stakeholders can increase entrepreneurial interest through providing working capital and coaching for poor households who are trying in the informal sector. with this assistance, the work done by poor households can be economically developed and profitable. 3. the burden of fishermen/poor households is more severe because there are many and less productive members. looking at this fact it seems necessary to suggest birth control, especially in poor households that have many children. with this greater burden, efforts to improve the quality of human resources in poor households are difficult to develop. increasing human resources of poor family members is a process that is believed to be able to reduce poverty in a relatively long time. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references aries, d. 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(2011). the effect of financial compensation, leadership costs & work motivation on employee performance in manufacturing companies in east java. journal of management and entrepreneurship, 13(1), 40–45. https://doi.org/10.9744/jmk.13.1.40-45. uma, s. (2006). research methods for business. book four edition 1. jakarta: salemba empat. vidiawan, e., & tisnawati, n. m. (2014). analysis of the effect of income, number of family members and education on the number of poor household consumption in batu kandik village, nusa penida district, klungkung regency. e-journal ep unud, 4(40), 243-257. https://doi.org/10.9744/jmk.13.1.40-45 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 587 socio-economic status and level of biosecurity practice of catfish farmers in delta north agricultural zone, delta state, nigeria agatha arimiche nwabueze a, albert ukaro ofuoku b a department of animal science and fisheries, delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, nigeria b department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, nigeria  aanwabueze@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 13-mar-2020 accepted: 27-jul-2020 online available: 26-aug2020 keywords: biosecurity measures, catfish, farmers, delta north, nigeria abstract the socio-economic status and level of practice of biosecurity measures amongst catfish farmers in delta north agricultural zone of delta state were assessed. data was collected randomly from 115 catfish farmers by oral interview and administration of structured questionnaires. descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression analysis were used to analyze data collected. results obtained show that catfish farmers had a mean of 45 years, dominated by males with 54.8 % having secondary education and 7.8 years experience in fish farming. the coefficients for stocking density, source of fish seed, organic inclusions, workers shower, access restrictions, a record of fish disease and pathogen management were highly significant (p<0.05). it implies that these variables are important factors influencing the practice of biosecurity measures in the study area. a poor level of practice of biosecurity was observed with a large number of negative coefficients of independent variables, implying that increases in the magnitude of these variables may lead to a reduction in the level of biosecurity practice amongst catfish farmers in the area. this study also observed that the practice of biosecurity measures was not an important issue among catfish farmers. guidelines supported by appropriate legislation is needed to enforce practice and compliance of biosecurity practice. contribution/ originality this study has shown that the level of biosecurity practice of catfish farmers in delta north agricultural zone of nigeria is poor. though the farmers understand the importance of producing healthy aquaculture fish, minimal biosecurity practice was carried out. there is a need for a specific legal biosecurity framework for the practice of aquaculture in the area to forestall any future incidence of disease outbreaks. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.587.597 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: agatha arimiche nwabueze and albert ukaro ofuoku (2020). socio-economic status and level of biosecurity practice of catfish farmers in delta north agricultural zone, delta state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 587-597. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 587-597 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:aanwabueze@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.587.597 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4498-5086 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1395-8114 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 587-597 588 1. introduction fish is important to humans and animals as food, source of protein and for the generation of income by man. intensive fish culture in the tropics has introduced stress due to overcrowding, poor water quality and general lack of knowledge of fish farming occasioned by the entry of unskilled personnel into fish culture practices (pulkkinen et al., 2010). stress has been reported to be a major cause of disease outbreaks in fish ponds (gabriel and akinrotimi, 2011; raman et al., 2013). fish diseases of protozoal (martins et al., 2015, okoye et al., 2016, rakesh et al., 2018, ogbu et al., 2019), helminth (onyedineke et al., 2010, onyishi and aguzie, 2018), bacterial (sudheesh et al., 2012, adeyemo, 2013, wamala et al., 2018, kousar et al., 2019), fungal (melaku et al., 2017, idowu et al., 2017, patel et al., 2018) and viral (ozturk and attinok, 2014) origins have been reported in many tropical fish ponds. management of fish diseases has, therefore, become an issue of great concern, particularly to rural fish farmers with little or no skills in fish farming. outbreaks of fish diseases have resulted in fish kills and economic losses, cumulating in reduced fish production (okaeme et al., 1987; hossain et al., 2011; pridgeon and klesius, 2012; oladele et al., 2015; kousar et al., 2019). the ability to curtail, contain and eradicate diseases of fish when they occur will depend on several factors bordering on biosecurity measures put in place and the extent of compliance with these measures. biosecurity has been defined as a strategic and integrated approach for the analyses and management of relevant health and environmental risks to human, animal and plant lives (hawkes and ruel, 2006). this approach is based on legal and regulatory frameworks for the protection of life forms. it has become a necessity to protect cultured fish stock from possible negative impacts resulting from the introduction, spread of animal diseases and management risks in aquaculture production facilities (pena et al., 2018). with biosecurity measures in place, the risks to health and life can be prevented, controlled, or eradicated as well as reduce the economic impacts of disease (pena et al., 2018). in aquaculture, biosecurity consists of practices that minimize the risk of introducing and spreading the infectious disease to animals, susceptible species, and other cultural sites (banrie, 2013). there is less information on the legal framework regarding the biosecurity of fish farms in the study area. legislation on biosecurity of fish farms is either not available or non-existence. the entrance of unskilled personnel into the aquaculture industry due to unemployment and food fish security issues has prompted the need to assess the practice of biosecurity amongst catfish farmers in delta north agricultural zone of delta state, nigeria, to recommend appropriate measures for improved fish health and prevention of disease outbreak. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study area delta state, located in niger delta, southern nigeria consists of three agricultural zones by the niger delta state agricultural development programme (dtadp), namely: delta north, delta central and delta south agricultural zones. delta state is situated between longitude 5º00' and 6º 45' east and latitude 5º00' and 6º30' north (figure 1). delta north is made up of nine local government areas (lgas): oshimili south, oshimili north, aniocha south, aniocha north, ndokwa east, ndokwa west, ika south, ika north east and ukwuani. the population of delta north agricultural zone was 1,236,840 persons by the national population commission (2006). the inhabitants of the area have diverse occupations such as farming, fishing, trading and secular jobs. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 587-597 589 figure 1: the study area, delta north, nigeria 2.2. selection of fish farms and locations a multi-stage sampling procedure was used to draw samples for the study. in the first stage, eight lgas out of the nine in delta north agricultural zone were purposively selected based on the presence of water bodies like river niger, river adofi, and some streams which encourage fish farming activities in the areas and also to the presence of fish farms in the areas. in the second stage, a simple random sampling technique was used to select sixteen fish farmers from the eight lgas amounting to one hundred and twenty-eight catfish farmers. the sixteen catfish farmers were selected purposively from the different communities in the lgas based on the presence of fish farms in the areas. it was discovered that not all the catfish farmers in the area were registered with the state department of fisheries. the study, therefore, involved both registered and un-registered fish farmers. about 0.01% of the population of the area of study were catfish farmers. 2.3. interview and visits to fish farms primary data for the study was obtained from fish farmers using a structured questionnaire. the fish farmers were also interviewed and assisted in ascertaining that the questionnaire was filled correctly. out of 128 catfish farmers interviewed, questionnaires from 115 respondents were used due to unresponsiveness and inadequate information supplied by the farmers. information of fish farm activities for the last one year obtained were on: pond preparation pp, source of water supply sw; source of fry/fingerlings sf, disinfection of facility df, quarantine of fry/fingerlings before stocking qf , fingerling disinfection fd, correct feeding practices cf, type of feed (conventional or non-conventional) tf, feed storage methods fs, probiotics application to feed pa, good husbandry practices gh, water quality management wq, organic inclusions into pond other than fish feed oi, proper fish handling hf, routine observations ro, access restrictions to visits ar, provision of mobile foot bath fb, biosecurity awareness ba, hand washing hw, provision of shower for workers to bath sw, environmental management/ disposal of effluent em, working with veterinary personnel wv, professional pathogen management pm, notify government agency of any outbreak ng, stocking densities sd, history of vaccinationhv, disposal of dead fish dd, record keeping of disease rd, practice of integrated farming if, wildlife visits to farm (e.g. rodents, frogs/toads, snails, snakes) wv and fencing of facilityfn. these gave rise to 31 independent biosecurity variables, including control variables. in contrast, the level of biosecurity practice is the dependent variable. the 31 biosecurity variables were adapted to suit the area of study and the nigerian environment from the works of banrie (2013) and fasanmi et al. (2016). other information obtained was on socio-economic variables such as gender, age, marital status, family size, level of education, experience on the job, level of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 587-597 590 inputs, level of output and other sources of income. the survey was conducted between january and april 2019. 2.4. statistical analysis descriptive analysis was used to describe the socio-economic variables (objective 1). the method was used to describe the variables of gender, age, marital status, family size, level of education, fishing experience, input, output and other sources of income. multiple regression analysis was used to determine the variable factors affecting the level of biosecurity practice of catfish farmers in the area of study (objective 2). the farmers' expression on biosecurity variables were dichotomous because fish farmers were to answer whether or not they practiced biosecurity measures in their fish farms. dichotomous data were subjected to logistic multiple regression model by first stating the regression model implicitly in an equation form as: 𝑌 = 𝑓(𝑋1, 𝑋2, 𝑋3, 𝑋4, 𝑋5, 𝑋6, … … . 𝑋6, 𝑒) where: 𝑌 = dependent variable (level of biosecurity practice %) 𝑋 = independent variables e = random error (udoh and nyienakuna, 2008). three functional forms of the model, linear, semi-log, and double-log functions, as used by almeida et al. (2001), were used for the analysis. the one with the best fit was used as the lead function based on having the highest value of the coefficient of multiple determination, the highest number of significant variables and conformity to a priori expectations. the level of biosecurity practice was inputted as the dependent variable while the variables were taken as the independent variables with the practice of biosecurity measure (yes) and the non-practice of biosecurity measures (no) recoded as 0 and 1 respectively. the self-rated level of biosecurity practices by the fish farmers was scored at four levels (objective 3). the scoring method used was based on the modified qualitative scoring by pagani et al. (2008). the 31 variables of biosecurity measures were scored as follows: level 1: non to very poor practice, 0 25% level 2: very poor to poor practice, 26 50% level 3: poor to good practice, 51 -75% level 4: good to very good practice, 76 100% any variable to be scored as 'being practiced,' has a score of ''4'', and for statistical analysis, all scores below ''4'' that is (1-3) were recorded to 0, while scores greater or equal to ''4'' was assigned a score of 1. 3. results and discussion the socio-economic characteristics of catfish farmers in the study area are presented in table 1. out of 115 catfish farmers, 79.1 % were males, while 20.9 % were females. the domination of men in fisheries activities has been reported (brummett et al., 2010; olaoye et al., 2013). inoni et al. (2017) also reported that men were more abundant in catfish farming since women have limited access to productive resources, external inputs, and information. more of the fish farmers were between 41 and 50 years of age. the average age of fish farmers was 45 years, with the youngest being 28 years and the oldest 72 years with 54.8 % having a secondary level of education. it confirms the findings of ayotunde and oniah (2012), which reported that a large number of fisherfolks were educated, and this portends a better future for catfish production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 587-597 591 table 1: socio-economic characteristics of catfish farmers variables frequency percentage (%) mean (mode) gender male 91 79.1 female 24 20.9 age 21-30 10 8.7 31-40 26 22.6 41-50 42 36.5 45 51-60 30 26.1 61 and above 7 6.1 marital status single 4 3.9 married 104 90.4 married widowed 6 5.2 divorce 1 0.9 size of family 0-4 28 24.3 5-9 84 73.0 6 persons ≥ 10 3 2.6 level of education non-formal 0 0.0 primary 11 9.6 secondary 63 54.8 secondary tertiary 41 35.7 job experience 0-5 36 31.3 6-10 53 46.1 7.8 years 11-15 16 13.9 16-20 1 0.9 ≥ 21 9 7.8 input level (n) 10, 000 50,000 28 24.3 60,000 100,000 75 65.2 n83,362.33 110,000 -150,000 9 7.8 160,000 200,000 3 2.6 output level (n) 10, 000 50,000 34 29.6 60,000 100,000 16 13.9 110,000 -150,000 62 53.9 n132,476.19 160,000 200,000 3 2.6 other sources of income no other source 0 0.0 crop farming 63 54.8 crop farming trading 17 14.8 civil service 45 39.1 source: field survey, 2019 note: ₦370.00 to $1 the respondents were found to be within the productive and economic active age. according to earlier reports, this active age is beneficial for the improvement of livelihood for families (okeowo et al., 2015). the level of education was observed to impact positively on the respondents, as asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 587-597 592 shown in the level of biosecurity awareness. the high level of education is expected to contribute significantly to decision making by the fish farmers, which becomes an advantage in terms of achieving sustainability in aquaculture. a major percentage, 90.4 % of the fish farmers, were married. the majority of fish farmers have been reported to be married and, by this, have a cherished level of responsibility (oladoja et al., 2008). this shows that the marriage institution is still appreciated as a sign of the economic responsibilities of the respondents (ayotunde and oniah, 2012). an average family size of 6 was observed in this study, thus indicating that family members may be involved in fish farming activities to reduce the cost of labour and increase productivity. fifty-three (46.1 %) of the respondent had between 6 and 10 years of experience on the job with a mean of 7.8 years. this number of years of experience on the job is beneficial for fish farming in the area of study, since farmers with less number of years of experience may be discouraged when they encounter many risks in the early days of fish farming business (olaoye et al., 2013). the respondents with more experience are also more likely to be able to forecast the market situation in which they may sell their products at higher prices. the input level shows that 65.2 % expended between n60,000 and n100,000 with a mean of n83,362.33 while output in the form of income was n132,476.19 with 53.9 % of the farmers earning between n110,000 and n150,000. most of the fish farmers (54.8 %) had other sources of income, such as crop farming and poultry. this result is in agreement with earlier findings, which stated that fish farming business is profitable according to the level of investment and variable cost minimization (adewuyi et al., 2010; kassali et al., 2011). table 2: results of multiple regression analysis independent variables coefficients ± s.e t-value p-value constant 1.935 0.34 5.695 0.000 pond preparation -0.145 0.086 -1.689 0.095 source of water supply 0.101 0.062 1.626 0.108 disinfection of facility -0.032 0.053 -0.599 0.551 quarantine of fry/fingerlings before stocking -0.343 0.076 -1.616 0.11 fingerlings disinfection -0.187 0.116 0.058 0.954 stocking densities 0.005 0.087 2.031 0.045* source of fish seed (e.g. fingerlings) 0.104 0.051 -4.538 0.000* correct feeding practices -0.102 0.083 -1.231 0.222 probiotics application to feed -0.131 0.08 -1.637 0.105 type of feed (conventional or non-conventional) -0.049 0.069 -0.714 0.477 feed storage methods -0.058 0.074 -0.785 0.435 organic inclusions into pond other than fish feed -0.15 0.051 -2.928 0.004* good husbandry practices 0.061 0.113 0.536 0.594 water quality management -0.08 0.065 -1.23 0.222 fish handling -0.376 0.285 -1.317 0.191 routine observations -0.079 0.079 -1.004 0.318 provision of mobile foot bath 0.026 0.079 0.332 0.741 hand washing -0.233 0.131 -1.774 0.08 workers shower -0.163 0.062 -2.626 0.010* access restrictions to visits -0.171 0.062 -2.735 0.008* environmental management/waste disposal -0.034 0.067 -0.508 0.613 work with veterinary officer -0.012 0.06 -0.203 0.84 record keeping of disease -0.211 0.07 -3.027 0.003* pathogen management -0.156 0.062 -2.504 0.014* notify government of any outbreaks -0.128 0.09 -1.428 0.157 history of vaccination -0.066 0.052 -1.268 0.208 biosecurity awareness 0.03 0.115 0.257 0.798 disposal of dead fish -0.02 0.073 -0.272 0.787 practice integrated fish farming -0.029 0.081 -0.358 0.721 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 587-597 593 wildlife visits to farm (e.g. rodents, frogs, snails) -0.249 0.199 -1.248 0.215 fencing of farm 0.021 0.055 0.388 0.699 source: field survey, 2019 * significant at p < 0.05 results show that the model used was a good fit, implying that 63 % of the levels of biosecurity practice resulted from the independent variables. the multiple regression coefficients for stocking density, source of fish seed, organic inclusions, workers shower, access restrictions, the record of fish disease and pathogen management were highly significant (p < 0.05). it implies that these variables are important factors influencing the practice of biosecurity measures in the study area. the coefficients for the source of water supply, stocking density, good husbandry practice, provision of mobile footbath, biosecurity awareness and fencing of the farm were positive, indicating that increases in the magnitude of these variables may bring about increases in the level of biosecurity practice. a large number of negative coefficients of independent variables were observed, implying that increases in the magnitude of these variables may lead to a reduction in the level of biosecurity practice amongst catfish farmers in the area. it calls for a more serious effort in enforcing and monitoring the practice of biosecurity in catfish farms in the area of study, particularly regarding stocking density, source of fish seed, organic inclusions, workers shower, access restrictions, the record of fish disease and pathogen management. control variables used were inputted as part of the independent variables. the contribution of each factor, including the control variables, was minimal. hence ruling out any bias in the model used. the level of biosecurity practice was rated as 2 with scores from 26 -50 % (very poor to poor) in all lgas (figure 2). most of the fish farms visited practiced intensive fish culture; fish was therefore predisposed to diseases due to stress resulting from bad husbandry practices, particularly having to do with organic inclusions to water, which may have led to poor water quality. poor water quality resulting from incorrect feeding with excess organic waste deposition in water was a major probable predisposing factor in most of the fish farms (pann, 2009). optimum fish production has been reported to be dependent on the physical, chemical and biological qualities of water for successful pond management (bhatnagar and devi, 2013). figure 2: level of biosecurity practices by catfish farmers in lgas this study also observed that the practice of biosecurity measures was not an important issue among catfish farmers. most of the farmers preferred non-professional option for the treatment of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 587-597 594 fish diseases. it has been reported that some fish ponds in some of the areas of study are not free of pathogenic agents (nwabueze, 2012). improper or insufficient dosage and treatment of fish diseases could lead to the danger of toxicity, which could cause damage to organs and hinder organ functions as well as introducing the risk of bacteria developing resistance (young, 2003). although anetekhai (2013) reported that outbreaks of fish diseases had not been a major concern in nigeria, the incidence of mortality of fries of about 2 4 weeks was observed across the country, with the true cause of the disease not fully known. it shows that there is a need to put biosecurity checks in place and to monitor compliance to forestall any future fish disease outbreaks. d'andrea (2005) observed that there was no specific legal framework for inland fish farming in nigeria, apart from the inland fisheries decree of 1992, which had a single provision empowering the minister in charge of fisheries matters to determine whether the set up of enclosures such as pens and cages should be subject to a license fee. currently, there is no specific legal definition or framework for the practice of aquaculture in nigeria. 4. conclusion a poor level of practice of biosecurity was observed in the study area. though most of the farmers were aware of the importance of maintaining a healthy fish production system, the practice of biosecurity in the fish farms by catfish farmers was not an important issue in fish production. proper and professional conduct in the aquaculture industry is a necessity for the management of fish farms to forestall any outbreaks of fish diseases in the area. also, a legal framework of international standards to regulate and monitor the level of practice of biosecurity amongst catfish farmers in the aquaculture industry should be put in place. it will go a long way to preventing any future consequences of negligence in aquaculture practices in the area of study. 4.1. the implication for sustainable aquaculture development the poor level of biosecurity practice is not beneficial for the production of healthy fish, particularly in the event of a future disease outbreak. for sustainable aquacultural development, therefore, the practice of biosecurity measures are necessary for catfish farms. guidelines for these measures are to be formulated and supported by appropriate legislation to ensure compliance. it will improve the production of healthy fish and a healthier environment to enhance food security for humanity. funding: there was no specific financial support for this study. competing interests: the authors declare that there is no competing interest. contributors/acknowledgments: the corresponding author solely designed the map, rest is designed equally by all authors. special thanks to the catfish farmers in the area of study for their cooperation during data collection. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adewuyi, s. a., phillip, b. b., ayinde, i. a., & akerele, d. 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(2003). use of antibiotics in ornamental fish aquaculture. university of florida, ifas extension, edis, circular 84 fa 084. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 192 effect of planting time on growth and corm yield of chinese water chestnut (eleocharis dulcis) in the mekong delta, vietnam dao phu quoca nguyen phi ngab le buu thachc auniversity of sciences, ho chi minh city, vietnam; viet nam national university, ho chi minh city, vietnam; institute of environment and resources, ho chi minh city, vietnam. buniversity of sciences, ho chi minh city, vietnam; viet nam national university, ho chi minh city, vietnam. csouthern institute of ecology, vietnam academy of science and technology, ho chi minh city, vietnam.  quoccmina@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 5 april 2021 revised: 10 may 2021 accepted: 8 june 2021 published: 1 july 2021 keywords mekong delta eleocharis dulcis chinese water chestnut cultivated crop yield. experiments were conducted to study the effect of time of planting on the performance of chinese water chestnut in the mekong delta in vietnam over a single investigation. plants of a local clone were planted in early january, march, may, july, september, or november and grown for four months. during the experiments, the photoperiod ranged from 11.2 to 12.6 h. the average daily mean temperature across the different cropping periods ranged from 27.70c to 29.10c. information was collected on chlorophyll fluorescence, plant growth, and yield. chlorophyll fluorescence (fv/fm) was greater than 0.7 in all the treatments (non-stressed), except for the first time of planting and at the end of growing. corm yield was higher with a planting in may (525 g/plant), november (440 g/plant), and march (325 g/plant), intermediate with a planting in july (196 g/plant), and lower with a planting in january (116 g/plant) and september (55 g/plant). there were strong correlations between yield and the number of stems/plant (r = 0.84), and between yield and stem weight (r = 0.84). these results indicate that acceptable commercial yields can be achieved with water chestnut planted in may in this area. contribution/originality: this study is one of very few studies to have investigated the effects of planting seasons on growth and corm yield of chinese water chestnut (eleocharis dulcis) in the mekong delta, vietnam; this study provides information about the most suitable times of the year for culture. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.192.198 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: dao phu quoc --nguyen phi nga --le buu thach (2021). effect of planting time on growth and corm yield of chinese water chestnut (eleocharis dulcis) in the mekong delta, vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2), 192-198. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.192.198 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction chinese water chestnut (eleocharis dulcis (burm.f.) trin. ex hensch.) is cultivated in many parts of the world. it was introduced to the usa (orlando, fl) in 1930, where its yield was 92 tons/ha (morton, sanchez, & snyder, 1988). this species is also cultivated in australia, with an average yield of 20 tons/ha (kleinhenz, midmore, & geoff, 2001). according to mei, kleinhenz, lyall, and midmore (2000), photoperiod and temperature both affect the growth asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 2 (2021): 192-198 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1874-9557 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7429-3641 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0593-6222 mailto:quoccmina@gmail.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.192.198 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 192-198 193 and development of water chestnut. these factors also affect yield and the ratio of tuber biomass to total fresh biomass (mei et al., 2000). according to meili and kleinhenz, the critical photoperiod is 12.0–12.5 h (kleinhenz et al., 2001; mei et al., 2000) and seed corms are best planted when the minimum soil temperature is above 13°c. corm formation was retarded by long days and promoted by photoperiods below a critical maximum (mei et al., 2000). in the mekong delta in vietnam, the photoperiod rises from 11.2 hours in january to 12.6 hours in july. the lowest average monthly temperature is in january (24 ± 1°c), and the highest average monthly temperature is in may (28 ± 1°c). we propose that water chestnut can be cultivated according to the information recommended by the abovementioned studies. this study examined the cultivation of water chestnut in the mekong delta; specifically, we examined the affect of different times of planting on plant performance. 2. materials and methods experiments were conducted at can tho city in the mekong delta (9° 57'40.51" n, 105° 46'36.70" e) in 2018 and 2019. the plants were planted at six different times and harvested after four months, as shown in table 1. table-1. summary of planting and harvesting dates, range of photoperiod and mean temperature from six experiments. experiment planting date harvesting date photoperiod mean temperature (0c) 1 01 jan 30 april 11:33-12:28 28.3 2 01 mar 30 june 11:55-12:25 29.1 3 01 may 30 aug 12:28-12.42 28.6 4 01 july 30 oct 11:48-12.42 28.2 5 01 sep 30 dec 11:32-12:18 28.4 6 01 nov 28 feb (2019) 11:32-11:55 27.7 monthly maximum, minimum, and mean temperatures are presented in table 2. table-2. monthly max and min temperatures (ºc) in can tho from january 2018 to february 2019. day/month temperature (0c) jan. feb. mar. apr. may. jun jul. aug. sep. oct. nov. dec. jan. feb max 32.5 33.6 34.9 35.7 35.4 33.8 33.6 33.7 33.7 33.7 33.7 34.9 32.5 33.5 min 20.6 21 24 24 24 23.2 22.7 22.3 22.5 23.5 22.3 23.1 20.6 21.1 average 26.5 27.3 29.4 29.8 29.7 28.5 28.2 28.0 28.1 28.6 28 29 26.5 27.3 chinese water chestnut corms were selected with weight ranging from 20 to 25 g/corm. they were placed in six foam boxes filled with moist clay soil and kept in a cooler at 5ºc. for each experiment, we took one foam box with corms and covered them with moist soil in polyethylene terephthalate glasses (5 cm diameter, 10 cm depth). after 15 days, when the seedlings had an average of 12 stalks and an average height of 30–40 cm, we moved the plants to a polystyrene box (25×25 cm and 28 cm deep), in which the depth of the soil layer was 23 cm. each experiment included 30 plants. the potted plants were grown under natural light and watered twice a day to ensure that there was always a thin layer of water (1–3 cm) on the soil. each pot was fertilized with 10 g of npk (n 20%, p2o5 20%, k2o 15%) every 30 days. every month we measured chlorophyll fluorescence, the number of stems, and number of blooming stems per plant, selecting mature stems in each bush and randomly measuring 30 mature stems in one box. we measured stem length and diameter and tracked corm formation. the plants were harvested 120 days after planting, and the total number of stems counted and their diameter and length were recorded. we also weighted the total mass of the stems/box. plant parts were dried in an oven for 72 h at 70°c. total soluble solids (brix 0) was determined as tree brown corm per box. the corms were peeled and ground, and juice extracted using a blender. we filtered the juice through whatman filter paper, centrifuged it at 10,000 rpm for 10 min, collected the extract, and measured the brix value with a refractometer. chlorophyll fluorescence was measured using the handy pea (hansatech, kings lynn, uk) with mature leaves from three plants in each sample. to evaluate the correlation of active variables (photoperiod, temperature (0c), stem number, stem height (cm), stem diameter (cm), flower, stem weight (g), root weight (g), corm weight (g), corm number, total weight (g), % bearing flowers, corm size (g)) and between observed variables (planting times: jan, march, may, july, sep (e1, e2, e3, e4, e5, and e6, respectively)), the data were analyzed using anova at the 95% confidence level (p = 0.05). in order to determine differences in parameters, rate relationship prices were equal to leaner regression. in addition, comparisons between experiments were done by factor analysis using the software xlsttat 2020 by applying principle component analysis (pca). in this study, pca is based on a correlation matrix and is forced to select two principal components, which together account for more than 75% of variation in the data. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 192-198 194 3. results 3.1. chlorophyll fluorescence figure-1. effected of time of planting on chlorophyll fluorescence in chinese water chestnut in vietnam. the plants were planted in jan. (e1), march (2), may (e3), july (e4), sept. (e5), and nov. (e6) and harvested after four months. data are the means of plant treatment (statistical analysis of each pair showed no difference between e1, e2, e3, e4, and e6 – only e5 was statistically significant different (α= 0.05, p <0.01). according to previous studies and values, fv/fm of 0.75–0.86 is an indicator of healthy plants while 0.60–0.75 indicates stressed plants (critchley, 1998). all plants had acceptable values of fv/fm except for the first time of planting at crop harvest (figure 1). 3.2. growth and development 3.2.1. number of stems the number of stems doubled in the first two months of plant growth, and the main bush of each plant produced 2–3 additional bushes by means of rhizome division (figure 2). each adult bush maintained an average of 14–18 stems (up to 24 stems/bush) and, on average, stem growth rate tripled after two months. figure-2. stem number increase by month. the plants were planted in jan (e1), march (e2), may (e3), july (e4), sept (e5), and nov (e6) and harvested after four months. data are the means of plant treatment. the number of stems was different among the experiments and was statistically significant (α= 0.05, p <0.01). the number of stems was lower in e4 and e5 than in e1, e2, e3 and e6. these results suggest that early or late plantings are best commerce production in this area. 0 50 100 150 200 250 0 1 2 3 4 n u m b e r o f st e m s p e r p la n t month after planting e 1 e 2 e 3 e 4 e 5 e 6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 192-198 195 3.2.2. stem height stem height increased rapidly in the first two months of growth, except for e1 and e6 where it was slower (figure 3). stem height was lower in e.6 than in the other treatments. figure-3. stem height increase by month. the plants were planted in jan (e1), march (e2), may (e3), july (e4), sept (e5), and nov (e6) and harvested after four months. data are the means of plant treatment. 3.2.3. stem diameter increases in stem diameter were greatest in the first two months after plating (figure 4). final stem diameter was highest in e3, intermediate in e1, e2, e4, and e6, and lowest in e5. figure-4. stem diameter increase by month. the plants were planted in jan (e1), march (e2), may (e3), july (e4), sept (e5), and nov (e6) and harvested after four months. data are the means of plant treatment. average stem diameter among experiments with the same date was significantly different (α= 0.05, p <0.01). 3.3. harvesting biomass biomass of aboveground plant parts (stems) accounted for 42%, and biomass of belowground parts (roots/rhizomes and corms) accounted for 58% (figure 5). this showed that the plants tended to accumulate belowground biomass more than the aboveground biomass. the total fresh biomass of experiment e3 was the highest (1337 g/box), followed by e2 and e6. the ratio of stem biomass/total biomass in e1 was the highest with up to 50% of the total biomass, leading to lower corm biomass, compared to e3 and e6. the lowest stem biomass/total biomass (34%) was recorded for e1. the fresh weight of stems in e6 and e1 was lower than that of corms, indicating a tendency of biomass accumulation in corms at this period of growth. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 0 1 2 3 4 h e ig h t o f st e m ( cm ) month after planting e1 e2 e3 e4 e5 e6 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0 1 2 2 4 d ia m e te r o f st e m ( cm ) month after planting e1 e2 e3 e4 e5 e6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 192-198 196 figure-5. fresh biomass of stems, roots and rhizomes, and corms. the plants were planted in jan (e1), march (e2), may (e3), july (e4), sept (e5), and nov (e6) and harvested after four months. there were significant difference between the six treatments (α = 0.05, p <0.01). 3.4. size and number of corms the size and number of corms in all experiments were different (p <0.01), but there were similarities between e1 and e3. the size of corms harvested from the six experiments was lower than for the parent corm (25 g/corm), and thus the environmental conditions in can tho may have had a negative impact on corm size. table-3. corm numbers and average corm size in experiments. parameter e1 e2 e3 e4 e5 e6 bloom stems (%) 5.0 6.0 21.0 48.0 2.0 1.0 number of corms 11.6 23.6 37.4 20.4 5.9 73.9 largest corm (g) 18 17 18 14 13 12 smallest corm (g) 5 7 6 5 3 1 average corm weight 14.3a 13.8 14.1a 9.8 9.3 6.0 total fresh biomass of corm (g/plant) 116 325 525 196 55 440 total fresh biomass of stem 112 598 557 189 62 830 total fresh biomass of root and rhizome 51 272 254 86 28 178 note: there is a statistically significant difference between cells on the same row (α = 0.05, p <0.01), except between two cells with the same symbol (a). the average size of corms harvested in experiment e1 was highest and that of e6 is the lowest, while the total corm biomass of e3 was the highest (table 3). all corms harvested from six experiments were less than 19 g/corm. perhaps the environmental conditions of the growing region had an influence on corm size. the size of corms was dissimilar among the six treatments, being statistically significant (α = 0.05, p <0.01), except in the case of mediumsized corms for e1 and e3, which were similar. figure-6. ratio (%) of corm size (g/corm) for all six treatments. 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 e1 e2 e3 e4 e5 e6 fr e sh b io m as s (g ) stem root and rhizome corm 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 e1 e2 e3 e4 e5 e6 r ai ti o ( % ) o f co rm s iz e ( g/ co rm ) fo r al l s ix t re at m e n ts 14-18g 9-13g <9g asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 192-198 197 figure 6 shows that the percentage of corms >14g was greatest in e3, and progressively decreased in the order e2, e4, e1, e5, e6. thus the two most significant crops in the agricultural economy are e2 and e3. 3.5. brix value in corms the brix value did not differ among the experimental plots, averaging 7 ± 1. 3.6. pca information from 12 parameters obtained in the six experiments, through pca, can be displayed by the scores of the two principal components, with 48.1% and 28.47% of the variation in data, respectively (figure 7). only 23.43% of information in the data was lost. the positive direction of pc1 points towards experiments with relatively high biomass, including total weight, stem weight, corm weight, and root weight. it is also includes high stem number and stem diameter. pc2 is mostly highly correlated with stem height and corm size. figure-7. distribution of active observations and active variables on the correlation plane. as shown in figure 7, the six experiments can be classified into three groups. the first group, consisting of e2 and e3, has a high yield, the second is e6, which has an intermediate yield while the last group (e1, e4 and e5) shows lower yields. there was no clear relationship between yield and average photoperiod or average daily mean temperature for different times of planting. it was also observed that crop yield (corm weight) has a strong correlation with stem number (r = 0.84) and stem weight (r = 0.84) (figure 8). thus, these two parameters can be used as indicators to project the corm yield of the crop. figure-8. linear regression between corm weight and stem number (left) and stem weight (right). y = 2.2947x 4.6433 r² = 0.7202 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 0 100 200 300 c o rm w e ig h t (g ) stem number y = 1.0731x + 15.208 r² = 0.7095 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 0 200 400 600 800 c o rm w e ig h t (g ) stem weight (g) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 192-198 198 4. discussion 4.1. cultivability of chinese water chestnut in the mekong delta according to lambers, hans, and oliveira (2019), of those species introduced to a site, many lack the physiological traits to survive the physical environment. results of the present study confirm that chinese water chestnut cultivated in the mekong river delta can survive, grow, and reproduce. measurements of chlorophyl fluorescence and other growth parameters of plants cultivated at different times of the year showed that it can grow healthily, undergo a growth stage in the first three months and enter the reproductive stage in the last month during the four months of its life cycle. thus, it has physiological traits to adapt to the physical environment of the mekong delta. however, many plant species that are transported to different continents as ornamental or food crops never spread beyond the areas where they were planted, because they cannot compete with native species. however, the occurrence of wild e. dulcis in the mekong delta can be considered a reason to believe that chinese water chestnut can overcome the biotic filter. 4.2. suitability of crop season for cultivation of chinese water chestnut in the mekong delta the total cultivation time of chinese water chestnut in the mekong delta is also lower than in other regions – the time from nursery to harvesting was 120–140 days in the mekong delta but 220 days in australia and the usa (kleinhenz et al., 2001). the duration of daylight for the highest biomass recorded in the corm experiments (for e3 and e2 (table 3)) was between 12h 28’-12h 43’ and 11h 55’–12h 25’, respectively. this result is consistent with the study of mei et al. (2000), which recommended that the critical photoperiod of this crop is between 12h 00’ and 12h 30’, and corm formation was promoted by photoperiods shorter than a critical maximum. thus, we can suggest that the season for cropping of this cultivar in the mekong delta is from march to august. this study also found that the experiment e6, with the range of daylight between 11h 32’ and 11h 55’, which was lower than the critical value, had higher yield compared with that of e1, e4, and e5. according to the study by mei et al. (2000) among photoperiods shorter than the critical value, the shortest photoperiod tended to induce stronger corm formation. in our study, we also observed that plants in experiment e6 produced very early corms (30 days after planting) and the number of corms obtained was the highest. this led to a higher yield in this experiment, even though the photoperiod was not favorable for the growth of this cultivar because, under short days, significantly more dry matter is allocated to corms and rhizomes. on the other hand, it seems that not only daylength but also temperature determines the yield of this plant, because the average temperature of this experiment was 27.7 0c, the lowest among the six experiments. observation of the production of chinese water chestnut in australia suggested that corm formation is associated with shortened photoperiod and cool temperatures, or photoperiod/temperature interaction. 5. conlusions to sum up, the data presented here suggest that it is possible to cultivate chinese water chestnut in climates such as those in can tho city in the mekong delta, with a daily temperature range of 20.6–35.7 ºc and photoperiod between 11h 30’ and 12h 43’. the most suitable growing season starts in april or may and ends in august, because the highest yield will be obtained and it will avoid flood damage in the mekong delta, where the flood season is often august–november. further studies should focus on the biotic interactions of this crop in the mekong delta to determine its diseases or natural enemies. in addition, to ensure successful crops, specific experiments should be conducted to determine the level of salinity and flood tolerance in order to minimize the damage caused by saltwater intrusion and floods due to the impacts of climate change. funding: this research was funded by the vietnam national university – ho chi minh city (vnu-hcm) under grant no. c2018-24-02. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: all authors contributed in an equal manner in designing the present research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references cantho city city statistics office. (2019). cantho city statistical yearbook 2018. ha noi: statistical publishing house. cantho city city statistics office. (2020). cantho city statistical yearbook 2019. ha noi: statistical publishing house. critchley, c. (1998). “photoinhibition.” in photosynthesis: a comprehensive treatise, a.s. raghavendra (pp. 264–272). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. kleinhenz, v., midmore, d. j., & geoff, l. (2001). a grower’s guide to cultivating chinese waterchestnut in australia. kingston, act: rural industries research and development corporation. lambers, hans, & oliveira, r. s. (2019). plant physiological ecology (3rd ed.): springer international publishing. mei, l., kleinhenz, v., lyall, t., & midmore, d. 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(1988). chinese waterchestnuts in florida past, present, and future. paper presented at the proceedings of the... annual meeting of the florida state horticulture society (usa). effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 222 market-based strategy to anticipate covid-19 pandemic in smallholder rubber plantations in riau province, indonesia shorea khaswarinaa sucherlyb umi kaltumc r. rina novianti ariawatyd a,b,c,ddoctoral study program of management sciences faculty of economics and business,university of padjadjaran dipatiukur, bandung, indonesia.  shorea.khaswarina@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 20 may 2021 revised: 25 june 2021 accepted: 27 july 2021 published: 23 august 2021 keywords rubber market strategy marketing mix strategy customer value marketing performance. the coronavirus pandemic had disrupted almost all businesses in various sectors, one of which is the plantation sector. smallholder rubber plantations in riau province, indonesia have faced the very tough challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. efforts that could be made were marketing rubber products by implementing market-based strategies, namely market strategy, marketing mix strategy, customer value and marketing performance. this study aimed to analyze the effects of market strategy, marketing mix strategy, and customer value on marketing performance in smallholder rubber plantations in riau province during the covid-19 pandemic. data collection was carried out using 45 respondents as heads of smallholder rubber plantation farmer groups in riau province. data analysis used structural equation modeling-partial least square (sem-pls). the results show that market strategy and marketing mix strategy had a significant direct effect on customer value. customer value had a significant direct effect on the marketing performance of smallholder rubber plantation farmer groups in riau, while the market and marketing mix strategies had an indirect effect. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the existing literature on market-based strategy. it requires knowledge of appropriate market-based strategies to be implemented in order to attract as many consumers as possible. the study findings will be used to improve rubber marketing performance. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.113.222.229 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: shorea khaswarina --sucherly --umi kaltum --r. rina novianti ariawaty (2021). market-based strategy to anticipate covid-19 pandemic in smallholder rubber plantations in riau province, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3), 222-229. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.113.222.229 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic has disrupted economies in many sectors around the world. reduced demand will lead to a reduction in overall profit, particularly in less influential sectors (guerrieri, lorenzoni, straub, & werning, 2020) such as the rubber plantation sector. rubber plantations are the main global source of natural rubber production; natural rubber is as an important raw material in several high-level manufacturing sectors. different rubber plantations around the world have different plant characteristics and quality of latex (brenas, 2019) affecting the price of rubber. according to su, liu, tao, and lobonţ (2019), rubber prices can change over the long or short term. short-term changes are usually influenced by world natural rubber production and changes in world rubber consumption, while long-term changes are influenced by changes in natural rubber stocks, production, and consumption. the institutional existence of smallholder rubber plantations in riau by implementing direct market-based marketing strategies is used as a solution to overcome farmers' low bargaining positions. this community rubber asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 3 (2021): 222-229 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0334-0188 mailto:shorea.khaswarina@yahoo.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.113.222.229 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 222-229 223 plantation institution is the kuantan singingi rubber association (apkarkusi), which consists of 45 farmer groups who conducts business activities that focus on selling products to other companies, not to individual consumers. this means that all farmer groups are business to business (b2b) companies. das, deshpande, salvi, goyal, and bhirud (2018) suggest that b2b marketing focuses on meeting business needs rather than non-individual corporate consumers, which makes it a complex business system. a b2b business strategy involves a real business information campaign about a product or service. rubber farmer groups in riau province during the covid-19 pandemic are facing marketing problems. in particular, the minimal application of market-based strategies is a major concern. the facts found in riau reveal that although the auction system has been implemented in the marketing activities of farmer groups, some continue to do marketing through traditional mechanisms. the reason is that the farmer groups do not have a factory for processing rubber, which leads suppliers to employ services from collectors to distribute their products to factories. the location of the farmers' fields, which are far from the factory, causes both production and distribution costs. these problems can be overcome by implementing a market and marketing mix strategies. the application of the marketing mix strategy uses the new era 4v marketing theory (differentiation, functional, value-added, and resonance), which provides a reference for marketing agricultural products. meanwhile, the application of market strategy is a formation strategy that includes customer involvement and technology leadership. a market strategy is a plan for how the company will provide value to the target market and make profits by fulfilling a promise/demand. the strategy identifies target market customers, creates a value proposition for each customer groups, and identifies the optimal channel for successfully providing a product or service to the target market (shimasaki, 2014). according to brege and kindström (2019), market strategy is used to refer to the company's strategy in creating and delivering customer value. a proactive producer will gain competitive advantage by having a superior understanding of the customer. proactive, in the context of b2b marketing, refers to companies that are future-oriented, take initiative, and drive change (grant & ashford, 2008; kindström, ottosson, & carlborg, 2018; parker, bindl, & strauss, 2010). a proactive formation strategy refers to a company's strategy to affect customers, suppliers, and other market players in order to strengthen their own ability to provide superior customer value and reduce the ability of their competitors, thereby gaining competitive advantage (elg, deligonul, ghauri, danis, & tarnovskaya, 2012; kindström et al., 2018; storbacka & nenonen, 2015). the strength of a market formation strategy comes from a combination of proactive activities aimed at changing market structure and customer-focused activities that provide companies with in-depth insights into current and potential customer needs (brege and kindström (2019)). exploring market strategies and related activities is important, because proactivity has the potential to increase the b2b performance (kindström et al., 2018; narver, slater, & maclachlan, 2004). the marketing mix has gradually changed from the original manufacturer-oriented 4p theory (product, price, place, and promotion) to the 4v theory, which focuses on customer satisfaction. in recent years, the marketing mix has once again evolved into a 4v theory centered on customer loyalty. the agricultural product marketing mix is an agricultural product marketing strategy that flexibly uses the 4v combination theory, which can play a positive role in the development of agricultural products. deng, he, fu, liu, and hu (2019) developed the 4v combination theory into the marketing of agricultural products and studied the impact of the 4v marketing mix on the perceived value of agricultural products. this provides new ideas and strategic support for marketing agricultural products in china. the four elements of the 4v marketing theory, namely differentiation, functional flexibility, added value, and resonance to the perceived value. the application of marketing strategy theory is important in influencing consumers to purchase a product or service, and is often referred to as the marketing mix (kotler & armstrong, 2018). market strategy refers to the company's strategy in creating and delivering customer value. proactive, in the context of b2b marketing, refers to companies that are future-oriented, take initiative, and drive change (brege & kindström, 2019). therefore, it requires knowledge of appropriate market-based strategies to be implemented in order to attract as many consumers as possible, so that farmer groups will become proactive producers and have a superior understanding of customers so as to obtain maximum profit. this research aimed to analyze the applicability of market-based strategies on smallholder rubber plantations in riau province facing the covid-19 pandemic effects, by analyzing the influence of market strategies, marketing mix strategies, and customer value on marketing performance. 2. materials and methods the method used was the verification method: namely, measuring and testing the causal relationships between the variables of customer value, market strategy, and marketing mix strategy. the unit of research analysis was farmer groups in riau province, indonesia. the sampling technique was the saturated sampling technique. the research observation unit was the head of the farmer group. data analysis used structural equation modeling-partial least square (sem-pls). sem-pls analysis consists of two models, the structural model/inner model (figure 1) and the measurement model/outer model (table 1). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 222-229 224 figure-1. structural model. table-1. measurement model. latent variables dimensions manifest variables symbol market strategies (x1) market formation the ability of farmer groups to increase the number of rubber customers x1.01 rules for the number of processed rubber materials sold to customers x1.02 the farmer group knows the price of rubber before it is sold to customers x1.03 target sales volume for processed rubber materials of farmers x1.04 the rate of each processed rubber materials sales volume increases x1.05 determinant factors of supplier–customer agreements x1.08 the farmer sells the processed rubber materials according to the existing agreement x1.09 process the rubber materials and use the sap vinegar according to the provisions x1.12 technological knowledge of farmers in the rubber business x1.13 discussion of new technology between farmer-land owners x1.15 customer engagement ability to build farmer–customer relationships x1.16 providing services to customers x1.17 the tendency of customers to buy processed rubber materials from farmers x1.18 how many times customers have subscribed x1.19 involvement of family members in the rubber business x1.20 the grade of processed rubber materials x1.21 rules for the duties of suppliers in the family/village/hamlet x1.22 the motivation of farmers to do rubber business x1.24 the level of maintaining the rubber business x1.27 the decision to do rubber business x1.28 the decision to sell rubber products to customers x1.29 the ability of farmer groups to continue to innovate due to customer involvement x1.30 technology leadership determine the use of technology x1.31 adopting new things in business x1.32 who is adopting new things? x1.33 have attended extension x1.35 new ways/methods in the rubber business x1.36 new ways of saving production costs x1.37 special tools for notching x1.38 mobile phone/social media for communication with customers x1.39 using the internet to determine the price of rubber x1.40 benefits of guidance/extension from related offices x1.41 benefits of technology in the business and buying and selling of rubber x1.44 marketing mix strategies (x2) differentiation of agricultural products performance of farmer groups is already good in producing rubber materials x2.01 the quality of the processed rubber materials is in x2.03 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 222-229 225 latent variables dimensions manifest variables symbol accordance with the national standard quality the resulting rubber form lump/latex x2.04 processing rubber latex, before being marketed x2.05 processed rubber materials can last before being processed by customers x2.06 the quality of the processed rubber materials is as promised x2.07 ability to produce processed rubber materials x2.09 the resistance level of the processed rubber materials x2.10 the peculiarities of natural/rubber products are difficult to imitate or replace x2.12 the shape and quality of the processed rubber materials product are easy to improve x2.14 time to improve the quality of processed rubber materials in the old factory x2.15 agricultural product elasticity the function of rubber products according to the needs of the target market x2.16 customers are easy to get processed rubber materials products x2.17 affordability of rubber prices by customers x2.19 value-added the process of extraction of rubber latex is hereditary x2.20 prices increase due to the use of technology to process processed rubber materials x2.21 the target market is achieved by means of a marketing channel x2.22 the price of the processed rubber materials goes up with a special price service x2.23 customer value (y) resonance the frequency of extraction of rubber latex x2.24 time to collect processed rubber materials x2.25 good relationship/trust/communication x2.26 how farmers deliver processed rubber materials to customers x2.27 emotional value farmers are satisfied in selling to customers y.01 farmers believe in selling to customers y.02 social value reasons for selling processed rubber materials to customers y.03 farmers have relationships with customers y.04 quality value processed rubber materials quality performance conditions y.05 farmers are able to provide services quickly y.07 cost/price value the selling price of the processed rubber materials is as expected y.08 when do prices go up and down? y.09 prices are appropriate to meet customer needs y.11 prices are set by farmers/suppliers y.12 prices according to meet needs y.13 marketing performance (z) sales value sales value increases every year z.01 sales value is always achieved z.02 sales volume targets are always achieved z.04 customer growth the number of consumers is fixed at each harvest z.05 the target number of customers has always been achieved z.06 productivity growth total sales of all products with total product sales increased z.07 profits increase with each sale z.08 from the smart-pls output we can show the effect between one latent variable and another by looking at the p value: if p ≤ 0.05, the latent variable had a significant effect on other latent variables. conversely, if p > 0.05, the latent variable did not have a significant effect on other latent variables (saptutyningsih & esty, 2020). the magnitude of the effect can be seen from the coefficient value. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 222-229 226 3. results and discussion 3.1. direct effect of market and marketing mix strategies on customer value the direct effect of market and marketing mix strategies on customer value is shown in table 2. table-2. direct effect of market and marketing mix strategies on customer value. hypothesis path coefficient standard deviation tstatistic p value r2 market strategy -> customer value 0.424 0.122 3.480 0.001 0.577 marketing mix strategy -> customer value 0.389 0.126 3.083 0.002 3.2. direct effect of market strategy on customer value table 2 shows that the p value of market strategy was lower than alpha 5% (0.001 < 0.05), which means that market strategy had a significant effect on customer value. the path coefficient value was positive, namely 0.424, which means that each increase in market strategy by one point would increase customer value by 0.424 units and vice versa, assuming other variables remain constant. the more relevant the market strategy used, the better the benefits that will be obtained from the products of the farmer group, namely processed rubber materials that must be paid for by customers. the research shows that the better or the higher the market strategy in the process level of the processed rubber materials price agreement, the higher the customer value. based on the indicator of the level of the processed rubber materials price agreement process from the market formation dimension, the price formation rules were based on the condition of the dollar exchange rate, sicom rubber, and the condition of the quality/quality of the processed rubber materials in the field, which could also affect the price offered. these rules or conditions have been approved by the company of the buyer who wants to join by making a statement letter that they were willing to follow the provisions related to the mechanism to be determined in the marketing of the processed rubber materials auction. that way the level of trust between farmers and customers became stronger. this research also shows that in the marketing of the auction system of the customer (factory) that offered the highest price would get all the farmer groups' processed rubber materials. this provides a higher profit compared to selling to collector traders and guarantees that all of the farmers' rubber products were sold if they met the standard. according to bhanot, kathuria, and das (2020), choosing to sell through alternative marketing channels helped farmers to minimize losses and avoid difficulties in sales. islam, hollebeek, rahman, khan, and rasool (2019) stated that service quality had a positive effect on customer involvement. the customer involvement strategy was one of the dimensions of market strategy related to customer value, because it focused on activities aimed at providing higher customer value through a superior understanding of their needs, including latent needs, and developing offerings to meet those needs. 3.3. direct effect of marketing mix strategy on customer value table 2 shows that the p value of the marketing mix strategy was smaller than 5% alpha (0.002 < 0.05), meaning that the marketing mix strategy had a significant effect on customer value. the path coefficient value (0.389) was positive, meaning that each 1-point increase in the marketing mix strategy would increase the customer value by 0.389 units and vice versa, assuming other variables remain constant. the higher the marketing mix strategy in the form of rubber produced (lump/latex), the higher the customer value. based on the indicators of the form of rubber produced (lump/latex) from the dimensions of agricultural product differentiation, all rubber produced by farmers was in lump form so that it was in accordance with customer/factory demand. according to purohit, paul, and mishra (2021), product is a major concern and it is important to acknowledge the customer's perspective when developing it. the results show that the shape of the processed rubber materials produced by lump/latex methods contributed to increasing the marketing mix strategy, because the shape of the processed rubber materials produced was in accordance with consumer demands. based on the indicator of the affordability of the location by customers from the elasticity dimension of agricultural products, the reach of the location of rubber products by customers would lead to a sense of satisfaction so that customer value increased. purohit et al. (2021) argued that companies must be careful when deciding on distribution channels to ensure that a product or service is available. according to ranta, keränen, and aarikkastenroos (2019), services that allowed products and materials to maintain value for longer increase the value creation potential of a single product. based on the indicators of hereditary rubber sap extraction process from the added value dimension, hereditary extraction could improve the marketing mix strategy to support added value and increase customer value. kwok, tang, and yu (2020) suggest that marketing mix is a dominant factor in identifying market developments and trends, and was the main tool in achieving the company's business goals. marketing activities consisted of elements of the marketing mix that reflected customer expectations and involved all factors used by companies to affect consumer perceptions of their products and services. 3.4. effect of market and marketing mix strategies and customer value on marketing performance the direct effect of market and marketing mix strategies and customer value on marketing performance is shown in table 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 222-229 227 table-3. direct effect of market and marketing mix strategies and customer value on marketing performance. hypothesis path coefficient standard deviation t-statistic p value r2 market strategy -> marketing performance 0.304 0.165 1.838 0.067 marketing mix strategy -> marketing performance 0.161 0.129 0.304 0.215 0.749 customer value -> marketing performance 0.486* 0.146 3.335 0.001 note: * significant at α 5%. 3.5. direct effect of market strategy on marketing performance table 3 shows that market strategy had no significant effect on marketing performance. based on the ruling indicator for the number of processed rubber materials sold to customers from the dimension of market formation, auction system marketing did not impose a rule on the volume/number of processed rubber materials to be sold. factors such as small area of land and erratic weather could affect the performance in producing and selling processed rubber materials. the result shows that the farmer groups never decided on the number of processed rubber materials that should be sold: farmers were free to determine the volume of sales. the absence of a stipulated rule on the number of processed materials to be sold meant that the volume of production produced varied with each sale. this is contrary to the opinion of orsi, de noni, corsi, and marchisio (2017) that farmer groups need to expand the cumulative amount of production to develop more effective actions to sell products to the market and increase their bargaining power. 3.6. direct effect of marketing mix strategy on marketing performance table 3 shows the marketing mix strategy had no significant effect on performance. purohit et al. (2021) considered physical access to products and services as the main challenge. the inseparability, perishability, and intangibility of services made traditional distribution channels ineffective. 3.7. direct effect of customer value on marketing performance table 3 shows that customer value had a significant effect on marketing performance. the higher the customer value in the indicator that farmers were satisfied with selling to customers, the higher the marketing performance. based on the indicator of how satisfied farmers were in selling to customers from the emotional value dimension, farmers' satisfaction in selling was affected by the price that the farmer receives and the availability of access to the customer. the satisfaction felt by farmers in selling materials to customers increased the enthusiasm of farmers in producing quality products. the result show that several factors led to farmer satisfaction in selling processed rubber materials to customers, including price received by farmers and availability to the customer. if the price received by farmers was high, they would be enthusiastic about producing processed rubber materials in large quantities. if availability was adequate and supported by transportation, it would make it easier for farmers to deliver processed rubber materials. 3.8. indirect effect of market and marketing mix strategies on marketing performance the indirect effect of market and marketing mix strategies on marketing performance is shown in table 4. table-4. use of values for the sobel test. hypothesis a b sa sb market strategy -> customer value -> marketing performance 0.203 0.370 0.022 0.085 marketing mix strategy -> customer value -> marketing performance 0.284 0.457 0.041 0.083 note: a = the direct effect coefficient of the independent variable with the intervening variable; b = the direct effect coefficient of the intervening variable with the dependent variable; sa = standard error coefficient a; sb = standard error coefficient b. 3.9. indirect effect of market strategy on marketing performance the hypothesis of the effect of market strategy on marketing performance through customer value used the sobel test. the values required for the sobel test are as follows: a = 0.203 b = 0.370 sa = 0.022 sb = 0.085 the indirect coefficient of market strategy variables on marketing performance is as follows: ab = a x b = 0,203 x 0,370 = 0,07511 the indirect standard error for market strategy variables on marketing performance was obtained as follows: 𝑆𝑎𝑏 = √𝑏2.𝑆𝑎2) + (𝑎2. 𝑆𝑏2) 𝑆𝑎𝑏 = √(0,4572 x 0,0412) + (0,2842 x 0,0832) 𝑆𝑎𝑏 = √0,00035 + 0,00055 𝑆𝑎𝑏 = 0,019 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 222-229 228 thus, the t-test value was obtained as follows : 𝑡 = 0,075 0,019 𝑡 = 3,947 based on the results from the processed data, the t-count was determined to be (3.947) > 1.96, which means the hypothesis was accepted. market strategy through customer value had a significant effect on marketing performance. thus, higher market strategies mediated by customer value increase marketing performance: namely, if the rubber farmer groups carried out the market strategy properly, this creates customer value, which in turn would increase the marketing performance of smallholder rubber plantations. this is in accordance with the conditions at the research location, where farmer groups that applied the best market strategies, such as maintaining high quality, creating good relationships with customers, using technology, making innovations, increasing knowledge about rubber farming, and providing optimal service so as to create satisfaction and added value in the eyes of customers, thereby increased their marketing performance. brege and kindström (2019) have suggested that market strategy acted as a coordinated proactive activity aimed at creating customer value and increasing sales volume and business profits. 3.10. indirect effects of marketing mix strategy on marketing performance the hypothesis of the effect of the marketing mix strategy on marketing performance through customer value was assessed using the sobel test. the values required for the sobel test are as follows: a = 0.284 b = 0.457 sa = 0.041 sb = 0.083 the indirect coefficient of market strategy variables on marketing performance is as follows: ab = a x b = 0,284 x 0,457 = 0,129788 the indirect standard error for market strategy variables on marketing performance was obtained as follows: 𝑆𝑎𝑏 = √𝑏2.𝑆𝑎2) + (𝑎2. 𝑆𝑏2) 𝑆𝑎𝑏 = √(0,4572 x 0,0412) + (0,2842 x 0,0832) 𝑆𝑎𝑏 = √0,00035 + 0,00055 𝑆𝑎𝑏 = 0,0009 the t-test value is obtained as follows: 𝑡 = 0,129 0,03 𝑡 = 4,300 the t-count was (4.300) > 1.96, which means that the marketing mix strategy through customer value had a significant effect on marketing performance. higher marketing mix strategies mediated by customer value improve marketing performance: namely, if the rubber farmer groups carried out a good marketing mix strategy, it created customer value, which in turn improved the marketing performance of smallholder rubber plantations. according to purohit et al. (2021), product is a major concern and it is important to acknowledge the customer's perspective when developing it. 4. conclusion market-based strategies on smallholder rubber plantations in riau province during the covid-19 pandemic have had a significant effect on customer value. the market-based strategies included both market and marketing mix. the market strategy had a dominant effect on the strategy formulation of smallholder rubber plantation farmer groups, where the dimensions of the marketing mix strategy show positive associations and were responded to very well by farmer groups. better market strategies create superior customer value. customer value, in turn, was affected by the dominant marketing mix strategy in the dimensions of agricultural product differentiation and product elasticity. customer value had a direct effect on marketing performance, while market and marketing mix strategies had an indirect effect. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: all authors contributed in an equal manner in designing the present research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 222-229 229 references bhanot, d., kathuria, v., & das, d. 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(2019). do natural rubber price bubbles occur? agricultural economics, 65(2), 67-73. available at: https://doi.org/10.17221/151/2018-agricecon. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 270 heterogeneous impacts of land quality on household income in vietnam’s north central region yen hai thi nguyena tuyen quang tranb afaculty of real estate and resources economics, national economics university, hanoi, vietnam. binternational school, vietnam national university, hanoi, vietnam.  tuyenisvnu@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 10 march 2025 revised: 30 may 2025 accepted: 11 june 2025 published: 18 june 2025 keywords heterogeneous effects household income instrumental variable quantile regression land fragmentation land quality vietnam. this paper examines the heterogeneous effects of land quality on household income in vietnam’s north central region. it aims to explore how land quality influences income distribution and whether its benefits are shared equally among households. we employ an instrumental variable quantile regression to analyze the impact of land quality across different income levels while addressing potential endogeneity issues. this approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of how land quality affects households at various points in the income distribution. our results indicate that only households above the median income level benefit from better land quality, while poorer households experience no significant gains. land quality positively influences crop income for all groups, but its effects are stronger for those with higher crop incomes. this suggests that wealthier households benefit disproportionately from improved land quality. the findings challenge conventional methods that focus on mean effects, highlighting the importance of accounting for heterogeneity when analyzing land quality’s impact. ignoring these differences may lead to misleading policy recommendations. the study underscores the need for targeted government policies to support poorer households in utilizing their land more effectively. policymakers should design interventions that enhance agricultural productivity for lower-income farmers to ensure more equitable benefits from land quality improvements. contribution/originality: this study provides the first empirical evidence on the heterogeneous effects of land quality on household income using an instrumental variable quantile regression approach. unlike previous studies that focus on average effects, our findings highlight how land quality benefits wealthier households more than poorer ones. this research contributes to the literature by emphasizing the importance of considering income distribution when evaluating agricultural policies and land quality improvements. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5416 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: nguyen, y. h. t., & tran, t. q. (2025). heterogeneous impacts of land quality on household income in vietnam’s north central region. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 270–280. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction land quality is an important factor in determining the effectiveness and sustainability of agricultural production, particularly in developing nations where agriculture typically serves as a cornerstone of the economy (lal, 2020; asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 270-280 mailto:tuyenisvnu@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1847-1735 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0221-1480 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5416 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 270-280 271 nguyen, tran, hoang, tran, & nguyen, 2023). land quality refers to a range of characteristics, such as soil fertility, water availability, terrain, and climate conditions, that have a direct influence on agricultural yields, livestock wellbeing, and the general prosperity of farming households (berazneva, mcbride, sheahan, & güereña, 2018; d’hose et al., 2014; leonard, parker, & anderson, 2020; nguyen et al., 2023; wiebe, 2003). in developing countries, where there may be limited nonfarm job opportunities, reliance on the natural condition of the land becomes even more important (tuyen, 2014). this implies that better land quality has the power to alleviate the adverse effects of farming constraints, resulting in more stable and higher agricultural yields. on the other hand, infertile land may aggravate poverty and food insecurity, leading to an ongoing process of inefficiency and poor economic growth. in the literature, it is well established that land quantity plays a vital role in rural livelihoods in both vietnam (nguyen & tran, 2013, 2018) and several other developing countries (barbier & hochard, 2018; tuyen, 2014). however, most researchers often ignore land quality, possibly due to data unavailability (nguyen et al., 2023) considering it an unobservable factor in the error term of econometric models (berazneva et al., 2018; bhalla, 1988). land is one of the most important livelihood capitals determining the livelihoods of farming households (barbier & hochard, 2018). better insight into the influence of land quality on household income is useful for both researchers and governments (nguyen et al., 2023). recently, a number of studies in vietnam and other developing countries have examined the effect of land quality on household income using a mean regression approach (e.g., ordinary least squares or instrumental variable estimators) (nguyen et al., 2023). to the best of our knowledge, however, no study has analyzed the hypothesis that the impact of land quality on household income varies significantly between poor, middle, and wealthier households in rural vietnam. this gap in the literature, as well as the topic's importance, motivated us to conduct this research. in particular, unlike previous studies that frequently employed a mean regression approach to estimate a mean or homogeneous relationship between land quality and household income, the current study is the first to apply a quantile regression framework to uncover the heterogeneous link between land quality and income among households in vietnam's north central region. the article is structured as follows: the next part discusses relevant references, followed by part 3 concerning data and econometric methods. part 4 presents the results and discussion, while part 5 provides a summary and some policy recommendations. 2. theoretical and empirical evidence recently, the international development community has increasingly recognized the crucial role of land in agriculture and human development (nguyen et al., 2023). in line with this, the united nations food and agriculture organization designated 2015 as the international year of the soil. this growing awareness has led development and agricultural economics researchers to integrate land data into their studies to better understand soil properties and fertility (berazneva et al., 2018). various methods exist to assess soil or land quality. many household surveys rely on farmers' self-reported assessments, which include information on input and output levels as well as farming conditions (ali, deininger, & ronchi, 2019; arslan & taylor, 2009; nguyen et al., 2023). the economic return on land is a function of land and its quality (bhalla, 1988). empirical evidence generally confirms that land quality is positively related to income, especially in developing countries (heger et al., 2020; nguyen et al., 2023). the mechanism explaining this link is quite intuitive. land is one of the most essential resources determining income for poor households (barbier & hochard, 2018). the water-holding capacity of soil is a vital factor that determines the growth of plants (wong & asseng, 2006). louwagie, gay, sammeth, and ratinger (2011) discovered that shallow soils, stoniness, and chemical problems, such as salinity or acidity, adversely affect crop production. furthermore, the geographical characteristics of the terrain, such as height and incline, influence soil erosion and ease of access for humans and machinery (zuazo & pleguezuelo, 2009). according to barrett and bevis (2015a), there are some channels through which low-quality land can hinder efforts to alleviate poverty. poor and degraded soils initially have adverse effects on farming and environmental income. the correlation between poor soil quality and restricted capital accumulation is mutually reinforcing. inadequate soil quality hinders the process of capital accumulation, while limited capital accumulation impedes investment in soil improvement (barrett & bevis, 2015b; eswaran, almaraz, van den berg, & reich, 1997). furthermore, degraded poor-quality soils lack soil micronutrients, leading to dietary mineral deficiencies that can have a negative effect on human health (barrett & bevis, 2015b). as noted by heger et al. (2020), the adverse impact of deteriorating personal health on an individual's ability to generate income is a commonly acknowledged factor in the field of economics, evidenced in luft's study (luft, 1975). many studies using microdata confirm the positive impact of land quality on enhancing agricultural productivity and income in various countries (nguyen et al., 2023). berazneva et al. (2018) have demonstrated that evaluating land quality, whether subjectively or objectively, enhances maize yield in kenya. additional research conducted in mexico (arslan & taylor, 2009) and rwanda (ali et al., 2019) shows that the quality of land, as measured subjectively, has a beneficial effect on agricultural production. a comprehensive analysis of 83 developing nations reveals a direct correlation between land degradation and the rise in poverty rates from 2000 to 2012 (barbier & hochard, 2016). heger et al. (2020) used data from sub-saharan africa and employed rainfall as an instrumental variable for land quality. their study found evidence that land fertility has a causal impact on reducing poverty in the region. barbier and hochard (2018) performed a study that further supports the thesis that poor land quality contributes to increasing poverty in many low-income nations, especially in south asia. according to bashir and schilizzi (2013), the most important variable influencing food security in many asian and african nations was the high quality of the land. whereas a large number of studies examine the impact of land quantity on income and poverty in vietnam, similar evidence for land quality is quite limited, mainly due to the unavailability of land fertility data (nguyen et al., 2023). a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 270-280 272 recent study by nguyen et al. (2023) investigated the role of land quality in income and poverty among households in vietnam’s north central region. the study employed an instrumental variable estimator to address the possible endogeneity of land quality. for households in this region, land quality increases income and reduces poverty. nevertheless, their mean regression approach fails to determine whether the effect of land quality differs among poor, middle, and wealthier households. to the best of our knowledge, no study using a quantile regression approach has examined the heterogeneous effect of land quality on income. our study fills this gap by using an instrumental-variable quantile regression estimator to explore this heterogeneous relationship in the same region, while also accounting for the endogeneity of land quality and other observable covariates. 3. data and methods 3.1. data and measurements this study uses a secondary dataset from the 2016 qseserpa (quantitative socioeconomic survey for emission reduction program areas), conducted by the mekong development research institute. the survey aimed to gather data on the socioeconomic characteristics of communities targeted by the emission reduction program (erp), with a particular focus on poor and forest-dependent households. data collection covered six provinces in vietnam’s north central region: thanh hoa, nghe an, ha tinh, quang binh, quang tri, and thua thien hue. a multistage sampling method was employed. initially, 102 communes were randomly selected from these provinces using probability proportional to population size. next, two villages were randomly chosen within each commune, and 15 households were interviewed per village, yielding a total sample of approximately 3,000 households. the surveyed households included various ethnic minorities such as thai, muong, bru‐van kieu, h’mong, co tu, ta oi‐pa co, and other ethnic groups (nguyen et al., 2023). after data cleaning and variable selection, the current study analyzes a final sample of 2,456 households. table 1 presents the names, definitions, and measurements of the variables used. in line with previous studies conducted in other countries (arslan & taylor, 2009; berazneva et al., 2018; sherlund, barrett, & adesina, 2002) and in vietnam (tran & van vu, 2021) this research evaluates annual cropland quality referred to as "land quality"—using self-reported household data. respondents rated their land quality on a scale from 1 (extremely poor) to 5 (excellent), with intermediate values of 2 (poor), 3 (average), and 4 (good). to construct a land quality index, the study calculates a weighted average that accounts for differences in plot sizes.” the simpson index of fragmented land is estimated as where is the area of plot j, and a is the farm size ( ). this index has values varying from zero to one, with a greater value showing that the land is more fragmented (ciaian, guri, rajcaniova, drabik, & y paloma, 2018). a number of zeros reveals that the household possesses only one plot of land, resulting in complete land consolidation. conversely, a value close to one implies that the household owns several plots, indicating a high degree of fragmentation on their farm. in vietnam, the prevalence of fragmentation is highest in annual cropland, as shown by tran and van vu (2019). as a result, our study assesses only the level of fragmentation for this specific type of land and not for other types. our research sample excluded households that did not have annual cropland. 3.2. econometric model following the rural livelihood conceptual framework (scoones, 1998) and previous studies (bhalla, 1988; glewwe, 1991; nguyen et al., 2023; tran & van vu, 2019; van hoang, tran, nguyen, & nguyen, 2019; zhao & barry, 2014) our study assumes that household income is a reduced function of land size and quality and other household and regional factors: 𝑌𝑖𝑗 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐿𝑖𝑗 + 𝛾𝑋𝑖𝑗 + 𝛿𝑇𝐷𝑗 + 휀𝑖𝑗 (1) equation 1 is specified in the semi-log form, in which the dependent variable is household income per capita in log form, while some of the independent variables also are in log form (e.g., size of various types of land) while others, such as ethnicity, gender, employment, migration and regional variables, cannot be transformed into log form because they are dummy variables. 𝑌𝑖𝑗 indicate the log of household income for the household 𝑖 in province 𝑗. 𝑋𝑖 represents several control variables (household characteristics; 𝐿𝑖𝑗 is the quality of land and 𝐷𝑗 presents province dummy variables that capture unobservable province factors. 𝛽0 is the intercept; 𝛽1, 𝛾 and 𝛿 are the parameters to be estimated, and 휀𝑖𝑗 indicate the error term. following previous studies in vietnam (nguyen et al., 2023; tran quang tuyen, lim, cameron, & vu van huong, 2014) and developing countries (jansen, pender, damon, wielemaker, & schipper, 2006) our study focuses exclusively on certain household assets, including human and natural capital, that are stable or change slowly. due to their inherent stability, these features are highly likely to be predetermined factors. because these types of assets typically determine or even depend on household well-being, we do not consider physical, financial, and social capital as factors affecting income. the names and measurements of the included variables are provided in table 1. first, we estimate equation 1 using two-stage least squares (2sls). however, the 2sls method only analyzes the homogenous or mean relationship between land quality and household income, missing valuable information. we are more interested in uncovering the heterogeneous effects of land quality on household income in this study, which is why we should employ a quantile regression framework instead of a mean regression approach. the former provides a more comprehensive view of the association among variables and allows researchers to evaluate the effect of land quality on income at various points of the income distribution (koenker, 2005). the model specifies the th – quantile (0<  <1) of the conditional distribution of the income variable, given a set of covariates, as in equation 2. 2 2(1 ( / a )) j a−  ja ja a=  asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 270-280 273 𝑄𝜃(𝑌𝑖𝑗|𝑥𝑖𝑗) = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐿𝑖𝑗 + 𝛾𝑋𝑖𝑗 + 𝛿𝑇𝐷𝑗 + 𝑢𝑖𝑗 (2) however, land quality may be endogenous due to several factors, including omitted variable bias (e.g., unobserved soil management practices), measurement error in land quality assessment, and simultaneity (e.g., wealthier households may invest more in soil improvement, creating a bidirectional relationship).therefore, our study should estimate equation 2 employing the instrumental variable quantile regression (ivqr) estimator, as the quantile regression estimator would produce biased and inconsistent results (chernozhukov & hansen, 2004, 2008). the ivqr estimator is a statistical method that estimates parameters at various points in the outcome distribution. it also takes into account endogeneity issues that can arise due to factors such as self-selection, exclusion of relevant variables, or measurement errors (chernozhukov & hansen, 2004, 2008). following nguyen et al. (2023), we select the level of land fragmentation at the commune level as the instrument for land quality because there is a strong correlation between the two variables. the mechanism behind this relationship is that farming costs (e.g., maintaining field embankments, irrigation, or moving between plots) tend to be higher with fragmented land. consequently, such land often receives less investment, resulting in less fertile land (ali et al., 2019; tran & van vu, 2019). 4. results and discussion 4.1. statistical analysis of household characteristics initially, we divided the sample into three groups of similar size (n = 819, 819, 819) based on their household income per capita (poor, middle-, and high-income groups). then, we compared the differences in the mean values of household characteristics among the three groups. on average, the per capita income for the whole sample is about 835 thousand vnd. however, the figure is much higher for the high-income group (1860 thousand vnd), followed by the middle-income group (about 489 thousand vnd), and the poor (about 158 thousand vnd). land quality is also slightly higher for wealthier households than for middleand low-income households. the average age of household heads is higher for those in the high-income group (about 35) than for those in the middle (about 35.5) and poor groups (about 32.8). the proportion of households whose heads belong to the kinh group (the major ethnicity) increases significantly from the poor (11%) to the middle (23%) and high-income groups (42%). this suggests a close relationship between poverty and ethnicity. there are substantial differences in education levels among the three groups. the proportion of household heads without education is highest in the poor group (46%), and it is much higher than that of the middle-income group (34%) and the high-income group (18%). also, the percentage of household heads who completed upper secondary school is only about 5% in the poor group, whereas the corresponding figures for the middle-income group are about 7%, and about 10% for the high-income group. both the household size and dependency ratio are larger for the poor than for the middle-income and wealthier groups. this suggests that some demographics are also associated with economic status. regarding economic activities, about 47% of poor households reported at least one member working as a wage earner. the corresponding figure is much higher for those in the middle-income (72%) and high-income groups (77%). only about 6% of poor households engaged in nonfarm activities, but this figure is about 16% for those in the highincome group. the percentage of households with migrant members is highest among high-income households (22%), followed by middle-income (15%) and poor households (13%). the average size of annual cropland is very similar for the rich and poor groups but lower for the middle class. however, the wealthier group has the largest amount of forestland, perennial cropland, and residential land. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 270-280 274 table 1. descriptive statistics of the research sample. income group low income middle income high income whole sample household characteristics mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd income per person (thousand vietnam dong/month) 157.72 77.22 488.99 138.32 1860.81 1691.94 835.42 1226.62 land quality (likert scale from 1 to 5) 1.83 1.01 1.95 1.04 2.02 1.11 1.93 1.06 age of household head 32.84 7.09 33.53 7.31 35.02 7.66 33.80 7.41 ethinicity (1=kinh;0=other ethnicity) 0.11 0.32 0.23 0.42 0.42 0.49 0.25 0.43 gender of household head (1=male;0=female) 0.89 0.31 0.89 0.31 0.89 0.31 0.89 0.31 no education (1=yes; 0=no) 0.46 0.50 0.34 0.47 0.18 0.39 0.33 0.47 primary education (1=yes; 0=no) 0.25 0.43 0.30 0.46 0.25 0.44 0.27 0.44 lower secondary (1=yes; 0=no) 0.23 0.42 0.27 0.45 0.36 0.48 0.29 0.45 upper secondary (1=yes; 0=no) 0.05 0.22 0.07 0.25 0.10 0.30 0.07 0.26 above upper secondary (1=yes; 0=no) 0.01 0.10 0.02 0.15 0.11 0.31 0.05 0.21 household size ( members) 4.99 1.75 4.62 1.53 4.20 1.56 4.60 1.64 dependency ratioa 1.00 0.78 0.83 0.67 0.66 0.63 0.83 0.71 wage employment (1=yes; 0=no) 0.47 0.50 0.72 0.45 0.77 0.42 0.65 0.48 nonfarm employment (1=yes; 0=no) 0.06 0.23 0.08 0.28 0.16 0.36 0.10 0.30 migration (1=yes; 0=no) 0.13 0.34 0.15 0.36 0.22 0.41 0.17 0.37 annual cropland (m2) 6543.42 9369.92 5491.30 8362.89 6541.31 10834.14 6191.87 9584.59 perenial cropland (m2) 286.89 1208.79 470.05 1994.93 614.27 2470.49 457.01 1965.19 forestland (m2) 7120.40 14617.98 9833.05 16672.79 15948.88 28849.41 10965.41 21317.47 residential land (m2) 296.00 675.26 412.54 960.66 584.06 994.18 430.80 895.75 observations 819 819 819 2456 note: this ratio is calculated by the number of members aged 16 and 60, divided by the total number of members. a refers to the overall dependency ratio, which combines both the youth dependency ratio (0–14 years) and the oldage dependency ratio (65+ years) for each income group. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 270-280 275 table 2 compares land quality among income groups. the poor group reports that about 3.34% of the total number of plots are of very bad quality, a higher percentage than that for the middleand high-income groups. similarly, the poor group has the highest percentage of plots assessed as of bad quality, while the high-income group has the lowest percentage. the percentage of the total number of plots considered to be of average quality is quite similar among the three groups, but the proportion of the total number of plots assessed as good or very good increases with the level of income, higher for the middle class and highest for wealthier households. the data suggests a correlation between land quality and economic well-being. table 2. land quality by income group. land quality number of plots poor middle rich total very bad number 55 50 44 149 % 3.34 3.09 2.64 3.02 bad number 528 446 411 1,385 % 32.02 27.55 24.64 28.06 average number 736 730 750 2,216 % 44.63 45.09 44.96 44.89 good number 323 383 436 1142 % 19.59 24 26.14 23.14 very good number 7 10 27 44 % 0.42 1 1.62 0.89 total number 1649 1619 1668 4936 % 100 100 100 100 4.2. econometric analysis table 3 presents the regression results from the 2sls and ivqr models. the 2sls estimates indicate that the coefficient for the land quality variable is 0.04 and is not statistically significant (p-value = 0.45). this suggests that, on average, land quality has no effect on household income. however, the ivqr estimates confirm that land quality only benefits those with higher income levels. for example, for households in the 75th quantile, their income level would increase by about 9% if land quality improved by one point. we also find a similar but larger effect, about 14%, for those in the 90th quantile. our study provides fresh evidence that land quality does not improve income for those with incomes below the median level, but does so for those with incomes above the median level (see more in figure 1). as discussed by nguyen et al. (2023), the role of crop income explains the mechanism behind the positive association between land quality and household income. therefore, we further analyze the effect of land quality on crop income, employing both 2sls and ivqr methods. the results in table 4 reveal that, on average, per capita income would improve by about 35% if land quality improved by one point, controlling for other factors in the models. all income groups experience this effect, but its magnitude increases with income levels, suggesting that those with higher crop incomes benefit more from land quality (figure 2). specifically, the crop income of the poorest group would increase by approximately 23% if land quality improved by one point. however, the corresponding effect for the richest group would be around 42%. the smaller effect on poorer groups may contribute to the lack of a significant positive impact on their overall household income. table 3 also reveals that many other factors influence household income. table 3's 2sls results demonstrate the positive impact of ethnicity on households. on average, kinh households earn about 64% more per person than ethnic minority households. the ivqr estimates also reveal the same results for all income groups. for all income groups, better education would result in positive effects on household income. surprisingly, the magnitude of education's income effects is quite similar across income quantiles. these findings are similar to those in vietnam’s north west region (tuyen, 2015) and the mekong delta region (van hoang et al., 2019). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 270-280 276 table 3. the effect of land quality on household income. explanatory variables two stage least squares (2sls) instrumental variable quantile regression (ivqr) 10th quantile 25th quantile 50th quantile 75th quantile 90th quantile coeff. se coeff. se coeff. se coeff. se coeff. se coeff. se land quality 0.04 0.05 -0.10 0.08 -0.03 0.06 0.03 0.05 0.09** 0.04 0.14*** 0.05 age -0.00 0.00 -0.01 0.01 -0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 ethnicity 0.64** 0.06 0.54*** 0.10 0.58*** 0.08 0.61*** 0.06 0.64*** 0.06 0.67*** 0.07 gender 0.05 0.07 0.08 0.12 0.06 0.09 0.04 0.07 0.02 0.07 0.00 0.08 primary edu 0.18** 0.06 0.21** 0.09 0.19*** 0.07 0.18*** 0.05 0.17*** 0.05 0.15*** 0.06 lower secondary 0.24** 0.06 0.24*** 0.10 0.24*** 0.07 0.24*** 0.06 0.24*** 0.05 0.24*** 0.06 upper secondary 0.42** 0.09 0.42*** 0.15 0.41*** 0.11 0.41*** 0.09 0.41*** 0.09 0.40*** 0.11 above upper secondary 1.15** 0.10 1.43*** 0.17 1.28*** 0.12 1.14*** 0.09 1.01*** 0.08 0.91*** 0.10 household size -0.07** 0.01 -0.03 0.03 -0.05*** 0.02 -0.07*** 0.01 -0.09*** 0.01 -0.10*** 0.01 dependency ratio -0.19** 0.03 -0.22*** 0.06 -0.21*** 0.04 -0.19*** 0.03 -0.18*** 0.03 -0.17*** 0.03 annual cropland -0.01 0.02 -0.04 0.03 -0.02 0.02 -0.01 0.02 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.02 perenial cropland 0.07** 0.02 0.06** 0.03 0.07*** 0.02 0.07*** 0.02 0.08*** 0.01 0.08*** 0.02 forestland 0.05** 0.01 0.05*** 0.02 0.05*** 0.01 0.05*** 0.01 0.05*** 0.01 0.05*** 0.01 residential land 0.08** 0.02 0.07* 0.04 0.08*** 0.03 0.08*** 0.02 0.09*** 0.02 0.10*** 0.03 nghe an -0.28** 0.06 -0.40*** 0.10 -0.33*** 0.07 -0.28*** 0.06 -0.22*** 0.06 -0.18** 0.07 ha tinh -0.27* 0.11 -0.27 0.17 -0.27** 0.13 -0.27*** 0.11 -0.27** 0.11 -0.27** 0.13 quang binh -0.34** 0.08 -0.28** 0.12 -0.31*** 0.09 -0.34*** 0.07 -0.37*** 0.07 -0.39*** 0.09 quang tri -0.50** 0.07 -0.76*** 0.12 -0.63*** 0.09 -0.51*** 0.07 -0.40*** 0.07 -0.31*** 0.09 thua thien hue -0.24** 0.07 -0.35*** 0.12 -0.29*** 0.09 -0.24*** 0.07 -0.20*** 0.07 -0.16* 0.09 constant 8.85** 0.19 7.90*** 0.32 8.43*** 0.24 8.93*** 0.18 9.39*** 0.18 9.77*** 0.21 centered r2 0.2292 observation 2456 note: *,**,*** indicate statistically significant at 10%, 5% and 1%, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 270-280 277 table 4. the effect of land quality on crop income.. explanatory variables two stage least squares (2sls) instrumental variable quantile regression (ivqr) 10th quantile 25th quantile 50th quantile 75th quantile 90th quantile coeff. se coeff. se coeff. se coeff. se coeff. se coeff. se land quality 0.35** 0.06 0.23** 0.12 0.29*** 0.08 0.34*** 0.06 0.38*** 0.06 0.42*** 0.07 age 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 ethnicity 0.40** 0.08 0.43*** 0.13 0.41*** 0.09 0.39*** 0.08 0.38*** 0.08 0.37*** 0.10 gender 0.15+ 0.09 0.17 0.16 0.15 0.12 0.14 0.09 0.12 0.09 0.11 0.11 primary edu -0.09 0.07 -0.04 0.13 -0.05 0.09 -0.07 0.07 -0.08 0.07 -0.08 0.08 lower secondary -0.10 0.07 -0.06 0.12 -0.07 0.09 -0.09 0.07 -0.10 0.07 -0.11 0.09 upper secondary -0.03 0.11 -0.02 0.20 -0.01 0.14 0.00 0.11 0.01 0.11 0.02 0.13 above upper secondary -0.07 0.14 0.05 0.25 0.00 0.17 -0.04 0.13 -0.08 0.13 -0.11 0.16 household size 0.07** 0.02 0.07** 0.03 0.07*** 0.02 0.07*** 0.02 0.07*** 0.02 0.07*** 0.02 dependency ratio -0.14** 0.04 -0.15** 0.07 -0.15*** 0.05 -0.14*** 0.04 -0.13*** 0.04 -0.13*** 0.05 annual cropland -0.01 0.02 0.00 0.03 0.00 0.02 -0.01 0.02 -0.01 0.02 -0.02 0.03 perenial cropland -0.03+ 0.02 0.02 0.03 -0.01 0.02 -0.03* 0.02 -0.05*** 0.02 -0.07*** 0.02 forestland 0.03** 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.03** 0.01 0.03*** 0.01 0.04*** 0.01 residential land -0.00 0.03 -0.01 0.05 0.00 0.04 0.00 0.03 0.01 0.03 0.01 0.03 nghe an -0.39** 0.08 -0.59*** 0.13 -0.48*** 0.09 -0.38*** 0.07 -0.30*** 0.07 -0.23*** 0.09 ha tinh -0.01 0.14 -0.31 0.26 -0.13 0.18 0.02 0.14 0.15 0.13 0.26 0.16 quang binh -0.71** 0.10 -0.93*** 0.17 -0.79*** 0.12 -0.67*** 0.10 -0.57*** 0.10 -0.48*** 0.12 quang tri -0.57** 0.10 -1.04*** 0.17 -0.78*** 0.12 -0.55*** 0.09 -0.36*** 0.09 -0.19*** 0.11 thua thien hue -0.12 0.09 -0.63*** 0.18 -0.36*** 0.13 -0.12 0.10 0.07 0.10 0.25 0.12 constant -0.66** 0.24 -2.11*** 0.42 -1.27*** 0.30 -0.52** 0.23 0.07 0.23 0.62** 0.27 centered r2 0.1337 observation 2456 note: *,**,*** indicate statistically significant at 10%, 5% and 1%, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 270-280 278 figure 1. heterogeneous effects of land quality on household income per person. figure 2. heterogeneous effects of land quality on crop income. according to the 2sls estimates, having more household and dependent members would reduce per capita income. researchers found the same result in rural vietnam (phan, tran, phan, & hoang, 2019). however, the negative effect of household size increases with higher income quantiles. with respect to the role of land in enhancing income, table 3 indicates that holding more annual cropland does not improve household income for any income groups. nevertheless, having more land of other kinds enhances income for all income groups. furthermore, the effect of perennial cropland, forestland, and residential land on income is quite similar across income groups, suggesting that all receive the same returns on those kinds of land. the findings are partially congruent with those in the mekong delta region (van hoang et al., 2019). table 4 shows some other factors affecting the total amount of crop income. surprisingly, education levels play no role in improving crop income for any income group. crop income is not affected by the size of annual cropland but is significantly boosted by its quality, as previously discussed. the finding suggests that the quality of annual cropland plays a critical role in raising crop income for local households. ethnicity emerges as a significant factor affecting crop income. specifically, kinh households earn about 40% more than ethnic minority households. male-led households, on asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 270-280 279 average, earn about 15% more crop income than female-led households. the finding suggests that having more household members is necessary for farming activities, as larger household sizes have a positive effect on crop income. having more dependents, however, reduces crop income. finally, controlling for other household characteristics, our study finds that households in nghe an, quang binh, and quang tri have lower crop income on average than those in thanh hoa (the base group). 5. conclusion and policy implications the current research is the first to examine the heterogeneous effect of land quality on household income in rural vietnam. the study applies an instrumental variable quantile regression approach to test the hypothesis that the impact differs among income groups. we provide new evidence that land quality has a positive impact only for those above the median income level, but not for those below it. our findings suggest that land quality only benefits the better-off. possibly, this result may reflect the fact that only better-off households know how to take advantage of land quality to promote their economic well-being. also, this suggests that wealthier households have better knowledge, skills, and financial resources to make good use of land quality. the findings confirm that land quality significantly influences crop income, particularly for those with higher crop income levels. therefore, our findings suggest the need for government policies to assist the poor in effectively cultivating their annual cropland. in addition, we find several other factors contributing to household income in the study region. all income groups agree that better education improves household income. kinh households earn significantly higher incomes than ethnic minority households. while the quality of annual cropland significantly influences both household and crop income, its size does not have the same effect. other types of land also positively influence both household income and crop income. this suggests the important role of natural assets in rural household livelihoods. we also observe differences in income levels across provinces, indicating that some unobservable provincial factors may significantly influence household income and crop income. we recognize that the current study has certain limitations that offer opportunities for future investigation. the subjective measurement of land quality, which relies on self-reported assessments, is less reliable compared to the objective approach (nguyen et al., 2023). ferrer‐i‐carbonell and frijters (2004) have discussed the ongoing question of whether to classify the resulting data as ordinal or interval. therefore, we recommend that future studies incorporate both assessment methodologies to validate the findings. in addition, our study's reliance on cross-sectional data constrains its ability to analyze the dynamic nature of the association between land quality and household income. given the availability of longitudinal data, future studies should explore the dynamic relationship between land quality and household income while accounting for unobservable time-invariant factors. finally, while the ivqr method effectively addresses endogeneity concerns, our model relies on a single instrumental variable, so it is identified exactly. this limitation prevents the standard overidentification test from being conducted to assess instrument validity. future research could explore additional instrumental variables to enable overidentification tests, which would provide a more robust assessment of instrument validity and help mitigate concerns associated with relying on a single instrument. funding: this research is supported by national economics university, hanoi, vietnam. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the 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(2009). soil-erosion and runoff prevention by plant covers: a review. sustainable agriculture, 785-811. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2666-8_48 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/3390/wp72.pdf?sequence=1 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104247 https://doi.org/10.1002/app5.330 https://doi.org/10.5937/ekonhor1402117t https://doi.org/10.15179/ces.17.1.5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-019-00101-y https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-006-0012-5 https://doi.org/10.1111/cjag.12033 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2666-8_48 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 729 technical efficiency among pepper farmers in sarawak, malaysia: a stochastic frontier analysis anita rosli a alias radam b khalid abdul rahim b amin mahir abdullah c a department of social science and management, faculty of humanities, management and science, universiti putra malaysia, bintulu campusa and institut ekosains borneo, universiti putra malaysia bintulu campus, malaysia. b school of economics and business, universiti putra malaysia, serdang campus, malaysia. c faculty of agriculture, universiti putra malaysia, serdang campus, malaysia  anitarosli@upm.edu.my (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 2 july 2020 revised: 26 august 2020 accepted: 28 september 2020 published: 19 october 2020 keywords piper nigrum l translog maximum likelihood estimation inefficiency model farm performance. this study aimed to estimate the technical efficiency among pepper (piper nigrum. l) farmers in sarawak, malaysia, using stochastic frontier analysis (sfa). sfa involves a one-step process that can estimate technical inefficacy factors simultaneously with the production frontier. 678 pepper farmers were involved in this study, and the data were collected from 2012 to 2013. the mean score for technical efficiency was 0.518, indicating that pepper farmers were not efficient. however, the inefficiency model showed that education level, membership in farmers’ association, full-time as a pepper farmer, attending courses and visiting sample farms were factors that significantly improved inefficiency. the major problem of pepper farming in sarawak is poor agricultural practices where farmers do not fully utilize the available agricultural inputs to produce maximum output. based on the findings, farmers must improve their knowledge and skills in pepper farming through agronomic education. contribution/originality: this study contributed to improving farm performance among pepper farmers in sarawak, malaysia, by estimating technical efficiency and determining efficiency or inefficiency factors in pepper farming. the findings highlighted technical efficiency levels and the reasons pepper farmers had not achieved full technical efficiency, and improved farm performance among pepper farmers. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.103.729.739 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: anita rosli, alias radam, khalid abdul rahim, and amin mahir abdullah (2020). technical efficiency among pepper farmers in sarawak, malaysia: a stochastic frontier analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3), 729-739. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.103.729.739 © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction 1.1. background of the study pepper (piper nigrum l) is one of the families in piperaceae and is widely used in the food, cosmetics, household, and medical industries. thus, pepper has a special position in the world marketplace as a foreign exchange source for producer countries, including malaysia. in 2018, vietnam was the largest pepper producer in the world with a total of 205,000 tonnes, representing 40% of total world pepper production. it was followed by brazil (72,000 tons), asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 3 (2020): 729-739 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:anitarosli@upm.edu.my http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.103.729.739 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 729-739 730 indonesia (70,000 tons), india (64,000 tons), malaysia (31,073 tons), sri lanka (18,600 tons), and other countries (70,000 tons) (malaysian pepper board (mpb), 2018). malaysia is the fifth largest pepper producer, representing 5.9% of total worldwide pepper production. in malaysia, pepper is the fifth most important commodity after palm oil, rubber, timber, and cocoa (ministry of plantation industries and commodities (mpic), 2019). in the world market, pepper from malaysia is known as sarawak pepper because most pepper production (approximately 97%) comes from sarawak state. pepper grown in malaysia is for both domestic use and export to other countries. in 2016, approximately 40% of the total pepper production was exported and the remainder was for domestic consumption (malaysian pepper board, 2017). traded pepper can promote a sustainable pepper industry and the income of pepper farmers, especially in sarawak. the malaysian pepper board (mpb) is an agency under the ministry of plantation industries and commodities (mpic), and is the agency responsible for managing the pepper industry in malaysia. 1.2. problem statement pepper is a traditional crop and source of income for approximately 67,000 people in rural sarawak. the current estimate of the area underpepper cultivation is approximately 13,000 hectares (department of agricultural sarawak, 2020). high production at the farm level is important to ensure that pepper continues to be one of the income sources for rural farmers, and in a competitive manner. therefore, development of the pepper industry is of great importance, especially production at the farm level. in crop production, high yield is important as this will benefit farmers by their gaining increased sales revenue. however, high yields should be in line with minimizing the quantity and cost of agricultural inputs, which will enable farmers to achieve high productivity and profits in crop production. thus, farmers need to know how to manage agricultural inputs to the optimal level and to avoid wastage in using agricultural inputs. farmers can achieve high technical efficiency levels in farming if they are able to utilize available inputs and current technology at an optimal level to produce maximum output (frontier level). however, technical efficiency in production depends on how farmers utilize agricultural inputs. this is also influenced by background factors such as demographic, economic, and social factors. besides, through extension agents, farmers can learn to use modern farming methods to manage their farms even though they may have inherited farming knowledge from their parents and learned through experience. these factors could influence farmers’ decisions in pepper farming practices and efficiency in input utilization, representing the difference between efficiency and inefficiency in farm management. currently there is a shortage of information on pepper farming in sarawak using the parametric method (see appendix 1). however, few efficiency studies on pepper farming in sarawak have been reported. (noorzakiah, alias, & shazali, 1993) reported that large farms utilized resources efficiently compared with small farms. the study suggested that small farms should be aggregated to form larger farms to enable cooperative farms to buy agricultural inputs in large quantities, in order to reduce expenditure and improve productivity. (mohd, alias, & ruhana, 1993) found that the difference between value marginal product and price of input indicated that these inputs were not used efficiently and farms were not operating at maximal profit; the study suggested that farmers should improve the efficiency of inputs use to attain an optimal level. abdul and mansur (1997) found that bumiputeras1 farmers were less technically efficient compared with non-bumiputeras2 farmers. fertilizer application, crop diversification, education level, harvesting practices, and farming experience all contributed to farmers’ technical efficiency (abdul & mansur, 1997). the efficiency problems of pepper production in sarawak are similar to those of pepper production in indonesia. an efficiency study on pepper farmers in southeast sulawesi, indonesia, by dewi and sahardi (2009) found that traditional farmers were inefficient in regard to farm labor and the application of nitrogen, organic fertilizers, and fungicides. grahasita (2012) studied 40 pepper farmers in the district of east belitung, indonesia and found that 32.5% had achieved technical efficiency whereas 67% had not reached an adequate level. farmers attained allocative efficiency in the use of urea, fertilizers, and labor but were inefficient in regard to organic and chemical fertilizers and herbicide utilization. as pepper is one of the key commodities in malaysia and an important crop for rural farmers in sarawak, it is important to determine farm performance among pepper farmers. thus, the objective of this study was to determine technical efficiency among pepper farmers in sarawak using stochastic frontier analysis (sfa). sfa involves a onestep process that estimates technical inefficacy factors simultaneously with the production frontier. this research will highlight the key factors influencing technical efficiency and where improvements could be made to improve pepper farmers’ efficiency. the findings from this study will be useful as a guideline for related agencies and policymakers to improve the pepper industry, especially production performance at the farm level. additionally, this study also determines an appropriate functional form to present data and stochastic frontier models in the two functional forms commonly used for sfa, i.e., cobb–douglas and translog. 2. materials and methods 2.1. data collection data were collected from 2012 to 2013. the survey covered the nine main districts in sarawak, including kuching, serian, sri aman, betong, sarikei, bintangor, sibu (including kapit, song areas), miri, and bintulu (including kampung sungai asap). pepper farmers were selected by each mpb branch (see appendix 2) using a 1bumiputeras refers to indigenous native peoples in sarawak state, including malays, melanau, and dayak (ibans, orang ulu, kenyah, kayan, kelabit, punan, etc.). 2 non-bumiputeras refers to non-native ethnic groups in sarawak state, such as indians and chinese. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 729-739 731 stratified random sampling method. the number of respondents was set according to the total number of pepper farmers registered by each mpb branch (refer appendix 2). even though the data had been collected several years previously, these still reflect the current pepper farming situation in sarawak because the farmers’ background and methods had changed little. for example, pepper farming is dominated by the ibans community compared to other races. the majority of pepper farms are located in rural areas and are predominantly managed by older farmers. a total of 800 questionnaires was distributed during the survey; however, some information was provided only partially, in particular production factor components. only 678 questionnaires were valid for analysis after the data cleaning process. the number of samples represented 2.5% of the population. based on sekaran and bougie (2016) a population number in the range 20,000–30,000 could represent 377–379 sample respondents. thus, the number of samples adequately represented the population of pepper farmers in sarawak. 2.2. stochastic frontier model aigner, lovell, and schmidt (1977) and meeusen and van den broeck (1977) introduced stochastic frontier production function (sfpf) with two types of error term: random effects (v) and inefficiency effects (u), and crosssectional data specification: yi = f (σ xi; β) + (vi–ui) i = 1, 2,...n ……………………….. (1) yi is the total amount of output produced by i farms, xi is the inputs used by i farms, β is a coefficient to be estimated, and n indicates the total number of sample farmers included in the study. vi is a random variable representing factors that cannot be controlled, such as pest and disease attack and weather, and it is independently and identically distributed: vi ~ niid (0,σv 2). meanwhile, ui is a non-negative random variable representing inefficiency factors in production operation and it is half-normal distribution: ui ~ niid (0, σu 2). ui values more than zero (ui > 0) indicate the efficiency level relative to the frontier level, i.e., the production level lies below the frontier line. thus, ui equals zero (ui = 0) indicates that the production level lies on the frontier line. the inefficiency effects model introduced by battese and coelli (1995) is represented as: ui = σ ziδ + wi ……………………….. (2) zi is a (1xm) vector of farm specificity by i farms, and values are fixed constant; δ is an (mx1) unknown vector scalar parameter of farmer-specific inefficiency factors where a positive sign indicates that the explanatory variables increase technical inefficiency and vice versa. wi is a random variable with truncation of normal distribution with zero mean and variance, σ2. the point of truncation is negative (– ziδ), where wi ≥ – ziδ, which assumes that ui has non-negative truncation of n(ziδ, σ2) distribution. ui is assumed to be independently distributed, with truncations at zero means of n (mit, σu2) distribution where mit = zitδ, and zit is a vector of variables that may influence farm efficiency. the parameters of the stochastic frontier are estimated by maximum-likelihood estimation (mle) using the frontier program. the likelihood function of variance random error σv2, the inefficiency effects σu2, and overall variance in the model σ2 are related by σ2 = σv2 + σu2, and ratios of γ = σu2/ σ2 measure the total deviation of output from the frontier that can be attributed to inefficiency, and have a value between zero and one (battese & corra, 1977). the parameterization of γ has advantages in obtaining mle because the parameter space for γ can be searched for a suitable starting value for the iterative maximization algorithm (coelli, rao, & battese, 1998). if value γ is equal to zero, the variation of output among farms is due to statistical noise, while if γ is equal to one, this indicates that variation is attributed to inefficiency (coelli, 1995). batiese (1992) defined technical efficiency as a level of production less than its frontier output. as a mathematical function, technical efficiency (te) could be defined as: te = y/ yi* ……………………….. (3) yi, is the farm output, yi*, frontier output supposedly produced yi/ yi *, and can also be interpreted as: te = f (σ xi: β) exp (vi–ui) / f (σ xi*; β)–exp (vi) te = -ui 2.3. empirical model estimation the stochastic frontier model is presented and analysed using cobb–douglas and translog functional methods to identify which functional forms adequately represent the data and the model. based on previous efficiency studies (see appendix 1), about 64% of studies presented sfa in the cobb–douglas production function. the specification of the stochastic frontier model in translog is as follows: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 729-739 732 in yi = β0 + β1 in x1i + β2 in x2i + β3 in x3i + β4 in x4i + β5 in x5i + β6 in x6i + β7 (in x1i)2 + β8 (in x2i)2 + β9 (in x3i)2 + β10 (in x4i)2 +β11 (in x5i)2 + β12 (in x6i)2 + β13 (in x1i in x2i) + β14 (in x1i x3i) + β15(in x1i in x4i) + β16 (in x1i in x5i) + β17 (in x1i in x6i) + β18 (in x2i in x3i) + β19 (in x2i in x4i) + β20 (in x2i x5i) + β21 (in x2i in x6i) + β22 (in x3i in x4i) + β23(in x3i in x5i) + β24(in x3i in x6i) + β25 (in x4i in x5i) + β26 (in x4i in x6i) + β27 (in x5i in x6i) + β28 (d1i) + vi ui, i = 1...678 ……………………….. (4) where yi is the total amount of output by i farms per year and there are six main production factors used, whereas x1 is the number of fruiting pepper vines. the number of fruiting vines used in this study as pepper yield depends on the number of mature vines on a farm. on a farm, because not all pepper vines are ready to harvest, the number of fruiting vines is appropriate as an independent variable compared to farm size. x2 is labor measured by man-days, x3 is fertilizer (kg) per year, x4 is herbicide (litres) per year, x5 is fungicide cost (rm) per year, x6 is pesticide cost (rm) per year, and dummy (β28 d1i) represents the use of the semongok variety. semongok varieties consist of three types: semongok aman, semongok perak, and semongok emas. these varieties are new pepper varieties recently adopted by pepper farmers, and are quite stable from the third year onwards compared with the kuching variety previously used widely (paulus, 2008). the remaining component variables of parameters β7 to β27 in the model are shown in table 1. for the translog production function, each independent variable needs to be set as a square (for example, x1i 2 for vines) and interaction between variables (β13 (in x1i in x2i), vines and labor). the calculation of elasticity for each input is needed when translog production function is applied. the returns to scale (rts) in production can be calculated as the total elasticity of inputs. referring to the empirical stochastic frontier translog production function in equation (4) and assuming the elasticity of the pepper vine variable x1, the calculation of elasticity (e) of input x1 is: exi = ∂iny / ∂inxi = β1 + 2 β7 (x ̅1i) + β13 (x̅2i) + β14 (x ̅3i) + β15(x ̅4i) + β16 (x̅5i) + β17 (x ̅6i) …. (5) meanwhile, the empirical specification for the technical inefficiency model is: ui = δ0 + δ1g + δ2el + δ3ce + δ4m + δ5ftp + δ6crv + δ7ex + wi ………….. (6) ui is the inefficiency for i farms, g refers to the farmer’s age, el is education level, ec the number of contacts with extension agents per year, m is membership in the farmers association, ftp is as s full-time pepper farmer, crv is attending courses and visiting sample farms, and ex is pepper farming experience. 2.4. research hypotheses the hypotheses tests were conducted by generalization of the likelihood-ratio (lr) test statistic with null (h0 = 0) and alternate (h1 > 0) hypotheses. the calculation of hypotheses tests followed was thus: lr = -2{in[l(h0)/l(h1)]) = -2{in[l(h0)/l(h1)]) ……………………….. (7) l(h0) and l(h1) represent the value of the likelihood function of the null and alternative hypothesis, respectively. the null hypothesis (h0) is rejected when value lr exceeds the critical value. in sfa, three main hypotheses were tested to evaluate the validation of method application: (1) functional form to represent data and stochastic frontier model h0 = 0. cobb–douglas production function adequately represents the data and stochastic frontier model. h1 > 0. cobb–douglas form does not adequately represent the data and stochastic frontier model. (2) presence of technical efficiency effects in the stochastic frontier model h0: δ = 0. there are no technical inefficiency effects in the stochastic frontier model. h1: δ > 0. there are technical inefficiency effects in the stochastic frontier model. (3) the frontier model is stochastic h0: γ = 0. the frontier model is non-stochastic. h1: γ > 0. the frontier model is stochastic. 3. results and discussion 3.1. summary statistics the summary statistics for variables used in the efficiency analysis are shown in table 1. the mean pepper yield for 534 fruiting vines was 617.58 kg and the average for fertilizer, herbicide, fungicide cost, and pesticide cost was 531.82 kg, 6.78 l, rm 311.73 (usd 77.93), and rm 98.88 (usd 24.72), respectively; only 244 sample farmers planted the semongok variety. the average age of farmers was 49 years, with farming experience of approximately 18 years. on average, farmers made contact with extension agents four times per year. the majority of the farmers (504) had joined a farmers’ association, and full-time pepper farmers (562) and 269 others had attended courses for pepper farm management and visited sample farms. the level of education is categorized into no formal education (1), adult school asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 729-739 733 (2), primary school (3), lower secondary school (4), and upper secondary school (5). on average, pepper farmers attended adult education and, although the majority were literate, they had attained only a low educational level. table-1. summary statistics for selected variables. variable total minimum maximum mean standard deviation pepper yield 678 150 6,925 617.58 623.41 number of fruiting vines 678 100 3,500 534.03 430.63 fertilizer (kg) 678 50 4,000 531.82 489.54 herbicide (l) 678 3 32 6.79 4.32 pesticide cost (rm) 678 10 691.07 98.88 80.48 fungicide cost (rm) 678 14 2,760 305.34 339.51 labor input (man-days) 678 2 7 2.62 0.94 level of education 678 1 5 2.81 1.02 frequency of contact with extension (per year) 678 2 9 4.12 1.32 membership in farmers’ association 504 0 1 0.74 0.44 full-time pepper farming 562 0 1 0.83 0.38 courses and visits 269 0 1 0.4 0.49 farming experience (years) 678 5 50 17.74 7.77 farmer’s age 678 22 76 47.88 10.95 semongok variety 244 0 1 0.36 0.48 3.2. stochastic frontier estimation the mle of the stochastic frontier model is given in table 2. table-2. mle of stochastic frontier production model. variable parame ter coefficient standard error t-ratio cobb–douglas translog cobb– douglas translog cobb– douglas translog constant β0 1.218 5.964 0.117 2.282 10.396* 2.613* pepper vines β1 0.292 0.077 0.035 0.690 8.292* 0.112 labor β2 0.071 –1.054 0.035 0.791 2.011** –1.332 fertilizer (kg) β3 0.534 –0.351 0.022 0.412 24.521* –0.851 herbicide (l) β4 0.063 0.739 0.036 0.780 1.734*** 0.948 fungicide cost (rm) β5 0.023 0.006 0.011 0.256 2.034** 0.023 pesticide cost (rm) β6 0.039 0.515 0.019 0.405 2.033** 1.272 vines2 β7 0.115 0.073 1.584 labor2 β8 0.104 0.083 1.252 fertilizer2 β9 0.158 0.040 3.987* herbicide2 β10 0.060 0.105 0.578 fungicide2 β11 0.002 0.014 0.178 pesticide2 β12 –0.033 0.024 –1.381 vines*labour β13 –0.078 0.133 –0.582 vines*fertilizer β14 –0.201 0.078 –2.568 vines*herbicide β15 –0.072 0.143 –0.508 vines*fungicide β16 0.024 0.041 0.589 vines*pesticide β17 0.119 0.068 1.737*** labor*fertilizer β18 0.118 0.081 1.461 labor*herbicide β19 –0.041 0.138 –0.295 labor*fungicide β20 0.030 0.048 0.625 labor*pesticide β21 –0.099 0.081 –1.228 fertilizer*herbicide β22 0.026 0.072 0.356 fertilizer*fungicide β23 –0.056 0.027 –2.070** fertilizer*pesticide β24 –0.053 0.041 –1.292 herbicide*fungicide β25 –0.030 0.045 –0.668 herbicide*pesticide β26 –0.053 0.074 –0.718 fungicide*pesticide β27 0.013 0.024 0.548 semongok variety β28 0.044 0.034 0.044 0.019 2.333** 1.767*** sigma2 σ2 0.045 0.042 0.002 0.003 18.664* 15.102* gamma γ 0.99 0.99 0.472 0.008 2.120** 128.206* ln (likelihood) 89.483 116.076 lr test 241.165 252.647 mean (x̅) 0.429 0.518 note: *, **, and *** indicate that the variable is significant at 1, 5, or 10%, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 729-739 734 according to cobb–douglas stochastic production function the mean technical efficiency of 678 sample pepper farms was 43%, suggesting that pepper yield could be increased by 57% if farmers achieved technical efficiency at the optimal farmer (frontier) level. the estimation of variance parameters sigma2 (σ2) and gamma (γ) were 0.045 and 0.99, respectively, and both t-ratio values were significant at the 1% level. this suggests that 100% of the variation in the sample of pepper farmers' yield was due to differences in their technical inefficiency in input utilization. the mle for the number of fruiting vines, family labor, fertilizer, herbicide, fungicide cost, pesticide cost, and semongok variety showed positive values of 0.292, 0.071, 0.534, 0.063, 0.023, 0.039, and 0.044, respectively, and these variables were significant. this means that an increment of 1% in inputs such as the number of fruiting vines, family labor, fertilizer, herbicide, fungicide cost, pesticide cost, and semongok variety would increase output by 0.29, 0.07, 0.53, 0.06, 0.02, 0.03, and 0.04%, respectively. fertilizer is the main factor increasing the yield of pepper, with a coefficient of 0.534, followed by the number of fruiting vines (coefficient 0.292), suggesting the need for improvement in production and productivity. in the present study, pepper farmers are increasing rts in production as the total elasticity of production is 1.06. for the stochastic frontier translog production function, the estimated coefficients of fertilizer2, the interaction of number fruiting vines and pesticide, and semongok variety were 0.158, 0.119, and 0.034, respectively, and these variables show positive and significant effects on pepper yield. fertilizer2 was significant at 1%, the interaction of the number of fruiting vines and pesticide was significant at 10%, and the semongok variety was significant at 5%. meanwhile, the interaction of fertilizer and fungicide cost was significant at 5%, but this interaction negatively affects pepper yield with a coefficient of –0.056. these findings indicate that there may be an incorrect relation between fertilizer and fungicide application on pepper farms. the results further suggest the flexibility of the translog production function in representing the input–output relationship compared with the cobb–douglas production function, because the latter function is restricted to a constant rts rule. the mean of technical efficiency in stochastic frontier translog production was 0.518, which is higher than that from the cobb–douglas production function. therefore, technical efficiency estimation is influenced by its functional form. the input–output relationship can be measured using elasticity analysis, because the first order of coefficient in stochastic frontier translog production function does not directly explain the elasticity of inputs and output as in the cobb–douglas production function (sharma & leung, 1999). the elasticity of each input and total output elasticity is given in table 3. the elasticities of fruiting pepper vines, labor, fertilizer, herbicide, fungicide cost, and pesticide cost were 0.336, 0.880, 0.520, 0.050, 0.012, and 0.038, respecively. the results indicate that a 1% increase in fruiting pepper vines, labor, fertilizer, herbicide, fungicide cost, and pesticide cost would increase the yield of pepper by 0.33, 0.88, 0.52, 0.05, 0.01, and 0.03%, respectively. all inputs positively influenced pepper yield. the total output elasticity was 1.873, suggesting that sample pepper farmers increased rts in production. this means that a 1% increment in all inputs would increase pepper yield by 1.87%. however, the rts of 122 farmers in 1989 surveyed by mohd et al. (1993) were found to be 0.96, indicating that farms were decreasing rts in their operation. these results demonstrate that pepper farming in sarawak improves with agricultural input utilization. however, the differentiation of rts is due to sampling size and the economic conditions over the survey period. table-3. partial elasticity and rts of farms (translog production function). variable elasticity pepper vines 0.336 labor 0.882 fertilizer 0.520 herbicide 0.050 fungicide cost 0.012 pesticide cost 0.038 semongok variety 0.034 total output 1.873 3.3. hypothesis test the hypothesis test is presented in table 4. the first hypothesis was to determine an appropriate functional form to represent data and stochastic frontier models. the translog production function adequately represents the data and stochastic frontier model in this present study. the hypothesis was rejected at a 5% critical value of 32.67, with a degree of freedom of 21. besides, the rejection of cobb–douglas is justified because nonlinear variables and some interaction among variables are relatively important in the present study (see table 4). this finding is consistent with azumah, donkoh, and awuni (2019) and kostlivý and fuksová (2018) who also rejected the cobb–douglas function and accepted the translog function. table-4. hypothesis testing. null hypothesis in[l(h0)] in[l(h1)] lr d.f. critical value decision (1) cobb–douglas function 89.483 116.076 53.186 21 32.67 rejected (2) γ = δ0… = δ7 = 0 10.247 116.076 252.647 9 19.68 rejected (3) γ = 0 119.208 116.076 6.262 2 5.138 rejected asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 729-739 735 the second hypothesis, that the technical inefficiency effect does not exist, was rejected with the lr test of 252.647 at a 5% critical value of 19.68. thus, the technical inefficiency effect exists among sample pepper farmers. the third hypothesis, that the frontier production function is non-stochastic. was rejected at a 5% critical value of 5.138. this finding indicates that the stochastic frontier model adequately represents pepper farmers. in summary, the results of hypothesis testing suggest that the stochastic frontiers translog production function is the best model to represent the data in this study. 3.4. technical efficiency score a summary of efficiency scores among farms is presented in table 5. technical efficiency scores for pepper farmers ranged from 0.193 to 0.998, and no farm was found to be fully efficient. the mean technical efficiency was 0.518 indicating that, on average, pepper farmers are able to produce only 52% of pepper production using available inputs and current technology. thus, they could improve pepper production by 48% through better use of agricultural inputs. table-5. technical efficiency scores for sample pepper farmers. efficiency index number of farmers <0.100 0 0.100–0.199 1 0.200–0.299 23 0.300–0.399 111 0.400–0.499 175 0.500–0.599 205 0.600–0.699 100 0.700–0.799 43 0.800–0.899 10 0.900–0.999 10 1.000 0 min. 0.193 max. 0.998 mean 0.518 sd 0.136 3.5. technical inefficiency model the next stage of the present study was to determine the efficiency (or inefficiency) factors, and this analysis is important for policy articulation. the inefficiency model was estimated simultaneously with the stochastic translog production function, as the cobb–douglas production function was rejected in this study (see table 6). the estimated coefficients for determinants of efficiency explain variation in the level of technical efficiency among farmers. however, for the inefficiency model, a positive sign of parameters indicates that the explanatory variables positively affect inefficiency and vice versa. education level, membership in farmers’ association, full-time pepper farming, attending courses and visiting pepper farms significantly contributed to variations in technical efficiency. farmers who had lower education levels or no formal education were technically more inefficient than those with more years of formal education. farmers with more years of formal education were better able to grasp and understand pepper farming knowledge and skills compared with farmers at a lower educational level. table-6. inefficiency model. variable parameter coefficient standard error t-ratio constant δ0 1.245 0.18 6.923* farmer's age δ1 0.002 0.001 1.173 level of education δ2 –0.028 0.01 –2.875* farming experience δ3 –0.002 0.002 –1.215 frequency of contacts with extension δ4 –0.012 0.007 –1.591 membership in farmers’ association δ5 –0.273 0.027 –10.053* full-time pepper farming δ6 –0.135 0.032 –4.241* courses and visits δ7 –0.05 0.025 –1.984** note: * and ** indicate that the variable is significant at 1 and 5%, respectively. approximately 74% of the respondents in the present study are members of farmers’ organizations. organizational membership appears to benefit members because they can share their knowledge and experience of pepper farming. moreover, full-time pepper farmers were more efficient compared with part-time. when farmers focus on pepper farming, they are more efficient because they put more effort into the main crop than into other crops. in addition, attending courses and study visits contributed to technical efficiency among pepper farmers in sarawak. however, because pepper farmers’ involvement in farming courses and visits was low, relevant agencies asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 729-739 736 such as mpb and higher education institutions (with an agricultural background) should provide more farming courses and encourage farmers to join their training programs. as expected, farmers’ age negatively influenced technical efficiency. this finding implies that younger farmers tend to have a higher technical efficiency level compared with older farmers. although pepper farming experience and frequency of contacts with extension officers per year did not significantly contribute to technical efficiency (in the present study), both explanatory variables positively affected technical efficiency. farmers with many years of experience in pepper farming manage their farms more efficiently compared with those with less pepper farming experience. frequency of contacts with extension agents could improve pepper farming practices; farmers visit extension offices not only for subsidies but also for solutions to their farming problems. in the case of pepper farming in sarawak, most farmers are in the interior areas and it is difficult for them to visit the extension offices located in towns. therefore, frequent visits by extension agents to farmers will enable them to obtain advice about new knowledge and skills in pepper farming. the results of this study have similarities with other efficiency studies in agricultural production. research conducted by alem, lien, and hardaker (2018) and bushara and abuagla (2016) found that agricultural practices affected farm performance. as expected, fertilizer usage increased production and had a significant relationship with pepper yield. the use of fertilizer should be increased to boost production (ai, liu, sirisrisakulchai, & sriboonchitta, 2018; dang, 2017; dube & mugwagwa, 2017). however, some agricultural inputs could harm production, such as fungicide, whereas the interaction between fungicide and fertilizer was found to be significantly negative regarding pepper yield in this study. dang (2017) also found that nitrogen fertilizer and pesticide negatively affected white maize yield. farmers need to use the correct types and amounts of agricultural input on the farm to ensure a boost to farm production. this study also found that the new variety semongok significantly influenced pepper yield and technical efficiency. thus, a new variety significantly improved farm production and influenced technical efficiency (chiona, kalinda, & tembo, 2014; dessale, 2019; ngango & kim, 2019; yahaya, shamsudin, radam, & abd latif, 2016). besides, socioeconomic factors including experience, farmer’s age, education, contact with extension agencies, education level, membership in farmers’ association and attending agricultural training have significantly improved technical inefficiency among farmers (dessale, 2019; dube & mugwagwa, 2017; lema, tessema, & abebe, 2017; moses & okpachu, 2019; owusu, 2018; pradhan & mukherjee, 2018). 4. conclusion, limitations, and recommendations the pepper farmers in the present study are technically inefficient. the major problem associated with pepper farming in sarawak, malaysia, is poor agricultural practices where farmers do not fully utilize the available agricultural inputs to produce maximum output. farmers must improve their knowledge and skills in pepper farming through agronomic education. government and relevant agencies such as the mpb, department of agriculture and higher education institutions (with an agricultural background) should provide more training to pepper farmers to educate them about good agricultural practices, especially hands-on training to those with less knowledge and experience in pepper farming. hands-on training also seems appropriate for more elderly groups with a low educational level, because they can learn about farming methods better through live demonstrations compared to theoretical training. however, this study focuses on pepper farming only in sarawak and thus does not appropriately reflect pepper farming practices in other pepper-producing countries, because different countries have different cultural, sociodemographic, environmental, and agricultural practices. thus, efficiency studies on pepper farming in other countries are highly recommended. funding: research graduate fellowship (grf) from school of graduate studies, upm. competing interests: there are no competing interests in this research. acknowledgments: all authors participated equally in the design and estimation of the current research. views and opinions expressed in this 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(2008). pepper varieties planted by farmers in sarawak. sarawak: department of agricultural (doa) sarawak, kuching, sarawak. http://www.mpb.gov.my/mpb/images/penerbitan/laporantahunan/laporan_tahunan_2018.pdf http://www.mpic.gov.my/mpi/images/01bahagian/psa/2020/2019_agricommodity_pocket_stats_resize.pdf http://www.mpic.gov.my/mpi/images/01bahagian/psa/2020/2019_agricommodity_pocket_stats_resize.pdf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 729-739 738 pradhan, k. c., & mukherjee, s. (2018). examining technical efficiency in indian agricultural production using production frontier model. south asia economic journal, 19(1), 22-42.available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1391561418761073. sekaran, u., & bougie, r. (2016). research methods for business: a skill-building approach (7th ed.). united kingdom: john wiley & sons ltd. sharma, k. r., & leung, p. (1999). technical efficiency of the long-line fishery in hawaii: an application of stochastic frontier. marine resource economics, 13, 259-274. yahaya, k., shamsudin, m. n., radam, a., & abd latif, i. (2016). profit efficiency among paddy farmers: a cobbdouglas stochastic frontier production function analysis. journal of asian scientific research, 6(4), 6675.available at: https://doi.org/10.18488/journal.2/2016.6.4/2.4.66.75. appendix appendix-1. efficiency studies using sfa in the agricultural sector. author (year); country subject of research data type of functional form moses and okpachu (2019); nigeria guava farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas payang, poyearleng, ngaisset, and xia (2019) africa maize farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas & translog azumah et al. (2019); ghana rice farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas & translog ngango and kim (2019); rwanda coffee farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas dessale (2019); ethiopia wheat farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas alem et al. (2018); norway crop farms panel data translog cost function kostlivý and fuksová (2018); czech rep. livestock (organic farms) panel data cobb–douglas & translog owusu (2018); ghana rice farms cross-sectional translog ai et al. (2018); china agricultural production annual data cobb–douglas alem. (2018); norway crop farms panel data translog lefroy and key (2018); australia broadacre farming panel data translog pradhan and mukherjee (2018); india agricultural production cross-sectional & panel data cobb–douglas becerra-perezab, lopez-reyesa, and tyne (2017); mexico corn cross-sectional cobb–douglas ali and jan (2017); pakistan sugarcane cross-sectional cobb–douglas lema et al. (2017); ethiopia rice production cross-sectional cobb–douglas zhang, xie, and affuso (2017); usa crop farms annual data cobb–douglas dube and mugwagwa (2017); zimbabwe smallholder tobacco farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas dang (2017); vietnam white maize farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas cillero, thorne, wallace, breen, and hennessy (2017); ireland beef panel data cobb–douglas latruffe, bravo-ureta, carpentier, desjeux, and moreira (2017); europe dairy farms annual data cobb–douglas yahaya et al. (2016); malaysia paddy farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas bushara and abuagla (2016); sudan small farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas kittilertpaisan, kittilertpaisan, and khatiwat (2016); thailand rubber farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas islam, tai, and kusairi (2016); malaysia fish cage culture cross-sectional cobb–douglas poungchompu and chantanop (2015); thailand rubber cross-sectional cobb–douglas bathon and maurice (2015); negeria groundnut-based cropping farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas masunda and chiweshe (2015); zimbabwe dairy farms cross-sectional cobb–douglas dudu, cakmak, and öcal (2015); turkey crop farms panel data cobb–douglas osmani and kambo (2015); albania apple cross-sectional translog zhou et al. (2015); china pig annual data translog chiona et al. (2014); zambia maize farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas & translog mburu, ackello-ogutu, and mulwa (2014); kenya wheat farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas guesmi, serra, and featherstone (2014) usa arable crop farms annual data cobb–douglas von cramon-taubadel and saldias (2014); chile farmers cross-sectional translog trujillo and iglesias (2014); colombia pineapple farmers cross-sectional cobb–douglas asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 729-739 739 appendix-2. farmer numbers surveyed by area according to mpb branches . mpb office district number of farmers questionnaire sample mpb kuching siburan 689 123 102 bau 593 lundu 656 asajaya 410 simunjan 1,904 mpb serian serian 4,562 132 110 mpb sri aman pantu 1,341 131 111 sri aman 1,464 engkilili 1,714 mpb betong betong 3,213 93 81 mpb sarikei saratok 1,404 137 110 sarikei 1,824 pakan 1,495 mpb bintangor julau 1,886 80 77 meradong 888 mpb sibu sibu 298 71 62 kanowit 851 selangau 398 kapit 347 song 166 belaga 166 mukah 225 mpb bintulu bintulu 222 13 10 tatau 221 mpb miri miri 369 20 15 marudi 176 limbang 138 total 27,620 800 678 source: malaysian pepper board (2011). effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 71 the impact of financial factors on the after-sales service of agricultural machinery: a case study of chinese agricultural machinery in south africa xiaoshun qina dongdong jiangb leon pretoriusc a,b,cdepartment of engineering and technology management, university of pretoria , pretoria, south africa.  dongdongjiang1212@163.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 16 december 2020 revised: 6 january 2021 accepted: 21 january 2021 published: 4 february 2021 keywords after-sales service agricultural machinery economic factors financial resources. compared to other countries, the level of agricultural mechanization in africa and south africa is relatively low. among the factors that influence agricultural mechanization, after-sales service of agricultural machinery is among the most significant. on the other hand, financial resources primarily impact on improvement and enhancement of aftersales service of farm equipment. in this paper, a questionnaire was employed as the method of quantitative data collection to assist in the analysis of data from 739 respondents in the chinese context. due to the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 (mmbengwa & qin, 2020), no questionnaires were collected from south africa for the purposes of this paper. a standard multiple regression analysis (mra) was utilized to analyze the data collected from the structured questionnaires. evidence from this study suggests that combining these financial resource factors has a major effect (f2 = 0.802) on the after-sales service of farm equipment. the high scores obtained for economic factors and analyzed in this study mean that, to a large extent, these have a major impact on china’s after-sales service for agricultural machinery in south africa. contribution/originality: this study is one of the very few researches to explore the impact of financial resource factors on the after-sales service of chinese agricultural machinery in south africa. however, the research results show that financial resources positively influence these services. furthermore, this study's outcome and impact will have a positive influence in terms of sustainable agri-enterprises and agricultural economic growth. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.71.78 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: xiaoshun qin --dongdong jiang --leon pretorius (2021). the impact of financial factors on the after-sales service of agricultural machinery: a case study of chinese agricultural machinery in south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 71-78. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.71.78 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction growth in agricultural productivity is a very worthwhile goal, resulting in robust leverage of hunger alleviation, poverty reduction, and an improved labor market. this is especially important in countries with relatively low agricultural productivity, such as in africa (qin, pretorius, & jiang, 2019). therefore, facilitating agricultural development and improving productivity in agriculture should be considered as key and crucial roles in increased industrialization in africa, including south africa. in a bid to promote enhanced agricultural industrialization, the aftersales service (ass) of agricultural machinery (am) plays a significant role in the agrarian mechanization of south africa (adu-baffour, daum, & birner, 2019; qin, zhang, & mmbengwa, 2020b; sims & kienzle, 2016). asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 71-78 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5938-4753 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4595-8453 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2842-3596 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.71.78 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 71-78 72 one of the main issues regarding agricultural machinery in africa is that of ass, which is crucial and essential to agricultural mechanization as it can decrease the utilization of physical labor, improve farm plant productivity, boost agricultural efficacy, enhance the effective and efficient use of resources, ameliorate market access, and contribute to mitigating climate-related hazards (kirui & braun, 2018; mrema, kienzle, & mpagalile, 2018; van loon et al., 2020). moreover, as more and more chinese am emerges in africa and south africa, the ass of farm equipment (qin et al., 2019) is very important because lack of service will severely impact agricultural production. among the factors that impact the ass of am, financial aspects have become among the most significant. the economic factors affecting ass of am in this study include savings (duguma & han, 2018), overdraft (melzer & morgan, 2015) and access to credit (awotide, abdoulaye, alene, & manyong, 2015; cingano, leonardi, messina, & pica, 2016; heikkilä, kalmi, & ruuskanen, 2016), sponsorship (lundh, lexchin, mintzes, schroll, & bero, 2017), and grants (creamer, 2015). although numerous researchers have focused on agri-mechanization in africa, few have concentrated on the impact of financial resource factors on the ass of am. the broad aim of this study was to establish a new risk-reduction model of ass of chinese am in south africa. in the context of this study, the focus is on the influence of resource factors on ass. the main objective of the research presented in this paper is to explore the impact of financial factors on the ass of chinese am (qin et al., 2019) in south africa, as part of a new model of ass risk reduction regarding am. in a bid to meet this objective, quantitative data collection and analysis were employed to examine the relationship between these factors. the accomplishment of our aim in this study may benefit the agriculture industry and relevant government policy-makers, to assist them in adjusting enterprise strategy and government policy formulation. the following sections are: literature review, research methodology, study results and data analysis, conclusion, recommendations and acknowledgments. 2. literature review after-sale service is regarded as an increasing and essential concept in many industries for establishing good customer relationships that contribute to increasing performance for sustainable results (chiguvi, 2020; murali, pugazhendhi, & muralidharan, 2015; shokouhyar, shokoohyar, & safari, 2020). moreover, han (2005) and fu and cheng (2010) state that the ass of am represent all the technical services provided by the sales department as well as sales division’s service management. on the other hand, zhang (2010) defines the ass as to debugging of am, maintenance, repairs, troubleshooting, provision of technical support, delivering production, offering information for improvement and upgrading, and access to customer feedback on agricultural products and services. according to qin et al. (2019), the factors involved in the ass of am include experts/technicians, timely repairs, spare parts, maintenance, training courses, and user information systems. on the other hand, financial resources play a highly significant role in the development of enterprises all over the world. meanwhile, financial resources are also extremely crucial to the development and sustainability of farm equipment enterprises. furthermore, the economic factors affecting ass of am in this study include savings (duguma & han, 2018), overdraft facilities (melzer & morgan, 2015), access to credit (awotide et al., 2015; cingano et al., 2016; heikkilä et al., 2016), sponsorship (lundh et al., 2017), and grants (creamer, 2015), as mentioned in the introduction. first, many enterprises face the issue of increasing overhead costs and make efforts to reduce these, which is a basis for the use of outsourcing principles to provide and increase savings (potkány, stasiak-betlejewska, kováč, & gejdoš, 2016), attending to the core business having become the priority in enterprise development (potkány et al., 2016)). meanwhile, wieliczko, kurdyś-kujawska, and sompolska-rzechuła (2020) demonstrated that savings are a catalyst for capital creation and are the driving force behind economic growth and development. as savings are crucial for the welfare, sustainability, increased competitiveness, and development of an agricultural enterprise, an understanding of what makes these more diverse can help identify appropriate support schemes set up by those companies for whom sustainable development projects are important (wieliczko et al., 2020). second, some statistics and research show that among the resources most used for finance companies is a bank loan or overdraft (mladenka, slobodan, & periša, 2016). furthermore, mladenka et al. (2016) state that the use of overdrafts is most prevalent among large enterprises (with at least 250 employees) and lowest among micro-enterprises (1 to 9 employees). overdraft facilities are also crucial to the development of enterprises and risk reduction in am companies. third, mabururu and wekesa (2020) explain that a major hindrance to entrepreneurship and enterprise development is access to funds. enterprise development funds have led to enhanced performance of enterprises, and therefore the socio-economic status of their managers shows improvement due to access to loans (mabururu & wekesa, 2020). on the other hand, ogundeji, donkor, motsoari, and onakuse (2018) conclude that adequate access to credit is necessary to promote sustainable agricultural development and the livelihoods of rural farmers in africa. fourth, fotiadis, nuryyev, achyldurdyyeva, and spyridou (2019) indicate that one way to acquire sponsorship is to access national or local government programs. in addition, the development of sponsorship programs that diversify the economic structure of rural communities businesses make them less vulnerable to changes in market conditions (fotiadis et al., 2019). the sponsorship obtained from government or an association is crucial for the growth and development of agricultural enterprises. finally, dvouletý, srhoj, and pantea (2020) elaborate that governments allocate financial resources to support smalland medium-sized enterprises (smes) through public subsidies and grants to increase their performance and growth (dvouletý et al., 2020). however, grants are less cost efficient when compared to other financial instruments (dvouletý et al., 2020). there is a long tradition of allocating public grants as a direct form of support to firms and entrepreneurs in a bid to increase their growth and improve their financial performance and efficiency (dvouletý et al., 2020). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 71-78 73 in conclusion, the literature shows that savings, overdrafts, access to credit, sponsorship, and grants are significant factors in enterprise development and growth. in the next section, the influence of and relationships between those financial factors and the ass of am will be elaborated upon in detail. 3. methodology the research methodology employed in this study is detailed in this section. 3.1. research design the study for this paper applied a quantitative (creswell & creswell, 2017; kidd, wengstro, & ulrika, 2011; terrell, 2012) research design, which makes it possible to collect quantitative data by means of questionnaires. the quantitative data for this paper were collected from shandong and henan provinces in china, two of the biggest am manufacturing provinces. quantitative data gathering was also planned to be obtained in south africa in a bid to compare the data acquired from those two countries, but unfortunately this had to be cancelled due to the covid-19 pandemic (qin et al., 2019; zhang. & qin, 2020) that started in china and south africa in december 2019. this will now be considered as part of future research for the extended research project. the analysis method of quantitative data employed in the research for this paper is multiple regression analysis (mra) (hossain, zyroul, pereira, & kamarul, 2012; ngo & puente, 2012; yarnold & bennett, 2016). mra refers to a statistical analysis method in which one variable is regarded as the dependent variable while the other variables are considered as independent variables (keith, 2019); moreover, the quantitative relationship between linear or nonlinear mathematical models among multiple variables is established, and the sample data collected in china were used for analysis (keith, 2019). in conclusion, this quantitative research explored the socio-economic impact of financial factors on ass of chinese am in south africa by means of the methodology mentioned above. 3.2. research population, sample strategy, and research participants the research population in this study included staff, workers, directors, managers, ceos, and presidents working in agricultural machinery enterprises; government officials, staff, and directors who research agricultural machinery and provide services and knowledge for agri-machinery users; academics including professors, doctors, and researchers whose research is on ass of am; smallholder farmers or users of farm machinery in china; and other relevant people involved in ass of am. in this study, probability sampling was used as shown in figure 1; furthermore, simple randomized probability sampling strategies were employed to devise sampling that represented the sample population associated with our research study (qin et al., 2019). the sample used in this study was initially chosen randomly from the personnel base mentioned above, followed by questionnaires formulated by employing the principles of non-probability sampling techniques such as snowball and purposive sampling (qin et al., 2019). figure-1. sampling techniques (saunders, lewis, & thornhill, 2016). source: saunders et al. (2016) the research participants involved in this study are representative of the research population mentioned above. 3.3. data collection method the method of data collection employed in this study is the structured questionnaire. unlike semi-structured or unstructured interviews, a questionnaire works best with standardized questions interpreted in the same way by all asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 71-78 74 respondents (saunders et al., 2016). questionnaires, therefore, tend to be used for descriptive or explanatory research (saunders et al., 2016). the choice of questionnaire used in this research is a method appropriate and suitable to answering the research question(s) and objectives via the relevant data collection. the total of 384 questionnaires available were collected in shandong province, china, while another 355 were obtained from henan province; these provinces host two of the largest agriculture machinery manufacturers. the data collected from china thus comprise 739 questionnaires which were analyzed in a bid to answer the research questions and meet the research objectives. 3.4. data analysis method as mentioned above, the analysis method employed in this research is mra (hossain et al., 2012; ngo & puente, 2012; yarnold & bennett, 2016). the financial resources for ass of am (qin et al., 2019) are treated as the dependent variable in the data analysis process, while values including savings, overdrafts, and access to credit, sponsorship, and grants are regarded as the independent variables. mra was employed to predict and reveal the relationship of financial resource of ass of chinese am in south africa. 4. results and discussion 4.1. demographics of research participants the demographic profiles of the research participants include four items: age, gender, position in the company or institute, and working years of business experience. descriptive analysis was employed to comprehensively explore and display these four items in terms of frequency, percentage, and cumulative percentage. the item age includes five items: <20, 20–29, 30–39, 40–49, and 50+ years of age (table 1); table 2 illustrates the item gender. the item participant's position consists of five items: ceo, senior manager, manager, specialist, and other, as shown in table 3. business experience (in years) is also shown in more detail in table 4. table 1 reveals that the majority of participants were aged 30–39 years (32.9%), followed closely by those aged 40–49 (31.7%). the third and fourth age categories were 20–29 (16.5%) and 50+ years (16.1%), as shown in table 1. the smallest group was the youngest (<20 years). table-1. age of study participants . age (years) frequency percentage valid percentage cumulative percentage <20 21 2.8 2.8 2.8 20-29 122 16.5 16.5 19.4 30-39 243 32.9 32.9 52.2 40-49 234 31.7 31.7 83.9 ≥50 119 16.1 16.1 100.0 total 739 100.0 100.0 in this study, gender participation was skewed toward male respondents, implying that males dominate in am entrepreneurship in china. according to table 2, males constitute the majority (72%). this observation may imply that the industry is not well represented in terms of gender when other conditions for transformation are held constant. table-2. gender of study participants. gender frequency percentage valid percentage cumulative percentage male 532 72.0 72.0 72.0 female 207 28.0 28.0 100.0 total 739 100.0 100.0 according to table 3, specialists comprise the majority (38.3%) of participants, followed by senior managers (23.3%) and managers (19.1%) (qin et al., 2019); the lowest category is other (8.5%), with ceo at 10.8%. table-3. participants' employment position. position frequency percentage valid percentage cumulative percentage ceo 80 10.8 10.8 10.8 senior manager 172 23.3 23.3 34.1 manager 141 19.1 19.1 53.2 specialist 283 38.3 38.3 91.5 other 63 8.5 8.5 100.0 total 739 100.0 100.0 from table 4 it will be seen that business experience of 6–10 years (20.7%) is the highest category, followed by 0–5 (18.9%), 11–15 (16.8%), and 16–20 years (14.1%). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 71-78 75 table-4. participants’ business experience. experience (years) frequency percentage valid percentage cumulative percentage 0–5 140 18.9 18.9 18.9 6–10 153 20.7 20.7 39.6 11–15 124 16.8 16.8 56.4 16–20 104 14.1 14.1 70.5 21–25 90 12.2 12.2 82.7 26–30 72 9.7 9.7 92.4 >30 56 7.6 7.6 100.0 total 739 100.0 100.0 4.2. results and discussion the factors that affect financial resources are denoted by fr-c6 (financial resources, the sixth item in group c; there are four groups in the questionnaire – a–d) for the ass of am, and are presented in table 5. these factors were estimated using mra, as indicated previously. multiple regression (morrissey & ruxton, 2018; pallant, 2020; valaskova, kliestik, & kovacova, 2018) is a suite of research techniques that can be employed to explore the relationship between one continuous, dependent variable and a set of independent variables. in standard multiple regression, all the independent variables are entered into the model simultaneously (pallant, 2020). each independent variable is assessed in terms of its predictive power, over and above that provided by all the other independent variables (pallant, 2020). the use of mra is appropriate after the assumption of normality (see figures 2 and 3) and homoscedasticity (see figure 4) are met. on the one hand, rani (2016) states that the most commonly used statistical methods are correlation, regression, and experimental design (littlejohn & dutant, 2020; schmidt & finan, 2018). however, these are all based on one basic assumption, that the observation follows normal (gaussian) distribution (littlejohn & dutant, 2020; rani, 2016). inferential methods require checking the normality of assumption prior to further discussion (rani, 2016). generally, histograms, percent–percent (p–p) plots and quantile–quantile (q–q) plots have the greatest application for normality assumption checking (rani, 2016). in this research, application of the histogram (figure 2) and p–p plots (figure 3) well illustrate the normality of financial resources that influence risk reduction regarding agricultural machinery. figure-2. histogram of the normality of the factor financial resources. figure-3. p–p plot of the normality of the factor financial resources. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 71-78 76 on the other hand, homoscedasticity (yang, tu, & chen, 2019) refers to a condition in which the variance of the residual, or error term, in a regression model is constant. when the condition of homoscedasticity (equal variances) is not met, it is expected that the variance of each data point may be quite different (barbosa et al., 2018). however, figure 4 shows the excellent fit for homoscedasticity of financial resources. figure-4. p–p plot of the homoscedasticity of the factor financial resources. table 5 reveals that the combination of the identified factors is significant [f (5, 739) = 117.437, p = 0.000], and represents 44.5% variability of the financial resources variable [r2 = 0.445, adj. r2 = 0.441]. the study also shows that combining these factors has a large effect (f2 = 0.802) on ass of am. given the beta estimates, it is revealed that access to grants (beta = 0.374, p = 0.000) has the most significant impact on financial resources of the ass of am, followed by sponsorship (beta = 0.154, p = 0.000) and access to credit (beta = 0.153, p = 0.002). on the other hand, savings and overdraft facilities are found to be insignificant at p = 0.05, which means they are relatively insignificant in comparison with other financial factors. these findings are supported by heyer, schmitt, dombrowski, and yarosh (2020), who emphasized that growth in most businesses is due to access to credit facilities, grants, and sponsorship. heyer et al. (2020) and omondi-ochieng (2020) report that donation and sponsorship account for 87.5% of enterprises' financial performance. table-5. factors affecting financial resources (fr-c6) of ass of am. factors b beta p-value [95% ci] part (sr) tolerance vif (constant) 0.635 0.000 0.300 0.969 savings 0.071 0.071 0.053 –0.001 0.142 0.053 0.569 1.758 overdraft 0.086 0.084 0.072 –0.008 0.180 0.050 0.348 2.876 access to credit 0.160 0.153 0.002 0.059 0.262 0.085 0.311 3.213 sponsorship 0.160 0.154 0.000 0.072 0.248 0.099 0.411 2.435 grant 0.372 0.374 0.000 0.304 0.439 0.298 0.636 1.573 notes: a. dependent variable: financial resources (fr-c6). b. r2 = 0.445, adj. r2 = 0.441, f (5,739) = 117.437, p = 0.000. mahal distance = 37.7166, f2 = 0.802 (large effect). c. source: survey, 2020. table 6 shows that the value of the impact of financial resource on the ass of am is 4.48, which is higher than the mean (3.0). the likert scale used in this study was measured from 1 to 7 (no influence = 1, highly influential = 7). the score of fr-c6 means that financial resources markedly influence the ass of am in south africa, as seen from the perspective of china. table-6. the impact of financial resources on the ass of am. n minimum maximum mean std. deviation skewness statistic statistic statistic statistic statistic statistic std. error fr-c6 739 1 7 4.48 1.875 –0.316 0.090 valid n (listwise) 739 5. conclusion the study employs a quantitative data gathering and analysis methodology to examine the relationship between financial resources and ass of chinese am in south africa (qin et al., 2019). a questionnaire was used as the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 71-78 77 measurement instrument to collect quantitative data from 739 participants in the study, in china. multiple regression analysis was employed to analyze the data collected from the structured questionnaires. evidence from the study suggests that the combination of financial resource factors has a large effect (f2 = 0.802), as shown in table 5. the high score found for fr-c6 means that financial resources seem to exert a marked influence on the ass of am in south africa, as seen from china’s perspective (table 6). in future research, both quantitative and qualitative data collection and data analysis will be employed to examine the relationships among financial resources, am risk reduction, sustainable agri-enterprise, and agricultural economic growth, in a bid to explore and validate the risk reduction model of ass of chinese am in south africa (qin et al., 2019). inclusion of research input from a future survey in south africa might also be beneficial. finally, this research provides an empirical contribution to the socio-economic sphere and literature and which can benefit the south african and chinese agricultural economy and policy-making sectors. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors would like to thank the participants in shandong and henan provinces who were involved and devoted themselves to this research outcome by completing the questionnaires efficiently and effectively. further appreciation is also due to the henan bureau of agricultural machinery, who assisted in obtaining data. finally, thanks are also due to the university of pretoria for study support and data analysis mentoring. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adu-baffour, f., daum, t., & birner, r. 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(2020). the impact of the covid-19 on china’s rural revitalization. basic & clinical pharmacology & toxicology, 127(y), 110-113. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 62 exploring optimal cereal crop sequence using cultivated land utilization index and yield in katihar district, india: a sub division level analysis vinay prasad mandal a raihan ahmad a sufia rehman a md masroor a, haroon sajjad a  a department of geography, faculty of natural sciences, jamia millia islamia, new delhi, india  haroon.geog@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 08-feb-2019 accepted: 16-apr-2019 online available: 03may-2019 keywords: crop sequence, cultivation land utilization index, yield, npk, katihar abstract the present study attempts to identify the suitable crop sequences in an agriculturally productive district of bihar, india. rice-ricevegetables, rice-maize-rice, rice-maize-maize, rice-maize-jute, ricepulse-rice, rice-pulse-jute, rice-pulse-potato, and maize-maize-rice were found to be the suitable crop sequences in the area under study. findings revealed that most of the blocks were found suitable for suggested crop sequences, while only two blocks (namely balrampur and barsoi) showed low potential in the rice-maize-rice sequence. use of farm machinery, application of efficient farm inputs, and irrigation is required to maximize the yield and achieve long-term agricultural sustainability in this district. contribution/ originality this study intends to identify the suitable cropping sequence for achieving a long-term sustainability in agriculture, in the katihar district of bihar, india. this study tried to establish the relationship of yield with cultivated land utilization index (clui), soil bulk density, and npk, for suggesting suitable crop sequence for sustainable agricultural development in the district. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.62.81 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: vinay prasad mandal, raihan ahmad, sufia rehman, md masroor and haroon sajjad (2019). exploring optimal cereal crop sequence using cultivated land utilization index and yield in katihar district, india: a sub division level analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1), 62-81. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 1 (2019): 62-81 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:haroon.geog@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.62.81 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 63 1. introduction agriculture has always been an important source of livelihood to the rural masses in india. increasing population pressure on resources has been a barrier to achieving agricultural sustainability, especially in rural areas. identification of suitable crop sequence and efficacious measures to increase agricultural yield, is necessary for sustainable agricultural development. agriculture has gone through many stages over time. it does not only provide livelihood, but also plays a key role in the manufacturing and industrial sectors (sajjad et al., 2014). agriculture has made rapid strides over the years, and many countries like russia federation, india, china, brazil and indonesia, have started participating in international agricultural markets. export of agricultural commodities in these nations have increased from 9.4% to 20% between 2000 and 2015. a similar pattern was also observed in imports (fao, 2018). however, at the same time agriculture has also been affected by urbanization, industrialization and climate change. the reducing level of ghgs, has also increased conflict for land and water resources (fao, 2017). nearly 33% farms in dry lands have been highly degraded affecting overall livelihood, health of the ecosystem, food security and impoverishment of farming communities, globally (fao, 2014). hence, achieving agricultural sustainability with less resource intensification is a great challenge, particularly for developing countries like india. fulfilling the demand of 10 billion people for fibre, fuel and food by 2050 is a difficult task. for achieving long-term sustainability in agricultural production, it must be grown at an average rate of 1.75% by 2050 (global agricultural productivity index, 2018). it is also anticipated that food demands would reach 60% by 2050. therefore, effectual farming practices are essential to make production sustainable (liebisch et al., 2014). characterization of farming system refers to the assessment of nature and traits of farming system, in terms of inputs like irrigation, fertilizers, high yielding variety of seeds, insecticides, pesticides, land use and quality of soils, etc. it is also essential to assess the cropping pattern, crop combination, crop intensity, crop diversification, utilization of cultivated land and yield, when suggesting long term sustainability of agricultural systems. characterization of a farming system is significant, especially in a diversified farming system. adoption of new techniques play an important role in achieving such characterization (timler et al., 2014). indian agriculture has experienced tremendous changes in the previous century. increase in food production exceeded the population growth since in the 1960s (sajjad et al., 2014). earlier, the emphasis were laid on ensuring self-sufficiency in production, which was somehow achieved. this massive production resulted to various socio-environmental implications, ranging from social lamentation to degrading land and natural resources (abrol and sangar, 2006). the size of most of the landholdings in india are small, resulting to meagre income of the farmers. of the total landholdings, nearly 86% of the farmers belong to the small and marginal farmers’ category (iqbal, 2018). characterization of farming system requires assessment of land use/land cover modification. land cover transformation affects fallow cycles, cropping pattern, crop rotation, etc. the main features of land cover modification are increasing land use production and intensification of land use. this land intensification has direct impact on cropping intensity which simultaneously helps in understanding the relationship between natural resources, people and sustainable land resource management (zhang and li, 2016). agricultural sustainability at farm level can be helpful in creating a holistic perspective of ecological, social and economic development (sajjad and nasreen, 2016). cropping pattern, cropping system and cropping intensity are significant parameters of farming system characterization, determined by the climate, soil, nourishment and other farm level components (das, 2006). land holdings and regional characteristics, determine the cropping pattern as monoculture, mixed cropping, double cropping and sequential cropping. farmers with less land holdings are vulnerable to climate change, fragmentation of land, and lesser earnings. diversified mixed cropping can significantly minimize the vulnerability of farmers, by improving asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 64 the crop yield and derived benefits (amejo et al., 2019). cropping intensity is mainly defined as the ratio of output and input in an agricultural system (ruiz-martinez et al., 2015). assessment of cropping intensity will also help in attaining agricultural productivity, while maintaining the sustainability of the environment (fan et al., 2014). it is generally believed that agriculture may lead to environmental problems, which is not usually the case. prudent agricultural activities can significantly provide solutions to various environmental problems, but monitoring has several implications. however, agricultural monitoring is more difficult than other economic sectors (dumanski and pieri, 2000). various scholars have examined agricultural intensity in terms of single components like micronutrients (kleijn et al., 2008; overmars et al., 2014) and pesticides (ruiz-martinez et al., 2015). several consensuses among scientific studies were made to characterize the farming system (hess and hoskinson, 1996; van et al., 2010; alemu, 2016). bembridge (1987) analysed the various constraints of a farming system namely, unscrupulous inputs, technological barriers and small landholdings. knowledge of crops with adequate technological support were identified as the two important determinants of a crop farming system. remote sensing data is playing an important role in identifying the cropping types, cropping intensity and plant phenology at various scales (fan et al., 2014). geospatial techniques have emanated as significant tools to prepare spatial inventory of cropping pattern, land use characteristics, examining the biophysical characters and land resources (choudhury et al., 2006). various indices obtained from high resolution satellite data as leaf area index (lai), leaf water content (lwc), canopy cover (cc), plant chlorophyll content and normalized difference vegetation index (ndvi), etc. can help in identifying inherent cropping characteristics (liebisch et al., 2014). chatterjee et al. (2015) characterized the farming system and farm typology, using multivariate statistical, cluster and principal component analyses. they emphasized that identification of farm typology may significantly reduce the problems of farmers and can be indelible to provide better livelihood opportunities. assessment of soil and land use characteristics are indispensable for increasing the productivity. ndvi and assessment of ground cover derived from satellite data, provides empirical information regarding the land and soil quality (sheffield and morse-mcnabb, 2015). land suitability is carried out when assessing the sustainability of agriculture. it is focused on the assessment of the potentiality of land, for specific utilization (jamil et al., 2018a). zhang and li (2016) examined the agrarian land use intensity of varied characteristics using principal component and energy analyses in beijing, china. jamil et al. (2018b) examined the cropland suitability through gis based multi-criteria decision-making, using site-specific parameters in the bijnor district of uttar pradesh, india. singh et al. (2013) characterized the farming system in southern arid lands of rajasthan, using field derived samples. they identified that lack of farming techniques and planting methods hindered the farming efficiency. sajjad et al. (2014) examined the spatial and temporal variability of agricultural sustainability in the vaishali district, using sustainable livelihood security index (slsi) at block level. bio-intensive farming requires appropriate cropping pattern, techniques and agricultural inputs in order to maintain the output sustainability. sajjad and prasad (2014) evaluated the crop diversification in the jalandhar district of punjab, india using the gibs and martin index. they identified that, declining crop diversification may affect farmers’ income, nutrients, natural resources and ground water, etc. rajbhandari (2011) evaluated the efficiency and relationship among land utilization index (lui), rotational intensity and yield efficiency for analysing the biointensive farming system. katihar is a district of bihar in india, known for its agricultural productivity and yield. agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, and provides livelihood to the rural masses. analysis of present cropping pattern, is essential in suggesting alternate crop-based farming systems. thus, this study intends to characterize crop farming, based on the land utilization index. this study also tried to examine the relationship between cultivated land utilization index (clui), soil bulk density, npk and yield, in suggesting a suitable crop sequence for sustainable agricultural development. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 65 1.1. study area katihar is a district in bihar, india covers an area of 3057 km2 lies between 25°13' to 25°53' north latitudes and 87°12' to 87°04' east longitudes (figure 1). the district comprises 16 blocks (administrative division of the district). it relishes a warm temperate climate with three distinct seasons winter, summer and rainy seasons. average temperature and rainfall of the district is 24 °c and 1281 mm. monsoon showers take place during june to september which leads to increase in water level up to 50 times higher causing devastating floods. numerous tributaries of kosi and mahananda rivers flow across the study area. major soils in the district are haplic fluvisols, stagnic cambisols, fluvic cambisols, haplic cambisols, endogleyic cambisols and haplic arenosols (reza et al., 2017). nearly 2.41 lakhs people reside in the district. agricultural population comprises nearly 11279 and marginal workers around 13049 (census, 2011). agriculture is the major source of livelihood to the rural masses as this district lies in mid gangetic plane region of agro-climate zone. of the total area of district (291 ha) nearly 146 ha are cultivable and 39 hac are non-agricultural lands while 10 ha came under miscellaneous tree crops and groves, 22 ha under barren and uncultivable and 1.7 ha area came under forest (agriculture contingency plan for district, 2012). katihar is one of the agriculturally advanced districts of bihar in india. the farmers grow crop during all the three seasons (rabi, kharif and zaid). figure 1: location map of the study area 2. methodology for identifying the land use under agriculture, land use/land cover map was prepared from sentinel 2a data through supervised classification. cropping pattern was identified using sentinel 2a data and verified with gps locations. maps of cropping pattern in kharif (rainy season crop), rabi (winter season crop) and zaid (short season between kharif and rabi seasons) seasons were used to examine the crop sequence in the study area. cultivated land utilization index (clui) is essential for assessing the utilization of efficiency and designates where the land is being utilized. it is generally represented in percentage or fraction. if the value of clui is 1 it shows that the land is fallow if it is more than 1 then it represents the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 66 relay and intercropping (rana and rana, 2011). clui assists in identifying the cropping sequence and to increase the land productivity for agriculture (panigrahy et al., 2005). block wise clui was calculated to identify the land utilization in kharif, rabi and zaid seasons as: 𝐶𝐿𝑈𝐼 = 𝑎1𝑏2 𝐴 × 365 × 100 where, 𝑎1 refers to area occupied by ith crop, 1,2 is the total number of crops, a is the total cultivated land area available for 365 days. relationship of yield with soil bulk density, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (npk) and irrigation was determined to distinguish the suitable cropping sequence in the study area. the detailed methodology is presented in figure 2. figure 2: methodological framework of the study 3. results and discussion of the total geographical area (183160 hectares), nearly 60% is under agriculture including fallow land (table 1 and figure 3). not all the area under agriculture is utilized in all the seasons because of low rainfall and non-availability of irrigation. nearly 133939 ha is utilized for agriculture during kharif season, 119910 ha during rabi season and 128574 ha in zaid season. largest area under agriculture is utilized during kharif season mainly due to monsoon rainfall. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 67 table 1: block wise area under various classes of land use/land cover in katihar district (2017) block area in ha agricultural & fallow land built-up land plant/forest scrub and grass wetlands rivers total azamnagar 16460 3170 3600 2630 1230 1420 28500 amdabad 10420 3100 1440 1040 490 3700 20200 barari 20940 3560 2280 1430 750 3890 32900 balrampur 9500 2700 2090 1550 720 1120 17700 barsoi 19200 2350 2860 1790 950 1000 28200 dandkhora 4600 1210 1280 1000 450 520 9100 falka 11440 580 2450 1490 810 150 16900 hasangunj 3890 930 850 680 290 400 7100 kadwa 20960 3350 3990 2560 1340 1650 33900 katihar 5890 1710 1300 1080 460 610 11000 korha 21980 1160 3210 1930 1060 580 29900 kursela 6520 2360 800 530 260 2310 12800 manihari 12020 4340 2050 1330 690 4310 24700 mansahi 5040 640 900 620 300 420 7900 pranpur 7690 1950 1930 1370 670 1740 15300 sameli 6610 370 1280 810 430 150 9600 total 183160 33480 32310 21840 10900 23970 305700 source: authors’ own calculations based on sentinel 2a data (january, 2017) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 68 figure 3: land use/land cover of katihar district (2017) major crops in the kharif season are rice, maize, pulses and vegetables (figure 4a). wheat, rice, maize, mustard, pulses, banana and vegetables are the dominant crops in rabi season in the study area while rice, maize, jute and pulses are important crops in the zaid season (figure 4b & c). crop land utilization index (clui) is a measure to understand the availability of agricultural land for whole year. however, it also determines the land occupancy for crop during a particular season. therefore, clui was calculated for both seasonal and annual cultivation practices (table 2). for kharif season high clui was found in sameli, pranpur, mansahi, korha, katihar, kadwa, hasangunj, dandkhora, azamnagar and balrampur blocks of the district. falka, amdabad, manihari, barari and kursela blocks have recorded moderate clui while low clui was found in barsoi. in rabi season high clui was observed in amdabad, manihari and pranpur blocks of katihar district. moderate clui was found in barari, kadwa, mansahi, kursela, korha, dandkhora and hasangunj blocks while falka, sameli, azamnagar, balrampur, katihar and barsoi blocks have experienced low clui in rabi season. high clui in zaid season was found in pranpur, balrampur, azamnagar, dandkhora, hasangunj, kadwa, amdabad, katihar and barsoi blocks of the districts. moderate clui was observed in mansahi, manihari, falka, sameli and korha blocks while low clui was found in barari and kursela blocks. high annual clui was found in pranpur, amdabad, dandkhora, kadwa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 69 table 2: block wise cultivated land utilization index during different seasons in katihar district blocks kharif rabi zaid annual net shown clui net shown clui net shown clui clui crop intensity azamnagar 14297.50 0.26 8448.00 0.14 15432.00 0.30 0.73 245.08 amdabad 5873.00 0.17 8584.00 0.22 8506.00 0.26 0.78 264.01 barari 15476.50 0.22 15958.00 0.20 7141.00 0.11 0.62 210.31 balrampur 9474.90 0.30 4934.00 0.14 9302.00 0.31 0.74 249.85 barsoi 2250.80 0.04 8977.00 0.13 14499.00 0.24 0.66 222.27 dandkhora 4434.60 0.29 2887.00 0.17 4348.00 0.30 0.76 257.28 falka 5181.60 0.14 6666.00 0.16 7226.00 0.20 0.66 221.43 hasangunj 3863.50 0.30 2531.00 0.17 3244.00 0.27 0.74 248.46 kadwa 17575.40 0.25 15235.00 0.20 17448.00 0.27 0.76 255.93 katihar 5830.00 0.30 3052.00 0.14 4515.00 0.25 0.68 228.47 korha 19707.50 0.27 15133.00 0.18 12039.00 0.18 0.66 223.62 kursela 4448.20 0.21 4654.00 0.19 1736.00 0.09 0.59 198.01 manihari 8656.40 0.22 9463.00 0.21 7851.00 0.21 0.72 244.04 mansahi 4575.10 0.27 3719.00 0.20 3534.00 0.22 0.72 243.91 pranpur 7112.40 0.28 6058.00 0.21 7666.00 0.32 0.82 278.47 sameli 5181.60 0.24 3611.00 0.15 4087.00 0.20 0.64 216.46 total 133939.00 0.22 119910.00 0.18 128574.00 0.23 0.70 235.66 source: authors’ own calculations based on sentinel 2a data (january, 2017) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 70 balrampur and hasangunj blocks. moderate annual clui was found in azamnagar, manihari, mansahi and katihar blocks whereas barsoi, falka, korha, sameli, barari and kursela blocks have experienced low annual clui. from the above results it is very clear that clui in katihar district is not homogeneous due to rainfall availability and irrigation potential. the farmers are bound to carry out their agricultural practices influenced by rainfall, flood, irrigation potential and land quality. various crops are grown during kharif season in the district specially rice, maize, pulses and vegetables. number of crops grown are more during rabi season than kharif due to variation in topography and flood which includes wheat, rice, maize, mustard, pulses and vegetables. rice, maize, jute, pulses and vegetables are dominant crops during zaid season. crop sequence in a year was identified to suggest a suitable crop farming system in katihar district. maps of cropping pattern during different seasons were prepared using remote sensing data. based on those thematic maps, crop sequence was identified and area occupied by those crop sequences was determined. crop yield data of all blocks were used to identify the suitable crop sequences (table 3). the combined average yield for three seasons of 150 q/ha was used as a lower margin for selection of crop sequences. in this way eight sequences were suggested for sustainable farming system. these sequences are rice-rice-vegetables, rice-maize-rice, rice-maizemaize, rice-maize-jute, rice-pulse-rice, rice-pulse-jute, rice-pulse-potato and maize-maize-rice. yield and clui for these sequences were also calculated for every block in the district (table 4 and table 5). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 71 figure 4: cropping pattern in katihar district: a) kharif (during 2016), b) rabi (during 2017) and c) zaid (during 2017) table 3: yield of crops during rabi, kharif and zaid seasons in the study area blocks kharif yields (q/ha) rabi crop yields (q/ha) zaid crop yields (q/ha) rice maize pulses vegetables wheat rice maize mustard pulses vegetable potato rice maize jute pulses vegetables azamnagar 32.67 92.86 7.72 150.52 28.89 47.65 133.45 12.35 8.47 188.1543 262.1055 24.7128 62.860 30.99286 8.09381 123.5235 amdabad 25.57 0.00 8.92 144.68 25.32 40.54 137.57 14.27 9.67 180.8528 284.5717 26.2106 0.000 36.40361 9.29620 117.6823 barari 22.64 84.73 6.05 135.33 21.33 34.41 0.00 9.68 6.64 169.1651 217.7081 23.5360 74.730 24.28692 6.34507 108.332 balrampur 32.85 0.00 7.44 137.79 26.34 47.83 140.81 11.91 8.19 172.2408 247.1281 22.4662 0.000 29.74976 7.81757 110.7926 barsoi 29.10 0.00 8.12 149.03 25.58 44.07 0.00 12.98 8.86 186.2821 256.8634 23.2151 0.000 32.77487 8.48982 122.0257 dandkhora 23.20 92.97 4.90 108.27 19.68 34.97 106.78 7.84 5.49 135.332 209.4705 19.4172 72.967 19.11196 5.19507 81.26563 falka 24.20 92.97 5.78 147.10 19.25 35.97 108.27 9.25 6.37 183.8751 250.0701 24.1244 62.967 23.07079 6.07482 120.1 hasangunj 22.13 87.67 5.64 110.62 18.83 33.90 109.01 9.02 6.22 138.274 234.7717 19.1230 77.672 22.41599 5.92930 83.61923 kadwa 21.21 84.73 6.15 112.97 18.41 32.98 107.97 9.83 6.73 141.216 247.1281 22.3592 74.730 24.71625 6.44047 85.97283 katihar 20.30 82.20 6.95 135.33 17.99 32.07 106.78 11.12 7.54 169.1651 234.1833 17.6520 72.200 28.33721 7.24513 108.332 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 72 source: authors’ own calculations based on field survey (2016-2017) table 4: block-wise yield of sequential crops in katihar district blocks rice-ricevegetable rice-maizerice rice-maizemaize rice-maizejute rice-pulserice rice-pulsejute rice-pulsepotato maize-maizerice azamnagar 176.91 173.83 211.98 180.11 315.49 321.77 298.87 238.02 amdabad 169.46 179.34 153.13 189.54 336.35 346.54 319.43 153.78 barari 156.51 178.99 230.19 179.74 265.89 266.64 248.70 239.08 balrampur 164.11 53.32 30.85 60.60 300.45 307.73 285.80 22.47 barsoi 174.34 52.31 29.10 61.87 309.18 318.74 294.45 23.22 dandkhora 126.88 162.39 215.94 162.09 255.09 254.78 240.86 221.16 falka 168.43 156.60 195.44 155.54 298.40 297.34 280.35 215.36 hasangunj 127.87 153.26 211.81 156.55 279.03 282.32 265.83 215.80 kadwa 137.35 187.34 239.71 189.70 298.50 300.86 282.58 243.05 katihar 151.28 160.73 215.28 171.42 277.13 287.82 266.73 217.63 korha 174.55 187.92 237.23 187.63 375.12 374.83 357.24 243.98 kursela 155.57 166.54 209.38 166.90 314.96 315.32 297.45 216.86 manihari 159.02 174.04 215.88 178.32 341.94 346.22 326.68 222.27 mansahi 159.15 162.35 202.31 166.81 282.06 286.52 267.52 208.56 pranpur 128.01 168.81 206.59 171.84 277.87 280.89 264.04 215.15 sameli 160.74 175.79 210.86 176.36 337.20 337.77 319.87 220.46 source: authors’ own calculations based on sentinel 2a data (2016-2017) korha 19.38 79.43 5.95 150.04 17.57 31.15 106.42 9.52 6.54 187.5526 323.6201 24.1244 73.434 23.82829 6.24315 123.042 kursela 21.65 76.67 6.03 132.39 17.14 33.41 106.36 9.65 6.62 165.4875 264.7801 23.8302 66.669 24.1963 6.32493 105.39 manihari 21.68 73.90 6.51 138.27 19.60 33.44 106.30 10.41 7.10 172.8426 294.2001 22.0650 63.903 26.34592 6.80262 111.274 mansahi 20.93 71.14 6.35 140.04 20.44 32.70 106.24 10.16 6.94 175.0491 235.9485 21.1824 61.138 25.64016 6.64579 113.0392 pranpur 22.03 68.37 5.90 112.38 20.90 33.80 106.18 9.44 6.49 140.4805 235.2424 20.5940 58.372 23.62025 6.76660 85.38443 sameli 24.05 68.73 6.04 140.04 21.48 35.82 114.08 9.66 6.63 175.0491 289.4929 23.6537 58.725 24.22444 6.33118 113.0392 total 383.59 1056.37 104.44 2144.81 338.75 584.71 1596.22 167.11 114.50 2681.02 4087.28 358.2662 880.3655 419.7156 110.0416 1712.815 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 73 table 5: block-wise cultivated land utilization index of identified crop sequence in katihar district crop sequence rice-ricevegetable rice-maizerice rice-maizemaize rice-maizejute rice-pulserice rice-pulsejute rice-pulsepotato maize-maizerice azamnagar 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.82 0.89 0.92 0.74 amdabad 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.82 0.89 0.92 0.74 barari 0.89 0.89 0.81 0.81 0.82 0.89 0.92 0.74 balrampur 0.92 0.92 0.82 0.82 0.92 0.92 0.82 0.82 barsoi 0.88 0.88 0.74 0.74 0.88 0.88 0.74 0.82 dandkhora 0.74 0.74 0.82 0.82 0.74 0.74 0.82 0.81 falka 0.74 0.74 0.81 0.81 0.74 0.74 0.81 0.81 hasangunj 0.74 0.74 0.74 0.74 0.74 0.74 0.74 0.82 kadwa 0.74 0.74 0.82 0.82 0.74 0.74 0.82 0.74 katihar 0.81 0.81 0.82 0.82 0.81 0.81 0.82 0.82 korha 0.74 0.74 0.74 0.74 0.74 0.74 0.74 0.81 kursela 0.74 0.74 0.89 0.89 0.74 0.74 0.89 0.74 manihari 0.90 0.90 0.92 0.92 0.90 0.90 0.92 0.82 mansahi 0.82 0.82 0.89 0.89 0.82 0.82 0.89 0.82 pranpur 0.82 0.82 0.63 0.63 0.82 0.82 0.63 0.74 sameli 0.82 0.82 0.67 0.67 0.82 0.82 0.89 0.74 average 0.82 0.82 0.81 0.81 0.80 0.82 0.83 0.78 source: authors’ own calculations based on sentinel 2a data (2016-2017) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 74 relationship of yield and clui were analyzed through the graphical representation. the analysis helped to understand the production and land utilization (table 6). relationship of crop sequence yield with npk, bulk density and irrigation was also analyzed to suggest suitable crop sequence. table 6: correlation between crop sequence yield and supporting land resources crop sequence coefficient of correlation (r2) average production (q/ha) npk bulk density irrigation rice-rice-vegetable 0.167 0.0159 0.0692 155.64 rice-maize-rice 0.238 0.00003 0.0734 155.85 rice-maize-maize 0.297 0.00007 0.092 188.48 rice-maize-jute 0.0199 0.0003 0.0535 259.69 rice-pulse-rice 0.2311 0.0469 0.2716 304.04 rice-pulse-jute 0.0113 0.0431 0.2062 307.88 rice-pulse-potato 0.0231 0.0521 0.2624 288.53 maize-maize-rice 0.255 0.00002 0.0943 194.80 source: authors’ own calculations based on field survey (2016-2017) ricerice-vegetable sequence will be suitable in korha and falka blocks due to low clui and high yield (figure 5). rice-maize-rice was found suitable in kadwa and korha blocks (figure 6). however, balrampur and barsoi have very low potential for this crop sequence. rice-maizemaize, rice-maize-jute and maize-maize-rice were not suitable crop sequences except korha block which has some potential in these sequences (figure 7, 8 & 9). rice-maize-jute will be more beneficial in pranpur and sameli blocks (figure 8). korha block has more advantage for ricepulses-rice, rice-pulses-jute and rice-pulses-potato sequences (figure 10, 11 & 12). in terms of productivity and clui maize-maize-rice sequence will be beneficial for azamnagar, barari, kadwa, kursela, pranpur and sameli blocks (figure 9). figure 5: relationship of yield with clui, npk, bulk density and irrigation for rice-ricevegetable crop sequence asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 75 figure 6: relationship of yield with clui, npk, bulk density and irrigation for rice-maizerice crop sequence figure 7: relationship of yield with clui, npk, bulk density and irrigation for rice-maizemaize crop sequence asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 76 figure 8: relationship of yield with clui, npk, bulk density and irrigation for rice-maizejute crop sequence figure 9: relationship of yield with clui, npk, bulk density and irrigation for maizemaize-rice crop sequence asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 77 figure 10: relationship of yield with clui, npk, bulk density and irrigation for maizepulse-rice crop sequence figure 11: relationship of yield with clui, npk, bulk density and irrigation for rice-pulsejute crop sequence asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 78 figure 12: relationship of yield with clui, npk, bulk density and irrigation for rice-pulsepotato crop sequence korha has high potential for rice-rice-vegetable and rice-maize-rice. rice-rice-vegetable is highly potential in falka block. kadwa block has high potential in rice-maize-rice sequence while balrampur and barsoi blocks have low potential in rice-maize-rice sequence. in rice-maize-maize crop sequence. korha block has registered moderate potential in rice-maize-maize, rice-maize-jute, rice-pulse-rice, rice-pulse-rice, rice-pulse-jute and rice-pulse-potato sequences. pranpur and sameli blocks have high potential in rice-maize-maize. azamnagar, amdabad, barari, balrampur, barsoi, dandkhora, falka, hasangunj, kadwa, katihar, kursela, manihari, mansahi and pranpur blocks have registered potential in all sequence (table 7). the scatter plots of npk, bulk density and irrigation shows the relationship between yield and land resource potential. the higher r2 value shows the increasing yield with increase in land resource potential. however, lower r2 value represents increasing yield with decreasing land resource potential. therefore, in this study, the lower r2 value is most desirable as it represents the high yield production in marginally available land resources like npk, bulk density and irrigation. crop sequence with maximum average yield found in the rice pulses jute followed by rice pulses rice, rice pulse potato and ricemaize jute. however, rice -maizejute (r2 =0.02) is the most suitable sequence with low land resource potential followed by rice-pulse-jute (r2 =0.09), rice-pulse-potato (r2 =0.11) and rice-pulse-rice (r2 =0.18). based on the analysis of the study, the ranking of crop sequences for maximum production in katihar district are rice-pulsejute followed by rice -maize jute, rice-pulse-rice and ricepulse-potato. jute is most suitable crop in flood inundated areas due to its resistance in flood. rice is the prime food crop of the region and suitable for low laying areas. these crop sequence-based farming system will be more effective in the district due to their potential of maximum return with limited land resources. the production through these crop sequence may be increased from present condition with the use of farm machinery and fertilizers. 4. conclusion the study sought to determine a suitable crop sequence for sustainable agricultural development in flood-prone districts of bihar in india. sentinel 2a satellite data (2016-2017) was used to identify major land uses and cropping patterns for different agricultural seasons. a cultivated land asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 62-81 79 utilization index was calculated to identify the period that land was under various crop sequences. a relationship was established between yield of crop sequences, npk, bulk density, and irrigation. rice-rice-vegetables, rice-maize-rice, rice-maize-maize, rice-maize-jute, rice-pulse-rice, ricepulse-jute, rice-pulse-potato, and maize-maize-rice were found to be the suitable crop sequences for this area under study. this study revealed rice-pulse-rice as the most suitable crop sequence, followed by rice-pulse-potato, and rice-maize-jute in terms of average maximum yield. with low resource potential, rice-maize-jute was found to be the most suitable sequence, followed by ricepulse-jute, rice-pulse-potato, and rice-pulse-rice. balrampur and barsoi blocks registered low potential in the rice-maize-rice sequence. in these blocks, effective farming techniques will play in important role in increasing the agricultural yield. in rice-maize-maize, rice-maize-jute, rice-pulserice, rice-pulse-rice, rice-pulse-jute, and rice-pulse-potato sequences, the korha block registered moderate potential. however, the azamnagar, amdabad, barari, balrampur, barsoi, dandkhora, falka, hasangunj, kadwa, katihar, kursela, manihari, mansahi and pranpur blocks registered potential in all sequence. in these blocks, farm machinery is required to maximize the yield and achieve sustainability in agricultural productivity of the area under study. efficiency in farm inputs, fertilizers, scrupulous irrigation, and maintenance of fallow cycles will help increase the overall productivity of the suitable crop sequences in the area under study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors, for their constructive comments and suggestions for improving the overall quality of the manuscript. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abrol, i. p., & sangar, s. 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(2016). characterizing and assessing the agricultural land use intensity of the beijing mountainous region. sustainability, 8(11), 1-18. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 321 contractual agriculture: better partnerships between small farmers and the business sector in the sultanate of oman badria hamed al ruqishi a tarig gibreel a faical akaichi b lokman zaibet a slim zekri a a department of natural resource economics, college of agricultural and marine sciences, sultan qaboos university, muscat, sultanate of oman b department of rural economy, environment and society, scotland's rural college, edinburgh, united kingdom  alruqishi80@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 28-feb-2020 accepted: 04-may-2020 online available: 01-jun2020 keywords: contract farming, stated preferences, transaction costs, discrete choice, mixed logit model, latent class model abstract this study aims to elicit the preferences of omani small-scale vegetable farmers towards contracting with different emerging and other potential business partners along with other contract terms. to accomplish this, a discrete choice experiment was adopted to elicit farmers' preferences towards different contract models. the choice data was analyzed using both latent classes as well as mixed logit models and as a result, three classes were found to best capture the preferences. class 1 represents 45% of the respondents who are more likely to adopt the “multipartite contract” model. this segment is characterized by a high education level, older age, and smaller family size. the second class represents 31% of the sample and tends to adopt an “informal contract” model. this group has a low experience, larger farm size, and own their private land. the last class represents 23% of the observations and is in favour of the “centralized contract” model. the main characteristics of this class are the low education level, older age, and medium income. realizing the farmers’ preferences and their characteristics are certainly important in improving farmers’ participation in the vegetables’ market and gearing the policies towards food security. contribution/ originality the significance of this research stems from the genuine lack of research in oman related to the role of contractual arrangements involving different governance structures like the form of a true agribusiness and farmer’s organization. secondly, we add a new dimension to the literature by analysing farmers’ preferences for different contract models by using a latent class model and categorizing the choices with the different farmer’s characteristics. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.321.335 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: badria hamed al ruqishi, tarig gibreel, faical akaichi, lokman zaibet, and slim zekri (2020). contractual agriculture: better partnerships between small farmers and the business sector in the sultanate of oman. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 321-335. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 321-335 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:alruqishi80@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.321.335 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 321-335 322 1. introduction according to statistics from the food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), the sultanate of oman relies very heavily on imports to secure roughly 60% of its vegetable’s needs (fao, 2017). food prices fluctuations and the need to be secured for food supplies dictate the urgent need of having a robust food security policy. food security-oriented studies in oman focused on production efficiency and overlooked the marketing aspect, hence this study has come to close this gap. this research views farmer’s ability to grow depending upon better access to high-value chains by participating in different contracts that are patronized by the partnership of different potential business models. these models have emerged as a result of various measures that have been taken by the government to ensure food security by focusing on the potential of vegetable production within oman. this has resulted in harnessing the private sector by establishing an agribusiness company that could act as an institutional solution to improve the efficiency of the sector. moreover, small-scale farmers started to operate collectively through farmers’ organizations. over the years, contract farming has been well-thought-out as a system that has great potential for providing an approach to integrate small-scale farmers into export, processing markets and the food security (dedehouanou et al., 2013; reardon and timmer, 2014; mishra et al., 2018, vilbert et al., 2019; gelli, 2015). it is one of the institutional options that enable small farmers’ diversification by enhancing their access to markets, decreasing price risks and transaction costs; contracts that deliver credit, inputs, technology, extension services, and information, aid farmers increase production efficiency; build profit-making culture, and increase income and employment (birthal et al., 2008; eaton and shepherd, 2001; michelson, 2013; da silva and rankin, 2013). bellemare and lim (2018) have viewed the positive effects of contract farming in enhancing small-scale farmers’ market participation and its positive impact on their welfare (wang and kooten, 2018). moreover, it enables farmers to upgrade their production value chain and tap into high-quality markets (demont and rutsaert, 2017). several authors also have found that engaging in contract farming has improved small-scale farmers’ income and other studies have examined the impact of contract farming on high-value crops like vegetables (see otsuka et al., 2016 and wang et al., 2014). it has also been proven that contracts with different patrons such as private companies, processors, cooperatives, and international companies can improve farmers’ income (hazell et al., 2007). hence, contract farming has been promoted as an institutional innovation and as a critical element for rural development to improve agricultural performance in developing countries. consequently, contract farming can be defined as a profitable relationship between a firm and a group of farmers. grosh (1994) noted that contract farming could act as an agro-institution that can overcome market failure resulting from uncertainty and risk. most of the studies (castaneda et al., 2018; chamberlain and anseeuw, 2017; mishra et al., 2016) rarely focused on the complexity of the set-up of such arrangements that involve different instruments like collective organization and agribusiness companies. different contract models may be perceived differently and these different views depend on the type of contractor, the price, the length of the contract, and by the characteristics of the respondents, bellemare and lim (2018). accordingly, contract farming takes many forms, such as the centralized, informal, and multipartite model (eaton and shepherd, 2001). contract farming models depend on four main components which are the type of contractor, the type of product, the intensity of vertical integration, and the involved stakeholder’s number (bijman, 2008). since one size doesn't fit all (gregory and chapman, 2002), different potential contracts were tested including an agribusiness company, farmers organization, and retailing companies. however, researchers believe that farmers are still concerned about the contract’s nature and hence there is a need to elicit their preferences towards those trade-offs. since farmers weigh the benefits over the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 321-335 323 costs to maximize their utility, farmers face various kinds of opportunity costs before they decide to engage in a specific contract model. contract attributes are best analyzed by considering the trade-offs between returns and risks associated with such a mutual relationship. the terms of the contract and its levels were selected based on transaction cost theory (seng, 2017). discrete choice experiment (dce) has been used in many areas to measure preferences for choice alternatives, for instance, dce has been used to derive farmers’ preferences for contract and market channel characteristics (blandon et al., 2009; schipmann and qaim, 2011; landmann et al., 2018; fischer and wollni, 2018; gelaw et al., 2016; ochieng et al., 2017; van den broeck et al., 2017). this study uses a dce that is based on stated preference data. the stated choice method has initially been developed in marketing research and applied in the contract (lajili et al., 1997). this data is collected from the farm households to analyze farmers' preferences for contract farming that allows controlling the correlation between different attributes for different contract profiles. the primary purpose of the stated preference approach is to assess these models by eliciting farmer’s stated preferences towards hypothetical settings (arouna et al., 2017). this methodology indicates the maximum utility of a particular contract model by separately estimating the preferences of the farmers for the pertinent attributes which characterize the contract model. the stated preference approach is used given the limitation of real contracts on vegetable production in the study area. hence, the stated choice method offers an excellent opportunity to estimate the demand for new potential contracts. the objective of this paper is to analyze the farmer’s preferences towards different contract structures in the selected study area in the sultanate of oman. this research examined different contract options using a latent class model to enable policymakers and the emerging agribusinesses in the vegetable industry to develop a suitable governance structure of contract farming that copes with the business purpose of different farmers groups. the paper is organized as follows: section 2 describes the data collection and data analysis including the latent class model. results are displayed in section 3, and the final section provides the concluding remarks and policy implications. 2. materials and methods 2.1. data collection farmers’ preferences for which type of contract farming depends on several contract attributes such as the type of contractor, technical assistance, duration of the contract and pricing mechanism (schlecht and spiller, 2012) for a better qualitative understanding of which behavioral preferences might affect the valuation of contract characteristics among omani farmers, focus group discussions were guided by the theory of transaction costs. farmers in choosing a contract seek to lower the transaction costs associated with information, negotiation, and monitoring (north, 1990). this has helped in evaluating the relevance of specific contract features for farmers and decide how to design the attributes and which levels to include in the discrete choice experiment. based on farmers’ qualitative statements, six attributes were selected. these are shown in table 1 and vary systematically in their levels: type of partner, cropping decision rights, quality specifications, technical assistance, length of the contract, and the price. the levels corresponding to each attribute of the contract were coded as binary variables except with the price. the level of price specification was considered based on historical data obtained from al batinah farmers’ organization records. the estimated parameters represent the respondent’s preferences concerning the baseline level. indicated (0) represents the reference/baseline for each level. a seventh variable “none” (none) was also considered to estimate respondents’ preferences for the status-quo option. an example of a card where option four is added to give the farmer the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 321-335 324 freedom and avoid the biases of forcing him/her to choose only from the listed options is displayed in appendix a. table 1: summary of contract attributes and levels no attributes levels 1 type of partner retailing firm (0), farmers’ organization(1), processing firm (2) 2 cropping decision rights farmers’ organization(0), trading firm (1), individually (2) 3 quality specification variable quality requirement (0), minimum quality requirement (1), high-quality standards (2) 4 technical assistance provision of technical assistance by the government (0) provision of technical assistance by the buyer firm (1) 5 length of contract one year (12 months) (0) one season (9 months) (1) two years (24 months) (2) 6 price market price (0) 7% less than the market price (1), 7% more than the market price (2), the data were collected interviewing vegetable producers who were randomly selected from an already prepared list of 220 common vegetable small-scale farmers’ names obtained from the ministry of agriculture and fisheries, whose farms with a holding size of fewer than five hectares. in total 160 farmers were surveyed and interviewed between may and july 2019 in 8 provinces (wilayat) in al dakiliah and batinah governorates of the sultanate of oman, considered as the principal vegetable production areas in the country, using a structured questionnaire comprising two parts. the first part was used to collect the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of producers. the second part focuses on the choice experiment. to examine the farmer’s preferences towards different contract models, ngene software was used to ensure the main effect of interaction and to generate the efficient total number of choices set combinations. an efficient design of eight choice sets was generated and broken into three blocks. making these cards readable to the farmers with clear levels and attributes, the choice cards are translated into the arabic language. each farmer was asked to complete 8 choice sets and asked to choose one option out of the three choices presented in every card and a fourth opt-out alternative. 2.2. data analysis the data collected were analysed within a random utility framework (mcfadden, 1974). thus, an individual n presented with j alternatives at a choice occasion t is expected to choose the alternative that maximizes his/her utility. following lancaster’s concept that any product is a bundle of attributes (lancaster, 1966), the utility that an individual n derives from the consumption of a product is assumed to be equal to the sum of his/her marginal utility for each of the product’s attributes. therefore, what a farmer derives from a contract farming package is expected to be equivalent to the summation of the marginal utilities for each of its attributes. therefore, the potential value of utility of an individual i’s associated with a contract farming j is defined as 𝑈𝑖𝑗𝑡 , which is particular for each jth contract farming alternative a tth choice occasion. it can be written as a function of two components: an observable systematic component ( 𝑉𝑖𝑗𝑡 ) and a random component (𝜀𝑖𝑗𝑡 ), which encompasses the unobservable part. thus, the utility function can be written as follows: 𝑈𝑖𝑗𝑡 = 𝑉𝑖𝑗𝑡 + 𝜀𝑖𝑗𝑡 …………………… (1) where, 𝑉𝑖𝑗𝑡 represents the systematic utility and 𝜀𝑖𝑗𝑡 is assumed to be independent and identically distributed for all options in each choice set. the systematic utility (𝑉𝑖𝑗𝑡 ) , expressed as a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 321-335 325 generalized regression function (ben-akiva and boccara, 1995) as a function of various explanatory variables can be written as: 𝑈𝑖𝑗𝑡 = 𝛽𝑋𝑖𝑗𝑡 + 𝜀𝑖𝑗𝑡 …………………… (2) 𝑈𝑖𝑗𝑡 can be expressed by k attributes 𝑋𝑖𝑗𝑡 that are assessed by parameters specific to respondent choice 𝜷ijt that is not observable and unknown utility parameter by the concerned researchers. where β denotes the k×1 vector of unknown marginal utilities that are associated with the farming contract attributes xijt. the individual preferences that are not observable are to be considered in the stochastic component𝜀𝑖𝑗𝑡 , assuming an independently and identically distributed extreme value distribution. thereby, 𝜷 denotes the vector of unknown parameters that are associated with the farming contract attributes xijt. individuals’ preferences heterogeneity is tested by a model called the mixed logit model which was suggested by train (1998). in the mixed logit model, the independence of irrelevant alternatives is relaxed and the following formula defines the conditional choice probability that individuals choose an alternative j at a choice occasion t as: 𝑝(𝑗|𝑋𝑖𝑡, 𝛽)= ∏ [ exp(x′𝑖𝑡,𝑗𝛽𝑞) ∑ exp(𝛽′x′ 𝑖𝑘𝑡) 𝐽 𝑘=1 ]𝑇 𝑡=1 …………………… (3) the unconditional choice probability is the expected value of the logit probability integrated over all possible values of 𝜷 and weighted by the density of: 𝑝(𝑗|𝑋𝑖𝑡, 𝛺) = ∫ 𝑝(𝑗, 𝑋𝑖𝑡, )𝑓(𝛽|𝛺) ⅆ𝛽 𝛽 …………………… (4) as the expression in the above formula does not have one solution, then simulation methods are created to resolve this issue. the choice probability has been calculated for each draw. maximum likelihood procedures have been used to estimate the simulated log-likelihood (sll) and are calculated as: 𝑆𝐿𝐿 = ∑ ∑ 𝑙𝑛𝑇 𝑡=1 𝐼 𝑖=1 ( 1 𝑅 ∑ exp(𝛽′𝑖𝑋𝑖𝑗𝑡) ∑ exp(𝛽′𝑖𝑋𝑖𝑗𝑡) 𝑗 𝑘=1 𝑅 𝑅=1 ) …………………… (5) train (2009) has created a new approach called conditional distributions to calculate individualspecific distributions. the main reason behind this computation is to obtain sufficient information on the likely position of each respondent. however, using the conditional distributions approach to evaluate the heterogeneity of respondents’’ preferences is of limited practical use. the estimation of the mixed logit model has allowed examining that respondents’ attitudes are highly heterogeneous. although this model does not explain the source of the heterogeneity it does control it and considers the attributes variation across respondents. therefore, the focus has been shifted to different alternatives termed latent levels (lcm) to analyze discrete choice analysis and explain the heterogeneity, greene and hensher (2003) lcm captures the source of heterogeneity in the individual’s preferences by assuming a homogenous preferences pattern within distinct groups. this model is powerful for decision making and policy-relevant analysis. the log-likelihood for respondents in the lcm for discrete choice analysis can be described as: 𝑙𝑛𝑙 = ∑ 𝑙𝑛[∑ 𝐻𝑖𝑞(∏ 𝑃𝑖𝑡|𝑞(𝑖)𝑇𝑖 𝑡=1 )𝑄 𝑞=1 ]𝑁 𝑖=1 …………………… (6) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 321-335 326 where hiq denotes prior probability for class q for individual i. for this study, the form of the prior probability is a multinomial logit 𝐻𝑖𝑞 = exp(zi′θq) ∑ exp(𝑧′𝑖𝜃𝑞)𝑄 𝑞=1 , 𝑞 = 1, … . . , 𝑄, 𝜃𝑄 = 0 …………………… (7) where zi refers to a set of observable characteristics (e,g socio-demographics such as gender, age, and income) that enter the model for class membership. pitq is the chosen probability that individual i, conditional to belonging to class q (q = 1,…q) chooses alternative i from a particular set j, comprised of j alternatives, in a particular choice occasion t, and is represented as: 𝑝𝑖𝑡|𝑞(𝑗) = exp(x′𝑖𝑡,𝑗𝛽𝑞) ∑ exp(x′𝑖𝑡,𝑗𝛽𝑞)𝐽 𝑗=1 …………………… (8) then beta regression analysis uses the computed respondent specific estimates to profile the members of each class. two criteria, which are the consistent akaike information criterion (caic) and the bayesian information criterion (bic), are used to determine the number of classes. 3. results and discussion the mixed logit model was estimated by using modified latin hypercube sampling draws along with 1200 simulations, considering repeated choice situations. all the estimations were conducted using the r-studio software and stata software. the results displayed in table 2 show the latent class model with 3 classes, fit the data better than the conditional logit based on the caic and bic values; table 2: information on the converged latent segment models number of classes log likelihood at convergence (ll) number of parameters (p) number of respondents (n) caic bic 2 -1097.9 31 116 2374.16 2343.16 3 -1052.0 50 116 2392.48 2342.48 4 -1036.3 69 116 2469.60 2400.60 5 -1005.7 88 116 2517.72 2429.72 caic (consistent akaike information criterion) is calculated using: -2 * ll + (ln(n) + 1) * p bic (bayesian information criterion) is calculated using: -2 * ll + ln(n) * p results derived from the estimation of the mixed logit model and the lcm are presented in table 3. the results indicate that the estimated marginal utilities are significant. the positive sign of the coefficient “opt-out option” suggests a general preference for the opt-out alternative. it is crucial to recall those respondents who chose “none” for all choices presented have been excluded. most of the standard deviation parameters, which show how the valuation of the entire sample spreads around the estimated means are significant, indicating that the preferences heterogeneity is maintained among the sampled farmers. the estimated 7% less than the market price coefficient statistically significant and is negative, indicating that respondents prefer to choose price running the market rather than the market price, other attributes constant. 3.1. types of partner to improve the efficiency of the agricultural sector, the omani government has decided to establish an agribusiness company as an institutional solution to link farmers with the market and to ensure asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 321-335 327 the food security (ministry of agriculture and fisheries, 2019), it is targeting large scale farming contracts (al-abdali, 2019). nevertheless, small-scale farmers can integrate with large scale farming if they operate collectively through farmers’ organizations. however, the forming of such an organization in oman is not supported by a legal setting. it is possible to be established as nonprofit organizations, and this legal form constrains it to function as a profit and commercial entity, (fao and squ, 2018). the results from the mixed logit model, displayed in table 3 corroborates the existing legislative status of the farmer’s organization in oman where that respondents are indifferent about the type of partner to contract with the farmer’s organization or the trading firm. nevertheless, respondents in class 1 and class 2 shows that they are less likely to favor a farmer’s organization compared to the trading firm. this result is expected, given that the farmer’s organization can lower transaction costs (andersson et al., 2015). unsurprisingly, the coefficient of the variable “processing firm” is negative and significant at 1% for class 1, which means that vegetable farmers are more likely to make a contract with retailing firms such as supermarkets and hypermarkets instead of processing firm. it could be attributed to the fact that farmers are familiar with the traders than with the processing firm. moreover, it could be explained by the farmer’s perception that the processing firms target large scale farms by which would harm the small scale business farms. nevertheless, farmers in class 2 are indifferent to adopt processing firms concerning the retailing partner, but class 3 is more likely to adopt the processing firm shows a significant level of 5% with a coefficient of 0.713. 3.2. cropping decision rights the agricultural commodity market is described by speculative behavior (tadesse and guttormsen, 2011). it was expected that farmers would prefer the firm to take the lead of cropping decision, to avoid unpredicted price fluctuations and the naïve cropping imitation. however, it was found that overall, farmers are more likely to prefer individual decisions. the results of mlm displayed in table 3 show that farmers are more likely to decide individually upon the crop’s type instead of giving the lead to the farmer’s organization. moreover, farmers are indifferent to the trading firm and farmer’s organization to decide for them the crop’s type. farmer’s organization is the reference line in eliciting the cropping decision to compare the farmer’s preferences concerning deciding upon the crop type by other partners such as the subsidiary trading company or deciding individually. with the latent class model, it shows a significant sign of 1% for class 1 that is more likely to adopt the decision of trading firm concerning farmer’s organization. class 2 and 3 are indifferent to their preferences upon the decision of cropping. however, with the latent class model, it showed that class 3 are more likely to adopt the individual decision compared with class 1, while class 2 is the least class that prefers to go with the individual decision in cropping. 3.3. quality specification quality standards play a major factor in sustaining a healthy contractual relationship (dolan et al., 2000; berdegué et al., 2005). the prior quality specification is crucial to reduce the pertinent uncertainty related to the demand of the buying firm which results in lower transaction costs (goodhue, 2011). mixed logit model in table 3 shows indifferent preferences over the contract that requires low-quality specification and a contract that specifies the variable quality as a variable. however, the preferences with high-quality specifications over the variable quality one are highly significant. with latent class model, positive and significant results at 5% presented reveal that farmers in class 2 are more likely to prefer low quality over the variable quality specification and farmers in class 1 prefer more variable quality specifications. https://www.powerthesaurus.org/unsurprisingly/synonyms asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 321-335 328 in class 2 and 3, they prefer more high-quality specifications with respect to the variable requirement. this shows that high-quality standards are important for vegetable farmers especially farmers in class three compared with class 2. on the contrary, farmers in class 1 are indifferent about the high-quality standard. 3.4. technical assistance provision farmers should have sufficient knowledge and know-how to meet food quality specifications and enhance productivity. within the omani context, farmers can obtain technical assistance from the government through the ministry of agriculture and fisheries. the statistical analysis has shown a negative coefficient sign with respect to the technical assistance provided by the government compared to the buyer firm and this implies that farmers prefer more the assistance to be provided by the firm instead of the government especially class 1 and class 3. whereas, class 2 is indifferent about the source of technical assistance provision. the tendency to favor the provision of technical assistance by the contracted firms rather than the government can be attributed to the professional quality approach set by the firm to be followed and found that this professionalism doesn’t exist with the government (bellemare, 2010). according to masakure and henson (2005), the technical assistance provided by the buying firm incentivizes farmers to enhance their farm performance and farmers’ accumulative farming experience. 3.5. duration of the contract overall, 76% of farmers are indifferent between the three proposed durations of contract. this implies that farmers prefer the short-duration contract of 9 months compared to 12 months (the baseline). this tendency towards shorter contracts could be attributed to the fact of farmer’s uncertainty and risk aversion and could be also explained by the climate adaptability to grow vegetables during one season only. short contracts allow the farmers to abrogate the contract if the partner does not adhere to an agreement. at the same time, other farmers are indifferent about the length of the contract. the variable “contract of 9 months” coefficient is significant for latent class 3 where the marginal effects are estimated at 0.970 and represent only 23% of sampled farmers. the other level of contract length “contract 24 months” in the mixed logit model reveals farmer’s indifferences about this contract with respect to “contract of 12 months”. this confirms the preferences by latent class model, the three classes are indifferent about the length of the contract of 24 months with respect to 12 months. 3.6. price price is considered as the first term discussed between parties in contracts( hernández et al., 2007). the coefficient of “7% less than market price” is significant and negative. not surprising, this revealed that contracts with market prices increase the probability for farmers to adopt a contract. market prices guarantee the market for their production (michelson, 2012). besides, the market price reduces the uncertainty associated with fluctuated prices. the same attribute’s coefficient is negative and significant with latent class 2 that reveals the preference of market price. the level of 7% more than market price shows a coefficient is insignificant with the latent class model and mixed logit model, which indicates their indifferences about this level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 321-335 329 table 3: estimated farmers’ preferences mixed logit model (mlm) latent class model (lcm) variables mean standard deviations class 1 class 2 class 3 farmer organization 0.083 --0.012 -0.362 0.258 processing firm -0.492** 1.109*** -0.812*** 0.008 0.713** cropping decision by a trading firm -0.091 1.142*** 0.758*** 0.222 0.030 individual cropping decision 0.433* 0.876*** 0.064 -0.262 0.367 low quality 0.143 0.846** -0.423 0.852** -0.662 high quality 0.589*** 0.648*** 0.370 0.409* 0.824*** technical assistance by government -0.209 --0.558** 0.201 -0.730*** contract 9 months 0.098 -0.390 0.122 0.970** contract 24 months -0.086 -0.117 0.144 0.307 7% less than market price -0.538*** --0.333 -0.572** -0.506 7% more than the market price -0.096 -0.300 0.046 -0.758 opt-out option 3.268*** 12.147*** 1.545*** -1.665*** -1.985** class shares 1 0.45 0.31 0.23 ***, **, and * denotes significant at 1%, 5%, and 10% level of significance respectively. table 4: regression results based on marginal effects variables class 1 class 2 class 3 coef. std.err coef. std.err coef. std.err region -1.937*** 0.049 0.461*** 0.093 10.4*** 0.324 gender -0.146** 0.067 -0.046 0.107 0.006 0.008 low education 0.623*** 0.126 -0.908*** 0.136 0.313*** 0.038 high education 0.706*** 0.057 0.371*** 0.097 -1.681*** 0.008 age 0.004* 0.002 0.008*** 0.003 0.001* 0.000 family size -0.012* 0.007 -0.033*** 0.011 -0.002** 0.001 main job 0.154*** 0.045 0.321*** 0.069 0.015 0.011 low income 1.093*** 0.057 0.015 0.099 -1.983*** 0.012 high income -0.273*** 0.058 0.204* 0.118 -0.005 0.011 marketing experience -0.004** 0.002 -0.008*** 0.003 0.000 0.000 land ownership 0.068 0.053 0.085 0.098 -0.015* 0.008 medium operated land -0.051 -0.850 -0.017 -0.170 -0.005 -0.690 large operated land 0.101* 1.880 0.209*** 2.440 0.015 1.370 inherited land 0.138** 2.110 0.109 1.030 0.002 0.180 rented land 0.393*** 0.105 0.669*** 0.178 0.033 0.025 shared land 0.371*** 0.104 0.589*** 0.202 0.029 0.022 government land 0.613*** 14.280 -0.128* -1.790 -0.715*** -80.110 low cultivated vegetables 0.038 0.044 0.014 0.074 -0.006 0.008 high cultivated vegetables 0.011 0.077 -0.057 0.160 -0.035 0.017 constant -0.168 0.171 -1.401*** 0.295 -9.642 0.327 class share 0.45 0.31 0.23 log-likelihood final 221.52 141.26 833.42 numberof observation 111 111 111 wald test value 11763.3 243.88 729812.5 p-value <0.01 <0.01 <0.01 ***, **, and * denotes significant at 1%, 5%, and 10% level of significance respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 321-335 330 3.7. heterogeneity to gain more information about the hypothesis of this research that one size of the contract does not fit all, it was necessary to identify different segments with similar preferences. the estimated standard deviations are significant and indicating the presence of heterogeneity which corroborates the hypothesis of this research. moreover, identifying the segments of farmers with homogeneous preferences would help to efficiently target them using strategies tailored to their specific needs. hence, the abovementioned three latent class models described how farmers’ responses varied across different segments. in this section, the features that describe the preferences of those groups are profiled and labeled according to the characteristics of the farmers by using the results of beta regressions displayed in table 4. the variables are described in appendix b. beta regression analysis is used to determine the relationship between the probability of a farmer to belong to one of the three classes and the independent variables considered in the regression. this can help design and tailor the policy that fits the needs of the members of each class and identify the contract model type which fits the group. each described class is provided with a title that is compatible with the contract type. the probability scale of the socio-demographic variables presented in table 4 helps understand how different classes vary against these indicators and what are the socio-demographic characteristics of each class. table 5: summary of the preferred contracts by the members of each class attributes class 1 “multipartite model” class 2 “informal model” class 3 “centralized model” type of partner retailing firms indifferent processing firm cropping decision trading firm indifferent indifferent quality specification indifferent low quality high quality technical assistance trading firm indifferent trading firm length of contract indifferent indifferent 9 months price indifferent market price indifferent class 1 “multipartite model” this class represents 45% of the entire respondents, and it is the class whose members are indifferent about farmers’ organization. they are also unwilling to contract with processing firms and prefer retailing firms instead. to cope with uncertainty and to reduce transaction costs, farmers in this class are willing to be led by the trading firm in deciding upon the crop types. this group is also indifferent about the quality specification. this class is more inclined towards seeking the technical assistance provided by the buying firm. this class preferences match with the attributes of the multipartite model in terms of the needed coordination and the joint venture business model. the results displayed in table 5 show that the dakhiliya region farmers are more in class 1 compared to the batinah farmers. moreover, in this class older people, large family size, and those whose main job is farming are presented comparing with other demographic segments. in addition, this class indicates that those of low income are well ahead of those characterized as high income. also, this class includes more of those of high marketing experience and those who own highly operated farms. farmers who attained land from the government and who inherited their lands are more in this class. class 2 “informal contract model” this class represents 31 % of the respondents. this type of contract is characterized by its transitory nature where the farmers are not usually engaged in directed farming. it is characterized by their indifferent preferences between retailing firms, the farmers’ organization and the processing firm. they are also indifferent about the decision of selecting the crop. farmers in this class prefer low-quality standards. with regards to the provided technical assistance, results in table 3 show that farmers are indifferent about it whether to be provided by the government or the buying firm. the length of the contract is also not crucial to the farmers as the price. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 321-335 331 unsurprisingly, farmers prefer the “market price” more than the 7% lower price”. the class preferences match the informal contract model type. from table 4, it can be noticed that this member of class 2 is more likely to be located in the batinah region compared to dakhliah. the same segment is more likely to have highly educated farmers and less likely to have a large family size. in this segment, the farmers whose main job is farming is proportionally higher compared to other classes. the farm is larger compared to other classes’ farms. farm ownership indicates that this group has less governmental land and more rented or shared private land. the marketing experience of this group shows the negative value and this indicates the low experience the farmers have in terms of several years. class 3 “centralized contracting model” this model main characteristics are directed contract farming where there is a commitment from the private corporate sector to provide technical assistance to farmers to meet the high-quality standards. this group represents 23% of the observations. farmers are indifferent about contracting with the farmers’ organization or the retailing firm. however, the segment has stronger preferences to contract with the processing firm. the members of this class are indifferent about the production decision. the segment also prefers the high-quality standards significantly with respect to the variable quality specification. the technical assistance provided by the buying firm is much more preferred compared to the one provided by the government. the members of this segment prefer the shortest contract of 9 months. these class preferences attribute match more with the centralized contracting model type, quality specification and technical assistance. farmers of this class tend to have low education levels, old age, and medium-income and tend to own their land. 4. conclusions contract farming is important to solve farmers' marketing problems in oman. however, there exists no “one size fits all” contract; farmers exhibit different preferences for partners’ types and terms of the contract. this study showed that 76% of the farmers prefer contracting with retailing firms and farmer organizations while 24% of farmers believe that the centralized contract model is their choice and the processing firm which is supported by the government is the main partner for them. policymakers should ensure prospected policies are matched with the farmer’s preferences in setting legal profit-oriented producers’ organizations. funding: this study received a financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: this project is supported by the internal grant (ig/agr/econ/18/01) and from sultan qaboos university bench fees given to phds students. this work also would not have been finalized without the assistance of dr. faical akaichi from scotland’s rural college at edinburgh university. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references andersson, c. i., change, c. g., rao, e. j., & qaim, m. 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(2018). forestry and the new institutional economics: an application of contract theory to forest silvicultural investment. routledge. appendices appendix a: choice cards “sample” attributes option 1 option 2 option 3 option 4 type of partner farmer’s organization processing firm retailing firm none of these cropping decision rights farmer’s organization farmer’s organization individually quality specification variable quality requirement highly quality standards minimum quality requirement technical assistance provision by the buyer firm provision by the buyer firm provision by the government length of contract duration of contract 1 year duration of contract 2 years duration of contract one season price market price 7% more than market price 7% less than market price please put tick on your choice appendix b: description of beta regression variables variable description region 0 = if the farmer is from the al batinah region and, 1= if the farmer is from aldakiliha ( interior region ) gender 0 = if farmers is female, 1 = if the farmer is male. low education this variable is coded if 1 the farmer education attainment level is primary, intermediary, otherwise is 0 medium education this variable is coded 1 if the farmer education attainment level is secondary or diploma, otherwise is 0 high education this variable is coded 1 if the farmer reveals a high education of university https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=16561045760721102731&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 321-335 335 degrees and above. age this variable is continuous and indicates the farmer’s age in years. family size this variable is continuous and represents how many children the farmer has. main job this variable is coded as = 1 if the main job is farming, otherwise is = 0. low income this variable is coded as 1 if the income range between 100 to 600, otherwise is 0 medium income this variable is coded as 1 if the income range between 6002000, otherwise is 0 high income this variable is coded as 1 if the farmer‘s income is higher than 2000 omr. marketing experience this variable is continuous to represent how many experience years the farmer has in marketing. land ownership this variable is coded if farmers own his land as 1, otherwise is coded as 0 low operated land this variable is coded if the operated land range is less than 5.0, otherwise is = 0 medium operated land this variable is coded if the operated land range is between 5.0 –19.9 feddan, otherwise is = 0 large operated land this variable is coded as 1 if the operated land large >= 20.0 feddan, otherwise is = 0 inherited land this variable is coded as 1 if the land is inherited, otherwise is 0 rented land this variable is coded as 1 if the land is rented, otherwise is 0 shared land this variable is coded as 1 if the land is shared with another partner, otherwise is 0 purchased land this variable is coded as 1 if the land is purchased, otherwise is 0 government land this variable is coded as 1 if the government grants the land, otherwise is 0 low cultivated vegetables this variable is coded as 1 if the cultivated vegetables is < 5.0 ton high cultivated vegetable this variable is coded as 1 if the cultivated vegetables is < 20 ton effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 1 the impact of social capital on the immigrants’ integration alongside the rural-urban continuum: evidence from greece petroula liltsi a, anastasios michailidis a, efstratios loizou b fotios chatzitheodoridisb adepartment of agricultural economics, aristotle university of thessaloniki, thessaloniki, greece b department of agriculture, division of agricultural economics, university of western macedonia, terma kontopoulou str., florina, greece  pliltsi@agro.auth.gr (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 19-sep-2019 accepted: 31-dec-2019 online available: 27-jan2020 keywords: greek communities, immigrants, integration, rural-urban continuum, social capital abstract this paper aims to develop methodological tools which will contribute to estimate the impact of social capital on the integration of immigrants alongside the rural-urban continuum of the prefecture of thessaloniki. the importance of this paper derives from the current debate in this respect with insufficient infrastructures for smooth integration of immigrants into societies and the need to develop an immigration policy which emphasizes the strengthening of policies on the development of multiculturalism and social cohesion. for this purpose, a survey was carried out in 607 residents of the prefecture of thessaloniki during the period june to november 2016. the data collected and other information were utilized according to simple descriptive or multivariate statistical analyzes as well as qualitative techniques. based on the descriptive statistical analyzes the paper concluded that “social capital” is key component in the structure of the relationship between natives and immigrants and according to the results of catreg models the main reason, which has a positive impact on the "integration" of immigrants, is their participation in community activities. contribution/ originality the survey provides information for integration of immigrants, a topic not widely examined in greece, and it is analyzed for the first time on the basis of rural-urban continuum theory. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.1.8 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: petroula liltsi, anastasios michailidis, efstratios loizou and fotios chatzitheodoridis (2020). the impact of social capital on the immigrants’ integration alongside the rural-urban continuum: evidence from greece. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 18. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 1-8 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:pliltsi@agro.auth.gr http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.1.8 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7560-4365 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 1-8 2 1. introduction undoubtedly, the phenomenon of immigration is a recent and significant new challenge for all countries, and especially for the euro-mediterranean ones. greek societies, particularly in recent years, have received a large number of immigrants (kasimis, 2008). according to the results of the 2011 census of greece more than 10% of the whole population in greece are foreigners (elstat, 2011). immigration brings importing positive long-term impacts to local societies and economies as it contributes to the increase of the host population and to improve its socio-demographic characteristics (age pyramids) (imran et al., 2019; mitrakos, 2016; boulet and boudarbat, 2015). moreover, immigration increases the local workforce especially in jobs that do not require specific qualifications (sandeep, 2015; schovánková, 2013; williams, 2009; peridy, 2006) and contributes to reducing inflation and boosting the local economies (mitrakos, 2016; piracha et al., 2016; kotani, 2012). on the other hand, in short term periods, immigration brings about negative changes to the social and political well-being of local population as it has negative effects on social cohesion and social capital of the area (gilmartin and migge, 2015; putnam, 2007). social capital is an essential component of harmonious coexistence and contributes to boosting social cohesion and promoting integration of immigrants (warburton, 2019; schmidt, 2016; tselios et al., 2015; beugelsdijk and sjak, 2009; cheong et al., 2007). societies with high rates of social capital have also positive attitudes to social issues (herreros and criado, 2009; martinovic et al., 2009). proper design of social capital can solve the problems that arise from the existence of different social groups within the communities (bilodeau and white, 2016; tham-agyekum and nimoh, 2013; evergeti and zontini, 2006; jacobs and tillie, 2004). according to perkins and long (2002), "sense of community" is an important dimension of social capital as it expresses the combined effect of networking, reciprocity and trust (lowea et al., 2016; sama et al., 2016; jamshidi and kenarsari, 2015; de blasi et al., 2012; casieri et al., 2010). immigrants are an organic part of the host society and their integration must be a fundamental concern of societies. integration is the result of political and social debates and derives from the interaction of different social groups (gilmartin and migge, 2015). this paper aims to estimate the impact of social capital on the integration of immigrants in a typical greek area. in addition, the paper seeks to develop modern methodological tools aiming to define the factors which contribute to the integration of immigrants alongside the rural-urban continuum of the study area and conclude empirical findings. in accordance with theory of rural-urban continuum areas and according to their distance (either the physical distance from other settlements or as travel time), the municipalities of the prefecture of thessaloniki are classified into a linear continuum (liltsi et al., 2014; pateman, 2011). the contribution of this research to scientific literature is particularly interesting and important as for first time in greece, in a period which characterized by uncertainty, is carried out a survey to determine the interaction between social capital and integration of immigrants as well as to investigate the characteristics of immigrants that contribute to their integration. social exclusion can be reduced by implementing appropriate programs and policy measures that boost social capital (stanley et al., 2012). therefore, on the basis of the results and according to the characteristics of immigrants that contribute to their integration, policy recommendations will be drawn to identify a new immigration policy that encourages the social cohesion and will help to facilitate the social and economic integration of immigrants in host societies. the rest of the paper consists of the following sections: section two outlines the employed methodological framework. the empirical results are discussed in section three and finally in the last section the conclusions are offered in combination with some emerging policy recommendations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 1-8 3 2. materials and methods this paper draws from an empirical study conducted in 607 residents of the 14 municipalities of the prefecture of thessaloniki during the period june to november 2016. the data were collected through a personal response questionnaire survey. according to the more recent census statistics (table 1), the permanent residents of the prefecture of thessaloniki are 1.040.590 of which 69.961 (6,7 %) are immigrants (elstat, 2011). table 1: sample distribution municipalities real population greece foreign countries questionnaires municipality of ampelokipoimenemeni (western) 52,185 47,703 4,424 27 municipality of kordelio-evosmos (western) 102,149 96,242 5,511 51 municipality of delta (western) 45,523 41,505 4,334 15 municipality of neapoli-sykies (western) 84,384 78,791 5,95 41 municipality of langada (western) 41,082 39,148 1,955 15 municipality of pavlou mela (western) 98,818 93,924 5,321 64 municipality of chalkidona (western) 33,309 33,673 2,284 21 municipality of oraiokastro (western) 38,861 37,201 1,116 14 municipality of thessaloniki (center) 325,321 299,874 25,308 225 municipality of volvi (eastern) 23,317 21,583 1,895 10 municipality of thermaikos (eastern) 49,964 45,951 4,313 16 municipality of thermi (eastern) 53,295 50,506 2,695 15 municipality of kalamaria (eastern) 91,046 88,814 2,704 46 municipality of pylaia-chortiatis (eastern) 69,950 67,959 2,151 47 total 1,109,202 1,040,590 69,961 607 source: hellenic statistical authority (elstat, 2011) to meet the aims of this paper a qualitative research was initially conducted in a small pilot sample of residents of the prefecture of thessaloniki (two focus groups). according to the results of this qualitative research, the final questionnaire was structured, and the main quantitative research was carried out, using stratified random sampling through personal interviews, in 607 residents of the study area (each municipality was a strata). the survey questionnaire is divided into four sections (figure 1). these sections consist of variables about: (1) the sense of community (2) the integration of immigrants (3) the impact of immigrants’ installation in rural areas (4) the demographic and personal characteristics of the respondents. aiming to increase participation, and in order to avoid the cognitive burden on respondents, a 5-point likert scale was used where “1 = strongly disagree”, “2 = disagree “, “3 = neither agree or disagree”, “4 = agree” and “5 = strongly agree”. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 1-8 4 figure 1: questionnaire functionality 3. results and discussion the main aim of the paper was to estimate and map the "integration" and “social capital” in the rural-urban continuum scale (figure 2). using simple descriptive statistical analysis, the average size of "integration" and “social capital” was calculated for each municipality and was designed on an in rural-urban continuum scale. social capital is a key element in the structure of the relationship between natives and immigrants in most municipalities in the prefecture, as municipalities with a high average social capital have higher levels of average "integration" (chalkidona, neapolissykeon, pavlou mela, thessaloniki, kalamaria, thermaikou). figure 2: “integration" and “social capital” therefore, categorical regression model (catreg), via spss v.23 for windows, has been employed to correlate the factors that influence integration of immigrants (loizou et al., 2013; asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 1-8 5 michailidis et al., 2011). catreg has been selected and used in order to explain and model the immigrants’ integration in terms of socioeconomic attitudes while it can also handle better when compared to other regression models, nominal and ordinal (qualitative in nature) variables (charatsari et al., 2013; chatzitheodoridis et al., 2013; michailidis et al., 2012; krikeli et al., 2020). the applied catreg model is well-performed and indicates a significant relationship between the dependent variable which is immigrant’s "integration" and the group of selected predictive variables (r2 = 0.962). the results (table 2) show that the most important factor of integrating immigrants, according to pratt measures of relative importance, are “the participation of immigrants in community activities” (26.3%), “employment in jobs which do not preferred by the local residents” (8.9%), “help of locals to immigrants to find a job” (6.8%) and “the growth of workforce in community” (6.5%). table 2: relative importance measures of the empirical catreg model models n r2 relative importance measures general 607 0.926 participation in community activities (0.263) labor in jobs that the locals do not (0.089) help from the locals to find work (0.068) increase the workforce of the community (0.065) note: dependent variable "integration" investigating further the integration procedure, according to the theory of rural-urban continuum, the municipalities of the study area were classified in three separate categories based on their physical distance from the main urban center (municipality of thessaloniki) and some certain characteristics of each area: a) urban, b) semi-urban and c) rural areas (table 3). table 3: distribution of municipalities based on the theory of rural-urban continuum municipalities urban ampelokipoi-menemeni, neapoli-sykies, pavlou mela, thessaloniki, kalamaria semi-urban kordelio-evosmos, pylaia-chortiatis, oraiokastro, thermaikos, thermi rural chalkidona, langada, volvi, delta in order to find out the factors that influence integration of immigrants alongside the rural-urban continuum, several catreg sub-models were employed (table 4). table 4: relative importance measures models n r2 relative importance measures total explanation urban areas 403 0.943 participation in community activities (0.274) 27.4% semiurban areas 143 0.974 participation in community activities (0.251) 25.1% rural areas 61 0.999 participation in community activities (0.242) the participation of immigrants in elections (0.151) friendly relations with migrants (0.145) cooperation in the work environment (0.142) increase the workforce of the community (0.149) 82.9% note: dependent variable "integration" the participation of immigrants in community activities is the major reason for "integration" of immigrants in urban (0.274) semi-urban (0.251) and rural areas (0.242). as for the inhabitants of https://www.linguee.com/english-greek/translation/semi-urban.html https://www.linguee.com/english-greek/translation/semi-urban.html https://www.linguee.com/english-greek/translation/semi-urban.html asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 1-8 6 rural areas, they examine the importance of "integration” immigrants through cooperation in the working environment (0.142) as migrants contribute to the increase of the workforce in the region (0.149). they also believe that the development of friendly relations with migrants (0.145) and the participation of immigrants in elections (0.151) improve their levels of "integration”. 4. conclusion according to the paper results, the integration of immigrant’s procedure in the study area adjusts satisfactory to the theory of rural-urban continuum. the employed multivariate statistical investigation supports the need for area segmentation alongside the rural-urban continuum as the integration factors of immigrants are different in the selected models. more specifically, for all models, the main reason, which has a positive impact on the "integration" of immigrants, is their participation in community activities. nevertheless, the factors change significantly for the model of rural areas. immigrants contribute to increase the workforce of the rural community therefore the cooperation in the work environment and friendly relations with immigrants improving contribute to improving integration levels of immigrants in rural areas (gidarakou et al., 2011; kasimis, 2008; levitt and jaworsky, 2007). on the other hand, “social capital” is the key component in the structure of the relationship between natives and immigrants (tselios et al., 2015). ιn most areas, the relation that links social capital and integration is proportional, as areas with high social capital have higher levels of "integration" herreros and criado, 2009; martinovic et al., 2009). areas with high social capital reserves are less vulnerable and have greater opportunities to achieve high levels of prosperity and solidarity than those with low levels of trust and weak civil society (wilkes and wu, 2018). efforts should be made to create hospitable societies in which immigrants are able to participate. by encouraging participation in society's activities, they increase the chances of interacting with the locals, reducing prejudice and creating new values that lead to improve levels of trust and social capital as well as the empowerment of local organizations and society (paluck et al., 2018; häussermann and siebel, 2001). therefore, there is an important need for an immigration policy that emphasizes the strengthening of policies towards multiculturalism and social cohesion. to achieve this, effective acceptance measures and programs should be considered to promote the development of social capital and the "sense of community". through the proper structuring of social capital, it is possible to solve the problems that arise from diversity in societies, as areas with high levels of social capital reserves have a more positive attitude towards social issues. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references beugelsdijk, s., & sjak, s. 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(2009). international migration, uneven regional development and polarization. european urban and regional studies, 16(3), 309-322. doi.org/10.1177/0969776409104695. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 264 determinants of burden of disease among rice farming households in ogun state, nigeria aboaba, k. o. a, oyekale, t. o. b , adewuyi, s. a. a , adigbo, s. o. c adepartment of agricultural economics and farm management, federal university of agriculture, abeokuta, nigeria b institute of food security environmental resources and agricultural research, federal university of agriculture, abeokuta, nigeria c department of plant physiology and crop production, federal university of agriculture, abeokuta, nigeria  aboabakazeem@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 01-jul-2019 accepted: 07-nov-2019 online available: 11-dec2019 keywords: burden of disease, rice farming, households, ogun state, cost of illness abstract this study was carried out to indicate the factors, which could determine the burden of disease among rice farming households in ogun state in nigeria. multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 240 rice farming households. the study showed that nearly all households took drugs or medicines without consulting a doctor or pharmacist. low level of income (85.33%), lack of awareness of health facilities (52.02%), low level of education (58.22%), as well as hindrances in distance and difficult terrains towards health facilities (75.11%) were indicated as the critical problems being faced by the households from using public health facilities. sex, household size, offfarm income, distance to health care services and dirt floor of home were positively and significantly considered to influence disease burden, while age, cooperative membership, labor used and health conditions had negative effects. the study concluded that increased distance to health care services increased the burden of diseases of the households. it was therefore, recommended that health facilities should be located nearer to the people’s locations to increase its appropriate use. this would gradually improve their health conditions, and thereby reduce the ill-health cost in the long run. contribution/ originality this study examined factors influencing economic burden of diseases among rice farming households. this study will further serve as a guide to government, non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders involved in provision of health care facilities, it will also be a prima facie in adding to the sparse knowledge that exist in the area of factors influencing farmers ill-health cost. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.264.273 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: aboaba k. o., oyekale, t. o., adewuyi, s. a. and adigbo, s. o. (2019). determinants of burden of disease among rice farming households in ogun state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 264-273. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 264-273 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:aboabakazeem@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.264.273 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 264-273 265 1. introduction since rice is the staple food commodity for many households within the sub-saharan africa, its demand would obviously creep upwards. its demand in the region had grown at an annual rate of 6% as a result of increase in population and change in taste of the populace (ismail et al., 2012). similarly, demand for rice in nigeria had grown at the rate of 7.3% annually, since mid-1970s (bamidele et al., 2010), whereas on average, every nigerian consumes 24.8 kg of rice annually, representing quite a larger percent of total calories intake (alfred et al., 2014). the production capacity of rice is far below its national supplies, despite its contribution to the food requirement of the population (ogunsumi et al., 2013). besides, the number of rice producing farmers in nigeria is small and are characterized by low output, aging population and very low know-how of technology, as observed by fasoyiro and taiwo (2012). in spite of these factors, rice farmers are facing a number of diseases, which prevents them from utilizing their full resources. since their production capacities are by and large affected, and lead to much reduction in their incomes in particular, and subsequently affect their wellbeing in general, as well accordingly. health comprises the complete physical, social, mental, and physiological well-being of an individual, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (fao/who, 1992), whereas good health contributes to people’s ability to be productive. since health contributes to one’s enrolment and success in school, which in turn is a determinant of future earnings. also, large out of pocket expenditure as a result of ill-health cost have an impact on financial status and can push people into continuous poverty. however, amidst the alarming report of effects of diseases on farmers, as pointed out by ajani and ugwu (2008), 13% of the household expenditure was spent on treatment of malaria infestation among small scale farmers in nigeria. similarly, another recent study valued both the health cost and opportunity cost of a farmer becoming sick once in nigeria to be ₦29, 225.53 (us$ 8.1).1 this shows that the cost of combating ill-health challenges by the farmers in nigeria is quite huge. when considered as a form of resource, health could reduce or increase efficiency because good health for productive agriculture is critically important in challenging the odds against poverty and food insecurity, precautions and improvement in health care, along with adequate and immediate facilities increase the productivity of labour and thereby enhance the economic growth (ulimwengu, 2009). however, most studies undertaken on health related issues are often diseasespecific, which limits the assessment of the farmers’ health conditions (ugwu, 2006). similarly, most of the other studies on health focused on occupational health in the medical field, making it impossible to determine the number of people with various illness as a result of agricultural exposure. nevertheless, the economic impact of agriculture related ill health and injuries require proper and appropriate assessment. as pointed out by ifpri (2007), poor health affects both productivity and income of the farmers, thereby perpetuating a downward spiral into a vicious cycle of ill health and poverty. such activities will further inhibit economic growth, development and general well-being of the vast and wider population. however, at this point we intend to place specific emphasis on studies aimed at understanding the determinants of burden of ill-health among rice farming households in nigeria, given the importance of this food crop in the specific baskets of food commodities for the average populace. therefore, this study seeks to fill the existing gap in the body of knowledge with regards to the factors that determine the burden of disease among rice farming households, specifically inclined to describe their personal characteristics, or ascertain various episodes and locate the prevalence of self-reported illness among them, besides identifying the sources of health care services available to the households along with the determination of those factors, which prevents rice farmers from using public health care services. 1 1usd equals ₦355.99 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 264-273 266 2. materials and methods the study was carried out in ogun state in the southwest geopolitical zone of nigeria. it lies within latitudes of 60n and 80n and longitude 20e and 50e with an estimated population of 3,728,098 according to the 2006 national census (npc, 2006). the state has conducive climatic and environmental conditions that support the cultivation of food crops such as rice, maize, cassava, plantain, etc. multistage sampling technique was employed for this study, the stage was a purposive selection of a block from each of the four (4) agricultural development project (adp) zones in the state, the second stage was a purposive selection of a major rice producing cell from each of the sampled blocks, the third stage was a random selection of three villages from the sampled cells, last stage entails purposive selection of twenty (20) rice farming households from the sampled villages, thus, making a total sample size of two hundred and forty (240) rice farming households, however, during the process of data clean up only two hundred and twenty five (225) questionnaires were fit for analysis. data for this study was obtained from primary source, primary data was collected from rice farming household via structured interview guide, the data collected was on socioeconomic characteristics such as age, sex, level of education, household size, primary occupation, secondary occupation, income, etc. question on prevalence and episodes of diseases, cost of illness etc. data for this study were analyzed with both descriptive and econometrics techniques. 2.1. cost of illness (economic burden of disease) cost of illness provides a monetary equivalent of diseases burden (adekunle et al., 2016). this study adopted and modified cost of illness procedure used by akinbode et al. (2011) by adding preventive cost such as cost of mosquito nets, mosquito coils, etc. to the total economic cost of illness and this is expressed as; economic cost = ∑ ( 𝑛 𝑗=0 fc+ tc+ p𝑐) …………...……………….. (1) where; fc is the financial cost of illness and expressed as; fc= ∑ ( 𝑛 𝑗=0 fd +𝐹𝑚+𝐹𝑡+𝐹𝑠𝑢) …………...……………….. (2) where; fd= financial cost of drugs, herbs, etc. (₦) fm= financial cost of medical consultancy (₦) ft= financial cost of travel (₦) fsu= financial cost of subsistence (feeding) (₦) and tc is the total time cost of illness expressed as; tc= ∑ ( 𝑛 𝑗=0 [(𝑇𝑠𝑖∗𝑎𝑠𝑖∗𝑤) + (𝑇𝑐𝑖∗𝑎𝑐𝑖∗𝑤)] …………...……………….. (3) where; 𝑇𝑠𝑖= number of days of forgone production by the sick individual (s) to calculate the number of days of forgone production it was assumed that average working condition prevail and adult male work for about 8 hours a day as used by akinbode et al. (2011). thus, the actual total hours devoted to farm work were converted to male adult equivalent by multiplying those of male by 1 and those of female by 0.75 and those of children by 0.5. a = age coefficients (number) the age coefficient “a” represents productivity coefficient and this takes on the following values following sauerborn et al. (1996) and world bank (1993): asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 264-273 267 age < 17years = 0.5 18-40years=1 41-55years=0.75 56-65years = 0.67 and >65years = 0.5. s = number of sick individual (s) w = daily wage rate (₦) 𝑇𝑐𝑖= number of days of forgone production by caregiver (s) c = number of caregiver (s) and p𝑐 is the preventive cost such as; cost of mosquito net, coil, balm, etc. 2.2. multiple regression analysis the determinants of disease burden among the rice farming households was estimated using ordinary least square regression model, the explicit form of the equation is specified as; g= β0+β1z1+ β2z2 + β3z3+ β4z4+ β5z5+ β6z6+ β7z7+ β8z8+ β9z9+ β10z10+ β11z11+ β12z12+µ … (4) where; g = economic cost of illness (₦) z1 = age of farmers (years) z2 = sex (male = 1, female = 0) z3 = household size (number of people) z 4 = off-farm income (₦) z5 = level of education (years) z6 = cooperative membership (member = 1, otherwise = 0) z7 = labor used (hired labor = 1, otherwise = 0) z8 = distance to health care services (kilometers) z9 = health condition (good = 1, otherwise = 0) z10 = access to clean drinking water (inaccessible = 1, otherwise = 0) z11 =access to adequate sanitation (inaccessible = 1, otherwise = 0) z12 = floor of home (un-cemented = 1, otherwise = 0) where β0β12 are parameters that will be estimated and µ = disturbance or error term. 3. results and discussion 3.1. socio-economic distribution results on table 1 revealed that a larger proportion (73.33%) of the rice farming household were headed by male while 26.67% of the rice farming households were headed by female, the dominance of male over female was because rice production is tedious and requires more strength that female may not be able to provide, more than a quarter (39.56%) of the rice farming household heads are greater than 60years, this implies that majority of the rice farming household heads are old, not energetic and non-vibrant which is an indication that their productivity might have started to fall. more than a quarter (37.78%) of the rice farming household heads did not had formal education, the implication is that this may further prevent them from adopting innovations related to agricultural as well as health practices, almost half (43.56%) of the rice farming household heads are into processing of agricultural produce and this may be attributed to the fact that farming was the major activities of the household heads. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 264-273 268 table 1: socio-economic characteristics of respondents variable frequency percentage sex female 60 26.67 male 165 73.33 total 225 100.00 age <=30years 11 4.89 31-40years 31 13.78 41-50years 47 20.89 51-60years 47 20.89 >60years 89 39.56 total 225 100.00 educational level non formal 85 37.78 primary 77 34.22 secondary 63 28.00 total 225 100.00 secondary occupation agricultural produce processing 98 43.56 trading 57 25.33 artisans /craft 55 24.44 others 15 6.67 total 225 100.00 source: field survey, 2018 3.2. self-reported illness episodes table 2 revealed that out of 1243 illness episodes reported by the rice farming households within the period of six months, malaria contributed most (17.14%) of the total illness experienced, 16.89% of the illness was due to back pain, 15.69% of the total illness was due to fever, 6.60% of the illness was due to guinea worm, 8.29% of the illness was due to typhoid, 4.51% of the illness was due measles, 9.49% of the illness was due to rheumatism, 5.31% of the illness was due to tuberculosis while 16.09% of the illness was due to waist pain, malaria infestation contributed mostly to the total illness experienced by the rice farming households followed by back pains, waist pain, fever, rheumatism, typhoid, guinea worm, tuberculosis and measles respectively. this result supports the findings of adekunle et al. (2016) that found out that malaria contributed most (41.92%) of the total illness among farmers in ogun state. table 2: self-reported illness episodes variable frequency (episodes) percentage perceived illness back pain 210 16.89 fever 195 15.69 malaria 213 17.14 guinea worm 82 6.60 typhoid 103 8.29 measles 56 4.51 rheumatism 118 9.49 tuberculosis 66 5.31 waist pain 200 16.09 total 1243 100.00 source: field survey, 2018 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 264-273 269 3.3. average ill-health prevalence table 3 revealed the prevalence of self-reported illness among rice farming households within the period of six months, the result revealed that on the average rice farming households experienced back pains illness 14 times, fever illness was suffered 6 times, malaria illness was suffered 10 times, guinea worm illness was suffered once, typhoid illness was experienced 3 times, measles illness was experienced once, rheumatism illness was suffered 5 times, tuberculosis illness was suffered once while waist pain illness was suffered 14 times, this implies that on average, rice farming households experienced back pain and waist pain more than other illness followed by malaria, fever, rheumatism, typhoid, guinea worm, measles and tuberculosis respectively. table 3: prevalence of self-reported illness variable mean prevalence illness back pain 14 fever 6 malaria 10 guinea worm 1 typhoid 3 measles 1 rheumatism 5 tuberculosis 1 waist pain 14 source: field survey, 2018 3.4. health care services source table 4 revealed that more than a quarter (37.78%) of the rice farming households took drugs without consulting a doctor or pharmacist, almost a quarter (24.44%) of the rice farming households seek health care services from government clinics, more than a quarter (29.33%) of the rice farming households seek health care services from private clinics while lower proportion (8.44%) of the rice farming households seek health care services from traditional healers, this implies that most of the households did not patronize health care services where drugs can be prescribed for the treatment of their illness. this could be as a result of lack of money to access health care services that probably seems expensive to them; this result is in line with the findings of adebayo et al. (2012) and oparinde et al. (2018) that reported that most of the farmers took drugs without consulting medical practitioners. table 4: health care services source variable frequency percentage government clinic 55 24.44 private clinic 66 29.33 traditional healers 19 8.44 self-medication 85 37.78 total 225 100.00 source: field survey, 2018 3.5. constraint faced in seeking public health care services table 5 revealed that larger proportion (85.33%) of the rice farming households did not use public health care services as a result of low level of income; this implies that most of the households lack adequate funds to seek for public health care services, this result conform to the findings of nnonyelu and nwankwo (2014). more than half (56.89%) of the rice farming households were of the view that poor quality of health care services in government clinics was not the reason why they asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 264-273 270 were not using public health care services, this implies that majority of the households were satisfied with the quality of health care services delivered by government clinics but failed to use those clinics, more than half (52.02%) of the rice farming households opined that lack of awareness of public health care facilities was the reason why they were not using government clinics, more than half (58.22%) of the rice farming households opined that low level of education prevented them from using public health facilities, this result supports the findings of moore et al. (2011) and agha (2000). larger proportion (75.11%) of the rice farming household head were the view that the longer distance and difficult terrain of public health centers discouraged them from using them. table 5: constraints facing the use of public health care services constraints frequency percentage low level of income no 33 14.67 yes 192 85.33 total 225 100.00 poor quality of health care services no 128 56.89 yes 97 43.11 total 225 100.00 lack of awareness of health care facilities no 109 48.44 yes 116 51.56 total 225 100.00 low level of education no 94 41.78 yes 131 58.22 total 225 100.00 distance and difficult terrain of health facilities no 56 24.89 yes 169 75.11 total 225 100.00 source: field survey, 2018 3.6. determinants of burden of disease the determinants of disease burden was estimated using ordinary least square regression, as shown on table 6, the diagnostic test; r2, probability of f and variance inflation factor attest to the fitness of the result, the r2 revealed that 51.3% variation in disease burden was jointly explained by the significant explanatory variables, the f-value revealed that the variables in the model are fit to explain the determinant of disease burden, the mean vif revealed that there is absence of multicollinearity, this implies that the model was rightly specified. the result revealed that age, sex, household size, off-farm income, cooperative membership, labor used, distance to health care services, health condition and floor of home significantly influence disease burden of rice farming households. the coefficient of age revealed that increase in age reduces the economic burden of disease; this implies that if age of the household heads increases by one year, the cost of illness would decreases by ₦1,977.8 (usd 5.5), this implies that older farmers tends to spend less on their health, this may be because aged farmers rely on self-medication practices, the coefficient of sex implies that the economic cost of illness of households headed by male increases by ₦67,142.42 (usd 186.5) compared with households headed by females, this may be because majority of the rice farming households are headed by male, the coefficient of household size revealed that as household size increases the cost of illness also increases, this implies that if the size of the household increases by asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 264-273 271 one person the economic cost of illness would increase by ₦15,614.92 (usd 43.38), this is so because the larger the household size the higher the likelihood of household member to be sick thereby raising the cost of their treatment, the coefficient of off-farm income revealed that if the off-farm income increases by ₦1 (usd 0.003) the cost of illness will increase by ₦0.14 (usd 0.0004), this implies that rice farmers that diversify their livelihood source into off-farm activities spend more on their health, the coefficient of cooperative membership revealed that the cost of illness of rice farmers that belonged to cooperative association would decreases by ₦50,322.2 (usd 139.8) compared to their counterparts that did not belong to cooperative society, the coefficient of labor used revealed that cost of illness of farmers that use mostly hired labor reduces by ₦21,234.55 (usd 60) compared with those that used own labor, family labor or communal labor, this is so because using hired labor reduces the chance of exposing family labor to occupational risk emanating from agricultural activities thereby reducing ill health as well as the cost of combating ill health, the coefficient of distance to health care provider revealed that increase in distance health care provider increases the burden of disease, this implies that 1km increase in distance to health care provider increase the cost of illness by ₦660.94 (usd 1.8), this is so because increase in distance to health care provider increases transportation cost thereby increasing cost of illness, the coefficient of health condition revealed that rice farmers whose health conditions are good spend ₦55,027.36 (usd 152.9) less on their health compared to their counterparts, this implies that rice farmers with good health condition spend less on their health compared to their counterparts, the coefficient of floor of home revealed that rice farmers whose floor of home was not cemented spend ₦153,183 (usd 425.5) more on their health compared to their counterparts with cemented floor. table 6: multiple regression estimates of determinants of disease burden variable coefficient standard error t-value p-value constant 132901.900*** 30917.960 4.300 0.000 age -1977.800*** 404.757 -4.890 0.000 sex 67142.420*** 12593.500 5.330 0.000 household size 15614.920*** 2141.353 7.290 0.000 marital status -837.478 7996.793 -0.100 0.917 off-farm income 0.135* 0.069 1.960 0.052 level of education 405.593 1016.849 0.400 0.690 cooperate membership -50322.200*** 11824.830 -4.260 0.000 labour used -21234.550* 10992.800 -1.930 0.055 distance to health care services 660.943*** 204.627 3.230 0.001 health condition -55027.360*** 13308.140 -4.130 0.000 access to clean drinking water -490645.900 372757 -1.320 0.190 access to adequate sanitation -96696.560 349386 -0.280 0.782 floor of home 153183*** 325390 4.710 0.000 diagnostic test r2 0.513 prob > f 0.000 f(13, 211) 22.400 mean vif 1.560 ***, ** and * represents significant at 1%, 5% and 1% level of significance 4. conclusion and recommendations this study has attempted to determine various factors, which directly or indirectly influence the burden of disease among rice farming households in the ogun state of nigeria. the findings clearly revealed that majority of the rice farmers were male, aged and with no formal education. the results further revealed that malaria infestation contributed with the highest ratio within the total asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 264-273 272 illness experienced by the rice farming households. some underwent severe backaches and pain in the waist more than other illnesses, followed by the earlier mentioned malaria, fever, rheumatism, typhoid, guinea worm, measles and tuberculosis, respectively in the descending order. the study also revealed that rice farming households took medicines and drugs without consulting any doctor or a pharmacist, because of lack of awareness of health facilities, and low level of education. it was also found that low level of income, and distance from and difficult access to public health centers are other problems faced by the households in making good use of public health facilities. the results of the study further disclosed that age, sex, household size, off-farm income, cooperative membership, labor used, distance to health care services, health condition and dirt floor at home significantly influenced the burden of disease among rice farming households. the study also concluded finally that increase in distance to health care services, increase in household size, increase in off-farm income and un-cemented floor of households were other factors causing an apparent increase in the burden of their diseases, whereas farmers with good and sound health conditions spend less in this head. therefore this study recommends undoubtedly and without hesitation that more awareness creation and informative know-hows about the need to patronize qualified medical personnel and public health facilities should be provided, instead of using selfmedication measures among farmers. moreover, health care amenities should be located closer to the people’s reach for immediate and rapid approach, as this would help to reduce their financial costs and in return could thereby, increase the usage of such adequate and requisite facilities. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adebayo, m. g., shittu, a. m., obayelu, a. e. & sam-wobo, s. o. 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(2009). farmers’ health and agricultural productivity in rural ethiopia. international food policy research institute (ifpri), washington, dc. world bank (1993). world development report: investing in health. oxford university press, new york. http://www.fpri.org/ http://aobpla.oxford/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 40 nutrition promotion and collective vegetable gardening by adolescent girls: feasibility assessment from a pilot in afghanistan md. abdul alima m. anowar hossainb a research fellow and head, independent evaluation and research cell, international institute of social studies (iss), the netherlands  alimabdu@gmail.com (corresponding author) b country representative, brac afghanistan, kart-e-parwan, kabul, afghanistan corresponding author article history: received: 26-jul-2018 accepted: 19-sep-2018 online available: 04-oct2018 keywords: adolescent girls, feasibility, vegetable gardening, afghanistan, south asia abstract this study aimed to assess the feasibility of collective vegetable gardening into an existing development programme for adolescent girls as a means of improving awareness about health and nutrition and increasing vegetable consumption in afghanistan. a one and half year pilot study tested the feasibility of layering an intervention that combined agricultural training and input support in kabul, parwan and kapisa regions on an adolescent programme implemented by a non-government organisation. the study included 400 adolescent girls for survey and qualitative tools to understand the local context of adolescent girls' participation in vegetable cultivation. the assessment demonstrates the evidence that despite of the challenging situation and traditional culture in afghanistan the pilot had successfully engaged almost all of the adolescent girls in collective vegetables cultivation by making them aware about health, nutrition and the usefulness of vegetables consumption while the bad effects of not intake those. and the cultivation proved itself financially viable and very much effective for the community though there were little challenges. the pilot would be feasible and scalable to address the malnutrition and girls' marginalization if those challenges were taken into consideration carefully. contribution/ originality afghanistan is the war savaged and landlocked country where, among other challenges, women especially adolescent girls are culturally, politically and economically marginalized. this study demonstrates the pilot project of vegetables cultivation being implemented by school dropped out adolescent girls could be scaled up and sustained to address the malnutrition and might reduce their marginalization steadily. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.1/1005.1.40.49 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: md. abdul alim and m. anowar hossain (2018). nutrition promotion and collective vegetable gardening by adolescent girls: feasibility assessment from a pilot in afghanistan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1), 40-49. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 1(2018): 40-49 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.1/1005.1.40.49 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3142-7499 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1161-2868 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 40-49 41 1. introduction among many challenges that include over the decades of conflicts, gender conservatism, failure of delivering the public services to the most of the citizens and continued worse economic condition in particular that afghanistan faces in their socio-economic development, malnutrition is one of the major ones. despite some recent progresses, the country has still very high malnutrition rates. the afghanistan national nutrition survey (nns) (2013) reveals high stunting (40%) and underweight (25%) rates among under-5 children. adolescents (10-19 years) are also found malnourished revealing with 8% of them being thin, meaning that the situation is also not much better for adult population. micronutrient deficiencies are even more widespread in this country (ibid). for example, 40% of the women of reproductive age and 45% of the 6-59 months old children are anaemic. vitamin-a deficiency is also common 6-59 months old children (50.4%). zinc deficiency is found among both women and children, with the prevalence rates of 23% and 15% respectively. similarly, iodine deficiency was fairly common among both women of reproductive age and children 7-12 years of age, with a prevalence of 41% and 30% respectively. among other reasons, lack of access to food is responsible for malnutrition. national risk and vulnerability assessment (nrva) (2011/2012) shows 31% of households across the country do not meet their daily caloric needs (2,100 kcal/person/day), and 35% of households had inadequate food consumption. besides, there is poor dietary diversity that contributes to micronutrient deficiencies. there is very low levels of consumptions of vegetables, a major source of the micronutrients, with only 50% of the households consuming such food in this country (lansa, 2017). there is also a clear difference in vegetables consumption by wealth categories (63% vs. 31% for the richest vs. poorest quintiles) suggesting access as one of the constraints to low level of vegetable consumption. food habit and low engagement of women in agriculture are among the other commonly cited constraints for low vegetable consumption. other factors include food and nutrition insecurity as a result of climate change, water scarcity and poor access to social services. these factors are compounded by traditional and cultural beliefs, women’s low social status, adverse climatic conditions, and poor infrastructure (ibid). besides, the immediate causes are lack of knowledge on appropriate nutrition practices, inadequate intake of nutritious food, and a high disease burden which perpetuate the problem. agriculture and nutrition are closely linked with each other but afghan women and girls are highly disempowered their involvement in agricultural activities are very limited; they have serious lack of access to credit, inputs, information and training; they lack ownership and access to productive assets; they have high time poverty due to domestic and care activities; and they face discrimination in the labour market (holmes and jones, 2009). moreover, the policy and programming do not adequately recognise the gendered experiences of poverty and vulnerability in the country. therefore, this has tremendously impacted on the vegetable consumption. increasing vegetable consumption as a means of improving micronutrient deficiency and overall nutritional status of the adolescent girls, therefore, is an important policy priority for the country. in a literature review, ruel and alderman (2013) postulates that the most promising avenue of addressing under-nutrition needs a cohesive approach that combines training and sensitisation of nutrition with targeted agricultural interventions to create access to nutritious food items. sen et al. (2010) make very similar argument that achieving progress on nutrition requires implementation of nutrition sensitive agricultural interventions in addition to the existing nutrition specific programmes by leveraging on various ongoing economic and social empowerment programmes. their suggestion of leveraging on ongoing programmes is of particular importance to make the progresses prompt and meaningful with available resources. large scale impacts can only be secured with adequate evidences on operational feasibility and effectiveness of different innovations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 40-49 42 given this context, brac (earlier known as bangladesh rural advancement committee) in afghanistan tested the feasibility of an intervention that combined nutritional training and collective vegetables gardening by leveraging on an existing programme for adolescent girls. this paper assessed the feasibility and scalability of the intervention by looking into the changes in knowledge of the adolescent girls related to nutrition and health indicators, perception of girls' collective vegetables cultivation followed by consumptions to contribute to reducing malnutrition as well as raising their voices. 2. materials and methods the research design was a randomized control trial with baseline and endline survey by combining both qualitative and quantitative methods. 2.1. study area and pilot intervention brac afghanistan established adolescent reading centres (arcs) in 2016, each consisted of 25 adolescent girls aged 15 to 25 years, to impart life skills and learning opportunities for school dropped out adolescent girls in remote village. out of 40 arcs 16 were randomly selected from kabul, kapisa and parwan regions based on the criteria that included the security of the areas, easy communication from the central office, prospect of nutrition sensitive agricultural activities by the adolescent girls, the high level of malnutrition and micro-nutrient deficiency of women particularly for adolescent girls and the low level of dietary diversity. out of 16 arcs 6 arcs each from kabul and parwan and 4 from kapisa were selected for baseline study in march, 2016 while endline survey was conducted in march 2017. as a treatment arc 3 each from kabul and parwan and 2 from kapisa were selected and similar number of arcs were selected as control in those regions but in different districts. sixteen girls received 6-day intensive training of trainers (tot) on better nutrition practices and vegetable cultivation mechanism and they provided 3-day training to 184 girls. the project managed to lease about 9 acres (locally known as 22.5 jerib) of land on average 1.12 acres per arcs near these centres for the girls to do the collective gardening and they were also provided all sorts of agricultural inputs along with the installation of the greenhouses for winter cultivation. study districts in map sakardara m. roqi kohistan 1111 jabul siraj asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 40-49 43 2.2. sample, tools and techniques sixteen arcs were selected from 40 arcs given that the selected arcs could fulfil the necessary requirements of the project as mentioned earlier. afterwards, additional data regarding the province, districts, villages, distance of the villages, number of girls in arc, common characteristics of the arcs including the willingness of the adolescent girls' participation in the project were collected for conducting randomization process through pair matching of the arcs. this was done with the help of stata software to differentiate the treatment and control arcs. thus 8 arcs of the 16 were selected as treatment and the rest as control. each of the arcs had 25 adolescent girls as per the project design and thus total sample for the study was 400 adolescent girls of 16 arcs. in other words, all of them were by design selected as respondents for quantitative data collection. on the other hand, 16 focus group discussions (fgd) and the similar number of in-depth interviews (idi) were carried out to comprehend the perceptions of the participants, parents and community people towards girls participation in vegetables cultivation, prospects and constraints, local dynamics of vegetable consumption and the potential feasibility of the intervention including challenges under the qualitative method. the fgds and idis included the adolescent girls, women and male as the participants in the discussion and as respondents. besides, five case studies were collected to understand the vegetables consumption pattern of the adolescent girls' family. 2.3. characteristics of the samples the adolescent interviewed both in treatment and control arcs mostly belong to tajik ethnic group (99%). the average family size of them reconfirms the national survey data, meaning 8 per household. a little more than half of the household members were female and their average age was 21 (table 1). the education level of them was very low, which also reconfirms the existing literature (average 5 years of schooling) of this country. interestingly 63% of them reported to have capacity about how to read and write. the unmarried people in the households were higher (72%) compared to other categories because more than half of them were school going pupils (54%) and there were some disable household members as well and similar proportion of them belong to the group of unpaid labour and the rest were neither paid or unpaid group. a small number of the household members were reported to have engaged with farming. table 1: household socio-demographic traits % variables treatment (n=1489) control (n=1685) all (n=3174) p value sex: female 51.26 54.91 53.1 0.040 average age 21.35 21.19 21.27 0.774 average years of schooling 5.33 5.02 5.18 0.057 education illiterate 29.36 26.74 28.1 0.114 grade 1 to 5 27.39 34.11 30.7 0.000 grade 6 to 9 19.19 20.53 19.9 0.361 grade 10 to above 24.07 18.62 21.4 0.000 can read and write 62.37 62.89 62.6 0.762 marital status married 27.21 28.04 27.6 0.597 unmarried 72.10 71.07 71.6 0.521 widow 0.69 0.82 0.8 0.689 occupation service 8.58 5.85 7.2 0.005 business 4.65 3.27 4.0 0.060 farming 7.22 6.41 6.8 0.388 students 51.56 56.13 53.9 0.017 housewife 18.03 20.82 19.4 0.060 others 9.87 7.52 8.7 0.026 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 40-49 44 paid labour 0.81 0.41 0.6 0.160 unpaid labour 50.03 66.37 58.2 0.000 does not have job 49.15 33.22 41.2 0.000 disability 0.76 0.69 0.7 0.827 on the other hand, the interviewed adolescents' membership length with arc was on average 10 months and none of them received any agriculture training earlier. their average years of schooling was very low, meaning 2.44 years (minimum 0 and maximum 14 grade) and there is no statistically significant difference between participant and non-participants adolescents in this regards. but almost all of them (91%) reported to have known how to read and write. in terms of grade most of them (60%) reported to have completed grade 1 to 5. however, overwhelming number of them reported unmarried. 2.4. data analysis quantitative data analysis were done using spss while qualitative data was grouped based on similarities and differences of the indicators of the relevant themes. the qualitative data supplemented the quantitative analysis with a specific rationalization. the overall findings demonstrated the comparison between the participants and non-participants under both baseline and endline in the project. changes in knowledge level of the adolescent girls on the nutrition and other relevant issues related to nutrition were determined through measuring scores. girls were asked 18 questions and each of them was given value 1 for correct answer while 0 for wrong answer. all those correct answers were summed for individual respondent and then categorized the scores on the basis of the frequencies including the average scores obtained by the respondents. higher the scores meant the level of knowledge of the adolescents increased and vice-versa. changes of knowledge and participation in vegetables cultivation were also measured through difference in difference (diff-in-diff) estimate method. and consumption pattern of the vegetables was analysed by looking at the food intake pattern along with vegetables for the last 3 days since the interview date. 3. results the feasibility of the pilot was assessed in terms of changing knowledge of the participants including family members, their participation in vegetables cultivation and perceptions towards girls' involvement followed by consumption and cost benefit analysis of the cultivation. 3.1. changes in adolescent girls' knowledge level one of the salient objectives of the intervention was to enhance the knowledge about the importance of vegetable intake and to reinforce vegetable consumption. after one and half year intervention the noticeable enhancement of the girls' knowledge about vitamin a and its causes of deficiency, anemia, iron deficiency and its impact on children and pregnant women, amount of food intake during adolescent, cause of night blindness and naming the nutrition sensitive vegetables was observed (table 2). difference in difference estimate demonstrates the knowledge scores of girls as categorized 5 to 9 increased by 20 percentage points after the intervention. besides, the average knowledge scores was found 2 times higher in the endline compared to baseline. in regard to the knowledge enhancement a study participant being interviewed mentioned, "prior to intervention i did not know anything about the importance of vegetables consumption and what sorts of nutritious values contain in various types of vegetables. but after being participated in the programme i now know which vegetables are good for health. for example, spinach is good for blood and stomach. squash decreases blood pressure. pea and bean, mint, cabbage and lettuce are sources of vitamin c and has lot of protein and iron." asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 40-49 45 table 2: changes in knowledge level of the adolescent girls % baseline endline score* treatment control p value treatment control p value diff in diff 0 51 53 0.690 4.5 16.0 0.000 -0.095 1 to 4 42.5 46.5 0.422 56.5 76.5 0.000 -0.160* 5 to 9 6.5 0.50 0.001 33.5 7.5 0.000 0.200*** 10 + 00 00 5.5 00 0.001 0.055** mean 0.97 0.79 0.148 4.4 2.1 0.000 2.11*** *minimum 0 and maximum 18, ***p<.000, ** p<.001*p<.01 though overall girls' knowledge improved there were some issues about which the level of their knowledge was not better as expected. the reasons included lack of sharing information which were supposed to be trickled down to the girls who were not regular in the hands on training including arc class. besides, illiteracy or low level of education might have been responsible for low average knowledge scores. some of the girls scoring low had low self-esteem as well. on the other hand, the reason of higher knowledge level after the intervention was access to different sources including better training being provided by the project. a study participant said, "we enhance our knowledge about vegetable cultivation, consumption and nutrition from the project. besides, we also acquire knowledge by listening to radio, watching television and from school". 3.2. changes in participation, perception and vegetables consumption despite of the negative attitudes of the family and community towards adolescent girls' involvement in this project as experienced at the beginning cultivating variety of vegetables collectively was a new experience for them. after being received knowledge on planting, preparing land, irrigation, protection of crops using fertilizers and pesticides, almost all of the girls in treatment areas participated in agricultural activities, particularly in vegetable cultivation, meaning that the participation increased by 38 percentage points in treatment areas compared to control areas after the intervention (table 3). different vegetables such as green been, pumpkin, potato, chili, squash, tomato, radish, cabbage, cauliflower, onion, and coriander were cultivated by them collectively. vegetables cultivation in winter season was another new experience for the girls as the project installed sheds (green houses) for this as there is usually heavy snowfall in the winter which hinders the vegetables cultivation. girls being received additional knowledge cultivated variety of vegetables such as tomato, cucumber, pepper, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, and cauliflower in the green house. one of the mothers in kabul said in this regard, “girls have learned many new things through this project such as cultivation in green house. they now know what, how, where and when to cultivate vegetables and its usefulness of consumption particularly to enhance nutrition level. also, they have utilized their knowledge in cultivating of different types of vegetables.” referring the benefits of participation in vegetable cultivation a participant mentioned how the perceptions towards girls engagement changed. she uttered, "my father did not allow me to attend in agricultural activities at field earlier. but his behaviour has changed when he realises the benefits of her attending the vegetable cultivation. he mentioned that girl should work outside home to improve their capability and efficiency and stand on their own feet. if all people let girls participate in cultivation we trust that they are capable of doing this work." asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 40-49 46 table 3: changes in girls' participation in vegetables cultivation participation in cultivation baseline endline t c p value t c p value diff in diff participate (yes) 65.5 70.5 0.285 99.4 65.8 0.000 0.387*** kind of activities help 9.1 9.9 0.830 16.2 14.5 0.676 0.025 clean 86.2 86.5 0.949 78.0 67.1 0.030 0.111* harvesting 0.76 3.5 0.119 5.7 15.2 0.004 -0.067* barrier (yes) 13.1 9.8 0.338 3.1 9.5 0.009 -0.097* sometimes 2.9 4.4 0.491 13.5 12.0 0.662 0.029 why don't cultivate don't have land 60.0 58.8 0.899 72.7 56.9 0.323 0.146 don't know 23.0 41.1 0.037 27.2 43.0 0.323 0.023 no one grow 12.3 00 0.009 00 00 -0.123* t=treatment, c=control, ***p<.000, *p<.02 so, collective cultivation brought a lot of changes in peoples' belief and attitudes as well. however, few of the girls did not participate in the cultivation because of barriers they faced from their family, though barriers were reported to have decreased at endline compared to baseline as shown in difference in difference estimate. one of the important barriers was the entrenched belief of male members of the family especially father and brother, who would like girls to abide by the existing norms and culture for the participation in collective cultivation. the norms and beliefs demonstrate adolescents and women were not allowed to be engaged in cultivation and should not work outside of home. group of males in the discussion stated in this regard, "people don't like adolescent girls to be involved in any activities that are outside home, according to religion, as there might have a chance to happen something bad that will tarnish the family's prestige. this has also lot of future consequences. the family will face challenges to get girls married off. also, if they work outside home then who will look after children and take care of household activities throughout the day." apart from increasing the participation of adolescent girls in vegetables cultivation enhancing the consumption of those vegetables being cultivated was one of the major focus of this project as well. following a year end evaluation of the intervention the report reveals that though the message about the importance of consumption was reached to the adolescent girls and their family members including the community a little increase in the consumption was observed after the intervention. this result was confirmed by the interpretation of the case studies collected. the cases being collected through self-reported information from poor, middle and rich family on the last three days vegetable consumption clearly indicate that vegetables such as potato, tomato and beans were eaten but the amount was not so much. family members reported to have eaten very simple and little amount of vegetables with common afghan naan (flour bread) in the morning, at lunch and in the dinner. vegetables were consumed less because of disliking by the people as reported by many of the respondents. a participant said in this regard, "i know some families that though they have good economic condition they don't consume vegetables such as okra, pumpkin and turnip. she also said that people who are not habituated with vegetables for ages will take time to change such habit." 3.3. cost-benefit analysis the project had usd 9768 fixed and usd 2192 variable cost for both summer and winter seasons cultivation. labour cost was not included in the production as girls themselves worked in the field.1 however, from this investment, all arcs produced a good amount of vegetables in summer season, i.e., 2060 kg that cost almost usd 5662.4 based on the market price available on that time. each arc girls could have earned a reasonable amount of money if they sold those vegetables in the market, instead of consumption, though few of them sold in the market. on the other hand, during 1 however, from opportunity cost perspective, we can impute costs using 0.55 cents per person per day. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 40-49 47 winter season compared to summer a less amount of vegetables were possible to be grown in the green house as the size of it was only 10 metre wide and 12 metre long. in the green house, though there was heavy snowfall, girls cultivated tomato, cucumber, pepper, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, and cauliflower that summed up around 594 kg, which might value usd 2000. the production was satisfactory in summer season compared to the cost incurred. so, analysis demonstrates the financial viability of the project, though the case was different in winter season. the cost in winter season was high as there was greenhouse installation cost. but the benefit was that this green house would be possible to be used for long time for example 10 to 15 years as it was made by iron. in the next winter season this would be used for cultivation without any significant cost, except the seeds and fertiliser cost. besides, the green house was the most attractive not only for the girls but also to parents and community as this was the innovative approach for the girls and they could work inside the green house without having the visibility of the outsider male in particular. therefore, girls being experienced cultivating vegetable inside the greenhouses for the first time during winter was much appreciated by the community. a mother mentioned, "the good thing with greenhouses was that it was very safe for the girls as it is not open. it’s being installed within the community. their parents will send them without any tension." 4. discussion within the purview of war-savaged, highly conservative and male-dominated society adolescents girls are strongly discouraged to be involved in collective vegetable cultivation. it is a stigma in the society when afghan girls are exposed to men for working outside home. therefore, adolescent girls didn’t show interest and parents also did not allow their daughters to participate in this project at its initial stage. instead, training on tailoring, embroidery and carpet weaving which would be possible in staying inside of their homes was preferred. but once being convinced through motivation and mobilization as to the necessity and the importance of vegetable cultivation and consumption their mind set changed and they were allowed to participate in the project. besides, both girls and their parents including community gained more confidence when the knowledge being achieved was shared among them. also, knowledge was spilled over to the neighbour. thus, the project was effective in enhancing knowledge of the participants including parents and community people that would sustain even after the intervention. the assessment also reveals the knowledge gained instigated the girls to engage in variety of vegetables cultivation. in other words, prior to intervention few vegetables were cultivated in limited scale particularly in summer season. but after initiation of the project, cultivation of vegetables such as pumpkin, green bean, ladies finger, squash, cabbage, potato, tomato, radish, spinach and cauliflower increased. increased vegetable cultivation assumed to leading higher consumption but it did happen a little as it depended on norms of eating vegetables in the study areas. culturally, people in the study areas were found reluctant to consume vegetables more because of their food habit. however, the importance of vegetables consumption to enhance the nutrition level was comprehended after the intervention but changing habit of vegetable intake might take time, as it was reported. alongside the benefit of vegetables consumption there were much more opportunities of financial gain of the girls in this project. the evaluation reveals that with the amount of vegetables harvested against the cost incurred girls could have earned a reasonable amount of money through selling vegetables in the market. thus, the financial gain as being created by the project was reported to have enhanced the girls' voice within the family and also generated the potentials of reducing the level of their marginalization. besides, with ensuring the adolescent girls' involvement in vegetables cultivation the project played significant role in challenging the local tradition and changing the embedded beliefs and practices of the family and community people related to gender relations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 40-49 48 the evaluation explicitly reveals that collective vegetables cultivation by adolescent girls created the opportunity of increasing dietary diversity in their households that would lead to enhance the nutritional outcomes as pandey et al. (2016) found the similar results in their evaluation. evans et al. (2012) also reported that garden based programs are promising avenue for increasing fruit and vegetables consumption for school age children while fulford and thompson (2013) found in their study that youth community development programming could be effective strategy of youth empowerment as it brought many positive changes such as skill building, self-esteem, improved nutrition and food security. despite of its feasibility there were potential challenges that need to be carefully addressed in scaling up the pilot and for sustainability. while working in the field girls might have faced the potential threat of harassment that especially include the bad comments being passed by the boys and arms group might hinder the girls' participation in cultivation as they don't like, though girls did not experience such kind of challenge during the project period. during the winter season heavy snowfall restrains from growing vegetables. providing knowledge to build traditional greenhouse available in some areas could be alternative for the girls to continue cultivation in the winter season. lack of access to improved technology, knowledge and attitudes towards girls participation were reported as barrier. knowledge needs to be given by the government agriculture extension workers and should inspire to use local variety of seeds and locally made fertiliser in order to be feasible and simultaneously mobilization programmes to the community to change the entrenched attitudes for allowing girls to participate in cultivation need to continued. 5. concluding remarks the study reveals that despite of the challenges vegetables gardening by the girls to contribute in addressing the malnutrition and to reduce their level of marginalization could be effective strategy throughout the country like afghanistan. however, this feasibility assessment instigated further research in order to get more credible impact of the intervention. such research could facilitate substantial outcomes for designing the nutrition sensitive agriculture programme in a large scale. funding: the study was financially supported by the department for international development (dfid), uk through the coordination of institute of development studies (ids), sussex and mssrf, india. competing interests: no conflict of interest was reported by the authors. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors are absolutely indebted to dr. alan dangour, professor in food and nutrition for global health at the london school of hygiene and tropical medicine, uk and lead researcher of leveraging agriculture and nutrition for south asia (lansa) responsive window call ii for his invaluable suggestions and guidance and thanks him for inspiration to put in writing this article. also special thanks to dr. munshi sulaiman for his valuable directions and supports in conducting the study. and murtaza haidary, muzdha ghulam, zakirullah stanikzai and leema naderi for being supported in different research steps, thanks to them as well. the authors are also grateful to department for international development (dfid), uk and m.s. swaminathon research foundation, india for funding and coordinating the project. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 40-49 49 references evans, c. e., christian, m. s., cleghorn, c. l., greenwood, d. c., & cade, j. e. 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(2010). food utilization and nutrition security. bangladesh food security investment forum; dhaka. view at google scholar https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=systematic+review+and+meta+analysis+of+school+based+interventions+to+improve+daily+fruit+and+vegetables+intake+in+children+aged+5+to+12+years&btng= https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.111.030270 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=youth+gardening+programming+as+community+development%3a+the+youth+of+eco-action+in+winnipeg%2c+canada&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=gender+inequality%2c+risk+and+vulnerability+in+the+rural+economy%3a+fe-focusing+the+public+works+agenda+to+take+account+of+economic+and+social+risks&btng= http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/emergencies/docs/cap2011_afghanistan.pdf.%20accessed%2030%20november%202017 http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/emergencies/docs/cap2011_afghanistan.pdf.%20accessed%2030%20november%202017 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=impact+of+agricultural+interventions+on+the+nutritional+status+in+south+asia%3a+a+review&btng= https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2016.05.002 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=nutrition-sensitive+interventions+and+programmes%3a+how+can+they+help+to+accelerate+progress+in+improving+maternal+and+child+nutrition&btng= https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(13)60843-0 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=food+utilization+and+nutrition+security&btng= effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 392 examine the role of agriculture to mitigate the co2 emission in bangladesh md. hasanur rahman a, shapan chandra majumder b, shantanu debbarman c a mss research student, department of economics, comilla university, cumilla, bangladesh b associate professor; department of economics, comilla university, cumilla, bangladesh c assistant professor; department of economics, university of chittagong, bangladesh  hasanur.cou@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 12-mar-2020 accepted: 14-may-2020 online available: 16-jun2020 keywords: carbon emission, agricultural production, economic growth, energy consumption, bangladesh abstract the current study analyzed the optimum solution to mitigate co2 emission in bangladesh. the significant factor of this study is agricultural productions and activities in bangladesh are the superior carbon absorber. to estimate the effective result and findings this perusal conducts the generalized method of movement with considering agricultural productions as a key variable to mitigate the co2 emission. the econometric result finds that agricultural production reduces carbon emission in selected models. an increase the agricultural activities and green harvesting significantly reduce co2 emission. whatever, the empirical result also states that increasing agricultural production is not only a productive way to mitigate co2, also, that co2 could be mitigated to invest in agriculture, provide initiative or subsidies in the agriculture sector. the current study provides a substantial way to mitigate carbon dioxide without any harms of economic growth. contribution/ originality this study is the first attempt to investigate the role of agriculture to relieve the co2 emission in bangladesh. it will also fill the gap of literature in this field in the country. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.392.405 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: md. hasanur rahman, shapan chandra majumder and shantanu debbarman (2020). examine the role of agriculture to mitigate the co2 emission in bangladesh. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 392-405. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 392-405 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:hasanur.cou@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.392.405 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8591-8560 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2756-436x asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 392-405 393 1. introduction carbon dioxide emission is one of the challenging and problematic issues in the global world. technological development and economic growth make life easier but this kind of development generates many remonstrances by reducing the environmental quality or ambient quality. almozaini (2019), saboori et al. (2012) argue that co2 is the most burning issue for environmental concerns. the main sources of co2 are fuel consumption, deforestation, industrial garbage, smoke, and energy consumption. energy consumption and industrialization are highly increased in bangladesh and it has an upward trend that implies co2 emission also increases. the coal burning, fuel, transportation, industrial smoke are the main source of carbon in this country. in some of the regions, coal burning and industrial smoke and others are the vital sources to increase co2 like the region nawapara, narayanganj, dinajpur. the ambient qualities of this region are gradually decreasing. the forest area in bangladesh is also reduced day by day. according to haque et al. (2014), deforestation or the insufficient forest area can’t absorb properly. however, it is generally said that if the source of co2 fact identifies properly then it will be mitigated. in the last decades, bangladesh achieved a high gdp growth rate it is more than 6% that is taken as a role model of economic growth among the developing nations. asadullah et al. (2014), uddin et al. (2014) also gives a similar kind of statement. after independence in 1972 the economic growth rate was negative it was -13.92%, in 2000 it was 3.82%, in 2015 gdp growth rate achieved 6.55% and the 2017 growth rate increases to 7.68%. on the other hand, the forest area is considerably decreasing which is insufficient to operate the environmental balance. bangladesh as an agricultural-based country, the total volume of agricultural production increases but decreasing the contributions on the percentage share of gdp by comparing service and industrial production. this is the case of the law of diminishing returns that’s highly applicable for agricultural production in bangladesh. udry (1996) found similar results. agricultural production value-added percentage to gdp in 1972 was 59.61% that means the economy vastly depends on agriculture, in 2005 the value-added rate was 18.57% and in 2017 it was decreased to 13.41% but the total volume of agricultural production increases that means the economy move to agricultural to industrial and service activities. energy consumption like fossil fuel, renewable and non-renewable energy is increased whenever the industrialization and urbanization also increase in bangladesh. in addition that the total percentage of the population is about 75% of people lives in rural areas (mendola, 2007; alam et al., 2009) and the percentage is similar in other south asian countries. so the impacts of co2 emission are largely affected in rural areas with consistent to urban areas. according to the ipcc 4th assessment report, the main reason for flood and drought is climate change and the rural belt are highly affected in agricultural productions with reduced natural resources, fisheries and forest area. according to parry et al. (2004), nelson et al. (2014) climate change affects agriculture productivity frequently. the agricultural production or the green growth activity is a substantial impact to protect environmental degradation where it includes forestry to secure environmental balance and sustainable food productions. the agricultural activity must play a role as the lifeline of an economy especially in south asian countries, that’s why every country concentration on significant economic development and ensure sustainable agricultural activities and increases the forest area. electricity accelerates carbon emission found by (shahbaz et al., 2016). co2 discharge from electricity and heat production in bangladesh is 52.80%, gaseous fuel emit 62. 80% and transport is emited14.19% from fuel consumption. the co2 scenario expects that agricultural productions and afforestation are to be able to absorb the greenhouse, carbon gasses, and other pollutions in bangladesh. the main purpose of the current study is to examine the optimum solution to mitigate co2 escape in bangladesh. the mitigating factor is the agricultural productions and activities with considering asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 392-405 394 economic growth, forest, fossil fuel consumption, energy use, and industrialization. this study conducts the gmm to estimate the empirical results. that is cover the existing literature gap and provides unique co2 mitigation in bangladesh. the next section of this study will be discussed in section 2 about the literature review, section 3 includes the objective, the hypothesis development in section 4, the methodology is present in section 5, empirical results and findings discussed in section 6 and finally conclude section 7. 2. literature review the previous study analyzed in this section to examining the optimum solution to mitigate co2 emission in a brief. the forest area, agricultural production, renewable energy, increasing the harvesting of land used as mitigating factors to mitigate co2 emission. schneider and mccarl (2003), lal (2004), adams (1989) concentrate on agricultural production and activities to reduced carbon emission. according to amin and rahman (2011) energy consumption and gdp has unidirectional causality, a time series analysis in bangladesh. asghar (2008), jumbe (2004), soytas et al. (2001) also measure similar kinds of findings. for bound testing among energy consumption, gdp, and co2 emission showing the long-run relationship (nain et al., 2015). granger causality test and a cointegration test examine by almozaini (2019) in china long-run between gdp and ec, in the usa gdp cause gas emission, in saudi arabia energy discharge cause of gas. a time-series analysis in saudi arabia alkhathlan and javid (2013) demonstrate that per capita carbon emission increase with the rise of per capita income increase respect to energy, gdp growth, and co2. to measure the importance between economic growth and co2 emission omri (2013) state that energy expenses cause co2 and growth and co2 have a bidirectional causal relationship. by using the variables energy, industrial growth, and carbon discharge rahman and kashem (2017) state the empirical analyses state that industrial production and energy outlay have a positive impact on carbon discharge. zhao et al. (2010), yang and chen (2011), khanna et al. (2008), gokmenoglu et al. (2015) measure the cause between energy consumption, industrialization, and carbon emission. and an inverted u shaped ekc curve found by (dong et al., 2017). an analysis of pollution and urbanization results explain that the environment was negatively affected by urbanization (khan and khan, 2015). analyzing the importance of agricultural production and related measure to carbon emission, popp et al. (2010) show that the global agricultural non-co2 emissions significantly increase. agriculture and gdp has a positive impact, while the increase in temperature has a negative effect found by (dumrul and kilicaslan, 2017). another empirical study in ghana asumadu-sarkodie and owusu (2016) showed that the carbon discharge, cereal production, and biomass-burned crop residues both have bidirectional causality concerning the agricultural ecosystem, carbon dioxide emissions and sarkodie (2018) also state that excessive use of agriculture, energy, growth, crop, fertility, the birth rate has a significant impact on environmental degradations. to measuring the reductions of carbon emission state that agriculture reduced co2 emissions to the variables co2 emission agriculture, forest, renewable energy (mccarl and schneider, 2000). this study shows the way to mitigate co2 by using agricultural productions and activities as a key of interest variable or the mitigating factor. whatever the agriculture productions and activities in bangladesh are the superior carbon absorber with including forest area. the significant role of agricultural production has been analyzed in a form of econometric modeling with considering economic growth, forest, fossil fuel consumption, energy use, and industrialization. this study conduct to examining the optimum solution to mitigate the co2 emission in bangladesh by using gmm econometric models, which are never been examined by any other researcher in the studied country. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 392-405 395 3. the objective of this study the main objective of this study is to examine the optimum solution to mitigate co2emission in bangladesh. the specific objectives are: i. to examine the empirical relation between co2 emission and agricultural productions ii. to evaluate co2 emissions and mitigation way in bangladesh iii. to analyzes the importance of agricultural production with including forest area and policy analysis. 4. hypothesis development the analysis of those hypotheses presented in table 6 which concludes decisions based on empirical results and findings. however, those hypotheses are assumed as the null hypothesis. those are given below: h1: there is a positive and significant relationship between co2 and agricultural production. h2: there is a negative relationship between co2 emissions and forest areas. h3: economic growth does not increase co2 emissions. h4: there is a negative and insignificant relationship between energy consumption and co2. h5: industrialization does not increase co2 emissions. h6: forest rent or deforestation increases carbon emissions. h7: there is a positive and significant relationship between co2 and fossil consumption. at the very first assumed the agricultural productions have a positive impact on co2 emissions. the current study suggests that this hypothesis should be rejected because agricultural production and activities work as a mitigating factor to mitigate co2 emissions (johnson et al., 2007), (rosenzweig and tubiello, 2007). h2 presents there is a negative relationship between co2 emissions and forest areas which is supported by (ruddiman and ellis, 2009). the third hypothesis assumes the economic growth does not increase co2 emissions and h4 states there is a negative relationship between energy consumptions and co2 emission which is rejected by (long et al., 2015). industrialization and carbon discharge relation measures in h5 which represent industrialization does not increase co2 emissions. h6 states that forest rent or deforestation increases carbon emissions (defries et al., 2002). h7 states that fossil fuel consumption does not increase emissions, to rejecting this statement argued by (long et al., 2015). 5. methodology of this study examine the optimum solution to mitigate co2 emission in bangladesh, this study conceded timeseries data from 1975 to 2017. world development indicators (wdi), knoema, and indexed mundi are the main secondary data source for this study. in details of all variables are presented in table 1. table 1: description of the variables variable name description data source co2 emission co2 emissions (kt) world development indicators forest forest area (sq. km) knoema, wdi ap agricultural productions, value added (constant 2010 us$) wdi frent forest rents (% of gdp) wdi eg gdp (current us$) wdi asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 392-405 396 fossil fossil fuel consumption knoema, wdi enc energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita) knoema, wdi ind industrial productions, value added (constant lcu) wdi 5.1. the model the current study investigates the impact of economic growth, agricultural production, forest, fossil fuel consumption, energy use, and industrialization on co2 emission for bangladesh. the implicated models are formulated by the author based on economic growth, rapid industrialization, energy consumption in production sectors, and transportations. the agricultural productions and activities including forest area support to increasing the ambient quality however, bangladesh is known as an agricultural country (shelley et al., 2016). contributions of forest rent to gdp accelerate deforestation which is a major concern for sustainable ambient quality. moreover, the simple form of the model is as follows: 𝐶𝑂2 = 𝑓 (𝐸𝐺, 𝐴𝑃, 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡, 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡) … … … … … … (1) 𝐶𝑂2𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐸𝐺𝑡 + 𝛽2 𝐴𝑃𝑡 + 𝛽3𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑡 + 𝛽4𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑡 + 휀𝑡 where co2 represents the emission of carbon dioxide and its measure in (kt). ap is the total volume of agriculture productions, measure in (constant 2010 us$). the agriculture productions and activities help to absorb the co2 like a sink. paustian et al. (1997), paustian et al. (1998), paustian et al. (2000) used agriculture as an element to the reduction of carbon emission. the term eg represents the economic growth which is measured by the volume of gdp in (current us$). forest is present the total area of forest in bangladesh, its measure in (sq. km) of total land, in addition, that in this study this variable used as the insufficient forest area because every country must hold 25 % of the forest is in the geography (% of land area) where bangladesh has only 10.95%, it's quite insufficient for bangladesh as a densely populated country. one of the important variables for this country is front and is measured as the forest rent (% of gdp). forest rest is defined as the forest rents are roundwood harvest times the product of average price that means it increases deforestation and reduces the forest area that’s help to increase the carbon dioxide emission in nature. 𝐶𝑂2 = 𝑓 (𝐸𝐺, 𝐴𝑃, 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡, 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡, 𝐹𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑙, 𝐸𝑛𝑐 ) … … … … … … (2) 𝐶𝑂2𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐸𝐺𝑡 + 𝛽2 𝐴𝑃𝑡 + 𝛽3𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑡 + 𝛽4𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑡 + 𝛽5𝐹𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑙𝑡 + 𝛽6𝐸𝑛𝑐𝑡 + 휀𝑡 in model-2, fossil and energy consumption has been added in mode-1 to empirically examine the vital role of agricultural productions to mitigate co2 from fossil and energy consumption. fossil fuel consumption is one of the greatest carbon sources in bangladesh because of several uses of energy in industry and other production and transportations. enc is representing energy use and it is a measure (kg of oil equivalent per capita) as the key element of production and transportation in bangladesh. 𝐶𝑂2 = 𝑓 (𝐸𝐺, 𝐴𝑃, 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡, 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡, 𝐼𝑛𝑑) … … … … … … (3) 𝐶𝑂2𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐸𝐺𝑡 + 𝛽2 𝐴𝑃𝑇 + 𝛽3𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑡 + 𝛽4𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑡 + 𝛽5𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑡 + 휀𝑡 in model-3, industrialization added in model-1 to examine the role of agricultural productions and activities to reduce the co2 emission. in the case of bangladesh, the industrial production increases the co2 escape and it has an upward trend. but this situation will be changed when the industrial growth takes a sustainable point the co2 escape can be decreased. as a growing industrial country, it is generally accepting economic theory and practices. urbanizations is one of the vital factors in increasing the carbon emission with respect to industrialization, besides, that gmm estimation considers urbanization as an instrument variable. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 392-405 397 𝐶𝑂2 = 𝑓 (𝐸𝐺, 𝐴𝑃, 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡, 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡, 𝐹𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑙, 𝐸𝑛𝑐, 𝐼𝑛𝑑 ) … … … … … … (4) 𝐶𝑂2𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐸𝐺𝑡 + 𝛽2𝐴𝑃𝑡 + 𝛽3𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑡 + 𝛽4𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑡 + 𝛽5𝐹𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑙𝑡 + 𝛽6𝐸𝑛𝑐𝑡 + 𝛽7𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑡 + 휀𝑡 finally, the current study goes about to investigate the role of agricultural productions and activities in co2 emission. however, all variables are included in model-4 and it examines how the mitigating factors work to reduce carbon emission. in addition that this model looks into the role of all variables in carbon emission. for the simplicity of this study, using log transformations of all variables in both models. table 2: model structure baseline model economic growth co2 agricultural productions forest area forest rent fossil fuel energy consumption industrialization 5.2. unit root test 5.2.1. adf technique the simple unit root stochastic process follows the procedure 𝑌𝑡 = 𝜗 𝑌𝑡−1 + 𝜇𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒, − 1 ≤ 𝜗 ≤ 1 … … … … … … (5) 𝑌𝑡 − 𝑌𝑡−1 = 𝜗 𝑌𝑡−1 − 𝑌𝑡−1 + 휀𝑡 … … … … … … (6) 𝑌𝑡 − 𝑌𝑡−1 = ( 𝜗 − 1) 𝑌𝑡−1 + 휀𝑡 … … … … … … (7) 𝛿𝑌𝑡 = 𝜕(𝑌𝑡−1) + 휀𝑡 … … … … … … (8) 𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒; 𝜕 = (𝜗 − 1) 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 1𝑠𝑡 𝑑𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟 𝑖𝑠 𝛿 𝑖𝑓 𝜕 = 0 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝜗 = 1 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡 𝑟𝑜𝑜𝑡 𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝐻0. 𝑖𝑓 𝜕 = 0 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛; 𝛿𝑌𝑡 = 𝑌𝑡 − 𝑌𝑡−1 = 휀𝑡 … … … … … … (9) since, 휀𝑡 is an error term, describe it is stationary, meaning that the time series is stationary after taking the first difference. now adf test has the following equations: 𝛿𝑌𝑡 = 𝛾1 + 𝛾2𝑡 + 𝜕(𝑌𝑡−1) + 𝛼𝑡 ∑ 𝛿𝑌𝑡−1 𝑓 𝑖 =1 + 휀𝑡 … … … … … … (10) where; 휀𝑡 is an error component and adf 𝛿𝑌𝑡−1 is the lagged selection criteria. p-p technique a technique of nonparametric stochastic unit root processes has proposed by (maddala and wu, 1999), (choi, 2001). adf test enhances the p-p technique without lagged term and considers as error term has serial correlations. ∆𝑌𝑡 = 𝛼1 + 𝜕(𝑌𝑡−1) + ∑ 𝛿𝑗∆𝑌𝑡−𝑗 𝑘 𝑗=1 + 𝛼2,𝑡𝜕 + 휀𝑡 … … … … … … (11) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 392-405 398 where; first difference showed by ∆, k is the constant and 𝑌𝑡−1 represent the optimum time-lagged for developing the null hypothesis (h0) is data has a unit root and task hypothesis (h1) represents no unit root or stationary. 6. results and discussion 6.1. descriptive statistics the descriptive statistics conduct with all studied variables like as agricultural productions, economic growth, forest area, forest rent, fossil fuel consumption, energy use, and industrialization with respect to mean, median, minimum value, maximum value, standard deviation, kurtosis, and skewness are importantly describing in table 3. for the simplicity of this study, log transformation of all variables is used for all estimations. table 3: descriptive statistics variables mean median maximum minimum std. dev. skewness kurtosis sum sq. dev. co2 10.000 10.087 11.466 8.491 0.869 -0.036 1.839 31.681 ap 23.141 23.141 24.235 22.275 0.498 0.467 2.578 10.412 forest 6.243 9.575 9.612 9.563 4.624 -0.634 1.402 897.909 fossil 3.912 4.027 4.379 3.206 0.338 -0.507 2.049 4.794 frent -1.060 -1.109 0.884 -1.817 0.592 1.257 4.793 14.721 eg 24.519 24.561 26.244 22.990 0.853 0.258 2.211 30.591 ind 27.133 27.105 28.712 25.758 0.855 0.163 1.885 30.693 enc 4.960 4.928 5.499 4.564 0.287 0.452 1.954 3.451 the mean value of energy consumption is 4.960 with 5.499 maximum and 4. 564 minimum values. industrial value-added in gdp has presented industrialization with mean value 27.133. the maximum and minimum value of this variable is 28.712 and 25.758 respectively. economic growth represents the mean value of 24.519 with a standard deviation of 0.853. the forests rents are roundwood harvest times the product of average price, that’s present the negative mean value 1.060 with maximum and minimum value is 0.88 and -1.817 respectively. the mean value of fossil fuel consumption is 3.912 with a maximum value of 4.379 and a minimum value of 3.206. carbon dioxide discharge measured in (kt) which shows the mean value of 10.000, maximum value 11.466 and the minimum is 8.419 with std. dev. 0.869. the agricultural activities and productions present the mean value 23.141, where the maximum 24.235 and the minimum value is 22.275. the std. dev of agricultural production is 0.498. the descriptive statistics conclude that the behaviors of variables are acceptable and reliable. 6.2. results of unit root tests to test the stationarity of selected variables, this study considers two popular techniques like as adf technique which is developed by (dickey and fuller, 1979). maddala and wu (1999), choi (2001) developed the philips parron -pp technique used to measure the unit root based on t statistics and individual p -values. table 4: results of unit root tests unit root test (baseline model) test variables adf pp at level at 1st difference at level at 1st difference co2 4.540 -4.060** 11.986 -4.803*** ap -0.940 -8.125*** -1.080 -7.859*** forest -1.604 -6.378*** -1.644 -6.379*** frent -3.564* -8.590*** -3.191 -6.731*** eg 1.129 -4.562*** 0.957 -4.804*** asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 392-405 399 ind 0.330 -9.043*** -1.069 -9.398*** enc -0.418 -8.221*** -0.193 -8.221*** fossil -1.586 -6.345*** -2.955 -6.995*** notes: all the variables are performed in trend and intercept for the series. sic, aic used to select lagged length. h0 is a data series that has a unit root. ***, **, and * represents 1%, 5%, and 10% level of significance respectively table 4, present the adf and pp test results, where the variables consider at the level and 1st difference with trend and intercept. the selected variables are stationary at 1st difference and all variables are non-stationary at the level. the nominal hypothesis is the variable is the unit root where, the task hypothesis is, the variable has no unit root with considering a 5 percent level of significance. the variable forest rest is shown exceptions because the adf test shows the stationary at the level in ten percent significance. 6.3. gmm regression estimations by considering agricultural production this study conducts agriculture productions as the key variables to mitigate co2 emission. table 5 demonstrates the econometric result of model 1-4 by using gmm estimations. the model-1 presents the fundamental model that examines the impact of agricultural production, economic growth, forest area, and forest rent on co2 emission. econometric evidence shows that economic growth positive and significant effect on co2 escape. increasing 1 percent volume of economic growth exhilarates the co2 discharge 1.982 percent which is significant at 1 percent level. amin et al. (2012), alam (2014) found a similar result of measuring emission. forest rent defined as the wood harvesting at different times in a year it's known as deforestation. the marginal effect of deforestation on carbon discharge is 0.160 percent, it is positive and significant. forest area is known as the insufficient forest area in bangladesh these variables demonstrate that 0.02 percent positive effect on co2 emission whenever, the forest area decrease. the mitigating factor explains that the negative effect on co2 emission as an expected sign of this study. the coefficient of agricultural production is -1.746 and it is significant with a 1 percent level, indicate that agricultural production and increasing agricultural activities mitigate carbon dioxide emission. table 5: gmm results variables estimated models co2 emission model-1 model-2 model-3 model-4 forest 0.023*** 0.012*** 0.019*** 0.009** ap -1.764*** -0.378** -1.105*** -0.191 frent 0.160** 0.007 0.076* 0.001 eg 1.982*** 0.430* 1.133*** 0.185 fossil 0.797*** 0.763*** enc 1.304*** 0.834*** ind 0.460* 0.326*** c 2.254 1.492* -4.768 -6.117*** note: ***, **, * represents 1%, 5%, and 10% level of significance respectively the gmm estimation results of model-2 are represented in the second column. model-2 is the extended form of model-1, where added fossil fuel and energy outlay. in model-2 demonstrates that the coefficient of forest areas is 0.01 percent and it is positive. forest rent showing the coefficient 0.007 and it is insignificant. one percent increase in economic growth accelerates co2 emission by 0.430 percent with a ten percent level. the consumption of energy is positive and significant to increase the carbon escape where fossil fuel has the coefficient value 0.797 percent and significant at a one percent level. in model-2 the marginal effect of agricultural productions is -0.378 that’s, which contains an expected sign meaning that agricultural productions have a significant impact to mitigate co2 discharge. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 392-405 400 column 4 in table 5 represents the model-3, which endeavours to analyze the role of the industrialization on co2 emission in bangladesh. industrialization added in fundamental model-1 which shows that the industrialization has a positive effect on co2 discharge. the coefficient is 0.460 and it is veritable with considering at a ten percent level. whatever the coefficient of insufficient forest area shows a positive relation to accelerating the co2 escape. forest rent shows a plus sign where the economic growth consists of increasing co2 discharge at a 1 percent level. the marginal effect shows that the coefficient value is 1.133 percent to accelerate carbon escape. this model demonstrates that agricultural production still a negative and significant impact that is expected to mitigate co2 discharge. in addition, model-4 estimates the following variables: forest area, forest rent, economic growth, energy, fossil, and industrialization. the econometric evidence impending in column-4 shows the insufficient forest area has a positive and significant impact on co2, where the forest rent is not significant. fossil fuel takes an equitable and significant impact to accelerate co2 emission by 0.763 percent. the coefficient of energy use is 0.834 percent to extend the marginal effect of carbon discharge. this finding is similar in (shahbaz et al., 2016). the coefficient of agricultural production is -0.191 which is not significant but it still shows a negative sign that’s expected to mitigate co2 discharge, where the agricultural productions show significant in previous models. the overall up of the estimations is that that economic growth is quite significant to accelerate carbon emission, insufficient forest area is unable to absorb the carbon gases properly that’s why the coefficient shows a positive sign. deforestation, energy, and fossil increase the carbon emission, where agricultural production as a mitigation factor works to reduce carbon emission. the overall study conveys that energy consumption, fossil consumption, forest rent, economic growth, and industrializations still work to increase co2 emission. by completing this analysis it is clear that agriculture significantly contributes to reducing co2 emission. so the co2 emission policies should consider those emissions factors to get success. 6.4. hypothesis analysis to measure the relationship between agriculture and carbon emission, the nominal hypothesis is that agricultural productions have a positive impact on co2 emissions. whatever the decision criteria state that in table 6 for several models. the empirical findings rejected the nominal hypothesis by accepting the task hypothesis. agricultural production does not increase carbon dioxide emissions (liu et al., 2017). in the second case insufficient forest area state, the hypothesis is rejected. the economic growth accelerates the carbon discharge that’s present in third cases. table 6: hypothesis analysis decision criteria null hypothesis (h0) model-1 model-2 model-3 model-4 h1 reject the h0 reject the h0 reject the h0 reject the h0 (insignificant) h2 reject the h0 reject the h0 reject the h0 reject the h0 h3 reject the h0 reject the h0 reject the h0 reject the h0 (insignificant) h4 reject the h0 reject the h0 h5 reject the h0 reject the h0 h6 fail to reject the h0 fail to reject the h0 (insignificant) fail to reject the h0 fail to reject the h0 (insignificant) h7 fail to reject the h0 fail to reject the h0 note: for the cases of (insignificant), that means the sign of the coefficient is expected but doesn’t significant in 5% level asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 392-405 401 in the fourth and fifth cases, the null hypothesis assumes that industrialization does not increase co2 emissions, in this section the empirical findings help to reject the nominal hypothesis. fossil fuel consumption increases carbon emissions which are rejected the null hypothesis as fossil fuel consumption does not increase emissions. forest rent or deforestation is unable to reduce carbon gases however this study fails to reject the h0 in the case of forest rent. 6.5. diagnostics test results there are two diagnostic tests as known as the normality test and regressor endogeneity tests are used in the econometric procedure. agricultural productions (ap) used as the endogenous variable in gmm estimations. the iv diagnostics, h0 is the ap is exogenous and the task hypothesis ap is not exogenous intent which indicates that ap is an endogenous impact on estimated models. in the normality test, h0 is that residuals are normally distributed and h1 is that the residuals are not normally distributed. table 7 conveys the diagnostic test by taking into account j-statistics for endogeneity tests and j-b statistics for normality tests to makes decisions. diagnostics test for model-1 is present the j-b is 0.08 to accept the h0 and j-stat is 0.02 to accept the task hypothesis as the agricultural production is endogenous. table 7: diagnostics test results model diagnostics test for baseline models test statistics hypothesis j -stats/j-b (p-value) decision model-1 regressor endogenity test h0= ap are exogenous 0.02 reject the h0 normality test h0= errors are normally distributed 0.08 fail to reject h0 model-2 regressor endogenity test h0= ap are exogenous 0.03 reject the h0 normality test h0= errors are normally distributed 0.27 fail to reject h0 model-3 regressor endogenity test h0= ap are exogenous 0.04 reject the h0 normality test h0= errors are normally distributed 0.72 fail to reject h0 model-4 regressor endogenity test h0= ap are exogenous 0.18 accept the h0 normality test h0= errors are normally distributed 0.09 fail to reject h0 in model-2, the endogeneity test rejects the h0 and residual diagnostics sighting the normality test where j-b stat. is 0.27 which fails to reject h0. test for the model-3 state that, j-b stat. is 0.72 to accept the nominal hypothesis and jstat. is 0.04 to reject the h0. diagnostics test for model-4 present endogeneity test fail to reject h0 and residual diagnostics of normality test j-b value is 0.09, the model is normal. however, the diagnostics test state that the behavior of estimated models has no inconsistencies. 7. conclusion the current study endeavour to examine the role of agriculture in carbon emission; where agricultural productions and activities are a carbon absorber in bangladesh. this study conducts considering other reliable variables like economic growth, forest, fossil fuel consumption, energy use, and industrialization to examine the carbon emission. agricultural production and activities used as the mitigating factor because agriculture is in generally reduced carbon dioxide. the gmm used to examine the empirical result with consideration of endogenous factors is agricultural asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 392-405 402 productions. the empirical result demonstrated in selected models is that economic growth accelerates the carbon emission, the expansion of economic activities increases the carbon gases. the insufficient forest area is unable to absorb co2 where the forest rest is quite significant to accelerate co2 emission. energy consumptions and fossil fuel show a positive impact on carbon emission in selected models. in this section, the mitigating factor as agriculture works to reduce carbon discharge. this study also demonstrated that in the future, the studied country achieved stable and high economic growth and moved to be a developed country. whenever, after achieving a certain level the economy works to reduce carbon emission which is the fundamental concept of the environmental kuznets curve (ekc) hypothesis. suri and chapman (1998), miah et al. (2010), diao et al. (2009) substantiate similar kinds of findings as to the inverted u shape of ekc. the government and regulatory authorities need to take initiatives to increase agricultural productivity. this study demonstrated the importance of reform agricultural policy and regulations to increases agricultural production and activities with limited use of chemical and toxic elements in agricultural activities. the forest area is also included in agricultural productions and strict rules and laws also required to reduce deforestation or illegal forest harvesting. forest harvesting is positive relation to accelerating the co2 emission, that’s why this study recommended that the forest rent is not necessary to accelerate the total volume of gdp. the current study provides a substantial way to mitigate carbon dioxide without any harms of economic growth. the current study works as a pioneer one, as per our sequential knowledge, this has afforded to examine the induction of agriculture to carbon mitigation in bangladesh. the current study collaborates the policymakers to increase agricultural activities to alleviate carbon emission, without affecting other economic variables like energy consumption, industrialization, and afforestation. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adams, r. 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(2010). decomposing the influencing factors of industrial carbon emissions in shanghai using the lmdi method. energy, 35(6), 2505-2510. doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2010.02.049. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 98 structural change in thailand’s tobacco leaf exports: implications of tobacco control in asean countries jirawat jaroensathapornkul faculty of economics, srinakharinwirot university, 114 sukhumvit 23, bangkok 10110, thailand.  jirawatj@m.swu.ac.th article history abstract received: 26 october 2022 revised: 15 march 2023 accepted: 3 april 2023 published: 17 april 2023 keywords asean countries chow test structural change tobacco control policies tobacco farmer tobacco leaf exports who fctc. the purpose of this research is to investigate the implications of tobacco control policies and measure how these have brought about structural changes in thailand’s tobacco leaf exports. the methodology involved employing secondary data to estimate the econometrics model and then utilizing the chow test. the findings showed that the estimates from the econometrics model reflect the income elasticity of the real export value of 6.621. in the chow test, a statistically significant (at 0.05) structural change in thailand’s tobacco leaf export was apparent when comparing the results before and after the first quarter of 2010. furthermore, since 2010 the exports have shifted from the old market to other asean countries, namely indonesia, the philippines, malaysia, and lao pdr. concerning the practical implications, from a public health perspective, the results provide evidence for the efficiency of tobacco control policies and measures in european countries, the us, and australia. on the other hand, they also pinpoint an area of improvement for tobacco control policies in asean countries, and further investigation is required. from an economic perspective, thai tobacco farmers need to be supported by the government during the transition period. contribution/originality: this study contributes empirical evidence about structural changes to tobacco leaf exports in thailand, which have been redirected to asean countries. it suggests that the tobacco control policies in those countries should be reassessed on a practical level to ensure they are more successful in the future. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i2.4774 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: jaroensathapornkul, j. (2023). structural change in thailand’s tobacco leaf exports: implications of tobacco control in asean countries. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2), 98–105. 10.55493/5005.v13i2.4774 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction from 1990 to 2016, tobacco consumption in 19 countries in europe, north america, and asia was too high, leading to an increase in healthcare expenditure, as well as rising costs of medical treatment and a higher mortality rate (aldakhil, nassani, abro, & zaman, 2018). for that reason, governments in these countries implemented policies and measures to control the consumption of tobacco. moreover, at the end of 2009, the world health organization framework convention on tobacco control (who fctc) was ratified by 168 countries, leading to the further implementation of various policies in line with the who fctc (sirichotiratana, 2015). the tobacco demand control aspect consisted of price and tax measures; also, these countries have applied non-price measures including the regulation of text on tobacco products, labels, packaging, advertisements, and promotion. at the same time, tobacco asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 2 (2023): 98-105. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:jirawatj@m.swu.ac.th http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 98-105 99 supply control measures, including illicit trade control measures and tobacco crop substitution, proceeded in these countries (world health organization, 2003). apart from this, the sustainable development goals of the united nations, particularly target 3.a, focus on the implementation of policies in line with the who fctc in each country (world health organization, 2017). in thailand, the excise tax structure for tobacco products was significantly adjusted on september 16, 2017. however, as of september 30, 2021, it has yet to be officially implemented; therefore, a provisional excise tax structure has been implemented in the interim. the main concept is as follows: in terms of tax per volume, one cigarette pack must be taxed at 1.20 baht per roll. simultaneously, the percentage tax per value depends on the “suggested retail price,” which means industrialists or importers consider a suggested retail price as a sale price for consumers in general (excise department, 2017). the percentage tax is separated into two tiers; firstly, if the suggested retail price of a pack does not exceed 60 baht, it must be taxed at 20% of the retail price. secondly, if the suggested retail price exceeds 60 baht, the cigarette pack must be taxed at 40% of the retail price. consequently, the price of imported cigarettes decreased to compete with the price of domestically made cigarettes, and the sale quantity of domestic cigarettes fell drastically. this caused the tobacco authority of thailand (taot) to strongly reduce the quota for purchasing tobacco leaves from tobacco farmers. jaroensathapornkul (2020) revealed that sample groups of virginia, burley, and turkish tobacco farmers who sell their tobacco leaves exclusively to the taot have experienced a statistically significant (at the 0.05 level) decrease in their household incomes. it should be noted that even though burley farmers in phetchabun province can sell their tobacco to exporters, their income would still decline because, in 2018 and 2019, thailand’s value of burley exports decreased by 10.28% and 42.06%, respectively. furthermore, thailand’s value of burley exports to important trading partners, such as the united states, belgium, and the philippines, have vastly decreased by 30.26%, 47.54%, and 70.03%, respectively. such empirical evidence reveals that the economy of tobacco farmers has been a challenge. therefore, the thai government needs a solution to tackle the problems of the transition period (jaroensathapornkul, 2020). figure 1. markets for thailand’s tobacco leaf exports from 1998 to 2020. aside from the burley export issue, the information technology and communication center of the ministry of commerce reports that, over two decades, the value of tobacco exports decreased from 67.59 million usd in 2000 to 30.48 million usd in 2020. this factor is important as it creates less competition for thailand and leads to a higher asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 98-105 100 cost of tobacco products by allowing a comparison between tobacco exporter countries. additionally, another contributing factor is the economic growth of the trading partner. the key issue here is that the serious reduction in export values results from the tobacco control policies and measures adopted by thailand’s trading partners. regarding thailand’s main trading partners, the export values to germany, the uk, belgium, australia, the us, and china show a downward trend from 1998 to 2020 (figure 1). on the other hand, the export values to indonesia, the philippines, malaysia, lao pdr, and south korea show a different pattern. the association of southeast asian nations (asean) is a 10-nation regional organization that includes brunei darussalam, cambodia, indonesia, lao pdr, malaysia, myanmar, the philippines, singapore, thailand, and vietnam. thus it can be said that the new market for thailand’s tobacco leaf exports is asean countries and south korea. moreover, the stream has shifted from the old market (europe, the us, australia, and china) to the new market, and the export value to the total market from 2008 to 2009 was the turning point (figure 1). therefore, this research aims to investigate the implications that the tobacco control policies and measures in line with the who fctc have had for the structural change in thailand’s tobacco leaf exports. 2. literature review a decrease in the demand for tobacco worldwide has resulted in a decline in tobacco prices. it has affected tobacco leaf exports in malawi, zimbabwe, and turkey (diao, robinson, thomas, & wobst, 2002). more specifically, in the case of malawi—a densely populated country in africa—the tobacco price shock affected tobacco leaf exports (bangara & dunne, 2018). the country’s export tariff policy also had an impact on the income of tobacco farmers (sahn, van frausum, & shively, 1994). however, establishing an association of burley farmers encouraged the production of burley, thus increasing the quantity of tobacco leaf sold (negri & porto, 2016). nevertheless, due to the overall reduction in tobacco production, consumer and producer welfare decreased by 3% and 4%, respectively (kachulu, rasche, schnieder, & chinene, 2018). in the case of turkey, tobacco leaf exports were strongly sensitive to the real exchange rate; thus, the depreciation of the turkish lira caused exports to expand (yanikkaya, kaya, & kocturk, 2013). among the asian countries, the main exporters of tobacco are china and india. over the past fifteen years, tobacco leaf has been an important export product for china. although the main trading partners or old markets have stagnated, the new markets have strengthened (li et al., 2018). the volume of tobacco production and export in india is second, after china. from 1987 to 1988 and from 2016 to 2017, india faced much higher competition in the tobacco export industry (wasnik, suryawanshi, & ganvir, 2020). regarding tobacco consumption, indonesia is an important market; in 2018, there were 60 million smokers out of a total population of 240 million. furthermore, indonesia had the highest number of male smokers and ranked second in the world overall. the government has also not yet ratified who fctc. apart from this, from 1990 to 2016, although domestic tobacco production was reduced by approximately 20% due to tobacco control policies among the main trading partners, the ratio of imported tobacco to domestic production increased from 17% to 65%. the ratio of imported to exported tobacco products also increased from 0.7% to 65% (ahsan et al., 2020). the main factors affecting tobacco export from indonesia to the united states were price and the real gdp of the united states. nonetheless, indonesia’s exports have little significance in the us tobacco market (rahmawati, 2013). as for the united states, its burley production was ranked first in the world. however, in terms of market share, the united states ranked just below malawi, italy, and brazil. the tariff and non-tariff barriers in the united states affected the international trade of burley (snell & reed, 1993). at the same time, tobacco control policies, such as increasing the excise tax and pricing cigarettes, affected the planted area of tobacco (brown, 1995). in addition, the us congress restricted the use of the budget from the tobacco export promotion fund (united states government accountability, 2019). in the case of europe, the creation of the european union led to an increase in international trade, including in tobacco, among its member countries (zolin & uprasen, 2018). on the other hand, the greek oriental tobacco leaf exports from greece to the united states were strongly sensitive to the volatility of the exchange rate under an agricultural policy (rezitis & brown, 1999). based on this literature review, the expected benefit of our research is to fill in the gap in the literature concerning the relationship between tobacco control policies and tobacco leaf exports, particularly in the case of asean countries. therefore, the findings of our research can help create a broader knowledge of the tobacco economy for future use in research. 3. methods and procedure the factors affecting thailand’s tobacco leaf exports used in the econometrics model are derived from the concept of the gravity model and can be illustrated by the equation below: 𝐿𝑛(𝑦𝑡) = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐿𝑛(𝑥1𝑡) + 𝛽2𝐿𝑛(𝑥2𝑡) + 𝛽3𝐿𝑛(𝑥3𝑡) + 𝛽4𝐿𝑛(𝑥4𝑡) + 𝑒𝑡 (1) ln refers to the natural logarithm; descriptions of the variables and sources of data are shown in table 1, and 𝑒𝑡 is the error term or white noise. since the frequency of data is annual, the variance of ordinary least squares estimators would increase, leading to the issue of statistically incredible estimation results. to remedy this issue, quarterly data is derived using denton’s method. the appropriateness of the model in equation 1 is subject to the need to address the following issues. with the coefficient diagnostic, the variance inflation factors (vif) aim to test for multicollinearity problems. the residual diagnostics refer to the lagrange multiplier test (lm test), the white test, and the jarque-bera test (jb test), which aim to assess the autocorrelation, the heteroskedasticity, and the normality of error terms, respectively. at the same time, the stability diagnostic, the ramsey regression equation specification error test (ramsey reset test), aims to identify specification error problems. apart from this, the statistical significance must be determined for the test results of the explanatory variables. the parameters also need to be reviewed using the r-squared and adjusted r-squared. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 98-105 101 to achieve the objective of this research concerning the analysis of the implications of tobacco control policies and measures in line with the who fctc for the structural change to thailand’s tobacco leaf exports, the chow breakpoint test is utilized. by the end of 2009, the who fctc had been ratified by 168 countries, meaning that various policies in line with the who fctc had been implemented (sirichotiratana, 2015); therefore, this research identifies the periods before and after the structural change as 1998 to 2009 and 2010 to 2020, respectively. consequently, the null (𝐻0) and alternative hypotheses (𝐻1) are expressed as follows: 𝐻0: 𝐿𝑛(𝑦𝑡) = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐿𝑛(𝑥1𝑡) + 𝛽2𝐿𝑛(𝑥2𝑡) + 𝛽3𝐿𝑛(𝑥3𝑡) + 𝛽4𝐿𝑛(𝑥4𝑡) + 𝑒𝑡;  𝑡 = 1998, . . . ,2020, 𝐻1: 𝐿𝑛(𝑦𝑡) = 𝛼0 + 𝛼1𝐿𝑛(𝑥1𝑡) + 𝛼2𝐿𝑛(𝑥2𝑡) + 𝛼2𝐿𝑛(𝑥3𝑡) + 𝛼2𝐿𝑛(𝑥4𝑡) + 𝑒1𝑡; 𝑡1 = 1998, . . . ,2009;  𝐿𝑛(𝑦𝑡) = 𝜆0 + 𝜆1𝐿𝑛(𝑥1𝑡) + 𝜆2𝐿𝑛(𝑥2𝑡) + 𝜆2𝐿𝑛(𝑥3𝑡) + 𝜆2𝐿𝑛(𝑥4𝑡) + 𝑒2𝑡; 𝑡2 = 2010, . . . ,2020 where 𝑒1𝑡 and 𝑒2𝑡 are white noise, and it is assumed that 𝑒1𝑡 is statistically independent of 𝑒2𝑡. to reject the null hypothesis, 𝐹𝑐𝑎𝑙 > 𝐹𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑡 where 𝐹𝑐𝑎𝑙 can be expressed as the following equation: 𝐹𝑐𝑎𝑙 = (𝑆𝑆𝑅1−(𝑆𝑆𝑅2+𝑆𝑆𝑅3)) 4⁄ (𝑆𝑆𝑅2+𝑆𝑆𝑅3) (48+44−8)⁄ = (𝑆𝑆𝑅1−(𝑆𝑆𝑅2+𝑆𝑆𝑅3)) 4⁄ (𝑆𝑆𝑅2+𝑆𝑆𝑅3) (84)⁄ (2) where 𝑆𝑆𝑅refers to the explained sum of squares, and 𝑆𝑆𝑅1,  𝑆𝑆𝑅2,  𝑆𝑆𝑅3 is derived from the estimates of the econometrics model under the null and alternative hypotheses above. also, 4 indicates the number of parameters of the model under the null and alternative hypotheses above. 𝐹𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑡 = 𝐹0.05,4.84 is derived from the f-distribution tables. in addition, the number of observations before and after the structural break is 48 (quarterly data from 1998 to 2009) and 44 observations (quarterly data from 2010 to 2020), respectively. table 1. definitions of variables and sources of information. variables explanation source of data 𝑦𝑡 value of tobacco leaf (virginia, burley, and turkish) exports using the 2010 price from thailand to the main trading partners including germany, the uk, belgium, australia, the us, china, south korea, indonesia, the philippines, malaysia, and lao pdr (unit: million usd) office of the permanent secretary of ministry of commerce (2022) 𝑥1𝑡 population of thailand (unit: million) world bank group (2022) 𝑥2𝑡 population of the main trading partners including germany, the uk, belgium, australia, the us, china, south korea, indonesia, the philippines, malaysia, and lao pdr (unit: million) world bank group (2022) 𝑥3𝑡 value of gdp at 2010 price in thailand (unit: million usd) international monetary fund (imf) (2022) 𝑥4𝑡 value of gdp with the 2010 price in the main trading partners including germany, the uk, belgium, australia, the us, china, south korea, indonesia, the philippines, malaysia, and lao pdr (unit: million) international monetary fund (imf) (2022) indexmundi (2021) note: the value of export and gdp at the 2010 constant price is based on the us gdp deflator at the 2010 price. the source of the gdp deflator is international monetary fund (imf) (2022). 4. results and discussion to remedy the autocorrelation, the lag of the dependent variable and the second-order autoregressive model are added to the model described in equation 1. the estimates from the econometrics model demonstrate the factors affecting thailand’s tobacco leaf exports from 1998 to 2020, as shown in table 2a. after adjusting the residuals of the model with the firstand second-order autoregressive model, the estimates of the model are judged reliable from an econometrics point of view. this is because, firstly, the p-values in the lm test, white test, jb test, and reset test are not able to reject a null hypothesis at a statistical significance of 0.05. therefore, the model does not display significant concerns in the areas of autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity, or specification errors. secondly, the adjusted r-squared is 0.995. thirdly, only one explanatory variable does not display a statistical significance of 0.05 because the model falls within the multicollinearity problem according to the centered vif, as shown in table 2b. therefore, the model is appropriate for our economic interpretation. the estimated econometric model implies that if the real value of gdp in the main trading partner increases by 1%, thailand’s real export value of tobacco leaf (virginia, burley, and turkish) will increase by 6.621% (table 2a). this result supports the studies by cantavella-jordá and guerra (2013) and nkhoma, mgale, and yan (2021). the first study indicated that there is statistical evidence that income elasticity plays a significant role in the determination of export growth for cuban tobacco. in the second study, the fixed effect model showed an overall positive and significant relationship between malawi tobacco exports and importers’ gdp. the results of the chow breakpoint test reveal that the structural change in thailand’s tobacco leaf exports before and after the first quarter of 2010 is statistically significant at 0.05, as shown in table 2c. this provides empirical evidence to confirm the situation of tobacco leaf exports depicted in figure 1, namely that the export values to germany, the uk, belgium, australia, the us, and china had a negative trend from 1998 to 2020, while the export values to indonesia, the philippines, malaysia, lao pdr, and south korea showed the opposite. therefore, thailand’s total tobacco leaf exporting industry has significantly shifted from the old market (germany, the uk, belgium, australia, the us, and china) to the new market (south korea, indonesia, the philippines, malaysia, and lao pdr). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 98-105 102 this is consistent with frey (1997), who succinctly stated that the stream of the tobacco economy has flowed to less developed countries, namely latin american and asian countries. furthermore, it is implied that between 2010 and 2020 thailand’s tobacco leaf exports decreased significantly because the who fctc was ratified by 168 countries and thus various policies in line with the who fctc were implemented. this implication supports the findings of ahsan et al. (2020), who stated that indonesia’s domestic tobacco production was reduced by approximately 20% due to tobacco control policies among its main trading partners. apart from this, it further implied that not only economic factors, including exchange rate (rezitis & brown, 1999; yanikkaya et al., 2013) and price (bangara & dunne, 2018; rahmawati, 2013), but also tobacco control policies affect tobacco leaf exports. examples of tobacco control laws and policies implemented by thailand’s old and new (asean) export markets, including smoke-free places, tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, tobacco packaging and labeling, cigarette contents and disclosures, and sales restrictions are summarized in tables 3 and 4 for the respective export markets. the results suggest that the tobacco control policies and measures in asean countries, including indonesia, the philippines, malaysia, and lao pdr, should be practically reassessed to achieve a more beneficial outcome. table 2. estimation results. a. the estimated econometrics model for thailand’s tobacco leaf exports. constant and independent variables dependent variable 𝐶 𝐿𝑛(𝑥1𝑡) 𝐿𝑛(𝑥2𝑡) 𝐿𝑛(𝑥3𝑡) 𝐿𝑛(𝑥4𝑡) 𝐿𝑛(𝑦𝑡−1) 𝐿𝑛(𝑦𝑡) 132.990 (24.506)** 26.270 (5.090)** -48.557 (9.357)ns -0.328 (0.255)** 6.621 (1.547)** 0.658 (0.085)** ar(1) = 1.637, ar(2) = -0.834, r-squared = 0.996, adjusted r-squared = 0.995 note: ** and ns refer to the statistical significance and non-significance at the 0.05 level, respectively. b. the results of the econometrics problem diagnostics. coefficient diagnostic residual diagnostic stability diagnostic variable centered vif lm test white test jb test reset test 𝐿𝑛(𝑥1𝑡) 271.296 obsr-squared = 0.903 p-value of chi-square = 0.342 obsr-squared = 40.050 p-value of chi-square = 0.07 jarque-bera = 2.829 p-value = 0.2431 f-statistic = 1.667 p-value = 0.195 𝐿𝑛(𝑥2𝑡) 1682.223 𝐿𝑛(𝑥3𝑡) 81.934 𝐿𝑛(𝑥4𝑡) 1086.007 note: obs refers to the number of observations. as for the lm test, the null hypothesis is no serial correlation at up to 1 lag. in the reset test, the omitted variables refer to the powers of fitted values from 2 to 3. c. the results of the chow breakpoint test. chow breakpoint test: 2010q1 null hypothesis: no breaks at specified breakpoints f-statistic = 2.979 prob. f(8,75) = 0.006 note: f-statistic reflects 𝐹𝑐𝑎𝑙 in equation 2 but the numerator is divided by 8 and the denominator is divided by 75. therefore, the degree of freedom is also 8 and 75, respectively. it differs from the degree of freedom in equation 2 because the lag of the dependent variable and the second-order autoregressive model plugs into the model to remedy the autocorrelation. table 3. example of tobacco control laws in the selected countries (old export market). tobacco control laws germany the united kingdom australia smoke-free places smoking is restricted in indoor workplaces and public places. smoking areas may be permitted on means of transport where it is possible to have “physically separate units.” smoking is prohibited on public transport and in indoor public places and indoor workplaces, including work vehicles. there are a few limited exceptions to the ban. smoking is prohibited in virtually all indoor workplaces, indoor public places, and on public transport, as well as in some outdoor places. tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship tobacco advertising is prohibited on tv, radio, the internet, in most print publications, and in most outdoor places. other types of print advertising are not covered under the law. tobacco advertising and promotion are generally prohibited, subject to a few exceptions such as direct person-to-person communications and retailer incentive programs. nearly all forms of tobacco advertising and promotion are prohibited by national and subnational laws. tobacco packaging and labeling for cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco, and waterpipe tobacco, rotating combined picture and text health warnings must occupy 65 percent of the front and back of the package. standardized (plain) packaging is required for all packages of cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco as of may 20, 2017. different types of tobacco products must display different warnings. plain packaging of tobacco products available for retail sale in australia is required. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 98-105 103 tobacco control laws germany the united kingdom australia cigarette contents and disclosures the law regulates specified contents in cigarettes, including banning characterizing flavors, ingredients that facilitate nicotine uptake, ingredients that may create an impression of health benefits, and ingredients associated with energy and vitality. the law regulates specified contents of cigarettes, including banning characterizing flavors and ingredients that facilitate nicotine uptake, create the impression of health benefits, or are associated with energy and vitality, among others. the contents and ingredients of cigarettes are not regulated at the national level. however, fruit and confectionery-flavored cigarettes are banned in all states and territories. in addition, mint is banned in at least one state. sales restrictions the law prohibits the sale of a single cigarette, small packs of cigarettes, and tobacco for oral use. there are restrictions on the sale of tobacco products via vending machines, but no restrictions on the sale of tobacco products via the internet. the law prohibits the sale of tobacco products via vending machines, a single cigarette, small packets of cigarettes, and tobacco for oral use. all australian states and territories prohibit the sale of a single cigarette and small packets of cigarettes. source: tobacco control laws (2022). table 4. example of tobacco control laws in the selected countries (asean countries). tobacco control laws indonesia the philippines malaysia smoke-free places smoking is prohibited on public transport and in the following public places: healthcare facilities, educational facilities, and places of worship. in other types of public places and workplaces, designated smoking areas must be provided. smoking is prohibited in enumerated indoor public places and workplaces, while designated smoking areas are allowed in other public places and workplaces, including bars and nightclubs. smoking is prohibited on public transportation. smoking is prohibited in specified public places and workplaces listed in the regulations. tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship tobacco advertising and promotion are allowed with certain restrictions. tobacco advertising on tv and radio may take place between the hours of 21:30 and 05:00 local time. many forms of tobacco advertising and promotion are prohibited, though tobacco advertising and promotion at points of sale and free distribution of tobacco products, among other promotional activities, are allowed. virtually all forms of tobacco advertising and promotion are prohibited. however, due to the lack of a definition of “tobacco promotion” in the law, some forms of tobacco promotion may not be covered by the ban. tobacco packaging and labeling pictorial health warnings are required to cover 40 percent of the main display areas parallel to the top edge of the packaging for most smoked and smokeless tobacco products. rotating and combined picture and text health warnings are required to be placed on 50 percent of each of the principal display areas of tobacco product packaging. rotating combined picture and text health warnings are required to occupy 50 percent of the front and 60 percent of the back of the package. cigarette contents and disclosures although regulation (pp) no. 109 in 2012 prohibits the use of additives in tobacco products “unless it has been scientifically proven that such additives are not harmful to health,” no ministerial regulation has been issued to date, and additives are allowed in practice. the law does not grant the authority to regulate the contents of cigarettes. the law does not require that manufacturers and importers disclose to government authorities information on the contents and emissions of their products. the law does not grant the authority to regulate the contents of cigarettes. the law does not require that manufacturers and importers disclose to government authorities information on the contents and emissions of their products. sales restrictions the law prohibits the sale of tobacco products via vending machines and in educational facilities, children’s playgrounds, and healthcare facilities, as well as the sale of small packets of cigarettes. the law prohibits the sale of small packets of cigarettes and the sale of tobacco products within 100 meters of schools, playgrounds, and other facilities frequented by minors. the law prohibits the sale of tobacco products via vending machines, the internet, small packets of cigarettes, and a single cigarette. the sale of tobacco products to persons under the age of 18 is also prohibited. note: indonesia is not a party to the who framework convention on tobacco control. source: tobacco control laws (2022). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 98-105 104 5. conclusion this research investigated the implications of the tobacco control policies and measures in line with the who fctc for the structural change in thailand’s tobacco leaf exports. the implication is made clear by the result of the chow breakpoint test, which showed that thailand’s total tobacco leaf export value has plummeted since 2010. additionally, exports have shifted significantly from the old market to the new market, specifically to the asean countries of indonesia, the philippines, malaysia, and lao pdr, since 2010. this shift reflects an area for improvement in these countries’ tobacco control policies and measures. however, from an economic perspective, tobacco farmers in thailand need to be supported by the government. the short-run policies, especially the compensation policy, should be maintained during the transition period of excise tax and the reduction of tobacco leaf's export values. at the same time, in the long run, policies such as crop substitution should be practically implemented. funding: this research is supported by the faculty of economics, srinakharinwirot university, bangkok, thailand (grant number: 519/2564). competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ahsan, a., wiyono, n. h., veruswati, m., adani, n., kusuma, d., & amalia, n. 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(2018). trade creation and diversion: effects of eu enlargement on agricultural and food products and selected asian countries. asia europe journal, 16(4), 351-373. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-018-0508-7 https://databank.worldbank.org/ https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/searo/hsd/hwf/01-monitoring-the-health-related-sdgs-background-paper.pdf?sfvrsn=3417607a_4 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/searo/hsd/hwf/01-monitoring-the-health-related-sdgs-background-paper.pdf?sfvrsn=3417607a_4 https://doi.org/10.17221/122/2012-agricecon https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-018-0508-7 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 65 factors driving the adoption of coping strategies to market risks of shrimp farmers: a case study in a coastal province of vietnam nguyen thai phana,b isabelita m. pabuayonb nguyen duc kiena truong quang dunga le thanh ana nguyen cong dinha auniversity of economics, hue university, vietnam. buniversity of the philippines los banos, laguna, philippines.  ntphan@hueuni.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 21 december 2021 revised: 8 february 2022 accepted: 24 february 2022 published: 15 march 2022 keywords market risks risk management strategies technology adoption shrimp production logit model vietnam. shrimp farmers in vietnam respond passively to market risks, such as input and output price shocks. this study provides a better understanding of market risks, risk management strategies adopted by shrimp farmers, the factors driving their choice of strategies, and how such strategies affect farm performance. random sampling was used to collect information from a sample of 246 shrimp farmers. several analytical methods were combined, including descriptive analysis, coefficient of variance estimation for market risks, and a logistic regression model to uncover factors behind farmers’ decisions to adopt risk management strategies. to cope with market risks, shrimp farmers frequently adopt two risk management strategies: changes in farming technology and practices, and agricultural input contracts. overall, 54.9% of shrimp farmers only used a single strategy, whereas the others used combined risk management strategies. age, farm size, membership in a farmers association, participation in training, gender, price of output, price of seed, price of fertilizer, distance from farm to the market center, and shrimp type were identified as factors driving the probability of using combined risk management strategies. contribution/originality: this study provides apart of existing literature for the market risk faced by the shrimp farmers and their strategies for market risk management. the findings could possibly contribute valuable insights on the factors affecting the choice of market risk management strategies and the impact on the productivity and income of shrimp farmers in vietnam. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4444 issn(p): 2304-1455/issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: nguyen thai phan --isabelita m. pabuayon --nguyen duc kien --truong quang dung --le thanh an --nguyen cong dinh (2022). factors driving the adoption of coping strategies to market risks of shrimp farmers: a case study in a coastal province of vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2), 65-74. 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4444 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction in vietnam, agriculture is essential for economic development and is the dominant source of income because most of the population lives in rural areas. moreover, agricultural production provides food, fuel and raw materials for the asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 2 (2022): 65-74. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7533-5057 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8500-2619 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7757-6225 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5108-5062 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9905-6797 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4679-6775 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 65-74 66 processing industries. in 2017, vietnam's gross domestic product (gdp) increased by 6.81%, and aquaculture production contributed significantly to economic growth with an increase of 5.54% (gso general statistics office of vietnam, 2017). in 2017, the total output of aquaculture production in vietnam was estimated to be 3,858,000 tons, which was 5.5% higher than in 2016. shrimp production reached 683,400 tons in 2017, which was 4% higher than that in 2016 (gso general statistics office of vietnam, 2017). in 2017, black tiger shrimp production in vietnam reached 256,400 tons, a decrease of 2.8%, whereas white shrimp production rose to 427,000 tons, 8.5% higher than in 2016. thus, there have been significant achievements in the development of aquaculture production, especially shrimp farming, to help improve socioeconomic conditions by reducing the unemployment rate and providing a better livelihood in the coastal provinces of vietnam. however, the aquaculture sector is still at high risk in production and faces challenges from recent changes in production. risk management is critical for minimizing the consequences of shrimp production risks, particularly for shrimp farmers in coastal provinces (girdžiūtė, 2012). understanding the risks in shrimp farming is necessary to help farmers develop appropriate coping strategies to mitigate the damage caused by adverse events and circumvent extreme outcomes such as bankruptcy in their farming operations (joy, richard, keith, janet, & agapi, 1999; kien, ancev, & randall, 2019). there are five distinct risk factors in agriculture: production, market, credit, personal, and environmental (herath & thirumarpan, 2017; mitra & sharmin, 2019). market risk can broadly impact production (bernard, de janvry, mbaye, & sadoulet, 2017), income (foster & rausser, 1991; paul & vogl, 2013), agricultural operations (drollette, 2009) and total supply (keefe & jolly, 2001). market risks refer to those associated with changes in the prices of outputs and inputs (ahsan, 2011; farzaneh, allahyari, damalas, & seidavi, 2017; greiner, patterson, & miller, 2009; knutson, smith, anderson, & richardson, 1998; mahaliyanaarachchi, 2016), which may occur after the commitment to production begins (joy et al., 1999). price shocks in the output and input markets could lead to lower incomes for shrimp producers and lower productivity in aquaculture production. shrimp farming in thua thien hue province faces significant market risks from changing market conditions. shocks from input and output prices have had adverse impacts, such as lower incomes and productivity for farmers engaged in shrimp production. generally, farmers respond passively to input and output price risks; they use traditional strategies to reduce input prices, and they agree to any price that has been set by middlemen for their output. in the short run, these practices can reduce the damage of market risks experienced by farmers. however, they are not encouraged to increase farm investments in the long term. understanding management strategies for addressing market risks is vital to ensuring effective shrimp production and increasing farmers' income. until now, there is no study conducted in vietnam that comprehensively examines the farmers' shrimp production management strategies and their impacts on farm productivity and income. some studies have been conducted on the strategies used in risk management of diseases and climate. however, they do not refer the level of fluctuation of input and output prices in shrimp industry. therefore, this study focuses on market risk, which is one of the five sources of risk in shrimp production in the study area. this study examines fluctuations in prices in the shrimp output and input markets and identifies how farmers manage market risks to lessen their adverse impacts. 2. literature review a change in technology involving shrimp seeds (paul & vogl, 2013), feeding, and fertilizer for onion production (bernard et al., 2017) can reduce the impact of market or price variability by decreasing production costs or increasing productivity (brennan, clayton, & be, 2000; renkow, 1993). in addition, improvements in the use of onion seeds increased their weight, leading to bargaining power to increase the price of onions for farmers (bernard et al., 2017). notably, technology can affect the magnitude of output and input prices (miller & tolley, 1989). this new technology can improve the quality of products and the use of production inputs (ha & bac, 2021). adopting improved agricultural technologies is crucial for economic development and rural income growth (barrett & carter, 2010; takahashi & barrett, 2014). essentially, a change in technology can increase labor availability, but can decrease the time for other productive activities, social network experience, yield, income (raju, 1976) and risk aversion (takahashi & barrett, 2014). any change in technology can reduce production costs and can reduce the farmers’ dependence on the quantity of inputs. consequently, the input price risks can affect farmers' production processes. an agricultural contract specifies the quantity and quality of a designated crop to be transacted on a future date. it sets either a predetermined price for the crop or a formula for pricing based on the future market price. consequently, in marketing contracts, intermediaries sometimes share price risks with farmers. in addition to ensuring prices in production contracts, intermediaries may provide inputs and guide the production process (du, ifft, lu, & zilberman, 2015). in fact, contractual farmers appear to have been largely successful in improving their incomes (ahsan, 2011; wang, wang, & delgado, 2014) and productivity levels (assefa, meuwissen, & oude, 2017; eidman, 1990; goodhue, 1999; hueth & ligon, 1999; kutawa, 2016). the significance of a contract is revealed in a study by jang & olson (2010), who specified that the desired quality attributes and related production systems begin before production if necessary. this enables the buyer to reduce the risk and associated costs of the producer not accessing the appropriate quantity of the desired inputs or having to accept attribute bundles that reduce the output value. similarly, agricultural contracts also consider transaction costs and risks (al ruqishi, gibreel, akaichi, zaibet, & zekri, 2020; eidman, 1990; fukunaga & huffman, 2009). several socioeconomic variables, including education, age, family size, training status, and experience, among others, significantly influence risk perception and management strategies (ahsan, 2011; farzaneh et al., 2017; nganje, kaitibie, & taban, 2005). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 65-74 67 3. materials and methods 3.1. market or price risk analysis market risk is usually referred to as price risk (drollette, 2009). market risk tends to be high because the industry depends on demand in the global market, such as shrimp raising (ahsan, 2011; mahul, 2003). van schalkwyk & groenewald (1994) pointed out that price risk is measured by investigating the combined effects of the aggregated output and input price ratio and the price stability of the output and input price ratio over time. in this study, price ratios, standard deviations, and coefficients of variation were used to compare the variability in prices of whiteleg and black tiger shrimp to estimate the level of price variations. 1) price variability or risk can be measured by the ratio of successive prices (pt / pt-1) instead of differences (pt – pt-1) (joy et al., 1999). the average prices for whiteleg and black tiger shrimp in a year or seasonal period were calculated, and the study used the percentage of the ratio of successive prices. the higher the percentage ratios of successive prices, the higher the risk. the formula for the percentage ratio of successive prices is as follows: where: pr = percentage of the ratio of successive prices. tp = mean price of shrimp in the tth year. 1tp− = mean price of shrimp in t-1th year. 2) standard deviation analysis: when price data for whiteleg and black tiger shrimp had the same mean value, the study considered the standard deviation. the greater the standard deviation, the more variable the prices. higher variability indicates a higher risk. the standard deviation formula is as follows: where:  = standard deviation. n = number of years. pi = price in the ith year (i = 1, 2, 3, ….). i = the ith year. p = mean price in the specified period (at least five years). 3) coefficient of variation analysis: when price data sets are different, a comparison of their standard deviations is not meaningful. therefore, this study used the coefficient of variation analysis. a greater coefficient of variation indicates higher risk. the formula for the coefficient of variation is as follows: where: cv = coefficient of variation. σ = standard deviation. p = mean price in the specified period (at least five years). 3.2. selecting risk management strategies first, focus group discussions were organized with local communities to provide an overview of the market risks and coping strategies. participants were asked to rank the severity level of the risk and the popularity of the coping strategies used by local farmers. the most significant risks and strategies were selected for further investigation. primary data were collected through face-to-face interviews with respondents using pre-tested questionnaires focusing on changes in production technologies or practices used by farmers. the analysis was performed for the two types of shrimp and classified according to the type of risk management strategy adopted. 3.3. factors affecting the choice of risk management strategy previous studies have analyzed the factors behind risk perception and management strategies using economic random effects models, such as the logit model (farzaneh et al., 2017; jordaan & grové, 2008; nganje et al., 2005) and probit model (coble, knight, pope, & williams, 1996). these models are useful for analyzing risk perceptions and management strategies. coble et al. (1996) showed that the rate of insurance return impacts farmers’ choices of risk mitigation strategies. farzaneh et al. (2017) pointed out that insurance adoption depends on the income of silk farmers and other sources. in this study, a logit model was used to analyze the factors that impact the choice of risk management strategies and were classified according to a single or combined strategy. the formula of the empirical model is as follows: management strategy adopted (j) = β0 + β1x1 + β2x2 + β3x3 + β4x4 + β5x5 + β6x6 + β7x7 + β8x8 + β9x9 + β10x10 + β11x11 + β12x12 + β13d1+ β14d2 + ε. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 65-74 68 where j is the dependent variable recorded as a binary variable; 0 represents shrimp farmers who have used a single strategy; 1 represents shrimp farmers who have used a combined strategy to minimize market risks; α is constant; βi represents the parameters of the explanatory variables to be estimated; xi is the explanatory variable: age of farmer (years), size of shrimp farm (hectares), educational level of the farmer (years in school), membership in a farmers association (1 = yes, 0 = no), gender of the farmer (1 = male, 0 = female), participation in training (1 = yes, 0 = no), price of output (1000 vnd/kg), price of seed (vnd/per shrimp seed), price of feed (1000 vnd/kg), price of fertilizer (1000 vnd/kg), distance from farm to market center (kilometers), type of shrimp (1 = whiteleg shrimp, 0 = black tiger shrimp); and di represents the dummy variables. the selection of explanatory variables was based on a review of the literature by coble et al. (1996); farzaneh et al. (2017); jordaan & grové (2008); nganje et al. (2005). 3.4. the impact of market risks management strategies the impact of management strategies adopted by shrimp farmers was estimated by comparing the average net income (vnd/hectare) and productivity (tons/hectare) of the two groups using a single risk management strategy and a combination of risk management strategies. at a 10% significance level, the mean values of the two groups were compared using a t-test. the formulation of the average farmers’ income in each group of risk management strategies is as follows: 1 *1000 n ik i ik k k i h i n ==  where: ki = mean of income in the kth group (vnd/1,000 m2). iik = income of the ith farm in the kth group (vnd). hik = area of the ith farm in the kth group (m2). k = 1 = group of farmers using a single strategy. k = 2 = group of farmers using a combination of strategies. the formulation of the mean farm productivity for each group of risk management strategies is as follows: 1 *1000 n ik i ik k k q h q n ==  where: k q = mean of productivity in kth group (kg/1,000 m2). ikq = production of the ith farm in kth group (kg). hik = area of shrimp of the ith farm in the kth group (m2). k = 1 = group of farmers using a single strategy. k = 2 = group of farmers using a combination of strategies. n = number of farms in the kth group. 4. results and discussion 4.1. market or price risks in shrimp production the percentage of the ratio of successive prices (pr) was used to estimate price changes from 2012 to 2017. the higher the percentage ratio of successive prices, the higher the risks. this study used pr and the coefficient of variation (cv) to compare the risk level of price between the two types of shrimp in thua thien hue province. table 1 shows the estimates of the market risk involved in shrimp production, including output, seed, and feed prices. the pr of black tiger (bt) shrimp for output during the 2012–2017 period is lower than that of whiteleg (wl) shrimp. this means that the level of output price change in bt shrimp is lower than that of wl shrimp price. therefore, bt shrimp farmers experience less output price risk than wl shrimp farmers did, specifically from 2012 to 2017. thus, the price of wl shrimp fluctuated more widely during these years than the price of bt shrimp during the same period. table 1 shows that the average prices of output, seed, and feed for the two types of shrimp are different. therefore, this study uses the coefficient of variation (cv) of the prices from 2012 to 2017 to compare the market risk levels of the two types of shrimp. the coefficient of variation of the bt shrimp price is lower than that of wl shrimp, by 12.14% and 16.36%, respectively. therefore, wl shrimp farmers faced more output price risk than bt shrimp farmers did from 2012 to 2017. in general, the amount of competition in the world market causes considerable variation in the price of wl shrimp. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 65-74 69 table 1. estimates of market risks in shrimp production. in contrast, it was found that the cv of bt shrimp seed and feed prices is higher than that of wl shrimp seeds and feed. this means that the fluctuation level of the shrimp seed price of bt is higher than that of wl. thus, bt shrimp farmers suffer more price risks for seeds than the wl shrimp farmers from 2007 to 2017. in general, the number of black tiger shrimp seed and feed suppliers is low. this causes bt shrimp farmers to face more price risks from seed and feed suppliers. meanwhile, more wl shrimp seed and feed suppliers (such as private companies and state seed centers) reduce the price risk for wl shrimp seed and feed. similarly, the pr for the 2007–2017 bt shrimp seed and feed period is higher than that of the pr of wl shrimp seed and feed. therefore, wl shrimp farmers experienced less market risk for feeds than bt shrimp farmers from 2007 to 2017. overall, the results show that wl shrimp farmers suffered more output price risks than bt shrimp farmers. however, bt shrimp farmers experience a higher input price risk than wl shrimp farmers. in addition, the price risk for seeds for both types of shrimp farmers is relatively high. this risk can cause difficulties as the farmers can incur high costs for seeds during the new growing season. table 2. descriptive statistics of the sample. item black tiger shrimp whiteleg shrimp average mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev age (years) 53 11.75 41 7.79 49 11.92 average annual household income (million vnd) 8,935 15,452 16,973 22,251 11,484 18,276 average of farming area (m2) 11,275 11,988 11,677 13,549 11,402 12,505 gender • male 144 85.71 72 92.31 216 87.80 • female 24 14.29 6 7.69 30 12.20 educational level • elementary school 120 71.43 33 42.31 153 62.20 • high school 33 19.64 18 23.08 51 20.73 • college 15 8.93 27 34.62 42 17.07 membership in a farmers’ association • yes 141 83.93 30 38.46 171 69.51 • no 27 16.07 48 61.54 75 30.49 membership in cooperative association • yes 27 16.07 9 11.54 36 14.63 • no 141 83.93 39 88.46 210 85.37 membership in a women’s association • yes 6 3.57 0 0.00 6 2.44 • no 162 96.43 78 100.00 240 97.56 attendance in training • yes 147 87.50 72 92.31 219 89.02 • no 21 12.50 6 7.69 27 10.98 item unit black tiger shrimp whiteleg shrimp price of output percentage of the ratio of successive prices (2012–2017) percent 5.54 7.49 average price (2012–2017) vnd/kg 138,321 116,489 standard deviation 16,787 19,057 coefficient of variation percent 12.14 16.36 price of seed percentage of the ratio of successive prices (2007–2017) percent 13.53 8.28 average price (2007–2017) vnd/kg 75 84 standard deviation (2007–2017) 39 24 coefficient of variation (2007–2017) percent 51.38 28.59 price of feed percentage of the ratio of successive prices (2007–2017) percent 3.37 1.48 average price (2007–2017) vnd/kg 32,545 29,091 standard deviation 5,306 1,832 coefficient of variation (2007–2017) percent 16.30 6.30 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 65-74 70 4.2. household and farm characteristics the average age of shrimp farmers is high, at 49 years of age (see table 2). the average age of wl shrimp farmers is lower than that of bt shrimp farmers because wl shrimp production has only become popular in recent years. in addition, due to the tremendous financial requirements needed to produce whiteleg shrimp, the majority of the whiteleg shrimp farmers have a stable source of income to support production. therefore, the annual income of households of wl shrimp is higher than that of bt, at vnd 16,973,077 per household and vnd 8,935,714 per household, respectively. there is no significant gap in the mean farm area between the two types of shrimp because the local government still supports developing both types of shrimp in thua thien hue province. in thua thien hue province, bt shrimp farmers produce shrimp based on the experiences shared by other shrimp farmers. hence, they do not consider pursuing higher education. as a result, more than 70% of bt farmers have only completed elementary level. in contrast, wl shrimp production requires farmers to have basic knowledge of white shrimp culture and ways to prevent disease to ensure high productivity. completing high school and college education helps farmers better understand wl shrimp production. therefore, about 60% of wl shrimp farmers have completed high school and college education. a farmers association is an organization consisting of local farmers in a particular area. members often share their experience in agricultural production and provide technical support to other members. bt shrimp farmers placed more importance on the farmers association than the wl shrimp farmers did. more than 83% of bt shrimp farmers are members of a farmers association. in contrast, only about 40% of white shrimp farmers are members of a farmers association. wl shrimp farmers often do not want to share their experience with other farmers, so they do not join a farmers association. 4.3. market risk management strategies shrimp farmers in thua thien hue are affected by changes in input and output prices in the domestic shrimp market. price changes are considered market risks for farmers. also, shrimp farmers depend on the middlemen's output prices because there are very few middlemen in the area. due to market risks, shrimp farmers apply new technology and use agricultural contracts as solutions to reduce the impact of market risk on income and shrimp production. technological changes refers to changes in the type of shrimp seed, feed, fertilizer, suppliers, or the production process. the change in shrimp seed type refers to the change in the size of shrimp seed from post 12 to post 15. post 12 and post 5 refer to the number of age days of shrimp seed in vietnam. the post 15 type of shrimp seed is more significant and better in disease prevention. the change in feed type refers to the change from homemade feed to industrial or commercial feed. the industrial feed has nutritional value and provides better development for shrimp. the change in fertilizer refers to the change from natural or homemade fertilizers to industrial chemicals. industrial fertilizers are more effective for the treatment of shrimp diseases. shrimp farmers in thua thien hue change from using input suppliers from other provinces to suppliers in their local areas to reduce transportation costs. the change in the production process refers to the shift from the traditional or non-use of machinery in shrimp production to using machines for growing and harvesting to increase productivity. table 3. distribution of market risk management strategies used by farmers. item black tiger whiteleg average no. percent no. percent no. percent change of farming technology/practices 168 100 78 100 246 100 • seed type 51 30.36 42 25.00 93 37.80 • feed type 75 44.64 12 7.14 87 35.37 • fertilizer type 9 5.36 45 26.79 54 21.95 • seed supplier 135 80.36 36 21.43 171 69.51 • feed supplier 60 35.71 15 8.93 75 30.49 • fertilizer supplier 24 14.29 33 19.64 57 23.17 • production process 108 64.29 36 21.43 54 21.95 adoption of agricultural input contracts 39 100.00 73 100 112 45.53 seed supplier 39 100.00 54 73.97 93 83.04 feed supplier 3 7.69 73 100 76 81.72 using a single strategy 126 75.00 9 11.54 135 54.88 using combined risk management strategies 42 25.00 69 88.46 111 45.12 all agricultural contracts focus on the use of inputs in thua thien hue province. these contracts provide inputs for the production processes of the two types of shrimp. suppliers transport inputs to each farmer's shrimp farm. there is no cost for these contracts because suppliers also need to sell inputs to increase their income. in addition, farmers can pay the expenses for inputs after harvesting and selling their output. however, the supplier can decide to implement the contract based on the information of shrimp farmers, who need to demonstrate their repayment capacity. for a technological change in shrimp production, 69.51% of the households interviewed changed seed. most households changed seed suppliers due to poor quality in comparison to previous years. overall, findings show that 54.88% of households only use one strategy to minimize market risk, and 45.12% of shrimp farmers apply a combination of coping strategies (see table 3). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 65-74 71 4.4. factors affecting the choice of risk management strategy the results of the logit model are shown in table 4. in a binary choice model, the sign of the estimated coefficients is critical to understanding the relationship between the variables and the adoption of management strategies. combined strategies are more likely to be adopted if the coefficient has a positive sign (kien, ancev, & randall, 2021). among the socioeconomic factors, age has a marginal negative effect coefficient (-0.003) and has a p-value of 0.091. this means that as young shrimp farmers become older, the probability that they will use a combination of risk management strategies decreases. younger shrimp farmers may better understand the shrimp industry and the market risks involved; hence, they adopt multiple strategies. likewise, the size of the area is statistically significant with a pvalue of 0.002 and a marginal effect value of 0.001. this indicates that as the production area increases, shrimp farmers tend to adopt a combination of strategies to ensure profitable harvests from their significant investments. thus, they want to mitigate the impact of market risk during their production process. the results of this research is in line with previous research; a key factor that affects risk management strategy adoption is age and farm size (adnan et al., 2020). similarly, gender is statistically significant with a p-value of 0.000 and a marginal effect coefficient of 0.639. this implies that male farmers use a combination of risk management strategies. this result is consistent with the outcome achieved by vigani & kathage (2019). table 4. results of logit regression on the factors affecting the choice of coping strategies. variable coefficient p-value marginal effect (dy/dx) p-value age -0.017* 0.084 -0.003* 0.091 farm size 0.003*** 0.002 0.001*** 0.002 level of education -0.057 0.149 -0.011 0.154 membership in a farmers association 0.948** 0.044 0.183** 0.037 gender 3.319*** 0.000 0.639*** 0.000 participation in training 1.294** 0.013 0.249** 0.013 price of output 0.005* 0.059 0.001* 0.057 price of seed 0.003*** 0.000 0.001*** 0.000 price of feed 0.015 0.397 0.003 0.383 price of fertilizer -0.050*** 0.005 -0.010*** 0.003 distance from farm to market center -0.003** 0.039 -0.001** 0.035 type of shrimp 2.898*** 0.009 0.558** 0.013 location 1 (1 = quang cong, 0 = otherwise) -0.245 0.315 -0.047 0.306 location 2 (1 = dien hai, 0 = otherwise) -0.437 0.340 -0.084 0.356 note: * denotes significance at the 90% level (α = 10%); ** denotes significance at the 95% level (α = 5%); *** denotes significance at the 99% level (α = 1%). participation in training is statistically significant, with a p-value of 0.013 and a marginal effect coefficient of 0.249. furthermore, membership in a farmers association positively influences the decision to use a combination of risk management strategies, with a p-value of 0.037 and a marginal effect coefficient value of 0.183. in the study by mairura et al. (2021), it was determined that group membership and training in agriculture affected a farmer's perception of uncertainty in the production process. these factors could affect a farmer's decision to use risk management in agricultural fields. generally, participation in training and membership in a farmers association helps farmers to understand the role of using a combination of risk management strategies. officers from the government, and other farmers in farmers association, will share the benefits of using a combination of risk management strategies. as a result, shrimp farmers tend to use a combination of risk management strategies to mitigate market risks. the marginal effect coefficients of the seed price and output price are 0.001, significant at p-values of 0.000 and 0.057, respectively. this shows that as prices of seed and shrimp increase, farmers are more likely to adopt a combination of risk management strategies. the increasing price of output implies increasing profit, all other things being equal. by using a combination of risk management strategies, farmers may protect the expected high profit. on the other hand, the rising seed price (input) means more expense for the farmers. therefore, they will tend to adopt a combination of strategies to ensure that they can recover their costs. however, increasing fertilizer output decreases the probability of using a combination of risk management strategies, with a p-value of 0.003 and a marginal effect coefficient of -0.010. an increase in fertilizer price can reduce farmers' investment in shrimp farming inputs. therefore, shrimp farmers may be less likely to choose a combination of strategies to reduce risk when they have reduced investment in production. in addition, an increase of 1% in the distance from the farm to the market center reduces the probability of using a combination strategy by 0.1%. farmers will have difficulty accessing inputs and output markets if shrimp ponds are located far from the market area. therefore, it is difficult for shrimp farmers to use multiple strategies to minimize market risks in shrimp farming. during the production process of whiteleg shrimp, farmers tend to use various strategies to mitigate price risk. whiteleg shrimp production requires a substantial financial investment and farmers always adopt production technologies to achieve high yields and minimize risks. in addition, they work together with input suppliers to reduce transportation costs and the impact of price fluctuations on inputs. 4.5. changes in productivity of shrimp farms the average farm area of the group using a single strategy is 8,950 m2, and the average farm area of a group using combined strategies is 13,978 m2. additionally, the output of the group using a single strategy is lower than the output of the group using combined strategies (1,823 kg and 9,465 kg, respectively). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 65-74 72 as a result, the average farm productivity of the group using a combination of risk management strategies is higher than that of the group using a single strategy, at 677 kg/1,000 m2 and 204 kg/1,000 m2, respectively (see table 5). the difference in productivity between the two groups is 474 kg/1,000 m2 with a p-value of 0.0782. agricultural contracts are an important strategy which ensures that shrimp farmers have good quality inputs for shrimp production. thus, those using a combination of strategies are likely to perform better than those who use only one strategy. table 5. test difference in the average productivity of shrimp farms. item unit single strategy (a) combined strategies (b) difference (b-a) area m2 8,950 13,978 5,028 output kg 1,823 9,465 7,642 productivity kg/1,000 m2 204 677 474* p-value 0.078 note: * denotes significance at the 90% level (α = 10%). 4.6. net income from shrimp production the average net income of the group using a combination of risk management strategies is higher than that of the group using a single strategy, at 131,160,898 vnd/1,000 m2 and 3,553,781vnd/1,000 m2, respectively (see table 6). the difference between the net incomes of the two groups is 127,607,116 vnd/1,000 m2 with a p-value of 0.0981. a combination of risk management strategies ensures that shrimp farmers have good quality inputs for shrimp production. this pushes farmers to use a combination of risk management strategies to have more good quality outputs and higher selling prices than farms using a single strategy. table 6. average costs and returns of shrimp farms by type of risk management. item unit single strategy (a) combined strategies (b) difference (b-a) revenue (vnd/1,000 m2) 34,459,680 186,114,747 151,655,067 average price (vnd/kg) 168,920 274,911 105,991 average quantity (kg/1,000 m2) 204 677 474 costs (vnd/1,000 m2) 30,905,899 54,953,849 24,047,951 seed cost (vnd/1,000 m2) 3,858,042 10,541,204 6,683,163 feed cost (vnd/1,000 m2) 12,505,264 30,882,012 18,376,748 fertilizer cost (vnd/1,000 m2) 3,867 4,442,802 4,438,934 energy costs (vnd/1,000 m2) 2,200,585 3,566,536 1,365,950 family labor cost (vnd/1,000 m2) 2,044,959 2,955,254 910,295 other costs (vnd/1,000 m2) 10,293,181 2,566,041 -7,727,140 net income (vnd/1,000 m2) 3,553,781 131,160,898 127,607,116* p-value 0.098 note: * denotes significance at the 90% level (α = 10%). 5. conclusions and policy recommendations the market risks of output for whiteleg (wl) shrimp were higher than that of black tiger (bt) shrimp. however, bt shrimp farmers experienced more input price risk than wl shrimp farmers. to cope with the risks, shrimp farmers adopted two types of risk management strategies: change of farming technology/practice and adoption of agricultural input contracts. overall, 54.9% of shrimp farmers used a single strategy (adopting farming technology or adopting agricultural input contracts), while the others used combined risk management strategies. we found that farm size, membership in the farmers’ association, participation in training, gender, price of output, price of seed, age, price of fertilizer, distance from the farm to the market center, and type of shrimp are the main drivers of the probability of applying combined risk management strategies. the study compared the farm productivity and net incomes of shrimp farmers by the risk management strategy adopted. the results showed that the farm productivity and net incomes of the group using a single strategy were lower than those of the group using a combination of strategies. also, the adoption of agricultural contracts was found to be an important strategy for obtaining good quality inputs and improving the overall farm performance. the study also shows that a larger scale of shrimp production is associated with a higher probability of farmers using combined risk management strategies. overall, it is necessary to promote combined risk management strategies, contract farming, and large-scale shrimp production in the area to better cope with market risks. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. acknowledgement: the paper has been presented to the master of thesis at los baños university of the philippines under the support of the united board. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 65-74 73 references adnan, k. m. m., ying, l., ayoub, z., sarker, s. a., menhas, r., chen, f., & yu, m. m. 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(2014). the transition to modern agriculture: contract farming in developing economies. american journal of agricultural economics, 96(5), 1257–1271.available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ajae/aau036. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 195 response kailan plants (brassica oleraceae l.) to the immersion plant growth regulator (ga3) with various types growing media salamet ginandjar, dikayani, fajri syahid nurhakim department of agrotechnology, faculty of science and technology, the state islamic university of sunan gunung djati of bandung, indonesia  salametginandjar@uinsgd.ac.id (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 18-jul-2018 accepted: 04-jan-2019 online available: 30-jan2019 keywords: gibberellin, hormone, kailan, media abstract gibberellin are hormones that accelerate the germination of seeds, buds sprout, stem elongation, leaf growth, stimulate flowering, fruit development, affecting root growth and differentiation. the research aims to determine the response kailan plants (brassica oleraceae l.) against immersion pgr gibberellin (ga3) with various types growing media have been conducted in ciparanje jatinangor since march 2015 to may 2015. using a randomized block design (rak) factorial design with three replications consisting of two factors. the first factor is the provision of pgr gibberellin (ga3) which consists of: (1) 0 ppm (2) 25 ppm (3) 50 ppm (4) 75 ppm (5) 100 ppm. the second factor is the type of growing media consisting of: (1) land (2) husk (3) cocopeat, with observation parameters plant height, leaf number, fresh plant weight, dry plant weight and dashed root. the results showed that the use of pgr gibberellin (ga3) with a concentration of (g2) 50 ppm and the type of soil planting medium (m1) of the most influential in improving growth and yield of kailan plant. contribution/ originality the research aims to determine the response kailan plants (brassica oleraceae l.) against immersion pgr gibberellin (ga3) with various types growing media. the study found that the use of pgr gibberellin (ga3) with a concentration of (g2) 50 ppm and the type of soil planting medium (m1) of the most influential in improving growth and yield of kailan plant. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.195.203 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: salamet ginandjar, dikayani and fajri syahid nurhakim (2018). response kailan plants (brassica oleraceae l.) to the immersion plant growth regulator (ga3) with various types growing media. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 195-203. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 195-203 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:salametginandjar@uinsgd.ac.id https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8763-9939 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.195.203 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 195-203 196 1. introduction kailan (brassica oleracea l.) is a popular type of vegetable that tastes good and crispy and has high nutrition. the plant is a food source that contains lots of vitamins a and c and minerals ca and fe so that it is beneficial for health. the form of kailan is similar to caisim or called chinese mustard. the leaves are long and wide like caisim while the color of the leaves and stems are similar to cauliflower. kailan is recognized as a very productive plant for the tropics (sagwansupyakorn, 1992), although in indonesia indonesia is classified as a new type of vegetable but kailan including leaf vegetables that have high economic value. based on data from the central statistics agency (bps), ship production belonging to cabbage families in indonesia has experienced ups and downs. in 1998 it was the peak of production which was 1.45 million tons and continued to decline until 2002 to 1.23 million tons and began to increase again in 2008 amounting to 1.32 million tons until 2012 successfully reaching 1.48 million tons. it is assumed that the public awareness to consume vegetables is now higher, causing demand for vegetables including kailan to increase (central statistics agency, 2012). in such a situation, it is necessary to have a strategy to increase the results of the crops value, especially from the amount of production. there are many factors that influence it, namely the level of soil fertility, the appropriate climate, improved seeds, free of pests and diseases and sufficient radiation. increasing the amount of crop production can be done by giving growth regulating substances (zpt) and the use of appropriate planting media. naturally the plant already contains growth hormone (endogenous hormone), because less intensive cultivation patterns accompanied by inappropriate soil management, the endogenous hormone content becomes low or less for the vegetative and generative growth processes of plants. as a result, there is often a slow growth of plants, loss of flowers or fruit, the size of tubers or small fruit which is part of a sign of hormone deficiency (in addition to lack of other substances such as nutrients). with the addition of exogenous hormones (zpt), it is expected to produce optimal vegetative and generative growth of plants (santoso and fatimah, 2004). the availability of fertile land and the potential for agriculture is now diminishing, the narrower land that can be planted is the problem most faced by society lately. rapid population growth accompanied by technological and industrial developments will eventually shift agricultural land into residential and industrial land. so there needs to be a planting medium that can replace or minimize the use of land as a planting medium. planting media is a place to stand upright plants and where plant roots are tightly attached to strengthen plants. planting media also plays a role in storing water and nutrients, and maintaining moisture. the requirements for a good planting medium are to have physical properties of crumbs to facilitate developing roots and for good aeration and drainage, do not contain toxic materials, acidity in accordance with plant tolerance, do not contain pests and diseases and have sufficient water holding capacity (ashari, 2006; el-gali, 2018). the right planting media is one of the requirements for successful plant cultivation. the success of plant growth is determined by the development of its roots. plant roots should be in an environment that is able to provide structural fertility, good water absorption and the availability of nutrition (subandi et al., 2018). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 195-203 197 2. materials and methods 2.1. time and place of research the research was conducted for 60 days starting from march to may 2015 in ciparanje village, jatinangor sub-district, sumedang regency with a place height of 860 asl, and optimum temperature of 22o33o c. this research was carried out using a randomized block design (rbd) method. factorial with two factors repeated three times. the first factor is the application of growth regulatory substance (zpt) gibberelin (g) which consists of 5 levels, namely: g0 = 0 g1 = 25 ppm g2 = 50 ppm g3 = 75 ppm g4 = 100 ppm the second factor is the type of planting media (m) with 3 levels, namely: m1 = land m2 = husk charcoal m3 = cocopeat the response design consists of supporting observations and main observations. supporting observations include observing temperature and humidity, observing pests and diseases, germination of seeds, and grading. the main observation is the observation that the data are statistically analyzed using variance (anova). the main observational components observed included plant height, number of leaves, weight of fresh stems, dry stover weight and root loss ratio. 3. results and discussion 3.1. plant height (cm) observation of kailan plant was carried out at the age of 10, 20, 30, and 40 days after transplanting (dap). the results of the variance analysis showed no interaction with the application of zpt gibberellins (ga3) with various types of planting media, but gibberellins (ga3) had an independent effect on plant height aged 10, 20, 30 and 40 dap. the treatment of various types of planting media had an independent effect on plant height aged 20, 30 and 40 dap, whereas at the age of 10 dap there was no influence from various types of planting media. table 1: zpt response (ga3) with various types of planting media on average plant height (cm) at age 10 to 40 dap treatment mean of plant height 10 dap 20 dap 30 dap 40 dap ----cm--- giberelin g0 7,92 a 13,64 a 23,72 a 31,98 a g1 10,61 b 15,91 b 24,82 ab 33,48 ab g2 11,14 b 16,64 b 26,94 b 37,31 c g3 11,08 b 16,21 b 24,97 ab 33,50 ab asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 195-203 198 g4 10,68 b 16,93 b 26,72 b 34,97 b jenis media m1 10,69 a 17,83 c 28,52 b 37,81 b m2 10,30 a 14,14 a 23,51 a 32,38 a m3 9,87 a 15,63 b 24,28 a 32,55 a note: the average number followed by the same letter shows no significant difference based on duncan's advanced test at the level of 5% in the table 1 can be seen at the age of 10, 20, 30 and 40 dap that the application of zpt giberelin (ga3) independently increases plant height. at the age of 10, 30 and 40 dap the application of zpt giberelin (ga3) with a concentration of 50 ppm gave the highest growth rate of plant height compared to all other treatments with values consecutively, 11.14 cm, 26.94 cm, and 37.31 cm. gibberelin (ga3) increases cell division, cell elongation, and stem lengthening which results in increased plant height. stem growth occurs in the intercalary meristem of the segment. the segment extends from the result of an increase in the number of cells and (mainly) due to the expansion of cells. segment growth can be caused due to the limited number of potential active cells. addition to the limited number of active cells is obtained from hormones given from outside (gardner et al., 1991). the effect of gibberellin (ga3) in spurring an increase in plant height is caused by; (1) cell division is spurred at the tip of the canopy, especially in the meristematic cells located below which grow long lines of cortical cells and pith cells; (2) ga3 stimulates cell growth because these hormones play a role in increasing the hydrolysis of starch, sucrose into glucose and fructose molecules; and third, ga3 affects the increase in cell wall plasticity (salisbury and ross, 1995). giberellins stimulate cell expansion through stimulation of cell wall enzymes, namely xyloglucan endotranslycosylase (xet) which can break the bonds in the cell wall-forming molecule, hemicelluluse which causes other wall components, namely cellulose microfibrils to move, causing widening or expansion of cell walls (dengler, 2008; subandi et al., 2018a), and this allows an increase in cell size which causes plants to grow taller. at the age of 20 to 40 dap the treatment of soil planting media (m1) gave the highest growth rate of plant height compared to all other treatments with plant height of 17.83 cm, 28.52 cm and 37.81 cm. soil has a very important role, namely as a root media, storing nutrients, providing water and as a reservoir (reservoir) of water, providing air for root respiration and as a place to plant (subandi, 2014). the amount of nutrient uptake for plants is very much determined by the balance of water and air in the planting media, if the air and water are balanced in the planting media, the plant roots will absorb nutrients in sufficient quantities so that plant growth will increase (harjadi, 1988). the availability of the elements needed by plants is in sufficient condition, so the results of metabolism will form proteins, enzymes, hormones and carbohydrates so that enlargement, extension and cell division takes place quickly (subandi et al., 2017). growth and development in plants occurs due to increased cell activity due to application of ga3 and the appropriate temperature. the temperature and humidity of the planting media are very influential on the performance of gibberelin (ga3) in enzyme activation. temperatures that are too high or too low will inhibit the growth process. differences in temperature and humidity in each type of planting media due to differences in characteristics, this causes the performance of gibberellins (ga3) in each type of planting media is different. it is not synergistic between the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 195-203 199 application of gibberellin application (ga3) and various types of planting media that cause no interaction. 3.2. number of leaves (strands) observation of the number of leaves of kailan plants is done at the age of 10 to 40 dap. the results of the variance analysis showed no interaction with the application of zpt gibberellin (ga3) with various types of planting media, but the application of zpt gibberellin (ga3) had an independent effect on the number of leaf plants at 10, 20, 30 and 40 dap. while the treatment of various types of planting media does not have an independent effect on the number of plant leaves. table 2: zpt response (ga3) with different types of media planting on the mean number of leaves (strands) at age 10 to 40 dap treatment mean number of leaves 10 dap 20 dap 30 dap 40 dap strands giberelin g0 4,93 a 5,17 a 7,06 a 7,78 a g1 5,11 ab 5,83 ab 7,33 a 7,94 a g2 5,72 b 6,56 b 8,22 b 9,06 b g3 5,11 ab 5,83 ab 7,39 a 7,94 a g4 5,17 ab 5,89 ab 7,17 a 8,17 a medium m1 5,30 a 6,10 a 7,53 a 8,53 a m2 5,10 a 5,70 a 7,30 a 8,03 a m3 4,90 a 5,77 a 7,47 a 7,97 a note: the average number followed by the same letter shows no significant difference based on duncan's advanced test at the level of 5% in table 2 it can be seen at 10, 20, 30 and 40 dap that the administration of zpt (ga3) independently increases the number of plant leaves. at the age of 10 to 40 dap the treatment of zpt (ga3) with a concentration of 50 ppm gave a better number of leaves compared to all other treatments with sequential values, which were 5.72, 6.56, 8.22 and 9.06. gibberellins are found in all parts of the plant, the greatest concentration of which is found in the tips of young stems and leaves. this means that gibberellins play an important role in increasing stem height and number of leaves. increasing the number of leaves is in line with the increase in seed height (heddy, 1989). this is in accordance with the statement of goldsworthy and fisher (1992), that the number of leaves will be influenced by plant height, with increasing plant height the number of nodes will increase so that the number of leaves increases because the leaves come out of the node. the average number of leaves at the age of 10-40 dap observation was not significantly different, this is due to the vegetative phase of nutrients in the planting medium cannot be absorbed perfectly by plants. increasing the number of leaves is strongly influenced by elements of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in addition to environmental factors such as temperature and light. this is also inseparable from the differences in the characteristics of the three planting media. 3.3. fresh weight of plant stover (g) the measurement of fresh weight of plant stover is done after the plant is 40 dap or after harvest. based on these results it is known that there is no interaction effect between the application of gibberelin zpt (ga3) with various types of planting media, but the application of zpt giberelin (ga3) with various types of planting media has an independent effect on the weight of stover per plant. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 195-203 200 table 3: zpt response (ga3) with various types of media planting on the average fresh weight of plant mass note: the average number followed by the same letter shows no significant difference based on duncan's advanced test at the level of 5% in table 3 shows that at the age of 40 dap the application of zpt giberelin (ga3) treatment independently increases the fresh weight of stover per plant. the treatment of the application of gibberelin zpt (ga3) with a concentration of 50 ppm gave the highest value of stover fresh weight compared to all other treatments with a value of 73.31 g. the fresh weight of plants shows the metabolic activity of plants and the more number of leaves and the higher the plants, the greater the weight of plant stover. gibberellins can increase cell size (cell enlargement) and increase the number of cells (cell division). increasing the size and number of cells will ultimately increase plant weight (sitompul and guritno, 1995). wet weight is a reflection of metabolic activity during the period of plant growth which is characterized by increasing irreversible weights. the growth process will run well if the factors (genetic traits) and environment of the plant are in optimum conditions. environmental factors greatly influence the ability to express potential in (genetic traits) of plants. the environmental factors in question include climate and soil (harjadi, 1991). the process of formation and development of plant organs is strongly influenced by the availability of water and nutrients in the soil. formation and development of plant organs (leaves, roots, and stems) associated with the process of plant cells to enlarge. plant cells will grow along with the thickening of the cell wall and the formation of cellulose in plants. other influences related to the availability of water for plants, in the form of nutrient transport from the soil for plants. nutrients in the soil are transported through water absorbed by plants through the process of osmosis diffusion that occurs. the better the nutrients absorbed by plants, the better the availability of basic ingredients for photosynthesis. photosynthesis process that takes place well, will stimulate the accumulation of carbohydrates and proteins in the body organs of the kailan plant. the accumulation of carbohydrates and proteins as an accumulation of the results of photosynthesis will affect the plant's wet weight. there was no interaction because there was no one that dominated the treatment combination. 3.4. dry weight of plant mass (g) the measurement of dry weight of stover per plant was carried out after the plant was 40 dap. based on these results it can be seen that there was no interaction, but showed an independent treatment wet weight of plant mass ----g--- giberelin g0 46,00 a g1 59,43 ab g2 73,31 b g3 55,92 ab g4 67,59 b medium m1 81,68 b m2 53,14 a m3 46,54 a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 195-203 201 effect on the treatment of zpt giberelin acid (ga3) application with various types of planting media on the dry weight per plant. table 4: zpt response (ga3) with various types of media planting on average dry weight of plant stover note: the average number followed by the same letter shows no significant difference based on duncan's advanced test at the level of 5% in table 4 shows that at the age of 40 dap the treatment application of zpt gibberelin acid (ga3) independently increases the dry weight of stover per plant. the treatment of application of zpt giberelin acid (ga3) with a concentration of 50 ppm gave the highest value of stover dry weight compared to all other treatments with a value of 17.88 g. ga3 given will have an effect on plant growth, in this case the plant's dry weight. ga3 performance which can accelerate hydrolysis of starch, fructan, and glucose into glucose and fructose molecules indirectly will accelerate the process of respiration so that the buildup of starch decreases, and dry weight will decrease. this is in accordance with the opinion of gardner et al. (1991), which states that the yield of plant dry weight is a balance between co2 capture (photosynthesis) and co2 expenditure (respiration). dry weight is a constant estimate to determine its growth, plant growth is shown by increasing size and dry weight which is interpreted by increasing protoplasm due to increased cell size, accumulation of clean results from photosynthesis or co2 assimilation along plant growth in the form of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and other nutrients. this means that not only leaves act as photosynthate evaporation, but also the whole plant body works together to produce new plant material (salisbury and ross, 1995). from the results of variance treatment various types of planting media independently increase the dry weight of stover per plant. the treatment of the type of soil planting media (m1) gave the highest value of stover dry weight value compared to other treatments with a value of 19.72 g, the value of the dry weight of the plant depends on the photosynthesis process carried out. photosynthesis is the process of cooking food in leaves that requires basic ingredients in the form of organic matter, water and sun. the availability of organic materials and water is very dependent on the ability of the soil to provide both materials, each composition of the planting medium has different capabilities in providing organic material and water for plant growth. this ability is greatly influenced by physical properties (texture and structure), chemical properties (cec, ph and temperature) and biological properties (soil microbiology content). treatment dry weight of plant mass ----g--- giberelin g0 10,67 a g1 14,20 ab g2 17,88 b g3 13,61 ab g4 14,18 ab medium m1 19,72 b m2 12,62 a m3 9,99 a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 195-203 202 the growth of plant height, stem and number of leaves that are good will produce a better total dry weight of the plant. the total dry weight of plants is the result of a balance between carbon dioxide uptake and oxygen expenditure, which is clearly shown in the fresh weight of plants, as well as the photosynthetic rate which influences the dry weight of plants where the higher photosynthetic weight increases plant dry weight (dwidjoseputro, 1994). there is no interaction due to photosynthesis and respiration equilibrium between the combinations of treatments going well. 3.5. root fertilizer ratio (%) the measurement of root shoot ratio was carried out on plants aged 40 dap. based on these results it is known that the treatment of gibberellin zpt application (ga3) with various types of planting media does not occur interaction or independently of root ratio. the average root shoot ratio of kailan plants at the age of 40 dap is presented in table 5. table 5: zpt response (ga3) with planting media type on root-shoot ratio note: the mean number followed by the same letter shows no significant difference based on duncan's advanced test at the level of 5% application of gibberelin zpt (ga3) with various types of planting media did not affect the root ratio because the value of the upper part of the plant weighed more than the root portion because more than one root root ratio showed more plant growth towards the upper part of the plant. lizawati et al. (2014) explained that root shoot ratio reflects photosynthetic yield sharing in plant growth. plant roots and the upper part of the kailan plant have meristem which is one of the places where cell division affects growth and development, cell division itself does not cause increase in size but it is the cell product that grows and causes growth affecting the weight of the roots and upper plants (salisbury and ross, 1995). root shoot ratio is a good indication of the influence of the environment on plant growth. 4. conclusion based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that: 1. there is no interaction between the application of giberelin growth regulating substance (ga3) and various types of planting media on the growth and yield of the plant varieties. 2. giberelin growth regulating agent (ga3) with a concentration of 50 ppm (g2) and soil planting media (m1) has the best effect in increasing the growth and development of the kailan plant with a yield of 8.14 tons / ha. treatment root-shoot ratio % giberelin g0 6,09 a g1 8,30 a g2 5,90 a g3 9,71 a g4 8,72 a medium m1 9,40 a m2 7,95 a m3 5,87 a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 195-203 203 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ashari, (2006). horticulture, aspects and style. university of indonesia press, jakarta. central bureau of statistics (2012). north sumatra in figures. bps. north sumatra, medan. dengler, n. g. 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https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=comparing+the+local+climate+change+and+its+effects+on+physiological+aspects+and+yield+of+cultivated+in+different+biophysical+environments&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=suitability+of+corcyra+cephalonica+eggs+parasitized+with+trichogramma+japonicum+as+intermediate+host+against+sugarcane+borer+chilo+auricilius.+&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=suitability+of+corcyra+cephalonica+eggs+parasitized+with+trichogramma+japonicum+as+intermediate+host+against+sugarcane+borer+chilo+auricilius.+&btng= effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 171 groundwater assessment and its implication for irrigation in selected coastal areas of south-western nigeria adeyeye j. a.a akinyemi o.d.b akinluyi f. o.c abiola m. o.d badmus g. oe adepartment of water resources management and agro-meteorology, federal university oye ekiti, ekiti state, nigeria. bdepartment of physics, federal university of agriculture, abeokuta, ogun state, nigeria. cdepartment of remote sensing and geoscience information system, federal university of technology, akure, nigeria. ddepartment of agricultural economics and extension, federal university oye ekiti, ekiti state, nigeria. edepartment of mathematics and physical sciences, afe babalola university, ado ekiti, ekiti state, nigeria.  joseph.adeyeye@fuoye.edu.ng (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 30 june 2020 revised: 23 march 2021 accepted: 28 april 2021 published: 26 may 2021 keywords aquifers crop ionic ratio physicochemical suitability saltwater intrusion. physicochemical and ionic characteristics of groundwater aquifers have been of tremendous importance in water applications. groundwater in selected coastal communities (badagry, epe, ikorodu, and ilaje/ese-odo) of southwestern nigeria was assessed for domestic and irrigation suitability. one hundred and ninety-two (192) groundwater samples were obtained and analyzed for chemical composition and major ionic ratio over a period of four seasons using standard methods. results indicated abundance of ions in the order hco3 – > cl–> so4 2– for anions, and k+ > na+ > ca2+> mg2+ for cations. piper's diagram revealed calcium (ca2+) and magnesium (mg2+) as the dominant cations, while sulphate and chloride were the dominant anions with a mixture of two major groundwater types: ca–cl water and mixed ca– mg–cl. the presence of ca–cl facies water type suggests potential ion exchange (na2+ with ca2+) reaction in these coastal aquifers. cation exchangeable values (cev), and molar ratios of mg/ca, hco3/cl, and na/cl, showed high values (>1) across all locations indicating the occurrence of saline water ingression in groundwater samples, especially during the dry spell. the increasing k+, na+, and cl– characteristics of the groundwater and calculated ionic indices values indicated the influence of seawater intrusion. however, total hardness values showed that the samples were very soft in nature. irrigation water quality suitability, as indicated by sodium adsorption ratio (sar), permeability index (pi), and percentage sodium (ps) varied with seasons and location, showing that water will cause soil deterioration and poor crop performance if intensively used for irrigation without proper precautions. contribution/originality: this study is one of few studies to have investigated groundwater quality for irrigation in a coastal environment in relation to extreme climate events and seasonal variation in south western, nigeria. evidence derived from analytical processes revealed short-term variations in soluble salt content that will affect irrigation suitability. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.171.183 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: adeyeye j. a. --akinyemi d.o. --akinluyi f. o. --abiola m. o. --badmus g.o (2021). groundwater assessment and its implication for irrigation in selected coastal areas of south-western nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2), 171-183. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.171.183 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 2 (2021): 171-183. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6598-335x mailto:joseph.adeyeye@fuoye.edu.ng http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.171.183 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 171-183 172 1. introduction groundwater salinity in coastal zones of the world is increasingly becoming a major challenge. while households are heavily dependent on this resource for daily living, irrigation water use is crucial to maintaining arable crop production, especially when there is inadequate rainfall or in the dry season. groundwater contributes greatly to the economic and social activities of people in nigeria. though fairly ubiquitous, its characteristics vary from one place to another and extraction is frequently carried out without adequate information on hydro-chemical attributes, especially in developing countries, before use (luo, gao, & zhang, 2018). the chemistry of groundwater is principally a product of mineral composition of the aquifers through which the water flows. spatial and temporal variation also depend on geology and chemical characteristics. more importantly, processes such as ion exchange, dissolution, precipitation, residence time, and downwater path determine the elemental characteristics of groundwater. manikandan, natarajan, and sivasamy (2011) reported the complexity of groundwater characteristics in coastal communities due to the influence of factors such as rainfall, saltwater ingression, geology, degree of groundwater exploitation, topography, and contamination rate. excessive groundwater removal often depletes the source and higher concentrations of certain ions, which frequently results in water becoming unfit for its intended uses. the chemical nature of groundwater has been one of the major tools used to match its suitability and usability, from time immemorial. hakim et al. (2009) emphasized the important of the physical characteristics of water in classifying and assessing water requirement for domestic and agricultural purposes. groundwater suitability for irrigation farming is dependent on the effect of mineral compositions in the soil and farm produce (raihan & alam, 2008). the hydro-geochemical characteristics of groundwater and potability of aquifers in a spatiotemporal context have proven to be a vital method in demystifying water challenges. it has also helped in highlighting the major geochemical processes dictating groundwater chemistry and thus groundwater categorization. mohan, singh, tripathi, and chowdhary (2000) found that na2+, mg2+, and hco3 have dominated groundwater in the naini industrial area of uttar pradesh, and concluded that the groundwater was unsafe for domestic purposes. in the nigerian coastal environment, comprehensive understanding revealing chemical indicators and hydro-chemical emergence using empirical field data is sparse. thus, this study investigated the hydro-chemistry and groundwater characteristics in selected coastal areas for the purposes of evaluation, classification of groundwater suitability for domestic use, and to help farmers in the region to better plan irrigation to boost food production throughout the year. also, the dominant processes that control aquifer composition were also studied. 2. material and methods 2.1. study area the study area under investigation is located between l5º 51' 14.4'' and 6º 42' 36'' n and 2º 42' 28.8'' and 5º 0' 18'' e, covering the badagry, ikorodu, and epe local government areas (lgas) of lagos state and ilaje/ese-odo lga of ondo state, south-western nigeria (figure 1). vegetation in the area varies from mangrove and swamp to rainforest. the area has a wet (rainy) season from the end of march to october, and a dry season from november to the end of february. the wet season is associated with the south-western monsoon wind from the atlantic ocean, while the dry season is driven by northeast trade winds from the sahara desert. it is characterized by the south-westerlies, which are onshore and confined generally to azimuths of 215–266o and velocities of 2–5 m/s (fatai, egberongbe, olusegun, & badejo, 2006). wind speed increases to about 10 m/s, especially during heavy rainfall and thunderstorms in the wet season. cloud cover and damp air moderate the temperature of the area, with mean monthly temperatures ranging from 24 to 32o c throughout the year. 2.2. sampling and analysis of groundwater samples groundwater samples were collected from shallow (hand-dug) wells and from deep holes (boreholes) whose depth varied between 3 and 80 m across the four locations. forty-eight (48) groundwater samples were collected consecutively during dry season i (dec. 2015 – feb. 2016) and wet season i (june 2016 – august 2016), and during dry season ii (december 2016 – february 2017) and wet season ii (june 2017 – august 2017) across the area, making a total of 196 water samples. before groundwater sampling, tap wells (including the boreholes) were allowed to flow for about three minutes to avoid taking water retained in the pipes as sample. pre-conditioned plastic bottles were used for sample collection after correct labeling at the point of collection (bh1, bh2… and bh12) and being tightly corked. non-preservative parameters (temperature, colour, ph, electrical conductivity (ec), and total dissolved solids(tds)) were measured in-situ with a hand-held multi-parameter meter (hannah hi9828). the 1-l plastic containers for cation analysis were acidified with 2 ml of strong trioxonitrate v acid in order to homogenize and prevent absorption or adsorption of ions to the wall of the container. the sampled water were preserved in an ice cooler to keep the temperature below 200 c, and was conveyed to the institute of agricultural research and training (iar&t) laboratory, ibadan, where samples were analyzed. these were stored in the refrigerator prior to analysis. moreover, to reduce sampling error, measurements were replicated from both field and laboratory measurements. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 171-183 173 figure-1. location of groundwater sampling areas in south-west nigeria. source: data analysis (2017) using arc gis version 10.4. groundwater samples collected from the selected coastal areas were analyzed following standard procedures. ec, ph, tds, and temperature (0c) were determined by a hanna multi-parameter meter (hi-98106) usa). the titrimeteric procedure was followed to determine hco3– and cl–. sulphate (so42–) was analyzed gravimetrically. na and k were determined with the flame photometer method, while mg and ca were measured using an atomic absorption spectrophotometer (bulk 210). 2.3. data analysis data were analyzed using descriptive analysis to decipher the average compositions of major and minor ions. moreover, piper diagrams were also used to describe relative ionic composition and delineate water types. anion and cation concentrations were converted to equivalent units (meq/l), illustrated as percentages of individual totals in two piper triangles merged into a quadrilateral polygon, which gives the groundwater type or hydro-chemical facies. ionic ratio was also used to give the ionic proportions that helped explain prevailing processes in the hydrology of the area. ionic relationships were studied to assess saltwater intrusion influence and groundwater origin in the area. these include: mg/ca, cl/hco3, na/cl and cationic exchange value (cev), as shown in equation 1: (1) other irrigation water quality indices were determined (sodium absorption ratio (sar), pi, and percentage soluble sodium: (2) irrigation quality of groundwater was categorized based on the pi value, as indicated by equation 3: (3) soluble sodium percentage was determined from equation 4: (4) 3. results and discussion 3.1. physicochemical characteristics of groundwater samples the ph ranged from 5.09 to 7.90 throughout the period, with mean values of 6.17 and 6.07 for the dry and wet season, respectively. ph was slightly acidic to slightly alkaline in badagry, epe ikorordu lga, and ilaje ese odo lga. this behaviour was linked to uncontrolled human activity such as fertilizer application from agricultural fields (cassava farms and coconut plantations, which are common features in the study area), sewage disposal, and incursion of brackish water into sandy groundwater strata, which results in weathering the course of underlying geology (srinivas, aghil, oliver, nair, & chandrasekar, 2017) and has affected the water quality, thus the ph characteristics. the groundwater samples simply behaved similarly, in being slightly acidic to alkaline across the area. spatial and temporal variation was also affected by the rate of aquifer recharge, replenishing rate, and water rock interactions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 171-183 174 the ph indicated good water quality for agriculture (irrigation) across the study area, since most crops will normally do well within the ph range 6.5–8.4 for irrigation (bauder, waskom, sutherland, & davis, 2011). ec values varied from 1056 to 2249 µs/cm, with mean values of 1191.64 and 1149 µs/cm for dry and wet periods, respectively. ec describes water salinity hazard, which seems to be the most significant water quality guideline regarding crop performance (johnson & zhang, 1990). the ec value is an estimated index of total dissolved solids in water. ph has also been reported as a major factor that increases dissolution processes triggering ec values. the higher value obtained for the wet season is attributed to both underground and surface erosion, which flushes nutrients into sandy aquifers or wells. the main effect of high ec when used for irrigation is the resultant physiological effect resulting from the inability of plants to compete with ions in the soil (naseem, hamza, & bashir, 2010). observed across the study area was the high nutrient accumulation in aquifers, which is a peculiar feature of coastal communities and usually as a result of intensive rainfall, low land characteristics, or high runoff. tds varied between 513.30 and 1439.30 mg/l, with mean values of 634.40 and 762.65 mg/l for dry and wet spells, respectively. categorization of groundwater samples (davis and de west, 1996) showed that all the groundwater samples fall outside the desirable category (<500 mg/l) for potable water, 100 % tolerable for drinking (500 – 1000 mg/l), and appropriate for irrigation agriculture. alkalinity primarily comprised carbonate and bicarbonate and as a stabilizer of ph. values ranged between 43.15 and 2147 mg/l, with mean values of 281.46 and 347.04 mg/l for the dry and wet seasons, respectively, across the study area. although the samples were collected along the coast, alkalinity was high, showing freshwater characteristics due to co3 and hco3 levels. elevated concentrations of carbonate and bicarbonate indicated the prevalence of mineral dissolution in these aquifers across the study area. the mean values were above the 100 mg/l recommended for drinking water (world health organization (who), 2011). the mean values of 281.46 and 347.04 mg/l for bicarbonate (hco3) during the dry and wet season respectively, are much higher than the maximum tolerable limit of 244 mg/l for crops (sai, 2010). high bicarbonate ion concentrations of mg or ca would normally result in carbonate in the soil solution concentrate during the dry season. chloride ions varied from 51.5 and 995. 5 mg/l, with mean values of 224.21 and 270.06 mg/l for the dry and wet season, respectively. it was observed that 35.42 % of the groundwater samples were characterized by chloride concentration >250 mg/l, the recommended limit for drinking (world health organization (who), 2011) across the study location. high chloride concentrations were noted at badagry, epe, ikorodu, and ilaje ese odo, indicating ingress of saltwater into freshwater aquifers in the region. a high concentration of chloride has also been linked to domestic sewage pollution and washing of saline residues into the soil (raju, shukla, & ram, 2011) in coastal environments. chloride concentrations >359 mg/l have been reported to cause severe problem in crops when administered for irrigation (hopkin, horneck, stevens, ellswort, & sullivan, 2007). on average, chloride concentrations for both seasons were below this value, which makes the water suitable for irrigation although the concentration of chloride in certain wells was about 1000 mg/l, and thus there is a need for close monitoring and continuous assessment of individual wells to ensure that concentrations are within the acceptable limit for irrigation. sulphate concentration varied from 2.75 to 13.50 mg/l, with average values of 7.37 and 7.60 mg/l for dry and wet spells, respectively. ikorodu recorded the maximum during the wet season, while badagry had the minimum during the dry season. excessive accumulation of sulphate in groundwater is associated with processes such as precipitation, solution, reduction, and concentration, because it permeates via rocks such as anhydrite and gypsum. the average concentration was below the permissible limit of 100 mg/l stipulated (world health organization (who), 2011) for domestic applications. aptness for irrigation with respect to sulphate revealed that the groundwater samples were within the acceptable limit of 1000 mg /l for optimal plant performance. concentrations above this limit are harmful for plants (sagnak, 2010). the spatial and temporary distribution of cations in the area showed that sodium (na+) ions ranged between 9.78 and 32.11 mg/l, with mean values of 15.55 and 24.94 mg/l for dry and wet spells, respectively. concentration of sodium was <200 mg/l, as recommended (world health organization (who), 2011), which categorized the water as potable although concentrations were sometimes well above 20 mg/l, the recommended dietary intake for individuals with restricted sodium intake. groundwater with a high sodium concentration is not fit for agriculture (soil alkalization). soils are sometimes enriched with sodium from irrigated water, which often results in loss of soil structure, impermeability, imbalance in soil nutrients, and poor plant performance. evidence shows that sodium was second to potassium in concentration order across the study area, and with respect to the seasons. the area generally showed higher sodium concentrations in all water samples, especially in the wet season in badagry and epe, followed by calcium and magnesium ions. potassium varied between 24.42 and 45.44 mg/l, with an average of 34.80 (dry) and 38.60 mg/l (wet). the concentration of potassium remained high (>12 mg/l) across the study areas compared with na+, mg2+ and ca2+, due to saline water intrusion (kumar, bharani, magesh, godson, & chandrasekar, 2014). potassium concentration was consistently higher during the dry season across badagry, epe, ikorodu, and ilaje/eseodo in ondo state than in the wet season, due to seawater intrusion. over drafting could also result in ion imbalance in groundwater composition, particularly during the dry season when the rate of groundwater recharge is low. potassium concentration >10 mg/l in irrigation water are detrimental to good plant growth (sai (spectrum analytic inc.), 2010). groundwater concentration of potassium across the study area appeared high, irrespective of location and season. this calls for caution in groundwater usage for agricultural purposes in the area in regard to optimum crop production. calcium varied between 0.56 and 2.75 mg/l, with mean values of 2.02 and 1.48 mg/l for the dry and wet period, respectively. ilaje recorded the maximum (2.75 mg/l) during the dry season, while badagry, epe, and ikorodu recorded the minimum (0.56 mg/l). the observed estimate of calcium ions across the area was within the acceptable asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 171-183 175 tolerance level in relation to water irrigation quality. the concentration range of 121–150 mg/l is high, and >150 mg/l may be very high for optimum crop performance (sai (spectrum analytic inc.), 2010). magnesium concentration varied between 0.09 and 5.55 mg/l, with mean values of 1.61 and and 0.48 mg/l for the dry and wet seasons, respectively. concentrations of calcium and magnesium were low probably due to low levels of rock water (dolomite, limestone, and gypsum among others) interaction in the region, which naturally contribute to the concentrations. the observed elevated concentration of sodium in groundwater samples across the location relative to calcium and magnesium can be attributed to reverse cationic exchange (srinivas et al., 2017). the spatial and temporary distribution of cations is illustrated in figures 2–5. figure-2a. pie chart showing spatial concentration of groundwater cations in badagry in the dry season source: data analysis (2015 –2017) using arc gis version 10.4. figure-2b. pie chart showing spatial distribution of cations in badagry in the wet season. source: data analysis (2015 –2017) using arc gis version 10.4. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 171-183 176 figure-3a. pie chart showing spatial distribution of cations in epe in the dry season. source: data analysis (2015 –2017) using arc gis version 10.4. figure-3b. pie chart showing spatial distribution of cations in epe in the wet season. source: data analysis (2015 –2017) using arc gis version 10.4. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 171-183 177 figure-4a. pie chart showing spatial distribution of cations in ikorodu in the dry season. source: data analysis (2015 –2017) using arc gis version 10.4. figure-4b. pie chart showing spatial distribution of cations in ikorodu in the wet season source: data analysis (2015 –2017) using arc gis version 10.4. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 171-183 178 figure-5a. pie chart showing spatial distribution of cations in ilaje/ese-odo in the dry season. source: data analysis (2015 – 2017) using arc gis version 10.4. figure-5b. pie chart showing spatial distribution of groundwater cations in ilaje/ese-odo in the wet season. source: data analysis (2015 –2017) using arc gis version 10.4. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 171-183 179 figure-6. a typical piper trilinear chart. source: piper (1953). 3.2. hydro-chemical facies of groundwater in the study area the hydro-geochemistry of water samples was investigated using a concentration of main cations (ca2+, mg2+, na+, k+) and anions (hco3 -, so4 2– and cl–) with the aid of piper diagrams (piper, 1953). the general sequences of ion concentrations in the region are in excess of hco3 – > cl– > so4 2for anions and k+ > na+ > ca2+ > mg2+ for cations. a typical piper trilinear chart shows the different water types, dominant cations and anions, and other ionic properties (figure 6). the relative ionic characteristics of groundwater on a seasonal basis are illustrated with piper trilinear diagrams (figures 7–10). the piper diagrams classify and compare water types in relation to the ionic components of various water samples (hem, 1985). piper's trilinear diagram revealed calcium (ca2+) and magnesium (mg2+) as the principal cations and sulphate and chloride as the main anions for two major water types (ca–cl and ca–mg–cl) across the study location. the samples were associated with alkaline earth elements including calcium and magnesium, and strong acidic anions of sulphate and chloride. high levels of sulphate ions in groundwater suggest highly mineralized water. groundwater ca–cl and ca–mg–cl showed that calcium in groundwater occurs as a result of water reaction with the soil, which increases ca2+ and decreases na+ in relation to the inverse exchange process. in addition, saline water making contact with water previously under the influence of calcium carbonate may absorb ca2+, leading to increased calcium in groundwater. hounslow (1995) reported the calcium – magnesium water type and associated it with a shell deposit of fluvio-marine origin. the dominance of chloride ions in groundwater has been reportedly associated with seawater intrusion (srinivas et al., 2017). this water type (ca–mg– cl) indicated that alkaline earths exceed alkaline metals in these aquifers, strong acidic anions such as chloride predominate over weak acidic anions. water of this type is characterized by permanent hardness and would not precipitate residual sodium carbonate when used for irrigation (chadha, 1999). on the other hand, mixed ca–mg–cl water in coastal environments indicates the mixing of high-salinity water with freshwater, normally arising from the surface, followed by ion exchange reaction processes. figure-7. piper trilinear diagram showing hydrochemical facies of groundwater in dry season i (december 2015–february 2016). source: data analysis (2016). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 171-183 180 figure-8. piper trilinear diagram showing hydrochemical facies of groundwater in wet season i (august 2016–november 2016). source: data analysis (2016). figure-9. piper trilinear diagram showing hydrochemical facies of groundwater in dry season ii (december 2016–february 2017). source: data analysis (2017). figure-10. piper trilinear diagram showing hydrochemical facies of groundwater in wet season ii (august 2017–november 2017). source: data analysis (2017). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 171-183 181 3.3. hydro-chemical indices and ionic ratios the molar ionic ratio of mg/ca was high, ranging from 0.05 to 13.46. higher values were obtained in the dry spell compared to the wet period. elevated values >5.0 are an indicator of marine water influence on groundwater, unless otherwise influenced by processes such as cationic exchange intervention, across the study area. low values indicate that the source of solutes in aquifers is the dissolution of soluble minerals (batayneh & qassas, 2006). the hco3/cl ratio for groundwater ranged from 0.18 to 10.8, falling outside the geochemical index of 0.1–5.0, and this is attributed to the presence of inland waters (custodio, 1987). the na/cl ratios of saltwater intrusion are usually lower than those of marine water (0.86, molar ratio <0.86) while high values (>1.0) classically characterize anthropogenic influence (klassen, allen, & kirste, 2014). groundwater samples showed evidence of saline water intrusion, with ratios <0.86 while those >1.0 indicate contamination from saline and anthropogenic sources (babu, viswanadh, & rao, 2012). according to klassen et al. (2014), the low ca/mg ratio value as obtained in this study is indicative of saltwater contamination, since this is present in seawater at higher concentrations than calcium. the ca/mg ratio indicates that 31% of groundwater samples have seawater intrusion, with ratios <1.0 during the dry season. calcium-enriched groundwater has been reported as an indicator of saltwater intrusion (carol, kruse, & maspla, 2009). cev values as expressed in equation 1 showed the groundwater samples to be inland water, with values below the 1.2–1.3 of seawater. 3.4. water quality and irrigation application the quality of water for irrigation, according to essington (2004), was evaluated in terms of eciw expressed as decisiemens per meter. eciw values varied between 1.06 and 2.25 ds/m. the maximum value was recorded in the ilaje-ese-odo area at the peak of the wet season. all values fall within 0.75–3.0 of medium salinity (increasing problem) for badagry, epe ikorodu, and ilaje/ese-odo for both dry and wet seasons. crop yields have been reported to generally decrease, according to bresier, mcneal, and carter (1982). although certain plants may be tolerant at this range, the need for specific crop management adherence is advised when administering such groundwater for irrigation, to curtail potential soil deterioration and prevent poor crop growth. the sar calculated with equation 2 is commonly applied because of its good correlation with exchangeable sodium percentage (esp). sar expresses the relative activity of sodium ions in the exchange process in terms of a ratio. sar values according to bouwer (1978) showed that about 75 % of samples – mainly from badagry, epe, and ilaje ese-odo fall within the no-problem category (dry season). moreover, 50 % of samples, mainly from ikorodu and ilaje ese-odo, fall within the increasing-problem category while 50 % fall under the severe-problem category, which includes groundwater samples from badagry and epe during the wet spell. low sar values were obtained during the dry seasons compared to the wet seasons, indicating seasonal influence on the suitability of groundwater for irrigation. since irrigation is commonly practiced in the absence of rain or when rainfall is inadequate, groundwater is therefore recommended for irrigation during the dry season, with close monitoring and assessment for optimum agricultural production while taking into consideration crop salt tolerance characteristics. the percentage soluble sodium (pss) calculated with equation 4 revealed that 6.25 and 93.75 % of samples denote doubtful and unsuitable, respectively, for irrigation (wilcox, 1955). groundwater application for optimum crop production based on ssp demands good agronomic practices with respect to soil and crop management. table-1. sar of groundwater samples across locations (bouwer, 1978). sar classification percentage falling within this category description <6 no problem 43.75 suitable for irrigation 6–9 increasing problem 31.25 likely to cause soil deterioration and reduce yield >9 severe problem 25 unsuitable for irrigation except when otherwise treated source: data analysis (20152017). the permeability index (pi) expressesd by equation 3 and according to doneen (1964) shows that all the groundwater was unsuitable for irrigation purposes, since values across all locations regardless of season were >60. bouwer (1978) classified groundwater with sar values <6 as ‘‘no problem’’, 6-9 as ‘‘increasing problem’’, and >9 as groundwater with ‘‘severe problems’’. sar calculations (table 1) showed that 43.75 % of groundwater samples were under the ‘‘no problem”, 31.25 % ‘‘increasing problem’,’ and 25 % ‘‘severe problem’’. the result indicated that each location within the study area would require specific treatment with respect to water use, to prevent poor growth and crop performance. 4. conclusion the study clearly demonstrated the importance of physicochemical and ionic analysis of groundwater in selected coastal communities of badagary, epe, ikorodu. and ilaje/ese-odo, south-western nigeria in domestic and agriculture applications. assessment of groundwater quality in the selected areas indicated that most of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 171-183 182 parameters measured compare favorably with world health organization (who) (2011) for drinking water standards except for ec, alkalinity, and potassium the levels of which were above the permissible limits. irrigation suitability of the water revealed that ec (salinity hazard), alkalinity, and potassium were at levels potentially detrimental to plant growth if applied without caution. results further indicated the relative abundance of anions, hco3 – > cl– > so4 2– and cations, k+ > na+ > ca2+ > mg2+. piper diagrams revealed magnesium and calcium as the principal cations and sulphate and chloride as the main anions relative percentage abundance. groundwater described as mg–ca and mg–ca–cl was influenced by ionic exchange and saltwater intrusion. this water type (ca–mg–cl) indicated that alkaline earths exceed alkaline metals in these aquifers, and strong acidic anions such as chloride predominate over weak acidic anions. cev and molar ratios of mg/ca, hco3/cl, and na/cl showed high values (>1) across all locations. molar ionic ratios indicated that the groundwater has a marine/saltwater signatory. the application of water for irrigation is linked to both season and location , as shown by irrigation indices indicating that each site requires specific water treatment to enhance optimum agricultural production without damaging the soil, and to prevent poor crop performance. abbreviations cev cation exchange capacity. sar sodium adsorption ratio. pi permeability index. psspercentage soluble sodium. lgalocal government area. iar&tinstitute of agricultural research and training. ecelectrical conductivity. eciwelectrical conductivity of water (decisiemens). µs/cmmicrosiemens per centimetre. tdstotal dissolved solids. mg/lmilligrams per liter. whoworld health organization. saispectrum analytic international. ds/mdecisiemens per meter. espexchangeable sodium percentage. funding: the financial support provided by the centre of excellence for agriculture and sustainable environment, federal university of agriculture, abeokuta (world bank ace023) is deeply appreciated in regard to the conduct of this research. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: all authors contributed in an equal manner in designing the present research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references babu, m. m., viswanadh, g., & rao, s. v. 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(2010). guide to interpreting irrigation water analysis, 1087 jamison road, washington c. h. ohio 43160. retrieved from www.spectrumanalytic.com srinivas, y., aghil, t., oliver, d. h., nair, c. n., & chandrasekar, n. (2017). hydrochemical characteristics and quality assessment of groundwater along the manavalakurichi coast, tamil nadu, india. applied water science, 7(3), 1429-1438. wilcox, l. (1955). classification and use of irrigation waters (pp. 19). usda circular 969. world health organization (who). (2011). guidelines for drinking water quality (4th ed.). geneva: world health organization. http://www.osuextra.com/ http://www.spectrumanalytic.com/ http://www.spectrumanalytic.com/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 1 identification of adaptive capacity assessments to improve collective adaptation of farmers to climate change ica wulansaria oekan s. abdoellahb budhi gunawanc parikesitd adoctoral student in department of sociology, universitas padjadjaran, bandung, west java, indonesia. b,ccenter for environment and sustainability science and department of anthropology, universitas padjadjaran, bandung, west java, indonesia. dcenter for environment and sustainability science and department of biology, universitas padjadjaran, bandung, west java, indonesia.  ica16001@mail.unpad.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 7 october 2021 revised: 12 november 2021 accepted: 2 december 2021 published: 20 december 2021 keywords adaptive capacity collective adaptation farmers climate change. collective adaptation is a relevant discussion in association with the limited adaptive capacity of farmers to deal with climate change. this study aims to improve the collective adaptation of farmers through the identification of adaptive capacity assessments. a collective adaptation mechanism in the form of planning for rice planting time has succeeded in reducing the vulnerability of farmers. this study was conducted at a rice production center with a collective adaptation mechanism in indramayu district, west java province, indonesia. the data were collected using a quantitative method through a questionnaire distributed to 296 farmer respondents and a qualitative method through structured interviews. the observations provided an overview for authors to build structured interviews. the results of the study show that the adaptive capacity of farmers is supported by social capital and collective adaptation mechanisms of farmers consisting of trust in the formal leaders, quality of collective decisions, and planning capacity. the results of this study contribute to the implementation of public policies in order to support the successful implementation of adaptation strategies to deal with climate change in accordance with the needs of farmers. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the implementation of public policies in order to support the successful implementation of adaptation strategies to deal with climate change in accordance with the needs of farmers. doi: 10.18488/5005.v12i1.4391 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ica wulansari --oekan s. abdoellah --budhi gunawan --parikesit (2022). identification of adaptive capacity assessments to improve collective adaptation of farmers to climate change. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1), 1-9. 10.18488/5005.v12i1.4391 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction in recent years, studies have shown that farmers face challenges in adapting to climate change. in reality, farmers have limited access in that they experience additional vulnerabilities due to exposure to climate change marked by uncertainties in the rainy season, drought, and changes in air temperature (sime & aune, 2019). despite their awareness of their vulnerabilities due to exposure to climate change, farmers do not necessarily implement asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 1 (2022): 1-9. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3952-0869 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3640-1485 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8183-0839 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8214-7126 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 1-9 2 adaptation strategies (jamshidi, asadi, kalantari, azadi, & scheffran, 2019). meanwhile, other studies have shown different results, in which the trust and perception of the risks of climate change encourage farmers to implement adaptation strategies (azadi, yazdanpanah, & mahmoudi, 2019). furthermore, numerous studies describe adaptation strategies of farmers in dealing with climate change. the adaptation strategies of farmers in south africa, kenya, pakistan, bangladesh, and malaysia involve rice varieties tolerant to drought, crop diversification, a planting calendar, water and soil conservation, and organic fertilizers (ali & erenstein, 2017). meanwhile, other farmers implement adaptation strategies by using climate information or farmer insurance and participating in rural communities (adzawla, kudadze, mohammed, & ibrahim, 2019; saptutyningsih, diswandi, & jaung, 2020). adaptability in the face of climate change is crucial for farmers today. adaptability followed by skills and knowledge can strengthen adaptive decision making that is a characteristic of adaptive capacity (gardezi & arbuckle, 2017; matewos, 2020). the characteristics of adaptive capacity consist of income diversity and flexibility, access to assets, learning and knowledge, and collective organization (whitney et al., 2017). adaptive capacity is the capacity of individuals or groups to carry out self-organization. self-organization, in addition to the diversity of knowledge and learning in the community, produces quality adaptation planning (folke, hahn, olsson, & norberg, 2005). collective adaptation mechanisms have the potential to be developed because previous studies have shown that the adaptive capacity of farmers is generally supported by social capital (abdul-razak & kruse, 2017; chepkoech, mungai, stöber, & lotze-campen, 2020). social capital produces collective actions, social networks, and collaborations that affect the level of adaptive capacity of farmers (freduah, fidelman, & smith, 2018). the indicators of social capital as the source of adaptive capacity of the community to deal with climate change are social networks, participatory decision making, and implementation of adaptation in the form of collective actions (phan, jou, & lin, 2019). social capital is a positive resource attribute of farming communities with low economic performance. however, several studies show that social capital does not have a positive impact on increase in yield and does not affect individual adaptability (carrico, truelove, & williams, 2019). meanwhile, other studies show that social capital strengthens community collaboration that affects the sustainability of farmers’ livelihood (asante, guodaar, & arimiyaw, 2021). the aspect of collaboration is a conceptual link between adaptive capacity and collective adaptation mechanisms in the context of farmers’ livelihood (djalante, 2012; folke et al., 2005). the aspect of collaboration also affects adaptation of the agricultural sector in facing climate change (islam & nursey-bray, 2017). the aspect of collaboration can be built presupposing that the performance of formal institutions provides comfort for farmers to be constantly involved in the collective decision-making process (tesfaye, hansen, kassie, radeny, & solomon, 2019). the correlation of social capital in the context of adaptive capacity and collective adaptation of farmers are quite limited. collective adaptation is a relevant discussion in association with the limited adaptive capacity of farmers to deal with climate change. the adaptive capacity of indonesian farmers in terms of skills and knowledge has been built through learning obtained from farmer field school (van den berg, ketelaar, dicke, & fredrix, 2020). however, the findings of other studies show that the limited capacity of indonesian farmers results in them being affected by climate change, leading to a decrease in income (rondhi, fatikhul khasan, mori, & kondo, 2019) . el-niño and lanina climate changes result in a decrease in agricultural production, thus threatening the food security of indonesian farmers (boer & surmaini, 2020). therefore, it was essential to carry out this study since it contributes to the novelty of indicators of collective adaptation mechanisms of farmers. this study aims to provide an adaptive capacity assessment of farmers and observe collective adaptation mechanisms. social capital as an indicator of adaptive capacity becomes the identification to providing understanding and opportunities to improve farmers’ collective adaptation mechanisms. 2. materials and methods 2.1. location of the study this study was conducted in nunuk village, lelea subdistrict, indramayu district, west java province, indonesia (figure 1). the location of the study was chosen purposively due to its characteristics of adaptive capacity, namely the diversity of knowledge from farmer field school and science field shops that supports a collective adaptation mechanism in the form of planning for rice planting time (folke et al., 2005; whitney et al., 2017). climate change is a phenomenon of climate variability including rainfall and air temperature below or above the normal average on a spatial and temporal scale affecting the community life of small farmers. rainfall data for a period of 30 years are included among the instruments used to determine the occurrence of climate change (ipcc, 2012). rainfall data for 30 years from cikedung rainfall measuring station, indramayu regency between 1987 and 2017 show that annual rainfall in that period tended to be below normal (1,500 mm). from 2008 to 2017 there were fluctuations in rainfall, with a normal annual rainfall ranging between 1,500 and 2,000 mm. however, in 2015 a drought was indicated by the absence of rainfall for 131 days. meanwhile, rainfall in 2016 tended to be above normal, reaching 2,436 mm over a total of 136 rainy days. although the intensity of rainfall varied, farmers' yields were stable in the range of 7–8 quintals per 100 bricks (1,400 m2) in each cultivation season. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 1-9 3 figure-1. study location in nunuk village, lelea subdistrict, indramayu district, west java province, indonesia 2.2. data collection this research model begins with a quantitative study, followed by analysis of the results and strengthened by detailed explanations through the results of a qualitative study. this research model can provide an understanding of the problem of the study as a whole (creswell, 2014). the study used the data collection method through questionnaires incorporating a likert scale with levels of choice ranging from strongly agree, agree, hesitate, disagree, to strongly disagree, as well as from always, often, sometimes, rarely, to never. the sample size was determined using the formula of lynch et al. with a reliability level of 95%, resulting in a survey sample of 296 farmer respondents (abdoellah et al., 2020). meanwhile, the sampling technique applied for the qualitative study was purposive sampling. purposive sampling is feasible to use in a study with a qualitative method on a specific case (neuman, 2014). the informants were selected based on adequate information provided regarding knowledge enrichment for farmers from external parties, and the dynamics in farming communities in building a mechanism for determining collective rice planting time. the informants in this study were 40 individuals including village heads, former village heads, agricultural extension officers, heads of farmers’ groups, independent learning farmers, and farmers who had participated in the knowledge enrichment process and were involved in planting time mechanisms. 2.3. data analysis the data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed using the smallholder farmers' adaptive capacity index (sfaci) assessment table 1 (abdul-razak & kruse, 2017). table-1. criteria for smallholder farmers' adaptive capacity index assessment. adaptive capacity level sfaci score very high adaptive capacity 4.01-5.00 high adaptive capacity 3.01-4.00 moderate adaptive capacity 2.50-3.00 low adaptive capacity 1.51-2.49 very low adaptive capacity 0.00-1.50 meanwhile, data collected from observations and structured interviews were analyzed based on the participation component in the farmers' adaptive capacity index. farmer participation was the initial analysis used to understand the relationship between the adaptive capacity and social cohesion of farmers faced with social, economic, ecological and political constraints (vertigans & gibson, 2020). 3. results and discussion 3.1. farmers’ characteristics farmer respondents were dominated by men, at 83.11%. the dominant age range was 56–65 years (34.46%) (figure 2). farming is the main livelihood for the residents of nunuk village, and approximately 75% of farmer respondents stated that farming is their only livelihood. most farmers in nunuk village stated that farming is a profession continuing from generation to generation, because they inherited their fields from from their parents. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 1-9 4 figure-2. distribution of respondents. 3.2. farmers’ adaptive capacity assessment the assessment of farmers' adaptive capacity in facing climate change consisted of three variables: economic resources, access to knowledge and information, and social capital (table 2). this assessment was dominated by the low category because the two variables of economic resources and access to knowledge and information showed a low capacity. there was one variable in the moderate category, social capital. adaptive capacity assessment was an assessment standard that showed the weak adaptive capacity of individual farmers in facing climate change. table-2. index of adaptive capacity of farmers in facing climate change. variable parameter score/category economic resources land ownership 1.99 (low) income diversification 1.48 (very low) access to knowledge and information level of education 2.16 (low) knowledge of climate change 1.81 (low) visits by agricultural extension officers 1.51 (low) climate information 1.82 (low) social capital participation 2.52 (moderate) group learning 2.71 (moderate) 3.3. economic resources the first variable in the farmer's adaptive capacity index was economic resources, which consisted of two parameters, i.e., land ownership and income diversification (table 3). the majority of farmers' land ownership was under 0.25 ha (39.5%). generally, farmers who owned land under 0.25 ha had a rice field area of between 100 and 200 bricks (1,400–2,800 m2). farmers who had rice fields under 0.25 ha became farm workers on other farmers' land at harvest time. this activity aimed at increasing farmers' income because the harvest cannot meet their needs, whereby they are obliged to pay debts and fulfill social obligations in the village areas. apart from farmers’ limited ownership of rice fields, around 79% did not have other sources of income. the farming profession is a hereditary profession from generation to generation in nunuk village, and livelihood as a farmer is an identity for the residents. in fact, some farmer respondents stated that they had migrated to cities to gain a higher income and have additional capital to purchase agricultural land and increase the area of land owned. table-3. index of adaptive capacity the variable of farmers` economic resources in facing climate change. parameter value/indicator % land ownership <0.25 ha 39.5 0.25–0.99 ha 29.1 1–2 ha 23.6 3–4 ha 5.1 >4 ha 2 income diversification farming 79 farming and owning other businesses 4 farming, owning a business, and working part time 11 farming and working professionally 1 farming, working professionally, and having a wife owning a business 13 3.4. access to knowledge and information the second variable of farmers' adaptive capacity was access to knowledge and information, which consisted of four parameters (table 4). the first parameter was the education level: farmers generally did not graduate from elementary school (up to 37.8%). most of the farmers who did not graduate from elementary school could neither read nor write. the second parameter was access to knowledge on climate change, which was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 1-9 5 dominated by 46% of farmers. twelve farmers who had gained knowledge of climate change were measuring rainfall, most of whom did not put their knowledge into practice in day-to-day farming. then, 66% of farmers did not have access to visits by agricultural extension officers and 67% did not obtain climate information. farmers who gained access to agricultural extension were those who had a relative relationship with agricultural extension officers. in addition, farmers did not obtain climate information from the authorities: those who obtained climate information were farmers who measured rainfall and acquired information from scientists. table-4. index of adaptive capacity of farmers` access to knowledge and information in facing climate change parameter value/indicator % level of education did not graduate from elementary school 37.8 graduated from elementary school 31.1 graduated from middle school 12.8 graduated from high school 14.2 graduated from higher education 4.1 access to knowledge on climate change none 46 social media 19 information from knowledgeable farmers 37 information from mass media knowledge enrichment 23 22 access to visits by agricultural extension officers none 66 1 time 19 2 times 11 3–4 times 3 5 times 1 access to climate information no information 67 information from internal network 4 information from the internet 14 information from farmers who are active in learning 3 information from scientists and authorities 12 3.5. social capital farmers' participation in village deliberations to determine planting time, and participation in group learning, were two parameters in the social capital variable (figure 2). the first parameter was participation which showed that 22.30% of farmers were often involved in joint decisions because they received the benefits of discussions with other farmers who measured rainfall. likewise, implementation of joint decisions was often followed by 30.74% of farmers. this was because joint decisions provided benefits for farmers in planning rice planting so as not to fail at harvest time. meanwhile, 43.92% of farmers rarely participated in pest eradication programs on rice plants because most preferred to conduct their own schemes independently. in addition, 35.47% of farmers had never participated in agricultural training activities because they did not participate in farmer groups or other farmer organizations and so they did not gain access to knowledge. the second parameter was group learning, which was started by the dominance of 45.61% farmers who never recorded the conditions of soil, water, and pests. it was different for farmers who had received knowledge enrichment. farmers attending science field shops had the habit of making observations in rice fields and taking notes. then, 28.04% of farmers stated that they often discussed the recorded results. such discussions became additional learning for farmers because they absorbed information and experiences from other farmers. however, 36.49% of farmers rarely shared discussion and knowledge enrichment results because they were of the opinion that schemes derived from knowledge enrichment were not practical and efficient in their day-to-day farming practices. however, 34.12% of farmers stated that discussions with fellow farmers always brought benefits of solutions in dealing with agricultural problems. based on the parameters of participation and group learning, the authors explored the existence of a collective adaptive mechanism which was a legacy of farmers' learning after the farmer field school in 1998. this mechanism was formally institutionalized by village officials and farming communities and became a tradition before each rice planting season twice per year. 3.6. collective adaptation mechanisms the results of the assessment of the adaptive capacity of farmers highlight the adaptability of individual farmers in the face of climate change. meanwhile, based on the results of observations and in-depth interviews with farmer informants, there are three findings that indicate the collective adaptation mechanisms of farmers. these three findings are related to the results of the assessment of adaptive capacity in terms of social capital. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 1-9 6 figure-3. index of adaptive capacity of farmer`s social capital in facing climate change ( a = never, b = rarely, c = sometimes, d = often, e = always). finding 1: trust in formal leaders the mechanism for making a joint decision to determine rice planting time has been established by a formal leader and conducted since 1998. the idea started with the knowledge enrichment obtained from farmer field school held from 1996 to 1998. knowledge enrichment instilled the principles of integrated pest management, followed by skills in observing and formulas for calculating pest life cycles. these skills provide an anticipatory action for farmers to determine the right time for planting season that does not coincide with the peak of pest life cycles. the formal leader viewed this skill as important and established this as a formal village tradition prior to the rice planting season. this collective mechanism has experienced dynamics since the change in the political structure in indonesia in 1998. national political dynamics are marked by regional autonomy, followed by elections for regional heads and village heads. village heads are formal village leaders. election of the village head as a democratic party is marked by the dichotomy between supporters of the candidates for the village head in the farming community. it certainly affects activities in the village. farmers supporting the elected village head will participate in those activities. meanwhile, farmers who are not become passive parties in various activities in the village. figure 2 shows participation in collective activities including those used to determine the planting time, where 33.11% farmers never participate and 22.30% farmers admit to participating often. generally, farmer respondents who never participate give two reasons. the first reason is political, since they do not support the village head. the second reason is that they do not have adequate knowledge, leading them to observe the collective mechanism as one that does not provide benefits to them. in addition, farmers who do not have adequate knowledge are pessimistic about the efficacy of collective activities in increasing farm productivity. referring to the in-depth interviews with farmer respondents and informants, the formal leader who created the mechanism for determining collective planting time is an ideal leader. this leader frequently took the initiative and directly mobilized farmers to participate in water and soil conservation in paddy fields. furthermore, this leader was able to reduce the dynamics of conflict in the village. this leader embraced even groups of non-supporters in the election of village head. therefore, this leader was the individual most mentioned by farmer respondents as one with a positive contribution to agricultural development in the village. in addition, by mobilizing the participation of farmers, they were involved in the mechanism and implementation of rice planting time as decided. meanwhile, the farming community currently does not follow the recent decision on collective rice planting time. those who are not supporters of the active village head are not encouraged to be active in village activities and participate in collective planting times. on the other hand, the active village head does not try to embrace them. finding 2: the quality of collective decisions the collective decisions in determining planting time derive from the process of observing pests and diseases in rice plants, as well as rainfall, by knowledgeable farmers. knowledgeable farmers are those who have attended farmer field school or science field shops. the results of observations by knowledgeable farmers are complemented by information on the adequacy of water in irrigation canals by water observers from the government, as well as climate scenarios provided by scientists. the results of these observations and information produce quality collective decisions as they provide an anticipatory action, allowing farmers to plant rice based on the adequacy of irrigation canals and to avoid planting rice during the peak of pest life cycles. thus, the quality of collective decisions is appropriate and accurate according to the needs of farmers. as stated by farmer respondents and informants, collective decisions have succeeded in preventing crop failure since 1998. 0 20 40 60 80 100 in v o lv ed i n j o in t d ec is io n s t h e p es t er ad ic at io n p ro g ra m a g ri cu lt u ra l tr ai n in g im p le m en ti n g c o n d it io n s o f so il , w at er , an d p es t t h e re co rd in g k n o w le d g e en ri ch m en t b en ef it s o f th e d is cu ss io n participation group learning p er ce n ta g e (% ) e d c b a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 1-9 7 finding 3: planning capacity the quality of collective decisions is supported by adequate planning capacity. this planning capacity is indicated by the knowledge and skills practiced by knowledgeable farmers. the number of knowledgeable farmers is quite limited in the village, but they are able to act strategically for collective mechanisms. not all knowledgeable farmers practice and contribute to the mechanism of collective rice planting time: several carry out their roles as planners. the mechanism for determining planting time will not be sustainable supposing it is not supported by the presence and contribution of the planners. they observe both pests and rainfall periodically. another factor that supports planning capacity is an information network maintained by planners. they obtain climate information from scientists to complement the results of observations. in addition, the village apparatus builds a network with the local government. additional information regarding the availability of water discharge in irrigation canals is another good consideration used to determine planting time. the capacity of the planners and the officials of village institutions build collaborative and responsive village institutions to deal with climate change. this study shows that economic resources and access to knowledge and information are not reliable in providing adaptation actions for individual farmers. the low economic resources of farmers caused farmers not to have the adaptive capacity in facing climate change (antwi-agyei, dougill, stringer, & codjoe, 2018). in addition, farmers did not acquire additional capacity to access economic resources in the form of financial access such as farming credit, market access, and agricultural subsidies (jamshidi et al., 2019). in addition to the weak economic resources of farmers, they also did not have access to adequate knowledge and information in building their capacity. four parameters in access to knowledge and information indicated that the state did not build the human resource capacity of farmers. access to knowledge on climate change and agricultural extension services covered a small number of farmers, so that the distribution of knowledge in the farming community became unequal. in addition, farmers were not provided with climate information by the authorities so that they could provide additional capacity in developing adaptation strategies. based on the findings of previous studies, access to agricultural extension services is a significant factor in supporting the adaptive capacity of farmers (chepkoech et al., 2020). in addition to the limited access to agricultural extension, the proportion of farmers obtaining knowledge enrichment on farming and climate change is also limited. thus, only knowledgeable farmers can develop adaptation strategies for themselves and contribute to the community. access to knowledge for farmers requires government policy interventions that can focus on building resilience for farmers to face climate change (maltou & bahta, 2019). although farmers' access to knowledge was limited, two forms of knowledge enrichment, from farmer field schools and science field shops, had succeeded in building the planning capacity of farmer communities in facing climate change (van den berg et al., 2020). the social capital observed in this study consists of two indicators, namely participation and group learning, that are in the category of moderate. group learning is influenced by access of farmers to knowledge. farmers without access to knowledge show low awareness of making independent learning efforts through observation and recording activities in paddy fields. in addition, they do not view discussion as a way to increase their knowledge. however, the findings of this study indicate that the participation of the farming community is not solid but is divided, due to their trust, or lack of trust, in formal leaders. trust in formal leaders can have a positive effect, namely a high level of participation by farmers in collective mechanisms. on the other hand, participation, trust, and involvement and harmonious personal relationships in the community can build relevant social capital in the context of adaptation to climate change (saptutyningsih et al., 2020). participation influences the quality of decision-making and planning capacity, the resources for formal institutions (whitney et al., 2017). formal institutions that preserve collective adaptive mechanisms can build farmer adaptation based on the findings of this study. it confirms the findings of previous studies that formal institutions provide agricultural practices that are adaptive to climate change (abdul-razak & kruse, 2017). however, adaptation mechanisms face dynamics because formal relations and institutions face contexts outside the phenomenon of climate change, namely political factors that affect interactions among farmers. the mechanism for determining planting time requires formal institutions. however, formal institutions require the active role of groups of actors in building agricultural capacity of adaptation strategies in farming (islam & nursey-bray, 2017). this study shows that formal institutions perpetuate collective adaptation mechanisms. it is indicated by the awareness of the formal leader who applied knowledge of integrated pest management as the basis for building adaptation strategies. the knowledge of integrated pest management from farmer field school is proven to be able to build farmers’ adaptive behavior (van den berg et al., 2020). furthermore, learning from farmer field school is determined by the formal leader as an adaptation strategy that is supported by knowledgeable farmers and sources of information from farmer networks. the availability of resources increases the readiness and response of the communities in adaptation (djalante, 2012). the adaptation mechanism is also followed by the fundamentals derived from the knowledge obtained from science field shops that is accommodated by the active formal leader as part of the instrument to increase the accuracy of rice planting strategy. however, the distribution of knowledge from science field shops to farmers was limited so that it did not provide sufficient knowledge on climate change to individual farmers. nevertheless, this mechanism shows the characteristics of adaptive capacity due to the diversity of sources of knowledge and information that increase adaptability (whitney et al., 2017). this study is in line with the findings of a study in bangladesh, that quality knowledge can encourage appropriate and responsible efforts and actions for community adaptation (haque, bremer, aziz, bin, & van der sluijs, 2017). collective adaptation mechanisms have indicators of diversity of knowledge and sources of information that support the adaptability of farmers in determining rice planting time. however, this adaptation mechanism needs improvement in order to survive and be sustainable. the findings of the study show that the specific indicators of collective adaptation mechanisms of farmers are leaders with a sustainable vision and quality planning capacity. adaptive capacity is a system device that can enable asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 1-9 8 actors to adapt (dixon, stringer, & challinor, 2014) or the capacity of social unit system, either individuals or communities. this study shows that adaptive capacity is a set of systems that can provide choices of adaptation actions to social actors, one of which is social capital. social capital can provide farmers with choices to become adaptive to climate change through individual relations in collective action, in the form of participation. however, this participation requires support to build collaboration as a requirement for building collective adaptive mechanisms. leaders with a sustainable vision are indicators to build group collaboration. leaders with a sustainable vision view planning capacity of farmers to be built through the fundamentals of knowledge (chingombe & musarandega, 2021). leaders play an important role in building the community adaptive capacity in the form of legitimacy, responsiveness, and accountability (nkiaka & lovett, 2019). in addition, leaders with a sustainable vision can mobilize the participation of farmers to engage in collective adaptation mechanisms by dismissing differences in political views. leaders with a sustainable vision are able to build collaborations with knowledgeable farmers to ensure that the learning obtained from knowledge enrichment remains the foundation for collective adaptation planning. another indicator found in this study is that quality planning capacity needs to be supported by the capacity of planners and farmer networks. in this study, knowledgeable farmers or those who have gained knowledge enrichment and practice their knowledge become the central figures in the mechanism of determination of rice planting time (otsuki, jasaw, & lolig, 2018). they use their skills to observe the life cycle of pests and analyze rainfall conditions based on the results of daily records. these two skills provide the capacity to anticipate crop failure. the capacity of farmers is also complemented by the existence of an external network that provides information that increases the capacity of farmers. an external network from academia provides information on climate change and climatic conditions. therefore, adaptation planning capacity is fundamentally derived from quality knowledge and is practiced by farmers with the capacity and appropriate sources of information (haque et al., 2017) 4. conclusion the adaptive capacity of individual farmers is dominated by the low criteria of economic resources and access to knowledge and information. however, social capital in the moderate criteria has the potential to be improved. the indicator of participation in social capital shows the dynamics of interaction in farming communities. this indicator plays a role in maintaining a collective adaptation mechanism in the form of determining rice planting time. the collective adaptation mechanism is an institutional set consisting of the trust of farmers in formal leaders, quality of collective decisions, and planning capacity. leaders with a sustainable vision are able to build collaboration between farming communities to perpetuate collective adaptation mechanisms. meanwhile, the capacity for quality adaptation planning is supported by the capacity of planners and a network of farmers with credible sources of information. in addition, the results of this study contribute to the implementation of public policies in order to support the successful implementation of adaptation strategies to deal with climate change in accordance with the needs of farmers. funding: the authors would like to thank the educational fund management institution (lpdp) of the ministry of finance of the republic of indonesia for providing financial support under grant fr2682018153208 for the research on which this article is based. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. 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(2017). adaptive capacity: from assessment to action in coastal social-ecological systems. ecology and society, 22(2), 1-22. available at: https://doi.org/10.5751/es-09325-220222. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 19 analysis of household food security policy: case of food security village programme, indonesia muhamad rusliyadia azaharaini bin hj. mohd. jamil b ratna tri kumalasari c a polytechnic of agricultural development yogyakartamagelang, agricultural extension and human resource development agency, ministry of agriculture, indonesia b institute of policy studies, university of brunei darussalam, brunei darussalam c agriculture extension officer, agricultural and food security office, kebumen regency, indonesia  m_rusliyadi@yahoo.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 11-feb-2019 accepted: 01-apr-2019 online available: 09may-2019 keywords: food security, household level, indonesia abstract the study analyses a food self-sufficiency village programme (dmp programme) at household level in the central java province of indonesia. the data of the dmp programme was collected through unstructured and semi-structured questionnaires and focus-group discussions. the survey was conducted in four villages, each consisting of 100 samples based on a purposive and clustered sampling technique. the study compares the implication between indicators before and after the policy. it was found that the impact of the dmp programme on the villages was positive. the level of poverty in each village has been significantly reduced by 8-40% after the introduction of the programme. the composite food security analysis at the household level shows the positive impacts of the programme. contribution/ originality this research is an original example of the use of food security analysis on a household level and is implemented in one of the government programs based on poverty and food security (food selfsufficiency programme). this research illustrates how a government policy can increase the food security of its people and contribute to poverty alleviation. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.19.32 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: muhamad rusliyadi, azaharaini bin hj. mohd. jamil and ratna tri kumalasari (2019). analysis of household food security policy: case of food security village programme, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1), 19-32. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 1 (2019): 19-32 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:m_rusliyadi@yahoo.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4632-5671 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.19.32 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 19-32 20 1. introduction food security policy will be a paramount concern for the economic development of many countries for at least the next two decades (fao, 2006). the rate of increase in population is rising significantly in many countries, but especially in developing countries. governments are trying to address their food problems, and they need good analysis and implementation of development policies, particularly in rural areas where most people live. food security analysis, carried out at national and household level is indispensable. the challenges in food security development in general are linked to high population growth, limited natural resources and shifting functions of agricultural soil, inadequate food sector infrastructure, increased competition with imported merchandise in the marketplace, lack of resources and little market accessibility and the share of poor people (ahmed et al., 2017; mukadasi, 2018). moreover, demand for food per capita increases over time, driven by increased revenue, awareness of health and diet changes, caused by the influence of globalization and various community activities. in indonesia, poverty and the attainment of food security have been the main problems. food insecurity is widely experienced in many regions and is positively linked to impoverishment (weiler et al., 2014). rural development aims to achieve food security in a region. it requires integration and collaboration of the aspects of availability, distribution, and consumption of food at a household level. therefore, a good system is a prerequisite for the realisation of food security by the food self-sufficiency village programme (dmp programme). the performance of dmp programme has provided significant impact with some major indicators such as poverty, income and food security in villages. however, rural areas have a classic problem; the participation rate for farmers in the program is low and most farmers in villages face the problem of limited capital resources hindering their success. policy programs such as dmp programme need to be effectively developed in collaboration and cooperation with other sectors so that the rural development targets focused on poverty reduction and maintenance of food security at village level can be met (darwis, 2012). according to darwis and rusastra (2011), the dmp programme was supported by agricultural and non-agricultural capital programmes, as well as by rural financial institutions. it was facilitated by agricultural extension workers and expert consultants. this programme is directed at several other objectives; raising the availability of foodstuffs, growing the family unit entitlement, recovering the efficiency of food supply and access programmes, enhancing the trade in local food items, raising capital and industry options through the introduction of high-yielding varieties of seeds which agricultural communities in rural areas can develop to increase income, as well as improving the quality of food consumption handling at the household level, and so forth. 2. materials and method this research is focused on the existing food security policy in indonesia with regard to the dmp programme that has been implemented since 2006. the methodology used in the study was mainly quantitative, but a qualitative approach was also used to enrich the findings of the quantitative study. primary data were analysed using microsoft excel and spss. the research site in java island has the largest population in indonesia. central java was chosen for this case study because it constitutes 17% of the population experiencing poverty (cbs, 2011). secondly, it has many deprived villages as compared to other provinces. four villages were selected purposively1. 1 purposive sampling is also known as judgmental, selective, or subjective sampling, based on the recommendation, of the agricultural and food security agency in regency level asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 19-32 21 two villages from kebumen regency, namely kedung dowo village in poncowarno district and selogiri villlage in karanggayam district, and the others in magelang regency, namely madukoro village in kajoran district and candirejo village in borobudur district were selected. these villages have been implementing the programme in varying stages with different characteristics and success rates. data related to the dmp programme and extension service were collected using unstructured and semi-structured questionnaire. the survey was conducted in four villages; 100 samples from each, using a purposive and clustered sampling technique based on some particular sample criteria. criteria of the sample chosen were based on farmer characteristics such as their level of wealth, farmer leader, the village leader, and gender. the purposive sampling technique is a type of nonprobability sampling that is most effective when one needs to study a certain cultural domain with knowledgeable experts within. purposive sampling may also be used with both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. this type of sampling can be very useful in situations when one needs to reach a target sample quickly, and where sampling for proportionality is not the main concern (rusliyadi and libin, 2018). 3. results and discussion 3.1. food security composite analysis at household level food security is achieved when every household can continuously have access physically and economically to food items (fao, 1996). food security should also include availability, accessibility, safety and sustainability. accessibility represents when every household is able to meet food self-sufficiency, food availability is the average amount of food needs at household level, while food safety emphasize on the quality of food that meets the nutritional needs. the indicators used in the analysis of food security at the household level are food availability, food access and food consumption or absorption. an indicator of food availability is normative per capita consumption for food production and normative consumption ratio. the ratio indicates whether a region has a surplus production of cereals and tubers. the normative consumption ratio is between the production of food commodity cereals (rice, maize, cassava, and sweet potato) net of the normative population food consumption per day, which is as much as 300 grams of cereals (dkp, 2005). food access has indicators that are expressed in the percentage of household poverty, working people and the percentage of those who work less than 15 hours per week. the percentage of those who did not finish elementary schooling, the percentage of households without access to electricity, and the length of roads per square kilometer are indicators which reflect limitation factors in accessing food at the village level (katarzyna and raqif, 2017). indicators of food consumption or absorption used in the study include; one-year life expectancy of children (nos. /1000), underweight children less than 5 years of age (%), percentage of illiterate women, percentage of children who are not immunised, percentage of people with access to clean and safe water, percentage of people who reside further than five kilometers from the health center, and the ratio of the people per physician. the food production is calculated using three years average production (2010-2) of rice, maize, cassava and sweet potatoes, since the main source of food energy comes from cereals and tubers. the pattern of food consumption in indonesia shows that nearly 50% of total caloric needs come from cereal crops. for the average net production of cassava and sweet potatoes that are equivalent to rice should be multiplied by 1/3 (1 kg of rice or corn is equivalent to 3 kg of cassava and sweet potato in terms of calorific value). per capita net availability of cereals is calculated by dividing asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 19-32 22 the total cereal availability by the population. under the indonesian consumption profile, the normative consumption of cereals/day/capita is 300 grams (dkp, 2009). 3.1.1. availability of food the rural lifestyle suggests a low income stream that contributes to vulnerability to food insecurity and to disease, since they cannot afford food prices. in most cases, only rice is being stored as food commodities, harvested in the last season. only a small amount of harvested rice is sold, so normally people seek for other employment whenever they have free time (falcon and naylor, 2005). the availability of adequate food is an absolute prerequisite for food security; however, it is not a sufficient precondition to ensure food security at the household and individual level. many efforts have to be made to ensure the availability of food at village level. the key causes of nonavailability of cereals food in some districts include; (1) expansion of oil palm, black pepper, rubber, cashew, and cocoa plantations (2) expansion of open-pit mining areas; (3) swamp areas; (4) upland rice production systems that have low productivity; and (5) non-availability of arable land with respect to population density. in addition, many areas of surplus cereal crops are often affected by disasters due to deforestation, drought or flood. this threatens the sustainability of production levels. table 1: net cereal production per capita per day (g) and normative consumption ratio in villages before and after programme implementation no indicators kebumen regency magelang regency kedungdowo village selogiri village candirejo village madukoro village before after before after before after before after 1 net cereal production per capita per day (g) 521 542 483 502 481 497 465 486 2 normative consumption ratio 0.58 0.55 0.62 0.60 0.62 0.60 0.65 0.62 source: authors’ own calculations (2013) note: before: before programme implementation; after: after programme implementation (2013)2 table 1 represents the indicators of food availability at selected sample village level. it showed a positive outcome after the implementation of the dmp programme. this specifies that, in the first indicator, the net cereal production per capita per day (g) in all villages increased after the implementation of programme. the highest increase was seen in madukoro (21 grams). the level of food security in the two villages was high. this result shows that the programme can increase agricultural production, especially in the cereal crops sector. this would be done with the support of training activities and efforts to increase rice productivity through field extension services, that is, provision of assistants in every village. the normative consumption ratio is a key indicator in the context of food security in a region. food insecurity of the area is already self-sufficient or does not use this indicator as a reference. the four villages showed that they have a medium surplus. after implementation of the dmp programme almost all the villages in the kebumen regency and magelang regency have shown a positive response to a decrease in the value of the normative consumption ratio, which can be interpreted as moving towards surplus food or food self-sufficiency. 2 classification for normative consumption ratio: > 1.5 high deficit, 1.25 1.50 moderate deficit, 1.00 1.25 low deficit, 0.75 1.00 low surplus, 0.50 0.75 moderate surplus, 0:50 high surplus asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 19-32 23 3.1.2. food access table 2 shows data before and after implementation of the dmp programme. the first indicator; percentage of household poverty, shows that most villages were in a very vulnerable category before implementation of the programme. after implementation, however, the percentage of poor households decreased significantly, especially in selogiri (29.8%). the programme encouraged the development of productive business activities, which increased the income of farmers. this programme is not the only factor contributing to poverty reduction, there are also other programmes, such as social safety assistance, social direct funds for community, rice for the poor and other activities that has encouraged the villages to become independent in food selfsufficiency. the other indirect impact of the dmp programme is the initiation of other programmes in villages. the lowest percentage of poor people (34.53%) after implementing the programme is found in candirejo. the villagers, apart from being farmers, are also engaged in tourism activities. three out of four villages have the potential to become tourism villages because of their natural resources. table 2: food access indicators in villages before and after programme implementation no indicators kebumen regency magelang regency kedungdowo village selogiri village candirejo village madukoro village before after before after before after before after 1 percentage of household poverty 61.54 56.46 69.42 39.60 42.36 34.53 61.14 35.56 2 percentage of people working less than 15 hour per weeks 12.36 8.62 14.65 12.59 9.26 8.21 10.32 7.85 3 percentage of those who did not finish elementary schooling 28.75 25.67 34.56 32.20 20.21 18.95 25.87 23.23 4 households without access to electricity (%) 3.53 3.24 3.50 3.45 1.45 1.22 1.32 1.27 5 the length of road per square kilometre 2.3 4.5 2.7 3.8 4.6 6.3 1.3 1.9 source: authors’ own calculations (2013) 3 the second indicator is the percentage of people who work less than 15 hours per week. this is the category of the community who are less productive. ideally, the average person works at least 35 hours a week, assuming more than five hours a day. kedungdowo shows a low percentage (3.74%), before the food self-sufficiency village programme was implemented prior to 2013. this situation shows that the duration of programme, which started from 2009, has been over an extended period and should have reached the stage of self-sufficiency. 3 note: before: before programme implementation; after: after programme implementation (2013) classification: indicator 1: percent of population below poverty line (%): ≥ 35 highly vulnerable, 25 35 vulnerable, 20 25 rather vulnerable, 15 20 – quite resistant, 10 15 resistant, 0 10 highly resistant. indicator 2: percentage of people working less than 15 hour per weeks (%): < 50 highly vulnerable, 50 30 vulnerable, 30 20 rather vulnerable, 20 10 – quite resistant, 10 12:01 resistant, 0:01 0.0 highly resistant. indicator 3: percentage who did not finish elementary schooling ; ≥ 50 highly vulnerable, 40 50 vulnerable, 30 40 rather vulnerable, 20 30 – quite resistant, 10 20 resistant, 0 10 highly resistant indicator 4: percentage of population without access to electricity; ≥ 50 highly vulnerable, 40 50 vulnerable, 30 40 rather vulnerable, 20 30 – quite resistant, 10 20 resistant, 0 10 highly resistant. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 19-32 24 when compared to the data of central java province, based on the number of hours of work in august 2013, a total of 10.95 million people (68.60%) worked over 35 hours per week, while the working population in the study area working less than 15 hours per week reached 1.33 million, equivalent to 8.30% (cbs, 2013). these findings show that on average, jobless people at village level are higher than the provincial level. hence, the policy should pay attention to the real condition of the people in the village by creating more job opportunities (katarzyna and raqif, 2017). the third indicator is the percentage people who did not complete elementary schooling. this is an important indicator in this study, since it is concerned with most of the population. the findings show interesting results, that a number of people completed the elementary schooling after the implementation of the programme. this means that the more they are educated, the more productive they are. further, the table revealed that only a few villagers are living without access to electricity (below 5%). 3.1.3. food utilization/consumption the indicator in food absorption is one-year life expectancy of children (nos. /1000); this is also the number of deaths of infants (0-12 months) per 1,000 live births in the period of one year. these indicators describe the health of the community and success rates of maternal and child health programmes, family planning, as well as environmental and socio-economic conditions. children with one-year life expectancy in the villages are below 12% which indicates a good health level and secured food supply at village level. a decreasing ratio of dying children is also observed after the implementation of the programme. table 3: food consumption indicators in villages before and after programme implementation no indicators kebumen regency magelang regency kedungdowo village selogiri village candirejo village madukoro village before after before after before after before after 1 one-year children life expectancy (nos./1000) 9.21 9.17 11.92 10.41 10.39 10.25 9.63 9.21 2 underweight children < 5 years (%) 16.70 14.1 17.34 16.65 14.87 13.4 15.93 15.46 3 illiterate women (%) 15.54 14.78 16.37 16.03 20.21 19.29 23.31 21.56 4 children not immunized (%) 19.23 19.11 24.28 23.87 21.34 21.02 10.23 10.12 5 people with access to safe water (%) 80.34 89.72 87.32 83.46 69.56 72.35 85.35 90.59 6 people residing more than five kilometers from the health center (%) 6.79 6.79 10.35 10.35 16.76 16.76 9.37 9.37 7 people to physician ratio 0.29 0.29 0.39 0.39 0.08 0.08 0.6 0.6 sources: authors’ own calculations (2013) 4 44 note: physician = health officer/midwife before: before programme implementation, after: after programme implementation (2013). classification: indicator 2: percent less toddler nutrition ; ≥ 55 highly vulnerable, 50 55 vulnerable, 45 50 rather vulnerable, 40 45 – quite resistant, 31 40 resistant, < 31 highly resistant indicator 3: percent of women literacy ; ≥ 40 highly vulnerable, 30 40 vulnerable, 20 30 rather vulnerable, 10 20 – quite resistant, 05 10 – resistant, < 05 highly resistant indicator 4: infant mortality; ≥ 55 highly vulnerable, 50 55 vulnerable, 45 50 rather vulnerable, 40 45 – quite resistant, 31 40 resistant, <31 highly resistant. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 19-32 25 the result shows that most villages are highly resistant (to absorption of food) due to less than 30% underweight children. the collaboration of dmp programme with other programmes, such as maternal and child health activities, and neighbourhood health centers in every village, has resulted in low percentages of underweight children in the four villages. the percentage of illiterate women in the villages in table 3 is in the range 14 23%, which falls under the category of ‘quite resistant’ (food absorption 10 20%), near to ‘rather vulnerable’ (food absorption 20 30%). before the implementation of the dmp programme, madukoro recorded the highest percentage for this indicator (23.31%). however, after implementation it decreased to 21.56%. the dmp programme is not aimed at purely educational purposes, rather it aims at providing more intensive assistance to farmers through extension field services which ultimately should contribute to the acquisition of modern farming skills by farmers. 3.2. problems and impacts of implementing the food self-sufficiency policy 3.2.1. problem of the self-sufficiency programme in villages social conditions in the study areas are mostly below average with key income coming from agricultural activities which justify the implementation of the dmp programme. the four villages are densely populated and some have more than 5,000 residents. a high population creates job competition, especially in the agricultural sector, because more people depend on one sector. the relatively low formal and informal education level of the people in most villages makes it necessary to undertake greater effort to increase the level of knowledge of the people in order for them to become more productive. special efforts in the dmp programme are expected to be incorporated to enable the rural economy to be developed through enhancing people’s knowledge of productive activities so as to develop society. socio-cultural attitudes of the people in the villages have contributed to the problems of implementing the programme. low participation in awareness-raising activities has led to a lag in the programme in two villages in the kebumen regency. this is partly due to the lack of village officials to publicize the programme to the community. the result is that the sustainability of the programme is difficult to achieve. in candirejo, the social and cultural aspects involve people’s inability to be creative in the utilisation of the available resources. for example, people sell pandan leaf directly to the merchants who visit the village. if the available resources such as pandan leaf were sold in the form of ‘handcrafts’, this will give added value to the resources and the people could earn more, rather than selling the resources in its ‘raw’ form. limited capital availability is also a major problem for many indonesian farmers. in the programme the government disbursed insufficient funds to meet the capital needs of the society. agricultural technology used by farmers in the most villages is thus, very rudimentary due to capital constraints yielding low productivity. the low literacy rate is another problem to managing a productive business. this is obviously seen in cultivation, maintenance and post-harvest activities in agriculture, animal husbandry and fishery. other problems include the low knowledge of market dynamics and the length of the marketing chain of agricultural products, which are sold at low prices by farmers. the programme connects the farmer activities into affinity groups’ engagement in agriculture-based small businesses, livestock, farms and home industry. all four villages under study have very few business networks and strategies for marketing local products to other business partners or investors who can push upwards the rural products to the district level and thus access reliable markets. lack of transportation facilities also affects market accessibility; this causes farmers to sell their products to merchants who visit the village (middlemen), rather than selling to district-level or regency indicator 5: percent of population with access clean water ; ≥ 70 highly resistant, 60 70 resistant, 50 60 – quite resistant, 40 50 rather vulnerable, 30 40 vulnerable, < 30 highly vulnerable indicator 6: percent of population living; > 5 km from the health center; ≥ 60 highly vulnerable, 50 60 vulnerable, 40 50 rather vulnerable, 30 40 – quite resistant, 20 30 resistant < 20 highly resistant. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 19-32 26 traders at higher prices. another problem is water availability which depends on topography as both villages use water flowing from the hills, and it is very difficult to obtain ground water directly. dry-land farming practices rely on harvested rain water. the problem indicators impacting poor/low income farmers’ groups are shown in the table 1a (appendix). the main reason for existing problems from agricultural service institutions’ perspective is the lack of understanding of the farmers’ challenges which is most significant at the local government level. the difficulty in policy implementation is because the farmers’ problems have not been well-explored and understood. this is because the civil servants have very limited time to work in the field. they normally suggest good plans on papers, but fail to implement them due to lack of information on the nature of the problem and possibly lack of commitment and funding too. the table further shows problems in the implementation of the dmp programme, affecting the performance of farmer’s groups in most villages. for example, ‘limited access to inputs’ makes farmers more dependent on other parties such as brokers/traders and this situation exacerbates the persistence of poverty. most villages need financial support to implement the dmp programme to be able to meet the farmers’ needs. lack of funds or capital contributes to the inability of farmer groups to invest and become innovative. other prominent issues are inadequate information, low levels of knowledge and skills, and uncertainty. access to information and knowledge are important to farmers, as these may help mostly poorly educated farmers to access good prices for their produces, which ultimately solves their problems. 3.2.2. impact of the self-sufficiency village programme at village sites table 4 shows the survey results before and after programme implementation in 2013. the data reveal the extent to which the programme has benefited people in the four villages in terms of social welfare, rural development, and poverty reduction. the income of the people has shown a relative increase in all four villages after programme implementation. although it increased at least 5-15%, this still benefits the farmer. the low involvement of farmers and rural communities in the dmp programme was one of the reasons why people’s income has been low. the programme needs more farmer involvement or participation so that the impact is more visible and realised. the main social problem in this research is poverty, because all other indicators (problems) tend to contribute to the context of poverty. the information below is taken and processed from the data of food self-sufficient villages and tabulation was done with village officers in each village and was then adjusted with data from village monographs and central bureau of statistics (cbs) at sub-district level. the level of poverty in each village declined after the introduction of the dmp programme by 8-40%. however, the poverty rate in the villages (34.5% to 56.5%) is relatively higher than the national average in rural areas (14.3% to 16.0%) of central java province (cbs, 2013). thus the provincial governments should introduce programmes that focus on empowering rural communities to promote their economic activities. one example is the implementation of the food self-sufficiency village programme which is complemented by other cross-sectoral programmes. the programme allocates funding for social assistance targeted at the poor households who participate in farmer groups. with these funds, productive business activities have been implemented, especially in agriculture, livestock, fisheries and small businesses, contributing to households earning income in the community. stimulation funding of 7143 us dollars per village from the government is hoping to become a revolving fund scheme for all citizens. the development funds managed by the financial institutions have increased after a few years of dmp programme implementation. this increase is not very large significantly, except for madukoro, which has shown a significant level of increase at 78%. the affinity group of the village has asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 19-32 27 managed to achieve a good performance. most of the funds in the villages are allocated to livestock such as goats. at the start, the food self-sufficiency village programme started with 40 goats and this number has increased to 89 goats during the research period. the increasing number of institutions for farmers’ groups has created a new cluster of affinity groups that can make village economies act independently. this is reflected in the table below, where there is an increase in farmer’s groups before and after programme implementation. these groups are important because of their strengthening effect on the community groups. it is part and parcel of building social capital, where a programme is initiated by groups which eventually become self-reliant. 3.3. responses to the food self-sufficiency programme for poverty reduction 3.3.1. comparative profile of the programmes in villages the findings indicate the variability of implementation in each village. although the villages are at different stages of implementation, they have virtually the same issues. poor household involvement in the dmp programme is a major issue in all villages. the procedures outlined in the programme’s activities are implemented by former leaders at district level involving over 60% of poor households for each activity. this initiative can have a direct impact on poor families in gaining their livelihood. the impacts of the dmp programme on two regencies are different. kebumen regency is less responsive to the programme compared to magelang. the study confirms that the impacts and adoption of the programme in kebumen are producing lower results compared to magelang. local government showed less concern for the programme in kebumen as compared to magelang regency. for example, the local government did not allocate a budget for a replication village in dmp programme in kebumen regency. the regency is dependent on the central government for funding. in contrast to this, in the magelang regency, local government allocated funds for replication villages for dmp programme development. in general, local government concern is important in the rural sector development, which depends on leadership quality in terms of paying attention and providing budget allocations. 3.3.2. indicators of outcomes of the self-sufficiency village programme the changes in the community after the implementation of the dmp programme are shown in table 5 and they are very impressive. the data show that there is a significant increase in the amount of funds managed by farmer groups. the increase of 78% in madukoro is unexpected, because it is a village replication which received social grants that are relatively small compared to other villages. this indicates that the dmp programme enables augmentation of the local economy through productive activities like animal husbandry (e.g., goats), home industries and fisheries. the result shows that other programmes associated with the implementation of the dmp programme are generating benefits every year. for example, some villages obtained funding of more than a 100% increase. the collective efforts in implementation of the intensive dmp villages programmes allocated to the madukoro and kedungdowo are working well for the endpoint of this research study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 19-32 28 table 4: impact of the self-sufficiency village programme at village sites no indicators kebumen regency magelang regency kedungdowo village selogiri village candirejo village madukoro village before after before after before after before after 1 average income/month (idr) 1,457,920 1,681,902 1,393,342 1,647,436 1,467,850 1,687,667 1,290,245 1,589,000 2 poverty (%) 61.54 56.46 69.42 39.62 42.36 34.53 61.14 35.56 3 village aid fund/year (million idr) 100 109 100 111.6 100 113.78 25 44.5 4 institutional/farmers groups 2 5 3 6 2 6 2 4 5 rice yields productivity (ton/ha) 2.65 2.87 4.58 4.84 3.76 3.88 3.87 4.23 6 livestock population (cows and goats) 139 171 245 261 598 805 195 268 7 average aid funding from other sources/year (millions idr) 65.3 146.9 193.1 264.7 76.86 123.42 46.39 93.67 8 infrastructure rice barns and roads rice barns and roads 3 km roads 2 km roads 9 participation of villagers in the programme 75 86 68 71 65 72 78 83 10 extension officer visit (per month) 1 5 2 4 1 6 2 4 sources: authors’ own calculations (2013) note: before: before desa mandiri pangan implementation, after: after desa mandiri pangan implementation (2013) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 19-32 29 table 5: community gains from the dmp programme gains indicator (%) kebumen regency magelang regency kedungdowo village selogiri village candirejo village madukoro village farmers knowledge about the programme 87 67 93 78 community response to the programme in terms of their actions 76 69 72 87 participation of community in the programme 86 71 72 83 sources: authors’ own calculations (2013) 4. conclusion composite food security analysis at household level shows the positive impacts of dmp programme implementation. this is shown by several indicators, including the rise of 4-7% in food availability, reduction in poverty by 8-40%, and decrease in people working fewer than 15 hours per week by 10-20%. in general, the impact of the dmp programme on the villages was positive. the level of poverty in each village has been significantly reduced by 8-40% after the introduction of the programme. the poverty rate in these villages (34.53% to 56.46%) is relatively higher than the national average in rural central java (14.32% as compared to 15.99%) (cbs, 2013). this is the justification for selecting the four villages to be the sites of the dmp programme. thus the expectation is that the national and provincial governments should introduce programmes of this nature in areas or villages where the gap between the poverty level at the grassroots and the national average is high. the programme introduced should be focused on empowering rural communities to enable them to carry out their economic activities. such empowerment should be complemented by other crosssectoral programmes that should be widely practiced throughout the entire country. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. reference ahmed, u. i., ying, l., 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(2017). an innovative approach to food security policy in developing countries. journal of innovation & knowledge 2, 39–44. doi: 10.1016/j.jik.2016.01.007. mukadasi, b. (2018). mixed cropping systems for sustainable domestic food supply of the smallholder farming communities in nakasongola district, central uganda. canadian journal of agriculture and crops, 3(1), 42-54. doi: 10.20448/803.3.1.42.54. rusliyadi, m., & libin, w. (2018). agriculture development programs for poverty reduction evidences from indonesia and china comparative study case. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 104-118. satriawan, b., dan, o., & henny, (2012). upaya pengentasan kemiskinan pada petani menggunakan model tindakan kolektif kelembagaan pertanian. jurnal ekonomi pembangunan, 13(1), 96-112. doi: 10.23917/jep.v13i1.185. weiler, a. m., hergesheimer, c., brisbois, b., wittman, h., yassi, a., & spiegel, j. m. (2014). food sovereignty, food security and health equity: a meta-narrative mapping exercise. health policy and planning, 30(8), 1078-1092. doi: /10.1093/heapol/czu109. https://openlibrary.org/publishers/dewan_ketahanan_pangan https://openlibrary.org/publishers/dewan_ketahanan_pangan https://openlibrary.org/search/subjects?q=jakarta,%20indonesia asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 19-32 31 appendix table 1a: matrix showing the problems in general at research village sites for poverty and programme implementation problems due to: problems indicators farmer groups agricultural service institutions village officers amount institutional issues problems problems problems poverty dependence on aid low investment capabilities function not optimal lack of understanding of farmers’ problems dependence on funds farmer groups limited access to input x x 2 imperfect information x x x x 4 limited availability of technology x x 2 low level of knowledge and skills x x x x 4 limitations of capital x x x 3 moral hazard behaviour x 1 price instability x x 2 uncertainty x x x x 4 price taker x x 2 high transaction cost x x x 3 poor organisational management x x x 3 agricultural service institutions limited human resources x x 2 limited funding x x x 3 village officers not the decision makers x x x 3 number 10 6 8 4 6 4 sources: primary data and modified from satriawan et al. (2012) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 19-32 32 table 1b: comparative profile of the programmes in villages indicators kebumen regency magelang regency kedungdowo village selogiri village candirejo village madukoro village year start 2009 2010 2012 2011 type of program core village core village core village replication alocation aid fund programme (million idr) 100 100 100 25 the number of farmer groups involved 4 4 6 1 the number of people involved 75 67 71 35 number of poor household 79 513 422 214 percentage poor household in the programme 65.8 68.4 71.3 75.2 kinds of activity in the programme livestock fishery financial agriculture small home industry empowerment society livestock agriculture small home industry empowerment society goat livestock women empowerment society goat livestock empowerment society sources: authors’ own calculations (2013) table 1c: some impact indicators on the community as a result of the self-sufficiency village programme impact indicators (%) kebumen regency magelang regency kedungdowo village (%) selogiri village (%) candirejo village (%) madukoro village (%) the number of farmer groups involved 100 100 100 25 increase in number of people (farmers) involved 15 17 5 32 increase of programme funds 9 11.6 13.78 78 reduction in poverty 8.25 29.8 7.83 25.58 increase in income of farmers 15.36 19.75 14.96 22.33 raising aid funds from other sources 124.96 37.079 60.57 101.92 sources: authors’ own calculations (2013) note: the percentage stated in the table shows the value after dmp programme implementation effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 62 marketing channel choice and its determinants among small-scale oil palm fruit farmers in akwa ibom state, the southern region of nigeria glory emmanul edeta sunday brownson akpanb ini-mfon vincent patrickc auniversity of uyo, department of agricultural economics, uyo, akwa ibom state, nigeria. b,cakwa ibom state university, department of agricultural economics, ikot akpaden, mkpat-enin, akwa ibom state, nigeria.  sundayakpan@aksu.edu.ng (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 16 february 2024 revised: 23 april 2024 accepted: 13 may 2024 published: 28 june 2024 keywords choice farmers marketing channel nigeria oil-palm fruit midllemen local market. the study identified preferred marketing channel choices and determinants among oil palm fruit farmers in the southern region of nigeria. three hundred oil palm fruit farmers were randomly selected using the multi-stage random sampling technique. descriptive statistics and logit regression techniques were employed to analyze the collected data. the socio-economic characteristics revealed that female farmers dominated oil palm fruit production in the region. the majority of the farmers were relatively young, literate, and had moderate household sizes but poor social capital accumulation. the study determined that the major marketing channels preferred by oil palm fruit farmers in the region were middlemen/agent marketing and direct sales in local markets. the empirical result identified oil palm fruit farmers’ education, experience, socialization, dependent ratio, non-farm income, farm income, land size, and access to credit as significant positive determinants of the choice of middlemen/agent marketing channel. conversely, the researchers identified household size as a significant negative determinant. moreover, marital status and household size significantly and positively influenced the choice of direct sales in the local market. on the contrary, the oil palm fruit farmers’ education, experience, non-farm income, farm income, farmers’ age, distance to the market, hectare of land, and access to farm credit have a significant negative relationship with the choice of direct sales in the local market. for a better and more efficient choice of marketing channel, oil palm farmers should improve their literacy level and build up social capital. contribution/originality: the research has provided insights into the types of marketing channels available to oil palm fruit farmers in the southern region of nigeria. the results generated new variables and confirmed those existing in the literature, thereby creating greater scope for policy making in agricultural marketing in the region. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i2.5109 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: edet, g. e., akpan, s. b., & patrick, i.mfon v. (2024). marketing channel choice and its determinants among small-scale oil palm fruit farmers in akwa ibom state, the southern region of nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2), 62–71. 10.55493/5005.v14i2.5109 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 2 (2024): 62-71. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9433-9579 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0458-028x https://orcid.org/0009-0007-9002-3060 mailto:sundayakpan@aksu.edu.ng http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 62-71 63 1. introduction the elaeis guineensis, popularly known as the oil palm tree, is considered one of the prominent cash crops grown in the southern region of nigeria (akpan, 2020; ini-mfon, sunday, samuel, daniel, & ubong, 2013; ojo, offiong, odionakhaine, baiyewu-teru, & allen, 2017; pind, 2011). the crop is part of the region's cultural heritage and dates back to the 1950s, when the country controlled nearly half of global exports. nigeria held a 43% global market share in the mid-1960s (pind, 2011). currently, nigeria is ranked 5th in global palm oil production, with an annual production of about 1.40 million metric ton which is below 2.0% of the global output in 2022 (fao, 2022). despite nigeria's abysmal performance in oil palm fruit and derivatives production, the relevance of the sub-unit has continued to rise, given its importance in job creation, industrialization drive, and multiple chains of income generation and livelihood sustenance (akpan, nkanta, & udoro, 2023; udoka, ekwere, akpan, & ugwu, 2019). the crop is rich and has a long chain of derivatives, namely: oil palm fruit, palm oil, palm kernel oil, palm kernel cake, palm kernel, palm kernel meal, and sludge, among others (owutuamor, iruo, & ologidi, 2019). palm oil is the most widely used oil palm fruit processing derivative. it is a major component in the daily dietary intake of the majority of nigerians. in the southern region of nigeria, oil palm fruit production, which is the parent raw material from which other important derivatives are obtained, is basically dominated by small-scale producers (about 80.00%). the majority of these small-scale farmers either inherit or purchase the wild plantations across the production belt area, spanning about 1.04 million hectares to 1.33 million hectares (market development in the niger delta (made), 2020). this group of oil palm fruit farmers occupied about 74.00% of the region's production area (market development in the niger delta (made), 2020). the remaining 26.00% consist of privately owned oil palm estates and other smallholder farmers participating in government schemes such as out-grower schemes, cooperative plantations, and other commercial based farmers cultivating improved ‘tenera’ varieties. according to market development in the niger delta (made) (2020) in the southern region of nigeria, the subsector provides jobs for more than one million smallholder plantation farmers, oil palm millers, processors, farm workers, market agents such as wholesalers, and retailers, among others. the sustenance of oil palm production is a serious concern, especially in the southern region of nigeria, where population density and poverty are mounting. farmers are vulnerable to input cost increases, income inequality, insufficient credit, price volatility, and an unfair marketing system, among others (akpan, 2020; akpan, okon, udo, & akpakaden, 2020; qiu, shi, he, & luo, 2021). moreover, the remoteness of the oil palm farms, poor infrastructure, and difficulties in accessing accurate market information on oil palm fruit price movement have persistently prevented farmers from having fair and competitive marketing activities (nwalieji & ojike, 2018). agricultural food marketing is one of the market activities that guarantees sustainable production, especially among small-scale producers in developing countries (borsellino, schimmenti, & el bilali, 2020). a good food marketing system is pivotal to the achievement of food security, poverty reduction, and a sustainable agricultural system, especially for the resource-poor small-scale farmers in rural areas (wong et al., 2017; woodhill, kishore, njuki, jones, & hasnain, 2022). in most developing countries, the marketing system has created job opportunities for youths, generated more income for participants, and widens the production scope of farmers (christiaensen, rutledge, & taylor, 2021; geza et al., 2021). despite this crucial role that the marketing system plays in agricultural production, small farmers in developing countries, who make up the majority of the agricultural population, sometimes face difficult marketing decisions (kamara, conteh, rhodes, & cooke, 2019; pawlak & kołodziejczak, 2020). inflating transaction costs and inadequate marketing infrastructure, including the existence of marketing roles and regulations, sometimes lead to difficulties in farmers' marketing decisions (hung & khai, 2020). also, sometimes, family sudden needs, distance to the market, lack of adequate assets, and skewness in market information affect the marketing decisions of small-scale farmers. as noted by xaba and masuku (2013), farmers' low bargaining power due to inadequate market information, exploitative and limited credit arrangements, or contractual arrangements has created opportunities for the majority of small-scale farmers in rural areas of developing countries to be exploited during the marketing process of products. therefore, the literature has provided evidence that the majority of farmers in developing countries are price takers and are unable to obtain a fair price for their products (abokyi, strijker, asiedu, & daams, 2020; assouto, houensou, & semedo, 2020; ncube, 2020). perhaps the inability of rural farmers in developing countries to adequately integrate into the marketing system and take full advantage of its benefits explains part of the reason why most of them are considered income and agricultural resource poor. the ability to identify and utilize the appropriate marketing mechanism is an effective way to rescue the oppressed rural farmers trapped by the unfavorable marketing system in the developing countries of africa (zhu, shen, tian, wu, & mu, 2022). this includes introducing an appropriate marketing channel that brings the greatest possible benefit to participants. such a decision to use a particular marketing channel depends on many factors, including, but not limited to, the availability of the channels or outlets, financial benefits, and the associated transaction costs. with changing marketing channels and patterns, a major concern for smallholder farmers in most developing countries, including nigeria, is how to survive and maximize their benefits. the situation of oil palm fruit farmers is precarious given the seasonality of production and the bulky nature of their products, oil palm fruit farmerssituation is precarious. furthermore, oil palm fruit farmers' choice of a particular marketing channel is extremely important and a fruitful path to the sustainability of the business, as they are considered resource poor and there is a high prevalence of poverty and low wages in rural areas. the key points of this study are identification of the available marketing channels, reasons for adopting the chosen channel, and factors affecting it among oil palm fruit farmers. following the importance of this issue, several pieces of literature have given an insight into the choice and determinants of marketing channels used by small scale farmers in developing countries. for example, harrizon, benjamin, patrick, and anthony (2016) showed that farmers' age, gender, years of education, and farming experience significantly influenced the choice of tea marketing channel in kericho district, kenya. in tanzania, mmbando, wale, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 62-71 64 and baiyegunhi (2017) showed that household wealth, access to agricultural credit, extension services, accumulation of social capital, age, education, and price of products influenced smallholder farmers' choice of marketing channels. also in tanzania, musara, musemwa, mutenje, mushunje, and pfukwa (2018) found that product price, distance to the market, and access to extension services positively influenced sorghum farmers’ decision to sell to traders rather than local markets. in nigeria, opata (2018) identified farmers’ age, storage cost, quantity of cocoyam marketed, distance to the market, purpose of farming, and farm size as significant factors influencing the choice of household cocoyam market outlet in the southeast region. in malawi, chikuni and kilima (2019) reported that maize price, distance to the market, purpose of farming, and access to agricultural extension services have a positive impact on maize farmers’ market participation, whereas farmers’ sex and low education level have a negative effect. nxumalo, oduniyi, antwi, and tekana (2019) identified age, marital status, gender, access to credit, education, and farming experience as important determinants of market channel choice among maize and sunflower farmers in the north west province of south africa. mgale and yunxian (2020) in tanzania found that rice farmers' education, access to credit, access to price information, their own means of transportation, and perceived buyers' trust are positive and important influencing factors in farmers' choice of millers/wholesalers sale outlet instead of the village collectors, whereas the distance to the market had a negative effect. similarly, kaimba, muendo, and mithofer (2020) reported that gender, age, marital status, years of experience, product price, distance to market, transport cost, and access to credit influenced baobab collectors' choice of marketing channels in kenya. donkor, garnevska, siddique, and donkor (2021) in ghana also confirmed that a lower percentage of rice farmers sold their processed rice directly to processors and also identified farm size, production price, market information, and access to agricultural credit as factors that increased the participation of rice farmers in direct marketing, whereas payment terms and ownership of transportation reduced their participation in direct marketing. mengstu, alemu, dagnew, and worku (2023) analyzed the factors influencing the choice of alternative markets for bamboo in ethiopia. the result showed that family size, land size, quantity of culm produced, farming experience, and distance to market influence the likelihood of a farmer's choice of marketing outlet. in western kenya, omondi and orinda (2023) identified the determinants of preferred markets for smallholder farmers and traders of domesticated and field-collected edible insects. the findings identified gender, farm-gate sales, and market training as key factors. recently, gachoka, kingori, and wanja (2023) identified the determinants of market choice for mango and passion fruit farmers in kenya. the results showed that market distance, household size, age, and years of schooling have a positive and significant influence on the choice of market outlet. despite their importance and uniqueness (i.e., seasonality in production), the marketing of oil palm fruits appears to have received no attention from the limited literature available. again, the literature available in nigeria is old and sparse. therefore, we need to update the available information to align with current realities and introduce new policy variables. therefore, this study was designed to address the identified research gaps and generate additional variables to help address the identified problem in the subunit. therefore, the study specifically aims to identify the marketing channels and the determinants of choosing a particular channel among the oil palm fruit farmers in the southern region of nigeria. 2. research methodology 2.1. study area the study was conducted in the abak and uyo agricultural zones of akwa ibom state in the southern region of nigeria. the state is located in the coastal region and has six agricultural zones. the state's other agricultural zones are oron, ikot, ekpene, eket, and etinan. abak agricultural zone consists of five (5) local government areas, namely etim ekpo, abak, oruk anam, ukanafun, and ika local government areas, while uyo zone consists of uyo, uruan, ibesikpo asutan, ibiono ibom, and itu local government areas. 2.2. sample size selection the study used the cochran (1963) method of sample size selection. from the large population of small-scale oil fruit farmers in the study areas, a representative sample was derived using the formula given in equation 1. 𝑆𝑥 = 𝑧2𝜌(1−𝜌) 𝐷2 (1) where sx is the estimated representative sample population; z represents the 95% confidence interval (1.96); “ρ” is the percentage of oil palm fruit farmers in the total population of cash crop farmers (approximately 80%) in the study areas; and d represents the absolute error at a 5% probability of type 1 error. equation 2 determines the representative population for the study. 𝑆𝑛 = (1.96)20.80(1− 0.80) (0.05)2 = 246 (2) the calculation indicated that the study required a total of 246 oil palm fruit farmers. however, to ensure equal distribution of respondents across the study areas, we scaled up the sample size to three hundred. therefore, the study selected three hundred oil palm fruit farmers from various study areas as the total sample size. 2.3. sampling technique and method of data collection a multi-stage random sampling technique was used in selecting the oil palm fruit farmers in the study area. in the first stage, a purposive sampling technique was used to select four local government areas in the ikot ekpene agricultural zone and three local government areas in the uyo agricultural zone. the study utilized a total of seven (7) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 62-71 65 local government areas. in this stage, the purposive sampling technique was intended to target and capture heavy production areas within the state. in the second stage, we identified high production intensity areas within the local government areas and randomly sampled a predetermined number of villages, as indicated in table 1. the next phase was a random sampling of the oil palm fruit farmers in each of the selected villages. note that the total number of oil palm fruit farmers sampled in each local government area represents about 20% to 25% of the total number of oil palm fruit farmers in that area. hence, an equal proportion range was maintained for equity in the number of respondents used in each local government area selected for the study. a total of three hundred (300) oil palm fruit farmers were randomly sampled and used for the study. table 1. distribution of respondents. sample areas no. of villages farmers per village total sampled percentage of total ukanafun 7 10 70 23.33 etimekpo 6 10 60 20.00 orukanam 7 10 70 23.33 ika 4 10 40 13.33 ibiono ibom 5 4 20 6.67 ibesikpoasutan 5 4 20 6.67 itu 5 4 20 6.67 total 39 300 100.00 the oil palm fruit farmers provided the primary data. the primary data collection instrument was a structured questionnaire, which was supplemented by focus group discussions with some farmer groups and key informants in villages. the questionnaire sought information on the socioeconomic characteristics of the oil palm fruit farmers, marketing decisions, and factors affecting their marketing decisions in the study area. 2.4. method of data analysis the specific objectives of the study guided the analysis of the data or information collected from the oil palm fruit farmers. descriptive statistics such as means, percentages, and frequency tables were employed to describe the socioeconomic characteristics and marketing decision options of the oil palm fruit farmers in the study area. the determinants of the use of a particular marketing channel by the oil palm fruit farmers were analyzed using a binary logit model equation 3 explicitly presents the specified model. 𝑀𝐴𝐶 = ( 𝑃𝑖 1−𝑃𝑖 ) = 𝑍𝑖 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑋1 + 𝛽2𝑋2 + 𝛽3𝑋3 + +𝛽4𝑋4 + 𝛽5𝑋5 + 𝛽6𝑋6 + 𝛽7𝑋7 + 𝛽8𝑋8 + 𝛽9𝑋9 + 𝛽10𝑋10 + 𝛽11𝑋11 + 𝛽12𝑋12 + 𝛽13𝑋13 + 𝛽14𝑋14 + 𝑈𝑖 (3) when the other covariates remain fixed, the marginal effect of the logit captures the immediate impact of a shock in any explanatory variable on the likelihood of an oil palm fruit farmer using a particular marketing channel. these estimates are obtained by computing the derivatives of the conditional mean function with respect to explanatory variables or probabilities. the estimation of the marginal effect is presented in equation 4. 𝛿𝑀𝐴𝐶𝑖 𝛿𝑋𝑖 = 𝐸{𝑌|𝑋} 𝛿𝑋𝑖 = 𝑓(𝑍𝑖)𝛽𝑖 = 𝑓(𝑋𝛽𝑖)𝛽𝑖 (4) variables used in equation 3 are defined in table 2. mac = the probability of using a particular marketing channel (dummy; 1 for the marketing channel used and 0 for otherwise). table 2. description of explanatory variables. s/n variable symbol unit expected sign 1 marital status x1 dummy positive or negative 2 years of formal education x2 years positive or negative 3 farming experience x3 years positive or negative 4 socialization of farmers x4 years positive 5 household size x5 number positive or negative 6 household dependent ratio x6 ratio negative 7 non-farm income x7 naira positive 8 age of a farmer x8 years positive or negative 9 farm income of a farmer x9 naira positive 10 distance to market x10 km positive or negative 11 hectare of land own by a farmer x11 hectares positive 12 access to extension services x12 number of times positive 13 access to farm credit x13 naira positive 14 farmer’s sex x14 dummy positive or negative note: dependent ratio = children less than 15 years plus adult greater than 65 years divided by the household size. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 62-71 66 3. results and discussion 3.1. the social and economic characteristics of oil palm fruit farmers table 3 presents summaries of the socioeconomic characteristics of oil palm fruit farmers. the results showed that the majority of oil palm fruit farmers were women, accounting for about 56.67% of farmers. the results indicate that in the study area, the female gender is the dominant gender in oil palm fruit production. they are likely to participate in the business to provide additional income for the family. the age distribution of oil palm fruit farmers revealed that they are relatively young and active, with an average age of 49.10 years. this finding leads to the conclusion that it is imperative to increase the participation of younger (youth) farmers in oil palm fruit production in the study area. the marital status of oil palm fruit farmers shows that about 83.33% of farmers are married. this means that oil palm fruit production has a strong affinity with married households. this is likely due to the availability of cheap family labor, which is advantageous given the semi-labor-intensive nature of oil palm fruit production in the study area. additionally, the findings revealed that oil palm fruit farmers in the region had an average agricultural experience of 17.50 years. this implies that oil palm fruit production in the study area is a well-established and sustainable enterprise. furthermore, the distribution of membership in social organizations among oil palm fruit farmers showed a low participation profile with an average of 2.65 years. more than 50% of farmers do not belong to any social organization. this means that in the study area, the social capital available to oil palm fruit farmers is relatively low. a good social organization can help farmers improve access to production information, market potential, and inputs, while also promoting cooperation among members. the household size distribution among oil palm fruit farmers showed an average family size of seven (7) members. this further demonstrates the importance of family labor in the study area's oil palm fruit production. with the presence of inelastic demand for hired labor in most rural communities and ruralurban migration among youths, family labor has become the most available source of labor for small-scale farmers in the region. furthermore, the result showed that more than 90.00% of oil palm farmers have attended at least some formal training. the average duration of formal education is around 9.20 years, which puts it in the category of secondary education. this means that the majority of oil palm fruit farmers are literate, or can read and write. table 3. the socio-economic characteristic s of oil palm fruit farmer. characteristic description frequency percentage mean gender (dummy) male 130 43.33 dummy female 170 56.67 total 300 100.00 age (years) < 39 30 10.00 49.10 39–50 190 63.33 >50 80 26.67 total 300 100.00 marital status (dummy) married 250 83.33 dummy others 50 16.67 total 300 100.00 farming experience (years) < 10 15 5.00 17.50 10–30 280 93.33 >30 5 1.67 total 300 100.00 membership of social organization (years) 0 155 51.67 2.65 1 – 3 65 21.67 4–10 70 23.33 >10 10 3.33 total 300 100.00 household size (number) < 3 6 2.00 7.00 3 – 5 44 14.67 > 5 250 83.33 total 300 100.00 educational level (years) no formal education 9 3.00 9.20 primary school 156 52.00 secondary school 95 31.67 tertiary 40 13.33 total 300 100.00 annual farm income (n) less than 10,000 30 10.00 143,069.00 10,000 – 50,000 120 40.00 50,001 – 100000 141 47.00 greater than 100,000 9 3.00 total 300 100.00 non-farm income less than 10,000 9 3.00 153,111.54 10,000 – 50,000 81 27.00 50,001 – 100000 120 40.00 greater than 100,000 90 30.00 total 300 100.00 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 62-71 67 the acquisition of formal education is believed to have a positive effect on decision-making ability and resource utilization in business management. moreover, the study area documented an average annual farm income of n143,069.00, or $158.92, for the oil palm fruit farmers. this justifies the small-scale nature of the oil palm fruit farmers selected for the study. it is crucial to acknowledge that the production of oil palm fruit is seasonal, and the prevailing climatic factors, among other factors, influence the obtained output. likewise, the average annual non-farm income of the oil palm farmers stood at n153,111.54, or $170.03, which is higher than the mean annual farm income reported earlier. the plausible explanation for the difference in income sources is the seasonality of the production of oil palm fruit. hence, the involvement of the oil palm farmers in non-farm activities is an adaptation strategy to cushion the effect of income lack, especially during the off-season. 3.2. the marketing channel options for oil palm fruit farmers the study identified two major sources of marketing channels, mostly preferred by the oil palm fruit farmers in the study area. the summaries of the oil palm fruit farmers’ responses are presented in table 4. table 4. marketing channel used by the oil palm fruit farmers. marketing channel frequency percentage direct sales in the local market 105 35.00 sales through the middle men/agent 195 65.00 total 300 100.00 source: field survey (2023). the result shows that the majority (65.00%) of oil palm fruit farmers preferred to sell their oil palm fruits to middlemen or agents, and only 35.00% preferred to sell directly in the local market. the incentives offered by buyers may influence the decision to sell to middlemen or agents. the literature documents the fact that in order to initiate a viable transaction with the oil palm fruit farmers, some of these intermediaries offered attractive incentives such as advance payments, contractual agreements, and the provision of inputs, among others (opata, 2018). since most oil palm fruit farmers are resource-poor, they are easily lured by the lobbying of middlemen to reap the benefits in the short term, whereas in the long run, such an arrangement becomes exploitative and harmful to the oil palm fruit farmers. however, selling directly to a local market is less preferred by oil palm fruit farmers in the study area. in the literature from other regions of the country, distance to the point of sale/market and taxes levied in the local market have been cited as triggering factors, among others (musara et al., 2018; opata, 2018). 3.3. determinants of the preferred marketing channel for oil palm fruit farmers 3.3.1. determinants of the choice of middlemen/agents marketing channel the determinants of the preferred marketing channel among oil palm fruit farmers were estimated. the results in table 5 show the determinants of using middlemen or agents as the preferred source of marketing for oil palm fruit farmers. the logit estimates consist of the coefficients and marginal effects of the explanatory variables on the probability of using middlemen or agents as the marketing channel. the diagnostic statistics revealed a mcfadden rsquared of 0.6975. this indicates that the specified explanatory variables determine about 69.75% of the variability in the choice of the middleman or agent. the variance inflation factor (vif) is less than the threshold of 10 units, signifying that there is no significant presence of multicollinearity among the specified variables. the empirical result shows that the years of formal education acquired by oil palm fruit farmers have a significant positive relationship with the probability of using the middleman/agent channel in marketing the oil palm fruit in the study area. the result implies that a year-long increase in an oil palm farmer's formal education would likely increase the probability of choosing a middleman or agent channel by 0.016 units. the possible reason for the result could be the fact that an increase in years of formal education will enhance access to better marketing information and also increase the bargaining power of the farmers. furthermore, an increase in the number of years of formal education for oil palm fruit farmers provides an additional incentive to access innovation and enhances their capacity to prepare a strong business plan.. the results corroborate harrizon et al. (2016), nxumalo et al. (2019), mgale and yunxian (2020) and gachoka et al. (2023). the slope coefficient of the farming experience has a significant positive relationship with the choice of using the middlemen/agent channel. this implies that, a 10.00% increase in farming experience would likely result in a 0.03% increase in the probability of using the middlemen/agent channel. based on the accumulated experience that the oil palm fruit farmers have in marketing their oil palm fruits, the result suggests that the most experienced farmers tend to prefer the middleman/agent channel over the alternative channel. the findings align with the submissions of harrizon et al. (2016), nxumalo et al. (2019), kaimba et al. (2020), and mengstu et al. (2023). the household size has a significant negative correlation with the choice of middlemen/agent channel. this means that as the family size increases, the probability of using the middleman/agent channel declines by 0.009 units. as a result, the findings suggest that oil palm fruit farmers with larger households are less likely to sell their palm fruits to middlemen or agents. the large household size likely provides cheap labor for transporting or processing the fruits to the local market. the findings agree with the assertions of mengstu et al. (2023) and gachoka et al. (2023). the relationship between farmers’ years of membership in social organizations and their choice of middleman or agent channel is shown to be positive. this means that the probability of using the middlemen/agents channel increases as farmers' years in social organizations increase. to be precise, a year-long increase in farmer membership in a social organization would lead to a 0.0001 increase in the probability of using the middlemen/agent channel. it is likely that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 62-71 68 the increase in farmers’ socialization would expose them to different forms of marketing channels and information sharing, among other social capitals. similar results have been reported by mmbando et al. (2017). table 5. determinants of the use of middlemen/agent as marketing channel. variable coefficient std. error z slope p-value vif constant 0.722 1.206 0.599 0.549 marital status -0.081 0.261 -0.310 -0.019 0.757 1.075 education 0.067 0.018 3.829*** 0.016 0.000 1.199 experience 0.012 0.002 6.316*** 0.003 0.000 1.395 socialization 0.080 0.030 2.658*** 0.0001 0.001 1.120 family size -0.041 0.016 -2.563** -0.009 0.022 1.349 dependent ratio 0.876 0.517 1.696* 0.216 0.090 1.265 non-farm income 0.020 0.011 1.800* 0.487 0.071 1.075 farmer’s age 0.012 0.017 0.706 0.003 0.465 1.476 farm income 0.022 0.010 2.200** 0.496 0.051 1.091 distance to the market 0.171 0.348 0.492 0.042 0.623 1.224 hectare of land 1.081 0.576 1.878* 0.266 0.061 1.122 extension agent -0.096 0.108 -0.892 -0.024 0.375 1.062 access to credit 0.028 0.011 2.545** 0.069 0.024 1.267 farmer’s sex -0.288 0.242 -1.192 -0.071 0.233 1.012 mcfadden r-squared 0.698 log-likelihood −198.061 likelihood ratio test chi-square(14) 15.435 [0.349] number of cases ‘correctly predicted’ 176 (58.7%) note: *significant at 10% ** significant at 5% *** significant at 1% probability level. source: data from field survey, 2023. the result revealed that the oil palm fruit farmers’ household dependent ratio, non-farm income, and farm income have significant positive relationships with the choice of middlemen/agents channel. for instance, a unit increase in the oil palm fruit farmers’ household dependent ratio, non-farm income, and farm income would lead to an increase in the probability of utilizing the middlemen/agent channel by 0.216, 0.487, and 0.496 units, respectively. an increase in the household dependent ratio will likely reduce the quantity of household labor and possibly increase household expenditure. to avoid escalating household expenditures, selling to the middleman/agent channel will likely be the best option. similarly, an increase in both non-farm and farm income for oil palm fruit farmers would enhance their ability to explore new marketing channels beyond the conventional local market channels. however, it is noticed that the most important determinants of the choice of middlemen/agents marketing channel based on the magnitude of the slope coefficient are the farm income and non-farm income variables. the result further revealed that the farmers’ land size and access to farm credit also relate positively to the use of the middlemen/agents channel by oil palm fruit farmers. this implies that as access to farm credit and land size increases, the likelihood of utilizing the middlemen/agent marketing channel also increases. to be precise, a unit increase in farm land and farm credit would result in a 0.266 and 0.069 unit increase in the probability of oilpalm fruit farmers preferring the middlemen/agent marketing channel, respectively. the results are substantiated by donkor et al. (2021) and mengstu et al. (2023). 3.3.2. determinants of the choice of direct sales in the local market the results in table 6 show the logit estimates of the choice of direct sales in the local market. the diagnostic statistics gave a mcfadden r-squared of 0.6718. this indicates that the specified explanatory variables determine about 67.18% of the variability in the choice of direct selling in the local market. the variance inflation factor (vif) is below the threshold of 10 units, meaning that there is no significant multicollinearity among the specified explanatory variables. the empirical finding revealed that the oil palm fruit farmers’ marital status and household size have a positive relationship with the choice of direct sale in the local market. this implies that, as these variables increase, oil palm fruit farmers’ willingness to sell directly in the local market increases correspondingly. a unit increase in marital status and household members would increase the probability of utilizing the option of direct sale to the local market by 0.085 and 0.007 units, respectively. the increase in household size creates the advantage of having cheap family labor, which helps transport the oil palm fruits to the nearby local market. the results are validated by nxumalo et al. (2019); kaimba et al. (2020); mengstu et al. (2023); and gachoka et al. (2023). in addition, the result shows that years of formal education, agricultural experience, and social organization membership among oil palm fruit farmers have a significant negative association with the likelihood of using direct sales in the local market. the result implies that as oil palm farmers' years of formal education, agricultural experience, and social organization membership increase, the chance of using direct sales in the local market decreases by 0.009, 0.006, and 0.003 units, respectively. perhaps improving formal training for oil palm farmers will enhance their analytical skills, enabling them to adopt better alternatives than direct sales in the local market. increasing the experience of oil palm farmers would enable them to assess the financial and other advantages of direct sales and draw asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 62-71 69 comparisons with alternative options. likewise, an increase in the socialization of farmers would expose them to better information sources and create an opportunity to explore the benefits of other marketing channel sources. however, harrizon et al. (2016), mmbando et al. (2017), nxumalo et al. (2019), mgale and yunxian (2020), kaimba et al. (2020), mengstu et al. (2023) and gachoka et al. (2023), have submitted similar findings. table 6. determinants of the choice of direct sales in the local market. variable coefficient std. error z p-value slope vif constant 1.647 1.248 1.319 0.181 marital status 0.357 0.174 2.051** 0.047 0.085 1.090 education -0.038 0.018 -2.106** 0.042 -0.009 1.263 experience -0.026 0.011 -2.367** 0.030 -0.006 1.403 socialization -0.011 0.029 -0.369 0.713 -0.003 1.127 family size 0.038 0.020 1.924* 0.081 0.007 1.402 dependent ratio -0.261 0.553 -0.471 0.625 -0.063 1.267 non-farm income -0.024 0.009 -2.667*** 0.010 -0.006 1.075 farmer’s age -0.029 0.012 -2.456** 0.024 -0.007 1.480 farm income -0.028 0.013 -2.154** 0.040 -0.048 1.082 distance to the market -0.556 0.155 -3.583*** 0.008 -0.137 1.227 hectare of land -0.119 0.060 -1.999* 0.074 -0.246 1.131 extension agent 0.153 0.120 1.281 0.208 0.037 1.062 access to credit -0.031 0.007 -4.429*** 0.000 -0.074 1.407 farmer’s sex 0.002 0.005 0.400 0.492 0.479 1.319 mcfadden r-squared 0.672 log-likelihood −194.898 likelihood ratio test chi-square(14) 16.319 [0.294] number of cases 'correctly predicted' 178 (59.3%) note: *significant at 10% ** significant at 5% *** significant at 1% probability level. sources: data from field survey 2023. the findings also revealed that oil palm fruit farmers’ non-farm income, age, and distance to the market, as well as access to credit, have a significant negative relationship with the probability of choosing direct sales to the local market option. about 0.006%, 0.007%, 0.137%, and 0.074% decreases in the probability of utilizing the direct sales to the local market channel would occur for every unit increase in oil palm fruit farmers’ non-farm income, age, and distance to the market, as well as access to credit, respectively. an increase in non-farm income could potentially boost the farmers' innovative ability to select a more effective marketing channel. also, an increase in the farmers’ age might limit their mobility and capacity to transport the oil palm fruits to the local market for sale, hence opting for an alternative channel. the impact of the "distance to the market" is evident. the longer the distance to the market, the higher the transaction cost and the less efficient the direct sale in the market option. moreover, increased access to farm credit by oil palm farmers would also increase their outputs and their ability to adopt a more efficient marketing channel.. the results are similar to the empirical findings of harrizon et al. (2016), mmbando et al. (2017), musara et al. (2018), opata (2018), chikuni and kilima (2019), nxumalo et al. (2019), mgale and yunxian (2020), kaimba et al. (2020), mengstu et al. (2023) and gachoka et al. (2023). furthermore, the findings showed that farm income and hectares of oil palm farm land are significant negative determinants of the choice of direct sales in the local market by the oil palm farmers. by implication, an increase in these variables would lead to a corresponding decline in the probability of using direct sales in the local market. for instance, a unit increase in farm income will result in a 0.048 unit reduction in the probability of using direct sale in the local market, while a unit increase in hectares of land will cause a 0.248 unit decrease in the probability of using direct sale in the local market option. this result is likely due to the strong correlation between the expansion of the enterprise or output and increases in farm income and hectares of land. the existence of economies of scale among oil palm farmers will necessitate a better and more efficient marketing channel, reducing the likelihood of using direct sales in the local market. the finding is supported by donkor et al. (2021). 4. conclusion the study identified two major marketing channels used by oil palm fruit farmers in the southern region of nigeria. however, the study confirmed that oil palm fruit farmers prefer the middleman/agent marketing channel over direct sales in the local market. the analysis of the social and economic characteristics of oil palm fruit farmers revealed that women dominated the subsector. the majority of the farmers were relatively young, well-experienced, literate, and married, with an average household size of seven members. the social capital formation among the majority of oil palm farmers in the region is poor, but there is an increasing preference for non-farm income-generating activities. what factors affected the decision to sell oil palm fruits through the middlemen/agent channel? the binary logit regression showed that education, farmers' experience, socialization, dependent ratio, non-farm income, farm income, hectare of land, and access to farm credit were all important positive factors. conversely, we identified household size as a significant negative determinant. similarly, marital status and household size positively and significantly determined oil palm fruit farmers' preference for using the channel of direct sales in the local market. on the other asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 62-71 70 hand, oil palm fruit farmers’ education, experience, non-farm income, farm income, farmers’ age, distance to the market, hectare of land, and access to farm credit have a significant negative influence on the choice of direct sales in the local market. the findings recommend improving the illiteracy levels of oil palm fruit farmers and enhancing their social capital. adult education in the rural areas where oil palm fruit farmers reside could achieve this. the provision of infrastructure in rural areas will also enhance the choice of marketing channel among oil palm fruit farmers in the region. increased access to credit will also improve their ability to make positive decisions about marketing channels. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the akwa ibom state university, ikot akpaden, mkpat-enin, nigeria has granted approval for this study on 9 november 2023 (ref. no. aksu-09-011-023). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abokyi, e., strijker, d., asiedu, k. f., & daams, m. n. 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brinjal plants 40 vertical and horizontal coordination in developing countries’ agriculture: evidence from vietnam and implications tien dung khong school of economics, can tho university, vietnam.  ktdung@ctu.edu.vn article history abstract received: 4 october 2021 revised: 21 january 2022 accepted: 7 february 2022 published: 28 february 2022 keywords collective actions linkages mekong river delta rice farming small farmers value chain. despite policy reforms and the integration of various linkages in rice production by the vietnamese government, small-scale farmers' (small farmers’) access to the market is limited. a value chain link is a powerful tool for improving small farmers' market access and competitiveness. the benefits of horizontal and vertical coordination on farm household performance were investigated using a dataset of 160 farmers. twenty-two stakeholders were also directly interviewed to analyze the value chain and farmers' access to markets in the mekong river delta, where 75% of people live in rural areas and contribute to 90% vietnam's total rice production. according to our findings, farmers' profits are higher than in the past and total chain economic value is more efficient when farmers participate in vertical or horizontal coordination. logit regression revealed that the determinants of farmers' decision to participate in cooperatives are training and expected benefits obtained from cooperatives. as a result, collective actions, such as contracting firms and cooperative engagement, are required to assist farmers in accessing the market. the findings also show that participation in value chain links, coordination, and integration benefits food companies significantly. however, financial assistance and insurance are required to adequately cover farmers' production costs and secure contract firms. furthermore, a written contract should be made to strengthen the value chain. cooperatives or farmers' organizations can be used as intermediaries to improve vertical and horizontal coordination by establishing links between small farmers and other market stakeholders. contribution/originality: this study contributes in the existing literature on value chains in developing countries. it employed a quantitative dataset stratified by vertical and horizontal coordination and reveals the determinants of farmers’ decisions to participate in linkages. the findings will be used to enhance the effectiveness and upgrade value chain performance. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i1.4429 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: tien dung khong (2022). vertical and horizontal coordination in developing countries’ agriculture: evidence from vietnam and implications. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1), 40-52. 10.55493/5005.v12i1.4429 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction since 1986, vietnam, a country with a typical wet rice agricultural civilization, has reformed its agricultural policy and introduced coordination among farmers and those in the value chain. this country's rice sector has promised changes in quantity, switched from importing to exporting, and is now among the top five rice exporters globally (general statistics office, 2020). the mekong river delta (mrd) is vietnam's rice-producing belt. with a triumphant story of effective, transformative policies in this sector, mrd farmers contribute to the country's food security and asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 1 (2022): 40-52. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2274-2123 mailto:ktdung@ctu.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 40-52 41 exports to africa and rice-importing countries including the philippines and indonesia (general statistics office, 2020). although some rice products have recently begun to approach higher markets, such as australia, the united states, and european countries, the quality of rice products has not been expected to meet expectations. however, due to pollution, rising input costs, urbanization, and previous policies focused on improving rice production and food security, the agriculture sector is currently dealing with serious issues (world bank, 2012). although many innovation programs have been implemented and developed, such as three reduced three gains (3r3g), small farmer large field (sflf), and the provision of more opportunities and higher benefits to those participating in the reform value chain, previous research has revealed market access and chain constraints (general statistics office, 2020; min, 2011). vietnam has progressed from a poor agricultural country to one of the top five rice-exporting countries globally. however, mrd rice farmers are receiving only a tiny amount of added value from the value chain, which is insufficient to support their livelihood (general statistics office, 2020). as a result, they must seek income diversification through non-farm activities and relocation to other areas. mrd is also one of the most vulnerable areas to climate change, especially during the dry season when fresh water is scarce (khong, young, loch, & thennakoon, 2018). in 2019 the country exported 6.37 million tons of rice, worth 2.81 billion dollars (general statistics office, 2020). the mrd has long been known as the country's largest food bowl and a vital rice-growing region, covering approximately 4 million hectares (nguyen, 2015). the mrd produces more than half of vietnam's rice and accounts for nearly all of the country's rice exports (people's daily, 2015). in some provinces in the mrd, farmers propagate short-term rice varieties with high yield and good quality for large-scale production. drought, flooding, saline intrusion, and other climate-related events have directly impacted the region's output, post-harvest preservation, and product consumption. from december 2019 to february 2020, the national center for hydro-meteorological forecasting predicted that the mekong river's flow into the mrd would be minimal, potentially shortening flow from the mekong river upstream to the mrd by 30–45%. as a result, the mrd would see significant saline intrusion that will happen more rapidly and forcefully, especially in coastal areas such as bac lieu, ben tre, hau giang, kien giang, soc trang, and tra vinh (khong, loch, & young, 2020). on the other hand, pesticides are used by most farmers in the mrd to control pests and diseases. rice yield quality and competitiveness are low due to limited and scattered production. to accommodate this recent situation, an increase in rice quality is required. many businesses now purchase rice for export, albeit in small quantities compared to the mrd's rice production. to increase the economic value of rice, vietnam must concentrate on the areas of production and consumption, allowing farmers to make more money and improve their lives. while previous studies have looked at the economic value of the rice value chain without making comparisons or using a qualitative approach to analyze coordination, quantitative data and comparison of vertical and horizontal coordination have revealed little about the rice value chain. as a result, more research is required to understand the value chain's benefits and drawbacks to understand better the current stakeholders involved. the results of this study will help the vietnamese government and policymakers issue future governance and policy implications. therefore, to improve the value of high-quality rice in the value chain, promote acreage expansion, and improve economic efficiency for each household, this study first maps and estimates the additional weight and benefits of stakeholders involved in the value chain stratified by vertical and horizontal coordination. policy implications are then drawn from these findings. to date, this is the first study the researchers are aware of that evaluates the rice value chain in mrd vietnam and compares different linkages using a quantitative dataset. the results of this study can also be used as a foundation for other developing countries to consider when developing agricultural export policies in the future. 2. literature review and research methodology 2.1. literature review the value chain is critical in ensuring a diverse and secure global and local agricultural sector worldwide. horizontal integration is internally coordinated through administrative activity within the business. in comparison, external coordination or vertical integration is accomplished through various actors, including pricing, markets, and other forces that govern relationships between forms. vertical integration does not include contract manufacturing. mighell and jones (1963) assert that “vertical coordination is a catch-all term that refers to any method of coordinating the vertical stages of production and marketing. alternative coordination modes include the market-price system, vertical integration, contracting, and cooperation, either alone or in combination”. nonetheless, the critical nature of coordination enables a thorough understanding of value chain details and potential upgrades. thus, economic analysis will significantly contribute once it clarifies what is involved and the distinctions between various coordinations. horizontal coordination benefits producers by increasing economies of scale and reducing transaction costs. on the other hand, vertical connections establish a connection between producers and sellers (mitchell, keane, & coles, 2009). trienekens (2011) provides three dimensions for evaluating the value chain in developing countries: constraints, value chain elements, and upgrade potential. limitations on market access, institutional vacancies, and a scarcity of resources all impede the value chain. within this value chain, value-added, horizontal, and vertical coordination and governance systems are included. additionally, value chain upgrading entails conducting market research, implementing network systems, and completing government forms. mesquita and lazzarini (2009) examined collaboration among smalland medium-sized enterprises in argentina. they discovered both vertical and horizontal benefits to global markets. while vertical integration connects field manufacturing producers, horizontal integration expands access to resources and innovation. as a result, collective action can help improve access to global markets. in recent years, the trend in american agriculture has been toward increased specialization in fewer commodities and stages of production. as a result, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 40-52 42 numerous forms of uncertainty exist, necessitating countermeasures such as collaboration, contracting production, insurance, and various methods of coordination (mighell & jones, 1963). additionally, contract farmers benefit from reducing scale bias associated with horizontal and vertical integration in mrd (ba, de mey, thoron, & demont, 2019). coordination in the agricultural sector overcomes disadvantages, improves farmers' market access capabilities, and reduces transaction costs (min, 2011). vietnam's central government currently promotes vertical and horizontal coordination through a policy (ba et al., 2019). vertical coordination through the ordering of contract relationships between food companies (exporters) and farmers, and horizontal coordination through the "small farmers large field" program must have involved researching the vietnamese value chain and its performance and potential upgrade strategies. vo-thi and nguyen (2011); vo-thi and nguyen (2013) and vo-thi and nguyen (2016) conducted value chain analyses of agricultural products, particularly rice, in can tho, soc trang, tra vinh, an giang, kien giang, long an, and soc trang in mrd. the authors of these studies used qualitative analysis methods (vo-thi & nguyen, 2013), descriptive statistics (nguyen, 2009; vo-thi. & nguyen, 2013), a cost–benefit analysis method (nguyen, 2009; vo-thi & nguyen, 2013; vo-thi et al., 2016), and economic analysis (nguyen, 2009; vo-thi & nguyen, 2011), logistics, risk, and commodity chain risk management (vo-thi & nguyen, 2011; vo-thi... et al., 2016), value chain analysis using (nguyen, 2009; springer-heinze, 2018; vo-thi et al., 2016), porter's model of five competitive pressures analysis (nguyen, 2009), and analysis of the entire rice industry's swot analysis (vo-thi & nguyen, 2011; vo-thi & nguyen, 2013; vo-thi et al., 2016). the authors then discuss the five functions of the economy: input, production, procurement, trade and consumption, market channels in the value chain, domestic and export channels (nguyen, 2009), and some economic analysis indicators. however, the majority of prior research has concentrated on the conventional value chain. the added value of the entire sector is low and distributed among many actors (including the domestic rice value chain and the export rice value chain). however, rice farmers earn the second-highest profit per kilogram of rice produced (25.6 percent) after wholesale/retail (34.4 % and 29.9%) (vo-thi & nguyen, 2011). another study conducted in tra vinh province discovered that farmers accounted for the highest profit margin, of 66.5 %. however, profit per household per year is relatively low (49.4 million vnd) because the annual sales volume per household is significantly lower than that of other actors (vo-thi et al., 2016). additionally, these studies identify risks in this sector, such as weather, climate change, institutional policy, logistics, and post-harvest handling, most notably a lack of chain connectivity and market risk (unstable selling price) (vo-thi & nguyen, 2011; vo-thi et al., 2016). however, previous research limited the use of case studies to illustrate and compare specific quantitative values (trienekens, 2011). yet, except for ba et al. (2019), little attention has been paid to the differences between vertical and horizontal coordination in the rice sector. however, their data are qualitative, and the relationship between vertical and horizontal integration remains unknown. on the other hand, previous research has focused on a single type of coordination or the decision to join contract farming (ba et al., 2019). as a result, this study maps the current value chain according to the type of coordination. it compares it in both vertical and horizontal coordination. then, objective information about cooperative as one of linkage-type is also provided. the findings of this study are expected to contribute to emerging value chain literature, mainly through quantitative data analysis and by fostering the rice value chain in mrd. such actions, in turn, are expected to have significant policy implications for current government policy guidance, as they respond to developments in policy reform and the emerging need for research on evaluating coordination. the study's first contribution comes from economic analysis. it identifies the contents and issues involved in vertical and horizontal coordination. a second way to contribute to the economic benefit of value chain participants is to consider those who are already members of cooperatives and contracting businesses. 2.2. research methodology 2.2.1. data collection primary data in the study were collected by directly interviewing 160 rice farmers and 25 chain actors in hau giang province, one of the typical rice production areas in mrd, through a random sampling method based on the list of farmers provided by the local government. secondary data used was collected from the local statistical department, statistical yearbook, and the local department of agriculture and rural development. the observations were then stratified based on horizontal and vertical coordination. while horizontal linkages are the connection between farmers and those who participate in cooperatives, vertical linkages are represented by farmers who hold contracts with firms. through a survey of 160 rice farmers in a research area, 107 households participate in cooperatives, accounting for 66.9%, and 53 households do not participate in cooperatives, accounting for 33.1%. for households participating in vertical linkage, 80 households account for 50% of the total number of households growing high-quality rice in the study area and which have a contract with enterprises, and households not participating in vertical linkage account for 50%. 2.2.2. data analysis method in this research, value chain analysis was employed as a descriptive means to understand how current vertical and horizontal coordination moves and improves value chains. the value chain approach (springer-heinze, 2018) of gtz (deutsche gesellschaft für technische zusammenarbeit, germany) was employed. from this framework, the value chain was analyzed based on providing inputs to the final product, including preliminary processing, transportation, marketing (if any), and finally selling the product to consumers. further detailed discussion about vertical and horizontal coordination within the agricultural value chain can be found in mighell and jones (1963); vroegindewey (2015); ba et al. (2019) and min (2011). this study, therefore, expects to contribute to detailed frameworks for analyzing coordination in agricultural value chains, especially in developing countries. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 40-52 43 in order to seek subjective information from farm households as the main stakeholder in the value chain, the binary logit model was then employed to estimate the probability of farmers’ decision to join the cooperatives as one kind of linkage. the dependent variable y takes two values, 1 or 0 (with 1 is the desire to join the cooperative, 0 is vice versa). xi is the factor influencing the decision to join the cooperative. the general form of the binary logit model is as follows: ln [ 𝑃(𝑌=1) 𝑃(𝑌=0) ] = β + β1x1 + β2x2 + β3x3 + β4x4 + ..... + βnxn where p(y=1)=p0 is the probability that the household wishes to join or continue to participate in agricultural cooperatives; p(y=0)=1-p0 is the probability that the household does not want to participate or not want to continue to join the agricultural cooperatives; β is constant and β1 to β9 are estimated coefficients; and ln is the log to base e (e=2.714). x1 to x9 are the independent variables, including factors affecting the decision to join the cooperative. specifically, x1 (age) is the age of household head (years) (xiang & sumelius, 2010), x2 (gender) is the gender of household head (male=0, female=1) (atmis, günşen, lise, & lise, 2009), x3 (experience) is the farming experience of the household head (years) (awotide, 2012), x4 (education level) is the number of years in the school of the household head (year) (awotide, 2012), x5 (area) is the total area of agricultural land (1,000 m2) (zheng, wang, & song, 2011; zheng, wang, & awokuse, 2012), x6 (training participation) takes 1 if participating and 0 if not participating), x7 (farmer union participation) with 1 if participating and 0 if not participating) (zheng et al., 2011; zheng et al., 2012), x8 (income) is households’ annual income, and x9 (perception of benefit) is the households’ expectation about benefits obtained when participating in agricultural cooperatives (5 points likert scale from 1 very unimportant to 5 very important). in addition, swot analysis was employed to recognize the advantages (strengths) and difficulties (weaknesses) as well as opportunities and threats/challenges of each actor participating in the chain. it was also employed to understand the whole industry (product) and from which they propose solutions to increase the value of the chain. this information was obtained through focus group discussions (fgds) with local experts from the department of agriculture and rural development, typical local farmers, and representatives of cooperatives in hau giang province based on an open-ended questionnaire about sustainable rice value chain concepts. the information was then grouped into internal factors (weaknesses and strengths) and external factors (opportunities and threats). this information was then considered by experts (lecturers and researchers) from the school of economics at can tho university through a further focus group discussion. 3. results and discussion 3.1. economic performance indicators stratified by type of linkages production costs are an essential factor in determining the economic performance of farmers producing rice. the cost of production includes input costs, machinery, hired labor, house labor, and bank loan interest (table 1). table 1. rice production cost category stratified by linkages type. source: survey data, 2020. when looking at the mean values of the cost category, the production cost of 1 kg of rice includes input costs (varieties, fertilizers, pesticides) which account for the highest proportion of 50.6%. the remaining category, so-called additional costs, accounted for 49.4% (including water pumping costs of 4.1%, tractor costs 5.9%, harvesting costs 13.7%, and bank interest rate of 3.6%). family labor accounted for 18.7%, and spending on hired labor accounted for about 3.4%. on 1 kg of rice, farmers have two selling prices of us$0.238/kg for the food company and us$0.233/kg for the traders, with a total production cost of us$0.131/kg and a profit of us$0.102-0.107/kg. the total input cost accounted for the largest with us$0.066, including seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers. the price increased by us$0.036 and the labor cost was us$0.029 (us$0.024 for house labor and us$0.004 for hired labor). interestingly, the charge is always lower when participating in vertical (also called contracting farmers) or horizontal coordination (cooperative 1 us$1 was equal to 22,890 vietnamese dong (vnd) on june 30, 2021. category details paddy production cost per 1 kg (us$1/kg) horizontal coordination vertical coordination mean non-cooperative member farmer (n=53) cooperative member farmers (n=107) noncontracting farmer (n=80) contracting farmer (n=80) inputs seeds, fertilizer, pesticides 0.068 0.065 0.072 0.060 0.066 mecha-nism water pumping 0.006 0.005 0.006 0.004 0.005 tractor 0.008 0.008 0.009 0.007 0.008 harvesting machine 0.015 0.019 0.018 0.017 0.018 hired labor 0.004 0.005 0.004 0.005 0.004 family labor 0.032 0.021 0.031 0.018 0.024 bank interest 0.011 0.002 0.004 0.005 0.005 total 0.143 0.125 0.145 0.117 0.131 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 40-52 44 members). when compared between the two kinds of coordination, contracting farmers achieve higher efficiency with lower prices. when participating in contracting, farmers must follow technical guidance from firms. table 2. differences in income sources stratified by linkage type (us$/farm-households/year). income sources horizontal coordination vertical coordination cooperative member farmer (n=107) noncooperative member farmer (n=53) diff. contracting farmer (n=80) noncontracting farm (n=80) diff. 1. income from rice farming season 9,488 6,371 3,117*** 9,872 7,038 2,485*** winter–spring 3,819 2,601 1,218** 3,969 2,862 1,107** summer–autumn 2,826 1,918 908*** 2,923 2,127 796*** autumn–winter 2,843 1,852 991*** 2,980 2,049 931*** 2. non-farm income 496 202 294* 517 280 237ns total (1+2) 9,984 6,573 3,411*** 10,389 7,318 3,072*** note: *, **, and *** are statistically significant at 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively, and ns are not statistically significant. source: survey data, 2020. as indicated in table 2, farmers who participate in vertical or horizontal linkages obtain higher income than other groups. the differences were statistically significant at 5% in the winter–spring season. in contrast, in the summer– autumn and autumn–winter seasons, differences were statistically significant at the 1% level. the aggregate total income reveals a higher income in the vertical coordination group. companies usually offer contracting farmers higher rice selling prices, and therefore, they receive a higher income from rice farming. interestingly, a comparison between non-farm income shows a higher number of farmers in coordination. nevertheless, they are significantly different in vertical linkages. in coordination linkages, a 10% level of significance indifference was noted. in other words, involving non-farm income in the analysis showed that participation in associations could significantly improve farmers' income. 3.2. rice value chain analysis 3.2.1. horizontal coordination value chain versus conventional coordination figure 1 illustrates horizontal linkages and the conventional rice value chain diagram with the next chain actors (with and without cooperative membership, which is the key indicator for stratifying farmers), traders, processors (drying, milling, polishing), food companies, and retailers. figure 1. horizontal linkages versus conventional chain diagram. note: * indicates the proportion in the conventional chain (including farmers are not cooperative members). source: survey data, 2020. 3.2.2. horizontal coordination market channel (coded as channels 1, 2, and 3) the value chain for horizontal coordination includes farmers participating in cooperatives, traders, millers, food companies, and retailers. farmers perform the production function. the collection function is performed by traders who buy 29.0% of the total output from farmers. two actors that serve the processing functions are the miller and the food company. retailers are important commercial actors in the value chain, bringing 43.0% of the total chain output to the domestic market. the food company, besides selling to retail agents, also exports with a proportion of 57.0%. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 40-52 45 channel 1: cooperatives member farmers → traders → milling plants → food companies → retailers channel 2: cooperatives member farmers → traders → food companies → retailers channel 3: cooperatives member farmers → food companies → retailers in this distribution chain, farmers sell rice through cooperatives as their representative partners to food companies, accounting for 71.0% of the chain's total rice production. however, several of them currently have to trade with traders since the paddy quality does not meet the contract requirements, or they would like to receive payment immediately. in contrast, the revenue from food companies usually arrives after two weeks. in some cases, traders offer them better prices because of their competitiveness. therefore, 29.0% of the total rice volume was sold to traders. then, traders sell rice to food companies and milling plants, accounting for 25.8% and 3.2% of the total output, respectively. next, the milling plant sells rice to the food company for 3.2%. after receiving rice from farmers and milling plants and completing the processing stages, the food company distributes 43% of the total output to retailers. after that, the agent sells it to the consumer, and the rest of the food companies export it to overseas markets. 3.2.2.1. non-horizontal coordination value chain (coded as channels 4, 5, and 6) channel 4: farmers not participating in cooperatives → traders → milling plants → food companies → retailers channel 5: farmers not participating in cooperatives → traders → food companies → retailers channel 6: farmers do not join cooperatives → food companies → retailers farmers who do not join cooperatives through traders to supply rice to the company account for 92.5% of the total rice volume of the whole channel (channel 4). some can produce better-quality rice and then sell it directly to food companies (7.5%) (channel 6). after that, traders sell rice to milling plants, accounting for 10.2% of the total output (channel 4) and 82.3% to food companies (channel 5). next, the milling plant sells rice to the food company for 10.2%. the food company distributes it to the retailers for 43% of the total output. the retailers then sell it to the consumer. besides the above-mentioned stakeholders, coordination facilitators in the value chain include local agriculture extension systems, contracting firms, local governments and authorities, and banks. although these functions should be in some necessary forms, such as pushing or subsidies to coordination, increasing payoffs from coordination, and increasing belief in incoordination. however, due to limited resources, these functions have never been fulfilled. 3.2.3. vertical coordination versus conventional channel value chain the vertical linkage and traditional channel are shown in figure 2 with the following key actors: farmers, traders, processors (drying, milling, polishing), food companies, and retailers. figure 2. vertical coordination versus conventional channel rice value chain. source: survey data, 2020. 3.2.3.1. vertical coordination value chain (coded as channel 7) channel 7: farmers → food companies → retailers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 40-52 46 farmers who have signed a contract to sell rice to food companies directly sell 100% rice output through this distribution channel. following the collection of rice from farmers, it is transported to the company's factories for processing. after the rice has been processed, the food company distributes it to retailers. 53% is accounted for by retailers, while the remainder is accounted for by food companies exporting to foreign markets. however, not all written contracts have been made in this type of coordination. as a result, some farmers violate their commitments and sell products to traders if they are not paid promptly or if the paddy quality does not meet the company's specifications. 3.2.3.2non-vertical coordination value chain (coded as channels 8 and 9) channel 8: farmers → traders → milling plants → food companies → retailers channel 9: farmers → traders → food companies → retailers non-contracting farmers supply rice to the company via traders, accounting for 100% of the channel's total rice volume. following that, traders transport rice to milling plants and food companies, accounting for 11% output (channel 8) and 89% output (channel 9), respectively. next, milling plants sell rice to the food company for 11%. the food company redistributes to the retailers 43% of the total output. and after that, retailers sell it to the end consumer. 3.3. economic analysis of rice value chain 3.3.1. economic analysis of value chains stratified by horizontal coordination determining the net added value of each actor when participating in the chain is essential. there are six channels when comparing horizontal linkages and non-horizontal coordination (conventional chain). the 1st and 4th channels are the main channels where all the actors are involved in the chain (table 3). table 3. value-added analysis by market channel of horizontal coordination chains (us$/kg). category farmers traders milling plants food companies retailers total horizontal coordination channel 1: cooperatives’ member farmers → traders →milling plants → food companies → retailers selling price 0.296 0.324 0.400 0.677 0.791 intermediary cost 0.099 0.296 0.324 0.400 0.677 added value 0.090 0.011 0.024 0.203 0.076 net added value 0.107 0.017 0.053 0.074 0.037 0.288 % net added value 37.1 6.0 18.3 25.7 12.9 100 channel 2: cooperatives’ member farmers → traders → food companies → retailers selling price 0.296 0.330 x 0.677 0.791 intermediary cost 0.099 0.296 x 0.330 0.677 added value 0.090 0.011 x 0.273 0.076 net added value 0.107 0.023 x 0.074 0.037 0.241 % net added value 44.4 9.5 x 30.7 15.4 100 channel 3: cooperatives’ member farmers → food companies → retailers selling price 0.309 x x 0.677 0.791 intermediary cost 0.099 x x 0.309 0.677 added value 0.090 x x 0.295 0.076 net added value 0.119 x x 0.074 0.037 0.231 % net added value 51.8 x x 32.1 16.1 100 conventional channels channel 4: farmers not in cooperatives → traders → milling plants → food companies → retailers selling price 0.298 0.324 0.000 0.677 0.791 intermediary cost 0.104 0.298 0.000 0.400 0.677 added value 0.114 0.011 0.024 0.203 0.076 net added value 0.080 0.016 0.000 0.074 0.037 0.260 % net added value 30.9 6.1 20.2 28.5 14.3 100 channel 5: farmers not in cooperatives → traders → food companies → retailers selling price 0.298 0.330 x 0.677 0.791 intermediary cost 0.104 0.298 x 0.330 0.677 added value 0.114 0.011 x 0.273 0.076 net added value 0.080 0.021 x 0.074 0.037 0.213 % net added value 37.7 10.1 x 34.8 17.4 100 channel 6: farmers do not join cooperatives → food companies → retailers selling price 0.317 x x 0.677 0.791 intermediary cost 0.104 x x 0.317 0.677 added value 0.114 x x 0.286 0.076 net added value 0.100 x x 0.074 0.037 0.211 % net added value 47.3 x x 35.1 17.6 100 source: survey data, 2020. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 40-52 47 rice farmers: the findings indicate that farmers have the highest net added value across all six channels. farmers who sell rice to food companies through cooperatives (0.309/kg) receive a higher price than those who sell rice to traders (us$0.296/kg). farmers who join cooperatives incur a total cost of us$0.189/kg (intermediary cost + additional cost) but earn a substantial profit of us$0.119/kg. as a result, channel three should be prioritized for further development in the long term to upgrade linkages. farmers who do not participate in cooperatives receive a lower price for rice sold to traders (us$0.298/kg) than cooperative members (us$0.317/kg). farmers who do not join cooperatives incur the same total cost of us$0.217/kg (intermediary cost + additional cost) but earn a higher profit of us$0.096/kg if they sell their product to a food company. thus, among conventional channels, channel six should prioritize upgrading to establish business connections necessary for long-term production and consumption stability. keep in mind that food companies only purchase from farmers who are not cooperative members when they need to meet demand and maintain a certain level of quality. as a result, only a small number of farmers were able to sell their products to them. traders: at this point, this actor is crucial, as many farmers are not cooperative members for various reasons. traders sell rice to milling plants and food companies for us$0.324 and 0.330/kg, respectively. they have the lowest net added value in the value chain. food company: the company obtains raw materials from various sources (traders, farmers), with varying purchasing prices. however, when purchasing rice from traders and milling plants, the company runs the risk of incurring additional costs if the rice does not meet production standards, resulting in loss and additional costs, as opposed to purchasing rice from cooperatives or farmers who may enter into a contract for loss and purchase. food companies, on average, achieve the second-highest net added value. retailers: retailers are exclusive participants in the domestic rice consumption chain. the chain's actors purchase their products exclusively from a food company, which sells them for an average of us$0.677/kg. after deducting agency costs, they earn us$0.037/kg profit and have a net added value of 12.9%, 15.4%, and 16.1% in the three horizontal linkages, respectively. the net added value varies between 7% and 18% in the three conventional channels that are not connected with resellers. milling plant: the miller appears on channels one and four. milling plants purchase rice from traders for us$0.324/kg, mill it, process it, package it, and sell it to a food company for us$0.400/kg, earning a profit of us$0.053/kg. the milling plant's net added value on channels one and four is 18.3% and 20.5%, respectively. 3.3.2. economic analysis of value chains by vertical coordination vertical coordination is illustrated by three channels only. among them, only channel 8 includes all the actors in the value chain (table 4). table 4. analysis of value added by market channel of vertical coordination (us$/kg). category farmers traders milling plants food companies retailers total vertical coordination channel 7 contracting farmers → food companies → retailers selling price 0.309 x x 0.677 0.791 intermediary cost 0.091 x x 0.309 0.677 added value 0.086 x x 0.295 0.076 net added value 0.132 x x 0.074 0.037 0.243 % net added value 54.3 x x 30.4 15.3 100 conventional channels channel 8 not contracting farmers → traders → milling plants → food companies →retailers selling price 0.298 0.324 0.400 0.677 0.791 intermediary cost 0.109 0.298 0.324 0.400 0.677 added value 0.111 0.011 0.024 0.203 0.076 net added value 0.078 0.015 0.053 0.074 0.037 0.257 % net added value 30.3 5.9 20.5 28.8 14.5 100 channel 9 not contracting farmers → traders → food companies → retailers selling price 0.298 0.330 x 0.677 0.791 intermediary cost 0.109 0.298 x 0.330 0.677 added value 0.111 0.011 x 0.273 0.076 net added value 0.078 0.021 x 0.074 0.037 0.210 % net added value 37.1 9.9 x 32.3 17.7 100 source: survey data, 2020. rice farmers: once again, the analysis results indicate that farmers are the actors with the highest net value added across all three channels. farmers who participate in vertical linkages and sell rice to food companies for us$0.309/kg earn a higher price than those who do not participate in vertical linkages and sell rice to traders for us$0.298/kg. farmers participate in vertical association at a cost of us$0.177/kg (intermediary cost + additional cost), earning a high profit of us$0.132/kg and a 54.3% share of the net added value. as a result, channel seven should prioritize upgrading to establish business relationships that will enable stable and sustainable production and consumption in the long run, consistent with market requirements. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 40-52 48 when farmers sell rice to traders (us$0.298/kg), they receive a lower price than farmers who engage in vertical relationships with food companies (us$0.309/kg). they spent exactly us$0.220/kg (intermediary cost + additional cost). they earned a small profit of us$0.078/kg, with the net added value of channels seven and eight being 30.3% and 37.1%, respectively. traders: this actor appears in two channels once more. traders sell rice to milling plants and food companies for us$0.324/kg and us$0.330/kg, respectively, with an additional cost of us$0.011/kg, with the lowest net percent added value. food company: when purchasing rice from traders and milling plants, the company runs the risk of incurring additional costs if the rice does not meet production standards, resulting in loss and other expenses, as opposed to purchasing rice from farmers who have entered into a purchase contract. food companies, on average, achieve the second-highest net value-added. retailers: this actor joins the chain solely to consume rice in the domestic market. only one actor, a food company, purchases the products of the chain's actors at an average price of us$0.677/kg. they earn us$0.037/kg profit after agency costs and have a 15.3% added value on channel seven. 14.5% and 17.7%, respectively, on channels eight and nine. milling plant: this actor purchases rice from traders for us$0.324/kg, mills, processes, packs it, and then sells it to a food company for us$0.400/kg, earning us$0.053/kg in profit. net added value as a percentage of total value is approximately 20.5%. in summary, the findings of this study are consistent with previous research indicating the need for a significant selling price premium over conventional. payments should be made on time to encourage a higher participation rate (ochieng, veettil, & qaim, 2017). risk-sharing commitments benefit the enterprise by increasing loyalty and participation rates. although vertical linkages strengthen relationships between producers and sellers, farmers continue to sell their products to others because the contract price is lower and only verbal contractual commitments are made. this finding is relevant to the weaknesses identified in other developing country value chains (mitchell et al., 2009). additionally, the study discovered that enterprises benefit more from this value chain. this study supports the notion that providing these benefits to businesses will increase chain engagement. 3.4. chain logistics, risk, and related policy analysis 3.4.1. chain logistics analysis the findings indicate that as cooperatives and food companies become more integrated into the value chain, it becomes easier for farmers to produce, stabilize their output, and expand market access. for instance, loc troi group was the first private company to establish a rice value chain through high-quality seeds and collaboration with local farmers. currently, this chain produces 45 thousand tons of rice seeds per year to supply the industry. in 2015, at an international rice competition featuring 25 varieties of delectable rice from international rice companies, the rice product "pearl of heaven-thien long" from the loc troi agpps103 variety won the top three awards for the world's best rice. the success of loc troi has facilitated a shift in perspective, created a large sample field for agricultural production, increased productivity and product quality, and established a new image for vietnamese rice products. many farmers, on the other hand, are unfamiliar with market-linked production models. the linkages between farmers (horizontal linkages) and between farmers and enterprises (vertical linkages) are insignificant in scale, frail, and unstable. the linkages' internal resource mobilization is still limited. additionally, the purchasing system is still dependent on small-scale farmers and remote traders, resulting in heterogeneous products and making brand building difficult. processing technology has fallen short of meeting the requirements for processing and deep processing rice products for specific market segments, most notably the premium rice market. 3.4.2. risk analysis according to fgds with local experts, actors continue to face three major risks when engaging in the current rice chain: market risk, climate change risk, and export policies and institutions risk. these factors have a significant impact on the chain's performance. additionally, previous research has revealed that weather, agricultural productivity, commodity pricing and availability, market demand, supplyand demand-side regulations, and contract enforcement can all contribute to uncertainty (barrett et al., 2012; bijman, 2008). market risk: market mechanisms have a profound effect on all actors along the value chain. farmers and food companies are the two actors most directly involved in this risk. this risk category includes price fluctuation, product quantity, product quality, and seed type. according to general statistics office (2020), up to 50% of rice production is exported. while mrd rice production currently meets food security requirements, international markets are significant. contracts will be affected if some actors violate the agreement by failing to follow technique guidance or selling to local traders. they cannot provide sufficient capital for payment and reinvestment. climate change risks: unstable weather conditions also significantly impact the yield and quality of rice products produced. the weather in the mrd can become scorching, with the dry season extremely hot and dry, and salinity intrusion has spread further into the hinterland (khong et al., 2018; khong, loch, & young, 2019; khong et al., 2020). according to the local department of agriculture and rural development, the highest salinity concentration infiltrating the survey area was 4.2% (february 11, 2020); in some locations, the highest salinity concentration measured was 18.3% (april 7, 2020). during the rainy season it rained heavily, resulting in continuous losses during the sowing stage. prices fell significantly until harvest, forcing people to hire manual cutting labor at a higher cost asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 40-52 49 than machine cutting. high humidity results in moldy rice, which causes more damage than self-germination before harvesting, as well as a decrease in selling price. risks due to export policies and institutions: this is a critical factor in determining the activities of chain actors. food security regulations and export policies have a direct impact on the rice chain and, except for the philippines, the significant and traditional rice import markets of china, indonesia, and bangladesh all reduced imports for a variety of reasons, including a shortage of rice due to high stockpiles in china, an election year in indonesia, and the resumption of production following floods in bangladesh. any minor changes in other countries will affect the domestic market to a lesser extent. simultaneously, food companies must have a large scale and a reliable source of raw materials to meet the requirements for rice export quality. as a result, this is a high-risk policy for food companies in particular and other chain actors in general. 3.4.3. analysis of relevant policies irrigation and agricultural extension policies have the most significant impact on farmers. farmers must gradually adapt to climate change by implementing several initiatives such as "three reductions, three increases", "one must do, five reductions", "one must do six reductions", economical watering techniques, and good agriculture practices (gap) such as vietgap and globalgap. numerous large field models have been developed for smallholder farmers to create large production areas linked to enterprises via a contract mechanism. historically, due to a lack of specific planning and a lack of clear identification of economic, social, and environmental benefits in management, the use of rice husks and straws for inappropriate purposes, such as discharging into canals or burning copper, resulted in negative impacts on the land, water, and air environment, as well as a significant waste of this resource. the remaining actors, cooperatives, milling plants, and food companies are affected by quality and export policies. at the moment, the majority of exported products are raw, unbranded, and of low competitiveness. in comparison, export turnover typically increases gradually over time. as a result, necessary policies include orienting and supporting farmers and businesses toward quality, and high added value along a sustainable chain; limiting the quantity and export of raw materials progressively; and gradually expanding the area of application of vietgap, globalgap, or organic in preparation for the development of official export area codes. table 5. binary logit model results on determinants of farm households’ decision to participate in agricultural cooperatives. variables marginal effects (dy/dx) std. err. p-value vif age -0.000096ns 0.00019 0.676 3.34 gender -0.010164ns 0.01582 0.148 1.21 experience 0.000490ns 0.00036 0.130 3.32 education level 0.003263ns 0.00333 0.191 1.12 area 0.000138ns 0.00025 0.599 4.33 training participation 0.015839* 0.01894 0.050 1.23 farmer union participation -0.06009ns 0.00803 0.234 1.22 income -2.78e-11ns 0.00000 0.281 4.29 perception of benefit 0.009934** 0.00823 0.021 1.12 number of obs. 159 prob.>chi2 0.0065 pseudo r2 0.4243 note: *, and ** are statistically significant at 10% and 5%, respectively, and ns are not statistically significant; only 159 respondents were used for regression analysis since one farmer refused to respond to this question. source: survey data, 2020. 3.5. analysis of farm household perception of participation in cooperatives table 5 summarizes the results of the binary logit model employed to identify the determinants of farmers participating in cooperatives. the pseudo r2 of the model is 0.4243 (42%), indicating that the prediction percentage is acceptable. the results reveal that the variance inflation factor (vif) of the independent variables are all <5, implying that there is no multicollinearity in the regression. the chi-square test value, 0.0065<0.01, indicates that the model is consistent with the 1% significance level. not surprisingly, there are only two factors that have positive influences on households’ decision to join cooperatives, including training participation and perception of benefits and consistent with initial expectations. regarding the benefits of joining a cooperative, the more benefits that come from participating in a cooperative, the higher the proportion of the households that decide to join. therefore, in order to enhance linkages in the rice value chain sector, the cooperative needs to deliver the benefits they need. in fact, current issues have been observed in both linkages such as financial constraints, inputs quality, training, and market information. 3.6. swot matrix analysis the swot analysis includes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the entire rice industry chain are shown in table 6. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 40-52 50 table 6. swot analysis. swot opportunities (o) o1: support policies of the province and local authorities at all levels in agricultural development programs. o2: the market demand for highquality rice varieties is increasing. o3: tighten business links with other food companies. threats (t) t1: effects of climate change and diseases. t2: input prices increase. t3: technical barriers of difficult export markets. t4: product selling price is not stable. t5: new competitive emerging export countries. strengths (s) s1: farmers have good experience in rice cultivation. s2: the land is suitable for some rice varieties; freshwater is sufficient for rice cultivation. s3: traffic, irrigation, and mechanization are being invested. s4: establishment and restructure many cooperatives. s5: the contracting company provides sufficient input materials and technical support. offensive strategy (so) s1,2,3,5 + o1,2: convert to highquality rice. s3,4 + o1,3: inbound and outbound logistics. s3,4,5 + o1,3: collective actions are made. s1,4,5 + o2: diversify products (herbal rice) and invest in market strategies. coping/adaption strategy (st) s1,2,3,4 + t3,4: technology development (blockchain). s4,5 + t5: improve the capacity and reputation of cooperatives with farmers in the chain. s4,5 + t4,5: marketing and sales. weaknesses (w) w1: market information is limited and depends on importing market (china, indonesia, and bangladesh). w2: lack of r & d and written contract between farmers and food companies. adjustment strategy (wo) w1,2 + o1,3: implement provincial support packages, projects, programs for key actors, including food companies. w1,2 + o1,2,3: develop linkages between different companies to form nationally operating companies. defensive strategy (wt) w2 + t3,4,5: carry out agricultural extension activities, convert to organic rice. w1,2 + t4,5: producer collaboration into “small farmer large field” (sflf). 4. conclusion and policy implications in summary, the proportion of linked production areas continues to be insufficient. horizontal linkages, such as cooperatives, have not actively connected production and output seeking and rely heavily on state support. joining the chain enables farmers to sell rice at a fair price without being pressured, through technical support, output product consumption, profit discounts, and quality assurance output, which have helped farmers increase their profits and reduce their rice production costs. the critical point in the swot analysis is that farmers have extensive experience cultivating rice, have production connections, and have participated in numerous new technical training courses. the shortcomings are that the link between farmers and cooperatives, and farmers and food companies, remains tenuous. farmers have not correctly applied cooperatives' and affiliated companies' techniques and processes. additionally, farmers are impacted by the weather due to climate change and saline intrusion, reducing rice yield and quality and reducing farmers' competitiveness in the market. thus, the preferred method of upgrading the chain is to strengthen and develop business ties, which are critical for the long-term stabilization and sustainability of the province's rice industry. the research findings indicate that the contemporary high-quality rice value chain differs from the traditional chain in several ways. farmers' profits increase as the number of actors in the chain decreases. they account for a more significant share of the highest net added value. the economic analysis demonstrates that when the economy of the entire chain is analyzed, the actors in the chain, particularly the food companies, have a relatively high economic efficiency. this analysis is critical as a basis for businesses to join the farmer association. however, this value chain continues to face obstacles such as contract terminations and quality concerns. thus, to advance and complete the rice value chain in a new direction, it is necessary to establish and perfect a new type of cooperative to serve as a link between production and consumption. moreover, training and sufficient information should also be provided as regression results indicated. additionally, it requires the support of credit institutions to ensure that farmers have access to production capital and participating enterprises have access to business capital. both vertical and horizontal linkages, this research indicates, can be effective tools for upgrading the existing value chain in developing countries, thereby increasing market access, competitiveness, and sustainability of the rice value chain. the study findings confirm that vertical coordination is possible through the development of horizontal coordination and emphasize the critical role of horizontal coordination. in vietnam, cooperatives enable small farmers to enter into contracts with businesses, increasing confidence in both parties. enhancing the role of cooperatives and encouraging food firms to participate in the value chain may reduce the government's budget. however, participation in the chain by third-party facilitators such as banks and local governments helps secure firms' capital and provides financial support to small farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 40-52 51 although vietnam is one of the top five exporters of rice globally, the traditional rice value chain in vietnam is primarily focused on increasing quantity. simultaneously, quality has been neglected despite the market's insufficient demand for rice. however, to capitalize on the opportunity to increase export output and economic value, the rice value chain must be scientifically organized to meet market demand. the findings of this study are corroborated by prior research conducted in china (min, 2011). cooperatives have a strong bias for coordination and integration. the more participation and governance are combined into coordination, the more robust and sustainable the linkages become. this research argues that by adopting a cooperative-style government structure, vertical and horizontal coordination can be enhanced. on both fronts, farmer organizations contribute significantly to the development of a value chain. this finding is significant in light of the rapid growth of cooperatives in mrd. however, as previously demonstrated, cooperatives should be treated as private businesses, with government intervention limited to financial assistance and without control (hussi, murphy, lindberg, & brenneman, 1993). by examining a case study in vietnam's mrd, this study demonstrates the critical role of vertical and horizontal coordination in connecting farmers to the market and overcoming constraints. collective action is required, including top-down policies implemented by contracting firms and bottom-up policies implemented by cooperatives. by analyzing the value chain using novel concepts, this research expands the quantitative dataset set to explore further and develop the value chain. by describing the value-added chain in detail, the results may aid policymakers and domestic and international firms in developing new activities that will enable them to succeed in agricultural chain investment. in the long run, more specialization and fewer stages in the value chain of each farm product are required, similar to what is required in other developed countries, such as the united states, as well as the contracting of agricultural insurance and the use of various coordinating methods. however, as mentioned previously, certain critical activities must be prioritized in the case of developing countries. this paper will contribute to further coordination, integration, and the implications of structural transformation in agriculture in the developing world. funding: this research is funded by the vietnam ministry of education and training (grant number: b2020-tct-05). competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references atmis, e., günşen, h. b., lise, b. b., & lise, w. 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(2012). determinants of producers' participation in agricultural cooperatives: evidence from northern china. applied economic perspectives and policy, 34(1), 167-186. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 262 the future of organıc fısh productıon in the world hülya sayğia, ayhan sayğia*, mahmut ali gökçeb a yumurtalık vocational school, cukurova university , adana, turkey b the faculty of fisheries, cukurova university, adana, turkey * email address: husaygi@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 19-jun-2018 accepted: 31-jul-2018 online available: 21-aug2018 keywords: organic agriculture, organic aquaculture, world abstract one of the fundamental problems of the world humans live in is that the resources human beings have used to meet their needs are limited. these resources, when used correctly, are enough to meet these needs. the main problem here is the mistakes human beings make and them not being aware of making these. in other words, they are consciously or unconsciously destroying the world they live in with every action they have taken to create the civilization. in this study, we will focus on the subjects of damages brought out to the natural sources by agricultural and aquacultural production which is used to meet the need for food, and wiping the effects of these damages. in this context, we will also focus on the conditions of the organic agriculture principle application on aquacultural production, which has emerged as a solution to the threats targeting human health and to the environmental problems brought out by the agricultural production. contribution/ originality nature is the source of our life in every sense, and the sources of nature are limited. we must act with this consciousness while meeting our needs or building our civilization. accordingly, two main objectives of this study are expected to contribute to the literature. the first is to contribute to creating this consciousness. the second is to increase the studies that are inadequate in the field of organic aquaculture. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.12/1005.12.262.267 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: hülya sayği, ayhan sayği and mahmut ali gökçe (2017). the future of organıc fısh productıon in the world. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12), 262-267. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 12(2017): 262-267 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:husaygi@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.12/1005.12.262.267 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 262-267 263 1. introduction organic agriculture is a system of gaining optimum yield that protects the natural balance, takes control of disease and pests, sustains continuity of living beings, with the optimum use of natural resources and energy. organic agriculture is an approach which integrates human, environment and economically sustainable agricultural production system (ak, 2004). organic farming is an agricultural production method, of which the aim is protecting, repairing, and rehabilitating the degraded ecological balance resulting from activities that people have undertaken for agricultural or other reasons. with this purpose, it develops and ensures the implementation of rules and principles which will protect plant, animal and human health, will provide organic products and production of inputs to be used in production of these, will spread organic production, increase the demand for such products, will serve the customer with healthy and high-quality organic goods, discipline the importation of organic products and inputs, will provide the development of organic product importation, production of vegetable, animal and aquatic products and all kinds of inputs used for these productions will be produced in accordance with organic farming method, will provide the control every stage in marketing both domestically and abroad, processing, packing, labeling, storing and transporting. water, which is a primary need to sustain lives of human beings, is not only a basic need in life but also is a basic input in which other living creatures have been produced. it has been known that aquatic products have a significant share in people’s diet. however, population growth, excessive and senseless hunting and environmental pollution have unfortunately led to a rapid decline in natural fish resources, and even to the risk of extinction in some species. even though some measures are tried to be taken after this point, the fact is stated by experts that natural fish stocks will never reach to the desired level, natural fish stocks will gradually decrease and it will be possible to close gap with the culture fishery is important. this puts forward that aquacultural production is an essential activity for the world. today, approximately 40% of the world’s aquacultural production is obtained by breeding. according to scientific researches, it is estimated that the amount of aquacultural products obtained by 2030 will be equal to the amount of aquatic products obtained by hunting, and that the fishing industry in the long term will surpass the hunting industry. this, as the day passes, increases the importance of seas and in-land waters, and indicates that aquacultural production will play an important role in the future. however, the conservation and planned use of water resources is important and necessary with environmental measures to be taken to make aquaculture sustainable. for it to be possible, the need for the implementation or development of various alternative aquaculture methods is emerging. organic agriculture can be a production method that can respond to this with the help of a sustainable agricultural production philosophy that bans the applications harming human beings and nature. within this framework, organic agriculture production method has been applied as a new alternative in the field of aquaculture. organic fish production began in the mid-1990s with the certification of the carp in austria as "organic". this first attempt is followed with the soma and rainbow trout entering the market. the first organic trout was sold in the uk in 1998 (tacon and brister, 2002). the organically development of aquaculture which is one of the world's fastest growing food markets, is quite similar to organic agriculture. however, nowadays, certified organic aquaculture is lagging behind the agricultural sector in terms of product variety and quality (bergleiter, 2001; brister and kapuscinski, 2001). although there is no official statistical data available on the world’s organic aquaculture production of these, atlantic salmon (salmo salar), shrimp (penaeus sp.), carp (cyprinuscarpio) and rainbow trout (oncorhynchusmykiss) are among the certified species according to organic standards. studies also show that the fish such as sea bream (sparusauratus), european seabass (dicentrarchuslabrax), tilapia (oreochromis sp.), mussels (mytilus sp.) the charr (salvelinusalpinus) and mersin (acipencer sp.) have started to be organically produced. studies are continuing to be done to produce new species, including clams (pecten sp.) and cod (gadusmorhua) for future organic aquaculture production (tekinay et al., 2006). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 262-267 264 organic fish production is growing very slowly compared to vegetative organic production, due to difficulties with organic bait and bait material, differences in consumer preferences and market uncertainty (merdan, 2014). according to the latest statistics, salmon fish, trout, carp, grass carp, sea bream, sea bass, tilapia, mussels, myrtle fish and microalgae are among the most produced organically certified fishery products in the world (çavdar, 2011). 1.1. organic agriculture and organic aquaculture in the world it is known that organic farming first started in the eu and the united states (usa) and later spread to other countries (demiryurek, 2011). there are a total of 37.2 million hectares of organic farming areas (including transitional areas) in the world. today, 1.2% of the agricultural area in the world is used as organic farming area (emir and demiryurek, 2015; eryilmaz et al., 2015, willer and klicher, 2011). there are no official statistics on the production of organic aquatic products. however, it is reported that production in 2005 was about 25.000 tons (hilge, 2005). although there is no official statistical data available on the world’s organic aquaculture production. it is reported that the majority (2000 tons) of production, which is about 5000 tons, is produced in european countries. this represents approximately 0.01% of total world aquaculture production or approximately 0.25% of total european aquatic production (lem, 2004 and tekinay et al., 2006). today, salmon (salmo salar) is the most important organic fish species of good quality. organic salmon production is mainly done in ireland and the united states. the first salmon farm in france was certified by the ecocert certification company in 2001 and sold its first organic products in 2002. organic carp, brown trout and rainbow trout farms are located in germany, france, america, ireland and australia (franze, 2004). studies are continuing to be done to produce new species, including clams (pecten sp.) and cod (gadusmorhua) for future organic aquaculture production. it is estimated that most of the organic aquaculture production will be in developed countries and that the most important markets for produced aquatic products will be europe and north america in the west and australia, japan, new zealand and singapore in the east. the future of organic fish production may change further with the introduction of official certificated products from developing countries (ötles et al., 2010). whereas, the less polluted natural water sources provides turkey an advantage instead of european countries where the traditional farming methods have been densely implemented and the advanced industrialization is carried out, it also provides a great opportunity in terms of organic production. as a result, many researches on organic fisheries have been carried out and different perspectives have been tried to be put forward (yılmaz, 2004; çavdar, 2006; ural and yılmaz, 2009). when the studies taken into consideration,it is clear that many water resources and many businesses in turkey are structurally compatible with organic fisheries and other businesses may adapt to organic fisheries if they are substructured. 1.2. organic agriculture standards and certification organizations there are many independent organic certification bodies and standards worldwide. one of them is the "ecological agriculture" regulation numbered 2092/91 which entered into force on 24.06.1991. although the european union directive has designed standards for organic agriculture, it has not yet established these for organic aquaculture. within european countries, private organizations such as naturland (germany), krav (sweden), debio (norway) and soilassociation (england) have developed their own standards for organic aquaculture production. these organizations have different standards for organic aquaculture (usda, 2000; soil association, 2001; ukrofs, 2001; tacon and brister, 2002; naturland, 2005). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 262-267 265 1.3. organic agriculture and organic aquaculture in turkey organic agriculture in turkey began unsystematically in 1985’s due to the development of organic agriculture in the world and the demand for organic products from abroad and developed parallel to the changes in the world’s consumption of healthy foods. the regulation on "production, processing and marketing of vegetable and animal products produced by organic farming methods" prepared by the ministry of agriculture and rural affairs on december 18, 1994 was published in the official gazette. organic agriculture in turkey is done within the frame of "regulation for organic agriculture principles and implementation”, which is in accordance with eu organic farming regulation, published in the august 18, 2010 dated and 27676 numbered issue of the official gazette. organic agricultural production in turkey is carried out under the control, inspection and certification organizations. certification organisations such as ecocert, imo, skal, bcs, etko and ekotar have been active in turkey. in turkey, ecologic agriculture is getting newly widespread, whereas organic aquaculture is in beginning level. as of february 2010, in turkey, 6 enterprises in rize province have started to produce organic trout under the supervision of the authorized inspection and certification body by obtaining "entrepreneur certificate". the total project capacity of the said 6 enterprises is 456 tons/year. an important part of this capacity (431 tons / year) is taken up by the rainbow trout, and 25 tons / year is the turkish local species, the black sea trout. in some countries, polycultural studies integrated with organic vegetable production in organic aquaculture are also being implemented. the first organic trout bait was produced commercially with the first and only organic aquacultural production project which is registered in the organic farming database launched on november 12, 2006 in çayeli, rize by the provincial directorate of agriculture (guner, 2011). the value of aquatic products as a food for human beings is increasing every day, and consequently, consumption is increased and different requirements are needed. generally, demand for products obtained from aquaculture is socially low. the reason of this is that the culture fish are fed with bait deemed artificial by people, and the fact that there is no selective nutrition possibility in the nature (çaklı, 1995). although individuals raised in a culture environment are superior in terms of food quality, natural individuals who are superior in terms of only textures are preferred by humans to those of culture individuals. 1.3. principles of organic aquaculture products the basic criteria for organic aquaculture production have been derived and produced from organic farming principles (bergleiter, 2001). due to the different ecology and special problems of the aquatic environment, these basic original principles have been renewed or new ones get added. a good example of this is that fishmeal is accepted as bait material in organic fish production, whereas this is not allowed in organic farming principles. some of the basic principles necessary for the production of aquaculture to be organic are summarized below. the production stoichiometry, especially the herbal bait ingredients and additives used in the bait, should not be genetically modified (gmo), the stock intensity should be lower than in the conventional production method, the use of pesticides and anti-fouling paints is prohibited, according to the management procedure, the natural environment should be minimally affected and the environmental effects should be monitored, in case of diseases, natural medicines should be preferred, the products must be processed according to organic principles and the final product must be organically certified. 2. result the principles and rules of organic farming have been slower to develop in organic fish farming than vegetal organic production. the main reason for this is that the problems threatening the environment and human health caused by agricultural production are beginning to be recognized in aquaculture. organic aquaculture production, which is the branch of the aquaculture of organic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 262-267 266 farming practices, is the emerging sector. as mentioned before, efforts by various countries to make international legislation and standards related to this issue continue. in the countries such as germany, england and usa legislation and standardization studies are still in progress and some issues (organic feedstuffs, fighting diseases) have not yet been resolved. in addition to all these, in order for “organic aquaculture” to develop both in turkey and the world, international organic aquacultural production standard has to be established, organic product sales need to get more attractive, and more scientific research on organic aquaculture is needed to be done. also, if economic analysis and market research of organic production based on potential species are done and the uncertainties in business owners' prejudices are eliminated, organic aquacultural production will be an important opportunity in terms of turkish fishery industry getting a place in worldwide market. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ak, i̇. 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evidence from rice farmers in rwanda jules ngango department of economics, college of business and economics, university of rwanda, kigali, rwanda.  ngajules2@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 14 june 2022 revised: 3 august 2022 accepted: 19 august 2022 published: 6 september 2022 keywords women’s empowerment agricultural productivity income instrumental variable rice production rwanda. this study aimed to assess the effects of women’s empowerment in agriculture on rice yield and income in rural rwanda. a multi-stage stratified sampling procedure was used to collect data through structured questionnaires (including both open-ended and closed questions). a sample of 561 rice farmers drawn from the eastern and western provinces of rwanda was used. the study used an instrumental variable to estimate the causal impacts of women’s empowerment, and controlled for the potential endogeneity of the same. the findings of the study showed that women’s empowerment has a positive impact on rice yield and income. overall, the study results call for policy interventions promoting female participation in financial inclusion mechanisms, farmers’ cooperatives, and agricultural production decisions. in addition, the results highlighted the importance of building strategies and mechanisms for increasing women’s control and decisions over assets. the study makes contributions to the empirical literature on the united nations sustainable development goals, such as achieving gender equality, women’s empowerment, and food security in developing countries. future research should attempt to use nationally representative panel data to fully understand the effects of women’s empowerment on rice productivity and other income outcomes. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the existing literature on the united nations sustainable development goals, such as achieving gender equality, women’s empowerment, and food security in developing countries. the study contributes also to the literature by applying the abbreviated women’s empowerment in agriculture index. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4602 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: jules ngango (2022). does women’s empowerment improve yields and income? evidence from rice farmers in rwanda. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3), 201-209. 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4602 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction an extensive body of literature contends that women play a significant role in the agricultural production sector of most sub-saharan african (ssa) countries (sell & minot, 2018). in particular, women account for over 50% of the agricultural labour force in ssa (donald, lawin, & rouanet, 2020; efobi, beecroft, & atata, 2019). however, empirical evidence asserts that there is a continuing gender gap between male and female farmers in terms of the access, control and use of the land, harvested produce, credit, extension services, labour, livestock, fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 3 (2022): 201-209. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9584-5318 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 201-209 202 irrigation, and mechanization (baliamoune-lutz & mcgillivray, 2007; diiro, seymour, kassie, muricho, & muriithi, 2018; sell & minot, 2018; seymour, 2017). for instance, gender-based discrimination in land tenure systems is a critical problem prevalent in many ssa countries. due to the lack of effective legal land tenure reforms in ssa, women do not have the same rights as men to inherit land (diiro et al., 2018). in rwanda, gender inequality is highly influenced by the inaccessibility that women face when it comes to having access and control over land and the revenue coming from farming activities (ali, deininger, & goldstein, 2014; djurfeldt, 2020). moreover, women spend far more of their time doing domestic activities than men, which limits their participation in some farm activities (i.e. extension services) and off-farm income-generating work (diiro et al., 2018; djurfeldt, 2020). based on the recognized importance of women in agriculture, it is necessary to reduce the gender inequality in agricultural production as much as possible through a sustained improvement in the real condition for women. in recent decades, the push to liberate women from patriarchal socioeconomic constraints has taken a global turn because it has been documented that improving the conditions and the accessibility to rights that women enjoy can contribute to the attainment of development goals such as poverty alleviation (zereyesus, 2017). previous studies on gender and agriculture have shown that women’s empowerment in agriculture is strongly linked to the improvement in agricultural productivity, income, and food security (diiro et al., 2018; murugani & thamaga-chitja, 2019; seymour, 2017; zereyesus, 2017). therefore, it is imperative that we attempt to formulate policies that aim to support female farmers and also attain poverty reduction and food security. the problem of concern for this essay is the low agricultural productivity and incomes among rural farmers in rwanda. in particular, agricultural productivity growth in rwanda remains a major developmental challenge for researchers and policymakers. numerous studies reported the inadequate use of inputs such as fertilizers, improved seeds, irrigation, and mechanization as important causes of low agricultural productivity and output in rwanda (ali, deininger, & duponchel, 2014; nahayo et al., 2017; ngango & hong, 2021b; ngango & hong, 2021a; nilsson, 2019). however, no single study has assessed the effect of women’s empowerment on agricultural productivity in rwanda. since women constitute the majority of the labour force in rwandan agriculture, particularly rice farming, it is important to investigate this link between farm activities and the improvement in the conditions of female rwandan agricultural workers. three research questions will be addressed through this study. they are: (i) what are the rice yields and incomes of households in the study area (i.e. the muvumba and bugarama rice schemes)? (ii) what would the effects of women’s overall empowerment on rice yield and income be? (iii) what would the effects of individual indicators of women’s empowerment on rice yield and income be? to achieve these objectives, the study used household-level data from 561 rice farmers in two major rice schemes in rwanda, that is, the muvumba and bugarama rice schemes. this study contributes to the existing literature by applying the abbreviated women’s empowerment in agriculture index (aweai), which is different from the women’s empowerment in agriculture index (weai) previously used in other gender and agricultural productivity studies such as sraboni, malapit, quisumbing, and ahmed (2014); malapit, kadiyala, quisumbing, cunningham, and tyagi (2015); zereyesus (2017); seymour (2017) and murugani and thamaga-chitja (2019). the a-weai includes six empowerment indicators in the five domains of empowerment. typically, the a-weai differs from the original weai, which uses ten empowerment indicators in the five domains of empowerment (diiro et al., 2018; kassie, fisher, muricho, & diiro, 2020). this study also makes a contribution to the literature from a methodological point of view, by using the instrumental variable (iv) method to estimate the causal impacts of women’s empowerment in agriculture on rice yield and income from rice production. in particular, this study employs the iv technique to control for the endogeneity problem of women’s empowerment. 2. materials and methods 2.1. conceptual and econometric framework the conceptual framework that guides this study is based on the idea that women’s empowerment as well as demographic, socio-economic, institutional, and locational-level characteristics are important factors that influence rice yield and income. in addition, farm inputs and agricultural practices such as labour, capital, fertilizers, seeds, chemicals, and row-planting are the major factors that affect rice yield and income. to examine the impact of women’s empowerment in agriculture on yield and income, the model was specified thus 𝑌𝑖𝑗 = 𝑓(𝑋𝑖 , 𝑉𝑖𝑗 , 𝑊𝑖). (1) where 𝑌𝑖𝑗 represents the outcome variables, that is, rice yield and net income generation of the 𝑖𝑡ℎ farmer from rice plot 𝑗. 𝑋𝑖 represents a vector of demographic, socio-economic, institutional, and locational-level characteristics. 𝑉𝑖𝑗 is a vector of inputs and farming practices such as labour, capital, fertilizers, seeds, chemicals, and row-planting used in rice production on plot 𝑗. 𝑊𝑖 represents women’s empowerment. it should be noted in equation 1 that 𝑊𝑖 is endogenous to rice yield and income. in particular, unobservable factors such as women’s management and leadership skills may influence both farm production and their empowerment status. also, the reverse causality between women’s empowerment and rice production outcomes (i.e. yield and income) may become a cause of endogeneity (diiro et al., 2018). seymour (2017) explains that women’s empowerment is likely to enhance agricultural growth and rural development. nevertheless, the improvement in farm productivity and income, on the other hand, may contribute to women’s engagement in community leadership activities and participation in decisions related to asset acquisition, credit, and more investment in agriculture (diiro et al., 2018; zereyesus, 2017). estimating the impact of women’s empowerment in agriculture on yield and income without controlling for endogeneity problems may generate inconsistent and biased estimates. thus, to manage the endogeneity bias in the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 201-209 203 structural model, the instrumental variable (iv) approach was used. the iv is considered to be an efficient approach for controlling for the endogeneity problem if the appropriate instruments are identified (cawley, o’donoghue, heanue, hilliard, & sheehan, 2018). five instruments for both overall women’s empowerment and the individual indicators of women’s empowerment have been identified. these instruments include: (i) the number of farmers’ groups in the village, (ii) difference in age between the male and female decision-makers in the family, (iii) difference in education between the male and female decision-makers in the family, (iv) whether a wife brought assets during the marriage, and (v) proportion of household members under 15 years of age. with regard to overall women’s empowerment, the study used all five variables as potential instruments. regarding individual indicators of women’s empowerment, the study used information on education and age differences between the primary adult male and female in the family as the potential instruments for all the six empowerment indicators. the number of farmers’ groups in the village was also used as an instrument for income and credit decisions. the variable capturing the information on whether the woman brought assets during the marriage is used as an instrument for production, asset ownership, and income decisions. the variable for the proportion of household members below 15 years of age is used as the instrument for the workload indicator. as stated above, women’s empowerment (𝑊𝑖 ) is considered as potentially endogenous to yield and income outcomes (𝑌𝑖𝑗) in this study. therefore, the two-stage least squares (2sls) iv approach is specified in the following system of equations. 𝑌𝑖𝑗 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑋𝑖 + 𝛽2𝑉𝑖𝑗 + 𝛽3𝑊𝑖 + 휀𝑖𝑗 (2) 𝑊𝑖 = 𝛿𝑀𝑖 + 𝜃𝑍𝑖 + 𝑢𝑖 (3) where 𝐸(𝑢𝑖|𝑍𝑖) = 0 and 𝐸(𝑢𝑖 , 휀𝑖𝑗) ≠ 0. in equation 2, 𝑌𝑖𝑗 is a vector of outcome variables, that is, rice yield and net rice income of the 𝑖𝑡ℎ farmer from rice plot 𝑗. 𝑋𝑖 represents a vector of demographic, socio-economic, institutional, and locational-level characteristics, 𝑉𝑖𝑗 is a vector of inputs and farming practices such as labour, capital, fertilizers, seeds, chemicals, and row-planting used in rice production on plot 𝑗 . 𝑊𝑖 represents women’s empowerment, 𝛽𝑖 represents the unknown parameters to be estimated, and 휀𝑖𝑗 is the error term. in equation 3, 𝑀𝑖 represents a vector of explanatory variables, 𝑍𝑖 represents a vector of instrumental variables, 𝑢𝑖 is the error term, while 𝛿 and 𝜃 are the parameters to be estimated. 2.2. analytical framework the estimation involved alternative specifications. first, in the framework of clarifying the overall impact of women’s empowerment in agriculture on yield and income generation, women’s empowerment is operationalized in aggregate. secondly, yield and income equations for each of the six indicators are estimated separately to assess the individual effect of each indicator on yield and income, respectively. indicators such as input in production decisions, asset ownership, access to and decisions on credit, control over the use of income, and group membership are entered in the equation as counts. on the other hand, the workload indicator is entered in the equation as a dummy variable taking the value of 1 if the woman spent less than or equal to 10.5 hours working on the day prior to the survey interview, and 0 otherwise. the iv approach involved a 2sls procedure. in the first stage, the suspected endogenous variable was regressed on the chosen instruments and exogenous regressors to obtain the predicted value of the endogenous variable. the iv diagnostic tests were used to check the validity and relevance of the chosen instruments (i.e. over-identification and under-identification tests). bootstrapping was also used to adjust the standard errors to account for the two-stage estimation procedure. in the second specification, the original structural model was estimated by inserting the predicted value of the endogenous variable (i.e. 𝑊𝑖 in the case of this study) obtained from the first step. bootstrapping was again used to adjust the standard errors to account for the two-stage estimation procedure. however, according to cameron and trivedi (2010) the iv regression assumes that endogenous explanatory variables are continuous, and its use may not be appropriate. in particular, when the iv probit is used, the predicted value of the endogenous explanatory variable (i.e. women’s empowerment in this case) will be linear (araya, 2020). to deal with this issue, econometric literature suggested the use of linear 2sls iv regressions (araya, 2020). 2.3. study area and data cross-sectional data used were obtained from a household survey conducted in the 2020/2021 cropping season. in particular, the sample was drawn from rice farmers operating in muvumba and bugarama rice schemes located in the eastern and western provinces of rwanda, respectively. the eastern and western provinces appear to have the most potential provinces in terms of rice production. in addition, muvumba and bugarama rice schemes are the largest in terms of area and rice production in rwanda. a multi-stage stratified sampling procedure was used to select enumeration areas and respondents. the first stage consisted of stratifying the sample based on the country’s two major rice schemes (i.e. muvumba and bugarama). in the second stage, based on weighted probabilities, 6 and 5 agricultural zones were randomly selected in muvumba and bugarama rice schemes, respectively. in the third stage, a certain number between 45 and 60 households were randomly selected from each zone, also based on weighted probabilities. in total, 332 households were selected under the muvumba rice scheme and 257 households were selected under the bugarama rice scheme, giving us a total sample size of 589 households. however, after cleaning the data collected, the dataset comprised a total sample of 561 households, with 315 households from the muvumba rice scheme and 246 households from the bugarama rice scheme. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 201-209 204 table 1 describes five domains of empowerment, namely, production, resources, income, leadership, and time. additionally, definitions of the six empowerment indicators are given. each indicator takes a value of one if a woman attains an adequacy criterion or zero otherwise (malapit et al., 2017). the a-weai allowed us to determine the empowerment score, on one hand, by taking the woman’s overall empowerment score, that is, the weighted sum of the six empowerment indicators. on the other hand, the empowerment score was determined by taking a woman’s level of empowerment concerning each individual a-weai indicator. indeed, alkire et al. (2013) elucidate the concept of women’s empowerment as the achievement of adequacy criteria in at least 80% of the weighted indicators. table 1. description of indicators and domains of empowerment in the abbreviated women’s empowerment in agriculture index (a-weai). domain indicator adequacy criteria weight production input in production decisions a woman is adequate if she participates in at least one decision related to food and cash-crop farming, livestock, and fishery production. 1/5 resources asset ownership a woman is adequate if she has sole or joint ownership of at least one asset. 2/15 access to and decisions on credit an adequate woman has access to credit and participates in decision-making over credit from at least one source. 1/15 income control over the use of income a woman is adequate if she has sole or joint control over income and expenditures for at least one of food and cashcrop farming, livestock, and fishery production. 1/5 leadership group membership a woman is considered adequate if she is an active member in at least one formal or informal group. 1/5 time workload an adequate woman spent less than or equal to 10.5 hours on paid and unpaid work in the previous 24 hours. 1/5 source: malapit et al. (2017). 3. results and discussion 3.1. descriptive statistics variables used in the analysis of this study were selected based on previous literature on women’s empowerment in agriculture (diiro et al., 2018; kassie et al., 2020; malapit et al., 2015; murugani & thamaga-chitja, 2019; seymour, 2017; sraboni et al., 2014; zereyesus, 2017). the main outcome variables of interest in this study are rice yield measured in kilograms per acre and farm income from rice production measured in rwandan francs (rwf) per acre. according to the data of this study, the average rice yield in the study area is 1,828 kg per acre. regarding the income, the study has considered the value of paddy rice harvested in the 2020/2021 crop season, evaluated using the average market price. the data shows that the average net rice income is approximately 843,380 rwf per acre (see table 2). coming to the independent variables, the primary variable of interest is women’s empowerment in agriculture which is measured by the a-weai. the summary statistics indicate that 71% of women in the sample have achieved adequate empowerment as per the weighted indicators. other independent variables considered in the analysis include farming practices, inputs, demographic, socio-economic, institutional, and locational-level characteristics. the descriptions and summary statistics of all variables used in the analysis are given in table 2. table 2. definition of variables used in the analysis and summary statistics. variables description mean std. dev. outcome variables rice yield quantity of paddy rice harvested per acre (kg/acre) 1.828 1.562 net crop income value of paddy rice harvested (‘000 rwf/acre) 843.383 647.187 women’s empowerment in agriculture variables empowerment score women’s overall empowerment score (weighted sum across 6 indicators comprising the aweai) 0.716 0.223 production decisions number of production decisions in which the woman participates 2.071 0.910 asset ownership number of assets over which the woman has control 2.629 1.494 credit decisions number of credit-related decisions in which the woman participates 3.145 2.578 income decisions number of income decisions in which the woman participates 5.211 2.859 group membership number of formal and informal groups to which the woman belongs 1.295 1.762 workload time adequacy (1 = woman worked less than or equal to 10.5 hours, 0 = worked 0.353 0.420 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 201-209 205 variables description mean std. dev. more than 10.5 hours) farming practices and inputs land area of land planted with rice (acre) 0.195 0.149 capital value of agricultural and household assets owned by the farmer (‘000 rwf) 314.733 306.116 labour total value of labour input (‘000 rwf/acre) 99.851 100.130 seeds value of seeds used (‘000 rwf/acre) 18.574 13.487 fertilizers value of fertilizers used (‘000 rwf/acre) 62.302 54.075 pesticides value of pesticides used (‘000 rwf/acre) 28.442 29.783 row-planting 1 if farmer plants rice seeds in rows, and 0 otherwise 0.468 0.505 demographic and socio-economic variables gender sex of household head (1 if the farmer is a male, and 0 otherwise) 0.534 0.481 male’s age age of primary male decision-maker (years) 51.208 18.154 female’s age age of primary female decision-maker (years) 49.656 18.503 male’s education education of the primary male decision-maker (years) 6.552 4.240 female’s education education of the primary female decision-maker (years) 6.080 3.879 household size number of people in the household 7.315 2.964 livestock ownership livestock ownership in tropical livestock units (tlu) 1.869 1.432 plot tenure 1 if the farmer owns the plot of land, 0 if rented 0.785 0.383 off-farm income 1 if a farmer has other sources of income offfarm, 0 otherwise 0.357 0.428 institutional and locational-level characteristics access to extension 1 if the farmer has access to extension contact, and 0 otherwise 0.634 0.541 access to credit 1 if the farmer has access to credit, and 0 otherwise 0.476 0.392 distance to market distance from home to the market (km) 2.885 1.023 location dummy 1 if the farmer is located in eastern province, 0 in western province 0.547 0.506 observations 561 3.2. empirical results table 3 reports the results for the impact of women’s overall empowerment on rice yield and farm-level income. the results show that women’s overall empowerment in agriculture has a positive and statistically significant impact on rice yield and income. based on the iv estimator, a unit increase in women’s overall empowerment leads to a 45.3% and 63.7% increase in rice yield and income, respectively (these numbers were computed based on the 100 × (𝑒𝛽 − 1) formula because the study used log-level regression specifications). this result is consistent with the findings of diiro et al. (2018) who found that women’s empowerment in agriculture significantly improved maize productivity in western kenya. additionally, anik and rahman (2021) revealed that women’s empowerment in agriculture has a positive impact on crop productivity and efficiency in bangladesh. traditionally, women play an important role in the agricultural sector and constitute a large percentage of the agricultural labour force in developing countries (diiro et al., 2018; seymour, 2017). thus, empowering women through the access, use, ownership, and control of land and financial resources can influence women’s ability to improve agricultural productivity and income (sraboni et al., 2014). other explanatory variables that have a positive and significant effect on rice yield include capital, seeds, fertilizers, row-planting, livestock ownership, off-farm income, access to extension, access to credit, and the location dummy. similarly, farm-level income is positively influenced by other variables such as capital, seeds, fertilizers, livestock ownership, plot tenure, off-farm income, access to extension, access to credit, and the location dummy. conversely, the distance to the market has a negative and significant effect on farm-level income. concerning the impact of individual indicators of women’s empowerment on rice yield, table 4 shows that production decisions, asset ownership, income decisions, and group membership indicators of women’s empowerment are positively and significantly correlated with rice yield. these findings corroborate the study of anik and rahman (2021) who found that women’s access to production decisions and asset ownership indicators were associated with higher productivity and efficiency. theoretically, it is believed that the improvement of women’s access to production decisions and asset ownership may help farmers to efficiently manage farm operations and hence increase productivity (murugani & thamaga-chitja, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 201-209 206 2019). moreover, our findings are consistent with the recent literature, which indicates that female farmers with access group membership and income decisions were linked to a statistically significant positive effect on crop productivity (bonis-profumo, stacey, & brimblecombe, 2021; diiro et al., 2018). however, our results are inconsistent with the study of cunningham et al. (2015), which indicated that production decisions, asset ownership, group membership, and workload are associated with low agricultural productivity. table 1. effects of women’s overall empowerment on rice yield and income. variables log (yield) log (income) ols 2sls-iv ols 2sls-iv women’s overall empowerment score 0.402** (0.104) 0.374*** (0.126) 0.425*** (0.218 0.493*** (0.196) log (land) -0.116 (0.057) -0.112 (0.055) 0.055 (0.063) 0.071 (0.067) log (capital) 0.458* (0.561) 0.409** (0.376) 0.392** (0.146) 0.354** (0.173) log (labour) 0.095 (0.052) 0.107 (0.042) 0.137* (0.102) 0.135 (0.099) log (seeds) 0.284*** (0.118) 0.250** (0.145) 0.565** (0.213) 0.562** (0.186) log (fertilizers) 0.357* (0.205) 0.374*** (0.201) 0.720*** (0.443) 0.704*** (0.368) log (pesticides) 0.136 (0.068) 0.123 (0.085) 0.086 (0.039) 0.084 (0.038) row-planting 0.143** (0.057) 0.130** (0.062) -0.235 (0.092) -0.227 (0.084) gender 0.049 (0.025) 0.046 (0.028) 0.067 (0.031) 0.078 (0.036) household size -0.036 (0.042) -0.036 (0.042) -0.080 (0.110) -0.073 (0.085) livestock ownership 0.244** (0.220) 0.277*** (0.209) 0.289* (0.174) 0.292** (0.162) plot tenure 0.641 (0.453) 0.622 (0.417) 0.261** (0.094) 0.266** (0.102) off-farm income 0.147* (0.085) 0.125* (0.093) 0.346*** (0.138) 0.329*** (0.120) access to extension 0.129** (0.102) 0.123** (0.098) 0.210 (0.088) 0.065* (0.224) access to credit 0.214*** (0.208) 0.192** (0.130) 0.441** (0.028) 0.325** (0.137) distance to market -1.153 (1.091) -1.146 (1.086) -0.756* (0.405) -0.584* (0.414) location dummy 0.075* (0.057) 0.097* (0.069) 0.058** (0.022) 0.051** (0.018) constant 2.454*** (0.326) 2.410*** (0.338) 3.168*** (0.295) 4.206*** (0.272) observations 561 561 561 561 f-test 19.450*** 18.640*** 21.524*** 20.863*** r-squared 0.22 0.21 0.29 0.27 note: *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1. bootstrapped standard errors for 2sls-iv and robust standard errors for ols are reported in parentheses. similarly, table 5 suggests that indicators of production decisions, asset ownership, income decisions, group membership, and credit decisions are positively and significantly associated with farm-level income. these results concur with the findings of anik and rahman (2021) who noted that individual indicators of women’s empowerment in agriculture have a positive relationship with income. empowering women through access to production decisions, asset ownership, income decisions, group membership, and credit decisions is believed to be the best path to reducing household vulnerability to poverty and food insecurity by increasing agricultural incomes and food availability (sharaunga, mudhara, & bogale, 2015). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 201-209 207 table 4. effects of individual indicators of women’s empowerment on rice yield (dependent variable: log (yield)). variables production decisions asset ownership income decisions credit decisions group membership workload number of production decisions made by the woman 0.194** (0.076) number of assets solely or jointly owned by the woman 0.157** (0.048) number of income decisions in which the woman participates 0.203*** (0.112) number of decisions over credit made by the woman 0.169 (0.104) number of groups to which the woman is an active member 0.272*** (0.088) time adequacy 0.096 (0.080) log (land) -0.115 (0.153) -0.127 (0.171) -0.110 (0.123) -0.162 (0.135) -0.158 (0.138) -0.151 (0.139) log (capital) 0.362*** (0.078) 0.542** (0.106) 0.518*** (0.086) 0.504*** (0.095) 0.436*** (0.061) 0.480*** (0.059) log (labour) 0.086** (0.014) 0.083** (0.012) 0.077** (0.009) 0.079** (0.008) 0.091** (0.018) 0.097** (0.022) log (seeds) 0.245*** (0.082) 0.268*** (0.087) 0.284*** (0.093) 0.252** (0.077) 0.294*** (0.121) 0.286*** (0.095) log (fertilizers) 0.165* (0.032) 0.148*** (0.026) 0.182** (0.025) 0.193*** (0.041) 0.180*** (0.036) 0.162*** (0.018) log (pesticides) -0.074 (0.150) -0.075 (0.145) -0.061 (0.113) -0.080 (0.098) -0.073 (0.137) -0.058 (0.081) row-planting 0.207*** (0.126) 0.131** (0.098) 0.225** (0.106) 0.214** (0.113) 0.249*** (0.105) 0.197** (0.106) gender 0.062* (0.041) 0.050 (0.022) 0.056 (0.018) 0.072 (0.025) 0.060 (0.034) 0.057 (0.023) household size -0.048 (0.063) -0.051 (0.059) -0.033 (0.054) -0.056 (0.047) -0.088 (0.073) -0.035 (0.009) livestock ownership 0.104** (0.075) 0.120** (0.053) 0.107** (0.062) 0.114*** (0.035) 0.102** (0.028) 0.138** (0.082) plot tenure 0.038 (0.007) 0.051 (0.018) 0.025 (0.013) 0.056 (0.021) 0.034 (0.005) 0.042 (0.019) off-farm income 0.083 (0.029) 0.067 (0.034) 0.092 (0.051) 0.074 (0.043) 0.062 (0.029) 0.058 (0.023) access to extension 0.445*** (0.206) 0.414*** (0.180) 0.412*** (0.185) 0.428*** (0.140) 0.536*** (0.097) 0.430*** (0.118) access to credit 0.196*** (0.087) 0.163** (0.088) 0.189*** (0.101) 0.232*** (0.113) 0.175*** (0.091) 0.187*** (0.096) distance to market -0.333** (0.061) -0.320** (0.059) -0.296** (0.102) -0.309** (0.114) -0.265** (0.088) -0.217** (0.095) location dummy 0.716*** (0.302) 0.773*** (0.327) 0.722*** (0.275) 0.708*** (0.230) 0.781*** (0.318) 0.785*** (0.307) constant 1.758*** (0.114) 1.629*** (0.120) 1.914*** (0.089) 1.720*** (0.077) 1.855*** (0.103) 1.932*** (0.116) r-squared 0.275 0.278 0.271 0.280 0.273 0.269 observations 561 561 561 561 561 561 note: *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1. bootstrapped standard errors are reported in parentheses. table 5. effects of individual indicators of women’s empowerment on income (dependent variable: log (income)). variables production decisions asset ownership income decisions credit decisions group membership workload number of production decisions made by the woman 0.216*** (0.092) number of assets solely or jointly owned by the woman 0.181*** (0.054) number of income decisions in which the woman participates 0.348*** (0.090) number of decisions over credit made by the woman 0.272* (0.129) number of groups to which the woman is an active member 0.185** (0.047) time adequacy -0.052 (0.078) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 201-209 208 variables production decisions asset ownership income decisions credit decisions group membership workload log (land) 0.208 (0.072) 0.077** (0.049) 0.134 (0.030) 0.169 (0.027) 0.125 (0.018) 0.092 (0.011) log (capital) 0.515*** (0.146) 0.588*** (0.134) 0.652*** (0.211) 0.697*** (0.182) 0.680*** (0.167) 0.598*** (0.085) log (labour) 0.274*** (0.087) 0.191*** (0.026) 0.159*** (0.023) 0.165*** (0.019) 0.238*** (0.090) 0.183*** (0.034) log (seeds) 0.141** (0.052) 0.148** (0.057) 0.194** (0.065) 0.146** (0.041) 0.137** (0.029) 0.150** (0.046) log (fertilizers) 0.223*** (0.080) 0.218*** (0.076) 0.301*** (0.118) 0.254*** (0.066) 0.243*** (0.072) 0.249*** (0.083) log (pesticides) -0.110 (0.235) -0.099 (0.202) -0.102 (0.157) 0.068 (0.097) -0.125 (0.173) -0.121 (0.178) row-planting 0.076*** (0.044) 0.140* (0.051) 0.087*** (0.036) 0.093*** (0.040) 0.124** (0.079) 0.095*** (0.064) gender 0.302 (0.288) 0.227 (0.253) 0.205 (0.171) 0.184 (0.205) 0.258 (0.312) 0.187 (0.222) household size -0.036 (0.041) -0.045 (0.055) -0.039 (0.060) -0.088 (0.086) -0.032 (0.045) -0.026 (0.050) livestock ownership 0.310** (0.142) 0.368* (0.139) 0.345* (0.094) 0.403* (0.251) 0.374* (0.158) 0.325* (0.088) plot tenure 0.062** (0.012) 0.080** (0.025) 0.076** (0.021) 0.107** (0.039) 0.074** (0.026) 0.082** (0.033) off-farm income 0.409*** (0.148) 0.436*** (0.145) 0.523** (0.280) 0.415** (0.163) 0.251* (0.117) 0.304** (0.126) access to extension 0.182 (0.169) 0.186 (0.170) 0.160 (0.095) 0.236 (0.194) 0.179 (0.102) 0.211 (0.225) access to credit 0.247** (0.083) 0.224** (0.068) 0.306** (0.053) 0.292** (0.050) 0.258** (0.062) 0.275** (0.068) distance to market -0.157** (0.040) -0.149* (0.042) -0.111** (0.028) -0.184** (0.067) -0.155** (0.079) -0.123* (0.061) location dummy 0.620*** (0.295) 0.597*** (0.186) 0.572*** (0.191) 0.619*** (0.226) 0.585*** (0.170) 0.552*** (0.194) constant 2.361*** (0.124) 2.003*** (0.095) 2.087*** (0.091) 1.821*** (0.102) 1.998*** (0.105) 2.144*** (0.108) r-squared 0.354*** 0.370*** 0.394*** 0.400*** 0.383*** 0.382*** observations 561 561 561 561 561 561 note: *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1. bootstrapped standard errors are reported in parentheses. 4. conclusion and recommendations this study used the iv method to examine the impact of women’s empowerment in agriculture on yield and income generation in rural rwanda. for the first research question, the descriptive results revealed that the average rice yield in the study area is approximately 1,828 kg per acre and the average net rice income is about 843,380 rwf per acre. for the remaining two research questions, empirical results revealed that women’s overall empowerment in agriculture has a positive and statistically significant impact on rice yield and income. indeed, this finding highlights the significance of improving women’s empowerment in agriculture to boost rice productivity outcomes and to ensure food security and poverty reduction. moreover, the results indicate that production decisions, asset ownership, income decisions, and group membership indicators of women’s empowerment are positively and significantly correlated with rice yield. on the other hand, production decisions, asset ownership, income decisions, group membership, and credit decisions indicators of women’s empowerment are positively and significantly associated with farm-level income from rice production. these findings call for policy interventions in favour of women’s participation in financial inclusion mechanisms, cooperatives, and agricultural production decisions. additionally, the findings of this study highlight the importance of building strategies and mechanisms for increasing women’s control and decisions over assets. overall, this study argues for the need for policy interventions aimed at improving women’s empowerment in agriculture to boost rice productivity and rural income in rwanda. however, this study is limited in the sense that the cross-sectional nature of the data does not support a rigorous examination of the impact of women’s empowerment in agriculture on yield and income generation. an additional limitation of this study is that the data are not nationally representative and thus cannot reflect the status of women’s empowerment across all parts of rwanda. consequently, future studies should employ nationally representative panel data to assess the effects of women’s empowerment on rice productivity and income outcomes. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture 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(2017). women’s empowerment in agriculture and household-level health in northern ghana: a capability approach. journal of international development, 29(7), 899-918.available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3307. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 436 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. sustainable use of eco-enzyme as biostimulants for enhancing yield and curcumin content in turmeric okti purwaningsiha rahmat a hi wahidb hanifah karimatulhajjc nur azizah uswatun hasanahd a,ddepartment of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, universitas pgri yogyakarta, bantul, special region of yogyakarta, indonesia. b,cdepartment of pharmacy, faculty of science and technology, universitas pgri yogyakarta, bantul, special region of yogyakarta, indonesia.  okti@upy.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 23 june 2025 revised: 11 august 2025 accepted: 26 august 2025 published: 8 september 2025 keywords curcumin eco-enzyme biostimulant health products rhizome sustainable turmeric cultivation traditional medicine. turmeric (curcuma longa l.) is widely cultivated for its medicinal properties and is used in the food industry. however, agricultural practices often prioritize rhizome yields over phytochemical richness. efficacy studies have been conducted on turmeric harvest quality using organic fertilizers. however, there are no reports on the curcumin content of turmeric grown organically using ecoenzymes. this study introduces an innovative application of ecoenzymes as biostimulants in sustainable turmeric cultivation to enhance both rhizome quality and yield. a completely randomized design (crd) with three replicates was employed, involving four treatments: control, 0.5%, 1%, and 1.5% eco-enzyme concentrations. data were analyzed using anova and duncan’s multiple range test at a 5% significance level. the results showed that while eco-enzyme application had no significant effect on tiller number and dry biomass at four months, it significantly increased rhizome weight per plant (p<0.05). phytochemical screening confirmed the presence of curcumin in all the samples, with significantly higher concentrations in the eco-enzymetreated groups. additional statistical tests indicated positive correlations between eco-enzyme concentration and curcumin levels. this study highlights the potential of eco-enzymes as a sustainable alternative for turmeric cultivation, producing rhizomes rich in bioactive compounds. compared to other sustainable practices, such as organic fertilization, eco-enzymes offer the dual benefit of enhancing yield and phytochemical content, with minimal environmental impact. future research should investigate their composition, impact on soil microflora, and long-term ecological safety. these findings contribute to a growing body of knowledge on sustainable agriculture and biostimulants. contribution/originality: this study presents a new use of eco-enzymes as natural boosters in growing turmeric. this method increases both the weight of the turmeric and its curcumin content. it is a major step forward in sustainable farming in indonesia. the results provide a green solution by using organic waste (eco-enzymes) in an environmentally friendly way. this is important for the pharmaceutical and food industries that rely on turmeric's active compounds. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5570 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: purwaningsih, o., wahid, r. a. h., karimatulhajj, h., & hasanah, n. a. u. (2025). sustainable use of eco-enzyme as biostimulants for enhancing yield and curcumin content in turmeric. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 436–443. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5570 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 436-443 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4406-9985 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3796-6998 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2868-0332 mailto:okti@upy.ac.id https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5570 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 436-443 437 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 1. introduction turmeric is a plant used as medicine and a spice. it contains curcumin, which helps reduce inflammation, fights cancer, and acts as an antioxidant. using chemical fertilizers harms the environment, so people are moving towards eco-friendly farming. sustainable farming is important to meet global needs without harming nature. eco-enzymes, made from fermented organic waste, help protect the environment and improve crop growth. this study looked at using eco-enzymes in growing turmeric to boost curcumin levels, supporting the global trend of eco-friendly farming. growing turmeric is hard because the soil is getting worse, and farmers use too much chemical fertilizers (zhu, sanidad, sukamtoh, & zhang, 2017). studies show that using organic materials like compost and biofertilizers can help plants grow more, but they affect quality differently (libutti, trotta, & rivelli, 2020). eco-enzymes, which contain nutrients and enzymes, can help plants grow better, but they are not used much in turmeric farming (khan et al., 2023). regular farming methods often reduce the organic matter in soil, which is bad for plant growth (montgomery & biklé, 2021). we need better ways to keep the curcumin levels high and protect the soil. this study is important for addressing the global challenge of turmeric with high curcumin content through sustainable agricultural practices, which contribute to the fields of agriculture and pharmacy. by evaluating the effectiveness of eco-enzyme use in agriculture, this study introduces a new organic fertilizer to increase curcumin levels, potentially reducing dependence on chemical inputs (kariada et al., 2023). these findings can inform large-scale agricultural practices that are aligned with environmental sustainability goals. additionally, this study provides insights into the interaction between eco-enzymes and secondary metabolite production in medicinal plants. according to hemalatha and visantini (2020) eco-enzymes produced through the fermentation of organic kitchen waste, such as fruit and vegetable scraps, brown sugar, palm sugar, or cane sugar, along with water, is a process that requires approximately three months (barman, hazarika, gogoi, & talukdar, 2022; nazim & meera, 2013). ecoenzymes have a wide range of applications, particularly during the pandemic, as they can be utilized as disinfectants and hand sanitizers. in agriculture, they can function as fertilizers, pesticides, and germicides, as well as purify contaminated river water. in the early 1900s, research mainly aimed to boost turmeric production using chemical fertilizers, often ignoring curcumin levels. in the late 1900s, organic farming became popular, highlighting the importance of biofertilizers and their impact on plant compounds (gao et al., 2020; panday, bhusal, das, & ghalehgolabbehbahani, 2024). eco-enzymes, a type of biofertilizer, use microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, and algae to improve soil and plant health. these biofertilizers are beneficial because they can fix nitrogen from the air, make nutrients like phosphorus and potassium available, and boost soil microbial activity (dhir, 2017). recent studies are examining the use of eco-enzymes in medicinal plants, which could facilitate their application in cultivating turmeric. ecoenzymes are important for increasing soil microbes, which help us understand how carbon and nutrients move in land ecosystems (gao et al., 2022). these enzymes help rice plants take in more nitrogen by affecting the genes and processes that control how well plants use nitrogen (lee et al., 2020). ecoenzymes also help good microbes grow around plant roots, which keeps plants healthy (velmourougane et al., 2017). spinach treated with enzymes has more antioxidants, which can be good for health by lowering stress in the body (simon et al., 2023). but, using these treatments on turmeric is not common, so more research is needed (kaur, al-khazaleh, bhuyan, li, & li, 2024). while ecoenzymes can improve crop yield and quality, their effects on turmeric need more study. these eco-friendly solutions are popular because they can be used in sustainable farming and caring for the environment (osman et al., 2024; shanka, 2020). they contain many important nutrients, making them great as organic fertilizers (dhaliwal, naresh, mandal, singh, & dhaliwal, 2019). they are also studied for cleaning household wastewater and industrial waste, such as from tofu production. in short, eco-enzymes are a new, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly way to manage waste and support sustainable practices (das et al., 2024; salsabila, 2024). making them helps reduce organic waste and creates a useful product for farming, animal health, and cleaning the environment (john, sharma, & venkatesh, 2023). curcumin in turmeric is affected by the environment, like soil quality and microbes (khan et al., 2023). nitrogen and phosphorus levels greatly affect curcumin gene activity (oyarce et al., 2019). but the effect of microbial substances, like those in eco-enzymes, on curcumin production is not yet known. turmeric and its roots are used in traditional medicine, herbal products, cosmetics, and cooking spices (ibáñez & blázquez, 2020; sharifi-rad et al., 2020). curcumin is produced through a process called the phenylpropanoid pathway. this process is influenced by soil nutrients and microbes (shofia, anggraeni, & nurlaila, 2024). eco-enzymes result from the breakdown of organic waste without oxygen. they are rich in enzymes, organic acids, and beneficial microbes that enhance soil health (blair, dickson, & o’malley, 2021). different types of soil microbes are important for recycling nutrients and affect how plants make certain chemicals (saghai, wittorf, philippot, & hallin, 2022). sustainable farming uses organic materials to reduce harm to the environment and improve crop quality. this study examines how eco-enzymes interact with the curcumin-making process in turmeric. soil nutrient imbalances affect curcumin production, so good management is needed (beganovic & wittmann, 2024). chemical fertilizers can harm soil microbes, reducing curcumin over time (dincă, grenni, onet, & onet, 2022). organic amendments should be optimized to boost activity without lowering yield (kracmarova et al., 2020). ecoenzymes might help, but they need thorough testing in turmeric farming. using ecoenzymes could increase curcumin and keep the soil healthy. more research is needed to find the best ways to use them for different turmeric types and soils. working together, experts in farming, biochemistry, and soil science can help develop sustainable ways to boost curcumin in turmeric. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 436-443 438 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. ecoenzymes help improve soil health, make nutrients more available, and increase plant growth using eco-friendly farming methods (mishra, maurya, & sharma, 2024; srivastava et al., 2023). organic materials like biofertilizers also boost plant yield (dzvene & chiduza, 2024). ecoenzymes have been successful in many crops but are not well-studied in turmeric. more research is needed to use ecoenzymes in medicinal plants. studies show that ecoenzymes can improve crop yields and soil health, but their use in turmeric is still limited (purwaningsih, hi wahid, & pamungkas, 2023). the effect of ecoenzymes on curcumin production is not well understood. this study aimed to assess the quality of turmeric rhizomes cultivated in an environmentally friendly manner using eco-enzymes. additionally, the agronomic characteristics of turmeric plants cultivated in an environmentally friendly manner were examined. this study contributes to a novel eco-enzyme approach to enhance curcumin biosynthesis, advancing sustainable agriculture and medicinal plant production. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study site this study took place from february to july 2024 at the experimental garden of the faculty of agriculture at universitas pgri yogyakarta (upy) in bantul, yogyakarta special region, indonesia. the area has a tropical climate, with temperatures ranging from 25 to 30°c and humidity levels of 78 to 84%. the study site is approximately 70 meters above sea level. 2.2. materials and methodology the research utilized turmeric roots, eco-enzymes, polybags, regusol soil, rice husks, ethanol, digital scales, a spectrophotometer, and an oven. regusol is sandy soil with over 80% sand and less than 10% clay, and its ph ranges between 6 and 7. it exhibits good air and water flow but has low organic matter content (approximately 0.95%) and retains little water and nutrients. the study employed a completely randomized design with three replicates. there were four treatments: no eco-enzymes, 0.5% eco-enzymes, 1% eco-enzymes, and 1.5% eco-enzymes. each treatment consisted of 16 polybags (figure 1). figure 1. cultivation and care of curcuma longa plants with eco-enzyme. 2.3. sustainable cultivation turmeric was grown by sprouting healthy rhizomes in a box with soil and rice husks. after about a month, when sprouts appeared, the rhizomes were moved to bags filled with the same mix. the plants were watered daily unless it rained. eco-enzymes were given every two weeks, with 100 ml added to each bag. eco-enzymes are made by fermenting fruit and vegetable waste, molasses, and water in a 3:1:10 ratio. this process took four months. the waste came from papaya, orange, apple, banana, watermelon, melon, dragon fruit, pear, carrot, spinach, cabbage, kale, and mustard greens. the eco-enzyme used in this study had n 0.04%, p 0.008%, k 0.34%, fe 17.72 ppm, zn 0.84 ppm, mn 3.82 ppm, ph 4.01 (purwaningsih et al., 2023). 2.4. observation and data analyzed observations included measurements of dry plant weight, number of tillers, rhizome weight, and the quantified phytochemical content of the rhizomes. data from the study were analyzed using analysis of variance at the 5% significance level. duncan's multiple range test was conducted to determine significant differences between treatments at the same significance level. 2.5. qualitative and quantitative analysis of curcumin qualitative analysis followed the method by harborne et al. for quantitative analysis, a spectrophotometric method was used. a standard curve was prepared by dissolving 1 mg of curcumin in 95% ethanol. it was then diluted to obtain concentrations of 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 ppm. the absorbance of each solution was measured at a wavelength of 420 nm using a spectrophotometer. to measure curcumin in the turmeric extract, 1 mg of the extract was dissolved in 95% ethanol. its absorbance was recorded at 420 nm using the same method. the curcumin content in the extract was calculated using the standard curve and expressed as the amount of curcumin in the sample (tanesib, rahmawati, & darusman, 2023). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 436-443 439 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3. result and discussion 3.1. analysis of plant growth and yield the observed growth and yield variables of the turmeric plants included the number of tillers, dry shoot weight, dry root weight, and rhizome weight. data collection for these variables was conducted when the turmeric plants reached four months of age. the results of the analysis of variance (anova) and duncan's multiple range test are presented in table 1 and 2. table 1. tiller number, dry root weight (g), and dry shoot weight (g) at various eco-enzyme concentrations. eco-enzyme concentrations tiller number dry root weight (g) dry shoot weight (g) 0 (control) 3.44 a 18.78 a 62.05 a 0.5% (eco-enzyme) 3.50 a 17.27 a 57.56 a 1% (eco-enzyme) 3.56 a 19.94 a 68.17 a 1.5% (eco-enzyme) 3.83 a 17.11 a 64.78 a note: numbers followed by the same letter indicate not significantly different based on duncan's multiple range test at the 5% significance level. table 1 demonstrates that the application of eco-enzymes at various concentrations did not significantly influence the growth of turmeric plants, as evidenced by the variables of tiller number, dry root weight, and dry shoot weight at four months after planting. turmeric plants not subjected to eco-enzyme treatment (control) exhibited no significant difference in growth compared to plants treated with eco-enzymes at all tested concentrations. in this study, the researchers examined three plant growth factors: dry root weight, dry shoot weight, and tiller number. these factors indicate how well plants grow. roots assist plants in absorbing water and nutrients, which are essential for growth (fageria & moreira, 2011). plants with strong roots can absorb more water and nutrients, leading to better growth, as shown by the dry root weight. roots also produce hormones that affect how plants grow by controlling nutrient intake (sathiyavani, prabaharan, & surendar, 2017). the eco-enzymes used in this study contain the nutrients necessary for root growth, so plants treated with eco-enzymes exhibit improved root development. figure 2 illustrates turmeric rhizomes cultivated using eco-enzymes. figure 2. turmeric rhizomes after harvesting time. dry shoot weight shows how much food a plant makes and stores in its shoots. more dry shoot weight means the plant is making more food, which indicates it is efficient at photosynthesis (li et al., 2022). photosynthesis is needed to make plant material (zou et al., 2022). some enzymes help in photosynthesis by balancing how food is made and used. the food produced by photosynthesis supports plant growth, including leaf and flower development (singh, nath, marboh, & sharma, 2017), like forming new shoots and developing turmeric roots.. in this study, there were no significant differences in dry root weight, dry shoot weight, and tiller number between plants with and without eco-enzyme treatment. this may be because the plants were only four months old, and their growth was still developing. at this stage, both vegetative and generative parts of the plant were still growing. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 436-443 440 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. vegetative growth influences generative growth and plant yield (barłóg, grzebisz, & łukowiak, 2018). in this study, turmeric rhizome weight was observed to assess yield. the results of the analysis of variance (anova) and duncan's multiple range test (dmrt) for rhizome weight are shown in table 2. table 2. turmeric rhizome weight (g) at various eco enzyme concentrations. eco-enzyme concentrations rhizome weight per clump (g) rhizome weight per plant (g) 0 (control) 209.11 a 82.16 b 0.5% (eco-enzyme) 220.01 a 107.71 a 1% (eco-enzyme) 206.11 a 105.62 a 1.5% (eco-enzyme) 242.28 a 110.64 a note: the letters a and b are notations to show real differences between treatments. numbers followed by the same letter indicate not significantly different based on duncan's multiple range test at the 5% real level. table 2 shows that using an eco-enzyme does not greatly increase the rhizome weight per clump, but it does increase the rhizome weight per plant. there is a strong positive link between the number of tillers and the rhizome weight per clump (r = 0.65*). the rhizome weight was measured when the turmeric plants were four months old, so not all tillers had grown rhizomes, or the rhizomes were not fully developed. the number of tillers was counted based on having opened leaves. the eco-enzyme likely helped because it contains enough n, p, and k nutrients needed for rhizome growth (noor, akhter, islam, hasan, & hamidullah, 2014; samanhudi, nugroho, santosa, & harjanto, 2014). 3.2. curcumin content analysis of turmeric rhizomes in this study, turmeric plants were picked four months after planting. the rhizomes were checked for curcumin levels. wahid, harahap, rambe, and nasution (2023) found that using eco-enzyme treatments significantly increases the amount of beneficial compounds in ginger, making it a more effective antioxidant. the positive effects of ecoenzymes on medicinal plants come from the way they work together with the plant's natural growth processes. this interaction helps initiate certain processes in the plant, leading to more beneficial compounds and enhancing the plant's effectiveness for health. table 3. average curcumin content in fresh turmeric rhizomes at various eco-enzyme concentrations. eco-enzyme concentrations curcumin content (ppm ± sd) 0 (control) 2.312 ± 0.009 d 0.5% (eco-enzym) 4.524 ± 0.002 a 1% (eco-enzym) 4.135 ± 0.008 b 1.5% (eco-enzym) 3.005 ± 0.001 c note: the letters a, b, c, and d are notations to show real differences between treatments. numbers followed by the same letter indicate not significantly different based on duncan's multiple range test at the 5% significance level. anova results in table 3 show that using eco-enzyme at different levels increased curcumin in turmeric rhizomes compared to no eco-enzyme (0%). the most curcumin was at 0.5% eco-enzyme, which was much more than with no eco-enzyme, and more than with 1% and 1.5% eco-enzyme. using more eco-enzymes did not increase curcumin. in fact, more eco-enzymes reduced curcumin levels. the elevated curcumin content at 0.5% eco-enzyme level can be attributed to the enzymatic action of the ecoenzyme, which may have increased curcumin solubility or release. eco-enzyme, containing enzymes such as proteases, amylases, and lipases, may cause the breakdown of cell walls or other structures, thereby promoting the extraction of bioactive materials (curcumin). the positive impact of low ph (acidic nature of eco-enzyme) might reinforce this effect, as an acidic environment could enhance curcumin solubility (hewlings & kalman, 2017; kępińska-pacelik & biel, 2023). the decrease in curcumin content at 1 and 1.5% eco-enzyme indicates an inhibitory or saturation effect. at 1.5%, curcumin content was found to be significantly lower compared to 0.5% and 1%. this phenomenon may be due to curcumin degradation resulting from higher enzymatic activity and unfavorable ph changes that occur at elevated ecoenzyme concentrations. curcumin is susceptible to degradation by oxidation or hydrolysis under certain conditions, which can be triggered by high enzyme concentrations (zhu et al., 2017). comparison with the control validated the significance of the eco-enzyme in increasing curcumin content, and a 95.5% increase was observed at 0.5% concentration. the use of multiple enzymes resulted in higher extraction yields of phenolic compounds. however, when curcumin was at 1.5%, the results began to decline, which indicates that the use of eco-enzymes has an upper limit that must be considered at certain concentrations. the results of the regression analysis of eco-enzyme concentration and curcumin levels are expressed in a regression equation, y = 0.338x + 3.2405. the regression equation graph can be seen in figure 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 436-443 441 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 3. regression analysis graph of the eco-enzyme concentration and curcumin levels. 4. conclusions the application of eco-enzyme in turmeric cultivation did not result in statistically significant increases in tiller quantity, dry root mass, or dry shoot mass in four-month-old turmeric plants; however, it did lead to a significant increase in rhizome mass per plant. phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of curcumin compounds in turmeric rhizomes across both the control and all eco-enzyme concentrations. the eco-enzyme treatment significantly elevated the curcumin content in turmeric rhizomes (p<0.05. using ecoenzymes to grow turmeric can help increase curcumin, which is important for making traditional medicine. this can lower production costs. research on ecoenzymes to boost natural compounds is suggested to advance the use of natural materials in medicine and health products. funding: this research was supported by the institute for research and community service of universitas pgri yogyakarta (grant number: 0246/lppm-upy/i/2024). institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and 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and among ngos, the most prominent are agha khan rural support program (akrsp), national rural support program (nrsp) and orangi pilot project (opp). extensive research have been carried out, to compared incomes and overall living standards of borrowers and non-borrowers in different areas of pakistan. some of these showed positive signs of improvement in living standards. for instance, micro credit significantly improved households’ income (waheed, 2009). households with access to credit are often more able to increase their income and food consumption than those without credit (sharma and zeller, 1998). similarly, institutional credits in pakistan are not only effective determinants of the agricultural output, but also affect household consumption and other household welfare indicators (khandker and faruqee, 2003). credit disbursements by pakistan poverty alleviation fund decreased the poverty level of borrowers from 6.61% to 3.07%. the effectiveness of microcredits and commercial loans among small farmers depends on the demand and supply of credits. the scope of this study is limited to the demand side of credits in the mandi bahauddin (m.b.din) district. it is a plain area situated at the heart of pakistan and very suitable for agricultural production. this district is enriched with vast irrigation facilities as it is bounded by the country’s two big rivers i.e. chenab and jhelum1. like the rest of the punjab province, there is also a high concentration of small farmers surviving in this district. the majority of farmers own less than 12.5 acres of land. in 2010 in the punjab province, 90.52% of small farmers holding land less than 12.5 acres of land, owned just 58% of farms and 9.48% of farmers owned 42% of farms (naseer et al., 2016). credit demands depends on different factors such as education, households’ size, interest rate, collateral, assets, households’ income and so forth. for instance, interest rates charged on the microcredit loans were greater than other loans (fernando, 2006). this was because, the credit services provided were for small sums of money and the administrative costs of these small loans made the interest rates high. the distance from the rural borrower to the bank, was an important determinant affecting access to credit (mensah et al., 2017). a positive correlation was observed between credit demand and family size (shah et al., 2008). the age, education, marital status, farm type, farm size, and farm status are key determinants in credit obtained and repayment (du et al., 2008). group based lending also released need for collateral for households that had previously limited access to loans from conventional commercial banks (kausar, 2013). 1 for this reason, it was named mandi bahauddin (or market bahauddin) after the establishment of a grain market in the early 20th century (district courts, 2018). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 49 2. methodology 2.1. site selection to gather information pertaining to credit demands among small farmers, m. b. din was selected for data collection. the total population of the district, is 1.59 million, and the total reported area of the district is 269,000 hectares, and the total agricultural land being used for all types of cultivation purpose is 226,000 hectares (pbs, 2018; bos, 2010). total of 6 villages were targeted from all three tehsils (sub-district) and villages were selected in such a way that no corner of the district was left unattended. lakhnewala and shahidanwali are situated on the east side, chak abdullah on the south, wara alam shah at the centre, kang sahali on the south-east corner and badshahpur on the north-west corner. all the households interviewed, owned at least some land, but there were some households who had rented out their land and earned their income from other activities different from agricultural farming. 2.2. data collection the total rural population of the district was around 1.26 million, and the total numbers of rural households were 199336. there were 4852 total households in six villages (pbs, 2018). the data was collected from 123 farm households. in this study, a household was defined as: members of a household, living in the same lodging and acknowledge a common household head and eat commonly prepared food together (beaman and dillon, 2010). the sample size with respect to rural households of the entire district was 0.061% of the population and 2.53% of the population with respect to six villages. around 9 weeks were devoted on interviewing the farmers with the help of a questionnaire. the questionnaire was also translated into urdu the national language. the total agricultural land owned by 123 small farmers was 464.7 hectares (or 1148.3 acres of land) with an average of 9.33 acres per farmer, which made up of 0.20% of the total agricultural land in the district. the questionnaire details are given in the appendix. 2.3. econometric and statistical models the probit model is used to estimate the credit demand, and to know the effects of certain factors on credit demanded. it was assumed that every household faced two choices, either to take credit from formal lending institution or not at all. thus, the general model is represented as: di = f (agei, edui, t_memi, total_yi, t_assets_valuei,) ……………….. (1) where di is a dummy variable taking value; 1 if the individual took credit, and 0 otherwise. agei and edui represents head of the households’ age and education, while t_memi, total_yi and t_assets_valuei represents the household size, total income, and the total value of household’s assets. got_loani = α0 + α1agei + α2edui + α3 t_memi + α4 total_yi + α5 t_assets_valuei+ εi ……. (2) got_loan represents credit demand (binary outcome) variable. total income variable was decomposed into three types of incomes i.e. livestock income, agricultural production income and other sources of income. by replacing the separate income variables with total income variable, the estimated model (2) changed to equation (3): got_loani = α0 + α1agei + α2edui + α3 t_memi + α4 live_y + α5prod_y+ α6oth_sou_y+α7 t_asseti + εi ……………….. (3) according to factors based on the previous studies, following signs of coefficients were expected: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 50 table 1a: expected signs of the predictors variables expected signs edu (+) t_mem (+) total_y non-linear (+/-) live_y non-linear (+/-) prod_y non-linear (+/-) oth_sou_y non-linear (+/-) interest rate (-) transaction cost (-) due to expected nonlinear correlation of income with credit demand, square of all types of income and total income variables were also included in the probit model (table 1b). table 1b: squared income variables livey_sq square of livestock income prody_sq square of (agricultural) production income othy_sq square of other sources of income totaly_sq square of total income 3. results and discussion 3.1. descriptive analysis only 5 households were found to be headed by widows and all other households were headed by husbands. no women were head of the household in the presence of the husband. the average age of head of households (hhhs) was 54 years. in addition, average household size was 6 persons, ranging from 2 persons to 16 persons in a household. among 123 households, 79 households (64.22%) never applied for any kind of formal loan and only 44 (35.78%) had applied for loans. it could be noticed that credit rationing was a minimal factor here because, among 44 households who applied for any loan, 43 (97.72%) got the same amount for which they had applied for and only one person was rejected (see table 2). table 2: distribution of households based on demand for credit applied not applied total got loan rejected total no. of households 44 79 123 43 1 44 percentage 35.78% 64.22% 100% 97.72% 2.28% 100% 3.2. informal lending 79 respondents, who had never applied for any sort of loan at any financial institution, were asked to rank 9 possible stated reasons in the questionnaire, and were also allowed to give any other reason apart from the stated reasons. the ranking was based on the following principle i.e. rank 1= most likely to rank 9 = most unlikely. to get an average score for each reason, the mean values of each reason were calculated. then mean values of each reason were tabulated in ascending order. the respondents ranked the reason ‘borrow from friends and relatives’ (with mean value 2.94) as their most likely reason and’ i don’t know about such loans’ (with mean value 8.06) was found to be the most unlike reason for not taking loans from financial institutions at the time of credit need (see figure 1). this also shows that the respondents were aware of the possibility and availability of loans from banks. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 51 graph 1: ranking of reasons out of 43, who got formal loans, more than half i.e. 25 (56.81%) households also got loans from informal sources (i.e. informal lending, friends, relatives and inter-linkages). these people borrowed money from informal sources 141 times, which was almost twice as often as formal loans. not surprisingly, the majority of these loans were taken from friends and relatives i.e. 128 times, collectively (see table 3). so, this proved that informal lending from friends and relatives crowded out formal lending, which could be explained by the reason that, loans from friends and relatives were interest-free. table 3: informal loans distribution loan type frequency (last 5 years) informal lending 1 friends 59 relatives 69 inter-linkage 12 total times 141 average informal loan (usd) 286 3.3. interest rate the second most commonly stated reason for not applying for any formal loan was a high rate of interest on bank loans (figure 1). while in hypothetical questions sub-section (see appendix), households gave first priority to the low interest rate. the second important thing was to instalment condition. it implied that returning half loan after one year was more difficult for them than returning the full amount after two years. this could be possible because, farmers usually did not have other sources of income, and they did not earn and save much from agriculture so that they could repay the loan. another reason could be that, their discount rates were higher than the interest rates, so that paying back after two years gave them a higher net present value, than paying back after one year. the collateral condition was the third in the list of priorities. they preferred smaller collateral conditions in the requirements list for a loan. group lending was the least important for farmers. 3.4. transaction cost it was further hypothesized that, high transaction costs resulted in less demand for loans. apart from stated reasons in the questionnaire for not taking loans; 20 respondents out of 79 also stated asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 52 other reasons, such as corruption, remittances and no need (to get a loan). not surprisingly, 40% described corruption as one reason for them not to ask for a loan. other reasons included difficult to find a guarantor who was acceptable to banks, lengthy and difficult procedure works and administrative charges. this showed a possible impact of transaction costs on the farmers’ decision. 3.5. consumption smoothing the data showed that out of the 43 households who took formal loans, 20 (46.52%) used their loans for consumption purposes such as son or daughter’s marriage, house construction or renovation, to repay private and informal loans etc. the other 23 (53.48%) households used the loans for agricultural purposes such as purchasing seeds, fertilizers, tractors, fuel etc. (see figure 1). figure 1: percentage of loan usage upon further decomposing the loans’ distribution, it came out that out of the 43 households who received formal loans, 37 households had applied for agricultural loans from different banks but only 24 respondents (64.86%) used these loans for agricultural purposes. the remaining 13 households spent these loans on consumption purpose. 6 households out of 43 households applied for loans for other purposes than agriculture (see figure 2 & 3). all of these loans were spent on activities for which they were taken. so, the data did not verify that the majority of the loans were spent for consumption smoothing. loan usage, consumption purposes, 46.52%, 47% loan usage, agricultural purposes, 53.48%, 53% consumption purposes agricultural purposes asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 53 figure 2: loan applications distribution figure 3: agricultural loans usage distribution 3.6. econometric analysis the overall probit model was statistically significant at 95% of the confidence interval, showing that at least one of the regression coefficients was not equal to zero (table 4). the results of the whole estimation can be seen in the appendix. table 4: results of probit model variable (got_loan) coefficient standard error z p>z marginal effects age 0.002 0.011 0.24 0.809 0.000 education 0.739 0.028 2.6 0.009 0.224*** total members 0.078 0.060 1.3 0.192 0.023 no. of farms applied agricultural loans = 37 (86%) no. of farms applied other loans = 6 (14%) agricultural usage = 24 farms (65%) other usage = 13 farms (35%) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 54 livestock income -9.26e-13 2.08e-06 -0.45 0.656 -2.81e-07 livestock income sq. 9.32e-13 3.43e-12 0.27 0.786 2.83e-13 total asset value -5.14e-08 2.22e-07 -0.23 0.817 -1.56e-08 production income 3.23e-07 2.39e-07 1.34 0.181 9.74e-08 production income sq. -1.91e-14 1.86e-14 -1.03 0.303 5.81e-15 other sources income -1.22e-07 5.12e-07 -0.24 0.811 -3.72e-08 other sources income sq. 4.24e-14 1.72e-13 0.25 0.806 1.28e-14 constant -2.064 0.833 -2.48 0.013 no. of obs. = 123; wald chi2 (11) = 23.24; prob. > chi2 = 0.016** log lh = -66.058; pseudo r2 = 0.1764 *** significant at 1% 3.7. education a significant positive impact of education was found on credit demand. however, interpretation of the coefficients in probit regression was not as straightforward as the interpretations of coefficients in linear regression or logit regression. the increase in probability attributed to a one unit increase in a given predictor is dependent both on the values of the other predictors and the starting value of the given predictors. the results in table 4 showed that, increase in years of schooling would increase the predicted probability of credit demand (with 0.009 p-value). the marginal effects showed that changing one unit in the education variable, increases the probability of credit demand by 0.022. thus, higher education could reduce the cost of gathering information, and make the understanding of loan regulations easier. it could also imply that higher educated respondents had higher income to repay loans. 3.8. family size surprisingly, household size showed no significant influence on credit demand. the two-way graph showing credit demand (got_loan) and household size (t_mem) revealed a positive pattern in the data (see figure 1 in appendix). it was plausible to use consumer/worker ratio variable, instead of household size variable in line with the intuition that higher consumer/worker ratio could lead to increase in credit demand. the result showed that (like household size) consumer/worker ratio also did not affect credit demand. 3.9. all (decomposed) incomes the probit model showed insignificant relationships between all sources of income and credit demand. it was plausible to expect that increase in income could increase credit demand first, as a farmer might want to enhance agricultural production or to start a small business along with agricultural farming. after some time, the farmer could be self-reliant and need no further financial assistance, which might result in a decrease in credit demands with further increase in income. by taking square of all sources of income variables, new variables were generated (i.e. livey_sq, prody_sq and othy_sq). these variables also show an insignificant association in the probit model. 3.10. livestock income however, the quadratic fitted values graph between credit demand and (squared) livestock annual income variable, showed a convex relation (see figure 2 in appendix). the intuition behind this convexity could be that, when livestock income is increasing, the farmers’ need for loan may decrease. after a certain amount of increase in livestock income, they might think about taking loans for enhancement of their livestock or to start other production activities along with livestock farming. 3.11. production income in the case of agricultural production income, the quadratic fitted values graph (see figure 3 in appendix), showed a concave relationship between credit demand and agricultural production asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 55 income. the intuition could be that, at a lower level of agricultural production, income credit is needed to enhance production activities; for instance, by renting more land or buying agricultural inputs such as improved seed and fertilizer. at higher levels of agricultural production income, they might not need as many credits anymore. this could be because of management problems of big land, unavailability of more land to rent etc. 3.12. other sources of income like the livestock income variable, the quadratic fitted other sources of income variable also showed a convex relationship with credit demand (see figure 4 in appendix). other sources of income included selling of milk, salary, business, land rents, remittances and pension. the reasons behind this convex relationship could be the same as in the case of livestock income. for instance, if a household’s income increased due to a job, promotion in a job, land rents, remittances etc. then at the first, credit demand could decrease. after sometime, when they have savings in the banks, it might be a possibility that they could take loans by relying on these savings, which would result in increased credit demand. it implied that, the relationship between credit demand and all incomes also depended on other things e.g. availability of land for rent, rents on land, different crops and livestock markets, etc., but these elements were beyond the scope of the current study. 3.13. total income the regression analysis of total income instead of decomposing income, did not yield any significant results for the income variables. it showed a concave relationship between demands for credit and total income, which might imply that increase in total income would eventually decrease credit demand (see figure 5 in appendix). it might imply that at first when income increased, farmers demanded credits to enhance agricultural activities like taking land on rent, buying of new livestock or establishing a small business, and then afterwards, they might not need any loan for financial support. however, this result is not significant, as can be seen by the heavy shaded area around the fitted line. 4. conclusion in order to determine the impacts of certain factors on credit demand, interviews of 123 small farmers were conducted in six villages of the mandi bahauddin district of pakistan. with the help of this dataset, seven determinants were tested, of which four factors (informal lending, interest rate, consumption smoothing, and transaction cost) were tested through qualitative methods, and the remaining three factors (education, family size and income) were tested through a quantitative method. out of 123 households, the majority of small farmers had never applied for any formal loan and listed ‘borrowing from friends and relatives’ as the most likely reason for not applying for formal loans, thus indicating that informal lending crowds out formal lending. moreover, their second-most likely reason for not applying for formal loan was high interest rates. in the hypothetical loan packages section, farmers preferred those packages that offered a loan at low interest rate. apart from the stated reasons, a considerable number of farmers described corruption as a reason for not seeking any loan, which affirmed the third factor (i.e. transaction cost). however, the data could not verify the hypothesis that most of the formal loans were taken for consumption smoothing rather than for agricultural purposes. in the quantitative analysis, a probit model was used to analyze the impact of education, household size, and income on credit demand. it was noted that years of education for the head of household increased the probability of credit demand, but no significant impact of household size on credit demand was observed. however, the coefficient had the expected positive sign. furthermore, no significant correlation between all types of income and credit demand was found. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 56 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that s/he has no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: i would like to extend my appreciation to the norwegian university of life sciences, norway for offering a research grant for data collection and for providing peaceful study environment throughout this research work. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akhtar, d. n. (2012). people need more than just microfinance: evidence from pakistan. management department, yanbu university college, yanbu, saudi arabia. british journal of arts and social sciences, 4(2), 319-329. beaman, l., & dillon, a. (2010). do household definitions matter in survey design? results from a randomized survey experiment in mali. international food policy research institute. discussion paper no. 01009. bos (2010). land utilization statistics by division and district, the punjab. bureau of statistics punjab. retrieved from http://bos.gop.pk/system/files/land_use_1011_r.pdf#overlaycontext=publicationreports. district courts (2018). brief history of mandi bahauddin. available at http://mbdin.dc.lhc.gov.pk/?page_id=1335. du, x. l., fang, s. y., meyer, t. e. (2008). impact of treatment and socioeconomic status on racial disparities in survival among older women with breast cancer. american journal of clinical oncology, 31(2), 125-132. fernando, n. a. (2006). understanding and dealing with high interest rates on microcredit. a note to policy makers in the asia and pacific region. east asia department. kausar, a. (2013). factors that affect microcredit’s demand in pakistan. international journal of academic research in accounting, finance and management sciences, 3(4), 11-17. khandker, r. s., & faruqee, r. r. (2003). the impact of farm credit in pakistan. agricultural economics, 28(3), 197-213. doi: 10.1016/s0169-5150(03)00017-3 mensah, o. s., jincai, z., isaac, a. b., & patrick, a. (2017). the role of institutional policies in promoting agribusiness development in rural china. agriculture and food sciences research, 4(2), 37-44. naseer, a., ashfaq, m., abid, m., razzaq, a., & hassan, s. (2016). current status and key trends in agricultural land holding and distribution in punjab, pakistan: implications for food security. journal of agricultural studies, 4(4), 14-27. pbs (2018). block wise provincial summary results of 6th population and housing census – 2017. pakistan bureau of statistics. government of pakistan. shah, s. r., bukhari, a. t., hashmi, a. a., & anwer, s. (2008). determination of credit programme participation and socioeconomic characteristics of beneficiaries: evidence from sargodha. the pakistan development review, 47(4), 947-959. sharma, m., & zeller, m. (1998). rural finance and poverty alleviation. food policy report. international food policy research institute (ifpri), washington d.c. waheed, s. (2009). does rural micro credit improve well-being of borrowers in the punjab (pakistan)? pakistan economic and social review, 47(1), 31-47. world bank (2015). poverty and equity brief: pakistan. the world bank. available at http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/home/. world bank (2017). rural population (% of total population). based on united nations population division’s world urbanization prospects: 2018 revision. the world bank. available at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.rur.totl.zs. http://bos.gop.pk/system/files/land_use_10-11_r.pdf#overlaycontext=publicationreports http://bos.gop.pk/system/files/land_use_10-11_r.pdf#overlaycontext=publicationreports http://mbdin.dc.lhc.gov.pk/?page_id=1335 http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/home/ http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.rur.totl.zs asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 57 appendix questionnaire details the first part of the questionnaire collected information about household characteristics, such as gender, age, marital status, education, occupation etc. the second part was about the households’ assets and properties. assets included land, livestock and machinery. the value of the assets was derived from the estimated price of the assets on which farmers were willing to sell them. the third part was about farmers’ previous year production activities. all types of commonly cultivated crops, fruits, vegetables and pasture were included. the last part was about other sources of income, for example, income from rented out land, selling of milk, jobs, remittances etc. the last part was about credit and borrowing. it was further divided into 3 parts; applied and got loan (both formal and informal), applied but could not get and never applied for any loan. those who never applied for loans, they were further questioned about their preferences to the loans with varying attributes e.g. interest rate, less collateral, payback period, group lending etc. with the help of hypothetical loan packages (table a and b). table a: detail of all packages packages amount (usd) interest rate (%) payback period (years) collateral (acres of land) payback installment (usd per year) group lending (number of persons) package 1 2000 10 2 5 package 2 2000 17 2 3 package 3 2000 10 2 3 1000 package 4 2000 10 2 4 table b: hypothetical scenarios scenarios packages your preferences scenario 1 package 1 vs package 2 scenario 2 package 1 vs package 3 scenario 3 package 1 vs package 4 scenario 4 package 2 vs package 3 scenario 5 package 2 vs package 4 scenario 6 package 3 vs package 4 probit model estimation of determinants of demand for credit no. of obs = 123 lr chi2(12) = 28.30 prob > chi2 = 00.50 log likelihood = -66.058 pseudo r2 = 0.176 variable coefficient standard error z p > z 95% confidence interval age 0.0027 0.1151 0.24 0.809 -0.0197 0.0253 education 0.0739 0.2840 2.60 0.009 0.0183 0.1296 total members 0.0784 0.0601 1.30 0.192 -0.0394 0.1964 live stock income -9.26e-07 2.08e -06 -0.45 0.656 -4.99e -06 3.14e -06 live stock 9.32e -13 3.43e -12 0.27 0.786 -5.79e -12 7.66e -12 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 58 income sq. total assets value -5.14e -08 2.22e -07 -0.23 0.817 -4.87e -07 3.84e -07 production income 3.20e -07 2.39e -07 1.34 0.181 -1.49e -07 7.90e -07 production income sq. -1.91e -14 1.86e -14 -1.03 0.303 -5.55e -14 1.73e -14 other source income -1.22e -07 5.12e -07 -0.24 0.811 -1.13e -06 8.81e -07 other source income sq. 4.24e -14 1.72e -13 0.25 0.806 -2.96e -13 3.80e -13 lakhnewala 0.9478 0.4939 1.92 0.055 -0.2034 1.9159 shahidanwali 0.7268 0.5093 1.43 0.154 -0.2725 1.7251 badshahpur 0.8474 0.5015 1.69 0.091 -0.1356 1.8304 wara alam shah 0.4655 0.5432 0.86 0.391 -0.5990 1.5302 chak abdullah -0.8992 0.6413 -1.40 0.161 -2.1562 0.3577 constant -2.0645 0.8331 -2.48 0.013 -3.6974 -0.4316 marginal effects variable dy / dx standard error z p > z 95% confidence interval age 0.0008 0.0034 0.24 0.809 -0.0060 0.0077 education 0.0224 0.0078 2.85 0.004 0.0070 0.03794 total members 0.0238 0.0178 1.33 0.183 -0.0112 0.0589 live stock income -2.81e -07 6.29e -07 -0.45 0.655 -1.51e -06 9.52e -07 live stock income sq. 2.83e -13 1.04e -12 0.27 0.786 -1.76e-12 2.33e -12 total assets value -1.56e -08 6.75e -08 -0.23 0.817 -1.48e -07 1.71e -07 production income 9.74e -08 7.13e 08 1.37 0.172 -4.23e -08 2.37e -07 production income sq. -5.81e -15 5.58e -15 -1.04 0.298 -1.67e -14 5.13e -15 other source income 3.72e -08 1.55e -07 -0.24 0.811 -3.42e -07 2.68e -07 other source income sq. 1.29e -14 5.24e -14 0.25 0.806 -8.98e -14 1.16e -13 lakhnewala 0.2881 0.1430 2.01 0.044 0.0076 0.5685 shahidanwali 0.2209 0.1506 1.47 0.142 -0.0742 0.5161 badshahpur 0.2576 0.1468 1.75 0.079 -0.0302 0.5454 wara alam shah 0.1415 0.1635 0.87 0.387 -0.1790 0.4621 chak abdullah -2.733 0.1920 -1.42 0.155 -0.6497 0.1030 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 59 figure 1: households size and demand for credit figure 2: quadratic fitted-values graph between (squared) annual livestock income and demand for credit 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 d e m a n d f o r cr e d its ( p ro b a b ili ty ) 0 5 10 15 household size 95% ci fitted values 0 .5 1 1 .5 d e m a n d f o r c re d it s ( p ro b a b ili ty ) 0 2.00e+11 4.00e+11 6.00e+11 8.00e+11 livestock income (squared) 95% ci fitted values asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 60 figure 3: quadratic fitted-values graph between (squared) annual (agricultural) production income and demand for credit figure 4: quadratic fitted-values graph between (squared) annual other sources of income and demand for credit -1 0 1 2 3 d e m a n d f o r c re d it s ( p ro b a b il it y ) 0 1.00e+14 2.00e+14 3.00e+14 4.00e+14 production income (squared) 95% ci fitted values -. 5 0 .5 1 1 .5 2 d e m a n d f o r c re d it s ( p ro b a b ili ty ) 0 5.00e+12 1.00e+13 1.50e+13 2.00e+13 other sources income (squared) 95% ci fitted values asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 47-61 61 figure 5: quadratic fitted-values graph between (squared) annual total income and demand for credit -1 0 1 2 d e m a n d f o r c re d it 0 1.00e+14 2.00e+14 3.00e+14 4.00e+14 total income(squared) 95% ci fitted values effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 132 the role of government in agricultural and rural development: review of agricultural policies in ukraine after independence with a look at the eu and south korea experience stanislav rieznik lee hwan beom  department of public administration at yeungnam university, geyongsan-si, 712-749, south korea.  hblee@ynu.ac.kr (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 09-aug-2018 accepted: 13-nov-2018 online available: 30-nov2018 keywords: ukraine, role of government, agricultural and rural development abstract support for prime agricultural producers in ukraine has been characterized by high volatility in the last decade, and some recent policy developments have contributed to the volatility and unpredictability. until recently, the government support for agricultural holdings led to an increase in the export potential of the sector, but, on the other hand, it also brought a number of negative consequences. this study aims at reviewing of the present status of ukraine's agricultural sector and rural areas and examines the role of the government intervention and support in the transformation of the agricultural sector and its effect on rural development to provide policy recommendations in this regard. based on the analysis, the study provides policy recommendations suggesting that government need to promote cooperation of small farms and households (helping them to develop in organic agriculture direction) with agricultural holding companies and emphasizes that development of rural non-farm employment opportunities can be seen as a pillar of the rural development policy. in addition, it is necessary to foster organic agricultural development and provide local governments with greater authority in order to achieve sustainable agricultural sector and rural areas development. contribution/ originality this study contributes to the existed literature providing policy recommendations for agricultural development based on the current state of dualization in the agricultural sector. it also stresses the importance of continuing the decentralization reform for sustainable rural development. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.132.145 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: stanislav rieznik and hwan beom lee (2018). the role of government in agricultural and rural development: review of agricultural policies in ukraine after independence with a look at the eu and south korea experience. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 132-145. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 132-145 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:hblee@ynu.ac.kr http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.132.145 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6800-971x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3002-0486 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 132-145 133 1. introduction various types of inputs, services, and commercial ties play key roles in modern agriculture. it is clear that the competitiveness of the agricultural sector cannot increase without the development of industrial, commercial, and service sectors characterizing modern agriculture. therefore, there is an urgent need for policies that can promote technological and human resource development and enhance the attractiveness of rural areas in the private sector, such as roads, electrification, and telecommunications (norton, 2004). to satisfy quality and safety standards of international markets, modern agriculture requires the proper government intervention that can and should create favorable conditions for cooperation in the agricultural and industrial sectors through appropriate management and administrative/advisory services in the secondary (e.g., processing and agricultural industries) and tertiary (e.g., technical, commercial, and transport services) sectors. government support for prime agriculture producers also plays an important role in agricultural development. support for prime agricultural producers in ukraine has been characterized by high volatility in the last decade, and some recent policy developments have contributed to the volatility and unpredictability. the ukrainian government needs to seriously consider the safety and quality of food products and implement a certification system for documenting compliance with internationally accepted standards to take full advantage of its wto membership and increase exports of agricultural and food products as well as to improve its domestic supply. ukraine's accession to the wto and ratification of ukraine – eu association agreement in 2014 has launched the process of development of a qualitatively new form of relations on the principles of political association and economic integration but has created a number of problems that can be solved only through the modernization of agricultural policies and new approaches to domestic support focusing on long-term improvements in productivity and competitiveness and making the agricultural policy more predictable. there are two major groups in ukraine's agricultural sector: large agricultural enterprises (about 152, each with more than 10,000 ha of leased land) and small and medium-sized farmers with rural households accounting for about 50% of total production volume. state support for large-scale enterprises and opinions of politicians can be divided on the appropriate distribution of resources between these groups. on the one hand, support for high-income groups is more likely to increase tax revenues than that for small and medium-sized farmers, but this comes at the expense of poverty and hardship for the latter group. till recently government support for agricultural holding companies has led not only to an increase in the export potential of the sector but also to a variety of negative effects such as exports of capital from the real sector to offshore entities, the formation of strong lobby efforts against the introduction of principles of sustainable agriculture based on proper crop rotation and soil fertility and the use of organic fertilizer (fao, 2012). this lobbying has made use of the market power of big players to ensure preferences for state support and marketing channels (infrastructure and export facilities). for sustainable agriculture, government support with the obligatory fulfilment of requirements and timely government interventions is needed. the ministry of agrarian policy and food of ukraine has prepared a draft of a single and comprehensive strategy for agriculture and rural development 2015-2020 that addresses the real needs of the sector. the strategy was supported by the national reforms council at the meeting on 9 november 2015 (mapf, 2015). the overall objective of the national strategy and action plan for agriculture and rural development for the period 2015-2020 is to increase agricultural competitiveness and food security, and to promote rural development in a sustainable manner in line with eu and international standards. based on the analysis below, this paper suggests that the ukraine government agricultural policy should focus on the whole sector and ensure that small and medium-sized farmers have an opportunity to modernize and access agricultural markets while using available resources and funds. in order to achieve sustainable agricultural sector and rural areas development ukrainian government should make its agricultural support stable, transparent asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 132-145 134 and predictable and establish clear targets and mechanisms to ensure that all types of agricultural producers receive the necessary support in the most appropriate way. 2. present status of ukraine’s agricultural sector and rural areas this paper identifies the main problems in ukraine's agricultural sector and finds certain aspects of its agricultural and rural development policies that need to be considered and analyzed. these issues include (a) state-funded support programs with limited transparency that favor big agricultural enterprises, which accentuates inappropriate policies and non-sustainable agricultural practices, and (b) the absence of a proper rural development policy, which produces high rural unemployment, decaying social infrastructure systems in rural areas, and depopulation. the ukrainian government is clearly responsible for these problems and the present state of development. as a representative example, ukraine did not have a long-term strategy for the use of budgets for agricultural and rural development till 2013. thus, inappropriate and inconsistent policies have made long-term investment planning by agricultural enterprises in the sector very difficult and increased their entrepreneurial risk. it should be noted that, following the demise of the u.s.s.r., the process of the economic transition to a market economy has been difficult for ukraine’s agricultural sector. food and agricultural sectors fell into a deep crisis from 1990 to 1999. during this period, the output of the primary agricultural sector in ukraine declined sharply by 51% (oecd, 2004). the crisis essentially came about as a result of a collapse of the general economy after a breach of economic relationships within the soviet infrastructure, but the depth and length of the decline were more serious than in other transition economies because of the government inert and passive policy reforms for most of the 1990s. 2.1. the current state of dualization in agricultural sector the agrarian sector of ukraine is currently represented by large corporate farms and small individual farms that range from households to farm cooperatives jointly managed by several families and small corporations. the absence of a proper strategy for decades, an incomplete land reform initiative, and weak government control over the development of the agricultural sector have led to the concentration of land and assets and the consolidation of large holding companies. this process has been taken place mainly in the shadow and been possible due to no transparent control of the distribution of former collective enterprises’ property and agricultural land. emergence of an informal land market led to the consolidation of large areas of farmland in the hands of vertically integrated legal entities and individuals through the leases, lease-purchase contracts, and purchase agreements. hundreds of thousands of hectares of consolidated land have been cultivated by export-oriented corporations. in 2010, the 40 largest holding companies controlled 4.5 million ha of land (now about 6 million ha), accounting for 11% of total agricultural land. large corporations and mega agricultural holding companies rarely register their businesses in ukraine because they prefer offshore registration option to benefit from tax exemptions (deininger and byerlee, 2012). therefore, it is difficult to track and statistically measure their emergence and dynamics. during the 2005-2012 period, export of food and agricultural products had increased by 315% (in 2013, exports of agricultural products in ukraine amounted to about $17-18 billion), and ukraine is now one of the largest grain exporters in the world, but ordinary farmers receive no benefit from it (sarna, 2014). more than 40,000 small and medium-sized farms only dream of large profits. there are many international and ukrainian experts who acknowledge unequal business opportunities for agricultural operators of different sizes in ukraine. indeed, large agricultural holding companies have access to comparatively cheap loans in international financial markets, whereas small farmers have to borrow from local banks at an interest rate around 20%. a serious problem for small and medium-sized ukrainian farmers in comparison to agricultural holding companies is the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 132-145 135 bureaucratic obstacle (corrupt public services). in terms of subsidies for primary producers, the situation is such that state financial support exists only for large-scale enterprises, whereas governments of developed countries generally provide subsidies mainly to small farmers. based on the statistics for the agricultural sector as of 2010, small farms accounted for about 55% of total agricultural production (see table 1), including 97.4% of potatoes, 83.6% of fruits and 88.1% of vegetables, 80.3% of milk, and 44.9% of meat. large farms (agricultural holding companies) remained strong in traditional crop exports, accounting for 78% of national agricultural production and 84% of the total national production of sunflower seeds (keizer et al., 2012). this shows that small farmers are an important part of the national economy and that they require and deserve government support. table 1: share of different types of farms in agricultural production, % indicator corporate farms individual farms peasant farms households 2000 2010 2000 2010 2000 2010 gross agriculture output (value) 32.3 39.9 1.7 5.0 66.0 55.1 production (quantity) grain and leguminous crops 76.5 63.8 5.1 12.0 18.4 24.2 sunflower seed 77.5 64.7 10.0 17.8 12.5 17.5 rapeseed 96.0 85.0 4.0 15.0 – – sugar beet (for processing) 82.1 83.7 5.7 8.4 12.2 7.9 potatoes 1.1 1.7 0.3 0.9 98.6 97.4 vegetables 15.5 9.3 1.4 2.6 83.1 88.1 fruits and berries 18.2 16.4 81.8 83.6 all types of meat 25.8 52.8 0.5 2.3 73.7 44.9 all types of milk 28.5 18.7 0.5 1.0 71.0 80.3 eggs 33.7 59.6 0.1 0.5 66.2 39.9 honey 6.6 2.0 0.2 0.3 93.2 97.7 wool 38.3 13.8 0.3 3.1 61.4 83.1 source: keyzer et al., 2012 2.2. an asymmetric development of organic agriculture in terms of organic agriculture, by its natural endowment of climate and soil, ukraine has the potential to become a leading producer of organic products. organic agricultural production in ukraine is currently in its initial stages of development, and despite its huge potential, it faces a number of serious problems. the area under organic production covers over 270,000 hectares, putting ukraine into the top 20 leading producers of organic products and the first place among eastern european countries (fao, 2012). in 2010, nearly 120 agricultural enterprises were in operation based on principles of organic farming. all enterprises were internationally certified, and most organic agricultural farms in ukraine were large or medium-sized entities with an average size of 3,000 ha. major forms of organic production include grain, legumes, and oilseeds. about 70% of all organic products are sold for exports, but their share of the domestic market is growing (cereal, juices, honey, and others). the federation of organic movement was formed in 2005 and has over 100 members composed of businesses, small farmers, and public/state research organizations (unep, 2011). in 2009, the national certification organization "organic standard" received international accreditation. however, the problem is that production of organic cattle remains almost non-existent, and a processing industry for organic agricultural products is yet to be developed. such one-sided development of organic agricultural products reduces profits of agricultural producers. ukraine's slow and asymmetric development of organic production is caused by the following factors: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 132-145 136  weak state support and stimulation systems for the development of organic agricultural products,  incomplete legal and normative standards,  export domination and the underdevelopment of the home market,  the active production and exportation of only one or two types of organic raw agricultural products (corn and oil) and the weak production of other crops,  most large agricultural enterprises involved in organic production and the limited transition of small and medium-sized enterprises. 2.3. limitations of the local governments another problem lies in the sphere of government administration. ukraine's administrative and territorial structure of the territorial subdivision system has not changed much since its independence in 1991 and is far from reflecting good governance in terms of global normative understanding. the current spatial division reflects political principles of a territorial organization inherited from the soviet era. in ukraine, large numbers of local authorities (more than 12,000) and districts (500) represent a serious obstacle to effective management and control, causing excessive diversity across departments at the same level and discrepancy between responsibilities and capacities of various organizational units. in sum, it is difficult to efficiently divide government responsibilities and achieve cooperation between government units at various levels. this has created considerable difficulty in achieving coordination between legislative and executive authorities at the local level. in addition, the current system has inherent problems such as ambiguous and ineffective political and administrative relationships between government units at various levels, which can cause serious conflicts of interest, particularly at regional and subregional levels (maynzyuk and dzhygyr, 2008). therefore, decentralization and reform of local governments became the most important task when the window of opportunity has opened. on april 1, 2014 the cabinet of ministers of ukraine government has adopted the concept of reform of local self-government and territorial organization of power. as noticed by hanushchak et al. (2017), currently local authorities receive much higher revenues through the redistribution of tax income from the central state budget to municipal accounts. in order to increase the institutional and financial capacity of local governments, the government initiated a process of voluntary unification of small districts into administratively more powerful and large structural subdivisions, called "amalgamated territorial communities" (atc). at present, new capable communities are created by uniting urban and rural communities on a voluntary basis (lukerya and halushka, 2016). thus, there is a hope that the reform of decentralization will continue and contribute to changing the post-soviet model of relations between the state and society. 2.4. rural development since 1991, the role of agriculture in ensuring the development of rural areas has undergone drastic changes. agricultural policy vector had gradually reoriented on support of large-scale, export-oriented agricultural enterprise development that specialized in production of extensive crops with minimum labor. so far, the agricultural sector is not in a position to fully meet the social and economic needs of rural society (see table 2). the employment system, formed in rural areas due to the economic conditions of the rural labor market, threatens the ability of the rural population to provide themselves with an adequate quality of life (kutsmus et al., 2017). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 132-145 137 table 2: role of agriculture in rural development in ukraine indicators 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2015 to 1990,+/ number of agricultural employees, thousand people 4,881 3,801 2,475 1,038 595 417 -4,464 number of employed in private households, thousand people 681 2,233 2,785 451 2,372 1,691 ratio of wages in agriculture to the average for the economy, % 90.2 50.7 48.3 51.5 63.9 63.3 -26.9 the share of revenues from subsidiary farming households in total resources, % 10.2 31.9 48.3 28.2 23.8 22 11.8 source: kutsmus et al. 2017 as a result of reform in agriculture sector, ukraine's rural areas have faced a systemic crisis: (a) worsening demographic trends, (b) decreasing living standards, (c) high level of unemployment, (d) deteriorating social service infrastructure systems, and (e) reduced access to social services. the reform program has narrowed the circle of socially oriented participants in rural development and made large-scale farms to focus on business activity and profits, which required a disclaimer of rural social services. as part of their restructuring, agricultural enterprises had to dispose their social assets and transfer responsibility for social service and infrastructure systems to local councils. initially, the process moved slowly because the government was unable to provide local councils with necessary budgets, and the situation has not changed. the limited financial resources of local budgets do not allow to provide an adequate level of maintenance of infrastructure facilities. due to the low diversification of sources of income and business activity, the poor maintenance of rural areas and, there is a significant gap in the living conditions of the rural and urban population which provokes a constant influx of young people into cities, and distortion of the age and gender structure of the rural population. hidden unemployment (e.g., marginally employed people on household land plots) is assessed at about 1.4 million or about 50% of the total rural workforce. according to an assessment by the ukrainian institute of agrarian economy, salaries in the agricultural sector are 40% lower than the national average monthly income. in addition, 16.8% of all rural households are living below the poverty level, and 48.8% survive on minimal income (fao, 2012). a majority of households in ukraine are still based on manual labor for land cultivation. for instance, their share was 89.3% in 2011. here a positive fact is that the proportion of households relying on tractors for crop production increased from 66.9% in 2005 to 72.7% in 2011. however, only a small percentage of rural families performs all technological operations by tractors. the role of horses and oxen for land cultivation has remained essential in the household sector, even though the proportion of households using these animals fell from 33.6% in 2005 to 31.8% in 2011 (moroz, 2013). to conclude, the most serious problems with ukraine's agricultural and rural area development can be summarized as follows: the weak competitiveness of agricultural products and the insufficient development of products of high value demanded by overseas markets; much lower productivity in comparison to the eu; the limited transparency of state-funded support programs favoring big agricultural enterprises, indicating inappropriate policies and unsustainable agricultural practices; hundreds of thousands of small and fragmented households still practicing a semi-subsistence type of farming; underdeveloped market infrastructure systems for handling, storage, packaging, processing, cooling, and distribution; insufficient market-based research and development; incomplete land reform has limited investment opportunities for farmers; the current administrative and territorial asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 132-145 138 structure has not changed much since the country's independence; absence of proper rural development policy and, as result, poorly developed rural infrastructure systems. 3. the role of government in agricultural and rural development in the eu and south korea the eu is one of the leading producers of agro-food products in the world who plays a key role in ensuring food security. agriculture combined with other related industries has played an important role in the economic development of eu countries. currently, it continues to play an important role in the management of natural resources, especially resources such as land and water (oecd, 2010). one of the oldest eu policies supporting farmers and ensuring food security in europe is a common agricultural policy (cap) with rural development measures in the core of it. as a result of comprehensive economic and agricultural development projects that have been undertaken since the 1960s, south korea could achieve remarkable structural transformation of agriculture, as well as economic development. continuous public investment in agricultural and rural development areas led to sustainable development and significant structural changes (oecd, 1999). therefore considering eu and korean experience in agricultural and rural development is very important for creation of a sustainable agricultural development path. 3.1. the role of government in agricultural and rural development in the eu eu has emphasized social inclusion as a main policy objective and included political and economic integration, focusing on preserving rural communities. the eu's agricultural policy is more oriented on support of small agricultural holding companies. the eu provides substantial state support for its agricultural sector. according to the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd), overall support for agriculture in the eu far exceeds that in the major developed economies. this implies that the eu government views agriculture not just from an economic perspective but also from the perspective of the multifunctional role of agriculture in rural development. the eu considers social inclusion as a main policy objective and includes political and economic integration, focusing on preserving rural communities. one key reason for this is that nearly 30% of the total population of eu member states lives in rural areas, which cover 90% of the territory (european commission, 2007). it should be noted that in ukraine, about 30% of its population lives in rural areas too. since the beginning, members of the eu have realized a need for an effective policy to assist farmers, control agricultural prices, manage their resources and the rural environment, and ensure that europe has enough safe, healthy, and affordable food. the creation of the european community through the 1957 treaty of rome set a few objectives for agricultural support and growth. in 1962, the common agricultural policy (cap) was initiated. at first it focused mainly on supporting agricultural prices, increasing productivity, and stabilizing markets. it actually worked too well in that, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, europe had a food surplus. farmers were producing too much food, and a revised cap set quotas to try to control the problem. in 1992, the eu decided that the cap required a major revision. the new cap added environmental concerns to its agenda, encouraging farmers to make responsible environmental decisions, preserve the environment and natural resources, and fight climate change. it also emphasized technological growth and changed its focus from price support to direct aid designed to help farmers improve their farms and care for the environment simultaneously. over the last decade, the cap has been encouraging farmers (even small ones) to engage in rural development, start organic production, and pay close attention to food quality (special eurobarometer, 2014). the long-term objective of the eu's organic agricultural development is to enhance food security, rural development, sustainable livelihood, and environmental integrity by building the capacity of member countries in organic production, processing, certification, and marketing. the eu government pays close attention to sustainable agricultural and rural development and understands that agricultural asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 132-145 139 development is crucial for the growth of whole economy. in ukraine, policy reforms in the agricultural sphere are often made individually, addressing only one issue at a time, but reforms can be more effective if they are designed and implemented jointly as part of an integrated package or strategy for the sector, as in the case of the eu, because such strategies include both a vision of what the sector should look like and a plan for fulfilling the vision. here the role of the government as the main policymaker, implementer, and controller in this process is important. one key part of the institutional system of the eu is the local government. activities of local authorities have considerable influence on the development of the agricultural sector and rural areas. local governments influence local development in various ways, including expenditures, taxes and duties, laws, and marketing, among others. in rural areas, the role of territorial governments is particularly important because, as it often happens, they are the only institution to act in this area (kata and zając, 2007). 3.2. the role of government in agricultural and rural development in south korea since the early 1960s, when korea's economic and social condition was much worse off that in ukraine in the 1990s and 2000s, the korean government started developing various state programs and strategies to tackle the urgent poverty problem of farmers. number of public agencies which have played important roles in the country's economic and social development were established under the ministry of agriculture (kim, 2009). founded in 1961, the national agricultural cooperative federation (nacf) was established to enhance the social and economic status of its members and to promote balanced development of the national economy. from the midst of 1970s, the government has started providing farmers with grants and affordable loans for the purchase of agricultural equipment to promote agricultural mechanization. in general, korea's small farmers considered investment in agricultural machinery to not make much economic sense from a microeconomic perspective. however, policymakers believed that mechanization was an urgent task for the development of agriculture and food security. therefore, the mechanization of agriculture in the country was carried out under a strong government intervention. strong financial support for grants and low-cost loans were provided to farmers as well as for machine manufacturing, suppliers, repair services, training, vehicle driving and maintenance, and subsidies (or tax exemptions) for agricultural machinery fuel, among others (im and jeong, 2014). as a result of diverse efforts of the government and the integrated value chain finance model of the nacf/member cooperatives, the number of farm machines has increased sharply in the last several decades (see table 3). table 3: number of major farm machines owned by 100 farm households year power tiller tractor cultivator rise trans-planter combine grain dryer 1965 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1970 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1975 3.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1980 13.4 0.1 0.0 0.5 0.1 0.0 1985 30.6 0.6 0.0 2.2 0.6 0.2 1990 42.5 2.3 2.9 7.8 2.5 0.7 1995 57.9 6.7 16.0 16.5 4.8 1.9 2000 67.9 13.8 27.4 24.7 6.3 4.0 2005 64.4 17.9 30.8 26.1 6.8 5.5 2006 64.5 19.0 32.1 26.1 6.9 5.9 2007 64.3 20.3 34.2 26.2 7.1 6.2 source: kim, 2009 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 132-145 140 the rate of mechanized farming practices in rice farming reached 95% in the 2000s for land preparation, transplanting, and harvesting. in addition, farm mechanization in producing upland crops and livestock has shown remarkable progress, as indicated by examples such as robots being used for milking by many dairy farmers. in south korea and eu, for small farms with a land plot of approximately 50 hectares of arable land, the amount of equipment per unit of land is up to 25 times greater than that for large farms with more than 1000 hectares of arable land (kalinchyk, 2013). thus, farmer can become competitive only through cooperatives and machinery use. a number of recent international agreements such as the free trade agreement between the eu and south korea, the free trade agreement between the usa and korea and other ftas with more than 50 countries in total have affected korean agriculture, which is represented by a smallscale family farming. one of the key challenges for policymakers is the income gap between farm and urban households. recent decades have witnessed the widening of this gap. average farm household income was only 58% of urban household income in 2012, reflecting the almost smallest share among all oecd countries. providing farm households with additional sources of income is a key challenge being addressed by korean policymakers. the korean government has implemented a series of agricultural policy reforms in the last two decades to cope with significant changes in both international and domestic environments. to strengthen agricultural competitiveness, the government has implemented a number of agricultural programs designed to reduce production costs through farm consolidation, foster competitive farm entities, encourage farmers to specialize, and promote the development of agricultural technologies. in addition, major policy initiatives have been implemented to improve farm household income through direct agricultural payment and crop insurance programs (im and jeong, 2014). the ukrainian government should consider all these important factors in agricultural and rural development in the eu and south korea and clearly recognize the important role played by the government in achieving prosperity and sustainability through this process. 4. discussion and policy recommendations agricultural and rural development policies of the eu and korea generally correspond to national priorities as well as to the social and political objectives and thus help to achieve economic as well as non-economic goals. therefore, the basis of ukraine's agricultural policy should laid in the achievement of broader social and public objectives for agriculture and rural areas and linked to the promotion of human development. in rural development, the eu and south korea have demonstrated that the main objectives are to accelerate reductions in the income gap between poor and rich regions, enhance employment, and reduce social disparity. based on the review of agricultural and rural development policies of the eu and south korea, it is seen that the main role of the government lies in protecting property rights, enforcing contractual obligations to foster competition in the sector, and providing public goods such as agricultural research, technologies, information, and infrastructure systems to all types of farmers. in addition, stabilizing prices, absorbing diverse risks facing agricultural producers, and providing affordable credit to small and medium-sized farmers can be added. despite such a difficult situation and problems facing now by ukraine's agricultural sector and rural areas, the ukrainian government still has a chance to mitigate the degeneration of rural areas and achieve sustainable development of the agricultural sector. if the country's tremendous agricultural potential is taken into account, together with the high quality and availability of arable land and natural conditions, then the following solutions and opportunities need to be considered:  eu association agreement opens up of new markets and provides an opportunity for ukraine to become one of the largest producer of organic products in europe. also, modernization of a quality management system could promote access to the new international markets for products of high value, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 132-145 141  the completion of land reform and formation of an effective land market could create new opportunities in the agricultural sector which along with improvement of the investment and business climate will increase investments in the sector from both local and foreign sources.  development of roads and social infrastructures in rural areas will contribute to promotion of business activities in rural areas and additional income. to ensure a balanced level of agricultural and rural development, establishment of mechanisms which allow local authorities to accumulate budgets for the development of necessary social infrastructure systems is necessary (kolodiy, 2013). below alternative policy regarding sustainable ukraine's agriculture and rural development will be proposed. 4.1. regarding dualization in agricultural sector given that ukraine already has a dual agricultural system, the agricultural development policy need to be designed based on support of both: agricultural holding companies and small and medium-sized farmers. the reason for ukrainian government to support the development of small and medium-sized farmers and the family farm model in conjunction with large-scale farming is that big agricultural holding companies are engaged in export activities and produce mainly commercially attractive and export-oriented products, whereas small and medium-sized farmers and individual farms produce food products for the domestic market, accounting for about 60% of total gross product in agriculture, and can continuously develop in organic agriculture direction (keyzer et al., 2012). here the ukrainian government should develop an effective system of collaboration with agricultural holding companies providing opportunities for development and overseeing their activities. agricultural holding companies and farmers in ukraine work separately and compete with each other, and this brings problems to some and the loss of benefits to others. many rural households have cows, but facing problems with storing and selling of milk and dairy products. someone needs to collect milk and deliver it to a dairy plant, and this role can be played by a service cooperative. such cooperatives can collect and cool milk and also manage quality control. in addition, many households and farmers grow vegetables, but the problem is that there are no storage facilities to store the harvest and purchase prices are low even when they should be high. this raises the question of how farmers can be helped and how small and medium-sized producers can access markets and services. here a solution lies in cooperation between farmers and agricultural holding companies. service cooperatives can collect milk, fruits, and vegetables and deliver them to dairy plants and juice factories belonging to agricultural holding companies, which should increase the latter's production capacity and provide income stability for the former. 4.2. regarding organic agriculture development in this difficult period of economic and social instability in ukraine, the government's active leadership is urgently needed, particularly in agricultural and rural development. the development of organic agriculture based on small and medium-sized farmers and the family farm model currently appear the most effective instrument for the ukrainian government based on the experience of developed countries. given that ukraine already has a dual agricultural system with big agricultural holding companies engaged in export activity, the government should provide support for small and medium-sized farmers and help them to develop in organic agriculture direction, as in the case of european countries and south korea. the completion of a legislative and regulatory framework should help to define the state policy on organic production, create necessary conditions for the legal recognition and protection of organic products, form a national certification system, and set relevant rules and standards (fao, 2012). today, all organic production in ukraine is export-oriented and based on the production of organic grain crops intended for the eu. unlike other european countries, ukraine has no specialized shops or markets for healthy organic products. in addition, the processing industry is almost nonasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 132-145 142 existent. small private organic farmers typically sell their products to customers through traditional markets, and sellers generally have only a vague idea about what certified organic products are (unep, 2011). the transition from conventional to organic farming in ukraine has slowed sharply because of a lack of marketing and advertising for healthy organic products. thus the development of a domestic market for organic products can be achieved only by promoting economic benefits of organic production by farmers and owners of supermarkets as well as by advertising and increasing customers' awareness of sustainable and healthy lifestyles, including a balanced diet. it should be noted that the european trend in well-being is becoming more popular among ukrainian consumers and there is some shift toward the purchase of healthy food. an increasing number of people are able and willing to spend more money for a balanced diet, particularly for the purchase of healthy food for children, which means that the child nutrition industry can benefit greatly from organic products. unfortunately, such trends are not sufficiently reflected in the media, which typically focus more on advertising medicines than on promoting healthy lifestyles. this important issue should be addressed to the government. to increase consumers' awareness of organic products and create their demand for these products, there is a need to carefully analyze the experience of developed european countries and launch an information campaign through the media to promote healthy organic products and traditional dishes instead of junk food. promotional activities can encourage healthy nutrition and increase production, thereby indirectly influence development of domestic processing facilities. intensive marketing activities for organic products through stock sales and supermarkets have the potential to create and strengthen the domestic market igniting and increasing end users' demand. potential challenges may only arise from the limited variety of domestic organic products. valuable marketing strategies can be offered by germany, where organic farmers have formed an association to promote organic products and create common trademarks and brands for environment-friendly and healthy organic products distributed through the shops and restaurants (bmel, 2018). in the netherlands, farmers have organized dairies through which they produce traditional cheeses and quark made of organic milk and sell them through the small stores right on their farms or in neighboring villages (afanasyev, 2010). apart of being highly profitable for farmers themselves, such activities may play important role in the promotion of green tourism. cooperation of organic farmers with different public and private enterprises such as schools and hospitals in the food/nutrition industry, is important for marketing organic products. it is clear that such measures require more funding, which is not possible in ukraine without foreign investment. 4.3. regarding the role of local governments after signing the eu agreement, ukraine's central and local governments have faced a new challenges in the area of new principles of competition, procedures, and standards. rural inhabitants and investors have high expectations of better-quality services by local governments. to attract potential investors to rural areas, local governments should provide a wider range of support instruments for entrepreneurship development, including low taxes, customer-friendly services, partner relationships, and efficient and formal transactions. another challenge lies in the development of basic infrastructure systems such as roads, schools, water supply systems, and sewage systems. to make such activities successful, local governments should design appropriate projects supported by local partners and manage the whole undertaking in an efficient manner (sakowicz, 2007). therefore local governments should be given more authority and be allowed to use the money, received from agricultural holding companies, and other taxes, to restore social infrastructure systems and for other needs. the government should enable citizens to participate more actively in its "governance." therefore continuation of decentralization reform is very important. another important issue for the government to consider is the regulation of land issue. terminating the moratorium on land sales is possible only after settlement legislation, price regulation, and the creation of an agency overseeing this process. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 132-145 143 4.4. regarding rural development based on the south korean and e.u. experience, it can be seen that ukraine's rural development policy should be more socially inclusive. rural communities should be at the center of government support. in working with villagers, the government should enable village communities and encourage them to diversify their activities. according to the state statistics committee of ukraine, formal employment among rural residents declined by 30% in the last decade of the 20th century (afanasyev, 2010). therefore, a solution may lie in cooperation between the agricultural and other sectors. most of ukraine's surplus labor has been involved in farming on individual land plots. however, with about a quarter of ukraine’s labor residing in rural areas, subsistence farming cannot be regarded as a sustainable solution. therefore, appropriate employment policies for surplus rural labor and an enhanced quality of life for rural residents as well as a more favorable environment for generating new jobs can be the major goal of any new rural development program. looking on experience of eu countries ukrainian government need to increase the level of effective employment and foster small and medium-sized farming development in rural areas. the development of rural non-farm employment opportunities can be seen as a pillar of the rural development policy and a critical factor in providing rural employment with stable income in the long term. rural non-farm employment includes all economic activities associated with work, either salaried or selfemployed, located in rural areas (except for agricultural hunting and fishing) that contribute to a sustainable livelihood strategy for the rural population. this is important for rural areas, particularly for agriculture, because one of the most challenging adjustments facing ukraine's agricultural sector today is the need to reduce hidden unemployment. in this regard, agricultural tourism may provide a good opportunity. ukrainian villages, particularly those in the western part of the country, have valuable natural and agricultural resources such as intact forests, rivers, and fertile soil along river valleys. in these areas, rural tourism can be an important part of rural development. as a key sector of the economy, tourism creates jobs and makes positive contributions to the development of rural communities. in addition, it can stimulate the renewal of villages and make them more attractive as places to live and visit while contributing to the preservation of cultural heritage (skryzhevska and karácsonyi, 2012). with the development of rural tourism, other related business opportunities such as hospitality and sustainable agriculture can be pursued to benefit the local communities. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in 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it seemed lucrative, yet fuelled with vast problems and sufferings; it is risky, yet seductive, this requires urgent research interventions. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.645.658 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: witness maluleke, ntwanano patrick tshabalala and jaco barkhuizen (2020). the effects of climate change on rural livestock farming: evidence from limpopo province, south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 645-658. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 645-658 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:witness.maluleke@ul.ac.za http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0999-0456 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.645.658 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6228-1640 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8106-7631 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 645-658 646 1. introduction the scientific and anecdotal evidence presented by the effects of climate change on rural livestock farming in the selected areas of limpopo province is quite overwhelming, at least a nightmare for many. alternatively, zwane and montmasson-clair (2016) affirm that the agriculture and mining sectors are two fundamental components of economic development. sustaining food systems and agricultural activities create an essential pillar of sustainable development. however, climate change is undeniably, progressively altering the ecological, social, and economic conditions, negatively impacting the agricultural sector in large. consequently, heat waves, wildfires, superstorms are all clear reminders of where we are right now (2020). the natural balance of our planet is changing, and this is just the beginning; we either come together and make climate change an urgent priority or let chaos reign … [for considerations, we might not be able to stop the clock on the effects of climate change on rural livestock farming practices, however, protecting and preserving livestock can be beneficial – researchers’ emphasis]. climate change is often related to the increasing concentration of the greenhouse gases (ghgs); this occurs in the atmosphere involving small quantities of water vapor, carbon dioxide (co2), methane (ch4), nitrous oxides (noxs) and chlorofluoro carbons (cfcs) permitting shortwave solar radiations to reach the ‘earth’s surface,’ to absorb existing long-wave radiations emanating from the-said ‘earth’s surface.’ therefore, this absorption results in warming of the lower atmosphere, inducing temperatures experienced. in the absence of this process, the ‘earth’ would be much colder than the present state (kgakatsi et al., 2012). subsequently, kgakatsi et al. (2006) share that this condition can be restricted to any alteration of climate on a timely basis; this can be of natural changeability or human activities. it is enormously, difficult and relatively poorly understood by many individuals. in response to this condition, smallhorne (2018) expresses that regional planning for climate change throughout the country is attaining more attention. steps to reduce ghg emissions are taken by hundreds of local governments, including the atlanta region. the benefits of lessening detrimental emissions prolong beyond acclimatising to a climate change and new federal legislation. the carbon dioxide equivalent (co2e) emissions are now 60% higher than the levels in 1990 and growing at about 2.5 percent (%) per annum. co2e emissions will continue to rise, primarily driven by the increasing population and economic growth, without anticipated mitigations. in essence, when compared to pre-industrial levels, if the world proceeds with this trajectory, the global mean surface temperatures are likely to increase from 3.7 degrees celsius (°c) to 4.8°c in the projected 2100. therefore, climate change poses a significant threat to south africa’s food security, water resources and health, biodiversity, infrastructure and ecosystem services. available projections suggest that climate change in south africa will depict a significant warming 5-8°c over the interior by the year 2050. it will pose a drier environmental risk to both the south and west sides of the country, together with turbulent weather risk conditions along the eastern portion of the country as well. therefore, this industry will experience distinct risks concomitant with climate change such alterations will present unstable rain patterns intensified higher temperatures, evaporation rates, increased pests and diseases and alteration, reduced production and spatial shift in optimum growing african regions. consequently, inceptions of the cited risks call for immediate, determined action ensuring the resilience of the agricultural sector by adapting to climate change impacts in south africa (zwane and montmasson-clair, 2016). the primary objective of this study was to identify actual perceptions of [both] prominent rural livestock farmers and daff officials from the selected rural areas of limpopo province. it was done to explore the effects of climate change on rural livestock farming practices, while restricted to the following secondary objectives:  to assess the effects of climate change on rural livestock farmers in the selected rural areas of limpopo province. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 645-658 647  to examine the relationship of relevant stakeholders in responding to the effects of climate change on rural livestock farmers in the selected rural areas of limpopo province.  to evaluate the challenges facing relevant stakeholders in responding to the effects of climate change on rural livestock farmers in the selected rural areas of limpopo province.  to ascertain the effectiveness of current strategies employed by relevant stakeholders in responding to the effects of climate change on rural livestock farmers in the selected rural areas of limpopo province. 2. literature review conventionally, the ‘anthropogenic’ view demonstrates that humankind is the most important centre of existence characterised by contrasting sentiments. this allows human beings to exploit precious natural resources beneficial to their livelihood and development; equally important; the ‘anthropocene’ epoch left a significant footprint on the planet through altering topography, while affecting ecosystems and causing climate changes, as a result; large planetary-scale changes in biological and ecological processes are witnessed, to this end; since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the mid-1700s, human activities added more gases into the atmosphere (boonzaaier, 2018). agriculture and food security are regarded as pivotal sectors to respond to climate change. the production of the former is highly vulnerable as 2°c (low-end) for global mean temperatures in 2100 are predicted, this will render major implications for rural and urban poverty and food security (usman et al., 2011). this essential sector requires a significant increase in productivity to sustain sufficient availability of food and other raw materials for future population expansions, which is estimated to exceed 9 billion by the year 2050 worldwide, despite this; the rapidly changing climate resulting from global warming is making this situation worse, making the rural livestock farmers deviate from this practice owing to increased input costs and low benefits (sainger et al., 2015). certainly, the largest known economic effects of climate change on agriculture rests in the agriculture industry due to the size and sensitivity of this sector. unquestionably, existing evidence presents that ghgs began to warm the planet, with various effects expected from global climate change by causing the greatest harm to this sector in developing countries [south africa rural areas included], as many farms in the low latitudes endure extremely hot climates (mendelsohn, 2009). practically, south africa’s richest agricultural areas also encompass limpopo province, which supplies the market with vegetable products. this province enjoys the sub-tropical climate in this province renders the opportunity to cultivate a range of products such as coffee, tea, mango and distinct tropical fruits. conversely, the province, through forestry, renders enormous economic contribution by producing the following products: tobacco; sunflower; wheat; cotton; maize; and groundnuts. in addition, livestock farming for both commercial and subsidence farming is practiced in the limpopo province (maponya and mpandeli, 2012). in the south african context, several studies were conducted on the effects of climate on water resources, largely neglecting the effects of related conditions on rural livestock farmers’ practices phenomenon. however, it is predicted that the effects of climate variability and change on water resources nor livestock practices will vary according to regions; hence, the need to identify locally specific effects. given the variations on the existing effects of climate change on rural livestock farming practices, it is expected that each region develops unique ways to deal with their specific challenges and consequences of climate effects. it is hoped that the future effects of climate variability can be mitigated if necessary adaptation is made and coping strategies are put in place (mmbadi, 2019). this is collaborated by findings regarding performance progress of the department of water and sanitation (dws) to achieve key challenges set by the africa water vision 2025 objective [of ensuring water security for food production, delivery of services, climate change and reverse of water resource degradation]; however, very little happened in terms of strategies and preparation for climate change (boonzaaier, 2018). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 645-658 648 another key point is that the documentation of the ghgs emissions as one of the major reasons for climate change at the global level can ease this process in recognizing that agriculture sectors are directly affected by changes in temperature, precipitation and co2 concentrations in the atmosphere (yadav et al., 2019). as largely deduced from modeling studies based on predictions of rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns, the present and ongoing climate changes, including drought, heat, and light stresses, and interactions between these factors are often witnessed globally (damatta et al., 2018). correspondingly, heavy rainfalls and floods, forest fires and the spread of new diseases are widely documented worldwide as climate change effects. the socio-economic and environmental effects of veld fires form part of the various discourse, with missing solutions offered mostly to rural areas. the veld fires are reported to increase due to unfavourable conditions, involving intense and long-burning with warm, hot and dry conditions, further attributing to climate change. it is likely to affect poor rural households who largely depend on land-based natural resources, for example, field crops, forests harvest, grazing land for livestock. with warm, drier and hotter conditions, it is emphasised that rural areas who share boundaries with mountains, rangelands, forests and wetlands are predicted to face greater threats from veld fires because of the dry flammable biomass (taruvinga et al., 2020). the effects of climate change on the global hydrological cycle are expected to vary the patterns of demand and supply of water for agriculture, regarded as the dominant user of freshwater. the livelihoods of rural communities and food security of the urban population will be at risk from water-related impacts linked primarily to climate variability and the vulnerable rural poor are also likely to be disproportionately affected. therefore, adaptation measures building upon improved land and water management practices will be fundamental to boosts overall resilience to climate change (turral et al., 2011). unsurprisingly, global climate change made observable effects on the environment. holistically, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time. thus, scientists bestowed high confidence in predicting that global temperature will continue to rise for decades. largely due to ghgs produced by human activities, the associated effects of global climate change are now occurring, namely: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea-level rise and longer and more intense heat waves (national aeronautics and space administration [nasa] (2020). sodangi et al. (2011) support this contention by providing that climate is the primary important factor for agricultural production in african countries. it accommodates the notion that science has made sterling efforts in understanding climate change and its related causes to develop a strong understanding of the current and potential postmodern effects and future challenges. it is believed that the earth is currently facing a period of rapid warming brought on by rising levels of ghgs in the atmosphere. the-indicated ghgs retain the radiant energy (heat) provided to earth by the sun in a process known as the greenhouse effect to allow this process occurring naturally, withstanding that the planet would be too cold for life sustainability. notably, one of the most important challenges of the 21st changes in global supplies and demands is climate change. this latter presents one of the greatest threats to african [especially the eastern and southern african regions]; this is caused by water scarcity, adaptability and associated variability facing agricultural livelihoods (sibanda and sibanda, 2019). reducing the risks of food security from climate change conditions is one of the major challenges in the 21st century (campbella et al., 2016). the effects of this system will have far-reaching impacts on crop, livestock and fisheries production, further changing the prevalence of crop pests. many of these impacts nor effects are already measurable nor understandable. climate change and agriculture are cited as interrelated processes taking place on a global scale. however, the overall effects of climate change on agriculture depends on the balance of the existing effects. resulting from global warming and human activities, the frequency of droughts in several tropical countries increased, with flooding reported in several countries, further disrupting food production and carrying capacity of the biosphere (srivastava, 2013). crop yields dominate the studies on the associated effects resulting from severe conditions despite limitations of climate-crop modelling [and livestock asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 645-658 649 mortalities in the rural settings], little attention is paid on components of cropping, other dimensions of food security [rural livestock farming practices are no exception]. this study highlighted that climate change would have far-reaching impacts on food security. the studies must address food security aspects other than the crop yields, given the serious threats; action-oriented research is a priority; the responsible stakeholder-driven portfolios of options should be a focus for research and combining adaptation and mitigation is a key challenge (campbella et al., 2016). subsequently, killmann (2008) collaborates that the effects of climate consist of four dimensions of food security, namely: food availability, accessibility, utilisation and systems stability. this negatively contributes to human health, livelihood assets, food production, distribution channels, changing purchasing power and market flows. the projected effects have both short-term challenges, resulting from frequent and intense extreme weather events and long-term hindrances caused by changing temperatures and precipitation patterns; vulnerable individuals with food insecurity are likely to be first affected, selected south african rural areas included. it is argued that the already vulnerable agriculture-based livelihood systems to food insecurity face immediate risks of increased crop failure, new patterns of pests and diseases, lack of appropriate seeds and planting material. those who stay on the coasts, floodplains, in the mountains, drylands and the arctic are reported to be at high risk. as an indirect effect, low-income individuals in urban areas will be at risk of food insecurity owing to loss of assets and lack of adequate insurance coverage; this may also lead to shifting vulnerabilities in both developing and developed countries. the food systems will also be largely affected through possible internal and international migrations, resource-based conflicts and civil unrest triggered by climate change and its probable effects. therefore, agriculture, forestry and fisheries will not only be affected by these conditions, but emitting ghgs will also contribute to this process. it can only be mitigated by reducing ghgs emissions to change existing agricultural practices. the resilience of rural people should be strengthened in helping the affected parties to cope with additional threats to food security. the climate change adaptations are linked with mitigation; the adaptation and mitigation measures need to be integrated into the overall development approaches and available schedule. consequently, rust and rust (2013) argues that the impacts of climate change on agricultural production and [rural] livestock practices are problematic to create and differentiate from other alterations in the earlier stated natural and human environmental settings. numerous non-climatic drivers are interconnected with climate change impacts such as ‘migration, overgrazing of natural pastures, change in livestock management, and alteration in livestock practices and human population can benefit this sector.’ susceptibility to climate change depends on biological, physical, and socio-economic features and low-income populations depending on subsistence agriculture such as the rural livestock farmers and are painted to be at risk of being affected. the effects on local and regional food production are expected to be more severe in low latitude regions, arid and semi-arid areas, precisely the rain-fed, non-irrigated production systems. significantly, kgakatsi et al. (2006) state that south africa is susceptible to climate changeability and rural livestock farming practices abundantly rely on the quality of the consistent rainy seasons. changes in arable crops and annual yield environments are directly related to climate conditions and notably to rainfall and related patterns. scenarios on climate change envisage that “rainfall over most parts of the country could decrease; temperature could increase; runoff into main river systems could be reduced; veld cover and composition could deteriorate significantly, and the frequency of wildfires could increase.” evidentially, a study in south africa based on one of the hadley centre in the united kingdom (hadcm2) scenarios further predicts a low rainfall in distinct regions south africa, the summer rainfall region by 15%, and winter rainfall by 25% by 2050. therefore, the temperature will rise between and 3°c. runoff into main rivers is likely to be reduced, for example, an expected decrease in an outflow from the orange river of 12% to 16%. there will be a rise with 2.5% increase in the frequency of fires, saltation crises will transpire, and there will be a rising demand for irrigation; these forecasts remain a common occurrence to the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 645-658 650 rural livestock farmers’ practices, impact negatively on economic activities, biodiversity animal and human health and water resources. the forecasted weather conditions can further result in extreme weather events, which can both affect the first and second economies. it, however, can jeopardize the following: the objectives of the agricultural strategy, the accelerated and shared growth initiative of south africa (asgisa), and the new partnership for africa's development (nepad). consequently, the annual crop production will be negatively affected by the consistent dry seasons throughout the country and possibly negatively impact veld cover and structure as well as the influence that this could have on carrying capacity for livestock and game (kgakatsi et al., 2012). the study of maponya and mpandeli (2012) show that drought in limpopo province has serious ecological and economic consequences and will proceed to pose increasing challenges to communities [rural areas included] owing to global climate changes. also, the results of this study indicated that severe weather condition in the limpopo province was a contributory factor to the severe drought, contributing to the experienced reduced grazing and water for livestock and irrigation that negatively impacted this sector and eventually resulted to the scarcity of food. in some parts of this province, livestock farmers are instinctively bound to sell their livestock because of these conditions, such as severe temperature changes on rainfall patterns and accelerate the frequency of droughts, further posing a serious challenge, maponya and mpandeli (2012). similarly, an increase for three days or more of over 35°c heatwave can directly damage crops or reduce production. killer heat that people endure by sitting in front of a fan or an air-conditioned environment can also negatively affect livestock such as poultry and cattle. if the heat from the sun compels animals into the shade for the relief, animals’ time to graze automatically becomes less and this disrupts the animals’ amount of feed needed for their nutrition. as a result, this can hinder production. heat can cause stress in cows, for instance, decrease milk production and this can negatively affect the milk market. high temperatures for prolong duration, particularly without ample water, may result in the death of livestock. persistent high temperatures above the expected average, such as sun heat that can last for days without cool down significantly at night, are especially hard on humans and animals. therefore, livestock farmers need to consider simple measures to protect animals from the impacts of high temperatures during the day, smallhorne (2018). van den berg (2017) also reveals that increased high temperatures are transpiring in south africa. it is a fact that global temperatures have increased by about 1°c on average over the past century twenty century. most importantly, people residing in the rural areas of developing countries such as south africa significantly rely on livestock farming practices for sustainability. it also incorporates the selected rural areas of giyani, lebowakgomo, and malamulele as this study presents. it remains a common knowledge that livestock is often affected by the surrounding immediate environment. equally, excessive temperatures, heavy rainfall, and drought can be detrimental to this sector. drought related problems are cited to be massive in south africa in general as it is becoming the unofficial capital of the country, while believed to be one of the recurring problems in the limpopo province relating to climate change. however, there are numerous resources to reveal the implications of climate change; some present information focuses on historically observed changes (temperature and precipitation, among others) while others project changes into the future-based alternative scenarios (involving frequency of intense storms in the future), united states environmental protection agency (2019). in collaboration, daff (2018) highlights that the overall climate change susceptibility in the south african agricultural sector should be perceived as representing both the risk and the opportunity. risks regarding the potential alteration in food security and the contrary impacts of climate change, socio-political conditions, and population growth and opportunities encompass factors associated with the regional trade in sub-saharan africa and technological sharing. south africa’s livestock asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 645-658 651 sector in south africa is essential to the agricultural economy and normally receives minimal attention than crops in bearing in mind the impacts of climate change. approximation of the effects of climate change on the livestock sector, simulations and different measures have been exerted in south africa, such as the development of heat stress (i.e., maximum ith) and humidity (temperature-humanity indices thi) indices for livestock. minimal and maxim critical temperatures control the thermally comfortable zone per livestock type to ensure optimum productivity and development. in the future, heat stress possibilities are expected to rise. furthermore, erasmus (2018) indicates that [livestock] farming sector is one of the sectors greatly affected by climate change, having a critical impact on food production. a 6°c increase in temperatures in southern africa would mostly make varieties of farming impossible. during the twenty century, a rise in temperatures had been perceived nearly everywhere in the world. temperatures had generally risen at a rate of nearly twice the global average, or about 1.5% in south africa, compared with the worldwide average of 0.8°c. further concern was the greater maximum rate of rising in the long-term average minimum temperatures of about 2.2°c. since minimal areas on earth have rainfall data that goes back 100 years or more, it was more challenging for scientists to determine whether the alteration in rainfall patterns resulted in more than cyclical patterns. van den berg (2017) shares that climate change is an everlasting departure from the average or mean, whether it is warmer, cooler, wetter, or drier. the resulted alterations transpire because of human actions, such as rising levels of ghgs released into the atmosphere. whereas climate changeability refers to distinction around the mean. it can happen in normal cycles over the years, or it can transpire greatly randomly in the absence of precise patterns. it is also possible that climate change can affect climate changeability by raising the frequency of extreme climatic events. climate variability is accountable for most of the variation seen in the climate. up until presently, climate change has had a considerably minimal impact. as a result, cities and the consequences of climate change are noticeable den hartigh (2016) divulges that the future of family farms, [rural] poor communion the agricultural sector. maintainable agricultural production, poverty and climate variation in the context of a reducing economy are the main problem facing the agriculture sector; the government should play an active role in understanding and developing solutions. consequently, this has led the food and agriculture organisation (fao) to commence negotiations on how to deal with the impact of climate change. increasingly, the world has placed its focus on climate change. the fao has its attention to the impact of climate change precisely on how agriculture and food security is being affected. animal and crop disease medications can positively aid this cause, as households can adapt to the changing circumstances by bringing new technologies, embracing sustainable natural resource management practices. it is changing patterns of making a living and can render an estimate of the number of people living in the different livestock production systems (van de steeg and tibbo, 2012). it is envisaged additional stresses from climate change can intensify, emanating from the already evident vulnerability of climatic alteration in various sections of african regions. in the central, west asia and north africa (cwana), the analysis of the coefficient of variation of the maximum normalised difference vegetation index (ndvi) for the period of 1982-2000 depicts that there is already enough confirmation of hotspots of reply and susceptibility to climatic change in this region. therefore, this is likely to affect the quantity and quality of the present ‘feeds, heat stress, available water, livestock diseases and disease vectors and genetic diversity,’ with forecasted a loss of 25% in an animal in livestock production depending on diversified crop-livestock systems in developing countries as a result. this loss will mainly emanate from heat stress and the reduction in feed resources (van de steeg and tibbo, 2012). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 645-658 652 the inference made by marigi (2017) highlights that the development plan for kenya is widely affected by climate change and its resultant effects, costing the economy a significant percentage of the country’s gdp. certainly, the cumulative effects of climate change have the potential to reverse much of the progress made towards the attainment of the sustainable development goals (sdgs) and kenya’s development ‘blueprint-vision 2030.’ most residents of kenya are said to be vulnerable to this effect owing to poverty, with approximately 46% classified as poor. the overreliance of many individuals to rain-fed agriculture and livestock production puts them in vulnerable positions based on adverse weather conditions on their production systems and also due to fluctuating market prices for their produce, both locally and internationally. climate change of kenya is restricted to long term variations in the statistical circulation of weather patterns, for example; rainfall and temperatures over decades to million years; it has negative effects on agricultural activities, with pastoralism mostly cited in terms of access to forage and water, forcing most of them to reconsider its viability. this sector still faces a myriad of unaddressed challenges relating to the variability in climate, making it extremely difficult for pastoralists to access key resources such as water and forage that are vital for the survival of their livestock (waithira and kathula, 2020). ogallo et al. (2018) concluded that sub-saharan africa is vulnerable to climate change due to its dependence on rain-fed agriculture in general. specifically, somalia has faced severe challenges linked to climate variability, exacerbated by conflict and limited governance persisted for decades. in 2018, climate extremes such as floods, drought, and coastal marine severe systems were associated with the destruction of property and livelihoods, losses of lives, livestock, migrations and resource-based conflicts. equally, increasing evidence can link climate change of this country to the major and minor threats to natural systems, threatening environmental, social and economic developments. comparatively, it is projected that the asian and global agriculture will be under significant pressure to meet the demands of rising populations resulting from the use of finite, degraded soil and inadequate water resources predicted to be stressed by the effects of climate change. considerably, agriculture and land-use change are also cited as essential sources of ghgs emissions. thus, fertilizer applications, livestock rearing and land management affect levels of ghg in the atmosphere, amount of carbon storage and sequestration potentials (rosegrant et al., 2008). complementary to this, the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc), including [more than] 1,300 scientists from the united states and other countries, forecasted a temperature rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees fahrenheit over the next century. according to the ipcc, the extent of climate change effects on individual regions will vary over time and with the ability of different societal and environmental systems to mitigate nor adapt to the envisaged change (nasa, 2020). yuan and mitchell (2014) collected temperature data from 1920-2010 of four (4) rural minnesota stations [minnesota of us], classified into three 30-year timeframes and examined for differences and trends in temperature (maximum recorded temperature tmax and minimum recorded temperature tmin), precipitation, and growing season variables. this study found a warmer 1980-2010 based on a significant increase in tmin at all four stations in the study locations. this period was touted as the most significantly wet of 91 years. the change point analyses result further support these findings by highlighting that enhanced co2 at the planetary scale and a regional increase of water vapor comprised part of the explanation increasing tmin from 19802010 at all four rural minnesota stations. the combined temperature results from the four stations (tmin and tmax) and precipitation trends especially reflected more water in the earth/atmosphere system over minnesota. other anthropogenic land covers nor use practices supplement the study findings. however, assigning an accurate weight to each factor remains an unsolved problem. while this is this discussion, various stress factors imposed by climate change significantly reduce the yield per unit area in pakistan. it is shared that ‘ozone’ and climate change are directly linked with each other; an increase of ozone on earth's surface results in more retention of heat, leading to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 645-658 653 high temperatures and disturbance of other components of the atmosphere, resulting in severe climate change which affects agriculture negatively. expressively, inadequacy irrigation of water supply remains a potential threat to the economy of pakistan. it maximizes the probability of extreme weather events occurrences, such as drought and floods. the government of pakistan is financing almost all hi-technology research institutions to carry out research projects focusing on the discovery of appropriate ways of tackling disastrous effects and major challenges of climate change (usman et al., 2011). in romania, climate change is expressed through droughts, floods, less rainy days during the year, extreme heatwaves, generating serious effects on agricultural and forestry activities of rural areas households. in developing countries, rural areas are altered by climate change, especially in regions depending on subsistence agriculture, where the population is not properly equipped to adapt to unforeseen climatic conditions may express vast effects in the economic sectors, such as agriculture, food industry, energy sector, and tourism, among others. moreover, the effects felt by vulnerable poor rural households are associated with various risks, namely: lack of income, aging population, low income and lack of access to essential services needed in the protection against climatic threats (surugiu et al., 2018). 3. problem exposition it is envisaged that african will enormously be affected by climate change, as massive regions could be stricken by the downfall of production with 50% by the year 2020, because of an increasingly hotter and drier climate. it will, therefore, threaten food security and livelihood of people in different areas of africa after food scarcity. in connection with this statement, limpopo province has already experienced some of these weather events, encompassing floods and droughts. for example, in 2000 and 2012, crops and infrastructure were shattered by floods, which consequentially affected the harvesting period. altering rainfall distribution and extreme temperature changes are probable to increase the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events like drought. by the year 2020, the livestock farmers in the selected rural areas of limpopo province are experiencing a severe decline because the area has been hard hit by drought and water deficiency in the post years. the importance of this study, however, is to introduce a baseline in understanding the implications of climate change in this sector to bring about both reactive and proactive measures by the affected farmers. there is evidence that subsistence livestock farmers are greatly susceptible to climate change than commercial livestock farmers. at the same time, large-scale irrigated production is probably the least vulnerable to climate change, conditional upon enough water supply for irrigation is available (daff, 2018). the main findings of the study conducted by maluleke and mokwena (2017) indicate that the rural livestock farmers in the greater giyani municipality of limpopo province are extremely susceptible to the results of climate change. deterioration in livestock farming practices in the regions caused by related health and sustenance difficulties carried forward by excessive temperatures, droughts, and heavy rainfall indicated to have harmful effects on rural livestock farmers in the designated regions. kriel (2017) mentions that livestock farmers south africa must acclimatize to limit the effects of climate change on livestock production and animal health, resulting in 1-2% incline in the average temperature along with coastal areas of south africa, and 2-3% incline the in inner regions by 2050. livestock farmers will have to contend with drier climatic conditions, faster evaporation and more frequent incidences of extreme weather such as floods and droughts to carry on producing food. for the ‘animal nutrition’ forecasters have foreseen that climate change will have an enormous impact on the quality and quantity of forage crops. warmer temperatures could result in the deterioration of pasture quality and quantity, making it extra challenging for farmers to align production with their animals’ nutritional asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 645-658 654 requirements. producers will have to synchronize breeding seasons with nature better. this synchronisation has transpired naturally to counterpart the accessibility of natural veld with their feeding requirements.” for ‘immunity’ climate change will also affect animals’ immunity; unfavourable climatic conditions and food scarcity cause stress, which negatively affects the immunity. 4. methods and materials this study adopted the phenomenology paradigm as a philosophical worldview, aligned with a qualitative research approach to transforming scientific knowledge into meaningful facts about the effects of climate change on rural livestock farming practices. for this study, this research approach was applied to study the selected participants’ perceptions, interpretations and beliefs regarding this subject (creswell, 2007). this approach was used to gain in-depth information further, personal ideas and experiences, viewpoints on the primary and secondary objectives of this study, brynard and hanekom (2006), welman et al. (2005). the exploratory research objective was also applied to enable researchers to compile a profile picture by listening to the participants; this was used in conjunction with their personal experiences using empirical research, involving going to the field to conduct face-to-face interviews and focus group discussions (fgds) to ascertain their respective on this subject (maxfield and babbie, 1995; and mouton, 2009). for study locations, the following rural areas were selected from limpopo province: mavambe village under collins chabane municipality, xikukwani village under greater giyani municipality and lenting, ga-mphahlele under lepelle nkupi municipality. furthermore, the sample size and procedures enabled allowed for the purposeful selection of participants with a broader understanding of this subject. the selected participants comprised of rural livestock farmers [12:3 = 36] and daff officials [6:2] (e.g., veterinary services; land and infrastructure and natural resource management managers). overall, 42 participants were selected for this study. the selection of the participants was based on their experience and knowledge on the subject matter; this included the local livestock farmers as victims of this plague. leedy and ormrod (2013), leedy and ormrod (2013) and welman et al. (2005). moreover, as initially stated, face-to-face interviews with six daff officials and the fgds with 36 rural livestock farmers were used to solicit data from these selected participants. the literature review was adopted to enhance the credibility of the participants’ responses, de vos et al. (2011), flick (2009), and leedy and ormrod (2010). for data analysis methods, the researchers read all transcriptions and write down notes while listening to the voice recorder of the conducted interviews with the selected participants, and identify common features to respond to the objectives of this study. after going through transcripts, the filtering process was done to implement critical data, mouton (2009). 5. study findings and discussions in this section, the focus will be on findings from data collected via interviews [face-to-face interviews and fgds conducted with the selected participants from limpopo province were explored]. these findings are arranged in terms of the interview schedule guide used during this process; what the participants shared with the researchers was triangulated with the previously presented literature studies on this subject. the purpose of the data gathered was to answer the objectives of this study, as indicated in the introduction section. 5.1. what are the effects of climate change on rural livestock farming practices in your area? as discussed by daff (2018) and maluleke and mokwena (2017) that the estimation of effects relating to climate change on rural livestock practices was shared by revealing that several approaches are used in south africa to develop heat stress (maximum ith) and humidity (thi) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 645-658 655 indices for livestock, droughts, excessive temperatures and heavy rainfall has a detrimental effect on rural livestock farmers. this supports the findings of this study, whereby the selected participants stated that they had not experienced heavy rain in seven (07) years period; it should be stated that rain is important; without it, we suffer, we are taking risks by practicing livestock farming; as anything can happen without notice, we urge the local daff to teach us how to feed them despite unpredictable climate change, this will allow us to avoid unforeseen livestock casualties and mortalities. 5.2. can climate change be effectively addressed by daff and other relevant stakeholders [rural livestock farmers included] relationship in your area? (please elaborate on your answer) out of ten livestock, the escaping lions and hyenas from kruger national park can kill and eat three; if a wound is created, the livestock can live for four months, to be exact and eventually dies. these animals break the spinal cord of livestock and fest on the carcass stomachs and intestines only. positively; when livestock is killed and eaten by a lion or hyena, the livestock owner can take a picture of the scene to the local daff for r5 000.00 compensation, only if the livestock in question corresponds with the stock card after validations; however, we still see this as little money as our livestock remains dead, we take this money as there is nothing we can do, it is better than nothing, to be honest. another problem relating to this remedy by [local daff] rests on corruption involving the residents who take pictures to submit to the local daff, acting as if the livestock belongs to them, causing misinterpretations and ownership disputes. thus, the ‘livestock committees’ in the rural areas should prevent this corruption by working closely with the veterinary services official who tends to know all the livestock in the rural village. it collates with the envisaged contribution of this study of providing a broader understanding of actual perceptions, to be solicited from the prominent livestock farmers and daff officials [from the selected areas of limpopo province] on this subject. it will create awareness to these rural areas by suggesting possible strategies to address the associated effects. 5.3. are the current strategies effective enough, as employed by the local department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries (daff) in responding to climate change in your area? (please elaborate on your answer) the findings of this study stated that the local daff brings fodder to us; this depends on the number of livestock we keep, for example; five cattle, goats and sheep equals to two fodder each [five stock] if your livestock is many; more fodder and maize malt are delivered for free; however, we are way too many for us to be all satisfied or catered for. all livestock farmers should be registered members of the village (permanent native residents). the daff also visits our rural areas for different vaccinations injections throughout the year; they commence in february to continues with seasonal inspections. equally, from july 2019; our livestock use to drink stream water, it is dried up now, we have to buy water for this livestock from those who have boreholes, this cost r25.00 per 20 litres to cater for one (01) cattle in two days, further causing financial strain to us, it will take time to ease this process since the streams collect soil instead of water owing to the unattended arable land in our rural communities. this was confirmed by camelia et al. (2018) in the introductory section of this study, who contended that climate change has an adverse impact on the livelihoods of rural communities and the responsible state departments should launch awareness campaigns regarding the adoption of different adaptation strategies. 5.4. what are the existing challenges faced by daff in addressing climate change in your area? the selected participants outlined that foot and mouth diseases as transmitted to our livestock by the local buffalo escaping from kruger national park; they often infect the leaves they eat, their drool is very dangerous; it can make our livestock to be swollen and eventually dies in the process. in response, the local daff works adequately to respond to this challenge by immediately injecting the whole livestock in the rural village if cases of this nature occur or are reported. it asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 645-658 656 supports what daff (2018) stipulated in the introduction section of this study by stating the associated risks and opportunities in the agricultural sector should be looked at holistically to understand the effects and impacts of climate change. 6. conclusion and recommendations it is concluded that the effects of climate change drastically work against effective practices by livestock farming with limited resources to overcome the various existing challenges, for example; in cases where there is an outbreak of diseases, such as; brucellosis, foot-and-mouth diseases, redwater and tick-borne, among others resulting from extreme weather conditions, poorly disadvantaged rural livestock farmers often fail to purchase recommended stock remedies to treat their livestock, this result in having a negative impact on human health through contaminations nor consumptions of the infected livestock products. it is recommended that the rural livestock farming activities of today require modern and rural wisdom; the effects of climate change in our rural communities differ drastically with the urban findings. due to the existing many different effects of climate change, this practice recently become win or lose business; it is no longer lucrative. during the 1960s-1980, it was great. the rural livestock farmers shouldn't have much livestock, for example, 60-100 cattle, as taking care of them can be problematic and taxing, as it requires buying of food owing to the turbulent climate change and the local daff incapacity to render effective services to all of us. this lead to [many] rural livestock farmers to sell their livestock to buy adequate food and vaccinations. this practice does help them despite the expensive nature of this practice; proper planning is highly sought in this regard. funding: the university of limpopo financially supported the research through a grant award of r50 000. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: authors’ would like to express their appreciation to the 42 selected participants who formed part of this study, from the rural areas of limpopo province views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references boonzaaier, j. h. 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(2012). livestock and climate change in the near east region: measures to adapt to and mitigate climate change. food and agriculture organisation of the united nations: cairo. waithira, n. m., & kathula, d. n. (2020). impact of climate change on pastoralists access to forage and water in kajiado south sub county. journal of agriculture, 4(1), 1-18. welman, j. c, kruger, s. j., & mitchell, b. c. (2005). research methodology, 3rd edition. southern africa. oxford university press. yadav, s. s., hegde., v. s., habibi, a. b., dia, m., & verma, s. (2019). climate change, agriculture and food security. international journal of agricultural sustainability, 11, 95107. doi.org/10.1002/9781119180661.ch1. yuan, f., & mitchell, m. (2014). long-term climate change at four rural stations in minnesota, 1920-2010. journal of geography and geology, 6(3), 228-241. doi.org/10.5539/jgg.v6n3p228. zwane, m., & montmasson-clair, g. (2016). climate change adaptation and agriculture in south africa: a policy assessment. world wide fund for nature-south africa: south africa. https://city-press.news24.com/news/what-will-climate-change-mean-for-sa-agriculture-201808kk17 https://city-press.news24.com/news/what-will-climate-change-mean-for-sa-agriculture-201808kk17 https://www.epa.gov/arc-x/implications-climate-change https://www.farmersweekly.co.za/opinion/by-invitation/climate-variability-versus-climate-change/ https://www.farmersweekly.co.za/opinion/by-invitation/climate-variability-versus-climate-change/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 334 integration of agro-ecological and groundwater resources for the assessment of crop suitability potential modeling: the case of limpopo province, south africa ndwambi, khudzadzoa azwihangwisi edward nesamvunib khathutshelo alfred tshikolomoc sylvester mpandelid johan van niekerke brilliant m. petjaf a,b,edepartment of sustainable food systems and development, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa. climpopo department of agriculture and rural development, polokwane, south africa. d,fwater research commission, lynnwood manor, pretoria, south africa.  nesamvunie@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 1 october 2021 revised: 3 november 2021 accepted: 20 november 2021 published: 15 december 2021 keywords subtropical fruits micro-climatic zones groundwater resources crop suitability. a comprehensive subtropical fruit potential model (ium) was established through novel integration of groundwater resources with multi-criterion predictive parameters. equal-weights overlay was applied to reclassified and ranked rasters to institute ium. avocado and litchi had the least spatial extent that concealed the microclimatic zones of high rainfall (>1000 mmpa) in vhembe, mopane, and waterberg districts; meanwhile, mango and citrus were the crops with the most extensive province-wide distribution. subsequent potential was apportioned in these sequences by constituency: waterberg (1719019 ha), mopane (977741 ha), vhembe (764044 ha), capricorn (579506 ha), and sekhukhune (379968 ha). the ium resulted in the demarcation of 8.7 million ha to produce the selected crops, which reflected an increase of 7.7 million from the rainfed suitability model. the integrated model would result in the creation of 10.87 million direct employments. the ium expanded the agrarian sector with positive spinoffs for agribusiness development. contribution/originality: this study uses new estimation methodology that integrates rainfed and groundwater resources with agro-ecological and climatic predictive parameters. this study introduces a new formula to establish a novel linear regression model for the simulation of subtropical crop suitability based on the integrated water resources of an area. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.334.345 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ndwambi, khudzadzo --azwihangwisi edward nesamvuni --khathutshelo alfred tshikolomo -- ndivhudza sylvester mpandeli --johan van niekerk --brilliant m. petja (2021). integration of agro-ecological and groundwater resources for the assessment of crop suitability potential modeling: the case of limpopo province, south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4), 334-245. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.334.345 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 4 (2021): 334-345. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1342-4788 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3764-1683 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0181-9416 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4925-6173 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-0641 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3151-0137 about:blank http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 334-345 335 1. introduction crop suitability qualitatively evaluates the congruence between crop requirements and the prevalent geoclimatological conditions (he, yao, chen, & ongaro, 2011; mu, 2006; prakash, 2003). the process used to define suitability involves the analysis and integration of the predictive determinants and interpretation of the subsequent land performance model (he et al., 2011; mu, 2006; prakash, 2003). the primary mandate for this exercise is the appraisal of the indexed potential model that defines how well a piece of land is capable of supporting specific crops (pan & pan, 2012). the concept of crop suitability was introduced during the mid-late 20th century with the notion to delineate appropriate land for specific agricultural commodities (fao, 1976; fao, 1983; fao, 2007). this initiative was directed towards curbing the environmental degradation that follows agricultural malpractices and overexploitation of resources associated with rapid population growth (elsheikh et al., 2013). rapid population growth leads to inadequate access to food. according to the fao, ifad, and wfp (2015), approximately 800 million people around the world do not have access to sufficient food, of whom 25% are children under the age of 5 years. the food and agriculture organization of the united nation (fao, 2018) expects this proportion to increase, particularly in the developing part of sub-saharan africa. fortunately, the crop suitability model represents a key spatial planning tool with the potential to delineate prospective areas for generation of additional food resources. according to elsheikh et al. (2013), agricultural production should be preceded by crop suitability assessment, to provide assurance that prospective environmental degradation likely to be imposed on the environment through improper crop production is marginalized (bodaghabadi, faskhodi, salehi, hosseinifard, & heydari, 2019; de la rosa, mayol, diaz-pereira, & fernandez, 2004; halder, 2013). such an assessment also represents a key role for governments, private companies, and financial institutions to mitigate the risks associated with investment in the agrarian sector (monjurul, ahamed, & noguchi, 2018). crop suitability modeling was derived from soil type mapping, with the mandate to generate potential agricultural areas bodaghabadi et al. (2019). thereafter, fao (1976) set out a systematic framework for land evaluation for rainfed and irrigated agriculture. then, fao (1996) established crucial parameters for the prediction of the crop suitability incorporating climate, soil type, and landform. these contributions established a fundamental layout for the emergence of multi-criterion linear regression modeling that involves the geographical information system (gis), which has since become a standardized approach in crop suitability assessment (chandio, matori, lawal, & sabri, 2011; muhsin, ahamed, & noguchi, 2017; rikalovic, cosic, & lazarevic, 2014). conventional gis based modeling includes boolean conditional mapping, satellite imagery (malczewski, 2006; petja, nesamvuni, & nkoana, 2014), and land capability mapping (baniya, 2008). over time, these techniques have advanced significantly to incorporate complex multi-criterion methods (behrens, schmidt, zhu, & scholten, 2010; nabiollahi, golmohamadi, taghizadeh-mehrjardi, kerry, & davari, 2018; nabiollahi, eskandari, taghizadeh-mehrjardi, kerry, & triantafilis, 2019; pahlavan-rad et al., 2014) that include linear combination, simple limitation, fuzzy-logic modeling, artificial neural networks, and the analytical hierarchy rocess (ahp) (ozdemir, 2020). the prominence of gis-based systems in the simulation of crop potential is attributed to their simplicity and the ability of the technology to integrate different datasets (dengiz, özyazici, & sağlam, 2015). one major drawback, however, is the inclusion of groundwater resources for crop prediction. this limitation renders these systems less than ideal for application in typical arid and semi-arid regions, particularly in limpopo province, south africa (ndwambi, nesamvuni, mpandeli, tshikolomo, & van niekerk, 2020), which is in the subtropical region (mpandeli & maponya, 2014). based on its location, the province has the potential for subtropical fruit production (tshikudu, 2005) but the potentiality is curbed due to the impact of climate change (chikosi, mugambiwa, tirivangasi, & rankoana, 2018). as a result of climate change, rainfall has declined and rainy days have now become too short and sporadic – to an insignificant level – to be able to meet agricultural needs, and surface water resource s are almost entirely allocated (chikosi et al., 2018; mpandeli & maponya, 2014). therefore, this study was conducted to establish a novel linear regression model for the simulation of subtropical crop suitability potential based on the integration of rainfed irrigation and groundwater resources with agro-ecological and climatological predictive parameters. this improved potential will aid in the generation of additional food resources and the development of smallholder farming and agribusiness. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study area 2.1.1. geographical setting the study was conducted in limpopo province, which is one of nine provinces constituting the republic of south africa. it is positioned towards the northwestern part of the country. the locality shares international borders with three of the four neighboring countries, namely, botswana, zimbabwe, and mozambique. the locality map in figure 1 indicates that the area lies between 26° and 32° east, and 22° 10ʹ and 25° 20ʹ south and has a land area of 125 754 km2. limpopo province has a population of about 5.7 million, with the highest proportion (75%) residing in the rural settings (villages and informal settlements) (statistics south africa, 2015). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 334-345 336 2.1.2. agricultural contribution limpopo province is often referred to as the bread and fruit basket of south african as it accounts for at least 60% of all the fruit, vegetables, maize meal, wheat, and cotton produced in the country. according to world travel information, the province possesses some of the richest agricultural areas in the country. furthermore, the province receives over 45% of the r2 billion annual turnover of the johannesburg fresh produce market. according to statistics south africa (2019), limpopo province is the most food-secure region in south africa, with 93% of the inhabitants having adequate access to food resources. limpopo province is a subtropical region (mpandeli & maponya, 2014). these regions are renowned for possessing exceptional potential for subtropical fruit production (tshikudu, 2005), and hence there is a high level of participation in agricultural production by its inhabitants. the agricultural sector in the province comprises both smallholder and commercial farmers. the central government, together with the provincial arm, has identified the smallholder sector as a primary tool for economic reform and job creation through the promotion of this sector to the mainstream economy. 2.1.3. climatic setting the climatic setting of the area ranges from dry sub-humid to semi-arid, attributed to wet, hot summers and dry, cold winters (kabanda, 2004). the mean annual temperature ranges between 18 and 30oc (mpandeli, 2006; mpandeli & maponya, 2014; naledzani, 1999). rainfall trends decrease from the east (>1000 mmpa) to the west (<400 mmpa). the effect and impacts of climate change are experienced considerably in the agricultural industry. after the impact of climate change, semi-arid is defined by insignificant and unreliable precipitation (mpandeli & maponya, 2014; ntikinca, 1999). despite this, the province is experiencing significant population growth that is overstretching current water resources. hence, there are growing concerns as to how the agrarian sector should be sustained to meet needs at both provincial and national levels. figure-1. locality map showing the geographic coordinates of limpopo province (ndwambi et al., 2020). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 334-345 337 2.1.4. the novel subtropical fruit suitability model this section presents the methodology that was employed for the establishment of the novel linear regression subtropical fruit (avocado, citrus, mango, and litchi) suitability model for limpopo province. the suitability model was based on auxiliary datasets obtained from arc-iscw (2016)m which is a subsidiary of the water research commission (wrc) of the republic of south africa. this subsection also describes the data quality assurance and processing techniques that were employed to establish the crop suitability model. 2.1.5. production requirements of subtropical fruit the crop suitability modeling was achieved through matching subtropical crop requirements to the prevalent agro-ecological, climatological, and available water resource for irrigation (rainfed and groundwater resource). subtropical crop requirements were appraised exclusively from arc-iscw (2016). the optimal requirements for citrus incorporate the absence of frost, the minimum temperatures in winter should be ≥3oc while the maximum for the same period should be ≤13 oc. this crop flourishes within a narrow spectrum of slightly acidic ph (6.0–6.5. ideal soil for this commodity should be well aerated, with depth ranging from 1 to 2 m, and clay composition of 10–40%. avocado relishes a humid environment with exceptional high precipitation in excess of 1000 mmpa. it requires cold temperatures and can cope well at <0oc, but begins to fade once temperatures exceed 25oc. avocado thrives in areas with a mean annual temperature of 20–25oc. optimal soil physiochemical attributes are 600 mm depth, clay composition of 20–40%, and slightly acidic ph (5.0–7.0). litchi and the mango generally favor warmer temperatures; they can only endure winter temperatures >6 and 5oc, respectively. furthermore, these crops are suitable for a diverse array of soil types. mango is one of the most drought-resistant crops and can withstand temperatures >40oc. it can also perform well in a drier environment with rainfall of <400 mm. however, elevation should not exceed 1200 masl. furthermore, the crop is suitable for a diverse array of soil types whereas litchi require soil depth of at least 1000 mm. 2.1.6. crop suitability requirements (arc-iscw, 2016; arc-itsc, 2003) citrus optimal potential: „{min avg temp july} >= 3˚c and {min avg temp june, july, aug} <= 13 3˚c; and {effective soil depth} >= 100 cm; and {avg clay %} >= 15 and <= 35; and {soil form} <> “va” and precipitation + groundwater>=1000mm citrus suitable potential: „{min avg temp july} >= 3˚c; and {min avg temp june, july, aug} <= 13 ˚c; and {effective soil depth} >= 90 cm and < 100 cm; and {avg clay %} >= 15 and <= 35; or and {effective soil depth} >= 100 cm; and {avg clay %} > 5 and < 15 and > 35 and < 50; and {soil form} <> “va, rg, wo, ar”. avocado optimal potential: „{mean annual temp} >= 20 ˚c and <= 25 ˚c; and {mean annual precipitation + groundwater} >= 1000 mm; and {mean annual temp, oct-nov} >= 15oc; and {effective soil depth} > 600 mm; and {avg clay %} < 50‟. avocado suitable potential: „{mean annual temp} >= 20 ˚c and <= 27 ˚c; and {mean annual precipitation + groundwater} >= 800 mm; and {mean annual temp, oct-nov} >= 15 ˚c; and {effective soil depth} > 600 mm‟. mango optimal potential: „{avg monthly temp, may, jun, jul, aug} > 5 ˚c; and {mean annual max temp} >= 27 ˚c and <= 36 ˚c; and {mmr sept} <= 50 and {mmr oct} <= 85 and {mmr nov} < 110 and {mmr dec} < 140 and {mmr jan} < 140 and {mmr feb} < 140; and {altitude} < 1200 m.a.s.l; and {effective soil depth} >= 75 cm; [vi] {avg clay %} <= 15 and <= 25; [vii] {soil form} <> “bo, ar”. mango suitable potential: „{avg monthly temp, may, jun, jul, aug} > 5 ˚c; and {mean annual max temp} >= 27 ˚c and <= 36 ˚c; and {mmr sept} <= 50 and {mmr oct} <= 85 and {mmr nov} < 110 and {mmr dec} < 140 and {mmr jan} < 140 and {mmr feb} < 140; and {altitude} < 1200 m.a.s.l; and {effective soil depth} >= 60 cm and < 75 cm; [vi] {avg clay %} <= 15 and <= 25; or and {effective soil depth} >= 75 cm; and {avg clay %} (>= 10 and < 15) and (>25 and <= 50); [vii] {soil form} <> “bo, ar”. litchi optimal potential: „{mean annual temp} >= 16 ˚c and <= 25 ˚c; and {altitude} <= 640 m.a.s.l; and {effective soil depth} >= 100 cm; and {avg clay %} >= 10 and <= 45. suitable potential for litchi: {mean annual temp} >= 16 ˚c and <= 25 ˚c; and {altitude} <= 640 m.a.m.s.l; and {effective soil depth} >= 90 and < 100 cm; and {avg clay %} >= 10 and <= 45. 2.2. data processing this section presents the data processing techniques adopted for establishment of the comprehensive crop suitability model. carl (1996) defined data processing as a process of collection and manipulation of raw data to yield meaningful information. a file geo-database was prepared in the arcgis environment to enable data processing. all datasets were transformed into the wgs84 coordinates system using the georeferencing tool in arcgis software. the mandate for this was to simplify the process of data extraction only for areas that coincide with limpopo province to enable temporal data processing and reduction of data redundancy. quality assurance was performed through a spatial dimension comparison of the features on different data. where there was a need, the extent of the features was modified based on size as reflected on the orthophoto. 2.3. integration of rainfall and groundwater resource predictive parameters of suitability modeling were converted to spatial resolution of 500 m, to ensure that the resultant model would yield meaningful results. the climatological component (rainfall) was integrated into the groundwater resource, performed on a locality basis. since crop water requirements are expressed in terms of rainfall asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 334-345 338 (mmpa) and annually sustainable groundwater resource is expressed in mm3/km2, the latter was converted to mmpa and the modeling was performed with groundwater abstraction restricted to 60% to accommodate other users. the two water-based units (rainfall and groundwater) were incorporated to give spatial water resource quantity. the predictive parameters were reclassified into three categories. the prime value of four was apportioned to the portion of the attributes corresponding to the optimal crop requirement, while three was allotted to the marginal suitability area. at the other end of the spectrum, zero was allocated to those attributes that neither support nor hinder crop potential. reclassification was repeated for all input parameters for the selected crops. the predictive parameters were assigned equal weights such that their sum was equal to 1. equal weights were opted for to nullify the biases associated with the operator‟s preference towards specific layers. furthermore, this weighting also yields the delineation of absolute potentiality, instead of propelling areas that are not ideal to optimal classes based on highly weighted parameters. these layers were incorporated into the crop suitability model using equation 1: u (1) where cp is crop potential and wi is the reclassified thematic layer. since equal weighting was adopted for the integrated potential assessment, the optimal potential was attributed to the mean index of 4, and the suitable potential with the mean index value equal to or greater than 3 but less than 4. 3. results and discussion this section presents the results of the novelty methodology that was employed to develop the linear regression suitability of the selected crops (avocado, citrus, mango, and litchi) through integration of the reclassified maps of the agro-ecological, climatological, and groundwater resources. the prospective areas for each of the selected crops were categorized into the optimal and suitable (marginal) areas. this potentiality constitutes a fundamental prerequisite for the developmental purposes of the agri-business and projection of smallholder farmers into the mainstream economy. 3.1. spatial extent of subtropical fruit suitability categories the subtropical fruit suitability modeling resulted in two prospective categories, namely the optimal potential area and the suitable (marginal) potential area. the two prospective potentials are shown in tables 1 and 2, respectively. table-1. spatial comparison of the rfm and the ugm novel models in terms of the extent of the optimal potential area for selected crops. distric avocado (ha) citrus (ha) mango (ha) litchi (ha) rfm1 ium2 rfm ium rfm ium rfm ium capricorn 1160 36628 55264 282914 17762 235083 193 24881 mopane 13705 86219 34093 464953 18722 182820 16902 243749 sekhukhune 294 6740 30836 182163 37063 149485 2550 41580 vhembe 3551 68943 37999 283835 32948 238553 20305 172713 waterberg 0 260207 55850 556009 12350 892556 0 10247 total 18 710 458737 214042 1767874 118845 1698497 39950 493170 3increase 440027 1553832 1579652 453220 note: 1rfm = geographical information system-based crop suitability model (rainfed water resources). 2ium = integrated geographical information system-based crop suitability model (rainfed and underground water resources). 3increase = increase in total optimum potential area (ha) when ium is used. tables 1 and 2 reflect the spatial extent corresponding to each category in each of the five district municipalities constituting limpopo province. as indicated in table 1, there was an increase in toptimum potential area (ha) for all commodities when the ium (integrated geographical information system-based crop suitability model – rainfed & underground water resources) was used. this increase was highest for mango (1,579,652 ha), followed by citrus (1,553,832 ha), litchi (453,220 ha), and avocado (440,027 ha). within commodities there were clear district-level increases that could benefit shae expansion if resources are provided for commodity-based production approach. for avocado the highest increase in the potential areas using ium was in waterberg district, with an increase of 56.72%, followed by mopani at 18.79%. the same trend was with evident for citrus in waterberg, with a 31.45% increase and mopani with 26.30%. mango as a commodity showed the highest increase in vhembe, with 14.04% followed by capricorn at 13.84%. litchi was more skewed to the northeast of the province, with the highest increases in vhembe (35.02%) and mopane (49.43%). the potentiality is in accordance with mahmudul, toriman, chamhuri, and basri (2011), that crop production is highly influenced by rainfall trend. similarly, table 2 shows that there was an increase in the suitable potential area (ha) for all commodities when the ium was used. the highest increase in suitable potential for all commodities was for mango (4,743,021 ha), followed by avocado (1.598,229 ha), litchi (1,234,819 ha) and citrus (1,155,316 ha). for avocado, waterberg and mopani followed the trend reported in table 1 under the optimum potential, with increases of 41.76% and 24.50%, respectively. for citrus the increase was highest in vhembe at 42.71%, followed by waterberg with 23.00%. mango was highest in waterberg jiwcp i j . asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 334-345 339 and vhembe, with increases of 31.12% and 28.17%, respectively. for litchi the highest increase was in waterberg and mopani, at 33.15% and 27.28%, respectively. table-2. spatial comparison of the rfm and the ugm novel models in terms of the extent of the suitable potential area for selected crops. district name avocado (ha) citrus (ha) mango (ha) litchi (ha) rfm ium rfm ium rfm ium rfm ium capricorn 784 90957 23393 624294 54840 681869 98 131408 mopane 22136 400477 0 335941 59342 1038216 0 357521 sekhukhune 0 251897 63105 90795 49169 320011 687 117103 vhembe 12862 208312 33315 74247 71259 1412596 74621 270156 waterberg 0 682368 186329 336181 35444 1560383 403 434440 total 35782 1634011 306142 1461458 270054 5013075 75809 1310628 increase 0 1598229 0 1155316 0 4743021 0 1234819 1rfm = geographical information system based crop suitability model (eainfed water resources). 2ium = integrated geographical information system based crop suitability model (rainfed and underground water resources) . 3increase = increase in total suitable potential area (ha) when ium is used. the map in figure 2 portrays the spatial extent and distribution of the optimal (gray) and marginal (yellow) potential areas for avocado in limpopo province. according to this map, the optimal potential areas are spatially restricted to the eastern margin of the province that constitutes vhembe, which coincides with thulamela and makhado, as well as mopane (greater letaba and greater tzaneen). this potentiality was corroborated by mpandeli and maponya (2014), with their assertion that there is a micro-climate with precipitation >1000 mmpa in tshakhuma, tshiombo, and tzaneen that coincides with the reflected potential. the rainfed potential model that was established by ndwambi et al. (2020) indicated vhembe and mopane as the best regions for avocado, at12,862 ha and 22,136 ha, respectively. however, re-evaluation incorporating the groundwater resource in table 2 yielded a spatial extent of 208,312 ha and 400,477 ha, respectively. the follow-up study depicted significant expansion on the extent of the potential in the two districts, at 195,450 ha and 378,341 ha. figure-2. a map showing the extent and the distribution of the optimal and the extent of the avocado potential. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 334-345 340 contrary to the rainfed potential, the western side of the study area also reflects the optimal potential that conforms with blouberg, mookgopong, and thabazimbi. despite the area having low rainfall of about 400 mmpa, which is insufficient for avocado cultivation, the section exhibits good potential for this water-demanding crop. nonetheless, this potentiality may be interpreted in terms of the groundwater levels for which the area is renowned. ultimately, this subsurface resources significantly improve the potential for this subtropical fruit. figure 3 shows a map reflecting the suitable and the optimal potential of citrus. figure-3. map reflecting the suitable and the optimal potential of the citrus. according to table 2, the spatial distribution of citrus under optimal potential in limpopo province is as follows: capricorn (624,294 ha), mopane (335,941 ha), sekhukhune (90,795 ha), vhembe (74,247 ha), and waterberg (336,181 ha). meanwhile, the citrus potential map in figure 3 indicates the spatiality of citrus throughout limpopo province. according to figure 3, citrus shows a similar spatial trend to avocado. the prospective areas are prominent to the east but decline with westward progression. the significant spatial extent to the east is in vhembe (makhado and thulamela), mopane district (greater giyani, greater letaba, and greater tzaneen), capricorn (blouberg and polokwane), and sekhukhune (fetakgomo, greater marble hall, fetakgomo, and mogkopong). there are also prominence occurrences stretching along the limpopo river flanking limpopo province in musina, blouberg, and lephalale, stretching to thabazimbi and bela-bela. in a similar fashion to avocado, the novel citrus model exhibits significant improvement in rainfed potential established by ndwambi et al. (2020). the incorporation of groundwater resources for the prediction of the ideal prospective area led to the expansion of this category by 1,155,316 ha throughout the province (table 2). figure 4 demonstrate the marginal and optimal potential distribution of mango in limpopo. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 334-345 341 figure-4. map of the marginal and optimal potential distribution of mango in limpopo. according to arc-itsc (2003), mango is the least demanding crop in terms of agro-ecological requirements. it is in this regard that this crop portrays the greatest spatial potential area in the province. table 2 shows the spatial distribution of mango: capricorn at 235,083 ha, mopane at 182,820 ha, sekhukhune at 149,485 ha, vhembe at 238,553 ha, and waterberg at 892,556 ha. contrary to the potentiality of avocado and citrus, for mango (figure 4) potentiality increased according to westward progression. the lesser potentiality in the east is attributed to high precipitation. according to arc-itsc (2003), mango thrives in a rainfall range of 400–600 mmpa. besides, this crop requires relatively warmer temperatures, such conditions being more prevalent in the west: the west constitutes the highest spatiality for mango in the province. this potential is a result of the warmer temperatures that the area experiences, and sufficient water resources (both surface and groundwater). the incorporation of groundwater for the establishment of the mango suitability resulted in the spatial expansion of 1,579,602 ha from the rainfed suitability model of ndwambi et al. (2020). the greater part of the area within this category comprises mutale, musina, lephalale, and blouberg. the spatial distribution and variability of litchi are shown in figure 5. this map shows that the potential of this area is restricted to the east of limpopo province. the areas within this category include vhembe (makhado, mutale, and musina) and mopane (greater letaba and tzaneen). the former accounts for 172,713 ha and the latter for 243,749 ha. spatial restriction for litchi is attributed to the low mean annual rainfall that the majority of the province receives. meanwhile, the optimal zones coincide with the microclimate zones that experience significant precipitation (>1000 mmpa). according to arc-iscw (2016), this commodity requires 1500–3000 mmpa during the growing period and >1000 mmpa annually to be productive. however, total mean annual precipitation for the entire province hardly exceeds 2000 mmpa, implying inadequate rainfall for this crop. capricorn and waterberg barely exhibit optimal potential for litchi. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 334-345 342 figure-5. spatial potential of litchi in limpopo province. thus, despite the ability of litchi to adapt to a wide array of soil types (dais, 2003), this implies that the vital determinant for optimal potential is water resources. this view is confirmed by the spatial correspondence between prospective areas and the mean annual rainfall map issued by arc-iscw (2016). on the contrary, the marginal areas for this commodity spread throughout as discontinuous patches are prominent in capricorn (131,408 ha), waterberg (434,440 ha), and sekhukhune (270,156 ha; table 2). 3.2. groundwater-based potential ndwambi et al. (2020) created a subtropical fruit (avocado, citrus, litchi, and mango) suitability model for limpopo province based on agro-ecological parameters and rainfed irrigation. the model established about 1 million ha of integrated (optimal and marginal suitability) prospective areas. however, such potential should not be considered as an absolute representation, because of the gradual decline in rainfall frequency and quantity (benhin, 2006) that is the result of climate change. nevertheless, ndwambi et al. (2020) outlined low rainfall as the determining factor for rainfed suitability potential, despite the area conforming to subtropical regions that exhibit exceptional potential for these crops (tshikudu, 2005). however, adams (2014) and woodford and rosewarne (2011) indicated that south africa bears the potential for bulk groundwater potential and that there is underutilization of groundwater resources, as current abstraction rates aret about 50% of potential. following these remarks, ndwambi et al. (2020) asserted that crop suitability in this region should be reevaluated with the consideration of sustainable groundwater resource availability. according to mussá, zhou, maskey, masih, and uhlenbrook (2015), groundwater is an emergency resource for countering the impact of drought. on the other hand, sekula (2019), showed that avocado potential was significantly affected by the heatwave of 2018. however, irrigation was found to be imperative in increasing crop resilience to such a phenomenon. this instills an understanding that the mandate to incorporate groundwater resources for simulation of the suitability model not only yields to the spatial expansion of the potential but also increase crop resilience to drought. nevertheless, a review of crop suitability potential through integration of groundwater resources significantly improved the potential, with an additional 4.03 million ha under optimal potential and suitable potential of 8.73 million ha. such an expansion confirms the importance of subsurface water resources in the agricultural industry (nepal et al., 2017). despite such a jump in potentiality, it could still be improved especially in areas not adjacent to other production activities. this is because the current model was based on 60% abstraction rates of the available resource. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 334-345 343 3.3. socioeconomic benefits south africa is faced with crucial socioeconomic challenges ranging from unemployment to unequal distribution of resources (alenda-demoutiez & mügge, 2020). these figures are likely to increase sharply due to the impacts of covid-19. in an age of unemployment and an economy that is growing at a marginal rate (joshua, bekun, & sarkodie, 2020), it is unlikely that the government will be able to tackle the issue of unemployment. however, south africa, like any other african country, should take advantage of the globally expanding population. it is believed that by the year 2050, global food resources are likely to increase by 38% (mohammad & karim, 2020) and it will then be up to this continent to cater to growing needs (smith & archer, 2020). the national development plan vision, 2030 (south african government, 2012) identified agriculture as an integral sector for socioeconomic development and unemployment. the ium approved a suitable area of 8.7 million ha. according to phillips (2012), the ratio og labor to farm size is 1.25, which can easily be expanded with proper planning. this would imply that the sector could easily adopt at least 10.87 million employees if the government commits the necessary investment and support. these will be people that are directly employed in crop production operations. however, in reality, much work is required to prepare for agriculture that incorporates de-bushing, landscaping, fencing, irrigation canals, road networks, and energy lines. these suggest that, apart from the employees involved in farming activities, many people will be absorbed even before the commencement of operations. there are job opportunities that will arise throughout the agricultural production value chain, and many more indirect opportunities. limpopo is recognized as the only food-secure province in south africa; suitability models have the potential to ensure there is food security in the country. at the dawn of the 4th industrial revolution, the only meaningful hope for south africa to contribute is likely to be through agriculture. while most countries are eager to contribute significantly towards this regime, they seem to align their prospective contribution to technological advancements. while south africa and other growing economies will be playing catch-up, they can set up agricultural hubs based on subsequent crop suitability models. the following areas were identified according to the interaction of gis-based models as suitable to become subtropical hubs of limpopo: musina–nwanedi corridor, thulamela–levubu nandoni, greater tzaneen, sekhukhune marble hall & nebo, and waterberg–thabazimbi & blouberg. 3.4. tools for planning delineation of the crop suitability model also serves as a fundamental spatial tool for the planning of land resources (piikki, winowiecki, vågen, parker, & söderström, 2015). beyond the scope of this study, the resultant crop suitability model should be used for the reservation of land for crop production; because planners appear to allocate any piece of land for settlement without prior assessment of land capability, most settlements qualify as optimal agricultural potential areas. reservation of agricultural land will be key to ensuring that the agricultural sector can keep up with the growing food needs of the country and the planet. crop suitability potential provides the government with an implementable tool to ensure that smallholder farmers join mainstream agricultural production. in the meantime, this model provides the government with a framework to launch subtropical fruit programs where farmers are encouraged to venture into crop production, with the government providing all necessary support to ensure the success of the program. the model also better positions the country in regard to improving earnings from foreign currency. 4. conclusions groundwater is an imperative resource for sustaining the agricultural sector, particularly in semi-arid regions. the incorporation of groundwater resources as one of the predictive parameters among climatological and agroecological parameters that significantly expands the spatiality of optimal potential and suitable areas. the suitability model should be incorporated into the spatial decision-making process and land planning. furthermore, the model offers greater insurance against food insecurity while also ensuring socio-economic empowerment. it also offers foundational planning towards actualization of the agro-processing and agricultural hubs. the findings of this study suggest that crop suitability models in semi-arid regions should be established with the incorporation of the prevalent groundwater resource as a predictive parameter to optimize potential. national and provincial departments of agriculture should adopt the crop suitability model as an advisory tool for spatial planning of their spatial projects. provincial departments of agriculture and associated district planning units should prioritize farmers in optimal potential areas for their support. since the crop suitability model was achieved through the adoption of groundwater resources, these resources should be monitored regularly to ensure sustainability. funding: financial support provided by the water research council, south africa is greatly appreciated. the university of the free state provided a doctoral scholarship to khuthadzo ndwambi. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: the authors acknowledge the water research council, south africa and the university of free state for financial support provided to the study. they are grateful for technical support provided by the limpopo department of agriculture. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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(2011). how much groundwater does south africa have? srk consulting cape town, south africa jan german: department of water affairs & forestry, pretoria, south africa. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 147 the level of job satisfaction of young farmers subsidized by european rural measures: evidence from northern greece dimitra g. papadopouloua, afroditi papadakiklavdianou b, anastasios michailidis c, maria partalidou d a phd candidate; decentralized administration of macedonia, thrace, thessaloniki, greece b emeritus professor; department of agricultural economics, school of agriculture, aristotle university of thessaloniki, thessaloniki, greece c associate professor; department of agricultural economics, school of agriculture, aristotle university of thessaloniki, thessaloniki, greece d assistant professor; department of agricultural economics, school of agriculture, aristotle university of thessaloniki, thessaloniki, greece  papadodim@agro.auth.gr (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 10-may-2019 accepted: 06-aug-2019 online available: 03-sep2019 keywords: greece, minnesota satisfaction questionnaire, job satisfaction, setting up of young farmers, young farmers abstract this paper examines the job satisfaction of a sample of 182 young farmers from northern greece who are beneficiaries of support policies, as well as the factors influencing it. the results indicate that young farmers are little satisfied in their job and the practices applied by institutional bodies are the main cause of their job dissatisfaction. nevertheless, they like the content and nature of their job. residing in peri-urban rural areas, the intention to continue exercising the farming profession, the sense of achievement, training opportunities, and optimism have positive effects on job satisfaction. however, considering that young people in mountainous areas have a strong sense of job dissatisfaction and claim that they are less likely to continue farming there is a need for integrated development of the countryside focused on the local needs of each area. contribution/ originality this study is important as it is the first effort to examine job satisfaction of people working in the farming sector, and especially among beneficiaries of the setting up of young farmers measure (eu common agricultural policy, pillar ii). the set of data gathered for this study is unique to date and the findings serve as a good start to the relevant discussion. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.147.163 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: dimitra g. papadopoulou, afroditi papadaki-klavdianou, anastasios michailidis and maria partalidou (2019). the level of job satisfaction of young farmers subsidized by european rural measures: evidence from northern greece. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 147-163. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 147-163 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:papadodim@agro.auth.gr http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7560-4365 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6712-2094 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8895-6124 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.147.163 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 148 1. introduction in order to renew the age structure of workers in the agricultural sector and maintain the population in rural areas the european union has established a series of policy measures and incentives for new entrants into farming, since the contribution of institutional bodies is decisive for the achievement of prosperity and sustainability in rural areas (rieznik and beom, 2018). thus in the framework of the common agricultural policy the agricultural development measure titled setting up of young farmers (european parliament, 2013) is being implemented in eu member states, since more than 50% of agricultural holding managers are over 55 years old, while only 6% are under the age of 35 years (european committee of the regions, 2017). success in the agricultural sector can only be achieved through a change in generations, considering that the lack of young farmers has an adverse effect on the dissemination of know-how, adoption of new practices, and implementation of innovations, thus putting the survival and competitiveness of the agricultural sector at risk. as part of the agricultural development measure the initial establishment of new entrants into farming is facilitated by giving significant financial incentives with the aim of achieving structural adjustment and improvement of the economic sustainability of agricultural households within five years. however, this adjustment does not show any indications of the intention or decision of beneficiaries to continue exercising the farming profession, since the lack of young farmers has been a problem in the eu for many decades despite the financial resources that have been allocated to its solution. this aspect is crucial in relation to the basic objective of the measure, which is to maintain the social and economic fabric of the countryside and introduce nonfinancial parameters to the discussion on sustainable farming. the literature suggests that young farmers’ job satisfaction possibly indicates their commitment to establishing a future in farming (kontogeorgos et al., 2014). according to agarwal and agarwal (2017) farmers’ satisfaction could affect their incentives to make long-term investments. furthermore, for the owners of small enterprises success can be measured based on nonfinancial criteria such as job satisfaction (reijonen and komppula, 2007). moreover, farmers’ satisfaction with their quality of life is connected to job satisfaction (herrera et al., 2018). therefore understanding the attitudes and views of new farmers can support competent bodies in their policy making with regard to planning integrated and sustainable agricultural development. this claim is supported by previous studies which suggest that the integration of psychological parameters in the survey of the farming community in general leads to correct proposals, conclusions, and recommendations (mzoughi, 2014). the literature shows that those who are satisfied with their jobs have lower job departure rates and better performance (robbins and judge, 2013). at the same time the mobility and behaviour of employees in the labour market are affected by the job satisfaction factor (freeman, 1977; tansel and gazioglu, 2006; mensah et al., 2017). the factors influencing job satisfaction include inter alia, age, sex (iroegbu, 2015), income, level of education, professional training, marital status, the employee’s personality (tansel and gazioglu, 2006), structural characteristics of the farms (besser and mann, 2015), and geographical position (herrera et al., 2018). 1.1. the concept of job satisfaction the concept of job satisfaction has been the subject of systematic study over the last fifty years in the context of human resource management (giraldo-o’mearaetal et al., 2014) in various professional sectors. nevertheless, it has not been systematically studied in relation to farmers and especially young farmers. job satisfaction is defined as a positive feeling about the job resulting from an assessment of its characteristics (robbins and judge, 2013). this concept has a cognitive component (the individual asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 149 perceives their job in a specific way and believes that their job is either good or bad), an affective component (the individual has positive or negative feelings about their job), and a behavioural component (the individual stays at a job or quits, performs or doesn’t, etc.). individuals with a high level of job satisfaction feel positively about their jobs as opposed to individuals with a low level of job satisfaction who feel negatively about their jobs. spector (1997) has stated that job satisfaction simply has to do with the feeling people have about their jobs and the different aspects thereof. it has to do with satisfaction with different aspects of the job such as supervision, independence, social status, cooperation, recognition, security, competition, etc. an aspect is defined as a part of the job causing one to feel satisfied or dissatisfied. according to spector (1997) job satisfaction is either intrinsic or extrinsic: intrinsic refers to the feelings people have about the nature and content of the actual job tasks (e.g. variety, skill utilisation, autonomy), extrinsic refers to the feelings people have about aspects of their work that are external to the actual tasks or work (e.g. salary, working conditions, co-workers). thiagaraj and thangaswamy (2017) divide theories on job satisfaction into two categories: content theories, which attempt to identify and interpret content, the type of needs, and the factors that motivate individuals to work; and process theories, which focus on the dynamic of the motivational process and examine the types and categories of variables that contribute to job satisfaction. the objectives of this study are to assess the overall level of job satisfaction of young farmers, assess satisfaction in relation to other aspects of the job, identify the sources of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction, examine the factors that influence job satisfaction, and study the connection between the job satisfaction of young farmers and their intention to continue working in the agricultural sector. the survey focuses on the demographic, economic, and structural features of agricultural holdings, and the characteristics of the area of permanent residence. given the lack of relevant research on the job satisfaction of young farmers this paper aims to fill this gap and start a discussion on this matter. 2. methodology 2.1. sample the survey sample includes 182 new entrants into farming (under 40 years of age) who live in the prefecture of thessaloniki in northern greece (see map 1). they first entered the agricultural sector in 2014 as beneficiaries of the setting up of young farmers measure which required them to implement the structural adjustment of their agricultural holdings within five years. they were selected by random sampling from a total of 482 beneficiaries throughout the prefecture based on their ability to take part in the survey. 218 questionnaires were initially distributed, 36 were rejected. the survey was conducted from june to september 2018 and the study sample was retrieved from the records of the paying agency. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 150 map 1: location of the study area in greece 2.2. instrument the level of job satisfaction was measured with the minnesota satisfaction questionnaire (msq) long form (weiss et al., 1977) which was adapted to the needs of this study. it was initially developed in 1967 and revised in 1977. it is suitable for all educational levels (sarraf, 2018) and provides detailed information on separate aspects of the job (aslan, 2017). it has been used in numerous sectors to measure job satisfaction (saner and eyupoglu, 2012). however, the review of the literature did not show any corresponding study for agriculture. for the needs of this survey supervision was considered to have been carried out by the ministry of rural development and food (mrdf), which is responsible for supervising the proper implementation of the measure in greece. the msq long form includes 100 items, 5 for each of the 20 individual aspects of the job, which are described in the msq manual, as well as 2 subscales measuring intrinsic (65 items) and extrinsic (35 items) job satisfaction (table a, in appendix). the subject is required to answer the question: ‘how satisfied do you feel with this aspect of the work?’ items are rated on a 5-point likert scale (1 = very dissatisfied, 2 = dissatisfied, 3 = cannot decide, 4 = satisfied, 5 = very satisfied). the reliability of the questionnaire items was measured using cronbach's alpha test. all cases produced a coefficient of cronbach alpha > 0.7, which is widely accepted (khushk et al., 2016; solis-carcano et al., 2015). the survey questionnaire also includes items concerning perceptions, the demographic characteristics of subjects, and the structural characteristics of their agricultural holdings. table 1: independent variables used in the analysis independent variables description sex 1= male 2 = female age years marital status 1= married, 2 = single, 3 = in relationship, 4 = divorced education level 1= primary, 2 = lower secondary, 3 = upper secondary 4 = post-secondary / non-higher, 5 = higher characterization of the residence area 1= normal area, 2 = disadvantage area, 3 = mountain area annual household income 1 ≤ 5.604 $, 2 = 5.605-16.811 $, 3 = 16.812-28.018 $ 4 = 28.019-39.226 $, 5 ≥ 39.227 $ % of total household income from agricultural activities percentage % of agricultural income from agricultural subsidies percentage asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 151 probability to remain in agriculture 1 = extremely likely, 2 = very likely, 3 = somewhat likely 4 = not very likely, 5 = not likely at all prediction for the development of the farm 1 = will improve significantly, 2 = will improve slightly, 3 = will remain the same, 4 = will deteriorate slightly, 5 = will deteriorate significantly the continuous training as an important factor for the development of the farm 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree evaluation of the development of the farm 1 = much better, 2 = somewhat better, 3 = about the same, 4 = somewhat worse, 5 = much worse saving money 1 = a great deal, 2 = much, 3 = somewhat, 4 = a little, 5 = not at all productive direction of the farm 1 = plant production, 2 = animal production total number of hectares hectares existing sectors of plant and animal production 1= yes, 2 = no note: dependent variable is ‘total mean score of overall job satisfaction’ 2.3. data analysis descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. in particular:  descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation) was used to analyse the socioeconomic characteristics of subjects and their agricultural holdings to measure their satisfaction with the 20 aspects of the job, their overall intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction, and to identify the sources of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction.  inferential statistics was used to examine the factors affecting overall job satisfaction as a dependent variable. one parametric (anova & t-test) and one nonparametric test (kruskalwallis & mann-whitney u) was performed on each independent variable of the survey: mann-whitney u & t-test performed when the independent variable had two values, kruskalwallis & anova performed when the independent variable had three values or more. these four tests are performed in order to determine whether the samples derive from the same population or not. the initial assumption is that k samples derive from the same population, and the assumption is accepted when the asymptotic significance (p-value) ≥ 0.05 and rejected when the asymptotic significance (p-value) < 0.05. thus when the initial assumption is rejected, we have a significant statistical difference in the levels of satisfaction pertaining to each factor. the independent variables used in the analysis are presented in table 1. in order to determine which of the tests above is suitable for each case, kolmogorov-smirnov & shapiro-wilk (ghasemi and zahediasl, 2012) normality tests were performed on the dependent variable and based on these tests, the kruskal-wallis and mann-whitney u nonparametric tests were deemed most suitable as they resulted in rejection of normality. for each test a p-value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. the statistical package for the social sciences (spss v.24) was used to analyse the collected data. 3. results and discussion 3.1. profile of young farmers the survey sample mainly includes men (73.6%) with a mean age of 32 years, 45.6% of whom are married and 42.9% of whom are single. the level of education of young farmers is highly satisfactory, considering that 26.9% have completed upper secondary school, 39% have completed postsecondary school / no higher education, and 22% have completed higher education. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 152 agricultural holdings cover a small surface area, considering that 49.5% of these holdings are limited to 5 hectares, with the average of privately-owned land amounting to 2.16 hectares. in terms of geographical area, 41.2% reside in normal areas, i.e. peri-urban rural areas where farming is based on a broad spectrum of intensively irrigated crops. 32.4% of the entire sample reside in disadvantaged areas, i.e. areas that are remote from urban areas and have natural disadvantages such as limited irrigation capacity and sloping grounds. in these areas agriculture is mainly based on a narrow spectrum of extensively farmed, not irrigated crops and cow breeding, and secondarily on the extensive farming of sheep and goats. 26.4% of the questioned subjects reside in mountainous areas where isolation and natural disadvantages are far more intense. in these areas 77% of agricultural holdings are smaller than 5 hectares and agriculture is based mainly on not irrigated crops and extensive farming of sheep and goats. lastly, 56.6% of the survey subjects claim that they have an income of less than $16.811, while 53.3% receive an extra-agricultural income. 3.2. level of job satisfaction the job satisfaction level of young farmers was examined in two stages. initially the level of satisfaction with the 20 facets of the job described in the msq manual (weiss et al., 1977) was assessed. the mean value for each facet of the job was calculated based on the average of the values given to each one of the five items on the long-form msq. the reliability of the 5 items / facets of job was tested. this was followed by an assessment of the level of intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction. the scores of the two subscales were calculated based on the mean score of the corresponding facets of the job (table a, in appendix). the mean of the 100 items was used to calculate the overall job satisfaction score (figure a, table β in appendix). according to the literature mean scores below 3.50 are placed in the ‘dissatisfied’ column on the ‘satisfactiondissatisfaction’ scale, while mean scores above 3.50 are placed in the ‘satisfied’ column (pearson and seiler, 1983). 3.2.1. level of satisfaction with the 20 facets of the job the mean values, standard deviations and values of cronbach’s alpha for the 20 facets of job satisfaction appear in tables 2-3. table 2 indicates the facets of the job with which young farmers are satisfied. in particular, they are satisfied with the opportunity they have to do things that do not go against their conscience and principles (mean = 4.13), to use their skills and do what they know well (mean = 4.07), to work independently of others without being controlled (mean = 4.02), and to experiment and try their own methods (mean = 3.94). furthermore, they are satisfied because they feel a sense of achievement (mean = 3.92), they are free to apply their decisions in practice (mean = 3.92), they work constantly and do not have to go through periods of idleness (mean = 3.85), they offer products and services to others (mean = 3.84), they occupy themselves with various things (mean = 3.77), they feel that they have value in society (mean = 3.52), and they receive praise when they do their job well (mean = 3.51). finally, they are satisfied with their collaboration and, in general, their interaction with other farmers (mean = 3.51). the results show that the survey subjects are satisfied with specific facets of the job, which mainly make up its content. these intangible outcomes constitute non-financial benefits, which could enhance their intention to remain in agriculture. when examining the impact of measures designed to support young farmers, we suggest that policy makers or researchers take these subjective aspects into account, thus adding more perspective to their recommendations and conclusions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 153 table 2: sources of job satisfaction for young farmers ν = 182 facets of the job mean std. deviation cronbach's alpha n of items type moral values 4.13 0.701 0.759 5 intrinsic ability of utilization 4.07 0.71 0.820 5 intrinsic independence 4.02 0.797 0.754 5 intrinsic creativity 3.94 0.714 0.803 5 intrinsic achievement 3.92 0.735 0.770 5 intrinsic responsibility 3.92 0.643 0.737 5 intrinsic activity 3.85 0.799 0.842 5 intrinsic social service 3.84 0.717 0.771 5 intrinsic variety 3.77 0.727 0.750 5 intrinsic social status 3.52 0.846 0.799 5 intrinsic recognition 3.51 0.903 0.886 5 intrinsic co-workers 3.51 0.89 0.870 5 extrinsic note: 1 1.5 very dissatisfied, 1.5 2.5 dissatisfied, 2.5 3.5 cannot decide, 3.5 4.5 satisfied, 4.5 5 very satisfied table 3 shows the facets of the job with which new entrants into farming are dissatisfied. in particular, they are dissatisfied with the ways in which the ministry of rural development and food (mrdf) supports them (mean = 2.22), the way in which the mrdf’s policies are applied in practice (mean = 2.26), the ability of the mrdf to make decisions (mean = 2.31), the income they receive from farming (μ = 2.51), their job security (m = 2.67), the opportunity they have to progress and grow (m = 3.05), their working conditions (μ = 3.21) and the possibility to guide other farmers (m = 3.34). the results indicate clear dissatisfaction of young farmers with the body responsible for supervising them, and show the need to improve the institutional environment. despite the fact that they receive substantial financial support for their initial establishment in the farming sector, as well as encouragement in the form of income aid in the framework of the european common agricultural policy, they feel dissatisfied and insecure in the agricultural sector’s existing structural framework. table 3: sources of job dissatisfaction for young farmers n = 182 facets of the job mean std. deviation cronbach's alpha n of items type authority 3.34 0.761 0.831 5 intrinsic working conditions 3.21 0.906 0.807 5 extrinsic advancement 3.05 1.034 0.885 5 intrinsic security 2.67 0.88 0.765 5 extrinsic compensation 2.51 1.066 0.900 5 extrinsic supervision*-technical 2.31 1.016 0.868 5 extrinsic supervision policies and practices 2.26 0.977 0.874 5 extrinsic supervision-human relations 2.22 1.017 0.892 5 extrinsic note: 1 1.5 very dissatisfied, 1.5 2.5 dissatisfied, 2.5 3.5 cannot decide, 3.5 4.5 satisfied, 4.5 5 very satisfied * ministry of rural development and food (mrdf) 3.2.2. level of extrinsic, intrinsic and overall job satisfaction table 4, which reflects the analysis of tables 2-3, presents the mean satisfaction scores pertaining to the 7 and 13 facets of the job, which determine extrinsic and intrinsic satisfaction respectively, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 154 as well as the mean for the 100 items representing overall job satisfaction. it follows from this table that the subjects are generally dissatisfied with their job (μ = 3.28). young farmers have a low level of extrinsic satisfaction as they are dissatisfied with the facets of their job that are external to the job tasks or work itself (μ = 2.66). on the contrary, they have a higher level of intrinsic satisfaction deriving from their satisfaction with the content and nature of their job (μ = 3.77); they like farming itself as they consider it to be challenging and interesting. the results indicate that young farmers need further support, however the fact that they like farming is positive feedback for the parties responsible for creating policies to support new entrants into farming. table 4: job satisfaction mean scores ν = 182 mean std. deviation cronbach's alpha n of items extrinsic job satisfaction 2.66 0.797 0.884 7 intrinsic job satisfaction 3.77 0.655 0.944 13 overall job satisfaction 3.28 0.657 0.974 100 note: 1 1.5 very dissatisfied, 1.5 2.5 dissatisfied, 2.5 3.5 cannot decide, 3.5 4.5 satisfied, 4.5 5 very satisfied 3.3. factors affecting overall job satisfaction in order to identify the factors affecting job satisfaction, one non-parametric (kruskal-wallis and mann-whitney u) and one parametric test (anova and t-test) was performed on each independent variable. the results are presented in table 5. table 5: nonparametric and parametric tests nonparametric tests parametric tests independent variables mannwhitney u kruskalwallis t-test anova sex 0.223 0.869 age 0.918 0.616 marital status 0.142 0.471 education level 0.979 0.737 annual household income 0.480 0.801 percentage of total household income from agricultural activities 0.910 0.106 percentage of agricultural income from agricultural subsidies 0.881 0.123 characterization of the residence area 0.006 0.009 probability to remain in agriculture 0.000 0.000 prediction for the development of the farm 0.000 0.118 the continuous training as an important factor for the development of the farm 0.008 0.074 evaluation of the development of the farm 0.000 0.018 saving money 0.007 0.180 productive direction of the farm 0.102 0.293 total number of hectares 0.085 0.304 cereals 0.972 0.265 cotton 0.827 0.260 rice 0.230 0.365 tobacco 0.124 0.594 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 155 sugar beet 0.410 0.388 sunflower 0.930 0.963 legumes 0.243 0.344 potatoes 0.207 0.593 industrial tomato 0.155 0.544 outdoor vegetables 0.660 0.342 greenhouse flowers and vegetables 0.344 0.902 vineyards 0.636 0.654 olives 0.250 0.834 fruit trees 0.628 0.528 nuts and dried fruits 0.483 0.663 aromatic plants 0.240 0.429 animal feed 0.778 0.782 cow farming 0.081 0.211 sheep and goat farming 0.009 0.005 apiculture 0.861 0.669 note: statistically significant values when p-value < 0.05 the non-parametric tests were found to be most suitable, since the kolmogorov-smirnov and shapiro-wilk normality tests (table 6) indicated rejection of normality in the case of the dependent variable (p-value < 0.05). table 6: tests of normality kolmogorov-smirnov* shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. overall job satisfaction 0.078 182 0.009 0.981 182 0.014 * lilliefors significance correction the kruskal-wallis and mann-whitney u non-parametric tests showed that the dependent variable ‘overall job satisfaction’ is statistically significantly affected by seven factors. in particular:  characteristics of the area of permanent residence (p = 0.006): the young farmers in the sample residing in ‘normal areas’1 where natural conditions and access to ‘social welfare’ and infrastructure (entertainment, information, health, education, transport) are good, feel more satisfied with their work situation compared to those living in ‘disadvantaged’ 2 and ‘mountainous’2 areas where they are exposed to less favourable natural, financial and social conditions (figure 1). this finding comes to complement the study by herrera et al. (2018), who suggest that studies on farmer perceptions should include data on the characteristics of the areas in which they reside. this gives rise to the need to achieve the integrated development of the countryside through the creation or enhancement of infrastructure in order to create favourable conditions to attract young people to rural areas and especially to mountainous areas, where the possibility of economic diversification is extremely limited due to adverse geomorphological and structural characteristics.  probability to remain in agriculture (p = 0.000): those responding that it is ‘extremely likely’ that they will remain in agriculture present a higher level of job satisfaction. furthermore, those responding that it is ‘very likely’, ‘somewhat likely’ or ‘not likely at all’ to remain in agriculture expressed an average level of satisfaction, while those responding that it is ‘not very likely’ are the least satisfied (figure 2). 1 reference is made to peri-urban rural areas 2 for greece, these areas have been identified by council directive 85/148/eec (european council, 1985) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 156 this finding is in line with freeman (1977); robbins and judge (2013); tansel and gazioglu (2006), who claim that workers’ behaviour in relation to their current job situation is interrelated to their professional satisfaction.  continuous training as an important factor for the development of the farm (p = 0.008): those indicating that they strongly agree with this statement usually have a high level of job satisfaction. those who strongly disagree are less satisfied (figure 3). this result corresponds to that of tansel and gazioglu (2006), who discovered that training opportunities have a positive impact on workers’ job satisfaction and development.  prediction on the development of the farm (p = 0.000): the more optimistic the subjects are about the future of their farms, the higher their job satisfaction (figure 4). this is similar to lange's (2012) finding on workers in general.  evaluation of the development of the farm (p = 0.000): those who responded that their farm has improved significantly have a higher level of satisfaction, whereas the smaller they consider the improvement to be, the less satisfied they are (figure 5).  saving money (p = 0.007): those stating that they have saved a great deal of money tend to have very high levels of satisfaction (figure 6). thus, the sense of achievement drawn from the belief that the farm has improved and from saving has a statistically significant effect on the dependent variable, despite the fact that the result is not the same for the annual household income (p = 0.480 > 0.05). this finding is in line with tansel and gazioglu (2006).  breeding of sheep and goats (p = 0.009): those operating in this sector have a very low level of job satisfaction even though they receive additional financial aid for their initial establishment in the agricultural sector, especially in mountainous areas (figure 7). the results show that the demographic characteristics of subjects (sex, age, marital status, educational level, annual household income) and the structural characteristics of their farms do not affect job satisfaction. (figure 8) shows factors affecting overall job satisfaction. figure 1 figure 2 figure 3 figure 4 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 157 figure 5 figure 6 figure 7 figures 1-7: dependencies between independent variables and overall job satisfaction figure 8: factors affecting overall job satisfaction 3.3.1. relationship between the variables ‘characterization of the residence area’ and ‘probability to stay in agriculture’ as the results showed that the characteristics of the area of permanent residence of subjects affect the level of job satisfaction, researchers examined the relationship between the two variables ‘characterization of the residence area’ and ‘probability to stay in agriculture’. the performance (table 7-8) of one nonparametric test (kruskal-wallis) and one parametric test (anova) between the two variables showed that there is a significant statistical correlation between them (p = 0.002). in particular the results showed that young farmers living in ‘normal areas’ are more likely to stay in agriculture than those living in ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘mountainous areas’ (figure 9). sense of achievement saving money very likely to stay in agriculture residing in a normal area positive attitude to training optimism money factor s asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 158 table 7: test statistics a, b probability to remain in agriculture kruskal-wallis 12.150 df 2 asymptotic significances 0.002 a. kruskal-wallis test b. grouping variable: characterization of the residence area table 8: anova test probability to remain in agriculture sum of squares df mean square f sig. between groups 22.731 2 11.366 6.476 0.002 within groups 314.131 179 1.755 total 336.863 181 figure 9: dependencies between the characterization of the residence and the probability to stay in agriculture the results are based on a set of data from the farms of beneficiaries/young farmers in northern greece and are affected by local conditions. consequently the results may not be as relevant to farms in other areas. nevertheless, these observations are a good start to encouraging further research in other areas with the use of a bigger sample. it is also recommended that the same survey be conducted on young farmers who are not beneficiaries of the setting up of young farmers measure in order to compare the results. another limitation of the survey was the time required to complete the long-form msq. the researchers chose this instrument because it provides detailed information on job satisfaction. 4. conclusions young farmers have low job satisfaction and it is therefore crucial to improve the institutional environment and working conditions to provide additional income aid and create a security framework in order to increase job satisfaction. apart from the provision of financial incentives it is recommended that programmes for young farmers be accompanied by practices to increase training opportunities and develop vital infrastructure, especially in mountainous areas where dissatisfaction is high and the likelihood of staying in agriculture is lower. high intrinsic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 159 satisfaction sends an encouraging message, however increasing overall satisfaction is the focus when designing policies to support new entrants into agriculture. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. acknowledgement: the researchers would like to extend their thanks to the paying agency for making available the register of young farmers included in the ‘setting up of young farmers’ measure for 2014. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references agarwal, b., & agarwal, a. 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(1977). minnesota satisfaction questionnaire (msq). retrieved march 3, 2017, from http://vpr.psych.umn.edu/instruments/msq-minnesota-satisfaction-questionnaire. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.04.015 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00140270 https://doi.org/10.1108/14626000710832776 https://doi.org/10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.132.145 http://bba12.weebly.com/uploads/9/4/2/8/9428277/organizational_behavior_15e_-_stephen_p_robbins__timothy_a_judge_pdf_qwerty.pdf http://bba12.weebly.com/uploads/9/4/2/8/9428277/organizational_behavior_15e_-_stephen_p_robbins__timothy_a_judge_pdf_qwerty.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.09.593 https://doi.org/10.4172/2169-026x.1000227 https://doi.org/10.1080/00036840500392987 https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.822315 http://vpr.psych.umn.edu/instruments/msq-minnesota-satisfaction-questionnaire asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 161 appendix figure a: level of job satisfaction source: spss mean, supervision policies and practices, 2.26 mean, compensation, 2.51 mean, co-workers, 3.51 mean, security, 2.67 mean, supervisionhuman relations, 2.22 mean, supervisiontechnical, 2.31 mean, working conditions, 3.21 mean, extrinsic job satisfaction, 2.66 mean, ability of utilization, 4.07 mean, achievement, 3.92 mean, activity, 3.85 mean, advancement, 3.05 mean, authority, 3.34 mean, creativity, 3.94 mean, independence, 4.02 mean, moral values, 4.13 mean, recognition, 3.51 mean, responsibility, 3.92 mean, social service, 3.84 mean, social status, 3.52 mean, variety, 3.77 mean, intrinsic job satisfaction, 3.77 mean, overall job satisfaction, 3.29 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 162 table a: statement examples for the msq statement examples facets of the job subscales ‘on my present job, this is how i feel about’ being able to do things that don’t go against my conscience 1 moral values intrinsic the chance to make use of my abilities and skills 2 ability utilization intrinsic the chance to work independently of others 3 independence intrinsic the chance to try out some of my own ideas 4 creativity intrinsic the feeling of accomplishment i get from the job 5 achievement intrinsic the chance to make decisions on my own 6 responsibility intrinsic being able to keep busy all the time 7 activity intrinsic the chance to be of service to people 8 social service intrinsic the chance to do different things from time to time 9 variety intrinsic the chance to be “somebody” in the community 10 social status intrinsic the praise i get for doing a good job 11 recognition intrinsic the chance to tell others what to do 12 authority intrinsic the chances of getting ahead on this job 13 advancement intrinsic the working conditions 14 working conditions extrinsic the spirit of cooperation among my coworkers 15 co-workers extrinsic the way my job provides for a secure future 16 security extrinsic the amount of pay for the work i do 17 compensation extrinsic the way mrdf* trains young farmers 18 supervision technical extrinsic the way mrdf policies are put into practice 19 supervision policies and practices extrinsic the way the mrdf handles young farmers 20 supervisionhuman relations extrinsic *mrdf: ministry of rural development and food source: manual of msq (weiss et al., 1977) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 147-163 163 table b: spss survey data questionnaire n=182 facets of extrinsic job satisfaction (5x7=35 items) mean score extrinsic j.s facets of intrinsic job satisfaction (5x13=65 items) mean score intrinsic j.s mean score overall j.s. (100 items) 1 facet 2 facet …… 7 facet 8 facet 9 facet …… 20 facet 1 item 2 item 3 item 4 item 5 item 1 item 2 item 3 item 4 item 5 item 1 . . . . . . . . mean1 . . . . . . . . mean1΄ mean 1 2 . . . . . . . . mean2 . . . . . . . . mean2΄ mean 2 3 . . . . . . . . mean3 . . . . . . . . mean3΄ mean 3 . . . . . . . . . …… . . . . . . . . …… …… . . . . . . . . . …… . . . . . . . . …… …… . . . . . . . . . …… . . . . . . . . …… …… 181 . . . . . . . . …… . . . . . . . . …… …… 182 . . . . . . . . mean182 . . . . . . . . mean182΄ mean 182 total mean score e.j.s. total mean score i.j.s. total mean score o.j.s. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 270 exploring heterogeneity in shrimp farmers’ preferences for the contracts of producing certified organic shrimp duyen thi thu trana, b yoshifumi takahashi c hisako nomura c mitsuyasu yabe c a graduate school of bioresource and bioenvironmental sciences, kyushu university, fukuoka, japan bcollege of economics, can tho university, can tho city, vietnam c faculty of agriculture, kyushu university, fukuoka, japan  thuduyen@ctu.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history: received: 06-feb-2020 accepted: 22-apr-2020 online available: 18-may2020 keywords: certified organic shrimp, farmers’ stated preference, choice experiments, contract design, heterogeneous preferences abstract this research applied choice experiments to explore farmers’ preferences for hypothetical contracts of producing certified organic shrimp. the contracts were described by four attributes, including premium for certified organic shrimp, premium-payment delay, selling place and the provision of quality seed. conditional logit and mixed logit models were used to analyze the data which were collected among shrimp farmers in vietnam. the results indicate that farmers prefer the contract with a higher premium; however, premium-payment delay decreases farmers’ utility and the probability of choosing the contract. besides the premium, the provision of quality seed is an important attribute that attracts farmers to choose a contract. almost farmers prefer to sell their shrimp from farms. the results also show heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences for the contract’s attributes and their willingness to accept these attributes. these findings should be carefully considered in building reasonable and attractive contracts for shrimp farmers. contribution/ originality this study contributes to the literature about farmers’ preferences for adopting the environmentally friendly practice, especially in the field of aquaculture, by analyzing shrimp farmers’ preferences for the contract of producing certified organic shrimp. this study also provides useful information for processing companies and the (local) government to expand this environmentally friendly practice. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.270.283 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: duyen thi thu tran, yoshifumi takahashi, hisako nomura, and mitsuyasu yabe (2020). exploring heterogeneity in shrimp farmers’ preferences for the contracts of producing certified organic shrimp. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 270-283. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 270-283 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:thuduyen@ctu.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.270.283 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 270-283 271 1. introduction the increasing demand of consumers on safe, quality-rich and environmentally friendly food, which accompanies the establishment of associated standards, created market barriers, on one hand, new opportunities for the aquaculture supply chain on the other hand. to satisfy consumer demands, the aquaculture industry has been changing its pattern and restructuring its supply chain to meet such standards. especially, improving vertical coordination in the supply chain is very important to ensure the stable supply of quality products. contract farming is the most widely used method of vertical coordination (rehber, 2007). to take the advantages of adopting standards and supplying the certified products such as better market access, improving competitiveness, and increasing customer trust (trifković, 2014), processing companies integrate farmers into the value chain through the contract to have a stable supply source of such products. to attract farmers to participate in the contract of producing such products, the company should build reasonable contracts which provide proper benefit for farmers to adopt this sustainable practice over other alternatives. to build reasonable contracts, analysis of farmers’ preferences for the contract’s attributes is an important step. successful build and implementation of the contracts not only tighter cooperation between the company and farmers to supply such quality products for the consumers, but also improve economic outcomes for the producers. recently, to support policy-makers to build good contract from the farmers’ point of view, choice experiment (ce) method has been used to explore farmers’ preferences for the contracts(abebe et al., 2013; blandon et al., 2009; broch et al., 2013; christensen et al., 2011; espinosa-goded et al., 2010; gelaw et al., 2016; lemeilleur et al., 2020; ochieng et al., 2017; schipmann and qaim, 2011; van den broeck et al., 2017; vassalos et al., 2016; villanueva et al., 2017). however, there are limited studies research on the contract focusing on sustainable certification. to our knowledge, the are two studies applied ce to explore farmers’ preferences for fair-trade contracting in benin (van den broeck et al., 2017) and eco-certified contract for coffee products in brazil (lemeilleur et al., 2020). moreover, no study applied ce to analyse farmers’ preferences for contracts of producing quality and environmentally friendly products in the field of aquaculture. filling this gap, in this research we apply ce to explore farmers’ preferences for the contract of producing certified organic shrimp in vietnam. vietnam is one of the largest producers and exporters of shrimp in the world (fao, 2019). recently, to prevent the degradation of mangrove forest and mangroves’ ecosystem services due to the expansion and intensification of the shrimp culture system, the vietnamese government has promoted a model of integrated mangrove-shrimp culture. this is a special kind of extensive shrimp culture model, which is mainly dependent on ecological services supplied by nature, and especially maintains a certain proportion of mangroves in the shrimp farms according to local regulations. however, this policy of protecting forests through regulations has some disadvantages such as lack of economic incentives for forest conservation. thus, together with this regulation, a potential solution for mangroves’ protection through economic mechanism has been implemented recently. in 2000, a certified organic shrimp production project was started in the ca mau province to preserve the mangroves and promote responsible aquaculture production through the certification of organic shrimp (giz, 2014). the first project, established by the vietnam association of seafood exporters and producers and ca mau department of fisheries, is funded by the swiss import promotion program (sippo). organic shrimp are cultured following naturland standards, certified by the institute for market ecology, switzerland, and bought by the ca mau frozen seafood processing import export corporation (camimex) for export to switzerland. in 2009, a second project was implemented also funded by sippo. in this project, certified organic shrimp are purchased and export by nam can sea-product import export join stock company (seanamico) (ha et al., 2012). in 2013, the international union for the conservation of nature asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 270-283 272 and the netherlands development organization started a third project, funded by bmub, the german ministry of environment, natural resources, building, and nuclear safety (iucn, 2016). in this project, minh phu seafood corporation buys and exports certified organic shrimp. being certified as organic shrimp farmers, they can receive a premium price for their products. however, this benefit is judged to be inconsistent with the contribution of people in the supply chain of quality products. after export, the price premium of the organic shrimp-the price is 20% higher than that of normal shrimpis distributed along the value chain. farmers were paid 5% and 15% premium by camimex and senamico respectively. however, farm-gate prices of certified organic shrimp paid by the companies were lower than the prices of non-certified shrimp; this was applied to discourage mixing no-certified with certified organic shrimp. thus, farmers received “the same (or a little more) from certified organic shrimp compared to non-certified products” (ha et al., 2012). also, farmers had to wait several months to receive the premium. because of these problems, many farmers withdrew from the program (ha et al., 2012). in the third project, farmers are directly paid 3,000 vnd/kg (0.13 usd/kg—approximately 1% of the shrimp price) as the price premium per kilogram of organic shrimp by the minh phu seafood corporation. in addition, farmers also received 500,000 vnd for owning one hectare of mangrove and buy quality shrimp seed at a lower price from minh phu seafood corporation. in total, the added value for shrimp is 2.5% of the shrimp price (iucn, 2016). although there are certain problems in benefit-sharing mechanisms, certified organic shrimp production projects are beneficial to a part of shrimp farmers and contribute to the protection of mangrove forests and mangrove ecosystems. thus, this sustainable practice is encouraged to be expanded to other coastal provinces. to successfully carry out the project expanded to other localities, it is important to pay attention to building a suitable contract with appropriate distribution of benefits for farmers to attract their participation and long-term cooperation with the company. therefore, this paper makes an ex-ante evaluation of farmers’ preferences for contracts with a processing company to produce certified organic shrimp. the findings of the paper will provide useful information for the company to design reasonable contracts as well as for the (local) government to create a better institutional environment for promoting this sustainable production model. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study area and data collection this study was carried out in the vietnamese part of the mekong delta, which is located in the southern part of vietnam. with an area of approximately 40,000 square kilometers, the vietnamese mekong delta is the largest shrimp production region in the whole country. in 2016, the shrimp yield of this region was 535,522 tons, accounting for 82% of the county’s total (general statistics office of vietnam, 2016). mekong delta also has the largest remaining mangrove forests in vietnam, accounting for 70% of vietnam’s total. among the 14 provinces in the mekong delta, ca mau has the largest mangrove forest area, followed by tra vinh (tran and ha, 2008). the certified organic shrimp projects have been implemented in ca mau province. to serve the plan of expanding the project to other coastal provinces, tra vinh province is selected to survey farmers’ preferences for the contract of producing certified organic shrimp. 220 integrated mangrove-shrimp farmers were face-to-face interviews from august to september in 2017. of these 220 farmers, 121 farmers (55.00%) intend to adopt certified organic shrimp practice; thus these 121 farmers were asked their preference for the hypothetical contract of producing certified organic shrimp. however, one respondent could understand and answer ce question because of low education. thus, 120 respondents’ responses to ce questions were analysed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 270-283 273 2.2. choice experiments ce was initially developed by louviere and hensher (1982) and louviere and woodworth (1983). it has been widely applied in many disciplines such as transportation, marketing, and environmental economics. in this paper, we apply this method to explore farmers’ preferences for hypothetical contracts to adopt certified organic shrimp production. suppose farmer i has preferences for a set of k alternative contracts. each contract is described as a bundle of attributes and attributes’ levels. the farmer’s utility derived from contract j is uij and can be divided into two components: deterministic component vij and error component eij: 𝑈𝑖𝑗 = 𝑉𝑖𝑗 + 𝜀𝑖𝑗 ………………..…….. (1) farmer evaluates each contract by its utility, compares them and then chooses the one with maximum utility. hence the probability of the farmer choosing contract j is equal to the probability that the utility of contract j is greater than (or equal to) the utility of contract k: 𝑃𝑖𝑗 = 𝑃[(𝑉𝑖𝑗 + 𝜀𝑖𝑗) ≥ (𝑉𝑖𝑘 + 𝜀𝑖𝑘)] ∀𝑘 ∈ 𝑘 = 1, … , 𝐾; 𝑗 ≠ 𝑘 ………………..…….. (2) rearrange above equation: 𝑃𝑖𝑗 = 𝑃[(𝜀𝑖𝑘 − 𝜀𝑖𝑗) ≤ (𝑉𝑖𝑗 − 𝑉𝑖𝑘)] ∀𝑘 ∈ 𝑘 = 1, … , 𝐾; 𝑗 ≠ 𝑘 ………………..…….. (3) the error terms are assumed to be independently and identically distributed and follow a type 1 extreme value distribution. under these assumptions, the probability of the farmer choosing contract j out of the set of k contracts is estimated with conditional logit model (cl): 𝑃𝑖𝑗 = exp𝑉𝑖𝑗 ∑ exp𝑉𝑖𝑘 𝐾 𝑘=1 = exp(𝛽𝑖 ′𝑥𝑖𝑗) ∑ exp(𝛽𝑖 ′𝑥𝑖𝑘)𝐾 𝑘=1 ; 𝑘 = 1, … , 𝑗, … 𝐾; 𝑗 ≠ 𝑘 ………………..…….. (4) where 𝑥𝑖𝑗 are observed variables that related to the alternative and farmer, 𝛽𝑖 is a vector of coefficients of these variables for farmer i. this model requires the satisfaction of “independence from irrelevant alternatives” (iia) assumption. mixed logit (ml) is an advanced model that relaxes the assumption of iia, allow for random taste variation and correlation in unobserved factors over time (train, 2002). according to the author, the formula of ml model is expressed as follows, 𝑃𝑖𝑗 = ∫ ( exp(𝛽′𝑥𝑖𝑗) ∑ exp(𝛽′𝑥𝑖𝑘)𝐾 𝑘=1 ) 𝑓(𝛽)𝑑𝛽; 𝑘 = 1, … , 𝑗, … 𝐾; 𝑗 ≠ 𝑘 ………………..…….. (5) in this model, 𝛽 varies over farmers in the population with density 𝑓(𝛽). therefore, it can reveal the preference heterogeneity among respondents from the analysed results. ml can be also used to estimate individual-level parameters (train, 2002). the mean β in the subpopulation of people who would choose j when facing choice alternatives described by x is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 270-283 274 �̅� = ∫ 𝛽.𝑃(𝑗|𝑥,𝛽)𝑓(𝛽|𝜃)𝑑𝛽 ∫ 𝑃(𝑗|𝑥,𝛽)𝑓(𝛽|𝜃)𝑑𝛽 ………………..…….. (6) where 𝑃(𝑗|𝑥, 𝛽) is the probability of 𝑗 conditional on knowing 𝛽 �̅� can be estimated through simulation (train, 2002). this procedure includes taking draws of β from the population density f(β|θ) and then calculating the weighted average of these draws. the simulated subpopulation mean is �̌� = ∑ 𝑤𝑟𝛽𝑟 𝑟 ………………..…….. (7) where 𝑤𝑟 = 𝑃(𝑗|𝑥,𝛽𝑟) ∑ 𝑃𝑟 (𝑗|𝑥,𝛽𝑟) ………………..…….. (8) 2.3. willingness to pay/willingness to accept willingness to pay (wtp) or willingness to accept (wta) is obtained as the ratio of an attribute parameter to the monetary parameter the premium parameter in this paper. 𝑊𝑇𝐴 = − �̂�𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑒 �̂�𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑢𝑚 ………………..…….. (9) the above formula is used to estimate wtp/wta in cl and ml1. in ml1, the coefficients of all attributes are treated as random coefficients and normally distributed, except the premium. treating the coefficient of premium as a fixed coefficient has some advantages such as the coefficient has the right sign and the distribution of wtp/wta for the attributes has the same distribution of the attribute coefficients (hole, 2008). however, significant preference heterogeneity in terms of cost should not be ignored. in ml2, the premium is treated as a random coefficient and has a normal distribution. in this case, there are two alternative practices in deriving wtp/wta (hensher et al., 2006). the first one is that wtp/wta can be estimated through simulation. this procedure involves taking the ratio of an attribute parameter and the price parameter which are drawn from the estimated population distribution, repeating this for many draws to obtain an average wtp/wta. the second one is the estimation of wtp/wta from an individual-based parameter. an individual’s wtp/wta is calculated by taking the ratio of the conditional mean of an attribute parameter to the conditional mean of the cost parameter (of that individual). hensher et al. (2006) conclude that the second practice provides a lower variance of wtp than the first practice and it hence reduces the unreasonable wtp. besides, grisolia and willis (2011) use this practice and confirm its advantages such as allowing to address heterogeneity in the sample and overcoming the problems of interval estimation. therefore, the second practice is adopted in this paper to calculate wtp/wta. 2.4. design of the choice experiments the important attributes of contracts (table 1) were decided after carefully evaluating the reports and related studies on the implementation of the naturland organic shrimp production project in ca mau province, discussing with experts and making a pilot survey. the chosen attributes for the contract alternatives include: price premium: this is an important factor that affects farmers’ utility when they consider choosing a contract. farmers prefer contract schemes that offer a higher selling price or price premium (gelaw et al., 2016; lemeilleur et al., 2020; ochieng et al., 2017; schipmann and qaim, 2011; van den broeck et al., 2017). in our case study, if signing a contract to produce certified organic shrimp, farmers have to comply with the standards of producing organic products. therefore, a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 270-283 275 proper premium should be used as compensation for farmers’ compliance. we suggest four levels of premia to explore farmers’ preferences; these were: 3,000; 10,000; 20,000; and 30,000 vnd/kg (this works out to 0.13; 0.43; 0.86; and 1.29 usd/kg and is approximately 1%, 3%, 7%, and 10%, respectively, of the average price of normal shrimp). the lowest level is equal to the current premium of certified organic shrimp paid by a company in ca mau province. we expected that a higher premium would increase the farmers’ utility and the probability of choosing the contract alternative. premium-payment delay: payment delay is one of the problems of contract farming (glover, 1987; singh, 2002). this is perceived to be a source of risk for small-scale farmers, and hence decreases their utility and probability of contracting (blandon et al., 2009; ochieng et al., 2017). in ca mau, certified organic shrimp farmers received premium after selling their shrimp from three to four months because of the delay in exporting shrimp to europe and late payment of downstream actors in the chain (ha et al., 2012). while the price premium may increase farmers’ utility, the delay in paying it may lose farmers’ utility. therefore, this factor is considered as an attribute in a designed contract to evaluate farmers’ preferences. we expected that farmers prefer to receive the premium as soon as possible. selling place: transportation cost is one of the main considerations when farmers choose the selling place for their products. farmers prefer to sell their products at the farm gate rather than transport them to the market because of the transportation cost (blandon et al., 2009; ochieng et al., 2017). in this study, we chose two levels for this attribute, at the farm or company, and expected that farmers prefer selling at the farm. also, we want to estimate the appropriate compensation for farmers to transport their shrimp to sell at the company because there are some advantages of selling at the company. first, farmers could receive a higher premium. currently, in ca mau, the collectors who buy certified organic shrimp also receive a commission from the company. if farmers sell shrimp directly to the company, the commission could be transfer to shrimp farmers. second, excluding small collectors in the value chain could reduce the number of steps of storing shrimp with ice; this keeps the good quality of shrimp. seed provision: besides the premium, the provision of quality seed is a significant benefit of contracting. the provision of quality seed, an important input, as a part of the farming contract increases the probability of farmers’ participation in the farming contract (abebe et al., 2013; schipmann and qaim, 2011; van den broeck et al., 2017). because shrimp production is a highrisk farming activity, quality seed which has a high survivor rate and strong resistance of disease is a major consideration of shrimp farmers. moreover, joining in the certified organic shrimp production project requires farmers to use quality seed. there are 2 levels of these attributes, including seed provision by the company and no seed provision (farmers buy seed by themselves). we expected that farmers prefer seed provision from the company. table 1: description of the contract attributes attribute description levels premium-payment delay the farmers will receive premium immediately, three-month delay, or six-month delay 3 levels: 0, 3 or 6 month(s) selling place the farmers will sell their products for the company at their farm (through collectors), or bring their products to the company to sell 2 levels: at farm, at company seed provision the company will sell quality seed to farmers 2 levels: no, yes premium the price premium (per kilogram) of organic shrimp compared to normal shrimp 4 levels: 3,000; 10,000; 20,000; 30,000 vnd/kg note: 1 usd = 23,271 vnd (date: february 6th, 2020) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 270-283 276 in this study, we just focus on the contract’s attributes which can be negotiated by farmers, not consider the attribute related to the standards of producing certified organic shrimp. also, certification cost represents the transaction cost of the contract and has a negative impact on growers’ utility (vassalos et al., 2016), however, we do not consider this cost as a contract attribute in our study because it is now supported by the non-governmental organization. the combination of all attributes and attribute levels is 48 choice sets. a fractional factorial design was used to reduce the choice sets (hensher et al., 2005), and finally, 16 choice sets were chosen in the questionnaire. the 16 choice sets were blocked into four segments, so each respondent received four choice sets. each choice set had 3 options including 2 contract alternatives and status quo options (no-contract). an example of a choice set is shown in figure 1. figure 1: example of a choice set 3. results and discussion 3.1. farmers’ preferences for the contract’s attributes table 2 presents the socio-economic description of the surveyed shrimp farmers. the average age of farmers is 50.283±10.593 years and 20% of them are female. the average of farmers’ education is 7.067±3.225 year, with nearly half of them at the secondary level. table 2: socio-economic characteristics of respondents characteristic mean standard deviation percentage age (years) 50.283 10.593 female 20.0 education (years) 7.067 3.225 not attend any schools 3.3 elementary 26.7 secondary 47.5 high school 21.7 bachelor 0.8 total respondents 120 source: authors’ estimates asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 270-283 277 we used both cl and ml (ml1 and ml2) to analyse the data and then compare the results. the descriptive statistic of the independent variables used in the cl and ml models are shown in table 3. in ml1, we treat the coefficients of 3m delay, 6m delay, selling place, and seed provision as random coefficients with the assumption that they are normally distributed, and the coefficient of premium as a fixed coefficient. in ml2, the coefficients of all variables are treated as random coefficients and normally distributed. table 3: descriptive statistics of the independent variables used in the cl and ml models variables description 3m delay 1 if a three-month delay in paying a premium; 0 otherwise 6m delay 1 if six-month delay in paying premium; 0 otherwise selling place 1 if selling at the company; 0 if at the farm seed provision 1 if the company sells quality seed to farmers; 0 if not premium price premium (1,000 vnd /kg) asc alternative specific constant based on the estimated results (table 4), the ml model is preferred to the cl model in terms of its higher value of the log-likelihood function, and lower value of aic and bic. because the superior of the ml model is demonstrated, we focus our interpretation on the results of the ml models. all the coefficients of the models are statistically significant and have the expected sign. premium: the coefficient of premium is positive, indicating that the contracts with a higher premium increase farmers’ utility and the probability of choosing a contract. this result supports the findings of previous researches (gelaw et al., 2016; lemeilleur et al., 2020; ochieng et al., 2017; schipmann and qaim, 2011; van den broeck et al., 2017). premium-payment delay: 3m delay and 6m delay reduce farmers’ utility and increase their probability of not participating in the contract. this result is in line with blandon et al. (2009) and ochieng et al. (2017), who argued that payment delay decreases the probability of contracting. selling place: a majority of farmers prefer to sell shrimp at the farm. this finding is in line with the findings of previous researches (blandon et al., 2009; ochieng et al., 2017). this could be explained as follows. first, for the integrated mangrove-shrimp culture model, farmers harvest shrimp many times per crop. they harvest shrimp nearly every tide (two tides per month), with several days per tide. because the shrimp quantity harvested per day is low, farmers prefer to sell shrimp at the farm for convenience. second, bringing shrimp to the company causes transportation cost and time cost. seed provision: the coefficient of seed provision is positive, indicating that the contracts with the provision of quality seed increase farmers’ utility and the probability of choosing a contract. this result is in line with the findings of previous researches (abebe et al., 2013; schipmann and qaim, 2011; van den broeck et al., 2017). moreover, seed provision is more important in the case of low premium and the negative effect of premium-payment delay on farmer’s utility. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 270-283 278 table 4: estimated results of cl and ml models variables cl ml1 ml2 coef. se coef. se coef. se asc 1.125*** 0.210 1.477*** 0.367 1.907*** 0.477 3m delay -1.014*** 0.146 -2.549*** 0.509 -3.463*** 0.905 6m delay -1.478*** 0.196 -3.872*** 0.774 -5.392*** 1.537 selling place -0.271** 0.119 -0.625* 0.345 -0.755* 0.427 seed provision 0.931*** 0.122 2.404*** 0.545 3.094*** 0.858 premium 0.039*** 0.007 0.086*** 0.020 0.121*** 0.035 std. deviation of parameters distribution 3m delay 2.466*** 0.634 3.204** 1.320 6m delay 2.464*** 0.843 3.190*** 1.124 selling place 2.687*** 0.572 3.567*** 0.900 seed provision 3.361*** 0.673 4.401*** 1.264 premium 0.090*** 0.026 log likelihood -376.899 -335.802 -330.812 observation 480 480 480 aic 765.799 691.604 683.625 bic 797.433 744.328 741.621 source: authors’ estimates ***, **, and * indicate significance level at 1%, 5%, and 10% levels, respectively standard deviations of all the random coefficients in ml1 and ml2 are statistically significant, suggesting the presence of preference heterogeneity among respondents around the mean. moreover, the estimated means and standard deviations of these coefficients also provide information on the proportion of farmers that places a positive value and negative value on the attributes (train, 2002). based on the estimated means (-2.549) and standard deviations (2.466) of the coefficient of 3m delay in ml1, we can know that 84.9 percent of the distribution of this coefficient is below zero and 15.1 percent above. this implies that 84.9 percent of farmers prefer immediate payment, while the other 15.1 percent accept the delayed payment. a similar calculation for 6m delay, 94.2 percent of farmers prefers immediate payment, while the other 5.8 percent accept the delayed payment. 59.2 percent of farmers are estimated to prefer to sell shrimp at the farm, while the other 40.8 want to sell shrimp at the company. 76.3 percent of farmers prefer seed provision, while the other 23.7 percent did not. these estimated numbers are very similar to those in ml2. the standard deviation of the coefficient of premium in ml2 is statistically significant, suggesting the presence of heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences for this attribute. a majority of farmers prefer higher premiums while a small part of farmers can accept the low premium. this can be explained that maybe premium is not the most important factor for some farmers to join in the contract of producing certified organic shrimp. they maybe care more other benefits such as the provision of quality seed and the technical assistants. because ml2 reflects the heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences for premium, it is preferred to ml1. ml2 is also better than ml1 in terms of the log-likelihood, aic and bic. 3.2. willingness to accept for contract’s attributes the willingness to accept the contract attributes and the 95% confident interval of wta are shown in table 5. wta in ml1 and ml2 are slightly higher than cl. because ml1 and ml2 are better than cl, the wta results in ml1 and ml2 are chosen to interpret. in ml2, individual parameters are issued to calculate wta in the sample. follow grisolia and willis (2011), we dropped one respondent, whose coefficient of the premium is close to zero, to obtain a more reliable distribution of wta [because a price coefficient close to zero would generate unreasonable wta (grisolia and willis, 2011)]. the distribution of wta for all attributes is shown in figure 2. it is clear from the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 270-283 279 figure that there is heterogeneity in wta for the attributes, including some farmers willing to pay much and less than the average. table 5: willingness to accept for each contract attribute unit: 1,000 vnd/kg variables wta (95% confidence interval) cla ml1a ml2 3m delay 25.754 (15.298; 36.211) 29.609 (16.494; 42.725) 31.031 (-8.494; 92.881) 6m delay 37.516 (22.124; 52.909) 44.977 (25.273; 64.681) 46.295 (9.876; 133.633) selling place 6.868 (0.593; 13.144) 7.264 (-0.859; 15.388) 7.844 (-28.556; 69.083) seed provision -23.646 (-33.582; -13.712) -27.923 (-41.386; -14.461) -29.616 (-115.533; 27.633) source: authors’ estimates note: a confident interval is calculated by delta method wta for three-month delay in paying premium wta for six-month delay in paying premium wta for selling shrimp at the company wta to receive quality seed from the company figure 2: distribution of wta premium-payment delay: table 5 shows that farmers need to receive (on average) 29,609 and 31,031 vnd/kg higher for certified organic shrimp price to compensate for the utility loss associated with 3m delay in paying a premium in the ml1 and ml2 respectively. the research results also show the heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences and wta for this delay (figure 2). a small part of farmers strongly hates the delay and wants a much higher compensation, while some others can accept the delay of about 3 months. if the premium-payment delay is 6 months, farmers need to receive 44,977 and 46,295 vnd/kg higher for certified organic shrimp price in the ml1 and ml2 respectively. the results also show the heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences and wta asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 270-283 280 for 6m delay, including some farmers who strongly hate the delay also have very high wta for it. these farmers can easily refuse to join the contract due to this payment delay. thus the premium should be paid as soon as possible to attract more farmers to participate in the contract. if the company cannot pay the premium immediately, the delayed payment should be within 3 months. this is because the quality seed provision could help to compensate for the loss of farmers’ utility caused by the delay (wtp for seed provision is nearly equal wta for a three-month delay in paying the premium), even with the lowest premium level (suppose selling shrimp at the farm). however, if the delay is above three months, the quality seed provision could not compensate for the loss of farmers’ utility due to the delay. wta for the six-month delay is 15,000 vnd/kg higher than wta for the 3-month delay; this means that 5,000 vnd/kg is the average wta for the onemonth delay (after the third month of the delay). thus after the third month of the delay, the company should increase 5,000 vnd/kg of certified organic shrimp per one-month delay. selling place: the price of organic shrimp should be increased 7,264 and 7,844 vnd/kg to encourage farmers to transport their products to sell at the company in the ml1 and ml2 respectively. the farmers’ wta for selling shrimp at the company are also heterogeneous. this heterogeneity occurs due to the different location of shrimp farms that leads to the differences in transportation cost and time cost, even some farms located in a remote area with bad road condition. in this situation, farmers should cooperate through farmers' group or cooperative to together transport shrimp to the company. this may help to reduce transportation costs with a big amount of shrimp to be transported to the company. besides, cooperative can help to protect farmers’ benefits from joining in the contract of producing certified organic shrimp. the establish of farmers’ group or cooperative should be discussed more in future researches. for farmers who have farms in remote areas and cannot directly bring shrimp to the company, the company can help them reduce the distance, time and cost of transportation by laying some collection points in these areas. in these ways, certified organic shrimp can be transferred from farmers to the company without small collectors. this can help to keep the better quality of certified organic shrimp because of reducing the number of steps of storing shrimp with ice. seed provision: farmers are willing to accept the lower price of certified organic shrimp at an average of 27,923 and 29,616 vnd/kg to receive the quality seed in the ml1 and ml2 respectively; this is the farmers’ willingness to pay to receive the quality seed from the company instead of buying seed by themselves. the results also show the heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences and wta for seed provision, including some farmers are willing to pay a very high amount to receive quality seed from the company. this indicates that the provision of quality seed is very important for them because it can help to improve the productivity of shrimp production and thus increase shrimp farm’s profit. this also explains why some farmers do not care much about the level of premium because high productivity may affect profits much higher than the premium. however, a small part of farmers wants to choose the shrimp seed by themselves. due to the heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences for seed provision, the company can make flexible contracts with farmers according to their preferences. the company should provide quality seed for the section of farmers who need it while letting the other section freely buy seed as long as its quality is good. finally, as mentioned, we did not consider the certification cost as a contract attribute to analyze farmers’ preference for it. in the future, if the ngos do not support this cost any more, it will become a significant barrier of contracting to produce certified organic shrimp. this should be carefully assessed in future researches. 4. conclusions this paper analyses the heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences for the contract of producing certified organic shrimp and in their wta for the contract’s attributes by applying ce approach. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 270-283 281 hypothetical contracts consist of four attributes which are price premium, premium-payment delay, selling the place and the provision of quality seed. the survey was conducted in the vietnamese part of the mekong delta. the results show that farmers prefer the contract which offers a higher premium. however, premium-payment delay reduces farmers’ utility. further, we found that there is heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences for the premium and premium-payment delay. another important finding is that almost farmers prefer seed provision. quality seed could help to improve productivity and increase profit. this attribute is more important in the case of low premium and the negative effect of premium-payment delay on farmer’s utility. farmers’ preferences for seed provision are also heterogeneous. a part of farmers strongly prefers to receive quality seed from the company, while a small other part wants to buy seed by themselves. regarding selling place of certified organic shrimp, a group of farmers (about 59 percent) prefers selling their shrimp at the farm over at the company while the other group does not. and the wta for bringing the certified organic shrimp to sell at the company also differs among farmers in the first group. based on the above finding, we suggest that the company should carefully consider contract attributes such as proper premium, seed provision and a suitable place to collect shrimp from farmers to build contracts. on the other hand, a premium-payment delay should be reduced as short as possible, especially try to control it within three months. in addition, a flexible contract should be made to suit the farmers’ heterogeneous preferences. our findings provide useful information for the company to design reasonable contracts with farmers to produce certified organic shrimp as well as for the (local) government to create a better institutional environment for promoting this sustainable production model. our findings may also be useful for contract design in the aquaculture sector of other developing countries where many companies also want to contract with farmers to supply quality-rich, safe and environmentally friendly products to the international market. funding: this study is funded in part by the can tho university improvement project vn14-p6, supported by a japanese oda loan. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: authors would like to thank farmers for participating in the survey, local government staff, colleges and students of can tho university for their all support. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abebe, g. k., bijman, j., kemp, r., omta, o., & tsegaye, a. 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(2017). heterogeneity of farmers’ preferences towards agri-environmental schemes across different agricultural subsystems. journal of environmental planning and management, 60(4), 684– 707. https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2016.1168289. https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2016.1168289 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 450 does digital marketing enhance rural agricultural transformation in nigeria? an empirical investigation evelyn nwamaka ogbeide-osaretin a, oseremen ebhote b a department of economics, faculty of arts, management & social sciences, edo university iyamho, edo state, nigeria b department of business administration, faculty of arts, management & social sciences, edo university iyamho, edo state, nigeria  iyokoevelyn@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 06-mar-2020 accepted: 16-may-2020 online available: 22-jun2020 keywords: agriculture, digital, marketing, rural transformation abstract the rural transformation has been noted as an important national policy goal. this requires among other things the use of recent technology to enhance agricultural production. this study examined the role of digital marketing in rural transformation. the objective of the study was to determine the impact of digital marketing using ict devices on nigeria's rural transformation. nigeria's time-series data on agricultural value-added was used as a measure of rural transformation on some measures of digital marketing (the percentage of internet users and the proportion of mobile users). rainfall and some control variables were also included over the time from 1995 to 2018. ordinary least square estimation method was employed in a linear model as no cointegration was found among the variables, proved by the bound testing result. the outcome showed that digital marketing is positively and substantially related to rural transformation. we hence, advocate that digital marketing be strongly encouraged by providing the needed infrastructure facilities as well as increasing the availability of education in the rural areas among others. contribution/ originality this present study contributes to the role of digital marketing towards agricultural production which has received some literature by employing econometric estimation techniques contrary to most previous studies that employed survey methods. it also took a step by including rainfall in the model which has not been captured before now. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.450.462 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: evelyn nwamaka ogbeide-osaretin and oseremen ebhote (2020). does digital marketing enhance rural agricultural transformation in nigeria? an empirical investigation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 450-462. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 450-462 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:iyokoevelyn@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.450.462 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2914-1929 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4789-561x asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 450-462 451 1. introduction agriculture plays a fundamental role in the nigerian economy funding the maximum share to the nation’s gross domestic production (gdp). it is an enormous potential to shoot growth, and advance income. for instance, in 2017, agriculture guaranteed about 20.85% to nigeria's gdp, 22.32% arise from industry, and 55.8% stems from the services sector. in 2018, agriculture contributed 22.86% to nigeria's gdp, industries 23.18%, and services 53.97%. the oil sector contributed 8.55% of gdp and the non-oil sector accounted for 91.45% and in 2019, the sector provided 21.91% to real gdp, greater than it impacts in the first quarter of 2018 21.66% (national bureau statistics, 2017, 2018, 2019). despite these indices, the agricultural performance in nigeria remains insufficient and undeniably far less than its capacities. agricultural practice is the mainstay of rural dwellers in nigeria with most of the countryside population reliant on it. sector encounters glitches in enhancing production amidst deteriorating natural resources indispensable for production. the swelling entreaty for agricultural products gives projections for farmers to sustain their production and possibly boost their income. nigerian governments in the past have attempted to add their slice to appeal and enhance agricultural production in nigeria by coming up with numerous projects targeted at expanding the sector between 1962 to date. this development is evident in the following areas; the introduction of state-of-the-art agricultural techniques utilizing farm settlements, accommodating plantations, provision of modern farm tools, and a significantly providing vibrant agricultural extension services. others include the national accelerated food production programme nafpp in 1972, the advent of operation feed the nation (ofn) in 1977, and the green revolution programme invented in 1980. the agricultural development projects financed by world bank, agricultural extension and research institutes of the mid-80s. all of the above initiated to facilitate food and cash crop production in nigeria (national agriculture survey, 2001). sadly, however, studies revealed that these programs initiated by the government at one point in time or the other have not copiously accomplished the purpose for which it was established. in 2018, the world bank collection of development indicators recorded that about 49.66% of the nigerian population lives in rural areas. however, affordability and long-range coverage of most cell phone providers have made it possible for nearly all her rural dwellers to be cell phone owners (alliance for affordability internet, 2019; trading economics, 2020). in the same manner, more than 100 million citizens in nigeria have access to the internet, with over 250,000 newfangled subscribers logging onto the internet in the later part of 2019 (russon, 2020). with this development, nigeria has witnessed a radical advancement in the information communication technology sector. within the last few years, nigeria has seen incredible growth in ict resources and facilities, and about twentyeight million nigerians now have access to the internet and mobile phone devices (agwu, 2012). telecommunication and information technology contributed 77% of the entire sector’s contribution to the gdp. overall, the mobile telecommunication sub-sector contributed 7.4% to the country’s gdp in 2018, compared to 5.5% in 2017. now, 44% of mobile subscribers in nigeria are using 3g and 4% are using 4g technology (mobile report, 2019). abdulsalam et al. (2008) opine that “information and communication technology plays a significant function in solving agricultural related problems oscillating from site selection, sale of farm produces in many parts of the world, they, however, noted that the use of ict and online marketing of agricultural products specifically in nigeria is still at infancy. therefore, a gap exists in the research in this area of rural agricultural transformation through online marketing strategies in nigeria. this is however amazing when one contemplates the relevance of agriculture to the nation’s economy because most nigerian are agrarian. aside from the oil sector, the agricultural sector is likened to being the most influential instrument of growth essential for economic development and the transformation of the rural areas in the country. this study, therefore, aims to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 450-462 452 examine the rural agricultural transformation using online marketing strategies in nigeria. therefore, the qualitative method will be employed, and this entails the use of questionnaires to collect needed data on the significance of rural agricultural transformation with the aid of online marketing strategies. the broad objective of this study is to examine rural agricultural transformation via digital marketing strategies in nigeria. 2. literature review 2.1. conceptual literature nwobi (2007) opines that rural development can be seen as the development of the moral, social, political and economic potentialities of rural communities to enhance their self-reliance through the provision of appropriate infrastructures such as pipe-borne water, electricity, good roads, and small scale industries, increase their political consciousness and participation, promote their moral and social well-being which will result in tolerance, good discipline, justice, fairness, kindness, love, and peace. similarly, filani (2000) defined rural development as the process of making life more satisfying and fulfilling for millions of people who live in rural areas. rural development provides rural dwellers with the opportunities for gainful employment as well as the expansion of social services which could enhance the welfare and security of rural people”. the definitions above lead us to the features of rural development which comprises of enhancing the standard of living of the population which encompasses the mobilization and apportionment of funds to reach desirable equilibrium overtime between the wellbeing and fruitful services obtainable to rural subsistence population, mass involvement which necessitates that resources be shared to low-income areas and classes and that the productive services reach them, and making the process self-sustaining which requires the development of suitable skills and implementing capacity and the existence of institutions at the local, regional and national levels to ensure actual supplementary financial and human resources for the sustained development of the subsistence sector. ifad (2016) present the following among others as numerous countryside modification scheme: dearth and inequality decline, ensuring victual guarantee and quickening agricultural growth, provision of good careers and creating an opportunity for economic autonomy in the villages, stir the development of villages and intermediate communities, overseeing complex and delicate matters of relocation from villages to cities, provision of infrastructure facilities like good and sound education for the rural dwellers, provision of better health facilities, provision of good housing, availability of potable water, provision of electricity, good transportation, and communications network, offering extensive access to well-organized and practicable financial facilities as well as encouraging invention, findings, and development aimed at meeting the requirements of citizens residing in villages, manufacturers, and multinationals. challenges faced by rural communities according to oecd (2010) includes; rural areas are remote communities far from main cities with difficulty inaccessibility, attaining standard rural-urban linkages is quite tasking financially; rural areas are usually less populated compared to cities so there is difficulty achieving economies of scale for the production of goods and services; infrastructure amenities is low or in some cases not available; high amount of labour drain, unskilled laborers and low paying jobs; human capabilities and institutional capabilities are limited; they are characterized by issues of migration and social element. 2.2. digital marketing digital marketing in nigeria has formed an integral aspect of marketing in the 21st century. it has acquired maximum acknowledgment over the past years since it was incorporated into the marketing system, with various search engines and discoveries accompanied by social media marketing. these have made online marketing an arduous and encouraging one. online marketing is also referred to as e-marketing and internet marketing. it is the application of marketing principles and techniques through electronic media and more specifically the internet. online asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 450-462 453 marketing describes an organization’s effort to inform buyers to communicate, promote, and sell its products and services over the internet (igbenedion and egwuelu, 2016). the role of digital marketing cannot be overemphasized, these roles are as follows: creating customers services through chatting; giving intermediate advice to customers about products for sales on their websites; training customers on the use of their websites to avoid frustrations that come due to lack of knowledge on how to access their website; providing online product categories that money can be spent or to buy; making buyers and sellers online; taking orders online – the essence of these is to make prices more transparent and gain a better picture of their true value and build customer relationship gives firsthand information on new products (igbenedion and egwuelu, 2016). 2.3. digital marketing and agricultural rural transformation food and agriculture organization noted that with the global population attaining 9.1 billion in 2050, accommodating this mounting population, world food production has to be increased tremendously by about 70%. the africa population is expected to increase to about 2billion by 2050. productivity in agriculture is expected to increase faster than the intercontinental average to circumvent mass famishment. key global companies have made attempts to introduce digitalizing of african agriculture by launching payment systems and digital insurance to help the farmers’ survival (ndubuisi, 2017). nikola et al. (2019) opined that reading ability, digital skills, and the accessibility of competence influence the use of digital transformations. today, almost half of the world population has access to the internet, this is unreasoningly in developed nations like nigeria and other african nations. in rural communities, where education and literacy rates are significantly low, mobile phone technology tends to be used primarily for communication and social media. this offers a great difficulty for the introduction of digital agriculture applications which necessitates more forwardthinking digital skills. low global smartphone ownership in rural communities in addition to the high cost of internet and insufficient system coverage also presents difficulties in the use of mobile agricultural applications and diminish the chance of using social networks like facebook to streamline agricultural support and information movements between farmers. such availability of information could back farmers to make better farming decisions which could enhance increased yields, lessen environmental influences, and upgrade livelihoods. singh et al. (2015) stated that the agriculture information system (ais) is a computer-based information system that encompasses all the interconnected information which could help farmers in handling information and policy decision making. the online strategies hat aid accelerating farming activities covered applications like radio, television, cellular phones, computers, tablets and networking, hardware and software, satellite systems (munyua and adera, 2009; pande and deshmukh, 2015). in the same vein, (yimer, 2015; munyua and adera, 2009) reports that radio is virtually utilized to communicate with users on agricultural subjects, including novel and upgraded farming methods, production management, and market information. this shows that farmers may take benefit from using radio in the absence of technology rural farmers. the internet and webbased applications are lengthily used in distribution and spreading of agricultural awareness, marketing of goods and services. the study conducted by (ramli et al., 2015) has revealed the proposition that online campaigns are an effective answer to complications that effect the advancement of the agricultural industry, such as frail marketing associations, poor information management, truncated productivity, low income and lack of diversity. singh et al. (2015) noted that the relevance of online marketing in agriculture can be seen in the area of distributing agricultural information systems to farmers at all levels. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 450-462 454 portable phones are in the front-line of the digitalization of farming activities. as for 2011, several studies show that 6 billion active subscriptions, sim’s are projected to be engaged universally (wireless intelligence, 2011). portable phone permeation in the unindustrialized world currently surpasses two subscriptions for every three individuals, motivated by intensifying links in asia and africa. proficiency to acquire cheap phones together with the widening communications set-up has made most african countries especially nigeria to have more than 90% of her citizens possess mobile handsets due to the availability of mobile signals in local communities. this swift development comes from upholding procedures that certify rivalry in the communications division along with increasing exigencies for mobile handsets. olaifa and oyeniyi (2014) noted that 91.4 percent of the local agriculturalists in kwara state desire seeking info from administrative authorities through messages on their numerous happening their devices. this is because statistics from the phone are quite cooler, inexpensive, and suitable for both the source and the recipient. the spread and ability to acquire the internet are on the rise specifically in developing nations. 2.4. empirical literature tolulope et al. (2015) on the application of ict to agriculture as root to unemployment reduction in nigeria focused on the significance of agriculture in the nation and the essence of utilizing info and communication technology in the sector as a cure to the incessant joblessness faced by nigerians. they used qualitative techniques by interviewing groups and individuals on a cluster of students, farmers, and traders in ogun and lagos states of nigeria. the outcome found that though the nigerian government is encumbered with the responsibility of development which includes agriculture, the private sector should complement government effort by investing in ict in the sector to boost and encourage the youth to see the agricultural sector as a viable sector. abdulrahman et al. (2017) investigated the opportunities and challenges facing the developing countries as it applies to ict to examine the relationship between ict and agriculture vis-à-vis the opportunities and problems of the sector. results revealed that increasing market events, exchanging relevant info, profit gain, steering research, and managing economic growth for selfreliance are among the likely paybacks of information communication technology in the agricultural sector. similarly, the study acknowledged insufficient information communication technology facilities, a deficiency of personnel, unsatisfactory infrastructure, synchronization of knowledge and language, power supply, and farmers’ view are the factors that constrain the complete implementation of information communication technology in the sector in nigeria. mbagwu et al. (2018) looked at the problems of meeting the information requirements of agriculturists in the villages via internet services. the rationale of the research was to detect the numerous encounters connected with meeting information requirements of rural farmers through online-based services with a specific focus on developing countries. the finding of the study shows that forming an online farmers’ dialogue opportunity, establishing ict and agricultural information literacy, adequate research to know the need of the rural farmers, repackaging of information using social media rostrum was among the major recommendation for the study. landes and burfisher (2009) examined the growth and equity effects of agricultural marketing efficiency gains in india. in their study, they assert that agriculture is the utmost font of employment in india, and food quaffs fractional consumer expenditures. the researchers adopted a quantifiable general equilibrium model with agricultural products and households disaggregated by rural, urban, and income class to study the likely effects of restructurings that accomplish productivity gains in agricultural marketing and lessen agricultural input subsidies and import tariffs. more efficient agricultural marketing produces economy inclusive gains in output and wages, increases agricultural producer prices, decreases consumer food prices, and surges private consumption, predominantly by low-income households. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 450-462 455 seyed et al. (2016) surveyed the adoption of agricultural e-marketing using the planned behavior theory (tpb). using primary data from 146 professionals drawn from public and private sectors, findings showed that the model explained about 94% and 71% of the differences in behavior towards intent for both public and private professionals individually. the study recommended speeding up e-marketing implementation, the easiness of use and recompenses needs to be verified using divergent programs like video displays and workshops. tsekouropoulos et al. (2013) examined marketing and digital functions in rural agribusiness to categorize the commercial websites of the countryside organizations adopting the cluster analysis. findings revealed that rural business can be differentiated in two clusters “more organized” business and “less organized” business. besides, they spotted and portray the optimal group of rural agricultural businesses to be emulated as an example of improved marketing and digital functions. thomas et al. (2016) evaluated the relevance of social media as a means of agricultural information using kesses district farmers investigated in kenya. they made use of a descriptive survey on primary data. they recommended the establishment of information centers in the areas where farmers can be readily sourced for veritable information that will help improve their farming activities. fainos et al. (2014) examined the role of agricultural marketing on the empowerment of rural farmers in masvingo province, zimbabwe. data gathered from 361 farmers who are specialists in maize, groundnuts, small grain crops, and vegetable production revealed that the farmers lack access to market information given their use of traditional means of gathering information. they, therefore, recommended the government’s improvement of training centers to provide knowledge to rural farmers as well as the establishment of a marketing board to harmonize marketing activities. rebekka and saravanan (2015) researched on access and extent of use of icts in agriculture and rural development by the tribal farmers in meghalaya state of north-east india. the study sampled 120 farmers randomly drawn between november 2013 and may 2014. the research findings revealed that a vast number of farmers have access to mobile phones and other telephones. venkatesh and swetha (2018) to provide insight into the influences of digital marketing on rural marketing by using the chickballapura region revealed that poor farmers' viewpoints on digital marketing, therefore, making some propositions regarding rural marketing development through digitalization. 3. methodological aspects 3.1. data and variable specification the study used nigeria annual data which covers the period 1995 to 2018 and sourced from the world development indicator of the world bank. this is because data showed that the use of mobile phones began in 1993 in nigeria while the mobile phone was from 1996. this may not be common in the rural areas and among the farmers at this earlier time but since our time series data on the use of ict in rural nigeria is not available, we decided to use the national data. the quantitative estimation was done using the e-views 9.0 version of the econometric software. data on agriculture value added (constant 2010 us$) was used as a measure for rural transformation. this is because the rural sector is characterized by more of agricultural activities. digital marketing and ict are our major variables of concern that were captured using the individuals' use of the internet (% of the population) and mobile cellular subscriptions (per 1000). agricultural technology was captured by agricultural equipment (proxy by tractors per 100 sq km of arable land). physical capital was captured by agricultural land (% of total land area). human capital represented by the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 450-462 456 active agricultural labour force, and education captured by gross enrollment into at least the secondary and primary levels. rainfall is also added as it is a major component of agricultural output level. 3.2 model to achieve the goal of this study of determining the impact of digital marketing on rural transformation, we employed the cobb-douglas production function following the studies of chavula (2013); olaniyi (2018) and ogbeide et al. (2019). the rural sector is transformed when there is an increase in the value-added of agriculture. agricultural output is a function of physical capital (p), human capital (h), and agricultural technology (t). our cobb-douglas production function is given as: y = atβhαpδ …………………… (1) where βδα are constant, a is the hichs-neutral productivity level which is a function of the level of ict (technology) and digital marketing can only be achieved by the use of ict facilities. taking a linear form of the model. we modified the production function in (1) by adding (r) rainfall, since production in the agricultural sector relies highly on the amount of the country’s rainfall and econometrically, we have: logy = loga + βlog(t) + αlog(h) + δ(p) + ηlog (r) +µ ….………………………… (2) expanding the model to include all variables for the study and taking the log ln of equation 2 becomes, logy =θ0+ θ1int + θ2mb + θ3agl + θ4pgenr + θ5sgenr + θ6agm + θ7r + θ8aloan + θ9la + µ …. (3) where: y = rate of rural transformation captured by agriculture value-added int = internet usage mb = use of mobile phones agl = agricultural labour force pgenr = primary gross enrollment rate, sgenr = secondary gross enrollment rate, agm = agriculture machine captured by a tractor r = amount of rainfall aloan = agricultural loan, la = agriculture land (% of total land area) еi = error term 3.3. estimation method the study used the ordinary least square method of estimation given its ability to provide blue estimates. 3.4. estimation procedure the correlation among the variables was carried out to determine the presence of multicollinearity. thereafter, the stationarity state of the variables were determined to prevent spurious result. other diagnostic tests were also carried out. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 450-462 457 4. empirical presentation and interpretation results 4.1. correlation to determine the presence of multicollinearity among the variables, we employed the correlation analysis was carried out on and the result presented in table 1. the outcome showed that the internet (int) and mobile use (mb) were positively correlated with the agricultural value-added (y). the secondary was also found to be positively correlated with y showing that education is needed for the effective use of internet and mobile for marketing and hence transforming the rural sector. agricultural labour (agl) and the gross primary enrollment rate were negatively correlated with y. agl and pgenr were also found to be negatively correlated with int and mb. this suggests that a large number of agl are not using int and mb maybe because of the financial or low educational status of the rural areas. however, the policy implication of this study will be drawn from a multivariate regression analysis. table 1: correlation matrix y int mb pgenr sgenr agl agm aloan la r y 1 int 0.817 1 mb 0.812 0.801 1 pgenr -0.249 -0.394 -0.416 1 sgenr 0.811 0.800 0.805 -0.216 1 agl -0.883 -0.803 -0.806 0.307 -0.824 1 agm 0.812 0.729 0.777 -0.026 0.831 -0.803 1 aloan 0.789 0.807 0.851 -0.360 0.790 -0.804 0.656 1 la 0.327 0.120 0.119 0.520 0.193 -0.272 0.564 0.087 1 r -0.446 -0.490 -0.508 -0.050 -0.603 0.499 -0.356 -0.493 0.048 1 source: authors’ computations using data on eviews 4.2. unit root test the variable’s order of integration varied using kwiatkowski-phillips-schmidt-shin (kpss) test which has been found to correct some defects of the adf. table 2 revealed that all the variables were stationary after the first differencing, except pgenr and la which were seen to be i(0). with these various levels of integration among the variables, we employed the autoregressive distributed lag bound testing method of cointegration for the existence of cointegration among the variables. table 2: results of kpss unit root test variables levels 5% critical 1st diff 5% critical remark y 0.8876 0.4630 0.1282 0.4630 i(1)* int 0.4876 0.4630 0.4616 0.4630 i(1)* mb 0.8318 0.4630 0.2954 0.4630 i(1)* agl 0.6601 0.4630 0.1294 0.4630 i(1)* pgenr 0.1966 0.4630 i(0)* sgenr 0.7940 0.4630 0.1054 0.4630 i(1)* agm 0.5237 0.4630 0.4230 0.4630 i(1)* r 0.4822 0.4630 0.0560 0.4630 i(1)* alaon 0.7734 0.4630 0.4137 0.4630 i(1)* la 0.2570 0.4630 i(0)* source: authors’ computations using data on eviews asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 450-462 458 4.3. co-integration test from the results of the unit root test, using the ardl bound testing was found more appropriate for testing the presence of cointegration among the variables. the result as shown in table 1 of the appendix revealed that the null hypothesis of no cointegration was accepted given f-stat of 2.09 which is below the 5% critical value of the lower bound of 2.14 and 3.3 of the upper bound. hence, we conclude that there is no cointegration among the variables. given this outcome of the cointegration test, we resort to the ordinary least square (ols) estimation method in the estimation of the connectivity between digital marketing and rural transformation in nigeria. 4.4. interpretation of ols estimation in the investigation of the ability of digital marketing to bring about rural transformation, the ols method of estimation was applied. the result is presented in table 3. table 3: long run results of ols approach variables coefficient t-stat probability int 0.029 2.866 0.012 mb 0.000 1.032 0.319 pgenr 0.0002 0.045 0.964 sgenr 0.008 1.736 0.104 agl 0.104 3.073 0.008 agm 0.0002 8.774 0.000 aloan 0.0001 0.357 0.724 la -0.008 -0.544 0.594 r 0.001 0.569 0.578 c 15.962 7.237 0.000 r2 = 0.892 dw = 1.742 f-stat. = 216.741 prob.= 0.000 note: dependent var = agricultural value-added log(y) source: authors’ computation using data on eviews starting with the fitness of the model, the r2 confirmed the explanatory variables accounted for 89% of changes in agriculture value-added. the dw-statistics 1.74 showed absence of autocorrelation in the model and this was further firmed with the lm serial correlation test of breusch-godfrey which showed an f-sat of 1.52 and pro of 0.26 allowing us to accept the null hypothesis of no serial correlation hence, the model exhibits good fit. the presence of heteroskedasticity was also tested using the breusch-pagan-godfrey. the f-stat of 1.09 made us take the null hypothesis of no heteroskedasticity. hence, the result passed the conditions for the validity of ols and our estimates are blue. analyzing the relationship and impact of the variables on rural transformation, the ols result demonstrated that all the variables were positively related to agricultural value-added (y) in line with expectation except land (la). specifically, the result showed that 1% increase in the use of the internet (int), mobile phones (mb), gross enrollment at the primary and secondary levels of education, the agricultural labour force (agl), credit to the agriculture (aloan) and rainfall (r) results in 2.9%, 0.000024%, 0.02%, 0.84%, 10%, 0.02%, 0.15 and 0.12% respectively increase in the rate of rural transformation all other variables held constant. the result showed that the use of mobile cellular subscriptions (mb) had the lowest magnitude on the rate of rural transformation. this can be attributed to the fact that mb became popular in nigeria in early 2000 and given the cost of acquiring one, it may not be popularly used in their agricultural activities. the result also showed that an increase in the land (la) will result in a fall in rural transformation by 0.5%. this is, however, contrary to expectation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 450-462 459 on the substantial impact of the variables on the y, the result showed that internet (int) and mobile (mb) usage, agl and agm had a substantial impact on our measure of rural transformation (y) at a 5% level of significance. this suggests that an increase in the use of digital marketing will result in rural transformation. this outcome is supported by some other studies. for instance, abdulrahman et al. (2017) highly recommended ict effective agriculture marketing to transform the rural sector, while landes and burfisher (2009) revealed that effective marketing increases agricultural production. also, in line with our result of mb not having a substantial impact on rural transformation, chavula (2013) found that mobile phones do not have a substantial impact. this is given the fact that infrastructures are usually very poor in rural areas where agriculture is predominant. for instance, assess to electricity is very low and the level of postprimary education is also very low and these are needed for effective digital marketing. therefore, increasing the educational rate in rural areas will facilitate the contribution of digital marketing. as was shown in the result, the pgenr and sgenr were not significant. digital marketing needs an educational level beyond the primary level. 5. policy corollaries of empirical outcome 5.1. policy suppositions the study investigated if digital marketing could enhance rural transformation in nigeria. the objective of the study was to examine the impact of digital marketing on the transformation of rural nigeria. from the upshot of the empirical analysis, the following is policies recommended:  the use of the internet and mobile phones which were used to proxy digital marketing showed a positive relationship while the internet had a substantial impact on the transformation of rural nigeria. hence, we recommend that the infrastructural facilities for the effective use of these be increased in the rural area to increase the use of mobiles and the internet.  the agriculture labour force was found to have a positive and substantial effect on transforming rural areas. we thus recommend the increase in the agriculture labour force for the effective transformation of the rural area.  the levels of education were found not to have a substantial impact on rural transformation. this could be as a result of the low level of the post-primary level of education in the rural areas. therefore, we recommend that educational advancement policies should go beyond the ube to the secondary level of education and made compulsory in all the areas of the country. 6. conclusion rural transformation is an intentional positive act of enhancing the development of the rural area and technology and effective marketing has been found as key instruments for shaping and transforming rural areas thereby increasing the level of development. given that agriculture is predominant in rural areas, therefore, technology should be applied towards improving agricultural production. however, providing marketing devices that will increase the sales of agricultural output (digital marketing) is a vital tool for encouraging agricultural production. results from the study revealed that digital marketing should be strongly encouraged and for the effective transformation of the nigerian rural area. this was also consistent with other studies. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 450-462 460 references abdulrahman, s., abubakar, m. c., suleiman, h. a., mohammed, m., & idris, j. 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(2015). the role of ict for good governance and agricultural development in ethiopia: local evidence from southern ethiopia. international journal of political science and development, 3(1), 30-39. https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/90359.html https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51377955 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08974438.2016.1229242 https://tradingeconomics.com/nigeria/rural-population-percent-of-total-population-wb-data.html https://tradingeconomics.com/nigeria/rural-population-percent-of-total-population-wb-data.html https://www.gsma.com/latinamerica/wireless-intelligence-3g-comes-of-age-in-the-americason https://www.gsma.com/latinamerica/wireless-intelligence-3g-comes-of-age-in-the-americason asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 450-462 462 appendix table 1: results of cointegration test using bound testing null hypothesis: no long-run relationships exist test statistic value k f-statistic 1.862017 9 critical value bounds significance i0 bound i1 bound 10% 1.88 2.99 5% 2.14 3.3 2.5% 2.37 3.6 1% 2.65 3.97 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 764 growth analysis and the determinants of entrepreneurial orientation in the small-scale poultry subsector in delta state, nigeria roli juliet egbea achoja roland onomub pius chinwuba ikec isiorhovoja rodney akpovirid a,c,ddepartment of agricultural economics & extension, delta state university, asaba, nigeria. bdepartment of agricultural economics & extension, university of fort hare, alice, south africa.  roland.onomu@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 15 may 2020 revised: 23 september 2020 accepted: 27 november 2020 published: 21 december 2020 keywords challenges characteristics gross margins stock size socioeconomic trend. entrepreneurial orientation is vital to growth and development, but lacking in many small-scale enterprises. this study investigated growth and entrepreneurial orientation in the small-scale poultry subsector of delta state, nigeria. it also ascertained the drivers of poultry entrepreneurial orientation in the study area. a multistage sampling procedure was used to collect primary data from 180 poultry farmers, through a questionnaire. a four-point likert scale of five items was used to measure entrepreneurial orientation from innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking. the data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, including gross margins, an autoregressive lag model, and logistic regression. the majority (57.7%) of the farmers are female. the small-scale poultry entrepreneurs had an orientation that was above average. the autoregressive lag model result indicated an increase in stock size and gross margins of poultry enterprises. it was forecast that the growth trend would increase up to 2022. furthermore, the anova result was statistically significant at 0.002*** and 0.001*** for stock size and gross margins, respectively. years of experience and training in poultry farming and noninvolvement of entrepreneurs in other occupations influence their entrepreneurial orientation. poultriy entrepreneurs must be trained while they adopt poultry farming as their principal occupation. contribution/originality: this study is one of very few studies to have investigated transformation in the small-scale poultry subsector. it indicates a trend in poultry development that researchers have not considered in the study area, while stating the likely future transformation in this subsector doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.104.764.772 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: roli juliet egbe --achoja roland onomu --pius chinwuba ike --isiorhovoja rodney akpoviri (2020). growth analysis and the determinants of entrepreneurial orientation in the small-scale poultry subsector in delta state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4), 764-772. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.104.764.772 © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 4 (2020): 764-772 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.104.764.772 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 764-772 765 1. introduction a growth-oriented entrepreneur is enthusiastic in expanding his/her business(es) while looking for new opportunities when the need arises through innovation (kahan, 2012). however, entrepreneurial growth will not be possible without the input of entrepreneurial orientation (eo), such as proactiveness (huang, wang, kuo-hisung, & yien, 2011). the characteristics of eo components that stimulate entrepreneurial growth include self-assurance, good behavioural trails, results-oriented, risk-taking, good leadership style, originality, and future-oriented (ajani & ayelotan, 2011). entrepreneurial orientation is a category of decision-making methods, practices, processes, and norms that ensure the enhancement of innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking propensity (patel & souza, 2009). entrepreneurial orientation describes why some managers recognize and exploit opportunities and others do not (shane & venkataraman, 2000). an organization is entrepreneurially oriented when it is innovative, risk-taking, and proactive (miller, 1983). the enterprise’s growth entails value addition, generation of more revenue, and expansion in business volume (greiner, 1972). many years ago, greiner (1972) concluded in his book on the theory of enterprise growth that enterprises undergo different stages in growth. these stages are creativity, direction, and collaboration (geroski, 2002). schumpeter’s theory and the resource-based theory of entrepreneurship are the two theories that explain growth in entrepreneurial orientation (schumpeter, 1911). schumpeter’s theory pointed out that entrepreneurship is all about innovation and the production of inputs combined by the entrepreneur to increase economic growth. this increase in growth is brought about by the innovative ability and skills possessed by the entrepreneur. ironically, many businesses and entrepreneurs have struggled to grow in nigeria (onogu, 2005). poultry farming is the raising of domesticated birds such as chickens, turkeys, and quails for various purposes, including meat, egg, and feather production (fao, 2005). poultry production systems in nigeria are grouped into extensive and intensive systems based on scale, stock, husbandry, and productivity (adene & oguntade, 2006). however, the most prevalent poultry system practiced in nigeria is the intensive system. the poultry industry in nigeria has assumed greater importance in improving employment opportunities and food production. thus, this industry has brought about a 15% contribution to the total yearly protein intake, with approximately 1.3 kg increase in poultry products consumed per head per annum (ologbon & ambali, 2012). the poultry industry is a diverse industry with various business interests including egg production, hatchery, and equipment manufacture (amos, 2006). despite the poultry sector’s significance, importation of frozen poultry food is still prevalent in nigeria and many other african countries (rakotoarisoa, iafrate, & paschali, 2011). statistics reveal that poultry product accounts for the vast proportion of frozen food on which nigeria spends annually about n600 billion (falaju, 2015). this raises the concern whether the poultry sector in developing countries (e.g. nigeria) can grow to be self-sufficient; and what is the growing trend for the poultry entrepreneur? moreover, this also shows the need to study small-scale poultry farmer entrepreneurial orientation. hence, this study investigates the growth trend in small-scale poultry enterprise, the level of small-scale poultry entrepreneurial orientation, and factors that influence the entrepreneurial orientation of small-scale poultry farmers in the study area. 2. methodology 2.1. area of study the study was carried out in delta state. delta state is in the south of nigeria. it has a land area of 17,698 square kilometers and lies roughly between longitude 50 and 60 45’ east and latitude 50 20’ and 60 30’ north of the equator. the state has a population of about 6,877,968, estimated from the 2006 census by nigeria population commission (npc, 2010). delta state is grouped into three agricultural zones: delta south, delta north, and delta central. the state enjoys a tropical climate with two distinct seasons: the rainy season (march–november) and the dry season (december–march). rainfall is highest in july. annual rainfall is about 256.5–190.0 mm in the north. the temperature varies between 20 and 340c. the state is richly endowed with fertile agricultural land suitable for agricultural production, and the main occupations of the people are farming and fishing. 2.2. sampling procedure and size method of data collection a multistage sampling procedure was used for data collection. the first stage involved the random selection of two local government areas (lgas) from three agricultural zones in the state. stage two involved the identification and selection of three communities in each of the selected lgas. this gave a total of 18 communities from six lgas. stage three involved a random selection of ten respondents from each of the selected communities to give a total sample size of 180 poultry farmers. hence data for the study were generated from primary sources. the primary data were collected with the aid of a well-structured questionnaire from poultry entrepreneurs. a total of 168 correctly completed copies of the questionnaire were retrieved and used from the 180 respondents sampled. 2.3. method of data analysis descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the analysis. entrepreneurial orientation was analyzed with a logistic regression model. gross margin was used to determine poultry enterprise growth over the period 2013– 2017. an autoregressive model was also used to analyze stock size growth over those same years. the autoregressive model was also used to forecast growth for poultry entrepreneurs up to 2022. the test of significance of growth in the poultry enterprise was analyzed using anova. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 764-772 766 2.4. measurement of variables the variables were measured as shown below. i. the age of respondents (years). ii. the education level of the respondents was measured categorically. for example, no formal education was assigned 0, primary 1, secondary 2, nd/nce 3, hnd/b.sc 4, and postgraduate 5. however, the educational variable was later converted to dummy (formal and informal) for inferential statistics analysis. iii. sex was identified as male or female. male was assigned 0 and female 1. iv. marital status was measured by asking the respondents to indicate whether they were single, married, or single again (divorced or widowed). single was assigned 0, married 1, and divorced or widowed 2. also factored in were currently having husband/wife =1, otherwise = 0. v. farming experience was measured as the number of years of participation in poultry production. vi. access to credit was measured by asking farmers to indicate whether they had access to credit: yes = 1, no = 0. they were also asked to state the sources of their credit as applied. vii. if have another occupation = 1, otherwise = 0. viii. if joined poultry professional organisation/association = 1, otherwise = 0. ix. income and expenditure were measured in naira (n, which is unit of monetary measurement in nigeria). x. stock size was measured using numbers of birds reared annually. 2.5. measurement of entrepreneurial orientation of entrepreneurs there are various ways to measure entrepreneurial orientation, due to the challenges and decision criteria associated with the entrepreneur’s formative versus reflective aims. however, a researcher is free to determine the measurement approach that best serves the research purpose. multidimensional entrepreneurial orientation measurement models are consistent with the eo constructs (covin & wales, 2012). al mamun, kumar, ibrahim, & bin (2017) validated the component of innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactiveness among the significant contributors to entrepreneurial orientation assessment. hence, poultry entrepreneurs’ entrepreneurial orientation was determined using a four-point likert scale of five items, each of innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking. the likert scale scores for respondents’ entrepreneurial orientation were calculated from the average sum points that measure entrepreneurial orientation, as presented in table 1. table 1. grade of entrepreneurial orientation. entrepreneurial orientation value entrepreneurial orientation grade 0–2.49 low eo 2.5-4.0 high eo 2.6. autoregressive model specification an autoregressive name was derived from the greek prefix auto, meaning self. the term auto indicates a variable that is regressed against itself. an autoregressive (ar) model anticipates future outcomes using past values (maxwell, cole, & mitchell, 2011). it explains the relationship in time series data regarding values that precede and succeed them. the autoregressive model involves linear regression of current series data against one or more past data values but the same (brockwell, dahlhaus, & trindade, 2005). the lag autoregressive model estimates a variable’s stability over time by regressing the later construct measures onto earlier measures of the same construct. this is necessary because the dependency of variable y on another variable x is hardly instantaneous. most often, y responds to x after some time elapse, and such time interval is called the lag (gujurat & porter, 2009). davtyan (2014) effectively used the autoregressive model to analyze fiscal performance, income inequality, and economic growth in anglo-saxon countries. davtyan (2014) successfully explained economic growth using the autoregressive model; however, the research did not focus on a particular subsector field, which part of this research addresses with the autoregressive model. the model for lag autoregression ar(p) is specified in equation i below: zt = δ 0+ δ 1zt 1+ δ 2 zt 2 + δ 3zt 3 + δ nzt – n ………. + et (i) where: zt = z seasonality, measure in time t. bo = constant. zt1 zt n = past or previous series values (lags). b1 b n = lag coefficient. et = random shock (white noise). δ could be expressed as. 2.7. growth measurement and model specifications the growth and development of an enterprise are explained in various ways, including growth in assets, increased number of employees, growth in profit, and turnover over time (delmar, davidsson, & gartner, 2003; delmar., 2006). however, ardishvili (1998) revealed that growth indicators, which are the variables used in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 764-772 767 observation of growth, include assets, employment, market share, physical output, sales, profits, and gross margin. alene et al. (2008) stated that profit in measuring growth and development is essential in the longer run. however, in this study, the gross margin variable was used as an indicator to observe growth because it estimates and subtracts total revenue generated from the fixed and variable cost when compared to using profit as an indicator. the growth of poultry enterprise was ascertained using poultry entrepreneur written records of gross margin and stock size from 2013 to 2017.the gross margin analysis formula and lag autoregression model are illustrated in equation ii below: gm = tr – tvc (ii) where: gm = gross margin. tr = total revenue. tvc = total variable cost. total revenue equation is given as: pq. q (n) where q = quantity of output . p.q = unit price of output (n). the gross margin equation was substituted into the autoregressive model for the growth trend analysis, as presented in equations iii and iv. hence: gmt = b 0 + b1gm-1 + b2 gm2 + b3gm-3 + bngm n + ……..et (iii) gt = b 0+ b1gm-1+ b2 gm-2+ b3gm 3 + b4 gm4 + b5 gm 5 + et (iv) where, gmt = gross margin in year t bo = constant b1-bn = lag coefficients gm-1 = lagged values of gross margin in year 1 gm-2 = lagged values of gross margin in year 2 gm3 = lagged values of gross margin in year 3 gm-4 = lagged values of gross margin in year 4 gm-5 = lagged values of gross margin in year 5 et = random shock the same equation specification and analysis procedures used for gross margin were used for stock growth trend analysis. however, the stock size variable was substituted for the gross margin variable alongside all appropriate stock growth trend analysis variables. 3. results and discussion the test results for the data obtained from small-scale poultry entrepreneurs are presented in this section. it starts by presenting the socioeconomic characteristics of respondents. 3.1. socioeconomic characteristics of poultry farmers table 2 presents a descriptive distribution of respondents using frequency, percentage, mean, and mode. there was no wide variation in small-scale poultry entrepreneurs’ age distribution in the study area. however, the majority of poultry farmers are within the age bracket 38–42 years. the majority (57.7%) of the farmers are female. this could be attributed to the fact that poultry farming does not require a lot of physical strength, unlike crop farming. this finding is similar to that of isiorhovoja, inoni, & ogisi (2013). table 2 reveals that married entrepreneurs dominated the study area. the results for marital status are in line with the findings of miller (2004). the need to provide for the family upkeep explains why married households dominate farming. respondents’ education status revealed that most entrepreneurs had completed formal education. it also revealed that 29.8% of respondents had b.sc./hnd, while 26.2% had nce/nd and 7.0% had a postgraduate degree; hence there is a high literacy level among farmers in the study area. babalola (2014) reported similar findings. the results showed that 72.6% of farmers do not have access to credit,. this could be due to poultry farmers’ inability to produce the required collateral and the extensive documentation required. onogu (2005) identified access to finance as among the constraints facing entrepreneurs. the study revealed that the majority (60.3%) of respondents had farming experience ranging from 8 years and below. this implies that more entrepreneurs are venturing into the business of poultry enterprise in delta state. the majority (67.3%) of respondents have another occupation, while a smaller fraction have more than one other occupation. this finding implies that many small-scale poultry farmers are not fully committed to farm work in the study area. the number of entrepreneurs having other occupations could have resulted from their desire to maintain a white-collar job. most entrepreneurs do not deem it fit to join a professional poultry farming/related organization/association. table 2 shows that the majority (74.4%) of respondents had not joined any form of poultry association/organization, while (25.6%) had. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 764-772 768 table 2. socioeconomic characteristics of poultry farmers. variables number percentage mean/mode age (years) 32 and below 33–37 38–42 43–47 48–52 53–57 58 and above gender female male marital status single married educational qualification no formal education primary education secondary education nce/nd hnd/b.sc. postgraduate access to credit no yes farming experience (years) 8 and below 9–13 14–18 19–23 24 and above have other occupation yes no joined professional association yes no 10 31 42 39 30 10 6 97 71 45 123 20 15 26 44 50 13 122 46 101 41 25 0 1 113 55 43 125 6.0 18.5 25.0 23.0 17.9 6.0 3.6 57.7 42.3 26.8 73.2 11.9 9.9 15.2 26.2 29.8 7.0 72.6 27.4 60.3 24.4 14.8 0.0 0.5 67.3 32.7 25.6 74.4 43.0 female married hnd/b.sc. no 9.0 no yes 3.2. growth in stock size of poultry enterprises the trend in average stock size of poultry enterprises is shown in figure 1. this steadily increased from 1,942 birds in 2013 to 2,042 in 2014. in 2015 the average stock size was 2,345 birds, rising to a peak of 2,749 in 2017. figure 1. trend and projection for stock size. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 764-772 769 the trend forecast indicates a steady increase in stock size between 2018 and 2022. this increase could be due to the expanding demand for poultry products resulting from population growth and food security improvement in west africa. the linear trend model is given as , which indicates that a unit increase over 1 year will lead to a 211.9 increase in stock size. this is in line with usda (2015) findings, which indicate a rapid expansion of the poultry sector. 3.3. test of significance in stock size growth of poultry enterprises, 2013–2017 the poultry enterprise’s stock size increase between 2013 and 2017 did not occur by chance in the study area. the anova result in table 3 indicate an increase in stock size at the 1% significance level. table 3. growth in stock size of poultry enterprises. anova stock size sum of squares d.f. mean square f-ratio sig. (p-value) between groups 77,445,729.29 4 19361432.32 4.33 0.002*** within groups 3,734,547,851 835 4472512.40 total 381,1993,580 839 note: *** = significant at 1%. in other words, the growth in the stock size of poultry enterprises has undergone significant transformation. 3.4. test of variance in stock size growth, 2013–2017 table 4 presents the duncan test results showing the significance level from 2013 to 2017, and comprises two subsets. the results indicate that subset one, which includes 2013 and 2014, recorded a lower stock size than subset two (2015–2017). this implies a significant difference between subsets one and two. this reduction in stock size in 2013 and 2014 resulted from flooding in 2012, where farmers worldwide suffered substantial economic loss. there were challenges in regard to food supply, processing, storage, and marketing. in addition, schools were shut down and commodity prices increased (famous, 2012). table 4. degree of variance in stock size of poultry enterprises. duncan subset for alpha = 0.05 year n 1 2 2013 168 1944.05 2014 168 2021.37 2015 168 2319.35 2016 168 2575.48 2017 168 2726.49 sig. (p-value) 0.125 0.096 3.5. trend in gross margins the results from figure 2 indicate steady growth in the gross margins of poultry enterprise. gross margins increased from ₦701,012.6 in 2013 to ₦754,495.2 in 2014. the average gross margin steadily rose from ₦884,733.2 in 2015 to a peak of ₦1,107,985.9 in 2017. this implies that there was an increase in gross margins. the linear trend model is given as yt = 583,533 + 971t, which indicates that a unit increase over the year will lead to a 97,176 increase in gross margin, and the trend forecast shows a steady increase in gross margin between 2018 and 2022. figure 2. trend and projection for gross margin. tyt 9.2116.1681 += asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 764-772 770 3.6. test of significance in gross margin growth of poultry enterprises, 2013–2017 table 5 shows that poultry enterprises’ gross margins underwent a significant increase, recorded at the 1% probability level, from 2013 to 2017. table 5. growth in gross margins of poultry enterprises. anova gross margin sum of squares d.f. mean square f-ratio sig. (p-value) between groups 1.611 4 4.027 6.320 0.000*** within groups 5.321 835 6.372 total 5.482 839 note: *** = significant at 1% 3.7. test of variance in stock size growth, 2013–2017 table 6 presents the duncan test result showing the significance levels from 2013 to 2017, and comprises two subsets. the results indicate that subset one, which includes the years 2013 and 2014, recorded a lower gross margin than subset two (2015–2017). this implies a significant difference between subsets one and two, which indicates that the years 2013 and 2014 recorded a reduced gross margin due to the flooding in 2012. still, in 2015–2017 a higher gross margin was recorded than in previous years because farmers were able to take cognizance of the fact that efficiency in chicken production will increase when there is an improvement in breeding, husbandry, and management, because this will reduce the cost of production (adene & oguntade, 2006). table 6. degree of variance in the gross margins of poultry enterprises. duncan subset for alpha = 0.05 year n 1 2 2013 168 701,835.82 2014 168 747,186.29 2015 168 875,091.80 2016 168 979,760.30 2017 168 1,071,428.54 sig. (p-value) 0.060 0.230 3.8. distribution of respondents according to level of entrepreneurial orientation the results in table 7 show the distribution of respondents according to their level of entrepreneurial orientation. entrepreneurs scoring from 2.5 to 4.0 points are considered to have high (above average) entrepreneurial orientation. in contrast, those scoring 0–2.49 are considered to have low (below average) entrepreneurial orientation. entrepreneurial orientation in the study area has grown. table 7 shows that 96.4% of poultry farmers in the study area had an above-average orientation. table 7. level of entrepreneurial orientation. level of entrepreneurial orientation n percentage below average 6 3.6 above average 162 96.4 total 168 100 3.9. determinants of poultry enterprise entrepreneurial orientation using the logistic model the logistic results from investigation of factors influencing respondents’ entrepreneurial orientation are presented in table 8. the omnibus test of model coefficient has a chi-square statistic of 15.522 with significance 0.030, while the hosmer–lemeshow test has chi-square 3.869 with significance of 0.869. these results show that the model is fit for the predictors. there was a significant improvement in growth and transformation for those respondents with entrepreneurial orientation above average compared to those below average. the nagelkerke r2, which should range between 0 and 1, has a value of 0.174. the proportion of variation in entrepreneurial orientation is accounted for by the predictors. again this shows that predictor variables are able to explain 17% of variation in entrepreneurial orientation. experience in poultry farming, receiving poultry farming training, and full-time involvement in poultry farming have a relationship with entrepreneurial orientation. a granted experience in poultry farming is likely to stimulate entrepreneurial orientation such as risk-taking, innovation, and proactiveness. furthermore, the exponential beta coefficient (odds ratio) result of years of experience in poultry farming showed that the number of years experience increased entrepreneurs’ entrepreneurial orientation by 17%. in other words, less experienced poultry farmers are more likely to have less entrepreneurial orientation. this result is similar to the findings of gelan & wedajo (2013), which stated that years of experience played a crucial role in the entrepreneurial orientation of small-scale businesswomen in ethiopia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(4)2020: 764-772 771 table 8. factors influencing respondents’ entrepreneurial orientation (logistic). variable b s.e. wald d.f. sig. exp(b) age -0.023 0.036 0.388 1 0.533 0.978 gender 0.350 0.549 0.406 1 0.524 1.419 marital status 0.170 0.572 0.089 1 0.766 1.186 farming experience 0.165 0.091 3.308 1 0.069* 1.179 received training 1.313 0.629 4.365 1 0.037** 3.718 have other occupation -1.230 0.570 4.648 1 0.031** 0.292 profession body -0.956 0.603 2.513 1 0.113 0.384 constant 1.382 1.691 0.668 1 0.414 3.983 note: nagelkerke r2 is 0.174, d.f. 7, omnibus test of the model coefficient chi-square statistic is 15.522 with sig. 0. 030, hosmer–lemeshow test chi-square is 3.869 with sig. of 0.869. receiving training has a relationship with orientation in poultry enterprises. the results show that the smallscale entrepreneur who received training on poultry farming enterprise is likely to have above-average entrepreneurial orientation. the respondents’ odds ratio value (3.718) indicates that farmers’ entrepreneurial orientation would increase by 3% for those who received training on poultry enterprises. having another occupation or taking poultry farming as the only occupation influences entrepreneurial orientation. table 8 shows that the small-scale poultry entrepreneur who has another occupation is less likely to have high entrepreneurial orientation. in other words, the smallholder poultry farmer who does not have another occupation is more likely to have better entrepreneurial orientation. this result could be attributed to the fact that the small-scale poultry entrepreneur who has another occupation may be distracted from full-time commitment to entrepreneurial orientation training and other poultry enterprise activities that might accelerate its growth and development. 4. conclusion there is transformation in the small-scale poultry farming subsector in delta state – growth in both stock size and gross margins. all things being equal, the growth trend may continue till 2021. the majority of small-scale poultry entrepreneurs have above-average entrepreneurial orientation. however, farming experience, poultry farming training, and noninvolvement in other occupations influence entrepreneurial orientation. age, gender, marital status, and joining poultry-related associations did not significantly influence entrepreneurial orientation in the study area. 5. recommendations based on this study’s findings, the following recommendations have been made to improve entrepreneurship in the poultry subsector in delta state. poultry entrepreneurs should be trained in the various techniques of poultry farming that will increase their entrepreneurial orientation. entrepreneurs who are new to poultry farming should continue in the enterprise although they should not expect to make any profits in the early stage; the experience gained over time will influence their entrepreneurial orientation, which will stimulate profitability and growth. small-scale poultry entrepreneurs should fully engage in the poultry business and not be distracted by involvement in another occupation. more research and effort should be made to investigate why most small-scale poultry entrepreneurs do not have poultry enterprise as their sole occupation. since there was growth in entrepreneurs’ stock size and gross margins, their challenges should be investigated and addressed to sustain growth. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in the design and performance of the current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adene, d. f., & oguntade, a. e. 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(2011). why has africa become a net food importer? explaining africa agricultural and food trade deficits. rome: food and agriculture organization of the united nations. schumpeter, j. a. (1911). the theory of economic development: an inquiry into profits capital credit, interest and the business cycle. oxford, england: oxford university press. shane, s., & venkataraman, s. (2000). the promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research. academy of management review, 25(1), 217226.available at: https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2000.2791611. usda. (2015). international egg and poultry review. united states department of agriculture (usda) report series no. 16, washington, d.c: usa. http://pointblanknews.com/pbn/articles-opinions/mitigating-the-impact-of-flood-disasters-in-nigeria/ http://pointblanknews.com/pbn/articles-opinions/mitigating-the-impact-of-flood-disasters-in-nigeria/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 68 transaction cost, price risk perspective and marketing channel decision of small-scale chili farmers in tra vinh province, vietnam pham quoc hung a huynh viet khai b a department of agricultural economics, college of economics, can tho university, vietnam b department of environmental and resource economics, college of economics, can tho university, vietnam  hvkhai@ctu.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history: received: 23-sep-2019 accepted: 24-feb-2020 online available: 09-mar2020 keywords: marketing channel, chili, outlet references, risk, probit model abstract the aim of this study is to determine the marketing channel and the factors affecting farmer’s selection of a distribution channel of chili produced in tra vinh province, vietnam. with primary data of 193 chili farmers, the study based on the theory of transaction cost economics to estimate the determinants of marketing channels using the approach of the probit model. the results showed that the marketing choice decision of chili farmers was affected by transaction costs, price risk attitude and farmers’ characteristics. cooperatives mainly used seedling supply as an interlocked exchange to encourage farmers to remain in the cooperative channel. the finding also revealed that cooperative channel was not just the preferred channel when farmers were confronted with selling pressure due to the perishable nature of the chili, but also was a safe channel for more risk-averse farmers. contribution/ originality the choice of marketing channel is one of the main decisions for producers because different channels are characterized by certain levels of profitability and cost. the study aims to identify factors affecting the chili farmer’s selection of a distribution channel. the results of this study could provide policymakers useful information to master chili farmers’ distribution channels. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.68.80 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: pham quoc hung and huynh viet khai (2020). transaction cost, price risk perspective and marketing channel decision of small-scale chili farmers in tra vinh province, vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 68-80. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 68-80 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 68-80 69 1. introduction the vietnamese government is encouraging rice farmers in the mekong delta to diversify their crops by cultivation other productive crops such as fruit and vegetable on the land that is under productive. the reason for this change is relatively low rice production in the mekong delta; one of the two main agricultural production areas in vietnam, is increasingly at risk due to land degradation of triple-crop rice cultivation and the adverse impact of climate change in the region. under the promotion campaign, the rice-growing area has been reduced by 14,000 ha over the period 2010 to 2014 (yearly reduction of 0.18%) and fruit and vegetable production increase from 1.54 million ha in 2014 to 1.72 million ha in 2016. this causes the fruit and vegetable sector to be one of the main income sources for many farmers in the region and contribute to a high portion of vietnamese agriculture export value. one of the vegetables promoted for cultivation in the mekong delta under this program is export-oriented chili which is increasing sharply in recent years due to high export demand. however, chili farmers have been confronted with many difficulties relating to market their products and obtaining a profitable price because of the small-scale production and poor integration. furthermore, dependent on the dominated intermediaries to market chili makes farmers face more risk and affect farmers’ income sustainability. marketing was considered to play a vital role to reduce poverty and promote sustainability in agriculture in developing countries like vietnam. however, a high transaction cost is especially a major marketing constraint (woldie and nuppenau, 2009) and is one of the most important causes for small-scale farmer’s failure to join the market (ouma et al., 2010). furthermore, the limitations of small-scale farmers are poor infrastructure, distance from the market and inadequate information with respect to market their product. small-scale production and lack of bargaining power make farmers to be exploited by dominated traders; as a result, small-scale farmers become price takers. particularly, perishable products force the farmer to sell soon after harvesting due to high cost of the storage facility. thus, it is trouble for farmers to obtain a fair price when they market their products to brokers or collectors at the farm gate. as a consequence, choice of marketing channel is one of the main decisions for farmers since various channels are described by certain levels of profitability and cost. therefore, mastering the determinants of the marketing channel selection is essential not only for the improvement of marketing channels but also for an increase in farmer’s income (soe et al., 2015). the choice of distribution channel is part of the ways for a farmer to obtain marketing objectives with their marketing strategy. generally, there are many studies about chili in mekong delta such as chili farmer performance and chili value chain, but few studies on farmer’s marketing strategy selection. although chili farmers in the mekong delta have many choices to market for their products such as selling to local traders or wholesalers, the current cooperative channel is expected to be a suitable choice to overcome the drawbacks of small-scale production. however, knowing the factors drive chili farmers’ decision to participate in different marketing channels should be clarified before making any encouraging policies. the aim of the study is to determine factors affecting the chili farmer’s selection of a distribution channel. the results of this study could provide policymakers useful information to master chili farmers’ distribution channels. 2. literature review an investigation of the marketing channel decision was conducted by many authors and studies follow two main streams, transaction cost theory and decision-making process or farmer behavior. transaction costs are defined as costs existed in the process of an exchange and are categorized into fixed and variable transaction costs (woldie and nuppenau, 2009). transaction costs were existed before and after the actual exchange. fixed transaction costs are invariant to the volume of output traded and may include the costs of searching for a partner to exchange a product, screening potential trading partners to ascertain their credibility, bargaining with potential trading partners to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 68-80 70 reach an agreement, monitoring the agreement to ensure that its conditions are fulfilled, and enforcing the exchange agreement. proportional or variable transaction costs, on the other hand, include the costs of transferring the product such as transportation costs and time spent to deliver the products to the market. according to mmbando et al. (2015) transaction costs are largely unobserved and cannot be easily recorded or measured directly in a survey and transaction cost theory is seen as a viable means of explaining the acquisition decision in marketing channels (chen et al., 2006). many studies found that transaction costs, farmers’ characteristics and also farmers’ risk perspective influenced smallholders’ decisions such as choices between alternative marketing options (higuchi et al., 2012; mabuza et al., 2014; siddique et al., 2017; woldie and nuppenau 2009; xaba and masuku 2012) and market participation (alene et al., 2008; jagwe et al., 2010; mmbando et al., 2015; ouma et al., 2010). regarding marketing channel selection, studies of woldie and nuppenau (2009) found that transaction cost such as the cost of information, negotiation, and monitoring and enforcement plays an important role to identify farmers’ marketing channel choice decision among selling to village retailers, wholesale traders and cooperative marketing group because transactions costs are different in these alternative channels. this study revealed that small land households prefer cooperative channels whereas larger farm households, having more bargaining power, normally face lower transaction costs prefer wholesale traders. farmers who receive market information easily prefer selling their products in the private market to through cooperative. if it takes more time to transact with wholesale traders, farmers are more likely to sell through the cooperative. this is similar to the finding of jagwe and machethe (2011), and mabuza et al. (2014) about banana and mushroom growers, stating that geographical location and access to price information significantly affect the choice of selling point, so mainly access to the price information from village mates and neighbors enhance the chance to sell at farm gate rather than travel to the market to sell their product. transaction cost was also found to influence farmers’ choice of marketing channels in studies by boger (2001) and gong et al. (2006) on cattle and hog sectors. in the study by gong et al. (2006), the spot market was still the main selection by farmers with 36 percent of farmers selling cattle through this channel. twenty-two percent sold via a dealer and 15 percent choose to sell directly to processors. this study also suggested that the farmers who are willing to pay higher transaction costs such as negotiation and monitoring costs are more likely to sell directly to the processor. it means that a more specialized farm would be more likely to sell directly to the processor. furthermore, payment delay and grade uncertainty not only occur for farmers who sell cattle to the processor but also farmers still choose this channel because of the premium bonus. bargaining power is measured by the herd size and the higher the bargaining power of the farmers, the more likely the farmer is to sell directly to the processor. in contrast, farmers who have a few cattle and relatively low bargaining power tend to use the spot market and middlemen. in addition to these above transaction costs, boger (2001) also found that the type of contract affects a farmer’s choice to sell hog to large processors or to traders and local slaughterhouses. in addition, the delay when produce is sold and when payment is made is an important negotiation cost that influences the choice of marketing channel by cocoa farmers. transportation cost gets higher related to an increase in distance from the farm and the bad condition of the road, and so farmers could not completely avoid it (ogunleye and oladeji, 2007). studies based on farmer’s behavior investigated the factors influencing farmer's marketing channel selection focused more on household characteristics and the findings are different depending on the produce. social characteristics are found by higuchi et al. (2012) to be effective in predicting a farmer’s marketing choice and the effect is different basing on a specific sector. the study results reveal that older and married coffee farmers are likely to participate in a cooperative channel, whereas large member household tends to commercialize through intermediaries. in the same viewpoint, gong et al. (2006) show that farmers favoring processor channels are those who have asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 68-80 71 high education and more investment. more experienced farmers, however, tend to participate in the spot market. in contrast, safi et al. (2018) found that experience farmers choose the processor channel due to the complex technique of semi processing in the grape sector. moreover, expertise on grade and standard, contractual agreement, social capital, market infrastructure, group participation are factors affecting household marketing behavior (jari and fraser, 2009). in addition, the study of soe et al. (2015) show that the farmers who possess storage, transportation, and larger quantity are more likely to engage in direct marketing channel to rice mills. this study emphasizes the important role of forming the farmers’ cooperative because individual marketing practices expose farmers to high transaction costs with low bargaining power. other research found that although a farmer can choose a single outlet or a combination of outlets during the fish production season, the wholesale channel was the most commonly used in 64.2% of the survey sample in the study of the louisiana crawfish industry. larger farmers were found to be more likely to market via retail outlets, farmers having come from off-farm sources and holding a college degree increased the probability of marketing via a wholesaler (nyaupane and gillespie, 2010). a middlemen marketing channel is preferred to cooperative by cocoa farmers because of the prompt payment, payment by cash, no distance covered to sell and no transportation cost (ogunleye and oladeji, 2007). furthermore, cooperatives are often seen as a way to increase farmers’ bargaining power within the food chain. more presence of processor or trader signals a high degree of competition between these intermediaries which reduces the need for farmers to deliver to cooperative and hence increase the likelihood of spot market solution. it also means that the fewer alternative is present for delivering an agricultural product the more likely farmers are to join a cooperative as a member and also deliver to that cooperative (pascucci et al., 2011). similarly, trust in cooperative leadership and cooperatives’ payment system was also found to affect the coffee farmer's marketing channel choice decision (milford, 2014). risk is also another factor affecting farmer's marketing channel choice decisions. few studies focus on this variable because it is difficult to quantify in the survey, particularly at the farmer level. besides, other normal risks link weather and pest, the marketing channel also provides producer marketing risks. price risk due to the competition of other farms and other channels is playing an important role in farmer’s marketing channel selection (leroux et al., 2010). the study by de bruyn et al. (2001) also reveals the relationship between price uncertainty and farmer's choice of selling cattle to state owed abattoirs or the indigenous market. furthermore, cooperative is found to offer stable price and cooperative suppliers are more risk-averse in comparison to those dealing with traders in the spot market (mujawamariya et al., 2013). 3. data and analysis method a structured questionnaire was used to collect data randomly with a sample of 193 farmers in tra vinh province where farmers are encouraged to participate in the cooperative channel. these farmers were interviewed face to face about transaction costs, household’s risk perception and risk attitudes, social-economic factors such as on-farm and off-farm activities, especially information on chili production and marketing. farmers were asked to list all buyers that they sold chili to and the percentage of chili production sold to each buyer. chili farmers may face several risks, but market risk or price fluctuation is of most concern. the perception of price risks is measured following the study of saqib et al. (2016) by using a 5-points likert scale, from 1 (very low) to 5 (very high). the responses of farmers then were put into a risk matrix to measure individual price risk perception (see figure 1). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 68-80 72 figure 1: risk matrix source: saqib et al. (2016) regarding risk attitude, there are several methods to quantify farmers’ risk attitudes. quantify risk attitudes using game and econometric are reliable, but these methods are very difficult to conduct in the survey. this study used a simple approach following the study of tu and bulte (2010) by a simple survey question. we asked respondents to indicate, on a 10 point-scale, whether they agreed with the statement: “i don’t dare to plant a new type of chili seedling as the first person in my village because i think it’s too risky.” hence, a larger score is associated with more risk aversion. we also have some discussions with the relevant stakeholders of chili supply chain to clarify the distribution system. farmers could sell their product to local trader, wholesalers, and cooperative. farmers who sell to cooperative usually have an advanced verbal agreement. under this agreement, farmers receive input supply service such as seedling, fertilizer and pesticide in credit and in return farmers commit to grow seedling provided by the cooperative and strictly follow the growing plan set by the cooperative because of quality management. cooperative in return, has the obligation to buy all farmers’ produce at the harvest time. farmers, however, have the right but not the obligation to sell to the cooperative. wholesalers just buy small quantity directly from the farmers to update the market price because of high transaction cost. therefore, in this study we focus more on cooperative as an innovative channel that could help farmers overcome their small-scale constraint and classify farmers in to two channels, cooperative channel for farmers who sell chili to cooperative and traditional channel for those who sell to other outlets. we use a probit model for the regression determining market channel choice between the cooperative channel and the traditional channel. the probit model takes the form: ( | ) ∫ ( ) where ( ) represents the standard normal probability distribution. this model measures the producer’s probability of participation in the cooperative channel taking into consideration the transaction cost, risk and producer’s characteristics: ( | ) where y represents the market channel to which the producer sells, with y = 0 for the producers who sell to the traditional channel, and y = 1 for the producers who sell to the cooperative severity of price variation fr eq u en cy o f p ri ce v ar ia ti o n asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 68-80 73 channel., is the number of independent variables, is the beta coefficient, and is a random error term, is a vector of selected explanatory variables that are proxy for transaction cost, risk perspective, and farmer’s characteristics. 4. variables definition and descriptive analysis table 1: definition and summary statistic of selected variables variables definition freq. % (mean) searching information market info 1 if the household head knows price in the local market 40.93 info-benefit 1 if collected market information really benefit the exchange 38.34 smartphone 1 if household own smartphone, 0 otherwise 41.45 negotiation and bargaining setting price 1 if buyers are those who set buying price, 0 otherwise 75.13 distance to road distance from farm to main road (kilometre) (4.97) no. of traders number of traders that farmer know (2.25) relationship duration of relationship with current buyer (months) (28.04) selling pressure 1 if household face pressure to sell right after harvest for cash 39.90 monitoring cost uncertainty 1 if household choose buyer because of less quality uncertainty 29.02 repetition trade 1 if household sell chili to the same buyer in previous crop 64.25 agreement 1 if household has oral selling agreement in advance with coop 47.15 risk perspective risk perception 1 if household head has high risk perception, 0 otherwise 85.49 risk attitude 10-point scale, a larger score is more risk aversion (6.32) household and social economics characteristics gender 1 if male household’s head, 0 otherwise 67.88 education educational level of household head in years (5.48) experience number of years engaged in chili production (3.03) farmland chili farmland owned by household (ha) (0.33) ext contact number of attending agricultural extension within 3 years (3.87) farm group 1 if member of common goal group, 0 otherwise 58.03 membership 1 if household know someone who is cooperative membership 57.51 seed coop 1 if household buy seed from cooperative, 0 otherwise 52.37 off-farm 1 if household has other earning activity, 0 otherwise 32.16 source: based on authors’ own survey, 2018 transaction cost variables were collected by interviewing chili farmers through a list of questions about the constraints of a marketing channel such as the costs of looking for information, negotiation and bargaining, and monitoring. market risk perspective and household characteristics was also considered in the analysis model. in the sample, there are about 50.26% choosing a cooperative channel and 49.74% selling through a traditional channel. the variable definition and descriptive statistics of the selected variables are summarized in table 1. searching information costs are costs incurred before the transaction. this is a common practice by farmers to gather some sort of price information and this is not free of charge (woldie and nuppenau, 2011). in this study, the cost is calculated by the action of searching for a market price before farmers selling their produce. prior to making any exchange, producers need to search for information such as price and buyers. farmers in the survey area were asked if they search for a price in advance as knowing the market price in advance influence the selection of trading partners. information searching cost is also measured by looking at if this collected information benefits asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 68-80 74 farmers in their transactions. this emphasizes the reliability of the information source and it may take considerable time in searching for reliable information because it is sometimes easy for some households to find such information, while it could be difficult for others. it is also argued that trustworthy information will help farmers select the appropriate outlet and have enough information to deal with a better price (negi et al., 2018). the hypothesis is that when knowing the market price and having reliable market information, farmers are likely to deal with traders who come to buy farmers’ produce directly at the farm gate and as the exchange is more flexible compared to deal with a cooperative. the statistical results show that more than 40 percent of the respondents said that they know the buying price in the local market before selling their produce, while about 38 percent confirm the benefit of the searched information. moreover, having a smart phone is also a way of searching for market information in the modern era and is also expected to affect outlets selection by farmers. access to the internet has increasingly become more popular in rural vietnam, owning a smart phone increase the chance for the farmer to obtain market information, hence reduce the transaction cost through reaching the final transaction quickly. access to information also improve bargaining power which could encourage farmers to participate in the traditional channel because of expected advantageous exchange that it brings to farmers through having strong bargaining power. table 1 show that almost 42 per cent farmers in the survey sample owned smart phone which helps them to connect to the internet and look for up-to date market information. farmers could not only decide where and which price to sell their products but also decrease the searching costs to get the best deal. negotiation and bargaining costs are costs incurred during the transaction. these costs may be very important when there is imperfect information regarding price (alene et al., 2008). having the power to influence the setting of exchange price in the exchange agreement refers to bargaining power which was reviewed by mabuza et al. (2014), who found that farmers would supply their commodity through a channel where they have a better bargaining position. table 1 show that the bargaining power of most of the farmers is very weak because 75 percent said that the buyer is the one who set the exchange price. another important factor is the costs of transporting farm products from the farm to the main road, as chili farmers usually do the selling exchange at the place (side road) where buyers’ truck can reach to collect chili. therefore, living far from the main road could prevent farmers from transporting their product to the exchange place where cooperative can use the truck to collect farmers’ produce, so the distance to the road is expected to influence negatively the choice of cooperative channel. the information from the survey shows that the average distance from farmers to the road is about 5 kilometres. this could be a barrier for the farmer access to the reliable buyer like a cooperative. in addition, several traders that farmer know is related to market competition through the presence of the local traders in the market at harvest time. more traders present in the market reflect how hard the competition is and improve the opportunity for farmers to have an effective deal, whereas the monopoly due to less presence of traders may lead to increasing opportunistic behavior, hence increase the transaction cost. as a result, it is expected that more traders that the farmer knows the market, the less they chose to sell products through the cooperative channel. the survey reveals that each farmer knows about two traders in the region. this, on the one hand, could imply that farmers have more options to sell their product but on the other hand less presence of traders could also reflect the likelihood of selecting the cooperative channel. in addition, the duration of the relationship with the cooperative is expected to encourage farmers’ commitment to this channel. because it is revealed that the length of the relationship also reflects the trust between buyers and sellers, the longer the relationship is the less time that farmers spent to obtain the exchanges, hence reduce the transaction cost through timesaving. in fact, farmers in the survey area have a rather long relationship with their buyers with an average of about 28 months, which is long enough for them to stay in the settled relationship, another factor that can influence the channel. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 68-80 75 monitoring costs are a cost incurred after the transaction. these costs are mainly incurred when the seller seeks to enforce and monitor the payment, and other advanced agreement. the monitoring cost is incurred when farmers spend time to manage farming to meet the required quality and manage the payment from the buyer for their produce. these costs arise when the time increases. in the survey area, farmers would face grade uncertainty when selling directly to cooperative as farmers would monitor farm to obtain the product quality stipulated by the cooperative, but the grade would not be known until the chili has been harvested. farmers get the payment based on a final grade result, creating risks for them. therefore, more farmers want to sell their products on the spot market if the grade uncertainty is higher. in addition, while there are currently no formal quality standards for a traded chili in vietnam, buyers generally screen delivered chili for quality based on visual inspection. if the producer faces quality uncertainty, they are more likely to sell their chili through a channel with no stringent quality requirements. the other variables in this category are repetitive trade. repetition trade expresses trust in buyers that could help the farmer to do a smooth transaction and decrease transaction costs. trust in cooperative could allow lower transaction costs because farmers will not need to obtain information for recognizing the reliability of this buyer. this leads to the expectation that the repetition of trade with cooperative will retain farmers in the cooperative channel. moreover, having selling agreement in advanced is expected to have an influence on farmers’ decision to engage in the cooperative channel as argued by woldie and nuppenau (2009) that trade agreement will help the farmers in keeping track of the transaction and also to counteract any conflicts, hence this will minimize monitoring cost. the statistical results reveal that about 29 percent replied that they were concerned about quality uncertainty when selecting buyers, almost 64 percent selling chili to the same buyer in the previous crop and about 47 percent have informal advanced selling agreement. in terms of risk perspective which is measured by price risk perception and risk attitude. the descriptive statistics show that farmers have high-risk perception with almost 86 percent, and they are a bit more risk-averse with a score of more than 6 points. regarding the household characteristic, according to cuevas (2014), female farmers have more various transaction costs (accessing land and credit) than male ones. farming experience and education considered as a human capital could help farmers to get market information to decrease transaction costs. moreover, social networks and organizational membership decrease transaction costs since they could make sure to cooperate among farmers to use scarce community resources. therefore, the household characteristic is also expected to have an influence on household outlet choice. our statistical results show that household heads are dominated by males with more than 67 percent and farmers, in general, having low education levels with an average of 5.4 school years. this is the current state in rural agriculture of vietnam and this could affect the ability of negotiation, farm management and the transfer of production technology in the survey region. farm experience regarding chili growing in the survey region is also low with an average of about 3 years. the average farmland area is around 0.3 ha each and extension service is not an attractive activity in the survey area with an average of 3 times within 3 years. more than 57 percent of farmers engage in farm group and a similar rate was observed for knowing someone in the village who has cooperative membership. this illustrates that farmers in the region try to widen their network in agricultural production and cooperative is becoming a popular channel in the survey area. the statistical results also show that about 52 percent of farmers buying chili seedling from cooperative. the dependence on input services like buying input (seedling) on credit from cooperative may affect the negotiation of farmers when selling a product to the buyer who is farmers’ input suppliers. as found by tefera (2014) producers and buyers also intermingle in the credit market because the buyers supply credit to producers as the latter is expected to deliver their produces to them and this locked-in exchange could help farmers to save time looking for the buyers, hence reduce the transaction costs and keep farmers in the cooperative channel as the interdependence relationship. finally, over 32 percent have income-earning activities other than producing chili. this would reflect the fact that farmers in the survey region diversify their income source which is an advantage and encourage farmers to be confident in making a chili marketing strategy. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 68-80 76 5. results and discussion the estimated coefficients and their marginal effects are presented in table 2. the estimated parameters of the probit model show the directions and reveal the likelihood of farmers’ selections of the cooperative channel relative to the basic outcome of the traditional channel. however, the parameters estimated from the probit model may be difficult to interpret because they are relative numbers to the outcome and just show the direction. the best way to study the effect of a unit change on the outcome would be to measure the marginal effect. the estimated results indicate that searching for information costs affects the farmer’s choice of marketing channel. the coefficients of market information and smart phone variables are statistically significant at the 5% and 10% level respectively revealing that farmers who look for the market information before selling and those who own a smart phone are likely to prefer a cooperative channel. particularly, farmers who know the selling price in the local market and those who possess a smart phone have 26 and 37 percent more likely to join the cooperatives channel compared to the households who do not know the local market price and possess the phone respectively. this finding indicates that access to information could strengthen farmers’ bargaining power and enhance transactions with traders by reducing the search cost only in a single exchange. however, farmers prefer selling through the cooperative channel because farmers consider this channel a safer choice and would bring sustainable profit to farmers in the long term by offering a stable price. regarding negotiation and bargaining cost, the coefficient of both numbers of trader and relationship variables are significant at 5% level but a negative sign for the number of trader variable show that if farmers know one more trader, the probability of choosing cooperative channel would decrease 6%. this is consistent with the study of maina et al. (2015) that farmers do not consume a lot of hours searching for the buyer because they are readily available in the market. in addition, having one more month relationship with the cooperative would increase the probability of participating in this channel by 0.7%. this finding implies that a sustained relationship with the cooperative decreases the costs of negotiating a sale, hence encouraging farmers to remain in such a relationship. furthermore, the probability of selling through the cooperative channel is 23% higher for those farmers who face selling pressure at the harvest time. this is the opposite of our expectation but might be explained that cooperative does not always seek self-interest but also for the mutual benefit of its members as well as the community. particularly, cooperative not only pay cash as a trader but also provide a safe exchange as its legally registered trading location increases the trust to farmers in making the selling transaction. the study results show that no variables measuring monitoring costs are significant. this is inconsistent with the arguments of previous studies (gong et al., 2006; mabuza et al., 2014) that the more producers become concerned about meeting buyers’ quality requirements, the less probability they will sell products to that channel. the negatively insignificant coefficient for quality uncertainty, however, could be explained that farmers would face quality uncertainty when selling chili to cooperative, but the safe exchange available through cooperative may not outweigh the quality uncertainty. similarly, the negative sign of the coefficient of agreement variable could reflect the fact that farmers may not commit to the informal verbal agreement with the cooperative. the possible justification behind this deriving from our survey is that cooperative although promising a flooring price in a depressed market, only first-grade products are applicable. however, when the market price is rising, the price offered by the cooperative is always lower than the market price, hence this may affect the farmers’ willingness to engage in such an agreement. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 68-80 77 table 2: factors determining chili farmer’s choice marketing channel using probit model variables probit model probit marginal effect coefficient s.e. dy/dx s.e. searching information market info 0.673* 0.350 0.263** 0.131 info-benefit 0.453 0.415 0.179 0.161 smartphone 0.966** 0.428 0.370** 0.151 negotiation and bargaining setting price 0.223 0.387 0.088 0.151 distance to road 0.040 0.045 0.016 0.018 no. traders −0.166** 0.078 −0.066** 0.031 relationship 0.019** 0.009 0.007** 0.003 selling pressure 0.602* 0.342 0.236* 0.130 monitoring cost uncertainty −0.287 0.369 −0.113 0.144 repetition trade 0.150 0.347 0.059 0.137 agreement −0.241 0.357 −0.961 0.141 risk perspective risk perception −0.243 0.498 −0.096 0.196 risk attitude 0.081* 0.049 0.032* 0.019 household and social economics characteristics gender 0.575 0.356 0.224* 0.133 education 0.025 0.051 0.010 0.020 experience 0.135 0.158 0.053 0.063 farmland −0.000 0.000 −0.000 0.000 ext. contact 0.028 0.058 0.011 0.023 farm group 0.904** 0.353 0.346*** 0.125 membership 1.257*** 0.379 0.466*** 0.121 seed coop 2.320*** 0.454 0.750*** 0.092 off-farm 0.624* 0.337 0.244* 0.127 chi-square χ2 test 170.16*** pseudo r2 63.60 log-likelihood −48.63 notes: ***, ** and * significant at 1%, 5% and 10% level of significance respectively. source: based on authors’ own survey, 2018 risk perspective is measured by two variables but only the estimated coefficient of risk attitude is significant at a 10% level. this result implies that more risk-averse farmers are likely to participate in the cooperative channel. this is in line with zheng et al. (2012) who found that farmers will participate in a cooperative channel if their perceived risk is high. in terms of farmer’s characteristics, the estimated results show that farmers who have farm groups’ membership are more likely to prefer cooperative marketing channels as opposed to traditional channel for their produce and the probability of selling through cooperative channel is 34% and 46% higher for those farmers who joining farm group and knowing cooperative’s membership respectively. this also indicates that enlarging network through farm groups’ membership would provide farmers with more chance to engage in the cooperative channel because they are confident in making a decision basing on shared information from the network, consistent with the study by jagwe et al. (2010). the variable of the seed coop is significant at a 1% level, indicating that farmers buying seedling from cooperative have a 75% higher probability to choose the cooperative channel. it also means that farmers may be locked-in by credit advances to buy inputs such as seedling and fertilizer. such arrangements could result in retaining farmers in the relationship with the buyer in the output market at harvest time or households sell chili to cooperative due to an interlocked exchange. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 68-80 78 finally, the result also supports the argument that diversifying the earning activity increase the chance to participate in the cooperative channel. 6. conclusion this paper seeks to explore the factors that influence small-scale chili farmers’ choice of marketing channels when chili is considered to be one of the vegetables promoted for cultivation in the mekong delta due to the adverse impacted of climate change in the survey area and increasing demand for export-oriented chili in recent years. particularly, because the cooperative channel is currently supposed to be a suitable choice for overcoming the constraints of small-scale production. using transaction cost economics as the main theoretical framework, we employ the probit model to estimate the determinants of marketing channel based on field survey data collected among 193 chili farming households in tra vinh province in vietnam. the survey reveals that farmers mainly sell their products through cooperative channels and traditional channels (local traders). the statistical results show that in the survey sample, the cooperative channel has become a more popular channel with around 50.26% of farmers choosing this outlet whereas 49.74% selling through the customary channel. there is a high rate of smart phone ownership by farmers which can be used to search for market information, whereas the education level of farmers in the survey area is low. farmers are more risk-averse and diversify their earning activities for income sustainability. the estimated probit results show that the marketing choice decision of chili farmers is influenced by transaction costs, price risk attitude and farmers’ characteristics. searching for pricing information before selling increases the probability of choosing the cooperative channel. in addition, cooperative use seedling supply as an interlocked exchange to retain farmers in the cooperative channel. the cooperative channel is also found to not only be the preferred channel when farmers are confronted with selling pressure due to the perishable nature of the chili but also is a safe channel for more risk-averse farmers. however, the field survey also reveals the limitation of keeping a promise to fulfil the purchasing agreement coming from both farmers and cooperative due to the conflict in pricing the product under the advanced agreement at the time of selling. based on the research results, we recommend that cooperative should take the leadership role in fulfilling its commitment and making sure that cooperative should be an appropriate channel helping smallscale farmers to overcome the market constraint and effectively implement a market participation strategy to sustain farmers’ income. although applying transaction costs as a primary analytical framework, this study just examines the determinants of outlet choice, particularly focusing on the cooperative channel in the transition economies context like vietnam where cooperative mainly takes the role of input services suppliers. there are just a few cooperatives considering marketing function as an integral part of a cooperative governance structure. there is need of further research on this field to clarify this issue and contribute more to the marketing channel choice literature as well as overcome this limitation of our study. funding: this study is funded in part by the can tho university improvement project vn14-p6, supported by a japanese oda loan. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors equally contributed to the article. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 68-80 79 references alene, a. d., manyong, v. m., omanya, g., mignouna, h. d., bokanga, m., & odhiambo, g. 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(2012). determinants of producers’ participation in agricultural cooperatives: evidence from northern china. applied economic perspectives and policy, 34, 167–186. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 721 estimating the demand elasticity of rice in bangladesh: an application of the aids model md. abu bakr siddiquea md. abdus salam b mohammad chhiddikur rahmanb a chief scientific officer; agricultural economics division, bangladesh rice research institute, gazipur, bangladesh. b senior scientific officer; agricultural economics division, bangladesh rice research institute, gazipur, bangladesh.  siddiquer07@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history received: 25 june 2020 revised: 21 august 2020 accepted: 23 september 2020 published: 19 october 2020 keywords food price compensated uncompensated demand and elasticity. abstract this study determines the causes of consumption, compensated, and uncompensated demand for rice using the linear approximate almost ideal demand system (la-aids) model in bangladesh. the model was used along with the corrected stone price index. the study's findings showed that the income elasticity of demand for rice was only 0.76, indicating that rice is a normal and necessary food item. the own-price elasticity (compensated and uncompensated) showed that all food items were price inelastic. the rice's own-price elasticity demonstrated that if the price falls by 10%, rice demand will rise by 8.21%. this cross-price elasticity showed the weak substitution effects of a price change. therefore, price interference may not lead to a substantial effect on food demand. contribution/originality: the study measured the demand elasticity of rice and other major crops of bangladesh. the effect of change in income on food demand was measured, as shown by income elasticity. it examined consumers’ expenditure pattern and demand for rice, including other food items. researchers and policymakers may use this study's findings to regulate bangladeshi rice and major crops' price and demand scenario. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.103.721.728 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: md. abu bakr siddique --md. abdus salam --mohammad chhiddikur rahman (2020). estimating the demand elasticity of rice in bangladesh: an application of the aids model. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3), 721-728. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.103.721.728. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction rice is the main staple food (rahman, hussain, hossain, rahaman, & chowdhury, 2015) and cash crop in bangladesh (rahman, siddique, salam, kabir, & mahamud, 2013) and its production has increased substantially since the 1980s. this increased production is imperative for augmenting marketed surplus, which provides cereal to the nonagricultural sector of the economy and eases pressure on much needed foreign currency. with increase in production its distribution becomes more important, since a balance between the price of rice output and input is indispensable for protecting the interests of farmers and consumers alike. almost the entire population consumes rice in bangladesh, obtaining about 62 and 46% of its daily calorie and protein requirements, respectively (siddique et al., 2017). rice covers 76% of the total cropped area (rahman et al., 2016) and accounts for more than 93% of food production in the country (siddique et al., 2017). because about 38% of rural labor is involved in the rice sector (bbs, 2016) any threat to prices and people's income can affect the economy as a whole (rahman et al., 2020). asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 3 (2020): 721-728 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:siddiquer07@gmail.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.103.721.728 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1866-998x http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 721-728 722 agricultural prices are notoriously unstable: rice prices influence both farmers' and traders' decisions simultaneously (eldukhery, elamin, kherallah, & abur, 2010). farmers frequently face severe fluctuations in price over both time and place, which introduces uncertainty and affects producers and consumers alike. this situation often compels farmers to accept low prices for their products and, subsequently, consumers to pay higher prices. because wide spread and fluctuation in price is observed in the rice market of bangladesh, information is essential in regard to changing the existing and upcoming demand and supply of rice due to changes in price and income. studies relating to demand for rice are numerous, and diversity has been found regarding the methods used. islam, mahabub, and jaim (2007) estimated rice demand in bangladesh using a well-accepted econometric (aids) model. lantican, sombilla, and quilloy (2013) used the linear approximate almost ideal demand system (la/aids) model to assess the demand elasticity of rice in the philippines. that study found that rice was a normal and essential good in the philippines because rice demand was inelastic for income and own-price changes. lazaro, sam, and thompson (2017) evaluated the dietary substitutability of imported and domestic rice and maize by estimating price and expenditure elasticity in tanzania, and found that tanzanian consumers preferred domestic rice. there was a weak substitution effect of imported rice on domestic rice. akram and henneberry (2016) identified the consumption pattern in pakistan using this method. the price elasticity of rice in malaysia indicated that rice is an inferior good tey, shamsudin, mohamed, abdullah, and radam (2008) and demand elasticity of aromatic and coarse rice was higher in rural areas compared to that of urban areas and cities in bangladesh (islam., 2002). hossain and yunus (2016) used the la/aids model and showed that the demand for rice and wheat will decrease in rural and urban areas of bangladesh. huq and arshad (2010) also used the aids model to estimate the income and own-price elasticity of different food items in bangladesh. the entire demand system in rural bangladesh indicated that income elasticity of demand for poor households was very reactive to change in income in regulating their consumption pattern (ahmed & shams, 1994). on the other hand, cross-price elasticity showed strong substitution effects that had significant consequences on pricing strategies. talukder (1993) revealed with the income elasticity estimation that except rice and wheat all other considered commodities (i.e., potato, pulses, fish, and edible oil) were superior goods. the superior goods means that the demand of these commodities would deteriorate with the increase in income. wheat was non-preffered inferior good in rural and preffered inferior in urban. there were a small deviation between expenditure and quantity elasticities of the commodities. therefore, both rich and poor used to pay the same price for the selected food item concerning their changes in income. analysis of critical income level, the turning point (zero income elasticity) of individual foods, revealed that, except for oil, the range of income over which food items remained as superior goods was wider in urban areas than for rural households. therefore, this study was aimed at examination and analysis of the demand elasticity of rice, the bangladeshi people's staple food. to illustrate the significant suggestion of price change, substitution linkage among different food items was also a key focus of this study. 2. methodology 2.1. data sources the study's location was the northwestern (nw) and greater mymensingh (gm) regions of bangladesh, which are leading paddy-producing areas. the agricultural sector's share of the household income is highest in the nw region (21.41%), followed by the gm region (20.15%). surplus districts were selected purposively based on their production and availability of rice. the nw region is comprised of bogra, rangpur, and dinajpur while the gm region covers mymensingh, sherpur, and kishoregonj districts. the study was constituted by 242 sample farmers and 200 rice traders. we randomly selected 40 farmers from each district in cooperation with the department of agricultural extension (dea), which has a complete list of farmers. it should be mentioned that we selected 42 farmers from mymensingh district, where two additional farmers were the key informants. we surveyed 100 different (faria/bepari, paiker/miller, aratdar/wholesaler, and retailer) traders from each region randomly. moreover, secondary information was collected from various published and unpublished sources, including the bangladesh bureau of statistics (bbs), the department of agricultural marketing (dam), the food planning and monitoring unit (fpmu) of the ministry of food, and various issues of the publication economic trends of bangladesh bank. 2.2. empirical model specification several studies have been conducted in bangladesh and elsewhere since the early 1970s related to demand estimation (ahmed & shams, 1994; chowdhury, 1982; deb, 1986; lantican et al., 2013; mahmud, 1979; rahman & hossain, 1988). the aids model is usually defined in the following budget share form (deaton & muellbauer, 1980) and can be expressed as follows: 𝑊𝑖 = i + ∑ 𝛾𝑖𝑗 𝑗 𝑙𝑛 𝑃𝑗 + 𝛽𝑗𝑙𝑛 ( p x ) + µ𝑡 … … … … … … … … … … … (1) where 𝑊𝑖= the ith good’s share on a budget (i.e., 𝑊𝑖 = 𝑃𝑄/𝑋) 𝑃𝑗 = price of jth goods 𝑋 = total household expenses on all goods in the model asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 721-728 723 µ𝑡 = residual (assumed normally distributed) ,i i and 𝛾𝑖 are parameters 𝑃 = a price index for the group, defined as 𝐿𝑛𝑃 = 0 + ∑ 𝛼𝑗 𝑗 𝑙𝑛 𝑃𝑗 + 1 2 ∑ ∑ 𝛾𝑖𝑗 𝑗𝑖 𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑖 𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑗 … … … … … … … … … … … (2) equation (2) becomes nonlinear through the price index from equation (1) that raised empirical complications. different studies employed stone (1954) price index (𝑃∗) for 𝑃 to avoid nonlinear approximation. blanciforti and green (1983) used stone’s price index and expressed it as la/aids. estimation of the parameters of the aids model with highly collinear prices is accomplished by the la/aids model, because the factor of proportionality of 𝑃 to 𝑃∗ is integrated within the intercept (green & alston, 1990). la/aids is expressed as 𝑙𝑛𝑃∗ = ∑ 𝑊𝑗𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑗𝑗 , highly collinear 𝑃 becomes approximately proportional to 𝑃∗, and therefore 𝑃  𝑃∗. in the extreme situation, 𝑃 becomes perfectly proportionate to 𝑃∗ and then the la/aids model can be employed to estimate the aids model parameters. to be consistent with consumer utility theory, equation (2) must be satisfied with the following restrictions for any estimated demand systems. the adding-up condition is automatically fulfilled in the aids model and is proficient at satisfying the other three limitations, but does not essentially do so accordingly. the adding-up condition implies: ∑ 𝛼𝑖 = 1 𝑖 , ∑ 𝛾𝑖𝑗 = ∑ 𝛽𝑖 = ∑ φ𝑖 = ∑ 𝜃𝑖 = 0, … … … … … … … … … … … … . (3) 𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑗 homogeneity is satisfied if – and only if – for all 𝑖 and 𝑗, ∑ 𝛾𝑖𝑗 = 0𝑗 , … … … … … … … … . … (4) while symmetry is satisfied provided, 𝛾𝑖𝑗 = 𝛾𝑗𝑖 … … … … … … … … … … … (5) according to the micro model in equation (1), the following equations are considered to estimate the expenditure elasticity (𝜂𝑖) and ownand cross-price elasticity (휀𝑖𝑗) of the different types of cereal: 𝜂𝑖 = 1 + 𝛽𝑖 𝑤𝑖 ⁄ … … … … … … … … … … … (6) 휀𝑖𝑗 = −𝛿𝑖𝑗 + (𝛾𝑖𝑗 − 𝛽𝜔𝑖𝑗) 𝜔⁄ … … … … … … … … … … … (7) where ‘𝛿𝑖𝑗 ’ is known as kronecker delta. here, 𝛿𝑖𝑗 = 1 for own-price elasticity and 𝛿𝑖𝑗 = 0 for cross-price elasticity. when the expenditure and uncompensated price elasticities are assessed, compensated (hicksian) ownand cross-price elasticities can be calculated using the slutsky equation's elasticity form. the slutsky equation can be written as: 휀𝑖𝑗 = 휀𝑖𝑗 𝐻 − 𝑤𝑗𝜂𝑖 … … … … … … … … … … … (8) or 휀𝑖𝑗 = −𝛿𝑖𝑗 + (𝛾𝑖𝑗 𝑤𝑖⁄ ) + 𝑤𝑖 … … … … … … … … … … … (9) here, the compensated price elasticity is ‘휀𝑖𝑗 𝐻’ (ahmed & shams, 1994; deaton & muellbauer, 1980; moschini, 1995). 3. results and discussion 3.1. measurement of coefficients of the la/aids model for major food items tables 1, 2, and 3 show the estimated coefficients of major bangladeshi food items by employing the la/aids model according to the different areas (rural, urban) and country average. the coefficients of the assessed parameters show the reaction of total expenditure share due to variation in the variables used. elasticities were measured by rural, urban, and, finally, as an entire household basis, of the samples. the sign of household size coefficient was negative and significant, which suggests that increases in household size responded to a decrease in food expenditure per capita. in rural bangladesh, among the household food demand estimation parameters, out of 54 considered variables 33 showed significant influence. the same number of variables (54) was considered for the urban area and all of bangladesh. the results showed that 27 and 29 variables significantly influenced household food demand in urban areas and the whole of bangladesh, respectively. estimated parameters demonstrated the high level of control of rice expenditure in rural and urban areas, indicating the overarching importance of rice in the total household budget. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 721-728 724 table-1. estimated parameters of the aids model of demand for food items in rural bangladesh. food item rice pulses oil fruits and vegetables fish and meat milk and milk products constant –0.015 (0.000) –0.0004 (0.030) –0.0005 (0.000) 0.007 (0.000) 0.012 (0.000) –0.003 (0.000) lnrice 0.219 (0.000) –0.0015 (0.000) –0.005 (0.010) –0.137 (0.000) –0.042 (0.000) –0.034 (0.000) lnpulses –0.001 (0.000) 0.035 (0.000) –0.013 (0.000) –0.013 (0.000) –0.004 (0.000) –0.004 (0.000) lnoil –0.005 (0.000) –0.013 (0.000) 0.049 (0.000) –0.032 (0.010) –0.007 (0.000) 0.004 (0.000) lnfruits and vegetables –0.137 (0.020) –0.013 (0.000) –0.032 (0.000) 0.427 (0.000) –0.075 (0.000) –0.169 (0.000) lnfish and meat –0.041 (0.000) –0.004 (0.000) –0.007 (0.000) –0.075 (0.000) 0.152 (0.000) –0.104 (0.040) lnmilk and milk products –0.034 (0.000) –0.004 (0.000) 0.004 (0.000) –0.169 (0.000) –0.023 (0.000) 0.231 (0.000) lnfamily size –0.031 (0.000) 0.0014 (0.050) 0.0016 (0.000) 0.031 (0.000) –0.013 (0.000) 0.011 (0.000) lnstoneprice (q) –0.082 (0.000) 0.004 (0.000) 0.004 (0.000) 0.005 (0.070) 0.062 (0.000) 0.006 (0.000) r2 0.56 0.29 0.43 0.59 0.74 – note: values in parentheses indicate probability level. table-2. estimated parameters of aids model of demand for food items in urban bangladesh. food item rice pulses oil fruits and vegetables fish and meat milk and milk products constant 0.046 (0.000) 0.004 (0.000) –0.001 (0.000) 0.041 (0.000) 0.023 (0.000) –0.114 (0.090) lnrice 0.132 (0.000) –0.006 (0.000) 0.004 (0.000) –0.139 (0.000) –0.012 (0.000) 0.021 (0.000) lnpulses –0.006 (0.000) 0.074 (0.000) 0.006 (0.000) –0.033 (0.000) –0.013 (0.000) –0.026 (0.000) lnoil 0.004 (0.000) 0.006 (0.000) 0.009 (0.000) –0.025 (0.000) 0.004 (0.000) 0.001 (0.000) lnfruits and vegetables –0.139 (0.000) –0.033 (0.000) –0.025 (0.000) 0.497 (0.000) –0.149 (0.000) –0.149 (0.000) lnfish and meat –0.012 (0.000) –0.013 (0.000) 0.004 (0.070) –0.149 (0.000) 0.097 (0.000) 0.073 (0.000) lnmilk and milk product 0.021 (0.000) –0.026 (0.000) 0.001 (0.000) –0.149 (0.000) 0.073 (0.000) 0.080 (0.000) lnstone price (q) –0.127 (0.050) –0.002 (0.000) –0.001 (0.000) –0.010 (0.000) 0.081 (0.000) 0.060 (0.000) ln family size –0.068 (0.000) 0.007 (0.000) –0.001 (0.000) 0.012 (0.000) –0.025 (0.000) 0.075 (0.000) r2 0.26 0.27 0.07 0.61 0.31 – source: field survey data, 2016. note: values in parentheses indicate probability level. 3.2. major household food expenditure patterns the budget share for rice, oil, milk, and milk products was higher than that of the national average. on the other hand, the household budget share for oil, milk, and milk products almost doubled in the survey year (2016) compared to the national level average. the budget share for fish meat was somewhat lower than the country average. over 45% of household food expenditure went on rice in rural areas, then 20.10% for fish and meat, 13.22% for fruit and vegetables, 8.23% for milk and milk products, and 7.35% for pulses. on the other hand, urban households spent comparatively less on rice (33.74%) and pulses (4.13%) and more on other food items. this indicates that the urban population spend more for higher quality as well as on nutrient enrich food. the budget share of rice compared to food expenditure in rural and urban areas shows its marked predominance over household consumption expenditure (table 4). the marginal propensity to consume, or marginal budget share, of rice, obtained as the product of average budget share and expenditure elasticity, was 37.27, 28.45, and 34.05% for rural, urban and all households, respectively (table 5). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 721-728 725 table-3. estimated parameters of aids model of demand for food items in bangladesh (pooled). food item rice pulses oil fruits and vegetables fish and meat milk and milk products constant 0.003 (0.000) 0.005 (0.000) 0.001 (0.060) 0.018 (0.000) 0.022 (0.000) 0.994 (0.000) lnrice 0.105 (0.000) –0.0005 (0.000) 0.004 (0.000) –0.126 (0.050) 0.045 (0.000) –0.028 (0.000) lnpulses –0.0005 (0.000) 0.020 (0.000) –0.021 (0.000) 0.010 (0.000) 0.007 (0.000) –0.002 (0.000) lnoil 0.004 (0.000) –0.021 (0.000) 0.028 (0.000) 0.013 (0.000) 0.002 (0.000) 0.004 (0.010) lnfruits and vegetables –0.126 (0.000) 0.010 (0.000) –0.013 (0.030) 0.335 (0.000) 0.063 (0.000) –0.143 (0.000) lnfish and meat 0.045 (0.01) –0.007 (0.000) –0.002 (0.000) 0.063 (0.000) 0.095 (0.000) –0.069 (0.000) lnmilk and milk products –0.028 (0.000) –0.002 (0.000) –0.002 (0.020) 0.004 (0.000) 0.143 (0.000) –0.069 (0.000) lnfamily size –0.058 (0.000) 0.023 (0.000) –0.013 (0.000) 0.005 (0.000) 0.005 (0.000) 0.058 (0.000) lnstone price –0.073 (0.000) 0.005 (0.000) 0.003 (0.000) 0.023 (0.020) 0.059 (0.000) –0.018 (0.000) r2 0.12 0.53 0.49 0.08 0.37 – source: field survey data. note: values in parentheses indicate probability level. table-4. major household expenditure patterns in bangladesh. food item average budget share (%) national average (%) rural urban pooled rice 45.49 33.74 42.72 36.78 pulses 7.35 4.13 4.65 4.51 oil 5.53 8.30 6.18 3.59 fruits and vegetables 13.22 15.40 14.32 15.00 fish and meat 20.10 29.10 22.68 25.22 milk and milk products 8.23 9.33 8.45 4.86 table-5. marginal budget share for household food items in bangladesh. food item marginal budget share (%) rural urban pooled rice 37.27 28.45 34.05 pulses 7.74 13.72 4.66 oil 6.01 11.65 6.19 fruits and vegetables 13.80 15.99 15.48 fish and meat 26.28 22.96 23.32 milk and milk products 8.82 6.69 12.45 3.3. expenditure (income) elasticity table 6 represents the income elasticity (ie) of major food items in bangladesh. the ie articulates the change in quantity demanded of the food item due to change in household income. the estimated result shows that the ie of rice for the entire sample is 0.76, showing that a 10% rise in household income stimulates rice demand by 7.6%. most of the considered food items in this study had positive ie, which means that the selected food is normal and essential for household consumption. the results also showed that the luxury food items were milk, milk products, and fish meat, as these are income elastic. on the other hand, pulses, oil, fruit, and vegetables were found to be unitary elastic. however, the results also revealed that (income) expenditure elasticity of demand for milk, milk products, fish meat, fruit, pulses, vegetables, and oil in rural areas was higher than for urban areas. therefore, improvement in the income of rural households would boost dietary quality in rural areas of bangladesh (table 6). 3.4. own-price elasticity for major food items the uncompensated own-price elasticity of rice assessed at the national (pooled) level showed that a 10% fall in rice price would stimulate an increase of 8.21% in demand. where the substitution effect is 5.89% (compensated ownprice elasticity), this means that an increase of 8.21% in rice demand due to a 10% price reduction had a 5.89% pureprice effect, and the income effect of a 10% price fall on rice demand was 3.70% (8.21 – 4.51). a 10% reduction in rice price might raise income per capita by 10%, which would raise demand by 15.82% (8.21 + 7.61). however, an increase asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 721-728 726 in per capita income would signify a move in the rice demand curve that would usually lead to an upsurge in rice prices (tables 6, 7, and 9). table-6. expenditure (income) elasticity of demand for major food items in bangladesh. food item expenditure (income) elasticity rural urban pooled rice 0.81 0.73 0.76 pulse 1.12 1.01 1.09 oil 1.11 1.00 1.06 fruits and vegetables 1.24 0.89 1.06 fish and meat 1.41 1.06 1.20 milk and milk products 1.21 0.98 1.16 source: authors’ estimation based on field survey. table-7. own-price elasticity of demand for food items in bangladesh. food item rural urban pooled uc c uc c uc c rice –0.699 –0.5856 –0.688 –0.357 –0.821 –0.451 pulses –0.969 –0.934 –0.843 –0.843 –0.984 –0.978 oil –0.955 –0.950 –0.169 –0.139 –0.974 –0.971 fruits and vegetables –0.579 –0.543 –1.033 –1.023 –0.688 –0.658 fish and meat –0.909 –0.834 –0.854 –0.841 –0.964 –0.893 milk and milk products –0.775 –0.769 –0.663 –0.607 –1.065 –1.056 source: authors’ estimation based on field survey. note: uc, uncompensated; c, compensated. table-8. uncompensated ownand cross-price elasticity of major food items in bangladesh. food item (price) demand for rice pulses oil fruits and vegetables fish and meat milk and milk products rice –0.688 0.389 0.087 –0.091 0.113 0.040 pulses –0.157 –0.843 –0.059 0.029 –0.002 –0.021 oil –0.103 –0.831 –0.169 –0.170 –0.008 –0.007 fruits and vegetables –0.106 –0.169 –0.782 –1.033 –0.060 0.176 fish and meat –0.024 –0.116 –0.396 –0.177 –0.854 –0.104 milk and milk products 0.350 0.426 0.386 –0.424 –1.144 –0.663 table-9. compensated ownand cross-price elasticity of major food items in bangladesh. food item (price) demand for rice pulses oil fruits and vegetables fish and meat milk and milk products rice –0.589 0.451 –0.017 –0.034 0.050 –0.024 pulses 0.120 –0.843 –0.059 –0.029 –0.002 –0.021 oil –0.058 0.831 –0.169 –0.170 –0.007 –0.007 fruits and vegetables –0.010 –0.159 –0.772 –1.023 –0.051 –0.166 fish and meat 0.319 –0.103 –0.392 –0.184 –0.841 –0.098 milk and milk products 0.104 0.370 –0.330 –0.368 –1.088 –1.607 3.5. cross-price elasticity estimates of own-price elasticity revealed that the income effect of price change was minimal for food items except for rice and fish meat, because the shares of those food items were very small compared to rice and fish meat in household expenditure patterns. the uncompensated cross-price elasticity results show positive cross-price elasticity of rice to pulses, indicating that rice price and pulse demand change in a similar direction. so, it can be demonstrated that a 10% fall in rice price would decrease household demand for pulses by 3.9% (table 8). the results of rice to pulse cross-price elasticity (compensated), which is the change in rice price effect on pulse demand, show that the demand for pulses would reduce by 4.5% with a 10% reduction in rice price (table 9). here the fall in rice price increases consumers' real income, which decreases demand for pulse (3.9%). the only price effect of decreasing demand for pulses (4.5%) is due to the falling price of rice. the impact of change in real income on demand for pulses is 0.49%, which is negated by deducting the two demand changes and summing income elasticity (i.e., 3.9 – 4.5 + 1.09 = 0.49%; table 7). therefore, pulses and rice here are complementary goods. oil, fish, meat, milk, and milk products cross-price elasticity was also positive, indicating that these goods are complementary to rice. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 721-728 727 the cross-price elasticity of demand (uncompensated) of other food items showed a negative value, which indicates that these are competitive with each other. the result also showed that a 10% increase in rice price would reduce the demand for fruit and vegetables by 0.9%. the uncompensated measure of cross-price elasticity was less clear. however, resilient expenditure effects play a role. the compensated measure of cross-price elasticity is the most suitable if one requires information on substitution potentials. 4. conclusion the present study examined consumer expenditure patterns and demand for rice, including other food items, employing the ls/aids model. the greater proportion of rice in rural and urban areas showed the marked predominance of rice in overall family expenditure. this indicates that a rise in absolute income per capita could result in an upward move in the rice demand curve, which usually suggests a rise in the price of rice. expenditure elasticity for all food items except rice was found to be markedly elastic, while that for fruit and vegetables and fish meat appeared highly elastic in rural areas compared to urban. the income elasticity of rice emerged as normal and necessary goods. compensated and uncompensated measures of own-price elasticity showed that all foodstuffs are price inelastic, suggesting that households were not particularly responsive to price changes in those commodities. the estimated elasticity of other food items in rural areas was greater than for urban areas, showing that the demand for these items is market oriented. the cross-price elasticity of other foodstuffs also showed that the substitute effects of price are not particularly stable. thus, the government’s price regulation strategy may not be a clue to major price effects in the economy. because rice is the main food of bangladesh, an increase in price is not desirable because the majority of the population is on a low income and is reliant on the market. thus, any policy aimed at aggregating the income or household total income of a specific group essentially either has consumer support or is supported by a buffer stock of food, mainly to defend the low-income population from higher prices. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in the design and estimation of the current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the authors' views and opinions; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ahmed, a. u., & 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[accessed 7 august 2008]. http://www.searca.org/kris/files/final/232_estimating-the-demand-elasticities-of-rice-in-the-philippines.pdf http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15062/ http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15062/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 245 organic agriculture: farmers’ perception and adaptation in northern thailand waripas jiumpanyarach school of agricultural resources, chulalongkorn university, thailand.  waripas.j@chula.ac.th article history abstract received: 9 june 2021 revised: 12 july 2021 accepted: 16 august 2021 published: 6 september 2021 keywords attitudes perceived behavior costs of production conventional agriculture organic agriculture farmers’ decision farm practices. this study aimed to examine factors impacting on farmers’ decision to convert from conventional to organic agriculture in phayao and nan provinces, thailand. the perceptions in conversion from conventional agriculture to organic agriculture toward the intention to change behavior, attitudes, and decision-making were analyzed. the data were collected by questionnaires administered to 124 farmers. the theory of planned behavior and the impacting factors of farm practices using logit model were used for analysis. the reasons for adopting organic agriculture were separated into three categories: (1) knowledge and understanding; farmers understood healthy farming but had little organic farm management information; (2) farm size impacts the costs of production; and (3) farm economics, including costs of delivery, storage, and markets, were a barrier to organic farming. these influenced attitudes, group norms, and perceived behavior. the study found that 50% of farmers using conventional practices were unwilling to change their practices, 16.1% had not decided, but 25.8% decided to change to organic practices. organic agriculture in the study area increased to approximately 30.65%. the study suggests that farmers’ long-term benefits were implementation of agricultural policies supporting equipment, financial resources, knowledge, green technologies, training, and extension. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the impact of factors on switching from conventional to organic farming in regard to socioeconomic and production procedures. this study used experimental choice and planned behavior models. the models tested various attributes of farmers’ decisions. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.113.245.254 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: waripas jiumpanyarach (2021). organic agriculture: farmers’ perception and adaptation in northern thailand. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3), 245-254. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.113.245.254 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction organic agriculture worldwide shows that consumers are turning to organic food and non-food as awareness increases of the health and environmentally friendly benefits. over the last two decades, organic agriculture land has increased to approximately 72.3 million hectares (in 2019) globally, an increase of 1.6% from 2018. more than 5.9 million hectares, or 8%, is organic agricultural land in asia, which has the largest land, india, followed by china. the world’s largest organic agricultural producer is china (51% of global production). the largest market is the usa (z44.7 billion euro , 42%), followed by the european union (41.4 billion euro, 39%) and china (8.5 billion euro, 8%). tropical fruits from china were the biggest import in the european union in 2019. there are 72 countries that have asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 3 (2021): 245-254 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6167-2172 mailto:waripas.j@chula.ac.th http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 245-254 246 implemented organic regulation, including partial implementation, and drafting. small-scale farmers in developing countries are focused on participatory guarantee systems (pgs). pgs is the best tool for small-scale farmers to access an affordable alternative to third-party certification. this will be an opportunity for them to access markets and increase the number of certified producers (willer & lernoud, 2019). much research has focused on motivational factors relating to the adoption of organic agriculture. these factors, including socioeconomics characteristics, farm characteristics, attitudes, perception risks, sources of information, and national policies, influence farmers’ decision making. national action plans, including market access, consumer demand, and organic standards, are applied to organic agricultural plans in developed countries such as in europe, japan, north america, and oceania (constance & choi, 2010; janssen & hamm, 2014; offermann, nieberg, & zander, 2009; vairo, häring, dabbert, & zanoli, 2009). in addition, farmers’ lifestyle, health and environment aspects, moral, and social concerns are affected by farmers’ attitudes (best, 2010; cranfield, henson, & holliday, 2010; koesling, flaten, & lien, 2008). in contrast, developing countries are focused on farmers’ financial resources, access to markets, domestic demand, government and private extension, and training facilities (karki, schleenbecker, & hamm, 2011; schoonbeek et al., 2013; thamaga-chitja & hendriks, 2008). economics aspects are the most important in adapting organic agriculture. pgs was initiated to help farmers in developing countries become certified at low cost (buerkert & schlecht, 2017; kirchner, 2015). the key factors influencing farmers’ decisions are culture, farm characteristics, access to subsidies and member-associated groups, and health and environmental concerns (shaban, 2015; ullah et al., 2015). according to the agricultural system in current use, farmers’ attitudes towards profit and production maximization have changed, and these are a major factor in the farm economy. the study of o'riordan and cobb (2001) investigated environmental economic and health benefits. the attitudes of organic farmers and consumers were studied: in particular, the factors influencing farmers to adopt organic farming, use of an ordered probit regression, and factors influencing attitudes toward organic farming – knowledge, experience, education, informational occupational effects, and individual aspects (wheeler, 2008). the theory of planned behavior (tpb) explains a decision-maker’s attitude towards performing behaviors. the attitudes are direct determinants of intention and behavior. the decision-maker’s opinion is dependent upon judgment and behavior (fishbein & ajzen, 1975). subject norm controls the perceived behavior to perform (ajzen, 1991). perceived behavioral control convinced decision-makers able to perform the intended behavior and decisionmakers attribute this to several factors (ajzen, 1991). factors controlling farmers’ behavior were attitudes, group norm, perceived behavior, risks of farming, and support by government policy (yanakittkul & aungvaravong, 2020). organic farming is more beneficial than conventional agriculture in terms of a healthy environment, the economy, and the community. thai farmers have opportunities due to good natural resources, but the infrastructure is limited. since organic markets in thailand, asia, europe, and the usa are expanding, the demand for safe foods has been rising. in converting to organic farming, a major challenge is the attitudes and behavior of individuals (ajzen & fishbein, 2005). most farmers in the study area decided to maintain conventional practices because of the appetite for, and aversion to agricultural risks (financial risks, production risks, quality and safety risks, and marketing risks). the trade-offs between the economic pressures of agricultural products and environmental objectives have been identified as reasons for changing farmers’ practices. this research focused on smallholder farmers in nan and prayao provinces focused small farming areas in northern thailand. eighty percent of the population are farmers and have a low income level (office of the national economic and social development board (nesdb), 2020). the geographic area is mountainous; the area has few water resources and a lack of water management. compared to other regions (central, southern, and north-eastern), agricultural production in this region is the lowest. additionally, the highest amounts of pesticides are consumed in this area because the area is mountainous and does not have access to water resources. wild and non-wild lands are usually affected in the fire seasons due to the burning of crops after harvesting. farmers in these regions prefer these practices because these are the cheapest and fastest way to clear the land for the next season. this is one of the air pollution problems in northern thailand, having been recognized as a seasonal smog and haze crisis (pardthaisong, sin-ampol, suwanprasit, & charoenpanyanet, 2018). this study aimed to analyze the factors that change processes in farm practices in nan and phayao provinces in thailand. the perceptions regarding switching from conventional to organic agriculture in the study areas were examined. barriers related to attitudes, practices, and the economy were investigated. the research included a variety of viewpoints, job satisfaction values, and quality of life issues. the study predicted attitudes and other costs of production impacting farmers’ adapting practices. organic agriculture should be an option for farmers to raise their income, live in a good environment, and for their farming to become sustainable. 2. data and methodology the methodology framework was divided into three steps: (1) selection of representative farm samples; (2) completion of questionnaires; and (3) analysis. the study population were farmers in nan and prayao provinces; purposive sampling was used to select 124 farmers: 59 from tumbon-santa aumpor-narnoi, nan province, 23 from tumbon-banlao aumpor-mayjai, phayao province, 22 from tumbon-sritoi aumpor-mayjai, phayao province, and 20 from tumbon-parfak aumpor-mayjai, phayao province. farms were selected considering four criteria: the farm system, farm size, farm location, and agreement to participate in the study. the data were collected from january to september 2019. the questionnaires focused on: 1. socioeconomic information: age, gender, education, farm owner, farm size, farm system, income, and household size. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 245-254 247 2. farmer attitudes: individual aspects regarding organic agriculture and conventional agriculture included unique ideas, beliefs, competences, and identities. 3. farm practices: organic farming practices, conventional farming practices, production processes, costs of conventional production, costs of organic production, logistic, and markets. 4. suggestion: market, knowledge, information, and logistic. other secondary information was retrieved from the department of internal trade, ministry of commerce, customs department, ministry of finance, office of agricultural economics, and ministry of agriculture and cooperatives in thailand. this study was completed based on field research and documentary research. the questions were indicators for development in farming practices and market strategies. the first indicator concerned organic farming attitudes, which included the production process using satisfaction levels (low, moderate, high, highest). the second indicator was farmers’ income levels, which impact farmers’ behavior. this research examined the attitudes and perceptions of the benefits of health and decreasing chemical contamination from organic farming. the tpb was used to explain farmers’ intentions towards organic farming. attitudes toward organic farming behavior, subject norm influences on organic farming behavior, and perceived behavior control towards organic farming behavior were the three key factors regarding intention to adopt organic farming (table 1). table-1. attribute questions for farmers’ switching decision. attribute questions attribute category attitudes: products what is the level of your satisfaction with products? satisfied with conventional products satisfied with organic products satisfied with organic more than conventional products satisfied with conventional practices attitudes: farm practices what is the level of your satisfaction with farm practices? satisfied with organic practices subject norm: product markets what is the level of your satisfaction with delivery to markets? fresh market modern trade/supermarket organic/green market what is the level of your satisfaction with marketing? conventional product marketing organic product marketing subject norm: product standards what is the level of your satisfaction with product standards? satisfied with organic standards attitudes: product delivery what is the level of your satisfaction with costs of delivery? costs of organic product storage additional delivery costs of organic products conventional products organic products perceived behavior: organic farming knowledge and information what is the level of your knowledge of organic farming? understanding knowledge perceived behavior: access to knowledge and information how do you access information and knowledge? extension from the government/academic extension from the private sector convenient fast satisfied 2.1. econometric method in the choice experiment, the respondents chose different attributes for organic practices. their opinions and attitudes regarding farm practices reflect the farm economy. the model tested different attributes of farmers’ decisions. regarding farmers’ choices, bias was a concern due to the decision situation (greene, 2003; lusk & schroeder, 2004). the estimation determined the impacts of factors (education, family members, number of conventional farms, number of organic farms, and costs of production) on the farm economy. this analysis uses descriptive statistics and a regression model run by the sas 8.0 program. the results explain farmers’ decision toward farm practice, providing important information related to future organic practices and promoting organic practices and organic markets in the future. the model analyzed variables that influence the farm economy. the equation is follows: 𝑌 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑋1 + 𝛽2𝑋2 + ⋯ + 𝛽𝑛𝑋𝑛 where 𝑌 = 𝐹𝑎𝑟𝑚 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝛽0 = 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝛽𝑖,…,𝑛 = coefficient of variables, i = 1, … , n 𝑋𝑖,…,𝑛 = dependent variables, i = 1, … , n asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 245-254 248 the empirical specification is as follows: model 1: 𝐹𝑎𝑟𝑚 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐺𝐸𝑁 + 𝛽2𝐴𝐺𝐸 + 𝛽3𝑀𝐸𝑀 + 𝛽4𝐸𝐷𝑈 + 𝛽5𝐶𝑂𝑁𝑉 + 𝛽6𝑂𝑅𝐺 + 𝛽7𝐶𝑂𝑆𝑇 + 𝛽8𝐼𝑁𝐶𝑂𝑀𝐸𝐼𝐿 where 𝛽𝑖,…,𝑛 = coefficient of variables, i = 1, … , n 𝑀𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙 1: 𝑖 = 𝐺𝐸𝑁, 𝐴𝐺𝐸, 𝑀𝐸𝑀, 𝐸𝐷𝑈, 𝐶𝑂𝑁𝑉, 𝑂𝑅𝐺, 𝐶𝑂𝑆𝑇, 𝐼𝑁𝐶𝑂𝑀𝐸𝐼𝐿 𝑀𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙 2: 𝑖 = 𝐺𝐸𝑁, 𝐴𝐺𝐸, 𝑀𝐸𝑀, 𝐸𝐷𝑈, 𝑂𝑅𝐺, 𝐶𝑂𝑆𝑇, 𝐼𝑁𝐶𝑂𝑀𝐸𝐼𝐿 𝑀𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙 3: 𝑖 = 𝐺𝐸𝑁, 𝐴𝐺𝐸, 𝑀𝐸𝑀, 𝐸𝐷𝑈, 𝐶𝑂𝑁𝑉, 𝑂𝑅𝐺, 𝐶𝑂𝑆𝑇, 𝐼𝑁𝐶𝑂𝑀𝐸𝐼𝐿, 𝑆𝐴𝑇𝐶𝑂𝑁𝑃𝐷, 𝑆𝐴𝑇𝐶𝑂𝑁𝑃𝑇, 𝑆𝑇𝐷 𝑀𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙 4: 𝑖 = 𝐺𝐸𝑁, 𝐴𝐺𝐸, 𝑀𝐸𝑀, 𝐸𝐷𝑈, 𝐶𝑂𝑁𝑉, 𝑂𝑅𝐺, 𝐶𝑂𝑆𝑇, 𝐼𝑁𝐶𝑂𝑀𝐸𝐼𝐿, 𝑈𝑁𝐷𝑂𝑅𝐺 𝐹𝑀𝐾𝑇 𝑀𝑀𝐾𝑇 𝑂𝑀𝐾𝑇 𝑂𝑅𝐺𝑆𝑇𝑂𝑅𝐴𝐺𝐸, 𝑆𝐴𝑇𝐷𝐸𝐿𝐼𝑉𝐸𝑅𝑌 𝑀𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙 5: 𝑖 = 𝐺𝐸𝑁, 𝐴𝐺𝐸, 𝑀𝐸𝑀, 𝐸𝐷𝑈, 𝐶𝑂𝑁𝑉, 𝑂𝑅𝐺, 𝐶𝑂𝑆𝑇, 𝐼𝑁𝐶𝑂𝑀𝐸𝐼𝐿, 𝐸𝑋𝑇𝐺𝑂𝑉, 𝐸𝑋𝑇𝑃𝑅𝐼, 𝐴𝐶𝐶𝐶𝑂𝑁, 𝐴𝐶𝐶𝐹𝐴𝑆𝑇, 𝐴𝐶𝐶𝑆𝐴𝑇, 𝐾𝑁𝑂𝑂𝑅𝐺 𝑀𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙 6 𝑖 = 𝐺𝐸𝑁, 𝐴𝐺𝐸, 𝑀𝐸𝑀, 𝐸𝐷𝑈, 𝐶𝑂𝑁𝑉, 𝑂𝑅𝐺, 𝐶𝑂𝑆𝑇, 𝐼𝑁𝐶𝑂𝑀𝐸𝐼𝐿, 𝑆𝐴𝑇𝑂𝑅𝐺𝑃𝐷, 𝑆𝐴𝑇𝑂𝑅𝐺𝑃𝑇 𝑀𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙 7 𝑖 = 𝐺𝐸𝑁, 𝐴𝐺𝐸, 𝑀𝐸𝑀, 𝐸𝐷𝑈, 𝐶𝑂𝑁𝑉, 𝑂𝑅𝐺, 𝐶𝑂𝑆𝑇, 𝐼𝑁𝐶𝑂𝑀𝐸𝐼𝐿, 𝑈𝑁𝐷𝑂𝑅𝐺, 𝐹𝑀𝐾𝑇, 𝑀𝑀𝐾𝑇, 𝑂𝑀𝐾𝑇 these variables are gen = gender, age = age, mem = family member, edu = education level, conv = number of conventional farms, org = number of organic farms, cost = cost of organic production, incomeil = income levels, satconpd = satisfied with conventional products, satconpt = satisfied with conventional practices, satorgpd = satisfied with organic products, satorgpt = satisfied with organic practices, std = organic standard, undorg = understand organic agriculture, fmkt = satisfied with farmer markets, mmkt = satisfied with modern markets, omkt = satisfied with organic markets, orgstorage = satisfied with organic storage, satdelivery = satisfied with product delivery, extgov = satisfied with extension from government, extpri = satisfied with extension from private sector, accconv = convenient access information, accfast = fast access information, accsat = satisfied with access information, knoorg = knowledge of organic agriculture. table-2. descriptive statistics of the explanatory variables: age, family members, educational level, agricultural areas, income levels, and costs of production variable % variable % gender male 69 educational level below kindergarten 6.45 female 31 kindergarten 32.3 age, years < 15 3.23 junior high school 33.1 16-25 6.45 high school 16.9 26-35 17.7 vocational school 4.03 36-45 21.8 graduated 2.42 46-55 31.5 conventional agriculture area, rai ≤5 36.13 56-65 11.3 6-10 22.69 > 65 3.23 11-15 10.08 income, (annual, baht) 180,000-300,000 37.1 16-20 17.68 300,000-540,000 46.8 >20 13.45 540,000-660,000 1.61 organic agriculture area, rai ≤5 18.49 600,000-780,000 0.81 6-10 10.92 780,000-900,000 1.61 11-15 4.20 900,000-1,000 ,000 0 16-20 4.20 > 1,000,000 3.83 >20 1.68 costs of production, (annual, baht) ≤ 50,000 46.22 farm practices conventional agriculture 64.49 50,000-100,000 52.94 organic agriculture 18.12 > 100,000 5.88 conventional and organic agriculture 17.39 note: baht: thai currency exchange in us$ is based on the exchange rates from siam commercial bank june 1, 2019 (1 us dollar = 31.47 baht) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 245-254 249 3. results 3.1. description of statistics the characteristics of representative farmers in payao and nan provinces are based on surveys of 124 farmers. farmers’ attributes are presented in table 3. the study found that the majority of farmers in the area, 46.8%, have an income that ranges from 300,000 to 540,000 baht and 37.1% have an income that ranges from 180,000 to 300,000 baht (table 2). according to the office of the national economic and social development board (nesdb), the annual income per capita in 2019 was 240,568.7 baht, which the majority of farmers have. this showed the farmers have an income that is either at or below the average national income per capita in thailand (nesdb, 2020). there is a small variation in farmers’ income: 36.13% of farmers ran small-scale conventional farms (5 rai) and 18.49% ran small-scale organic farms (5 rai). table-3. levels of farm practice satisfaction. percentage (%) attribute attribute category low (1) moderate (2) high (3) highest (4) products satisfied with conventional products 0 14.5 21 40.3 satisfied with organic products 5.65 25 41.1 17.7 farm practices satisfied with conventional practices 8.87 21 51.6 10.5 satisfied with organic practices 17.7 27.4 39.5 6.45 product markets fresh market 12.1 18.5 35.5 25 modern trade/supermarket 53.2 16.1 18.5 2.42 organic/green market 42.7 21 23.4 4.03 product standards satisfied with organic standards 17.7 27.4 39.5 6.45 product delivery costs of organic product storage 6.45 27.4 43.5 12.9 additional delivery costs of organic products 16.9 23.4 45.2 5.65 conventional products 6.45 28.2 46 7.26 organic products 9.68 28.2 49.2 4.03 organic farming knowledge and information understanding 5.65 12.1 27.4 39.5 knowledge 6.45 16.1 50.8 17.7 extension extension from the government/academia 16.9 38.7 32.3 4.84 extension from the private sector 37.1 19.4 29.8 4.84 access knowledge and information convenient 49.2 24.2 16.1 2.42 fast 53.2 18.5 16.9 3.23 satisfied 55.6 18.5 14.5 3.23 table 3 shows the satisfaction levels of farmers in different categories. major farmers had positive attitudes toward organic farming, measured on five-point likert scale from 1 = strong disagree to 4 =strongly agree. farmers rated many statements positively regarding knowledge, understanding, farm practices, production, and farm economy. farmers’ decision making toward organic agriculture adaption were focused on: (1) attitudes toward organic farming behavior refer to positive attitudes towards organic agriculture behavior and intend to perform organic agriculture showed that the attitudes of farmers had a mean score of 2.2864 for conventional products, 2.1337 for satisfaction with organic standards, 2.421 for cost of organic storage, 2.1863 for additional costs of delivery of organic and conventional products, and 2.2793 for organic products. the products related to number of farming areas, which implied farmers’ positive attitude on both types of product. (2) subject norm influences on organic agriculture referring to influencing farmers behavior toward organic farming decision showed a mean score of 1.4028 for farmers satisfied with modern trade/supermarket, 1.4028 for organic/green markets, and 2.5326 on fresh markets. (3) perceived behavior controlled the intention to switch to organic farming showed a mean score of 2.6896 for understanding, 2.606 for knowledge, 1.7748 for private sector extension, 1.4606 for access to information and knowledge, and 2.0729 for extension from government and academia. convenient, fast, and satisfaction on access knowledge and information scored 1.4606, 1.4352, and 1.3826, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 245-254 250 3.2.factors impacting on farmers’ decision regarding the logit model, seven different models were comparing among different impacting factors in each models regarding farmers’ decision to switch to organic agriculture. the study found that all seven models had negatively impacted the size of the conventional farm and costs of production. in contrast, the results showed a positive impact on the size of organic farm. the results showed that farmers’ decision making to switch to organic agriculture depended upon costs of production and farm size. farmers considering a switch to organic agriculture had to spend more money on preparing infrastructure and did not expect to receive a high return on organic products. farmers who possessed more conventional farmland would not switch to organic farming. the factors impacting on farmers’ decision are presented in table 4 with respect to costs of production and area of conventional agriculture land, these had a negative impact on farmers’ decisions. farmers who had high production costs were not willing to change to organic agriculture. the results showed that the more conventional the agricultural land, the less likely a changed to organic agriculture. changing to organic agriculture had many concern or farmers, including costs of production, labour, productivity, market, and quality standards (cristache, vuță, marin, cioacă, & vuţă, 2018; darnhofer, lindenthal, bartelkratochvil, & zollitsch, 2010). furthermore, the majority of farmers were satisfied with the logistics information relating to modern trade, supermarkets, and conventional markets. product standards were limited in accessing modern trade. fresh markets or farmer markets were available for small-scale farmers in rural areas. small-scale farmers, especially organic farmers, had few connections to modern trade, supermarkets, or organic markets. table-4. estimated factors impacting farmers’ decision toward organic farming using seven choice experiment logit models. model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 model 5 model 6 model 7 intercept 1.1259 1.0716 -3.8385 -1.3489 -1.4735 -3.3921 -2.5368 (1.3313) (1.3248) (3.3941) (3.9182) (5.7313) (3.2935) (3.9059) age -0.1145 -0.1028 0.1879 0.2032 -0.3810 0.0917 0.1776 (0.1642) (0.1613) (0.4928) (0.5248) (0.8920) (0.4686) (0.5072) gender 0.3057 0.3077 0.6109 -0.1002 0.6340 0.8174 0.0816 (0.4038) (0.4035) (0.8161) (0.8941) (1.1313) (0.7776) (0.7967) education -0.0634 -0.0534 -0.2618 -0.1672 -0.2899 -0.2981 -0.3029 (0.1887) (0.1873) (0.3913) (0.4369) (0.6045) (0.3771) (0.4206) income level 0.3503 0.3447 0.1008 0.1618 -0.00919 0.1483 0.1230 (0.2687) (0.2674) (0.2089) (0.2678) (0.5164) (0.2038) (0.2639) family member -0.1555 -0.1602 (0.1205) (0.1197) conventional area -0.0107* -0.00789* -0.0987** -0.1319** -0.1597 -0.0647** -0.0691** (0.0276) (0.0266) (0.0871) (0.1013) (0.1425) (0.0807) (0.0707 ) organic area 0.0160* 0.0606** 0.1082** 0.1101** 0.0423** 0.0424** (0.0377) (0.0927) (0.1062) (0.0925) (0.0866) (0.0834) costs of production -0.00002* -0.00002* -1.69e-6* -0.00002* 0.000016* -7.7e-6* -0.00001* (9.324e-6) (9.262e-6) (0.000015) (0.000019) (0.000026) (0.000013) (0.000016) satisfied with organic products 0.4325 0.0948 (0.7517) (0.4600) satisfied with conventional products -0.3275 (0.6266) satisfied with organic practices -0.2688 0.7323 (0.9268) (0.5494) satisfied with conventional practices 1.1468 (0.8925) understand organic agriculture 1.3223 1.0815 (0.6111) (0.4835) satisfied with farmers’ markets 0.9146*** 0.3981 (0.6421) (0.4322) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 245-254 251 model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 model 5 model 6 model 7 satisfied with modern markets 0.4290 0.1722 (0.7058 ) (0.6746) satisfied with organic markets -1.2221 -0.8464 (0.8110) (0.7221) satisfied with organic storage -1.0465 (0.7825) satisfied with product delivery -0.0766 (0.9781) satisfied with extension from government 0.3894 (0.8209) satisfied with extention from private sector 1.6902 (1.3419) convenient access to information 0.00279 3.0030 fast access to information 0.2060 2.3395 satisfied with access to information -3.6452 2.8871 knowledge of organic agriculture 1.6086 1.1172 note: *denotes significance at the 5% level. **denotes significance at the 10% level. 3.3. description of decision criteria farmers’ decisions must be considered in regard to costs of production, size of conventional farm, and size of organic farm before they consider other factors. farmers’ attitudes, including satisfaction with products, logistics, markets, knowledge, and agricultural information, were of secondary impact on farmers’ decision on which agricultural practice to adopt in these models. the structure of farmers’ decisions showed that they considered the costs of production, which are related to number of farms owned. the study separated switching decisions into three criteria, as follows. criterion i focused on knowledge and understanding. the questions assessed the levels of organic farming knowledge and information from government, academia, and the private sector. extension provided health and environmental friendly information of farm practices. the questions asked to farmers considered whether they would understand and had knowledge. farmers did not answer positively and did not perceive their farming to be safe due to their access to information, which was very poor. the results showed the difference in attitudes between conventional and organic farming. farmers considered that organic farming was more environmentally friendly and healthy than conventional farming. criterion ii addressed farm size, i.e. farmers who were not willing to risk the foregoing. farmers’ decisions must be consider conventional and organic farm size before they consider other factors. the adapting decision depended upon farm area owned. the decision model showed that the area of organic farmland had a positive impact; in contrast, regarding the costs of products for conventional farmlands, this had a negative impact on farmers’ decision to adopt organic practices. criterion iii focused on farm economics. conventional and organic products had a high level of individual farmers’ norm. these reflected the costs of delivery and fresh markets. costs of products, including storage, delivery, and organic products, impacted on farmers’ decisions. by contrast, the results of modern trade and organic markets showed a low level of satisfaction. regarding satisfaction with markets and standards of products, farmers’ intention asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 245-254 252 to improve organic practices focused on (1) costs of delivery, storage, and products and (2) markets. market availability for organic products was an essential factor that motivates farmers to switch to organic agriculture. as expected, farmers who agreed that conventional agriculture is more profitable than organic agriculture were more likely to be satisfied with conventional markets (modern trade) and supportive of the private sector, while others were of the opinion that organic farming had more environmentally friendly standards, fresh markets, and government and academia support than conventional agriculture. however, many farmers think organic market is a niche and that supply could rise faster than demand, leading to reduced prices. 3.4. farmers’ decision to switch to organic agriculture approximately 17.39% of farmers practised both conventional and organic agriculture, 64.49% conventional agriculture only, and 18.12% organic agriculture only. regarding farmers’ decision to convert from conventional to organic agriculture, results varied: 25.8% of farmers in conventional agriculture decided to change to organic agriculture, 50% of farmers in conventional agriculture were not willing to change their practices, and 8.1% used both conventional and organic agriculture. a total of 16.1% of farmers had decided not to become organic farmers. the decisions whether to switch to organic agriculture are presented in figure 1. figure-1. farmers’ decisions regarding switching to organic agriculture. 4. discussion and conclusions the theoretical and methodological approach of the study implemented tpb and decision-making factors as a framework. the decision-maker’s intention performs a behavior according to their attitudes towards their behaviors, and their perceived opinions are applied to perceived behavior (fishbein & ajzen, 1975). the approaches were analyzed and examined throughout the theoretical model. subject norms played a major role in forming behavior intention and understanding the decision making of northern thai farmers regarding switching to organic agriculture. the model included attitudes, perceptions, subject norms, and beliefs about different aspects of organic agriculture (economic, environmental, and health) regarding the decision to switch to organic farming. the level of farmers’ knowledge and awareness had direct effects on behavioral intention (terano, mohamed, shamsudin, & latif, 2015). the influence of perceived social pressure and perceived behaviural control were found to be influential on farmers’ behavioural intention (asadollahpour, najafabadi, & hosseini, 2016). farmers had strongly intentions to convert to organic agriculture using low chemical inputs and following organic practices. the results showed that approximately two-thirds of farmers in the study area had views on organic farming and were willing to switch. those attitudes (knowledge and understanding) had indirect effects on behavioral intention. the positive aspect of organic practices was the low costs of land preparation. furthermore, the adaption decision was different for farmers with a high level of education while age and experience played only a small role in intention. farm size showed a direct influence on farmers’ intention to convert to organic farming. there was strong evidence that farmers were more likely to feel positively towards organic agriculture, which was the most consistent predictor of farmers’ intention toward organic agriculture (attitudes toward organic farming, norm of organic farming, and perceived behavior organic farming). most elderly farmers, who believe that conventional agriculture is currently unsustainable, were more likely to be looking for alternative farming practices. organic farming had a positive role inn organic farming by producing net benefits, and thus increased organic knowledge, experience, and information played a positive role for farmers who believed organic farming would produce net benefits. moreover, for farmers showing positive intention toward adopting agricultural practices, government initiatives were very important, including the academic and private sectors, in providing information, knowledge, conversion processes, certification, standards, and quality for market requirements. farm practices have changed over time in response to new technologies, markets, and policies. concepts related to agriculture, health, and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 245-254 253 the environment have been introduced, changing the adaptation of farm-level practices. the concept of good farming has been applied for agricultural transformation from conventional to organic agricultural practices. initiatives should pay attention to informing consumers and raising the demand for fresh markets and further international markets. northern thai farmers had direct effects on agricultural chemicals while environmental and health concerns had increased in the market. consumers prefer products that meet organic quality standards, and such products benefit the environment and sustainable agriculture. consumers tended to support organic agriculture and, on average, were willing to pay a higher price premium for organic produce – at least 24% (yiridoe, bonti-ankomah, & martin, 2005). on the other hand, scientific communities and industrial professional agriculture rejected organic farming because of the high cost of production and an unproductive system (stanhill, 1990). 5. recommendations effective organic agriculture support should explicitly consider two factors as key in decision making. first, market support by allowing the sale of organic products in private markets (modern trade) and premium markets (organic/green markets). second, farmers are likely to consider an incremental step-by-step approach to adapting to organic agriculture. these may affect the decision of farmers to switch to organic agriculture. as a future suggestion, governments should establish regulations with more incentives for farmers to change to organic agriculture: 1) regulation should support equipment and input factors, and funding resources. 2) regulation of incentives for conventional farmers to form organic farming groups and motivate older members to join these groups. 3) regulation should focus on the sustainability of organic farming by promoting the benefits of organic cultivation and encouraging continuous and expansive support of organic farming. 4) regulation should underpin support knowledge, technology, training, standards, and extension to produce high quality and high yields for organic farmers. as an additional recommendation, organic farming should include these developments: research, extension, farmers, and community. a new of generation farmers have important roles in helping to create, develop, inform, and educate their communities. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ajzen, i. 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(2005). comparison of consumer perceptions and preference toward organic versus conventionally produced foods: a review and update of the literature. renewable agriculture and food systems, 20(4), 193-205. available at: https://doi.org/10.1079/raf2005113. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 120 household food insecurity and nutrition status: implications for child’s survival in south-western nigeria rufus b. akindola department of sociology, federal university oye-ekiti, ekiti state, nigeria  boluwaji56@gmail.com article history: received: 23-dec-2019 accepted: 03-mar-2020 online available: 26-mar2020 keywords: food security, child survival, nutrition status, vulnerability, mortality abstract this study investigated the relationship between household food insecurity and nutrition status with a focus on the implications for child survival. data were collected on 746 women of child-bearing age (15 49 years) in five states in south western nigeria. the study finds that household food security increased with income and education. the findings show that child survival is not only about improving nutrition status in the household or improving household food security, but also activities that mothers undertake to enhance child survival. contribution/ originality this study is important in that information on the effects of household food insecurity will benefit policy makers who are currently interested in strategies for improving household food availability, accessibility and safety. the study will also bring the current information about the most vulnerable group of people in the household, “the very young ones”. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.120.140 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: rufus b. akindola (2020). household food insecurity and nutrition status: implications for child’s survival in south-western nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 120-140. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 120-140 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:boluwaji56@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.120.140 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5507-8716 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 121 1. introduction 1.1. background of the study at the dawn of the new millennium, world leaders under the auspices of the united nations pledged towards attacking the challenges of poverty; illiteracy; hunger; unsafe-water; diseases; urban and environmental degradation, within the time frame of 2000 and 2015 (andohol, 2012). one of the major sustainable development goals in the countries of africa is to improve children’s health in the region. however, these goals are far from being achieved. the state of undernourishment in africa is far above the experience of other developing regions. studies have shown that a larger proportion of the african population suffers from starvation. since 1990, food availability per capita in sub-saharan africa has declined by 3 per cent (ojogho, 2010). reducing the risk of food insecurity is a major challenge confronting africa today. addressing this challenge, therefore, involves addressing short-term risks such as the recent economic crisis and volatility in food prices, and addressing long-term risks of chronic under nutrition (harttgen and klasen, 2010). these authors further argue that when there are more resources at the household level, the ability of the household members to acquire more calories and parents to invest more in the nutrition and health of their children is guaranteed. moreover, there has been a persistent increase in the level of food insecurity because extreme poverty remains on the increase and does not correspond with the soaring prices of food items. though as barrett and lentz (2010) has suggested, the relationship between poverty and food insecurity is complex and bidirectional. furthermore, studies have demonstrated that food insecurity results in malnutrition and ultimately propels ill health and lethargy, which eventually traps its victims in a cycle of poverty (thomas and strauss, 1997). in turn, poverty contributes to poor nutrition and health (barrett and lentz, 2010). it has been reported that over the decades, researchers found that early experience of food insecurity can have a lasting impact on people’s lives, including children. specifically, according to chilton et al. (2007), studies of the first three years of life show a strong link among investments in primary education, maternal-child attachment and nurturance, and more creative nutrition initiatives on breaking the cycle of poverty. arguably, food insecurity can affect a young child’s development and learning potential which can result in the continuity of poverty that is rolled-over to another generation (chilton et al., 2007; barrett and lentz, 2010). it was also reported that increase in food prices resulted in at least 50 million more people becoming hungry globally in 2008 (fao, 2008). invariably, this food crisis may have negative impacts on human development in four ways: increasing poverty and inequality; worsening nutrition; reduction in utilization of education and health services, and depletion of the productive assets of the poor globally (compton et al., 2010). even before the food crisis, gpf (2008) reported that an estimated 70% of the world’s hungry were women and girls. accordingly, vulnerable groups, such as young children and pregnant women, are now at risk of becoming permanently malnourished; irreversibly impacting the next generation. women are also more vulnerable to poverty, with less access to credit, property rights, education, training, good jobs, and farm inputs such as fertilizer and extension services, compared to men, making them one of the hardest hit groups in times of crisis (gpf, 2008). for example, ilo (2006) asserts that women own less than 15% of land worldwide and make up some 60% of the world’s working poor, people who work but do not earn enough to lift themselves above the $1 per day poverty line. 1.2. statement of the problem malnutrition has remained a problem of public health importance in contemporary nigeria despite the various interventions in the past two decades. according to erhabor and erhabor (2016), morbidity and mortality amongst nigerian children can be attributed to the inability of households asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 122 to secure food. specifically, there is an increase in the prevalence level of protein-energy malnutrition (pem) and micronutrient deficiencies (abubakar et al., 2017). household food insecurity, as cordeiro et al. (2007) suggest, plays an important role in determining poor nutritional health, which affects the physical growth and development of the child. in other words, the nutrition status of children under-five years is a priority due to vulnerability and child survival concerns. moreover, an understanding of the relationship between household food security and child nutrition status is important (cordeiro et al., 2007). according to the authors, high food prices imply re-prioritization of resources to address the current situation both at household and national levels. this will affect the healthcare-seeking behaviour since most resources will be diverted into food purchases. also, compliance with taking drugs could be compromised, especially for medicines that required food before consumption. the number of malnourished children under five will increase. reports show that, of the world’s undernourished children, 80% live in 20 countries; 9 of these are in sub-sahara africa. about 200 million africans are hungry and malnourished, including 31 million under–age five. about 35% of under–age five mortality is attributed to under-nutrition (chaudhary et al., 2016). 1.3. objective of the study the general objective of this study was to examine the effects of household food security on child nutrition status, and the implications for child survival in south-western nigeria. the specific objective was to determine the socioeconomic factors associated with household food security and examine the impact of household food insecurity on nutrition status. 2. review of literature food is the most basic need and necessity for human survival; and it is done through qualitative feeding behaviour. the feeding behaviour and access to the appropriate quantity and quality of food are essential components of optimal nutrition status for children (ijarotimi and odeyemi, 2011). the term food security has been identified in various ways. the world bank, for example, defined food security as access by all people at all times to enough food for active and healthy life (ojogho, 2010). food insecurity, in turn, refers to limited or uncertain physical and economic access to secure sufficient quantities of nutritionally adequate and safe food in socially acceptable ways to allow household members to sustain active and healthy living (fao, 1996). child development in this context relates to health, anthropometric and academic performance of the child. the main goal of food security is for individuals to be able to obtain adequate food needed at all times and to be able to utilise the food to meet the body’s needs. according to (omonona and agoi, 2007; ojogho, 2010), food security has been defined to include food availability, food accessibility, utilisation and stability of food access as the elements. food security indicates the availability of and access to food by those in needing. furthermore, the authors argue that household food insecurity has led to hunger and malnutrition in most countries, including nigeria while also influencing health and nutritional status of children. on the other hand, ijarotimi and odeyemi (2011) maintain that food insecurity has been found to be the main factor causing poor feeding habits and protein-energy malnutrition among children. for example, findings from a study by jyoti et al. (2005) in the united states confirm that food insecurity over time related to changes in reading and mathematics test performance, weight and body mass index, healthy social skills in children. the concern for food security and nutritional well-being in an economy is predicted by the role of the human element in economic development. this shows why at national level, food is of economic and political significance, especially in issues that relate to promoting peace and stability among the populace. the socio-economic characteristics and resources of individual household have been identified as basic factors influencing the food security status of households. worldwide, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 123 to 852 million men, women, and children are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty while up to 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying degree of poverty (ojo and adebayo, 2012). 2.1. concern for food security in nigeria the federal government of nigeria (fgn) has played a major role in attempts to ensure food security at the national level in the country. ojo and adebayo (2012) indicate that these attempts have taken the form of implementing several food related schemes at the national level. according to these authors, the early 1970s marked a period of massive importation of rice, which could not solve the problem of food insecurity. the operation feed the nation scheme implemented in 1976, for example, did not achieve much in solving the problem of hunger in the nation, whilst the green revolution scheme implemented in 1979 was just a mere change of name with little impact. also, the directorate of food, roads and rural infrastructure designed to improve national food production was a failure, as the program was engulfed in corruption that marred an impact (ojo and adebayo, 2012; andohol, 2012). moreover, much investment was made in agriculture during 1999-2007. reports, however, showed that little has been achieved regarding food security in nigeria. also the level of importation in the country has remained very high for various food items. additionally, several international agencies have provided assistance to nigeria, both at the federal and state levels, to boost agriculture in the nation. these include the world bank, food and agricultural organisation, united states agency for international development and international fund for agricultural development. however, the attending problem of unstable policies as new government assumes office, the perception that agriculture is an occupation for the illiterate, corruption, low remuneration on farm produces, etc., have brought about the low level of achievement in the national food security (ojo and adebayo, 2012; andohol, 2012). 2.2. conceptual framework this conceptual framework was adopted by mosley and chen in 1984 to explain the mechanism through which various modified proximate determinants operate to affect child survival in the study area (mosley and chen, 1984). the proximate determinants model was originally developed to study factors affecting child mortality, and is based on the idea that all social and economic determinants of child mortality operate through a set of biological or proximate determinants to affect a child’s probability of survival. the framework model is a combination of social, economic, biological and medical explanations of child survival. mosley and chen (1984) group the proximate determinants into five categories, namely, maternal factors (mother’s age and occupation); environmental contamination (routes of infection); nutrient deficiency; injury; and personal illness control (preventive and curative care). figure 1: the mosley-chen framework-proximate determinants of child survival asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 124 food security is a broad and multi-dimensional concept. it relates to access to adequate food for a healthy life. that is, access to available food and adequate nutrient intake for sustainable health (olagunju et al., 2012). empirical studies show a strong relationship between household food security to household income and asset (or wealth) status. empirical studies have also shown that low-income households are more likely to suffer food shortages than wealthier households. poor households spend more on food, which constitutes a larger per cent of their spending, making them relatively more vulnerable to the impacts of food price inflation. this relationship between a household’s food security status and its purchasing power, according to aliber (2009), romer lovendal and knowles (2006), is far from static; it changes over time. all other factors remaining constant, changes in income alter the quantity and quality of food purchased and consumed. price movements of food and non-food items also affect the ability to buy food. food security at the household level is a subset of the national level. that is, the ability of all individuals and households to have access to sufficient food either by producing it themselves or by generating sufficient income to demand it. omonona and agoi (2007) argue that food availability is a function of the combination of domestic food stocks, commercial food imports, food aid, and domestic food production, as well as the underlying determinants of each of these factors. furthermore, the authors believe that accessibility is determined by the resource endowment of the household which defines the set of productive activities they can pursue in meeting their income and food security objectives. in this case, food utilization, which is typically reflected in the nutritional status of an individual, is determined by the quantity and quality of dietary intake, general childcare and feeding practices, along with health status and its determinants. poor child care and feeding practices, inadequate access to, or the poor quality of health services is also major determinants of poor health and nutrition omonona and agoi (2007). 3. material and methods 3.1. study area nigeria lies between 4° 16΄ “1 and 13° 0΄ 53̋ and between 20° 40΄ 1” and 14° 04΄ 11” eaast. as nbs (2010) shows, the country is in the west african sub-region and shares borders with niger republic in the north, chad in the northeast, cameroon in the east, and benin republic in the west. to the south, nigeria is bordered approximately by 800 kilometers of the atlantic ocean, stretching from badagry in the west to the rio del rey in the east (nbs, 2010). with a total land area of 923.768km square kilometers, nigeria is the fourth largest in africa. the country has a projected population of 170 million and life expectancies are around 50 years. nigeria is an ethnically and religiously diverse country with over 250 ethnic groups (akindola and ehinomen, 2017). the country, according to the authors, is divided into six geo-political zones. this study was based in south-western nigeria, comprising oyo, ekiti, osun, ondo, ogun, and lagos states. most of the people living in the south-west are yorubas. there are both christians and muslims in the region. 3.2. data collection open ended questionnaire was developed for the survey of households. the questionnaire contained four modules (sections) on which data and information were collected. the first module contained questions on the socioeconomic characteristics of respondents, including age, income, occupation, marital status, education, etc. the second module contained questions relating to food security in the respondent household, including frequency of skipping meals, if at all; eating less than three square meals a day; the type of food eaten; whether children ate balanced meal; etc. the third module of the questionnaire contained questions to collect information relating to the nutrition status of the respondent household, including nutritional intensity of meals, frequency of consumption of fruits and vegetables, food advertisement, etc. the last fourth module of the questionnaire contained questions relating to child survival in a respondent household. these asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 125 included frequency of attending antenatal before delivery, adherence to recommended dietary intake during pregnancy, breast-feeding, etc. the questionnaires were administered mainly to women randomly selected from 192 communities across 75 local government areas in five south western states nigeria. table 1 displays the distribution of the respondents across the five states covered. the five states were ekiti, ogun, ondo, osun, and oyo states. among the five states, ekiti has the largest number of randomly selected respondents, representing 287 (38.5%) of the total respondents. this was followed by ondo state with around a third of the total respondents 261 (35.0%) whilst osun respondents were 75 (10.1%) and oyo has the smallest number of respondents at around 4%. the women respondents were those who gave their consent to have their information used in the research. also, collection of data focused on the local government areas which have been divided into enumeration areas by the national population commission (npc, 2006). out of a total of 762 questionnaires that were randomly administered, 16 of them were later dropped; comprising 13 questionnaires used for pretest, 2 respondents who refused consent to use their information for the research, and the remaining one questionnaire which was returned uncompleted. overall, data comprised n=746 respondents with complete data and information. table 1: distribution of respondents across the states in south-west nigeria distribution of respondents across the five states number of respondents (%) ekiti 303 (39.8) ogun 90 (11.8) ondo 261 (34.3) osun 75 (9.8) oyo 33 (4.3) total 762 (100) source: authors’ calculation from survey data (2018) 4. results 4.1. socio-economic characteristics of the respondents table 2 presents the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents. the table shows the name of variables, the number of observation or data points observed (n), mean, standard deviation (std), minimum (min) and maximum (max). for ease of understanding, the mean or average figures for the categorical variables (e.g. marital status) are interpreted in percentage terms. table 2: socio-demographic and economic characteristics of respondents variable mean std min max n =746 age 41.432 15.015 15 88 marital status single 0.083 0.276 0 1 married 0.786 0.411 0 1 divorced 0.064 0.246 0 1 widow/widower 0.067 0.25 0 1 education level secondary 0.015 0.121 0 1 modern school 0.004 0.063 0 1 ond 0.055 0.228 0 1 postgraduate 0.016 0.126 0 1 primary 0.119 0.324 0 1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 126 senior secondary 0.312 0.464 0 1 student 0.012 0.109 0 1 teacher education 0.109 0.311 0 1 uneducated 0.064 0.246 0 1 university/hnd 0.294 0.456 0 1 monthly income group 0 n10000 (0 27 usd) 0.2 0.4 0 1 10001 n20000 (28 54 usd) 0.2 0.4 0 1 20001 less than n30000 (55 82 usd) 0.153 0.36 0 1 30001 less than n40000 (83 109 usd) 0.084 0.278 0 1 40001 less than n50000 (110 136 usd) 0.133 0.339 0 1 50001 less than n750000 (137 204 usd) 0.084 0.278 0 1 75001 and above (204 usd and above) 0.046 0.209 0 1 declined & don't know 0.101 0.301 0 1 occupation group general business 0.079 0.27 0 1 trading 0.275 0.447 0 1 civil servant 0.126 0.332 0 1 professionals-banker, engineer, nurse, etc. 0.206 0.405 0 1 teaching 0.173 0.378 0 1 student 0.063 0.243 0 1 farming only 0.028 0.166 0 1 housewife or unemployed 0.05 0.217 0 1 spouse has other wives no 0.519 0.5 0 1 yes 0.127 0.334 0 1 don’t know 0.008 0.089 0 1 not applicable 0.346 0.476 0 1 all wives live in the same household yes 0.068 0.253 0 1 no 0.166 0.373 0 1 not answered 0.056 0.231 0 1 not applicable 0.709 0.454 0 1 ethnicity yoruba 0.854 0.353 0 1 igbo 0.097 0.295 0 1 hausa 0.031 0.173 0 1 other 0.019 0.136 0 1 religion christianity 0.843 0.364 0 1 islam 0.133 0.339 0 1 traditional religion 0.008 0.089 0 1 don’t know 0.016 0.126 0 1 household number of children 3.109 1.563 1 10 household size 5.025 3.017 1 28 age at first intercourse at age 12 to 19 0.165 0.371 0 1 at age 20 to 25 0.509 0.500 0 1 at age 26 & above 0.196 0.397 0 1 can't remember or don't know 0.130 0.337 0 1 age at first marriage at age 12 to 21 0.189 0.392 0 1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 127 at age 22 to 25 0.340 0.474 0 1 at age 26 to 38 0.359 0.480 0 1 not applicable or don't know 0.111 0.315 0 1 source: authors’ calculations from survey data (2018) as the table shows, the data were complete for all the 746 respondents. the average age of the respondents was a little over 41 years with the youngest being 15 years and the oldest 88 years. there was sufficient spread in the age of the respondents, suggesting there would be varied experience in the outcomes. also, the majority of the total respondents (71%) were females in reproductive age, 15-49 years. in terms of marital status, an overwhelming majority of the respondents (approx. 78.6%) were married, which is consistent with the objectives of the study and a high probability of observing the outcomes in the sample. moreover, an overwhelming majority of the respondents (approx. 79%) were educated with at least secondary education and only about 6% were uneducated. this is not surprising given that ekiti state is one of the most educated states in nigeria. obviously, the people are aware, as mcmahon (2009), psacharopoulos and woodhall (1997) argue, that education has direct and wider returns to individual and immediate members of their family and society at large in terms of increased income, improved health and better decision making. additionally, the respondents were mainly low-income. over half of the respondents (approx. 55.3%) reported that they earn a monthly income of n30,000 or less, whilst 13% reported that they earn n50,000 and above. however, about 10% of the respondent declined to report their monthly income. notice that the standard deviations for monthly income were generally greater than the mean values, suggesting potential for wide variations in income, hence the possibility of underreporting their income. also, the respondents varied widely in terms of occupational status, as most of them reported they engage in different occupations. the majority of the respondents (approx. 27.5%) were traders, approx. 13% civil servants, approx. 17% teachers, approx. 21% professionals, whilst only 5% were housewives or unemployed. over half of the respondents (approx. 52%) reported that their spouse has no other wives. amongst these, only a few (approx. 6.8%) reported that all the wives live in the same household. in terms of ethnicity and religion, an overwhelming majority of respondents were from the yoruba ethnic group (approx. 85.4%) and was christian (approx. 84.3%). moreover, the average household of the respondents has small families, with three numbers of children in the household on average and household size of about five. however, there were some large families as large as 10 number of children. finally, a majority of the respondents (approx. 51%) reported that they had first intercourse between 20 and 25 years of ages, whilst over a third of them (approx. 36%) got married between 26 and 38 years of age. overall, the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents were generally consistent with the objectives of the study, particularly in terms of age, education level, income, and household circumstances. in the analysis section, the extent to which these characteristics were associated with household food security is further examined. it must be emphasised that child malnutrition is still one of the most serious health problems in countries in sub-saharan africa and south asia, according to shinsugi et al. (2015), it is estimated that nearly 3.1 million children die annually either directly or indirectly as a result of malnutrition, and approximately 165 million children are affected by chronic restriction of potential growth. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 128 table 3: household food security variable mean std min max skipped meals in the last 12 months yes 0.503 0.500 0 1 no 0.489 0.500 0 1 don’t know 0.008 0.089 0 1 frequency of skipping meals almost every month 0.437 0.496 0 1 some months, not every 0.133 0.339 0 1 only 1 or 2 months 0.012 0.109 0 1 don't know 0.012 0.109 0 1 not applicable 0.406 0.491 0 1 ate less than expected in last 12 months yes 0.424 0.494 0 1 no 0.531 0.499 0 1 don’t know 0.046 0.209 0 1 hungry but not enough to eat yes 0.391 0.488 0 1 no 0.564 0.496 0 1 don't know 0.044 0.206 0 1 few low-cost food to feed child often true 0.127 0.334 0 1 sometimes true 0.576 0.494 0 1 never true 0.277 0.448 0 1 don't know 0.019 0.136 0 1 unaffordable balanced meal for child often true 0.118 0.323 0 1 sometimes true 0.487 0.500 0 1 never true 0.367 0.482 0 1 don't know 0.028 0.166 0 1 child not eating enough food often true 0.094 0.292 0 1 sometimes true 0.413 0.493 0 1 never true 0.458 0.499 0 1 don't know 0.035 0.184 0 1 child go hungry when there is no more food yes 0.273 0.446 0 1 no 0.643 0.479 0 1 don’t know 0.083 0.276 0 1 frequency of unbalanced meal in household a lot 0.094 0.292 0 1 sometimes 0.665 0.472 0 1 never 0.241 0.428 0 1 description of food eaten in household enough of all kinds of food we want to eat 0.339 0.474 0 1 enough but not always for all kinds of food 0.449 0.498 0 1 sometimes not enough to eat 0.153 0.36 0 1 often not enough to eat 0.023 0.149 0 1 don't know 0.036 0.187 0 1 composite measure of food security household food security index 18.282 6.678 4 29 source: author’s calculations from survey data asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 129 about half of the respondents (50.3%) reported that they skipped meals in the last 12 months, and the majority among this group of respondents (approx. 44%) also reported that they skipped meals almost every month. also, a majority of the respondents (approx. 58%) reported that they relied upon only a few kinds of low-cost food to feed their children whenever they ran out of money to buy food. additionally, a majority of the respondents (approx. 60.5%) reported that it is often or sometimes true that their children could not eat a balanced meal, as they could not afford it. it is imperative to state that physical inactivity and an unbalanced diet, as postulated by vandevijvere et al. (2015), are major risk factors for chronic diseases in both childhood and adulthood. a majority of the respondents (53%) reported that they did not eat less than they had expected in the last 12 months. also, when asked whether they were very hungry but did not eat because they had not enough money for food in the last 12 months, a majority of them (56.4%) reported that this was not the case. moreover, a majority, (approx. 64.3%), reported that their children did not have to go hungry whenever food was not enough. nevertheless, the respondents appear to be divided regarding whether their children were not eating enough food in the last 12 months. whereas a majority of them (approx. 50.7%) reported that it is often or sometimes true that they did not, approx. 56% also reported that it is not true that they did. at the household level, over two-thirds majority of the respondents (approx. 66.5%) reported that they sometimes eat an unbalanced meal in providing an overall description of the food eaten at the household level, over a third (approx. 34%) reported that they have both enough of all kinds of food they want to eat, whilst 45% of the respondents reported that though they have enough food to eat, but not always so for all kinds of food. the descriptive statistics of household food security variables are mixed. whilst some variables indicated that the majority of the respondent household were insecure, others provided an indication of moderately food secured households. nevertheless, household food insecurity, as asserted by drammeh et al. (2019), is increasingly deemed to be a global health problem, especially in sub-saharan africa. in this case, tackling food insecurity means that food should always remain available and accessible to all individuals throughout the life course (drammeh et al., 2019). finally, using the response options to derive an aggregate measure, the overall household food security score was 18.28 on average, ranging between the lowest score of 4 and highest at 29. comparing to the maximum score at 33, these figures suggest that just a little over half of the respondent households (approx. 55.4%) were food secured. thus, whereas there were a few extremely food insecure households, some were highly food secured. indeed only 48 or approx. 6% of the respondents scored above average on the household food security index. 4.2. nutrition status table 4 presents the summary statistics of the variables for measuring nutrition status of the respondent households. as the table shows, an overwhelming majority of the last child of the respondents (approx. 75%) was 24 years or less. this is consistent with examining the nutrition status and child survival in the sample. table 4: nutrition status variables (%) mean std. min max age of last child less than 12 months 40.1 0.401 0.490 0 1 13 – 24 months 34.9 0.349 0.477 0 1 above 24 months 18.2 0.182 0.386 0 1 don't know 6.8 0.068 0.253 0 1 frequency of eating once daily 2.4 0.024 0.154 0 1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 130 twice daily 33.4 0.334 0.472 0 1 three times daily 47.3 0.473 0.5 0 1 all through the day 15.7 0.157 0.364 0 1 other 1.2 0.012 0.109 0 1 meals are nutritious intense yes 58.2 0.582 0.494 0 1 no 38.6 0.386 0.487 0 1 don’t know 3.2 0.032 0.177 0 1 frequency of taking milk everyday 10.3 0.103 0.304 0 1 twice a week 27.3 0.273 0.446 0 1 three times a week 22.5 0.225 0.418 0 1 few days in a month 37.8 0.378 0.485 0 1 other 2.0 0.02 0.14 0 1 frequency of taking tea/coffee everyday 10.5 0.105 0.306 0 1 twice a week 22.7 0.227 0.419 0 1 three times a week 21.4 0.214 0.411 0 1 few days in a month 38.2 0.382 0.486 0 1 other 7.2 0.072 0.259 0 1 frequency of taking fruits everyday 18.8 0.188 0.391 0 1 twice a week 24 0.24 0.427 0 1 three times a week 30.2 0.302 0.459 0 1 few days in a month 18.4 0.184 0.387 0 1 other 8.7 0.087 0.282 0 1 frequency of taking irish/white potatoes everyday 16.9 0.169 0.375 0 1 twice a week 28.3 0.283 0.451 0 1 three times a week 18.1 0.181 0.385 0 1 few days in a month 31.5 0.315 0.465 0 1 other 5.2 0.052 0.223 0 1 frequency of taking vegetables everyday 22.4 0.224 0.417 0 1 twice a week 35.8 0.358 0.48 0 1 three times a week 18 0.18 0.384 0 1 few days in a month 20.4 0.204 0.403 0 1 other 3.5 0.035 0.184 0 1 frequency of taking fruit juice none 13.9 0.139 0.347 0 1 everyday 3.1 0.031 0.173 0 1 twice a week 12.5 0.125 0.331 0 1 three times a week 9.1 0.091 0.288 0 1 few days in a month 52.5 0.525 0.5 0 1 other 8.8 0.088 0.284 0 1 familiarity with nutrition ad yes 83.4 0.834 0.373 0 1 no 16.6 0.166 0.373 0 1 if yes, where were you familiar television 48.8 0.488 0.5 0 1 radio 22.7 0.227 0.419 0 1 newspaper 2.3 0.023 0.149 0 1 friends 8 0.08 0.272 0 1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 131 other 2 0.02 0.14 0 1 not applicable 16.2 0.162 0.369 0 1 income affects choice of food intake yes 51.9 0.519 0.5 0 1 no 48.1 0.481 0.5 0 1 spouse influences choice of food intake yes 39.4 0.394 0.489 0 1 no 60.6 0.606 0.489 0 1 coping strategy eating less preferred food 42.9 0.429 0.495 0 1 reduction or rationing 37.3 0.373 0.484 0 1 beg for food or money to buy 9.4 0.094 0.292 0 1 skipping meals within a day 10.5 0.105 0.306 0 1 composite measure of nutrition status nutrition status index 26.206 5.394 12 39 source: author’s calculations from survey data (2018) a majority of the respondents (approx. 47.3%) indicated that people in their household eat three times daily. only 2.4% reported that their household eat once daily. a majority of the respondents (approx. 58.2) also reported that they eat nutritious intense meals. when the respondents were asked how often they drank milk and tea/coffee, a majority of them (approx. 37.8%) and (approx. 38.2%) reported that they do so only a few days in a month respectively. in terms of frequency of fruit and vegetables consumption, approx. 30.2% and approx. 35.8% of the respondents indicated that they did so three times a week and twice a week respectively. however, a majority of the respondents (approx. 52.5%) reported being taking fruit juice only a few days in a month. also, only around a third of the respondents (approx. 31.5%) reported that they took irish/white potatoes only a few days in a month. when the respondents were asked about their familiarity with nutrition adverts, an overwhelming majority of them (83.4%) reported that they did so, and this was mainly through radio and television (approx. 71%). the respondents were also asked about possible influences on their household choice of food intake. the respondents were almost equally divided as to whether income affected their choice of food intake, as approx. 52% reported that it did. however, a majority of the respondents (approx. 60.6%) were of the view that their spouses did not influence their choice of food intake. on the question on how the respondents cope with a shortage of food, a majority of the respondents (approx. 43%) indicated that they did so by eating less preferred food, whilst only 9% reported that they beg for food or money to eat. finally, the response options were also used to derive an aggregate measure. the overall nutrition status score was 26.2 on average, ranging between the lowest score of 12 and highest at 39. the maximum score obtainable was 41. the raw data showed that just about half of the respondents (approx. 52%) scored above average on nutrition status. 4.3. child survival table 5 presents the summary statistics of the variables for measuring child survival in respondent households. as the table shows, an overwhelming majority of the respondents (approx. 82%) reported that they had their last child in a health care facility (i.e. health/maternity centre or general hospital). only about 11.7% of them are reported having their child at home. having a new born at a healthcare facility increases the chance of child survival. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 132 table 5: child survival variable % mean std. min max where your last child was born at home 11.7 0.117 0.321 0 1 health /maternity centre 38.1 0.381 0.486 0 1 general hospital 43.8 0.438 0.497 0 1 teaching hospital 6.4 0.064 0.246 0 1 no. of antenatal attended before delivery did not go for antenatal 2 0.02 0.14 0 1 only occasionally 9.1 0.091 0.288 0 1 less than 3 times 9.4 0.094 0.292 0 1 10 to 20 times 15 0.15 0.357 0 1 20 to 40 times 3.5 0.035 0.184 0 1 all appointed days 24 0.24 0.427 0 1 don't know 37 0.37 0.483 0 1 adherence to recommended dietary intake when preg yes 72.9 0.729 0.445 0 1 no 27.1 0.271 0.445 0 1 child first receive breast-milk when born immediately 70.8 0.708 0.455 0 1 following day to third 26.4 0.264 0.441 0 1 much later 2.8 0.028 0.166 0 1 child received anything else before breast-milk yes 33.9 0.339 0.474 0 1 no 66.1 0.661 0.474 0 1 what baby received water 19.6 0.196 0.397 0 1 pap 5.4 0.054 0.225 0 1 canned or baby milk 7.9 0.079 0.27 0 1 other 1.1 0.011 0.103 0 1 not applicable 66.1 0.661 0.474 0 1 baby received the first milk (colostrums) yes 87.4 0.874 0.332 0 1 no 12.6 0.126 0.332 0 1 how did you feel for giving first milk happy, glad, good, better 34.2 0.342 0.475 0 1 painful 52.7 0.527 0.5 0 1 not applicable 13.1 0.131 0.337 0 1 child received other food/ liquid after birth yes 62.1 0.621 0.486 0 1 no 37.9 0.379 0.486 0 1 other food/liquid received after birth baby milk only 5.8 0.058 0.233 0 1 baby milk and others 22 0.22 0.414 0 1 pap only 9.9 0.099 0.299 0 1 pap and others 12.1 0.121 0.326 0 1 water only 9.5 0.095 0.294 0 1 others-grape, lactogen, etc. 2.8 0.028 0.166 0 1 not applicable 37.9 0.379 0.486 0 1 what was given the baby water 26.3 0.263 0.44 0 1 pap 19 0.19 0.393 0 1 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 133 canned milk/baby milk 14.6 0.146 0.353 0 1 other 2.1 0.021 0.145 0 1 not applicable 37.9 0.379 0.486 0 1 at what age was other food/liquid given one day one week 3.6 0.036 0.187 0 1 after one week one month 7.1 0.071 0.257 0 1 after one month – three 29.2 0.292 0.455 0 1 after three month – six 35.7 0.357 0.479 0 1 after six month nine month 19.4 0.194 0.396 0 1 after nine month one year 2.8 0.028 0.166 0 1 after one year 1.7 0.017 0.131 0 1 don't know/remember 0.4 0.004 0.063 0 1 special foods for mothers to produce more milk yes 83.6 0.836 0.37 0 1 no 16.4 0.164 0.37 0 1 child ill 6 months before survey yes 58 0.58 0.494 0 1 no 42 0.42 0.494 0 1 nature of illness malaria/fever 29.5 0.295 0.456 0 1 diahrrea 11.3 0.113 0.316 0 1 cough 14.9 0.149 0.356 0 1 anaemia 2.4 0.024 0.154 0 1 not applicable 42 0.42 0.494 0 1 sought medical attention yes 50.5 0.505 0.5 0 1 no 7.5 0.075 0.264 0 1 not applicable 42 0.42 0.494 0 1 where sought medical attention medicine store 7.9 0.079 0.27 0 1 health/maternity 18.9 0.189 0.392 0 1 general hospital 27.7 0.277 0.448 0 1 teaching hospital 3.5 0.035 0.184 0 1 not applicable 42 0.42 0.494 0 1 composite measure of child survival child survival index 27.075 4.737 14 38 source: author’s calculations from survey data (2018) although a majority of the respondents reported that they could not really remember how many times they attended antenatal before delivery, approx. 24% of them reported that they attended all their appointed antenatal days, whilst only 2% reported that they did not go for antenatal before delivery. moreover, an overwhelming majority of the respondents (approx. 73%) adhered to the recommended dietary intake when they were pregnant. additionally, approx. 71% of the respondents gave breast-milk to their child immediately after birth, whilst only approx. 3% did so much later. a majority of the respondents (approx. 66%) did not give the child anything else before breast-milk. for those who reported that they gave anything else, a majority of them (approx. 20%) gave only water. an overwhelming majority of the respondents (approx. 87.4%) gave first milk (colostrum) to their child when they were born, though a majority of these respondents (approx. 53%) found it painful. in addition to breast-milk, a majority of the respondents (approx. 62.1%) also expressed that they gave other food/liquid to the child after birth. for these respondents, a majority of them (approx. 22%) gave baby milk and others; such as water (approx. 26%) and pap (19%), which a majority (approx. 35.7%) gave when the child was between three and six months. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 134 moreover, an overwhelming majority of the respondents (approx. 83.6%) believed that there are special foods which mothers could eat to produce more milk. as katarzyna (2019) has rightly espoused, breastfeeding is a special period in the life of a woman and her baby. accordingly, during the nursing period, the need for energy, nutrients and minerals increases. in this case, the daily diet of lactating women should consist mostly of complex carbohydrates as the author further suggests. child illness within the last six months will reduce the probability of child survival. a majority of the respondents (58%) reported that their child was ill within six months before the survey. for these respondents, the nature of the illness was primarily malaria/fever (approx. 30%), diarrhoea (approx. 11%), and cough (approx. 15%), and a majority of them (approx. 51%) reported that they sought medical attention from a health care facility such as health/maternity centre (approx. 19%) and a general hospital (approx. 28%). finally, the response options were also used to derive an aggregate measure for the overall child survival score. the overall child survival score was 27.1 on average, ranging between the lowest score of 14 and highest at 38. the maximum score obtainable was 44. the raw data showed that about half of the respondents (approx. 49%) scored above the average score on the child survival index. table 6: socioeconomic factors affecting household food security variables food security index age -0.0139 (0.0173) marital status: ref. single married 0.110 (0.991) divorced -0.402 (1.518) widow/widower -2.917 (1.462)** education level ref. uneducated primary -5.411 (1.347)*** modern school 4.406 (1.896)** junior secondary -8.634 (1.346)*** senior secondary -2.442 (1.218)** ond -5.426 (1.299)*** teacher education -0.140 (1.346) university/hnd 0.0198 (1.281) postgraduate 0.364 (2.159) student 0.00322 (2.283) income: ref. 0 n10000 10000 – 20000 -0.0317 (0.785) 20001 – 30000 -1.910 (0.904)** 30001 – 40000 -2.781 (1.139)** 40001 – 50000 -1.298 (0.932) 50001 – 750000 -1.752 (1.139) 75001 and above -1.406 (1.335) not reported -1.911 (0.996)* occupation, ref. housewife/unemployed general business -0.205 (1.639) trading -0.446 (1.400) civil servant 2.391 (1.528) professional banker, engineer, nurse, etc -1.715 (1.471) teaching 1.152 (1.512) student -1.740 (1.917) farming only -1.639 (1.780) spouse has other wives asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 135 yes -1.714 (0.850)** all wives live in the same house yes 1.504 (0.855)* ethnicity, ref. yoruba igbo -0.0538 (0.788) hausa 1.789 (1.441) other -1.685 (1.728) religion. ref. christianity islam -0.621 (0.828) traditional religion -2.909 (1.532)* age at first intercourse. ref. at age 12 to 19 at age 20 to 25 0.955 (0.577)* at age 26 & above 1.738 (0.798)** age at first marriage. ref. at age 12 to 21 at age 22 to 25 1.072 (0.637)* at age 26 to 38 0.634 (0.737) constant 20.85 (2.223)*** observations 746 r-squared 0.224 note: robust standard errors in brackets. the asterisks indicated level of significances; *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1. for categorical variables, the point estimates are interpreted in comparison to a reference group source: author’s calculations from survey data (2018) as the table shows, age has no effect on household food security in this data. widows/widowers were less likely than those that were single to be food secured and the effect was statistically significant at 5% level. other marital status has no effect on food security. those with lower levels of education were highly significantly less likely to be food secured. higher levels of education above ond, or being a student, have no effect on household food security. those at relatively lower levels of income were significantly less likely to be food secured. the effects were statistically significant at 5% level only for income levels between n20,000 to n40,000 (55 to 108 usd) per month. the remaining income groups have no effect on household food security. it appears that income is endogenous to other factors. occupational status of the individual has no effect on household food security. as expected, however, polygamous households (where the spouse has another wife) were less likely to be food secured. the effect is statistically significant at 5% level. where all wives live in the same house, the effect is statistically and marginally significant at 10% level. ethnicity has no effect on household food security. moreover, traditional religious households were significantly less likely to be food secured than christian religious households. the effect is only marginally significant at the 10% level. in terms of early social relationships, food security increased progressively and in the level of statistical significance of the age range for which the respondent had the first intercourse. those whose first intercourse was at age 20 and above were statistically and significantly more likely to be food secured than those of lesser age. however, those who got married between the age of 22 and 25 were marginally and significantly more likely to be food secured than those who got married at an earlier age. in summary, the result of the income groups appears consistent with the literature which suggests that low-income households were more likely to suffer food shortages than wealthier households. however, the present study also shows that the income effect disappears after n40, 000 (55 usd) monthly incomes. this suggests that the income effect is less likely to be linear. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 136 table 7: estimation results of the probit and instrumental variable regressions (1: probit model) (2: iv model 1) (3: iv model 2) variables child ill last 6 months child survival child survival household food security -0.0225 (0.00701)*** 0.171 (0.0547)*** nutrition status -2.573 (5.034) 0.323 (0.0940)*** child ill last 6 months -4.405 (0.340)*** -4.136 (0.340)*** constant 0.719 (0.258)*** 21.18 (2.492)*** 26.36 (1.070)*** observations 746 746 746 r-squared 0.041 0.313 note: robust standard errors in brackets. the asterisks indicated levels of significance; *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1 in the probit model, child illness as a measure of child survival was negatively related to household food security score, and the effect was highly statistically significant at 1% level. this result suggests that the more food secure households were less likely to have their children illness in the last 6 months before the survey. however, the effect of nutritional status on child illness was statistically not different from zero. we did not find any effect because household food security and nutrition status were related, thereby creating endogeneity problem. the iv model in models 2 and 3 solved the endogeneity problem. in the iv model 2, the aggregate measure of household food security was a key instrument for nutrition status, other variables included were education level and income. as expected, child survival was strongly positively associated with nutrition status score, and the effect was highly statistically significant at 1% level. this result suggests that the chance of child survival increases with higher nutrition status. the coefficient on child illness was negative and highly statistically significant at 1% level, suggesting that child illness reduces the probability of child survival. using nutrition status as an instrument for household food security in model 3, the probability of child survival also increased significantly with higher household food security score. the effect was highly statistically significant at 1% level. this result indicates that the more food secured a household is, the greater the chance of child survival, and the linkage is through the effect of household food security on nutrition status. on the other hand, the coefficient on child illness was negative and highly statistically significant at 1% level. this suggests that child illness reduces the probability of child survival and the more reason why it is argued in literature that under-5 child mortality continues to be an important public health problem and a serious challenge for developing countries. according to hani (2011), most of the 8.1 million children who died before their fifth birthday in 2009 died in africa and low income countries. finally, comparing the r-squares in both model 2 and model 3, the proportion of the total variation in child survival score explained by the included variables in model 3 is 31.3%, compare to just 4.1% in model 2. thus, the iv model to examine the linkage between household food security and child survival provides a better fit for the data. 5. conclusion reducing the risk of food insecurity is a major challenge facing a majority of households in africa. a major aspect of this challenge relates to addressing long-term vulnerability to chronic malnutrition amongst children, which threaten child survival (who, 2018). the socioeconomic circumstances of the household may affect both the quantity (affordability and availability) as well as the quality of food intake, especially the calorie intake and nutrition intensity of the food intake. for mothers, child survival may be dependent on the nutrition status, which in turn is a function of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 137 household food security. this study has examined the possible relationship between household food security, child nutrition status, and child survival, using a representative sample of women of child-bearing age (15-19 years). largely because of the multidimensional nature of these outcomes, as each of them was measured from several dimensions, using several variables, composite measures or indexes were derived based on the response options in the data. this approach solved the multiple inference problem often encountered in this type of studying. food security score derived for the individual respondents suggests that the households in the sample were modestly food secured. whilst about half of them were below the average score, the remaining half were above the average score. based on the response of the majority of the respondents, it is not the case that they do not have enough to eat in the household, the nature of food insecurity is that they have enough but not always for all kinds of foods they want to eat. hence, this manifests in the form of eating less balanced meals rather than going hungry. however, they often cope by eating less preferred food, rather than skipping meals altogether or go begging for food. secondly, the respondents scored high on the nutrition status index. evidence from the nutrition status score showed that the respondents were generally well informed about nutrition. this was expected as they were largely educated women. they gave breast-milk when it became necessary at child birth. they were familiar with nutrition adverts through radio and television. however, having information and knowledge about nutrition intensity of food does not mean that the individual has the resources to purchase them. for example, despite the overwhelming majority that reported being familiar with food nutrition adverts, only about a third were eating nutrition intense food such as fruit and vegetables, or white/irish potatoes. indeed, nutrition intense food tends to be relatively more expensive than less nutritious food. it is often heard from people that they would like to eat healthier food but they could not afford to (e.g. bandt, 2016). therefore, familiarity does not translate into affordability. moreover, respondents appear to perform modestly on child survival index. they undertook activities that are more likely to enhance child survival than constraining it. these include attending their appointed antenatal days before delivery, adherence to recommended dietary intake during pregnancy, and giving breast-milk to the new born immediately after birth. even though over half of the respondents reported that their child was ill within six months, the nature of the illness was mainly malaria or fever, which is less likely to be food related, and they sought medical attention from a health care facility. put in perspective, the findings were consistent with previous findings, except that the present study offers an additional insight into the possible dimensions of the relationship between the socioeconomic circumstances of the individual, household food security, nutrition status, and child survival. finally, this study consists of limitations. firstly, it was difficult to obtain the actual food consumption behaviour of the households surveyed in the study. this limits the extent to which causality can be assumed for the results. food consumption data obtained from household food diaries and associated calories will improve the study greatly, particularly in linking nutrition status of household food consumption behaviour. secondly, understanding the share of income expended on food would be consistent in capturing the substitution effect of income on food, which will provide a better understanding of the effect of income on household food security. this and other limitations could be addressed in future studies. 6. policy recommendations a key message from the present study is that improvement in household food security will also improve child health (survival), through its positive effect on nutrition status. it should be noted asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 120-140 138 also that child survival is not only about improving nutrition status in the household or improving household food security, but also activities that mothers undertake to enhance child survival. hence, it is recommended that women of child bearing age should be targeted for education and information on activities that enhance child survival. these include i. it is important that pregnant women are encouraged to attend appointed antenatal days before delivery, during which any discrepancies about the pregnancy could be detected and addressed. ii. it is equally important that mothers adhere to recommended dietary intakes when they are pregnant. adherence will improve their nutrition status, hence healthy child. however, the extent to which they will adhere to any recommended dietary intakes is largely dependent on the resources at their disposal. it is clear that nutrition intense food tends to be more expensive than less healthy food. therefore, a food bank intervention may be implemented where nutrition intense food is given to pregnant women on their antenatal appointment days. not only will this improve their nutrition status, but also improve breast-feeding behaviour, and use of health care facilities during and after birth up to a year. breast-feeding behaviour of mothers will remain poor as much as the mothers themselves do not eat healthy food. the design and implementation of the food bank intervention are beyond this study. iii. pregnant women should be encouraged to give birth in a health care facility to prevent premature births or complications at child birth. iv. improved breast-feeding behaviour of mothers. after birth, new mothers are often guided on the importance of breast-feeding. however, they do not always follow these guidelines largely because of their poor socioeconomic circumstances, including working conditions. policies that improve the situation of nursing mothers should be implemented. funding: tetfund provides funds for the study. competing interests: author declares that s/he has no conflict of interest with respect to this article. contributors/acknowledgement: author thanks to dr. damilola olajide and mr. abatan sunday matthew for their comments and suggestions. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views 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(2015). increased food energy supply as a major driver of the obesity epidemic: a global analysis. bull world health organ, 93, 446-456. doi.org/10.2471/blt.14.150565. who world health organisation (2018). infant and young child feeding. retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/infant-and-young-child-feeding. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/infant-and-young-child-feeding effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 215 the livelihood of farmers cultivating fire-prone peatlands: keeping the ecology and economy sustainable deasy arisantya karunia puji hastutib eva alviawatic nevy farista aristind parida angrianie ersis warmansyah abbasf syahrilg muhammad muhaiminh a,b,c,d,e,hdepartment of geography education, universitas lambung mangkurat, banjarmasin indonesia. fdepartment of social science education, universitas lambung mangkurat, banjarmasin, indonesia. gdoctoral program of education management department, universitas pakuan, bogor indonesia.  deasyarisanty@ulm.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 20 march 2022 revised: 2 may 2023 accepted: 18 july 2023 published: 15 august 2023 keywords farmer financial assets fire-prone human assets livelihood natural assets peatland physical assets social assets. the purpose of this research was to analyze the livelihood of farmers on fire-prone peatlands and their efforts to maintain their sustainable livelihoods. the study took place in banjarbaru, indonesia, a fireprone peatland area. our 251 samples were farmers cultivating the peatland. the variables measured in this study were livelihood assets, including human assets, social assets, natural assets, physical assets, and financial assets. we employed classification and principal component analysis. the findings revealed that physical and natural assets played the most significant roles in ensuring the sustainability of farmers’ livelihoods in the fire-prone peatland. human assets also played an important role because the farmers have been cultivating peatlands for a long time, giving them the skills and knowledge for sustainable and zero-burning peatland management. peatlands managed by farmers have a low fire potential because farmers protect their land from burning. social and financial assets did not play significant roles because the farmers did not take advantage of the existing cooperatives and farmer groups. increasing the role of cooperatives and farmer groups would improve people's livelihoods by increasing the contribution of social and financial assets. sustainable peatland cultivation as a productive space has proven beneficial for preventing fires on peatlands (ecology) and livelihoods (economy). contribution/originality: this study provides empirical evidence about the livelihoods of farmers on fire-prone peatlands. it shows that farmers play a large role in controlling fires and making peatlands productive to achieve better livelihoods in the future. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4853 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: arisanty, d., hastuti, k. p., alviawati, e., aristin, n. f., angriani, p., abbas, e. w., syahril, & muhaimin, m. (2023). the livelihood of farmers cultivating fire-prone peatlands: keeping the ecology and economy sustainable. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3), 215–224. 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4853 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 3 (2023): 215-224. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5937-2309 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0813-7699 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-3468-3954 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1551-6654 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6847-8834 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6963-6515 https://orcid.org/0009-0005-6765-2745 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4957-6225 mailto:xxxxxxxdeasyarisanty@ulm.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 215-224 216 1. introduction peatlands contribute to biodiversity, climate control, and people’s welfare. the mismanagement of peatlands has led to a decrease in environmental quality, which also means a decrease in environmental functions. one event causing a decline in environmental quality is the frequent land fires on peatlands (elia & yulianti, 2022). the mismanagement of peatlands, which leads to fires, includes deforestation and excessive drainage (kiely et al., 2021; silvianingsih, hairiah, suprayogo, & van noordwijk, 2021). turning shrubs into plantations on peatlands has been proven effective in reducing fires by around 40-55% (horton, lehtinen, & kummu, 2022). farmers have often been blamed for peat burning, yet the peat burning farmers do is more controllable than the fires that occur in unmanaged shrubs on peatlands. unmanaged peatlands with shrubs as the ground cover tend to be left unattended, making the area prone to fires (arisanty, rajiani, hastuti, putro, & abbas, 2022). farmers who cultivate peatlands work to maintain economic and ecological sustainability, so the peatland cultivated by farmers has a lower probability of uncontrolled fires (arisanty et al., 2022; elia & yulianti, 2022). peatlands have good potential for agriculture. shallow peatlands can be planted with crops, including vegetables (surahman, shivakoti, & soni, 2017). crops and horticultural plants were planted on peatlands from the 1970s up to the 1990s. since the 2000s, plantations have developed rapidly on peatlands. data show that crops and horticultural plants cover 0.5-0.8 million hectares of peatlands, while palm oil plantations cover 2.5-3.0 million hectares (hairani & noor, 2020). frequent land fires damage plants and agricultural land (kiely et al., 2021). the ash that accumulates after peatland fires increase soil ph, organic matter, humic acid content, hydrophobicity, available n, and available k. however, its availability is only temporary because it is quickly reduced and washed away, which results in long-term land degradation (agus et al., 2019; arisanty, jędrasiak, rajiani, & grabara, 2020). peatland degradation affects the direct users of the land and the surrounding community as a whole (rawlins & morris, 2010). peatland degradation reduces the quality of agricultural land, which affects the livelihood of peatland farmers (arisanty et al., 2020; ulya, waluyo, nurlia, rahmat, & martin, 2021; winarno, rohadi, herawati, rahmat, & suwarno, 2020). peatland degradation may cause people to lose their livelihoods (thornton et al., 2020). environmental changes and the effects of such changes on people’s livelihoods are one of the obstacles people have to deal with (nasrnia & ashktorab, 2021). the sustainable livelihood assessment and framework can help to analyze the effects of such environmental changes on livelihoods (hidayat, rajiani, & arisanty, 2022). livelihood sustainability has become crucial in disaster management and mitigation because people’s livelihoods often become vulnerable after a disaster (yang, yang, min, & liu, 2022). this vulnerability also occurs after fires, and suitable countermeasures require the systematic integration of multidimensional variables. the livelihood vulnerability index (lvi) can be used to measure the threat of fire disasters in physical and social environments (baijnath-rodino, kumar, rivera, tran, & banerjee, 2021). the sustainable livelihood framework presents the principal factors affecting people’s livelihoods and the relationship between those factors. this framework is suitable for assessing development and contributes to sustainable livelihoods (sheets, 2001). strategies for sustainable livelihood refer to the process of developing certain activities or skills supported by various social aspects and assets to survive or improve living standards, such as processing various resources or livelihood assets, using possessed capabilities, and taking advantage of opportunities (carney, 1998; masri & prasodjo, 2021). the elements of a livelihood strategy are assets, capabilities, and activities—the three are inseparable (chambers & conway, 1992). these three elements show the dynamic relationship underlying livelihood strategies. the choice of livelihood strategies is based on the assets one has and the situational context (ferdiani, baiquni, & purwohandoyo, 2016). livelihood assets are at the center of the livelihood framework in the context of vulnerability. livelihoods assets consist of human assets (e.g., skills, knowledge, and health), social assets (e.g., networks, membership of groups, relationships of trust, access to institutions), natural assets (e.g., land, water, wildlife, and environmental resources), physical assets (transportation, shelter, water supply, and energy supply), and financial assets (e.g., savings, credit, remittances, and pensions) (arram, 2021; sheets, 2001). peatland fires always occur during the dry season in south kalimantan, and the dry season in banjarbaru is rather severe (arisanty et al., 2020; arisanty et al., 2021; arisanty et al., 2021). the peatland fires in banjarbaru occur in uncultivated peatlands covered with shrubs. the fires sometimes grow too big and reach the adjacent agricultural lands—which indeed affects the livelihood of the farmers (arisanty et al., 2022). since 2016, peatland restoration has taken place in several areas of indonesia. the initiative was started by badan restorasi gambut dan mangrove republik indonesia (brgm) or the peatland and mangrove restoration agency of the republic of indonesia. kalimantan selatan is one of the areas undergoing peatland restoration (yuwati et al., 2021). peatland restoration programs run by brgm consist of rewetting, revegetation, and revitalization of livelihood sources (brgm, 2022; harrison et al., 2020). the revitalization stage of the restoration program is crucial because the aim of revitalization is to improve people’s wealth on fire-prone peatlands; one of the efforts to achieve this is through agricultural activities (brgm, 2022). some areas of fire management priority in south kalimantan include kesatuan hidrologis gambut (khg) or the peat hydrological unit of sungai balangan-sungai batang alai, khg sungai barito-sungai alalak, khg sungai barito-sungai tapin, khg sungai utar-sungai serapat, and khg sungai maluka-sungai martapura. banjarbaru is one of the restoration areas in khg sungai maluka-sungai martapura; the restoration program was established in 2022 and will commence in 2023 (trgd, 2022). banjarbaru is vital because syamsudin noor international airport is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 215-224 217 located in banjarbaru, and peatland fires have wide-reaching effects on people’s livelihoods (arisanty et al., 2022; arisanty et al., 2021; arisanty et al., 2022). peatlands in banjarbaru are planted with crops and horticultural plants. farmers mostly grow local rice, with a total rice field area of 1,834 ha and a productivity of 3.68 tons/ha in 2019 (wahyuni, rosni, & yulianti, 2021). the peatland fires frequently occurring in banjarbaru affect the livelihood sustainability of the local farmers. thus, the present study aims to analyze farmers’ livelihoods on fire-prone peatlands and their efforts to maintain their sustainable livelihoods. 2. materials and methods our study was conducted on fire-prone peatlands in banjarbaru, south kalimantan, indonesia. the area covers the villages of landasan ulin timur and syamsudin noor (arisanty, adyatma, muhaimin, & nursaputra, 2019; arisanty et al., 2020; arisanty et al., 2021; arisanty et al., 2021; arisanty et al., 2022). the study site is presented in figure 1. figure 1. map of the study sites. fires in this area affect farmers as the agricultural land also experiences fires. our sample included 251 farmers. data were collected through observations and questionnaires. the research variables were based on the pentagon of assets (sheets, 2001) consisting of natural (na), social (sa), human (ha), physical (pa), and financial (fa) assets. based on these five assets, we developed a 47-item questionnaire to elicit data from the respondents: 13 items on human assets, 7 items on social assets, 6 items on natural assets, 15 items on physical assets, and 6 items on financial assets. table 1 presents a complete overview of the livelihood asset variables. the livelihood assessment was carried out by assigning a score to each indicator. next, the score of all indicators was calculated based on the response of each respondent. each item was given a score, with 4 as the highest and 1 as the lowest. then, we added up the score each respondent gave for each variable. each variable was classified into one of three categories based on the total score: low, moderate, or high. the classification represents the condition of the local people on each variable and their livelihood. we proceeded with the sustainable livelihood analysis by grouping the score of each respondent on each variable and calculating the percentage for each variable. table 2 illustrates the classification of each variable. principal component analysis (pca) was used to identify the factors with the most significant effect on the livelihood of the farmers in the fire-prone peatlands. pca is an analysis technique for reducing big data with many variables and observations on each variable (kherif & latypova, 2020). we employed spss 22 to conduct the pca. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 215-224 218 table 1. livelihood asset variables. variable statements human assets (ha) most of my family members have graduated from senior high school and higher education (university). the number of working-age family members who have finished school and have an income. i have been a farmer for a long time. i have a side job in addition to my primary job as a farmer. i have sufficient knowledge of farming. i have the skills to run a business related to agriculture. i have the skills to run a business not related to agriculture. i have received training in agricultural management. i am willing to undergo more training in agricultural management. i have specific health issues that may hinder my activities. i know how to get assistance from the government or local organizations to support my livelihood. mention the types of assistance you receive as a farmer. social assets (sa) i join local organizations to increase my assets. the community i live in always considers my suggestions. mention the types of local organizations (farmer groups) you are a member of. i actively participate in local organizations (farmer groups). i am on good terms with government organizations responsible for assistance during difficult times. i am on good terms with service providers for farmers (the ones who supply fertilizers, pesticides, and others). i usually participate in programs or activities held by the government or nongovernment organizations (ngos). natural assets (na) there is abundant land for agriculture. peatlands are beneficial to farmers. mention the agricultural productivity of peatlands during the rainy season. mention the agricultural productivity of peatlands during the dry season. the available land can be used to plant any plants. land productivity has been decreasing recently. physical assets (pa) land ownership ownership of assets: • houses • cars • motorcycles or tricycles • bikes • televisions • handphones • refrigerators • ac • fans • computers easy access to agricultural land. all farmers have full access to manage the available land or areas. the agricultural land owned is close to the house. i have many farming tools. financial assets (fa) the money i earn from farming is enough for my daily needs. i have received financial assistance from the government to increase my assets. i have a salary/wage, savings, debts, receivables, inheritance, and gifts (blt/basis/lsm). i receive social assistance from the government. i have a family inheritance. i take advantage of the cooperatives. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 215-224 219 table 2. classification of variables based on scores. variable categories low moderate high human assets 13-25 26-38 39-52 social assets 7-13 14-20 21-28 natural assets 6-11 12-17 18-24 physical assets 15-29 30-44 45-60 financial assets 6-11 12-17 18-24 livelihood 47-93 94-140 141-188 3. results and discussion 3.1. the livelihood of farmers cultivating fire-prone peatlands the livelihood index is the result of the accumulation of the values of human assets, social assets, natural assets, physical assets, and financial assets. the livelihood of farmers cultivating fire-prone peatlands is presented in table 3. table 3. livelihood of farmers cultivating fire-prone peatlands. assets categories low moderate high percentage (%) human assets 23.2 71.7 5.1 social assets 75.3 23.5 1.2 natural assets 7.2 72.1 20.7 physical assets 2.4 52.2 45.4 financial assets 94.4 5.3 0.3 livelihood 7.2 92.8 0 human assets include the levels of education, knowledge, and skills farmers have in cultivating their land. human assets are indispensable in managing other livelihood assets. for the majority, human assets are in the moderate category, with 71.7% percent. although the farmers had a low educational level, only elementary school, they had good knowledge of farming. they had been cultivating the peatlands for 6-10 years. they understood the problems in the peatlands and how to solve them. they had received training from extension officials on agricultural land management, and they received assistance in the form of fertilizers, seeds, and farming tools. the data in table 3 confirm that human assets can support the livelihood of farmers cultivating peatlands. social assets include social networks farmers join, either formally or informally. these social networks support the sustainable livelihoods of farmers on fire-prone peatlands. for most, social assets are in the low category, with 75.3% of farmers having a low level of social assets because they had not joined farmer groups, cooperatives, or other organizations. the farmers did not participate actively in the activities of farmer groups, government organizations, or non-government organizations. social assets are important because they help farmers exchange knowledge, experience, and ideas about managing peatlands. as such, our respondents were found to have low social assets. these farmers need to improve their participation in social organizations to improve their livelihoods. natural assets include land ownership and the existence of peatlands that are beneficial to farmers. the agricultural peatlands farmers own support their livelihood sustainability. natural assets support farmers’ livelihoods. the farmers owned large peatland farms (> 2 ha) to support their livelihood, although they confirmed that fires had decreased their land’s productivity. they could plant various short-age horticultural plants such as chilis, tomatoes, mustard greens, sweet potatoes, cassava, bananas, and oranges (figure 2). the peatland planted with various crops and horticultural plants was able to support the farmers’ livelihood. the farmers plant throughout the year so they have income all year round. the farmers were able to solve the issue of peatland fires—they managed to keep their agricultural land free from fires and prevent the fires from spreading widely. the farmers used the existing drilled wells to wet agricultural land and extinguish fires when they occurred (arisanty et al., 2022). farming on the fire-prone peatlands actually reduces the potential for the land to burn because farmers take good care of the land to prevent it from catching fire. in addition, the government has provided counseling to farmers about how to prepare land without burning. fireprone areas on peatlands are those that are not managed properly and are overgrown with shrubs (arisanty et al., 2022; arisanty et al., 2022). physical assets refer to the facilities the farmers have to support their livelihood sustainability. physical assets include property, land, and facilities that support their efforts to cultivate the fire-prone peatlands. table 3 illustrates the farmers’ physical assets. overall, their physical assets belonged to the moderate category, as much as 52.2%. the farmers had sufficient facilities, including houses, agricultural land, vehicles, and farming tools, to support their work. the farmers owned the agricultural land, so the income from farming activities was their primary income. the close distance and easy access to the agricultural land from their homes helped them cultivate their land well; this had a significant impact on the livelihood of the farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 215-224 220 figure 2. peatlands planted with horticultural plants. financial assets include the income generated from agricultural and other activities, including inheritance and social assistance from the government. table 3 shows the financial assets of farmers that contribute to their livelihoods. their financial assets are in the low category. the farmers stated that their income from agriculture was sufficient for their daily lives. however, they did not receive social assistance from the government to improve their livelihoods. farmers also stated that they had no inheritance or other income aside from agricultural activities. farmers did not take advantage of cooperatives in terms of savings and loans for agricultural activities. thus, agricultural activities were farmers’ main job and main source of income. it would be advisable for them to take advantage of cooperatives to increase their financial assets, especially by adding assets for agricultural activities. table 3 shows that the overall livelihood level of the farmers was in the moderate category (92.8%), which means that the farmers’ assets could support their livelihoods. in other words, although their agricultural land was in a fireprone peatland area, it could support them. the farmers were used to cultivating the area and understood what to do. they were skillful farmers who practiced various mitigation efforts to prevent fires from damaging their land. various assets help support sustainable livelihoods on the fire-prone peatland, in particular the physical and natural assets, as elaborated in figure 3. table 4. sustainable livelihood approach (sla) level of peatland farmers. aspect of sla value (%) human assets 61 social assets 42 natural assets 71 physical assets 81 financial assets 36 figure 3. level of sustainable livelihood approach (sla). table 4 and figure 3 describe the livelihood sustainability of farmers cultivating peatlands. physical and natural assets play a very significant role in farmers’ sustainable livelihoods. ownership of a large land area (> 2 ha), asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 215-224 221 availability of agricultural tools, and easy access and close distance to the agricultural land make it easy for farmers to manage the land to improve their lives. the factors with the most significant effects on the livelihoods of the farmers were identified using principal component analysis (pca). the factors affecting sustainable livelihoods are human assets, social assets, natural assets, physical assets, and financial assets. all assets have a correlation value > 0.5, so all assets were included in the calculation (table 5). table 6 illustrates the number of components formed. the variance column has 2 components formed: component 1 with a value of 31.140 and component 2 with a value of 27.091. the two components determine the factors with the most significant effects on the livelihood of the farmers. the effect of components 1 and 2 on the livelihood of farmers is 58.232 or 58.232%. the variables formed as factor variables include human, social, natural, physical, and financial assets. table 5. anti-image matrices. variables ha sa na pa fa anti-image covariance ha 0.777 -0.342 -0.106 -0.050 -0.048 sa -0.342 0.786 0.009 -0.026 -0.093 na -0.106 0.009 0.870 -0.211 0.216 pa -0.050 -0.026 -0.211 0.929 0.000 fa -0.048 -0.093 0.216 0.000 0.920 anti-image correlation ha 0.528a -0.438 -0.128 -0.059 -0.057 sa -0.438 0.527a 0.011 -0.030 -0.110 na -0.128 0.011 0.517a -0.234 0.241 pa -0.059 -0.030 -0.234 0.584a 0.000 fa -0.057 -0.110 0.241 0.000 0.533a note: a. measures of sampling adequacy (msa). table 6. total variance explained. component initial eigenvalues extraction sums of squared loadings total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % 1 1.557 31.140 31.140 1.557 31.140 31.140 2 1.355 27.091 58.232 1.355 27.091 58.232 3 0.884 17.681 75.913 0.884 17.681 75.913 4 0.667 13.341 89.254 0.667 13.341 89.254 5 0.537 10.746 100.000 0.537 10.746 100.000 note: extraction method: principal component analysis. table 7 describes the variables that affect the livelihood level. the first factors that influence the livelihood level are human and social assets, with correlation values of 0.805 and 0.753, respectively. the second factors are natural, physical, and financial assets, with correlation values of 0.702, 0.470, and 0.703, respectively. table 7. component matrixa. variables component 1 2 ha 0.805 0.175 sa 0.753 0.340 na 0.388 0.702 pa 0.423 0.470 fa 0.106 0.703 note: extraction method: principal component analysis. a. 2 components extracted. 3.2. efforts to maintain the sustainable livelihood of farmers cultivating fire-prone peatlands since the farmers had a moderate livelihood level, it should be easy for them to make various efforts to improve their livelihood, including improving their human, social, and financial assets and maintaining and improving their physical and natural assets. human assets can be improved through skill improvement in cultivating the peatland, such as by participating in extension activities. the farmers can also increase their expertise in combining fertilizers, for example, by utilizing various types of manure widely available in the environment where they live. the farmers can also innovate in their agriculture activities, for instance by planting according to the season and diversifying plant species. community livelihoods derived from cultivating the fire-prone peatlands are determined by five factors: human assets, social assets, natural assets, physical assets, and financial assets. physical and natural assets play the most significant roles in the livelihoods of the farmers cultivating the peatlands. physical assets are in the medium-high category; however, they can be optimized by equipping farmers with various high-tech agricultural equipment. in addition, less productive land overgrown with shrubs can be converted into productive agricultural land. farmers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 215-224 222 who manage the previously less productive land can increase their income and prevent the fires that often occur in these areas. the farmers have large areas of land and plant various crops to make the land productive. in addition, they also have a relatively complete set of farming tools that make it easy for them to manage their land. adapting the utilization of agricultural land by adjusting plant varieties, water and fertilizer management, agricultural financing, and agrotechnical support can be used to deal with livelihood risks (kuang, jin, he, ning, & wan, 2020). innovative agricultural technology is one key to success in agriculture on peatlands. in addition, an understanding of land characteristics and water management is essential (sulaeman, 2019). social assets can be increased by optimizing the role of farmer groups. farmer groups can provide seeds and fertilizer and initiate knowledge-sharing sessions about managing peatlands. the farmers also need to take advantage of the existing cooperatives to increase the role of associations and farmer groups, which in turn will increase social assets in agriculture. financial assets can also be increased with the help of cooperatives. cooperatives can offer savings and loans to increase capital for farming. many of the farmers lacked capital, so the role of cooperatives is very important. the farmers can also use cooperatives to sell their agricultural products to buyers. social and financial assets played a minor role in the farmers’ livelihoods. the farmers did not take advantage of cooperatives to increase their capital through the loans offered. such loans would help the farmers improve their agricultural activities to increase their income (mariyono, 2019). cooperatives can also help the farmers to sell their agricultural products. social networks are highly important in supporting people’s livelihoods (de bruin, dengerink, & van vliet, 2021). cooperatives can function as social networks that can increase farmers’ livelihoods because cooperatives can provide the necessary capital and network to market agricultural products. social assets must be managed better through farmer groups. farmer groups can be a way to share knowledge among farmers and solve the fire issue. members of a farmer group can work together to tackle fires on their land. although the group masyarakat peduli api (mpa) or fire care community helps manage fires, its members are not farmers. mpa consists of community members who voluntarily control fires; they have been trained and can be empowered to assist in forest and land fire control activities. its members are volunteers organized by badan penanggulangan bencana daerah (bpbp), the national agency for disaster countermeasures, or the community’s initiative (arisanty et al., 2021). farmer groups may cooperate with mpa to prevent and control fires on peatlands. natural assets can be increased by making the best use of land to produce all year round. agricultural activities using the innovative surjan system can improve livelihood sustainability. peatlands in swamps are inundated during the rainy season, so not all plants can be grown in such areas. the inundated land must be raised by constructing walls or mounds, so the land becomes high and dry. this system is more economically profitable because the land can be planted with various types of plants, including both seasonal and vegetable crops. surjan is the system implemented in peatlands cultivated as agricultural land, which are usually inundated in the rainy season and prone to fire in the dry season. the surjan system is beneficial because it can be implemented all year round to grow various crops. in this system, farmers plant annual crops on dry land, and flooded areas are planted with rice and fish (sulaeman, 2019). various plants can be grown, such as rice, oranges, vegetables, and others, in a way that is integrated with other activities, such as fish ponds (kurnain, mahbub, septiana, makalew, & murjani, 2022). this system can also be implemented by planting rice in paddy fields and oranges on dry land. in addition, the system can be combined with chicken and duck farming and fisheries. good land management can improve the community’s economy because harvests occur throughout the year, which increases the farmers’ livelihood sustainability. this can improve the livelihood of farmers cultivating peatlands because their land becomes productive all year round. the farmers cultivating peatlands had quite good human assets. they commonly have good knowledge and skills for managing agricultural activities on peatlands because they have been doing so for more than 10 years. the skills and knowledge farmers have on peatland cultivation and management significantly impact the sustainability of peatlands (samsudin, puspitaloka, rahman, chandran, & baral, 2020). the agricultural land on the peatlands has been cultivated for a long time and has become the primary source of income for the farmers, meaning that sustainability has been achieved. the farmers work on their land full-time because they have no other skills and have low educational backgrounds (elementary and junior high schools). their skills in managing the peatlands to become productive areas have turned the peatlands into something valuable. the farmers can provide their children with a better education using the agricultural income. however, regeneration has become a major problem because their grown-up children prefer to work in other sectors. agriculture is seen as an old-man activity, meaning only the elderly still farm. there is a need to create agricultural innovations to attract the young generation to farming. by utilizing the peatlands as productive land, the farmers help prevent fires. the farmers ensure that no fires attack their land and have prepared a mitigation system, using drilled wells and irrigation, to prevent fires from damaging their land (arisanty et al., 2022). uncultivated land is overgrown with shrubs and is usually left unattended so it has a higher risk of fires (arisanty et al., 2021). the farmers’ agricultural activities offer two benefits: livelihoods for the people (the economy) and a reduction in the risk of fires (the ecology). 4. conclusion physical and natural assets significantly affect the livelihood sustainability of farmers cultivating fire-prone peatlands. ownership of large areas of peatland, adequate agricultural equipment, and easy access to peatland farms mean that peatlands play a significant role in farmers’ livelihoods. farmers’ knowledge and skills in managing peatlands also significantly impact the sustainability of community livelihoods. nevertheless, farmers do not take asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 215-224 223 sufficient advantage of the existing cooperatives and farmer groups as social networks and a way to increase their capital. funding: this research is supported by the ministry of education, culture, research, and technology of indonesia (grant number: 026/e5/pg.02.00.pl/2023) and the faculty of teacher training and education, lambung mangkurat university, indonesia (grant number: 615/un8/pg/2023) institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the lambung mangkurat university, indonesia has granted approval for this study (ref. no. 06). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references agus, c., azmi, f. f., ilfana, z. r., wulandari, d., rachmanadi, d., harun, m. k., & yuwati, t. w. 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(eds.), tropical peatland eco-management. singapore: springer. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1108/jeee-06-2017-0046 https://doi.org/10.29244/jskpm.v5i5.881 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2021.107817 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2009.02.022 https://doi.org/10.3390/land10080856 https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-805454-3.00015-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2020.08.018 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 578 forecasting import demand of table grapes: empirical evidence from thailand chalermpon jatuporn a patana sukprasertb, siros tongchurec, vasu suvanvihok a, supat thongkaew d a school of economics, sukhothai thammathirat open university, thailand b faculty of agriculture, kasetsart university, thailand c faculty of agriculture and life sciences, chandrakasem ratchabhat university, thailand d crop integration business, c. p. group, thailand  chalermpon.jat@stou.ac.th; jatuporn.stou@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 27-mar-2020 accepted: 04-jun-2020 online available: 20-jul2020 keywords: box-jenkins, seasonal forecasting, table grape abstract the purpose of this study is to forecast the import demand of table grapes of thailand using monthly time series from january 2007 to april 2020. the adf unit root test is used for stationarity checking, and seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (sarima) is applied to forecast the import demand of table grapes. the results revealed that the integration of time series was in the first difference for non-seasonal and seasonal order. the best-fitted forecasting model was sarima(1,1,3)(2,1,0)12. the forecasted period for the next eight months showed the import demand of table grapes of thailand that is slightly decreased by an average of 11.398 percent, with overall expected to decrease by an average of 15.218 percent in 2020. contribution/ originality the forecasting of table grapes in thailand is less studied in the literature. seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average model is appropriate to forecast the time series composed of trend and seasonal elements that is applied in this study. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.578.586 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: chalermpon jatuporn, patana sukprasert, siros tongchure, vasu suvanvihok and supat thongkaew (2020). forecasting import demand of table grapes: empirical evidence from thailand. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 578-586. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 578-586 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:chalermpon.jat@stou.ac.th mailto:jatuporn.stou@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.578.586 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5524-3945 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 578-586 579 1. introduction grapes have long been an important fruit for the world’s consumers. it is an economic crop that generates income for farmers. grapes can be eaten fresh or processed into various products. it contains medicinal properties to prevent disease and can be used as a component in cosmetic products, and so on. it has been assumed that grapes were imported to thailand and planted since the reign of king rama v, in which grape varieties started to have been developed. the table grape varieties, consisting of white malaga, black opal, and cardinal, are largely planted and consumed in thailand. at present, there have been successive demand for grapes, but the production is not sufficient to meet domestic consumption. according to the 2018’s statistics, thailand has imported more than 118,316 tons of table grapes from foreign countries, equivalent to 4,854 million baht or accounted for 14.41 percent compared to all imported value of fruits and products, while thailand’s grape production capacity can supply only 14,305 tons. the top exporters of table grapes to thailand are china, australia, peru, the united states, and india, respectively (department of agricultural extension 2019; office of the permanent secretary 2019; office of agricultural economics, 2020). this data shows that there is still a large amount of excess demand occurring within the country each year. the main reasons that thai farmers do not grow grapes or with low yield are attributed to the highly paid investment and relatively high production cost, such as a plastic house, net house coverings, labor wages, fertilizers, pesticides, pest control costs, maintenance costs, insufficient knowledge and sources of funds. as such, these hinder small farmers from growing grapes. the grape planting, compared to other crops, has a high risk due to diseases, pests, as well as rising climate change that easily causes harm. to circumvent these problems needs a lot of capital; however, grapes’ price that farmers sell has been unstable. besides, the import of grapes from abroad is also at a lower cost than domestic; thus, some people import table grapes from foreign countries instead of investing in domestic planting. forecasting import demand for table grapes of thailand is an important plan in dealing with domestic consumption needs. according to a review of documents and related research, few studies have been published which examine these issues. for example, lertsivanont and boonserm (2014) forecasted the import demand of table grapes from china using quarterly time series over the 4th quarter of 2003 to the 4th quarter of 2012 with a total of 40 samples which were analyzed using the vector autoregressive model (var) followed by the forward data forecast until 2015. the results of this study show that per capita income determined the import demand of grapes from china. in other words, if people have more income, the import demand for grapes from china will be more likely to increase until 2015. however, studies related to forecasting of agricultural production by using time series analysis have a large number of case studies, such as jatuporn and sukprasert (2016) developed the forecasting models of rubber production and export quantity of thailand. the statistical methodology consists of three techniques, namely, a regression model with seasonal dummy and time trend, box-jenkins concepts, and exponential smoothing. to compare the efficiency of the forecasting models, jatuporn and sukprasert (2016) used the root mean square error (rmse) to determine the best-fitted model and then forecasted the data forward for 16 months. the empirical results found that the regression with seasonal dummy and time trend is the best-fitted model based on the lowest value of the rmse benchmark. moreover, keerativibool (2014) forecasted the export value of thai jasmine rice using monthly time series, starting from june 2002 to july 2013, and a total of 134 samples were collected. the study considered three forecasting models by box-jenkins, winters additive exponential smoothing, and combined forecasting method. the study used the mean absolute percentage error (mape) as a criterion for comparing the accuracy of the forecasts. the results indicated that the combined forecasting method is the most accurate method that provides the lowest value of the mape statistics. likewise, masood et al. (2018) used time series models to predict wheat production in pakistan based on linear, quadratic, exponential, s-curve, double exponential smoothing, single exponential smoothing, moving average, and arima. the conclusion of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 578-586 580 masood et al. (2018) showed that arima(2,1,2) was selected as the best forecasting model to predict wheat production in pakistan. numerous studies employed the relationship between actual and forecasted value using the correlation coefficient to explain forecasting model efficiency [see, for instance, lim et al. (2009a), chang et al. (2009), and kulthatpong et al. (2019)]. the objective of this study is to forecast the import demand of table grapes of thailand using the box-jenkins procedure. the akaike criterion and schwarz criterion are utilized to select the fitted model of arima(p,d,q), as of kuo et al. (2008), lim et al. (2009b), and saengwong et al. (2012). in the next section, the research methodology consisting of data, variables, and forecasting model, is explained. then, the results of the empirical study and conclusions as proposed policy suggestions are discussed. 2. methodology the data of this study is the monthly time series, from january 2007 to april 2020, a total of 160 samples are gathered from the information and communication technology center, office of the permanent secretary, ministry of commerce with cooperation from the customs department. for the variable (qgrape), the number of table grape imports is used with the harmonize code of 08061000. the analysis of time series techniques requires the testing of the properties of the time series because erroneous results would probably arise if the data used in the analysis is not stationary (non-stationary process). the problem is called a spurious relationship, which results from the influence of time distorting the outcomes (granger and newbold, 1974). the checking can be examined by various means, such as considering the line graph, correlogram diagram, or statistical testing by using the unit root method. however, analyzing the time series properties of this study using the augmented dickey-fuller (adf) unit root of dickey and fuller (1979, 1981) has been performed in testing the stationarity of the qgrape which can be displayed as the equation (1), (2) and (3), respectively. ∆qgrape,t = β1qgrape,t−1 + ∑ β2∆qgrape,t−i + εt … … … … … … . . (1) p i=1 ∆qgrape,t = α0 + β1qgrape,t−1 + ∑ β2∆qgrape,t−i + εt … … … … … … . . (2) p i=1 ∆qgrape,t = α0 + δt + β1qgrape,t−1 + ∑ β2∆qgrape,t−i + εt … … … … … … . . (3) p i=1 where α, δ and β are identified as the parameters to be estimated, δ is the differencing order, t is the time trend, t is the time period, ε is the error term, and p is the optimal lag selection of ar based on the lowest value of the schwarz criterion. the forecasting models employed the time series method of box et al. (1994) or autoregressive integrated moving average (arima), which is a widely common model for analyzing and forecasting time series data. the method considered the behavior of the data itself in the past to determine the current pattern and predict future information. the model is divided into three components: ar(p), i(d), and ma(q) or arima(p,d,q). the forecasting process using box-jenkins procedure can be divided into four steps (gujarati and porter, 2009): (1) identifying the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 578-586 581 arima(p,d,q) by considering i(d) with the adf unit root and considering ar(p) and ma(q) with the correlogram diagram, respectively, (2) estimating the parameters with maximum likelihood (ml), (3) checking for the serial correlation with ljung-box q statistics (qlb), and (4) forecasting forward for eight months till to december 2020. however, if the arima(p,d,q) is found more than one model. it needs to be selected for the most fitted model using the lowest value of the akaike criterion (ac) and schwarz criterion (sc). arima(p,d,q) was configured by the equation (4). ∆qgrape,t = α0 + ∑ ϕi∆qgrape,t−i + ∑ θjεt−j q j=1 + εt … … … … … … . . (4) p i=1 where p is specified as the past period of qgrape, q is the preceding period of ε, and ϕ and θ are the parameters to be estimated of ar(p) and ma(q), respectively. however, the arima model in equation (4) is fitted for a time series without seasonality. in other words, arima(p,d,q) is a model to predict time series that contains only the elements of a time trend. according to the variable (qgrape), it contains the influence of time trend and seasonal components. therefore, box et al. (1994) proposed the seasonal arima model or sarima(p,d,q)(p,d,q)s to predict the time series with time trend and seasonal elements by including additional p, d, q and s as sar(p), seasonal order of integration or i(d), sma(q) and seasonal frequency (s), respectively. sarima(p,d,q)(p,d,q)s can be configured by the equation (5). ϕp(b)p(bs)(1 − b)d(1 − bs)dqgrape,t = θq(b)θq(bs)εt … … … … … … . . (5) where ϕp(b) and θq(b) are structured with no seasonal components of ar(p) and ma(q) respectively, while p(bs) and θq(bs) are structures that contain seasonal components of sar(p) and sma(q), respectively (makridakis et al., 1998; jatuporn et al., 2016). 3. results and discussion in time series analysis, it is necessary to examine the properties of the time series to prevent the spurious relationship because such problems will skew the results from the actual values. therefore, in the process of testing the time series of qgrape, the test for stationarity by dickey and fuller (1979, 1981), the adf unit root method was used. the null hypothesis (h0) is that the variable is a non-stationary time series. if the output does not have a statistical significance level of 0.05, that is, the time series is non-stationarity, we have to find the first differencing order of the data and then retake the test until the data is stationarity.1 testing for stationarity by using the adf unit root is shown in table 1. the model is based under three conditions: (1) the adf model without constant (α) and time trend (t), (2) the adf model with constant (α), and (3) the adf model with constant (α) and time trend (t). the results showed that the variable (qgrape) provided the t-ratio equal to (1.063), (-1.074), and (-1.605), respectively. the results of the analysis could not reject the null hypothesis of non-stationarity at a significance level of 0.05. it can be concluded that the qgrape time series is not stationarity at the normal level stage. then, the data is converted to the first difference and then tested again, which specified the statistics of the t-ratio equal to (-12.097), (-12.311), and (-12.292), respectively. the results of the analysis rejected the null hypothesis at a significance level of 0.01, that is, the qgrape time series is stationarity with the order of integration or i(d) is equal to i(1). however, the qgrape time series contains seasonal components with the frequency of the seasonality (s) equal to 12. therefore, there is a need to try out stationarity of the seasonal or i(d) as well. also, the results of the analysis in 1 the data was analyzed using the gretl program (gnu regression, econometrics, and time-series library) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 578-586 582 table 1 showed that i(d) of the qgrape time series ranked the seasonal stationarity as the first seasonal difference with rejected the null hypothesis at a significance level of 0.01, that is, i(d) is equal to i(1) as specified the statistics of the t-ratio equal to (-5.254), (-5.230) and (-5.207), respectively. table 1: the results of the adf unit root test model non-seasonal i(0) non-seasonal i(1) seasonal i(1) t-ratio p-value t-ratio p-value t-ratio p-value adf without α + t qgrape 1.063 0.925 -12.097 <0.001 -5.254 <0.001 adf with α qgrape -1.074 0.728 -12.311 <0.001 -5.230 <0.001 adf with α + t qgrape -1.605 0.791 -12.292 <0.001 -5.207 <0.001 adf without α + t, adf with α, and adf with α + t refer to the unit root models from equation (1), (2), and (3), respectively. i(0), i(1), and i(d) refer to the order of integration of level stage for i(0), the first difference for i(1), and the first seasonal difference for i(d), respectively the results of the stationary testing of the qgrape time series can be concluded that the stationary rating i(d) is equal to i(1), the stationarity of the seasonal i(d) is equal to i(1) and the frequency of seasonality (s) is equal to 12; thus the model of sarima(p,d,q)(p,d,q)s primarily represents sarima(p,1,q)(p,1,q)12. then, the forecasting model was determined by considering the correlogram diagram for decision making, and configured by the parameters with the next highest probability method. table 2 presents the results of the parameter estimation using ml estimator of six models of sarima(p,d,q)(p,d,q)s, which are fitted for forecasting based on the coefficients ϕ, θ, φ and θ at a significance level of 0.05. all the models in table 2 were no serial correlation problem because the outputs from the qlb statistics could not reject the null hypothesis of the model without serial correlation. finally, sarima(1,1,3)(2,1,0)12 is selected as the appropriate forecasting model because it shows the lowest value of the ac and sc statistics as (2744.625) and (2762.568), respectively. the forecasting results for import demand of table grapes of thailand (qgrape) using the model of sarima(1,1,3)(2,1,0)12 found that the number of table grapes consumed in thailand during the remaining eight months of the year 2020 is 98,863.572 tons, which decreased by 11.398 percent when compared to the same period of the previous year 2019. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 379-391 583 table 2: the results of sarima(p,d,q)(p,d,q)s variable coefficients of sarima(p,d,q)(p,d,q)s (1,1,3)(2,1,0)12 (2,1,3)(0,1,1)12 (2,1,3)(1,1,0)12 (2,1,9)(0,1,1)12 (9,1,3)(0,1,1)12 (12,1,3)(0,1,0)12 ϕ1 -0.302* ϕ2 -0.197* -0.231* -0.168* -0.177* -0.191* ϕ9 0.171* ϕ12 -0.509* θ1 -0.347* -0.371* -0.389* -0.383* -0.396* θ2 -0.333* θ3 -0.447 -0.514* -0.489* -0.469* -0.506* -0.482* θ9 0.261* φ1 -0.763* -0.525* φ2 -0.381* θ1 -0.643* -0.698* -0.627* q6 (p-value) 2.582(0.108) 1.651(0.438) 0.719(0.698) 1.750(0.186) 1.530(0.216) 1.277(0.528) q12 (p-value) 9.958(0.191) 11.328(0.184) 14.157(0.078) 9.068(0.248) 8.303(0.307) 15.066(0.058) ac 2744.625 2748.069 2760.822 2744.802 2746.142 2760.596 sc 2762.568 2763.021 2775.774 2762.745 2764.085 2775.548 * denotes the statistical significance at 5% level. qlb denotes the ljung-box q statistics. ac and sc denote the akaike criterion and schwarz criterion ϕ, θ, φ, and θ denotes the estimated parameters of ar(p), ma(q), sar(p) and sma(q), respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 379-391 584 4. concluding remarks the purpose of this study is to forecast the import demand of table grapes of thailand using the box-jenkins procedure. the analysis of the fitting forecasting model is performed by considering the lowest value of the ac and sc statistics, which is sarima(1,1,3)(2,1,0)12 and then predicting for the next eight months to see the trend of demand for table grapes consumed in thailand. furthermore, the efficiency of the forecasting model sarima(p,d,q)(p,d,q)s, according to the study of lim et al. (2009a), chang et al. (2009) and kulthatpong et al. (2019), was analyzed from the correlation coefficient that can explain the relationship between the actual value and forecasted value. it was found that the forecasting model of sarima(1,1,3)(2,1,0)12, which was established, provides the forecasted value when compared to the actual value with the correlation coefficient equal to 0.925. this result suggests that the forecasting model can explain the correlation with the actual value (qgrape) up to 92.580 percent. the findings of this empirical study present that the import demand of table grapes to thailand from january to april 2020 based on actual value decreased by 30.299 percent as well as the whole year of 2020 is expected to decrease by 15.218 percent when compared to the same period of the previous year 2019. the dramatic decline in the import quantity of table grapes is the result of a coronavirus disease (covid-19) that has decreased domestic demand. the import of table grapes to thailand has still massively existed. the main reason is that the production is insufficient for domestic consumption. the investment of farmers for grape plantation involves high production costs and intricate management. given the climate change, insect, and pest epidemic, farmers who need to grow grapes in the plastic house with net house coverings require more efficient production control, which causes more production costs. following the study of promchon et al. (2018), it was found that many farmers stopped planting grapes and grew other crops instead. at present, the price that farmers sell does not encourage farmers to grow grapes due to its high risks. based on empirical data, it was found that the import price of table grapes during the past five years (2015 2019) is likely to decrease by an average of 2.866 percent per year. moreover, the import price of table grapes from abroad has lower than the domestic price of 7.971% in 2018. therefore, entrepreneurs tend to import table grape from abroad to meet the needs of domestic consumption. the plan of planting grapes in response to domestic demand must be aligned with the imported quantity; otherwise, it will affect the price at which farmers could sell and their occupational future. the study suggests that the effective production system must be improved in some aspects, especially the planting of grapes in the plastic house with net house coverings that help produce higher quality products and provides a reasonable price with good quality. besides, growing grapes in the plastic house with net house coverings can also reduce losses due to diseases, pests, climate fluctuations, and so on. however, the investment in building a plastic house with net coverings to grow grapes is relatively high. if the government sector comes to assist with low-interest loans or has crop insurance programs for grape growers, it will help them to bear a risk of growing grapes. moreover, the government should assist in the development of grape production technology, especially the development of grape varieties to withstand diseases and pests or tolerate climate fluctuations. for future research recommendations, there should be more studies analyzing the efficiency of grape production and, cost and benefit of grape plantation with technologies to find the ways to produce the most efficient and the optimal cost with good product quality. finally, risk management of grape plantation should, therefore, be performed to support farmers to grow the table grapes. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 578-586 585 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references box, g. e. p., jenkins, g. m., & reinsel, g. c. 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(2012). an analysis of taiwanese livestock prices: empirical time series approaches. journal of animal and veterinary advances, 11(23), 4340-4346. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 109 an assessment of the use of agricultural marketing extension among extension methods: insight from jordan radi altarawneh a, ali al-sharafat a, mohammad altarawneh a a department of agricultural economics and extension, faculty of agriculture, jerash university, jordan  m.tarawneh@jpu.edu.jo (corresponding author) article history: received: 20-dec-2019 accepted: 02-mar-2020 online available: 24-mar2020 keywords: agricultural extension, public extension agents, marketing extension, jordan abstract this study aimed at assessing the use of agricultural marketing extension services among extension methods provided by public agricultural extension agents in jordan. a sample survey of public agricultural extension agents was conducted covering the whole agricultural directorates in the country. the survey employed a structured questionnaire with pre-coded questions. the entire sample consists of 107 agricultural extension agents. to achieve its goals qualitative as well as quantitative analytical procedures were adopted in this study. a four point likert-scales was used to compute the respondents overall mean score. the study provided empirical evidence about the lack of agricultural marketing extension among extension methods used by public extension agents in jordan. public extension agents in jordan consider agricultural marketing extension with low priority during their extensive activity. public agricultural extension activities should be directed to enhance marketing extension activities. extension methods such as newspapers, radio, tv, mobile, internet and experts systems should be strongly considered to spread marketing knowledge to the farmers. public agricultural extension activities should be directed to enhance marketing extension activities. extension methods such as newspapers, radio, tv, mobile, internet and experts systems should be strongly considered to spread marketing knowledge to the farmers. contribution/ originality in jordan perspective, it is the first contribution to the literature regarding marketing extension. so, it provides a pioneer model for extension agents who may be less familiar with marketing extension activities. the results of the paper characterize all possible issues providing in the long term a basis for devising useful and helpful extension structures beyond what is addressed in the paper. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.109.119 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: radi altarawneh, ali al-sharafat and mohammad altarawneh (2020). an assessment of the use of agricultural marketing extension among extension methods: insight from jordan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 109-119. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 109-119 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:m.tarawneh@jpu.edu.jo http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.109.119 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 109-119 110 1. introduction in agricultural activities, adopting new technologies is crucial in raising productivity (morris, 2007). lack of information provided to farmers will result in low adoption rates of new technologies needed for better production practices which will end in achieving poor outcomes (anderson and feder, 2003). one of the most considered tools in delivering knowledge and skills to improve farmers capacity in adopting new technologies related to advanced agricultural production is agricultural extension service (anderson and feder, 2004). development and dissemination of new agricultural production technologies are the only mechanism to achieve agricultural productivity growth (asfaw et al., 2012). providing information for farmers and educating them about applying new technologies is the main goal of the agricultural extension services providers (rivera et al., 2006; anderson and feder, 2004). fao (2010) defined agricultural extension as; “systems that should facilitate the access of farmers, their organizations and other market actors to knowledge, information and technologies; facilitate their interaction with partners in research, education, agribusiness, and other relevant institutions; and assist them to develop their own technical, organizational and management skills and practices”. various studies revealed that agricultural extension services contributed to increased productivity and farm income (huffman, 1976; owens et al., 2003). lee et al., (2017) stated that extension increases not only farmers’ direct output, but also allocative ability in crop production. improved productivity is one of the most important contributions of agricultural extension activities (birkhaeuser et al., 1991). anderson and feder (2004) argued that agricultural extension is one of the most important systems to reduce the productivity differential. onwuka et al. (2017) concluded that extension services have increased farmers’ productivity, income and also improved their welfare. swanson (2008) also argued that the extension service goes beyond technology transfer to general community development. among many agricultural extension services the concept and practice of marketing extension have not yet deeply rooted in the public extension service (shepherd, 2007). of one of its well-known reports, oxfam america (2011) reported that; "there is critical knowledge and skills gaps in market oriented extension and communication skills”. the report confirmed the need for a certain level of competencies and skills of public agricultural extension agents to provide market oriented extension services farmers. a well-developed public agricultural extension system is critical to have access to proper knowledge about markets (undp, 2012). it is very important to investigate the effects of public marketing extension services as well as to analyze if these services raise agricultural output and assist farmers to make more revenue and profit. a study conducted by alhabbab and alrimai (2002) showed that 73% of the agricultural producers in jordan indicated their need for marketing guidance. this study is an attempt to assess the use of public agricultural marketing extension among extension methods in jordan. 2. the agricultural sector in jordan in jordan, according to the jordanian ministry of agriculture (moa), the agricultural sector is one of the most important sectors contributing to country’s economy. its importance is not only limited to creating farming jobs. it contributes to the kingdom’s exports and gdp (moa, 2017). despite its noticed importance for the country, due to the scarcity of water, agriculture has been declining as a component of the overall economy for years. it consumes around 70% of jordan’s water resources. according to escwa (2016) the agriculture and food sector contributes to the livelihood of about a quarter of the active population in jordan. the jordanian ministry of agriculture (moa) agricultural statistical records showed that the value of the agricultural gross domestic product (agdp) reached 1137 million usd at current prices in the year 2018 constituting about 3.8% of the country’s gross domestic product (gdp). the agdp growth rate asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 109-119 111 for the current decade exceeded 18%. approximately 60% of the agricultural production in jordan is used as intermediate goods for other sectors. the total added value in the national economy resulting from the cross-linking of the agricultural sector with other sectors is estimated at 3.76 billion usd, representing 16% of the country’s gdp. the value of agricultural exports exceeded 0.7 billion usd constituting about 20% of the total exports value of the country (moa, 2018). figures 1, 2 and 3 show development of areas (in m2) of each of the three main components of the agricultural sector in jordan from 2013 – 2017, while figures 4, 5 and 6 show development of the main livestock components for the period 2008 2017. figure 1: development of field crops areas in jordan (2003-2017) figure 2: development of fruit trees areas in jordan (2003-2017) figure 3: development of vegetables areas in jordan (2003-2017) 0 500000 1000000 1500000 2000000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 a r ea in m 2 year 760000 780000 800000 820000 840000 860000 880000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 a r ea in m 2 year 0 100000 200000 300000 400000 500000 600000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 a r ea in m 2 year asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 109-119 112 figure 4: development of sheep number in jordan (2008-2017) figure 5: development of goats number in jordan (2008-2017) figure 6: development of cattle number in jordan (2008-2017) as showed in the figures above, the largest areas were cultivated field crops followed by fruit trees and then vegetables. decline in the areas cultivated with two of the three components is noticed. the areas cultivated with field crops declined from 1184.23 million m2 in 2003 to 736.73 million 0 500000 1000000 1500000 2000000 2500000 3000000 3500000 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 n u m b er year 0 200000 400000 600000 800000 1000000 1200000 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 n u m b er year 0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 90000 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 n u m b er year asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 109-119 113 m2 in 2017. the areas cultivated with fruit trees declined from 857.91 million m2 in 2003 to 780.63 million m2 in 2017. the areas cultivated with vegetables increased from 344.23 million m2 in 2003 to 344.23 m2 in 2017 (moa, 2017). the decline in field crops, fruit trees areas, cattle and goat numbers could be attributed mainly to water scarcity problem in jordan. climate change consequences which largely impacted the agricultural sector also resulted in diminishing farmers’ incomes. agricultural products price fluctuations as well as the increase in farm business input accompanied by agricultural products poor marketing system is another main reason for many farmers to leave agricultural business in both plant and animal production sectors. the agricultural sector in jordan faces a set of obstacles and challenges that affect the development efforts undertaken by the government to develop this sector, the most important of which are (moa, 2018): 1. limited available agricultural resources, such as land resources, the scarcity and low quality of water resources, and the dependence of jordanian agriculture in most of it on rainwater. 2. weak agricultural development policies during the past three decades. 3. evaluating the agricultural sector from the perspective of its direct contribution to the gross domestic product, and neglecting the main role of the sector in economic, social and rural development. 4. high indebtedness of the agricultural sector, represented by the indebtedness of the farmers, which led to the weak ability of farmers to adopt modern production techniques that increase the efficiency of agricultural production and use resources properly. 5. weak government agricultural guidance and the lack of financial and human resources allocated to it in several agricultural fields, especially with regard to adopting modern agricultural techniques and methods. 6. decline in marketing outlets for jordanian products to neighboring countries as a result of factors related to the conditions in these countries, such as syria and iraq. 7. continuing deterioration of the vegetation covers of the natural pasture land and the decline of their productive capacities. 3. public agricultural extension in jordan in jordan, the public extension service body is the most popular regarding providing agricultural extension services. providing agricultural extension services was one of the most important functions of the jordanian moa when established in 1939. despite of this, institutionalization of the extension services was realized in 1954 by creating a division of agricultural extension followed by establishment of the department of rural in 1961, which was named the department of agricultural extension in 1962, which in turn merged with the department of scientific research in 1970 and renamed the department of agricultural research and extension. this merger sought to enhance cooperation between researchers and extension agents. in 1986 the national center for research and transfer of technology (ncartt) was established to replace the department of agricultural research and extension. the ncartt consisted of five divisions; one of them was the department of agricultural extension which was separated in 1992 to a new body named the department of agricultural extension and information. the main duties of these bodies were providing advisory services to farmers in order to promote agricultural production, to achieve agricultural policy objectives, and to disseminate information among farmers in order to change their attitudes and to be more receptive to new agricultural technologies (al-rimawi and arabiat, 1997). in 2008 a merger was undertaken between research and extension function, where the national center for agricultural research and extension was created, ncartt was reformed to resume asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 109-119 114 responsibility for extension and its name was changed to national center for agricultural research and extension (boubaker et al., 2017). in 2018 the public agricultural extension activities in the country were the responsibility of the moa as a separate sector, and the directorates of extension programs, training and educating farmers and documenting farm holdings and records was affiliated with it. the marketing extension programs section was affiliated with the directorate of extension programs (moa, 2018). table 1 shows number of those agents according to their specialization. table 1: number of public agricultural extension agents in jordan (2018) specialization number plant production 47 plant protection 16 agricultural economics and extension 15 soil and irrigation 8 animal production and protection 18 nutrition and food processing 4 orchards 2 forestry 3 farm management 3 veterinary medicine 1 total 117 source: moa (2018) public extension services in jordan have been criticized for low coverage of farmers, including the small number of extension workers, their unsatisfactory technical know-how, as well as their lack of proper program planning and evaluation. some of the factors responsible for unsatisfactory services are the small number of extension workers, their insufficient operational funding, their lack of transportation facilities and rare in-service training (moa, 2018). 4. agricultural marketing extension mwada et al. (2019) reported that: “the concept of agricultural marketing extension may be new, however it could be regarded as the most neglected part of extension activities”. in trying to show the importance of this type of extension, they also reported: “agricultural marketing extension is concerned with making the farmer understand and take advantage of market opportunities”. agricultural marketing extension can be described as; “an education program which provides information to farmers to solve marketing problems” (çukur, 2013). mungroo and seppersad (1995) confirmed that agricultural marketing extension covers; “all marketing activities from production to the retail level and can be effective in putting the farmers in touch with the reality of the market. mungroo and seppersad (1995) also concluded that; “agricultural marketing extension can effectively put farmers in touch with the realities of the market place and increase the efficiency with which they market their produce”. main activities to be covered by agricultural marketing extension range from production decision to consumer response to products. these activities include teaching the farmers how to use all the information that is available in deciding what crops to produce. they must learn to determine what the market wants before deciding what to produce. the agricultural extension activities also include teaching the farmers how to employ proper harvesting and post-harvesting practices to produce a product with desired form and quality. also, the activities teach the farmers how to access and interpret marketing and price information (mungroo and seppersad, 1995). berhanu et al. (2015) summarized functions of market-oriented extension as a means for achieving improved and sustainable livelihoods for the rural population asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 109-119 115 and as total effort of extension service to support farmers to produce profitable products, to collect market information, to identify profitable markets and to build marketing capacity of producers. they also presented the key principles of market-oriented extension as business principles related to income and resource principles related to the comparative advantages of a given area. the primary focus of agricultural extension today is on enhancing incomes through market-orientation (christoplos, 2010). market-oriented agricultural advisory services help farmers to overcome constraints related to a lack of adequate know-how and skills (mwada et al., 2019). in conducting their agricultural activities farmers, as key players, are faced with many challenges related to market their products, therefore, they need the support of agricultural marketing extension agents. figure 7 shows the value chain approach to market-oriented advisory extension services. a value chain is a set of connected activities that work together in order to add value to a product, while linking buyers, sellers and markets (gfras, 2016). figure 7: value chain approach to market-oriented advisory extension services source: neuchatel group (2008) in jordan, as mentioned earlier, the marketing extension programs section was affiliated with the directorate of extension programs. according to the moa website, this section is responsible for: 1. preparing specialized extension programs to guide agricultural systems to improve product quality. 2. directing and guiding farmers to adopt high-value crops that contribute to reducing marketing bottlenecks. 3. preparing guidance programs to increase the added value of plant and animal products. 4. preparing annual programs for exhibitions and festivals to promote agricultural and rural products. 5. guiding farmers to adopt preand post-harvest techniques and encourage contract farming. 6. preparing training programs to build the capacity of extension workers and target groups in agricultural marketing issues. 7. preparing marketing plans and periodic achievements reports. 5. materials and methods 5.1. sample, data collection and study hypothesis data was obtained mainly from primary sources through the use of a structured questionnaire. purpose simple random sampling was used to select the respondents. a sample survey of public asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 109-119 116 agricultural extension agents was conducted covering the whole agricultural directorates in the country. the survey employed a structured questionnaire with pre-coded questions. the entire sample consists of 107 agricultural extension agents. the researchers explained details of this study and gave agents enough information about the reason for the study before conducting the survey. results are based on descriptive analysis of the survey data. in order to predict that the agricultural marketing extension is adopted within public extension methods used by public agricultural extension agents in jordan, the study will try to test the following statement: h0: agricultural marketing extension is adopted within public extension in jordan. the alternative statement is: h1: agricultural marketing extension is not adopted within public extension in jordan. 5.2. analytical techniques qualitative as well as quantitative analytical procedures were adopted in this study. descriptive statistical tools such as measures of central tendency such as means, percentages, standard deviation and frequency distributions were used to achieve objectives of the study. four point likert-scale was used to compute the respondents overall mean score. the extension methods were itemized and the respondents were asked to indicate the degree they use the agricultural marketing extension approach in each method. the 13 extension methods were used to assess the use of agricultural marketing extension that include, home visits, field visits, extension meetings, extension fields, field days, farmers field schools, extension publications, newspapers, radio, television, telephone/mobile, internet, and expert systems. the scale had been ranked as follows: always as 4 points, sometimes as 3 points, rarely as 2 point, and never as 1 point. the weighted mean score was obtained by dividing the total weighted score for all the options by the number of respondents to obtain a mean sore for each statement. the likert formula is: 𝑋𝑠 =∑ 𝐹𝑛 𝑁𝑟 ⁄ where; xs = mean score, ∑ = summation, f = frequency of each (4, 3, 2, 1) option, n = responses of the respondents, nr = total number of respondents. the judgment value was 2.5, which was obtained by dividing the total score value by the number of the options (4 + 3 + 2 + 1/4). this is also applicable to compatibility and complexity. that is, any method with a mean score equal to or above 2.5 means that the agricultural marketing extension approach is adopted within the extension method and so we accept the method as an agricultural marketing extension one, and any statement with a mean score less than 2.5 means that the agricultural marketing extension approach is not adopted within this method and the method is rejected as an agricultural marketing extension one. the data were analyzed with statistical package for social sciences (spss). 6. results and discussion 6.1. agricultural marketing extension the results of the study revealed that all of the respondents were aware of the concepts related to agricultural marketing extension. this result may be explained by the fact that all of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 109-119 117 interviewed extension agents were bachelor degree holders in several agricultural disciplines. agricultural extension including agricultural marketing extension topics was covered by several courses during their college study. the results also showed that almost 80% of the respondents considered agricultural marketing extension with low priority during their extension activity. about 19% of them considered this type of extension with moderate priority and nearly 1% considered it with no priority at all. no one of the agents is considered the agricultural marketing extension with high priority compared to other types of extension activities. this result indicates that although the extension agents are aware of marketing extension activities are not concentrating on this type of extension when performing their job. this situation reflected negatively on the performance of the farmers when dealing with marketing issues. another related result of this study indicated that only 21% of the respondents used agricultural marketing extension as a separate professional program while 79% of the respondents, with little attention, used it within other extension programs. this result proves that agricultural marketing extension is not a major one among other extension activities and not receiving enough attention. the results of the study also indicated that 55% of the agricultural marketing extension activities were directed mainly to top farmers and investors, while only 9% of these activities are directed to small farmers. this means that agricultural marketing extension is in fact directed to farmers who do not need this type of extension and neglecting those who need it. results related to market problems facing farmers showed that the main problems include lack of markets and high exporting costs. the results also indicated that lack of agricultural marketing extension professionals and lack of capital are the main problems which are needed to be solved to guarantee effective agricultural marketing extension. 6.2. adopting agricultural marketing extension the results of statistical analysis regarding the use of agricultural marketing extension among public extension methods are presented in table 2. the table shows mean score and standard deviations of respondents’ answers according related to the use of marketing extension. table 2: mean scores and standard deviations of respondents’ answers method mean score standard deviation home visits 2.7 0.506 field visits 2.9 0.167 extension meetings 3.0 0.339 extension fields 3.1 0.422 field days 2.9 0.518 farmers field schools 3.3 0.620 extension publications 2.7 0.950 newspapers 1.9 0.494 radio 1.8 0.555 television 1.8 0.516 mobile , … 1.8 0.568 internet 1.6 0.545 expert systems 1.6 0.596 average (overall result) 2.38 0.287 source: authors own analysis results, as presented in table 2 reveal that the overall mean score is 2.38, which is less than judgment value of 2.5 presented in section 5.2. according to the decision rule that serve to judge that agricultural marketing extension is adopted within public extension or not, the overall mean score value indicates that we can’t accept the null-hypothesis which states that agricultural marketing extension is adopted among public extension in jordan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 109-119 118 7. conclusions and recommendations the results of this study showed that public extension agents consider agricultural marketing extension with low priority during their extension activity. although all of the respondents interviewed in this study were aware of the concepts related to agricultural marketing extension, empirical evidence was provided in this study about the lack of agricultural marketing extension among extension methods used by public extension agents in jordan. the results of the study revealed that the overall mean score to test if marketing extension activities are included within public extension activities in jordan was lower than the determined judgment statistical value, indicating lack of marketing extension activities in jordan. public agricultural extension activities should be directed to enhance marketing extension activities. extension methods such as newspapers, radio, tv, mobile, internet and experts systems should be strongly considered to spread marketing knowledge to the farmers. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: we would like to show gratitude to the jordanian ministry of agriculture for assistance in providing data used in this study. we also thank our colleagues from jerash university who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted us. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. 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(2012). promoting ict based agricultural knowledge management to increase production and productivity of smallholder farmers in ethiopia. development brief no. 3. http://www.fao.org/countries/55528/en/eth/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 1 recombinant protein foliar application activates systemic acquired resistance and increases tolerance against papaya dieback disease norliza abu-bakara nor mustaiqazah jurib ros azrinawati hana abubakarc mohd zulfadli sohaimed rafidah badrune johari saripf mohd azhar hassang khairulmazmi ahmadh a,b,c,d,ebiotechnology and nanotechnology research centre, malaysian agricultural research and development institute, malaysia. f,ghorticulture research centre, malaysian agricultural research and development institute, malaysia. hdepartment of plant protection, faculty of agriculture, universiti putra malaysia, malaysia.  lizaab@mardi.gov.my (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 21 october 2020 revised: 25 november 2020 accepted: 19 december 2020 published: 11 january 2021 keywords carica papaya papaya dieback disease systemic acquired resistance (sar) sar inducers recombinant protein pathogenesis-related (pr) proteins. similar to animals, plants possess ‘immune memory’ in response to invading pathogens that lead to enhanced defense reaction following pathogen exposure. systemic acquired resistance (sar) is a well-characterized type of plant immunity and is associated with coordinated expression of a set of pathogenesis-related (pr) genes and proteins also known as sar markers. induction of sar in plants was shown to be initiated by group of chemicals and biological compounds known as sar inducers that can be used for the management of important plant diseases. elucidation and characterization of potential sar inducers as potential elicitors that can protect papaya from the papaya dieback disease pathogen were carried out using hrpx protein, which was produced as a recombinant protein in an escherichia coli system. disease severity analysis in a glasshouse experiment indicated lower disease infection rates in the hrpx-treated plants than in water-treated plants. selected sar-associated defense gene expression was also shown to increase in treated plants, via quantitative real-time pcr analysis, confirming enhanced disease response through sar activation. in this report, the selected recombinant protein was shown to activate the sar mechanism in papaya for increased tolerance against papaya dieback disease, which was proven via physiological and molecular analysis. contribution/originality: this study documents the process utilized to produce erwinia mallotivora hrpx recombinant protein using a heterologous e. coli recombinant system. the recombinant protein produced was later tested and assessed for its ability to act as a systemic acquired resistance (sar) inducer to increase papaya tolerance against papaya dieback disease. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.1.9 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: norliza abu-bakar --nor mustaiqazah juri --ros azrinawati hana abu-bakar --mohd zulfadli sohaime --rafidah badrun ---johari sarip --mohd azhar hassang --khairulmazmi ahmad (2021). recombinant protein foliar application activates systemic acquired resistance and increases tolerance against papaya dieback disease. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 1-9. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.1.9 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 1-9 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9815-6921 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4291-6757 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0337-5812 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8241-6047 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8553-1032 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4296-3425 mailto:lizaab@mardi.gov.my http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.1.9 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 1-9 2 1. introduction carica papaya – widely known as papaya – is a tropical plant that is highly associated with its appealing fruit and medicinal properties arising from various parts of the plant. papaya remains one of the most popular species in the caricacae family, part of the angiosperm group within the kingdom plantae (evans & ballen, 2012). papaya was once widely grown in malaysia. malaysian consumers prefer the fruit for daily consumption while the leaves, which contain considerable levels of flavonoids, alkaloids, and phenolic compounds, are used as a remedy for fevers, dengue fever, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, malaria, asthma, ulcers, eczema, hypoglycemia, and hyperlipidemia (anuar, zahari, taib, & rahman, 2008; aziz, kassim, kasim, haque, & rahman, 2015; dharmarathna, wickramasinghe, waduge, rajapakse, & kularatne, 2013; otsuki et al., 2010). even though the demand for papaya is high, production in malaysia is severely threatened by the emergence of diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, phytoplasma and fungi (rabu & mat, 2005). since 2006, the phytopathogen erwinia mallotivora has led to a decline of the papaya industry in malaysia despite being the second-highest exporter globally in 2004, just behind mexico, with a total production of 58,149 mt covering more than 21% of the global papaya trade market (anon, 2009). commercial varieties, including sekaki, solo, and eksotika, are very susceptible to the disease, thus making it harder for the papaya industry in malaysia to be revitalized and attain its former prominence. papaya dieback disease in malaysia is caused by e. mallotivora, a flagellar, biotrophic phytopathogenic bacterium (noriha, hamidun, & indu, 2011). the disease has led to devastating effects in term of yield loss and national incomes for both domestic and international trade. infected papaya fruit exhibits lesions and spots on the leaves and crown, eventually accompanied by water damage to the stem (gardan, christen, achouak, & prior, 2004). fruit quality is also affected by defoliation and spots and blemishes that downgrade its quality, rendering it unsuitable for consumption and export. eventually the infected plant will succumb to the disease, resulting in death (mohd taha et al., 2019). holistic approaches have been taken by the malaysian government and researchers to curb the widespread transmission of this disease (abu bakar et al., 2017). during the early spread of this disease, infected trees were destroyed and crop rotation practices implemented (chan & baharuddin, 2010). interim measures were introduced, such as systematic farming; changes in the management and operation of farms, including limiting vehicular access to farmland, cleaning of farm equipment, and farm workers' clothing; and monitoring of drainage and drainage systems’ processes (ahmad et al., 2014; mohd taha et al., 2019). daily supervision and the process of eradication of suspected disease on the farm were also carried out regularly. advancement in disease management strategies, supported by plant–pathogen interaction studies, has advanced alternative crop protection technology by utilizing the host systemic acquired resistance (sar) mechanism to control phytopathogen attack (dangl, horvath, & staskawicz, 2013). accumulation in the plant of the hormone salicylic acid (sa) is closely linked with sar induction (gao, zhu, kachroo, & kachroo, 2015). these measures are supported by research on the usage of chemicals and synthetic chemicals such as sa and jasmonate, and of virulent, avirulent, and non-pathogenic microbes (birkenbihl, liu, & somssich, 2017). the introduction of sar is closely connected with increased oxidative cell burst, changes in cell wall composition, de novo synthesis of compounds like phytoalexin, and increased expression of pr proteins (fu & dong, 2013). plants treated with various sar inducers have been demonstrated to exhibit increased tolerance, and sometimes increased resistance, with observation of subsequent pathogen challenge resulting in a stronger elicitation of the plant defense mechanism (bektas & eulgem, 2015; jung, tschaplinski, wang, glazebrook, & greenberg, 2009). the application of such sar inducers has paved the way for plant disease control and management and, specifically, as an alternative crop protection strategy in managing papaya dieback disease. type iii secretion systems are widely used by phytopathogens to deliver effectors into their host cells to cause disease (alfano & collmer, 2004; chen et al., 2017; göhre & robatzek, 2008). natriuretic peptide receptor 1 (npr1) is essential in plants for the expression of pr genes involved in sar activation and defense of the plant against invasion and attack, through increased expression of pr genes (cao, glazebrook, clarke, volko, & dong, 1997; kim & delaney, 2002). as a key transcriptional regulator of sa signaling, npr1 is important in the induction of host systemic immunity. overexpression of a rice npr1 homolog led to constitutive activation of the defense response and hypersensitivity to light (chern, fitzgerald, canlas, navarre, & ronald, 2005). type iii effectors have been shown to interact with npr1 to destabilize host immunity and thus have the potential as target molecules to stimulate the signaling molecule for plant immunity, together with defense onset and commencement (chen et al., 2017; jones & dangl, 2006). our previous study indicated that hrpx, an e. mallotivora type iii effector, was upregulated in in vitro cultures of e.mallotivora stimulating the expression of pathogenicity (hrp) and virulence proteins of the pathogen. this finding was later confirmed via real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (q-pcr) analysis (abu bakar et al., 2017). thus, the present study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of a selected e. mallotivora type iii effector, hrpx, produced as a recombinant protein to aid in the control of papaya dieback disease. we aimed to determine its effectiveness as a sar inducer and understand the molecular events underlying the sar process regarding the induced resistance process. 2. materials and methods 2.1. plants, plasmids, bacterial strains, and growth conditions carica papaya (eksotika i) seedlings were grown in polybags filled with mixed compost. the plants were grown in a glasshouse at 27˚c with a 12-h day/night cycle. plasmid pgem-t (promega) and pet32b (novagen) were respectively used as cloning and expression vector. the e. coli strains top10 (invitrogen, usa) and bl21 (de3) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 1-9 3 were used as cloning and expression host, respectively. both e. coli strains were grown in lb broth medium supplied with 100 µg/ml of ampicillin at 37˚c. e. mallotivora was cultured in lb broth at 28˚c. 2.2. isolation and cloning of hrpx total rna from overnight culture (28˚c) of e. mallotivora was extracted using a total rna extraction kit (qiagen, usa) following the manufacturer’s protocol, followed by cdna synthesis using an iscript cdna synthesis kit (bio-rad, usa). pcr was performed using a predesigned, specific hrpx primer pair and other pcr components from promega (usa). the primer sequences were hrpx forward, 5’ggatccgatgcaattttccgagcgacat-3’ and hrpx reverse, 5’aagctttccattgtacgattccaaatc-3’, with an expected amplicon size of ~1.5 kbp. the bamhi and hindiii sites were added to facilitate the cloning processes. the total 20 µl reaction mixture contained 2 μl of 10 × pcr buffer, 2 μl of mgcl2 (20 mm), 0.5 μl of each dntp (2.5 mm), 1 μl of dna, 0.6 μl of each primer, and 1 μl of pfu dna polymerase (5 units/μl). the program used was an initial incubation time of 3 min at 94°c, 30 cycles of 30 s at 94°c, 30 s at 60°c for annealing, and 30 s at 72°c for extension, followed by a cycle of final elongation for 7 min at 72°c. the pcr product was visualized by 1% agarose gel electrophoresis. the band was excised from the gel, purified, and cloned into pgem-t easy vector (promega) according to the manufacturer’s protocol, followed by transformation into competent top10 e. coli via the heat shock method. transformed cells were plated on lb medium supplemented with 100 µg/µl ampicillin and 20 µg/ml x-gel. white colonies were selected for colony pcr and plasmids of positive clones were extracted, double digested with bamhi and to confirm the presence of the insert (hrpx). the digested hrpx fragment was subcloned into the pet32b (novagen) expression vector with 6× his tags downstream and transformed into a competent bl21 e. coli expression strain. transformed cells were plated on lb medium supplemented with 100 µg/µl ampicillin. 2.3. expression and purification of hrpx recombinant protein a colony of pet32b/hrpx-transformed bl21 was cultured in 5.0 ml of lb broth medium supplemented with 100 µg/µl ampicillin overnight at 37˚c. the culture was transferred into 400 ml of lb broth medium containing 100 µg/ml ampicillin and was grown at 37˚c to od600 0.5. to induce expression, isopropyl-ß-dthiogalactopyranoside (iptg) was added to a final concentration of 0.5 mm to the cell culture and was grown for a further 6 h before harvesting by centrifugation at 2,500 × g for 15 min. the bacterial pellet was resuspended and lysed with 10 ml of bugbuster reagent (novogen) supplemented with a tablet of protease inhibitor (thermo fisher, usa). the lysed cell suspension was centrifuged at 20,000 × g for 30 min at 4˚c. the pellet was resuspended in 10 ml of inclusion bodies (0.5m tris ph 7.4, 75 mm nacl, and 10% glycerol) supplemented with 0.5% triton and was rotated for 15 min at 4˚c before centrifuging at 20,000 × g for 30 min at 4˚c. the pellet was then resuspended in 10 ml of solubilization buffer (50 mm tris-cl ph 7.4, 150 mm nacl, 8 m urea) supplemented with a tablet of protease inhibitor and was rotated overnight at 4˚c. then, the protein suspension was centrifuged at 3,500 × g for 15 min at 4˚c and the supernatant was collected for purification using a ni-nta column (his tag protein purification) by the acta prime chromatography system. the purified hrpx protein was quantified following the bradford method (quick start™ bradford protein assay, biorad) using bovine serum albumin as standard (bradford, 1976). to visualize the purified protein, approximately 20 µl was mobilized on two sets of sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (sds–page), with polyacrylamide concentration of 12 and 5% for separation and stacking gel, respectively. one set of the gel was imaged using coomassie brilliant blue r250 while the other was presented for western blot analysis. briefly, the protein was transferred to a polyvinylidene fluoride membrane. the membrane was blocked with blocking buffer before probing with an anti-his antibody, with gentle agitation for 2 h at 37˚c. after three washes with 1× tris buffered saline with tween 20 (tbst), the membrane was further incubated with anti-mouse igg alkaline phosphatase conjugate for 2 h at 37˚c. the membrane was washed again with 1× tbst, followed by incubation with the substrate solution (bcip/nbt) until the bands appeared. 2.4. plant treatment at 4 months of growth, papaya seedlings were sprayed with hrpx protein formulation three times at 1-week intervals. for control, plants were treated with water. the experimental design adopted a complete randomized design with ten replicates for each sprayed treatment. inoculation of e. mallotivora in papaya plants was conducted 1 week after the final formulation treatment. e. mallotivora was cultured in lb broth and grown at 28c in an incubator shaker to od600 1.0. about 10 ml of e. mallotivora culture at a concentration of 1 × 106 colony-forming units (cfu) was injected into all seedlings at the level of the third node from the shoot. 2.5. disease index and statistical analysis evaluation of the progression of e. mallotivora infection was made through disease severity (ds) statistical analysis, with severity evaluated using a 5-point scale: 0 = symptomless, 1 = leaf vein blackening, 2 = leaf vein blackening + slight wilting, 3 = leaf stalk wilting, 4 = stem blackening, and 5 = plant death. scoring was applied from days 3 to 21 post inoculation at 3-day intervals. the disease severity index (dsi) was computed based on a previous study (abu bakar, mohd zulfadli, juri, & johari, 2018). the experiments were repeated three times, and the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 1-9 4 data were analyzed using analysis of variance followed by comparison means using duncan multiple range tests (samsuddin et al., 2018). 2.6. leaf sampling and expression profiling of pr genes sampling of leaves was conducted on day 20 after the first application of hrpx foliar treatment. all plant samples were immediately immersed in liquid nitrogen and stored at -80c until further analysis. leaf tissues were ground to a fine powder and extraction of total rna was conducted using the genejet plant rna purification kit (thermo fisher scientific, usa) following the manufacturer’s instructions. removal of genomic dna contamination was performed using dnase i (thermo fisher scientific, usa). two micrograms of rna was transcribed into cdna using the iscript cdna synthesis kit (bio-rad, usa) following the manufacturer’s protocol. synthesized cdna was used as template for real-time pcr for four reported pr genes in papaya (npr, pr1b, pr1d, and osmotin) (norliza, rafidah, & mohd, 2016) and two housekeeping genes (actin and 40srnp) to normalize expression fold. da list of the primers used as given in table 1. real-time pcr was performed using a 96-well-plate bio-rad cfx96 real-time pcr system thermo cycler (bio-rad, berkeley, ca, usa). the pcr reaction per well contained 2 µg of first-strand cdna, 0.4 µm forward and reverse primers, and 1× master mix of sensifast sybr no-rox kit (bioline, uk). for negative control, sterile distilled water was added to the master mix rather than cdna. ten microliters of pcr reaction components were transferred to the wells, in triplicate. the pcr condition was set to 95°c for 2 min, 40 cycles at 95°c for 15 s, and 60°c for 1 min. table 1. list of primers used. gene forward primer reverse primer size (bp) osmotin tctacttgccaagctccaaa gggcaattgttccttacttga 132 pr1d ctcggttcgtttagggtgtg tggattattgggaaacttttattga 155 pr1b cgtccttttggtttctggga tttttgttcgttactcacacatga 151 npr cgcctttcagaatccaagag atcatgttccagacgtgcaa 155 actin ttccactatgttccctggtatt tcctatccagacgctgtatttc 119 40srnp tggcaaagcctacaaagactatca aggaatgggaagggagggagat 78 3. results and discussion 3.1. in silico characterization of hrpx a previous study showed that the type iii secretion system plays a major role during e. mallotivora pathogenesis (juri et al., 2020). hairpin or hrp proteins are part of the gram-negative plant-pathogenic type iii secretion system and have been shown to induce resistance in plants against various pathogens (fontanilla, montes, & de, 2005; kim, jeon, oh, moon, & hwang, 2004; liu et al., 2010). increased expression of e. mallotivora hrpx genes was shown during infection, which was further validated using real-time analysis (abu bakar et al., 2017; juri et al., 2020). this gene was hypothesized to be a candidate gene for induction of sar during subsequent infection. thus research was initiated to further characterize the hrpx gene from e. mallotivora, which involved in silico characterization and protein function in induction of sar for the management of papaya dieback disease. the domain analysis of e. mallotivora’s hrpx protein sequence (orf) showed that this hrp protein has a signal transduction histidine kinase motif, located at 240-483 of the c-terminal end of its amino acid sequence (figure 1). meanwhile, a blastp homology search in genbank nonredundant databases revealed that this protein has the highest identity (80–99.8%) with pas domain-containing sensor histidine kinase and pas domain s-box protein from several pantoea and erwinia species (table 2). pas domain-containing sensor histidine kinase is present in archaea, eubacteria, and eukarya. it is part of a twocomponent system (tcs), functioning as a protein kinase that phosphorylates a target protein in response to various signals. in bacteria, tcss are pairs of proteins with a modular structure comprising a sensing (input) domain at the n-terminal, and a c-terminal conserved kinase core (transmitter) domain that interacts with a response regulator protein (rr), where the rr protein is usually a transcription factor. activation of the rr triggers specific downstream responses (merighi, majerczak, stover, & coplin, 2003). name accession description interval e-value cog4585 cog4585 signal transduction histidine kinase 240-483 4.67e–52 prk13560 super family cl30932 hypothetical protein (provisional) 12-266 1.81e–20 figure 1. domain hits. http://www.google.com.my/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0ccmqfjaa&url=http://www.bio-rad.com/en-us/product/iscript-cdna-synthesis-kit&ei=20mnvdurcou3uqszr4dgba&usg=afqjcnf9zgjznx5tr470qn1l8ta5i7o4rq&sig2=cltv2kf-ppa6xjq-4v6scw&bvm=bv.90491159,d.c2e http://www.google.com.my/aclk?sa=l&ai=cqmg220mnvep1d9wsuat554cwcomhpqeggbqfh1mb5ixafqgaeafgy4oagiwxyaebqgqit9aucs2gx6picmse6voqwm9teyomtfwuqm3vy6qqfto2frofewib65uz5ureahwlw44khzkxaezkbqcab9wohwkqbwgob6a-g9ghaq&ei=20mnvdurcou3uqszr4dgba&sig=aod64_0v-qylpok4biyvqnmmhpydrjysgq&rct=j&q=&sqi=2&ved=0cbkq0qw&adurl=http://506.xg4ken.com/media/redir.php?prof=142&camp=7089&affcode=cr49482&cid=23855427737|475309|iscript%20cdna%20synthesis%20kit&mtype=b&networktype=search&kdv=c&url%5b%5d=http%3a%2f%2fwww.bio-rad.com%2fen-us%2fcategory%2fpcr-reagents%2freverse-transcription-reagents%3fwt.srch%3d1%26wt.mc_id%3daw-gxd-ap-pcr_iscript-reverse-transcription%26wt.knsh_id%3d_kenshoo_clickid_&cad=rja asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 1-9 5 table 2. blastp analysis of e. mallotivora hrpx. description query cover (%) e-value per. ident. (%) accession no. pas domain-containing sensor histidine kinase (e. mallotivora) 79 0.0 100.00 wp_034936536.1 pas domain-containing sensor histidine kinase (pantoea sp. vs1) 79 0.0 99.80 wp_088518176.1 pas domain s-box protein (erwinia psidii) 79 0.0 91.57 wp_124231880.1 pas domain s-box protein (pantoea agglomerans) 79 0.0 90.36 wp_158150184.1 pas domain s-box protein (pantoea vagans) 79 0.0 90.08 wp_061060958.1 pas domain s-box protein (erwinia tracheiphila) 79 0.0 86.37 axf77209.1 pas domain-containing sensor histidine kinase (e. tracheiphila) 79 0.0 86.17 wp_016191016.1 hrpx p. agglomerans pv. gypsophilae 77 0.0 84.98 aaf76212.1 pas domain s-box protein (pantoea sp. paga) 79 0.0 83.84 wp_143991671.1 pas domain-containing sensor histidine kinase (erwinia amylovora) 79 0.0 81.17 wp_004155353.1 pas domain-containing sensor histidine kinase (erwinia tasmaniensis) 79 0.0 81.38 wp_012440278.1 pas domain-containing sensor histidine kinase (erwinia piriflorinigrans) 79 0.0 80.97 wp_023653749.1 pas domain-containing sensor histidine kinase (erwinia pyrifoliae) 79 0.0 81.17 wp_012669312.1 pas domain s-box protein (erwinia sp. ejp617) 79 0.0 80.97 wp_014543259.1 pas domain s-box protein (pantoea sp. pna 03-3) 77 0.0 82.19 wp_110268456.1 3.2. cloning, expression, and purification of recombinant hrpx a specific primer was designed to amplify hrpx from e. mallotivora (figure 2a). the amplified hrpx gene was cloned into pgem-t easy vector and the presence of the hrpx in the vector was confirmed by colony pcr (figure 2b). the integrity of the recombinant vector pgem-t/hrpx was confirmed by double digestion using restriction enzymes bamhi and hindiii (figure 2c). the digested hrpx fragment was then successfully subcloned into the expression vector pet32b (novagen), where the identity and orientation of hrpx in the construct was confirmed by sequencing. cloned hrpx gene sequencing showed 100% homology with the reference sequence. expression of the hrpx gene in the pet-20b expression vector was induced in the presence of iptg. proteins in the supernatant and cell lysate pellet were analyzed using sds–page (data not shown), with the majority of the expressed protein being detected in the pellet of cell lysate. the recombinant protein was successfully purified using a ni-nta column (figure 3), having a molecular weight of approximately 50 kda. approximately 50–100 mg of pure recombinant protein is normally obtained from every 2-l culture of lb broth expression culture, induced with 0.5 mm iptg, 37°c for 2 h. the amount of pure hrpx protein obtained was sufficient for the foliar application treatment of papaya seedlings to determine the effect of sar inducement for increased tolerance to papaya dieback disease. figure 2. (a). amplification of hrpx gene via pcr. a single gene was amplified from the pcr reaction. the band was excised, purified, and cloned into pgem-t easy vector. (b) colony pcr. a single band was detected at the size expected for hrpx. m: 1-kb marker; 1–6: colonies; c: control (pcr reaction without colony). (c) the plasmid from the transformed colony was digested with the restriction enzymes bamhi and hindiii, to determine the presence of the insert. m: 1-kb marker; x: hrpx. https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi?cmd=get&adv_view=yes&adv_view=on&alignments=100&alignment_view=pairwise&cdd_rid=68mfuvvz016&cdd_search_state=0&database_sort=0&descriptions=100&dynamic_format=on&first_query_num=0&format_num_org=1&format_object=alignment&format_page_target=&format_type=html&get_sequence=yes&i_thresh=&line_length=60&mask_char=2&mask_color=1&new_view=yes&num_overview=100&page=proteins&query_index=0&query_number=0&results_page_target=&rid=68mfuv9d016&show_linkout=yes&show_overview=yes&step_number=&word_size=6&adv_view=on&display_sort=4&hsp_sort=0 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi?cmd=get&adv_view=yes&adv_view=on&alignments=100&alignment_view=pairwise&cdd_rid=68mfuvvz016&cdd_search_state=0&database_sort=0&descriptions=100&dynamic_format=on&first_query_num=0&format_num_org=1&format_object=alignment&format_page_target=&format_type=html&get_sequence=yes&i_thresh=&line_length=60&mask_char=2&mask_color=1&new_view=yes&num_overview=100&page=proteins&query_index=0&query_number=0&results_page_target=&rid=68mfuv9d016&show_linkout=yes&show_overview=yes&step_number=&word_size=6&adv_view=on&display_sort=3&hsp_sort=3 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_034936536 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_034936536 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_034936536.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=1&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_088518176 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_088518176 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_088518176.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=2&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_124231880 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_124231880 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_124231880.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=3&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_158150184 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_158150184 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_158150184.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=4&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_061060958 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_061060958 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_061060958.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=6&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_axf77209 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_axf77209 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/axf77209.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=8&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_016191016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_016191016 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_016191016.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=9&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_aaf76212 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/aaf76212.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=12&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_143991671 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_143991671 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_143991671.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=13&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_004155353 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_004155353 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_004155353.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=14&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_012440278.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=15&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_023653749 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_023653749 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_023653749.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=16&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_012669312 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_012669312 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_012669312.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=18&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_014543259 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_014543259 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_014543259.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=19&rid=68mfuv9d016 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_110268456 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast.cgi#alnhdr_wp_110268456 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/wp_110268456.1?report=genbank&log$=prottop&blast_rank=20&rid=68mfuv9d016 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 1-9 6 figure 3. (a) sds–page and (b) western blot showing the purity of hrpx protein after purification using a ni-nta affinity column. m: 1-kb marker; 1: hrpx before purification; 2–8: fractions collected after purification. 3.3. pathogen inoculation, plant disease severity assessment, and profiling of sar-responsive genes to investigate the capability of hrpx recombinant protein in enhancing papaya resistance against dieback pathogen, both the hrpx-sprayed and control plants were injected with approximately 10 ml of e. mallotivora culture at a concentration of 1 × 106 cfu, at the third node from the shoot. overall, although both control and hrpx-sprayed plants were infected, from days 3–13 reduced disease symptoms were shown by the latter compared to the former. by day 13, control plants were totally infected and died (figure 4). figure 4. disease severity analysis for assessment of the effect of recombinant hrpx treatment on papaya plants. to investigate the effect of hrpx protein on the expression levels of defense-related genes, hrpx-sprayed and control leaves were harvested/collected and their expression was analyzed via real-time pcr. leaf sampling was conducted one day after the third application of hrpx foliar spray treatment, when rna was extracted (figure 5a). the selected genes were npr, pr1b, osmotin, and pr1d. overall, profiling analysis showed that all four genes were upregulated in response to hrpx treatment as compared to control (figure 5b). the highest expression was recorded for pr1d, with ~13-fold expression in hrpx-treated plants compared to control. pr1b and npr also showed significant increase in expression (~2to 2.8-fold) in hrpx-treated plants, whereas an insignificant increase was seen for osmotin, with ~1.7-fold expression. npr, pr1b, osmotin, and pr1d are pathogenesis-related genes previously reported as potential sar markers (abu bakar et al., 2018). the activation of sar markers suggested that hrpx recombinant protein had induced papaya plant resistance via a sar mechanism. with regard to to ds scoring, figure 4, and the profiling of sar-responsive genes, this result suggested that hrpx activates the sar response against papaya dieback pathogen but is unable to enhance plant survival since it is a regulatory protein that does not directly interact with the host. it has been reported that in several necrogenic bacteria, including erwinia and pantoea, hrpx is one of two key regulatory genes (hrpxy) that are required/vital for activation of the expression of hrp operons, which will finally result in activation of promoters containing hrp boxes (e.g., the hairpin water-soaking wts and hrp secretion genes) (merighi et al., 2003; zhao, wang, nakka, sundin, & korban, 2009). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 1-9 7 figure 5. (a) rna extracted from control (c1–c3) and treated (x1–x3) plants. (b) expression analysis of papaya defenserelated genes in control plants (non-sprayed) and recombinant hrpx foliar-sprayed plants. the usage of recombinant protein to induce a hypersensitive response and sar in tobacco was reported by shen et al. (2019). in their research, a novel effector from bacillus subtilis bu412, which was produced as recombinant protein, was shown to increase the production of reactive oxygen species (h2o2 and o2 –) along with that of tobacco plant defense enzymes. similar findings were recorded by fontanilla et al. (2005) when tomato plants were sprayed with harpin (ea). plants infected by phytophora infestans developed higher tolerance to the pathogen after subsequent foliar application of the protein (fontanilla, montes, & de, 2005). thus, for our future research, the expression conditions for hrpx will be optimized and the parameters determined for increased resistance against papaya dieback disease using recombinant hrpx. concurrently, we will also assess the underlying mechanisms of hrpx stimulation in plant defense responses against papaya dieback disease for future application of the protein in the management of this disease. 4. conclusions erwinia mallotivora hrpx was analyzed via in silico analysis, cloned, and expressed in an e. coli system and investigated to determine its ability to induce sar in the management of papaya dieback disease. foliar application of the hrpx recombinant protein was tested to evaluate its effectiveness in inducing sar in papaya for enhanced disease resistance to the papaya dieback pathogen. disease progression data recorded for disease severity assay indicate that plants thus treated were more tolerant to e. mallotivora infection, with reduced disease symptoms compared to control plants. thus, hrpx has the potential for use as part of sar inducer formulation in the fight to revitalize the malaysian papaya industry against the notorious papaya dieback disease. funding: this study was funded by a malaysian agricultural research and development institute (mardi) development research grant, no. prb405. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in the design and performance of the current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abu bakar, n., badrun, r., rozano, l., ahmad, l., mohd raih, m. f. r., & tarmizi, a. a. 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(2009). systems level analysis of two-component signal transduction systems in erwinia amylovora: role in virulence, regulation of amylovoran biosynthesis and swarming motility. bmc genomics, 10(1), 245.available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2164-10-245. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 145 factors influencing rural migrant households’ participation in livelihood activities and income diversification strategies in southwestern nigeria omolehin, ajayi raphael adeniyia ajiboye, akinyele johnb adepartment of agricultural economics and farm management, federal university oyeekiti, nigeria. bdepartment of vocational education, university of ilesa, ilesa. osun state, nigeria.   akinyele_ajiboye@unilesa.edu.ng (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 28 may 2024 revised: 14 april 2025 accepted: 29 april 2025 published: 12 june 2025 keywords livelihood activities livelihood diversification rural migrants household expenditure farm income non-farm income off-farm income south west. this study focuses on factors influencing rural migrant households’ participation in livelihood activities and income diversification strategies in southwest nigeria. a multistage sampling technique was used for the study. this involved purposive selection of ekiti, osun, and oyo states and twenty percent of the rural local government areas (lgas) in the respective states. ten percent of wards in each lga and 40% of migrant households were randomly selected to arrive at 413 respondents. a structured questionnaire was used to collect relevant data for the study. the collected data were analysed using descriptive statistics, estimation of sid, and multinomial logit regression. the findings showed that 72.75% of household heads were males. 76.75% of the respondents were first-generation migrants, with a mean duration of stay of 29.51 years. the sid revealed that incomegenerating activities among migrants are moderately (0.53) diversified. the primary factor influencing migrant households’ preference for non-farm and off-farm activities over farm activities was the size of their land holdings. the study recommends that government and other stakeholders should adopt strategy to improve access to non-farm and off-farm employment opportunities, particularly in rural areas, by encouraging corporate and private investors to invest in rural areas to solve the problem of unemployment during off-seasons. contribution/originality: the study contributes to existing body of knowledge of livelihood diversification. the study assisted in identifying the role of asset endowment in livelihood diversification strategies and income generation among migrant households in the region. specifically, it offered a glimpse of what rural migrants consider the most attractive livelihood option. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5401 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: adeniyi, o. a. r., & john, a. a. (2025). factors influencing rural migrant households’ participation in livelihood activities and income diversification strategies in southwestern nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 145–155. © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 145-155 mailto:akinyele_ajiboye@unilesa.edu.ng https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5401 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2)2025: 145-155 146 1.introduction agriculture is an important sector for rural dwellers in nigeria and other developing countries of the world because it is their main source of livelihood. although nigeria’s rural economy is largely agrarian, only a minority derive their sources of income exclusively from farming. this view is corroborated by djido and shiferaw (2018), who pointed out that about eighty percent of rural households in nigeria diversify their livelihood activities. despite constraints that appear to limit their social and economic opportunities, these rural people find ways to mitigate the impact of declining income from farm activities (eneyew & bekele, 2012; samuel & sylvia, 2019). migration has been documented as one of the many strategies that rural households and individuals employ to diversify their livelihoods (awumbila, 2017; world bank, 2017). the existence of inequalities and livelihood opportunities between rural areas in terms of access to economic resources and development is known to be a major cause of rural-rural or urban-rural migration (chand, 2012; ogunniyi, mavrotas, olagunju, fadare, & rufai, 2018). migrants are people who have left their homes or usual place of residence to a new location temporarily or permanently to reap social and economic benefits (olagunju, ogunniyi, oguntegbe, rahji, & ogundari, 2019; young, 2013). despite conditions that tend to limit their social and economic opportunities, migrants in rural areas find ways to ensure their survival. one of the commonest ways by which they meet their needs is by combining various activities that will ensure their survival within the society or localities they find themselves (gberu, amare, mavrotas, & ogunniyi, 2018). intra-rural migration is typically undertaken by poorer households with low levels of education and other assets, as it requires lower investment. it is one of the commonest coping strategies adopted by poor rural households to stabilize their livelihoods and to adapt to climatic, environmental, social, and economic changes. farmers often combine this with other livelihood activities like agricultural intensification and local non-farm and off-farm activities (gberu et al., 2018). in recent years, the body of literature on development process has emphasized what is generally referred to as rural livelihood and livelihood diversification. a key concept of livelihood is the strong link between asset endowments, activities, and income generation, as well as socio-economic factors affecting the use and return of household assets. according to ellis (2000), livelihood comprises the assets (human, social, financial, physical, and natural), activities (which include crop production, livestock production, self-employment, farm labour, non-farm labour, off-farm labour) and access to all these, facilitated by social institutions that determine the welfare of an individual or a household. these assets can be stored, transferred, or exchanged during income-generating activities (walelign, 2016). there are several ways to define livelihood diversification. a definition of livelihood diversification is the attempt by households or individuals to find new ways to raise income. it is also the process by which individuals and households construct a range of activities and social supports for survival in order to improve their well-being. thus, a household or an individual with three sources of income is considered more diversified than the one with two income outlets (eneyew & bekele, 2012; samuel & sylvia, 2019). most often, the term “rural livelihood diversification” refers to expanding into non-farm and off-farms income, as solely relying on farm activities has not ensured a sustainable livelihood for rural households. diversification as a rural livelihood strategy involves maintaining over a long time a diversified portfolio of activities and a regular adjustment to contingencies for the purpose of increasing profit, spreading risks, reducing income shocks, or achieving other household goals (awotide, awoyemi, diagne, kinkingnihoun, & ojehomone, 2012; murata & miyazaki, 2014; nguyen, nguyen, do, nguyen, & grote, 2022). with respect to factors influencing livelihood diversification, the empirical literature offers mixed results. furthermore, the conceptualization of livelihood diversification as having multiple income streams without considering their respective weights and transfer payments, such as remittances, is overly restrictive. some studies in nigeria, which include babatunde and matin (2009), fabusoro, omotayo, apantaku, and okuneye (2010), and abiodun, olutumise, and ojo (2019), have used simpson’s index of diversity to report the degree of livelihood diversification without any recourse to other factors that affect choice of livelihood activities before conclusions can be drawn on drivers of livelihood diversification. some reports, including that of fao (2018), have revealed that migrants in rural areas are sometimes restricted due to a range of factors, including climate change, resource limitations, material uncertainties, and land tenure systems prevalent in their various locations. therefore, it is necessary to examine the factors that influence migrant households’ choice of livelihood activities and the income shares from those activities. the emphasis here is on the role of households’ asset endowments, namely, human, social, natural, physical, and financial capital. the total household income is the aggregate measure of all the outcomes of all activities (farm, non-farm, off-farm) the household is engaged in. there is also the need to ascertain the key drivers of livelihood diversification. 2. methodology 2.1. scope of the study the study was carried out in nigeria's southwestern geopolitical zone, which spreads between latitudes 6°21’ and 8°37’ n and longitudes 2031’e and 2031’. it has a land area of 114,271 square kilometers, representing 12% of the country’s land mass. the 2006 national population census estimated the zone’s population at 21,974,678. this zone is made up of four different sub-ecologies, namely, derived savannah, moist and dry lowland, mangrove forests, and swamps. it comprises 6 states, namely; ekiti, lagos, ogun, ondo, osun, and oyo. large portion of osun, oyo, and ekiti are covered with derived savannah, while lagos, ondo, and ogun states have a sizeable portion of their lands covered with tropical rainforests with swamps along the coastline zone. the region is characterized by a tropical climate, usually with distinct rainy and dry seasons and a main growing season lasting about 9 months. the average asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2)2025: 145-155 147 annual rainfall with peaks in july and september is 1480 mm. during the dry season, the monthly temperature ranges from 18°c to 24°c and 30°c to 35°c during the rainy season. the main source of income for the people living in this zone is rain-fed agriculture, which is characterized by arable cropping with cassava, maize, and yam as the main crops. commonly grown are tree crops such as cocoa, cashew, oil palm, and kolanut. the zone is also well-known for business and trade in addition to farming, which is the main economic activity in rural villages. there are many micro, small, and medium-sized businesses in the area that are involved in production, manufacture, and agro-allied enterprises. culturally, the south west zone is home to a diverse array of ethnic nationalities, with the yorubas being the majority and having the most dominant language. the study placed emphasis on migrant households in the selected rural areas. for this study, respondents must have been residing in their new location for at least one year and have migrated from one local government area to the other. another layer of migrants that were considered are foreigners who move in from different parts of africa. 2.2. sample size and sampling procedure the study used a multistage sampling technique to select the respondents for the study. ekiti, osun, and oyo states were purposively selected from the six states of the southwest of nigeria due to their low level of urbanization. twenty percent of the rural lgas were randomly selected in the respective states. ten percent of wards in each lga were randomly selected. prior to the survey, leaders of selected descendant associations in chosen wards facilitated the availability of member lists, which formed the sampling frame for migrant households, from which 40% of households were randomly selected to arrive at 413 respondents. 2.3. data collection structured questionnaire was used to collect data on respondents’ generational status, duration of stay, household assets, livelihood activities, and other important variables relevant to the study. 2.4. method of data analysis data were analysed using descriptive statistics (frequency counts, percentages, mean and standard deviation), estimation of simpson’s index of diversity (sid), and multinomial logit regression model. 2.5. measurement of overall income diversity simpsons index of diversity encompasses both the count of income sources and the significance or uniformity of these sources, as articulated by minot, epprecht, and trung (2006). it is calculated using the following formula: d = 1 − ∑ pi2 (1) where d = simpson’s index of diversification. n = number of livelihood activities. pi = proportion of income generated from each activity. i = number of income sources indexed by i. this metric of income diversification (d) quantifies the variety of income sources numerically and ranges between zero and one. a value closer to one indicates greater diversity in household income, with a diversification index of one signifying extreme diversification. the index is formulated by evaluating each income source, weighted by its proportionate contribution to the total income. the empirical model for (d) is articulated as follows: d =1 (2) where: fincom = farm income. nfincom = non-farm income. offincom = offfarm income. thi = total household income. this approach, aimed at assessing income diversification, is more inclusive as it considers transfer payments to individual households. the index has been employed in studies by ahmed, bhandari, gordoncillo, and quicoy (2018), djido and shiferaw (2018), and abiodun et al. (2019). 2.6. econometric specifications 2.6.1. the multinomial logit model the classification of households based on their income mix strategies served as the foundation for formulating and estimating the multinomial logit model, which assesses the probability of belonging to one of the activity income groups. farm, non-farm, and off-farm were the designated categories for farm activities. the objective is to understand how each explanatory variable influences the likelihood of a household head engaging in non-farm activities compared to farm activities, which serves as the base case. the model assigns each individual to one of the categories with a specific probability. households in the study area can choose from three different income activity options. researchers have used a similar methodology to examine the characteristics of households associated with various activities. examples include studies by adepoju and oyewole (2014), maja and oluwatayo (2018), and abiodun et al. (2019). following kennedy (1986), the multinomial logit model is expressed as: n i asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2)2025: 145-155 148 where pij = the probability linked to the income activity choices of a household "i" is denoted by "j," where j=0 if the household exclusively engages in farm activities, j=1 if the household participates in non-farm activities, and j=2 if the household partakes in off-farm activities. xi = represents the explanatory variables that remain constant across these alternatives. 3. results and discussion 3.1. socio-economic characteristics of rural migrant households the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents (table 1) show that the majority (72.25%) are male, whereas 27.25% were female. this indicates a higher occurrence of male-headed households in rural settings. consequently, this gender imbalance is likely to affect the respondents' choices regarding diversifying their livelihoods. men often perceive themselves as more active and motivated to improve the wellbeing of their household members, which may lead them to pursue additional income-generating activities. the average age of household heads, which is 49.97 years, indicates that the age range of migrant household heads falls within the productive years. this aligns with previous research conducted by fabusoro et al. (2010) and oyesola and ademola (2011), who reported that rural labor forces in the southwestern region of nigeria generally range from 20 to 55 years old. consequently, the household heads in this study are more likely to seek additional avenues for income generation. the majority (85.25%) of the respondents are married, while about 84.5% had access to formal education, with the average year of formal education estimated at 7.81 years. the literature widely acknowledges a positive relationship between access to education and involvement in income-generating activities. babatunde and matin (2009) emphasized that education significantly and positively influences the diversification into non-farm income. the level of literacy within rural farm households is vital for improving productivity, enhancing production efficiency, and ultimately increasing income, leading to a more diverse range of income sources for improved well-being. as household heads are typically responsible for decision-making within the household, their educational background greatly influences their choice of livelihood strategies. the result further indicates that majority of respondents (73.50%) had a household size of 4 to 8 individuals, with an average household size of 8. this suggests a relatively large family size within migrant households. these results align with the research conducted by fabusoro et al. (2010), which also found that relatively large household sizes are prevalent in rural areas. consequently, in the study area, a larger household size implies that there is a higher likelihood of diversified income sources if all members contribute to the overall welfare of the household. the results also showed that majority (91.25%) of household heads were physically fit, 76.75% of them were firstgeneration migrants, and 85% of the respondents have spent at least 15 years as migrants in their respective locations, with the mean duration of stay estimated to be 29.51 years. according to hendriks, martinj, julie, and espinova (2018), length of stay in a location is an important determinant of migrants’ welfare. they are of the opinion that migration is often considered a long-term investment into one’s future and that standard of living is expected to gradually improve over time after the initial challenges, such as cultural differences and environmental-related issues, are overcome. demireva (2019) also found out that most migrants experience more positive and significant impact of migration over time than negative ones. some results have also emerged from literature that length of stay of migrants is positively related to acquisition of assets and social integration (borodak & tichit, 2013; mara & landesmann, 2013). the results further reveal that about 95.5% had access to electricity from the national grid for less than 36 hours in a week, and about 78.75% had at least one livestock unit. power is a crucial element of rural infrastructure that plays a significant role in expanding non-farm opportunities in rural areas. it contributes to the establishment of rural enterprises, reduces operational costs, minimizes labor requirements for time-consuming tasks, and enables individuals to allocate more hours towards selected rural non-farm activities. access to electricity and its reliability directly impact the income-generating activities of rural migrant households and encourage them to diversify their livelihood strategies. livestock provide income and employment for producers (herrero et al., 2013). the respondents had various categories of livestock, such as goats, sheep, cows, rabbits, and chickens, that are at various stages of development. the tropical livestock unit (tlu) conversion index was used, depending on the type of livestock. about 73% of the respondents were members of one or more social organizations. the level of participation in social organizations and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2)2025: 145-155 149 decision-making of such organisations largely affects access to networks, credit information of cooperatives, and other forms of social assets that enhance the economic strengths of rural dwellers for livelihood diversification. regarding the size of land holdings of respondents, 86.5% had at least 2ha with a mean of 11.29 ha. about 92.25% of respondents covered at least 15 km from their locations to urban center, with a mean distance of 18.37 km. the household disposable asset of the majority (51%) was in the range of n 1,000,000 to n 2,000,000, while only 43% had access to credit. disposable assets are those that can be used to pay off debt in a hurry and reduce the impact of income shocks. having disposable assets also gives households freedom to get quick access to cash when there is a need to dabble into new business ventures. having disposable assets is crucial for meeting current needs and creating longterm plan. by implication, the more the household’s disposable assets, the more likely they are to be able to diversify their income sources. access to credit by households or individuals residing in rural areas is important because it helps to break the vicious circle of low capital, low productivity, and low levels of savings that usually characterize rural economies. access to credit plays a crucial role in rural households as it aids in mitigating the negative effects of income fluctuations and enables the diversification of livelihood activities (abraham, 2018). the rural economy can grow only if it has an adequate flow of finance. provision of credit facilities has been discovered to enable rural dwellers to buy farm inputs and expand their businesses. access to credit helps alleviate financial constraints and enhances the ability of households to initiate off-farm and non-farm enterprises (oyinbo & olaleye, 2016). table 1. socio-economic characteristics of rural migrant households. variables frequency percentage female 109 27.25 male 291 72.75 <30 years 6 1.50 30-40 years 80 20.00 41-50 years 134 33.50 51-60 years 102 25.50 above 60 years 78 19.50 mean 49.97 standard deviation 10.25 married 341 85.25 widow/widower 37 9.25 divorced/separated 22 5.50 0 year 62 15.50 1-6 years 157 39.25 7-12 years 129 32.25 above 12 years 52 13.00 mean 7.81 standard deviation 4.86 <4 persons 29 7.25 4-8 persons 294 73.50 9-12 persons 59 14.75 above 12 persons 18 4.50 mean 8 standard deviation 2.69 healthy 365 91.25 permanently ill 35 8.75 first generation 307 76.75 second generation 93 23.25 <15 years 60 15.00 15-25 years 140 35.00 26-35 years 67 16.75 above 35 years 133 33.25 mean 29.51 standard deviation 14.71 0 111 27.75 <15 hours 23 5.75 15-25 hours 132 33.00 26-35 hours 116 29.00 above 35 hours 18 4.50 < 1 85 21.25 1 – 2.5 156 39.00 2.6 – 3.5 43 10.75 above 3.5 116 29.00 mean 12.95 standard deviation 27.77 0 106 26.50 1 130 32.50 2 111 27.75 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2)2025: 145-155 150 variables frequency percentage 3 52 13.00 4 1 0.25 <2ha 54 13.50 2ha4 ha 164 41.00 4.4ha -6 ha 102 25.50 above 6 ha 80 20.00 mean 11.29 standard deviation 6.38 6.38 < 5km 31 7.75 5-15km 129 32.25 16-25km 153 38.25 above 25km 87 21.75 mean 18.37 standard deviation 8.73 <1,000,000 naira 58 14.50 1,000,000-2,000,000 naira 204 51.00 2,000,001-3,000,000 naira 83 20.75 above 3,000,000 naira 55 13.75 mean 2.186,513 standard deviation 2,122.428 no 220 55.00 yes 180 45.00 source: field survey, 2023. 3.2. major sources of income of household heads in the study area results in table 2 show that more than half (53%) of the respondents engaged in farming as their major occupation, 27.75% chose non-farm as their major source of livelihood, and 19.25% of the migrant households were involved in offfarm activities as their primary means of livelihood. non-farm activities provide employment for the landless. off-farm activities are agriculturally related but occur beyond the farm. examples of off-farm services include extension services, processing, packaging, storage, and transportation. diversification of income sources into farm and non-farm enhances food security, increases agricultural production by alleviating capital constraints, and also helps to better cope with environmental shocks. table 2. distribution of respondents based on major source of income of household heads. major source of income frequency. percent farm 212 53.00 non-farm 111 27.75 off-farm 77 19.25 total 400 100 source: field survey, 2023. 3.3. number of income outlets of the respondents rural areas have unique socio-economic dynamics, meaning that most rural dwellers make their living from their relationship with land-based industry. this section presents livelihood diversity in the study area based on the number of income sources. table 3 shows that 21.25% of the respondents had only one source of income, while 24% relied on two income sources. also, 20.75% of the respondents had three sources of income, 15.75% had four sources, 8.75% had five income outlets, and 6.75% had 6 income outlets, while 2.50% of them had 7 sources of income. on cumulative basis, 46.25% of the migrants had 1 to 2 income sources, while 66.00% had between 1 and 3 income outlets. table 3. distribution of households according to number of income outlets. income source outlets freq. percent 1 85 21.25 2 96 24.00 3 83 20.75 4 63 15.75 5 35 8.75 6 27 6.75 7 11 2.75 total 400 100 source: field survey, 2023. 3.4. primary occupation of household heads table 4 presents the primary occupations of household heads. the table shows that 44.25% of the respondents chose farming as their primary occupation. those who chose teaching, commercial transportation, commercial motorcycle riding, and retailing formed 13.00%, 11.00%, 6.00%, and 6.00% of the rural migrants, respectively. others include blacksmithing, carpentry, hair plaiting, palm wine tapping, paid employment, tailoring, and vulcanizing. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2)2025: 145-155 151 table 4. distribution of household heads according to primary occupation. primary occupation of households freq. percent blacksmithing 16 4.00 carpentry 9 2.25 farming 177 44.25 hair plaiting 18 4.50 motorcycle operator 24 6.00 palm wine tapping 14 3.50 paid employment 4 1.00 retailing 24 6.00 tailoring 16 4.00 teaching 52 13.00 transporter 44 11.00 vulcanizing 2 0.50 total 400 100.00 source: field survey, 2023. 3.5. livelihood diversification among the rural migrant households the results presented in table 5 show that among household heads who engaged in farming as their major source of income, 47.64% had sid values that ranged from 0.41-0.60, and 30.19% had sids that were above 0.60. those with sids of 0.20-0.40 accounted for 21.23%, while the remaining 0.94% had sid estimates that were less than 0.20. for household heads that chose non-farm as their main livelihood activity, 45.95% had sid estimates that ranged from 0.41-0.60, 40.54% had sid estimates well above 0.60, while those who had sids of 0.20-0.40 formed 12.61%, and the remaining 0.90% had less than 0.20. with respect to household heads that took off-farm as their main source of livelihood, 44.16% and 44.16% had sid values that range from 0.41-0.60 and above 0.60, respectively. the remaining 11.69% had sid estimates between 0.20-0.40. it will be observed that the household heads with sid estimates that range from 0.41-0.60 were prevalent across the three income sources. furthermore, the results revealed that the offfarm activities have the highest sid. this is similar to the findings of anang and yeboah (2019), who asserted that the income from off-farm work complements income from farm activities and helps to expand other economic activities. overall, the results revealed that less than one percent (0.75%) of the rural migrant household heads had sid of less than 0.20. while seventeen percent (17%) of the migrant households had sid ranging between 0.20 and 0.40, 47.5% (0.41-0.60) and 35.75% had above 0.60. the average livelihood diversification index was 0.53; this is an indication that livelihood activities of the respondents are moderately diversified. the findings are similar to those of oni and fashogbon (2013), who asserted that households in rural areas, including those of migrants, are risk-neutral with sid of 0.53. the moderate level of livelihood diversification in this study could be attributed to major challenges that are peculiar to rural migrants. these may include constraints such as low levels of assets, inadequate rural infrastructural facilities, erratic power supply, and inadequate credit facilities, among others, which militate against a suitable environment for venturing into many livelihood activities. table 5. distribution of the migrants based on simpson's income diversity index. simpsons income diversity index farm non-farm off-farm total mean <0.20 2 (0.94) 1 (0.90) 0 (0.00) 3 (0.75) 0.53 0.20-0.40 45 (21.23) 14 (12.61) 9 (11.69) 68 (17.00) 0.41-0.60 101 (47.64) 51 (45.95) 34 (44.16) 186 (46.50) above 0.60 64 (30.19) 45 (40.54) 34 (44.16) 143 (35.75) total 212 (100.00) 111 (100.00) 77 (100.00) 400 (100.00) note: figures in brackets are in percentages (%). 3.6. determinants of household choice of livelihood activities table 6 presents the results of the multinomial logit model, which examines the determinants of migrant households’ choice of livelihood activities. the model includes three outcome variables: farm activities, non-farm activities, and off-farm activities, with farm activities serving as the reference group. the total assessed a total of 10 explanatory variables, identifying four statistically significant in the non-farm activity equation and two as significant in the off-farm activity equation. the overall model was determined to be statistically significant, with a wald chisquare ratio of 42.27 and a p-value of 0.0025. the model has a log likelihood of -378.11236. 3.7. non-farm activities relative to farm activities the age of household heads was found to have a positive impact at a significance level of 5%. this suggests that a one-unit increase in age increases the likelihood of choosing non-farm activities over farming activities by 0.0357 units, assuming all other variables remain constant. this finding aligns with the research by nmeregini and udoka (2021) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2)2025: 145-155 152 indicating that older household heads are more likely to participate in non-farm activities, potentially due to health challenges associated with old age. household size negatively influenced the choice of livelihood activity at a significance level of 10%. this implies that a one-unit increase in household size decreases the likelihood of choosing non-farm activities as a livelihood option relative to farming activities by 0.1271 units, assuming other variables remain constant. this result is consistent with the findings of babatunde and matin (2009) and adepoju abimbola and obayelu oluwakemi (2013) but contradicts the findings of ahmed and melesse (2018). the large household size often leads to a focus on farm-related activities as a way to increase income and meet the family's food needs. furthermore, the multinomial regression estimates demonstrate that farm size is highly significant at a significance level of 1% and has a negative influence. when all other variables remain constant, a one-unit increase in farm size reduces the likelihood of choosing non-farm activities as a livelihood choice by 0.0585 units. this finding aligns with the research by abiodun et al. (2019), suggesting that households with larger farm sizes tend to specialize in farming as their primary income source. vocational training has a positive and significant influence on livelihood activity choice at a significance level of 1%. this means that the log odds of migrants who have undergone vocational training relative to those who have not undergone training are 0.7447 units higher in choosing non-farm activities over farming activities, assuming all other variables remain constant. this implies that migrants with specialized skills have more time dedicated to their vocations and are less likely to engage in farming activities. 3.8. off-farm activity relative to farm activity participation in off-farm activities refers to engaging in paying jobs related to farming outside of one's own farm. researchers have found that these activities significantly contribute to livelihood security. off-farm income, derived from activities such as crop processing, hunting, gathering, and palm tapping, supplements on-farm income and promotes economic expansion among rural communities. the estimates from multinomial regression (table 6) demonstrate that farm size has a significant impact on the choice of off-farm activity as a livelihood. this significance is observed at a 1% level and is negative. this suggests that the availability of land for farming purposes influences the decision to engage in off-farm activities. specifically, a one-unit increase in farm size leads to a 0.0682 reduction in the log odds of choosing off-farm activity as a source of livelihood, holding other variables constant. these findings align with previous studies by ahmed and melesse (2018) and abiodun et al. (2019). furthermore, the coefficient for the value of disposable assets significantly influences the choice of activity at a 1% significance level and is negative. this suggests that a one-unit increase in the value of assets leads to a 3.852e-07 unit decrease in the log odds of choosing off-farm activity, while maintaining the same level of other variables. the results indicate that migrant household heads with higher levels of disposable income are less inclined to engage in off-farm activities. this finding contradicts the expectations set forth by babatunde and matin (2009), which anticipated a positive relationship. the discrepancy may be due to the poor compensation associated with self-employment in the non-farm activities in rural areas. table 6. multinomial logit regression estimates of determinants of household choice of livelihood activities. variables non-farm off-farm coefficient z p> |z| coefficient z p> |z| sex -0.3346 (0.2658) -1.26 0.208 -0.0793 (0.3235) -0.25 0.806 age 0.0357** (0.0163) 2.19 0.028 0.0094 (0.0177) 0.53 0.596 household size -0.1271* (0.0675) -1.88 0.060 -0.0273 (0.0681) -0.40 0.688 education years -0.0017 (0.0260) -0.07 0.947 -0.0211 (0.0301) -0.70 0.483 farm size -0.0585*** (0.0217) -2.69 0.007 -0.0682*** (0.0235) -2.90 0.004 value of assets -0.000000109 (0.0000000807) -1.36 0.175 -0.000000385*** (0.000000137) -2.81 0.005 dependency ratio 0.1869 (0.2567) 0.73 0.466 0.0877 (0.2822) 0.31 0.756 migrant generation -0.3229 (0.2903) -1.11 0.266 -0.2021 (0.3276) -0.62 0.537 vocational training 0.7447*** (0.2775) 2.68 0.007 0.0802 (0.2968) 0.27 0.787 credit access 0.1139 (0.2469) 0.46 0.644 0.2131 (0.2779) 0.77 0.443 constant -0.9524 (0.8335) -1.14 0.253 0.3455 (1.0425) 0.33 0.740 observation = 400 wald chi2 (20) = 42.27 prob> chi2 = 0.0025 log likelihood = -378.11236 standard error in parenthesis note: ***, ** and * represent level of significance at 1%, 5% and 10% respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2)2025: 145-155 153 3.9. marginal effect of determinants of household choice of livelihood activities table 7 presents the marginal effect (me) of the explanatory variables. with an increase in age, there is a decrease in the probability of choosing farm activity as the main livelihood activity by 0.0055 unit (p= 0.068). however, the same variable increases the probability of choosing a non-farm activity by 0.0062 unit (p= 0.026), assuming all other variables remain constant. an increase in household size by one unit decreases the probability of choosing a non-farm activity by 0.0224 unit (p=0.060), holding other variables constant. the marginal effect of farm size on the choice of livelihood activity shows that an increase in the farm size by one unit increases the probability of choosing farm activity by 0.0140 unit (p= 0.000). in contrast, increasing the same variable by one unit will reduce the probability of choosing non-farm activity (p= 0.064) and off-farm activity (p= 0.038) by 0.0071 and 0.0068 units, respectively, assuming other variables remain constant. increasing the value of assets by one unit increases the probability of choosing farm activity (p=0.004) by 5.02e08 units, while reducing the probability of choosing off-farm activity (p=0.010) by -5.12e-08 unit, holding other variables constant. acquiring vocational training lowers the probability of choosing farm activity (p= 0.037) by 0.1060 units, while having vocational training increases the probability of choosing non-farm activity (p= 0.005) by 0.1360 units, assuming other variables remain constant. table 7. marginal effect of determinants of household choice of livelihood activities. variables dy/dx std. error z p>|z| sex farm 0.0516 0.0527 0.98 0.327 non-farm -0.0587 0.0472 -1.24 0.214 off-farm 0.0070 0.0455 0.15 0.877 age farm -0.0055* 0.0030 -1.83 0.068 non-farm 0.0062** 0.0027 2.23 0.026 off-farm -0.0006 0.0024 -0.25 0.801 household size farm 0.0193 0.0120 1.60 0.109 non-farm -0.0224* 0.0119 -1.88 0.06 off-farm 0.0030 0.0096 0.32 0.749 education years farm 0.0021 0.0050 0.43 0.667 non-farm 0.0008 0.0046 0.19 0.853 off-farm 0.0030 0.0042 -0.72 0.472 farm size farm 0.0140*** 0.0038 3.66 0.000 non-farm -0.0071* 0.0039 -1.85 0.064 off-farm -0.0068** 0.0033 -2.07 0.038 value of disposable assets farm 0.0000000502*** 0.0000000173 2.9 0.004 non-farm 0.00000000103 0.0000000156 0.07 0.947 off-farm -0.0000000512** 0.0000000199 -2.57 0.010 dependency ratio farm -0.0328 0.0487 -0.68 0.500 non-farm 0.0303 0.0459 0.66 0.509 off-farm 0.0025 0.0399 0.06 0.949 migrant generation farm 0.0615 0.0560 1.10 0.272 non-farm 0.0495 0.0511 -0.97 0.332 off-farm 0.0119 0.0457 -0.26 0.795 vocational training farm -0.1060** 0.0509 -2.08 0.037 non-farm 0.1360*** 0.0483 2.82 0.005 off-farm -0.0299 0.0412 -0.73 0.467 credit access farm -0.0348 0.0477 -0.73 0.466 non-farm 0.0095 0.0439 0.22 0.828 off-farm 0.0253 0.0389 0.65 0.516 note: ***, ** and * represent level of significance at 1%, 5% and 10% respectively. 4. conclusion and recommendations the study area is characterized by predominantly active, first-generation male migrants with limited education. while migrant households exhibit high levels of capital availability, the quality of various capital sources is notably asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2)2025: 145-155 154 poor. respondents participated in three primary income-generating activities, namely: farming, non-farm, and off-farm activities. although farming is the primary occupation for most households, the majority have reasonably diversified income sources, recognizing that sole reliance on farming may not sustain their desired livelihoods. the livelihood diversification index suggests a moderate level of rural livelihood diversification. there is a high degree of heterogeneity in terms of asset ownership and income-generating activities at household level among the respondents. the level of diversification estimated using sid revealed that income generating activities among migrants are moderately diversified. the major factors that determine migrant household choice of non-farm activities and off-farm over farm activity was size of landholdings. based on the findings of the study, government and other stakeholders should adopt a comprehensive strategy to improve access to non-farm and off-farm employment opportunities, particularly in rural areas. to address the issue of unemployment during off-seasons, we can encourage corporate bodies and private investors to invest in rural areas. additionally, government and other policymakers should focus on creating a conducive environment by establishing microfinancial institutions to tackle the problem of access to various livelihood assets, offering training to rural inhabitants, and developing rural infrastructure, including improved roads, electricity, and market facilities. these measures would enable rural households to sustain their livelihoods throughout the year. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abiodun, t. c., olutumise, a. i., & ojo, s. o. 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(2013). inequality, the urban-rural gap, and migration. the quarterly journal of economics, 128(4), 1727-1785. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106043 https://doi.org/10.3390/economies7030084 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 74 microcredit repayment among smallholder farmers: what microfinance institutions need to know emmanuel tetteh jumpah, emmanuel kojo tetteh, abdulai adams council for scientific and industrial research-science and technology policy research institute, cantonments-accra, ghana  emmanuel.jumpah@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 22-sep-2018 accepted: 22-oct-2018 online available: 07-nov2018 keywords: microcredit, repayment, smallholder farmers, determinants, lenders, borrowers abstract microcredit default among borrowers has been rising in recent years but empirical evidence to ascertain the factors determining repayment remain lacking especially in developing countries like ghana. this study contributes to addressing this knowledge gap. the study used data of 224 microcredit borrowers from ada west and ada east districts to analyse factors determining repayment rate among smallholder farmer borrowers. applying the logistic regression model, farmer and credit specific characteristics were used to analyse the determinants of microcredit repayment. from the logistic regression, age, gender, income, and number of dependants increase the likelihood of repayment. however, membership of farmer based organization, experience, interest rate, and duration of loan repayment negatively influences loan repayment. the study also found delays in loan disbursement resulted in loan use for unproductive ventures and repayment challenges. in addition, lack of training for borrowers on credit management, and investment procedures adversely impacted on loan repayment. the paper recommends that mfis should institute measures to train borrowers on loan utilization, focus on women clients, since they have higher probability of repayment, reduce interest rate as well as putting in place mechanisms to reduce cost of operations. contribution/ originality in developing economies like ghana’s microfinance institutions (mfis) rely on speculative means to advance credit to borrowers. this has produced adverse negative effect on loan repayment and the sustainability of microcredit schemes. using speculative means such as collateral and credit history of potential borrowers has resulted in high rate of default among borrowers. the consequences were collapse of some microcredit institutions whiles others are in distress. this paper provides the empirical evidence that farmer and credit specific characteristics are critical for ensuring microcredit repayment and the sustenance of microfinance institutions (mfis). doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.74.91 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: emmanuel tetteh jumpah, emmanuel kojo tetteh and abdulai adams (2018). microcredit repayment among smallholder farmers: what microfinance institutions need to know. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 74-91. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 74-91 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:emmanuel.jumpah@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.74.91 https://orcid.org/000-0003-3828-972x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4348-0862 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8820-0925 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 75 1. introduction microcredit (small loans) over the years has been used as a developmental tool and is regarded as a means of providing financial capital to smallholder businesses and vulnerable households, who otherwise would have no access to financial capital from the orthodox financial system for entrepreneurial activities (kumar et al., 2013; bourlès et al., 2018). in many communities in the developing world, microcredit can be obtained from microfinance institutions (mfis) after certain basic criteria to access them are met. the ultimate goal of the microcredit programmmes or schemes is to reduce poverty among poor people by increasing their access to financial capital in order to invest in income generating activities. access to financial capital for the entrepreneurial poor, especially women, will boost living standards and reduce poverty in developing countries (yunus and weber, 2007). as milton freidman observed that the poor remains poor not because they are not entrepreneurial but because they lack financial capital to invest in income generating activities (bell, 2014). the availability of financial capital to the poor can lift millions out of poverty. microcredit has existed for ages as people lend small loans among each other within communities. however, institutionalized microcredit in its’ current form, structure, and mode of operation can be traced to the 1970s with the establishment of the grameen initiative by mohammed yunus, the co-winner of the 2006 nobel peace prize. the benefits of microcredit to small business entrepreneurs have been documented in several studies including adjei et al. (2009), chen and ravallion (2010), fraser et al. (2013), kaboski and townsend (2013) and klapper and dutt (2015). these studies argue that microcredit provides supports to the poor to meet basic needs and also as a safeguard against risks and uncertainties. microcredit empowers poor women entrepreneurs, improves household socioeconomic wellbeing and income (fraser et al., 2013; kaboski and townsend, 2013). to klapper and dutt (2015), access to microcredit leads to women’s empowerment and their ability to be part of the household decision making process. millions of the world’s poor who have access to microcredit are able to invest in small businesses to increase production and income, thereby reducing poverty among many in the process. according to pitt et al., (2006) and kumar et al. (2013), access to microcredit empowers vulnerable and business oriented women to actively participate in economic activities and by so doing stimulate gender equity. there are also studies that have contested some of these findings and have pointed to the contrary (dowla and barua, 2006; neff, 2009; karlan and zinman, 2011; roodman, 2012) and concluded that microfinance is not a panacea for mitigating the problem of the poor. neff (2009), for example, found that after eight years of borrowing, 55 percent clients of the grameen bank were still not able to meet their basic household needs. to karlan and zinman (2011), microcredit can even collapse the business of some clients. the critics of microcredit also argue that, microfinance has failed as a development tool because client often use loans on other activities such as marriage, funeral, and for household consumption without investing in business. the microcredit industry in ghana had grown tremendously since the liberalization of the financial sector in the past two decades even though the industry’s existence dated to 1955 when missionaries of the catholic church established a small loan scheme for an underprivileged community in upper east region of ghana. prior to 1960, the policy of the state was to provide subsided small loans to the poor because it was believed that lack of financial capital was the main cause of poverty especially in rural communities. the policy could not achieve its goal of eliminating poverty because poor people require other types of financial services in addition to the small loans. there was therefore the need to in-cooperate non-financial services such savings, reinvestment, and business training which are important for proper loan management and utilisation to achieve positive outcomes. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 76 from the later parts of 1960 through the 70s and to the 1980s, provision of microcredit to small business enterprises was largely done through ngos and rural and community banks who during the period, placed little emphasis on financial sustainability and self-sufficiency. this period was also characterised by heavy reliance on donor aid from development partners as such the lending institutions paid little attention to effectiveness, efficiency, and loans recovery. the next epoch of microcredit evolution in ghana was from the 1990s and early part of this century when policies were initiated to formalise the microfinance industry. during this period, laws to support the structure and operations of the microfinance industry in ghana were promulgated (asiama and osei, 2007). ever since, ghana’s microcredit industry has transformed from a non-profit venture to a commercial one and its operation has expanded all over the country. the industry has therefore been mainstreamed into the conventional financial system and is now regarded as one of the subsectors of the financial systems in ghana providing financial capital to the poor. practitioners within the microcredit industry believe that the increasing number of microfinance institutions in ghana is eventually closing the lending gap that had been created by the orthodox financial markets since micro, small and medium scale enterprises can now have access to financial capital on sustainable bases from microfinance institutions. this confirms the significant role microcredit plays in an open economy like ghana’s. crop production especially vegetables cultivation like any other economic activities is capital intensive. vegetable farming requires inputs such as seedlings, fertilizer and agro-chemicals for which some amount of capital is needed. the main economic activity of the people of ada west district and ada east district is farming. therefore, the emergence of the microcredit programmes in these two districts was highly welcomed by the people. most of the smallholder farmers in ada west and ada east districts over the years have relied on microcredit to meet their financial capital needs. however, recent developments in the microfinance industry have been a course of concern among many players of the sector. one critical area of concern was the collapse of hitherto strong microcredit schemes due to:  investments in extremely risky assets (long term and very large assets) with the view to make super abnormal profits defeating the initial objective of microcredit as envisioned by mohammed yunus; providing short term small loans to micro entrepreneurs  lending to close associates who invest the loan in unproductive ventures; and  high rate of default among borrowers due to multiplicity of factors. the last five years has witnessed the collapse of several microcredit institutions whiles others are in financial distress due to the factors enumerated. the main source of capital for most of the smallholder farmers in ada west and ada east districts is microcredit without which farming activities, especially vegetable cultivation, the livelihood activity of the people will come to a standstill, thereby increasing poverty levels within the two districts. an empirical evidence to establish microcredit loan repayment in order to find answers to the sustainability of the microcredit programme in the ada east district and ada west district cannot be overestimated. this, therefore is the focus of this paper. in many microcredit institutions the procedures adopted to advance credit to a would-be-borrower are normally hypothetical and largely depend on past knowledge of the borrower or experience of the borrower rather than on empirical and objective analysis. nevertheless it must be acknowledged that the decision to lend to the borrower is based on speculations but it is more appropriate if such decisions are based on empirical evidence. the decision to grant credit to a borrower is based on certain criteria such as collateral securities or a deposit from the borrower to achieve maximum repayment. relying on these criteria to access repayment rates of vegetable farmers in the two districts in ada may be misleading. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 77 the use of speculative means to make a decision could have severe negative outcome for the microcredit institution. besides, much can be found in literature on the criteria for lending by microcredit institutions. however, not same can be said for the reasons for failure to repay credit advanced to borrowers, though such defaulters met the minimum lending criteria required by lenders, therefore the need for this study. using farmer and microcredit specific characteristics such as mode of repayment, interest rate, gender, duration of repayment among others, this study provides empirical evidence as to whether these characteristics impact on the capability of the borrowers to repay the credit advanced to them. 2. determinants of microcredit repayment there are several factors that determine the ability of borrowers to repay the credit advanced to them by the credit providing agency. these factors are discussed below based on previous research. rural people especially the vulnerable such as women normally have unequal access to credit. the problem is more pronounced in developing countries (rodriguez, 1995; yunus, 1995). studies suggest that small loans available to women can help them invest in income generating activities and improve upon their income. the increase income will enable them to repay the loan with interest (pitt et al., 2003; khandker, 2005). it therefore presupposed that gender is an important determinant of the ability to repay microcredit. while many third-world microcredit borrowers have been able to maintain high repayment rate despite low educational levels, micro entrepreneurs in the united states of america (usa) are faced with different circumstances. unlike many developing countries, which have demand for products/services produced by micro entrepreneurs, the market demand is high in the usa, products and services offered by micro entrepreneurs is often quiet low. to achieve high returns on their investments and be capable of repaying loans, micro entrepreneurs in the usa need to carved out distinct market niches, compared with the counterpart in developing countries. borrowers with higher levels of education may have higher repayment rates because they can make better investment decisions (bhatt et al., 1999). micro entrepreneurs often use part of the loan acquired for household needs such as paying for their children’s education, medical bills, buying of food and as a security for meeting emergencies or unexpected expenditure. according to wright (2010), and mersland and strom (2011), microcredit clients are risk-averse and do not invest their loan into one enterprise. other studies that have alluded to microcredit clients using loan for other non-income generating activities include littlefield et al. (2003), alexander (2006), and mersland and strom (2011). loan borrowers may use cash inflow from non-farming activities such as money from friends, family members to make loan repayments. thus borrowers with higher household income from non-farming activities may have a higher chance of repaying their credit. farmers who have been in farming longer are expected to have more stable sales and cash flow than those who have just started. thus those who have been in farming for a long period may have a higher tendency to repay the credit facility (bhatt and tang, 2002). if a farmer’s farm or residence is close to the lender it is easier for the lender to get information to the borrower and to provide him/her with relevant technical or business advice. thus borrowers with farms or residence closer to the lending agency may have higher repayment rate (ibid) to access loan, borrowers may incur various types of transaction costs (bhatt and tang, 1998). borrowers may be less able and motivated to repay if they have to bear excessive transaction costs due to complicated loan application and repayment procedure or due to inefficiencies in the lender delivery system, such as missed investment opportunities because of delay in loan disbursement. in such a case if a farmer received the credit late in the farming season he/she may use it on unplanned activities resulting in debt. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 78 members of a group can bring pressure to bear on individuals to repay their loans in order to protect the integrity of the group to enable the group to access future credit facility. group members can also check their peers to ensure that they are not engaged in activities that will threaten loan repayment. thus, farmers who are members of a group/fbo may have a higher tendency of repaying the credit facility advanced to them (varian, 2010). as demonstrated empirically by besley and coate (1995), social sanctions in grouped-based lending can lead to increased repayment rate. field studies in burkina faso further indicated repayments are high when threat of ex post pressure is carried to the extreme, and has even resulted in the forced sales of household items in order to recover the loan amount. in the absence of peer monitoring, peer pressure in the form of verbal abuse, ostracism and sanctions were the strategies to ensure loan repayment (giné, 2010; jeffrey and tyler, 2010). borrowers usually repay their credit from incomes that accrue from investment of their credit in income-generating activities. whiles income from non-farming can also help the borrower to repay the credit, yeboah (2010) argued that the proceeds from the farming activities as a result of the use of the credit is the main source of funds for repayment. roslan and mohd-zaini (2009) suggested the amount of credit received by beneficiaries influences their ability to repay. where credit is inadequate farmers are unable to purchase the needed inputs to increase their output hence a low rate of repayment. on the other hand if the credit amount is more than needed by borrower there is tendency of misuse, resulting in debt and poor repayment. it is argued that where borrowers are trained on the use of credit there is efficient use of the funds. this will result in increased yield and for that matter income, ceteris paribus. the increase in revenue and profit may help the farmer to repay the credit. thus, provision of training to borrowers may improve the ability to repay the credit that has been advanced to the farmer. it is argued that older borrowers are wiser and more responsible than younger borrowers. on the other hand, younger borrowers are more knowledgeable and more independent. hence age might have positive and negative effect on credit repayment rate (ibid). repayment duration refers to the period for which all the entire credit must be repaid. ledgerwood (1999) observed that cash flow in part determines the debt-servicing capacity of the borrower. shorter repayment period might cause the borrower not to have generated enough revenue to make credit repayments. on the other hand, longer repayment period might be detrimental to the borrower if they cannot access future loan until the existing credit is paid back. hence both shorter and longer repayment period can have negative effects on the ability to repay. field et al. (2012) provided empirical evidence to suggest that longer repayment period does not necessarily encourage irresponsible repayment behavior among borrowers. however, roslan and mohd-zaini (2009) provided evidence that longer repayment period increase the probability of default among borrowers whiles analyzing the determinant of microcredit repayment in malaysia in their work on loan defaults in nigeria, oladeebo and oladeebo (2008) concluded that, loan quantum received, age, farming experience, use of credit, and level of education were the major significant socio-economic factors determining loan repayment. borrower’s socio-economic factors which did not have significant influence on loan repayment were gross farm income, and cultivated farm size. their findings suggested that credit should be mostly advanced to middle age and energetic farmers who are more likely to adopt new innovations in agricultural production than their older counterparts. the study emphasized adult education for non-literate farmers because literate farmers are also likely to adopt new innovations which may enhance their income positively. 3. methodology 3.1. study area and data collection the study was carried out in ada west and ada east districts of the greater accra region of ghana in 2015. the two districts are predominantly rural districts with farming being the main asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 79 economic activity. available information from the ada rural bank, alphamaga, and opportunity international mfis shows that microcredit loan recovery in the two districts is no more than 83%. greater accra region as a whole is considered a cosmopolitan area where commerce and white collar jobs are the main economic activities thus little attention has been given to empirical research to establish microcredit utilization and repayment among smallholder farmers in the region in spite of their presence. both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. with the help of microcredit lenders we were able to identify farmers who have accessed microcredit that have either paid in full or defaulted. since the information, according to the lenders were highly confidential they had to seek the consent of the respondents (defaulters in particular) and upon agreeing before we were given the opportunity to interview them. from over 3000 smallholder farmer microcredit users, we randomly selected 250 respondents and administered questionnaires to them. but due to outliers and incomplete responses to some questionnaires the study finally used 224 (comprised 120 who repaid loan in full and 104 defaulters). the sample size was based on availability of funds. a structured questionnaire was used to collect data through the interview format. data were analysed with the stata statistical software. there were follow ups to validate some of the findings. tables and charts were generated and analysed descriptively. 3.2. empirical method of analysing data the logit model was used to analyse the factors determining loan repayments capabilities among borrowers. the logit model was used because the dependent variable is dichotomous. this implies that during the period of loan repayment if the respondent had difficulties to repay agreed amount at the scheduled time it is indicated zero (0) otherwise one (1) for the dependent variable. we used farmer and credit specific characteristic that could influence microcredit repayment based on theory, literature and prior knowledge of the study areas. microcredit repayment, the dependent variable is therefore a function of the selected farmer and credit specific characteristics. the farmer and microcredit specific characteristics used and the expected impact on the dependent variable are shown on table 1. for estimation purpose the logit model is given here as: 𝐿𝑖 = ln(𝑃|1 − 𝑃) = 𝛽1 + 𝛽𝑖𝑋𝑖 + 𝜀𝑖 𝐿𝑖 = independent variable 𝛽1 = constant 𝛽𝑖= marginal values of the independent variables 𝑋𝑖 = independent variables 𝜀𝑖 = error term the data was analysed using stata 14 table 1: the variables included in model and their predicted impacts variable symbol measurement predicted impact level of education x1 dummy (1=jhs; otherwise=0) + fbo membership x2 dummy (1=member of fbo; otherwise=0) + gender x3 dummy (1=female; otherwise=0) + interest rate x4 percentages experience in farming x5 years in farming + distance x6 kilometers + perception of pressure from credit institution x7 dummy(1=pressurized to repay; otherwise=0) + asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 80 repayment duration x8 months +/ age x9 years +/ amount of credit granted x10 ghana cedis + dependants x11 number of people farmer is taking care of +/ income x12 ghana cedis +/ 4. results and discussions 4.1. loan default: farmers perspective low prices of farm output accounted for about 43% of the reasons why the farmers defaulted in loan repayment. high interest rate (22%) was the second cause of default whereas poor yield was the least (6%) (figure 1). it is not surprising that poor yield is the least while ‘low prices’ is a major factor for loan default. availability of credit could lead to increased farm size and investment in other income generating ventures. ceteris paribus increase investment in farm operations will lead to increased yield but the increased in yield may result in glut and hence low prices, resulting in income decline and loan repayment challenges. this means provision of credit must be backed with efficient marketing strategy. figure 1: reasons for non-payment of credit source: field survey data, 2015 4.2. loan repayment and saving pattern from figure 2, 64% of the borrowers paid back their loan from the proceeds of their farms whilst 24% paid from non-farm incomes. twelve percent (12%) paid the loan from both farm and nonfarm incomes. repayment duration ranges from 6 months to one and half years, suggesting that the loans are for short term financing. nearly 77% (76.8%) of the farmers saved from their earnings. savings in the local currency ranged from gh₵ 150.00 (≃ us$ 42.00) to gh₵ 3000.00 (≃ us$ 834.00) with average of gh₵ 240.34 (≃ us$ 67.00). these savings are normally deposited with the various microcredit schemes from which the loan was obtained. the average savings figure is relatively low which may be a sign of poor savings habit or higher consumption pattern of farmers from income that accrued to them. those who did not save (23%) attributed it to various reasons as shown in figure 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 81 figure 2: reasons some farmers could not save source: field survey data, 2015 low/small income is seen as the main cause of no saving among smallholder farmers. the small income may be due to relatively low prices they might have received for their products. ‘social responsibilities’ is the least reason for not savings. mfis need to encourage their clients to inculcate the habit of saving. accumulated savings can be used to offset repayment in times of repayment challenges or to mitigate unforeseen economic hardships. such savings could also be used as collateral for accessing bigger loans. 4.3. business management training the lending institutions provided business management training to some of the clients. in figure 4, 49% were trained on how to follow loan repayment schedules, 38% received training on use of loan and 13% received training on keeping business records. it can be observed in figure 4 that credit providers are more interested in repayment of the credit advanced to farmers without exerting much pressure on borrowers hence they tend to focus training borrowers more on how to follow repayment schedule to the neglect of record keeping and credit utilisation. figure 3: form of business training offered by lenders source: field survey data, 2015 58% 25% 17% reasons for not saving small income household consumption social responsibilities 13% 38% 49% types of training business training use of loan loan repayment asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 82 4.4. loan fungibility loan fungibility is the use of loan for purposes other than the purpose for which the loan was granted. sixty-nine percent (69%) of the farmers alluded to using part of their credit on other activities instead of investing all in the farming activities. amount used ranged from gh₵ 50.00 (≃ us$ 14.00) to gh₵ 500.00 (≃ us$ 139.00) with an average usage of gh₵ 125.64 (≃ us$ 35.00). reasons for using portion of loan on non-income generating activities are distributed in figure 4. figure 4: use of loan for other activities source: field survey data, 2015 food consumption is critical to the survival of man. in particular, during off-season when farm products become scarce, farmers may rely on credit advanced to them for food. it emerged that 67% of the borrowers who spent part of the credit on non-farm activities used it to smooth consumption (buy food for the household). need to pay school fees (14%) and hospital bills (8%), and others such as funeral, marriage etc. (11%) were the reasons for using the portion of credit on non-income generating activities. microcredit given to smallholder farmers is not only used on income generating activities but also non-income generating activities. 4.5. farmers’ perception of delays in loan disbursement the procedures one has to go through in applying for credit was perceived by majority (64%) of the farmers as the main cause of delays in loan disbursement. group formation requirement in the view of 19% of farmers delays credit disbursement (figure 6). this means that loans could be disbursed at any time of the year. given the seasonal nature of economic activities in the area, granting of loan at any time of the year could mean mismatch between loan disbursement and time of economic activity. this has also been reported in the eastern region of ghana (tetteh, 2017) and in bangladesh (imai and azam, 2012). similarly, ekong and onye (2013) attributed poor loan performance in nigeria to mismatch of credit with seasons. ekong and onye (2013), and tetteh et al., (2015) observed that loans disbursement flow to micro and small business enterprises (mses) disregarded the seasons and this not only reduce growth and productivity of businesses, but also resulted in poor loan recovery rates. 14% 8% 67% 11% activities children's school fees health needs smooth consumption others asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 83 figure 5: farmers perception on causes of delay of disbursement of credit source: field survey data, 2015 requirement of collateral (3%) is perceived the least cause of delay, formation of groups (fbo) (19%) and requirement of a guarantor (11%) came second and third respectively. formation of fbos may require time to register and assemble members who may not reside in one community. the fact that fact collateral requirement is the least supports previous findings that most microcredit borrowers are poor and cannot provide collateral to obtain huge sums of loans (ganle et al., 2015). loan application process appears to be cumbersome (59%) and this is supported by the fact that 64% of delays in disbursement; long application procedure was perceived to be the cause. 4.6. determinants of repayment of microcredit the findings on the determinants of repayment of microcredit are both consistent as well as inconsistent with existing research findings on microcredit. specifically, the variables age, gender, fbo, experience, dependants, income, interest rate, and repayment period are statistically significant, but pressure, level of education and total credit granted are statistically insignificant. the pseudo r-squared of 63.8% suggests that the independent variables explain approximately 64% of the factors influencing the rate of repayment. the model is asymptotically significant at 1% level of significance. a summary of the results is shown on table 2 and details can be seen in appendix table 2: logistic regression of factors determining repayment of microcredit dependent variable: repayment ability of microcredit borrowers (binary) variable coefficient standard error p>|z| marginal effects education 0.341 0.731 0.642 0.457 age 0.047 0.033 0.083 0.012* gender 0.223 0.578 0.004 0.675*** distance -0.004 0.019 0.827 -0.079 fbo -0.983 0.504 0.001 -0.430*** experience -0.054 0.040 0.013 -0.006** dependants 0.249 0.128 0.052 0.156* income 0.002 0.005 0.004 0.053*** pressure 0.295 0.643 0.646 0.001 interest rate -5.215 0.759 0.000 -0.443*** quantum of loan 0.231 0.143 0.335 0.321 repayment duration -0.311 0.032 0.049 -0.271** 64% 19% 3% 14% causes of delay of microcredit long application procedure formation of group (fbo) collateral requirement requirement of a guarantor asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 84 constant -1.369 1.245 0.271 no. objs. =224; wald chi2(10) =46.12; prob>chi2 =0.000 log lh =-38.918; pseudo r2 =0.638 *** significant at 1%; ** significant at 5% and * significant at 10% stata results of survey data, 2015 education from the model, level of education has a positive relationship with repayment. this implies that the higher the level of education of the farmer, the higher the probability of repayment. the marginal effect of 0.46 implies that an educational level up to jhs (junior high school) increases the likelihood of repayment by 46%. the result is, however, statistically insignificant. age age, influences repayment in the positive direction. it is significant at 10% with a marginal value of 0.012. this implies that, the probability of repayment increases by 1.2% as age increases. these results corroborate to karlan and valdivia (2011), who observed improvement in loan repayment among microcredit clients in peru and associated the improvement partially to experience in terms of age on the business. it must be, however, noted in the case of farmers, age will reach a peak and the marginal effect begins to decline thereafter because the strength to tilt the soil for farming generally declines after a certain age. old age could render the farmer inefficient which could result in poor yield and income thereby leading to non-repayment of the credit ceteris paribus. gender there is a positive and significant relationship between gender and repayment of microcredit. it has a marginal value of 0.68 and significant at 1% level of significance. in this study gender is dummied 1 for female. given that the smallholder farmer or borrower is a female, the probability of repayment increases by 68%. this suggests that women are meticulous users of microcredit as compared to their male counterparts. the finding is corroborate the study chakravarty and pylypiv (2015) who found that women are better managers of microcredit and are less likely to default (imai and azam, 2012; banerjee et al., 2015; ganle et al., 2015). the result met the a priori expectation. distance that the distance from the farmers’ residence to the place of the credit granting agency is insignificant in the model but with a negative relation with repayment is consistent with other microcredit studies (alexander, 2006; giné, and karlan, 2011; roodman, 2012). this result echoes the grammen banks principle of the need to take microcredit facilities closer to the rural poor. none of the mfis in the study area was engaged in mobile banking. mobile banking is however available in some communities where loan officers transact business at the borrowers’ doorstep. being closer and spending less time commuting to the lender, gives the farmer more time for farm activities. it also enables the lenders to get quick information on farm needs and challenges for prompt technical advice. as distance increases by a kilometer the probability of default increases by 8% as depicted by the marginal value of -0.08 (table 2). proximity therefore reduces transaction cost and increases farmers’ chance of repayment fbo there was a negative relation between repayment and membership of fbo. the model showed a marginal value of -0.43 and significant at 1%, implying that being a member of fbo increases the probability of default by 43%. this is contrary to the expectation that members of the group will bring pressure to bear on group members to repay their loans in order to benefit from the dynamic incentive strategy where group loans were increased after every successful loan cycle (breza, 2012). group members unanimously can agree to default if the groups have a strict joint liability. in this context borrowers are not individually held liable for default. this result is consistent with asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 85 giné and karlan (2011). it, however, contradicts the findings of breza (2012). the inconsistency in the findings could be attributed to differences in economic and socio-cultural practices in the study areas and the methods used to analyse data. interest rate as predicted, interest rate has a negative relationship with microcredit repayment. the logistics model showed a marginal effect of -0.44 and statistically significant at 1% level of significance. this means that a unit increase in the interest rate increases the probability of default by 44%. the issue of the interest that microcredit clients pay on their loans had been a critical issue in microfinance programme design (cgap, 2010; rosenberg et al., 2013). very often , the seemingly high interest rates compared to normal commercial lending rates, are the strongest point of criticism for opponents of the microfinance concept. according to oliver et al. (2007) administrative costs for individually tailored microloans are much greater than for normal standardized loans. therefore, micro-lending cannot be sustainable without charging interest rates that are higher than what commercial banks normally charge. roodman and uzma (2006) and waterfield (2012) justified higher interest rates for mfis on the basis of complex labor-intensiveness, documentation and provision of the credit, remote location of the clients as well as frequent meetings with mfi’s staff during approval and repayment process. for instance, lending gh¢10,000 in 100 loans of gh¢100 is obviously more expensive concerning staff salaries etc., than giving out one single loan of gh¢10,000 to an individual. it is also argued that mfi high interest rate makes it possible to grow the microfinance industry by expanding outreach in breadth and depth (rosenberg et al., 2013). although the farmers perceived the interest they paid on the loan to be high, it was far less expensive to borrow from the microcredit programme than from local moneylenders whose interest rates range from 50% to more than 100%. to most of the farmers, microcredit was the only opportunity to get money for their farming activities and so they preferred its sustainability to the actual cost of the credit. it was one of the reasons why they took the loans in spite of the interest. as indicated in bateman (2018), extremely high interest which are charged microcredit borrowers are very inimical to the poor whose interest microcredit is supposed to serve. dependants at 10% level, the model showed a positive and significant relationship between repayment rate and number of dependants. the marginal value is 0.16, implying that the probability of repayment increases by 16% with a unit increase in the numbers of dependants. poor people’s ability to repay loan is expected to correlate positively or negatively with number of dependants. this study has shown that the higher the number of dependants, the higher the chance for the borrower to repay the loan. this is possible with microcredit clients who are farmers. the reason being that the farmer may use the dependants as farm labours to increase farm size and productivity at lower cost. there will be increase in income to enable loan ceteris paribus. experience the logistic result showed a negative relation between repayment and experience in farming which is significant at 1% level and a marginal value of -0.01. this suggests that as experience increases the probability of the farmer defaulting increases by 1%. this finding is contrary to several microfinance studies (field and plange, 2007; oladeebo and oladeebo, 2008; gerald and obuobie, 2010; bichanga and lilian, 2013) which posit that clients with longer periods of participation have higher repayment rates. oladeebo and oladeebo (2008) for instance, examined socioeconomic factors influencing loan repayment among small scale farmers in ogbomoso agricultural zone of oyo state of nigeria and revealed that amount of loan obtained by farmers, years of farming experience with credit use and level of education were the major factors that positively and significantly influenced loan repayment. it is possible that experienced farmers in this study were asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 86 the very old ones with smaller farm sizes, low output and small income resulting in their susceptibility to default. perception of pressure as expected the perception of pressure though not significant increases the probability of repayment by 0.1%. this may be so if the farmers do not like to be constantly harassed by credit providers since it may be disgraceful to their households. in a study in lima referred to as “microfinance games” giné et al. (2010) found that microcredit borrowers who defaulted were ostracized by their peers, and threated of court actions which influenced repayment. total income income as a factor that determines the ability to repay the microcredit advanced to the farmers in the study area met the a priori expectation. it has a positive relationship with ability to repay the credit and significant at 1%. it increases the ability to repay by 5.3% because it has a marginal value of 0.053. rise in income can influence savings and loan repayment. quantum of loan/total credit granted usually, the quantum of loan received and ability to repay is expected to correlate in both positive and negative directions. this is because on one hand, too much credit may lead to abuse and repayment challenges. on the other hand, too small credit even though not adequate for the farmer, can be easily paid. the study revealed a positive relationship between the quantum of credit received and the ability to repay with a marginal value of 0.32. this implies that a unit increase in the quantum of credit will result in 32% likelihood of repayment. the reason is that the bigger the loan, the higher the opportunity to invest more in the farm (purchase more inputs and increase farm size). ceteris paribus this will increase productivity and farm returns, thus facilitating repayment with ease. this relationship is, however, statistically insignificant. repayment duration the model depicts negative relationship with the rate of repayment. this is significant at 5% level with a marginal effect of -0.27, implying that, the probability of default rises by 27% as repayment duration increases. this finding corroborate to roslan and mohd-zaini (2009) observation after analyzing the determinant of microcredit repayment in malaysia. the finding is ironic, given that microcredit clients usually complain about short periods of repayment yet, from this study, an increase in the repayment duration increases the probability of default. long repayment duration can lead to irresponsible behavior on the part of borrowers. according to ledgerwood (1999), short repayment periods not only enhances microcredit repayment but ensures the sustainability of mfis as well. indeed, short repayment schedules limited the types of activities and investments that can be financed by micro loans. certain businesses have long gestation period and do not yield returns immediately to allow regular repayment directly after credit disbursement. perhaps, this was the reason why some farmers were found to have repayment challenges as farm products takes some time to mature compared to artisans and shopkeepers whose businesses yield daily income. table 2 in appendix shows details of the regression results. 5. conclusion and recommendation loan default is one of the critical issues of the microfinance industry. high loan default rate is the primary cause of the failure of many mfis (papias and ganesan, 2009; mason, 2014). microcredit lenders rely mostly on speculative methods to advance loans to borrowers which are usually not objective and may produce adverse or negative outcomes. this study analysed the factors that determine microcredit repayment among smallholder farmers in ada west and ada east districts in the greater accra region of ghana using data from 224 households of smallholder farmer microcredit beneficiaries. the logit model was used to estimate the socioeconomic and credit specific characteristics that determine ability of farmers to repay the credit advanced to them. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 74-91 87 result showed that, gender, age, level of education, income, number of dependants, perception of pressure from the credit granting agency and quantum of loan/total credit granted relate positively with rate of repayment. on the other hand, distance from farmers residence to the credit scheme, experience, repayment duration, interest rate and membership of farmer based organization requirement were negatively related to rate of repayment. income, membership of fbo, interest rate, gender, age, experience and number of dependants were positive and statistically significant. whereas membership of fbo, experience, interest rate, and repayment duration exert statistically significant negative effect on repayment rate, age, gender, number of dependants, and income influence repayment positively. overall, the study found that client characteristics are core factors that mfis need to scrutunize well to prevent loan loss. therefore, to limit loan default rate, there is the need for effective examination of potential farmer borrowers before releasing credit to the applicants. based on the findings, it is recommended that mfis should institute measures to reduce interest rate by introducing mechanism to reduce operational costs to reduce cost of borrowing. mfis should give adequate loan to women because they have higher probability of repayment. credit should be disbursed in a timely and appropriate manner to prevent loan use for unproductive ventures. training of farmers on credit management and investment should extend beyond what currently pertain; following repayment schedule. repayment duration should be adjusted to suit individual needs than a wholesome or fixed duration for everyone. finally, microcredit borrowers should use loan for the purpose for which the loans have been applied for and given because, using loan for other purposes often result in repayment challenges. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adjei, j. k., arum, t. g., & hossain, f. 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0.6671 0.9254 interest rate -5.215 0.7591 -4.21 0.000 0.0852 -2.45 total credit 0.2316 0.1426 3.21 0.335 0.0089 1.4223 repayment duration -0.3113 0.0032 -6.39 0.0491 0.6345 2.6672 constant -1.3697 1.2450 -7.03 0.271 0.5612 8.6324 marginal effects after logit estimation y = pr(repayment) (predict)= .70724532 variable dy/dx std. error z p>|z| [95% conf. interval] x education 0.457 0.2314 2.03 0.602 0.4134 -0.0024 0.6683 age 0.012 0.1431 1.12 0.091 -0.0016 0.1835 0.3032 gender 0.675 0.1582 0.02 0.008 -0.2353 0.1374 0.2457 distance -0.079 0.0184 -0.32 0.625 0.2485 -0.5441 0.3243 fbo -0.430 0.1040 -3.85 0.021 0.2345 1.0691 3.2241 experience -0.006 0.1401 -2.56 0.019 -0.4330 1.0376 0.5157 dependants 0.156 0.1364 1.06 0.012 0.6401 1.268 0.4454 income 0.053 0.0031 2.43 0.001 0.1155 1.0882 0.1073 pressure 0.001 0.1534 0.59 0.246 2.6371 0.6252 14.8634 interest rate -0.443 0.2217 -4.07 0.006 0.0892 -2.245 0.1662 total credit 0.321 0.1322 4.12 0.434 0.0083 2.4123 2.1321 repayment duration -0.271 0.0233 -4.33 0.041 0.6185 1.7322 0.6834 (*) dy/dx is for discrete change of dummy variable from 0 to 1 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 379 economic analysis of high-density apple plantation scheme in jammu and kashmir bakhtaver hassan a, mahua bhattacharjee b, shabir a wani c a research scholar & visiting faculty; amity school of economics, amity university, noida, uttar pradesh, india b professor; amity school of economics, amity university, noida, uttar pradesh, india c head of department; agricultural economics and hortibusiness management, skuast-k, shalimar, srinagar, jammu and kashmir  bakhtaverbaigh@gmail.com, (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 12-mar-2020 accepted: 13-may-2020 online available: 15-jun2020 keywords: horticulture, net present value, yield, kashmir, break-even year, net revenue, profitability abstract this paper evaluates the performance of the high-density apple plantation scheme, launched in 2016 in jammu & kashmir, india to boost both productivity and production of apples, amidst the stagnancy witnessed in the sector. primary data was collected from apple farmers in two districts, kulgam and pulwama. the qualitative techniques were used to estimate the yield, establishment cost, and break-even year of the different orchard densities. multiple regression analysis and multivariate statistical techniques were used for yield-forecasting and estimation of net present value and internal rate of return respectively. the results show that the yield has increased by two-five times than the traditional orchards. break-even year for different densities without government was found to be 6-years while with government support it went down to just 4-5 years. net present value and internal rate of return, further substantiate high-profitability and early returns in these orchards. further, it was concluded that the government subsidy provides significant support to the farmers in two main densities 2200trees/hectare and 3300trees/hectare. thus, the government should broaden the scheme and make it more inclusive for the overall development of the sector. contribution/ originality the study provides a foundational pathway to research regarding the economic analysis of high-density orchards in jammu & kashmir. it is the first study that deals extensively with the present and prospects of the high-density orchards in the region. the results of the paper suggest that the government should be more inclusive and provide due support to the farmers for establishing these highly profitable orchards. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.379.391 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: bakhtaver hassan, mahua bhattacharjee and shabir a wani (2020). economic analysis of high-density apple plantation scheme in jammu and kashmir. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 379-391. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 379-391 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:bakhtaverbaigh@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.379.391 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1597-6802 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 379-391 380 1. introduction agriculture continues to be the dominant sector in the union territory of jammu and kashmir. around 70% of the population of the union territory is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture (shaheen et al., 2019). in terms of gsdpgross state domestic product, agriculture contributes 17.2% compared to the national contribution of 15.5% in 2019-20 (government of jammu and kashmir, 2017a). the growth-rate of agriculture in the union territory was 24.6 % in 2015-16 and 8.4% in 2016-17 respectively, while the national average has been hovering around 2.9% (government of jammu and kashmir, 2017b). horticulture is the most important driver of agricultural growth rate in the union territory and contributes nearly 40% to the total output from agriculture (malik, 2013). it is regarded as a sunrise sector in the region with nearly seven lakh families and 33 lakh people directly or indirectly involved in the sector (jha et al., 2019, rather et al., 2013). it is one of the thrust areas of the economy of the union territory. apple significantly contributes nearly 60% to the total horticultural output in jammu and kashmir. about 50% of the area is covered under the apple and there is a 6 percent growth in the annual production of the crop (government of jammu and kashmir, 2017a). in 2018-19, the total production of apple from the union territory was 19 lakh tonnes which were nearly 77% of the total production of the country as a whole (horticulture at glance 2018, national horticulture board). in terms of economy, the sector is ever-increasing with an annual export of more than 70 billion from the fruits alone (naqash et al., 2019). horticulture has tremendously grown in jammu and kashmir from the last five decades. the area and production of the horticultural crop have consistently increased by three-fold (300%) and tenfold (985%) respectively (table 1). in the meantime, the productivity has witnessed a four-fold jump which is higher than the two-fold national average. while the acreage under apple has witnessed a fall from 55-56% to 48%, however, the production has increased by manifolds (hanan, 2015). table 2, clearly depicts that the productivity or the yield per hectare of jammu and kashmir has been higher than the national average. for instance, in apple alone, the ut’s average yield is 11.43 tonnes/hectare which is higher than the national average of 9.73 tonnes/hectare. himachal pradesh which contributes 21% to the total production, has an average yield of 6tonnes/hectare which is two-time lower than yield per hectare of jammu and kashmir (malik and choure, 2014). in walnut too, there is a large difference in productivity between jammu and kashmir and the second largest producing state-uttarakhand (taili, 2014). however, when we compare this average yield of jammu and kashmir and india as a whole with that of the world average, we see a considerable difference of around 40 tonnes/hectare. the productivity of developed countries in temperate zones for instance italy, netherlands, new zealand near almost 70-75tonnes/hectare (robinson et al, 2004). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 379-391 381 table 1: growth trend of horticultural crops in jammu and kashmir 1974-75 2000-01 2018-19 area (hectares) production (metric tonnes) productivity (tonnes/ha) area (hectares) production (metric tonnes) productivity (tonnes/ha) area (hectares) production (metric tonnes) productivity (tonnes/ha) apple 46189 190452 4.12 88149 751310 8.52 164742 1882319 11.43 cherry 654 510 0.78 2368 5293 2.24 2713 11789 4.35 pear 2296 7655 3.33 9169 31324 3.42 13945 86034 6.17 almond 9361 1525 0.16 18059 10901 0.60 5588 10326 1.85 walnut 13246 10520 0.79 59900 83399 1.39 84777 279422 3.30 others 10740 5502 0.51 41394 49573 1.20 72334 76453 1.06 total 82486 216164 1.62 219039 931800 2.89 344099 2346343 4.69 source: directorate of horticulture, jammu and kashmir, 2019 table 2: comparative yields of horticultural crops in 2018-19. (tonnes/hectare) crop jk average yield national average world average apple 11.43 9.73 55-63 pear 6.17 5.3 55-60 peach 2.16 3.6 15-20 cherry 4.35 3.03 9-11 almond 1.85 0.7 3-5 walnut 3.3 1.64 6-8 others 1.06 1.63 5-7 source: directorate of horticulture, jammu and kashmir, 2019. fao, 2019. horticulture at a glance, national horticulture board, india, 2018-19 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 379-391 382 the recent rollout of the high-density apple plantation scheme by the department of horticulture, jammu and kashmir is extremely important to increase productivity and production of apples in jammu and kashmir. in himachal pradesh, the production and quality of apples have improved substantially (singh et al., 2012). intensive orcharding is the most efficient technology evolving in horticulture. the early gestation period, high-quality produce, and higher productivity help the farmers to generate high returns (badiu et al., 2015). the yield per hectare increases at least twice than that in traditional orchard systems (singh et al., 2012). further, the farmer has the choice to opt for different densities ranging from 1500 trees/hectare to 5000 trees/hectare. there exists a linear relationship between the cost, yield, and the density of the orchard. although higher densities are capital-intensive upfront the benefit-cost ratio in the long-term is very high (cahn and goedegebure, 1992). with high-density orchards, the farmers’ net-return is substantially higher and is an effective tool to improve total horticultural output (meland, 2005, sansavini et al., 1980). even in mango cultivation, high-density orchards provide increasingly high productivity and therefore better returns in the market (kerutagi et al., 2017). jammu and kashmir offers favourable agri-climate conditions for the development of high-density apple orchards this would result in an increase in the production and productivity of the crop and attract low-yield rice cultivating farmers to high-density apple orchards (kumar et al., 2012). 1.1. objectives 1. to make a fair assessment of the performance of the high-density apple plantation scheme in jammu and kashmir. 2. to compute the profitability of the high-density orchard combinations and its relative feasibility for large-scale development in jammu and kashmir. 2. data and methodology 2.1. sample size and data collection primary data was collected from a sample of farmers who became the beneficiaries of the highdensity apple plantation scheme. according to horticulture department, jammu & kashmir (2016-17), 95 percent of the farmers who opted for the scheme were from pulwama and kulgam, district of jammu and kashmir, india; therefore, these two districts were selected. a ground-level survey was conducted to identify the beneficiaries/farmers from different villages in these districts during december 2019 and january 2020. during the survey, 37 farmers from 15 villages in kulgam district and 48 farmers from 18 villages in pulwama district were identified, who adopted the scheme in the first year. damhal, frisal and mohammadpura villages from kulgam district and chakoora, chatapora, rajpora, heff, dadsara, and chersoo villages from pulwama district were the most prominent villages where the scheme was widely adopted. finally, data were collected through a personal response questionnaire from these 85 farmers/beneficiaries from the two districts. the farmers were divided into four major groups based on their land-size and the corresponding tree-density was recorded (table 3). four main densities of orchards were found in the region. an important correlation was developed between land-sizes of the farmers and the tree-densities. data shows that almost 68.23 percent of the farmers chose tree-density of 2200trees/hectare, 18.82 percent chose 3300 trees/hectare, and 8.2 percent of farmers chose 4400 trees/hectare. out of the seven farmers opting for 4400 trees/hectare, 85.7percent farmers belonged to small and marginal category (<1 hectare). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 379-391 383 table 3: farm size of the sampled orchardists along with their respective choices size of farm number of farms percentage with 1100 trees/ha (3mx 3m) percentage of farmers 2200 trees/ha (3m x 1.5m) percentage of farmers 3300 trees/ha (3m x 1m) percentage of farmers with 4400 trees/ha (2.25 x 1 m) marginal (<0.1 hectare) 20(23.53) 5 70 20 5 small (0.1-1 hectare) 40(47.05) 7.5 65 15 12.5 medium (1-2 hectares) 21(24.7) 0 71.43 23.80 4.77 large (>2 hectares) 04(4.7) 0 75 25 0 total 85 4.7 68.23 18.82 8.2 parenthesis denotes percent source: field survey, 2019-20 2.2. yield and production data primary and secondary data were collected to estimate the yield per hectare. data regarding the annual production of apple boxes were collected from the respondents. data for weight and price was collected from the horticulture department, jammu and kashmir. the price of each box depends on the particular grade of apple. grade a, b and c apples are priced at 0.8 usd/kg (60 inr/kg), 0.53 usd/kg (40 inr/kg) and 0.32 usd/kg (24 inr/kg), respectively (nafed, 2019). the gross weight of each box is 18 kgs while the net weight is 16kgs. using mean and standard deviation, the average price of each box was taken as 9.33 usd/box (700 inr/box). yield and total production from the sample were therefore calculated. yield per hectare was taken as tonnes/hectare of the four different densities of the orchards. 2.3. yield forecasting different models in machine learning are used to forecast the crop yield. regression analysis was used to estimate the yield of the crop posts in the fifth year. the first few years of the apple orchards have shown a proportionate development of the yield compared to earlier studies made by cahn and goedegebure (1992) in the netherlands. primary data was collected from the respondents while the secondary data was collected from the department of horticulture, jammu and kashmir to form an organized dataset. the dataset included data on irrigation, rainfall, acreage under the orchards, input supplies like pesticides, fertilizers, manure, quality of the rootstock, and the soil-health. chipanshi et al. (2015) considered a linear regression model for the estimation of crop-yield forecasting in canada. the model in which the value of r-square is higher while the value of mppe-mean percentage prediction error and rmseroot mean square error is lower, is considered the most accurate model for forecasting the crop yield (shastry et al., 2017). multiple regression model was used in forecasting the yield for 20 years (r-squared=0.92). 2.4. establishment and maintenance primary data was used to compute the total establishment cost which is one of the important parameters in the development of the orchards. the cost analysis of the establishment of the orchards helps the farmers to plan economically. in this regard, since the scheme had an inbuilt subsidy clause of 50 percent to the farmers in two major densities2200trees/ha and 3300trees/ha. it is therefore important for the government too, to analyse the establishment cost. the total cost of the orchard majorly includes: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 379-391 384 a. non-harvest variable cost which includes land development, drip-irrigation, plant-material, fertilizers, pesticide, and development of the trellis system. b. harvest variable cost which includes harvesting, picking, sorting, transportation, and supervision. c. fixed cost which includes land costs (rental value), depreciation, and interest cost. an important feature of the analysis is that interest cost in the two main orchard combinations (2200trees/ha and 3300trees/ha) kicks in the fourth year because of the government support in the first three years. therefore, net-cost computed in the study incorporates this important factor. 2.5. break-even year analysis (payback period) break-even year analysis was done to estimate the year in which the accumulated revenue of each orchard combination will be equal to the accumulated cost (establishment and maintenance cost until that year). the purpose of the break-even analysis is to assess how early the value of production kicks in so that the farmer gaining net profit (cahn and goedegebure, 1992). postbreak-even year, the farmer starts profiting from his/her orchard system. the fixed costs remain constant while only the variable costs are varied for the calculation of the break-even year. breakeven analysis is very useful as a management tool, as it is simple to apply and understand and readily applicable in farm management. an investment with early break-even year is the most desirable one, however, there are shortcomings in this, as early break-even year (payback period) may also come with lower long-term returns. therefore, the net present value and internal rate of return is used to analyse the long-term impact of the likely investment in the orchards. 2.6. net present value and internal rate of return analysis net present value is simply the net cash inflow or the revenue generated over a while from an investment. it is therefore used to determine the profitability of an investment. higher the value of net present value (npv), profitable the investment (ivey, 1990). internal rate of return (irr), also determines the profitability of the investment. it simply estimates the expected rate of growth of an investment. it is more useful than the cagrcompound annual growth rate as it takes into account all the cash inflows over the period while cagr takes into account the initial and final inflows only. both npv and irr are extremely useful for the assessment of the orchard combinations. while npv gives the amount earned by the farmers over the discount rate (usually the interest rate), the irr gives the actual percentage return of the farmers’ investment. the formula for net present value, 𝑁𝑃𝑉 = ∑. 𝑘 𝑛=1 (𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑢𝑒 − 𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝐶𝑜𝑠𝑡).𝑛 (1 + 𝑑)𝑛 where “k” is expected life of the orchards, “n” is the time period for the analysis, “d” is the appropriate discount rate and (total revenuetotal cost) is the net accumulated revenue in the time period, “n.” the formula for internal rate of return 0 = 𝑁𝑃𝑉 = ∑ (𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑢𝑒 − 𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝐶𝑜𝑠𝑡).𝑛 (1 + 𝐼𝑅𝑅) 𝑘 𝑛=1 − 𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝐶𝑜𝑠𝑡 where, “k”, is the expected life of the orchards, and npv is the net present value of the different orchard combinations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 379-391 385 3. results and discussion 3.1. yield and production yield per hectare or productivity is one of the most important parameters for assessing the performance of the crops. table 3, shows that the yield per hectare in all the orchard combinations increases linearly with time from the second year (year 1). in the lowest tree-density orchard, the yield per hectare was 0.64 tonnes/hectare in the first year which increased to 21.76 tonnes/hectare in the fourth year. in orchards with density 2200 trees/hectare, the yield has increased from 0.912 to 29.6 tonnes/hectare during the same time. similarly, the yield in the higher-density orchards has increased substantially giving a push to the sector. the productivity is increasing proportionately which is consistent with cahn and goedegebure (1992) analysis of the high-density orchards in the netherlands. table 4: yield per hectare of different tree-densities year 1100 2200 3300 4000 year 1 year 2 0.64 0.912 1.104 1.6 year 3 11.824 19.936 23.296 35.12 year 4 21.76 29.6 36.56 49.552 year 5 25.968 36.56 48.288 59.344 year 6 31.648 45.44 52.96 63.792 year 7 40.08 52.864 60.704 72.304 source: field survey, 2019-20 the orchards are in their fifth year with three years of production and therefore have not reached the full potential. the yield of upcoming years from fifth to seventh comes to be consistent with the current development based on the input parameters. in the seventh year, the yield for orchards of density 3300trees/hectare will be 60.7 tonnes/hectare, this is comparable with the yield in developed economies. table 5, shows the number of apple boxes produced from the given sample under study. the production has increased considerably in all the tree-densities. when compared with the analysis done by shaheen et al. (2019), in the fourth year of these orchards the number of boxes harvested per hectare is higher than the production of a full-grown traditional apple orchard in the region. the production will reach 52784 kgs and 60704 kgs in 2200 trees/hectare and 3300 trees/hectare respectively which is three-four times higher than that of the traditional apple orchard systems. table 5: number of apple boxes produced in different densities (trees/hectare) tree-density (trees/ha) 1100 2200 3300 4400 year 1 (2016) year 2 (2017) 20 40 60 100 year 3 (2018) 739 1246 1456 2195 year 4 (2019) 1360 1850 2285 3097 year 5 (2020) 1623 2285 3018 3709 year 6 (2021) 1978 2840 3310 3987 year 7 (2022) 2505 3304 3794 4519 total boxes 8225 11565 13923 17607 source: field survey, 2019-20 gross weight of each box = 18 kgs., net weight of each box 16 kgs asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 379-391 386 3.2. establishment and maintenance cost the establishment cost shows a linear relation with the tree-density (figure 1). this cost majorly includes non-harvest cost and fixed costs like land rent and depreciation of the machinery. in higher-density orchards, there is a slight dip in the establishment cost, possibly because of same fixed costs for all the orchards as well as due to discount rates that apply in procuring material for the development of the orchards. this trend is also consistent with the study done by cahn and goedegebure (1992). figure 1: establishment cost with respect to tree-density the maintenance cost varies according to the orchard density, as the supervision and tree-training costs increase with an increase in the tree-density. the harvesting and transportation cost increases with the increase in the production for each orchard combination with time. these costs show a linear relationship with the tree-density of the orchards. the profitability of the orchard combinations depends on the difference between the total costs and the total revenue. higher the economic efficiency of the orchards, the higher the profitability. among small and marginal farmers, the upfront establishment cost is therefore an important parameter to assess how they adopt the new high-density scheme. for instance, for a marginal farmer (<0.1hectares = 2 kanals), the total upfront cost ranges from 3.2 thousand1 usd (equivalent to 0.24 million inr) too 6.8 thousand usd (0.51 million inr) which is extremely high. but the same cost when subsidized might seem favourable to the farmer as he pays just 50% of the total establishment cost. 3.3. break-even year analysis the farmers start harvesting apples only in the second year of their orchards (table 6). the value of production or the revenue in the second year of the orchards is very low, however, the early gestation period is an important outcome here. different orchard combinations with their different yields (table 4) have different values of production annually. for 1100trees/hectare orchards, the farmers earn 6.8 thousand usd (0.51 million inr) in the third year, it is 11.62 thousand usd (0.87 million inr), 12.59 thousand usd (1.019 million inr) and 0.48 thousand usd (1.536 million inr) for 2200trees/ha, 3300 trees/ha and 4400 trees/ha respectively. this increases to 12.67 thousand usd (0.95 million inr), 17.28 thousand usd (1.296 million inr), 21.33 thousand usd (1.6 million inr) and usd 28.89 thousand (2.167 million inr) for 1100 trees/ha, 2200trees/ha, 3300 trees/ha and 4400 trees/ha respectively in the fourth year. therefore, the value of production per hectare has increased significantly for the farmers from 9.36 thousand usd (0.702 million inr) per hectare in developed traditional orchards (naqash et al., 2019) to 12.73 to 22.92 usd 1 1 usd = 75 inr (approximate exchange rate in 2020) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 1100 2200 3300 4400 c o st o f t re es /h ec ta re i n 0 0 0 ' u s d tree-density per hectare asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 379-391 387 (0.9552.196 million inr) in only the fourth year of the different orchard combinations in the high-density orchards. break-even year is crucial for the farmers in the region. as the establishment cost is already high, so the farmers demand early and higher returns to repose their faith in modern-day farming. table 6, shows the net accumulated cost in the first four years of the orchards. net accumulated cost is the total cost excluding the total revenue earned by the farmer during the four years (net accumulated cost = total cost total revenue). the different combinations of the orchards warrant different treatment in the analysis, as two combinations (2200trees/density and 3300trees/density) are supported by the government. table 6: net accumulated cost in the first four years of the orchards (in thousand usd) tree density 1100 trees/ha 2200 trees/ha 3300 trees/ha 4400 trees/ha cost revenue cost revenue cost revenue cost revenue year 1 32.56 (2.442) 44.36 (3.327) 57.43 4.307 66.5 (5.054) year 2 2.2 (0.165) 0.37 (0.028) 4.53 (0.34) 0.52 (0.039) 5.75 (0.431) 0.64 (0.048) 6.48 (0.486) 0.933 (0.07) year 3 2.88 (2.16) 6.8 (0.51) 5 (0.375) 11.63 (0.872) 6.1 (0.458) 13.58 (1.019) 7.72 (0.579) 20.48 (1.536) year 4 3.21 (0.241) 12.67 (0.95) 7.37 (0.553) 17.28 (1.296) 8.18 (0.614) 21.32 (1.599) 10.04 (0.753) 28.89 (2.167) total 40.85 (3.064) 19.84 (1.488) 61.27 (4.595) 29.43 (2.207) 77.47 (5.81) 35.55 (2.66) 91.63 (6.872) (3.773) subsidy 21.33 (1.6) 42.63 (3.2) net accumulated cost 21.01 (1.576) 10.5 (0.788) -0.75 (-0.056) 41.32 (3.099) parenthesis denotes cost in million indian rupees source: field survey, 2019-20. price = usd 9.33/box = 700 inr / box = 18 kgs/box table 8, shows the break-even year of different orchard combinations. without government support, year 6 is the break-even year for all the orchard combinations. however, the government support in two orchard combinations proves a major difference in the net accumulated cost in the fourth year. orchardists with a density of 3300 trees/hectare in their farms are given the support of 42.63 thousand usd upfront subsidy as a result of which the orchardist earns profit in the fourth year only of their orchard. the break-even year for this orchard combination is four years with support from the government. this means 18.82 percent of farmers in the region, (table 3) have already started earning profits in the fourth year (2019). similarly, for another 68.23 percent farmers with orchards, the break-even year was year 5. 3.4. net present value and internal rate of return analysis the regression analysis done, provided a forecast of yield in different orchard combinations (different densities), for twenty years. this yield was estimated to be dependent on certain important variables like annual rainfall, price of the produce (which was kept constant for the period), fertilizer, and soil health. table 7, gives the yield per hectare for the 20-year period which was used to estimate the net present value and internal rate of return analysis. the accuracy of the regression is high as the r-squared is 0.977. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 379-391 388 table 7: expected yields in bins per acre for the vertical axis variety/rootstock combinations (yield = tonnes/hectare) tree density (trees/ha) 1100 2200 3300 4400 year 7 40.08 52.86 60.704 72.304 year 8 42.48 55.76 67.2 76.7 year 9 42.16 56.18 68.86 77.69 year 10 41.76 56.98 68.12 77.26 year 11-20 40.91 56.12 67.65 76.19 source: authors’ own analysis accumulated net cost in the seventh year for different orchard combination gives an optimistic perspective of the performance of the high-density orchards in the region. the net accumulated cost/revenue in the seventh year, therefore, for 1100trees/hectare orchard is 23.58 thousand usd (1.769 million inr), for 2200trees/hectare it is 24.4 thousand usd (1.83 million inr) without government support and 45.73 thousand usd (3.43 million inr) with government support. this is very significant for the farmers as it pushes the net revenue of the farmers by over 300% in the seventh year of the production than the traditional orchard system (naqash et al., 2019). net present value and internal rate of return enables us to understand the profitability of the orchard combinations. at the end of the 7th year, the net present value is highest for the lowestdensity orchard (1100 trees/hectare) and lowest for the highest density orchard (4400trees/hectare) (table 8). the reason is that the establishment cost is high upfront with respect to the high-density orchards. establishment cost for orchards of density 1100trees/hectare and 4400trees/hectare is 32.26 thousand usd (2.42 million inr) and 67.2 thousand usd (5.04 million inr) respectively. similarly, the internal rate of return is highest for the lowest density orchard and vice-versa. a high internal rate of return in the lowest density orchard means that the “profitability rate of return” for the investment is higher and earlier than the rest. table 8: economics of different densities of apple orchards density (trees/hectare) accumulated 7 year net cost (000 usd) break-even year net present value at 7 years (000 usd) net present value at 20 years (000 usd internal rate of return @ 7 years internal rate of return @ 20 years 1100 -23.57 year 6 41.45 150.67 19% 35% 2200 -24.4(-45.73) year 6 (year 5) 24.4(45.73) 160.72(182) 10% (26%) 29% (42%) 3300 -27.92 (-55.92) year 6 (year 4) 26(54) 175.46(203.46) 8% (25%) 29% (40%) 4400 -41.59 year 6 17.6 209.6 11% 27% note: 1 united states dollar = 75 indian rupees (exchange rate, 2020) discount rate – 9.5%, parenthesis indicates the break-even year and npv and irr with government subsidy. price of box = 9.33usd/box or inr700/box, which is kept constant for the 20 years. (mean price). but the case reverses as we analyse the net present value at the 20th year (table 8). the highest density orchard(4400trees/hectare) has the highest net present value at 209.6 thousand usd (15.72 million inr). net present value at the 20th year of orchards of densities 2200trees/ha and 3300 trees/ha is at 160.72 thousand usd (12.054 million inr) and 175.46 thousand usd (13.16 million inr) respectively. however, for the lowest density orchard, npv is 150.93 thousand usd (11.32 million inr). therefore, net present value increases with an increase in the tree-density per hectare, implying that the highest-density orchards are the most profitable ventures even when their establishment cost is high. internal rate of return, however, decreases with an increase in the treedensity (table 8). lowest-density orchard has a high internal rate of return (35 percent), while the highest-density orchard has the lowest internal rate of return (27 percent). an important conclusion asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 379-391 389 drawn from this is that the higher-density orchards see a slow return on their investment as compared to the low-density orchards but the overall profitability, as well as value, is significantly higher in the higher-density orchards. thus, making them the best long-term investment choice for the farmers. with government support for two orchard combinations, the net present value and internal rate of return also shift positively. net present value in orchards with densities 2200trees/hectare is 45.73 thousand usd (3.43 million inr) and 182 thousand usd (13.65 million inr) for 7-year and 20year period respectively. internal rate of return also increases from 10 percent to 26 percent in the 7 years and 29 percent to 42 percent in the 20 years. similarly, for the orchards with density 3300trees/hectare, npv for 7-and 20-year period is 54 thousand usd (4.05 million inr) and 203.46 thousand usd (15.26 million inr). the internal rate of return also sees a change from 8 to 25 percent and 29 to 40 percent in a 7-and 20-year period. therefore, government subsidy in both these combinations drastically improves profitability and makes them extremely feasible for farmers. 4. conclusion the study concluded that the yield in all the density combinations of these high-density apple orchards has increased 2-5 times as compared to traditional orchard systems. in quantitative terms, the yield has increased substantially from just 11.43 tones/hectare in the traditional orchards to 21.76 tonnes/hectare and 49.55 tonnes/hectare in 1100 trees/hectare and 4400 trees/hectare orchard in just the fourth year respectively. while the establishment cost is considerably higher in these high-density orchards posing a challenge for their adoption but the lower break-even year provides early profitability, which lowers the interest cost and leads to early returns. according to the results in the paper, the break-even year for all the orchard-density combinations is just six years, which is lower than 11-12 years of traditional apple orchards (ahmad, 2013). the internal rate of return is lowest while the net present value is highest for the highest-density orchard (4400trees/hectare), and vice versa. together read, this orchard combination (4400 trees/hectare) sees a slower return but the overall value of the return is significantly higher than the other orchard density combinations, therefore making it the best investment choice. but the paper finds that only 8.2 percent of farmers have opted for this orchard-combination. another striking conclusion of the paper is that the government support has tremendously increased both the net present value as well as the internal rate of return, of the two orchard combinations (2200 trees/hectare and 3300 trees/hectare). it has also lowered down the break-even year to just 4-5 years, therefore 87.05 percent of farmers start earning net profits earlier than expected. the paper concludes that the government provides crucial support for the establishment of these orchards in jammu & kashmir. the need is to broaden the reach of the scheme with proper support/subsidy being provided to all the density-combinations, especially the highest-density orchard combination. also, considering that more than three-fourth (3/4th) of the farmers possess small and marginal farms, government subsidy and support are extremely important to nudge the farmers of the region to this highprofitability scheme. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, 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(2012). impact of high-density apple plantation under horticulture in himachal pradesh. agro economic research centre, hp university. taili, a. (2014). dynamics of horticulture in kashmir, india. international journal of current science, 11, e15-e25. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 184 evaluating the challenges of food access and the factors influencing it among residents of periurban areas in ray nkonyeni municipality, kwazulu-natal province, south africa tulisiwe pilisiwe mbombodwebaa simiso lembeteb themba andries samboc a,b,cdepartment of agriculture and animal health, college of agriculture and environmental sciences, university of south africa, south africa.  mbombtp@unisa.ac.za (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 5 july 2024 revised: 12 november 2024 accepted: 25 november 2024 published: 17 december 2024 keywords food access food gardening food security household income poverty urban agriculture urban households. this research examines the assessment of food insecurity and its determinants among different provinces in south africa. a quantitative study design was conducted to assess food insecurity status and its determinants in a peri-urban area, namely ray nkonyeni local municipality in kwazulu-natal province, south africa. data was collected from 360 systematic, randomly selected households. the results showed that 71.00% of these were food insecure. food insecurity was more pronounced among older, unemployed, less educated, and low-income respondents. households with an income of between r4001 and r5000 (adjusted odds ratio (aor)=0.05; 95% confidence interval (95% ci):0.01–0.41) and those with an income ≥r5000 (aor=0.01; 95% ci:0.00– 0.11) had lower odds of experiencing food insecurity compared with those with an income of <r1000. households with more than one source of income (aor=2.36; 95% ci:1.07–5.17) were more likely to experience food insecurity than those with a single source of income. households that participated in food gardening had higher odds (aor=3.40; 95% ci: 1.45–7.95) of being food insecure than those that did not participate in food gardening. food insecurity was very high in this peri-urban area. food insecurity was associated with household income, number of income sources, and participation in food gardening. policymakers and other stakeholders should focus on these groups with a view to improving household food security. contribution/originality: this is one of the few studies that have assessed food insecurity and its determinants in periurban areas. the study contributes to the scant literature by quantifying the degree of food insecurity in peri-urban areas.significant determinants include household income, number of income sources, and participation in food gardening. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5259 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: mbombo-dweba, t. p., lembete, s., & sambo, t. a. (2024). evaluating the challenges of food access and the factors influencing it among residents of peri-urban areas in ray nkonyeni municipality, kwazulu-natal province, south africa . asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4), 184–193. 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5259 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction global statistics show that the urban population has been expanding rapidly. estimates indicate that between 1990 and 2018, the urban population grew from 2.29 billion to 4.2 billion (united nations, 2018). this upward urbanization trend is anticipated to continue, with projections suggesting that over 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas by 2050 (ritchie, samborska, & roser, 2018). available literature suggests that africa is the fastest urbanizing region, with its population expected to triple in the next 40 years (güneralp, lwasa, masundire, parnell, & seto, 2017). in 2021, approximately 56% of the population of africa were urban residents. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 4 (2024): 184-193. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8395-3322 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6840-6726 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2966-4244 mailto:mbombtp@unisa.ac.za http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 184-193 185 however, the available literature shows that rapid urbanization has resulted in a number of problems, such as unemployment, poverty, and a lack of housing, and has placed a huge demand on basic education and healthcare services (african policy circle, 2020). in view of the increase in the number of urban poor, and since poverty and food security are interdependent, there is an urgent need to assess the food security status of this growing population (jonah & may, 2020). similarly, van den berg and walsh (2023) call for the prioritization of research on the impact of urbanization on food security. it is known that people living in rural areas are likely to experience food insecurity (battersby & haysom, 2019). this has led to research and food security policies that concentrate on rural areas (berlie, 2023; jonah & may, 2020; mazenda, molepo, mushayanyama, & ngarava, 2022). while a number of national food security studies have been conducted in south africa (shisana et al., 2014; stats, 2019, 2021) they fail to examine the geospatial dimensions of food security. for instance, these national and provincial studies do not segregate data on food security between rural and urban areas. therefore, although these studies provide evidence of food insecurity among urban dwellers (battersby & haysom, 2019) they lack precision and thus fail to quantify the degree of food insecurity in urban areas (rudolph, kroll, muchesa, paiker, & fatti, 2021). this lack of urban-specific data on food security makes it difficult to guide policy and formulate strategies to support the urban poor (ruel, 2020). there is therefore a need for urban-focused case studies to provide empirical evidence on the food security status of populations such as the urban poor (battersby & haysom, 2019). the small number of local studies on food security among urban dwellers that could be sourced support the growing evidence that food insecurity is rife in urban areas. mudau and mahlatsi (2022) conducted a study that revealed a high level of food insecurity in townships. rudolph et al. (2021) reached a similar conclusion, finding that 34% of households in their study, which was conducted amongst urban dwellers, were food insecure. mazenda et al. (2022) likewise found food insecurity among urban dwellers to be critically high, nenguda and scholes (2022) reported that 71% of urban households in their study were food insecure. however, gauteng was the focus of all studies (mazenda et al., 2022; mudau & mahlatsi, 2022; nenguda & scholes, 2022; rudolph et al., 2021). evidence from other urban areas is lacking, and the extent of food security in urban areas is therefore not fully known (ruel, 2020). furthermore, there are limited studies on the determinants of food insecurity in urban areas. because societal characteristics and contexts differ, context-specific studies (mazenda et al., 2022) and area-tailored interventions (simelane, 2024) are necessary. simelane (2024) further argues that municipality-specific scientific data is crucial for the design of targeted interventions.studies assessing the food security status in ray nkonyeni local municipality (rnlm) are not available. the rnlm is relatively small, with unique characteristics that distinguish it from large metropolitan municipalities, and was therefore considered likely to provide new insights regarding food security status among urban dwellers of smaller towns. this municipality is located in kwazulu-natal (kzn), which, like limpopo province, constitutes a food insecurity hotspot in south africa (stats, 2021). this study hypothesized food insecurity to be high in urban areas, particularly in peri-urban areas, which are characterized by a younger population and high unemployment (nenguda & scholes, 2022). the intention of our study was therefore to assess food security status and determinants of food security among peri-urban dwellers in rnlm. 2. materials and methods 2.1. description of the study area the study was carried out in the rnlm under the ugu district municipality of kzn province. the rnlm is also known as the south coast due to its positioning in the southern coastal part of kzn (figure 1). . figure 1. map of rnlm. source: municipalities of south africa (2017). the rnlm has a surface area of about 1594 km² and it is the largest of the four municipalities within the ugu district municipality (municipalities of south africa, 2023). the eastern part of rnlm is bounded by the indian asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 184-193 186 ocean, while the southern part is bounded by umtamvuna river, which also serves as the boundary between kzn and the eastern cape province. the rnlm was selected as a study area due to its rapid urbanization as compared to the neighbouring municipalities (rnlm, 2023). 2.2. research design a cross-sectional, quantitative design was adopted to achieve the objectives of the study. 2.3. sample size and sample selection out of a target population of 348 533 households (rnlm, 2023) a sample size of 384 was deemed adequate based on the formula described by krejcie and morgan (1970). adults over the age of 18 who were household heads and residents in the area and who agreed voluntarily to participate in the study were recruited. ultimately, 360 respondents met the inclusion criteria and were available to participate. systematic random sampling was used to select participating households. 2.4. data collection a questionnaire was used to collect respondents’ socio-demographic information, while the household food insecurity access scale (hfias) was used to measure the food security status of respondents using a four-week reference period. the researcher collected data between october and december 2019 with the assistance of two trained research assistants. the questionnaire was designed in english, but prior to data collection, it was translated into isizulu, the local language spoken in the study area. a pilot study was carried out to identify any ambiguities, and the results were used to improve the questionnaire. 2.5. data management and analysis 2.5.1. data management the data was recorded and coded in microsoft excel 2016 and thereafter imported into the statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 28 (ibm) for analysis. based on the nine hfias homogenized questions, the hfias score for the individual households was computed by adding up the codes for frequency-of-events questions. this hfias score revealed the degree of food insecurity in the households over the previous four weeks. by following coates, swindale, and bilinsky (2007) the codes 0,1,2, and 3 were used to denote that each of the nine food-insecurityrelated events did not happen, rarely, sometimes, and often happen, respectively. households were categorized as follows: households with a score of ≤1 as food secure; households with scores between 2 and 8 as mildly food insecure; those with scores between 9 and 17 as moderately food insecure; and households with a score of ≥18 as severely food insecure households (simelane, 2024). the households were further divided into three territories created on their encountering a single or multiple forms in each of these territories: (i) uncertainty or anxiety about food stocks in the household (question 1); (ii) insufficient quality and food type preference (questions 2–4); and (iii) insufficient food intake and its physical consequences (questions 5–9). the household food insecurity access levels, that is, mild, moderate, or severe food insecurity, were further fused into food insecure to allow the outcome variable (household food insecurity access) to have only two possible outcomes (0=food secure; 1=food insecure). this fusion was rational, as supported by a number of studies conducted in south africa and across the globe that suggest that all households within the three levels (i.e., mildly, moderately, and severely food insecure) are regarded as food insecure (mncube, ojo, & nyam, 2023; mota, lachore, & handiso, 2019; nkoko, cronje, & swanepoel, 2024). therefore, since the outcome variable was a binary variable, a binary logistic regression model was fitted to the data (faizi & alvi, 2023; patel, 2021). 2.5.2. data analysis descriptive statistics were used to analyse categorical variables, and the results were reflected in tables and figures. binary logistic regression was applied to identify the determinants of household food insecurity in the study area. according to harris (2021) the binary logistic regression model is estimated by the following equation: 𝑃(𝑦) = 1 1+𝑒−1(𝛽0+𝛽1 𝑋1+𝛽2 𝑋2) (1) where p(y) is the odds of one category of the outcome variable y (the y above can be either (0=food secure or 1=food insecure) depending on the score of ith households on the outcome variable). β represents the coefficients of the predictor variable, and x represents the predictor variables. in the model-building process, the univariate analysis was performed to isolate outcome variables significantly associated with the dependent variable at a cut-off point of p≤0.20. later, a manual backward selection method was used to fit a multivariable binary logistic regression model, using all the variables that were significantly associated with the outcome variable in the univariate analysis. confounders in the model were validated by measuring the association before and after adjusting for a potential confounding variable. when the difference in the estimated measure of association is greater than 10%, we certify and individual variable as a confounder. the model maintained all confounders. the multicollinearity test was performed by computing the variance inflation factor (vif) and tolerance values. there was no problem with multicollinearity, since the vifs and tolerance values of all the independent variables were asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 184-193 187 less than 3 and greater than 0.20, respectively. the model’s goodness of fit was measured by running the omnibus and hosmer-lemeshow (hl) tests. the likelihood ratio chi-square tests showed the model with the predictors to suit the data more accurately than the null model [x2(29)=142.36; p=0.00]. the results of the hl test also confirmed that the model suited the data perfectly [x2(8)=0.83; p=1.00]. statistical significance was assessed at p=0.05. 2.6. ethical consideration the college of agriculture ethics committee (reference number: 2019/caes/047) of the university of south africa approved the study prior to data collection. a written consent form was used to obtain consent from each participant. 3. results 3.1. the distribution of households based on their food security status the results (table 1) showed only a slight difference between the percentage of male (72.07%) and female respondents (70.28%) who were food insecure. of the respondents in the age categories 61–70 and >70 years, a large majority, at 84.21% and 77.42%, respectively, were food insecure. in terms of marital status, respondents in all categories except for those who identified themselves as cohabiting reported high levels of food insecurity. in the latter category, there were more food secure households (66.67%) than food-insecure households (33.33%) (see table 1). households of which the head had been widowed were found to be more food-insecure (82.61%; n=9), with this percentage being higher than in other categories such as single (77.05%), divorced (74.19%), and married (58.16%). the majority of respondents owned formal houses, and the majority of households in this category (72.36%) were food insecure. the results reported in table 1 further indicate that 84.21% of households with more than 6 household members were food insecure, while 72.38% of households with 4 to 6 members reported as food insecure. by contrast, only 57.43% of households with 1 to 3 household members were food insecure. of the respondents who lacked agricultural experience, a slightly higher percentage were food secure (52.78%) than were food insecure (47.22%). among the respondents who indicated that they participated in food gardening, a higher percentage (78.93%) were food insecure, while of those who did not participate, the majority (50.51%) were food secure. table 1. results showing socio-demographics of respondents based on their food security status. food security status variable level food secure food insecure overall n=105 %=29.0 n=255 %=71.0 gender of the household head male 31 27.93 80 72.07 female 74 29.72 175 70.28 age 18–40 27 35.53 54 67.50 41–50 26 32.50 54 67.50 51–60 33 34.02 64 65.98 61–70 12 15.79 64 84.21 above 70 7 22.58 24 77.42 marital status of the household head single 44 22.45 152 77.55 married 41 41.84 57 58.16 divorced 8 25.81 23 74.19 widowed 4 17.39 19 82.61 cohabiting 8 66.67 4 33.33 dwelling type formal (own) 89 27.64 233 72.36 informal (own) 4 33.33 8 66.67 renting 12 46.15 14 53.85 number of household members 1–3 members 43 42.57 58 57.43 4–6 members 50 27.62 131 72.38 over 6 12 15.79 64 84.21 experience of the household head in agriculture yes 67 23.26 221 76.74 no 38 52.78 34 47.22 household participating in food gardening yes 55 21.07 206 78.93 no 50 50.51 49 49.49 3.2. socio-economic characteristics of households based on their food security status table 2 presents socio-economic characteristics of households based on their food security status. it was found that of the respondents who had access to land, the greater percentage (74.84%) were classified as food insecure. with regard to the educational level achieved by the head of the household, in the case of respondents with no formal education, 76.67% of households were food insecure, in the case of respondents with primary education, 87.21% of households were food insecure; and where respondents had a high school education, 69.65% of households were food insecure. by contrast, where the household head had a tertiary education, 60.47% of households were food secure, and only 39.43% were food insecure. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 184-193 188 as reflected in table 2, among the respondents who identified themselves as unemployed, the larger percentage (84.30%) of households were food insecure, while among those that were employed, 58.51% of households were food insecure. in cases where respondents had one income source, 71.77% of households experienced food insecurity, whereas among households with more than one source of income, this figure was 68.75%. 92.77% of the households without any employed members experienced food insecurity. table 2 further reveals that as the number of employed members per households decreased. table 2. results showing socio-economic characteristics of respondents based on their food security status. variable level food secure food insecure overall n=105 %=29.0 n=255 %=71.0 access to land yes 77 25.16 229 74.84 no 28 51.85 26 48.15 level of education of the household head no formal education 7 23.33 23 76.67 primary school 11 12.79 75 87.21 high school 61 30.35 140 69.65 tertiary 26 60.47 17 39.43 employment status unemployed 27 15.70 145 84.30 employed 78 41.49 110 58.51 number of income sources 1 income 70 28.23 178 71.77 more than 1 income 35 31.25 77 68.75 number of household members employed number of member employed 6 7.23 77 92.77 1–2 members employed 83 34.30 159 65.70 >3 members employed 16 45.71 19 54.29 income of the household head less than 1000 2 8.70 21 91.30 r1000–r2000 12 13.04 80 86.96 r20001–r3000 21 19.81 85 80.19 r30001–r4000 24 35.29 44 64.71 r40001–r5000 19 54.29 16 45.71 over r5000 27 75.00 9 25.00 table 2 further shows that with regard to household monthly income, of the households with an income of over r5000, 75% were food secure and 25% were food insecure, while among households with an income of more than r4000, 54.29% were food secure and 45.71% were food insecure. households with incomes of <r1000, r1000–r2000 and r2001–r3000 all experienced a degree of food insecurity, with 91.30%, 86.96% and 80.19%, of households in these respective categories classifying as food insecure. 3.3. household food security status of peri-urban households from the hfias data, four indicators of food security were computed and are presented in this section. the results in table 3 show that over two-thirds (70.06%, 70.03%, 65.06%, and 65.00%) of the households responded in the affirmative to questions 1–4 of the nine occurrence questions. the results further indicated that that 25.08% respondents experienced lack of food, 20.03% went to bed hungry and 18.09% spent the whole day without food over the recall period. table 3. distribution of respondents by food insecurity indicators (access scale). variable level frequency(n) percent (%) 1. worry about food yes 254 70.06 no 106 29.04 2. unable to eat preferred food yes 253 70.03 no 107 29.07 3. eating limited variety of food yes 236 65.06 no 123 34.04 4. eating undesired food yes 234 65.00 no 126 35.00 5. eat a smaller meal yes 210 58.03 no 150 41.07 6. eat fewer meals in a day yes 168 46.07 no 46.7 53.03 7. no food of any kind in the household yes 93 25.08 no 267 74.02 8. go to sleep hungry yes 73 20.03 no 287 79.07 9. go a whole day and night without eating yes 68 18.09 no 292 81.01 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 184-193 189 based on the hfias domains, the results in figure 2 illustrate that the majority of participants experienced inadequate food quality (70.08%) and anxiety or uncertainty concerning food stock (70.06%). insufficient food intake and its physical consequences were experienced by the smallest percentage (59.01%) of participants in this study. figure 2. the three domains of occurrence of food insecurity. the score was calculated on the basis of responses to the nine questions, with the maximum score being 27 and the minimum being 0. the lower the score, the less food insecurity a household experienced; alternatively, the the higher the score (maximum 27), the more food insecurity and less access the household experienced. the results of the study showed the mean food security score for these surveyed households to be 8.5. based on the formula for calculating the hfias category and household food insecurity access prevalence presented above, the degree of food insecurity experienced by each urban household in rnlm was calculated and is presented in table 4. the results revealed only 29.00% of households to be food secure, and the majority (71.00%) to be food insecure. coates et al. (2007) suggested further subdividing respondents who were food insecure into three categories. it was found that the largest percentage of these respondents (40.00%) were moderately food insecure, while the remainder were either mildly food insecure (12.05%) or severely food insecure (18.06%) (table 4). table 4. prevalence of household food insecurity. food security status frequency (n) percent (%) food secure 105 29.00 mildly food insecure 45 12.05 moderate food insecure 145 40.00 severely food insecure 67 18.06 total 360 100 3.4. factors associated with food insecurity among the households table 5 presents the results of multivariate analysis. households with higher incomes per month, that is, incomes between r4001 and r5000 (aor=0.05; 95% ci:0.01–0.44; p=0.01) and those with incomes greater than r5000 (aor=0.02; 95% ci:0.00–0.14; p=0.00) were less likely to experience food insecurity than those with a total income of less than r1000 per month. households with more than one source of income were twice (aor=2.36; 95% ci:1.07– 5.17; p=0.03) as likely to be food insecure than those with a single income source as a referent. similarly, households that engaged in food gardening (aor=3.40; 95% ci:1.45–7.95; p=0.00) had significantly higher odds of experiencing food insecurity than households that did not engage in this practice. table 5. multivariate analysis of the factors associated with food insecurity among the households (n=360). variable category food security status aor p-value 95%ci food secure food insecure f (%) f (%) age 18–40 27 (35.53) 49 (64.47) ref 41–50 26 (32.50) 54 (67.50) 0.34 0.19 0.07–1.67 51–60 33 (34.20) 64 (65.98) 0.36 0.23 0.07–1.88 61–70 12 (15.79) 64 (84.21) 0.33 0.20 0.06–1.77 above 70 7 (22.58) 24 (77.42) 0.20 0.11 0.03–1.45 gender male 31 (27.93) 80 (72.07) ref female 74 (29.72) 175 (70.28) 0.76 0.42 0.39–1.47 marital status single 44 (22.45) 152 (77.55) ref asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 184-193 190 variable category food security status aor p-value 95%ci food secure food insecure f (%) f (%) married 41 (41.84) 57 (58.16) 0.59 0.15 0.29–1.20 divorced 8 (28.81) 23 (74.19) 1.06 0.91 0.35–3.22 widowed 4 (17.39) 19 (82.61) 1.99 0.34 0.48–8.23 cohabiting 8 (66.67) 4 (33.33) 0.31 0.16 0.06–1.62 employment status unemployed 27 (15.70) 145 (84.30) ref employed 78 (41.49) 110 (58.51) 0.61 0.25 0.26–1.41 level of education no education 7 (23.33) 23 (76.67) ref primary level 11 (12.79) 75 (87.21) 1.04 0.96 0.28–3.79 high school level 61 (30.35) 140 (69.65) 0.65 0.54 0.16–2.58 tertiary level 26 (60.47) 17 (39.43) 0.56 0.48 0.12–2.76 members employed none 6 (7.23) 77 (92.77) ref 1–2 83 (34.30) 159 (65.70) 0.48 0.24 0.14–1.66 more than 2 16 (45.71) 19 (54.29) 0.78 0.76 0.15–3.92 household income less than r1000 2 (8.70) 21 (91.30) ref r1000–r2000 12 (13.04) 80 (86.96) 0.42 0.36 0.06–2.76 r2001–r3000 21 (19.81) 85 (80.19) 0.44 0.40 0.06–2.98 r3001–r4000 24 (35.29) 44 (64.71) 0.16 0.07 0.02–1.17 r4001–r5000 19 (54.29) 16 (45.71) 0.05 0.01 0.01–0.44 over r5000 27 (75.00) 9 (25.00) 0.02 0.00 0.00–0.14 number of income sources 1 income 70 (28.23) 178 (71.77) ref more than 1 income 33 (31.25) 77 (68.75) 2.36 0.03 1.07–5.17 dwelling type formal 89 (27.64) 233 (72.36) ref informal 4 (33.33) 8 (66.67) 0.39 0.29 0.07–2.19 renting 12 (46.15) 14 (53.85) 0.40 0.14 0.12–1.34 land access no 28 (51.85) 26 (48.15) ref yes 77 (25.16) 229 (74.83) 0.96 0.95 0.32–2.86 agricultural experience no 38 (52.78) 34 (47.22) ref yes 67 (23.26) 221 (76.74) 2.20 0.08 0.91–5.31 practising food gardening no 50 (50.51) 49 (49.49) ref yes 55 (21.07) 206 (78.93) 3.40 0.00 1.45–7.95 4. discussion the majority (>65.00%) of the food insecure households in the study indicated that they often worried about food, were unable to eat the food they preferred, and ate a limited variety of food. these are regarded as mild forms of food insecurity (rudolph et al., 2021). other studies conducted in south africa (rudolph et al., 2021) and eastern ethiopia (derese, belay, fentie, & derese, 2023) have found similar results to ours. however, the numbers reported in our study are slightly higher than those reported in the study by rudolph et al. (2021). for example, in the latter study, approximately 50% of respondents reported experiencing the occurrences described by the first hfias questions. just as was observed in previous studies conducted in urban areas in south africa (rudolph et al., 2021), a declining trend from the first to the ninth question was observed in our study. while this is reassuring in light of the fact that these questions reveal the severity of food insecurity, these proportions are high in comparison with findings of other studies conducted in other urban areas in gauteng province (rudolph et al., 2021) and eastern ethiopia (derese et al., 2023). in the study by derese et al. (2023) less than 15% of respondents experienced severe forms of food insecurity, such as sleeping hungry or not eating the whole day and night, compared with 20% and 18% of the respondents in our study who responded in the affirmative to these questions. with regard to domains of food insecurity, the proportion of households in our study reported as having insufficient food intake (59.01%) was slightly higher than the percentage in other urban areas in gauteng (rudolph et al., 2021). while insufficient food intake is considered a milder form of food insecurity, its existence is problematic due to its association with poor educational and psychological performance and health outcomes in both adults and children (arora, 2018; gregory, mancino, & coleman-jensen, 2019; reuter, forster, & brister, 2021). differences between the study areas could explain the observed inconsistencies between the two studies. generally, recent reports have indicated that at 51% food insecurity is much lower in gauteng than in kzn (simelane, 2024). furthermore, over 70% of the households in our study experienced anxiety and uncertainty about food supply and insufficient food intake; this percentage was much higher than that reported in the previous studies (derese et al., 2023; rudolph et al., 2021). the age of the respondents may explain the observed difference between these studies. the majority of the respondents in our study (55.38%) were in the age category of 51 years and older; this age category is dominated by retirees and beneficiaries of old age grants. available evidence suggests that retirees and beneficiaries of old age grants are more vulnerable to food insecurity (sandile mthethwa & wale, 2020). people of working age, with an average age of 30 years, dominated the latter studies (derese et al., 2023; rudolph et al., 2021). this suggests that households headed by members of the younger generation are less likely to experience asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 184-193 191 food insecurity than households headed by older people. this view is supported by authors such as oduniyi and tekana (2020) who observed that food insecurity increases with the increase in age of the household head. the mean hfias score in this study was 8.50. this is high by most standards and denotes high levels of food insecurity (simelane, 2024). moreover, this mean score is high in comparison with similar studies conducted in south africa. for example, in a study involving 1000 households in the city of johannesburg, a mean score of 5.7 was recorded (rudolph et al., 2021), and a study conducted in selected smaller cities in kwazulu-natal revealed an average hfias score of 5.5 and 8.3 in richard’s bay and harrismith, respectively (chakona, 2022). this suggests that the households in our study experienced difficulty in accessing food (simelane, 2024). furthermore, the results revealed 71.00% of households in our study to be food insecure. these results correspond with the results from studies conducted among urban dwellers in south africa and ghana (nenguda & scholes, 2022; tuholske, andam, blekking, evans, & caylor, 2020). however, this percentage was considerably higher than that reported in urban areas in eastern ethiopia (41.7%) (derese et al., 2023); east africa (60.91%) (gebremichael et al., 2022); and in tembisa township, south africa (62%) (mojela, hlongwane, & ledwaba, 2018). time could explain the discrepancies between our study and these earlier studies, as evidence suggests an increasing trend in food insecurity (fao, ifad, unicef, wfp, & who, 2022). of the respondents in our study, 40% were moderately food insecure, while 18% were severely food insecure. while the percentage of severely food insecure households was slightly lower than that reported in the literature from other peri-urban areas (chakona, 2022; nenguda & scholes, 2022) these numbers are worrying, especially considering that this percentage represents people who have run out of food and have gone for days without eating. in our study, total monthly income, number of income sources, and participation in food gardening were significantly correlated with household food insecurity. the study showed that households with higher monthly incomes were less likely to be food insecure than those with lower incomes. this result is consonant with previous studies kundu et al. (2021) and nkomoki, bavorová, and banout (2019) where income was found to be inversely associated with household food insecurity, and confirms the finding of previous studies that income is the main determinant of food security in urban and peri-urban areas (mazenda et al., 2022; nenguda & scholes, 2022; ruel, garrett, & yosef, 2017). the association between income and food security in urban areas is attributable to the high dependency of urban households on the markets for food supply (battersby & haysom, 2019). consequently, when food prices rise (fao et al., 2022; writer, 2022) households with low incomes struggle to meet their basic needs. the odds of being food insecure were higher in households with multiple sources of income than in those with a single source of income. although these results are consistent with the results of a study by atuoye, antabe, sano, luginaah, and bayne (2019) conducted in the upper west region of ghana, they were not expected. for example, in a study conducted using data extracted from the 2019 general household survey in south africa, sandile mthethwa and wale (2020) observed that income diversification reduced household food insecurity. therefore, findings reported here may appear counterintuitive, given the broad body of literature substantiating the impact of income diversification on food insecurity (akrasi, eddico, & adarkwah, 2020; etea, zhou, abebe, & sedebo, 2019). however, in an earlier study we published from the same study group, we observed that households with multiple income sources were recipients of pensions and government social grants, namely old age, disability, and children’s grants (lembete, agyepong, & mbombo-dweba, 2024). these income sources are insufficient to maintain consumption and alleviate household food insecurity and poverty (mthethwa & wale, 2023). as a result, pensioners and beneficiaries of social grants are more vulnerable to food insecurity (sandile mthethwa & wale, 2020). berlie (2023) argues that it is the total income earned from these different sources, not the number of income sources, that determines food security. in our study, households that participated in food gardening were more likely to experience food insecurity than those that did not engage in this activity. similar findings were reported by oguttu, mbombo-dweba, and ncayiyana (2021) in a study conducted among urban residents in gauteng, which revealed that households that had experienced some form of food insecurity in the previous year or lived in the poorest areas were more likely to engage in food gardening. tawodzera and chigumira (2019) found 92% of respondents in a study conducted in epworth, an urban area in zimbabwe, to be food insecure despite the majority of them participating in urban agriculture. low-income urban households often use food gardening as a strategy to mitigate food insecurity, according to literature. however, the literature has also revealed that urban agriculture is often limited due to zoning laws and access to productive resources (ruel et al., 2017; tawodzera & chigumira, 2019). furthermore, the literature has demonstrated that agricultural activities in urban areas are limited to personal consumption and are highly seasonal (lembete et al., 2024). this leaves low-income households vulnerable to food insecurity during the off-season. 5. conclusion and recommendations although the majority of households in the study participated in food gardening, the level of food insecurity among the study population remained high. this demonstrates the complexity of food security in urban areas and provides an indication that finding a solution to the problem of food insecurity requires a multidimensional approach. income, sources of income, and participation in food gardening were identified as factors that correlated with household food insecurity in the area. this suggests the necessity of targeted policy interventions intended to alleviate the unique difficulties that urban households are facing. this could include a review of the minimum wage in the informal sector to ensure that wages are on par with the rising costs in urban areas. nevertheless, the study’s findings of widespread adoption of food gardening are encouraging, and we recommend that we not ignore urban agriculture, but rather consider it as one of a range of strategies to enhance food security. however, innovative methods and support from extension and advisory services to maximize the outcome of this endeavour are necessary. moreover, there is a need for training and resources to assist those participating in urban agriculture in producing not only for their own consumption but for income generation as well. this will not only benefit the participating households but could also asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 184-193 192 boost local food systems. financial support and/or incentives to establish off-farm or non-farm income-generating ventures and the creation of employment safety nets such as the community work programme and expanded public works programme are possible strategies to assist in improving household income. further research is required to investigate the obstacles limiting the effectiveness of urban agriculture. funding: this research is supported by university of south africa. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the college of agriculture and environmental sciences of the university of south africa, south africa has granted approval for this study on 26 april 2019 (ref. no. 2019/caes/047). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: involved in the study design, the data analysis and interpretation and the writing and reviewing of the manuscript, t.m.d.; 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(2022). food prices in south africa continue to soar – here’s what you’re paying more for business tech. retrieved from https://businesstech.co.za/news/lifestyle/630171/food-prices-in-south-africa-continue-to-soar-heres-what-yourepaying-more-for/ views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___https:/doi.org/10.1108/bfj-11-2021-1234___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzoxzwvinzhhzmywytu0zjy3yjuxnwq3n2vhmzjlmde0mzo2ojkxotq6m2jkogi1m2i3yze1mmjinzewmdvlzdgxotq0njlmytrmytdimda2ndfmnjzmywvimzgymmy4nte1mdlmzjg4ndpwolq6tg 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kamarulzaman c a institute of agricultural and food policy studies, university putra malaysia, malaysia b school of business and economics, university putra malaysia, malaysia c faculty of agriculture, universiti putra malaysia, malaysia  nwi@upm.edu.my (corresponding author) article history: received: 03-feb-2020 accepted: 20-apr-2020 online available: 11-may2020 keywords: integrated farming, feedlot, ruminant, domestic resource cost, social profitability abstract costly operation contributed by land availability and feed cost hurt the production capacity which has been demonstrated by malaysia’s low self-sufficiently level. the objective of this study is to investigate the competitiveness and efficiency of ruminant farms in malaysia based on its production system particularly on the aspect of cost rationalization of feed. a total of 29 cattle farms operated under the scheme of permanent food production park have been surveyed and analysed based on the policy analysis matrix (pam) approach. the analysis reveals that the integrated farms were more competitive and efficient as compared to feedlot farms indicated by the ratio value of domestic resource cost and social profitability. contribution/ originality the findings will provide empirical-based evidence to convince the stakeholders on the importance of having a production system that suits the strength and weaknesses. domestic production has the potential to be improved if the appropriate production system is adopted. integrated farming will not only increase malaysia’s self-sufficiency level and correcting the trade deficit but it will also determine whether the sector will become privately and socially profitable or not. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.227.238 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: hebat hisham mohd yusoff, normaz wana ismail and nitty hirawaty kamarulzaman (2020). assessing the comparative advantage of integrated farming and feedlot production system of the ruminant sector in malaysia: a policy analysis matrix approach. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 227-238. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 227-238 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:nwi@upm.edu.my https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0865-256x http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.227.238 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 227-238 228 1. introduction malaysia’s self-sufficiency level for ruminant meat has never exceeded 30 percent for the past 20 years despite numerous intervention programs initiated by the government to boost the production. the inability to improve the self-sufficiency level has pushed malaysia to opt for import as a measure to improve the supply and availability in the domestic market. the deepening reliance on the international market has resulted in a high import bill of agro-food which has reached usd4.74 in 2018 where ruminant meat together with feed was amongst the major contributors. the deficit is expected to remain the status quo as the conditions needed for the betterment of domestic production have yet to be improved (sahar and chamhuri, 2016). weakened ringgit and shrinking export market for malaysia’s main commodities have further worsened the situation. the economic planning unit (2015) has suggested that the major challenges faced by the ruminant sector in malaysia are rooted from the prohibitive cost of feeder and feed. the high cost of the feeder is due to malaysia’s strong dependence on the imported feeder as the domestic activity of breeding is still at its infancy stage. breeding in malaysia is largely conducted on a small scale basis with limited involvement from the private sector. it is concentrated amongst a few government-linked companies (glcs) as part of their business diversification strategies and some selected smallholders whose farms are still far from achieving economies of scale (ariff et al., 2015). dependency on the international market for the supply means that malaysia has to compete with the other importing countries, which in some cases, are in a better position to secure the supply. it is contributed by the fact that malaysia’s competitors have better purchasing power aided by their economic clouts and favorable bilateral trade arrangements such as long term supply contracts. stiff competition has contributed to the situation where supply is not paralleled with the surge in demand and this has served as a push factor for the price to trend upward globally (shahudin et al., 2018). the situation is almost replicated in the case of feeding. malaysia is not a grain producer and has to rely on the international market in getting the supply. this reliance has exposed malaysia to the vagaries of international trade apart from shouldering the ballooning import bill. grain needed in feed production is also demanded as an important input in food production triggering the worldwide dilemma of ‘food versus feed’ (mottet et al., 2017). it has been reported that 6 to 20kg of feed grains are required to produce a kilogram of beef (muir et al., 2010). the competition for grain has become more intense due to technology advancement in converting grains to biofuel that could power not only land vehicles but also aircraft. competition in getting the supply by the three sectors and the fact that production is concentrated amongst the limited number of producers has caused the price to increase (zhong and zhu, 2017). this trend has posed a serious issue to malaysia since smallholders are the prominent players in the ruminant sector and their financial capability could not absorb the consistent pattern of the high cost of feed. in this regard, it is important to note that the materialization of the national agro-food policy (nap) objective to achieve 30 percent self-sufficiency levels for ruminant meat is subject to how malaysia would be the response to the issues. therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate the capability of integrated farming as one of the ruminant production systems in rationalizing the operational cost. various studies have highlighted the ability to integrate farming to address the mentioned issues. lemaire et al. (2014), serin et al. (2008) and galnaitytė (2017) have categorized the benefits of integrated farming into two main categories economic and environmental. empirical evidence has indicated that integrated farming is proven to be effective in rationalizing the operational cost (yu and sun, 2016) apart from being biologically symbiotic (alberto et al., 2013). integrated farming could be understood as a farming method that is kinder to the environment and has the characteristics of both conventional and organic farming (vlahos et al., asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 227-238 229 2017). the method of integrated farming is not confined to a particular country or region as it has been extensively practiced all over the world integrating varieties of crops with various kinds of suitable livestock. the dairy farmers of east java in indonesia have integrated their livestock with horticultural as a means to increase the farmers’ household income as well as preserving a sustainable environment (osak and hartono, 2016). in india, integrated farming has been encouraged by the government as a tool for income expansion, especially for the small and marginal farmers. it is practiced based on the principles of input complementarity and minimum input utilization to reduce the operational cost as to increase yields and profits (goverdhan et al., 2018). ismail and abdul (2014) investigate the comparative advantage of malaysia ruminant production found that economies of scale are an important prerequisite for the sector to achieve the comparative advantage. 2. materials and methods policy analysis matric (pam) has become a chosen method in examining the competitiveness and efficiency of an agricultural system and policy. the ability of pam to gauge the influence of public policies vis a vis the performance of the economy has made pam a preferred method. pam provides connectivity between the profitability of each component of production and the production as a whole and this has allowed pam to identify the most efficient and the weakest links in a production chain (dos and padula, 2017). those efficient and weak links are identified through the indicators of competitiveness, comparative advantage, and market failure produced by the pam analysis. this would allow for further identification of domestic and international market distortion policies practiced by certain agro-commodities sector (liefert and westcott, 2015). as such, pam has been recognized and accepted by both scholars and policymakers in investigating competitiveness and comparative advantage as well as input in the formulation of agro-policies. in general, pam framework is about the two identities of the basic accounting principle combined with the divergence (table1). the three columns of pam are meant for revenue, cost, and also profits respectively. the column for the cost is further divided into two subcomponents-tradable inputs and domestic factors/non-tradable inputs. in the context of pam, there are two types of input needed in agricultural production. those inputs are known as tradable inputs as well as nontradable inputs. tradable inputs are inputs that have the components of cross-border transactions particularly import and export. those inputs could be 100 percent from the international market or only a certain percentage of its components are sourced internationally. prices of tradable input are dictated by the demand and supply of international trade. general tradable inputs involved in the production of ruminants include fuel, feed and medicine, vaccines, and supplements (mvs). the non-tradable inputs which are also known as domestic factors include input that is not traded internationally such as labour and land and its prices are determined by the factors within the domestic market. the first row of the pam matrix reflects the private profitability based on actual transactions that refer to the actual prices received and paid by the farmers. it is calculated as revenue (a) minus total costs of tradable and domestic (b+c) where, b and c are tradable and domestic costs, respectively. private profitability captures the competitiveness of the ruminant production system based on the present technologies, prices of input, output values, and policy transfer. the second row indicates social profitability which is measured using the shadow prices to reflect social opportunity cost. social profitability is derived from the calculation of revenue values at social prices (e) minus tradable and domestic costs (f+g) which are also valued at social prices. social profitability is a signal for efficiency and comparative advantage. it is an indication of whether scarce resources have been efficiently managed or not whether. the efficient utilization of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 227-238 230 resources will cause the production at a social cost to be lower than the cost of importing resulting in the positive value of social profitability. the third and the last row shows the existence of policy transfer or divergence resulted from distorting policies and market failure. it is derived from the difference between observed parameters and parameters that would exist if the divergences were removed. in the ideal situation where the market is free from any market distortions, the two would be the same. the presence of market failures and distortions has caused the observed and shadow parameters to diverge from one another. the pam matrix is developed to determine policy indicators for policy analysis. as for this study, 3 policy indicators have been used as a basis for policy analysis; i. domestic resource cost (drc)g/ (e-f) a drc value between zero and less than one implies that commodity has a comparative advantage while the value above one suggests that domestic production is not socially profitable due to inefficient utilization of resources as compared to import. ii. nominal protection coefficient of output (npco) – a/e protection on domestic output is detected if the value of npco is greater than one and vice versa if the ratio is less than one. iii. nominal protection coefficient of input (npci) –b/f npci is expressed as b/f (the ratio of the value of tradable inputs at local market prices or private prices to value tradable inputs at world market prices or social prices). table 1: policy analysis matrix: measurement revenue cost profitability tradable inputs non-tradable inputs private price a b c d = a (b+c) social price e f g h = e (f+g) divergence i = a e j = b f k = c g l = i (j+k) = d h 2.1. data this study used both secondary and primary data. the secondary data were largely sourced from the department of veterinary services (dvs), department of statistics (dos), ministry of agriculture and agro-based industry (moa), economic planning unit (epu) and ministry of finance (mof). the secondary data were used to develop an understanding of the sector as well as formulating the research issues. the main data for this study came from the primary data. a total of 29 cattle farms located in johor, pahang, terengganu, negeri sembilan, selangor, kedah, and kelantan operated under the scheme of permanent food production park (tkpr) have been surveyed using a structured questionnaire. the highest number of farms comes from johor and negeri sembilan with a total of 9 farms for each state followed by terengganu with 4 farms. kedah and selangor have two farms each while 1 farm each from kelantan, perak, and pahang. 10 months have been spent to complete the overall process of the survey which was started on 12 december 2018 until 15 october 2019. data collected from the survey were entirely on the aspect of production and its related issues. amongst the issues covered by the survey include the quantity of farm production inputs and outputs, cost of the operation, size of the farm, prices paid and received by the farmers, production method, revenue, profits, and ruminant inventory information. 2017 was used as a reference year for the data collection. in other words, the collected data is the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 227-238 231 production data of 2017. each farm was classified into two categories based on its production methodintegrated and feedlot. 3. results and discussion in a total of 29 farms, there were 9 integrated farms and 20 feedlot farms. 8 integrated farms were categorized as commercial farms based on the size of the cattle population which is greater than 250 head (table 2). the remaining integrated farm was the sole representative for a medium farm where the number of cattle categorized under this category ranging from 50 to 250 head. as for the feedlot farms, the majority of the farms under this production system were the medium farms 17 out of 20 farms. the other three were the commercial feedlot farms (table 3). table 2: classification of farms commodity farm size population cattle commercial > 250 heads/year medium 50 – 250 heads/year small < 50 heads/year source: department of veterinary services (dvs), 2005 table 3: number of farms according to classification production system farm classification medium commercial integrated 1 farm 8 farms feedlot 17 farms 3 farms source: author calculation based on data collection 2017 the classification was to assist the comparison process to determine its specific characteristics of production especially in the utilization of resources which will influence the overall operating cost, revenue as well as profit. the selection of those farms was based on purposive samplings or authoritative sampling where knowledge of the department of veterinary services malaysia was utilized in determining the representative sample. the secondary data obtained from different sources, including the dvs, the department of statistics, ministry of agriculture and also ministry of finance (mof). secondary data were useful in determining the information related to fob prices, the shadow exchange rate, international trade of ruminant and other relevant data. the cost-related data compiled from the survey are totally in private value. the calculation of pam indicators requires the cost related data to be converted into social values. the conversion from private value to social value is done based on the value of conversion factors (cf) as mentioned by veitch (1986) (table 4). the estimation by cf required all the production input to be categorized under two types of input namely immediate and primary input. the immediate input involved the following: feeds, livestock purchased, maintenance, utility mvs (medicine, vaccines, and supplements), fuel, repair and office supplies. the primary input included labor, land rent, interest, and depreciation. other items included taxes, licenses, and losses (table 5). table 4: conversion factors from financial to economic analysis input conversion factor intermediate input feed mvs 0.95 0.88 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 227-238 232 livestock purchase fuel repairs & maintenance water electricity office supplies 0.95 0.88 0.78 0.75 0.84 0.90 primary input labor depreciation building equipment transportation interest 0.82 0.86 0.90 0.70 land rent tax licence losses 1.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 source: veitch, 1986 table 5: allocation of costs between domestic and foreign component input foreign/ tradable (%) domestic/ non-tradable (%) intermediate input feed beef goat mvs repairs & maintenance water electricity fuel livestock purchase beef goat office supplies tax land rent license primary input labor depreciation building equipment transportation interest losses 90 80 80 0 10 10 50 50 50 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 33 5 0 10 20 20 100 90 90 50 50 50 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 67 95 100 source: veitch, 1986 3.1. analysis of comparative advantage the analysis is meant to gauge the level of efficiency in the utilization of domestic resources is whether it gains or save foreign exchange. in this regard, domestic resource cost (drc) has been used to estimate the comparative advantage of malaysia’s ruminant sector according to the production method. comparative advantage is closely associated with the efficient utilization of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 227-238 233 domestic resources. the drc is used as an indicator of whether the ruminant sector in malaysia has efficiently utilized the domestic input and resources in producing the output. the measurement is based on the fact that resources used in the production manage to save or earn one unit of foreign exchange. the indication of comparative advantage is from the value of the domestic resource cost (drc). if drc is less than one and greater than zero it indicates that ruminant production has a comparative advantage because the value of domestic resources used in production is less than the value of foreign exchange saved. if drc is greater than one it indicates that ruminant production has a comparative disadvantage because the value of domestic resources used in production is greater than the value of foreign exchange saved (dos and padula, 2017). table 6: results from policy analysis matrix type of farm average domestic resource cost average social profitability average nominal protection coefficient of output average nominal protection coefficient of input feedlot 1.32 1.18 1.40 1.10 integrated 0.31 0.40 1.43 1.06 note: author’s calculation based on the findings provided in table 6, it is obvious that integrated farms have a comparative advantage as compared to the feedlot farms. integrated farms have a comparative advantage with the average drc ratio of 0.31. on the other hand, feedlot farms have a comparative disadvantage indicated by the average drc ratio of 1.32. the values of drc calculated from the integrated farm show that the value of domestic resources utilized by the integrated farm is lower than the value of the output produced. the comparative advantage enjoyed by the integrated farm is partly contributed by the fact that this farm has a low dependency on tradable or imported inputs (goverdhan et al., 2018). its inputs are largely sourced from non-tradable ones or domestic. this is proven based on the calculation which has clearly shown the bigger amount of domestic input compared to the tradable input for both private and social prices. dependency on domestic input has made the farms free from the risk of price fluctuations caused by currency depreciation. it is quite normal for the integrated farm to practice a mixed production system that combined the managed grazing in oil palm plantation (integrated farming) and feedlot. the mixed production system has allowed the farm to have a relatively short duration of feedlot period which was around 30 to 45 days where the commercial practice of feedlot is between 3 months to 6 months. shorter feedlot duration means a lesser feed cost borne by the farmer. feedlot for integrated farming was just a 'finishing stage' to achieve the targeted market weight. the early stage of the cattle was largely spent in the oil palm plantation where cattle were allowed to graze the vegetative available in oil palm plantation based on managed grazing where grazing plot was controlled by a portable electric fence. some scientific journals have also highlighted that the nutrients content of those vegetative in oil palm plantation was, in fact, comparable with commercially farmed grass. most of the integrated farms also have their breeding program and this has reduced the cost of getting the feeder since the feeders were not bought but come from its breeding program (ayob and kabul, 2009). this was quite essential in reducing the overall operational cost. the situation is contributed by the fact that the owners of these farms are largely well-established operators. aqil berjaya enterprise, for instance, has been recognized by the dvs as an expert and reference point for integrated farming and cattle breeding specializing in brahman breed. risda livestock which was formerly known as espek livestock sdn bhd has been involved in the ruminant sector since asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 227-238 234 1996 and currently has 12 integrated farms throughout peninsular malaysia with some of its farms are solely focussed on breeding activities. the situation of non-comparative advantage amongst the feedlot is majorly rooted in the high operating cost. studies have shown that feed contributes almost 60-70 percent of the total operating cost for the feedlot farms. the cost of feed which should be kept at the maximum level of rm3 per head per day (but also depend on other factors as well) could sometimes shoot up due to supply disruption. palm kernel cake (pkc) or palm kernel expellant (pke) which is extensively used in the mixed ration for ruminant is highly involved in cross-border trade and highly exposed to the price fluctuation. in this regard, as an alternative, instead of using pkc in the mixed ration, feedlot farms should be encouraged to switch to a cheaper source of feed such as palm oil mill effluent (pome) or popularly known as decanter cake which could be purchased at rm200 to rm300 per ton compared to rm450 to rm 550 for pkc. even though the crude protein (cp) of decanter cake is lower than pkc, but when combined with roughage such as napier, that mixed ration could achieve the required 14 percent of cp needed by the ruminant. 3.2. analysis of protection nominal protection coefficient of output (npco) and nominal protection coefficient of input (npci) are the indicators of pam used to measure the level of policy distortion in a particular agriculture system. the presence of policy distortion has caused the domestic prices to diverge from the social prices which could be detected from the ratio value of npco and npci. in the case of npco, if its ratio value exceeds one, the domestic prices are higher than the import or export price. this is an indication to show that the domestic market is protected by the government. on the other hand, the ratio value of less than one shows that the domestic prices are lower than the import or export price reflecting that the domestic market is free from any protection. the npco for both types of farms –integrated and feedlot exceed one reflecting that the domestic output prices are higher than the world price. the npco ratio value of 1.439 for integrated farms and 1.773 for feedlot farms represents the fact that the policy interventions by the government have resulted in higher domestic output prices of the ruminant sector as compared to the world price by approximately 43.9 percent and 77.3 percent respectively. this could be interpreted as a transfer of 43.9 percent and 77.3 percent gains from the local consumers to the producers. the gains could be transferred from consumers due to the tax imposed while producers receive protection in the form of subsidy – transfer of gains from one actor to another actor resulted from government policy. the impact of policy interventions, as well as market failure on the input of production, could be traced from the ratio value of the nominal protection coefficient on input (npci). intervention policies on production inputs exist in the form of subsidies and taxes. npci is an indicator to indicate the level of divergence experienced by the domestic prices of tradable input as compared to social prices. npci is interpreted based on its ratio value. if the ratio value of npci is greater than one, the cost of production input domestically is higher than the cost of input at the world prices. the high price of domestic input is caused by the tax policy imposed by the government. on the other hand, the subsidization of production inputs will reduce the prices of production inputs domestically which makes it cheaper than the international prices. this is shown by the ratio value of npci where the value is less than one. the analysis of pam has indicated that npci for malaysia’s ruminant for both integrated and feedlot farms are all exceeding one. the values ranging from 1.056 to 1.071. it is a sign that prices for the production input in malaysia are higher as compared to the prices in the international market. in getting the inputs for their production, ruminant producers in malaysia are paying 5.6 to 7.1 percent higher than the prices in the international market. they have been taxed at 5.6 to 7.1 percent per unit of tradable input. this could be understood from the fact that input needed in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 227-238 235 ruminant production was subject to the consumption tax and gst which were imposed at the rate of 6 percent. apart from gst, there were various processing fees, import permits and approval involved in the importation of feed, medicine, vaccine and supplements (mvs) as well as feeder animals – the important prerequisite in the production of a ruminant. those production inputs have a high degree of foreign/imported components. feed which contributes to almost 70-80 percent of the overall ruminant production cost contains around 90 percent foreign components. foreign components of mvs could reach up to 80 percent and it is 50 percent foreign components for livestock feeder. the dependency on foreign components has made them susceptible to external shocks such as currency fluctuation, price hike and uncertainties of supply. some of the foreign components contained in the input are subject to import taxes by the government of malaysia. for instance, rice for use in feed production is subject to a 15 percent import duty. although there are no taxes imposed on the importation of soybean and corn meant for feed, it is still subjected to import approvals from both the department of veterinary services (dvs) and the department of agriculture (saidin et al., 2018). under the feed law, importers are required to apply for an import license from the dvs. the import license required the importers to provide a certificate of origin; certified composition by a competent agency of the exporting country; relevant packaging, manufacturing and labeling requirement; and import registration. in addition to the feed law, corn imports are subject to the agriculture quarantine law, which requires registration with the department of agriculture for an import license and a phytosanitary certificate for every consignment. effective protection coefficient (epc) is a parameter of pam that is used to gauge the overall results produced by the intervention policies in both input and output markets. the greater than one value of epc demonstrates that the intervention policies introduced by the government have led to positive incentives to the producers. it could be said that a supportive environment has been created through the intervention policies. on the other hand, less than one value of epc shows that policy interventions do not provide any incentive or protection to the producers. the calculated pam of the ruminant farms has produced the epc values of greater than one for both integrated and feedlot farms. the epc for integrated farms is 1.464 while the feedlot farms have generated epc values of 1.640. those values have reflected the positive effects of government intervention in implying that government policies provide positive incentives to the producers. table 7: sensitivity analysis production system sensitivity analysis drc scb all normal 0.57 0.68 increased feed 50% 0.60 0.71 increased feeder 20% 0.64 0.75 increased feed 50% + increased feeder 20% 0.68 0.78 integrated normal 0.31 0.40 increased feeder 20% 0.32 0.42 increased feeder 20% 0.34 0.44 increased feed 50% + increased feeder 20% 0.35 0.46 feedlot normal 1.32 1.18 decreased feed 50% 1.17 1.11 decreased feeder 20% 1.10 1.06 decreased 50% + decreased feeder 20% 0.98 0.99 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 227-238 236 it is important to acknowledge that parameter assumptions and values in any economic model are dynamic and not insulated from change and error (pannell, 1997). since the ruminant sector in malaysia is highly exposed to various factors that have the potential to influence its comparative advantage level, sensitivity analysis has been conducted to ascertain the impact of changes in key variables. in this regard, sensitivity analysis is widely utilized as a tool in determining the effect of changes in input to the outcome of the outputs which reflect the level of dependency that the outputs have the input. this would help the decision-makers to understand the riskiness of a strategy which allows them to make informed and appropriate decisions. the cost of the ruminant production system in malaysia is largely dictated by the cost of feed and feeder. in the case of this study, the input cost has been increased as part of its sensitivity analysis to gauge its effects on the level of comparative advantage of the ruminant production system. the analysis is conducted by increasing the input cost of feed by 50 percent and feeder cattle by 20 percent for the integrated production system as well as decreasing the input cost of feed by 50 percent and feeder cattle by 20 percent for the feedlot production system (table 7). . the production system of integrated has shown to possess the comparative advantage even in the situation where the cost of feed is increased by 50 percent and the cost of the feeder by 20 percent. its comparative advantage has also not been adversely affected in the situation where both the cost of feed and feeder be jointly increased at the same time by 50 percent and 20 percent respectively. the feedlot production system does not have a comparative advantage, so the sensitivity analysis is done by lowering input coststhe feed and feeder cost. the results of sensitivity analysis have shown that the individual cost reduction of either feed or feeder of the percentage of 50 percent and 20 respectively will not be able to improve its comparative advantage level. the efficiency of the feedlot production system can be improved to nearly achieve comparative advantage only if the cost for both feed and feeder be reduced in tandem by 50 and 20 percent respectively. 4. conclusion this study applied the policy analysis matric (pam) in the ruminant sector in malaysia. the results showed that the comparative advantage of the ruminant sector could be achieved dependent on the chosen production system. malaysia had a comparative advantage in the production of ruminants if integrated farming is adopted as the main production system. this has been proven based on the calculated domestic resource cost of pam. it is because the major contributing factor in determining the comparative advantage is the operational cost. the rationalization of operational cost where feed is the biggest component is crucial not only in increasing competitiveness (at the private prices) but also in the efficiency level (at the social prices). the integrated farm has the potential to reduce the feed cost through the utilization of natural resources which is available at a minimum cost. what is more important is its ability to minimize the use of imported feed. it is important to note that almost 80 to 90 percent of commercial feed consists of imported components. the externalities associated with imports have caused the sector to be exposed to various risks associated with currency exchange, shortage of supply, and stiff competition from other importers/sectors. in this regard, it is also important to note that the call for the sector to embrace integrated farming does not mean that we are going to abandon the feedlot production system. feedlot should only be meant for the finishing stage and the duration for feedlot should be kept as short as possible to reduce the feed cost. as a recommendation, there must be concerted efforts amongst all the stakeholders involved in the ruminant sector. integrated farming needs to be aggressively promoted as a means to achieve the targeted self sufficiency level (ssl). there must be a mechanism that could be taken in the form of joint action between the ministry of agriculture and agro-based industries, ministry of primary industries and ministry of economic affairs to further institutionalize the participation of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 227-238 237 government-linked companies and big plantation companies in integrated farming. their involvement is crucial because almost 70 percent of agricultural land uses is monopolized by an oil palm plantation. moreover, 60 percent of total oil palm plantation is suitable for integrated farming due to its topography and almost 70 percent of herbage available in oil palm plantation is nutritionally beneficial to the ruminant. on the issue of feed, a quota system should be considered to allocate a certain percentage of palm kernel cake (pkc) production to be maintained in the country for the use of the ruminant sector. currently, producers of pkc have a strong preference for the export market encouraged by strong demand and attractive prices. various financial and non-financial incentives can be considered for wiling companies to further stimulate their involvement. on top of that, research and efforts to expand the pool of local resources that can be utilized as feed need to be seriously undertaken by our research institutions. crops like sorghum, barley, coconut, and tapioca which are suitable for the weather conditions of malaysia can be further researched and developed to become our source of feed. the utilization of local resources will enable the industry to reduce its dependency on foreign-based feed. this will ultimately reduce the operation cost since feed is the most expensive component of the overall production components. home-grown feed development needs to be complemented with home-grown breeding activities. breeding is a long term solution to increase the ruminant population in malaysia since the importation of live animals from a limited source of countries particularly thailand and australia is getting costlier. the focus should be given to the breeds that have a high adaptation level with local conditions. getting the feeder ruminant sourced locally will further strengthen the financial sustainability of feedlot farms that have been associated with operational cost issues. funding: this study was funded by the university’s grant from university putra malaysia (gpips/2018/9623700). competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the department of veterinary services malaysia for assistance during the survey. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the 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(2017). food security in china from a global perspective. choices, 32(2), 1–5. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 311 purchasing power of farmers challenges and opportunities in indian agriculture vanishree pabalkar, rashmy morey, shivanand rai symbiosis international (deemed university), india  vanishree.p@sims.edu (corresponding author) article history: received: 20-oct-2019 accepted: 28-apr-2020 online available: 30-may2020 keywords: agriculture, farmers, employment, sustainable, purchasing power abstract the objective of the study is to analyse the farmer’s financial condition and to understand the challenges faced in exhibiting the power of purchasing. the study indicates that there is abundant scope to improve the agriculture and financial condition of farmers in the entire country. the primary input for the study has been collected by an informal interview with focus groups of various populations of farmers, retailers, distributors, opinion leaders, and government officials to find out the status of agriculture and financial conditions of farmers. the total sample size was 500 farmers for empirical analysis. contribution/ originality the research paper captures the status of the agricultural scenario in india. the different mechanisms through which the yield of the farmer can be marketed is addressed in this study. the various schemes like the vishesh krishi and gram udyog are not much discussed in the other research papers, which came out as the gap in the literature review. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.311.320 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: vanishree pabalkar, rashmy morey, and shivanand rai (2020). purchasing power of farmers challenges and opportunities in indian agriculture. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 311-320. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 311-320 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:vanishree.p@sims.edu http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.311.320 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 311-320 312 1. introduction agriculture has always been recognized as a vital vocation with cultural traditions, social customs, and even religious rites associated with agricultural practices. in india, agriculture amounts to approximately 15 percent of the gdp. this is one of the largest sectors employing people. as per the official records, the total no. of farmers in the rural areas amounts to only a few hundred million, there are the family members of these farmers who support them in the activities and are the wage laborers. with this, the total goes to nearly half a billion people. since the 1990s, there have been implications of weather that put farmers into the state of financial losses. in 2006, india had to import wheat for the first time. the agriculture system in india comprises of a blend of conventional and advanced techniques together. the conventional system contributes to the lower side of per capita income from the farmer. this research pertains to the analysis of the rural economy of india. the 59th survey by the national sample survey office stating that about 40 percent of farmers did not get appealed by farming and would quit given a chance. farm business income has been dropping since the late 1990s. further, farmers’ suicides in uttar pradesh (up) a province of india, previously limited to the bundelkhand region, are being reported from all parts of the state, including the relatively prosperous region of western up. there were 12,602 suicide cases in the year 2015, out of which 8007 were farmers and 4595 were laborers who assist the farmers. the key reasons for suicide include bankruptcy or debts. indebtedness is one of the major causes of suicides (talule, 2013). approximately 12 percent of farmers have family problems and 10.5 percent have health problems. in the year 2015, 45.2% of small farmers and 27.4% of marginal farmers had committed suicide. the financial crisis is a fundamental cause of farmers’ suicide. the condition has proved to be the same for many years. there was no significant change in the financial aspects of indian farmers. the traders on one hand and the financiers on the other are the main reasons for suicides in maharashtra (manjunath and ramappa, 2017). the agriculture sector compared to other sectors is not significantly profitable. the purchasing power of the farmers has been reducing. the social schemes which include midday meals for school kids and other schemes on rural health insurance along with mahatma gandhi national rural employment guarantee scheme etc, have been in existence, yet do not contribute to a great extent in enhancing the purchasing power of the farmers (dhas, 2009). there is abundant stress on the farmers (sangalad, 2012). as per chandrasekhar and ghosh (2004), notable reasons for farmers to live below the poverty line were increased costs of fertilizers, supply chain problems, reduction in bank credit, and inappropriate marketing facilities, etc. (shakeel-ul-rehman et al., 2012). the government of india has committed to offering the farmers with a minimum support price and 50 percent profit. unfortunately, this failed drastically. the failure of crops leads to farmer’s migration of farmers from rural to urban areas. this further leads to the dip in the realty prices of agricultural land. it was found that the suicide rates went up from 1995 to 2011, the reasons being drought conditions. the government did not cater to spend much to meet the requirements during such conditions (parida et al., 2018). peasant politics is just not capable of making things better, as most of the peasant agitations that happened in the past decade or more have revolved around the issue of land acquisition. their target has been to get a better deal from the state through higher prices. the state is expected to set an example in terms of ethical practices and standards. unlike the private sector, governments can define and control the rules that guide public purchases, making it both a player and a decision-maker in markets. importantly, the large size of government purchases gives public procurement the power to influence markets and regulate market players. given its power, public procurement has been used to serve several development goals, including job creation, innovation, industrial growth, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion (mccrudden, 2007; arrowsmith, 2010). public procurement processes are in principle designed to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 311-320 313 enable governments to purchase goods and services as cost-effectively as possible. however, procuring entities normally consider aspects other than cost-efficiency when purchasing goods and services (arrowsmith, 2010). for example, governments in all cases require compliance with legal norms and obligations, such as paying taxes and complying with labor law and health and safety regulations. this is designed to ensure that public procurement is not associated with unlawful behavior. procurement policies can also be instrumental in enabling the state to advance social, economic, political, and environmental benefits that go beyond compliance with general law and responding to the public sector’s procurement need. socio-economic and environmental concerns can, for example, inform governments’ decisions on which goods and services to purchase. procuring entities may, for instance, decide to only procure fairly traded goods or invest in green products (unep, 2013). the world food programme (2013) estimates that governments spend between usd47 billion and usd75 billion a year globally on school meals. linking public food procurement to domestic food production can be used to promote economic outcomes in a similar vein to the benefits generated by public procurement on sme development. expanding marketing opportunities for producers and rural enterprises can boost rural economies and communities by promoting growth and job creation in the food sector. this link has been promoted by several countries in all parts of the world, for example, the usa, the uk, italy, brazil, and thailand (usda, 2015; morgan and sonnino, 2008). in many developing countries, public food procurement has specifically targeted smallholder farmers to promote their economic inclusion and strengthen local food systems. in this case, the rationale is that public food procurement can reduce some of the uncertainties and risks related to market participation by providing an accessible market channel and a source of income to farmers. greater market participation and an additional source of income can generate several positive impacts such as increases in household food consumption, dietary diversity, and higher investments underway and enhancement (sumberg and sabates-wheeler, 2011). also, enhancements to smallholder occupations can create positive overflow impacts in nearby economies. moreover, open nourishment obtainment can likewise prompt positive results on wellbeing and sustenance, especially among kids and other defenseless gatherings (niebylski et al., 2014). nourishment acquisition can target better-quality and all the more healthfully adjusted dinners, improving their dietary status and empowering more advantageous dietary patterns. research in england, scotland, canada, and the usa have demonstrated that nourishment and supplement admission improved after leafy food was acquainted with dinners in schools, emergency clinics, and other open offices (niebylski et al., 2014; cohen et al., 2014). increments in sound nourishment utilization likewise prompted upgrades in wellbeing markers, for example, lower circulatory strain and body mass index (bmi) among recipients. most investigations on the effects of open nourishment obtainment on wellbeing and sustenance have concentrated on evolved economies. be that as it may, this connection has likewise been investigated in creating nations, for the most part, according to the class taking care of. in low-salary nations, school nourishment has been generally utilized as a social assurance methodology (bundy, 2008). open nourishment obtainment can address the wholesome prerequisites of younger students by expanding the gracefully of nutritious food sources. some pilot encounters in malawi, mozambique, and ethiopia have been effective at utilizing nourishment obtainment techniques to present privately sourced organic products, vegetables, and heartbeats to class menus, enhancing kids' weight control plans and expanding access to supplement rich food sources (gyori et al., 2016). governments are additionally looking to make collaboration between nourishment acquirement and spp approaches to encourage progressively maintainable nourishment frameworks. for instance, in the eu, nourishment and providing food is a significant class under the green public procurement asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 311-320 314 approach. open obtainment can support creative strategies that are all the more earth neighborly, for example, natural nourishment. this methodology has been widely embraced in sweden, finland, and denmark (risku and loes, 2017; sørensen et al., 2016; smith, 2016). the acquirement of regular nourishment international policy center for inclusive growth 11 and preferring short flexibly chains can likewise build interest for wares and items that have lower ozone-depleting substance emanations. indeed, buying nourishment from nearby providers/makers is a typical technique to advance increasingly practical open acquisition in a few nations across europe and asia just as north and latin america (brammer and walker, 2011). though the government is trying to contribute a lot through various schemes to complete the transition of the villages and farming systems, efficient ways of utilizing water, and information provision on weather-based crop insurance. further, the budget of 2017-18, had initiatives towards sustainable development of agriculture, such as an allocation of us$ 28.1 billion for rural development, a separate micro-irrigation fund; national bank for agriculture and rural development (nabard) was established with a fund of us$ 750 million. the government intends to introduce a dairy processing fund of us$ 1.2 billion for the coming years which would have an initial corpus of us$ 300 million. the inclusion of females in the mahatma gandhi national rural employment guarantee act (mgnrega) multiplied by 55 percent. the scheme was brought up to us$ 7.2 billion for fy2017-18. short-term crop loans were introduced up to us$ 4,500 for a lower interest rate of 7 percent per annum. some of the recent major indian government initiatives in the sector are as follows:  a think tank, niti aayog was established to achieve sustainable development goals with cooperative federalism by fostering the involvement of state governments of india in the economic policy-making process using a bottom-up approach. this think tank introduced several reforms including direct purchase from farmers without intermediaries to ensure costsaving.  the maharashtra state agriculture marketing board (msamb) had introduced 31 farmer-toconsumer markets. this would ensure direct sales of farmers to end consumers thereby leading to better outputs and better monetary benefits to farmers.  the ministry of labor and employment intends to have the policy of the minimum wage act to be changed to meet the needs of other labors who are not skilled.  the central government intends to provide the farmers with assistance in advancements through technology. the advancements in technology have empowered rural customers to have better access to information and thereby having a greater role in the purchase decisions made by rural customers especially. these rural customers are as much as about close to 70 percent of the population. this is contributing to 50 percent of gdp. the patterns of buying and consuming are now varying with rural customers as well.  india’s per capita gdp coming from the rural market has multiplied at a compound annual growth rate of 6.2 percent since the year 2000. the fast-moving consumer goods (fmcg) sector in rural areas and semi-urban areas is bound to touch us$ 100 billion by 2025 (www.ibef.org). maharashtra state has very diverse agro-climatic conditions that are more appropriate for producing a variety of crops. however, the key contribution of revenue generated from the industrial sectors of the state. the state is a pioneer in water-saving technology as well. drip and sprinkler irrigation, technology is significant in the state. this amounts to 60 percent of the total area for drip irrigation in the country. more than 70 percent of the area covers the grapes and banana and has access to drip irrigation. it is one of the major exporters of thompson seedless grapes, alphonso mangoes, onions, and long stem cut flowers (kumar, 2016). declining diversity of crops can have serious repercussions for natural resources, ecology, and socio-economic condition of the farmers (haroon and sandip, 2014). other schemes introduced by the state for the http://www.ibef.org/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 311-320 315 benefit of farmers and exporters are included vishesh krishi upaj yojana, gram udyog yojana, and nabard. farming is one of the sectors that have been given priority by the government. however, the issues regarding the laborers, regulations, and standardization of procedures are required. firstly, there is a lack of skilled laborers in the sector, and the available ones are not equipped with the required skill sets to carry out the tasks effectively. there is a need for training of the unskilled laborers to keep up in the sector. programs to re-skill and develop the farmers for other jobs can be taken up. going digital is another option, with more emphasis on getting hands-on experience through technology and agricultural skilled efforts. (status and determinants of small farming households' food security and the role of market access in enhancing food security in rural pakistan (ahmed et al., 2017). 1.1. major challenges for farmers global warming. the yield produced will subsequently drop because of the moderate warming of around 1-2 o c. the dry areas will be drastically affected and the yield in the pasture areas may improve. resulting in reduced crop yields in seasonally dry and tropical regions, while crop and pasture yields in temperate regions may benefit. global warming in the latter part of the century may lead to drastic changes across all the regions of the country. extreme climate events. extreme changes in the climatic conditions in the times ahead may destroy the entire ecosystem of the cycle. the changes could be in the form of floods, natural calamities, droughts, tsunami, etc. this will have a negative impact on agriculture and allied areas (singh and issac, 2018). undernourishment. the ratio of undernourished would multiply; this is expected to approximately go up to 5 170 million people by the year 2080, concerning a baseline with absolutely no change in the weather. the production itself of food will be curtailed thereby increasing the risk of nonavailability of food and increased risk of hunger in the developing and not so rich countries. food stability, utilization, and access. the adverse effects of non-availability of food and the issues on climate change on food security are not yet clearly identified statistically. the risk will be the worst, with severe climatic conditions (easterling et al., 2007). illiteracy is one of the major concerns that lead to a lack of awareness of advancement in any field. the poor socio-economic background of the farmers is the major reason for diminishing agricultural productivity. the gap that exists between the high end and low-end farmers and the farmers who have their basic needs unmet, is the conditions for low productivity (dwivedi, 2011; division, 2007). improper finance, irregular and inconsistent policies, and other policies which are contradicting the policies of the government are all the reasons for an increased level of problems and challenges faced by the farmers (dwivedi, 2011). adequate availability of funds at the appropriate time when the farmers need them the most or making credit facilities available to farmers at low-interest rates is a few aspects that should be considered for ensuring greater output. there exists an abundant high rate of regional disparity for water resources. there is an increasing demand for clean drinking water. 1.2. objectives of the study the current study aimed to understand the status of indian agriculture system focusing on the following issues, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 311-320 316 1. understand the economic status of agriculture in india generally and maharashtra state particularly. 2. understand the purchasing power and financial conditions of farmers in rural areas of india. 3. critically analyze the issues and challenges of farmers. 4. evaluating the ways of marketing and promoting the farmer’s produce. 5. recommend measures for improving the financial conditions of farmers. 2. methodology the primary input has been collected by an informal interview with focus groups of various populations of farmers, retailers, distributors, opinion leaders, government officials to find out the status of agriculture and financial conditions of farmers. the facts and figures have been also searched from various websites and newspapers, and published articles related to the subject of the project. 2.1. data collection collecting primary data was a critical phase of this study. considering all these factors, ‘informal discussion’ was the method chosen to collect the primary data. informal discussions on the topic of demonetization and without asking directly pointed questions, from the respondent of the focus group had taken place. choosing this method ensured that any ‘bias’ is removed in the response and that helped me to collect the facts on this very sensitive issue. the primary data obtained from the districts of pune and sholapur from the focus group, with a sample size of approximately 10 to 50 or more. the total sample size was 500 farmers from pune and sholapur. secondary data was collected from print and digital media as well as from literature for overall maharashtra state and india. the total sholapur district population living in rural areas is 2.918 million and that of the pune district population living in rural areas is 3.678 making it 6596891 at all. solvin’s formula for sample size n = n / (1 + n e2) = at 95 percent confidence level 1,000 / (1 + 1000 * 0.05 2) = 285.714286 n = 500/ (1+500 * 0.052) = 500/ (1+500*0.0025) n = 500/ (501*0.0025) n = 500/ (1.2525) = 399 the required sample size is 399. however, a sample size of 500 is chosen for the current study. (0.01 percent of the population of rural households) feedback from 50 farmers or sellers were taken at a time during distributor’s and farmer’s conferences from time to time. this included a rural population of villagers and farmers, agriculture input sellers including fertilizers, pesticides, and seed, etc. to understand the following: 1. the sales and consumption of agriculture inputs like fertilizers and seeds. 2. marketing of agriculture produce, profitability out of crop production, availability of resources for undertaking agriculture production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 311-320 317 3. results it was noted that farmers in maharashtra are quite progressive and knowledgeable, uses drip and spray irrigation of micro-irrigation system, and do balance use of fertilizer 95% of farmers have not done soil testing and do not know about soil testing facilities. 90 percent of farmers use biofertilizers like compost fertilizers. 90 percent of farmers adopt the prevailing cropping pattern using biofertilizers. only 15 percent of farmers reported that they used balanced fertilizers. 95 percent of farmers get the fertilizers as per their needs and demand. 65 percent of farmers use the wrong practice of spraying fertilizer under waterlogging conditions. poor infrastructure facilities are the primary causes of poor output. it is also observed that farmers are not happy with government policies of importing onions, banning the export of onions, and not providing proper logistics and warehousing for excess production of perishable fruits and vegetables. though the schemes are in place, crop production does not have any effect on the policies framed by the government. the figure below being selfexplanatory for the socioeconomic profiles of the farmers. 90 percent of farmers are in the occupation of more than a decade and have this as a primary source of income. others are newly entered. they are not skilled in any activities beyond farming making it difficult for them to migrate and find other sources of employment. figure 1: socio-economic profiles of farmers the main aspects like the seed cost, fertilizer cost, and manures that lead to plant protection have been increasing drastically, making it difficult for the farmers to invest in. this is further leading to poor quality of the crop. inadequate water supply and an inadequate supply chain system is responsible for the present condition (halder and pati, 2012). the laborers who are into supporting the farmers are also diminishing because of the nuclear families migrating to the urban areas in search of employment (see figure 2). 83 32 65 75 86 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 agriculture main occupation other than agriculture family help long term association in farming have their own land small farmers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 311-320 318 figure 2: composition of farming expenditures almost 72 percent of farmers have a great liking for farming, 22 percent did not like farming and take it because they had no other source of income, and the rest of the farmers had no other option than to choose the field of farming to make their living. also, the crop failures and indebtedness is the main cause of loss of interest. 4. conclusion and discussion to control the issues and challenges of farmers, farmers are provided with adequate support from the government authorities, through the national rural health mission. several committees are being set up at grass root levels to address the concerns raised by the farmers. the micro-credit and microfinance policies are to be framed appropriately at regular intervals to ensure maximum support is provided to the farmers. insurance in the fields is a major concern. this has to be in place for all kinds of crops to have optimum benefits in case of any kind of natural calamity that affects the yield. farmers are to be provided with other benefits like the facilities of health awareness camps and other health insurance facilities. act good for play techniques to combat the scarcity of water. the availability of the best techniques has to be ensured for a better quality of seed. training to farmers on advancement in technology to gear up to face situations of bad yield and come up with alternate sources of income generation. introduction of market intervention schemes (mis). this would help in attaining stability in funds. awareness among farmers to combat international pricing strategies. india’s agricultural sector has made significant progress overtime points to think over aspects that include low and volatile growth which is a serious concern. the declining average size of operational holdings. the growing disparity between agriculture and non-agriculture incomes, this is major because though the yield may increase yet the earnings of farmers may not substantially increase. the government has been taking measures to quantify this. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 311-320 319 references ahmed, u. i., ying, l., bashir, m. k., abid, m., & zulfiqar, f. 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(2011). connecting agricultural development to school feeding in sub-saharan africa: theoretical points of view. food policy, 36(3), 341-349. talule, d. (2013). political economy of agricultural distress and farmers suicides in maharashtra. international journal of social science and interdisciplinary research, 2(2), 95-124. unep (2013). reasonable public procurement: a global review. nairobi: united nations environment program. united nations, usa. usda (2015). getting local foods for child nutrition programs. washington, dc: united states department of agriculture. usa. appendix questionnaire for focus group 1. do you know the importance of soil testing? 2. have you done soil testing? 3. do you know the balanced use of fertilizer ratio of npk which is 4:2:1. 4. in what ratio you use fertilizer or npk or 1) urea, 2) complexes and dap and 3) potash. 5. do you use compost or bio fertilizers? 6. which crops do you grow? 7. what is the per acre yield of your crop. 8. do you get the estimated profit on sales of your crop? 9. what is your suggestion for effective implementation and improvements in minimum selling price of your crops? 10. are you happy that you are a farmer and satisfied with your agriculture output? 11. how much fertilizers do you use in one acre of land 12. do you know that fertilizers should not be used in water logging situation 13. do you get fertilizers as per demand and on correct price or mrp 14. which brands of fertilizers do you prefer most 15. what is your suggestion for improvement in supply or door delivery of fertilizers 16. what kind of irrigation systems you adopt 17. do you know the benefits of drip irrigation and incentives given by the government like subsidy on purchase of drip irrigation system 18. have you availed subsidy on installation of drip irrigation system 19. which are the government agencies and companies do you know providing active support in micro irrigation. 20. what is your suggestion for improvements and in installations of drip irrigation system 21. do you have proper information of government schemes for your benefits like shet-tal (farm pond) drip irrigation, farm warehouse, and vegetable processing warehouse? 22. what are your suggestion for improvements of agriculture productivity and your purchasing capacity? your suggestions to stop farmer’s suicide and increase wellbeing of farmers. http://doi.org/10.20448/journal.512.2018.51.30.46 https://doi.org/10.1017/s1368980016001737 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 113 factors influencing the practice of commercial rice production for food security in vientiane capital, laos phoukeo saokhamkeoa rapee dokmaithesb jamnian chompooc cherdpong kheerajittd a,b,c,dfaculty of agriculture at kamphaeng saen, kasetsart university, kamphaeng saen, nakhon pathom 73140, thailand.  agrrpd@ku.ac.th (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 7 january 2023 revised: 28 february 2023 accepted: 31 march 2023 published: 19 april 2023 keywords commercial rice production influencing factors food security irrigated area laos traditional agriculture. rice is viewed as an indicator of food security and poverty reduction, but many rural areas of laos still face rice insufficiency. dealing with the problem requires transitioning from traditional farming to commercial production using modern techniques. this study aimed to investigate the factors influencing the adoption of commercial rice production for local food security and poverty reduction. the survey included 70 samples in the namxouang irrigation development area of vientiane capital, laos, using a questionnaire for secondary and primary data collection. both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to describe the collected data and analyze factors influencing commercial rice production. the findings revealed that 65.7%, 18.6%, and 15.7% of the respondents engaged in commercial, semi-commercial, and subsistence rice production, respectively. in addition, it also found that land size, labor costs, and machinery costs each had a significant positive relationship with the practice of commercial rice production at a statistical significance level of 0.01. at the same time, household size, media perception, and annual income had significant negative relationships with the practice of commercial rice production at significance levels of 0.01 and 0.05. therefore, high-quality rice varieties, new rice production techniques, and rice production groups are needed to support farmers using the same technical practices to obtain similar yields. moreover, regulations are required to control chemical use and manage paddy land. these changes would help achieve the government policy to promote smart farming and good agricultural practice for food security and poverty reduction. contribution/originality: this is the first study to discover factors influencing the practice of rice production in irrigated areas. the result can guide local governments and stakeholders to help farmers increase their rice yields and improve their quality for regional food security and export. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i2.4777 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: saokhamkeo, p., dokmaithes, r., chompoo, j., & kheerajitt, c. (2023). factors influencing the practice of commercial rice production for food security in vientiane capital, laos. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2), 113–119. 10.55493/5005.v13i2.4777 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 2 (2023): 113-119. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1813-3827 mailto:agrrpd@ku.ac.th http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 113-119 114 1. introduction in recent years, laos has focused on achieving the sustainable development goals to graduate from least development country (ldc) status by 2026. promoting sustainable agriculture for food security and poverty reduction is a priority in the national socio-economic development plan (ministry of planning and investment (mpi), 2016, 2021) to address food insecurity, which remains a pressing problem among low-income households. the incidence of poverty is higher among agricultural households (lsb & wb, 2020), so food and nutrition insecurity are closely associated with poverty and vulnerability. still, more is needed to understand why food insecurity remains problematic in some areas of rural laos despite the general improvement in living standards across the country (santos et al., 2022; wfp, 2017). food security continues to be focused on rice – its production, marketing, and consumption – as rice contains a significant number of calories and a wide variety of essential vitamins, minerals, and other nutritional values (mohidem, hashim, shamsudin, & man, 2022; timmer, 2010). rice production is thus viewed as an indicator of food security and poverty reduction. many areas of laos still face chronic rice deficits, even though rice self-sufficiency has reportedly been achieved at the national level. in dealing with the problem of rice insufficiency, efforts need to shift from traditional farming practices to production groups or a new cooperative production model, both using modern technology (smart farming), improving the efficiency of agricultural production using modern tools and new techniques, promoting good agriculture practices (gap) and organic farming for domestic consumption and tourist attraction, improving the profitability of rice production, and investing in market infrastructure (ministry of planning and investment (mpi), 2021; newby, manivong, & cramb, 2013). to achieve food security and poverty reduction, the ministry of agriculture and forestry projects the need to produce at least 3.7 million tons of rice annually for food security and export, based on the priority and potentiality of the northern, central, and southern regions (maf, 2022). however, the promotion of rice production for food security and export in laos continues to face many problems. production has been insufficient to meet the demand of domestic consumers due to problems associated with climatic change, with annual losses of 10% of harvested rice, as well as poor transport facilities to move rice from surplus to deficit areas. moreover, factors such as drought and post-harvest failures are essential determinants of food insecurity at the household level, and the transition to sustainable commercial production still presents the following challenges: minimal infrastructure, limited technical knowledge, and lack of sufficient extension support (fao, european union, & cirad, 2022; sacklokham, 2014; santos et al., 2022). in addition, food security needs still struggle to be met due to land degradation, land use issues, and several large-scale investment projects affecting production areas. moreover, production has been unstable and unable to meet export demand and quality due to low productivity, limited investment budgets and technology capacity, and the impacts of natural disasters (ministry of planning and investment (mpi), 2021). although farmers are intensely encouraged by the lao government to practice commercial rice production for local consumption and to obtain surpluses for export, many still practice traditional rice production techniques, produce rice for subsistence, and apply low-quality management at the farm and post-harvest levels. different rice seed varieties often get mixed at older rice mills, reflecting a fragmented milling sector dominated by small operators with outdated and inefficient technology (liese et al., 2014; wb, 2018). the objective of commercialized agriculture is production with the intent to sell; thus, when crops are grown as an economic activity, it is called commercial agriculture (grant, guilleminault, & sarma, 2017; rath, 2021). on the other hand, households with access to irrigation currently cultivate other crops in their paddy fields in the dry season as an alternative to producing a second crop of rice, with some of them converting their land to fish ponds. in addition, the irrigation systems need to meet certain standards to support food security and commercial production; irrigation systems have limited access to water in the dry season (adb, 2018; maf, 2022; sourideth, ouanesamone, & newby, 2011). this factor makes farmers uninterested in production, though the local government encourages it. however, previous studies have found that socio-economic and environmental factors and household income significantly impact the adoption of agricultural conservation innovations. still, education level, social networks, and labor do not affect farmers’ choice to adopt agriculture innovations (vuntade & mzuza, 2022). in contrast, ayenew and tilahun (2022) revealed that education, household size, income, climate change perception, and farmland size all had statistically significant effects on farmers' adoption of climate-smart agriculture. similarly, abubakar, garba, gana, and jocob (2019) suggested that farmer training, expansion contracts, household size, land ownership, and farming experience were significant factors influencing the adoption of rice production methods. moreover, rapankum et al. (2022) and ntshangase, muroyiwa, and sibanda (2018) confirmed that experience on dairy farms, labor type, farm size, and amount of raw milk produced significantly affected farmers' acceptance of the dairy farming standard. also, an increase in extension visits, age, education, and farmers' positive perceptions significantly increased the likelihood of a farmer adopting no-till conservation agriculture. on the other hand, the study found that land size and technology were positively correlated with rice production levels. while labor availability and the demand for rice had strong relationships with the volume of rice produced, seed, fertilizer, herbicide, family size, and off-farm income were significant and major determinants of wet season paddy output (jamaludin, amer, & hasan, 2010; sary, wen, darith, & chand, 2020). at the same time, education levels, farming experience, soil quality, market information, farm machinery ownership, and contracts with extension agents significantly and positively influenced the adoption of improved rice varieties. in contrast, age had a very negative effect on the adoption of improved rice varieties. furthermore, credit is an important factor in the farming sector and is linked to increased farm productivity and improved livelihoods of rural households (chandio & yuansheng, 2018). at the same time, a small number of farmers in the namxouang irrigation area in vientiane capital continue to practice subsistence agriculture. they prefer to cultivate only in the wet or dry seasons and only an amount sufficient for household consumption. they are not interested in growing rice in both seasons even though they are in an asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 113-119 115 irrigated area and encouraged by the government, so they sometimes lease their paddy fields to other farmers or leave their land fallow. this study aimed to explore the main factors influencing commercial rice production in support of local food security and generating additional income for poverty reduction. the results can be used as a guide for consideration by the government or key development partners to promote commercial rice production in irrigated areas throughout laos. 2. methodology the study applied both qualitative and quantitative approaches to data collection. the population included 2,189 rice farming households from 10 villages in naxaythong district, vientiane capital province. the sample size of 70 households was determined using arkin (1974); samples were selected through the multi-stage sampling method, including purposive and snowball sampling techniques. the questionnaire was developed based on the research objectives and was used for secondary and primary data collection. it included questions on personal and socioeconomic background, agricultural activities, and farming systems currently practiced. before collecting the data, three experts in the field of agriculture checked the validity of the questionnaire. it was then tested with 30 rice farmers to obtain the reliability index. the reliability of the questionnaire was obtained by using the kuder and richardson (1937) reliability coefficient, which resulted in a reliability of 0.84. descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to analyze the collected data using spss software version 20. descriptive statistics were used to examine the frequency, percentage, arithmetic means, standard deviation, minimum, and maximum, while inferential statistical analysis was applied to analyze the correlation relationships between the dependent and independent variables. 3. results and discussion 3.1. background of the respondents the analysis found that most respondents were male, accounting for 72.9% of the sample, and the rest were female, 27.1%. the average age was 51.53 years old, with a range from 24 to 75 years old, and most respondents were married, accounting for 95.7%. the remaining 2.9% and 1.45% were windowed and single, respectively. the average household size was 5.47 people per household and ranged from two to 11 people, while the average number of laborers in each household was 3.1 and ranged from one person to six people. among those interviewed, 98.6% had an education level ranging from primary school to university; the remaining 1.4% were illiterate. their rice farming experience averaged 29.84 years, ranging from five to 55 years. moreover, decision-making on agricultural activities in the household was equal between husband and wife in 60% of households. among the remaining 40%, decisions were made only by the husband, wife, parents, son, or daughter. the data also revealed that 62.9% of the respondents were rice farmers, and the remaining 37.1% were government officials, weavers, traders, businesspeople, and construction workers. in comparison, 34.3% had a single occupation, and 47.1% and 18.6% had two or three occupations, respectively, of which one was their major occupation. among the respondents, 92.9% received information on agricultural production via radio, television, workshops, or training. all respondents were members of a water user group, while 77% and 27% participated in their village development fund or a rice production group, respectively. concerning land tenure status, 55.7% owned land and neither rented from nor rented out land to other farmers. the remaining 15.7%, 22.9%, and 5.7% leased land only, owned and rented additional land, and owned and rented land, respectively. among the respondents, the average paddy land holding size was 1.45 hectares per household, ranging from 0.32 to 7.20 hectares. the average annual income reported was us$8,715, ranging from us$1,729 to us$33,600 per household. of the respondents, 25.7% accessed credit for agricultural production activities, while the remaining 74.3% never accessed any credit. 3.2. the practice of commercial rice production the study found that most respondents in the study area had not fully engaged in commercial rice production. however, their land is irrigated, and government extension agents have promoted commercial production. table 1 shows that 65.7% of the respondents produced rice primarily for selling to local markets to support food security in the vientiane capital area. these farmers tended to have large paddy fields. some of them not only produced rice on their own land, but they also rented more paddy land for rice cultivation; and hired more labor and machines during land preparation, transplanting, harvesting, and threshing, because these required more work. on the one hand, some owned machines such as tractors and threshing machines to practice rice production in large areas during both the wet and dry seasons for commercialization. they immediately sold the harvested rice to middlemen and rice mill owners for income generation. as such, it can be asserted that they were fully engaged in commercial rice production consistent with the lao government's policy to achieve food security in the community. on the other hand, 18.6% of the respondents undertook semi-commercial rice production since they prioritized food security at the household level. they would keep harvested rice at home and sell it when they needed money for an emergency, or they would wait until the rice cultivated in the next season was growing well, without the threat of flood, drought, and pests, to ensure a good yield for food security. after that, they sold their surplus to middlemen who came to purchase agricultural products in the village to supplement their household income. in contrast, some farmers in this group had medium to large areas of paddy land, sufficient to perform commercial rice production, particularly if they practiced in the rainy and dry seasons, leased land to other farmers, especially relatives or friends, and charged a fee in rice to support household food security. however, 15.7% of the producers had never sold rice and only produced a rice crop in the wet season sufficient for household consumption. they neither rented more land nor cultivated rice for commercialization during the dry season. it has been asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 113-119 116 established that laos households mainly produce sticky rice for self-consumption rather than sale (sengsourivong & ichihashi, 2019). this group of farmers may have small plots of paddy land because some of them are young and new households who had just separated from their parents' families, so they had a small area of paddy land given to them by their parents. at the same time, they also had other occupations, particularly government officials and construction workers, so they lacked the time and labor for rice cultivation. however, they still engaged in subsistence rice production; sometimes they had insufficient rice for year-round consumption and needed to purchase additional rice from the local market for food security in the household. table 1. the pattern of rice production in the study area. pattern of rice production number of households percentage subsistence production 11 15.7 semi-commercialized production 13 18.6 commercialized production 46 65.7 total 70 100.0 3.3. the key factors influencing the practice of commercial rice production multiple linear regression was applied to find the factors influencing the practice of commercial rice production in the study area. a multiple linear regression model measured the relationship between independent and dependent variables. the measured form of the equation was specified as in equation 1: 𝑌 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑥1 + 𝛽2𝑥2 + …….. + 𝛽15𝑥15 (1) y is the dependent variable (commercial rice production). x1, x2, x3,….. x15 are independent variables (age, education, household size, number of occupations, farming experience, media perception, group participation, land size, household labor, annual income, amount of credit, fertilizer, pesticide, labor, and machinery costs). 0, 1, 2,……. 15 are unknown parameters (constant to be estimated from the data). the analysis of the multiple linear regression shown in table 2 found that land size, labor costs, and machinery costs had significant positive relationships with the practice of commercial rice production at a statistical significance level of 0.01, while household size, media perception, and annual income had a significant negative relationship with the practice of commercial rice production at a statistical significance level of 0.01 and 0.05; therefore, the findings can be presented as follows: commercial rice production (y) = –0.028 – 0.362(household size) – 0.725(media perception) – 0.172(income) + 1.091(land size) + 0.458(labor cost) + 0.462(machinery cost) (2) in accordance with the analysis in equation 2, if the household size was reduced by one person, there was a greater chance that rice was produced commercially. this may relate to food security at the household level because households prefer to keep sufficient rice for household consumption for the whole year. thus, the larger the household, the more rice was required for consumption. mullis and prasertsri (2020) and sacklokham (2014) emphasized that the average rice consumption in laos was the highest in the world; it was 216 kg of milled rice or almost 450 kg of paddy rice per capita per year in 2000. more recently, it has declined, especially in urban areas, to about 206 kg per capita per year in 2020; each household thus needs to keep at least 2.4 tons of paddy rice for consumption, so they have less surplus rice for selling. the results also revealed that if farmers perceived they had less information related to agricultural production, they engaged more in commercial rice production. as a result, the agricultural information they received through television, training courses, workshops, advertisements, and other means may be related to other agricultural activities. at the same time, they also were encouraged to practice those commercialization activities that could provide them with a better income. some farmers used their paddy fields to undertake other agriculture activities, namely pig or chicken raising, fishponds, or cultivating other crops such as beans, sawah lettuce, cucumbers, vegetables, and others. abubakar et al. (2019) suggested that farmer training significantly influenced the adoption of the rice production practice. on the other hand, mrc (2019) claimed that the agricultural land in lower mekong basin had changed due to expanding agricultural areas, changing crop cultivation and patterns, and shifts from agriculture to other land uses depending on social-economic development. adb (2018) confirmed that the improvement of the irrigation system was the fastest way to increase rice crop production and enable farmers to diversify into high-value crops demanded by the market. similarly, if annual household income from agriculture declined or the household generated less income overall, the cultivation of commercial rice crops would increase. farmers may thus undertake several occupations simultaneously, including business, trading, and working as government officials and construction workers to generate income. as a result, however, they were always busy and had little or no time for commercial rice production. instead, they applied easy techniques in some seasons, changing from rice transplanting to a dry sowing technique, and they used herbicides and pesticides to control weeds and snails, even though this resulted in lower yields. some rented their paddy land out to other farmers to obtain fees or rice; they charged about 360 kg of paddy rice per hectare of cultivated rice during one wet or dry season because they lacked sufficient time and labor to grow rice themselves. in this way, sufficient rice was obtained for household consumption. however, if the land size for rice production increased, farmers were more likely to engage in commercial rice cultivation. although some farmers would like to produce rice commercially, they have limited paddy land, thus limiting their production to rice for household consumption. at the same time, finding and hiring additional paddy land for rice production was challenging because farmers preferred to rent it out exclusively to friends or relatives from inside or outside the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 113-119 117 community. ayenew and tilahun (2022) confirmed that household size, income, and farmland size all had statistically significant effects on farmers' adoption of climate-smart agriculture. finally, the results showed that if labor and machinery costs for rice cultivation increased, the number of farmers cultivating rice commercially would also increase. this meant that farmers had large paddy land and could fully adopt rice production on a commercial scale because they hired more labor and machinery. specifically, they hired more labor during rice transplanting and harvesting and paid machinery costs for land preparation, threshing, and loading rice. in summary, the analysis indicated that the combination of reduced household size, media perceptions, annual income, and increased land size, labor, and machinery costs resulted in farmers engaging in more commercial rice production in the irrigated area. at the same time, the other factors that were not significant and were not included in the equation, such as age, education, number of occupations, farming experience, group participation, household labor, amount of credit, fertilizer cost, and pesticide cost, may also play a role by combining at a minimal percentage or being an existing factor. factors that are needed to support farmers who cultivate rice commercially in both the wet and dry seasons in irrigated areas and for local food security purposes include providing more information on the importance of rice production and identifying appropriate zones for rice cultivation. this is needed to reduce the replacement of other crops by a second crop of rice in the dry season. the limited paddy land of some households was problematic, given the expanding population growth. therefore, it is necessary to encourage farmers to apply new production techniques and use improved varieties, fertilizer packages, and other inputs to increase the yield for commercialization. because the practice of the rice gap method could increase and improve the tillers, panicle, yield, and quality, it could provide potential benefits and increase the production and price of both sticky and non-glutinous rice compared to non-gap rice (fao, european union, & cirad, 2022; huyly, soytong, makhonpas, & adthajadee, 2011; mi, 2017; senthilkumar, tesha, mghase, & rodenburg, 2018). in addition, farmers need to form commercial rice production groups. this would help them access information on rice production together and cultivate using the same techniques based on group requirements, even though they may have different social and economic circumstances in the community. it would not only support them in reducing the dry sowing technique, but it would also help increase yield and reduce chemical application, directly impacting the rice field's living conditions. table 2. factors influencing the practice of commercialization. factors the practice of commercialization coefficient std. p-value personal background factors (constant) -0.028 0.918 0.976 age 0.015 0.181 0.934 education 0.111 0.114 0.336 household size -0.362** 0.099 0.001 number of occupations 0.382 0.254 0.138 social factors farming experience -0.003 0.171 0.988 media perception -0.725* 0.327 0.031 group participation -0.159 0.327 0.628 economic factors land size 1.091** 0.218 0.000 household labor 0.250 0.155 0.114 annual income -0.172* 0.065 0.011 amount of credit 0.180 0.102 0.083 agricultural input factors fertilizer cost 0.184 0.207 0.378 pesticide cost -0.040 0.198 0.840 labor cost 0.458** 0.131 0.001 machinery cost 0.462** 0.174 0.010 r-squared 0.899 note: * < 0.05 and ** < 0.01. 4. conclusion based on the analysis, it can be concluded that farmers in the study area engaged in subsistence agriculture, semi-commercial, and full commercial rice production for food security based on their household capacity and socioeconomic conditions. households with many family members, yet that controlled limited paddy land, emphasized producing sufficient rice for household consumption. some of these households rented additional land for semicommercial rice farming. at the same time, households with more paddy land but less labor or fewer available family members sometimes rented out their land or merely produced sufficient rice for household consumption. most farmers in the study area practiced rice production in both wet and dry seasons for food security and to generate their primary income through selling, even though some lacked paddy land and sufficient labor. instead, they rented additional paddy land and hired more labor and machinery. this confirms that commercial rice production can provide farmers with a profitable income. therefore, the following aspects need to be addressed to encourage more asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 113-119 118 farmers to engage in commercial rice production in irrigated areas. firstly, concerned organizations need to conduct additional research to produce suitable quality rice varieties that are tolerant of floods, drought, pests, and diseases, and that are high yielding. these varieties should be available at a reasonable price, enabling farmers to access and purchase suitable varieties. this would help farmers with sufficient family members but limited paddy land to produce rice for food security and sale. some farmers continue to use the same rice seed variety for many seasons, which yields only 3.6 tons per hectare on average, ranging from 2.2 tons to 4.6 tons per hectare. secondly, concerned organizations, especially district agricultural officials, should have strict rules for the management and control of chemical applications; they should identify and continuously check with distributors or chemical shops which type of chemicals should be permitted to be used in the area, keeping in mind that some chemicals are prohibited in neighboring countries. at the same time, they need to encourage farmers to practice the transplanting technique, or rice gap, to help reduce chemical applications, as it would benefit producers, consumers, and biodiversity in the rice field. thirdly, rice production groups must be organized in each village. each group should adopt a practical and concrete model, not an abstract model, in terms of regulations, information dissemination, production techniques, credit guarantee, water use management, and other practices. this would enable farmers to receive similar information about rice production and employ the same rice production techniques based on group requirements and regulations. the outcome should ensure that the average rice yield among group members does not differ widely. on the other hand, farmers who have income from several sources should also follow the group requirements, applying the same methods and changing from dry sowing to transplanting techniques, thus helping to increase rice yields and reducing herbicide use in the study area. finally, the government or concerned organizations need to strictly manage and zone agricultural land in irrigated areas, designating areas for cultivating rice and other crops for food security. this will prevent paddy fields from being sold and converted to residential land or other agricultural activities that may cause food insecurity in the community and cause rice production to be insufficient for local consumption and export in the future. the improvement of these four dimensions would help achieve the government policy of shifting from traditional to commercial agriculture using modern technology to increase rice production volume and quality to ensure food security in vientiane capital. funding: this research is supported by the southeast asian regional center for graduate study and research in agriculture (grant number: gcs15-2696). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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sujan9099@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 20 august 2021 revised: 22 september 2021 accepted: 14 october 2021 published: 3 november 2021 keywords fdi agriculture land permanent cropland employment population. the aim of this study is explore the effect of foreign direct investment on agriculture and rural development. for this, panel data of 46 countries from asia were accumulated for the time frame 1991–2018. the models ols, pols, 2sls, and gmm are employed in this study. the study reveals that there is a favorable association between foreign direct investment and agricultural land as percentage of total land using the models ols, pols, 2sls. in stark contrast, value added for agriculture, forestry, and fishing has an unfavorable association with foreign direct investment in all models employed in the study. furthermore, female employment in agriculture has a negative association with foreign direct investment in ols, 2sls and gmm models, whereas male employment in agriculture has a negative association with foreign direct investment in the pols model only. land under cereal production has a favorable association with foreign direct investment in all models except pols, and permanent cropland has a favorable association with foreign direct investment in all models except gmm. in addition, rural population has a positive relationship with foreign direct investment in ols, pols and 2sls and a negative relationship with foreign direct investment in gmm. contribution/originality: this study contributes to providing evidence on the effects of foreign direct investment on agriculture and rural development. different types of models were used in this study to find out the relationship between foreign direct investment and certain variables relating to the agriculture and rural development of 46 asian countries. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.311.319 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: sujan chandra paul --nusrat jahan --ashim kumar nandi --md. asiqur rahman (2021). nexus between fdi, agriculture, and rural development: evidence from asian countries. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4), 311-319. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.311.319 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction in a study conducted by chaudhuri and banerjee (2010), where a three-sector general equilibrium model with simultaneous unemployment of both skilled and unskilled labor was used to investigate the effects of foreign direct investment (fdi) in agricultural land in a developing economy. the findings of that study demonstrate unequivocally that fdi in agriculture not only boosts national welfare, but also helps to alleviate the unemployment asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 4 (2021): 311-319. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6834-8829 mailto:sujan9099@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 311-319 312 problem in both forms of labor. this paper, therefore, logically supports the significance of fdi inflow in agriculture in emerging countries. a study by onphanhdala, suruga, daigaku, and kenkyūka (2013), where the researchers conducted field surveys between 2009 and 2011 in oudomxay province, northern laos, demonstrated that chinese investment has changed the agriculture sector from subsistence to commercial farming. it is evident from that study that chinese investment has a major impact on poverty alleviation and income inequality. unfortunately, these benefits are not available to all households or communities. uneven development across families and communities is essentially rooted in the first era and chinese merchants' manufacturing choices. anwar, saeed, khan, and ahmad (2013) identified that gdp and trade openness have a positive and considerable association with fdi inflows in the pakistani agriculture sector, but government debt has a negative and significant relationship. the findings also showed that in pakistan's agriculture sector there is a positive association between inflation and fdi inflows, whereas the exchange rate has a negative relationship, though both of these factors are trivial. moreover, wang, xie, zhang, wang, and yu (2019) used the slack-based measure and malmquist-luenberger (sbm-ml) index method to quantify the agricultural green total factor productivity (gtfp) of 24 provinces of china in the period 2004–2016, bringing the undesirable output of agricultural carbon emissions into the agricultural total factor productivity (tfp) accounting framework as a measure of gtfp. using the two-step system generalized moment method (gmm), the influence of agricultural fdi on the rise of agricultural gtfp and other sub-items was also revealed. the average annual growth rate of agricultural gtfp was 3.1%, with a 52% contribution rate to agricultural growth. the growth of agricultural gtfp shows that, with advancement in agricultural technology accompanied by a decline in agricultural technical efficiency, agricultural gtfp rose in the eastern, central, and western regions. although agricultural fdi has a considerable enhancing influence on agricultural gtfp and sub-items, in the long run it has an inverted u-shaped pattern. furthermore, between 1990 and 2017, mivumbi, wangping, and xiaoling (2019) examined the link between rwandan economic development, agricultural fdi, agricultural employment, and rural population. the cointegration with the constant level relationship of variables was investigated using the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) "bounds" test technique. the ardl model estimates co-integration coefficients while the ecm model estimates short-run coefficients after verifying the long run (co-integration) equilibrium connection of economic growth within variables. these workers discovered that rwandan economic growth is now contingent on foreign direct investment, with agriculture serving as a growth engine for the country. economic growth has a causal link with the population of rural regions, but fdi and employment in agriculture have no direct relationship with economic growth. rwanda, according to the report, should have the ability to absorb sophisticated agricultural technologies in order to fully benefit from fdi. rwanda's government should push macroeconomic measures to entice fdis while also encouraging agricultural economic growth. additionally, chaudhary (2018) found that the agriculture sector's results are unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. more than half of the population is now food insecure as a consequence of this scenario. the agriculture industry has had bleak results as a result of inadequate policy and execution. hence, the nepalese government, in collaboration with other relevant authorities, should efficiently execute agriculture policies in order to diminish poverty and promote rural development. for poverty reduction and rural development, agriculture-rural accommodating policies and effective performance are pivotal. rashid and razak (2016) empirically explored the key drivers of fdi in the agriculture sector using high-income emerging economies in oic nations as a case study. agriculture sectors respond as critical components of any economy's expansion in order to alleviate poverty. therefore, it inspected agriculture investment experiences in a number of member countries to identify possible roles for nations seeking fdi and their development partners in fostering fdi within the oic, particularly in agriculture fresh investment. in this study, fdi in agriculture responds as a dependent variable while economic determinants such as market size, inflation, poverty, exchange rate, and infrastructure are independent variables in chosen oic countries (malaysia, oman, and brunei). in light of the above-mentioned studies, this paper attempts to determine the relationship between fdi, agriculture, and rural development in asian countries. the paper comprises five parts, with the second part giving a review of the literature while section three describes the methods used in the study; part four sheds light on the findings and discussion and finally the paper concludes with some viable recommendations and conclusions. 2. literature review according to chaudhuri and yabuuchi (2010) one of the most contentious policy problems in many emerging economies, including india, is the establishment of special economic zones (sez) that use agricultural land to encourage industrialization. thar study gauged the policy's implications with the help of a three-sector, harris– todaro-type general equilibrium model that represents a typical emerging economy. it concludes that agriculture and sez may both flourish simultaneously if the government invest a significant portion of its resources in irrigation projects and other infrastructure development aimed at fostering land efficiency. in addition, this approach may also boost agricultural wages and aggregate employment in the economy. tambuman (2014) demonstrated that the presence of fdi in agriculture does not inevitably contribute a lot to the well-being of small farmers. it depends on the business strategies they use to relate their output to small farmers in the area. the most intriguing insights of this study comprises (1) contract farming, particularly the plasma and nucleus system, which is the most popular in indonesia; (2) some partnerships failed to benefit local farmers, denoting that there are some preconditions for a successful partnership; and (3) there is no evidence to date that successful asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 311-319 313 partnerships will have positive impacts on agricultural productivity, rural income, and economic growth. despite the paucity of data, that study indicates that the sort of business model employed has a significant impact on whether investment improves market access and, hence, the income of small farmers in the area. given that the overall climate is favorable, any sort of commercial collaboration will benefit plasma farmers and have a good multiplier impact on rural areas. the study by izuchukwu, huang, shehu, and olufemi (2012) showed that the agricultural sector plays a pivotal role in the growth of the overall economy of nigeria. nevertheless, despite several government initiatives, the sector is still characterized by low yields and limited areas under cultivation, particularly due to government dependence on a mono-agricultural economy based on oil. to analyze the impacts of fdi on agricultural sector growth in nigeria between the years 1980 and 2009, a vector autoregression (var) model and a three-step approach were utilized. here, the augmented dickey fuller (adf) and philips–parron (pp) unit root tests were also used. the multivariate cointregration test by johansen and juselius indicates that cointregration is present. the results of the granger causality test demonstrate that the variables used have a bidirectional, unidirectional, and no causal connection. more fdi should not only be sourced in order to boost agricultural output and develop the sector as a whole; but the government should also impart a legal and administrative quality framework and encourage more agricultural exportation, which will enhance foreign exchange earnings and facilitate the competitiveness of nigerian agricultural produce in the international market. santangelo (2018) analyzed the impact of fdi on land in agriculture in developing countries and found that the impact varied depending on the investor's country of origin. due to domestic institutional pressure for human rights respect and responsible agricultural behavior, as well as positive spillovers, fdi in land by developed-country investors has a beneficial impact on food security through expansion of land used for crop production. on the contrary, fdi in land by developing-country investors has an adverse impact on food security by reducing farmland owing to domestic institutional pressure to conform to national interests and government policy objectives, as well as negative spillovers. foreign direct investment has been utilized as a strategy in rising nations that have created a real shift in their economies, according to douansouvanh, qijun, and kombate (2019). however, no research has been done to determine how these changes have helped the country's poverty reduction and economic growth. therefore, in order to fill a research vacuum, this article sought to determine how fdi's role in agriculture development, such as job creation, tax payment, and knowledge and technology transfer, contributes to poverty reduction in a nation. the lao people's democratic republic was utilized as a case study, and 450 respondents were gathered using a selfadministered survey questionnaire (face to face with interaction with the participant). the findings showed that fdi involvement in agriculture development through job creation and fdi tax payments have a strong short-term impact on poverty alleviation, but a weak long-term impact. however, fdi transfer of knowledge and technology has a weak short-term impact on poverty alleviation but a greater long-term impact. transfer of knowledge and technology is a critical asset that emerging economies require from fdi in order to stimulate change and contribute to economic success. a study by houjian (2010) examined how fdi affects the urban–rural income gap, using panel data between 1992 and 2007. the results suggest that fdi influx can limit widening of the urban–rural income disparity. moreover, fdi is an endogenous variable for closing the income gap between urban and rural areas. fiscal expenditure is a vital element in the tendency of the income gap between urban and rural in the control variables, although economic growth and physical capital accumulation may considerably lower the income gap between urban and rural, while the accumulation of human capital and the degree of opening up have no discernible effect on the income difference between urban and rural areas. chen, hsu, and fan (2014) conducted a comparative review of china's and africa's distinct development paths and current policy contexts. the authors discuss china's development lessons as well as policy recommendations for china–africa engagement in areas such as agricultural and rural development, openness and liberalization, evidencebased policymaking, pro-poor policies, institutions, and capacity. a study by lv, wen, and xiong (2010) demonstrated that agricultural market size has a substantial positive influence on fdi inflow to china's agriculture while agricultural import has a negative effect. although agricultural export has a beneficial effect, it is not statistically significant. the report states that the direction of fdi policy during china's agricultural opening process is still vague, and the reduction in the proportion of fiscal spending is evidently not favorable to attracting more fdi to china's agriculture. additionally, the performance index indicates that inbound fdi performance in china's agricultural is growing, but not according to the satisfaction of its market size. a research carried out by chun-ying (2010) used a vector error correction model, cointegration, and the granger causality test to investigate the connection between foreign direct investment and the urban–rural income disparity in jiangsu province from 1986 to 2007. the empirical findings showed that the connection between fdi and the urban–rural income gap is constant over time. as a consequence of fdi, the income gap between urban and rural areas has widened. between foreign direct investment and the urban–rural income divide, the granger causality connection did not exist. finally, the empirical findings were examined as well as the policy implications. gunasekera, cai, and newth (2015) utilized the dynamic global trade analysis project (gdp) model to study the possible implications of increased land productivity and foreign direct investment in africa. their findings showed that combining measures to improve land productivity with fdi development may boost africa's share of global agricultural output and exports, notably in the areas of oil seeds, sugar, and cotton. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 311-319 314 zhuang and chen (2008) found that fdi in the service industry had a noteworthy direct and indirect influence on the host country's industrial structure adjustment.the paper's empirical research in guangzhou demonstrates that the impact of fdi in the service industry on economic growth and structural adjustment varies greatly depending on the stage of economic development. in this case, fdi is the driving force behind the service industry's internal reorganization. further investigation reveals that the effect of fdi on the circulation industry in guangzhou is greater than the effect on production service and real estate, and the effect on social services is less obvious, which is consistent with the shifting path of fdi among various sectors of the service industry since 2000. therefore, fdi in the service sector has a significant impact on structural adjustment. finally, strategies for improving the service industry's internal structure are proposed. rashida and razaka (2019) found that poverty is an influential factor for fdi in agriculture inflows, and fdi in agriculture inflows has a negative and substantial influence on poverty reduction. following that, the study's policy implications are explored, along with some recommendations. the study carried out by gorton and guba (2002) revealed that the hungarian dairy-processing sector underwent substantial reorganization throughout the transition period. by acquiring larger processing units, streamlining manufacturing, and cutting staff, foreign investors have spearheaded this reorganization. they have put in place more formal contracting arrangements, supporting the expansion of a limited group of medium-sized dairy farms while excluding micro-producers. the latter are unable to fulfill quality control standards and mostly produce for informal marketing channels. kalkidan (2017) studied the influence of fdi influx on the growth of ethiopia's agriculture industry from 1985 to 2016. the vector error correction model was employed due to the nonstationarity of the macro variables utilized in the model and the presence of cointegration. to validate the model, it was examined for serial correlation, multicollinearity, hetroscedasticity, and omitted variables. in ethiopia, fdi was found to have a beneficial influence on agricultural growth. according to the research, the ethiopian government should develop policies that would generate an enabling climate for increased fdi inflows. because an unchecked flood of foreign investors destroys native new businesses, the regulations should be implemented with prudence. existing rules to limit excessive profit repatriation and divestments should also be reviewed by policymakers. according to mwijarubi (2019), tanzania has attempted to restructure its economy in order to gain the full benefits of capitalism. the agricultural industry is one of the vital sectors it has attempted to focus on, which employs the great majority of tanzanians. any increase in sector productivity will assist the vast majority. the government of the united republic of tanzania, which is a significant stakeholder in the industry, is pushing for more foreign direct investment. unfortunately, the fdi inflow has had little impact on agriculture, disrupting rural livelihoods and causing food insecurity among peasant communities in several situations. the solution to enlarge production in agriculture is to invest more in the existing framework of small scale farming. wang and li (2011) investigated the link between fdi and the rural–urban income disparity in china from a theoretical and empirical viewpoint, and provided a theoretical synthesis. from the theoretical analysis, they first utilized the classical production function framework to investigate the inherent relationship between fdi and the rural–urban income difference. it has been shown that fdi has boosted the non-agricultural economy and is expected to widen the rural–urban economic divide. as a result, they present the industrial structure adjustment mechanism and examine the connection between fdi and the rural–urban income gap using data from 1979 to 2009. the empirical findings demonstrate that fdi expansion lowered the share of rural residents' income in total national income, whereas it had a substantial beneficial influence on urban residents' income growth. it, therefore, confirms the theoretical prophecy that fdi may widen the income disparity between urban and rural areas. as a result, the study suggests that they should promote rural society reform, free rural productive force, and reduce the negative effects of fdi on the urban–rural income gap by modifying fdi industrial locations and boosting employment. investigation of the function of fdi in the indian economy's agriculture sector and examined the influence of fdi on agriculture. fdi is one of the most important vehicles for increasing job possibilities in the agriculture sector through commercialization and modernization, as the industry employs 52% of the workforce. the agriculture industry contributes around 15% to the national economy, and there is ample room for growth in food processing, farm services, and infrastructure. agricultural and fdi growth have an inverse relationship, which indicates that a substantial percentage of fdi does not go to agriculture. the government should make agriculture a top priority in order to boost production and meet the rising need for food security, as well as to work toward the welfare of small and marginalized farmers. in the agricultural sector, a public–private partnership approach will be beneficial in filling the savings investment gap. to address the limitations of foreign investments, a robust regulatory framework should be used to safeguard customers and marginal farmers. a study by jiang and shi (2014) studied china's attractiveness for foreign direct investment (fdi) and found that fdi has been rising year after year as a result of reform and opening up, as well as ongoing economic growth and development. fdi, however, is spread unevenly among the three major industrial sectors. the study discovered that the amount and scope of fdi used in agriculture lagged considerably behind the industrial and service sectors, and that it was dispersed unevenly across geographical areas as a result of our research. the problem of "agricultural, rural regions and farmers" has long been one of the most crucial and challenging in china's economic reform process. the major focus of this article is on the effects of fdi on the agricultural sector of the macro-economy and how they should fully utilize fdi to reduce china's agricultural trade deficit and improve agricultural commodities' international competitiveness. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 311-319 315 3. methods this paper conducted exploratory analysis by using the following data and techniques. 3.1. data secondary panel data of 46 countries in asia for the period 1991–2018 were compiled from the world bank's world development indicators. the data comprise information that considers nine variables. to conduct the analysis, it was first log normalized. after, the data are first degree separated to eliminate the autocorrelation problem. 3.2. methods this paper administered a step-by-step model-based composite analysis. the ordinary least squares (ols) model was used first to define the relationship between fdi and certain variables related to agriculture and rural development among the 46 countries in asia. then the pooled ordinary least squares (pols) model was used to determine the relationship between fdi and certain variables related to agriculture and rural development. after, to describe the relationship between fdi and certain variables related to agriculture and rural development, the twostage least-squares model (2sls) was deployed capitalizing stata 15. finally, the generalized method of moments (gmm) was applied to classify important explanatory variables that can explain why fdi and certain variables related to agriculture and rural development are related. 3.3. variables and description here, net inflow (bop, current) is expressed in billion usd while lnfdi denotes log normal of foreign direct investment. lnalpla indicates log normal of agricultural land, this variable being expressed as percentage of land area of a country; lnaffpgdp denotes log normal of value added for agriculture, forestry, and fishing, expressed as percentage of gross domestic product. moreover, lneafpfe denotes log normal of employment in agriculture (female) and is expressed as percentage of total female employment. in addition, lneampme indicates log normal of employment in agriculture (male), expressed as percentage of total male employment. lnlcphec indicates log normal of land under cereal production, expressed as hectares; lnpcpla denotes log normal of permanent cropland, expressed as percentage of total land area. lnrpptp denotes log normal of rural population, expressed as percentage of total population; lnrp denotes log normal of rural population, expressed as absolute value. 4. results and discussion 4.1. descriptive statistics all variables used in the descriptive statistics are listed below. for each statistic, the table depicts the number of measurements, mean value, standard deviations, and minimum and maximum values. table-1. descriptive statistics. variable obs. mean std. dev. min. max. year 1288 2004.5 8.081 1991 2018 fdi 1244 6.286e+09 2.396e+10 -1.018e+10 2.909e+11 alpla 1188 35.102 23.726 0.931 83.981 affpgdp 1156 13.68 11.143 0.025 57.239 eafpfe 1288 33.646 26.847 0.01 90.65 eampme 1288 30.793 20.404 0.08 83 lcphec 1224 7262010.8 19785684 4 1.057e+08 pcpla 1280 3.465 4.984 0.001 26.667 rpptp 1288 45.819 24.251 0 90.82 rp 1285 50178048 1.566e+08 0 8.923e+08 table 1 summarizes the data from the 46 countries over the 28 years based on nine variables. the prominent dependent variable, fdi, shows an average of 6.28 billion dollars for the countries surveyed, with a very high standard deviation of 2.39 billion dollars. this indicates that there is a significant deviation in fdi among the countries of the world. the average agricultural land (percentage of land area) is 35.10%, with a standard deviation of 23.72%. the mean value of value added in agriculture, forestry, and fishing (percentage of gross domestic product) is 13.68%, with 11.18% standard deviation. the average female employment in agriculture is 33.64% of total female employment, while the average male employment in agriculture is 30.79% of total male employment, with 26.84% and 20.40% standard deviation, respectively. the average land under cereal production is 7.26 million hectares, with 19.78% standard deviation. the mean value of permanent cropland is 3.46% of total land area, with standard deviation of 4.98%. the average value of rural population is 45.81% of the total population, with standard deviation of 24.25% and the mean value of the rural population is 50.17 million. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 311-319 316 4.2. pairwise correlation matrix table-2. matrix of correlations. variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (1) fdi 1.000 (2) alpla 0.100 1.000 (3) affpgdp – 0.106 0.268 1.000 (4) eafpfe – 0.050 0.271 0.792 1.000 (5) eampme 0.002 0.280 0.822 0.888 1.000 (6) lcphec 0.550 0.259 0.102 0.248 0.272 1.000 (7) pcpla – 0.025 0.017 –0.071 –0.098 0.017 –0.022 1.000 (8) rpptp – 0.023 0.234 0.746 0.849 0.836 0.233 0.142 1.000 (9) rp 0.515 0.222 0.103 0.247 0.263 0.983 –0.015 0.237 1.000 in order to identify the impact of fdi on agriculture and rural development (table 2), we analyze correlations among the variables sourced from the literature. a combined correlation matrix is given below to report the variables. 4.3. econometric models the dependent (lnfdi) and independent variables (lnalpla, lnaffpgdp, lneafpfe, lneampme, lnlcphec, lnpcpla, lnrpptp, lnrp) are used in multiple regression models. the effects of such models are demonstrated and interpreted in the following section. table-3. ols model. lnfdi coef. st. err. t-value p-value [95% conf. interval] sig. lnalpla 0.417 0.082 5.09 0 0.257 0.578 *** lnaffpgdp -1.654 0.14 -11.79 0 -1.929 -1.378 *** lneafpfe -0.249 0.087 -2.88 0.004 -0.42 -0.079 *** lneampme 0.137 0.143 0.96 0.339 -0.144 0.418 lnlcphec 0.245 0.058 4.21 0 0.131 0.36 *** lnpcpla 0.18 0.034 5.33 0 0.114 0.247 *** lnrpptp 0.245 0.186 1.32 0.187 -0.119 0.61 lnrp 0.489 0.074 6.61 0 0.344 0.635 *** constant 10.975 0.643 17.08 0 9.714 12.237 *** mean dependent var. 20.309 sd dependent var. 2.515 r-squared 0.513 number of obs. 935.000 f-test 122.070 prob > f 0.000 akaike crit. (aic) 3721.955 bayesian crit. (bic) 3765.520 note: *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1. table-4. pols model. lnfdi coef. st. err. t-value p-value [95% conf. interval] sig. lnalpla 0.693 0.241 2.88 0.004 0.222 1.165 *** lnaffpgdp -2.129 0.178 -11.96 0 -2.478 -1.78 *** lneafpfe -0.064 0.163 -0.40 0.692 -0.383 0.254 lneampme -0.694 0.321 -2.16 0.031 -1.323 -0.065 ** lnlcphec 0.115 0.107 1.07 0.284 -0.095 0.325 lnpcpla 0.376 0.098 3.82 0 0.183 0.569 *** lnrpptp -0.188 0.341 -0.55 0.582 -0.857 0.481 lnrp 1.024 0.154 6.65 0 0.722 1.325 *** constant 8.089 1.611 5.02 0 4.932 11.246 *** mean dependent var. 20.309 sd dependent var. 2.515 overall r-squared 0.491 number of obs. 935.000 chi-square 585.179 prob > chi2 0.000 r-squared within 0.411 r-squared between 0.612 note: *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1. table 4 shows the pols model demonstrating that there is a significant positive relationship between fdi with agric the ordinary lease squares model table 3 shows that foreign direct investment has a significant positive asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 311-319 317 relationship with agricultural land, land under cereal production, permanent cropland, and rural population. it implies that an asian country having more agricultural land, land under cereal production, permanent cropland, and rural population can attract more fdi. on the contrary, the chart depicts that the value added of agriculture, forestry, fishing, and female employment in agriculture have a significant negative relationship with fdi. furthermore, other variables such as male employment in agriculture and rural population as a percentage of total population have a positive relationship with fdi. ultural land, permanent cropland, and rural population. it implies that an asian country having more agricultural land, permanent cropland, and rural population can entice more fdi. in contrast, value added for agriculture, forestry, and fishing and male employment in agriculture depicts a significant negative relationship with fdi. other variables, including female employment in agriculture, land under cereal production, and rural population as a percentage of total population, show a mixed relationship with fdi. table-5. 2sls model. instrumental variables (2sls) regression lnfdi coef. st. err. t-value p-value [95% conf interval] sig. lnalpla 0.417 0.082 5.09 0 0.257 0.578 *** lnaffpgdp -1.654 0.14 -11.79 0 -1.929 -1.378 *** lneafpfe -0.249 0.087 -2.88 0.004 -0.42 -0.079 *** lneampme 0.137 0.143 0.96 0.339 -0.144 0.418 lnlcphec 0.245 0.058 4.21 0 0.131 0.36 *** lnpcpla 0.18 0.034 5.33 0 0.114 0.247 *** lnrpptp 0.245 0.186 1.32 0.187 -0.119 0.61 lnrp 0.489 0.074 6.61 0 0.344 0.635 *** constant 10.975 0.643 17.08 0 9.714 12.237 *** mean dependent var. 20.309 sd dependent var. 2.515 r-squared 0.513 number of obs. 935.000 f-test 122.070 prob > f 0.000 note: *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1. the results of the 2sls model (table 5) show that fdi has a substantial positive relationship with agricultural land, land under cereal production, permanent cropland, and rural population, which suggests that an asian country having more agricultural land, land under cereal production, permanent cropland, and rural population can attract greater fdi. on the contrary, value added for agriculture, forestry and fishing, and female employment in agriculture has a significant negative relationship with fdi. moreover, other variables such as male employment in agriculture and rural population as a percentage of total population have a positive relationship with fdi, but although the nature of that relationship is insignificant for fdi, the overall model is significant at the 10% level. table-6. gmm model. lnfdi coef. st. err. t-value p-value [95% conf interval] sig. l.lnfdi 0.388 0.04 9.64 0 0.309 0.467 *** lnalpla 0.65 0.841 0.77 0.439 -0.998 2.298 lnaffpgdp -1.523 0.184 -8.28 0 -1.884 -1.163 *** lneafpfe -0.448 0.203 -2.20 0.028 -0.847 -0.05 ** lneampme -0.676 0.43 -1.57 0.116 -1.518 0.166 lnlcphec 0.425 0.142 2.99 0.003 0.146 0.703 *** lnpcpla 0.327 0.244 1.34 0.18 -0.152 0.806 lnrpptp 0.6 0.527 1.14 0.255 -0.433 1.633 lnrp -1.301 0.608 -2.14 0.032 -2.493 -0.109 ** constant 29.712 9.611 3.09 0.002 10.876 48.549 *** mean dependent var. 20.503 sd dependent var. 2.303 number of obs. 810.000 chi-square 966.380 note: *** p < o.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1. the gmm (table 6) model shows a significant positive relationship for fdi with land under cereal production and rural population, which indicates that an asian country with greater land under cereal production and rural population can attract more fdi. conversely, value added for agriculture, forestry and fishing, and female employment in agriculture demonstrates a significant negative relationship with fdi. in addition, other variables such as agricultural land, male employment in agriculture, permanent cropland, and rural population as a percentage of total population render a mixed relationship with fdi. 5. conclusion this paper sought to examine the effect of fdi on agriculture and rural development with the help of panel data from 46 asian countries during the time frame 1991–2018. the findings of this study show that there is a favorable association between fdi and agricultural land as percentage of total land using the models ols, pols, and 2sls. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 311-319 318 however, value added for agriculture, and forestry and fishing shows an unfavorable association with fdi in all the models used in the study. female employment in agriculture has a negative association with fdi in the ols, 2sls, and gmm models while male employment in agriculture has a negative association with fdi in the pols model only. furthermore, the paper depicts a favorable association between lands under cereal production and fdi in all models except pols. additionally, permanent cropland has a favorable association with fdi in all models except gmm. finally, it shows that rural population has a positive association with fdi in the ols, pols, and 2sls models but a negative association in the gmm model. due to database constraints, this study used statistics based solely on asian countries. moreover, as the study takes into consideration data spanning a period of 28 years, the evidence would be more convincing if the data covered a longer period in time. besides, for research purposes, data must be transformed, which could likely result in inconsistency; and several factors were omitted from this study. other than the foregoing, further future research should concentrate on determining the most significant determinants of fdi. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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(2014). steadying the ladder: china's agricultural and rural development engagement in africa. china agricultural economic review, 6(1), 2-20. available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/caer-04-2013-0055. chun-ying, z. (2010). empirical analysis of fdi and urban-rural income gap: a case study on jiangsu province. sciencetechnology and management, 4, 7-10. douansouvanh, v., qijun, l., & kombate, b. (2019). foreign direct investment (fdi) in agriculture implication into emerging country change and socio-economic development. american international journal of agricultural studies, 2(1), 28-38. available at: https://doi.org/10.46545/aijas.v2i1.110. gorton, m., & guba, f. (2002). foreign direct investment (fdi) and the restructuring of the hungarian dairy processing sector. journal of east-west business, 7(4), 5-28. available at: https://doi.org/10.1300/j097v07n04_02. gunasekera, d., cai, y., & newth, d. (2015). effects of foreign direct investment in african agriculture. china agricultural economic review, 7(2), 167-184. available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/caer-08-2014-0080. houjian, l. y. t. y. l. (2010). can fdi inflow inevitably expand tendency of the income gap between urban and rural? world economy study, 8. izuchukwu, o.-o., huang, h., shehu, a., & olufemi, e. a. (2012). fdi trade and its effects on agricultural development in nigeria: evidence from time series analysis. the international journal of management science and business administration, 1(1), 28 40. available at: https://doi.org/10.18775/ijmsba.1849-5664-5419.2014.11.1003. jiang, y., & shi, g. (2014). an empirical analysis of the effects of agricultural fdi on the international competitiveness of agricultural products in china. modern economy, 5(11), 1046-1052. available at: https://doi.org/10.4236/me.2014.511096. kalkidan, y. a. 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(2013). chinese outward fdi in agriculture and rural development: evidence from northern laos (no. 25). graduate school of international cooperation studies, kobe university. rashid, i. m. a., & razak, n. a. a. (2016). determinants of foreign direct investment (fdi) in agriculture sector based on selected high-income developing economies in oic countries: an empirical study on the provincial panel data by using stata, 2003-2012. procedia economics and finance, 39, 328-334. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/s2212-5671(16)30331-8. rashida, i. m. a., & razaka, n. a. a. (2019). foreign direct investment (fdi) in agriculture inflows and poverty in selected oic countries. international journal of information, business and management, 11(2), 326-336. santangelo, g. d. (2018). the impact of fdi in land in agriculture in developing countries on host country food security. journal of world business, 53(1), 75-84. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2017.07.006. tambuman, t. (2014). identifying business models adopted by fdi in agriculture in indonesia. journal of economics and development studies, 2(1), 99-130. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 311-319 319 wang, y., xie, l., zhang, y., wang, c., & yu, k. (2019). does fdi promote or inhibit the high-quality development of agriculture in china? an agricultural gtfp perspective. sustainability, 11(17), 4620. available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/su11174620. wang, h. j., & li, y. h. (2011). the impact of fdi on chinese urban-rural income inequality——based on theoretical and empirical research. soft science, 1. zhuang, l.-j., & chen, c.-l. (2008). an empirical analysis of the effect of fdi on the structure of service industry in guangzhou. international economics and trade research, 24(3), 26-30. appendix-1. list of countries. afghanistan lao pdr armenia lebanon azerbaijan malaysia bahrain maldives bangladesh mongolia bhutan myanmar brunei darussalam nepal china oman colombia pakistan cyprus philippines egypt, arab rep. qatar georgia saudi arabia india singapore indonesia sri lanka iran, islamic rep. syrian arab republic iraq tajikistan japan thailand jordan timor-leste kazakhstan turkmenistan korea, dem. people’s rep. united arab emirates korea, rep. uzbekistan kuwait vietnam kyrgyz republic yemen, rep. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 255 is imported cabbage a better choice than local egg fruit for salad preparation: an economic analysis of ekiti state, nigeria abiola matthew oladipupo a, ibidapo clement adedayo a adepartment of agricultural economics extension, federal university oye ekiti, ekiti state, nigeria  matthewabiola201911@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 02-sep-2019 accepted: 05-nov-2019 online available: 09-dec2019 keywords: cabbage, garden egg salad, import reduction abstract the study deals with the possibility of reducing higher ratio of dependence on importation of food through the replacement of foreign products with locally produced and processed food products. in order to accomplish the objectives of the study, both primary and secondary data had been used. accordingly, a multistage sampling technique was utilized to select the sample size. descriptive and inferential statistics were eventually applied to the primary data collected. the results indicated undoubtedly that the locally produced and processed salad competed favourably and suitably with foreign salad products in terms of colour, odour, taste, and other sensory parameters evaluated accordingly. the orthodox budget analysis indicated that garden egg salad was more profitable than imported cabbage salad. the correlation outcome value of +1 indicated that local salad stands as a perfect substitute for foreign salad. therefore, the phasing out of foreign salad so as to replace it with locally sourced salad is quite feasible. it had therefore been obviously and clearly established in this study that imported cabbage could be replaced with locally produced garden egg salad, thereby indicating that reducing the degree of dependence on food importation is absolutely viable. contribution/ originality this study provides adequate evidence that it is possible to prepare and process vegetable salad from locally produced garden egg fruit as a substitute for salad produced from imported cabbage. moreover, the outcome shows that locally produced salad competes favourably in terms of taste, nutrients, colour and other parameters examined in the study. garden egg fruit salad was found to be more profitable in the areas of our study than foreign salad produced from imported cabbage. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.255.263 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: abiola matthew oladipupo and ibidapo clement adedayo (2019). is imported cabbage a better choice than local egg fruit for salad preparation: an economic analysis of ekiti state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 255-263. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 255-263 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:matthewabiola201911@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.255.263 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 255-263 256 1. introduction a threefold rising trend is currently found in nigeria: (i) a rising trend in domestic food demand created out of the population explosion, (ii) a rising trend of shortfall in foods and (iii) a rising trend of food importation therein. the nigeria bureau of statistics (2017) indicated that india, united states, spain, netherlands and france were major export partners of nigeria, accounting for 17.44%, 13.92%, 9.9%, 6.79% and 6.32% respectively in third quarter of 2017. whereas the major import partners of nigeria were china, united states, netherlands, india and united kingdom importing about 46% of total import in third quarter of 2017. nigeria had a positive trade balance of 1.22 billion naira (nigerian currency) in the third quarter of 2017 but had faced a serious trade deficit in the agricultural and food sectors. nigeria experienced a negative trade balance (lakin, 2018) and its annual food import bills are more than one trillion naira, while the export bills accrued on the nation was about 1.5 billion naira (audu, 2018). the deficit between food imports and exports seems to be apparently outrageously embarrassing even after using the likely moderately downward adjusted estimations of audu 2018 statistics of $22 billion worth of annual food imports, and in accordance with lakin’s (2018) food export value of $1.5billion, gives an obvious deficit of about $20 billion. the nigerian government (2018) reported annual food import value of two billion, seven hundred and seventy-seven million us dollars but surprisingly, audu (2018) reported the annual food import of $22 billion and subsequently repeated the same value in 2017. the value estimated by audu may have been reviewed with a downward trend simply for political implications. out of a total export value of $16.44 billion from nigeria, agricultural and food sector accounted for $0.705 billion only, representing 4.3% in the third quarter of 2017. however, oil exports had always accounted for more than 80% of total exports from nigeria. being the leading crude oil producer, nigeria imported processed fuel worth about 5 trillion naira in third quarter of 2018. to be more precise, nigeria is considered to import what it produces with negative implications for loss of revenue, employment ratio, and value addition income. out of total trade (representing $0.705 billion), undertaken in the agricultural sector in nigeria, the total agricultural export in the third quarter of 2017 was $0.06 billion, while the total agricultural import was $0.65 billion, besides showing a negative trade balance of $0.58 billion within the same period. however, import of agricultural products, such as raw food items and processed foods, are actually estimated to be more than ten times as compared with the local produce. food supply is therefore considered to be a function of imports, and nigeria depends heavily on food imports. during the periods of war, any country had to face, by and large, extremely worse and vulnerable situations, especially food shortages. nigeria experienced such a situation and unwillingly, had to import food worth 43 trillion-naira in six years and also tried to produce some of the food items locally. wheat, rice, sugar and fish were some of the items which accounted for almost one trillionnaira value for importation in one year. nigeria mainly depends on food importation to meet the nutritional demands of the explosive teaming population. there had been a constant trade deficit in agricultural sector of its economy. food importation had also been embarrassingly higher than food export. all out government efforts over the years through various plans and programmes failed woefully to secure food security in nigeria. plans and programmes like green revolution (gr), operation feed the nation (opfn), food accelerated programmed (fap), agricultural development programs (adp), cassava initiatives (ci), river basing development authority (rbda), agricultural credit guaranteed scheme (acgs), bank of industry (boi) peoples bank (pb) and cocoa commodity board (ccb) among many others proved worthless and baseless industrial supplies import accounted for 27%, capital goods 23% and food and beverages for 17% of total import in 2014 and from then onwards, nigeria had to depend on food import rather than on domestic food production. for instance, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 255-263 257 nigeria produced 2 million metric tons of rice annually but imported 3 million metric tons to feed its citizens within some satisfactory limits to some extent. nigeria imported food worth 1.93billion-naira per annum within a period spanned over 1990-2010 (nbs, 2010; cbn, 2010; afolami et al., 2012). food import stood at more than five times the value of food exports (oboh and elusiyan, 2004; oboh et al., 2007; nwaogu et al., 2007; ogiehor et al., 2008). nigeria has been a nation in troubles frequently due to its aspect of imports. various vegetables, such as okra fruit, cabbage, cucumber, carrot, tomatoes, etc. are imported to nigeria via the lagosbenin border. cameroon and benin republics are real good and reliable exporters of tomatoes to fulfil the needs between domestic food demand and supply by looking inwards. is it possible to reduce food importation in nigeria by sourcing cabbage and carrots for salad preparation? the question is of vital importance and needs to be examined thoroughly through economic analysis. there had always been constant struggle to overcome the frequently evolved and endemic food problems in nigeria (ayanwale and abiola, 2007). there had been national calls from time to time, to bridge the gap in shortfalls of various ingredients locally. however, cabbage had zero production in the state and all its supplies are related with foreign aspects. without import of cabbage to ekiti state consumption would be considered to be zero. although garden egg, especially the white coloured variety, is being produced in all the sixteen local government areas, and vastly cultivated and made readily available everywhere in ekiti state,. cabbage is used as a side dish in salad preparation, whereas garden egg is mostly not taken as the main meal but considered to be a supplementary food. why is there the mad rush for cabbage importation, if garden egg could be as nutritious and delicious as cabbage intake? is it possible to replace cabbage with garden egg or whether garden egg would be acceptable to consumers in salad preparation? now the main question arises towards the real costs and nutritional implications of replacing cabbage with garden egg? the study is an attempt to provide answers to the above mentioned research questions as how to solve the endemic problems of food insufficiency. it will help the policy makers and provide immense benefits to ekiti state in general and the federal government in particular, to evolve suitable and feasible resolutions to stem out the problems of excessive food importation in nigeria. as mentioned earlier, the main objective of the study is to carry out economic analysis of replacing foreign cabbage with local salad ingredients within its research areas. the specific objectives include the following aspects: (i) determination of the possibility of replacing foreign salad with locally sourced salad; (ii) to determine and compare the sensory evaluation of the two categories of salads, so as to determine the degree of acceptability, (iii) estimate cost benefit analysis of the local salad; and (iv) compare and contrast the nutritional values of both the categories of salads with the possibility of curbing and ultimately stopping cabbage importation and, subsequently encourage massive local garden egg fruit production in the state. the risk factors in preparation of vegetable salad with garden egg fruit and cabbage is at par, apparently same and equal, because both are uncooked. however, the risk factor in cabbage may be higher due to some possible contamination during transportation from foreign countries. the risk of microbial infection is found in all raw and uncooked salad ingredients as reported by nbs (2017). salads containing raw vegetables have been identified as diarrhea, an illness sometimes experienced by visitors coming into developing countries, in vehicles of travellers. another microbial flora of partially processed vegetables has also been found in pre-packed mixed vegetable salads, leading towards great concern of both aspects in food spoilage and safety are involved. even the considerate presence or absence, as well as the fate of both human pathogens and plant tissues spoilage organisms are important factors for some watchful examination (uzeh et al., 2009). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 255-263 258 2. material and methods 2.1. area of study ado is the capital of ekiti state and the state is divided into sixteen local area council as indicated in the figure below. ekiti standard food outlets are mr. bigg, tantalizer, fork and finger, smiln, danke, portofino, village port among others. these outlets are not present in other local government areas because they are rural except ado ekiti. 2.2. data collection primary and secondary data were used to accomplish the objectives of the study. primary data were collected using detail questionnaire and focused group discussion and laboratory analysis. deliberately the garden egg was single homogenous recipe type while the one sold in outlets were multi ingredients recipe but the lion share is generally made of cabbage leaf and the foreign salad can be tagged cabbage salad. the desire is to replace the cabbage 100% by garden egg as single recipe salad or used garden egg as substitute for cabbage in salad preparation in the state. a beautiful white colour type of garden egg is used to replace the white cabbage. cabbage and garden egg is a multi-colour kind of vegetable. 2.3. type of garden egg and imported cabbage the type of garden egg considered in this study is the variety that are eaten without cooking with fresh sweet taste white colour though there are several varieties with different colours which are eaten raw. also, the variety of cabbage considered is the type that can be eaten raw without cooking. in nigeria there many garden eggs that are eaten raw without cooking. this study does not consider eggplant fruits that require cooking before consumption. since the two can be eaten without cooking they are substitute for each other but garden egg fruits has been ignored or underutilized in nigeria. 2.4. sampling and data analysis a multi stage sampling techniques was used to select respondents. a purposive sampling was used to select ado out of all the towns and villages in the state. all other towns and villages were rural and standard outlets were not present except ado. therefore, ado was selected because it vividly reflects the feature under study. it was followed by random sampling of five outlets operating in ado ekiti. twenty salad consumers were randomly selected out of the buyers patronizing the outlet. each twenty were people of different age to accommodate variation in that might arose from age difference of both male and female respondents with a total sample size of 100 respondents in the study area. descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to data collected. orthodox budgeting techniques was used to determine the feasibility of changing from foreign salad to local salad while rank correlation was used to determine the correlation between cabbage and garden egg salad. respondents were allowed to taste and make their decision on a scale of five which form the basis of judgments. 3. result and discussion 3.1. sensory evaluation of local and foreign salad in the study area 3.1.1. colour preference evaluation the foreign salad had a better acceptability in terms of colour evaluation. the two had a positive colour and acceptability status of greater than 90% and negative colour evaluation of less than 10% (table 1). the local had a 1% higher value of negative index and a 1% lower value of positive colour value indicating a marginal difference in general acceptability among respondents in the state. the outcome indicates that the colour of local salad compete favourably with foreign salad and policy should be geared toward replacing foreign salad with domestic or indigenous source salad in the study area as a way of reducing possible trade deficit in the country in with too much asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 255-263 259 dependency on food importation. therefore, garden egg as domestic vegetable can play a vital role in domestic vegetable food consumption which is in agreement with abdulai et al. (2018) who indicated that vegetables play an important role in the household economy and occupy a unique position in both domestic and foreign food trade. table 1: colour preference evaluation evaluation class frequency local salad foreign salad very poor 1.00 4.00 poor 7.00 2.00 good 31.00 22.00 very good 35.00 39.00 excellent 26.00 33.00 total 100.00 100.00 source: field study, 2018 figure 1: colour of cabbage and garden egg fruit source: adedayo et al. (2010) 3.1.2. odour preference evaluation the outcome indicate that foreign salad had a value for very poor but none rated the local salad poor (table 2). also, local salad was rated 16% higher in terms of good attribute value but foreign salad had lower negative scale value. local salad had total positive scale value of 87% while foreign salad had a value of 93%. the two had acceptable positive value in odour evaluation indicating the two-smell fresh and good. therefore, phasing out foreign salad will be with little or no negative impact owning to the good degree of indigenous source salad acceptability and a ready substitute for cabbage. the result demonstrate that garden egg salad made from local source compared favourably with foreign type. availability is key in food security which is in agreement with (rusliyadi et al., 2019) who indicates that availability, accessibility are factors in food security and since garden egg is produced locally showcases the replacement of foreign salad with local source enhances nigeria food security. the domestic economic will be better off because of lesser import bills and associate cost. table 2: odour preference evaluation odour class frequency local salad foreign salad very poor 0.00 1.00 poor 13.00 6.00 good 43.00 27.00 very good 25.00 41.00 excellent 19.00 25.00 total 100.00 100.00 source: field data, 2018 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 255-263 260 3.1.3. matching evaluation by teeth foreign salad had better teeth grinding evaluation status than local salad. this is probably due to lower moisture availability in garden egg which makes it harder to chew than cabbage with higher water content making it softer in term of texture and grinding capacity of teeth. however, there are varieties of garden egg with higher moisture capacity that can neutralize these negative features and harvesting early will also count in term of improving mouth grinding status of local salad. table 3: matching preference evaluation marching class frequency local foreign very poor 70 2 poor 7 11 good 4 20 very good 2 29 excellent 17 29 total 100 100 source: field data, 2018 3.1.4. taste preference evaluation the local garden egg salad is perfect substitute for cabbage salad (table 4). the two had equal negative and positive evaluation status in the study areas. the study outcome indicates that nigerians has good acceptability status for their products provided there is availability. in most cases in nigeria some food item has no local substitute: for instance, igbemo rice is popular rice in ekiti state but such rice does not appear in standard shops because of poor packaging since there is no bag, label or brand for this local rice but it is sweeter and generally available in the state. the rice is sold in gerri cans, kongo, paint rubbers and other local measures. the taste of this rice is generally more acceptable to consumer. in most standard outlets cooked igbemon rice attracts a unit price of five hundred naira while the foreign rice attracts two hundred and fifty naira. the outcome here indicate that nigeria can come out of food importation problem if it can work more on domestic source and other neglected food resources in the country. table 4: taste preference evaluation evaluation class frequency local salad foreign salad very poor 1.00 2.00 poor 6.00 5.00 good 32.00 31.00 very good 38.00 25.00 excellent 23.00 37.00 total 100.00 100.00 source: field data, 2018 3.1.5. orthodox budgeting analysis evaluation of garden egg and cabbage salad the orthodox budget analysis indicates that there is 216.5-naira positive beneficial revenue gained per kg for producing garden egg salad instead of cabbage salad (salad table 5). the outcome shows that garden egg salad is more profitable than cabbage salad in the study areas. ten units are derivable in every kilogram of garden egg fruit or cabbage. a salad unit is sold at standard price of #300 in food outlets operating in ado ekiti. garden egg fresh fruit commands an average price of #97.5 per kilogram while cabbage fresh leaf was sold at a mean value of #314 per kilogram. cabbage is more expensive because it is not produced at all in the state. it is 100% foreign in the state. cabbage contains more water and transportation and other factors probably accounts for high asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 255-263 261 price. garden egg contains lesser water but it is produced in all the 16 lga areas in the state. it is 200 times cheaper. garden egg in all season has lower price than cabbage. however, the market price of cabbage and garden egg salad is the same making the sales of garden egg salad more profitable ceteris paribus. a ban on importation of cabbage will have a serious positive effect on garden egg production and demand in the state. the outcome indicates that replacing cabbage with garden egg is feasible. the production of garden egg salad attracts lower transaction and production which can lead to rapid business expansion because lower transaction cost will attract higher demand for loan which is in agreement with (ali, 2019) who hypothesized that, high transaction costs resulted in less demand for loans. the production of garden egg salad is expected to have lower cost because of inverse relationship between demand and price. table 5: orthodox budgeting analysis of garden egg and cabbage salad in the study areas price (kg/n) cabbage garden egg market price 3000.0 3000 on season 200.0 70 of season 428.0 125 average price 314.0 97.5 orthodox budget analysis revenue gained for producing garden egg salad 3324.0 cost incurred for not producing cabbage salad 3097.5 decision deferential 216.5 source: field data, 2018 3.1.6. correlation analysis between garden and cabbage salad sensory evaluation the outcome of correlation analysis between the two salads indicates a perfect linear correlation between garden egg salad and cabbage salad. the two are usually side dishes consumed with main meal such as fried rice and jollof rice to provide minerals and vitamins mostly available in inadequate form in the main meal. the correlation indicates the two are perfect substitute for each other. the correlation value of 1 is also significantly different from zero indicating that the two salad types had positive association. 3.1.7. chemical and nutritional composition of garden egg and cabbage the outcome indicated that garden egg fruit and cabbage in terms of moisture content mineral and chemical composition were good substitute as indicated in table below. garden has higher protein content and good vitamin e content which is absent in cabbage. cabbage has higher iron content but generally garden egg has higher essential nutrient value than cabbage. the nutritional content of both vegetables is presented below. table 6: chemical and nutritional composition of garden egg and cabbage parameters concentration (%dw)* garden egg fruit cabbage moisture 91.4 ± 0.56 92.18g ash 21.2± 0.42, crude lipid 12.5±0.07 0.1g crude protein 8.31 ± o.63 1.28 crude fibre 6.22 ± 0.36 1.5 available carbohydrate 51.74 ± 0.32 5.8g estimated caloric value 308.9 kcal 25kg mineral element (mg/100g dw) phosphorus 1085.00 26 magnesium 39.14 12 potassium 216.89 170 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 255-263 262 manganese 147.0 0.18 copper 256.17 0.019 sodium 149.34 18 iron 326.50 0.47 calcium 15.29 40 ca/p 0.01 k/na 1.45 vitamin concentration (mg/100g dw) riboflavin (vitamin b2) 0.036 0.234 ascorbic acid (vitamin c) 6.273 36.6 a-tocopherol (vitamin e) 0.140 00 richard and ali (2011) 4. conclusion it has been established in this study as a factual result that cabbage salad had to be replaced with garden egg fruit salad which has the capacity to reduce import dependence on foreign food (cabbage) with adequate abilities to build self-sufficiency on, and also encourage domestic food production in ekiti state in nigeria. the correlation result indicates that the imported cabbage and garden egg fruit are perfect substitute mutually for each other. the correlation value of 1 is also significantly different from zero indicating that the two salad types have positive association. garden egg fruit salad could be compared favorably with foreign cabbage salad in terms of colour, taste and general acceptability among consumers, across various age groups in the study areas. based on the outcome of the study, it is recommended that nigeria will be at an advantage if the importation of cabbage from benin republic, cameroon and other countries could be banned to encourage domestic production of salad ingredients in ekiti state. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: authors wish to appreciate mr. and mrs. ibidapo the parent of adebayo clement who provide the full fund for this undergraduate 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(2009). the microbial quality of pre-packed mixed vegetable salad in some retail outlets in lagos. nigeria journal of food science, 3(9), 270272. http://www.academicjournals.org/ajfs. https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/08/nigeria-spends-22bn-annually-on-food-importation-audu-ogbe/ https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/08/nigeria-spends-22bn-annually-on-food-importation-audu-ogbe/ https://www.cbn.gov.ng/out/2011/publications/statistics/2010/index https://shipsandports.com.ng/evaluation-nigerias-food-import https://nigerianstat.gov.ng/elibrary https://nigerianstat.gov.ng/ http://www.academicjournals.org/ajfs effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 279 a pragmatic study for enhancing agricultural efficiency through labor freedom rajni kapoora nimai dasb aresearch scholar at the department of economics, mriirs (deemed university) and assistant professor, department of economics at shaheed bhagat singh college, (university of delhi), new delhi, india. bassociate professor at indian institute of forest management (iifm), bhopal (mp), india.  kapoorrajni2@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 10 august 2021 revised: 6 september 2021 accepted: 30 september 2021 published: 25 october 2021 keywords india property rights wage contracts development policy labor freedom agricultural efficiency. jel classification c25; o47; q12; q15. the study aims to explore labor freedom in the agricultural sector for enhancing the efficiency of farming through policy change towards assigning property rights, rental contracts, and better wage-employment options to rural workers. labor freedom emphasizes land reform and development policy for improving the economic status and capabilities of rural workers. the paper assessed the labor freedom index, weighted through agricultural property rights, labor wage contracts, and rural development policy. data envelopment analysis is used to assess farm-level efficiency under the framework of tobit regression for different size-based farm categories. farm-level information was collected through a primary survey of 336 rural households of an advanced agricultural state in india. the study found a positive association between farm size and intensity of labor freedom, although the extent of freedom differs among farms. size-specific variation was also observed for allocative efficiency such that marginal and medium-sized farms are more efficient than smaller ones. tobit regression indicated labor freedom to be positively and significantly related to the efficiency of marginal, small and overall farms with enhancing efficiency of 25, 17 and nearly 20%, respectively; however, estimates of labor freedom insignificantly increased the efficiency of mediums farms, by 4.8%. this result suggests that labor freedom positive and significantly affects the efficiency of farms in general, and marginal and small farms in particular. of course, the elasticity estimate of enhancing efficiency through labor freedom for medium farmers is found at a lower level. contribution/originality: the study contributes to the existing literature of enhancing efficiency of farms through labor freedom options and opportunities, thereby building capabilities among rural workers. labor freedom can be enhanced through property rights, wage contracts, and region-specific development policy reform. the study findings will be further used to develop allocative efficiency at the farm-level. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.279.290 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: kapoor, r. and das, n. (2021). a pragmatic study for enhancing agricultural efficiency through labor freedom. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4), 279-290. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.279.290 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 4 (2021): 279-290 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3447-4215 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4178-9955 mailto:kapoorrajni2@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 279-290 280 1. introduction the existing literature on land reform, property rights, and rural wage-employment policy stating allocative inefficiency in the rural labor market found that, the smaller the farm size the higher the labor efficiency and vice-versa (ahmad, 2003; bardhan, 1979; bardhan, 1977; besley & burgess, 2000; green, 1987; hoque, 1993; moschini & hennessy, 2001; sen, 1981; taslim, 1990); examples from previous literature introduced rural development and migration policy to minimize rural–urban wage and employment gaps to enhance labor efficiency (boyer & hatton, 1997; deshingkar & akter, 2009; li, 1976; miller, 1966; renkow, 2003; rhoda, 1983; todaro, 1969; wouterse, 2010). this paper introduces the concept of labor freedom in the agricultural sector to resolve inefficiency issues through assessing the intensity of land reform, wage contracts, labor market reform, off-farm wages, and labor mobility, thereby evaluating its impact on agricultural efficiency. the purpose of labor freedom is to explain building capability among groups of rural laborers (namely, farm-labor, hired, forced, tenants, landlords, migrants, etc.) for enhancing the allocative farm efficiency1. labor freedom is specified to offer better wages and job options to rural workers in the process of economic transformation, thereby deploying resources from one use to another for development and efficiency (mellor, 2017). thus, labor freedom involves structural, institutional, and economic changes for enhancing agricultural efficiency (carraro & karfakis, 2018). labor freedom is an opportunity given to workers for getting better access to the labor market. it offers ‘voluntary exchange’ to both workers and employers sanctioned by labor laws. the concept of labor freedom is widespread and includes personal freedom, willingness and ability to work, along with legal rights to do so (baum, 2016). in the rural labor market, land inequality and market imperfections are found due to its monopsonic features and thus there are limited options and opportunities for workers to enhance efficiency (ezeala-harrison, 2004). besides, farm operations are seasonal and usually occur with involuntary job losses. in short, allocative inefficiency exists when an inadequate level of labor is working at a fluctuating wage rate (benjamin & brandt, 2002). land reform is considered as the first component of labor freedom that redistributes property rights among small and marginal farms for resolving inverse farm size and labor productivity relations; small-sized farms are more efficient in the use of labor resources as they are focused on intensive farming, irrigation improvements, and land quality (mendola & simtowe, 2015). likewise, tenancy reform provides possession of property on lease to ‘tenant’ laborers (deininger, jin, & nagarajan, 2009) for enhancing the efficiency and incentives to work. land rental contracts increase labor freedom with larger incentives and bargaining power, thereby giving an opportunity to register in rental contracts (banerjee, gertler, & ghatak, 2002). land rental activities were enhanced among rural households after the inclusion of tenancy reform in rural china, which allowed farmers to lease out their land (chari, liu, wang, & wang, 2017). in this way, the reform has provided freedom to ‘tenant’ laborers to develop their skills and talents. over a period of time, economic status will improve and tenants will be able to spend more on training, education, and health and, hence, the position of tenants will be upgraded from ‘ladders’ to ‘trained cultivators’. thus, tenancy reforms identified significant freedoms to rural laborers for earning income and investing in human and physical capital (tarisayi, 2014). next, wage contracts are interlinked transactions or commitments that landlords have made with workers for employment. minimum wage laws can measure the cost of labor in monetary terms, being suitable for both the skilled and unskilled worker (eswaran & kotwal, 1985). labor wage contracts and minimum wage laws motivate workers to be more liable to contribute their best, and landowners are also bound to pay higher wages, maintaining the consistency for enhancing efficiency of farms (ezeala-harrison, 2004). this enables landlords to engage farm labor during the peak season for attaining optimal employment at an efficient wage rate. there is a marked rise found in real wage payments of hired labor in days relative to hours during the recent years of institutional reform (chari et al., 2017). thus, reforms positive and significantly have affected rural wages and employment options. likewise, rural development policy boosts freedom of labor and efficiency of farms. a favorable development policy opens off-farm jobs for workers and creates opportunities for high rural wages and employment (lanjouw, shariff, & rahut, 2007). development policy affects the labor mobility of workers within rural to rural and rural to urban areas for better wages and job options; these movements towards efficient regions are considered as an alternative choice of labor (pingali, 2007). in-migration and out-migration of workers improve labor freedom with greater commuting to nearby residences and, besides, remittances have increased the productive capacity and efficiency of farming (nonthakot & villano, 2008). thus, labor mobility is a tool for balancing the knowledge, skills, and structure of both local and national labor markets facing the productivity challenges of globalized farming (chand, 2019). a rural development policy aims to promote investment in technology, agro-based industries, cooperative farming, and infrastructure, thereby providing off-farm job opportunities to farm workers. such inclusions are benefitable for both residential workers and those from nearby regions. a favorable rural development policy can induce migrant workers to settle for longer in the farm-job-receiving community (nori & farinella, 2020). labor freedom changes migration decisions positively (agbonlahor & phillip, 2015), whereas wage rigidities may limit rural labor market stabilizing at an under-employment situation (bardhan & mookherjee, 2008). nevertheless, the high pressures of population, scarcity of land, and insufficient growth of the off-farm sector reduce rural wages (hossain, 2008). thus, policy has endorsed labor mobility, commuting and incentive to move for migrant workers by reducing the rural/urban income and employment gaps (todaro & smith, 2006). subsequently, sociocultural gaps among rural and urban areas diminished (taylor, 2010) through retrieving options of upgrading abilities, knowledge, and attitudes. the average wage rate for farm wotk improved after implementing a rural employment program2 analyzing the total factor productivity of labor (nagaraj, bantilan, 1allocative efficiency refers to the ability to produce a given level of output using cost-minimizing input ratios. in other words, allocative inefficiency denotes inadequate levels of input showing an ambiguous effect on output and production costs. 2after implementation of mgnrega based on field survey data of the villages of maharashtra state of india. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 279-290 281 pandey, & roy, 2016). in developing countries, employment-orientated programs in the agro-based industries have been established at the village level for increasing the income and employment opportunities of the rural laborer. there is a significant positive relation among investment in the growth of agro-processing units and the rural employment. the study of kumar, dixit, kumar, and singh (2016) examined the impact of agro-processing units on the employment growth rate, taking into account all categories of agro-processing industries in india. a section of the literature reported positive and significant impact of agricultural productivity and efficiency on rural wages (kundu, 2016; nagaraj et al., 2016). in the surplus labor developing countries, rural wages have responded towards productivity and efficiency of the agricultural sector (hossain, 2008). rural wages and agricultural efficiency increased due to technical and institutional reforms following rural inventions and investments, thereby improving the marginal productivity of labor (chamberlin, jayne, & sitko, 2020). in this way, wage payments are positively related to labor freedom, labor productivity, and efficiency (venkatesh, 2013). thus, higher wage payments and better working conditions engaged labor in crucial farm activities. the study therefore attempts to explore first a comprehensive framework to measure labor freedom in an empirical perspective. the second objective is to offer an analytical perspective to determine its impact on the allocative efficiency of farms. the remainder of the article is organized as follows. the next section describes the data sources and methodology used to measure labor freedom and efficiency at the farm level. thereafter, the empirical findings are presented. conclusions and policy implications are specified in the last section. 2. materials and methods 2.1. dataset the study collected information through a primary survey conducted in the reference year 2020–21 using a multistage stratified sampling technique from different categories of farmers3. a total of 336 rural households were surveyed from randomly selected villages in the state of haryana in india. the cross-sectional data were compiled for estimation of allocative efficiency using the dea technique. for analyzing the impact of labor freedom on farm efficiency, a qualitative framework was designed for response analysis through measurable indicators from a sample of rural households. 2.2. area of research the northern zone of the state of haryana was selected for the primary survey as it is one of the most suitable areas for cereal production in india. the major crops being wheat, rice, and sugarcane. haryana is one of the developed states in regard to agriculture, where the green revolution has increased land productivity, and this state appears to be a technically efficient agricultural system. a recent study by coventry et al. (2015) revealed that the state achieved significant improvement in agricultural growth, especially in wheat production, since the green revolution. this state is a significant contributor of another staple crop, rice (sihmar, 2014). notably, the state in terms of geographical location falls under the category of major agro-climatic zones on the basis of rainfall, terrain, temperature, and soil characteristics, as defined by the haryana kisan ayog (government of haryana). the study area covers three randomly selected districts in the northern zone (figure 1). source: haryana state agricultural policy. 3 landless (0 acre), marginal (0 > 2.5 acres), small (2.5 > 5 acres), and medium (5 >10 acres). figure-1. district map of haryana state, india. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 279-290 282 2.3. framework of assessing labor freedom labor freedom was assessed through three-dimensional variables, namely agricultural property rights, labor wage contracts, and rural development policy as may be observed in the agricultural sector. the scheduled questionnaire was designed to obtain responses for each of the measurable indicators under those variables on a four-point scale (never, very little, little, and high) ranging from 1 to 4, thereby indicating high or full freedom (4), little or moderate freedom (3), very little or low freedom (2), or never or no freedom (1). the respondents were asked open-ended questions regarding each specific indicator with a discrete choice: yes/no, indicating a negligible freedom score for no (1), if yes, the intensity further evaluates into next three points of the assessment scale. qualitative scores were then quantified to arrive at a weighted index using the principal component (pca) framework (see chart-1). chart-1. indicators and qualitative reviews used to assess labor freedom from respondents. 2.4. indexing approach to measurement of labor freedom the first principal component is considered to estimate the weight for each indicator of the labor freedom. the principal component technique uses a correlation coefficient between dimension-wise indicators of labor freedom, described as the latent4 variables, which further depended on other observed variables. thus, the results are discussed in terms of component scores by transforming the variables and loading of the weights by each standardized original variable multiplied to obtain the average weighted index (wooldridge, 2015). for the same, pca weights (factor loadings 𝑙𝑖𝑗) are estimated by dividing the column sum of covariance σ𝑟𝑥𝑖𝑥𝑗 of each sub-components/indicator to the square root of column sum of covariance √𝛴σ𝑟𝑥𝑖𝑥𝑗 , i.e. 𝑙𝑖𝑗 = σ𝑟𝑥𝑖𝑥𝑗 √𝛴σ𝑟𝑥𝑖𝑥𝑗 principal component weights (λ) is estimated by adding the square sum of covariance of each indicator, i.e. λ = 𝑙1 2 + 𝑙2 2 + 𝑙3 2 + ⋯ … … … … … + 𝑙𝑟 2 estimated model to measure labor freedom indices labor freedom index (lfi) = σc𝑖wri , i = observations and r = set of indicators in the contemporary empirical literature, the principal component method is a widely used approach for extracting the significant determining factor through obtaining pca weights (factor loadings), solving the problem of multicollinearity and assessing reliability in the field of indices. 4 these latent variables are called components used in multivariate analysis comprises of a set of techniques dedicated to analyze data with more than one response variable (abdi, 2003). 1. agricultural property rights: (a) land reform: whether have benefitted with any piece of land from land reform? if yes, have had larger land before getting from land reform /had little land / had very little land. (b) land rental contracts: whether have made any kind of legal/formal land registration with the land rental contracts? if yes, have the land rental contracts disregarded the security of tenure / provided the security of tenure / provided the security of tenure and improved the bargaining capacity both. 2. labor wage policy (c) labor wage contracts: whether have ever employed on regular/contractual basis in farm job? if yes, has farm job disregarded the security and benefits of real wages / has farm job provided the security / has farm job provided the security and benefits of real wages? (d) minimum wage laws: whether have ever paid wages as per the minimum wage laws? if yes, have wage payments lesser than the work capacity? /have wage payments equal to the work capacity /have wage payments as per the work capacity and skills? (e) labor market reform: whether have benefitted with labor market reform? if yes, have these reforms disregarded the working conditions /have reforms provided good working conditions /have reforms provided good working conditions as well improved the wage rate? 3. rural development policy (f) off-farm wage/income: whether have ever benefitted with higher wage and employment from off-farm works? if yes, have had wage & employment before getting from off-farm? / had little wage & employment / had very little wage & employment? (g) off-farm job: whether have accessed off-farm job easily? if yes, have found lack of complete information about off-farm jobs? / found limited availability / found irregular jobs? (h) in-migration of labor: whether have found in-migration of workers for wage and employment in the rural area? if yes, have had larger wage & employment benefits before in-migration? / had little / had very little? (i) out-migration of labor: whether have found out-migration of workers for wage and employment from the rural area? if yes, have had facilitated larger commuting? /had facilitated little commuting /had facilitated very little commuting? asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 279-290 283 2.5. dea framework for allocative efficiency allocative efficiency can be measured using the cost-minimization dea model (charnes, cooper, & rhodes, 1978) analyzing with multi-input and single-output, constant returns to scale (crs) input oriented dea model. the inputoriented model represents the input to be proportionally reduced without changing the quantity of the output produced, following coelli, rahman, and thirtle (2002). let us assume that there are ‘n’ decision making units (dmus) each producing output using ‘m’ different inputs. a cost minimization linear programming problem is solved for each dmu and for qth dmu is given below: objective function: 𝑀𝑖𝑛𝜆𝑥𝑞 𝑧𝑞 ′ 𝑥𝑞 ∗ subject to; ∑ 𝜆𝑞𝑥𝑗𝑞 − 𝑁 𝑞=1 𝑥𝑗𝑞 ∗ ≤ 0, ∑ 𝜆𝑞𝑦𝑖𝑞 − 𝑦𝑖𝑞 ≥ 0 𝑁 𝑞=1 𝑁1𝜆𝑞 = 1, 𝜆𝑞 ≥ 0 where, 𝑧𝑞 = vector of unit price of inputs utilized by dmuq, 𝑥𝑞 ∗ = vector of input quantities of dmuq with respect to production cost minimization, 𝑦𝑖𝑞 = amount of output i produced by dmuq, 𝑥𝑗𝑞 = amount of j utilized by dmuq, 𝑁1 = an nx1 vector of one, 𝜆 = dual variables. a measure of cost efficiency is the ratio of minimum feasible cost to actual cost, it requires input prices. if the value is unity, then the farmers are cost efficient and if a value is less than unity indicates degrees of cost inefficiency. input-allocative efficiency is the ratio of the measure of cost efficiency to the measure of input-oriented measure of technical efficiency. if input prices are z = (𝑧1 , … . , 𝑧𝑛 ) ∈ 𝑅++ 𝑛 objects to minimize costs, minimum cost function is: 𝑐(𝑥𝑗𝑞 , 𝑧𝑞 ′ ) = 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑥 {𝑧𝑞 ′ 𝑥𝑞 ∗ : 𝑁1(𝑦𝑖𝑞 , 𝑥𝑗𝑞) ≥ 1} a measure of cost efficiency is the ratio of minimum cost to actual cost: 𝐶𝐸(𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧) = 𝑐(𝑧𝑞 ′ 𝑥𝑞 ∗ ) 𝑧𝑞 ′ 𝑥𝑞 a measure of input-allocative efficiency is: 𝐴𝐸1(𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧) = 𝐶𝐸(𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧)/𝑇𝐸1(𝑦, 𝑥) 2.6. tobit regression tobit regression is a second-stage econometric analysis using dea efficiency vrs dea (𝑇𝐸𝑞 𝑉𝑅𝑆) and in the crs dea (𝑇𝐸𝑞 𝐶𝑅𝑆) of qth farm regressed against some institutional factors suggested by tobin (1958). it is used to estimate determinants of agricultural efficiency when the observed dependent variable lies between 0 and 1. tobit regression is an alternate to the ols regression estimate and is applied when the dependent variable is bounded with specific positive range, as in dea allocative efficiency is either 0 or some positive figure from 0 to 1. it is reviewed that the estimation of ols is inconsistent and inefficient, which is why the tobit model is used replacing ols. the efficiency measurement is censored with the value between 0 and 1 known as censored regression to analyze the role of farm-specific factors in determining efficiency in the cultivation of crops, first analyzed in the econometric literature by maddala and lahiri (2009). in this study, the two-limit tobit model is used with a random effect assuming that the farm-specific individual effect of identified factors is not correlated with the observed experimental variables. the empirical tobit model for ith observation is given as: 𝑦𝑖 ∗ = 𝛽𝑚σ𝑥𝑖𝑚 ′ + 𝜖𝑖 , 𝑖 = 1, 2, 3, … .252 where, 𝑦𝑖 ∗ = latent variable representing dea allocative efficiency of farm i used as a dependent variable in the model, 𝜖𝑖/𝑥𝑖 is 𝑁(0, 𝜎0 2) . {𝑦𝑖 , 𝑥𝑖 }(𝑖 = 1, 2, … 𝑛) , 𝛽𝑚 is the vector of independent variables (m =1, 2…..k) and are known parameters associated with farm-specific factors. 𝜖𝑖 is normally distributed error term with zero mean and constant variance 𝜖𝑖~𝑁(0, 𝜎0 2). 𝑦𝑖 is observed variable, 𝑦𝑖 = 1, if 𝑦𝑖 ∗ ≥ 1 𝑦𝑖 = 𝑦𝑖 ∗, if 0 < 𝑦𝑖 ∗ < 1 𝑦𝑖 = 0, if 𝑦𝑖 ∗ ≤ 0 tobit regression model is used to apply the maximum likelihood approach to estimate the model. 𝐿 = ∏(1 − 𝐹𝑖) ∏ 1 (2 ∏ 𝜎2)1/2 𝑒[ 1 2𝜎2 ](𝑦𝑖 − 𝛽𝑥𝑖 ) 2 𝑦𝑖>0𝑦𝑖=0 where, 𝐹𝑖 = ∫ 1 (2π 1 2) 𝛽𝑖𝑥𝑖/𝜎 −∞ 𝑒 −−𝑖2/2 𝜕𝑖 𝐹𝑖 is normally scattered in the 𝛽𝑖𝑥𝑖/𝜎. in this way, farm level allocative efficiency scores are used in the tobit regression model to represent relation among the measurement of efficiency and socio-economic indicators of farmers. it is reviewed in the literature that there are several variables identified to examine allocative efficiency level among farmers, such as age, education, family labor, year of farming experience and farm size; information is collected based on surveys and interviews. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 279-290 284 3. results and discussion 3.1. farm-wise intensity of labor freedom index the survey results depict the farm-wise intensity of labor freedom represented in table 1, which reveals that around 60 per cent of the landless have low scores and approximately 40 per cent have a moderate score of labor freedom. it is observed that although landless farmers are working as hired, farm or contractual laborers; land and labor market reforms has improved their working conditions, wages, and job tenure because landowners have made some kind of explicit or implicit contract with them. likewise, the study of eswaran and kotwal (1985) mentioned that labor wage contracts were required to confirm the supply of farm labor for completing agricultural works. besides, migrant workers have benefitted with rural development policies; it is observed that a development policy has provided off-farm job opportunities to in-migrants and local laborers. consequently, migrant workers are engaged in off-farm work within the rural area staying at the farm-job-receiving community. nevertheless, rhoda (1983) found that rural-urban migration of labor was reduced by increasing cultivatable land and equalizing the size of landholding. figure 2 is the representation of table 1 for a better understanding (see figure 2). it is also observed that development policy is positively related to commuting, incentives to move, and labor mobility and, in this way, employment rate is observed to be better in rural areas. similar observations have been specified by renkow (2003) in north carolina, that commuting flows of workers and employment growth rate were found positively related to each other. table 1 depicts that nearly 40 per cent of marginal farmers have low scores of labor freedom and above 50 percent have a moderate score, and it was observed that a couple of marginal farmers are largely benefitted more than landless because a larger proportion of marginal farmers have used land rental contracts and labor wage laws, besides land has been redistributed among weaker classes within the village, and community lease-in land found available for farming at lowest rent. herein the study it is observed that rental contracts provided possession of land to the marginal farmers/tenants and has improved their bargaining capacity, tenure security, and production rights. nevertheless, a group of marginal farmers is found in a very low range of labor freedom because they are not from the main profession of farming and hence have not received direct benefits from freedom. table-1. farm-wise intensity of labor freedom index. labor freedom level landless marginal small medium overall freq. % freq. % freq. % freq. % freq. % 1 ≥ 𝑓𝐿 > 2 (very low) 0 0 9 10.71 3 3.57 1 1.19 19 5.66 2 ≥ 𝑓𝐿 > 2.5 (low) 49 58.33 31 36.9 25 29.76 13 15.48 100 29.76 2.5 ≥ 𝑓𝐿 > 3 (moderate) 35 41.67 44 52.38 46 54.76 57 67.86 202 60.12 3 ≥ 𝑓𝐿 > 3.99 (high) 0 0 0 0 10 11.9 13 15.48 15 4.46 total sample 84 100 84 100 84 100 84 100 336 100 next, table 1 also reveals that around 30 per cent of small farmers have low scores and 55 percent have a moderate score of labor freedom. the results suggest that small farmers have enjoyed the considerations of labor freedom more than marginal farmers. figure 2 shows that more than 10 percent of small farmers have high scores of labor freedom. it indicates that freedom improved when contract farming, whether in the form of sharecropping or fixed rent benefitted small farmers through increasing the number of land registrations. similarly, the study of banerjee et al. (2002) on indian agriculture has reported that small landholders secured tenureship and bargaining capabilities in tenancy reform. thus, results are expected. table 1 depicts that around 15 per cent of medium farmers have low scores and nearly 70 percent have a moderate score. it is observed that development policy has explored the options for them to work as technical personnel. it is also found that in the farming process, medium-sized farms have coordinated the exchange activities with tenants for mutual benefit. in contrast, powell (2002) reported that medium-sized farms that have diversified crops have greater harvesting options to choose the best with well-defined property rights. figure-2. farm-wise intensity of labor freedom index. we observe that around 15 percent of medium farmers have higher scores of labor freedom (see figure 2) because they have greater incentives to move with better wages and employment and have used remittances as inputs to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 279-290 285 improve farm management. likewise, taylor and wyatt (1996) analyzed migrant households of rural mexico and has found that remittances enhanced household farm income indirectly by reducing their financial constraints, whereas one respondent from a medium rural household was found in a very low category. it suggests that out-migration has placed a negative effect on farming and has reduced the quality and intensity of farm work. migrant households have the ‘labor loss’ effect owning to insufficient farm laborers in the initial years of migration (gubert, 2002; mochebelele & winternelson, 2000), and the process of optimizing labor input continued till replacing labor intensity with non-labor inputs or machines (yang et al., 2016). 3.2. components/indicators of labor freedom labor freedom index is the composite average of the weights assigned to each individual indicator (see table 2), which reveals that, on average, landless farmers have benefitted with off-farm jobs, labor market reform, and minimum wage laws as a mean estimate of these indicators are found 3.08, 2.99 to 2.84, respectively, and the standard deviation of off-farm jobs (0.45) is a minimum specifying that data points are inclined to be very close to the mean. whereas, the standard deviation of labor market reform (0.68) found a maximum for landless indicating that data points spread out over a large range of values. on the other hand, landless have the lowest mean (0.71) in land reform and estimated with the lowest standard deviation (0.003), meaning that landless workers have not been provided significant land from the land reform. table-2. summary statistics: weighted average scores of labor freedom indicators. indicators landless marginal small medium total land reform (ldr) 0.71 (0.003) 1.49 (0.78) 0.80 (0.29) 0.89 (0.38) 0.98 (0.54) land rental contracts (lrc) 2.69 (0.52) 2.80 (0.96) 2.66 (0.58) 2.70 (0.44) 2.91 (0.69) labor wage contracts (lwc) 2.28 (0.49) 2.54 (0.56) 2.83 (0.71) 3.13 (0.48) 2.94 (0.65) minimum wage laws (mwl) 2.99 (0.67) 2.97 (0.73) 2.83 (0.68) 2.62 (0.45) 2.54 (0.57) labor market reform (lmk) 2.84 (0.68) 2.86 (0.73) 2.99 (0.74) 3.63 (0.44) 3.07 (0.71) off-farm jobs (ofw1) 3.08 (0.45) 2.04 (0.49) 2.42 (0.71) 2.92 (0.53) 2.83 (0.72) off-farm wages (ofw2) 2.42 (0.42) 2.75 (0.81) 2.91 (0.77) 2.69 (0.77) 2.56 (0.66) in-migration of labor (lmb1) 2.78 (0.62) 2.43 (0.75) 2.97 (0.73) 3.26 (0.70) 2.96 (0.74) out-migration of labor (lmb2) 2.32 (0.62) 2.29 (0.64) 3.02 (0.75) 2.98 (0.72) 2.43 (0.64) labor freedom (lfi) 2.45 (0.16) 2.47 (0.33) 2.60 (0.34) 2.76 (0.26) 2.58 (0.30) observations 84 84 84 84 336 next, marginal farmers have good scores for minimum wage laws, labor market reforms, land rental contracts, and off-farm wages as a mean estimate of these indicators are 2.97, 2.87, 2.80 to 2.75. respectively. small farmers are found to be more inclined towards out-migration and in-migration, as mean scores of these indicators are 3.02 to 2.97, respectively. the mean estimate of labor market reform (3.63) is maximum for medium farmers. furthermore, inmigration of labor (3.26) and wage contracts (3.13) have increased the freedom of medium households. thus, table 2 depicts a positive relation between farm size and weighted average scores of labor freedom indicators. that is why the mean value of labor freedom index is estimated as high (2.76) for medium farms and low (2.45) for landless. 3.3. input-output summary in cereal production the major inputs used in cereal production (rice and wheat) are land, seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, electricity, machinery, and labor. the natural logarithm of input-output data is represented in table 3. table 3 shows that land is an important input in the cereal production. the results indicate farm-wise increase in expenditure on land, on an average, mean estimate of land (10.66) is minimum for marginal farmers’. there is a positive relation found between farm size and expenditure on seeds also, the results exclude medium farmers. a similar kind of result observations have been reported by amaechina and eboh (2017). it is observed that large-size farms spend more on fertilizers. the application of fertilizer varies across farms due to lack of capital and proper knowledge of using it. table 3 depicts extensive expenditure on pesticide as farm size increases. it suggests that medium farms have spent more on pesticides. the mean estimate of electricity consumption varies across farms. it indicates that, on an average, marginal farmers have spent least on electricity. the expenditure pattern reveals that marginal farmers are more rational in their expenditure on inputs. it is found that marginal and small farmers have almost equal expenditure in hiring machinery such as tractors, combines, or threshers used during harvesting and cultivation; however, medium farmers paid slightly more than others. nevertheless, labor requirements asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 279-290 286 of marginal and medium farmers were low, although small farmers spent more on labor. it is reported that marginal and medium farmers enjoyed the highest output using adequate proportion of inputs in farming, whereas small farmers misused their resources and produced the lowest output. the results are consistent with the findings of nasrin, bauer, and arman (2018). table-3. summary statistics of input-output data used in cereal production (expenditure/land). input output seed fertilizer pesticide electricity machine labor land marginal farms, dmus=84 mean 11.78 7.47 8.57 7.96 7.90 8.64 8.60 10.66 sd 10.41 6.38 6.40 6.53 6.78 6.78 7.24 8.94 min 10.61 6.68 8.01 7.09 6.91 8.13 8.01 10.31 max 12.44 8.29 8.74 8.34 8.49 8.91 9.20 10.97 small farms, dmus= 84 mean 11.74 7.64 8.60 8.10 8.01 8.64 8.77 10.69 sd 10.52 6.67 6.23 6.41 6.90 6.70 7.29 8.76 min 11.16 7.00 8.34 7.60 7.31 8.29 8.27 10.31 max 12.44 8.52 8.74 8.52 8.59 8.99 9.20 10.97 medium farms, dmus= 84 mean 11.82 7.49 8.61 8.15 8.18 8.67 8.64 10.72 sd 10.14 6.51 6.17 6.48 7.49 6.83 6.84 8.73 min 11.38 7.00 8.34 7.55 7.17 8.29 8.19 10.31 max 12.30 8.52 8.80 8.61 9.21 9.04 8.94 10.97 all farms, dmus= 252 mean 11.78 7.54 8.59 8.07 8.04 8.65 8.68 10.69 sd 10.39 6.55 6.28 6.55 7.19 6.77 7.21 8.82 min 10.61 6.68 8.01 7.09 6.91 8.13 8.01 10.31 max 12.44 8.52 8.80 8.61 9.21 9.04 9.20 10.97 note: sd=standard deviation, min=minimum, max=maximum value. 3.4. allocative efficiency of farms in order to determine the cause of inefficiency across different size-based farm categories, the study estimated allocative efficiency scores using dea methodology. a farmer having an allocative efficiency score between 0.7 and >0.9 is treated as highly efficient, less than 0.5 is inefficient, between 0.5 and >0.7 is moderate and between 0.9 and >1 is extremely efficient. farm-wise allocative efficiency scores are represented in figure 3, which reveals that allocative efficiency scores varied across farm category ranges from inefficient to extremely efficient. it is found that more than 45 per cent of marginal farms are moderately, around 12 percent are extremely and 25 percent are highly efficient. the study suggests that marginal farms have used a suitable quantity of inputs. nevertheless, nearly 20 percent are inefficient because this group may be primarily associated with off-farm jobs. the implication of the observation is that a larger proportion of marginal farms have efficiently allocated resources. figure-3. farm-wise dea allocative efficiency. figure 3 reveals that around 60 per cent of small landholders are moderately efficient, more than 30 percent are less than 0.5 and a couple of small-size farms are extremely efficient. it is observed that the majority of the small farms are inefficient relative to the best-practised farms that are producing the same output at the given technology. on the other hand, around 55 percent of medium farms are highly, nearly 15 percent are extremely (0.9 >1) and around 30 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 279-290 287 percent are moderately efficient, however, a couple of them are inefficient. the results indicate that the majority of medium landholders (70 percent) have utilized resources efficiently. this would provide an opportunity to them to increase farm revenue through equalizing marginal revenue product of inputs to their marginal costs (umanath & rajasekar, 2013). the results are consistent with the findings of coelli, rao, o'donnell, and battese (2005). 3.5. impact of labor freedom on allocative efficiency of farms the estimated model of tobit regression can be written as: aei = β0 + β1lfii + β2agei + β3edui + β4nfii + β5dumii + ui (1) where 𝐴𝐸 = allocative efficiency of 𝑖𝑡ℎ no of observations , 𝑖 = 252, 𝑈𝑖 = error term, dumi=1………..3 (for marginal, small, and medium farms). 𝐴𝐸 is latent variable ranges from 0 𝑡𝑜 1, β0, β1, β2, β3, β4 and β5 are the coefficients of labor freedom index, age of head of the family, education level, non-farm income, and farm-size dummy, respectively; in this study, four tobit regression models operated in stata@ 14.0 were used to examine the impact of labor freedom and socio-economic variables on allocative efficiency. the five given explanatory variables are assumed as a cause of inefficiency across farms. the econometric results of tobit regression model estimated from equation 1 are shown in table 4. the results reveal that all models are statistically significant at the 1% level as p-value>fstatistics(0.000). the selected five variables {namely, labor freedom index (lfi), age of farmers (age), education (edu), non-farm income (nfi), and dummy of farm-size (dumi)} have significantly contributed to farm-level efficiency. table-4. impact of labor freedom on allocative efficiency of farms. variables tobit regression results parameters marginal small medium overall constants β0 0.084 (0.620) 0.248 (1.750) 0.572*** (3.820) 0.231*** (2.76) labor freedom index β1 0.249*** (6.12) 0.170*** (4.830) 0.048 (1.18) 0.189*** (8.21) age β2 -0.004*** (-0.300) -0.011 (0.015) 0.007 (0.510) -0.004 (-0.48) education β3 0.017** (1.770) 0.002 (0.210) 0.012 (1.32) 0.010** (1.8) non-farm income β4 -0.019** (-1.940) 0.002 (0.160) 0.014 (0.97 -0.004 (0.537) farm-size dummy β5 na na na -0.018 (2.76) p-value > f 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** lr chi2 33.12 23 4.43 65.97 log likelihood estimates 59.859 67.106 76.337 180.316 no of observations 84 84 84 252 note: ***significant at 1%, **significant at 5%. table 4 reveals that the coefficient of labor freedom is positively and significantly related to allocative efficiency at the 1% level of significance. the results indicate that an increase in the option and opportunities of labor freedom such as property rights, miniumum wage laws, and land rental contracts improve allocative and resource-use ability among marginal farmers by 25%. the results are consistent with the study of nagaraj et al. (2016), whereas age and non-farm income of marginal farmers show negative and significant effect on efficiency. the implication of the result is that an increase in the age and non-farm income of marginal farms has reduced the resource-use efficiency by 0.4% and 0.19% respectively. it is observed that aged farmers and those with other sources of income are found less efficient than the younger farmers with farming as their primary profession. similar conclusions are specified in bhatt and bhat (2014). education is found to be positive and significantly related to efficiency of marginal landholders. this implies that an increase in the year of schooling of marginal farms enhanced farm efficiency by 0.17%. the study suggests that education has assisted marginal farmers in making better allocation of resources. for small farmers, the coefficient of labor freedom is found positive and significant at 1%. the results indicate that an increase in the freedom of labor such as migration with commuting services enhanced efficiency by 17%. the age of small landholders was found to be negative and insignificantly related to efficiency. the results suggest that an increase in the age of small farmers reduced resource-use efficiency by 1.1%. it is observed that aged farmers are less efficient than younger farmers. similar observations are confirmed in the findings of houngue and nonvide (2020). education is positively related to efficiency, but the relationship is not significant. the estimated results suggest that an increase in the years of schooling will improve efficiency of small farms by 0.2%. it is observed that knowledge, skills, and ability helped them to access and allocate resources in a better way. similar results have specified by bravoureta and pinheiro (1997). next, labor freedom estimates of medium-size farms are positive and insignificantly related to allocative efficiency. moreover, the extent of efficiency increased by 4.8%. it is observed that a very smaller proportion of labor freedom options and opportunities such as labor market reform, wage contracts, and migrants’ remittances are used to allocate and access resources. similar results were reported by benjamin and brandt (2002). age of the head of medium asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 279-290 288 households was also found positive but insignificantly associated with farm efficiency. the results indicate that a 1% increase in the age of farmers will increase efficiency by 0.07 %. this implies that older farmers have allocated resources more efficiently than younger producers at their counterparts. the results are consistent with the findings of coelli et al. (2002). moreover, education is also positive but insignificant. the results suggest that a one percent increase in years of schooling improved efficiency by 0.12 %. the coefficient of non-farm income was found positive, but insignificant. it means that a one percent increase in income from other sources increased the resource-use efficiency of medium farms by 0.14%. this implies that income from other professions (secondary jobs) has created an assured and continuous supply of extra disposable income for fulfilling farming requirements. similar findings were reported by sibiko et al. (2013). furthermore, the coefficient of labor freedom of farms overall was found positive and significant at 1%. this implies that efficiency increased by 18.9%. the results indicate that greater options given to rural laborers built capabilities to allocate resources efficiently and effectively. similar results were found by kundu (2016). age, on average, was found to be negative and insignificant. it suggests that a one percentage increase in the age of the sampled farmers decreased efficiency by 0.04%. likewise, non-farm income was also found to be negative and insignificant (see table 4), implying that the extent of efficiency reduced by 0.04%. it is also observed that farmers whose main occupation continued to be farming are expected to have higher efficiency than those engaged in any other income-generating activity. next, farm size was found to be negative and significantly related to efficiency at the 1% level of significance. farm size is a dummy variable of different farm categories. the study reveals that membership of a farm group reduced efficiency by 1.8% compared to non-member counterparts. in contrast, the findings of tchale (2009) in malawi showed that farmers who had been members of any group not only benefitted with knowledge, resource use and input price, but were also credited with economies of scale. 4. conclusions it is concluded that labor freedom in agriculture is empowered with property rights, legal approvals, autonomy of choices, and making changes in development policy. consequently, this paper emphasizes ownership rights, tenancy reform, wages, and rental contracts. moreover, the paper specifies rural development policy exploring off-farm work to enhance labor freedom, rural wage employment, and the mobility of workers. in this way, the paper has determined a farm-wise labor freedom index using weights of nine sub-components/indicators for enhancing agricultural efficiency. the outcomes show a positive relation between farm size and intensity of labor freedom. it is found that the mean value of labor freedom index ranges from 2.76, 2.60, and 2.47 to 2.45 for medium, small, marginal, and landless farmers, respectively. however, indicators of labor freedom are found different farm-wise: on average, labor market reform, wage contracts and minimum wage laws, off-farm jobs and in-migration of labor significantly contributed to development of the freedoms and options of rural laborers. the study found that labor requirement by marginal and medium farmers is estimated as low, but small farmers spent more on labor. the observations suggest that marginal and medium farmers have enjoyed the highest output using an adequate proportion of inputs in farming; on the other hand, small farmers have misused resources and produced a lower output than others. allocative efficiency scores varied across farm size, implying that marginal and medium farms are more efficient relative to small farms. tobit regression estimated labor freedom to be positively and significantly related to the efficiency of marginal, small, and overall farms, with the extent of enhancing efficiency by 25, 17 and nearly 20%, respectively, although elasticity estimates of labor freedom increased the efficiency of medium farms by 4.8%. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: this article is based on a doctoral study of the first author under supervision by the second author. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdi, h. 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(2016). migration, local off-farm employment, and agricultural production efficiency: evidence from china. journal of productivity analysis, 45(3), 247-259. available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11123-015-0464-9. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 99 some rural attractions which attract tourists shu-yi chia , biing-wen huanga, han xing luoa a department of applied economics, national chung hsing university, taichung, taiwan, (r.o.c).  silvia663489@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 05-mar-2019 accepted: 13-may-2019 online available: 03-jun2019 keywords: rural tourism, attraction, experiential value, just revisit, satisfaction abstract developing rural tourism is a comprehensive strategy for improving the rural economy. the structure equation model (sem) approach was applied to test how attraction and experiential values of a rural region affect the tourists’ satisfaction and their decision to revisit. after interviewing 353 tourists during their trip to hakka county, miaoli, taiwan, the new finding of this study is that rural life and culture are more attractive than rural scenery to tourists. this implies a strong preference for tourists to experience agricultural knowledge and engage with rural life and farming work. furthermore, the experiential response generated from the indirect mediation effect of satisfaction had a significant effect, supporting the concept that satisfaction brings additional experiential values to the intentions of tourists to revisit and thus creates more revisit opportunities to those tour sites. contribution/ originality the study explores that rural life and culture are more attractive than rural scenery to tourists which implies the tourists’ strong preference for experiencing agricultural knowledge and engaging with rural life. further, the indirect mediation effect of satisfaction had a significant effect on supporting the concept that satisfaction brings additional experiential values to tourists’ intention to revisit and thus creates more revisit opportunities to those tour sites. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.99.110 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: shu-yi chi, biing-wen huang and han xing luo (2019). some rural attractions which attract tourists. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1), 99-110. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 1 (2019): 99-110 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9328-7084 mailto:silvia663489@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.1/1005.1.99.110 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 99-110 100 1. introduction rural tourism refers to tourist activities in rural areas or non-urban territory where tourists engage in leisure and rural pursuits with aspects of emotional and spiritual experiences (jepson and sharpley, 2015; liu, 2008; oppermann, 1996). since emotional experiences in rural development influence tourist preferences, the development of rural tourism has become the primary boosting momentum for the advancement of rural prosperity (huang et al., 2016). this further helps to form the win-win strategies which not only benefit tourists for their satisfaction but also local residents which results in higher employment and income as well as better quality of life (choenkwan et al., 2016). however, aside from the expense incurred by the tourists themselves, the characteristics of tourist attractions, whether travel experiences can be shared or recommended via social media, and the likelihood that tourists will revisit tourist destinations in the future may be taken into account (sameer et al., 2016). accordingly, a rural area that lacks the potential for commercial images, a distinctive natural landscape, or a planned interactive environment may not appeal to tourists. of the many factors that affect consumers’ decisions on tour destinations, attraction is seen as an inherent behavioral intention (leiper, 1990). tourist preferences for a tour destination typically exert a positive influence on tourist satisfaction, while the characteristics of different destinations create a diverse attraction network for tourists. in other words, rural attractions with distinctive characteristics, such as a farmers’ auction market may appeal to tourists (ea et al., 2015; choenkwan et al., 2016; mckercher and koh, 2017). based on consumer experiences, consumer value can be seen as an interactive and relativistic preference whose value lies not in its purchase but in the associated consumer experience (holbrook and hirschman, 1982; holbrook, 1996; pine and gilmore, 1998; simelane et al., 2016; lee et al., 2017). accordingly, creating memorable experiences for tourists has become a core value of the tourist industry (knobloch et al., 2017). for tour business, providing a memorable tour and continuously developing new tourist products will generate positive word-of-mouth communication (knobloch et al., 2017) and will enhance their competitiveness and sustainability (ritchie et al., 2011). because the cost of attracting potential tourists is often higher than that of tourists who already have experience in the tour, the development of tourist attractions is increasingly dependent on those revisit tourists. thus, an insight into the revisit intentions of tourists has become an important research topic (assaker et al., 2011; chew and jahari, 2014). in addition, investigations of rural tourism have shown that satisfaction and revisit frequency have an impact on tourists’ revisit intentions (antón et al., 2017). therefore intense analysis of revisit intention is also regarded as a key economic factor that could affect the tourist industry as well as rural tourism (jang and feng, 2007). while numerous existing tourist studies focus more on destination characteristics, experiences, and satisfaction, the mediating effect of satisfaction, which is a notable feature of rural tourist research, is rarely discussed. based on rural tourist perspectives, this study plans to investigate related cases of rural leisure tourism of taiwan and to explore how attraction and experiential values in terms of tour projects and attractive products affect tourist intentions to revisit the same sites. the findings could be used as a comprehensive reference for rural communities in relation to designing tourist activities and experiences to further steer tourist development in regenerating rural communities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 99-110 101 2. methods 2.1. research framework 2.1.1. attraction attraction refers to the motivation of internal force (inherent behavioral force) that affects consumers’ decisions and pushes them toward attractions (leiper, 1990); this is also known as the “first power” in tourist development (gunn, 1997). attraction is chiefly focused on culture, nature, activities, recreation, and entertainment, and tourists are also attracted by natural scenery, buildings, artificial landscapes, and special festivals (swarbrooke, 2002). rural attractions with distinctive characteristics appeal greatly to tourists (choenkwan et al., 2016), while attractive tourist markets also draw consumers to visit (mckercher and koh, 2017). the development of rural tourism is also one of the winning strategies for potential agriculture enhancement (choenkwan et al., 2016). in their study, cai and combrink (2000) came up with the push-pull theory of tourist motivation. according to that theory, the tourist attraction of rural destinations comprises the push factors that motivate tourists to travel, such as education, physiology, health, social events, and conspicuousness, while the pull factors include other aspects that appeal to tourists; for example, natural landscapes, rural life and culture, and convenient transportation. 2.1.2. experiential value experiential value is essentially untouchable, but the perceptions consumers gain from the process of experiencing is long-lasting (pine and gilmore, 1998). based on consumer research, people tend to be fascinated by intangible experiences that benefit them mentally; for example, experiencing a feeling of fun (holbrook and hirschman, 1982; holbrook, 1996), a sense of happiness, a desire to flee, or the urge to enjoy a fresh impetus (weinberger et al., 2017). such “experiences” learned through experience could be considered the most popular “product” of the tourist market (knobloch et al., 2017). through the process of experiencing, consumers are guided to make accurate decisions in the presence of a credible behavior which allows them to live a meaningful life as a result (schmitt and zarantonello, 2013). through authentic experiences, tourists will gain personal experiential values from various interactions in the course of their travel (sheth et al., 1991). the experiential perceptions of consumers typically involve five aspects: namely, sense (sensory experience), feel (affective experience), think (intellectual experience), act (behavioral experience), and overall (schmitt and zarantonello, 2013). furthermore, these experiential values also extend to consumers’ return on expenditure, the quality of service they experience, and their aesthetic perceptions and pleasure (mathwick et al., 2001). 2.1.3. satisfaction and revisit intention in assessing the important aspects of consumers’ experiential values, satisfaction is measured based on the tourists’ expectations of their scheduled travel tours and their actual perceptions of their destination after they arrive (del bosque and martin, 2008). zeithaml et al. (1996) defined willingness to revisit a destination as the intention to return to a place but also the willingness to recommend it; in other words, it amounts to the cognitive difference between consumers’ prepurchase expectations and their actual post-purchase perceptions. westbrook (1987) suggests that satisfaction is usually the mediating variable of the consumers’ willingness to repurchase. lin et al. (2003) explored tourist revisit intentions in relation to scenic coastal areas with this framework. the results supported that satisfaction positively affects tourists’ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 99-110 102 behavioral intentions, deepens their perceptions of the tourist experience, and significantly affects tourists’ intentions to revisit a destination. 2.2. hypotheses two approaches are adopted to explore the travel value of tourists in this study. one is the investigation of interests combined with consumer values, and the second one is the concept of experiential values, which has drawn increasing attention among tour operators recently (komppula and gartner, 2013). experiential marketing has also been applied by many researchers to measure tourist experiences by influencing tourist satisfaction (cai and combrink, 2000; shen et al., 2005). leask et al. (2013) suggested that to meet the needs of all generations for traveling, agents may adopt segment-based experiential marketing strategies to attract tourists. sameer et al. (2016) showed that tourist satisfaction brings about tourist loyalty, and this affection toward the destination will exert a direct influence on tourist satisfaction and their intentions to recommend the attractions. if a tourist’s image in accordance with the experience is pleasant, this will then increase the tourist’s intention to revisit the destination. although destination attributes play a key role with tourists choosing a place to visit, how to fulfill the typical travel wishes of the tourists and present enjoyable travel experience are more important with regard to meeting tourists’ expectations (gannon et al., 2017). this study evaluates the relationships between experiential values, attraction, satisfaction, and tourist revisit intentions based on four hypotheses as follows: hypothesis 1: attraction positively influences experiential values. hypothesis 2: experiential values positively influences satisfaction. hypothesis 3: experiential values positively influence the tourists’ intention to revisit. hypothesis 4: satisfaction positively influences the tourists’ intention to revisit. we also plan to examine the mediating effect of tourist satisfaction between experiential values and revisit intention. the research framework is shown below (see figure 1). figure 1: research framework 2.3. data collection and analysis the 353 questionnaires were collected during july and september of 2015 with an effective rate of 88.25%. in summary, many of the tourists (195; 55.2%) were from central taiwan (see table 1). most of the tourists were female, at 248 (70.3%), while 128 tourists stated that they were aged 45– 65 (36.3%). a total of 140 tourists reported having a bachelor degree (39.7%), and 101 were engaged in business (28.6%). income of less than 25k ntd per month was claimed by 163 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 99-110 103 (46.2%), while 168 stated that they travelled with their families (47.6%). 178 tourists (50.4%) travelled less than three times for the number of domestic travel trips taken in 2014. table 1: descriptive statistics of the sample (n=353) category item number percentage (%) residence north 158 44.8 central 195 55.2 gender male 105 29.7 female 248 70.3 age under 14 40 11.3 15–24 35 9.9 25–34 47 13.3 35–44 30 8.5 45–64 128 36.3 65 and above 73 20.7 education elementary and below 44 12.5 junior high school 46 13.0 senior high school 100 28.3 college 140 39.7 master and above 23 6.5 times of domestic travel in 2014 1-3 178 50.4 4 – 6 153 43.4 7 – 9 21 6.1 10 or above 21 6.1 occupation student 76 21.5 business 101 28.6 government official 17 4.8 agriculture 2 0.6 retirement 97 27.5 other 60 17.0 monthly income less than 25k 163 46.2 25k–40k 101 28.6 40k–55k 53 15.0 55k–70k 18 5.1 70k and above 18 5.1 travel companion alone 13 3.7 family 168 47.6 couple 5 1.4 friend 140 39.7 coworker 9 2.5 other 18 5.1 none 22 6.2 3. results 3.1. indicator analysis and reliability analysis to check whether discrimination was associated with the indicators in the questionnaire, an item analysis was first done before confirmatory factor analysis to examine the relevance of each indicator item in the questionnaire. comparisons of extreme groups were used in the item analysis, and the samples were divided in a 27% to 73% split. a paired sample t-test was taken to check the discrepancy in the means of the indicators for the two groups. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 99-110 104 results indicated that all the variables discriminated well. subsequently, a reliability analysis was carried out to identify the internal consistency of the questionnaire, and modified indicators with a total correlation of lower than 0.50 were deleted from the scale. the cronbach’s α coefficients displayed in the reliability analysis of the latent variables were all over 0.80 (0.84~0.90), and it can thus be inferred that this questionnaire is reliable. descriptive statistics and reliability detection of the four latent variables of the model are shown in table 2 below. table 2: results of the reliability measure (n=353) dimensions number of items mean s. deviation cronbach’s α attraction 7 6.457 3.836 0.851 experiential value 9 6.459 4.459 0.886 satisfaction 7 6.472 3.875 0.900 revisit intention 3 6.605 1.578 0.840 3.2. confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) in this study, a modification index (mi) was used to delete the indicators whose standardized estimates were lower than 0.5 or which had high variance in order to improve the model fit. goodness of fit (gfi), adjusted goodness of fit (agfi), root mean square error of approximation (rmsea), tucker-lewis index (tli), and comparative fit index (cfi) were applied to measure the model fit in structural equation modeling (sem) (fan and sivo, 2005). table 3 shows the gfi analysis of the research model, where χ2/df = 1.864, gfi = 0.929, agfi = 0.900, rmsea = 0.050, tli = 0.960, and cfi = 0.966. these statistics indicate that a good fit was achieved. table 3: goodness-of-fit measures for the structural equation model notes: χ2 = chi-square, df = degree of freedom, gfi = goodness-of-fit index, agfi = adjusted goodness-offit index, rmsea = root mean square error of approximation, tli = tucker-lewis index, cfi = comparative fit index, (+): acceptability three types of convergent validity in the measurement model are described as follows: (1) factor loadings serving as index variables explain the correlation of each variable to the underlying factor. the larger the factor loadings, better the expression of the factors. the recommended factor loadings from the results ranged between 0.6 and 0.95; (2) composite reliability (cr) is used to measure the internal consistency of the factor variables, and a cr value  0.7 is considered; and (3) average variance extracted (ave) is used to assess discriminant validity with an ave  0.5 considered (hair et al., 2013). as shown in table 4, the cr in the four latent variables was between 0.831 and 0.896, presenting good internal consistency. in addition, the ave of the latent variables mostly reached the standard threshold of 0.5 or above. goodness-of-fit measure index criterion χ2/df 1.864 <3.0 gfi 0.929 >0.80 agfi 0.900 >0.80 rmsea 0.050 0.08 tli 0.960 >0.90 cfi 0.966 >0.90 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 99-110 105 table 4: results of exploratory factor analysis of the standardized model latent variables and measured indicators estimate smc se t-value cr ave attraction (engagement in rural tourism) 0.831 0.623 a6 able to experience natural resources (natural resources) 0.753 0.567 a7 able to experience rural life and culture (life and culture) 0.856 0.733 0.085 14.730*** a8 able to experience rural landscape resources (landscape resources) 0.754 0.569 0.098 13.649*** experiential values (experience gained from rural tour engagement) 0.847 0.499 c1 i perceived the beauty of rural areas (sense of beauty) 0.699 0.489 c2 i gained knowledge and pleasure (pleasure) 0.727 0.529 0.077 12.661*** b1 i felt sensual enjoyment (sensory experience) 0.694 0.482 0.078 12.130*** b2 i felt warmth and enthusiasm from rural villages (affective experience) 0.674 0.454 0.075 11.784*** b3 i gained knowledge about rural industry (intellectual experience) 0.756 0.572 0.074 13.149*** b4 i’m pining for rural life and activity engagement (behavioral experience) 0.732 0.536 0.085 12.753*** b5 i’ll be more aware of rural tourism development (overall experience) 0.657 0.432 0.077 11.500*** satisfaction (personal experience of this rural tour) 0.896 0.591 g2 i’m satisfied with the content (experiencing content) 0.838 0.702 g1 i’m satisfied with the environment of the rural community (rural environment) 0.728 0.530 0.060 15.481*** g3 i’m satisfied with the schedule (schedule arrangements) 0.820 0.672 0.058 18.404*** g4 i’m satisfied with the safety of the facilities on site (facility safety) 0.670 0.449 0.063 13.850*** g5 i’m satisfied with the food and beverage arrangements (catering arrangements) 0.733 0.537 0.055 15.619*** g7 i’m satisfied with the overall activity (overall activity) 0.810 0.656 0.052 18.070*** tourist’s intention to revisit 0.841 0.639 d1 i will participate in rural tourist activities if there’s a chance (revisit) 0.741 0.549 d2 i’ll recommend rural tourist activities to my friends and family (recommendation) 0.831 0.691 0.073 14.763*** d3 i’ll share the rural tourist experience with my friends and family (promotion) 0.823 0.677 0.071 14.650*** note: smc = squared multiple correlations; se = standard error; cr = composite reliability; ave = average variance extracted asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 99-110 106 according to the correlation of the latent variables and measured indicators shown in table 4, the primary attraction of rural tourism for tourists is being able to experience rural life and culture (a7), rural landscape resources (a8), and natural resources (a6), with a “β” of 0.856, 0.754, and 0.753, respectively. this supports the findings of previous studies that rural attractions with distinctive characteristics are appealing to tourists (choenkwan et al., 2016). the result also supports that rural life and culture are more attractive than rural scenery to tourists. through experiential values perspectives experience gained from rural tour engagement in intellectual experience (i gained knowledge about rural industry, b3, β = 0.756), behavioral experience (i’m pining for rural life and activity engagement, b4, β = 0.732), pleasure (i gained knowledge and pleasure, c2, β = 0.727) are higher than sense of beauty (i perceived the beauty of rural areas, c1, β = 0.699). and through attraction perspectives engagement in rural tourism in life and culture (able to experience rural life and culture, a7, β = 0.856) is higher than landscape resources (able to experience rural landscape resources, a8, β = 0.754). therefore the new finding of this study is that rural life and culture are more attractive than rural scenery to tourists. the experience types favored by tourists were knowledge (b3) and action (b4) activities, with β value at 0.756 and 0.732, respectively. this highlights the tourists’ strong preference for experiencing agricultural knowledge and engaging with rural life and farming work. “knowledge and pleasure received from the rural tour” (c2), with a “β” of 0.727 was found to be the most prized experiential value for tourists during participation in rural tourism. this suggests that tour agents need to add more pleasurable aspects to intellectual and behavioral experiential activities when arranging tour activities with high experiential values. experiencing content (g2) and schedule arrangements (g3) attained a “β” of 0.838 and 0.820, respectively, which reflects satisfaction with rural tourism. indicators d2 and d3, which present the willingness to recommend the tour to family and friends, and word of mouth earned the most recognition from consumers with a “β” of 0.831 and 0.823, respectively. 3.3. analysis of the structural model and hypothesis testing the empirical results are shown in table 5. attraction, experiential values, experiential values, and satisfaction are all positively influenced experiential values in h1, satisfaction in h2, tourists’ intention to revisit in h3, and tourists’ intention to revisit in h4 with β values at 0.719, 0.816, 0.324, and 0.508, respectively. this result showed that all the hypotheses of this study were proven. in addition, the experiential value generated from the indirect mediating effect of satisfaction had a β=0.414 with the t-value at 0.738, supporting the idea that satisfaction brings more experiential values to tourists’ revisit intentions and creates more revisit opportunities as well. the direct and indirect effects are shown in table 6 below. table 5: results of the structural path and hypotheses structural path hypotheses standardized t-value result h1 attraction→ experiential values 0.719 10.118*** supported h2 experiential values→ satisfaction 0.816 12.349*** supported h3 experiential values→ revisit intention 0.324 3.505*** supported h4 satisfaction→ revisit intention 0.508 5.418*** supported notes: *** represents p<0.001 table 6: direct and indirect effects structural path hypotheses direct effect indirect effect total effect h1 attraction→ experiential values 0.719 0.719 h2 experiential values→ satisfaction 0.816 0.816 h3 experiential values→ revisit intention 0.324 0.414 0.738 h4 satisfaction→ revisit intention 0.508 0.508 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 99-110 107 figure 2: empirical result of the structural model 4. discussions this study proves that tourism attraction positively influences the tourists’ experiential values and their intention to revisit rural tourism by using the linear structure method. in addition, the experiential response generated from the indirect mediation effect of satisfaction had a significant effect, supporting the notion that satisfaction brings additional experiential values to tourists’ revisit intentions and thus creates more revisit opportunities to those tour sites. in the face of an increasingly stable tourism market, how to enhance the economic development of the community by enhancing the willingness of tourists to visit has become an important issue. this paper proposes the following strategies based on the results. enhance rural tourism by shaping the distinctive characteristics of rural culture. rural communities should have a deep understanding of their own cultural attributes through regenerating activities in farming and living. residents can develop traditional life and offer tourists a chance to appreciate details and aspects of the local culture in a new way. based on the diversity of agricultural products in the neighbouring rural communities, themebased activities can be undertaken to promote seasonal agricultural products, and the seasonal characteristics of the destination can be conveyed to the tourists during the tour to enhance tourist expectation of the next trip. offering farming experience in this area should be considered. the farming activities provide pleasurable experiences to tourists through planting, weeding, or harvesting operation on the farms. the visitors’ impression of the villages is enhanced by these interactions with the environment and community, and these involvements may mean they visit again. cater to tourists’ experience for farming tour planning with more intellectual and behavioral experiences. planning a tour involves choosing an appropriate tour module to satisfy the tourists’ experiences of satisfaction. moreover, our findings suggest that those revisited tourists feature activities in those farming experience with knowledge and field operation, which suggests that considering more activities of these types when planning tours would encourage tourists to visit again. since tourists expect to gain the most pleasure from their travel, offering such experiences, fulfilling the tourists’ needs and forging some unexpected enjoyable travels are decisive elements in satisfying tourist expectations. of these experiential values, the characteristics of rural life and culture are particularly attractive to tourists. therefore, communities should not only emphasize asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(1)2019: 99-110 108 the attraction of rural culture and natural scenery (leask et al., 2013) but satisfy the experiential values of the destination for revisit decisions. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the work was supported by the 2014 urban-rural communication project in miaoli, taiwan. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and 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(1996). the behavioral consequences of service quality. journal of marketing, 60(2), 31-46. doi:10.2307/1251929. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 139 influence of short-term maize–green manure cover crop rotations on germinable weed seed bank under conservation agriculture rugare joyful tatendaa pieterse petrus jacobusb mabasa stanfordc a,department of agronomy, stellenbosch university, south africa, south africa; department of crop science, university of zimbabwe, mount pleasant, harare, zimbabwe. bdepartment of agronomy, stellenbosch university, south africa, private bag x1 matieland, south africa. cdepartment of crop science, university of zimbabwe, mount pleasant, harare, zimbabwe.  rugarejoy@yahoo.co.uk (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 4 may 2020 revised: 26 february 2021 accepted: 15 march 2021 published: 6 april 2021 keywords allelopathy conservation agriculture crop rotation cover crops weed seed bank zea mays l. the effects of oneand two-year maize-cover crop rotations on weed seed bank density and species composition were evaluated in fields at the university of zimbabwe (uz) and the international maize and wheat improvement center (cimmyt, harare) between 2014 and 2017. nine cover crops were rotated, and maize and weed seed bank analyses were done using the seedling emergence method. maize was used as the control. the results indicated that weed seed density was not significantly (p > 0.05) affected by cover crop mulch type across the seasons. there was a significant (p < 0.05) decline in weed density in the second maize phase of the rotation in uz field a. bidens pilosa, galinsoga parviflora, amaranthus hybridus and eleusine indica were the dominant weeds. b. pilosa density significantly decreased in the second season in uz field a but did not vary significantly among cover crops. significant changes in weed species richness, evenness, and diversity were observed only in the second phase of the rotation in uz field a. the results suggest that maize-cover crop rotations could be effective in reducing seed bank size in the short term but have no short-term effect on weed species community composition. contribution/originality: the study demonstrated the efficacy of short-term green manure cover crops in reducing weed seed bank density when they were rotated with maize. the study provides important information on the potential role of maize-cover crop rotations in integrated weed management of weeds in maize under conservation agriculture. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.139.155 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: rugare joyful tatenda --pieterse petrus jacobus --mabasa stanford (2021). influence of short-term maize–green manure cover crop rotations on germinable weed seed bank under conservation agriculture. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 139-155. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.139.155 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction viable seeds and vegetative propagules that are produced by weeds are deposited in the soil by various types of dispersal agent, where they form the soil weed seed bank (singh, kaur, kang, & singh, 2012). since weeds produce seeds in abundance, the seed bank comprises millions of weed propagules, some of which may remain viable for extensively long periods depending on the dormancy characteristics and longevity of weed seeds in the soil (hossain & begum, 2015). soil seed banks act as reserves for viable seeds in arable fields (chen, liu, zhang, li, & dong, 2017). asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 139-155. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9573-3394 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7602-6923 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7115-271x mailto:rugarejoy@yahoo.co.uk http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.139.155 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 140 therefore, targeting the soil weed seed bank is a useful integrated weed management strategy (hossain & begum, 2015) and can, therefore, be used to assess the efficacy of cropping systems to reduce weed seed germination (barberi, bonari, & mazzoncini, 2001). seed bank studies can be conducted for either the whole seed bank or specific weeds up to a specific soil depth, to determine the impact of cropping systems on weed seed bank density and species composition (abbas, nadeem, tanveer, ali, & farooq, 2018). in addition, information obtained from seed bank studies is used to predict future weed infestations and is therefore a useful tool in determining the type of weed control method to use (forcella et al., 1997). management of the non-aerial seed bank is an important long-term weed management strategy, because it is aimed at reducing further accumulation of seeds in the seed bank by minimizing seed production and/or dispersal into the field, at the same time promoting loss of viability and death of those already in the seed bank (hossain & begum, 2015). to date, a few studies have been done to assess the role of allelopathic cover crops in arable weed management in zimbabwe (mhlanga, cheesman, maasdorp, mupangwa, & thierfelder, 2015a; mhlanga et al., 2015b; mhlanga, cheesman, chauhan, & thierfelder, 2016). allelopathic cover crops may produce allelochemicals as root exudates and, in the process, suppress germination of weeds in the soil. alternatively, bioherbicidal compounds may be produced as the residues of these cover crops decompose to produce phytotoxins that can impose secondary dormancy on weeds in the seed bank, consequently suppressing both weed germination and emergence (bezuidenhout, reinhardt, & whitwell, 2012; rueda-ayala, jaeck, & gerhards, 2015). moreover, addition of allelochemicals to the soil may reduce weed seed bank density by creating a microenvironment that promotes predation and rotting of weed seeds (nichols, verhulst, cox, & govaerts, 2015). for example, an increase in soil moisture of 6–24% in fields mulched with cover crop residues resulted in a rise in microbial populations and a concomitant increase in wild oat (avena fatua l.) mortality of 23–88% (mickelson & grey, 2006), and reduced seed viability in the range 41–69% (abbas et al., 2018). surface mulching of soils with cover crop residues results in an increase in the population of phytophagous soil-inhabiting insects like beetles and crickets, which reduce weed seedling emergence by 5–15% thereby demonstrating their potential to reduce weed seed bank size in cropping systems (nichols et al., 2015; white, renner, menalled, & landis, 2007). additionally, cover crops can be used to stimulate suicidal germination of crop-bound parasitic weeds like witch weeds (striga spp.) (muoni & mhlanga, 2014; reinhardt & terfamichael, 2011). for example, khan, pickett, wadhams, hassanali, and midega (2006) reported reduced striga parasitism when the cover crop desmodium spp. was rotated or intercropped with maize. previous research on the potential role of green manure cover crops (gmccs) in weed management concentrated on their effect on weed seedling emergence without paying much attention to their effect on weed seed bank dynamics (mhlanga et al., 2015a; mhlanga et al., 2015b; mhlanga et al., 2016). management of the soil seed bank is a key strategy that ensures the control of weeds before they emerge and damage the crop. the objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of one and two-year maize–legume cover crop rotations on weed seed bank density, richness, evenness, and diversity under conservation agriculture (ca) conditions. it was hypothesised that there are some, among the cover crops tested, that are effective in reducing the size and species composition of the soil seed bank within two rotations and may thus be proposed for inclusion in smallholder ca. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study site the study was carried out at uz and cimmyt zimbabwe station fields between august 2014 and march 2017. uz fields a and b are situated at the university of zimbabwe’s crop science department (31o 05’e 18o12’s and 1523 m above sea level) (chitagu, rugare, & mabasa, 2014). the cimmyt plot is located at the uz farm (31o03’e 18o22’s and altitude of 1503 m above sea level), 20 km north of harare (mhlanga et al., 2016). both sites lie in zimbabwe’s agro-ecological region iia according to classification of agroecological regions in zimbabwe, and receive rainfall of 800-1000 mm per annum. mean daily maximum temperature at both sites is 30 oc. germination of weed seeds in the soil samples taken from different green manure cover crop plots in the field was done in a glasshouse at uz. the soils at both experimental sites are classified as chromic luvisols (nyamapfene, 1999). the pysicochemical properties of the soils in the fields in this study are presented in table 1. table 1. physicochemical properties of soils in the study soil propertu uz field a uz field b cimmyt % clay 18 16 26 % silt 16 17 16 % sand 66 67 58 ca me % 7.61 9.19 6.34 mg me % 4.17 4.67 2.86 k me % 0.32 0.46 0.33 na me % 0.22 0.24 0.62 cec me % 12.32 14.56 10.15 % h2o 2.98 3.10 3.16 % organic carbon 1.66 1.53 2.15 ph (cacl2) 5.20 5.40 4.60 % organic matter 3.32 3.05 4.31 note: me %, milliequivalents percent. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 141 2.2. treatments and history of sampled plots soil samples used in the seed bank study were taken at the beginning of the maize phase of the rotation from plots in which maize was rotated with different gmccs. red sunn hemp [crotalaria ochroleuca (g.) don], black sunn hemp (crotalaria juncea l.), common rattlepod (crotalaria grahamiana wight & arnd), tephrosia (tephrosia vogelli l.), showy rattlebox (crotalaria spectabilis roth), and radish (raphanus sativas l.) were dribbled in separate plots in rows 0.45 m apart, targeting an intra-row spacing of 0.25 m to achieve a plant density of 444,444 plants ha–1. velvet bean [mucuna pruriens (l.) dc], hyacinth bean [lablab purpureus (l.) sweet], jack bean [canavalia ensiformis (l.) dc], and common bean (phaseolus vulgaris l.) were planted in rows 0.45 m apart, targeting an intra-row spacing of 0.25 m to achieve a plant population per hectare of 88,888. cover crops and maize were grown under dry-land conditions except in the first cover crop phase in uz field a, where they were grown under irrigation between august and december 2014. these cover crops were selected because they are under evaluation as potential rotational crops for smallholder ca in zimbabwe. cover crops were grown in plots with a gross plot size of 31.5 m2 (6.3 m x 5 m) and net plot size of 18 m2 (4.5 m x 4 m). the field layout was a randomized complete block design (rcbd), with three blocks in each field. in uz field a, the rotation commenced in august 2014 with the sowing of cover crops under sprinkler irrigation. the gmccs were chopped down with a hand-slasher and the residues uniformly spread over the same plots in which they were grown. thereafter, maize variety sc403 was planted in january 2015. rotation was repeated in the summer season of 2015–16 with the planting of cover crops in the same plots where they were sown in the first cover crop phase of the rotation, followed by a uniform maize crop in the 2016–17 cropping season. in uz field b the rotation was commenced with the planting of cover crops in january 2015, and these were allowed to grow for nine months. thereafter, cover crops were slashed down, spread over their respective plots, and maize was then planted in december 2015. at cimmyt, the rotation was initiated in the summer cropping season (december 2015 to july 2016), and maize was grown in the next cropping season (2016–17). the trial was done under no-tillage conditions, and planting of both maize and cover crops was done in furrows opened by a hoe. 2.3. seed bank sampling and analysis the glasshouse experiment was laid out as a 3 x 10 factorial in a split-plot design with seven blocks. the main factor was soil sampling depth with three levels (0–5 cm, 5-20 cm, and 10–15 cm), and the subplot factor was the maize-cover crop type at ten levels as described earlier. soil samples were collected at the beginning of the maize phase of the rotation in the respective plots using an auger of 0.12 m diameter, from three sampling positions per net plot. a total of nine soil samples (three samples per sampling position) were collected from each plot. consequently, a total of 270 samples were collected at each site. each set of three samples from the same treatment were mixed according to depth to produce a composite (chen et al., 2017) sample, resulting in a total of 90 representative samples for each depth per respective field. the soil samples were dried in the glasshouse to prevent germination of weeds and were stored at room temperature in the field laboratory until further use. estimation of the weed seed bank size and community composition was done using the seedling emergence method (mandumbu, musvosvi, & rugare, 2010). each soil sample was placed in a plastic tub of 9.5 cm base diameter x 4.3 cm height to a depth of 3 cm. seven representative subsamples from each soil depth per cover crop were obtained, totaling 210 representative samples. the tubs were placed on tables in a glasshouse and were watered initially to field capacity to maintain adequate moisture for germination of weed seeds. thereafter, the pots were watered daily with 100 ml of tap water using a perforated cup. temperature in the glasshouse was not controlled, but day and night temperature ranged 28–29 oc and 18–19 oc, respectively. weed seedlings were identified, counted by species, recorded, and removed daily for 14 days. after two weeks, the soil from each pot was turned to promote germination of photoblastic weed seeds and watered to field capacity. the identification process continued for the next 14 days. the samples were then placed in a cold room at 4o c for two weeks to break weed seed dormancy (mandumbu et al., 2010). thereafter, the pots were returned to the glasshouse where they were watered, and the process described above was repeated every fortnight for another four weeks. 2.4. calculation of species composition parameters the total number of weeds that germinated for the duration of the experiment in the respective pots was converted to weed density m–2. the relative contribution of each weed species to the seed bank was expressed as percentage of total weed density m–2 (morris et al., 2015). weed species diversity was calculated using species richness and evenness by equations 1 and 2 as follows: pi = ni/n (1) h = −∑pi *(ln (pi)) (2) where ni = number of weeds of species, n = total number of weeds of all species observed, pi = relative abundance of species (equation 1) and h = the shannon diversity index (equation 2) (mtambanengwe et al., 2015). evenness (e) was calculated as follows: e = h/ln n where e = relationship between the observed and total number of species (mhlanga et al., 2015a). 2.5. data analysis analysis of variance (anova) was carried out on all parameters using genstat (14th edition). all data were subjected to the shapiro–wilk test for normality testing, and data that did not meet the assumptions of anova were transformed log10(x) and √(x + 0.5) transformed. mean separation was done using the least significant asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 142 differences (lsd) test at the 0.05 probability level. the models (gomez & gomez, 1984; little & hills, 1978) used to perform the (1) combined-season anova for data obtained from uz fields and (2) one-season anova for cimmyt fields are given below: yijk = µ + sk + dj + rk + si * dj + dj * rk + si * rk + si * dj * rk + eijk (a) yjk = µ + dj + rk + dj * rk + eijk (b) where yijk is weed density in the ith season, µ is overall mean weed density, dj is the effect of the jth depth, and rk is the effect of the kth rotation. si * dj * rk is the interaction of the ith season, jth depth, and kth rotation. si * rk is the interaction of the ith season * kth rotation, dj * rk is the interaction of the jth depth and the kth rotation, si * dj is the interaction of the ith season and the jth depth, and eijk is the error term. maize-cover crop rotation plus maizecover crop rotation * environment interaction (gge) analysis was carried out on the means from the acrossenvironments * maize-cover crop rotation anova using genstat (genstat, 2011). the model for the gge biplot used was described by yan, hunt, sheng, and szlavnics (2000) and yan and kang (2002) as yij – µ – βj = k∑l =1 λl ξil ηjl + εij, where yij is the average weed density of the ith cover-crop rotation in the jth environment; µ is the grand mean; βj is the main effect of the environment j; λl is the singular value of the lth principal component, k = 2 in this case; ξil is the eigenvector of the maize-cover crop rotation i for pc l; ηlj is the eigenvector of environment j for pc l; and εij is the residual associated with maize-cover crop rotation i in the environment j. based on this model, the biplot is environment-centered using genstat (genstat, 2011). 3. results 3.1. weed relative density a total of 12 weed species were recorded in the soil seed bank in uz field a in the 2014–15 season, of which 58.3% were annual broadleaf, 25% annual grasses, and 16.7% perennial sedges. in the 2016–17 season, species richness in the seed bank decreased to ten. out of these, 50% were annual broadleaf, 40% annual grasses, and 10% perennial sedges. the seed bank in uz field b comprised 77% annual broadleaf, 15% annual grasses, and 8% perennial sedges. the seed bank at cimmyt comprised 75% broadleaf, 16.7% annual grasses, and 8.3% perennial sedges. the dominant weeds were smooth pigweed (amaranthus hybridus l.), blackjack (bidens pilosa l.), goosegrass [eleusine indica (l.) gaertn], gallant soldier (galinsoga parviflora l.), and mexican clover (richardia scabra l.). the life cycle, type of reproduction, and relative density of the weeds found in the different seed banks are presented in table 2. the relative densities of individual species differed between years and across sites. in the 2014–15 season in uz field a, the primary broadleaved weed species were smooth pigweed and blackjack whilst goosegrass was the dominant grass species. in the 2016–17 season there was a general increase in both weed species number and relative density of individual species in uz field a. the dominant weed species in uz field a in the second maize phase (2016–17 season) were smooth pigweed, black jack, goosegrass, gallant soldier, and purslane (portulaca oleracea l.). however, the relative density of pigweed decreased fivefold to 11% from a previous high of 49% in the 2014–15 season. in 2015–16, blackjack, goosegrass, gallant soldier, and mexican clover were the primary weed species in uz field b. the primary weeds at cimmyt were smooth pigweed, gallant soldier, and mexican clover. goosegrass consistently maintained its position as the dominant grass species between seasons and across sites. table-2. relative weed density of all species found in at 0–15 cm depth at all sites from which soil samples were taken. scientific name relative density (%) life cycle uz field a 2014–15 uz field a 2016–17 uz field b 2015–16 cimmyt 2016–17 amaranthus hybridus l. a, br 49 11 3 17 bidens pilosa l. a, br 11 24 18 1 commelina bengalensis l. a* 2 8 6 eleusine indica (l.) geartn a, gr 6 11 17 6 urochloa panicoides beauv. a, gr 4 8 4 sckhuhria pinnata (lam.) kuntze a, br 1 galinsoga parviflora cav. a, br 8 23 29 37 chenopodium album l. a, br 2 1 portulaca oleracea l. a, br 9 10 4 oxalis latifolia kunth a, br 4 cyperus esculentus l. p, se 1 4 2 1 nicandra physaloides (l.) gaertn a, br 2 rottboellia conchinchinensis l.f. a, gr 1 2 1 richardia scabra l. a, br 3 1 12 23 setaria pumila (poir.) roem. & hideber. a, gr 6 2 conyza albida (retz) e.h. walker a, br 3 datura stramonuim l. a, br 2 total 100 100 100 100 note: * possesses characteristics of both monocotyledons and dicotyledons. a, anuual; br, broadleaf; gr, grasses. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 143 table-3. effects of maize-cover crop rotations, depth of soil sampling, and season on weed seed density and community composition. site weed seed density weed species richness weed species diversity weed species evenness source p-value p-value p-value p-value uz plot, two seasons combined (2014–15 and 2016– 17) season 0.002 0.002 <0.001 <0.001 depth <0.001 <0.001 0.003 0.006 gmcc 0.016 0.229 0.594 0.902 season * depth 0.028 0.276 0.258 0.228 season * gmcc <0.001 0.053 0.012 0.136 depth * gmcc 0.001 0.357 0.143 0.463 season * depth * gmcc 0.216 0.152 0.322 0.780 uz new plot (2015–16) depth 0.011 gmcc 0.007 gmcc * depth 0.014 cimmyt plot (2016–17) depth <0.001 gmcc <0.002 gmcc * depth 0.110 3.2. uz field a total weed seed density (seasons 2014–15 and 2016–17) table 3 shows the effects of season, depth of soil sampling, and maize-cover crop rotations on weed seed density, species richness, diversity, and evenness. combined anova for seasons 2014–15 and 2016–17 showed that the seasons * depth of sampling * maize-cover crop rotation interaction on weed seed density in uz field a was not significant (p > 0.05) (table 3). however, depth of sampling * season, season * maize-cover crop rotation and depth of sampling * maize-cover crop rotation interactions were significant (p < 0.05). weed seed density was significantly (p < 0.05) lower across all maize-cover crop rotations in the 2016–17 season compared to the 2014–15 season (figure 1a) except where common rattlepod, tephrosia, showy rattlebox and jack bean were rotated with maize. weed density in maize-after-maize control increased by 4.8% in 2016–17 compared to 2014–15, although the increase was not significant. however, the influence of different maize-cover crop rotations on weed seed density did not differ within the same season in either season. significant reductions in weed seed bank size were observed in maize-aftermaize, maize-black sunn hemp, maize–velvet bean and maize–hyacinth bean rotations as soil sampling depth was increased from 0–5 to 10–15 cm depth (figure 1b). in the maize–pigeon pea rotation, weed density was significantly higher at 10–15 cm depth compared to 5–10 cm. figure-1. effects of (a) cover crop and season on weed density seasons and (b) cover crop and sampling depth on weed seed density in 2014–15 and 2016–17. data were log10(x) transformed. the interaction between season and sampling depth on weed seed density in uz field a was significant (p < 0.05). there was a significant (p < 0.05) decline in weed seed density at 0–5 cm soil sampling depth in the 2016–17 compared to the 2014–15 season (figure 2). however, weed seed density did not differ at depths of 5–10 cm and 10– 15 cm between the 2014–15 and 2016–17 seasons. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 144 figure-2. interaction effects of soil sampling depth and season on total weed seed density in uz plot a. data were log10(x) transformed. 3.3. uz field b total weed density (2015–16) weed seed bank studies done in uz field b in one season (2015–16) showed that there was a significant interaction (p < 0.05) between soil sampling depth and maize-cover crop rotation on weed seed density. weed seed density in the maize–jack bean, maize–velvet bean and maize–red sunn hemp rotations was significantly higher at 0– 5 cm depth compared to 5–10 and 10–15 cm depth, which did not differ in seed bank size (figure 3). weed seed density at 0–5 and 5–10 cm depth was the same as in the maize-after-maize, maize–black sunn hemp, maize–hyacinth bean and maize–showy rattlebox rotation,s but was significantly higher than in the 10–15 cm layer. maize–common rattlepod and maize–tephrosia rotations did not affect total weed seed density across all sampling depths. figure-3. interaction effects of soil sampling depth and maize-cover crop rotation on weed seed density in uz field b in 2015–16. data were log10(x) transformed. 3.4. cimmyt total weed density (2016–17 season) the cover crop * sampling depth interaction was not significant (p < 0.05) at cimmyt. there were variations in weed seed bank size in the different soil layers, with significantly (p < 0.05) higher densities in the upper layers. weed seed density significantly (p < 0.05) decreased from the 0–5 cm depth as sampling depth was increased (figure 4a). a comparison of the influence of different cover crop rotations showed that there were significant (p < 0.05) treatment effects on weed seed bank size (figure 4b). weed seed density was 55 and 40% lower in the maize–red sunn hemp and maize–pigeon pea rotations compared to the maize-after-maize control. the other maize cover crop rotations were the same as the maize-after-maize control. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 145 figure-4. effects of (a) soil sampling depth and (b) crop rotation on weed seed density at cimmyt in the 2016–17 season. figure 5 shows the effect of the different rotations on total weed seed density at all the sites in different seasons. in all plots, total weed seed density was highest in the maize-after-maize control, followed by the maize–showy rattlebox and maize–tephrosia rotations. the biplot shows that the different sites and seasons can be grouped into one mega-environment. figure-5. which-won-where biplot showing the influence of maize-cover crop rotations on total weed density in the different plots across seasons. co, red sunn hemp; cj, black sunnhemp; cg. common rattlepod; mp, velvet bean; tv, tephrosia; ll, hyacinth bean; cs, showy rattlebox; ce, jack bean; pp, pigeon pea; uzaa, uz field a 2014–15 season; uzab, uz field a 2016–17 season; uzb, uz field b 2015–16 season; cimmyt (2016–17 season). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 146 3.5. weed species richness, diversity, and evenness 3.5.1. uz field a (combined seasons analysis 2014–15 and 2016–17) there were no significant (p > 0.05) interactions between season, depth, and cover crop type on weed species richness and evenness in uz field a between 2014 and 2017 (table 3). the effect of maize cover crop type on species richness and evenness was not significant (p > 0.05) (table 4). table-4. effect of maize-cover crop rotations on weed species richness and evenness indices in uz field a (2014–15/2016–17). rotation species richness species evenness maize-after-maize 1.51 (2.08) 0.92 (0.41) maize/red sunn hemp 1.39 (1.60) 0.86 (0.27) maize/black sunn hemp 1.50 (1.95) 0.90 (0.35) maize/common rattlepod 1.31 (1.48) 0.88 (0.32) maize/velvet bean 1.39 (1.69) 0.91 (0.37) maize/tephrosia 1.35 (1.52) 0.89 (0.34) maize/lablab 1.38 (1.64) 0.91 (0.38) maize/showy rattlebox 1.38 (1.65) 0.88 (0.32) maize/jack bean 1.39 (1.55) 0.92 (0.39) maize/pigeon pea 1.28 (1.33) 0.88 (0.32) p-value 0.229 0.902 cv% 29.7 21.1 note: data were log10(x) transformed; untransformed data shown in parentheses. there was a significant (p < 0.05) effect of soil sampling depth on weed species richness and evenness in uz field a (figure 6a,c). both species richness and evenness were significantly higher at 0–5 cm depth compared to the other sampling depths, which had similar species richness and evenness. weed species richness and evenness significantly (p < 0.05) decreased in 2016–17 compared to 2014–15 (figure 6b,d). figure-6. effect of soil sampling depth (a,c) and season (b,d) on weed species richness and evenness (m–2) at uz field a in seasons 2014–15 and 2016–17. however, the season * maize-cover crop rotation interaction was significant (p < 0.05) on weed species diversity (figure 7). the shannon–weiner diversity indices for maize-after-maize and maize–red sunn hemp remained unchanged in both seasons. in contrast, weed species diversity indices in the other maize-cover crop rotations were significantly lower in 2016–17 compared to 2014–15. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 147 figure-7. interaction effects of season and type of rotation on weed species diversity in uz field a. the effect of sampling depth on weed species diversity was significant (p < 0.05). weed species diversity was 10.3 and 6.4% higher in the 0–5 cm soil layer compared to 5–10 and 10–15 cm, respectively (figure 8). figure-8. effect of soil sampling depth on weed species diversity in uz field a in 2014–15 and 2016–17. 3.6. response of major weed species to different cover crop rotations at different sites and across seasons table 5 summarizes the anova values for major weeds in different fields. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 148 table-5. anova values explaining the effects of different maize-cover crop rotations, depth of soil sampling, and season on densities of major weeds in different fields. site blackjack smooth pigweed gallant soldier goosegrass source p-value p-value p-value p-value uz plot, 2014–15 and 2016–17 combined season 0.072 <0.001 0.755 0.186 depth 0.254 0.251 <0.001 0.144 gmcc <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 0.066 season * depth <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 0.175 season * gmcc <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 0.211 depth * gmcc <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 0.079 season * depth * gmcc 0.002 0.270 <0.001 0.288 uz new plot, 2015–16 depth 0.998 0.363 0.330 gmcc <0.001 0.787 0.086 season * depth 0.001 0.860 0.023 mexican clover cimmyt plot, 2016–17 depth 0.180 <0.001 0.379 gmcc 0.396 0.004 0.090 season * depth 0.093 0.001 0.129 3.6.1. uz field a (2014–15 and 2016–17 seasons) combined season anova for the 2014–15 and 2016–17 seasons was performed on major weeds in uz field a, and the results are presented in figures 10–13. there was a significant (p < 0.05) season * depth * maize-cover crop rotation interaction on the density of blackjack (figure 9). blackjack density was significantly (p < 0.05) higher in the 2016–17 season than the 2014–15 season at 5–10 and 10–15 cm in the maize-after-maize, showy rattlebox, and jack bean rotations only. the density of blackjack did not significantly change between seasons and across the three sampling depths in the other maize-cover crop rotations. figure-9. response of blackjack density to different maize-cover crop rotations and soil depths across seasons. data were log10(x) transformed. there was no significant (p > 0.05) interaction of season, depth, and maize-cover crop rotation on goosegrass density in uz field a between 2014 and 2017. goosegrass density was not significantly (p > 0.05) influenced by the type of maize-cover crop rotation that was used (figure 10a). the density of goosegrass did not vary significantly (p asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 149 > 0.05) in the different layers of the soil profile (figure 10b). there were no significant (p > 0.05) differences in goosegrass density between the 2014–15 and 2016–17 seasons (figure 10c). figure-10. response of goosegrass to (a) maize-cover crop rotation, (b) soil sampling depth, and (c) season in uz field a. data were √(x+0.5) transformed. there was no significant (p > 0.05) season * depth * maize-cover crop rotation interaction on the density of smooth pigweed in uz field a. however, the interactions season * maize-cover crop rotation, depth * maize cover crop rotation and season * depth were significant (p < 0.05) (figure 11). smooth pigweed density declined significantly in the second season in all rotations except where maize was rotated with common rattlepod and showy rattlebox, as well as the maize monoculture plot (figure 11a). significant (p < 0.05) variations in smooth pigweed density were observed amongst the different maize-cover crop rotations in the 2014–15 season but not in the 2016– 17 season. in the 2014–15 season, smooth pigweed density was significantly (p < 0.05) higher in maize–red sunn hemp, maize–black sunn hemp and maize–velvet bean compared to maize-after-maize control. the other maize cover crop rotations did not significantly differ with the maize-after-maize control. a significant (p < 0.05) variation in the density of smooth pigweed across the different soil layers was found only in the maize–velvet bean rotation (figure 11b). in the other maize-cover crop rotations, the density of smooth pigweed did not vary. smooth pigweed density was significantly (p < 0.05) higher at 0–5 cm depth compared to the other layers in the 2014–15 season (figure 11c). in the 2016–17 season there were no significant differences in the density of smooth pigweed across the three soil layers. figure-11. response of smooth pigweed to (a) maize-cover crop rotation and season, (b) soil sampling depth and season, and (c) maize-cover crop rotation and depth in uz field a. data were log10(x) transformed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 150 results for the effects of season, depth, and maize-cover crop rotation on the density of gallant soldier at uz field a are shown in figure 12. there was a significant (p < 0.05) season * depth * maize-cover crop rotation interaction on the density of gallant soldier. gallant soldier density was significantly (p < 0.05) higher at 0–5 cm depth compared to the other soil sampling depths in the maize-after-maize control, black sunn hemp, common rattlepod, velvet bean, and jack bean rotations in the 2014–15 season. however, there were no significant variations in gallant soldier densities across the different maize-cover crop rotations in the 2016–17 season. gallant solider density significantly (p < 0.05) decreased between seasons atin the 0–5 cm depth where maize was rotated with black sunn hemp, velvet bean, and jack bean. in contrast, the density of gallant soldier significantly (p < 0.05) increased across all sampling depths in the maize–showy rattlebox rotation. figure-12. response of gallant soldier density to different maize-cover crop rotations and soil depths across seasons. data were log10(x) transformed. 3.7. analysis of weed density of major weeds across environments and seasons the which-won-where scatter biplots (figure 13a–d) show the influence of different maize-cover crop rotations on the total density of major weeds across the environments and seasons at 0–15 cm depth of the seed bank. blackjack density was highest in the maize-after-maize plots at uz field b (2015–16 season) and cimmyt (2016– 17 season). on the other hand, the density of blackjack was highest in the maize–hyacinth bean and maize–jack bean rotations in the uz a field in the 2014–15 season. blackjack density was also high in the maize–black sunn hemp rotations at both uz field a (2014–15) and uz b (2015–16 season). smooth pigweed density was high in uz field a, in the order red sunn hemp > black sunn hemp > hyacinth bean in both the 2014–15 and 2016–17 seasons. the density of smooth pigweed was highest in maize–velvet bean and maize–common rattlepod rotation at cimmyt. the maize-after-maize control and maize–velvet bean rotation had the highest density of gallant soldier at all uz fields across all the seasons. at cimmyt, gallant soldier density was highest in the maize–tephrosia followed by maize–jack bean rotations. goosegrass density was highest in black sunn hemp at all uz fields across seasons. in, contrast, the density of goosegrass was highest in red sunn hemp and pigeon pea at cimmyt. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 151 figure-13. which-won-where biplot showing the influence of maize-cover crop rotations on the density of blackjack, smooth pigweed, gallant soldier, and goosegrass in different plots across seasons. co, red sunn hemp; cj, black sunn hemp; cg, common rattlepod; mp, velvet bean; tv, tephrosia; ll, hyancinth bean; cs, showy rattlebox; ce, jack bean; pp, pigeon pea; uzaa, uz field a 2014–15 season; uz ab, uz field a 2016– 17 season); uz b, uz field b 2015–16; cimmyt 2016–17 season. 4. discussion the relative densities of weeds that germinated at all sites during the study showed that the seed banks of different fields are dominated by annual weeds, the majority of which broadleaf. the abundance of annual weeds in seed banks could be attributed to the fact that most of the plots were within their first two to three years after shifting from conventional tillage to ca. the only perennial weeds that were present in the 0–15 cm seed bank were cyperus spp., probably because they have a dual mode of reproduction and can germinate from seed although their predominant mode of reproduction is through tubers (botha, 2001). the low numbers of perennial weeds could also be due to the fact that they reproduce vegetatively and the sampling done could have missed vegetative structures such as rhizomes and stolons. the results concur with the findings of mandumbu et al. (2012), who reported the presence of several annual weeds and only one perennial in seed banks under ca in the early years of adopting reduced tillage. generally, there were similarities in terms of the types of weed species present in the different seed banks, probably because of similarities in the previous land use, soil types, and climatic conditions of the fields used. nichols et al. (2015) reported that the initial state of the seed bank influences study results. total weed seed density in the plots where maize-cover crop rotations were repeated were lower in the maize phase of the rotation only at 0–5 cm depth, but did not differ among the different maize-cover crop rotations. the higher weed densities obtained at 0–5 cm depth compared to the deeper soil layers in this study are consistent with results from other weed seed bank studies (barberi et al., 2001; chen et al., 2017; mandumbu et al., 2012). the higher weed densities found at 0–5 cm depth could be attributed to the accumulation of weed seeds (60–90%) in the top 5 cm of the soil (barberi & lo cascio, 2001; mandumbu et al., 2012). unlike in conventional tillage, weed seeds penetrate the deeper soil layers through very slow processes like cracking and fauna (nichols et al., 2015), and hence the differences in seed bank size reported in this study may be due to lack of tillage that distributes weed seeds vertically asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 152 in the soil profile rather than the direct influence of crop rotations. the results concur with the findings of barberi and lo cascio (2001), who reported that weed community composition in the 0–15 cm layer seemed more influenced by tillage system than by crop rotation. however, there was a general decline in the density of weed seeds in the seed bank between the seasons in the plots where rotations were repeated (figure 2). this decline in weed density may be ascribed to the ability of the residues of different cover crops to suppress weed growth and germination, thereby reducing seed rain. similar findings were reported by abbas et al. (2018), who found increased decay and reduced seed viability in phalaris minor in the seed bank after being buried in soil treated with different allelopathic mulches. the maize–velvet bean, maizejack bean, maize–black sunn hemp, and maize–red sunn hemp rotations significantly reduced weed density in the 0–5 cm layer, demonstrating their ability to suppress weed growth under field conditions. previous studies conducted under controlled environments identified l-dopa from velvet bean (fujii, 1999; nishihara, parvez, araya, kawashima, & fujii, 2005; soares et al., 2014), phenolics, alkaloids, flavonoids, and phytotoxic polyamines from jack bean (santos, moraes, & rezende, 2007; santos, moraes, & rezende, 2010), and delta-hydroxynorleucine (5-hydroxy-2-aminohexanoic acid) from crotalaria spp. (adler & chase, 2007) as the allelochemicals responsible for weed suppression. the presence of these compounds was also confirmed by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (lcms) (rugare, 2018). it is possible that the release of these allelochemicals could have resulted in the lower numbers of viable weeds in the second year of rotation. mechanisms of allelopathic activity include induction of dormancy (nichols et al., 2015) and enhancement of natural loss of viability of seeds in soil (anderson, 2005). moreover, surface accumulation of weed propagules, which happens in ca, exposes seeds of annual weeds to greater risks of mortality through weather variability and predation by both microand macrofauna (nichols et al., 2015). blubaugh and kaplan (2015) reported an increase in seed-consuming fauna under reduced tillage compared to conventional tillage, due to either increased habitat (baraibar, westerman, carrión, & recasens, 2009) or decreased tillage-induced mortality (shearim, reberg-horton, & gallant, 2007). however, these findings contradict the findings of mtambanengwe et al. (2015) and barberi and lo cascio (2001), who reported that differences in weed species composition were not affected by mulches in the short term. these differences in results could be due to differences in the initial seed bank composition. in this study, the seed bank was dominated by smallseeded weeds which are more susceptible to the effect of allelochemicals, compared to studies in which large-seeded weeds and perennials were more dominant (liebman & davis, 2000; rueda-ayala et al., 2015). however, principle component analysis (pca) of the effect of cover crops in the different environments (fields and seasons) grouped them into the same mega-environment (figure 5), demonstrating that the changes in weed densities observed could be due to cover crop effects rather than differences in initial weed seed bank composition. the higher weed seed densities at 10–15 cm depth (figure 3) in some maize-cover crop rotations in uz field b lend credence to the assertion that weed species response to crop rotations in the first years of ca adoption is mainly influenced by previous management practices. the increase in weed density observed in the maize-after-maize plots clearly demonstrates the variable response of weeds to different types of mulch. these results are in agreement with the findings of mhlanga et al. (2015a), who reported high weed emergence in plots mulched with maize despite the fact that maize has higher mulch biomass weight and percentage ground cover compared to leguminous cover crops. this increase in weed density in plots mulched with maize was also reported by mtambanengwe et al. (2015), clearly demonstrating that the low weed densities recorded in the cover crop plots were not simply a result of the physical effects of mulching, but may also have been due to the allelochemicals produced as the cover crop residues decomposed. mulches that are not allelopathic may result in increased weed pressure due to the creation of a soil microclimate that is conducive to weed germination (mashingaidze, madakadze, twomlow, nyamangara, & hove, 2012). there were variations in the response of blackjack to different maize-cover crop rotations. blackjack was a dominant weed in two uz fields, but not at cimmyt. very low blackjack numbers recorded at cimmyt could be attributed to previous high levels of management, because it is an on-station experimental site (muoni, rusinamhodzi, & thierfelder, 2013). at uz, management of late-season weeds was poor in preceding seasons and could have resulted in the addition of large quantities of blackjack seed into the seed bank. in both uz plots, blackjack density was significantly higher in the maize-after-maize plots compared to the other rotations. similar findings were reported by mhlanga. et al. (2015b), who found higher weed densities in plots mulched with maize residues. this could imply that this weed is susceptible to allelochemicals produced by cover crops. these results corroborate the work of runzika, rugare, and mabasa (2013), who reported reduced germination and seedling growth of blackjack when treated with aqueous extracts and soil-incorporated biomass of the cover crops used in this study. however, results obtained in this study contrasted with the findings of mhlanga. et al. (2015b), who reported high blackjack emergence in pigeon pea plots and attributed the high weed number to low biomass production which left the ground bare and allowed for proliferation of weeds. goosegrass was the dominant grass species at all sites. this grassy weed produces very small seeds with a high voilure coefficient and is prone to hydrochory and anemochory (mandumbu. et al., 2012). however, there were no differences in goosegrass density among the different cover-crop rotations and across soil layers, probably due to age of the rotation, which was too short to have resulted in significant changes in weed density as a result of treatment effects. smooth pigweed densities decreased in the second season, with most seeds being found at 0–5 cm depth, although density was influenced by neither soil sampling depth nor maize-cover crop rotation type, except in the maize-after-maize and maize–showy rattlebox rotations where it did not significantly change. these findings suggest that this weed is susceptible to different allelochemicals produced by cover crops, hence the higher densities in maize asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 153 residues which are generally not allelopathic. showy rattlebox establishes slowly, produces little biomass, and does not achieve complete ground cover. as a result it leaves a lot of gaps in the field which allow penetration of light and heat, resulting in high soil temperatures that are conducive for the proliferation of smooth pigweed (damalas, 2008). gallant soldier was present in high numbers at all sites, accounting for more than 20% of total weed density at all sites probably due to the fact that it is a cosmopolitan weed that can survive in different habitats (botha, 2001). the which-won-where biplot showed higher densities of gallant soldier in maize-after-maize plots in uz fields compared to the other maize-cover crop rotations, further lending credence to the assertion that it could have been affected by allelochemicals that were produced by cover crops as they decomposed. several allelopathic compounds have been previously isolated from some of the cover crops used in this study. it is possible that these allelochemicals released by cover crop residues could have played a role in suppressing weed growth and reducing the subsequent addition of more weed seeds into the non-aerial seed bank. mexican clover was a primary weed found only at cimmyt, but its density was affected by neither sampling depth nor maize-cover crop rotation. this weed is an acidophile that tends to dominate in light-textured soils with very low ph and fertility. these results concur with those of mhlanga et al. (2015b), who reported high mexican clover numbers in maize-after-maize plots. however, they reported low numbers of mexican clover in maize-velvet bean rotation, contrary to results of this study which showed high mexican clover densities in velvet bean. the number of weed species (species richness) present in the seed bank did not vary among maize-cover crop rotations in either season in uz field a. the lack of substantial variation in species richness in short-term rotations was previously reported by barberi and lo cascio (2001), who attributed this to the buffering effect of weed seed banks. this result implies that short-term rotations may not be a way to rapidly reduce the number of troublesome weeds in arable fields. the significantly higher species richness in the 0–5 cm soil layer could be due to the deposition of weed propagules in these layers arising from several dispersal agents, which did not happen in the 5–15 cm layer. these findings are in agreement with the results of chen et al. (2017), who reported significantly higher weed species richness at 0–5 cm depth. a similar trend was observed for species evenness, which is a measure of how evenly weeds are distributed in an environment (nolan & callahan, 2006). weed species evenness ranged from 0.27 to 0.41, showing that there were dominant weeds in this plot. the lower species evenness values in the second season (2016– 17) compared to the first (2014–15) in the rotation at uz show the emergence of dominant species in the rotations. this could imply that cover crops are effective at suppressing growth of some weeds but not all. the dominant weeds that remain can be controlled by spot weeding or the application of herbicides, thereby reducing the cost of weed control (muoni et al., 2014). consequently, there were significant variations in species diversity. species diversity decreased in the 2016–17 season in uz field a, indicating the ability of cover crop mulches to suppress some weed species. similar findings were reported by jones, jessop, sindel, and hoult (1999) and mtambanengwe et al. (2015), who found low diversity where mulching and timeous weeding were combined. however, no clear trends were obtained in the first season of rotations, indicating that changes in weed community composition occur after at least one rotation. 5. conclusion the results of this study illustrate the short-term benefits of maize-cover crop rotations on total weed density. the results also show that mulching with cover crop residues reduces seed bank size better than maize residues, and this change in weed populations may be attributed to the release of allelochemicals and alteration of the soil microenvironment. cover crops were effective in reducing the density of blackjack but not the other broadleaf weeds, suggesting that the effect of the weed suppression activity of cover crops could be weed species specific. however, no clear trends on weed species composition were established due to short-term maize cover crop rotations. therefore, there could be merit in practicing crop rotation for several seasons in order to realize the changes in weed species composition reported by other researchers. the effect of the different cover crops in reducing weed seed bank size was similar, and therefore the choice of cover crop would depend on other factors and not simply their ability to control weeds, because they all demonstrated potential to reduce weed seed bank size. there is a need for this study to be replicated in several agroecological regions under farmer-managed conditions, to determine the effect of maize cover crop rotation on weeds in different soil types with different initial weed species composition, including perennial and parasitic weeds. funding: support for this research was made possible through a capacity-building competitive grant training the next generation of scientists, provided by the carnegie cooperation of new york through the regional universities forum for capacity building in agriculture (ruforum). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 139-155 154 references abbas, t., nadeem, m. a., tanveer, a., ali, h. h., & farooq, n. 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(2002). gge biplot analysis: a graphical tool for breeders, geneticists, and agronomists. florida, united states of america: crc press. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 306 determinants of system of rice intensification adoption and its impacts on rice yield in the upland region of central vietnam hang thi thuy nguyena pham xuan hungb a,buniversity of economics, hue university, vietnam.  nguyenthithuyhang_dhkt@hueuni.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 8 september 2022 revised: 26 october 2022 accepted: 14 november 2022 published: 1 december 2022 keywords adoption factors binary logit central vietnam impact rice yield system of rice intensification upland. the system of rice intensification (sri) is an eco-friendly approach that aims to increase rice yield, reduce required inputs, and improve rural households' income without burdening the environment. this paper investigates the factors that influence the adoption of the sri practice in rice production and the impact of the sri adoption on rice yields in the upland region of central vietnam. utilizing the stratified random sampling method, 239 rice farmers in quang nam and thua thien hue provinces were selected for the study. our study employed the logit model to identify the determinants of sri adoption and found that the age of respondents had a significant and negative effect on the adoption of sri. in contrast, the amount of family labor, number of plots, and access to credit had significant positive effects on farmers’ decision to adopt sri. in addition, the results showed that when rice farmers adopted sri, their yields increased by 15.1% on average. regarding the policy implications, the results suggest a need for a coordinated policy between the vietnamese government and farmers to support the implementation of the sri method in mountainous areas, especially to train farmers to use the sri technique. contribution/originality: our study makes a significant contribution to the literature by analyzing the factors influencing sri adoption in rice production. by employing a quantitative approach, our study showed the positive impact of the adoption of the sri method on rice yields and addressed the issue of new technology adoption in agriculture. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4677 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: hang thi thuy nguyen --pham xuan hung (2022). determinants of system of rice intensification adoption and its impacts on rice yield in the upland region of central vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4), 306-315. 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4677 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the adoption of new technology in agricultural production is crucial to improving rural households' income and enhancing economic development (takahashi & barrett, 2014). the success of the green revolution has shown that the adoption of technology in the agricultural sector has resulted in significant productivity and farm income gains. increasing agricultural productivity, particularly rice productivity, is essential to achieve food security and enhance household income, especially in low and middle-low-income countries, where many farmers rely on rice cultivation. a new technique for paddy production – the system of rice intensification (sri) – has recently attracted interest and been widely introduced in many countries, with support from africare, the oxford committee for famine relief (oxfam), the world wildlife fund (wwf), and world bank (barrett, islam, mohammad malek, pakrashi, & ruthbah, 2022). the sri practice, developed by father laulanié in madagascar in the mid-1980s, is an approach to asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 4 (2022): 306-315. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4099-8154 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9817-3863 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 306-315 307 increasing rice yield, reducing required inputs, and improving environmental friendliness (stoop, uphoff, & kassam, 2002; uphoff et al., 2002). the sri practice does not require using new varieties and chemical inputs, such as inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. instead, this technique combines several agronomic management practices in rice farming by changing how water, plants, soil, and nutrients are managed (dass et al., 2015; thakur, rath, roychowdhury, & uphoff, 2010). the technical components of the sri method are based on five principles: care in transplanting young seedlings, wider spacing between the plants, soil aeration combined with weed control, decreasing irrigation water to keep the soil moist, and the application of organic fertilizer (stoop et al., 2002; styger et al., 2011; varma, 2019). some studies consider the sri approach a "system" of techniques rather than a "technology" because it requires no specific inputs and does not apply a fixed set of principles (barrett et al., 2022). rice is vietnam’s main crop; the country ranks as the second-largest rice exporter in the world (fulton & reynolds, 2015; ha, nguyen, kompas, che, & trinh, 2015) with a total exported value of 2.79 billion us$ in 2020 (trade international center (tic) calculations based on united nations comtrade and trade international center statistics). rice production in upland areas of vietnam, especially the central region, faces many difficulties, such as poor soil, drought, weeds, diseases and pests, and high fragmentation. since 2003, vietnam's plant protection department (ppd) has been implementing the sri practice in north vietnam. in 2012, the foundation for international development and relief (fidr), a japan-based non-governmental organization (ngo), introduced sri in three mountainous districts in quang nam province. this model was expanded to six districts in quang nam province and one district in thua thien hue province (do, le, cao, otsuki, & kano, 2020). the application of sri has fundamentally and comprehensively changed the status of rice production by increasing rice productivity and improving food security for local people (do et al., 2020; varma, 2019). in addition, the sri practice can adapt to the negative effects of climate change (thakur & uphoff, 2017) and is suitable for upland farming conditions. the literature has extensively reported that the sri practice is expected to reduce input costs, curtail water use, and improve rice yields (barrett et al., 2022; choudhary & suri, 2018; dass et al., 2015; dobermann, 2004; mishra, ketelaar, uphoff, & whitten, 2021; sinha & talati, 2007; styger et al., 2011; thakur et al., 2010). several empirical studies have indicated that the adoption of sri enhances household income and increases economic returns or profits (barrett et al., 2022; kadigi et al., 2020; mishra et al., 2021; varma, 2019). however, some studies have expressed skepticism about this and indicated that sri did not increase rice yields (reddy, reddy, reddy, & raju, 2005). the successful sri practice seems to bring many benefits to farmers; however, studies on the determinants of sri adoption and its impacts on rice yields using quantitative models are still limited. therefore, our paper attempts to address this issue in the uplands of the central region in vietnam. our paper focuses on sri adoption in the uplands for several reasons. first, most minority people are concentrated in the uplands and mountainous areas of vietnam. most of them are poor, vulnerable, and live in difficult situations, subject to natural disasters and extreme weather conditions (inoue, 2019). their main income source is agricultural activities. improving the food security and livelihoods of ethnic people in these areas is a target of the vietnamese government. thus, the adoption of sri is considered one way to enhance farm income through increased rice yields. secondly, the rice farming practice of minority ethnicities in mountainous areas differs from that of the delta areas, and productivity is usually low. thirdly, the adoption of sri in upland and mountainous areas faces certain difficulties because of low education levels and long-standing farming practices. these may induce constraints on the adoption of new techniques in agricultural production in these areas. therefore, this research investigates the adoption of sri in the upland and mountainous areas of vietnam. furthermore, the contribution of our study does not only lie in showing the benefits of applying the sri method to increase rice yields but also the benefits of its adoption in alleviating food shortage and poverty for minority people. the results could provide information for policymakers on the implementation of new practices in other mountainous areas of vietnam. 2. conceptual framework according to loevinsohn, sumberg, diagne, and whitfield (2013), technology can be defined as a vehicle and manner of producing goods and services. technology adoption is defined as “the integration of new technology into existing practice” (loevinsohn et al., 2013). in agricultural production, technology adoption is not a simple yes or no decision (varma, 2019). farmers' decisions about whether and how to apply a new agricultural technique are influenced by the interaction between the characteristics of the technology itself and the factors related to the characteristics, conditions, and circumstances of farmers (loevinsohn et al., 2013). the adoption of agricultural technology is the result of the optimization of heterogeneous factors in the presence of various constraints, such as budget, lack of information, and availability of technology (foster & rosenzweig, 2010; ghimire, wen-chi, & shrestha, 2015; kuswardinah, ansori, rachmawati, & fajri, 2021; mwangi & kariuki, 2015). thus, farmers will adopt an agricultural technology that can provide maximum utility, subject to these constraints (varma, 2019). the discrepancy between the utility of adopting (uia) and the utility of not adopting the technology (uin) in a utility-maximizing farm household is denoted as ui *. according to de janvry, dustan, and sadoulet (2010), asfaw, shiferaw, simtowe, and lipper (2012), and ghimire et al. (2015), the adoption decision model can be presented in a random utility framework as in equation 1: ui *= xiβ + ui with 𝑈𝑖 = { 1 𝑖𝑓 𝑈𝑖 ∗ > 0 0 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑖𝑠𝑒 (1) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 306-315 308 where ui * is the latent variable representing the probability of the farmer deciding to adopt agricultural technology; xi are explanatory variables explaining the adoption decision; β is a vector of parameters of the explanatory variables, and ui is the error term. there is extensive prior literature on the elements that influence farmers’ technology adoption decisions in agricultural production. the decision to adopt new agricultural technology is affected by several internal and external factors (sunny, huang, & karimanzira, 2018). davies (1979) developed a threshold model that includes three elements that boost adoption decision-making, such as microeconomic behavior, heterogeneity factors, and a dynamic process affecting adoption behavior. the author indicated that the adoption decision was heterogeneous and was affected by many factors, such as knowledge, farm scale, technology information, human capital, cost, risk, and more. some previous studies have explained that technology adoption behaviors relate to socio-economic factors, including demographical characteristics, imperfect information, risk, input availability, institutional characteristics, and infrastructure (feder, just, & zilberman, 1985; foster & rosenzweig, 2010; mwangi & kariuki, 2015). previous studies have classified the various factors into different groups. akudugu, guo, and dadzie (2012) categorized the adoption factors of new agricultural technology into three groups: economic factors, social factors, and institutional factors. varma (2019) classified the factors affecting sri adoption into economic factors, social factors, institutional factors, and household characteristic factors. other recent studies have included a factor related to technical information among the categories of factors affecting technology adoption, called "technology factors." for example, mwangi and kariuki (2015) reviewed the factors influencing technology adoption by classifying them into four groups, namely, technological factors, economic factors, household-specific factors, and institutional factors. udimal, jincai, mensah, and caesar (2017) showed that the adoption of technology in rice farming is affected by many elements, including demographic characteristics, economic factors, and technology factors. li, huang, ma, qi, and li (2019) developed a theoretical model of technology adoption decision-making for the farmers of litchi based on rogers' innovation diffusion theory. according to this study, the decision to apply new agrarian technology in agricultural production is impacted by five factors, that is, the farmer's characteristics, the farmer's family characteristics, the farmer’s ability to access information, technology information accumulation, and the farmer's opinion of the technology. the research on influencing factors is contingent on the current technology being investigated and the location of the study area. equation 2 presents the theoretical model of farmers’ agricultural technology adoption. 𝐷𝑖 = 𝑓(𝐻𝑖 , 𝐸𝑖 , 𝐼𝑖 , 𝑇𝑖) (2) in the formula, di represents the agricultural technology adoption decision of the i-th farmer; hi is the human capital of the farmer or the farm household characteristics; ei represents the economic factors of the i-th farm household; ii is the farmer’s institutional factors, and ti represents the technology factors. the human capital of the farmer, which some studies call the household-specific factor or farm household characteristics, is believed to have a significant impact on the decision to adopt technology for agricultural production. several studies have indicated that the human capital of farm households can be defined as household characteristics such as the farmer’s age, gender, education, and farm size (feder et al., 1985; keelan, thorne, flanagan, newman, & mullins, 2009; teklewold, kassie, & shiferaw, 2013; uaiene, 2011). some studies, such as langyintuo and mungoma (2008) and meshram, chobitkar, paigwar, and dhuware (2016), have found a positive influence of the farmer’s age on adoption decisions. in contrast, other studies have indicated a negative impact of farmer age on adoption decisions (teklewold et al., 2013), meaning that older farmers tend to have less interest in adopting new technology due to an increase in risk aversion. there is an expectation that a farm household’s education level has a positive effect on their technology adoption decision (langyintuo & mungoma, 2008; meshram et al., 2016). farmers’ education level could increase their ability to access and obtain new technology, their capacity to understand the information about the technology, and their capacity to evaluate the utility of the new technology (okunlola, oludare, & akinwalere, 2011). gender differences have been investigated in many studies, which have found mixed results about the differences between men and women regarding the decision to adopt new technology. according to manda, alene, gardebroek, kassie, and tembo (2016), there was a negative relationship between the gender of households’ heads and their decision to adopt improved maize varieties. kamau, kabuage, and bett (2019) indicated that women heads of households were more likely to adopt new technology than male heads of households. however, doss and morris (2000) found no relationship between gender and the decision to adopt new technology in agricultural production. household size is considered a measure of family labor availability. according to teklewold et al. (2013), it is expected that the number of household members or available family labor has a positive impact on technology adoption because a larger household could relax the labor constraints when applying the new technology. ghimire et al. (2015) investigated family labor as a factor affecting the adoption of improved rice varieties; however, they found that the number of family laborers had no impact on rice farmers' adoption. according to sigdel, devkota, joshi, and devkota (2014), farm household characteristics such as gender, age, and education are the factors that influence the adoption of sri. regarding economic factors, many studies have shown the critical role of farm size in the decision to adopt new technology (langyintuo & mungoma, 2008; manda et al., 2016; meshram et al., 2016; mwangi & kariuki, 2015; nyairo, pfeiffer, & russell, 2021). large-scale farmers tend to adopt new technology because they can afford to spend part of their land trying out the new technology (uaiene, 2011). a few studies have explored how the plot characteristics of farm households influence their technology adoption decision. in particular, takahashi and barrett (2014) found that the size of the plot had a positive effect on sri adoption, while the number of plots that a household operates negatively affected the adoption of sri practices. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 306-315 309 access to credit is believed to promote technology adoption because it reduces risk by loosening liquidity constraints (simtowe & zeller, 2006). this is considered an institutional factor that influences the technology adoption decision of farming households (mwangi & kariuki, 2015). 3. materials and methods 3.1. data and study area this research was carried out in two provinces in the central region of vietnam, that is, quang nam and thua thien hue provinces. data was collected in three districts, namely, bac tra my and nam tra my in quang nam province, and nam dong district in thua thien hue province (as illustrated in figure 1). all three districts are located in the mountainous or upland areas of the central coast in vietnam, which have a high proportion of ethnic minorities. specifically, about 95% of the total population of nam tra my district belongs to ethnic minority groups, and these population groups account for nearly 50% and 54% of the population in the bac tra my and nam dong districts, respectively. agriculture is the primary production sector in these districts, accounting for more than 70% of the total production value. nevertheless, the small production scale has resulted in many poor households in these areas. wet-rice cultivation is the main traditional cultivation method in the study areas, with winter-spring and summerautumn crops; of these, winter-spring is the main crop. aside from the wet-rice areas, farmers cultivate rice in the uplands; however, the productivity is rather low due to drought and the traditional cultivation method. the majority of nam tra my district is made up of steep mountains. consequently, most wet-rice crops are cultivated on fragmented terraced fields with inactive irrigation. the terrain of the bac tra my district is flatter than the nam tra my district, resulting in more convenient wet-rice production. with its flat terrain and active irrigation, most of the paddy land can be used to cultivate both winter-spring and summer-autumn crops in nam dong district, thua thien hue province. figure 1. map of study areas. the farm households that took part in this study belong to the project on food security improvement for smallscale farmers in central vietnam, organized by the foundation for international development and relief (fidr), which started in quang nam in 2012. in 2015, this model was expanded to six districts in quang nam province as well as nam dong district in thua thien hue province. the project aims to improve food security for small-scale asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 306-315 310 farming households by implementing an advanced rice farming technique (sri) in mountainous areas. rice farmers were selected and trained to apply the sri technique in their rice production. a stratified random sampling technique was used to select the rice farmers for the study. the rice farmers were divided into 2 groups: sri adoption and sri non-adoption. in each group, farmers were randomly selected. the interviewed rice farmers were selected based on a list of households reporting sri adoption in the winter-spring crop of 2020 provided by the district's staff. the farming households without sri adoption were also selected randomly. the total number of farm households interviewed in this study was 239, including 89 households in bac tra my district, 67 households in nam tra my district, and 83 households in nam dong district. a proportionate sampling technique based on the wet-rice cultivation area and the area implementing sri was applied to determine the sample size for each district. a pre-test survey was conducted with 10 rice farmers from each district to validate the accuracy of the questionnaire. 3.2. method 3.2.1. binary logistic model to investigate the factors that influence the adoption of sri, we applied logit regression for the binary dependent variable of sri adoption. this model was adjusted from similar studies on farmers’ technology adoption decisions (li et al., 2019; ntshangase, muroyiwa, & sibanda, 2018; udimal et al., 2017). when faced with a decision relating to the adoption of an innovation, the farmers would either adopt or reject the technology. it is well documented that farmers' adoption decisions can be analyzed using logistic regression. the dependent variable in this model was a dummy variable in which the rice farmers who were adopters of the sri method took the value 1, and non-adopters of the sri method took 0: 𝑆𝑅𝐼𝑖 = { 1 𝑖𝑓 𝑎 𝑓𝑎𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑑𝑜𝑝𝑡𝑠 𝑆𝑅𝐼 0 𝑖𝑓 𝑎 𝑓𝑎𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑟 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑎𝑑𝑜𝑝𝑡 𝑆𝑅𝐼 the likelihood of the farmer adopting the sri technique was predicted by the odds of (sri = 1); that is, the ratio of the probability that sri = 1 to the probability that y ≠1: 𝑂𝑑𝑑 𝑆𝑅𝐼 = 𝑃(𝑆𝑅𝐼 = 1) (1 − 𝑃(𝑆𝑅𝐼 = 1)) the binary logistic regression model is represented as follows: 𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑡 (𝑆𝑅𝐼) = log 𝑂𝑑𝑑𝑠 𝑆𝑅𝐼 = ln ( 𝑃(𝑆𝑅𝐼 = 1) (1 − 𝑃(𝑆𝑅𝐼 = 1)) ) where logit (sri) is given by the natural log of odds. the binary logistic regression model of the determinants affecting sri adoption was constructed and expanded based on theories and practices: 𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑡 (𝑆𝑅𝐼𝑖) = 𝛼0 + 𝛼1 ∑ 𝑍𝑖 𝑖 𝑖=1 + ɛ𝑖 where zi is a vector of the socio-economic characteristics variables of the i-th household and the district dummy variables. 3.2.2. ordinary least squares regression the estimation of the effect of the adoption of sri on rice yield was performed by applying the ordinary least squares (ols) model, which is represented in the following equation: 𝑌𝑖 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 ∑ 𝑍𝑖𝑗 𝑗 𝑗=1 + 𝛽2 ∑ 𝑋𝑖𝑘 𝑘 𝑘=1 + 𝜉𝑖 (3) where yi is the rice yield of the i-th farm household. xi is a vector of inputs used in the rice production of the i-th farm household. β1 and β2 are the parameters of vector variables zi and xi. 3.3. descriptive statistics of variables based on the technology adoption theory and the literature, the sri adoption model and the model describing its impact on the rice yield include several explanatory variables, which are defined in table 1. the descriptive statistics of the variables in the two models that influence sri adoption and rice yield within the two groups (adopters and non-adopters) are presented in table 2. the group of non-adopters included 99 households. the total number of sri-adopting households was 140. an independent t-test was applied to discover the differences between the adopters' and non-adopters' characteristics. this revealed statistically significant differences between adopters and non-adopters of the sri technique concerning certain household and farm-level characteristics, including rice yield, age of household, the amount of family labor, and the quantity of seed used. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 306-315 311 table 1. variable definitions. variables definition rice yield the rice yield of the winter-spring crop (kilogram per sao) gender gender of the interviewee or head of the household age age of the interviewee or head of the household education the completed years of schooling of the household's interviewee ethnicity dummy variable, = 1 if the household is of kinh ethnicity (the major racial identity of vietnamese people, = 0 for minority ethnicities rice land the total rice area of the household (hectare) number of plots the number of plots in rice cultivation family labor the number of family members’ labor available credit the credit borrowed from banks by the household (million dongs) sri dummy variable, = 1 if household adopts sri technique, and = 0 otherwise (non-adopter) seed the quantity of seed used in the winter-spring crop (kilogram per sao) chemical fertilizer the quantity of chemical fertilizer used in the winter-spring crop (kilogram per sao) organic fertilizer the quantity of organic fertilizer used in the winter-spring crop (kilogram per sao) rice land of winterspring crop the rice land cultivation in the winter-spring crop (sao) rice labor days the number of labor days for 1 sao of rice in the winter-spring crop (labor days per sao) dummy of bac tra my district dummy variable of bac tra my district, = 1 if household in bac tra my district, = 0 otherwise dummy of nam tra my district dummy variable of nam tra my district, = 1 if household in nam tra my district, = 0 otherwise dummy of nam dong district dummy variable of nam dong district, = 1 if household in nam dong district, = 0 otherwise note: 1 sao = 500 m2. table 2 also presents the independent t-test values of the differences between adopters and non-adopters of the sri method. there are statistically significant differences between the household characteristics of adopters and nonadopters of the sri technique. specifically, the rice yield of non-adopters was 189.03 kilogram/500m2 (approximately 3.78 tons per hectare), while adopters obtained 225.67 kilogram/500m2 (approximately 4.51 tons per hectare). moreover, adopters and non-adopters differed significantly in the age of the household head or interviewee, the amount of family labor, and the use of seeds in rice production. the households that adopted sri were younger than the non-adopters. the amount of family labor was significantly higher for adopters than for non-adopters. because the sri technique does not use herbicides and pesticides, farmers used more labor in the cultivation practice. the use of seed inputs in rice production differed between the two groups, in that adopters used less seed than non-adopters. one of the requirements of the sri technique is sparse planting density compared to the traditional technique (reddy et al., 2005). thus, this result implies rice farmers met the requirements of this specification of sri. table 2. descriptive statistics for rice yield and input variables of rice production between non-adopters of sri and adopters of sri. variable non-adopters of sri adopters of sri total mean difference rice yield (kg/sao) 189.03 (69.0) 225.67 (93.3) 210.5 (85.88) 0.001*** age 38.52 (12.86 35.45 (10.28) 36.72 (11.49) 0042** rice land (hectare) 0.25 (0.35) 0.32 (0.72) 0.29 (0.60) 0.365 number of plots 2.68 (2.01) 3.13 (2.30) 2.94 (2.19) 0.117 family labor 2.70 (1.01) 3.24 (1.22) 3.01 (1.17) 0.000*** credit 29.47 (22.66) 34.38 (33.68) 32.34 (29.66) 0.208 seed (kg/sao) 6.44 (3.30) 5.07 (4.39) 5.64 (4.02) 0.010*** chemical fertilizer (kg/sao) 6.64 (8.83) 5.25 (7.56) 5.83 (8.12) 0.192 organic fertilizer (kg/sao) 0.14 (0.38) 0.57 (2.36) 0.39 (1.83) 0.074 rice land of winter-spring crop (hectare) 2.21 (1.21) 2.14 (1.38) 2.17 (1.31) 0.706 rice labor days 12.42 (9.14) 13.45 (8.70) 13.02 (8.88) 0.38 number of observations 99 140 239 note: 1) standard deviations in parentheses; 2) ** and *** indicate significance at 5% and 1% levels, respectively; 3) 1 sao = 500m2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 306-315 312 4. results and discussion 4.1. factors influencing the adoption of sri table 3 presents parameter estimates of the factors that influence the adoption of the sri method by rice farmers in the mountainous area of central vietnam. the influencing factors are used in the model, which is based on the conceptual framework and the characteristics of the study area. the results show that the age of farmers had a statistically significant and negative impact on the adoption of sri. this implies that farmers who adopt the sri method tend to be younger than non-adopters. this result is consistent with the studies of varma (2019) in india and teklewold et al. (2013), akudugu et al. (2012), and udimal et al. (2017) in ghana. however, this result is in contrast with the study of ntshangase et al. (2018), which found a positive impact, as well as the statistically insignificant results reported in studies such as ghimire et al. (2015) and takahashi and barrett (2014). the number of plots had a positive and statistically significant effect on the sri adoption decision of rice farmers. this result indicates that rice farmers with more rice plots are more likely to adopt sri. this may be because farm households with many plots find it easier to try new technology by committing only a few plots to the new method of rice production, thereby decreasing their risk. this result contradicts the finding of takahashi and barrett (2014) in their study on sri adoption in indonesia. another interesting outcome of our model is that an increase in the number of family laborers boosts the adoption of the sri method. the results show a positive and statistically significant relationship between the amount of family labor available and the adoption of sri. sri is a labor-intensive model, requiring hands-on techniques such as soil aeration, weed control, and seedling planting rather than using machines or herbicides. thus, this approach requires more labor days than traditional farming methods. the finding is consistent with earlier studies on sri adoption by teklewold et al. (2013), takahashi and barrett (2014), udimal et al. (2017), ntshangase et al. (2018), and varma (2019). however, our finding contradicts the study of ghimire et al. (2015), which found no impact of family labor on technology adoption decisions in farming households. table 3. the factors that influence the adoption of sri. independent variables coefficient s.e. gender -0.194 0.31 age -0.023* 0.01 education 0.092 0.09 ethnicity -0.755 0.86 rice land -0.016 0.28 number of plots 0.115* 0.07 family labor 0.500*** 0.16 credit 0.011** 0.01 dummy of bac tra my district -0.045 0.36 dummy of nam tra my district 1.109** 0.43 constant -1.349 0.76 number of observations 239 p > chi2 (ꭓ2) 0.0038 note: 1) ***, **, * indicate statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% levels, respectively. 2) the base district is nam dong district. 3) s.e. indicates the robust standard error. in addition, access to credit had a positive impact on sri adoption among rice farmers. the accessibility of credit sources could make it easier for rice farmers to adopt new techniques in agricultural production. this result is consistent with the study of udimal et al. (2017). regarding the dummy variables for the district, the dummy variable of nam tra my district had a positive and significant effect. the result indicates that the sri adoption project was conducted more effectively in nam tra my district than in nam dong district. indeed, this project was implemented in quang nam province (including nam tra my and bac tra my districts) first and was applied in nam dong district three years later. 4.2. the impact of sri adoption on rice yields table 4 shows the estimates of the impact of sri adoption on rice yields. from the estimation results, we can see that the parameter of the sri adoption variable is positive and statistically significant at a significance level of 1%. this result implies that the farmers who adopted the sri technique had a higher rice yield than non-adopters. the parameter also indicates that adopting sri in rice cultivation could increase the rice yield of farm households by about 15.1%. this result is in line with the studies of varma (2019), kadigi et al. (2020), mishra et al. (2021), and barrett et al. (2022), who found that sri adoption could increase rice yields through an estimated econometric model. regarding the other variables affecting rice yield, the results showed a positive effect on rice yield if the number of labor days used for rice production in the winter-spring crop was higher. the parameter of this variable indicates that if farmers spend 1% more labor days on the winter-spring crop, the yield will increase by 0.098%. this aligns with the fact that households applying the sri technique need more labor for production activities than those using the conventional method. in contrast, the size of households’ rice land (in the winter-spring crop) had a negative impact on rice yield. this result implies that rice farmers with a larger area of rice land had lower rice productivity. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 306-315 313 specifically, if the size of farm households’ rice land increases by 1%, the rice yield will reduce by 0.185%. the coefficient of ethnicity variable is positively significant at the 1% significance level. this result means that rice farmers who are kinh may produce higher rice yields than minorities. regarding the dummy variables for districts, the estimation results showed that bac tra my and nam tra my districts have higher rice productivity than the base district (nam dong). table 4. the impact of the adoption of sri on rice yield in the winter-spring crop. independent variables rice yield (log) coef. s.e. sri 0.151*** 0.05 rice labor days (log) 0.098* 0.06 seed (log) -0.012 0.04 chemical fertiliser (log) 0.007 0.01 organic fertiliser (log) 0.003 0.01 rice land winter-spring (log) -0.185*** 0.05 gender 0.015 0.06 age 0.001 0.00 education -0.003 0.02 ethnicity 0.323*** 0.11 number of plots (log) 0.026 0.04 credit 0.001 0.00 dummy of bac tra my district 0.191** 0.08 dummy of nam tra my district 0.180** 0.09 constant 4.858*** 0.21 number of observations 239 r-squared 0.236 note: 1) ***, **, * indicate statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% levels, respectively. 2) s.e. indicates the robust standard error. 3) the base district is nam dong district. 5. conclusions the decision to adopt the sri practice in rice production is a function of a farm household’s age, amount of family labor available, access to credit, and number of plots. thus, the study recommends that in mountainous areas, the local government and ngos should focus more on young farmers, who are more willing to apply new farming practices such as sri. in addition, a credit program for farmers needs to be implemented to increase the number of sri adopters. the results also showed that the adoption of sri increased the rice yield by about 15.1%. thus, aside from improving the productivity of rice paddies, this method can enhance farm households' incomes. however, it is more difficult to increase the adoption of sri techniques among minorities in the upland regions than among kinh people because minorities tend to have lower education levels and prefer not to shift cultivation practices. thus, the results suggest a need for a coordinated policy between the vietnamese government and farmers to support the extension of the sri method in mountainous areas. the expansion and development of sri practices should also be conducted in many other regions in vietnam, with the support of the ministry of agricultural and rural development. furthermore, we recommend training farmers on the techniques of the sri method, especially the five technical multi-component principles that need to be fully implemented. funding: this research is supported by the university of economics, hue university. (grant number: 110a/hd-dhkt). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akudugu, m. a., guo, e., & dadzie, s. k. (2012). adoption of modern agricultural production technologies by farm households in ghana: what factors influence their decisions? journal of biology, agriculture and healthcare, 2(3), 1--14. asfaw, s., shiferaw, b., simtowe, f., & lipper, l. 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(2019). adoption and the impact of system of rice intensification on rice yields and household income: an analysis for india. applied economics, 51(45), 4956-4972.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2019.1606408. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 63 farmers' markets: an analysis of the determinants of consumers’ attitudes and behavior sandip solankia krishna murthy inumulab a,bsymbiosis institute of international business (siib), symbiosis international (deemed university), hinjawadi, maharashtra, india.  sandip.solanki@siib.ac.in (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 12 november 2020 revised: 28 december 2020 accepted: 14 january 2021 published: 26 january 2021 keywords farmers’ markets agri-business consumer behavior consumption motivation food willingness to pay direct marketing farm products. this research explores indicators of the attitudes, preferences, and features of customers who buy at farmers’ markets in india, using an intercept survey design. single-stage purposive sampling was carried out in which consumers were targeted at weekend farmers’ markets at nine different locations within the state of maharashtra, india. over a 2-month period of data collection (eight weekend visits) a total of 255 consumers were interviewed on site at the time of purchase, from whom we collected 235 completed questionnaires. consumers in the sample were divided into three clusters and were rated positively on all seven factors considered. the findings of the study are that in cluster 1, about 80% of consumers were willing to pay more at the farmers’ market rather than to go to a nearby retail outlet or supermarket. cluster 2 comprised those consumers who prefer value for money while cluster 3 includes those consumers who gave a high rating to the hygiene and service conditions at the market. this research concludes that consumers are positive about the operation of farmers’ markets held near their home. contribution/originality: this study documents an understanding of what stimulates customers to buy from farmers’ markets, and what distinguishes those markets from other food retailing sites such as supermarkets. the study findings will be used to improve marketing, farmers' markets, and economic conditions in order to attract other consumer groups. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.63.70 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: sandip solanki --krishna murthy inumula (2021). farmers' markets: an analysis of the determinants of consumers’ attitudes and behavior. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 63-70. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.63.70 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction india as an agrarian country has a wide presence of farmers’ markets in both rural and urban sectors of society, where farmers directly sell their produce to end consumers thereby bringing down the cost of logistics and the role of middlemen, which ultimately reduces the final prices of produce. various studies have reported that consumers choose to shop at farmers’ markets because of low prices (kuches, toensmeyer, german, & bacon, 1999), while at the same time enjoying the freshness, quality and variety of tasty, healthy fruit and vegetables (pokorná, pilař, balcarová, & sergeeva, 2015; wolf, spittler, & ahern, 2005). as a consumer-driven economy, india has considerable potential in regard to the farmers’ market business model, to increase access to food and improve the nutritional quality of produce from indigenous farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 63-70 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9455-5263 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4556-549x mailto:sandip.solanki@siib.ac.in http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.63.70 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 63-70 64 farmers’ markets act as a catalyst in reducing the gap between the urban and rural landscape wherein every consumer wants home-grown organic food with less chemical input and available at an affordable price. the rural– urban interface in farmers’ markets facilitates communication and an exchange of culture and trade relations between farmers and local residents, thereby building trust and customer loyalty to improve business (feagan & morris, 2009; hunt, 2007). direct marketing through farmers’ markets also encourages farmers to grow independently and sustain competition, and helps to produce a wider variety and quality of farm products. according to down-to-earth, a private news agency, “rural markets are presently not working as effective price discovery points for farmers. for 47 years, government has not acted on recommendation of upgrading rural market into business hubs. india needs 30,000 agriculture markets to give fair deal to farmers”. in the state of maharashtra in india, weekend farmers’ markets offer the benefits of providing fresh fruit and vegetables to local consumers; similar types of farmers’ markets should be morewidespread around the country so that benefits would be equally distributed among farmers and consumers for the greater good and a healthier nation. 1.1. what is a farmers’ market? direct marketing or selling is variously defined: “farmers’ markets are characterized by the selling of foods and other items directly to the customer by the person who grew, reared or produced the goods.” (trobe, 2001). the current study identifies buyer attitudes, characteristics, and anxieties that predict the likelihood of visiting a farmers’ market. most developed countries have experimented with the farmers’ market business model to achieve improved hygienic standards and control over obesity in the population, by improving access to fresh fruit and vegetables at an affordable price. in india there is currently a need to develop the presence of farmers’ markets in everyday business; to make this happen, public–private initiatives are required to encourage farmers, consumers, and society at large to understand the long-term benefits of farmers’ markets. due to globalization, western practices are automatically followed by the developing nations; in india this is a way forward in regard to the demand for farmers’ markets across urban and semi-urban cities to promote healthy diets and consumption of nutritious food. farmers' markets are known for providing fresh fruit and vegetables, as well as other value-added products (payne, 2002). 2. literature review various scholars have revealed that concerns when buying fruit and vegetables include their provenance and freshness, good taste, and absence of food-borne illnesses (archer, sánchez, vignali, & chaillot, 2003; bukenya, mukiibi, molnar, & siaway, 2007; conner, colasanti, ross, & smalley, 2010; govindasamy & nayga, 1996; murphy, 2011; payne, 2002; pokorná et al., 2015; wolf et al., 2005). kuches et al. (1999) found that locally grown produce is one of the key reasons for buying from farmers’ markets. moreover, wolf et al. (2005) indicated that the quality of produce and price are among the most significant features when buying from farmers’ markets. in other studies, bukenya et al. (2007) highlighted that customers are happy to pay more for naturally grown food, while wolf (1997) found that fresh produce reasonably priced, convenient to purchase, and easily accessible within cities was sought by consumers willing to buy produce from farmers’ markets. archer et al. (2003) revealed that almost all buyers will return to farmers’ markets to buy produce because it is fresh, distinctive, and local; as well as wanting to support local farmers. kuches et al. (1999) highlighted that the most important reason why respondents purchased produce at direct markets was for the selection of produce available. bruhn, vossen, chapman, and vaupel (1992) indicated that buyers will return to farmers’ markets if they can buy locally grown produce at a reasonable price. several studies have been conducted on shoppers to determine who shops and why at these farmers' markets (abelló, palma, waller, & anderson, 2014; adams & adams, 2011; bavorova, unay-gailhard, & lehberger, 2016; bukenya et al., 2007; eastwood, 1996; gallons, toensmeyer, bacon, & german, 1997; kezis, gwebu, peavey, & cheng, 1998; onianwa, wheelock, & mojica, 2005; wolf., 1997). onianwa et al. (2005) explored an unfavorable but not significant correlation between married couples and buying at farmers’ markets. with regard to location, those who live in metropolitan areas were expected to shop less at farmers’ markets. education (above high school) was one of the important variables in regard to buying from a direct farmer-to-consumer market (onianwa et al., 2005). previous studies (gallons et al., 1997; govindasamy, italia, zurbriggen, & hossain, 2002; kuches et al., 1999; sommer, wing, & aitkens, 1980; wolf et al., 2005) have shown that buying at farmers’ markets means value for money. sommer et al. (1980) highlighted that consumers save money by buying from farmers’ markets. likewise, gallons et al. (1997) found that farmers’ markets help farmers to sell their products directly to customers while enjoying better profit margins. a key benefit of this set-up for consumers is that they get fresh produce at lower prices. moreover, kuches et al. (1999) highlighted that respondents believe that prices were lower at direct markets. many studies (eastwood, 1996; morgan & alipoe, 2001; pokorná et al., 2015; rengasamy et al., 2003; ross, anderson, goldberg, houser, & rogers, 1999; wolf et al., 2005) have investigated lack of knowledge about farmers’ markets: inconvenient access, high prices, and inconvenient opening hours were among some of the primary reasons for not buying. morgan and alipoe (2001) discussed how the geographic location of direct marketing outlets is one of the key determinants of success. in addition, pokorná et al. (2015) reported that consumers visit farmers’ markets because of the fresh and healthy produce but that higher prices and inconvenient operating hours were seen as disadvantages. eastwood (1996) identified a list of problem areas regarding customers’ reluctance to shop regularly at these outlets, the most frequently cited being the distances required to drive; prices were too high; equal or better quality available at more convenient locations; and the facility was acceptable for occasional, but not regular, trips. rengasamy et al. (2003) also found that accessibility was a key influence regarding visiting farmers’ markets. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 63-70 65 research studies have shown strong evidence that customers are willing to pay higher prices for local produce (gumirakiza, curtis, & bosworth, 2017). kezis et al. (1998) investigated customers who said that they would be willing to spend more for local produce at farmers' markets. other studies (feagan & morris, 2009; gumirakiza, curtis, & bosworth, 2014; hunt, 2007) have attributed numerous reasons to why customers attend farmers’ markets, including social interaction. similarly, gumirakiza et al. (2014) indicated that buyers who visit farmers’ markets intend to purchase fresh food and interact with farmers. many researchers (archer et al., 2003; bavorova et al., 2016; conner et al., 2010; feagan & morris, 2009; gallons et al., 1997; kezis et al., 1998; kuches et al., 1999) found that customers bought from farmers’ markets to support farmers. various factors, such as store atmosphere and quality of produce, have been found to influence consumer satisfaction (lulfs-baden, spiller, zuhlsdorf, & mellin, 2008). it has also been demonstrated (gale, 1997; govindasamy, hossain, & adelaja, 1999; guthrie, guthrie, lawson, & cameron, 2006; henneberry, whitacre, & agustini, 2009) that farmers’ markets are a substantial source of income for smallholders and aid economic development. 3. methodology 3.1. pilot survey before taking up the large-scale survey on consumers’ choice and why they prefer farmers’ markets, a pilot survey of 25 consumers was tested using simple questions including the reasons for their preferences, their expectations, and how much time they spend at farmers’ markets. a literature review of similar studies, mostly conducted outside of india, was taken into consideration while building up a large-scale survey in maharashtra state. 3.2. sample survey in addition to demographic and social information on consumers, three main constructs were used in the survey to assess consumer choices and preferences regarding farmers’ markets. the first deals with the purchasing decisions of consumers based on 17 measurable items rated on a scale of importance from 1 (not at all important) to 5 (very important). the second concerns the level of agreement with the characteristics of purchasing importance, based on 10 measurable instruments from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). the third construct, rating of farmers’ market characteristics, consists of 15 measurable items from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). all the above survey items were tested for reliability and analysed, with cronbach-alpha value exceeding the stipulated value of 0.70. 3.3. sample size the sampling design used in this study is a singl-e-stage, purposive method in which consumers were interviewed at weekend farmers’ markets in 9 different locations within maharashtra state. over a 2-month data collection period (8 weekend visits), a total of 255 consumers were interviewed on site at the time of purchase, from whom we collected 235 completed questionnaires; 20 questionnaires were found to be inaccurate, either because of interviewee non-interest or incomplete responses, and therefore the sample size in this study is restricted to 235 consumers. the time period for data collection was chosen to ensure that there were no promotional offers or village fairs that could impact the study results. the survey was administered through a direct approach to the respondents, with the set of questionnaires and responses noted by the investigators; the sample was a mix of men and women aged 15–60 years and including students, working professionals, and domestic workers. 3.4. data analysis the data collected were coded, entered on an excel spreadsheet, and converted to spss data files for analysis. respondents’ ratings were collected on three different 5-point likert scales and were assumed to be on a continuous scale; we measured both ranking and distance between the attributes and opinions as rated by the consumers. a simple frequency analysis was used to describe the sociodemographic profile of respondents, factor analysis was used to reduce data variables to meaningful clusters, and subsequent cluster analysis was utilized to determine cluster naming and grouping. hierarchical cluster analysis was then performed, in which the ward dendrogram method was used to determine the number of clusters, followed by a k-means clustering technique for cluster grouping. finally, profiling of clusters was done based on the demographic variables age, gender, and occupation. 4. results 4.1. respondent profile the respondent sample is 65% male and 35% female, from different age groups, with 45% aged between 26 and 35 years and 28% between 15 and 25 years. around 56% of the sample respondents are married, 43% are single; 48% have graduate qualification and 30% postgraduate. in terms of occupation, the private sector comprises 60% followed by self-employed (14%) and domestic (12%). the monthly household income is negatively skewed: 48% earn >rs.40,000 and 21% earn rs.31,000–40,000. around 80% of respondents were found to be the primary buyer of fruit and vegetables at the farmers’ market. around 80% of respondents said that they are willing to pay more for produce at farmers’ markets rather than purchase at a supermarket or nearby market. the majority of respondents (38%) learned about the farmers’ market through friends and neighbors, and 32% by word of mouth. about 76% of respondents go to the farmers’ market every week, with 10% visiting twice per month. typical time spent by respondents at the farmers’ market ranged from <1 hour (63%) to 1–2 hours (33%). in a single transaction, 35% of consumers spend rs.201–400 while 31% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 63-70 66 spend rs.401–600. around 39% respondents said that of all fruit and vegetables bought each week, 75% came from the farmers’ market while for 28% this was 50–75% of fresh produce. 4.2. factor determination factor analysis was used to reduce the number of data variables in the original dataset to a meaningful number of factors, with a few variables representing the originals. the preliminary factor analysis gave a 7-factor solution representing 22 variables from the original dataset of 42. the suitability of data for structure detection (table 1) – also confirmed by the kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) measure of sampling adequacy statistic value (0.823) – indicates that the proportion of variance in the data variables may well be due to underlying factors. the high value indicates that the factor analysis is justified for the given data. bartlett's test of sphericity also confirms that the correlation matrix is not an identity matrix, meaning that the data variables are correlated with each other and that factor analysis gives a good representation of the original data variables in terms of factor solution. table-1. structure detection. kmo and bartlett's test of sphericity kmo 0.823 bartlett's approx. chi-square 3472.372 d.f. 861 sig. 0.000 table-2. factor labels. factor number factor label 1 convenience 2 variety 3 quality 4 price 5 hygiene and health 6 service conditions 7 buying experience table-3. factor loadings. factor labels: items measured factor loading mean standard deviation convenience: adequate parking 0.75 4.25 1.05 fconveniently located 0.68 4.18 0.98 operating times are convenient 0.78 4.8 1.02 flexibility in payment 0.84 4.12 1.12 variety: large variety of produce 0.72 4.02 0.98 this is one of the best farmers’ markets i have ever seen 0.75 4.15 1.2 number of crafts/stalls 0.67 3.98 0.89 quality: freshness 0.78 4.3 0.68 fresh-tasting fruit & vegetables 0.74 4.12 0.95 quality of products 0.84 4.47 1.04 price: price of fruit & vegetables is very reasonable 0.84 4.02 0.98 fruit & vegetables sold by growers 0.89 4.37 1.23 product return and exchange facilities 0.86 4.52 1.06 hygiene & health: pesticide-free fruit & vegetables 0.72 4.09 0.65 cleanliness & hygienic condition of market 0.71 3.95 0.98 minimum likelihood of food-borne disease 0.75 4.25 1.25 service conditions: adequate parking 0.7 4.56 0.59 behavior and service 0.81 4.12 1.07 security 0.73 3.87 1.32 buying experience: consistency 0.87 4.65 1.25 product return and exchange facilities 0.91 4.15 1.54 buying from this farmers’ market is an outstanding experience 0.76 3.95 1.45 because of the nature of the data variables to be correlated and subsequent correlation among factors, in this study factor analysis with the principal axis factoring extraction method, and direct oblimin rotation, were used to reduce the size of variables; items with small loadings (<0.5) were excluded from factor consideration, and the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 63-70 67 resultant variables with higher loadings were considered. a total of 7 factors were extracted from the given data and named according to the characteristics they represent. detailed factor labels, mean and standard deviation scores, along with factor loadings are given in tables 2 and 3. the reliability of the above 7-factor model was tested with cronbach’s-alpha, with results showing a reliability coefficient of 0.85 for all 22 items, which is above the threshold value suggested by hair, anderson, tatham, and black (1998). hence the reliability of scale was well established for the 7 factors considered in the study. consistency in regard to purchase, product return and exchange facilities, and farmers selling their own produce at farmers’ markets was highly rated by consumers. consumers in the sample data mostly preferred the factors price, quality, and convenience as reasons for purchasing at the farmers’ market. all 7-factor measured items yielded a mean score of ≥4, indicating a strong preference towards the farmers’ market. table-4. final cluster centers. cluster 1 2 3 convenience 0.87 0.55 0.58 variety 0.75 0.72 0.69 quality 0.65 0.78 0.68 price 0.75 0.84 0.60 hygiene & health 0.66 0.74 0.82 service conditions 0.67 0.45 0.72 buying experience 0.78 0.64 0.60 cluster 1 respondents show higher ratings for all factors; in particular, this group of respondents were interested in convenience, variety, and buying experience. cluster 2 respondents gave high ratings to price and quality while cluster 3 respondents give high ratings to hygiene and health and service conditions. the respondents in cluster 1 showed an active interest in all factors, and hence they are the active consumers looking at all the factors involved in farmers’ markets. all three clusters rated positively on all factors, with cluster 2 rating high on quality and price factors compared to the other two clusters. the factors hygiene and health and overall buying experience were rated higher by cluster 3 compared to the other two clusters. 4.3. cluster analysis hierarchical cluster analysis using ward’s agglomerative method – with the distance measure as squared euclidean distance – was used to determine the number of clusters. the dendrogram produced by hierarchical cluster analysis gave four cluster solutions, of which one of very small size (<10 respondents) was excluded as an outlier from the study. therefore a three-cluster solution was deemed appropriate to use in the k-means nonhierarchical cluster analysis to determine the final cluster centers. the final cluster centers were examined (table 4) to give them suitable names. to test the significant difference between the mean factor scores of each cluster and cluster similarity or variation, analysis of variance (anova) with post hoc difference test by tukey’s hsd (honestly significant difference) was used. the results showed that all three clusters were significantly different from each other except on the factor “variety”, where the mean factor scores were identical for all three clusters. cluster 1 respondents gave higher ratings on all 7 factors, followed by cluster 2 respondents who rated high on price and quality factors while cluster 3 respondents rated high on health and hygiene and service conditions. consumers in cluster 1 appeared to be regular visitors to farmers’ markets, with a positive perception on all 7 factors and high ratings on convenience and buying experience. consumers in cluster 2 also showed a positive response in all 7 factors, but with lower rating power than cluster 1. consumers in cluster 3 also gave positive ratings on all 7 factors but with greater emphasis on health and hygiene and service conditions. clusters 1, 2, and 3 had 103, 75, and 51 respondents, respectively. based on cluster characteristics, table 5 gives cluster membership along with suitable labels. table-5. cluster membership and labels. cluster number of cases per cluster % cluster 1 – local favorites 103.000 45 cluster 2 – value for money 75.000 33 cluster 3 – health conscious 51.000 22 valid 229.000 missing 6.000 4.4. cluster profiles to profile the clusters, demographic information including age, gender, marital status, household size, qualification, occupation, and income were considered to determine any significant difference between cluster groups. a cross-tabulation procedure was used with chi-square statistic to determine the significant difference between asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 63-70 68 clusters using the above-mentioned demographic variables. results showed that only age, gender, and occupation had a significant (p < 0.05) difference in all three clusters, and therefore other demographic information was excluded in cluster profiling. 4.5. local favorites (45%): cluster 1, labeled local favorites, is a male group aged 15–35 years and working in the private sector. this group represents 45% of the sample, more than either of the other two clusters. they were labeled local favorites because of the fact that they mostly use the farmers’ market as their only source for purchasing fruit and vegetables, and they rated high on all 7 factors – mostly on convenience, variety, and purchasinging experience. these local favourites have made the farmers’ market visible and countable in the domestic markets, on a par with other retail layouts and supermarkets. cluster 2 was labeled value-for-money customers, representing a mix of males and females aged 26–35 years and working in the private sector. customers in cluster 2 preferred quality at a price equivalent to that offered in other outlets. this group represents 33% of the sample, and who are looking for value for money as a key preference in buying choices at the farmers’ market. cluster 3, labeled health-conscious consumers, represents women aged 26–45 years most of whom are selfemployed homemakers. cluster 3 represents 22% of consumers who are mainly interested in health and hygiene and service conditions at the farmers’ market. clusters 2 and 3 share a common female age group but differ slightly in their opinions or choices of farmers’ markets as a factor of influence. because 65% of the sample are men, cluster 3 is representation of a wholly female cohort, highlighting positive views on farmers’ markets and placing greater emphasis on the health and hygiene factor. 5. discussion & conclusions the findings of the current study on farmers’ markets in an urban area reveal that consumers are positive about the operation of such markets in the vicinity of their homes. all consumers in the study favored the existence and utilization of farmers’ market services in their neighborhood. the majority of respondents in the sample were men and were labeled the local favorites of farmers’ markets because they rated high on all 7 factors; this group of consumers is represented by cluster 1, where the majority are in the age group 15–35 years and working in the private sector. around 80% of consumers are willing to pay more at farmers’ markets rather than shop at a nearby retail outlet or supermarket. the second cluster of consumers represents 33% of the sample and they were positive about buying at farmers’ markets, preferring value for money as they prioritize quality and price as the key factors when shopping. they represent a pool of men and women aged 26–35 years and working in the private sector. cluster 3 consumers are women aged 26–45 years, most of whom are home-makers and self-employed, representing 22% of the sample. this group of consumers were mainly interested in health and hygiene and service conditions in farmers’ markets. based on factor analysis results, a total of 7 factors were used to determine consumers’ preferences and ratings for farmers’ markets. the sample was divided into three clusters and were rated positively on all 7 factors considered. cluster 1 are the local favorites because they liked all 7 factors, with high ratings for convenience; cluster 2 comprises consumers who prefer value for money, and cluster 3 are consumers who rated high on health and hygiene and service conditions of the farmers’ market. 5.1. managerial implications in the indian context, the study of farmers’ markets is a novel concept and is starting to become utilized in urban and semi-urban areas. this study highlights how consumer choice regarding shopping changes over time, by understanding farmers’ role in producing and delivering their own produce directly to consumers in the form of farmers’ markets. the majority of male consumers were enthusiastic about farmer’s markets because of their operational time and convenience and fresh and tasty produce. three segments of consumers were found in the study, with differing age groups and working conditions, and all were favourable in their opinions regarding farmers’ markets; there is thus greater scope for the existence of farmers’ markets in similar urban areas in india. the existence of farmers’ markets sidelines the need for middlemen and, at the same time, consumers can enjoy the freshness of fruit and vegetables in their neighborhood. 6. limitations this study is based on customers who were interested in buying fruit and vegetable produce at farmers’ markets; the study did not consider farmer’s opinions on operating these markets. the study required the presence and practice of farmers’ markets within the city because consumers were interviewed directly at the chosen locations. a total of 9 locations were identified, and therefore consumers were widespread across the study area, collectively representing the state as sample size. the classification of consumers into three clusters is based on demographic information including age, gender, and profession, and the results cannot be generalized because the locations and choices of consumers differ in both demography and working conditions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 63-70 69 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abelló, f. j., palma, m. a., waller, m. l., & anderson, d. p. 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(1997). a target consumer profile and positioning for promotion of the direct marketing of fresh produce: a case study. journal of food distribution research, 28(856-2016-56989), 11-17. 210 the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption of biological control methods for tomato growers in villages of matrouh governorate asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 2 (2021): 210-221 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 abdu omran mohameda fekry kamal kamelb yousria ahmed allamc ismail abdel-malik mohamedd a,cagricultural division, national research center, egypt. bagricultural extension and rural development research institute agricultural research centre, egypt. ddepartment of economic and agricultural cooperative sciences, higher institute for agricultural cooperation, egypt.  abdoomran666@yahoo.com (corresponding author) articlehistory abstract received: 27 july 2020 revised: 11 june 2021 accepted: 2 july 2021 published: 19 july 2021 keywords agricultural extension role diffusion adoption biological control tomato knowledge growers process farmers this research aimed to define the role of agricultural extension in the process of diffusion and adoption of biological control methods among tomato growers in matrouh governorate, egypt, and also to define the relationship between their role in agricultural extension in diffusion and adopting biological control methods for tomato growers and some independent variables .the research was conducted in matrouh governorate using a random sample of 323 farmers, representing 16% of the total research cohort amounting to 2050 farmers; the data were collected using a questionnaire in september 2019. data wereanalyszed using a statistical program, arithmetic mean, and the simple correlation coefficient of pearson (r). the results are also presented in tabular form using frequencies and percentages.the main results of the research are as follows:the majority of farmers (82.97%) stated that the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption methods of biological control among tomato growers was low, while 15.17% said that agricultural extension plays an intermediate role and 1.86% said it played a key role.there is a positivecorrelation at the 0.01 level of significance between the level of farmers' adoption of biological control methods as an dependent variable and each of the following independent variables: participation in local development organizations, social participation, satisfaction with life in the region, and attitudes towards agricultural innovations; and there is a positive correlation at the 0.05 level of significance with the levels of modernization and farmers' education. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the existing literature by defining the role of agricultural extension in the process of diffusion and adoption of biological control methods among tomato growers in matrouh governorate, egypt. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.210.221 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 howtocite: abdu omran mohamed --fekry kamal kamel --yousria ahmed allam --ismail abdel-malik mohamed (2021). the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption of biological control methods for tomato growers in villages of matrouh governorate. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2), 210221. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.210.221 © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1612-1478 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6159-2447 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.112.210.221 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 210-221 211 1. introduction the agricultural sector is one of the most important production sectors and the main pillar of economic activity in egypt. agriculture is considered one of the most labour-intensive economic sectors, because the number of workers in the agricultural sector in 2012 reached approximately 6.4 million, representing 27.1% of the total number of workers in egypt for the year 2012, this sector contributed about 13.4% of gross domestic product. egypt is among countries whose food production does not meet the increasing needs of the population, as population growth rates always exceed growth rates in agricultural production and the population of egypt increased from 18.97 million in 1947 to about 83.6 million in 2012, and over this period per capita agricultural land declined from 0.3 to 0.11 acres. despite the efforts of the state to increase agricultural area, erosion and loss of agricultural land is often equal to total reclaimed land, withloss of more than 750 thousand acres of the best types of agricultural land in the delta and lower egypt during the second half of the last century(central agency for mobilization and statistics, 2015). in addition, the production of vegetables in egypt is considering an essential aspect of food production. agricultural extension can play an effective role in improving crop quality and increasing productivity, as vegetable crops are considered among those of economic importance because they fall within the realm of intensive agriculture, which allows a higher profit margin than traditional crops. the area undervegetables in egypt at the present time is about 1.5 million acres, and it produces more than 17 million tons for local consumption, export, manufacture, and seed. we need to double this area as a result of an increasing population, because vegetable crops are necessary for local consumption and an important source of vitamins and mineral elements, as well as an important source for the establishment of many agricultural industries, the most important of these being tomato(international potato center, 2015). therefore, efforts being made in egypt to grow vegetable crops should be a high priority due to their economic importance as one of the main components of national agricultural income, where the annual income from the production from vegetable crops in 2015 amounted to 6,092,967 pounds, or 36.62% of the average annual agricultural income of 21,934,681 pounds(central administration of agricultural economics, 2018).the tomato crop is considered one of the most important vegetables crops in terms of annual cultivated area, which amounted to about 344,562 acres, and total production reached 123,368,860 tons in 2015 as a result of effective extension programs and services to improve the level of productivity (central administration of agricultural economics, 2018). although the state has paid considerableattention to tomato crops, it is noted that there are many diseases and insect pests affecting tomato, which leads farmers to use many agricultural pesticides that may expose the fruit to various health problems.despite all the efforts and extension services provided in this field, there are still considerable failings in the effectiveness of these activities and services for tomato growers, such as in matrouh governorate, where farmers face many difficulties and problems that are reflected in their misuse of agricultural pesticides.the world has now turned towards the use of organic farming technology as the total global cultivated area reaches about 25 million hectares, and sales volume reached us$40 billion in 2005, for the following reasons. the consumerwishes to buy safe food that does not contain pesticide residues or chemicals. reduction in environmental degradation, preservation of soil fertility, and preservation of biological diversity are all now key issues, in addition to a profitable financial return for organic farming (hamdi, 2006). therefore, egypt has adopted this trend towards clean agriculture based on the use of organic, biological fertilizers and biological control of insect pests and diseases that affect various agricultural crops (bahloul, 1999). therefore, egypt has adopted the trend towards clean agriculture based on the use of organic and biological fertilizers and biological control of insect pests and diseases that affect various agricultural crops (bahloul, 1999): the area of organically grown crops has soared from 11.8 thousand fedans in 1999 to 43.2 thousand in 2004;thecenter for organic agriculture in egypt was established as an inspection center and an article was added to allow for the regulation of such crops. modern agriculture depends on several foundations, including: integrated resistance, especially vital ones, in eliminating agricultural pestsusing sexual attractant pheromones to predict the numbers of pests, yellow adhesive traps, and microbiocides (bacteria, fungi, and viruses); all of these alternatives came into effect under the concept of "biological resistance”. egypt has become one of the main canters of production of organic agriculture and has attracted the attention of importers from europe and around the world, with many egyptian companies starting to enter this field – the number of companies working in the field of organic agriculture has now reached 40. egypt now produces a large number of organic crops covering vegetables, fruits, cereal crops, and medicinal and aromatic plants (tolba, 2008), so organic agriculture should receive more attention to overcome the problems of using pesticides. biological control is considered one of the most important elements of the pest control department. biological control means working to encourage and increase the natural enemiesof pests in the same environment, or importing these vital enemies and trying to localize them and spread them widely to reduce pest reproduction. the biological enemies of pests include parasites and predators(abdou, mohammed, & allam, 2016). biological control also depends on the use of what is known as biocides, which are among the most important elements of microbiocides and include various pathogens (fungi, bacteria, viruses, nematodes, and protozoa); pesticides resulting from fermentation processes for actinomycetes naturally present in the soil;pheromones;pesticides extracted from plants; and plants genetically modified to control pests (al-huneidi, ahmed, & fayyad, 2004).it is known that plant pathogens cause pathological symptoms in cereal and horticultural crops, resulting in significant losses in productivity and quality that affect farm incomes, and consequently the national economy and exports. therefore, plant disease control must be supported by modern methodsratherthan by the use of chemicals and pesticides as much as possible, which has a harmful effect on both humanand animal health, in addition to harming the environment and causing pollution of air , water, and soil (egyptian plant pathology society, 1996). from the above, it is clear that it is important to study the role of agricultural extension in adoption innovations because this works as a link between research and farmers, where the problems of farmers are transferred file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_5 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_9 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_4 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_4 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_4 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_4 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_8 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_3 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_3 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_14 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_14 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_1 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_2 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_2 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_6 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 210-221 212 to the research authorities, and here the technology becomes the result of scientific research in solving farmers’ problems, as they are the recipients and users of the technology (omar, 1992). the stages of diffusion and adoption of agricultural innovations are seen among farmers. through several steps that are summarized in providing knowledge about the innovations and how to use them correctly, and getting farmers to make a decision to experiment by showing its benefits to them, providing the information necessary for them toimplement, providing the necessary capabilities for that, and helping farmers to evaluate the results of their application of the innovations so that they can make a decision to adopt,flegel (1990) and yousria, allam, and mohamed (2016) stated that it is important to supportproducers in the desert environmentwith its difficult conditions, by providing mechanization services, reservoirs and surface wells for water irrigation, scheduling bank debts,and helping them adopt agricultural innovations. in the light of the previous elements, this research seeks to answer the following questions: • what is the role of agricultural extension in the diffusion and adoption of biological control methods among tomato growers? • what is the relationship between the level of the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption of biological control methods for tomato growers and some of the independent variables? 2. research objectives according to the research problem previously presented, the following objectives were elaborated: first: determine the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption of biological control methods among tomato growers through the following activities: 1a. the degree to which agricultural extension' activities provide knowledge about the biological control methods between tomato farmers, and clarify how to use them correctly. 1b. the level of agricultural extensionactivities engaging farmers in deciding to try these methods by clarifying their advantages. 1c. the level of agricultural extension activities providing the information necessary for applying these methods. 1d. the level of agricultural extension activities providing the necessary capabilities to implement biological control methods among tomato growers. 1e. the level of agricultural extension assisting tomato growers in evaluating the results of their application of biological control methods so that they can make a decision to continueand adopt. second: determine the correlation between the degree to which biological control methods are adopted between tomato growers as a dependent variable and certain independent variables. 3. research hypothesis to achieve the second goal, the following research hypothesis was formulated: there is a significant correlation between the degree to which tomato farmers adopt biological control methods as a dependent variable, and some of the following independent variables: age, education level, area of agricultural tenure, number of years of experience in agricultural work, area planted with tomato crop, level of modernization, level of opinion leadership, participation in local development organizations, level of informal social participation, level of satisfaction with life in the region, and prevalence ofattitudes toward agricultural innovations. 4. research method 4.1. procedural definitions definition of biological control: it is the action of living organisms (natural enemies) to reduce the intensity of insectpest numbers in either animals or plants to the extent of economic damage limits. 4.2. search area the northwest coast of matrouh is considered one of the most important new and promising areas in the field of horizontal agricultural development, because matrouh governorate is one of the largest governorates in the republic in terms of area, with a length of approximately 450 km from burj al arab to the libyan border, and with a depth of 400 km (matrouh governorate, 2016). most of the area is arable, and almost all agricultural lands are used to maintain irrigation through rain except for siwa, hammam, and the irrigated part of el alamein the city of marsamatrouh is the capital of the governorate and is located 286 km west of alexandria, 240 km from the egyptian–libyan border. the governorate consists of eight administrative centers, with the centers of al-hamam, al-alamein, and al-dabaa located east of the city of marsamatruh, the capital,distances of 226.5, 184, and 138 km, respectively, while the centers of al-nujaila, sidibarani, salloum and siwa are at distances of 75, 126, 215 , and 301km, respectively from marsamatrouh ; among the largest centers where tomatoes grown is the center of alhamam, where an area of 11,927 acres is cultivated, representing 93.4% of the tomato area in 2018 in matrouh governorate (the arab republic of egypt, 2018). among the largest centers where tomatoes grown is al-hammam center, where an area of 11,927 acres is cultivated, representing 93.4% of the tomato area in 2018 in matrouh governorate (the arab republic of egypt, 2018). file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_12 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_7 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_15 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_15 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_11 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_13 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 210-221 213 4.3. research and sampling a comprehensive study was undertaken, sampling tomato growers in the al-hammam center in matrouh governorate, where six societies plant 11,927 acres of tomato; and the largest three associations were chosen in terms of area: abu shabina, with an area of 3600 acres and 750 farmers, and al-hammam center with an area of 350 acres and700 farmers, and al-amed in an area of 3300 acres and 600 farmers, where the area of the three associations represents 86.4% of the area planted with tomato in the center of al-hammam, and the total number of tomato crop growers selected among the three associations was 2050. the sample size was determined using the equation of krejcie and morgan (1970), as 323 tomato growers were included, representing 16% of the total. using the same percentage, the number of farmers was chosen in a simple random way from three associations (directorate of agriculture in matrouh, 2018, unpublished data). table-1. distribution of tomato growers among the three largest associations. sample (16% of population) total number (population) area planted with tomato(feddans) association no. 110 700 3500 al-hammam 1 802 15 may 2 95 600 3300 al-amed 3 118 750 3600 abu shabina 4 400 alamfonush 5 325 abnaa al mostakbl 6 323 2050 total: 11,927 4.4. data collection methodsand tools to achieve their research objectives, the questionnaire was designed to include a set of questions related to the role of agricultural extension in the diffusion and adoption of biological control methods between tomato growers and the research independent variables.a pre-test of the questionnaire was conducted on a sample of 15 farmers from the 15 may society, to verify clarity and ease of understanding of the phrases used by the respondents; the data were collected during september 2019 in a personal interview with the respondents. 4.5. data quantitative processing after completing data collection, the researcherstreated some data quantitatively by giving them values according to the scale used with each variable. 1. personal variables 1. age:the age of the respondent is given as the nearest year at the time of data collection. the maximum and minimum ages of respondentswere 68 and 27 years, respectively . respondents were divided according to age into three categories: <41, 41<55 and 55+ years. 2. educationlevel: thisparameter is the number of years of formal education for those who could read and write. one point was given for the illiterate farmer, two for those who could read and write; in regard to respondents who were officially educated, they were scoredaccording to the number of years of education and, by this, it was possible to derive scores indicating the respondent’s level of education. 3. agricultural tenure: agricultural tenure as registered by the agricultural society and calculated in acres: maximum (20 acres), minimum (5 acres), and actual extent (15 acres. according to this parameter, farmers were divided into three categories of area: small (<10 acres), medium (10–<15 acres), and large (15+ acres). 4. number of years of agricultural work experience:respondents were asked about the number of years of experience, expressed as a raw number, the maximum (35 years), minimum (5 years), and actual extent (30years). the respondents were divided according to range into three categories: little experience (less than 15 years), medium experience (15–25 years), and significant experience (25 years+). 5. area planted with tomato: the size of the area on which the respondent cultivates tomato. the respondents were divided according to that variable to the nearest acreageinto the following categories: maximum (7 acres), minimum (1 acre), and actual range (6 acres). the respondents were divided according to range into three categories: small (less than 3 acres), medium (3to less than 5 acres), and large (5 acres+). 6. number of years of tomato cultivation: the number of years in which the farmer planted tomato; this variable was calculated by raw numbers as maximum (25 years), minimum (10 years), and actual extent (15 years). the respondents were divided according to range into three categories: little experience (less than 15 years), medium experience (from 15 to less than 20 years), and significant experience (20 years+). 7. degree of modernization: the application and use by the researcher of new technologies; this variable was measured on a scale of six: agree, neutral, and disagree, scored 3, 2, and 1, respectively, for a positiveand vice versa for negative. the maximum (18), minimum (6), and actual range (12) of the three categories are: low (less than 10), medium (10 to less than 14), and high (14+). 8. self-assessed degree of leadership: self-assessment by respondents of their being a source of agricultural information and guidance compared to other farmers; this consists of 6 indicators indicating the degree of leadership among therespondents, withscoring of 3, 2, and 1 for agree, neutral, and disagree, respectively. the maximum was file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23_enref_10 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 210-221 214 (18), minimum (6), and actual range (12); respondents were divided according to range into three categories: low level of leadership (less than 10), medium level (from 10 to less than 14), and high (14+). 9. participation in local development organizations: attendance at meetings of these organizations. four grades were given to the chairman of the board of directors, three grades for a member of the board of directors, two grades for a member of the committee,one for a regular member, and zero for non-participation;two grades were given to those attending meetings and activities and zero for those who do not attend.: maximum (14), minimum (zero), and actual extent of the degree of respondents' participation in local development organizations (14). respondents were divided according to range into three categories: low participation (less than 5), medium (from 5to less than 10), and high (10+). 10. degree of informal social participation: this variable was measured quantitatively on the basis of measuring the respondent’s participation in five of the most important social activities in the region, through four responses in front of each that determines the degree of participation: always participating, sometimes participating, rarely participating, and not participating, and those responses were given grades (4, 3, 2, and 1) respectively, and the scores obtained by the respondent were combined to reflect the total score for informal social participation: maximum (20), minimum (5), and actual extent of the degree of respondents' participation in informal social events (15).respondents were divided according to range into three categories: low participation (less than 10 degrees), medium participation (from 10 to less than 14), and a high participation(14+). 11. degree of satisfaction with life in the region: this variable was measured on a scale of 8, each of which has three responses: agree, neutral, and disagree. the maximum score according to this scale was (24), minimum (8), and theoretical extent in terms of their degree of satisfaction with life (1),and was divided into three categories: low degree of satisfaction (less than 13), medium degree of satisfaction (from 13 to less than 18), and high degree of satisfaction (18+). 12. attitude towardsagricultural innovation: using a ten-point scale consisting of three responses, agree, neutral, and disagree. responses were scored between 3 and 1 in the case of positive statements, and vice versa in the case of negative. the maximum according to this scale is 30 and the minimum 10, and the theoretical rangewas20. the respondents were divided into three categories: negative attitude towards innovations (less than 10), neutral attitude (from 10 to less than 14), and positive (14 degrees+). 2. dependent variables the degree to which agricultural extension activities act in diffusionand adoption of biological control methods among tomato growers was measured using a scale that defines the role of agricultural extension in five dimensions using the following activities: 1a.the degree to which agricultural extension' activities provide knowledge about biological control methods among tomato farmers and how to use them correctly. 1b. the degree to which agricultural extension activities are adopted by farmers in deciding to try these methods by clarifying their advantages. 1c. the level of agricultural extension activities providing information necessary for the application of these methods. 1d. the level of agricultural extension activities providing the necessary capabilities to implement biological control methods among tomato growers. 1e. the level of agricultural extension assisting farmers in evaluating the results of their application of biological control methods, by explaining its usefulness to them so that they can make a decision regardingtheir continuingadoption. 1a. the degree to which agricultural extension activities provide knowledge about biological control methods to tomato growers, and clarification of how to use them correctly. the role of extension was measured in the process of adoption of these methods through the use of a graduated scale: always, sometimes, rarely, or never, determining the level of carrying out biological control operations; scores of4, 3, 2, and 1 were given, respectively, for the following; 1. dispersal pheromones the views of farmers were investigated regarding the degree to which agricultural extension provided knowledge about biological control methods and how to use them in the correct way, through five statements: -work by creating an artificial smell to attract female butterflies. -spray it on plants or tie it to stems in tubes or rings in large areas. -this leads to distracting males and their not meeting with females. -thus, the possibility of mating and laying of unfertilized. do not hatch larvae, reduce infection. 2. sex-attractant pheromones the views of the farmers were investigated regarding the degree to which agricultural extension provided knowledge about biological control methods and how to use them in a correct way, through four statements -depends on creating the artificial smell of female butterflies. -put them in capsules inside special traps (water/paper). -catching male butterflies to reduce their mating opportunities. -leads to laying unfertilized eggs that do not hatch larvae. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 210-221 215 3. pathogenic bacteria the farmers were asked about agricultural extension providing knowledge about biological control methods and how to use them in the correct way, through four statements: • the pathogen is used to control pests. • the bacteria are in the form of crystals. • once the insect has eaten these crystals, the walls of the bacteria will dissolve. • the active substance is released as it causes the death of insects. 4. pathogenic nematodes farmers were asked about agricultural extension in regard to providing knowledge about how to use these properly, through the following statements: 1kills the insect within 48 hours, as nematodes breed on lesion. 2nematodes then search for other pests and so on until these pests are eliminated. 5. growth regulators and molting hormones farmers were asked about agricultural extension in regard to providing knowledge about how to use these properly, through the following statements: 1. insectmolting hormones are used to eliminate them. 2. thus, an imbalance in the life cycle of insects occurs, leading to their elimination. 4.6. role of agricultural extension in providing knowledge about biologicalcontrol methods for tomato, and explaining how to use these correctly scoring in regard to the maximum level of providing knowledge about biological control methods for tomato, and explaining how to use these correctly (68), minimum (17), and range (17); farmers were divided into three categories: low (less than 34), medium (34 to less than 51), and high (51+). the level of agricultural extension to the farmers was measured regarding making a decision to experiment with biological control methods, the level of agricultural extension providing the information necessary for farmers to actually implement biological control methods, the degree to which agricultural extension provided the necessary capabilities to implement biological control methods, the level of agricultural extension assisting farmers to evaluate the results of their application of biological control methods and their benefit to them so that they can make a decision to continue implementation, and eventual diffusion and adoption in the same way. 4.7. role of agricultural extension indiffusionand adoption of biological control methods among tomato growers the degree to which agricultural extension provides knowledge of biological control methods and how to use them properly, the degree to which agricultural extension invests farmers to make a decision to experiment with biological control methods, the degree to which agricultural extension provides the information necessary for farmers to actually implement biological control methods, the degree of agricultural extension providing the capabilities necessary to implement biological control methods, and the degree to which agricultural extension helps farmers evaluate the results of their application of biological control methods and their usefulness to them so that they can make a decision to continue implementation and diffusion and adoption. levels of each activity were converted to standard grades, the average of the total was calculated, and average percentage was calculated for activities a–e. the levels of each extension activity were converted to standard scores to reflect the total score of the role of agricultural extension in the diffusionand adoption of biological control methods for tomato growers, through the following equation: overall score = the degree of each activity arithmetic mean standard deviation through the previous five dimensions, the total level of the role of agricultural extension was obtained in diffusion and adopting methods of biological control among tomato growers. the level of the role of agricultural extension were limited to a maximum of 340 and a minimum of85; thus the theoretical range (255) is divided into three categories: low (less than 170), medium (170 to less than 255), and high (255+). 4.8. statistical analysis tools these were used in analyzing the data for the statistical program devoted to social sciences, the arithmetic mean, and the simple correlation coefficient of pearson(r). the results are also presented using frequencies, percentages, and average percentages, in tabular form. 4.9. description of research sample (table 2) more than a half of the respondents (54.7%) were 55 years or more,the vast majority were educated (75.2%) , , and the vast majority of the agricultural tenure (58.6%) was of 15 acres or more .more than half of the respondents number experience agricultural (5.7%) are from at 25 years and above,and the vast majority of the respondents the area planted with the tomato crop (58.4%) from 3 to less than 5 acres ,and less than half of the respondents number of years of tomato cultivation (39.7%) less than15 years,more than half of the respondents the degree of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 210-221 216 modernization (53.2%) 14 degrees and more,and less than half of the respondents the degree of opinion leadership (41.9%) 14 degrees and more,and less than half of the respondents participation in local development organization (43.3%) from 5 to less than 10 degrees,and the degree of informal social participation (45.8%) from 10 to less than 14 degrees,the respondents of the degree of satisfaction with life in the region (48.9%)18 degrees and more,finely vast majority respondents of the degree of attitudes towards agricultural innovations (65.7%) from 10 to less than 14 deg. the results show that more than half of the respondents are of age from one year or more, that the vast majority of respondents have an education degree, that more than half of them have experience in agricultural work, and that the majority have a degree of attitudes towards agricultural innovations, and this explained to the designers how to preparethe guidance programs necessaryfor these responses in order for farmers to adopt biological control operations in the future for insect pests that affect tomato crops. 5. results and discussion 1: defining the role of agricultural extension in the diffusion and adoption methods of biological control among tomato growers. the role of agricultural extension was measured using the following five parameters: 1a. determine the degree to which agricultural extension provides knowledge to farmers about biological control methods and how to use them properly the results in table 3 show a decrease in the degree of providing knowledge about the methods of biological control from agricultural extension' activities to tomato growers, where the average of all biological control methods is 1.64 and the percentage41%. as shown in the results of table 4, the dispersal pheromone ranked first in providing knowledge with an average of 2.38 and a rate of 59.5%, followed bysexattractant pheromones with an average of 1.63 and percentage of 40.75%, pathogenic bacteria with an average of 1.62 and percentage of 40.5%, pathogenic nematodes with an average of 1.33 with percentage 33.3%, then growth regulators and moltinghormones, with an average of 1.29 and percentage 32.4%. it is also shown from the results in table 5 that more than three-quarters of respondents (81.74%) stated that the level of agricultural extension providing knowledge of biological control methods between tomato growers and how to use them in a correct manner was low, while it was found that 15.79% of them had an average level of residency in turn while 2.47% had a high degree. table-2.distribution of farmers according to their studied characteristics. personal characteristics number % personal characteristics number % 1. age less than 41 years old from 41–to less than 55 years -55years and more 177 110 36 54.7 34.1 11.2 2. education degree: illiterate reads and writes intermediate education university education 14 66 140 34 4.3 20.5 43.3 31.9 3. agricultural tenure: less than 10 acres from 10 less than 15 acres 15 acres and more 23 11 118 7.2 34.2 58.6 4. experience in agriculture: less than 15years from 15 to less than 25years 25years and above 102 50 171 31.6 15.3 53.7 5. area planted with tomato less than 3 acres from 3 to less than 5 acres 5acres and more 41 181 94 12.6 58.4 29.0 6. number of years of tomato cultivation less than15 from 15to less than 20 20yearsand more 128 82 113 39.7 25.5 34.8 7. level of modernization less than10 from 10to less than 14 14 and more 43 108 172 13.8 33.0 53.2 8. legree of leadership less than10 from 10 to less than 14 1+ 64 123 136 19.9 38.2 41.9 9. participation in local development organizations less than5 from 5 to less than 10 10 degrees+ 92 140 91 28.4 43.3 28.3 10. level of informal social participation less than10 from 10 to less than 14 14+ 64 148 111 19.9 45.8 34.3 11. degree of satisfaction with life in the region less than13 from 13 to less than 18 18+ 64 101 158 19.9 31.2 48.9 12. d level of attitude towards agricultural innovations less than10 from 10 to less than 14 14+ 51 212 60 15.9 65.7 18.4 note: total number of respondents was323. 1b. urging farmers to make a decision to experiment withbiological control techniques by demonstrating their benefits the results of table 3 show a decrease in the level of urging farmers to make a decision to experiment withbiological control techniques by demonstrating their benefits, where the average of all biological control methods among tomato growers was 1.54 and the percentage 38.50%. as shown in the results of table 4, dispersalpheromones ranked first in the role of extension activities with an average of 2.25 and percentage of 56.25%, file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table3 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table4 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table5 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table3 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table4 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 210-221 217 followed bypathogenic bacteria with an average of 1.44 and percentage of 36%, pathogenic nematodes with an average of 1.38 and percentage of 34.5%, sex attractants with an average of 1.37 and percentage of 34.25%,then growth regulators and moltinghormones with an average of 1.30 and percentage of 32.5%. it is also shown from the results in table 5 that the majority of respondents (83.59%) said that the degree of agricultural extension to attract farmers to make a decision to experiment with biological control is low, with 14,86% medium and 1.55% high. 1c. providing the necessary information for the farmers to implement the biological control process data intable 3show a decrease in the level of agricultural extension activities providing the necessary information to implement biological control methods for tomato growers, with anaverage of 1.57and a percentage of 39.25%. as shown in the results of table 4, dispersalpheromones ranked first in the role of this extension activity, with an average of 2.36 and a percentage of 59%, followed bypathogenic bacteria with an average of 1.53 and percentage of 38.25%, pathogenic nematodes with an average of 1.39 and percentage of 34.75%, sex attractants came with an average of 1.37 and percentage of 34.25%, then growth regulators and moltinghormones with an average of 1.23 and percentage of 30.75% the results intable 5also show that the majority of respondents (82.66%) stated that the level of agricultural extension providing the information necessary for farmers to implement biological resistance is low, medium for 15.17% andhigh for 2.17%. 1d. providing the necessary capabilities to implement biological resistance the results of table 3 showa decrease in the degree of agricultural extension in providing the necessary capabilities to implement the methods of biological control among tomato growers, with anaverage of 1.57and percentageof 39.25%.as shown in the results of table 4, dispersalpheromones ranked first in the role of this extension activity with an average of 2.24 and percentage of 56%, followed by pathogenic bacteria with an average of 1.51 and percentage of 37.75%, sex attractantswith an average of 1.50 and percentageof 37.5%, growth regulators and moltinghormones with an average of 1.36 and percentageof 37.5%, and pathogenic nematodes with an average of 1.17 and percentage of 29.25%. it also seen from the results in table 5 that the majority of respondents (82.66%) stated that the level of agricultural extension providing the necessary capabilities to implement biological control was low, with 15.17% average and 2.17% high. 1e. helping tomato growers to evaluate the results of applying these methods so that they can take a decision to adopt them the results of table 3showa decrease in the level of agricultural extension activities in assisting farmers to evaluate the results of their application of methods of biological control,with an average of 1.52 andpercentage of 38%. as shown in the results of table 4, dispersalpheromones ranked first with an average of 2.41 and percentage of 60.25%, followed by pathogenic bacteria with an average of 1.44 and percentageof 36%, sex attractantswith an average of 1.42 and percentage of 35.5%, growth regulators and moltinghormones with an average of 1.21 and percentage of 30.25%, and pathogenic nematodes with an average of 1.15 and percentage of 28.75%. it is also seen from the results of table 5 that the majority of respondents (84.21%) stated that the level of agricultural extension assisting farmers in evaluating the results of applying biological control methods and their benefits so that they can make a decision to continue to implement, and in diffusion and adoption, was low, with 14.55% medium and 1.24% high. the results presented in table 3 show that the overall level of the role of agricultural extension in the diffusion and adoption of biological control methods among tomato growers had decreased, with an average capacity of 1.57 and rate of 39.25%. this requires that agricultural extension apparatus works and makes an effort to disseminatemethods of biological control of pests that affect the tomato crop (totaabsylota) so that farmers in future can identify them and it becomes part of their routine to eliminatedamage that affects the tomato crop. table-3. distribution of respondents according to the average score of agricultural extension in the process of diffusion and adoption of biological control methods. rank % average parameters of the role of agricultural extension 1 41.00 1.64 1the level of agricultural extension providing knowledge to farmers and how to use it properly. 2 39.25 1.57 2the level of agricultural extension providing the necessary information for implementation. 2 39.25 1.57 3the level of agricultural extension providing the necessary capabilities for implementation. 3 38.50 1.54 4the level of agricultural extension urging farmers to make a decision to experiment with techniques. 4 38.00 1.52 5the level of agricultural extension evaluating the results of applying these methods to making the decision to adopt them. 39.25 1.57 overall mean of the level of agricultural extension in the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption of biological resistance. note: total number of respondents was 323and the maximum score was 4 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table5 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table3 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table5 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table3 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table4 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table5 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table3 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table4 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table5 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 210-221 218 table-4.distribution of respondents according to the level of the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption of biological control methods by tomato growers. agricultural extension activities for adoption of biological control methods biological resistance process 1providing knowledge to farmers and how to use it properly 2urging farmers to make a decision to experiment with techniques 3providing the necessary information for implementation 4-providing the necessary capabilities for implementation 5-evaluating the results of applying these methods for making the decision to adopt them average % average % average % average % average % 1dispersal pheromones 1depends on creating the artificial smell of female butterflies 2.38 59.5 2.47 61.75 2.4 60 2.45 61.25 2.42 56.75 2-spraying it on plants or tying it to its stems in the form of tubes or rings over a large area. 2.37 59.4 2.15 53.75 2.31 57.75 2.37 59.25 2.41 60.5 3this leads to dispersal of males 2.40 60.00 2.05 51.25 2.33 58.25 2.19 54.75 2.37 60.25 4thus, the chance of mating and laying unfertilized eggs decreases. 2.39 59.75 2.20 55.00 2.5 62.5 2.21 55.25 2.37 59.25 5do not hatch larvae, which will reduce infection rates 2.38 59.50 2.40 60 2.27 60.5 2.50 62.5 2.52 59.25 average 2.38 59.50 2.25 56.25 2.36 59 2.24 56 2.41 60.25 ranking 1 1 1 1 1 2sexattractant pheromones 1depends on creating artificial smell of female butterflies. 1.63 40.75 .41 35.25 1.41 35.25 1.42 35.5 1.59 39.75 2put it in capsules inside special traps (water/paper) 1.65 41.25 1.32 33.00 1.32 33.00 1.41 35.25 1.40 35.00 3catching male butterflies, the chances of mating between them also decreases 1.64 41.00 1.40 35.00 1.40 35.00 1.56 39.00 1.39 35.00 4leads to laying of unfertilized eggs that do not hatch larvae 1.63 40.75 1.35 33.75 1.35 33.75 1.61 40.25 1.32 33.00 average 1.63 40.75 1.37 34.25 1.37 34.25 1.50 37.5 1.42 35.5 ranking 2 4 4 3 3 3pathogen ic bacteria 1-the pathogen is used to control pests 1.73 43.25 1.60 40.00 1.58 39.50 1.42 35.50 1.38 34.50 2-the bacteria are in the form of crystals 1.56 39.00 1.32 33.00 1.49 37.25 1.48 37.00 1.32 33.00 3once the insect has eaten these crystals, the bacterial wall will dissolve 1.54 38.5 1.47 36.75 1.45 36.25 1.56 39.00 1.65 41.25 4the active substance is released to cause insect death (especially squamous wings) 1.63 40.75 1.38 34.50 1.62 40.50 1.61 40.25 1.42 35.50 average 1.62 40.5 1.44 36 1.53 38.25 1.51 37.75 1.44 36.00 ranking 3 2 2 2 2 4 1-kills the insect within 48 hours, as nematodes breed on the lesions 1.40 35.00 1.38 34.50 1.37 34.25 1.20 30.00 1.18 29.50 2then searches for other pests and so on until these pests are eliminated 1.26 31.50 1.39 34.75 1.41 35.25 1.15 28.75 1.12 28.00 average 1.33 33.25 1.38 34.5 1.39 34.75 1.17 29.25 1.15 28.75 ranking 4 3 3 5 5 5growth regulators and molting hormones 1insect molting hormones are used to eliminate them. 1.30 32.5. .31 32.75 1.25 31.25 1.37 34.25 1.32 33.00 2thus, an imbalance occurs in the insect’s life and this leads to its elimination 1.28 32.00 1.29 32.25 1.21 30.25 1.35 33.75 1.10 27.50 average 1.29 32.35 1.30 32.5 1.23 30.75 1.36 34.00 1.21 30.25 ranking 5 5 5 4 4 overall average 1.65 41.27 1.55 38.7 1.58 39.4 1.56 38.9 1.53 38.15 note: total number of respondents was 323 and the maximum score was 4. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 210-221 219 the results presented in table 4 indicate a decrease in the overall level of the role of agricultural extension in the diffusion and adoption of biological control methods among tomato farmers, with an average capacity of 1.57 and a rate of 39.25%, less than the theoretical average. the results indicate a decrease in the overall level of the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption methods of biological control among tomato growers. this requires the agricultural extension services at the ministry of agriculture and land reclamation to make considerable efforts to boost the diffusion the study of biological control methods for insect pests that affect tomato crops, among which is the insect tutaabsoluta, so that farmers continue to use biological control methods and adopt them in the future. table-5. distribution of the respondents according to the role of agricultural extension in the process of diffusionand adoption of biological control methods among tomato growers. 6evaluating the results of applying these methods for making the decision to adopt them 4-providing the necessary capabilities for implementation 3providing the necessary information for implementation 2urging farmers to make a decision to experiment with techniques 1providing knowledge to farmers and how to use it properly agricultural extension activities for adoption level of the role of agricultural extension % number % number % number % number % number 84.21 272 82.66 267 82.66 267 83.59 270 81.74 264 low level (less than 34) 14.55 47 15.17 49 15.17 49 14.86 48 15.79 51 moderate level (34 to less than 51) 1.24 4 2.17 7 2.17 7 1.55 5 2.47 8 high level (51+) 100 323 100 323 100 323 100 323 100 323 total note: total number of respondents was 323. 5.1. level ofthe role of agricultural extension in the process of diffusionand adoption of biological control methods among tomato growers the results in table 6 show that the majority of respondents (82.97%) stated that the level of the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption of biological control methods among tomato growers was low, while 15.17% of them mentioned average and 1.86% high. this explains that the central administration for agricultural extension of the ministry of agriculture should conduct awareness seminars on the importance of biological control of tomato crop pests in working on elimination of those insect pests, including tutaabsoluta, to promote the production of tomato crops. table-6. distribution of respondents according to the level of agricultural extension in the process of diffusion and adoption of biological control methods. level number % low (less than 170) 268 82.97 average (170 to less than 255) 49 15.17 high (255+) 6 1.86 total 323 100 note: total number of respondents was 323. 5.2. defining the relationship between the level of the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption methods of biological control among tomato growers, and selected independent variables regarding the relationship between the role of agricultural extension in diffusion andadoption methods of biological control among tomato growers, and between some independent variables, the statistical hypothesis was formulated that "there is no relationship between the degree of the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption methods of biological control among tomato growers and the following independent variables:age,education,agricultural tenure, number of years of agricultural work experience, area planted with the tomato crops,number of years of tomato cultivation,level of modernization,level of leadership, participation in local development organizations, level of informal social participation, level of satisfaction with life in the region, and level of attitude towards innovations, by testingthe validity of the hypothesis using the simple correlation coefficient of pearson (r).” 1there is a direct correlation at the level of significance of 0.01 between the following independent variables: participation in local development organizations, level of informal social participation, level of satisfaction with life in the region, and level of attitudetowards innovations as the value of r calculated for each separately. the results intable 7show, respectively, 0.395**, 0.397**, 0.357**, and 0.416**, and there is a direct correlation at the level of significance 0.05between these independent variables: level of education andlevel of modernization, where the values of r were, respectively, 0.192 * and0.193*. file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table4 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table6 file:///c:/users/egy/downloads/fekry.doc%23table6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(2)2021: 210-221 220 2there is an inverse significant relationship at the level of significance 0.01 between these variables: age where r reached –0.248**, and an inverse significant relationship at the level of significance 0.05 with these variables:agricultural tenure, number of years of agricultural work experience, and area cultivated with tomato crops, where the values of r were, respectively,–0.189*, –0.191*, and –0.185*. 3there is no significant relationship between each of these independent variables: number of years of tomato cultivation andlevel of leadership, where the values of r were, respectively, 0.106 and 0.153. thus, we can reject the statistical hypothesis. thus, the statistical assumption states that "there is no correlation between the degree of the role of agricultural extension in diffusion and adoption of biological control methods among tomato growers, and the following independent variables: age, level of education, area of agricultural tenure, number of years of experience in agricultural work, area planted with tomato crop, level of modernization, participation in local development organizations, level of informal social participation, level of satisfaction with life in the region, and level attitude toward agricultural innovations”. we were unable to reject the statistical assumptions for the remainder of the studied variables – number of years of tomato cultivation and level of leadership. table-7. correlation coefficients for the relationship between the level of agricultural extension role in diffusion and adoption methods of biological control among tomato growers and some independent variables. pearson simple correlation coefficient (r ) independent variables m 0.248** age 1 0.192* level of education 2 -0.189* agricultural tenure 3 -0.191* number of years of agricultural work experience 4 -0.185* area planted with tomato crop 5 0.106 number of years of tomato cultivation 6 0.193* level of modernization 7 0.153 level of leadership 8 0.395** participation in local development organizations 9 0.397** level of informal social participation 10 0.357** level of satisfaction with life in the region 11 0.416** level of attitudetowards innovations 12 note: **significance at the level of: 0.01; *significance at the level of: 0.05. 5.2. applied benefits 1. the results of this research contribute to providing a picture of the current situation for officials of the ministry of agriculture when planning and implementing extension programs. 2. the research uses a methodology to enhance the agricultural extension services provided to farmers in the biological control of tomato diseases. 3. this research documents the importance of disseminating the methods of biological control of tomato diseases so that farmers can adopt such methods. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdou, o., mohammed, y. a., & allam. 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(2016). tourist guide. 4. omar, a. m. (1992). contemporary agricultural extension. cairo: egypt for scientific services. the arab republic of egypt. (2018). ministry of agriculture and land reclamation. agriculture directorate, matrouh governorate, unpublished data. tolba, a. r. f. (2008). definition of organic agriculture and its organized laws. atraining course in organic farming, the central laboratory of organic agriculture in conjunction with caire international in egypt. yousria, a., allam, a., o., & mohamed. (2016). agricultural extension needs' assessment of bedouin farmers for wheat and barley crops under adverse environmental conditions in north sinai governorateegypt. international journal of chemtech research, 9(9), 62-74. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 473 vocational training for rural workers in the context of economic restructuring in ha tinh province, vietnam bui thi quynh tho a  nguyen thi kim nhung a tran hai ngoc a tran thi khanh a a ha tinh university, vietnam  tho.buithiquynh@htu.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history: received: 19-mar-2020 accepted: 21-may-2020 online available: 27-jun2020 keywords: rural worker, vocational training, economic structure, economic restructuring abstract labor force development is one of the strategic solutions in the process of shifting the agricultural and rural economy to commodity production in accordance with economic restructuring. the article aims at discussing the trend of economic restructuring in ha tinh province in recent years, surveying vocational training needs of rural workers and vocational training results in ha tinh province in the context of economic restructuring. the research utilizes a binary logit model for primary data collected in a sample of 334 working-age people in ha tinh province to examine the vocational training needs of rural laborers in ha tinh. it is found that economic restructuring and state policies have a significant effect on the vocational training needs of rural workers. in addition, the change in vocational training pattern is relatively in line with the change in economic restructuring. the study also gives some recommendations for rural vocational training policy in ha tinh province. contribution/ originality this is the first study to examine vocational training needs for rural workers in the context of economic restructuring in ha tinh province, vietnam. it employs binary logit model to identify factors influencing the vocational training needs of rural workers. the study goes further by assessing some results on vocational training for rural laborers in ha tinh and giving some recommendations for developing vocational training policies for rural workers in ha tin province, vietnam. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.473.484 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: bui thi quynh tho, nguyen thi kim nhung, tran hai ngoc and tran thi khanh (2020). vocational training for rural workers in the context of economic restructuring in ha tinh province, vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 473-484. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 473-484 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:tho.buithiquynh@htu.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.473.484 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 473-484 474 1. introduction vocational education and training play an important role in productivity improvement, providing human capital for economic development and sustainability (atchoarena and gasperini, 2003; fluitman, 2002; hilal, 2012; wallenborn, 2014). according to fluitman (2002), skill training can contribute to quality and output increase, health improvement, job security, hence improving the income and employability of the poor in the informal sector. particularly, in rural areas, vocational education and training is the key to rural employment and poverty reduction. rural workers with higher education training can have higher productivity (atchoarena and gasperini, 2003). as the case of vietnam, vocational training contributes to the increase in productivity of the rice sector in vietnam (ulimwengu and badiane, 2010). using household survey data, ulimwengu and badiane (2010) studied the relationship between farmer’s education attainment and agricultural productivity in vietnam, controlling for gender and worker health. the research found that as long as poor farmers are trained in specific technical needs, agricultural productivity will be improved. it also pointed out the necessity of adjusting the training non-traditional education curricular in order to meet the skill needs of workers in rural areas. some research focuses on the vocation training for rural youth in vietnam. using survey data from 3 provinces in vietnam, pham and le (2017) found that rural youths with vocational training have more advantages over those without vocational training when finding sustainable jobs. institute of labour science and social affairs (2017) pointed out the needs of vocational training needs for youth in rural areas of vietnam to meet the demand of economic development. like many rural areas in vietnam, ha tinh province has an extremely abundant labor resource. ha tinh has a population of 1,277,530 people in 2018, among these, there are 239,643 people in the urban area, 1,037,887 people in the rural area. the number of people living in rural area makes up 81.24%. however, human resources in rural areas in ha tinh are still facing many shortcomings such as poor education, low professional qualifications, unequal labor distribution, which limits the initiative and creativity in production as well as technology application and market access. also, the low level of awareness and small production practices significantly affect the quality and structure of labor. this leads to labor inefficiency, low production, difficulties in applying modern technology, narrow market, low competitiveness. when economic restructuring in ha tinh tends to shift from agriculture to industry and service with more specialization, the demand for labors in agriculture decreases while that in industry and sector increases. therefore, it is important to provide vocational training for rural workers so that they can have better employment opportunities. in addition, in ha tinh in general and in vietnam in particular, vocational training for rural workers is an important criterion in new rural area construction in vietnam. 2. literature review depending on the context and purpose, there are different approaches to examining vocational training for rural laborers in countries. along with institutions, the state policies, including policies for training human resources, play an active role in promoting economic restructuring. from the perspective of colin (2005), reform or change the production structure contributes to achieving economic growth, in which the adjustment of macroeconomics plays an important role. gylfason et al. (1999) tried to quantify the effects of economic restructuring on the growth of countries around the world by examining the change in the share of gdp in agriculture and the shift of migrant workers from rural to urban areas. in addition to studying the direct effect of the change in the share of agriculture in gdp on economic growth, gylfason et al. (1999) also examined the shift immigrant worker from rural to the urban area. thus, vocational training for rural workers must be based on the economic restructuring of each country. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 473-484 475 one of the most visible characteristics of rural labor is lower qualification than urban labor. atkinson (2005) pointed out the causes of the stagnancy in industrial development, the lack of intellectual labor force, or poor infrastructure. at the same time, the author outlined six things that the government should do to revitalize the rural area in america. instead of just financing the rural area, the government must help workers in rural areas switch jobs. vocational training for rural workers is one of the policies to speed up career change. researching training, recruiting, and developing technical human resources in korea and thailand, hawley and paek (2005) found that korea implemented flexible and diversified recruitment subjects. in addition to recruiting new graduates, businesses and government agencies also welcome international workers and students to korea. many of them are rural workers from developing countries. in thailand, the vocational training system is always oriented towards socioeconomic development and poverty reduction based on training opportunities, training quality, and competitiveness of the economy. therefore, the vocational training policy in thailand always creates favorable conditions for all participants in vocational training without taking entrance exams, preferential treatment for disabled apprentices, focusing on supporting career orientation as well as coordinating with enterprises in recruiting, creating jobs for skilled workers. in addition, the system of vocational schools in thailand has developed thanks to the trend of "socialization", which means there is an equal development in vocational schools in both public and those in private sectors. tarp (2017) has important research on growth, structural transformation, and rural change in viet nam. on the one hand, tarp (2017) provided a comprehensive understanding of the impact of rural household access to markets for land, labour, and capital. tarp (2017) also elaborated on government policies on growth, inequality, and poverty at the village level in viet nam. the research pointed out how gains and losses form economic growth is distributed. the research provided a comprehensive set of materials and studies of use to academics, students and development practitioners who are keen on an integrated approach to the study of growth, structural transformation, and the microeconomic analysis of development in a developing country. in vietnam, several studies have examined vocational training for rural workers and their role in the process of economic restructuring. these studies emphasize the role of vocational training for rural laborers as an urgent solution to meet the demand of economic structuring (le, 2001; nguyen, 2012; pham, 2001). these studies separate vocational training for rural workers and economic restructuring. for the research on vocational training, they are mostly related to the proposed solution to improve the effectiveness of vocational training for rural workers. meanwhile, for studies on economic restructuring, authors have integrated vocational training for labor into solutions to develop human resources. there have been few studies on vocational training for rural workers in line with economic restructuring. this study makes a modest contribution to the existing literature by studying the current situation of vocational training for rural workers in ha tinh province (vietnam) considering economic restructuring. 3. data and methodology 3.1. data this research utilizes both secondary data and primary data. the primary data is collected to examine the vocational training needs of rural workers. the authors got this data by conducting surveys among a sample of 334 working-age people in some rural areas in ha tinh province. the variables used in this study are (i) training needs of rural workers; (ii) age of correspondent; (iii) education attainment; (iv) household size; (v) average household income; (vi) state vocational training policies: (vii) economic restructuring. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 473-484 476 the secondary data on the economic restructuring and economic performance of ha tinh province, the employment situation of trained rural workers are collected from ha tinh statistical office and ha tinh department of labor – invalids and social affairs. 3.2. econometric technique to study the vocational training needs of workers, the authors use a logistic regression model to quantify the influence of factors on the probability of rural laborers having vocational training needs. data are collected through a sociological survey, participatory rural appraisal (pra) method, and then processed by excel, eviews, and synthesized. this study uses the binary logistic regression model to analyze the factors affecting rural workers’ vocational training needs. binary logistic non-linear regression model is used to determine the impact of xi factors on the probability of y when x occurs. in logistic regression, dependent variables are binary while independent variables can be continuous, binary, or categorical. the inverse of the standardized probability distribution function is a linear combination of explanatory variables. in this model, the left side of the logistic function is a dependent variable that receives 2 values: equal to 0 (if the laborer does not need vocational training) and equal to 1 (if the laborer needs vocational training). the right side of the equation consists of 3 different groups of variables including personal characteristics, household characteristics, and state vocational training policies. the regression model is as follows: 𝑃𝑖 = 𝑒𝑋𝑖𝛽 1+𝑒𝑋𝑖 𝛽 (where: xi = (1; x1i; x2i; x3i; x4i; x5i; x6i;), β = (β0; β1; β2; β3; β4; β5; β6) or: logep(y=1)/p(y=0) = β0 + β 1x1 + β 2x2 + β 3x3 + β 4x4 + β 5x5 + β 6x6 (1) x1: age of the correspondent (2) x2: education attainment (3) x3: household size (number of people in the household) (4) x4: average household income (million dong) (5) x5: effect of state vocational training policies (6) x6: effect of econonomic restructuring dependent variable = y (binary variable) y = 1: have vocational training needs 0: have no vocational training needs this model consists of 6 independent variables that explain the probabilities of rural laborers having vocational training needs. in this model, when xiβ receives a value from -∞ to + ∞, pi receives a value from 0 to 1. the function is nonlinear with both x and the parameter β, so the maximum likelihood estimation method is used to estimate the parameters. after estimating the parameters, the sample regression model will be: �̂�𝑖 = 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑋𝑖�̂� 1 + 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑋𝑖 �̂� this model shows the effect of the variables xi on the probability that y will get the value of 1. in other words, this model shows the probability that the ith-person in the sample needs vocational training, considering the influence of some factors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 473-484 477 4. research results and discussion 4.1. economic restructuring in ha tinh province the economic structure of ha tinh province changes in the direction of reducing the proportion of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries and increasing the proportion of the industry, construction, trade, and services. table 1: percentage economic structure of ha tinh province in the period of 2015-2019 year agriculture, forestry and fishery industry-construction trade and service 2015 18.13 38.05 43.82 2016 22.69 32.07 45.24 2017 15.54 44.05 40.41 2018 15.28 43.79 40.93 2019 13.63 43.22 43.15 source: ha tinh statistical office, 2020 4.2. agriculture, forestry and fishery the agricultural structure has been positively shifting towards promoting the advantages of key agricultural products of each locality to meet market demand. some key agricultural products of ha tinh include phuc trach-huong khe grapefruit, khe may oranges, fresh deer velvet, dried deer antler and processed products from deer velvet in huong son district, vegetable growing areas in communes such as tuong son, thien loc, thach lien, other riverside areas in duc tho and huong son districts. many technical advances and new technologies have been transferred and applied in production, contributing to increased productivity, quality and economic efficiency in ha tinh such as: applying specialized technology of breeding beef cattle; on-sand shrimp farming, super lean pigs raising. many businesses, cooperatives and production complexes with advanced technology were established, contributing to minimize market-related risks. the agricultural structure in ha tinh not only changes in the proportion of sub-sectors, but the value chain of agricultural products has been increased by reorganizing production and linking with enterprises. from 2011 to 2015, 2016-2020, thanks to implementing agricultural restructuring policy, ha tinh has attracted many businesses to invest in agriculture, forestry and fisheries. many efficient production models have been established in the province. 4.3. industry industry increasingly accounts for a large proportion and experiences rapid development. the change in the industrial structure is also indicated by the increase in the value of processed and manufactured products. industry focuses more on processing agriculture, forestry and fisheries products, mining, manufacturing of construction materials, metallurgy, electricity and mechanics. processing and manufacturing industries are often scattered in different areas of the province. generally, ha tinh industrial production index in the period of 2014-2018 increased annually. the processing and manufacturing industry plays a key role in leading the overall growth of the industry and the whole economy. however, there has not been profound industrial development in the province. there are also limitations in connecting with other provinces in the region in terms of developing a value chain and logistics system, attracting investment in infrastructure construction and economic zones. the process of restructuring industrial sectors is still slow, not making significant changes in the intra-industry structure. 4.4. trade and services trade and service sector has experienced stable development, ranging between 40% and 45% growth speed in recent years. the consumption market as well as the supply of goods has been asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 473-484 478 expanded. more types of retail service such as mini supermarkets and convenience store chains have gradually appeared in rural areas. in general, economic restructuring has shifted towards increasing the proportion of industry and service sectors, reducing that of agriculture, forestry and fishery. the industry has had a breakthrough development. supporting industries, new energy industries, manufacturing and processing industry have started to develop. service and trade have a quick recovery. despite economic shocks and unfavorable incidents, the service sector has prospered and increasingly met the changing demand of the society. the economic restructuring has a significant impact on rural labourer’s vocational training needs, vocational training institutions as well as vocational training policies issued by the state. labor structure and economic structure are closely related. when the economic structure changes, it means changing the proportion of sectors in the economy. resources will be shifted from sectors with decreasing proportion to sectors with increasing proportion. therefore, when the economic transition takes place, it will change the proportion of the labor force (a kind of resource) in sectors labor will shift from the sector with the decreasing proportion (labor surplus) to the industry with the increasing proportion (labor shortage), thus leading to the restructuring of labor structure. today, with the continuous development of science and technology, the industry and service industry sector is constantly developing. therefore, the change in the proportion of these sectors will result in the labour transition. more labours in the agricultural sector will be attracted to the industry and service sector. structural transformation often takes place first and orientates labor restructuring. meanwhile, vocational training for rural laborers changes the structure of rural laborers. therefore, vocational training for rural laborers has a close relationship with economic restructuring. 4.5. vocational training needs of rural laborers in the context of economic restructuring in the context of ha tinh's economic restructuring, there is a shift among sectors and fields. to investigate the factors affecting the vocational training needs of rural laborers, the research team surveyed working-age rural laborers. factors that influence vocational training needs are divided into internal factors and external factors. internal factors include educational attainment, age of workers, household size, family’s economic status…external factors are information on training programs provided by institutions, local authorities, society, state training policies…based on the regression model in section 3.2, the result is presented in table 2. table 2: logistics model results using eviews software no. independent variable coefficient std. error z-statistic prob. 1 intercept (c) -33.974 7.549 -4.500 0.000* 2 age (x1) -0.136 0.046 -2.931 0.003* 3 educational attainment (x2) -0.631 0.363 -1.734 0.083*** 4 household size (x3) 0.993 0.792 1.253 0.209*** 5 average household income (x4) 0.632 0.142 4.431 0.000* 6 state policy (x5) 2.089 0.821 2.544 0.011** 7 economic restructuring (x6) 2.337 0.968 2.414 0.015** note: *, **, and *** represents 1%, 5%, and 10% level of significance respectively the regression model is as follow: logep(y=1)/p(y=0) = -33.974 0.136*x1 0.631*x2 + 0.993*x3 + 0.632*x4 + 2.089*x5 + 2.337*x6 age (x1) has a negative effect on vocational training needs. the older the labors are, the less they want to participate in vocational training. therefore, vocational training policies should focus on asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 473-484 479 youths who are more likely to pursue vocational training. this result is similar to pham and le (2017), yu and wang (2014). however, in terms of education attainment (x2), this research is contradictory to pham and le (2017). the negative coefficient on education attainment shows that highly educated workers face relatively higher opportunity costs for changing jobs so they are less likely to take up vocational training. meanwhile, household size (x3), average household income (x4) have a slight positive effect on vocational training needs. state policies and economic restructuring have the greatest effect on vocational training needs. variable x5 (state policies): the p_value of the coefficient on x5 ( �̂�5 ) is 0.0109 (<0.05) so �̂�5 is significant at the 5% level. this result shows that state vocational training policies affect the vocational training needs of rural workers. with the state’s supporting policy, especially related to tuition fees, rural laborers are encouraged to study in various vocational fields. �̂�5 = 2,089 shows that the increase in the correspondent’s perception about state policies (holding other factors constant) will lead to a 0.889 increase in the probability of rural laborers having vocational training needs. according to descriptive statistics, the mean value of opinions about vocational training needs is 3.8, which means state policies have a great influence on vocational training needs. 70.3% of the correspondents held this opinion. variable (x6): the p_value of the coefficient on x6 ( �̂�6 ) is 0.0158 (<0.05) so �̂�6 is significant at the 5% level. �̂�6 = 2.3374 shows economic restructuring has a positive effect on vocational training needs. the trend of economic restructuring is increasing the proportion of industry and service and gradually reducing the proportion of agriculture. since then, the labor force in industry and service also shifts, increasing the proportion of industrial and service workers and reducing the proportion of agricultural labor. along with economic development, industrial zones, businesses and resorts will attract more and more laborers, thereby increasing the vocational training needs in the industry and service sector. the coefficient �̂�6 = 2.3374 indicates that, if workers increase their perception of the impact of economic restructuring on vocational training needs (other factors are constant), there will be a 0.56 increase in the probability for them to have vocational training needs. according to descriptive statistics, on average, all respondents thought that the economic restructuring process has a great impact on vocational training needs (the mean value is 3.86), and nearly 80% of respondents hold this opinion. table 3: descriptive statistics describing perception about the influence of state policies and economic restructuring on vocational training needs mean value have no effect (%) have small effect (%) have moderate effect (%) have big effect (%) have very big effect (%) state policies 3.8 0 0.90 23.4 70.3 5.4 economic restructuring 3.86 0 0.9 19.3 72.6 7.2 source: authors’ own calculations the obtained binary logistic regression model shows that the 2-loglikelihood index is -22.049 which is an appropriate indicator to confirm the certainty of the model. the mcfadden r-squared correlation coefficient is 0.876, indicating that 87.69% of the change in vocational training needs is explained by the factors within the model. the homer and lemeshow tests show that the chi-squares value is 10.595 with [prob.] = 0.997 (> 0.05), proving that the model is in the right form. these results all show that the binary logistic regression model is suitable and can be applied in the analysis. the actual survey results show that 77.3% of the respondents have vocational training needs soon, focusing mainly on those who are young or are not yet apprenticed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 473-484 480 with regard to the survey on vocational training needs, when requested to identify a vocational training area in which they are interested in pursuing, 224 out of 334 working-age correspondents in rural areas chose the industry and service sector, accounting for 51.8% and 39.3% respectively. only 8.9% correspondents wanted to be trained in the agriculture sector. the high demand for industry and service training among rural workers is consistent with economic restructuring and development. after determining the factors affecting workers 'vocational training needs, including economic restructuring, the research team investigated the employment needs of students who are currently studying at vocational schools. the results show that 45% of learners want to work in industry and construction after graduation; 45.7% would like to work in the service sector; only 5.4% are keen on working in agriculture, forestry and fishery. once again, the results show that the vocational training needs of learners are in line with the trend of economic restructuring. 4.6. policies and objectives of vocational training for rural workers consistent with the economic restructuring in ha tinh province being aware of the important role of vocational training, especially in the context of economic restructuring, the government has issued many guidelines and policies to encourage vocational training for rural workers such as decision 1956/2009/qdttg approving the project on vocational training for rural laborers until 2020 (project 1956). accordingly, the people's council of ha tinh province issued resolution 56/2017/nq-hdnd to implement the prime minister's decision 1956 on vocational training for rural labor for the 2017-2020 period. in this resolution, the target number of trainees is 70,000 in the 2011-2015 period, 80,000 people in the 2016-2020 period. in total, ha tinh province targets to have 150,000 new trained rural laborer by 2020. from 2012 to 2019, the proportion of the labor force in rural areas accounted for over 80% of the total labor force. however, in terms of labor structure by sectors, there has been a clear shift with the increasing proportion of industry and service sector compared to a decreasing share of agriculture forestry and fishery sector (table 4). table 4: sector-wise structure of working age (above 15) population year agriculture forestry – fishery industry construction trade – service total no. of people share (%) no. of people share (%) no. of people share (%) 2017 387,423 54.81 102,605 14.51 216,862 30.68 696,978 2018 320,460 45.04 157,693 22.17 233,297 32.79 711,450 2019 300,049 43.05 165,290 23.72 231,639 33.23 706,890 source: ha tinh department of labor – invalids and social affairs 4.7. results of vocational training for rural workers in ha tinh province in the context of economic restructuring the total number of labor force admitted to vocational training for the period 2010-2018 is 59,313 people. the details are as follows: period of 2010-2015: the total number of trained rural laborers is 38,575 people. in which: basic training 21,425 people, accounting for 56%; training for less than 3 months is 17,150 people, accounting for 44%. the total number of rural laborers who are supported with basic training and training for less than 3 months according to the policy specified in decision no. 1956/qd-ttg is 37,375 people; in which the number of people supported for agricultural vocational training is 22,799 people, accounting for 61%; the number of people supported with non-agricultural vocational training is 14,576 people, accounting for 39%. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 473-484 481 period of 2016 2018: the total number of trained rural laborers is 20,738 people. in which: primary training 11,743 people, accounting for 57%; under 3-month training is 8,995 people, accounting for 43%. the total number of rural laborers who are supported with basic training and training for less than 3 months under the policy specified in decision no. 46/2015/qd-ttg is 16,283 people; in which the number of people supported with agricultural vocational training is 6,276 people, accounting for 39%; the number of people supported with non-agricultural vocational training is 10,007, accounting for 61%. in the first 6 months of 2019, the number of trained rural laborers is 5,445 people. in which: 3,950 people at primary education, accounting for 73%; training for less than 3 months is 1,495 people, accounting for 27%. the number of rural laborers who are supported with primary training and under 3 months training according to the policy specified in decision no. 46/2015/qd-ttg is 1,677 people; in which the number of people supported for agricultural vocational training is 757, accounting for 45%; 920 people are supported for non-agricultural vocational training, accounting for 55%. regarding the structure of training occupations under project 1956, the structure of trained occupations gradually shifted to increase the proportion of non-agricultural vocational training and reduce the proportion of agricultural vocational training. the change in vocational training structure is suitable for economic restructuring. 4.8. evaluate training effectiveness for the period 2010-2015, the province targeted to train 32,000 workers with 70% of those having a job after training. ha tinh had trained 37,375 people, exceeding 16.8% of the set target, the rate of employed labor exceeds 70% (table 5). for the period 2016-2020, the target of training was 32,000 workers in ha tinh province, the percentage of employed laborers was at least 80%. in the period of 2016-2018, ha tinh had trained 16,283 employees; the rate of employed labor reached a minimum of 80%. in particular, the proportion of employed labor in agriculture was higher than that of non-agricultural employment. in general, the training program for rural laborers in ha tinh had achieved the goals set for each period. however, during the period 2010-2018, the proportion of employed labor in the non-agricultural sector was only 59.5%. this requires policies to promote and find jobs for workers. table 5: the employment situation of rural workers after apprenticeship no. of trainees no. of employed share of employed labor period total agriculture nonagriculture total agriculture nonagriculture total agriculture nonagriculture 2010 2018 53,658 29,075 24,583 41,330 26,700 14,630 77% 91.8% 59.5% 2010 2015 37,375 22,799 14,576 28,150 17,950 10,200 75.3% 78.7% 70% 2016 2018 16,283 6,276 10,007 13,180 8,750 4,430 80.9% 2019 4,500 2,000 2,500 3,700 1,800 1,900 82.2% 90% 76% source: ha tinh department of labor invalids and social affairs (2019) regarding the types of jobs that employees participated in after training, in the period of 20102020, 22,200 / 41,330 employees will continue to do the same jobs but their labor productivity and income increase, accounting for 53.7% of the total number of employees. i in addition, a number of rural laborers work in other forms such as: working under labor contracts with enterprises, signing products off-take agreements with enterprises, setting up their own enterprises, cooperatives, cooperative groups, production groups. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 473-484 482 table 6: job wise distribution of rural workers expression 2010 2018 2010 2015 2016 2018 2019 rural laborers are recruited by enterprises to work under labor contracts 5,400 3,850 1,550 600 rural laborers are contracted to cover products 5,880 4,090 1,790 500 rural laborers continue to do previous jobs but with increasing productivity and income 22,200 14,500 7,700 2,200 rural laborers are allowed to establish enterprises, cooperatives, cooperative groups, production groups 7,850 5,710 2,140 400 total 41,330 28,150 13,180 3,700 source: ha tinh department of labor invalids and social affairs (2019) in the period from 2010 to 2018, there is a large proportion of rural laborers who continue to do previous jobs but with increasing productivity and income (22,200 people, accounting for 53.7% of the total number of employees in rural areas), in 2019 this figure was 59.5%; followed by selfemployment through establishing businesses, cooperatives, cooperative groups, production groups (7,850 people, accounting for nearly 19%). the rest work in enterprises under labor contracts or being signed contracts to cover products by enterprises. 5. conclusion this research has examined the current situation of vocational training for rural workers in ha tinh province in the context of economic restructuring. the result from the binary logit model shows that economic restructuring and state policies have a large effect on the vocational training needs of rural workers. overall, ha tinh is one of the localities that have well-implemented vocational training policies for rural laborers. from basic short-term training (less than 3 months) to intermediate and college training at vocational training institutions, ha tinh has well exploited the government's support policies to promote the effectiveness of training and retraining for rural laborers. however, because the training support policy for rural labor is mainly short-term, training results sometimes fail to meet some expectations. the results of short-term vocational training are still formalistic. for medium and long-term training disciplines (intermediate, college), some professions require high technology; specialized-skills such as welding, industrial electricity, and electronics do not attract students despite the high demand. meanwhile, some professions such as accounting, sewing, and tourism are attractive to students because these areas are less laborintensive. the current supporting policies for rural labor force will expire in 2020, suggesting that the government need other policies to replace them promptly. in addition, when developing vocational training policies for rural laborers, it is necessary to research and consider the trend of movement among sectors and fields, thereby prioritizing funding support for sectors with market demand. this will promote the efficiency of the government’s investment in training, developing quality human resources, and meeting job requirements most effectively as well as adapting to the shift of economic structure in the current period. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 473-484 483 funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references atchoarena, d. e., & gasperini, l. e. 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(2014). factors influencing farmers' willingness to participate in the new vocational training. asian agricultural research, 06(03), 55-59. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 28 an exploratory study in to the benefits and challenges facing small-scale farmers in the taung irrigation scheme, north west province, south africa gabriel ekobi a lovelyne mboh b a department of development studies, north west university, corner luthuli drive, mmabatho south africa.  gabriel.ekobi@gmail.com (corresponding author) b centre for indigenous knowledge systems, north west university, corner luthuli drive, mmabatho south africa. corresponding author article history: received: 19-jul-2018 accepted: 25-aug-2018 online available: 10-sep2018 keywords: irrigation, food security, poverty, livelihoods, small-scale farmers abstract this study examined the benefits and challenges small-scale farmers faced in the taung irrigation scheme. irrigation schemes have been identified as the backbone in promoting agriculture in south africa. nevertheless, literature have shown that very few studies have been conducted on the benefits and challenges facing small-scale farmers in irrigation schemes, there is a need to supplement this gap. the findings contend that taung irrigation scheme enabled small-scale framers to generate income. income made in the scheme permitted small-scale farmers to purchase gardening tools such as watering cans, cattle ploughs and hoes to improve productivity. the scheme also provides a platform for farmers to produce more food therefore, a reduction in poverty incidence in the area. however, challenges such as lack of market, absence of institutional structure, farming capital, transport and loss of harvest through theft are affecting farmers on the scheme. institutional structure is needed since it allows small-scale farmers to make decision regarding management of the scheme. contribution/ originality this study indicated that taung irrigation scheme provide a platform for small-scale farmers to generate income which enhances productivity, human capital and physical endowment. the scheme also enable small-scale farmers to produce enough food which improve household consumption thus livelihood. better management of the scheme would serve as an impetus to employment, income and food security in the area. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.1/1005.1.28.39 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: gabriel ekobi and lovelyne mboh (2018). an exploratory study in to the benefits and challenges facing small-scale farmers in the taung irrigation scheme, north west province, south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1), 28-39. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 1(2018): 28-39 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:gabriel.ekobi@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.1/1005.1.28.39 orcid.org/0000-0003-3773-4801 orcid.org/0000-0002-7674-4095 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 28-39 29 1. introduction globally, irrigation plays a crucial part in making water available for food production in rural areas, most importantly, in arid and semi-arid regions (chazovachii, 2012). studies have shown that irrigated land has been far more productive than rain fed land over the past four decades and currently constitute 20 percent of the harvested areas in the world (food and agriculture organisation, 2016). improving irrigation farming contributes significantly to better livelihood of the people in rural areas, as it provides wages through employment. in africa, irrigation schemes acts as buffer to extreme variability in rainfall, long dry seasons, recurrent droughts, floods and dry spells in order to promote agriculture and food production (food and agriculture organisation, 2014). world bank (2013) and cousins (2012), point out that irrigation development in south africa was introduced due to the unreliability of rainfall in the country making crop production very difficult and risky. irrigation schemes were seen as a mechanism for eliminating or reducing water deficit in crop production in order to, promote food security and rural development (government of south africa, 2013). irrigated agriculture that covers about 1.3 hectares of land contributes about 30 percent of the country’s gdp undertaken by only 10 percent arable land in south africa even at different provincial levels (government of south africa, 2015; fanadzo et al., 2010; tekana and oladele, 2011). in this study, irrigation is seen as the supply of water to agricultural crops by artificial means, designed to permit farming in arid regions and to offset the effect of drought in semi-arid regions (food and agriculture organisation, 2014). the taung irrigation scheme was established in 1939 by the south african government as part of the vaal-hartz scheme (van averbeke et al., 2011). during the 1970’s, political and administrative independence of the bantustan or native area was encouraged, resulting in the central government‘s withdrawal and homeland administration taking over. this prompted the incorporation of the taung scheme into the bophuthatswana homeland during the independent homeland era which lasted from 1970 until 1990’s and was an integral part of the economic development of the homelands (tekana and oladele, 2011). the scheme was initially established as 1.7 hectares plots per farmer and was irrigated by floods. on the same, about 200 subsistence farmers used the land to grow crops such as maize and pumpkins. the significance of the taung irrigation scheme arises from the fact that, the scheme is situated in the economically depressed area with high levels of food insecurity and poverty. institutions such as south african breweries and cotton south africa (cotton), department of agriculture and department of water affairs and forestry were brought together for better management of the scheme (golder associates, 2004; government of south africa, 2013). the scheme is operated as a public-private partnership that involves small-scale farmers, department of agriculture, department of water affairs and forestry, traditional authority and south african breweries (sab). the pivots of the irrigation project are maintained by the department of agriculture, water for the scheme is made available by department of water affairs and forestry through the water user associations. the traditional authority provides land for the irrigation scheme. farmers are responsible for minor repairs and the replacement of electrical cable in the case of cable theft. south african breweries provides off-take contracts to the farmers for both barley and maize, thereby providing the farmers with a secure and stable market for their produce, as long as they are able to produce acceptable quality of, and quantities of, barley and maize (golder associates, 2004; bureau for food and agricultural policy, 2008; government of south africa, 2013). however, despite legal and policy frameworks introduced by the south african government such as the south african constitution (act 108 of 1996), the national water act (act 36 of 1998), water user associations of 2005 (wua), national extension recovery implementation plan of 2006 and the provincial growth and development strategy of the north west province of 2004 to propel irrigation development, food insecurity and poverty are major concern in the area (golder associates, 2004; bureau for food and agricultural policy, 2008; tekana and oladele, 2011; government of south africa, 2013). besides it seems the scheme is not meeting its objectives it was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 28-39 30 created, that is, to continue to uplift the standard of living for all stakeholders involved in the scheme. the scheme was supposed to create job, assure food security and income to rural households in the area (government of south africa, 2013). in this study, there is the need to determine if the taung irrigation scheme still achieves its objectives by providing farmers with better living standard. to explore the benefits and challenges facing small-scale farmers in the taung irrigation scheme, the study was guided by the following objectives: to describe the contribution of taung irrigation scheme to income generation and food security and also to identify the challenges plaguing smallscale farmers on the scheme. 2. methodology 2.1. study site the taung irrigation scheme is located in greater taung local municipality of dr ruth segomotsi mompati district municipality, in the north west province of south africa. the province lies between 22 and 28 degrees longitude east of the greenwich meridian and between 25 and 28 degrees latitude south of the equator (cowley, 1985). the region is situated 1.200mm above sea level and has an annual rainfall of 430mm. the climate is very dry, especially in winter and summers are hot with temperatures ranging from 16-38 degree celsius (dr ruth segomotsi mompati district municipality, 2015). taung irrigation scheme irrigates 3 698 hectares of land by means of centre pivot, flood and sprinkler irrigation (government of south africa, 2013). three methods of irrigation are practiced at taung irrigation scheme. centre pivot irrigation is the largest area (2 490) and the gravity fed sprinkler irrigation irrigates 967 hectares. there are also 24 farmers using flood irrigation on 41 hectares. about 412 small-scale farmers are presently working on the scheme (government of south africa, 2013). small-scale farmers in the taung irrigation scheme are selected by the taung traditional authority with the help of the department of agriculture (government of south africa, 2013). 2.1.1. selection of the study site majority of the population in the area constitutes the historically disadvantaged groups and poverty level in the area stands 49.8 percent. most of the households in area rely on external economic activities, especially state grants. for instance, studies conducted by tekana and oladele (2011) show that pension 33 percent were the greatest contributor of the economy in the area. in addition, agriculture plays an important role in the area with about 60 percent of rural livelihood. agricultural households in taung stand at 18, 255, livestock’s contributes 38.1 percent of the economy, poultry 41.9 percent, vegetables stands at 6.0 percent and other crops 4.3 percent (dr ruth segomotsi mompati district municipality, 2015). 2.2. methods a descriptive study using a mixed method research involving quantitative and qualitative approaches was adopted to collect and present data (babbie, 2013). quantitative and qualitative methods were employed because the study aimed to provide clearer and more precise responses, comprising open and closed-ended questions. there was the need to triangulate these methods in the sense that important information which would have been left out by quantitative was explained by qualitative method (hesse-biber, 2010; babbie, 2013). 2.3. sample size out of the 412 small-scale farmers involved in the taung irrigation scheme, 203 small-scale farmers were selected in this study using the yamane formula (1967): where n= population of the study asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 28-39 31 n = sample size e = error term in this case = 0.05% considering that the confidence interval was 95% furthermore, a simple random sampling approach was utilised to recruit respondents for the survey. this was done to give equal chances for respondents to be chosen to take part in this study as this reduces bias. in regards to identifying participants for the qualitative study, this study employed purposive sampling in recruiting the key informants and those for the focus groups discussions. key informants included the officials from the department of agriculture, water affairs and forestry, development agents from the south african breweries and the tribal authority in the taung area. 2.4. data collection data was collected through interviews, structured questionnaires and; focus group discussions consisted of semi-structured interview guide was utilized to get information from small-scale farmers. questionnaires were formulated in such a way so as to produce responses on the demographic data, income generated, types food produced as well as to explore the challenges facing small-scale farmers on the scheme. the focus groups consisted of three groups of 6-10 members each was employed in the study. unstructured interview guide was also utilised to obtain data from the key informants that is the officials from the department of agriculture, water affairs, south african breweries and traditional authority. the study also employed secondary data to obtained information which was very relevant to the study. secondary information was obtained from sources such as the department of agriculture, statistics south africa, department of water affairs and forestry, provincial government of north west, mafikeng municipal council and greater taung local municipalities. 2.5. data analysis descriptive statistics1 were used in the analysis of the results to show demographic profiles of smallscale farmers, types of food as well as income generated. the qualitative data (transcripts and field notes) for focus group and other stakeholders was analysed using taylor-powell and renner’s (2003) approach. 3. results and discussions this segment deals with the results and discussions of the benefits and challenges faced by smallscale farmers in the taung irrigation scheme. 3.1. demographic profiles of small-scale farmers table 1: demographic profiles of respondents (n=203) demographic profiles frequency percentage gender male female 126 77 62% 38% age group 19-24 years 25-30 years 31-36 years 37-42 years 42+ 2 4 9 51 137 67.5% 25.2% 4.5% 22.9% 68.6% marital status married single 65 101 32.1% 49.7% 1 quantitative data was analysed using spss version 22 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 28-39 32 widowed 37 18.2% educational level illiterate literate (read and write only) grade 1-4 grade 5-8 grade 9-12 tertiary 19 63 73 31 12 5 9.4% 31.1% 35.9% 15.3% 5.9% 2.4% income level a month less than r800 r900 – 1600 r1700 – r2200 r2200+ 101 49 8 5 69.6% 24.1% 3.9% 2.4% size of household 1 – 2 3 – 4 5+ 22 42 139 10.8% 20.6% 68.6% small-scale farmers in the taung irrigation scheme were predominantly males (62%) as compared to females (38%). this is due to the fact that when the scheme was introduced in the area, men were given preference over women and also, men felt that women could not cope with the demands of the scheme (tekana and oladele, 2011; government of south africa, 2013). age groups that participated in the study fell under the age of 42 years or more were the majority (68.6%). this implies that young people in the area do not see agriculture as a sector that can provide them with job or income. this corroborates anyanwa in akinbile et al. (2007), study which acknowledged that active participants in farming activities were between 40 and 50 years. majority of the small-scale farmers earned less than r800 per month (69.6%). most of the households consisted of more than five (68.6%) people living in it. implying that large household can be used in improving production on the scheme and sustain family income. nearly half of small-scale farmers were single (49.7%) which means the scheme was used to cater for the vulnerable group in the society. educational level among small-scale farmers in the taung irrigation scheme was low. this implies the lack of understanding and knowledge on how to use technology such as pesticides, tractors, access better market and herbicides. mutambara and munodawafa (2014) acknowledged that low educational levels, resulted to lack of understanding of commercial farming concepts and limited access to information which are both very crucial in sustaining high production levels. 3.2. contribution to food security table 2: types of crops grown on the scheme (n=203) types of crops frequency percentage barley 32 15.8% potatoes 13 6.4% groundnuts 18 8.9% lucerne 129 63.6% millet 3 1.4% onions 8 3.9% total 203 100 irrigation schemes provide a better platform for small-scale farmers to cultivate various types of crops due to the availability of water throughout the year which improved productivity. the different types of food grown on the scheme provide enough income for farmers to acquire basic commodities and services that improve living standard. table 2 indicates that majority of small-scale farmers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 28-39 33 (63.6%) preferred growing lucerne since it is more profitable than other crops. in the focus group discussion including interviews with the traditional authority and officials from the department of agriculture (irrigation manager and extension officers), water affairs and forestry, and the south african breweries, most of the small-scale farmers reported they grow different types of crops on the scheme. however, according to the small-scale farmers, they preferred growing lucerne. lucerne is cheaper to grow and yields average high output since the prices are good. the farmers went on to explain that they preferred producing lucerne as there is a ready market for the produce. growing lucerne helps in preventing parasites and diseases which affect crops. one farmer reported that cultivating lucerne enabled them to cover losses of other crops due to fluctuation in prices and climate change. another farmer stressed that growing lucerne provide enough income for him and his families to acquire better health which prevents ill-health. although some farmers reported that they prefer cultivating barley as the demand from south african breweries is always high. however, some farmers reported that growing more than one crop throughout the year is more profitable. according to these small-scale farmers growing onions, potatoes, millet and groundnuts provided them not only with income but food security therefore, a reduction in poverty incidence in small-scale farmer’s households. one farmer confirms irrigation scheme gives small-scale farmers the opportunity to cultivate high value crops like potatoes and tomatoes that need regular supply of water to cultivate. also, another farmer stressed that the scheme enables them to earn an income through the various types of food grown, according to this farmer he is far better than those farmers who depend on rain fed agriculture. another farmer also confirmed that the scheme allowed them to grow additional crops like tomatoes, spinach and pumpkin that are sold or consumed by them. one farmer said she would cover her costs by growing onions and potatoes but point out that cultivating more than one type of crop was no easy task since it demands both inputs and labour. the different type crops grown on the scheme like lucerne, barley, potatoes, onions, millet and tomatoes provide income to small-scale farmers and also broaden their nutritional requirements. one farmer stressed that besides increasing productivity of crops due to the access to irrigation, increases the demand for agricultural labourers and therefore, a wage rates for those who are not part of the scheme. some farmers further reported that the access and availability to irrigation infrastructure, coupled with access to new technologies like tractors, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers has facilitate production of varieties of crops on the scheme. this findings is line with mutsvangwa and doranalli (2006), vegetables, and other crops affect customer’s diet and health not only to rural households but also to those who buy them through local markets and more so food crops have a special role in supplementing the diet of small children at weaning age and lowering the lack of protective foods. table 3: enough food to small-scale farmers using the scheme (n=203) enough food frequency percentage yes 133 65.5% no 70 34.5% total 100 100 small-scale farmers involved in the taung irrigation scheme were able to produce enough for the throughout the year that improved household consumption. farmers were able to build household assets such as different livestock with the availability this directly reduces vulnerability to shocks in time of hardship. table 3 shows that majority 65.5% of small-scale farmers indicated that they produce enough food for their household and; 34.5% indicated that they do not produce enough food for their households. in the focus group discussions, majority of small-scale farmers, the irrigation manager, and extension officer, development agent (south african breweries) and traditional authority reported that farmers had managed to produce enough food to support their households, despite the fact that they lacked fertilizers, chemicals, seeds, pesticides and proper farming skills. small-scale farmers explained that some of the food produced is consumed by them to provide them with nutrients, since working on the scheme requires a lot of energy. small-scale farmers reported asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 28-39 34 they were able to support themselves and their dependents with food produced from the scheme and this prevented hunger and malnutrition. hunger leads to fatigue, weight loss, stunting of growth, and frequent colds most especially among children. undernourished pregnant women are more likely to bear babies with low birth weight, and the babies are then more likely to experience developmental delays that can lead to learning problems. one farmer also revealed that due to the introduction of the scheme, he had physical and economic access to safe, sufficient and nutritious food at all times which improved their health and that of their children. according to the farmers due to abundant of water throughout the year, they owned vegetable gardens such as cabbages, tomatoes, spinach and pumpkin in his backyard. small-farmers also reported that the scheme led to the increase household’s consumption and reduced expenditure on buying food. the scheme made food available and affordable to farmers who spent a major part of their monthly income expenditure on basic food. sufficient and affordable food can be very crucial to the improvement of nutrition and health which was beneficial in promoting small-farmers skills and capabilities. one farmer claim that food produced from the scheme played at least some role in preventing frequent hunger and meeting the objectives of the scheme. irrigation schemes like the taung irrigation scheme continue to act as an impetus in poverty reduction by providing protection against famine, food security and intensifying job opportunities. some farmers stressed that the taung irrigation scheme beneficiaries that encountered poor harvest and crop failure in the past years before joining the scheme dramatically declined. the scheme helps in the production of enough food which enabled farmers to meet their basic needs associated with enhancements of their overall economic happiness such as protection against poor harvest due to insufficient rainwater supplies and employment which enable people to move out of the poverty cycle. sinyolo (2014), corroborated this finding where it was found out that irrigation continues to be a plausible approach for achieving high agricultural production, food security among households and reduction in rural poverty in less developed countries. 3.3. income generated from the sale of produce on the scheme table 4: small-scale farmer’s income from the scheme (n=203) income frequency percentage less than r4000 64 31.5% r4001=8000 126 62.0% r8001+ 13 6.4% total 203 100 the scheme was very successful in enabling small-scale farmers acquire a certain amount of wealth through income generated suggesting that farmers involved in the scheme have shown significant improvement in their livelihoods, and earn higher incomes than those that are not part of the scheme. the taung irrigation scheme do not only offer income to the rural population of the area but also act as an alternative source of employment. the scheme doubles small-scale farmers’ income and this augments household food security greatly. in the survey, majority of the small-scale farmers earned between r4001-8000 in a month from the scheme (62.0%). during the focus group discussion and interviews with the manager of the scheme, small-scale farmers reported that they were able to generate income from the scheme. income generated from the scheme enhances productivity and returns to human capital and physical endowment. income made through the scheme enabled small-scale farmers to purchase gardening tools such as watering cans, cattle ploughs and hoes. these were critical assets for daily use within the scheme and home gardens. one farmer went on to stressed that income generated from the scheme, were therefore vital in influencing access to better and affordable quantities of assorted variety of food for sufficient nutrition. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 28-39 35 despite the fact that, the income made from the scheme is low, the amount received has also enabled farmers to solve their daily problems like education, health, housing, education, health and transport. small-scale farmers further reported that the income made from the scheme, is far better than the social grant package given by the government of south africa. according to these small-scale farmers, their lives are better than those that were unemployed in the area, or civil servants who went unpaid for many months. the scheme also enabled farmers to accumulate assets such as livestock’s and landed property that contributed to wealth accumulation and poverty reduction. one farmer said she is able to buy livestock’s such as cattle, goats, pigs, camel and sheep with money obtained from the scheme. cattle for instance, were very significant in promoting households income since it was seen as an indicator of wealth. also, cattle produced manure that is rich nutrients and also assists in retaining soil moisture, unlike chemical fertiliser. in addition, cattle and camel play a central role in the agricultural sector as it provides draught power for tillage purposes. another farmer confirmed that families with cattle could plough a greater portion of land and get better harvest ultimately when they applied manure to their crops. the owners of these cattle have the capacity to generate wealth either through direct use or to hire out their cattle as the draught power to those who did not have them accumulating, even more, income in the process. one farmer further revealed that cows also provided milk for household use and for selling to community members at a competitive price. small-scale farmers also reported that they relied on goat milk, as it was nutritious and delicious. goats provided much-needed protein to farmers and were less vulnerable to theft, unlike cattle. also, some farmers further reported that the scheme has enabled them to further their education and that of their children which improve human development. education is critical to crop production, especially in a rapidly changing technological or economic environment. more so, income generated from the scheme allowed farmers to afford better quality education of their children, increasing chances of those students to further education in tertiary institutions. human capital development through the acquisition of education is very important factor for agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction. the scheme also enables small-scale farmers to meet some of their basic needs like paraffin, cloths, electricity and water bills and cooking oil. taung irrigation scheme was very crucial in reducing poverty through income generated from the scheme. this was a significant contribution to the community and national development, as it contributed towards the national skilled labour force. this finding was in line with studies conducted elsewhere by food and agriculture organisation (2001) and sarkar et al. (2014) where it was found out that irrigated agriculture contributed about a 30-60% share of the gross domestic product, employed about 40-95% of the workforce and provided food, subsistence and income to the majority of developing countries’ population. 4. challenges faced by small-scale farmers 4.1. marketing small-scale farmers reported marketing as the major challenge on the scheme. according to the small-scale farmers, only one buyer was allowed to purchase their produce and sell to neighboring countries. this buyer was arranged by the department of agriculture and south african breweries. the buyer exploit farmers by paying a minimal amount for their produce and this affected their income level negatively. this in line with findings from a study conducted by woldeab (2003) that points out that, market information is limited to small-scale farmers involved in irrigation system in north of ethiopia and this has hampered marketing of their agricultural products. also, langat et al. (2011) studies explained that in the eastern cape province in south africa, it is often difficult for smallholder farmers to partake in market due to a number of obstacles that reduced the motivation for partakers. these may be reflected on the hidden costs that made access to markets and productive assets difficult. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 28-39 36 4.2. institutional structures the sustainability of the scheme depends on the establishment of appropriate institutional structures (organisation and management) which involves the formation of farmers groups (fsu’s) and a management committee to manage the scheme. nevertheless, the scheme does not have a management committee to formally represent all the farmers. the absence of this has resulted in the farmers not having proper and communicable channels through which they can raise their concerns, needs and problems with the strategic partners. also, this led to poor relation with other stakeholders hence poor management of the scheme. also, small-scale farmers complained that they were never part of the decision making body of the scheme. the farmers support units that was supposed to represent small-scale farmers at the management committee is non-existent. according to the small-scale farmers, the above made them to resort to vandalizing the office of the scheme in order for the department of agriculture to meet their demand. this is consistent with mudau (2010) study which revealed that smallholder irrigation was exposed to improper institutions and organisational approaches, as well as a lack of the capacity to provide the necessary assistance to smallholder farmers. 4.3. lack of capital small-scale farmers reported the lack of capital to buy inputs such as fertilizers, seeds, pesticides as a challenge. one farmer claim that the absence of capital and refusal of the banks to grant credit to small-scale farmers forced them to use unspecified organic fertilizers or just plants which resulted to low productivity. another farmer reported that due to lack of capital she cannot afford to buy watering can, cattle and shovel to facilitate production. nyamutule and ayessaki (2009) work found out that smallholder farmers access to funds from organizations such as governments and nongovernmental organisations was very difficult due to low output, commodities, market risk, lack of collateral, farmer’s poor track record in managing the farm and the loan repayment, lack of risk alleviation for production, high transaction costs, poor timing of the payment of funds, a negative attitude of the financial institutions that considered smallholders non-bankable. these challenges were serious threats to small-scale farmers in the scheme since finance is needed to pay for water and also to buy farm inputs like chemicals, pesticides, tractors and fertilisers to ease production. 4.4. water charged small-scale farmers indicated that, the price of water charged by department of water affairs and forestry (water user associations) was too high. farmers in taung irrigation scheme were supposed to be charged in accordance with the number of plots they owned; instead they were charged at a higher rate (r154 per hectares for a year). this has made them to accumulate large amount of debts. as a result, small-scale farmers were forced to temporarily abandon cultivation of their plots and instead resorted to increasingly leasing or renting their plots of land. liao et al. (2008) study conducted in china revealed that water pricing hike methods threatened the sustainability and viability of irrigation projects. this has made some irrigation schemes in china to collapse thus causing food insecurity in the area. 4.5. transportation small-scale farmers reported that the scheme did not have available vehicles to transport their produce to the market, since they were the people taking their produce to the market. coupled with the above, roads leading to farms were inaccessible. small-scale farmers explained that due to the above challenges, their livelihoods were not improving since they did not make enough profits from the scheme. as a result they were getting poorer thus, hindering development in taung area. this finding is equal to ngomezulu (2010) work which acknowledged that transactional costs are barriers to the efficient participation of farmers in different markets. the transaction costs are generally high for smallholder producers because of poor road infrastructures. in addition, other constraints, such as poor fencing, winter, contract farmers (european farmers), theft of crops, absence of title deeds and ownerships of land by farmers, extension officers low level of education, levy paid on electricity and tractors, the constant changing of ministry (member of the executive council) and lack of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 28-39 37 proper sanitation (clean water and sewerage) to farm houses were reported as challenges affecting small-scale farmers working on the scheme. 5. way forward 5.1. institutional structure institutional structure plays a very vital role for the success or failure of any irrigation system. without a good institutional structure in an irrigation scheme, the failure of the scheme is high. the study revealed that institutional structure was a problem plaguing small-scale farmers in taung irrigation scheme, leading to discontent between small-scale farmers and the department of agriculture. the study therefore, recommends that small-scale farmers should establish cooperatives to enable them have more powers to influence the decision making process of the scheme. also cooperatives would enable small-scale farmers to afford legal representatives to negotiate contractual agreement between south african breweries, department of agriculture and small-scale farmers to avoid being exploited. secondly, small-scale farmers and other partners (department of agriculture, department of water affairs and forestry, south african breweries, traditional authority) need to form a management committee with small-scale farmers having a better representation. formation of management committee would provide a smooth platform for communication among the members of the scheme. lastly, small-scale farmers’ inputs concerning the scheme should be highly considered since this is their project. 5.2. capital support capital is very important to small-scale farmers in the scheme since it is needed to pay for water and also to buy farm inputs like chemicals, pesticides, tractors and fertilisers to ease production. the study showed that capital was a serious challenge facing small-scale farmers in taung irrigation scheme. in this regard, it is recommended that community based bank should be introduced to meet the financial needs of the small-scale farmers in the scheme. the north west provincial government through the bank needs to provide capital in the form of inputs such as fertilisers, seeds, chemicals and pesticides of up to 60 percent, and then the community can provide the rest. the rate of percentage of lending money should be below the cost of operation of the scheme. secondly, cooperatives should be established by the small-scale farmers as this would enable them to obtain loans from banks involved in agricultural development since they would be able to pull their resources together. thirdly, the department of agriculture should organise workshops to educate small-scale farmers on how to acquire loans from banks and the importance of repaying the loans. lastly, the department of agriculture needs to encourage banks involved in agricultural development to assist farmers involved in the irrigation scheme. 5.3. marketing support freedom to market produces by small-scale farmer’s results to improved livelihoods, since it will generate high income to farmers. from this study, it is evident that small scale farmers are struggling to market their produce. therefore, the study recommends that the department of agriculture and the greater taung local municipality needs to assist small-scale farmers in marketing their produce. this can be done by holding market fairs and agricultural trade exhibitions. also they can assist small-scale farmers by using media platforms to advertise their produce. the one buyer system of marketing introduced by the department of agriculture and south african breweries should be addressed so that small-scale farmers would be able to market their produce with freedom. with access to market information, the department of agriculture, south africa breweries, private and governmental organizations needs to constantly supply market information to small-scale farmers. department of agriculture and greater taung local municipality should organise workshops to educate the farmers on how to use the market information. also small-scale farmers should establish cooperatives as this will enable them to acquire power to influence the market. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 28-39 38 6. conclusion taung irrigation scheme was a tool implemented to uplift the lives of the people through income generation and; most especially to provide food security and livelihoods in taung area. this study attests that the scheme enabled some small-scale farmers to produce more food which has helped in improving household nutritional levels. the scheme was also very instrumental in providing the platform for small-scale farmers to generate income. some small-scale farmers were able to acquire assets such as livestock and farming tools with income made from the scheme although limited. however, the income generated has not been able to address food security and livelihoods among small-scale farmers in taung due to challenges. these challenges include; lack of proper markets, institutional problems, lack of capital such as finance to purchase inputs, low level of education of extension officers, high presence of european contract farmers, high water rate charged, poor transport and theft of crops which hindered production to be done on a large scale. some recommendations were made to help address the challenges that small-scale farmers were facing on the scheme. cooperatives should be established by small-scale farmers as this will enable them to solve the problem of institutional structures of the scheme. cooperative establishment will also enable small-scale farmers to have access to markets and even capital. funding: the study was supported by the north west university (nwu) post-graduate bursary, south africa. competing interests: no conflict of interest was reported by the authors. contributors/acknowledgement: this work was part of the master’s research project, the problems faced by small-scale farmers in taung irrigation scheme, north west province, south africa. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akinbile, l. a., salimonu, k. k., & yekinni, o. t. 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(coleoptera: brentidae) pham thi maia hoang thi thanh hab bui thi suuc le thi thaod nguyen thi quyene tran dinh toanf vu thi lieng yamakawa reih a,b,c,d,e,f,gfaculty of agriculture and forestry, tay bac university, son la, vietnam. hjapan international cooperation agency (jica), tokyo, japan.  maipham@utb.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 8 june 2021 revised: 29 september 2021 accepted: 5 november 2021 published: 15 december 2021 keywords sweet potato weevil repellent lamiaceae essential oil. in this research, the repellent activity of five lamiaceae essential oils, agastache rugosa, elsholtzia blanda, elsholtzia ciliata, elsholtzia penduliflora, and plectranthus ovatus, was evaluated against sweet potato weevil, cylas formicarius using a two-choice test between the essential oil-treated filter paper and the control. e. blanda and a. rugosa essential oils have some sweet potato weevil attractant properties at low dose (<47.16 nl/cm2),while n,n-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide (deet), p. ovatus, e. penduliflora, and e.ciliata essential oils have repellent properties at doses ranging from 15.72 nl/cm2 to 196.49 nl/cm2. the effect of type of essential oil and their dose were interactively associated with repellent efficacy. there was a increase in repellent efficacy as the dose increased for all essential oils. the repellent activities of p. ovatus essential oil and e. penduliflora were higher than the others, and the repellent effects of e. ciliata essential oil and deet were more dose-dependent than others, indicating that at low dose, p. ovatus and e. penduliflora essential oils have stronger repellent efficacy, but at higher dose deet and e. ciliata have greater effects. our findings clearly demonstrate that p. ovatus, e. penduliflora, and e. ciliata essential oils are candidate materials for future investigation as repellent compounds against sweet potato weevil control. contribution/originality: this study uses new estimation methodology to characterize the role of types of essential oils and their dose in the response of insects to repellents. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.327.333 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: pham thi mai --hoang thi thanh ha --bui thi suu --le thi thao --nguyen thi quyen -- tran dinh toan --vu thi lien --yamakawa rei (2021). screening of five lamiaceae essential oils as repellents for sweet potato weevil, cylas formicarius (f.) (coleoptera: brentidae). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4), 327-333. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.327.333 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction sweet potato weevil, cylas formicarius (fabricius) (spw), is the most important insect pest infesting sweet potato, both in the field and in storage (sutherland, 1986). their impact on sweet potato crops results in millions of dollars of losses annually around the world (jackson et al., 2005). vietnam, among the ten largest sweet potato-producing asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 4 (2021): 327-333. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8453-2589 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9170-9183 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3502-067x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8530-3470 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5212-1718 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9866-278x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5315-2118 mailto:maipham@utb.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 327-333 328 countries in the world (1994–2019) (faostat, 2021), recorded losses of up to 30-40% (dinh, khang, & thew, 1995). spw larvae bore into the vines and tubers of sweet potatoes (sutherland, 1986); infested sweet potato tubers then produce certain terpenoids, resulting in infested tubers becoming unsuitable for consumption by either humans or livestock (sato, uritani, & saito, 1982). thus, even a low level of infestation by spw causes considerable economic losses. this pest is mainly controlled by insecticides and pheromone trapping. chemical insecticides are understood to give inadequate control (sutherland, 1986) because the larvae develop inside the vines and tubers. moreover, sex pheromones attract only males, leaving females to continue to cause damage (proshold, gonzalez, asencio, & heath, 1986). therefore, the efforts to control spw still face various challenges. insect olfaction refers to the function of chemical receptors that enable insects to detect and identify volatile compounds for host selection, defense and escape from predators, shelter selection, mating and reproduction, and general orientation (carraher et al., 2015). thus, it is the most important sense for insects. insects are capable of detecting and differentiating between thousands of volatile compounds, both sensitively and selectively (carraher et al., 2015; syed, 2015). therefore, chemosensory-based tactics are especially important for integration of insect pest management. the strategy for repellents use is mainly to stop pests from finding a valuable resource. useful repellents can be derived from natural sources, such as plants (e.g. essential oils), or they may synthesize, as in the case for most insecticides (curtis, lines, baolin, & renz, 1990; norris, 1990). most efforts to apply volatile repellents have protected humans from insect bites, particularly from insects such as mosquitoes and blackflies that are vectors of diseases (schreck, 1977). among these chemicals, the best known is deet, which is used to repel a broad range of insects (rutledge, sofield, & moussa, 1978). repellents protecting crops, excepting those with general insecticidal activity, have received little attention (renwick, 2018). we therefore suggest that the use of repellent plants as pushplants (push–pull strategies) or compounds (easy to synthesize, easy to apply or deliver, inexpensive, low-toxicity…) with repellent activity against spw may contribute to the integrated pest management strategy for spw in the field, as well as in storage. plants members of the lamiaceae, especially ocimum spp., are used as traditional mosquito repellents globally (ntonifor, ngufor, kimbi, & oben, 2006; seyoum et al., 2002). numerous studies have shown that essential oils and their constituents from lamiaceae have high repellent activity against insect pests (maia & moore, 2011; nerio, olivero-verbel, & stashenko, 2010). in addition, recent research has shown that mulching with fresh material from lamiaceae (basil (ocimum basilicum l.), lime basil (ocimum americanum l.) and spearmint (mentha spicata l.)) reduced the number of weevil feeding holes on sweet potato storage root fragments, and the numbers of weevil (rehman, liu, johnson, dada, & gurr, 2019). another study indicated that the use of lamiaceae (oregano (origanum vulgare l.), basil (ocimum basilicum l.) and mint lime (mentha × piperita l.)) as barrier plants reduced the passage of c. formicarius and the number of oviposition holes in sweet potato storage roots (dada, liu, johnson, rehman, & gurr, 2020). therefore, lamiaceae essential oils are potential candidates as repellents against spw. this study aims to assess the repellent activity of lamiaceae essential oils as a basis to invest repellent compounds of essential oils as candidates for synthesis and use as active repellent ingredients in the field, as well as in storage. furthermore, the stems and leaves of the plants whose essential oils have repellent activity can be used to mulch sweet potato in the field or to cover piles of sweet potato in storage. 2. material and methods 2.1. plant and essential oils the aboveground parts of five lamiaceae plants were collected (during their flowering periods) in son la and lao cai provinces of the northwest region of vietnam (table 1). after sample collection, the plants were cut into small pieces of 5–7 cm in length then spread in thin layers in a well-ventilated room for about 12 hours to reduce the water in the plants before essential oil extraction. essential oils of five lamiaceae species were extracted by steam distillation using a stainless steel distillation apparatus. three liters of filtered water and 1 kg of plant materials were used to collect 1.5 l of condensed water. subsequently, the essential oils were separated using a pipette. the essential oils collected over water were dried over sodium sulfate and preserved in a refrigerator (4ºc) for subsequent experiments. a commercial repellent, deet, was purchased from sigma and used as a positive control. table-1. names and sources of five lamiaceae essential oils used in this study. scientific name common name collection time collection location latitude and longitude elevation agastache rugosa (fisch. & c.a.mey.) kuntze korean mint june, 2016 son la province 21ο 16’ 57.9’’ n 103ο 55’ 28.3’’ e 795 m elsholtzia blanda (benth.) benth. november, 2016 lao cai province 22 ο 21’ 20.7’’ n 103ο 51’ 36.5’’ e 1351 m elsholtzia ciliata (thunb.) hyl. vietnamese balm november, 2016 son la province 21ο 18’ 02.1’ ’n 103ο 56’ 00.6’’ e 666 m elsholtzia penduliflora w.w.sm. november, 2016 lao cai province 22 ο 21’ 14.6’’ n 103ο 51’ 48.1’’ e 1296 m plectranthus ovatus benth. clove basil august, 2016 son la province 21ο 17’ 27.2’’ n 103ο 55’ 53.2’’ e 804 m asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 327-333 329 2.2. insect culture the cylas formicarius (spw) specimens used in this study were originally collected in tay hung village, muoi noi ward, thuan chau district, son la province in 2016, and were maintained for more than 15 generations on sweet potato root. the spw adults used for testing were generated by 200 pairs of sexually mature spw, which were placed in a plastic cage containing 2 kg of sweet potato for 2 days. the plastic cage is 28 cm in diameter and 25 cm in height and was covered by a mosquito net. after this period, the adults were removed and the cages containing the sweet potatoes were incubated at 27 ± 1οc and 75 ± 5% rh under a 14:10 light:dark photoperiod. when the adults emerged from the tubers, male and female weevils were separated daily. the adults emerging from the tubers after 2–6 days were used for experimentation. 2.3. repellent bioassay the repellence test used was adopted from the method of liu and ho (1999), with some modifications. petri dishes (9 cm in diameter) were used to confine spw during the experiment. deet and essential oils were diluted in n-hexane to different concentrations (15.72, 47.16, 78.63 and 196.49 nl cm–2), and pure n-hexane was used as the control. filter paper (9 cm in diameter) was cut in half and 500 µl of each concentration was applied separately to one half of the filter paper as uniformly as possible, with a micropipette. the other half (control) was treated with 500 µl of absolute n-hexane. both the treatedand control halves were then air-dried to evaporate the solvent completely. after drying, the treated and control halves were reassembled with solid glue on a petri dish. twenty adults (10 males and 10 females) were released in the center of each filter paper disc. vaseline was applied to the inner vertical side of the petri dishes to prevent the sp from climbing on to the sides and the lid of the dishes. a cover was then placed over the dish. because adult walking activity is greatest under darkness (shimizu & moriya, 1996), the testing period was between 6 pm and 11 pm at 26 ± 2 ºc and 75 ± 10% rh. each treatment was repeated three times. counts of insects located on each strip were made after 2 and 4 hours. the repellent effect was measured by comparing the counts of insects on the control and treatment strips – more insects on the control strip indicated the repellent effect of the treatment strip. percentage repellence (pr) for a given exposure time was calculated using the formula: pr = [(nc – nt)/( nc + nt)], where nc and nt are the number of insects presented in the control and treated half, respectively. 2.4. statistical analysis repellence data was processed with r (r development core team, 2020) using a logistic regression model with two factors (essential oil and dose) and interactions: in which is the predicted value of the proportion of spw choosing the treated area/total essential oil ̇ at dose ̇, is essential oil ̇, d is dose, α is the intercept, β is the parameter estimate of the effect of essential oil, is the parameter estimate of the effect of dose, and λ is parameter estimate of the effect of interaction between oil and dose. 3. results and discussion the results of repellence essays for five lamiaceae essential oils and deet against spw are presented in table 2. the data show that at the lower tested concentrations (15.72 nl/cm2 and 47.16 nl/cm2), there was no repellence of e. blanda and a. rugosa essential oils, but some insect attractant properties were observed (table 2 and figure 1). deet, p. ovatus, e. penduliflora, and e.ciliata essential oils possessed repellent properties at all tested concentrations (table 2 and figure 1). table-2. percentage of repellence after two exposure times for five lamiaceae essential oils and deet against spw. essential oil re (%) (mean ± se) 15.72 nl/cm2 47.16 nl/cm2 78.63 nl/cm2 196.49 nl/cm2 2 h deet 26.7 ± 12.0 70.0 ± 25.2 70.0 ± 15.3 100.0 ± 0.0 e. penduliflora 43.3 ± 6.7 56.7 ± 13.3 56.7 ± 8.8 70.0 ± 5.8 p. ovatus 63.3 ± 18.6 93.3 ± 3.3 76.7 ± 13.3 83.3 ± 8.8 e. ciliata 26.7 ± 6.7 80.0 ± 5.8 56.7 ± 12.0 83.3 ± 6.7 e. blanda -6.7 ± 21.9 -23.3 ± 14.5 66.7 ± 18.6 30.0 ± 26.5 a. rugosa 3.3 ± 12.0 -13.3 ± 8.8 -16.7 ± 3.3 36.7 ± 17.6 4 h deet 0.0 ± 10.0 46.7 ± 18.6 76.7 ± 14.5 96.7 ± 3.3 e. penduliflora 20.0 ± 30.0 83.3 ± 8.8 63.3 ± 8.8 70.0 ± 10.0 p. ovatus 40.0 ± 20.0 66.7 ± 12.0 83.3 ± 6.7 86.7 ± 8.8 e. ciliata 16.7 ± 3.3 60.0 ± 5.8 73.3 ± 6.7 93.3 ± 6.7 e. blanda 0.0 ± 11.5 13.3 ± 12.0 73.3 ± 17.6 43.3 ± 8.8 a. rugosa 13.3 ± 17.6 -16.7 ± 8.8 20.0 ± 5.8 30.0 ± 0.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 327-333 330 figure-1. repellent efficacy of five lamiace essential oils and deet at different dosages against spw at 2 and 4 hours after exposure. table-3. summary of logistic regression analysis of the effect of the interaction of essential oils and dose on the proportion of spw choosing the treated area. factors (variables) comparison unit analysis of deviance parameter estimate deviance df p estimate se p 2 h intercept (α) -0.2222 0.3096 0.473 type of essential oil (β) deet 141.4 5 <0.001 e. penduliflora -0.7382 0.3933 0.061 a. rugosa 0.5820 0.3727 0.118 p. ovatus -1.6751 0.4489 <0.001 e. ciliata -0.5716 0.3999 0.153 e. blanda 0.2906 0.3730 0.436 dose (γ) nl/cm2 41.9 1 <0.001 -0.0244 0.0061 <0.001 essential oil: dose (λ) deet: dose 17.8 5 <0.01 e. penduliflora: dose 0.0203 0.0066 <0.01 a. rugosa: dose 0.0195 0.0064 <0.01 p. ovatus: dose 0.0212 0.0070 <0.01 e. ciliata: dose 0.0155 0.0069 <0.05 e. blanda: dose 0.0195 0.0065 <0.001 residual 141.4 60 <0.001 4 h intercept (α) 0.3302 0.297 0.265 type of essential oil (β) deet 70.6 5 <0.001 e. penduliflora -1.2670 0.3858 <0.01 a. rugosa -0.2930 0.3613 0.417 p. ovatus -1.2812 0.4054 <0.01 e. ciliata -0.5754 0.4044 0.155 e. blanda -0.6021 0.3659 0.100 dose (γ) nl/cm2 67.8 1 <0.001 -0.0273 0.0058 <0.001 essential oil: dose (λ) deet: dose 34.9 5 <0.001 e. penduliflora: dose 0.0218 0.0064 <0.001 a. rugosa: dose 0.0240 0.0061 <0.001 p. ovatus: dose 0.0163 0.0069 <0.05 e. ciliata: dose 0.0085 0.0074 0.253 e. blanda: dose 0.0223 0.0062 <0.001 residual 121.4 60 <0.001 -50.0% 0.0% 50.0% 100.0% 150.0% 15.72 47.16 78.63 196.49 p er ce n ta ge r ep el le n cy ( % ) concentration (nl/cm2) 2 hours after exposure deet e. penduliflora p. ovatus e. ciliata e. blanda a. rugosa -50.0% 0.0% 50.0% 100.0% 150.0% 15.72 47.16 78.63 196.49 p er ce n ta ge r ep el le n cy ( % ) concentration (nl/cm2) 4 hours after exposure deet e. penduliflora p. ovatus e. ciliata e. blanda a. rugosa asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 327-333 331 the repellent efficacy of deet and five lamiaceae essential oils was dependent not only on the type of essential oil but also the dose. our results indicated significant differences in the proportion of spws choosing the treated area, as a function of the type of essential oil (compared with the effect of deet) (deviance = 141.4, df = 5, p < 0.001), the effect of dose (deviance = 41.9, df = 1, p < 0.001), and the effect of interaction between the type of essential oil and dose (compared with the effect of interaction between deet and dose) (deviance = 17.8, df = 5, p < 0.01) (table 3). there was a clear decline in the proportion of spws, which made the choice of choosing the treated area as the dose increased for all essential oils (figure 2). figure-2. logistic regression curves of proportion of spw choosing the treated area/total with deet, five lamiaceae essential oils and dose. compared with the effect of deet, only p. ovatus essential oil showed significantly higher repellent activity (βp.ovatus = -1.6751, p<0.001) (table 3). at low dose, p. ovatus essential oil exhibited the highest repellent activity. the repellent efficacy for spw exposure to concentration 15.72 nl/cm2, in order of effectiveness, was p. ovatus (63.3%) > e. penduliflora (43,3%) > e. ciliata = deet (26.7%) > a. rugosa (3.3%) > e. blanda (-6.7%) (table 2). the effect of the interaction between deet and dose was significantly different to the effect of that between essential oils and dose (λe. penduliflora = 0.0203, p<0.01; λa. rugosa = 0.0195, p<0.01; λp. ovatus = 0.0212, p<0.01; λe. ciliata = 0.0155, p<0.05, λe. blanda = 0.0195, p<0.001) (table 3). this indicated that the effects of deet were more dose-dependent than the others. therefore, at higher dose, the repellent effect of deet increased more than that of essential oils. at concentrations of 47.16 and 78.63 nl/cm2, the order of efficacy, respectively, was p.ovatus (93.3%) > e. ciliata (80.0%) > deet (70%) > e. penduliflora (56.7%) > a. rugosa (-13.3%) > e. blanda (-23.3%), and p. ovatus (76.7%) > deet (70.0%) > e. blanda (66.7%) > e. penduliflora = e. ciliata (56.7%) > a. rugosa (-16.7%) (table 2). at the highest tested dose (196.49 nl/cm2), the order changed to deet (100%) > p.ovatus = e. ciliata (83.3%) > e. penduliflora (70%) > a. rugosa (36.7%) > e. blanda (30.0%) (table 2). the results after 4 and 2 h of exposure were similar, except that both p. ovatus and e. penduliflora essential oils showed stronger repellent activity than deet and the repellent efficacy of e. ciliata was dose-dependent equivalent to deet and higher than the others (table 3). at dose of 15.72 nl/cm2, the repellent efficacy was p. ovatus (40.0%) > e. penduliflora (20.0%) > e. ciliata (16.7%) > a.rugosa (13.3%) > e. blanda = deet (0%) in descending order, and these effects were e. penduliflora (83.3%) > p. ovatus (66.7%) > e. ciliata (60%) > deet (46.7%) > e. blanda (13.3 %) > a. rugosa (-16.7%) at dose of 47.16 nl/cm2 (table 2). at the tested dose of 78.63 nl/cm2 the order of repellent effect was p. ovatus (83.3%) > deet (76.7%) > e. ciliata = e. blanda (73.3%) > e. penduliflora (63.3%) > a. rugosa (20%). conversely, at the highest assayed dose (196.49 nl/cm2), the efficacy was deet (96.7%) > e. ciliata (93.3%) > p. ovatus (86.7%)> e. penduliflora (70%) > e. blanda (43.3%) > a. rugosa (30%) (table 3). it is clear that at the low dose, p. ovatus and e. penduliflora essential oils have stronger repellent efficacy but, at the high dose, deet and e. ciliata have greater effects. many essential oils and their constituents were evaluated for repellence against insects (maia & moore, 2011; nerio et al., 2010). however, only a few reports are available on bioactivity to the spw, mainly regarding insecticidal asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 327-333 332 activity (facey, porter, reese, & williams, 2005; mcneil, porter, & williams, 2012). in this study, for the first time, the repellent efficacy of five lamiaceae essential oils against spw was evaluated. based on our results, we characterized the repellent properties of five lamiaceae essential oils into three groups. group 1 included p. ovatus and e. penduliflora, whose essential oils have higher repellent bioactivity than commercial deet, but their efficacy was less dose-dependent than deet. group 2 included deet and e. ciliata, which were characterized similarly deet. group 3 included a. rugosa and e. blanda, whose essential oils have repellent bioactivity equivalent to deet, and their efficacy was less dose-dependent than deet. these findings suggested that p.ovatus, e. penduliflora, and e. ciliata essential oils may contain effective repellent compounds with different properties, and need further investigation. the strong repellent effects of p. ovatus essential oil against adult tuta absolut (essoung, tadjong, chhabra, mohamed, & hassanali, 2020), sitophilus oryzae, tribolium castaneum, ryzopertha dominica, callosobruchus chinensis (ogendo et al., 2008), aedes aegypti (keziah, nukenine, danga, younoussa, & esimone, 2015), and e. ciliata essential oil against blattella germanica (huang, zhang, ren, dong, & wu, 2020) have been noted previously. these findings, considered together, suggest that the essential oils derived from lamiaceae, especially p. ovatus and e. ciliata, show potential for the investigation of new and safe compounds to repel spw. p. ovatus, e. penduliflora and p. ciliata essential oils have high repellent activity oagainst spw adults under laboratory conditions, and have provided information that may eventually result in implementation of an alternative management strategy to deal with spw in the field. this may involve a “push–pull strategy” in which pests are repelled from the main crop using repellent plants (push) and then lured to the trap crop (pull) where they are concentrated, facilitating their elimination (cook, khan, & pickett, 2007). this strategy may be easy to apply because all three lamiaceae plants are inexpensive and easy to grow. in the future, the effectiveness of using lamiaceae in push–pull strategies for spw control in the field must be assessed. in this study, we used a petri dish bioassay to evaluate the repellent activity of essential oils. this method allows rapid screening of the repellent effect of essential oils with regular timing. however, in some cases, it can give an aberrant response. in petri dish bioassay, spws walk on treated paper; at the same time, active chemicals could have toxic effects by contact, in addition to their repellent action. 4. conclusion in conclusion, our results indicated that e. blanda and a. rugosa essential oils have some spw attractant properties at low dosage (<47.16 nl/cm2), and deet, p. ovatus, e. penduliflora, and e.ciliata essential oils possess repellent properties at a dosage range of 15.72–196.49 nl/cm2. there was increased repellent efficacy as the dose increased for all essential oils. the repellent activities of p. ovatus essential oil and e. penduliflora were higher than the others tested, and the repellent effects of e. ciliata essential oil and deet were more dose-dependent than the others. at low dose, p. ovatus and e. penduliflora essential oils have higher repellent activity against spw than deet. in contrast, at high dose, deet and e. ciliata essential oils have a greater effect. p.ovatus, e. penduliflora, and e. ciliata essential oils are candidate materials for future investigation of repellent compounds for spw control. funding: this work was funded by vietnam ministry of education and training (project code, b2018-ttb-13). we would like to thank assoc. prof. j. doland nichols and dr. heidi c. zimmer (southern cross university) for comments that improved the article. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references carraher, c., dalziel, j., jordan, m. d., christie, d. l., newcomb, r. d., & kralicek, a. v. 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(2015). chemical ecology and olfaction in arthropod vectors of diseases. current opinion in insect science, 10, 83-89. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cois.2015.04.011. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 30 assessment of turkey farming management practices by small-scale rural farmers in eastern nigeria oyeagu chika ethelberta iwuchukwu juliana chinasab falowo andrew bamidelec akuru eunice amakad adetunji adewole tomiwaa lewu francis bayoa yiseyon sunday hosue,f idamokoro emrobowansan mondaye,f adepartment of agriculture, faculty of applied sciences, cape peninsula university of technology, wellington campus, cape town, south africa. bdepartment of agricultural extension, university of nigeria, nsukka, nigeria. cdepartment of animal science, adekunle ajasin university, akungba-akoko, ondo state, nigeria. ddepartment of animal science, university of nigeria nsukka nigeria. esmall-scale agribusiness and rural non-farm enterprise, niche area, walter sisulu university, south africa. ffaculty of commerce and administration, department of economics and business sciences, walter sisulu university, south africa.  mondayidamokoro@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 18 february 2021 revised: 14 january 2022 accepted: 31 january 2022 published: 28 february 2022 keywords management practices rural areas smallholder farmers local families production turkey farming. a survey of rural turkey farmers was conducted in three villages in the eastern part of nigeria, namely: amukwa, amaeze and nguru. the aim of the study was to assess the prevailing management and production practices of turkey farmers in the area. information obtained included flock size, reasons for keeping birds, breeding and management practices among others. the multistage random sampling method was used to collect information from 180 respondents. results obtained revealed variability in response among flock sizes (1–20), with most (90%) respondents being part-time farmers. mean scores, in terms of the level of adoption of standard management practices by turkey farmers, were given as cleaning and disinfection of pen before restocking ( = 4.60), removal of droppings ( = 4.57), and changing and replacement of litters ( = 4.4). beak trimming ( = 1.27) was the lowestranked farm practice by farmers. it was concluded that the management practices and production of turkey in the study area are below standard when compared to those in developed societies. adequate support for farmers in terms of finance and regular training, among others, by relevant agencies including the government may help improve the production of turkey in the area. contribution/originality: this study contributes in the existing literature on the prevailing management practice of local turkey-farming among rural communities in the eastern region of nigeria. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i1.4428 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: oyeagu chika ethelbert --iwuchukwu juliana c --falowo andrew bamidele --akuru eunice amaka --adetunji adewole t --lewu francis b --yiseyon sunday hosu --idamokoro emrobowansan monday (2022). assessment of turkey farming management practices by small-scale rural farmers in eastern nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1), 30-39. 10.55493/5005.v12i1.4428 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. x x x x asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 1 (2022): 30-39. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1572-1295 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4712-0398 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3093-0247 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5565-3605 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8446-9065 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9078-7748 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3641-530x mailto:mondayidamokoro@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 30-39 31 1. introduction turkey (meleagris gallopavo) production is an integral part of poultry production that forms an important component of nigeria’s livestock sub-sector. the turkey industry in nigeria has risen from 1.5 to 2 million tons of meat locally per annum. this rapid growth in the industry was made possible by intensification of production and development of large breeds with standard live weights ranging from 15 to 17 kg for males and 8 to 10 kg for females, some of which were produced from homesteads (ajala & adesehinwa, 2006). turkey is one of the largest animals of the poultry species, reaching 10-15.8 kg live weight (mozdziak, 2019). in nigeria, large strains/hybrids of up to 8-12 kg live weight and of white plumage are reared (ironkwe & akinola, 2010). the economic potential of local turkeys cannot be overlooked considering the huge foreign exchange implication of the importation of improved exotic stock and genotype–environment interaction, which leads to considerable loss of fitness of exotic stock (nwagu, 2002). turkeys are natural foragers and can be kept as scavengers. turkeys can be reared under three different management systems, namely: intensive, semi-intensive and extensive. ironkwe and akinola (2010) in their study reported that turkeys are easy to manage as domestic animals, with relatively high turnover and rapid returns on capital invested. turkey production is a means of livelihood and a way of achieving some level of economic independence in nigeria. its production is carried out in all parts of the country with little or no religious, social or cultural inhibitions associated with its consumption. specifically, investment in turkey enterprises is attractive because the production cost per unit is low, with a short generation interval compared to other types of livestock such as ruminants. owing to these obvious advantages of turkey production, large number of farmers, both men and women, have ventured into turkey production mostly for income generation, besides meeting the protein needs of their households. turkey production for meat and eggs are practiced by both urban and semi-urban dwellers. turkey production in nsukka (eastern nigeria) is relatively low compared to some other poultry species (broilers and layers). furthermore, sales and marketing of turkeys in the area are carried out by residents, with the highest sales recorded during festive periods such as easter, christmas and new year. conversely, the potential of turkey production in the area if properly harnessed will increase farmer’s income and improve household food and nutrition security, thereby improving their livelihood. meanwhile, seasonal and shortage of quality feed, low breed quality, bad management practices, and poor health constitute the limiting factors to rapid growth and development of this poultry subsector. these problems are, however, surmountable if the prevailing poor extension services to poultry farmers are materially improved (ayanda, 2013). on the other hand, poor management and extension practices may thwart the dream of achieving self-sustenance and improved production of the livestock in the near future. it is desirable to improve on the tempo of extension services as one of the strategies used to increase poultry production at the rural level. sinkaiye (2005) equates help in extension to empowering all members of the farm household to ensure holistic development. addressing the poor state of poultry extension services in nigeria will be pertinent at this material time in order to improve skills, management practices and knowledge of poultry producers, and to increase their access to farm inputs and credit. these in turn may translate to sustainable growth of the industry, provide quality and affordable animal protein for citizens and increase producers’ income and thus help to alleviate poverty in the south-eastern part of nigeria, and in other parts of the country. therefore, this study is intended to assess and document the prevailing turkey management practices by small-scale rural farmers in eastern nigeria in order to identify possible intervention approaches. 2. materials and methods 2.1. ethical considerations ethical principles were taken into consideration during the study, to adhere to the national and international standards governing research of this nature with regards to the use of research animals and humans. permission was obtained from the ethical clearance committee of the university of nigeria, nsukka, nigeria. 2.2. study area the study was conducted in nsukka town, enugu state, eastern nigeria. the town, as shown in figure 1, is made up of three major communities: ihe-owere, mkpunano, and nru. nsukka lies at latitude 06o 221 north and longitude 07o 241 east. it has an annual rainfall range of 1567–1847 m. mean minimum and maximum daily temperatures are 21 oc and 30.3 oc, respectively. relative humidity ranges from 46.7% to 76.2% (ugwu, ogbu, & amaechi, 2011). nsukka is in the humid tropical rainforest zone of south-eastern nigeria. 2.3. data collection the population of nsukka town was estimated at 95,510 in 1990 (npc, 2006). the multi-stage sampling technique was used to select respondents for the study. from the three communities that make up nsukka, two (ihe-owere and mkpunano) were selected and used for the study. in ihe-owere, amukwa and amaeze sub-communities were randomly selected. mkpunano has only one sub-community, called nguru, which was selected as the third study area. a total of 180 questionnaires were distributed to turkey farmers in the three sub-communities used for the study. in each subcommunity, 60 respondents (turkey farmers) were purposively selected among turkey farmers in the area and questionnaires were administered to them. 2.4. data analysis data analysis was done using ibm spss statistic 24. frequencies were used to analyze the demographic and socioeconomic status of turkey farmers. in order to ascertain the level of adoption of standard turkey management practices, a five-point likert-type scale was used: unaware = 0, aware = 1, aware but no detail = 2, detail but not interested = 3, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 30-39 32 have personally used = 4, and still in use = 5. the maximum total of the likert scale = 15 and the cut-off point was obtained by using the mean of the nominal values, which is 3.0. any variable with mean score of 3.0 and above was regarded as practice used, while variables with mean score <3.0 were regarded as otherwise. 3. results and discussion 3.1. socio-economic characteristics of turkey farmers socio-economic characteristics of smallholder turkey farmers in the study area were examined with respect to age, level of education, sex, farming status, and marital status, as presented in table 1, while flock size is presented in table 2. these socio-economic variables were specifically selected in order to determine the category of persons involved in the poultry business and their capacity in terms of number of birds owned for any policy intervention. table 1. personal characteristics of turkey farmers (n = 180). household head characteristics percentage (%) age (years) 21-30 10.0 31-40 36.7 41-50 30.0 51 and above 23.3 educational status no education 0.0 fslc 16.7 waec/gec/ssce 40.0 ond 6.7 nce 6.7 degree/hnd 20.0 higher degree 10.0 sex male 26.7 female 73.3 farming status full-time 10.0 part-time 90.0 marital status married 70.6 single 29.4 note: fslc = first school leaving certificate. waec = west african examination council. gce = general certificate of education. ssce = senior school certificate examination. ond = ordinary national diploma. nce = national certificate of education. hnd = higher national diploma. table 1 shows that the majority of turkey farmers were female (73.3%) as against male (26.7%) in the study area, their age ranged between 31 and 40 years and educational status was up to waec/gce/ssce. the majority were married and part-time turkey farmers. this is an indication that turkey production is dominated by younger persons in the study area, implying that people within this age bracket are able-bodied that are likely to produce more, which means greater profit and higher protein intake. again, young farmers are more likely to adopt new innovations than the older farmers. according to onwumere and obasi (2010), in their study of small-scale turkey production in owerri (imo state), nigeria, it was reported that turkey production in the area was mostly practiced by people within the age bracket 31–50 years (56.0%). table-2. distribution of respondents based on flock size (n = 180). flock size percentage (%) 1-5 13.3 6-10 40.1 11-15 33.3 16-20 6.7 above 20 6.7 total 100.0 the high level of female involvement in poultry production may be due to the quality time they spend with their families, and their natural interest in raising domestic birds (poultry farming), which is a typical practice for women in the study area. the extra money generated from poultry farming may empower them to support their men in some basic needs of the family in terms of feeding, medication, clothing and general welfare. this finding contradicts the study of ja’afar-furo and gabdo (2010), who reported that more males (85.0%) engaged in poultry farming than females (15.0%) in the northern (adamawa state) part of nigeria. the present study also disagrees with the work of apantaku asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 30-39 33 (2006), who reported more males (77.0%) than females (23.0%) as owners of poultry enterprises in the southern (lagos state) part of nigeria. likewise, ajala and adesehinwa (2006) in their study reported that there were more males (66.0%) in the turkey production business in zaria than females (34.0%). however, the findings of the current study are not different to what is obtainable in the rural extensive management system in which females are the dominant owners of poultry farms. studies from zimbabwe (oakeley, 1999), bangladesh (nielsen, roos, & thilsted, 2003), kenya (okitoi, ondwasy, obali, & murekefu, 2007), and nigeria (ogunlade & adebayo, 2009) indicate that females participate more than males in rural poultry production. they opined that men might not have the time to take care of turkey poults or growers since they are engaged in other moneymaking ventures while women can combine household activities with involvement in in part-time turkey production. the present result however, agrees with the findings of brocholt and odgaard (2009), who reported that poultry keeping is a skill of housewives in nicaragua. likewise, the result from the present study showed that 100.0% of the respondents have acquired some form of formal education (table 1). with this level of literacy among respondents, it is possible that they will readily adopt or accept any innovation aimed at improving turkey production in the area. the study of musa, dabai, sakaba, and sanchi (2015) showed that the level of education enables turkey farmers to accept innovations readily and to perform effectively in their management practices such as administration of drugs, vaccines, and feeds, as well as effective marketing of turkey. the level of education of turkey farmers could be a good platform through which extension services can be established in transferring research results for sustainable food production. this finding has, therefore, reflected the importance of education in agricultural production activities. the more an individual is exposed to any form of education, the more he/she will have a better understanding of their environment. this is in line with the findings of onwumere and obasi (2010), that the majority (83.0%) of turkey farmers in owerri (imo state) had formal education. furthermore, table 1 reveals that greater proportions of turkey farmers do this on a part-time basis. the implication is that the majority of the turkey farmers have other jobs and that most are not dependent on it as their sole means of livelihood. the reason could be that civil servants or businesswomen in the study area are becoming more enterprising in turkey production as a source of income other than their main occupation, since they operate their turkey business on a part-time basis. this tallies with the findings of ajala, nwagu, sekoni, and adeshinwa (2007), who reported that the majority (62%) of turkey farmers in zaria (kaduna state, nigeria) were civil servants. the result also agrees with the findings of amaza (2000), who reported that it is common for some farm households to engage in other non-farming activities to complement their farming occupation for their livelihood. the results from table 1 further reveal that the majority of turkey farmers were married, indicating that turkey production in the study area is most common among couples, which may help to generate more income and food for the family. the involvement of household members (married) in turkey farming may promote better chances of getting family labor in abundance for use on their farms than hired labor (musa et al., 2015). the results in table 2 show that the majority (40.1%) of respondents owned fewer than 10 turkeys. many respondents stated that since they raise turkey as a source of income, they usually sell off the young ones. however, some respondents attributed their small flock size to losses during the brooding stage (1–7 weeks). the study revealed that turkey production in nsukka is on a small scale. the fact that up to 33.3% of respondents owned up to 11–15 turkeys is an indication that if encouragement is given to farmers in the area, they may do better and it is only when they own large numbers of turkeys that they can be more responsive to improvements in turkey management practices. therefore, extension administrators and policymakers should take steps in encouraging medium-scale turkey production in the area considering its numerous advantages over other livestock. 3.2. prevailing turkey management practices by small-scale rural farmers data on the prevailing management practices are presented in table 3. among all turkey management practices, cleaning and disinfection of pens before restocking ( =4.60), removal of droppings ( =4.57), and changing and replacement of litters ( =4.4) ranked highest (above the cut-off point of 3.0 and above) in terms of adoption. beak trimming ( =1.27) was the lowest, showing that this practice was not applied by respondents. restriction and control of personnel, visitors, and equipment in the pen ( =2.83), and raising turkey and chicken together ( = 2.73), were also used by respondents but to a lesser extent. this indicates that the respondents were aware of some standard practices and were more knowledgeable about certain standard management practices associated with poultry pen hygiene and litter. a modified battery cage system has been identified as the best management system for birds (dikmen, ipek, şahan, petek, & sözcü, 2016; sherwin, richards, & nicol, 2010). this practice, and certain other management practices such as beak trimming, had not been adopted in the study area. the reason for this may be attributed to the fact that most of these farmers kept small numbers of turkeys and thus may find it uneconomical to adopt some standard farm practices in raising their birds. one would have thought that small farm size would have encouraged debeaking, but this was not so according to our current findings. extension agents should therefore encourage small-scale farmers to increase their flock size with the use of a battery cage system, and also promote the adoption of this system and other improved technologies that are currently not in use in the study area. 3.3. feed management practices and feedstuffs used for turkey farming table 3 also shows that green vegetables mixed with silage was a highly adopted (x=3.77) technology in the feeding and feedstuff for turkeys; meanwhile, research into the use of cheaper agro-industrial byproducts and waste x x x x x x asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 30-39 34 materials at various levels of dietary inclusion for poultry has been intensified in the last few years to determine their efficiency of utilization in terms of growth and production (adeniji & balogun, 2002; oyeagu et al., 2015a; oyeagu et al., 2016). the study conducted by ja’afar-furo, balla, tahir, and haskainu (2008) revealed that chickens are either fed from household food remnants or are allowed to roam about for food. farmers (x=2.53) sometimes give birds feed at night, as observed in the current study. local fish meal (x=1.87) was not used as food for turkeys by respondents. local fish meal feeding is a means of alleviating the problem of feed cost without impairing the performance of birds (bureau & cho, 2000). table-3. distribution of respondents on the adoption of standard turkey management practices. standard practices mean score* management cleaning and disinfection of pen before restocking 4.60 removal of dropping at appropriate times 4.57 changing and replacement of litters restriction/control of personnel, visitors, and equipment in the pen 4.40 2.83 turkeys and chickens cannot be raised together 2.73 beak trimming 2.23 usage of battery cage system 1.00 feed and feedstuffs green mixed with silage/from carrots and pumpkin 3.77 night feeding 2.53 local fish meal 1.87 water requirements usage of vitamins. such as vitalyte in drinking water 3.27 vitalyte dosage 3.0 usage of hypochlorite, nitrofurazone and embazine-forte in drinking water 1.13 disease management importance of vaccination 4.70 vaccination against newcastle disease 4.67 vaccination against fowl thyroid disease 4.60 vaccination against gumboro disease 4.43 usage of sulphatide 4.03 correct sulphatide dosage 4.03 forage usage 3.23 correct forage dosage 3.93 adverse effect of nitrofurazonic drugs 1.89 note: *based on a 5-point lickert scale: unaware = 0, aware = 1, aware but no detail = 2, detail but not interested = 3, have personally used = 4, and still in use = 5. it is under this system of management that family poultry formed the largest proportion of all livestock in nigeria, which had a population of about 104 million about two decades ago (ja’afar-furo & gabdo, 2010). in this regard, improving poultry production will invariably greatly improve the economic base of most rural populations in the country, and in other nations with similar economies, especially if the target groups are women. according to nielsen et al. (2003) in their study, assets (local available resources) controlled by women were used to improve the livelihood of household members and in particular that of children. the benefits derived from the improved form of this agriculture are numerous. in spite of serving as one of the major sources of readily available protein in rural areas, amos (2006) and ja'afar-furo, balla, and yakubu (2007) reported that poultry enterprise yields rapid monetary turnover with prudent management. similarly, alabi and aruna (2006) maintained that although output from the individual bird is low, family production systems are found to be economically efficient due to the low input requirement. the fact that over 70% of the population of nigeria are resident in rural areas (ayichi, 1995), engaging in poultry production will contribute to reducing the numbers of unemployed people in the country. 3.4. water management practices adopted by small-scale turkey farmers data from table 3 also revealed that the addition of vitamins, such as vitalyte, and antimicrobial agents, such as hypochlorite and nitrofurazone, in drinking water had mean scores of 3.27 and 1.13, respectively. however, the correct dosage of vitalyte in drinking water is 3.0 ml. it has been reported that vitalyte increases the appetite of birds and also serves as an anti-stress agent (asli, hosseini, lotfollahian, & shariatmadari, 2007; ciftci, ertas, & guler, 2005). farmers may therefore be employing these drugs because of harsh environmental conditions. some research findings on the use of vitamin c and e in poultry feed showed that these agents can help to minimize reduction in poultry growth and egg production caused by heat stress (biswas, mohan, & sastry, 2010; oguz, oguz, buyukoglu, & sahindokuyucu, 2010; panda, ramarao, raju, & chatterjee, 2008; pornpun, bunchasak, rakangthong, & poeikhampha, 2014; renaudeau et al., 2012; sobayo et al., 2008). although according to medication prescriptions by manufacturers, hypochlorite, nitrofurazone and embazine-forte in poultry drinking water will help prevent fowl typhoid, fowl cholera, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 30-39 35 and intestinal infections, respectively. conversely, the majority of the respondents from our findings did not use these medications for their birds, probably because of their high prices which most are unable to afford. 3.5. disease management practices as practiced by small-scale turkey farmers information on disease management practices is presented in table 3. the data show the importance of vaccination ( x =4.70), vaccination against newcastle disease ( =4.67), fowl typhoid disease ( =4.60), and gumboro disease ( =4.43); these were the highest adopted practices, with the usage and dosage of sulphatide (4.03 and 3.93 mean score, respectively). adverse effects of lurazoidone and nitrofurazone ( =1.89) were not known by farmers. however, since the medication was not used by these farmers, there will be no adverse effect of nitrofurazone on turkeys. goetting, lee, and tell (2011) and jacob, wilson, miles, butcher, and mather (2014) opined that laying birds experienced poor egg production as a result of the adverse effects of feeding nitrofurazone. the study conducted by alam and shaikh (2007) in pakistan showed that even though poultry production is a very lucrative business there, the capital intensiveness in terms of cost of feed and medication is putting it out of reach for rural farmers. however, they also reported that a massive intervention by the government through the provision of liberal financing and credit, income tax exemption, duty-free import of grandparent and parent stocks, machinery, and poultry farm equipment, coupled with easy access to loan facilities from commercial and financial institutions, has allowed poultry enterprises to flourish and spread all over rural areas in that country. in nsukka town (eastern nigeria), all respondents that were interviewed practiced a deep litter system. 3.6. possible sources of information to turkey farmers on latest improved practices in turkey production the sources of information to turkey farmers on latest information of improved management practices in turkey production are presented in table 4. the result showed that veterinarians (90%), neighbors, and friends (96.7%) ranked as the most important sources of information (on improved management practices) available to turkey farmers. newspapers and magazines, as well as extension agents, each contributed 33.3% as a source of information to turkey farmers. other sources of information acquired by farmers to improve their management practices were radio and television (26.7%), agricultural researches (26.7%), and schoolchildren (13.3%). table-4. distribution of respondents according to sources of information. source of information frequency percentage (%) fellow turkey farmers, neighbors and friends 58 96.7 veterinarians 54 90.0 written material in newspapers and magazines 20 33.3 agricultural extension agents 20 33.3 radio and television 16 26.7 agricultural researchers 16 26.7 children at school 8 13.3 note: multiple responses, 100. the implication of this result is that veterinarians appear to be at the forefront as sources of information to farmers. it is therefore necessary for more livestock extension agents to be trained and recruited by the government. interestingly, schoolchildren were also found to be sources of information. if schoolchildren are properly educated they can serve as a cheap and rapid means of information dissemination to farmers. 3.7. source of extension service the proportion of information on standard turkey management and production practices received from extension services was 33.0%, as shown in table 4, and these services were provided by agricultural development programs (adps). however, more than 80.0% of respondents never received any extension services. this finding is in agreement with fawole (2006), who reported that although extension institutions and various sources of information exist in almost every developing country, their coverage of farming families remains very limited. also, ovwigho, bratte, and isikwenu (2009) stressed the importanvce of improving extension services in order to stimulate egg producers to adopt optimal chicken management systems (in delta state, nigeria). steps should be taken to ensure that turkey farmers are exposed to extension services. veterinarians in the area contributed significantly as sources of information to turkey farmers and equally provided substantial extension services, but there is need for cooperation between livestock extension agents and veterinarians for the purposes of improving turkey production in the area. 3.8. problems hindering the adoption of standard management practices by farmers the data in table 5 illustrate the problems hindering the use of improved management practices by respondents and reveal that high cost of feed (90.0%) and lack of funds for the establishment of turkey enterprises (80.0%) were the major economic problems hindering the adoption of improved innovation by respondents. atteh (2002); kehinde, babatunde, ayoola, and temowo (2006); and oyeagu, ani, egbu, udeh, and omumuabuike (2015b) reported that feeding is a major item of cost in poultry production and that the high cost of poultry feed also results in general increase in the cost of production. the seasonal market demand for turkey (66.7%) was encouraging. this finding agrees with the work of musa et al. (2015), that sales and marketing of turkeys attain their peak during festive periods x x x x asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 30-39 36 such as easter, christmas, and new year. the low price of turkey in the area (6.7%) and long maturity time (3.3%) were also identified as problems faced by turkey farmers. this is in line with the study of ja’afar-furo and gabdo (2010) that marketing of table-size birds is another major constraint suffered by the respondents in the area surveyed. since poverty is so pronounced in both urban and rural areas (kwaghe, amaza, & ja’afar-furo, 2009), demand for these birds is low in spite of the shift in consumption patterns from the other sources of livestock proteins to poultry products and fish due to changing tastes, costs, and income (ja'afar-furo et al., 2007). this result further supports the findings of akbay (2006), who reported that high demand for animal-sourced proteins in turkey had shifted from beef, veal, lamb, mutton, and goat to greater consumption of poultry and fish. governments should provide funds in the form of loans and subsidies to encourage an increase in the scale of turkey production. table-5. problems hindering the use of improved management practices by respondents. problems percentage (%) economic and marketing problems high cost of feed 90.0 lack of funds for establishment of turkey farming 80.0 seasonal market demand for turkeys 66.7 low price of turkey in the area 6.7 low time of turnover or maturity 3.3 management problems high mortality at 0-7 weeks of age 76.7 lack of accommodation 56.7 laborious nature of turkey management. 40.0 lack of technical know-how in turkey management 30.0 hostility and cannibalistic action of turkeys 20.0 endemic nature of coccidiosis 10.0 problems in detection of fertile eggs 3.3 non-availability of drugs 3.3 low number of poults produced after hatching 3.3 difficulty in feeding at younger age 3.3 social problems destruction of crops on the farm 73.3 theft of turkeys 36.7 lack of time for proper bird management 3.3 destruction of equipment and properties by birds 3.7 information problems lack of information/advice 56.7 communication gap between extension agents and farmers 3.3 insincerity of veterinarians 3.3 note: multiple responses: 100. 3.9. management problems of small-scale turkey farmers table 5 also shows that the major management problems hindering adoption by these respondents were high mortality at the brooding stage (76.7%) and lack of accommodation (housing) (56.7%). accommodation (housing) for poultry birds is a problem in this area, probably because most respondents are tenants in rented accommodation. according to mapiye and sibanda (2005), inadequate housing, feeding, and health systems mostly result in predation, diseases, and chick mortality, which limits the expansion of village chicken production. the laborious nature of turkey management (40.0%) also posed a problem in the production of these birds. salo, tadesse, and hilemeskel (2016) listed some challenges (predators, theft, high mortality, diseases, etc.) in managing village chicken farms since the mode of production is extensive systems. extension officers should look into these problems and suggest new technologies that can better solve them, especially that of mortality at the brooding stage (1-7 weeks of age). mapiye and sibanda (2005) suggested that more poultry extension officers should be equipped and deployed in rural locations to assist farmers with their challenges in poultry rearing, such as high mortality rate, diseases, hatching of eggs, housing, etc. lack of technical know-how in turkey management (30.0%), cannibalistic action of turkeys (20.0%), and the endemic nature of coccidiosis in the study area (10.0%) have the potential to cause problems in the adoption of innovation by respondents. meanwhile, problems of detection of fertile eggs (3.3%), non-availability of drugs (3.3%), low number of poults produced after hatching (3.3%), and difficulty in feeding younger birds (3.3%) were the minor management problems hindering the adoption of standard management practices by respondents. 3.10. social problems of turkey farmers that may affect the adoption of standard management practice the major social problems preventing the adoption of standard turkey management practice were destruction of crops by stray animals (73.3%) and theft of turkeys (36.7%), as presented in table 5. this implies that most farmers operate a free range (extensive) system of management. extension agents should therefore advise these farmers to adopt intensive management system to solve these problems. lack of time to take care of birds (3.3%) and destruction of equipment and property (3.7%) were the least prevalent worries of respondents in the adoption of improved asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 30-39 37 innovation. about 56.7% of the farmers indicted that lack of information and advice hindered them from adopting improved technologies, as can be seen in table 5. this suggests that extension services did not reach the target group. this may be due to insufficient funds to provide transport, communication, and support materials to service all farmers’ needs, as pointed out by gildemacher et al. (2009) and ogunniyi and kehinde (2015). governments should therefore make efforts to provide necessary funds for extension activities, and extension agencies should also make use of these funds judiciously to accomplish the task of improving turkey production in the study area. the communication gap between extension agents and farmers (3.3%) and insincerity of veterinarians (3.3%) were the least important problems associated with non-adoption of improved innovation. 4. conclusion and recommendations the study showed that the majority of the turkey farmers are female and work on a part-time basis. half of the respondents were unaware of improved management practices. since all respondents had formal education, they can readily adopt or accept innovations designed to improve turkey production in the area. it is therefore important for the government through its agencies to update turkey farmers on the existing improved management practices. livestock and extension workers should help to spread up-to-date information on standard management practices to improve turkey production through print media such as pamphlets, posters, and leaflets, among others, to turkey farmers. again, government should increase the number of extension agents to facilitate access to these turkey farmers in remote places in order to increase the rate of adoption of improved farm practices, which may boost the food security and economic power of the farmers. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adeniji, a., & balogun, o. 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(2011). effect of soil type and soil depth on the reproductive performance of two species of giant african land snails in the humid tropics. international journal of science and nature, 2(2), 176-182. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 244 endogenous knowledge and importance of "conoro", fermented condiment from seeds of baobab (adansonia digitata), kapok (ceiba pentandra) and okra (abelmoschus sp) by bondoukou department populations (north-eastern cote d'ivoire) yao kouakou adayeab, faulet meuwiah bettya, dan chepo ghislainea*, fagbohoun jean bedel c, yao kouadio ad, kouame lucien patrice a a laboratory of biocatalysis and bioprocesses (lbb), nangui abrogoua university, abidjan, cote d’ivoire b phd student; biochemistry and food technology (bta) branch, nangui abrogoua university, abidjan, cote d’ivoire c laboratory of biochemistry-genetics, peleforo gon coulibaly university, korhogo, cote d’ivoire d national laboratory of public health (lnsp), abidjan, cote d’ivoire * email address: gisln78@yahoo.fr (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 19-may-2018 accepted: 14-jun-2018 online available: 02-jul2018 keywords: knowledges of conôro, fermented condiments, seeds of abelmoschus sp, adansonia digitata and ceiba pentandra abstract "conoro" is a traditional fermented condiments prepared from seeds of baobab, kapok and okra. it is consumed by the north-eastern ivoirians. the aim was to report ethno-nutritional knowledge of "conôro" and to understand theirs uses. data showed that respondents had a high knowledge level of "conôro" (86 to 96.67%). a significant difference is found in ethnic and age groups (p <0.05). koulango were majority ethnic and people over 65 years old had the high knowledge level of "conôro" to 96.8-100 % and 85.7-100 % respectively. conoro’s utilization rates varied between 85.27 to 97.93 %. sauces seasoning (icf = 0.92) and addition of "conôro" to other natural substances (icf = 0.46) were respectively the most reported food and therapeutic uses. blood pressure (icf = 0.19) and abdominal pain after childbirth (icf = 0.33) represented the most common treated diseases. "conôro" was made from seeds taken individually or combined. the production processes of "conôro" were studied in different localities. fermentation took 3 days in all localities. it was sold in dumpling form at 25 to 100 fcfa. the conservation time of "conôro" was from 6 to 12 months. contribution/ originality this study found that the conôro help to fight against the high blood pressure and abdominal pain after childbirth etc. in the economic level, its commercialization would represent a source of income for disadvantaged local populations. in addition, this study would promote the plant species used for "conôro" production and their preservation. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.12/1005.12.244.261 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 citation: yao kouakou adayé, faulet meuwiah betty, dan chépo ghislaine, fagbohoun jean bedel, yao kouadio and kouame lucien patrice (2017). endogenous knowledge and importance of "conôro", fermented condiment from seeds of baobab (adansonia digitata), kapok (ceiba pentandra) and okra (abelmoschus sp) by bondoukou department populations (north-eastern côte d'ivoire). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12), 244-261. © 2017 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 7, issue 12(2017): 244-261 http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 mailto:gisln78@yahoo.fr http://aessweb.com/journal-detail.php?id=5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2017.7.12/1005.12.244.261 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 245 1. introduction the global demand in food is continuously increasing due to population growth and urbanization (lavalette, 2013). according to durst et al. (2010), one billion people worldwide suffered from malnutrition and 98 % of them lived in asia and africa (lavalette, 2013). the malnutrition is not only related to a food shortage, but also concerned the nutritional quality of food. thus, to improve staple foods nutritional quality (cassava, yam, maize), traditional fermented condiments from seeds were used since centuries by african populations sauces cooking. these condiments are traditionally used as a proteins substitute and flavoring agents (achi, 2005; azokpota et al., 2011; fatoumata et al., 2016). moreover, they are empirically used by some ethnic tribes to cure high blood pressure, diarrhoea, and rubella and as an antiseptic (parkouda et al., 2008). unfortunately, these traditional condiments have been abondaned because of the high-industrialization and urbanization life of africans people. fermented condiments are considered as food for poor. in addition, cheapest agroindustrial products including seasonings are omnipresent on all displays of saleswomen condiments and various products (dossou-yovo et al., 2016). specifically in west africa, these industrial seasonings dated from colonial time and were gained fulgurating because of their potential taste and the lobbying developed around them. more than 100 million industrial seasonings cubes are sold each day in africa (pivot, 2002; anonymous, 2015; dossou-yovo et al., 2016). however, increased and uncontrolled consumption of these industrial products may constitute a risk for consumer’s health because of their high sodium content (meneton, 2012). in addition, studies archived on nutritional quality assessment of the most consumed "cube" broths in south benin revealed that their sodium levels is above the standard (dossou-yovo et al., 2016). while american studies indicated a mean sodium value in "cube" broths, should be 10.670 % (dash, 2006). according to dash (2006), excessive sodium consumption contributed factor to higher blood pressure cardiovascular diseases and cerebral vascular accidents. salty products consumption generally answered to consumer tasteful requirements, but in a small proportion to the physiological needs of the organism. indeed, genetic patrimony is always adjusted to a very low salt intake; about 2 to 3 g of salt per day are enough for physiological needs of the organism (meneton, 2012). according to oms, 5 g of salt consumption per day is the threshold limit not to exceed. in spite of the risks associated to the excessive consumption of salt provided by agro-food products and specifically seasoning broth, consumers are accustomed to them due to their characteristic taste (meneton, 2012). for few exceptions, plants generally contain small amounts of salt (arcand et al., 2017). therefore, vegetable resources may be used to reduce the rate of salt in the consumer's diet. to added value to local products for consumption and to enlarge their sale market, some fermented seed products in sub-saharan africa have been investigated. indeed, studies on soumbala (côte d'ivoire and mali), kantong (ghana), dikouanyouri (benin), bikalga (burkina faso) and ugba (nigeria) showed that these fermented products have a potential flavoring ability for sauces, good nutritional and therapeutic values (azokpota et al., 2011; kaboré et al., 2012; onyenekwe et al., 2012; okorie and olasupo, 2013; kpikpi et al., 2014; ojewumi, 2016; fatoumata et al., 2016). as well, "conôro" is used by north-eastern people of côte d'ivoire to season sauces. it is made from fermented seeds of baobab (adansonia digitata), kapok tree (ceiba pentandra) and okra (abelmoschus sp) used as single or in combination. regarding species, several authors have published on whole seeds and kernels of baobab, kapok tree and okra. the results showed that they are rich in nutrients and have high antioxidant activities which are necessary for the body wellbeing (kamatou et al., 2011; anigo et al., 2013; jitin et al., 2015; manal and hend, 2015). in addition, some food products derived from these seeds have been identified. condiments such as dikouanyouri and kantong are obtained from the fermentation of baobab and kapok tree seeds respectively (chadare, 2010; kpikpi et al., 2014; parkouda et al., 2015). also, coffee substitute was made from the roasted seeds of okra (çalişir et al., 2005). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 246 recently, the lack of documentation of traditional and indigenous foods, which are important for the transmission of food knowledge to future generations, is of increasing interest and concern (wahlqvist, 2007; chadare et al., 2008). effective valorization through improvement of traditional technologies and production of value-added products for a larger market would the increase income of rural populations. it would also ensure the safety and nutritional security of consumers. however, in our mind there is no sustained research in africa and specifically in côte d'ivoire on endogenous processing and food knowledge of "conôro". ours study showed that "conôro" is used to enhance the taste of sauces and to cure some diseases. it is locally sold by the women and give them substantial incomes. this study is a prerequisite for valorization and promotion of the local products and to better orientate and prioritize further research. it aims to report the ethno-nutritional knowledge of "conôro" and understand theirs uses by the populations, specifically evaluate the knowledge of "conôro" according to ethnicity and age and to identifie the uses, the manufacturing process, the conservation time, the therapeutic virtues and sale price of the "conôro" 2. material and methods 2.1. study area this study was carried out in the region of gontougo, specifically in the department of bondoukou (north-eastern côte d’ivoire). it is located between 8°2 8°17 north latitude and 3°2-2°31 west longitudes. investigated localities were laoudi-bah, yezimala, kouassi-n'dawa and bondoukou (figure 1). seasons (dry, rainy) are very irregular. the most dominant ethnic groups are abron, degha, koulango and nafana (ouattara et al., 2016). legend : limit of departments : sub-prefectures : limit of sub-prefectures : department : studied localities figure 1: mapping of the studies area and localities asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 247 2.2. methodology 2.2.1. sample size a survey was carried out from february to may 2017. the sample size was determined following the normal approximation of the binomial distribution according vessereau (1992). n = t² x p (1-p)/e² n is total number of people for the study, t is value of the normal random variable for a probability value of α = 0.05, t2 = (1.96)2, e is margin error taken as 4 %, and p is proportion of people who used or at least knew of the "conôro" (50 %). 2.2.2. investigation procedure respondents were selected using a random sampling scheme. a semi-structured interview method was used to collect data. during the survey, samples of "conôro" were kept and shown to the respondents. information was collected through individual interviews. the interview focused on the socio-demographic information, which included the ethnic group, age and sex and the uses information, the manufacturing process, the therapeutic virtues, the sales price and the conservation time of the "conoro". a total of 600 people (men and women) were interviewed. prior to the analyses, respondents were split into four age groups, (from 12 to 17 years for adolescents, from 18 to 44 years for young, from 45 to 64 years for adults and from 65 years or over elders). 2.3. statistical analysis the data were recorded in a database. statistical analyses were performed using statistica.v7.1 software. chi-square test (χ²) was used to test the independence between the variables and the statistical significance was test at p < 0.05. in addition, in order to assess informants' agreements on the variables studied, a consensus factor (degree) or informant consensus factor (icf) was calculated (ilumbe et al., 2014). 3. results 3.1. investigation 3.1.1. socio-demographic status of respondents the socio-demographic status of respondents is depicted in table 1. the women were found to be the main respondents (57 to 70 %). respondents came from different ethnic groups, of whom koulango is the highest one (50.33 to 94.67 %) in all the localities. regarding age, a high proportion corresponded for the age group from 18 to 44 years (46.67 to 59.33 %). 3.1.2. people knowledge level of "conôro" the knowledge level of "conôro" is very high whatever the locality (figure 2). the most predominant proportion is observed among the populations of kouassi n'dawa (96.67%). the chisquare test (χ²) revealed that the knowledge level of "conôro" is related to the study locality (p < 0.05). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 248 table 1: socio-demographic status of respondents parameters localities bondoukou (n=150) laoudi-bâh (n=150) kouassi-n’dawa (n=150) yezimala (n=150) gender (%) men 36 43 30 35 women 64 57 70 65 age bracket (%) [12-17] 14 8.67 5.33 6 [18-44] 59.33 56 56 46.67 [45-64] 17.33 26 28 43.33 ≥ 65 9.33 9.33 10.67 4 ethnic group (%) abbey 0 0 2 0 abron 8.33 0 0 0 agni 4.67 0 0 5.33 ashanti 0 0 3.33 0 attie 2 0 0 0 baoule 2 0.67 0 1.33 nafana 6 0 0 0 degah 0 1.33 0 5.33 ebrie 1.33 0 0 0 guere 0 0 0 2 koulango 50.33 75.33 94.67 78 lobi 1 20.67 0 0 malinke 9 0 0 8 mossi 3 0 0 0 senoufo 3.33 2 0 0 n is the number of respondents figure 2: knowledge level of "conôro" in studied localities n is the number of respondents asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 249 3.1.3. knowledge level of "conôro" according to the age for analysis of the survey results, four age groups were defined, namely: 12 to 17 years, 18 to 44 years, 45 to 64 years and 65 years or over (table 2). the statistical test (chi-square) showed a significant different in knowledge level of "conôro" between groups discriminated and studied localities (p <0.05). aged people 65 years and over (≥ 65 years) showed the highest knowledge level of "conôro" with proportions ranging from 85.7 to 100 % in all the studied localities. table 2: knowledge level of "conôro" according to the age localities age groups knowledge of "conôro" (%) chi-square parameters yes no dl χ² p bondoukou (n=150) [12; 17] 57.1 42.9 15 59.49 < 0.05 [18; 44] 76.4 23.6 [45; 64] 84.6 15.4 ≥ 65 85.7 14.3 laoudi-bâh (n=150) [12; 17] 71.4 28.6 [18; 44] 89.2 10.8 [45; 64] 92.3 7.7 ≥ 65 92.9 7.1 kouassi n'dawa (n=150) [12; 17] 71.4 28.6 [18; 44] 96.4 3.6 [45; 64] 100 0 ≥ 65 100 0 yezimala (n=150) [12; 17] 72.7 27.3 [18; 44] 88.6 11.4 [45; 64] 96.8 3.2 ≥ 65 100 0 n is the number of respondents, dl is the degree of freedom, χ² is the chi-square, p is the probability 3.1.4. knowledge level of "conôro" according to the ethnic groups the knowledge level of "conôro" differs according to the ethnic groups of the respondents. study showed that "conôro" is more known by koulango (96.8 to100 %) and followed respectively by degah, malinke, nafana, lobi and abron (table 3). the chi-square test (χ²) is significant at the 5 % confidence level (p < 0.05) in all studied localities. 3.1.5. use level of "conôro" in the studied localities the use level of "conôro" in different localities is shown in figure 3. the results showed that use level of "conôro" is high in all studied localities. however, the localities of kouassi n'dawa, yezimala and laoudi bâh have a highest use level compared to bondoukou locality. the chi-square test (χ²) showed significant correlation between the use of "conôro" and the studied localities (p <0.05). table 3: knowledge level of "conôro" according to the ethnic groups localities ethnic groups knowledge of "conôro" (%) chi-square parameters yess no dl χ² p bondoukou abron 57,1 42,9 24 73.11 < 0.05 agni 4,3 95,7 attie 0 100 baoule 3,3 96,7 nafana 77,8 22,2 ebrie 0 100 koulango 96,8 3,2 lobi 73,3 26,7 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 250 malinke 81 19 mossi 10,7 89,3 senoufo 8,5 91,5 laoudi-bâh baoule 0 100 degah 100 0 koulango 97,3 2,7 lobi 74,2 25,8 senoufo 0 100 kouassi n'dawa abbey 0 100 ashanti 12 88 koulango 100 0 yezimala agni 25 75 baoule 0 100 degah 75 25 guere 0 100 koulango 100 0 malinke 66,7 33,3 n is the number of respondents, dl is the degree of freedom, χ² is the chi-square, p is the probability figure 3: use level of "conôro" in studied localities n is the number of respondents 3.1.6. uses of "conôro" in localities the results of survey revealed dual uses of "conôro" in all studied localities including food and therapeutic (table 4). for food’s used, "conôro" is used in households for cooking and seasoning of sauces with consensus indices (icf) of 0.92 and 0.08 respectively. in therapy, "conôro" is used in four forms. the form in which it combined with other traditional remedies is the most important with icf of 0.46. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 251 table 4: uses of "conôro" in studied localities uses of "conôro" localities total icf bondoukou (n=110) laoudi-bâh (n=130) kouassi n’dawa (n=142) yezimala (n=134) food uses seasoning of sauces 103 113 130 128 474 0.92 preparation of sauces 7 17 12 6 42 0.08 therapeutic uses addition to traditional remedies 70 88 51 27 236 0.46 addition to fruit extract of coelocaryon oxycarpum 12 14 28 20 73 0.14 addition to leaves decoction of jatrofa sp 28 28 63 72 191 0.37 addition to salt solution 0 0 0 15 15 0.03 icf is the consensus factor index; n is the number of respondents who use "conôro" 3.1.7. therapeutic virtues of "conôro" in studied localities at the end of this survey, it appears that "conôro" is used for several diseases treatment such as malaria, diabetes, blood pressure, pain of throat, nausea, stiffness, and abdominal pains after childbirth. ifc values are ranged from 0.01 to 0.33. the highest values were obtained for abdominal pain treatments after childbirth (icf = 0.33) and blood pressure regulation (icf = 0.19). table 5: therapeutic virtues of "conôro" in studied localities therapeutic virtues of"conôro" localities total icf bondoukou (n=110) laoudi bâh (n=130) kouassi n’dawa (n=142) yezimala (n=134) antimalarial 8 7 0 21 36 0.07 aperitif 12 15 21 0 48 0.09 antidiabetic 6 0 0 0 6 0.01 regulator of blood pressure 52 7 9 32 99 0.19 treatment of throat pain 4 0 0 0 4 0.01 treatment of abdominal pain after childbirth 28 47 55 42 172 0.33 removal of nausea 0 33 7 8 48 0.09 suppression of alcohol effect 0 5 18 0 23 0.04 tonic 0 6 16 11 33 0.07 treatment of body aches 0 5 0 0 5 0.01 pregnancy keeping 0 5 0 0 5 0.01 favorable to lactation 0 0 3 5 8 0.01 anti diarrhea 0 0 13 15 29 0.06 icf is the consensus factor index; n is the number of respondents who use "conôro" 3.1.8. different varieties of "conôro" the investigations revealed seven types of "conôro" obtained from baobab, kapok tree and okra seeds in all the localities studied (figure 4). the results showed that "conoro" obtained without combination of seeds had the highest proportions from 23.70 to 29.5 % and from 21.61 to 37.11% respectively for cb and ck, against "conôro" (cg) formulated from okra seeds (7.5 to 11.15%). however, the mixed "conôro" obtained by combining baobab and kapok tree seeds (c.bk), asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 252 expressed a proportion from 16.11 to 21.18 % close to "conôro" without seeds combination. the chi-square test (χ²) shows that the use of the "conôro" is independent of study locality (p > 0.05). figure 4: proportion of various types of "conôro" in studied localities c.b: "conôro" manufactured from baobab seeds; c.k: "conôro" manufactured from kapok tree seeds; c.g: "conôro" manufactured from okra seeds; c.bk: "conôro" manufactured from baobab and kapok seeds; c.bg: "conôro" manufactured from baobab and okra seeds; c.kg: "conôro" manufactured from kapok tree and okra seeds; c.bkg: "conôro" manufactured from baobab, kapok tree and okra seeds;, n: number of respondents knowing "conôro" 3.1.9. manufacturing process of "conôro" the results revealed many manufacturing steps of the "conôro" (figure 5). the steps include cleaning, washing, pounding, sieving, drying, moulding. the chi-square test (χ²) revealed that there is no significant difference between the different manufacturing process of localities (p > 0.05). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 253 figure 5: traditional manufacturing process of "conôro" water washing and seeds sorting sorting seeds drying dried seeds pounding pounded seeds sieving (fruits of abelmoschus sp, adansonia digitata, ceiba pentandra) powders stones, perforate seeds, others dried fruits seeds extraction crushing (powders of seeds of abelmoschus sp, adansonia digitata, ceiba pentandra) powders with a single type of seeds water water dough dough dough fermentation in closed containers (2-7 days) dough fermentation in closed containers (2-7 days) drying fermented dough (3 days) drying fermented dough (3 days) "conôro" in small balls "conôro" in small balls molding of fermented dough dried molding of fermented dough dried mixing mixing powders with a mixing of different type of seeds asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 254 3.1.10. fermentation time of dough obtained from seed powders for the production of "conôro" table 6 shows the different fermentation times ranging from 2 to 7 days. among all of them, fermentation over 3 day is found to be the most used time in all studied localities giving proportions ranging from 64.08 to 78.55%. the chi-square test (χ²) shows that the fermentation time is related the study locality (p < 0.05). table 6: fermentation time of the dough from the seed powders in the manufacture of "conôro" localities fermentation time (%) chi-square parameters 2 days 3 days 4 days 5 days 6 days 7 days dl χ² p bondoukou (n=62) 8.01 64.08 11.21 9.61 4.81 2.27 15 31.98 < 0.05 laoudi-bâh (n=113) 5.31 68.14 9.73 7.96 5.31 3.54 kouassi n’dawa (n=127) 4.72 76.38 6.30 6.30 3.94 2.35 yezimala (n=115) 2.86 78.55 8.58 4.29 4.29 1.43 n is the number of respondents who know how to make conôro; dl is the degree of freedom, χ² is the the chisquare, p is the probability 3.1.11. sale price of "conôro" in the studied localities in all localities, "conôro" is marketed in the dumpling form which weigh is between 20 and 70 g. its sale price is from 25 to 100 f cfa (table 7). however, the price fixed at 50 f cfa is the most used by respondents (49.09 to 60%), followed 25 f cfa (17.65% to 40%) and 100 f cfa (5.71% to 25%). the chi-square test (χ²) shows a dependency ratio between the sales price of "conôro" and studied locality (p <0.05) table 7: proportion of the sale price of the "conôro" meatball in the different localities localities selling price (%) chisquare parameters 25 fcfa 50 fcfa 100 fcfa dl χ² p bondoukou (n= 110) 27.27 49.09 23.64 6 32.05 < 0.05 laoudi-bâh ( n=130) 40 54.29 5.71 kouassi n’dawa (n= 142) 17.65 57.35 25 yezimala ( n= 134) 24.17 60 15.83 n is the number of respondents who use the "conôro" ; dl is the degree of freedom, χ² is the chi-square, p is the probability 3.1.13. conservation time of "conôro" in the localities figure 6 show the most common conservation time practiced by consumers was the ranging from 6 months to 12 months (46.59 72.83 %,), followed by times higher 12 months (14.04 to 35.54%) and that between one month and five months (13.13 to 20.47 %). in addition, the chi-square test (χ²) revealed a link between the conservation time of the "conôro" and the studied locality (p <0.05). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 255 figure 6: conservation time of "conôro" in study localities [1 m; 6 m [: shelf life between 1 month and 5 months; [6 m; 12 m]: shelf life between 5 months and 12 months; > 12 m: shelf life longer than 12 months; n: number of respondents who use "conôro" 4. discussion "conôro" is the common name given to all traditional fermented condiments based on vegetable seeds (abelmoschus sp, adansonia digitata, ceiba pentandra) which have the same manufacturing processes. the ethno-nutrition survey carried out on this condiment among the populations of bondoukou department (north-eastern côte d'ivoire) allowed to get data on the manufacturing process, food and therapeutic uses, therapeutic virtues, the economic aspect and the conservation time. it also took account the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents. the high proportion of people between 18 and 44 years (54.5%) indicates the youthfulness of the population in the study area. indeed, the results of the 4th general census of population and housing (rgph, 2014) reveal that côte d'ivoire has 23 million inhabitants. this population is relatively young and unevenly distributed in the country with a proportion of 36.2% whose age varies between 15 and 34 years. in addition, the characteristic of the young population is confirmed in several african countries (gendreau, 1993; garenne, 2011). regarding to gender, the high frequency of women (57 to 70 %) shows real involvement of these women in livelihoods of the housekeeping. during survey, most men let their wives answer the questionnaires. in sub-saharan africa, traditional skills are usually held by women. the expertise of these women is also recognized in the production of shea butter (elias and carney, 2007, saussey et al., 2008). among ethnic groups, the koulango recorded the highest proportion (50.33 to 94.67 %). the indigenous populations of the bondoukou department are gbin, koulango, abron, nafana, déga and lobi. ethnobotanical surveys of edible wild plants carried out by ouattara et al. (2016) in the same studied localities indicated koulango as the majority indigenous ethnic group. the results of the survey revealed that 86 to 96.67% of the interviewees know perfectly the "conôro" against 3.3 to 14% who don’t know it. however, the knowledge level of "conôro" has varied according to age and ethnic group. among the ethnic groups, koulango achieved the highest level of knowledge (96.8 to 100%). this is due to the fact that consumption of "conôro" is an integral part of the koulango's eating habits. old people (65 years and over) have a higher knowledge level asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 256 than young people (85.7 to 100%) in all studied localities. this is congruent with previous findings relative to species knowledge in rural communities within the semi-arid region of brazil (arévalomarín et al., 2015) and wild edibles used by the naxi in baidi village of northwest yunnan province (geng et al., 2016). our findings can be justified as knowledge transmission through generations, which is facing a progressive vanishing with the slow demise of old people, as reported by geng et al. (2016). a difference occurring between generations could be linked on one hand to the mode of use and on the other hand to the therapeutic virtues of the "conôro" of which the old people would have more accumulated knowledge than the young people. the high use level of "conôro" by the respondents in all studied localities (85.27 to 97.93%) is explained by their eating habit. this observation is confirmed by ouali-n’goran et al. (2018) who reported that insect consumption in côte d’ivoire is an eating habit for ethnic groups krou and mandé. surveys showed dual use of "conôro" included food and therapeutic. indeed, the food and therapeutic use product is one of basic human needs. this corroborates the works of séguéna et al. (2013) who showed that the populations of bingerville in côte d'ivoire rely heavily on both food and medicinal plants in their habits. the north east of côte d'ivoire is one of the regions where population lives in poverty. this has led many households to explore food and health options based on local products. nutritional and health importance associated with feeding has been reported also by several authors on fruit trees (okullo et al., 2004; gouwakinnou et al., 2011) and fermented seeds of parkia biglobosa (sackey and kwaw, 2013; biobaku et al., 2017). in terms of food uses, "conôro" used in the form of seasoning is well known to the population (icf > 0.5). according to the respondents, the "conôro" allows to raise the taste of the sauces accompanying their basic dishes. this form of use (sauces seasoning) is in accordance with that of (chadare et al., 2008; parkouda et al., 2008; kpikpi et al., 2014; fatoumata et al., 2016) respectively for condiments tayohounta (fermented kernels of adansonia digitata), bikalga (fermented seeds of hibiscus sabdariffa), kantong (fermented seeds of ceiba pentandra) and soumbara (fermented seeds of parkia biglobosa). sauces consumed with staple foods are an essential component of the diet. indeed, staple foods provide the calories but are poor in other nutrients. soups are the one of the ways to improve the diet (achi, 2005). in therapy, "conôro" is combined with other natural’s substances to the specific treatment. the different combinations performed show many pathologies that "conôro" can cure. the survey show that "conôro" is used for its therapeutic virtues. the health is a factor that greatly influences the choice of foods to consume. many interviewed consumers of "conôro" have recognized the following virtues: antimalarial, antidiabetic, blood pressure regulator, throat treatment, treatment of abdominal pain after childbirth, suppression of nausea, suppression of alcohol, invigorating, treatment of body aches, maintenance of pregnancy, favorable to lactation, anti diarrhea and appetizer. all these virtues recognized by "conôro" could classify it as a functional food. studies conducted on other condiments and species with significant socio-economic value in the sub-region confirm these findings (fandohan et al., 2010; kim et al., 2016; najafi et al., 2016; monyn et al., 2016). the study conducted among the populations revealed seven types of "conôro". they are obtained by combination or not of different seeds. the seeds used for "conôro" manufacturing are those of baobab (adansonia digitata), kapok tree (ceiba pentandra) and okra (abelmoschus sp). these raw materials are used to create the different varieties of "conôro". similar fermented condiments have already been studied. indeed, "ogiri" is the name used by igbos for the traditionally prepared fermented condiments based on melon seeds (citrullus vulgaris), fluted pumpkin (telferia occidentallis) and castor oil seeds (ricimus communis) (ojukwu et al., 2013). the high proportions of "conôro" obtained from boabab and kapok tree seeds (23.70 to 29.5% and 21.61 to 37.11%) show the availability of these seeds in study areas. it should be noted that baobab and kapok tree seeds are used in the same way as nere (parkia biglobosa) and melon (citrullus vulgaris) seeds for the most part in the production of fermented condiments (omafuvbe et al., 2004; kpikpi et al., 2014, parkouda et al., 2015). on the other hand, low proportion of okra seeds (7.5 to 11.15%) compared asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 257 to previous seeds, explained by the fact that okra is usually grown for its tender fruits and leaves used as vegetables in culinary preparations (çalişir et al., 2005). information from the respondents on process of "conôro" in studied localities allowed establishing a general production diagram. the steps of production included cleaning, washing, pounding, sieving, fermentation, drying and moulding. technology of production of «conôro» doesn’t require large means for their establishment. indeed, it has been shown by some authors that these technological steps make it possible to improve the quality of food (chadare et al., 2008; parkouda et al., 2008; dossou et al., 2011). the investigation showed the fermentation times of "conôro" which between 2 to 7 days. most used fermentation time is 3 days (64.08 to 78.55%). according to the respondents, this fermentation time of 3 days is the most favorable for development of typical organoleptic characteristics of "conôro" (dark brown color, strong odor, sour taste, smooth texture, soft appearance). the fermentation of three (3) days seeds to obtain food condiments was reported by achi in 2005 and enujiugha in 2003. in fact, the microorganisms associated with fermentation have a significant impact on taste, texture, the smell and nutritional value of the fermented food (visessanguan et al., 2006). "conôro" is marketed in dumpling form of which the sale price is between 25 and 100 f cfa. the sale price of 50 f cfa the dumpling is most know by the surveyed people (49.09% to 60%). for this purpose "conôro" is accessible condiment to all social classes because of its low selling price. in addition, these prices are in line with those applied to the sale of afitin (soumbala), toyohounta, ubga and bikalga condiments respectively obtained from the fermentation of parkia biglobosa seeds, adansonia digitata, pentaclethra macrophylla benth and hibiscus sabdariffa (chadare, 2010; akintan et al., 2013; hongbete et al., 2017). concerning the conservation time of conôro, results of the investigation indicate that it is conserved more on period of 6 to 12 months (46.59 to 72.83%). according to assogbadjo et al. (2004), valorization of a food product depends on its conservation capacity for use over time. 5. conclusion and recommendation consumption surveys conducted in bondoukou revealed that the "conôro" is made from seeds of baobab (adansonia digitata), kapok tree (ceiba pentadra) and okra (abelmoscus sp). these seeds are used either single or combined for the manufacturing. "conôro" is used, for food and medicinal treatment by the people. in traditional medicine, it is more used to fight against hypertension and abdominal pains after childbirth. in addition, its shows an economic interest for various actors involved in the production and marketing activity. depending to knowledge level, koulango and people over 65 years old were majority. however, the knowledge level of "conôro" related to the age whose elders had perfect acquaintance, could lead to its long-term decline if no decision regarding its sustainability is not took. indeed, in agricultural sectors diversification context to improve living conditions of the populations and to contribute the resolution of food insecurity problems, all knowledge related to "conoro" remains fundamental for its valorization. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 7(12)2017: 244-261 258 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interest. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors are grateful to laboratory of biocatalysis and bioprocessing at the university of nangui abrogoua (abidjan, côte d’ivoire) for technical assistance. people in department of bondoukou were also heartily acknowledged for their participation in this study by agreeing to give information during the survey. yao kouakou adayé and faulet meuwiah betty conceptualize the main idea, completed the empirical section and wrote the report. dan chépo ghislaine, fagbohoun jean bedel and yao kouadio edited and supervised the research. kouame lucien patrice made visualization beside of supervision. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references achi, o. k. 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(2024). determinants of south africa’s agri-food export performance: gravity model approach. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2), 51–61. 10.55493/5005.v14i2.5108 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction agri-food is the production of food agriculturally, as opposed to through hunting, fishing, and so forth. the agrifood sector plays a pivotal role in the south african economy at large, considering all necessary contributions like employment, food security, foreign earnings, and so forth. even though its share in south africa's gross domestic asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 2 (2024): 51-61. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9813-7851 mailto:mamasmj@unisa.ac.za http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 51-61 52 product (gdp) is relatively small, primary agriculture is a critical sector of the economy. agriculture seems to continue to provide significant employment, most importantly in rural areas where employment is very scarce and is also a foreign exchange earner for south africa’s economy. in 2013, south africa recorded a value of agricultural production of approximately r188 billion, with the sector contributing about r72 billion to the country's gdp. there was an average growth of about 9.9% per annum in the primary agricultural sector between the years 1970 and 2013. however, between the same years in south africa, the overall annual economic growth of 12.9% resulted in a decrease in the contribution of agriculture to the gdp from 7.1% in 1970 to 2.6% in 2013 (department of agriculture forestry and fisheries, 2018). anand, roberto, and zhang (2016) highlighted in a report by the international monetary fund (imf) that south africa's export performance has disappointed since the last global financial crisis. this clearly indicates the need for corrective actions to bring about improvements. exports are critical for every country because they are an essential tool for achieving economic growth. in that case, it is of great importance to always make sure that industries have what it takes to compete in the international market. this will necessitate a thorough examination of the factors that influence export performance. literature shows that quite a few researchers and analysts excessively encourage export promotion. reduced trade restrictions should lead to considerable improvement in trade performance in the region, as high levels of trade restrictions have historically been a major barrier to exports (rodrik, 1998). since it closes trade deficits with other countries and sets the pace of development, rising export sales volumes are important for national economies (ayan & percin, 2005). ayan and percin also highlighted that in global marketplaces with heightened rivalry, success necessitates determining the elements influencing exports and implementing remedial measures, which is precisely what this study aims to ascertain. the tripartite free trade area (tfta) is a milestone for africa’s integration progress. it is highly regarded for its potential to unlock the agri-food market and establish new markets in the region. the fact that south africa is not the sole exporter of agri-food products in africa underscores the competitiveness of this market, posing a constant challenge for south africa to enhance its competitiveness and maintain its dominance over the long term. this study, the first of its kind, will examine the main factors influencing south africa's agri-food exports to its major trading partners in africa. it is important to study the trade benefits among countries through their regional trade agreements. 2. theoretical framework the english economist adam smith first proposed the theory of absolute advantage in foreign trade activities in his 1776 publication, "wealth of nations." he argued that countries should specialize in producing goods over which they have an absolute advantage and engage in trade activities with other countries; as a result, they will all benefit from international trade. the theory, however, does not describe why other countries that do not have an absolute advantage still gain from international trade (smith & skinner, 1974). the question received more attention because it appeared to be critical. the english economist david ricardo attempted to answer the question by developing a theory. david ricardo proposed the theory of comparative advantage, which states that a nation benefits from trade by exporting goods that it has a higher comparative advantage in producing and importing goods that it has the least comparative advantage in producing (ruffin, 2002). the influential trade theory developed by swedish economist ohlin (1933) further expanded the theory of comparative advantage. the swedish economists enhanced david ricardo's model by incorporating land and capital, creating the heckscher-ohlin model. the heckscher-ohlin model is one of the leading theories about the determinants of countries' trade patterns. the model predicts that a nation will export products that it produces efficiently and abundantly and import those that it produces less efficiently and abundantly. according to classical trade theory, countries with a lower level of similarity tend to trade more. as a result, it is difficult to characterize the large percentage of intra-industrial trade that drives trade among wealthy nations and between countries with comparable endowments. this provided impetus for the development of new trade theories, which began in the 1980s. by softening the harsh assumptions of classical theory, new theories of trade characterize global trade based on imperfect competition, product differentiation, and economies of scale (krugman & obstelf, 2005). people have recently applied the gravity model to finely define international trade flows that conventional economic theories cannot explain. here is a representation of the gravity model: 𝐹𝑖𝑗 = 𝐺 𝑀𝑖𝑀𝑗 𝐷𝑖𝑗 where: fij is the gravitational attraction. mimj are the mass of two objects. dij is the distance. g is the gravitational constant. the gravity model was initially used to analyse foreign trade flows by a dutch economist (tinbergen, 1962). in his study, trade flows between nations were considered a dependent variable. he employed gdp and geographic distance as independent variables. the findings demonstrated that the gdp variable positively impacts international trade. the distance seems to have a detrimental effect. in summary, the findings indicate that countries with larger economies and closer geographical locations typically engage in more trade. elshehawy, shen, and ahmed (2014) looked at the variables influencing egypt's export flows to its principal trading partners in bilateral trade. egypt's exports were estimated using panel data, which included annual data for 42 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 51-61 53 major trading partners from 2000 to 2013. the study's findings demonstrated that the primary factors influencing egypt's exports to its major trading partners are the importer's population, gdp, gdp of egypt, regional trade agreements (rtas), and the border between egypt and its trading partner. egypt's export flow is positively impacted by several factors. binh, nguyen, and cuong (2014) examined vietnam's trading operations with 60 nations on a bilateral basis between 2000 and 2010, using the gravity model. using information gathered from the world bank, the monetary fund, and the international trade centre, panel data on vietnam's international commerce were examined. the study's findings demonstrated the significant influence that vietnam's economic size, as well as the economic and market sizes of its foreign partners, culture, and distance, had on bilateral trade between vietnam and sixty other nations. vietnam demonstrated trade potential with several new markets, including western asia and africa, by applying the speed of convergence approach to identify potential markets. rahman (2003) used cross-section data from 50 countries and augmented gravity models to study australia's trade potential. the size of the economy, openness, gdp per capita, and shared language all have a beneficial impact on australia's bilateral trade, according to the study's findings. the study also revealed that distance had an adverse impact on trading partners. australia has significant trade potential with argentina, singapore, bangladesh, russia, greece, norway, portugal, brazil, and chile, according to the assessed results. hatab, romstad, and huo (2010) used a gravity model approach to analyze the factors influencing egypt's agricultural exports to its major trading partners between 1994 and 2008. their findings revealed that a one percent increase in egypt's gdp corresponds to an approximately 5.42 percent increase in egypt's agricultural export flows. however, a rise in gdp per capita in egypt is associated with a fall in exports; this is because rising economic growth increases the per capita demand for all ordinary products. the findings also revealed a substantial positive coefficient for the exchange rate, meaning that export volumes rise each time the egyptian pound weakens relative to the currencies of its trading partners. it was discovered that the distance and expense of transportation had an adverse effect on agricultural product exports. the goal of the crescimanno, galati, and yahiaoui (2013) study, "determinants of italian agri-food exports in non-eu mediterranean partner countries (mpcs)," was to highlight the primary factors influencing italian agri-food exports in the non-eu mpcs through an empirical investigation using a gravity model approach. the study's findings demonstrated that factors such as the gdp of partner nations, historical and colonial relationships, geographic closeness, and the relative importance of the agriculture sector in particular partner nations all positively affect exports. nguyen (2010) used the gravity model to analyze vietnam's exporting activities for 20 years. the study used the export value from vietnam to other countries as a dependent variable, and used gdp, exchange rate, and distance as independent variables, with the association of southeast asian nations (asean) acting as a dummy variable. the results showed that gdp, exchange rate, and asean partner being in asean positively affect the export value of vietnam. distance was found to be negatively affecting the export value of vietnam to other countries. vietnam exports more to countries with a closer geographical location. thai (2006) describes bilateral trade flows between vietnam and twenty-three european nations using a gravity model. the analysis covers the period from 1993 to 2004. vietnam's total trade with other nations was the dependent variable. the population, gdp, exchange rate, geography, and history were all independent variables. the findings revealed that population, gdp, and exchange rates are the primary factors influencing bilateral trade between vietnam and european countries.. the outcomes also demonstrated that distance and history have no bearing at all. matthee and gallego (2017) looked into a variety of market access factors that influence south africa's export growth along the intensive and extensive margins in their study, "identifying the determinants of south africa's extensive and intensive trade margins: a gravity model approach." using highly disaggregated data, a heckman selection gravity model was used in this study. the first section presented the variables influencing the likelihood that south africa will export to a specific country (extensive margins), and the second section presented the variables influencing the volume of exports (intense margins). the study's findings showed that, while south africa's export product mix is reasonably diverse, there aren't many markets available. economic factors such as the population and gdp of the importing nation positively influence businesses' decisions to export. cost, trade laws, and distance were determined to be factors adversely affecting the large margin. the existence of a free trade agreement with the sadc, cultural fit, and the south african embassy's global reach were also shown to be favourably influencing extended margin. it was discovered that there are significant similarities between the extensive and intensive margins in terms of the factors impacting export volumes (intensive margin), with the difference that the time required for exporting has a greater influence than the documentation requirements. the study "analysing the trade effect of the eu-sa & sadc trading agreements: a panel data approach" was carried out by jordaan and kanda (2011). investigating the trade consequences of the eu-sa and sadc preferential trade agreements, of which south africa is a part, was the goal of the study. panel data from 1994 to 2008 was used in the study. using a gravity model, the study found that trade expansion is significantly impacted by the eu-sa preferential trade deal. the findings also demonstrated that until the agreement is finalized and put into action, no meaningful conclusion regarding the trade effects of the sadc preferential trade can be drawn. it has been suggested that south africa support attempts for regional trade agreements to further economic stability and growth in the region. 3. materials and methods 3.1. study area this study focused on the agri-food industry in south africa. agri-food firms exporting products to the world were used as respondents to find out from them what they perceive as factors influencing export performance. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 51-61 54 3.2. population of the study the population of the study is categorized into two groups, namely export destinations (african markets) and agrifood exporting firms within south africa. to address the objective of identifying factors that influence the export performance of south africa’s agri-food products, thereby identifying major challenges and opportunities for sustained growth, the population used to draw a sample for data collection was that of exporting firms within south africa. according to the ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, the total population, was not known. for that reason, a stratified random sampling method was used to assume the population which amounted to 137 active firms. for this study, the sample size was drawn from a population of 137. the african market served as the sample population for data collection in order to address the objective of examining the main factors influencing south africa's agri-food exports to its major trading partners in africa. the total number of african markets is 54. due to a lack of data from other countries and a lack of trade activities, the population size was therefore reduced to 45. for this study, the sample size was drawn from a population of 45. 3.3. sampling frame for data about the export destination (african markets), a total of 28 countries were selected from the total population, and the required statistical data were obtained from the world bank (wb) and the international trade centre (itc) map databases. the primary reason for selecting 28 countries was that some of them didn't have complete data. a total of 28 countries were found to have all the required data. the study randomly selected a total of 117 agrifood exporting firms to serve as respondents. 3.4. data collection 3.4.1. primary data using structured questionnaires, face-to-face interviews were conducted with leaders of the firms selected, and for those who were very far away as well as those who did not have time to meet, questionnaires were e-mailed to them so that they could fill them out in their own free time. completed questionnaires were later e-mailed back to the researcher. telephonic interviews were also used as an alternative way of collecting data from some of those who did not have time to meet face-to-face. a total of 112 respondents were able to provide feedback. a five-point likert scale was used to determine the range in which each determinant is recognized to affect the performance of the firm. spss version 27.0 was used as a statistical tool for analysis. scores ranging between 1 and 5 were allocated to each determinant based on the simple arithmetic means of the answers, with a higher score stipulating a more enhancing factor and a lower score indicating a more challenging factor in terms of performance. 3.4.2. secondary data secondary data were obtained from the world bank (wb) and international trade center (itc) databases. the wb data set includes gdp, gdp per capita, population, and exchange rate, whereas the itc data set includes export values. 3.5. limitations of the study • for primary data collection, some respondents did not provide feedback, and that led to a reduced sample size. • for secondary data, the plan was to use all african countries' statistics, but some countries’ information was not available. 3.6. results and discussion 3.6.1. results based on porter’s diamond methodology table 1 displays agri-food companies' perceptions of labor factors. the table indicates that many companies struggle to find skilled labor, with 59% strongly agreeing that it is difficult to obtain skilled labor. the reason could be that most skilled laborers demand high wages because they are skilled enough and have what it takes to make a considerable contribution to the company. 31% of companies agree that skilled labor is too costly. table 1. perception of agri-food companies on labour factors. labour factors s tr o n g ly a g re e a g re e neutral a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e labour factors skilled labour is difficult to obtain 59% 22% 8% 7% 5% skilled labour is easy to obtain skilled labour is too costly 10% 31% 32% 20% 7% skilled labour is very affordable the cost of doing business, infrastructure, and technology are the most crucial factors within the organization. table 2 provides results based on what agri-food companies perceive as constraining and non-constraining factors in that regard. 59% of the population strongly agreed that the most constraining factor for them is the electricity supply. the cost of raw materials is also a big problem. many companies find raw materials very expensive because the results show that 34% strongly agree that the cost is extremely high and 45% agree that the cost is high. according to the results in table 2, the cost of better infrastructure is not too high, with 43% of the population feeling neutral about the cost and 34% agreeing that the cost is affordable. the cost of quality technology is another factor that agri-food asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 51-61 55 companies find to be very expensive. a total of 28% strongly agree that the cost of quality technology is extremely high, and 46% of the companies concur that it is too costly. table 2. perception of agri-food companies on business cost, infrastructure and technology. business cost, infrastructure, and technology factors s tr o n g ly a g re e a g re e neutral a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e business cost, infrastructure, and technology factors electricity supply is a constraint 59% 22% 20% 0% 0% electricity supply is not a constraint telecommunication is a constraint 5% 5% 31% 25% 34% telecommunication is not a constraint the cost of better infrastructure is extremely high 0% 0% 43% 34% 23% the cost of better infrastructure is very affordable the cost of raw materials is extremely high 34% 45% 15% 6% 0% the cost of raw materials is very affordable the quality of technology for the company generally lags behind most others 5% 13% 43% 26% 14% the quality of technology for the company is among the world leaders the cost of quality technology is extremely high 28% 46% 20% 6% 1% the cost of quality technology is very affordable moving goods from one place to another always requires an available and reliable transportation system. table 3 below presents agri-food companies' perceptions about transportation. it can be concluded that transportation due to infrastructure and the availability of transport are not a challenge to companies, with a total of 69% feeling neutral about it and 49% feeling the same about the availability of transport. however, the major constraint is the cost of transporting goods from one place to another. 66% strongly agree that it is too expensive. table 3. perception of agri-food companies on transportation. transport factors s tr o n g ly a g re e a g re e neutral a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e transport factors transportation due to infrastructure is a constraint 1% 9% 69% 14% 7% transportation due to infrastructure is not a constraint transportation costs are very high 66% 23% 10% 1% 0% transportation costs are affordable transport is rarely available 5% 34% 49% 7% 5% transportation is always readily available table 4 presents the perceptions of respondents about research and development. a majority of respondents believe that scientific research institutions do not exist, with 66% of the population strongly agreeing with that statement. this means that what is available is not enough to help with research and development within the industry. a total of 74% of the respondents felt neutral about the collaboration with scientific institutions in their research and development activities. table 4. perception of agri-food companies on research and development. research and development factor s tr o n g ly a g re e a g re e neutral a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e research and development factor scientific research institutions do not exist 66% 14% 21% 0% 0% scientific institutions are the best in their field your collaboration with scientific research institutions in their r&d activities does not exist 1% 13% 74% 9% 3% your collaboration with scientific research institutions in their r&d activities is intensive and ongoing the table (table 5) presents the strategic factors affecting export performance. the results show the effect that these factors have on exports. according to the table (table 5), product design, packaging, pricing, and promotion are the most crucial factors that help in improving the export performance of agri-food products, with 74%, 46%, 69%, and 86%, respectively, agreeing strongly that these factors improve export performance. the results, however, indicate that tariffs and language are major barriers to exports. a total of 74% of the respondents strongly agree that tariffs asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 51-61 56 have a negative effect on exports, and 70% of the respondents also agree that language is a major constraint. this implies that south african agri-food enterprises encounter difficulties when engaging in trade with nations that utilize distinct official languages from their own, particularly in terms of paperwork and comprehending product labels. it is easier to do business with those countries that use english as compared to those that use other languages. researchers have also discovered that the individual in charge of export activities within the organization must possess the essential qualities and mindset that enhance export performance. a total of 47% of respondents strongly agree that a manager's willingness to export is very important and improves export volumes; 48% strongly agree that a manager's educational and training level is also crucial; 78% agree that the manager's period of experience in the company has a positive effect on export performance; and 68% strongly agree that a manager's overall experience has a positive effect on export performance. table 5. perception of agri-food companies on export factor conditions. export factors s tr o n g ly a g re e a g re e neutral a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e export factors product design improves exports 74% 14% 11% 1% 0% product design does not improve exports packaging improves exports 46% 26% 16% 9% 2% packaging does not improve exports labelling has a positive effect on exports 69% 22% 9% 0% 0% labelling has no effect on exports pricing has a positive effect on exports 46% 41% 13% 0% 0% pricing has no effect on exports promotion improves exports 86% 10% 3% 0% 0% promotion does not improve exports tariffs are a major barrier to exports 74% 20% 7% 0% 0% tariffs are not a major barrier to exports managers’ willingness to export improves exports 47% 36% 17% 0% 0% managers’ willingness to export does not improve exports managers’ educational and training levels improve exports 48% 45% 6% 1% 0% managers’ educational and training levels do not improve exports period of the manager in the company improves exports 13% 78% 9% 0% 0% period of the manager in the company does not improve exports managers’ experience improves exports 68% 26% 6% 0% 0% managers’ experience does not improve exports language is a constraint 70% 21% 9% 0% 0% language is not a constraint table 6 presents the african market and its growth. south african agri-food companies see the african market as one with great potential. a total of 53% of the respondents agree strongly, and 33% agree that the market size is large enough. on the other hand, a great number (76% of the respondents) agree strongly that the growth in the market is fast enough. therefore, we can conclude that the african market is highly competitive, and the south african agri-food industry must address its challenges to achieve market dominance. table 6. perception of agri-food companies on demand factors. demand factors s tr o n g ly a g re e a g re e neutral a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e demand factors the market size is too small 2% 6% 6% 33% 53% the market size is large enough growth in the market is too slow 0% 0% 6% 18% 76% growth in the market is fast enough agri-food companies rely on other companies, farmers, institutions, and so forth to help them achieve their goals. these are regarded as related and supportive industries. table 7 displays respondents' perceptions based on related and supporting industries. according to the table of results (table 7), the availability of local suppliers of primary inputs is not a constraint at all, with 64% of respondents agreeing that there are numerous suppliers of primary inputs. the agri-food companies are also satisfied with the quality of the inputs supplied. a total of 63% of the respondents agree that the primary inputs they receive from local suppliers are of high quality and are therefore internationally competitive. sustainability is also not a problem at all, with a majority of respondents (63%) agreeing that the suppliers of primary inputs to their companies are sustainable enough. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 51-61 57 table 7. perception of agri-food companies on related and support industries. related and support industries factors s tr o n g ly a g re e a g re e neutral a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e related and support industries factors the availability of local suppliers of primary inputs does not exist 0% 1% 8% 64% 26% the availability of local suppliers of primary inputs is numerous the quality of suppliers of the company’s primary inputs is inefficient 1% 3% 23% 63% 9% the quality of suppliers of the company’s primary inputs is internationally competitive the sustainability of local suppliers of the company’s primary inputs is a huge problem 0% 2% 14% 63% 21% the sustainability of local suppliers of the company’s primary inputs is not a problem at all the table 8 provides the perceptions of the respondents on firm strategy, structure, and rivalry. research is very important in any industry, however, it appears that the respondents feel that the agri-food industry is not given enough attention in the area of research and development. a total of 47% of respondents agree, and 48% strongly agree, that industry's expenditure on research and development is very low. on the other hand, 61% of the respondents agree that competition in the market is very intense. this clearly indicates the need for corrective actions in research and development to handle the intense market competition. a staggering 74% of respondents agree that the entry of new competitors occurs more often, which means that the african market in general is becoming more and more competitive. table 8. perception of agri-food companies on firm strategy, structure and rivalry. firm strategy, structure, and rivalry factors s tr o n g ly a g re e a g re e neutral a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e firm strategy, structure, and rivalry factors the industry’s expenditure on research and development is very low 48% 47% 5% 0% 0% the industry’s expenditure on research and development is massive competition in the market is very limited 15% 3% 21% 61% 0% competition in the market is very intense entry of new competitors rarely occurs 0% 1% 14% 74% 11% entry of new competitors occurs more often every country aspires to implement the most effective policies and systems that can assist industries and governments in achieving their goals, thereby contributing to the nation's development or success. table 9 presents the perceptions of respondents on government support and policies. south africa seems to have good policies in place, as the results show that 66% of the respondents strongly agree and 25% agree that south africa’s trade policy is not a constraint on companies’ performance. this notion of trade policy is the same as that of south african labor policy and macroeconomic policy. a total of 45% express indifference towards the labor policy's role as a constraint or an enhancement to performance, while 35% concur that the labor policy in south africa enhances the performance of companies. a total of 36% of the respondents agree that macroeconomic policy is an enhancement to performance, yet 55% felt indifferent between macroeconomic policy being a constraint and an enhancement. lastly, respondents seem to be fine with the south african tax system that is in place. a total of 30% of the respondents agree that the tax system is not a constraint at all; on the other hand, 66% felt indifferent about the tax system being a constraint or not a constraint at all. table 9. perception of agri-food companies on government support and policies. government support and policy factors s tr o n g ly a g re e a g re e neutral a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e government support and policy factors south africa’s trade policy is a constraint on the company’s performance 0% 1% 8% 66% 25% south africa’s trade policy is not a constraint on the company’s performance south africa’s labour policy is a constraint on the company’s performance 0% 2% 45% 38% 15% south africa’s labour policy is an enhancement to the company’s performance south africa’s macroeconomic policy is a constraint 0% 1% 55% 36% 8% south africa’s macroeconomic policy is an enhancement the tax system is a constraint 0% 0% 66% 30% 5% the tax system is not a constraint asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 51-61 58 table 10 summarizes respondents' perceptions based on chance factors. many companies feel that crime is still a major problem in south africa. a total of 54% of the respondents agree strongly, and 29% agree that crime is a constraint on performance. economic stability is not a significant issue, as indicated by the majority of respondents (60%), who recorded a neutral response. this indicates that most respondents perceive south african economic stability as neither a constraint nor a source of increased opportunities for performance improvement, making it a moderate issue. according to the respondents, the exchange rate is excellent, with 55% agreeing that it improves performance. table 10. perception of agri-food companies on chance factors. chance factors s tr o n g ly a g re e a g re e neutral a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e chance factors crime is a constraint 54% 29% 9% 6% 2% crime is not a constraint economic stability in south africa is a constraint 9% 29% 60% 2% 0% economic stability in south africa creates opportunity to improve performance exchange rate is a constraint on performance 0% 0% 14% 55% 31% exchange rate enhances performance 3.7.1. results based on the gravity model 3.7.1.1. analytical technique and variables in the case of south africa, a variation of gravity models given by krugman and obstelf (2005) was applied. according to the original model, only two independent variables are introduced, which include gdp and distances. in this article, the model was therefore further enhanced by putting in other variables, namely, population, exchange rate, and gdp per capita. the gravity model was estimated in logarithmic form as follows: 𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑇𝑖𝑗𝑡 = 𝛼0 + 𝛼1𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑌𝑖𝑡 + 𝛼2𝑙𝑜𝑔𝐺𝑗𝑡 + 𝛼3𝑙𝑜𝑔𝐺𝑖𝑡 + 𝛼4𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑌𝑗𝑡 + 𝛼5𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑃𝑖𝑡 + 𝛼6𝑙𝑜𝑔𝐸𝑋𝑖𝑗𝑡 + 𝛼7𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑃𝑗𝑡 + 𝛼8𝑙𝑜𝑔𝐷𝑖𝑗 + 𝑒𝑖𝑗𝑡 where: i = 1 (south africa). j = 2, 3, 4, (partner countries). t = 2007, 2008, 2009... 2016. tijt: south africa’s trade with country j in year t. log1: yit: south africa’s gdp in year t. log2: gjt: gdp per capita of country j in year t. log3: git: south africa’s gdp per capita in year t. log4: yjt: gdp of country j in year t. log5: pit: south africa’s population in year t. log6: exijt: exchange rate between south africa and country j in year t. log7: pjt: population of country j in year t. log8: dij: distance in kilometres between south africa and country j. eijt: error term. 3.7.1.2. results based on the size of the agri-food industry the figure (figure 1) shows the structure of agri-food companies in terms of size. based on the figure, the size is categorized into small, medium, and large companies. the manner in which the size was categorized was based on number of employees within the company. it was therefore concluded that a company with 5 to 49 employees was regarded as a small-sized company, one with 50 to 99 employees was regarded as a medium company, and lastly, one with 100 or more employees was regarded as a large company. the figure (figure 1), indicates that small-sized companies dominate with 51%, followed by medium-sized companies with a share of 19%, and, lastly, large-sized companies being the least with a share of 17% of the overall sample. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 51-61 59 figure 1. sample size of agri-food companies. table 11 presents the results of the gravity model carried out using r statistical software. the results show that importers’ gdp, exchange rate, and distance are the variables that influence south africa’s export performance with a high level of significance. on the other hand, importers’ gdp per capita and importers’ population influence south africa’s exports with a moderate level of significance. the results also indicate that south africa's exports are not influenced by exporters' gdp, exporters' population, or exporters' gdp per capita. the findings indicate that an increase in the importing nation's gdp per capita causes an increase in the nation's import of agri-food goods. the findings also show that a rise in the importing nation's gdp corresponds to a rise in the country's agri-food imports. this is consistent with macroeconomic theory, which holds that rising national incomes will result in rising import volumes. the importer’s population is also found to be positively significant, indicating that an increase in the population of the importing country leads to an increase in imports. this is linked to an increase in market size, as an increase in population necessitates the feeding of a larger number of people, which in turn demands a higher volume of imports. the results also demonstrate the positive significance of exchange rate and distance variables. the results indicate that a devaluation in the south african currency leads to an increase in exports of agri-food products. this could be due to the growing interest among agri-food exporters to increase their product exports, as a devaluation increases their potential earnings. this distance shows that south africa's agri-food exporters target countries that are a bit closer to south africa. before expanding further, exporters take advantage of the proximity. this may be due to transportation costs. table 11. gravity model regression results. coefficients: variables estimate std. error t value pr(>|t|) (intercept) -421.935 5569.035 -0.076 0.940 log1 63.781 805.407 0.079 0.937 log2 0.214 0.068 3.145 0.002** log3 63.442 805.657 0.079 0.937 log4 0.401 0.077 3.343 0.000182*** log5 -63.571 805.196 -0.079 0.937 log6 -0.239 0.039 -6.137 2.97e-09*** log7 0.209 0.064 3.279 0.00118** log8 -0.850 0.074 -11.551 <2e-16*** significant codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1 null deviance: 72920714 on 279 degrees of freedom multiple r: 0.847 residual deviance: 21442866 0n 271 degrees of freedom r square: 0.7800 number of fisher scoring iterations: 6 adjusted r square: 0.745 note: e means exponent multiplied by the preceding number ***, **, and * means statistically significant at 1%, 5% and 10% respectively. 3.8. hypotheses testing results for this study, three hypotheses were proposed, which are highlighted in chapter one of this study. the following table presents the results of hypothesis test number one, which states that: h0: the size of the economy does not influence south africa’s exports of agri-food products to africa. h1: the size of the economy has a positive influence on south africa’s exports of agri-food products to africa. according to the results in the table (table 12), the null hypothesis has been disproven. in that scenario, we accept the alternative hypothesis over the null hypothesis. the test statistics, which show a value greater than the critical asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 51-61 60 value (t = 7.256 > 1.650), inform the decision to reject the null hypothesis. value was also taken into consideration when deciding whether to reject the null hypothesis or not. the p-value rule states that we should reject the null hypothesis if the p-value is less than alpha. the test results show that the p-value is less than an alpha; therefore, this tells us to reject the null hypothesis. table 12. hypothesis test results on the size of the economy. test results data mean 140856,3 42780,79 variance 4,87e+10 2,24e+09 observations 279 279 hypothesized mean 0 df 304 t-statistic 7,256 p(t<=t) one-tail 1,67e-12 t critical one-tail 1,650 p(t<=t) two-tail 3,35e-12 t critical two-tail 1,968 note: e means exponent multiplied by the preceding number. table 13 provides results about the second hypothesis, stated as follows: h0: there is no relationship between geographical distance and trade. h1: geographical distance is a barrier to trade. the test statistics are greater than the critical value (t=10.333 >1.650), and the p-value is less than alpha. based on the test results, the null hypothesis is rejected, and the alternative hypothesis is accepted. table 13. hypothesis test results on the geographical distance. test results data mean 140856,287 4271,319 variance 4,874e+10 8931799 observations 279 279 hypothesized mean 0 df 278 t-statistic 10,333 p(t<=t) one-tail 1,074e-21 t critical one-tail 1,650 p(t<=t) two-tail 2,148e-21 t critical two-tail 1,969 note: e means exponent multiplied by the preceding number. the table (table 14) shows the results of the last hypothesis, which states that: h0: devaluation of south africa’s currency has no effect on agri-food exports variations. h1: devaluation of south africa’s currency has a positive effect on agri-food exports variations. the table's results support the acceptance of the alternative hypothesis over the null hypothesis. the reason being that the test statistics were found to be greater than the critical value (t = 7.085 > 1.650), and the p-value was less than alpha. table 14. hypothesis test results on the exchange rate. test results data mean 140856,3 43003,2 variance 4,87e+10 4,48e+09 observations 279 279 hypothesized mean 0 df 329 t-statistic 7,085 p(t<=t) one-tail 4,24e-12 t critical one-tail 1,649 p(t<=t) two-tail 8,48e-12 t critical two-tail 1,967 note: e means exponent multiplied by the preceding number. 4. conclusion the main focus of this study was to investigate factors that influence the export performance of south africa’s agri-food products, thereby identifying major challenges and opportunities for sustained growth as well as examining the main factors that influence south africa’s agri-food exports to its major trading partners in africa for the period asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 51-61 61 1996 to 2017. the study used both primary and secondary data to address the two main objectives. the gravity model was applied to examine the benefits of trade between south africa and the african market at large. to identify the major challenges, porter’s framework was followed, and the results showed that quite a number of factors are indeed a huge challenge to agri-food exporting firms in south africa. the factors include shortage of skilled labour, the cost of skilled labour, electricity supply, cost of raw materials, cost of high-level technology, transportation costs, scientific research institutions, pricing, tariffs, language, and crime. to examine factors influencing south africa’s agri-food exports, the gravity model was employed, and the results of the study support the hypotheses that predicted that south africa’s agri-food exports are positively affected by the size of the economy, geographical proximity, and currency devaluation. abbreviations asean: association of southeast asian nations; dalrrd: department of agriculture, land reform, and rural development; gdp: gross domestic product; ict: international trade centre; imf: international monetary fund; rta: regional trade agreements; sadc: southern african development community; tfta: tripartite free trade area; wb: world bank. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the the university of south africa, south africa has granted approval for this study on 13 october 2015 (ref. no. 2015/caes/087). transparency: the author states that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. references anand, r., 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(1962). an analysis of world trade flows. shaping the world economy, 3, 1-117. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___https:/jiem.ftu.edu.vn/index.php/jiem/article/view/117___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzo3otbimwu1mjyxmtdhmdbky2mynda3yzeymju3otg3nzo2omq3nmu6ywy4yjk4otyznmyyn2yzn2jiyjlkote3ntm4zdq1mmm4mdu1zdk5yzjjmtiyzmuxndu1nzhkntq1zdewotbkntpwolq file:///c:/users/mano/downloads/www.grainsa.co.za https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___https:/doi.org/10.4236/jss.2014.211020___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzo3otbimwu1mjyxmtdhmdbky2mynda3yzeymju3otg3nzo2omm5zwu6zdi2owu4mmzloge0ngu2yja4zwy5zdfhnme0zmuyywe2nzu1zmflzduxmthmmjc3otnmodfmmtkxm2qxowy0njpwolq 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program, center for research in development, social and environment, faculty of social sciences and humanities, universiti kebangsaan malaysia, malaysia. 3professional development and continuing education, faculty of educational studies, universiti putra malaysia, malaysia. 4biotechnology and nanotechnology research centre, malaysian agricultural research and development institute (mardi), selangor, malaysia.  miza@ukm.edu.my (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 4 january 2021 revised: 27 january 2021 accepted: 10 february 2021 published: 23 february 2021 keywords farming economics food security nematodes nematode attacks rice diseases rice yields. nematode attack is among the factors significantly reducing the world's rice production, to the extent of affecting farming economics and global food security. one of the factors involved in the decline in production is the prevalence of rice diseases and pests, among which are nematodes. therefore, this study was conducted to identify the level of farmers’ knowledge on the symptoms of nematode infection in pasir panjang, which is situated in the rice cultivation area, namely integrated agricultural development area (iada), of northwest selangor. the study also analyzed the effects of nematode attacks on farming economics. descriptive analysis was performed on 86 randomly selected samples of farmers whose crops had often been attacked by nematodes. the results of the study found that the farming community had knowledge of the symptoms of nematode infestation in rice crop fields. analysis of the study results showed that farmers were significantly affected by nematode attacks on their rice crops. the effects of attack could be seen from the reduced income and economic levels of the farmers and consequent increase in management costs, in addition to the increasing costs of purchasing pesticides and fertilizers. production output and yield quality also declined. this situation has negatively impacted the quality of life of these farmers. the implications of this study inform the strategies for integrated and continuous disease and pest control to ensure that the country's food security is more stable. contribution/originality: the paper's primary contribution is the finding that nematode attacks are seen to have a negative impact on farming economics and farmers’ quality of life. they are also a major threat to the country's rice supply security. therefore, handling strategies using environmental friendly methods involving control and prevention need to be strengthened so that nematode attacks can be overcome effectively. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.105.112 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: rosmiza m. z. --muhammad zaim samion --milah zainal --mohd nor mohd rosmi (2021). nematode attacks and their influence on farming economics. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 105-112. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.105.112 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 105-112 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4836-1548 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2750-3794 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1487-1574 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0278-0835 mailto:miza@ukm.edu.my http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.105.112 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 105-112 106 1. introduction global rice yield productivity shows a declining trend from 2017 to 2019. this is due to several factors, including climate change, pest attacks and rice diseases, and limited agricultural area (ilakiya & kalaivani, 2020; nguyen & ferrero, 2006). according to nurul and kalaivani (2014) and pam (2019), a survey on crop health found that diseases and pests were among the main causes of huge losses of crop yields, as well as weed populations (mardiana-jansar, bajrai, ishak, & ismail, 2019). at a global scale, pathogens and pests are causing losses of 10–28% in wheat, in rice (25–41%), maize (20–41%), potatoes (8–21%), and soybeans (11–32%) (gonzalez-chang, tiwari, sharma, & wratten, 2019). in fact, according to nguyen and ferrero (2006), the problem of rice pests, including nematode attacks, has caused annual crop losses of up to 25%. it is clear that diseases and pests are among the problems for farmers that are threatening their crops to the extent of causing a decline in agricultural yields. nematodes are invertebrates, a type of worm or microscopic parasite in the shape of a long circle, mostly metazoans (bird, opperman, & davies, 2003; davies, 2009; decraemer & hunt, 2006; maisarah et al., 2018; pracaya, 2008). more than 90 species of nematode have been recorded, and most are inactive endoparasites (crow & dunn, 2009; decraemer & hunt, 2006; perry, moens, & starr, 2009). the original habitat of this organism is soil or plants, with some living in water. therefore, most of the symptoms of nematode attack are seen in the parts of crops below soil level – the roots and tubers. nematodes live in plants by consuming the contents of root cells, stems, and leaves (department of agriculture sarawak, 2020). generally, nematode attacks cause physical damage to the roots, stems, or leaves of plants. their ability to attack crops, especially on the roots and leaves, can affect plant growth, yield, and production quality (maisarah et al., 2018; mirsam, 2018). the rate of damage to long-term crops is relatively low. the effect of nematode attack is more pronounced if the plant is under stress, such as during a long dry season (department of agriculture sarawak, 2020). serious nematode attacks pose a threat to a country's farming economy and food security (auwal, pham, shi, & zheng, 2013; fleming, mcgowan, maule, & fleming, 2016; nicol et al., 2011). significant impact on the farming economy in terms of production and quality of yields due to nematode attacks puts pressure on farmers and their quality of life. accordingly, a study was conducted to assess the level of farmers' knowledge of the symptoms of nematode attack and its influence on their finances. the implications of this study are expected to enable formulation of control strategies to overcome the problem of continuous nematode attacks so that farmers’ quality of life is more secure, through increased productivity and the quality of their rice crops. this will also guarantee the security of the country's rice supply. 2. literature review 2.1. symptoms and their influence on rice yields and the farming economy generally, crops attacked by nematodes show symptoms such as slow growth rate, stunted growth, leaf chlorosis and leaves falling off easily. however, these symptoms vary depending on the type of nematode that attacks the plant. these are (1) root knot nematode (meloidogyne sp.), (2) leaf nematode (aphelenchoides sp.), (3) lesion nematode (pratylenchus sp.) and (4) rice root nematode (hirschmanniella sp.) (maisarah & azmi, 2015; mulyadi. & triman, 1995; nurjayadi, munif, & suastika, 2015; smiley, 2015). even though various methods have recently been introduced in developed countries to overcome pests, nematode attacks still affect crop yields by 5–10% (nicol, 2002). based on studies by sasser and freckman (1987), nematodes cause a yield loss of about 17–20%, equivalent to us$100 billion annually (bird et al., 2003). in addition, plantparasitic nematodes have resulted in a reduction in the quantity and quality of crop yields in the agricultural sector (bird & bird, 2001; handoo, 1998). the symptoms of disease and damage to crops that are visible above the soil surface reflect the damaged root system as a result of nematode disturbance. because of damage to the root system, the plant shows symptoms of nutrient deficiency, the leaves turn yellow and wither, the growth of the plant is stunted, and eventually the plant will die (maisarah & azmi, 2015). besides direct physical damage, nematodes also encourage other pathogenic infections such as bacteria and fungi. for example, root knot nematodes mutually interact with fusarium solani, resulting in severe damage to plants (department of agriculture sarawak, 2020). according to atkins et al. (2003), koenning et al. (1999), sasser (1977), and perry et al. (2009), root knot nematodes are among the most common parasitic genera of plants and the main crop pests in the world (fofie & raymundo, 1979; ruben et al., 1998); however, attacks are commonly more extreme in the tropics and subtropics (moens, perry, & starr, 2009; perry et al., 2009). rice agriculture, especially in asia, has major concerns concerning root knot nematode, as new approaches in agriculture due to environmental (climate change) and socioeconomic factors have resulted in a drastic rise in the prevalence of meloidogyne graminicola (mg) (de waele & elsen, 2007). galls in a shape of a hook (root swellings) develop mainly at the infected plant root tips. as water and nutrients cannot be transported due to changes in the root vascular system, symptoms will develop on the upper part of the plant including loss of vigor, stunting, and chlorosis, contributing to poor crop growth and reproduction (fahiem & larry, 2005; karssen & moens, 2006; mantelin, bellafiore, & kyndt, 2017; michel, richard, & john, 2005), which may account for up to 87% of production losses (netscher & erlan, 1993). according to mulyadi (1997), the influence of root knot nematode on rice growth and yield – that is with mg treatment at 16.0 heads/ml of soil – can cause 70.0% death of seedlings at the age of 20 days and 38.5% decrease in yield production. a study by sari (2017) in indonesia on five varieties of rice, namely ipb 3s, hipa 14, sintanur, pertiwi 1, and ciherang, found that the influence of leaf nematode attack (aphelenchoides sp.) caused a decrease in high yields for all varieties of crop studied. on average, there was a decrease in yield of 30.0% while total decline in the growth of seedlings was 50.0% and in total number of rice seeds was 15.0%. according to teuku (2018), attacks by leaf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 105-112 107 nematodes on the ipb 3s rice variety in purwakarta, west java on average showed a decrease in plant height to 75 cm compared to the normal height of 88.5 cm. the number of seedlings decreased to six, whereas the normal number was nine, and the average incidence rate was up to 60.0%. apart from the foregoing, there are three types of leaf nematode species, namely aphelenchoides besseyi, aphelenchoides fragariae, and aphelenchoides itzemabosi, that have greatly impacted the economy, causing losses in various agricultural and horticultural crops (duncan & moens, 2013). a. besseyi, for example, can cause white tips on leaves, the affected parts then turnung dry and curly (fahiem & larry, 2005; kepenekci, 2013). it is reported that leaf nematode attacks have infected more than 200 species of plant including rice, strawberries, and ornamentals (cheng et al., 2013; duncan & moens, 2013). according to tülek et al. (2014), cheng et al. (2013), and de jesus et al. (2016), a. besseyi attacks have affected rice crops resulting in loss of yield of 5.4–57.9% in turkey and 71% in china. these attacks have caused losses to the farming community due to the increased costs of crop management. in malaysia, nematode attacks are also causing reduced yields in rice (abdul karim, 1991; maisarah et al., 2018; nicol et al., 2011), resulting in farmers suffering losses due to markedly reduced income. studies by fahiem and larry (2005), nurjayadi et al. (2015), michael, claude, david, thierry, and elisavet (2018), and goswami, archana, neetu, and satyendra (2015) found that the symptoms of rice root nematode attack include decreased seedling production and delayed flowering of up to 14 days and above. in fact, michel et al. (2005) recorded the symptom of roots turning brownish yellow. eventually, the stem of the rice plant will rot after being attacked. the lesion nematode genus is pratylenchus. symptoms of attack by this nematode can be found on the panicle, spike, and spikelets (fahiem & larry, 2005). this species will infect the host plant causing stem lesions (brooks, 2013; crow, 2013; mitiku, 2018; perry & moens, 2013). lesions, which are initially brownish gray in color, will turn yellow on the leaves of a 22-day-old plant. this will cause the plant to become stunted, chlorotic, and wither, and eventually it will die (michel et al., 2005). attacks can result in significant loss of crop yield and are capable of causing secondary infections by bacteria and fungi as a result of the lesions (perry & moens, 2013). it is clear that nematode attacks on rice crops will increase crop management costs, especially regarding the purchase of pesticides and fertilizers. continuous attacks will affect farmers’ income and quality of life (rosmiza, amriah, rosniza, jabil, & mazdi, 2015; xing et al., 2017). according to briggs (2000) and heong, wong, and reyes (2013), the use of appropriate pesticides and fertilizers is very important in overcoming the problems of rice diseases. however, nematodes will become resistant to pesticides when these are used over a long period. in fact, commonly used pesticides will not have any effect on diseases recently encountered. this puts pressure on farmers to bear additional costs for crop management, such as the purchase of pesticides and fertilizers. farías (2020), rosmiza, rosniza, jabil, and mazdi (2019), and fuad et al. (2012) found that prolonged use of chemical pesticides could have a negative impact not only on farmers, but also on the surrounding community and environmental. thus, it is undeniable that rice diseases result in a progressive deterioration in farmers’ quality of life. 3. method and study area a quantitative study design (survey) was used to study the influence of nematode attacks on farming economics in pasir panjang, selangor. descriptive analysis involving frequency, percentage, and convergence tendency (mean, variance, and standard deviation) was conducted to examine the types of nematode that most frequently attack rice plants, and the effects of attacks on farming communities. to obtain data in the field, questionnaires and observations were implemented. the likert scale was used to assess farmers' level of knowledge on nematode attacks on cultivated rice crops. the likert scale runs from 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (somewhat disagree), and 4 (agree) to 5 (strongly agree). observational methods were carried out at rice cultivation sites to thoroughly examine the types of nematode attack, as well as the symptoms of those attacks. this method of observation can give a clear picture of the symptoms of nematode attack and its effect on crop yields. the rationale for selecting pasir panjang as the study area is because the location is located in the integrated agricultural development area (iada) in northwest selangor, one of eight major rice-growing areas in malaysia. the 19,057-ha iada area consists of nine blocks of crops among which is the study area, pasir panjang. the pasir panjang block has a cultivation area of 1589 ha and a farming population of 601. purposive sampling was conducted by selecting farmers who cultivate rice, in addition to those having experienced nematode attacks. based on sample size calculation by yamane (1967), a total of 86 samples were randomly selected for the questionnaire. 4. results and discussion the majority of farmers (85) in the study who cultivate rice were men (98.8%). thirty-five of the 85 farmers (40.7%) were aged 31–40 years. most respondents were malay (83, 96.5%) and the rest were chinese (3.5%). the majority of respondents had a level of education up to secondary school only (47.7%), and only one (1.2%) had attained the educational level of a higher learning institution. nevertheless, all respondents had had a formal education. none of the respondents earned less than rm500 per month, while the majority earned in the range rm1000–1500 per month (38.4%), 31.4% earned rm1501–1999 and 16.3% earned more than rm2000 per month (table 1). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 105-112 108 table-1. farmers’ profile. profile category frequency percentage gender male 85 98.8 female 1 1.2 age 18-20 years 3 3.5 21-30 years 13 15.1 31-40 years 35 40.7 41-50 years 30 34.9 51 and above 5 5.8 race malays 83 96.5 chinese 3 3.5 educational level primary school 5 5.8 secondary school 41 47.7 high school 19 22.1 technical and vocational 20 23.3 college/higher education institution 1 1.2 income <rm500 rm501-rm999 12 14 rm1000-rm1500 33 38.4 rm1501-rm1999 27 31.4 > rm2000 14 16.3 source: fieldwork, 2020. 4.1. profile of rice cultivation most respondents carried out rice cultivation as their full-time employment (74, 86.0%). the majority of these worked on their own (81.4%) in cultivating rice without the assistance of family members. only 12 respondents (14.0%) were doing it part-time. full-time jobs for respondents who chose rice cultivation as a part-time job included traders, schoolteachers, and house builders (table 2). the majority of farmers who cultivated rice in pasir panjang were tenants (67, 77.9%), but only a few owned their land (19, 22.1%). no farmers cultivated on leased land. most farmers cultivated small farms, ranging from 1 to 2 acres only (36.0%), with medium-sized (3–4 acres) accounting for 39.5% while nine farmers (10.5%) worked on an area of over 7 acres (table 2). typically, the estimated value of operating costs in rice cultivation is in the range rm6000–8000 for a plot of area 3 acres. these operating costs include plowing, fertilizer and chemical pesticide inputs, and processing and other operating costs. because the majority of the respondents cultivated more than 3 acres of rice, that is often taken as the basis for operating costs in rice cultivation. most of the respondents (40.7%) obtained a yield of 4–6 tons in one cultivating season, with 34.9% obtaining 1–3 tons. none of the respondents obtained a yield of more than 10 tons or above for one cultivating season (table 2). table-2. profile of rice cultivation. profile category frequency percentage job status full-time 74 86.0 part-time 12 14.0 land status owned 19 22.1 tenant 67 77.9 leased farm size 1-2 acres 31 36.0 3-4 acres 34 39.5 5-6 acres 12 14.0 7 acres and above 9 10.5 length of time in rice cultivation <1 year 1-3 years 5 5.8 4-6 years 12 14.0 7-9 years 27 31.4 10 years and above 42 48.8 operating costs of rice cultivation <rm2000 rm2000-4000 32 37.2 rm4001-6000 33 38.4 rm6001-8000 12 14.0 rm8001-10 000 9 10.5 rm10,000 and above rice yield in one season <1 ton 1-3 tons 30 34.9 4-6 tons 35 40.7 7-9 tons 21 24.4 10 tons and above source: fieldwork, 2020. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 105-112 109 4.2. farmers' level of knowledge on nematode attacks and symptoms studies related to farmers' level of knowledge regarding nematode attacks are very important because, without a high level of knowledge, farmers will not be able to overcome such attacks. these attacks cause physical damage to the roots, stems, and leaves, subsequently jeopardizing yield production and affecting the country's food security. based on the percentages recorded, the majority of farmers had a level of knowledge about nematode attacks with the highest percentage value recorded in the agree category, with 46 (53.5%), while strongly agree was recorded for 10 (11.6%). the mean value was 0.747 (s.d. = 0.865). most respondents knew that there are four types of nematode that often attack rice crops: leaf nematode, root knot nematode, lesion nematode, and rice root nematode. the majority of farmers (52, 60.5%) knew that leaf nematodes had attacked their crops (table 3); they knew this based on the symptoms of the attack such as the presence of white tips on the leaf structure. the results of this study are in line with those of fahiem and larry (2005) and kepenekci (2013), which recorded that the symptoms of leaf nematode attack are the presence of white tips on the leaves that will become dry and curled up. in addition, more than half of the farmers (59, 86.6%) agreed and strongly agreed (10.5%) with having knowledge about the symptoms and attacks of root knot nematode on their crops. the mean value recorded was 0.377 (s.d. = 0.614) (table 3). the symptoms of root knot nematode attack are similar to those found in studies by mantelin et al. (2017), karssen and moens (2006), fahiem and larry (2005), michel et al. (2005), netscher and erlan (1993), and mulyadi (1997), where hook-shaped galls were noted at the root tip . this attack can cause chlorosis in rice seed, where it becomes empty and withers, in addition to reducing rice seedling numbers and decreasing crop yields. based on descriptive analysis, most farmers had a moderate level of knowledge about lesion nematode attacks, the mean value being 3.55 (s.d. = 1.124). based on the mean value stated, the majority of respondents had experienced a lesion nematode attack on their crops and knew about the resulting symptoms. a total of 11 respondents (12.8%) had limited knowledge while four (4.7%) had no knowledge (table 3). this nematode causes lesions on the stem of the plant (brooks, 2013; fahiem & larry, 2005; mitiku, 2018; perry & moens, 2013), these becoming brownish grey with yellowing of the leaves in 22-day-old plants (michel et al., 2005). the majority of farmers had knowledge of the symptoms resulting from attack by rice root nematodes. this was evidenced by the 44 respondents (51.2%) who agreed and 20 (23.3%) who strongly agreed, with a mean value of 0.597 (s.d. = 0.772) (table 3). farmers knew that the symptoms of a rice root nematode attack involve reduction in seedling numbers as well as delay in flowering by up to 14 days, as proven by the studies of fahiem and larry (2005), nurjayadi et al. (2015), michael et al. (2018), and goswami et al. (2015). in addition, farmers also knew that the roots will turn brownish yellow and eventually the plants will rot, as evidenced by michel et al. (2005). table-3. level of farmers' knowledge on nematode symptoms and attacks. scale 1 2 3 4 5 mean variance standard deviation (s.d.) level of farmers’ knowledge of nematode attacks 2.30% 7% 25.60% 53.50% 11.60% (2) (6) (22) (46) (10) 3.65 0.747 0.865 leaf nematode 2.30% 5.80% 20.90% 60.50% 10.50% 3.71 0.679 0.824 (2) (5) (18) (52) (9) root knot nematode 2.30% 17.40% 68.60% 11.60% 3.9 0.377 0.614 (2) (15) (59) (10) lesion nematode 4.70% 12.80% 29.10% 20.20% 23.30% 3.55 1.263 1.124 (4) (11) (25) (26) (20) rice root nematode 3.50% 22.10% 51.20% 23.30% 3.94 0.597 0.772 (3) (19) (44) (20) source: fieldwork, 2020. note: 1 = strongly disagree; 2 = disagree; 3 = somewhat disagree; 4 = agree; 5 = strongly agree. 4.3. impact of nematode attacks on farming economics the results of the study found that all farmers either agreed or strongly agreed that nematode attacks have a negative impact on the farming community, affecting farmers' source of income, reduction in their quality of life, increased cost of crop management, pesticide, and fertilizer purchases, as well as deterioration in production and harvest quality (table 4). the results of this study are supported by bird and bird (2001), nicol (2002), and sasser and freckman (1987), who also found that nematode attacks caused reduction in the yield of rice production, further affecting the national rate of production and consumption of rice. yield productivity also decreased, affecting farming economics. studies by maisarah et al. (2018), nurjayadi et al. (2015), smiley (2015), prasad, panwar, and rou (2008), and mulyadi and triman (1995) found that nematode attacks caused losses in crop yield of up to 20% of the overall harvest. analysis of the study results found that 82.6% (71 respondents) strongly agreed and 17.4% (15) agreed that nematode attacks have affected farmers' source of income. this is due to the issues farmers had to deal with in relation to the increased cost of crop management, in addition to reduced production yield and quality. this situation had affected farmers' quality of life, which was acknowledged by all farmers, among whom 50.0% agreed and 50% strongly agreed that nematode attacks on crops had affected their quality of life. the mean value was 4.50 (s.d. = asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 105-112 110 0.503). generally, harvest yields can influence farmers’ total income. when yield decreases, farmers’ income is affected and will have an influence on their living standards. this is because most farmers who cultivate only rice rely on the harvest as a major source of income for survival. this finding is supported by rosmiza et al. (2015), who found that low harvest yields also affect farmers' income. indirectly, the quality life of farmers declines because they do not have enough money to support themselves or their families. this is also evidenced by xing et al. (2017) and rosmiza et al. (2019), who stated that frequent disease attacks on rice crops resulted in an increase in the use of chemical pesticides. in fact, their continuous use affected the health of the local population (lah, 2011). the results of this study are also supported by heong et al. (2013) and briggs (2000), who found that the appropriate use of pesticides and fertilizers is very important in overcoming the problems of rice disease. however, their continuous use can result in nematode resistance, with farmers then requiring other, additional pesticides and fertilizers. this puts pressure on farmers by incurring additional costs for crop management and is in line with the results of a study which found that all respondents agreed that rice diseases resulted in increased costs of purchasing pesticides and fertilizers. the highest score obtained in the strongly agree category was 69.8% (60 respondents), while the agree category comprised 30.2% (26). the mean value was 4.70 (s.d. = 0.462) (table 3). the results of our analysis found that a total of 61 respondents (70.9%) strongly agreed while 25 (29.1%) agreed that nematode attack resulted in severe deterioration in production yield and quality of the harvest. the mean value obtained was 4.71 (s.d. = 0.457) (table 3). the results of this study are in line with those of sari (2017) and teuku (2018), who found that nematode attacks by such as a. besseyi can reduce the quantity and quality of harvest. this is because nematodes disrupt the growth of rice plants, causing them to change color and wither, resulting in reduction in rice seedling numbers which in turn affects yield (fahiem & larry, 2005; michel et al., 2005). table-4. effects of nematode attack on production yield and farming economics. scale 1 2 3 4 5 mean variance standard deviation (s.d.) farming economics 60.5% (52) 39.5% (34) 4.40 0.242 0.492 farmers’ income 17.4% (15) 82.6% (71) 4.83 0.146 0.382 decreased quality of farmers’ life 50% (43) 50% (43) 4.50 0.253 0.503 increased crop management 36% (31) 64% (51) 4.64 0.233 0.483 increased cost of purchasing pesticides and fertilizers 30.2% (26) 69.8% (60) 4.70 0.213 0.462 loss of yield 29.1% (25) 70.9% (61) 4.71 0.209 0.457 reduced quality of yield 29.1% (25) 70.9% (61) 4.71 0.209 0.457 source: fieldwork, 2020. note: 1 = strongly disagree; 2 = disagree; 3 = somewhat disagree; 4 = agree; 5 = strongly agree. 5. conclusion overall, the farmers interviewed were aware of the symptoms and attacks by nematodes on the rice crops that they cultivated. in general, farmers' in-depth knowledge and their awareness about the types of diseases that attack their crops will make it easier for them to overcome such attacks. however, nematode attacks are seen as having a negative impact on farming economics and farmers’ quality of life, in addition to posing a major threat to the country's rice supply security and causing deterioration in the quality and quantity of crops. this is due to the nematode’s actions in the plant in the roots and stems, causing disruption to growth, leaves withering and falling off, and weedy plants. this situation puts pressure on farmers in terms of the increasing costs of crop management. if the problem persists, productivity and harvest quality will decline. therefore, handling strategies involving control and prevention measures need to be strengthened so that nematode attacks can be overcome effectively. chemical and biological control methods and seed treatment are seen as being able to overcome the problem of nematode attacks infesting crops. in fact, the system of rice intensification (sri) method is able to increase production yield while reducing crop management costs. however, chemical control is not an environmental friendly method and will affect farm ecosystems. the combination of various techniques such as seed treatment, use of disease-resistant or -tolerant varieties, crop rotation, and use of organic materials can reduce nematode populations. exposure through development services, such as guidance and advisory services from government agencies, can help farmers develop more efficient management methods in controlling rice diseases. as a result, farmers will be able to increase harvest productivity and thus the level of national rice security is better guaranteed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 105-112 111 funding: this research was supported by a research university grant, universiti kebangsaan malaysia (grant number: ggpm 2013-041). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdul karim, s. 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(1967). statistics: an introductory analysis (2nd ed.). new york: harper and row. http://www.toxipedia.org/ http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/jsm-2019-4811-07 http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/jsm-2019-4811-07 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 628 characterization of bank lending requirements for farmers in zimbabwe chigunhah blessing ropafadzoa, svotwa ezekiab, munyoro geralda, mabvure tendai josephc govere ignatiusd a  graduate business school, chinhoyi university of technology, zimbabwe b department of crop science and post-harvest technology, chinhoyi university of technology, zimbabwe c department of accounting science and finance, chinhoyi university of technology, zimbabwe d faculty of agriculture and environmental sciences, bindura university of science education, zimbabwe  blessingmhere@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 10-mar-2020 accepted: 25-jun-2020 online available: 01-sep2020 keywords: bank credit, bank lending, campari, collateral, investments abstract bank credit availability is vital for enhancing farm productivity, income, and farmer livelihoods. this study sought to characterize the lending requirements considered by commercial banks when lending to farmers in zimbabwe. primary data were collected from a cross-section of 12 registered commercial banks. relative importance index (rii) and thematic analysis analysed data. high importance lending requirements that were always considered by all commercial banks when lending to farmers included credit history, productive farm assets, business registration, loan purpose, amount, and repayment source. agricultural production skills, age, business plans, financial statements, social reputation, and project insurance were also mandatory in the majority of the commercial banks. high to medium importance lending requirements included extension support, business management skills, bank account ownership, own contribution, and personal savings. medium importance requirements included formal basic education, alternative income, and freehold land ownership. therefore, besides the widely documented collateral, local commercial banks also considered several other requirements when lending to farmers. government policy should go beyond solving the collateral issue but benchmark its policies to other bank lending requirements. farmers should also pursue personal development programs in agricultural production, business, and financial management. they should also invest in off-farm assets to ensure collateral availability. contribution/ originality this study is one of the first few in zimbabwe, which directly investigated specific lending requirements that commercial banks consider when lending to farmers. the study also uniquely validated the applicability of bank lending models in agricultural lending in zimbabwe. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.628.644 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: chigunhah blessing ropafadzo, svotwa ezekia, munyoro gerald, mabvure tendai joseph and govere ignatius (2020). characterization of bank lending requirements for farmers in zimbabwe. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 628-644. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 628-644 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:blessingmhere@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.628.644 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 629 1. introduction financial resources are the basic ingredients for economic growth, provided that they are not left idle (sulaiman and aluko, 2015). according to ponnala (2016), banks are statutorily vested with the primary responsibility of the financial intermediation function to ensure the availability of funds to all economic agents. in executing this function, bank deposits are converted into loans or credits, which foster capital formation that enhances the economy's productive capacity (afolabi, 1998). omankhanlen (2012) avers that economic activity would not progress smoothly without the continuous flow of money and credit, particularly from the banking system. short, medium, and long term loans advanced as institutional credit to agriculture are recognized as important determinants of private capital formation (joliya et al., 2017). the availability of bank credit in the agricultural sector is also purported to empower farmers to invest in technologies and inputs that are required for enhancing productivity, income and livelihoods, especially in developing countries like zimbabwe (international finance corporation (ifc), 2014; makamure et al., 2001). goeringer and hanson (2013) also propound that bank credit availability is key for enabling the transition of smallholder farmers from subsistence to commercial agriculture. however, lack of access to bank credit by farmers in developing countries is recurrently cited as a major bottleneck to increased productivity (ike and umuedafe, 2013; reserve bank of zimbabwe (rbz, 2016). according to the ifc (2014), only 5% of commercial lending is destined for the agricultural sector in africa, while a quarter of loans advanced south of the sahara originated from a bank (fan et al., 2013). these financial constraints are also prevalent in zimbabwe, an agro-based economy which has approximately 60% of its economically active population self-employed in agriculture (swinkels and chipunza, 2018). farmers lack access to formal bank credit in zimbabwe due to their high dependence on rainfed agriculture, which exposes them to weather risks (united nations, 2014; vitoria et al., 2012). they also lack the immovable and titled collateral demanded by banks since they do not have freehold ownership of their farmland (masiyandima et al., 2011; ministry of agriculture, 2013). besides, the majority of the farmers in zimbabwe, who benefitted from the fast track land reform program (ftlrp) between 1999 and 2010, also lack the skills and passion for farming compared to their predecessors, the former white commercial farmers (richardson, 2005). the government of zimbabwe formulated several policies in response to the financial constraints faced by farmers. such policies include the collateral registry, the 99 year lease agreements, and the ongoing command agriculture program. according to the rbz (2013), a collateral registry is a publicly available database of interests in or ownership of movable assets, which allows borrowers to prove their creditworthiness, and lenders to assess their ranking priority in potential claims against particular collateral. the main purpose of the collateral registry cited by the goz (2017) is to enable commerce, industry and other socio-economic activities by enabling individuals and businesses to utilize their movable property as collateral for credit. movable assets that can be used as collateral include equipment, inventory, accounts receivable, farm products, household items, fixtures, and bank accounts, among others (goz, 2017). however, the registry is yet to be operationalized. the government of zimbabwe has also sought to improve tenure security for the land reform beneficiary farmers to allow them to use their landholdings as collateral for accessing finance (rukuni, 2012). consequently, 99 year lease agreements were drafted. however, the 99 year lease agreement is still perceived as inadequate for banking purposes because it gave all the powers and rights to the state and a few to the farmer. the 99 year lease also segregated against smallholder farmers and is non-transferable to third parties (bhatasara, 2011). the government also introduced the command agriculture program in partnership with the private sector (ministry of finance and economic development, 2017). according to echanove (2017), it asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 630 is a government-mediated contract farming arrangement in which international and domestic capitalists work in alliance with the local banks. in the 2018 budget statement, the ministry of finance and economic development (2017) revealed that the thrust behind command agriculture was on the full, efficient and sustainable utilization of allocated land for increased investment and production. as a result, more than us$2 billion was directed towards the program through treasury bills (shonhe, 2018). however, the main shortfall of the command agriculture program was that it also segregated against the small farmers who are in most need of support in zimbabwe (echanove, 2017). apart from the command agriculture program, the collateral registry and the 99 year lease agreements were solely focused on solving the collateral problem among farmers in zimbabwe. this observation raises concerns over the ability of farmers to access bank credit in the long run even if they manage to have their collateral deficiency problems addressed. in other words, the study argues that policy direction in zimbabwe, which is concentrating on solving the collateral problem alone, is not enough to address the agricultural financing gap in zimbabwe. according to owusu-dankwa and badu (2013), banks screen loans through several lending requirements to analyse borrowers who are likely to default, to add an incentive for the borrower to repay the loan, to offset the cost to the lender of a loan default, and to reduce the lending risk. banks are usually guided by different lending models that provide a checklist of what they have to consider before granting a loan to a borrower. such models include the 5c's of credit (character, capacity, capital, collateral and conditions); the 5p's (person, payment, principal, purpose and protection); the lapp (liquidity, activity, profitability and potential); the campari (character, ability, margin, purpose, amount, repayment and insurance) and financial analysis and past experiences (fape) (abbadi and karsh, 2013). therefore, this study sought to comprehend the extent to which zimbabwean commercial banks consider different lending requirements postulated by theoretical and empirical literature when lending to farmers. 2. materials and methods the study was conducted in harare, zimbabwe, in october 2019. harare is the capital city of zimbabwe, where most of the commercial banks' head offices are located. hence, its selection as the study area. the study was guided by the pragmatism research philosophy and adopted both quantitative and qualitative methods in answering its objectives. qualitative methods were used to support the study's quantitative findings. the study's population was comprised of 13 registered commercial banks in zimbabwe (rbz, 2019). however, only 12 commercial banks are currently operational in the country. therefore, the study's sample was made up of all the 12 operational commercial banks in zimbabwe. an interviewer-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data from bank credit officers from the agribusiness units of the targeted commercial banks. the questionnaire included some open-ended sections where the respondents were allowed to elaborate on the importance of various lending requirements they considered when lending to farmers in zimbabwe. 2.1. quantitative data analysis a 3-point likert scale was used to establish the extent to which commercial banks in zimbabwe considered various lending conditions derived from the campari model and other requirements stated by empirical literature as important requirements for lending. the campari model postulates that banks consider several conditions related to borrower character, ability to run the business, the margin of finance, the purpose of the loan, the amount requested, repayment ability, and insurance before granting loans (rouse, 1989). some factors related to these campari lending requirements were selected for rating by the bank credit officers. the campari lending model was chosen in this study because it is confirmed as one of the common credit evaluation tools used by banks in practice (chepkoech, 2014; ntow-gyamfi and boateng, 2013; nyamutowa asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 631 and masunda, 2013; owusu-dankwa and badu, 2013; seyoum, 2017). microsoft excel was used to assign weights to the lending requirements using the relative importance index (rii). the weighted rii scores were subsequently used to rank the lending requirements in order of importance. the following formula was used in determining the rii: 𝑅𝐼𝐼 = ∑ 𝑊 𝐴 ∗ 𝑁 where, w is the weight assigned by each respondent on a scale of 1 to 3, with 1 implying the least and three the highest. the responses were categorized into ‘always considered (3)’, ‘sometimes considered (2)’ and ‘never considered (1)’ responses. a is the highest weight, while n is the total number in the sample. five important levels were transformed from the rii values: high (0.80 to 1) (h); high-medium (0.60 to 0.79) (h-m); medium (0.40 to 0.59) (m); medium-low (0.20 to 0.39) (m-l); and low (0 to 0.19) (l) (rooshdi et al., 2018). the rii was used by previous studies in the construction industry (davoodi and dagli, 2019; rooshdi et al., 2018; somiah et al., 2015). according to davoodi and dagli (2019), the rii is applicable in instances when the researcher is interested in extracting or determining major important factors from a population. therefore, rii was chosen in this study because it allowed the identification of the most important lending requirements based on the commercial bank credit officers' responses. the rii is also regarded as a suitable tool to prioritize indicators rated on likert scales (rooshdi et al., 2018). results were presented on a table. the cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to authenticate the questionnaire's reliability using spss. according to hair et al. (2006), this scale measurement tool is used to determine the internal consistency factor within and among study variables. if a study attains a score that is above 0.70, it is deemed reliable. the questionnaire scored a cronbach's alpha co-efficient of 0.72, which meant that it was reliable. 2.2. qualitative data analysis the bank credit officers' verbal responses were analysed by the nvivo software using thematic analysis. the results were mainly presented through word trees. 3. results and discussion out of the targeted 12 commercial banks, eight took part in the study. therefore, a 67% response rate was achieved. 3.1. high importance of lending requirements all the eight commercial banks that participated in the study always considered credit history; business registration documents; irrigation facilities; a clear and supported loan purpose; and a clear and adequate repayment source in assessing agricultural loan applications by farmers in zimbabwe (table 2). these factors received the highest scores on the 3-point likert scale from all the commercial banks, and consequently attained the highest rii rank of 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 632 table 1: ranking of lending requirements by commercial banks in zimbabwe lending requirement relative importance index (rii) importance level credit history 1 h business registration documents 1 h productive farm assets 1 h clear and supported loan purpose 1 h clear and adequate repayment source 1 h loan amount 1 h agricultural production experience, qualifications, and skills 0.96 h project insurance 0.96 h financial statements 0.92 h business plan 0.88 h guarantor 0.88 h social reputation 0.83 h economically active age 0.83 h agricultural extension support 0.79 h-m business management qualifications, skills, and experience 0.79 h-m bank account ownership 0.79 h-m own contribution to the loan amount requested 0.71 h-m personal savings with a bank 0.67 h-m formal basic education 0.54 m alternative income 0.54 m freehold land ownership 0.54 m source: primary data (2019) key to table 1 high (h) importance (0.80 1) high-medium (h-m) importance (0.60 0.79) medium (m) importance (0.40 0.59) medium-low (m-l) importance (0.20 0.49) low (l) importance (0 0.19) 3.2. credit history a good and flawless history of honouring past loan obligations was a key requirement for advancing credit to farmers in all the commercial banks that participated in the study. the consideration of a farmer's credit history attained a perfect rii score of 1 (table 2). commercial bank 4 (cb4) specified that looking into the potential borrower's credit history was part of its compulsory character checks. cb5 also stated that "we do not lend to anyone with an outstanding loan within or outside the bank". according to cb8, it made use of the credit registry and the financial clearing bureau (fcb) platforms within the formal banking system to determine the farmers' credit history in terms of how they honoured their past loan obligations and to also ascertain their gearing levels in terms of current debt obligations. in support of these findings, gebremedhin (2010) avers that a good and outstanding past loan repayment history is the first and probably the most important requirement for a successful loan. feschijan (2008) also confirms that the process of establishing client reputation is long and revolves around the use of information relating to the payment of previous loans. ijioma and osondu (2015) discovered that if farmers repaid borrowed funds timeously without default, lenders would become willing to release more asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 633 loans to them. it also validates the applicability of the character component of the campari lending model in zimbabwean commercial banks. 3.3. business registration documents business registration documents as a lending requirement received another highest rii score of 1, after attaining perfect scores from all the commercial banks that participated in the study (table 1). according to all the bank credit officers, business registration documents portrayed the legitimacy of the agricultural business entity, and also positively contributed to the character profile of the farmer. cb1 expounded that the verification of a farmers' business registration documents like the current tax clearance certificates enabled the bank to enforce tax compliance issues within the agricultural sector. on the other hand, cb4 reiterated in its interview that this lending requirement was an essential part of the know your customer (kyc) standards that are key in bank lending. the bank credit officer from cb5 specifically said, "an agricultural enterprise must be a registered company with a company account because we strictly offer corporate lending…tax clearance is a condition for loan access". cb8 also indicated that it only financed registered companies that could produce documents like the cr6, cr14, and tax clearance along with its credit application. in the case of south africa, mayowa (2015) concluded that a registered business was one of the key requirements set by the land bank in its lending programs to smallholder farmers and that credit access increased with the smallholder farmers registering their farms. these findings also validate further the applicability of the campari model in local commercial banks. 3.4. productive farm assets all the commercial banks always considered the presence of productive farm assets in their credit evaluation processes because productive farm assets enhance the production capacity, income and loan repayment ability of the farmer. the requirement also scored the highest rii score of 1 (table 1). all the banks specifically emphasized the need for irrigation facilities on the farm. cb1's bank credit officer underlined that the bank no longer financed dryland farming and that irrigation was mandatory for a farmer who wished to receive an agricultural production bank loan (figure 1). similarly, cb5's bank credit officer declared that they did not finance dryland farming and that this had been adopted as a bank policy (figure 1). cb8 also revealed that its key condition for advancing a loan to an agricultural enterprise was that 70% of its crop had to be under irrigation. however, cb1 stressed that it was selective on the type of physical assets that a farmer had because most farms owned movables that were not valuable and did not provide recoverability. cb1 went on to declare that the only movable asset that stored value on a farm was the center pivot (irrigation equipment), which had a 25-30-year lifespan. figure 1: word tree output for the word "irrigation" source: primary data, 2019 these findings confirm claims that zimbabwean banks are now reluctant to fund local farmers due to the recurring el-nino induced droughts in the country and their high dependence on rainfed agriculture, which all negatively affect their production, income and loan repayment ability (united nations, 2014; vitoria et al., 2012). similarly, samuel et al. (2015) discovered that lenders perceived farmers with irrigation facilities as capable of timeously repaying their loans because they had less risk of loss from rainfall fluctuations in dharwad district of karnataka in india. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 634 credit access in the land bank of south africa was also discovered to be higher among farmers who had irrigation sources in their farms (mayowa, 2015). several studies from different countries have also demonstrated that farm assets enhance access to bank credit for farmers by fulfilling the collateral requirements by banks. moreover, the requirement for farm assets by banks was centered on the fact that they enhanced productive farm capacity. such studies that established higher credit access among farmers who had the required productive assets by banks include mayowa (2015) (south africa) and njogu et al. (2018) (kenya). however, wulandari et al. (2017) discovered that collateral assets owned by farmers were a less important requirement to obtain finance in indonesia. these findings have shown the banks' emphasis on farm viability to ensure enhanced ability to repay loans, and also the collateral role that farm assets can play. it validates the application of the ability, repayment and insurance requirements of the campari lending model in local banks. 3.5. clear and supported loan purpose a clear and supported loan purpose was also mandatory in all commercial banks under study. the requirement also attained a perfect rii score of 1 (table 1). according to all the bank credit officers, local farmers were compelled to disclose loan purposes that were legally acceptable in zimbabwe. abbadi and karsh (2013) confirm that a potential borrower is obligated to define the purpose of the loan to enable the lender to ascertain the acceptability of the project and the riskiness of the loan. seyoum's (2017) study of ethiopian private banks similarly established that 90% of bank employees agreed that the purpose of the loan had to be checked before releasing funds to a prospective borrower. it also confirms the applicability of the campari lending model in zimbabwean commercial banks. 3.6. clear and adequate repayment source a clear and adequate repayment source of the loan being sought by a farmer was also always considered by all the commercial banks in their agricultural credit evaluation processes in this study. the lending requirement scored a high rii of 1 (table 1). seyoum's (2017) study mentioned above again discovered that 93.3% of bank employees agreed that checking the repayment potential of a loan could help the bank to recover its loans successfully. it is also confirmed that the lender is obliged to establish the degree of certainty that the promised funds will be received through the analysis of income and cash flow projections, to ensure that there are surplus funds to cover repayment after meeting other commitments (feschijan, 2008; seyoum, 2017). feschijan's (2008) study of bulgarian banks also confirms that banks check if the potential borrower's source of repayment is clear and if there is a secondary source of repayment available in case of failure. repayment is another component that is regarded as important by the campari model, which further validates its application in local banks. 3.7. loan amount a farmer was also obligated to determine the loan amount required for an agricultural project according to the study's findings. this lending requirement also scored a perfect rii of 1 (table 1). the bank credit officers emphasized that the loan amount had to match the project financing needs of the farming enterprise, and also fall within the farmer's qualifying loan amount limit. seyoum (2017) confirms that a bank considers whether the customer is asking too much or too little because there are dangers in both, which calls for banks to establish if the amount requested is correct, adequately accommodating incidental expenses and other contingencies. in support of these findings, feschijan (2008) also avers that credit insufficiency or excess leads to the lowering of profitability of the credited undertaking, and may have several unfavorable effects on the financial situation of the borrower and his/ her capacity to service the debt by the negotiated terms. therefore, the accumulation of information on the amount and aim of the requested loan by banks plays an important role in monitoring if the amount corresponds to the real financial needs of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 635 loan applicant (feschijan, 2008). these findings also confirm that all commercial banks apply the amount component of the campari model in zimbabwe. 3.8. agricultural production qualifications, skills and experience the requirement for agricultural production qualifications, skills and experience scored a high rii of 0.96 (table 1). a total of 7 out of the eight banks that participated in the study always considered this requirement in assessing agricultural production loan applications by farmers, while only one bank sometimes considered it. figure 2 below shows what the banks said regarding the requirement for agricultural production skills within a farming enterprise. figure 2: word tree output for the word "skills" source: primary data, 2019 cb3 expounded that the farmers or their management team were supposed to have skills, qualifications and experience in agricultural production to be able to qualify for agricultural production loans. tetteh (2011) confirms that the background and experience of individuals or businesses are perceived indicators of the potential for success, hence their inclusion as an important lending requirement. according to seyoum (2017), the spread of skill and experience in the area where funding is sought among the management team is also considered in ascertaining borrower ability, as well as their relevant professional qualifications and their commitment to making the company successful. a study by odu et al. (2010) in the niger state of nigeria also discovered that farmer experience was advantageous in the securing of formal credit facilities because it acted as a guarantee that the project would succeed. the emphasis on farm viability based on the production skills of the management in the majority of the commercial banks also validates the applicability of the campari model in zimbabwean commercial banks. 3.9. insurance the need for agricultural project insurance also scored a high rii of 0.96 (table 1). according to the bank credit officers, insurance acted as a cushion to the bank, which safeguarded it from loss in case of unforeseen events like theft and market price fluctuations, as well as natural disasters like droughts, floods and hailstorms. all of the banks indicated that insured agricultural projects were a must for a farmer to receive financing in zimbabwe. these results coincide with claims by tsikirayi et al. (2013). they aver that after the ftlrp, there was a decline in farming knowledge, insurance, management skills, experience, capacity and property ownership among the new breed of farmers compared to the previous owners, which resulted in elevated risk levels in the agricultural sector. this may serve to explain why most banks are strict on the financing of insured agricultural projects only. mishra et al. (2017) in ghana also confirm that agricultural insurance guarantees full loan repayment during drought spells, allowing lenders to expand credit access even to the marginalized smallholder farmers. it also confirms the applicability of the campari model in zimbabwean commercial banks. 3.10. financial statements and business plan the requirement for financial statements of the agricultural enterprise also scored a high rii of 0.92 (table 1). six out of the eight commercial banks revealed that they always considered the requirement for a farm's financial statements in their evaluations of agricultural loan applications. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 636 at the same time, the remaining two said that they sometimes required financial statements from farmers seeking loans. closely related to this lending requirement was the need for a farmer to present a business plan, which scored another high but lower rii score of 0.88 (table 1). six commercial banks also revealed that they always required a business plan for a farming project that seeks funding. however, one commercial bank indicated that it sometimes considered the condition, while the remaining one bank never considered it. the banks revealed that historical financial statements and business plans enabled them to assess the project's viability, from which they could make sound lending decisions with certainty that their advanced loans would be paid back. cb8 stated that it always needed a letter of financing request, which is essentially a business plan. supporting the banks' need for financial statements and business plans from potential borrowers, seyoum (2017) avers that the analysis of income and cash flow projections by the bank ensures that there are surplus funds in the potential borrower's project to cover repayment after meeting other commitments. in support of these findings, sebatta et al. (2014) 's study in zambia also revealed that farmers who were able to make informed decisions concerning the amount needed to undertake particular projects through making business plans, or budgets had better access to bank credit. according to the study, their better access to bank credit was premised on the fact that loan granting institutions usually needed such documents before issuing out loans. goeringer and hanson (2013) also aver that one document required by banks that demonstrates the business' ability to generate adequate cash is the business plan because it contains financial statements like projected cash flow statements and balance sheets that show the financial standing of an enterprise. the business plan is also purported to enable lending institutions to establish if the potential borrower has a basic understanding of the industry and the business, which may also suggest their ability to successfully manage the business (goeringer and hanson, 2013). therefore, the requirement for these documents by local commercial banks to verify the ability of the farmer to repay the loan also validate the applicability of the campari model in agricultural lending in zimbabwe. 3.11. guarantor this study also established that local commercial banks required guarantors for agricultural loans granted to farmers in zimbabwe. this lending condition also scored a high rii of 0.88, as shown in table 1 above. five out of the eight commercial banks that participated in the study always required guarantors, while the remaining three sometimes required them when lending to farmers. cb1 stated that "third party guarantors are considered subject to gearing checks and due diligence." cb7, on the other hand, indicated that it opted for co/ peer guaranteeing of farmers under communal irrigation setups, in which no new loans were granted until every farmer had honored his/her outstanding loan obligations. otieno (2013) confirms that guarantees are a part of considerations that determine the acceptance or rejection of any loan, and have been one of the most popular credit risk reduction strategies by banks. another nigerian study by ololade and olagunju (2013) in the oyo state of nigeria also revealed that the availability of a guarantor positively affected the farmers' access to bank credit. abdul-jalil (2015) 's study in ghana similarly revealed that farmers with guarantors had a higher likelihood of accessing higher loan amounts of credit from formal sources. guarantors are part of the insurance aspect of the campari model, and its requirement in the majority of the banks also validates the applicability of the model in zimbabwe. 3.12. social reputation five out of the eight commercial banks always considered the farmer's social reputation, whereas two sometimes considered it. however, only one bank highlighted that it never considered the farmers' social reputation in the evaluation of their agricultural loan applications. the borrowing condition consequently scored another high rii of 0.83 (table 1). the banks which considered a farmer's social reputation before granting a loan clarified that a farmer's conduct in a society formed part of their verification of borrower character. safi and lin (2014) similarly assert that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 637 character is concerned with reputation, which is the opinion about an entity resulting from social evaluation. according to gebremedhin (2010), in ascertaining borrower character, lenders need to know the personal reputation of the borrowers and their attitude towards financial obligations. this lending requirement, which is directly linked to the character of the borrower, also confirms the application of the campari model in local commercial banks. 3.13. age age also scored a high rii of 0.83 (table 1). five commercial banks always considered it, while two banks sometimes considered it in assessing agricultural loan applications. however, only one bank never considered age in its assessment of farmer loan applications. figure 3: word tree output for the word ‘age’ source: primary data, 2019 cb2 revealed that it accepted farmers ages between 25 to 80 years, while cb7 expressed no desire to deal with farmers beyond the age of 65 favouring a mature 25-50-year range (figure 3). cb4 did not specify its preferred age group but highlighted that old age was a barrier to credit access among prospective farmer borrowers. on the other hand, cb8 underlined that if an old farmer makes a credit application, he/she should at least furnish the bank with a convincing succession plan. empirical evidence from ethiopia availed by mukasa et al. (2017) equally established that older loan applicants were perceived as most likely to default than younger ones because of their higher risk of premature death and other recurring age-related health complications that could considerably undermine their ability to generate revenues for repaying credit. age falls under the ability and repayment component of the campari model. its requirement by the majority of the commercial banks in zimbabwe also validates the applicability of the campari model in agricultural lending in the country. 3.14. high to medium importance requirements lending requirements whose rii fell within the high to medium importance range included agricultural extension support, business management qualifications, skills and experience, bank account ownership, own contribution to the loan requested and personal savings with a bank. these lending requirements are discussed in detail below. 3.15. extension support the lending requirement for agricultural extension support in the farm seeking a loan was always considered by exactly half (4) of the commercial banks, sometimes considered by three and never considered by 1. the lending requirement scored an rii of 0.79, which fell within the high to medium importance category (table 1). according to the banks that always considered this condition in agricultural lending, extension support enhanced the farmers' knowledge of agricultural production, which helped them to enhance their yield, income and loan repayment asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 638 ability. it is supported by djoumessi et al. (2018) 's study in cameroon, where banks preferred farmers with higher extension contact to those who had less frequent extension contact. tetteh et al. (2015) and kiplimo (2015) 's studies in northern ghana and kenya respectively also established higher credit access among farmers who received agricultural extension services. cb8, which sometimes considered extension support when lending to farmers, highlighted that it was only strict about the lending requirement in value chain financing (vcf), especially for export markets production where strict specifications like product weight, moisture content or organic products had to be met. 3.16. business management qualifications, skills and experience the requirement for a farmer to have business management skills, qualifications and experience also scored an rii of 0.79 (table 1). similar to extension contact, 4 out of the eight commercial banks always considered them when lending to farmers, while three banks sometimes considered them. however, only one bank never considered business management qualifications, skills, and experience it in its evaluation of farmer loan applications. figure 4: word tree output for business management skills source: primary data, 2019 cb4 indicated that business management skills were mandatory, and in their absence, a farmer could fill the gap by hiring technically competent employees. cb5 equally highlighted that the farmers' business management skills were not always considered if there was evidence that their farming enterprises were well run (figure 4). tetteh (2011) confirms that banks look at the evidence of financial understanding and aptitude in managing financial affairs of the business in potential borrowers. according to feschijan (2008), the banks' believe that borrower profitability is highly dependent on the management and staff qualifications, professional qualities and competence. hence its inclusion as a crucial lending requirement as confirmed by this study. 3.17. bank account ownership four banks always considered bank account ownership with the bank from where the farmer is seeking bank credit, sometimes considered by three, and never considered by 1. this lending condition scored an rii score of 0.79, which also fell within the high to medium category (table 1). cb1 stressed that bank account ownership by a prospective borrower was a must, which prompted the need for account opening. however, other commercial banks that sometimes or never considered account ownership by a farmer highlighted that the prospective borrower could always be requested to open an account at the point of contact with the bank. the importance of owning a bank account by a farmer is articulated in the study of mohamed and temu (2008), which established that it positively influenced farming households' access to bank credit in zanzibar. seyoum (2017) also confirms that account opening procedures are done to establish that the customer is honest and trustworthy, especially if the customer wishes to borrow at a later stage. according to feschijan (2008), the analysis of movements in the bank accounts of a prospective borrower also furnishes the bank with valuable information about the financial state of the loan applicants, which is also crucial in the making of a lending decision. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 639 3.18. own contribution to the loan amount requested the farmer's contribution to the loan amount requested was ranked in the medium to a high category with an rii score of 0.71 (table 1). only three banks always considered this requirement, sometimes considered by three banks and never considered by two banks. cb6, one of the banks that always considered own contribution as a lending requirement, implored farmers to have some equity to the loan amount they are seeking before approaching the bank. they were encouraged to seek part of the funding, for example, 60%. on the other hand, cb4, which never considered this lending requirement, highlighted that it only requested a farmer's contribution to the loan amount requested under asset financing facilities. despite not demanding its own contribution to the loan amount requested by the farmer, cb3 highlighted that the owner's equity in the transaction came in the form of the crop in the field if the farmer approached the bank for other loans like asset financing facilities. goeringer and hanson (2013) confirm that banks usually dictate their clients to contribute a certain margin as a borrowing commitment because they seldom grant 100% financing. confirming the need for a borrower's contribution to asset financing loans as shown by this study, abbadi and karsh (2013) underlined that a potential borrower is obliged to pay a certain percentage of the value of the asset that needs to be financed, which they claimed to show that the potential borrower had a high level of seriousness and commitment to the project by willing to share the risk with the lending institution. this requirement falls within the margin component of the campari model, which also validates its applicability in zimbabwean commercial banks. 3.19. personal savings with bank personal savings with a bank scored the lowest rii score of 0.67 in the high to medium category (table 1). only three banks always considered savings as a lending condition for farmers, while two sometimes considered it. however, three banks never considered the personal savings of the farmer in the bank as a lending requirement. banks that always considered this lending requirement highlighted that personal savings and deposits into the farmer's bank account provided evidence that the farmer could generate enough income from his/her farming enterprise, which therefore guided them in making lending decisions. sebatta et al. (2014) confirms that personal and voluntary savings with a bank positively affect the loan amounts that farmers accessed from banks in the case of zambia. the banks that sometimes considered this lending requirement only highlighted that it was difficult to use personal savings as a measure of creditworthiness in zimbabwe, where most individuals and corporates lack confidence in the formal banking system but opt for alternative saving options like physical assets. moreover, the availability of alternative payment systems that have been more efficient than bank accounts like ecocash and one money have negatively affected the amount of savings channeled into the banking system. hence, the use of personal savings with a bank as a criterion for judging a potential borrower's creditworthiness could segregate against other potentially good borrowers who may be making meaningful alternative savings or making use of alternative transacting platforms. 3.20. medium importance requirements three lending conditions, namely formal basic education, alternative income, and freehold land ownership, scored lower riis, which fell within the medium importance category as discussed further below. 3.20.1. formal basic education the lending requirement for a farmer with formal basic education scored a low rii of 0.54 (table 1). only one bank (cb4) always considered farmer education because educated farmers understood better the conditions and other requirements of their contracts, and were therefore in a better position to honor their loan obligations. this is confirmed by ijioma and osondu (2015) in the case of nigeria that educated farmers' better understanding of loan contracts, better tendencies of loan management and their adoption of new productivity-enhancing technologies improved their repayment potential. also, education was perceived by lenders as a signal that prospective borrowers were financially mature, creditworthy, and capable of better credit management in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 640 mukasa et al. (2017) 's study in ethiopia. three banks sometimes considered farmer education, while an additional four never considered this lending condition. most of these banks highlighted that the farmer's education was not an issue, but the farm's management team had to be educated to some extent. however, more emphasis was placed on their agricultural production qualifications and skills instead of their formal education qualifications. 3.20.2. alternative employment the need for a farmer to have alternative employment scored another low rii of 0.54, which also fell within the medium importance category (table 1). only one bank (cb7) always considered the farmers' alternative employment because it guaranteed the repayment of the loan in case of the agricultural project's failure. cb1, which sometimes considered this lending requirement, stated that "a diversified portfolio of income is not a key requirement, but an advantage for gaining credit access". this validates reports that loans in zimbabwe are easily accessed by individuals who have proof of alternative employment like payslips because they are perceived as less risky by banks (facasi, 2015). on the other hand, three banks sometimes considered this lending requirement, whereas the other three never considered it in lending to farmers. expounding why it never considered alternative farmer employment in granting loans, cb1 underscored that a full-time farmer was preferable than the one involved in other activities off the farm because the presence of a full-time farmer on the ground at all times helps in reducing theft risk. the bank also argued that a full-time farmer results in better management of the farm. 3.20.3. freehold land ownership the requirement for farm title deeds or freehold land ownership also scored a low rii of 0.54 in the medium importance category (table 1). only one bank (cb2) emphasized that it required farm title deeds to extend bank credit to a farmer, while three banks sometimes considered them, and four never considered them altogether. some of the banks highlighted that where there was solid proof of project viability, they accepted the 99-year lease document and also adopted cashflow based instead of collateral-based lending. these results were quite unexpected to the researcher, who expected freehold land ownership to be the key lending requirement in local banks in light of the available literature, which propounds that most farmers are denied credit access by local banks because they are required to produce farm title deeds, which they do not have because the state wholly owns their land (masiyandima et al., 2011; ministry of agriculture, 2013; richardson, 2005; vitoria et al., 2012). three banks (cb1; cb3 and cb4) went on to highlight that even if they practiced more of cash flow based lending, every loan in primary agriculture had to be backed by off-farm titled collateral in light of the lack of land titles among land reform beneficiaries in zimbabwe (figure 5). therefore, based on these findings, this study infers that as long as the farmers who benefitted untitled land under the ftlrp do not have titled property off the farm to pledge as collateral, then their chances of accessing bank credit in zimbabwe are very slim. these findings are also corroborated by several studies which claim that local banks are reluctant to lend to farmers under the current land tenure system of user rights, but instead demand upfront immovable and titled property (masiyandima et al., 2011; nyamutowa and masunda, 2013; richardson, 2005; vitoria et al., 2012). figure 5: word tree output for the word collateral source: primary data, 2019 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 628-644 641 4. conclusion and recommendations commercial banks in zimbabwe consider multiple requirements for assessing agricultural loan applications. credit history, registered business, irrigation, loan purpose and repayment source are their major considerations for lending to farmers in zimbabwe. therefore, the government of zimbabwe should not only focus on solving the collateral problem, but also other lending requirements by banks. farmers are encouraged to treat their farming enterprises as businesses, pursue training in production and management, maintain a clean credit history and invest in offfarm collateral assets. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that there is no competing interest. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abbadi, s. m., & karsh, s. m. a. 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(2017). access to finance from different finance provider types: farmer knowledge of the requirements. plos one, 12(9), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179285. https://doi.org/10.4236/jbcpr.2015.33012 https://www.cfuzim.org/~cfuzimb/images/wburban.pdf https://doi.org/10.5897/ajar2015.9536 http://dspace.knust.edu.gh/bitstream/123456789/4323/1/ethel/naa/nueki/tetteh.pdf https://doi.org/http:/dx.doi.org/10.1093/ehjci/jev278 http://www.finmark.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/rep_status-of-rafin_zim.pdf http://www.finmark.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/rep_status-of-rafin_zim.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179285 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 87 nutritional value of edible russula griseocarnosa in vietnam chung nhu anha,b nguyen minh chic bernard dellc,d avietnamese academy of forest sciences, hanoi 11910, vietnam. btay nguyen university, buon ma thuot city, dak lak 63000, vietnam. cforest protection research centre, vietnamese academy of forest sciences, hanoi 11910, vietnam. dagriculture and forest sciences, murdoch university, murdoch 6150, australia.  nguyenminhchi@vafs.gov.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 20 may 2024 revised: 18 july 2024 accepted: 5 august 2024 published: 27 august 2024 keywords edible mushroom mycorrhiza nutrient russula griseocarnosa vietnam wild edible mushroom. this study examines the nutritional value of edible russula griseocarnosa in vietnam. russula griseocarnosa is a popular edible wild mushroom in northern vietnam, where it is consumed locally or exported to china. future market development and increased trade in russula griseocarnosa require information on the composition and quality of mushrooms being harvested from the wild. as the nutritional value of this mushroom has not been documented, mushrooms were collected from secondary forests in bac giang and cao bang provinces, and primary forests in quang ninh province for determining the proximate and mineral contents. we dried the mushrooms and sequentially measured the proximate content using standard protocols. for mineral content, the mushroom powder was acid digested and analysed by atomic absorption spectrometry. the study found that russula griseocarnosa in vietnam contained 18-29% protein, 57-68% carbohydrate, 8.7-13.7% crude fiber, 0.8-2.1% crude fat, and 0.9-1.1% ash, and has high mineral content (mg/kg dry weight) of k (19,836-24,966), p (2,631-3,335), ca (573-1,530), mg (350-636), fe (143-836), zn (60-93), and cu (31-42). the data in this study can be used in establishing official product brands of russula griseocarnosa, which could improve the livelihood of local people who are dependent on nonwood forest products. further studies should explore the market chain and mushroom product opportunities, the livelihood of rural households, and the sustainability of harvesting wild mushrooms. contribution/originality: whilst some data are available on the nutrient content of russula griseocarnosa in china, there is no information on russula griseocarnosa collected in forests in vietnam. the research gap filled by this paper will assist in developing the market chain and mushroom product opportunities of this wild edible mushroom in vietnam. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i3.5162 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: anh, c. n., chi, n. m., & dell, b. (2024). nutritional value of edible russula griseocarnosa in vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3), 87–94. 10.55493/5005.v14i3.5162 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction many species of the genus russula are edible mushrooms with delicious flavor and rich in nutrients (ijioma blessing, ihediohanma ngozi, onuegbu ngozi, & okafor damaris, 2015; kaewgrajang, kaewjunsri, jannual, & nipitwattanaphon, 2020; nadjombé et al., 2022; sanmee, dell, lumyong, izumori, & lumyong, 2003). therefore, indigenous people of asia and africa have widely collected them from the wild (atri, sharma, kumar, & mridu, 2019; sanmee et al., 2003; shiyan, tianyan, bin, fuchang, & xiaohua, 1998; srikram & supapvanich, 2016). some species have been used as staple foods for indigenous peoples, such as r. alboareolata, r. cyanoxantha, r. lepida, r. virescens, and asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 3 (2024): 87-94. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7843-8647 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2345-2398 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8623-6425 mailto:nguyenminhchi@vafs.gov.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 87-94 88 r. xerampelina in thailand (sanmee et al., 2003; srikram & supapvanich, 2016), r. congoana in india (verma, pandro, mishra, raj, & asaiya, 2019) and russula spp. in angola (kissanga et al., 2022). the chemical composition of a number of russula species has been quantified. ouzouni, petridis, koller, and riganakos (2009) found that dried r. delica contained 26.1% protein, 2.4% fat, 63.9% carbohydrates and 5.6% ash. similarly, r. alboareolata, r. cyanoxantha, r. emetica, and r. virescens comprised 29.5-49.2% protein, 3.9-12.5% fat, 27.432.2% crude fiber, 9.6-27.1% carbohydrate, and 2.6-10.9% ash (srikram & supapvanich, 2016). furthermore, r. delica contains a number of omega-3 fatty acids (kalač, 2009). russula griseocarnosa harvested in china is reported to contain many nutrients and useful phytochemicals (chen, xia, zhou, & qiu, 2010), polysaccharides (liu, zhang, & meng, 2018), and some amino acids (ming, li, huo, wei, & chen, 2014). people are not only using russula griseocarnosa for food but also exploring its medicinal properties. several substances extracted from russula griseocarnosa have demonstrated inhibitory effects on cancer cells (liu et al., 2018; yuan et al., 2017). russula griseocarnosa naturally occurs in secondary and primary forest stands in northern vietnam (anh et al., 2023), and in southern china (wang, yang, li, knudsen, & liu, 2009). this species is commonly used as food by local people in vietnam (anh et al., 2023; chi, 2022) and it is also being traded in the region (chi, 2022). however, there are no data on the nutritional composition of this wild edible mushroom in vietnam. this study aims to fill this gap by analyzing the proximate and mineral composition of russula griseocarnosa in vietnam. 2. material and methodology 2.1. mushroom materials in may 2022, mushrooms were sought in secondary forests in bac giang, cao bang, and primary forests in quang ninh provinces, vietnam (table 1; figure 1) at sites where local people collected. anh et al. (2023) identified quang ninh province as having the highest density of russula griseocarnosa in vietnam, and this province has the largest market for this species (chi, 2022). therefore, we collected 80% of the mushroom samples in this study in quang ninh. at each forest site, ovoid or unopened fruiting bodies were randomly harvested, and the bulk collection was divided into 4 samples, each approximately 150 g fresh weight. the fruiting bodies were wrapped in tissue paper, placed in paper bags over ice in a cool container (atalay & erge, 2021), and transported to the food analysis laboratory at the national food analysis and inspection center, hanoi. we used a soft brush to clean the mushrooms of soil and humus without washing them. the base of the stalk plus mycelium with soil was removed using a sharp knife. the mushrooms were dried at 55 °c for 24 hours, and then crushed in a mortar and pestle to produce a fine powder. all 40 samples were used for chemical analysis. table 1. field data of russula griseocarnosa fruiting bodies collected in northeast vietnam for proximate and mineral analysis. sample location (ward, district, province) geographical coordinates altitude (m) forest type host tree bg1 nghia phuong, luc nam, bac giang 21°15'32.2"n 106°27'42.2"e 295 secondary forest engelhardia roxburghiana cb2 doai duong, trung khanh, cao bang 22°46'00.8"n 106°29'57.1"e 468 secondary forest engelhardia roxburghiana qn7 ha lau, tien yen, quang ninh 21°25'12.2"n 107°18'21.7"e 106 primary forest engelhardia roxburghiana qn8 ha lau, tien yen, quang ninh 21°25'32.0"n 107°18'08.5"e 98 primary forest lithocarpus ducampii qn11 thanh son, ba che, quang ninh 21°17'47.7"n 107°14'28.6"e 213 primary forest lithocarpus dealbatus qn19 thanh son, ba che, quang ninh 21°18'04.1"n 107°14'47.5"e 239 primary forest engelhardia roxburghiana qn20 ky thuong, ha long, quang ninh 21°11'06.4"n 107°07'06.5"e 405 primary forest castanopsis tonkinensis qn22 ky thuong, ha long, quang ninh 21°10'48.7"n 107°08'44.1"e 437 primary forest engelhardia roxburghiana qn29 vo ngai, binh lieu, quang ninh 21°32'29.7"n 107°20'37.3"e 361 primary forest castanopsis cerebrina qn50 vo ngai, binh lieu, quang ninh 21°30'36.6"n 107°20'51.8"e 299 primary forest engelhardia roxburghiana asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 87-94 89 figure 1. location of the russula griseocarnosa samples that were collected in northeast vietnam. 2.2. methods 2.2.1. ash, crude protein, crude fat, crude fiber, and carbohydrate aliquots of the dried fungal powder were taken, and the proximate components were sequentially measured using standard protocols (aoac, 2000). briefly, the methods were as follows: crude nitrogen; crude fat by soxhlet extraction in petroleum ether; crude fiber using 1.25% h2so4 and 1.25% naoh; and ash by combustion. the carbohydrate content was calculated as the difference between 100% and the combined percentages of crude protein + ash + fat + crude fiber. a conversion factor of 4.38 was used for crude protein as fungi contain non-protein nitrogen (kalač, 2009). the results were expressed as % dry weight. 2.2.2. mineral elements aliquots wet digested (hno3 + h2so4 + h2o2) (aoac, 2000) and the concentrations of ca, cu, fe, k, mg, mn, na, p and zn were determined by atomic absorption spectrometry (perkinelmer aanalyst™ 700, waltham, ma, usa), using a deuterium background correction. 2.2.3. data analysis all samples were analyzed in triplicate. data analysis was carried out using the genstat release 12.1 software package (vsn international ltd., hemel hempstead, uk). data for the chemical composition of mushrooms were examined using the kolmogorov-smirnov test and then subjected to one-way analysis of variance (anova), followed by duncan’s multiple range test (p<0.05) for comparison of means. 3. results and discussion 3.1. proximate composition of russula griseocarnosa the russula griseocarnosa collected from forests in northern vietnam contained 57.4-68.4% carbohydrate, 18.329.0% crude protein, 8.7-13.7% crude fiber, 0.8-2.1% crude fat, and 0.9-1.1% ash (table 2). the mushrooms from quang ninh province had more protein (23.2-29.0%) than those in bac giang and cao bang provinces (18.3-20.2%). also, mushrooms from bac giang had the highest fat (2.1%) and carbohydrate (68.4%) concentrations (table 2). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 87-94 90 table 2. proximatse composition (% dry weight) of edible russula griseocarnosa and comparison with other other edible russula species in the region. species sample* protein fat ash fiber carbohydrate source russula griseocarnosa bg1 18.3±0.17 2.05±0.03 1.01±0.01 10.2±0.18 68.4±0.31 this study russula griseocarnosa cb2 20.2±0.20 1.45±0.02 1.03±0.01 10.9±0.16 66.5±0.33 this study russula griseocarnosa qn7 29.0±0.25 1.36±0.01 1.06±0.02 8.7±0.10 59.9±0.15 this study russula griseocarnosa qn8 24.5±0.21 1.47±0.02 0.98±0.01 11.4±0.13 61.6±0.26 this study russula griseocarnosa qn11 23.3±0.19 1.63±0.03 1.00±0.01 12.3±0.11 61.8±0.19 this study russula griseocarnosa qn19 23.3±0.16 1.48±0.01 1.00±0.03 10.4±0.10 63.9±0.22 this study russula griseocarnosa qn20 26.5±0.24 1.38±0.01 1.00±0.01 10.0±0.09 61.1±0.30 this study russula griseocarnosa qn22 25.2±0.21 0.80±0.01 0.89±0.02 13.4±0.17 61.1±0.14 this study russula griseocarnosa qn29 23.3±0.22 1.68±0.03 0.96±0.01 11.9±0.12 62.1±0.29 this study russula griseocarnosa qn50 26.6±0.23 1.36±0.02 0.97±0.02 13.7±0.15 57.4±0.27 this study mean 24.01 1.46 0.99 11.29 62.38 p < 0.001 < 0.001 0.06 < 0.001 0.005 russula alatoreticula na 31.6 3.5 16.4 na 63.6 khatua, sen gupta, ghosh, tripathi, and acharya (2021) russula alboareolata na 21.2 9.5 17.6 10.1 41.6 sanmee et al. (2003) russula brevipes na 30.2 5.1 9.1 46.3 66.5 shahid, fatima, anjum, and riaz (2020) russula lepida na 18.3 5.6 7.6 8.4 60.1 sanmee et al. (2003) russula lepida na 12.1 0.3 0.2 1.2 34.2 sharma and gautam (2015) russula mairei na 11.0 0.2 0.1 1.4 36.4 sharma and gautam (2015) russula nigricans na 22.6 4.8 6.7 9.6 56.3 sanmee et al. (2003) russula nobilis na 25.5 2.8 2.1 44.1 82.5 shahid et al. (2020) russula griseocarnosa na 32.3 7.2 7.8 8.85 48.1 chen et al. (2010) russula virescens na 20.0 4.3 11.3 9.7 54.7 sanmee et al. (2003) russula xerampelina na 22.4 4.5 6.7 10.4 55.8 sanmee et al. (2003) note: *data are expressed as mean ± sd, n. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 87-94 91 this is the first study on the nutritional composition of russula griseocarnosa in vietnam. according to the reports from china, (chen et al., 2010; yuan et al., 2017; zhang et al., 2019) this species is rich in nutrients, with protein (19.132.3%) and carbohydrate (48.1-63.0%) concentrations comparable to those found in this study (chen et al., 2010). furthermore, the protein and carbohydrate concentrations in russula griseocarnosa are similar to some other edible species in this genus, such as r. delica in greece (ouzouni et al., 2009) and r. alatoreticula, r. brevipes, r. cyanoxantha, r. heterophylla, and r. virescens in west bengal (khatua et al., 2021). however, edible russula species in togo had lower protein concentrations (nadjombé et al., 2022). protein content is important in marketing because mushrooms contain more protein than vegetables (ouzouni et al., 2009; satyanarayana, das, & johri, 2019). the fat and fiber content of the samples in this study are similar those reported by chen et al. (2010) who found that russula griseocarnosa collected in china was low in fat (5.2-7.2%) and high in fiber (8.9-11.7%). in addition, the ash content of russula griseocarnosa in vietnam was lower than in china (6.6-7.8%) and also lower than for r. delica in greece (5.6) (ouzouni et al., 2009). 3.2. mineral composition of russula griseocarnosa the mineral concentrations in russula griseocarnosa were in the order: k > p > ca > mg > fe > na > zn > cu > mn (table 3). there were differences (p<0.001) due to forest type and sampling location. for example, sample qn50 (vo ngai, binh lieu) had the highest ca concentration, sample qn11 (thanh son, ba che) had the highest mg concentration, and sample qn8 (ha lau, tien yen) had the highest zn concentration. these samples were collected in primary forest in quang ninh province. sample bg1 (collected in secondary forest in nghia phuong, luc nam, bac giang) had the highest p concentration. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 87-94 92 table 3. mineral composition (mg/kg dry weight) of edible russula griseocarnosa and comparison with other other edible russula species in the region. sample or species ca cu fe k mg mn na p zn source bg1 889.2±20.51 39.4±0.95 400.2±10.65 19,835±51.6 364.0±6.61 11.5±0.21 357.8±7.13 3335.1±18.6 72.3±3.15 this study cb2 811.1±16.99 35.3±1.02 310.2±11.03 19,944±52.6 360.1±6.32 11.1±0.18 368.3±6.55 2934.4±15.6 70.3±3.06 this study qn7 874.5±21.11 41.7±1.24 465.6±11.18 24,965±68.1 447.4±8.15 13.8±0.22 533.1±8.91 3093.0±17.2 76.4±2.89 this study qn8 573.5±13.68 41.1±1.17 566.0±13.46 24,243±62.3 489.4±9.07 12.0±0.17 299.3±5.88 3057.4±15.9 92.7±4.12 this study qn11 613.2±20.01 37.9±0.99 440.4±12.17 24,765±60.9 636.0±11.28 12.6±0.19 342.6±6.46 3085.9±16.7 77.8±3.27 this study qn19 685.5±18.87 38.9±1.22 453.4±11.28 24,661±69.1 552.1±12.03 12.6±0.20 345.5±7.33 3124.5±13.7 75.2±2.87 this study qn20 691.0±20.12 32.8±1.31 143.2±8.88 23,409±50.8 350.4±7.13 6.91±0.13 405.9±8.05 2631.3±15.4 68.9±2.45 this study qn22 1,010.0±30.0 34.2±1.40 402.0±9.75 23,485±71.5 409.5±6.98 17.6±0.14 322.8±7.12 3249.0±20.0 60.1±2.61 this study qn29 621.1±14.77 35.9±1.08 836.5±15.64 24,646±66.4 451.9±8.37 11.2±0.10 462.0±7.18 3296.3±18.6 69.9±3.05 this study qn50 1,530.1±51.2 31.0±0.86 298.8±10.31 21,333±57.3 369.4±6.68 10.6±0.16 384.1±8.24 2837.2±14.5 62.5±2.77 this study mean 830.3 36.8 431.6 23,129 443.0 12.0 382.1 3064.4 72.6 p < 0.001 < 0.001 < 0.001 < 0.001 < 0.001 < 0.001 < 0.001 0.003 < 0.001 r. alboareolata 200 71.8 3,118 36,200 1,300 66.1 na 6,600 135 sanmee et al. (2003) r. delica na na 2.78 16,000 na 0.18 na 4,700 na singdevsachan, patra, tayung, sarangi, and thatoi (2014) r. griseocarnosa 850 48.0 500 19,800 570 23.0 1,340 3,420 88 chen et al. (2010) r. lepida 100 52.8 228 35,300 700 24.2 na 4,100 108 sanmee et al. (2003) r. nigricans 200 81.1 208 25,300 600 13.7 na 3,400 62 sanmee et al. (2003) r. sardonia 145 29.2 40 31,240 580 11.9 700 na 47 rasalanavho, moodley, and jonnalagadda (2020) r. vesca na na 4.24 18,000 na 0.16 na 8,100 na singdevsachan et al. (2014) r. virescens 100 41.3 283 27,600 800 18.4 na 5,100 131 sanmee et al. (2003) r. xerampelina 100 48.0 193 28,900 600 17.4 na 3,300 94 sanmee et al. (2003) note: data are expressed as mean ± sd, n. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 87-94 93 the concentration (mg/kg) ranges of k (19,835.8-24,965.9), p (2,631.3-3,335.1), ca (573.5-1530.1), mg (350.4636.0), fe (143.2-836.5), zn (60.1-92.7), and cu (31.0-41.7) in russula griseocarnosa collected in vietnam are quite similar to measurements obtained in china, being 19,800, 3,420, 850, 570, 500, 88, and 48 mg/kg, respectively (chen et al., 2010). however, the concentrations of na and mn were lower than those reported in china (chen et al., 2010) and in some edible russula species in togo (nadjombé et al., 2022). in addition to their proximal and macroand micronutrient contents, mushrooms contain a number of other chemicals with nutritional and health benefits to humans. in particular, consumption of wild edible mushrooms containing antioxidants enhances the scavenging of hydroxyl radicals and the free radical of 2.2-diphenyl-1picrylhydrazyl (chen et al., 2010; yuan et al., 2017). some mushrooms contain useful phytochemicals such as ergosterol, flavonoids, β-carotene, phenolics, and quercetin (chen et al., 2010; grangeia, heleno, barros, martins, & ferreira, 2011; ouzouni et al., 2009). quercetin has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties and is a major phytochemical component in russula griseocarnosa with a concentration of about 95.8 mg/kg (chen et al., 2010). in addition, edible mushrooms are a source of essential amino acids that are required in the human diet. ming et al. (2014) found that russula griseocarnosa in china contains 40 amino acids, including 20 non-structural amino acids. further research should be undertaken on the profile of organic compounds for the populations being harvested for food in vietnam. this includes the other edible species in the genus russula such as r. albidula, r. cystidiosa, r. paludosa, r. rosea, r. variata, r. vinosa, and r. virescens (anh et al., 2023; kiet, 2012; nguyen, 2017; phu & kiet, 2019). the results of this study suggest that russula griseocarnosa in vietnam is a valuable source of protein, carbohydrate, and essential minerals in the diet of local people who consume it. it has similar nutritional composition as the same species in china, where it is a popular food among local people (chen et al., 2010; yuan et al., 2017). not surprisingly, therefore, russula griseocarnosa is now being purchased in large quantities by traders for export to china (chi, 2022). the findings of this study can be used to add value to the current trade through the development of quality-controlled product brands for vietnamese russula griseocarnosa. this will aid in poverty reduction and income stabilization in the poorest part of vietnam, where mushroom naturally occurs. additionally, the impact of continuous harvesting on forest ecosystems must be investigated to ensure that harvesting practices are sustainable. ideally in the future, the goal is to produce improved strains of russula griseocarnosa that can be cultivated in household and village forest food orchards. 4. conclusions russula griseocarnosa collected from forests in vietnam has rich nutritional composition and high mineral content. the nutritional composition of this mushroom in vietnam largely mirrors values for this species in southern china. products from russula griseocarnosa with higher economic value will be created based on information of their nutritional composition obtained in this study. funding: this research is supported by quang ninh government (grant number: 19/2021/hđ-khcn-btg) and the master, phd scholarship programme of vingroup innovation foundation (grant number: vinif.2023.ts.001). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the vietnamese academy of forest sciences, vietnam has granted approval for this study on 31 december 2023 (ref. no. 168/qd-khln). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references anh, c. n., chi, n. m., kiet, t. t., long, p. d., thuy, p. t. t., van loi, v., & dell, b. 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https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/346508 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00003-014-0861-4 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anres.2016.08.001 https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2019.801.063 https://doi.org/10.1127/0029-5035/2009/0088-0269 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsps.2017.04.018 https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules24071305 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 749 economic activities for repatriated migrant workers of india: a framework for rural development sukanta chandra swaina  sunil kumar padhib a  kiit deemed to be university, bhubaneswar, india. b fakir mohan university, balasore, india.  sukanta_swain@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 24 july 2020 revised: 4 september 2020 accepted: 6 october 2020 published: 20 october 2020 keywords migrant workers returnee odisha rural economy agriculture skill mapping economic activities. this paper's basic objective is to design a framework for the efficient accommodation of repatriated migrant workers in odisha's rural sector (india). for this purpose, secondary data derived through content analysis have been analyzed and interpreted. besides recognizing migrant workers' wishes and ascertaining their inbuilt skill sets, the framework will focus on skill mapping with the existing and would-be economic activities in the rural sector. since the inflow of returnee migrant workers to the rural sector has been a crucial point of concern for respective state governments owing to the covid19 pandemic, all state governments are alert to addressing the issues of returnee migrants. the state of odisha is not an exception to this concern. it has been putting all its efforts into accommodating all repatriated migrant workers in the rural sector's economic activities, but with no significant achievement. a framework embedded within the skills matrix will help accommodate returnee migrants to promote rural development against this backdrop. this study's findings will help policymakers shift focus from transfer payments to the creation of capital overheads. contribution/originality: this study's findings will help policymakers shift their focus from transfer payments to capital overheads. this research will help in policymaking of the management of surplus workers in the rural sector, the management of skill sets of repatriated migrant workers, providing socioeconomic justice to repatriated migrant workers, and weathering the expected recession in the future. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.103.749.755 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: sukanta chandra swain --sunil kumar padhi (2020). economic activities for repatriated migrant workers of india: a framework for rural development. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3), 749-755. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.103.749.755 © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic has left its mark across all communities irrespective of their geographical boundaries, but it has made the lives of migrant workers in india wretched and forced most to return to their home regions. the inflow of returnee migrant workers to the rural sector is a crucial concern for the respective state governments (bhagat, sahoo, sahoo, roy, & govil, 2020). the state of odisha is no exception to this; the lives of migrants from odisha working in other states are in disarray due to covid-19. because of lockdown and shutdown, their work establishments have been closed and they are living in so-called residences where the density of workers per room is exceptionally high. they are obeying the mantra “stay home; stay safe” to help survive the virus, but the nature of asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 3 (2020): 749-755 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:sukanta_swain@yahoo.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.103.749.755 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 749-755 750 this incarceration makes them more vulnerable as they cannot maintain social distancing or the required hygiene measures. since they do not have ration cards, they are deprived of governmental assistance. to safeguard these migrants, the government announced that those establishments where migrants are working would take care of their food and other basic requirements. however, it is obvious that the reality of their conditions is far removed from that stated by the government. when these establishments are no longer operational and showing a negative return on investment, how long can they support those workers? consequently, migrant workers are left either starvating or poorly fed. they are unable to return to their home villages because no mode of transportation is allowed during lockdown. also, they are well aware that they will be put into quarantine for 14 days in their villages and, only if everything goes well post quarantine, will they be allowed to enter their village and residence. in both cases, they are facing a critical choice between life and livelihood. in the former case, as they walk for long distances looking for work in their native villages, they put their lives at risk owing to the physical strain of extensive walking and their vulnerability to covid19. in the latter case, if they seek work outside of their local area, they render themselves vulnerable to the virus (jan, 2020). this is a matter to ponder for researchers and planners – life or livelihood, which is to be prioritized during this unprecedented situation, particularly for migrant workers? is there any intermediate pathway for these migrants? that question is the basis of this research proposal for the design of a comprehensive framework. one clue to the solution of this question, and which encompasses a greater socioeconomic issue, has been arrived at by analysis of the literature, in both print and electronic media. india's government has started to announce economic packages for different sectors of the economy and different sections of society. these packages may help address the employment issues in both segments regarding migrant workers during the post-pandemic situation. these packages announced by the government, together with existing facilities and those to be created in rural areas, may address the issue of tackling the surplus workforce that has emerged due to repatriation of migrant workers. however, the value paradox still stands because migration was the outcome of not accommodating the rural population effectively in their home regions; but how will this rural economy accommodate the returnee migrants? a well-thought out framework devised by the government may address this paradox. thus, the development of a precise framework is needed to efficiently utilize this surplus workforce by proper planning for the skill sets inherent in migrant workers and the facilities available or created in rural areas (singh, patel, chaudhary, & mishra, 2020). as a rough estimation, of around 2 million migrant workers from odisha working in different states around the country, more than 0.5 million have returned to odisha. these migrant workers are an extra burden on the rural sector as they return to their place of origin. if they are properly utilized, the primary sector, in particular, and the rural economy, in general, may see a boost in regard to growth and development. however, improper utilization of this additional workforce may create chaos and distortion in the rural economy. the immediate measures required of the state are: food security: the government and many nongovernmental organizations (ngos) have put all their efforts into providing food security to all migrants. thus, there must be a team set up to ensure implementation along the desired pathway. agricultural labour security: the addition of repatriated migrant workers to the existing workforce in rural areas may result in a surplus workforce, which will overload the agricultural sector leading to hidden unemployment. the leading existing economic activity that dominates provision of livelihoods in the rural sector of odisha is agriculture. of the 15.57 million hectares comprising the geographical area of odisha, 41.16% is cultivable. the average holding is 1.25 hectares, and 83% of farms are small and marginal. agriculture employs around 65% of the state workforce and contributes around 26% of state gdp. due to various factors such as baffling soil (waterlogged, acidic, and saline), absence of assured irrigation, lowlevel seed transposition, basal levels of fertilizer usage, and reduced pace of mechanization, agriculture in odisha is known for its low productivity. the very poor yield potential and technology transfer provide an opportunity for the state to increase production and productivity substantially. for the effective utilization of repatriated migrants, all rural sector stakeholders need to make a concerted effort to solve the current problem of accommodating them in economic activities and facilitating development of the rural economy. from secondary data, i.e., data from the registration documents of returnee migrants, we can assess the baseline for the type of employment under consideration. before assessment of the skills of returnee migrant workers, we should compile a list of parameters that cover the expertise of workers inherent in each job ascertained from the secondary data. if a particular job is not found in the migrants’ register, it could possibly be created in the locality. the parameters inherent in that job will also be enlisted as that could be a source of employment for some migrants after motivating and making them trained. 2. literature review repatriation of migrant workers could become an important lever for development. the knowledge, skills, and expertise gained in the workplace are channeled into the production process and appropriate institutional infrastructure (kumar, bhattacharya, & nayek, 2014). there have been policy issues in regard to the rehabilitation of repatriated migrants from gulf countries to india; lack of a comprehensive framework to channel those returnees is responsible for them not becoming contributors to domestic growth (kumar, 2008). while chronic poverty is the cause of migration in most cases, migration may lead to chronic poverty in exceptional cases due to an incorrect approach (kothari, 2002). apart for decentralization, the convergence of various services related to food and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 749-755 751 nutritional programmes, water and sanitation programmes, and employment and livelihood programmes must be made worthwhile. it is appropriate to establish an alliance and systematization between central and state governments (bhagat et al., 2020). around 31% of the workers surveyed reported they had taken loans from banks, moneylenders, contractors, or other sources, and 8% said they had taken loans from multiple sources. more than 79% believed that they would not repay their debts in the short term, and nearly 50% feared danger or violence due to their inability to repay these debts. over 42% of the workers surveyed said they did not have sufficient rations for the next day, while nearly 40% said they had rations for the next two weeks and 18% reported that they had enough for 2–4 weeks. one third (33%) of the workers surveyed reported having no money to buy rations, 14% had no ration card, and 12% had ration cards. nevertheless, these workers could not access the public distribution system because they were migrants (jan, 2020). return migration has many potential benefits. through employment abroad, migrants can increase their income, acquire new skills, and accumulate savings and assets. however, benefits are materialized in their home region only if that region has the right policies to encourage returnees' investment and to use their skills (wahba, 2015). return migration has major potential to boost the performance of the economic engine of the country. however, it needs to be handled delicately (dustmann & weiss, 2007). returnee migrants have experienced both a conservative and an innovative approach. returnee migrants use their earnings generated for repayment of loans previously taken, or to meet family needs in some cases. this is the conservative approach. in other cases, returnee migrants use their return to develop a new career (kļave & supule, 2019). based on a comparative study in six countries, it was found that return migration has the potential to engender peace and prosperity. migrants intend to be the agents of positive change in their home territory (houte & davids, 2014). with governmental policies and assistance from ngos, a relationship among repatriated migrants, sustainability, and growth can be established. a borderless approach is needed to address the need for repatriated migrants, strengthening the economic condition of the regions where they are based (van & davids, 2008). migration has the potential to impact economic development because repatriated migrants can promote entrepreneurship in their place of origin. by way of ethnographic research in senegal among repatriated entrepreneurs, it was found that return migration is a pivotal instrument for promotion of development (sinatti, 2019). return migration is a key component of total migration, because it is estimated that approximately one in four returnee migrants relocates to their place of origin. returnee migrants, if organized properly, may drive the local economy in the desired direction (azose & rafterya, 2019). by contributing to social reclamation and economic growth, returnee migrants can contain ferocity in their places of origin. in the context of homicide rates in mexico, it was found that the higher the rate of return migration the lower the local homicide rate (bucheli, fontenla, & waddell, 2019). while migration is treated as a brain drain, return migration can be seen as a brain gain (olesen, 2002). returnee migrants promote entrepreneurship and the generation of capital, both financial and human, in their place of origin. however, proper planning must integrate the inherent talent and intent of returnee migrants with the local economies (coniglio & brzozowski, 2018). a concise framework based on reviews of experiential and theoretic literature on the economic development role of repatriated migrants is required (wahba, 2014). it is apparent from the literature reviewed here that return migration has great potential to contribute to the economy. nevertheless, this requires planned intervention with a comprehensive framework to channel that potential. this research is primarily designed to develop an all-encompassing framework for the same. 2.1. objectives the objective of this study was to design a framework that includes the following: the wishes of migrant workers concerning their place of work after the restoration of normality. all potential work opportunities (available and future) in rural areas. the potential of migrant workers' to adapt to any job that is available or that can be created in their native region. mapping of job opportunities in the locality with regard to the potential of migrant workers, by absorbing the surplus workforce efficiently and thus benefitting the rural sector. 3. methodology the framework and proposed methods for the research are given below. the study is a blend of descriptive and action research for rural odisha. the census method (i.e., complete enumeration survey) was followed. both primary data (from repatriated migrants, villagers, village heads, experts, and established repatriated migrants) and secondary data (analysis of both the print and digital literature) were used. to outline all potential work opportunities and explore some unusual and unconventional work opportunities based on existing facilities and available know-how, regular and sustainable livelihoods could be catered for. content analysis and experts’ opinions are used to design a model that absorbs a surplus workforce to benefit the rural economy. descriptive statistics are used to interpret data, and a skills matrix created to assess the skill sets of repatriated migrant workers, which will be mapped with existing and would-be job opportunities created. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 749-755 752 3.1. efforts to accommodate repatriated migrants to upgrade the skills of returnee migrants and to create sustainable livelihood opportunities under the pradhan mantri kaushal vikas yojana and the apprenticeship scheme, the skill development ministry of india selected 116 districts of the country to reskill as per local requirements. the ministry will identify the current skill sets of returnee migrants and reskill them, if necessary, as per local job market requirements. it is pertinent that skill mapping and reskilling are addressed without delay to ease the pressures on the rural economy created by returnee migrants. however, skill mapping methodology is vital but has not been clarified by the skill development ministry. our focus is on the methodology for skill mapping. in bihar, the department of industry carried out skill profiling of 80,000 returnee migrant workers and found that most were unskilled. hence, bihar is planning to focus on the mahatma gandhi national rural employment guarantee act (mgnrega) to provide livelihoods to unskilled migrant workers at an enhanced workday of 200 from 100 previously. however, the potential of reskilling those unskilled workers who intend to engage in other modes has not been explored; our skill profiling methodology and recommendations for reskilling will create a window of opportunity for those unskilled workers. the state of uttar pradesh has begun to liaise with industry to accommodate skilled and semiskilled returnee migrants. real estate companies have already started contacting such workers for skill assessment, based on which they will be accommodated or, if required, they will be reskilled before being accommodated. however, the problem here concerns correct skill profiling and interest assessment. perhaps skill profiling will be done apropriately by the real estate companies, but what about workers’ intentions? real estate companies are mostly based in cities, but returnee migrants live mostly in their home villages. in this case, migration would again occur from rural to urban areas in that state but not in other states. the covid-19 pandemic has impoverished the lives of migrants within the state, as well as the resident population. thus, mere skill profiling is insufficient to address the issue. besides skill profiling, intent assessment is required because most returnee migrants may prefer to remain in their native areas. moreover, the real estate sector may have little spare capacity to accommodate a substantial additional workforce. at present, people in cities also struggle to find regular work. if accommodating returnee migrants results in redundancy for existing workers, this is clearly not a solution. finding a way to accommodate returnee migrants in their native regions will solve the problems of ignoring their wishes, reduce the incomes of existing workers in cities and strengthen the rural economy. our framework is aimed at addressing this gap. jharkhand and odisha are in a similar position to uttar pradesh, with pivotal dependence on mgnrega. however, this is not the right platform for skilled and semiskilled returnee migrants. a pertinent point that questions the potential of mgnrega is: “can it generate sufficient work for massive numbers of returnee migrants or will it just be a type of transfer payment to inject money into the economy?” states like punjab and haryana have adopted a different approach. migrants working in those two states and who were unable to return to their native regions because of lockdown were given distress cards by which they can obtain free food (grain) until they resume work. some migrant workers who had gone back to their native regions were offered booked train tickets by their employers to return to work. however, considering the pain and fear the migrant workers experienced because of the covid-19 pandemic, it is important to assess their wishes. nevertheless, unfortunately, migrant workers’ wishes have not been given due importance in either of the alternatives mentioned. although efforts made to date at different levels to accommodate returnee migrants in economic activity are undoubtedly praiseworthy, the outcome will be satisfactory only if they are properly channeled through skill mapping. 3.2. skill mapping through skills matrix the following steps were used to map the skills of returnee migrants. identify all possible work opportunities in rural areas (an exhaustive list can be prepared). considering the specific conditions in odisha, work opportunities could be created through the following suggested categories: traditional farming (rabi and kharif crops), horticulture, vegetable farming, mushroom farming, sugarcane farming, betel leaf plant farming, floriculture, animal husbandry (cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs), beekeeping, poultry, fishery, masonry, brick making, trading in agricultural products, cottage industries (based on locally available raw materials), vehicle repair, pottery, carpentry, blacksmith work, goldsmith work, stationery shop, snack shop/dhaba, tailoring, painting, plumbing, electrical work, welding, security guarding, and see-saw, rice, and flour milling, etc. however, the complete list of job opportunities for a particular locality may vary depending on soil quality, climatic conditions, availability of raw materials, etc. further, each category of work opportunity needs to be tested for its potential to accommodate an enhanced workforce; otherwise, it may create hidden unemployment. define the relevant skills required for each job opportunity (enumerate all skills required for each job opportunity. for example, to establish a successful career in horticulture, knowledge of the following is required: • irrigation • plant nutrition • soil management • crop rotation • pest and disease management • weed control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cattle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sheep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/goat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pig asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 749-755 753 • care in postharvest handling • costs involved in machinery and equipment, etc. • adopting technology as and where required • legal aspects of food safety requirements • dealing with people, i.e., good interpersonal skills. any migrant with the qualities of crop cultivation knowledge, basic education, willingness to learn, dedication, patience, good communication skills, and interest in horticulture can be reskilled to adopt this area as his/her occupation. assess repatriated migrants on their current skill levels. for each job we need to know the migrant’s level of proficiency, which is scaled thus: • no experience or knowledge (level 1) • little experience or knowledge (level 2) • reasonable experience or knowledge (level 3) • considerable experience or knowledge (level 4) • expert experience or knowledge (level 5). migrants are to be briefed about the skill set or proficiency required for each job so that they can rate themselves appropriately. determine a migrant’s interest in working in their chosen field. for each migrant, we would want to know whether they are: • not interested in applying their skills or knowledge in this job (level 0) • interested in applying their skills or knowledge in this job (level 1). information collected from steps 3 and 4 will help us to create ‘clusters’ of returnee migrants. assimilate all data collected from steps 1 and 2 in the skills matrix. the format of the skills matrix, showing the levels of proficiency and interest of returnee migrants in regard to a specific type of work, is presented in sample form in table 1. this will be extended for all types of work identified in the locality. table-1. skills matrix. proficiency rating past employment level of proficiency and interest of migrant regarding different work opportunities what (where) expertise horticulture mushroom farming proficiency interest proficiency interest 1 2 3 4 5 source: collated from existing literature. note: proficiency and interest ratings: see steps 3 and 4, respectively. table 1 is a sample of the skills matrix in which only two employment opportunities are featured. however, while collecting data from migrants, all work opportunities will be reflected in the matrix. when administering this schedule to migrants, the data collector must clarify all its technicalities. take action on insights derived from the skills matrix. migrants will be clustered according to the output of the skills matrix and accordingly reskilled, if required, to be accommodated by any of the work opportunities. for example, suppose a migrant has rated her/himself 1 for proficiency and 0 for interest under each work opportunity; in that case, s/he may be considered for unskilled work through mgnrega or as a casual worker in traditional farming as per the requirements. if a migrant reveals a degree ofof proficiency in a particular type of work and shows interest in that job, s/he may be considered for the said job. suppose a migrant shows interest in multiple jobs and has different levels of proficiency in those; in that case, s/he will be accommodated in the type of work in which his/her proficiency level is highest. migrants having a reasonable level of proficiency, or the highest level of proficiency for them personally, will be directly accommodated in that job where available. on the contrary, migrants with a low proficiency level, which is the highest level of proficiency for them personally, will be upgraded through reskilling before being accommodated in that job. 4. conclusion migration plays a crucial role in maintaining a balance between the twin market forces of demand and supply in the inter-regional labour market. the research in this study is innovative; it advocates accommodating surplus labour emerging from the repatriation of migrant workers to their native regions. this research is not meant to discourage migration; rather, it targets a solution for managing pressure in the labour market of rural areas where migrant workers are being repatriated due to disruption to their lives resulting from the covid-19 pandemic, with no intention on their part to migrate again even after normality is restored. this research was planned to effectively asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 749-755 754 manage a surplus workforce in rural areas to benefit the rural economy. it was designed to solve the socioeconomic issues of repatriated migrants and the overall development of the rural economy. this study's basic objective was to design a framework to accommodate a surplus workforce returning permanently to their native regions from their previous workplaces. as such, the rural sector is not able to accommodate them efficiently with the facilities currently available; pump priming (stimulating economic activity through investment in socioeconomic overheads) is required to get them effectively engaged. capital overheads will be created, and self-employment will be promoted by way of providing subsidies and facilitating acquisition of the required know-how. this, in turn, will enable the rural sector to prosper and the rate of employment in the rural economy will be expanded. greater employment will accelerate the purchasing power of the community and augment the supply of goods and services. thus, society will be in equilibrium at a higher level. this study's findings will help policymakers shift their focus from transfer payments to the creation of capital overheads. instead of providing free or very subsidized essential commodities in creating socioeconomic justice in the rural sector, policymakers can provide the subsidized equipment required for job opportunities that will accommodate repatriated migrant workers and add enormous value to the rural economy. however, transfer payments in the form of either cash or in kind might make the rural population complacent, and there is a risk that they could opt for working less in the hope of being taken care of by the government for their essential needs. thus, pump priming represents a better alternative than transfer payments and, as such, it has the inherent trait of combatting recessionary pressure which is part of the post-covid-19 effect. thus, this research will help policymaking in regard to 1) management of a surplus workforce in the rural sector, 2) management of the skill sets of repatriated migrant workers, 3) providsion of socioeconomic justice to repatriated migrant workers, and 4) combatting the anticipated recession. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: both authors participated equally in the design and estimation of th ecurrent research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the authors' views and opinions; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references azose, j. j., & rafterya, a. e. (2019). estimation of emigration, return migration, and transit migration between all pairs of countries. pnas, 116(1), 116-122. available at: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1722334116. bhagat, r. b., sahoo, h., sahoo, a., roy, k., & govil, d. (2020). the covid-19, migration and livelihood in india. paper presented at the a background paper for policy makers, international institute for population sciences, mumbai. bucheli, j. r., fontenla, m., & waddell, b. j. (2019). return migration and violence. world development, 116, 113-124. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.12.010. coniglio, n. d., & brzozowski, j. (2018). migration and development at home: bitter or sweet return? evidence from poland. european urban and regional studies, 25(1), 85-105. available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0969776416681625. dustmann, c., & weiss, y. (2007). return migration: theory and empirical evidence from the uk. british journal of industrial relations, 45(2), 236-256. available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2007.00613.x. houte, m. v., & davids, t. (2014). moving back or moving forward? return migration, development and peacebuilding. new diversities, 16(2), 71-87. jan, s. (2020). voices of the invisible citizens: a rapid assessment on the impact of covid-19 lockdown on internal migrant workers. april, new delhi. kļave, e., & supule, i. (2019). return migration process in policy and practice. in: kaša r., mieriņa i. (eds) the emigrant communities of latvia. imiscoe research series. cham: springer. kothari, u. (2002). migration and chronic poverty. working paper no. 16, chronic poverty research center, institute for development policy and management, university of manchester. kumar, p. (2008). gulf return migration and dilemmas of rehabilitation: policy issues in india. new delhi: icon publications pvt. ltd. kumar, p., bhattacharya, u., & nayek, j. k. (2014). return migration and development: evidence from india’s skilled professionals. g. tejada et al. (eds.), indian skilled migration and development, dynamics of asian development. olesen, h. (2002). migration, return, and development: an institutional perspective. international migration, 40(5), 125-150. available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2435.00214. sinatti, g. (2019). return migration, entrepreneurship and development: contrasting the economic growth perspective of senegal’s diaspora policy through a migrant-centred approach. african studies, 78(4), 609-623. available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2018.1555310. singh, s. k., patel, v., chaudhary, a., & mishra, n. (2020). reverse migration of labourers amidst covid-19. economic & political weekly, 55(19), 28-31. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(3)2020: 749-755 755 van, h. m., & davids, t. (2008). development and return migration: from policy panacea to migrant perspective sustainability. third world quarterly, 29(7), 1411-1429. available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590802386658. wahba, j. (2014). return migration and economic development. chapters, in: robert e.b. lucas (ed.),international handbook on migration and economic development (pp. 327-349). edward elgar publishing. wahba, j. (2015). who benefits from return migration to developing countries? working paper, university of southampton, uk, and iza, germany. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 682 use of abattoir wastewater compost as organic fertilizer for rice production on a ultisol in delta state, nigeria smart augustine ojobor a , collins n. egbuchua a a department of agronomy, delta state university, asaba campus, nigeria  smartojobor@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 25-mar-2020 accepted: 31-jul-2020 online available: 03-sep2020 keywords: abattoir wastewater, organic fertilizer, oshimilli north, rice dust, soil fertility abstract the research was conducted to monitor the influent of abattoir wastewater compost on rice growth and yield in benin-owah river basin in illah, delta state, nigeria. the compost was applied at 0, 2.5, 5.0, 10 t/ha, and npk15:15:15 at 250 kg/ha laid in randomized complete block design with four replicates. rice seeds were sown for two years, and residual effects were evaluated in the third year. rice plant height, stem circumference, and the number of tillers was measured at two weeks intervals while rice yields have taken at harvest. soil samples were taken yearly to monitor nutrient changes. data obtained were analyzed with analysis of variance and mean separated with duncan multiple range test at α0.05. in the first year, npk15:15:15 significantly gave the highest dry matter (6.28±1.45 t/ha) and grain yield (2.4±0.53 t/ha). while in the second year, 10 t/ha treatment produced the dry matter (7.69±1.60 t/ha) and grain yield (2.6±0.53 t/ha). in a residual study, the highest grain yield (2.8±0.72 t/ha) was produced in the plot treated with 10 t/ha, and it also gave the highest ph, organic carbon, total nitrogen, and available p content. the compost at the rate of 10 t/ha can increase soil fertility and rice yield. contribution/ originality the study has substantiated that compost formulated with abattoir wastewater and rice dusk should be used as a soil amendment for rice production. it also gives opportunities for farmers and agriculturists to start considering alternative use of the waste materials for fertilization because the materials contain nutrient elements. the paper has not been published or presently submitted anywhere for publication. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.682.689 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: smart augustine ojobor and collins n egbuchua (2020). use of abattoir wastewater compost as organic fertilizer for rice production on a ultisol in delta state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 682-689. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 682-689 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:smartojobor@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.682.689 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 682-689 683 1. introduction wastes generated through agricultural processing caused negative effects on the environment, creating potential danger such as foul odour and forming breeding grounds for pathogen but can be converted through proven technology into valuable material which can be used as a soil amendment (schneider et al., 2010 and gayathri et al., 2019). commonly used methods of wastes disposal are landfilling and open incineration. landfilling method can contaminate groundwater through leaching, and even as the population increases, it is difficult to find a suitable site for wastes disposal. open incineration has a tendency to increase air pollution that requires expensive techniques to control its emissions. animal production and processing generate large amounts of waste with an outdated waste management system, most notably in developing countries. the increase in waste generation also accelerates greenhouse gas production that had a negative impact on the ecosystem (huynh et al., 2006). wastewater is one category of wastes that emerges from agricultural activities, and it increases with the increasing population. some sources of wastewater include cassava processing, beverage industry, abattoir, rubber factory, fertilizer factory, and palm oil processing mill, etc. (liu and haynes, 2011). abattoir is one primary source of wastewater among the industries due to the drive to increase meat production for the growing population. still, the challenges facing the sector is how to manage the indiscriminate disposal of the wastewater in the environment (omole and ogbeyi, 2013). the wastewater is composed of urine, blood, water, dissolved solids, pieces of meat, manure. according to olarewaju and olofayo (2004), wastewater contains minerals, metals, and microorganisms. it was used for irrigation, and the results showed that it significantly increased plant growth, total herbage production, and nutrients uptake (sparling et al., 2006 and castro et al., 2011). the abattoir wastewater can be a source of water and soil nutrients, so; it is important to assess its potential for compost making. if the wastewater with low c:n ratio (6:2) is used to compost rice dust (c:n ratio 83:1), it will enhance the quality of the rice dust, which can be used for soil amendment (thiyageshwari et al., 2018). advantage can be taken off the rice dust that is available in rice farming communities (adeoye et al., 2005). limited information on the use of abattoir wastewater for compost making, is hindering its utilization (adeoye et al., 2005 and ojobor, 2018). composting is a technology that is successfully used to convert organic waste into useful and stable material through microbial activities, and it is viewed as a flexible technology than incineration (rockson, 2014). use of abattoir wastewater and rice dust for compost making will reduce the cost of inorganic fertilizers, the stress it unleashed on farmers to obtained it due to nonavailability, and also reduce the negative impact on the environment. composting the wastes for soil amendment now that the federal government of nigeria is emphasizing on food sufficiency through crop production will play a significant role in improving soil fertility. the nigeria government food selfsufficiency policy can only be achieved through good soil management practices that can improve the declining soil fertility (vanlauwe et al., 2001). the current practice of using inorganic fertilizer cannot improve the declining soil fertility but with an organic fertilizer that is made with known quality. therefore, if the abattoir wastewater is carefully used for compost making, it can be used to amend soil fertility of a ultisol at the benin-owah river basin, illah, delta state. the community is allocated over 3,000 ha of land for rice, but due to poor soil fertility, only 550 ha is being used. hence, this study monitored the influent of abattoir wastewater compost for rice production in benin-owah river basin, illah, delta state, nigeria. 2. methods 2.1. location of study the study was conducted at the benin-owah river basin, illah, oshimilli north l. g. a., delta state, nigeria (coordinates: 6°25′26″n 6°38′56″e) during 2017 and 2018 cropping year in a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 682-689 684 ultisol. a faro 52 rice variety was sown in a completely randomized block design. the site was previously used for rice cultivation, and the last harvest was in 2015 and was left fallow in 2016. the dominant weeds in the area were chromolaena odorata and aspilia africana. the compost was applied at 2.5, 5, and 10 t ha-1 while npk15:15:15 was at 250 kg/ha with control in four replicates. application of compost was made a week before sowing in an area of 361 m2 that was demarcated into a plot of 3m by 4m, and a space of 1m was used to separate the plots at a spacing of 25cm by 30cm. 2.2. composting rice dust (rd) was obtained from onicha rice mill, anambra state, and abattoir wastewater (aww) was obtained from ogbe-ogonogo market, asaba, delta state, nigeria. one hundred kilograms of rd and 35 liters of aww were used to mix each heap in three replicates. the materials were turned and mixed periodically and moisture content was maintained at 60% by adding aww for 12 weeks. the materials were characterized for their nutrient concentration before composting: the rd had: 24.5% organic carbon (oc), 0.30% total nitrogen (tn), 0.18% phosphorus (p), 0.21% potassium (k), 0.16% calcium (ca), 0.50% magnesium (mg), c:n ratio of 85:1 and ph of 7.1 while aww had: 14.6% oc, 2.12% tn, 2.01% p, 0.66% k, 0.33% ca, 0.73% mg, c:n ratio of 6.1 and ph of 7.8. after composting the material was further characterized with the following values: oc (21.8%), tn (0.76%), p (3.11%), k (1.32%), ca (1.15%), mg (1.44%), c:n ratio (28.7) and ph of 7.2. 2.3. data collection growth data [height (cm), stem circumference (cm), and a number of tillers] were measured at two weeks intervals from three weeks after sowing (3 was). yields data were measured at harvest. samples of soil were taken for pre-planting soil evaluation and yearly for post-harvest soil analysis. soil texture, ph, oc, tn, p, k, ca, mg, na, exchangeable acidity were measured while ecec and base saturation were calculated. 2.4. laboratory analysis the soil samples were analyzed at the international institute of tropical agriculture, ibadan, oyo state. soil texture was according to bouyoucos (1951). soil ph was in 1:2 soilwater suspensions. walkley black method was used for organic carbon determination (see walkley and black, 1934). 1n ammonium acetate was used to extract exchangeable bases while flame photometer was used to measure k and na, mg and ca were read with atomic absorption spectrophotometer (jackson, 1964). bray-1 was used to extract available p (bray and kurtz, 1945). macro-kjeldahl method was to determining total nitrogen (jackson, 1962). exchangeable acidity was determined, according to black (1975). 2.5. statistical analysis analysis of variance was used to analyze the data with sas institute, inc. (2012) and mean were separated with duncan multiple range test (dmrt) at 0.05 probability level. 3. results 3.1. chemical properties of the soil before fertilizer application and at harvest the soil was strongly acidic (ph 5.4), oc (1.8 g/kg) and tn (0.9 g/kg) were low. available p (11 mg/kg) was medium, effective cation exchange capacity (6.9 cmol/kg) was low and base saturation was high (table 1). soil ph increased significantly with a higher rate of compost. plot treated with 10 t ha-1 had the highest soil ph values. soil ph values increased significantly. rates of compost did not correspond to increasing soil oc in the first year but did in the second year. the 10 t ha-1 of compost gave the highest oc in both years (2.7±0.53 gkg-1 and 8.5±2.94 gkg-1, respectively). total nitrogen did not increase appreciably in the first year though 10 t ha-1 had the highest value. in the second year, there was a significant difference (p<0.05), and 10 t ha-1 also had the highest (1.6±0.37 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 682-689 685 gkg-1) while the lowest was found in control (0.5±0.37 gkg-1). in both years, there were significant incremental differences in values of available phosphorus. the 10 t ha-1 of compost had the highest p (12±2.15 and 18±4.72 mgkg-1, respectively) while npk treatment had 8±2.15 and 9±4.72 mgkg-1, respectively). the 10 t ha-1 had the highest k, ca, mg, na and ecec in both years. the same level of compost gave the highest base saturation. table 1: soil fertility before and after fertilizer application ph om n p k ca mg na ecec bs ----g/kg----mg/kg ---------------cmol/kg-------------------g/kg soil chemical properties before fertilizer application 5.4 1.8 0.9 11 1.3 2.2 1.7 0.1 6.9 923 soil chemical properties after fertilizer application rates 2017 0 5.0c 1.5b 0.5 6de 0.2 1.1b 1.1 0.1 2.7b 926b 2.5 5.3a 2.6a 0.6 7cd 0.2 1.2b 1.2 0.2 3.0a 933b 5.0 5.4a 2.6a 0.6 10b 0.3 1.7a 1.3 0.2 3.7a 946a 10 5.5a 2.7a 0.7 12a 0.4 1.8a 1.4 0.2 4.0a 950a npk 5.0c 1.6b 0.6 8c 0.2 1.2b 1.2 0.1 3.0a 900c sd 0.21 0.53 0.06 2.15 0.08 0.29 0.102 0.049 0.487 17.8 ns ns ns ns 2018 0 4.9b 1.5d 0.5d 4e 0.2d 1.0b 1.0e 0.1 3.0c 767c 2.5 5.5a 10.1b 1.1b 12c 0.4c 2.2a 2.5c 0.3 5.9b 915a 5.0 5.6a 10.3b 1.3b 14b 0.6b 2.3a 2.9b 0.4 6.8a 912a 10 5.7a 12.5a 1.6a 18a 0.8a 2.7a 3.4a 0.5 7.9a 937a npk 4.9b 1.5c 0.9c 9d 0.4c 2.0a 1.9d 0.1 5.2b 846b sd 0.35 4.12 0.37 4.72 0.20 0.56 0.831 0.16 1.65 62.2 ns means with the same letters in each column are not significantly different at α0.05 note: ns – not significant, sd – standard deviation 3.2. effect of treatments on rice growth and yield in the first year, the npk plot produced the tallest plants (table 2). in the second year, plots amended with 10 t ha-1 of compost gave the tallest plants while the control had the least. stem circumference significantly increased (table 3) with npk treatment producing plant the highest circumference in both years. the control plot had no-tiller in both years (table 4). in the first year, plots with 10 t ha-1 of compost treatment and npk had two tillers each, 5 t ha-1 had one tiller while 2.5 t ha-1 had no farmer. in the second year, 10 t ha-1 had three tillers, 5 t ha-1 and npk treatments had two tillers each while 2.5 t ha-1 had one tiller. the npk treatment produced the highest dry matter yield in the first year, and in the second year, 10 t ha-1 of the compost had the highest dry matter yield (table 4). the npk treatment also produced the highest grain yield in the first year, while 10 t ha-1 had the highest in the second year. table 2: plants height (cm) at 3-11 weeks after sowing application was after sowing rates (t ha-1) 3 5 7 9 11 3 5 7 9 11 2017 2018 0 19.2 29.1b 35.0c 40.4c 46.3e 17.4d 24.1d 29.0d 32.4d 36.0d 2.5 19.1 31.0b 41.2b 50.4b 59.8d 22.3b 32.1c 42.8c 53.3c 64.7c 5.0 19.0 29.8b 41.5b 52.9b 62.5c 20.4c 35.9b 46.6b 56.9b 67.3b 10.0 19.0 30.5b 41.7b 53.4b 64.0b 25.5a 36.9a 50.8a 65.1a 78.7a npk 20.8 32.7ab 43.4a 55.0a 66.0a 21.3b 32.0c 42.6c 55.8b 65.3c asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 682-689 686 sd 0.69 1.22 2.88 5.23 7.00 2.63 4.50 7.32 10.90 14.14 ns means with the same letters in each column are not significantly different at α0.05 note: ns – not significant, sd – standard deviation table 3: stem circumference (cm) at 3-11 weeks after sowing application was after sowing rates (t ha-1) 3 5 7 9 11 3 5 7 9 11 2017 2018 0 0.19a 0.24a 0.24b 0.24c 0.24d 0.19b 0.23 0.23c 0.23d 0.23d 2.5 0.14bc 0.23a 0.28b 0.33b 0.36c 0.18c 0.23 0.28b 0.33c 0.38c 5.0 0.13c 0.24a 0.28b 0.33b 0.36c 0.18c 0.22 0.28b 0.33c 0.38c 10.0 0.13c 0.17b 0.26b 0.33b 0.41b 0.18c 0.22 0.30a 0.37b 0.47a npk 0.19a 0.25a 0.36a 0.48a 0.51a 0.20a 0.24 0.31a 0.39a 0.49a sd 0.028 0.029 0.041 0.077 0.087 0.004 0.006 0.028 0.055 0.092 ns ns means with the same letters in each column are not significantly different at α0.05 note: ns – not significant, sd – standard deviation table 4: number of tillers, dry matter and grain yield application number of yield t ha-1 number of yield t ha-1 rates (t ha-1) tillers/plant dry matter grain yield tillers/plant dry matter grain yield 2017 2018 0 0b 2.83c 0.97d 0d 2.68d 0.93d 2.5 0b 3.29c 1.51c 1c 5.21c 1.17c 5.0 1a 5.32b 1.91b 2b 5.71b 2.31b 10.0 2a 6.16a 2.33a 3a 7.69a 2.60a npk 2a 6.28a 2.40a 2b 5.55a 2.01a sd 0.894 1.45 0.53 1.02 1.60 0.65 means with the same letters in each column are not significantly different at α0.05 note: sd – standard deviation 3.3. effects of residual nutrient treatments on rice growth and yield plot treated with 10 t ha-1 of compost had the tallest plants (69 ± 12.8 cm), 5.0 t ha-1 and npk plots had 67.2 ± 12.8 and 66.4 ± 12.8 cm, respectively while the control had 35.1 ± 12.8 cm (table 5). the 10 t ha-1 of compost gave the fattest stem circumference (0.40 ± 0.069 cm), and control had 0.20 ± 0.069 cm. treatment 5.0 t ha-1 and npk were not significantly different, but both were higher than 2.5 t ha-1. the number of tillers (3) was higher in plots treated with 10 t ha-1 of compost. the highest dry matter yield was produced in the plot treated with 10 t ha-1 (8.12 ± 1.80 t ha-1) and was significantly higher than the lower rates. grain yield was significantly different, 10 t ha-1 of compost produced the highest grain yield (2.8 ± 0.72 t ha-1). table 5: residual effects of treatments on growth and yield of rice application rates (t ha-1) plant height (cm) stem circumference (cm) number of tillers dry matter -------t grain yield ha-1---- 0 35.1d 0.20c 0d 2.53d 0.67d 2.5 63.8c 0.35b 1c 5.63c 1.86c 5.0 67.2b 0.36b 2b 6.19b 2.46b 10.0 69.4a 0.40a 3a 8.12a 2.81a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 682-689 687 npk15:15:15 66.4b 0.36b 0d 5.69c 1.96c sd 12.77 0.069 1.17 1.80 0.71 means with the same letters in each column are not significantly different at α0.05 sd – standard deviation 4. discussion soil ph of the site was adequate for crop growth and production, but the nutrients were low. low contents of oc, tn, and medium-range of p are an indication that there is a need to improve the fertility of the soil (fmard, 2012). therefore, the cultivation of the site without the soil amendment cannot guarantee optimum crop yield. there was gradual soil ph increment with increasing application of the compost. this could be the alkaline nature of the compost. its application increased soil ph as it mineralized (santillan et al., 2014). the process of compost mineralization decreased cation fixation that played a significant role in raising the soil ph (thiyageshwari et al., 2018). soil ph values in compost plots were higher than npk15:15:15 plot that decreases. this could be due to the acid-neutralizing potential of the compost during and after decomposition. the compost expressed a comparatively higher concentration of nutrient elements than the npk 15:15:15 and control treatment. it enhanced soil fertility by increasing the nutrient contents and soil organic carbon. the abattoir wastewater, according to matheyarasu et al. (2015), contains some percentage of elements in organic forms and, if converted to available form during decomposition, can increase the soil nutrient. organic carbon contents in compost plots were higher, and it might be the fact that waste from abattoir typically contains compounds that are characterized with organic components (coker et al., 2001; nafarnda et al., 2006). it could also be responsible for the gradual increase with application levels in both years-the compost enhanced total nitrogen at harvest. omole and longe (2008) attributed the high level of total nitrogen to the feces, blood, urine, undigested protein, and digested protein in abattoir wastewater that leads to high microbial decomposition and subsequently releasing nitrogen in the soil. matheyarasu et al. (2016) also found that abattoir wastewater supplies readily available nitrate-n, ammonia-n, and available p for plant growth. it might also cause a higher level of total nitrogen observed in compost plots. mineralization of the successive application of the compost also increased phosphorus in the soil. improve soil fertility promoted rice growth, as evidenced by the increased rice yields. plants treated with compost did better than those in control and npk plots. though the npk treatment did better in the first year, there was a turning point in the second year, where compost treated plants recorded the highest. this shows the potential of the abattoir wastewater compost in improving the soil chemical properties. glick (2012) and matheyarasu et al. (2016) noted that the used of abattoir wastewater for irrigation increase crop growth by facilitating nutrients supply and also inhibit the effects of pathogens on crops. this could account for the increased growth and development that resulted in higher dry matter and yield production. sparling et al. (2006) noticed that the abattoir wastewater application significantly increased the annual and total herbage production, and n and p uptake from soils. rice plants were taller in the second year due to increased nutrient released, and this gave room for higher rice yields. the increased nutrients released from compost resulted in a high rate of cell division that enhanced dry matter and rice grain yield production (mengel and kirby, 1987). higher residual nutrient pool in compost plots, as shown in the results, could be ascribed to the slow mineralization of nutrients that led to a higher growth rate, as evident with the application of 10 t ha-1 of the compost. it proves that the abattoir wastewater compost had residual value. improved soil fertility due to abattoir compost application increases rice yields (glick, 2012). as asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 682-689 688 soil fertility was enhanced, nutrients were released to the rice plant for growth and development; this, however, reflected in higher grain yield of rice produced (picchioni et al., 2012). 5. conclusion abattoir wastewater and rice dust were used for compost formulation to produced rice at the rate of 2.5, 5.0, 10 t/ha and npk15:1515 at the rate of 250 kg/ha with a control on an ultisols for two years. in the first year, npk15:15:15 gave the highest growth and yield of rice; however, 10 t/ha of the compost had highest in the second year. while in residual nutrients study, 10 t/ha of the compost significantly increased rice yield and soil chemical properties. therefore, the abattoir wastewater compost proves to be effective for rice production. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adeoye, g. o., ojobor, s. a., & adeoluwa, o. o. 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(1934). an examination of the degtjareff method for determining soil organic matter and a propose modification of chromic acid titration method. soil science, 39, 29-38. doi.org/10.1097/00010694-193401000-00003. 240 farmer perspectives on understanding rural household behaviour in agricultural decision-making jennifer g. fronda nueva ecija university of science and technology , cabanatuan city, philippines.  frondajennifer79@yahoo.com article history abstract received: 26 june 2023 revised: 10 august 2023 accepted: 15 september 2023 published: 21 november 2023 keywords agricultural decision-making climate change perception local knowledge risk attitudes rural households. this study aims to provide an in-depth understanding of the agricultural decision-making processes undertaken by rural households in nueva ecija, philippines. the goal is to elucidate the significance of individual perceptions, experiences, and risk attitudes in this process and to identify the key elements that influence agricultural decision-making among these households. the research employed a mixed-methods approach to data collection, incorporating both surveys and interviews to gather quantitative and qualitative data. the analysis involved the use of descriptive statistics, chisquare tests, and logistic regression for the quantitative data, while the qualitative data were assessed through thematic analysis. the research's findings showed that local knowledge and experiences, risk attitudes, and perceptions of climate change among rural households all have a significant impact on agricultural decision-making. even though risk aversion acted as an obstacle, the prevalent use of local knowledge in decision-making presented itself as an invaluable asset for creating adaptive strategies. based on these findings, the study recommends the integration of local knowledge into agricultural training programs, the development of efficient risk management strategies, and the promotion of climate-smart agriculture. the results also underscore the need for further exploration of decision-making complexities in future research. these recommendations and findings have substantial implications for designing interventions and policies geared towards sustainable rural development. the study thus contributes significantly to enhancing our understanding of agricultural decision-making, helping to pave the way for sustainability in rural development. contribution/originality: this study examined the impact of socioeconomic factors, risk attitudes, and perceptions of the climate on agricultural decisions in nueva ecija, philippines. the significance of local knowledge in the context of adaptation is underscored, and it is advised that its integration into development strategies be prioritised to enhance the resilience and sustainability of rural agricultural sectors. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4912 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: fronda, j. g. (2023). farmer perspectives on understanding rural household behaviour in agricultural decision-making. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3), 240–247. 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4912 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction rural agriculture plays a critical role in economies worldwide, contributing significantly to food security, poverty reduction, and sustainable development. however, these agricultural landscapes and practices are undergoing rapid transformation due to globalization, demographic changes, and climate change, coupled wit h technological advancements. these multi-dimensional challenges profoundly impact the decision-making processes of rural households engaged in agriculture. thus, understanding the intricacies and determinants of their decision-making is vital for formulating effective agricultural policies, sustainable rural development strategies, and ensuring optimized agricultural productivity. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 3 (2023): 240-247. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0006-7807-1433 mailto:frondajennifer79@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 240-247 241 agricultural decision-making within family units, an intricate tapestry woven with threads of diverse elements such as economic factors, societal norms, individual perceptions, climate change realities, and local agro-ecological conditions, has been the subject of numerous studies. however, there's a notable lacuna in the understanding of perspectives from rural households, an element that this narrative seeks to address. at the heart of agricultural growth is the adoption of new technologies and practices. according to adnan, nordin, bahruddin, and tareq (2019), green fertilizer technology (gft) in malaysia is seen as an instrument that can not only address environmental concerns but also significantly enhance crop yields, particularly in paddy farming. however, the uptake of gft has been sluggish due to factors such as high production costs, leading to a lukewarm perception towards its adoption. the study, therefore, proposed an amalgamation of various theories, including the diffusion of innovation (doi), theory of reasoned action (tra), theory of planned behavior (tpb), and technology acceptance model (tam), to examine the adoption decisions. the scholars concluded that these theories, combined with effective communication channels, could help address the limitations in the adoption of gft, thereby bolstering paddy production in malaysia. in the same vein, plieninger et al. (2021) studied mediterranean agroforestry systems, specifically focusing on the impacts of land use and management practices on biodiversity. the study, which comprised an extensive review of 128 empirical studies, identified socio-cultural factors, economic dynamics, and agricultural policies as key drivers of change, ultimately leading to the intensification of livestock production and land use simplification. the researchers emphasized the need to incorporate a wider range of disciplines and perspectives, moving from single -topic to landscape-level approaches to ensure sustainable agricultural practices. climate change, undoubtedly, has far-reaching effects on farming. kenea and mebratu (2020) corroborate this in their review, revealing that most farmers in ethiopia are cognizant of climate change impacts and have consequently adopted strategies to mitigate these effects. however, there are a wide range of factors, such as agro-ecological settings, education level, landholding, and farm income, that have an impact on people's preferences for adaptation strategies. the review also pointed out the glaring lack of empirical evidence in livestock sectors, calling for further research on adaptation strategies within these sectors. according to soubry, sherren, and thornton (2020), it is crucial to incorporate farmers' knowledge into discussions of land management and climate change adaptation. unfortunately, there is a notable lack of research that encompasses farmers' perspectives. most studies tend to focus more on the global south, often evaluating farmers' perceptions against historical data or quantitative measurements, consequently reducing them to passive and vulnerable figures rather than active adaptors. the researchers, thus, called for a shift from these prevailing dynamics towards embracing in-depth qualitative methods that respect and value the expertise of farmers in adaptation discourses. accoridng to sadiq, ramanoon, mossadeq, mansor, and hussain (2019), farmer perceptions also have a significant impact on animal welfare. focusing on lameness in dairy cows, the study identified a discrepancy in the understanding of the problem between veterinarians and dairy farmers, leading to delayed treatment and poor cattle welfare. the research underscores the importance of farmers' perceptions and attitudes towards animal health and suggests the incorporation of interventional programmes to address such challenges. these studies illustrate the intricate web of factors influencing agricultural decision-making processes and the crucial role farmers' perceptions play in these processes. addressing these perceptions, integrating farmers' expertise, and understanding their attitudes towards new technologies and practices can, therefore, greatly enhance the sustainability and productivity of the agricultural sector. agricultural households contribute significantly to the economy, functioning as active decision-makers who shape their livelihoods and surrounding landscapes. while neoclassical economic theory offers a foundation by viewing these households as rational entities that make choices to maximize utility or profits (mcn & becker, 1978), it often neglects the complexities of rural households and their interactions with land and communities. efforts to augment rural agricultural livelihoods have led researchers and practitioners down a path of various frameworks and theories. a key milestone is the sustainable livelihoods approach (sla), introduced by scoones (1998). the sla provides a comprehensive exploration of rural agricultural households, focusing on their resilience and adaptation to various challenges influenced by human, natural, physical, social, and financial capitals. yet, the sla isn't perfect. it overlooks individual perceptions, experiences, and perspectives, which are crucial in agricultural decision-making. addressing this gap, natarajan, newsham, rigg, and suhardiman (2022) proposed an updated sustainable livelihoods framework, incorporating structural, spatially-disaggregated, dynamic, and ecologically-coherent elements of rural livelihoods in the age of climate change and globalization. simultaneously, azadi et al. (2021) evaluated the concept of climate-smart agriculture (csa) and argued for the inclusion of small-scale farmer realities, giving birth to vulnerable-smart agriculture (vsa). they insisted that effective policies should consider the voices of the farmers directly affected. their research proposes strategies for farmers to manage tensions and disasters sustainably. in a related vein, zhong, zhu, zhao, and shen (2022) examined the effects of hydropower development on farmers' livelihoods in the lancangmekong river basin, calling for comprehensive assessments of such projects' impacts on these livelihoods. meanwhile, fierros-gonzález and lópez-feldman (2021) spotlighted the pressing issue of climate change. the duo acknowledged the lack of sufficient research on farmers' perceptions of climate change, particularly in the highly vulnerable region of latin america. their review established the need for more research in this area, asserting that understanding farmers' perceptions is crucial for effective climate change adaptation. praveen and sharma (2019) explored the effects of climate change on crop productivity, acknowledging agriculture’s vulnerability and discussing strategies for adaptation and mitigation. from agroforestry practice and organic farming to rainwater harvesting, irrigation planning, and manure management, they delved into a variety of measures that could help alleviate the impacts of climate change. the issue of risk also made its way into the discourse, with komarek, de pinto, and smith (2020) arguing that the understanding of risks in agriculture has been too narrow. they urged for a holistic approach to risk management, calling attention to the need for a comprehensive understanding of the multiple risks farmers face. technological adoption formed another pillar in this discourse, with takahashi, muraoka, and otsuka (2020) noting the persistent food insecurity in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 240-247 242 regions like sub-saharan africa. they promoted the idea of integrated farm management systems and efficient farmerto-farmer technology extension as potential pathways to increased crop yields and sustainable yield gains. hatab, cavinato, lindemer, and lagerkvist (2019) addressed the challenges of urbanization and demographic changes to food security in developing countries. they advocated for a holistic perspective on urban and rural food systems, emphasizing the need to address the disconnects within the approaches used to analyze these systems. in essence, these studies highlight the need for inclusive, comprehensive, and holistic approaches towards enhancing rural agricultural livelihoods. they underscore the importance of individual farmer perspectives, climate change adaptation, risk management, efficient technology extension, and integrative understanding of urban and rural food systems in the face of ever-evolving challenges. the study of cognitive and psychological aspects of agricultural decision-making is receiving increasing attention from researchers. scholars such as spence and pidgeon (2010) have illuminated the influence of risk perceptions and attitudes towards climate change on agricultural decisions. carlisle (2014) further emphasized the impact of farmers' belief systems and their relationship with the land on sustainable farming methods. this suggests that farmers should be better understood as human beings with social and psychological aspects in addition to their role as economic actors.. findlater, kandlikar, and satterfield (2019) found that farmers' interpretations of farming practices often deviated from local experts' views, indicating a potential communication gap. they also warned that inaccurate estimations of adoption could jeopardize climate change adaptation strategies. this emphasizes the necessity of considering the psychological facets of farming, including perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs that influence decision-making. the need to understand farmers as multifaceted beings was echoed by gregorioa and ancog (2020), who argued for systemic changes in agricultural systems to ensure resilience and sustainability. similarly, santos (2023) urged for better cooperation between the government and stakeholders to encourage safe city programs. harvey et al. (2018) highlighted the negative effects of climate change on small-scale farmers, calling for climate adaptation policies that consider the varying socioeconomic conditions, environmental contexts, and climate stresses farmers face. dosso, gouroubera, idrissou, and moumouni-mousa (2023) reinforced this, finding that enhancing farmers' innovation adoption required a focus on their capacities and propensity to embrace new practices. these studies emphasize the need to perceive farmers as social, psychological, and economic beings. agricultural policies and interventions should reflect their perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and abilities. by acknowledging the holistic nature of farmers, we can foster a more resilient and productive agricultural sector and facilitate system transformation, climate change adaptation, and innovation adoption. the need for studies that combine neoclassical economics, the sustainable livelihoods approach, and psychological perspectives is urgent in these regions. agricultural decision-making, particularly within rural households, is complex due to the interplay of various factors, including economic aspects, societal norms, climate change perceptions, and local ecological conditions. current research has explored areas like technological adoption (adnan et al., 2019), land use and management practices (plieninger et al., 2021), and climate change adaptation strategies (kenea & mebratu, 2020). however, these often focus on tangible factors while overlooking the nuanced perspectives and experiences of the farmers themselves. a growing body of research is acknowledging the importance of integrating farmers' perspectives into the discourse on agricultural decision-making. these studies (e.g., (sadiq et al., 2019; soubry et al., 2020)) recognize the critical role farmers' perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs play in shaping agricultural practices. furthermore, they assert that an understanding of these cognitive and psychological aspects can significantly enhance the effectiveness of agricultural policies and interventions. furthermore, even though a number of theories and frameworks have been used to analyse agricultural decisionmaking, an integrated approach is required due to the complex nature of the issue. it is glaringly lacking a method that incorporates concepts from neoclassical economics, the sustainable livelihoods method, and contemporary viewpoints on the psychological and cognitive elements of farming. by taking into consideration the various spheres of influence that shape farmers' decisions, an integrated approach like this one could offer a more comprehensive knowledge of agricultural decision-making. consequently, this research aims to bridge these gaps, shedding light on rural household behavior in a gricultural decision-making from the farmers' perspectives, especially in the context of a developing nation. the study will not only examine the influence of economic factors, societal norms, and climate change realities but also delve into the personal perceptions, experiences, and risk attitudes of the farmers. moreover, it will strive to synthesize insights from various theoretical standpoints, aiming to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the subject. by doing so, this research will offer valuable insights that could inform effective agricultural policies and interventions, ultimately promoting agricultural sustainability and rural development. 2. methodology a mixed-methods strategy was used in this study to provide comprehensive and nuanced knowledge of the agricultural decision-making processes of rural families in nueva ecija, philippines. this approach used both qualitative and quantitative approaches. 2.1. research design the study used an explanatory sequential design, whereby qualitative data collection came after quantitative data collection. the quantitative phase identified key factors in agricultural decision-making among rural households, with the qualitative phase elaborating on these using farmer perspectives. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 240-247 243 2.2. population and sampling respondents the target population for this study was rural households engaged in farming activities in nueva ecija, philippines. a multi-stage stratified sampling technique was employed to ensure that the sample was re presentative of the agricultural households across different villages and farm types. in the first stage, a random se lection of ten villages from the regionnwas done. farms were divided into three groups in the second stage: small farms (less than 2 hectares), medium farms (2-4 hectares), and big farms (greater than 4 hectares). after that, families for the research were chosen using random selection within each stratum. in total, 300 households were included in the survey 100 from each farm category. 2.3. research instrument the primary data collection tool for the quantitative phase was a structured questionnaire. it comprised questions on demographic characteristics, farming practices, socio-economic factors, perceptions about climate change, risk attitudes, and other potential influencers of agricultural decision-making. the qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews. an interview guide was used to ensure that all relevant aspects were covered while allowing flexibility for the participants to express their views and experiences. 2.4. data gathering procedures there were two stages to the data collection process. the questionnaires were given out in the first phase via in person interviews with the chosen houses by the researcher. prior to starting the survey, participants were told of the study's goals and provided with their informed permission. a selection of respondents (about 30) who displayed distinctive decision-making characteristics in the quantitative phase was chosen for in-depth interviews in the second phase. the researcher conducted the interviews personally, had them videotaped with permission, and then had the transcripts analyzed. 2.5. statistical tests data were summarized using descriptive statistics, and decision-making in agriculture was studied using inferential statistics, including logistic regression and chi-square tests. the qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis. this involved reading and rereading the transcripts, cod ing the data, identifying patterns, and generating themes that encapsulated the farmers' perspectives on agricultural decision-making. this mixed-methods approach, by combining statistical analysis with in-depth qualitative insights, allowed for a robust and comprehensive understanding of rural household behavior in agricultural decision-making in nueva ecija, philippines. the quantitative phase identified significant factors influencing decision-making, while the qualitative phase provided richer context and depth to these findings, offering an intricate understanding of farmer perspectives. 3. results and discussion 3.1. understanding the primary factors influencing the agricultural decision-making process of rural households descriptive statistics were conducted to describe the basic features of the data in this study. for instance, the average farming household size was 4.6 members, with the head of the household typically around 48.5 years old. in addition, 2.5 hectares of farmland were owned by each household, and their yearly income was, on average, 200,000 philippine peso (php). it was discovered that just 30% of farming households had a college education or above, further elaborating on the educational status of farming households. roughly 70% of farmers only had primary or secondary education. table 1 summarizes this distribution of educational levels. table 1. distribution of educational level among farming households. education level frequency percentage (%) primary 140 47 secondary 70 23 tertiary or higher 90 30 total 300 100 table 1 illustrates the distribution of educational levels among farming households in nueva ecija, philippines. nearly half (47%) of the farmers had only attained a primary level of education. about a quarter (23%) achieved secondary education, while 30% managed to pursue tertiary or higher education. this finding suggests a relatively low level of formal education among the farmers, potentially impacting their agricultural decision-making. previous research has shown that education plays a crucial role in farming practices. higher education often equates to better knowledge and comprehension of new farming technologies and innovative practices (adesina & seidi, 1995). this study implies that farmers with higher education levels may not adopt innovative farming technologies. logistic regression analysis suggests that older methods are employed more often. additionally, inferential data show a strong correlation between agricultural techniques and household size, household head's education level, and income. this result is consistent with other studies showing that families with bigger sizes, more educated people, and better incomes have a tendency to diversify their farming operations, increasing agricultural output and resilience (bezu, kassie, shiferaw, & ricker-gilbert, 2014; udry, 1996). by revealing a complex interaction of factors impacting agricultural decision-making among rural families, the current study adds to this body of work. in order to improve asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 240-247 244 policy and practice and support the development of a sustainable agriculture industry, future research should continue to investigate these processes. next, inferential statistics were employed to understand the relationships between different factors and household agricultural decision-making. chi-square tests revealed a significant relationship (all p 0.05) between agricultural techniques and family size, household head's educational attainment, and income. table 2 presents the findings of the chi-square tests. table 2. chi-square tests for association between farming practices and selected factors. variables chi-square value degrees of freedom (df) significance (p-value) household size 10.77 2 0.005 education level 8.24 2 0.016 annual income 12.38 2 0.002 table 2 presents the outcomes of chi-square tests scrutinizing the relationships between farming practices and selected determinants such as household size, the household head's educational attainment, and annual income. all three of these variables demonstrate significant relationships with farming practices, confirming their substantial impact on agricultural decision-making processes. the significant association between household size and farming practices (χ² = 10.77, df = 2, p = 0.005) offers evidence that the number of family members plays a pivotal role in shaping agricultural decisions. this observation is in line with prior research. pitt, rosenzweig, and hassan (2012) pointed out that larger families often have the advantage of more available labor. this additional workforce capacity empowers them to manage extensive farming areas, diversify their agricultural operations, and withstand risks and uncertainties more effectively, thereby bolstering the stability and resilience of their farming enterprises. the noteworthy link between the educational level of the household head and farming practices (χ² = 8.24, df = 2, p = 0.016) aligns well with extensive scholarly work. advanced educational levels are often correlated with superior comprehension and implementation of innovative farming methodologies, leading to heightened productivity and sustainability in agriculture (abdulai & huffman, 2005; adesina & seidi, 1995). a higher level of education provides the capacity to comprehend and apply complex farming techniques, which can enhance yields and promote sustainable farming practices. similarly, the association between annual income and farming practices (χ² = 12.38, df = 2, p = .002) suggests that economic factors also play an integral role in farming decisions. higher income levels can enable the adoption of progressive farming practices. as families' financial resources grow, they gain the ability to invest in advanced farming equipment and technologies. this economic flexibility can lessen their vulnerability to shocks and stresses, whether environmental or economic, and increase their propensity to experiment with novel agricultural techniques (dercon, 1998; dercon & christiaensen, 2007). these findings collectively underline the multifaceted influences on agricultural decision-making, ranging from demographic factors such as family size to socioeconomic factors such as education and income. they offer valuable insights for shaping agricultural policies that aim to enhance farming practices and promote sustainability in the sector. table 3. logistic regression analysis of factors influencing agricultural decision-making. variables b s.e. wald df sig. exp(b) household size 0.680 0.211 6.320 1 0.012 1.974 education level -0.540 0.183 8.940 1 0.003 0.583 annual income 0.001 0.000 7.621 1 0.006 1.001 perceptions of climate change 1.301 0.422 9.505 1 0.002 3.673 risk attitude -0.931 0.311 8.994 1 0.003 0.394 note: b = unstandardized regression coefficient; s.e. = standard error; wald = wald chi-square; df = degrees of freedom; sig. = significance level; exp(b) = odds ratio. table 3 delineates the outcomes of a logistic regression analysis performed to deepen our comprehension of the dynamics influencing agricultural decision-making in nueva ecija, philippines. this analysis examines several variables, including household size, the level of education of the household head, annual income, perception of climate change, and risk attitude. the coefficient for household size (b = 0.680, se = 0.211) is statistically significant at the .012 level, indicating that each additional family member in the household correlates with a 97.4% increase in the likelihood of adopting innovative farming practices (exp(b) = 1.974). this result aligns with research conducted by pitt et al. (2012) and bezu et al. (2014), which underscores the influence of larger households on adopting innovative farming methods. larger families, which typically possess more available labour, have the capacity to manage diversified farming operations and cope with the uncertainties associated with the adoption of novel practices better than smaller households. interestingly, the education level of the household head has a negative coefficient (b = -.540, se = .183, p = .003), signifying that each incremental increase in the level of education corresponds with a 41.7% decrease in the odds of adopting innovative farming practices (exp(b) = .583). this somewhat paradoxical finding may suggest a higher inclination of educated farmers towards traditional methods, possibly due to their understanding and comfort with existing practices (adesina & seidi, 1995). annual income has a significant positive relationship with the adoption of innovative farming practices (b = .001, se = 0.000, p = 0.006). this outcome suggests that for each unit increase in income, the likelihood of innovative adoption increases by approximately 0.1% (exp(b) = 1.001). higher income levels provide farmers with the financial asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 240-247 245 capacity to bear the risks inherent to innovative farming practices, in accordance with prior studies (dercon, 1998). the financial flexibility facilitated by increased income may allow for the experimentation with and implementation of innovative practices, thereby potentially enhancing productivity and sustainability. moreover, perceptions of climate change show the strongest positive association with the adoption of innovat ive farming practices (b = 1.301, se = .422, p = .002). this finding indicates that acknowledging climate change increases the likelihood of adopting innovative farming practices by approximately 267.3% (exp(b) = 3.673). this pivotal result underscores the influential role of climate change perceptions in steering agricultural decision-making. individuals who perceive the pressing reality of climate change may be more inclined to adopt innovative practices to ensure the sustainability of their farming operations, a finding that has been supported by prior studies such as deressa, hassan, ringler, alemu, and yesuf (2009). finally, risk attitude is negatively associated with adoption (b = -.931, se = .311, p = .003), implying that farmers who are more risk-averse are 60.6% less likely to adopt innovative farming practices (exp(b) = .394). this corresponds with findings from dillon and scandizzo (1978), who established that risk aversion can act as a barrier against the uptake of new technologies and practices. farmers who are more cautious or uncertain may resist deviating from known and reliable methods, thereby potentially hindering innovation. these findings illuminate the complex web of influences shaping agricultural decision-making, from demographic factors such as household size to socio-economic factors including education and income to psychological factors such as perceptions of climate change and risk attitudes. this nuanced understanding can inform effective policy interventions that foster sustainable and productive agricultural practices. 3.2. elucidating the role of individual perceptions, experiences, and risk attitudes in agricultural decision-making the qualitative phase of the study further added depth to the understanding of decision-making processes among the farming households. a thematic analysis was conducted, and the frequency of thematic occurrences was recorded to quantify the prominence of each theme. the frequency distribution of the themes is summarized in table 4. table 4. frequency distribution of thematic occurrences in qualitative data. themes frequency perception of climate change 25 risk attitudes 20 role of local knowledge and experience 27 table 4 demonstrates that the 'role of local knowledge and experience' was the most frequently occurring theme, appearing in 27 out of 30 interviews, followed by 'perception of climate change' (25 occurrences) and 'risk attitudes' (20 occurrences). perception of climate change: a significant majority of farmers (83%) have observed alterations in weather patterns and seasonal shifts, which they attribute to climate change. these climate change perceptions have emerged as vital factors influencing their farming decisions, such as the choice of crops, timing for planting and harvesting, and the selection of agricultural inputs. therefore, the farmers' observations of climatic changes have substantial implications for their agricultural practices. risk attitudes: in our sample, about two-thirds of the farmers (67%) exhibited risk-averse behaviors, often favoring traditional and well-known farming practices over innovative ones. this predisposition towards familiarity and tradition manifests as a considerable impediment to the adoption of novel or sustainable farming methods. as such, risk aversion plays a pivotal role in shaping the agricultural choices of farmers and could act as a barrier to farming innovation and sustainability. role of local knowledge and experience: a vast majority of the farmers (90%) heavily depended on their historical experiences and indigenous knowledge to make farming decisions. this strong reliance on experiential knowledge underscores the value they place on their personal experiences and local wisdom. indeed, this ingrained wisdom was often found to be a more influential determinant in their decision-making process than formal education or expert advice. thus, the role of local knowledge and lived experiences holds significant weight in guiding the farmers' decisionmaking, potentially overruling other sources of knowledge. 3.3. discerning the impact of these decisions on agricultural sustainability and rural development farmers' decision-making processes bear profound implications that stretch beyond their individual farming practices and outcomes, penetrating deeper to impact agricultural sustainability and rural development on a broader scale. for instance, farmers demonstrating risk-averse attitudes tend to shy away from adopting sustainable farming practices. this behavioral pattern, while understandable in the face of uncertainty, carries far-reaching implications for environmental sustainability and the long-term vitality of the agricultural sector. moreover, the entrenched reliance on local knowledge and experiences highlights the paramount importance of integrating cultural sensitivity and local appropriateness into extension services. these services, designed to promote sustainable development, should acknowledge and respect the wisdom contained in years of lived experience. by doing so, they open avenues for interventions that are more likely to be accepted and acted upon, such as enhancing education and awareness surrounding sustainable farming practices and the realities of climate change. the findings presented in this study resonate with the tenets of the sustainable livelihoods approach, which underscores the complex interplay of various forms of capital in shaping rural livelihoods and the decision-making processes therein (scoones, 1998). the observations also dovetail with the insights put forth by spence and pidgeon asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 240-247 246 (2010) and carlisle (2014) regarding the influential role perceptions and belief structures play in guiding agricultural decision-making. however, this study goes a step further, adding a unique perspective to the expanding scholarly conversation on the intricacies of agricultural decision-making among rural families. the novelty lies in its exploration of these dynamics within the context of a developing nation, a setting often fraught with its own unique challenges and opportunities. this facet of the study enhances its contribution to the literature, inviting future research to delve deeper into these complexities and devise effective strategies to promote sustainable agricultural practices. 4. conclusions and recommendations the study provides insight into how rural households in nueva ecija, the philippines, make agricultural decisions. the study demonstrates that risk attitudes, individual experiences and beliefs, and domestic circumstances all complicate decision-making. the results show that while making agricultural decisions, farming families value local knowledge and experience. this result complements the sustainable livelihoods framework and highlights the value of local knowledge as a vital component of human capital. additionally, the study demonstrates that a key consideration in agricultural decision-making is risk aversion. this suggests that programmes aimed at promoting the use of innovative farming methods should consider strategies to lower perceived risks and uncertaintie s, like providing farmers with reliable information, support, and training. furthermore, it became clear that farming decisions were significantly influenced by views of climate change. the need for climate-smart agricultural treatments that take into account farmers' experiences and perceptions of climate change is highlighted by this finding. the findings of this research provide valuable insights and call for several strategic recommendations. training and capacity-building programmes in agriculture should take a more inclusive approach that encapsulates local knowledge and wisdom. recognising the value of farmers' lived experiences can enhance their capacity to adapt to changing circumstances, ultimately fostering a resilient farming community. risk aversion was prominent among the farmers, suggesting the need for structured risk management strategies. such strategies could involve offering crop insurance, improving access to credit, and promoting diversified farming systems. these approaches may stimulate innovation and sustainable farming by reducing risk. the study found that farmers' views on climate change strongly influenced their agricultural decisions. policymakers and practitioners should take heed of this, promoting climate smart agricultural practices that resonate with these perceptions. such practices could contribute to improving farm productivity, bolstering resilience, and mitigating the release of greenhouse gases. future research could provide further valuable insights. one possible area of exploration could be how local knowledge and wisdom can be effectively integrated into the design and implementation of agricultural interventions. additionally, the role of gender and age in agricultural decision-making could be investigated to provide a more comprehensive understanding of farming households' dynamics. this study has illuminated the influential roles of local knowledge, risk attitudes, and climate change perceptions on the decision-making processes of rural households in nueva ecija, philippines. a 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darr-us-salam, dhaka-1216, bangladesh c associate professor; department of management studies, patuakhali science and technology university, dumki, patuakhali, bangladesh d department of agricultural extension and rural development, patuakhali science and technology university, dumki, patuakhali, bangladesh  murashidpstu@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 16-sep-2019 accepted: 26-nov-2019 online available: 20-dec2019 keywords: usefulness, cell phone, crop farmers, bangladesh abstract this research endeavours the usefulness of cell phones for crop farmers in selected region of bangladesh. for adequate findings and to achieve its purpose, structured interview schedule was adopted to collect data from 281 randomly selected farmers and it was revealed that a little over 60% of them found cell phones very useful, while only 5.3% respondents found the cell phone as less useful. based on average talk time hours spend in the last six months, top three sources of agricultural information were friends and relatives, distributors and middlemen, and farmers in advanced categories. the results of the ordered logit model showed that their usefulness was significantly determined by age, farm size, per month call charges, and experience in using cell phones. higher call rates, lack of awareness and paucity of mobile-based information sources were major bottlenecks in using cell phones for agricultural information. the recommendations suggested therein lead to connecting farmers with reliable and rich information sources, use of mms and sms, voice call activities, providing subsidized sim cards, and ultimately undertake widespread campaigns for training of aged farmers to persuade their interest towards the use of cell phones and mobile-based information sources. contribution/ originality to the best of authors’ knowledge other researches did not consider the types of services provided to farmers for receiving sufficient agricultural information. moreover, this study is quite in contrast with other researches undertaken earlier on the use of cell-phones in bangladesh, since it considers the concrete and appropriate usefulness, and also able to provide a holistic scenario of use of cell-phones along with its extended and vast informative benefits to the farmers. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.298.312 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: md. mamun-ur-rashid, md. masud karim, md. muzahidul islam and md. soad bin mobarak (2019). the usefulness of cell phones for crop farmers in selected regions of bangladesh. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 298-312. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 298-312 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:murashidpstu@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.298.312 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 298-312 299 1. introduction despite of apparent self-sufficiency in rice production, its yield is still considered to be very low in bangladesh (shelley et al., 2016). for instance, being the fourth largest rice producer in the world, productivity (4.42 ton/ ha) in bangladesh is significantly lower than vietnam (5.75 ton/ha) although placed in the fifth position (grisp, 2013). credit constraints, lack in insurance markets, and poor infrastructure could be described as causes of some of this disparity, while a variety of observers have pointed out the possibility that sub-optimal agricultural practices and poor management may also be the contributors of these slackness (jack, 2013). there are mostly small and family operated farms amongst the more than 570 million farmers worldwide, (lowder et al., 2016). a similar trend is also characterized by the prevalence of small and fragmented landholdings in the agricultural sector in bangladesh (haque and jinan, 2017). unexpectedly, farming systems pertaining to small-holding farmers are remarkably less productive and less profitable than their capacity for reasons encompassing the lack of access to credit and input, and inability to withstand risks. information and skill gaps regarding adoption of modern technologies and management practices also contribute to productive growth and technical efficiency (world bank, 2007). since farming is gradually and progressively becoming time-critical and information-intense business, and hence, improved information flows have positive effects on the agricultural sector and individual producers, but gathering and distribution of information are quite difficult and expensive activities (milovanović, 2014). similarly, agricultural extension system in bangladesh is historically suffering from many inherent problems and often unable to meet the information needs of most farmers (nippard, 2014; rashid and gao, 2016). the service is operating with limited manpower in constraining resources. for instance, department of agricultural extension (dae) the largest crop extension organization employs 14,092 field-level extension agents, where each agent is liable and responsible to provide services to 900-2,000 farm families (miah, 2015). in this context, information and communication technology (ict), particularly mobile phones could be effective medium to link farmers with necessary information. mobile phone sector in bangladesh is experiencing a rapid growth from its inception since 1993. to be more precise, till march, 2019 the number of total mobile subscribers was 158.44 million, which includes almost 97.02% of the total population standing at 163.288 million (btrc, 2019). not only had there been an increase in the number of subscribers, the coverage of mobile network reached almost at its highest limits for almost 99% residents (globaleconomy.com, 2019). however, successful application of cell phones need to know the type of information, which is being sought by the farmers, various sources used accordingly, and appropriate usefulness of mobile phones for the farmers. 1.1. study objectives the general objective of this research was to explore the usefulness of mobile telephony in receiving agricultural information in the study area. however the specific objectives were: 1. to reveal the present situation of mobile use by the respondents. 2. to explore the usefulness of mobile phone for the crop farmers in the study area. 3. to identify the determinants of cell phone usefulness in the study area. 1.2. conceptual framework a cell phone is a portable telephone, which embraces cellular network technology to make and receive calls. the names originated from the cell like structure of these networks (ware, 2016). the term cell phone is interchangeable with cellular phone or mobile phone. usefulness, on the other hand, is something (service or device) that represents its benefit. usefulness is the quality of having utility and especially practical worth or applicability. so, usefulness of mobile phone in agriculture means the utility of mobile phone in enhancing benefit from crop production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 298-312 300 mobile phone based information delivery assists smallholder farmers to address the economic development challenges to deal with extreme poverty and increasing food security as well (wyche and steinfield, 2016). along with reduction of communication and information cost, cell phone provide rural peasants with information on market, weather, transport, and agricultural techniques, and helps to maintain contact with concerned agencies and departments (aker, 2011). as stated by mcnamara (2009), the list of benefits of mobile phone use in extension and agricultural development are numerous, which encompasses increasing small-holder productivity and incomes; turning agricultural markets more efficient and transparent; connecting poor farmers to urban, regional, and global market; improving services and governance for the rural poor; promoting and engaging smallholder in agricultural innovation; assisting farmers in managing a range of risks; efficient management of land, natural resources, and environmental pressure; enhancing participation of poor farmers in high-value agriculture; supporting the emergence of a more diverse rural economy and assisting rural families decisions about their integration of productive activities.. however, consulting several number of literatures (aker, 2011; baumüller, 2012; bayes et al., 1999; donner, 2006; goggin and clark, 2009; goodman, 2005; kyem et al., 2006; martin and abbott, 2010; mittal and mehar, 2012, singh and issac, 2018; qiang et al., 2011; vodafone group and accenture, 2011) around the globe a list of benefits of usefulness of cellphone in agriculture is displayed in table 1. table 1: usefulness of cell phone in agriculture area of information usefulness input related better input and equipment; optimum use of input; real price; less chance of being cheated; better delivery; better environment financial quick payment; increased access to credit; better management of bank account weather better management of climate change effect; reduction of risk; better water management production better selection of crop varieties; efficient management of land, irrigation, fertilizer, disease, pest, natural resources, etc.; better harvest, processing, & storage market better market links and distribution networks; enhanced access to markets and value chain; reduction of fraud; latest market rates training & education better knowledge & skill; positive attitude; improved literacy social networking improved cohesion and better interpersonal relationship; enhanced group efficiency; better mobility and security; more empowerment multiple social issues effect on the use of icts, such as literacy, socio-economic status, willingness, as well as conditions to participate in ict training (manalo and eligio, 2011). katengeza et al. (2011) identified literacy, distance to local market, land size, current value of assets, crop income, and regional variations positively affect mobile use by smallholder farmers for agricultural marketing. demographic variables, such as age, sex, educational level, experience and size of holdings were found influential determinants in the use of mobile phone among small-scale poultry farmers in ghana (folitse et al., 2019). in tanzania urassa and mvina (2016) identified distance from home to the nearest cattle market; the variety of information demands; income earned per year; level of local network coverage and access to mobile financial services in using cell phones in access to beef cattle market information. farmers’ decision to patronize mobile phonebased weather and market information was found significantly influenced by contact with agricultural extension agents and farmer-to-farmer extension services (etwire et al., 2017). factors, such as, age and social participation was identified as influential in mobile phone use by the farmers in receiving information on vegetable cultivation in bangladesh (asif et al., 2017). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 298-312 301 use of cell phone for agricultural information is often constrained by several factors. primary obstacle identified by most of the studies was high call charge (asif et al., 2017; stephane, 2017; warthi and bhanotra, 2017). several studies conducted in diversified locations also cited network failure as a crucial constraint (folitse et al., 2019; navinkumar et al., 2018; warthi and bhanotra, 2017). lack of electric power supply emerged as a conspicuous constrains in cell phone use in the agriculture sector (asif et al., 2017; falola and adewumi, 2012; mukadasi, 2018; navinkumar et al., 2018; warthi and bhanotra, 2017). other constraints limit the use of mobile phone in agriculture identified in various studies were non-membership of agricultural society, inadequate extension services, fluctuating telecommunication services, inadequate access to mobile services, lack of mobile servicing centre, language barrier, lack of knowledge and confidence, complex technology, incomplete messages, lack of locally relevant information, and high cost of mobile phone set (asif et al., 2017; falola and adewumi, 2012, navinkumar et al., 2018; warthi and bhanotra, 2017). there are also debates and issues on the mode of information delivery via mobile phone. for instance, sms is preferred over the voice message or vice-versa. for text sms, there are issues of language conversion, maintaining character constraints, compatibility of farmer’s handset to local language, literacy of subscribers, etc. voice message, on the other hand, have constraints like more costly, efficiency of receiving the messages at pre-defined time is poor and there is a cost of retrieving the information in the message (aker, 2011; mittal et al., 2010; mittal, 2012). 2. methodology 2.1. study area the study was carried out in barisal division under bangladesh. this division is situated in the southern part of the country and bears a land area equivalent to 13,295 km2. the total number of the population resides in barisal is 8,173,818 and the division is renowned for rice and pulse production. in recent years some areas of the division become advanced in vegetable production also. people (54.72%) of this division predominantly depend upon agriculture as a major source of income (banglapedia, 2015). 2.2. study approach this study adopted a quantitative method for reaching research objectives. as stated by creswell (1994), quantitative research is a type of research that is explaining a phenomenon by collecting numerical data that are analyzed using mathematically based methods (in particular statistics). 2.3. population and sampling this study adopted a multistage random sampling method for the selection of sample. barisal division is composed of six districts of which three districts (barisal, patuakhali, and jhalokathi) were purposefully selected for the study. from each of the selected districts one sub-district was randomly selected. one union from each of the selected sub-district (babugonj, dumki, and nalchity) was selected randomly followed by the selection of two villages randomly from each of the selected unions (chandpasa, angaria, and dopdobia). hence, the total number of selected villages was six namely dumki satani, jhatra, chandpasa, bailakhali, bhorotkathi, and jurkathi. the farmers of these selected villages, who use a cell phone for agricultural information at least once in the last six months, constitute the population of the study. the total number of such farmers in the study area was 1150. based on the sample size calculator at 95% confidence level and 5% margin of error the required sample size was 289. hence, this research took face-to-face interview of 289 farmers. due to inconsistency of information 8 interviews were dropped and finally 281 respondents constituted the sample of the study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 298-312 302 2.4. data collecting instruments this study used a structured interview schedule as data collecting instrument. the interview schedule was pre-tested upon forty similar respondents as considered in the study for ensuring validity and reliability and executing necessary correction and adjustments. test-retest method was applied to ensure the reliability of usefulness scale. the score of test and retest showed significant correlation which represents the reliability of usefulness scale. 2.5. measurement of variables usefulness of mobile phone is the dependent variable of the study which was measured based on a single-item 5 point rating scale (very useful=5, useful = 4, moderately useful = 3, less useful = 2, very less useful = 1). usefulness can be measured based on both single and multiple items. as usefulness holistically represents one concept, and judged to be concrete, so single item measurement can be considered as reasonable (sackett and larson, 1990; rossiter, 2002). nonetheless, single-item measures are flexible, easy to administer (pomeroy et al., 2001), less time consuming and not monotonous (gardner et al., 1998) thus reducing response biases (drolet and morrison, 2001). however, measurement techniques of other variables of the study are provided in appendix 1. 2.6. statistical tests this study used descriptive statistics like mean, median, mode, standard deviation, frequency, range, etc., for describing the variables. however, to identify the determinants of usefulness of mobile phone, this study deployed order logistic regression. when a criterion variable has more than two categories and the values of each category have a meaningful sequential order i.e. a value is higher than the previous value then an ordinal logit model can be deployed (torres-reyna, 2012). the model is based on the assumption that there is a latent continuous outcome variable and the observed ordinal outcome arises from discretizing the underlying continuum into j-ordered groups. the thresholds estimate these cut-off values. the basic form of the generalized linear model is 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘 (𝛾𝑗 ) = 𝜃𝑗 − [𝛽1𝑥1 + 𝛽2𝑥2 + ⋯ + 𝛽𝑘𝑥𝑘] exp (𝜏1𝑧1 + 𝜏2𝑧2 + ⋯ + 𝜏𝑚𝑧𝑚) where, γj is the cumulative probability for the jth category, θj is the threshold for the jth category, β1…….βk are the regression coefficients, x1….xk are the predictor variables, and k is the number of predictors. the numerator on the right side determines the location of the model. the denominator of the equation specifies the scale. the τ1…τm are coefficients for the scale component and z1…zm are m predictor variables for the scale component (chosen from the same set of variables as the x’s). 3. results and discussions 3.1. personal characteristics of the respondents participants in this study were 214 males and 67 females. mean age of the respondents were 42.69. in terms of educational background, almost half (46.9%) of the respondents had secondary school certificate (ssc) level education. more than one third (37.7%) of the respondents were placed in marginal farmers category. in case of objectives of farming, 89.7 percent of the respondents had both commercial and family consumption motive, while mean annual income of the respondents was 129.94 thousand taka. however, a detail of personal characteristics of the respondents are presented in table 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 298-312 303 table 2: personal characteristics of the respondents (n = 281) variable scaling category freq. % mean med. sd age year 42.69 40 11.37 gender nominal male 214 76.2 female 67 23.8 education category primary (1-5) 105 37.4 ssc(6-10) 132 46.9 above ssc(<10) 44 15.7 farm size category landless 35 12.5 marginal 106 37.7 small 66 23.5 medium 68 24.2 large 6 2.1 objective of farming nominal commercial 3 1.1 family consumption 26 9.3 both 252 89.7 annual income ‘000’ tk* 129.94 100 118.30 note: *the short name of currency of bangladesh called taka (1 usd = 83 tk) source: field data, 2016 3.2. a profile of cell phone use by the respondents data arranged in table 3 shows that 80.15% of the respondents use only one operator for mobile telephony. on an average, respondents spend 380 taka per month as mobile toll and majority of them were using mobile phone for almost six years. table 3: status of cell phone use by the respondents (n = 281) variable scale category freq. % mean med. sd number of operator(s) use score 1 for each operator one 229 80.15 two 49 17.39 1.19 1 0.04 >2 3 1.06 monthly expenditure ‘00’ taka 3.80 3 6.39 tenure of mobile use years 5.78 5.25 2.71 source: field data, 2016 mobile operators in bangladesh cater different services for their clients. grossly, these services include voice call, text message, picture message, voice message, and internet service. however, farmers’ use of these services varies abruptly. according to the data presented in table 4, all the respondents use the voice call service to a varying degree. although a negligible section of the farmers use the text message, but none of the farmers use the voice message service for receiving agricultural information. similar to voice message user group, a puny section of farmers uses the internet service in the last six months. however, detail of farmer’s extent of used for different service is presented in table 4. supporting to our findings, wyche and steinfield (2016) in their study rural kenya also found limited use of texting as sms requires multiple sub-skills in putting letters, spaces, and symbols, and switching between upper and lower cases – which involve a significant degree of learning, especially, when menus involve only english words. martin and abbott (2010), in a study in uganda on the use of mobile phones in agricultural development found limited use of sms what is supposed to be linked with a high illiteracy rate. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 298-312 304 table 4: distribution of respondents based on extent of use of different types of services s. no. type of service extent of use regular frequent occasionally rarely never 1 voice call 166 41 56 18 0 2 text message 0 2 1 4 274 3 voice message 0 0 0 0 281 4 internet 5 0 1 2 273 note: regular = every week; frequent: every 15 days; occasionally = every month; rarely = every six months, never = no use in last six months source: field data, 2016 mobile phone operators in bangladesh offer different kinds of service to their customers. these services include voice call, text message, mms, voice message, internet service, etc. among these services voice calls are more expensive and most transient in terms of future preservation. on the other hand, text messages, mms, voice message, etc. are long lasting and at the same time less expensive. they can reach the receiver in case of his absence at the other end of the mobile phone. nonetheless, information received via text message, mms, voice message, etc., can easily be shared repeatedly with the peers at any time. 3.3. usefulness of cell phone as presented in table 5 for little more than two third (35.2%) of the farmers found mobile phone useful for receiving agricultural information, while 31.3% of the respondents found mobile phone moderately useful. among the rest of the respondents 28.1% found mobile phone very useful, while rest 5.3% of the farmers identified mobile phone as less to very less useful. table 5: distribution of the respondents based on the level of their mobile phone usefulness s. no. level of usefulness frequency percentage 1 very useful 79 28.1 2 useful 99 35.2 3 moderately useful 88 31.3 4 less useful 11 3.9 5 very less useful 04 1.4 total 281 100 source: field data, 2016 the following table shows the average minutes used in last six months, the top source for agricultural information for respondents is peers and relatives. on average, farmers spent 135.85 minutes/six months with peers and relatives in agricultural information. the other dominated source of information based on average minutes in the last six months via mobile was distributer/middle man, advanced farmers, input dealers, ngo extension worker, public extension worker, private company representative, and mobile company call centers. it is important to note that a negligible proportion (2.8%) of farmers surfed website via mobile for agricultural information. fashina and odefadehan (2014) also confirmed that the friends are the top ranked agricultural information sources in the case of ondo state of nigeria. cell phone can be a very effective device for securing farm information, however, bangladesh still has significant room for improving the usefulness of the cell phone. if we have a critical observation, majority of farmers mostly use less reliable sources like relatives and peers, advanced farmers, middlemen, input dealers, etc. for getting information. their use of reliable and rich sources like public and private extension workers seemed to be very limited. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 298-312 305 table 6: use of different information sources for acquiring agricultural information (n = 281) information source use* freq. (%) mean med. std. or* rank* public extension officer yes 135(48) 18.71 0.00 40.27 0-240 6 no 146(52) ngo extension worker yes 131(46.6) 25.36 0.00 58.78 0-360 5 no 150(53.4) seed/fertilizer/pesticide dealer yes 205(73) 35.61 15.0 53.73 0-240 4 no 76(27) private company representative yes 37(17.2) 6.50 0.00 42.33 0-480 7 no 244(86.8) advanced farmers yes 160(56.9) 37.26 6.0 63.69 0-480 3 no 121(43.1) mobile company call center yes 25(8.9) 2.46 0.00 18.98 0-280 8 no 256(91.1) distributer/middle man yes 137(48.8) 42.56 00 97.06 0-720 2 no 144(51.2) friends and relatives yes 217(77.2) 135.85 60.0 193.66 0-960 1 no 64(22.8) websites yes 8(2.8) 1.89 00 16.63 0-240 9 no 273(97.2) note: *use in last six month; *ranked based on mean (minutes/6 month); *or = observed range source: field data, 2016 3.4. type of information sought farmer sought varieties of information via mobile phone. based on weighted mean, information related to crop protection occupies the first position. the other crucial subjects of information search according to rank order are fertilizer management, selection co crop varieties, marketing of agricultural products, seed processing and treatment, etc. however, other aspects of information search are presented in table 7. similar to the respondents of the study area, kenyan farmers also sought information about seed, fertilizers and pesticides for growing crops against bad weather (kashem, 2010). studying the case of morocco ilahiane (2007) found that farmers exchange marketing, weather, and business information among each other via cell phone. table 7: extent of information search by the respondents (n = 281) s. no. subject of information extent of search wm* rank of oc ra ne 1 pest and disease control information 107 109 41 24 2.06 1 2 fertilizer management 66 112 44 59 1.65 2 3 selection of crop and/or vegetables species 53 94 77 57 1.50 3 4 marketing of crop/vegetables 73 58 34 116 1.31 4 5 seed processing and treatment 24 54 58 145 0.84 5 6 irrigation and water management 26 35 52 168 0.71 6 7 purchase of equipment and their use 16 21 90 154 0.64 7 8 land preparation 16 42 45 178 0.62 8 9 weather information 27 18 38 198 0.55 9 10 crop/vegetable processing 12 31 56 182 0.54 10 note: often (of) = search information at least once/month, occasionally (oc) = at least once/three months, rarely (ra) = once/six months, never (ne) = don’t search information in last six months, *weighted mean= oftenx3+ ocassionallyx2+ rarelyx1+ neverx0/ total respondents source: field data, 2016 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 298-312 306 3.5. constraints of cell phone usefulness farmers encountered numerous problems in using cell phone for agricultural information (table 8). among the confronted problems, high call charge is placed at the top of the list. based on weighted mean other major problems encompass lack of awareness about mobile based information sources, scarcity of mobile based information sources, unavailability of skilled mobile mechanic, lack of skill in operating cell-phone, etc. similar to this study, a research conducted in ethiopia, ruanda, and bangladesh concluded that the cost of purchasing and using mobile devices can become a momentous deterrent to the success of mobile device system for marketing (cho and tobias, 2012). reviewing several studies, chhachhar and hassan (2013) claimed that there is a lack of signal of uses of mobile phone and infrastructure in many developing countries. the lack of knowledge is also a profound problem among rural communities and families in use of ict. a study in malaysia also claimed that use level of ict among rural community especially farmers remain low as a result of lack of knowledge and skill (musa, 2008). table 8: problem confrontation in using mobile phone for agricultural information (n = 281) s. no. problem incidence of problem wm* rank vh hi mo lo vl 1 high call charge 62 126 72 15 6 3.79 1 2 unaware about mobile based information sources 95 83 47 35 21 3.77 2 3 paucity of mobile based information sources 65 91 73 29 23 3.52 3 4 scarcity of skilled mobile mechanic 48 70 95 47 21 3.27 4 5 lack of skill in operating cell phone 52 83 60 45 41 3.21 5 6 weak network 54 56 78 60 33 3.13 6 7 don’t find relevant information 61 48 72 59 41 3.10 7 8 balance shortage during phone call 31 53 90 80 27 2.93 8 9 high price of mobile handset 6 36 151 72 16 2.80 9 10 inadequacy of electricity for mobile charging 49 38 57 61 76 2.72 10 *weighted mean = very high (vh)x5 + high (hi)x4 + moderate (mo)x3 + low(lo)x2 + very low (vl)x1/ total respondents source: field data, 2016 bangladesh is one of the resource poor populous countries in south asia. contrasting other sectors, cell phone sector is experiencing a rapid progress in last one and half decades. cell phone can improve proximity between service providers and clients which can enhance better farmer access to quality information. deplorably, mobile based information service for agricultural development in bangladesh is still minimal. grossly, none of the important extension service provider either public or private do not have well-structured sustainable communication with farmers via cell phone. 3.6. ways to improve cell phone usefulness bangladesh is one of the top countries experiencing massive growth of the mobile network. common improvement of customer service may not be fully useful for improving farmer access to agricultural information as most of the farmers in bangladesh are subsistence farmers and don’t have enough money to invest for cell phone based information collection. according to the respondents reduction of call toll and strengthening cell phone network can certainly increase farmers’ access to mobile based agricultural service. however, a detail of suggestions proposed by the respondents for improving cell phone usefulness is displayed in table 9. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 298-312 307 table 9: suggestions for improving usefulness of mobile phone s. no. suggestions frequency 1 reduction of mobile call charge 189 2 strengthening mobile network facilities 100 3 toll free facilities for agricultural calls 33 4 training for developing mobile operating skill 28 5 inspiring farmers in using mobile based information sources 26 6 ensuring accuracy of information 24 7 ensuring regular supply of electricity 21 8 increasing number of mobile based information sources 20 9 reducing price of mobile phone set 20 10 supplying need based easily understandable information 19 note: respondents enjoyed the opportunity of providing more than one suggestions source: field data, 2016 3.7. determinants of mobile usefulness this study used ordered logistic model to reveal the determinants of usefulness of mobile phone for retrieving agricultural information. in the process of analysis, different models were run combining explanatory variables to find out the most suitable combination. model 1 can best explain the usefulness of the cell phone with the highest number of explanatory variables at lower p value than model 2. olm results presented in table 10 show that among the selected variables age, farm size, experience in mobile use, mobile expenditure per month, etc., have significant association with the usefulness of the cell phone. it is important to note that age has a negative contribution on farmer usefulness of mobile phone i.e. probability of usefulness of cell phone decreased with the increase of farmers’ age. in line with our findings nyamba and mlozi (2012) also found age as a variable significantly negatively associated with cell phone use in the case of tanzania. table 10: contribution of different selected variables on the farmers’ usefulness of mobile phone (n = 281) xi model 1 model 2 β se z p> |z| β se z p> |z| age -0.0242 0.010 -2.422 0.015 -0.022 0.009 -2.296 0.021 education 0.0360 0.042 -0.853 0.393 annual income -0.0008 0.001 0.782 0.433 objectives of farming 0.3346 0.354 0.943 0.345 farm size 0.3701 0.122 3.017 0.002 0.324 0.112 2.881 0.004 length of mobile use 0.1244 0.046 2.654 0.008 0.116 0.044 2.608 0.009 mobile expenditure/month 0.1066 0.052 2.037 0.041 0.111 0.051 2.143 0.032 frequency of mobile use 0.0003 0.0004 0.805 0.420 extent of information search 0.0316 0.0178 1.778 .0766 0.031 0.017 1.842 0.065 yi= usefulness of mobile phone (ordered*) ll=-334.37, lr static = 45.390, p>lr= 0.000001, pseudo r2= 0.0635 ll=-335.68, lr static = 42.77, p>lr= 0.00000, pseudo r2= 0.0598 *ordered (5: very useful, 4: useful, 3: moderate, 2: less useful, 1: very less useful) source: field data, 2016 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 298-312 308 in bangladesh, most of the farm families are either marginal or small, possessed a very small piece of land. eventually, they are not well off to spend much money as mobile toll. mobile operators in bangladesh have almost similar call rate. they also have different low call charge packages but inured with so many rules and regulation that can’t easily be understood by an ordinary client like farmer. in bangladesh a major section of the farmers are aged and illiterate. progress in agricultural can’t be achieved without incorporating this section with modern information communication technology like a cell phone. negative association between age and usefulness can be explained from a different angle. firstly, aged farmers are normally less innovative and have less interest in modern information communication media. secondly, they are interested but don’t know how to secure information via cell phone. 4. conclusion & recommendations the findings of this research revealed that a large section of farmers in bangladesh found mobile phones from useful to very useful for the various crops farming. deplorably, farmers predominantly used less reliable and less efficient informal sources, such as friends, relatives, dealers, etc., for accumulating various crop farming information. the respondents mostly sought information about crop diseases and pest control followed by fertilizer management suggestions, selection of appropriate crops and/or adequate vegetable species, and crop marketing related information. despite the availability of low-cost services, such as sms, mms, voice message, etc., the peasants mostly used high costs in voice call service. major deterrents of using a cell phone for crop related information were high call rates, lack of awareness about mobile based information sources, scarcity of mobile based information sources, and lack of skills among farmers in operating mobile phones. however, in light of the findings of this research, recommendations are being proposed to enhance the usefulness of mobile phones for crop farmers. 1. it is essential to link farmers with rich and reliable agricultural information sources, such as public extension services, ngos’ extension service, etc. 2. at present the respondents are predominantly using voice call service which is expensive and short-lived. it is therefore essentially necessary to engage farmers with other comparatively cheap services, such as sms, mms, and voice message, etc., so that they can store, share and use information repeatedly. 3. to provide relief in mobile expenditure burden and assist in enhanced use of cell phones for crops production, special kind of sim with subsidized call rate should be supplied to them. 4. aged farmers are less inclined to use mobile based agricultural information sources. it is therefore necessary to launch widespread awareness campaigns for their training for keen interest and to connect them with mobile phone based information sources. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions 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298-312 312 appendix appendix 1: measurement and coding of the variables of the study var. no. variable name coding system level of measurement 1 age score 1 for each year scale 2 gender 1= male, 0= female nominal 3 education score 1 for each year of schooling scale 4 annual income score 1 for each thousand taka* scale 5 objective of farming 1= commercial, 2= family consumption, 3= both nominal 6 farm size 1= landless farmer, 2= marginal farmer, 3= small farmer, 4= medium farmer, 5= large farmer ordinal 7 length of mobile use total number of months/12 scale 8 mobile expenditure per month score 1 for each 100 taka scale 9 number of mobile operators used score 1 for each operator scale 10 frequency of mobile use for agricultural purposes minutes/ six months ( against 8 selected sources of information) scale 11 extent of information search scoring against 13 selected information subject (3= very often, 2= often, 1= seldom, 0=never ) scale 12 problem confrontation in using mobile for information scoring against 11 selected problems ( 5= very high, 4= high, 3=moderate, 2=low, 1=very low scale 13 usefulness of mobile phone 5= very useful, 4= useful, 3=moderately useful, 2= less useful, 1= very less useful ordinal note: *taka is the national currency of bangladesh (1$ = 83 taka 8 determinants of smartphone adoption and its benefits to the financial performance of agricultural households: evidence from hoa binh province, vietnam quan duc doa the kien nguyenb tung thanh tranc thanh bao truongd nga thi doe lam khanh hoangf a,ffaculty of political economics, academy of politics region i, hanoi, vietnam. bvnu university of economics and business, vietnam national university, hanoi, vietnam. c,eacademy of politics region i, faculty of political economics, academy of politics region i, hanoi, vietnam. dacademy of politics region i, journal of theoretical education, hanoi, vietnam.  nguyenthekien@vnu.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 30 august 2022 revised: 16 december 2022 accepted: 5 january 2023 published: 26 january 2023 keywords agricultural household financial performance pls-sem smartphone vietnam. mobile phone usage has come to play a vital role in the enhancement of farmers’ agriculture business. currently, the adoption of mobile phone technology is considered an important factor in enhancing farmers' access to knowledge of the agricultural market situation. this paper studies the determinants of smartphone adoption in agricultural production and examines the roles smartphone use plays in promoting agricultural firms’ performance. we collected research data from 389 agricultural households in hoa binh province, vietnam. we considered the impacts of both farmer and farm characteristics on the adoption of smartphones in agriculture. the farmers’ characteristics we examined included the influences of age, education, and gender. for the farm characteristics, we considered the impacts of farm size, farm diversification, and farm location. using the pls-sem method, the results showed that gender had no impact on household smartphone adoption in agricultural production, while education, farm size, farm diversification, and farm location each had a positive effect on smartphone adoption. farmer age and farm location both impeded smartphone adoption. in addition, as per our expectation, the use of smartphones in agricultural production helped increase the farm’s financial performance. based on these findings, we offer suggestions to policymakers and researchers in the field of agriculture technologies. contribution/originality: this paper is the first to study determinants of smartphone adoption in agricultural production and the roles smartphone use plays in promoting agricultural firms’ performance. moreover, this is the first study to examine smartphone adoption in agriculture in hoa binh province, vietnam. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4709 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: do, q. d., nguyen, t. k., tran, t. t., truong, t. b., do, n. t., & hoang, l. k. (2023). determinants of smartphone adoption and its benefits to the financial performance of agricultural households: evidence from hoa binh province, vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1), 8–15. 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4709 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 1 (2023): 8-15. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4471-9696 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9404-5239 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9966-9833 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9837-518x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6867-7446 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6282-7770 mailto:nguyenthekien@vnu.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 8-15 9 1. introduction agriculture plays a vital role and is considered the backbone of the national economic system in many countries. agriculture has a wide range of effects on society, including the provision of food, habitat, and employment, the provision of raw materials for food and other products, and the development of robust economies through trade. agriculture not only provides food and raw materials but also helps reduce poverty, raise incomes, and improve food security for 80% of the world's poor, who live in rural areas and work mainly in farming (world bank). to ensure the efficiency of the agricultural value chain, many countries have applied digital technologies in agriculture. the digital revolution has been transforming agribusiness worldwide (bronson & knezevic, 2016). the pervasiveness of information and communication technologies (icts) has created a set of new solutions for the agribusiness value chain (kamilaris, kartakoullis, & prenafeta-boldú, 2017). digitalization can be applied to all steps of the agricultural value chain, including planning, inputs, on-farm production, storage, post-harvest processing, transportation, and access to markets. among icts, the increasing use of smartphones is changing agricultural processes. the introduction of smartphones has resulted in access to new services and applications, such as information on market access, weather, and plant health, as well as education and other services (bhaskar, murthy, & sharma, 2017). studies have revealed that smartphones have a positive impact on sustainable poverty reduction and identified accessibility as the main challenge in harnessing the full potential (bhavnani, chiu, janakiram, & silarszky, 2008). the adoption and use of smartphones may have an impact on how farmers combine and use various inputs (such as labor, capital assets, fertilizers, and pesticides) in the production of crops (khan et al., 2021). additionally, smartphones appear to be a viable option for farmers, allowing them to access government information and conduct business with public entities whenever and wherever it is convenient for them (karetsos, costopoulou, & sideridis, 2014). the advantages of smartphones include affordability, wide ownership, voice communication, and instant and convenient service delivery. for these reasons, the number of smartphone applications (smartphone apps) is increasing exponentially, facilitated by the evolution of mobile networks and the increasing functionality and falling prices of mobile handsets (qiang, kuek, dymond, & esselaar, 2012). an increasing number of smartphone apps provide access to agriculture and allied sector information. the main advantage of smartphone apps for farmers is that they provide easy access to information on the farmer’s mobile. the information is stored on the smartphone itself for easy access; it may include the details of a range of practices, pest and disease information, scheme-related information, and more. where the information is dynamic in nature, for example, weather details, market prices, and advisory services, smartphone apps require internet connectivity to fetch the data from back-end server databases (bhaskar et al., 2017). however, the use of smartphones for agriculture faces many challenges, especially in rural areas. a poor network signal, unfamiliarity with smartphone features, and a lack of practical knowledge are just some of the many barriers to the use of smartphones in promoting the agricultural value chain (ogunniyi & ojebuyi, 2016). the agriculture sector plays a crucial role in vietnam’s economy and society. in vietnam, the sector includes crop production, livestock, fisheries, and forestry. the agricultural sector helps to ensure national food security by supplying sufficient food for vietnam’s population of 96.48 million people. it accounted for about 13.96% of the total gross domestic product (gdp) of vietnam in 2019. however, in recent years, population increase, urbanization, and climate change have presented several challenges to the vietnamese agriculture sector, necessitating a restructuring to adapt to the new circumstances. the vietnamese agricultural sector has gradually intensified its ict use to improve its productivity, quality, and competitiveness. it is anticipated that digital transformation and hightechnology applications will enable the industry to increase agricultural productivity, adapt to climate change, ensure farmers' incomes, and decrease food waste. in this research, we studied the use of smartphone applications in the agricultural value chain in hoa binh province, vietnam (we describe this location in detail in section 3). we explored how smartphone use could enhance the agricultural value chain in this area and what the barriers to using smartphones were for participants in the value chain. our findings should allow us to propose some suggestions for promoting the use of smartphones to optimize the agricultural value chain of hoa binh province, vietnam. the findings of the partial least squares structural equation modeling (pls-sem) indicate that while education, farm size, farm diversity, and farm location all have favorable effects on smartphone adoption, gender has no bearing on the household's use of smartphones for agricultural output. two barriers to smartphone adoption are farmer age and farm location. additionally, as expected, the use of smartphones for agricultural purposes contributes to an improvement in the financial performance of producers. the contributions of this study are twofold. first, this paper comprehensively considers the impact of both farmer and farm characteristics on smartphone adoption in agricultural production processes. second, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to investigate factors influencing smartphone adoption in agricultural production in vietnam and provides evidence for the positive effects of smartphone adoption on the financial performance of agricultural households. the remainder of the paper is organized as follows. section 2 reviews the literature and develops the hypotheses. section 3 introduces the study area. section 4 describes the data. section 5 outlines and discusses the results. section 6 sums up the conclusions. 2. literature review and hypothesis development rogers (2003) theory on the diffusion of innovation has been applied in numerous scientific areas to explain the adoption of technology by individuals, social groups, and organizations. the theory includes several variables that are expected to influence smartphone adoption in agriculture. these factors include both adopter and company characteristics. accordingly, the hypotheses take into account both farmer characteristics and farm characteristics. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 8-15 10 2.1. farmer characteristics age is one of the most frequently studied qualities in the agricultural economics literature, and it is believed to have a significant impact on the adoption of technology and innovations (ghadim & pannell, 1999). according to tamirat, pedersen, and lind (2018), younger farmers are more likely to use high-tech devices due to a greater interest in new technology. compared to other producer groups, younger farmers (those under 45) and those with larger operations are more likely to use digital media, such as full desktop websites, mobile websites, and social media platforms. additionally, compared to producers with smaller businesses, those with extensive revenue-generating activities ($1 million or more in gross revenues) are far more likely to deem digital channels important. in addition, tiffin and balcombe (2011) demonstrated that older british farmers are less likely to use a computer. similarly, the age of the individual making smartphone adoption decisions is a significant factor. a recent study by kongaut and bohlin (2016) indicated that older individuals in sweden were less likely to adopt smartphones than younger individuals. therefore, we hypothesize that: h1: age has a negative effect on smartphone adoption in agriculture. next, it is anticipated that farmers' education will impact their decision to accept new technologies (lin, 1991). however, the literature regarding the adoption of mobile phones is contradictory. daberkow and mcbride (2003) found that a higher level of education was favorably associated with technology awareness, but not actual adoption. similarly, education level was believed to be a significant factor influencing computer and internet usage in agriculture (briggeman & whitacre, 2010). regarding cell phones, kongaut and bohlin (2016) discovered that those with lower levels of education were less likely to own one. therefore, we hypothesize that: h2: education has a positive effect on smartphone adoption in agriculture. gender plays a distinct role in the decision processes that drive the adoption of information technology (venkatesh, morris, & ackerman, 2000). regarding mobile phone adoption, paustian and theuvsen (2017) observed that gender has not been acknowledged as a significant driver because it is assumed that the majority of farmers are male. however, in agriculture more generally, male farmers were more likely than female farmers to accept new techniques or innovations (doss & morris, 2000). according to theis, lefore, meinzen-dick, and bryan (2018), a gender gap in technology adoption persists for many agricultural technologies, even those that are targeted at women. therefore, we hypothesize that: h3: male farmers are more likely to own a smartphone. 2.2. farm characteristics the literature indicates that larger farms are more likely to embrace mobile phones due primarily to economies of scale (pierpaoli, carli, pignatti, & canavari, 2013). the size of a farm is also a major factor in computer and internet adoption decisions. numerous studies have demonstrated that only farms of considerable size will embrace new tillage technology with higher fixed costs but lower variable labor costs. smaller farms cannot afford to engage in modern tillage technology due to fixed capital expenses (brown, ferguson, & viju‐miljusevic, 2020). gloy and akridge (2000) discovered a positive correlation between farm size and computer adoption. in addition, mishra and park (2005) found that the size of us farms increased the number of internet applications they utilized for business purposes. therefore, we hypothesize that: h4: farmers on smaller farms are less likely to buy a smartphone and, as a result, less likely to use smartphones for agricultural production. it has been demonstrated that enterprise diversification has no statistically significant effect on mobile phone adoption (walton, reed, & macagno, 2008). according to amponsah (1995), diversification had little effect on cell phone use in agriculture. in contrast, mishra and park (2005) suggested that more diversified farms require farmers to make more decisions and collect more information; hence, they were more inclined to utilize mobile phone technology. therefore, we hypothesize that: h5: diversification has a positive effect on smartphone adoption. due to differences in climatic, soil, and geographical factors, the farm's location also plays a vital role (paxton et al., 2011). regarding ict, the location's digital infrastructure may serve as either a facilitator or a barrier to adoption. for instance, territorial limitations to internet access are frequently caused by the location of digital infrastructure (philip, suman, menon, & dhanya, 2017). due to its digital infrastructure, housing also has a significant impact on mobile phone usage (srinuan, srinuan, & bohlin, 2012). therefore, we hypothesize that: h6: location has a negative effect on smartphone adoption. 2.3. mobile phone adoption and financial performance based on the above literature review, we developed a research framework as shown in figure 1. in addition to the above-mentioned hypotheses, we would also like to discover how the smartphone decision affects the financial performance of agricultural households. khan et al. (2022) showed that the adoption of mobile internet technology boosted agricultural output, which in turn increased the revenue of agricultural producers. even though mobile phones can serve as a catalyst for increased farm production and rural incomes, the quality, timeliness, and credibility of this information must be conveyed to farmers to fulfill their requirements and expectations (mittal & tripathi, 2009). therefore, we hypothesize that: h7: smartphone adoption has a positive effect on the financial performance of agricultural households. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 8-15 11 figure 1. research framework. 3. study area hoa binh is a mountainous province of northwestern vietnam, more than 70km from hanoi capital, with three border regions, including the northwest, northeast, and north central coast of vietnam. hoa binh province has 11 districts, a city with 210 communes, wards, and towns. the population is 854,131 and includes 6 main ethnic groups, of which the muong ethnic majority is over 63%. the province covers an area of 4590.57 square kilometers. in 2020, the gdp per capita of the province was estimated to be $2625. the total area of hoa binh province is 459,524.36 hectares. agricultural land is 307,986 hectares, accounting for 67% of the total area, including 55,151 hectares of farmland, 251,315 ha of forest land, 1,335 ha of aquaculture land, and 185 ha of other agricultural lands (hoa binh province website). due to its geographical position adjacent to the red river delta and hanoi city, as well as its natural conditions and rich and diverse cultural characteristics, hoa binh province developed a tradition of agriculture. hoa binh province has soil and climate diversity suitable for agricultural and forestry development; it has highly fertile land, forest land, agricultural land, and large unused surface land suitable for investment in the field of afforestation and industrial plants, enabling medicinal and high technology agricultural production. for aquaculture, hoa binh province contains a network of rivers, streams, lakes, and marshes distributed throughout all districts and cities. da river flows through mai chau, da bac, tan lac, hoa binh city, and ky son districts. hoa binh reservoir, with its surface area of about 8,000 hectares, provides convenient conditions for agricultural production and aquaculture. thanks to the above mentioned conditions, hoa binh province’s agricultural products have gradually come to dominate the domestic and international markets, significantly contributing to the socio-economic development of the province. many specialty products can be mentioned, such as red flesh dragon fruit and honey from ky son district, huong chi longan from kim boi district, purple sugarcane and oranges from cao phong district, and more. 4. data description 4.1. data collection and analysis method the research sample was drawn from agricultural households in hoa binh province, vietnam. interviewees were randomly selected from the population for questionnaire administration. to assess the research model and test the stated hypotheses, the questionnaire survey was used to collect data for this study. all observed variables were defined using a likert scale, which ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). the questionnaires were answered by owners, managers, or employees where there were no owner-managers available. face-to-face, drop-off, and email methods were employed to distribute the questionnaire, culminating in 389 returned copies. the collected data was subsequently cleaned and analyzed using structural equation modeling (sem) in smartpls software. 4.2. demographic profile table 1 shows the demographic profile of the study participants. a majority of the respondents had a low level of education (78.66% had post-secondary education or lower), while a very low proportion of respondents had a higher degree. for this reason, it is unsurprising that the monthly income of most of the respondents was quite low (63.75% earned less than 10 million vietnam dong (vnd; approx. usd 400 per month). in terms of gender and age, the sample equally covered all categories. 5. results and discussion table 2 shows the hypothesis testing results of the pls-sem model. the estimated results show that h3 was rejected, while h1, h2, h4, h5, h6, and h7 were supported. specifically, gender had no impact on smartphone adoption for agricultural production in households, whereas education, farm size, farm diversification, and farm location each had a positive effect on smartphone adoption. farmer age and farm location were two obstacles to smartphone adoption. moreover, as we expected, the use of smartphones in agricultural production helped increase the farm’s financial performance. among the three farmer traits, farmers’ age and educational attainment had a strong positive correlation with their desire to embrace smartphone technology; however, gender had a negligible asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 8-15 12 positive correlation. this finding is in line with research by poushter (2016) and alampay (2006), who found that age had a significant impact on ict use. younger farmers were more likely to employ mobile devices than their elder counterparts. the generation to which new technologies are introduced is more appreciative of them. table 1. demographic profile. variables frequency percentage (%) gender male 201 51.67% female 188 48.32% age under 30 27 6.94% 30–39 85 21.85% 40–49 152 39.07% 50 or above 125 32.14% education secondary education or lower 112 28.79% post-secondary education 194 49.87% short-cycle tertiary education 56 14.50% bachelor's degree 24 6.17% graduate degree 3 0.76% farm size (total farm value) less than vnd 100 million 47 12.08% vnd 100–200 million 201 51.67% vnd 200–300 million 84 21.59% vnd 300–400 million 37 9.51% more than vnd 400 million 20 5.14% farm diversification less than 5 agricultural products 89 22.88% 5–10 agricultural products 162 41.65% 10–15 agricultural products 64 16.45% 15–20 agricultural products 57 14.65% more than 20 agricultural products 17 4.37% farm location (far from prefectural city) 0–20 km 86 22.11% 20–40km 93 23.91% 40–60km 106 27.25% 60–80km 74 19.02% 80–100km 30 7.71% >100km smartphone adoption yes 285 73.26% no 104 26.74% yearly profit less than vnd 100 million 37 9.51% vnd 100–200 million 183 47.04% vnd 200–300 million 89 22.88% vnd 300–400 million 34 8.74% more than vnd 400 million 46 11.83% total 389 100% table 2. testing results of path coefficients. note: ** and *** indicate coefficients significant at 10% and 5% significance levels, respectively. hypothesis relationship coefficient standard deviation p value conclusion h1 farmer age -> smartphone adoption -0.483** 0.189 0.0109 supported h2 farmer education -> smartphone adoption 0.592*** 0.039 0.0000 supported h3 farmer gender -> smartphone adoption 0.326 0.328 0.3208 unsupported h4 farm size -> smartphone adoption 0.973** 0.391 0.0132 supported h5 farm diversification -> smartphone adoption 0.784*** 0.119 0.0000 supported h6 farm location -> smartphone adoption -0.892*** 0.307 0.0038 supported h7 smartphone adoption -> financial performance 0.985*** 0.089 0.0000 supported asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 8-15 13 poushter (2016) found that individuals from generations y and x tend to possess and utilize cell phones more frequently than their elder counterparts. although cell phones help farmers interact with one another, increase production, and stay up to date on agricultural information, many elderly farmers lack confidence with technology. the challenges to smartphone adoption for elderly farmers may include a lack of knowledge and skills, fear, a lack of technical self-efficacy, and trust concerns. according to a study on income and education conducted in the philippines by alampay (2006), persons with higher incomes and more education tend to use ict more frequently than those with lower incomes. low-educated farmers may not be able to embrace the most recent digital technologies (such as mobile phones, the internet, and computers) to boost agricultural output because they lack the necessary training and skills. moreover, ma, renwick, nie, tang, and cai (2018) mentioned that increasing family incomes can directly affect how many rural inhabitants use smartphones, and smartphone use in turn increases revenue by enabling online financial transactions, simplifying administrative duties, expanding social networks, offering technical services, and minimizing risk exposure. regarding farm size, large farms may have more multifaceted decision-making and organizational complexity (ghimire, huang, & poudel, 2015). thus, a smartphone might be used to construct strong farm business strategies, including banking and the acquisition of operating resources for long-term agricultural development. furthermore, smartphones can be used to reach staff and advisors, supporting the notion that farmers with large farms may have a higher need for cutting-edge technology. as a result, farmers on big farms may utilize smartphones to swiftly collect data. specifically, smartphones enable farmers to collect location and time-varying pricing and weather information. in short, farmers who manage large farms are more likely to use smartphones. according to our model, farm diversity affects smartphone uptake as well. this result is consistent with roco, engler, bravo-ureta, and jara-rojas (2015). diversified farms may have a greater need for skills and use smartphones for a variety of production operations and information collecting. therefore, there may be a link between farm diversification and smartphone use. the use of smartphones is more likely since the owners of very diverse farms must acquire more knowledge to make agricultural decisions. diversified businesses and farms, as the results of kaila and tarp (2019) show, have greater information technology needs. according to our model's findings, farm location has a detrimental impact on smartphone uptake. according to bellon-maurel et al. (2015), location may be interpreted as a proxy for internet access. in terms of mobile broadband coverage, the current study's findings demonstrate that the coverage and long-term evolution of general mobile telecommunications services in some regions are substantially lower than in other regions, which may explain the findings. furthermore, cultural differences (for example, farmers in some areas may be more traditional) may make it difficult to adopt new technologies like smartphones. although the current study did not explicitly evaluate this factor, it may be concluded that farm location will affect smartphone uptake. finally, our findings indicate that having and utilizing a mobile phone can improve farmers' financial success. smartphone adoption benefits farmers in many ways. smartphones have made it possible for farmers to obtain information regarding markets and the weather. through this vital technology, they can maintain direct contact with market personnel and provide their produce at competitive costs (michels et al., 2020). the use of smartphones also keeps them informed of weather forecasts for the application of agricultural inputs, such as fertilizer and pesticides, which may be impacted by unanticipated weather or natural disasters as relayed by the meteorological department. this technology has also provided farmers with a new orientation and strategy for communicating directly and exchanging information about current advances (nie, ma, & sousa-poza, 2021). in addition, smartphones save farmers time and energy, which ultimately increases their income. thanks to mobile phones, farmers are now able to contact market brokers and clients directly to sell their produce at a good price (siaw, jiang, twumasi, & agbenyo, 2020). many studies have identified potential mechanisms underlying the positive relationship between phone use and agricultural productivity, such as the use of mobile phones to connect farmers to buyers (martin & abbott, 2011), acquire farm inputs (asif, uddin, dev, & miah, 2017), reduce transaction costs and time associated with agricultural activities (mwantimwa, 2019), and exchange agricultural information and recommendations (mwantimwa, 2019). for instance, a farmer may use his phone to contact a fertilizer supplier in town, purchase fertilizer, and then hire assistance in transporting the fertilizer to the farm, saving both time and money. 6. conclusion smartphones are increasingly important in agriculture and are significantly changing the agricultural value chain worldwide. they provide timely access and useful information for farmers, enterprises, and governments in managing all aspects of agriculture. this paper studies the determinants of smartphone adoption in agricultural production and the roles smartphones play in improving agricultural firms’ performance. using the pls-sem method, the results showed that gender has no impact on smartphone adoption for agricultural production in households, whereas education, farm size, farm diversification, and farm location each have a positive effect on smartphone adoption. farmer age and farm location are two barriers to smartphone adoption. in addition, as we expected, the use of smartphones in agricultural production enhances farms’ financial performance. this paper contributes to the body of knowledge by identifying critical factors that influence the adoption of smartphones in agriculture and their benefit to the financial performance of agricultural households. the findings may be of interest to policymakers, researchers in the field of agriculture technologies, and developers and providers of farm equipment and precision agriculture technologies that integrate with smartphones, as the findings provide information on smartphone use and the key factors that influence smartphone adoption. some policy implications can be drawn from our results. first, the government needs to pay attention to improving farmers’ education, farm size, farm diversification, and farm location. these factors will ensure farmers have better opportunities to apply high asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 8-15 14 technologies in their agricultural production processes. secondly, the government should focus on expanding and speeding up the mobile infrastructure so that farmers can use smartphones more easily. this will enable farmers to take full advantage of smartphones and reap the agricultural benefits. finally, to encourage farmers to use smartphones in production, financial support measures are needed to increase the number of users, thereby developing a smart value chain in which icts are applied in all stages. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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(2008). argumentation schemes. fundamentals of critical argumentation. new york: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1177/0266666917739952 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-020-09397-1 https://doi.org/10.4314/jae.v20i2.13 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11119-016-9482-5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2015.12.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.protcy.2013.11.010 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-014-0669-x https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083255 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2011.10.003 https://doi.org/10.1080/09064710.2017.1402949 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-018-9862-8 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8489.2011.00549.x https://doi.org/10.1006/obhd.2000.2896 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 269 the effects of improved cassava variety adoption on farmers’ technical efficiency in indonesia syafriala hery toibab moh. shadiqur rahmanc dwi retnoningsihd a,b,ddepartment of socio-economics, faculty of agriculture, brawijaya university, indonesia. cdepartment of tropical agriculture and international cooperation, national pingtung university of science and technology, pingtung 912, taiwan.  syafrial.fp@ub.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 6 august 2021 revised: 2 september 2021 accepted: 27 september 2021 published: 25 october 2021 keywords cassava east java propensity score matching stochastic frontier technology adoption improved variety. the adoption of technological innovations, such as an improved variety, has been widely promoted worldwide to improve agricultural productivity. this study aimed to examine factors affecting farmers’ decision to adopt a new improved cassava varieties (nicv), and to estimate the effects of nicv adoption on farmers’ technical efficiency. this research used cross-sectional data from 300 cassava farmers in east java, indonesia. furthermore, the data were analyzed by probit regression to examine factors affecting farmers’ decision to adopt nicv. propensity score matching (psm) procedures and stochastic frontier analysis were applied to evaluate the impact of nicv adoption on farmers’ technical efficiency. the results indicated that adoption was highly influenced by cooperative membership, access to credit, internet access, certified land, and off-farm work. the stochastic frontier analysis, by controlling the matched sample using psm procedures, demonstrated that nicv adoption positively and significantly impacted farmers’ technical efficiency. those who adopted nicv showed a higher technical efficiency level than those who did not. this finding implies that improved varieties could be further promoted to increase productivity. the research suggests that there is a need to improve nicv adoption to increase the levels of technical efficiency and productivity. contribution/originality: this study provides two contributions to the literature. first, it essentially contributes empirical estimations of the impacts of nicv adoption on technical efficiency in indonesia. second, it comprehensively estimates the technical efficiency of cassava farmers in indonesia, the world’s third-largest cassava exporter. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.269.278 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: syafrial --hery toiba --moh. shadiqur rahman --dwi retnoningsih (2021). the effects of improved cassava variety adoption on farmers’ technical efficiency in indonesia asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4), 269-278. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.114.269.278 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction cassava is one of the key commodities contributing to food security, as it can be both a staple food resource and a raw material of the food industry (muhaimin, toiba, retnoningsih, & yapanto, 2020). fao (2018) reported that indonesia is the world’s third-largest cassava exporter; the country was the second-largest cassava-producing asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 4 (2021): 269-278 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7394-9044 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3816-9066 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4275-3196 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0466-415x mailto:syafrial.fp@ub.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 269-278 270 country in asean after thailand from 2015 to 2018. however, smallholder farmers in indonesia are in poverty due to low agricultural productivity. according to susilo, saleha, darmansyah, oktawati, and maryanto (2021), more than 60% of poor people live in rural areas and engage with agricultural sectors. on the other hand, the lack of technological innovation complicates indonesian farmers dealing with agricultural problems, such as environmental threats (i.e., temperature change, drought, and flood). this condition becomes the most damaging factor in the agricultural sector and frequently influences agricultural production. a study by dar and dar (2021) found that annual agricultural production has declined because of increasing drought intensity. furthermore, ju, van der velde, lin, xiong, and li (2013) claim that water scarcity, increasing frequency and severity of pest and disease outbreaks, and soil degradation induced by environmental changes have contributed to lower agricultural yields. increasing farm productivity is one way to alleviate poverty in developing countries. afolami, obayelu, and vaughan (2015) believe that one essential factor in reducing long-term rural poverty is adopting agricultural technology innovations, such as enhanced varieties that can reduce farmers’ poverty by providing higher agricultural productivity and income. agricultural productivity can be escalated by the adoption of improved varieties in three ways. first, improved varieties are more tolerant to climate changes, such as temperature fluctuation and drought (lunduka, mateva, magorokosho, & manjeru, 2019). second, improved varieties are more resistant to pests and diseases (hong-xing et al., 2017; nyangena & juma, 2014). third, improved varieties produce higher crop yields (kumar et al., 2020; nabasirye, kiiza, & omiat, 2012). besides rice and maize, the indonesian government has also developedanew improved cassava varieties (nicv) to maintain national and global food security. cassava farmers in indonesia may have benefitted from nicv because these varieties are resistant to pests and plant diseases, require shorter planting times, and taste better (ariani, estiasih, & martati, 2017). this innovation provides benefits for smallholder farmers and enhances national economic growth (abate, dessie, & mekie, 2019). previous studies have documented how nicv have been applied internationally to alleviate farmers’ poverty. for example, afolami et al. (2015) estimated the welfare impacts of adopting an improved variety in nigeria and showed that adoption raised farmers’ annual income and purchasing power. amao and awoyemi (2008) measured the correlation between adopting an improved variety and farmers’ poverty level. the results showed that farmers who did not adopt the variety had a higher poverty level than those who did. several studies have also shown that an improved variety produces better yields (afolami et al., 2015), helps improve food security (abdoulaye, wossen, & awotide, 2018; donkor, onakuse, bogue, & de los rios carmenado, 2017; simon, olufemi, oluwasegun, & adetola, 2019), and enhances asset ownership (awotide, alene, abdoulaye, & manyong, 2015). in addition, one direct indicator by which to understand agricultural productivity is to examine the correlation of technical efficiency levels with farmers’ poverty levels. ma, renwick, yuan, and ratna (2018) assert that increasing farmers’ technical efficiency can be a key strategy to alleviate poverty in rural areas of developing countries because it can improve agricultural production. however, smallholder farmers usually face several barriers to achieving technical efficiency, such as lack of input availability (i.e., seeds, fertilizers, and labor), waste of input usage due to environmental threats, and unavailability of technology innovation. existing studies have documented some insights regarding factors associated with farmers’ technical efficiency. among others, they capture the effect of cooperative membership (ma et al., 2018), cultivation technology adoption abdulai, zakariah, and donkoh (2018), and agricultural information (mwalupaso, wang, rahman, alavo, & tian, 2019). for instance, ma et al. (2018) estimated the impacts of cooperative membership on apple farmers’ technical efficiency in china. they concluded that cooperative membership provides a higher technical efficiency level by promoting efficient usage of agriculture inputs. abdulai et al. (2018) explored the effects of adopting cultivation technology on rice farmers’ technical efficiency. they revealed that farmers who adopted cultivation technologies had 10% higher technical efficiency levels than farmers who did not. meanwhile, mwalupaso et al. (2019) assessed the correlation between agricultural information and technical efficiency. they discovered that agricultural information gained by using mobile phones significantly affected farmers' technical efficiency and reduced their poverty levels. however, empirical evidence on the effect of nicv adoption on farmers’ technical efficiency in indonesia is very scanty in the literature. to fill this gap, this study investigated the impacts of nicv adoption on the technical efficiency of smallholder cassava farmers. the research will answer two questions to address the gap; first, what are the factors associated with farmers’ decision to adopt nicv?; and second, what are the impacts of nicv adoption on farmers' technical efficiency levels? 2. materials and methods 2.1. research data the research sites were decided by multistage sampling. first, we purposively determined east java province as the location (figure 1). second, three regencies were chosen by considering the volume of cassava production; these were malang, blitar, and trenggalek. third, we randomly chose three subdistricts for inclusion in the current study: arjowilangun and sukowilangun in malang regency, sumberagung and balerejo in blitar, and gading and durenan in trenggalek regency. the respondents of this study were cassava farmers who had adopted nicv and those who had not. the sample was determined using a simple random sampling method. first, we established a list of farmers who planted cassava to build the sampling framework. then, we randomly selected 300 farmers, 50 from each district. the research survey employed a structured questionnaire developed by considering a literature review and information from relevant institutions, such as government agencies and farmer groups. after creating the questionnaire, this research conducted a pilot test to check farmers’ understanding. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 269-278 271 figure-1. research sites in east java, indonesia. 2.2. estimation strategy two common strategies for estimation of technical efficiency have been widely applied, stochastic frontier and data envelopment analysis. the former is more appropriate in the agricultural sector than the latter, because agricultural production is vulnerable to external factors such as environmental conditions and unpredictable weather. data envelopment analysis assigns inefficiency to variances from the production frontier, assumes no stochastic errors, and is vulnerable to outlying (ma et al., 2018). in contrast, the stochastic frontier approach allocates inefficiency to both random and inefficient terms. to estimate cassava farmers’ technical efficiency, this study assumed that the respondents adopted and did not adopt the improved cassava variety. hence, the stochastic frontier model of this study is formulated in equation 1: 𝐶 = 𝑓(𝑍𝑖 , 𝐴𝑖)휀𝑖 with 휀𝑖 = 𝜔𝑖−𝑢𝑖 (1) where 𝐶 is the cassava production of ith farmers, 𝑍𝑖 is inputs of cassava farmers (i.e., seeds, fertilizers, and labor). 𝐴𝑖 represents the adoption variable measured by a dummy (1 if farmers adopt nicv, 0 otherwise). 휀𝑖 represents the error of the model and is structured by a symmetric stochastic that can be written as 𝜔𝑖 ∼ 𝑁(0, 𝜎𝜔 2) and can summarize the noise of statistic. meanwhile, half-normal stochastic can be written as 𝑢𝑖 ∼ 𝑁(0, 𝜎𝑢 2) and captures for efficient production. moreover, to estimate the production frontier, this study employed a cobb–douglas estimation, as in equation 2: 𝑙𝑛(𝑌𝑖) = 𝑎0 + ∑ 𝛽𝑗 5 𝑗=1 𝑙𝑛𝑍𝑖 + 𝛿𝑖𝐴𝑖 + 𝜖𝑖 (2) 𝑙𝑛 denotes natural logarithm, 𝑌𝑖 cassava production of the ith farmers (kg per hectare), and 𝑍𝑖 an input of cassava production vectors divided into five items: hired labor, family labor, seed, organic fertilizers, and chemical fertilizers. 𝑎0 is a constant, 𝛽𝑗 and 𝛿𝑖 are the estimated parameters, and 𝜖𝑖 denotes uncorrelated random errors with the distribution of 𝑁(0, 𝜎𝜖 2). furthermore, this study employed psm to estimate the impacts of nicv adoption. the psm method is commonly used to estimate the impacts of evaluating a program by comparing the outcome variables of matching respondents in treatment and control groups. the treatment group of this study was farmers who had adopted nicv while the control group was those who had not. psm utilizes the propensity score, or farmers’ probability to adopt nicv, as a reference to build comparable respondents. following rahman, toiba, & huang (2021), who employed the propensity score, this study employed a probit regression model as in equation 3. the propensity score is formulated in equation 4. 𝐷𝑖 ∗ = 𝑧𝑖𝛽 + 𝑒𝑖 ; 𝐷𝑖 ∗ = 1 if 𝐷𝑖 ∗ > 0 and 0 otherwise (3) 𝑆(𝑧𝑖) = 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑏(𝐷𝑖 = 1|𝑍𝑖) (4) in equation 3, 𝐷𝑖 ∗ represents nicv adoption (1 if adopted, 0 otherwise). meanwhile, 𝛽 is a coefficient and 𝑧𝑖 is an independent variable (vector), including farmers’ sociodemographic characteristics; 𝑒𝑖 is the error term. in equation 4, 𝑆(𝑧𝑖) represents the propensity score of each respondent. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 269-278 272 after estimation of propensity score matching, the matching group was formulated using matching techniques. several matching techniques are provided in the literature, such as nearest-neighbor matching, caliper matching, stratification matching, and kernel-based matching. following research by qu et al. (2020), this study employed the nearest-neighbor method to formulate a matching or comparable group between adopter and non-adopter. after matching the group, this research compared the technical efficiency of the adopter and non-adopter groups. 3. results and discussion 3.1. descriptive statistics this sub-chapter starts by describing the statistical variables of the study (table 1). the treatment variable was the nicv. this variable was measured by a dummy (1 if farmers adopted nicv, 0 otherwise). the descriptive statistics denoted that 37.0% of respondents adopted the nicv, while 63.0% did not. the control variables of this research included the dummy of land ownership, with an average value of 0.330. this finding implies that that farmers own 33% of the cultivated land. table-1. descriptive statistic of research variables. variables description mean std. adoption 1 if farmers adopt the nicv, 0 otherwise 0.370 0.484 certified land 1 if farmers’ land is certified, 0 otherwise 0.330 0.471 age age of household head (years) 55.167 10.411 education duration of household heads’ education (years) 7.307 3.077 experience household head’s length of farming experience (years) 26.867 13.693 off-farm work 1 if farmers participate in off-farm work, 0 otherwise 0.271 0.446 farmer groups 1 if farmers participate in farmer group, 0 otherwise 0.953 0.211 cooperative 1 if farmers participate in off-farm work, 0 otherwise 0.353 0.479 access to credit 1 if farmers have a cooperative membership, 0 otherwise 0.360 0.481 internet access 1 if farmers access the internet, 0 otherwise 0.243 0.430 malang 1 if farms are located in malang regency, 0 otherwise 0.333 0.472 blitar 1 if farms are located in blitar regency, 0 otherwise 0.333 0.472 trenggalek 1 if farms are located in trenggalek regency, 0 otherwise 0.333 0.472 inputs and outputs hired labor number of hired labor (days/ha) 158.083 72.729 family labor number of family members (days/ha) 42.510 29.367 seed number of seeds used (unit/ha) 13245.520 2704.407 organic fertilizers number of organic fertilizers used (kg/ha) 496.937 955.943 chemical fertilizers number of chemical fertilizers used (kg/ha) 445.192 442.286 production total of cassava production (kg/ha) 4454.043 8177.255 the average farmers’ age was 55 years, with a seven-year education. this value implies that farmers’ education was in elementary school. in addition, their experience of farming cassava was 27–28 years. then, 27.1% of respondents had other off-farm occupations, such as agricultural product sellingor enterprise-related roles. the majority of respondents (95.3%) participated in farmers’ groups, 35.3% participated in a cooperative and 36.0% had access to credit. on the other hand, only 24.3% of respondents accessed the internet. lastly, the dummy of location represented 33.3% of 100 respondents in each regency. the input variables for technical efficiency estimation consisted of five items: (1) hired labor with an average value of 158.08 days/ha; (2) farmers’ average family labor of 42.52 days/ha; (3) seed, with average use of 13,245.52 units/ha; (4) organic and chemical fertilizers, with average use of 496.93 and 445.19 kg, respectively; and (5) average cassava production of 4,454.043 kg/ha. 3.2. mean differences of research variables the mean differences of this study are summarized in table 2. the survey showed that 111 farmers had adopted the nicv while 189 farmers did not. the mean test of variables was employed to estimate the propensity score in an unmatched sample, and showed that adopter and non-adopter groups had significant differences in land ownership, cooperative membership, access to credit, and internet access. in the matched sample, only two variables were significantly different – cooperative membership and access to credit. in the unmatched sample, farmers who adopted the nicv tended to have certified land while those who did not adopt the nicv did not have certified land. however, adopter and non-adopter farmers in the matched sample did not show a significant difference in regard to certified land. furthermore, adopter farmers were more likely to become cooperative members and have access to credit in unmatched and matched samples. lastly, in the unmatched samples, adopter farmers were more likely to access the internet. however, in matched samples, adopter and nonadopter farmers did not show significant differences. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 269-278 273 table-2. mean differences in sociodemographic characteristics. variable unmatched matched adopter (111) non-adopter (189 ) diff. adopter (111) non-adopter (142) diff. certified land 0.378 0.302 0.077* 0.378 0.331 0.047 age 55.441 55.005 0.436 55.441 56.035 0.594 education 7.523 7.180 0.343 7.523 7.338 0.184 experience 26.694 26.968 0.275 26.694 27.035 -0.342 off-farm work 0.307 0.250 0.057 0.307 0.331 -0.024 farmers’ group 0.955 0.952 0.003 0.955 0.937 0.018 cooperative 0.604 0.206 0.397*** 0.604 0.261 0.343*** access to credit 0.640 0.196 0.444*** 0.640 0.261 0.427*** internet access 0.297 0.212 0.086** 0.297 0.261 0.037 malang 0.306 0.349 -0.043 0.306 0.444 0.137 blitar 0.360 0.317 0.043 0.360 0.254 0.107 trenggalek 0.333 0.333 0.000 0.333 0.303 0.031 note: *, **, *** denote significance at 10, 5, and 1%, respectively. table-3. mean differences in farmers’ inputs and outputs. variables unmatched matched adopter (111) non-adopter (189 ) diff. adopter (111) non-adopter (142) diff. hired labor (ln) 4.981 5.003 0.021 4.981 5.010 0.029 family labor (ln) 3.553 3.541 0.012 3.553 3.484 0.069 seed (ln) 9.475 9.480 -0.005 9.475 9.496 0.208* organic fertilizers (ln) 5.378 5.129 0.248** 5.378 4.943 0.435*** chemical fertilizers (ln) 5.886 5.787 0.100* 5.886 5.730 0.156** production (ln) 8.126 7.846 0.279 8.126 7.905 0.221** note: *, **, *** denote significance at 10, 5, and 1%, respectively. the mean differences between adopter and non-adopter farmers in using inputs are presented in table 3. the unmatched sample showed that the use of organic and chemical fertilizers was significantly different. farmers who adopted the nicv used higher levels of organic fertilizers and chemical fertilizers than those who did not adopt. after controlling for farmers' characteristics, the matched sample showed three significantly different variables: seeds, organic fertilizers, and chemical fertilizers. adopting farmers tended to use more seed by a factor of 0.208, organic fertilizers by 0.434, and chemical fertilizers by 0.156. lastly, we concluded that production in the unmatched sample was insignificantly different, but it was insignificantly different in the matched sample. farmers who adopted the nicv had significantly higher cassava production (by 5%) than farmers who did not adopt it. 3.3. factor affecting cassava adoption and propensity score estimation this study employed the probit model to estimate the propensity score of respondents and to determine factors affecting farmers’ decision to adopt the nicv. this section begins by discussing factors affecting farmers’ decision to adopt the nicv. table 4 shows that land certification, off-farm job, cooperative membership, access to credit, internet access, and dummy location of malang significantly affected farmers’ likelihood of adopting the nicv. on the other hand, age, education, experience, farmer group, and the dummy location of blitar and trenggalek did not significantly affect adoption. probit estimation results indicated that land status positively and greatly influenced farmers’ decision to adopt the nicv (by 5%). this finding revealed that farmers with land ownership were likely to adopt the nicv. nurwahyuni, arianti, and hindarwati (2021) and ramirez (2013) state that land status correlates with farmers’ decision to adopt technology because they have control over their land. having off-farm work significantly triggered farmers’ decision to adopt the nicv (by 10%). it is predicted that off-farm work provides farmers with available cash to buy agricultural inputs, such as improved varieties. this finding agrees with a study by ma et al. (2018), who investigated factors affecting technology adoption in china. they employed endogenous switching regression analysis and found that having an off-farm job positively influenced farmers to adopt agricultural technology. cooperative membership positively affected farmers’ likelihood to adopt the nicv (by 1%). ma and abdulai (2017) argue that a cooperative is an important institutional arrangement to overcoming constraints preventing smallholder farmers from taking advantage of agricultural production. moreover, belonging to a cooperative can strengthen farmers’ capacity to achieve a better quality of agricultural inputs. in indonesia, cooperatives function by distributing improved varieties, including the improved cassava variety, from the government. zhang et al. (2017) claim that cooperatives might encourage farmers to adopt technology in agricultural production, thereby improving crop productivity. this study discovered that access to credit positively and significantly affected nicv adoption (by 1%). those farmers with access to credit were more likely to adopt the nicv. access to credit refers to financial support assisting farmers to purchase good-quality agricultural inputs, such as improved cassava varieties. this finding is consistent with a previous study by simtowe and zeller (2006), who concluded that access to credit asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 269-278 274 significantly and positively influenced farmers to adopt improved varieties. the variable of internet access had a positive effect on farmers’ decision to adopt the nicv. this finding implies that farmers who have access to the internet were more likely to adopt the nicv than those who did not. internet connectivity provides widespread farming information. farmers with better internet connections were more likely to join an organization and implement more farm innovations. salazar, jaime, figueroa, and fuentes (2018) discovered that internet connection increased the scope and intensity of farm innovation adoption. among the three regencies in this study, the farming location in malang regency was the one including farmers most significantly motivated to adopt the nicv. this finding revealed that the improved cassava variety was mostly distributed in malang regency. as a result, farmers in this area had a greater opportunity to adopt it. table-4. factors affecting farmers’ decision to adopt the nicv. adopter coef. std. err. z p>|z| certified land 0.480 0.246 1.960 0.050** age 0.005 0.011 0.410 0.682 education 0.007 0.029 0.240 0.809 experience -0.001 0.009 -0.100 0.917 off-farm work 0.382 0.219 1.750 0.081* farmer group -0.214 0.404 -0.530 0.597 cooperative 0.821 0.189 4.340 0.000*** access to credit 1.405 0.214 6.570 0.000*** internet access 0.593 0.219 2.710 0.007*** malang 0.761 0.324 2.350 0.019** blitar 0.464 0.291 1.600 0.110 trenggalek -0.115 0.207 -0.550 0.580 _cons -2.133 0.733 -2.910 0.004 log likelihood -142.982 lr chi2(11) 108.480 prob > chi2 0.000 pseudo-r2 0.275 note: *, **, *** denote significance at 10, 5, and 1%, respectively. furthermore, probit regression estimated the propensity score of each respondent. based on the estimation of probit regression, the common support regions ranged between 0.094 to 0.974 of propensity score. figure 2 summarizes the propensity score of adopter farmers (treated) and non-adopter farmers (untreated). the adopters’ and non-adopters’ propensity scores are shown in the upper and lower halves of the graph, respectively. this study revealed 111 adopter farmers and 142 non-adopter farmers in the common support regions. figure-2. propensity score distribution for adopting and non-adopting farmers. 0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 propensity score untreated treated asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 269-278 275 3.4. stochastic frontier estimation the stochastic frontier estimation using unmatched respondents is presented in table 5, while the use of matched respondents is presented in table 6. this study applied a cobb–douglas stochastic frontier with a single output – cassava production (in kg/ha) – and five inputs, including hired labor, family labor, seed, organic fertilizers, and chemical fertilizers. we estimated the pooled, adopter, and non-adopter models in each unmatched and matched sample. the estimation resulted indicated a significant effect of all input variables on the pooled model in unmatched and matched samples. in addition, the adoption variable indicated a positive and significant effect on cassava production. the findings suggest that adopting a cassava variety is associated with higher output. furthermore, all estimations of the stochastic frontier model in table 5 and table 6 suggest that hired labor positively and significantly affected cassava production for both adopter and non-adopter farmers. this finding suggests that cassava farming needs professional labor because it enables farmers to achieve enhanced quality and output. this finding supports a previous study by ma et al. (2018), who estimated the technical efficiency level of apple farming in china and discovered that hired labor enabled farmers to employ better technology innovation and, as a result, farming output increased. although family labor negatively impacted cassava production in the pooled model, this variable was not significant in separate models (adopter and non-adopter models). this finding implies that family labor did not have such a key role as hired labor. finally, the seed variable positively and significantly affected cassava production in all estimation models. increasing cassava seed quantity could improve production. this study advises that farmers improve their seed quality to achieve maximum output. this finding agrees with missiame, nyikal, and irungu (2021), who employed the stochastic frontier method and found a positive and significant impact of seed on cassava production in ghana. table-5. parameter estimates for spf models: unmatched samples. variables pooled (model 1) adopter (model 2) non adopter (model 3) coef. std. err. coef. std. err. coef. std. err. hired labor (ln) 0.599*** 0.118 0.645*** 0.238 0.786*** 0.121 family labor (ln) -0.125** 0.062 -0.163 0.114 -0.056 0.063 seed (ln) 1.959*** 0.258 2.190*** 0.553 3.352*** 0.349 organic fertilizers (ln) -0.083** 0.034 -0.134** 0.068 -0.106*** 0.038 chemichal fertilizers (ln) 0.130* 0.071 0.251* 0.134 0.056 0.076 adoption (dummy) 0.310*** 0.079 constant -13.599** 2.492 -16.014*** 5.365 -27.063*** 3.437 mu -1.224 151.765 -1.626 198.161 -529.302 1995.408 usigma -5.775 160.403 -5.312 161.075 5.306 3.764 vsigma -0.840*** 0.082 -0.474*** 0.134 -1.954*** 0.208 sample 300 111 189 note: *, **, *** denote significance at 10, 5, and 1%, respectively. furthermore, organic fertilizers had a negative and significant impact on cassava output. this finding implies that that farmers necessarily reduce organic fertilizer use to improve production. in contrast, although the adopter model showed that chemical fertilizers had a positive and significant effect on cassava production, it was not significant in the adopter model. this finding implies that chemical fertilizers are more efficient than organic. the combination of organic and chemical fertilizers reduces the effectiveness of the former because this combination boosts plant nutrients faster than the latter. 3.5. the effect of nicv adoption on technical efficiency the scores of technical efficiency for all spf models in table 5 and table 6 are shown in table 7. the average technical efficiency score of cassava farmers in the unmatched sample is 0.754 for the pooled model and 0.818 for the individual model. furthermore, the matched sample indicated an average technical efficiency score of 0.821 for the pooled model and 0.826 for the individual model. this finding suggests that farmers who adopted the nicv had a higher technical efficiency score than those who did not – 0.242 in the unmatched samples and 0.254 in the matched. table-6. parameter estimates for the spf models: matched samples. variable pooled (model 1) adopter (model 2) non-adopter (model 3) coef. std. err. coef. std. err. coef. std. err. hired labor (ln) 0.494*** 0.140 0.645*** 0.238 0.591*** 0.157 family labor (ln) -0.149** 0.070 -0.163 0.114 -0.089 0.075 seed (ln) 1.869*** 0.281 2.190*** 0.553 3.233*** 0.387 organic fertilizers (ln) -0.081** 0.039 -0.134** 0.068 -0.121** 0.049 chemichal fertilizers (ln) 0.161** 0.080 0.251* 0.134 0.114 0.090 adoption (dummy) 0.294*** 0.089 constant -12.314*** 2.723 -16.013*** 5.363 -25.084*** 3.852 mu -0.989 74.563 -1.620 130.289 -586.751 1004.540 usigma -5.621 98.348 -5.002 105.437 5.510 1.717 vsigma -0.744*** 0.089 -0.474*** 0.134 -1.913*** 0.248 sample 253 111 142 note: *, **, *** denote significance at 10, 5, and 1%, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 269-278 276 moreover, the individual model showed that the mean difference in technical efficiency score between adopters and non-adopters was significantly and positively different. farmers who adopted the nicv showed a higher technical efficiency score than those who did not – 0.283 in the unmatched samples and 0.303 in the matched. ma et al. (2018) proposed that the pooled model cannot be used to compare technical efficiency scores of different groups because they use different technology innovations. therefore, the sample must be separated into different groups – for instance, adopter and non-adopter groups. thus, the technical efficiency of the individual stochastic model can be compared. on the other hand, a good comparison is derived from two groups with similar characteristics. in this study, a good comparison was shown in the matched sample and, as a result, the best comparison in table 7 indicates the individual mode of matched samples. the matched sample with a separated model indicated that adopter farmers had a higher technical efficiency score than non-adopters (by 0.303). this finding answers the main objective about the impacts of improved cassava varieiesy on technical efficiency, by showing the positive impacts of nicv adoption on technical efficiency. the nicv is a technological innovation aimed to improve cassava productivity in four ways. first, the variety improves tolerance to climate phenomena, such as drought, rain intensity, and temperature changes. second, the improved variety was developed to resist pests, such as red spiders and mites, and plant diseases, such as rotten tubers, that are a fundamental problem in indonesian cassava farming. third, improved cassava can be planted at maximal intensity (i.e., 15,000 plants/ha). table-7. the effect of nicv adoption on technical efficiency. spf models combined adopters non-adopters diff. unmatched sample pooled 0.754 0.906 0.664 0.242*** separated 0.818 0.996 0.713 0.283*** matched sample pooled 0.821 0.959 0.714 0.245*** separated 0.826 0.996 0.692 0.303*** note: *** denotes significance at 1%. generally, the findings of this study agree with those of a previous study by rahman, matin, and hasan (2018), who compared the technical efficiency score of improved and traditional varieties. their findings concluded that the improved variety produced a higher technical efficiency score than the conventional. meanwhile, abdul-rahaman, issahaku, and zereyesus (2021) investigated the impacts of an improved rice variety in ghana and discovered that farmers who adopted the improved variety were 24% more technically efficient than farmers who did not adopt it. a study by ghimire, wen-chi, and shrestha (2015) showed that improved varieties enable farmers to enhance farming inputs, such as labor and managerial time. as a result, they can improve the efficiency of farming operations. the findings of the present research support previous literature that found positive impacts of improved varieties on household income (wordofa et al., 2021), poverty reduction (manda et al., 2019; wossen et al., 2019; wu, ding, pandey, & tao, 2010), and food security (jaleta, kassie, & marenya, 2015; shiferaw, kassie, jaleta, & yirga, 2014). 4. conclusion this study assessed the impact of adoption of a new improved cassava variety (nicv) on the technical efficiency of smallholder farmers in east java, indonesia, by examining cross-sectional data from 300 cassava farmers. the study employed probit regression to estimate factors associated with farmers’ decision to adopt the nicv. furthermore, we estimated the farming technical efficiency score using stochastic frontier analysis. lastly, propensity score matching was applied to evaluate the effects of nicv adoption on farmers’ technical efficiency. this study provides valuable information about the nicv and the effects of specialized efficiency farming in indonesia. the study reveals that farmers’ decision to adopt the nicv was positively associated with certified land, off-farm work, cooperative membership, access to credit, internet access, and the geographical status of malang regency. furthermore, the inclusion of skilled labor, seed, and chemical fertilizers enabled farmers to increase production. however, family labor and organic fertilizers harmed cassava production. the exciting finding of this study was that nicv adoption positively and significantly affected farmers’ technical efficiency. we suggest that cassava farmers should adopt the nicv continuously to improve productivity and thus support food demands in indonesia. policy measures encouraging cassava farmers to adopt the nicv are critical to indonesia's agricultural growth. the government and extension agents, in particular, can offer training to farmers to improve their knowledge of nicv adoption. furthermore, in considering the research findings we suggest the improvement of agricultural institutions, such as agricultural cooperatives and financial institutions, to support farmers’ needs in farming activities, especially in adopting the nicv. lastly, the limitation of this research is that it employed only a desirable output (i.e., cassava production) to estimate farming technical efficiency. this study did not include an undesirable output (i.e., emission) to estimate farming efficiency and environmental efficiency; this could become a consideration for future research. hence, estimating the relation between nicv adoption and environmental efficiency using an undesirable output could support the findings of this study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(4)2021: 269-278 277 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. refferences abate, t. m., dessie, a. b., & mekie, t. m. 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(2017). performance analysis and optimization in downlink noma systems with cooperative full-duplex relaying. ieee journal on selected areas in communications, 35(10), 2398-2412. available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/vtcfall.2017.8288078. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 188 stability of maize hybrids across environments using gge biplot and ammi analysis saleem abid a , saleem zahid b a statistics and computing program, social sciences research institute, parc national agricultural research centre, islamabad, pakistan. b institute of business and management sciences, the university of agriculture, peshawar, pakistan. saleemabidpk@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 23-oct-2018 accepted: 01-jan-2019 online available: 23-jan2019 keywords: ammi analysis, maize hybrid, gge biplot, environments, stability abstract twenty six yellow maize hybrids on the basis of stability analysis were evaluated in national uniform maize hybrid yield trials conducted across eight diversified environments of pakistan. combined analysis of variance based ammi analysis shown highly significant differences for environments, genotypes and their interactions. the environments explained about 78 percent of the total yield variation followed by genotype by environment interaction. environment was the main aspect that influences the performance of maize yield in study area. the first two interaction principal component axes (ipca1 and ipca2) explained about 63 percent of the grain yield variation due to genotype and genotype by environment interaction (gge). the gge biplot analysis shown that entry-2 (mex-ylhy2) was the most stable hybrid and can be considered as adaptable to all the environments. contribution/ originality the main objective of this study was to identify the promising maize hybrid for their adaptability and stability using gge biplot and ammi analysis under different agro-climatic conditions in pakistan. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.188.194 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: saleem abid and saleem zahid (2018). stability of maize hybrids across environments using gge biplot and ammi analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 188-194. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 188-194 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:saleemabidpk@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.188.194 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 188-194 189 1. introduction in pakistan, maize is cultivated in an area of 1334 thousand hectares resulting with total production of 6130 thousand tonnes with an increase of 16.3% over previous year production of 5271 thousand tonnes (government of pakistan, 2017). moreover, there is a big gap between actual and potential yield of maize within pakistan. the demand for maize has significantly increased due to the extension in the poultry and livestock industries (kabir, 2009). maize has a diverse genetic crop and can be planted in different agro-ecological zones. improved maize varieties give high and stable yields in the environment where adopted. the improved hybrids should have the charcteristics of adoptibility across a wide range of different environments (cimmyt, 1991). stability of a hybrid over different locations is needed feature and depends upon the size of hybrid and enviroment interactions (ahmad et al., 1996). the genotypes are considered stable if their variations among environments are small, which is called statistical stability. a stable genotype does not change or at least change the performance, regardless of changes in the environmental conditions (baker and leon, 1988). there are two types of stability measures: non-parametric and parametric (multivariate and univariate) stability measures. the main problem in nonparametric and univariate stability statistics is that it cannot provide a real picture of the complete response pattern, as the genotype‘s response is of multivariate nature in different environments (lin et al., 1986; akpan and udoh, 2017). hence, using multivariate analysis i.e. additive main effects and multiplicative interactions (ammi) model is more useful for description of genotype by environment interaction (gei) than univariate stability methods (crossa et al., 1990). ammi model improve the accuracy of yield estimates when the main effects and interaction effects are important. the ammi method pools principal component analysis (pca) and analysis of variance (anova) into an integrated approach. in this approach, the adjustment is done by using the information from other environments to refine the estimates within a given environment (sadeghi et al., 2011). a number of researchers have accomplished substantial work on stability analysis using ammi analysis and gge biplot analysis for different crops such as munawar et al. (2013); banik et al. (2010); and francis and kannenberg (1978) for maize crop, wieslaw et al. (2011); crossa et al. (1990); kaya et al. (2002) for wheat crop, kilic (2014) for barley crop, mahalingam et al. (2006) for rice crop; and sadeghi et al. (2011) for tobacco crop. the main objective of this study was to identify the promising maize hybrid for their adaptability and stability using gge biplot and ammi analysis under different agro-climatic conditions in pakistan. 2. materials and methods this study was conducted with a view to identify the most stable hybrid of maize crop across different environments. for this purpose twenty six maize hybrids were tested in eight diversified environments of pakistan; islamabad, yousaf wala, vehari, sahiwal, lahore, dadu, faisalabad and nowshera. these maize hybrids were fb-1142, mex-ylhy2, 6619, 6655, st-6253, st-6293, kolosseus, bp-3, kxb-2572, hsm-34, tara-g-866, tara-lp-1243, 20-r-52, mex-ylhy1, mex-ylhy3, mex-ylhy4, mex-ylhy5, msm-1, y.whybrid, y.w1898, 1515, 1516, 1616, fh-1046, fh1036, and monsanto. the experiment was designed in a randomized complete block design with three replications, in all locations. the combined analysis of variance was performed for the eight environments and then genotype by environment interaction was divided according to additive main effects and multiplicative interactions (ammi) model gauch and zobel (1997). additive main effects and multiplicative interactions analysis pools principal component analysis (pca) of the g x e interaction with the analysis of variance for the genotype and environment main effects (kilic, 2014). the model equation is: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 188-194 190 1 n ij i j k ik jk ij k y g e e          where yij is the maize yield of ith genotype in jth environment; gi and ej are the genotype and environment deviations from the grand mean, respectively; μ is the grand mean; k is the eigenvalue of the principal component analysis axis k; ik and jk are the genotype and environment principal component scores for axis k; n is the number of principal components retained in the model and ije is the error term. the gge biplot and ammi analysis were carried out using gea-r software (cimmyt, 2015). 3. results and discussion the performance of hybrid can change when grown in diversified environments, demonstrated by fluctuations in the relative ranking of hybrid over environments. the hybrids commonly retained in a breeding program are those having a high mean performance, as hybrids are seldom selected on the basis of their performance in specific environments. the mean performance of grain yields for twenty six maize hybrids and their combined means across eight environments were presented at table-1. the mean of grain yield of maize hybrids across the environments showed significant variations in ranks among the hybrids, which demonstrate high hybrid and location interactions (baker, 1988). statistically significant differences were observed for mean grain yield among the hybrids in all the eight environments of the study. the mean grain yield over environments ranged from 6.905 tons ha-1 (y.whybrid) to 11.026 tons ha-1 (st-6293) with a grand mean of 9.086 tons ha-1. out of twenty six 13 of the hybrids (50%) had above the mean average yields (table 1). the st-6293 was found to be the highest yielding maize hybrid giving the mean yield of 11.026 tons ha-1 followed by fh-1036 (10.507 tons ha-1), st-6253 (10.062 tons ha-1) and so on, whereas y.w hybrid (6.905 tons ha-1) produces the lowest yield combined over the environments. table 1: mean performance of grain yields for twenty six maize hybrid (tons ha-1) and their combined means across eight environments of pakistan s# maize hybrid environments hybrid means 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 islamabad yousaf wala vehari sahiwal lahore dadu faisalabad nowshera 1. fb-1142 11.03 11.48 12.21 11.26 9.85 3.50 4.17 5.07 8.571 2. mex-ylhy2 10.85 10.95 11.03 11.65 10.68 4.80 9.08 5.16 9.275 3. 6619 12.67 10.79 12.77 14.58 11.08 4.20 9.51 4.41 9.999 4. 6655 11.69 11.56 10.56 12.08 11.76 3.72 6.62 3.29 8.909 5. st-6253 11.67 12.27 11.76 13.67 10.31 3.17 11.37 6.28 10.062 6. st-6293 13.37 13.69 11.21 17.17 11.53 4.73 8.69 7.82 11.026 7. kolosseus 10.34 11.31 12.32 12.08 9.14 5.15 7.48 6.48 9.286 8. bp-3 10.06 14.65 11.38 12.35 6.60 4.34 7.76 4.54 8.959 9. kxb-2572 13.42 10.81 9.06 12.80 7.54 4.68 7.85 4.13 8.786 10. hsm-34 12.70 12.01 12.41 10.74 7.89 4.68 8.63 4.23 9.162 11. tara-g-866 11.23 11.11 12.29 11.28 7.06 4.77 10.77 5.69 9.273 12. tara-lp-1243 12.83 10.71 8.08 10.82 6.89 5.36 8.00 3.13 8.226 13. 20-r-52 11.68 10.17 10.70 11.22 10.09 3.73 6.00 4.20 8.473 14. mex-ylhy1 9.82 11.71 10.68 11.58 8.46 4.48 5.47 3.67 8.233 15. mex-ylhy3 12.81 11.31 10.49 12.02 9.58 5.45 7.17 3.21 9.005 16. mex-ylhy4 11.00 11.17 11.33 11.18 11.22 4.33 8.85 3.37 9.055 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 188-194 191 17. mex-ylhy5 11.04 12.72 12.27 11.31 10.05 4.26 7.71 3.23 9.073 18. msm-1 11.73 11.42 11.12 14.82 7.83 3.62 8.11 4.61 9.156 19. y.whybrid 4.72 10.78 10.07 8.77 5.10 4.03 7.49 4.29 6.905 20. y.w1898 8.17 11.33 11.82 6.79 5.09 4.87 8.66 5.35 7.761 21. 1515 12.65 10.97 12.24 12.67 11.41 4.96 8.40 4.17 9.682 22. 1516 10.28 10.87 10.89 13.92 10.31 4.58 9.35 4.74 9.369 23. 1616 12.49 11.44 12.30 11.92 7.85 5.41 10.11 4.97 9.561 24. fh-1046 11.12 8.84 10.41 9.05 6.32 5.04 11.75 4.41 8.366 25. fh-1036 15.62 11.09 11.95 15.54 10.24 3.47 12.11 4.05 10.507 26. monsanto 12.18 12.40 11.50 14.94 8.80 4.03 8.37 4.19 9.552 locations means 11.43 11.44 11.26 12.16 8.95 4.44 8.44 4.57 9.086 underlined values are highest yields at each test environments. lsd0.01 (locations) = 0.2796; lsd0.01 (hybrids) =0.5041 combined analysis of variance for grain yield based on ammi model is presented in table 2. the results of analysis of variance showed statistically highly significant differences (p<0.01) for genotypes, environments and their interaction. the interaction principal component axis (ipca) are ordered according to decreasing contribution to variation. the f-test was statistically highly significant (p<0.01) for all the ipca axes. the environments explained 77.7% of the total yield variation followed by the g × e interaction (16%). genotypes contributed only 6.3% which indicates that in the multi environment trials (mets) genotypes contribute the least to the total variation. the environment is a major factor that affecting maize productivity in most parts of the study area. the first seven ipca axes are highly significant and explained 100% of the g x e interaction. the first two interaction principal component axes (ipca1 and ipca2) explained 62.6 percent of the grain yield variation due to genotype and genotype by environment interaction (gge). table 2: ammi analysis of variance of grain yield of maize trails over eight environments sources df sum of square mean square total variation explained (%) g x e explained (%) cumulative (%) environments (e) 7 5283.33 754.7** 77.7 genotypes (g) 25 428.48 17.14** 6.3 g × e 175 1088.87 6.22** 16 ipc1 31 423.71 13.67** 38.9 38.9 ipc2 29 258.36 8.91** 23.7 62.6 ipc3 27 149.92 5.55** 13.8 76.4 ipc4 25 123.7 4.95** 11.4 87.8 ipc5 23 58.86 2.56** 5.4 93.2 ipc6 21 48.67 2.32** 4.5 97.7 ipc7 19 25.65 1.35** 2.4 100 error 416 194.95 0.47 total 623 6995.63 **p < 0.01; grand mean = 9.09; cv = 7.43%; ipc = interaction principal component axis the ammi model biplot based on ipca1 and the genotype means for twenty six maize hybrids across the eight environments was constructed to show the performance and association of the genotypes. the figure displays that entry 6 (st-6293) was the highest yielding followed by entry 25 (fh-1036) and entry 5 (st-6253). the lowest yielding among the 26 maize hybrids was entry 19 (y.whybrid) located at the top left corner of the biplot. entry 2 (mex-ylhy2) was the most asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 188-194 192 stable as it is the closest to the ipca1 axis and can be considered as adaptable to all the environments. figure 1: biplot analysis of gei for the pca1 scores and grain yield of 26 maize hybrids across eight environments the gge biplot analysis based on ammi model for the first two ipc scores (pc1 vs pc2) was presented in figure-2. the gge biplots based on the performance of 26 maize hybrids evaluated under 8 environments were constructed based on the values of the first two interactions principal component scores (pc1 and pc2) which explained 62.6% of the grain yield variation due to genotype and g x e interaction (figure 2). figure-2 shows the association or relationship between the different environments. faisalabad was the most discriminating environment due to its longest distance from the origin of the biplot. environments with small vector angles tend to have closer similarity and those with wide vector angles show minimum association. similarly the rug plot also displays the proximity among the different environments based on the angle variation of the vectors. all the managed drought environments were displayed close to each other as their deviation from each other was small. figure 2: biplot analysis of gei for first two ipc scores (pc1 vs pc2) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 188-194 193 the dendrogram (figure 3) displays the information in the form of tree diagram in our experiment, locations islamabad, sahiwal, lahore make-up the first cluster; locations yousaf wala, vehari, nowshera make-up the second cluster and dadu and faisalabad make-up the third cluster on the basis of similarity levels of environment. figure 3: dendrogram showing clustering of eight locations of experiment 4. conclusion the combined analysis of variance based on ammi analysis shown highly significant differences for environments, genotypes and their interactions. the environments explained about 78 percent of the total yield variation followed by genotype by environment interaction. environment was the main aspect that influences the performance of maize yield in study area. the first two interaction principal component axes explained about 63 percent of the grain yield variation due to genotype and genotype by environment interaction (gge). it was concluded from the study that gge biplot analysis shown that entry-2 (mex-ylhy2) was the most stable hybrid and can be considered as adaptable to all the environments. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ahmad, j., choudhery, m., din, s. s., & ali, m. a. 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indonesia (umi), indonesia. bdepartment of agricultural socio-economics, faculty of agriculture, universitas hasanuddin, jl. perintis kemerdekaan km. 10 gedung pkm 1 90245 makassar, indonesia. cnational chung hsing university, 145 xingda rd., south dist., taichung city 402, taiwan. ddepartment of socio-economics of agriculture, faculty of agriculture, university of bengkulu, jl. w.r supratman, kandang limun, bengkulu 38112, indonesia.  ida.rosada@umi.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 24 january 2025 revised: 26 march 2025 accepted: 10 april 2025 published: 21 april 2025 keywords agricultural extension institutions policy resources rural areas smallholder farmers. palm oil plays an important role in the economy in indonesia, particularly in the waru sub-district, penajam paser utara, east kalimantan, which is one of the main producers. however, production conditions in the region tend to fluctuate due to the limited involvement of existing institutions, challenges that weaken their role and effectiveness, and strategic programs aimed at increasing oil palm production. this study analyzes the relevant institutional structures, identifies constraints that weaken their roles, and determines strategic programs to increase oil palm production. the study used interpretative structural modelling as its analysis method. the results of the analysis show that the agricultural extension centre plays an important role in increasing oil palm production. the main factor contributing to the limited effectiveness of this institution is the lack of skilled human resources. the findings of this study can be used as a practical guide by the government and relevant agencies to strengthen the role of agricultural institutions, particularly the agricultural extension centre, in increasing oil palm production. the implementation of strategies such as improving the human resources of extension workers and empowering farmer groups can increase the effectiveness of programs for developing oil palm in a sustainable manner. contribution/originality: this study, conducted in key areas for oil palm production in indonesia using the interpretive structure model (ism), provides new insights into the role of agricultural institutions in enhancing productivity. it uniquely contributes by addressing challenges in tropical regions and highlighting strategies to strengthen institutional support for sustainable oil palm production. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5368 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: rosada, i., nurliani, amiruddin, a., & novanda, r. r. (2025). identifying constraints and strategies for palm oil production in indonesia: an interpretive structure model approach. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 134–144. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the agricultural sector is crucial to the economies of developing countries, and plantations are a key subsector (anwer, farooqi, & qureshi, 2015; sertoglu, ugural, & bekun, 2017). however, smallholder plantations face several challenges, including cultivation in large areas, low productivity, poor quality, and weak sales and marketing (hall, asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 134-144 mailto:ida.rosada@umi.ac.id https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5368 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 134-144 135 scoones, & tsikata, 2017; johns, powell, maundu, & eyzaguirre, 2013) indonesia has significant agricultural potential, presenting an opportunity for the government and society (wisnujati & patiung, 2020). the demand for palm oil is high owing to its widespread use across various industries. according to amiruddin, ali, lumoindong, fudjaja, and suryadnyani (2021) palm oil is particularly used as an energy substitute. because of this, the government and business leaders are now concentrating on making oil palm production more sustainable and competitive (albar & pratama, 2022). the advantages of palm oil are clear. first, it is an important ingredient in cooking oil, and maintaining a sustainable supply helps stabilize its price. since cooking oil is one of the nine staple meals in many communities, it must stay affordable for people from all socioeconomic backgrounds (bukhori & ekasari, 2017). second, its inclusion in non-oil and non-gas exports contributes to the generation of foreign exchange and tax revenues. third, the production and processing of palm oil can create jobs and improve the welfare of local communities (pratiwi, maryam, & balkis, 2019). in east kalimantan, oil palm cultivation started in 1982 with the people's nucleus plantation project, overseen by perseroan terbatas perkebunan nusantara (ptpn) vi until 2014. by 2013, oil palm production in the province had reached 7,600,298 tonnes (arsyad & maryam, 2017). the region's whole area of oil palm plantations was expected to reach 1,551,345 hectares by 2021, with production reaching 17,277,404 tonnes, including 3,715,612 tonnes of crude palm oil. with a total production of 376,958 tonnes and a productivity rate of 23,702 kg/ha in 2021, penajam paser utara is one of east kalimantan's leading oil palm-producing districts (dinas perkebunan provinsi kalimantan timur, 2021). three types of plantations are distinguished: smallholder plantations, huge private plantations, and large government plantations. waru sub-district, where oil palm is the primary plantation crop, is one of the district's significant oil palm-producing regions. 141,720.19 tons were produced in waru sub-district in 2018. nevertheless, the subdistrict still has difficulties growing its oil palm output. using non-certified seeds and aging and destroying existing plants contribute to low productivity in smallholder oil palm plantations. therefore, replanting oil palm with superior, certified seeds is necessary (ogahara, jespersen, theilade, & nielsen, 2022). the program to replant oil palm for smallholders aims to increase productivity on land owned by smallholders, eliminating the need to clear additional land fields (tampubolon & nainggolan, 2021). issues related to the subsidized fertilizer allocation policy are not typically considered significant problems by the government's fertilizer subsidy program. however, the price difference between subsidized and non-subsidized fertilizers often leads to farmers' suboptimal use of fertilizer inputs, negatively affecting production and yields. farmers may reduce their fertilizer usage if subsidized fertilizer is unavailable and only the more expensive non-subsidized option remains. a potential solution is to gradually phase out the government's agricultural input subsidy program and shift to a market-driven approach (nafisah & amanta, 2022). another challenge faced by plantation operators is low crop productivity and inefficient land use (woittiez, slingerland, rafik, & giller, 2018). productivity levels in both smallholder and large plantations remain below the yield potential. this low productivity is largely due to farmers' suboptimal implementation of good agricultural practices (napitupulu, yanita, & rahma, 2022). issues such as the circulation of counterfeit seeds and inadequate plant maintenance further complicate plantation management. the relatively low productivity of oil palm plantations has led to expanding plantations to achieve higher production from existing land units (niaga & kalimantan, 2018). institutions play a crucial role in strengthening participation across all environmenta l elements (šūmane et al., 2018). the training processes involving agricultural institutions, such as counseling for oil palm farmers, are often viewed merely as formalities. this perception leads to a lack of active farmer participation. consequently, institutions do not support oil palm farmers optimally (anawar, tampubulon, & handoko, 2021; jelsma, schoneveld, zoomers, & van westen, 2017). weak coordination among the relevant institutions can lead to various issues for oil palm farmers, including problems with pricing, intermediaries’ manipulation of prices, and cha llenges related to capital, fertilization, marketing, and cooperatives. these factors create significant disadvantages for farmers. we expect the government to respond to these challenges by enhancing facilities for smallholder plantation development, strengthening farmer institutions, and fostering plantation partnerships with companies. to get the most out of training/extension programs and other projects paid for by the regional budget fund (tampubolon & nainggolan, 2021) for oil palm farmers who also work with other crops, especially food crops, it is strongly suggested that they join farmer groups. interpretative structural modelling (ism) was used as a system modeling method in this study to create a hierarchy of important sub-elements related to the role of agricultural institutions. this approach involves classifying relevant elements into four sectors to determine the sub-elements (attri, dev, & sharma, 2013). strategic programs to enhance palm oil production and the challenges faced by agricultural institutions trying to do so are addressed. as a result, ism provides insights for handling complicated issues in a way that maximizes the application of methodical and rational thinking (attri et al., 2013). based on the problems described, this research focuses on the need for data presentation, role mapping, and strategies for strengthening institutions in the waru sub-district. the government intends to use the current research findings as a reference when developing programs to increase oil palm production. 2. materials and methods 2.1. location and time of research this research will be conducted in waru sub-district, penajam paser utara regency, east kalimantan (figure 1). the waru sub-district was chosen as the research location because it is one of the sub-districts that produce oil palm. the study will span two months, commencing in april and concluding in may 2023. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 134-144 136 figure 1. research location. 2.2. research stages 2.2.1. determination of information the information in this study is from experts in the oil palm field in waru sub-district, penajam paser utara district. the information is determined using the purposive sampling technique, which is based on the characteristics of the selected participants because these characteristics are by the research objectives. the researcher considered the following points when selecting experts: 1) have experience in the field under study , 2) have a reputation, position, or authority in the field under study, 3) be willing to conduct in-depth interviews, and 4) have a strong influence and interest in the development of the oil palm commodity. the number of experts as informants required by the ism method is up to seven people (setiati, kasmungin, riswati, rinanti, & satriabudi, 2021). the informants in this study were determined to be as many as five people, consisting of experts taken from various institutions/agencies, including (1) the agriculture office of penajam paser utara district, (2) the agricultural extension center, (3) farmer groups, (4) private companies, and (5) bappelitbangda. 2.2.2. determination of elements and sub-elements elements and sub-elements are research elements defined with reference to the research objectives. in this study, three elements were determined, namely (1) institutions that play a role, (2) institutional constraints, and (3) strategic programs. elements are determined based on the research objectives, the analytical model used, or the results of discussions with experts related to the field of palm oil expertise. 2.2.3. questionnaire development the questionnaire is a data collection technique that provides a list of questions for informants to fill in. the questions are then developed so that information is obtained in accordance with the research needs. this study used three series of questionnaires (questionnaire series a, b, and c) to achieve the research objectives. 2.2.4. interviews, questionnaires, and data input before starting the interviews, informants were socialized to provide an understanding of the ism method and the interrelationships between the sub-elements that had been determined in accordance with the research objectives. the purpose of this socialization is to prevent informants from becoming confused about how to complete the questionnaire. 2.2.5. data analysis using ism the questionnaire results were tabulated according to the questionnaire. then, they entered into the ism program to identify key elements, the division of sub-elements into four quadrants, and the hierarchical structure of each sub-element. this data analysis will result in a directional graph and level structure . 2.2.6. presentation of data analysis results at this stage, the data will be presented in the form of a matrix (ssim, initial reachability matrix, final reachability matrix, and canonical matrix), a directional graph, and a level structure. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 134-144 137 2.2.7. inference the ism results are then described and analyzed to answer the objectives of this research and produce conclusions and suggestions. 2.3. analysis method this study uses ism analysis, which helps make complicated policy structures by figuring out what the important parts are, how they relate to each other, and how they are grouped into four areas: linkage, autonomous, independent, and dependent (see figure 2) (nuddin et al., 2019). according to sinaga, simangunsong, liebman, and tambunan (2019) and arsyad et al. (2020) the following primary steps are involved in conducting an ism analysis. ● build a structural self-interaction matrix (ssim) using the information the survey provided. this matrix illustrates the relationships between the studied components, using four different symbols to indicate the type of relationship. the following is an explanation of the symbols. v: indicates that, although the opposite is not true, sub-element i and sub-element j have a contextual relationship. a: indicates that sub-element j and sub-element i have a contextual link, but not the other way around. x: indicates a reciprocal contextual link between sub-elements i and j. o: indicates that sub-elements i and j do not have any contextual relationships. ● transform the ssim into an initial reachability matrix by substituting binary values (1 or 0) for the symbols v, a, x, and o. the final reachability matrix is created by modifying the original matrix to include both direct and indirect linkages to create the final reachability matrix. ● the driver power and dependence (dp-d) values are determined by processing the final reachability matrix. a directional graph that shows the direct relationships between items indicates the levels of the hierarchy and divides the elements into four sectors created using these values: a) autonomous weak driverweak dependent variables: within this area, sub-elements usually have little to no relationship to the overall system. if a sub-element's driver power (dp) and dependence (d) values are both less than or equal to 0.5, it falls under this domain; b) weak driver-strong dependent variables (dependent): the sub-elements included in this classification are heavily reliant on other sub-elements located higher up in the hierarchical structure. if the d value is greater than 0.5 and the dp value is less than 0.5, the sub-element is classified as being in this category; c) strong driver-strong dependent variables (linkage): sub-elements in this sector require careful examination because many of their interactions with other sub-elements are unstable. d) strong driver-weak dependent variables (independent): sub-elements classified in this sector are independent variables that significantly impact other sub-elements. a sub-element is placed in this category if both the dp and d values are more than 0.5. if the d value is less than 0.5 and the dp value is greater than 0.5, the sub -element is considered to be a component of this sector. ● ism analysis relies on data processing and expert input to develop a consistent matrix following established procedures in the (mathiyazhagan, govindan, noorulhaq, & geng, 2013) expert respondents are selected based on the following criteria: (1) they have experience in the field being studied; (2) they hold a recognized position, reputation, or authority within the relevant domain; and (3) they are prepared to contribute to the analysis and take part in in-depth interviews. figure 2. directional graph: driver power and dependence (dp-d). 3. results and discussion 3.1. cast institution one of the results of the ism approach was a graph that showed six institutional sub-elements. these sub-elements are expected to play a big part in increasing palm oil production in waru sub-district and are categorised by four different quadrants and their coordinates. these sub-elements are categorized into three quadrants: independent, dependent, and linked, as shown in figure 3. because this part of the system doesn't usually connect to the bigger asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 134-144 138 picture or interact much with the other quadrants, the autonomous quadrant doesn't have any sub -elements. two subelements fall into the independent quadrant: the department of agriculture and the agricultural extension centre. these are placed in this quadrant owing to their high driver power and low dependence. this indicates that they have a greater influence than the sub-elements in the linkage and dependent quadrants. both institutions wield the authority to adjust agricultural practices to maintain productivity, from procuring agricultural infrastructure and facilities to providing seeds, fertilizers, and services to farmers (fachruddin & rahayu, 2017). these services must also be adaptable to farmers’ specific challenges and offer solutions (suci & jamil, 2019) as each agricultural domain—in this case, oil palm plantations—faces unique social and economic issues (andrianto, komarudin, & pacheco, 2019; jelsma et al., 2017; susanti & maryudi, 2016). furthermore, the two sub-elements—the agriculture office and the agricultural extension center— show that the influence levels of institutions can increase oil palm production in the waru sub -district. the agricultural extension center is highly influential in this quadrant with its driver power of six points; therefore, it wield s greater authority than other institutions. the linkage quadrant contains two sub-elements: banking institutions and farmer groups. these sub-elements require careful examination owing to their unstable relationships; actions taken within this quadrant can influence sub-elements within this quadrant and in other quadrants as well. sub-elements in this quadrant exhibit both high driver power and high dependence. the dependent quadrant contains two sub -elements: the regional planning, research and development agency and private companies. these institutions have low driver power and high dependence, indicating they are strongly influenced by the sub -elements in the linkage and independent quadrants. private companies contribute towards increasing oil palm production by purchasing palm oil, thus allowing farmers to directly sell the oil palm harvest (choiruzzad, 2019; nesadurai, 2019) the level structure model is one of the ism outputs that can be used as reference material in determining the institutions that are expected to play a role along with their roles and responsibilities in increasing oil palm production (figure 4). institutions at level 1, namely the agricultural extension office, are at the top of the level structure because they are the key actors in increasing oil palm production in the waru sub-district. meanwhile, the institution at level 4, bappelitbangda, is at the bottom of the level structuration. this shows that t he success of increasing oil palm production is largely determined by the role of institutions at the top level, along with support from institutions at the level below. furthermore, at level 2, there are three institutions: the agriculture office, banking institutions, and farmer groups. the department of agriculture is the government agency responsible for issues related to palm oil production. in addition, the department of agriculture also has the responsibility to strive to increase oil palm production through implementation and supervision in carrying out policies. banking institutions offer people's enterprise credit to oil palm farmers in the waru sub-district as part of their mandate. meanwhile, at level 3, there are private company institutions that take priority to increase oil palm production in the waru sub-district due to the increasing demand for oil palms. the company waru kaltim plantation cooperates with farmer groups in purchasing fresh fruit bunches so that farmers do not need to look for buyers of oil palm production. the government institution at level 4 is bappelitbangda. although bappelitbangda is one of the government agencies but is at the lowest level, they are still expected to take a role in efforts to increase palm oil production in the regulations and policies set. the results of the ism analysis align with the findings of arsyad et al. (2021) which identify the department of agriculture, the agricultural extension agency, and farmer groups/gapoktan as key actors in agricultural development in border areas. furthermore, the indonesian oil palm producers association emphasized raharja, papilo, massijaya, asrol, and darmawan (2020) as important factors in the model of institutional strengthening for independent oil palm producers in the provinces of riau and jambi. these findings demonstrate that key actors are not always limited to government agencies or farmer groups, as each region has different systemic key actors based on their respective conditions. figure 3. institutions that are expected to play a role. note: a1: agriculture office. a2: regional development planning, research and development agency. a3: agricultural extension centre. a4: private companies. a5: banking institutions. a6: farmer groups. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 134-144 139 figure 4. structuring levels of institutions expected to play a role. 3.2. factors weakening the roles of institutions in order to separate the sub-elements into four quadrants—autonomous, dependent, linkage, and independent— and their corresponding coordinates, a directional graph was constructed using the canonical matrix. no sub -elements were positioned in the linkage or autonomous quadrants; instead, the ten sub-elements that were analyzed were split into the independent and dependent quadrants. five sub-elements were categorized in the independent quadrant: ‘lack of skilled human resources,’ ‘weak institutional commitment,’ ‘limited budget for coordination,’ ‘limited institutional human resources,’ and ‘limited facilities to support coordination.’ these five factors are significant because they can influence factors in other quadrants. among them, the factor ‘lack of skilled human resources’ is particularly crucial, as it has the highest driver power (as shown in figure 5), making it a key factor for strengthening institutional roles. addressing this issue is urgent and important. figure 5. factors weakening the roles of institutions. note: description: b1: non-involvement of the institution from the start. b2: weak institutional commitment. b3: lack of skilled human resources. b4: limited institutional human resources. b5: the absence of a performing institution that serves as a coordinator. b6: limited budget to organise coordination. b7: limited facilities that support coordination. b8: lack of understanding of each institution’s role. b9: lack of program integration and synchronisation. b10: difficulty in nurturing farmers’ attitudes. this study found nine levels of factors that make institutions less effective at increasing oil palm production. level 1 of these factors is the most important (figure 6). the factor at level 1 is a lack of quality human resources. the ability to coordinate, implement, and apply field results demonstrates the quality of human resources. in addition, in terms of quantity, it is also seen in the limited human resources of the agriculture office and the agricultural extension center, which cannot possibly reach all institutions that are focused on farmer groups. m. arsyad et al. (2021) emphasized in their research on inter-institutional linkages in agricultural development that the agricultural extension agency is at the forefront of transferring knowledge and skills to help farmers manage farms. at level 2, there is a factor of weak institutional commitment; this factor is critical because if the commitment is weak, it will have an impact on the weak commitment to coordinate in carrying out the program to increase oil palm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 134-144 140 production. then, at levels 3 and 4, there are factors such as a limited budget to organize coordination, limited institutional human resources, and limited facilities that support coordination. the factors of a limited budget and limited facilities are factors that affect human resources, so they can think of ways to carry out effective coordination if they are not constrained by a budget and facilities for coordination. furthermore, at level 5, there is a factor of non-involvement of institutions from the start. the non-engagement of institutions is because institutions do not understand the important role of coordination between institutions, so understanding the role of institutions is a very important factor to address or resolve. then, at level 6, there is the factor of lack of integration and synchronization of programs. based on the results of interviews with the head of the farmer group, explaining about seeds related to the program to increase oil palm production. the example given in relation to certified seeds explained by the informant of the head of the farmer group is the late provision of oil palm seed assistance to farmers so that farmers buy seeds in online shops due to the late seed assistance. therefore, many farmers are deceived by certified seeds. understanding about certified seeds should be done by the agricultural extension centre because the agency is the supervisor and conveys information to farmers. finally, at levels 7-9, there is a lack of institutional understanding of each other's roles, the absence of an institution that functions as a coordinator , and the attitude of farmers who are difficult to coach. this factor is related to the level 2 factor, namely weak institutional commitment, because if there is a lack of understanding of the institution's main tasks and functions, it will have an impact on the weak commitment of the institution to coordinate and carry out a program to increase oil palm production. the absence of a coordinating institution is an influential factor because an institution that can be responsible for coordination between institutions is also needed to ensure that each institution coordinates and does not work independently. likewise, the attitude factor of farmers should be able to understand their expected role in increasing oil palm production, and farmer institutions should support government programs to increase oil palm production. figure 6. structuration level factors causing the weak role of institutions. five sub-elements were also found: institutions not being involved from the start, programs not being able to work together or with each other, institutions not knowing what their roles are, not having a coordinating institution, and problems with changing farmers' attitudes. these factors have low driver power and high dependence because they are asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 134-144 141 influenced by other factors in the independent quadrant. to effectively implement t he action plan for developing the palm oil industry, the relevant policy must prioritize infrastructure and investment process improvement. this includes ensuring the availability of public facilities such as roads, healthcare, electricity, and clean water management, as well as providing support for pro-investment policies. the central government plays a critical role as a facilitator for industrial development, particularly in terms of policy and support systems (robbani, fahmi, & suprayitno, 2015). 3.3. strategic programs strategic programs aim to increase the production of oil palms (ruysschaert & salles, 2018). the ism framework helps identify key programs from various government and non-government agencies. expert judgment plays a crucial role in evaluating and selecting such strategic programs. in the current research, one ism output is a directional graph, which categorizes eleven sub-elements from the strategic program to increase palm oil production in the waru subdistrict in four quadrants (figure 7). these sub-elements are further classified into two categories: independent and dependent. in the strategic program assessment, none of the sub-elements fall in the autonomous quadrant. this is similar to how institutions and limiting factors were evaluated. this means that all programs are seen as necessary to improve oil palm production. four sub-elements are in the independent quadrant: the upstream-downstream extension program, production facility assistance program, human resource improvement for extension workers, and farmer institution development program. these four programs have a greater influence on boosting oil palm production. because our knowledge about oil palm production is always changing, it is important to come up with effective and efficient ways to do things. this is especially important because climate change affects fruit yield and oil palm quality in oil palm plantations (manzo & padfield, 2016; zainal, shamsudin, mohamed, & adam, 2012; zamri et al., 2022). additionally, access to capital significantly affects oil palm farmers’ motivation to apply new knowledge. financial support can also be directed towards improving road access, education, and healthcare for farmers around the palm oil companies (achmad amiruddin, rukmana, & anugra, 2022). programs in the other quadrants support independent initiatives. the four sub-elements indicate the priority programs implemented by agricultural institutions for increasing oil palm production. there are seven sub-elements in the dependent quadrant. they are "giving access to institutions," "comparing institutions," "providing organic farming technology packages," "streamlining coordination between institutions," "forming farmer partnerships with companies," and "creating a special team for oil palm research and development." while these programs are not prioritized over others, they remain important and can become additional initiatives once the higher-priority programs are completed. the formation of a special team for oil palm research and development ranks lowest in terms of driver power, indicating it is less impactful than the programs listed above. there are nine levels of strategic programs to increase palm oil production, with level one being the key program. figure 8 illustrates the interpretation of the level structuring model. at level 1, there is a program that increases the human resources of extension workers. this program is key to increasing oil palm production. the program to increase the human resources of extension workers is an indispensable part of efforts to increase production. bambang sumatri rosnita (2015) asserted that extension workers have a lesser role in providing education, disseminating information, and monitoring evaluations, which could potentially impact the empowerment level of oil palm farmers through the overall extension program. therefore, the lack of field extension workers, especially in plantations, must be a concern. we must prioritize and implement these two programs simultaneously. at level 2, the production facilities assistance program plays a crucial role in boosting oil palm production. the strategic plan program includes activities such as providing assistance with seeds, pesticides, land expansion, and plantation tools. the production facilities assistance program is needed because the main problem faced by oil palm plantations is old and damaged plants, so production is reduced. at level 3, there is an extension program that focuses on improving knowledge and skills in using technology through the active participation of farmer groups. in level 4, there is a program called "farmer institutional development" that aims to improve farmers' ability to manage the institutions outlined in the strategic plan. this is done by building and improving the institutions of people who are oil palm farmers. the goal is to make farmers more aware of their role as the main people who can increase oil palm production. at level 5, two programs are implemented, namely the provision of capital access and the extension of plantation land. these programs aid farmers in meeting their production facility needs and positively impact oil palm production. then, the land extensification program involves opening up land for oil palm cultivation, with the farmer clearing the land himself and asking the government for help with seeds. increasing the area of oil palm plantations will be useless if farmers rejuvenate all old and damaged plants so that they can maximize the potential of the land. level 6, there is one program, namely comparative studies of institutions, that can be carried out to add insight to farmers regarding the success of agricultural institutions. then, at level 7, the program for providing organic agricultural technology packages and streamlining coordination between institutions will have an effect on palm oil production and create sustainable agriculture. the program for streamlining coordination between institutions will manage and share data between institutions to make sure that there are no mistakes in reporting and evaluating. at level 8, there is a program to establish farming partnerships with companies that have been realized but play a very limited role because companies sometimes do not guarantee the price of oil palm, and there is no fixed purchase in oil palm farms. meanwhile, at level 9, the program to establish a special team for palm oil research a nd development occupies the lowest structure because it does not have a greater influence on other programs to increase palm oil production. the program of the special research and development team yields high-quality seedlings, suitable fertilizers, and efficient pesticides. ism interpretation and structure model results on each element were reviewed by the expert to comment on the formulation. the structure of levels and quadrants and the resulting analyses have described the real conditions for increasing oil palm production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 134-144 142 figure 7. a strategic program to increase oil palm production. note: description: c1: extension (upstream-downstream). c2: production facility assistance program. c3: improvement of human resources for extension workers. c4: providing access to capital. c5: farmer institution development program. c6: comparative study of institutions. c7: provision of organic farming technology packages. c8: effective coordination between institutions. c9: expansion of agricultural land. c10: establishment of farming partnerships with companies. c11: establishment of a special team for oil palm research and development. figure 8. strategic program level structuring to increase oil palm production. 4. conclusion what this study found is a model that shows the role of institutions, things that make institutions less effective, and strategic programs that can be used to boost oil palm production in the waru sub-district. the results indicate that the agricultural extension centre is the key institution that drives increased oil palm production in the area. the main factor hindering the effectiveness of this institution is the lack of skilled human resources. a key initiative that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 134-144 143 should focus on enhancing programs to increase oil palm production is to increase extension resources. the challenges faced by extension workers at the agricultural extension centers align with this program. it was decided that one of the most important things that needed to be done was to train more extension workers at the department of agriculture and the agricultural extension office so that they could help oil palm farmers in waru sub -district. the field findings and analyses conducted reveal the crucial role of government institutions in boosting oil palm production. therefore, the researcher anticipates that institutions will play a significant role by providing training and additional manpower, enabling them to provide counseling to oil palm farmers. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the universitas muslim indonesia and hasanuddin university, indonesia has granted approval for this study on 18 august 2023 (ref. no. 5823/un4.10.8/pk.03.00/2023). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript . references albar, a., m., & pratama, m. f. 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(2022). an overview of palm oil biomass for power generation sector decarbonization in malaysia: progress, challenges, and prospects. wiley interdisciplinary reviews: energy and environment, 11(4), e437. https://doi.org/10.1002/wene.437 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2018.1536262 https://doi.org/10.20956/ijas.v6i2.1690 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2022.106258 https://doi.org/10.35941/jakp.3.1.2020.2855.9-16 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03875 https://doi.org/10.17358/jma.12.2.137 https://doi.org/10.xxxx/jae.2015.32.4.45 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60579-1_5 https://doi.org/10.32479/ijefi.13930 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2019.04.011 https://doi.org/10.36423/hexagro.v3i2.279 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.01.020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2016.09.009 https://doi.org/10.21776/ub.agrise.2020.20.4.7 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10705-018-9919-5 https://doi.org/10.3923/tasr.2012.872.880 https://doi.org/10.1002/wene.437 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 608 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. actor dynamics in farmland protection: a mactor analysis in tasikmalaya, indonesia faqihuddina,b teguh soedartoc hamidah hendrarinid mubarokahe a,c,d,eupn veteran jawa timur, indonesia. bagribusiness department, universitas siliwangi, indonesia.  faqihuddin@unsil.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 5 september 2025 revised: 13 october 2025 accepted: 31 october 2025 published: 21 november 2025 keywords actor mapping mactor analysis policy network power asymmetries sustainable food, agricultural land protection sustainable land governance urbanization. agricultural land protection is vital for ensuring food security, especially in peri-urban areas of developing countries facing rapid urbanization and land conversion. this study analyzes actor interactions in implementing sustainable food agriculture land (sfal) protection in tasikmalaya city, indonesia, using the mactor (matrix of alliances and conflicts: tactics, objectives, and recommendations) method. the use of mactor in farmland protection in indonesia is still limited. the study provides a novel approach to uncover alliances, conflicts, and power asymmetries among policy actors. data were collected through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with stakeholders from government institutions, farmer organizations, and the private sector. the analysis identified eleven key actors and six strategic objectives, including regional regulation, soil fertility, irrigation management, cost-efficient farming, and livelihood diversification. results show that private developers exert the greatest influence, followed by the city government through the regional development planning agency, sub-district authorities, and the mayor. in contrast, farmers and their groups remain marginalized with limited policy influence. despite this, there is formal alignment among actors toward land protection goals. the study highlights the need to strengthen farmer institutions, enhance transparent land governance, and develop multi-actor collaboration to balance agricultural sustainability and urban growth pressures. contribution/originality: this study introduces the mactor method for analyzing actor dynamics in farmland protection within indonesia's peri-urban context. it reveals that farmers are marginalized despite being the primary land users and highlights the dominance of developers. additionally, the study identifies convergence on regulatory and agronomic goals as a novel foundation for fostering collaborative governance. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5733 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: faqihuddin, f., soedarto, t., hendrarini, h., & mubarokah, m. (2025). actor dynamics in farmland protection: a mactor analysis in tasikmalaya, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 608–618. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5733 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 608-618 mailto:faqihuddin@unsil.ac.id https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2657-7863 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2018-9501 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2028-0965 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0682-5583 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5733 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 608-618 609 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 1. introduction agricultural land plays a fundamental role in global food supply, carbon storage, and biodiversity (faoziyah, rosyaridho, & panggabean, 2024). however, urbanization and industrialization are eroding fertile land, particularly in peri-urban areas, which are the spearhead of regional and global food security. based on a dynamic systems study, indonesia's food security is expected to become increasingly vulnerable by 2045, particularly on java, which is a food belt and faces high urbanization pressures. if productivity is only developed without land protection, future food consumption will be disrupted, particularly for strategic commodities such as rice, corn, and cassava. at the global level, a similar phenomenon is observed in urbanization studies, which show that urban expansion contributes to the reduction of agricultural land availability, although the effects vary across countries (olivia, boe‐ gibson, stitchbury, brabyn, & gibson, 2018). controlling land conversion is an urgent global need to ensure future food production and prevent a broader food security crisis. meanwhile, indonesia has experienced a significant decline in rice paddy areas in recent decades. agricultural census data shows that in the 2018–2023 period, the national rice paddy area shrank from approximately 7.7 million hectares to 7.1 million hectares, or an average loss of approximately 130,000 hectares per year. projections from the bogor research and development center for land resources even suggest that by 2045, rice paddy areas will only remain at around 5.1 million hectares. reflecting on this trend, the world resources institute (wri) indonesia warns that java experienced 91% of its total agricultural land conversion to residential and industrial land between 2011 and 2022. similarly, in sumatra and kalimantan, the expansion of oil palm plantations has eroded agricultural land and threatened national food sustainability. the agricultural land conversion was driven by greater economic incentives in the non-agricultural sector and weak land protection regulations. although indonesia law no. 41 of 2009 concerning the protection of sustainable food agricultural land (sfal) exists, it is often not effectively implemented at the regional level. tasikmalaya faces similar challenges, including rapid urban growth, pressure on agricultural land, and ineffective local sfal policies. an economic valuation study of environmental services lost due to agricultural land conversion in tasikmalaya recorded losses of approximately idr 1.24 billion per year (based on willingness to accept/wta) and a potential loss of willingness to pay/wtp of up to idr 278 million per year in purbaratu, tasikmalaya (erfrissadona, sulistyowati, & setiawan, 2020). the study concluded that land conversion is economically and ecologically detrimental and highlighted the need for a multi-actor approach to addressing land conversion. despite extensive studies on land conversion in indonesia, most have emphasized economic valuation, spatial patterns, or regulatory shortcomings, with limited attention to the dynamics of multi-actor interactions that shape policy outcomes. moreover, the application of systematic tools such as mactor in analyzing farmland protection remains scarce, particularly in peri-urban contexts where competing interests are most intense. this study addresses this gap by employing the mactor method to map actor influence, alliances, and conflicts in the implementation of plp2b in tasikmalaya city. the novelty lies in uncovering how asymmetric power relations between government, private developers, and farmers affect policy effectiveness, while also identifying opportunities for collaborative governance to strengthen sustainable farmland protection. 2. methods this study uses a qualitative-descriptive approach supported by exploratory quantitative analysis through the mactor method (matrix of alliances and conflicts: tactics, objectives, and recommendations). this approach was chosen because the plp2b problem is complex, involving many actors with different goals, interests, and levels of influence. conceptually, the mactor method (godet, 2000) is used to identify actors involved in the policy, determine the strategic objectives of each actor, analyze convergence and divergence (coalitions and conflicts) between actors, and measure the relative influence of actors in the policy system. this approach is expected to be relevant to answer the research objective, namely, to map important actors in the implementation of plp2b in tasikmalaya city. the study was conducted in tasikmalaya city, west java, which is an urban-peri-urban area with high land conversion pressure. data collection was carried out in three stages: 1. document analysis of law no. 41 of 2009 concerning the plp2b; the tasikmalaya city regional regulation (perda) on plp2b; the mayor's regulation on spatial planning (rtrw) of tasikmalaya city; and agricultural and land statistics. 2. in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 key informants selected through purposive sampling. the informants included: local government officials (agriculture office, spatial planning office, bappelitbangda, legal section of the regional secretariat); representatives of farmer groups and gapoktan (farmer groups); academics in the fields of agribusiness, spatial planning, and public policy; local ngo activists working in the environmental and agricultural sectors; and representatives of the private sector (housing developers). 3. focus group discussions (fgds) were conducted to validate the list of actors and strategic objectives and to assess the level of influence between actors and coalition/conflict relations. the mactor analysis process followed the stages developed by godet (2000), which can be summarized in the following flowchart. figure 1. mactor analysis stages. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 608-618 610 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 1 illustrates the mactor analysis process, which begins with data collection as mentioned above. the fgds identify actors and strategic objectives within the sfal policy, followed by measuring the influence between actors and strategic objectives. in the final stage, convergence and divergence analyses are conducted to map alliances, conflicts, and power asymmetries among policy actors. to strengthen the validity and reliability of the findings, several triangulation techniques were employed. first, data triangulation was conducted by combining three sources of evidence: (1) official policy documents, (2) in-depth interviews, and (3) fgds. second, methodological triangulation was applied by cross-checking perceptions obtained through interviews with collective assessments in fgds and by integrating them into the structured mactor matrices. third, expert validation was carried out by discussing the preliminary results with academic experts and local practitioners familiar with land governance. triangulation is widely recognized as an effective strategy to enhance credibility in qualitative and policy research (denzin, 2009; flick, 2018; patton, 2015). this study has several limitations, namely the subjectivity of the assessment (the score in mactor is strongly influenced by respondents' perceptions). the number of actors involved in this study was only 15 main actors, while there are still other actors who may be relevant. although this study involved a relatively small number of informants, such a sample size is common in qualitative policy studies where the focus is on depth rather than breadth of analysis (creswell, 2014; guest, bunce, & johnson, 2006). the informants were selected purposively to ensure representation from key actor categories, namely local government institutions, farmer organizations, private developers, academics, and ngos, thereby capturing the diversity of perspectives relevant to the implementation of sfal in tasikmalaya city. 3. result and discussion 3.1. sfal key actor and strategic objective identification the sfal is a cross-sectoral policy that inherently involves diverse actors with varying roles, interests, and levels of influence. actor identification is a crucial initial step in multi-actor analysis using the mactor method, as the position and interactions of each actor will determine the direction of policy implementation (godet & durance, 2011). based on the results of fgds and in-depth interviews, this study identified 11 key actors involved in the implementation of the sfal in tasikmalaya. 1) the mayor of tasikmalaya (wali) – the highest executive authority at the city level, with significant authority in determining policy direction and development priorities. 2) the tasikmalaya city council (dprd) – the local legislative body responsible for drafting regional regulations and overseeing policy implementation. 3) the department of food security, agriculture, and fisheries (distan) – the technical agency responsible for implementing agricultural programs, food security, and land conservation. 4) the department of public works and spatial planning (dispu) has authority over urban spatial planning, which is closely related to agricultural land protection. 5) the department of housing and settlement areas (disper) plays a role in housing development, with a potential conflict of interest with the objectives of the plp2b. 6) the regional development planning agency (bapeda) – a development planning agency with a strategic role in formulating mediumand long-term policies, including land protection. 7) the tasikmalaya city land office (bpn) – an agency that regulates the legal aspects of land, including certification and land conversion. 8) the village (kel) – the smallest government unit that directly interacts with the community and serves as a liaison between city government policies and their implementation on the ground. 9) farmer groups (poktan) – community organizations that represent the interests of farmers at the local level. 10) farmers (tani) – key actors in agricultural land use, but often marginalized in decision-making. 11) housing developers (dev) – a private sector entity with a strong interest in land conversion into residential and commercial areas. this identification shows the existence of three large groups of actors: (1) the government (the center of regulatory and administrative power), (2) the farmers' community (direct users of agricultural land), and (3) the private sector (housing developers). this configuration aligns with the finding that the implementation of land protection policies is determined by the trade-off between government authority, farmers' interests, and the push for property expansion (mulyani & jepson, 2015). meanwhile, regarding the strategic objectives of sfal in tasikmalaya city, according to the results of the fgd, they were identified as follows: 1) drafting a mayoral regulation on the distribution and area of lp2b (perwali). 2) maintaining rice field fertility (subur). 3) developing alternative non-rice business opportunities (altut). 4) efficient rice farming costs (biayaut). 5) maintaining irrigation channels (irig). 6) increasing the cropping index (ip). 3.2. the influence between actors of sfal the matrix of direct influence (mdi) is used to map the relationships between actors, namely the extent to which one actor influences another in the policy system. based on mactor analysis criteria, the influence scores in this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 608-618 611 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. matrix are categorized as 0 (no influence), 1 (influence on operating procedures), 2 (influence on projects), 3 (influence on missions), or 4 (influence on existence). table 1. direct influence between actors involved in sfal. mdi w a l i d p r d d is t a n d is p u d is p e r b a p e d a b p n k e l p o k t a n t a n i d e v wali 0 3 4 4 4 4 1 4 3 3 3 dprd 4 0 3 3 3 3 1 2 1 1 1 distan 3 3 0 1 1 1 1 1 4 3 0 dispu 3 3 1 0 1 1 1 2 0 0 2 disper 3 3 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 3 bapeda 3 3 3 3 3 0 2 3 2 2 3 bpn 1 2 1 1 1 3 0 2 2 2 3 kel 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 0 4 3 3 poktan 2 1 3 1 0 1 2 2 0 4 0 tani 2 2 2 0 0 2 2 2 4 0 0 dev 2 2 2 2 3 3 1 2 3 2 0 source: primary data (2025). table 1 shows that wali has an influence on the existence (score 4) of distan, dispu, disper, bapeda, and kel. this reflects the local political reality, where the regional head is the center of decision-making (agrawal & ribot, 1999). bapeda holds a crucial position, with influence on the missions (score 3) of wali, dprd, distan, disper, dispu, bapeda, and kel. this is consistent with the regional development planning agency (bapeda)'s role as the "conductor" of regional development planning (healey, 2003). interestingly, dev has influence on the missions (score 3) of disper, bapeda, and poktan, highlighting the potential conflict between housing development interests and agricultural land conservation. meanwhile, the village (kel) plays a significant role at the community level, influencing the existing (score 4) of farmer groups (poktan) and the mission (score 3) of farmers (tani). however, farmers and farmer groups have relatively weak influence over other actors, generally scoring 1 or 2, indicating their position as policy-takers rather than policy-makers. this configuration demonstrates a power asymmetry, with city governments and the private sector dominant, while farmer actors tend to be marginalized. a similar situation is found in many developing cities, for example, addis ababa (ethiopia) and hanoi (vietnam), where peri-urban farmers are losing political power in the face of urban expansion (bryceson, 2000; hall, hirsch, & li, 2011). the matrix of dependence and indirect influence (mdii) is a development of the mdi that not only considers the direct influence between actors but also the chain effect (indirect influence) that occurs through other actors. methodologically, the mdii is calculated by adding the direct influence to the indirect influence obtained from the combination of relations across two or more levels of actors (godet & durance, 2011). table 2. indirect influence and dependence between actors. mdii w a l i d p r d d is t a n d is p u d is p e r b a p e d a b p n k e l p o k t a n t a n i d e v ii wali 25 23 22 18 18 19 14 20 21 18 16 189 dprd 22 21 18 17 16 16 12 17 14 14 15 161 distan 15 14 16 12 11 14 11 14 14 14 9 128 dispu 14 14 14 14 14 14 9 13 11 11 11 125 disper 13 13 13 13 14 14 8 12 11 10 11 118 bapeda 25 24 20 17 17 19 14 20 19 18 17 191 bpn 17 16 17 14 14 17 14 17 14 13 12 151 kel 20 20 19 15 15 18 14 19 20 19 15 175 poktan 13 14 13 9 9 12 11 12 15 15 9 117 tani 13 13 14 11 10 12 11 13 15 15 9 121 dev 21 20 19 15 15 16 14 18 15 15 14 168 di 173 171 169 141 139 152 118 156 154 147 124 1644 table 2 presents the cumulative effects of indirect influence among actors. wali and bapeda emerge as the most influential actors (ii=189 and 191, respectively), reaffirming the central role of political leadership and planning asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 608-618 612 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. institutions in shaping land-use policies (agrawal & ribot, 1999; healey, 2003). meanwhile, kel (village government) also scores relatively high (ii=175), underscoring the importance of decentralized governance in mediating local agricultural interests. by contrast, poktan and tani remain weak in terms of indirect influence, reflecting their dependence on higher-level actors for policy direction (hall et al., 2011). the significant role of housing developers (dev, ii=168) illustrates the persistent tension between urban expansion and farmland protection, a pattern also reported in peri-urban china and vietnam (lichtenberg & ding, 2008; mcgee, 2009). these findings suggest that despite formal recognition of farmers in policy frameworks, power asymmetries structurally disadvantage them, consistent with broader critiques of agrarian governance in the global south (borras jr & franco, 2012). 3.3. the influence of actors on objectives in sfal matrix actors–objectives (mao) analysis is used to assess actors' relationships to strategic policy objectives. the analysis is conducted in three stages: 1mao (direct actor-objective influence), 2mao (after considering inter-actor influences), and 3mao (after considering both direct and indirect influences). this method allows us to understand how actors' support for policy objectives evolves from initial preferences to a more realistic final configuration (godet, 1991; godet & durance, 2011). 3.3.1. direct influence the 1mao analysis in table 3 indicates that most actors express positive alignment with strategic farmland protection objectives, particularly perwali (local regulation), subur (soil fertility), and irig (irrigation). strong agreement from technical agencies such as distan, poktan, and tani highlights that frontline actors recognize the urgency of sustaining agricultural productivity (davis et al., 2012). however, weaker engagement from institutions like bpn and bapeda at this initial stage suggests that regulatory and planning bodies may prioritize broader development agendas over specific farmland protection goals (hudalah & firman, 2012). this divergence between technical-operational actors and policy–planning actors is consistent with prior research showing sectoral silos as a key challenge in land governance. table 3. 1mao matrix. 1 mao p e r w a l i s u b u r a l t u t b ia y a u t ir ig ip a b so lu te s u m wali 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 dprd 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 distan 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 dispu 1 0 0 0 1 0 2 disper 1 0 0 0 1 0 2 bapeda 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 bpn 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 kel 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 poktan 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 tani 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 dev 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 number of agreements 11 5 5 5 7 5 number of disagreements 0 0 0 0 0 0 number of positions 11 5 5 5 7 5 note: -1: actor unlikely to achieve objective 0: neutral position 1: actor likely to achieve the objective 3.3.2. after considering the influence of inter-actors table 4 presents inter-actor influences. poktan and tani emerge as the strongest supporters of farmland protection objectives (absolute score 24 each), followed by distan (21) and wali (19). this indicates that farmer actors, though institutionally weak in direct influence, gain strength when considered in relational terms, as their interests converge with technical agencies (adger, arnell, & tompkins, 2005). bapeda also records higher involvement (13), suggesting that interdependencies with political leaders and technical agencies increase its role in supporting farmland sustainability. conversely, private developers (dev) remain marginal (2), confirming their limited willingness to support farmland protection when it conflicts with urban expansion interests (lefebvre, 2009). these findings illustrate how actor alliances can reshape policy priorities beyond initial formal positions, reinforcing the importance of network effects in policy processes (klijn & koppenjan, 2016). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 608-618 613 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 4. 2mao matrix. 2 mao p e r w a l i s u b u r a l t u t b ia y a u t ir ig ip a b so lu te s u m wali 4 3 3 3 3 3 19 dprd 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 distan 3 4 4 4 2 4 21 dispu 2 0 0 0 3 0 5 disper 2 0 0 0 3 0 5 bapeda 3 2 2 2 2 2 13 bpn 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 kel 2 3 3 3 3 3 17 poktan 4 4 4 4 4 4 24 tani 4 4 4 4 4 4 24 dev 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 number of agreements 29 20 20 20 24 20 number of disagreements 0 0 0 0 0 0 number of positions 29 20 20 20 24 20 note: 0 = objective has a bleak outcome. 1 = the objective jeopardizes the actor's operating procedures (management, etc) / is vital for its operating procedures. 2 = objective jeopardizes the success of the actor's projects / is vital for the success of its projects. 3 = objective jeopardizes the accomplishment of the actor's mission / is indispensable for its missions. 4 = objective jeopardizes the actor's existence / is indispensable for its existence. 3.3.3. after considering both direct and indirect influences the 3mao results in table 5 show a more consolidated pattern of actor mobilization, with wali (24.3), kel (20.9), and bapeda (18.6) as central supporters, alongside poktan (15.8) and tani (17.1). this configuration reveals the critical role of vertical integration linking local government, planning institutions, and grassroots actors in advancing farmland protection (ansell & gash, 2008). interestingly, while distan’s score decreases slightly (15.1), the relative rise of kel underscores the importance of village-level governance as a bridging institution between farmers and city authorities (meinzen-dick, knox, place, & swallow, 2002). these findings imply that sustainable farmland protection requires multi-level governance, where local institutions actively mediate farmer voices within city planning processes (ostrom, 2010). table 5. 3mao matrix. 3 mao p e r w a l i s u b u r a l t u t b ia y a u t ir ig ip m o b il is a ti o n wali 5.1 3.8 3.8 3.8 3.8 3.8 24.3 dprd 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 distan 2.2 2.9 2.9 2.9 1.4 2.9 15.1 dispu 1.6 0 0 0 2.3 0 3.9 disper 1.4 0 0 0 2.1 0 3.6 bapeda 4.3 2.9 2.9 2.9 2.9 2.9 18.6 bpn 2.3 0 0 0 0 0 2.3 kel 2.5 3.7 3.7 3.7 3.7 3.7 20.9 poktan 2.6 2.6 2.6 2.6 2.6 2.6 15.8 tani 2.9 2.9 2.9 2.9 2.9 2.9 17.1 dev 2.6 0 0 0 0 0 2.6 number of agreements 28.4 18.7 18.7 18.7 21.8 18.7 number of disagreements 0 0 0 0 0 0 degree of mobilisation 28.4 18.7 18.7 18.7 21.8 18.7 3.4. mapping of convergence and divergence between actors the 1caa matrix (table 6) reveals the initial configuration of actor alignments without considering interdependencies. farmer groups (poktan and tani) show the strongest convergence with distan and dispu, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 608-618 614 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. reflecting their common interest in protecting farmland and maintaining agricultural productivity. in contrast, private developers (dev) appear as the most divergent actor, showing little support for farmland protection objectives. wali and bapeda register moderate convergence values, signaling a cautious political stance at this stage. this initial picture confirms that frontline agricultural actors align more naturally with land protection, while planning institutions and political leaders hold more ambivalent positions (davis et al., 2012; healey, 2003). table 6. 1caa matrix. 1 caa w a l i d p r d d is t a n d is p u d is p e r b a p e d a b p n k e l p o k t a n t a n i d e v wali 0 1 6 2 2 6 1 6 6 6 1 dprd 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 distan 6 1 0 2 2 6 1 6 6 6 1 dispu 2 1 2 0 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 disper 2 1 2 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 1 bapeda 6 1 6 2 2 0 1 6 6 6 1 bpn 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 kel 6 1 6 2 2 6 1 0 6 6 1 poktan 6 1 6 2 2 6 1 6 0 6 1 tani 6 1 6 2 2 6 1 6 6 0 1 dev 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 number of convergences 37 10 37 17 17 37 10 37 37 37 10 the network visualization of 1caa (figure 2) clearly illustrates two clusters: (i) farmer organizations and technical agencies forming a dense pro-agriculture group, and (ii) developers positioned at the opposite pole. this confirms prior findings in southeast asia, where peri-urban expansion often generates structural tensions between urban development and agricultural protection (hall et al., 2011; lichtenberg & ding, 2008). figure 2. map of order 1 convergence between the actor. when interdependencies are incorporated, the 2caa matrix (table 7) shows significant strengthening of convergence between wali, bapeda, and grassroots actors (poktan, tani). this indicates that political leaders are more likely to align with agricultural objectives once their relationships with technical agencies and farmer groups are factored in. at the same time, divergence between dev and the pro-agriculture coalition remains sharp, confirming asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 608-618 615 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. entrenched conflicts of interest. bpn and dprd record weak convergence scores, pointing to institutional fragmentation in land governance (hudalah & firman, 2012). table 7. 2caa. 2 caa w a l i d p r d d is t a n d is p u d is p e r b a p e d a b p n k e l p o k t a n t a n i d e v wali 0 2.5 20 6 6 16 3 18 21.5 21.5 3 dprd 2.5 0 2 1.5 1.5 2 1.5 1.5 2.5 2.5 1.5 distan 20 2 0 5 5 17 2.5 19 22.5 22.5 2.5 dispu 6 1.5 5 0 5 5 2 5 6.5 6.5 2 disper 6 1.5 5 5 0 5 2 5 6.5 6.5 2 bapeda 16 2 17 5 5 0 2.5 15 18.5 18.5 2.5 bpn 3 1.5 2.5 2 2 2.5 0 2 3 3 2 kel 18 1.5 19 5 5 15 2 0 20.5 20.5 2 poktan 21.5 2.5 22.5 6.5 6.5 18.5 3 20.5 0 24 3 tani 21.5 2.5 22.5 6.5 6.5 18.5 3 20.5 24 0 3 dev 3 1.5 2.5 2 2 2.5 2 2 3 3 0 number of convergences 117.5 19 118 44.5 44.5 102 23.5 108.5 128.5 128.5 23.5 the visualization of 2caa (figure 3) highlights the shift of wali and bapeda closer to the pro-agriculture cluster, showing their increasing alignment. the figure also demonstrates the isolation of developers (dev), who remain at the periphery of the network. this suggests that actor interdependencies are crucial for building coalitions, echoing findings from collaborative governance literature where relational ties shift actor positions (ansell & gash, 2008; klijn & koppenjan, 2016). figure 3. map of order 2 convergence between the actor. the 3caa matrix (table 8) presents a consolidated picture of actor alignments, where wali and bapeda now record the strongest convergence with farmer groups (scores above 20). village government (kel) also emerges as a significant actor, bridging between farmers and higher-level authorities. distan and dispu remain supportive, though their relative scores decline slightly as political leaders consolidate their positions. on the divergent side, developers (dev) maintain strong opposition, showing persistent structural conflict. these results illustrate the consolidation of a multi-level governance coalition supporting farmland protection (adger et al., 2005; ostrom, 2010). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 608-618 616 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 8. 3caa matrix. 3 caa w a l i d p r d d is t a n d is p u d is p e r b a p e d a b p n k e l p o k t a n t a n i d e v wali 0 3.1 19.7 6.4 6.3 21.4 3.7 22.6 20 20.7 3.9 dprd 3.1 0 1.6 1.3 1.2 2.6 1.7 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.8 distan 19.7 1.6 0 3.7 3.6 16.8 2.2 18 15.4 16.1 2.4 dispu 6.4 1.3 3.7 0 3.7 5.5 1.9 5 4.6 4.8 2.1 disper 6.3 1.2 3.6 3.7 0 5.4 1.9 4.9 4.4 4.6 2 bapeda 21.4 2.6 16.8 5.5 5.4 0 3.3 19.7 17.2 17.9 3.5 bpn 3.7 1.7 2.2 1.9 1.9 3.3 0 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.5 kel 22.6 1.7 18 5 4.9 19.7 2.4 0 18.3 19 2.6 poktan 20 1.8 15.4 4.6 4.4 17.2 2.5 18.3 0 16.5 2.6 tani 20.7 1.9 16.1 4.8 4.6 17.9 2.6 19 16.5 0 2.7 dev 3.9 1.8 2.4 2.1 2 3.5 2.5 2.6 2.6 2.7 0 number of convergences 127.7 18.8 99.7 39.1 37.9 113.3 24.5 114.3 103.3 106.9 26.1 the 3caa visualization (figure 4) depicts a dominant cluster comprising wali, bapeda, kel, distan, and farmer groups, visually confirming their strong convergence. dev remains clearly detached, highlighting their continued divergence. the marginal positions of bpn and dprd are also visible, emphasizing their weak role in coalition-building. this pattern mirrors global experiences where farmland protection hinges on bridging local farmer interests with political authority, while developers remain a counterforce (mcgee, 2009; meinzen-dick et al., 2002). figure 4. map of order 3 convergence between the actor. the caa analysis reveals that the pro-agriculture coalition comprising farmers, farmer groups, and technical agencies gains stronger support once inter-actor influences are considered, with wali, bapeda, and kel joining the main convergence cluster. in contrast, developers remain the most divergent actors, while bpn and dprd appear marginal. these findings highlight significant opportunities for cross-level collaborative governance to strengthen farmland protection, although institutional fragmentation and the dominance of developer interests continue to pose major challenges for the effectiveness of plp2b policy. 4. conclusion this study applies the mactor method as a novel approach to reveal alliances, conflicts, and power asymmetries among policy actors in farmland protection. the findings indicate that developers and certain government bodies asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 608-618 617 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. dominate decision-making, while farmers remain marginalized. yet, convergence is evident between political leaders, village governments, and farmer organizations, offering opportunities for collaborative governance. to strengthen policy effectiveness, three directions are proposed: (i) empower farmer institutions through capacity-building, legal recognition, and active participation in policy forums; (ii) enhance enforcement of farmland protection regulations by embedding sfal into spatial planning and applying transparent monitoring and sanctions; and (iii) establish multilevel coordination platforms to bridge community and city-level actors in balancing agriculture and urban growth. these measures are crucial not only to transform actor convergence into policy action but also to secure sustainable farmland protection and long-term food security in rapidly urbanizing regions. funding: this work was supported by the siliwangi university, indonesia (grant number 290/un58.06/pm.00.00/2025). institutional review board statement: the study involved minimal risk and adhered to ethical guidelines for social science fieldwork. formal approval from an institutional review board was not required under the policies of universitas pembangunan nasional veteran jawa timur, indonesia. informed verbal consent was obtained from all participants, and all data were anonymized to ensure participant confidentiality. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. disclosure of ai use: the author(s) used openai’s chatgpt to edit and refine the wording of the introduction. all outputs were reviewed and verified by the authors. references adger, w. n., arnell, n. w., & tompkins, e. l. 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(2015). qualitative research & evaluation methods (4th ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8489.12258 https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.100.3.641 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 133 the impact of savings groups on female agency: insights from village savings and loans associations in northern ghana kwarteng amaning theophilus , sarfo-mensah paul bureau of integrated rural development (bird), kwame nkrumah university of science and technology, kumasi, ghana  theo.kwarteng@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 03-may-2019 accepted: 09-jul-2019 online available: 05-aug2019 keywords: women empowerment, vsla, savings group, microfinance, female agency abstract in this paper we examined how participation in savings groups like the village savings and loans associations (vslas) influence women’s agency in rural ghana, i.e. their ability to freely participate in group activities and act on other issues and matters that affect them. both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from vsla and nonvsla members to compare the effect between participants and nonparticipants. we used three dimensions of agency adapted from the women's empowerment in agriculture index (weai) to assess female agency: women’s participation and decision making in groups; women’s comfort with public speaking; and women’s decision making in their households. a significant finding of this study is that vsla membership has enhanced the agency of female participants as they are more economically and socially active and can act on their own compared to women who did not use the savings group. contribution/ originality this study significantly contributes to the growing evidence of the impact of village savings and loans associations (vslas). the research explored how women’s participation in vslas influences their ability to freely participate in group activities and personally act on issues that affect them. the evidence provided by this study demonstrates how the vsla model can be adopted by development agencies and practitioners as a tool to drive women’s agency. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.133.146 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: kwarteng amaning theophilus and sarfo-mensah paul (2019). the impact of savings groups on female agency: insights from village savings and loans associations in northern ghana. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 133-146. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 133-146 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:theo.kwarteng@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.133.146 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 133-146 134 1. introduction mostly the poor lives in rural areas of developing countries and has limited access to financial services. notwithstanding their complex financial decisions, they have limited range of financial tools to address their ever-changing needs (collins et al., 2009). however, the available formal and informal options mostly lack flexibility and are risky and expensive to the rural poor the majority of whom are smallholder farmers. in the quest to improve rural households’ access to financial services many nongovernmental organizations and development partners have promoted informal savings-led microfinance groups that mimic and develop the model of informal associations indigenous to many societies (karlan et al., 2017). in recent years the village savings and loans associations (vslas) concept pioneered by care international has become an increasingly popular tool among development practitioners. the vslas have become an important source of funding for both household expenditure and farm enterprise, particularly for women who are more marginalized in access to finance. there is growing evidence of the impact of vslas on rural peoples’ access to financial services and better incomes and livelihoods. statistics from the vsl associates suggest that the vslas model has been introduced in about 75 countries in latin america, asia, africa, and has reached over 17 million active participants worldwide with women comprising 78% of the membership (vsl associates, 2018). the primary purpose of the vsla is to offer essential savings and loan services to rural people who would otherwise not have access to financial services. these associations are mostly self-managed and provide members with a secure place to keep their money, get loans, and get emergency support (ksoll et al., 2015). with the vsla model a group of farmers meet regularly not only to save, but also to be able to borrow from their savings. the emphasis of this method is on saving, building assets, and provision of credit facilities comparable to the needs and repayment strength of the borrowers. indeed, this approach offers a poverty reduction component to the economically disadvantaged, particularly women (kesanta and andre, 2015). some studies have emphasized the impact of vslas on rural savings, access to loans, household food security, living conditions, and livelihoods. for instance, ksoll et al. (2015) in a randomized cluster trial in tanzania reported evidence of a positive and significant effect of vslas on several household outcomes including the number of rooms in a dwelling, household expenditure, and the number of meals consumed per day. this effect was attributed to the increase in savings and credit obtained through membership in vslas, which increased agricultural investments and income. similarly, care international’s evaluation of the impact of vslas in ghana, malawi, and uganda showed that there was an increase in savings among members in all three countries (karlan et al., 2017). it was evident that vslas substantially increased the range of financial services available to members with increased access to loans as a result of the vsla program. similar impact stories have been reported by other studies (such as anyango et al., 2007; ipa, 2012; lowicki-zucca et al., 2014; wireko-manu and amamoo, 2017; karlan et al., 2017). however, the impact of vslas on women’s empowerment has not been sufficiently studied. because women are the majority and most active in the vslas, there is the need to explore how vsla participation impacts female agency. this study therefore seeks to analyze the effect of vsla participation on female agency, that is, their ability to freely participate in group activities and act on other issues and matters that affect them. 2. literature review 2.1. the concept of village savings and loans associations financial inclusion has received considerable attention in recent global social and economic debates. in ghana, access to financial services by the poor, particularly those living in rural areas is limited due to issues such as availability of financial institutions, proximity to clients, adequacy asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 133-146 135 of loans provided, timeliness and cost of services offered by financial institutions (egyir, 2010). to address this, vsla model initiated by care international in the early 1990s has been implemented by several development agencies and practitioners. the vsla is a community-based self-managed group funded by members who contribute to a pool of savings in regular meetings, offer credit facilities to its members from the savings, and collaborate to implement systems that ensure transparency and repayment, with a minimum group membership of ten (10) to a maximum of thirty (30). each group has a management structure which typically includes chairperson, secretary, box-keeper, money counter, and up to three key keepers (anyango et al., 2006). weekly, members, purchase shares at an agreed value based on the group’s constitution, borrow from the group fund, and are required to pay at a given period, usually within four weeks, with interest. the interest charged on loans varies from one association to the other as the group determines this. the interest charged on loans is eventually shared among group members at the end of the cycle during share-out. at the end of a cycle, the group may choose to share out all or part of the accumulated savings in the proportion of the number of shares purchased per an individual during the cycle (anyango et al., 2006). an essential component of the vsla is the social or solidarity fund. this is a quota set aside by the group to assist members in emergencies such as illness or death in the family, and members can access other social support such as marriage and naming ceremonies in the form of an interest-free loan or cash grant (karlan et al., 2017). for these purposes, disbursement of the social fund is assessed and determined by the group. 2.2. effect of the village savings and loans associations the vsla model is widely recognized as a powerful tool for delivering financial services to the rural poor where formal financial services are non-existent. indeed, a plethora of studies in different regions of the world have sought to establish the impact of vsla participation on the socio-economic outcomes of participants and their households. some studies have confirmed the effect of vsla on livelihoods, food security, and asset ownership. for instance, anyango (2005) in an assessment of savings group in malawi found that the savings group programme improved the livelihood of members through increased household incomes, especially among women participants who comprised a majority of the members. the author reported that members of the savings group diversified into additional income generating activities while others expanded existing activities, but they were found not to be investing in capital intensive activities. similarly, allen and hobane (2004) established that participating in group savings and loans contributed to increased levels of productive and household assets among the majority of members’ in zimbabwe. the number of income generating activities per household was found to have increased, with an associated increase in households’ time allocation to income generating activities. however, the study found no variation in the diversity of these activities. indeed, similar findings have underscored the impact of vslas (lowicki-zucca et al., 2014; beaman et al., 2014; ksoll et al., 2015). it is noteworthy, however, that some recent studies including that of karlan et al. (2017) did not find any evidence of average impacts on household income, consumption, food security, or asset ownership but rather observed results related to non-farm business operations and women empowerment. the effect of savings groups on women empowerment has not received much attention, and empirical studies in this domain continue to be inconclusive. care tanzania found in a study on vsla and women empowerment that participating in the savings group increased members’ selfconfidence and role in decision making (care, 2006). also, karlan et al. (2017) found that community-based microfinance groups lead to an improvement in women’s empowerment in ghana, uganda and malawi. they observed that women who were vsla members displayed an increase in their influence on household decision-making. in contrast, researchers in mali found no significant impact of savings groups on women empowerment (beaman et al., 2014). also, kabeer (2005) concluded that while women’s participation in microfinance programmes facilitates their access to financial services and contributes to their economic empowerment, it does not asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 133-146 136 "automatically" empower women. the author stressed that although there is evidence that participation in microfinance programmes can influence women’s role in household decisionmaking, it does not occur uniformly in all contexts or in all areas of decision-making. 2.3. measuring female agency the literature on empowerment highlights resources and agency as the two most common components of empowerment. however, most discussions on empowerment consider resources as not empowerment in itself but a means to achieve empowerment, although agency and resources are not easily separable in developing empowerment indicators (malhotra et al., 2002). agency, the second component is central to many conceptualizations of empowerment. the world bank (2012) defines agency as “an individual’s (or group’s) ability to make effective choices and to transform those choices into desired outcomes.” women are usually disadvantaged regarding their ability to make effective choices in a range of spheres. however, agency is intrinsically important and influence other spheres of empowerment, including the transformation of resources into wellbeing outcomes (fernandez et al., 2015). for example, the linkage between women’s agency and family planning, household health and nutritional outcomes and agricultural productivity has been well documented (quisumbing, 2003; do and kurimoto, 2012). the women empowerment in agriculture index (weai) developed by usaid’s feed the future initiative is a survey-based index that measures the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women (alkire et al., 2013). an individual is said to have expressed agency within a domain when the person has adequate achievements that surpasses a threshold for that domain. these domains reflect aspects of empowerment found in the literature. for instance, the leadership aspect encompasses key features of participation, inclusion, accountability, and local organizational capacity cited by narayan (2002). also, the agricultural production decision domain directly follows kabeer’s (1999) definition of empowerment as the ability to make choices. alkire (2007) asserts that since agency could differ across different spheres of life and can manifest in diverse ways, it is essential to identify and compare agency achievements in various domains. some researchers have questioned the self-reported measurement of empowerment, arguing that this approach may lack validity since it is influenced by biases resulting from the presence of other household members during the interview, the recall period, sequence of questions, and information available to the respondent. however, others (such as jupp et al., 2010; alkire et al., 2013) contend that since empowerment is an idiosyncratic concept, its measurement may be weakened if self-reported indicators are not used. the weai applies both objective and self-reported indicators. for instance, an objective indicator would be an individual’s group membership, and a related self-reported indicator would be the individual’s comfort with speaking in public. 3. materials and methods 3.1. study area the study was conducted in the northern and upper east regions of the northern part of ghana. it must be noted that this study covered the ‘old northern region' which included the present-day savannah and north east regions. until recently (february 2019) when the two regions were carved out of the northern region, the region had the largest share of the total land area of ghana, covering about 29.5% of the total land mass of the country with a population of 2,479,461 (gss, 2010). the total population of the upper east region is 1,046,545 comprising 48% men and 52% women. the population is primarily rural (84.3%) and scattered in dispersed settlements. with only 15.7% of people living in urban areas the upper east region is considered the least urbanized in the country. agriculture is the main economic activity in the study area with about 80% of the total population directly or indirectly supported by agriculture and related activities (gss, 2010). vegetation in the regions is predominately a grassland interspersed with guinea savannah woodland. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 133-146 137 3.2. sampling, data collection, analysis this study set out to assess the effect of vsla membership on women’s agency in selected districts of the northern and upper east regions of ghana. a mixed method approach was used drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, while leveraging on its “opportunity to compensate for inherent method weaknesses, capitalize on inherent method strengths, and offset inevitable method biases” (greene, 2007). quantitative data were collected through a well-structured questionnaire in a face to face interview. a multistage sampling approach was employed in selecting districts, communities, and ultimately respondents. two districts were purposively sampled from each region based on the concentration of vslas and the number of years in operation (minimum of three years). twelve (12) communities were selected through a simple random sampling approach based on the list prepared earlier. female members with membership in vslas who had operated for more than three years were listed in each of the communities. the total of 265 women was recorded, and this served as a basis for the vsla sampling. following the formula n = n/1+ n (∝)𝟐 and operating at a 95% confidence level and 5% margin of error, 145 women who had participated in the vsla for at least three years were sampled. in addition, about two thirds (95) of the determined sample size were also selected for women who were not members of the vslas. therefore a total sample size of 240 female smallholder farmers were selected for the study. 20 respondents in each of the selected communities were randomly selected for the interview. all administered questionnaires were completed. the chi-square and t-tests were used to ascertain whether the difference between the two groups is significant. many of the indicators used in this study were adapted from the women’s empowerment in agriculture index (weai). the weai is a multidimensional tool designed to examine women’s agency, inclusion, and empowerment in agriculture (alkire et al., 2013). qualitative data were collected through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions (fgd). 12 focus group discussions were held. a focus group comprised 6-8 participants purposively selected from the study communities. all interviews were tape recorded with consent from participants and later transcribed. thematic analysis was performed to bring out the relevant constructs and categories across transcripts and synthesized with quantitative data for comprehensive analysis. 4. results and discussion 4.1. sociodemographic characteristics of respondents sociodemographic characteristics are important factors that could have implications on an individual’s development trend (leinbach, 2003) and could influence a person’s contribution to decision making in the family (gupta and malhotra, 2006). the study therefore explored respondents’ sociodemographic characteristics (table 1). the number of respondents sampled for the study was 240 female smallholder farmers, out of whom 60.4% belonged to a vsla group and 39.6% were not vsla members. the results of the study showed that the majority of the respondents (98.2%) were from households which comprised male and female members, and 4.5% from female adult-only households with no variations across respondent type. the majority of respondents (83.1%) indicated that their households were headed by men; 16.9% were from households headed by women. the average household size was 10.95 (sd=7.54) with no significant difference between vsla and non vsla members (see table 1). 53.5% of respondents were in monogamous marriages; 36.6% were in polygamous unions, 1.5% were single, 6.4% were widowed. the remaining 2% were either divorced or separated. from the gathered qualitative information the high percentage of married people was attributed mainly to the perception in most societies in the northern regions that married adults are responsible community members. it was also mentioned that islam, the predominant religion in the area, frowns upon unmarried adults. it is well documented that marital status can influence the roles and responsibilities as well as the occupation of members of households and their families (dennis and peprah, 1995). the youngest survey respondent was 18 years old, the oldest was 70. the average age was 39.6 years (sd = 9.94) with no variation across respondent type (see table 2). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 133-146 138 table 1: socio-demographic characteristics of respondents characteristics vsla members (n=145) non-vsla members (n=95) pooled (n=240) p-value sex of household head male 83.5 82.0 82.8 0.653 female 16.5 18.0 16.9 household type male and female adult 94.5 97.9 95.5 0.489 female adult only 5.5 2.1 4.5 marital status single 1.4 1.8 1.5 married (monogamous) 52.4 56.1 53.5 married (polygamous) 37.2 35.1 36.6 0.899 separated 0.7 1.8 1.0 divorced 1.4 0.0 1.0 widowed 6.9 5.3 6.4 table 2: summary statistics of the characteristics of respondents variables vsla members non-vsla members t-value pooled sample mean sd mean sd mean sd age 39.75 10.02 39.25 9.84 0.325 39.61 9.94 household size 11.18 7.47 10.39 7.76 0.672 10.96 7.54 4.2. the impact of savings groups on female agency in this section we discuss how female smallholder farmers’ membership in vslas enhances their agency. many of the indicators used in this study were adapted from the women’s empowerment in agriculture index (weai). women’s agency was assessed based on three domains: women’s participation and decision making in groups; women’s comfort with public speaking; and women’s decision making within their households. 4.3. group participation and decision-making results of the study showed that there was a significant difference between vsla and non-vsla women in terms of their group membership (p = 0.000). among the non-vsla members, just about one-fourth (25%) indicated they had membership in any group whereas all (100%) women in the vslas reported membership in at least a group. apart from their membership in vslas, 38% of women in vslas reported they had membership in other groups (see table 3). group membership is an essential tool for female smallholder farmers as it enhance farmers' access to information and productive resources such as inputs, credit, and extension services. for instance, salifu et al. (2012) reported that farmers with group membership are able to get easy access to extension services, credit facilities as well as markets, unlike those outside farmer groups. jetten et al. (2015) observed that membership in social groups act as a social resource that drives personal self-esteem. thus women's membership in vslas has the potential to enhance their self-esteem within the communities, mainly due to the social support provided by vslas. indeed, this was confirmed by focus group participants and during in-depth interviews. the vslas are reliable social security for its members who fall back onto them in times of need, including funeral support, marriage, health and other social needs. the platform it has provided for networking within communities as well as the savings and loans component is a further boost for enhancing women smallholder farmers’ agency and quality of life. emphasizing the benefits of vsla membership, one female member had this to say: “i can say there is an improvement in my access to credit now. previously, i will just be thinking of how to get money, you will go to someone and tell the person all that is bothering you, and after all this, you will still not get the money. so this vsla has taken away that disgrace where asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 133-146 139 you will have to narrate your situation to people who at the end cannot help you. i can boldly say that my family will not go hungry and i feel proud that i can assist others in my community." similar to this assertion, some earlier evaluation studies have suggested that membership in vslas can nurture the self-respect of members and aid in building up social capital within communities, especially amongst women (casini and vandewalle, 2011; deininger and liu, 2013; weingärtner and pichon, 2017). among other benefits, women in vslas ranked their increased access to loans (72.9%) as the most essential benefit they have received as members. these benefits portray the financial and social empowerment of women who are members of the savings group (see table 3). earlier findings by weingärtner and pichon (2017) have confirmed that such benefits accrued from self-helped savings groups can help members to acquire assets, improve their financial security and ultimately reduce their overall vulnerability. table 3: group characteristics of vsla members membership in other groups frequency percentage agricultural/livestock producer's group 8 22.2 credit or microfinance group 5 13.9 trade and business association 6 16.7 other social groups 17 47.2 expectation for joining vsla* access to finance 131 90.3 access to information 78 53.8 access to inputs 76 52.4 access to market 31 21.4 benefits from vsla membership* increased access to loans 105 72.4 emergency support 90 62.1 greater access to farm inputs 80 55.2 acquisition of capital assets 52 32.9 *percentages are computed from multiple responses interviews with smallholder farmers who were not members of any savings group revealed that inability to raise entrance fees or share contribution, inconvenient group meeting location, and husbands' decision against joining vslas were the primary reasons they did not belong to the vsla. in one of the interviews, a non-vsla member indicated that: "the last time i talked to my husband about joining the vsla, but he will not accept because he is against the idea of me joining any group in the community. i can't save because i live in the same room with him so if he sees i've kept any money in the room he will question me.” regarding their group decision-making power, a chi-square test results showed there was a statistically significant difference between women participating in the vslas and those who were not members (p = 0.000). when asked “how much input do you have in making decisions in your group?” the majority of women (55.2%) participating in vslas indicated they had most to all say (rating of 4 or 5 on scale of 1-5) in group decisions compared to 9.5% of their non vsla counterparts (see table 4). during the various focus group discussions, it was mentioned that the governance structure of the vsla has made women more active in group decision making, both in mixed and women-only vsla groups. it was emphasized that increased leadership roles by women in the savings groups has been vital and enhanced women’s group decision-making power, and are able to challenge some structural barriers (such as male dominance) in their various groups, even aside from the vsla. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 133-146 140 table 4: input comparison of respondents in group decision making level of input vsla members (%) (n=145) non-vsla members (%) (n=24) no input 9.0 54.8 input into very few decisions 12.4 11.9 input into some decisions 23.4 23.8 input into most decisions 36.6 0.0 input into all decision 18.6 9.5 4.4. comfort with public speaking comfort in speaking in public is critical for rural women to represent themselves and others. table 5 presents a comparison between women in vsla and their counterparts who do not belong to the savings group. overall, women in vslas reported higher levels of comfort in public speaking than do their counterparts who do not belong to any savings group. the gap between vsla and non-vsla women is highest when protesting misbehaviour of those in authority (i.e. in terms of arguing issues out with their male counterparts or persistently seeking clarifications and not being docile). the results show that 51.7% of women in vslas and 26.2% of non-vsla women reported “feeling somewhat to very comfortable” (a score of 4 or 5 on a scale of 1-5) (p = 0.034). among the non-vsla members, 45.3% expressed high levels of discomfort (a score of 1 or 2 on a scale of 1-5), compared with 26.2% of those with vsla membership. although some women mentioned during focus group and informal discussions that they recognize their husbands and other male counterparts as lead persons in public discourse in conformity with their culture, women in vslas have become more assertive due to the exposure they have received as members. it was mentioned that they had been exposed to training programs (such as leadership and public speaking) that have enhanced their assertiveness and can speak out their opinion at community meetings. for example, in one of the communities, it was reported that women whose monies were supposedly locked up with a financial institution were mobilized by their leadership to negotiate a deal with the bank officials. others also mentioned that their active participation in the groups' activities and the demand of their weekly meetings have made them more engaged and confident to express their views at both group and community meetings. indeed, the ability for women to speak confidently on public issues individually and collectively is a prerequisite to challenging existing institutions and social norms that affects their wellbeing. similar to our findings, amin et al. (1998) in their study on the impact of microcredit on women’s empowerment found that members of the savings programme outperformed non-members in all three empowerment indices. the authors also reported that women who were members of the savings program were more confident than the non-members. this findings also corroborate that of hashemi et al. (1996) who reported an increase in women’s self-confidence as a result of their interaction outside the household through the activities of a microfinance programme. according to duflo (2012), empowering women is not just important for women themselves, but instead, there is a strong correlation between economic development and women empowerment. for instance, women's ability to publicly ask extension officers questions relating to their farm or public health officers on issues relating to their children's health and nutrition affects their agricultural productivity and household's health outcomes. also, this result is comparable to that of waller (2014). on the contrary, beaman et al. (2014) in an assessment of the impact of a villagebased savings group in mali did not find any effect of savings group on empowerment. table 5: comparison of comfort level between vsla and non-vsla women when speaking in public issues vsla members (%) non-vsla members (%) pvalue little to none some somewhat to very little to none some somewhat to very development 22.1 24.1 53.8 40.5 26.2 33.3 0.034 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 133-146 141 infrastructure ensure proper payment of wages 25.7 22.6 51.7 38.1 35.7 26.2 0.007 protest the misbehaviour of authorities 22.5 23.1 54.4 45.3 28.5 26.2 0.004 4.5. women’s decision-making within smallholder farmer households 4.5.1. decision-making input into productive activities table 6 presents results on women decision making input into productive activities in the household. the results generally show that women's decision making on productive activities was low among the respondents. however, women in vsla groups have proportionately higher decision-making input into productive activities than those who do not belong to vslas. specifically, there was a significant difference between vsla members and non-members' decision making in terms of marketing of crops, deciding the types of crops to grow, raising livestock and engaging in non-farm business activity (see table 6). the low women personal decision-making could be attributed to the local tradition which recognizes male as a figurehead and subsequently the principal decision maker. it is well documented that women control fewer assets, have less autonomous income, and have less control over household decisions than men (world bank, 2012). in ghana, traditionally men are frequently identified as the primary decisionmakers in production, as they are more often in control of productive resources such as land, labour and capital (akudugu et al., 2012). however, during the various focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, women in the vsla confirmed that there had been an improvement in their decision-making input into productive activities. this, they attributed to the financial empowerment gained through their participation in savings groups which has made them more active in household decision making. in line with this finding, karlan et al. (2017) found a positive effect of increased access to savings and loans through women's participation in vsla on intrahousehold decision making. although economic growth can advance the material conditions for exercising agency, the world bank (2012) asserts that women's ability to increase their bargaining power within the household and accumulate personal assets hinges on women's ability to earn their income. on the contrary, other researchers have debunked the assertion that economic empowerment will lead to overall empowerment of women (joshi, 2014; guerin et al., 2013). table 6: comparison of vsla and non-vsla women’s decision making on productive activities activity vsla members non-vsla members p-value male head/husband (%) female head/wife (%) joint (%) male head/husband (%) female head/wife (%) joint (%) agric. production 29.0 23.4 47.6 36.8 12.3 50.9 0.279 inputs to buy for agric. production 29.7 17.2 53.1 42.0 12.3 45.7 0.270 types of crops to grow 23.5 37.2 39.3 36.8 17.6 45.6 0.017 marketing of crop produce 17.3 32.4 50.3 26.3 22.8 50.5 0.043 raising livestock 36.6 30.3 33.1 43.9 12.3 43.8 0.028 non-farm business activity 26.2 33.8 40.7 28.1 15.8 56.1 0.037 own salary or wage employment 21.4 34.5 44.1 26.3 26.9 46.8 0.547 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 133-146 142 4.5.2. decision on household expenditure regarding decision-making on household expenditure, women generally reported higher joint decision making on both major (such as a large appliance like refrigerator, motorbikes, tv, etc.) and minor (such as food or other household needs) household expenditure. although women in vsla groups reported proportionately higher sole decision-making making in both major (28.3% vsla women; 12.3% non-vsla women, p = 0.047) and minor (25.2% vsla women; 17.9% non-vsla women, p = 0.179) household expenditure. in discussions with women in the vsla, it was mentioned that ability to contribute to the household’s expenditure has made them more active in household decision-making. compared to when they were not in the vlsa, most of the women reported they could make more financial contributions to their families’ development, including payment of school fees, health insurance bills, and acquisition of family assets such as bicycles. their participation in the savings group has improved their access to financial products and capital, and as a result, some women are undertaking new economic activities (e.g. petty trading, retail trading in agricultural commodities and food vending). in explaining how vsla membership has contributed to women’s decision-making in the household, a member noted that: "when we did the share-out, and i sent the money to the house, and my husband saw the money then we used it for our girl's school fees, and now he has even joined the group. now anything he does he will consult me, my wife what should we do, but first, those things were not there, whatever he did you have to take it like that, whether you like it or not, because you cannot contribute". we found this as a positive development since women’s involvement in household decision making has been recognized as a sign of empowerment (malhotra et al., 2002). most of the vsla women respondents often spoke of the fact that they do no longer overly depend on their husbands for every basic need, but instead, they are in the position to support their husbands, and this has brought peace and happiness to their households. emphasizing this point during an in-depth interview, a respondent had this to say: "with the vsla intervention i am able to support my husband to meet the household needs, and we are all happy. my family members can eat well, take care of our health insurance premiums, and very happy because we can also dress well. in the past, we were unable to meet these family needs and often resulted in quarrels amongst family members. with the vsla intervention." generally, although some women own and control valued assets, the majority are constrained by traditional norms and low level of education in their asset ownership and decision making within and outside their households. the social institutions & gender index (sigi) confirms that culturally accepted patterns that women control more "feminine resources," such as household utensils whereas more "masculine resources," such as cash crops are to be managed by men, create barriers to women’s access to and ownership of highly valued assets (sigi, 2012). however, evidence from this study suggests that vslas have the potential to make women more economically active and improve their asset ownership, contribute to the household needs and make them productive in the household decision. according to the world bank (2012), women’s income influence their ability to accumulate physical, human, and financial assets. indeed, this has an implication for a woman's ability to cope with shocks, invest and expand her earnings and economic opportunities. consistent with our findings, deere and leon (2001) reported that improvements in women's financial position could challenge acceptable social norms on women's role in the household and community. on the contrary, waller (2014) found that household decision-making and access to and control over household assets is dependent on the individual personalities of the husband and wife. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 133-146 143 table 7: decision on household expenditure between vsla and non-vsla women expenditure vsla members non-vsla members pvalue male head/husband (%) female head/wife (%) joint (%) male head/husband (%) female head/wife (%) joint (%) major household expenditure 40.7 28.3 31.0 52.6 12.3 35.1 0.047 minor household expenditure 22.1 36.6 40.8 33.3 17.5 49.1 0.179 5. conclusions and recommendations this study was set out to examine how women’s participation in savings groups, such as the village savings and loans associations, influence their agency that is, their ability to freely participate in group activities and personally act on issues that affect them. we used three dimensions of agency adapted from the women's empowerment in agriculture index (weai) to assess female agency: women’s participation and decision-making in groups; women’s comfort with public speaking; and women’s decision-making within their households. the results of the study have shown that women's involvement in vslas has enhanced their agency as they are more economically and socially active. the evidence-based information provided by this study should prompt development agencies and practitioners to promote the vsla model as a critical tool to drive interventions that aim to enhance female agency and eradicate poverty. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akudugu, m. a., guo, e., & dadzie, s. k. 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(2017). comparative studies on proximate and some mineral composition of selected local rice varieties and imported rice brands in ghana. agriculture and food sciences research, 4(1), 1-7. world bank (2012). world development report: gender equality and development. washington, dc. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 95 structure and performance of advisory services in agricultural development around protected area: the case of xuan thuy national park, vietnam nguyen thi trang nhung a b, tran huu cuong b, philippe lebailly a aeconomics & rural development, gembloux agro-bio tech, university of liège, belgium b faculty of accounting and business management, vietnam national university of agriculture, hanoi, vietnam  thuytrangnhung@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 18-dec-2019 accepted: 28-feb-2020 online available: 20-mar2020 keywords: agricultural advisory services, buffer zone, xuan thuy national park, vietnam abstract the study was conducted in the buffer zone of xuan thuy national park (xtnp), the largest wetland ecosystem in northern vietnam, to assess the governance structure and performance of agricultural advisory services (aas) in agricultural production under the context of environmental protection. based on a sample of 12 officials from diverse organizations and 234 farmers living nearby the park, the results revealed that agricultural production received supports from both public and private sectors, including communal agricultural board (cab), communal agricultural cooperative (cac), xtnp management board, irrigation companies, and input dealers. there were huge differences in advisory flows, methods, and effectiveness according to types of aas providers and production systems. rice production received more technology transferred from cac, cab and irrigation companies as compared to aquaculture farming. meanwhile, aquaculture sectors obtained more consultation from input dealers. among public sectors, xtnp’s managers were partly responsible for raising awareness of environmental protection of the inhabitants but this organization has a small role in the agricultural development of peripheral communities. contribution/ originality this article contributes to overcome the shortage of information on agricultural advisory services for buffer zone management of vietnam and other countries. in this manuscript, the authors analyse the governance structure of agricultural advisory services (aas) in the buffer areas of xuan thuy national park of vietnam. then, performance of aas was evaluated regarding the relevance and effectiveness of service providers with farmers. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.95.108 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: nguyen thi trang nhung, tran huu cuong and philippe lebailly (2020). structure and performance of advisory services in agricultural development around protected area: the case of xuan thuy national park, vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 81-94. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 95-108 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:thuytrangnhung@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.95.108 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 95-108 96 1. introduction agricultural advisory services (aas) (evolve from the extension) refer to the entire organizations assisting farmers to solve problems and obtain information, skills and technologies to enhance agricultural production and stimulate their livelihoods (birkhaeuser et al., 1991; anderson and feder, 2007; anderson, 2008, regina et al., 2009). the initial objective of aas is to stimulate farm productivity. in addition, aas helps to reduce the gap between potential and actual yields through the technology transfer and provision of management skills. the enormous investment in advisory services has significant roles in the agricultural production of developing countries (anderson, 2008). however, the decentralization of the extension system includes more involvement of the private sector and the third sector (non-government organizations and farmers’ consortium) contributes to pluralistic forms of aas (sulaiman and hall, 2002). currently, aas is reformed to confront changes in global food and farming system such as the expansion of supermarkets, developing standards and labels, increasing non-farm rural employment, agricultural industrialization and the degradation of natural resources, etc. (anderson, 2008). farmers acquire diverse advisory services incorporating technical, socio-economic and environmental parameters through the dissemination of information and technology, reinforcement of learning process, and accompanying interactions between stakeholders (faure et al., 2012). vietnam has approximately 70 percent of households depend on agricultural activities which have linkages with advisory services (hynek and jana, 2019). information transmission, training and other service supports are essential for rural development in developing countries including vietnam (ruifa et al., 2012; mohsen and kamal, 2012; donus et al., 2013). the public aas system was officially established in vietnam in 1993 firstly to provide advanced technology and training and to disseminate agricultural-related policies (bo, 2012). currently, this public system operates nationwide with five administrative levels (central, provincial, district, commune and village) at an average ratio of one extension officer per 280 households to help farmers to improve grain yield through responding to outbreaks of pests or diseases and supporting the implementation of new varieties. beside some achievements, public aas sectors still have various limitations, including: (1) a shortage in the quantity of extensional workers as well as lack of qualified personnel; (2) a dearth of integrated specialized workers for whole production process; (3) aas has not yet focused on processing and marketing; (4) its methods has not satisfied diverse demands of different farming systems; and (5) low participation of farmers in aas system (bo, 2012). since 2015, vietnam began transforming its aas to improve efficiency as well as the competitiveness of agriculture and the livelihood of farmers (ngan and suresh, 2018). pluralistic actors from private sectors participate in carrying out advisory tasks including farm households, common interest groups, and agribusiness enterprises. they provide formal and informal knowledge and contribute to the enhancement of social learning among communities. different farming systems require relevant information to gain higher productivity and profitability for the improvement of farmers’ livelihoods (singh et al., 2016). the buffer zone of xuan thuy national park (xtnp) has diverse agricultural systems comprising rice-based, integrated aquaculture-mangrove, and intensive shrimp. they cultivate in a changing environment. being the buffer zone of the international importance site, the central government requires agricultural production to mitigate its impacts on the ecosystem at the same time ensure economic viability for farmers. however, attempts to integrate environmental protection in cultivation have met with limited success. water conflicting between farmer users, excessive use of agrochemicals, un-treated sludge from farms is concerned by many researchers (haneji, 2014; nguyen et al., 2019, nhung et al., 2020). shortage of assistance, low effectiveness of aas work and lack of collaboration between stakeholders partly prevents agricultural development toward conservation goals. the purposes of this article are to (1) describe the governance structure of aas in nam dinh province asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 95-108 97 and xtnp’s buffer zone; (2) assess the performance aas in agricultural development and (3) propose implication to enhance roles of aas in this area. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study site the study was conducted in the buffer communes surrounding xuan thuy national park (xtnp). the park extends from latitude 20o10’ to 20o15’ north and longitude 106o20’ to 106o32’ east in giao thuy district, nam dinh province, vietnam (vietnam administration of forestry, 2017). the core zone of xtnp covers 7,100 ha including two areas of terrestrial (3,100 ha) and wetland (4,000 ha). overall, xtnp has seven ecosystem typologies, including tidal wetland with mangroves, tidal wetland without mangroves, aquaculture-mangrove farming, rice farming, sandy coastal line, tidal rivers, and estuary. the mangrove forest is an important ecosystem. there are two types of mangroves consisting of natural and planted. it ranges between eight to ten meters in height. they are three canopies and seven species of mangrove in this area. the planted mangroves include two species which are of lower stature at five meters. mangroves also play crucial functions in the park as providing living conditions for habitats and other wetland species, especially for migratory birds. the buffer zone covers 8,000 ha including ngan islet (the boundary runs from the lagoon dike to the vop river canal), bai trong and five communes namely giao thien, giao an, giao lac, giao xuan, and giao hai. figure 1: map of xuan thuy national park 2.2. data collection and analysis the in-depth interviews were carried out in 2018-2019 to define the structure and organization of aas in the study site. the surveys were conducted with managers of communal people’s committee (cpc), headers of communal agricultural board (cab) and communal agricultural cooperative (cac), managers of xtnp management board and officials of giao thuy district’s department of agriculture and rural development (dard) and center of agricultural services (cas). in order to assess the organization and effectiveness of aas, 234 farmers in major farming systems within the ngan islet which is a large buffer area of xtnp were approached including integrated aquaculture-mangrove (84 farmers), intensive shrimp (54 farmers), and rice-based (96 farmers) (table 1). questionnaires focused on advisory need and receive, farmers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of aas. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 95-108 98 table 1: distribution of respondents according to different farming systems farming systems total farm owners no. of respondent integrated aquaculture–mangrove 102 84 intensive shrimp 64 54 rice-based 2737 96 total 2903 234 farmers’ opinion and knowledge on the effective level of aas were evaluated by a weighted average index (wai). the wai is a social scaling for identifying the perception of farmers on aspects of sustainable agriculture (zhen and routray, 2003). this value can be estimated by multiplying the statement to its corresponding weight and dividing it by the total number of respondents in each farming systems (chowdhury et al., 2015) as below: 𝑊𝐴𝐼 = [∑(𝑉𝐿 ∗ 0.2) + (𝐿 ∗ 0.4) + (𝑀 ∗ 0.6) + (𝐻 ∗ 0.8) + (𝑉𝐻 ∗ 1.0)] 𝑛⁄ where wai = the weighted average index (0 < wai ≤ 1); vl = number of farmers’ response very low effectiveness and its weight is 0.2; l = number of farmers’ response low effectiveness and its weight is 0.4; m = number of farmers’ response very medium effectiveness and its weight is 0.6; h = number of farmers’ response very high effectiveness and its weight is 0.8; vh = number of farmers’ response very high effectiveness and its weight is 1.0; n = total number of respondents. 3. results 3.1. current farming practices 3.1.1. integrated aquaculture mangrove (iam) production system the system combines extensive aquaculture species farming with mangrove trees. all of iam farms were previously mangroves. since 1986, mangroves were reduced to provide space for aquaculture raising. the average farm size was 6.82 ha/farm owners, in which scattered mangroves were maintained with about 24.28% total area, as self-reported by respondents. farm ranged in size from 2.2 to 20 ha. black tiger shrimp (penaeus monodon) and crab were reared in ponds. numerous co-products such as wild-caught marines including shrimp (metapenaeus ensis) and fish co-exist. production cycle lasts from april to november, the remaining time (from december to march) farmland is open for brackish water with wild marines through the tide. in iam culture, black tiger seed is hatchery-raised transporting from ben tre and nha trang provinces. however, 100% of crab seed were bought from farmers who involved in the exploitation of natural resources around xtnp wetland area. this production system was operated with little use of supplemental feeds (wet or dry pelleted feeds). there are not any antibiotics, fertilizers or other agrochemicals are used in this production. 3.1.2. intensive shrimp (ish) production system shrimp farms in xtnp’s buffer zone situated in non-mangrove near rivers and ba lat estuary. farms have an average size of 1.6 ha. a farm normally consists of several rearing ponds. one pond has a size of 1,000-1,500 m2. pumps and two aeration device systems are available for water circulation in each pond. farms depended on hatchery-raised seed. farmers stocked whiteleg (litopenaeus vannamei) at the rate of fries about 70-80 post-larvae/m2. grow-out takes about 80105 days for one seasons (two seasons/year). farmers used commercial pellet feed for shrimp and numerous drugs and additives were also applied for water management. water standards were tested before releasing post-larvae in all of the surveyed farmers. however, waste and sludge including uneaten feed, shrimp shells or organic and inorganic matter were often released to drainage canal or directly to surrounding rivers without careful treatment methods. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 95-108 99 3.1.3. rice-based (rb) production system rice is planted in two crops per year without the application of crop rotation or intercropping. the first season usually lasts from january to may, and the second season starts from june to october. this system depends mainly on irrigation and rainfall. rice production is small scale with 0.28 ha/household. from farmers’ perspectives, high profitability and production yield are driving their decisions and the conservative objective is often seen as secondary by prevailing respondents. pesticides were used by 100% of the respondents. most of the rice grower burn straw after harvesting. all of the respondents used chemical fertilizers and there was an excessive use of nitrogenous nutrient sources. agro-inputs were provided by cac and private shops in communes. cultivation is guided by dard of giao thuy district, cac and cab. xtnp receives little political supports in monitoring unsustainable practices. among 96 rice cultivators, there were 13 farmers (13.5%) stated that they would increase the bio-pesticide amount in the fields. 3.2. governance structure of agricultural advisory services in nam dinh province and xuan thuy national park’s buffer zone the governance structure implies the institutional set-up of the aas system comprising public sectors (administrations and agencies), private sectors (farmers and profit-oriented enterprises), and the third sector (ngos, farmer-based organizations, non-profit organizations) (regina et al., 2009). figure 2 illustrates the structure of aas of nam dinh province including xtnp’s buffer zone. there are a wide variety of stakeholders in the system including department of agriculture and rural development (dard), center of agricultural services (cas), xtnp, agro-dealers (input traders) and irrigation companies. note: assigned relationship cooperated relationship figure 2: stakeholders of the aas system in nam dinh province and xuan thuy national park’s buffer zone dard: department of agriculture and rural development; xtnp: xuan thuy national park; cab: communal agricultural board; cac: communal agricultural cooperative. center of agricultural services district dard giao thuy district people’s committee nam dinh provincial people’s committee provincial dard xtnp buffer commune people’s committee farmers cac input dealers private irrigation companies cab irrigation cluster center of agricultural services district dard asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 95-108 100 dard and cas are specialized agencies working under the authority of giao thuy district people’s committee. they coordinate with communes to promote agricultural production of the whole district. the main responsibilities of the dard are defined by the ministry of agriculture and rural development and ministry of home affairs1. it is in charge of: (1) implementing programs of agricultural, aquaculture, fishery and forestry development of the whole district; (2) controlling natural disasters, pest, and disease; (3) protecting irrigation infrastructure; (5) managing services to promote agriculture, forestry, aquaculture. the nam dinh provincial people’s committee defines responsibilities of center of agricultural service2 as (1) implementing programs of crop cultivation, plant protection, veterinary service provision, and agricultural extension of the whole district; (2) transferring advanced technologies for agricultural production; (3) organizing training for rural communities and (4) providing technical knowledge of crop cultivation, plant protection, and livestock raising. at the commune level, communal people’s committee (cpc) designates communal agricultural board (cab) and communal agricultural cooperative (cac). the cac works under cooperative law 3 to supply agricultural materials and transferring knowledge for members. cac has approached only rice farmers and it does not cover market development tasks. the cab mainly instruct the cultivation, livestock raising activities, food safety programs and rural development of the commune. a large number of private sectors facilitate in promoting agricultural and aquaculture production including irrigation companies, input enterprises, distributors and agro-dealers/traders. enormous topics related to advanced agriculture and aquaculture are transferred to farmers through input traders. they offer comprehensive services directly for farmers including technical advice on the application of inputs in production. irrigation is responsible for managing water in the region. they inform irrigation calendar to cac and cba and then irrigated water is provided directly to fields. 3.3. flows and methods of agricultural advisory services figure 3-5 shows major multi-directional flows of advisory services and agricultural topics received by different groups of farmers. the role of public and private providers was different among the three groups of producers. the main findings show that the public aas currently focuses almost on rb production with the main topics on conventional agriculture and less concern on conservation agriculture such as ipm or sustainable practices. the focus on conventional farming is based on raising productivity strategies of nam dinh people’s committee. our further results reported that 100% of surveyed rb farms are cultivated with chemical fertilizers. moreover, there has been excessive use of nitrogen-based fertilizers in rice production, compared with local standard introduced by dard of giao thuy district (nguyen et al., 2019). the standards for chemical fertilizers in xtnp area are recommended but not monitored by any institution. extension staff from cab have made little effort to decrease the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides which mainly transfer through one-way propagation news on local radio. while cac worked as a business unit to sell agricultural inputs and provide extension services for only rb cultivators and it has made more effect on promoting conservation agriculture knowledge through direct communication with farmers while selling input as compared with cab. cab sometimes 1circular 14/2015/ttlt-bnnptnt-bnv of ministry of agriculture and rural development and ministry of home affairs: guidelines of responsibilities and structure of agricultural organizations of provincial and district levels. available at https://thuvienphapluat.vn/van-ban/bo-may-hanh-chinh/thong-tu-lien-tich-142015-ttlt-bnnptnt-bnv-co-quan-chuyen-mon-ve-nong-nghiep-phat-trien-nong-thon-269221.aspx 2 decision 2721/2018/qd-ubnd of nam dinh provincial people’s committee: the establishment of center of agricultural services of giao thuy district, nam dinh province. available at http://sokhdt.namdinh.gov.vn/filedinhkem/031220180238giao%20thuy.pdf 3 cooperative law 23/2012/qh13 of vietnamese pariliament issued in 2012. available at http://vanban.chinhphu.vn/portal/page/portal/chinhphu/hethongvanban?class_id=1&mode=detail&document_i d=164954 https://thuvienphapluat.vn/van-ban/bo-may-hanh-chinh/thong-tu-lien-tich-14-2015-ttlt-bnnptnt-bnv-co-quan-chuyen-mon-ve-nong-nghiep-phat-trien-nong-thon-269221.aspx https://thuvienphapluat.vn/van-ban/bo-may-hanh-chinh/thong-tu-lien-tich-14-2015-ttlt-bnnptnt-bnv-co-quan-chuyen-mon-ve-nong-nghiep-phat-trien-nong-thon-269221.aspx http://sokhdt.namdinh.gov.vn/filedinhkem/031220180238giao%20thuy.pdf http://vanban.chinhphu.vn/portal/page/portal/chinhphu/hethongvanban?class_id=1&mode=detail&document_id=164954 http://vanban.chinhphu.vn/portal/page/portal/chinhphu/hethongvanban?class_id=1&mode=detail&document_id=164954 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 95-108 101 connect with private input suppliers organized meetings or training to promote companies’ input products and disseminate rice production-related information. the shortage of staff holding aquatic expertise prevents both cab and cac from providing farming management knowledge and skills for iam and ish. figure 3: advisory service flows for iam farmers (% of respondents) note: asp: advisory service providers. xtnp mgt. board: xuan thuy national park management board; cac: communal agricultural cooperative; cab: communal agricultural board; iam: integrated aquaculture mangrove figure 4: advisory service flows for ish farmers (% of respondents) note: asp: advisory service providers. xtnp mgt. board: xuan thuy national park management board; cac: communal agricultural cooperative; cab: communal agricultural board; ish: intensive shrimp figure 5: advisory service flows for rb farmers (% of respondents) note: asp: advisory service providers. xtnp mgt. board: xuan thuy national park management board; cac: communal agricultural cooperative; cab: communal agricultural board; rb: rice-based asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 95-108 102 it was found that private input suppliers transferred various kinds of services including disseminating conventional and conservation agriculture knowledge, training, input provision. private companies have extension workers holding specialization in agriculture, aquaculture, veterinary or economics. they often visit and help farmers to find the problems and solutions based on the participation of farmers. the role of private input supply companies has been increasing in the iam and ish farming with the dissemination of materials, new technology, and training based on a demand-driven approach. distribution of feeds, additive nutrients and diverse artificial inputs for aquaculture production is carried by staff experts of national and international companies (vinh thinh, bayer, etc.). irrigation companies are responsible for water management and informing the timetable of irrigation gates for merely rb growers through cab and cac. nevertheless, the majority of iam and ish farmers cannot access irrigation services. they manage brackish water for their ponds through private communication or personal relationships with irrigation staff. this leads to frequent complaints by ish and iam on negatively affected by freshwater and pesticide residue from rb areas. one indication that no sample farmers have interaction with xtnp’s staff regarding agricultural activities but the park’s authority is connected with farmers to educate and propagate three groups of farmers to preserve the living environments, such as garbage managing, bird conservation, and growing trees. advisory methods used by extension staff are plentiful depending on types of training and technology transfer (field days, demonstrations, short courses), number of farmers approached (individual, group, mass approach), participation of farmers (top-down and participatory methods), and specificity of farming (cropping, livestock, aquaculture), media (radio, paper, communication technology) (regina et al., 2009; cathrine et al., 2015). table 2 shows methods and tools of aas in xtnp’s buffer zone. input dealers have more types of delivery methods than xtnp, cab, cac, and irrigation companies according to three groups of farmers such as meeting, training, field visits, one-to-one advice, etc. table 2: methods and tools of aas to farmers service providers methods and tools iam ish rb input dealers meetings, training courses, and selling meetings, training courses, field visits, one-to-one advice, input supplier technicians, selling training courses, selling, and direct consultation irrigation companies informing working times of sluice gates through public loudspeakers informing irrigation times of sluice gates through public loudspeakers informing irrigation times of sluice gates through public loudspeakers xtnp mgt. board meetings, training meetings, training meetings, training cab none none public loudspeakers cac none none input supplying, direct consultation 3.4. performances of agricultural advisory services (relevance of aas) 3.4.1. aas needs according to regina et al. (2009), the performance of aas can be assessed through the accuracy and relevance of the advisory content, timeliness of services, quality of the relationships or feedback, or efficiency of service dissemination. table 3 illustrates various advisory services needed regarding different groups. the majority of iam and ish culturists expected solutions to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 95-108 103 their intake water, which has been impaired for months applying pesticides in rb fields and effluent discharge from ish ponds. the present results further show that all of rb farmers widely applied pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. the majority of farmers (80.21% of the respondents) used herbicides to kill weed species. environmentally-friendly pest, disease and weed control methods were not largely applied by farmers. a further indication that can be observed is an overuse of nitrogen-based fertilizers and an imbalance rate of chemical fertilizers in the paddy field. rb cultivators needed extension people to address numerous problems that they cannot tackle individually including the spread of exotic snails and disease outbreaks, over dependent on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. table 3: main topics of aas needs aas needs percent (%) 1. iam (n=84) controlling of pesticide contaminants from rice farms 90.47 controlling effluent from ish ponds 33.33 monitoring post-larvae quality 14.28 marketing, certification 72.62 disease outbreak management skills 10.71 drastic weather adaptation skills 100.00 2. ish (n=54) controlling of pesticide contaminants from rice farms 77.78 controlling effluent from ish ponds 100.00 monitoring post-larvae quality 100.00 disease outbreak management skills 38.89 credit access supports 68.52 drastic weather adaptation skills 100.00 3. rb (n=96) disease outbreak adaptation 63.54 solutions for decreasing in use of chemical fertilizers 73.96 solutions for decreasing in use of pesticide 100.00 controlling of exotic snails 100.00 drastic weather adaptation skills 21.88 natural disaster adaptation skills related are also mostly requested by iam, ish culturists and some of rb growers, since their farms are located near the coastline which has been affected by climate variability including storms, fluctuation of salinity and climate changes. post-larvae quality monitoring is another emerging problem required to be tackled by ish and some iam farmers. 3.4.2. aas receipt farmers were asked for advisories obtained from agricultural extension people. one indication reveals that government-based actors of cab and cac have been reaching a significant proportion of rice farming populations on a sustained basis with information and guidance on the use of farm inputs, while both aquaculture raising groups were limited to access transferred works from these providers. on the other hand, private input suppliers played an important role with respect to providing knowledge and facilitate consultation on pond and feed management for two groups of iam and ish. irrigation time of opening and closing the sluice system was available for all of rb but for moderate percent of iam and ish (table 4). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 95-108 104 table 4: main topics of aas receipt aas receipt percent (%) providers .1.iam (n=84) shrimp larvae management 100.00 private input dealers pelletized feed use 100.00 private input dealers irrigation calendar 7.10 irrigation staff, cab training 60.71 private input dealers 2.ish (n=54) shrimp larvae management 100.00 private input dealers pelletized feed use 100.00 private input dealers pond management 100.00 private input dealers veterinary medicine application 100.00 private input dealers disease adaptation skills 100.00 private input dealers training 100.00 private input dealers irrigation calendar 14.80 irrigation staff, cab 3.rb (n=96) pesticide application 100.00 cab, cac fertilizer application 100.00 cab, cac crop calendar 100.00 cab, cac training 77.08 cab, input dealers irrigation calendar 100.00 cab, cac, irrigation staff 3.4.3. effectiveness of aas an assessment of effective levels of aas is to provide evidence from advisories at the regional level. farmers were asked whether they were aware of effective levels of aas provision in terms of technical and non-technical services. responses were ranked as very high, high, medium, low, and very low as presented below: table 5: value index of effective level from the farmers’ perspective very high (1.0) high (0.8) medium (0.6) low (0.4) very low (0.2) wai 1. iam farmers (number of respondents) cac 0 0 14 70 0 0.43 cab 0 0 4 80 0 0.41 xtnp 0 0 11 73 0 0.42 irrigation board 0 0 17 67 0 0.44 input dealers 0 61 12 11 0 0.72 2. ish farmers (number of respondents) cac 0 0 6 48 0 0.42 cab 0 0 4 50 0 0.41 xtnp 0 0 3 51 0 0.41 irrigation board 0 0 7 47 0 0.43 input dealers 0 39 15 0 0 0.74 3. rb farmers (number of respondents) cac 0 51 45 0 0 0.71 cab 0 5 61 30 0 0.55 xtnp 0 0 31 65 0 0.46 irrigation board 0 37 59 0 0 0.68 input dealers 0 13 83 0 0 0.63 table 5 demonstrates different levels of farmers’ perception of effectiveness from service providers. cac, cab, xtnp and irrigation companies gained higher effectiveness in the case of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 95-108 105 rb than iam and ish, nevertheless, input dealers are essential for two aquaculture farming groups. xtnp has low responding in the delivering agriculture advisory for three groups of farmers. the aas works for rb, which focuses more on supplying seed, pesticides, fertilizers and informing cropping calendar. meanwhile, there is shortage of transferred work for iam and ish because the communal authority has a lack of aquaculture technicians and field workers. aas providers have few roles in assisting farmers to confront regional issues including negative impacts from pesticide contaminants and pond effluents, a disease outbreak in production, drastic weather, post-larvae quality management. on the other side, input dealers contribute growing roles in delivering materials and updated technical knowledge, instructing new technologies and providing direct consultation based on community-led and demand-driven approach for farmer clients in particular in the case of iam and ish. 4. discussion buffer areas are established to protect and enhance the conservation value of the parks or reserve (lynagh and urich, 2002). in particular, this zone of xtnp has objectives of (1) preventing threats from surrounding areas for the core zone, protecting forest trees, ecosystem, and biodiversity; (2) conservation of culture, indigenous knowledge, local gene and local breed and (3) heightening awareness of local managers and communities toward sustainable natural resource management and improving livelihood for residents. results demonstrate that in the period from 2017-2019, xtnp management board has been implemented several activities to promote environmental protection in core and buffer zones, including environmental education, forest replanting, and ecotourism development. while the government aims at developing agriculture simultaneously ensuring biodiversity conservation for the park, nearby population manage their farms towards short-term profitability rather than long-term development. currently, the ecosystem of this area bears many environmental impacts partly due to improper practices of farmers. as concerned by nguyen et al., 2019, rb farmers apply excessive doses of inorganic fertilizers but dearth of organic nutrient sources. contaminants of pesticides from rb fields were pollutants for iam and ish farm. sludge and sewage without careful treatment from ish ponds lead to degradation of intake water for both ish and iam. the findings of this study reveal that farming practices and management are guided by dard of giao thuy district and applied similarly between buffer and outer communes of the district. the dard regulates standards and permits of farm disposal based on index introduced by the ministry of agriculture and rural development of vietnam in circular number 22/2014/ttbnnptnt (mard, 2014) but they are implemented as a suggestion instead of a compulsion among farmers. this may mismatch between dual goals of xtnp’s buffer areas which seek to achieve the livelihood of farmers and preserve the ecosystem. the aas system in the buffer zones of xtnp involves public and private stakeholders. they are crucial in promoting agricultural production by providing materials and disseminating knowledge and practices for classes of farmers. public aas providers have reached a number of marginal farmers, but their methods and flows remain a supply-driven approach with single technical services. private actors carry out aas but they may focus more on the needs of business than sustainability. according to umali and schwartz (1994), the public sector should provide advisory services if the advice has the nature of public goods, while the private sector is a preferred choice if the advice represents private goods. in addition, as mentioned by boyd (2004) and oladosu (2006), advisory service system is designed to help farmers to identify problems, educate and link them with the environment. thus, it is urgent for more programs in conservation agriculture and water conflicting resolutions should be implemented and monitored strictly by government-based sectors. in addition, strengthening the collaboration between public and private sectors can complement and supplement of aas system in the area and encourage multi-directional flows of information, knowledge and management skills. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 95-108 106 since agricultural production in the buffer zone depends on changing conditions and needs of farmers for knowledge and information are various, but the aas received is still poorly delivered for all farming systems. aas focuses mainly on conventional than on conservative perspectives. hence, current technical advisory has not improved the economic and environmental outcomes of diverse production systems. target farm management skills, training, and solutions for different groups of farmers should be addressed based on the need for farmers to motivate farm managers to comprehensively adapt for sustainable production. 5. conclusion vietnam, innovation in agricultural expertise and its application in agricultural production has been a significant contributor to economic growth. the overall objective of the aas analysis is to provide an analysis of the structure and performance of aas in protected areas’ buffer zones of vietnam. results from individual surveys provide information on the implementation of aas in different types of production systems for vision of further improvement. there are two sectors involving in financing and transferring aas in the study area comprising the public sector (cab, cac and xtnp management board) and the private sector (irrigation companies, input suppliers, distributors and agro-dealers selling pesticides, seeds, nutrients, and farm implements). assessment of differences between aas providers varied for diverse farming systems across the buffer areas. the public sector has municipal agriculture offices from central, province, district and commune levels. at the commune level, cab and cac play a vital role in promoting basic knowledge on conventional agriculture and training for a large proportion of rb growers. however, iam and ish farmers were limited to access services from these providers. currently, private input suppliers have been reaching commercial aquaculture producers widely than smallholding rb farmers. the effective level of this input suppliers in iam and ish production is more than that of cab and cac. among public sectors, xtnp’s managers were partly responsible for raising awareness on environmental protection of inhabitants based on general environmental policies of state government but this organization has a small role in agricultural production of peripheral communities. the collaboration of xtnp with buffer communities was limited in agricultural production. diverse production systems produce different products for farmer livelihood but various environmental problems incorporated with farm activities within the region. collaboration between the public and private sectors and between xtnp’s officials and buffer communes in strengthening conservation agriculture is necessary for better aas in the site. plus, practical technical assistance and solutions need to be redefined for each farming system to reduce the gaps of aas need and receipt. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references anderson, j. r. 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(2003). operational indicators for measuring agricultural sustainability in developing countries. environmental management, 32(1), 34-46. doi.org/10.1007/s00267003-2881-1. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 160 effect of understumps age on the growth of budding of orange plant (citrus sp.) salamet ginandjar  m. subandi alamsyah dikayani department of agrotechnology, faculty of science and technology, the state islamic university of sunan gunung djati of bandung, indonesia  salametginandjar@uinsgd.ac.id (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 10-aug-2018 accepted: 02-jan-2019 online available: 24-jan2019 keywords: budding, insert, chip-budding, orange abstract the research was conducted in the garden of development of horticultural seeds of west java province. the purpose of research to know the influence of age of rootstock and budding method to the success of citrus (citrus sp). research method using factorial randomized block design (rbd) with 2 factors. the first factor is the age of the understump (rootstock) consisting of 5 levels, namely the stem age of 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 months, while the second factor is the budding method consisting of 2 levels, namely t (t-budding) budding method and the budding (chip-budding). the results showed that the treatment of budding method and the age of rootstock did not interact in all observation variables. the treatment of budding method and the age of rootstock independently had a very significant effect on the high percentage of shoots, no significant effect on the stem bud diameter and significantly affect the number of leaves. the best treatment on the method of budding is the method of insert (chipbudding), while at the lowest rootstock is the best age of rootstock 6 months. contribution/ originality the current study analyse the influence of age of rootstock and budding method to the success of citrus (citrus sp) using factorial randomized block design (rbd) with 2 factors in the garden of development of horticultural seeds of west java province. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.160.171 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: salamet ginandjar, m. subandi, alamsyah and dikayani (2018). effect of understumps age on the growth of budding of orange plant (citrus sp.). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 160-171. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 160-171 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8763-9939 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5816-3329 mailto:salametginandjar@uinsgd.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.160.171 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 160-171 161 1. introduction oranges can be consumed in fresh or processed form with protein content of 0.5 g, 0.1 g fat, 500 to 1000 g of vitamin c and carbohydrate 20 g. indonesia has made oranges into industrial products such as: leather oil and orange seeds, alcohol, sugar drops and pectin from waxed oranges. oil from orange peel is used for perfume, soap and cake mixture. oranges are used as traditional medicine, such as fever, pain reliever and for inflammation of the eyes (buton, 2010). orange is one of the fruits commodities that have an important role in the world market and in the country, because it has a high economic value, the government not only directs the management of oranges for small farmers, but also oriented to the development of a comprehensive citrus industry. a brighter prospect toward orange agribusiness is becoming more real with attention to various potentials such as the potential of land that is the availability of agricultural land for fruit crops covering millions of hectares so it has a big enough opportunity to open large scale plantations with attention to the suitability of agroclimate, the potential of production can be is achieved if the management of citrus farming is done intensively to lead to agribusiness, and the market potential is predicted that the demand for citrus fruits will increase with increasing income, population growth and income elasticity on demand (soelarso, 1996). successful exploitation of fruit crops, especially large-scale commercial ones is determined by the availability of quality seeds at the right time, in large quantities at affordable prices by farmers. the use of unsuitable seeds and varieties will lead to difficulties in subsequent crop management. this mistake will usually be felt several years later after the plant produces (hatta et al., 1992; subandi et al., 2018; obinna-echem and torporo, 2018). therefore research and development and management of existing nurseries needs to be improved to meet growing consumer demand for seedlings (samekto et al., 1995; subandi et al., 2017; mukadasi, 2018). commercial cultivated citrus plants generally use seeds derived from budding (samson, 1980). 1.1. budding oculation is a plant propagation technique by combining good seedlings from the upper stem and rootstock. implementation will occur with the upper and lower stem links through a two-stage process, which enlarges and divides the new cambium cell connecting the upper and lower root cultivars, the formation of vascular tissue that drains nutrients and water from the rootstock to the upper stem, the new and vascular cambium cells (yuniastuti et al., 1992). pratomo et al. (2010) states that the connection between two harmonious plants will produce strong and long-lived plants. furthermore nurzaini (1997) reported that factors affecting budding are plant physiology, rootstock health, undercutaneous skin condition, climate at the time of budding, as well as technical factors such as skills and expertise in the implementation of the budding and the equipment used. according to devy and jati (2008) in suharsi and sari (2013), rootstocks are crucial to the growth of citrus seedlings, as they are able to exploit unfavorable environmental conditions of drought, excess water, and resistance to certain pests and diseases. the rootstock of the rough lemon (rl) species has good rooting features for rocky and less fertile ground. the age of the rootstock is thought to have an effect on the success of budding and growth of seedlings. the rootstock that is too young will be easy to lose water so that when the budding of the seedlings will wilt, otherwise if the rootstock used is too old, it is known that the old plant tissue has low regeneration power so that the connecting of the upper stem and rootstock is not asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 160-171 162 perfect (barus, 2000). according to prastowo and roshetko (2006) in sugiatno and hamim (2009), the rootstock requirement for the connection is 3-5 mm in diameter and 3-4 months. the age of the rootstock affects the linking process between the upper and lower stems. from prasetyo (2009) results, the fastest budding shoot growth was obtained from japanese citroen (jc) rootstock 12 months old compared to younger and older age. the technique of plant budding is the incorporation of the upper stem and the rootstock of two different plant species. the upper stem is expected for the development and growth of branch, tunasserta high fruit production with good quality. the rootstock is expected for the development of a robust root system, able to adapt to infertile soil conditions and to soil diseases. the grafted plant is expected to have superior properties possessed by the upper stem and rootstock (susanto et al., 2004). propagation of citrus plants by budding should be done at the time of the plant at a generative growth stage. this technology will produce plants that are rapidly flowering and fruiting. the advantage of budding technology is that entres are used less because it only takes one bud to produce one seed. in addition, the implementation is faster and economical if there is a large rootstock. some variations of the budding propagation technique are t-budding and chip-budding modification. the choice of method depends on several considerations: plant type, upper stem and rootstock condition, material availability, propagation purposes, equipment and expertise workers (limbongan and limbongan, 2012) in limbongan and djufry (2013). 1.2. the t method (t-budding) according to limbongan and limbongan (2012) method t or ⊥ (t inverted) is a budding method in which the incision on the rootstock resembles the letter t or ⊥ (t inverted), the stem diameter has reached 3-5 mm and the growth of the rootstock is quite active, easily removed from the wood. 1.3. insert method (chip-budding) chip budding method is an budding method where the rootstock is slashed along 1-2 cm so that the wood and the skin is taken or the incision of the rootstock can be said to form the same notch with the slices of the temple's eye, so that when it is grafted entres and the wood is attached (limbongan and limbongan, 2012). 2. methodology 2.1. place and time of research the place of research was carried out in the garden of horticultural seed development center. department of agriculture food crop west java province. implementation of the research in april-june. 2.2. materials and tools the materials used in the research are local citrus seedlings jc (japanche citroen) as rootstock and the top stem used is local orange siam banjar. while the tool used is the knife budding, cutting scissors, plastics, labels, cutter, hygrometer, plugs, ruler, soil (latosol) and stationery. 3. results and discussion 3.1. temperature and humidity temperature and humidity are factors that can affect the growth and development of plants and microbes that exist. temperature and humidity affect each other, too. in general, the higher the temperature the lower air humidity and vice versa. the low temperature and humidity around the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 160-171 163 plant are influenced by sunlight and plant density. observation data of temperature and humidity that is average temperature 19°c-25°c and humidity with average 77%-78%. so that environmental provide optimal condition for healing process of the bud tissue wound. supriyanto and setiono (2006) stated that the optimal growing environment is needed for healing tissue wound, healing process of the rootstock seedlings. oxygen, temperature, and humidity play important role in regulating the networking pooling process. oxygen requirement can be fulfilled by way of fastening budding which is not too tight, optimal temperature range between 20°c 30°c, air humidity is maintained above 70%. sutami and gusti (2009) stated the same thing that temperature and humidity play a very important role in the linking process between rootstock and entris. hartmann and kester (1983) stated that the temperature of air affects the formation of parenchymal cell cell constituents of callus formed due to injection. optimum temperature 27°c 29°c, temperature higher than 29°c causes the formation of excess parenchyma cells, but the cell walls are thin so easily damaged. at temperatures below 20°c, the formation of slow callus and below 15°c callus will not be formed at all. 3.2. percentage of growing bud (%) data of the observation of the percentage of live budding success. based on the research that has been done, obtained the combination of treatment data as in table 1, while the results of manual calculations can be seen in appendix 6. table 1: average of growing bud treatments days persentage of growing bud 14 (dab) 45 (dab) (%) m1u1 √ √ 100% m1u2 √ √ 100% m1u3 √ √ 100% m1u4 √ √ 100% m1u5 √ √ 100% m2u1 √ √ 100% m2u2 √ √ 100% m2u3 √ √ 100% m2u4 √ √ 100% m2u5 √ √ 100% notes: dab = day after budding the result of observation data of the percentage of growing bud that the influence of stem age and budding method on the growing bud (citrus sp.) with the average percentage of rowing bud days after budding (dab) that is 100% successful, so it can be known at each age factor of rootstock and budding method showed no significant effect on the success rate of live budding 14-45 dab. the combination of rootstock and stem (budding) has shown a very real success, although the rootstock is different age, but the success of live budding is not hindered by age difference, in this study also age used is very diverse for example age 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 months there is a 100% growing bud. in essence, the percentage of growing bud (%) is not only fixed on 1 or 2 age but which must be observed on the budding of success factors such as rootstock, entres, tools used, and maintenance. at the time of the budding operation there will be a linkage of the upper and lower stems going through a two-stage process, which enlarges and divides the new cambium cell connecting the upper cavity and the rootstock, the formation of the vascular tissue that drains nutrients and water from the rootstock to the upper stem, the new cambium cell and vascular. so that the different ages are generally said to have an effect on the percentage of successful live budding (%) is in fact what we know is the fertility between the rootstock and the top stem (entrys). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 160-171 164 a b figure 1: persentage of growing bud: (a) t-metode (t-budding); (b) chip metode (chip budding) a b figure 2: persentage of growing bud 45 dab: (a) metode t (t bud); (b) metode sisip (chip bud) the growing of bud is largely determined by some of the crop compatibility mechanisms themselves, such as physiological properties, boichemistry and anatomical systems simultaneously. thus it can be seen that live budding (figures 3 and 4) and what if there is failure or death is not solely caused by the treatment of rootstock and budding method, but can be caused by environmental factors such as humidity, sunlight, or any other temperature can also be caused from technical factors when the implementation of the budding itself. optimal temperature and humidity will also enhance the formation of fine tissue, which is necessary for the success of a patch (budding). the temperature required in the paste is between 7.2-32° c, when the temperature is less than 7.2° c the callus formation will be slow. when more than 32° c the callus formation is also slow and can kill cells on the connection. the optimum temperature at the connection is 2530° c. the attachment requires high humidity, when low humidity will be dry, and inhibit or block the callus formation in the joint because many cells in the connection die. sunlight effect on the timing of the pengempelan going. therefore, the connection should be done in the morning or evening at a time when the sun is not strong enough to radiate and light. overheated light will also reduce the resistance of the top stem (entres) to the drought, and may damage the cambium in the connection area. then on the technical factors affecting the success of the budding is the skill, the connecting speed is the best prevention against infectious diseases and damage to the cambium and the perfection of tools in the connection required sharpness and cleanliness of the tool, thin and flexible straps. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 160-171 165 3.3. time of start growing the result of observation the starting time of bud appearace as shown in the appendix 7 and the figure is as below: figure 3: start growing the result of observation data of the beginning time of the shoots is very diverse that is different day, seen in the data of appendix 7. each treatment and replication show different fluctuation. so that the observation data can be known with the average value of the initial time of bud budding buds of oranges from the influence of stem age under 6 months, which gives the average value of the initial time of shoots emerged faster 24 dab, while the time appear shoots are slow 25 dab which is found at the age of rootstock 10 and 12 months. nevertheless, the average centres used with the age of the stems show the very standard shoots appear from the usual budding treatment. growth rate of buds appear there are several factors that influence among others the level of compatibility of rootstock and stem above, which resulted in the distribution of nutrients from the rootstock food will continue to enter the upper stem through a network that has been attached perfectly both through the roots and leaves. according to nahansyah (1990) in sutami and gusti (2009), the difference in the rate of shoot buds is thought to be due to the ability of different plants to form the budding linkage associated with the amount of callus formation speed. according to hartmann and kesler (1983) in sutami and gusti (2009). that the process of callus formation required hormones in sufficient quantities. this hormone serves to begin the process of tissue formation by using carbohydrates and sugars to shoot buds. 3.4. high shoot (cm) the data of observation and analysis of the variation of the influence of the stem age and the budding method on the high parameters of citrus shoots can be seen in (annex 8, 9, 10 and 11) (citrus sp.) interaction of rootstock age and the budding method showed no significant effect and seen independently shows a marked influence (table 2). based on statistical data, the result of statistical analysis shows that the real suitability is consistent with the change cycle of each shoot growth time, at 30 dab the age of the stem does not show any significant effect, then at 35 and 40 dab gives a real effect and at age 45 dab again does not give the effect is real, whereas in the budding method viewed based on the time 30, 35, 40 and 45 dab method showed a real effect. this is because there are several factors that affect the growth of the upper stem against the shoot height, such as the difference in age of the rootstock. table 2 the age of the rootstock / inetrstock showed that at 6 months of age showed higher growth of shoots than the rest of the stem age, then asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 160-171 166 from the two methods used t (t-budding) and the chip-budding method tendency on the chipbudding method. table 2: average of stalk height treatments height of stalk 30 dab 35 dab 40 dab 45 dab u1 u2 u3 u4 u5 0.45 a 0.48 a 0.48 a 0.41 a 0.4 a 1.01 ab 1.05 a 1.01 ab 0.95 ab 0.88 b 1.51 ab 1.6 a 1.55 a 1.46 ab 1.36 b 1.98 a 1.98 a 1.95 a 1.91 a 1.9 a m1 m2 0.36 b 0.53 a 0.85 b 1.11 a 1.36 b 1.64 a 1.8 b 2.13 a notes: average figures of the same coloumn followed by the same letter are not significantly different based on duncan test at 5% figure 4: length of sprout at 45 dab putri et al. (2006) states that there are several factors that affect the growth of the stem on the high shoot, if viewed from the physiology of disruption of the flow of plant growth regulator (zpt) in the plant and disturbed distribution of photosynthesis results, but also the age of rootstock used is still young not yet woody will occur damage at the time of budding, so also the age of the old rootstock will slow growth, whereas in the best method is influenced by technical factors such as the result of incision of onion rod with incision of the top bar (entres) should be appropriate because it will show the marrow between the upper stem and the rootstock through a two-stage process, namely the enlargement or division of new cambium and the formation of vascular tissue (yuniastuti et al., 1992). the occurrence of this discrepancy in buddy rupture shows that the influence of interstock and rootstock in inducing the appearance of stem buds is different or it can be assumed that the abscissic acid content synthesized in young leaves and cytokines is produced by the roots and transported to the tip through the xylem vessels in a state of no balanced, thus causing rupture of different buds (sugiyatno et al., 2013). the results of this study were significantly different from the research (yuniastuti et al., 1992; mohamad et al., 2013) where the top working treatment on the grape shoots did not affect the rate of growth of buds. similarly, in the study of the use of rootstock was an effect on the appearance asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 160-171 167 of buds. in the visible trunk, the interstock is no longer a barrier network but as a connective tissue that facilitates the physiological processes of plants either moving from the bottom up or vice versa. 3.5. stem diameter the data of observation and analysis of the variation of the influence of stem age and the budding method on the orange shoot diameter parameter can be seen in (appendix 12 and 13) the influence of the age of rootstock and orange budding method (citrus sp.) showed no significant effect on shoot bud diameter at all treatment both interactionally and independently (table 3). table 3: average of stalk diameter (dab) treatment stalk diameter 40 dab 45 dab u1 u2 u3 u4 u5 0.15 a 0.16 a 0.16 a 0.11 a 0.11 a 0.2 a 0.2 a 0.2 a 0.16 a 0.15 a m1 m2 0.12 a 0.16 a 0.17 a 0.19 a notes: average figures of the same coloumn followed by the same letter are not significantly different based on duncan test at 5% figure 5: diameter of stalk based on statistical data above indicate that the real match according to the change cycle every time the growth of shoot diameter, while the treatment of rootstock and budding method does not show the real effect either interaction or independently, but from each treatment indicates which results are best, so that at (table 3) the age of the rootstock is best seen at 6 months of age, whereas the method is shown by the chip-budding method. good growth is indicated by the ability of plants to photosynthesize more and the result of photosynthesis (carbohydrates) produced more. carbohydrates produced more ditraslocation through phloem and can be used to spur growth including the expansion of stem cells and is indicated with a wider stem diameter. so it affects the diameter of buds to be not significantly different. this happens because there are several factors that affect, such as entris used, the activity of cambium rootstock and the hormone content of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 160-171 168 rootstock. the use of non-stemed entries can improve the success of budding and shoot diameter. the growth of stem diameter occurs within the intercalar meristem of the segment, the segment extends as a result of an increase in the number of cells. growth due to cell division occurs at the base of the segment (i.e. the intercalcal) and not the end meristem. however, the intercalar meristematic activity is distributed throughout the length of the leaf lamina, leaf sheath, and the segment at the primordia stage, with increased maturity, meristem activity moving to the basal area and then stop (gardner et al., 1991). 3.6. leaf amount the data of observation and analysis of the variation of age influence of rootstock and budding method on orange shoot diameter parameter can be seen at (appendix 14, 15, 16 and 17) the influence of rootstock age and orange budding method (citrus sp.). if seen in the interaction of rootstock age with the budding method showed no significant effect and if independently treatment of rootstock and budding method showed a real effect, the results of statistical analysis on 30, 35, 40 and 45 dab age of rootstock showed a real effect, whereas in the oculation method based on time 30, 35, 40 and 45 dab showed no significant effect, but from each treatment showed which result is best, so that at (table 3) the age of rootstock is best seen at age 6 months , while in the method shown by the method of insip (chip-budding). table 4: average of leaf number treatments number of leaf 30 dab 35 dab 40 dab 45 dab u1 u2 u3 u4 u5 0.66 bc 1.66 a 1.00 ab 0.83 bc 0.16 c 1.16 ab 2.00 a 1.33 ab 0.83 b 0.66 b 1.66 bc 2.66 a 2.16 ab 1.83 bc 1.16 c 2.66 bc 3.66 a 3.00 ab 2.83 bc 2.16 c m1 m2 0.86 a 1.53 a 1.53 a 2.26 a 1.53 a 2,26 a 2.53 a 3.20 a notes: average figures of the same coloumn followed by the same letters are not significantly different based on duncan test at 5% figure 6: number of leaves at 45 dab based on the statistical data above indicate that the real match is consistent with the change cycle every time the growth of the number of leaves, while the treatment of rootstock and budding method does not give a real effect either interaction or independently, but each treatment shows the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 160-171 169 existence the tendency that the treated rootstock treatment is 6 months the average number of leaves more than the other aged rootstock treatment i.e. age 4, 8, 10 and 12 months, while in the budding method used there is one of the most either that is shown on the method of insip (chipbudding). tables 2 and 4 show that high data shoot and leaf number data. leaf growth is closely related to the high buds because the leaves lie in the stem books. the longer the shoot, the more books are formed, so the number of leaves more and more (bansir, 2011) in sugiyatno (2013). the more leaves produced, the better the plant growth because the leaves are the plant organs needed for the absorption and conversion of light energy into growth and produce harvest through photosynthesis (gardner et al., 2008; subandi, 2014). 4. conclusion conclusion based on the results obtained from research the effect of lower stem life and the okulation method to the success of citrus plants (citrus sp.) is summarized as follows: 1. treatment of rootstock and budding method to the success of citrus plants (citrus sp.) did not give ineteraksi on all parameters of observation. 2. treatment of rootstock independently, gave a real effect on the parameters of shoot height and number of leaves, while the diameter of shoots showed no significant effect. 3. treatment of budding method independently, giving a real effect on the shoot height parameters while the number of leaves and shoot diameter showed no significant effect. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references bansir, l. 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(1992). combination of upper and lower stem on grape breeding with okulation. journal of horticulture, 2(1), 19-22. https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=penampilan+pertumbuhan+jeruk+besar+%28citrus+grandis+%28l.%29+osbeck%29+cv.+cikoneng+pada+beberapa+lnterstock&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=pengaruh+umur+batang+bawah+dan+panjang+entris+terhadap+keberhasilan+sambungan+bibit+jeruk+siam+banjar+label+biru&btng= https://doi.org/10.21082/jtidp.v1n2.2014.p95-100 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 192 climate change factors' impact on the egyptian agricultural sector zainab shawky el-khalifaa hoda farouk zahranb ahmed ayoubc a,cproject management and sustainable development, arid lands cultivation research institute, city of scientific research and technological applications, alexandria, egypt. bpollution management department, environment and natural materials research institute, city of scientific research and technological applications, alexandria, egypt.  dr.zainabsh7@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 28 april 2022 revised: 22 july 2022 accepted: 5 august 2022 published: 29 august 2022 keywords climate change carbon dioxide temperature rainfall agriculture gdp unit root tests ardl bound tests. climate change is the greatest threat to agriculture and food security, particularly in developing countries. climate change occurs as co2 levels in the atmosphere rise, causing changes in wind patterns and rainfall and rising temperatures. this study assumes that climate change will have a long-run impact on egypt's agricultural sector. so, an autoregressive distributed lag model (ardl) was applied to examine the effects of climate change factors and other economic factors on egyptian agricultural gdp in the short and long run from 1990 to 2020. the findings indicate that climate change factors have a long-run impact on egypt's agricultural sector. in the long run, co2 is the primary cause of egypt's increasing temperatures. in the short run, climate change occurs because co2 levels in the atmosphere increase, resulting in global warming, storms, floods, and rising sea levels. the result is that rising temperatures have reduced agricultural gdp. contribution/originality: the present study is, according to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first to examine the shortand long-run impacts of climatic factors (temperature, co2, and rainfall) and economic variables on gdp in egypt using the ardl method. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4600 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: zainab shawky el-khalifa --hoda farouk zahran --ahmed ayoub (2022). climate change factors' impact on the egyptian agricultural sector. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3), 192-200. 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4600 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction climate change is a serious threat to agriculture and food security, particularly in many developing countries (chandio, ahsan, & fang, 2020; kilicaslan & dumrul, 2017). climate change also has an impact on agriculture as it results in changes to rainfall and wind patterns, rising temperatures, decreased crop productivity, and changes in planting and harvest dates (el-khalifa, zahran, & elsheikh, 2018; rosegrant et al., 2008). in addition, agriculture plays a critical role in ensuring food security. for the majority of rural communities, it represents a significant source of income (chandio et al., 2020). furthermore, the agriculture sector contributes to increasing gdp by supplying raw materials, creating jobs in the industrial sector, and providing foreign exchange that contributes to economic development (malr, 2021). to accommodate the rapid population growth, agriculture production should be expanded. as a result, egypt has pursued two main strategies: the reclamation of vast desert areas to become productive land and intensive cultivation of existing productive land using high-tech management techniques (abdel-rahman, afifi, & scopa, 2021). climate change is caused by a rise in carbon dioxide (co2) levels in the atmosphere (kilicaslan & dumrul, 2017). co2 is the main greenhouse gas (ghg) emitted by human activities, including the use of fossil fuels for energy, such as coal and oil, as well as transportation, electricity, and industry (rahim & puay, 2017; rehman, asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 3 (2022): 192-200. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1000-0066 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6547-128x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5061-085x http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 192-200 193 ozturk, & zhang, 2019). co2 emissions account for more than half of ghg emissions, which may be linked to significant climate change impacts such as global warming, storms, floods, and rising sea levels (yang, ali, nazir, ullah, & qayyum, 2020). according to the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc), co2 is the primary cause of global warming and will raise average global temperatures by about 0.3°c per decade over the next century (el-khalifa, el-sheikh, & zahran, 2020; kim, 2012). likewise, according to ar5 climate change (2014), if no further mitigation efforts are made, the average global temperature will have risen by 3.5°c by 2100. carbon dioxide emissions have thus emerged as an economic and environmental challenge on a global scale (garidzirai, 2020). moreover, increasing temperatures cause changes in the rainfall system. rainfall increases can cause soil moisture levels to rise, which is of benefit to semi-arid soils but can exacerbate problems in others. on the other hand, a decrease in rainfall may cause a water crisis in the agricultural sector (rahim & puay, 2017). the agriculture sector itself contributes 14%–30% of global greenhouse gas emissions due to the use of fuel-powered agricultural equipment (rehman et al., 2019). obviously, climate change may lead to significant economic losses, as is currently happening around the world; it has increased the frequency of natural disasters, such as floods, storms, and drought. climate change is endangering food production and future food supply, especially given the world's rapid population growth and food demand (rabbi & tabassum, 2020; rehman et al., 2019), which contribute to an increase in co2 emissions over time. additionally, climate change will affect global agricultural commodity prices (kilicaslan & dumrul, 2017). moreover, onyeji and fischer (1994) pointed out that global warming happens over time due to the steady accumulation of greenhouse gases, particularly co2, in the atmosphere, which is expected to reach approximately 660 parts per million (ppm) by the year 2030. in 2020, the global average co2 level was 412.5 ppm. despite a 7% decrease in emissions due to covid-19, this is the fifth highest increase in 63 years (noaa, 2020; wmo, 2020). climate change has already had a negative impact on egypt's agriculture sector. it is considered one of the countries most susceptible to the potential effects of climate change (el raey & book, 2010). climate change has resulted in abrupt shifts in climatic factors, such as extremely cold winters, long and extremely hot summers, and unseasonal rains. climate change has resulted in a shortage of agricultural crops, particularly strategic crops such as wheat, maize, and rice, as well as significant water loss in arid to semiarid environments. it endangers both water and food security (ema, 2021; malr, 2021). the objectives of this research are twofold. first, it examines the effects of climate change factors and other economic factors on egyptian agricultural gdp from 1990 to 2020 to assist egyptian policymakers in predicting and preparing for the long-run effects of climate change factors on agriculture. secondly, the study hypothesis assumes that climate change will have a long-run impact on egypt's agricultural sector. therefore, an autoregressive distributed lag model (ardl) is used to verify this assumption and obtain accurate parameters. furthermore, this study adds to the existing literature, although there is limited literature (if any) that examines the shortand long-run impacts of climatic factors (temperature, co2, and rainfall) and other economic variables on gdp in egypt using the ardl method to aid in the identification of the most important factors affecting developing countries' agricultural sectors, which have to play a role in mitigating the negative effects of global climate change. the current investigation is distinct from previous studies in this regard. 2. literature review in egypt, the agricultural sector contributed about 71.8% to the gdp in 2020. it is one of the most important sectors in the pursuit of economic development. climate change's impact on agriculture is a major source of concern for economic development as climate change is a severe threat to agriculture and the food supply. in recent years, several studies conducted in various countries, such as turkey, china, pakistan, india, and malaysia, have confirmed that climate change has a negative impact on all economic sectors. however, agriculture is the most susceptible to climate change. these studies concentrated on climate change for the purpose of developing policies, strategies, plans, and programs to combat climate change. farmers should be made aware of the need to adapt to climate change by encouraging a shift toward agricultural output products that can withstand temperature increases. in china, chandio et al. (2020) showed that climate factors such as changes in temperature and rainfall have a negative impact on agriculture, while co2 emissions have a positive impact. others have reported that rainfall has a positive impact on agricultural gdp. furthermore, many studies have applied the ardl model to examine the effects of climate change factors on agriculture, crop yield, economic growth, and environmental sustainability in both the long run and the short run. kilicaslan and dumrul (2017) reported that precipitation has a positive impact on agricultural output in turkey, whereas the effect of temperature is negative. rahim and puay (2017) investigated the relationship between malaysian economic growth and climate change using the johansen cointegration approach. also, alam (2013) investigated the response of agricultural output to climate change and its long-run impact on economic growth in india. using an ardl model, the study showed that co2 emitted, economic growth, and agricultural output have shortand long-run relationships. furthermore, in pakistan, rehman et al. (2019) used an ardl approach and found that cropped area, water availability, and gdp per capita had positive and significant relationships with carbon dioxide emitted, whereas the increased distribution of seeds and total food grain production had a negative relationship with carbon dioxide emitted. also, previous research has found that climate change could cause a variety of socioeconomic issues, including poverty, decreased economic growth, unsustainable development, and health and safety concerns. temperature and rainfall have been considered the two most significant climate change markers for agricultural output and have been shown to have an impact on agricultural gdp and income growth in some developed countries, such as the united states (abdel-rahman et al., 2021; akadiri, alola, alola, & nwambe, 2020; el raey & book, 2010; kilicaslan & dumrul, 2017). likewise, some studies have been conducted to determine how co2 emissions affect agricultural crops, and how, on the other hand, energy consumption affects co2 emissions (akadiri et al., 2020; alam, 2013; chandio et al., 2020; kim., 2020; onyeji & fischer, 1994; yang et al., 2020). they have confirmed that reducing co2 emissions asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 192-200 194 is necessary to achieve long-run economic development. climate change, in general, affects people all over the world. so all countries should be ready to deal with the long-run consequences of climate change. using the ardl model enables the long-run and short-run influences of climatic factors on gdp to be examined while controlling for certain variables, such as cultivated areas and agricultural investment. 3. research methods & data sources used using the ardl model, previous studies have shown that climate change forecasts negatively impact crop yield, agriculture, economic growth, and environmental sustainability in many countries. in this study, therefore, the ardl model was used to examine the effects of climate change factors on egypt's agricultural gdp (agdp). the ardl model was used to estimate relationships among variables in the short and long run using the eviews 12 program. the ardl is a cointegration test model that is used to solve spurious regression problems that arise when the time series of variables are non-stationary. it can be used to test cointegration, longand short-run equilibrium relationships, as well as both levels and differences (sarkodie & owusu, 2020). the ardl model was introduced by pesaran and shin (1999); pesaran, shin, and smith (2001). it has many advantages, such as being appropriate and efficient for small data sets and when variables are integrated at levels i(0) or first difference i(1) or both, but not i(2), with no autocorrelation or heteroscedasticity (shrestha & bhatta, 2018). compared to other cointegration methods, such as engle and granger cointegration (engle & granger, 1987) and johansen and juselius cointegration (johansen & juselius, 1990), they are integrated at the same order. furthermore, once the ardl cointegration test confirms the long-run cointegration relationship, the short-run coefficients between variables can be estimated using the ardl error correction model (ecm) (kilicaslan & dumrul, 2017; nkoro & uko, 2016). the following formula can be used to specify the ardl model that reflects the effect of variables on agdp: ln agdpt = β0 + β1 lnco2t + β2 lntempt + β3 lnrft + β4 lnainvett + β5 lncat + εt (1) where ln agdpt: is the natural logarithm of agricultural gross domestic product at time t. lnco2t: is the natural logarithm of carbon dioxide emissions at time t. lntempt: is the natural logarithm of average annual temperature at time t. lnrft: is the natural logarithm of average annual rainfall at time t. lnainvett: is the natural logarithm of agricultural investment at time t. lncat: is the natural logarithm of cultivated area at time t. εt: is the error term at time t. β1,2,3,4,5: are the parameters of the independent variables. β0: is the intercept term. first, the ardl model investigates the existence of long-run cointegration between the variables under consideration. the ardl model is defined by the equation below: △ln agdpt = α0 + ∑ α1k ∆lnagdpt-k 𝜌 𝑘=1 + ∑ α2k ∆lnco2t-k 𝜌 𝑘=0 + ∑ α3k ∆lntempt-k 𝜌 𝑘=0 + ∑ α4k ∆lnrft-k 𝜌 𝑘=0 + ∑ α5k ∆lnainvestt-k 𝜌 𝑘=0 + ∑ α6k ∆lncat-k 𝜌 𝑘=0 + β1ln agdpt-1 + β2 lnco2t-1 + β3 lntempt-1 + β4lnrft-1 + β5lnainvett-1 + β6lncat-1+εt (2) where α0 represents the intercept, α1, α2, α3, α4, α5, and α6 represent the short-run relationships, β1, β2, β3, β4, β5, and β6 represent the long-run relationships, ρ indicates the lag order, △ denotes the first difference operator, t-1 represents time lag, and εt indicates the error term. the f-bound test is used to evaluate a long-run relationship. the null hypothesis h0 means that there is no cointegration between ln agdp and the variables in the long run, whereas the alternative hypothesis h1 means that there is cointegration between ln agdp and the variables in the long run. following narayan (2005) and pesaran et al. (2001), the calculated f-statistic is compared to critical values at upper bound i(1) and lower bound i(0). if the calculated f-statistic (or t-statistic) exceeds critical values, h0 is rejected, indicating that there is a long-run cointegration relationship between the variables; however, if the calculated fstatistic (or t-statistic) does not exceed critical values, h1 is rejected, indicating that there is no cointegration. if the calculated f-statistic (or t-statistic) lies between the lower and upper bounds, the cointegration between the variables is inconclusive. second, after the bound test confirms the existence of a long-run relationship, the short-run coefficients and the following ecm in the ardl model are estimated by the next equation: △ln agdpt = α0 + ∑ α1k ∆lnagdpt-k 𝜌 𝑘=1 + ∑ α2k ∆lnco2t-k 𝜌 𝑘=0 + ∑ α3k ∆lntempt-k 𝜌 𝑘=0 + ∑ α4k ∆lnrft-k 𝜌 𝑘=0 ∑ α5k ∆lnainvestt-k 𝜌 𝑘=0 + ∑ α6k ∆lncat-k 𝜌 𝑘=0 + λecmt-1+ εt (3) where λ represents the speed of adjustment (error correction model), which should be negative and statistically significant (granger, 1988; khan, abdullah, & samsudin, 2016). it measures the speed with which the dependent variables and independent variables balance from the short run to the long run. then, using the cumulative sum and cumulative sum of squares of residuals, the stability of the ardl model is investigated. when both cusum and cusumsq statistically fall within critical limits at 5% significance, stability is achieved (borensztein, de gregorio, & lee, 1998; granger, 1988). furthermore, after estimating the ardl model, some diagnostic tests are performed to ensure the accuracy of coefficient estimates, such as the breusch-godfrey serial correlation (lm test) to detect autocorrelation (godfrey, 1978), the normality test using (jarque & bera, 1980), and the breusch-pagan-godfrey test to detect heteroscedasticity (engle, 1982). this study is based on published data spanning the period 1990 to 2020. the data were obtained from the egyptian ministry of agriculture and lands reclamation, ministry of planning and economic development (mped), the world development indicators (wdi) of the world bank, the food and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 192-200 195 agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), www.tutiempo.net/clima, and previous studies on the subject. the data and sources are listed in table 1. table 1. data description and sources. data description source agdp agricultural gross domestic product (constant 1990 l.e. million) mped co2 carbon dioxide emissions (metric tons per capita) wdi temp average annual temperature (°c) tutiempo rf average annual rainfall (mm) tutiempo ainvest agricultural investment (constant 1990 l.e. million) mped ca cultivated area (hectares) fao 3. results 3.1. descriptive statistics of variables egypt's climate is generally characterized by arid and semiarid conditions with little precipitation during the winter season. egypt's rainfall is generally low, except for the northern coastal region. climate change has recently contributed to an increase in rainfall. this may aid semi-arid soils in some areas by increasing soil moisture, particularly in northern egypt, where rain-fed agriculture is prevalent. however, it has caused environmental disasters such as torrential downpours in other parts of egypt, including cairo, alexandria, giza, dakahlia, and aswan (ema, 2021). these effects have occurred as the result of rising temperatures worldwide, as well as in egypt, as a result of higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere – the cause of global warming. high temperatures also have negative impacts on the physiological processes of cultivated plants and the biological activities in the soil (el-marsafawy, bakr, elbana, & el-ramady, 2019). as a result, it is critical to investigate climatic factors and their impacts on the egyptian agricultural sector. agricultural gross domestic product (agdp) is a dependent variable. during the study period, it accounted for approximately 71.3 % of gdp (real value). this means that the agriculture sector is the most important in the egyptian economy because it provides employment, raw materials, foreign exchange, and food security (malr, 2021). carbon dioxide emissions, average annual temperature, average annual rainfall (climate factors), agricultural investment, and cultivated areas (economic factors) are the independent variables. they represent the vast majority of the factors that influence the agricultural sector and can help in its development. they were not stable during the study period, as shown in figure 1. table 2 shows the descriptive statistics of the climate change factors and economic variables that have an impact on agricultural gross domestic product (agdp) from 1990 to 2020. figure 1 depicts the time series plots of the study variables. table 2 provides some indicators to explain the development of the variables over the study period. additionally, the jarque-bera statistics show that all variables, except agricultural investment and cultivated area, are normally distributed. kurtosis is moderate, and the variables are free from outliers. furthermore, the variables are negatively skewed, except for agricultural gross domestic product, agricultural investment, and temperature, which are positively skewed. table 2. descriptive statistics of variables during 1990-2020. variables mean median maximum minimum std. dev skewness kurtosis jarque-bera ln agdp 6.296 6.059 8.275 4.605 1.075 0.278 1.972 1.763 ln co2 0.691 0.754 0.997 0.347 0.212 -0.163 1.392 3.476 ln temp 3.089 3.086 3.247 2.960 0.073 0.024 2.075 1.109 ln rf 0.626 0.747 2.355 -2.059 1.077 -0.381 2.596 0.962 ln ainvest 5.521 5.233 7.728 4.605 0.845 1.778 4.874 20.87*** ln ca 15.047 15.075 15.167 14.787 0.099 -1.120 3.712 7.14** notes: ln indicates the natural logarithmic of variables. ** and *** indicate the 5% and 1% statistical significance levels, respectively. 3.2. stationarity tests the ardl cointegration approach is adequate if the variables are stationary in the case of i(0), i(1), or a mixed integration order. in this study, the augmented dickey-fuller (adf) (dickey & fuller, 1979), phillips-perron (pp) (perron, 1988), and kwiatkowski-phillips-schmidt-and-shin (kpss) (kwiatkowski, phillips, schmidt, & shin, 1992) unit root tests were used to determine the stationarity of the variables (sarkodie & owusu, 2020). the null hypothesis h0 assumes that a unit root exists (the variable is non-stationary), and the alternate hypothesis h1 assumes there is no unit root (the variable is stationary). table 3 shows that the variables agdp, co2, temp, and ainvet were stable at the first difference, whereas the variables rf and ca were stable at the 0 level. this means that given the combination of i(0) and i(1) at 1% and 5% significance, all variables are stationary and the ardl model can be used to show a strong long-run relationship among the variables in this study. . asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 192-200 196 figure 1. eviews 12 – outputs of variables time series plots. table 3. results of unit root tests. variables adf pp kpss unit root ln agdp -4.074** -4.085** 0.0941* at first difference ln co2 -4.519*** -4.519*** 0.1217* at first difference ln temp -6.611*** -6.627*** 0.2024* at first difference ln rf -6.609*** -6.609*** 0.1053* at level ln ainvest -4.899*** -4.899*** 0.2667* at first difference ln ca -3.629** -3.871** 0.1876*** at level notes: the lag order selection according to the (sic) schwarz information criterion. adf refers to augmented dickey-fuller, pp refers to phillipsperron, and kpss refers to kwiatkowski-phillipsschmidt–shin. *, **, and *** indicate the 10%, 5%, and 1% statistical significance levels. 3.3. ardl model & bounds tests using the optimal lag, bounds tests were applied with critical values and a p-value to test for cointegration (sarkodie & owusu, 2020). the results in table 4 show that the calculated value of the f-statistic is 6.786 and the t-statistic value is 7.259. the results of the bounds test using the selected ardl (1,2,0,1,0,2) model thus exceed the critical values at the 1% significance level. these test results show that the variables have a long-run cointegration relationship in which ln agdp is the dependent variable and ln co2, ln temp, ln rf, ln ainvest, and ln ca are independent variables. in table 5, the ardl model was used to calculate the long-run and short-run results. in the long run, the amount of co2 emitted has a significant and positive impact on agricultural gdp. a 1% increase in emitted co2 leads to an increase in agricultural gdp of 2.91%. furthermore, the coefficient of agricultural investment in egypt has a significant (at the 1%) and positive impact on agdp in the long run. this indicates that a 1% increase in agricultural investment increases agricultural gdp by 0.422% in the long run. on the other hand, the negative temperature coefficient indicates that a 1% increase in temperature results in a 2.19% decrease in agdp, a statistic that is significant at the 5% level. in the short run, the co2 emitted coefficient has a positive impact that is significant at the 1% level. a 1% increase in co2 emitted leads to a 0.725% increase in agricultural gdp. furthermore, the coefficients of agricultural investment and cultivated area have a positive short-run impact on agdp that is significant at the 1% level. this indicates that a 1% increase in agricultural investment and cultivated areas contributes to a 0.105% and 0.96% increase in agricultural 4 5 6 7 8 9 90 95 00 05 10 15 20 agdp 14.7 14.8 14.9 15.0 15.1 15.2 90 95 00 05 10 15 20 ca 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 90 95 00 05 10 15 20 co2 4 5 6 7 8 90 95 00 05 10 15 20 invest -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 90 95 00 05 10 15 20 rf 2.95 3.00 3.05 3.10 3.15 3.20 3.25 90 95 00 05 10 15 20 temp asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 192-200 197 gdp, respectively. in contrast, the negative temperature coefficient indicates that a 1% increase in temperature results in a 0.598% decrease in agricultural gdp, which is significant at the 1% level. in addition, table 5 shows the importance of the short-run results as represented in the coefficient of error correction model ecm to investigate cointegrating relationships among the variables (jalil, mahmood, & idrees, 2013; kilicaslan & dumrul, 2017). the ecm coefficient was negative and statistically significant at 1%. this confirmed the cointegration between the variables, and the model is corrected from short-run to long-run equilibrium by -0.249. this means any disequilibria in agdp from the previous period converge back by about 24.9% in the next period. table 4. ardl bounds tests. f-statistic significance levels i(0) bound i(1) bound 6.786*** 10% 2.26 3.35 5% 2.62 3.79 2.5% 2.96 4.18 1% 3.41 4.68 t-statistic significance levels i(0) bound i(1) bound -7.259*** 10% -2.57 -3.86 5% -2.86 -4.19 2.5% -3.13 -4.46 1% -3.43 -4.79 notes: *** indicates significance at the 1% level. table 5. ardl model in the long and short run. dependent variable: ln agdp; selected model: ardl (1,2,0,1,0,2) long-run coefficients t-statistic ln co2 2.909 3.997*** ln temp -2.195 -2.729** ln rf 0.019 0.694 ln ainvest 0.422 10.06*** ln ca 2.936 1.671 short-run ln co2 0.725 4.255*** △ln temp -0.598 -3.494*** ln rf 0.005 0.702 ln ainvest 0.105 3.948*** △ ln ca 0.957 3.203*** ecm(-1) -0.249*** notes: ** and *** indicate the 5% and 1% statistical significance levels, respectively. 3.4. diagnostics & stability tests table 6 shows that several tests, including heteroskedasticity, lm, and jarque-bera tests were used to assess the quality of residuals from the selected ardl model. the results showed that the model is free from autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity. furthermore, they confirm the normal distribution of the residuals. moreover, the model has a high adjusted r-squared value. finally, to investigate the parameter stability of the ardl (1,2,0,1,0,2) model, this study used tests for cumulative sum and cumulative sum of squares to validate the long-run stability parameters of the variables (pesaran & pesaran, 1997). both cusum and cusumsq statistically fall within critical limits at 5% significance, as shown in figures 2 and 3. as a result, the stability of the selected ardl (1,2,0,1,0,2) model is confirmed; the estimated coefficients of the variables are stable throughout the study period. table 6. residual diagnostics for ardl (1,2,0,1,0,2) model. tests χ2 (p-value) adjusted r-squared 0.998 f-statistic 12.66*** breusch-pagan-godfrey h test 1.376 (0.268) breusch-godfrey lm test 1.113 (0.354) normality test (jarque-bera) 2.822 (0.244) notes: χ2 is the chi-squared, and the p-value is the probability value. lm: serial correlation lagrange multiplier test; h: heteroskedasticity test. *** indicates the 1% significance level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 192-200 198 figure 2. plot of cusum test. figure 3. plot of cusumsq test. 4. discussion & conclusion this research has examined the effects of climate change factors and relevant economic factors on egyptian agdp from 1990 to 2020. egypt was chosen as a case study because the agriculture sector remains the backbone of the egyptian economy, representing approximately 71.3 % of gdp during the study period. furthermore, it is considered one of the countries most susceptible to the potential effects of climate change. in this study, the ardl model was used as the econometric method. the ardl bounds test confirms the variables' long-run equilibrium. the long-run and short-run coefficients were then estimated using ardl-ecm. in the long run, co2 levels will rise, leading to higher temperatures, which will have a negative impact on egypt's agriculture sector, particularly in arid and semiarid areas where rising temperatures cause soil evaporation, leading to increased salinity and land degradation. these findings agree with the majority of prior studies in other countries, such as alam (2013), who demonstrated, using the ardl model, that there is a negative relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions in india, while there is a positive relationship between economic growth and agricultural output. furthermore, using the johansen cointegration approach, rahim and puay (2017) discovered a long-run cointegration between malaysia's gdp and its arable land, precipitation, and temperature. furthermore, using the ardl model, rehman et al. (2019) confirmed that in pakistan, there is a positive long-run relationship between energy consumption, water availability, cropped areas, fertilizer consumption, gdp per capita, and carbon dioxide emissions, using the ardl model. agricultural investment is expected to rise. egypt intends to implement projects relating to vertical expansion and the development of plant varieties adapted to extreme climatic conditions, as well as modern irrigation projects relating to production requirements, according to the ministry of agriculture. in the short run, co2 levels in the atmosphere have increased as a result of human activities including the use of fossil fuels, which has caused significant changes to the climate, including global warming, storms, floods, and rising sea levels. the rise in temperatures has resulted in a decrease in agricultural gdp. this result is consistent with kilicaslan and dumrul (2017), who found that rising temperatures have a negative impact on agricultural gdp in turkey. according to the ipcc, co2 is the main cause of rising average global temperatures, which are expected to have risen by 3.5°c by 2100 (el-khalifa et al., 2020; kim, 2012). this rise in temperatures has already resulted in a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 192-200 199 decrease in crop productivity, particularly in arid and semi-arid areas that suffer from a lack of water and fertility, resulting, in turn, in an increase in the size of the food gap to approximately 67.7% due to egypt’s rapid population growth. this is consistent with onyeji and fischer (1994), who predicted that rising co2 levels in the atmosphere would have a negative impact on agriculture in egypt and that these negative effects would have a broader economic impact in certain scenarios. also, el raey and book (2010) expected that global warming would cause water shortages in egypt resulting in an increase in the severity and frequency of heat waves, as well as the severity and frequency of sand and dust storms. furthermore, rising temperatures cause soil evaporation, which increases soil salinity; nearly 35% of egypt's agricultural lands are salinized. recently, egypt has prioritized land reclamation through horizontal expansion projects such as the new delta project and other projects in north and central sinai. in combination with projects in agricultural manufacturing, packaging, export, export stations, and urban communities, this has resulted in an increase in agricultural investment. in consequence, egypt's cultivated areas have increased by 3.44 million hectares in the short run. furthermore, food prices are expected to rise globally, including in egypt, as a result of lower yields caused by climate change, and income is expected to fall. moreover, it has been demonstrated that climate change has a negative impact on land degradation. this is supported by the findings of abdel-rahman et al. (2021) in kafr el-sheikh governorate, egypt, who identified four major deterioration risks: water-logging, soil compaction, salinization, and alkalization. also, previous studies using the ardl model have confirmed that emitted co2 has a positive effect on agdp and that temperature decreases cause a decrease in agricultural gdp in china in both the long and the short run (chandio et al., 2020). furthermore, akadiri et al. (2020) and garidzirai (2020) pointed out using the ardl model that energy use for consumption and production activities, as well as population growth, have positive impacts on emitted carbon dioxide and thus increase environmental degradation, whereas carbon taxes reduce carbon emissions. meanwhile, kim (2020) pointed out that in the long run, urbanization and economic growth contribute to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, whereas nuclear energy and renewable energy contribute to a decrease in these emissions. climate change affects all sectors of development in egypt, but especially water supplies and agricultural resources in arid to semi-arid environments. the egyptian government is aware of these challenges, and they were incorporated into its vision 2030. confronting or adapting to climate change might take the form of proposing projects aimed at mitigating it. furthermore, using environmentally friendly irrigation systems that produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, such as using solar energy to power underground wells or water pumps, is one way to mitigate the effects of climate change. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdel-rahman, m. a., afifi, a. a., & scopa, a. 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(2020). financial instability and co2 emissions: cross-country evidence. air quality, atmosphere & health, 13(4), 459-468.available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-020-00809-7. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 230 technical efficiency and the factors that affect it in rice production in indonesia muhardia effendyb adepartment of agrotechnology, agriculture faculty of tadulako university, palu, indonesia. bdepartment of agriculture economics, agriculture faculty of tadulako university, palu, indonesia.  muhardi_hasanuddin@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 24 may 2021 revised: 30 june 2021 accepted: 2 august 2021 published: 26 august 2021 keywords organic rice yields in lowlands rice farmers rice cultivation efficiency inefficiency. most of the population of asia depends on consuming rice to support their lives. this implies that rice production needs attention. the existence of inefficiencies in lowland rice production could reduce rice yields for consumption, so the measurement of technical efficiency in lowland rice production needed to be studied. this research aimed to analyze the level of technical efficiency in lowland rice cultivation and identify the factors affecting it. the research was done in the palolo and torue subdistrict of indonesia. the number of samples used was 249 lowland rice farmlands, consisting of 106 and 143 farmers of organic and inorganic lowland rice cultivation, respectively. the results show that land, fertilizer, seeds, and labor had a positive and significant effect on lowland rice production. the average technical efficiency of lowland rice cultivation was around 78.2%. the results also show that manager education, extension contacts, superior seeds, and organic lowland rice cultivation have a significant effect on the level of technical efficiency in lowland rice production. we concluded that there is an opportunity for farmers to increase lowland rice yields if they can manage production factors in an efficient manner. the government could provide support for farmers, such as formal and informal education, extension, superior seeds, and ready-to-use organic materials. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the existing literature on the development of organic rice, thus requiring knowledge of the concept of efficiency. the concept of efficiency played an important role in increasing the organic rice yield and was widely recognized by researchers and policymakers. the study findings will be used to improve opportunities for farmers to increase lowland rice yields. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.113.230.235 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: muhardi --effendy (2021). technical efficiency and the factors that affect it in rice production in indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3), 230-235. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.113.230.235 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 3 (2021): 230-235 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1630-532x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0490-3122 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.113.230.235 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 230-235 231 1. introduction global rice consumption has increased parallel with the increase in global population, as is the case in indonesia. there, rapid population increase has demanded the availability of rice in sufficient quantities, adequate quality, and with rapid cultivation time. this need has encouraged the emergence of a modern agricultural system characterized by a high dependence on fertilizers and pesticides containing synthetic chemicals (cui et al., 2020; suhardianto, baliwati, & sukandar, 2007). the use of chemical inputs, however, will reduce the level of soil fertility, decrease biodiversity, and increase attacks on pests, diseases, and weeds (zhao et al., 2016). another negative impact is contamination of agricultural products by chemical materials which, in turn. will have a negative impact on human health (navaranjan et al., 2013; slusky et al., 2012). public awareness of the dangers to health and the environment has caused a shift in cultivation to an organic system (al-taie, rahal, al-sudani, & al-farsi, 2015). organic farming has become part of recent efforts to promote agricultural systems that are both socially and ecologically sustainable (cabusora et al., 2021; chouichom & yamao, 2010). when organic rice in indonesia was starting to be developed, it was affected by a number of factors. one of the key factors was the public's need for the types of food that provide good health. farmers began to restructure rice production according to changing market needs. the increasing demand for organic rice not only promoting healthy foods, but also allowed for environmental protection. the development of organic rice in indonesia was still being managed using low-yield agricultural technology, so it was necessary to identify productivity behavior and its components. organic rice production could be made more efficient by achieving enhanced output at current input levels, which could be done by identifying productivity behavior and its components. the concept of efficiency plays an important role in increasing organic rice yield and is widely recognized by both researchers and policymakers. this research aimed to assess resource productivity and evaluate the technical efficiency of organic and inorganic rice production, and determine the main factors affecting technical efficiency (te). 2. materials and methods 2.1. description of the research area and techniques of data collection the research was done in central sulawesi, indonesia, which is located between 20 22 n and 30 48' s and between 1190 22' and 1240 22' e. this province has land at various heights above sea level: 0–100 m, 20.2%; 100–500 m, 27.2%; 501–1000 m, 26.7%; and <1,001 m, 25.9%. central sulawesi comprises 12 regencies and one city with a total area of 61,841.29 km2. the temperature in this province ranges from 27 to 28 0c and annual rainfall is 71.7– 217.8 mm (bps, 2018). this research used cross-sectional data from lowland rice farmer households. primary data were collected using a questionnaire from may to august 2020. data on production input and output collected included: harvested area, fertilizer, number of seeds, labor, and amount of rice. also, variables that resulted in variations in technical efficiency in lowland rice production were also collected, including manager's age, gender, and education, extension contacts, number of family members, types of seed used, and the lowland rice cultivation system applied. the research location was selected purposively in palolo and torue subdistricts because these were found to be organic lowland rice cultivation regions. the numbers of samples used were based on 249 lowland rice cultivation farms. the samples of organic lowland rice cultivation were selected purposively, being taken from 106 farmers, with 143 farmers randomly selected for samples of inorganic lowland rice cultivation. 2.2. specification of the empirical model the methodological tool used to achieve the objectives of this research was stochastic frontier analysis. stochastic production frontier measures business efficiency, which is affected by factors outside the farmer's control because it can be taken into account as the inefficiency of these factors and errors during measurement. lowland rice production in the research area was likely to be affected by several factors beyond the farmer's control, such as natural disasters and pests; besides that, measurement errors could not be avoided. based on this, we used the stochastic production frontier to achieve our research objectives. we used the cobb–douglas model of stochastic production frontier (1 and 2) described by coelli, rao, and battese (1998): 𝑙𝑛𝑞𝑖 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑙𝑛𝑥𝑖 + 𝑣𝑖 − 𝑢𝑖 (1) or 𝑞𝑖 = 𝑒𝑥𝑝(𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑙𝑛𝑥𝑖). 𝑒𝑥𝑝(𝑣𝑖). 𝑒𝑥𝑝(−𝑢𝑖) (2) where qi represents the output of the ith cultivation; xi is the input from the ith cultivation; β is the parameter to be estimated; vi is a statistical disturbance; and ui reflects the technical inefficiency of lowland rice cultivation. the measure of technical efficiency (te) is the ratio of observed output to stochastic frontier output (3): 𝑇𝐸𝑖 = 𝑞𝑖 𝑒𝑥𝑝(𝑥𝑖𝛽+𝑣𝑖) = 𝑒𝑥𝑝(𝑥𝑖𝛽+𝑣𝑖−𝑢𝑖) 𝑒𝑥𝑝(𝑥𝑖𝛽+𝑣𝑖) = 𝑒𝑥𝑝(−𝑢𝑖) (3) te values range between zero and one. te of lowland rice production in central sulawesi was measured by considering the output obtained per farmer as the dependent variable. the yield of lowland rice cultivation was measured in tonnes. the independent variable is the production input used by farmers in lowland rice cultivation, so the formula (4) is written as follows: ln 𝑌 = 𝛽0 + ∑ 𝛽𝑗𝑙𝑛𝑋𝑖𝑗 + 𝑣𝑖 − 𝑢𝑖 5 𝑖=1 (4) where: y = rice produced (tonnes) by the ith farmer. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 230-235 232 x1 = lowland rice harvested area (ha) by the ith farmer. x2 = number of fertilizer (kg) used by the ith farmer. x3 = number of lowland rice seeds (kg) used by the ith farmer. x4 = number of labor (days of people work) used by the ith farmer. technical inefficiency (ui) can be defined in the following equation 5: 𝑢𝑖 = 𝜆0 + ∑ 𝜆𝑘𝑍𝑗𝑘 7 𝑘=1 (5) z1 = manager's age (years); z2 = manager's gender (1 if male, 0 otherwise); z3 = manager's education (years); z4 = extension contacts (frequency); z5 = number of family members (soul); z6 = superior seeds (1 if the seed is superior, 0 otherwise); and z7 = organic lowland rice cultivation (1 if organic, 0 otherwise). 3. results and discussion 3.1. factors in lowland rice production the parameter estimations of the cobb–douglas model stochastic production frontier are presented in table 1. table-1. parameter estimation of the cobb–douglas production function. variable maximum likelihood estimate parameter coefficient standard error intercept β0 4.377 0.165 lnland β1 0.183** 0.051 lnfertilizer β2 0.211** 0.043 lnseed β3 0.196** 0.040 lnlabor β4 0.345** 0.055 sigma squared vi 0.025** 0.003 gamma ui 0.965** 0.010 log likelihood function 240.054 lr test of one-sided error 415.140** mean efficiency 0.782 = 78.2% note: ** significant at α 1%. table 1 shows that the four variables considered in the production function (land, fertilizer, seed, and labor) had a significant effect in explaining variations in rice production at the farming level. the four variables considered were positive and significant at the 1% level. this suggested that land, fertilizer, seed, and labor are still important in explaining lowland rice production in the research area. given that the form of the production function is cobb– douglas, the coefficient value directly reflect its elasticity. the positive production elasticity from land, fertilizer, seed, and labor indicated that each increase in these variables would increase the yield of lowland rice. with the increase in land allocation for lowland rice, the numbers of fertilizer and seed applications, and labor by 1% each, lowland rice production could increase by 0.18, 0.21, 0.20, and 0.35%, respectively. this research is in line with that of effendy (2010), antara and effendy (2018), and geffersa, agbola, and mahmood (2019), who stated that land, fertilizer, seed, and labor were important production factors supporting lowland rice yields. 3.2. te the average technical efficiency achieved by farmers in lowland rice production in the research area was 0.782. this suggested that the average productivity achieved was 78.2% of the frontier, namely the maximum productivity that could be achieved with the best management system at that time. the distribution of lowland rice farmers according to the level of technical efficiency can be seen in figure 1. figure-1. technical efficiency. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 230-235 233 figure 1 shows that the level of technical efficiency of organic lowland rice farmers was higher than that of inorganic lowland rice farmers. the level of technical efficiency of organic lowland rice farmers ranged from 0.6 to 0.99, and for inorganic lowland rice farmers from 0.3 to 0.99. the proportion of farmers who were close to the frontier (te ~1) was around 24% while those below 0.6 was around 13%, showing that there was still an opportunity for farmers to increase productivity with the resources at their disposal. to achieve this, better managerial skills were required. mastery of information and decision making in managing production factors had to be improved. farmers who had a technical efficiency level close to 1 had little chance to increase productivity. to increase the productivity of farmers, more advanced technological innovations were needed than existing ones. 3.3. the determinant of te the stochastic production frontier estimation results in table 1 show a gamma value of 0.965 and significant at the 1% level, reflecting that random errors that could not be explained in the production function model could be explained in the inefficiency function. the variables that were thought to affect the te of lowland rice cultivation are listed in table 2. table-2. parameters estimated to affect te. variable parameter coefficient standard error constant λ0 0.818 0.085 manager's age λ1 0.000 0.002 manager's gender λ2 0.002 0.004 manager's education λ3 -0.020** 0.007 extension contact λ4 -0.068** 0.017 number of family members λ5 0.010 0.007 superior seed λ6 -0.036** 0.008 organic lowland rice cultivation λ7 -0.098** 0.045 note: ** significant at α 1%. table 2 shows that, of the seven variables thought to affect technical efficiency, only four were significant, namely manager's education, extension contact, superior seed, and organic lowland rice cultivation. the coefficient of these variables was negative and significant at the 1% level, implying that improving these variables would increase technical efficiency in lowland rice production. the results showed that the level of manager's education had a significant effect on the level of technical efficiency of lowland rice cultivation; the education coefficient had a negative and significant effect at the 1% level. this meant that farmers with higher education attained relatively higher levels of technical efficiency. education could increase the farmer's insight in seeking more advanced agricultural technology information. education gives farmers the ability to manage information from various sources and apply new technologies to lowland rice cultivation so they can increase yields. educated farmers were able to adopt better technology such as superior seed, fertilizer, and pesticide more rapidly than those without education. these results are in line with the findings of ali and khan (2014) and alemu, tegegne, and beshir (2018), who stated that education can increase the productivity of human resources (farmers). extension contact had a significant effect on the level of technical efficiency in lowland rice production; the sign of extension contact coefficient was negative and significant at the 1% level. this implied that farmers who frequently followed agricultural extension would reduce the effects of technical inefficiency in lowland rice production. farmers who often followed lowland rice agricultural extension tended to have a higher level of technical efficiency than those who did not. this finding is in line with the arguments of ahmed, haji, and geta (2013), effendy et al. (2019), effendy, hanani, setiawan, and muhaimin (2013), emmanuel, owusu-sekyere, owusu, and jordaan (2016), and mann and warner (2017), which showed that the extension provided would increase the productivity of farmers and suppress the effects of unwanted technical inefficiency. the extension was informal education that could build the managerial capacity of a farmer (mangisoni, chigowo, & katengeza, 2019). farmers who followed lowland rice agricultural extension were quicker to adopt better technology than those who did not. farmers in the research area often received lowland rice agricultural extension services: for example, adopted lowland rice cultivation techniques, learned better pest and disease control, and gained overall better harvest and post-harvest results. superior seed was stated in dummy variables (1 if superior seeds, 0 if otherwise). the sign of superior seed coefficient was negative and significant at the 1% level in affecting the degree of technical efficiency of farmers in lowland rice production. lowland rice cultivation that used superior seed was more efficient than farmlands that were using local seeds. the results of this research are consistent with the findings of bhatt and bhat (2014), dessale (2019), and effendy et al. (2019), who stated that superior seed could suppress technical inefficiency in agricultural production. the use of superior seed in lowland rice cultivation could reduce the effect of technical inefficiency so that the maximum productivity tended to be achieved. this implied that increase in lowland rice production is dependent on the type and quality of seed available. organic lowland rice cultivation in this research was stated as a dummy variable (1 if organic, 0 if otherwise); the sign of organic lowland rice cultivation coefficient was negative and significant at the 1% level. this showed that organic lowland rice cultivation can reduce the effects of technical inefficiency in lowland rice production. farmers who cultivated organic lowland rice tended to have a higher level of technical efficiency, implying that organic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(3)2021: 230-235 234 materials can increase soil productivity so that the effect of technical inefficiency would be suppressed (effendy et al., 2019). organic materials from manure and leaves could increase the nitrogen and organic c content in the soil. returning rice straw to lowland rice cultivation could increase the potassium content; rice straw is a good source of macronutrients (bu et al., 2020). 4. conclusion the technical efficiency of lowland rice cultivation could be increased through better management of the resources owned by farmers, especially land, fertilizer, seed, and labor. to increase technical efficiency in lowland rice production, the productivity of farmers should be increased in managing production factors. increasing productivity of farmers in their organizations makes it necessary to pay attention to their education, participation in extension, the seed used, and applied cultivation. education status also proved relevant, with research results showing that managers with higher education were better able to deal with efficiency in the lowland rice production process. this implied that efforts were needed to increase the knowledge of poorly educated farmers through extension services. extension positively and significantly affected technical efficiency in lowland rice production. it is necessary to provide extension for farmers because it could increase their knowledge regarding the use of superior seed, organic materials, and post-harvest handling. the use of superior seed and organic materials in lowland rice cultivation could suppress inefficiency in production, so that the results could reach the frontier set. funding: authors would like to thank tadulako university for providing funding for this study. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. acknowledgement: both authors contributed in an equal manner in designing the present research. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ahmed, b., haji, j., & geta, e. 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(2016). effects of organic–inorganic compound fertilizer with reduced chemical fertilizer application on crop yields, soil biological activity and bacterial community structure in a rice– wheat cropping system. applied soil ecology, 99, 1–12. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsoil.2015.11.006. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 91 multifunctionality of integrated plantation polyculture farming in tasikmalaya regency, west java, indonesia rina nuryatia lies sulistyowatib iwan setiawanc trisna insan noord faqihuddine cici aulia permata bundaf a,e,ffaculty of agriculture, siliwangi university, tasikmalaya, west java, indonesia. b,c,dfaculty of agriculture, padjadjaran university, bandung, west java, indonesia.  faqihuddin@unsil.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 17 january 2022 revised: 21 march 2022 accepted: 4 april 2022 published: 12 april 2022 keywords ippf diversification environmental quality local wisdom multifunction fhier welfare. resilience, independence and sovereignty have historically been successfully realized by local communities through diversification. in fact, diversification has been institutionalized in farming communities in dryland agroecosystems. this research uses a survey method to gather data from 250 farmers in tasikmalaya regency, west java, indonesia, who carry out integrated plantation polyculture farming (ippf). the main variables of the multifunctional ippf are economic, social, cultural and environmental functions as well as the welfare of the farmers involved in the ippf. primary data were collected through interviews using questionnaires and secondary data were obtained from various related parties. primary data were tabulated and analyzed descriptively and quantitatively using farmer household income exchange rate (fhier) analysis. in general, the farmers stated that ippf contributed to the economy of farmers and the community, has a high social function, and also has an environmental function. on average, ippf farmers’ families in tasikmalaya regency are categorized as prosperous families (fhier > 1). farmer households spend more income to meet consumption needs (fhier = 1.66) compared to ippf production costs (fhier = 22.94), and non-food consumption (fhier = 4.88) was greater than food consumption (fhier = 4.48). contribution/originality: this research contributes to agricultural development because the multifunctional study of integrated plantation polyculture farming (ippf) provides an understanding that efforts to increase production for the welfare of farmers can be carried out while maintaining local knowledge (culture) and can maintain and improve environmental quality to avoid various environmental risks such as floods and landslides. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4466 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: rina nuryati --lies sulistyowati --iwan setiawan --trisna insan noor --faqihuddin --cici aulia permata bunda (2022). multifunctionality of integrated plantation polyculture farming in tasikmalaya regency, west java, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2), 91-103. 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4466 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction historically, food security, independence and sovereignty have been successfully realized by local communities through a diversification approach. on a macro level, japan, india and turkey in the contemporary era have succeeded in realizing food security, sovereignty and self-sufficiency through food diversification and crop diversification asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 2 (2022): 91-103. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6034-6295 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2027-7395 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5007-3468 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8121-4785 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2657-7863 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1665-0855 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 91-103 92 (archana & khyrunnisa, 2017; irem & talat, 2001; sheereen & shazia, 2016; uehara, 2012; wahyu & iwan, 2017). food security, independence and sovereignty are some of the sustainable development goals (sdgs) to be realized. in fact, in indonesia, food and plant diversification is institutionalized for farmers in dryland agroecosystem zones. the diversity of cropping patterns in one year and the diversity of plants in one season cultivated on one plot of land have led to adaptation and mitigation strategies applied by farmers in dryland agroecosystem zones. food crops, fruits, perennials and medicinal plants are commodities that are commonly grown in dry land areas in java, sumatra, sulawesi, maluku and papua (balitbangtan, 2014; darmawan, akira, tosiyuki, & tugiyuki, 2002; fao, 2017; roosganda, 2011). statistically, the central bureau of statistics (2017) noted that 88% of agricultural land in indonesia are drylands. quantitatively, the agricultural development research center of the indonesian ministry of agriculture reports that in indonesia there are around 80 million hectares of drylands that have the potential for food development. this confirms that drylands have enormous potential to support the realization of food security, independence and sovereignty. however, the huge potential of drylands has not been widely used. in fact, drylands are still marginalized and neglected because they are poorly understood in terms of ecosystems, sociosystems and geosystems. year-on-year, the diversity of food crops in dryland agroecosystem zones is being reduced by uniformity. ironically, drylands have long been living spaces and the foundation of life for some marginal poor people in rural areas (maman, 2013). in contrast to indigenous people and traditional rural communities who possess a great deal of wisdom, the contemporary poor who exist in marginal dryland agroecosystem zones have weak capabilities in terms of capital, technology adoption, seasonal farming and farming culture, and this has had a negative impact on the environment. all four of these aspects are interrelated determinants and have a sustainable negative impact on the land and farmers' livelihoods. in fact, it has created unproductive critical lands (herman & handewi, 2004). this has implications not only for the reduction of productivity and farm income, but can also trigger migration and low ratings for generations of farmers. agricultural modernization and rural industrialization have been implemented since 1970, but they have been biased towards wetlands, especially rice fields. meanwhile, drylands, which are plentiful and have very diverse conditions, still depend on the rainy season. in fact, with climate conditions that are always changing, the efficiency and effectiveness of the application of farming technology and dryland management are increasingly facing many obstacles. ironically, the sustainability of land management is strongly influenced by many resources, including land, water, human actions, technology and the economy of the surrounding area. strictly speaking, business sustainability and dryland management are influenced by land access and physical (ecosystem), social, economic and technological environments controlled by local residents (sociosystem) as well as geological conditions (geosystem) and geographical location (abdoellah, 2017; mufid, 2014; soeryo, fredian, & prastowo, 2005). climate change multiplies the opportunities and challenges for dryland farmers in managing their land and businesses. sutrisno, muhrizal, and effendi (2010) stated that in facing climate change, agricultural sector actors and managers must develop adaptive and anticipatory agriculture. climate change should be seen as an opportunity to increase productivity and business innovation. dryland agriculture must be created and innovated in order to increase production and contributions. strictly speaking, dry land agriculture must have an adaptive and anticipatory strategy in order to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change. adaptive and anticipatory farming on drylands can be done by integrating various approaches and technologies, both from local sources (local knowledge) and those from the global environment (global innovation). one approach that is in line with this thinking is an integrated farming system (abdurahman, ismail, & sutono, 1997; coen, bertus, & ann, 1992). ippf is a form of integrated farming system and is a model that not only pays attention to the production function, but many functions (multifunctionality). biswas (2010) explains that mixed farming systems or integrated farming provide better benefits in terms of time, money, resources and family labor. in addition, it also provides a more open space for farming families to find work throughout the year. this is a condition that ensures farming families have a better income and standard of living than small scale businesses. ecologically, planting annual crops on land with high slopes makes this possible and ensures land and water conservation. the use of the vegetative method reduces the rate of erosion and landslides (suwarto & sapja, 2012). socio-spatially, dryland farmers in the southern part of west java have implemented various integrated farming approaches, including ippf. one of the pilot areas for the implementation of ippf in the southern west java region is tasikmalaya regency. the uniqueness of ippf in tasikmalaya regency is that it was built through internalization of local approaches (localism) with the institutionalization of innovations introduced from outside (social engineering). this study aims to describe and analyze the economic, socio-cultural and ecological functions, as well as study the welfare of farmers involved in ippf in tasikmalaya regency. 2. methods this research has a positivist paradigm which was designed quantitatively by using a survey method and was carried out in tasikmalaya regency, west java province, indonesia. the survey was conducted from february to november 2018 on 250 farmers who are involved in integrated plantation polyculture farming (ippf). the location was determined purposively, and the determination of the sample of farmers was carried out using slovin’s formula. the main variable in this study is the ippf multifunction, which includes economic functions (producing agricultural products, sources of income, employment providers), socio-cultural functions (social interaction, ippf experience, origin of ippf knowledge) and environmental functions (soil and water conservation, pollution control, waste recycling). primary data were collected from farmers through structured interviews using a questionnaire. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 91-103 93 secondary data were obtained from various related parties through observation techniques, literature studies (desk studies) and documentation studies. the primary data were then tabulated and analyzed descriptively and quantitatively using fhier analysis with the formula according to vibilia, charles, and ellen (2019) as follows: fhier= y e fhier = farmers’ household income exchange rate. y = farmer's household income. e = farmer's household expenditure. from the fhier values, we can determine the following: • a fhier value of < 1 means that the level of a farmer's welfare is low or that a farmer's household does not yet have the ability to allocate income to different expenditures (example: food and clothing expenditure and food and education expenditure), or the purchasing power of farmers is still lacking. • a fhier value of > 1 means that the farming household is prosperous or the household has the ability to allocate income to different expenditures. 3. results and discussion farmers who are the main actors in integrated plantation polyculture farming have the following personal and farming characteristics: almost 91% of them are of a productive age (15–64 years), more than half of them (51.60%) have 3–5 dependent family members, and 45.60% of them only have 0–2 dependents. almost all farmers are married (96.80%), while the rest (1.60%) are single or widowed. in general, farmers in the dryland agroecosystem zones are old and have a basic (53.60%), medium (44.00%) or high (1.64%) education. being a farmer is the primary job of most farmers. quantitatively, the experience of farmers in implementing ippf varies, ranging from 1–50 years. farmers who are experienced in implementing ippf for one year does not mean they have just implemented it. in fact, the commodity a farmer cultivates has been in production for a long time because it has been inherited. in general, the average farmer owns an ippf area of 0.62 ha. the management of dryland farming systems is strongly influenced by various ecosystem elements, such as land conditions, water, plants, livestock, and soil nutrients. water is a major limiting factor because its availability is highly dependent on rain. therefore, ippf management in dryland areas requires a special and adaptive strategy. as ecosystems, drylands have various functions—conservation (including environmental services), economic, and sociocultural. ippf in drylands is one model of sustainable agricultural development. coen et al. (1992) called it low external input sustainable agriculture (leisa). this farming model not only pays attention to the diversity of the types of commodities being cultivated, but also the adaptive, protective and anticipatory functions. what is cultivated in an integrated manner in drylands has a clear function. the results of in-depth interviews with farmer leader a in cibalong district revealed: “‘huma’ rice (upland rice), corn, vegetables and beans are cultivated at the beginning of the rainy season with the aim of meeting daily food needs. sweet potatoes, cassava, turmeric, galangal and other medicinal plants are cultivated after the seasonal crops with the main aim of meeting farming costs, especially land preparation costs for the planting season. meanwhile, the results of livestock and plantation crops are intended to fulfil secondary needs, especially costs for celebrations, holidays, children's schools and households. perennials (especially wood) are intended to fulfil tertiary needs, including building houses, buying household appliances and even buying motor vehicles. the types of plants which are intercropped and/or rotated also influence aspects of adaptation and anticipation”. undang, nono, and iwa (2010) explained that agricultural cultivation activities in drylands have various functions, such as producing agricultural products, providing employment, controlling floods, protecting water sources, maintaining the sustainability of groundwater supplies, filtering co2 and/or air purifiers, maintaining natural beauty, protection of biodiversity, air conditioning, recycling of organic matter, and so on. the following are aspects related to the multifunctionality of ippf in the upland agroecosystem zones from economic, socio-cultural, and environmental aspects. 3.1. economic function ippf is a type of farming that produces more than one type of agricultural crop commodity. it’s not only a variety of crops, but also a variety of livestock and even fish. the ippf cropping pattern cultivated by farmers in the dryland agroecosystem zone of tasikmalaya regency is a combination of woody plants, plantations, horticulture, food and poultry, large ruminants and small ruminants. based on the diversity, farmers cultivate their land with three types of crop commodities which are integrated with sheep and cattle business. however, there are also farmers who cultivate up to eight commodities and one type of livestock. the diversity of these plants forms a varied cropping pattern. most of the farmers apply the albasiah–durian– cardamom–coconut–pepper–mango–jackfruit–banana cropping pattern that is integrated with goats. however, there are also farmers who cultivate eight types of crop commodities that are integrated with two types of livestock with the following pattern: albasiah–clove–cocoa–coconut–coffee–pepper–paddy–bananas integrated with sheep and cattle. in fact, there are also farmers who combine nine crop commodities with one type of livestock, with a cropping pattern of albasiah–clove–ginger–cardamom–rubber–turmeric–pepper–galangal–bananas that is integrated with cattle. all of these ippf patterns and combinations clearly provide direct and indirect benefits to farmers and rural communities in general. based on the identification results, it is known that ippf produces various agricultural, plantation, livestock and forestry products. first, it produces various types of wood and their by-products from hard plants, such as albasiah, mahogany, teak and manglid; second, it produces various products from plantation crops in the form of cocoa, coffee, rubber, cloves, pepper, coconut and nutmeg; third, it produces various products from asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 91-103 94 horticultural plants in the form of durian, mangosteen, jackfruit, banana, petai and cardamom; and fourth, various food crop products are produced from rice, cassava, sweet potatoes, beans, chilies, and so on, including a variety of livestock products from chickens, sheep, goats and cows. the variety of ippf commodities cultivated by farmers is an adaptation strategy and anticipation of dryland farmers to face all the worst possibilities (especially in the dry season) and to get optimal benefits from the limited water and dryland resources they have. coen et al. (1992) asserted that the reciprocal relationship between crops and livestock (especially in the use of waste) will reduce production costs and optimize the income of farmers' families and/or ranchers. in addition, the development of livestock business is a way to increase the variety of sources of income. for ippf dryland farmers, livestock also serve as annual, medium-term savings in addition to being a means to plough the land and being a source of organic fertilizer that can increase soil fertility. tanaka, karn, and scholljegerdes (2008) confirmed that the integration of agricultural crops with livestock has a multiplier effect as follows: (1) producing manure that fertilizes the soil and saves costs; (2) encouraging the community to graze their livestock on agricultural lands so that their activities and excreta can improve soil quality; (3) provoking the presence of biodiversity (plants and insects) that can assist the process of pollinating plants, controlling weeds and managing pests; (4) providing social benefits (building livestock culture, interacting with each other) to farmers and rural communities; (5) increasing crop yields (productivity); and (6) increasing economic benefits for farmers. in general, almost half of the farmers (41.71%) stated that ippf contributed to the economy of farmers and communities in dryland agroecosystem zones (see table 1). the majority (75.20%) of farmers stated that ippf is sufficient and very functional as a source of agricultural products, food crops, vegetables, fruits and livestock (food sources) as well as plantation and forestry crops. ippf is also recognized (73.60%) as a continuous source of income (70.80%), and relatively stable (74%). in addition, ippf is also a provider of main employment (75.60%) and secondary employment (85.60%) for farmers and rural communities in general. table 1. ippf economic function. no. economic function of ippf function level total percentage of function (%) total vl l f h vh vl l f h vh 1. source of various agricultural products 2 60 166 20 2 250 0.80 24.00 66.40 8.00 0.80 100 2. income source 1 65 161 23 0 250 0.40 26.00 64.40 9.20 0.00 100 income continuity 0 41 32 168 9 250 0.00 16.40 12.80 67.20 3.60 100 income stability 0 65 101 78 6 250 0.00 26.00 40.40 31.20 2.40 100 3. main employment provider 2 6 53 164 25 250 0.80 2.40 21.20 65.60 10.00 100 4. side job provider 1 34 84 130 1 250 0.40 13.60 13.60 33.60 52.00 100 total 6 271 597 583 43 1500 0.40 18.07 39.80 38.87 2.87 100.00 note: vl (very low), l (low), f (fair), h (high), vh (very high). based on the results of the analysis, it is known that ippf productivity has the potential to be increased because it is still considered low (24.40%). the assumption is, if productivity is increased, the income from ippf, which is classified as sufficient (64.40%) and low (26.40%), has the potential to experience a significant increase. in fact, for some farmers (9.20%) it can increase several times. ippf productivity and income can be optimized if production factors, such as human, capital and natural resources, can be managed and utilized properly. utilization of the four production factors embodies farming technology in the form of arable land area (farming scale), number of livestock (livestock business scale), use of labor, capital, determination of cropping patterns, and selection of the most profitable business. according to the food and agriculture organization fao (2017), high integration of crops and livestock is often considered a step forward. the condition is that small farmers must have adequate access to knowledge, assets and production inputs to manage an integrated farming system that is economically and environmentally beneficial in the long term (sustainable). in real terms, seen from its continuity and stability, the income from ippf has the potential to be optimized because it is still relatively sufficient (12.80%) and discontinuous (16.40%). logically, the income from ippf must be continuous because it cultivates many agricultural commodities on land that is integrated with livestock business. this means that ippf farmers have various sources of income (polyculture) in the short term (one season, one year) and long term. in the cacao–coffee–coconut–banana and sheep/goat farming patterns, farmers have a source of income from cocoa plants every two weeks. the proposition is that cacao is a plant that can be harvested 24 times a year. subsequent harvests are from coffee plants, which are harvested once a year, as well as from coconut and banana plants, which are harvested every month. in addition, farmers also receive income from livestock business, which is harvested according to a more flexible period because livestock usually function as family savings and will only be sold if there is a sudden and urgent need (such as celebrations, deaths, children's schooling, and others). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 91-103 95 table 2. season calendar. month phenomenon or activities ja n u ar y f eb ru ar y m ar ch a p ri l m ay ju n e ju ly a u g u st s ep te m b er o ct o b er n o v em b er d ec em b er wind # ### ### ## # rain garden processing ◊◊ ◊◊◊ ◊◊◊ ◊◊ planting ∆∆∆ ∆∆∆ ∆∆∆ ∆∆ ∆∆ harvesting coconut √ √√ √√ √√ √√ √√ √√ √√ √√ √ √ √ banana √√ √√√ √√√ √√√ √√√ √√√ √√√ √√√ √√ √√ √√ √√ clove √√ √√√ cocoa √√√ √√ √ cardamom √√√ √√ √√√ nutmeg √√ √√√ √√ famine disease flu caterpillar pest black leaf flu caterpillar pest black leaf flu work outside the village ooo ooo ooo marketing □□ □□ □□ □□□□□ □□□□□ □ □□□□□ □ note: different symbols indicate different phenomena/activities (in each month). the number of symbols in one column indicates the frequency of occurrence of phenomena/activities that occur in each month. explanation: 1. wind: wind has a role in the process of forming rain. wind carrying particles known as aerosols encounter water vapor. the water vapor then condenses around the particles and turns into water droplets. water droplets collect to form clouds, then fall to the earth in the form of rain. at the research location, it was observed that wind phenomena occur in january, september, october, november and december. where in september-november wind phenomena occur more often than other months. 2. rain: rain occurs in january, october, november, december along with the phenomenon of the wind season. 3. garden/land processing: farmers cultivate the land in june-september, which is before the onset of the rainy season. in general, farmers mostly carry out land management activities in july-august. 4. planting: planting activities are carried out when water availability increases, namely in the rainy season in february and september-december. in general, farmers carry out planting activities more in february, september and october. 5. harvest: farmers in the study area can harvest almost every month from coconut and banana commodities, while other commodities such as clove, cocoa, cardamom and nutmeg can harvest 2-3 times a year. 6. famine: the famine phenomenon occurs in may-october which coincides with the dry season. the most severe period is the june-august period. 7. disease: disease is a phenomenon that occurs due to changing seasons from the rainy season to the dry season. 8. working outside the village: during the dry season when the planting process has not been carried out, more villagers go outside the city to look for work other than agriculture. 9. marketing: this marketing activity is carried out during the harvest season. and the most is in the period of april, july and september. the results of in-depth interviews with informant farmers (mulyadi: head of tunas mekar farmer group) related to the seasonal calendar (see table 2) show that the many and varied agricultural and livestock commodities cultivated by farmers through ippf have resulted in crop and livestock harvests being carried out every time. coconut plants are harvested every month. in fact, the highest production occurs from february to september and will experience a decline during october to january. this happens because in the february–september period, rainfall begins to decrease, and sunlight, which helps the photosynthesis process, is maximized resulting in increased production. another crop that can be harvested every month is bananas. in fact, production will be maximal from february to august and will decrease from september to january. in general, cloves are harvested in march/april, and cocoa/chocolate is harvested in march, july and november. in march, june and august, farmers harvest cardamom and nutmeg. all of this confirms that the production results from ippf are obtained by farmers almost every month, even in the same month several types of commodities can be harvested. with such conditions, marketing of agricultural products can be done every month or several times a month so that farmers' income becomes continuous. empirically, most of the marketing of agricultural products is done in april, july and september. other than that, marketing is carried out in january, february, march, august and november. singh, chambliss, and sharma (1997) asserted that the integration of crops in various areas of land ownership tends to be more profitable than monoculture farming activities, and it also creates more jobs. thamrongwarangkul (2001) acknowledged that agricultural diversification always increases the use of labor, reduces unemployment in areas with a surplus of labor and provides a source of livelihood for those who work in agriculture. this shows that ippf provides job opportunities for local residents both as a main job (65.60%) and as a side job (52.00%). this means that ippf and the agricultural sector in general are sectors that have an important role in supporting the economy of residents in dryland agroecosystem zones. 3.2. socio-cultural functions in addition to economic functions, ippf also provides socio-cultural benefits for farmers and communities in dryland agroecosystem zones. hilimire (2011) asserted that communities can benefit from the diversity of plant/livestock species. indeed, integrated farming (polyculture) has the capacity to produce more energy than homogeneous farming (monoculture). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 91-103 96 the results of the current study (see table 3) reveal that ippf raises public awareness to participate in institutions (80%) and some are even involved in 2–3 agricultural and rural institutions (1.60%). several institutions that exist in the dryland agroecosystem zones are farmer groups, including women farmer groups (kwt), family welfare development (pkk), village consultative body (bpd) and religious institutions (dkm). however, farmer participation needs to be strengthened because there are still around 20% of farmers who have not been involved in institutions. table 3. ippf socio-cultural functions. no. function of ippf function level total percentage of function (%) total vl l f h vh vl l f h vh 1. farmers’ activities 0 0 28 198 24 250 0.00 0.00 11.20 79.20 9.60 100 2. farmers’ participation room 18 15 38 79 10 250 7.20 6.00 51.20 31.60 4.00 100 3. farmers’ group activity room 43 1 122 81 3 250 17.20 0.40 48.80 32.40 1.20 100 4. ippf experience sharing platform 95 72 44 20 19 250 38.00 28.80 17.60 8.00 7.60 100 5. ippf cultural regeneration forum 175 28 5 2 40 250 70.00 11.20 2.00 0.80 16.00 100 6. community culture space 9 1 68 170 2 250 3.60 0.40 27.20 68.00 0.80 100 total 340 117 265 550 98 1500 22.67 7.80 17.67 36.67 6.53 100.00 note: vl (very low), l (low), f (fair), h (high), vh (very high). for farmers, institutions in rural areas, especially farmer groups, are a place for discussion, deliberation, exchanging information, mutual cooperation (including improving agricultural facilities and infrastructure) and a space for cooperation in planning farming activities, procuring production facilities, organizing joint extension activities and accessing assistance from the government with field agricultural extension officer. strictly speaking, ippf contributes as a forum for community activities (79.20%). compared to farming communities in the upland and highland agroecosystem zones, farmers in dryland agroecosystem zones have a stronger level of participation, social capital and mutual cooperation (setiawan, 2012). for farming communities in dryland agroecosystem zones, ippf has a high social function as a space for farming activities, a space for participation and a space for farmer group activities. although the role of ippf's cultural regeneration room is quite high (16%), overall, ippf's social function as a space for sharing farming experiences, regeneration space and space for strengthening community culture still needs to be strengthened because it is perceived as weak. apart from the weak institutional attractiveness, the low participation of farmers in institutional activities also tends to be influenced by the frequent clashes between the timing of these activities and farming activities. in fact, the main factor for the weak participation of farmers is the unattractiveness of group activities. so far, extension activities have focused more on farming food crops, especially rice, corn and soybeans, while there are very few activities for other crop commodities that are in accordance with the culture of the dryland communities. in fact, most of the farmers in dryland agroecosystem zones do not cultivate much of these three commodities. therefore, innovation and extension approaches are needed that are more in line with the needs and problems faced by farmers in dryland agroecosystem zones. historically, ippf has long been entrenched in farming communities in dryland agroecosystem zones. in fact, it has become a farming method that has been passed down from one generation to the next. ippf has become the norm and is developed based on local wisdom. historically and empirically, the cropping pattern applied by farmers is the result of a long journey of adaptation of farming to various factors, such as climate, soil, economy, culture and markets. with the ability to think, farmers are able to change and adapt to the situation by finding technology (local knowledge) to improve the condition of their crops (setiawan, 2008). in general, most of the farmers are ippf cultured (see table 3). in fact, 62% of farmers have applied ippf for more than 10 years. this means that ippf has become an inseparable activity of the dryland farming community in west java. in fact, 70% of ippf knowledge was inherited, while the rest came from fellow farmers, farmer groups, extension workers and personal experiences. due to local wisdom and knowledge, ippf has become a value system for the life of dryland communities that is integrated with religion, culture and customs. the dry and forest-dependent nature requires communities to adapt by developing knowledge, ideas and tools that are guided by customary norms and cultural values in managing the environment to meet their daily needs. socio-culturally, ippf has become the culture of the dryland community in west java. 3.3. environment function russelle, entz, and franzluebbers (2007) stated, before the agricultural industry developed, the function of agroecosystems in traditional community farming systems in dryland agroecosystem zones had been designed adaptively according to its complexity and diversity. for people in dryland agroecosystem zones, cropping systems asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 91-103 97 and cropping patterns that integrate crops and livestock are social capital. ippf conducted on drylands faces many problems. therefore, land use is always regulated so that it is in harmony with its conditions and carrying capacity. if you don't pay attention to the principles of conservation, then agricultural cultivation on drylands with a high slope can result in lean and critical land. as one of the areas located in the ring of fire (volcanoes) and earthquake pathways, tasikmalaya regency is prone to landslides. therefore, the use and management of drylands must be done wisely. this means that efforts must be made to maintain and prevent the factors that cause land damage based on conservation principles. farming and settlements must be designed to be adaptive to natural conditions and anticipatory to all possibilities. ippf is one approach that has an environmental function (see table 4). more than half of the farmers (54.80%) acknowledged that ippf is able to control erosion, and some farmers (39.20%) stated that erosion had never occurred, i.e., ippf can minimize erosion. the existence of stands and various commodities cultivated on drylands are able to absorb forest water and minimize surface runoff. in general, erosion is related to various factors, especially the slope of the land. sloping land has a higher potential for erosion than flat land. therefore, if there is a slight mistake in the application of the agricultural system in conservation areas, disaster will be inevitable and the community will feel the impact. nasution (2004) asserted that the acceleration of erosion in the upstream watershed, which causes land to become critical, is not only due to the damage to the physical environment and local climate change, but is also triggered by land management methods that are not in accordance with conservation principles. the results obtained by arsyad (2007) prove that erosion and runoff are the main causes of environmental damage of drylands in indonesia. the impact is not only erosion (decreased physical, chemical, biological and land productivity) upstream, but also has increased and expanded flooding, sedimentation, pollution and socioeconomic conditions in downstream communities. table 4. ippf environmental functions. no. function of ippf function level total percentage of function (%) total vl l f h vh vl l f h vh 1. soil and water conservation erosion control 2 1 12 137 98 250 0.80 0.40 4.80 54.80 39.20 100 terraces 15 53 81 90 11 250 5.60 21.20 32.40 39.20 1.20 100 erosion occurrence 3 8 28 156 55 250 1.20 3.20 11.20 62.40 22.00 100 heading density 0 10 12 210 18 250 0.00 4.00 4.80 84.00 7.20 100 root system 0 7 111 121 11 250 0.00 2.80 44.40 48.40 4.40 100 flood control 2 4 4 46 194 250 0.80 1.60 1.60 18.40 77.60 100 water stock 1 8 104 131 6 250 0.11 1.81 35.33 59.34 3.40 100 soil porosity 0 0 12 212 26 250 0.00 0.00 4.80 84.80 10.40 100 2. pollution control air freshness 0 19 10 165 56 250 0.00 7.60 4.00 66.00 22.40 100 air comfort 0 0 41 162 47 250 0.00 0.00 16.40 64.80 18.80 100 3. biodiversity protection existing biodiversity 0 1 59 162 28 250 0.00 0.40 23.60 64.80 11.20 100 forage utilization 2 1 80 89 78 250 0.80 0.40 28.40 35.60 31.20 100 waste recycling 43 36 61 104 6 250 17.20 14.40 20.80 41.60 2.40 100 use of organic fertilizer 1 2 15 151 81 250 0.40 0.80 6.00 60.40 32.40 100 total 69 150 630 1936 715 3500 1.92 4.19 17.04 56.04 20.27 100 note: vl (very low), l (low), f (fair), h (high), vh (very high). ippf is very effectively adopted by farmers in southwest java because 25.60% of farmers' land has a high slope and 45.20% is moderately sloped. in general, only 29.20% of farmers' land is categorized as sloping or flat. even though asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 91-103 98 the land slope is high, with ippf, the erosion rate can be minimized (1.20%). in fact, with ippf, 94% of farmers' land is safe from landslides or erosion (see table 4). the results of the study on the slope of the land show that most of the respondents (45.20%) stated that the condition of the land in the study location was categorized as being quite sloping, so the land in the research location had the potential to experience erosion. one of the efforts to minimize the occurrence of erosion is to implement mechanical soil conservation techniques through the use of terraces. arsyad (1989) explained that the construction of terraces serves to reduce the length of the slopes and retain water thereby reducing the speed and amount of runoff so as to allow absorption by the soil and reduce erosion. the results of the data tabulation on the condition of the terraces at the research site, most of the respondents (39.20%) stated that they were in good condition (see table 4). terrace construction aims to change the sloping ground surface to reduce the velocity of runoff and hold water so that it is absorbed into the soil through the infiltration process (sarief, 1986). furthermore, yuliarta (2002) stated that terraces are useful for reducing the velocity of surface runoff so that the erodibility of the soil and erosion is minimized but the infiltration of water into the soil is enlarged and accommodates and controls the speed and direction of runoff to a lower place safely. respondents' understanding of the role of ippf in minimizing erosion is indicated in table 4. most of the respondents (62.40%) agreed that erosion occurred due to the reduction in ippf land. therefore, ippf has a very important role to overcome the occurrence of erosion because it is a farming method that is carried out with a multicrown system. this cropping pattern can utilize sunlight and soil in layers to increase land productivity while protecting the soil from damage and preventing soil fertility from decreasing through natural mechanisms. a very good conservation system is a multistrata system utilizing shade from trees because the canopy layer is able to provide a good conservation function to reduce erosion (agus, ginting, & noordwidjk, 2002; mulyoutami, endy, wim, subekti, & laxman, 2004). figure 1. the roots of dead trees (photo: meine and willigen (1986)). figure 1 depicts the important role of burrows formed from the roots of dead trees. the soil in the burrow is darker and looser than the surrounding soil so more roots will grow following the burrow to the bottom layer. dead tree roots form burrows in which cassava roots grow through the undercoat of ultisols. the criteria for canopy capacity, according to 84.00% of the farmers, 7.20% of the respondents said that the canopy capacity was very tight. furthermore, 4.80% of respondents stated that the editorial capacity was less dense, 4.00% stated that the editorial capacity was less dense, and none of the respondents stated that the canopy capacity was open. furthermore, arsyad explained that vegetation has an effect on runoff and erosion, namely reducing the speed of runoff and the destructive power of rain, the interception of roots, and the influence of roots and organic matter. furthermore, arsyad (2006) explains that vegetation has an effect on surface runoff and erosion, namely reducing the speed of runoff and the strength of rain destroying, root interception, as well as the influence of roots and organic matter. ippf root system, stated by most respondents (48.40 percent) deep and 4.40 percent stated very deep (table 4) because ippf cultivates long-lived plants that have roots that are able to form burrows in the soil to the bottom layer so as to improve hydrological function and water management. deep tree roots can also improve nutrient recycling, reduce erosion hazards, improve soil porosity, and so on. the criteria for soil pore capacity, as stated by 84.80% of respondents, are good soil condition and the potential for floods. most of the respondents (77.60%) stated that there had never been a flood and 63.60% of respondents agreed that a flood occurred because of the reduction in ippf land. regarding water availability, 59.34% of respondents stated that the availability of incoming water was in the available criteria. ippf is a polyculture farming method that is dominated by the exploitation of woody plants and plantation crops. these plants produce continuous organic matter from fallen leaves, branches, twigs, dead plant roots and soil animals, resulting in crumbly soil which has a high infiltration level. increasing groundwater infiltration and water absorption by plants will reduce surface water runoff, thus reducing the risk of flooding and ensuring water availability. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 91-103 99 this is essential because the main limiting factor for dryland farming is the availability of water due to low rainfall. meeting the water needs for farming in general relies on rainwater. meanwhile, climatic conditions that occur over time and between regions experience changes in water, so ippf is a farming system which is also an efficient and effective water management system. human activities that use fossil fuels for power generation, transportation and industry, including activities related to land conversion to provide new land for agriculture (including plantations) and settlements have increased greenhouse gas (ghg) concentrations. these gases in the atmosphere can cause changes in the radiation balance so that it increases the temperature of the earth's atmosphere. the largest major ghg produced by human activities with very large emission rates is carbon dioxide (co2). this gas is often used as a standard or reference for changes in composition and global climate change (widianto, suharjito, & sarjono, 2003). regarding the freshness and comfort of the air, most of the respondents (66.00%) stated that the freshness of the air was included in the fresh criteria and 64.80% stated that the comfort of the air was included in the comfortable criteria. widianto et al. (2003) explained that the potential of terrestrial ecosystems to reduce co2 in the air depends on the type of ecosystem, species composition, plant structure and distribution of plant age. other influencing factors include local conditions such as climate, soil conditions, natural disturbances and types of land management. ippf is a farming business with various components of the land cover system (plantation, timber, horticulture, food and livestock) and generally has a long lifespan. this has an influence on the input of litter that occurs continuously and varies in quality so that the "stay" above ground level also tends to be longer. planting systems on drylands can reduce co2 gas through the process of photosynthesis and then stockpile it as c-organic in the plant body (biomass) and soil for a long time (30–50 years) (hairiah & rahayu, 2007). c-organic content is an element that can determine the level of soil fertility. the land use system affects the maximum age of the land and also the carbon stock contained in it (table 5). carbon stock is the carbon content stored either on the soil surface as plant biomass, dead plant residues (necromass), or in the soil as soil organic matter. table 5. carbon stock per crop rotation of various land use systems. no land use system maximum age (years) c reserves per cropping rotation, mg ha-1 1 natural forest 120 254 2 secondary forest 60 176 3 rubber agroforestry 40 116 4 rubber plantation (monoculture) 25 97 5 grass fallow rotation 7 74 6 cassava-reed rotation 3 36 source: tomich et al. (1998) in widianto et al. (2003). figure 2. uses of biodiversity for communities (irri (2001)). during the growth phase, plants photosynthesize, which requires sunlight, co2 from the air, water, and nutrients from the soil. thus, the presence of plants can reduce the concentration of co2 in the atmosphere and the result is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 91-103 100 carbohydrates, which accumulate in the plant biomass. the level of co2 absorption in the atmosphere varies depending on the type of plant constituent and the age of the land. according to collins et al. (1999), one indicator of the success of soil management efforts is the maintenance of c reserves so that the balance of the environment and biodiversity can be maintained. biodiversity is the variety of living things, including animals, plants and microorganisms and various genera and the ecosystem complexes that support them, that have existed on earth for hundreds or even thousands of years (mcneely & scherr, 2001), and is something that must be protected (see figure 2). the biodiversity reported by most of the respondents (64.80%) was in various conditions (see table 4). ippf respondents operate more than one agricultural crop commodity and livestock business. biodiversity needs to be protected or maintained for several reasons: 1) until now, we have been very dependent on nature as a source of food, medicine, etc.; 2) in the future, genetic diversity is needed for plant selection, food production, etc.; 3) ecosystems function as guardians of ecosystem stability; 4) culture and spirituality function as sources of inspiration; 5) the moral aspect, which states that all species have the right to exist in nature (widianto et al., 2003). funes-monzote (2008) stated that more diverse species have been found in integrated farming than in farms where only one type of plant or livestock is cultivated. the simple fact is that by integrating livestock there will be at least more than one species; this does not include the biodiversity that arises from the addition of land for animal feed, which can increase the population of insects and other wild animals (brunson & huntsinger, 2008). ippf produces various types of forage originating from polyculture plants and from various types of weeds that grow in ippf areas. this waste has the potential to be used as a source of animal feed for sheep, goats and cattle. meanwhile, organic material is produced from livestock business that has the potential to be used as raw material for organic fertilizer that is applied to cultivated plantation polyculture plants. the results of a study on the use of forage as animal feed showed that 35.60% of respondents stated that they often used ippf forage as animal feed, 31.20% always use ippf forage as animal feed, 28.40% sometimes use it, and only 0.40% and 0.80% of respondents stated that they rarely and never used ippf forage as animal feed. subagyono (2004) explains that several plantation crop commodities support the integrated system model in relation to plantation areas, including rubber, coconut, palm oil and others, which have the potential to support the development of livestock business. these potentials are: 1) land use among plantation crops (rubber, coconut, palm oil, cloves, coffee), and 2) utilization of waste from staple crops and intercrops as well as factory waste (palm oil, coconut and cocoa). priyanto, priyanti, and inounu (2004) stated that cocoa husks can reduce the portion of grass feeding, especially in an intensive pattern because cocoa skin is one of the prospective goat feed ingredients that supports the creation of a cocoa–goat integration model. livestock business carried out in ippf also produces cage waste from livestock manure and leftover feed that is not eaten by livestock. this waste also has the potential to be used as a source of organic material for the manufacture of organic fertilizers. katyal, rao, and reddy (2001) stated that organic soil matter is a basic element for soil fertility, land productivity and land quality. therefore, the existence of organic soil matter must be maintained in a sustainable land management system. a study of ippf waste recycling shows that 41.60% of respondents stated that they often recycle ippf waste, 2.40% of respondents said they always carried out the ippf waste recycling process, 20.20% said sometimes, 14.40% said rarely, and 17.20% stated that they had never recycled ippf waste. ippf waste recycling results in organic fertilizer obtained from the decomposition process of organic matter originating from polyculture plant waste (decayed leaves, fruit peels, forage from pruning residue, weeds, and inedible and livestock manure). this organic fertilizer can be used by farmers on the polyculture plants they cultivate. the results of the study on the use of organic fertilizers show that as many as 60.40% of respondents said they often use organic fertilizers on their polyculture fields, 32.40% said they always use them. only 6.00%, 0.8% and 0.4%, respectively, stated that they quite often, rarely and very rarely use organic fertilizers on their farming land. russelle et al. (2007) stated that integrated agriculture is not a new phenomenon and that the agricultural system before the emergence of the agricultural industry was carried out based on complexity and diversity. livestock are an integral part of farming and animal husbandry in the us and are used for tillage and fertilization for crop production. forita, suratman, and slamet (2011) explained that an integrated farming system implemented by farmers can guarantee soil conditions that support plant growth, especially through organic matter management. plant and livestock farming has a high functional linkage so that external inputs can be reduced. 3.4. farmers' household income exchange rate (fhier) of ippf farmers fhier is an indicator that is used to determine the welfare of farmers’ households. this fhier is the ratio of the total income to the total expenditure of a farmer’s household. total household income is the sum of all agricultural production values and non-agricultural businesses. meanwhile, total household expenditure is the sum of all expenditures made by farming families (simatupang & mohamad, 2007). fhier can determine whether a farming family is only able to meet their daily needs with the income earned, or whether a farmer has been able to allocate household income to other desires besides basic household needs. table 6 shows ippf farming families in tasikmalaya regency who are, on average, already categorized as prosperous with a fhier value of 1.45. this shows that ippf farming families have a surplus of income and are able to meet all their expenses. the fhier value achieved by ippf farmers in tasikmalaya regency is higher than that achieved by dryland farmers in tanggamus regency, lampung province, which is only 1.07 (reni, rudi, & susni, 2016). this shows that ippf dryland farmers in tasikmalaya regency are more prosperous than dry land farmers in tanggamus regency even though both are categorized as prosperous. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 91-103 101 table 6. fhier of ippf in tasikmalaya regency. no component rupiah 1 income 18.689.712.90 1. agriculture 10.899.952.90 2. non-agricultural 7.789.760.00 2 production cost 1.494.673.14 3 consumption 13.255.806.40 1. food 6.240.128.00 2. non-food 7.015.678.40 4 total expenditure 14.750.479.54 5 income exchange rate against 1. production cost 22.94 2. food consumption 4.48 3. non-food consumption 4.88 4. total consumption 1.66 5. total expenditure 1.45 furthermore, when the fhier is compared to total consumption (1.66) and production costs (22.94), it shows that farmer households spend more of their income on meeting consumption needs than ippf production costs. this is due to the expenditure of farmers on ippf costs only according to their needs depending on the production process of the plant, while the consumption needs of both food and non-food must be met every day. furthermore, fhier for food consumption (4.48) and non-food (4.88) shows that fhier for non-food consumption is greater than fhier for food consumption. this means that ippf farming families prioritize non-food items/services over food. this is because farming families cannot make adjustments for non-food needs, such as education and transportation. farmer families cannot determine prices/costs for education and transportation. the price/cost is determined by an external party (other than the farmer), so like it or not, the farmer have to pay the cost of education and transportation. meanwhile, for food consumption, ippf farming families can make adjustments according to the available budget. 4. conclusion farmers in general (41.71%) stated that ippf contributed to the economy of farmers and their communities. most of the farmers (75.20%) stated that ippf is sufficient and functions well as a producer of agricultural products, 73.6% stated that ippf functions as a source of income in sufficient and high categories. it is also stated as being a continuous source of income (70.80%), quite stable (74%), and serves as a main job provider (75.60%), and a side job (85.60%). ippf has a high social function, but overall, the social function of ippf is as a space to share farming experiences, a space for regeneration and a space for strengthening community culture, which still needs to be strengthened because it is considered weak. the environmental function of ippf makes the soil crumbly with high infiltration to reduce surface water runoff, reduce flood hazards and ensure water availability. ippf also produces forage from polyculture plants as animal feed, and 66.80% of farmers have used the forage for animal feed. from livestock businesses, organic material is produced as a raw material for organic fertilizer, and 92.80% of farmers often use organic fertilizer to reduce pollution. ippf farming families in tasikmalaya regency are categorized as prosperous families (fhier > 1); farming households spend more income on meeting consumption needs (fhier = 1.66) compared to ippf production costs (fhier = 22.94), and non-food consumption (fhier = 4.88) was greater than food consumption (fhier = 4.48). 5. policy implications it is necessary to develop local superior commodities with regard to the fact that, in general, farmers have diverse methods of planting the commodities they cultivate so they do not focus on developing specific business processes. an increase in added value is needed to increase income and expand employment opportunities because, so far, farmers are still selling their produce in the form of fresh or raw materials. it is necessary to increase cooperation between fellow farmers in groups and associations, and build networks with external parties (e.g., agroindustrial companies, wholesalers, financial institutions, universities, and research and development institutions), which are important capital for the development of ippf. regeneration of farmers was necessary because most of the ippf farmers were elderly, and the youth had little interest in being involved in ippf. funding: this research is supported by siliwangi university (grant number: 213/un58.21/pp/2021). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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(2002). cultivation technology in conservation farming systems. jakarta: grafindo. http://www.litbang.pertanian.go.id/buku/lahan-kering-ketahan/bab-iii-3.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 138 an empirical examination of barriers to acceptance of integrated paddy and beef cattle farming in indonesia sutrisno hadi purnomoa ayu intan sarib shanti emawatic endang tri rahayud a,b,c,ddepartment of animal husbandry, faculty of agriculture, universitas sebelas maret, surakarta, indonesia.  sutrisnohadi@staff.uns.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 13 september 2022 revised: 5 april 2023 accepted: 28 april 2023 published: 25 may 2023 keywords acceptance model barriers farmers integrated farming quantitative. this research aims to identify the barriers to the spread of integrated paddy and beef cattle farming and the influence of these barriers on indonesian farmers’ acceptance of integrated farming. quantitative methods were used to examine the barriers to integrated agriculture acceptance. a direct survey was conducted in which questionnaires were distributed to respondents. in addition, a research framework for the acceptance of integrated agriculture was developed using the technology acceptance model (tam). several data analysis methods were employed, including descriptive analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (cfa), and structural equation modelling (sem). data were obtained from 310 organic paddy farmers in boyolali regency, central java, indonesia. the data were analysed using lisrel 8.8 software to assess the influence of barriers on the acceptance of integrated farming. sem yielded the following results: x2 degree 1.77, gfi 0.92, agfi 0.90, cfi 0.94, and rmsea 0.06. as a result, we concluded that the goodness-of-fit index met the recommended criteria and that the model corresponded to the data provided, which allowed us to continue with the hypothesis testing. the results of hypothesis testing showed that the factors that significantly influenced the acceptance of integrated farming were barriers in the areas of production, knowledge, government, and economics. the practical implication of the research results is that by reducing barriers to production, knowledge, government, and economics, the acceptance of paddy and beef cattle integration can be increased. contribution/originality: this study examined barriers to the acceptance of integrated farming, including production barriers, knowledge barriers, government barriers, and economic barriers. the results of the research can be used by policymakers to overcome the barriers that arise in the implementation of the integrated crop and livestock system. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i2.4809 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: purnomo, s. h., sari, a. i., emawati, s., & rahayu, e. t. (2023). an empirical examination of barriers to acceptance of integrated paddy and beef cattle farming in indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2), 138–145. 10.55493/5005.v13i2.4809 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the diversification of agricultural practices to extend systems of cropping patterns is encouraged to strengthen food security at the household level by spreading risks across a larger variety of low and high-value outputs (asante, asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 2 (2023): 138-145. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5720-5678 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1703-2132 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6925-6602 https://orcid.org/0009-0001-0266-9424 mailto:sutrisnohadi@staff.uns.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 138-145 139 villano, patrick, & battese, 2018). the implementation of an integrated farming system is a form of agricultural diversification that helps support sustainable agriculture development. an integrated farming system can improve food security, increase product diversity, and lead to a healthy environment and the wider availability of public commodities for rural development (cec, 2002). integrated farming systems are more environmentally friendly than other agricultural production methods (mäder et al., 2002) and their implementation is gaining significant acceptance in many parts of the world. empirical evidence indicates that integrated farming is effective in rationalizing operational costs, apart from being biologically symbiotic (alberto et al., 2013). hisham, yusoff, ismail, and kamarulzaman (2020) demonstrated that the optimization of locally available, affordably priced natural resources through an integrated farming system in malaysia helps to suppress feed costs. it decreases the reliance on imported feeds. meanwhile, as defined by vlahos, karanikolas, and koutsouris (2017), integrated farming is a combination of conventional and organic farming that includes several interrelated and interdependent factors to create an environmentally friendly farming practice. the construction of a production system based on the synergistic and sustainable utilization of soils, animals, and crops is crucial to achieving sustainable intensification. the integrated crop-livestock system (icls) has immense potential as an agroecological model (bonaudo et al., 2014). however, the traditional biodiverse icls has become increasingly specialized, which has led to increased efficiency in labour and per unit land area, but has also resulted in detrimental effects on the environment, including pollution, land degradation, market fluctuations, and vulnerability to climate extremes (garrett et al., 2020; gil, garrett, & berger, 2016). to achieve sustainable intensification, there is a growing interest in reharmonizing animal maintenance practices with specialized crop farming systems. this strategy is fundamental to icls and is believed to foster resilience against extreme climate events by buffering field-level biophysical processes, such as nutrition cycle and crop production improvement (peterson, bell, carvalho, & gaudin, 2020; szymczak et al., 2020). icls offers more promise than specialized and intensive systems due to its sustainable production and resilience against climate change (sekaran, lai, ussiri, kumar, & clay, 2021). the system helps to foster sustainability of animal maintenance and crop farming practices by strengthening regular income from product diversification and autonomy of agricultural inputs (le gal et al., 2022). icls is not limited to a certain country or region; it has been widely adopted and practised across the world by integrating locally available crop varieties with diverse livestock commodities that are suitable to the area (hisham et al., 2020). previous studies have shown that economic scale is a crucial factor in achieving comparative advantages (ismail & abdul, 2014). the integration of livestock maintenance practices with horticultural farming positively affects farmers' incomes and environmental sustainability (osak & hartono, 2016). the integration of pasundan cattle farming and rice cultivation in west java has been shown to achieve optimal family income per year with a ratio of 6.02 au and 0.5 hectares (ha) of rice cultivation (thawaf, herlina, sulistyati, & fitriani, 2017). the integration of livestock and rice crops has a positive impact, both socially and economically (syamsu, ali, ridwan, & asja, 2013). integrated farming systems that combine plantation crops and food crops with livestock are an alternative that can overcome the problems of plantation farming, food crop farming, and animal husbandry (boonyanuwat & wongsri, 2016). the integration of crop and livestock production yields several benefits, for instance, increasing soil fertility, increasing crop production, recycling nutrients, increasing land use, and increasing environmental sustainability (asai et al., 2018; gupta, rai, & risam, 2012; reddy, 2016). although integrated farming has many benefits, conventional farmers encounter technical and economic feasibility issues when transitioning from conventional farming to integrated farming (peterson, deiss, & gaudin, 2020). barriers to this transition can be economic, technical, social, legal, or cultural (purnomo et al., 2019). the transition from conventional agriculture to organic farming can also be affected by several factors, including farmers' knowledge of the market, cultivation expertise, capital information, organic product certification, and cultural barriers (padel, vaarst, & zaralis, 2017). natural resources, market demand, and government policies are also important in the decision to convert from conventional to organic systems (ullah et al., 2015). agricultural producers thus face several obstacles to the adoption of integrated agriculture (harris, lloyd, hofny-collins, barrett, & browne, 1998). several studies on agricultural technology adoption have used rogers' (1983) technology acceptance model (tam) and davis' (1989) diffusion of innovation (doi) theory. davis (1989) argued that technology adoption behaviour results from a person’s affective response to innovation. according to davis (1989), tam is based on the concepts of perceived usefulness (pu), which is the perception of a technology’s usefulness, and perceived ease of use (peu), which is the perception of the technology’s ease of use. these two aspects influence the perceived intention to use (piu) that technology. the current study investigates the relationship between the barriers to integrated farming acceptance and two aspects of tam acceptance. this study examines the barriers to integrated farming according to the model of crop (rice)-livestock (beef cattle) among farmers. we also observe the effects these barriers have on integrated farming acceptance among farmers in boyolali regency, central java, indonesia. no previous studies have researched the barriers to implementing integrated crop-livestock systems by conducting empirical testing. most of the research on integrated farming, such as that of hilimire (2011), gupta et al. (2012), rundengan, fanani, subagiyo, and elly (2013), munandar, yakup, and munawar (2015), boonyanuwat and wongsri (2016), and purnomo et al. (2019), has been based on descriptive analysis. some studies have investigated the implementation of integrated crop-livestock systems but have not specifically discussed the barriers that occur. for example, alberto et al. (2013) discussed the economic aspects of icls cattle and soybean production, ismail and abdul (2014) examined the sustainability of integrated cattle-plantation crop production systems in malaysia, vlahos et al. (2017) studied the sustainability of integrated farming, and gil et al. (2016) researched the determinants of crop-livestock integration in brazil. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 138-145 140 this study examines five barriers as predictors of integrated agriculture acceptance: production barriers, knowledge barriers, infrastructure barriers, government barriers, and economic barriers. production barriers are related to the following matters: access to materials needed for integrated production, labour availability, time availability, access to facilities, and suitability of weather. knowledge barriers are related to knowledge and skill of integrated farming, pest management knowledge, and market knowledge. infrastructure barriers are related to access to transportation equipment, storage for organic produce, equipment processing, and road accessibility. government barriers are related to the government’s policies and commitment to supporting integrated farming. economic barriers consist of labour costs, market size, and price management. the following hypotheses are developed based on the theory and literature outlined above: h1: production barriers have a negative effect on the pu of integrated farming. h2: production barriers have a negative effect on the peu of integrated farming. h3: knowledge barriers have a negative effect on the pu of integrated farming. h4: knowledge barriers have a negative effect on the peu of integrated farming. h5: infrastructure barriers have a negative effect on the pu of integrated farming. h6: infrastructure barriers have a negative effect on the peu of integrated farming. h7: government barriers have a negative effect on the pu of integrated farming. h8: government barriers have a negative effect on the peu of integrated farming. h9: economic barriers have a negative effect on the pu of integrated farming. h10: economic barriers have a negative effect on the peu of integrated farming. h11: peu has a positive effect on the pu of integrated farming. h12: peu has a positive effect on the piu of integrated farming. h13: pu has a positive effect on the piu of integrated farming. 2. materials and methods this was a survey-based study using a structured questionnaire instrument as a tool for data collection. the respondents were selected using purposive sampling based on the criteria that they were farmers who had cattle and land for paddy cultivation. a quantitative approach was then used to investigate barriers to the acceptance of integrated farming. we distributed questionnaires to the participants; a total of 310 responses were collected from organic paddy farmers in boyolali regency, central java, indonesia. the 36-item questionnaires were answered using a five-point likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). the questionnaire comprised two parts: the first part consisted of 36 questions about barriers to organic agriculture and the second part consisted of questions about individual characteristics. lisrel 8.8 software was used to conduct structural equation modelling (sem) and confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). 3. results and discussion the study collected data on the demographic characteristics of the respondents, such as their district of origin, gender, age, education, length of service as an extension officer, and instructor experience. 85% of the respondents were male. most of the respondents (56%) were between the 40-50 or above 50 age brackets. the most common level of education was elementary school (62%), followed by high school (30%), and a bachelor's degree (8%). convergent validity is defined by fornell and larcker (1981) based on three criteria: composite reliability, factor loading, and average variance extracted (ave). each measurement criterion has a threshold value; this is 0.7 for the composite reliability and loading factor and 0.5 for the ave value. cfa was employed to determine the validity and reliability of the research instrument. the ave exceeded all construction threshold values of 0.50, and the composite reliability of all factors exceeded the minimum value of 0.70. except for three items, the factor loading analysis results showed that the majority of the measurements were above and beyond the bare minimum of 0.70. although the three items did not meet the minimum criteria, the factor loading values ranged from 0.6 to 0.7, meaning that the three items were very close to meeting the minimum measurement criteria. according to chau (1997), evaluating the structural model requires building relationships between the variables as stated in the research model. in sem, the fit index is tested to assess the model's suitability using the root means square error approach (rmsea), goodness fit index (gfi), adjusted goodness fit index (agfi), comparative fit index (cfi), and the x2-squared test statistic. according to hair, anderson, tatham, and black (1998), a model with a good fit scores equal to or greater than 0.9 for the relative fit index (rfi), normed fit index (nfi), gfi, and cfi, and 0.8 for agfi, while rmsea values between 0.05 and 0.08 are acceptable (bagozzi, yi, & phillips, 1991). the structural model analysis yields the following results: x2 degree 1.77, gfi 0.92, agfi 0.90, cfi 0.94, and rmsea 0.06. as a result, we conclude that the goodness-of-fit index meets the recommended criteria and that the model corresponds to the data provided, allowing hypothesis testing to proceed. the hypothesis testing results are illustrated using path analysis in figure 1, with the significant pathways in thick lines and paths that are not significant in dotted lines. this study's coefficient of determination for pu is 72%, which means that this model can explain approximately 72% of the variance. as a result, hypotheses h1, h3, and h7 all prove significant. the coefficient of determination for the peu variable is 54%, which means that this model can explain 54% of the variance. the hypotheses h2, h4, h8, and h10 are found to be significant. approximately 68% of the variance in the piu of integrated farming can be explained by peu (β = 0.38, p < 0.001) and pu (β = 0.57, p < 0.001). therefore, hypotheses h11, h12, and h13 are significantly supported. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 138-145 141 figure 1. the result of structural model analysis. note: * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001. the results show that production barriers have a significant effect on the acceptance of integrated farming; this means that there are still barriers for farmers regarding the availability of labour and time and the lack of access to necessary production facilities (manure, organic rice seeds, organic pesticides). on organic rice fields, more labour is needed for land preparation and fertilization because the volume of manure is greater than the volume of inorganic fertilizers. this also results in a longer time required to process and fertilize the soil. the production facilities farmers need, such as manure, organic pesticides, and organic seeds, are not yet readily available. this affects the success of the implementation of integrated farming. knowledge barriers also have a significant influence on the acceptance of integrated farming, especially farmers' knowledge of pest control and the marketing of organic agricultural products. farmers need more knowledge and skills on how to handle pests and plant diseases that occur on organic land, especially weeds, which appear more frequently on organic rice fields than on conventional land. in addition, the marketing of organic rice products is limited to middle and upper consumers who have the ability to buy them; therefore, wider marketing access is needed, especially through the export market. the results of testing the effects of infrastructure barriers show that they do not affect the acceptance of integrated farming among farmers. these barriers relate to transportation, product storage, and harvest processing equipment. this shows that in terms of infrastructure, farmers do not encounter significant obstacles; this is because farmer groups provide transportation equipment, storage warehouses, and organic rice mills. the local government assists farmer groups with these facilities as part of research programmes. government barriers relate to the government’s policies and commitment to supporting integrated farming. in this study, government barriers have a very strong influence on the acceptance of integrated farming; this proves that the government plays a very important role by creating policies that support the sustainability of integrated farming. farmers need government support to increase their knowledge and skills, as well as to provide market access for the sale of organic rice products. in addition, farmers need government support in the form of subsidies for organic label certification on product packaging, because the cost of certification is quite high. the results of testing the economic barriers variable show that labour costs, market size, and price regulation affect the acceptance of integrated farming through the perceived ease of use. the need for more labour on organic land will increase production costs. in addition, the higher price of organic rice will result in a limited market. overall, this research proves that the implementation of integrated paddy and beef cattle farming still has barriers that must be overcome to ensure that the implementation of integrated farming is sustainable. this research differs from previous studies that discuss integrated crop-livestock systems using various methods, such as descriptive, empirical, economic, experimental and case studies. these studies have not specifically examined the influence of barriers on the successful implementation of integrated farming. several studies on the implementation of integrated farming in various countries around the world from 2011 to 2021 are summarized in table 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 138-145 142 table 1. previous studies on the topic of integrated crop-livestock systems. no author title publisher type/topic 1 hilimire (2011) integrated crop/livestock agriculture in the united states: a review. journal of sustainable agriculture, 35: 4, 376393. descriptive; a review of research, policy, and theory related to integrated agriculture in the usa 2 gupta et al. (2012) integrated crop-livestock farming systems: a strategy for resource conservation and environmental sustainability. indian research journal of extension education, special issue (volume ii), 2012. descriptive; challenges and opportunities facing an integrated croplivestock system to guarantee sustainable production 3 rundengan et al. (2013) integrated farming system model in south minahasa regency – north sulawesi. iosr journal of agriculture and veterinary science (iosr-javs). 5(6): 0107. descriptive; a potential alternative integrated farming system of plantation crops and feed crops 4 alberto et al. (2013) comparison of an integrated crop-livestock system with soybean only: economic and production responses in southern brazil. renewable agriculture and food systems, 29(3), 230-238. economic; the economic side of icls cattle and soybean production 5 ismail and abdul (2014) sustainability of cattle-crop plantations integrated production systems in malaysia. international journal of development and sustainability, 3(2), 252-260. descriptive; sustainability of cattleplantation crop integrated production systems in malaysia 6 munandar et al. (2015) crop-cattle integrated farming system: an alternative of climatic change mitigation. journal of animal science and technology. 38(2): 95103. experimental research; activities of integrated crop-cattle farming could be an alternative solution to climatic change-induced mitigation 7 boonyanuwat and wongsri (2016) integrating thai native cattle into organic paddy rice farming system in bokcharearn community. rajabhat agriculture. 15 (1): 22-26. economic; comparative study of integrated rice and beef cattle 8 vlahos et al. (2017) integrated farming in greece: a transition-tosustainability perspective. international journal of agricultural resources, governance and ecology, 13(1), 43-59. case study; the sustainability of integrated farming in greece 9 purnomo et al. (2019) investigation of barriers to integrated paddy and beef cattle farming in organic agricultural system. russian journal of agricultural and socioeconomics sciences, vol 1 (85). empirical research; investigation of barriers to the implementation of paddy-cattle integration 10 gil et al. (2016) determinants of crop-livestock integration in brazil: evidence from the household and regional levels. land use policy 59, 557-568. empirical research; examination of the determinants of crop-livestock integration in brazil 11 sekaran et al. (2021) role of integrated croplivestock systems in improving agriculture production and addressing food security – a review. journal of agriculture and food research. volume 5, september 2021. meta-analysis; advantages, disadvantages, and development of an integrated crop-livestock system 4. conclusion the barriers that determine the acceptance of integrated farming in indonesia are production barriers, knowledge barriers, government barriers, and economic barriers. to overcome these barriers, several alternative solutions must be implemented, including providing production facilities, increasing education and extension about integrated farming among farmers, expanding the role of government in providing coaching about integrated farming implementation, and providing the market with promotional products from integrated farming. funding: this research is supported by the lppm universitas sebelas maret, through the research grant penelitian unggulan (grant number: 260/un27.22/hk.07.00/2021). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-agriculture-and-food-research https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-agriculture-and-food-research https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-agriculture-and-food-research/vol/5/suppl/c asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 138-145 143 references alberto, c., oliveira, o. d., bremm, c., anghinoni, i., moraes, a. d., kunrath, t. r., & carvalho, d. f. 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(2017). integrated farming in greece: a transition-to-sustainability perspective. international journal of agricultural resources, governance and ecology, 13(1), 43-59. https://doi.org/10.1504/ijarge.2017.084033 appendix appendix 1. questionnaire of respondent’s profile. a. name : ___________________________________ b. gender : 1. men 2. women c. age : 1. 20-30 years 3. 40-50 years 2. 30-40 years 4. 50 60 years 5.> 60 years old d. education : 1. elementary school 3. high school 2. junior high school 4. bachelor 5. others, please specify ........... e. the main job : 1. farmers 4. civil servants 7. others, specify ..... 2. breeders 5. private employees 3. entrepreneurship 6. teacher f. job experience : 1. 0-5 years 2. 6-10 years 3. 10-15 years 4.> 15 years g. rice field area: ________________ hectares / m2 h. land ownership: self-owned / leased / cultivated land appendix 2. questionnaire of respondent’s perception toward barriers to the application of integrated farming. 1. strongly disagree 4. agree 2. disagree 5. strongly agree 3. neutral choose one of the answers according to your choice by giving a cross (x) to the available column no. question strongly disagree --strongly agree production barriers 1 2 3 4 5 1 lack of access to materials needed for integrated production. 2 need a lot of labor in integrated farming. 3 i don't have enough time for integrated cultivation. 4 lack of access to necessary production facilities (manure, integrated rice seeds, integrated pesticides). 5 weather conditions do not allow this type of product integrated cultivation. knowledge barriers. 1 i have no skill to cultivate integrated products . 2 i don't have enough knowledge and education about integrated farming. 3 i don't know how to do integrated farming. 4 i don't know how to market integrated produce. 5 not enough knowledge to eradicate pests that attack naturally. infrastructure barriers 1 lack of access to transportation equipment for the production of integrated rice. 2 lack of access to appropriate places to store integrated rice products. 3 lack of equipment to process integrated products until they are ready to be marketed. 4 lack of access to transportation equipment for the marketing of integrated rice. 5 lack of access road for the production of integrated rice. government barriers 1 2 3 4 5 1 the government has no commitment to integrated farming. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2020.102904 https://doi.org/10.14710/jitaa.42.4.270-278 https://doi.org/10.4236/as.2015.66057 https://doi.org/10.1504/ijarge.2017.084033 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 138-145 145 choose one of the answers according to your choice by giving a cross (x) to the available column no. question strongly disagree --strongly agree 2 the government does not support integrated products. 3 lack of government funding subsidies to certify integrated product. 4 lack of clear standards for integrated rice production methods from the government. economic barriers 1 labor costs for processing land are too high 2 the profits obtained are not in line with expectations 3 people don't pay more to buy integrated products 4 traders often reduce the purchase price to farmers 5 lack of access to the right market to sell integrated products usefulness 1 the application of integrated farming will increase to my knowledge. 2 the use of integrated farming will increase my agricultural production. 3 the use of integrated farming will increase my income. 4 i get that integrated farming is very beneficial in increasing my soil fertility. ease of use 1 2 3 4 5 1 the application of integrated farming does not require a lot of energy. 2 the application of integrated farming is very easy. 3 integrated farming is in accordance with my wishes. 4 i get integrated farming easy to do as i do. intention to use 1 i will use integrated farming on the next opportunity. 2 i will always apply integrated farming to my farm. 3 i would encourage others to use integrated farming. 4 i think integrated farming is the future of agriculture. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 515 social determinants of rural secondary school students’ choice of agricultural career and its implication for counseling services: a case of delta state, nigeria egbule elizabeta osita a a department of guidance and counseling, delta state, nigeria  egbuleosita2@gmail.com corresponding author article history: received: 19-mar-2020 accepted: 20-may-2020 online available: 30-jun2020 keywords: career choice, agricultural career, counseling services, secondary school students, social determinants, rural secondary schools abstract this study unveils the factors that influence rural secondary school students to choose agriculture as a career or course of study. many of the students chose a career in medicine and engineering before agriculture. most (57.89%) had no counseling experience with a guidance counselor, but 81.14% were engaged in agricultural child labour. 83.77% were exposed to agriculture programmes on audiovisual media and visit to commercial farms. the few (10.09%) chose agriculture as an opportunity for self-employment, interest, profitable and easy nature of agriculture as a course of study and parents' preference, among others. the social attributes of the students such as age, parents education & occupation, wealth status of parents, sex, knowledge of the subject, aptitude for prerequisite subjects, contact with guidance/counselors, involvement in agricultural child labour, exposure to mass media and visit commercial farms influenced their choice of agriculture as career or course of study. contribution/ originality evidence is provided as regards the influence of social attributes on students’ choice of career in agriculture and the need for career guidance in secondary schools. this will be of utility in the analysis of career choice in agriculture as being social factors – driven in other nations that are agricultural economies. insight into policy needs for engagement of guidance counselors to encourage choices of a career in agriculture is also offered. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.515.527 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: egbule elizabeta osita (2020). social determinants of rural secondary school students’ choice of agricultural career and its implication for counseling services: a case of delta state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 515-527. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 515-527 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:egbuleosita2@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.515.527 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4219-9540 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 515-527 516 1. introduction agriculture is the mainstay of every economy of the world and it is the wish of every government to make the country self-sufficient in food and raw materials production. to these end younger ones, the youths are encouraged to pick up a career in agriculture, to increase production and sustain increased production. however, it is observed that most secondary school students do not like and would not like to practice agriculture as a career (adeoti et al., 2013; apantaku, 2004). the students prefer the first choice of medicine and engineering (excluding agricultural engineering). it is expected that students in the rural areas will be interested in agriculture as a career and as such, wish to make it the first choice of career, while seeking admission into tertiary schools. while this is the expectation, it should be remembered that individuals possess varying values, differential abilities aptitudes and interest of persons toward a career determines the level of success or failure of such persons in the career chosen (ezeji, 1998). many nigerians are known to have a negative attitude about agriculture. however, many people are still engaged in agriculture. most of these people do it as a way of life and not as a business, while those that have the opportunity to leave agricultural practice do so without hesitation. this is prompted by the fact that most nigerians believe that the practice of agriculture or farming is meant for wretched or poverty-stricken (adejumo, 1998). worst still is the serious level of rural-urban migration of labour (ofuoku and chukwuji, 2012). the low parental value placement on agriculture also contributes to this phenomenon (apantaku, 2004). zhiri (1998) as cited by apantaku (2004) reports that most parents, in the rural areas most especially, do not believe or see reasons why their children/wards should be engaged in farming or be trained in agriculture for future livelihood. they prefer their children becoming medical doctors, lawyers, journalists, and army officers or should engage in rural-urban migration (salami and salami, 2013; cheung et al., 2013; fan et al., 2014; bubić and ivanišević, 2016; hui et al., 2018) because they feel that is how they will make ‘quick’ money. despite these undesired circumstances, youths are needed in agricultural production. at least, there is the need to make youths productive so that they can realize their full potentials and become useful to themselves and their societies. however, most parents engage their children in agricultural child labour because of their socioeconomic backgrounds (ofuoku et al., 2014). it these ends, the services of guidance counselors are required (fouad et al., 2016; gonzalez et al., 2013). it is a common knowledge that in secondary schools in delta state, guidance and counseling units/offices are non-existent. this is amid guidance counselors trained and graduated annually, from our universities. this challenge is more glaringly observed in rural than in urban secondary schools. the challenge of students’ attitude to agriculture as a career lies mainly in the falling population of youths available for agricultural activities over the years. this is prompted by a series of reasons. the reasons include rural-urban migration which is propelled by the desire and search for whitecollar jobs in urban settlements. this gives rise to fewer people that are available for agriculture respectively as a career or school subject (apantaku, 2004). hatred for agriculture is known to be created in the mind of secondary school students where offenders are given punishment to do in the school farm, to manually weed, plant, make beds, and ridges for sowing. this makes students associate agriculture with hard labour (ofuoku and ugbechie, 2017) and develops a negative impression of agriculture as a course of study or as a career (ogunrinde, 2002; cheung and arnold, 2014). for any problem to be resolved the root causes of the problem have to be identified. the identification of the causes most would likely form a guide for guidance counselors in the bid to adequately help students to help themselves. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 515-527 517 1.1. objectives of the study the major objective of the study was to identify the determinants of the choice of agriculture as a career among secondary school students. specifically, the study sought to: (i) examine the students' social attributes; (ii) determine the most important career choices of secondary school students; (iii) ascertain the reasons secondary school students like agriculture as a career or course of study; (iv) investigate the reasons secondary school students do not like agriculture as a career or course of study (v) determine the contributions of their social attributes to their choice of agriculture as a career or course of study; hypothesis (h0): social attributes of secondary school students do not contribute to their choice of agriculture as a career/course of study. 1.2. conceptual framework two factors have been identified by ekpere (1999) as the key factors that influence career choice. these two factors are genetic and environmental related. apantaku (2004) observes that a postulation to the effect that intelligent quotient (1q) which is transferred from parent to child, coupled with other variables such as family background, peer groups, notion attached to the particular career or profession by society and individual’s education, influence one’s choice of career. oladele (1998) lists subject combination, interest in school subjects related to the chosen career, knowledge of the tasks attached to a chosen career, academic achievement in subjects related to the career, difficultly perceived in such school subjects and motives for choosing the career as the variables affecting choices of career. however, hoppick (1997) opine that choice of career or occupation is influenced by emotional needs and particular values, an individual’s attitude, and societal prestige associated with a career and ability to affect occupational change or mobility within a career. abiasekog (1992) identified the length of the training period, social status attached to career and income of parents, values, and educational level of parents as factors influencing occupational choice. others identified include rural residence, community background, and socioeconomic status of the family. shiertzer and stone (1998) made a review of different variables such as external and internal factors of the individual. these are intellectual ability, aptitudes, the influence of schooling, family, personality, self-concept and self-esteem, values, job stereotypes, expectations, interests, gender differences, and environmental influence. ofuoku and emodi (2015); ofuoku and ugbechie (2017) identified child labour in agriculture among rural households as one of the contributory variables. 2. methodology the study area was delta state, nigeria. delta state is demarcated into 3 senatorial districts-delta north, delta central, and delta south senatorial districts. delta north senatorial district is constituted by 9 local government areas, delta central by 8 and delta south by 6 local government areas. two predominantly rural government areas were selected purposively from each local senatorial districts in delta north senatorial district, oshimili north and ndokwa west were selected. in delta central senatorial district, ethiope east and ughelli south; and in delta south, patani and isoko north local government areas (lgas) were selected. two rural communities hosting secondary schools were randomly selected from each local government areas selected to arrive at the selection of 12 rural communities. this selection based on districts is for equal representation of the districts that constitute delta state and for generalization in the study area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 515-527 518 the secondary schools in the selected communities had junior (jss1-3) students and senior (ss13) students. senior secondary school students were purposively used because they already know or are already made up their minds on their career choices. the senior students were randomly selected from each school based on stratification. the stratification was used by randomly selecting 20 students from ssc1, ssc2, and ssc3 in each of the schools. this led to the selection of 240 students. however, the actual response rate was 95.25% (38) in each of the selected lgas, thus making a sample size to be 228. primary data were collected through a structured interview schedule personally administered by the researcher and trained enumerators. the interview schedule had sections on the social background of the respondents, career choice, items on reasons students would or would not like agriculture as a career and course of study in tertiary institution, attitude towards agriculture as a career, willingness to practice agriculture and suggestions by respondents on how to improve their willingness to practice agriculture and farming. the content validity of the instrument was determined by a panel of 3 vocational education specialists. these suggestions were inputted into the final draft. the instrument was tested for reliability with the application of the test-retest method at 3 months interval. the reliability coefficient obtained was r = 0.83. collected data were analyzed by the use of frequency counts, percentages, means derived from 4-points likert-type scale of strongly agree = 4, agree = 3, disagree = 2, and strongly disagree = 1. the hypothesis was tested with the utilization of logistic regression. the formula was as stated thus. 𝐼𝑛 ( 𝑝𝑖 1−𝑝𝑖 ) = 𝛼2 + ∑𝐵𝑗 𝑋 𝑗𝑖+ ∈ 𝜀 …………………. (1) 𝐼𝑛 ( 𝑝𝑖 1−𝑝𝑖 ) = 𝛼2 + 𝛽 ixi + 𝛽1x1 + 𝛽2x2 + 𝛽3x3 + 𝛽4x4 + 𝛽5x5 + 𝛽6x6 + 𝛽7x7 + 𝛽8x8 + 𝛽9x9 + 𝛽10x10 + 𝛽12x12 + ∈ …………………. (2) where yao = career choice in agriculture (yes = 1, otherwise = 0) 0 = constant term x1 = age (years) x2 = level of education of parent (number of years of schooling) x3 = occupation of parent (farming = 1, otherwise = 0) x4 = wealth status of parent (wealthy = 1, otherwise 0 = 0) x5 = sex (male = 1, female = 0). x6 = knowledge of the subject (high = 3, medium = 2, low = 1) x7 = aptitude for prerequisite subjects (yes = 1, no = 0 x8 = contact with guidance counselor (no of contact per term) x9 = involvement in agricultural child labour (yes = 1, otherwise = 0) x10 = exposure to audio visual mass media (yes = 1, otherwise = 0) x11 = visit to commercial farms (yes = 1, no = 0). 𝜀 = error term. 3. results and discussion 3.1. social attributes of the students table 1 indicates that many (37.72%) of the students were in the age bracket of 13-15years; 32%, in the age bracket of 19-21 years and 29.82% in the age range of 16-18 years. this implies that most of them were in their teenage years and therefore need close guidance and counseling. this is more so when this stage in life depicts the childhood era. ofuoku and chukwuji (2012) found that rural children of 6-17 years of age were engaged by their parents in agricultural child labour in nigeria, mostly after the close of school daily. most (43.42%) of their parents had primary education, while 23.68% had no formal education. education brings enlightenment and modifies asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 515-527 519 people's attitudes. the educational level of the parents is expected to influence the students' attitude and career choice. shiertzer and stone (1998) point to the parental educational background as one of the variables that influence students’ choices of career and occupation. it is a known fact that some parents influence their wards while choosing a future career, however, the reasonably experienced ones leave the choice to their children. this means that the level of formal educational attainment of parents has implications for their children's choice of future career and occupation. most (60.53%) of the students had parents that were farmers. others, 27.19% had parents who were either traders or artisans, and 12.28% had parents who earned a livelihood as civil servants. the gain from parents’ occupation contributes to the career choices of their children. children are convinced by their parents to choose their career when they find it rewarding. ravallion and wodon (2000) found that most parents want their occupation/career for their children when such occupation/career are found rewarding. most (53.07%) of the children were of parents who had low wealth status, while 30.26% were children of parents of average wealth status and 16.67% were children of wealthy parents at the rural area standard. ekpere (1999) points to family wealth background as one of the determinant variables of career choice among people. abiasekog (1992) mentioned the socioeconomic status of the family as one of the correlates of career choice among students. to sex, 62.72% of the students were males while 37.28% were females. this is not unconnected with the fact that many rural parents do not like training the girl child. ofuoku and emuh (2009) posit that rural parents deprive their female children of formal education because of the belief held by them relating to the loss of their family name once the girl child gets married. table 1: social attributes of secondary school students (n = 228) age frequency percentage (%) 13 – 15 86 37.72 16 – 18 68 29.82 19 – 21 74 32.46 level of education of the parent no formal education 54 23.68 primary education 99 43.42 secondary education 47 20.61 tertiary education 28 12.28 occupation of parents farming 138 60.53 trading 62 27.19 civil servant 28 12.28 wealth status of parents not wealthy 121 53.07 moderately wealthy 69 30.26 wealthy 38 16.67 sex: male 143 62.72 female 85 16.67 knowledge of agricultural science high 76 33.33 average 101 44.30 low 51 22.37 aptitude for prerequisite subjects yes 110 48.25 no 118 51.75 contact with a guidance counselor (term) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 515-527 520 0 132 57.89 1 54 23.68 2 23 10.09 3 11 4.82 4 8 3.51 involvement in agricultural child labour yes no exposure to electronic mass media (audiovisual) yes 191 64.77 no 37 16.23 visit commercial farms (yearly) 1 4 147 64.47 5 8 52 22.81 9 12 29 12.72 above 12 0 0 source: primary data, 2019 most (44.30%) of the students had average knowledge of agricultural science as a subject. others, 33.33% had low knowledge of it. with reference to the prerequisite subjects, 48.25% of them had the aptitude for the prerequisite subjects, while 51.75% did not have the aptitude for the prerequisite subjects. this aligns with apantaku (2004) who formally similar trends in his study in ogan state, nigeria. oladele (1998) suggests that subject combination, academic acquirement in subjects related to career, difficulty perceived in such school subjects, among others are variables that affect career choice. most (57.89%) of the students had no contact with guidance counselors. this is attributable to the dearth of guidance and counseling personnel in rural schools. counselors are very crucial to the choice of career made by students in secondary schools. olayinka (1992) state that the counselor is very important in guiding students to make the right choice of career. through interaction in a counseling session, students make the right choice of career as the counselor makes the students see the reality before them and decide on their career choice without the counselor forcing one on them. after weighing the options, the students make their own choice. concerning involvement in agricultural child labour, most (81.14%) of the students were engaged in agricultural child labour. this variable is very crucial to a career choice in agriculture ofuoku and ugbechie (2017) found that involvement in agricultural child labour influenced students’ choice to study agriculture in various tertiary institutions in delta state, nigeria. while considering, family farming, the international labour organization (2014) suggests that agricultural child labour promotes the inter-generational transfer of skills and children's future food security. it is also worthy of note that the various contributions made by children toward household livelihood have the potentials to make children develop practice and social skills for their future (international labour organization, 2014) and create in them the interest to study agriculture and make a career of it. in the context of the large family farm, ofuoku and ugbechie (2017) observe that most often than not, students graduate into their family farms or pressurize their parents to sponsor establishment one for them, so that they do not go back to work in their family farms. almost all (83.77%) of them were exposed to audio-visual mass media such as television and video. agricultural-related programmes are always aired on television. these programmes are run by agriculture research institutes and the federal ministry of agriculture and rural development as extension programmes. these programmes are capable of motivating people to love farming. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 515-527 521 secondary school students, on watching these programmes may develop the desire to chose a career in agriculture. most (64.47%) of them visited commercial farms 1-4 times yearly. these visits to see what obtains there may inspire them to want to choose a career in agriculture. this is so especially when they witness the use of machines as a deviation from the manual way of carrying out operations in their family farms. ikeoji and agruibike (2006) found that exposure of students to the ideal task environment in agricultural establishments acts to inspire them into planning to choose a career/occupation in farming and other agriculture-related activities. 3.2. secondary school students’ most important career choice some (28.07%) of the students chose to indicate taking up a career in medicine, followed by engineering (excluding agricultural engineering) (12.28%) (table 2). it is noteworthy to see that only 10.09% of the students chose agriculture as their first choice of career/occupation; this implies that many of the students take agriculture science as a subject just to meet the requirement for their school certificate examination. this trend is congruent with that of apantaku (2004) findings. most students chose medicine either because of the influence of their parents or because of the prestige attached to it and of course the interest of their parents was borne out of the societal prestige it attracts. those that chose a career in agriculture were either inspired by the recent enlightenment campaign of governments or the fact that they may easily become self-employed after graduation than when they choose to study other courses in the future. they also found the subject and the prerequisite subjects easy for them. their exposure to agricultural extension programmes on television and visit to established commercial farms are other factors that may have inspired them to choose agriculture as a future career. ofuoku and ugbechie (2017) found that students chose to study agriculture because they believed agricultural business is lucrative. the students pointed out that food is one of the basic needs of man, therefore production and marketing of agricultural produces will be very encouraging as they will be highly demanded. table 2: distribution of students according to their first choice of career career/course frequency percentage (%) medicine 64 28.07 engineering (excluding agricultural engineering) 28 12.28 agriculture 23 10.09 pharmacy 8 3.51 nursing 12 5.26 agricultural engineering 13 5.70 aeronautics 5 2.19 law 13 5.70 teaching 13 5.70 computer science 5 2.19 accountancy 18 7.89 mass communication 13 5.70 business courses 10 4.39 armed forces 2 0.88 police 1 0.44 source: primary data, 2019 3.3. reasons to choose agriculture as a career or course of study among secondary school students table 3 indicates that the reasons given by the 23 students who would like to have a career in agriculture or choose it as a course of study include the ones given in item numbers 1-8 and 9-13 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 515-527 522 respectively. the important reasons given for planning to have a career in agriculture included selfemployment, interest, parental influence, peer group influence, economic improvement of the nation, provision of food for the populace, and profitable nature of agriculture. the important reasons they gave for desiring to study agriculture in the college or university included the fact that agriculture is not difficult, parents’ preference for a course of study, peer group influence for choosing the course of study, interesting practical aspects and ease of making a good grade. all the reasons given by the students are congruent with those found by ofuoku and ugbechie (2017), zhiri (1998), shiertzer and stone (1998), abiasekog (1992) in their various studies. table 3: reasons to choose agriculture as a career or course of study among students no. reasons strongly agree (4) agree (3) disagree (2) strongly disagree (1) score mean 1. self-employment 21(84) 2(6) 0(0) 0(0) 90 3.91 2. interest 20(80) 3(9) 0(0) 0(0) 89 3.87 3. parental influence 18(72) 1(3) 1(2) 3(3) 80 3.48 4. peer group influence 14(56) 3(9) 2(4) 4(4) 73 3.17 5. economic improvement of the nation 13(52) 3(9) 5(10) 2(2) 73 3.17 6. agriculture has different enterprises one can engage in 6(24) 7(21) 7(14) 3(3) 43 1.87 7. provision of food for the populace 12(48) 5(15) 4(8) 2(2) 73 3.17 8. agriculture is profitable 22(88) 1(3) 0(0) 0(0) 91 3.96 9. agriculture is not a difficult course 20(80) 1(3) 1(2) 1(1) 86 3.74 10. parents’ preference for course of study 18(72) 1(9) 2(4) 0(0) 85 3.70 11. peer group influence for choosing course of study 17(68) 1(3) 3(6) 2(2) 79 3.43 12. interesting practical aspects 16(64) 3(9) 2(4) 2(2) 79 3.43 13. ease of making good grade 14(56) 5(15) 3(6) 1(1) 78 3.39 source: primary data, 2019 *there are multiple responses cut-off score = 2.50 ( > 2.50 = important reason, < 2.50 not an important reason) 3.4. reasons students would not like to go into agriculture as a career or course of study table 4 shows the reasons given by 205 students who do not like to have a career in agriculture or study agriculture as a course. the important reasons included lack of interest in becoming a farmer, drudgery involved in farming activities parental influence/preference. others included making one dirty and gender consideration. female students had the feeling that since it involves drudgery, it is only males that could cope with agriculture. this aligns with apantaku (2004) who fund the same reasons among secondary school students in ogun state. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 515-527 523 table 4: reasons to not choose agriculture as a career or study course among students no. reasons strongly agree (4) agree (3) disagree (2) strongly disagree (1) score mean 1. lack of interest, just do not want to become a farmer 159(636) 30(90) 10(20) 6(6) 752 3.67 2. agriculture involves drudgery 159(636) 30(90) 10(20) 6(6) 752 3.67 3. parents’ influence/preference 73(292) 74(222) 29(58) 29(29) 601 2.93 4. agriculture has low societal prestige 76(304) 69(207) 36(72) 24(24) 607 2.96 5. agriculture does not yield quick returns 66(264) 74(222) 38(76) 27(27) 589 2.87 6. peer group influence 69(276) 69(207) 37(74) 30(30) 587 2.86 7. it makes one to be dirty 69(276) 68(204) 39(78) 29(29) 587 2.86 8. agriculture is a difficult course 81(324) 44(132) 51(102) 29(29) 587 2.86 9. gender considerations (agriculture is not good for females) 59(236) 60(180) 53(106) 33(33) 555 2.71 10. difficulty in getting a “nonfarming job” with a degree in agriculture 48(192) 49(147) 64(128) 44(44) 511 2.49 11. practical aspect of the course is difficult 56(224) 35(105) 63(126) 51(51) 506 2.47 source: primary data, 2019 *there are multiple responses. cut-off score = 2.50 ( > 2.50 = important reason; <2.50 = not important reason) 3.5. contribution of secondary schools’ students’ social attribute to their choice of agriculture as a career or a course of study table 5 unveils the estimated coefficients of the logit model. the coefficients of the logit do not have a direct interpretation. the quantifications that are familiar had marginal influences. here, the coefficients are transformed to show the odds ratio of students to choose a career in agriculture or study agriculture as a course. all the variables captured in the equation were a significant factor that influences the students' decision on career or course of study in agriculture. table 5: estimation of social attributes of secondary school students that contribute to their choice of agriculture as a career or course of study variable coefficient (β) wald stat(x2) exp. (β) constant 1.071 1.62 0.066 x1(age) 10.701 1.13 1.968 x2 (parents’ level of education) -2.242 -3.46 0.030 x3 (parents’ occupation) 0.037 0.24 0.030 x4 (wealth status of parent) 0.069 1.54 0.057 x5 (sex) -0.555 -2.16 0.594 x6 (knowledge of the subject) 1.045 3.04 2.815 x7 (aptitude for prerequisite subjects) 0.630 3.27 1.886 x8 (contact with guidance/counsellor) 0.48 0.60 0.024 x9 (involvement in agric. child labour) 1.014 4.57 2.734 x10 (exposure to audio visual media) 0.079 3.841 0.061 x11 (visit to commercial farm) 1.830 1.755 0.198 notes: lr x2 = 68.67; prob > x2 = 0.0112; pseudo r2 = 0.4253; log likelihood = -86.0232 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 515-527 524 the interpretation given to the significant variables shows that for a unit (years) increase in the age of secondary school students, the odds in favour of deciding to take up agriculture career or course of study in agriculture is estimated to increase by 96%. the odds in favour of educated parents’ influences on students to engage in agriculture as a career or course of study are estimated to decrease by 30% than by uneducated parents. this implies that parents who had little or no formal education are more prone to influence their children (students) to take up a career in agriculture or enroll for a course in agriculture. this supports the findings of ofuoku and ugbechie (2017). the odds in favour of male students’ decision to make a career in agriculture or take up a course of study in agriculture are estimated to decrease by 59% compared with female students. this implies that female students are more prone to tend to choose agriculture as a career or course of study. this is congruent with ofuoku (2017), beall (2002) who observe that females currently take broader and more defined roles on farms and agriculture and its related businesses. according to global census data, 70% of farmers are women (beall, 2002). parents’ occupation, wealth status of parents, knowledge of the subject, aptitude for prerequisite subjects, contact with guidance/counselors, involvement in agricultural child labour, exposure to audiovisual media and visit to commercial farms were the variables that increase the odds in favour of students’ decision to choose agriculture as a career or course of study. the implication points to the fact that the more involved parents are in agriculture; the higher the wealth status of parents; the more knowledgeable the student was in agriculture as a subject; the higher the aptitude for prerequisite subjects among students; the more frequent they are involved in child labour; the more exposed they are to agricultural programmes in audio-visual media; and the higher the number of their visit to commercial farms, the higher the likelihood to choose agriculture as a career or course of study among secondary school students. 3.6. implications for counseling services olayinka (1992) as cited by alfred (2015) says counseling involves a process in which a person (counselor) assists another in a face-to-face encounter. this is indicative of involvement of personal interaction between a client with a peculiar problem, he finds difficulty in solving, and a counselor who has the duty of elucidating the situation to enable the person to decide for himself on what is present before him in the extant situation (myles, 1987) as cited by alfred (2005). counseling services are needed in schools to help students make beneficial decisions. the study reveals the dearth or lack of counseling services in rural secondary schools. at the senior level in secondary schools, students are faced with decisions on what career they need to take up in the future. most times, students make wrong decisions concerning the choice of their various career aspirations for obvious reasons. this makes the students find themselves choosing the wrong careers/courses. this situation is envisaged in the rural areas, as counseling services are absent in rural secondary schools. this situation may not be unconnected with some of the reasons given by the secondary school students on why they would not like to choose agriculture as a career or course of study. some of the reasons given are against the principles of counseling and it is suspected that the choices made by the students outside agriculture career may not be the best for them. in this situation, counseling services are needed to properly guide the students and if possible, their parents so that the students will be well equipped to make an impropriate decision on their proper choice of career. this is required so that some students who for the wrong reasons chose other careers instead of an agricultural career, that may be best suited for them will correct the mistake and avoid the difficult situation in the future. 4. conclusion and recommendations this study was conducted to determine the factors that guide the choice of agriculture as a career or course of study among secondary school students in delta state, nigeria. it was found that students asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 515-527 525 had an average age of 16 years. most of their parents had one form of formal education or the other, most of who are engaged in farming as an occupation. most of the parents were not wealthy. the secondary schools were male-dominated, as most of the students had average level knowledge of agricultural sciences and many had no contact with guidance/counselors and were highly involved in agricultural child labour. their most important career choice was medicine and engineering. however, few of them had an interest in agriculture as a career or course of study. this set of students liked agriculture as a career or course of study for reasons varying from self-employment, interest, parents influence, peer group influence, economic improvement of the nation, agriculture having many enterprises, provision of food, profitable nature of agriculture not being a difficult course, parents’ preference for agriculture as a course, peer group influence and preference for agriculture as a course of study, its interesting practical aspects, to ease of making a good grade. those who do not like to have a career in agriculture or study agriculture as a course gave their reasons for that decision to include lack of interest, drudgery, parents’ influence/preference, low societal prestige, delay in returns on investment in agriculture, peer group influence, filthy nature of farming activities, the difficulty of agriculture as a course and gender consideration. the social attributes of the students such as age, parents’ level of education, parents’ occupation, wealth status of parents, sex, students’ knowledge of the subject, aptitude for the prerequisite subjects, contact with guidance/counselors, involvement in child labour, and exposure to audiovisual media agricultural programmes, and visits to commercial farms influenced their choice of career in agriculture or course of study. it is expected that from the reasons gives for not aspiring to make a career in agriculture, most of the students may have chosen an impropriate career. arising from the results of this study it is recommended that: (i) all the secondary schools in rural areas or communities need counseling units to be manned by qualified guidance/counselors. (ii) public enlightenment encouraging youths to choose agriculture as a career needs to be carried out. (iii) the government should develop and encourage mechanized agricultural practice in secondary schools. (iv) students should be taken out to agricultural establishments on field trips and excursions. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that she has no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all the designing and estimation of current research done by sole author. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abiasekog, e. m., (1992). a preliminary study of educational and occupational aspiration and expectation of rural youth in cross river state in nigeria. journal of the nigeria institute of social and economic research (niser), 2(1), 79-110. adejumo, g. o. 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(1998). le contrôle parlementaire sur le gouvernement. paris. france: abebooks. 176 unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model to understand farmer's readiness: implementation of precision agriculture based on digital iot monitoring apps in west java, indonesia niken larasatia adelia anissa putrib annisa s. soemodinotoc nadya alyssad okke siti shoofiyanie a,b,c,d,etelkom corporate university center, gegerkalong no 47, bandung, indonesia.  niken.larasati@itdri.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 20 august 2024 revised: 4 november 2024 accepted: 18 november 2024 published: 16 december 2024 keywords agricultural systems digital transformation extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (utaut2 and utaut3) farmer readiness internet of things precision agriculture technology acceptance model. this research investigates the readiness of farmers in west java to adopt iot monitoring applications through the lens of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (utaut) model. the digital transformation has introduced precision agriculture, an advanced technology-based approach that enhances the monitoring of crop and farmer needs. smart farming leverages the internet of things (iot) and sensor technology to optimize complex agricultural systems, thereby increasing productivity while mitigating environmental impact. utilizing soil and weather sensors to measure temperature, nutrients, and humidity, the study explores factors such as performance expectancy, facilitating conditions, personal innovativeness, habit, behavioral intention, and use behavior that will influence technology adoption within diverse farming communities. a deeper exploration through the lens of the utaut model reveals that west javan indonesian farmers are prepared to utilize the monitoring apps. the factors that affect the use behavior (ub) of the farmers consist of their internal or personal characteristics, habit (h) and personal innovativeness (pi), and the external factors that correlate with the app developer’s performance are facilitating condition (fc) and performance expectancy (pe). habits from farmers for data recording and the personal innovativeness will increase the intention to use iot monitoring apps. contribution/originality: this study pioneers the application of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (utaut) to evaluate farmers' readiness for precision agriculture using iot monitoring apps in west java, indonesia. it integrates technology adoption theories with regional agricultural practices, offering innovative insights into digital transformation in farming. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5258 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: larasati, n., putri, a. a., soemodinoto, a. s., alyssa, n., & shoofiyani, o. s. (2024). unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model to understand farmer’s readiness: implementation of precision agriculture based on digital iot monitoring apps in west java, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4), 176–183. 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5258 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 4 (2024): 176-183. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6045-1503 https://orcid.org/0009-0005-0930-1023 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8618-8938 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-9111-515x https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5923-5616 mailto:niken.larasati@itdri.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 176-183 177 1. introduction digital transformation has significantly impacted various sectors, including agriculture, where precision agriculture is a technology-based approach that monitors individual crop and farmer needs. this involves identifying and localizing crops, insects, and weeds, monitoring performance, and mapping plantings (akhter & sofi, 2022). understanding the needs of smart farming is crucial for farmers to utilize data effectively. smart farming uses technologies like iot and sensors to optimise complex agricultural systems, increasing productivity and reducing environmental impact (wicaksono, suryani, & hendrawan, 2022). iot sensors help farmers identify specific field zones, reducing water use and chemical runoffs (piramuthu, 2022). in the modern agricultural landscape, the integration of technology has led to transformative shifts in farming practices, enabling greater precision, efficiency, and sustainability. research on agricultural iot technology is extensive and intensive, focusing on sensor extension (xu, gu, & tian, 2022). farmers' readiness to adopt digital technology is crucial for smart farming. indonesia's telecommunications development has accelerated, raising agriculture's gross domestic product (gdp) by 3.64%. however, digital familiarity doesn't guarantee effective iot sensor usage. communication tools and internet networks are necessary enabling conditions. while existing research has often explored the barriers and facilitators of technology adoption in the farming sector, this paper offers a fresh perspective by comprehensively employing the interplay of 1) performance expectancy (pe), 2) facilitating condition (fc), 3) habit (h), 4) personal innovativeness (pi), 5) behavioral intention (bi), and 6) use behavior (ub) of the utaut model. by delving into the intricacies of these multifaceted determinants, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of obtaining the factors that influence the application of technology within diverse farming communities. in bridging the gap between theoretical insights and practical implementation, this research sheds light on novel pathways to foster precision agriculture development in an increasingly digital era. this research aimed to understand the farmers’ readiness to adopt iot monitoring applications using a modified version of the unified theory of acceptance and use technology (utaut) model to create precision agriculture. this paper addresses the question of how ready west java farmers are to adopt monitoring applications and the internal and external factors that affect adoption readiness using the utaut model. a key objective of the research is to study and gain insight into the factors influencing farmers' readiness to adopt internet of things monitoring applications in the context of precision agriculture. 2. literature review and research framework 2.1. literature review the utaut2 model has been successful in assessing factors influencing technology acceptance of different technologies with high explanatory power (walle, 2022). the extended utaut-3 model was modified to understand farmers' behavior in indonesia, especially in west java, regarding gadget usage. the authors eliminated four constructs because they were deemed irrelevant to the current behavior of west java farmers, who have not yet utilized digital monitoring applications, and the it company is still developing the product. the model can be modified based on the study's context (venkatesh, morris, davis, & davis, 2003). due to their lack of experience with digital monitoring iot technology, farmers are unsure about its ease or pleasure of use. the it company has not yet launched the product, developed a prototype, and decided on its price, making the farmers unaffected by significant constructs like si. this uncertainty hinders their ability to influence the impact of digital monitoring apps on their operations. therefore, the model of utaut was modified based on the existing west java farmers’ behavior with six constructs as the latent variables: 2.1.1. facilitating condition (fc) facilitating condition (fc) is a degree that represents the consumers’ perceptions of the resources and support available to perform a behavior, such as the availability of technological resources and technical infrastructure. several studies (jahangir & begum, 2008; mital, chang, choudhary, papa, & pani, 2018; sicari, rizzardi, grieco, & coenporisini, 2015) have examined the effect of fc on consumers’ perceived ease of use. 2.1.2. performance expectancy (pe) performance expectancy (pe) is the measure of how effectively users can carry out specific tasks after adopting a technology (venkatesh, thong, & xu, 2012). 2.1.3. personal innovativeness (pi) personal innovativeness (pi) in this context of research is defined as an individual’s perceived propensity or attitude that reflects their inclination to experiment independently with and adopt new developments in information technology (schillewaert, ahearne, frambach, & moenaert, 2005). 2.1.4. habit (h) habit (h) can be defined as the extent to which people tend to perform behaviors automatically because of learning (limayem, hirt, & cheung, 2007). 2.1.5. behavioral intention (bi) behavioral intention (bi) is the motivational factor that influences a given behavior, and the stronger the intention to perform the behavior, the more likely the behavior will be performed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 176-183 178 2.1.6. use behavior (ub) use behaviour (ub) can be defined as the degree of individual commitment to using specific technology continuously. 2.2. research framework the research model proposed above was developed for a hypothesis based on west java farmers’ present behavior and various supporting ideas. the author’s study hypothesis primarily concerns identifying technology adoption in west java. the research-based hypotheses and their respective relationships: are listed below: h1: facilitating conditions positively affect performance expectations. facilitative circumstances motivate customers to use technology more easily, such as in mobile shopping services, boosting performance expectations and enhancing the overall shopping experience. h2: performance expectancy influences behavioural intention. pe is the degree to which an individual believes that using technology would help them perform better in their work. pe has been identified as a component that influences bi. pe positively impacts the intention to use iot technology (ronaghi & forouharfar, 2020). h3: habit positively affects personal innovativeness. the transfer of learning models can help establish mobile payment usage habits by highlighting the similarity between two inventions and personal innovativeness (agarwal & prasad, 1998). this helps identify individuals who are more likely to adopt it advancements. highly innovative customers are more likely to accept new technology when they consider it superior to incumbent innovations, even if it's technologically complicated and unfamiliar. h4: personal innovativeness positively affects people’s willingness to use digital iot (ub). pi is a human quality that impacts individuals’ desire and openness to accepting new information technology innovations11. h5: behavioural intention positively influences the use behaviour of digital iot systems. a person’s bi reveals their mental preparedness to be persuaded to use technology (venkatesh et al., 2003). furthermore, the theory of planned states that a higher degree of perceived behavioral control correlates with a higher intention to use technology. an individual’s behavioral intention signifies their mental preparedness to adopt technology (ronaghi & forouharfar, 2020). ultimately, the authors created a relationship between the original model and the best model of digital ub among indonesian farmers, as shown in figure 1. figure 1. a proposed research model based on utaut for indonesia farmers in west java. source: farooq et al. (2017). the relation in figure 1 was created specifically for this study. this research defines latent variables as a set of measurable variables that cannot be directly observed. these variables are inferred from the measured or observed variables, which are measurable and assigned to multiple questions to predict the latent variable in figure 2. therefore, the authors drew inspiration for the study's framework from farooq et al. (2017) utaut-3. the theoretical framework proposed for this study can be seen in figure 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 176-183 179 figure 2. proposed research model with questionnaire items based on utaut for indonesian farmers in west java. 3. methodology this study is conducted to understand the farmers' readiness to adopt iot monitoring applications using a modified version of the utaut model. the proposed utaut model was validated through the quantitative method using surveys of 40 farmers in west java. the primary products produced by the farmers who participated in the survey fall under the olericulture category. the farmers were chosen using a non-probability/non-random purposive sampling strategy to ensure they had prior experience with agriculture iot devices, like weather and soil sensors; some of them were also the owners of the farm and could make the decision to adopt the technology. non-probability purposive sampling, is a planned and focused strategy used in qualitative research to choose participants under the researcher’s discretion who can give in-depth insights and information relevant to the research issue (neuman, 2014). the lack of details in empirical articles regarding the determination of sample sizes for sem calculations often leaves the extent of sample-size planning unclear. researchers frequently use rules of thumb, such as absolute minimum sample sizes or those based on model complexity. for sem-pls, a suitable sample size should meet one of two criteria: the sample size should be either (i) be at least ten times the largest number of items or questions used to measure a construct, or (ii) be ten times the largest number of paths associated with a construct. for the proposed utaut model, condition (i) requires a minimum sample size of 40 (aparicio, bacao, & oliveira, 2016). there are two parts to the quantitative data collection. the first part collects information regarding the demography of the farmers. the second part is a 5-point likert scale questionnaire used to validate the utaut model using the structural equation modeling (sem) calculation. this part consists of 19 questionnaire items, each serving as an observed variable that corresponds with the utaut-3 constructs or latent variables. the model and questionnaire items were retrieved from farooq et al. (2017) with some adjustments to fit our objectives. the data were analyzed using the partial least squares (pls) technique with smartpls 3. structural equation modeling (sem) is a multivariate, hypothesis-driven technique based on a structural model representing hypotheses about causal relationships among variables (stephan & friston, 2009). thus, to perform sem-pls, the utaut model must first be constructed according to the hypotheses concerning the relationships among variables. 4. result and discussion 4.1. demographic summary result this study collected some demographic data to get the depiction of the respondents. table 1 presents the summary of the data collected in the study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 176-183 180 table 1. demographic information for questionnaire respondents. characteristics n (respondents) % gender male 20 50 female 20 50 age < 25 years old 2 5 25-45 years old 18 45 > 45 years old 20 50 last education no formal education 2 5 primary school 21 52.5 junior high school 7 17.5 senior high school & equivalent 6 15 diploma & bachelor degree 4 10 years of farming experience < 5 years 9 22.5 5-10 years 6 15 10-20 years 16 40 >20 years 9 22.5 total land area <1000m2 6 15 1000-5000m2 8 20 5000-10000m2 2 5 >10000m2 5 12.5 electric device ownership feature phone (sms & call only) 8 20 smartphone android 20 50 smartphone apple 2 5 laptop/pc 3 7.5 no device 11 27.5 the table reveals that many farmers, irrespective of their digital skills, share their devices with the family members such as children or partners. many farmers, regardless of their digital skills, share their devices with family members, bridging the digital divide. the importance of digital access, particularly for those with lower literacy, motivates this practice. farmers typically start their work in farming from primary school, with most relying on instinct and sense rather than data for farming activities. 4.2. sem – pls calculation result all calculations for sem-pls were processed using smartpls 3.0. to ensure the reliability and validity of the questionnaire items, construct validity and reliability tests were conducted by assessing cronbach’s alpha (ca), average variance extracted (ave), and composite reliability (cr). ca and cr measure the internal consistency of the questionnaire’s scale, while ave evaluates the proportion of variance captured by a construct relative to measurement error. for the model to be considered reliable, ca and cr values should exceed 0.7, and the ave should be above 0.5. table 2’s reliability test result shows that all constructs have values of 0.7 and above for ca and cr, demonstrating the consistency of the questionnaire’s scale. table 2. construct validity and reliability. variable ca cr ave bi 0.823 0.894 0.739 fc 0.813 0.878 0.648 h 0.856 0.912 0.775 pe 0.892 0.925 0.757 pi 0.773 0.869 0.689 ub 1.000 1.000 1.000 the discriminant validity of the proposed model was assessed using the fornell-larcker criterion, which requires that the square root of the average variance extracted (ave) for each construct be higher than the highest correlation between that construct and any other construct in the model. the fornell-larcker criterion calculations for the proposed model are presented in table 3, and the results meet the required standard. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 176-183 181 table 3. calculatioin of the fornell-larcker criterion for the discriminant validity. variable bi fc h pe pi ub bi 0.859 fc 0.650 0.805 h 0.440 0.747 0.880 pe 0.735 0.712 0.436 0.870 pi 0.736 0.833 0.790 0.722 0.830 ub 0.556 0.661 0.515 0.417 0.663 1.000 the study used 19 questionnaire items as observed variables to explain latent constructs’ value. the outer loading of these variables determined an item’s absolute contribution to its assigned construct. h_4 and fc_4 were found to be negative, indicating their contribution was insignificant and removed from the proposed model. 4.3. hypothesis result the p-value and path coefficient were calculated using the new proposed model, determining the significance of constructs in the relationship. a p-value less than 0.05 rejects the null hypothesis, while the path coefficient explains the direct effect of constructs. the pvalue and path coefficient for the hypotheses mentioned in the research framework are shown with the proposed model in figure 3. the hypothesis testing resulted in p-values of all relationships being below 0.05 (0.000 for h1 (fc → pe), h2 (pe → bi), and h3 (h → pi), 0.009 for h4 (pi → bi), and 0.003 for h5 (bi → ub)), indicating that all the relationships are significant, thus the hypotheses are accepted. figure 3 shows the final model, the external loading of each variable to each construct, and the path coefficient of each construct’s relationship. figure 3. utaut model for west java farmer. the highest path coefficient value is observed between h and pi (h3) (0.790), suggesting that h strongly affects pi. 5. conclusion in summary, after considering several factors, it is clear that the indonesian farmers in west java are ready to use the monitoring apps. the factors that affect the ub of the farmers consist of their internal or personal characteristics (h and pi) and external factors that correlate with the app developer’s performance (fc and pe). the results show that if the farmers perceive the fc to be in an ideal condition, this will help farmers create the pe to carry out specific tasks after adopting a technology (venkatesh et al., 2012; venkatesh, 2003) which will affect their intention to use the ub. further, h had the highest path coefficient value, strongly affecting pi. thus, creating a way for the farmers to develop a habit of recording agricultural data will help them carry out specific tasks after adopting a technology (venkatesh et al., 2012; venkatesh, 2003). once farmers develop the habit of recording agricultural data, their use of the technology will increase, leading to an increase in their intention to use it, which in turn positively impacts the user base (ub) of digital iot monitoring apps. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 176-183 182 6. limitation and future research this study used a purposive sampling strategy due to the limitations of knowing the exact number of farmers who are familiar with or already use iot monitoring apps and cross-sectional design, so there is limited scope to gather data only on farmers in west java who were exposed to agriculture iot sensors. future research could incorporate some case-study-related variables into the utaut. further, to make this research more comprehensive, the authors also suggested that future researchers continue this study by adding user acceptance testing (uat) to obtain an in-depth understanding and gather the farmer’s feedback after launching the digital iot monitoring apps. funding: this research is supported by telkom corporate university center. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the telkom corporate university center, indonesia has granted approval for this study (ref. no. tel. 01/ lb 000/tcua1050200/2024). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: study conception and design, n.l, a.a.p., a.s.s., n.a. and o.s.s.; data collection, a.a.p., a.s.s., n.a. and o.s.s.; analysis and interpretation of results, a.s.s. and n.l.; draft manuscript preparation, n.a., a.a.p. and o.s.s. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references agarwal, r., & prasad, j. 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(2022). review of agricultural iot technology. artificial intelligence in agriculture, 6, 10–22. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.9.2.204 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2021.05.013 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2016.06.003 https://doi.org/10.1108/itse-06-2016-0015 https://doi.org/10.2307/25148817 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.03.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2022.08.098 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2020.101415 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2004.09.013 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2014.11.008 https://doi.org/10.2307/30036540 https://doi.org/10.2307/41410412 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2021.12.179 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 176-183 183 appendix appendix a presents a list of research questions that adopt the utaut model to assess farmers' readiness for the implementation of precision agriculture based on digital iot monitoring apps in west java, indonesia. appendix a. list of research question. variables code question farmers identity 1. name 2. age 3. gender 4. education background 5. time of farming experience (in year) 6. commodity 7. land area size (m2 or hectare) 8. ownership of electronic devices agricultural data recording habits 1. are you used to recording agricultural data? 2. reasons for doing or not recording agricultural data? 3. what data is usually recorded? 4. how frequently is agricultural data recorded? 5. if there is a digital application to help farmers record data, would you be interested? (yes/no) please state the reason performance expectancy (pe) pe_1 digital iot monitoring apps are very useful for my farming activities pe_2 digital iot monitoring apps help me to complete farming activities better pe_3 using digital iot monitoring apps increases the productivity of my farming activities pe_4 using digital iot monitoring apps helps me to produce better yields facilitating conditions (fc) fc_1 i have a laptop to use digital iot monitoring apps fc_2 i know how to use digital iot monitoring apps fc_3 the digital iot monitoring apps in my farmer group can be operated via my cell phone fc_4 the digital iot monitoring apps provider provides assistance facilities when i encounter problems in its use habit (h) h_1 i often use/read graphs displayed in digital iot monitoring applications h_2 i am used to using digital iot monitoring applications h_3 the use of digital iot monitoring applications has become a habit for me h_4 i am used to recording my agricultural activities manually in a notebook personal innovativeness (pi) pi_1 i like to try new features and developments in the world of information technology pi_2 i am interested in trying the new features found in the digital iot monitoring application pi_3 usually, i am one of the first to adopt the latest monitoring applications among my colleagues behavioral intention (bi) bi_1 i am interested in using digital iot monitoring applications on my farm in the future bi_2 i will provide recommendations to other farmers to use iot monitoring applications on their farms bi_3 i have positive expectations for my farm, when i use iot monitoring applications use behavior (ub) ub_1 how often will i use iot monitoring applications on my farm views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 178 growth induction of cavendish buds (musa acuminata l.) on difference concentration of iba and ba in vitro subandi, m. arkhan jannata, sofiya hasani department agrotechnology, faculty of science and technology, the state islamic university of sunan gunung djati of bandung, indonesia  mhd.subandi@uinsgd.ac.id (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 04-aug-2018 accepted: 02-jan-2019 online available: 24-jan2019 keywords: bud, longger, propagation, seeds abstract the propagation of cavendish (musa acuminata l.) seedling conventionally relatively took a longer time, not uniformed in quality and possibly has a disease that is derived from unhealthy mother stock. this research aimed to find the effect of iba and ba on difference concentrations on the growth of plantlet, also to determine the optimum concentration of iba and ba on the growth of cavendish bud plantlets in vitro. this research had been carried out started from april to july 2018 in tissue culture laboratory, research institute of horticultural seed development of pasir banteng, sumedang, west java. indonesia. the method used in this research was completely randomized design with two factors. the first factor was iba (i0 = 0 mg l-1, i1= 0,75 mg l-1, dan i2= 1,5 mg l1), and the second factor was ba (b1= 1 mg l-1 b2= 3 mg l-1 b3= 5 mg l-1 b4= 7 mg l-1), replicated three times. duncan multiple range test (dmrt) was used as a further test. the result showed an interaction between iba and ba on the parameters of shoot growth and the number of leaves at 6 wac. iba showed an independent effect on the number of buds. the addition of 1,5 mg l-1 iba and 3 mg l-1 ba was optimum for the growth of cavendish bud explants. contribution/ originality the current research analysed the effect of iba and ba on difference concentrations on the growth of plantlet, and determine the optimum concentration of iba and ba on the growth of cavendish bud plantlets in vitro on the basis of recent data. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.178.187 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: subandi, m., arkhan jannata and sofiya hasani (2018). growth induction of cavendish buds (musa acuminata l.) on difference concentration of iba and ba in vitro. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 178-187. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 178-187 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:mhd.subandi@uinsgd.ac.id https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5816-3329 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.178.187 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 178-187 179 1. introduction banana is a fruit that is often consumed compared to other fruits and is consumed without regard to the social level (rahmawati and erita, 2013). apart from being easy to obtain and affordable, bananas have long been known as a delicious and nutritious fruit (supriyanto et al., 1990). bananas are also one of the main crops that are commonly planted by the community in addition to cassava, papaya, and jackfruit (putranto and taofik, 2014; akpan and udoh, 2017; okebiorun and jatto, 2017). the type of banana that is currently in high demand and desired by the international market is cavendish, but based on information from the ministry of agriculture (directorate general of horticulture, 2015) the development of cavendish cultivars in indonesia still faces obstacles for the attack of fusarium wilt. non-uniform quality and the rare use of quality seeds have become obstacles to indonesia's banana export activities to other countries. another problem is to fulfill one hectare of land needed as many as 1000-2500 banana seedlings, while conventional propagation of banana seedlings has problems because of the relatively small number of tillers obtained, which is only about 5-10 tillers per clump per year (yusnita and hapsoro, 2013). according to (bhosale et al., 2011; subandi et al., 2018), for commercial purposes planting material can be obtained through tissue culture techniques. this technique produces high multiplication, is uniformly genetic, and the planting material is free of pests and diseases. growth and development of explants in tissue culture is further maximized by using growth regulating substances (grs). according to lestari (2011), the use of grs in tissue culture depends on the which of growth of the desired plant tissue. the formation of shoots explains in vitro culture is usually aided by applying grs auxin and cytokinin (zulkarnain, 2009). auxin is actually a stimulating grs for root formation, but lu and thorpe (1987) and davies (1995) states that in the same medium, a combination of auxin and cytokinin will form synergism to spur shoot proliferation. iba (indole-3butyric acid) is one of the auxiliary substances that is often used in tissue culture, because it has a more stable, easily available, relatively inexpensive and effective nature (wattimena, 1988). cytokinin is a hormone that plays a role in shoot growth (triningsih et al., 2013). benzyladenine (ba) is a type of cytokinin with propagul propagation effectiveness that is quite high, easy to obtain, relatively inexpensive, and stable so that it is widely used (srivastava, 2002; subandi et al., 2018a). srivastava (2002), reported iba 0.0 mg l-1 and ba 1.5 mg l-1 had the best influence in the formation of the number of barangan banana shoots as much as 4.00 shoots per explant, supriati (2010), reported on amorang kepok banana that ba 1 mg l-1 in the media ¼ ms was best for multiplication of shoots, avivi and ikrarwati (2004), in abaca banana, 5 mg l-1 ba had the same effect with kinetin 7 mg l-1 in producing plantlets. this study aims to determine the effect of various concentrations of iba and ba on the growth of shoots of cavendish banana explants and determine the optimum level of iba and ba concentration for the growth of cavendish banana plantlets shoots in vitro. 2. materials and methods the research was conducted from april 2018 to july 2018 at the research institute of horticultural seed development of pasir banteng, sumedang, west java. indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 178-187 180 the tools used during the research took place, namely 1) sterilization equipment (bottle brush, autoclave, oven, toolbox); 2) media preparation equipment (culture bottles, stirring rods, timers, spatulas, magnetic stirrers, volumetric flasks, hot plates, analytical scales, measuring cups, ph meters, pipettes and pump pipettes); 3) dissection equipment (tweezers, scissors, handles and scalpel blades); 4) planting and incubation equipment (laminar air flow cabinet, petri dish, bunsen, culture rack, air conditioner, thermo hydro meter, rubber band, hand sprayer); and 5) observation equipment (rulers, cameras and stationery). the materials used during the research took place, namely banana plantlets cavendish (musa acuminata l.) sk3 (3rd subculture), murashige and skoog (ms) stock solution, iba and ba growth regulating substances, 70% and 96% alcohol, agar-agar, sugar, activated charcoal, tissue, detergent, methylated, aquadest, label stickers, plastic wrap and aluminum foil. the experimental design carried out was a factorial completely randomized design method consisting of two factors, and three replications. 1) the first factor, the concentration of iba (i) which consists of 3 levels of treatment, namely: i0 = iba 0.00 mg l-1 i1 = iba 0.75 mg l-1 i2 = iba 1.50 mg l-1 2) the second factor, the concentration of ba (b) which consists of 4 levels of treatment, namely: b1 = ba 1.00 mg l-1 b2 = ba 3.00 mg l-1 b3 = ba 5.00 mg l-1 b4 = ba 7.00 mg l-1 the treatment combination was 12 treatment units with each were replicated 3 implications which each bottle is filled with 1 explant. of the 36 bottles of treatment, then each one was made a backup per bottle, so that the total number of trials was 72 bottles. 2.1. several parameters were observed including a. early growing time: observations were made from the beginning of planting until the first time shoots appeared. criteria for new shoots that grow are the presence of protrusions from the surface of the explants pointing up b. number of shoots (fruit) the number of shoots was observed by counting the number of shoots formed in each live explant. the number of shoots is calculated every two weeks every 2, 4, 6 and 8 wac. c. shoot height (cm). the shoot height was observed by measuring the ruler from outside the culture bottle, starting from the base of the stem to the highest growing point. measurements are made every two weeks every 2, 4, 6 and 8 wac. 2.2. stage of research 1. sterilization of space and equipment space sterilization (laboratory) is carried out by cleaning every corner of the room in the planting room, and incubation room. especially for planting rooms, floors and tables in the room cleaned and sprayed using 96% alcohol every time before and after use. dissection equipment is sterilized by washing with water and detergent. wet sterilized equipment in an autoclave at 121° c with a pressure of 15 psi for 60 minutes. then dry sterilization by inserting the equipment into the oven at 100 ° c for 60 minutes. lafc sterilization is done by activating uv light for 30-60 minutes before use and activating the blower, then. at the time of use, all parts of lafc (except filter alpha) are sprayed with 70% alcohol and wiped with tissue. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 178-187 181 2. preparing and sterilizing media the media composition was made according to the experimental level used to be mixed into ms media material. media that has been mixed is cooked until boiling, then poured into a culture bottle, then covered with plastic and tightly tied using rubber. the media is coded according to the treatment using a sticker, then sterilized using an autoclave with a temperature of 121ºc at a pressure of 15 psi for 30 minutes. after sterilization is complete, the media bottles are stored for 5 days in the incubation room before use. 2.3. planting explants 3. explanation planting is done inside lafc. before planting, lafc and the equipment to be used are sterilized according to the method described in the equipment sterilization section. the explants were removed from the bottle and then cut off the shoots, then planted in the treatment medium as much as 1 explant / bottle using sterile tweezers. before transferring explants, it is necessary to pay attention to the media that will be used in a sterile condition (there are no contaminants), and to anticipate contamination, the mouth of the bottle is burned with bunsen before and after the explants are removed. the culture bottle that has been filled by the explant is then covered with plastic and tied with a rubber band, then tightened with plastic wrap. 2.4. cultivation/maintenance 4. the culture bottles that have contained explants are stored neatly on top of the culture rack in the incubation chamber. maintenance is carried out every day by noticing and maintaining cleanliness by ensuring that every equipment that enters the incubation chamber is sterile. the environmental conditions of the room are maintained so that the room temperature is stable between 27 oc 29 oc and 70% room humidity and 90% bottle moisture. spraying 70% alcohol on each culture bottle is done every day to prevent contamination. explants undergoing contamination are recorded and separated so that contamination is not widespread. 3. results and discussion 3.1. the time of early shoots appears shoots are new young branches that grow or prospective new plants that grow from parts of the plant (rahardja and wiryanta, 2003). the earlier the growth of shoots shows that the explant response to treatment is very good. the initial time for buds to appear varies in each treatment. table 1: interactions of iba and ba on the initial time of growing shoots (dac) iba (i) ba (b) b1 b2 b3 b4 i0 6,33 ab 8,33 a 5,33 a 15,67 a b b b a i1 11,00 a 2,67 a 4,00 a 2,67 b a b b b i2 2,00 b 2,33 a 2,33 a 3,33 b a a a a note: the number followed by the same letter is not significantly different according to the duncan test at the 5% level. lowercase letters are read vertically (columns). the capital letter is read horizontal direction (line) based on table 1, each iba and ba concentration can affect the speed of explants on growing shoots. the initial time to grow the fastest shoots was found in i2 treatment when combined with the addition of ba at levels b1, b2, and b3. this means that lower ba concentrations will have the maximum effect in growing shoots when combined with iba at a concentration of 1.5 mg l-1. on asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 178-187 182 the contrary, the higher the concentration of ba used it actually resulted in the initial growth time of shoots occurred more slowly, which grew at 3.33 dac at the level of b4. this is allegedly closely related to fahmi's (2013) disclosure, that the use of high concentrations of cytokinin can inhibit growth, poison and even kill explants, causing increased concentration in the ba treatment combined with i2 treatment, causing explants to grow slowly in growing shoots. the right cytokinin treatment to balance the initial growth time of shoots if without the addition of iba (i0) is the treatment of 5 mg l-1 ba (b3), whereas in iba 0.75 mg l-1 (i1) you should add ba 3 mg l-1 (b2) or ba 7 mg l-1 (b4). the treatment of i2b1 is the treatment that has the best influence with the average shoots of cavendish explants in this combination can grow starting from 2.00 dac. in another sense, the concentration of 1.5 mg l-1 iba when combined with ba 1 mg l-1 is able to grow shoots faster than other combinations. based on this, the high or low concentrations of exogenous growth regulators are not necessarily absolute, with exogenous auxin concentrations increasing, it will cause barriers to the time of shoot growth to increase, since enjoni (2004) states that the effect of explant growth in vitro depends on the growth regulators applied to the media, the concentration or concentration of the growth regulator given is closely related to the hormone content contained in explant. figure 1: the initial time to grow shoots of cavendish explants in treatments a) i2b1 at 2.00 dac; b) i2b3 2.33 dac; c) i1b2 at 2.67 dac; d) i1b4 at 2.67 dac. the accuracy of the iba and ba concentrations in the i2b1 treatment is affected by the interactions of auxin and cytokinin in the form of endogenous phytohormones from within the explants, thus spurring the growth of explant shoots earlier than the other treatments. the initial time to grow buds is an important parameter to be observed because the faster the shoot grows, the 1 . b a d c asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 178-187 183 faster the growth of the shoot is expected, so that it can accelerate the multiplication stage to shorten the time in multiplication in vitro. 3.2. number of buds growth in the number of buds is one of the important factors in tissue culture, because the number of buds indicates the success of the multiplication stage. buds have an important role to become the main organ that will support the plant to keep growing and developing. calculation of the number of buds carried out on the whole shoots that grow, both in the form of shoots originating from buds or adventitious shoots. observation of the number of buds did not correlate with the initial time of shoot growth in this study. the results of the variance analysis showed no significant interaction between iba and ba in influencing the growth of the number of bud of cavendish banana explants. the growth of the number of shoots in this study was influenced by independent factors from the existence of iba from 2 wac to 8 wac with a very significant degree of influence. table 2: independent effect of iba on number of buds at 2 wac, 4 wac, 6 wac, and 8 wac treatment number of buds 2 wac 4 wac 6 wac 8 wac iba i0 1,00 a 1,50 a 1,67 a 1,83 a i1 1,42 a 2,17 a 2,67 a 3,33 a i2 ba 3,33 b 5,58 b 8,17 b 9,08 b b1 1,89 a 2,89 a 3,78 a 3,89 a b2 2,44 a 3,11 a 4,67 a 5,44 a b3 1,56 a 2,78 a 3,56 a 3,89 a b4 1,78 a 3,56 a 4,67 a 5,78 a note: the mean value of each column marked with the same letter shows no significant difference based on duncan's advanced test at the 5% level the results of the analysis were carried out using duncan's advanced test at a significant level of 5%, indicating that the i2 (iba) giving factor of 1.5 mg l-1 had the best effect in growing the number of bud in cavendish banana as much as 3.33 buds at 2 wac, 5.58 buds in 4 wac, 8.17 buds at 6 wac, and 9.08 buds at 8 wac (table 2). the independent influence factor of ba itself did not show any significant effect on each level of treatment, but the highest effect was found at the level of treatment b2 with an average of 2.44 buds per explant at 2 wac, the level of treatment b4 on average 3.55 buds per explant at 4 wac, then b2 and b4 with an average of 4.66 buds per explant at 6 wac, and at 8 wac the treatment level b4 was able to produce an average of 5.78 buds per explant. growth regulator iba is an exogenous auxin hormone which functions to stimulate root growth in tissue culture. however, the results of observations showed that the treatment with auxin was lower, the growth in the number of shoots was not very visible. the growth of the number of buds is very increased in treatment i 2 (iba 1.5 mg l-1). this can be caused by the good interaction between iba and endogenous auxin hormones in cavendish bananas, as revealed by george and sherrington (1984) in their research which showed that explant growth and development can be influenced by interactions and balance between grs exogenous grs endogen (hormon). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 178-187 184 figure 2: a) i2b2 treatment; b) i2b3 treatment; c) i2b4 treatment; d) i1b4 treatment the combination of cytokinins with auxin which is appropriate can spur morphogenesis in bud formation (flick et al., 1933), meaning that with a suitable combination, auxin as a root grs can work with cytokinins to form buds in cavendish culture. based on observations on 8 wac (figure 2), cavendish banana explants with i2b2 treatment (iba 1.5 m l-1 + ba 3 mg l-1) showed a higher effect than the treatment of i2b3 and i2b4 (iba 1.5 mg l-1 + ba 5 mg l-1) and i2b4 (ba 1.5 mg l-1 + ba 7 mg l-1), with an average number of buds that grew 11.67 shoots, while treatment i1b4 had an average the number of shoots is 7.67 buds. 3.3. the height of buds the results of the variance analysis showed that there was no significant interaction between iba and ba in growing cavendish banana shoots during the observations that lasted from 2 wac to 8 wac. very significant influence was shown independently by iba at each observation conducted from 2 wac to 8 wac. table 3: effect of independent iba and ba on buds height at the age of 2 wac, 4 wac, 6 wac, and 8 wac treatment height of buds (cm) 2 wac 4 wac 6 wac 8 wac iba i0 0,21 a 0,39 a 0,46 a 0,55 a i1 0,36 a 0,63 a 0,70 a 0,82 a i2 0,54 ab 1,01 b 1,36 b 1,51 b ba b1 0,34 a 0,64 a 0,81 a 0,97 a b2 0,40 a 0,72 a 0,89 a 1,06 a b3 0,35 a 0,58 a 0,79 a 0,84 a b4 0,39 a 0,78 a 0,89 a 0,96 a note: the mean value of each column marked with the same letter shows no significant difference based on duncan's advanced test at the 5% level a c d b asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 178-187 185 through the results of further testing using duncan at the significant level of 5%, which is shown in table 10, it is known that the treatment factor i2 (iba 1.5 mg l-1) has a highly significant effect compared to other levels of iba by growing cavendish banana buds as high as 0.54 cm , 1.01 cm, 1.36 cm, and 1.51 cm in 2 wac, 4 wac, 6 wac, and 8 wac in sequence. the application of ba at the level of treatment b2 (ba 3 mg l-1) is able to grow the best shoot height compared to other levels of ba treatment, which is as high as 1.06 cm at 8 wac, but the effect is not significantly observed according to the results of statistical calculations due to comparisons which is not so significant with other levels of ba treatment. on the observation data of treatment i 2b4 (iba 1.5 mg l-1 + ba 7 mg l-1) at 2 wac 4 wac was the treatment with the highest growth of the best shoots with an average of 0.62-1.15cm per explant. then at 6 wac the highest buds were found in the treatment of i2b2 (iba 1.5 mg l-1 + ba 3 mg l-1) with an average shoot height of 1.43 cm per explant. then the treatment of i2b1 (iba 1.5 mg l-1 + ba 1 mg l-1) produced the best shoot height at 8 wac with an average height of 1.65 cm per explant. changes in treatment in the best category are thought to be caused by plants needing time to absorb nutrients and respond differently. growth is usually seen in morphological changes in the form of tissue lengthening and enlargement (karjadi and buchory, 2007). gardner et al. (1991) explains that in a narrow sense, growth means cell division, which results in an increase in the number and enlargement of cells, so that the increase in cell size causes increased shoot height marked by increased shoot size in explants. increased shoot height in tissue culture as a sign of increased growth and ability of explants in adding new organs around the bud organs that have specific and important functions for future plant life. the type and concentration of plant growth regulators that are appropriate for each plant are not the same because it depends on the genotype and physiological conditions of the plant tissue (lestari, 2011). in addition, according to fahmi (2013), too much growth regulating substances can actually inhibit, poison, and kill plants. coupled with the scale of production, the use of regulating growth substances is too large to reduce the value of efficiency in the use of production costs. 4. conclusion 1. the application of iba and ba interacts with the initial time parameters of growing shoots. 2. independently the application of iba affects the parameters of the number of buds and buds height. 3. the optimum growth of cavendish banana plantlets was at iba 1.5 mg l-1 concentration with ba 3 mg l-1. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akpan, e. a., & udoh, v. s. 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(2009). plant tissue culture. earth literacy. jakarta, indonesia effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 129 enhancing market orientation of cocoa farmers through farmer business schools: the ghana cocobod experience enoch kwame thamagyekuma ernest laryea okorleyb joseph kwartengc john-eudes andivi bakangd fred nimohe a,d,edepartment of agricultural economics, agribusiness and extension, kwame nkrumah university of science and technology-kumasi, ghana. b,cdepartment of agricultural economics and extension, university of cape coast-cape coast, ghana.  ektagyekum@knust.edu.gh (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 12 january 2021 revised: 24 february 2021 accepted: 8 march 2021 published: 25 march 2021 keywords cocoa farmers competition customer emphasis cocobod farmer business school ghana intelligence generation intelligence dissemination market orientation market responsiveness. the study sought to ascertain how the farmer business school (fbs) introduced in 2012 by the ghana cocoa board as an extension approach makes the ghanaian cocoa farmer more business and entrepreneurially minded. the research methods included using the descriptive survey and multi-stage sampling techniques to cover the six cocoa regions and 600 cocoa farmers. the 600 cocoa farmers selected were made up of 230 non-participants and 370 participants of the fbs. in terms of competency, the results showed that fbs participants had greater knowledge, a more positive attitude, and better skills than non-participants. in terms of market orientation, fbs participants were more competitor oriented, had less intelligence generation, were less market responsive, had less intelligence dissemination, had more customer emphasis, and had more interfunctional coordination than non-participants. the market orientation of cocoa farmers can be enhanced by provision of relevant practical experience for attitudinal change. contribution/originality: this novel study investigated how the market orientation of cocoa farmers in ghana can be enhanced through the farmer business school. the paper's primary contribution is finding that market orientation has a significant association with the attitudes and skills of fbs participant cocoa farmers. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.129.138 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: enoch kwame tham-agyekum --ernest laryea okorley --joseph kwarteng --john-eudes andivi bakang --fred nimoh (2021). enhancing market orientation of cocoa farmers through farmer business schools: the ghana cocobod experience. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1), 129-138. 10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.129.138 © 2021 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the cocoa industry in ghana is characterized by low productivity and peasantry, although it remains a major contributor to the national economy (gockowski, afari-sefa, sarpong, osei-asare, & dziwornu, 2011; obuobisadarko, 2015). in the past, extension organizations have been more concerned with the process of disseminating technical information or innovations about the production needs of farmers. this extension strategy over the years has improved cocoa yields marginally but its impacts have not been sustainable (giz, 2015; wiredu, mensah-bonsu, andah, & fosu, 2011). röling (2009) reported that in sub‐saharan africa, the majority of smallholder farmers rarely applied the technical innovations received from the extension system, which in part, may explain why yields are low. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 11, issue 1 (2021): 129-138. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1657-1409 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1354-7446 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6576-5678 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4980-075x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9684-8393 mailto:ektagyekum@knust.edu.gh http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2021.111.129.138 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 129-138 130 the cocoa research institute of ghana (crig) had reported that only 3% of cocoa farmers in ghana had adopted the full range of crig-recommended production technologies, leading to yield and production levels below potential (crig, 2010). for many farmers, lack of resources including money and labor to apply the technologies, and technical difficulties were the key reasons for the low adoption of the technologies. to address the problem, the government of ghana for the past decade has intervened with the national cocoa diseases and pests control program (codapec) for mass spraying of cocoa farms, and the cocoa high technology program (hi-tech) which provides free inputs and labor for the control of capsids and black pod (aneani, anchirinah, owusu-ansah, & asamoah, 2012). admittedly, the inputs from the codapec program were inadequate and farmers were expected to supplement it and as such, the program has not been successful as expected. oddly, the interventions to address this problem were targeted more to production techniques until as recently as 2012, when the ghana cocoa board started the idea of farmer business schools (fbs) to improve the market orientation of cocoa farmers. the fbs focuses on the business and entrepreneurial skills development of smallholder cocoa farmers, with the aim of improving their market orientation and subsequently, their motivation to invest and apply improved techniques (fao, 2011; giz, 2015). the fbs is expected to improve producer knowledge of markets and marketing to enhance farmers’ capacity to engage with and benefit from such activities (fao, 2011). since the financial and marketing-related issues are critically important for improving their incomes, the fbs seeks and adopts new technologies for further improvement in farming livelihoods (giz, 2015). the decisions on adoption of new technologies in agriculture are usually complex, involving both quantitative and qualitative objectives (social, sustainability, rural development, etc.). fortuin, batterink, and omta (2007) have argued that market failures arising from information asymmetry can hamper the success of adoption of innovation. it is also argued that market orientation can lead to positive economic results for a business entity (ellinger, ketchen jr, hult, elmadağ, & richey jr, 2008). in this sense, farmers who want positive results are more likely to adopt technologies to improve quality and to satisfy their customers. for example, in valencia a positive relationship between market orientation, adoption of innovation, and economic results was observed, supporting the view that market dynamism influences firms’ results (schwartz, 2006). the presence of crop productions with strong market orientation was found to have favured the dissemination and adoption of innovations and economic results in the region (aldas-manzano, küster, & vila, 2005). from the afore-understanding in the extant literature, the provision of technical production information is positive for cocoa production and productivity, but it must be supported by economic and market information for better adoption and economic results. this new orientation can help farmers to consider the market in their production decisions and activities in order to enhance profits (giz, 2015). anecdotal attribution to the problem of the cocoa industry in ghana is that the market orientation of cocoa farmers is low. blankson and david (2002) contended that market orientation principles have not been applied by many farmers because they perceive their farms as informal. activities are mostly unplanned and rely on the intuition and energy of the farmer to make things happen. thus, uptake of business and entrepreneurial ideas and technical innovations is limiting (meziou, 1991). since 2012, the ghana cocoa board in collaboration with giz (deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit) has introduced the fbs with the aim of improving cocoa farmers’ market orientation, to assist them in producing high-quality cocoa beans to attract premium prices from cocoa-buying companies and certification agencies for better incomes. currently, however, there is limited empirical information to justify continued support of the fbs as tool for enhancing the market orientation of cocoa farmers. this study therefore seeks to ascertain the extent to which fbs can enhance market orientation among cocoa farmers in ghana. to address the research problem, the following specific objectives were set: 1. to ascertain the competency of cocoa farmers in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitude by comparing participants and non-participants of the fbs. 2. to determine the market orientation of cocoa farmers in terms of customer emphasis, competitor orientation, interfunctional coordination, intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination, and market responsiveness, by comparing participants and non-participants of the fbs. 2. research methodology the study adopted a comparative survey research design with a focus on famers who have participated in the cocobod fbs since its inception and those who had yet to participate. the study was undertaken in the six cocoagrowing regions of ghana. the study was comparative because the attribution of the competence acquired and market orientation gained through the fbs were on the basis of a comparison between participants and nonparticipants of the fbs. from an estimated 350,000 cocoa farmers in the study area, a sample of 600 respondents was taken representing the regions ashanti (100 respondents), brong ahafo (100 respondents), central (100 respondents), eastern (100 respondents), volta (60 respondents), and western (140 respondents). a multi-stage sampling technique was employed to select farmers. the census method was used in selecting the regions, i.e. all cocoa-growing regions in ghana. the second stage involved the selection of cocoa-growing districts. two districts from each of the regions, with the exception of western (3) and volta (1), making a total of 10 districts, were selected using the simple random sampling technique. this was done because western had a very large population while volta had the lowest. selection of communities followed for the third stage. from each district, three communities each were selected through the simple random sampling technique. the final stage involved simple random sampling and selection of the cocoa farmers from communities to make up the sample size of 600: 370 participants and 230 non-participants. in each of the simple random sampling techniques used, the balloting method asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 129-138 131 was utilized whereby a list of subjects was produced (with information from cocobod), and researchers were blindfolded and selected the required numbers needed. this ensured that all subjects had an equal and independent chance of selection. the research instrument (questionnaire) was designed to reflect the domain or key variables of the study – competence in terms of knowledge (17 items), skills (17 items), and attitude (17 items), and market orientation in terms of customer emphasis (8 items), competitor orientation (8 items), interfunctional coordination (8 items), intelligence generation (8 items), intelligence dissemination (8 items), and market responsiveness (8 items). all items were derived from the literature and modified for use in this particular study (e.g. dawes, 2000; jaworski & kohli, 1993; narver & slater, 1998). data were collected using the questionnaire for both participants and non-participants of the fbs, and were analysed using mainly descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations). the results are presented in composite form in terms of the domain variables. 3. results and discussion 3.1. competency of cocoa farmers 3.1.1. knowledge of cocoa farmers table 1 explains the mean knowledge of cocoa farmers acquired in the fbs and that of the non-participants. the lowest knowledge score observed for participant cocoa farmers concerned being familiar with profit and loss analysis. this recorded a mean of 2.50 and a standard deviation of 0.94. accordingly, cocoa farmers are classified as inefficient. efficient farm managers want to be able to determine the position of their business at any point of time. the breakeven point and expected profit are very important analyses done by farm producers who want to know how much they have to produce to cover costs and make profits thereafter. the profit and loss analysis involved classifying and allocating to the products and or activities of the farm business, and making it easy to measure profitability (wernerfelt, 1984). table-1. knowledge of cocoa farmers (participants and non-participants). knowledge participants non-participants mean (std. dev.) mean (std. dev.) a. i am familiar with profit and loss analysis 2.50 (0.94) 2.99 (0.99) b. i can differentiate between commercial agriculture and other businesses 4.19 (0.78) 2.80 (1.23) c. i understand the cocoa financial calendar 3.55 (1.09) 2.81 (1.19) d. i know the ways to improve my cocoa production 3.99 (0.79) 3.13 (1.08) e. i know the criteria used for selecting quality cocoa 4.08 (0.81) 3.54 (1.01) f. i know the conditions involved in dealing with financial service providers 4.14 (0.88) 2.62 (1.18) g. i know the obligations of membership in fbo 4.15 (0.73) 3.17 (1.05) h. i know the benefits of collective business actions 4.19 (0.76) 2.76 (1.18) i. i know the importance of savings 4.27 (0.81) 4.10 (0.85) j. i know the factors that make farmer organizations succeed 4.31 (0.46) 2.53 (1.25) k. i know the investment needs of my farm business 4.32 (0.47) 2.75 (1.21) l. i know the benefits of reimbursing credits 4.35 (0.63) 3.65 (1.14) m. i know the importance of farm credit 4.38 (0.75) 4.19 (0.88) note: scale: 1, no knowledge; 2, very low; 3, low; 4, high; 5, very high. in table 1the lowest score for non-participant cocoa farmers concerned knowing the factors that make farmer organizations succeed. this recorded a mean of 2.53 and a standard deviation of 1.25. accordingly, the most obvious explanation is that they were not trained. it could also be that they had either never been part of farmer organizations or, if they had, they did not realize any benefit from their participation. however, paladino (2008) indicated that farmer-based organizations aim to secure economic, social, and wider benefits to farmers through expanding their social capital and building the capacity of local communities. farmer organizations also enhance the ability of smallholders to improve productivity and product quality and to access market information and inputs, while small-scale farmers save money to accumulate capital and collectively run economic activities. farmers extend networks and experience stronger social cohesion and relationships through collective work. farmers’ participation in farmer organizations helps them to gain management skills as well as experience in conflict resolution and public speaking. overall, it increases their capability and self-confidence to articulate their interests. in a study in china, zhou, gao, yang, and zhou (2005) enumerated the factors that make farmer organizations succeed. they mentioned factors such as a stable legal environment, government support, a dedicated initiator, farmers’ understanding of and participation in cooperative activities, transparent and efficient internal management, product orientation, cooperative and technical training, and appropriate external support from professional ngos. the highest knowledge score for cocoa farmers (both participants and non-participants) was their ability to know the importance of farm credit. this recorded a mean of 4.38 and a standard deviation of 0.75 for participants and a mean of 4.19 and a standard deviation of 0.88 for non-participants, suggesting that the cocoa farmers were well versed in credit issues since they knew the importance of farm credit. the reason for this, as explained by ghorbani (2005), could be that most farmers perceive credit accessibility as important for the improvement of quality and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 129-138 132 quantity of farm products, and also it can help increase their income. therefore, with the robustness required for cocoa businesses, farmers will be very interested in farm credit because they know how it can help improve their business. 3.1.2. skills of cocoa farmers table 2 explains the mean skills of cocoa farmers acquired in the fbs and those of non-participants. the lowest skill observed for participant cocoa farmers was filling the simple cropping calendar. this recorded a mean of 4.11 and a standard deviation of 1.23. although the mean value was high, it was the lowest in comparison with all the other skills acquired during the fbs. the lowest skill observed for non-participant cocoa farmers was using the financial calendar to plan farm/household expenditure. this recorded a mean of 1.83 and a standard deviation of 0.89. the results found here confirm the findings of akoto (2015), who observed that, generally, most cocoa farmers have low skills in areas such as farm planning, calculating business profits, practice of savings, credit worthiness, loan cosign consequences, insurance practice, and financial investments. other areas such as record keeping remain a gray area for most farmers, although it has the potential to reduce risks significantly. the highest skill observed for both participant and non-participant cocoa farmers was producing good-quality cocoa following cocobod techniques. this recorded a mean of 4.36 and standard deviation of 0.83 (participants) and a mean of 4.16 and standard deviation of 0.93 for non-participants. the implication for this result is that cocoa farmers are highly skilled in producing good-quality cocoa following cocobod techniques. table-2. skills of cocoa farmers (participants and non-participants). skills participants non-participants mean (std. dev.) mean (std. dev.) a. fill a simple cropping calendar 4.11 (1.23) 1.94 (1.06) b. obtain a guarantee for a loan 4.14 (1.14) 2.80 (1.33) c. manage financial deficits and surplus money 4.15 (1.12) 2.81 (1.06) d. use the financial calendar to plan my farm/household expenditure 4.16 (1.14) 1.83 (0.89) e. determine profit or loss of my farm business 4.18 (1.14) 2.76 (1.23) f. calculate money out and money in 4.19 (1.15) 2.29 (1.33) g. bargaining new farm opportunities 4.19 (1.09) 2.77 (1.32) h. manage savings and reimburse a loan 4.21 (1.1) 2.64 (1.24) i. assess a cooperative business opportunity 4.22 (1.07) 2.84 (1.40) j. measure a plot with simple tools 4.24 (1.12) 2.05 (1.02) k. contribute to strengthen fbo in business 4.25 (1.02) 3.55 (1.23) l. how to access cocoa farm support services 4.28 (1.01) 3.16 (1.06) m. produce good-quality cocoa following cocobod techniques 4.36 (0.83) 4.16 (0.93) note: scale: 1, no knowledge; 2, very low; 3, low; 4, high; 5, very high. 3.1.3. attitudes of cocoa farmers table 3 explains the attitude of cocoa farmers towards the fbs and that of non-participants. investigation into the attitudes of cocoa farmers towards the fbs was prompted by the general perception that their attitudes stand in the way of efforts to achieve higher cocoa productivity. many workers in the cocoa sector posit that cocoa cultivation in ghana will move forward if farmers are encouraged to change their attitude towards cocoa as a business enterprise (baah, anchirinah, & amon-armah, 2011). the lowest attitude developed for participant cocoa farmers was “recording of money inflows/outflows helps in managing my money” and “diversifying to manage risks”; this was observed among 41% of respondents. among non-participants, the lowest attitude developed was on saving money for future needs; this was observed among 18% of respondents. the implication is that the majority of participants do not perceive that recording their money inflows/outflows helps in managing their money and that diversification helps them to manage risks; for non-participants, they do not perceive saving their money for future needs as a good attitude. the highest attitude developed by both participant and non-participant cocoa farmers was seeing their farm as a business. this was observed among 73 and 64% of respondents, respectively. the implication is that majority of cocoa farmers perceive their farm as a business. this is the right mentality expected of every cocoa farmer who intends to improve his or her income and livelihood. osei-bonsu, baah, and afrifa (2001) also confirmed that farmers’ objectives include the meeting of the subsistence needs of their families, the search for capital to invest elsewhere, provision of inheritable property to next of kin, and the use of cocoa as security for old age. therefore, they will adopt any program that can help them fulfill this objective. the fbs was aimed at helping meet the needs of the cocoa farmers. if farmers hope to achieve these objectives, it is expected that they would hold favorable attitudes towards cocoa cultivation to be sufficiently motivated to work towards their goals. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 129-138 133 table-3. attitudes of cocoa farmers (participants and non-participants). attitude participants non-participants % (agree) % (agree) a. recording of money inflows/outflows helps in managing my money 40.54 38.26 b. diversification helps me to manage risks 40.54 23.04 c. i spend my money carefully 44.32 22.61 d. record keeping helps me to evaluate my business 52.70 30.00 e. collective action helps me to get better prices 52.97 19.57 f. i stick to my original objective of taking farm credits 54.04 18.70 g. i play a key role in ensuring the quality of my cocoa beans 54.04 20.87 h. i save my money for future needs 55.14 18.26 i. trust, transparency, and solidarity are needed for governance of fbo 62.70 55.65 j. i see replanting/planting as an investment 63.51 23.48 k. standard plot measurements are used for farm negotiations 63.51 33.48 l. i see myself as an entrepreneur 69.92 33.91 m. i see my farm as a business 73.24 63.47 3.1.4 summary of competency indicators participants in the fbs had a higher knowledge (mean = 4.07) than non-participants (mean = 3.12). the results showed that a greater proportion of participants had a positive attitude (56%) than non-participants (31%). participants of the fbs had higher skills (mean = 4.21) than non-participants (mean = 2.74). table-4. summary of competency indicators. competency in fbs participants non-participants knowledge (mean/std. dev.)* 4.07 (0.34) 3.12 (0.49) skills (mean/std. dev.)** 4.21 (0.75) 2.74 (0.59) attitude (%) *** 55.93 30.87 measurement: * scale: 1, no knowledge; 2, very low; 3, low; 4, high; 5, very high. ** scale: 1, no skill; 2, very low; 3, low; 4, high; 5, very high. *** scale: <50%, negative; >50%, positive. table 4 gives a descriptive statistical summary of the competency indicators – knowledge, attitude, and skills – of cocoa farmers (participants and non-participants). the reason for the higher knowledge, positive attitude, and better skills among participants compared to non-participants could be the greater exposure that the former had in the fbs module. the fbs as a training program was also aimed at improving the knowledge of cocoa farmers, changing their attitudes towards cocoa farming, and improving their skills. at the fbs, participants were engaged in financial and entrepreneurial issues (profit and loss analysis, measurement of cocoa farms, dealing with financial service providers, improving cocoa production, quality criteria for cocoa selection, benefits of collective actions, savings, investments, farm credits, diversification, etc.). therefore, it is very likely that those who participated in the fbs will be more knowledgeable, have a positive attitude, and be more skilful than those who did not participate. a case that supports this assertion is a piloted finance and social literacy program, organized by unilever ghana in partnership with solidaridad, with young cocoa farmers in ghana to encourage them to work in the sector. in that study, it was found that about 99% of participants in the program experienced high knowledge in the training models on business and financial literacy issues compared to those who did not participate. in terms of skills, about 68% of participants gained better skills compared to 25% of non-participants (unilever, 2017). this supports the claim that cocoa farmers who participate in finance or business-related programs are more likely to experience improvement in knowledge, attitude, and skills than those who do not participate or are yet to participate. 3.2. market orientation of cocoa farmers 3.2.1. customer emphasis table 5 explains the customer emphasis of cocoa farmers. the lowest score on customer emphasis for participants was on how they treat lbcs as business partners (mean = 2.51) while for non-participants it was on how they look for ways to satisfy the needs of their lbcs (meanm=m2.45). this means that most of the participants do not treat lbcs as business partners, and also for the non-participants, most of whom do not look for ways to satisfy the needs of the lbcs. cocoa farmers in ghana are fixed in a “straightjacket”. this is because there is no flexibility in terms of who their customers are. it is only the lbcs who have been licenced by cocobod to purchase their cocoa beans. with a monopolized marketing arrangement, cocoa farmers are not likely to do anything extra in order to benefit from their partnership with the lbcs. this may account for the reason why they do not look for ways to satisfy the needs of the lbcs and they do not treat them as their business partners. the result is that they may be asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 129-138 134 able to achieve very little through their level of customer emphasis (narver & slater, 1998). again, the only change that could occur is that there are different groups of lbcs that farmers can probably treat as different customers. beyond that, cocoa farmers are tied to only one customer. a market-oriented cocoa farmer may be more aware and be exposed to different buyers (not only lbcs) and exploit that arrangement for their benefit. the highest score on customer emphasis for both participants (mean = 4.48) and non-participants (mean = 4.54) was on knowing the quality criteria used by lbcs in purchasing. the implication is that the majority of cocoa farmers know the quality criteria used by lbcs in purchasing their cocoa beans. jaworski and kohli (1993) indicated that customer emphasis is not only about meeting the needs of the immediate consumer, but seeing the wider picture and providing products that meet the needs of immediate buyers and buyers’ buyers. this could account for the reason why cocoa farmers know the quality criteria used by the lbcs in purchasing their cocoa. table-5. customer emphasis. note: scale: very low, 1; low, 2; moderate, 3; high, 4; very high, 5. key: lbc, licensed buying companies. 3.2.2. competitor orientation table 6 explains the competitor orientation of cocoa farmers. the lowest score on competitor orientation for participants was on monitoring lbcs buying from other farmers (mean = 2.07) while for non-participants it was knowing whether lbcs buying from other farmers were satisfied (mean = 1.97). this means that most participants do not monitor lbcs buying from other farmers, and likewise for most non-participants, they do not know whether lbcs buying from other farmers are satisfied. the low level of competitor orientation is that, generally, most cocoa farmers do not perceive their fellow cocoa farmers as their competitors. they all sell to the same customer and they receive the same unit returns from their sales. they therefore do not focus on how their competitors (fellow cocoa farmers) are devising policies to satisfy the needs of their customers (lbcs) (ellis, 2006). there is no point in devising strategies to gain competitive advantage over other farmers if the end point (market) is fixed. the orientation for competition among cocoa farmers could be changed and improved if markets or customers and the unit returns are diverse. however, with the current arrangement where only the lbcs are licenced to purchase cocoa beans from the cocoa farmers, and at fixed prices, competition among cocoa farmers may still remain low. the highest score on competitor orientation for participants was on knowing whether lbcs buying from other farmers are satisfied (mean = 2.18), while for non-participants it was on monitoring lbcs buying from other farmers (mean = 2.02). this means that most participants know whether lbcs buying from other farmers are satisfied while most non-participants monitor lbcs buying from other farmers. aziz and yasin (2010) noted that within the local cocoa farming system, farmers are also aware that their fellow farmers do other things that get them better value and other benefits from lbcs. this could be another form of competition. they could devise a good understanding of the changing behaviors of their fellow cocoa farmers who are their current and future competitors. when this is done, they will be able to make greater profits, since dawes (2000) asserted that the competitor orientation component of market orientation is positively correlated to company profitability. without it, cocoa farmers will always have low levels of profitability. table-6. competitor orientation. competitor orientation participants non-participants mean (std. dev.) mean (std. dev.) a. i monitor lbcs buying from other farmers 2.07 (0.59) 2.02 (0.66) b. i know whether other farmers are open to lbc complaints 2.09 (0.60) 1.90 (0.70) c. i know whether other farmers meet lbc quality criteria 2.14 (0.59) 1.99 (0.77) d. i know whether lbcs buying from other farmers are satisfied 2.18 (0.62) 1.97 (0.69) note: scale: very low, 1; low, 2; moderate, 3; high, 4; very high, 5. key: lbc, licensed buying companies. 3.2.3. interfunctional coordination table 7 explains the interfunctional coordination of cocoa farmers. the lowest score on interfunctional coordination for both participants (mean = 1.99) and non-participants (mean = 1.96) was on coordinating activities aimed at training farm workers. this means that most cocoa farmers are not interested in training their farm workers. generally, farming in ghana is not perceived as a business entity that requires the setting up of different departments and functions. however, as defined by zhou, brown, and dev (2009), interfunctional coordination could be viewed as the coordination of farm resources and customer-related activities. cocoa farmers are therefore expected customer emphasis participants non-participants mean (std. dev.) mean (std. dev.) a. i treat lbcs as business partners 2.51 (0.78) 2.47 (1.05) b. i consult lbcs to improve my activities with them 2.81 (0.97) 2.45 (1.05) c. i encourage lbc comments and complaints 2.87 (0.94) 2.84 (1.24) d. i incorporate lbc comments into farm operations 2.54 (0.21) 3.02 (1.62) e. i look for ways to satisfy the needs of the lbcs 3.07 (0.91) 2.45 (1.06) f. i know the quality criteria used by lbcs in purchasing 4.48 (0.65) 4.54 (0.65) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 129-138 135 to also develop a mechanism to coordinate activities with their workers, extension agents, licenced buying companies, input suppliers, and others for the growth of their business. according to amalia, ionu, and cristian (2008), cocoa farmers who are able to do this will be able to create and deliver superior value to their customers and obtain sustainable competitive advantage. the highest score on interfunctional coordination for both participants (mean = 4.10) and non-participants (mean = 3.98) was on having a cordial working relationship with key actors (mean = 4.10, mean = 3.98, respectively). this means that the majority of cocoa farmers have a cordial working relationship with key actors. table-7. interfunctional coordination. interfunctional coordination participants non-participants mean (std. dev.) mean (std. dev.) a. i coordinate activities aimed at training my farm workers 1.99 (0.80) 1.96 (1.09) b. i coordinate meetings to discuss market trends with key actors 2.12 (0.61) 2.00 (0.67) c. i discuss the future needs of my farm with key actors 2.62 (0.92) 2.57 (1.03) d. i have a cordial working relationship with key actors 4.10 (0.71) 3.98 (0.98) note: scale: very low, 1; low, 2; moderate, 3; high, 4; very high, 5. 3.2.4. intelligence generation table 8 explains the intelligence generation of cocoa farmers. the lowest score on intelligence generation for both participants (mean = 1.91) and non-participants (mean = 2.10) was searching for information on cocoa market trends. this means that most participants and non-participants do not search for information on cocoa market trends. for cocoa farmers to serve the market better than their competitors, information regarding existing and perceived future needs and wants of customers needs to be collected (zebal & goodwin, 2012). this is done through the act of intelligence gathering. according to lafferty and hult (2001), intelligence generation is a unifying element that defines market orientation. therefore, with a low level of intelligence gathering, it means that cocoa farmers are not aggressive in information or intelligence generation regarding their buyers and competitors and the other factors that affect their purchasing. this means that they cannot experience novelty and meaningfulness in producing new valued options that align with customer expectations (ho & tsai, 2006). the highest score on intelligence generation for both participants (mean = 2.79) and non-participants (mean = 3.04) was on assessing lbc perception on the quality of their cocoa beans. this means that most cocoa farmers assess lbc perception on the quality of their cocoa beans. table-8. intelligence generation. intelligence generation participants non-participants mean (std. dev.) mean (std. dev.) a. i search for information on cocoa market trends 1.91 (0.79) 2.10 (1.36) b. i meet with lbcs to find out their future needs 2.65 (1.03) 2.73 (1.35) c. i attend extension meetings to get information on new cocoa technologies 2.69 (1.00) 2.71 (1.27) d. i quickly detect changes in my farm operations 2.70 (0.95) 2.80 (1.33) e. i assess lbc perception on the quality of my cocoa beans 2.79 (1.03) 3.04 (1.32) note: scale: very low, 1; low, 2; moderate, 3; high, 4; very high, 5. key: lbc, licensed buying companies. 3.2.5. intelligence dissemination table 9 explains the intelligence dissemination of cocoa farmers. the lowest score on intelligence dissemination for participants was on informing their workers when they find out something about other farmers (mean = 2.69) while for non-participants it was about informing their workers about their activities with lbcs (mean = 2.66). this means that most participants do not inform their workers when they find out something about other farmers, while most non-participants do not inform their workers about their activities with lbcs. it is expected that cocoa farmers disseminate the information they generate to all levels of their farm business. if this is done, the information is likely to affect their activities, the activities of their workers, and their relationship with other cocoa stakeholders. however, with a low level in intelligence dissemination, it means that they do not disseminate the information they are able to generate. the information generated and disseminated by cocoa farmers should go beyond simply customer satisfaction into satisfying other key areas of the cocoa farm business (narver & slater, 1998). the highest score on intelligence dissemination for participants was informing their workers about their activities with lbcs (mean = 2.78) while for non-participants it was about informing their workers when they find out something about other farmers (mean = 2.99). this means that most participants inform their workers about their activities with lbcs while most non-participants inform their workers when they find out something about other farmers. as cocoa farmers are able to disseminate the information they generate to all levels of their farm business, the information is likely to affect their activities, the activities of their workers, and their relationship with other cocoa stakeholders (narver & slater, 1998). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 129-138 136 table-9. intelligence dissemination. intelligence dissemination participants non-participants mean (std. dev.) mean (std. dev.) a. i inform lbcs on issues relevant to their relationship with me 2.58 (1.03) 2.67 (1.35) b. when i find out something about other farmers, i inform my workers 2.69 (1.04) 2.99 (1.24) c. information on lbc satisfaction is disseminated to all workers 2.71 (1.07) 2.83 (1.31) d. i inform lbcs on issues affecting my farm operations 2.73 (1.07) 2.70 (1.35) e. i inform my workers about my activities with lbcs 2.78 (1.03) 2.66 (1.26) note: scale: very low, 1; low, 2; moderate, 3; high, 4; very high, 5. key: lbc, licensed buying companies. source: field survey. 3.2.6. market responsiveness table 10 explains the market responsiveness of cocoa farmers. the lowest score on market responsiveness for both participants (mean = 1.68) and non-participants (mean = 1.91) was making new offers based on world market prices of cocoa. this means that most participants and non-participants do not make new offers based on world market prices of cocoa. the implication is that cocoa farmers are not responsive to the market. they do not make new offers based on world market prices of cocoa, they do not choose the best purchasing packages from the lbcs, and they do not come up with any new business strategy and implement it in timely fashion. under the current marketing arrangement with cocobod, it is not unexpected that cocoa farmers are not market responsive. changes in world market prices do not affect the returns they get from the sale of their cocoa beans. they are given a fixed price, whether there is a rise or a fall in the world market price. however, the lbcs have developed various strategies and packages in order to attract cocoa farmers. these packages include giving loans and supplying farm inputs and training activities, but not in the area of cocoa prices. depending on lbc packages, cocoa farmers can make their own choices. the highest score on market responsiveness for both participants (mean = 3.18) and non-participants (mean = 3.57) was venturing into other business opportunities as back-up in the minor season. this means that most participants and non-participants venture into other business opportunities as back up in the minor season. they ensure that their new business opportunities do not conflict with their work as cocoa farmers and they venture into other business opportunities as back up in the minor season. the implication is that if cocoa farmers become market responsive, they can have a competitive advantage in both the speed and effectiveness of their reaction to intelligence generated and disseminated (chen & volpe, 2002). table-10. market responsiveness. market responsiveness participants non-participants mean (std. dev.) mean (std. dev.) a. i make new offers based on world market prices of cocoa 1.68 (0.73) 1.91 (1.09) b. i choose the best purchasing packages from the lbcs 2.65 (1.05) 2.64 (1.31) c. when i come up with any new business strategy, it is implemented in timely fashion 2.79 (1.02) 2.79 (1.12) d. i ensure my new business opportunities do not conflict with my work as a cocoa farmer 2.97 (0.84) 3.17 (0.99) e. i venture into other business opportunities as back up in the minor season 3.18 (1.08) 3.57 (1.19) note: scale: very low, 1; low, 2; moderate, 3; high, 4; very high, 5. key: lbc, licensed buying companies. table-11. market orientation indicators. indicator participants non-participants mean (std. dev.) mean (std. dev.) competitor orientation 2.12 (0.42) 1.97 (0.57) intelligence generation 2.55 (0.58) 2.68 (0.98) market responsiveness 2.66 (0.47) 2.82 (0.71) intelligence dissemination 2.69 (0.78) 2.77 (1.12) interfunctional coordination 2.71 (0.42) 2.63 (0.49) customer emphasis 3.05 (0.51) 2.96 (0.67) overall market orientation 2.63 (0.35) 2.56 (0.50) standard error of means 0.02 0.03 note: scale: very low, 1; low, 2; moderate, 3; high, 4; very high, 5. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 11(1)2021: 129-138 137 3.2.7. summary of market orientation indicators participants in the fbs (2.12) are more competitor oriented than non-participants (1.97); participants (2.55) have less intelligence generation than non-participants (2.68); participants (2.66) are less market responsive than nonparticipants (2.82); participants (2.69) have less intelligence dissemination than non-participants (2.77); participants (3.05) have more customer emphasis than non-participants (2.96); and participants (2.71) have more interfunctional coordination than non-participants (2.63). table 11 is a mean and standard deviation summary of the market orientation indicators. the findings also suggest than while the participants in the fbs have higher scores for customer emphasis, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination than non-participants, the latter have higher scores for intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination, and market responsiveness. the things taught at the fbs could have given the participants a new orientation in terms of customer emphasis, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination. for non-participants, they may have shown greater aggression than participants in trying to generate and disseminate their own intelligence while trying to be more responsive to the market. with competitor orientation as the lowest indicator in the market orientation of cocoa farmers (both participants and non-participants), this means that cocoa farmers do not have an understanding of their competitors’ strengths or strategies. the case is that cocoa farmers do not even perceive their fellow cocoa farmers as their competitors. a good competitor orientation could help cocoa farmers to recognize the quality and quantity of cocoa beans to produce and the lbcs markets to enter/avoid (adjei-ababio, 2011). with customer emphasis as the highest indicator in the market orientation of cocoa farmers (both participants and non-participants), cocoa farmers will be able to achieve more through their customer emphasis in relation to the lbcs (narver & slater, 1998). however, this must not simply be about meeting the needs of the immediate consumer (lbcs) but seeing the wider picture and providing products that meet the needs of immediate buyers and buyers’ buyers (jaworski & kohli, 1993). in comparing the overall market orientation of fbs participants and non-participants, a marginal difference will be noted. the evidence still exists that participants have a higher market orientation than non-participants. 4. conclusion the fbs as an extension approach has made significant incursions into the ghanaian cocoa sector. areas of the knowledge, attitude, and skills of cocoa farmers have been improved or enhanced. from the study findings, it was realised that participants of the fbs had a greater knowledge than non-participants. a higher proportion of participants had a positive attitude than non-participants; participants had better skills than non-participants. in the area of market orientation, areas such as competitor orientation, customer emphasi,s and interfunctional coordination have seen some level of improvement among cocoa farmers. these areas in times past were not of interest to cocoa farmers but, however, through the fbs, the same can no longer be said. the study found that fbs participants were more competitor oriented than non-participants, had less intelligence generation, were less market responsive, had less intelligence dissemination, had more customer emphasis, and had more interfunctional coordination. based on these conclusions, the study recommends the scaling up of the program since not all cocoa-growing communities are currently benefiting from the fbs. also, the market orientation of cocoa farmers can be enhanced by the provision of relevant practical experience for attitudinal change. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adjei-ababio, k. 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(2005). developing strategic orientation in china: antecedents and consequences of market and innovation orientations. journal of business research, 58(8), 1049-1058. available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2004.02.003. http://www.unilever.com/sustainable-living/enhancing-livelihoods/inclusive-business/livelihoods-for-smallholder-farmers/creating-an-inclusive-supply-chain/financial-and-social-literacy-for-young-cocoa-farmers-in-ghana.html http://www.unilever.com/sustainable-living/enhancing-livelihoods/inclusive-business/livelihoods-for-smallholder-farmers/creating-an-inclusive-supply-chain/financial-and-social-literacy-for-young-cocoa-farmers-in-ghana.html http://www.unilever.com/sustainable-living/enhancing-livelihoods/inclusive-business/livelihoods-for-smallholder-farmers/creating-an-inclusive-supply-chain/financial-and-social-literacy-for-young-cocoa-farmers-in-ghana.html http://www.unilever.com/sustainable-living/enhancing-livelihoods/inclusive-business/livelihoods-for-smallholder-farmers/creating-an-inclusive-supply-chain/financial-and-social-literacy-for-young-cocoa-farmers-in-ghana.html effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 123 characterization of small-scale farming as an engine of agricultural development in mountainous south kivu, democratic republic of congo fidele mulumeoderhwa munyakazia aristide manirihob angelique neema cizac erick banza iyotod fabrice nfuamba lukebae stany vwima ngerizabonaf germaine furaha mirindig jean-luc mastaki namegabeh philippe lebaillyi a,cunity of economics and rural development, faculty of gembloux agro-bio tech, university of liege, passage of the deportes, gembloux, belgium; faculty of economics and management sciences, evangelical university of africa, bukavu, democratic republic of congo. bunity of economics and rural development, faculty of gembloux agro-bio tech, university of liege, passage of the deportes, gembloux, belgium; school of economics, college of business and economics, university of rwanda, kigali, rwanda. d,e,f,gfaculty of economics and management sciences, evangelical university of africa, bukavu, democratic republic of congo. hfaculty of economics and management sciences, evangelical university of africa, bukavu, democratic republic of congo; united nations economic commission for africa, sub-regional office for central africa, yaounde, cameroon. iunity of economics and rural development, faculty of gembloux agro-bio tech, university of liege, passage of the deportes, gembloux, belgium.  fidmude@yahoo.fr (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 31 august 2021 revised: 28 march 2022 accepted: 13 april 2022 published: 26 april 2022 keywords small-scale farming diversification characterization mountainous south kivu democratic republic of congo. jel classification d13; q10; q18; r20. mountainous south kivu is an agropastoral zone in democratic republic of congo where small-scale agriculture is predominant. due to its location and potential, this region contributes to the food security of the population of south kivu and neighboring territories. this research aimed to establish a characterization of small-scale farming in this area in order to highlight the factors that differentiate farms. to achieve this objective, we adopted a holistic approach coupled with descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, and student's t-test for data analysis. data were collected from a purposive sample of 211 farmers in 2018 and 2019, respectively. the results revealed that differentiation of farms is based on the number of plots per farm, the choice of production systems, the cropping system, the land tenure, the gross margin, the gross value added, and the net farm income achieved at farm level. therefore, solutions such as access to finance allowing farmers to diversify their production system, the restoration of security in rural areas, the rehabilitation of the existing and creation of new feeder roads, and the setting and promotion of very strong and dynamic farmers' structures would allow a significant development of agricultural activities in the study area. contribution/originality: this study is one of very few studies to have investigated the characterization of smallscale farming in mountainous south kivu, democratic republic of congo. results revealed that the primary factors that differentiate small-scale farmers are farm economic performance, membership of peasant associations, and crop production systems. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 2 (2022): 123-129. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9876-425x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7367-1479 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9281-7661 mailto:fidmude@yahoo.fr http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 123-129 124 doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4475 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: fidele mulumeoderhwa munyakazi --aristide maniriho --angelique neema ciza --erick banza iyoto --fabrice nfuamba lukeba --stany vwima ngerizabona --germaine furaha mirindi -- jean-luc mastaki namegabe --philippe lebailly (2022). characterization of small-scale farming as an engine of agricultural development in mountainous south kivu, democratic republic of congo. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2), 123-129. 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4475 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction although small-scale farming (also known as family farming) has been at the heart of international debates related to food security, agriculture, and the environment for several years, it is clear that policy directions and strategies to ensure agricultural support have not been wholly implemented (coalition against hunger, 2015). further, family farming has sufficient assets for its potential development. it is an effective engine for poverty reduction and to fight undernourishment (world bank, 2017); it plays a major role in the development and protection of natural resources and landscapes (laplante, 2014); it produces more than 70% of the world's food, providing food security for hundreds of millions of family farmers as well as millions of other categories of people, and it is the largest employer of family workers who form the majority of the total labor force (ministry of agriculture-french republic, 2013; world bank, 2008). however, 815 million of people globally are undernourished (fao, who, & unicef, 2017). this situation correlates not only with insufficient production, but also with poverty as reflected in insufficient access to the means of production. despite a number of solutions that small-scale farming can provide, small-scale farmers are faced with various challenges, such as difficulty in accessing resources, lack of succession and mediocrity, lack of training (mcglynn et al., 2013), lack of appropriate markets (fao., 2014), threats to their livelihoods from climate change (fao, 2016), difficulties in accessing credit because their financial returns remain low and risky (coalition against hunger, 2015), as well as many agricultural risks (mulumeoderhwa munyakazi et al., 2019). beyond production and market constraints, family farmers also face broader challenges including health issues, social protection, education, and lack of infrastructure and community facilities, among others (laplante, 2014). several definitions of the concept of family farming have been formulated by different scholars. for the sake of simplicity, we prefer to retain the one that considers that family farming as the types of agricultural production characterized by (1) a close relationship between the family's domestic economy and their farm, and (2) the effective use of family labor without making recourse to permanent waged labor (sourisseau et al., 2014). from this definition, it may be observed that the main elements intrinsically associated with family farming are the linkage between family assets, farm capital, and the use of family labor. nevertheless, it is difficult to define family farming easily, given the diversity it contains in terms of different issues at stake, depending on the scale at which one is placed, the place in which one is located, because the economic and social situations, as well as production and the market conditions, and even the family and its logics of spatial mobility are different (delfosse, 2015). considering the realities of certain regions in developing countries such as south kivu province, family farming refers to any form of agricultural production that uses mainly family labor and other factors of production held by the farmer him/herself or by members of his/her family in order to guarantee the well-being of family members. the small-scale farming referred to in this research is one of the forms of family farming in terms of its differentiating characteristics. the main criteria for characterizing small-scale farming include guaranteed access to resources, capacity to invest, selfconsumption, mode of penetration of downstream markets, pluriactivity or system of activity, agricultural diversification or specialization, recourse to capital as a replacement for family labor, choice of strategies, and purposes of the activity (bélières, bonnal, bosc, marzin, & sourisseau, 2014). these criteria can be enriched or specified according to the context and realities of the regions concerned in the research. in order to act effectively on the transformation and development of the agricultural sector in south kivu, research on the characterization of farms remains essential to guide the actions of public authorities and other development partners. the general objective of this research is to establish a characterization of small-scale agriculture in the mountains of south kivu. more specifically, it aims to identify and analyze the differentiating factors of family farms in this region. it focused on small-scale farmers whose landholdings are above the mean average size at national level. this choice is supported by neema, manners, schut, ngezirabona, and lebailly (2021), who reported the average land size of 3 hectares among farmers who participated in their study. with the intention of differentiating small-scale farms, this study focused on selected criteria, namely the number of land parcels per farm, the adopted production systems, the cropping system practiced, the land tenure patterns, as well as the farm performance indicators (gross margin, gross value added, and net farm income). the results will provide some guidance to small-scale farmers for them to make rational decisions regarding the choice of crops to be grown. the existing literature shows that a household in mountainous south kivu farms between 0.35 ha (civava, malice, & baudoin, 2013; rutakayingabo, muhigwa, lwaboshi, barhahakana, & amato, 2016) and approximately 1 hectare (furaha., namegabe, & lebailly, 2016b), while the national average ranges between 1 and 1.5 ha (drc, 2013). besides significant demographic pressure, the socioeconomic situation in south kivu province is explained by land spoliation of land by the elite, who sell it fraudulently (utshudi, 2008). despite its potential to facilitate food self-sufficiency and to export surplus production, south kivu province is characterized by a large proportion of the rural poor, poverty caused by a very high unemployment rate (undp, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 123-129 125 2009), a very worrying nutritional situation (drc, 2014; undp, 2015), food dependence on neighboring provinces and countries (vwima, mastaki, & lebailly, 2012), nonexistence of financial institutions in rural areas, lack of adequate basic rural infrastructure, asymmetric information that benefits intermediaries, rural exodus, and low profitability that does not encourage financial institutions to lend to farmers. solutions to these problems are needed to enable the development of the agricultural sector in south kivu province so as to respond to certain essential issues of sustainable development, particularly to meet the food needs of both present and future generations. 2. materials and methods south kivu province is located in the east of the democratic republic of congo, approximately between 1°36' and 5° south, and 26°47' and 29°20' east, with a mean altitude of 1.000 m above the sea level. it is bordered to the east by the republics of rwanda, burundi, and tanzania; to the south-east by tanganyika province; to the south, west and north-west by maniema province; and to the north by north kivu province (drc, 2005). south kivu province covers 3% of the country's surface area, equal to 69,130 km². the region is characterized by an equatorial climate with year-round rainfall in one part, and a tropical climate with a rainy season and a dry season in another. average annual temperature ranges between 11 and 25°c. the majority of the population of south kivu province (78.4%) live in rural areas; its urban population represents 5% of the drc's urban population (undp, 2009). these specificities demonstrate that agricultural development in south kivu is fundamental to enable poverty reduction among rural households, which make up a significant proportion of the province's population. the choice of mountainous south kivu as a framework for analysis is explained by the predominance of small-scale agriculture based on the average area farmed per household compared to the national average. the sampled territories of kabare and kalehe were formerly characterized by a predominance of both high-fertility volcanic soils and medium-fertility soils of ancient rocks in those parts not affected by the extension of lava flows (wils, caraël, & tondeur, 1986). unfortunately, high demographic pressure and overexploitation of land resources have affected soil fertility in this region (mastaki, 2006), especially in kabare where the population density (360 inhabitants per square kilometre) is higher than that in kalehe (105 inhabitants per square kilometre) (ipapel south kivu, 2018). nevertheless, this area remains very favorable to agriculture and livestock farming. for sample constitution, two criteria were considered, namely (1) farms that produce mainly for the market and (2) crop and activity diversification on the farm. due to the absence of a census of farmers in south kivu, a purposive sampling was carried out and 211 farmers were selected on the rates of 50 farmers in bugorhe locality, 50 farmers in irhambi locality in kabare, 60 farmers in mbinga sud locality, and 51 farmers in mbinga nord locality in kalehe, respectively. we used non-probability sampling (reasoned choice sampling) due to the lack of sampling frame. the number of farmers selected per locality was motivated by their availability during the survey. qualitative and quantitative data collection from farmers on crops (expenses, revenues, selling prices, cropping system, etc.) was facilitated by a survey questionnaire and interviews. these surveys were organized in two phases, in 2018 and 2019, respectively. this study adopted a holistic approach to farms and focused on comparative analysis of the performance indicators of speculations. the study also used descriptive statistics (mean, frequency, proportion, and standard deviation). in addition, anova and student's t-test were used to test for the variability of farm measures and performance indicators among certain groups of farmers. 3. results and discussion 3.1. small-scale farming and membership of peasant organizations in mountainous south kivu results show that more than 60% of the surveyed farmers are not members of any farmer association. nonmembers (61.4%) reported that they did not participate in farmer associations because of their poor management, explained by their lack of dynamism. other reasons included discrimination by some leaders in the distribution of external aid (16.6%), that the benefits granted by associations were not sufficiently interesting, inability to pay for membership fees, the feeling that leaders are exploiting their members, etc. table 1 shows the distribution of surveyed farmers by production systems and by their membership of farmers’ associations. table-1. distribution of surveyed farmers according to their membership of farmers' associations. membership of farmers’ association agricultural production systems system 1 system 2 system 3 system 4 total non-members n 90 17 19 1 127 % 72 34 59.4 25 60.2 members n 35 33 13 3 84 % 28 66 40.6 75 39.8 total n 125 50 32 4 211 note: system 1: production of food crops; system 2: association of food and vegetables; system 3: food, industrial and forestry crops; system 4: all crops associated. members of farmers’ associations (39.8%) reported that the benefits from farmers' associations include collective bargaining power, access to small loans and assistance from peer members during both positive and negative events, mutual assistance, access to certain training on agricultural practices, and access to certain donations, grants, and subsidies (seeds, farmyard animals, agricultural equipment such as hoes, etc.). it is important to note that the types of farmers’ associations mostly formed in the region of mountainous kivu south are mainly village savings and credit associations (vscas), mutual solidarity organisations (musos) initiated mostly by local ngos, or other rural asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 123-129 126 organisations created by farmers themselves to help each other. this self-help mechanism developed by farmers to resolve certain social issues and strengthen solidarity between farming communities has spread rapidly in central africa (manirakiza, mulumeoderhwa, maniriho, ndimanya, & lebailly, 2020) thanks to the various interventions of ngos and the awareness of certain community leaders. such a mechanism has contributed to increasing farm income and improving farmers’ welfare (maniriho, 2021). 3.2. total owned and exploited farm sizes in mountainous south kivu results from our analysis show that the size of the surveyed farms varies from one site to another and from one territory to another. the mean farmed land size per holding in kalehe is 3.9 ha while it is 2.7 ha in kabare. results point also to the highly significant variability of land size among the four localities, for both total owned land size (p=0.002) and exploited land size (p=0.009). this situation is shown in table 2. table-2. variability in size of owned and exploited land among production sites in mountainous south kivu. agricultural production sites total owned land size (ha) cultivated land size (ha) average min. max. average min. max. land size by territory kalehe 3.9 0.3 40 2.9 0.3 13.5 kabare 2.71 0.4 15 2.05 0.3 7 land size by locality mbinga south 4.84 0.3 40 3.31 0.3 13.5 mbinga north 2.76 0.5 8 2.8 0.5 7 irhambi 2.7 0.4 15 1.9 0.3 7 bugorhe 2.72 1 7 2.2 1 7 overall study area 3.33 0.3 40 2.5 0.3 13.5 significance level (prob >f) 0.002** 0.009** note: significance levels of the variable: ** p<0.05 implies moderately significant variability. in light of the results of this study, both mean owned land size (3.3 ha) and mean exploited land size (2.5 ha) in mountainous south kivu appear to be high compared to the average (between 0.35 and 1 ha) generally reported in the literature on this region (civava et al., 2013; furaha, mastaki, & lebailly, 2016a; rutakayingabo et al., 2016). this difference could be explained by a few factors. first, the population density of 105 inhabitants per km2 in kalehe compared to kabare, whose population density was 360 inhabitants per km² in 2016 (ipapel south kivu, 2018). second, the presence of farmers who practice afforestation and thus grow different types of trees (eucalyptus, grevillea, cinchona, etc.) which can occupy large areas compared to other crops, which undoubtedly has an impact on the size of the landholding. third, the large landholdings for farmers in the region of kalehe highlands around kahuzi-byega national park. in this region, when farmers go to their farmland they say they are going to the 'forest'. most of them exploit forest crops and livestock (cattle and sheep). they use rwandans who have settled there, mainly as their herdsmen for their flocks and as labor for the production of potatoes and maize. fourth, most farm parcels have not been measured; this would lead farmers to give false estimates of their acreage. however, it is important to note that it would require an in-depth study to empirically confirm this hypothesis. however, the average of 3 ha of cultivated land per farmer in kalehe as reported by neema et al. (2021) is one of the motivations of our study; this average is close to our findings where we found an average of 2.9 ha per farmer in the same territory. table 3 provides the results on comparison of cultivated and total owned land size between kalehe and kabare. results indicate a highly significant difference for cultivated land size (p=0.003) and a moderately significant difference for total owned land size (p=0.037) between the territories. table 3. comparison of farmed land size between kalehe and kabare. land size (ha) kalehe (n=111) kabare (n=100) difference p-value surface of cultivated land 2.9 2.1 0.8 0.003*** total owned land size (ha) 3.9 2.7 1.2 0.037** note: *** p<0.01 implies highly significant variability; ** p<0.05 implies moderately significant variability. 3.3. land tenure in mountainous south kivu and combination of crop farming and livestock in mountainous south kivu, farmers who combine crop farming and livestock represent on average about 59% of the farmers surveyed. this percentage varies by both the production systems practiced and production sites. the types of livestock reared in this region are mainly goats (74.2 %), poultry (35.5%), cattle (30.7%), sheep (5%), pigs (14.5%), guinea pigs (14.5%), and rabbits (3.2%). it should be noted that combining crop farming and livestock remains a very common practice among farmers in mountainous south kivu (furaha et al., 2016a; ndjadi et al., 2021). the main reasons for farmers combining crop farming and livestock are savings, production of organic fertilizers, and milk and meat supply, mainly for family members. farmers decide to sell their livestock only when they want to address more important issues, such as paying school fees for their children, acquiring new farmland, or making a large investment. the analysis carried out on different production systems shows that farmers with high farm incomes represent a large proportion of those who combine crop farming and livestock (system 4, 100%; system 2, 64%; system 3, 62.5%). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 123-129 127 the predominant mode of land tenure in mountainous south kivu is renting, at the rate 97.8% (table 4). people who rent out their land do so mainly for risk aversion, because the season may be very bad and have a negative impact on the harvest. the annual cost of renting a quarter hectare was estimated at usd 70 on average in the surveyed sites in kalehe and usd 120 in kabare. the relatively low land rental price in kalehe can be explained by the existence of land reserves: 1 ha of uncultivated land per farm household in kalehe compared to 0.7 ha in kabare (table 2), the reserve land being the difference between owned and cultivated land size). nevertheless, it should be noted that the price of agricultural land in these territories also depends on other factors, including the location of the land (in the lowlands or on the hills), the distance of the field from communication routes (mainly roads), the quality of the soil, and the relationship established between the tenant and owner. table 4 shows the combination of crop farming and livestock, as well as the modes of land tenure across production systems in mountainous kivu south. table-4. small-scale agriculture: interaction between livestock and land tenure patterns. item agricultural production systems overall study area system 1 system 2 system 3 system 4 no combination of farming and livestock n 57 18 12 0 87 % 45.6 36 37.5 0 41.2 combination of farming and livestock n 68 32 20 4 124 % 54.4 64 62.5 100 58.8 total n 125 50 32 4 211 land tenure patterns land renting n 93 46 31 4 174 % 97.9 95.8 100 100 97.8 share cropping n 2 2 0 0 4 % 2.1 4.2 0 0 2.2 total n 95 48 31 4 178 3.4. the predominance of mixed crop farming in mountainous south kivu mixed farming (also known as multicropping) is predominant (almost 92%) among the farmers surveyed in mountainous south kivu. only around 8% of farmers practice pure cropping or monoculture. the main reason that persuades farmers to opt for multicropping is risk version in the face of various hazards in the agricultural sector that can also affect their farm income. among farmers in production system 4, 50% practice pure cropping or monoculture. this can be explained by the fact that the average size of these farms (system 4, 6 ha) is the category of selected crops whose farming techniques and exploitation procedures require larger parcels or plots than the other production systems (system 1, 2.3 ha, system 2, 2.8 ha, system 3, 2.4 ha). in addition, access to other resources, particularly financial and material, would also explain the adoption of pure cropping systems or monoculture, which implies that such farming is practiced by better-off farmers. details on the cropping systems practiced on family farms in mountainous south kivu are provided in table 5. for the mixed-cropping system, farmers’ choice is motivated by land scarcity, and also by the demographic pressure and the monopolization of large land areas by the rich, the politicians, and religious denominations (bainville, mena, rasse-mercat, & touzard, 2005). in kalehe, surveyed farmers mentioned the phenomenon of land occupation around kahuzi-biega national park and the masisi south forest reserve by displaced people from rwanda. one study (ansoms, claessens, & mudinga, 2012) indicates also that rwandans without identity came to buy land in kalehe because there was more land available than in rwanda. as reported by some surveyed farmers, this phenomenon seriously threatened indigenous farmers. table-5. analysis of cropping systems practiced on farms in mountainous south kivu. production systems pure cropping system or monoculture multicropping system n % n % system 1: food crops 10 8 115 92 system 2: food and vegetable crops 3 6 47 92 system 3: food, industrial, and forestry crops 2 6.3 30 93.8 system 4: all associated crops 2 50 2 50 total 17 8.1 194 91.9 production sites mbinga south 8 13.3 52 86.7 mbinga north 5 9.8 46 90.2 irhambi 4 8 46 92 bugorhe 0 0 50 100 3.5. characterization of small-scale agriculture based on economic performance indicators the farms surveyed in mountainous south kivu are characterized by positive values for economic performance asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 123-129 128 indicators, namely gross value added (usd 1,117), gross margin (usd 906), and net farm income (usd 628). results show that mbinga south and bugorhe performed better than the others in terms of net farm income (usd 851 and usd 837), gross value added or wealth created (usd 1,485 and usd 1,356), and gross margin achieved (usd 1,156 and usd 1,137) for bugorhe and mbinga south, respectively. the main reason for this trend in bugorhe is the cultivation of high-value crops, mainly tomato; in mbinga south it is due to the ability of farmers to combine several crops on their farms. accordingly, by importance, production system 4 comes top, the production system 2 is the second, production system 3 is the third, and the production system 1 comes fourth. table 6 shows the variability in farm performance across production sites and systems. results reveal significant variability in all farm performance indicators (p<0.05) across production sites and production systems. table-6. variability in economic performance indicators of small-scale agriculture among production sites and production systems in mountainous south kivu. indicators production sites weighted average significance level (prob>f) mbinga south (average) mbinga north (average) irhambi (average) bugorhe (average) nfi (usd) 836.7 334.8 453.8 850.6 627.9 0.000** gva (usd) 1,356.4 783.2 802.6 1,484.9 1,117.1 0.000** gm (usd) 1,136.6 621.2 670.6 1,155.6 906.1 0.000** production systems system 1 system 2 system 3 system 4 nfi (usd) 515.5 788.5 720.1 1,396.6 627.9 0.023** gva (usd) 922 1,446.7 1,251 2,020.2 1,117.1 0.001** gm (usd) 774.3 1,105.4 1,022.6 1,603.2 906.1 0.018** note: with nfi = net farm income; gva = gross value added; gm = gross margin; ** p<0.05 implies moderately significant variability. 4. conclusion this article has attempted to highlight the factors that differentiate farms in mountainous south kivu. the surveyed farmers reported that farms are characterized by common factors, but they are distinguished by specific factors with respect to the production system practiced. results from descriptive and statistical analyses show that for the majority of farmers land renting is the predominant mode of land tenure. results also indicate that a large majority did not participate in farmers' associations, despite the benefits these can provide. with significant variability across production sites and the production systems, the main differentiating factors for farms are the size of landholdings and cultivated land, the cropping system, the use of land, and farms’ economic performance. from the results and their discussion, access to finance, security and peace restoration, creation of infrastructures, and enhancement of strong and dynamic peasant associations would allow small-scale farmers to diversify crops or farming activities and boost agricultural development in the study area. funding: this research is supported by evangelical university in africa through university project on quality improvement in research and teaching (grant number: a-cod-20180383). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ansoms, a., claessens, k., & mudinga, e. 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(2017). ending extreme poverty: promoting shared prosperity. washington dc: world bank publications. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 420 evaluation of the potential of jack bean [canavalia ensiformis (l.) dc.] and velvet bean [mucuna pruriens (l.) dc.] aqueous extracts as post-emergence bio-herbicides for weed control in maize (zea mays l.) rugare, j. t a,b, pieterse, p. j a, mabasa, s.b a department of agronomy, stellenbosch university, matieland, 7602, south africa b department of crop science, university of zimbabwe, mount pleasant, harare, zimbabwe  rugarejoy@yahoo.co.uk (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 26-feb-2020 accepted: 15-may-2020 online available: 19-jun2020 keywords: allelopathy, atrazine, bidens pilosa, canavalia ensiformis, conservation agriculture, eleusine indica, mucuna pruriens, postemergence abstract the objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of jack bean and velvet bean aqueous extracts when applied post-emergence alone or in combination with half dosage rates of atrazine on goosegrass, beggarticks, and maize. three potted experiments with fifteen treatments were laid out in a completely randomized design replicated four times and repeated once. the bio-herbicidal treatments were applied to maize at two weeks after crop emergence and on the weeds at the 3-4 leaf stage. results showed that maize height increased significantly (p<0.05) across all treatments from 24 to 34 days after crop emergence (dace). maize chlorophyll content significantly (p<0.05) increased from 24 to 34 dace in all the treatments. in contrast, dry weight, height, and chlorophyll content of goosegrass were significantly (p<0.05) reduced by all treatments. the height of beggarticks was not significantly (p>0.05) affected while chlorophyll content and dry weight were significantly (p<0.05) reduced by all treatments. all the treatments caused complete weed control at 6 and 10 das in beggarticks and goosegrass, respectively. it was concluded that velvet bean and jack bean aqueous extracts are phytotoxic to weeds of divergent morphology. contribution/ originality the study demonstrated the post-emergence effect of aqueous extracts of jack bean (canavalia ensiformis) and velvet bean (mucuna pruriens) on goosegrass (eleusine indica) and beggarticks (bidens pilosa). doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.420.439 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: rugare, j. t., pieterse, p. j., & mabasa, s. (2020). evaluation of the potential of jack bean [canavalia ensiformis (l.) dc.] and velvet bean [mucuna pruriens (l.) dc.] aqueous extracts as postemergence bio-herbicides for weed control in maize (zea mays l.). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 420-439. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 420-439 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:rugarejoy@yahoo.co.uk http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.420.439 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9573-3394 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7602-6923 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7115-271x asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 421 1. introduction conservation agriculture (ca) is a farming system involving minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover through crop residue retention, and rational use of crop rotations (harrington and erenstein, 2005; hobbs, 2007). the adoption rate of ca in the smallholder sector in sub-saharan africa (ssa) is still very low despite all the positive benefits offered by this farming system. one of the key impediments to widespread ca adoption is weed management (jat et al., 2012). the majority of the resource-poor farmers in the developing world rely mainly on hand weeding despite this method being laborious and expensive resulting in a significant reduction in the size of the fields being put to use for crop production (khan et al., 2012; mashingaidze et al., 2012; rugare and mabasa, 2013). consequently, delayed weeding coupled with serious labour bottlenecks in the smallholder sector results in low productivity because farmers fail to control weeds in maize during the critical weed-free period of six weeks (rugare et al., 2019). the success of ca hinges on the use of herbicides for weed control because weed control with tillage is not possible. moreover, chemical weed control is a generally faster and more effective way of managing high populations of difficult to control weeds commonly encountered in reduced tillage systems (mendes and rezende, 2014). permanent soil cover with a layer of mulch of retained crop residues is one of the underpinning principles of ca. derpsch (2008) reported that permanent soil cover has been a key factor for having success in reduced tillage systems in south america. experience in other countries including zimbabwe has shown that reduced tillage without residue retention results in poor yields (ashburner, 1984; wall, 1999; sayre et al., 2006). however, the presence of a thick layer of mulch at the time of planting has made the use of soil-applied herbicides practically unfeasible. this is because the presence of mulch at the time of planting intercepts 15-80% of pre-emergence herbicides thereby preventing herbicide activation to form an herbicide seal, a process which is key in ensuring the effectiveness of soil-applied herbicides (chauran et al., 2012). as a result, post-emergence herbicides play an important role in controlling weeds after crop emergence, especially in cases where the efficacy of pre-emergence herbicides would have been compromised by the presence of a thick layer of mulch at the time of planting. however, the excessive and injudicious use of herbicide families with the same mode of action has exerted selection pressure on weed populations that were previously susceptible to those herbicides (pieterse, 2010). this has resulted in the development of herbicide resistance in some weed populations. the most commonly used herbicides in reduced tillage systems are non-selective herbicides like paraquat and glyphosate that are used as burndown herbicides. unfortunately, their future role in weed management is bleak because some of the weeds have developed resistance to these widely used herbicides (pieterse, 2010). furthermore, intensive and continuous use of herbicides raises concerns about the sustainability of soil fertility. herbicides are reported to cause changes in the cycle of nutrients due to their interaction with various soil types resulting in variation in the activity of soil enzymes (singh and ghoshal, 2013). on the other hand, environmentalists are lobbying for significant reductions in the use of synthetic herbicides due to the negative effects that they can have on non-target sites and non-target species resulting in the crop, animal and human injury, especially where herbicides with high mammalian toxicity like alachlor and paraquat are not handled and applied correctly (razzaq et al., 2012; farooq et al., 2011). one possible strategy for managing weeds with reduced or no herbicide input in ca is the use of aqueous extracts of allelopathic plant parts as natural herbicides (razzaq et al., 2012; soltys et al., 2013). these extracts can be used alone or in combination with reduced herbicide dosages (mendes and rezende, 2014; razzaq et al., 2012; miri and armin, 2013). it has been reported that allelopathic aqueous extracts and herbicide combinations work synergistically or additive resulting in satisfactory weed control, considerable monetary savings, and less pollution (cheema et al., 2005; razzaq et al., 2012). al-obaidi and alsaadawi (2015) postulated that the use of synthetic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 422 herbicides can be reduced by 50-70% when they are tank-mixed with aqueous extracts of sorghum [sorghum bicolor (l.) moench] in many field crops including maize. a mixture of allelopathic extracts of sorghum, sunflower (helianthus annuus l.), and mulberry (morus rubra l.) combined with atrazine at half dosage rates showed 70-75% suppression of weed density and dry weight concomitantly resulting in a maize yield increase of 31% (khan et al., 2012). it has been reported that the green manure cover crops (gmccs) jack bean [canavalia ensiformis (l.) dc.] and velvet bean [mucuna pruriens (l.) dc.] are sources of potent allelochemicals (fujii, 1999; nishihara et al., 2005; santos et al., 2010; mendes and rezende, 2014; silva and rezende, 2016). studies of jack bean extracts have so far been limited to evaluating them using broad-leaved weeds as test species and to our knowledge have never been tested on pernicious grass weed species. nishihara et al. (2005) confirmed the presence of the allelochemical l-3-[3, 4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (ldopa)] in velvet bean leaves and roots. there is a paucity of information on the possible role of velvet bean aqueous extracts as post-emergence bio-herbicides for the control of weeds of divergent morphology. whilst the use of atrazine in europe is prohibited (helling et al., 1988) and its use in other countries like south africa is declining, it remains one of the key herbicides that are being used in both large scale and small scale arable crop production in zimbabwe. the use of atrazine in maize (zea mays l.)-legume rotations in zimbabwe is likely to increase in ca since research done in several environments demonstrated that 1.8 kg ha-1 active ingredient (a.i) of atrazine that is recommended in maize does not affect soya bean (glycine max l.) grown 12 months following herbicide application in the same field (muoni et al., 2014). this is contrary to conventional tillage where broad-leaved crops susceptible to atrazine can only be safely grown after 18 months from the date of atrazine application (reinhardt, 1995). keeping in view the potential of allelopathy in weed management, studies were carried out to evaluate the efficacy of postemergence applications of jack bean and velvet bean leaf, stem, and root aqueous extracts on weed control efficacy as single treatments or in mixture with reduced dosage rates of atrazine. in anticipation of the possibility of using extracts of these cover crops in maize production, their injurious effects on this staple crop were also evaluated. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study site greenhouse pot experiments were conducted at the university of zimbabwe’s crop science department between january and june 2017. the university of zimbabwe (uz) is located at 1523 m altitude, 17.78os; 31.05oe and is in ecological region 2a. this site receives annual rainfall ranging from 700 to 1000 mm with an average summer temperature of 25 oc. 2.2. extract preparation the cover crops, jack bean, and velvet bean that were used in the study were grown under irrigation in a field at the uz crop science department between september and december 2017. the cover crops were grown in uz red soil (clay 18%, silt 16%, and sand 66%) and were harvested at the flowering stage (approximately 120 days after planting). after harvesting the plants were separated into leaves, stems, and roots. the different plant parts were chopped into 20 mm pieces before being air-dried in the greenhouse for two weeks after which they were oven-dried for 48 hours at 80 oc. the dried tissues were ground separately into a fine powder using a hammer mill grinder and the powder was stored in khaki paper envelopes under room temperature for between two and three days after which they were used to make aqueous extracts. fifty grams of each of the plant tissues were soaked separately in one liter of distilled water and left to stir mechanically using an orbital shaker at 100 revolutions per minute for 24 hours. the solution was then strained through four layers of cheesecloth to remove all the solid material before being centrifuged for 15 minutes at 4000 rpm. the resultant supernatant was kept in the refrigerator at 4oc until further use. goosegrass seeds used in the experiment were harvested at henderson weed research in february asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 423 2016 whilst the blackjack seeds were harvested in the uz crop science department fields in june 2016. since blackjack produces dimorphic seeds with different germination requirements (amaral and takaki, 1998), its short dormant achenes (seeds) were removed and only the non-dormant long achenes were used in this study. maize variety sc403 which is an early maturing and droughttolerant variety, purchased from seedco was used in the maize bioassay. 2.3. experimental design and treatments the bioassays for goosegrass, blackjack, and maize were conducted separately in a greenhouse. the experiments were laid out in a completely randomised design (crd) with fifteen treatments that were replicated four times. the bioassays were repeated once. the treatments were compared against three controls (a) where nothing was sprayed and (b) atrazine 47% g l-1 a.i recommended full dose (3.5 l/ha) or (c) atrazine half dose (1.75 l/ha). the treatments used are described in table 1. table 1: treatments used in the experiments treatment description 1. control (nothing was sprayed) 2. 114.5 µl active ingredient (a.i.) atrazine in 10 ml of distilled water 3. 56.5 µl (a.i) atrazine in 10 ml of distilled water 4. 5 ml 5% wv-1 velvet bean leaf + 56.5 µl (a.i.) atrazine in 5 ml of distilled water 5. 10 ml 5% wv-1 velvet bean leaf extract 6. 5 ml 5% wv-1 velvet bean root extract + 56.5 µl (a.i.) atrazine in 5 ml of distilled water 7. 10 ml 5% wv-1 velvet bean root extract 8. 5 ml 5% wv-1 velvet bean stem extract + 56.5 µl (a.i.) atrazine in 5 ml of distilled water 9. 10 ml 5% wv-1 velvet bean stem extract 10. 5 ml 5% wv-1 jack bean leaf extract + 56.5 µl (a.i.) atrazine in 5 ml of distilled water 11. 10 ml 5% wv-1 jack bean leaf extract 12. 5 ml 5% wv-1 jack bean root extract + 56.5 µl (a.i.) atrazine in 5 ml of distilled water 13. 10 ml 5% wv-1 jack bean root extract 14. 5 ml 5% wv-1 jack bean stem extract + 56.5 µl (a.i.) atrazine in 5 ml of distilled water 15. 10 ml 5% wv-1 jack bean stem extract note: atrazine treatments are based on the recommended dosage of 1.75 liters (a.i) ha-1 in maize, whilst the extracts dosages used to translate to 200l ha-1 of 5% wv-1 of aqueous extracts of either jack bean or velvet bean tissues 2.4. experimental procedure for weed bioassays the chemical and physical properties of the soil that was used in the pot experiments are presented in table 2. table 2: chemical and physical properties of soil clay (%) sand (%) silt (%) ph (cacl2) moisture (%) organic carbon (g/kg) organic matter (%) cec (me %) ca (me %) mg (me %) k (me %) na (me %) 7 5 88 4.6 0.2 0.23 0.46 2.81 1.76 0.41 0.05 0.61 me % = milliequivalents percent pots measuring 90 mm base diameter, top diameter of 105 mm, and a height of 65 mm were three quarters filled with sandy soil described in table 2. one gram of compound d (7% n, 14% p2o5, 7% k2o) was added to each pot as basal fertilizer. thereafter, five seeds of goosegrass were planted in each pot. blackjack does not easily germinate in pots so the seeds were pre-germinated on two layers of munktell ahlstrom 90 mm diameter filter paper in 90 mm diameter petri dishes in the weed science laboratory at room temperature (average temperature = 25 oc). the seedlings asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 424 were then transplanted in the pots and were watered daily with 150 ml of tap water. care was taken during watering not to apply water on the foliage of plants that had been sprayed with extracts and/or atrazine. goosegrass and blackjack seedlings were thinned a week after sowing or transplanting leaving three plants and one plant per pot, respectively. weed seedlings were sprayed with the prospective bio-herbicidal treatments when they had reached the three to four leaf stage to mimic the stage at which farmers usually control weeds in arable fields (approximately 14 days after crop emergence). the application of herbicidal treatments was done using a hand-held sprayer that was calibrated to discharge 10 ml of spray mixture per four pots to achieve a spray rate of 200 l ha-1. the application of herbicides was done in the morning around at 9 am with outside temperatures ranging between 20oc and 23oc and the pots were left in the shade for two hours before being returned into the glasshouse. the average daily maximum and minimum greenhouse temperatures were 32oc and 17.9oc, respectively. 2.5. experimental procedure for the maize experiment pots of 200 mm diameter and 175 mm height were three quarters filled with sandy soil with the characteristics presented in table 2. the soil in the pots was mixed with 2 g of compound d. (8n: 14 p2o5; k20). thereafter, three maize seeds (seedco variety sc403) were planted in the pots to a depth of 50 mm after which the pots were watered with tap water to field capacity using a watering can fit with a fine rose. the maize plants in the pots were thinned leaving one healthy plant per pot seven days after sowing. the maize plants were sprayed with different treatments as presented in table 1 following the same procedure that was used in the weed bioassays. the same maize plants were sprayed twice with the same treatment at 14 days after crop emergence (dace) and again at 24 dace. thereafter, the plants were allowed to grow for ten more days (observational period) after which the experiment was terminated. 2.6. data collection height and chlorophyll content data of maize and the two weed species were collected in situ using a minota chlorophyll meter (spad 502). maize chlorophyll content and height data were measured twice at 24 dace and 34 dace. in goosegrass, chlorophyll data were collected every day starting from the first day after spraying. in blackjack, chlorophyll content recording was done on days 1, 4 and 6 after spraying. the height of the youngest leaf of blackjack and goosegrass was measured daily up to day 4 and 7, respectively. thereafter, goosegrass and blackjack plants were uprooted gently together with their roots and washed using running tap water to remove soil before being oven-dried for 24 hours to determine the dry weight of the weeds. visual assessments of the phytotoxicity of the different treatments on weeds were done daily up to the end of the experiments (i.e. 6 and 10 days after application of herbicidal treatments in blackjack and goosegrass, respectively). the visual phytotoxic assessment of the prospective natural herbicides and their combinations with atrazine was done collectively by three people using the latin american weed association (alam) visual assessment scale (mendes and rezende, 2014) (table 3). all the treatments were compared to the untreated control (no extracts applied) and the sole atrazine treatments at full and half dosages. table 3: latin america weed association (alam) visual assessment scale index percentage (%) description of the control level 1 0-40 none or poor 2 41-60 regular 3 61-70 sufficient 4 71-80 good 5 81-90 very good 6 91-100 excellent asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 425 2.7. data analysis plant height and chlorophyll content of weeds and maize were subjected to repeated measures analysis of variance (anova) in genstat 14 whereas weed dry weight data were analysed using one-way anova at a 5% probability level. normality was assessed using the shapiro-wilk test and appropriate transformations were done where data did not meet the assumptions of anova. mean separation was done using the fischer protected least significance difference (lsd) at p<0.05. data from the visual assessments were analysed in spss using the kruskal wallis nonparametric test to obtain mean ranks and mean separation was done using the mann whitney u test. only visual assessment data for day 1, day 5, and day 10 were presented for goosegrass whilst data for day 1, day 5, and day 6 was presented for blackjack. graphs were drawn using sigma plot 10.0 and r studio. 3. results 3.1. maize height repeated measures anova showed that there was no significant interaction (p>0.05) between time and herbicidal treatment on maize height. however, the height of maize plants significantly (p<0.05) increased by 51.7% from 24 dace to 34 dace (table 4). there were significant (p<0.05) variations on the height of maize sprayed with different herbicidal treatments (table 4). all the herbicidal treatments significantly (p<0.05) stimulated maize height compared to the untreated control except the atrazine full dose, velvet bean root, and jack bean + atrazine. table 4: effect of different (bio-) herbicidal treatments on height and chlorophyll (mean of 24 and 34 dace) content of maize herbicidal treatment height (mm) chlorophyll (mmolcm-2) control atrazine full dose atrazine half dose velvet bean leaf + atrazine velvet bean leaf only velvet bean stem + atrazine velvet bean stem velvet bean root + atrazine velvet bean root jack bean leaf + atrazine jack bean leaf only jack bean stem + atrazine jack bean stem jack bean root + atrazine jack bean root 177.6a 193.8a 205.6a 203.1a 213.1bc 206.6a 192.5a 199.6a 179.5a 229.9bcd 226.9bcd 228.2bcd 176.9a 209.6ab 214.4bc 34.25 36.64 36.68 34.25 36.12 36.76 33.24 34.49 34.21 34.29 34.11 35.83 33.29 37.56 33.58 pvalue 0.006 0.681 lsd 31.63 ns cv% 13.7 25.5 days after first spraying 24 dace 34 dace 161.9a 245.7b 33.01a 36.96b p-value <0.001 0.001 lsd 7.16 2.283 cv% 13.7 25.5 means followed by the same letter in the same column are not significantly different at p<0.05 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 426 3.2. maize chlorophyll content there was no significant interaction (p>0.05) between time and herbicidal treatment on maize chlorophyll content and there were no significant (p>0.05) differences in maize chlorophyll content across all the treatments (table 4). nevertheless, maize chlorophyll content significantly (p<0.05) increased from 24 to 34 dace across all treatments (table 4). 3.3. goosegrass chlorophyll content repeated measures anova showed a significant interaction (p<0.05) on the chlorophyll content of goosegrass from 1 das to 8 das. chlorophyll content in untreated plants increased significantly from 1 das to 8 das when complete weed kill was achieved in plants treated with either atrazine and/or cover crop aqueous extracts (figure 1). sole atrazine concentrations of 112.5µl and 56.6µl a.i. significantly reduced chlorophyll content of goosegrass compared to treatments with jack bean extracts. the effect of jack bean leaf extracts only and that of a combination of jack bean leaf extracts and atrazine were similar. velvet bean extracts also significantly reduced chlorophyll content gradually compared to the control. the effect of aqueous extracts of the different tissues of velvet bean was similar. it is noteworthy that velvet bean extracts only started to significantly reduce chlorophyll content at 5 das in contrast to atrazine treatments that had already caused a complete reduction in chlorophyll content of goosegrass at 5 das. the results show that atrazine was fast-acting on chlorophyll compared to the aqueous extracts of both jack bean and velvet bean or their combination with atrazine. figure 1: effect of different post-emergence treatments on chlorophyll content of goosegrass error bars indicate interaction standard error of the difference (sed). afd = atrazine full dose, ahd = atrazine half dose, vb = velvet bean, jb = jack bean, +a = plus atrazine half dose asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 427 3.4. goosegrass height there was a significant (p<0.001) interaction between time (days after application) and herbicidal treatment on goosegrass height (figure 2). untreated plants were significantly taller at 7 das compared to all the other treatments. post-emergence sprays of atrazine full dose, atrazine half dose, velvet bean leaf + atrazine and velvet bean stem + atrazine on goosegrass seedlings caused the plants to collapse resulting in a significant reduction in height by the eighth day compared to the first day of the experiment. on the other hand, the height of the plants that were sprayed with the other treatments and/or atrazine remained the same throughout the experiment. figure 2: effect of post-emergence treatments on the height of goosegrass error bars indicate sed. afd = atrazine full dose, ahd = atrazine half dose, vb = velvet bean, jb = jack bean, a = atrazine 3.5. blackjack chlorophyll content there was a significant (p<0.001) treatment * time interaction on chlorophyll content of blackjack (figure 3). all the herbicidal treatments significantly reduced blackjack chlorophyll content at both 4 and 6 das compared to the first day. it is noteworthy that the majority of tissue extracts when used alone or in combination with atrazine caused complete chlorophyll destruction by day four after the application of post-emergence sprays. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 428 figure 3: effect of different post-emergence treatments on chlorophyll content of blackjack error bars represent sed. afd = atrazine full dose, ahd = atrazine half dose, vb = velvet bean, jb = jack bean, a = atrazine 3.6. blackjack height there was no significant (p>0.05) interaction between time and treatment on the height of blackjack. no significant (p>0.05) change in height was observed from 1-4 das (table 5). table 5: effect of different bio-herbicidal treatments on the height of blackjack days after spraying plant height (mm) 1 45.87 2 45.38 3 47.43 4 49.13 p-value 0.292 lsd ns cv% 25.0 however, significant (p<0.05) differences in blackjack height among treatments were observed (figure 4). velvet bean treatments did not affect blackjack height compared to the untreated control. sole velvet bean extracts of different tissues significantly (p<0.05) reduced blackjack height compared to the full atrazine dose treatment but did not differ from the atrazine half dose treatment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 429 all the jack bean treatments except jack bean root + atrazine treatment significantly reduced blackjack height compared to the controls. treatment figure 4: response of blackjack height to post-emergence sprays of jack bean and velvet bean bio-herbicidal treatments error bars indicate sed. afd = atrazine full dose, ahd = atrazine half dose, vb = velvet bean, jb = jack bean, a = atrazine 3.7. goosegrass and blackjack dry weight the effects of velvet bean and jack bean on the dry weight of blackjack and goosegrass are shown in table 6. all the post-emergence treatments of atrazine and/or cover crop extracts significantly (p<0.01) reduced the dry weight of blackjack compared to the untreated control. only the stem extracts of velvet bean significantly reduced blackjack dry weight when applied alone compared to both atrazine controls. similarly, all the cover crop extract treatments significantly (p<0.05) reduced the dry weight of goosegrass but they did not differ from the single atrazine treatments. table 6: effect of herbicide and/or aqueous extract post-emergence treatments of jack bean and velvet bean on dry weight (g) of beggarticks and goosegrass at 6 and 10 days, respectively treatment beggar ticks goose grass dry weight (g) % reduction dry weight (g) % reduction control 0.44(0.101) f 0.79(0.588) c atrazine full dose 0.27(0.021) bcde 79 0.41(0.075) ab 87 atrazine half dose 0.29(0.025) de 75 0.49(0.168) ab 71 velvet bean leaf + atrazine 0.31(0.029) e 71 0.39 (0.060) a 90 velvet bean leaf extract 0.28 (0.022) bcde 78 0.38 (0.063) a 89 velvet bean root extract + atrazine 0.26(0.017) bcde 83 0.54 (0.295) b 50 velvet bean root extract 0.28(0.024) bcde 76 0.41 (0.064) ab 89 velvet bean stem extract + atrazine 0.21(0.011) abc 89 0.45(0.097) ab 84 velvet bean stem extract 0.15(0.010) a 90 0.41 (0.071) ab 88 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 430 jack bean leaf + atrazine 0.21(0.014) abc 86 0.42 (0.087) ab 85 jack bean leaf extract 0.26(0.018) bcde 82 0.38 (0.063) a 89 jack bean root extract + atrazine 0.28(0.017) cde 83 0.44 (0.067) ab 89 jack bean root extract 0.26(0.013) bcde 87 0.36 (0.054) a 91 jack bean stem extract + atrazine 0.23(0.027) bcd 73 0.40 (0.107) ab 82 jack bean stem extract 0.21(0.019) ab 81 0.37 (0.048) a 92 p-value <0.001 <0.001 lsd 0.073 0.143 cv% 23.7 27.8 n.b. data were 3√x transformed. untransformed data is shown in brackets. means followed by the same letter in the same column do not differ significantly at p<0.05 3.8. visual assessments 3.8.1. goosegrass the results of the visual assessment of the toxicity on goosegrass of the different herbicidal treatments done using the alam scale are shown in table 7. there were no significant differences (p>0.05) in terms of mean ranks and median scores at 1 das. however, significant differences (p<0.05) were observed at 5 das. the untreated plants remained healthy whilst all the treated plants showed variable signs of phytotoxic damage. mean ranks and median scores for goosegrass plants treated with velvet bean aqueous extracts showed no significant differences amongst treatments at 5 das (table 7). the visible phytotoxic effect of velvet bean leaf, stem, and root only aqueous extracts were similar to what was observed on plants to which the atrazine control was applied. consequently, the mean ranks and median scores at 10 das showed that all the treatments achieved complete weed kill by 10 das. no phytotoxic effect of any treatments with jack bean aqueous extracts was observed on 1 das on goosegrass (table 7). at 5 das all the other tissues of jack bean performed the same except the stem extracts treatment and the root + atrazine treatment which resulted in significantly lower mean ranks compared to the atrazine only treatments. at 10 das, the untreated plants remained healthy with a significantly low mean rank and median score of 1 but all the other treatments had already caused complete weed kill as shown by the significantly high mean ranks that ranged from 42-49 and a uniform median score of 6. figure 5 and figure 6 show the pictorial presentation of the visual phytotoxic effects of the extracts of velvet bean and jack bean on goosegrass in comparison with atrazine + extract treatments and the controls a day before the end of the experiment. it was observed that the untreated controls remained healthy and continued growth throughout the experiments. it is interesting to note that similar activity of all the treatments was observed at about the same time in the first and second runs of the experiments. phytotoxic activity of atrazine was observed at 4 das, whereas the bioherbicidal treatments started to show signs of chlorosis at 6 das. symptoms that developed in all treatments were similar. the plants started to show chlorosis and necrosis starting at the tips and edges of the leaves and the upper leaves were more affected than the lower older leaves. visually the extracts from jack bean appeared to be more phytotoxic than those from velvet bean although they caused similar symptoms on goosegrass. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 431 table 7: results of visual assessments of the percent control of goosegrass treatment day 1 day 5 day 10 mean rank median score mean rank median score mean rank median score control 45.50 1.0 14.00a 1.0 3.50a 1.0 atrazine full dose 45.50 1.0 53.00bc 4.0 49.00b 6.0 atrazine half dose 45.50 1.0 63.50b 4.0 49.00b 6.0 velvet bean leaves + atrazine 45.50 1.0 47.75bc 4.0 49.00b 6.0 velvet bean leaves only 45.50 1.0 58.75b 4.0 49.00b 6.0 velvet bean stem + atrazine 45.50 1.0 42.50bc 4.0 49.00b 6.0 velvet bean stem 45.50 1.0 46.08bc 4.0 49.00b 6.0 velvet bean root + atrazine 45.50 1.0 42.50bc 3.5 49.00b 6.0 velvet bean root 45.50 1.0 51.33bc 4.0 49.00b 6.0 jack bean leaf + atrazine 45.50 1.0 58.25b 4.0 49.00b 6.0 jack bean leaf 45.50 1.0 46.08bc 4.0 42.00b 6.0 jack bean stem + atrazine 45.50 1.0 46.08bc 4.0 49.00b 6.0 jack bean stem 45.50 1.0 33.92c 3.5 49.00b 6.0 jack bean root + atrazine 45.50 1.0 44.42bc 4.0 49.00b 6.0 jack bean root 45.50 1.0 44.83bc 4.0 49.00b 6.0 kruskal-wallis value (x2) 0.000 28.374 79.000 p-value 1.000 0.013 0.000 df 14 14 14 n 90 90 90 note: means followed by different letters in the same column are significantly different from each other at p<0.05 3.8.2. blackjack the effect of the different herbicidal treatments on blackjack plants was assessed daily and the results for visual assessments done 1 das, 5 das, and 6 das using the alam visual assessment scale are shown in table 8. there were no treatment differences (p>0.05) at 1 das showing that the different treatments had no immediately observable effects on blackjack. at 5 das treatment effects were significant (p<0.05). however, at 5 das only the untreated control remained healthy without displaying symptoms of phytotoxic damage. contrastingly, the other herbicidal treatments appeared to have caused deleterious effects on blackjack. by 6 das all the herbicidal treatments had caused permanent phytotoxic damage (figure 7 and figure 8). table 8: results of visual assessments of the percent control of beggarticks treatment day 1 day 5 day 6 mean rank median score mean rank median score mean rank median score control 30.50 1.0 2.5a 1.0 2.50a 1.0 atrazine full dose 30.50 1.0 16.5b 5.0 32.50b 6.0 atrazine half dose 30.50 1.0 16.5b 5.0 32.50b 6.0 velvet bean leaves + atrazine 30.50 1.0 44.5c 6.0 32.50b 6.0 velvet bean leaves only 30.50 1.0 16.5b 5.0 32.50b 6.0 velvet bean stem +atrazine 30.50 1.0 44.5c 6.0 32.50b 6.0 velvet bean stem 30.50 1.0 16.5b 5.0 32.50b 6.0 velvet bean root + atrazine 30.50 1.0 44.5c 6.0 32.50b 6.0 velvet bean root 30.50 1.0 44.5c 6.0 32.50b 6.0 jack bean leaf + atrazine 30.50 1.0 44.5c 6.0 32.50b 6.0 jack bean leaf 30.50 1.0 16.5b 5.0 32.50b 6.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 432 jack bean stem + atrazine 30.50 1.0 44.5c 6.0 32.50b 6.0 jack bean stem 30.50 1.0 16.5b 5.0 32.50b 6.0 jack bean root + atrazine 30.50 1.0 44.5c 6.0 32.50b 6.0 jack bean root 30.50 1.0 44.5c 6.0 32.50b 6.0 kruskal-wallis value (x2) 0.000 59000 59.000 p-value 1.000 0.000 0.000 df 14 14 14 n 60 60 60 note: means followed by the same letter in the column are not significantly different from each other at p<0.05 figure 7 and figure 8 show the visual effect of the extracts of jack bean on blackjack. all the extracts performed equally to atrazine. however, during the experiment, it was observed that atrazine acted faster than all the other tissue treatments. plants sprayed with atrazine showed signs of phytotoxic damage at 3 das compared to the others which caused chlorosis of leaves as from day 6. similar findings were observed when the experiment was repeated. generally, the effects of jack bean and velvet bean extracts were more apparent and developed faster on blackjack than on goosegrass. figure 5: phytotoxic effects of tank mixtures of atrazine and aqueous extracts of velvet bean on goosegrass 9 days after spraying asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 433 figure 6: phytotoxic effects of tank mixtures of atrazine and aqueous extracts of jack bean on goosegrass 9 days after spraying figure 7: phytotoxic effects of leaf, stem and root extracts of jack bean versus the untreated and atrazine control of beggarticks figure 8: phytotoxic effects of leaf, stem and root extracts of velvet bean versus the untreated and atrazine full dose controls on beggarticks asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 434 4. discussion post-emergence application of aqueous extracts of jack bean and velvet bean did not affect the height and chlorophyll content of maize plants. maize height increased across all the treatments indicating that the growth of maize plants was not adversely affected by the allelochemicals present in the tissues of the two cover crops. moreover, there was an increase in maize chlorophyll content from 24 dace to 34 dace across all the treatments suggesting that the aqueous extracts of jack bean and velvet bean did not affect the photosynthetic pigment system of maize. khan et al. (2012) reported similar findings when maize was sprayed using atrazine tank mixes with sorghum [sorghum bicolor (l.) moench], sunflower (helianthus annuus l.), brassica, and mulberry (morus rubra l.) extract. these results also support the findings of dinardo et al. (1998) who reported that maize was not affected by soil incorporated biomass of jack bean tissue extracts. it was also reported that the allelochemical l3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (l-dopa) found in velvet bean did not exhibit deleterious effects on maize when residues of an l-dopa containing cover crop were used as mulch (adediran et al., 2004). selective weed control using allelopathic extracts on their own or with reduced herbicide dosages applied as post-emergence sprays have also been reported in wheat (triticum aestivum l.) (razzaq et al., 2010) and canola (brassica napus l.) (jabran et al., 2008). this lends credence to the fact that allelochemicals produced by jack bean and velvet bean could be selective and are likely to offer prospects for use to selectively control weeds of divergent morphology in maize. variable responses of different plant species to allelochemicals have been reported. for example, plants belonging to the gramineae family to which maize belongs were seen to be less affected by l-dopa due to their ability to detoxify this allelochemical (soares et al., 2014). offen et al. (2001) reported that l-dopa could be enzymatically decarboxylated by l-dopa decarboxylase to form dopamine or form 3-o-methyldopa through the action of catechol-o-methyltransferase. however, these findings contradict the findings of caamal et al. (2001) who reported the phytotoxic activity of aqueous extracts of fresh velvet bean extracts on maize. the results obtained where aqueous extracts of jack bean and velvet bean were applied are similar to those where atrazine was applied suggesting that the cover crop aqueous extracts were phytotoxic to the test species. atrazine is a preand early post-emergence s-chlorotriazine herbicide that is applied to selectively control mainly broadleaved weeds and some grasses in maize and other grass crops (ross and lembi, 1985). it is well documented that maize is tolerant to atrazine. this tolerance is due to the ability of the maize plants to enzymatically detoxify atrazine. two enzymes, namely cytochrome p450 monooxygenase and glutathione-s-transferase, catalyse the conversion of atrazine to the nonphytotoxic conjugates oh-2atrazine and glutathione-atrazine that are responsible for conferring tolerance of maize to this herbicide (ibrahim et al., 2013). probably, the same enzymes could also enzymatically detoxifying potent allelochemicals produced by jack bean and velvet bean. in contrast, aqueous extracts of jack bean reduced chlorophyll content and dry weight of both blackjack and goosegrass. all the herbicidal treatments caused gradual chlorosis, necrosis, and death of plant leaves. the visual effects of the extracts were similar to what was observed in the atrazine treatments. symptom development was more visible in the youngest and top leaves, which are the ones that were more exposed to herbicide sprays. also, symptoms developed first at the tips and edges of the affected plants which are characteristic of apoplastically translocated photosystem 2 inhibitor herbicides (ross and lembi, 1985). these results concur with findings by silva and rezende (2016) who reported that foliar application of jack bean extracts caused chlorosis with some brown spots on soybean (glycine max l.) plants within 24 hours after application of the bioherbicide. inhibition of photosynthesis, decrease in chlorophyll content, enzymatic activity inhibition, and cell membrane destruction are possible mechanisms through which allelochemicals could exert their effect on susceptible species (khan et al., 2012). reduction of chlorophyll content, carotenoid content, plant dry weight, and other growth parameters were reported in field bindweed (convolvulus arvensis l.) treated with 10 g l-1 of crocus sativus l., ricinus communis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 435 l., nicotiana tabacum l., datura inoxia mill., nerium oleander l., & sorghum vulgar pers extracts. furthermore, dadkhah (2012) reported reduced chlorophyll content in cirsium arvense (l.) scop treated with ephedra major host. extracts and attributed the phytotoxic activity observed to the presence of phenolics, alkaloids, and other volatile compounds found in the leaves of e. major. in this study, it was not clear whether the observed chlorosis as a result of the disintegration of chlorophyll already in the plant or direct chlorophyll biosynthesis inhibition (batish et al., 2002). the phytotoxic activity of jack bean extracts observed in this study may be attributed to the presence of phenolic compounds; p-anisic acid, chlorogenic acid, naniringin and rutin that were found to exhibit phytotoxic activity in commelina bengalensis l., ipomoea grandifolia (dammer) o'donell (mendes and rezende, 2014), emilia sonchifolia and sida spinosa l. (silva and rezende, 2016). santos et al. (2007) reported germination inhibition in mimosa pudica l., cassia tora l., and cassia occidentalis l. which ranged from 45.6% to 72.4% due to the effect of the allelochemical atropine in jack bean root extracts. hence, the results obtained in this study further confirm the allelopathic activity of jack bean allelochemicals on broad-leaved plants. similar results were obtained in experiments where goosegrass, an annual grass weed belonging to the poacea family was also used as a test weed species. the fact that jack bean aqueous extracts exhibited phytotoxic activity on both dicotyledonous and monocotyledonous weeds suggests the presence of allelochemicals that have a broad spectrum of activity. to our knowledge, the allelopathic activity of post-emergence sprays of both jack bean and velvet bean aqueous extracts on grass weed species has not yet been reported. herbicide activity is known to be dosagedependent and the current lack of phytotoxic activity of extracts in maize could probably be due to subtoxic dosages of the potent allelochemicals. these results imply that 5% wv-1 sole aqueous extracts of jack bean can effectively control annual broad-leaved and narrow-leaved weeds in maize. moreover, allelochemicals are known to be less stable and are therefore less likely to affect rotational crops especially in ca and organic farming where crop rotations are a key cultural component in integrated weed management (farooq et al., 2011). in addition, the utilisation of allelopathic aqueous extracts as post-emergence sprays has prospects to perform better than when residues are used because their efficacy is less likely to be compromised by edaphic factors. elshahawy and abdelhamid (2013) reported a loss of allelopathic activity of cover crop residues due to processes like enzymatic modification and adsorption especially in soils with high biological activity and cation exchange capacity (cec). this is less likely to occur when extracts are applied post-emergence because they are readily absorbed by the foliage of the plant before they are broken down due to environmental factors. velvet bean also exhibited similar effects as where jack bean extracts were used. extracts from all tissues exhibited phytotoxic activity on both weeds suggesting the presence of potent allelochemicals in leaves, stems, and roots of velvet bean. the phytotoxic activity of velvet bean on weeds has been previously reported (adler and chase, 2007; runzika et al., 2013). the reduction in growth consequently causes reduced biomass accumulation in susceptible plants (soares et al., 2014). in this study, all the tissues of velvet bean were equally phytotoxic to both weed species. velvet bean extracts reduced chlorophyll content of both weeds. the effects of velvet bean extracts reported in this study align with the findings of bernard and udensi (2015) who reported the adverse effects of l-dopa on chlorophyll synthesis in the plants. however, the effects of velvet bean extracts were faster and more devastating in blackjack than in goosegrass. these findings corroborate the work of nishihara et al. (2005) who reported that velvet bean extracts had a more deleterious effect, on broadleaved weeds than on grass species. similarly, uddin et al. (2009) reported that broadleaf weeds were more susceptible to the herbicidal activity of sorgoleone than grass weed species. these observations suggest that the degree of phytotoxic damage due to allelochemicals from other plants could be species-specific (nekonam et al., 2013). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 436 results suggest that both jack bean and velvet bean are promising sources of bio-herbicides that can be applied postemergence to control weeds in sustainable agricultural systems. it has been reported that the application of allelopathic plant extracts as bio-herbicides may be a sustainable weed control strategy because they are usually less stable and have short half-lives (dinardo et al., 1998; farooq et al., 2011). however, their use alone may not translate into a meaningful yield benefit indicating the need to mix them with reduced dosages of herbicides (al-obaidi and alsaadawi, 2015). in this study, a combination of cover crop tissue extracts and atrazine gave similar results to atrazine at a full dose. similar results were obtained by cheema et al. (2003). sole extracts treatments also controlled weeds at a similar rate as treatments with synthetic herbicides. similar findings were also obtained by several researchers working with sorghum aqueous extracts (cheema et al., 2003, cheema et al., 2004). it, therefore, implies that satisfactory weed control can be achieved without applying full atrazine dosages in maize. the reduced application of atrazine will enhance the provision of an economically benign strategy of managing weeds at the same time reducing environmental pollution caused by this persistent herbicide with a half-life of 60 days in the soil (ross and lembi, 1985). while a lot of researchers have obtained successful results from allelopathic plants applied as post-emergence natural herbicides, there still exists the need to establish the optimum concentrations and conditions under which this weed control strategy could be employed under large scale arable crop production (weston et al., 2013). in this study, it was shown that all the tissue extracts of both jack bean and velvet bean exhibited phytotoxic activity on blackjack and goosegrass as shown by the differences in chlorophyll content between herbicidal treatment and the untreated control on the last day of the experiment. interestingly, the herbicidal effects of the extracts that were demonstrated on the weeds were not observed in maize. moreover, the results demonstrated that there was no extra benefit that was gained by combining aqueous extracts of the cover crops with reduced atrazine dosages. this is an important result because it demonstrated the potential use of these allelopathic aqueous extracts for weed control without the need for synthetic herbicides. the results show that the two cover crops have the potential to be used as post-emergence sprays in maize to effectively control emerged weed seedlings even without combining them with atrazine. 5. conclusion it could be concluded that both jack bean and velvet bean leaf, stem, and root tissues possess allelochemicals that have post-emergence herbicidal effects on blackjack and goosegrass, while maize is rather insensitive. it can, therefore, be further concluded that 5% wv-1 aqueous extracts of the leaf, stem, and root tissues of jack bean and velvet bean can be used to effectively control annual weed seedlings in maize. these findings provide a reasonable base for suggesting that the use of jack bean and velvet bean aqueous extracts as post-emergence sprays could provide an effective and environmentally friendly method of weed control. however, there is a need to evaluate the efficacy of these extracts under field conditions in different soils and agro-ecological regions. there could also be merit in evaluating the allelopathic activity of these two cover crops on other important and commonly occurring weeds in maize production and other crops. economic analysis may also need to be done to establish the economic feasibility of using these bioherbicides in weed management as well as establishing the optimum application rate of these extracts. funding: funds for this research were provided by a capacity-building competitive grant training the next generation of scientists provided by carnegie cooperation of new york through the regional universities forum for capacity building in agriculture (ruforum). competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in the research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 420-439 437 references adediran, j. a., akande, m. o., & oluwatoyinbo, f. i. 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(2013). potential and prospects of sorghum allelopathy in agroecosystems. allelopathy journal, 24, 255-270. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 298 the causal impact of government support on the small strategic crop industry: malaysia’s experience kamarudin othman, hapiza omar, hanani ahmad fuad , jamilah laidin, irlisuhayu mohd ramli faculty of business, universiti teknologi mara, kedah, malaysia  hanan5560@uitm.edu.my (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 24-jan-2020 accepted: 27-apr-2020 online available: 26-may2020 keywords: ardl, fertiliser subsidy, minimum price guarantee, paddy production, rice abstract rice is a staple food for countries particularly in asia, including malaysia, hence arise concern on its supply. thus, this study aims to investigate the causal relationship between the incentives (fertiliser subsidy and minimum price guarantee) given and paddy production in kedah, the rice bowl of malaysia. a time-series data ranging from the 1996 main season to the main season in 2018 (1996h1 to 2018h1) employed. using ardl and granger approaches, the result shows that any disequilibrium in paddy production is regulated to accomplish the convergence faster. in the short-run, fertiliser subsidy and paddy prices are not significant in the mada regions. the results of the analysis show that there are various causes of the long-run in the production of rice with subsidized steel and rice prices related to rice yield. the outcome of this study demonstrates the presence of long-run causality between paddy production with fertiliser subsidy and paddy price with respect to paddy yield. therefore, to boost the paddy yield, the government should increase the number of subsidies, and control the paddy price to prevent it from falling below the market price. therefore, future research should investigate the causal relationship between fertiliser and paddy price subsidy to the different types of paddy seeds planted. contribution/ originality this study significantly contributes to the growing evidence of the relationship between government incentive schemes to paddy production in malaysia. the research explored how fertiliser subsidy and minimum price guarantee contributed to paddy yield. the evidence provided in this study demonstrates that the presence of long-run causality between paddy production of fertiliser subsidy minimum price guarantee. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.298.310 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: kamarudin othman, hapiza omar, hanani ahmad fuad, jamilah laidin, and irlisuhayu mohd ramli (2020). the causal impact of government support on the small strategic crop industry: malaysia’s experience. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 298-310. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 298-310 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:hanan5560@uitm.edu.my http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.298.310 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 298-310 299 1. introduction paddy that is undoubtedly the principal crop in malaysia represents the predominant source of the single malaysians’ staple food that is rice. paddy planting areas cover almost 6% to 10% of the total agricultural areas in malaysia (economic planning unit, 2001, and 2006, fatimah et al., 2020). although rice is a staple food for malaysians, by 2015, more than 70% of the agricultural land was occupied by oil palm (fatimah et al., 2020). paddy cultivation is initiated on a small scale and the average field size is 1 to 2 hectares. there are two types of paddy crops, namely wetland paddy, and dryland paddy. the average production for the main and off seasons is around 3000 kilograms per hectare. based on these facts, it seems that the malaysian paddy yield is below the national paddy production target at a rate of 5% in 2010 (food and agriculture organization, 2002; othman, 2008; department of agriculture, malaysia, 2011). the actual yield for rice production is between 44% to 68% and under the potential yield (othman, 2008, che et al., 2019). this situation causes a shortage of paddy production around 125,552.15 metric tons per annum. the shortage of local paddy production also causes lower local rice supply. on average, rice consumption in malaysia is roughly 120 kilograms per person every year. this is approximately 26% to 44% of the daily calorie needs (suthida et al., 2008: usda, 2012, che et al., 2019). to solve these problems, the government has to import almost 30% of the rice from neighbouring countries such as vietnam and thailand. therefore, to increase the rice self-sufficiency level (ssl), malaysia has to increase its local paddy production. the tenth malaysia plan aims to achieve a minimum self-sufficiency level of 70 percent food security (saiful and mohd, 2016). thus, as to increase paddy production, farmers have to increase their level of productivity. to increase malaysian paddy production, the government has adopted various series of subsidy policies. the purpose of subsidy policies is basically to reduce the costs of production and to boost farmers’ income. there are also subsidies given to reduce consumers’ burden. fundamentally, there are three instruments implemented under the subsidy policy, which are the fertiliser scheme, paddy price subsidy scheme, and rice price subsidy scheme. the fertiliser subsidy was introduced in the early 1950s. in the early stage, the government stopped the fertiliser subsidy when the price of fertilisers decreased. nonetheless, in 1979, the government had to resume this policy when the price of fertilisers increased and until to date, fertilisers have become 100% subsidy. it was only given to the landowners and not to the operators. the average allocation of fertilisers for the years (20032007) was approximately usd 44.4 million. meanwhile, the government introduced the paddy price subsidy scheme in 1980. the purpose of introducing this scheme was to increase the farmers’ productivity and income (tan, 1987; tawang et al., 1999, fatimah, 2018). the scheme was stemmed from the realisation that the paddy farmers have recorded the highest poverty rates in malaysia. on average, the paddy price subsidy has increased over the years except in 2006. however, the allocation gap between 2005 and 2006 had a minor difference of about 0.6%. this proves that the paddy price subsidy is the major instrument in boosting the farmers' income. therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyse the fertiliser and paddy price subsidy schemes on paddy cultivation based on the estimated paddy production function. 2. literature review among the most important inputs in agricultural production is fertiliser. the correct measurement of the fertiliser application may help to increase production output. generally, fertilisers are classified into two, namely organic fertilisers and chemical fertilisers. fertilisers are additional nutrients supplied to the plant. they are very important, especially in increasing the level of productivity among paddy farmers. the right application of the fertilisers and the right fertiliser specification help increase the nutrients in the soil, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and others. the effective use of fertilisers may increase the output by more than 20 %. therefore, fertilisers are crucial in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 298-310 300 increasing the fertility of the soil especially in unfertile paddy growing areas (nurul et al., 2012; meena et al., 2013). many of the researchers concluded that fertiliser inputs are complementary to the production of other inputs (lori et al., 2013; lenis et al., 2013; adnan et al., 2017). in other words, to increase the paddy production, farmers have to make sure that they use effective technology and the correct schedule of fertilisers. in a preliminary study of paddy, jayaraman (1983) found that fertiliser is an important input in the paddy production in indonesia. meanwhile, in 2010, krishna et al. (2010) discovered that fertiliser is an extremely important factor for the family farms in nepal. chaudhry et al. (2009) and oluwatosin (2013) also discovered that fertiliser is significant in agricultural production. in the efficiency study conducted by sherlund et al. (2002), it was discovered that labour can be substituted by the use of chemical fertilisers. furthermore, suresh and ready (2006) found that the ratio of mpv / mfc land in the district of kerala, india is high, which is approximately 3:04. this means that land is significant as a determinant factor in paddy production. however, the size of the cultivated areas is small. this causes a low average output. therefore, to increase paddy production, ready (2007) suggested that the farmers in kerala employ fertilisers. furthermore, the results of the study indicated that one rupee increase in the fertiliser expenditure increases the yield by about 2.83 rupees in the kerala district of india. the literature above shows strong evidence in supporting that fertilisers are very important in increasing the paddy yield. similar to other sectors, the agricultural output price also affects the allocation of resources to aggregate production (liyan and richard, 1993). mundlak (1988), in his article, stressed the importance of price as an input to determine the choice of technique used. furthermore, the price also important in influencing the level of productivity (mundlak, 1988). when the price of agricultural output is high, farmers are given the incentive to improve their earning and, indirectly, it can help to raise the supply of the agricultural product. numerous research has shown that price and productivity are positively related. several studies have shown that price and productivity are positively related to the research in south asia (bhavani et al., 2019) according to timmer et al. (1983), two major roles played by price are, firstly, it shows the level of consumption especially among the poor. secondly, the price also affects the supply through increased production as an incentive to producers. in reality, there are two different desires among consumers and agricultural producers. consumers prefer lower prices of goods while farmers want a higher price of output. in the case of malaysia, this difference is offset by the government through price subsidies for both consumers and agricultural producers. 3. materials and methods 3.1. co-integration test: the ardl approach the underlying regression for this section is based on the log-linear production model as follows: 𝑌 = (𝑁, 𝐾, 𝐿40, 𝐿41, 𝐹, 𝑃) …………………... (1) where y is the paddy yield. meanwhile, f and p represent fertiliser and paddy price subsidy schemes respectively. in the meantime, n, k, ll40, and ll41 are selected control variables for land, capital, young farmers, and old farmers. a natural log of both sides of equation 1 is taken and equation 2 will be obtained as follows: 𝑙𝑛𝑌𝑡 = 𝛼0 + 𝛼1𝑙𝑛(𝑁𝑡) + 𝛼2𝑙𝑛(𝐾𝑡) + 𝛼3𝑙𝑛(𝐿40) + 𝛼4𝑙𝑛(𝐿41) + 𝛼5𝑙𝑛(𝐹𝑡) + 𝛼6𝑙𝑛(𝑃𝑡) + 𝜇𝑡 ... (2) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 298-310 301 where α represents the elasticity of paddy production with respect to each independent variable in var model. subscript 𝑡 represents time and µ represents the residual. equation 2 is the underlying var that is used in the empirical analysis of all paddy production regions in mada. the notation of 𝛼0 is the intercept, 𝜇𝑡 is white-noise random error, and 𝛼1 to 𝛼6 are the coefficients for the long-run model. the f-statistic of the bounds testing method (pesaran and pesaran, 1997; pesaran et al., 2001) is examined for the joint significance of the coefficients of the lagged levels of the variables. every year has two main seasons. so all together 32 observations. this study employed the narayan (2004) approach because critical values produced by narayan is more suitable for small sample sizes. this study employs time-series data from the main season in 1996 (1996h1) to the main season in 2011 (2011h1). this study only focuses on the muda agricultural development authority (mada) granary area. the long-run equations which form the production functions model to be analysed in the present study can be portrayed as a general vector autoregressive model of order p in zt as follows: 1 0 1 , 1,2,3,..., p t i t i t i z a t z t t           …………………... (3) where 0a represents a (k+1) vector containing intercepts and β is a (k+1) vector of trend coefficients. following this, a vector equilibrium error-correction model (vecm) is derived as shown below: 1 0 1 1 p t t i t i t i z a t z z              t = 1,2,3,…, t …………………... (4) where the (k+1) x (k+1) matrices 1 1 p k i i i       and 1 p i j j i      with i = 1,2, …, p-1 have both the long-run multipliers and short-run dynamic coefficients of the vecm. tz contains the vector of variables ty and tx . yt is the dependent variable and xt reflects the ‘forcing’ i (0) and i (1) variables. assuming there is a unique long-run association between the parameters of interest, the vecm above can be written as: 1 1 0 1 1 1 , 1 0 1,2,..., p p t y yy t xx t i t i i t yt i i y a t y x y x t t                          ….. (5) in equation (5) above, i refers to the paddy sub-sector,  is the long-run multiplier, a is constant, and  is the white-noise error. adapting the above specification to the variables in the present study, yield equations (6) and (7) below are for the production function model of paddy sub-sector: ∆𝑙𝑛𝑌𝑡 = 𝑐0 + 𝛿1𝑙𝑛𝑌𝑡−1 + 𝛿2𝑙𝑛𝑁𝑡−1 + 𝛿3𝑙𝑛𝐾𝑡−1 + 𝛿4𝑙𝑛𝐿40𝑡−1 + 𝛿5𝑙𝑛𝐿41𝑡−1 + 𝛿6𝑙𝑛𝐹𝑡−1 + 𝛿7𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝜔𝑗 𝑞1 𝑗=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑁𝑡−𝑗 + ∑ 𝛾𝑘 𝑞2 𝑘=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐾𝑡−𝑘 + ∑ ∅𝑙 𝑞3 𝑙=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐿40𝑡−𝑙 + ∑ 𝜗𝑚 𝑞4 𝑚=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐿41𝑡−𝑚 + ∑ 𝜇𝑛 𝑞5 𝑛=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐹𝑡−𝑛 + ∑ 𝜏𝑜 𝑞6 𝑜=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑡−𝑜 + 휀𝑡 …………………... (6) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 298-310 302 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑁𝑡 = 𝑐0 + 𝛿1𝑙𝑛𝑁𝑡−1 + 𝛿2𝑙𝑛𝑌𝑡−1 + 𝛿3𝑙𝑛𝐾𝑡−1 + 𝛿4𝑙𝑛𝐿40𝑡−1 + 𝛿5𝑙𝑛𝐿41𝑡−1 + 𝛿6𝑙𝑛𝐹𝑡−1 + 𝛿7𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝜔𝑗 𝑞1 𝑗=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑁𝑡−𝑗 + ∑ 𝛾𝑘 𝑞2 𝑘=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐾𝑡−𝑘 + ∑ ∅𝑙 𝑞3 𝑙=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐿40𝑡−𝑙 + ∑ 𝜗𝑚 𝑞4 𝑚=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐿41𝑡−𝑚 + ∑ 𝜇𝑛 𝑞5 𝑛=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐹𝑡−𝑛 + ∑ 𝜏𝑜 𝑞6 𝑜=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑡−𝑜 + 휀𝑡 …………………... (7) the ols technique is used to conduct the f-test for the above equation which tests the null hypothesis 0 1 2 3 4 5: 0h          against the alternate hypothesis 1 1 2 3 4 5: 0h          . the rejection of the null hypothesis shows that there exists a long-run relationship between the variables. therefore, the variables in the model are co-integrated. the f-statistic obtained is a statistic in a generalised dickey-fuller type of regression that employed to test the significance of lagged level variables in a conditionally unrestricted equilibrium-correction model (pesaran et al., 2001). f-statistic is then compared with the two sets of critical values that create a band. the first value presumes all the variables are i (1) while another value presumes all the variables are i (0). critical values for i (1) series are known as upper bound while the critical values for the i (0) series are known as lower bound. if the computed f-statistic is beyond the upper-bound level, the null hypothesis can be rejected. this shows that there is a co-integration between the parameters or variables. however, if the f-statistic is below the lower-bound value, the null hypothesis cannot be rejected and this demonstrates no cointegration between variables. if the statistic falls between the upper and lower bounds, a conclusive inference cannot be made without knowing the order of integration of the independent variables (narayan, 2004). if the variables are integrated i (1), then the upper bound is taken as the critical value. if the variables are integrated i (0), the lower bound becomes the critical value. in the meantime, there is also an alternative way to capture the existence of co-integration for the inclusive case. as mentioned by kremers et al. (1992), the alternative way to capture the co-integration is by using the error-correction term (ect). additionally, the ect value must be negative and significant. this condition indicates that there is a presence of adjustment towards the long-run equilibrium, therefore, the series are co-integrated. the bounds table by pesaran and pesaran (1997) and pesaran et al. (2001) has produced a sample size of 500 and 1,000 observations and 20,000 and 40,000 replications consecutively. however, the present study just employs 31 observations. therefore, the f-statistic obtained compared by the critical values generated by narayan (2004), which is more suitable for small sample sizes1. after establishing the presence of co-integration, the long-run relationship between the variables is estimated via the following conditional ardl (p, q1, q2, q3, q4, q5), a longrun model for paddy subsector production function in equations (8) and (9) below: ∆𝑙𝑛𝑌𝑡 = 𝑐0 + ∑ 𝛿1 𝑝 𝑖=1 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑁𝑡−𝑖 + ∑ 𝛿2 𝑞1 𝑖=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐾𝑡−𝑖 + ∑ 𝛿3 𝑞2 𝑖=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐿40𝑡−𝑖 + ∑ 𝛿4 𝑞3 𝑖=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐿41𝑡−𝑖 + ∑ 𝛿5 𝑞4 𝑖=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐹𝑡−𝑖 + ∑ 𝛿6 𝑞5 𝑖=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑡−𝑖 + 휀𝑡 …………………... (8) ∆𝑙𝑛𝑁𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑐𝑖,0 + ∑ 𝛿1 𝑝 𝑗=1 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑁𝑖,𝑡−𝑗 + ∑ 𝛿2 𝑞1 𝑙=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐾𝑖,𝑡−𝑙 + ∑ 𝛿3 𝑞2 𝑚=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐿40𝑖,𝑡−𝑚 + ∑ 𝛿4 𝑞3 𝑛=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐿41𝑖,𝑡−𝑛 + ∑ 𝛿5 𝑞4 𝑜=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐹𝑖,𝑡−𝑜 + ∑ 𝛿6 𝑞5 𝑝=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑖,𝑡−𝑝 + 휀𝑡 …………………... (9) the optimal lag for each variable (p, q1, q2, q3, q4, q5) is selected based on schwarz bayesian criterion (sbc) or akaike information criterion (aic). after obtaining the long-run coefficient estimates, the short-run dynamic coefficients are estimated by ols through the error-correction models associated with the long-run estimates. the error 1 narayan (2004) generated a different set of critical values using the same gauss code as pesaran et al. (2001) but tailored his study with 31 observations. these new critical values were calculated using stochastic simulations for t=31 and 40000 replications for the f-statistic. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 298-310 303 correction models corresponding to paddy sub-sector production functions are presented in equations (10) and (11) below: ∆𝑙𝑛𝑌𝑖,𝑡 = 𝛽𝑖 + ∑ ф1 𝑝 𝑗=1 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑁𝑖,𝑡−𝑗 + ∑ 𝜛2 𝑞1 𝑙=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐾𝑖,𝑡−𝑙 + ∑ 𝜑3 𝑞2 𝑚=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐿40𝑖,𝑡−𝑚 + ∑ 𝛾4 𝑞3 𝑛=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐿41𝑖,𝑡−𝑛 + ∑ 𝜂5 𝑞4 𝑜=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐹𝑖,𝑡−𝑜 + ∑ 𝜂6 𝑞5 𝑝=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑖,𝑡−𝑝 + 𝜗𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖,𝑡−1 + 휀𝑖,𝑡 ..…… (10) ∆𝑙𝑛𝑁𝑖,𝑡 = 𝛽𝑖 + ∑ ф1 𝑝 𝑗=1 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑁𝑖,𝑡−𝑗 + ∑ 𝜛2 𝑞1 𝑙=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐾𝑖,𝑡−𝑙 + ∑ 𝜑3 𝑞2 𝑚=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐿40𝑖,𝑡−𝑚 + ∑ 𝛾4 𝑞3 𝑛=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐿41𝑖,𝑡−𝑛 + ∑ 𝜂5 𝑞4 𝑜=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝐹𝑖,𝑡−𝑜 + ∑ 𝜂6 𝑞5 𝑝=0 ∆𝑙𝑛𝑃𝑖,𝑡−𝑝 + 𝜗𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖,𝑡−1 + 휀𝑖,𝑡 ……… (11) in equations (10) and (11), the short-run coefficient estimates for the paddy sub-sector production function models are given by , , , , ,      each model converges to its long-run equilibrium. reflects how fast the equilibrium is achieved or how the speed of adjustment is. 3.2. granger causality if the co-integration test reveals that the variables are co-integrated, we employ the vector errorcorrection (vec) model estimation as in equations 12 to 18y. the error-correction model (ecm) is used to test for granger-type causality. a benefit of using an ecm specification to test for causality is that it permits the testing of the short-run causality over the lagged different regressors. it also used to test the long-run causality over the lagged error-correction term (ect). a significant ect confirms the presence of the long-run causality from the independent variables to the measured variable. nevertheless, if the variables are not co-integrated, then vector autoregressive (var) model is used in the first difference in the estimation given that both variables fertiliser and paddy price is i (1). thus, ecm is used to examine the granger causality between variables. ∆𝐿𝑌𝑡 = 𝛼0𝑌 + ∑ 𝛿1𝑌 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝑌𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿2𝑌 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝑁𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿3𝑌 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐾𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿4𝑌 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿40𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿5𝑌 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿41𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿6𝑌 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐹𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿7𝑌 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝑃𝑡−1 + 𝛾1𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1 + 휀𝑡 ………….. (12) ∆𝐿𝑁𝑡 = 𝛼0𝑁 + ∑ 𝛿1𝑁 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝑁𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿2𝑁 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝑌𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿3𝑁 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐾𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿4𝑁 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿40𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿5𝑁 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿41𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿6𝑁 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐹𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿7𝑁 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝑃𝑡−1 + 𝛾2𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1 + 휀𝑡 …………. (13) ∆𝐿𝐾𝑡 = 𝛼0𝐾 + ∑ 𝛿1𝐾 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐾𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿2𝐾 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐾𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿3𝐾 𝑘 𝑖−1 𝑌𝑁𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿4𝐾 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿40𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿5𝐾 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿41𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿6𝐾 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐹𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿7𝐾 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝑃𝑡−1 + 𝛾3𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1 + 휀𝑡 …………. (14) ∆𝐿𝐿40𝑡 = 𝛼0𝐿𝐿40 + ∑ 𝛿1𝐿𝐿40 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿40𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿2𝐿𝐿40 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝑌𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿3𝐿𝐿40 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝑁𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿4𝐿𝐿40 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐾𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿5𝐿𝐿40 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿41𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿6𝐿𝐿40 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐹𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿7𝐿𝐿40 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝑃𝑡−1 + 𝛾4𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1 + 휀𝑡 ………….…………. (15) ∆𝐿𝐿41𝑡 = 𝛼0𝐿𝐿41 + ∑ 𝛿1𝐿𝐿41 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿41𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿2𝐿𝐿41 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝑌𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿3𝐿𝐿41 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝑁𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿4𝐿𝐿41 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐾𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿5𝐿𝐿41 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿40𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿6𝐿𝐿41 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐹𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿7𝐿𝐿41 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝑃𝑡−1 + 𝛾5𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1 + 휀𝑡 …………………….. (16) ∆𝐿𝐹𝑡 = 𝛼0𝐿𝐹 + ∑ 𝛿1𝐿𝐹 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐹𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿2𝐿𝐹 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝑌𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿3𝐿𝐹 𝑘 𝑖−1 𝑁𝑌𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿4𝐿𝐹 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐾𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿5𝐿𝐹 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿41𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿6𝐿𝐹 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿41𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿7𝐿𝐹 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝑃𝑡−1 + 𝛾6𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1 + 휀𝑡 …….….. (17) ∆𝐿𝑃𝑡 = 𝛼0𝐿𝑃 + ∑ 𝛿1𝐿𝑃 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝑃𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿2𝐿𝑃 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝑌𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿3𝐿𝑃 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝑁𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿4𝐿𝑃 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐾𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿5𝐿𝑃 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿41𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿6𝐿𝑃 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐿41𝑡−1 + ∑ 𝛿7𝐿𝑃 𝑘 𝑖−1 ∆𝐿𝐹𝑡−1 + 𝛾7𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1 + 휀𝑡 ……… (18) where 𝐸𝐶𝑇𝑡−1is the lagged error-correction term. the granger causality testing technique includes testing the significance of 𝛿𝑖𝑗 s limited on the optimum lags. the ecm equations 12 to 18 are the alternative tests of causality. the 𝛾𝑖𝑗 is zero, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 298-310 304 which means that the variation in the dependent variable doesn't respond to the deviation in the longrun equilibrium in a period of 𝑡 − 1. for example, equation 1, if 𝛾𝑖𝑗 is zero and all 𝛿𝑖𝑗 is zero, that can be implied that all the variables do not granger-cause paddy production. the insignificance of t and f-statistic in the wald test suggests that the variable is weakly exogenous. if there is a presence of the co-integration between variables, we presume that at least one or all of the ects should be significantly non-zero. granger causality between ly and other variables can be revealed by testing the following null hypothesis: a) short-run granger causality: (𝐻𝑂: 𝛿2𝑌 = 0, 𝐻𝑂: 𝛿2𝑁 = 0, 𝐻𝑂: 𝛿2𝐾 = 0, 𝐻𝑂: 𝛿2𝐿𝐿40 = 0, 𝐻𝑂: 𝛿2𝐿𝐿41 = 0, 𝐻𝑂: 𝛿2𝐿𝐹 = 0 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐻𝑂: 𝛿2𝐿𝑃 = 0, ) b) long-run granger causality: (𝐻𝑂: 𝛾1 = 0, 𝐻𝑂: 𝛾2 = 0, 𝐻𝑂: 𝛾3 = 0, 𝐻𝑂: 𝛾4 = 0, 𝐻𝑂: 𝛾5 = 0, 𝐻𝑂: 𝛾6 = 0 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐻𝑂: 𝛾7 = 0) c) joint granger causality: (𝐻𝑂 = 𝛿2𝑌 = 𝛾1 = 0, 𝐻𝑂=𝛿2𝑁 = 𝛾2 = 0, 𝐻𝑂=𝛿2𝐾 = 𝛾3 = 0, 𝐻𝑂=𝛿2𝐿𝐿40 = 𝛾4 = 0, 𝐻𝑂=𝛿2𝐿𝐿41 = 𝛾5 = 0, 𝐻𝑂=𝛿2𝐿𝐹 = 𝛾6 = 0 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐻𝑂=𝛿2𝐿𝑃 = 𝛾7 = 0) 4. empirical results based on the results of the unit-root test, ardl co-integration test, vector autoregressive (var) granger-cause test in the framework of vector error-correction (vecm), response functions (irfs), variance decomposition (vds), and diagnostic tests shown in table 1 and 2. table 1 displays the results of augmented dickey-fuller (adf) and phillip perron test (pp) to the paddy yield, land, capital, young farmers, old farmers, fertiliser, and paddy price to mada paddy production areas. based on these tests, at level, the absolute t-statistic obtained for all the time-series data fails to reject the null hypothesis of which the data are not stationary time series. this situation describes that, all factors not stationary at 1% and 5% significance level. this research proceeded with the firstdifference stationarity test and found out that the t-calculate was larger than the t-critical value at 1% and 5 %. this means that the integration of the variables is at the first difference or i(1). table 1: unit-root analysis for mada regions variables adf test pp test conclusion constant without trend constant without trend ly δly -1.696 -14.489* -2.041 -22.41** i(1) ln δln -1.037 -7.489* -1.455 -7.537* i(1) lk δlk 0.254 -4.465* 0.080 -4.465** i(1) ll40 δll40 -2.273 -6.125* -2.407 -6.108* i(1) ll41 δll41 -2.083 -6.402* -2.198 -6.356* i(1) lf δlf -1.564 -6.779* -1.565 -6.611* i(1) lp δlp -0.115 -5.599** -0.051 -5.599** i(1) notes: *, and** donated 1% and 5% significant levels respectively to approve the existence of co-integration among the parameters, this study employed the bound test and the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) method. the optimal lag length needs to be determined first before the ardl co-integration test. based on the aic suggestion, the optimal lag asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 298-310 305 length is 2. table 2 shows that f-statistic for the mada area is 3.4337. this f-statistic value is between the lower (2.303) and upper (3.483) bound value at 5% and 10% significant levels. this indicates that the presence of co-integration between variables in the model could not be ascertained. therefore, the test on the error correction term (ect) by kremers et al. (1992) is used to confirm the co-integration between variables. to test the ect, the long-run equation for the mada area needs to be generated first. table 2: results of bounds test and critical values for case ii case ii (intercept and no trend) level of significance lower upper 1% significance 5% significance 10% significance 3.901 2.780 2.303 5.611 4.084 3.483 computed f-statistic 3.4337 notes: the f-statistics are compared with the upper bound i.e. i(1) and lower bound i.e. i(0) critical values for zero restriction on the coefficient of the lagged level variables n = 30 based on table 3, the coefficient estimation shows that land, old farmers, fertilisers, and paddy prices are significant in the long-run equation for mada. the coefficient estimation of land, fertilisers, and paddy price show that paddy yield is elastic towards change in land, fertilisers, and paddy price. 1% increase in land size leads to an increase in output by 28%. meanwhile, a 1% increase in fertilisers used triggers the increase in output by approximately 172%. this reflects that the use of fertilizers intensively and effectively increases paddy yield. on the other hand, old farmers and paddy prices are inelastic to the change in paddy yield. if there is a 1% increase in the number of old farmers, the output decreases by about 0.4%. nonetheless, when the paddy price increases by 1%, the output decreases by 5%. other variables are not significant to determine paddy yield in the long-run. table 3: long-run coefficient estimations for the determinants of the paddy yield in mada area variables ln lk l40 l41 lf lp c coefficient 28.29** -0.06 0.12 -0.04** 172.35** -5.07** -1438.3** t-statistic 2.86 -0.78 1.50 -2.17 2.83 -2.84 -3.31 notes: *, ** indicates significance at 5% and 10% levels from the information in table 3, we then computed the error-correction term (ect). the negative and significant value of the error-correction term (ect) shows the presence of the long-run relationship among variables. the output error-correction terms (ect) for mada are shown as below: δly = 0.015 + 46.966δln** + 0.449δlk** + 256.334δll40* 345.454δll41** [1.445] [4.083] [ 2.986)] [6.522)] [-4.233] + 93.228δlf 2.851δlp 1.038ect* [1.297] [-1.288] [-8.355] ……………………. (19) r2: 0.843; adjusted r-squared: 0.793; ar(2): 0.970(0.396); heteroscedasticity (1): 0.891(0.559); reset(2): 1.645(0.217); normality(2): 1.269(0.530); cusum: stable; cusum-sq: stable asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 298-310 306 notes: brackets denote the t-statistics while p-values are in parentheses. breusch-godfrey, white, ramsey reset, and jarque bera tests are used to test for the presence of serial correlation, heteroscedasticity, model miss-specification, and residual non-normality in the model. * and ** denote significant at 1% and 5% level respectively. sr is short-run from the above ect estimation, we found that the value of ect is negative and significant. this shows that there exists a long-run relationship among variables. the lagged coefficient of the errorcorrection term (ect) depicts the speed of adjustment of paddy yield to shock in the system. the speed of adjustment of paddy production is higher. from the short-run output, the speed of adjustment for mada is 104%. the result suggested that any disequilibrium in paddy production is adjusted to achieve faster convergence. additionally, it could be inferred from these results that paddy yield, land, capital, young and old farmers, fertilisers, and local paddy price are the long-run ‘forcing variables’ of paddy yield in mada paddy production areas. from this result, we could make an initial assumption that at least there is a presence of one-way causality between variables in mada paddy production areas. the present study also found that in the short-run, the land is significant in the mada areas. the degree of elasticity of paddy yield with respect to land is that it is elastic and has a positive sign. this means that 1% of the increase in paddy planting areas leads to approximately 46.97 % of the increase in paddy yield. this indicates that in the short-run, the increase in harvested areas may increase the paddy yield (fatimah et al., 2020). besides, the present research also found that young and old farmers are also significant in influencing paddy production. the degree of elasticity of paddy yield concerning young and old farmers is elastic. however, both variables have a different sign. young farmers have a positive effect on paddy yield; a 1% increase in young farmers, paddy yield increases roughly by 611%. the increase in old farmers reduces paddy production by about 611%. this indicates that young farmers are among the most vulnerable target to increases agricultural output (balezentis et al., 2020). if paddy cultivation is too dependent on old farmers, the productivity may reduce. nonetheless, this research also found that capital is significant in the short-run. from the above result, the degree of elasticity is inelastic and has a positive sign. based on the empirical finding, a 1% increase in capital results in the increase of paddy yield by about 0.45 %. this finding is smaller as compared to the study done by oniah et al. (2008). the diagnostic test was then employed to test the goodness of fit of the model. the goodness of fit of the model is adequate as roughly 84% of the differences in paddy yield clarified by dissimilarities in the regressors. additionally, there is no autocorrelation, no residual non-normality, and no missspecification problems associated with the mada areas model. the present study also found that there is no heteroscedasticity in mada. the cusum and cusum-sq test in figure 1 shows that the model parameters and residual variance are stable throughout the study. figure 1: cusum and cusum-sq graphs for mada paddy production 4.1. causal relationship the result from table 4 shows that land and capital are significant at 5% and 1% levels respectively in the paddy yield equation but there are no other explanatory variables that are significant in the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 298-310 307 short-run. meanwhile, in the land and capital equation, paddy yield is significant at 5% and 1% levels. these clearly show that paddy yield and land, and paddy yield and capital both have a bidirectional granger causality in the short-run. furthermore, we also discovered that young farmers and capital, old farmers and capital, old farmers and young farmers, and paddy price and fertilisers also have the presence of bidirectional granger causality. table 4: short-run and long-run granger causality vec model variable s mada short-run causality longrun causalit y ∆ 𝑳𝒀𝒕 ∆ 𝑳𝑵𝒕 ∆ 𝑳𝑲𝒕 ∆ 𝑳𝑳𝟒𝟎𝒕 ∆ 𝑳𝑳𝟒𝟏𝒕 ∆ 𝑳𝑭𝒕 ∆ 𝑳𝑷𝒕 ect wald f-statistics ∆ 𝐿𝑌𝑡 5.96** [0.02] 11.53* [0.00] 0.89 [0.36] 0.20 [0.66] 1.38 [0.25] 1.39 [0.25] 1.03* (-7.85) ∆ 𝐿𝑁𝑡 5.81** [0.03] 0.50 [0.49] 0.93 [0.35] 1.37 [0.26] 0.39 [0.54] 0.35 [0.56] 0.009** (2.17) ∆ 𝐿𝐾𝑡 24.99* [0.00] 0.57 [0.46] 11.30* [0.00] 6.00** [0.02] 1.04 [0.32] 1.26 [0.27] 0.86* (4.10) ∆ 𝐿𝐿40𝑡 2.39 [0.14] 0.89 [0.36] 10.71* [0.00] 101.66* [0.00] 0.09 [0.77] 0.12 [0.73] -0.0006 (-1.58) ∆ 𝐿𝐿41𝑡 -.71 [0.41] 1.29 [0.27] 6.05** [0.02] 100.87* [0.00] 2.68 [0.12] 2.48 [0.13] 0.0004 (0.82) ∆ 𝐿𝐹𝑡 2.13 [0.16] 0.38 [0.55] 0.82 [0.37] 0.09 [0.76] 2.63 [0.12] 5213* [0.00] 0.001 (1.53) ∆ 𝐿𝑃𝑡 2.22 [0.15] 0.84 [0.37] 1.23 [0.28] 0.11 [0.74] 2.43 [0.13] 50.80* [0.00] -0.044 (-1.43) notes: ( ) is t-statistic, [ ] is p value. *, **, and *** shows 1%, 5%, and 10% level of significance respectively based on t-statistic, it could be seen that the coefficient of ect is significant in the paddy yield, land, and capital equations. meanwhile, ect is found to be insignificant in fertilisers, young and old farmers, and paddy price equations. this implies that paddy yield, land, and capital carry out the short-run adjustment to the long-run equilibrium. based on the paddy yield equation, the deviation of paddy yield from the long-run equilibrium, and all the seven variables interact ineffective way to restore the long-run equilibrium. joint granger causality in table 5 suggests that the presence of bidirectional causality in capital and land, young farmers and land, young farmers and capital, old farmers and capital, old farmers and young farmers, fertilisers and old farmers, fertilisers and young farmers, and paddy price and fertilisers have the presence of two-way short-run granger causality. there are also a few variables having a one-way granger causality such as young farmers granger-cause paddy yield, old farmers granger-cause paddy yield, fertilisers granger-cause paddy yield, and paddy price granger-cause paddy yield. table 5: joint causality granger causality vec model asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 298-310 308 variables mada joint causality ect ∆ 𝑳𝒀𝒕 ect ∆ 𝑳𝑵𝒕 ect ∆ 𝑳𝑲𝒕 ect ∆ 𝑳𝑳𝟒𝟎𝒕 ect ∆ 𝑳𝑳𝟒𝟏𝒕 ect ∆ 𝑳𝑭𝒕 ect ∆ 𝑳𝑷𝒕 wald f-statistics ∆ 𝐿𝑌𝑡 32.22* [0.00] 30.83* [0.00] 31.95* [0.00] 31.74* [0.00] 30.82* [0.00] 30.83* [0.00] ∆ 𝐿𝑁𝑡 2.91*** [0.08] 3.14*** [0.07] 4.98** [0.02] 4.30** [0.03] 2.36 [0.12] 2.36 [0.12] ∆ 𝐿𝐾𝑡 12.49* [0.00] 9.47* [0.00] 16.42* [0.00] 14.09* [0.00] 8.44* [0.00] 8.49* [0.00] ∆ 𝐿𝐿40𝑡 1.29 [0.29] 3.02*** [0.07] 5.49** [0.01] 63.23* [0.00] 1.27 [0.30] 1.26 [0.31] ∆ 𝐿𝐿41𝑡 0.36 [0.69] 1.64 [0.22] 3.58** [0.05] 57.34* [0.00] 2.75*** [0.08] 2.61** [0.09] ∆ 𝐿𝐹𝑡 1.18 [0.33] 1.17 [0.33] 1.17 [0.33] 1.18 [0.33] 3.72** [0.04] 2627* [0.00] ∆ 𝐿𝑃𝑡 1.12 [0.35] 1.08 [0.36] 1.04 [0.37] 1.03 [0.38] 3.33*** [0.06] 2561* [0.00] notes: ( ) is t-statistic, [ ] is p value. *, **, and *** shows 1%, 5%, and 10% level of significance respectively 5. conclusion in the short-run, fertiliser subsidy and paddy prices are not significant in the mada regions. this indicates that fertiliser subsidy and paddy prices do not give any significant effects to the local paddy production in the short run. nonetheless, in the long-run, fertiliser subsidy and paddy prices have a positive relationship and are significant with respect to paddy yield. although fertiliser subsidy and paddy prices are significant with paddy yield, the relationship between paddy price and paddy yield is negative. this means that when paddy price increases, paddy yield decreases. poor soil fertility and the awful weather condition might be the cause of this negative relationship. the present research also discovered the presence of one-way short-run causality between fertilisers and paddy yield in the mada regions. this clearly shows that any shock in fertilisers will increase paddy yield. fertiliser is considered as one of the most important non-traditional inputs in paddy production. the evidence from the granger causality analysis shows that fertilisers play an important role in causing the rise in paddy output in the mada regions. therefore, the government should provide information and knowledge related to the use of fertilisers to paddy farmers. the government should also reduce the price of fertilisers by increasing the number of subsidies. also, paddy farmers themselves should have a better understanding of how to use the fertilisers efficiently. they should also follow the fertilising schedule provided by the government to raise the paddy yield. therefore, researchers should expand the study further by investigating the causal relationship between fertiliser subsidy and paddy price subsidy to different types of paddy seeds planted. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors would like to express their gratitude to everyone who involved directly or indirectly in completing this study. the causal impact of government support on the small strategic crop industry: malaysia’s experience. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references asian journal of agriculture and rural 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(1983). food policy analysis. baltimore, md., the johns hopkins university press. usda foreign agricultural service (2012). global agricultural information network report. retrieved from http://static.globaltrade.net/files/pdf/20110406115103794.pdf. http://static.globaltrade.net/files/pdf/20110406115103794.pdf effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 232 farmers’ prioritization of dairy development strategies in vavuniya district, sri lanka kamshajini raveenthirana sooriyakumar krishnapillaib sivashankar sivakumarc a,b,cdepartment of agricultural economics, faculty of agriculture, university of jaffna, sri lanka.  ksoori@univ.jfn.ac.lk (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 9 january 2023 revised: 20 june 2023 accepted: 26 july 2023 published: 31 august 2023 keywords artificial insemination choice modelling conditional logit model dairy development strategies milk collection milking silage willingness to pay. this study examines dairy farmers’ willingness to pay (wtp) for dairy development strategies in the vavuniya district of sri lanka. yeo hundred dairy farmers from vavuniya district were randomly selected for this study. the choice research approach was applied, and conditional logit models were developed. the results of the study show that farmers are willing to pay for all the selected development strategies. farmers prioritize the development strategies as follows: training in silage making, morning and evening milk collection, the establishment of milk collection centres within 2 km of dairy farms, and doubling the success rate of artificial insemination. farmers’ wtp for training in silage making is higher than their wtp for other dairy development strategies. female farmers’ wtp for training in silage making is greater than male farmers’ wtp for the same training. farmers' income and education level each have a positive effect on their wtp for training in silage making, and their education level positively influences their wtp for morning and evening milk collection. the results of this study will assist policymakers in developing appropriate dairy development strategies and charges for the services offered. contribution/originality: this paper investigates dairy farmers’ willingness to pay for dairy development strategies, their prioritization of strategies and the influence of their socioeconomic demographic characteristics on their willingness to pay. to develop effective dairy development projects, government authorities should know how farmers prioritize the various dairy development strategies. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4872 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: raveenthiran, k., krishnapillai, s., & sivakumar, s. (2023). farmers’ prioritization of dairy development strategies in vavuniya district, sri lanka. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3), 232–239. 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4872 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction livestock significantly contributes to rural livelihoods in sri lanka. livestock provides income, employment, and a safety net for producers, as well as nutrition for consumers in urban and rural areas. for many rural small farmers, livestock is a “living bank”. in sri lanka, of the 2 million hectares of agricultural land, almost 75% consists of smallholding land area, and 90% of farmers have less than 2 ha of land. one-third of smallholder farmers have a mix of crops and livestock, mainly cattle or buffalo (perera & jayasuriya, 2008). the contribution of the agriculture sector to the country’s gross domestic product (gdp) is around 6.8%. of this, livestock contributes about 0.75% of the gdp. of the 8.2 million-strong labour force, nearly 26% is employed in the agriculture sector (economics and social statistics of sri lanka, 2017). rural employment depends mainly on agriculture and livestock. female participation in the asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 3 (2023): 232-239. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:ksoori@univ.jfn.ac.lk https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5695-3608 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5499-5563 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8488-5122 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 232-239 233 livestock sector is higher in rural areas than in urban areas. total annual milk production is 494.85 million litres per year. cow milk production is 354 million litres per year and buffalo milk production was 67 million litres per year in 2019. in vavuniya district, 10 million litres of cow milk were collected in 2017 (daph department of animal production and health sri lanka, 2019). in sri lanka, the total cow milk production was 354 million litres per year in 2019. almost 56% of the total milk produced is collected by processors and then sent to the formal milk market and sold alongside imported milk products. the rest of the domestic milk production, about 44%, is kept by the dairy farmers for their own consumption needs and sold to their neighbours (pathumsha, 2016). the number of milk chilling centres was around 236 in 2018. fourteen main milk processors in the country collected 269.26 million litres through the formal milk market in 2018. compared to other asian countries, the per-capita consumption of milk and milk products is low in sri lanka. in 2018, the per-capita consumption of milk and milk products was 159.20 ml/day (daph department of animal production and health sri lanka, 2019). imports of dairy products amounted to 104,861.87 metric tons (mt) in 2018 (daph department of animal production and health sri lanka, 2019). powdered milk accounted for 83.18% of imported dairy products in 2018. full cream milk powder and non-fat milk powder imports were around 87,228.39 mt and 11,799.32 mt, respectively. the total import expenditure on dairy products was nearly rs 54.00 billion in 2018. the total availability of milk and milk products, including imported milk products, was 1,263.9 million litres of liquid milk equivalent. the per-capita availability of milk was 54 l/year. the average farm-gate price of milk was around rs 70.59 per litre in 2018. the average cost of production per litre of milk under intensive systems was rs 47.67 in 2018 (daph department of animal production and health sri lanka, 2019). before introducing the open economic policy in 1977, sri lanka was self-sufficient in milk consumption. after the open economic policy, milk products were imported due to the low price compared to the price of domestic milk products. therefore, the interest in domestic dairy production decreased, and the dairy farmers were dismayed. from that point, the dairy industry in sri lanka was reliant on imported dairy products, which had a negative impact on the economy (pathumsha, 2016). after dicyandiamide (dcd) was found in imported milk powder in 2013, consumers became more careful about buying imported milk powder for consumption. data on consumers’ behaviour and preferences could be important factors for the development of the dairy sector. precise estimates of consumers' buying behaviour of dairy products could be useful for the dairy sector development in sri lanka. dairy production in the country has shown positive growth in the past two decades. efforts to upgrade the chilling facilities of milk collectors, provide financial assistance, stabilize profitable farm-gate prices, provide suitable high-bred cattle, and promote the consumption of fresh liquid milk have contributed to the positive growth in the dairy sector. formal milk collection has shown an increasing trend; however, milk collection has not increased in line with the growth in milk production. according to surveys of household expenditure, the expenditure on dairy products is about 9.4%. reproductive efficiency is the most important factor in the economic success of dairy farming. artificial insemination (ai) was first introduced in commercial production in the 1950s (valergakis, arsenos, & banos, 2007). in the past, one of the reasons for the rapid adoption of ai was its lower cost for smallholders. in many districts, smallholder dairy farmers do not have adequate land to grow grass or access to available grassland (perera & jayasuriya, 2008). silage making is a primary fodder preservation strategy in sri lanka. silage making using commonly available grasses has become a suitable practice for commercial dairy farming, but there is little scope for smallholder use. silage making in plastic barrels is a feasible technique. fodder is cut using a machine and then pressed into a barrel and covered with a plastic top (weerasinghe, 2019). a number of large feed mill operators control the feed business in sri lanka. milking frequency in early lactation can expand milk yield persistency (wall & mcfadden, 2008). the normal milk yield of dairy animals drained 3 times/day is 2.9 kg/d greater than that of dairy animals drained 2 times/day (hart, mcbride, duffield, & devries, 2013). due to the lack of milk collection centres and the restriction of milk collection to mornings only, most dairy farmers only collect milk in the morning (perera & jayasuriya, 2008). dairy farming in developing countries is considered relatively inefficient in its use of scarce resources. there is a high potential to increase milk yield in developing countries through sustainable intensification. research and development can contribute to providing more sustainable solutions. vavuniya district is endowed with substantial natural and human resources that can be utilized for cattle farming. figure 1 shows that vavuniya district is located in the north of sri lanka. vavuniya district is divided into four divisional secretaries. these are vavuniya, vavuniya north, vavuniya south and vengala cheddikulam. it has an area of 1,967 square kilometres. the total population of the district is around 187,310. paddy cultivation and livestock are the main livelihoods of most people in this district. the livelihood of one-third of the population mainly depends on livestock. livestock farming is the second most widespread economic activity in vavuniya district, after crop farming, and it provides a livelihood for the majority of the rural population in vavuniya district. there are around 13,530 farm households in the district. cattle and buffalo farming produce about 30,328 litres of fresh milk daily. many small-scale value-added production centres, nine milk collection centres, and two milk chilling centres operate in the district. most of the cattle farms have small herds of less than ten heads that they rear on less than two acres. the livestock are mostly fed by free grazing, not by improved pastures. livestock activities are not properly integrated with crop cultivation in the district, resulting in limited income and conflict in land use. cattle farming provides jobs for rural people and a continuous flow of income in the district. the two chilling plants that operate in the district have a capacity of 8,500 litres per day. in 2014, these two chilling plants collected 2,772,409 litres of milk out of a total production of 7,430,780 litres. the buffalo milk production was 523,928 litres in 2014. there is a high potential for improving livestock in the district as a large number of families are involved in cattle farming, and about 20% of the total land is natural grassland that could be used for the production of improved pasture. if appropriate knowledge and high-bred cattle were provided to the farmers, the high potential of cattle farming in the district could be realized to a greater extent. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 232-239 234 figure 1. map of vavuniya district, sri lanka. vavuniya district is also one of the main agricultural land areas in sri lanka with a mix of crop and cattle farming on land areas of less than 2 ha. the total population of vavuniya district is 181,539, of which the rural population is 140,741, and the urban population is 41,798. the rural population is thus higher than the urban population in vavuniya district (department of census statistics, 2012). the livelihoods of most people in vavuniya district mainly depend on agriculture and animal husbandry, particularly cattle farming. the total cattle population in sri lanka was around 1.46 million in 2018. vavuniya district had around 14% of the national cattle population in 2018 (daph department of animal production and health sri lanka, 2019). vavuniya is the second major milk collection area in the northern region (daph department of animal production and health sri lanka, 2019). local milk production has only been able to meet 42% of the demand in sri lanka, and the deficit is met by imports. dairy development helps to improve food security and import substitution and prevents poverty and the migration of rural poor to urban areas (perera & jayasuriya, 2008). small dairy farmers in vavuniya district face many difficulties: lack of grazing land, low ai success rates, lack of knowledge of silage making, lack of milk collection centres, and price fluctuations of concentrated feeds. the department of animal production and health (daph) is the main provider of services to dairy farmers in sri lanka. it offers ai, training, and extension services to dairy farmers and sporadically assists with constructing animal sheds, enhancing calves and other assistance. the daph is also accountable for controlling widespread diseases and provides veterinary services through its offices. the national livestock development board and the milk industries of lanka company milco (private) limited also provide some assistance with obtaining animals through brokers. however, farmers frequently do not receive services on time to the desired standards (ranawana, 2008). compared to india and pakistan, dairy development in sri lanka, nepal and bangladesh is not developed to allow these countries to be self-sufficient, partly due to the lack of government assistance for the sector (fao, 2009). the government should consider the development of the dairy sector as a main pathway for the social and economic development of the rural poor, but the government has limited resources to support dairy development programmes and seeks funds from foreign governments and agencies to develop the dairy industry in sri lanka. resources allocated to dairy development projects or programmes should be effectively utilized to achieve maximum benefit from the scarce resources. to develop effective dairy development projects or programmes, government authorities should know how the farmers prioritize the various dairy development strategies. in vavuniya district, dairy farmers face many difficulties in rearing cattle. therefore, the objective of this study is to estimate the dairy farmer’s willingness to pay (wtp) for dairy development strategies in vavuniya district, as well as the influence of socioeconomic demographic characteristics on the farmers' wtp, and to make suggestions and recommendations to develop effective dairy development projects or programmes in this district. 2. methodology vavuniya district was selected for this study because the livelihood of most farm families in vavuniya district depends mainly on agriculture and animal husbandry, particularly cattle farming. there are 13,530 farm families in vavuniya district. as a preliminary study, 20 households were randomly selected and interviewed about the strategies to develop the dairy industry in vavuniya district. based on data collected in the preliminary study, attributes of dairy development strategies were identified, and a questionnaire was prepared for this study. this study used a stratified random sampling method to select respondents from divisional secretariates (ds) in vavuniya district. the respondents were randomly selected proportionate to the number of residents living in each ds division. a total of 200 cattle farmers were thus randomly selected from different areas using random stratified sampling. data was collected through in-person interviews with the cattle farmers using a structured questionnaire. the questionnaire included the farmer’s demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, such as age, income, education, number of people and children asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 232-239 235 in the household, cattle farming practices, artificial insemination, distance from milk collection centres, milk collection time (morning and/or evening), silage making, feeding, and grazing land. random utility choice modelling was used to estimate the farmers’ wtp for the various factors contributing to improved milk production, such as artificial insemination, distance from milk collection centres, milk collection time (morning and/or evening), and training in silage making. wtp is the perceived economic value of a selected good or service to an individual based on a particular set of conditions (minh, nguyen-viet, thanh, & yang, 2013). empirical techniques used to estimate wtp are categorized into two methods: stated preference (sp) and revealed preference (rp) methods. in the revealed preference method, the actual choices made by consumers in markets are used to estimate their wtp. rp methods can only be used if there is a market for a good or service. since there is no market for factors contributing to improved milk production, such as artificial insemination, distance from milk collection centres, milk collection time (morning and/or evening), and training in silage making, the rp method cannot be used to estimate households’ wtp for factors contributing to improved milk production. within the stated preferences method, two economic approaches are used to estimate wtp: the contingent valuation method (cvm) and the choice modelling (cm) approach. cvm is a direct method that estimates the economic value of non-market commodities by asking a respondent’s wtp for a non-market commodity. on the other hand, cm is an indirect method that estimates the economic value of non-market commodities by asking a respondent to choose between alternatives. the cm approach has been applied in many fields to study the determinants of choices of non-market commodities (quaife, terris-prestholt, di tanna, & vickerman, 2018). in choice experiments, respondents are asked to select their preferred choice from a set of hypothetical alternative goods or services. choice experiments may avoid some of the potential biases of direct sp methods. in direct sp methods, hypothetical bias occurs when answers differ between hypothetical and real-life situations when respondents make payments (hausman, 2012). hypothetical bias has been extensively recognized in research using cvm (list & gallet, 2001; little & berrens, 2004). however, there is very little evidence of hypothetical bias in research using the cm method (johansson-stenman & svedsäter, 2003). cm often predicts actual health behaviours, for instance, and is less subject to social desirability bias compared to other sp methods (de bekker-grob, donkers, bliemer, veldwijk, & swait, 2020; horiuchi, markovich, & yamamoto, 2022). therefore, this study employed the cm approach to estimate farmers’ wtp for the various attributes of dairy development strategies. the cm approach was framed in a random utility framework that allowed us to measure the value of environmental goods and services. the utility function (u) has two components: the indirect utility function (observable component) and the error term (unobservable component): 𝑈 = 𝑉 + 𝜀 (1) where v is the indirect utility function, and 𝜀 is the stochastic error term. the indirect utility function is assumed to be a linear function: 𝑉𝑖 = 𝛽𝑖𝑋𝑘𝑖 + 𝛼𝑚 = 𝛽1 + 𝛽2𝑥2𝑖 + 𝛽3𝑥3𝑖 + … . + 𝛽𝑘𝑥𝑘𝑖 + 𝛼𝑖𝑚𝑖 (2) where (𝑋𝑘𝑖 = {𝑥1,2, …. , 𝑥𝑘}) is a vector of k attributes of alternative i, 𝛽 is a vector of coefficient of k attributes, m𝑖 is the income of the individual choosing the alternative i, and 𝛼 is the coefficient vector of income. if the error term is logistically gumbel distributed, the probability of alternative i being chosen is given by pr(𝑖) = exp (𝜌𝑉𝑖) ∑ exp (𝜌𝑉𝑖) 𝐽 𝑗∈𝐶 (3) where c is the choice set, and 𝜌 is a positive scale parameter. 𝜌 is assumed to be 1. the following formula is used to estimate wtp for a change from the status quo to the chosen state: 𝑉𝑖(𝑋𝑖 , 𝑦) + 𝜀𝑖 = 𝑉𝑗(𝑋𝑗 , 𝑚 − 𝐶𝑉) + 𝜀𝑗 (4) where 𝑉𝑖 and 𝑉𝑗 denote utility gained from the status quo state and the chosen state, respectively. compensating variation (cv) is the quantity of money that brings the individual utility gained from the status quo state, and the chosen state is equal. to estimate the welfare changes (cv) in equation 4, a conditional logit model is developed, and equation 4 is restated as: 𝛽𝑖𝑋𝑘𝑖 + 𝛼𝑖𝑚 + 𝜀𝑖 = 𝛽𝑗𝑋𝑘𝑗 + 𝛼𝑗(𝑚 − 𝐶𝑉) + 𝜀𝑗 (5) as the marginal utility of income is assumed to be constant for an individual, 𝛼𝑖 and 𝛼𝑗 become equal in equation 5. therefore, equation 6 presents the welfare change (cv). 𝐶𝑉 = − 1 𝛼 [(𝛽𝑖(𝑋𝑘𝑖 − 𝑋𝑘𝑗) + ( 𝜀𝑖 − 𝜀𝑗)] (6) in the conditional logit model, the coefficient of each attribute is the same across all alternatives (βi = βj), while only the attribute levels differ across the alternatives. therefore, the welfare change can be estimated by the following equation: 𝐶𝑉 = − 1 𝛼 [(𝛽(𝑋𝑘𝑖 − 𝑋𝑘𝑗) + ( 𝜀𝑖 − 𝜀𝑗)] (7) equation 7 is thus used to estimate a farmer’s wtp for the various attributes of dairy development strategies. the attributes of dairy development strategies were milk collection time (morning and/or evening), distance from a milk collection centre, artificial insemination, and training in silage making. each attribute has several discrete levels. for artificial insemination, two levels were presented to respondents: double the success rate or no change from the current success rate. the attribute of training in silage making for cattle farmers was limited to two levels: training in silage making for all farmers or no change. the third attribute, the milk collection centre, was limited to two levels: establishment of a milk collection centre within 2 km or no change. the fourth attribute, milk collection from dairy asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 232-239 236 farmers, was limited to two levels: milk collection in both morning and evening or no change. the four levels of the cost attribute were rs 0, rs 200, rs 400, and rs 800. table 1 provides the definitions of the attributes of selected dairy development strategies along with the cost levels. the choice experiment surveys comprised multiple choice sets of four development strategies for improving milk production in cattle farming. in the survey, respondents were briefed on the attributes of four development strategies and the cost associated with each alternative. respondents were asked to choose their preferred option from the three options given to them. each option was a combination of various levels of the four attributes and the cost. the costs presented to the respondent as option a and option b were set differently across the choice sets, and option c was set at rs 0 as the status quo for all choice sets. as there were two levels each for milk collection time, distance between milk collection centre and household, artificial insemination, and training in silage making, as well as four cost levels, there were 2x2x2x4 factorial designs. therefore, 32 orthogonal choice combinations could be formed; however, it is difficult to ask a respondent to select among that many choice sets. for an efficient choice design, a d-efficient design was developed. we limited the number of choices to half of the orthogonal combinations. we selected 16 choice combinations from the 32 orthogonal combinations. interaction effects between the attributes were assumed to be insignificant. among the 16 choices, one unrealistic option was excluded. therefore, 8 choice sets of options a and b were developed. “no change”, the current attribute of each development strategy was added to each choice set as option c. except for option c, the levels of the attributes changed from one option to the next. the attribute levels, costs, and benefits for cattle farming were explained to the respondents. each option in the choice set had different levels of the attributes of the dairy development strategies. respondents were asked to choose an option from 8 choice sets. a conditional logit model was estimated for the farmer’s choice. variable definitions and the effect codes for the attributes are presented in table 2. 3. results and discussion the descriptive statistics of the socioeconomic demographic characteristics of the dairy farmers are shown in table 3. the descriptive statistics show that the average, minimum, and maximum income of dairy farmers are rs 23,000, rs 1500, and rs 80,000, respectively. this indicates a large variation in farmers' average income. the average educational level, minimum, and maximum educational levels of farmers are 10th grade, 5th grade, and graduate, respectively. around 90% of dairy farmers in vavuniya district are male. table 1. effect codes: choice modelling. attribute variable effective code artificial insemination ai 1 if double the success rate; -1 if no change training in silage making tsm 1 if training all farmers; -1 if no training milk collection centres mcc 1 if establishing within 2 km; -1 if no change milk collection time mct 1 if morning & evening; -1 if only morning income incom 1 if income < 20,000; 0 if income ≥ 20,000 education edu 1 if edu ≥ g.c.e.(a/l); 0 if edu < g.c.e.(a/l) gender gen 1 if male; 0 if female table 1. definitions of selected attributes affecting milk production in cattle farming. attributes levels definitions artificial insemination (ai) double the success rate double the success rate compared to the current level no change maintain the current success rate training in silage making (tsm) training in silage making training in silage making for all farmers no change no training in silage making for all farmers milk collection centre (mcc) establishing one within 2 km reduce the distance between the household and the milk collection point no change maintain the same distance milk collection time (mct) ad morning & evening availability of milk collection in the evening as well as the morning no no change morning only cost rs 0, 200, 400, 800 annual payment to the department of animal production and health asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 232-239 237 table 3. descriptive statistics. variable mean std. dev. min. max. income 23043.13 10050.53 1500 80000 education 10.398 2.202 5 17 gender 0.905 0.293 0 1 four conditional logit models were developed using effective codes for attributes. the coefficients of the four conditional logit models are presented in table 4. model 1 consists of the attributes of milk production development strategies alone. model 2 includes the attributes of dairy development strategies and the interaction of the attributes of dairy development strategies with farmers' income levels. model 3 consists of the attributes of dairy development strategies and the interactions of the attributes of dairy development strategies with farmers' income levels and education levels. model 4 consists of the attributes of dairy development strategies and the interactions of the attributes of dairy development strategies with farmers' income levels, education levels, and gender. table 4. coefficients of the four conditional logit model. attributes model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 ai 0.474** 0.457** 0.481** 0.343** tsm 0.748** 0.819** 0.739** 1.11** mcc 0.447** 0.429** 0.433** 0.455** mct 0.577** 0.557** 0.522** 0.657** cost -0.005** -0.005** -0.005** -0.005** ai × incom 0.062 0.051** 0.058 tsm × incom -0.212** -0.152** -0.170** mcc × incom 0.062 0.063 0.063 mct × incom 0.07 0.102 0.096 ai × edu -0.055 -0.075 tsm × edu 0.556** 0.605** mcc × edu 0.08 0.078 mct × edu 0.243** 0.264** ai × gen 0.159 tsm × gen -0.419** mcc × gen -0.017 mct × gen -0.148 note: ** and * indicate significance at the 1% and 5% level, respectively. all four conditional logit models show that the variables of artificial insemination, training in silage making, milk collection centre, milk collection time, and cost are significant at the 1% level. farmers are willing to pay for artificial insemination, training in silage making, a nearby milk collection centre, and multiple milk collection times. the negative sign of the coefficient of cost shows that farmers are most likely to accept an option with lower costs. among these attributes, farmers are willing to pay more for training in silage making than for other attributes. the interaction effect of training in silage making with income in models 2, 3, and 4 is negative and significant at the 1% level. this implies that farmers with a monthly income below or equal to rs 20,000 are willing to pay more for training in silage making than farmers with a monthly income of more than rs 20,000. the interaction effects of training in silage making with a farmer’s education level in models 3 and 4 are positive and significant at the 1% level. this indicates that farmers with an education level above general certificate of education advanced level, g.c.e.(a/l) are willing to pay more for training in silage making than farmers with an education level below or equal to g.c.e.(a/l) the interaction effect of milk collection time with a farmer’s education level in models 3 and 4 is positive and significant at the 1% level. this implies that farmers with an education level above a/l are willing to pay more for morning and evening milk collection than farmers with an education level below or equal to g.c.e.(a/l) the interaction effect of training in silage making with gender is negative and significant at the 1% level. this implies that female farmers’ wtp for training in silage making is higher than male farmers’ wtp for training in silage making. mean wtp for attributes of dairy development strategies were estimated using equation 7, and the estimated welfare values for each attribute are presented in table 5. it shows how dairy farmers prioritize the various attributes of dairy development strategies. among the selected attributes, dairy farmers’ wtp for training in silage making is higher than their wtp for other attributes. this shows that dairy farmers prioritize silage making over other attributes because they are facing persistent difficulties obtaining grass and fodder, especially during the dry season in vavuniya district. households give lower priority to artificial insemination than other attributes. the low success rate of artificial information in vavuniya district could be the reason for the dairy farmers assigning a low priority to artificial insemination development strategies. dairy farmers assign the second-highest priority to morning and evening milk collection. most milk collection centres in vavuniya district only collect milk in the morning. therefore, dairy farmers do not milk in the evening and allow calves to consume all the milk instead. there is a high potential to increase dairy farmers’ income if milk collection centres were to collect milk in the evening. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 232-239 238 table 5. mean and total willingness to pay (wtp) per farming family per year (lkr). attributes mean wtp/household/year (lkr) total wtp/household/year (lkr) ai 137 tsm 444 mcc 182 mct 263 total wtp (household with income ≥ lkr 20,000) 1026 (wtp)tsm * incom (household with income < lkr 20,000) 376 958 tsm*edu > g.c.e.(a/l) 686 1268 mct*edu > g.c.e.(a/l) 368 1132 tsm*gen = male 276 858 note: willingness to pay (wtp) was calculated from the significant coefficients in table 4. dairy farmers are willing to pay rs 137 per year for artificial insemination and rs 182 per year for milk collection centres. a dairy farmer’s willingness to pay for training in silage making is influenced by the farmer’s income, education, and gender. farmers with a household income greater than or equal to rs 20,000 are willing to pay a total of rs 1026 per year for all attributes of improved milk production strategies, with rs 444 for the attribute of training in silage making. farmers with a household income of less than rs 20,000 are willing to pay a total of rs 958 for all attributes of improved milk production strategies, with rs 376 for the attribute of training in silage making. farmers who were educated above g.c.e.(a/l) are willing to pay a total of rs 1268 for all attributes of improved milk production strategies, with rs 686 for the attribute of training in silage making. farmers who were educated below g.c.e.(a/l) are willing to pay a total of rs 1132 for all attributes of improved milk production strategies, with rs 368 for morning and evening milk collection. male farmers are willing to pay a total of rs 858 for all attributes of improved milk production strategies, with rs 276 for training in silage making. 4. conclusion and recommendation this study concludes that farmers are willing to pay for all the selected development strategies. farmers’ priorities for development strategies are as follows: training in silage making, morning and evening milk collection, establishing milk collection centres within 2km, and doubling the success rate of artificial insemination. farmers’ willingness to pay for training in silage making is higher than their willingness to pay for other dairy development strategies. female farmers’ willingness to pay for training in silage making is greater than male farmers’ willingness to pay. farmers’ income and education level have a positive impact on their willingness to pay for training in silage making, and a farmer’s education level positively influences their willingness to pay for morning and evening milk collection. the findings of this study may assist policymakers in developing appropriate dairy development strategies and charges for the services offered by daph to improve milk production. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the faculty board of agriculture, university of jaffna, sri lanka has granted approval for this study. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references daph department of animal production and health sri lanka. 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(2019). livestock feeds and feeding practices in sri lanka. in (pp. 181-206). dhaka, bangladesh: saarc agriculture centre. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2021.30 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12199-012-0317-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-018-0954-6 https://doi.org/10.1017/s1751731107340044 https://doi.org/10.2527/jas.2007-0318 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 297 rice: seed systems, production characteristics, and fungal infections of stored grains in major production zones of liberia ousman sarlia dorleya,c julius onyango ochuodhoa elmada odeny aumaa javan omondi werea james mumo mutiob adepartment of seed, crop and horticultural sciences, school of agriculture, university of eldoret, eldoret, kenya. bdepartment of soil sciences, school of agriculture, university of eldoret, eldoret, kenya. cdepartment of general agriculture, university of liberia, capitol hill, liberia.  odorley2012@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 22 august 2022 revised: 24 october 2022 accepted: 10 november 2022 published: 29 november 2022 keywords kitchen attic land size liberia rice yield seed sources storage methods. the inadequacy of information on rice farmers' situations, particularly their access to propagation materials and grain storage and the impact thereof on liberia's food security scenario, curtails the development of strategies and interventions meant to optimize rice production. this study investigated the rice seed systems, storage methods of the harvested rice grains, and degree of fungal contamination of stored rice seeds in the major rice-producing counties of liberia: lofa, bong, montserrado, and nimba. a mixed data collection method, comprising interviews and focus group discussions (fgds) was adopted. five hundred (500) farmers were purposefully selected for one-on-one interviews, and 12 fgds were held (three in each county). the results indicated that 94.7% of farmers source seeds through informal channels. grain for use as seed in the subsequent farming season is mainly stored in kitchen attics, a practice reported by 83.8% of the farmers, while 7.8%, 3.8%, and 4.6% of farmers stored seeds in plastic containers, nylon sacks, and jute bags, respectively. land size was identified as the primary factor determining rice yield across the studied counties, r2 = 0.944, p = 0.001. farmers in high-rainfall regions had a high likelihood of experiencing fungal infections on their stored grains; however, only 19.6% of farmers were aware of the health implications of consuming affected grains. therefore, policies and support frameworks should be directed towards actualizing modern seed channels and extension services and creating awareness of the different nodes of the rice value chain. contribution/originality: liberia’s poor food security status is underlined by the challenges facing rice production. this study provides new information on seed systems and their characteristics. by examining farmers’ perceptions of seed sources and their impact on productivity, the study highlights farmers’ awareness of several productionconsumption aspects. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4676 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ousman sarlia dorley --james mumo mutio --julius onyango ochuodho --elmada odeny auma -javan omondi were (2022). rice: seed systems, production characteristics, and fungal infections of stored grains in major production zones of liberia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4), 297-305. 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4676 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the lack of established formal seed systems in liberia is a major constraint to achieving sufficient crop production, particularly rice (sdca, 2016). the sluggish efforts in developing a supportive infrastructure and policies can be attributed to many interlocking factors, including the country's economic state, civil war, and lack of asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 4 (2022): 297-305. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7007-7458 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0705-1516 mailto:odorley2012@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 297-305 298 concerted effort amongst stakeholders, such as the government, farmers, non-governmental organizations, and other stakeholders, to modernize the seed system. currently, farmers rely on community seed systems for their planting materials and acquire them through traditional seed channels (moa, 2014b). seeds circulating within such channels are often of poor quality due to a decline in genetic yield potential over many years of use (finch-savage, 1995). the seeds and planting materials sourced through community seed systems are also highly susceptible to diseases and pests, and their tolerance to climatic and environmental stresses is usually low (mcguire & sperling, 2016). farmers’ overreliance on such seeds has been pointed out as a significant factor contributing to the decline of crop productivity (sdca, 2016). rice has been the most affected crop, given that the liberian population is highly dependent upon it as a staple food (luther et al., 2017). rice (oryza sativa l.) is globally the most important cereal crop in consumption and production, followed by corn and wheat (cosslett & cosslett, 2018). china is the leading rice producer worldwide with more than 200 million metric tons of rice grain produced in 2018 (faostat, 2020), while nigeria leads the african continent with 6.8 million metric tons of grain rice production in 2018, followed by egypt with 4.9 million metric tons (faostat, 2020). the consumption of rice is projected to increase due to the growing population and the effects of climate change restraining the production of alternative cereals. in liberia, rice is a primary preferred staple food (hilson & van bockstael, 2012), depended upon by more than 80% of people (republic of liberia, 2019). liberia's annual rice consumption is the highest in africa and was estimated to be more than 140 kg per capita in 2010 (chauhan, jabran, & mahajan, 2017). the crop is mainly produced by smallholder farmers scattered across the country (ashmun, 2020). rice cultivation in liberia is extensive and characterized by low inputs that do not meet the essential crop requirement in terms of best agronomic practices and technical and post-harvest handling strategies. these facts translate to an annual decline in yield. for instance, in 2018, grain production was 257,995 tons produced from 238,090 hectares of land, averaging 1.083603 tons per hectare compared to nigeria's 2.035084 tons per hectare (faostat, 2020). in the decade since the end of the civil war (vorrath, 2018), the area under rice production has steadily increased. many people have taken up rice farming; the sector now employs more than 51% of the liberian population (knoema, 2019). in recent years, concerted efforts of the government, the world bank, and non-governmental organizations have seen the rice sector receive support in the form of agriculture equipment and inputs such as fertilizers and improved varieties (moa, 2014a). the efforts indicate an acknowledgment from the stakeholders of the role of rice in national food security. nevertheless, rice production has continuously declined compared to the area under cultivation, despite the synergies created by value chain stakeholders and farmers’ increased involvement (moa, 2014a). therefore, this study was conducted to provide critical information on rice farming and seed systems, focusing on liberia’s major rice-producing counties. 2. materials and methods 2.1. description of the study area the study was conducted in four counties of liberia located in the rice agroecological zones, namely, bong, lofa, montserrado, and nimba, as illustrated in figure 1. figure 1. the four major rice-producing counties of liberia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 297-305 299 bong county is situated 8-75 meters above sea level. the county is located between 6° 24' 7" n and 7° 25' 48" n longitude and 10° 28' 34" w and 9° 5' 38" w latitude, covering an area of 11,846.931 km² (schroth, läderach, martínez-valle, & bunn, 2015). lofa county is categorized within two agroecological zones: upper highland tropical forest and northern savanna. it experiences bimodal rainfall seasons with an annual range of 700-2900 mm. the county’s highlands support coffee and cocoa production while the lowlands produce rice, plantain, and cocoyams, among other crops (schroth et al., 2015). montserrado is the smallest county in liberia, covering an area of 1,912.7 square kilometers. it is located between longitude 6° 12' 56" n and 6° 49' 57" n and between latitude 10° 48' 48" w and 10° 12' 0" w (lisgis, 2008). the county has a tropical climate driven by the harmattan winds. nimba county lies at an altitude range of 63-1730 meters above sea level and is situated at 5° 49' 26" to 7° 41' 46" n longitudes and 9° 11' 43" to 8° 16' 24" w latitudes. the county has a tropical climate categorized by alternating wet and dry seasons, driven by inter-tropical convergence zoning (schroth et al., 2015). 2.2. sampling and data collection a cross-sectional study was conducted among the four counties, utilizing one-on-one interviews and focus group discussions (fgds). weather data, including temperature and rainfall amounts, were obtained from weather stations in each of the selected counties. 2.3. one-on-one interviews one-on-one interviews were used to establish farmers’ levels of awareness regarding how their activities enhanced or deteriorated rice seeds’ quality. mixed structured questions were developed to assess farmers' seed quality status, seed fungal contamination, source of rice seeds, storage conditions, and utilization of fungus-infected grains. participating farmers were purposively sampled on the criterion of active rice farming. a total of 500 respondents were recruited based on the formula suggested by kotrlik and higgins (2001) and taherdoost (2017). 𝜂 = 𝑝(100 − 𝑝)𝑍² 𝐸² where 𝜂 is the required sample size. p is the percentage occurrence of a state or condition (50). e is the maximum percentage error required (0.05). z is the value corresponding to the level of confidence required (1.96), which was applied to sample frames provided in each county. 2.4. focus group discussions (fgds) fgds were conducted to reinforce the information obtained from the interviews, get expert opinions on the rice seed sector, and compensate for the lack of literature on the institutional framework and developments. two fgds were held in each county, for which active rice farmers were targeted, including women and men aged 18-75. in each fgd, the facilitator ensured equal gender participation. each fgd constituted 12-15 participants, one facilitator, one translator, and one camera person. videos and pictures were only taken upon receiving consent from all participants. expert fgds were also conducted among six organizations: the bangladesh rehabilitation assistance committee (brac), the county agriculture coordinator (cac), the college of agriculture and forestry (caf), the centera agriculture research institute (cari), the liberia agriculture commodity regulatory authority (lacra), and the ministry of agriculture (moa). unlike the farmer fgds, the expert discussions had small participant numbers and no gender requirements because of the small number of seed experts in the organizations. however, the discussion process followed a similar protocol to that of the farmer fgds. the discussions were centered on five thematic issues: rice production in the country, characteristics of the rice seed systems, contribution of research institutions to the development of seed systems, quality control of seeds distributed through formal systems, and participants’ take on liberia’s rice system. before the start of the general discussion, identified lead farmers (in the case of farmer fgds) or the most senior officer (in the case of expert fgds) were requested to provide an overview of rice production trends in liberia, and from there the discussion expanded to include the other participants. the facilitator only moderated the discussions and ensured they did not get offtopic by interjecting guiding questions. these questions were developed prior to the fgds and aimed at expounding the discussion on the identified themes. sample questions included “what is your take on the current rice production trends?” for theme one, and “what channels do farmers use to source their planting materials?” and “who are the main actors in distributing community-sourced seeds?” for theme two (a full list of guiding questions can be found in appendix 1). the fgds had a maximum two-and-a-half-hour duration. recorded videos were transcribed and the content was narratively analyzed. 3. results 3.1. focus group discussion summaries the fgds with the farmers and experts provided concordant information on some themes; however, other themes received contradictory information. both groups were in agreement regarding the impact of the civil war on the entire agriculture sector and the slow development of the seed sector, particularly that of non-horticultural crops like rice. the discussions were synthesized into the following points: 1. post-civil war rice production has been on the decline, and the government seems to have no plans in place to salvage the situation, despite the crop being the staple food of the liberian population. lofa and nimba are the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 297-305 300 top producers among the major rice-producing counties. all the fgds agreed that liberian rice production is very poor when compared with neighboring countries like nigeria. liberian farmers suggested a lack of inputs, poor irrigation systems, and the use of obsolete agriculture techniques as impediments to adequate rice production. the argument was supported by experts; however, they indicated that there was a coordinated plan to revamp the sector, which they claimed had started with the implementation of improved local rice varieties for lowland use (liberia agriculture company (lac) 23) and the adoption of globally improved new rice in africa (nerica) varieties for both lowlands and highlands. 2. the community seed system is the sole channel through which rice farmers obtain planting materials. farmers use their own saved seeds or obtain them from other farmers or open-air markets, while a few farmers benefit from non-governmental organization-supplied seeds. the quality of the community seeds varies according to the source. farmers’ own saved seeds are considered better quality because they are selected from the field and stored in the kitchen attic where they are subject to minimal disease and pest attacks. seeds sourced from markets are of unknown quality and tend to provide poor yields. farmers and experts agreed on the indicators of quality in seeds; these included color grading, grain size, and grain shape. farmers were of the opinion that the formal seed sector had never existed, but this opinion was countered by the experts, who argued that before the war, the sector was in development. farmers never experienced it, however, because it was in the policy and lawmaking stages. the war is blamed for the destruction of the gains that had been made. 3. farmers had no information on research institutions or their roles in rice production and denied their existence. they were only aware of a few non-governmental organizations. on the other hand, the experts acknowledged the existence of research institutions, which play an important role in germplasm banking and conducting research on various improvements. some of the named institutions were african rice and cari. 4. the lack of a formal seed system has made it impossible to put in place a monitoring organization to check and ensure seed quality. 3.2. farmers’ characteristics rice farming in liberia is not biased toward one gender; the results show that 49.8% and 50.2% of the farmers in the selected counties were men and women, respectively. however, in bong and montserrado counties, more men took part in rice farming, as shown in figure 2. figure 2. distribution of farmers’ gender in the four selected counties. the sector is dominated by farmers with a low level or no education, who account for 63.8% of farmers. in contrast, 26.8% have achieved secondary school education (either junior high school or senior high school), and only 9.4% have completed tertiary education (post-secondary vocational training or college degree). despite rice being the nation's staple food and almost every household allocating land to its cultivation, it is not farmers’ primary source of income; the study established that only 16.2% of farmers depend on the rice crop as their household's primary source of income. other reported sources of income are shown in figure 3. the study also found that rice farmers have an average of 6 ± 3 (standard deviation (sd)) dependents in their households. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 297-305 301 figure 3. the main household sources of income for farmers engaged in rice production. 3.3. rice seed systems the study found that local channels of seed supply and maintenance dominate the liberian rice seed system. about 94.7% of farmers source their seeds from local open-air markets, borrow from neighbors, or save seeds from previous harvests. only 5.3% of rice farmers use certified seeds from agro-dealers and aid from non-governmental organizations. the various channels of seed access are not dependent on farmers’ characteristics or county of residence as there is no significant association between these factors and farmers’ sources of seeds, as shown by the chi-square test of independence, p > 0.05, and lambda (ʎ) association of 0.00. the grains for next season planting are mainly stored in the kitchen attic, as indicated by 83.8% of the farmers who reported this practice; 7.8%, 3.8%, and 4.6% of farmers store their seeds in their house attic, containers, and sacks, respectively. the chi-square test of independence revealed a significant association between the different storage methods and farmers’ experience of fungal infections on their stored grains; χ2(3) = 25.210, p < 0.001, and ʎ association of 0.164 indicated that farmers who stored seeds in the kitchen attic experienced low fungal infection rates compared to farmers using other storage methods. the selected counties were nationally ranked as the major rice producers; however, the production levels varied significantly among them, as indicated by the kruskal wallis (kw) test of the quantity of shelled rice across the four counties in three consecutive years; h (3) = 115.032, p = 0.001 in 2018, h (3) = 125.84, p = 0.001 in 2019, and h (3) = 125.603, p = 0.001 in 2020. lofa had the highest rice production level among the counties. figure 4 illustrates the mean ranks of rice production in the four counties over the selected three years. the study found that the land area allocated to rice production was the primary regressing factor of yield and correlated linearly with the yield reported. for instance, in 2020, r2 = 0.944, p = 0.001. the land area allocated to rice in the counties also varied significantly, h (3) = 140.344, p = 0.001, with lofa leading in the land area allocated to rice. apart from land area, management aspects like fertilizer applications were also positively correlated with the obtained yield, as shown in table 1. figure 4. mean ranks of the shelled rice yield in the four studied counties. error bars: standard deviation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 297-305 302 table 1. correlation of rice yield in the studied counties with predictive factors. land under rice rice yield 2018 rice yield 2019 rice yield 2020 basal fertilizer topdressing fertilizer land under rice r2 1 0.914** 0.940** 0.944** 0.141** 0.134** p 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.002 0.003 n 499 499 499 500 500 rice yield 2018 r2 1 0.953** 0.950** 0.433** 0.398** p 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 n 499 499 499 499 rice yield 2019 r2 1 0.965** 0.390** 0.392** p 0.000 0.000 0.000 n 499 499 499 rice yield 2020 r2 1 0.382** 0.336** p 0.000 0.000 n 499 499 basal fertilizer r2 1 0.750** p 0.000 n 500 note: ** indicates correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). a logistic regression was conducted using farmer characteristics (training in agriculture, age, and county of residence), climatic factors (annual average temperature and rainfall), rice variety (local or exotic), fertilizer used, and land area to assess their influence on farmers’ likelihood of experiencing fungal infection on their stored grains. the binomial logistic regression model indicated statistical significance, χ2 (9) = 110.105, p < .001. the model explained 26.4% (nagelkerke r2) of the variance in farmer experience of rice grain fungal invasion in 2020 and correctly classified 70.4% of cases. farmers who resided in lofa or nimba, received a high amount of rainfall, and applied fertilizers were likely to experience fungal infestations on their stored grains, as shown in table 2. the likelihood was also found to increase by 88.5% among farmers who had training in agriculture. the study also revealed that 19.6% of farmers in the liberian rice sector understood the health concerns related to the consumption of fungal-contaminated grains, which is a significantly low proportion and correlates linearly with the percentage of farmers who experienced fungal infections on their stored grains. this result indicates that most farmers lack the knowledge to evaluate the quality of their grains. table 2. contribution of selected predictor factors on the likelihood of a farmer experiencing fungal invasion on their stored rice grains. predictors b s.e. wald df sig. exp(b) training in agriculture -2.037 0.435 21.929 1 0.000 0.130 annual average rainfall (mm) 0.079 0.023 11.377 1 0.001 1.082 annual average temp (ºc) -0.221 0.473 0.217 1 0.641 0.802 land area allocated to rice 0.002 0.002 1.588 1 0.208 1.002 application of fertilizer 0.703 0.334 4.440 1 0.035 2.020 age of the farmer -0.291 0.210 1.929 1 0.165 0.747 rice variety 0.271 0.347 0.609 1 0.435 1.311 county of residence 0.867 0.228 14.481 1 0.000 2.380 source of seed -0.672 0.663 1.027 1 0.311 0.511 constant -6.792 8.962 0.574 1 0.448 0.001 note: average rainfall and temperature data were all for 2020; significance is measured at 0.05. 4. discussion 4.1. rice farmer characteristics and seed systems in liberian rice production the results revealed that the liberian rice sector is dominated by small-scale farmers who have limited knowledge and resources. the latter is evidenced by the small land area and obsolete management techniques allocated to rice farming, despite the crop being regarded as a staple. the low level of formal education among the farmers and the inadequacy of their agricultural training makes farming experience a driver of farming success; similar observations have been made across the rice-producing countries of west africa (zossou, arouna, diagne, & agboh-noameshie, 2020). from a different perspective, the results also reflect the tendency of a large part of the population to engage in subsistence farming of rice while intensively cultivating high-value crops like rubber, cocoa, and palm. such scenarios are prevalent across africa. dowswell, paliwal, and cantrell (2019) put this practice into context when they realized that east african households grow maize despite clearly not attaching commercial value to it. this practice gives the false impression that there are a high number of farmers in a certain cropping value chain. the observed low literacy level is a problem cutting across several sectors in liberia, which has its roots in the nation's shaky development. the observations on literacy are confirmed by united nations children's fund findings that place liberia behind other african countries in terms of literacy level (unicef, 2016). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 297-305 303 the informal seed system is the primary channel through which farmers acquire their planting materials. the results were anticipated given liberia's poor policies and lack of institutions and technical infrastructure to advance the formal seed system, particularly for rice. farmers, therefore, use their own saved seeds from the previous harvest, farmer-farmer exchange, or buy from local markets. the finding corroborates that of bèye and wopereis (2014), who concluded that informal, traditional seed supply systems are the primary framework for acquiring seeds among rice farmers in sub-saharan africa. despite the system's dominancy, it is rife with challenges that directly affect the yield and quality of the grains. munyi and de jonge (2015) stated that planting materials acquired from such channels are often of poor quality and prone to spreading diseases. 4.2. rice yield variations among the main producing counties rice production levels, even in high-potential areas, are low, averaging below 1.5t/ha (lnrds, 2012; saysay, gabagambi, mlay, minde, & kikuu, 2018); however, the results showed that lofa and nimba have consistently led the production ranking, which may be attributed to the rice research that has continuously been conducted in these two counties. there is a lack of significant yield increases over time (between 2018 and 2020, as reported by farmers) in the studied counties, despite efforts by stakeholders to surmount production constraints. 4.3. storage method influence on fungal infection of stored rice grains fungal infection of the stored grains has particularly affected the grains stored using methods other than kitchen attic storage. grains stored in kitchen attics are usually subject to the drying heat and smoke coating generated by household cooking activities. storing rice grains at high temperatures has been found to reduce fungal infections (kamara et al., 2019). as observed by hell, cardwell, setamou, and poehling (2000), the smoke coating deprives fungi of the capacity to grow, while the heat constantly destroys any growing fungi, which explains the low infection rates. knowledgeable farmers seem to experience more fungal infections than their counterparts, indicating that the former group is keener to identify the infections than farmers with no education. farmers’ awareness of the dangers of infection makes them cautious about utilizing infected grains, unlike farmers without this knowledge. 5. conclusion rice farming in liberia is dominated by resource-poor, small-scale farmers with limited knowledge and resources to enhance productivity. the farmers’ rice production is primarily for subsistence purposes, and informal seed systems form the main channel for farmers to acquire seeds for agricultural activities. the lack of a well-established formal seed system compromises other efforts to increase productivity. reforming seed system-related policies is core to the long-term realization of profitable rice farming in liberia. funding: this research is supported by the regional universities forum for capacity building in agriculture (grant number: ru/2020/gta/drg/007). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ashmun, j. 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(2015). climate vulnerability and adaptation of the smallholder cocoa and coffee value chains in liberia. cgiar research program on climate change, agriculture and food security (ccafs). copenhagen, denmark: international fund for agricultural development. sdca. (2016). the liberia seed development and certification agency act. monrovia, liberia: government of liberia. taherdoost, h. (2017). determining sample size; how to calculate survey sample size. international journal of economics and management systems, 2, 237-239. unicef. (2016). liberia education sector analysis. new york, usa: united nations children's fund. vorrath, j. (2018). what drives post-war crime? evidence from illicit economies in liberia and sierra leone. third world thematics: a twq journal, 3(1), 28-45. zossou, e., arouna, a., diagne, a., & agboh-noameshie, r. a. (2020). learning agriculture in rural areas: the drivers of knowledge acquisition and farming practices by rice farmers in west africa. the journal of agricultural education and extension, 26(3), 291-306. appendix 1. focus group discussions (fgds) guiding questions. greetings ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the focus group discussions (fgds) regarding different rice seed systems and consequential rice production in this county. i am ousman dorley, a phd student at the university of eldoret (kenya) and my colleague assisting me with video recording is […………. ] we are glad to welcome you to these discussions aimed at providing the information on the state of rice production in liberia with focus on the seed systems, challenges and local made solutions by farmers and other stakeholders. similar discussions have/are planned to be conducted in other counties. you were selected to participate in these discussions because we understand and appreciate the roles and responsibilities you undertake to make crop production by our farmers efficient and sustainable. your experience in dealing with farmers is of paramount importance to data collected from this fgds will be used to inform the relevant stakeholders on the state of rice production and seed systems that exists in the value chain. the data will also be used to contribute towards achievement of the phd course requirement in seed science and technology before we start the discussions let me highlight some of the guidelines that will help our discussions to be successful; 1.0 all participants are encouraged to air out their opinions freely without fear of discrimination 2.0 we appreciate that every opinion matters and none is considered better than the other or wrong. we believe the more we differ the better our understanding is in regard to the subject matter 3.0 we’ll use the first name in this discussion and don’t feel offended when i miss out on yours 4.0 we will also be video recording every person’s contribution, however this should not compromise your opinions. the video will be handled with utmost confidentiality and will only be used for information analysis towards the said objectives. 5.0 i request that all the participants switch off their mobile phone devices or put them on the silent mode. in case of an important call, kindly walk out silently and after you have responded rejoin the meeting quickly 6.0 i as the moderator, my role will be to guide the discussions. feel free to discuss the matter within yourselves if need arises. questions introduction to the subject matter 1.0 what is your take on the current rice production trend? 2.0 which county has better rice production in the country? 3.0 when you compare our national general rice production with other neighbor countries like nigeria, how can you rate our production? 4.0 which range of production do you think is optimal given our country soil, climatic condition, agronomic practices and germplasm? asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 297-305 305 5.0 what are the common rice varieties grown in this county? 6.0 what are the challenges facing our rice production sector? characterization of seed industry components in liberia 1.0 what channels farmers use in sourcing their planting materials? 2.0 how developed is the community seed channels? 3.0 how are the informal seeds produced and prepared? 4.0 who are the main actors in distributing community seeds? 5.0 how do the buyers ensure quality of the seeds sourced through informal channels? 6.0 is there an established framework that regulates sale and purchase of seeds in the informal seed system? 7.0 how developed is the formal seed system channels? 8.0 who are the actors in the formal seeds value chain? 9.0 does the country has designated institutions and organization conducting rice breeding programs? 10.0 what is the government doing in spearheading establishment of seed companies? 11.0 what are characteristics of existing seed companies? (companies privately owned or parastatals) 12.0 do the companies have their specific rice germplasms? contribution of research institutions to development of seed systems 1.0 what type of research institutions are actively engaged in seed research? 2.0 do the institution conduct seed rice variety developments or import already processed seeds? if they do productions; 3.0 what is their average land put under rice seed production? 4.0 what is their average annual rice seed quantity? 5.0 how do these institution process and package seeds? 6.0 how are the processed seeds distributed to the farmers? 7.0 how affordable are the rice seeds when they reach the farmers? 8.0 does the quantity of seeds meet farmers demand? quality control of seeds distributed through formal system 1.0 how many governmental and non-governmental agencies mandated with ensuring seed quality? 2.0 at what stage of seed production is the monitoring and evaluation conducted? 3.0 does the formal seed sector have policies and guidelines on importation and exportation of seeds? 4.0 what protocol does a new seed company follow to acquire certificate of operation? 5.0 what are the policies guiding pertinent properties in regard to rice seeds? participants take on rice seed industry in liberia 6.0 what is the government doing to provide a solution to the rice challenges in the country? 7.0 what are farmers doing to ensure the planting materials are of good quality? 8.0 what measures is the government and other agriculture stakeholders putting in place to manage rice diseases? 9.0 what is your suggestions to the problems in the rice production sector? conclusion i wish to thank you all from my heart for your substantial participation and every opinion registered will be considered in providing information to stakeholders and contribution towards my phd requirement. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 64 the economic impact of stall feeding on cow milk production and calf death: empirical evidence from northern ethiopia muuz hadush a  berhe gebregewergs hagos b a lecturer; department of economics, mekelle university, tigrai, ethiopia & ph.d. student; norwegian university of life science(nmbu), norway  muuz.hadush@mu.edu.et (corresponding author) b department of economics, mekelle university, tigrai, ethiopia corresponding author article history: received: 28-aug-2018 accepted: 16-oct-2018 online available: 31-oct2018 keywords: cow milk, calf death, iv 2sls, stall feeding, tigrai, ethiopia abstract ethiopia, the emerging economies of africa has abundant cow milk potential but its milk harvest is negligible. in order to enhance milk yield, an improved livestock feeding practice such as stall feeding (sf) is introduced and expanded in the region. in this paper, we aim to evaluate the impact of stall feeding on rural farmers’ milk production and calf death using iv 2sls model. the paper used a primary data collected from 251 randomly selected smallholder households consisting 115 adopters and 136 non-adopters. accordingly, the average sf adopter’s milk production per day per cow is 1.3 litters larger as compared to the non-users. likewise, stall feeding significantly reduces the probability of death for the newly born calves by about 68%. contribution/ originality this paper distinguishes itself from the past related research works in two ways: firstly, this study is perhaps the first to show how stall feeding users compared to non-users benefit from it, using proper impact evaluation design compared to prior survey studies which totally neglected the endogeneity problem. secondly, the adoption of stall feeding is slow, probably due to a lack of understanding of its positive impact. being able to precisely estimate its impact would influence the possible types of policies to be implemented in order to expand its coverage. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.1/1005.1.64.73 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: muuz hadush and berhe gebregewergs hagos (2018). the economic impact of stall feeding on cow milk production and calf death: empirical evidence from northern ethiopia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1), 64-73. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 1(2018): 64-73 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:muuz.hadush@mu.edu.et http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.1/1005.1.64.73 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4854-7617 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8678-7446 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 64-73 65 1. introduction ethiopia is one of the milk production potential emerging economies around the globe including brazil, china, india, and pakistan (fao, 2018). livestock as part of the agriculture economic sector alone contributes about 47% yield to this sector in ethiopia (cited in behnke and metaferia, 2011). factors such as climate variability, low-quality feed, lower management, low genetic potential for milk production, and high incidence of disease resulted lower milk yields and shorter lactations in developing countries including ethiopia (fao, 2018; ngeno, 2018; ojango et al., 2016; adane et al., 2015; tegegne et al., 2013). stall feeding improves milk productivity and economic livelihood of smallholder farmers in kenya (kipkoech, 2014). similarly, stall feeding adopter households’ income in uganda has increased from the sales of cow dung manure and average crop outputs reaches $us 1,041 per annum as compared to non-adopter households’ whose crop outputs value is $us340 (zimbe, 2012). dairy milk consumption for households who have adopted stall feeding accounts for 0.39 litters against to the non-adopters of 0.11 litters (zimbe, 2012). declining grazing land, low market for cash crops, low yield of local cattle, declining soil fertility and low income, cheap price for local cattle and products, and disease challenges under free grazing are the main expected causes to raise adoption of stall feeding on small-scale farmers today in the world (cited in nalunkuuma et al., 2013). nonetheless, in germany, open grazing benefits more in terms of ecological and economic perspectives against the zero grazing adopter farmers (meul et al., 2012). although ethiopia owns large livestock from africa, the dairy farming productivity is low even compared to its neighbouring countries (adane et al., 2015; tegegne et al., 2013; cited in de cao et al., 2013). the total cattle holding of households in ethiopia ranges from two to four, of which 25% are used for a dairy purpose which is below standard (negassa et al., 2012). irrespective of the diverse livestock, good agro-ecology, high demand for dairy products, the culture of societal dairy consumption, and supportive government policy in ethiopia, productivity of dairy animals is limited (tegegne et al., 2013). ethiopian most small-scale dairy farmers produce 1.5 litters per day per cow from their indigenous, which is 20 folds far lower than the milk production level of developed countries today (stapleton, 2018). moreover, the mean milk production level in mekelle, tigrai, ethiopia is about730 kg per cow per year unlike to 1829 kg per cow per year in the peri-urban farms though still lower than what is produced in our next-door country kenya (woldegebriel et al., 2017). however, the cross breed dairy cows' productivity in some urban ethiopia reached 10.21 to 15.9 liters per cow per day that outsmarts the peri-urban 9.5 litters (tegegne et al., 2013). a research made in tanzania, kenya, india, and nigeria has proven that enhanced and quality use of breeding, reproductive technologies, and infrastructure are the factors that enhance milk yield per cow per day (ojango et al., 2016). education, experience, and size of the farmland positively contributed to the efficient milk production in kenya smallholder farms (nganga et al., 2010). however, the age of the smallholders impacted negatively. land size, access to extension services, infrastructure, and level of education reduce the efficiency of milk producers in kenya (majiwa et al., 2010). benefit, awareness, the source of finance, the source of credit, land tenure, and disease outbreaks variables have no effects of zero grazing on dairy farmers (kipkoech, 2014). nalunkuuma (2013) revealed that gender (male), herd size, number of family members going to school, and the number of small ruminants negatively impacted of zero grazing adoption in western kenya. age, education, number of exotic cattle, above poverty ratio (ksh 2,500), dependency ratio, and number of cross breed cattle affect for zero grazing positively (ibid). on the other hand, age, off-farm income, and training were affecting negatively the milk production through 50 -70% of rural bangladesh's economy relied on (sultana et al., 2016). farmers' knowledge of cattle reproductive parameters, number of exotic cattle, number of cross breed cattle, milk production as the most important reason for keeping cattle, being above the poverty line of (ksh 2,500), and zero asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 64-73 66 grazing impacted milk production positively (nalunkuuma, 2013). but, gender (male), herd size, ownership of means of transport and the number of ruminants impacted negatively to milk production in western kenya (ibid). furthermore, a research made in four regional states of ethiopia disclosed that lactating cows, crossbred cow, agro-ecological zone, labor supply, supplementary feed purchase, education, wealth, and access to market affected milk production negatively (adane et al., 2015). nevertheless, size of grazing land, amount of crop residue, cost of purchased feed, health expenditure, distance to woreda, distance to development agent's (da), sex, and age has a neutral effect on the milk production (adane et al., 2015). education, extension services, credit access, landholding, and herd size positively impacted the households participated in the dairy hubs welfare kenya (ngeno, 2018). however, variables distance to the dairy hub, off-farm activities, and size of households determines negatively for the welfare of the non-participants welfare. small-scale farm households participated in the dairy hubs average milk production per cow per day reached 6.17 litters as compared to the non-participants which they produce 4.67 litters (ngeno, 2018). likewise, dairy hub participant smallholder farmers' net profit outweighs their counters by more than 45%. as shown above, large prior researchers did not agree on the returns of adoption of stall feeding and determinants of milk production by small-scale households' this is then the driving factor for this research. stall feeding is a recent episode in the study area and envisions evaluating its impact. the study is designed to answer the following lists of research questions; (1) what exactly is the impact of stall feeding adoption on milk harvest and calf death? what factors other than stall feeding affect milk production and probability new born calf death? we answered these questions using instrumental variable (iv 2sls) estimation method in order to account for endogeneity problem. 2. materials and methods 2.1. data type a cross-sectional data from was collected from tahtay maichew district composed of owns 19 subdistricts (tabia1) which is one of the leading districts to implement stall feeding in tigrai, was purposively selected putting its experience in stall feeding and ecological similarities with the other districts in to account. of the total tabias, eight tabias have found to start stall feeding in 2005 (bofed, 2010). this survey is based on a three-stage stratified sample design. in the first stage, three stalls feeding adopter tabias out of eight were selected. in the second stage, three stall feeding users and three comparable control villages1 were randomly selected using similar geographical, ecological and socio-economic indicators. in the last, a list of household heads for each village was supplied by respective tabia leaders and 115 stall feeding adopters and 136 non-adopters were chosen using random sampling techniques. every household head was given equal chance of being included without bias. table 1: sample size of households per village region zone district tabia village category sample tigrai central zone tahtaimaichew kewanit adieyo(ae) treated 35 menqeraqho(mn) treated 36 laelaykewanit(lkw) controlled 46 hadushadi amoke(am) controlled 45 hadushadi(ha) controlled 45 akab seat guada(gau) treated 44 total 251 source: own survey, 2016 1 village (kushet) is the smallest governance system (next to tabia) in ethiopia asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 64-73 67 2.2. econometrics model descriptive statistics give only a mere first indication of the impact of sf. first, users in this study might belong to the more advantaged groups in terms of access to irrigation and market given t h a t these groups are also more likely to have high milk yield outcomes without the intervention, controlling household characteristics in order not to overestimate the impact of the treatment is required. moreover, since participation is a voluntary decision, this could lead to as selection bias. users might differ on additional unobservable characteristics such as awareness or motivation that could have a direct effect on the outcomes beyond participation in the sf. thus, the econometric model used to evaluate the impact of stall feeding on milk production and calf death is an iv 2sls estimation specified as below: 𝑌𝑖 = 𝛼 + 𝛽𝑖𝑋𝑖 + 𝛾𝐷𝑖 + 𝜂𝑖………………….. (1) where; 𝑌𝑖 = 1 the mean value of milk harvest (production) in litter per cow per day and calf death which is binary (1= for calf died below 1 year, 0= for calf survived above) 𝑋𝑖 = a vector of exogenous explanatory variables like(cow type, cow age, breed residue, food share, calf milk, water distance, summer, autumn, and spring seasons, calf sex, households sex, age, family size, education, herd size, market distance, extension distance, and so forth) di = 1if a household member 𝑖participates in the intervention (i.e., stall feeding) and 0 otherwise. the estimate for γ captures the treatment effect for participants in the policy group compared to the control group. estimating the above model does not give the true treatment effect since farmers themselves decide whether to adopt sf. the assignment is by self-selection or participation, in this case, is endogenous due to two reasons: selection bias due to unobserved household characteristics and omitted variable bias (households’ talent, motivation, ability, awareness and level of information). the difference between sf adopters and non-adopters is likely to be systematic. treating di as an exogenous variable and applying ols would result in inconsistent parameter estimate. to account for participation selection bias, instruments for the decision to become participants is used. a two-stage (2sls) instrumental variables approach with probit model for binary outcomes in both stages and probit model in first stages and linear ols/lpm or tobit model in the second stage for continuous outcomes were used. the first stage model reflects the participation decision (hereafter reduced equation) and has the form: 𝐷𝑖 = 𝐶 + 𝜆𝑋𝑖 + 𝛿𝑍𝑖 + 𝜇𝑖 ………………….. (2) where; 𝑋𝑖 =encompasses exogenous household’s and village characteristics 𝑍𝑖 = contains the instruments not included in𝑋𝑖. this equation is estimated to predict the probability of participation for the entire households. the predicted participation variable𝐷𝑖 is then reentered as a new exogenous variable in the outcome equation as under: 𝑌𝑖 = 𝛼 + 𝛽𝑖𝑋𝑖 + 𝛾�̂�𝑖 + 𝜂𝑖 ………………….. (3) analysis of the treatment effects estimated using the above specification. in the absence of participation treatment heterogeneity; the estimate for 𝛾, reflects the average treatment effect of participation (blundell and monica, 2000; heckman, 1997). to correct for the potential participation selection bias, instrumental variables that are correlated with participation but not correlated with the outcomes of the treatment (and is thus not correlated with the result and error term in the outcome equation) are required. mechanically, the iv method is no more difficult than ols regression method to implement but it is more difficult than other methods conceptually. although it is usually a difficult, it’s easily done as follows. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 64-73 68 in this estimation, the estimation used three instrumental variables named school distance measured in walking minutes for students, membership of tabia council (binary) and the ratio of grazing land to the total area of the village (hectare). distance to school is supposed to have a negative effect on participation in sf. longer distance to school was supposed to discourage household to educate their child, suggesting that they prefer their children to stay outside the school and not to feed their animal under sf if the child is available for looking after these animals in the free grazing system. council membership is supposed to have positive impact on participation because a member has high information and awareness about the benefit of sf than non-members. farmers living in villages of lower grazing ratio are supposed to be high participants than farmers living in the village of high grazing ratio proposing grazing ratio to be a good instrument for participation in stall feeding. 3. results and discussion 3.1. descriptive analysis from table 2, milk harvest and calf death are compared by participation in panel ‘a’ using t-test and by each village in panel ‘b’ with f-test. cows in a stall feeding village appear to have an average of 2.4litters more as compared to cows in the non-adopter villages given that it is statistically significant at p-value of (<.05) for 5% level of significance and lower mean calf death (28%) than untreated cows (72%). however, the difference is not significant enough to conclude that sf reduces calf death at p-value of 0.1456 using simple mean comparison. furthermore, breed cows give 1.2 litters more than local cows (indigenous) regardless of their treatment which is significantly different. table 2: comparison of stall feeding adopters and non-adopters by outcome variables variable control adopters pv(t) obs mean sd min max obs mean sd min max panel a milk milk harst 89 1.449 0.6949 1 4 53 3.3313 1.118 2 6 0.0000 calf death 89 0.3486 0.4797 0 1 52 0.2307 0.42546 0 1 0.1456 panel b ae(t)a am(c)b gua(t)c ha (c) d lkw(c)e mn(t)f pv (f) milkharv 3.7 1.1 27 1 0.2 42 3 1.8 6 1.3 0.5 26 2.3 0.8 21 2.9 0.7 20 0.0000 calfdeath 3 0.5 27 0.4 0.5 42 0 0 6 0.4 0.5 26 0.2 0.4 21 0.2 0.4 20 0.0434 aae=adieyo; bam=amoke; cgua= guaeda; dha=hadushadi; elkw=laelaykewanit; fmn=menqerakho source: own survey data analysis, 2016 3.2. econometrics estimation of milk production and calf death the estimated results of milk harvest measured in terms of litters per cow per day and probability of death of calves below one year old measured in binary value are provided in the appendix i. accordingly, the coefficient of interest participation in appendix i suggests that stall feeding (policy intervention) positively and significantly increases milk harvest by almost 1.3 liters per cow per day given that the estimate is statistically significant at 5%. our research output is consistent with the previous researches (ngeno, 2018; woldegebriel et al., 2017; kipkoech, 2014; zimbe, 2012). but; it’s against (meul et al., 2012). the same table (3.2) displayed that linear probability model estimates suggest that the treatment has no significant effect on death of new-born calves but using a 2s iv estimator correctly presents the true impact of the policy and the probability of death for the newly born calves is significantly lower in the policy villages than in the control villages. thus, newly born calves in the stall-feeding village have 68% probability of surviving than calves in the open grazing village at its marginal effect. it’s the same finding with the previous outcomes (moran, 2011). the amount of milk consumed by the new calf before actual milking significantly affects milk harvest negatively and cows which lives in a permanent stable (local shell) provides 0.413littersmore milk asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 64-73 69 than cows living without shell (open). in fact, our result is similar to the previous works (kipkoech, 2014; zimbe, 2012). milk harvest also seems very conditional on season implying that milking cows can give 3.2 litters when milked in autumn, 1.4 litters in summer, and 0.8 litters in spring relative to the winter season. opposite to the previous findings (adane et al., 2015; nalunkuuma, 2013; nganga et al., 2010), male households seem to harvest 0.239 litters more milk than female-headed households. household's age, religious education, and low economic status (receive aid) reduce milk harvest significantly. the result is opposite to (adane et al, 2015; nganga et al., 2010). whereas, consistent with (sultana et al., 2016; majiwa et al., 2010).the estimation of variables in the calf death model also shows that calves from breed cows have less chance of dying than calves from a local cow (ojango et al., 2016; nalunkuuma, 2013). brewery residue consumption appears to play in reducing a calf death. however, milking frequency and distance to water source significantly increase the probability of calf death in the study area (kipkoech, 2014; zimbe, 2012; moran, 2011). domestic cow milk yield declined by 0.19 litters as compared to the crossbreed cows and is reliable too (ngeno, 2018; ojango et al., 2016; cited in duguma and janssens, 2016; adane et al., 2015; nalunkuuma, 2013; tegegne et al., 2013). furthermore, the estimation used 2s iv named school distance measured in walking minutes for students and a binary variable membership of tabia council. distance to school is supposed to have a negative effect on participation in stall feeding and council membership with a positive impact on participation. indeed, our findings are as equal as the last outcomes (ngeno, 2018; adane et al., 2015; kipkoech, 2014). numbers of family size and herd size of small-scale household’s positively affected milk yield of stall feeding adopters’ (ngeno, 2018; adane et al., 2015). however, it’s contrary to what is in him (nalunkuuma, 2013). for short view, table 3 as part of appendix ii presents the summary of the impact of stall feeding on milk yield and calf numbers of calf deaths is almost equal. table 3: impact of stall feeding on milk harvest and calf death estimates variable ols/lpm iv-2sls ivtreg milk harves hhpart 0.0311 1.259** 1.2539*** calf death hhpart -0.241 -0.677*** -0.4189** source: own estimate, 2016. *shows significance at 10%, ** at 5% and *** at 1% level in the milk model, the estimation used two instrumental variables (in appendix ii) named school distance measured in walking minutes for students and a binary variable membership of tabia council. distance to school is supposed to have a negative effect on participation in sf and council membership with a positive impact on participation. referring to appendix ii, the endogeneity test with wu-hausman f-test at a p-value of 0.04 supports the use of iv estimation to be efficient and consistent, moreover, the candidate instruments have also passed the over identification requirement at a sargan p-value of 0.73 indicating that the first assumption that instruments should not be correlated to the error term in the structural model is fulfilled. since application of instrument approach requires the instrument to meet the second assumption that the instrument is correlated to the endogenous variable (participation in this case), the f statistics from the first stage estimation ensures the strength of the instruments with its f statistics value of42.04 greater than the rule of thumb, 10. following the same procedure and explanation, the instruments in the calf death model estimation prove to pass endogeneity test at a p-value of0.0096, over identifications test at a p-value of 0.93 and fstatistics of 26 for relevance test. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 64-73 70 though the main objective of this paper is to provide an iv-2sls estimate of sf impact, it is of some interest to compare the iv-2sls results with those from iv treatment regression. because one of the drawbacks of the iv method is that during weak instrumentation, the danger of instrument is much higher than the diseases of endogeneity that exist under the original regressions leading to higher standard errors and lower t-statistics leading to accepting the null hypothesis when it is not actually accepted and making the impact of the policy unrepresentative. to address this concern, an alternative strategy is to estimate the equation using iv treatment regression approach which is a proper regressionapproach when selection is made either based on observable covariates or unobservable characteristics such as personal ability, awareness, commitment, level of information and the propensity to accept changes (blundell and monica, 2000). table 4: estimate results from iv treatment regression approach (robustness) estimates ate atet atent significance level p>|z| obs(to) p>|z| obs(t) p>|z| obs(c) panel a milkest1 1.2539 0.000 141 1.4343 0.000 52 1.1485 0.000 89 at 5% calfdest1 -0.4189 0.045 141 -0.4418 0.016 52 -0.4056 0.086 89 at 10% source: own estimate, 2016 note: ate=average treatment effect, atet=average treatment effect on treated and atent=average treatment effect on non-treated panel a in the above table ensures that the ate of milk harvest and calf death is almost quite comparable not only in sign, significance but also in magnitude with the previous results approving the consistency of the estimation approach. 4. conclusion stall feeding adopters’ milk productivity per cow per day is 1.3 litters higher than non-adopters. similarly, the newly born calves in the stall feeding villages have 68% probability of surviving than calves in the open grazing village. in fact, economic status, cow type, education, market distance, extension service, gender, milking frequency, and cows live in shell matters. in the end, stall feeding has registered remarkable multiple economic impacts in the study area in a short period of time. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adane, z., shiferaw, k., & gebremedhin, b. 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(2012). socio-economic impact of dairy cattle zeroes grazing production system on the livelihoods of the rural poor in uganda (a case study of sironko dairy heifer project). msc thesis. 2006/hd17/6758, makerere university, kampala, uganda. view at google scholar appendix appendix i: estimation of milk harvest and probability of calf death variables (ols) (iv-2sls) (lpm) (iv-2sls) milkharv milkharv calfdeath calfdeath hhpart(household participation=1) 0.0311 1.259** -0.241 c (0.119) (0.624) (0.213) (0.235) cowtype(local cow=0&bred cow=1) -0.187** 0.0738 -0.167 -0.260** (0.0787) (0.145) (0.123) (0.111) cowage(age of milking cow in years) 0.0575 -0.0276 0.0485 0.0786 (0.0668) (0.0865) (0.112) (0.0956) breresidu(if cow uses brewery residue=1) -0.124 -0.0206 -0.213* -0.250** (0.106) (0.104) (0.112) (0.0997) foodshare(cow food share in 50killosack) 0.0196 0.0715 0.0785 0.0601 (0.0438) (0.0610) (0.0900) (0.0809) equalfed(if cow is equally fed with ox=1) -0.139 0.0330 -0.190 -0.251* (0.139) (0.187) (0.151) (0.130) calfmilk(length of milking minutes by calf) -0.0005 -0.0890* 0.0625 0.0939*** (0.0258) (0.0538) (0.0430) (0.0358) milkfreq(daily milking frequency in rounds) 0.139 -0.0233 0.258* 0.315** (0.154) (0.164) (0.144) (0.126) livingstab(if cow lives in shed=1, open stable= 0) 0.148 0.413** 0.0628 -0.0312 (0.100) (0.173) (0.129) (0.114) eelgrass(if cow eat elephant grass= 1 if not 0) -0.247** -0.354** 0.119 0.157 (0.110) (0.171) (0.195) (0.160) sessespa(if cow uses sespania sespan=1 if not 0) -0.0261 -0.136 -0.153 -0.114 (0.0496) (0.0934) (0.122) (0.107) consfreq(consultancy frequency in round in a year) -0.0118 0.00108 0.0153 0.0107 (0.0188) (0.0188) (0.0262) (0.0232) waterdis(distance to water for cattle in minutes) 0.0004 0.0006 0.0079** 0.0078** (0.0017) (0.0022) (0.0037) (0.0034) sumseasn(if cow is milked at summer=1 if not 0) 2.030*** 1.421*** 0.178 0.394** (0.115) (0.320) (0.178) (0.196) autseasn(if cow is milked at auto men=1 if not 0) 3.728*** 3.170*** 0.293 0.491* (0.275) (0.322) (0.266) (0.273) sprseasn(if cow is milked at spring=1 if not 0) 1.179*** 0.772*** 0.0917 0.236* (0.0804) (0.203) (0.153) (0.143) calfsex(1= female and 0= male) 0.0740 0.0780 0.0919 0.0904 (0.0557) (0.0633) (0.0895) (0.0800) typepart(interaction of cow type & treatment ) 0.124 -0.425 0.0231 0.218 (0.163) (0.301) (0.180) (0.178) vdindex(village development indicators) 0.00679 -0.103 0.0961 0.135** (0.0432) (0.0695) (0.0623) (0.0578) hhsex (household sex: male=1 if not 0) 0.343*** 0.239* -0.195 -0.158 (0.126) (0.133) (0.143) (0.136) hhage(age of household) -0.0594* -0.0612* -0.0255 -0.0249 (0.0308) (0.0334) (0.0345) (0.0304) https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=socio-economic+impact+of+dairy+cattle+zeroes+grazing+production+system+on+the+livelihoods+of+the+rural+poor+in+uganda+%28a+case+study+of+sironko+dairy+heifer+project%29.+&btng= asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(1)2018: 64-73 73 hhsize(the size of the household in unit) -0.00860 0.0144 -0.00181 -0.00997 (0.0170) (0.0245) (0.0289) (0.0262) divorce(if husband live with his wife=1 if not 0) -0.219 -0.0927 0.175 0.130 (0.168) (0.274) (0.272) (0.239) hhledu(if literacy education=1 if not 0) -0.0521 0.0142 0.138 0.114 (0.0925) (0.111) (0.106) (0.0971) hwspr (if hh has water spring in his plot = 1) -0.0945 -0.166 0.185 0.211* (0.0683) (0.104) (0.135) (0.121) hhtlu(total hh animal holding in tlu) -0.0033 0.0010 -0.0129* -0.0145** (0.0045) (0.0051) (0.0072) (0.0062) markdis(market distance from home in minuets) 0.0015 -0.0011 0.0025 0.0034 (0.0014) (0.0018) (0.0024) (0.0022) excendis(ftc distance from home in minutes) -0.0019 0.0002 -0.00377 -0.0045 (0.0017) (0.0022) (0.0032) (0.0027) cage2(milking cow age square) -0.00530 -0.0003 -0.0005 -0.0022 (0.0042) (0.0050) (0.0066) (0.0055) hage2(hh age square) 0.0005* 0.0005* 0.0002 0.0002 (0.0002) (0.0003) (0.0003) (0.0002) hhredu(if hh has religious education=1 if not 0) -0.0794 -0.140* 0.0133 0.0349 (0.0586) (0.0780) (0.0904) (0.0834) hheclass(hh economic class: if hh get aid= 1) -0.241** -0.256** -0.163 -0.158 (0.104) (0.130) (0.113) (0.100) constant 2.490** 2.997*** -0.463 -0.643 (1.022) (1.118) (1.024) (0.918) observations 141 141 141 141 r-squared 0.957 0.928 0.375 0.350 source: own estimate, 2016. robust standard errors in parentheses*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 * shows significance at 10-percent level, ** at 5-percent level and *** at 1-percent level appendix ii: tests of instrumental variables (iv) model instruments endogenity test over identification test weakness test f(p-value) chi2(p-value) r2or f-statistics milkest3a schodishhtcm (0.0400) (0.7264) (0.83,42.04) calfdest3b schodisschograzr (0.0096) (0.9301) (0.9174,26.984) source: own estimate, 2016 a milkest=milk estimation, and calfdest3b=calf death estimation model effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 671 changing pattern of farm and non-farm livelihood among the bodos: a study in bodoland territorial areas of assam, india prithwiraj swargiary  a, amarjyoti mahanta b a ph.d. scholar; department of economics, dibrugarh university, assam, india b associate professor and head; department of economics, dibrugarh university, assam, india  baramchari@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 21-mar-2020 accepted: 31-jul-2020 online available: 03-sep2020 keywords: bodos, livelihood, inter-generational, intra-generational abstract the objective of this paper is to examine the pattern and intensity of inter-generational and intra-generational changes in livelihood, taking the case of the bodos, the largest scheduled tribe of assam, india. the data for the study has been collected from 1161 randomly selected bodo households in bodoland territorial area districts of assam. the intensity of inter-generational and intra-generational livelihood changes has been measured through a rate developed for the purpose. further, the association between the livelihood attributes has also been tested. the study finds that the intensity of intra-generational livelihood change is less than that of the inter-generational change. livelihood change is more prominent from the farm to the non-farm sector. though livelihood changes have taken place between the generations, the sectoral selection of livelihood by the present generation is closely associated with the livelihood of the preceding generation. steps for infrastructure development to unfold farm and non-farm sources of income are required. agro-based industrial units should be promoted, and required skill development initiatives should be taken so those poor households can diversify their livelihood portfolios. contribution/ originality the paper explains the livelihood changes from the generational perspectives examining both intergenerational and intra-generational livelihood changes and contributes towards understanding the changes that have occurred in the traditional ways of living, giving due consideration to the areaspecific conditions. it explains a rarely addressed association between the main occupations pursued over the generations and within a generation over time. doi: 10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.671.681 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: prithwiraj swargiary and amarjyoti mahanta (2020). changing pattern of farm and non-farm livelihood among the bodos: a study in bodoland territorial areas of assam, india. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2), 671-681. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 2 (2020): 671-681 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:baramchari@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.ajard.2020.102.671.681 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 671-681 672 1. introduction livelihood refers to the ways and activities through which people achieve means of living, applying the capabilities and assets at their disposal. it is defined as the activities, assets, and access that jointly determine the living gained by an individual or household (ellis, 1999). the means, activities, entitlements, and assets by which people gain a living, attempt to meet their consumption and economic needs, cope with uncertainties and respond to new opportunities are called livelihood (chambers, 1995; haan and zommers, 2005). the activities are usually carried out repeatedly (islam, 2014). the capabilities, assets, and resources available to an individual or a group often influence the livelihood chosen by him or by the group. the resources available to the people living in rural areas are mostly agricultural or natural, and therefore, their primary livelihood is associated with agriculture and allied activities. however, inadequate irrigation facilities, crop failure, and more erratic market behavior for farm products increase the risk-sensitivity of farm income and make the agriculture-dependent livelihood strategy vulnerable and unsustainable. the growing importance of non-agricultural income has also raised a question on the extent to which agriculture is the key driver of rural development, and it is necessary to incorporate diversification in policies of rural development (elmqvist and olsson, 2006). farm diversification has been considered as one of the most likely avenues to promote the development of agriculture (seng, 2014). farmers face difficulties in persisting with traditional productivist business models and have developed an entrepreneurial opportunity-seeking behavior (morris et al., 2017). they attempt to assure income by undertaking a set of economic activities rather than relying upon a single source of income. the rural income diversification is seen to be higher among low-income people (schwarze and zeller, 2005). rural people make a living through a portfolio of activities so that they can be flexible and can adapt to a wide range of misfortune and external shocks (whitehead, 2002). if the main source of livelihood fails to provide sustainable income, households tend to opt for a diversified livelihood strategy for achieving rising income flows sustainably. household’s livelihood strategy is interpreted as the chosen combination of assets, activities, and choices made usually at the household level to achieve their livelihood outcomes (sallu et al., 2010; rijn et al., 2012). a livelihood is socially sustainable if it can cope with and recover from stress and shocks and provide for future generations (chambers and conway, 1992). sustainable livelihoods are stable, durable, resilient, and robust in the face of both external shocks and internal stresses (scoones, 2009). in managing livelihood strategies, the household heads consider meeting the immediate consumption needs, managing long-term resources, investing in new technology, and people management as objectives (whitehead, 2002). people tend to change the livelihood if they find it unsustainable. they counter the vulnerability arising out of risk and uncertainty of income to meet the present and future needs and aspirations by switching over to other activities. the depletion of land resources for farming caused by the pressure of the population induces farm exit and motivates people to change livelihood in favour of non-farm activities. the presence of more family labourers increases the likelihood of farm exit for a different career (ahmad et al., 2020). it is found that large farms provide higher incomes to farmers and, therefore, increase farm survival (kimhi and bollman, 1999). farm households with a small size of operational land holding are more likely to change their livelihood strategies to non-farm occupations (bhandari, 2013). young and educated individuals prefer non-farm activities as occupation and hence, are more likely to change the occupation of the previous generation. merlan (1998) pointed out that the young generation explores and internalizes new and diverse intercultural arenas of social practice. remoteness is no longer an obstacle to the youth for broader cultural influences and they are more capable of adapting the modern non-farm occupation. increasing opportunities brought about by modernization of agriculture, industrialization, development of services, urbanization, improvement in trade and commerce, an extension of market opportunities, etc. have motivated people to opt for nonasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 671-681 673 traditional activities. farm households also participate in non-farm activities and earn much more from non-farm activities than from the farm labor market (reardon, 1997). conversely, the opportunities for off-farm income have grown much slower in comparison to the addition to the workforce in many developing countries (binswanger-mkhize, 2013; agarwal and agrawal, 2017). therefore, many rural families do not change traditional agricultural occupations. in developing countries like india, for the majority of families in farm and non-farm sectors, agriculture has been the main source of livelihood (acharya, 2006; kumar et al., 2006). this paper, therefore, seeks to examine the changes in the pattern of livelihood among the bodos, the largest scheduled tribe of assam. the bodos are a branch of the great bodo group of the indomongoloid family falling within the assam-burmese linguistic section (bordoloi et al., 1987). as per the population census of india, 2011, the total bodo population in assam was 13,61,735, which was 35.06 percent of the total scheduled tribe population of assam. traditionally bodos are agriculturists. however, over time, different occupational avenues have widened the employment opportunities. an earlier study (swargiary and mahanta, 2020) finds that the extent of livelihood diversification among the bodos, measured in terms of simpson index, is greater than that at the state level. bodos are seen acquiring new ways of livelihood strategies that are adaptive to new technology and skills. livelihood changes have been looked from the generational perspectives examining both inter-generational and intra-generational livelihood changes. while examining the changing pattern of livelihood among the bodos, the paper seeks an answer to the research question – whether there is an association between the main occupation pursued by the present generation and the main occupation of the previous generation. the livelihood changes affect the development discourse at the household and community level. therefore, to understand the development discourse in a population, it is necessary to identify the directions of change in the livelihood strategy over the generations and within the same generation. this study is important for two reasons. firstly, the bodos are the largest scheduled tribe of the state of assam whose source of livelihood has traditionally been agriculture. like many other tribes, the bodos use the local ecology, traditional knowledge, and organization for meeting the means of living. understanding, therefore, the livelihood transition is of great use for understanding the changes that might have occurred in the traditional ways of living. secondly, the bodoland territorial council (btc) was established in assam in 2003 under the sixth schedule of the constitution of india covering four contiguous districts baksa, chirang, kokrajhar, and udalguri called as bodoland territorial area districts (btad). the local government of the area can formulate policies for efficient use of the workforce by providing alternative employment opportunities for a sustainable living giving due consideration to the area-specific conditions. 2. data and methodology the data for the study has been collected from four districts that comprise the btad of assam. the purpose of selecting btad is that it shelters 66 percent of the total bodo population of the state. samples have been drawn by following a multi-stage sampling procedure. the first stage of sampling design is the selection of sample sub-division from the sample districts. the sub-division with the highest proportion of the bodo population of each district is selected as a sample. in the next stage, two village council development committees (vcdcs) are selected as samples from each sample sub-division based on the same population criterion. in the third stage, 50 percent of the total villages from each sample vcdc are chosen randomly as sample villages. finally, 25 percent of the total bodo households of each sample village are randomly selected. as such, 1161 households are covered for data collection using an interview schedule. the rate of inter-generational livelihood change has been estimated through the following method: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 671-681 674 𝑁𝑔1𝑔2 −𝑁𝑔1=𝑔2 𝑁𝑔1𝑔2 × 100 where, 𝑁𝑔1𝑔2 = total number of persons 𝑁𝑔1=𝑔2= number of persons of the current generation (g1) following the occupation of the previous generation (g2) likewise, the intensity of intra-generational livelihood change is estimated as: 𝑁𝑝𝑐 − 𝑁𝑝=𝑐 𝑁𝑝𝑐 × 100 where, 𝑁𝑝𝑐= total number of persons 𝑁𝑝=𝑐 = number of persons whose previous occupation (p) and the current occupation (c) is the same the statistical significance of the association between the main occupation of the present and the previous generation and also between the present and previous main occupation of the present generation has been examined by the chi-square test. 3. results and discussions agriculture is the primary occupation for most of the people of btad. the main occupation of the heads of the households has been categorized into two broad types farm and non-farm occupation. the former covers the economic activities related to the agriculture and allied activities found in the sample households like farming, rendering service as agricultural labour, livestock rearing, and aquaculture. activities like the salaried job, skilled profession, petty business, handicraft, and wage laborers are included in the non-farm category of occupation. the study finds that the present main occupation of 38.5 percent of the heads of the sample households is in the farm sector, while 61.5 percent have the main occupation in the non-farm sector. in the farm sector, the majority of the respondents (i.e., 92 percent) are engaged in cultivation. on the other hand, most of the respondents with non-farm sector occupations are engaged in public and private salaried job (41 percent). however, this observed pattern of the current main occupation has evolved over time. the livelihood change over time has taken place within a generation and between the generations. 3.1. inter-generational livelihood change inter-generational livelihood change refers to changes in livelihood status that occur between two generations, that is, of father and son or family members of one generation and the next (chakravarty, 2013). livelihood change will be called inter-generational if the present generation does not pursue the same occupation that was pursued by the preceding generation. in this study, the heads of the sample households are taken as the present generation while their fathers represent the preceding generation. inter-generational change in livelihood sources will take place if the heads of the sample households follow an occupation different from that of their fathers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 675 table 1 depicts that out of the 1161 fathers of the heads of the sample households, 472 fathers had farming as the main occupation. however, it is found that only 64.19 percent of their sons (i.e., 303 sons) have continued the main occupation of their fathers, and the remaining 35.81 percent have changed their livelihood. it is stated that they have shifted to other occupations (mostly to salaried jobs) due to low income and other risks associated with the agriculture sector. some household members migrated to other states and cities to work in non-farm activities. as in other studies (sundaravaradarajana et al., 2011; thapa and yadav, 2015), lack of continuous employment is reported as the main reason for migration to urban areas. it is found that only 12 percent of sons of the fathers whose main occupation was livestock have only continued the same occupation of their father and the remaining 88 percent of household heads have opted for other occupations. inter-generational livelihood change could also be seen in the case of agricultural laborers. findings show that as many as 90 percent of heads have not followed the same occupation of their father. they report that the wage rate of agricultural labour is highly fluctuating and seasonal. there is also no certainty of work available for wages. hence, they have chosen an alternative income source. table 1: inter-generational livelihood change main occupation of the household head main occupation of the father of the household head on-farm non-farm farming livestock agricultural labour salaried job (govt./private) wage labour professional petty business handicraft on-farm farming 303 4 11 14 38 4 38 0 livestock 3 3 1 0 5 0 0 0 agricultural labour 2 0 6 0 7 1 4 3 non-farm salaried job (govt./private) 106 5 15 22 120 2 19 2 wage labour 21 7 25 2 212 4 8 3 professional 3 0 1 1 8 4 0 0 petty business 31 6 2 2 49 2 13 5 handicraft 3 0 1 0 4 3 0 3 total 472 25 62 41 443 20 82 16 percentage of respondents changing livelihood 35.81 88.00 90.32 46.34 52.14 80.00 84.15 81.25 source: survey data, 2019 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 676 it is found that 41 fathers of the heads of the sample households had a salaried job (public/private sectors), but currently, only 54 percent of their sons are engaged in salaried jobs. unlike their fathers, 46 percent heads of the sample households are now not engaged in salaried jobs as they have failed to get such employment opportunities. it is also found that 34 percent (i.e., 14) sample heads, whose fathers were salaried jobholders, are engaged in farming. likewise, more prominent inter-generational livelihood change has been noticed from the occupation like different professions, petty business, and handicraft to other occupations. the rate of inter-generational livelihood change has been estimated from the statistics presented in table 1 by applying the following method: 𝑁𝑔1𝑔2 −𝑁𝑔1=𝑔2 𝑁𝑔1𝑔2 × 100 where, 𝑁𝑔1𝑔2 = total number of persons (n) which is 1161 𝑁𝑔1=𝑔2= total number of persons (n) of the current generation continuing the same occupation of the previous generation (g1=g2), which is 566. hence, the rate of inter-generational livelihood change is 51.25%. table 2: inter-generational livelihood change (sectoral analysis) main occupation of the household head main occupation of the father of the household head total  𝟐 on-farm non-farm on-farm 333 (59.57) 114 (18.94) 447 149.64 non-farm 226 (40.43) 488 (81.06) 714 total 559 (100.0) 602 (100.0) 1161  𝟐 =149.64, p=0.000 ≤ 0.05, df=1 figures in the parentheses indicate percentages table 2 shows that the main source of livelihood of the 559 fathers of the 1161 heads of the sample households was in the farm sector. it is seen that 59.57 percent of their sons have continued to earn a livelihood from the farm sector, while the rest of 40.43 percent of sons have changed their livelihood to the non-farm sector. similarly, 602 fathers of the 1161 heads of the sample households had non-farm sector as the main source of livelihood. it has been found that 488 sons have continued to earn a livelihood from the non-farm sector, while the rest 114 have changed their livelihood to the farm sector. to see if there is an association between the main occupation of the present generation and that pursued by the previous generation, the chi-square test has been done. the chi-square statistic is found significant at 1 percent level of significance, implying that there is an association between the main occupation of the previous generation and that opted by the present generation. it can thus be concluded that though livelihood changes have taken place between the generations, the sectoral selection of livelihood by the present generation is closely associated with the livelihood of the preceding generation. 3.1. intra-generational livelihood change intra-generational livelihood change refers to change in someone’s livelihood throughout his/her lifetime. in this study, livelihood change is interpreted as intragenerational if the household head currently pursues an occupation different from the occupation pursued previously. no asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 671-681 677 intragenerational livelihood change shall occur if the present and previous occupation of the head of the household is the same. table 3 depicts the findings on the intragenerational livelihood change. it is found that out of the heads of the 1161 sample households, 455 were previously engaged in farming. currently, 369 of them (i.e., 81.1 percent) have continued farming as the main occupation and the rest 18.9 percent have changed their current occupation. intra-generational livelihood change among them has taken place chiefly to the salaried job in the public/private sector and petty business. it is reported that the risk faced by the farmers in gaining livelihood from agriculture has prompted them to shift to other occupations. people would have liked farming if the occupation was more profitable and less riskprone (agarwal and agrawal, 2017). on the other hand, the percentage change in a livelihood within the generation is found as 25 percent and 53 percent in the case of livestock rearing and agricultural labour respectively. the change has taken place from agricultural labour to petty business, farming and salaried jobs. concerning the non-farm occupation, it is found that 7.65 percent of the respondents who were engaged previously in the salaried job have changed their livelihood. the majority of those sample heads who have changed the livelihood from salaried jobs were engaged in jobs in the unorganized sector and are now engaged basically in farming. on the contrary, the percentage change in a livelihood within the generation from wage labour, skilled professions and petty business categories of occupation to others is found as 30.76 percent, 44.83 percent and 16.42 percent, respectively. the change has taken place mostly in favour of salaried jobs and farming. it is found that all the sample heads pursuing handicrafts as the prime source of livelihood have not ever changed the source of livelihood. thus, intragenerational livelihood change has not taken place in the case of handicraft occupation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 678 table 3: intra-generational livelihood change present main occupation of the household head previous main occupation of the household head on-farm non-farm farming livestock agricultural labour salaried job (govt./private) wage labour professional petty business handicraft on-farm farming 369 0 4 9 20 7 3 0 livestock 3 6 2 0 1 0 0 0 agricultural labour 1 0 16 0 6 0 0 0 non-farm salaried job (govt./private) 51 2 4 169 59 4 2 0 wage labour 8 0 3 3 261 1 6 0 professional 1 0 0 0 0 16 0 0 petty business 22 0 5 2 24 1 56 0 handicraft 0 0 0 0 6 0 0 8 total 455 8 34 183 377 29 67 8 percentage of respondents changing livelihood 18.9 25.0 53.0 7.65 30.76 44.83 16.42 0 source: survey data, 2019 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: xxx 679 the rate of intra-generational livelihood change is estimated from the data presented in table 3 by applying the following method: 𝑁𝑝𝑐 − 𝑁𝑝=𝑐 𝑁𝑝𝑐 × 100 where, p = previous occupation c = current occupation 𝑁𝑝𝑐= total number of respondents (n), i.e., the total number of heads of the sample households which is 1161 𝑁𝑝=𝑐 = total number of persons (n) who have not changed their main source of livelihood. for this number of persons, previous occupation and the current occupation are the same (p=c), which is 901. hence, the rate of intra-generational livelihood change is 22.39 percent. table 4: intra-generational livelihood change (sectoral analysis) previous main occupation of the household head current main occupation of the household head total  𝟐 on-farm non-farm on-farm 401 (89.71) 96 (13.45) 497 211.74 non-farm 46 (10.29) 618 (86.55) 664 total 447 (100.0) 714 (100.0) 1161  𝟐 =211.74, p=0.000 ≤ 0.05, df=1 figures in the parentheses indicate percentages the study finds that 497 heads of the sample households previously had the main occupation in the farm sector while the number of household heads presently having the main occupation in the farm sector is 447. likewise, 664 respondents were earlier engaged in the non-farm sector, while 714 respondents are currently working in the non-farm sector. thus, intra-generational livelihood change has taken place from the farm sector to the non-farm sector. it is reported that the small landholding size, traditional agricultural technology, inadequate irrigation facility, seasonal nature of employment, crop failure and more erratic market behavior for farm products have increased the sensitivity of farm income to the risk and hence, farm income does not meet the rising needs. it is also seen that 10.29 percent of the respondents currently having the main occupation in the farm sector has changed the main source of livelihood from the non-farm sector. but, 13.45 percent of the respondents currently engaged in non-farm sector has changed their livelihood from the farm sector to the non-farm sector. the majority of those who have changed the livelihood from the non-farm sector to the farm sector were engaged in jobs in the private and unorganized sector with low income. therefore, they have preferred to engage in farming for the best utilization of their cultivable land. failure in business has also caused some of them to change livelihood to farm-sector. the results indicate that though livelihood changes have taken place within the generations, the extent of change is less than the inter-generational change. 4. conclusion the study finds that inter-generational livelihood change from the previous generation to the present generation has taken place and it is more prominent from farm to non-farm sector, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(2)2020: 671-681 680 particularly to salaried jobs in public and private sectors. inter-generational change in livelihood from the non-farm sector to the farm sector is found less significant. although the fruits of industrialization and globalization have largely accrued to the urban areas, with development, urbanization and rapid modernization outlook on livelihood selection have changed even in rural areas. it was reported in the survey that the contact with the neighboring urban areas influenced their livelihood options. unlike their parents, many respondents are not engaged in the salaried job due to lack of employment opportunities, required qualifications and skills lack. intra-generational livelihood change from the farm sector to the non-farm sector is more prominent than the change from the non-farm to the farm sector. uncertainty of farm income due to inadequate irrigation facility, crop failure and more erratic market behavior for farm products have motivated people to shift occupation to non-farm sector. low-paid jobs in the unorganized private sector, failure in business and willingness to utilize own cultivable land are the reported causes of change of livelihood from non-farm to farm sector. the study finds that the intensity of intragenerational livelihood change is less than that of the inter-generational change. the study also concludes that though livelihood changes have taken place between the generations, the sectoral selection of livelihood by the present generation is closely associated with the livelihood of the preceding generation. switching over of livelihood from farm to non-farm and vice versa does not necessarily ensure the wellbeing of the households. the key requirement is the better provision for basic infrastructure to unfold farm and non-farm sources of income for sustainable livelihood. agro-based industrial units should be promoted to support the agriculture sector and create employment opportunities. skill development initiatives should also be taken. the constraints of livelihood diversification are to be identified and addressed so that poor household can diversify their livelihood portfolios. funding: there was no specific financial support for this study. competing interests: the authors declare that there is no competing interest. contributors/acknowledgments: the authors thank the anonymous referee for needful and helpful suggestions on improving the presentation of this paper. authors declare that they contributed significantly towards the research study, that is, conception, design and analysis, and interpretation of data. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references acharya, s. s. 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(2002). tracking livelihood change: theoretical, methodological and empirical perspectives from north-east ghana. journal of southern african studies, 28(3), special issue: changing livelihoods, 575-598. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 166 impact of agricultural extension training on economic performance of rice farms: an investigation in vietnam’s mekong river delta tran quoc nhana nguyen van nayb a,bcollege of rural development, can tho university, can tho city, vietnam.  tqnhan@ctu.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 6 march 2025 revised: 21 april 2025 accepted: 9 may 2025 published: 13 june 2025 keywords economic performance extension impact matching approach rice farm training. agricultural training has been seen as an effective method to improve farmers’ knowledge of agricultural techniques and farming management skills, which may enhance farm performance. this study aimed to estimate the impact of training provided by public agricultural extension agencies on trainees’ rice farming outcomes, such as productivity, gross margin, and profitability. the household survey was conducted in the vietnamese mekong river delta’s hau giang province. a sample size of 230 rice farmers, including 120 participants and 110 non-participants of the training, was interviewed to gather primary data with a structured questionnaire. the propensity score matching method was employed to estimate the impact of the training on the farm outcomes of trainees by controlling for biased selection. results reveal that training in agriculture significantly increases farmers’ rice productivity, gross margin, and profitability. this may conclude that participation in agricultural extension training may help farmers adopt more knowledge of technology and farm management skills, which leads them to use inputs, manage farms more efficiently, and have better marketing strategies. the policy implication of the study is that agricultural extension agencies should expand agricultural training programs to all farmers who have not engaged in any training course regarding agricultural production and management. contribution/originality: this study employs propensity score matching for controlling selection bias and first estimates the impact of agricultural extension training on farms’ economic performance in vietnam. the findings reveal the significant effect of agricultural training on rice farmers’ productivity, gross margin, and profitability. the policy implication of the study is that agricultural extension agencies should expand to deliver agricultural training to all farmers. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5403 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: nhan, t. q., & nay, n. v. (2025). impact of agricultural extension training on economic performance of rice farms: an investigation in vietnam’s mekong river delta. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 166–173. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction vietnam, a net rice importer before 1989, has recently become known as one of the globe’s three largest rice exporters. this great achievement may be explained by the impactful results of the renovation policy since 1986 (pingali & xuan, 1992). indeed, vietnam’s rice production increased more than threefold during three decades, from asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 166-173 mailto:tqnhan@ctu.edu.vn https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8259-0638 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1073-3299 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5403 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 166-173 167 1985 to 2015 (song et al., 2020). the reform policy has shifted the country’s economy from a centrally planned system to a market-oriented one. from the shifting point, many important and strategic policies on agriculture and rural development have been promulgated by the central government of vietnam. in this regard, the policy on agricultural extension was one of the most crucial policies to help improve agricultural production remarkably in vietnam. in 1993, the government of vietnam issued decree no. 13/1993/nd-cp on agricultural extension, and under this decree, the public extension system of vietnam was officially formed in march 1993. accordingly, vietnam’s public agricultural extension system is organized into five levels from the central to the grassroots levels, including central, provincial, district, commune, and village, and its main activities place emphasis on such following areas: first, it builds demonstration models showcasing advanced farming techniques to transfer to farmers. the models often focus on applying new varieties, effective methods, and technology as well. second, it provides training to farmers. training is considered an effective method to diffuse or transfer new agricultural techniques or innovations to farmers since the models cannot demonstrate all new farming techniques in the pilot sites. third, it holds science and technology forums and exhibitions that serve as platforms for farmers to directly exchange knowledge, experience, and practices with specialists, managers, and successful farmers who effectively apply new techniques. besides technical transfer, it also disseminates new regulations and policies related to agriculture, farmers, and rural development, and provides market information to farmers. in summary, the main responsibilities of extension workers are to transfer technical advances, provide information related to market and farming techniques, spread knowledge, and deliver training to farmers to improve their capacity and efficiency in agricultural production (nguyen & nguyen, 2016). over the past three decades of formation and operation, vietnam’s public agricultural extension system has played a significant role in the development of the agricultural industry through its activities of providing training, advice, and transferring new and advanced technologies to farmers (dang, li, & bruwer, 2012; ministry of agricultural and rural development, 2019). however, few studies on agricultural extension areas in vietnam have been found. a study by truong (2022) assessed the farmers’ satisfaction with the quality of agricultural extension services in the central region of vietnam’s province of quang binh. the author indicated that three crucial factors, including assurance, reliability, and sympathy, had a positive impact on the farmers’ satisfaction with the quality of extension services. trinh, hoang, and drysdale (2023) investigated extension workers’ perception of using information and communication technology tools such as cellphones, computers, internet, tvs, radio, and newspapers for agricultural extension services in the south coastal central region of vietnam. as mentioned earlier, providing new technological knowledge to farmers is one of the main functions of extension agencies in vietnam. therefore, this study aims to provide empirical evidence on the impact of agricultural training on trained farmers' farm economic outcomes, such as yield, gross margin, and profitability. the study collected data from 120 trained and 110 non-trained rice farmers in the mekong river delta's hau giang province and used the propensity score matching method for data analysis. the results of this study fill a major gap in the literature on the impact of extension training on the economic outcomes of farmers in vietnam. there is currently no research available on the effects of agricultural training provided by public extension agencies on farm performance in vietnam. this study aims to provide empirical evidence on the impact of agricultural training on trained farmers' outcomes, such as yield, gross margin, and profitability. data was collected from 120 trained rice farmers and 110 non-trained farmers in hau giang province of the mekong river delta, and the propensity score matching method was used for data analysis. the results of this study address a significant gap in the literature regarding the impact of extension training on the economic outcomes of farmers in vietnam. 2. literature review previous studies on the impact of agricultural training programs have primarily focused on two areas: the effect of training on trainees' technical knowledge and adoption of new technologies, and the impact of agricultural training on trainees' farm performance. training is seen as a potential way to improve farmers’ knowledge of agricultural techniques and farming skills, as well as to encourage the adoption of new technologies. agricultural extension training is often referred to as a form of formal and informal educational activities designed to help individual farmers or a group of farmers achieve specific goals (gwivaha, 2015; oduwole, sennuga, willberforce, & ebhohon, 2022). agricultural training has been recognized as an effective way to enhance farmers’ awareness of agricultural technology (asayehegn, weldegebrial, & kaske, 2012; challa & tilahun, 2014; kinyangi, 2014). the training content is often designed to transfer knowledge or skills on agricultural topics that aim to benefit farmers (oduwole et al., 2022; stewart et al., 2015). extension agents often deliver new agricultural technology and innovation, new farming techniques, market information, policies related to agriculture and rural development, which may have a positive impact on farmers’ technological knowledge, such as using high-yielding varieties, proper application of herbicides and pesticides, and implementing new methods of irrigation (rasanjali, wimalachandra, sivashankar, & malkanthi, 2021). training has been illustrated to be an important factor in influencing farmers’ adoption of new and advanced agricultural technology (seelan, laguette, casady, & seielstad, 2003). nakano, tsusaka, aida, and pede (2018) stated that agricultural training can spread new knowledge on agricultural technologies to farmers, which enhances agricultural productivity and reduces the poverty situation in rural areas. agricultural training helps improve trainees’ farm outcome performances. agricultural training tremendously enhanced the production of agriculture, livestock, and poultry in the northern region of pakistan (khurshid, saboor, khurshid, & akhtar, 2013). luther, mariyono, purnagunawan, satriatna, and siyaranamual (2018) used the difference asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 166-173 168 in difference method to measure the impact of farmer field schools on the vegetable productivity of farmers in bali and east java of indonesia. by using psm method, khode et al. (2020) proved that training had a positive impact on dairy farmers’ milk productivity and annual net income in india. wonde, tsehay, and lemma (2022) used psm to reveal that participating in the training helped trainees increase yields of maize and wheat by 10.10% and 26.66%, respectively, and raised wheat farm income by 19.64% in ethiopia. using both psm and inverse probability weighting methods, schreinemachers, wu, uddin, ahmad, and hanson (2016) revealed that training may increase land productivity by 47%, profitability by 50%, and net income by 48% for smallholder farmers. murshed‐e‐jahan, beveridge, and brooks (2008) indicated that fish farmers who participated in training gained 23% higher productivity and 52% higher return. kijima, ito, and otsuka (2012) reported that the training program increased the adoption of improved rice-farming practices and the profit of rice cultivation in uganda, using psm approach and weighted regression model. similarly, wordofa and sassi (2017) demonstrated that participation in training programs significantly improved household farm income in eastern ethiopia. todo and takahashi (2013) showed that participation in training programs enhanced farmers’ real income due to the adoption of new agricultural practices. 3. materials and methods 3.1. model used for impact estimation to accurately assess the impact of agricultural extension training on trainees’ farm outcomes, it is important to compare the outcomes of trainees and non-trainees. however, simply comparing the mean value of outcomes between the two groups may not be a reliable method, as there may be other factors that contribute to the differences in outcomes besides the training itself. for example, the characteristics of the households and farms, such as age, education, experience, and farm size, may differ between the two groups and could potentially affect the outcomes (caliendo & kopeinig, 2008). to address this limitation, we utilized the propensity score matching (psm) approach developed by rosenbaum and rubin (1985) to assess the impact of agricultural extension training on farm outcomes. specifically, we calculated the average treatment effect on the treared (att), which measures the difference in expected outcome for farmers who participated in the training compared to those who did not (caliendo & kopeinig, 2008). this can be expressed as follows. 𝐴𝑇𝑇 = 𝐸[𝑌1𝑖 − 𝑌0𝑖|𝑃𝑖 = 1] = 𝐸[𝑌1𝑖|𝑃𝑖 = 1] − 𝐸[𝑌0𝑖|𝑃𝑖 = 1] (1) where y1i is the outcomes (such as productivity, gross margin and profitability) of the farmer who has participated in the training, while y0i is the outcomes of the same farmer when not participating in the training. pi takes 1 if the farmer has joined the training, otherwise 0. however, we are unable to accurately estimate the att in equation 1 due to the missing value of 𝐸[𝑌0𝑖|𝑃𝑖 = 1]. indeed, both outcomes created by the same farmer with and without the training cannot be observed simultaneously. thus, we must replace 𝐸[𝑌0𝑖|𝑃𝑖 = 1] with a proper substitute. as earlier discussed, using the average outcome of actual non-trainees as a substitute is not strongly recommended. in this investigation, farmers’ decisions to participate in the training may be based on their characteristics rather than randomly assigned. this implies that variables influencing participation in the training may also affect the outcome of the subject, generating biased estimated results. to address this issue, the psm technique can be used to treat farmers who have participated in the training as a treated group, while farmers who did not receive the training but have similar characteristics or propensity scores as those in the treated group as a control group. this allows us to use the expected outcomes of the control group to replace 𝐸[𝑌0𝑖|𝑃𝑖 = 1] in equation 1. by doing so, we can estimate att through two steps. first, we use the probit regression model to generate the propensity score, which is defined as the probability of each farmer’s participation in agricultural extension training. 𝑝(𝑋𝑖) = 𝑃𝑟(𝑃𝑖 = 1|𝑋𝑖) = 𝛼 + 𝜌𝑖𝑋𝑖 + 𝜀 (2) where 𝑝(𝑋𝑖) is denoted as the probability of each farmer joining the training; 𝑋𝑖 is a vector of covariates affecting farmers’ decision to join the training; 𝛼 is an intercept; ε is an error term. second, att is estimated by matching the treated group and the control group based on similar propensity scores. thus, att can be re-written as follows: 𝐴𝑇𝑇𝑃𝑆𝑀 = 𝐸[𝐸{𝑌1𝑖|𝑝(𝑋𝑖)} − 𝐸{𝑌0𝑖|𝑝(𝑋𝑖)}|𝑃𝑖 = 1] (3) where 𝐴𝑇𝑇𝑃𝑆𝑀 is referred to as the mean difference of outcomes between the treated group (trainees) and the control group (non-trainees) properly matched by the propensity score 𝑝(𝑋𝑖). in this study, the nearest neighbor matching method was employed to match trainees and non-trainees with similar propensity scores. this matching technique uses each farmer in the control group to match a treated farmer who has the most similar propensity score, which may help reduce bias. 3.2. definitions of variables used in empirical model due to using the psm method for assessing the impact of agricultural training programs, three kinds of variables are in this study (table 1). first, the treatment variable, which is referred to as the dependent variable, displays whether farmers engage in the training. second, explanatory variables or covariates were used to construct propensity scores. regarding covariates selected for probit model, covariates that affect both selection into farmers’ participation in training and outcomes of the subject and are not influenced by the participation should be included in the probit model to estimate propensity asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 166-173 169 scores (austin, 2011; caliendo & kopeinig, 2008; maertens & swinnen, 2009; smith & todd, 2005). based on earlier empirical evidences from wonde et al. (2022); khode et al. (2020); wordofa and sassi (2017); schreinemachers et al. (2016) and kijima et al. (2012) background of study area, nine covariates were used in the probit model. third, outcome variables or impact indicators, such as productivity, gross margin, and profitability, were used to examine the impact of training in agriculture. the productivity was measured in tons per hectare. gross margin was the difference between total revenue and variable cost estimated in millions of vietnamese dong (vnd) per hectare. profitability was defined as the ratio of gross margin and variable cost. table 1. definitions of selected variables used in the empirical model. items description treatment variable participation in training 1 if the farmer participates in agricultural extension training covariate age of head age of household head in years education of head schooling of household head in years farming experience year of rice-farming experience family labor number of family labor for rice cultivation (person) rice land area farm land area for rice cultivation (ha) internet use 1 if the household uses the internet, and 0 otherwise cooperative membership 1 if the household is a member of cooperative, and 0 otherwise farms visited by extension worker 1 if the household has been visited by extension worker, and 0 otherwise distance to commune people’s committee the distance from household to commune people’s committee (km), this measure the accessibility to extension agency outcome variable yield yield of rice (ton/ha) gross margin difference between total revenue and variable cost (million vnd/ha) profitability ratio of gross margin and variable cost 3.3. study site and data collection the primary data used for this study were collected through a household survey conducted in march 2023 in four communes of hau giang province’s long my district. hau giang is located in the south-western region of vietnam and is considered the central province of the mekong river delta. the majority of farmers in the province rely on rice farming for their income. the mekong river delta, also known as the “rice bowl” of vietnam, contributes around 55% of the country's paddy production and 95% of its total rice exports annually (gso, 2021). hau giang province was chosen as the location for this study due to its comprehensive agricultural extension system. it officially has four levels of administrative structure, including a provincial extension center, district extension stations, commune extension staff, and village extension collaborators. in comparison, other provinces typically only have extension agents at the commune level who also work as extension collaborators. a random sampling method was employed to select respondents who are both participants and non-participants in agricultural extension trainings. the participants were chosen from lists provided by the district station of agricultural extension, while the non-participants were selected from lists provided by village leaders. it was important for both groups of respondents to cultivate their rice in the same villages to ensure the similarity of natural conditions, infrastructure, and social context. a total of 230 rice farmers were interviewed, with 120 respondents having participated in agricultural extension training at least once in the past two years and the remaining 110 having never engaged in the training. each chosen commune had around 58 rice farmers, with 30 participants and 28 non-participants in the trainings. a structured questionnaire was designed to collect primary data from rice farmers, focusing on household demographics, farm characteristics, social networks, production costs, rice sales, and rice yield. the questionnaire was tested for relevance with the field situation before being officially administered to rice farmers. 4. empirical results and discussion 4.1. characteristics of trained and non-trained farmers the results showed significant differences in socio-economic characteristics between trained and non-trained farmers (table 2). regarding human capital, the trained farmers were generally older and tended to have a higher level of education compared to the non-trained farmers. however, the difference in years of schooling was not statistically significant. both groups had similar levels of experience in rice farming and the number of family labor members. in terms of farm size, the rice land area of trainees was significantly larger than that of non-trainees. the survey results also showed that a higher percentage of households in the trainee group used the internet compared to the non-trainee group. additionally, it was found that farmers in the trainee group were more likely to participate in agricultural cooperatives than those in the non-trainee group. the study also revealed that trained farmers lived closer to the commune people's committee compared to non-trained farmers. this suggests that trained asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 166-173 170 farmers, who have a more favorable location, may receive more visits from extension workers than nontrained farmers. in summary, there were significant differences in farm and household characteristics between the trainee and non-trainee groups, which suggests that the distribution of the sample across the two groups was not random. this could potentially lead to various outcomes among trained and non-trained farmers table 2. characteristics between trainees and non-trainees (t-test results). variable trainees non-trainees p-value age of head (year) 53.52 51.14 0.076 education of head (year of schooling) 7.94 7.3 0.123 farming experience (year) 27.92 26.24 0.257 family labor (number) 2.45 2.63 0.239 rice land area (ha) 1.89 1.54 0.061 internet use (dummy) 0.68 0.55 0.044 cooperative membership (dummy) 0.66 0.26 0.000 farms visited by extension worker (dummy) 0.95 0.51 0.000 distance to commune people’s committee (km) 1.65 2.47 0.000 4.2. probit model results . the primary objective of utilizing the probit model was to generate propensity scores, which were then used to match trainees and non-trainees with similar scores. this allowed for the creation of treated and control groups. the results of the probit model showed factors influencing the farmers’ decision to participate in the training course. specifically, five covariates were found to have a significant association with farmers' decisions to join the agricultural training courses (p-values < 0.05). these covariates included the age of the household head, internet usage, cooperative membership, visits from extension workers, and distance from the farm to the commune people's committee (table 3). these results were supported by several previous studies. wordofa and sassi (2017); schreinemachers et al. (2016), and kijima et al. (2012) reported that the age of the household head, experience in rice cultivation, membership in local organizations, and distance to town had a significant association with participation in trainings. on the contrary, kosim, aji, and hapsari (2021) stated that the age of farmers had no impact on engaging in the training. todo and takahashi (2013) indicated that years of schooling of the household head had a significant and positive impact on participation in training. it was found that other factors, such as the education and farming experience of the household head, family labor, and rice land size, had no remarkable association with participating in the agricultural extension training to sum up, the results revealed that some selection biases remained among farmers. this suggests that farmers’ participation in the training courses was not randomly assigned and influenced by their farm and household characteristics, which may lead to biased results of assessing the training impact on farm performance if the biases are not eliminated. table 3. probit results analysis for generating propensity scores. covariate coefficient std. err. z-value age of head 0.0317** 0.0161 1.97 education of head 0.0202 0.0328 0.62 farming experience -0.0184 0.0142 -1.29 family labor -0.0168 0.0879 -0.19 rice land area 0.0208 0.0682 0.31 internet use 0.4231** 0.2141 1.98 cooperative membership 0.7107*** 0.2095 3.39 farms visited by extension worker 1.4032*** 0.2871 4.89 distance from farm to commune people’s committee -0.1504** 0.0608 -2.47 constant -2.6763*** 0.7515 -3.56 lr chi2 (9) 91.82 prob > chi2 0.0000 pseudo r2 0.2884 log likelihood -113.29 note: ** and *** display significance levels at 0.05 and 0.01, respectively. 4.3. impact results of agricultural extension training as previously discussed, propensity scores generated from the probit model were used to match trained farmers with non-trained ones who have similar propensity scores. before interpreting the estimated results, it is crucial to assess the quality of the matching process to ensure its reliability. the first step involved examining the common support region, which includes only the households used in the matching process. figure 1 illustrates the distribution of propensity scores and the common support area. the data presented in figure 1 indicate a substantial overlap in the propensity scores between the treated and untreated groups. this suggests that the common support assumption was likely met, confirming the effectiveness of the matching process. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 166-173 171 figure 1. propensity score distributions and common support area. secondly, it is important to check the reduction of mean standardized bias before and after matching. the results in table 4 indicated that the mean standardized bias was reduced by approximately 5.8 and 5.6 after using the kernel and nearest neighbor matching methods. the pseudo r2 values were 0.012 and 0.013, and the test of the likelihood ratio for the joint regressors was not statistically significant. these findings suggest that although there was initially bias in the covariates between the trainee and non-trainee groups, this bias was effectively eliminated through the use of matching methods. therefore, the att can be accurately calculated (rosenbaum & rubin, 1985). table 4. psm quality indicators before and after matching. indicator before matching after matching by kernel after matching by neighbor pseudo r2 0.2884 0.012 0.013 p > chi2 0.0000 0.926 0.898 mean standardized bias 42.0 5.8 5.6 with regard to estimating the impact of agricultural extension training, results showed that participation in the training had a remarkable impact on increasing yield or productivity, gross margin, and profitability of rice farms. the mean difference value of rice productivity between the treatment and control groups was 138 and 147 kg/ha, matched by nearest neighbor and kernel methods, respectively (table 5). this result was in line with the studies of kosim et al. (2021); mgendi, mao, and qiao (2021); oduwole et al. (2022) and cheruiyot (2022). tambi (2019) reported that agricultural training might increase approximately 3% of crop production. wonde et al. (2022) revealed that the training also helps farmers in ethiopia increase yields of maize and wheat by 10% and 27%, respectively. singh, bharati, chandra, and dwivedi (2020) reported that after participating in scientific training, farmers in india increased 14.4%, 14%, and 13.5% of rice yield, wheat yield, and mustard yield, respectively. the explanation for higher productivity may be that farmers receiving the training have better knowledge of farming techniques and better management skills. training had a positive and significant association with the application of modern technology (tambi, 2019). rasanjali et al. (2021) stated that farmers might remarkably gain technological knowledge through participating in agricultural extension training. evidence from table 5 showed that trained farmers obtained 7.2% higher gross margin of rice production as compared to non-trained ones. this result is consistent with earlier studies of todo and takahashi (2013) and kijima et al. (2012). wordofa and sassi (2017) revealed that annual farm income generated by trainees was significantly higher than that of non-trainees in eastern ethiopia. schreinemachers et al. (2016) the trainings might increase the net household income of smallholder vegetable farmers in bangladesh by about 48%. davis et al. (2012) reported that farmer field school trainings help enhance the crop income of smallholder farmers in east africa. wonde et al. (2022) proved that wheat farmers who join agricultural training might increase approximately 20% of their income. trainees often generate higher farm income since they obtain better technical knowledge, farming skills, and adoption of advanced practices (khode et al., 2020). as a consequence, trained farmers achieve significantly higher profitability as compared to non-trained ones (table 5). in summary, the implication of these results may suggest that participation in agricultural extension training has a positive and significant impact on farm economic performances, such as productivity, gross margin, and profitability for rice growers in the mekong delta. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 166-173 172 table 5. the impact of cooperative channel use (psm results). outcome algorithms treated control att t-value productivity unmatched 8.17 8.06 0.108* 1.71 neighbor 8.17 8.03 0.138** 2.01 kernel 8.17 8.02 0.147** 2.12 gross margin unmatched 33.53 31.06 2.46*** 3.41 neighbor 33.53 31.27 2.26** 2.03 kernel 33.49 31.24 2.25** 2.16 profitability unmatched 1.75 1.57 0.18*** 3.41 neighbor 1.75 1.62 0.14** 2.03 kernel 1.75 1.61 0.15** 2.00 note: *, ** and *** display significance levels at 0.1, 0.05 and 0.01, respectively. 5. conclusion this study aimed to assess the effects of agricultural extension training on rice farmers' productivity, gross margin, and profitability in hau giang province located in vietnam’s mekong river delta. a case study involving 230 rice farmers was conducted, utilizing propensity score matching to address selection bias in the training program. the analysis indicated a selection bias between trainees and non-trainees, influenced by several factors such as the household head's age, internet usage, cooperative membership, visits from extension workers, and the farm's distance from the commune people's committee. by applying the propensity score matching method, the study effectively eliminated selection bias, ensuring more accurate impact estimates. the findings demonstrated that agricultural training programs provided by extension agencies had a significant positive effect on rice farm performance, enhancing productivity, gross margin, and profitability. this improvement can be attributed to farmers acquiring advanced technical knowledge and better farm management skills, enabling them to adopt more effective farming techniques. consequently, trained farmers were able to implement improved agricultural practices, leading to better overall farm outcomes. the findings of this study suggest that agricultural extension agencies should broaden agricultural training programs to include all farmers who have not previously participated in any training courses related to agricultural production and management. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the can tho university research ethics committee for social sciences and humanities, vietnam, has granted approval for this study on 12 september 2024 (ref. no. ctu-recsh24009). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references asayehegn, k., weldegebrial, g., & kaske, d. 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(2025). challenges in the development of cooperative-based closedloop refined palm oil agribusiness in indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1), 50–59. https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i1.5306 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 1 (2025): 50-59 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-6865-7381 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2237-245x mailto:luhutsihombing@usu.ac.id https://www.doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i1.5306 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 50-59 51 1. introduction there are two big problems in indonesia’s palm oil industry: independent farmers are being pushed to the edges of the upstream sector, and the downstream cooking oil market is very concentrated and oligopolistic, with vertical integration. these issues have resulted in limited bargaining power for small-scale farmers, who remain essential contributors to the national palm oil supply chain. palm oil agribusiness plays a crucial role in indonesia's rural economy, where independent farmers predominantly operate small-scale businesses with low market influence (bissonnette, 2016). recognizing these issues, the commission for the supervision of business competition in indonesia has recommended that the government ensure the steady availability of cooking oil across the supply chain, preventing palm oil from becoming a "resource curse" (sogen, 2023). in response, the ministry of cooperatives and smes, alongside the palm oil fund management agency (pofma) and the ptpn group, has launched a cooperative-based model for refined palm oil (rpo) production. this initiative aims to enhance farmers' bargaining positions, address domestic cooking oil demands, and promote an “outwardlooking industry” strategy (rahayu, nugroho, & yusuf, 2022). the cooperative-based rpo agribusiness model functions as a closed-loop system, integrating independent farmers through cooperatives that act as aggregators, processors, and marketers. this model, facilitated by pofma funding and technological support from ptpn group, provides independent farmers with a market guarantee and enables them to process fresh fruit bunches (ffb) into crude palm oil (cpo) in a sustainable and organized manner. however, several challenges hinder the successful development of this cooperative-based rpo agribusiness model. these include: (1) rpo production via fractionation and soft refining, which lacks the extensive processing steps of premium palm oil; (2) concerns regarding the quality and sustainability of ffb sourced from cooperatives, as opposed to large-scale plantations; (3) the significant capital required to adhere to closed-loop principles; (4) the public’s uncertain acceptance of rpo; (5) higher production costs relative to cpo, necessitating competitive pricing to remain viable against bulk cooking oils; and (6) the preparedness of cooperatives and ptpn as partners in the cpo processing chain. even though cooperative-based rpo agribusiness has the potential to give independent farmers more power and keep the cooking oil market stable, not much research has been done on the operational and strategic problems that come up when trying to make this model bigger. specifically, there is a lack of empirical insights into effective strategies for enhancing product quality, achieving economic viability, and fostering public acceptance. this study fills this gap by examining the planned approaches and strategies necessary for the successful implementation of cooperative-based rpo agribusiness in indonesia. through a mix of qualitative and analytical hierarchy methods (cipp and ahp), the research aims to look at the closed-loop rpo development process, pinpoint key success factors, and make suggestions for how independent farmers can compete in the larger palm oil market. 2. research methodology this study was conducted from march to may 2024 in the operational area of the rpo plant, which will be allocated by the government to the pujakesuma cooperative in the pagar merbau subdistrict, deli serdang regency, north sumatra. the indonesian president inaugurated this as the sole cooperative-based rpo facility operating in indonesia. the gathered data comprised both primary and secondary sources. primary data were acquired through indepth interviews, observations, focus group discussions (fgd), and closed-ended questionnaires. secondary data were acquired through desk and documentation investigations from multiple sources published by pertinent agencies. the context, input, process, and product (cipp) model (stufflebeam, 1983) served as the assessment instrument. this evaluation method is thought to be right for this study because it fits with the product development framework and gives a good picture of how the program or activity was carried out, from planning to meeting goals. the analytical hierarchy process (ahp) was subsequently employed to establish the prioritization of growth plans (saaty, 1990). setting up a hierarchy of elements, such as selection criteria and options, comparing these criteria and options pairwise, figuring out priorities by looking at how all the options rank, and checking for logical consistency are all parts of the process. the participants in the ahp analysis were the institutions involved in the closed-loop program. data were analyzed with super decisions software v2.8, with respondents' opinions considered consistent if the inconsistency value was below 0.1. the highest score found in the data analysis at both the factor and strategy levels led to the conclusion that the mitigation strategies should be put in order of importance. the conclusion for establishing the priorities of the mitigation strategies was derived from the highest score obtained from the analyzed data at both the factor and strategy levels. hierarchy was established by defining objectives, identifying the criteria for evaluation, and formulating the tactics to be executed. the identification of issues and measures for mitigation was founded on the regulation governing the management of cooperative-based rpo. 3. results and discussion 3.1. management of cooperative-based rpo according to presidential regulation no. 61 of 2015 on the organization and use of palm oil plantation funds, one of the purposes of the funds is for the downstream industry (nasution, handayani, bagio, agustiar, & sufriadi, 2022). one way to improve the independence of farmers is to develop a cooperative rpo plant. rpo is obtained through refining (fractionation and soft refinery), without bleaching and deodorization from cpo, and can be used as cooking oil, raw materials for food, food additives, consumed directly as additional intake of nutrition, or palm cooking oil fortificants and raw materials for nutraceuticals (purnama, setyaningsih, hambali, & taniwiryono, 2020). the management of rpo follows the development of the rpo plant, funding by pofma, and plant management by cooperation, guidance, and supervision (setiajiati, nurrochmat, van assen, & purwawangsa, 2024). the government is planning to build three rpo plants in sumatera utara: in the pagar merbau subdistrict, deli serdang regency, tualang subdistrict, langkat regency, and pulau rakyat subdistrict, asahan regency. the pofma funding enabled asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 50-59 52 the construction of the cooperative-based rpo plants, at an approximate cost of 15 billion indonesian rupiah. the plant with a daily capacity of 10 tons is to be granted to a cooperative that has fulfilled the criteria in accordance with the regulations and is managed under the supervision of the ministry of cooperatives and smes of indonesia and ptpn group (ptpn iii and indonesian oil palm research institute). there are three production models for cooperativebased rpo production: independent, toll processing, and cpo purchase (kusumadewi et al., 2024). as part of the independent model, a cooperative was in charge of getting fresh fruit bunches (ffb), processing them into cpo and then rpo, distributing and selling the goods. this is called closed-loop agribusiness. the toll-processing model is similar to that of the first independent model. however, third parties perform the conversion of ffb into cpo. there is a dependency on outsourcing; thus, it does not meet the requirements of closedloop principles. the cpo purchase model procures raw materials from external sources. this model does not meet the closed-loop principles and thus cannot be adopted because it does not fit the concept of improving the welfare of oil palm farmers. the independent model is the most ideal model to meet the closed-loop rpo agribusiness principles, as all the activities involved from farm gate to downstream are performed from, by, and for cooperatives. figure 1 illustrates the details of managing a cooperative-based rpo. figure 1. management of cooperative-based rpo. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 50-59 53 3.2. cooperative as cooking oil agribusiness subject a cooperative is a business entity comprising people or legal entities whose activities are based on the principle of togetherness as well as an economic movement based on the nature of kinship (budi, 2022). in the management of rpo plants, cooperatives should provide human resources, raw materials, technology, product standardization, and marketing strategies. the managing cooperative that received the grant operates in the plantation sector, with independent oil palm farmers as its members. a cooperative is required to meet the daily production of 50 – 60 tons of ffb to ensure the sustainability of the raw materials. the cooperative should have a minimum of 1000 hectares of palm oil plantations to meet the mean productivity of 1800 kg ffb monthly. cooperative members supplied all materials, and the cooperative, acting as an aggregator, supervised the quality. the cooperative created a memorandum of understanding on the use or utilization of ptpn iii and its subsidiaries within an area of at least 5000 m2 for a period of use of at least 30 years on the plant location. the cooperative also needs to prepare a maintenance budget in the form of utilities and other variable costs that meet the installed production capacity. revolving funds from the managing agency of revolving fund for small and medium enterprises (marfsme) can be used for expenses, as the regulation states that the government only provides grants in the form of rpo processing plants (mafira, mecca, & muluk, 2020). the rpo plant in merbau subdistrict, deli serdang, is planned to be managed and granted to the pujakesuma cooperative under the supervision of the ministry of cooperative and smes. this cooperative is engaged in the field of oil palm and was founded on march 23, 2020. it consisted of independent oil palm farmers who fulfilled the permits and requirements to obtain grants and management rights from the ministry. the characteristics of cooperatives, including land information, production, productivity, and socioeconomic characteristics, are presented in table 1. it can be concluded that the age and productivity of crops owned by independent farmers are sufficient to support the installed capacity of the granted rpo plant. it is hoped that collection and transportation to the processing site can run effectively and efficiently, as the distance between farmers and the processing site is not relatively large. this condition is favorable so that ffb can quickly reach the plant with no or limited physical damage. table 1. cooperative and members characteristics. general characteristics (n=511) description address hamlet vi, pagar merbau ii village certificate of residence no.780/2007/ix/2022 endorsement from law and human rights ministerial decree no.ahu-0001507.ah.01.38. year 2022 business license number (bln) 9.12e+12 average harvest area of palm oil (ha) 2.14±1,10 total harvest area (ha) 921±215 average crop age (years) 8±6.2 >3 to 10 years 433.2 (677) ->10 years 567.2 (347) average daily production (tonnes) 45±19.0 distance between farmers (km) socioeconomic characteristics of cooperative member 4.5±1.2 age (years) -male 42 ± 14.0 -female 35.1 ± 12.3 level of education (above high school) -male 211 (22%) -female 123 (25%) number of children (>3) 352 (69%) number of dependants (>3) 367 (72%) 3.3. achievement of the development of cooperative-based rpo the context, input, process, and product (cipp) evaluation model can describe the result of an activity from planning to the results obtained. this is related to the goals to be achieved, plan to be implemented, actions, and outcomes. stufflebeam (2015) portrayed the core values of the cipp model in figure 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 50-59 54 figure 2. core value of cipp evaluation model. the inauguration of rpo plant development as a pilot program for downstream oil palm through cooperation was done on march 14, 2024, by the indonesian president, joko widodo, which only differs a week from the issuance of the ministry of cooperative and smes regulations of indonesia no.5 2023 and march 7, 2024. it can be concluded that all administrative processes have been completed before the regulations are promulgated and have been acknowledged as a whole process. in addition, the development of rpo plants, including the costs incurred before the regulations were promulgated, has been recognized as part of the process of development. the development of the 15 billion-rupiah rpo plant in pagar merbau village, pagar merbau district, is funded by the pofma. in pujakesuma cooperative will manage its 10 tons of daily rpo capacity independently. the ptpn group owns the land where it is located, which is adjacent to their oil palm processing (opp) plant. the processing technology and raw materials, ffb and cpo, were provided by indonesian oil palm research institute. during this study, the toll processing model was still used, where the cooperative toll processes the ffb to ptpn group to be processed to cpo, as the cooperative does not yet have the capability. the main issue in this model is the yield level, as each party will have its own reasoning regarding the amount. the cooperative is expected to obtain a high yield level, while the other party will have their own refusal to refuse it. this is because the ffbs from cooperative members came from crops that might not have been precisely managed, unlike the ptpn group. the large yield margin expected and claimed by the processor will certainly affect the cooperative efficiency in obtaining the minimum unit cost of the rpo. it can be concluded that all involved parties contributed to the plant operation. however, one of the long-term issues remains the inability to fully operate from farm gate to downstream, yet independently, as planned in the model and regulations. 3.4. context evaluation this program is an initiative of various institutions coordinated by the ministry of cooperatives and smes. the cooperative, as an aggregator, will be the sole player from the farm gate to the downstream. independent farmers as cooperative members will receive prices in the form of final products, and the public has more options to meet cooking oil needs. collaboration with other parties is an option in this development model. it is a social process that involves doing certain things to help and understand each other in order to reach common goals (syarbiah, rianse, & fausayana, 2024). the documentation study found that the development plan has not been done comprehensively, which is seen from the issuance of regulations after the plant had been built. meanwhile, the involvement of various parties who have played a role and the toll processing model implied that the plan has been done holistically, as it involved the ptpn group on technology provision, as well as farmer groups and cooperatives as full implementers from farm gate to downstream, which is known as closed-loop agribusiness. the on-site formative evaluation revealed that the program’s early stages did not perform as anticipated. the cooperative currently lacks a pk plant, and it outsources its ffb to cpo processing to the ptpn group. meanwhile, it is known that rpo processing from ffb requires two units of plant: ffb to cpo processing plant and cpo to rpo processing plant. in this study, pofma only funded the development of cpo to rpo processing plants; thus, the closed-loop system is still dependent on other parties. the interview results showed that a very large investment is required to build ffb for cpo processing plants, which aligns with the capacity of the current rpo processing plant. the study also showed that the goals and priorities of the program have yet to fulfill the needs of the targeted parties. locke and latham (2013) expressed five basic aspects in determining goals/settings: specific, measurable, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 50-59 55 attainable/achievable, relevant, and time bound (locke & latham, 2013). first, the goal of the program has been detailed, focused, and reasoned, followed by the strategy to meet the purpose; second, the goal is in accordance with capability limits with concrete criteria to measure goal achievement; third, the industrial area has fulfilled weber theory and is quite realistic, where the site selection is based on the principles of cost minimalization, as it is located adjacent to the opp plant of the ptpn group, which is also close to the crop location of cooperative members and supported by ministries; fourth, the goal relevance is less realistic as there is a limitation in plant facilities and infrastructure, also the available crops; and fifth, the time bound to reach the goals is still limited due to the toll processing model. 3.5. input evaluation the minister of cooperative and smes regulations on the management of cooperative-based rpo stated that cooperatives must provide human resources, raw materials, technology, product standardization, and marketing strategy (petri et al., 2023). input evaluation using conformity assessment checklist based on the regulations indicated that 1) the raw materials used for rpo production must come from the palm oil of cooperative members, the independent farmers; 2) all members must deliver all ffb to cooperate to be processed to rpo; 3) human resources need to come from cooperative members; 4) cpo as raw materials of rpo must come from members’ ffb and processed independently by the cooperative using their own processing plant; 5) processing technology and packaging is done directly by the cooperative; 6) product standardization in accordance with existing regulations must be done by the cooperative; and 7) marketing strategy of the product must be done directly by the cooperative. the test results showed that there wasn’t enough information about the rspo certification of each farmer group or the existence of independent farmers’ plant cultivation units as ffb sources. the cooperative needs to make a detailed inventory of the members’ crop area, productivity, seed origin, and maintenance technique, especially on the use of fertilizers and chemical pesticides. one of the conditions for the smooth production of rpo is the sustainability of the ffb supply through timely harvest, amount, and quality, as it affects the free fatty acid content, which will eventually affect the rpo produced. table 2 presents the raw and supplementary materials used for the rpo production. table 2. raw and supplementary materials for rpo production. type of materials usage (tonnes/month) physical form raw materials -cpo 400 semi liquid fractionation plant -rbdpo 110 semi liquid supplementary materials -bleaching earth 6 liquid -phosphoric acid 0.2 liquid -water 216 liquid -salt as needed solid -other ingredients as needed solid -emulsifier as needed solid source: pujakesuma cooperative, north sumatera, 2022. 3.6. process evaluation in accordance with the regulations, the government has provided and will grant the cpo to the rpo processing plant to the cooperative. the cooperative can achieve rpo production through three models: independent, toll processing, and cpo purchase (khatiwada, palmén, & silveira, 2021). the processing involves fractionation and soft refining. fractionation, a process that separates refined bleached and deodorized palm oil (rbdpo) into liquid (olein) and solid (stearin) fractions, is performed to retain nutritional content, especially total carotene (ramli et al., 2020). adding things like phosphoric acid and naoh to this process makes it semi-continuous. at a certain temperature, it separates sap, free fatty acids, volatile compounds, and water residues. the process is followed by a continuous soft refinery to eliminate odors and retain oil stability (mba, dumont, & ngadi, 2015). the law of conservation of mass states that mass cannot be made or destroyed; thus, the total incoming materials are equal to the total product mass and waste mass. the mass balance principle indicates that the total raw materials are equal to the total product, total waste, and mass of stored materials (lópez-gómez, iguaz-gaínza, esnoz-nicuesa, & martínez-hernández, 2021). based on this, the mass of rpo would be equal to the “total product,” materials stored (total carotene and “other materials”), and total waste. thus, it can be concluded that the stored mass of rpo was larger than that of commercial cooking oil. figure 3 illustrates the fractionation and soft refinery process used in the production of refined palm oil (rpo). fractionation is a process that separates refined bleached and deodorized palm oil (rbdpo) into liquid (olein) and solid (stearin) fractions, which helps retain the nutritional content, particularly total carotene. a continuous soft refinery process follows, enhancing oil stability and minimizing odors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 50-59 56 figure 3. fractionation and refinery plant. since the rpo production method is a change to the oil refining process, it is important to make sure that harmful substances are kept to a minimum to protect consumers in the long term. hydrolyzed vegetable oil, such as palm cooking oil, contains 3-monochloropropane-1,2-diol ester (3-mcpde) and glycidyl ester (ge). there are dangerous contaminants formed during refining at high temperatures, as they are carcinogenic. ge is both carcinogenic and genotoxic, which means it damages dna (yung, lakshmanan, kumaresan, chu, & tham, 2023) and is found in digestion systems. many global health agencies have adjusted the tolerable daily intake (tdi) of 3-mcpde and ge in food products owing to their negative effects (nik azmi, tan, ang, & leong, 2023). the precursors that lead to the formation of these contaminants are chlorine-containing fertilizers, phosphoric acid during the degumming stage, herbicides, diacylglycerol (dag) in vehicles, a high level of bruises post-harvest, iron-containing tools, and groundwater (chew, abdul hamid, silvamany, & tiong, 2022). these must be mitigated before ffb or cpo enters the refining and fractionation stages. thus, the mitigation of 3-mcpde and ge formations on rpo should be performed early at the farm gate level. the post-harvest mitigation step shortens and optimizes the distance between the plant area and location of the cooperative (farm gate). there is more 3-mcpde in processed oil and vegetable fat, especially processed oil, than in unprocessed oil. this supports the idea that conditions are very important in creating 3-mcpde and its esterified form (mayayo, oey, van der fels-klerx, & van leeuwen, 2024). 3.7. product evaluation rpo is not a novel product in indonesia, as it has been widely produced in java at the household scale. one of the goals of rpo production is to reduce the refinement cost so that the sales price is cheaper than bulk or premium cooking oil, thus making it more affordable to the public (setiajiati et al., 2024). table 3 presents a comparison of physiochemical characteristics between regular and cooking oils and rpo. table 3. comparison of physico-chemistry characteristics of cooking oil and rpo. components regular cooking oil refined palm oil saturated fatty acid (% w/w) 1.lauric acid (c12:0) 0.17* 0.12**** 2.myristic acid (c14:0) 0.92** 0.61**** 4.palmitic acid (c16:0) 37.71* 34.05** 5.stearic acid (c19:0) 3.76* 2.87**** non-saturated fatty acid (% w/w) 1.oleic acid (c19:1) 42.56* 36.39** 2.palmitoleic acid (c16:1) 0.14* 0.09** 3.linoleic acid (c14:2) 13.59* 9.13** 5.linolenic acid (c18:3) 0,27* 0,26** carotenoids (mg/kg) 536** 753** peroxide value (meq/kg) 8.09** 3.98** vitamin a (iu) 43.6*** 875**** vitamin e (ppm) 323** 1.016**** squalene (mg/kg) 128** 378** source: * bonnie and choo (2000), ** ulberth and buchgraber (2000), *** rao and lokesh (2003), **** ping and gwendoline (2006), nebeling, forman, graubard, and snyder (1997), **** budiyanto, silsia, efendi, and janika (2010). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 50-59 57 palmitic and oleic acids are two compounds that represent the dominant saturated and non-saturated fatty acids found in palm oil and are discussed the most in terms of their roles in consumer health (nurhasanah & munarso, 2024). data from table 3 show that despite the health benefits and abundant nutrients, products are still lacking when compared with conventional cooking oil. this product does not undergo perfect bleaching; thus, it has higher contaminants that could affect the quality and safety of the final product, such as a tarter taste and smell. the variability of rpo quality could also affect the non-uniformity of the final product, which is a challenge for the industry that requires consistent products. the most interesting advantage of rpo is its lower peroxide value, which indicates that it can better preserve vitamin a content owing to photooxidation during distribution or storage (ayu, andarwulan, hariyadi, & purnomo, 2017). in addition to free-radical scavengers, some carotenoids are also known for their vitamin a activity, such as αcarotene, β-carotene, β-carotene, and β-cryptoxanthin (eze et al., 2021). rpo contains 500 ppm carotenoids, consisting of 37% α-carotene, 47% β-carotene, 1.5% lycopene, and 6.9% cis-α-carotene (van rooyen, esterhuyse, du toit, lochner, & engelbrecht, 2007). thus, rpo can also be used as a substitute for synthetic vitamin a as a fortifying agent. 3.8. indicative production cost of rpo the output and outcome determine the agribusiness unit’s performance. output performance is assessed by productivity level, while the income level accepted by producers is an indicator of outcome performance (bryceson & slaughter, 2010). thus, the outcome was an indicator of industrial success. one of the important conditions for reaching the optimum outcome level is high productivity, which should be followed by the economic efficiency of input use and output prices above the normal profit. table 4. indicative production cost of rpo under independent scheme (10 tonnes/day capacity). type of cost usage unit (tonnes) unit cost* (idr/unit) cost per 10 tonnes/day ffb 52.632 kg 2,600 136,843,200* supplementary materials 0.17 ton 3,500,000 595,000 fuels 220 liter 6,800 1,496,000 direct labour 80 working days 120,000 9,600,000 indirect cost** 2,750,000 total 151,284,200 table 4 presents the indicative production costs of refined palm oil (rpo) under an independent scheme with a daily production capacity of 10 tons. assuming a yield of 19%, approximately 52.632 kg of fresh fruit bunches (ffb) is required to produce 10 tons of crude palm oil (cpo). at the current farm-gate price of idr 2,600 per kg, the total cost for ffb amounts to idr 136,843,200. supplementary materials, fuel, and labor also contribute to the overall production costs, which culminate in an estimated cost price of idr 13,615 per liter. in an ideal cooperative-based rpo industry, the source of raw materials should be ffb from cooperative members. however, the operation utilized the second model of toll processing. in this model, ffb from cooperative members is processed at the partner company, the ptpn group. the partner receives the yield level and charges processing fees to the cooperative. the yield level of palm oil is critical for the unit cost components of rpo (gibon, de greyt, & kellens, 2007). it can be said that the current rpo production process has not met the criteria for closed-loop agribusiness, as there are some parts that are handed over to other parties. this is due to the absence of opp plants owned by cooperatives. according to the regulations, the government only granted the cooperative a plant that processed cpo into rpo. however, the processing of ffb for cpo still relies on other parties. this plant requires a large investment, which is close to the investment required for rpo plants. in addition, there will be a time gap between cpo storage at the partner’s plant and meeting the rpo plant capacity, where the partner will impose a storage fee. thus, the production cost in this scheme is much higher than in the first scheme, which affects the sales price and cooperative income level. the lack of competition for the product will affect marketing; thus, the government is required to subsidize the product to achieve the goals of the program. figure 4 outlines the hierarchy for creating a development strategy for the pro industry by setting the focus, criteria, and principles. with an inconsistency value of 0.05, the data showed that the top three strategies were to build the palm oil processing plant, get rspo certification for the plantation, and use more efficient processing technology, both technically and financially. the development of ffb processing in cpo plants is a priority, as it will position cooperatives as the sole downstream player. the second most important strategy is the rspo certification program for all independent oil palm agribusinesses, which is needed for the sustainability value of rpo. this will give a good impression of the safety of the final product, as it came from farms that are managed sustainably. the application of a more efficient processing technology, both technically and economically, is the third most important strategy. the production of the rpo aims to obtain the maximum profit with minimum cost. this is critical, especially when the price of ffb increases at the farmer level and farmers do not sell their products; the plant will experience a shortage of raw materials, which might lead to losses. another important strategy includes collaboration with commercial cooking oil factories, as they could use rpo as a substitute for synthetic vitamin a as a fortificant. this is in line with the study by solomons and orozco (2003) who reported the use of rpo as a substitute for imported vitamin a as a fortificant. note: *processed secondary data; **wages, electricity, indirect labor, machine maintenance, inventory maintenance, laboratory supplies, depreciation of machines and tools, supplies, plants, and vehicles. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 50-59 58 figure 4. the priority of development strategy of closed loop rpo agribusiness. 4. conclusion the pilot program for downstreaming independent palm oil aims to ensure fair pricing for farmers and affordable cooking oil for consumers. success depends on aligning plantation productivity with the rpo plant capacity, government subsidies to offset higher production costs, and continuous brand positioning. strategic actions include supporting cooperatives with processing plants, obtaining rspo certifications for independent plantations, and adopting efficient processing technologies. these measures are crucial for the program to effectively compete in the commercial palm oil market. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the universitas sumatera utara, indonesia has granted approval for this study on 3 february 2024 (ref. no. swuec10/12/ec/2024). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references ayu, d. f., andarwulan, n., hariyadi, p., & purnomo, e. h. 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(2025). determinants of climate change awareness among emerging commercial maize farmers in limpopo province, south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 598–607. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5732 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction climate change is a result of shifting precipitation patterns and increasing temperatures that will progressively pose challenges to farmers worldwide (ortiz-bobea, 2018). the season of precipitation is expected to start late, and there are also signs that precipitation will decline in many areas of southern africa (antle, homann-keetui, descheemaeker, masikati, & valdivia, 2018). werndl (2016) noted that there is climate change when there are different distributions for succeeding periods. africa is one of the continents of the world that is susceptible to climate change because the majority of its people’s livelihoods depend on rainfed agriculture (jayne, sitko, mason, & skole, 2018). it is asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 598-607 https://orcid.org/0009-0008-2646-4125 mailto:tshilpf@unisa.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3896-4502 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5732 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 598-607 599 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. predicted that climate change will reduce the production of the main crops in sub-saharan africa. overall, the impact of the changing climate on food security and the welfare of smallholder farmers is significant (nkonya, koo, kato, & johnson, 2018). mereu et al. (2018) noted that the effect of climate change needs to be well thought out during the planning of water storage and development of irrigation infrastructure to avoid inadequate water loadings. agriculture is a risky business, and it is the only enterprise that turns out to be riskier under changing climate conditions (mullins, zivin, cattaneo, paolantonio, & cavatassi, 2018). climate change awareness helps agricultural producers in planning farming activities and reducing the risks that are connected to agriculture (adebayo, onu, adebayo, & anyanwu, 2012). ansari, joshi, and raghuvanshi (2018) noted that climate change awareness shapes farmers' perceptions regarding climate change. acquah (2011) emphasised that the provision of free climate change awareness and information is key to address climate-related complications. being aware of climate change is one of the important aspects when building the resilience of society to handle climate change and thereby ensuring that strategies are sustainable (iturriza, hernantes, abdelgawad, & labaka, 2020). ansari et al. (2018) noted that climate change awareness shapes the perceptions of farmers regarding climate change. mulenga, wineman, and sitko (2017) and mengistu (2011) noted that climate change awareness and accessibility to information are prerequisites for adapting to the adverse impact of climate change. first and foremost, climate change awareness needs to be created among the people through mass media followed by individual communication procedures by qualified extension agents (sarkar & padaria, 2016). the objectives of the study were to analyze the levels of climate change awareness among emerging maize commercial farmers in the study area; the study also analyzed factors associated with climate change awareness among emerging commercial maize farmers in limpopo province, south africa. climate change is a threat to maize production and other field crops that depend on the availability of water (mulungu & ng’ombe, 2019). most of the studies were conducted regarding climate change awareness. however, they did not focus on the level of awareness among farmers. this study aims to address that gap by assessing the level of awareness among farmers. in this study, farmers were asked whether they were aware of climate change or not. the determinants were analyzed using binary logistic regression. the respondents also defined climate change to assess their level of awareness. the objective was analyzed using descriptive analysis. 2. literature review shrestha, kadel, shakya, nyachhyon, and mishra (2025) noted that climate change is a global phenomenon that harms socio-economic, ecological, and environmental sustainability. therefore, farmers and society at large must be aware of climate change. grechyna (2025) noted that experience in extreme weather events influences climate change awareness because individuals who are aware of global warming can spread the news. according to ricart, gandolfi, and castelletti (2025) knowledge of climate change helps assess the occurrence and severity of its impacts and also increases farmers’ ability to adapt and respond to climate change. climate change awareness is becoming increasingly important since the country is focusing on environmental management (nasir, khan, iqbal, & ahmad, 2025). humans’ actions may have a negative impact on the climate and environment. açıkalın, sarı, and erçetin (2024) highlighted that to fight climate change, which is caused by human activities, it is imperative to involve humans. the society’s behaviour change is important in addressing the impact of climate change (shrestha et al., 2025). due to a lack of knowledge, some farmers still burn crop residue on their farms. the nations that understand the issue of climate change shift their behaviour towards sustainability (hakimi, safi, & momand, 2024). the primary reason for raising awareness about climate change is to promote climate change adaptation and environmental management. 2.1. levels of climate change awareness among developing farmers levels of climate change awareness among farmers differ among developing countries. for instance, pakistan's level of climate change awareness is low compared to other developing countries, which may be due to insufficient campaigning on climate change among farmers (mustafa, alotaibi, & nayak, 2023). according to akano, modirwa, oluwasemire, and oladele (2023) farmers in the agroecological zones of southwest nigeria have a higher awareness level of climate change. kom, nethengwe, mpandeli, and chikoore (2022) reported that one-third of farmers in the vhembe district of south africa had a very high level of climate change knowledge, and 50% high level of knowledge. the knowledge assists the farmers in addressing the issue of climate change. ado, leshan, savadogo, bo, and shah (2019) also reported that the level of climate change awareness among the fulani farmers in niger was satisfactory, with 92% of the farmers. 2.2. factors associated with climate change awareness among developing farmers mustafa et al. (2023) reported that off-farm income has a good relationship with farmers’ climate change awareness. ricart, gandolfi, and castelletti (2023) highlighted that the majority of regression tests revealed that the farming experience had a positive association with climate change awareness. the extent to which farmers participate in community discussions of climate change in thailand significantly and positively affects farmers’ awareness of climate change (thamsuwan, 2024). farmer’s educational level, farming experience, and access to climate information were the factors that influenced climate change awareness in niger (ado et al., 2019). gudina and alemu (2024) reported that agro-climate consulting services have a positive impact on climate change awareness. recommendations for improvement in climate change awareness include targeted interventions to provide farmers with enhanced climate knowledge and support; extension services, collaborative efforts such as fostering collaboration between academics, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 598-607 600 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. extension services, and farmers are essential for sharing knowledge and developing appropriate adaptation strategies; and investment in information systems is necessary to build climate-resilient societies. 3. materials and methods 3.1. study area the study was carried out in the limpopo province (figure 1) of south africa. the province comprises five district municipalities: mopani, vhembe, capricorn, sekhukhune, and waterberg. the five district municipalities in the province are divided into twenty-two local municipalities. it is situated in the northern part of south africa and is named after the limpopo river. the province borders the north west, gauteng, and mpumalanga provinces and the countries of botswana, zimbabwe, and mozambique. rainfall in the province varies significantly, and this affects the rural population depending on agriculture (ecoafrica, 2016). limpopo province highlighted that there is an urgent need to address the challenges of climate change (limpopo provincial government, 2024). figure 1. map of limpopo province in south africa. source: https://municipalities.co.za/provinces/view/5/limpopo (accessed: 13 september 2024). 3.2. sample size and sampling technique the list of emerging commercial maize farmers was obtained from the department of agriculture of the limpopo province krejcie and morgan (1970). a formula was employed to determine a sample size of 288 for the study since the target population is finite at 354. table 1 indicates the population and sampling procedure. the population of the target farmers was 354. the random stratified sampling technique was used to select the samples for the respective districts, which constituted a total of 288. table 1. sampling procedure according to the districts in the province. destrict municipality number of emerging commercial maize farmers per district (a) sample per district proportionately. a x n n 1 vhembe 135 102 2 mopani 100 81 3 sekhukhune 83 70 4 waterberg 23 22 5 capricon 13 13 total n=354 n=288 source: data from the study. 3.3. ethics considerations the study obtained ethical approval from the human research ethics committee for the college of agriculture and environmental sciences at the university of south africa before the research was conducted. the participants were informed about the purpose of the study. the participants were treated as anonymous, and their responses were kept confidential. consent from participants was obtained before completing the questionnaires. interviews with participants were conducted by appointment at a convenient time and place for the farmers. data for the study will be asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 598-607 601 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. used solely for the purpose of the study. all emerging maize commercial farmers on the list obtained from the department of agriculture in the province were over 18 years of age and actively farming. 3.4. data collection and analysis the data in this study were collected from primary sources using a semi-structured questionnaire. the questions in the questionnaire were informed by the objectives of the study. the collected data from the fully completed questionnaires were captured in excel, cleaned, and transferred to the statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 28. the data for the study were analyzed using binary logistic regression. descriptive statistics were also used to summarize the results of the analyses. 3.5. the binary logistic model specification and estimation the logistic function is employed in logistic regression to model the dependent variable (ostovar, davari, & dzikuć, 2025). the dependent variable in this study was dichotomous, i.e., y = 0 or 1. the value of 1 represented farmers who were aware of climate change, and 0 represented farmers who were not aware of climate change. the study used binary logistic regression, which was introduced by cox, while different forms of logistic regression, such as multinomial and ordinal, are available (saran & nar, 2025). the assumptions of the binary logistic regression model are that; the outcome variable is binary, observations are independent, explanatory variables should not experience multicollinearity, and there should be a linear relationship between continuous predictors and the log-odds of the outcome, not a direct linear relationship with the outcome itself. the model is specified as: 𝑃(𝑌 = 1) = 𝑒𝛽𝑥/1 + 𝑒𝛽𝑥 (1) 𝑃(𝑌 = 0) = 1 − 𝑒𝛽𝑥/1 + 𝑒𝛽𝑥 = 1/1 + 𝑒𝛽𝑥 (2) p is the probability that y= 1. equation 1 presents the probability that farmers were aware of climate change, equation 2 presents the probability that farmers were not aware of climate change. both equations 1 and 2 present the result of the model. an alternative equation to present the binary logistic results is: 𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑡[𝜃(𝑋)] = 𝑙𝑜𝑔[𝜃(𝑋)/ 1 − 𝜃(𝑋)] = 𝑏𝑜+ 𝑏1𝑋1+ 𝑏2𝑋2+ 𝑏3𝑋3+ … … . . 𝑏𝑘𝑋𝑘 (3) where: θ = logit transformation. bo= is the constant. bi = regression coefficient. xi = independent variables. the model is estimated by maximum likelihood estimation, thus it finds the parameters that maximize the likelihood of observing the actual data. 𝑌𝑖 = 𝑏𝑜+ 𝑏1𝑋1+ 𝑏2𝑋2+ 𝑏3𝑋3+ … … . . 𝑏𝑘𝑋𝑘 (4) explanatory variables used in the study and their expected effect are presented in table 2. table 2. explanatory variables used for the analysis of the determinants of climate change awareness. independent variables variable label expected indicator x1 age of farmer positive x2 gender (male=1, female=0) positive x3 household size (number of people in the family) positive x4 marital status (married=1, if not married=0) positive x5 educational level (no formal education=1, primary education=2, secondary education without matric=3, matric=4, tertiary=5 positive x6 discussion of climate change in the farming organisation (yes=1, no=0) positive x7 extension officers visit the farm (yes=1, no=0) positive x8 considering maize as a staple food (yes=1, no=0) positive x9 believing that climate change has a negative impact (yes=1, no=0) positive x10 perception of temperature (increased temperature=1, decreased temperature=2, still the same=3) positive x11 perception on rainfall (increased rainfall=1, decreased rainfall=2, it rains late=3, none of above/ it rains normal=4) positive x12 drought experienced (yes=1, no=0) positive x13 maize farming experience (number of years in maize farming) positive x14 knew climate change from media (yes=1, no=0) positive 4. results and discussion 4.1. demographic characteristics of the farmers participated in study table 3 indicates that 56% of the participants were male, while 44% were female. in terms of age, 6% of the participants were between 18 and 35 years, 18% were between 36 and 50 years, 30% were between 51 and 60 years, and 46% were over 60 years of age. the results further indicate that 7% of the participants had fewer than three people in their households, 39% had household sizes of between three and five persons, 46% had a household size of six to ten asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 598-607 602 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. persons, and 8% of the farmers had more than ten people in their households. the results show that 71% of the farmers were married, and 29% were single. about 16% of the participants had no formal education, 25% had primary education, 26% had secondary education without matric, 16% had matriculated, and 17% of the participants had tertiary education. baiardi (2023) noted that demographic characteristics such as gender, age, and education are significant for understanding climate change, its impact, and the need for adaptation strategies. table 3. demographic characteristics of farmers (n=288). gender frequency percentage male 161 56 female 127 44 total 288 100 age group frequency percentage 1835 years 18 6 36-50 years 52 18 5160 years 87 30 >60 years 131 46 total 288 100 household size frequency percentage <3 21 7 3-5 112 39 6-10 132 46 >10 23 8 total 288 100 marital status frequency percentage married 204 71 single 84 29 total 288 100 educational level frequency percentage no formal education 46 16 primary education 72 25 secondary education without matric 75 26 matric 45 16 tertiary 50 17 total 288 100 4.2. socio-economic characteristics and perceptions of farmers the results in table 4 indicate that 78% of the participants were aware of climate change, whereas 22% were not yet aware of climate change. the knowledge about climate change awareness is growing compared to a decade ago. mandleni and anim (2011) reported that 57% of farmers were more aware of climate change while 43% were not aware at that time. the results in table 4 also indicate that 51% of the participants knew about climate change from the media, while 49% of the participants did not know about climate change from the media. according to rahimi (2020), climate change awareness can be successfully achieved if climate change becomes a social epidemic like the outbreak of a viral infection such as covid-19, and then the awareness can be achieved within a short space of time. the findings also indicate that 20% of the participants were discussing the issue of climate change in their farming cooperatives, whereas 80% were not. the agricultural extension service is a fundamental platform where farmers can receive information about climate change. table 4 indicates that 87% of the participants were receiving agricultural extension services from the government, while 13% were not receiving agricultural extension services. about 8% of the participants had one to three year(s)’ experience in maize production, 27% of the participants had four to ten years’ experience of maize farming, 32% of the participants had 11 to 20 years’ experience of maize farming, 15% of the participants had 21 to 30 years’ experience of maize production, while 18% of the participants had more than 30 years’ experience in maize farming activities. the study by sarkar and padaria (2016) noted that farmers with farming experience were expected to realise that there are changes in weather conditions. akano et al. (2023) reported that farming experience had a positive impact on the farmers’ understanding of climate change. almost all study participants (99.7%) considered maize a staple food, and only one participant (0.3%) did not; his staple food was sorghum. the result is consistent with the review by mulungu and ng’ombe (2019), who highlighted that maize is a staple food and provides food security in most countries of sub-saharan africa. table 4 indicates that 93% of the participants believed that climate change has a negative impact on farming activities, while 7% of the participants did not believe that climate change poses problems to the farming process. niles and mueller (2016) reported that farmers who believe that climate change is taking place and that it is caused by human behavior are expected to believe that temperature is increasing, while those who do not believe that climate change is happening and is caused by people's behavior will not believe that the temperature is rising. the results in table 4 indicate that 98% of the participants noticed that the temperature has increased nowadays, 1% of the participants had noticed that the temperature is still the same, and 1% of the participants noticed that the temperature has decreased. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 598-607 603 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. similarly, mengistu (2011) found that only less than 5% of the farmers did not see a slight change in temperature. sahu and mishra (2013) also reported that 98% of farmers who were aware of climate change noticed a rise in temperature as well. the results further indicate that 93% of the participants noticed that rainfall had decreased, 5% of the participants noticed an increase in rainfall, 1% of the participants observed that the rains come very late, and another 1% noticed that the rainfall remains the same as in the past decade. about 95% of the participants experienced drought in the last ten years, while 15% did not experience drought during that period. table 4. socio-economic characteristics and perceptions of farmers in the study area (n=288). climate change awareness frequency percentage yes 224 78 no 64 22 knew climate change from media frequency percentage yes 146 51 no 142 49 discuss climate change in the cooperatives frequency percentage yes 57 20 no 231 80 extension visits frequency percentage yes 250 87 no 38 13 maize farming experience (years) frequency percentage 1-3 year(s) 23 8 4-10 years 79 27 11-20 years 92 32 2130 years 43 15 more than 30 years 51 18 considering maize as a staple food frequency percentage yes 287 99.7 no 1 0.3 believing that climate change has a negative impact frequency percentage yes 267 93 no 21 7 perception of temperature frequency percentage increased temperature 283 90 still the same 4 1.4 decreased temperature 1 0.3 perception of rainfall frequency percentage decreased rainfall 268 93 increased rainfall 14 5 it rains late 3 1 still the same 3 1 drought experienced in the last ten years frequency percentage yes 273 95 no 15 5 source: data from the study. 4.3. level of climate change awareness among farmers participants of the study explained how they understood climate change. the explanations were grouped as high, moderate, and low understanding (awareness). criteria followed when rating the level of farmers’ awareness of climate change: • high level: providing definitions, causes, and impacts of climate change in their explanation. for instance, “unusual reactions of the climate caused by pollution, high population, and human behavior. currently, there is a shortage of rain, and temperatures are very high.” • moderate level: indicating the shifting of seasons, low rainfall, and high temperatures in their explanation. for instance, “the temperature is higher than we used to know. the rainy season has changed. there are a lot of pests.” • low level: confusing climate change with weather forecasts in their explanation. for instance: “there is a change in the weather and temperature. our area is hot.” the result in table 5 indicates that 10% of the participants had a high level of climate change awareness. the majority (66%) of the participants had a moderate understanding of climate change, while very few (2%) of the participants had a low level of understanding. acquah (2011) highlighted that farmers only define climate change as asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 598-607 604 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. changes in weather. sarkar and padaria (2016) noted that most community members do not have detailed information about climate change. table 5. rating the level of farmers’ awareness of climate change. level frequency percentage high 28 10 moderate 189 66 low 7 2 unaware of climate change 64 22 total 288 100 source: data from the study. 4.4. binary logistic analyses for factors influencing climate change awareness among the emerging commercial maize farmers the results in table 6 from the binary logistic regression model had four coefficients, which were statistically significant at the levels of 10%, 5%, and 1%. the significant variables were education, discussion of climate change in the farming organisation/cooperative, farmers’ belief that climate change has a negative impact on maize farming, and access to media. the results in table 6 indicate that the estimate for education is positive (.347) and statistically significant ((p<0.10)), which means that climate change awareness increases when the level of education improves, with other factors held constant. this might be because literate people are likely to access different sources of information where climate change is discussed. similarly, the study conducted in kathmandu valley, nepal, by shrestha et al. (2025) reported that education has a significant positive relationship with the level of climate change awareness. consistently, baiardi and morana (2021) found that education had a positive impact on the formation of environmental attitudes. filho, aina, dinis, purcell, and nagy (2023) highlighted that higher education is critical to the global effort to address climate change. indeed, climate change is an important factor in raising awareness about climate issues. the coefficient associated with the discussion of climate change in the farming organisation of the farmers had a positive (1.994) impact on climate change awareness and is statistically significant (p<0.05), indicating that the level of climate change awareness increased when farmers are frequently discussing the issue of climate change in their organisations. the reason might be that the discussion of climate change in the farmer organisation helps to enlighten the farmers about the impact, mitigating, and adaptation strategies of climate change. the coefficient associated with the farmers’ belief that climate change has a negative impact on farming positively (2.210) influences climate change awareness and is statistically significant (p<0.01). this indicates that when the number of farmers who believe that climate change has a negative impact on maize farming or farming at large increases, climate change awareness also increases. the reason might be that those who believe in the impact of climate change can spread the information to those who are unaware of climate change. the result supports (niles & mueller, 2016), who reported that 66% of the farmers in marlborough and 52% in hawke’s bay believed that climate change exists and is caused by the behaviour of human beings. according to hyland, jones, parkhill, barnes, and williams (2016) climate change awareness is independent from the belief that the alteration of climatic conditions negatively affects farming processes. access to media had a positive (5.026) and significant (p<0.01) influence on climate change awareness among farmers. this means that the increase in media usage in climate change awareness raises awareness among farmers. the reason might be that information from the media reaches a large number of people in different locations within a short period of time. supporting this finding, das and ghosh (2020) reported that mass media exposure had a positive and significant effect on the knowledge of farmers about climate change in india. nasir et al. (2025) reported that the media influences public awareness of climate change. the goodness of fit for the model is indicated in table 6, -2 log-likelihood value is 170.133. the value of the -2 log-likelihood in these results shows that the model fits the dataset. the value of chi-square is 134.978, which still indicates a better fit of the model to the dataset. the values of -2 log-likelihood and chi-square indicate a better fit (starkweather & moske, 2011). the value of cox & snell r square is .374, while nagelkerke r square is .573. the r-squared value still supports that the model fits the dataset. gelman, goodrich, gabry, and vehtari (2019) reported that the value for r square is acceptable when it is between 0 and 1. multicollinearity was tested to check the problem between independent variables. the multicollinearity test (table 7) indicates that all tolerance values are greater than 0.2, indicating that there was no multicollinearity problem between the independent variables. the multicollinearity test further shows that variance inflation factors are less than 10, confirming that no multicollinearity problem occurred among the independent variables used during data analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 598-607 605 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 6. results of binary logistic regression model on climate change awareness. independent variables coefficient s.e. sig. age -0.030 0.021 0.154 gender 0.561 0.412 0.174 household size 0.033 0.057 0.566 marital status -0.065 0.446 0.885 education 0.347 0.184 0.060* discussion of climate change in the organisation 1.994 0.788 0.011** extension visits 0.884 0.541 0.102 considering maize as staple food -14.736 40192.923 1.000 perception of temperature -0.403 1.290 0.755 perception of rainfall 0.787 0.687 0.252 drought experienced 1.418 1.405 313 maize farming experience 0.021 0.018 0.245 believe that climate change has a negative impact 2.210 0.790 0.005*** media 5.026 1.060 0.000*** constant 9.416 40192.923 1.000 number of observations 288 chi-square 134.978 -2 log likelihood 170.133a cox & snell r square 0.374 nagelkerke r square .573 note: significance: *** if p < 0.01; ** if p < 0.05; * if p < 0.10. source: data from the study. table 7. multicollinearity test for independent variables on climate change awareness analysis. variables collinearity statistics tolerance vif age 0.597 1.674 gender 0.857 1.168 household size 0.940 1.063 marital status 0.854 1.172 education 0.680 1.471 discussion of climate change in the organisation 0.917 1.090 extension visit 0.936 1.068 considering maize as staple food 0.932 1.073 belief that climate change has a negative impact 0.929 1.076 perception of temperature 0.801 1.248 perception of rainfall 0.837 1.195 drought experienced 0.786 1.272 maize farming experience 0.697 1.434 media 0.928 1.078 source: data from the study. 5. conclusion this study found that most farmers were aware of climate change. however, the level of understanding of climate change among farmers was not equal. some farmers had a high level of understanding of climate change, others had a moderate understanding, and others had a low understanding of climate change. the binary logistic regression model in spss has been employed to analyze the factors that influenced the awareness of climate change among farmers. the findings of the study have implications for education, the discussion of climate change, and the use of social media among farmers. the study recommends climate change education. the study also recommends the discussion of climate change among farmers because the discussions could enlighten the farmers about the impact, mitigation, and adaptation strategies of climate change. the recommendation is also directed at policymakers and the government to have a budget for farmers’ training workshops on climate change awareness. 5.1. future studies future studies need to focus on identifying the best climate change adaptation strategies to lessen the severity of climate change impacts on food production, especially among smallholder and emerging farmers. environmental management should also be given attention. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 598-607 606 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. funding: this study was conducted using internal resources provided by the university of south africa under the ‘academic qualification improvement programme’. no external funding was received. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the college of agriculture and environmental science, university of south africa, south africa has granted approval for this study on 1 november 2018 (ref. no.2018/caes/145). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references açıkalın, ş. n., sarı, e., & erçetin, ş. ş. 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(2016). on defining climate and climate change. the british journal for the philosophy of science, 67(2), 337–364. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axu048 views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.4236/as.2011.22020 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-016-0780-5 https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13030758 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.05.002 https://doi.org/10.3390/su17062611 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-023-02078-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-023-02078-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e41328 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apcbee.2013.05.022 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.2579 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.2579 https://doi.org/10.3390/su17072819 https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axu048 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 82 adoption of a leucaena-based cattle fattening system in the dompu district of nusa tenggara barat, indonesia muktasam aa dahlanuddinb ryan a putrac made sriasihd m. taufik fauzie i g.l. parta tanayaf penny j backg rebecca hicksonh william e pomroyi janet i reidj christopher w n andersonk stephen t morrisl a,e,ffaculty of agriculture, university of mataram, mataram, lombok, indonesia. b,c,dfaculty of animal science, university of mataram, mataram, lombok, indonesia. g,h,j,k,lschool of agriculture and environment, massey university, palmerston north, new zealand. ischool of veterinary sciences, massey university, palmerston north, new zealand.  muktasam03@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 6 january 2022 revised: 8 march 2022 accepted: 21 march 2022 published: 4 april 2022 keywords adoption diffusion cattle fattening leucaena farmers groups. cattle fattening using leucaena (leucaena leucocephala) as the source or the main component of the cattle’s diets is one of the proven innovations that can provide financial benefit to cattle farmers. the objective of this study is to evaluate the adoption of leucaena-based cattle fattening and identify the factors contributing to the adoption and diffusion of these improved practices. a mixed method approach was used to understand the adoption of leucaena and cattle management by local farmers who participated in the early stage (2017) and those who participated in the later stages of the project (2018– 2020). the study showed that male bali cattle (bos javanicus) that were fed leucaena-based diets grew two times faster than cattle fattened on grasses. this increased live weight gain and, subsequently, faster sales and increased profits. this may account for the rapid adoption and diffusion of leucaenabased cattle fattening in dompu through farmer-to-farmer learning, effective facilitation, demonstration trials, and linking farmers to end markets. to sustain the practice change, the project facilitated the development of an agribusiness support center (asc). sustaining the asc requires further efforts that include internalization of the project outcome into the local government program. contribution/originality: this paper contributes strategically to the field of adoption theories, studies, and practices. moreover, the lessons discussed in this paper may contribute to a better understanding of adoption and diffusion processes that assist in promoting the effective adoption and diffusion of innovations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 2 (2022): 82-90. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2074-9284 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9514-5082 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0874-498x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7497-8146 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4575-6701 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3663-9255 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8939-686x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9609-9599 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2578-1678 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6307-7361 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0935-1475 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3646-1138 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 82-90 83 doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4462 issn(p): 2304-1455/issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: muktasam a --dahlanuddin --ryan a putra --made sriasih --m. taufik fauzi --i g.l. parta tanaya --penny j back --rebecca hickson --william e pomroy --janet i reid --christopher w n anderson --stephen t morris (2022). adoption of a leucaena-based cattle fattening system in the dompu district of nusa tenggara barat, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2), 82-90. 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4462 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction cattle are important for the livelihoods of farmers in southeast asian countries as they enable the attainment of multiple necessities and services, such as income, draught power, fertilizer, savings (‘walking bank’) and social status. in 2018, indonesia produced 497,000 tons of beef (dglhs, 2018), which is about 73% of the national beef consumption of 684,000 tons (bps, 2018). to meet the domestic demand for beef, indonesia imported live cattle (almost 600,000 heads) from australia in 2018 (beef central, 2020) and 160,000 tons of frozen beef in 2017 also predominately from australia (bps, 2018). indonesia also imported 94,500 tons of buffalo meat from india in 2018 (agri xchange, 2019). nusa tenggara barat (ntb) province in eastern indonesia has the fourth largest sub-population of the 16.6 million indonesian cattle population (bps, 2018). realizing the significance of ntb’s contribution towards the national beef industry, ntb’s government launched a program called “bumi sejuta sapi” (land of a million cattle) in 2009. the program is now entering a new phase aiming to improve the efficiency and profitability of beef production along the entire value chain. currently, cattle are raised either in a free grazing system (on the native pastures, in native forests, on crop residues or roadsides) or kept in pens and fed using a cut and carry feeding system utilizing native grasses with little technology application. the innovative farming systems and capability for agribusiness (ifsca) activity, a collaboration between massey university (new zealand) and university of mataram (indonesia) funded by the ministry of foreign affairs and trade (new zealand) aims to increase farm income through improved integration of corn and cattle production in the dry areas of nusa tenggara barat (ntb) province, indonesia. the innovations in cattle production are based on previous research on cow–calf operations that match the reproduction cycle with available feed resources (alvarez, wilson, & preston, 1977; dahlanuddin, supriyadi, panjaitan, poppi, & quigley, 2016), the fattening of bulls using the tree legume leucaena (leucaena leucocephala) as described in dahlannudin et al. (2019) and other evidence on the roles of leucaena for beef production (buck, rolfe, lemin, & english, 2019; queensland government – department of agriculture and fisheries, 2015; radrizzani & nasca, 2014). through the ifsca project, farmers and farmer groups received support, such as leucaena seeds, pen construction, three-wheel vehicles and technical assistance. in the ifsca project areas, leucaena is planted on marginal land, some of which is on slopes (5o or greater) that is currently planted with maize. advantages of using marginal land include its nitrogen-fixing ability, long-term survival (up to 25 years), land stability (to avoid erosion), carbon sequestration ability and provision of firewood. the project supported farmer groups through the provision of funds (40%–50% of total costs) for the construction of drylots, and seeds for establishing leucaena nurseries. after three years of the project implementation, there is a need to understand and evaluate how farmers respond to the introduction of leucaena-based cattle fattening, identifying factors contributing to the adoption and diffusion of these improved practices. an important secondary aim is to collate and analyze production metrics that allow the comparison and evaluation of improvements, which will be important for future benchmarking. this information can be used to inform local governments what is needed to sustain the adoption of this practice that has led to the improvement of smallholders’ livelihoods. this paper discusses the adoption of the improved leucaena-based cattle fattening system in the dryland in nusa tenggara barat, indonesia. 2. materials and methods a mixed method approach was used, combining both quantitative and qualitative research methods (creswell, 2009). the quantitative research methods used involved measuring the weight gains of cattle and the use of leucaena for cattle fattening. this was integrated with survey methodology to understand the degree of use of leucaena and cattle management by local farmers who participated in the early stage of the project (2017) and those who participated in the later stages (2018–2020). qualitative methods were applied to understand the adoption and diffusion of improved innovations introduced through the project and the reasons for the adoption and non-adoption of all or part of the innovations. the dompu district in nusa tenggara barat was selected as the research location and consists of five regions where the project promoted and facilitated farmer groups and farmer learnings. these regions are woja subdistrict (region 1), pajo subdistrict (region 2), manggelewa – southern areas (region 3), manggelewa – northern areas (region 4), and kempo subdistrict (region 5). a detailed description of the regions is presented in the results section. data collection was conducted during the project from 2017 to 2020. various appropriate data collection instruments for quantitative and qualitative research, such as questionnaires, interviews and observation guides, were used. purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to understand the adoption and diffusion pathways and factors associated with the adoption rate. by the end of the project period (end of 2020), there were 25 farmer groups and more than 400 farmers who participated in the project. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 82-90 84 quantitative and qualitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, qualitative data transcriptions and trend/patterns analysis of responses. 3. results and discussion 3.1. description of participating farmers and districts the ifsca project started in 2016 with five initial farmer groups representing five different farming systems that can be found in the dompu region of sumbawa. the rainfall pattern in this district provides a suitable environment for cattle production, and the cattle population in the last 10 years has met local consumption requirements with surplus for export to other indonesian islands. a farmer group in indonesia is defined as a number of farmers who gather together to address their problems and achieve common goals. the farmer groups were selected based on the following criteria: (i) the cattle population is mostly based on the indigenous bali (bos javanicus) cattle that have a high reproductive rate and have adapted to the local feed resources and climatic conditions; (ii) dompu has a large area of grazing land which generates cattle for fattening, and (iii) dompu has been declared an area for corn cattle integration, indicating that cattle are one of the priority commodities for development. the five initial farmer groups (see figure 1) represent five specific regions and farming systems within the dompu region. region 1 is the woja subdistrict, which consists of dry, flat land and hence farmers are reluctant to plant leucaena along with corn, with all land utilized to plant corn in the wet season resulting in cattle not having sufficient feed or access to a grazing area during this time. farmers are mainly from local dompu ethnic groups. the mada lemba farmer group is located in this region. region 2 is the pajo subdistrict, which consists of a mix of rice paddy and forest area, with some horticulture and tobacco farming. farmers are a mix of the local dompu community and transmigrants from lombok. the kampus tani farmer group is located in this region. region 3 is the manggelewa south region, which consists of a mix of rice paddy and flat, dry, grazeable land. farmers in this region are a mix of local dompu and balinese ethnic groups and it is the location of the salaja mbaru farmer group. region 4 is the manggelewa north region, which consists of drylands and the predominant land use is for corn cropping together with some rice and often a second corn crop in the rice fields during the dry season. the farmers here are transmigrants from lombok. the tekad makmur farmer group is located here. region 5 is the kempo subdistrict, which is characterized by drylands with slopes ranging from 5o to more than 30o that are used for corn production. farmers involved in this area are mainly balinese farmers who have a history of extensive cattle farming systems. this is the location of bersama sambi maci farmer group. baseline data collected for the project highlighted that farmers traditionally let their cattle roam free (free range) over available grazing areas, while some farmers, especially the bali and lombok ethnic groups, have been used to keeping their cattle in stalls and feeding them with grass and fodder such as gamal (gliricidia sepium) and wild leucaena. prior to the ifsca project, farmers did not measure their cattle weight regularly to understand the importance of weight gain and to use this information to assist in making decisions to market cattle. a further 20 farmer groups were added to the project in 2017 and 2018 resulting in a total of 464 farmers that were directly monitored and evaluated. variables, such as cattle ownership, number of farmers involved in leucaena planting, stall establishment, feeding practices, and socioeconomic impacts, were measured regularly. collected data were tabulated and analyzed descriptively. figure 1. locations of the five initial farmer groups (1–5; yellow pins) and the subsequent 20 new groups (red balloons). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 82-90 85 3.2. adoption of leucaena-based cattle fattening by the first five farmer groups data collected from monitoring the first five farmer groups showed that three farmer groups adopted leucaenabased cattle fattening, namely the bersama sambi maci, mada lemba, and tekad makmur farmer groups, while the other two groups failed to adopt the drylot system, not only in planting leucaena, but also in fattening cattle. sociometric studies on the adoption and diffusion of leucaena-based cattle fattening highlighted that farmers around the three farmer groups that adopted the drylot system were interested in the innovation and started to follow by planting leucaena on their farms and constructing their own feeding pens. this type of farmer-to-farmer learning has been used by the project to facilitate other farmers and farmer groups that has led to a total of 25 farmer groups within the ifsca project. in addition to farmer-to-farmer learning, the diffusion of leucaena-based fattening has been significantly promoted through cross visits and demonstration trials. after three years in the project from a zero base (defined by no cattle fattening or use of cultivated leucaena), the number of farmers involved was 397 who were farming a total of 272 ha of leucaena (see table 2) and fattening 547 male cattle (see figure 6). 3.3. cattle population, ownership, and breeds the total cattle population in the five initial farmer groups by sex at start of the project (december 2016) is presented in figure 2. the greatest number of cattle was found in the bersama sambi maci farmer group, while the lowest was in the mada lemba farmer group. the lowest number of male cattle was found in the kampus tani farmer group. farmers living in areas close to the doro ncanga communal grazing area in dompu from the salaja mbaru and bersama sambi maci farmer groups owned more cattle—mostly female cattle—because their cattle has access to free grazing during the wet season and also, for some, their animals could stay at the grazing area all year round. these groups also owned more of the hissar cattle breed compared to the other farmer groups (see figure 5). figure 2. cattle population in the initial five farmer groups. figure 3. cattle number per household in the five initial farmer groups. cattle ownership in the five initial farmer groups range between two to 12 cattle per household (figure 3). consistent with the total cattle population, farmers belonging to the salaja mbaru, and bersama sambi maci farmer groups have more cattle compared to the tekad makmur, mada lemba and kampus tani farmer groups. these three farmer groups are far (70–80 km) from the doro ncanga communal grazing land and hence had little access to grazing land. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 82-90 86 within all the farmer groups, a large proportion of the cattle were owned by the farmers themselves (figure 4), but farmers within tekad makmur and kampus tani also reared other peoples’ cattle through a 50:50 profit-sharing agreement. figure 4. ownership status of cattle in the five initial farmer groups. figure 5. cattle breeds in the five initial farmer groups. data on the cattle breeds of the five initial farmer groups indicated that most of the cattle are bali cattle, while the rest consist of hissar and hissar x bali cross, brahman, angus, and simmental (see figure 5). 3.4. adoption of leucaena-based cattle fattening by all farmer groups across the regions table 1 reveals that 37.1% of farmers across the 25 farmer groups have adopted the leucaena-based fattening systems. regions 3, 4 and 5 are characterized by a higher rate of adoption of fattening activities. farmers in these regions own more land compared to the farmers in regions 1 and 2. the primary data collected for this project found that average land ownership of farmers in these three regions was approximately 1.81 ha compared to the remaining two regions that had fewer leucaena plantings and where average land ownership was 1.13 ha. table 1. number of farmers involved in leucaena-based cattle fattening (up to june 2020). the recently planted leucaena in categories 1 & 2 was in its first year and not ready for harvest. category region 1 region 2 region 3 region 4 region 5 total n % (1) recently planted leucaena on own land but no fattening 36.0 36.0 19.0 7.00 5.00 103.0 22.2 (2) fattening using wild leucaena 12.0 12.0 15.0 14.0 13.0 66.0 14.2 (3) fattening using wild leucaena and recently planted leucaena on own land 10.0 18.0 37.0 18.0 40.0 123.0 26.5 (4) fattening using farmers’ own leucaena 19.0 12.0 29.0 56.0 56.0 172.0 37.1 total number of farmers who have adopted recommended practices 77.0 78.0 100 95.0 114 464 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 82-90 87 table 1 also indicates that 40.7% of farmers (189 out of 464 farmers) across the regions have fattened their cattle using wild and recently planted leucaena, which indicates that they were familiar with the benefits of using leucaena as a feed in a cattle fattening system. again, a larger number of farmers in groups within regions 3, 4, and 5 have adopted leucaena-based fattening. data presented in table 2 indicates that the average number of leucaena trees planted per household in regions 3, 4 and 5 was between 391 and 984, which is enough to keep one to three cattle per household. based on the calculation of cattle’s dry matter intake requirement of 2.5% of live weight and estimated dry matter production of a leucaena tree of 1–1.5 kg per tree, with a harvest interval of 2–3 months, a male bali cattle weighing 250 kg will require around 300 leucaena trees if it is to be fed 100% leucaena. table 2. number of farmers planting leucaena and the area planted (up to june 2020). variables region 1 region 2 region 3 region 4 region 5 all number of farmers 64.0 74.0 113 85.0 61.0 397 total land area (ha) 102 140 182 258 207 889 total leucaena area (ha) 29.6 52.9 107.1 33.6 48.4 271.6 number of leucaena trees 35,252 16,850 44,200 83,605 44,289 224,196 average land ownership (ha/hh) 0.97 1.28 1.52 2.00 1.91 1.54 average leucaena area (ha/hh) 0.29 1.36 0.95 0.39 0.79 0.76 average number of trees (trees/hh) 551 228 391 984 726 576 as a result of having leucaena trees on their own land, the number of farmers using leucaena to fatten their cattle is increasing. figure 6 shows the number of cattle fattened and the average daily weight gain (adg) of male bali cattle in the five regions, which is very different compared to the baseline data in 2016 where no farmers fattened using leucaena. during the project, farmers monitored their cattle’s daily weight gain and understood the effect of leucaena feeding. consequently, the farmers’ bargaining position has now increased as they use cattle’s body weight to determine their cattle’s selling price. the growth rates of 0.4 kg/day are similar to that achieved in bali cattle fed leucaena reported previously (dahlanuddin, yanuarianto, poppi, mclennan, & quigley, 2014) and about twice that of what is reported for bali cattle fattened on grass alone (dahlanuddin, yulianto, priyanti, poppi, & quigley, 2012). figure 6. number of cattle fattening regions and average daily weight gain by region in 2018. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 82-90 88 3.5. changes of socioeconomic conditions due to adoption of leucaena-based cattle fattening data from focus group discussions conducted within the five regions confirmed changes in social and economic behavior. farmers are now moving from subsistent types of cattle production to commercialization. farmers are no longer keeping cattle just to fulfill their household needs for consumption and savings but are farming and keeping cattle because it is profitable. once they perceive that they can make sufficient profit from selling, they sell their cattle and then buy replacement cattle. the increasing roles of female farmers in feeding and looking after cattle is another change in communities’ social and economic behavior. previously, male farmers used to go out to gather leucaena or other feeds, but since planting leucaena on their own land, cutting and collecting feed and feeding the cattle are now tasks performed by female farmers. male farmers have more time to do other jobs, such as look after their crops or female cattle. leucaena-based cattle fattening has increased the number of cattle fattened and sold and hence farmers’ income. almost all groups in all regions claimed that their selling trend has increased, and household income has also increased. 4. discussion this study found steady adoption and diffusion of leucaena-based cattle fattening in the dompu region from 2016 to 2020. the project has facilitated learnings from the first five farmer groups to other groups as evidenced by the increasing number of farmers involved in the project. leucaena-based cattle fattening resulted in a higher cattle growth rate and promoted social and economic impacts on farming families and communities. factors contributing to the rapid adoption and diffusion in regions 4 and 5, for example, were that (1) the demonstration effects of leucaena farms where other farmers observed leucaena farms belonging to the bersama sambi maci farmer group led to the involvement of the pete jaya farmer group and other surrounding groups, such as the wadu jamba farmer group; (2) farmers have experience in fattening cattle, and certain ethic groups in particular, such as the balinese and those originating from lombok, have a long history of fattening cattle compared to the local dompu farmers. farmers in these regions are also not as busy with crops as those in rice producing areas (regions 1 and 2) and have a sufficient area of suitable land (mostly dry land on the slopes) for leucaena planting; (3) effective learning facilitated and supported by the project’s agribusiness support centre and the field officers followed the concepts of dale (1969), where people tend to learn more when they observe and then do it themselves. cross visits and trials facilitated during the project also followed this concept. a recent extension project following this principle has been reported where farmers learned more through observation and doing it themselves, and from other farmers who have more experience rather than field agents with limited or no experience (muktasam, reid, race, & perdana, 2019a; muktasam et al., 2019b; race, muktasam, & reid, 2019). these factors contributing to the rapid adoption and diffusion of leucaena-based cattle fattening are consistent with the concept of “innovation characteristics” where farmers tend to adopt innovations that have relative advantages, are compatible with local conditions and practices, are not complicated, and could be observed and tried (rogers, 1995). the “transformation of smallholder beef cattle production in vietnam” provides more supporting evidence that the rapid adoption of farm-grown forages and stall-feeding was due to (i) a convincing innovation – the use of farm-grown fodder – that provided immediate benefits to farmers and provided a vision for local stakeholders; (ii) a participatory, systems-oriented innovation process that emphasized capacity strengthening; (iii) a value chain approach that linked farmers and local traders to markets; (iv) the formation of a loosely structured coalition of local stakeholders that facilitated and managed the innovation process; and (v) technical support over a sufficiently long time period to allow innovation processes to become sustainable (werner, khanh, & duncan, 2013). moreover, the slow adoption and diffusion rates in regions 1 and 2 have been attributed to factors, such farmers being busy with corn and rice cropping activities; farmers are not experienced in fattening cattle; farmers do not want to use cropping land to plant leucaena; farmers see cattle as a way to save money rather than as a business venture; and farmers’ land area, topography and ownership structure result in reluctance to plant leucaena. findings reported by fujisaka (1994) and long, blok, & coninx (2016) support these findings, especially the social and socioeconomic factors, and stated: “six overlapping reasons why farmers do not adopt are that farmers do not face the problem targeted by the innovation, farmer practice is equal to or better than the innovation, the innovation does not work, extension fails, the innovation costs too much, and ‘social’ factors” (fujisaka, 1994). within the ifsca project, roles within the agribusiness support center (asc) were created and this was a substantial factor which influenced the fast adoption and diffusion of leucaena-based cattle fattening. the field officers employed by the asc possess extensive knowledge on the innovations and local communities and have a commitment to work with farmers. the establishment of every new farmer group beyond the first initial five groups has been, to some extent, due to the “demonstration effects” of the first five groups facilitated by the roles of the asc and their field officers. there are at least three strategies conducted to sustain the adoption and diffusion of this improved cattle fattening practice. the first is to continue to promote farmer-to-farmer learning through cross study visits as it was done at the initial stage of the ifsca project where farmers visited leucaena sites in the sumbawa district (dahlannudin et al., 2019). another way to promote farmer-to-farmer learning is to invite successful farmers to share their knowledge, skills and experiences through demonstrations. sharing the experiences and benefits from cattle fattening practices will not only create awareness among other farmers, it will also create interest and the intention to apply or continue applying good agricultural practices (tinh, hung, dzung, & trinh, 2019). facilitating field days is another option to promote effective farmer-to-farmer learning (muktasam et al., 2019b). these strategies have been carried out through the ifsca project. the formation of farmer groups and the use of the group approach in the project are the strategies taken to sustain learning among farmers that may lead to the adoption and diffusion of the innovations, even when the project has finished. this is in line with williams, wensveen, grünbühel, & puspadi (2022), who concluded that “a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 82-90 89 focus on measures to build capacity and empower farmers with information to adapt and respond to change, regardless of project activities, is a much more important goal and indicator of impact than measuring adoption”. the second strategy involves the inclusion of the outcomes of this project into government policies and programs. activities conducted through the project have influenced local government to adopt leucaena-based cattle fattening. examples include a government-funded project in dompu for a 200 ha leucaena plantation to be used for cattle fattening and a provincial government plan to plant 5000 ha of leucaena to improve beef production. further capacitybuilding activities for the local government’s technical and extension staff are also needed in both cattle management and leucaena plantation management (nulik & hau, 2019). the third strategy to sustain the adoption of this practice is to promote public–private partnerships. farmers can meet with people in the meat processing industry, hotels and restaurants, and can establish partnerships. by linking farmers with markets, they then have a clear market for their products. farmers may also then have clear ideas about requirements regarding production quantity, quality, time and price well in advance that help to make good production and marketing decisions. farmers claim that leucaena-fed cattle have an attractive appearance (hence easy to sell) and the meat has a distinctive taste. there is a challenge here, however, to upgrade existing meat processing practices from selling hot beef in wet markets to producing high-quality beef that can be sold in high-end markets. the ifsca has been facilitating a beef processor to improve the processing system (pre-slaughter, chilling, aging, packaging) and then links this abattoir to hotels and steak houses and sells direct to mediumto high-end household consumers. challenges to sustaining the project impact have been discussed by ash, dahlanuddin, & sutaryono (2017). some of the challenges are the subsistence farming practices where farmers only rear cattle for savings and emergency use and are therefore not business-oriented. the lack of consumer appreciation of meat quality means no significant price incentive for the high-quality cattle fattened with leucaena, and this may discourage further expansion of the leucaenabased cattle fattening system. the project has therefore started to promote the high-quality beef produced by this system to create a niche market and develop a premium local beef supply chain. the findings presented in this paper may address the question “why haven’t silvopastoral systems expanded in brazil?” (márquez, ovani, & abdalla, 2021). 5. conclusions leucaena-based cattle fattening has been adopted widely in the five regions of dompu, west nusa tenggara province, since it was introduced in 2016. almost all farmers participating in the ifsca project have adopted some or all of the innovations introduced by the project. the high rate of adoption has been due to the immediate benefits of feeding cattle with leucaena, which include significant improvements in cattle conditions and cattle growth rates. this has resulted in increased cattle prices and farm incomes. sustaining the adoption of existing leucaena-based cattle fattening can be encouraged through local government pathways, utilizing farmer-to-farmer learning and policy advocacy. keeping and extending the existing critical roles of the agribusiness support centre developed by the current project will lead to further developments in the cattle value chain and agribusiness sector. the size of the areas selected for the project and time required for the development and collection of data on adoption is a limitation of the study. further research needs to include economic analysis, including the benefit–cost ratio and environmental impacts of land use options, comparing maize monoculture, leucaena monoculture for cattle fattening, and maize–leucaena integration for cattle fattening. additionally, provision of more detailed production and financial metrics will provide the means to reach greater numbers of farmers who may consider adopting these practices. funding: this research is supported by the new zealand ministry of foreign affairs and trade (mfat) (grant number: a12069-a02). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. acknowledgement: this study is part of the innovative farming systems and capability for agribusiness (ifsca) project, which is a collaboration between the university of mataram (indonesia) and massey university (new zealand). views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use 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(2013). transformation of smallholder beef cattle production in vietnam. international journal of agricultural sustainability, 11(4), 363-381.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14735903.2013.779074. williams, l. j., wensveen, v. m., grünbühel, c. m., & puspadi, k. (2022). adoption as adaptation: household decision making and changing rural livelihoods in lombok, indonesia. journal of rural studies, 89, 328-336.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2021.12.006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/an13276 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 243 factors affecting the acceptance of dairy farming standards by modernized farmers for agricultural extension in thailand narawut rapankuma rueangrit hanmontreeb chanoknan srilapatc kanjanaporn niljindad phornphat chaisombute a,b,c,edepartment of agribusiness administration, faculty of agricultural technology, sakon nakhon rajabhat university, sakon nakhon, thailand. ddepartment of marketing and logistics management, faculty of management sciences, sakon nakhon rajabhat university, sakon nakhon, thailand.  phornphat@snru.ac.th (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 5 july 2022 revised: 30 september 2022 accepted: 14 october 2022 published: 28 october 2022 keywords agricultural extension dairy cows dairy farming standards farmers’ acceptance milk production thailand. milk production in compliance with dairy farm standards (dfs) assists farmers in improving the quality of local raw milk, facilitating more efficient farm management, and potentially increasing raw milk prices. in addition, it helps consumers to consume milk that is safe for their health. this study aimed to investigate the factors affecting the acceptance of dfs among modernized farmers in sakon nakhon and udon thani, thailand. a total of 201 respondents were selected using the cluster sampling method. a structured questionnaire was utilized to collect data. the data were analyzed using binary logistic regression with 12 variables: age, education, experience in dairy farming, types of labor, size of dairy farming land, farm size, amount of raw milk yields, processing cost of raw milk, the profitability of raw milk production, access to and use of information on dairy farming, number of attended dairy farming workshops, and farmer satisfaction towards their dairy cooperative administration. the results indicate that modernized dairy farmers with more experience, medium-sized farms (21-100 dairy cows/farm), combined family and hired labor, and higher raw milk yield were more willing to accept dfs. this result is relevant in the context of agricultural extension according to government policies to raise the quality of raw milk in thailand. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the existing literature by defining the role of government agricultural extension in modernized farmers' acceptance and implementation of dairy farming standards to raise the quality of raw milk. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4641 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: narawut rapankum --rueangrit hanmontree --chanoknan srilapat --kanjanaporn niljinda --phornphat chaisombut (2022). factors affecting the acceptance of dairy farming standards by modernized farmers for agricultural extension in thailand. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4), 243-249. 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4641 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 4 (2022): 243-249. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8438-0009 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6126-7716 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2498-7909 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7083-0868 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8645-7922 mailto:phornphat@snru.ac.th http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 243-249 244 1. introduction dairy products are an important segment of the world’s livestock economy. the range of dairy products varies from region to region and among countries in the same region, depending on dietary habits, the milk processing technologies available, market demand, and social and cultural situations. over the past decade, developing countries have expanded their shares of milk production worldwide. smallholder farmers are an essential part of milk production in developing countries, and milk production contributes to the livelihood of households, food security, and nutrition (food & agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), 2018). in thailand, the government has promoted dairy cattle farming for farmers to minimize the need to import milk and dairy products and to substitute for the cultivation of crops with production and marketing difficulties. in 2018, thailand had 17,925 dairy farms and a total dairy cow population of 623,427. more than half, 56.38 percent, were raised in the north of the country, while 32.04 percent were raised in the northeast. sakon nakhon and udon thani, in the northeast of thailand, accounted for approximately 25.28 percent of the dairy cows in the northeastern farms. there were 151 farms with 3,746 dairy cows in sakon nakhon and 184 farms with 6,199 dairy cows in udon thani (department of livestock development, 2019). government policies have been implemented to advance the thai dairy industry globally by improving production quality, developing raw milk, transferring innovations to farmers, establishing new market channels domestically and internationally, and educating farmers to enhance the standing of thai raw milk quality. in addition, the government encourages dairy farmers to become “smart farmers” to increase the efficiency of raw milk production, targeting an increase in small dairy farmers’ incomes to at least 180,000 baht per person per year. moreover, to strengthen farmers’ stability and sustainability in their occupation, the government focuses on high-efficiency farming in which technology is applied to control production (dairy farming promotion organization of thailand, 2017). the thai dairy industry plays a role in assisting farmers to generate income as well as in developing improvements in the commercial processing of dairy products to create value for the domestic market and increase export value. the primary dairy export markets are in neighboring nations such as cambodia, the philippines, and singapore (food intelligence center, 2016). dairy processing gives small dairy producers a higher cash income than raw milk sales. moreover, it provides better opportunities to access regional and urban markets. processed milk helps to manage seasonal fluctuations in the milk supply. transforming raw milk into processed milk and its products can benefit communities by creating off-farm jobs in milk collection, transportation, processing, and marketing (food & agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), 2018). in terms of raw milk production in thailand, farmers encounter a quality issue of producing milk with low milk mass and excessive microorganisms and somatic cells; this has affected their competitiveness in both global and domestic markets. the absence of quality standards impedes industry growth (godfrey et al., 2019). therefore, the thai government emphasizes the quality of raw milk production by promoting production standards for modernized dairy farmers. the farmers are encouraged to have standardized and quality milk processing procedures in place, from farming to raw milk products’ transportation and manufacturing. the standards cover farm components, dairy cow feed, water, farm management, animal health, animal welfare, the environment, raw milk production, and data recording. the government also motivates dairy farmers to adhere to the standards by increasing the price of raw milk based on its quality. however, raw milk production in thailand faces the same problem as in some countries in east africa, such as kenya; in raw milk production, farmers still have negative beliefs and lack knowledge about the effects of antibiotic residues in animals that affect humans. this is reflected in the farmers’ lack of acceptance and compliance with milk production standards. therefore, government agencies, the private sector, and supply chain operators must collaborate and encourage farmers to achieve their goals by rewarding them, such as by compensating them based on milk quality (nyokabi et al., 2021). supporting activities for farmers is necessary for the intensive development of dairy farms (bazarragchaa, luvsandorj, & qian, 2015). producing milk according to dairy farm standards will help farmers improve the quality of local raw milk and the efficiency of their farm management, as discussed by mukson, isbandi, santosa, sudjadmogo, and setiadi (2012). environmental factors significantly affect milk production, and suleiman, mdegela, and karimuribo (2016) indicated that appropriate farm hygiene practices play a significant role in high-quality raw milk yields. suriya (2015) also claimed that standardized dairy farms could raise raw milk prices. although the thai government has encouraged dairy farmers to raise farm standards, they fail to register as they perceive the process to be complicated, with high investment costs and a lack of data on agricultural standards. in addition, personal factors, such as age and education, and production factors, such as labor, area, productivity, cost, profitability, and access to information, training, and workshops, influence farmers’ decision-making concerning the acceptance of dfs. furthermore, farmers’ satisfaction with cooperative management tends to lead to higher levels of compliance with dfs. research on dfs in thailand has mainly concerned farmers’ attitudes toward farm management standards, farmers’ readiness to adopt farming standards, dairy farmers’ need for extension services to achieve good dairy farming practices, factors influencing dairy farm improvement, and farm management under farm standards. however, there is a lack of documented research on factors affecting farmers’ acceptance of dairy farming standards. therefore, this research investigates factors affecting the acceptance of dfs by dairy farmers. it will then formulate recommendations and ideas to promote modern dairy farming among dairy farmers, which will help improve the quality of raw milk produced in thailand. 2. literature review dairy farming standards (dfs) specify the criteria for good agricultural practices of dairy cattle farms, covering everything from dairy cattle rearing on farms to the transportation of raw milk to collecting centers or processing asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 243-249 245 plants. the objective is to produce healthy dairy cows that produce milk that is safe and suitable for human consumption or further processing without impacting the environment (national bureau of agricultural commodity and food standards, 2009). the production of raw milk in compliance with dfs enables farmers to sell raw milk at higher prices, reduce raw milk production costs, and improve raw milk production efficiency and quality to support competition with trade liberalization (suriya, 2015). each farmer is uniquely equipped to raise farm standards, which are influenced by factors such as milk production and the number of dairy cows raised (eddy, roessali, & marzuki, 2012). according to kariyasa and dewi (2013), yield level is crucial to farmers’ decisions to adopt technology that increases farm productivity. in addition, factors such as age, education level, and farm size influence farmers’ behavior and decision-making to switch farm production patterns, as well as their utilization of farm management tools (alexopoulos, koutsouris, & tzouramani, 2010; corner-thomas et al., 2015; mittal & mehar, 2016). shimahata, farghali, and fujii (2020) found a statistically significant positive correlation between farm size, productivity, and gross margin and farmers’ intention to expand their businesses in the future to increase their farm income. the correlation between farm size, productivity, and gross margin was also statistically significant (datta, haider, & ghosh, 2019). farmers’ knowledge, experience, and income level are crucial factors influencing their attitudes toward and adoption of agricultural technology (dehinenet, mekonnen, kidoido, ashenafi, & bleich, 2014; shams & fard, 2017). rodthong, kuwornu, datta, anal, and tsusaka (2020) and bui and nguyen (2021) also indicated that farm labor and the number of training sessions influenced the farmers’ adoption of new practices on their farms. in addition, land holding size is a factor that affects farm income (sharma, bangarva, & sharma, 2016). this factor is significant if a farmer allocates land use to maximize profit. farmers’ satisfaction with dairy cooperatives is a factor that helps farmers comprehend dfs and increases their adoption. ritter, adams, kelton, and barkema (2019) discovered a positive relationship between farmers’ satisfaction and veterinary recommendations. this suggests government officials should provide information to farmers. nevertheless, the key to a successful cooperative is performing functions and providing services to members’ satisfaction (liebrand & ling, 2014). 3. materials and methods 3.1. method of analysis based on the previous research and findings, farmers’ acceptance of dfs is influenced by age, education, experience in dairy farming, types of labor, size of dairy farming land, farm size, amount of raw milk yields, processing cost of raw milk, the profitability of raw milk production, access and use of information on dairy farming, number of attended dairy farming workshops, and farmer satisfaction with their dairy cooperative’s administration. these variables were included in the research model and are shown in table 1. table 1. definitions of independent variables in the research model. variables definitions symbols ß1: age of farm owner age (years) age ß2: education of farm owner years of education (years) educ ß3: experience in dairy farming experience (years) exper ß4: labor force for dairy farming 1 = household labor 0 = household labor and hired labor labor ß5: size of dairy farming land land size (square meters) land ß6: farm size 1 = medium size (21-100 dairy cows/farm) 0 = small size (not more than 20 dairy cows/farm) farm_s ß7: produced raw milk amount of produced raw milk (kg/day) raw_m ß8: raw milk production cost cost (baht/kg) cost ß9: profit from raw milk production profit (baht/kg) profit ß10: access to information on dairy farming 1 = consistent access (≥ once a month) 0 = inconsistent access news ß11: number of training and workshops on dairy farming participation in training and workshops (number of training and workshops) train ß12: dairy farmers’ satisfaction with the administration of the dairy cooperative they join 1 = very satisfied to extremely satisfied 0 = satisfied to not at all satisfied satis descriptive statistics analysis, including averages, frequencies, and percentages, was used to describe farmers’ profiles, while binary logistic regression analysis (vanichbuncha, 2012) was employed to determine which factors affected dairy farmers’ acceptance of dfs. the study model’s formula is represented as the following equation: y = ß0 + ß1age + ß2educ + ß3exper + ß4labor +ß5land + ß6farm_s + ß7 raw_m +ß8cost + ß9profit + ß10news + ß11trai n + ß12satis where y refers to dairy farmers accepting and following the dfs; when y = 1 farmers accept the dfs (achieve the dairy farming standard certification); y = 0 farmers refuse the dfs (fail the dairy farming standard certification). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 243-249 246 3.2. the sample and data collection this study was conducted in sakon nakhon and udon thani, thailand. 151 sakon nakhon dairy farmers who were members of phu phan sakon nakhon dairy cooperative limited and waritchaphum dairy cooperative limited, as well as 184 udon thani dairy farmers who were members of udon thani dairy cooperative limited, srithat dairy cooperative limited, and thung fon dairy cooperative limited, comprised the study population (department of livestock development, 2016). cluster sampling in accordance with the cooperatives the farmers had joined was used as the sampling method. the cooperatives with the most members in each province were selected. 113 members of waritchaphum dairy cooperative limited and 88 members of srithat dairy cooperative limited in sakon nakhon and udon thani were selected as the sample in this study. the total number of participants was 201. a structured questionnaire was utilized for data collection between october 2017 and september 2018. 4. results and discussion 4.1. descriptive results table 2 shows that 82.30% of dairy farms in sakon nakhon were dfs-certified. most farms were small-sized, with an area of 10,176 square meters and an average of 15 dairy cows per farm. 13.83 kg of raw milk was produced per cow. this was higher than the country’s average raw milk yield of 11 .60 kg per cow in 2017 (office of agricultural economics, 2018). the farmers had an average accounting cost of 10 .21 baht/kg. they earned an accounting profit of 7.87 baht/kg. the accounting cost was low, and the selling price was higher than the country’s average, where the average costs of raw milk production and the raw milk price were 14.31 baht/kg and 18.01 baht/kg, respectively. most of the costs were associated with concentrated feed, roughage, and labor costs. this is in agreement with the findings of mohamed, abd latif, and chizari (2014), saleh et al. (2016), and odero-waitituh (2017), who stated that animal feed comprised the largest proportion of milk production costs. non-certified farmers were required to spend 219,495.58 baht on average to renovate their houses to meet the standards. regarding production in udon thani, 28.41% of dairy farms in udon thani were dfs-certified. most of the farms were medium-sized, with an area of 20,000 square meters and an average of 21 dairy cows per farm. 11.62 kg of raw milk was produced per cow, which was higher than the country’s average raw milk yield. the farmers had an average accounting cost of 10.94 baht/kg, earning an accounting profit of 7.29 baht/kg. the accounting cost was low, while the selling price was higher than the country’s average. non-certified farmers were required to spend 262,465.75 baht on average to renovate their houses to meet the standards. table 2. profile of dairy farmer and production information . items provinces sakon nakhon udon thani certification of farming standards (no. of farms/%) 93 / 82.301 25 / 28.409 ages (year) 49.94 47.33 formal education (%) primary school 62.88 54.55 secondary school 27.43 30.68 high school or more 9.69 14.78 experience in dairy farming (years) 16.08 12.86 size of farm area (square meters) 10,176 20,000 farm size (%) small-sized 76.10 39.78 medium-sized 23.90 60.22 production of raw milk per day (kilogram per cow) 13.83 11.62 price of raw milk (baht per kilogram) 18.08 18.23 accounting cost of raw milk (baht per kilogram) 10.21 10.94 accounting profit of raw milk (baht per kilogram) 7.87 7.29 average capital required by farmers to renovate their houses to standard (baht) 219,495 262,465 4.2 .factors affecting the acceptance of dfs the statistics were analyzed to determine whether independent variables correlated with the dependent variables. the chi-square value of 52.6 (sig = 0.00) indicated that at least one factor affected the dairy farmers’ acceptance of dfs (see table 3). the correlation determined by the value of pseudo r2 and the nagelkerke r2 of 0.31 demonstrated that the independent variables in the formula predicted the possibility of the farmers’ acceptance of dfs at 31.1%, and the values of cox & snell r2 = 0.23 indicated that the independent variables were used to define the possibility of the farmers’ acceptance of dfs at 23% (see table 4). hosmer and lemeshow tests were used to determine the goodness of fit formula, and the critical value of chi-square distribution 2 )8,05.0( = 21.0 that 2 )( lh− equaled 4.40, which was lower than 21.02, and the significance value was 0.82, which was higher than 0.05. these asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 243-249 247 values indicated that the formula fit to show the correlations and the formula accuracy that was analyzed using the classification table showed a prediction accuracy percentage of 79.66. table 3. omnibus tests of model coefficients. tests chi-square df sig. hosmer and lemeshow test 4.401 8 0.819 omnibus test of model coefficients step 52.662 12 0.000 block 52.662 12 0.000 model 52.662 12 0.000 table 4. model summary. step -2 log likelihood cox & snell r square nagelkerke r square 1 219.857a 0.230 0.311 note: a estimation terminated at iteration number 5 because parameter estimates changed by less than .001. according to the findings, the factors that significantly affected farmers' acceptance of dfs included their experience in dairy farming, labor type, farm size, and amount of raw milk produced, as demonstrated in table 5 . table 5. logit model analysis results . variables b s.e. wald df sig. exp(b) 95% c.i.for exp(b) lower upper age -0.010 0.021 0.216 1 0.642 0.990 0.951 1.032 educ 0.027 0.054 0.251 1 0.617 1.027 0.925 1.141 exper** 0.085 0.025 11.657 1 0.001 1.089 1.037 1.143 labor* -0.903 0.422 4.568 1 0.033 0.405 0.177 0.928 land 0.019 0.020 0.881 1 0.348 1.019 0.980 1.059 farm_s** 2.401 0.522 21.111 1 0.000 11.029 3.961 30.710 raw_m* 0.004 0.002 5.887 1 0.015 1.005 1.001 1.008 cost -0.007 0.022 0.091 1 0.763 0.993 0.952 1.037 profit 0.014 0.032 0.181 1 0.671 1.014 0.952 1.079 news 0.290 0.516 0.316 1 0.574 1.336 0.486 3.671 train 0.002 0.004 0.396 1 0.529 1.002 0.995 1.010 satis 0.105 0.413 0.065 1 0.799 1.111 0.495 2.494 constant -3.358 1.484 5.119 1 0.024 0.035 note: * significant at p <0.050; ** significant at p <0.010. in terms of dairy farming experience, it is evident that farmers with one more year of dairy farming were 1.089 times more likely to accept the dfs as they gained more learning experiences through their daily occupation. experience helps farmers to have a better understanding and a more positive attitude towards farming business development. maniriho, musabanganji, and lebailly (2021) discovered that farmers’ experience was a positive and significant factor in yields and incomes. this finding corresponds with hansen and jervell (2015), who found that farmers with experience in consistent transformation processes could manage farms effectively, and haloho, santoso, marzuki, roessali, and setiadi (2013), who claimed that experience in dairy farming was significantly associated with profit . in terms of labor in dairy farming, farmers with only household labor tended to accept the dfs 0.405 times less than those with both household and hired labor. household labor is generally limited and mainly includes older workers. this limitation, combined with several regulations and complicated processes, results in difficulties in improving standards. it was found that an increase in hired labor was associated with a significant increase in the number of cattle and products, which resulted in a higher employment rate. an increased proportion of farm-hired labor is thus significantly related to an increase in dairy herd size and production (deming, gleeson, o'dwyer, kinsella, & o'brien, 2018; júnior et al., 2016). not only does hiring labor provide sufficient labor for standardized farming, but it also contributes to higher profits. maina, mburu, gitau, and vanleeuwen (2020) described how farmers’ proper utilization of hired labor for dairy farming increased economic efficiency. krpalkova, cabrera, kvapilik, and burdych (2016) reported that a higher proportion of dairy cows per worker correlated with a higher raw milk yield, herd size, and increasing profits. however, the amount of hired labor will likely decrease as the use of highly functioning farming machines increases, e.g., automatic milking systems; there will then be less need for human labor (gargiulo, eastwood, garcia, & lyons, 2018). in terms of farm size, the farmers with medium-sized farms (21-100 dairy cows) were 11.029 times more likely to accept the farming standards than those with small-sized farms (up to 20 dairy cows) because medium-sized farms produce more raw milk. hence, it is more beneficial to invest with fixed factors. hanrahan et al. (2018) claimed that farm size significantly correlates with the safety of raw milk production. as larger farms have adopted the safety asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 243-249 248 measures governing raw milk production, the milk production structure has shifted towards the expansion of these farms (yang, chen, & kong, 2019). however, the larger the farm, the higher the production costs (moreira & bravoureta, 2016). modernized farmers need to consider these factors . in terms of the amount of raw milk, the results show that if one more kilogram of raw milk is produced per day, the farmer is 1.005 times more likely to accept the dfs as more raw milk means more income. eddy et al. (2012) emphasized that an increased amount of raw milk has an impact on farm economic efficiency; similarly, datta et al. (2019) emphasized the statistically significant correlation between farm size, produced amount of milk, and gross profit margin. 5. conclusion and recommendations this research has investigated factors affecting the acceptance of dfs among dairy farmers. the data were collected from 201 dairy farmers in sakon nakhon and udon thani, thailand. a binary logistic regression was conducted to examine the factors affecting the acceptance of dfs among dairy farmers. the results revealed that farmers with more dairy farming experience tended to accept dfs more due to their better understanding of the dairy farming business or a more positive attitude that encouraged them to follow the standards. the dairy farms using only household labor were less likely to accept the standards than those with both household and hired labor. the limited nature of household labor can explain this as it results in difficulties in farm management complying with the standards. moreover, the farmers that owned medium-sized dairy farms were more likely to accept the standards than those with small farms because, on medium-sized farms, fixed-factor investment offers more value when elevating farming standards. finally, higher raw milk yields motivate farmers to be more accepting of the standards . based on the results, the thai government should focus on this group of farmers to drive their raw milk development policy. the policy should center on promoting knowledge among farmers to improve the quality of raw milk, creating added value for raw milk, and identifying new domestic and international sales channels. the government should encourage dairy farmers to become “smart farmers” to increase the efficacy of raw milk production to meet higher standards and criteria. that could help farmers increase their income and strengthen stability and sustainability in their occupation, which is fundamental for agricultural extension and will result in benefits for farmers and an improvement in thailand’s sustainable dairy farming. funding: this research is supported by national research council of thailand (grant number: 735262). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references alexopoulos, g., koutsouris, a., & tzouramani, i. 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(2019). factors affecting the adoption of on-farm milk safety measures in northern china—an examination from the perspective of farm size and production type. journal of integrative agriculture, 18(2), 471-481.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/s2095-3119(19)62567-0. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 148 identifying and addressing institutional problems constraining the financial performance of rice cooperatives in the philippines brenda dimasa michael lyneb alison baileyc a,cdepartment of land management and systems, lincoln university, new zealand. bdepartment of agribusiness and markets, lincoln university, new zealand.  michael.lyne@lincoln.ac.nz (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 10 march 2022 revised: 20 may 2022 accepted: 8 june 2022 published: 24 june 2022 keywords cooperative marketing institutional arrangements governance practices hierarchical cluster analysis philippine cooperative code. farmer-controlled cooperatives contribute significantly to the growth of the rice sector in the philippines, the country’s most important agricultural sector. despite ongoing financial support from various government agencies, many of the country’s rice cooperatives struggle to remain viable. cooperative failure is often attributed to poor management, inadequate capital, and opportunistic side selling by members. however, a growing body of literature views these problems as symptoms of much more fundamental flaws in the institutional arrangements that characterize traditional cooperatives. relationships between indicators of financial performance and institutional attributes observed in case studies of four philippine rice farmer cooperatives were identified using hierarchical cluster analysis. the results of this analysis were interpreted against causal relationships predicted by the new institutional economics theory. financial performance improves when cooperatives require their members to invest in proportion to their patronage, allow members to adjust their shareholding, and periodically redeem members’ shares. other performance-enhancing institutional arrangements could be adopted if the philippine cooperative code authorized directors to issue class b shares. the findings also highlight operational and governance practices that improve financial performance, which directors can and should apply. contribution/originality: this study contributes new information about property rights and governance practices observed in philippine rice cooperatives. it examines relationships between these institutional arrangements and indicators of financial performance and identifies specific arrangements these cooperatives should adopt to improve their performance. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4527 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: brenda dimas --michael lyne --alison bailey (2022). identifying and addressing institutional problems constraining the financial performance of rice cooperatives in the philippines. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3), 148-156. 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4527 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction rice is the single most important crop in the philippines (arnaoudov, sibayan, & caguioa, 2015; boquet, 2017; bordado, orden, oliva, & domingo, 1996). rice is the primary food staple for 80% of the filipino population, and its production accounts for more than one-third of the country’s land area (psa, 2021; suministrado, 2013). however, stagnating yields and rising input costs have reduced farm incomes, and domestic farmers are struggling to compete with imported rice in an increasingly liberalized trade environment (fao, 2014). the government has responded to these challenges by prioritizing the rice sector in its agricultural policies and programs. since 2005, a disproportionately large share of the department of agriculture’s (da’s) budget has been allocated to the national rice asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 3 (2022): 148-156. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8738-1920 mailto:michael.lyne@lincoln.ac.nz https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0442-3006 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4530-1195 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 148-156 149 program.1 in essence, this program subsidizes the farmer’s cost of inputs, credit, machinery, storage, and processing services. farmers can access some or all of these program benefits by joining and patronizing producer associations or cooperatives. cooperatives are key among these organizations as they are mandated to offer a wide range of services to their patron-members. agricultural marketing cooperatives can play an important role in the development of smallholder agriculture (markelova, meinzen-dick, hellin, & dohrn, 2009), but they do not have a good track record in the philippines. financial failure has been attributed largely to poor management, inadequate capital, and opportunistic side-selling by members (araullo, 2006; balgos & digal, 2016; ferrer, 1956; manalili, yaptenco, & manilay, 2015; tadem, 2002). however, the new institutional economics (nie) theory views these shortcomings as symptoms of more fundamental problems arising from ill-defined benefit and voting rights that discourage members of traditional cooperatives from investing in the organization and complying with supply contracts (cook & iliopoulos, 1999; harris, stefanson, & fulton, 1996). the nature of these property rights is constrained by formal laws governing cooperative societies and, to some extent, by the practices of the government and non-government agencies that help smallholders organize as cooperatives. the philippine cooperative code of 2008 is the principal law governing the country’s cooperative societies.2 this law imposes a traditional structure on cooperatives and remains at odds with trends in developed countries, where cooperative legislation has been relaxed to accommodate investor-friendly institutional arrangements (lyne & collins, 2008). there are, however, strategies cooperative leaders can adopt to mitigate some of the disincentives created by illdefined property rights. this study asks what cooperative leaders are doing to make their cooperatives more investorfriendly, what more they could do within the law, and what policy changes would improve their prospects of achieving value-adding business goals. in the first instance, this paper summarizes information about financial performance and de facto institutional arrangements observed in case studies of four rice farmer cooperatives located in davao del norte province. second, it applies hierarchical cluster analysis to identify institutional arrangements that correlate positively with indicators of financial performance. the results of this quantitative analysis are then interpreted against causal relationships predicted by the nie to highlight institutional problems affecting cooperative performance and to formulate recommendations for cooperative policymakers, facilitators, directors, and managers. 2. literature review and research methods 2.1. conceptual model the nie literature dealing with agricultural marketing cooperatives focuses largely on institutional problems created by ill-defined property rights, and the adverse effect that these problems are likely to have on member investment. ill-defined benefit rights can result in free-rider, horizon, portfolio, and control problems, while ill-defined voting rights can lead to an influence problem (sykuta & cook, 2001). traditional cooperatives are prone to all these institutional problems as they adhere strictly to the historical cooperative principles of member economic participation, open membership, and democratic control. each of these institutional problems is expected to discourage members from investing in their cooperative, limiting its ability to borrow and hence its ability to finance assets needed to pursue a value-adding business strategy (nilsson & ohlsson, 2007). the free-rider problem can be alleviated by obliging members to invest in proportion to their patronage, while the horizon, portfolio, and control problems can be mitigated by selling members a class of shares that is non-redeemable and therefore tradable and appreciable. the success of new generation cooperatives has been attributed in large part to tradable delivery rights, which members must buy in proportion to their patronage (cook & iliopoulos, 1999; harris et al., 1996). less attention has been given to the important role that tradable delivery rights play in facilitating and incentivizing patron compliance with supply contracts. predictable quantity and quality are important when cooperatives seek to build long-term supply relationships with premium buyers (awolu, ajibola, adeloye, & ogwu, 2020; beverland, 2007; esnard, lyne, & old, 2017; zaman, aker, & nishat, 2022). conservative cooperative legislation, like that in the philippines, does not allow cooperatives to issue non-redeemable shares that members can trade at market prices. however, they can require members to invest in proportion to their patronage, and they can redeem shares on a regular basis. these strategies alleviate the internal free-rider problem and, to a lesser extent, the horizon problem. salazar and galve (2011) found that periodic redemption of shares improved the value-adding performance of proportional investment cooperatives studied in spain. with few exceptions, cooperatives worldwide are legally required to assign equal voting power to their patron members. this introduces an influence problem that may discourage investment because control does not reside with majority investors. a study of producer organizations in sri lanka (rosairo, lyne, martin, & moore, 2012) found empirical support for the argument that democratic control is less likely to create meaningful influence problems if the organization’s governance arrangements clearly separate ownership from control – i.e., ordinary members should be consulted but should not participate in strategic or management decisions. at the same time, the study found that influence problems attributed to the (bad) practice of allowing external agencies to appoint directors to the producer organization’s board were a leading cause of business failure. a key point to take from rosairo et al. (2012) study is that the advantages of well-defined property rights are easily lost if these rights are not upheld by (good) governance practices that promote transparency and accountability. governance arrangements impact performance via their effects on management as they determine who gets to direct and manage the organization, to whom the directors and managers are accountable, and the ease and extent to which they can be held responsible for poor decisions (cadbury, 1992). good governance practices are therefore 1 http://www.da.gov.ph/transparency/ . 2 https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/2009/02/17/republic-act-no-9520/. http://www.da.gov.ph/transparency/ https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/2009/02/17/republic-act-no-9520/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 148-156 150 expected to improve the quality of management, and there is a view that better managers tend to implement better governance practices. however, the ability to hold directors and managers accountable diminishes if property rights are not well-defined. if shares are not tradable, there is no market to signal managerial performance, and members cannot sanction poor management promptly by disinvesting. in short, well-defined property rights and good governance practices are expected to impact positively on financial performance, and the relationship between good governance and well-defined property rights is expected to be both positive and bi-directional. figure 1 illustrates the conceptual model. figure 1. conceptual model of relationships between institutional arrangements and performance. source: adapted from chibanda, ortmann, and lyne (2009). 2.2. the study area and selection of cases this research was conducted in davao del norte province, partly because it is typical of most provinces where rice is one of the three most important crops grown, and partly because the lead researcher had strong professional and social networks in the province to support the research. data were gathered using a case study approach because reliable information about an organization’s de facto institutional arrangements calls for in-depth answers to “how” and “why” questions (yin, 2018), as well as triangulation of responses across the organization’s members, directors, and managers (yin, 2003). records maintained by the provincial agriculture office (pagro) and the cooperative development authority (cda) listed a total of nine rice-marketing cooperatives in the province, all operating under similar agro-climatic conditions and the same government support programs. four of these nine cooperatives were selected for study between july and december 2020. the selection was purposeful in that prior information about each cooperative’s financial health was used to ensure variation in performance across cooperatives of different membership sizes. in the absence of a priori information about the cooperatives’ institutional arrangements, variation in size was considered important as influence problems are more likely to occur in larger cooperatives particularly if their governance practices do not adequately separate ownership from control. personal interviews were conducted with respondents selected from each case study. the respondents included the chair of the cooperative’s board of directors (bod), its principal manager, and members selected using snowball sampling to identify patrons willing and able to provide additional information. semi-structured interview guides were developed for directors, managers, and ordinary members. it was anticipated that directors and managers would be the most reliable sources of information about their cooperative’s property rights and governance practices, whereas members would provide more reliable information about motives for patronizing and investing in their cooperative. most interviews were conducted face-to-face, but covid-19 regulations introduced towards the end of 2020 necessitated some online and telephonic interviews. fifteen respondents, including twelve ordinary members, were interviewed at each of the four cooperatives studied. qualitative and quantitative information gathered in these interviews was complemented with and triangulated against information drawn from secondary sources provided by each cooperative (including their constitutions, bylaws, annual reports, and agm minutes) and personal observations of their physical assets made by local research assistants. although the data were analyzed qualitatively (dimas, 2021) using the pattern matching technique recommended by yin (2018), this paper reports the application of a quantitative method to identify relationships within and between institutional characteristics and indicators of financial performance observed in the case studies. 2.3. hierarchical cluster analysis hierarchical cluster analysis offers a suitable method of detecting positive relationships between binary variables when the number of cases is small, as the technique can be applied to variables rather than cases. broadly speaking, the objective of cluster analysis is to classify a set of observations into mutually exclusive clusters based on a measure of their similarities (chatfield & collins, 1980). a hierarchical cluster analysis of variables starts with a single cluster containing all the variables and, at each successive step, merges the variables into fewer and fewer clusters such that homogeneity within the clusters, or heterogeneity between the clusters, is maximized (norusis, 1994). although there is no objective way of choosing an optimum number of clusters, the decision is usually guided by a substantial increase in a measure of proximity showing the loss of homogeneity (heterogeneity) within (between) groups. in this instance, the variables measured the presence of “good” performance, property rights, and governance attributes. following the logic presented in figure 1, it follows that each cluster produced by the analysis should contain a healthy mix of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 148-156 151 performance and institutional indicators. rosairo et al. (2012) applied this method to triangulate the results of pattern matching in a similar study investigating the failure of farmer companies in sri lanka. 3. results and discussion 3.1. indicators of financial performance table 1 lists some general demographic features of the four case studies and nine indicators of their financial performance. financial data reported by the cooperatives for the years 2016–2019 were expressed in constant 2019 prices to account for inflation. measures of profitability (return on equity), leverage (debt/equity), and liquidity (current ratio) in 2019 were then estimated from trend lines to account for random variation in the financial data. for these indicators, a “yes” reported in table 1 shows that the estimate was better than a critical value recommended by the university of minnesota extension.3 indicators of change in financial performance over the period 2016–2019 were based on slope coefficients estimated for the (deflated) trend lines. for these indicators, a “yes” shows that the slope coefficient was positive and statistically significant, implying improvement since 2016. case b maintained relatively high levels of profitability over the period 2016–2019 and outperformed the other cases. for convenience, table 1 lists the cases from left to right in decreasing order of financial performance. table 1. features of the cooperatives and differences in their financial performance (2019=100). indicator case b case c case a case d cooperative demographics years in operation as a registered cooperative 29 25 28 21 members in 2020 (#) 104 138 183 189 provide market, machinery, and financial services yes yes yes yes financial performance profitability (roe in 2019 within acceptable range) yes yes yes no leverage (debt/equity in 2019 within acceptable range) yes yes no no liquidity (current ratio in 2019 within acceptable range)a yes no yes no positive growth in profitability 2016–2019 no no yes no positive growth in assets 2016–2019 yes no yes yes positive growth in equity 2016–2019 yes no no yes < 10% contraction in book value of shares 2016–2019 yes yes no yes low level of government supportb yes yes no no long-term trading relationships with premium buyersc yes no no no notes: a cases c and d had unusually high liquidity ratios, suggesting inefficient use of working capital. b “no” signifies that > 60% of assets were donated by the government; “yes” shows that < 30% of assets were donated by the government. c case b is the only cooperative that markets certified rice seed, a quality product sold to premium buyers with whom the cooperative had established long-term trading relationships. 3.2. indicators of institutional arrangements property rights were not expected to differ much between the case studies owing to (a) national legislation that prevents cooperatives from issuing non-redeemable, tradable shares, and (b) the absence of strategies used by cooperatives in other countries to reward investors with capital gains by revaluing redeemable shares or issuing bonus shares. table 2. institutional arrangements that differed between the cooperatives.a attribute case b case c case a case d property rights only members can sell rice to the cooperative yes no no no members use cooperative services on better terms than non-members yes no yes no investment is proportional to patronage yes no no no members can readily exit and redeem all shares yes yes yes no members can redeem some shares without exiting the cooperative no yes no no periodic redemption of excess member capital no yes no no governance practices members have enough time to review reports tabled at the agm yes yes yes no outsiders excluded from agms yes no no no members removed a director from office at the agm no yes no no members do not participate in policy or operational decisions no yes yes yes directors should not be appointed to a managerial position yes yes yes no directors are not allowed to participate in management decisions no yes no no directors did not intervene in daily operations yes yes no no the board fired a manager yes no no no the manager can be a non-member yes no no no the manager must have a tertiary qualification yes yes no no note: a “yes” (“no”) indicates the presence (absence) of a good institutional arrangement. 3 https://extension.umn.edu/farm-finance/ratios-and-measurements. https://extension.umn.edu/farm-finance/ratios-and-measurements asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 148-156 152 indeed, few differences were observed in de jure property rights, but table 2 lists observed practices that created some differences in de facto property rights, and which help to alleviate at least some of the institutional problems thought to constrain performance in traditional cooperatives. case b, the best financial performer, alleviates the external free-rider problem by purchasing rice only from members and by charging non-members more for its services. case b also alleviates the internal free-rider problem by requiring members to buy shares in proportion to the quantity of rice they deliver to the cooperative. case c, the only other cooperative not heavily dependent on government donations, alleviates the portfolio problem by allowing members to redeem shares without exiting the cooperative and eases the horizon problem by periodically redeeming excess shares.4 the governance practices specified by the cooperatives in their constitutions and bylaws were virtually identical and promoted transparency, accountability, and clear separation of ownership from control. the case studies, however, were more concerned with de facto practice, and it was often the members, rather than the directors and managers, who revealed some notable deviations from good practice. cases a and d, the worst financial performers, had no history of holding directors and managers accountable for poor performance, failed to separate control from ownership, and did not look beyond their own members to recruit well-qualified managers. 3.3. hierarchical cluster analysis table 3 summarizes the qualitative data presented in tables 1 and 2 in a quantitative format suitable for use in hierarchical cluster analysis. the performance indicators presented in table 1 are reported as dummy variables, with a score of one indicating the presence of relatively good financial performance, and zero otherwise. likewise, all indicators of property rights and governance practices are reported as dummy variables with a score of one indicating a good institutional arrangement, and zero otherwise. table 3. variables and data used in the cluster analysis. indicator/attribute variable case b case c case a case d financial performance profitability (roe in 2019 within acceptable range) profit 1 1 1 0 leverage (debt/equity in 2019 within acceptable range) leverage 1 1 0 0 liquidity (current ratio in 2019 within acceptable range) liquidity 1 0 1 0 positive growth in profitability 2016–2019 profitgro 0 0 1 0 positive growth in assets 2016–2019 assetsgro 1 0 1 1 positive growth in equity 2016–2019 equitygro 1 0 0 1 less than 10% contraction in share book value 2016–2019 sharegro 1 1 0 1 low level of government support lowgrants 1 1 0 0 long-term trading relationships with premium buyers reputation 1 0 0 0 property rights only members can sell rice to the cooperative memsell 1 0 0 0 members use services on better terms than non-members discount 1 0 1 0 investment is proportional to patronage investpat 1 0 0 0 members can readily exit and redeem all shares exitall 1 1 1 0 members can redeem some shares without exiting cooperative exitsome 0 1 0 0 periodic redemption of excess member capital periodic 0 1 0 0 governance practices members have enough time to review reports tabled at the agm review 1 1 1 0 outsiders excluded from agms agmclosed 1 0 0 0 members removed a director from office at the agm firedir 0 1 0 0 members do not participate in policy or operational decisions nopart 0 1 1 1 directors should not be appointed to a managerial position dirnomgr 1 1 1 0 directors not allowed to participate in management decisions dirnomgt 0 1 0 0 directors did not intervene in daily operations dirnoday 1 1 0 0 the board fired a manager firemgr 1 0 0 0 the manager can be a non-member outmgr 1 0 0 0 the manager must have a tertiary qualification qualmgr 1 1 0 0 in this study, the (n=25) dummy variables listed in table 3 were grouped into clusters by minimizing the squared euclidean distance within clusters using spss software. variables within clusters are positively related, with the strength of these positive relationships weakening as the number of clusters diminishes. relationships between 4 all the cooperatives studied retained part of payments (price rebates and/or dividends) made to members, crediting them in turn with additional shares. case c periodically redeemed shares that members accumulated in excess of what shareholders were required to own. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 148-156 153 variables within clusters remained strong until the number of clusters dropped below four, resulting in a marked increase in the agglomeration coefficient from 0.679 to 1.051 (see appendix table a1). 3.4. relationships between performance indicators and institutional attributes separation of the performance and institutional indicators into different clusters would not support the nie argument that good financial performance is more likely to be found in organizations with good institutional arrangements. conversely, a healthy mix of performance and institutional indicators within each cluster supports the nie theory. figure 2 shows the mix of indicators in each of the four homogenous clusters identified in this study. all the clusters combine performance indicators with institutional indicators. this is consistent with nie theory. the mix of indicators in each cluster also provides more nuanced information about the relationships between aspects of financial performance, property rights, and governance practices. figure 2. inter-relationships between indicators of performance and institutional arrangements. three performance indicators were included in cluster 1: net equity growth (equitygro), positive asset growth (assetsgro), and presence of reputation and significant markets (reputation). this signals a positive relationship between growth in equity, growth in assets, and market recognition. these performance indicators correlated positively with two indicators of property rights (investpat and memsell) that strengthen proportionality between member investment and patronage. proportionality between investment and patronage addresses internal and external free-rider problems, encouraging both investment and patronage by aligning the interests of members as investors on the one hand, and as patrons on the other hand. this alignment of interests also reduces the cost of negotiating and enforcing supply contracts with patrons, which helps the cooperative establish a good reputation for meeting the quantity and quality requirements of its buyers and establish long-term trading relationships that reduce uncertainty in investment plans and inefficiency in operations and resource use. the performance indicators in cluster 1 also correlated positively with three governance indicators that curtail external influence problems (agmclosed), improve the quality of managers (outmgr), and strengthen accountability (firemgr). the first of these governance indicators emphasizes the importance of preventing prominent outsiders from influencing the selection of directors and appointment of managers a problem encountered in development settings where producer organizations tend to be treated as public enterprises (rosairo et al., 2012). conversely, the second indicator signals the importance of recruiting managers on merit from a pool of candidates that is not restricted to members of the cooperative. the last of these governance indicators measures the ability and willingness of directors to dismiss managers who perform poorly in growing the cooperative’s business. c lu st er e qu it yg ro a ss et sg ro r ep u ta ti on p ro fi t l iq u id it y p ro fi tg ro s ha re g ro l ev er ag e l ow g ra n ts memsell 1 investpat agmclosed firemgr outmgr discount 2 exitall review dirnomgr exitsome 3 periodic firedir nopart dirnomgt dirnoday 4 qualmgr legend property rights indicators governance indicators asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 148-156 154 cluster 2 included two indicators of current performance, one a measure of profitability (profit) and the other a measure of liquidity (liquidity). these performance indicators correlated positively with two indicators of property rights, exitall and discount. cooperatives that respect decisions made by members to exit and redeem all their shares (exitall) need to maintain relatively high levels of liquidity to cope with redemption risk. profitability is likely to be higher in cooperatives that alleviate the external free-rider problem by offering price rebates only to shareholding patrons (discount), particularly if a substantial part of their business is transacted with customers who are not members. the performance indicators in cluster 2 also correlated positively with two governance indicators, review and dirnomgr. giving members sufficient time to review their cooperative’s financial statements ahead of the agm promotes transparency and signals competent management a characteristic more likely to be found in profitable cooperatives. acceptance of the view that directors should not be appointed to managerial positions (dirnomgr) is necessary but not sufficient to separate ownership from control, a practice that promotes accountability in management and attenuates the damaging effects of influence problems. cluster 3 combined one performance indicator, profitgro – which signals on-going profitability, with two indicators of property rights (exitsome and periodic) and three governance attributes (dirnomgt, nopart, and firedir). both property rights indicators reflect the ability of members to realize the nominal value of some part of their shareholding before they exit the cooperative. clearly, this does not resolve the horizon problem, but it would make retentions withheld by the cooperative to grow its equity capital more palatable. regular redemption of excess shares (as in case c) also helps to align voting power with investment, thereby alleviating influence problems and reducing conflicts of interest that raise transaction costs and decrease profits. two of the three governance indicators in cluster 3, dirnomgt and nopart, relate to effective separation of ownership from control, first by excluding directors from management decisions and second by preventing members from participating in board decisions. this does not imply that directors should not canvass members’ views. rather it means that board decisions should be centralized in the hands of accountable directors to promote efficiency in decisionmaking and curtail influence problems that lead to misallocation of resources. the remaining governance indicator, firedir, measures the ability and willingness of members to hold directors accountable for board decisions by exercising their voice and voting power at a general meeting of the cooperative. cluster 4 included three highly correlated performance indicators, with the imputed value of shares holding up better (sharegro) when debt/equity ratios (leverage) are at acceptable levels and most of the cooperative’s assets are not donated by the government (lowgrants). these performance indicators combined with two governance indicators. the first of these, dirnoday, refers to the absence of any interference by directors in the cooperative’s day-to-day operations, even in cooperatives that did not explicitly forbid directors from participating in management decisions. this signals the effective separation of ownership from control and a high degree of trust in management. cornforth (2004) noted that confidence in management also inspires managers to act decisively. unsurprisingly, the second governance indicator in cluster 4, qualmgr, reflects the quality of the cooperative’s lead manager. in essence, cluster 4 highlights the importance of decisive, high-quality management to a cooperative’s financial sustainability. 4. conclusions the most obvious finding of this research is that philippine cooperatives are severely constrained by conservative legislation that prevents them from issuing a class of non-redeemable shares that can be traded at their market price. as a result, cooperatives face several institutional problems that discourage members from investing in their cooperative and from complying with supply contracts. under these conditions, it is not surprising that philippine cooperatives rely so heavily on assets donated by the government. this situation is unlikely to change much unless policymakers relax the cooperative code to legalize less traditional cooperative models. if cooperatives were allowed to issue non-redeemable class b shares they could operate as new generation cooperatives or as hybrid cooperatives depending on their business strategy and capital requirements. in the meantime, there are strategies that cooperative leaders can adopt to alleviate some of the problems created by ill-defined property rights. cooperative performance is expected to improve when investment is linked to patronage as proportionality addresses the internal and external free-rider problems and reduces transaction costs in supply contracts. the findings reported in this study support this proposition. proportionality is manageable in cooperatives that focus their business on buying a single product supplied by their members (as in case b) but is difficult to manage in cooperatives that focus on selling inputs and machinery services to members and non-members. in this case, proportionality can be incentivized by offering larger investors incrementally higher discounts on prices paid for inputs and services – a strategy that can be easily implemented by issuing personalized discount cards to shareholders. the results also support the view that performance improves when shares are redeemed periodically. while periodic redemption of shares bought and redeemed at the same nominal price is unlikely to attract voluntary investment, it makes compulsory retentions more palatable and so helps the cooperative to raise additional equity capital. directors could, however, make periodic redemption considerably more appealing to investors if their cooperative’s mutual equity has grown (as in cases b and d). in practice, this can be achieved simply by revaluing the shares or by issuing bonus shares. again, these strategies would not fully resolve the horizon problem as the capital gains awarded to shareholders are at the discretion of the directors and are not market related, but empirical evidence shows that it does provide an incentive for members to leave profits in the cooperative to finance future investments rather than withdrawing them as price rebates and annual dividends (salazar & galve, 2011). while the evidence gathered in this research shows high levels of compliance with good governance, the analysis exposed lapses that directors and managers could address to improve their cooperative’s performance. the results support the argument that ownership should be clearly separated from control, and that decision-making should be asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 148-156 155 centralized in the hands of accountable directors and managers. consequently, directors should not be tasked with management roles as this makes it difficult for the board to hold management accountable for poor performance, and ordinary members should not participate in board and management decisions. keeping ordinary members out of the boardroom does not mean that directors and managers should avoid canvassing the views of shareholders or consulting outside experts. the results also emphasize the importance of extending the search for well-qualified managers to include candidates outside the membership group. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. acknowledgement: authors acknowledge student scholarship support from the new zealand aid programme. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the 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(2022). comparative profitability of the modern and traditional variety of t. aman rice in mymensingh district of bangladesh. international journal of sustainable agricultural research, 9(2), 55-67.available at: https://doi.org/10.18488/ijsar.v9i2.2971. http://www.undp.org/publications/adaptation-and-mitigation-initiatives-philippine-rice-cultivation http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/bodies/cl_149/sideevents_cl149/rice/presentation_rri-philippines.pdf asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 148-156 156 appendix table a1. agglomeration schedule for the cluster analysis. stage cluster combined coefficients stage cluster first appears cluster 1 cluster 2 cluster 1 cluster 2 next stage 24 1 4 1.567 23 20 0 23 1 3 1.298 22 19 24 22 1 5 1.051 21 18 23 21 1 2 0.679 17 0 22 20 4 13 0.667 0 11 24 19 3 6 0.533 12 14 23 18 5 25 0.400 16 0 22 17 1 8 0.286 0 15 21 16 5 7 0.000 0 3 18 15 8 9 0.000 0 13 17 14 6 10 0.000 0 0 19 13 9 11 0.000 0 7 15 12 3 12 0.000 0 10 19 11 13 14 0.000 0 9 20 10 12 15 0.000 0 5 12 9 14 16 0.000 0 8 11 8 16 17 0.000 0 4 9 7 11 18 0.000 0 6 13 6 18 19 0.000 0 2 7 5 15 20 0.000 0 0 10 4 17 21 0.000 0 0 8 3 7 22 0.000 0 1 16 2 19 23 0.000 0 0 6 1 22 24 0.000 0 0 3 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 160 appraisal of backyard farming among households: implications for rural development and food security in nigeria ovharhe, oghenero joseph a, achoja felix odemero a, okwuokenye goddey folunsho b joe-james uduak oghenefejiro a a department of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, asaba campus, asaba, delta state, nigeria b national open university of nigeria, zaria, nigeria  drovharhe.oghenero@gmail.com; achojafelix@gmail.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 03-jan-2020 accepted: 11-mar-2020 online available: 06-apr2020 keywords: household, backyard farming, livestock, crops, food security abstract this study investigates backyard farming and implications for food security in nigeria. purposive random sampling technique was used in this study to obtain a total of 80 respondents as sample size. data were collected using structured questionnaire copies. data generated were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. the result showed that the respondents' mean age was 43 years. women (71%) were more involved in backyard farming than males (29%). identified mixtures of backyard household agricultural enterprises in order of preference by respondents were: vegetable growing (88.75%) > cassava cropping (76.25%) > yam cropping (67.50%) > maize cropping (52.50%) > plantain cropping (46.25%) > poultry farming (41.25%). a high satisfaction level was recorded in terms of farm yield (𝑥 = 2.39) and food security (𝑥 = 2.34). extension workers' visits to farmers (31.25%) were poor. risk level was low (𝑥 =2.25). the result indicates a significant and positive relationship between farmers’ adoption of improved crop varieties and access to extension services. the study recommends that advocacy should be scaled up for more family participation in backyard farming since it has the capacity for food security, income generation, and rural development. contribution/ originality the study derives significance from its contribution of empirical information to the existing literature in the area of backyard farming and its potentials for food security and rural development in nigeria, and it highlighted one of the long-neglected but important aspects of farm family theory. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.160.170 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: ovharhe, oghenero joseph, achoja felix odemero, okwuokenye goddey folunsho and joe-james uduak oghenefejiro (2020). appraisal of backyard farming among households: implications for rural development and food security in nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 160-170. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 160-170 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:drovharhe.oghenero@gmail.com mailto:achojafelix@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9705-4923 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.160.170 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 160-170 161 1. introduction backyard farming is a compound type of farming located around the homestead for the production of varieties of crops and rearing of livestock for consumption, food security, and income generation. cases of poverty and food insecurity among rural households in nigeria have occupied central positions in both scientific and public debates in recent times. backyard farming model for rural poverty alleviation and food security management has been widely accepted by rural farm families in nigeria. it has the potential to improve households' cash economy and sustainability of the micro-environment (achoja and obodaya, 2019). homestead farmers are those individuals who cultivate crops and raise livestock around their houses (residence) or close to their residence. backyard farming has the advantages of low start-up capital, low risk of theft, utilization of households’ wastes and it is easy to manage and monitor. the backyard farm is, therefore, an important aspect of the households as it is usually the center of family lives (onuebunwa and adesope, 2006). household backyard farming contributes to food security by ensuring the availability of harvested produce and livestock which eventually will be used to feed family members often daily. once a good understanding of household backyard farming practices, constraints and objectives are established and farmers can work on how to get improved varieties of crops. the household backyard can be referred to as the very beginning of agriculture which has played a vital role in providing food and income for families. household backyard farming is a small scale production system that involves the cultivation of land which may be around the household or within walking distances from the farmers house. backyard farming could be a mixed cropping type that encompasses vegetables, fruit, medicinal plants and livestock that serves as a source of income and food. household backyard farming could be referred to as home farming. chukwuji et al. (2001) viewed backyard farming as compound tree farming in mixture with other subsistence farming. the labour used is not compensated for. home farming frequently uses family labour: men, women and children. home farming or backyard farming is always a small scale when the compound or residence is big enough to accommodate a good number of crops, wage labour may be hired to cultivate and maintain the farm, the household backyard farming may be vulnerable to a harsh environmental condition such as drought and flood just like the large scale farming which could be referred to as commercial farming irrespective of the small scale farmers activities demands a lesser amount of horticultural and agronomic knowledge, losses in crops and the negative implication can be reduced or even avoided when the farmers are empowered with knowledge and better skills. interviews with farmers have been able to reveal that kind of behavioral and economic incentives facing household farmers varies, even within the same city and culture. backyard farming contributes to food security by ensuring the provision of food in the fresh form to satisfy the immediate calorie and nutritional needs of households (ojo, 2009). backyard farming is usually done on a small piece of plot in any convenient land area. according to oke (2014), backyard farming was initiated with a double purpose: household consumption and sales of surplus. this type of farming has been said to be a poverty eradication programme. empowerment with better skills and knowledge of the small scale farmers or household farmers can be done with the help of agricultural extension officers. home farming has been recognized globally as a promising approach to enhance household food security and wellbeing. based on rapid population growth, there is a need to increase food asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 160-170 162 production and buffer stock with maximum use of the limited land area. inoni (2007) opined that fish production requires any small size space for domestic and commercial intentions. again, mbanasor (2002), ologbon and ambali (2012) reaffirmed that poultry enterprises can flourish well as homestead basis among smallholder farmers. onuebunwa and adesope (2006) identified challenges with household backyard farmers to include lack of finance, experienced high-interest rates on credit facilities and uncertainty of the right seed to use because of too many varieties of seed companies in the market. there should be the provision of information to all farmers either commercial or household farmers (extension support service). backyard farmers are faced with the problem of how to allocate their labour and expenditure to maximize their welfare within a constraint of limited resources. at the conception of household backyard farming, farmers and the government believed that backyard farming would help the poor household or jobless individuals achieve food security and generate income through the production of food crops and sales of surplus produce. impacts of backyard farming have not been evaluated as proof as to whether the social-economic status of farmers that benefitted from backyard farming has improved largely in competing with other farmers in resource management and farming business productivity. the objectives of the study are to: i. to describe the socio-economic characteristics of backyard farmers, ii. to identify the improved crop varieties and livestock types adopted by backyard farmers, iii. to evaluate the satisfaction level derived by backyard farmers, iv. to ascertain the extension services rendered to backyard farmers, v. to determine the risk types of backyard farms, and vi. to identify the constraints associated with backyard farmers the following hypothesis was tested in the study: ho: there is no significant relationship between the presence of improved crop varieties and access to extension services. 1.1. related theoretical and empirical literature review in brevity backyard farming is small -scale farming. management of backyard farming is important in effective decision making, supervision and coordinating ability of the farmer. effective backyard farming with good farm management practices involves the utilization of available resources of the environment to satisfy the household and maximize profit based on marketing. ngo et al. (1998) stated that the amount of profit made in any production either crop or livestock be it for consumption or income generation depends primarily on good management. there is a need for skilled manpower in small scale farming because whether it is large scale farming or not, they share the same objective and that is better yield production. backyard farming has been able to perform several functions that have influenced the socioeconomic status of an individual and the nation’s development. oke (2014) conceived backyard farming to mean a form of microenterprise which is a source of revenue for the unemployed, a supplemental income for the low-income boosters for the high-income earners. in every part of the country every family engages in agriculture in one area or the other, be it livestock farming or crop production which has helped to increase income levels the economic has proved that most families cannot afford the escalating cost of beef meat without breaking a sweat and this calls for alternative sources of meat in a human diet which is cheap, easy to manage. these alternative sources include fish farming, poultry farming, pig farming, etc. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 160-170 163 in nigeria, there are different types of backyard farming. backyard farming components are mix cropping: a mixture of cassava, plantain, maize, groundnut, cowpea, yam, cocoyam, sugarcane, fruit trees and medicinal plants; and mix farming: a mixture of crop and animal production, fisheries plus agro-forestry enterprises. snail and mushroom farming fall into this sector. 1.2. conceptual framework of the study backyard farming is broadly categorized into mix cropping and mixed farming including varieties of crop, livestock types, and fisheries in well-organized farming patterns. many households practice different types of backyard farming cutting across sole cropping, sole animal husbandry, sole aquaculture, a mixture of crops, a mixture of livestock, complete mixture of crops, livestock and/or aquaculture. upon establishment of a backyard farm at whatever levels, the onus lies on the backyard farm practitioner to identify and adopt the desired farming practices. based on the farming practices adopted; if grounded on the best practices principles, the satisfaction level is guaranteed. otherwise, worst farming practices tend to dissatisfaction level (figure 1) which is detrimental to the purpose of backyard farm establishment. risk and constraint issues involved in backyard farming when well managed are associated with best agricultural practices (baps) which lead to backyard farm goals achievement and satisfaction. on the contrary, worst agricultural practices (waps) are congruent to the non-adoption of technological advancement as communicated by extension workers. baps and waps are pulling and pushing forces of backyard farming respectively. while baps tend to pull backyard farming to success and satisfaction, waps tend to push it to failure and dissatisfaction. 2. materials and methods the study was conducted in 5 local government areas in delta state, nigeria. the state consists of 25 local government areas. the global position system (gps) 6.5;6 coordinates are between 5o30n, 6o00t, 5o30n, 6o00e. the land area is between 17698km2 (6833sqm), area. the local government areas were ughelli north, ughelli south, ika east, isoko south and patani. 2.1. sampling technique and sampling size a two-stage sampling procedure was adopted for the study. the first stage was the use of simple random sampling techniques to select 5 communities out of the 5 local government areas in the study area. the second stage was the purposive random sampling of 16 respondents from each of the 5 communities to obtain a total sample size of 80 respondents. an equal sample size of 16 respondents per community was considered appropriate for the study backyard farming system is relatively homogenous across the state. primary data were collected using structured questionnaires that were administered by the research team. 2.2. methods of data analysis objectives one which referred to the socio-economic characteristics of respondents was achieved using descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, means and percentages. objective two was achieved through respondent’s identification of the improved crop varieties and livestock types adopted in backyard farming as indicated in a check. objective three and five were achieved through the use of a 4point likert–type scale to indicate a level of satisfaction and risk levels respectively (nil = 0, low = 1, medium = 2, high = 3). the average of the corresponding weights (0 + 1 + 2 + 3)/4 = 1.5 was used as the assumed cut-off mark. this implies that items with values ≥ 1.5 were considered satisfactory. while items with values < 1.5 were rated not satisfactory. on the contrary, as applicable to risk levels, using the same scale, items with values ≥ 1.5 are considered risk factors, while items with values < 1.5 are not risky. objective four based on extension activities was achieved using binary response (yes or no) from listed interrogation concerning extension activities. objective six was achieved using a four-type likert scale consisting of strongly disagree (1), disagree (2), agree (3) and strongly agree (4). the mean corresponding asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 160-170 164 weight was (1 + 2 + 3 + 4)/4 = 2.5. hence, 2.5 was used as the cut-off mean to judge the degree of seriousness of identified constraints (𝑥 ≥ 2.5) or a lesser degree of seriousness (𝑥 < 2.5). for each ranging scale used, a grand mean value was generated such that the sum of means was divided by the number of items under consideration. the test of the hypothesis (h0) was analyzed with the use of the pearson chi-square method in a software package. 3. results and discussion 3.1. socio-economic characteristics of the respondents the socio-economic characteristics of the respondent of the respondents are discussed under the following; age, sex, marital status, household size, and educational status. the ages of the respondents in the study (table 1) showed that most ranges from 45-54 years with a mean of 43 years. data on respondent gender revealed that 29% of respondents were male while 71% were female. this suggests that women were involved in backyard farming more than males in the study area. okwuokenye and ovharhe (2019) acknowledged that women were more into arable cropping than permanent cropping in delta south agricultural zone of delta state, nigeria. married respondents were 89%, and the single was 11%. the different household sizes of various respondents revealed that 44% of the respondents were between 2-4 persons,49% of the respondents were between 5-7 persons, 3% of the respondents had 8-10 persons, 1% of the respondents had between 11 persons and above. the mean household size was 5 persons per household. ovharhe (2019) reported a similar result on a household survey in the niger delta. table 1: socio-economic characteristics of respondents (n = 80) parameters frequency percentage (%) mean/ mode age 15-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 3 7 31 34 5 3.25 8.25 38.75 42.5 6.25 42.5 gender male female 23 57 28.75 71.25 female marital status single married 9 71 11.25 88.75 married household size 2-4 5-7 8-10 11-13 14-16 17-19 35 39 3 1 1 1 43.75 48.75 3.75 1.25 1.25 1.25 5.2 source: field survey, 2019 3.2. improved varieties and type of backyard farm result in table 2 showed a profile of backyard farming enterprises such that improved varieties, stocks, and types of backyard farming ranked hierarchically as follows: vegetable growing asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 160-170 165 (88.75%), cassava cropping (76.25%), yam cropping (67.50%), maize cropping (52.50%), plantain cropping (46.25%), poultry farming (41.25%), okra cropping (27.50%), potato farming (22.50%), aquaculture (17.50%), piggery (13.75%), goat keeping (10.00%), snail farming (5.00%) and rabbitry (2.50%). based line of fifty percent was used to judge the prevalence of backyard farming enterprises in the study area. as a result, by preference, vegetable growing > cassava cropping > yam cropping > maize cropping. these four enterprises are mostly found and utilized by resident farmers in the study area. in another household economic analysis survey, oladunni and fatuase (2014) asserted that improved varieties yielded more in backyard farming methods. hence, farmers partner with extension workers to have access to improved input stocks whether in crop or animal husbandry. table 2: respondents’ types of backyard farming enterprise yes* percentage (%) rank vegetable growing 71 88.75 1 cassava cropping 61 76.25 2 yam cropping 54 67.50 3 maize cropping 42 52.50 4 plantain cropping 37 46.25 5 poultry farming 33 41.25 6 okra cropping 22 27.50 7 potato farming 18 22.50 8 aquaculture 14 17.50 9 piggery 11 13.75 10 goat keeping 8 10.00 11 snail farming 4 5.00 12 rabbitry 2 2.5 13 source: field survey, 2019 (*multiple responses) 3.3. level of satisfaction result in table 3 shows that the mean level of satisfaction of farmers involved in backyard farming experienced high satisfaction level in available water supply for farming water supply (𝑥 = 2.48), farm yield (𝑥 = 2.39),food availability (𝑥 = 2.34),organic manure usage (𝑥 = 2.30), market adequacy(𝑥 = 2.18), farm tools usage(𝑥 = 1.89), improved seeds provision (𝑥 = 1.54), extension training(𝑥 = 1.14), inorganic manure usage (𝑥 = 1.10) and storage techniques (𝑥 = 0.99). in line with the results, only extension training, inorganic manure usage, and storage techniques adoption that was below (𝑥 < 1.5.). this was used as a baseline judgment of not satisfied. satisfaction grand mean of 1.84 was generated (𝑥 > 1.5.). this implies that generally, household members were satisfied with backyard farming in the study area. ovharhe et al. (2016) in a fadama survey in delta state discovered that farmers were assisted with fadama inputs and assets experienced high yield in backyard farm practices with ease to market their product. table 3: respondents’ level of satisfaction (n = 80) items nil (0) low(1) medium(2) high (3) mean water supply 2 5 26 47 2.48 farm yield 0 0 49 31 2.39 food availability 2 5 37 36 2.34 organic manure usage 4 10 24 42 2.30 market adequacy 1 8 47 24 2.18 farm tools usage 1 24 39 16 1.89 improved seeds provision 7 34 28 11 1.54 extension training 17 38 22 3 1.14 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 160-170 166 inorganic manure usage 17 43 15 5 1.10 storage techniques 21 42 10 9 0.99 grand mean = 1.84 source: field survey, 2019 3.4. extension activities rendered to farmers results in table.4 outlined the extensive activities partook by farmers. noticeable observations were seen as a decision making on farming enterprise (88.75%), knowledge sharing among neighbouring farmers (85.00%), baps (66.25%), extension workers visit farmers (31.25%), access to television agric-show (27.50%), access to radio agric-show (22.50%), access to demo plot (21.25%), (access to internet services (17.50%), extensionfarmer phone contact (11.25%) and farmers’ visit to extension offices (6.52%), specifically, backyard farmers in the study area were mostly involved in three items which were above fifty percent: decision making on farming enterprise, knowledge sharing among neighbouring farmers and baps. invariably, these might have contributed to some levels of success recorded in backyard farming among households. in a separate study, it was reported that of all sources of information on vegetable production, the information needs of farmers were mostly met by farmers’ personal efforts in knowledge search (alakpa et al., 2016). benard et al. (2014) reported that farmers in tanzania did not make use of the internet and public information center due to low awareness of the importance of modern technologies to access agricultural information. efforts are needed to bring the extension workers to the doorsteps of backyard farmers to perform their tasks to increase productivity among backyard farmers. table 4: respondents’ involvement in extension activities items yes* percentage (%) rank decision making on a farming enterprise 71 88.75 1 knowledge sharing among neighbouring farmers 68 85.00 2 baps 53 66.25 3 extension workers visit farmers 25 31.25 4 access to television agric-show 22 27.50 5 access to radio agric-show 18 22.50 6 access to demo plot 17 21.25 7 access to internet services 14 17.50 8 extensionfarmer phone contact 9 11.25 9 farmers visit extension offices 5 6.52 10 source: field survey, 2019 note: * multiple responses 3.5. level of risk in backyard farming using the cut-off point of (𝑥 ≥1.5 for high risk), values obtained in table 5, it showed that the level of risk in backyard farming is highest with pest attack (𝑥 = 2.25) only. others have lesser risk such as theft incidence (𝑥 = 1.21), yield spoilage (𝑥 =1.15), marketing (𝑥 =1.05) and farm supervision (𝑥 = 1.00) accordingly. in managing the risk level of high incidence attacks of pests, khan (2013) opined that extension agents can assist by regular visits, training and guiding farmers in decision making. thus, packaging programmes with a focus on integrated pest management (ipm) will reduce the incidence of pest invasion and subsequently, increase agricultural productivity among backyard farm practitioners. there is a need to increase tactics on backyard farm surveillance as this will help to reduce theft of backyard farm produce. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 160-170 167 a risk level grand mean of 1.33 was generated (𝑥 < 1.5.). it is hereby deduced that backyard farming is not a highly risky enterprise in delta state. as a result, folks are advised to venture into backyard farming. this is a giant stride for food security alternatives. table 5: respondents level of risk in backyard farming indicators nil (0) low(1) medium(2) high(3) mean pest attack 4 12 24 40 2.25 theft incidence 21 30 20 9 1.21 yield spoilage 23 31 17 9 1.15 marketing 22 38 8 10 1.05 supervision 26 34 14 6 1.00 grand mean = 1.33 source: field survey, 2019 3.6. constraints to backyard farming results in table 6 revealed the constraints to backyard farming and were ranked accordingly: nonlinkage to agricultural funds (𝑥 = 3.30), pest attack incidence (𝑥 = 3.20), poor access to extension activities (𝑥 = 3.08), poaching(𝑥 = 2.31), low farm inputs availability(𝑥 = 2.19), insufficient farm land area (𝑥 = 1.78), irrigation difficulty(𝑥 = 1.60), food scarcity(𝑥 = 1.51) and flooding(𝑥 = 1.36). the most serious constraints in backyard farming were non-linkage to agricultural funds, pest attack incidence and poor access to extension activities. eventually, addressing these constraints would boost agricultural produce among backyard farmers in delta state of nigeria. ovharhe et al. (2016) in a fadama survey in delta state discovered that insufficient funding is a constraint in farmers’ development. a constraint grand mean of 2.26 was generated (𝑥 < 2.5.). here is an implication that the overall constraints affecting backyard farming are not too serious, such that they could affect backyard farming productivity. they are manageable in baps. table 6: respondents’ degree of constraints in backyard farming items strongly disagree (1) disagree (2) agree (3) strongly agree(4) mean non-linkage to agricultural funds 6 8 22 44 3.30 pest attack incidence 4 10 32 34 3.20 poor access to extension activities 8 16 18 38 3.08 poaching 17 30 24 9 2.31 low farm inputs availability 3 31 37 9 2.19 insufficient farm land area 40 28 2 10 1.78 irrigation difficulty 45 27 3 5 1.60 food scarcity 51 21 4 4 1.51 flooding 61 12 4 3 1.36 grand mean = 2.26 source: field survey, 2019 table 7 shows the result of the relationship between the growth of improved crop variety and access to extension services. from the result the value of pearson chi-square = 3.810, continuity correlation = 2.743, livelihood ration = 4.059, linear by linear association = 3.762, number of valid cases = 80 the chi-square result revealed that at 5% test of significance p > 0 (0.046). this implies that the significant relationship exists between variables hence the null hypothesis was rejected with the conclusion that few farmers with improved crop varieties had access to extension services. that is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 160-170 168 to say the more the availability of extension workers rendering services to backyard farmers, the more the farm productivity in backyard farming. alakpa et al. (2016) had a similar experience such that women in vegetable production increased in productivity due to farming needs satisfaction by extension workers. table 7: cross-tabulation information for chi-square computation parameter type of vegetable crop grown traditional improved total do you obtain information from extension workers programme no count 11 7.7 13.8% 3 6.3 3.8% 14 14.0 17.5% expected count % of total yes count 33 36.3 41.2% 33 29.7 41.2 66 66.0 82.5% expected count % of total total count 44 44.0 55.0% 36 36.0 45.0% 80 80.0 100.0% expected count % of total source: field survey, 2019 table 8: chi-square computation result parameter value df asymp sig (2-sided) exact sig (2-sided) exact sig (1-sided) pearson chi-square 3.810 1 0.051 continuity correction 2.743 1 0.098 likelihood ratio 4.059 1 fisher's exact test 0.075 0.046 linear-by –linear association 3.762 1 0.052 n of valid cases 80 note: significant at 5% level 4. conclusion based on the finding of this research, it is believed that backyard farming has a great impact on providing food for households and its locality. the study showed that females dominated household backyard farming with the majority married. of the thirteen agricultural enterprises surveyed, the most prevalent backyard farming types were vegetable growing, cassava cropping, yam cropping and maize cropping with subsequent high levels of satisfaction recorded. they displayed self-help efforts in decision making and knowledge sharing which led to the best agricultural practices at their levels besides minimal extension support to very few farmers. only pest attack incidence was considered at a high level of risk factors. serious degrees of constraints were noticeable in nonagricultural fund supports, pest attack incidence and poor access to extension workers. the following recommendations are necessary to add values to household backyard farming: since married females dominate household backyard farming, there should be attempts to convince the household occupants who are youth to partake in backyard farming. the policy implication here is that every household should embark on backyard farming as a measure of food security, income generation, and recreation activity. i. besides the prevalent backyard farming enterprises, efforts should be geared towards little backyard fruit tree planting for bigger premises with space. this will increase fruit asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 160-170 169 availability, act as a shade, support wind-breaks and carbon sequestration for environmental sustainability. thus, policy implication should be centered on ‘operation one household, one fruit tree’. again, this policy will constitute an addendum to the mitigation profile of climate change in delta state and nigeria at large. ii. the attitudinal self-help postures of backyard farmers’ involvement in decision making and knowledge sharing could be improved upon if extension workers are adequately mobilized to reach backyard farmers. invariably, this must improve and uphold the best agricultural practices in the localities. in essence, existing policies on reaching farmers in the field should be redefined to include household backyard farmers since they are part of agricultural productivity. iii. in controlling pest attack incidence, a stakeholder synergy is desirable with awareness creation and capacity building. policy implications are needed for integrating pest management among neighborhoods. this will drastically reduce the migration of pests, improve environmental friendliness and food security. iv. the issue of inadequate funding as mentioned by backyard farm practitioners as a serious constraint could be best handled by government policies inclusion and introduction of ‘best backyard farmer award’ concerning stated terms and conditions. this will act as an incentive to backyard farm practitioners and avenues for new entrants in the venture. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references achoja, f. o., & obodaya, o. 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(2019). determinants of the socioeconomic profile of fadama iii project beneficiaries in three states of niger delta area of nigeria. international journal of agricultural science, 4, 29-34. ovharhe, o. j., oyibo, o., & alakpa, s. o. e. (2016). appraisal of fadama iii beneficiaries levels of satisfaction in the operation, utilization and maintenance of rural infrastructure in delta state, nigeria. journal of agriculture and food environment, 3(2), 32-40. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 20 what are the consequences of livelihood diversification, and what solutions are suggested? findings from tamil nadu, india sathyapriya ea m.vengateswarib r.raja priyac reeba jacobd asokhan, me adepartment of agricultural extension, amrita school of agricultural science, amrita viswa vidyapeetham, coimbatore, tamil nadu, india. bkrishi vigyan kendra, ramanathapuram,tamil nadu, india. cdepartment of agronomy, tamil nadu agricultural university, coimbatore, tamil nadu, india. ddepartment of social sciences, s thangapazham agricultural college, tamil nadu agricultural university,tenkasi,tamil nadu, india. edepartment of agricultural extension,tamil nadu agricultural university, coimbatore, tamil nadu, india.  sathyasree321@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 2 december 2021 revised: 12 january 2022 accepted: 27 january 2022 published: 14 february 2022 keywords livelihood diversification constraints consequences survey sustainability policies western zone suggestions garratt ranking. agriculture is one of the major sectors affected by climate change, and farmers are having to adapt rapidly to overcome the risks. however, farmers face many struggles because of lack of awareness and experience of new methods. understanding farmers’ constraints and adaptation strategies is very important for the implementation of adequate policies for agricultural and food security. hence, this research aims to investigate the consequences faced by farmers due to livelihood diversification and suggestions to overcome. data were collected from 240 respondents in tamil nadu, india by a thorough survey method with the help of a pretested, well-structured interview schedule. percentage analysis is an appropriate method that gives answers to how many respondents give a particular response. the garratt ranking technique was used to study the preferences and change in priority of consequences encountered by farmers–and the potential advantages–into numerical scores. the z test was used to determine whether two population means are different with the same variance. data analysis was done using spss software. the results show that the majority of farmers reported concerns regarding constraints such as lack of previous experience, poor family support, and involvement of risk factors. the survey reveals that tamil nadu farmers suggested the conducting of specific training, encouraging livestock management and providing subsidies for agricultural and allied enterprise development as strategies to overcome the constraints of livelihood diversification. the z test results indicated that there is a difference between irrigated and nonirrigated farms with respect to farmers’ age, educational status, level of income, occupation, and awareness of climate change. the suggestions offered help policymakers develop suitable policies. contribution/originality: this study documents the constraints faced by diverse farmers and provides suggestions to overcome these in various locations. the study results will help policymakers, extension personnel, and scientists to update their understanding of this area. this study results will encorage scientists to carry out a similar in-depth study in another location. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 1 (2022): 20-29. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2595-9862 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4864-2240 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7064-474x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0619-151x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1679-2677 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 20-29 21 doi: 10.18488/5005.v12i1.4421 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: sathyapriya e --m.vengateswari --r.raja priya --reeba jacob --asokhan, m (2022). what are the consequences of livelihood diversification, and what solutions are suggested? findings from tamil nadu, india. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1), 20-29. 10.18488/5005.v12i1.4421 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction agriculture is highly dependent on weather. recent evidence suggests that global climate change is likely to increase the incidence of natural hazards, as well as the variability of rainfall, temperature, and other climatic parameters.hence, climate change will affect all aspects of food security, i.e., food availability, access, utilization, and stability. in these circumstances, people seek diversification as their livelihood security. people make diversification decisions due to desperation rather than new opportunities. with regard to migration, increase in agricultural income stagnates, the share of income from non-agricultural sources is considerably increased and high non-farm growth rates are seen by allocating greater labor to local non-farm sectors. hence, diversification seems to be beneficial to poor agricultural communities and farmers have adopted livelihood diversification as the strategy to overcome the risks from farming, even though they face difficulties in their life because of diversification. farmers in minnesota, usa regarded diversified cropping systems as both ecologically and economically advantageous, but they also saw inadequate markets, uncertain government policies, unfavorable climate, and greater workload and difficulty as factors hindering further diversification. diversification reflects the reduced dependence of farmers on agriculture as a source of income, and also implies some kind of entrepreneurial activity on behalf of the farmers. the majority (72.00%) involved in rainfed farming found a lack of availability of inputs, including credit, as the major constraint faced by them. marketing issues were found to be another major problem among farmers. also, it was further quoted that to promote diversified integrated farming, ecological techniques need to be combined with social engineering and backed up by reliable information and training or advisory services, along with credit or insurance and processing or marketing support. rural–urban migration should be supported by migrant-friendly policies and should be treated as a strategy for improving the incomes of rural households, alleviating of rural poverty, and reducing pressure on rural resources. rural–urban migration has been globally recognized as an important pathway out of rural poverty. for removal of entry barriers to non-farming employment opportunities, education and skills need to be developed. tailor-made training programs could be arranged for rural workers to enhance the probability of them getting employment in the non-farm sector. agro-climatic factors account for the high degree of the seasonality of supply. similarly, many fruits, often grown on trees or other perennials, also exhibit climatic sensitivity and seasonality. fruits and vegetables tend to require greater postharvest care to avoid damage and spoilage, exacerbating the distribution problem. the main constraints faced by households in diversified areas were a poor asset base, lack of credit facilities, lack of awareness and training facilities, fear of taking risk, lack of rural infrastructure, and lack of opportunities in the non-farm sector, while the main constraints in less diversified area were poor transport facilities, poor asset base, an unfavorable agro-climate, lack of credit facilities, lack of awareness and training, and lack of basic infrastructure7. diversified farmers faced huge hurdles, even though in order to overcome climatic and other agricultural risks and maintain their livelihood they should adopt diversifications either on-farm or off-farm. hence, the study focused on finding appropriate solutions to overcoming these constraints. to promote sustainable farming, all types of vegetable production systems should adopt soil conservation, plant protection, and cropping techniques. high external input systems would benefit from a more judicious application of fertilizer, diversified cropping pattern, and a shift to labor-saving technologies (e.g., mechanization). reduced application of inorganic fertilizer is not, however, a universal prescription; in fact, low external input systems, which are also fairly widespread, would benefit from greater fertilizer application. for removal of entry barriers to non-farm employment opportunities, education and skill development need to be promoted. tailor-made training programs could be arranged for rural workers to enhance their likelihood of gaining employment in non-farm activities. thre is sufficient scope for alleviating agricultural productivity by improving infrastructural facilities in the state, particularly in the banking, education, communication, and health sectors. climate change causes major challenges in the agriculture sector, and farmers change occupation for a sustainable livelihood. however, a lack of experience and knowledge in their new field means that they have many struggles to face in achieving their goal. since previous research studies measured only livelihood diversification patterns, this study aimed to identify the specific constraints and suggestions. the study aims to answer the following questions: what are the consequences faced by farmers following livelihood diversification? and how to solve these constraints by modification? 1.1. theoretical framework makate, wang, and makate (2016) found that crop diversification is a good strategy to overcome climate risks and significantly increase crop productivity and farmers’ economic status. also, they recommend wider adoption of diversification practices for greater adaptation to the ever-changing climate. non-farm income-generating activities provide an important source of primary employment in the rural areas of most developing countries, and it is assumed that as farm size due to population pressure becomes smaller, the percentage of non-farm income becomes larger (hilson, 2016). non-farm activities have the potential to play a crucial role in reducing vulnerability to poverty by providing households with a form of insurance against the risks of farming asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 20-29 22 and reducing reliance on natural resources (cinner & bodin, 2010; lohmann & liefner, 2009; martin & lorenzen, 2016; rigg, 2006). in addition, livelihood diversification is an effective way of solving the problems caused by poverty and environmental degradation. therefore, livelihood diversification can be used as an efficient indicator to evaluate the success and sustainability of the rural community, which is, for instance, true in china (liu & liu, 2016). kabir, cramb, alauddin, and roth (2016) studied farmers who changed their farming system to shrimp cultivation; after 5 years they were facing issues like increased soil salinity, reduced profitability and altered rice crop cultivation. multiple motives prompt households and individuals to diversify assets, incomes, and activities. diversification may be derived by limited risk-bearing capacity in the presence of incomplete or weak financial systems that create strong incentives to select a portfolio of activities in order to stabilize income flows and consumption, by constraints in labor and land markets, and by climatic uncertainty (kassie, kim, & fellizar jr, 2017). livelihood diversity helps to reduce households’ dependence on environmental resources, thereby helping environment restoration. off-farm employment causes the outflow of the rural population and reduces regional population and environmental pressures, which is beneficial for maintaining rural development achievements. this is consistent with the results of the study on ecological restoration in the wuyi mountain area of fujian, china (wang, wang, li, & qin, 2016). in developing countries, farm households allocate their labor to off-farm income diversification activities for the following reasons: to reduce income risk by diversifying ex ante; to maintain food security (income and consumption) in the face of low farm productivity and income shocks such as drought, by diversifying ex post, in the face of insurance market failure; and to earn cash income to finance farm investments, in the face of credit market failure (kassie, 2017). kassie (2017) found that the proportion of family members who had been attending school during the survey season, either in the rural area where their family lives or in some other urban areas, was found to have a negative impact on non-farm and off-farm household income levels. as the proportion of students increased by 1%, the income level of off-farm and non-farm diversification activities declined by 0.93 and 1.02% units, respectively. these results are likely due to the fact that schooling withdraws a rural labor force from livelihood diversification activities, so household farm income will decline. thus, shortage of family labor may push the household to concentrate only on subsistence and on-farm agricultural activities. however, in the long run, investment in education may increase remittances, which will, in turn, increase household non-farm income. mango, makate, tamene, mponela, and ndengu (2018) revealed that households with higher crop diversification intensity were more likely to have diversity in terms of food crops that can be consumed within the household, thus justifying the positive relationship. this implies that crop diversification improves food consumption in central malawi. 2. methodology the study followed an ex post facto research design and purposive sampling method. the study was conducted in the western zone of tamil nadu state, india. the study area was selected based on maximum area under agriculture. the districts and villages were selected purposively based on area under cultivation. from the villages, sample farmers were selected using a purposive sampling technique. samples were selected from two different situations: irrigated and nonirrigated. in each category 120 farmers were selected, with a total sample size of 240. socio-economic variables and consequences and suggestions were collected from previous studies. relevant papers for the study were collected and variables were identified by thorough understanding. after that, the identified variables and other items like consequences and suggestions were sent to 100 adjudicators for rating; these are all experts in the research area. after acquiring ratings from the adjudicators, the variables were finalized and used for interview schedule preparation. for data collection purposes, a well-structured interview schedule was prepared with the help of scientists’ opinions, before a pilot study was launched to test the interview schedule. an interview schedule was modified and finalized as per the pilot study report. the survey was conducted in the selected area by the authors and the collected information was coded and cumulated for analysis. the data were grouped by low, medium, and high based on the median and standard deviation value and simple percentage method (equation 1) used for analysis: percentage (value/total value) × 100% (1) opinions on perceived constraints due to livelihood diversification was collected and the garrett ranking method was used for ranking. ranking is done to determine the most significant factor from the respondent's answer. ranking of alternatives using the garrett method is done by calculating the respondent's data as a factor of the percentage position value, using equation 2: percentage position = 100(rij-0.5)/nj (2) where rij is the value of variable i given by the respondent to j, while nj is the number of variables assessed by as many as j respondents. the results of the percentage position are then converted to garrett values using the garrett ranking conversion table. the value of rij is then multiplied by the garrett value to determine the total garrett score. the average garrett score is then calculated by dividing the total garrett score by the number of alternatives. alternative ranking is done based on the highest average value. the z test is used to test the difference between respondents in irrigated and nonirrigated areas with respect to each variable. the formula used to calculate z value is given in equation 3: z = (x̄ – μ)/(σ/√n) (3) here, x̄ is sample mean, μ is population mean, σ is standard deviation of population, and n = number of observations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 20-29 23 3. findings and discussion among the 240 respondents, an equal (120) number were in irrigated and nonirrigated areas. the collected responses were analysed and the results and discussion presented below. the findings and discussion are grouped in two parts: • profile of respondents. • consequences and suggestions encountered by the farmers due to livelihood diversification. 3.1. profile of respondents the collected responses on the respondent’s profile were analysed, and the findings presented in table 1. table 1. profile of the respondents. s. no. variable category irrigated (120) (%) nonirrigated (120) (%) total (240) (%) z value 1 age young 4.200 5.800 5.000 2.002* middle-aged 40.800 22.500 31.700 old 55.000 71.700 63.300 2 education illiterate 16.600 4.200 10.400 0.808* functionally literate 4.200 18.200 11.300 up to primary school 26.700 34.200 30.400 up to middle school 10.800 15.000 12.900 up to secondary school 24.200 11.700 17.900 up to higher secondary school 8.300 12.500 10.400 collegiate education 9.200 4.200 6.700 3 level of income (in rs.) ≤25000 5.000 14.200 9.600 6.096** 25001-50000 30.800 60.800 45.800 50001-75000 20.800 14.200 17.500 75001-100000 14.200 4.200 9.200 ≥100001 29.200 6.600 17.900 4 occupation farming as sole occupation 16.700 9.200 12.900 1.796* farming +agricultural labor 32.400 28.300 30.400 farming + business 9.200 14.200 11.700 farming + service 41.700 48.300 45.000 5 entrepreneurial motivation low 11.700 15.000 13.300 0.558ns medium 83.300 73.300 78.400 high 5.000 11.700 8.300 6 perception of livelihood diversification low 6.700 14.200 10.400 3.918ns medium 60.800 73.300 67.100 high 32.500 12.500 22.500 7 attitude of farmers towards farm diversification unfavorable attitude 11.700 20.800 16.200 0.599ns favorable attitude 88.300 79.200 83.800 8 awareness on climate change low 14.200 15.800 15.000 2.664** medium 76.600 56.700 66.700 high 9.200 27.500 18.300 note: * -significant at 5 percent level; ** significant at 1 percent level and nsnon significant. 3.2. age little more than three-fifths (63.30%) of respondents belonged to the old age group, followed by 31.70% middle aged and 5.00% in the young age category. these findings are in accordance with the study conducted by kassie (2017). with regard to category-wise distribution, based on age more than half (55.00%) of irrigated respondents belonged to the old age group followed by 40.80% middle-aged and 4.20% were in young aged group. among the nonirrigated respondents, nearly three-fourths (71.70%) belonged to the old age group followed by 22.50 and 5.80% in the middle-aged and young groups, respectively. the z value indicated that there was a significant difference between irrigated and nonirrigated respondents at the 5% level of significance. hence, the null hypothesis was rejected and an alternate hypothesis accepted. this might be due to the fact that the majority of nonirrigated respondents were in the old age group compared to irrigated respondents and, among irrigated respondents, an almost equal percentage belonged to the old and middle-aged groups. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 20-29 24 the above observation leads to the inference that more than half of the respondents were in the category of the old age group, with more knowledge and experience of both traditional and modern farming systems. during the survey it was observed that the wards of the farmers were not interested in agriculture, and those farmers who had farming as a traditional occupation were also not interested in putting their children into a career in agriculture. this may be the reason for a smaller number of respondents in the young age category 3.3. educational status education is the process of bringing about desirable changes in human behaviour. educational status is one of the factors that may influence the farmer in adopting diversified farm practices. it is generally presumed that the higher the educational level, the higher the rate of livelihood diversification. the distribution of respondents based on their educational status is presented in table 1. it is evident from the table 1 that less than one-third (30.40%) of respondents could claim schooling up to primary level, followed by 17.90, 12.90, and 11.30% up to secondary, middle school level and functional literacy, respectively. an equal number (10.40%) of respondents had attended higher secondary school or were illiterate. about 6.70% of respondents had collegiate education. among irrigated respondents, almost equal numbers could claim schooling up to primary (26.70%) and up to secondary level (24.20%), followed by 16.60% who were illiterate. the other levels reported by respondents were up to middle school (10.80%), collegiate education (9.20%), and higher secondary education (8.30%). a very small proportion (4.20%) had a functional literacy level. among nonirrigated respondents, 34.20% claimed up to primary school education followed by 18.20% functionally literate and 15% up to middle school. around 13 and 12% of respondents had up to higher secondary level and secondary level, respectively. equal numbers (4.20%) were of collegiate or illiteracy status. the z value indicated that there was a significant difference between irrigated and nonirrigated respondents at the 5% level of significance. hence, the null hypothesis rejected and an alternate hypothesis accepted. this might be due to the fact that among irrigated respondents nearly one-fifth were illiterate while others were educated up to middle school. very few respondents had attended higher education. in nonirrigated respondents only a very small number were illiterate or had collegiate education. the remaining irrigated respondents claimed from primary up to a higher level of education. most of the villages in the study area had education facilities up to primary school level. this may be the reason the majority of the respondents claimed literacy up to the primary school education level. few orespondents would have studied in the colleges situated in nearby towns. also, these results explain why more nonirrigated respondents had at least functional literacy than irrigated respondents, because the majority of irrigated respondents came under the old age group and had not attended school in their lifetime. 3.4. annual family income family annual income decides the status of an individual in the social system. it influences the decision of farmers to change occupation. the distribution of respondents according to their annual income is presented in table 1. a cursory look into the table 1 little more than two-fifths (45.80%) of respondents had an annual income of 25001– 50000 rupees, followed by 17.90% with 50001–75000 rupees and 17.50% with more than one lakh. nearly 10.00% of respondents had below 25000 or 75001–100000 rupees. regarding irrigated respondents, less than one-third (30.80%) of respondents had 25001–50000 rupees, followed by 29.20% with more than one lakh. around 21.00% of respondents had 50001–75000 rupees, followed by 75001– 100000 rupees. only a very small number (5.00%) of respondents had below 25000 rupees. among nonirrigated respondents, 60.80% had an annual income of 25001–50000 rupees while 14.20% respondents had either below 25000 rupees or 25001–50000 rupees. nearly 7% had above one lakh. only a very small number (4.00%) of respondents had an annual income of 75001–100000 rupees. the z value indicated that there was a significant difference between irrigated and nonirrigated respondents at the 1% level of significance. this might be due to the fact that majority of irrigated respondents had a maximum annual income of up to 75000 rupees whereas nonirrigated respondents’ maximum annual income was up to 50000 rupees. it was observed that irrigated respondents in the study area were engaged in diverse agricultural activities. during investigation of annual income, it was shown that diversified crop cultivation was considered as the main means of getting higher income in the irrigated area. in the nonirrigated area, the respondents followed only mono crop cultivation along with animal husbandry. these might be the reasons for variation in income between irrigated and nonirrigated conditions. 3.5. occupational status occupational status determines the extent of involvement of a farmer in farm operations. agriculture as a full-time occupation means that an individual allocates more time in farming. hence, the respondents were asked about their occupational status and the related data are presented in table 1. table 1 reveals that 45.00% of the respondents had farming plus service as their main occupation, followed by 30.40% with farming plus agricultural labor as an occupation. nearly 13% of respondents had farming as their sole occupation. about 11.70% of respondents were involved in farming plus another business. these findings are contradictory to the study of theodore and theodore (1999), who reported that two-fifths (60.00%) of respondents had farming as their sole occupation while 5.00% gave farming plus service as their occupation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 20-29 25 among irrigated respondents, little more than two-fifths (41.70%) reported farming plus service as a main occupation, followed by farming plus agricultural labor (32.40%). about 16.70% of respondents were involved in farming as a sole occupation while nearly 10 gave farming plus business as their occupation. regarding nonirrigated respondents, nearly half (48.30%) reported farming plus service as their main occupation, followed by farming plus agricultural labor (28.30%). about 14.00% of respondents were involved in farming plus business. only 9.20% of respondents considered farming as their sole occupation. the z value indicated that there was significant difference between irrigated and nonirrigated respondents at the 5% level of significance. in the study area the respondents depended on more than one occupation as opposed to a single occupation. during the survey it was observed that respondents were engaged in more than one farm activity, such as farming plus agricultural labor/business, rather than farming alone for overcoming agricultural climatic risks. to some extent young respondents mainly depend on service sector employment outside of farming. the above factors may explain the low number of respondents with farming as their sole occupation. 3.6. entrepreneurial motivation it has been referred to as a process of transforming an ordinary individual into a powerful businessman: someone who can create opportunities and help to maximize wealth and economic development. the collected data were analysed and grouped and are presented in table 1. it can be inferred from the table 1 that about 78.40% of respondents had a moderate level of entrepreneurial motivation, followed by 13.30% at a low level. less than one-tenth (8.30%) of respondents had a high level of entrepreneurial motivation. with regards to irrigated respondents, the majority (83.30%) were in the medium category with 11.70% in the low category. very few (5.00%)% of the respondents had entrepreneurial motivation at a high level. regarding nonirrigated respondents, the majority (73.30%) belonged to medium level of entrepreneurial motivation, followed by low (15.00%) and high (11.70%). the z result showed that there was no significant relationship between irrigated and nonirrigated respondents. this might be due to the fact that both type of respondents had same level of entrepreneurial motivation. recently respondents have faced huge agricultural risk due to climatic variation, and also earn only a low income from farming. in this context, the majority of respondents showed interest in starting agricultural ventures, while respondents showed only a medium level information-seeking behavior or had membership in any of the organisations. this might be why the majority of the respondents come under the ‘medium to low’ level of entrepreneurial motivation. 3.7. perception of livelihood diversification a perceived idea of respondents about livelihood diversification is essential for measuring the extent of livelihood diversification at the farm level. hence, an attempt was made to measure the perception of irrigated and nonirrigated respondents of livelihood diversification. the collected data were analysed and grouped and are depicted in table 1. it can be seen from the table that about two-thirds (67.10%) of the respondents had a perception of livelihood diversification at a medium level, followed by high (22.50%) and low (10.40%) levels. pertinent to irrigated respondents, around 61.00% fell within the medium category. the remaining respondents had high (32.50%) and low (6.70%) levels of perception towards livelihood diversification. regarding nonirrigated respondents, nearly three-fourths (73.30%) had a medium level of perception about livelihood diversification. almost an equal percentage of the respondents fell under low (14.20%) and high (12.50%) levels of perception. the z value indicated that there was no significant difference between irrigated and nonirrigated respondents. this might be due to the fact that both type of respondent fell within the medium level of perception about livelihood diversification. 3.8. attitude toward farm diversification an appropriate mindset and predisposition are essential ingredients very much needed for the development of a favorable attitudinal condition. hence, an attempt was made to measure the attitude of irrigated and nonirrigated respondents towards farm diversification. the relevant data were collected, analyzed and grouped in two categories: favorable and unfavorable attitude. the results are presented in table 1. from table 1, among the respondents nearly 84% had a favorable attitude towards farm diversification. these findings are similar to those of theodore and theodore (1999). among irrigated respondents, the vast majority (88.30%) declared a favorable attitude towards farm diversification. regarding nonirrigated respondents, about four-fifths (79.20%) of respondents had a favorable attitude. the z value indicated that there was no significant difference between irrigated and nonirrigated respondents. the respondents’ attitude was similar in both areas. on the whole it will be noted that a greater number of irrigated respondents had a favorable attitude towards farm diversification than nonirrigated respondents, due to availability of irrigation and the high land value of wetland. besides, irrigated respondents were willing to engage in various non-farming activities like coir manufacture, power looms, hand looms and construction of apartments, hotels, schools, ginning factories etc. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 20-29 26 3.9. awareness of climate change climate change is one of the reasons for diversification of existing farming practices. hence, this variable was selected and studied. the findings are analyzed and presented in table 1. it will be seen from the table that 66.70% of the respondents were aware of climate change at a medium level, followed by 18.30% with a low level of awareness. about 15.00% had a low level of awareness of climate change. regarding irrigated respondents, more than three-fourths (76.60%) were aware of climate change at a medium level and 14.20% at a low level of awareness. only 9.20% of respondents were aware of climate change at a high level. among nonirrigated respondents 56.70% had a medium level of awareness followed by 27.50% at a high level. about 15.80% of respondents had a low level of awareness on climate change. the z value indicated that there was significant difference between irrigated and nonirrigated respondents at the 1% level of significance. hence, the null hypothesis was rejected. this might be due to the fact that irrigated respondents had a medium to low level of awareness about climate change but nonirrigated respondents had a medium to high level. respondents’ age and their information-seeking behavior may have motivated them to be more aware of climate change issues. this could be the reason for a medium to a high level of awareness among respondents about climate change. 4. consequences and suggestions encountered by farmers regarding livelihood diversification a consequence in general means the effect of accepting or rejecting an innovation at the individual level. the objectives of this study were to identify the consequences encountered by farmers in adopting livelihood diversification, and suggestions to enhance diversification. the related findings and discussion are presented under the following subsections. 4.1. consequences encountered in livelihood diversification 4.1.1. suggestions to encourage livelihood diversification identifying the consequences would project the field-level problems faced by the respondents in integrating and gaining success from different components. details of the consequences encountered by both irrigated and nonirrigated respondents were collected and collated, and the garrett ranking method used for ranking the constraints the results aispresented in table 2. it can be seen from the table 2 that lack of previous experience (score of 152.22) ranked top. due to adverse climatic effects, respondents moved to new employment. however, the respondents can’t overcome the management issues in new employment. poor family support (135.23) was in second position. discussions revealed that youth and second-line generations felt that farming was not remunerative and hence they started looking for other occupations and careers. other consequences, such as involvement of risk factors (133.37), fear of failure of mixing enterprises (132.60), and lack of confidence (131.49) were in third, fourth, and fifth positions respectively. once respondents had adopted diversification, it is natural that factors such as risk, fear of failure, and reduced confidence hamper them in driving diversification to the higher/next level. complex procedures required to secure a loan (128.52) was in sixth position. in the study area, the respondents were interested in getting loans to extend farm diversification. however, the stringent rules and regulations of credit agencies impeded respondents’ aims. indebtedness (127.31) was in seventh position. during interactions, it was noticed that crop and livestock loans had been obtained by small farmers. there was greater confusion in the minds of small farmers as to whether their livelihood activities could be extended as they were already in debt. table 2. consequences faced by respondents due to livelihood diversification. (n = 240) s.no factors average score rank 1 lack of technical support 124.41 8 2 lack of previous experience 152.22 1 3 poor family support 135.23 2 4 heavy investment in starting new enterprise 92.34 15 5 poor access to resources 104.55 13 6 livestock disease management 104.96 12 7 involvement of risk factors 133.37 3 8 frustration due to failure of enterprises 123.18 9 9 lack of confidence 131.49 5 10 fear of failure in mixing enterprises 132.6 4 11 indebtedness 127.31 7 12 complex procedures to acquire loans 128.52 6 13 poor economic status 106.13 11 14 poor investment capacity 98.74 14 15 rural migration 108.35 10 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 20-29 27 lack of technical support (124.41) ranked eighth. upon observation, it could be seen that the respondents were highly dissatisfied about the inadequate technical support received from extension officials and scientists of kvk. also, the centers was less accessible due to their physical proximity. frustration due to failure of enterprises (123.18) ranked ninth. in the study area, to overcome climatic risks the respondents had adopted livelihood diversification without having previous experience, while they faced hurdles during enterprise management and were unable to overcome these issues. this might prevent respondents from extending their enterprise. in tenth position was rural migration (108.35). a few agricultural laborers had migrated to nearby towns to work as laborers in shops and textiles because of the attractive wages offered. both categories of farmer shared the view that diversification involves integration of several components that demand labor for maintaining and carrying out such activities. the remaining consequences, including poor economic status (106.13), livestock disease management (104.96), poor access to resources (104.96), poor investment capacity (98.74), and heavy investment to start new enterprises (92.34), were ranked 11th to 15th, respectively. these factors affected the diversified respondents at lower levels only. 4.2. suggestions to encourage livelihood diversification further attempts were made to elucidate suggestions regarding strategies to enhance livelihood diversification. the related findings are given in table 3 and figure 1. from the results, almost an equal proportion of respondents expressed the view that farmers need specific training (77.92%), encourage livestock management (77.50%), and provide subsidies for agricultural allied enterprise development as a strategy to encourage livelihood diversification. this might be due to the fact that both irrigated and nonirrigated respondents experienced adverse effects due to unpredictable climatic variation. hence, the respondents felt the need for training and additional income-oriented business startups to overcome agricultural risks and promote their livelihood standards. the respondents gave facilitation of easy administrative procedures for accessing loans (74.58) and encouraging small-scale enterprise development (73.75) as factors to encourage livelihood diversification. the respondents in the study area expressed that they wanted to become entrepreneurs. hence, the respondents look for easy ways to access loans and subsidies for small-scale enterprise development. about 68.75% of the respondents felt that creation of wider market opportunities is one of the factors to enhance livelihood diversification. respondents look forward to wider market opportunities for overcoming marketing risks. table 3. suggestions to encourage livelihood diversification in irrigated and nonirrigated land ecosystems. s. no. suggestions total respondents (n = 240)* no. % 1 facilitating easy administrative procedures for accessing loans 179 74.58 2 ensuring minimum support price for dryland crops 152 63.33 3 expanding the coverage of crop insurance 124 51.67 4 providing subsidies for agricultural enterprise development 182 75.83 5 encouraging farm mechanization in both irrigated and nonirrigated areas 139 57.92 6 extending subsidies for agricultural development 156 65.00 7 encouraging group approaches (i.e., fpo, cig, fig) 137 57.08 8 creating wider market opportunities 165 68.75 9 creating better road connectivity 120 50.00 10 farmers need specific training 187 77.92 11 encouraging small-scale enterprise development 177 73.75 12 encouraging livestock management 186 77.50 13 implementing an exclusive program for diversification 150 62.50 14 creating a model farm village to enhance understanding 153 63.75 15 creating non-agricultural ventures in nearby areas 127 52.92 note: *multiple responses. more than 60.00% of respondents said that extending subsidies for agricultural development (65.00%), creating a model farm village for better understanding (63.75%), ensuring minimum support price for dry land crops (63.33%), and implementing an exclusive program for diversification (62.50%) were the key strategies for livelihood diversification. during the survey the respondents said that the creation of a model farm village in a nearby area should be promoted to adopt new technologies soonest. furthermore, they pointed out that implementation of a minimum support price for nonirrigated crops will help to overcome economic risks; and also, implementing an exclusive program for diversification will help to encourage respondents to adopt livelihood diversification on a large scale. around 57.00% of respondents stated that encouraging farm mechanization in both irrigated and nonirrigated areas, and encouraging group approaches, will support livelihood diversification. the respondents perceived that, to overcome labor shortages it will be necessary to create much greater awareness about farm mechanization and implements in both irrigated and nonirrigated areas. also creating awareness about the benefits of group approaches facilitates wider crop cultivation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(1)2022: 20-29 28 figure 1. suggestions to overcoming the consequences of livelihood diversification. more than half (52.92%) of the respondents mentioned the creation of non-agricultural ventures in nearby areas to enhance livelihood diversification. increased family expenditure had forced respondents to involve high remuneration-oriented non-agricultural work, whereas some respondents who had migrated to non-agricultural work. other respondents had left farming. to overcome this, the respondents suggested that creating non-agricultural ventures in nearby areas would control migration and encourage respondents to participate in, at least, part-time agriculture. expanding the coverage of crop insurance was mentioned by 51.67% of respondents.to overcome climatic risks and their livelihood security, respondents were looking for crop insurance. exactly half (50.00%) of respondents expressed the view that creating better road connectivity is among the factors for livelihood diversification. better road connectivity encourages respondents to cultivate crops rather than sell land. 5. conclusion current climate change influences agriculture to a greater exrent. hence the farmers have changed occupations to overcome the situation. at that time, they were affected due to constraints like lack of experience in the new sector, lack of family support to do the new work and lack of knowledge in managing the multiple cropping system in their field. the study indicated future suggestions to overcome the consequences, such as providing specific training to farmers and encouraging them to rear cattle; and also they expect a region-specific subsidies program to support their livelihood options. hence, the study concluded that policymakers must concentrate on this area and may implement new, area-specific policies. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references cinner, j. e., & bodin, ö. 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(2018). adoption of small-scale irrigation farming as a climate-smart agriculture practice and its influence on household income in the chinyanja triangle, southern africa. land, 7(2), 1-19. martin, s. m., & lorenzen, k. (2016). livelihood diversification in rural laos. world development, 83, 231-243. rigg, j. (2006). land, farming, livelihoods, and poverty: rethinking the links in the rural south. world development, 34(1), 180-202. theodore, m. k., & theodore, l. (1999). major environmental issues facing the 21st century. wang, j., wang, y., li, s., & qin, d. (2016). climate adaptation, institutional change, and sustainable livelihoods of herder communities in northern tibet. ecology and society, 21(1), 5. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 284 analysis of parboiled rice processing in northern region of ghana: determinants, constraints and opportunities abdulai adamsa, emmanuel tetteh jumpah b, kehinde damilola ilesanmi c, hajei douri bennind aresearch scientist; csir science and technology policy research institute, accra, ghana b principal technologist; csir science and technology policy research institute, accra, ghana c postdoctoral fellow; faculty of commerce, administration and law, university of zululand, kwa dlangezwa, 3886, south africa d executive director; youth advocacy on rights and opportunities, tamale, ghana  boginah@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history: received: 13-sep-2019 accepted: 22-nov-2019 online available: 17-dec2019 keywords: constraints, determinants, northern region, probit model, parboil rice abstract this paper aims at understanding the current dynamics that underlie the parboil rice industry in the northern region of ghana and the analysis focuses on the determinants, constraints, and opportunities. study utilise recent primary data collected (march-april 2019) from 270 rice processors across two districts purposively selected. quantitative analysis was done using probit and non-parametric methods to identify determinants and rank constraints associated with local rice parboiling. the findings revealed that rice parboiling is the primary activity of women and jasmine and agra rice is the most commonly varieties processed. grades and standards for parboiling rice exist but enforcement in the marketplace is weak. education level, age and experience of processors are the key determinants of rice parboiling in the northern region. inadequate technical know-how, low capacity of processing equipment, lack of grades and standards, general low prices and demand, and lack of finance are the main constraints hindering the proper development of the local rice industry and efficient participation of households in markets. emerging opportunities in the sector which women and youth could take advantage for better livelihoods includes sale to institutions (schools, prisons, and hospitals), packaging, and the government input subsidy programme. contribution/ originality there are limited studies that examine the performance of the local rice industry in ghana, especially on rice parboiling and the constraints and opportunities associated with it. this paper bridges the gap by providing insights into the dynamics and nature of constraints facing the rice parboiling sector. opportunities exist locally for exploitation to help upgrade the quality of local rice for an improved standard of living. we declare that this paper has never been published before and is not under consideration with any other journal for that purpose. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.284.297 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: abdulai adams, emmanuel tetteh jumpah, kehinde damilola ilesanmi and hajei douri bennin (2019). analysis of parboiled rice processing in northern region of ghana: determinants, constraints and opportunities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2), 284-297. © 2019 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 9, issue 2 (2019): 284-297 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:boginah@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8820-0925 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2019.9.2/1005.2.284.297 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3828-972x asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 284-297 285 1. introduction ghana has a great potential for self-sufficiency in rice production. in the 1970s, the policy of selfsufficiency by the government facilitated the production of rice in the country. the country has witnessed sustained increases in both rice production and productivity since 2013. for instance, rice productivity increased from 2.64 mt per hectare in 2013 to 3.01 mt per hectare in 2017 (mofa, 2017). the increased trajectory has largely been attributed to increased adoption of technologies, access to and use of input, enhanced extension delivery, and availability of improved planting materials. northern ghana has a vast potential for rice production and accounts for 61% of the total rice produced in the country (mofa, 2016). rice production and processing are profitable ventures (islam et al., 2017; wireko-manu and amamoo, 2017; bwala and john, 2018; akter et al., 2019) and the industry offers a huge potential to eliminate poverty if significant investments are made to address constraints. several national policies and programmes are being developed and implemented by african governments aimed at increasing domestic rice production and reducing import, and ghana is no exception. however, many of these programmes and strategies are production focused with little emphasis on the entire rice value chain (demont, 2013). in ghana for instance, the rice sector support project (rssp) intervention being implemented by the ministry of food and agriculture (mofa) is anticipated to support the development of 6,000ha of lowland rice production and milling of 16,250mt per annum. however, linking processors to marketers/or markets, and packaging to meet the needs of consumers is missing in the programme targets. there is urgent need to commercially connect local rice value chains to national rice sector development hubs for greater efficiency. interventions by state and non-state actors to revamp the rice sector over the years has not yielded the desired impact as domestic production cannot still meet demand as a result of population growth and inefficiency in the sector. on the other hand, changing taste and preferences in consumer coupled with the uncompetitive nature of rice mills has led to high import rice bills in the country. in northern ghana for instance, the market share for imported rice stood at 76% compared to 24% for local rice (tanko, 2016). constraints faced by the local rice industry which makes it less competitive includes high production and processing costs, difficulty in obtaining credit, poor quality of local rice, poor packaging, and limited use of advanced technologies in processing. poor farm management practices (late harvesting, water logging), post-harvest practices by farmers (harvesting, threshing, drying, and storage of paddy), poor extension service delivery coupled with the use of sub-standard processing infrastructure in rice milling contributes to the poor quality of local rice (manful et al., 1998; seck et al., 2010; nwalieji, 2016). grading techniques and grading attributes are essential in rice milling as it ensures that the quality standards demanded by consumers are met (chepa et al., 2016). however, ensuring greater quality remains a challenge to the local milling sector, hence low prices and demand for the product. as noted by ayeduvor (2018), the perceived low quality for local rice is reflected in the low prices received compared to imported rice of the same quality in ghanaian markets. the commercial distribution of local rice is also unstructured and this impacts on the marketing. the main criteria for grading rice are the degree of milling, content of broken rice, grain length, and the content of head rice (bernas, 2011). both socio-economic and quality factors influence households’ preferences for local rice in ghana (ahiakpor et al., 2017). while income, age, sex and marital status significantly influences household’s preference for local rice in the upper east region, packaging, the absence of foreign materials and aroma play a significant role. key traits considered by consumers in their choice for local rice are grains with good appearance, well packaged, and the absence of contaminants. in assessing the quality of local rice that influences their consumption in ghana, ayeduvor (2018) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 284-297 286 found improvements in the quality of branding for local rice types in recent times though some are still not branded and the presence of foreign materials remains a challenge. despite the nutritional, economical, and better sensory advantages of parboiling rice compared polished rice (rocha‐villarreal et al., 2018) only few people are involved in the processing and marketing of parboil rice. parboiling significantly improves head rice recovery, the physical appearance, eating, nutritional quality, and could compensate for the weakness in farmers and millers post-harvest practices (ndindeng et al., 2015). the key questions raised are: ‘what factors influence the decision of processors to participate in the rice parboiling business and what constraints and opportunities exist in the industry? analysing the dynamics that underlie local rice production in the northern region is relevant as it contributes to bridging the knowledge gap in rice parboiling and how to improve the quality, an area that has received less attention in the rice literature. the constraints and opportunities highlighted, has greater policy implications in making the local rice sector competitive and creating decent jobs along the rice value chain. 2. literature review 2.1. factors influencing consumer preference of rice consumer preference for local rice is driven by several factors and in terms of pricing, a long run relationship exists between imported and local rice in regional and district markets (tanko, 2016). domestic prices for rice response to price shocks in the long run and local rice producers are not price takers as traders selling imported rice do not lead in price setting. as a policy measure, there is the need to make local rice more competitive (improve standards), creating more awareness among target groups on the quality and quantity of domestic rice available in local markets, and probably imposing higher tariffs to reduce rice imports to create demand for local rice are advocated for. moseley et al. (2010) attributed mali’s success from less dependence on imported rice to a mix of price and non-price factors. improving internal networks for local rice, landlocked status which facilitates domestic rice production, generating more financial space for the national rice sector to thrive, less competition faced by local rice in terms of quality, strong desire by consumers for local rice, and the willingness of people to pay a higher price premium for local rice varieties contributed to rice self-sufficiency (moseley et al., 2010; demont et al., 2013; demont, 2016). recent studies have espoused the centrality to upgrade rice value chains to effectively deal with the demand side issue and ensure rice self-sufficiency especially in large urban consuming centres in africa (demont, 2013; wailes et al., 2015; gyimah-brempong et al., 2016). historically, the continent is noted for increasing rice imports resulting in a biased preference shift for local rice in favour of asian rice quality standards, a situation that makes it difficult for local rice to compete (demont and ndour, 2015; coulibaly et al., 2015; demont et al., 2017). consumer appreciation for asian rice attributes, access to free port, as well as geographic distance explains the increasing difficulties for local rice to favourably compete with imported rice (demont et al., 2017). aiming to attain rice self-sufficiency would therefore require simultaneous upgrading of rice quality and value chains (wailes et al., 2015). other policy measures proposed in dealing with the rice imports are the imposition of higher tariffs, marketing campaigns and consumer awareness raising, and improving the quality of local rice (tanko, 2016; ayeduvor, 2018). increasing investments through public support also have great potential of inducing higher prices for local rice in domestic markets with positive returns. in addition, studies that focus on analysing consumer preferences for local rice and their willingness to pay higher premiums have revealed mixed findings (fiamohe et al., 2015; diagne et al., 2017). generally, urban consumers in west africa prefer imported rice to local rice and the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 284-297 287 willingness of consumers to pay a higher premium is based on the attributes of cleanliness and whiteness (fiamohe et al., 2015; chepa et al., 2016), aroma/fragrance (diagne et al., 2017), and local/relative rice (asante et al., 2013). however, a study conducted by demont et al. (2017) did not find the aroma to be a significant attribute that shapes the choice of consumers for local rice. their findings suggest that the failure to upgrade the quality of local rice to the standards of imported rice affects the demand for local rice. other quality attributes of rice that influences consumers choice for imported rice over local rice includes the absence of contaminants, ease of cooking, better grain quality (asante et al., 2013), taste, cooking time, and cooking quality (anang et al., 2011; ahiakpor et al., 2017). this suggests that, consumers demand for rice is driven by multiple factors with price and quality variables playing key roles in the market. socio-economic, quality factors, and policy constraints affect rice production, processing and consumption in sub-saharan africa (ahiakpor et al., 2017; balamurugan and balasubramanian, 2017). input and output market constraints, limited access to credit, poor rural transport and infrastructure are the issues. furthermore, high post-harvest losses, poor quality of milled rice, and high production cost are some of the biggest challenge facing african rice farmers (balamurugan and balasubramanian, 2017). reducing unit costs at the farm and off-farm levels of the rice value chain could positively impact on future developments in the sector (adjao and staatz, 2015). quality improvement, managing risks, and the promotion of locally suitable technologies holds the promise to increase local rice production. lack of a comprehensive national policy plan for the rice sector and coherence in program implementation to tackle the numerous constraints and observed deficiencies remains an issue. meanwhile, the demand for more expensive rice varieties by consumers is on a growth trajectory because of the high premium placed on off-farm activities, especially milling, retailing, and branding (minten et al., 2013). in analysing the implications of food quality changes in bangladesh, the authors reported that the rewards for labour in producing different varieties of rice were the same and that farmers enjoy no direct benefits from the increased willingness of consumers to pay more for rice. custodic et al. (2016) analysed the differences and trends associated with consumer choices for intrinsic rice attributes in 24 cities across 7 countries in asia. the study highlighted the need to incorporate rice attributes preferred by most people into rice breeding programmes while taking into account geographic differences and specific preferences as a way of improving the food security situation. while reducing yield gaps and expanding areas cultivated to rice hold the key to substantially increase paddy production (seck et al., 2010), branding, advertising, and promotional events are central to uplifting demand for local rice (demont, 2013; demont et al., 2017). furthermore, demont et al. (2017) emphasised the need for specific targeting of promotional events to larger households and female shoppers for greater consumption effects. marketing, therefore, offers a great opportunity for the realization of african countries a large potential for rice production. recent increases in rice production in sub-saharan africa have been linked to commercialization. domestic policies are focusing to improve market access and performance especially for smallholder farmers, and promote inclusive participation (nasrin et al., 2015). a study on rice commercialization in ethiopia showed that majority of farmers mainly sold their paddy to local processors whom they build long term relationships with. farmers were, however, not very happy with the arrangement due to low prices obtained and the observed manipulation of scales by some processors (alemu et al., 2018). analysing the operations of 140 rice farmers in bangladesh, akter et al. (2019) found rice production profitable since the returns exceeded the production cost. however, profitability levels asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 284-297 288 were found to differ across different farmer groups and large-scale farms are more profitable than small and medium sized farms. the main determinants of profitability revealed were fertilizer cost, the cost of power tiller, and hired labour cost. in addition, rice processing has also been found profitable (johnson and masias, 2016; chung et al., 2016). an analysis of rice mills in malaysia revealed long run profitability in milling though there is subsidy effect on the profit margin. rice mills that received miller subsidy were more protected than those that do not benefit from such intervention. furthermore, large private mills enjoyed higher profit margins due to economies of scale. however, paddy price, the recovery ratio, and changes in paddy purchases influences profitability (chung et al., 2016). johnson and masias (2016) assessed the performance of rice mills in nigeria in the light of government’s growth and agriculture modernization agenda. the findings revealed governments’ success in expanding both the quality of paddy produced and milling capacity of medium and large-scale firms. this has accelerated the capacity of the mills to utilize paddy (rice milling rose by 0.5 million mt) and produce quality rice for consumption. this suggests that expanding quality paddy supply to mills could lead to self-sufficiency in rice production. however, overall increase in employment in the industry was minimal and the study did not factor the role of small-scale millers in the analysis. 3. methodology 3.1. population and sampling the population for this study is made up of rice processors (parboiled and non-parboiled) in the kumbungu and sagnarigu districts of northern region. the northern region was chosen for this study because it accounts for over 61% of the total rice produced in the country and rice parboiling is dominant in the two districts considered. both primary and secondary data were collected and analysed as part of the study. a list of rice processing groups compiled by armsig resources, a local ngo engaged in rice parboiling was used as the basis for determining the sample. the list which was updated in 2018 has a total of eight groups with 365 individual members actively engaged in rice parboiling and marketing. a total of five groups were selected based on their current level of operations and activities. groups which were more active and vibrant in their processing activities were purposively selected and 150 rice parboilers randomly selected. for nonparboiler, the total population was 183 individuals and assuming a confidence of 95% translated into 125. data was collected using a semi structured questionnaire, and after cleaning the number of non-parboilers dropped to 120. the distribution of the sample selected is captured in table 1. concentration of rice processing activities and population density were taken into consideration on the number of respondents allocated to each community. table 1: sample distribution district communities no. sampled kumbungu kpachi 51 kunkulung 72 wuba 43 sagnarigu garizegu 43 sligu 37 total 270 the information collected covers socio-economic and demographic data, production and processing data, financing, grading and standardization, marketing, constraints and opportunities. secondary data on prices was collected from the district department of agriculture which was used to validate some of the responses given by processors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 284-297 289 3.2. model specification and data analysis the quantitative data collected was analysed using lindep version 10 econometric software. the study utilised the probit model in analysing the factors that influence processers’ choice of rice processing. theoretically, the decision of a processor to do parboiling is influenced by certain factors (individual, demographic and institutional). let the latent variable, 𝑌𝑖 represent the decision of a processor to do parboiling as her main occupation for livelihood and 𝑋𝑖 represents independent variables, the quantitative response model can be written as: 𝑌𝑖 = 𝛼 + 𝛽𝑋𝑖 + 𝜇𝑖 …………………………. (1) where 𝛼 is the constant, 𝛽 is the coefficient of parameters to be estimated, and 𝜇𝑖 is the error term. for discrete choice models of this nature, the ordinary least squares (ols) technique is inappropriate and cannot be applied since the probability of an event occurring is non-linear in nature (collet, 1991). heteroscedasticity of the error terms coupled with estimated probability values that lie outside the usual range [0 and 1] could arise if ols is applied. the use of logit or probit models offers a plausible solution. however, the probit model performs better in small samples relative to the logit (anang et al., 2015; sebopetji and belete, 2009), hence the choice for the probit model. the probit model is specified as: probability(𝑍𝑖 = 1) = ∅(𝑋𝑖 𝛾) …………………………. (2) where 𝑍𝑖 is the binary choice variable (0 or 1), ∅ depicts the cumulative distribution function of the standard normal distribution, 𝛾 represents unknown parameters to be estimated, and 𝑋𝑖 represents the explanatory variables included in the model. probit models often produce estimates that lie between 0 and 1 (constrains probabilities) but poses a relaxed condition on the effects of explanatory variables on the predicted values of the dependent variable. the basic assumption is that only the values of 0 and 1 are observed for the dependent variable, but that a latent continuous variable 𝑍 ∗𝑖 exists which determines the value of the dependent variable, 𝑍𝑖 (sebopetji and belete, 2009). z* is given as: 𝑍 ∗𝑖= 𝛾0 + ∑ 𝛾𝑛𝑋𝑚 + 𝑢𝑖 𝑁 𝑛=1 …………………………. (3) where n = sample size and 𝑍𝑖 = 1 if 𝑍 ∗𝑖> 0; and 𝑍𝑖 = 0 otherwise. the empirical model which was estimated following maximum likelihood procedures is of the form: 𝑌𝑖 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝐴𝐺𝐸𝐼 + 𝛽2𝑀𝑆𝑇𝑖 + 𝛽3𝐻𝐻𝑆𝑖 + 𝛽4𝐸𝑋𝑃𝑖 + 𝛽5𝐸𝐷𝐶𝑖 + 𝛽6𝑂𝐶𝐶𝑖 + 𝛽7𝐴𝑆𝑀𝑖 + 𝜀𝑖 ….... (4) where, 𝑌𝑖 = dependent variable which is binary (parboiling of rice by a processor), 𝛽0 = intercept 𝛽1 -𝛽7 = coefficient of parameters to be estimated age = age of respondent in years mst = marital status hhs = household size exp = years of experience in rice processing edc= level of education occ= main occupation of processor asm = membership to a group, and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 284-297 290 𝜀𝑖 = random error term. to understand the key constraints facing rice processors, kendall’s coefficient of concordance, a nonparametric approach was used to rank constraints identified to be associated with rice processing and marketing in the districts. this approach has been widely used in assessing the level of agreement among a set of observations by providing ranks. a list of constraints based on literature search was provided to respondents and each processor was asked to rank the constraints (from the most important to the least important) based on the level of importance they attach to them in their operations. the sum of ranks was then computed though most empirical studies utilise the mean rank. kendall coefficient of concordance (w) is given as: 𝑊 = 12𝑆′−3𝑝2 (𝑛+1)2 𝑝2(𝑛3−𝑛)−𝑝𝑇 …………………………. (5) where p = number of observations, n = number of constraints ranked, s = sum of squares, and t = correction for tie. the value of w is tested using the chi square, x2 = p (n-1) w, with the null hypothesis of no agreement in the ranks of the constraints as provided by the observations. based on the level of significance, a decision to accept or reject is then made. if significant, then the null hypothesis is rejected. 4. results and discussions 4.1. socioeconomic characteristics of respondents the variables considered in this study, their definitions and measurement, and a summary of the descriptive statistics are discussed here. the mean age of processors was 46 years, but the age structure varies from 25 years to 51 years. the future of the parboil rice processing in the area does not seem sustainable since young females involvement in the sector is minimal. about 94% of respondents covered were married, a sign of independence and maturity as cultural norms in the area reflects. the mean household size of the sample surveyed is 8 but varies widely from a membership of 2 to 20 people. this reflects the demographic profile of households in northern ghana which are said to be larger in size. the average experience level of processors was 7 years with the maximum being 45 years. this is good enough to make processors more efficient as learning curve effects occur within the sector. education is a key factor in business development. however, most processors did not have formal education and when they do, it was below the tertiary level. about 85% of processors were engaged in rice parboiling as their main occupation. the study found that females were engaged in rice processing and marketing while males are mainly focussed on production. furthermore, 96% of processors were members of a production/ processing/marketing groups or groupings such as the village saving loan associations (vsla). this is important due to the social and economic benefits likely to be derived for belonging to such associations. in addition, about 65% of the processors were undertaking value addition activities such as packaging, and promotions to expand markets for their products. 4.2. determinants of rice parboiling results of the analysis on factors that influence rice parboiling is presented in table 2. the values of the pseudo r-squared and that of the chi-squared shows that the model is well fitted to the data set. table 2: probit estimates of the determents of rice parboiling variable variable definition coefficient standard error prob. |z|>z* age age of processor in years -0.057** 0.026 0.028 mst marital status -0.368 0.745 0.622 hhs household size -0.014 0.063 0.998 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 284-297 291 exp years of experience in rice processing 0.067** 0.031 0.029 edc level of education -0.061*** 0.550 0.913 occ main occupation 1.449 0.992 0.145 asm membership to a group -0.362 0.725 0.618 goodness of fit no. of objects = 270; pseudo r2 = 0.667; chi2 (6df) =110.46; p-value = 0.011; log likelihood function =-126.04 source: authors’ own estimation from field data note: ***, **, and * represents 1%, 5%, and 10% level of significance the coefficient for age is negative and statistically significant, suggesting that as processors age, their level of participation in rice parboiling decline. this may be because older people are generally risk averse and such adoption of new ideas and technologies in processing and marketing methods may decline with age. this could be attributed to the generally low adoption to new things which older people use to minimise risk in their business operations. the recent shift in focus to the youth following the unemployment situation in the country could also mean than less attention is being paid to older people in the rice industry. this finding is similar to previous evidence by musa et al. (2011) who found age to be a significant determinant of the purchasing behaviour of rice consumers in malaysia. in the upper east region of ghana, ahiakpor et al. (2017) found age to significantly influence households’ preferences for local rice. female involvement in the rice value chain needs to be supported through investments in the sector. both marital status and household size are found to have negative coefficients and statistically insignificant, suggesting that these factors do not influence rice parboiling decisions in the area. experience, which is measured as the number of years of processors has been in rice parboiling business has a positive and significant effect on the decision to parboil. this suggests that as females stay longer in the industry their attitude toward the adoption of new processing and marketing methods improves due to learning curve effects. the level of education attained is negative and statistically significant in influencing rice parboiling decision. as level of education increases the decision to do parboiling business declines. this may be due to the low profitability of the sector which may compel more educated people, who may have better job options to leave the business. this outcome contradict earlier findings by anang et al. (2016) that formal education increases the technical efficiency in rice production. the occupation of processors is also irrelevant and does not influence the uptake of processing and marketing methods in any way. even though, these women were members of rice processing groups in their communities, individuals were not deriving the needed benefits for their membership since the coefficient of the variable is negative and insignificant. this is in sharp contrast with the findings of dandedjrohoun et al. (2016) that being a member of a parboilers association increases processors knowledge and adoption of technology. membership to a farmer association improves the technical efficiency performance of rice farmers (anang el al., 2016). there is need for members to engage in collective marketing activities so that economic benefits can trickle down to members as a result of their being together in as association. 4.3. constraints to processing and marketing local rice rice parboilers are faced with several processing and marketing constraints which contribute to making the local industry non-competitive. following extensive review of the literature and talking to experts in the sector, a list of constraints was identified (table 3) and processors were then asked to rank these constraints based on their experience and operations. the mean rank for each constraint was then calculated and the rank determined. the kendall’s coefficient of concordance which tests the level of agreement among the rice parboilers of the constraints was estimated at asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 284-297 292 0.7987, having a chi-square of 196.12 with 8 degrees of freedom. since the computed chi-square was greater than the chi-square critical at 1% significance, the study accepts the alternate hypothesis and rejects the null hypothesis. this implies that there was agreement among the rice parboilers about the challenges that confront their operations. w of 0.798 means that there was about 80% agreement among the rankings of the constraints of the rice parboilers. table 3: constraints to processing and marketing of parboil rice constraints mean score rank limited technical know-how 1.22 1st low capacity of processing equipment 2.30 2nd lack of grading and standards 2.33 3rd low prices 4.46 4th lack of finance 5.47 5th poor market infrastructure 5.83 6th low level of awareness among consumers 6.04 7th poor road network 7.28 8th poor quality 7.31 9th measure of goodness of fit no. of objects = 150; kendall’s w = 0.799; chi2 = 196.12; df = 8 asymptomatic significance = 0.000 the findings show that limited technical know-how is the main constraint facing local rice processors in the northern region. technical knowledge on quality rice processing is currently limited among farmers and efforts by both government and ngos to enhance the capacity of these people through training appears to be weak. in fact, only 14.67% of the respondents admitted receiving any form of training on rice processing for the past two years. participation of parboilers in video training has been found to positively impact on the knowledge and use of improved parboiling vessels in benin (dandedjrohoun et al., 2014). improving the quality standards of local rice to the level of asian imports to make it competitive would require large public expenditure in not just equipment but more importantly on training (wailes et al., 2015). poor extension services visit to farmers and processors remains a major constraint in the rice sector (nwalieji, 2016). the second identified constraint is the low capacity of processing equipment which manifests in reduced volumes. the average volume of paddy processed per week currently stood at 11 maxi bags. the potential to increase this volume and improve the quality exist if improved modern equipment is made available to processors. as noted by fofana et al. (2011) the use of traditional equipment in parboiling results in high (90%) heat-damaged grains compared to the use of improved methods (17%). however, meeting the cost of improved processing vessels remains a challenge for most women parboilers. although, small scale processors have been shown to earn lower returns compared to large scale mills (chung et al., 2016), they are efficient in their operations and the government could consider introducing milling subsidy to make the sector more lucrative. the performance of rice mills especially among smallholder processing firms remains a challenge (johnson and masias, 2016). lack of grading and standards is ranked the third most pressing constraint facing the local rice processing sector. inadequate regulations and weak enforcement could be the cause of lack of standardisation despite the fact that standardisation plays critical in ensuring the quality of rice processed and sold to the consumer. rice processors play unique roles in rice commercialisation by providing processing and wholesale services (alemu et al., 2018). however, manipulation of scales by some processors does not only reduce the incomes of farmers but contributes to inaccurate estimation of rice volumes bought and sold (alemu et al., 2018). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 284-297 293 low prices which are reflected in low demand and lack of finance are ranked fourth and fifth respectively. given the challenges of standardisation, it is no surprise that low price is another important constraint because standards will affect quality which intends will affect the price. as reported by ahiakpor et al. (2017), good appearance, well packed and free from contaminants are the key traits that influence consumers’ choice of local rice in the upper east region. ensuring greater quality, is necessary for higher prices to be obtained (chepa et al., 2016). to address the issue of low prices will require the use of multiple approaches such as adapting effective marketing strategies, improving the standards, exploring the use of external buyers, encouraging group marketing, linking processors to consumer groups and aggregators. lack of finance for processors, aggregators and other actors within the rice value chains is a major concern. financing for parboiling rice processing is non-existent from formal sources and processors had to rely on friends, relatives and vsla groups meagre loans to support their operations. as reported by nwalieji (2016) inadequate funds for start-ups and difficulty in obtaining loans hinders the efficient production of quality rice. linn and maenhont (2019) noted that financial constraints impacts on infrastructure investment in rice value chains which make it structurally inefficient. policy interventions aimed at addressing these constraints will greatly impact on the local rice sector and make it more competitive. 4.4. opportunities for rice parboiling and marketing several opportunities exist in the districts which women and youth could take advantage of for better livelihoods. key areas revealed through this study are discussed below:  demand for local rice exist: the demand for parboiling rice though slow is growing. improving the quality and packaging it attractively in different sizes could further increasing demand for the commodity in domestic markets. however, upgrading the quality to appreciable levels of standards will not happen unless conscious efforts are made to uplift investment in the local rice value chain (wailes et al., 2015). increasing investment in postharvest infrastructure and improving research and development on rice varieties preferred by consumers locally is thus critical in sustaining the local rice industry (custodic et al., 2016).  presence of the ghana school feeding programme: the school feeding programme which is currently running in most schools is a good avenue that can be used to create market for parboiling rice. a policy that makes it mandatory for suppliers under the school feeding programme to supply the majority or only parboil rice could go a long way in creating a market and demand for local rice. also, linking processors to other government institution (such as hospitals, senior high schools, prison service) under contract supply agreements/arrangements could promote the consumption of local rice, improve incomes of processors, and trigger rice production in the country.  presence of research institutions: the savannah agricultural research institute (sari) and the university for development studies (uds) which are located in the region can continue with the development and scaling up of improved rice varieties such as jasmine and agra rice, which, because of their aromatic qualities have high patronage among the consuming public. breeding programmes in the rice sector need to be tailored towards the end market (custodic et al., 2016) with greater involvement of women along the crop value chain. the women in agriculture division (wiad) of the district department of agriculture should step up the conduct of food demonstrations on parboil rice to highlight the nutritive value of the product and create household demand for it.  well organized women groups: the presence of existing women groups engaged in village savings and loans (vsl) activities, rice processing and marketing provides an opportunity for capacity building and training on rice parboiling/processing to be integrated into the value chain at minimal cost. strengthening these groups to undertake community advocacy programme could help improve the local rice industry. women and youth could take asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 284-297 294 advantage of the paddy available in communities and go into assembling and stocking for higher incomes.  planting for food and jobs (pfj): the presence of the government input subsidy programme provides an opportunity for women and the youth to go into rice cultivation for increased incomes and better livelihoods. the community extension component of the programme will further equip rice farmers with best agronomic and post-harvest practices leading to the production of quality paddy. positive effects of input subsidy programmes on production and gender outcomes has been documented (fisher and kandiwa, 2014; jayne et al., 2018). however, adjao and staatz (2016) argued that in the context of west africa, subsidies may not be needed to make the rice sector competitive. improving efficiency in production, processing and transportation are rather effective ways of improving the system.  packaging of parboiled rice: currently, most processors sell their rice in maxi bags (85kg). however, not all consumers can afford this quantity at a time. poor packaging of local rice makes it less competitive in the market (tanko, 2016). there is, therefore, the need to package in smaller sizes (5kg, 10kg, and 25kg) just as is done for imported rice so that many more people can afford with convenience. the use of quality packaging materials with good labels will also help consumers in making the right decisions. 5. conclusions and recommendations this study has analysed parboil rice processing in the northern region of ghana with a focus on the determinants, constraints and opportunities using primary data gathered from 270 processors (150 parboilers and 120 non parboilers). the determinants of rice parboiling was analysed using the probit model while non-parametric approach was employed in analysing the constraints. findings revealed that rice parboiling is dominantly a female enterprise though they undertake secondary income activities in the non-farm sectors (sale of processed food and retailing of foodstuffs. jasmine and agra rice is the commonest varieties produced and processed but consumption is not uniform for all varieties marketed. quality factors such as good packaging, absence of foreign materials and the relative price matter for consumers. the main significant determinants of parboiling rice processing is level of education, age and experience. efforts to enhance smallholder processing activities should concentrate on improving training and experience level of processors. the main revealed constraints hindering the proper development of the local rice industry and efficient participation of smallholder households in markets are inadequate technical know-how, low capacity of processing equipment, lack of grades and standards, low prices and demand, and lack of finance. the latter, appears to be more acute as many of the constraints ranked very high is interlinked with finance. for instance, low processing capacity of machinery can only be addressed effectively if funds are available to procure modern efficient mills. financing for parboiling rice processing from formal sources was found to be non-existent and most processors had to rely on friends, relatives and vslas for meagre loans to support their operations. also, weak enforcement of regulations on grades and standards for local rice in the marketplace is an issue. investments in training and modern processing machinery can contribute tremendously in upgrading the rice value chain and guarantee the needed quality to make the product more competitive. based on the findings, a few recommendations are made. first, advocacy campaigns should target young women since the average age of processors is 43 years and increasing age reduces the odds of participation in rice parboiling. failure to target and motivate young people to go into processing will affect the long-term sustainability of the parboil rice sector. also, educated young females should be encouraged and supported with start-up processing equipment to venture into rice parboiling as a business since the sector is profitable. this has wider implications for developing economies where agriculture offers a huge opportunity and yet unemployment asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 9(2)2019: 284-297 295 continues to rise. second, policies and advocacy campaigns should be directed towards addressing issues of limited technical know-how, low capacity of processing equipment, lack of grades and standards, pricing and financing. technical and financial management (resource mobilisation) training should be pursued with serious gender considerations. this will greatly impact on the incomes and welfare of all actors along the parboil rice value chain. finally, public education and policies that encourage the consumption of parboiling rice both at the household and institutional levels are recommended options for governments to help address the observed low demand for local rice. improving quality standards of local rice, creating more awareness among target groups on the quality and product availability in local markets are advocated for. developing pricing and marketing strategy for parboiling rice is an area that requires further research. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: the authors thank yaro field officers who supported in collecting the data. the busag fund through yaro provided funding support for the data collection and dissemination of the research findings. the views and opinions expressed here are solely that of the authors and do not reflect their respective organizations. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or 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(2017). comparative studies on proximate and some mineral composition of selected local rice varieties and imported rice brands in ghana. agriculture and food sciences research, 4(1), 1-7. doi.org/10.20448/journal.512.2017.41.1.7. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 502 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. influence of led supplemental lighting on aeroponic potato (solanum tuberosum l.) minitubers production alvin c. dulaya,b carolyn grace g. someraalmerolc  sylvester a. baduad jonathan v. fabulae wendy c. mateof acollege of engineering, central luzon state university, philippines. bfaculty, department of agricultural and biosystems engineering, college of engineering, benguet state university, philippines. c,d,e,f department of agricultural and biosystems engineering, college of engineering, central luzon state university, philippines.  cggsomera@clsu.edu.ph (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 11 july 2025 revised: 8 september 2025 accepted: 17 september 2025 published: 24 september 2025 keywords aeroponics full spectrum led photoperiod natural daylight minitubers potato plantlets. the photoperiod significantly regulates the growth and tuberization of a potato (solanum tuberosum l.) transplanted inside a greenhouse grown aeroponically. using a full spectrum led grow light with 55% red (660 nm), 30% blue (450 nm), 15% other colors (5% of 6500k white, 5% of infrared 730 nm, 5% of ultraviolet 380 nm) illuminating 100 μmol/m2/s photosynthetic photon flux density (ppfd) on the granola potato cultivar, a 3-hour lighting supplementation, 6-hour lighting supplementation, and no lighting supplementation (natural daylength) were performed to investigate the effects on the growth and minituber production of potato plantlets. the supplemental lighting enhances height, increases stem diameter, and increases leaf size and the number of lateral stems. compared to plantlets grown in natural daylight, the quality of the mini tubers increased by 51% in weight, 76% in diameter, and 21% in the average number of mini tubers per plant, offsetting the delayed stolon and tuber initiation. the results of this study suggest that a 3-hour lighting supplementation using full-spectrum led lights is effective in propagating potato mini tubers. there is no significant difference between the 3-hour and 6-hour lighting supplementation in terms of minituber production; therefore, adopting the 3-hour regimen is more practical. contribution/originality: although aeroponics has been studied and practiced in developed countries, this study is unique in that it focuses on benguet, philippines, where most potatoes are produced. this research contributes to the existing body of literature; however, it is one of the very few studies conducted in the philippines. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5625 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: dulay, a. c., somera-almerol, c. g. g., badua, s. a., fabula, j. v., & mateo, w. c. (2025). influence of led supplemental lighting on aeroponic potato (solanum tuberosum l.) minitubers production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 502–509. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5625 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction potato is the fourth most valuable crop grown globally, behind only corn, rice, and wheat (food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), 2015). the philippines is among the top 104 countries in the world for potato production in 2021, with china being the largest producer, accounting for 25 percent of global production, amounting to 376 million metric tons (faostat, 2023). aeroponics systems could be one of the alternative methods for potato production, especially in urban areas where soil and water are in critical condition through in vitro conditions (romanova, khaksar, novikov, & leonova, 2019). the system significantly increases potato production compared with the other systems currently in use and protects asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 502-509 mailto:cggsomera@clsu.edu.ph https://orcid.org/0009-0001-2987-5498 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9313-677x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4462-6836 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9271-7492 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9315-6885 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5625 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 502-509 503 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. them from pests and soil-borne diseases. higher growth rates and robust, homogeneous, and healthy potato tubers are possible with aeroponics techniques. aeroponic production has the potential to produce two to three times as many minitubers per plant compared to traditional methods (rykaczewska, 2016). growing aeroponic potatoes in vitro may be more costly compared to systems under natural environmental conditions. highland areas in the philippines are the major producers of potatoes due to their favorable environmental conditions (gonzales, kiswa, & bautista, 2016). initial experiments proved that aeroponic potato production can be grown under greenhouse conditions. however, diurnal and seasonal variations, especially the natural photoperiod from the sun, can affect the growth and tuberization of potatoes (schulz et al., 2019). plant physiology and growth are influenced by both the quantity (intensity and photoperiod) and quality (spectral composition) of light, which interact with other environmental parameters and cultivation factors to shape plant behaviors (paradiso & proietti, 2022). using continuous light increased yields by providing plants with a substantial daily amount of light, but only when cultivars were physiologically capable of withstanding constant light (wheeler & tibbitts, 1987). red and blue optical spectrums with wavelengths of 640-660 nanometers and 430-460 nanometers, respectively, are most effective for the growth of plants (tertyshnaya & levina, 2016). this was supported by the study of paradiso et al. (2018), wherein the potato tuber yield was higher in plants under red and blue led light (8:1 ratio) in both ‘avanti’ and ‘colomba’ potato cultivars. conversely, red and blue led light reduced stem elongation, the number and area of leaves, and the aerial biomass per plant in ‘colomba’ compared to white, fluorescent tubes. further, the red-blue-green led light combinations in vitro on potato plantlets enhanced the weight and proportion of large tubers, as well as the number of tubers per plantlet (chen et al., 2020). according to ishartati, sukardi, madiyanto, and siskawardani (2017) potato plants yielded the most when they were transplanted and grew in the early stage under short days, which is believed to have begun with a significant number of tubers early in their growth, and then changed to sustained illumination, in experiments where they were transferred between environments to a 12-hour photoperiod and continuous lighting. however, based on (rahman et al., 2021) the study, they followed 16 hours of light and 8 hours of dark, and 8 hours of light and 16 hours of dark, at the times of vegetative development and tuber bulking, respectively, employing artificial red (660 nm), blue (450 nm), far-red (730 nm), and white led light. to explore the responses of the granola potato cultivar, which is the commonly planted cultivar in the highland areas of the philippines, we investigated the effects of different durations of full-spectrum led light supplementation on growth and tuberization. potato plantlets were transplanted through an aeroponic system installed inside a greenhouse under its natural environmental conditions, except for the photoperiod. our results provide additional insights into the effects of led light supplementation on potato plantlets grown under greenhouse conditions, which may improve the propagation of these plantlets. 2. materials and methods 2.1. plant materials and growth conditions the granola potato cultivar was utilized in this study. it was acquired from the northern philippines root crops research and training center, benguet state university. the seedlings were propagated from microtubers and transplanted to the aeroponic growing chamber after 15 days in the nursery. the potato plantlets grow under natural environmental conditions. based on data gathered by the instrument installed inside the greenhouse, a minimum of 100 μmol/m²/s ppfd from sunlight penetrates the greenhouse from around 8:00 am to 5:00 or 5:30 pm, resulting in an average of 9 hours of sunlight daily. 2.2. aeroponic system the aeroponic system, as shown in figure 1, was installed inside a 4m x 7.5m greenhouse wrapped with a 50% shade net. the 200-liter hdpe plastic drum was used as the growing chamber for the aeroponic potato. misting nozzles are installed in a downward position (da silva filho et al., 2020) and operate for 30 seconds at 5-minute intervals (based on our initial experiment). figure 1. aeroponic setup inside the greenhouse. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 502-509 504 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 2.3. light experiment design light treatments included natural day length (no artificial lighting), 3 hours of led lighting supplementation, and 6 hours of led lighting supplementation. 30-watt full spectrum grow lights with 55% red (660 nm), 30% blue (450 nm), and 15% other colors (5% of 6500k white, 5% of infrared 730 nm, 5% of ultraviolet 380 nm) were utilized. four led grow lights were used per growing chamber, and the height was adjustable to meet the minimum light quantity of 100 μmol/m2/s ppfd (rahman et al., 2021). led lighting supplementation was implemented during the early vegetative stage of the potato plant. it began on the first day of transplanting in the aeroponic growing chamber and concluded on the 35th day (5 weeks) after transplanting. 2.4. plant growth parameters weekly plant heights were gathered until the 9th week. the plant height was maintained at an average of 80 cm through pruning (andrade-piedra, kromann, & otazú, 2019). root length, development of stolons, and tuber development were observed and recorded. 2.5. minituber production the production of minitubers, from the 4th week to the 17th week, was documented. harvesting of minitubers was conducted at intervals of every 10-12 days (andrade-piedra et al., 2019). harvested minitubers are dried at ambient temperature for a few hours and are classified by weight (international potato center, cip) and diameter (altaf, 2015). 2.6. statistical analysis the study utilizes a completely randomized design with three treatments and three replications. each replication consists of six samples as shown in figure 1. the data were analyzed with one-way analysis of variance (anova) using jasp version 0.17.1.0 software. tukey’s test at the p 3. results 3.1. growing conditions potato seedlings were transplanted into the growing chamber of the aeroponic system in february 2024 and were terminated in june 2024. using the automatic weather station with a data logger, the temperature, relative humidity, and light quantity were recorded at 15-minute intervals. the average weekly data for temperature and relative humidity for the whole growing period is shown in figures 2a and 2b. the temperature inside the aeroponic growing chamber ranges from 0.16 to 1.67 °c, which is higher than the temperature inside the greenhouse, and from 0.92 to 2.34 °c higher than the outside temperature. however, the aeroponic potato grows under its ideal growing temperature range from 15 to 25 °c (otazu, 2010). figure 2b shows the relative humidity inside the greenhouse and outside. the relative humidity inside the aeroponic growing chamber was maintained at 90 100%. figure 3 shows an example of a one-day, from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm, photosynthetically active radiation (par) curve penetrating inside the greenhouse. table 1 shows the number of hours during which the potato plants inside the greenhouse receive greater than or equal to 100 μmol /m2 /s of natural sunlight starting from the day of transplant until the 35th day. it shows an average of 8 hours and 30 minutes. figure 2a. average weekly temperature inside the aeroponic growing chamber (plant root zone), inside the greenhouse, and outside. 18.00 19.00 20.00 21.00 22.00 23.00 24.00 25.00 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 t e m p e r a tu r e , o c weeks growing chamber greenhouse outside asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 502-509 505 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 2b. average weekly relative humidity inside the greenhouse and outside. figure 3. daytime photosynthetic photon flux density (ppfd) curve. table 1. the number of hours that natural sunlight reaches the potato plants exceeds 100 μmol/m2 /s. day # of hours day # of hours 1 8.00 19 8.75 2 8.25 20 8.25 3 8.00 21 7.00 4 9.25 22 8.75 5 8.00 23 8.50 6 6.75 24 9.50 7 7.50 25 8.50 8 9.25 26 9.00 9 9.00 27 8.25 10 8.75 28 8.00 11 8.75 29 7.75 12 8.75 30 8.25 13 8.75 31 7.75 14 7.50 32 8.75 15 8.25 33 8.75 16 7.50 34 8.00 17 9.00 35 9.50 18 8.75 3.2. growth of potato seedlings under different led lighting durations the different supplemental led lighting duration significantly affects the growth of the potato, as shown in figure 4. treatments with lighting supplementation start to elongate more in the third week. the stem diameter and leaf area of the treatments with lighting supplementation were observed to be greater compared to the potato under 70.00 75.00 80.00 85.00 90.00 95.00 100.00 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 r e la ti v e h u m id it y , % weeks greenhouse outside 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 p a r , μ m o l/ m 2 / s daytime (6:00 am 6:00 pm) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 502-509 506 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. natural lighting. the stem length of the potato plant with supplemental lighting can reach more than a meter if left unpruned, while the potato plant under natural lighting has reached only the maximum average length of 60 cm. figure 4. weekly plant height under different supplemental lighting duration. 3.3. stolon and tuber initiation the supplemental lighting has a significant impact on the tuberization and lifespan of the granola potato. as summarized in table 2, the stolon initiation until the termination of the plant is extended under the treatments with supplemental lighting. seven harvesting frequencies were conducted under plantlets with no lighting and were terminated earlier compared to the plantlets with supplemental lighting, which delayed the harvesting of minitubers but prolonged the termination period. only six harvesting frequencies were performed under plantlets with supplemental lighting; however, they produced better quality and a greater quantity of minitubers. table 2. effects of the supplemental lighting on the stolon development and tuberization of the potato plant. effects on natural 6 hours 3 hours stolon initiation observed at 1 month dat delayed delayed tuber initiation observed at 36 dat delayed delayed first harvest 44 dat 63 dat 53 dat lifespan of plant dead plant was recorded on the 96 dat extended extended 3.4. tuberization yield and grading performance as shown in table 3, the total number of harvested minitubers within the diameter class was affected by lighting. more microtubers (less than 5 mm) were observed on the stolons of plants with lighting; however, they fall short in the termination of the vegetative part needed to continue development. the same findings are observed when using classification by weight, as presented in table 4. supplemental lighting increases the minituber weight. the highest average number of minitubers per plant was recorded at 3 hours of supplemental lighting, followed by 6 hours, as presented in table 5. table 3. average number of minitubers gathered and graded per diameter (altaf, 2015). light treatment > 25 mm 20-25 mm 15-20 mm 10-15 mm 5-10 mm natural 1.67 b 11.67 42.00 62.00 13.34 b 6 hours 7.0 a 14.33 46.33 52.67 60.00 a 3 hours 5.0 ab 19.67 32.33 63.00 60.33 a table 4. average number of minitubers gathered and classified according to weight (based on the manual for seed potato production using aeroponics produced by the international potato center (cip) (andrade-piedra et al., 2019). light treatment production per weight class > 10 g 5-10 g 2-5 g <2 g natural 8.33 b 28.33 62.67 28.67 b 6 hours 15.33 a 27.67 57.67 81.00 a 3 hours 17.00 a 18.67 60.00 82.33 a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 502-509 507 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 5. number and weight of minitubers gathered as affected by the supplemental lighting. light treatment total number of minitubers (pcs.) average number of minitubers per plant (pcs.) minimum number of minitubers per plant (pcs.) maximum number of minitubers per plant (pcs.) average weight of minitubers harvested per plant (grams) natural 140.60 23.44 16.60 33.00 93.47 6 hours 175.30 29.22 16.00 44.30 101.37 3 hours 177.00 29.5 13.68 54.60 107.34 figure 5 illustrates the formation of the potato minitubers on the rootzone located inside the growing chamber. the harvesting of the seed potato minitubers is accessible through the aperture on the face of the cylindrical growing chamber. it further shows the grading by weight of harvested minitubers using the digital weighing scale. figure 5. minituber production as affected by supplemental lighting. 4. discussions 4.1. growth of the potato plantlets analysis the different durations of the artificial led light full spectrum influence the growth and minituber development of the granola potato. the light with an average light quantity of 100 μmol /m2 /s ppfd supplemented for 3 hours, and 6 hours has a significant difference in the growth of the potato plant grown in the natural daylight. potatoes with supplemental lighting have a greater leaf area, larger stem diameter, and longer stem length. the plant's weekly height is shown in figure 4. potato plants grown under natural daylight reach a maximum average height of 60 cm, while those with supplemental lighting extend their height by more than a meter. the plant can reach a height of 2 meters if left untrimmed. based on the results of our study, it supports the findings that blue light is essential for leaf expansion in the p. tricornutum plant (schellenberger et al., 2013). the 30% blue (450 nm) light on the full spectrum grow lights we utilized in the study may have improved the potato plant leaves by enhancing cytokinins. cytokinins significantly aid plant leaf development (hwang & sheen, 2001). under blue light from fluorescent lamps, the highest concentration of cytokinins was found in a potato plantlet leaf grown in vitro under blue light spectrum fluorescent lamps (sergeeva et al., 1994). according to the other findings, potato plantlets growing in monochromatic red light had smaller, weaker, and slender leaves (aksenova, konstantinova, sergeeva, macháčková, & golyanovskaya, 1994). however, our study supports the findings of (rahman et al., 2021) wherein the potato plants developed longer stems and higher biomass. our results are also consistent with the findings on in vitro potato plantlets grown under a 65% red + 35% blue light combination (chen et al., 2020). the potato with supplemental full-spectrum lighting (55% red (660 nm), 30% blue (450 nm), and 15% other spectrum) enhanced the growth, biomass, and stem diameter. in our study, the granola potato plant shows that the longer the photoperiod, the higher the growth rate. studies have shown that complex photosynthetic machinery, utilizing photosynthetic pigments, captures light energy and converts it into chemical energy. red and blue light are essential for photosynthesis and promote the production of chlorophyll and carotenoids (fan et al., 2013). our study is synonymous with the report, which found that long photoperiods increase stem weight and elongation more than short photoperiods. while the size of the leaves and leaflets decreases, there is an increase in both the quantity and weight of leaves (haverkort, 2007). 4.2. minituber production analysis extending the average nine hours of daylight with a minimum of 100 μmol m2 /s ppfd to another six hours of led light having 100 μmol m2/s ppfd resulted in more minitubers per potato plantlet as the same findings reported by milinkovic, horstra, rodoni, and nicolas (2012). as shown in table 2 to table 5, though the stolon and tuber initiation was delayed by the supplemental lighting (haverkort, 2007), the supplemental lighting significantly improves the number of minitubers per plant, tuber weight, and tuber size. after being transplanted into a greenhouse, the red and blue led lights and fluorescent lamp sources did not affect the number or size of tubers of zantedeschia cultivar that were grown in vitro (jao, lai, fang, & chang, 2005). however, in our study, the effects of supplemental lighting at 6 hours and 3 hours, respectively, in addition to the natural day length, using a full-spectrum led light on the early asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 502-509 508 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. vegetative stage of the plantlets, are not consistent with the zantedeschia potato plantlets. instead, our findings are consistent with the study of chen et al. (2020) on the effects of led light spectrum on tuberization of potato plantlets in vitro utilizing the zhongshu 5 potato cultivar. the reasons for these results may be the response of different genotypes to varying photoperiods. for example, the potato cultivars (jemseg, kathadin, russet burbank, and superior) subjected to 8 hours of lighting resulted in the optimal treatment (seabrook, coleman, & levy, 1993). furthermore, our study is in contrast with the report that potato plants yield the most when they were transplanted and grow in the early stage under short days, which is believed to have begun with a significant number of tubers early in their growth, and then changed to a sustained illumination, in experiments where they were transferred between environments to a 12 hours photoperiod and continuous lighting (ishartati et al., 2017). instead, it is close to the recommendation to follow the 16 hours of light and 8 hours of dark, and 8 hours of light and16 hours dark, at the times of vegetative development and tuber bulking, respectively, employing artificial red (660 nm), blue (450 nm), far-red (730 nm), and white led light (rahman et al., 2021). since the granola potato plantlets were grown in the same greenhouse environmental conditions in our study, we can infer that supplementation with full-spectrum led light may affect the plantlets' photosynthetic capacities, which could be a significant factor in the tuberization performance of the plants. the supplemental lighting induced the axillary buds and developed into lateral stems. the proliferation of shoot branches could lead to the development of underground stolons, which is a requirement for tuber production (tierno, carrasco, ritter, & de galarreta, 2014). these could be the reasons why potato plantlets supplemented with led lighting, which have longer stems and a higher number of lateral stems, resulted in increased quality in terms of size and weight, as well as a higher number of minitubers harvested per plantlet, compared to plantlets grown at natural day length. based on the data, supplemental lighting at the vegetative stage delayed stolon and tuber initiation in exchange for improved minituber quantity and quality. long days enhanced top plant growth, while short days were required to promote tuber production. as a result, tuber formation slowed to two to three weeks compared to the plantlets grown at natural day length. tuber formation requires limitation of light penetration and darkness (chang, cho, suh, kim, & lee, 2011; chang, park, kim, & lee, 2012). in comparison to proper illumination, an excess of light will promote shorter tuber growth (mbiyu et al., 2012). the weight and number of large tubers, as well as the average number of tubers per plantlet, increased in potato plantlets grown with supplemental lighting. supplementing 3 hours of lighting in addition to natural daylight (a 12hour average total photoperiod) can be utilized to propagate granola potato minitubers and other cultivars with similar characteristics, thereby improving tuberization performance. 5. conclusion the philippines' potato farmers are dealing with issues related to soilborne diseases. the adoption of the aeroponic system cannot be fully introduced to the farmers due to the limited research conducted in the philippine environmental settings. most of the literature is conducted outside the country, which may produce different results for some findings. the results of this study, which improve the quantity and quality of minitubers produced per plant, may contribute to the country's potato production. since this study was restricted to benguet, philippines, where potatoes are regularly farmed, related research on aeroponic potato production may be carried out in other potato-producing regions of the nation. funding: this research is supported by the department of science and technology science education institute (dost-sei) through the engineering research and development for technology (erdt) program at central luzon state university (clsu), philippines (grant number: 416-69). institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors declare that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. disclosure of ai use: the author used openai’s chatgpt (gpt-4) to edit and refine the wording of the introduction and literature review. all outputs were thoroughly reviewed and verified by the author. references aksenova, n. p., konstantinova, t. n., sergeeva, l. i., macháčková, i., & golyanovskaya, s. a. 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(2024). exploring the relation between farmer organization and welfare using propensity score matching approach: evidence from madurese traditional salt farmers in indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3), 108–118. 10.55493/5005.v14i3.5178 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 3 (2024): 108-118. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9188-1349 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8520-6854 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7394-9044 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8531-5444 mailto:campinailla26@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 108-118 109 1. introduction madura island is indonesia’s primary salt producer. despite being a part of east java, madura island maintains a geographical separation from java island. ministry of maritime affairs and fisheries in 2018 showed that almost 25% of indonesia’s salt supply in 2018 came from madura island. (prihantini, syaukat, & fariyanti, 2017a) noted that the untapped potential of pamekasan, bangkalan, sumenep, and sampang regencies could potentially contribute to the national salt production in the future. historically, there have been two types of salt farming in indonesia (rochwulaningsih, 2012). the first type is small-scale salt farming conducted on individual salt fields either by individual farmers or owned by the community. the second type involves collaboration with one of the state-owned enterprises, namely pt garam, resulting in a partnership between pt garam and salt farmers. the local community typically acts as laborers, with contract farming arrangements frequently in place (prihantini, syaukat, & fariyanti, 2017b). it should be noted that there are three common salt production methods employed by salt-producing countries worldwide, namely solar evaporation, rock salt mining, and solution-mined salt (ihsanuddin & pinuji, 2020; rochwulaningsih, 2012; sedivy, 2009). solar evaporation is a time-honored method that entails the production of salt through the evaporation of seawater in artificial ponds, salt marshes, or salt flats, marking one of the earliest techniques in the industry. this method heavily relies on weather conditions, evaporation rates, and the quality of the land or salt ponds. rock salt mining is carried out using the extraction method. rock salt (halite) is a term referring to the salt residue in ancient oceans formed millions of years ago when lagoons got dry. this salt layer is below the rock formations and can be found underground and within mountains. rock salt is a term referring to dry salt extract from these salt-containing rock layers, using the mining methods. lastly, solution-mined salt is produced by dissolving underground salt and then pumping the salty water to the surface. in this phase, the salt is extracted from the rock salt layers at a depth reaching 400 meters, in which water is pumped down and the resulted salty water is removed. the concentrated salt solution is then directed to collection tanks and transported to salt factories for softening and undergoing the crystallization process in evaporator plants. based on salt production methods, salt in madura island is generally processed using the solar evaporation method (jamil, 2014; prihantini, 2016). despite being the largest salt producer in indonesia, the prosperity of salt farmers in madura island is still relatively low (prihantini, 2016; prihantini et al., 2017a). various efforts have been carried out to improve their welfare, including extensive, intensive, and revitalization measures. one form of the revitalization to enhance the prosperity of salt farmers is through the traditional salt business development (or pengembangan usaha garam rakyat [pugar] in indonesian language) program by participating in the traditional salt business group (indonesian: kelompok usaha garam rakyat [kugar]). salt farmers expect various benefits from the pugar program, including intensive counselling, transfer of the latest production technology, and literacy in sustainable salt production, among others. numerous studies on the impact of farmers and fishermen’s participation in a producer group or organization denoted positive effects. for example, current research indicates an increase in income (abdul-rahaman & abdulai, 2018, 2020; agarwal, 2018; ma, zheng, & yuan, 2022) improvement in efficiency (abate, francesconi, & getnet, 2014; ainembabazi et al., 2017; gong, battese, & villano, 2019; olagunju, ogunniyi, oyetunde-usman, omotayo, & awotide, 2021) higher productivity (grashuis & skevas, 2023; lin, wang, jin, yang, & li, 2022) utilization of the new technologies (ibnu, offermans, & glasbergen, 2018; wossen et al., 2017; wu, guo, & guo, 2023; yang, zhang, liu, & qiao, 2021) as well as other positive impacts (fischer & qaim, 2012; grashuis, 2020; hao et al., 2018). efficiency rate in the traditional salt farming process in madura ranges from 55% to 78%, and this method remains profitable with a return on investment (r/c) or benefit-cost (b/c) ratio above 1 (effendy, zainuri, & hafiludin, 2014; prihantini, 2022). we have not extensively analyzed the impact of salt farmers’ participation in madura island. however, this study is crucial for the indonesian government, through the ministry of marine affairs and fisheries, in formulating policies that could potentially enhance the well-being of salt farmers, including their participation in kugar. currently, salt farmers receive numerous benefits from their participation. the first section of this paper discusses the characteristics of each respondent group, namely salt farmers who participate in kugar and those who do not. the second part explores the factors behind the participation of salt farmers in kugar, while the third section delves into the effect of this participation on the prosperity of salt farmers using the propensity score matching approach. this research is expected to be empirical evidence for the government and relevant stakeholders in their efforts to enhance the welfare of salt farmers through the increased participation in kugar. 2. materials and methods 2.1. research data this research was conducted in a major salt-producing area of madura island, specifically pamekasan regency. this research location was intentionally chosen due to the highest level of salt farmer participation in kugar, compared to other regencies. using the simple random sampling method, 115 salt farmers were selected. the salt farmers were categorized into two groups, namely the farmers joining kugar (treatment group) and other farmers not joining kugar (control group). interviews were conducted with 115 respondents regarding the traditional salt farming, particularly in the least season of 2023. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 108-118 110 2.2. data analysis methods 2.2.1. the analysis of factors influencing salt farmers’ participation in traditional salt business groups (kelompok usaha garam rakyat [kugar]) this analysis was conducted to examine the reasons behind the salt farmers’ decision to join the traditional salt business group (kelompok usaha garam rakyat [kugar] in indonesian language) program. decision of these salt farmers’ participation in kugar was investigated by utilizing the binary logistic regression as well as the maximum likelihood estimator (mle) method (gujarati, 2003). equation 1 represents the factors influencing the salt farmers’ decision to participate in kugar. 𝐿𝑖 = 𝑙𝑛 ( 𝑃𝑖 1−𝑃𝑖 ) = 𝑍𝑖 = 𝛾0 + 𝛾1𝑋1 + 𝛾2𝑋2 + 𝛾3𝑋3 + 𝛾4𝑋4 + 𝛾5𝑋5 + 𝛾6𝑋6 (1) where: li = logarithmic equation. pi = probability to participate in kugar. (1 – pi) = probability not to participate in kugar. zi = decision of the salt farmer. γ0 = intercept. γi = parameter of variable xi. x1 = salt farmers’ age (in years). x2 = education level. x3 = salt farmer’s experience (in years). x4 = salt production (in tons). x5 = salt farm area (in ha). x6 = number of family members (total individuals in salt farmer’s family). factors in the salt farmers’ decision to join kugar were determined using theories and other empirical experiences from several researches conducted by bernard and spielman (2009); barrett et al. (2012); fischer and qaim (2012); ito, bao, and su (2012) and verhofstadt and maertens (2015). the odds ratio interpretation was frequently used in the logistic regression models, which illustrated the relationship among categorical variables. the odds value for salt farmers not participating in kugar (y = 0) was defined as 𝜋1 (1−𝜋1) , while the odds value for salt farmers participating in kugar (y = 1) was defined as 𝜋2 (1−𝜋2) . the odds ratio itself represented comparison of the odds value for y = 0 and the odds value for y = 1. prihantini et al. (2017b) introduced the odds ratio equation, as shown in equation 2. 𝑂𝑑𝑑𝑠 𝑅𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜 = 𝜋1 (1−𝜋1) 𝜋2 (1−𝜋2) (2) subsequently, the produced logistic regression model was tested for its adequacy. tests were conducted three times in this research, in (a) model significance tests, (b) model goodness-of-fit tests, and (c) partial tests and model formation. these tests showed the decisions based on hypotheses as formulated earlier. 2.2.1.1. model evaluation every regression required an assessment of its models’ suitability. the tests conducted on every model were based on the regression model and the utilized method. this study applied two diverse models and methods, namely binary logistic regression with maximum likelihood estimator (mle) method as well as multiple linear regression with the ordinary least squares (ols) method. the tests were conducted as follows by the writers: 2.2.1.2. model significance test (g-test) the logistic model significance test was conducted for assessing significance of the salt farmers’ participation and their characteristics in participating in kugar. this test was conducted by analyzing the g-value and deciding the formulated hypotheses. the hypotheses were explained as follows: h0 = 0: independent variables without any significance towards dependent variable. h1 ≠ 0: independent variables having significance towards dependent variable. decisions to be made were as follows. accept h0 for p-value higher than α. reject h0 for p-value lower than α. 2.2.1.3. model goodness-of-fit tests these tests aimed to analyze salt farmers’ decision-making and participation in kugar. these tests were conducted by examining the values from each method, namely pearson, deviance, and hosmer–lemeshow tests. decisions were made based on the resulting p-value from every method. the formulated hypotheses were as follows: h0: the model is sufficiently capable of defining data. h1: the model is not sufficiently capable of defining data. decisions to be taken were as follows: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 108-118 111 accept h0 for p-value higher than α. reject h0 for p-value lower than α. 2.2.1.4. partial test and model formation the test was conducted to examine effect of each independent variable on its dependent variable. decisions were made in accordance with the p-value from every independent variable. hypotheses are formulated as follows: h0: the i-th independent variable did not have any significance towards dependent variable. h1: the i-th independent variable had significance towards dependent variable. decisions to be taken are as follows: accept h0 for p-value higher than α. reject h0 for p-value lower than α. 2.2.2. the effect of involvement in kugar towards salt famers’ prosperity this analysis aimed to estimate effect of the salt farmers’ participation in kugar on their prosperity. this impact analysis was conducted using propensity score matching (psm) technique. this method was widely applied to accurately analyze treatment effects by ensuring that these distinctions were considered to minimize a selection bias. it enabled the construction of a counterfactual scenario for the treatment group using the control group (abadie & imbens, 2006; heinrich, maffioli, & vázquez, 2010). psm is among estimation techniques to evaluate a program or intervention by striving to form a control group closely resembling the participant (treatment) group, by considering the observed characteristics (getler, martinez, & premand, 2010; khandker, koolwal, gayatri, & samad, 2010). the current study was designed by involving participant (treatment) groups, who were salt farmers participating in kugar. the control group included salt farmers who were not participating in kugar. a commonly fundamental issue when using the psm was an inability to simultaneously measure the potential outcomes of respondents participating in kugar (y1i) and the control group (y0i). since only one of the groups can be observed, the utilized estimation model allowed for examining the average impact of participating in kugar. this method is known as the average treatment effect on the treated (att) approach. the psm estimation model and att approach were capable of estimating the average value for respondents participating in kugar and those who were not. the att model can be expressed in equation 3 (getler et al., 2010; khandker et al., 2010). 𝐴𝑇𝑇 = 𝐸(𝑌1|𝐷 = 1) − 𝐸(𝑌0|𝐷 = 1) (3) in the equation, att is the difference in the outcome variable (net income from the traditional salt business in the last season), estimated from the household needs of salt farmers participating in kugar, i.e., e [y1i | di = 1], subtracted by household needs of salt farmers not participating in kugar, i.e., e [y0i ∣ di = 0]. the area where the propensity distribution overlapped, between the salt farmers who participated in kugar and those who did not was termed the common support area. if characteristics of some salt farmers in kugar group cannot be matched with those of salt farmers in the non-kugar group, the effect cannot be accurately calculated. salt farmers who participated in kugar were believed to be experience an increase in production, quality, and overall well-being. this analysis aimed to identify the effects of salt farmers’ involvement in kugar on their wellbeing. therefore, the study investigated a significant difference between salt farmers who were kugar as well as non-kugar participants, viewed from their prosperity. 3. results and discussion 3.1. respondents’ characteristics table 1 described net income of kugar members at average idr 12,833,732.69, while that of non-kugar members was average idr 22,283,846.32. this indicated that average net income earned by the salt farmers not participating in kugar was lower. furthermore, the average age of non-kugar members was averagely 44.46 years, compared to 50.41 years for kugar members. this result indicated that the average age of kugar members was younger. the family members of non-kugar participants were averagely 2-3 people, while those of kugar participants were also averagely 2-3 people. the number of family members in each group was often the same. the farming experience of non-kugar members was averagely 11-12 years, while that of kugar members was averagely 16-17 years. this showed that the average experience of salt farmers participating in kugar was longer. the production of non-kugar members was averagely 81.77 tons, whereas that of kugar members was averagely 192.58 tons. this indicated that the average production of salt farmers participating in kugar was higher. the average land area of non-kugar members was 1 hectare, whereas that of kugar members was averagely 2.15 hectares. this indicated that the average land area owned by the salt farmers participating in kugar was wider. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 108-118 112 table 1. descriptive statistics of salt farmers’ samples. variables participation n minimum maximum mean std. deviation income non-kugar 13 4910075.00 19492625.00 12833732.69 3746216.93 kugar 102 5277033.33 203552650.00 22283846.32 26294157.20 age non-kugar 13 35.00 64.00 44.46 10.10 kugar 102 31.00 69.00 50.41 8.85 number of family members non-kugar 13 2.00 4.00 2.38 0.65 kugar 102 1.00 8.00 2.80 1.47 farming experience non-kugar 13 2.00 25.00 11.15 7.65 kugar 102 2.00 50.00 16.04 9.58 production non-kugar 13 65.00 110.00 81.77 12.92 kugar 102 60.00 1702.00 192.58 216.12 land area non-kugar 13 1.00 1.00 1 0 kugar 102 1.00 20.00 2.15 2.44 3.2. determinants of salt farmers’ decision to participate in kugar this study used a binary logistic regression analysis to examine several factors that influence salt farmers’ decision to be kugar members. the analysis incorporated six independent variables in the salt farmers, namely age, education level, the farming experience, the width of salt land owned, salt production volume, and the number of family members. 3.2.1. model significance test (g-test) g-test results in table 2 showed g-value of 47.070 and a log-likelihood value of -4.774. based on the criteria for accepting or rejecting h0, the obtained p-value was 0.000 (p-value < 0.10). therefore, the decision was to reject h0. h0 = 0 signified that independent variables did not significantly affect dependent variables), while h1 ≠ 0 indicated that independent variables significantly affected dependent variables. a conclusion to reject h0 implied that independent variables collectively and significantly affected salt farmers’ decisions regarding their participation in kugar. in other words, the independent variables in this logistic regression model can affect decision to get involved in kugar, so the model can be utilized in further analyses. 3.2.2. model goodness-of-fit tests the output resulted by the spss program in table 2 showed a result from goodness-of-fit tests, as shown in the p-value for each method used, namely pearson, deviance, and hosmer–lemeshow tests. the reason for rejecting h0 in this test was p-value > α. it turned out that each method had a p-value > α (p-value > 0.10). in the context of h0 (the model adequately defined data) and h1 (the model did not adequately define data), it was concluded that h0 was rejected. to put it another way, we deemed this model of salt farmers’ decisions regarding kugar participation sufficiently capable of explaining the collected field data, making it suitable for estimating their decisions. 3.2.3. measures of association the values in measures of association were employed to examine the variability from dependent variable. based on the concordant value in table 2, a percentage of 98.8 was obtained. this value indicates that the dependent variables in the model define 98.8 percent of the dependent variable variability, while independent variables outside the model define 1.2 percent. table 2. result of the regression analysis on aspects affecting salt farmers’ decisions regarding their participation in kugar in pamekasan regency, 2023. variables coefficient p-value odds ratio constant 5.129 0.152 age of salt farmers 0.133 0.069** 0.876 extent of salt land 0.0001983 0.916 1.000 experience of salt farmers 0.092 0.272 1.097 education of salt farmers 0.742 0.096** 0.476 salt production 0.082 0.004*** 1.085 number of family members 0.822 0.131* 2.275 log-likelihood = -4.774 test that all slopes are zero: g = 47.070, df = 5, p-value = 0.000 goodness-of-fit tests method chi-squared df p pearson 15.122 35 0.999 deviance 9.548 35 1.000 hosmer-lemeshow 4.183 8 0.840 measures of association concordant 98.8 % note: statistical significance (robust): ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.1, *p < 0.15. source: processed primary data, 2024. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 108-118 113 table 2 shows the values for somers’ d and goodman–kruskal’s gamma approach 1. this indicated that the predictive capacity of the model obtained was quite robust (firdaus, harmini, & farid, 2011). in essence, the model for salt farmers’ decisions regarding participation in kugar has demonstrated sufficient effectiveness for practical use. 3.2.4. partial test and model formation (wald test) the output from the spss program in table 2 indicated that five independent variables significantly affected the dependent variable. the criterion for accepting h0 was p-value > α. several variables, namely the age of salt farmers, the latest education of salt farmers, salt production volume, and the number of family members, had p-values < α (pvalue < 0.01; 0.1; 0.15), leading to the decision to reject h0. in the context of h0 (i-th independent variable had no significance towards dependent variable) and h1 (i-th independent variable had significance towards dependent variable), these four variables were considered to have a significant effect on the salt farmers’ decisions regarding their participation in kugar. meanwhile, the other two variables (i.e., experience and land width of the salt farmers) were deemed to have no effects on salt farmers’ decisions to be kugar members. 3.2.5. interpretation of odds ratio values wald test revealed that four independent variables significantly affected dependent variable. these variables were the age of salt farmers, education of the salt farmers, salt production volume, and family members. a variable for the number of family members was significant at α = 15%. in addition, the age of salt farmers and their education level were significant at α = 10%. furthermore, the salt production volume variable was significant at α = 1%. conversely, the independent variables without significance at α = 15% were the experience of salt farmers and the extent of salt land. these variables were suspected to have a non-significant impact due to the limited data variation obtained in the field, indicating homogeneity in the acquired data. subsequently, the odds ratio values obtained for these independent variables will be interpreted further. the odds ratio values depicted the likelihood comparison of salt farmers participating in kugar versus salt farmers not participating in kugar. 3.2.5.1. age of the salt farmers the p-value obtained for this variable was 0.069. the criterion for accepting h0 was p-value < α. therefore, the decision made was to accept h0, indicating that the age of salt farmers significantly affected their decision regarding the participation in kugar with a confidence interval of 90 percent. a variable, age of the salt farmers, had an odds ratio value of 0.876. this value can be interpreted as meaning that salt farmers who were ten years older had an 8.76 times higher chance of participating in kugar compared to salt farmers who were ten years younger. in other words, older salt farmers had a greater possibility of 0.876 times joining kugar. the parameter value generated for this variable was positive. this meant that older salt farmers were more likely participate in kugar. this tendency may arise because salt farmers were generally divided into an above-average or older age group. this finding matched other studies as conducted by abdul-rahaman and abdulai (2020) and baga, utami, and wahyudi (2023). according to baga et al. (2023) older farmers may be more experienced in agricultural practices, compared to their younger counterparts, providing them with greater access and networks within the farming community. however, this did not suggest that younger farmers were not interested in joining farmer groups, more likely due to their lower representation in the agricultural sector. 3.2.5.2. salt land area the p-value of salt land area variable was 0.916, higher than 10 percent (p-value > 0.15). therefore, it was decided to accept h0. this means that, with a confidence interval of 85 percent, the variable of salt land area possessed by salt farmers did not significantly affect salt farmers’ decision to join kugar. the salt land area variable had an odds ratio value of 1.00. this value can be interpreted as meaning that salt farmers with larger or smaller salt field areas had an equal possibility of participating in kugar. in other words, all salt farmers intending to participate in kugar had no constraints related to the size of their salt land area. salt farmers with limited salt land were equally likely to participate in kugar as those with extensive salt land. therefore, regardless of the salt land area possessed by a salt farmer, they can freely decide to participate in kugar. the obtained parameter value was positive. the desire to participate in kugar tended to increase with the larger salt land area possessed by a salt farmer because salt farmers with sufficient experience understood that participation in farmer groups, including kugar, allowed them to gain more benefits, namely information on production technology, access to government assistance, and other advantages. this study was in line with other research conducted by bernard and spielman (2009); chagwiza, muradian, and ruben (2016); fischer and qaim (2012); grashuis and cook (2018) and baga et al. (2023). research by baga et al. (2023) explained that farmers owning wider land are more likely to join farmer organizations, in line with land status within these farmer groups. farmers who actively manage their cultivated land tend to participate in farmer groups. as observed in other instances, wealthier farmers are more inclined to join farmer groups compared to their less affluent counterparts. 3.2.5.3. farming experience of salt farmers the p-value obtained for this variable was 0.272, higher than 10 percent (p-value > 0.15). it was concluded to accept h0. this means that the farming experience variable had no bearing on their decisions. the farming experience variable had an odds ratio value of 1.097. this odds ratio value indicated that for every additional year of farming asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 108-118 114 experience, the likelihood of participating in kugar increased by 1.097 times, compared to salt farmers with lower farming experience. the parameter value for the farming experience variable turned out to be positive. this showed that a longer farming experience was associated with a greater desire to participate in kugar. additionally, the parameter sign for this variable was positive. this implied that with the increasing farming experience, salt farmers acquired a deeper understanding of the nuances involved in salt farming. salt farmers will understand that participating in kugar will provide them with more benefits. according to baga et al. (2023); abdul-rahaman and abdulai (2020) and grashuis and cook (2021) farmers with extensive experience tended to have broader access and networks compared to those with shorter or lower experience. rahman and huang (2021) also obtained similar research results, where experience in performing fishing activities (in their case, fishermen in east java province) also had a non-significant influence on fishermen’s decisions regarding participation in fishermen groups. 3.2.5.4. latest education level of salt farmers the p-value obtained for this variable was 0.096, lower than 10 percent (p-value < 0.10). therefore, it was decided to reject h0. this indicated that salt farmers’ education level had a significant impact on their decision to participate in kugar. the education level variable of salt farmers had an odds ratio value of 0.476. this odds ratio value can be interpreted as meaning that salt farmers with higher education had a higher likelihood of 0.476 times to join kugar, compared to salt farmers with lower education. in other words, higher education level can enhance the likelihood of joining kugar at 0.476 times. this conclusion was similar to the researches by qu et al. (2020) and yang et al. (2021) in which education level affected decisions regarding participation in farmer groups. the positive parameter sign in the education level variable indicated that higher education level showed a greater tendency to participate in kugar. this result supported several previous studies, including those conducted by ma and abdulai (2016) and methamontri, tsusaka, zulfiqar, yukongdi, and datta (2022) in which a higher participation level in farmer groups was related to higher formal education levels among rice farmers. rahman and huang (2021) and baga et al. (2023) also had the similar research findings for this variable. 3.2.5.5. salt production for the salt production variable the p-value was 0.004. this value was smaller than a significance level of 10% (pvalue < 0.01). therefore, it was decided to reject h0. this indicates that, at a 99 percent confidence level, the produced salt production variable significantly affected the salt farmers’ decision to join kugar. the salt production variable had an odds ratio value of 1.085. it can be interpreted that for salt farmers whose salt production was ten tons higher, the likelihood of participating in kugar increased by 10.085 times, compared to salt farmers with lower production. the obtained parameter value was positive. as the salt production and reception by salt farmers increased, the inclination to participate in kugar tended to rise. based on the field observation, this phenomenon occurred because salt farmers actively engaging in kugar typically had a wider access to information, including the latest salt production technology. consequently, their production results and land productivity were higher compared to nonkugar salt farmers. the research conducted by barrett et al. (2012) concluded that agricultural land managed by farmers actively participating in producer groups was more productive than that of non-participating farmers. this was in line with other studies conducted by blekking, gatti, waldman, evans, and baylis (2021); chagwiza et al. (2016); gong et al. (2019) and qu et al. (2020) who stated that farmers engaged in the producer groups were relatively more productive and efficient than non-participating farmers. farmers in producer groups significantly motivated themselves to achieve high agricultural yields, which influenced this phenomenon. this will unquestionably bring about positive outcomes for salt farmers if the salt fields they cultivate yield favorable results, as it directly influences the income and profits obtained by these salt farmers. 3.2.5.6. number of family members of salt farmers the p-value obtained for this variable was 0.131. a requirement for rejecting h0 was the p-value < α. therefore, the decision to be taken was to reject h0, indicating that the variable representing family members of salt farmers significantly affected the decision to participate in kugar within an 85 percent confidence interval. the number of family members had an odds ratio of 2.275. it can be interpreted that salt farmers with one more family member had a 2.275 times higher likelihood of joining kugar. in other words, one more family member can increase the likelihood to join farmers’ group by 0.26 times. these research findings were similar to the conclusions of gyau, franzel, chiatoh, nimino, and owusu (2014) and ito et al. (2012) stating that family member were a decisive factor in joining producer groups or organizations. the parameter value was positive. the number of family members among salt farmers possibly had a positive correlation with the decision to join kugar. the result of this research was similar to a study by mojo, fischer, and degefa (2017). binary logistic regression regarding an involvement in the cooperative indicated that demographic and socio-economic factors (e.g., age, level of education, the number of family members, and land ownership) significantly increased the possibility of farmers joining the cooperative. 3.3. propensity score matching analysis on the effects of salt farmers’ involvement in kugar on their welfare this research examined the effect of salt farmers’ using the propensity score matching (psm) analysis. the psm was estimated through the psmatch2 command in stata. the variables used as covariates in the matching procedure significantly affected salt farmers’ decision to join kugar based on result of the logit analysis. significant variables, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 108-118 115 in estimating the aspects of salt farmers’ participation in kugar, included the latest level of education, family members, and the period of farming activities. the outcome between treatment and control groups was the net income earned by salt farmers in the last cropping season of 2023. the first step involves determining the propensity values for treatment and control groups by conducting a logit regression on the covariate variables. table 3.displays the logit reaction result to determine the propensity scores. table 3. results of logit regression testing to obtain propensity score. variables coefficient z p > |z| note age 0.061 0.41 0.680 not significant latest education level -1.236 -2.14 0.032* significant number of family members -1.954 -2.03 0.043* significant farming duration -0.336 -2 0.045* significant production 0.044 1.19 0.233 not significant mobile phone ownership -2.232 -1.12 0.263 not significant internet access -2.906 -1.8 0.071 not significant region of origin -0.409 -0.37 0.712 not significant constant 9.525 1.31 0.189 not significant note: statistical significance level (robust): *p < 0.05. source: processed primary data, 2024. the impact of farmers’ participation in kugar was calculated using psm with the nearest-neighbor (nn) method, which involved matching the nearest propensity scores of every respondent of treatment group (participating in kugar) with control group (not participating in kugar) in a single matching process. this matching process resulted in att, representing distinctions found in treatment and control groups. att value signified distinction between treatment and control groups. variables without any significant effect on farmers’ decisions to participate in kugar, (e.g., age, production, mobile phone ownership, internet access, land size, social factors, and region of origin) were excluded as covariates in estimating att. table 4 illustrates the outcome distinction in the treatment and control groups, by applying the psmatch2 program in stata 17. table 4. effect of the involvement in kugar analyzed by psmatch2 and nearest neighbor method. variable samples not participating in kugar participating in kugar difference se t-stat income unmatched 12833732.7 22283846.3 9450113.65 7329611.34 1.29 att 14380982.1 22283846.3 7902864.24 3049005.11 2.59 in table 4, the effect of salt farmers’ involvement in kugar on their income was evident in the difference of idr 9,450,113.65 (idr means the indonesian rupiah (rp), the official currency of indonesia). after matching, as indicated by the att, the net income of salt farmers showed a difference of idr 7,902,864.24. based on the impact assessment using the psmatch2 and nearest neighbor methods, it can be observed that the participation of salt farmers in kugar can enhance the net income of salt farming. table 4 indicates that the difference in net income for salt farmers participating and not participating in kugar, before matching, was idr 9,450,113.65. after matching, the difference was idr 7,902,864.24. the net income for those participating in kugar was idr 22,283,846.30, while for those not participating, it was idr 14,380,982.10. the ttest results revealed that after matching, the net income of salt farming in both kugar and non-kugar groups showed a significant difference (t-test > 2). this indicates that participating in kugar can significantly increase the net income of salt farming. the findings of this research were similar to another research conducted by baga et al. (2023) indicating that participation in producer organizations (including farmer groups, fishermen groups, livestock groups, and cooperatives) empirically had a significant impact on prosperity. farmers participation in producers groups or organizations significantly influences productivity, agricultural efficiency, and the ease of accessing marketing and distribution channels. as previously conducted, research shows a positive relationship and supports theories and concepts regarding this. in general, farmers’ participation also affects their access to government programs, such as assistance in production inputs, cash aid to farmers, subsidies for production inputs, and the adoption of the latest production technologies. therefore, it is essential to prioritize extension activities to sustain and enhance community participation in farmers’ groups, emphasizing that this engagement should persist beyond government assistance programs. this is due to the myriad of benefits and advantages that farmers stand to gain through their active engagement in producer groups/organizations. 4. conclusion the productivity of the agricultural sector, in a broad sense, is important for the sustainable development in the densely populated and developing countries, such as indonesia. this research focuses on examining the significance of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 108-118 116 involvement in salt farmer groups in shaping salt farming practices and the well-being of farmers in the indonesian salt sector. despite indonesia having the longest coastline globally, the livelihoods of coastal communities, including salt farmers, are not entirely categorized as prosperous. empirical findings confirm a positive relation between participation in salt farmer groups and prosperity of salt farmers on madura island. salt farmers engaged in salt farmer groups (i.e., kugar) experience higher levels of well-being compared to those who do not participate in these groups. therefore, these results consistently support the argument for the significance of farmer groups in enhancing the wellbeing of farmers, as emphasized in several previous studies. moreover, participation in farmers’ groups is affected by some aspects, including age, education, farming experience, width of the owned salt land, salt production quantity, and number of their family members. these factors positively affect the likelihood of participating as members of a farmers’ group. several policies can be made from empirical findings in this research. in general, these findings mark the advantages of salt farmers’ participation in their groups in an effort to improve the prosperity of small-scale salt farmers on madura island. enhancing the well-being of salt farmers may not solely rely on increasing agricultural production factors. interventions in institutional aspects, such as promotion of salt farmer groups or other collective actions, can support any development project. in practice, the government can leverage the role of farmers’ groups to implement or introduce new production technology products. this also reduces the transaction costs in the implementation of agricultural projects, leading to more effective and efficient agricultural policies. therefore, increasing and sustained support from various stakeholders—including the government, private companies, and other development institutions—is crucial in forming farmer groups and undertaking development projects in the agriculture sector more broadly. despite the common assumption that farmer groups can merely serve as a tool for government politics to convey their interests, particularly in indonesia, the farmer groups play an important role in enhancing prosperity of many farmers should not be overlooked. the level of education significantly influences salt farmers in deciding their participation in salt farmer groups (kugar). this indicates that the education of salt farmers should be a primary concern, especially for the younger generation in agriculture, to cultivate interest in the agricultural sector, including fisheries, livestock, and salt farming. direct educational programs for farmers’ or their children can achieve this. funding: this research is supported by the ministry of finance, specifically the higher education financing centre and indonesia endowment fund for education agency through the indonesia education scholarship (grant number: 202209091346). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the brawijaya university, indonesia has granted approval for this study on 27 december 2023 (ref. no. 15164/un10.f04.11/pp/2023). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no 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(2021). do cooperatives participation and technology adoption improve farmers' welfare in china? a joint analysis accounting for selection bias. journal of integrative agriculture, 20(6), 1716-1726. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2095-3119(20)63325-1 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.06.022 https://doi.org/10.1111/apce.12433 https://doi.org/10.1016/s2095-3119(20)63325-1 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 257 population’s preference of rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) between oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.): contributing to pest’s controlling strategy izaitul aida ismaila mohd rasdi zainib noor shuhaina shaikh mazranc ahmad khairuman mohd hasind a,cfaculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara cawangan melaka, jasin, melaka, malaysia. buniversiti teknologi mara, melaka, malaysia. dfaculty of hotel and tourism management, universiti teknologi mara, melaka, malaysia.  dddpim@uitm.edu.my (corresponding author) articlehistory abstract received: 26 january 2022 revised: 30 october 2023 accepted: 13 november 2023 published: 29 november 2023 keywords coconut palm oil palm population oryctes rhinoceros. the rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) began to establish itself in malaysia with the emergence of coconut cultivation. rhinoceros beetles were well adapted to survive on oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut (cocos nucifera l.) trees. different host plants could have different interactions and food preferences with the rhinoceros beetle against their host plant, even within the same family. additionally, climatic change, particularly rainfall, could also influence the population dynamics of o. rhinoceros especially in terms of the biological aspect of the pest. this study was carried out to evaluate the difference in population of rhinoceros beetles between oil palm and coconut palm as a preference host comparison in relation to the climatic factors on the plantation scale. the population of rhinoceros beetles was found to be higher in oil palm as compared to coconut palm. it can be concluded that rhinoceros beetles highly prefer oil palms when compared to coconut palms. this study highlighted the importance of planting similar families in order to reduce the risk of pest attacks. this study also found that climate is one of the factors influences the population dynamics of rhinoceros beetles and puts pressure on plants, subsequently making it a favorable condition for rhinoceros beetles in the field. interestingly, female rhinoceros beetle in an oil palm field was significantly correlated with the rainfall. therefore, preventive measures need to be taken during the rainy season, considering the high risk of planting nearby and/or similar plants. contribution/originality: this study was carried out on the preference of the major pest (oryctes rhinoceros) on both host plants, namely oil palm and coconut palm, at the plantation scale, considering gender variables. the f indings and outcomes of this study could contribute to the fundamental body of knowledge about good agronomic practices when planting both palmae families in the same area or nearby. the growers could use this information as a basis for decision, particularly when planting oil palms near coconut palm areas, which had a higher risk of being infested by oryctes rhinoceros due to their preference. the same family should not be planted in the same area or nearby to lower the risk of oryctes rhinoceros attacks. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 4 (2023): 257-268. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-8437-8724 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2107-2287 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-2328-9889 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5968-1641 mailto:dddpim@uitm.edu.my http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 257-268 258 doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i4.4918 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ismail, i. a., zaini, m. r., mazran, n. s. s., & hasin, a. k. m. (2023). population’s preference of rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) between oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.): contributing to pest’s controlling strategy. asian journal of agriculture and rural development , 13(4), 257–268. 10.55493/5005.v13i4.4918 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1.introduction rhinoceros beetle is one of the insect pests that could cause very serious problems on oil palm and coconut palm plantations. oryctes rhinoceros is naturally and usually destroys young palms in fields (pradipta, wagiman, & witjaksono, 2020). oryctes rhinoceros attacking young palm plants will delay the maturing process of young palm plants. chung, sim, and balasubramaniam (1999) estimated that the average crop loss in oil palm caused by o. rhinoceroscan reached up to 53.16%. census palm for monitoring and evaluating young palm at early replanting is one of the important practices in plantations (source: malaysian palm oil board (mpob) (2012)). it is a common practice and is included in standard operating procedures in estates. the main purpose of the census at the early stage after replanting is to estimate the pest damage during the immature stage and the yield at the mature stage. data are recorded purposely for further action based on the condition of the estate (source: pertubuhan peladang negeri johor (ppnj) (2015)). the serious damage done by pest damage should be controlled by using che mical or biological control. it is the common practice in estates to control the population of o. rhinoceros is using pheromone traps or chemicals such as cypermethrin at 0.05% (source: pertubuhan peladang negeri johor (ppnj) (2015)). cypermethrin is usually applied every two weeks using a mist blower or knapsack sprayer. a pheromone trap was installed at the boundaries to prevent o.rhinocerosfrom entering the field. the populations ofo.rhinocerosare are monitored, and data from the census on palm damage is also recorded (source: pertubuhan peladang negeri johor (ppnj) (2015)). oryctes rhinoceroshighly preferred and attacked at the vegetative as the reproductive part of palm (norman, mohd basri, & ramle, 2005). the reproductive part of the palm, namely the leaves, petiole, and spindle. o.rhinocerosmore is more likely to attack the petiole part and permanently make a hole in the spindles and leaves (ahmad, 2006). o.rhinoceros feeding activ ities on the leaves of the plants will result in a “v’ shape with a cutting mark, and the fronds will easily break with light winds because of the chewing marks on the spindle (manjeri, muhammad, & tan, 2014). different host plants could have different interactions between pests and their hosts. climatic change could also influence the population dynamic, especially in terms of biological aspects of pests such as life cycle, fecundity, and longevity (karuppaiah & sujayanad, 2012). nowadays, climate change is reported as one of the major issues, such as global warming, that contributes to inconsistencies in temperature and rainfall distribution. the population and abundance of o.rhinocerosexhibited temporal f luctuations and variations. this scenario happened mainly due to several factors, such as a biotic and abiotic factors, specifically host plants, and climatic factors. norman and mohd basri (2014) reported that the population of o.rhinocerosfluctuated with time in the replanting area, and largely due to the living organism factor. in terms of agronomic practices, zero burning is one of the standard procedures used in many oil palm plantations (mohd rizuan, abu hassan, hasber, & noor hisham, 2014). this technique was found to signif icantly influence the population of o. rhinoceros. the remaining trunks and stems in the field provide a good breeding site as favorable conditions for o. rhinocerosto increase their population (mohd rizuan et al., 2014). this technique could encourage and attract the population of o.rhinoceros (norman et al., 2005). liew and sulaiman (1993) found that the breeding site ofo.rhinoceroscan be reduced by planting cover crops. cover crops acted as a physical barrier to the breeding site of o. rhinoceros. when norman et al. (2005) studied the relationship between the physical characteristics of the habitat and o. rhinoceros, it was found that the cover crop height and moisture content in the chip trunk were equally important in affecting the number ofo. rhinoceros. a negative correlation was shown between cover crop heights and the population of o. rhinoceros. adult o.rhinoceroshave a positive influence on the moisture content in chip trunks (norman et al., 2005). more rapid decomposition of the chip trunk could also influence the population of larvae in oil palm. addit ionally, if similar families of plants were planted nearby or in the same area, direct effect on the pest population could be achieved. for instance, integrating oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.) together in the same area. in the aspect of abiotic effect on the o. rhinoceros in palm area, allee, park, emerson, park, and schmidt (1949) stated that both biotic and abiotic factors exist in the environment. smith (1935) stated that ecologists defined abiotic as the non-living factors and biotic as the living organism. basically, insect populations fluctuated based on the seasonal basis. the survival of an organism, particularly o.rhinoceros, was highly influenced by the environment (norman et al., 2005). in general, rainfall, temperature, and humidity are several environmental factors that commonly influence the organism. diniz and pinheiro (2000) found that after rain, coleoptera, diptera, homoptera, hymenoptera, lepidoptera, and orthoptera were found to be the most abundant in the field. the population dynamics of o.rhinocerosmay be influencedby climatic factors. in this study, rainfall distribution was recorded at ladang penyelidikan, bukit bujang, and segamat to evaluate the relationship between climate and the population abundance of o.rhinocerosin oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.) as well. additionally, rainfall could directly affect the breeding site of o.rhinocerosas reported by norman et al. (2005). rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) was found to be more attracted to aromatic coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.) compared to oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and prefers to attack young coconut palms (cocos nucifera l.) due to its much lower height (zhong et al., 2013). therefore, this study was carried out to evaluate the difference in population of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 257-268 259 o.rhinoceros between oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.) as a preference host in ladang penyelidikan, bukit bujang, segamat, johor and the relationship with the climatic factor. 2. material and methods preparations of experimental plots and explanations on oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.). the study was carried out in the field at bukit bujang, segamat, johor. the oil palm and coconut palm research plots were planted in 2013. the palm planting distance for oil palm and coconut palms was designed at 29m x 29m between palms. the planting distance of palm was following the recommended agronomic practices and the standard operation procedures of plantations and the ministry of agriculture. the total number of coconut plants involved was 2500 palms. meanwhile, the total number of plants involved in oil palm was 2760. this study monitored the populations of rhinoceros beetleson oil palm and coconut palm. monitoring was also conducted on rainfall and temperature to study the relationship of the population of rhinoceros beetleswith climatic factors for 40 weeks (march 2015-february 2016). data on rainfall distribution was recorded biweekly for each treatment for both crop oil palm and coconut palm. a rain gauge meter was used to collect and record data on rainfall. data on temperature were supplied by the malaysian meteorological department for year’s sampling period, referring to the nearest location of the experimental plot. 2.1. trapping system the population and abundance of oryctes rhinoceros were observed and caught using traps. pheromone trap was used in this study to catch o. rhinoceros to evaluate the population and abundance of o. rhinoceros for a one-year sampling period in both host plants, such as oil palm and coconut palm, and correlate with climatic factors. the number of o. rhinoceros beetles for both male and females was counted and recorded. 2.2. pheromone trap (oryctes rhinoceros) pheromone traps were used in oil palm plantations to control the o. rhinoceros population. pheromone traps have become an important component in ipm for controlling and monitoring o. rhinoceros in oil palm plantations. this trapping can also be used to study the ecology of o. rhinoceros. in this study, pheromone trap was used to collect adult males of o. rhinoceros. ethyl 4-methyloctanote is a pheromone aggregation that is produced for commercial use (hallet, 1995). chung (1997) claimed that the double vane type of pheromone trap was found to be the most effective and economical. in this study, double vanes trapping was used and placed at 3 meters above ground, and for young oil palm, it was 1-2 meters above the canopy. the pheromone was hung in the center of metal vanes. the metal vanes, like a zinc plate, were placed on top of the pails. one unit of pheromone trap was installed for every 2 hectares and replaced with a new hormone set for every two months. the female and male numbers of oryctes rhinoceros were recorded in this study. the number of o. rhinoceros was collected and counted from the pheromone trap that hangs at the boundaries of the oil palm experimental plot. the height of the trap and the distance between the pheromone traps were following the standard of procedure in ladang penyelidikan bukit bujang. the federal land development authority (felda) and other plantations also used the same technique. high consideration for the elevation of traps on the top of the pole is crucial before hanging the pheromone trap. it is because o. rhinoceros is proven to be significantly attracted to the pheromone trap. therefore, by setting up the optimum elevation of the pheromone trap’s pole and the distance interval between pheromone traps, which was 125 meters from one to another, the maximum number of rhinoceros can be caught. the number of rhinoceros was observed by using a pheromone trap for each plot with coconut palm and oil palm as host plants. the total acreage was 18 hectares for both host plants, coconut palm and oil palm,respectively. the observation of the rhinoceros’s population was designed by placing the pheromone traps in the particular plots, as is common practice done by felda. 2.3. preparation of trapping system pheromone traps were installed at each block’s boundaries of the experimental plot according to the standard practice. for pheromone traps, the height of the traps is one foot higher than the oil palm tree. height of the trapping was 7-8 feet from the ground. pheromone trap was hung at the top of pole and replaced every 2 months with a new one. the pail was hung below the vane, and the pheromone was placed at the center of the pail purposely to trap and collect the oryctes rhinoceros. 2.4. parameters of study number of oryctes rhinoceros , male and female, was collected, monitored, and recorded biweekly. the pheromones were replaced every two months to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the data. 2.5. data collection the trapped oryctes rhinoceros were taken and recorded every two weeks after pheromone trap installation. in oil palm and coconut palm field studies, there were five plots, and each plot consisted of five replications for pheromone traps. for each replication, number of male and female o. rhinoceros was counted. the numbers of o. rhinoceros were collected, including male and female. the data was collected to determine the population dynamics of o. rhinoceros and its relationship with cl imatic factors. the number of o. rhinoceros was recorded and sorted in order to determine the abundance of the population and also to differentiate the population between host plants, oil palm and coconut palm. the o. rhinoceros were attracted to the pheromones and entered and were trapped in the trap. male and female asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 257-268 260 o. rhinoceros were trapped because the pheromones used in this study were not specif ically sexual. in this study, pheromone traps were placed randomly in each block. the maintenance and agronomy practices in this research plot were done as planned and followed the standard of procedure. 2.6. data analysis to compare data on the rhinoceros beetle population (oryctes rhinoceros) between oil palm and coconut palm, a ttest was used in this study to differentiate the pest population between these two palmae families. data population dynamics male, female, and total of o. rhinoceros) in oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.) were used. pearson’s correlation test and linear regression analysis were used to study the relationship of the o. rhinocerosin oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.) with the cl imatic factors (rainfall and temperature). 3. results 3.1. comparison population abundances of rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) between oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.) in this study, abundance and population dynamic of rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) in oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.) were observed. rhinoceros beetle was found to be more attracted to oil palm plots than coconut palm plots. population of rhinoceros beetlesin oil palm was signif icantly greater (t = 3.861, p < 0.01) than population of rhinoceros beetlesin coconut palm in this study. figure 1 shows the mean number of male and female of o.rhinocerosin both host plants, oil palm and coconut palm for 40 sampling weeks. the trend population of o. rhinoceros males and females, for both oil palm and coconut palm plots exhibited similar trend that fluctuated for the entire sampling period. the population of o.rhinocerosin oil palm and coconut palm fluctuated from week 2 until week 40. at the beginning of the week after installing pheromone trap (week 2), interestingly, the mean number of o.rhinoceros was 8.67 and 10.44 in oil palm and coconut palm, respectively. the highest populations of o.rhinoceroswere recorded in coconut palm as compared to oil palm plot figure 2. figure 1. mean number of o. rhinoceros in oil palm and coconut palm plantation for 40 weeks sampling periods. figure 2. total mean number of o. rhinoceros (male and female) in oil palm and coconut palm plantation for 40 weeks sampling periods. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 257-268 261 overall, the total female and male populations of o. rhinoceros in oil palm (elaeis guineensis) ranged from 0.33/sampling week to 13.44/sampling week. the total female and male population of o. rhinocerosin coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.) ranges from 1.44 per sampling week to 12.00 per sampling week figure 2. interestingly, from week 6 until week 32, the population of o.rhinocerosin both oil palmand coconut palmplots fluctuated with similar trends. mean number of o. rhinoceroswas constantly recorded lower in the coconut palm compared to mean number of o. rhinocerosin oil palm for the entire sampling period. 3.2. relationship between rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros)in oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.) and rainfall and temperature 3.2.1. oil palm table 1 shows the correlation of therhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) (total male and female, male, and female) with the rainfall distribution and temperature in oil palm (elaeis guineensis). the male (p > 0.05; r = 0.016) and total (male and female) (p > 0.05; r = 0.081) of o.rhinoceros were found to not be significantly correlated to rainfall distribution in oil palm experimental plots. this study indicated that the rainfal l did not influence the male and total numbers (male and female) of rhinoceros beetle o. rhinoceros. however, the o. rhinoceros female was observed to be significantly influenced with low correlation (r=0.140, p<0.05) by rainfall in an oil palm experimental plot. meanwhile, female and total (male and female) o.rhinoceros was observed to be significantly influenced (p<0.05) by temperature in oil palm ) experimental plots, and the temperature did not influence the number of maleo. rhinoceros. table 1. correlation analysis between male, female and total (male and female) of oryctes rhinoceros and rainfall and temperature in oil palm. oryctes rhinoceros (sex) plant variety rainfall temperature n pearson correlation sig.2-tailed pearson correlation sig.2-tailed male oil palm 0.016 p>0.05 -0.109 p>0.05 200 female 0.140 p<0.05 -0.185 p<0.05 200 total (male and female) 0.081 p>0.05 -0.168 p<0.05 200 the study observed that there was a parallel pattern and variability in the distribution of rainfall and temperature during the duration of sampling period. average temperature during the entire sampling period was 26.55°c. result showed that in week 24, the mean rainfall was 8.57mm and the mean number of the total o.rhinoceros was 7.00. in general, it can be explained from the graph figure 3 that higher mean number of rainfall and lesser number of o.rhinoceros total (male and female) were in week 24. the lowest mean of the rainfall was recorded in week 40 (0.00), with a temperature of 26.96°c and the lowest mean of the total number of male and female of o.rhinoceros was observed in week 34 (0.00), at a temperature 27.41°c. figure 3. total mean number of o. rhinoceros (male and female) correlated with rainfall distribution and temperature in oil palm plantation for 40 weeks sampling periods. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 257-268 262 the highest mean number of rhinoceros beetles (oryctes rhinoceros) was recorded in week 16 at temperature (25.82°c) and rainfall (24.20mm). the graph also explained that the populations of o.rhinoceros, with the rainfall distribution, and the temperature are fluctuating throughout the weeks. in correlation analysis, the population of o.rhinoceros was observed not significantly (p>0.05) influenced by rainfall distribution. bedford (2014) found that during wet weather traps, the captured rhinoceros beetle showed an increasing trend in flight activities and exhibited a higher number of males during the full moon. in another study, yusof, tuck, and chong (2013) found that the survival rate of other herbivores attacked in oil palm ranged between 25°c and 35°c. figure 4 shows that the population dynamics of rhinoceros beetle male throughout the sampling period from week 2 until week 40 correlated with the rainfall di stribution and temperature. the lowest number of mean for rainfall was recorded in week 40 (0.00) at temperature 26.96°c and the highest volume of ra infall distribution was recorded in week 24 (8.57mm) at temperature 26.13°c. meanwhile, in week 34 (0.00) t he lowest population male of o. rhinoceros was observed at temperature 27.41°c and the highest number of o. rhinocerosrecorded in week 16 (16.20) at temperature 25.82°c. however, in correlation analysis, o. rhinoceros’smale was not significantly correlated (p>0.05; r=0.016) with rainfall distribution and also not significantly correlated with temperature (p > 0.05; r =-0.109) in oil palm test plot. figure 4. mean number of o. rhinoceros male correlated with rainfall distribution and temperature in oil palm plantation for 40 weeks sampling periods. the female of rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) was positively and significantly correlated with rainfall (r = 0.140; p < 0.05) and female was negatively and significantly correlated with the temperature (r =0.0185; p < 0.05). the highest volume of rainfall was recorded in week 24 (8.57mm) at temperature 26.13°c and the highest number of females was observed in week 36 (13.60) at temperature 26.48°c. meanwhile, the lowest rainfall was in week 40 (0.00mm) at temperature 26.96°c and the lowest number of females was in week 34 (0.60) at temperature 27.4°c. from the graph figure 5, it was observed that from week 2 until week 22 the graph showed that the populations of the female had a positive relationship with the rainfall distribution and negative relationship with temperature. in week 34, a similar trend clearly can be observed whereby when the rainfall and temperature dropped or increased, the population of female o. rhinoceros followed the similar trend. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 257-268 263 figure 5.mean number of o. rhinoceros female correlated with rainfall distribution and temperature in oil palm plantation duration for 40 weeks of sampling periods. however, a f inding of this study was parallel with a study done by ahmad (2006) in felda plantation in lepar, pahang. he found that the number of o. rhinoceros captured was dropped in drought season (february, 2005 – april, 2005) which using pheromone traps. they found that the highest mean numbers of rhinoceros beetle were caught in the end of the september 2005 (14 month after planting) and the lowest means numbers of rhinoceros beetle were caught in the first week of february 2005 (7 months after replanting). 15 months after planting, they found that the damaged related to higher population caused by rhinoceros beetle was very severe. the significant deterioration observed in the oil palm can likely be attributed to the pronounced preference of the immature palm for the rhinoceros beetle. planting material dxp palms seedlings in ladang penyelidikan segamat was planted in 2013 and the tested plot was in the middle of the plantation. the border was planted with mature palms about 25 to 30 years old palms. therefore, the migration of the o.rhinoceros was observed due to alternate host plant from old oil palm at the border, which differed in palm age significantly. the beetle migrated from old mature palms to nearby sites to search new breeding sites and food. therefore, the field was abundantly higher with o. rhinoceros and may cause higher damage level on the palms. 3.2.2. coconut palm table 2 shows male, female and total (male and female) population of o. rhinoceros were not correlated (p > 0.05) significantly by rainfall distribution but, male of rhinoceros beetle was significantly influenced (p < 0.05) by temperature in coconut palm plot. interestingly, both female and total (male and female) of rhinoceros beetle was not significantly correlated (r = 0.056, p > 0.05) to the rainfall distribution. table 2. correlation analysis between (male, female and total (male and female) of oryctes rhinoceros and rainfall and temperature in coconut palm. oryctes rhinoceros (sex) plant variety rainfall temperature n pearson correlation sig.2-tailed pearson correlation sig.2-tailed male coconut palm -0.074 p>0.05 0.150 p<0.05 180 female 0.056 p>0.05 0.043 p>0.05 180 total (male and female) -0.020 p>0.05 0.120 p>0.05 180 total male and female of rhinoceros beetle are plotted into the graph figure 6. week 24 was recorded as the highest (8.57) rainfall distribution at temperature 26.13°c and the highest population total male and female of o. rhinoceroswas recorded in week 4 (36) at temperature 26.94°c. but the lowest number of the total (male and female) ofo.rhinoceros was recorded in week 34 (4.33) at temperature 27.41°c and the lowest rainfall amount (0.00) was in week 40 at temperature 26.96°c. population of the total male and female of o. rhinoceros was seemed not to be influenced by the rainfall distribution. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 257-268 264 figure 6.total mean number of o. rhinoceros (male and female) correlated with rainfall distribution and temperature in coconut palm plantation for 40 weeks of sampling periods. interestingly, in week 30 until week 40, figure 7 shows that male and rainfall line seemed to have a positive relationship, but statistically there was no correlation (p > 0.05; r=-0.074) with rainfall in coconut palm. meanwhile, male of o. rhinoceroswas significantly influenced (p < 0.05; r=0.150) by temperature in coconut palm. the highest number of males was captured in week 4 (23.33) at temperature 26.94°c but the lowest number of males was in week 28 (1.33) at temperature 26.39°c. figure 7. mean number of oryctes rhinoceros male correlated with rainfall distribution and temperature in coconut palm plantation for 40 weeks of sampling periods. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 257-268 265 based on statistical analysis, no signif icant l ink was observed between the female population of the rhincervos beetle species and the distribution of rainfall as well as temperature. the highest number of female (21.00) was recorded in week 38 at temperature 26.36°c when the mean rainfall at 7.07mm. the lowest number female of o.rhinoceros was in week 12 (2.33) at temperature 26.74°c while the rainfall was 0.86mm figure 8. overall, both male and female did not correlate with rainfall. data was analyzed and found that female and total (male and female) of o. rhinoceros also did not correlate with the temperature, but male of o. rhinoceros was significantly influenced by temperature in coconut palm plot. basically, rhinoceros beetle’s reproduction process continues under favorable condit ion. o. rhinoceros active and reproduce when food and breeding site available but not directly affected by rainfall. coconut palm was found to be a good host plant with minimal dry season may give favorable condition for o. rhinoceros and active for activity of food searching. figure 8. mean number of oryctes rhinoceros female correlated with rainfall distribution and temperature in coconut palm plantation for 40 weeks of sampling periods. 4. discussion in this study, different varieties of oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.) were evaluated to determine the reaction of rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) population. data male and female of rhinoceros beetle were collected and recorded for 40 weeks in both oil palm and coconut palm that were collected from the pheromone trap in each experimental plot. rhinoceros beetle is one of the major pests in palmae family. the image of the rhinoceros beetle is serious stage, which is called as a destructive stage. rhinoceros beetle has a record of causing severe damage. yusof et al. (2013) found that rhinoceros beetle population of male pupae has five instars and survives at 25°c with the optimum survival at 30°c. in this study, generally, the mean number of rhinoceros beetles in oil palm was higher than the mean number of rhinoceros beetleson coconut palm in many occasions during the sampling period. interestingly, only at the early stage, especially weeks 2 and 4 and at the end of the sampling week, such as weeks 38 and 40, the population of rhinoceros beetles in coconut palm was higher than the population of rhinoceros beetles in oil palm plots. the population of rhinoceros beetles is probably lower in oil palm due to the agronomic pract ices that have been carried out by management, such as fertilizer application and physiological changes in plant performance. as a result, the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 257-268 266 rhinoceros beetle population shifted, and the cocunt palm was discovered to be a suitable alternative host. additionally, population number of rhinoceros beetles was found to be higher in some varieties of coconut palm because of different varieties with different physical appearances. the physical appearance of coconut palm differed between plant varieties and it was more attractive compared to oil palm. based on the previous study by mohammed and hassan (2004), indicated that beetle highly preferred the yellow color. chemical composition and nut rient content differed based on the different plant varieties zhang, li, and li (2016) may also affect the abundance of the population of rhinoceros beetle. allou et al. (2012) found that rhinoceros beetle’s mating process and laying egg require an affordable host. the lowest population of rhinoceros beetles for both oil palm and coconut palm plots was detected in week 34. in week 34, rainfall distribution was recorded as the lowest compared to another week. parallel with other studies done by karuppaiah and sujayanad (2012), low rainfall, the survival rate of insect pest brown plant hopper, and rice leaf folder were decl ined. however, the multitude of species will decrease in growth rate, fecundity, and mortality rate. allou et al. (2012) also found that larvalrhinoceros beetles aremore preferred host, which can provide them food to survive. the temperature, rainfall and weather condition are one of the most important factors in population dynamic of insect pest. climatic factors are important for rhinoceros beetle survival particularly for searching their food and breeding site. the highest number of rhinoceros beetle was observed in week 16 (13.44) in oil palm plot. the population of rhinoceros beetle generally fluctuated for both oil palm and coconut palm plot figure 1. climatic condition is one of the factors that may influence population dynamic of the rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) in the oil palm (elaeis guineensis) and coconut palm field. rhinoceros beetle need favorable condition for breeding process. however, in oil palm, male and female populations were not influenced by rainfall distribution. male of rhinoceros beetle in oil palm was also not influenced by the rainfall. however, interestingly, in this study, the female of rhinoceros beetle in oil palm had significant relationship with the rainfall. it is because female need the favorable condition for the breeding sites to lay their egg and rainfall could interrupt the breeding or reproduction process. previous study reported that imago rhinoceros beetle was active during raining season permadi (2012) which indicated that laying eggs process was occurred before raining season. this explained that rainfall much contributes to the development and growth of immature of rhinoceros beetle. at early stage in this study, average temperature in week 2, week 4 and at end of the sampling period in week 38 and week 40 were 26.72°c. this range of temperature is suitable for survival rate of the insect pest population and yusof et al. (2013) also find that 79% male of pupae are survived at 25°c to 30°c. in coconut palm, the population of rhinoceros beetlewas not influenced by rainfall distribution. statistically, there was no relationship between population rhinoceros beetlewith the rainfall in coconut palm plots. these plant traits will give different effect towards pest’s preference (fathul, mohd rasdi, & nur, 2018; mohammed & hassan, 2004) and whereas rainfall did not give effect to rhinoceros beetle population. from the beginning of june 2015 until september 2015 (weeks 2-18), female population male and female population of rhinoceros beetlesdecreased gradually and increased from october 2015 till february 2016 (week s 2040). during this season, particularly in june 2015 (weeks 2-4), the climate was drought-prone. during the droughtprone, temperature increase and rhinoceros beetles migrate to search for favorable conditions for breeding sites. more larvae of rhinoceros beetles need a high level of moisture content 80% 100% to survive (norman et al., 2005); low moisture content was unfavorable for larvae; and a dry microclimate retarded the developmental process of rhinoceros beetles. interestingly, this study found that when the rainfall decreased, the populations of the rhinoceros beetle in coconut palmalso decreased gradually (week 2-week 8), and when the rainfall distribution increased, the population of the rhinoceros beetle also increased (week 10) figure 5. norman et al. (2005) found that rainfall was highly significant and positively correlated with population of first and second instar larvae of rhinoceros beetles. rainfall had affected the population dynamics of the rhinoceros beetle due to wet season, which was favorable for breeding activities. adult rhinoceros beetle was found actively flying in wet season and searching for new breeding sites reported by norman et al. (2005). this study revealed that there was no relationship between rhinoceros beetle and the rainfall table 2. this finding explained that the population of rhinoceros beetles (oryctes rhinoceros) in coconut palm did not have a clear relationship with rainfall distribution. the result was against the finding from karuppaiah and sujayanad (2012) which states that rainfall and weather affect the mortality rate, survival rate, fecundity, developmental rate , and dispersal of the pest population. however, climate change may alter the nutritiona l value of plants, alter insect abundance, and increase the consumption rate of herbivores. physical characteristic of the plant host or habitat may affect the populat ion of rhinoceros beetle. in this study, plant variety for both crops were studied. norman et al. (2005) found that nutrient value of k in trunk chips and moisture content increased the population of the rhinoceros beetle. rhinoceros beetle also needed nitrogen element which nutrient for protein to form its hard cuticular structure. from the finding, planters can properly plan pest and disease control during planting both crops (fathul et al., 2018). planters also can manipulate the microclimates within the habitat of the rhinoceros beetle to be less favorable for the breeding site. avoid replanting at the wet season condition that may attract the rhinoceros beetle for breeding site. another way to avoid the increased number of breeding site for adult rhinoceros beetle, planters can plant the legume cover crops to hinder the for aging of the adult. further study on chemical and nutritional in each variety for both crops was needed to be carried out. overall, again female and total of male and female of rhinoceros beetle in the coconut palm had no correlation with the temperature. meanwhile, female and total of male and female of rhinoceros beetle in oil palm was negatively asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 257-268 267 correlated with the temperature. for male of rhinoceros beetle in coconut palm, there was positively correlated with the temperature compare to male of rhinoceros beetle n oil palm because rhinoceros beetle can be active and reproductive throughout the year occur in no cold season and a minimal dry season (pradipta et al., 2020). rainfall will provide moisture to organic materials and this will help the developmental of the insect pest population. insect pest population survives for food searching and helps in food consuming. manjeri et al. (2014) found that adult females of rhinoceros beetle will deposited its eggs inside the dead palms, decaying plant material, soil with high organic matter, and wooden structure (allou et al., 2012). adults will be flying to a new tree to search for new habitat for feed, and mate. adults of rhinoceros beetle feed on fresh leaves (zhong et al., 2013). the changes of climate in the environment affects the pest population dynamics in two ways e ither directly or indirectly by altering the host physiology. insect pest population and plant exposed to complex of the interactions among the changes in temperature, precipitation and increased level of co 2 and variations in nutrient availability (karuppaiah & sujayanad, 2012). 5. conclusions and recommendations overall, the population of rhinoceros beetles (oryctes rhinoceros) was found higher in oil palm (elaeis guineensis) as compared to coconut palm (cocos nucifera l.). it can be concluded that rhinoceros beetles highly prefer oil palms when compared to coconut palms. climate is one of the factors that might influence the population dynamics of rhinoceros beetles in field. rainfall distribution and temperature seemed to not influence the total number of males and the total number of males and females of rhinoceros beetles, beetles in oil palm and coconut palm in this study. rhinoceros beetles need moisture and favorable conditions for breeding process. interestingly, it was found that female rhinoceros beetles in oil palm field was correlated with the rainfall. this might be probably that the female rhinoceros beetle s need favorable condit ion for breeding sites to lay their eggs. high rainfall, high of moisture , and temperature will decrease, and rhinoceros beetles will search for the favorable condition for the mating process and also for sources of food for the larva. rhinoceros beetles prefer shelter for their breeding site. this scenario is probably due to types of canopies, both oil palm and coconut palm. oil palm plants have a longer and wider rachis compared to coconut palm. it gives more shaded area in oil palm compared to coconut palm. the shaded area has a more favorable condition during high temperatures and it will influence the availablity of hosts for pest rhinoceros beetles. preventive measures need to be taken with high consideration for climatic factors such as rainfall and temperature. climatic factors affect and exert pressure on plants, making them favorable conditions for pests and diseases. further study should be carried out in terms of chemical compounds in the both palmae varieties to determine the main reason why the rhinoceros beetle (oryctes rhinoceros) is more attracted to the variety of the oil palm. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the uitm melaka, malaysia has granted approval for this study on 24 december 2021 (ref. no. 600 -cm (pji.jpu.5/7/5)). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references ahmad, a. h. 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(2013). oviposition selection of oryctes rhinoceros among different host stems. journal of environmental entomology, 34(1), 13-17. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.9734/arrb/2014/11023 https://doi.org/10.17660/actahortic.2006.710.53 https://doi.org/10.1093/jee/28.6.873 https://doi.org/10.5713/ajas.16.0052 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 214 tax incentives, soft credit programs, and economic welfare: qualitative study of rural farmers in kyrgyzstan ulanbek moldokmatova talant asan uulub kadyrbek sultakeevb,c urmat ryskulovb akyrgyz state technical university n.a. i. razzakov, bishkek, kyrgyzstan. bamerican university of central asia, bishkek, kyrgyzstan. cinstitute for agricultural policy and market research, justus liebig university giessen, germany.  kadyrbek.sultakeev@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 3 april 2025 revised: 19 may 2025 accepted: 28 may 2025 published: 13 june 2025 keywords agricultural policy agricultural productivity central asia food security institutional support post-covid recovery rural economic welfare smallholder farmers soft credit programs tax incentives. agriculture remains central to kyrgyzstan’s economy, yet rural farmers continue to face deep-rooted challenges that hinder their economic progress. in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic, the country’s heavy reliance on food imports—particularly from eurasian economic union (eaeu) partners—exposed severe food security vulnerabilities. the sudden restriction of flour imports from russia and kazakhstan highlighted the country’s limited domestic production capacity. in response, the kyrgyz government introduced a tax moratorium on agricultural land (2022–2024) and launched targeted soft loan programs through state banks such as jsc aiyl bank and jsc rsk bank to improve the financial stability of farmers and stimulate productivity. this study explores how these policy measures have impacted smallholder farmers by drawing on in-depth interviews with farmers across three provinces. while tax exemptions were acknowledged, they were often seen as offering only marginal benefits. in contrast, soft credit programs provided real opportunities for investment in inputs and machinery, yet access remained difficult due to complex procedures and collateral requirements. the findings suggest that although recent reforms have contributed to reducing food imports and strengthening food security, the current structure of support programs needs refinement. expanding outreach, simplifying loan access, and better aligning policies with farmer realities are key to achieving inclusive rural development. contribution/originality: this study provides the first qualitative analysis of kyrgyzstan’s post-covid agricultural tax and credit policies at the smallholder level. by integrating farmer perceptions across multiple provinces, it uniquely assesses how tax moratoriums and soft loans influence rural economic welfare, food security, and policy effectiveness in an emerging eaeu economy. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5408 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: moldokmatov, u., uulu, t. a., sultakeev, k., & ryskulov, u. (2025). tax incentives, soft credit programs, and economic welfare: qualitative study of rural farmers in kyrgyzstan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 214–222. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the agricultural industry is an important sector of the economy of the kyrgyz republic, where the share of employed peasant farmers is more than half of the country's population (world bank, 2020). especially, the agricultural asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 214-222 mailto:kadyrbek.sultakeev@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0009-0002-0583-0057 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4843-804x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6449-3727 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0018-7955 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5408 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 214-222 215 industry is constantly experiencing difficulties, such as a lack of financial resources, insufficient application of sustainable practices, as well as an irrational institutional support mechanism. for example, fiscal policies to promote agriculture through a moratorium on agricultural land and concessional affordable credit programs (adb, 2021; food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), 2022). during the covid-19 pandemic in the kyrgyz republic, food security problems were acutely identified due to heavy reliance on imports of essential commodities, paradoxically from neighboring eurasian economic union (eaeu) partner countries. the drastic restriction of flour imports from russia and neighboring kazakhstan has revealed a negative limitation on the provision of domestic food at the expense of the country's own resources, despite the advantages of integration within the framework of eaeu membership. in order to radically eliminate these problems, the kyrgyz republic took urgent systemic measures to support the domestic agricultural sector of the economy. an important step was the announcement of a tax moratorium for agricultural land (2022-2024) and a targeted program of preferential lending to domestic farmers through state-owned commercial banks such as jsc aiyl bank and jsc rsk bank to improve the financial stability of farmers and increase the productivity of the agricultural sector of the domestic economy (ministry of finance of the kyrgyz republic, 2023). the results of the state reforms have yielded positive outcomes by significantly reducing imports and increasing the food security of the country. nevertheless, there are still social and economic consequences, and therefore they should be studied in detail. for example, it is not yet fully understood how these policies affect farmers' income stability, decision-making, and resilience to shocks. international experiences, such as the elimination of agricultural taxes in china in 2004-2005, provide valuable lessons on the potential advantages and disadvantages of such measures. in china, agricultural incomes and productivity increased significantly, but financing and resource reallocation by local authorities faced challenges (huang, qiao, & rozelle, 2008; lin & wong, 2012). kyrgyzstan's unique context, including its small economy and different financial structure, requires local analysis to assess whether similar outcomes can be achieved or avoided. tax incentives and agricultural policies have demonstrated mixed effects globally, with evidence from china and africa highlighting their potential to boost rural incomes and productivity, while other studies reveal challenges such as inequitable benefits and reduced government revenues for rural investments (badiane, stifel, & osei, 2002; jayne & jones, 2003; lin & wong, 2012). in kyrgyzstan, the recent moratorium on agricultural land taxation offers a unique context to assess the impact of such policies on household income and investment decisions. however, the limited availability of local research creates a significant gap in understanding whether these incentives equitably benefit farmers or disproportionately favor larger, wealthier producers. while past reforms have improved efficiency in the agricultural sector, persistent issues such as inadequate investment, poor natural resource management, and reliance on private over government services (mogilevskii et al., 2017; saparova, khan, & joshi, 2024) underline the need for comprehensive studies to evaluate the effectiveness of tax incentives in enhancing welfare across diverse farming communities. this study addresses a significant gap in the literature by examining how tax incentives and soft loan programs affect the economic welfare of kyrgyz farmers. in doing so, it provides practical recommendations for designing effective policies that increase resilience and promote sustainable development of agriculture and rural areas. exploring these issues will provide further insights into how kyrgyzstan can optimize institutional support mechanisms to balance economic growth, stability, and rural livelihoods. these findings contribute to the broader debate on agricultural policy and institutional reforms in lowand middle-income countries. 1.1. research question how do tax incentives and preferential credit programs influence the economic welfare of kyrgyz farmers? answering the research question provides critical insights into how kyrgyzstan’s land tax moratorium and soft loan programs drive agricultural growth and economic welfare. by enabling farmers in regions to expand grain production through increased access to credit and reduced financial burdens, these policies enhance food security, household income, and resilience against economic shocks. the results of scientific research aim to strengthen structural support for domestic farmers, enabling them to increase their productivity and improve their economic welfare. these methods can be applied in similar countries where the financial incomes of farmers are at medium or low levels. 2. literature review 2.1. influence of the tax moratorium on the financial and economic well-being of peasants and farmers this chapter reviews existing research on two research questions: the impact of tax incentives on farmers' economic welfare and the role of concessional credit programs in enhancing the economic stability and sustainability of rural households. the constant life-cycle income hypothesis and consumption smoothing theories provide a basic understanding of how tax incentives can affect household welfare. these theories assume that households adjust consumption and investment based on expected lifetime income, especially when tax policies such as tax credits reduce immediate financial burdens (alderman & paxson, 1992; deaton, 1997). however, the effectiveness of tax incentives largely depends on how they are implemented and perceived by beneficiaries. the agricultural sector of the kyrgyz republic occupies a special place in the national economy of the state. since this sector employs more than 50% of the labor force, its share is more than 30% of the country's gdp (light, 2007). however, it is worth noting that this sector is experiencing difficulties, particularly in small-scale production, poor logistics and processing, and a low level of competitiveness in the eurasian economic union (eaeu) (dzhailov, 2020). government support is essential for addressing these issues, particularly in providing financial assistance and creating asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 214-222 216 favorable conditions for development (mirlanbek et al., 2023). to ensure sustainable growth and competitiveness, measures such as forming regional agricultural clusters, stimulating agricultural cooperation, improving logistics, and enhancing credit and state support mechanisms are recommended (kozhogulova et al., 2023). in the late 1990s, initial tax policies associated with land reforms led to improvements, but growth rates subsequently declined significantly. most peasants believed that agriculture was a form of insurance rather than entrepreneurship (light, 2007). the correct solution to this problem contributes to improving food security and the economic development of the kyrgyz republic within the eaeu. the research has shown that tax policy aimed at stimulating agriculture through tax moratoria has a full effect depending on current conditions. in other countries, similar tax incentives have contributed to an increase in farmers' incomes, which has allowed peasants to invest in and modernize agricultural production. as a result, they have been able to diversify their production and increase their financial resources. for example, evidence from china shows that the abolition of agricultural taxes has led to higher rural incomes and productivity (lin & wong, 2012). similarly, studies in african countries have shown that tax cuts can incentivize smallholders to participate in the market (jayne & jones, 2003). other studies suggest that tax incentives do not always bring equitable benefits. high transaction costs, limited awareness, and poor implementation often limit the benefits to richer or larger farmers (fan, zhang, & zhang, 2008). however, the introduced tax incentives through the moratorium cannot always increase the inflow of investment in the agricultural sector without compensating for the budget losses from the introduced tax incentives (badiane et al., 2002). to see the improvement of financial and economic well-being of peasants and farmers, it is possible to assess the impact of tax incentives using the example of the kyrgyz republic. however, without such scientific studies, it is difficult to evaluate the positive effect of these tax incentives on peasants and farmers or whether a narrow range of beneficiaries is benefiting. research on kyrgyz agriculture reveals mixed outcomes of reforms and policies. while liberalization has granted farmers more freedom and improved sector efficiency (mogilevskii et al., 2017), the welfare effects of export participation for smallholders remain insignificant (esenaliev, 2023). tax incentives and credit programs have shown limited impact, with farmers preferring private sector services over government interventions. however, farmers express a willingness to participate in phytosanitary systematization policies that offer market information, interest-free loans, and production inputs (saparova, khan, & joshi, 2024). despite attempts at reform, challenges persist, including insufficient investments, poor natural resource management, and inadequate public goods provision (mogilevskii et al., 2017). the agricultural sector remains crucial to kyrgyzstan's economy, accounting for over a third of gdp and supporting half the population's livelihood (christensen & pomfret, 2007). future policies should focus on supporting both large and small farmers while addressing infrastructure and resource management issues, as these areas are integral to enhancing the overall impact of agricultural credit on farmer welfare (syahrial, 2022); however, this paper is not relevant to the query about tax incentives and preferential credit programs influencing the economic welfare of kyrgyz farmers. another paper discusses tax incentives and subsidies for the agricultural sector in belarus but does not specifically address economic welfare (kireyeva, 2016). 2.2. impact of concessional credit programs on farmers' economic welfare access to credit is a key determinant of economic stability in rural areas. according to the theories of demand smoothing and capital accumulation, credit enables households to overcome liquidity constraints, invest in high-income activities, and insure against income shocks (eswaran & kotwal, 1989). soft loans and concessional credit programs, in particular, aim to reduce the barriers faced by resource-poor farmers. studies in south asia have shown that microcredit and subsidized credit improve agricultural productivity and household welfare (pitt & khandker, 1998). these financial inputs contribute directly to higher productivity, more stable incomes, and improved economic conditions for rural households. however, karymshakov, sultakeev, and sulaimanova (2015) emphasize that the positive effects of credit programs depend substantially on the strength and effectiveness of local financial institutions, such as banks and microfinance organizations, especially within the kyrgyz context. soft loan programs often have indirect benefits, such as empowering women and improving social cohesion. for example, research in india shows that government programs to provide financial support to women in rural areas have significantly increased their economic well-being, as well as their role in economic decision-making (kabir, 2005). however, it is worth noting that these points will be positive if the stimulus loans issued are repaid at maturity along with interest rates. high loan default rates, limited outreach, and the exclusion of marginalized groups remain major obstacles (armendariz & morduch, 2010). according to other researchers, sometimes concessional loans will not be effective if farmers cannot earn enough to repay the interest on the loans in time. if we look at the situation in the kyrgyz republic under the incentive concessional loan program, the objectives were to improve the economic welfare of farmers, especially in rural areas. however, due to the lack of statistical data, it is impossible to predict the economic and social outcomes for a long period of time. understanding how these programs affect household income stability, risk reduction, and investment behavior is critical for policy improvement. while valuable insights into the role of tax incentives and credit programs can be found in the global literature, kyrgyzstan's unique socioeconomic and institutional context requires a localized analysis. factors such as limited rural financial infrastructure, different levels of financial literacy, and regional disparities may affect the outcomes of these policies differently than in other countries. for policymakers to be able to prepare optimum plans considering the current needs of domestic peasants and farmers, the authorities should eliminate the existing deficiencies. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 214-222 217 2.3. socio-economic and environmental vulnerabilities the rural households of kyrgyzstan face a number of vulnerabilities that reinforce economic insecurity. rising temperatures and shifts in precipitation increasingly threaten food availability, disproportionately affecting poor households and amplifying their economic vulnerability (bopushev, tokobaev, & sultakeev, 2025; ibraeva, tokobaev, bopushev, & sultakeev, 2025). these climatic shifts contribute to already existing challenges, making consistent agricultural production increasingly difficult, especially for smallholder farmers. additionally, the covid-19 pandemic unveiled stark food insecurity concerns, particularly among the poorer segments of the population. poor families, who are already vulnerable to fluctuations in food prices and availability, are very sensitive even to minimal tax changes, as this can negatively impact their consumption patterns (sultakeev, abdieva, & ganiev, 2025). these vulnerabilities indicate the exposure of rural livelihoods and the potential for policy alterations, however minor, to compound vulnerabilities in economically disadvantaged groups. furthermore, as sultakeev and petrick (2025) observe, entrenched poverty traps make it nearly impossible for poor people in kyrgyzstan and central asia to escape poverty, which causes variations in economic behavior between poorer and wealthier households. such traps tend to undermine the possibility for poorer farmers to take advantage of agricultural incentives or credit programs, thereby perpetuating economic disparities. these coinciding vulnerabilities underscore the need for effective, targeted policy intervention in agricultural and rural development. these structural challenges must be addressed in order to improve rural economic welfare and achieve long-run sustainable development. 3. methodology 3.1. research design this research is based on the thematic analysis of braun and clarke (2006), which is particularly suitable for analyzing and interpreting qualitative information obtained from interviews with current experts in the agricultural sector. this qualitative method is set against the background of tax incentives and subsidies aimed at improving the financial and economic benefits for farmers and peasants. 3.2. data collection baseline information for the analysis was obtained through interviews with respondents, including local experts from the spheres of rural agrarianism and inspectors of tax services. a total of twenty respondents were interviewed. all respondents provided valuable information regarding the direct and indirect impacts of tax incentives and soft loans for peasants and farmers. all this data supplies the scientific outcomes in this research study. 3.3. selection of respondents expert interviewers were selected based on their experience in the fields of agrarian services, tax services, and representatives of aiyl okmotu. farmers from various regions, particularly those directly impacted by the tax moratorium and credit programs, were included. additionally, experts with technical knowledge of agricultural systems and government policies contributed to understanding broader socio-economic impacts. 3.4. data analysis thematic analysis was conducted to identify recurring patterns and insights within the data. the analysis followed braun and clarke’s six-phase framework: 1. familiarization: transcripts and secondary data were reviewed to understand the breadth and depth of the content. 2. coding: key phrases and concepts were coded to capture significant aspects of the data, such as "improved access to machinery" and "financing irrigation systems." 3. theme development: codes were organized into themes representing major insights, such as enhanced agricultural productivity, infrastructure and irrigation development, and sustainable farming practices. 4. reviewing themes: themes were refined by checking them against the data to ensure coherence and relevance. 5. defining and naming themes: themes were clearly defined to reflect their contribution to addressing the research question. 6. writing up: findings were synthesized and presented, integrating supporting excerpts and explanations. 3.5. validity and reliability to ensure validity, multiple sources of data were triangulated, and themes were reviewed by independent researchers familiar with agricultural policy. reliability was achieved by maintaining a systematic coding process and detailed documentation of the analysis steps. 3.6. ethical considerations ethical approvals were obtained prior to data collection. this study can be considered complete as a result of the introduction of government programs on tax incentives and preferential lending affecting the welfare of all peasant farmers in kyrgyzstan and continuous optimization. 4. findings this study explores the impact of tax incentives and preferential credit programs on the economic welfare of kyrgyz farmers during the moratorium on agricultural land taxation (2022-2024). the thematic analysis was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 214-222 218 conducted to identify patterns in how these policies influence farming practices, productivity, and overall economic outcomes (table 1). the analysis involved coding transcripts of interviews with agricultural experts and farmers, categorizing the codes, and identifying recurring themes. this process enabled us to systematically uncover how financial policies influence different aspects of farming (table 1). the following themes in table 1 are developed in this study as follows: theme 1: enhanced agricultural productivity there was a strong theme of general agricultural productivity due to tax incentives and soft credit programs that increase the economic welfare of rural farmers (specifically identified by 8 participants). farmers associated with the moratorium on agricultural land taxes (2022-2024) and soft credit programs directly support enhanced agricultural productivity by easing financial burdens on farmers. these measures enable investments in farming technology, equipment, and sustainable practices, leading to increased land cultivation and higher crop yields. by improving access to financial resources, farmers are better equipped to enhance productivity, adopt modern techniques, and build resilience to economic shocks, ultimately strengthening food security and supporting long-term agricultural growth (explicit in all interviews). enhanced agricultural productivity was seen as a key element of moratorium tax incentives and soft credit programs. for example, tax incentives and loans facilitated the acquisition and renewal of farming equipment, including tractors, combines, and harvesters. this information is illustrated by a quote from interviewee 1, a 67-year-old woman, as follows: “well…despite the special role of land tax on agricultural land in the formation of the local budget, the government has imposed a moratorium on taxation of agricultural land (2022-2024) to incentivize farmers to improve food security by cultivating undeveloped land, improving the irrigation system to prevent soil erosion and gullies, starting to build canals and flumes. also, as you know, agriculture is divided into several sectors, including agriculture, livestock and fisheries. by equipping agricultural equipment, farmers can develop their industry in all directions, that is: animal husbandry, crop production, fishery”. theme 2: infrastructure and irrigation development infrastructure and irrigation development was a prominent theme, identified in 9 of the 20 interviews. twelve participants indicated the importance of infrastructure and irrigation development. a 42-year-old man illustrated the role of irrigation infrastructure, which boosts agricultural output and sustainability. he mentioned the following: “peasants and farmers in rural areas first of all try to stop the process of soil erosion, for this purpose they say to complete and modernize irrigation facilities, for these measures they plan to use soft loans. at the moment, surface irrigation is considered as the most common type of irrigation system in agrarian rural areas. in remote areas of the republic to set the task, to build irrigation network with iron concrete canals, it does not give water loss and will reach every consumer. water flows through irrigation structures, thus preventing soil erosion from growing ravines”. the above citation emphasizes that the development of the irrigation network improves soil fertility, increases the level of crop yields, and consequently enhances food security and the economic well-being of peasant farmers, all of which will affect the stable growth of the agricultural sector of the domestic economy. other participant mentioned as follows: "the tax moratorium incentivized farmers to improve irrigation systems by starting to build canals and flumes". theme 3: farming in sustainable ways using government loan and tax incentive programs, peasants and rural farmers try to switch to optimal farming methods. they also try to use organic fertilizers, alfalfa sowing, and of course, crop rotation. in the long term, these measures will improve food security, soil fertility, productivity, and a sustainable rural economy, which will have a positive impact on the environment, i.e., ecology. this theme underscores the importance of integrating sustainability into policy measures, as it ensures that immediate gains in productivity do not come at the cost of long-term agricultural health. this is highlighted by the first interviewer as follows: "buy organic fertilizers, do crop rotation, and plant alfalfa to get more crops in a couple of years. farmers should follow crop rotation where the soil is regenerated for the next season where weeds are destroyed”. theme 4: policy-driven farming support the imposed moratorium on agricultural land has had a positive impact on the economic behavior of peasant farmers, as it has encouraged them to cultivate previously uncultivated land. hence, the loss to the local budget from these tax levies on agricultural land from farmers is compensated by increasing food security through their active farming. this tax policy has strengthened the role of the state by influencing the development of the agrarian sector of the domestic economy. the volume of reduction of the tax burden for farmers is a significant amount, as the local budget before the moratorium was announced was about 17% of all tax revenues received from the tax on agricultural land. this indicates that the state has significantly supported the stable growth of the economic welfare of rural farmers. this theme was described by the first respondent as follows: "the government has introduced a moratorium on land tax on agricultural land (2022-2024), at which the land tax revenues of agricultural land had a significant volume in the district budget, i.e. 17% of the local budget revenues. despite the significant amount of tax revenues from agricultural land tax, the government encouraged farmers to maximize the development of uncultivated land in order to improve the food security of the country". theme 5: improved financial accessibility despite the benefits of soft loans, limited access to these financial resources remains a significant challenge. not all farmers are able to access the necessary credit, which creates disparities in the agricultural sector. the unequal distribution of loans limits the potential for some farmers to modernize their operations or implement sustainable practices. this finding suggests that while the policy is beneficial for those who can access it, broader efforts to enhance asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 214-222 219 financial accessibility and ensure equitable distribution of resources are necessary for achieving widespread economic benefits. the last theme was explained by the first interviewer as follows: “all farmers can receive all concessional loans allocated by the state, all farmers can be informed about this information through mobile devices of the population, farmers can find out all information about concessional loans in their phones. specialists of the ministry of agriculture in order to increase the knowledge of agricultural producers and farmers hold training seminars, with the introduction of new technology. seminars and trainings on the procedure for obtaining soft loans are also held in each aiyl okrug. farmers use soft loans to breed new breeds of animals. for example, cows that give more milk and meat. however, the availability of soft loans is not enough for all farmers. the local authorities of aiyl okmotu and akims are personally responsible for the correct distribution of soft loans to farmers". all these themes indicate that tax incentives and preferential credit programs have positively influenced the economic welfare of kyrgyz farmers in several ways, including enhanced productivity, infrastructure development, sustainable practices, and financial accessibility. this information is derived from interviews with 20 respondents from different regions of the country, which are listed in appendix a. the study employed a semi-structured interview format to explore farmer perceptions of tax incentives and soft credit programs in rural kyrgyzstan. the full set of background and thematic interview questions is provided in appendix b. however, challenges such as limited loan access and the uneven distribution of resources highlight areas for improvement. in order to further expand the process of systemic support to rural farmers, the relevant ministries and departments should take measures on the agenda for maximum access to preferential financial resources using public spaces, involving mass media, organisation of seminars and other local activities with the participation of representatives of aiyl okmotu and financial structures, therefore, all these activities will have a positive impact on the growth of financial and economic well-being of peasants, farmers in rural areas. in order to further expand the process of systemic support to rural farmers, the relevant ministries and departments should take measures on the agenda for maximum access to preferential financial resources using public spaces, involving mass media, organisation of seminars and other local activities with the participation of representatives of aiyl okmotu and financial structures, therefore, all these activities will have a positive impact on the growth of financial and economic well-being of peasants, farmers in rural areas. table 1. thematic table. themes codes supporting excerpts explanation themes enhanced agricultural productivity improved access to machinery "state soft loans...helped agricultural farmers to improve their technical equipment: acquiring and renewing agricultural equipment and machinery such as tractors, combines, balers, mowers." soft loans provide farmers with financial resources to purchase advanced machinery, improving productivity and efficiency. enhanced agricultural productivity infrastructure and irrigation development financing irrigation systems "farmers use credit to finance drip irrigation and improve irrigation systems to prevent soil erosion." credit helps farmers invest in essential irrigation infrastructure, which boosts agricultural output and sustainability. infrastructure and irrigation development sustainable farming practices investments in sustainable practices "buy organic fertilizers, do crop rotation, and plant alfalfa to get more crops in a couple of years." loans and tax incentives encourage environmentally sustainable practices, ensuring long-term productivity and soil health. sustainable farming practices policy-driven farming support land tax moratorium benefits "the government imposed a moratorium on taxation of agricultural land to incentivise farmers to improve food security." the moratorium on land tax reduces financial burdens, motivating farmers to increase food production and utilize idle land. policy-driven farming support improved financial accessibility limited loan access "however, the availability of soft loans is not enough for all farmers." while soft loans are beneficial, their limited availability creates inequality, leaving some farmers without access to necessary resources. improved financial accessibility asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 214-222 220 5. conclusion as a result of the research findings, it was concluded that stimulation through tax moratoriums on agricultural land and support to farmers through soft loans have significantly affected the development of the economic and financial well-being of domestic peasant farmers during the imposed tax moratorium on agricultural land in the period 2022 2024. the findings of the research led to relevant results; that is, it is necessary to improve the performance of the agricultural sector of the agrarian economy. also, to renew and improve infrastructure and complete irrigation facilities that were halted during the soviet union, to introduce balanced sustainable methods of conducting the agricultural sector, and to increase access to finance for all farms, especially those engaged in making a significant contribution to improving the food security of the country. all of the above will ultimately ensure the sustainability of agriculture and improve food security and resilience to various financial and economic shocks, and sustainably support the long-term development of the agricultural sector. on the basis of thematic analysis, it was revealed that incentives through tax moratoriums on agricultural land significantly reduced the tax burden of peasant farmers; respectively, such a tax policy induced farmers to cultivate more unallotted agricultural land, financial investment in irrigation and other agricultural infrastructure, as well as the use and implementation of modern agricultural machinery, tools, and equipment. ultimately, the above measures will help improve agricultural productivity and economic stability. in parallel, measures through concessional credit have helped farmers to renew and modernize their capital stock, as well as invest in sustainable methods of development and improve the productivity of livestock. nevertheless, the research found a number of problems regarding restrictions on receiving concessional loans, untimely information on receiving concessional loans, as well as the unequal distribution of concessional loans to needy farmers; as a result, farmers will be deprived of high income from good harvests. resolving this gap could provide full access to preferential financial resources to all needy farmers in the regions of our country in accordance with the launched program on preferential lending. on the part of the state, all these measures should be as effective as possible; for this purpose, all state programs to support the agricultural sector and simplified access to financial resources should be nationwide, periodically covered through the state and regional mass media, through field seminars and meetings with the participation of regional local aiyl okmotu and other relevant state structures, which can lead to stable and sustainable development of the agrarian agricultural sector of our economy. in conclusion, we would like to note that the state programs of preferential lending and tax policy to stimulate farmers through tax moratoriums on agricultural land have a positive effect and will lead to an increase in the economic well-being of peasant farmers. however, these measures should be systematically implemented; preferential loans should be as accessible and simplified as possible, and regional and local relevant state structures should ensure a smooth support system for all farmers, solving all problems in a timely manner. the conclusions of these studies are important as recommendations for ministries and agencies. funding: this research is supported by the american university of central asia (auca), kyrgyzstan through the faculty research grant for spring 2025. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the american university of central asia (auca), kyrgyzstan, has granted approval for this study on 22 may 2025 (ref. no. 2025052200000737). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references adb. 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(2020). kyrgyz republic: employment in agriculture (% of total employment). retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sl.agr.empl.zs?locations=kg appendix appendix a. list of interview participants. participation code location (province) p 1 naryn p 2 naryn p 3 osh p 4 issyk-kul p 5 naryn p 6 chui p 7 jalal-abad p 8 naryn p 9 batken p 10 talas p 11 naryn p 12 naryn p 13 osh p 14 issyk-kul p 15 naryn p 16 chui p 17 jalal-abad p 18 naryn p 19 batken p 20 talas appendix b. interview questions. section 1: respondent information these questions were used to collect basic demographic and background data: 1. gender: what is your gender? (male / female / other) 2. work experience: how many years have you been involved in farming? https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sl.agr.empl.zs?locations=kg asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 214-222 222 3. age group: what is your age group? (18–30, 31–45, 46–60, 61+) 4. region: which region do you primarily operate in? section 2: thematic interview questions 1. how do rural farmers in kyrgyzstan perceive the effectiveness of current tax incentives in supporting their agricultural activities? 2. what are the key challenges faced by farmers in accessing soft credit programs? 3. are there regional differences in accessing credit programs? 4. how do tax incentives and soft credit programs impact the economic welfare of farmers in rural kyrgyzstan? 5. in what ways do farmers utilize tax incentives and soft credits to improve their agricultural productivity? 6. how do farmers compare the benefits and limitations of tax incentives versus soft credit programs? 7. what factors influence farmers' decisions to participate in government-provided tax incentives and soft credit schemes? 8. how do social, economic, and political contexts shape the implementation and effectiveness of tax incentives and soft credit programs? 9. what are the perceived barriers to accessing tax incentives and soft credit support for marginalized or smallscale farmers? 10. how do farmers' experiences with tax incentives and soft credits vary across different regions of kyrgyzstan? 11. what recommendations do farmers have for improving tax incentives and soft credit programs to better support agricultural development? views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 586 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. households’ livelihood diversification and its influencing factors in the vietnam’s smallholder mixed farming systems le van nama+ nguyen tien dungb hoang gia hungc a,b,cfaculty of rural development, university of agriculture and forestry, hue university, hue city, vietnam.  levannam@hueuni.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 1 august 2025 revised: 3 october 2025 accepted: 24 october 2025 published: 19 november 2025 keywords household income livelihood diversification mixed farming systems simpson index of diversity smallholders tobit regression vietnam. this study aims to measure the extent of household livelihood diversification, identify its effect on household income, and determine key factors that influence households' livelihood diversification. a total of 426 smallholders were randomly selected for a survey in hue city, vietnam, conducted from december 2024 to april 2025. the simpson index of diversity (sid) was used to quantify the extent of livelihood diversification, and a tobit regression model was applied to determine the determinants of households' livelihood diversification. the findings revealed a moderate level of livelihood diversification (mean sid=0.303), with smallholders engaging in a combination of on-farm, off-farm, and non-farm livelihood strategies. livelihood diversification was found to have a positive impact on household income. six factors including age, education level, number of family laborers, number of skilled laborers, participation in credit schemes, and technology adoption were positively and significantly associated with livelihood diversification levels. these results underscore the importance of promoting diversified livelihoods to enhance income and resilience among small-scale households. the study suggests that rural development policies should prioritize human capital development, strengthen access to appropriate technologies, and expand credit opportunities to foster inclusive and sustainable livelihood diversification of smallholders in developing countries. contribution/originality: this study contributes to existing literature by providing a more systemic view of the determinants of livelihood diversification by smallholders and highlighting areas that need to be considered when designing policies to support smallholders in diversifying their livelihoods in developing countries. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5727 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: nam, l. v., dung, n. t., & hung, h. g. (2025). households’ livelihood diversification and its influencing factors in the vietnam’s smallholder mixed farming systems. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 586–597. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5727 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 586-597 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3616-3971 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0303-8226 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4379-5355 mailto:levannam@hueuni.edu.vn https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5727 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 586-597 587 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 1. introduction smallholder farmers play an important role in agricultural production in developing and emerging countries; they account for about 80% of the global farm population and produce more than 30% of the world's food (fao, 2021). they contribute significantly to global food security, nutrition, and sustainable development (fan & rue, 2020; nwanze & fan, 2016). however, smallholders face multiple challenges that constrain their profitability and overall success, including limited access to resources, agricultural market volatility, and the negative impacts of climate variability and change. diversifying livelihood activities is widely recognized as an important pathway to improve household wellbeing and ensure food security in developing nations (brugère, holvoet, & allison, 2008; hengsdijk et al., 2007; israr, khan, jan, & ahmad, 2014). livelihood diversification generally involves engaging in a range of income-generating activities beyond traditional farming, such as wage employment, small-scale businesses, and the use of forest or aquatic resources. empirical evidence shows that livelihood diversification positively influences household income, economic resilience, poverty reduction, and overall welfare (abebe, chalchisa, & eneyew, 2021; adepoju abimbola & obayelu oluwakemi, 2013; alobo loison, 2016; habib, ariyawardana, & aziz, 2023; oyinbo & olaleye, 2016; peng et al., 2022; samuel & joe, 2025). in the context of climate change, urbanization, and increasing pressures on natural resources, livelihood diversification is increasingly seen as a key mechanism for strengthening the sustainability and adaptive capacity of rural households (beltrán-tolosa, cruz-garcia, ocampo, pradhan, & quintero, 2022; chuong, ngoc, dat, & yen, 2021; habib et al., 2023; khan et al., 2024). several studies have examined livelihood diversification in developing countries, including vietnam. however, most focus on specific household types, such as cassava-growing households (nguyen hac et al., 2024) households migrating to the central highlands (hương, lan, ngọc, & đình, 2023) or ethnic minority group as the dao (nguyen et al., 2020). some studies used census data from general households to assess livelihood diversity (chuong et al., 2021; diep & vien, 2017; nga, trang, mai, & hường, 2022; trang, 2023). yet, there remains limited research on livelihood diversification in the context of mixed farming systems. to date, no formal study has measured the extent of livelihood diversification, assessed its impact on household income, and identified its determinants within vietnam’s smallholder mixed farming systems. vietnam is an agriculture-based developing nation, with more than 61% of its population living in rural areas. most rural households operate on small landholdings, often less than 0.5 hectares, and rely heavily on agriculture as their main livelihood source (gso, 2024). smallholders play a vital role in vietnam's agricultural transformation and export performance, but they face major challenges related to mechanization, sustainability, limited land for production, capital access, and climate vulnerability (dao & pham, 2022; marks, 2018). strengthening the resilience and commercial viability of smallholders, especially women and youth, is critical for advancing national development and climate change goals (nwanze & fan, 2016). structural constraints, such as limited land, insufficient capital, and restricted access to markets and technologies, continue to hinder livelihood diversification and income security, leaving smallholders particularly susceptible to shocks and external risks. to design effective policies and interventions that support sustainable livelihoods for smallholders and rural communities, it is essential to better understand the factors influencing livelihood diversification strategies. therefore, the main objectives of this study are: (1) to measure the extent of livelihood diversification and its impact on household income; and (2) to identify the key determinants of livelihood diversification among smallholder households engaged in mixed farming systems in vietnam. previous discussions have highlighted that livelihood diversification among smallholder farmers is influenced by a range of demographic, socio-economic, situational, and institutional factors. existing literature suggests that the extent of diversification varies across producers (abebe et al., 2021; adepoju abimbola & obayelu oluwakemi, 2013; alobo loison, 2016; gwandi, adewuyi, & dia, 2024; habib et al., 2023; oyinbo & olaleye, 2016; peng et al., 2022; samuel & joe, 2025). as illustrated in figure 1, the relationship between the dependent variable livelihood diversification and various independent variables is depicted using directional arrows, indicating the influence of the latter on the former. demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and education are considered key determinants. similarly, socio-economic characteristics like farm size, labor, and situational factors (e.g., credit, technology) are presumed to impact livelihood diversification. in addition, institutional aspects, including market opportunities and policy support, are also expected to play a significant role. figure 1. conceptual framework of this study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 586-597 588 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 2. methodology 2.1. a brief description of the study region this study was conducted in thua thien hue province (officially restructured as hue city from july 1, 2025), focusing on three rural areas (upland, plain, and coastal areas) within the province, which is located in central vietnam (figure 1). the province comprises 4,947.11 km2 and its total population was 1,166,500 people in 2024, of whom about 70% reside in rural areas and rely primarily on agriculture and farming-related activities for their livelihoods (thua thien hue statistical office, 2025). rural household livelihoods in the province are traditionally based on small-scale crop cultivation, animal husbandry, and forest resource use. in recent years, the province has promoted livelihood diversification as a key strategy to improve rural incomes and enhance climate resilience, with a focus on integrated farming, community-based tourism, medicinal plant cultivation, and forest-based livelihoods. these efforts align with broader national policies aiming to foster sustainable rural development and reduce poverty in mountainous and ethnic minority areas. figure 2 illustrates the study location figure 2. the study location. 2.2. sampling strategy a random sampling strategy is planned to select participants for this cross-sectional survey. the survey sample size was determined using yamane’s formula (yamane, 1967). 𝑛 = 𝑁 / (1 + 𝑁 × 𝑒²) (1) where n is the sample size. n is the total population (4,706 smallholder households). e is the level of precision (5%). with a 5% margin of error, the required sample size was 369 smallholder households. to ensure representativeness and compensate for possible non-response, the final sample size was increased to 426 households. 2.3. data collection and data analysis a semi-structured questionnaire was developed to collect data. the questionnaire was administered through faceto-face interviews at the respondents' houses during their leisure time, and the survey was conducted from december 2024 to april 2025. households’ livelihood diversification is measured by the simpson index of diversity (sid) (simpson, 1949), which is a popular index to measure the level of livelihood diversity of farm households (alemu, 2023; challa, mamo, tibeso, & dawud, 2019; dympep, singh, singh, & chiphang, 2018; iraoya & isinika, 2020; musyoka & onjala, 2023). sid index is expressed according to the following formula. 𝑆𝐼𝐷 = 1 − ∑ (𝑃𝑖)𝑛 𝑖=1 2 (2) where: pi: ratio of income generated by livelihood number i compared to total income from all livelihood activities of rural smallholders. n: total livelihood sources of rural smallholders include on-farm activities, forestation and non-timber forest product exploitation, off-farm activities, non-farm activities, and other activities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 586-597 589 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the sid index of households has a maximum value of 1. the sid index value depends on the number of income sources and the household's income structure. the more sources of income a household has, the greater its potential sid value. however, the greater the difference in proportion between income sources of household livelihoods, the smaller the sid index value will be. for households dependent on only one source of income, the sid has a value of 0. according to sarker, wu, alam, and shouse (2020), the level of household livelihood diversity is divided into five levels, from no livelihood diversity to very high livelihood diversification, as below. sid ≤ 0.01 = no livelihood diversity. sid= (0.01 ≤ 0.25): low livelihood diversity. sid= (0.26 ≤ 0.50): medium livelihood diversity. sid= (0.51 ≤ 0.75): high livelihood diversity. sid= (0.76 ≤ 1): very high livelihood diversity. data was processed and analyzed using stata version 17. several statistical parameters, such as mean, percentage, and one-way anova, were used to describe research results. to examine the determinants of households’ livelihood diversification, this study applied the tobit regression model (greene, 2012; tobin, 1958; wooldridge, 2010), which is appropriate when the dependent variable is censored or limited within a specific range. in this case, the sid index, which measures the extent of livelihood diversification, ranges from 0 to 1. smallholder households with a sid value of 0 engage in only one type of livelihood activity, while those approaching 1 are highly diversified. the tobit regression model used in this study is specified as follows: 𝑆𝐼𝐷𝑖∗ = 𝛽0 + ∑ 𝛽𝑗𝑋𝑖𝑗 + ε𝑛 𝑗=1 𝑖 (3) where: sidi* is a latent (unobserved) variable representing the potential level of livelihood diversification for household i. this value is censored between 0 and 1, with values close to 0 indicating low diversification and values close to 1 indicating high diversification. β0 is intercept term. xij coefficients associated with explanatory variables. βj are slopes of the equation in the model. εi is random error term. the explanatory variables were carefully chosen from the mainstream literature (bayata & nega, 2020; glory & nsikak-abasi, 2018; hassan, khan, & mehmood, 2024; hương et al., 2023; kalinga, kangalawe, & lyimo, 2019; khan et al., 2024; musumba, palm, komarek, mutuo, & kaya, 2022; tefera, gecho, & wallole, 2021; tyenjana & taruvinga, 2019; yussuf & mohamed, 2022) and derived from the key profiles of households in the research area. explanatory variables are described in table 1. table 1. description of hypothesized variables affecting sid. variable name description variable type measurement x1 smallholders’ gender dummy 1 = male; 0 = female x2 smallholders’ age continuous years x3 smallholders’ education levels continuous years x4 number of family laborers continuous numeric x5 number of skilled family laborers continuous numeric x6 farmland size continuous hectare x7 distance from home to the capital of the city continuous kilometers x8 smallholders’ participation in credit schemes dummy 1 = yes; 0 = no x9 smallholders’ communications with extension officers dummy 1 = yes; 0 = no x10 internet access and usage dummy 1 = yes; 0 = no x11 smallholders’ participation in cbos dummy 1 = yes; 0 = no x12 access to support policies from government dummy 1 = yes; 0 = no x13 having market linkage with value chain actors dummy 1 = yes; 0 = no x14 having access to input services for farming dummy 1 = yes; 0 = no x15 having knowledge/information about climate change dummy 1 = yes; 0 = no x16 adoption of new technologies dummy 1 = yes; 0 = no 3. results and discussion 3.1. socio-economic characteristics of smallholders in the study area our analysis shows that participants in this study were mainly middle-aged. the age distribution of the participants is shown in figure 3. respondents were classified into five age groups (20–30, 31–40, 41–50, 51–60, and >61 years). the 41–50 age group had the highest proportion (31.5%), followed by the 51–60 years age group (27.5%), while the 20–30 age group had the lowest proportion (6.5%). men account for 68.3%, reflecting the dominant role of men in agricultural production. the educational level of participants was generally low. the distribution of education levels among participants is shown in figure 4. education levels were classified into four groups: no formal education, primary, secondary, and high school. most respondents had completed secondary school (37.3%), followed by high school (24.9%), while 16.2% had no formal education (never attended formal schooling). each household had an average of 0.6 skilled or trained laborers, indicating limited technical human resources. the average cultivated land size was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 586-597 590 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 0.4 ha, reflecting a common small-scale agricultural production model. regarding access to resources and information, about 54% of households had contact with agricultural extension services, approximately 68% had access to credit schemes, while 94.6% used the internet and 89.7% received information about climate change. notably, 75.4% of households applied new technology in production, indicating a positive trend in adaptive production. however, access to government support (24.1%) and participation in community organizations (27%) remained limited. additionally, only 47.7% of households had access to favorable production inputs, and 48.4% had links with other value chain actors. figure 3. age distribution of participants in the study area (n=426). figure 4. distribution of participants' education levels in the study area (n=426). 3.2. the livelihood activities of smallholders the results in table 2 indicated a wide range of livelihood activities among households in the study area, categorized into on-farm, off-farm, and non-farm activities. on-farm livelihood activities dominated the livelihood portfolio, with food crop production being the most prevalent (69.2%), followed by livestock production (41.5%), plantation forestry (27.5%), and fruit crop production (30.3%). although vegetable production, industrial crops, and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 586-597 591 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. aquaculture were present, their participation rates remained relatively low, highlighting the limited diversification within this category. off-farm livelihood activities were less common but still contributed significantly, with agricultural wage labor (21.1%) and fishing (16.0%) being the most practiced. activities such as forest protection management and collection of non-timber forest products accounted for a small proportion, indicating underutilization of forest-related opportunities. non-farm livelihood activities showed notable engagement, particularly in factory or industrial labor (36.4%) and non-agricultural wage labor such as construction and domestic work (23.0%). small trading and retail services also played a significant role (19.7%), reflecting the increasing integration of rural households into market-oriented and service-based economies. remittances and government support (10.6%) served as a safety net for some households, underscoring the role of external income in rural livelihoods. the results of this research suggest that while on-farm activities remain central to rural livelihoods, non-farm income sources are becoming increasingly important, especially amid declining land productivity and climate uncertainties. although there are several studies (abebe et al., 2021; adepoju abimbola & obayelu oluwakemi, 2013; alobo loison, 2016; gwandi, adewuyi, & dia, 2024; habib et al., 2023; oyinbo & olaleye, 2016; peng et al., 2022; samuel & joe, 2025), findings from this study have not been reported in any prior research. this research shows that there is limited engagement in forest-based and aquaculture activities, which may reflect barriers such as access to resources, knowledge, or market connections. therefore, policies aiming to support livelihood diversification should focus not only on enhancing productivity within traditional agriculture but also on enabling access to non-farm employment opportunities and sustainable natural resource use. table 2. distribution of smallholder households’ livelihood activities (n=426) categorisation name of livelihood activities percent (%) on-farm food crop production 69.2 fruit crop production 30.3 vegetable production 13.6 industrial crops production 11.3 plantation forestry 27.5 livestock production 41.5 poultry production 30.5 aquaculture production 9.9 others (medicinal plants, beekeeping) 1.0 off-farm agricultural wage labor 21.1 collection of non-timber forest products 1.9 forest protection management 9.6 fishing 16.0 primary processing of agricultural products 1.2 non-farm non-agricultural wage labor (e.g., construction, transport services, domestic work) 23.0 small trading, food vending, and retail services 19.7 factory or industrial labor 36.4 others (remittances from family members or government support) 10.6 figure 5 illustrates the distribution of livelihood strategies among households in the study area indicates diverse approaches to income generation. the majority of smallholders (46.5%) adopted a mixed strategy combining both onfarm and non-farm activities. additionally, 19.5% engaged in all three types on-farm, off-farm, and non-farm highlighting a significant trend toward livelihood diversification. a smaller proportion of households relied exclusively on a single source: 7.0% on on-farm activities, 10.1% off-farm, and 3.3% on non-farm. the relatively low share of households depending solely on agriculture reflects the declining role of pure farming in the local livelihood structure. the results of some previous studies (bayata & nega, 2020; khai, kinghan, newman, & talbot, 2013; pimhidzai et al., 2020; tefera et al., 2021) suggested that livelihood strategies that combine multiple income sources are becoming increasingly important in rural areas, which is corroborated by the results of this study. however, the transition to offfarm and non-farm livelihoods remains constrained by limited access to vocational skills, finance, and market information. therefore, policies aiming to support sustainable livelihood development should prioritize skills training, technology transfer, and improved access to markets, especially in remote and resource-poor communities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 586-597 592 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 5. distribution of rural households following type livelihood strategies (n=426). 3.3. the extent of livelihood diversification among smallholders the extent of livelihood diversification among smallholders in the study region was assessed using the sid index. the sid value for each household depends on both the number of livelihood activities and the relative contribution of each activity to total household income. a higher number of livelihood activities generally results in a higher sid value; however, if there is a large disparity in income shares among those activities, the sid value will be lower. as shown in table 3, the average sid among rural smallholders in the study area was 0.303, indicating a relatively low level of livelihood diversification. this low sid value reflects significant fluctuations in income derived from different livelihood sources. although a high proportion of households (79.6%) engaged in mixed livelihood strategies, the uneven distribution of income among these activities resulted in a lower overall diversification index. table 3. level of sid of rural smallholders (n=426). level of livelihood diversification frequency (n=426) percent (%) sid mean no livelihood diversification (sid <0.01) 106 24.8 0 low level of livelihood diversification (sid=0.01 ≤ 0.25) 45 10.6 0.158 medium level of livelihood diversification (sid= 0.25 ≤ 0.51) 245 57.5 0.424 high level of livelihood diversity (sid = 0.51 ≤ 0.75) 30 7.0 0.598 very high level of livelihood diversity (sid = 0.76 ≤ 1) 0 0 total respondents 426 100 0.303 the results indicated that the rate of households with undiversified livelihoods (24.8%) and households with low levels of diversification (10.6%) shows that a significant number of rural households have not yet implemented or do not have enough capacity to implement diversified livelihood strategies, making them vulnerable to fluctuations in markets, weather, diseases, etc. the findings indicated that about 57.5% of smallholder households had a moderate level of livelihood diversification, indicating that the potential for household livelihood diversification exists but they still face barriers in accessing knowledge, techniques, and capital. research by nam and dung (2024) also showed that the lack of effective agricultural extension programs, lack of opportunities for learning, and technology transfer are the main barriers to livelihood diversification. notably, the fact that no household achieved a very high level of livelihood diversity (sid ≥ 0.76) indicates a limitation in the ability to integrate multiple livelihood activities simultaneously, which is often only achieved by households with high levels of management skills, strong capital, and good access to development resources. this indicates that although the level of livelihood diversity of rural smallholder households in this study has changed, there are still many challenges. this requires more comprehensive support policies on training, access to credit, markets, and agricultural extension to improve adaptive capacity and sustainable poverty reduction. 3.4. the impact of livelihood diversification on household income the analysis results presented in table 4 show that there was a clear positive relationship between the level of livelihood diversity and the average household income. when households were grouped into four levels of livelihood diversity based on the sid index, the average annual income of the groups tended to increase with the level of livelihood asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 586-597 593 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. diversification. specifically, the group of households that did not diversify their livelihood activities (sid < 0.01) had the lowest income, averaging vnd 99.6 million per year. meanwhile, the group of households with the highest level of livelihood diversity (sid > 0.51) had an average income of vnd 179.4 million per year nearly twice as high as the group without diversification. the remaining two groups, with low (sid = 0.165) and medium (sid = 0.395) levels of diversity, recorded incomes of 153.7 and 160.3 million vnd per year, respectively. the results of the one-way anova test showed that there was a statistically significant difference in average income between groups of households with different levels of livelihood diversity (f = 6.681, p = 0.000). this indicated that the income of the group of households with high levels of livelihood diversity (sid ≥ 0.51) was significantly higher than that of the group with no diversity (sid < 0.01). this result revealed that the level of livelihood diversification positively affects the annual income of rural smallholders. combining multiple livelihood activities has contributed to improving rural household income generation capacity, while strengthening the role of livelihood diversification as an effective strategy in household livelihood development. the results of some previous investigations (agbola et al., 2008; alemu, 2023; dympep et al., 2018; gebreyesus, 2016; phung duc & waibel, 2009; sharma, 2016; tran, an-vo, cockfield, & mushtaq, 2021; zerai & gebreegziabher, 2011) suggests that greater livelihood diversification was positively associated with increased household income, which is supported by the findings of this research. this research also shows that livelihood diversification plays an important role in improving household income. expanding and combining multiple livelihood activities helps not only households reduce risks but also optimize resources and profit opportunities in the rural context. therefore, improving the diversity of household livelihoods not only enhances household income but also strengthens households' ability to adapt to possible risks. table 4. average household income according to sid index (n=426). level of livelihood diversification sid mean mean household income (million vnd/year) standard deviation no livelihood diversification (sid <0.01) 0 99.6 93.1 low level of livelihood diversification (sid=0.01 ≤ 0.25) 0.165 153.7 154.3 medium level of livelihood diversification (sid= 0.25 ≤ 0.51) 0.395 160.3 130.6 high level of livelihood diversity (sid = 0.51 ≤ 0.75) 0.606 179.4 138.1 total respondents 0.303 146.0 128.3 f= 6.681, p=0.000 3.5. factors affecting smallholder livelihood diversification table 5 presents the results of the tobit regression analysis examining factors influencing smallholder livelihood diversification in the study area. the regression model was statistically significant, with a likelihood ratio chi-square (lr chi²(16)) of 75.10, p < 0.01, and a pseudo r² coefficient of 0.255, indicating a moderate fit and suggesting that the model reasonably explains the variation in the livelihood diversity index (sid). this implies that the selected independent variables significantly contribute to explaining differences in livelihood diversity among rural smallholders. out of the 16 independent variables included in the model, six showed statistically significant regression coefficients. notably, livelihood diversification was significantly associated with education level, the number of skilled laborers (≤ 99%), age of the household head, adoption of new technology (≤ 95%), number of family laborers, and participation in credit schemes (≤ 90%). table 5. results of tobit regression model of factors affecting sid (n=426). independent variables coefficient std. err t p-value x1_gender 0.050 0.051 0.97 0.331 x2_age 0.003 0.001 2.13 0.034** x3_education level 0.053 0.015 3.50 0.001*** x4_the number of family laborers 0.022 0.012 1.79 0.074* x5_the number of skilled laborers 0.055 0.017 3.12 0.002*** x6_ farmland size -0.000 0.001 -0.35 0.724 x7_distance from the capital of the city 0.001 0.001 0.72 0.471 x8_smallholders’ participation in credit schemes 0.051 0.027 1.89 0.059* x9_smallholders’ communications with extension officers 0.020 0.030 0.68 0.497 x10_internet access and usage -0.004 0.059 -0.08 0.939 x11_smallholders’ participation in cbos 0.004 0.037 0.12 0.907 x12_access to support policies from grovement 0.049 0.032 1.52 0.130 x13_having market linkage with value chain actors -.0528 0.036 -1.43 0.153 x14_having access to input services for farming -0.041 0.041 -1.00 0.287 x15_having knowledge/information about climate change 0.041 0.044 0.93 0.353 x16_adoption of new technologies 0.113 0.046 2.46 0.014** _cons -0.143 0.115 -1.25 0.212 lr chi²(16) = 75.10; p < 0.01; pseudo r² = 0.2550 note: *: indicates significant at ≤ 90% level; **: indicate significant at ≤ 95%; ***: indicate significant at ≤ 99%. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 586-597 594 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. this study found that small-scale households’ livelihood diversification was statistically associated with their adoption of new technologies (𝛽=0.113, p=0.014). this indicates that small-scale households who adopt new technologies or innovations are better positioned to diversify their livelihood activities. the findings from this study have not been reported in any prior literature. however, a study by musyoki, busienei, gathiaka, and karuku (2022), which examined farmer livelihood diversification and the adoption of climate-smart farming technologies in kenya, found that the adoption of climate-smart farming technologies was associated with kenyan farmer livelihood diversification, but it was not statistically significant, supporting the results of this study. fao (2021) indicates that access to and application of technical advances from energy-saving irrigation systems and drought-tolerant crop varieties to digital production management technology play an essential role in improving production efficiency, reducing risks, and promoting sustainable livelihoods for farmers. findings from this research emphasize the importance of promoting the transfer of technologies tailored to local ecological and economic conditions. prioritizing context-specific solutions, combined with technical training integrated into practical, community-based livelihood models, can enhance the feasibility, adoption, and long-term sustainability of livelihood diversification, especially as smallholders face increasing vulnerability to climate change and resource limitations. it has been found that smallholder livelihood diversification was statistically connected to the number of skilled laborers in households (𝛽=0.055, p=0.002), which suggests that the more skilled laborers a household has, the more livelihood diversification activities it undertakes. although a body of research (abebe et al., 2021; adepoju abimbola & obayelu oluwakemi, 2013; alobo loison, 2016; habib et al., 2023; oyinbo & olaleye, 2016; peng et al., 2022; samuel & joe, 2025) has been conducted to investigate livelihood diversification in several contexts, findings from this investigation have not been reported in any previous literature. however, pour, barati, azadi, and scheffran (2018) examined the role of livelihood assets in livelihood strategies in iran and found that households with members who had vocational training or professional skills were more proactive in adjusting their livelihood strategies to cope with environmental and market fluctuations, which is partially supported by the result of this research. some important policy implications can be drawn to improve the quality of labor in rural areas to promote livelihood diversification, focusing on organizing short-term vocational training courses suitable to the needs and capacities of rural workers, supporting access to training for disadvantaged groups (women, youth, ethnic minority workers). the education level of the household head had a positive and statistically significant impact on the sid index (𝛽=0.053, p=0.001). this suggests that households with a higher education head tend to engage in more types of livelihoods, due to better access to information, higher labor skills, and more effective risk coping. this finding is consistent with studies in nepal, rwanda, and nigeria, where education level was identified as a factor that promotes livelihood diversification, especially through participation in non-farm activities (oladapo et al., 2025; rahut, ali, kassie, marenya, & basnet, 2014). in the context of vietnam, tran, tran, pham, and nguyen (2023) also confirmed the positive role of education on agricultural household income, emphasizing that education not only improves production efficiency but also expands non-agricultural livelihood opportunities. however, the impact of education also depends on local institutional conditions and economic opportunities. in areas lacking labor markets or supporting infrastructure, the role of education may not be fully realized. therefore, along with investment in education, there is a need for synchronous support policies to facilitate the process of livelihood diversification in rural areas. the age of the household head had a positive impact on sid (β = 0.003, p = 0.034), suggesting that life and production experience can positively contribute to the choice of appropriate livelihood strategies. this result is similar to the study results of chuong et al. (2021); khatun and roy (2012); nasa'i, atala, akpoko, and kudi (2010), and oladapo et al. (2025), in which older household heads tend to be more conservative but more cautious in managing livelihood risks and often choose diversification to ensure income stability. the findings of this study contribute to clarifying the role of human resources, environmental awareness, and technological capacity in promoting sustainable livelihoods in rural areas. this suggests that policies to support vocational skills improvement, enhance communication on climate change, and promote technical innovation should be given more attention in current rural development programs. 4. conclusions and recommendations this study provides empirical evidence that smallholders in the study area do not operate their farms and households with one or some livelihood activities, but use a wide range of diversified livelihood activities, spanning onfarm, off-farm, and non-farm sectors. the average livelihood diversification index (sid = 0.303) reflects a moderate level of diversification. importantly, the findings reveal that livelihood diversification has a positive impact on household income, confirming that combining multiple sources of livelihoods is an effective strategy to enhance income and reduce vulnerability. the results identified key determinants of livelihood diversification, including age, education level, number of family laborers, number of skilled laborers, participation in credit schemes, and adoption of new technology. rural smallholder households with more skilled labor, better education, and greater access to information and technology tend to have higher levels of diversification. the results of this study underscore the importance of both resource endowments and informational access in shaping diversification decisions and improving household adaptability and resilience. the study results suggest that social and economic development priorities for small-scale farmers in developing and emerging nations should be given to rural development policies that enhance the capacity and skills of rural workers, improving access to technical and technological information. this study acknowledges several limitations. while it offers valuable insights into the factors influencing smallscale farmers’ livelihood diversification, the research was limited to mixed farming systems in hue city. as such, the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 586-597 595 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. findings may not be generalizable to other regions or farming contexts. future studies should expand the geographical scope and include diverse agricultural systems to enhance the applicability of the results. moreover, the cross-sectional design of this research captures farmer perceptions at only one point in time, which may not reflect evolving views as farmers gain more experience. longitudinal studies would be beneficial to better understand how these perceptions change over time and their impact on livelihood diversification. further research is also recommended to validate these findings in other settings and to explore the determinants of livelihood diversification among smallholder farmers engaged in different farming systems. broader contextual analyses could provide a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics involved. funding: this research was partially supported by hue university under the core research program (grant no. nctb.dhh.2025.03). institutional review board statement: the study involved minimal risk and followed ethical guidelines for social science fieldwork. formal approval from an institutional review board was not required under the policies of hue university of agricultue and forestry, vietnam. informed verbal consent was obtained from all participants, and all data were anonymized to protect participant confidentiality. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abebe, t., chalchisa, t., & eneyew, a. 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(2011). effect of nonfarm income on household food security in eastern tigrai, ethiopia: an entitlement approach. food science and quality management, 1, 1-23. views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104720 https://doi.org/10.1177/0019466216653535 https://doi.org/10.1038/163688a0 https://doi.org/10.2307/1907382 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wdp.2023.100489 https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137106 https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/7868248 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 504 adverse effects of climate change on agriculture: an evaluation of fruit and honey bee farming hülya sayğı vocational school of yumurtalık, cukurova university, turkey  husaygi@gmail.com corresponding author article history: received: 19-mar-2020 accepted: 20-may-2020 online available: 30-jun2020 keywords: climate change, global warming, fruit production, beekeeping abstract agriculture is one of our most basic activities that are done depending on nature with scarce resources and directly affects our life and nature. this activity, which we have met our needs from past to present, is under threat due to climate change and will not be able to produce the expected benefits in the future if measures are not taken immediately. in this study, the negative effects of climate change on agriculture are discussed under the sub-heading fruit production and bees that have an active role in fruit production. in this study, secondary data sources related to the subject (academic publications, explanations by authorized institutions and organizations, and future projections created by them) were used. the findings obtained in the study reached that if the necessary steps regarding climate change are not taken immediately, the presence of bees will decrease. as a result, fruit production will be negatively affected because pollination, which is the main factor in fruit production. contribution/ originality climate change will adversely affect agriculture, especially in terms of fruit production and bees. the study draws attention to agriculture and the importance of fruit growing as an agricultural production activity and the possible negative effects of climate change on them, emphasizing the importance of bees performing the pollination (in terms of biodiversity conservation), which is the main process of fruit production, and shedding light on subsequent studies. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.504.514 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: hülya sayğı (2020). adverse effects of climate change on agriculture: an evaluation of fruit and honey bee farming. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1), 504514. © 2020 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 10, issue 1 (2020): 504-514 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:husaygi@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.504.514 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2327-566x asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 504-514 505 1. introduction as a result of gases released into the atmosphere by people increasing the effect of natural greenhouse gases, the rise in the average temperature on the earth's surface, and the resulting climate changes are expressed as global warming (dellal et al., 2011). climate change is the result of changes in the composition of gaseous components in the atmosphere, as well as temperature increase and its associated effects. the temperature of the world is regularly increasing. it has raised around 0.7°c 0.8°c in the last 100 years (saglam et al., 2008), will increase between 0.9°c 3.5°c until 2100 (chakraborty et al., 2000). if the necessary precautions are not taken, it is estimated that the temperature will continue to increase (saglam et al., 2008). these estimates support the data in figure 1. the figure shows the temperature change from 1860 to 2019, prepared by institutions that analyze global temperature change (berkeley earth, nasa's gistemp, noaa's globaltemp, the u.k.'s hadcrut, cowtan & way, and ecmwf's). when figure 1 is analyzed, it is seen that forecasts of climate change can be realized. figure 1: pattern of global warming from 1850 to 2019 source: barkeky earth, 2020 turkey can be seen as one of the countries most affected by climate change as a result of the country's complex climate structure (özturk, 2002; kapluhan, 2013). the severity and strength of the climate change signals formed worldwide by regional climate change models. hence, mediterranean and central anatolia regions will get affected by climate change in different ways and to the different extent due to the country being surrounded by seas on three sides, to it having variable topography, and to its orographic features (giorgi ve lionello, 2008; kapluhan, 2013). it is estimated that rainfall in some important areas which benefit from rainwater such as kansas and oklahoma will lessen (tubiello et al., 2002). a set of agroclimatic indices representing canadian climatic conditions for field crop production is analyzed for long-term trends from 18952007. results indicate that in-season plants might become more vulnerable against coldstress and wounds as a result of a significant lengthening of the growing season due to a significantly earlier start and a substantially later end of the growing season (qian et al., 2010). according to the results of the public agricultural institutions' research survey conducted in 47 provinces in japan to determine the effects of the recent warming trends in agricultural production in 2003 and 2005, it was observed that the current warming trends significantly affected almost all plant and animal species. (sugiura et al., 2012). it has been stated that loss, which may occur due to plant diseases because of climate change, will be influenced by three factors, such as disease management strategies, disease effectiveness, and geographic distribution of plant diseases (chakraborty et al., 2000). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 504-514 506 due to its nature-dependent structure, agricultural activities are one of the sectors most affected by climate change, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change also affects agricultural production activities of countries. fruit production is the agricultural activity in which the effects of global warming and climate change are most intense, and perennial plants are more affected by sudden temperature changes. one of the conditions frequently seen in recent years is the extreme weather conditions during winter rest, flowering, and bud formation in fruit trees. while this situation directly affects fruit production and quality, it also has negative effects on bees involved in pollination. changes in climate trigger the formation of weak colonies in honey bees, causing the spread of diseases, lost bees, and deaths. after this part of the study, the studies on fruit growing and beekeeping activities will be synthesized, and the importance of the subject will be explained. 2. effects of climate change on fruit production activities as fruit production is a multi-annual agricultural activity, it is more affected by global climate changes. to obtain high-quality products with balanced flowering and fruit set in the cultivation of fruit species, the chilling requirement, of which periods differ for varying fruit species, is needed. with the data of 4293 weather stations in the world, the amount of chilling exceeding 90% of all years was estimated using a dynamic model for safe winter chilling. it has been reported that in the warm and temperate regions, severe and potentially production threatening drops, and in cold areas, a rise in temperature can be observed (luedeling et al., 2011). however, if global warming is analyzed in general, it has the potential to increase the air temperature in the winter period. these predicted temperature changes would have adverse effects in the regions where most fruit species, grapevine, and hard-shelled fruit production are common (webb et al., 2007; campoy et al., 2011; luedeling et al., 2011; pope et al., 2014). it is stated that in the margaret river region of australia, bud burst will be delayed as a result of not meeting the chilling requirement in grape production due to the temperature increase (webb et al., 2007). it has been reported that to face the possible effects of climate change the efforts should be made to produce varieties of trees with lower chilling needs, to develop tools to deal with insufficient winter coldness and to understand better the reaction of products to temperatures (luedeling et al., 2011). in january 2020, the surface temperature of the oceans and lands in the world increased from the average temperature of the twentieth century to 1.14°c (2.05°f), reaching the highest temperature recorded in 141 years. this value has been 0.02°c (0.04°f) higher than the january average temperature since 2016. january has been recorded as the hottest month four times since 2016, while it has been recorded as the hottest month ten times since 2002. in january, the surface temperature of the oceans and lands in the world increased by 1°c (1.8°f) in 2016 and 2020, above the average temperatures (ncdc noaa, 2020) (figure 2). figure 2: monthy surface temperature source: ncdc, 2020 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 504-514 507 a significant temperature increase is predicted, especially in summer (giorgi and lionello, 2008). the temperature rise in the winter will cause some problems in providing the winter chilling requirement and bud awakening in the fruit species, while the temperature rise in the summer months will cause some problems such as twin fruit formation (beppu and kataoka, 1999; engin and unal, 2004; imrak and kuden, 2012). for instance, when researches on twin fruit formation that reduces fruit quality and market value in cherry cultivation are observed; it was determined that in regions with hot climates, while the normal single female organ was formed at 25°c in the period of flower bud differentiation of the previous year, the rate of double female organs increased at 30°c (imrak and kuden, 2012), and it has gone up to 80% at 35°c and above (beppu and kataoka, 1999; engin and unal, 2004). the effects of global warming on vine phenology in australia are modeled in 6 regions for 2 varieties with high commercial importance. it has been determined that the time of bud burst in cabernet sauvignon variety in the coonawarra region will be 4-6 days in 2030 and 6-11 days earlier in 2050. it is thought that the harvest time will be reduced to early in all regions studied, and the harvest maybe 45 days earlier in the coonawarra region until 2050 according to the highest temperature scenario (webb et al., 2007). extreme changes in air temperatures also have a negative effect on the flowering periods of fruit species (omoto and aono, 1990; guédon and legave, 2008; legave et al., 2008). it is stated that changes occurring in flowering phenology will affect pollination and fruit set and cause problems in production by increasing the risk of catching late spring frosts (zavalloni et al., 2004). in a study on the effects of global climate change on apple cultivation in the hesse region, it has been reported that between 2031 and 2060, the trees will start blooming 6-8 days early and there will be a significant increase in the risk of late spring frost during the flowering period (braun and müller, 2012). in most temperate fruit-producing regions, the effects of climate change on safe winter coldness differ quantitatively between global climate models and greenhouse gas emissions scenarios (luedeling et al., 2011). cold damage is the main problem that restricts fruit production in the okanagan valley (usa). when the historical records between the years 1916 & 2006 are analyzed, it is seen that severe lethal cold damage occurred 16 times. although this period is the 4-month period in which the products are most exposed to cold damage, the periods involving risk for each species differ. if climate changes continue, a decrease is expected in the production of grapes, apples, and cherries in this region. in contrast, it is expected that there will be an expansion in the fields of pear, apricot, and peach production (quamme et al., 2010). the low-temperature tolerance seen in winter is the result of genotype interaction with the environment, affecting plant development and metabolic activity at low temperatures and freezing conditions. in addition, subzero temperature tolerance mechanisms vary with tissue type, age, and season and climate conditions (fennell, 2014). since the temperature change directly affects photosynthesis, the increase in temperatures can have an important effect on the post-harvest quality of the products by changing important quality parameters such as sugars, organic acids, synthesis of antioxidant compounds and hardness. the level of rising ozone causes different types of visual damage and physiological disorders, as well as changes in dry matter, reducing sugars, citric and malic acid, and other important quality parameters (moretti et al., 2010). possible effects of climate change on anthocyanin and titratable acidity levels of grape varieties grown in western australia were estimated for the years 2030, 2050 and 2070, and it was stated that it would be negatively affected by global warming under current management practices (barnuud et al., 2014). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 504-514 508 as a result of the extreme temperature increase occurring in the summer period, the high temperature at the time of harvest affects the quality of the grapes negatively due to the early harvest time in grapes (webb et al., 2007). the increase in a harvest period and temperature in wine-growing causes the increase in sugar concentration and alcohol level, low acidity, and modification of flavor compounds depending on the species. the negative changes in wine phenology and grape composition, also affects the wine microbiology, chemistry, and sensory properties (de orduna, 2010). considering the data of the central hungarian, the grape-growing regions, extreme weather events such as floods, frost, drought, heat waves that have started to occur more frequently have been observed under global climate change. it has been stated that changing climatic conditions in the carpathian basin can affect the quality and quantity and cause negative economic results and create stress effects (szenteleki et al., 2012). a study evaluates the effects of climate change and to investigate the relationship between environmental suitability in the cultivation of "pequi" (caryocar brasiliense) fruit tree in brazil, it concludes that there will be a drop in production and absolute measures must be taken until 2050 (nabout et al., 2011). in turkey, although it is a species resistant to dry conditions, olive (olea europa) has been reported to be one of the agricultural products that will be most affected by global climate change. therefore urgent measures should be taken in olive cultivation (varol and ayaz, 2012). it has been stated that it should be considered in some way that the production values of almond (prunus dulcis), pistachio (pistacia vera), and walnut (juglans regia) grown in california have been compared with 50-year meteorological records. as a result of the hot winters caused by the effects of climate change in fruit species, the processes after the bud burst period are more dangerous (pope et al., 2014). in the u.k., studies are carried out to determine energy efficiency within the food marketing system. it has been stated that because importation of fruit and vegetables by air causes a large amount of greenhouse gas production, this method should be avoided. as a solution, local production should increase. compared to products supplied locally, it has been determined that products imported by air produce 9.66 kg more co2 emissions (michalský and hooda, 2015). it has been reported that future research should be aimed at minimizing seasonal changes, aiming at sustainable and profitable production of high-quality fruit growing for private uses in the face of water and labor shortages, consumer preferences, and global competition (keller, 2010). following this section, possible negative effects of climate change on pollinating bees (wild bees and cultivated bees), which are an essential step in fruit growing, and the results of these effects will be explained. 3. the effect of climate change on bees realizing pollination in fruit production over 75% of the world's crop production is due to pollination by bees, butterflies, birds, moths, insects, and even bats. this rate is even higher in fruit production because fruit production depends on pollination. pollination is the most crucial function in fruit production, and bees are in the foreground among these (hafi et al., 2012). figure 3 shows the effect of honey bees on pollination in vegetative production. similar data for fruits is presented in figure 4. pollination is an essential element in the reproduction of flowering plants, and it is defined as the process of carrying pollen from the same organs of a flower of the same type or from the male organs (stamen) to the female organ (pistil) of different kinds of flowers (free and williams, 1977). pollination is a prerequisite for the formation of seeds and fruits in flowering plants. the most asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 504-514 509 important factor in low yield is fertilization weakness, and the critical factor for productivity is pollination (mcgregor, 1976). figure 3: percentage of all pollination done by honey bees source: https://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/agriculture-and-agri-food-canada/?id=1395690825741 figure 4: percentage of all pollination done by honey bees source: abares, 2019 janick et al. (1996) reported that suitable pollinator varieties should be kept in the garden, and necessary precautions should be taken to obtain sufficient and high-quality products from cherry trees. pollination in crop production; it is realized by wind (anemopoli), insects (entomofoli), especially honey bees. changes in the global climate will likely affect the behavior and lifestyle of many beings, including insects. for insects, the increase in temperature and humidity means an increase in growth rate, displacement rate, and reproductive capacity. these changes can also affect ecological processes occurring in nature. changes in climate will also change the character of the environment in which living things exist, and these changes will indirectly affect the behavior of insect populations living in that ecological environment. it is thought that the changes in the climate factors will cause some important differences in the physiology and geographical spread limits of the insects since they are cold-blooded. in particular, changes in temperature and humidity affect the function of insect metabolism, reproductive capacity, nutritional habits, and in accordance, its spread (akbulut, 2000). https://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/agriculture-and-agri-food-canada/?id=1395690825741 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 504-514 510 global warming can cause living species living in a region to leave the region they live in, as well as allowing new invasive species that are not specific to the region to settle. one of the most remarkable effects of global warming is that some species have disappeared from the world (dogan et al., 2010). in a study, nine species of bees showed adverse effects on body weight and development in some species as a result of the increase in winter temperature (1.5-9.5 ° c). it was stated that an increase in weight loss, energy consumption and that the life cycle of some species ended in spring. wild bees, which are the forefront among bee species due to their adaptation capabilities, become important in climate change (fründ et al., 2013). global warming leads to a linear increase at the beginning of flowering and the appearance of pollinators. although differences in the phenological responses to climate change between species are expected, these reactions occur in the same proportion between the plants and those pollinating them. it has been determined from the studies that the pollination communication service structure is strong against the concern caused by global warming. it has been stated that phenology, geographical distribution and local abundance of plants and pollinators are affected by climate change. in contrast, plant flowering and pollination activity time are strongly influenced by temperature (hegland et al., 2009). climate change affects honeybee behavior and physiology. decreasing flower quality in the environment may decrease colony development and, thus, colony honey production capacity (le conte and navajas, 2008). the sudden climate changes and the negative effects of global warming make the future of the plants and the lives of the bees difficult. low temperature and high humidity; cause the bee activity to decrease, and the release of pollen from the fruit flower slows down (braun and müller, 2012). global warming and climate change affect phenology, local wealth, and large-scale distribution of plants and pollinators (rader et al., 2013; türkoğlu et al., 2016). in addition, climate changes and irregularities in colony development weaken honeybee colonies, diseases are becoming widespread, they cannot return to the honey bee hive that has gone out of the hive to continue their field activities, and deaths occur (şahin et al., 2015). if climate change affects pollinator-dependent herbal production, this will have important implications for global food security, because insect pollination contributes to the production of 75% of leading global food products. whether global warming has indirect effects on plant pollination services has been investigated. it was stated in the study that there would be a 14.5% reduction in pollination managed by honey bees, and an increase in pollination provided by domestic wild species, as a result of the warming of 2,4o c and 6,4o c, which will occur until 2099 on watermelon pollination. researchers suggested that to minimize the effects of climate change, the domestic biodiversity should be conserved since the plant pollination will fall faster without domestic pollinators (rader et al., 2013). the adaptation of honey bees to their environment is expressed as the annual development of the colony. food sources balance and host-parasite balance and environmental changes interact with each other. in the research, 597 colonies from 5 apis mellifera subspecies (carnica, ligustica, macedonica, mellifera, siciliana) belong to 16 different genetic origins in 11 european countries from central europe and the balkans to scandinavia, are grouped in 6 environmental clusters, and development models were analyzed over two years. while the juvenile population tended to be smaller in the north, colonies placed in southern europe tended to have a lower adult bee population than colonies placed in cold conditions. in other words, while bees in hot climates show shorter lifespan, there is a shorter breeding period in the north. it has been stated that genotype and environment significantly affect colony development and is especially important in terms of the adult bee population and wintering ability (hatjina et al., 2014). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 10(1)2020: 504-514 511 the single living osmia lignaria bee needs a certain period of cold to complete the pause period (diapause). to examine the effect of long summers on osmia lignaria populations, the researchers deal individuals to 3 simulated treatments (earlymid-late winter); respiration rates, metabolic consumption, weight loss, body fat loss, lipid levels, and winter death data were taken. early winter practice disrupted the development of the pause period but had no negative effect on physical development. on the contrary, late winter bees cause more energy consumption (1.5 times), more weight (1.4 times), and more lipid loss (2 times), while a 19% increase in mortality compared to mid-winter. therefore, in the global warming scenario, it is stated that, despite the delay in winter, the long summer pause period diapotic phenotypes that replace the short summer pause period can replace the phenotypes with a short summer pause period (sgolastra et al., 2011). 4. conclusion global warming and climate change associated with it is a scientific reality accepted by all circles. although climate change has some positive effects on nature, it is claimed that the negative effects will be more. agriculture is carried out depending on nature and climatic conditions. for this reason, it is a fact that agriculture will be affected by climate change at a higher rate. the subject of our study is to examine the effects of these claims on agriculture in terms of fruit production and bees (performing pollination, which is a fundamental process in fruit production). accordingly, due to the sudden change in temperature, it was observed that the climate demands of the plants in the fruit production could not be achieved, and abnormal conditions occurred in the reactions of the plants against this situation, and this caused a decrease in the yield and product quality. it is concluded that the bees that perform pollination for fruit production are also affected by the sudden climate change. the climate, which is one of the stress factors in beekeeping, directly affects the nutrients that the bee needs, and sudden climate changes have consequences leading to a decrease in resistance in weak colonies, an increase of disease and harmful activity, and eventually extinction of the colony. damage to the existence of bee, which is the basic pollinator in plant production, will result in a significant decrease in fruit production. as a result, it is expected that fruit production and bee existence will be adversely affected by climate change, and this effect will increase over time. the study evaluates the possible negative effects of climate change on agriculture in terms of fruit production and bees, which is involved in fruit production, to contribute to the literature in this field and to encourage studies in this field. funding: this study did not receive any specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that s/he has no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all the designing and estimation of current research done by sole author. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references akbulut, s. 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(2004). the pileus project: climatic impact son sour cherry production in the great lakes region in past and projected future time frames. vii international symposium on modelling in fruit research and orchard management, 707, 101-108. doi.org/10.17660/actahortic.2006.707.12. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 291 assessing the adoption of specialized rice production technology in selected towns of nueva ecija thomas jahson s. mercadoa mari joy m. buenavistab marife dt. pascualc aldrin e. baduad adepartment of communication and development studies, college of arts and social sciences, central luzon state university, philippines. bfaculty, department of agri-management, college of agriculture, central luzon state university, philippines. c,dfaculty, department of communication and development studies, college of arts and social sciences, central luzon state university, philippines.  tjsmercado@clsu.edu.ph (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 5 april 2025 revised: 27 may 2025 accepted: 10 june 2025 published: 18 june 2025 keywords extension services factors affecting adoption rice farmers special rice technology adoption technology attributes. this study assesses the adoption of special rice production (spr) technology among rice farmers in selected towns of nueva ecija. specifically, it examined the influence of socio-demographic factors and extension services on the perceived attributes of the technology. using a survey research design, interviews were guided by a semi-structured questionnaire. farmers showed strong positive perceptions and high adoption of special rice production (spr). adoption was significantly influenced by age, farming experience, institutional support, and favorable technology traits. regression analysis indicated that gross income and water source positively impacted adoption, while farm size, training services, and perceived relative advantage had negative effects. the extension services from clsu play a significant role in facilitating the adoption of spr technology. however, challenges related to the costs and complexities of the technology, as well as unexpected negative effects on training, highlight areas for improvement. future efforts should focus on addressing these challenges, ensuring that economic and practical barriers do not hinder the widespread adoption and successful implementation of special purpose rice production technology. this study provides insights for policymakers and stakeholders to develop strategies for wider adoption of spr technology. contribution/originality: this study offers vital baseline data on the factors influencing farmers' adoption of specialpurpose rice (spr). amid challenges in the rice industry, it highlights the high market value and income potential of spr, positioning it as a promising alternative to improve farmers’ livelihoods through technology-driven cultivation strategies. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5418 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: mercado, t. j. s., buenavista, m. j. m., pascual, m. d., & badua, a. e. (2025). assessing the adoption of specialized rice production technology in selected towns of nueva ecija. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 291–308. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the agricultural sector in the philippines, particularly rice production, plays a pivotal role in ensuring food security and providing livelihoods for millions of farmers. nueva ecija, known as the "rice granary of the philippines," is at the forefront of rice cultivation and innovation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 291-308 mailto:tjsmercado@clsu.edu.ph https://orcid.org/0009-0001-1612-5735 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1084-6128 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5749-8650 https://orcid.org/0009-0008-8534-5935 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5418 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 292 in recent years, rice production technologies have been introduced to enhance productivity, improve sustainability, and increase profitability for farmers. these technologies encompass a range of practices, including improved seed varieties, precision farming techniques, and integrated pest and nutrient management systems. the adoption of special rice production technology is influenced by multiple factors, including socio-demographic characteristics of the farmers, their educational background, access to resources, and support from agricultural extension services. understanding the levels of adoption and the factors that drive or hinder it is critical for designing effective interventions and policies that promote the widespread use of these technologies. this study aimed to assess the adoption levels of special rice production technology among farmers in selected towns of nueva ecija. by examining the socio-demographic profiles of the farmers, their farm management practices, and the extent to which they integrated special rice production technologies into their farming operations, the research sought to identify the key determinants of adoption. additionally, the study explored the perceived benefits and challenges faced by farmers in implementing these technologies. the findings of this research will provide valuable insights for policymakers, agricultural extension workers, and other stakeholders involved in promoting agricultural innovation. by highlighting the factors that contribute to successful adoption, the study aims to support efforts to enhance the productivity and profitability of rice farming in nueva ecija, ultimately contributing to the broader goals of food security and rural development in the philippines. 1.1. specific objectives of the study 1. describe the farmers’ perceived adequacy of extension services and technology attributes in terms of relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, and observability. 2. evaluate the relationships among socio-demographic and economic characteristics, extension services, and technology attributes to the level of adoption of special rice production technology. 3. assess the level of adoption of farmers regarding the special rice production technology protocol. 2. literature review 2.1. status of special rice in nueva ecija according to the philippine rice research institute, there are 13,286 kinds of traditional varieties of specialty rice, and this number continues to grow. pigmented rice, such as black rice, red rice, violet rice, and pink rice, as well as aromatic rice like jasmine and basmati rice, are popular varieties of specialty rice in nueva ecija. presently, particularly in this modern generation of our society, people are more aware and sensible about consuming healthy and nutritious foods, which has led to specialty rice becoming more popular and accepted in the market worldwide (provincial commodity investment plan (pcip), 2020). 2.2. factors affecting adoption melesse (2018) cited that the age and education of the household head are other variables explaining farmers’ behavior in technology adoption, which play an important role by influencing farmers’ access to information and shaping their ability to convert the available information into action. farid, tanny, and sarma (2015) found that in the adoption of improved farm practices, age, farmers’ level of education, training status, communication score, and landholding were found to be insignificant in the adoption of farm practices. on the other hand, younger farmers have a higher propensity to adopt technologies than older farmers (dhraief et al., 2019). farmers with larger holdings are more likely to adopt agricultural technologies compared to those with smaller plots (kasirye, 2013). similarly, adopters were found to have larger cultivable land sizes compared to non-adopters (mugisha, 2004). meanwhile, the size of the labor force is statistically not significant and has no impact on the decision to adopt innovative technology. this seems to be explained by the fact that farmers do not need a large labor force, especially for mechanized technologies (dhraief et al., 2019). dhraief et al. (2019) found that farmers with livestock experience are significantly but negatively correlated with the adoption decision in livestock production. melesse (2018) cited institutional factors, particularly services for agricultural development, to enhance farmers’ access to productive inputs and product markets, such as facilities, mechanisms, and information dissemination, which deal with the extent of institutional impact on technology adoption by smallholders. dhraief et al. (2019) found that the extension services were significant and positively correlated with the adoption decision. farid et al. (2015) stated that involvement with cooperative societies and ngo affiliations do not have a significant relationship with adoption. in contrast, for association members, these are significant factors that positively influence the adoption decision (dhraief et al., 2019). according to silva and broekel (2016), farmers who participate in associations and cooperatives have more experience, which influences the adoption of technologies such as precision agriculture technology (pat). they also found that farmers with greater access to sources of information about pat are more likely to adopt new technologies due to increased awareness of the impact of pat adoption on farm businesses. it is the utilization of different communication channels of mature technology or innovation in farming practices and methods for effective extension services through farmers' training, technology demonstration, use of iec materials, mobile applications, and online platforms to reach a wider audience (david, 2018). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 293 2.3. technology characteristics facilitating adoption the degree of adoption of any innovative technology depends largely on its characteristics. there are five characteristics that affect the rate at which an innovation is adopted: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability (rogers, 2003). literature proposes that innovations which are perceived by individuals as having greater relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, observability, and less complexity will have a greater adoption rate than other innovations (ghane, samah, ahmad, & idris, 2011). to mwangi (1998), because farmers want to make money, how a new technology will benefit them financially must be shown to them. the relative advantage of integrated pest management (ipm) practices found that additional ipm practices provide benefits such as economic profitability, decreased production costs, reduced discomfort, social prestige, and time and effort savings that influence farmers’ decisions (ghane et al., 2011). in previous studies, compatibility appears to have a significant impact on technology adoption (ghane et al., 2011). technologies that can be tried on a limited scale will be adopted faster due to their lower risk to the adopter (mwangi, 1998). in addition, technologies that are more complex to understand and use have lower rates of adoption (mwangi, 1998). finally, material innovations and concrete ideas that are easily observable are adopted faster than less concrete ones (mwangi, 1998). 3. methodology 3.1. population and sampling procedure table 1 presents the population of this study which included farmers who planted special purpose rice in five municipalities of nueva ecija. a complete enumeration of 33 farmer adopters who participated in the training conducted by the clsu-uepo was selected as respondents. table 1. location and distribution of the respondents of the study. no. municipalities number of farmers percentage 1 guimba 5 15.2 2 licab 11 33.3 3 science city of muñoz 8 24.2 4 sto. domingo 1 3 5 talavera 8 24.2 total 33 100 3.2. data gathering procedure the primary data were acquired from the number of farmers who adopted the technology for special-purpose rice production (cls 2) through a survey using a structured interview schedule. other data were obtained from key informants through surveys and key informant interviews using questionnaires. the data needed for the study were gathered from farmer respondents of special rice technology in nueva ecija. the secondary data were obtained from the clsu-university extension program office. the special rice production technology was guided by secondary materials such as recommended technology protocols for the special rice techno-demonstration and the techno-guidebook from clsu technical experts. the researcher sent a request letter to all municipal mayors through the municipal agriculturist office (mao) for assistance and permission to interview respondents before conducting primary data collection. 3.3. methods of data analysis the data were analyzed using the statistical package for social science (spss). descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, range, frequency, and percentage were used to describe the farmers’ perceived adequacy of extension services, and technology attributes in terms of relative advantage, compatibility, triability, and observability. in this study, regression and pearson correlation were utilized to analyze the relationships between the variables. multiple regression analysis was used to identify the factors that influence the level of adoption of the farmers. additionally, pearson correlation was used to assess the strength and direction of linear relationships between pairs of continuous variables, providing insight into their associations. linear regression model with one independent variable can be expressed as: where, 𝑦𝑖 is the dependent variable (level of adoption). 𝑥𝑖 is the independent variable (individual, institutional and technology factors). 𝛽0 is the intercept, representing the value of 𝑦 when 𝑥 is zero. 𝛽1 is the slope, representing the change in 𝑦 for a one-unit change in 𝑥. 𝜀𝑖 is the error term, representing the difference between the predicted value of 𝑦 and the actual value of 𝑦 for each observation. the pearson correlation coefficient is denoted by the letter “r”. the formula for pearson correlation coefficient r is given by. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 294 where, r = pearson correlation coefficient. x = values in the first set of data. y = values in the second set of data. n = total number of values. 4. results and discussion 4.1. training services in relation to special rice table 2 presents the training services attended by the respondents in relation to special rice. the majority of 25 farmer-respondents (75.8%) had attended training related to special rice, while 8 respondents (24.2%) did not participate in any training. the training sessions covered two main topics: agro enterprise clustering approach on special purpose rice, attended by 19 respondents (76%), and organic farming of rice production, attended by 6 respondents (24%). the majority of training occurred in 2022, with 14 respondents (52%) attending. all training sessions lasted for 2 days, indicating a consistent duration across all training events for the 25 respondents (100%). the majority of the training was conducted by clsu. the training sessions were held in four locations: talavera (9 respondents or 36%), guimba (6 respondents or 24%), and cabisuculan and licab (5 respondents each, or 20%). the training services related to special rice showed a high level of participation, with 75.8% of respondents having attended at least one training session. the predominant focus of these trainings was on the agro-enterprise clustering approach for special purpose rice. training services play a crucial role in the adoption of farming innovations by improving knowledge, skills, confidence, and economic understanding among farmers. effective training can lead to increased adoption rates and better overall farm productivity (feder, just, & zilberman, 1985). this data highlights the extensive and structured training efforts aimed at enhancing special rice production practices among the respondents. table 2. training services in relation to special rice. variable frequency percentage training attended no 8 24.2 yes 25 75.8 no. of training attended 0 8 24.2 1 25 75.8 mean 1 training title agro enterprise clustering approach on spr 19 76 organic farming of rice production 6 24 year of the training 2018 1 4 2020 7 28 2021 2 8 2022 14 56 2023 1 4 venue cabisuculan 5 20 guimba 6 24 licab 5 20 talavera 9 36 duration (no. of days) 2 25 100 conducted by clsu 24 96 gracia plena 1 4 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 295 4.2. information services in relation to special rice table 3 provides an overview of the information services related to special rice that respondents utilized, detailing the sources and modes of information received. the respondents obtained information from various sources. the most common source of information was obtained from clsu by 14 respondents (42.4%), and other sources through co-farmers (24.2%), lgu extension workers (12.1%), and the barangay council for agriculture (21.2%). the majority of respondents received information through interpersonal means of communication by 28 respondents (84.8%), while the other 5 respondents (15.2%) received it through print media. it can be seen that farmer respondents are more likely to trust information received from reliable institutions, extension workers, and fellow farmers whom they know personally. this indicates a strong reliance on direct communication and trust in disseminating information on special rice production practices among the respondents. it is shown that the interpersonal mode of information services is key in diffusing innovations (rogers, 2003) and farmers with greater access to the source of information are more likely to adopt new technology (silva & broekel, 2016). table 3. information services in relation to special rice. variable frequency percentage source of information co-farmers 8 24.2 lgu extension workers 4 12.1 clsu personnel 14 42.4 barangay council for agriculture 7 21.2 mode of information received print media 5 15.2 interpersonal 28 84.8 4.3. technical assistance services in relation to special rice table 4 provides insights into the technical assistance services related to special rice, detailing the frequency, sources, and types of assistance received by respondents. respondents received technical assistance with varying frequencies. the most common frequency of technical assistance was once a month, reported by 12 respondents (36.4%). all respondents (100%) received technical assistance from clsu. the type of technical assistance received by the majority of 24 respondents (72.7%) covers both the production and marketing aspects of special rice. this indicates that the frequency of technical assistance is indeed critical for farm production, which ensures a significant effect on productivity and income (abbeam, wiredu, asante, & al-hassan, 2018). the technical assistance services for special rice are predominantly sourced from clsu, ensuring a consistent and centralized provision of expertise. most respondents receive monthly assistance, primarily focusing on both production and marketing aspects of special rice. this comprehensive support framework highlights clsu’s crucial role in enhancing the technical capabilities and market integration of special rice farmers. table 4. technical assistance services in relation to special rice. variable frequency percentage frequency of technical assistance once a month 12 36.4 twice a month 7 21.2 once in 2 months 10 30.3 twice in 3 months 2 6.1 twice a year 2 6.1 source clsu 33 100.0 kind of technical assistance planting methods & marketing 1 3.0 production 1 3.0 production & marketing 24 72.7 source of seeds, production & marketing of spr 1 3.0 no answer 6 18.2 note: multiple response. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 296 4.4. technology factors (perceived attributes of technology) table 5 presents the perceived attributes of special purpose rice. the spr technologies have one recommended production protocol. respondents were asked about the spr’s perceived technology attributes in terms of relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. these attributes were rated on a five-point rating scale as shown below. table 5. perceived attributes of special purpose rice. mean range relative advantage compatibility complexity triability observability 5.00 4.24 very relevant (vr) very compatible (vc) very easy (ve) very high (vh) very visible (vv) 4.23 3.43 relevant (r) compatible (c) easy (e) high (h) visible (v) 3.42 2.62 moderately relevant (mr) moderately compatible (mc) moderately easy (me) medium (m) moderately visible (mv) 2.61 1.81 less relevant (lr) less compatible (lc) less easy (le) low (l) less visible (lv) 1.80 -1.00 not relevant (nr) not compatible (nc) not easy (ne) very low (vl) not visible (nv) relative advantage: table 6 shows the perceived relative advantage, indicating a very relevant result with an overall rating of 4.43. the majority of the respondents rated the 31 production technology protocols as very relevant (vr), and only 7 out of 31 were rated relevant (r). the production technologies rated relevant are: a) soak the seeds (40 kg/ha) with fungicide for 24 hours (4.21), b) broadcast 2 bags of organic fertilizer in a 400 m² seedbed area (3.97), c) at the last harrowing, apply organic fertilizer at 20 bags per hectare (3.94), d) broadcast a mix of urea (3 bags) & 14-14-14 (4 bags) during the wet season (4.09), e) organic fertilizers (3.79), f) rouging is done (4.06), and g) as possible, dry harvest rice continuously for 3 hours per day to meet 14% moisture content and to preserve the aromatic scent (4.12). this indicates that the extension workers or technical experts must emphasize to the special rice farmers the advantages and benefits of the seven technologies. special rice farmers must be encouraged to fully utilize the technology protocol to enhance better economic profitability by adopting additional new farm practices to lessen production costs while improving the quality of produce that will increase farmers' income. roughing is very important in terms of the purity of paddy rice seeds; the application of organic fertilizers must be enhanced to improve soil fertility. the use of fungicide during seed germination is highly recommended to lessen the contamination of fungus and increase the seed germination rate. the application of paclobutrazol is needed to strengthen the stems of rice to prevent lodging during the wet season. maintaining the recommended moisture content of rice seeds at 14% is important during postharvest management to maintain the quality of special rice. table 6. relative advantage of the special rice production technology. perceived relative advantage of special mean rating description rice production technology 1. variety used a. cls 2 4.42 vr 2. seedbed preparation a. prepare 400 m2 seedbed area at 21-25 days before transplanting 4.42 vr b. submerge the area with water for 2-3 days 4.55 vr c. plow the soil with water level of 2-3 cm and harrow 4.55 vr d. prepare plots measuring 1.5 meters width 4.55 vr 3. seed germination a. soak the seeds (40kg/ha) with fungicide for 24 hours 4.21 r b. drain seeds after 24 hours and incubate for 24 hours 4.67 vr 4. seedling production a. broadcast 2 bags of organic fertilizer in 400 m2 seedbed area 3.97 r b. sow seeds with enough water level and drain it in the next morning 4.61 vr c. maintain 2-3 cm depth of water level for 21-25 days before pull out the seedling for transplant 4.70 vr 5. land preparation a. plow field at 10 cm depth 4.61 vr b. harrow field 2-3 weeks before transplanting 4.73 vr c. at last harrowing, apply organic fertilizer at 20 bags per hectare 3.94 r d. cultivate and level the soil one day before transplanting 4.64 vr 6. transplanting a. transplant seedlings after 25-30 days from sowing 4.42 vr b. plant 2-3 seedlings per hill at distance of 20x20cm 4.70 vr asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 297 perceived relative advantage of special mean rating description rice production technology 7. water management a. maintain 2-3 cm water level for 25-30 days after transplant 4.67 vr b. increase water level at 5 cm as rice grow & drain water one (1) week before harvest 4.61 vr 8. nutrient management / use of fertilizers a. apply fertilizer in right time and dosage 4.67 vr b. broadcast mix urea (3 bags) & 14-14-14 (4 bags) during wet season 4.09 r c. broadcast mix urea (4 bags) & 14-14-14 (6 bags) during dry season 4.58 vr d. organic fertilizers 3.79 r 9. pest and disease management a. use pesticide if needed 4.55 vr b. use pesticide for snail 1-3 days after transplanting 4.64 vr c. spray paclobutrazol to strengthen rice plant 3.39 mr perceived relative advantage of special mean rating description 10. weed management and rouging a. spray weed control if needed 4.36 vr b. rouging is done 4.06 r 11. harvesting and postharvest management a. drain water one week before harvesting 4.67 vr b. harvest when 80% of the grains are ripe with moisture content of 20-22% 4.73 vr c. harvest using combine harvester 4.82 vr d. as possible, dry harvest rice continuously 3 hours per day to meet 14% moisture content and to preserve aromatic scent 4.12 r overall mean rating 4.43 vr note: mean range description 5.00 4.24 very relevant (vr) 4.23 3.43 relevant (r) 3.42 2.62 moderately relevant (mr) 2.61 1.81 less relevant (lr) 1.80 -1.00 not relevant (nr) compatibility: table 7 shows the perceived compatibility of special rice production technology. the overall mean rating was 4.42, indicating that the technology was very compatible. the majority of the farmer respondents rated the 31 production technologies as very compatible; 7 out of 31 were rated compatible, and 1 out of 31 was rated moderately compatible. the production technology with compatible ratings are: a) prepare 400 m2 seedbed area at 21-25 days before transplanting (4.21), b) soak the seeds (40kg/ha) with fungicide for 24 hours (4.15), c) broadcast 2 bags of organic fertilizer in 400 m2 seedbed area (4.03), d) broadcast a mix of urea (3 bags) & 14-14-14 (4 bags) during the wet season (4.06), e) organic fertilizers (3.82), f) rouging is done (4.18), and g) as possible, dry harvest rice continuously for 3 hours per day to meet 14% moisture content and to preserve aromatic scent (4.21). the spray of paclobutrazol to strengthen the rice plant was rated moderately compatible (3.36). this implies that the perceived attributes of technology among farmer respondents regarding their farming experience or existing farming practices are almost the same as those of special rice production farm practices. table 7. compatibility of the special rice production technology. perceived compatibility of special mean rating description rice production technology 1. variety used a. cls 2 4.36 vc 2. seedbed preparation a. prepare 400 m2 seedbed area at 21-25 days before transplanting 4.21 c b. submerge the area with water for 2-3 days 4.39 vc c. plow the soil with water level of 2-3 cm and harrow 4.42 vc d. prepare plots measuring 1.5 meters width 4.36 vc 3. seed germination a. soak the seeds (40kg/ha) with fungicide for 24 hours 4.15 c b. drain seeds after 24 hours and incubate for 24 hours 4.48 vc 4. seedling production a. broadcast 2 bags of organic fertilizer in 400 m2 seedbed area 4.03 c b. sow seeds with enough water level and drain it in the next morning 4.58 vc c. maintain 2-3 cm depth of water level for 21-25 days before pull out the seedling for transplant 4.67 vc 5. land preparation asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 298 perceived compatibility of special mean rating description rice production technology a. plow field at 10 cm depth 4.52 vc b. harrow field 2-3 weeks before transplanting 4.73 vc c. at last harrowing, apply organic fertilizer at 20 bags per hectare 4.27 vc d. cultivate and level the soil one day before transplanting 4.82 vc 6. transplanting a. transplant seedlings after 25-30 days from sowing 4.64 vc b. plant 2-3 seedlings per hill at distance of 20x20cm 4.76 vc 7. water management a. maintain 2-3 cm water level for 25-30 days after transplant 4.70 vc b. increase water level at 5 cm as rice grow & drain water one (1) week before harvest 4.58 vc 8. nutrient management / use of fertilizers a. apply fertilizer in right time and dosage 4.48 vc b. broadcast mix urea (3 bags) & 14-14-14 (4 bags) during wet season 4.06 c c. broadcast mix urea (4 bags) & 14-14-14 (6 bags) during dry season 4.52 vc d. organic fertilizers 3.82 c 9. pest and disease management a. use pesticide if needed 4.55 vc b. use pesticide for snail 1-3 days after transplanting 4.73 vc perceived compatibility of special rice production technology mean rating description c. spray paclobutrazol to strengthen rice plant 3.36 mc 10. weed management and rouging a. spray weed control if needed 4.48 vc b. rouging is done 4.18 c 11. harvesting and postharvest management a. drain water one week before harvesting 4.55 vc b. harvest when 80% of the grains are ripe with moisture content of 20-22% 4.73 vc c. harvest using combine harvester 4.73 vc d. as possible, dry harvest rice continuously 3 hours per day to meet 14% moisture content and to preserve aromatic scent 4.21 c overall mean rating 4.42 vc note: mean range description 5.00 4.24 very compatible (vc) 4.23 3.43 compatible (c) 3.42 2.62 moderately compatible (mc) 2.61 1.81 less compatible (lc) 1.80 -1.00 not compatible (nc) complexity: table 8 shows the perceived complexity of special rice production technology. the overall mean rating was 4.44, indicating that it is very easy to use. the majority of the respondents rated the 31 production technologies as very easy; 6 out of 31 were rated easy, and 1 out of 31 was rated moderately easy. the production technology rated easy) includes: a) soak the seeds (40kg/ha) with fungicide for 24 hours (4.15), b) broadcast 2 bags of organic fertilizer in a 400 m² seedbed area (3.85), c) at the last harrowing, apply organic fertilizer at 20 bags per hectare (4.03), d) broadcast a mix of urea (3 bags) & 14-14-14 (4 bags) during the wet season (4.06), e) organic fertilizers (3.82), and f) rouging is performed (4.21). spray paclobutrazol to strengthen the rice plant, which is rated as moderately easy. this implies that the sr production technology is easy to use and understand. table 8. complexity of the special rice production technology. perceived complexity of special mean rating description rice production technology 1. variety used a. cls 2 4.45 ve 2. seedbed preparation a. prepare 400 m2 seedbed area at 21-25 days before transplanting 4.36 ve b. submerge the area with water for 2-3 days 4.48 ve c. plow the soil with water level of 2-3 cm and harrow 4.55 ve d. prepare plots measuring 1.5 meters width 4.58 ve 3. seed germination a. soak the seeds (40kg/ha) with fungicide for 24 hours 4.15 e b. drain seeds after 24 hours and incubate for 24 hours 4.52 ve asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 299 perceived complexity of special mean rating description rice production technology 4. seedling production a. broadcast 2 bags of organic fertilizer in 400 m2 seedbed area 3.85 e b. sow seeds with enough water level and drain it in the next morning 4.52 ve c. maintain 2-3 cm depth of water level for 21-25 days before pull out the seedling for transplant 4.64 ve 5. land preparation a. plow field at 10 cm depth 4.55 ve b. harrow field 2-3 weeks before transplanting 4.70 ve c. at last harrowing, apply organic fertilizer at 20 bags per hectare 4.03 e d. cultivate and level the soil one day before transplanting 4.91 ve 6. transplanting a. transplant seedlings after 25-30 days from sowing 4.76 ve b. plant 2-3 seedlings per hill at distance of 20x20cm 4.64 ve 7. water management a. maintain 2-3 cm water level for 25-30 days after transplant 4.79 ve b. increase water level at 5 cm as rice grow & drain water one (1) week before harvest 4.61 ve 8. nutrient management / use of fertilizers a. apply fertilizer in right time and dosage 4.61 ve b. broadcast mix urea (3 bags) & 14-14-14 (4 bags) during wet season 4.06 e c. broadcast mix urea (4 bags) & 14-14-14 (6 bags) during dry season 4.42 ve d. organic fertilizers 3.82 e 9. pest and disease management a. use pesticide if needed 4.45 ve b. use pesticide for snail 1-3 days after transplanting 4.61 ve perceived complexity of special rice production technology mean rating description c. spray paclobutrazol to strengthen rice plant 3.39 me 10. weed management and rouging a. spray weed control if needed 4.36 ve b. rouging is done 4.21 e 11. harvesting and postharvest management a. drain water one week before harvesting 4.76 ve b. harvest when 80% of the grains are ripe with moisture content of 20-22% 4.79 ve c. harvest using combine harvester 4.82 ve d. as possible, dry harvest rice continuously 3 hours per day to meet 14% moisture content 4.12 e overall mean rating 4.44 ve note: mean range description 5.00 4.24 very easy (ve) 4.23 3.43 easy (e) 3.42 2.62 moderately easy (me) 2.61 1.81 less easy (le) 1.80 -1.00 not easy (ne) triability: table 9 shows the perceived triability. with an overall mean rating of 4.27, triability was rated very highly. the majority of the respondents rated the 31 production technologies as very high; 7 out of 31 were rated high, and only 1 out of 31 was rated medium. the production technology rated high (h) includes: a) soaking the seeds (40kg/ha) with fungicide for 24 hours (4.09), b) broadcasting 2 bags of organic fertilizer in a 400 m² seedbed area (3.91), c) at the last harrowing, applying organic fertilizer at 20 bags per hectare (4.00), d) broadcasting a mix of urea (3 bags) & 14-14-14 (4 bags) during the wet season (3.94), e) using organic fertilizers (3.73), f) performing rouging (4.18), and g) if possible, dry harvesting rice continuously for 3 hours per day to meet 14% moisture content and preserve the aromatic scent (4.15). the spray of paclobutrazol to strengthen the rice plant is rated (3.27) as medium. this implies that the overall production technology of sr production in a small area is relatively high. farmer respondents can assess the suitability and efficiency of the sr technology on a limited scale ranging from 500 to 1,500 m2 of production area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 300 table 9. triability of the special rice production technology. perceived triability of special mean rating description rice production technology 1. variety used a. cls 2 4.39 vh 2. seedbed preparation a. prepare 400 m2 seedbed area at 21-25 days before transplanting 4.39 vh b. submerge the area with water for 2-3 days 4.36 vh c. plow the soil with water level of 2-3 cm and harrow 4.58 vh d. prepare plots measuring 1.5 meters width 4.61 vh 3. seed germination a. soak the seeds (40kg/ha) with fungicide for 24 hours 4.09 h b. drain seeds after 24 hours and incubate for 24 hours 4.58 vh 4. seedling production a. broadcast 2 bags of organic fertilizer in 400 m2 seedbed area 3.91 h b. sow seeds with enough water level and drain it in the next morning 4.58 vh c. maintain 2-3 cm depth of water level for 21-25 days before pull out the seedling for transplant 4.64 vh 5. land preparation a. plow field at 10 cm depth 4.45 vh b. harrow field 2-3 weeks before transplanting 4.61 vh c. at last harrowing, apply organic fertilizer at 20 bags per hectare 4.00 h d. cultivate and level the soil one day before transplanting 4.85 vh 6. transplanting a. transplant seedlings after 25-30 days from sowing 4.73 vh b. plant 2-3 seedlings per hill at distance of 20x20cm 4.58 vh 7. water management a. maintain 2-3 cm water level for 25-30 days after transplant 4.82 vh b. increase water level at 5 cm as rice grow & drain water one (1) week before harvest 4.61 vh 8. nutrient management / use of fertilizers a. apply fertilizer in right time and dosage 4.58 vh b. broadcast mix urea (3 bags) & 14-14-14 (4 bags) during wet season 3.94 h c. broadcast mix urea (4 bags) & 14-14-14 (6 bags) during dry season 4.33 vh d. organic fertilizers 3.73 h 9. pest and disease management a. use pesticide if needed 4.30 vh b. use pesticide for snail 1-3 days after transplanting 4.45 vh c. spray paclobutrazol to strengthen rice plant 3.27 m perceived triability of special rice production technology mean rating description 10. weed management and rouging a. spray weed control if needed 4.36 vh b. rouging is done 4.18 h 11. harvesting and postharvest management a. drain water one week before harvesting 4.70 vh b. harvest when 80% of the grains are ripe with moisture content of 20-22% 4.76 vh c. harvest using combine harvester 4.85 vh d. as possible, dry harvest rice continuously 3 hours per day to meet 14% moisture content and to preserve aromatic scent 4.15 h overall mean rating 4.27 vh note: mean range description 5.00 4.24 very high (vh) 4.23 3.43 high (h) 3.42 2.62 medium (m) 2.61 1.81 low (l) 1.80 -1.00 very low (vl) observability: table 10 shows the perceived observability. the overall mean rating of 4.40 was obtained, indicating it is very visible. the majority of the respondents rated the 31 production technologies as very visible, 8 out of 31 were rated visible, and only 1 was rated moderately visible. the production technology protocols rated visible are: a) soak the seeds (40kg/ha) with fungicide for 24 hours (4.12), b) broadcast 2 bags of organic fertilizer in a 400 m² seedbed area (3.91), c) at the last harrowing, apply organic fertilizer at 20 bags per hectare (4.03), d) broadcast a mix of urea (3 bags) & 14-14-14 (4 bags) during the wet season (3.94), e) broadcast a mix of urea (4 bags) & 14-14-14 (6 bags) during the dry season (4.21), f) organic fertilizers (3.61), asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 301 g) rouging is done (4.03), and h) as possible, dry harvest rice continuously for 3 hours per day to meet 14% moisture content and to preserve the aromatic scent (4.03). the application of paclobutrazol is rated (3.18) as moderately visible. this implies that the production technology protocols for special rice are very visible in terms of quality and appearance. table 10. observability of the special rice production technology. perceived observability of special mean rating description rice production technology 1. variety used a. cls 2 4.48 vv 2. seedbed preparation a. prepare 400 m2 seedbed area at 21-25 days before transplanting 4.45 vv b. submerge the area with water for 2-3 days 4.52 vv c. plow the soil with water level of 2-3 cm and harrow 4.55 vv d. prepare plots measuring 1.5 meters width 4.64 vv 3. seed germination a. soak the seeds (40kg/ha) with fungicide for 24 hours 4.12 v b. drain seeds after 24 hours and incubate for 24 hours 4.58 vv 4. seedling production a. broadcast 2 bags of organic fertilizer in 400 m2 seedbed area 3.91 v b. sow seeds with enough water level and drain it in the next morning 4.67 vv c. maintain 2-3 cm depth of water level for 21-25 days before pull out the seedling for transplant 4.61 vv 5. land preparation a. plow field at 10 cm depth 4.55 vv b. harrow field 2-3 weeks before transplanting 4.61 vv c. at last harrowing, apply organic fertilizer at 20 bags per hectare 4.03 v d. cultivate and level the soil one day before transplanting 4.85 vv 6. transplanting a. transplant seedlings after 25-30 days from sowing 4.70 vv b. plant 2-3 seedlings per hill at distance of 20x20cm 4.73 vv 7. water management a. maintain 2-3 cm water level for 25-30 days after transplant 4.79 vv b. increase water level at 5 cm as rice grow & drain water one (1) week before harvest 4.67 vv 8. nutrient management / use of fertilizers a. apply fertilizer in right time and dosage 4.58 vv b. broadcast mix urea (3 bags) & 14-14-14 (4 bags) during wet season 3.94 v c. broadcast mix urea (4 bags) & 14-14-14 (6 bags) during dry season 4.21 v d. organic fertilizers 3.61 v 9. pest and disease management a. use pesticide if needed 4.39 vv b. use pesticide for snail 1-3 days after transplanting 4.42 vv perceived observability of special rice production technology mean rating description c. spray paclobutrazol to strengthen rice plant 3.18 mv 10. weed management and rouging a. spray weed control if needed 4.30 vv b. rouging is done 4.03 v 11. harvesting and postharvest management a. drain water one week before harvesting 4.64 vv b. harvest when 80% of the grains are ripe with moisture content of 20-22% 4.79 vv c. harvest using combine harvester 4.85 vv d. as possible, dry harvest rice continuously 3 hours per day to meet 14% moisture content and to preserve aromatic scent 4.03 v overall mean rating 4.40 vv note: mean range description 5.00 4.24 very visible (vv) 4.23 3.43 visible (v) 3.42 2.62 moderately visible (mv) 2.61 1.81 less visible (lv) 1.80 -1.00 not visible (nv) summary table on the perceived technology attributes. in summary, farmer-respondents' perception of the technology was highly positive (table 11). the relative advantage, with a mean rating of 4.43, revealed a very relevant attribute compared to other variables. special rice asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 302 commands a relatively higher price than the other ordinary rice varieties due to its unique characteristics along with its other health benefits. in terms of compatibility, the rating was 4.42, described as very compatible. the planting of special rice is not different from current production practices of inbred rice in terms of labor, fertilizer application, and other cultural pest management practices. complexity was noted as 4.44, described as very easy to use. this is supported by the increased number of adopters planting sr over two years, although there was a decline in 2023. triability was noted at 4.27, indicating that sr can be planted on a small scale. the mean farm size devoted to sr by the farmer-respondents was 0.5 ha, which is almost one-fourth of the total farm area cultivated by the farmers. observability was noted at 4.40, which means that the goodness of the sr in terms of production or the standard of the crop can be observed. grain quality, in terms of color, eating quality, and the effect on a low glycemic index, was highly observable. lastly, the demand for the sr was relatively increasing due to its perceived health benefits. table 11. summary table on the perception of farmer-respondents on the special rice production technology attributes. perceived attributes of special rice production technology mean description relative advantage 4.43 vr compatibility 4.42 vc complexity 4.44 ve triability 4.27 vh observability 4.40 vv overall mean rating 4.39 vh 4.5. level of adoption for this study, the level of adoption is measured in terms of the number of technologies adopted by the farmer respondents. table 12 presents the number of farmers who adopted the special rice production technology protocol. as shown in table 12, the overall mean of 27.81 indicates a very high level of adoption. the results imply that the production technology can be strongly promoted as an alternative rice variety and a promising agribusiness in the rice industry. the specific production protocols that were not fully adopted are as follows: a) broadcast of 2 bags of organic fertilizer in a 400m2 seedbed area (21); b) at the last harrowing, apply organic fertilizer at 20 bags per hectare (21); c) application of organic fertilizers (21); d) spray of paclobutrazol to strengthen the rice plant (18). the relatively low application of organic fertilizer was due to the high cost of organic fertilizer per hectare (20 bags/hectare) and the issues of the lack of quality available organic fertilizers. studies have shown that organic fertilizers are beneficial for soil fertility and crop yield but are not widely used due to economic and quality constraints that affect efficacy and reliability in improving soil health and crop productivity (singh et al., 2020). table 12. level of adoption. special rice production technology no. of farmer who adopted the technology level of adoption 1. variety used a. cls 2 33 vh 2. seedbed preparation a. prepare 400 m2 seedbed area at 21-25 days before transplanting 31 vh b. submerge the area with water for 2-3 days 32 vh c. plow the soil with water level of 2-3 cm and harrow 31 vh d. prepare plots measuring 1.5 meters width 32 vh 3. seed germination a. soak the seeds (40kg/ha) with fungicide for 24 hours 30 vh b. drain seeds after 24 hours and incubate for 24 hours 30 vh 4. seedling production a. broadcast 2 bags of organic fertilizer in 400 m2 seedbed area 21 h b. sow seeds with enough water level and drain it in the next morning 32 vh c. maintain 2-3 cm depth of water level for 21-25 days before pull out the seedling for transplant 31 vh 5. land preparation a. plow field at 10 cm depth 32 vh b. harrow field 2-3 weeks before transplanting 31 vh c. at last harrowing, apply organic fertilizer at 20 bags per hectare 21 h d. cultivate and level the soil one day before transplanting 31 vh 6. transplanting a. transplant seedlings after 25-30 days from sowing 30 vh b. plant 2-3 seedlings per hill at distance of 20x20cm 31 vh asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 303 special rice production technology no. of farmer who adopted the technology level of adoption 7. water management a. maintain 2-3 cm water level for 25-30 days after transplant 33 vh b. increase water level at 5 cm as rice grow & drain water one (1) week before harvest 30 vh 8. nutrient management / use of fertilizers a. apply fertilizer in right time and dosage 33 vh b. broadcast mix urea (3 bags) & 14-14-14 (4 bags) during wet season 28 vh c. broadcast mix urea (4 bags) & 14-14-14 (6 bags) during dry season 31 vh d. organic fertilizers 21 h 9. pest and disease management a. use pesticide if needed 33 vh b. use pesticide for snail 1-3 days after transplanting 30 vh c. spray paclobutrazol to strengthen rice plant 18 m 10. weed management and rouging a. spray weed control if needed 32 vh b. rouging is done 25 h 11. harvesting and postharvest management a. drain water one week before harvesting 32 vh b. harvest when 80% of the grains are ripe with moisture content of 20-22% 32 vh c. harvest using combine harvester 31 vh d. as possible, dry harvest rice continuously 3 hours per day to meet 14% moisture content and to preserve aromatic scent 30 vh overall 27.81 vh note: no. of farmer who adopted the technology description 27 33 very high (vh) 20 – 27 high (h) 14 – 20 moderate (m) 7 – 14 low (l) 1 – 7 very low (vl) 4.6. respondents’ adoption characteristics table 13 provides an overview of the respondents’ adoption characteristics regarding special rice production technology, including the timeline, sources of information, learning methods, adoption patterns, and future intentions. the majority of the 19 respondents (57.6%) learned about spr in 2022. other significant years included 2020, with 7 respondents (21.2%), 2021 with 3 respondents (9.1%), and both 2017 and 2023, with 2 respondents each (6.1%). the majority of 32 respondents (97%) learned recommended practices from clsu, with only 1 respondent (3%) obtaining this information from an organization or association. this signifies a significant positive intervention by clsu in disseminating information about new farming practices among farmer-respondents regarding the new innovation in special rice production technology. extension workers were the primary source of information for 24 respondents (72.7%), followed by technical experts for 8 respondents (24.2%), and farmers for 1 respondent (3%). training was the primary method through which 20 respondents (60.6%) learned about srp, while 13 respondents (39.4%) utilized information, education, and communication (iec) materials. the majority of respondents first used srp in 2022, with 15 individuals (45.5%) adopting it that year. other notable years included 2021 with 9 respondents (27.3%), 2023 with 6 respondents (18.2%), 2020 with 2 respondents (6.1%), and 2017 with 1 respondent (3%). adoption occurred almost equally in both seasons, with 17 respondents (51.5%) adopting in the dry season and 16 respondents (48.5%) in the wet season. most respondents (19 or 57.57%) dedicated 3,750 square meters or less to srp. other production area sizes included 3,751-7,000 square meters for 10 respondents (30.30%), and over 16,751-20,000 square meters for 2 respondents (6.06%). a significant majority of respondents, 31 (93.9%), expressed a desire to continue adopting srp, with only 2 respondents (6.1%) indicating that they will not. the adoption characteristics of special rice production among respondents showed a high level of engagement and continued interest, primarily driven by the higher profitability and ease of adopting srp practices. most respondents learned about srp from clsu and extension workers, with training being the predominant method of learning. adoption has been widespread since 2022, with nearly equal uptake in both wet and dry seasons. the commitment to continued adoption was strong, with 93.9% of respondents planning to persist with srp, motivated by the economic benefits and practical advantages it offers. there was also a notable demand for further technical information, particularly regarding processing and organic practices, indicating areas for future extension services to address. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 304 table 13. respondents’ adoption characteristics. variable frequency* percentage when did you learn spr? 2017 2 6.1 2020 7 21.2 2021 3 9.1 2022 19 57.6 2023 2 6.1 where did you learn spr recommended production technology? clsu 32 97.0 organization/ association 1 3.0 from whom? extension workers 24 72.7 technical experts 8 24.2 co-farmers 1 3.0 how did you learn spr? spr training from clsu 20 60.6 variable frequency* percentage clsu iec materials 13 39.4 when did you first use the spr (year)? 2017 1 3.0 2020 2 6.1 2021 9 27.3 2022 15 45.5 2023 6 18.2 what season? wet 16 48.5 dry 17 51.5 production area for spr (m2) 3,750 and below 19 57.57 3,751-7,000 10 30.30 7,001-10,250 1 3.03 10,251-13,500 0 0 13,501-16,750 1 3.030 16,751-20,000 2 6.06 will you continue adopting? yes 31 93.9 no 2 6.1 note: *multiple answers. 4.7. reasons for adoption of special rice production technology table 14 presents the reasons behind the adoption of special rice production technology as reported by respondents, highlighting various motivating factors driving adoption. a significant majority of respondents, 18 (54.5%), cited the desire for additional income or the prospect of obtaining a higher price as the primary reason for adopting special rice production technology. this emphasizes the economic incentive and potential profitability associated with this agricultural practice. a small portion of respondents, 2 (6.1%), mentioned home consumption as a reason for adoption, indicating a preference for cultivating special rice for personal or household consumption needs. eight respondents (24.2%) reported having a sure buyer as a reason for adoption, indicating the presence of reliable market channels or established relationships with buyers, which can provide stability and assurance to farmers. four respondents (12.1%) cited gaining additional knowledge as a reason for adopting special rice production technology, indicating an interest in acquiring new skills and expertise in agricultural practices. five respondents (15.2%) mentioned health benefits as a motivating factor for adoption, suggesting an awareness of the nutritional advantages or perceived health benefits associated with the consumption of special rice. a portion of 6 respondents (18.2%) mentioned the ease of care associated with special rice production as a reason for adoption, signifying that the cultivation process may require less intensive labor or resources compared to other crops. five respondents (15.2%) highlighted the low cost of production as a reason for adoption, indicating that special rice production may offer cost-effective agricultural practices that contribute to profitability. one respondent (3%) mentioned the higher quality of special rice as a reason for adoption, suggesting that the unique characteristics or superior attributes of special rice compared to traditional varieties may drive adoption. the reasons for adopting special rice production technology among respondents are multifaceted, reflecting both economic incentives and intrinsic motivations. the primary drivers include the potential for additional income and higher prices, followed by factors such as home consumption, the presence of a sure buyer, and the desire to acquire asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 305 additional knowledge. additionally, considerations such as health benefits, ease of care, low production costs, and perceived higher quality contribute to the appeal of special rice production. understanding these motivating factors is crucial for policymakers, agricultural extension services, and stakeholders to support and promote the adoption of special rice production technology among farmers. table 14. reasons for adoption of special rice production technology. variable frequency* percentage additional income/higher price 18 54.5 home consumption 2 6.1 sure buyer 8 24.2 additional knowledge 4 12.1 health benefits 5 15.2 easy to care 6 18.2 low cost of production 5 15.2 higher quality 1 3.0 note: *multiple response. 4.8. correlation analysis the correlation analysis reveals an understanding of the relationships between various independent variables, individual factors, institutional factors, and technology factors in relation to the outcomes regarding the level of adoption in terms of the number of farmers who adopted the technology (table 15). individual factors: age has a weak positive correlation (0.164) with the level of adoption, indicating that older individuals tend to adopt slightly more, although the effect is minor. educational attainment shows a moderate negative correlation (-0.308) with the level of adoption, which indicates that higher education levels are associated with lower adoption rates. this could imply that more educated individuals either find the practice less appealing or prefer alternative solutions. household size also exhibited a weak negative correlation (-0.185), meaning larger households tend to have slightly lower adoption levels, possibly due to resource constraints or differing priorities. farming experience positively affects adoption (0.276), implying that more experienced farmers are more likely to adopt due to greater familiarity and comfort with new practices. farm size, however, has a minimal positive impact on adoption (0.022), showing that the size of the farm is not a significant factor in adoption decisions. tenurial status had a very weak negative correlation effect on the level of adoption (-0.017), which shows no effect on their likelihood of adopting new technology/practices. access to water through the national irrigation administration (nia) had a significantly strong positive correlation (0.418*) with adoption, indicating that reliable water sources greatly enhance adoption levels. the positive correlation between age and adoption suggests that older farmers may be more open to adopting new technologies, possibly due to greater experience and resources. however, the negative correlation with educational attainment indicates that formal education may not directly translate to better adoption of agricultural technologies. institutional factors: training services had a moderate positive impact on adoption (0.194), which shows that individuals who participate in training sessions tend to have a slightly higher adoption rate, which implies that exposure to training has a positive effect on their willingness and ability to adopt new technologies or practices. the correlation analysis on perceived information services to the level of adoption revealed varying degrees of influence from different sources and modes of information. information sourced from the central luzon state university (clsu) had a strong positive correlation (0.448**) with the level of adoption. this significant positive relationship suggests that information from clsu is highly effective in encouraging adoption, possibly due to the credibility and relevance of the information provided by this institution. however, information from extension workers showed a moderate negative correlation (-0.210) with the level of adoption. this indicates that reliance on extension workers for information is associated with lower adoption rates. this negative correlation might reflect issues such as the quality or perceived relevance of the information provided by extension workers, or possibly a mistrust or lack of confidence in these sources. farmers had a weak positive correlation on adoption (0.047). this implies that farmers' network of information has an influence on their adoption decisions, possibly because of their trust in co-farmers, which has proven effective and relevant. technical advisory services had a negative impact on the level of adoption (-0.060). this may suggest that the knowledge and information provided by extension services are more focused on training and general information, with limited emphasis on technical consultancy regarding the special rice production (srp) protocol. it could also imply that the srp protocol is quite similar to that of inbred rice varieties, reducing the need for frequent consultancy and advisory services from technical experts. the significant positive impact of clsu on adoption underlines the importance of accessible and high-quality training and information services. technology factors: relative advantage showed strong positive correlations with adoption (.502**). this indicates that when individuals perceive a significant benefit or improvement from adopting the technology compared to existing methods, they are more likely to adopt it. the higher the perceived relative advantage, the greater the likelihood of adoption. compatibility had similar strong positive correlations with adoption (.543**). this indicates that technologies perceived to be compatible with existing values, past experiences, and current needs of the users are more likely to be asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 306 adopted. when individuals find that a new technology fits well within their current practices and lifestyle, they are more inclined to adopt it. complexity had significant positive correlations with adoption (.686**). this shows that the special rice production technology protocol is very easy to use and understand due to the similarity of production practices with other varieties of rice they are planted. triability also shows strong positive correlations with adoption (0.675**). this suggests that when individuals can experiment with a technology on a limited basis before fully committing, they are more likely to adopt it. the ability to trial a technology reduces perceived risk and uncertainty, thus facilitating higher adoption rates. observability is positively correlated with adoption (0.623). this shows that when the results and benefits of a technology are visible and observable to others, it increases the likelihood of adoption. seeing the positive outcomes of a technology in real-world scenarios encourages others to adopt it as well. the strong positive correlations of relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability with adoption emphasize the importance of these attributes in technology diffusion among farmers. in summary, the correlation revealed that individual factors such as age and farming experience, along with institutional support and favorable technology characteristics, significantly influenced the adoption of agricultural technologies. table 15. correlation of independent variables to the level of adoption. variables level of adoption (percentage) individual factors age 0.164 educational attainment (years) -0.308 household size -0.185 farming experience 0.276 farm size 0.022 tenurial status -0.017 family income -0.106 water source 0.418* institutional factors training services 0.194 information services clsu 0.448** extension workers -0.210 farmers 0.047 technical advisory services -0.060 technology factors relative advantage 0.502** compatibility 0.543** complexity 0.686** triability 0.675** observability 0.623** note: * statistical significance at the 0.05 level. ** statistical significance at the 0.01 level. 4.9. regression analysis table 16 shows that the socio-economic factors that positively affect the level of adoption are gross income and source of water, while farm size negatively affects the level of adoption. this means that a higher gross income for farmers is associated with a significant increase in the level of adoption by 7.04%. farmers with higher incomes are more likely to adopt new technologies due to better access to financial resources (feder et al., 1985). additionally, the source of water significantly affects the level of adoption positively by 6.82%, which means that a readily available source of water will increase the adoption level of spr technology. access to water is a significant factor in adopting new practices that improve land productivity and reduce degradation (shiferaw & holden, 1998). however, an increase in farm size has a significant negative effect on the level of adoption, decreasing by 0.000069%, which is a very minimal effect. the result is slightly opposite to the expectation that larger farmers are more likely to adopt agricultural technologies than farmers with small land holdings.(kasirye, 2013). the institutional factor that negatively affects the level of adoption is the training services related to the production of special purpose rice, which is at -4.92%. this result is contrary to the study of factors affecting the adoption of organic rice farming, where farmers' participation in training has been found to have a positive influence on the respondents' adoption (chanhathai, suneeporn, & panya, 2016). relative advantage as a technological factor significantly affects the level of adoption negatively by -0.53%. these factors may be influenced by economic profitability, social prestige, physical convenience, low initial cost, lower perceived risk, decreased discomfort, psychological satisfaction, or time savings (rogers, 2003). the results of this study on perceived attributes of the relative advantage of the special rice technology protocol among the 33 respondents indicate that they are less likely to adopt the application of fungicide during seed germination, the use of organic fertilizer, and the application of paclobutrazol, which may be considered additional costs and time. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 291-308 307 table 16. regression analysis. variables coefficients t stat p-value farm size -0.000 -2.302 0.035 gross income 7.046 2.318 0.034 source of water 6.824 2.879 0.010 training services -4.924 -2.324 0.033 relative advantage -0.530 -2.254 0.038 note: adjusted r2 0.6804 f value 5.2594 5. conclusion the majority of farmer respondents participated in training sessions primarily provided by clsu, focused on the agro enterprise clustering approach. this training provided a strategic framework to enhance agricultural productivity and sustainability by grouping together related agricultural enterprises within the community of rice farmers. however, the results show that it has a negative effect on the adoption of the special rice technology protocol among the respondents, despite the awareness they acquired. the farmers with higher gross income and access to a reliable water source have positively influenced the level of adoption of spr technology. conversely, larger farm sizes have a minimal negative effect on adoption. this suggests that farmers with better financial resources and water availability are more likely to adopt new technologies. additionally, the study finds that the perceived adequacy of extension services positively impacts adoption; however, a surprising negative effect of training services on adoption is noted, which contrasts with typical findings where training is expected to enhance the adoption level. despite the overall positive perception of technology attributes, the relative advantage shows a negative effect on adoption. this may indicate that the perceived additional costs or difficulties associated with certain technology protocols are preventing adoption. furthermore, the overall adoption level of special rice production technology is very high, with a mean rating of 27.81. adoption has been widespread since 2022, and farmers are generally committed to continuing its use, motivated by economic benefits, profitability, and ease of adoption. however, some protocols, particularly those involving the application of organic fertilizers, fungicides, and paclobutrazol, are less frequently adopted due to economic and practical concerns. the extension services from clsu play a significant role in facilitating the adoption of spr technology. however, challenges related to the costs and complexities of the technology, as well as unexpected negative effects on training, highlight areas for improvement. future efforts should focus on addressing these challenges, ensuring that economic and practical barriers do not hinder the widespread adoption and successful implementation of special-purpose rice production technology. funding: this research is supported by central luzon state university, philippines through its faculty development program. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the central luzon state university, philippines has granted approval for this study on 19 october 2023 (ref. no. 2023586). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abbeam, a., wiredu, a. n., asante, b. o., & al-hassan, r. m. 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plants 182 investigating farm machinery breakdowns and service support system conditions in rainfed rice areas in riau province, indonesia ujang pamana khairizalb selvia sutrianac a,bdepartment of agribusiness, faculty of agriculture, islamic university of riau, pekanbaru, riau, indonesia. cdepartment of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, islamic university of riau, pekanbaru, riau, indonesia.  pamanu@agr.uir.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 3 january 2022 revised: 7 july 2022 accepted: 25 july 2022 published: 16 august 2022 keywords farm machinery breakdowns service support systems rainfed rice areas farm power power loss repair and maintenance. farm machinery breakdowns are the most common problems farmers face in field operations. the problems can cause losses of time, power, and money and must therefore be prevented. this research investigates farm machinery breakdowns and loss of machine power, as well as service support conditions in riau province, indonesia. most data were collected from secondary sources published by the food crop and horticulture services of riau province and the statistical bureau of riau province. the data on service support facilities were obtained through field visits to service support sites in the province. the number of farm machines, farm power, and machine breakdowns increased during the period 2010–2021. there were different breakdown rates among farm machines and regencies. the highest annual growth was 17.03 percent for water pumps, followed by power threshers (14.41%), and 2-wheel tractors (14.32%). rokan hilir regency had the highest level of machinery breakdowns, reaching 26.93 percent annually. the total loss of machine power was 9,553 hp per year on average or 15.76 percent of the total power of 61,357 hp per year. the availability of service support facilities like workshops and storage sheds was very limited and remained inadequate. a lack of spare parts and mechanics was also found in the surveyed areas of the province. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the implementation of farm machinery management policies to improve the associated maintenance and service support systems to prevent machinery breakdowns in the field and thereby aid farmers. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4578 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ujang paman --khairizal --selvia sutriana (2022). investigating farm machinery breakdowns and service support system conditions in rainfed rice areas in riau province, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3), 182-191. 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4578 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction mechanization is required to improve the productivity and efficiency of the agricultural system. mechanization is one of the essential inputs to increase labor and land productivity and reduce drudgery (mottaleb, rahut, ali, gérard, & erenstein, 2017; mujawamariya & kalema, 2017; sims & kienzle, 2016). currently, mechanization technologies asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 3 (2022): 182-191. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3407-5524 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8498-0111 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4116-9895 mailto:pamanu@agr.uir.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 182-191 183 have changed from technologies requiring human power or animal power to those based on mechanical power. mechanical-power technologies, such as farm machines and associated implements, represent the highest level of mechanical technology (houmy, clarke, ashburner, & kienzle, 2013), and this is the highest level of mechanization technology commonly used in agriculture (gifford, 1992). therefore, farm machines have become more and more dominant in farming practices today, particularly in rice farming operations. the tractor, for example, has become an important source of power for mechanizing tillage operations (afsharnia, asoodar, abdeshahi, & marzban, 2013; khodabakhshian & shakeri, 2011; oluka, 2000). hence, a shortage of farm power can be a major constraint to the development of an agricultural system (paman, inaba, & uchida, 2014). machine power has replaced many farm jobs formerly carried out by manual labor or by working animals (poozesh, mohtasebi, ahmadi, & asakereh, 2012; zhou, ma, & li, 2018). this is because farm machinery can produce more power and carry out necessary tasks more efficiently and effectively than either manpower or animal power. farm machinery has become indispensable to farming practice (zhang, hao, & sun, 2017), particularly in largescale commercial production systems (yousif, 2016). smallholder farmers often have difficulty raising sufficient funds for the necessary investment in farm machinery (sims & kienzle, 2015). this is because farm machinery is costly to purchase (calcante, fontanini, & mazzetto, 2013; kay, edwards, & duffy, 2019), so it requires a major investment in the farming system (al-suhaibani & wahby, 2017). it requires as much as 40 percent of total agricultural investment (henderson & ghericke, 1983). nevertheless, small-scale farms, which dominate the agricultural sector in developing countries (gifford, 1992), utilize farm machines in their farming operations to increase production and productivity. governments in developing countries consistently support the application of mechanical power in farm operations; however, the use of farm machinery has been growing at a relatively low rate. the use of farm machines in small-scale farming systems remains low because it faces multiple challenges. one of the crucial challenges to managing and employing farm machines and implements on small-scale farms is field breakdowns. machinery breakdowns lead to field stoppages due to sudden and random failure of a part (hunt, 1983); thus, the events are unpredictable and bring a high risk. breakdowns can be very expensive (afsharnia et al., 2013; bukhari, soomro, rajper, & sewar, 1984; jacobs, harrell, & shinn, 1983) due to loss of working time and profits and the cost of repairing the defect. continual random failures in a machinery system can also cause the machine’s performance to drop (bala, govinda, & murthy, 2018). breakdown problems have been shown to cause about 26 percent and 15 percent loss of potential main season working time in thailand and malaysia, respectively (chancellor, 1971). it has also been reported that about 53 percent of total machine expenses in developing countries were due to repairs of machinery after breakdowns (afsharnia, asoodar, & abdeshahi, 2014). given the conditions outlined above, the availability of service support systems is becoming increasingly crucial because these support systems, which consist of workshops, mechanics, and a supply of materials and spare parts (fao, 1992), are expected to prevent machinery breakdowns, making them less likely to occur. they can also ensure that machinery breakdowns are immediately inspected and repaired. they allow preventive maintenance, involving inspection, servicing, and repairing or replacing physical components of machines, to be performed following a prescribed schedule (khodabakhshian & shakeri, 2011). in many cases, however, mechanical-power technology in the form of farm machines is adopted without adequate planning for infrastructural and institutional support (gifford, 1992). the absence of service support facilities may lead to large numbers of farm machines and equipment remaining unserviced for long periods and, eventually, cause a loss of machine power available for farm works. besides inadequate service support facilities, farm machine breakdowns are more likely to occur under rough field conditions (paman, uchida, inaba, & kojima, 2007), such as those found in the rainfed paddy field areas of riau province. this research thus investigates farm machinery breakdowns and the loss of available machine power due to breakdowns, as well as the service support conditions in riau province, indonesia. 2. methodology 2.1. study area the study was conducted in riau province, which comprises ten regencies: kampar, indragiri hulu, indragiri hilir, bengkalis, rokan hulu, rokan hilir, kuantan singingi, siak, pelalawan, and kepulauan meranti, and two cities: dumai and pekanbaru, see figure 1. the province is located in the center of sumatra island, and the total land area is approximately 87,023,660 km2. based on data from the statistical bureau of riau province (2020), the area extends from the bukit barisan slope up to the malacca strait, lying between 01o05’00’’ s and 02o25’00’’ n with temperatures varying between 19.80 c and 36.80 c. the rainfall and rainy days vary between 23 mm and 347 mm and 3 days and 23 days, respectively. there are two seasons, namely the rainy and dry seasons, and the rainy season is the main season in which food crops are grown – especially rice. although rice is not the main crop of riau province, it is an important crop for the livelihoods of many people and the staple food of riau’s population. this crop is mostly cultivated in rainfed areas across the province (paman, bahri, khairizal, & wahyudy, 2018). of the total arable land for agriculture, 740,148 hectares, 96,912 hectares are classed as paddy fields, of which 51 percent are in rainfed areas (food crop and horticulture services of riau province, 2019). most of the rainfed areas can be cultivated only once a year during the rainy season due to the limited water supply. during the dry season, most of the rainfed areas are cultivated with seasonal crops like corn, soybeans, peanuts, etc. small farm machines are mostly used by small farmers to mechanize rice farming operations in the rainfed areas. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 182-191 184 figure 1. map of the study areas in riau province. the geographical area of riau province is large enough and sufficiently representative for this research topic. the utilization of farm machines in the province remains low, although a similar mechanization program has also been developed in other provinces across the country. this is an indication that the management of farm machines in the province is facing serious problems. the farm machines mostly operate on rainfed paddy fields that often experience dryness, primarily during the dry season. moreover, the agricultural infrastructure and facilities are inadequate to support the effective and efficient use of the machines. 2.2. data sources and collection the main data for this research were obtained and collected from secondary sources, namely the food crop and horticulture services of riau province, the statistic bureau of riau province, and other related sources. time-series data for the period 2010–2019 were used. the data consisted of the number of farm machines, number of tractor breakdowns, harvested rice areas, and rice yields. field visits were also conducted to investigate the conditions of the service support systems, which provide maintenance and repair services in case of machinery breakdowns. the investigation was carried out in three regencies where service support was available, namely kamar, indragiri hulu, and siak. the collected data were then tabulated for analysis with relevant statistical tools. simple descriptive techniques were used to analyze the data, such as means and percentages, among others. 3. results and discussion 3.1. number of farm machines and power availability the most common types of farm machinery used for rice farming operations in riau province include 2-wheel tractors, 4-wheel tractors, power threshers, water pumps, dryers, and rice milling units (rmu). the farm machines are mostly small types, except the 4-wheel tractor. these machinery types are suitable for rice farming conditions characterized by small scale, poor technical skills of farmers, and low economic ability of farmers. two-wheel tractors, for example, are most popularly used for land preparation in semi-irrigated and rainfed rice-growing areas in the province (paman, inaba, & uchida, 2015). the majority of the above machines are managed and operated by custom hire service providers, with aid from the local government as well as the ministry of agriculture. custom hire service providers are farm machinery businesses that are managed by either a group of farmers or an individual farmer (paman et al., 2014). this management method ensures that farm machines can be widely accessed by small farmers. the local government continually encourages and supports small farmers to mechanize their farms to enhance production and productivity. for those purposes, the local and central governments, through the ministry of agriculture, directly contribute to various types of small farm machines for farmers through mechanization programs for rice farming. therefore, the number of farm machin available on a farm depends greatly on the government aid that is budgeted every year. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 182-191 185 table 1. trends of farm machinery development in riau province. type of farm machine 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 annual growth (%) 2-wheel tractor 1.082 1.978 1.611 1.721 1.906 2.096 2.481 2.730 2.753 2.846 14.52 4-wheel tractor 31 35 24 29 28 24 46 102 130 160 27.61 power thresher 799 1.109 1.281 2.195 2.288 2.216 2.126 2.272 2.083 1.693 11.39 water pump 3.080 4.674 1.431 2.910 2.930 2.556 2.708 2.888 2.491 3.105 10.79 dryer 45 50 51 12 17 20 20 19 16 14 -4.15 rice milling unit 764 927 818 995 1.102 991 991 1.008 841 937 3.16 source: food crop and horticulture services of riau province (2015) and food crop and horticulture services of riau province (2020). table 1 shows the trends in small machinery development over the last 10 years in riau province. the number of farm machines was found to increase during the period but differed by machine type, according to the required farm operations. the small farm machine with the largest number was the water pump, which increased from 3,080 units in 2010 to 3,105 units in 2019, with an annual growth of about 10.79 percent during the period. this machine is important because, as the field area is rainfed, it will always experience water shortages during the growing season, particularly during the dry season. climate changes will change the weather patterns and will influence the number of rainy days and the rainfall in some areas. it will bring about less rain in some areas, but others will have more rain. a dry area, for example, may become drier, so it will need a water pump to supply water to the field to perform land preparation. the second most popular farm machine is the 2-wheel tractor with an annual growth of about 14.52 percent, increasing from 1,082 units to 2,846 units over the study period. the machine is very important in land preparation and consists of three types, namely mouldboard tillers, rotary tillers, and hydro tillers (paman et al., 2015). the type of farm machine with the smallest number was the dryer, the number of this machine decreased by about 4.15 percent per year. most farmers prefer to dry the rice using solar energy because this method is easy and free, and is available every day if the weather is bright. finally, the 4-wheel tractor experienced the highest growth, with an average of about 27.61 percent per year or an increase from 31 units in 2010 to 160 units in 2019. this indicates that farmers have gradually begun to shift from small tractors to bigger ones. the bigger farm tractor is more efficient and saves time in land preparation compared to the smaller one. table 2. trends of available farm power, harvested area, and yields in riau province. item 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 annual growth (%) power available (hp) 43.881 64.859 43.118 60.635 64.537 61.883 65.957 71.660 66.618 70.426 7.91 power per hectare (hp/ha) 0.33 0.56 0.39 0.59 0.68 0.78 0.81 0.89 0.93 1.12 17.69 harvested area (ha)* 131.263 123.038 117.649 97.796 85.062 86.218 79.475 80.680 71.448 63.142 -7.62 yield (ton/ha)* 3.87 3.92 3.85 3.97 3.97 4.01 4.10 4.18 3.73 3.66 -0.54 *source: food crop and horticulture services of riau province (2015) and food crop and horticulture services of riau province (2020). the mechanization of agriculture requires energy, and this comes from farm power sources (sims & kienzle, 2017). in riau province, farm machines have today become the main power sources for farm operations, particularly in rice farming, because animal power is no longer used by farmers. table 2 shows the amount of farm power obtained from farm machines in riau province for the period 2010–2019. the total amount of available farm power increased from 43,881 hp in 2010 to 70,426 hp in 2019 with an annual growth of about 7.91 percent. furthermore, the farm power per hectare, which is a measure of the mechanization level, increased more rapidly, from 0.33 hp per hectare in 2010 to 1.12 hp per hectare in 2019 with an annual growth of about 17.69 percent. the increased farm power was the result of the increased number of farm machines in the province. from 2016 onwards, the available farm power was more than the minimum power needed for an optimum yield, at more than 0.8 hp per hectare (jain, 1979). the level of mechanization in riau province in 2019 was slightly lower than that of the philippines, which had 1.23 hp per hectare (cruz, 2018). increasing the power supply to rice farms is expected to allow field operations to be carried out completely at the right time and greater areas to produce larger quantities of rice. the increase in available farm power did not result in increases in harvested area or yields. harvested area and yields decreased 7.62 percent and 0.54 percent per year on average, respectively. this indicates that the increase in the amount of available farm power was insufficient to enhance the harvested area and yields. this may be because the number of farm machines is still small and many of them remained unused for more than a season due to breakdown problems, as shown in table 3 and figure 2. 3.2. number of farm machinery breakdowns and power losses table 3 shows the number of farm machinery breakdowns that occurred for each type of farm machine in riau province in the period 2010–2019. most farm machines experienced an increase in breakdowns with different rates of increase for different machine types. the greatest increase of breakdowns was found water pumps, with an increase of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 182-191 186 about 17.03 percent per year, followed by power threshers (14.41%) and 2-wheel tractors (14.32%). the number of the annual breakdowns for each machine type was 312 units for water pumps, 369 units for power threshers, and 364 units for 2-wheel tractors. in contrast, the 4-wheel tractor experienced a decreasing trend of about 16.74 percent per year, with the average number of breakdowns totaling 6 units per year. the number of machine breakdowns can be affected by usage intensity, field conditions, and operator skill. however, the rate of farm machinery breakdowns tended to decline slightly over the period 2010–2019, as shown in figure 2. table 3. number of farm machinery breakdowns in riau province. type of farm machine 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 annual growth (%) average (unit) 2-wheel tractor 200 477 388 362 383 323 355 355 382 413 14.32 364 4-wheel tractor 8 7 7 7 7 9 0 6 6 3 -16.74 6 power thresher 163 298 323 505 392 380 414 474 353 387 14.41 369 water pump 182 315 275 327 715 273 300 233 208 292 17.03 312 dryer 5 11 12 1 2 2 0 3 2 2 0.51 4 rice milling unit 86 177 170 188 196 132 134 132 116 115 7.89 145 source: food crop and horticulture services of riau province (2015) and food crop and horticulture services of riau province (2020). figure 2. number of breakdowns for each type of farm machine in riau province. the rate of farm machinery breakdowns was also found to differ among regencies, although it decreased slightly over the period 2010–2019, as shown in figure 3. the highest breakdown rate was found in rokan hilir regency, where it reached 26.93 percent annually. however, the highest rate in the regency reached 41 percent in 2013 and then declined sharply to 12 percent in 2019. a high breakdown rate was also found in indragiri hilir and rokan hulu regencies, with average rates of 21.24 percent and 20.26 percent annually, respectively. kepulauan meranti regency had the lowest breakdown rate; it was 5.44 percent annually on average. figure 3. number of farm machinery breakdowns in each regency of riau province. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 182-191 187 farm machinery breakdowns cause significant power loss on farms. figure 4 depicts the total loss of machine power as a result of breakdowns in riau province between 2010 and 2019. the total loss of machine power was 9,553 hp per year on average or 15.76 percent of the total power available, which was an average of 61,357 hp per year during the period. the highest power loss was 22.54 percent in 2012, followed by 19.93 percent in 2014 and 18.41 percent in 2013, while the lowest was 12 percent in 2010. there was a high degree of fluctuation from year to year mainly between 2010 and 2014; afterward, the fluctuation was lower, and the number of machine breakdowns gradually decreased. this indicates an improvement in farm machinery maintenance over the last 5 years. figure 4. amount of available farm power and power loss in riau province. 3.3. service support system conditions service support systems comprise workshops, mechanics, storage sheds, and the supply of materials and spare parts. workshops are one of the most important service support facilities, both for making repairs in case of breakdowns and for the regular maintenance of farm machines. the availability of workshops, spare parts, and skilled mechanics is crucial to the optimal performance of the farm machinery. farm machinery storage sheds are also important to protect and keep the machines and tools safe and secure from the weather. the number of workshops for repairing farm machines and tools in riau province is very limited. although ricecultivating areas are found in each regency, workshops are only available in three regencies, namely kampar, siak, and indragiri hulu regencies, as well as one in pekanbaru city, see figure 5. businessmen are less interested in establishing workshops due to the limited number of farm machines available in the rice field areas. an adequate number of farm machines is required to economically establish a workshop. the establishment of well-equipped workshops and the employment of mechanics does not make economic sense for a small number of machines (fao, 1992). fortunately, the supplier of farm machinery and tools in pekanbaru city also runs a workshop. serious machinery breakdowns can usually be brought to this dealer for repairs to be carried out and machines to be overhauled. figure 5. workshop sites in riau province. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 182-191 188 the workshops in riau province are owned by individuals (privately) or managed by custom hire service providers. both workshop types are under local government supervision, particularly workshops owned by custom hire service providers. except for the dealer, most workshops in rural areas are inadequate because they have inadequate tools to make repairs. in addition, they have little space to store broken down farm machinery to be repaired in the workshop. they employ only a single mechanic who is usually either an experienced operator (5-10 years) or a trained farmer. they also do not sell the required spare parts in the workshop due to capital deficiency. interviews with workshop staff revealed that the lack of mechanics and spare parts are the most serious problems facing machine owners in riau province’s rice field areas, see figure 6. consequently, workshops can only carry out minor repairs, whereas if the breakdown is serious and requires spare parts, the machine is stored in the workshop to await replacement parts, see figure 7; a few of them are sent to the dealer in pekanbaru for repairs to be made. spare parts can take months or even years to arrive, depending on where they are ordered from. this finding suggests that more complete workshops must be established in the vicinity of rice-cultivating areas, so that farm machinery can be repaired, and broken parts can be replaced immediately to restore them to service as soon as possible. the improper handling of machine breakdowns has a chance of causing more serious breakdowns. figure 6. discussion and interview with staff in a farm machinery workshop. figure 7. machinery breakdowns in the workshop waiting for spare parts. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 182-191 189 complete repair and maintenance facilities are required to make spare parts available at low prices (afsharnia, asoodar, abdeshahi, & marzban, 2015) and then repair minor as well as serious breakdowns. the availability of spare parts for the proper repair and maintenance of machinery is of paramount importance, so that reliability, efficiency, and long life of the machines can be achieved (maradun, sanusi, & akubuo, 2013). in addition, proper servicing can optimize agricultural productivity in farm operations (nkakini & etenero, 2019). figure 8. farm machinery storage shed in the survey area. furthermore, the proper storage of farm machines is vital to keep the machine in safety, particularly during the off-season. the purpose is to protect farm machines from harsh weather conditions such as rain, wind, and sun. field investigations found that the farm machinery storage sheds were inadequate for storing the machines during the offseason. the storage sheds were found to lack walls and sometimes also cement floors, see figure 8. not all farmers have a farm machinery storage shed. in the case a storage shed is unavailable, fam machines and tools were stored outdoors and only covered with canvas or other types of covers, see figure 9. this finding suggests that farmers (machine owners) must make sure that their farm machines are stored properly in a storage shed when not in use and during the off-season. the establishment of farm machinery storage sheds is necessary for the above purpose. figure 9. farm machines and tools stored outdoors during the off-season. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 182-191 190 4. conclusions and recommendations the number of farm machines and associated farm power increased during the period 2010–2021, with different rates of growth for different machines. the total amount of farm power per hectare increased by about 7.91 percent annually during the period. farm machinery breakdowns also increased during this period, with different rates of growth for different machines. there were also different breakdown rates among the various farm machines. the highest breakdown rate was found for water pumps, with an increase of about 17.03 percent (312 units per year) annually, followed by power threshers with about 14.41 percent (369 units per year) and 2-wheel tractors with about 14.32 percent (364 units per year). the total loss of machine power was 9,553 hp per year on average or 15.76 percent of the total available machine power, which was an average of 61,357 hp per year during the period. the number of service support facilities, such as workshops, storage sheds, and mechanics in the rice field areas, was found to be very limited and hampered by inadequate tools and a shortage of mechanics. the available workshops could only perform minor repairs, and farm machines that suffered serious breakdowns must be sent to dealers in pekanbaru city or put in long-term storage in the workshops to await the ordered replacement parts. based on the results, it is strongly recommended that service support systems like workshops with adequate tools and skilled mechanics, as well as spare part depots, are provided to enable the proper repair and maintenance of farm machinery in rural areas. farmers should also improve their care and maintenance of farm machines by keeping them in storage sheds, particularly during the off-season. this research has presented a preliminary investigation of machinery breakdowns without exploring in detail the root cause of the breakdowns or the type of machine parts that frequently broke or failed. therefore, there is a need to conduct field investigations into the root cause of machinery breakdowns and the machine parts that fail most frequently. further investigation is also required to identify the competencies required for operators and mechanics to operate and repair machines, respectively. funding: this research is supported by the education and culture ministry of indonesia under the research competition programme for basic research scheme (grant number: 190/sp2h/lt/drpn/2020). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references afsharnia, f., asoodar, m. a., abdeshahi, a., & marzban, a. 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(2018). draft animals, farm machines and sustainable agricultural production: insight from china. sustainability, 10(9), 1-16.available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/su10093015. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 121 management of gi-certified agricultural products and their contribution to household income in rural thailand daroonwan kamthonkiat department of geography, thammasat university, klong luang, pathumthani, 12121, thailand.  daroonwan.k@arts.tu.ac.th article history abstract received: 17 january 2025 revised: 19 march 2025 accepted: 28 march 2025 published: 21 april 2025 keywords agricultural gis agricultural management agricultural products geographic indication gi producer gi product gi thai household income mixed-methods rural thailand. this research looks at how geographical indication (gi)-certified agricultural products are managed in thailand. it focuses on the sales and production cycles, the income they bring in, and the main problems they face. using a mixed-methods approach, surveys and interviews were conducted with representatives of 77 gi-certified products categorized into rice (10), foods (15), and plant fruits and vegetables (52). four management patterns emerged: one production and one selling season (25 products), one production with multiple selling seasons (15), two production and selling cycles (19), and multiple cycles (18). contributions to household income were classified into four levels: low (19), medium (18), high (13), and maximum (27). a chi-square test revealed no significant association between management patterns and income levels. producers identified critical barriers, including limited market access and climate variability, which affected product quantity and quality. many expressed low confidence in product reputation, citing the inability to secure price premiums over non-gi products. the study underscores the need for targeted policies to address market access, climate resilience, and product reputation. these findings provide valuable insights for gi authorities, policymakers, and stakeholders to sustain gi management, enhance rural incomes, and align with sustainable development goals. the results are broadly applicable to other developing countries reliant on agricultural gis. contribution/originality: this study explores the management practices and income contributions of gi-certified agricultural products among rural producers with over five years of experience. it identifies barriers to sustaining gi production and highlights opportunities to boost household incomes through certification. aligned with the sustainable development goals, the findings offer insights for refining policies and strategies in thailand and other developing countries, especially in the asean region. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5367 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: kamthonkiat, d. (2025). management of gi-certified agricultural products and their contribution to household income in rural thailand. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 121–133. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 121-133 mailto:daroonwan.k@arts.tu.ac.th https://www.doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5367 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 121-133 122 1. introduction geographic indications (gis) became more well-known internationally in the twentieth century. in 1995, the world trade organization (wto) trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (trips) agreement included gis (article 22), which was a significant milestone. the trips agreement requires member nations to recognize and protect gis as part of the larger framework of intellectual property rights. gis are especially important for agricultural products since their characteristics—whether soil quality, climate conditions, or traditional farming methods—are frequently inextricably linked to the location where they are produced. gis depend on this link between the product and its origin, which indicates that the product has unique qualities that cannot be replicated again. gis are currently incorporated into many countries' intellectual property regimes, particularly in agricultural and food-related industries in the european union (eu), and are spreading globally (moschini, menapace, & pick, 2008; world intellectual property organization (wipo), 2021). several researchers used literature reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and statistical models to examine the effects of gis on rural and economic development (cei, defrancesco, & stefani, 2018; de filippis, giua, salvatici, & vaquero-piñeiro, 2022; li, ban, ge, qi, & fan, 2024; török, jantyik, maró, & moir, 2020; yin et al., 2024) the relationship between gi products and incomes was first investigated in the european union (eu) for wine, cheese, and olives (crescenzi, de filippis, giua, & vaquero-piñeiro, 2022; poetschki, peerlings, & dries, 2021) and then expanded to other regions and certified crops such as fruit crops, rice, coffee, beans, and so on (dogan, 2024; ingole, kumar, jadhav, & kulkarni, 2023; petruang & napasintuwong, 2022). many articles have found that gis have a favorable impact on the environment and consequently on sustainable development (cardoso, lourenzani, caldas, bernardo, & bernardo, 2022; eliasson, 2022; ingole et al., 2023; li et al., 2024; sgroi, 2021; ty & devaraja, 2024). although the issues that farmers and local communities confront in managing gis, as well as the complexity of marketing products in local and global markets, have been investigated, research in developing nations has been limited. gi registration in asean countries has increased dramatically over the last decade, and it is becoming increasingly significant in the context of international trade and local sustainability, particularly in thailand, which has built its own gi systems (world intellectual property organization (wipo), 2023). as with research in other parts of the world, many studies on gis in asean focus on legislation, marketing, or consumer attitudes, with few emphasizing the real -world issues faced by producers (bramley & bienabe, 2012; datta, manchikanti, & bhattacharya, 2024; delphine, 2020; european union intellectual property office (euipo), 2019; ha, 2017; hanh, anh, van tuan, & hai, 2021; ngokkuen & grote, 2013; tianprasit, 2016). examining producers’ perspectives and management practices is vital for understanding the challenges and benefits of gi-certified products. this study investigates the management practices and income contributions of gicertified agricultural products among rural producers with at least five years of experience, including the pre-covid19 period. focusing on raw and processed agricultural commodities marketed for human or animal consumption (food and agriculture organization (fao) & world health organization (who), 2001 ) the research identifies barriers to sustaining gi production and explores opportunities to enhance household incomes through certification. the study supports the sustainable development goals (sdgs) by promoting economic growth and agricultural sustainability (sdg 1: no poverty, sdg 2: zero hunger), sustainable agriculture (sdg 12: responsible consumption and production), and economic empowerment (sdg 8: decent work and economic growth) (united nations, n.d). the findings offer actionable insights for refining policies, trade strategies, and agricul tural development initiatives in thailand while providing broader relevance for other developing countries, particularly in the asean region, facing similar agricultural challenges. 2. materials and methods 2.1. gi-certified product selection this study refers simply to gi-certified products, also known as gi-tagged or gi-labeled products. thailand's gi scheme supports through registration, control system, marketing, and promotion and was initiated by the department of intellectual property (dip) under the ministry of commerce in 2004. eligible categories include agricultural and industrial products, as well as handicrafts (department of intellectual property (dip), 2019). as of july 2024, 206 products across thailand’s 77 provinces were registered, classified into six categories: rice (23 products), foods (41 products), plant fruits and vegetables (pfv, 103 products), silks and cottons (16 products), handicrafts (21 products), and wine and spirits (2 products) (department of intellectual property (dip), 2024). agricultural products— comprising rice, foods, and pfv—are the most economically impactful. this study identified 92 agricultural gi products registered before 2018, using records from the department of intellectual property (dip). ethical approval was obtained from the human research ethics committee of the institute (reference id: 091/2564). contact information for certified producers was collected from provincial commerce and agriculture offices. a purposive sampling method, in consultation with local experts, was used to select producers with significant experience in managing gi products. selection criteria included involvement in gi production during normal conditions (precovid-19), throughout the pandemic (2020–2022), and during periods of climate variability. one certified producer per gi product was targeted, aiming to cover at least 50% of the registered products across all thai regions. data collection focused on annual production and sales cycles, as well as the contribution of gi products to household income, with updates reflecting conditions as of 2023. 2.2. data collection this study employed a mixed-methods approach, integrating quantitative surveys with qualitative interviews and field observations to provide a comprehensive understanding of the management of gi-certified agricultural products. data were collected from rural producers who had been involved with gi certification for at least five years, including the period before the covid-19 pandemic. ethical approval for the study was obtained from the institutional ethics committee in 2021. due to restrictions during the covid-19 pandemic, data collection was adapted to include online asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 121-133 123 and phone interviews. field surveys were conducted at production sites when travel restrictions were lifted, with data collection spanning from 2021 to 2023. semi-structured, in-depth interviews were used to capture personal experiences, challenges, and benefits associated with gi certification. quantitative data included measurable household income levels and production and sales cycles (p-s), while qualitative data provided insights into producers' perspectives. the provincial administrative boundaries of thailand (scale 1:50,000) from the ministry of interior were utilized to map production sites and the number of production and sales cycles (px-sx). these geospatial data supported the visualization of production patterns and their regional distribution. 2.3. data analysis descriptive statistics were applied to summarize household income derived from gi-certified products and the number of production and sales cycles. the income levels earned by producers from their gi products were categorized into four groups: ● low level: households where 25% or less of their total income is derived from gi-certified products. ● medium level: households where 26% to 50% of their total income is derived from gi-certified products. ● high level: households where 51% to 75% of their total income is derived from gi-certified products. ● maximum level: households where 76% to 100% of their total income is derived from gi-certified products. this classification provides insights into the distribution of income derived from gi products across the three product groups: rice, foods, and plant fruits and vegetables (pfv). a chi-square test for independence (nonparametric test) was used to examine the statistical association between income levels and product groups: ● null hypothesis (h₀): there is no significant association between income levels and product groups. ● alternative hypothesis (h₁): there is a significant association between income levels and product groups. for gi management, the number of production and sales cycles per year (px-sx), as reported by producers and observed during field visits, was categorized. a chi-square test for independence was also applied to determine whether the distribution of income groups differed significantly across gi management practices: ● null hypothesis (h₀): there is no significant association between income levels and gi management (px-sx). ● alternative hypothesis (h₁): there is a significant association between income levels and gi management (px-sx). the goal of these statistical studies is to find out if there are big differences in how income is distributed between product groups and gi management practices. if there are, that would tell us a lot about how gi certification affects the economy and how long it lasts. to ascertain the relationship between two variables, apply the chi-square test of independence using the following steps and equations (turney, 2023): step 1: create a contingency table and calculate expected frequencies a contingency table is constructed to display the observed frequencies of the two variables. the expected frequencies (e) are calculated using the following formula: 𝐸 = (𝑟𝑜𝑤 𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙) ×(𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙) 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 (1) step 2: calculate the chi-square statistic the chi-square statistic (𝑋2 ) is computed using pearson’s chi-square formula: 𝑋2 = σ (𝑂−𝐸)2 𝐸 (2) where: o 𝑋2: chi-square test statistic. o σ: summation operator (indicating “sum of”). o o: observed frequency. o e: expected frequency. step 3: calculate the critical value (cv). to calculate the critical value (cv), two parameters are required: ● degree of freedom (df): df = (number of variable 1 group 1) x (number of variable 2 groups 1) ● significance level (α): typically set at 0.05. step 4: compare the chi-square statistic to the critical value (cv) and make a decision. ● if the chi-square value (𝑋2 ) is greater than the cv, mean the difference between the observed and expected distributions is statistically significant, and the null hypothesis (h₀) is rejected, indicating a relationship between the variables. ● if 𝑋2 is less than the cv, the difference is not statistically significant, and the null hypothesis is not rejected. in addition, the p-value is calculated to assess probability of the observed data occurring under the null hypothesis. ● if p < α, reject the null hypothesis. ● if p > α, fail to reject the null hypothesis. the chi-square test results are reported in the following format: 𝑋2 (degrees of freedom, n = sample size) = chi-square value, p = p-value). only issues brought up by at least 30% of the producers will be shown in order to find out what they think about the reputation and public awareness of their gi products, as well as the problems and issues that come with the https://www.scribbr.com/statistics/p-value/ https://www.scribbr.com/statistics/p-value/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 121-133 124 development of agricultural gi products. the levels of barriers or problems are classified into four categories: none (no barriers identified), low (minimal impact), medium (moderate impact), and high (significant impact). this research method made sure that both numerical trends and subjective experiences were carefully looked at. this gave us a deeper understanding of the pros, cons, opportunities, and results of gi certification for thai rural producers. 3. results based on the interviews and field visits to gi production sites, the results are presented in three parts: ● gi management: this section focuses on the number of production and sales cycles for each product group, distributed across various regions of thailand. ● contribution to household income: the analysis examines the contribution of gi products to household income and assesses the statistical association between income levels and product groups, as well as gi management practices, using the chi-square test of independence. ● producers’ perspectives: a summary of producers’ views on the public awareness of their gi products, along with the barriers and challenges they face in developing their gi-certified agricultural products, is provided. 3.1. gi management this study assessed gi management by examining the average number of production and sales cycles (px-sx) per year, as reported by producers and observed in the field. a total of 77 agricultural gi-certified products/producers were analyzed, representing approximately 83% of the 92 products registered and protected prior to the covid-19 pandemic. the production sites were distributed across all regions of thailand as follows: 23 products originated in the central (c) region, 13 in the north (n), 12 in the northeast (ne), 7 in the east (e), 15 in the south (s), and 7 in the west (w). figure 1 categorizes the observed products into three groups—rice, foods, and plant fruits and vegetables (pfv)—with their distribution by region detailed below: ● rice products (10) o regional distribution: 5 in ne, 2 in n, 2 in s, and 1 in c. o notable examples include thung kula rong-hai thai hom mali rice (a soft, fragrant jasmine rice grown in northeastern thailand) and sangyod muang phatthalung rice (a soft, aromatic brown rice from phatthalung province, southern thailand). both products are protected or registered in the european union (eu) and multiple asian countries. ● food products (15) o regional distribution: 3 in c, 3 in n, 3 in ne, 3 in s, and 3 in w. o notable examples include doi tung coffee (grown at 800–1,200 meters above sea level in chiang rai province under the doi tung development project) and doi chang coffee (grown at 1,000–1,200 meters above sea level in doi chang village, chiang rai province). both coffees are protected or registered in the eu and several asian countries. ● plant fruits and vegetables (pfv) products (52) o regional distribution: 19 in c, 7 in e, 8 in n, 4 in ne, 10 in s, and 4 in w. o some fruit types were registered multiple times, including 9 durians, 9 pineapples, 7 pomelos, 4 bananas, 4 coconuts, 4 lychees, and 2 mangoes. durian prachin, phetchabun sweet tamarind, ratchaburi aromatic coconut, pakpanang tubtimsiam pomelo, huaymon pineapple, and nam dok mai sakeao mango are some of the gi-labeled pfv products that have been protected or applied for in the eu and asian countries. based on production and sales cycles, this study further categorized gi management patterns into four types: ● p1-s1 (one production/crop per year, one selling period/season): this category includes 25 products, such as 9 durians, 4 lychees, and other fruits like rambutan, longan, orange, and tamarind. ● p2-s2 (two productions/crops per year, two selling periods/seasons): this category includes 19 products, such as 9 pineapples, 7 pomelos, 2 mangoes, and rose apples. ● p1-sm (one production/crop per year, multiple selling periods/seasons): this category includes 15 products, including 10 rainfed rice products and 2 coffee products. ● pm-sm (multiple productions/crops per year, multiple selling periods/seasons): this category includes 18 products, such as 4 bananas, 4 coconuts, and various foods. the interviewed producers were categorized into three age groups: 13 were of middle working age (30 –44 years), 39 were of late working age (45–59 years), and 25 were seniors (60 years and older). in terms of educational attainment, approximately 61% of the producers had education levels below a bachelor’s degree, 34% held a bachelor’s degree, and the remaining producers had education levels higher than a bachelor’s degree. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 121-133 125 figure 1. agricultural gi products and gi management in thailand. 3.2. the contribution of gi products to household income the contribution of gi products to household income, or gi dependency, is detailed in table 1 and summarized as follows: ● low level (19 products) producers in this group exhibit a low dependency on gi products, with income supplemented by various sources. eleven producers earned their living from high-demand fruits, vegetables, rubber, oil palm, and other agricultural products. four producers operated businesses outside the agricultural sector, such as construction or car care. a few were full-time employees with additional income from various agricultural and non-agricultural sources. this group comprised 5 middle-working-age producers (30–44 years), 5 late-working-age producers (45–59 years), and 9 seniors (60 years and older). ● medium level (18 products) about 66% of producers in this group (12 out of 18) earned half of their annual household income from other crops. three producers relied on pensions from government organizations, while the remaining producers were employed outside the agricultural sector. this group included 2 middle-working-age producers, 11 late-working-age producers, and 5 seniors. ● high level (13 products) producers in this group displayed high dependency on gi products, with most earning approximately a quarter of their annual household income from other crops. four producers supplemented their income through non-agricultural activities. this group included 1 middle-working-age producer, 9 late-working-age producers, and 3 seniors. ● maximum level (27 products) producers in this group demonstrated the highest level of gi dependency. however, 20 p roducers experienced market uncertainties and received prices similar to non-gi-tagged products. seven producers (involving 2 pomelos, coffee, durian, pineapple, tea, and beef) reported satisfaction with existing market channels and achieved advantageous market prices. this group comprised 5 middle-working-age producers, 14 late-working-age producers, and 8 seniors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 121-133 126 table 1. levels of household income contribution by gi products and other sources. other sources of income level of household income contributed by gi products total low medium high maximum none 0 0 0 27 27 full-time 3 1 1 0 5 pension 1 3 0 0 4 other crops 11 12 9 0 32 non-agri. business 4 2 3 0 9 sum 19 18 13 27 77 in a study that looked at household income levels and how they related to gi product groups, it was found that most pfv and foods products helped 25 households earn the most money. in contrast, most rice products contributed to household incomes at low to medium levels. the contribution levels were associated with product groups and the production (p) and sales (s) cycles per year, as illustrated in figure 2 and summarized below: ● low dependency (19 products) o rice: 4 p1-sm products. o pfv: 11 products, comprising 7 p1-s1, 3 p2-s2, and 1 pm-sm. o foods: 4 products, comprising 1 p1-sm and 3 pm-sm. ● medium dependency (18 products) o rice: 3 p1-sm products. o pfv: 13 products, comprising 7 p1-s1, 4 p2-s2, and 2 pm-sm. o foods: 2 products, comprising 1 p1-sm and 1 pm-sm. ● high dependency (13 products) o rice: 1 p1-sm product. o pfv: 10 products, comprising 7 p1-s1, 1 p2-s2, and 2 pm-sm. o foods: 2 products, comprising 1 p1-sm and 1 pm-sm. ● maximum dependency (27 products) o rice: 2 p1-sm products. o pfv: 18 products, comprising 4 p1-s1, 11 p2-s2, and 3 pm-sm. o foods: 7 products, comprising 2 p1-sm and 5 pm-sm. among p1-s1 products, an equal number of 7 pfv products contributed to household income at low, medium, and high levels, while 4 pfv products contributed at the maximum level. notably, most durians contributed to household incomes at high to maximum levels. the p1-sm pattern refers to rainfed rice grown once a year. the harvested yields from this pattern were processed and packaged for prolonged sales throughout the year. dependency on rice products within this pattern was primarily at low to medium levels. five food products in the p1-sm category consisted mainly of coffee and beverage items. the p2-s2 pattern was exclusively observed among pfv products. most of the pineapples in this group contributed to household income at a medium level. two pomelo products contributed at a low level, while the remaining pomelo products contributed at the maximum level. the pm-sm pattern included various products, primarily foods such as processed meat, desserts, dried bananas, salted fish, and similar items. this pattern also included some pfv products, such as coconuts, bananas, and vegetables. most of these products contributed to household incomes at maximum and low levels. figure 2. levels of household income contributed by gi products linked with the product groups and management. the statistical tests revealed the following findings: ● association between household income levels and product groups. the chi-square test for independence shows that there is no significant link between the product groups and the amount of household income that gi-certified products contributed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 121-133 127 o test statistics: 𝑋2 (6, n = 77) = 3.92, p = 0.69 o interpretation: the observed variations in income levels across rice, pfv, and foods are not statistically significant. this conclusion is that product group differences do not substantially influence the income dependency levels of households. ● association between household income levels and management. another chi-square test was conducted to examine the relationship between income levels and production/sales cycle management (p-s patterns). o test statistics: 𝑋2 (9, n = 77) = 11.54, p = 0.24 o interpretation: the income levels are not significantly associated with the management patterns. this implies that differences in production and sales cycles do not have a pronounced impact on the level of income derived from gi-certified products. the results show that the amount of household income these products bring in is not greatly affected by the type of gi-certified product or the management. this outcome highlights the need for further investigation into other potential factors that might influence the economic impact of gi products. 3.3. summary of producers' perspectives this section provides insights derived from producers regarding the public's awareness of their gi products' reputation and barriers in managing gi certification. the producers expressed diverse views on how customers perceive the reputation and quality of their gi-certified products: o weak confidence (58%). o a majority of producers (45 producers/products/households) reported weak confidence in their gi product's reputation. o customers were not aware of the quality of gi certification and the factors that set it apart from non-gi products. o producers emphasized that public understanding of the added value of gi-certified products remains limited. ● strong confidence (42%). o a smaller group (32 producers/products) reported strong confidence in their product's reputation. o this group observed that customers recognized and appreciated higher-quality gi products, enabling them to achieve premium prices. o these producers attributed their success to targeted marketing efforts and favourable local or international markets. these findings suggest that the effectiveness of gis is influenced by both the intrinsic characteristics of the product and the specific local context in which it is produced. based on table 2, households that relied heavily or exclusively on gi products for their livelihoods exhibited nearly equal levels of strong and weak confidence in their products' reputations. in contrast, households with low to medium dependence on gi products showed a significant disparity, with weak confidence outweighing strong confidence. rice products, in particular, were consistently associated with weak confidence regarding their reputation, regardless of the level of household dependence on gi products. for households with low to medium reliance on pfv products, weak confidence was also more prevalent than strong confidence. also, households with a high level of dependency were more likely to rate gi foods with weak confidence than with strong confidence. at other levels of dependency, ratings of weak and strong confidence were about the same. table 2. confidence of gi product reputation classified by product groups and level of gi dependency. level of gi dependency product group confidence of product reputation strong weak grand total low rice 1 3 4 pfv 4 7 11 foods 2 2 4 low total 7 12 19 medium rice 0 3 3 pfv 4 9 13 foods 1 1 2 medium total 5 13 18 high rice 0 1 1 pfv 7 3 10 foods 0 2 2 high total 7 6 13 maximum rice 0 2 2 pfv 9 9 18 foods 4 3 7 maximum total 13 14 27 grand total 32 45 77 among the 25% of households with low reliance on gi products, over 60% expressed weak confidence in their products' reputations. of these, approximately half of the weak confidence ratings were associated with pfv products, a quarter with rice products, and 17% with food products, as illustrated in figure 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 121-133 128 figure 3. confidence on gi products reputation in a group of low dependency. the barriers encountered by at least 30% of producers in managing gi products are presented and categorized by product groups as percentages, as shown in figure 4. figure 4. barriers of gi management. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 121-133 129 two significant barriers to gi product management, reported by more than 50% of producers, are summarized below: ● limited market places (approximately 79%, or 61 producers). despite the availability of gi markets, gi festivals, and specific product festivals (e.g., for coffee, rice, and durians) organized annually in the bangkok metropolitan area and select economic provinces, these events were often insufficient to address the needs of diverse gi products and producers, particularly those from remote rural areas. the department of intellectual property (dip), the ministry of commerce, and other relevant government and private sectors typically collaborated to organize these events. however, producers frequently cited limited marketpl aces as a critical barrier to effective gi management. the timing and spatial constraints of these events often failed to accommodate the variety of gi products and producers. producers who sold their products in non-specific markets faced challenges in realizing the premium pricing advantage associated with gi products. figure 5 illustrates the relationship between levels of gi dependency and the barriers to gi management. a high level of barriers was evident among pfv products, contributing to household incomes at medium to maximum levels (18 products). many pfv producers reported difficulties participating in organized markets, as the events often did not align with their harvest periods, leaving them without products to sell. others chose not to attend events located far from production sites due to the prohibitive costs of travel and accommodation. furthermore, web -based marketing was not a viable option for many senior producers (over 60 years old), who were unfamiliar with such platforms. high barriers were also reported for rice and food products across all levels of dependency. conversely, 16 pfv and food products were not affected by these challenges ("none" category). figure 5. levels of gi dependency and barrier market places. ● climate variability (approximately 68%, or 52 producers). many production areas reported experiencing climate variability during the observation period, including droughts, floods, windstorms, and extreme weather. these conditions created significant challenges in maintaining the gi quality of products and adversely affected the fertility of production sites. more than half of the producers indicated that the frequency of climate variability had increased over the past decade. in response, additional water sources were established in large-scale production areas of high-economic-value products such as rice, durians, pomelos, mangoes, and oranges. despite these efforts, climate variability severely impacted pfv products at medium and maximum levels across all dependencies. similarly, a high level of impact was reported for rice products with medium and high dependency levels. conversely, 60% of food products, 30% of rice products, and 25% of pfv products were unaffected by climate variability, as shown in figure 6. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 121-133 130 figure 6. levels of gi dependency and barrier – climate variability. among the barriers mentioned by 30–50% of producers, two were rated equally by approximately 49% of producers: packaging and labour. these barriers are summarized below: ● non-attractive packaging (reported by 49%, or 38 producers). this issue had a medium to high impact, particularly on 46% of food products that contributed to household incomes at low, medium, and maximum levels. while about half of the food products were satisfied with their current packaging, which required considerable investment in terms of budget and time for development, significant challenges remained for other products. approximately 53% of pfv products did not prioritize packaging development, as these products were primarily sold wholesale to middlemen and rural markets. producers relying on pfv products, such as pineapples, coconuts, durians, and pomelos, at medium and maximum dependency levels faced considerable difficulties in creating premium and durable packaging. this was especially true for thin-skinned fruits like mangoes, which required specialized protective packaging. similarly, rice products across low to high dependency levels expressed a desire to enhance their packaging with more attractive designs and origin-specific information to meet market expectations. ● lack of labor (reported by approximately 49%, or 38 producers). labor shortages were reported mostly at medium to high levels of severity among nine maximum-dependency products (seven pfv, one rice, and one food product), followed by six medium-dependency products and four products each at high and low dependency levels. in contrast, half of the producers did not experience labour shortages, as their production relied on household members and local labourers within the same villages. additionally, many unemployed villagers who had formerly worked outside their hometowns returned home during the covid-19 pandemic, providing additional labour after numerous business closures caused by disease control measures. producers of maximumdependency products expressed greater concerns about labour shortages compared to those with lower dependency levels. the latter group instead focused on controlling production volume and budget during the pandemic and associated disease control measures. ● insufficient product supply (reported by approximately 46%, or 36 producers). this issue was reported at medium to high levels across all dependency groups, with the highest severity observed in low-dependency products and less impact on maximum-dependency products. in the low-dependency group, production of gi products was limited, as producers relied on other income sources for their livelihoods. for higherdependency products, insufficient gi-standard products were often attributed to the increasingly variable climate in recent years. additionally, some producers prioritized household capacities—operating within fixed budgets and limited household labour—over investing in larger-scale production to meet growing market demand. the medium to high severity of this issue was noted for 19 pfv products, six food products, and two rice products. importantly, the problem of insufficient product supply in this study encompassed not only the quantity but also the quality and compliance with gi standards. ● product transfiguration (reported by approximately 33%, or 26 producers). concerns about product transfiguration to add value and expand market channels were reported by 50% of rice products, 32% of pfv products, and 20% of food products. the issue was most severe among eight medium-dependency products (three rice and five pfv products) and four maximum-dependency products (all pfv). producers identified the need for transfiguration techniques and ideas to enhance product value and extend shelf life. those who were not benefiting from advantageous market prices or had produced a surplus exceeding market demand particularly emphasized this idea, most producers in this group prioritized strengthening household income over adhering strictly asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 121-133 131 to the specific framework of their gi-tagged products. this approach reflected a focus on flexibility and adaptability to maximize economic benefits. ● lack of inheritors (reported by approximately 32%, or 25 producers). concerns about the lack of inheritors were reported for 17 products (four rice, 10 pfv, and three food products) at medium to high levels of severity. when considering the dependency levels, two maximum-dependency products (pfv: pomelo and coconut), two high-dependency products, six medium-dependency products, and seven lowdependency products were affected. four rice products from the northeastern region of thailand were particularly impacted by the lack of inheritors to manage future production. two of these products were low-dependency (aromatic rice from ubon ratchathani province and germinated brown rice from sakon nakhon province), and two were medium-dependency (aromatic rice from surin province and sticky rice from kalasin province). in general, gi products are derived from good agricultural practices or specific production wisdom. however, many of the gi products in this group were managed by senior generations, creating a critical concern regarding the availability of inheritors to ensure continuity in management. of the 25 producers who reported concerns about this issue, 13 were senior producers (over 60 years old), 9 were in the late working age range (45–59 years old), and 3 were in the middle working age range (30– 44 years old). ● lack of investment (reported by approximately 31%, or 24 producers). reports raised concerns about capital shortages for six rise products and food products, with varying degrees of severity. when considering the dependency levels, four products were low-dependency, seven were mediumdependency, and five were maximum-dependency (including two bananas, one rice, one coconut, and one food product). most producers in this group reported a need for capital to support various activities, including value -added processes (such as product transfiguration and packaging) and the development of production areas (e.g., levelling, zoning, and irrigation systems). the most significant products in this group were rice, bananas, and pineapples. it was also observed that a lack of market channels and the impact of climate variability contributed to additional challenges in managing gi products. 4. discussion geographical indications (gis) provide significant benefits to producers, including enhanced market access, price premiums, and positive impacts on economic and rural development. this has been established by several studies, such as those by li et al. (2024); yin et al. (2024); de filippis et al. (2022); török et al. (2020) and cei et al. (2018). research by crescenzi et al. (2022); poetschki et al. (2021); dogan (2024); ingole et al. (2023) and petruang and napasintuwong (2022) has primarily focused on geographically specific products such as gi-certified wine, cheese, olives, rice, coffee, beans, and various fruits. these studies often rely on statistical data and economic benchmarks at regional or national levels, employing systematic review methods and models to analyze outcomes. however, these prior studies often overlook ground-level insights from rural producers and the diversity of gi products. this study sought to address this gap by examining the experiences of gi-certified producers managing agricultural products—specifically rice, plant fruits and vegetables (pfv), and food products—across thailand. the analysis included producers engaged in gi product management before the covid-19 pandemic, during the restrictive measures imposed by the pandemic, and within the "new normal" routines, as well as those grappling with the effects of recent climate variability. the study focused on contemporary management practices, including production and sales cycles and the contribution of gi products to household incomes over the past year. additionally, it explored alternative income sources and the barriers to effective gi management as perceived by the producers. although the scope of this study differs from that of previous research, several findings align with the existing literature. most producers expressed limited confidence in their products' reputations and reported that gi-certified products did not offer substantial benefits compared to their non-gi-certified counterparts. this finding suggests that the effectiveness of gis is highly contingent on product characteristics and local contexts. for example, jasmine rice from thailand’s northeastern region commands a premium price compared to jasmine rice from other regions, a trend mirrored in the gi registration of sangyod rice in southern thailand. it was found by cei et al. (2018) that producers in gi-designated areas benefit more from farming than those in non-gi areas. this was noted by cultivation compared to non-gi areas. this was noted by petruang and napasintuwong (2022). furthermore, weak product reputation and limited reliance on gi products can be attributed to inadequacies in policies aimed at protecting and promoting certified products and their producers. this observation aligns with the findings of török et al. (2020); cardoso et al. (2022); eliasson (2022) and de filippis et al. (2022) which emphasize the necessity of robust gi policies to achieve positive regional development outcomes. this study also highlighted the practice of integrating gi production with other income-generating agricultural activities, which contributes positively to household income security. such practices align with the food and agriculture organization’s (fao) principles of sustainable agriculture and several united nations sustainable development goa ls (sdgs). however, while diversification enhances immediate income stability, it does not necessarily ensure the long-term sustainability of gis. despite its contributions, this study focused on a limited range of gi management factors. a more detailed investigation into production practices, technological adoption, investment strategies, and related management aspects would provide more profound insights. furthermore, comprehensive studies on economic impacts, policy frameworks, and associated barriers are essential. future research could adopt a focused approach by examining single products or comparing similar product types, such as pomelos, coconuts, durians, and pineapples. alternatively, studies could encompass all gi-certified product types using systematic methodologies. policymakers and gi-related authorities should prioritize obtaining insights directly from rural producers rather than solely emphasizing an increase in gi registrations. such grassroots perspectives are invaluable for enhancing gi protection systems, strengthening rural economies, and ensuring the sustainability of gi products in thailand and other countries relying on them. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 121-133 132 5. conclusion geographical indications (gis) have shown significant positive impacts on enhancing economic development, promoting soft power, and preserving specific know-how and natural resources, all of which align with the sustainable development goals (sdgs). consequently, gi registration has been actively encouraged in many countries, including thailand. however, feedback and perspectives from producers on the aftermath of gi registration—critical for strengthening gi protection systems—remain limited. this research looked into gi management in terms of the time it takes to make and sells goods (px-sx) and the money that can be made from gi-certified crops in a year. a mixedmethods approach, combining surveys and interviews, was employed. the target group comprised gi-certified producers who had been involved in gi products for at least five years or prior to the covid-19 pandemic. a total of 77 gi-certified producers, representing 77 products across thailand, were interviewed and categorized into three product groups: rice, foods, and plant fruits and vegetables (pfv). the management of these produ cts was classified into four patterns of production and sales: p1-s1, p1-sm, p2-s2, and pm-sm. the contribution of gi products to household income was divided into four levels: low, medium, high, and maximum. seasonal -based products (p1-s1) were most common in the pfv group (e.g., longan, durian, lychee). products with one-time annual production but multiple sales opportunities (p1-sm) were predominantly rice and some food products. products with multiple production and sales cycles within a year (pm-sm) were mostly food products and some pfv products, while biannual production and sales were limited to certain pfv products, such as pineapples, pomelos, and mangoes. although these management patterns were linked to product types, a chi-square test for independence revealed no correlation between product groups and their contribution to household income. similarly, no significant association was found between income contribution levels and production management patterns. among the 77 producers, those with maximum dependency on gi products were predominantly in the late working age group compared to other generations. additional sources of income, both within and outside the agricultural sector, revealed that producers prioritized income security over the sustainability of their gi products. from the producers’ perspectives, the low or weak reputation of their products in domestic and international markets was a major concern. the main problems with managing gi were found to be limited market access and the effects of changing climates on both quantity and quality of gi products. this study provides a comprehensive overview of the impact of gis on rural household incomes and the sustainability risks associated with their production in thailand. while gis offer numerous advantages and have the potential to foster local economic development, realizing this potential requires careful consideration of factors beyond the gi label itself. the challenges faced by producers, particularly in developing regions, highlight the need for further research and targeted policy interventions to optimize gi benefits. for keeping gi protection systems going and making rural economies stronger, it’s also important for people from production areas to national and regional levels to work together, in both the public and private sectors. funding: this research is supported by research and innovation unit, faculty of liberal arts, thammasat university, thailand (grant number: 3/2565). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of thammasat university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 7 july 2021 (ref. no. 091/2564). transparency: the author states that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. references bramley, c., & bienabe, e. 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(2024). risk management towards performance of agropreneur firm: the case of sustainable environmental in malaysia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3), 102–107. 10.55493/5005.v14i3.5176 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction over the last decade, environmental performance has gained increasing attention, particularly among agropreneurs. today, some of the world's largest organizations are seeking to proactively manage and report on their environmental performance and to partner with or invest in “green enterprise risk management-ready” companies. researchers have identified sustainability as a fundamental technique for mitigating both current and future challenges. organizations' reputations among stakeholders have also improved as a result of sustainable practices. risk management has always pushed firms to establish long-term strategies to avoid future hazards or dangers. the concept of green risk management has been designed to improve the outcomes of risk management. green risk management asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 3 (2024): 102-107. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0504-338x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1046-7304 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1189-0670 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2107-2287 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1282-6163 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 102-107 103 refers to organizational approaches that are both sustainable and preventative against external and internal dangers. green risk management is a current idea for risk mitigation based on sustainable practices. organizations now prioritize environmental maintenance and preservation, implementing green operations to mitigate negative environmental impacts. three things are necessary to become a sustainable agropreneur, learning about the environment, getting outside help and incentives, and having strong internal or altruistic motivation. a small number of farmers have maintained their agropreneurial endeavors for extended periods, and some have not been able to generate adequate revenue as agropreneurs, even with the support of agencies and stakeholders. a crucial indicator of a successful entrepreneur is a company's ability to "live" or "sustain" beyond any kind of engagement and ongoing corporate growth. few studies have examined the relationship between risk management and performance, despite the fact that some researchers have discovered a positive correlation between risk management and performance. consequently, it is clear that this correlation has received minimal attention, particularly when it comes to the supply chains for agri-fresh produce. this necessitates a more theoretically grounded empirical investigation. therefore, the current study empirically investigated the performance of agri-fresh product supply networks and supply chain risk management. risk management is the process of identifying potential hazards, mishaps, or challenges. through risk management, entrepreneurs can implement strategies to prevent, lessen, or manage risk. reducing possible dangers while lessening the impact of potential losses is the primary objective of risk management (de araújo lima, crema, & verbano, 2020). the two methods used to manage risks are the enterprise risk management approach and the conventional risk management strategy, also known as the silo-based approach. according to kadir, naghavi, and subramaniam (2020) the enterprise risk management practices employs a holistic strategy for managing both risks and opportunities concurrently. according to tahir and razali (2011) enterprise risk management is a methodical and comprehensive strategy for managing organizational risks with the goal of creating and optimizing value for stakeholders. it means integrating and managing financial, strategic, operational, and other organizational risks simultaneously. additionally, it helps to identify potential occurrences that could affect the company and its management and make sure that they stay within the parameters of the organization's risk appetite. numerous previous studies (callahan & soileau, 2017; rehman & anwar, 2019) have linked enterprises risk management and sme performance. the development of enterprise risk management was a response to the perceived shortcomings of conventional risk management. rehman and anwar (2019) assert that enterprise risk management can help small and medium-sized enterprises (smes) minimize the significant losses that could follow from a risk management failure. ade, joseph, and francis (2020) who discovered that enterprise risk management affects smes' survival in lagos state, lend support to it. an increasing number of companies are utilizing enterprise risk management because it has been demonstrated to increase a company's value (maruhun, abdullah, atan, & yusuf, 2018). thus, this research proposes the following hypothesis: h1: intangible resources have a relationship with sustainable agropreneur performance. h2: intangible resources have a relationship with enterprise risk of agropreneur firm. h3: green enterprise risk management has a relationship with sustainable firm performance of agropreneur firms. h4: green enterprise risk management mediates the relationship between intangible resources and sustainable firm performance of agropreneur firms. 1.1. problem statement if we exclude factors like actively seeking employment and education from the current statistic, the employment rate for young people in malaysia is considered high. furthermore, employment limitations have lately tightened, and there aren't many job openings. job shortages continue, even in more established sectors as the corporate sector and government (michael, geetha, sarveswaran, jeyaraj, & palanimuthu, 2020). it is critical for the agriculture sector to create an environment that inspires young people to pursue careers in agriculture, as the average age of malaysian farmers is fifty years old. this is especially important since young people from rural areas are moving to cities in search of employment and a more modern way of life. this will likely increase the pressure on the volume of the output. furthermore, although youth have long since left the agricultural sector, it still has a large potential for long-term economic growth. it is necessary to revive their agricultural consciousness and dedication, which they gave up decades ago (kamaruddin, abdullah, & ayob, 2018). above all, there is a compelling need to change the thinking of adolescents so that they perceive agriculture as a viable choice for being self-employed. the government's efforts to revive the agriculture sector are another aspect. it is too early to say whether or not the government's effort to help more youth become more self-sufficient and eventually become agricultural entrepreneurs will succeed. there is a growing proportion of recent graduates without jobs (kadir et al., 2020). this has escalated into a national issue that requires more serious attention. with a current unemployment rate of 12.5%, young people in malaysia make up 45% of the population (department of statistics malaysia, 2021). similarly, a recent poll found that of malaysia's overall population of 32.67 million, 45 percent, or roughly 14.7 million, are young people. this growing youth population has also raised the country's unemployment rate, especially for university graduates. furthermore, the growing concern about youth unemployment and food security has received widespread attention. this topic is critical because it has implications for malaysia's economic growth as well as meeting the world's anticipated population of 9.1 billion people by 2050. malaysia is not an exception to the global impact of the coronavirus illness (covid-19), which has affected food security even before the year 2050. cheng, hail, and yu (2022) assert that the covid-19 epidemic caused the economy to contract by 4.5 percent in 2020, leading to the loss of about 100,000 employment since the implementation of movement control order (mco). due to traffic restrictions and market asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 102-107 104 operations hours under the movement control order (mco), farmers were unable to transport perishable goods, especially to large cities in malaysia, and were consequently compelled to destroy hundreds of tonnes of fruits and vegetables. on the other hand, the inability to transport fish into large city marketplaces compelled fishermen to discard them into the water. the agriculture and food processing industries have both seen disruption and a considerable increase in food waste as a result of all of this. in addition to farmers, fishermen also faced financial difficulties after losing their main source of income, and in 2021, there would be no room for complacency. globally, an additional 135 million people are predicted to experience extreme food insecurity in the first half of 2021. the united nations world food programme (2020) estimates that 265 million people globally could experience food insecurity by the end of 2020 as a result of income loss. for this reason, it is one of the sustainable development goals (sdgs) that helps the world's poorest nations succeed economically. the pandemic’s consequences severely impair households that spend up to 70% of their income on food, particularly those in the lowest 40% of the population. agriculture and food security experts recently claimed that the 2021 budget fails to address long-standing challenges in the country's agriculture sector (rashidi, abdul fatah, & saili, 2021). the malaysian ministry of agriculture and food industries is expected to unveil more target-specific policies and strategies to help accelerate the agriculture sector's transformation into a dynamic, cutting-edge, and globally competitive industry, particularly in the subsector of agricultural entrepreneur development and agro-based processing activities. farmers must also use green innovation that is socially and environmentally responsible to boost productivity. 2. literature review empirical studies on green enterprise risk management rarely emphasize an integrated approach towards strategy research unless it is incorporating with finance and accounting area by appearing mostly in accounting and finance journals instead of management journals. the research in finance and accounting emphasizes tools that apply only to risks with well-defined statistical properties. moreover, the tools offered in finance and accounting research are often mathematically complex, too difficult to understand by most managers, especially in the agriculture sector. an integrated empirical approach by management scholars and risk management is most welcome, especially by relevant work in management on risk, strategic management, organizational change, and other relevant topics. basically, various conceptualizations of green enterprise risk management have led to the unclear articulation of the definition of enterprise risk management itself. to make it simpler, the conceptual roots of enterprise risk management can be categorized into two categories: firstly, from an academic journal, and secondly, from standards setting organizations, industry publications, industry associations, consulting firms, and rating agencies. in contrast to the previous silo approach to risk management, risk management emerged in the late 1990s with the idea that a firm should identify and (where possible) measure all of its risk exposures, including operational and competitive risks, and manage them within a single, unified framework. the word "intangible" refers to something that is not measurable or perceptible. intangible resources, by definition, are considerably harder to define than tangible resources. the balance sheet usually does not cover all of the aspects that are included in intangible resources. according to definitions, intangible resources are "nonphysical factors that contribute to or are employed in creating commodities or delivering services, or that are projected to provide future productive benefits for the individuals or firms that control the use of those factors. assets are defined as the things that a company possesses, while capabilities are defined as the things that the company does. the categories of resources listed and selected for this study were chosen because they are popular among academics and have been mentioned in a wide range of studies, including those in the fields of economics, marketing, strategic management, and general management. this construct was comprised of company reputation, copyrights, culture, reputation for customer service, designs, hrm policies, organizational structure, patents, product reputation, and trademarks. in a simple manner, all the items concerned can be grouped under three different main headings, namely, intellectual property assets, organizational assets and reputation assets. trademarks, copyrights, designs, and patents fall under intellectual property assets, which usually have their own legal protection that enables the firm to create barriers to duplication by its competitors. culture, human resource management policies, and organizational structure fall under organizational assets, which are also able to resist the duplication efforts of competitors as they have high levels of specificity. the reputational asset is the third group under intangible resources, which contained company reputation, customer service reputation, and product reputation. it reflects the credibility and quality of the firm. 2.1. entrepreneurship's use of enterprise risk management research on the importance of enterprise risk management as a connection between business strategy and sme success was done by rehman and anwar (2019).the researcher provided a standardized questionnaire to 327 pakistani smes. it has been demonstrated that enterprise risk management moderates the association between sme performance and business management. furthermore, this study demonstrates that the success of smes is unaffected by corporate risk management. therefore, senior management must take strategic action to implement appropriate and effective corporate risk management strategies, thereby enhancing profitability (rehman & anwar, 2019). in a different study, ade et al. (2020) investigated corporate risk management. the aim of this study is to find out how enterprise risk management techniques affect smes’ ability to thrive in lagos state. a cross-sectional survey was used to collect data from 400 smes in lagos state. descriptive and inferential statistical techniques were then used for analysis. researchers has demonstrated the significant impact of enterprise risk management on the capacity of smes of the respective state. therefore, the researcher suggested using enterprise risk management as a critical asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 102-107 105 business function to help smes prosper. furthermore, in order to force smes to implement enterprise risk management, the government must continue to educate them about its benefits and impose required rules. these earlier studies support the findings of kulathunga, ye, sharma, and weerathunga (2020), who discovered a positive relationship between corporate risk management practices and sme performance. this study by kulathunga et al. (2020) uses enterprise risk management as a mediator between financial literacy and sme performance. managers can create suitable long-term plans and strategies to improve organizational performance by using effective enterprise risk management, which enables them to anticipate the opportunities and difficulties that may come from changes in the global economy (yilmaz & flouris, 2017). previous research by maruhun et al. (2018) demonstrates the extensive exploration of erm by past scholars in various industries. there is not much empirical research that examines the relationship between enterprise risk management and corporate value, according to maruhun et al. (2018). maruhun et al. (2018) created the enterprise risk management index, an effective measurement instrument, to close this gap in enterprise risk management. according to maruhun et al. (2018) enterprise risk management can only be measured using a limited number of suitable and comprehensive dimensions. thus, the researcher developed an enterprise risk management index based on data from a literature analysis. academics and practitioners can use this enterprise risk management index to conduct empirical research and evaluate the maturity level of their organization’s enterprise risk management program (maruhun et al., 2018). although agriculture has the potential to address these issues and reduce youth unemployment, it seems that young people do not favor agriculture. this is likely due to their negative perceptions of the industry, which are centered around its labor-intensive nature, high cost, risk, and vulnerabilities. furthermore, the agriculture sector remains in second place and is considered inferior. it might be because most young people are disinterested in working in agriculture since they think the industry pays poorly and offers little opportunity for advancement (stapa, bakar, & hashim, 2021). due to lower investment compared to other sectors and declining enthusiasm among young workers, many young people are moving to the city and leaving the farm in the care of the senior farmers. furthermore, in order to maintain the industry, this has encouraged the farm's owner to employ foreign workers to work on their property (saili, saili, & hamzah, 2018). metelerkamp, drimie, and biggs (2019) claim that young people don't want to work in the agriculture industry because they think it's a dull field. furthermore, research from other nations has shown that younger farmers have higher occupational mobility, and that leaving farming is a regular move for farmers under the age of thirty. 3. methodology this study collected data using self-administered questionnaires. the factors that were adopted were measured using a total of 37 items, as per galbreath and galvin (2008). the study's data analysis was conducted using smartpls v4.0. following the questionnaire's distribution to the relevant agropreneur firm, 54 respondents were deemed to be authentic. figure 1 depicts the research framework for this study. figure 1. research framework. 4. results and discussion based on their demographic data, the respondents come from a variety of educational backgrounds, according to the distribution. indicating that they have extensive expertise in the agricultural sector and are dependable and capable of providing unbiased survey responses, over 72% of the respondents have over ten years of work experience in the field which is critical to the study’s validity. 4.1. assessment of measurement model convergent validity was demonstrated at the indicator level by all item loadings, which were all more than 0.50 and significant at the 0.01 level (hulland, 1999). the fact that all average variance extracted (ave) values were larger than 0.50 suggests cconvergent validity at the construct level. when each construct's composite reliability (cr) is greater than the 0.7 criterion, the measurement model is said to have sufficient internal consistency and dependability (gefen, straub, & boudreau, 2000). when the reliability coefficient is greater than 0.70, it is considered satisfactory. as a result, the findings show that the internal consistency and reliability of the items used to represent the constructs are good. the outcomes listed above are shown in table 1 as follows: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 102-107 106 table 1. ave and composite reliability. variables intangible resources enterprise risk sustainable performance intangible resources enterprise risk 0.526 sustainable performance 0.503 0.557 as for table 2, the htmt criterion also indicates that the confidence interval does not show the value of 1 on any of the constructs, confirming discriminant validity. table 2. heterotrait-monotrait ratio (htmt). variables cronbach's alpha composite reliability average variance extracted (ave) intangible resources 0.814 0.825 0.524 enterprise risk 0.964 0.972 0.585 sustainable performance 0.803 0.806 0.719 4.2. assessment of structural model according to henseler, ringle, and sinkovics (2009) when a small number of external constructs explain the endogenous construct, moderate or medium r2 values are appropriate. in terms of this study, enterprise risk accounted for 30.5% of the variance in sustainable performance, while intangible resources contributed 23.7% of the variance with r2 = (0.237), which is regarded as moderate. intangible resources have a moderate impact on generating the r2 for enterprise risk, according to the f2 value of 0.311. conversely, a little effect is indicated in the production of the r2 for sustainable performance by the ƒ2 value of 0.194. the model has a medium predictive significance for the performance construct, according to the predictive relevance (q2), which has a value greater than 0. as to the study's findings, intangible resources play a crucial role in elucidating the correlation between intangible resources and risk management associated with entrepreneurship. this validates the findings of razak, pangil, zin, yunus, and asnawi (2016) about the importance of intangible resources on any beneficial enterprise risk management approaches in larger companies. consequently, the t-value of 4.811 indicated that h1 was supported. the structural path coefficient was below the t stat range of 1.521, as indicated in table 3, which means that the theories linking intangible resources to the firm's sustainable performance were not validated. therefor, h2 was disapproved. regarding hypothesis h3, the results indicate that enterprise risks have a noteworthy influence on the long-term success of agribusiness, as indicated by the t value of 3.284. table 3. path coefficients, observed t-statistics, and results for all hypothesized paths. hypothesis path coefficient t-value intangible resources -> enterprise risk 0.487 4.811 ** intangible resources -> sustainable performance 0.208 1.521 enterprise risk -> sustainable performance 0.420 3.284** note: values > 1.645 (p < 0.05); ** t-values > 2.33 (p < 0.01) (one-tailed test). based on table 4, as indicated by preacher and hayes (2008) the significant indirect effects 95% boot ci: [lower level = 0.090, upper level = 0.416] did not straddle a 0 in between, indicating mediation. thus, this testing concluded that enterprise risk had a significant mediation effect between intangible resources and agropreneur sustainable performance relationships. table 4. bootstrapped confidence interval calculation. indirect effect se t-values ll ul 0.205 0.082 2.488 ** 0.090 0.416 note: t-values > 1.645 (p < 0.05); ** t-values > 2.33 (p < 0.01) (one-tailed test). 5. conclusion as previously stated, sustainability is a competitive component in modern enterprises. stakeholders are increasingly interested in businesses that provide better sustainability. green risk management has enabled firms to achieve environmental sustainability; consequently, this green risk management strategy can be regarded as advantageous for modern organizations. green risk management has enabled firms to decrease financial losses by lowering risks and using cost-effective, sustainable alternatives. it has also increased the organizations' profit-making prospects by boosting their reputations among stakeholders. green risk management has helped managers link long-term goals with risk-mitigation measures. as a result, it can be viewed as a timeand cost-effective method of minimizing risks and ensuring sustainability. green risk management has enabled enterprises to assure total protection of both external and internal stakeholders, especially in agriculture sector. environmental performance of an environmental management system can be measured and evaluated based on environmental goals, objectives, and policies from green risk management. controlling environmental elements has a direct impact on environmental performance. environmental performance as a business' operations that directly affect the surrounding natural environment is crucial for agriculture firms. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 102-107 107 funding: this research is supported by universiti teknologi mara, malaysia (grant number: myra-phd 2023/2, 600-rmc/gpm lphd 5/3 (057/2023)). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the universiti teknologi mara, malaysia has granted approval for this study on 1 december 2023 (ref. no. 600-rmc/gpm lphd 5/3 (057/2023)). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to 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(2017). corporate risk management for international business. singapore: springer. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.2478/sbe-2020-0007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adiac.2017.01.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacceco.2022.101544 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2019.06.005 https://www.dosm.gov.my/v1/index.php?r=column/cone&menu_id=nk1jznjbmm1tdmrfs0xatxznanirqt09 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2007.06.009 https://doi.org/10.17705/1cais.00407 https://doi.org/10.1108/s1474-7979(2009)0000020014 https://doi.org/10.1108/s1474-7979(2009)0000020014 https://doi.org/10.1002/(sici)1097-0266(199902)20:2%3c195::aid-smj13%3e3.0.co;2-7 https://doi.org/10.18488/journal.1.2020.1010.583.592 https://doi.org/10.1108/jadee-06-2017-0063 https://doi.org/10.1108/jadee-06-2017-0063 https://doi.org/10.3390/info11060297 https://doi.org/10.6007/ijarbss/v8-i1/3893 https://doi.org/10.1080/03031853.2018.1564680 https://doi.org/10.5005/jp-journals-10046-0152 https://doi.org/10.3758/brm.40.3.879 https://doi.org/10.26656/fr.2017.5(s4).010 https://doi.org/10.1016/s2212-5671(16)30163-0 https://doi.org/10.1080/13215906.2019.1624385 https://doi.org/10.18488/journal.1.2021.1110.490.499 https://doi.org/10.22610/jsds.v1i5.645 https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/wfp-0000115255/download https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/wfp-0000115255/download effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 396 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. market orientation and distribution strategies in poultry agribusiness: evidence from chicken layer farms in nueva ecija jayson garcia juan nueva ecija university of science and technology, philippines.  mmfijgj@gmail.com article history abstract received: 30 april 2025 revised: 28 july 2025 accepted: 11 august 2025 published: 8 september 2025 keywords agricultural marketing strategies chicken layer farms digital marketing distribution channels market orientation poultry agribusiness smallholder farming strategic agribusiness planning supply and demand value chain coordination. this study investigates the strategic market orientation and distribution strategies among registered chicken layer farms in nueva ecija, philippines, amid challenges involving supply-demand gaps, market fluctuations, and evolving consumer behavior. it aims to examine how these farms align their internal strategies with external market dynamics. a descriptive-evaluative quantitative approach was applied. data were collected from all ten registered chicken layer farms across six municipalities using a structured questionnaire based on the market orientation framework. descriptive statistics and weighted mean scoring were used to analyze four dimensions: customer orientation, competitor orientation, interfunctional coordination, and responsiveness. results revealed a persistent supply-demand gap of over 80%, worsened by seasonality, disease outbreaks, and logistical constraints. marketing remains heavily intermediary-driven, with minimal digital platform adoption. while farms show basic responsiveness to market signals, most lack formal systems for feedback, competitor monitoring, and internal coordination. improving marketing performance requires a strategic shift toward structured, data-informed market orientation and diversified distribution. the study highlights the need for stronger policy support, targeted training, and the integration of digital tools to improve efficiency, strengthen competitiveness, and enhance long-term sustainability in poultry agribusiness. contribution/originality: this research examined the market orientation and distribution strategies of chicken layer farms in nueva ecija, philippines. the study describes the market environment, assesses marketing channel utilization, and evaluates market orientation levels, offering strategic recommendations to enhance agribusiness performance. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5565 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: juan, j. g. . (2025). market orientation and distribution strategies in poultry agribusiness: evidence from chicken layer farms in nueva ecija. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 396–405. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5565 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the chicken layer industry has become a vital agricultural sector in the philippines, providing a key source of protein and rural livelihoods. according to the philippine statistics authority, as cited by salvia and valderama (2021), chicken egg production in the philippines reached approximately 605.79 thousand metric tons in 2020, showing a 3.9% increase from the previous year. the province of nueva ecija, dubbed an abundant agricultural area in central luzon, is a key player in egg production and contributes significantly to the country’s national supply (tanquilut et al., 2020). relatively, the challenge of marketing the eggs produced in the province is an evident issue, as farmers have limited knowledge and experience in distribution management and marketing. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 396-405 mailto:mmfijgj@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0009-0006-7729-124x https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5565 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 369-405 397 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. changing demand, unstable prices, and difficulties in getting products to the right markets are common external factors faced by the poultry industry in nueva ecija. the asf outbreak affected poultry production, as many swine farmers shifted to egg production, leading to a drop in farmgate egg prices by 2020 (united broilers raisers association [ubra], as cited in veterinaria digital (2022)). additionally, the increase in feed prices and the occurrence of poultry diseases affected egg production, highlighting the unpredictability of the egg market. many farmers still have a hard time finding better ways to sell their eggs. most small-scale producers depend on middlemen, which often means they earn less than they should from their own products. based on existing studies related to egg production, many developing countries follow a similar practice where egg producers sell through different channels, whether directly from their farms, to wholesalers, or to retailers. this greatly impacts small-scale farmers, who have limited bargaining power within the supply chain (beesabathuni, lingala, & kraemer, 2018). the current market environment and practices highlight the importance of strategic marketing decisions and effective channel utilization to remain competitive and maintain a profitable business. given these circumstances, adopting a strong market orientation has become increasingly important in the poultry industry. based on the definition, market orientation refers to how well a business understands its customers and uses that understanding to meet their needs and deliver real value (butkouskaya & llonch-andreu, 2024). many studies in agribusiness have shown that when farmers or agribusinesses truly understand and respond to their markets, they tend to perform better and adapt more easily to changes (corchuelo martínez-azúa, dias, & sama-berrocal, 2025). to supply what the market actually needs and avoid losses, poultry farms must pay close attention to what their customers want and fully understand the market environment, including the competition. despite this, most available studies focus on large-scale agricultural enterprises, with limited focus on small-scale poultry layer farming (mappigau & amar, 2019). despite their vital role in egg production, small poultry farms in nueva ecija remain underexamined in terms of how they understand and apply market strategies, from gathering market information to adjusting their distribution efforts. this gap highlights the importance of closely studying the marketing practices of local chicken layer farms, as enhancing their market orientation and channel strategies could enable them to respond more effectively to unpredictable demand and increasing competition. therefore, this study on market orientation and distribution strategies in poultry agribusiness aims to understand how chicken layer farms in nueva ecija align their market environment, distribution channels, and internal marketing practices to improve their performance and resilience in a competitive market. specifically, the study examines how chicken layer farms in nueva ecija respond to their market environment by analyzing demand, supply, and existing gaps. it also explores how these farms distribute their products through various channels, including direct selling, wholesale, institutional, and online platforms. additionally, the study investigates the degree of their market orientation, focusing on customer understanding, awareness of competitors, coordination within their operations, and their ability to adapt. collectively, these insights aim to develop practical strategies to enhance the marketing performance of local poultry farms in nueva ecija. 2. materials and methods in order to better understand how chicken layer farms in nueva ecija apply market orientation and utilize different marketing channels, the study employed a descriptive-evaluative quantitative design. this method was chosen because it is widely used in agribusiness and strategic research to examine the marketing practices and market awareness of the chicken layer industry in the province (leitão, paiva, & thomé, 2024). the study was guided by the market orientation framework, which comprises four key areas: customer orientation, competitor awareness, internal coordination, and responsiveness. this framework is often used to assess marketing behavior in agricultural enterprises and small businesses (corchuelo martínez-azúa et al., 2025). the respondents of the research were ten (10) registered commercial chicken layer farms in nueva ecija, verified through the official list provided by the provincial veterinary office and confirmed by the department of agriculture – regional field office iii (da rfo iii). these registered farms are located across six municipalities in nueva ecija, namely: cabiao, san isidro, peñaranda, san leonardo, natividad, and talavera. data collection was conducted in 2024 using a complete enumeration method, allowing the study to capture all relevant respondents and minimize potential sampling bias (food and agriculture organization, 2020). primary data were collected using a structured questionnaire that included likert-scale and multiple-choice items, adapted from multiple validated instruments. the tool was reviewed by agricultural marketing experts to ensure relevance and clarity. descriptive statistics and weighted mean scores were used to analyze the data. inferential statistics were not applied, as the study focused on describing trends rather than testing hypotheses. the findings are specific to registered farms and do not generalize to informal producers outside the scope of the study. 3. results and discussion 3.1. market environment of the chicken layering industry 3.1.1. demand for table eggs this study analyzed the demand environment for table eggs in nueva ecija, focusing on the production and market participation of the ten (10) registered chicken layer farms identified from the official list of the provincial veterinary office. these farms represent the formally recognized segment of the province’s commercial egg supply chain. backyard and unregistered producers, while likely contributing to overall egg output, were excluded from the study’s data collection and analysis. based on data from the philippine statistics authority (2022), nueva ecija had a population of approximately 2.31 million. according to national averages, annual per capita egg consumption in the philippines was 5.27 kilograms per asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 369-405 398 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. person, or about 109 eggs per year (food and agriculture organization, 2021). using this figure, the total annual egg demand in the province is estimated at 221.12 million eggs, or approximately 18.4 million eggs per month. this estimate was validated by interviews with egg retailers, who reported that household consumption habits and purchase frequencies closely align with the national norm. however, field data from the 10 registered farms show that their combined production capacity averages only 3.4 to 3.6 million eggs per month, covering roughly 18% of the estimated monthly demand in the province. the situation is further highlighted in table 1, which compares monthly supply and demand based solely on these farms’ production. the gap exceeds 80% across all months and peaks during high-demand seasons such as august and september. table 1. 2022 comparative average monthly supply and demand for eggs in local and regional markets (registered farms only). month local supply (pcs) local demand* (pcs) local % gap regional supply (pcs) regional demand** (pcs) regional % gap january 3,442,500 18,400,000 81.29% 68,850 99,000,000 99.93% february 3,523,500 18,400,000 80.84% 70,470 99,000,000 99.93% march 3,321,000 18,400,000 81.95% 66,420 99,000,000 99.93% april 3,118,500 16,800,000 81.44% 68,850 88,000,000 99.92% may 3,159,000 16,800,000 81.21% 64,800 88,000,000 99.93% june 3,483,000 20,200,000 82.76% 72,090 110,000,000 99.93% july 3,442,500 20,200,000 82.95% 70,470 110,000,000 99.94% august 3,523,500 21,800,000 83.84% 68,850 120,000,000 99.94% september 3,564,000 21,800,000 83.64% 71,280 120,000,000 99.94% october 3,523,500 18,400,000 80.84% 72,090 99,000,000 99.93% november 3,604,500 18,400,000 80.41% 68,850 99,000,000 99.93% december 3,564,000 18,400,000 80.64% 70,470 99,000,000 99.93% note: * based on 2.31m population × 109 eggs/year ÷ 12. ** provided for comparison; only one farm serves regional markets. while only one farm caters to buyers outside the province, regional demand is included for comparison. monthly demand across the region exceeds 99 million eggs, yet the registered farms of nueva ecija contribute less than 0.1%, highlighting their limited market reach. to better understand what drives consumption patterns locally, the study also assessed the perceived factors influencing egg demand using kendall’s coefficient of concordance (w = 0.60), indicating moderate agreement among the 10 farmers. as shown in table 2, season of the year emerged as the top-ranked factor, reinforcing the observed demand peaks from august through december. table 2. factors influencing the demand for eggs in nueva ecija. factors mean rank final rank season of the year 1.63 1st trader-related issues 2.25 2nd household income 3.38 3rd price of egg 3.13 4th quality of egg 4.63 5th note: diagnostic: kendall’s w = 0.60; chi-square = 23.92; df = 4; n = 10 (registered farms). beyond seasonality, trader-related concerns, such as delayed payments or unstable purchase volumes, were cited as affecting consumer availability and farm-level planning. household income was the third most influential factor, aligning with poverty data from the department of social welfare and development field office iii (2022), which reported that nueva ecija had the highest number of poor households in central luzon, totaling 76,691, or 28.35% of the region's identified poor households. for a family of six, regular egg consumption could cost up to ₱1,800 per month, posing affordability issues despite eggs being a staple food. while egg price and quality ranked lower, they still reflect changing consumer preferences, particularly among higher-income or urban households who are beginning to favor “value-added” or branded egg products. however, for the majority of rural consumers, pricing remains the top consideration. the ten registered chicken layer farms in nueva ecija play an essential role in supplying the province’s table egg needs but are currently unable to meet more than one-fifth of the estimated monthly demand. the shortfall, which exceeds 80%, is especially pronounced during seasonal spikes in consumption. these findings demonstrate the urgent need for strategic interventions in production planning, market coordination, and consumer-oriented marketing strategies to support both producers and end-users more effectively. 3.1.2. supply capacity of registered chicken layer farms in nueva ecija the supply capacity of chicken layer farms in nueva ecija, focusing exclusively on the ten (10) registered farms listed by the department of agriculture–nueva ecija, reveals limited flexibility in adjusting to seasonal market fluctuations. monthly egg output remains generally constant, averaging 3.1 to 3.6 million eggs, despite observable peaks in consumer demand during certain months. this suggests that egg production in these farms is not demand-driven but instead shaped by biological, environmental, and infrastructural constraints. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 369-405 399 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. as shown in figure 1, the lowest production months were recorded during the summer season march (3.32m), april (3.12m), and may (3.16m). these drops correspond with increased heat stress, which has been shown to significantly reduce feed intake and egg production in laying hens (kim, ryu, lee, cho, & kang, 2024). figure 1. monthly egg supply from registered chicken layer farms in nueva ecija. beyond seasonal variation, deeper insight into production capacity was gathered by analyzing internal and external factors affecting supply. internal factors ranked by farmers using a modified likert-kendall scale are shown in table 3. feed quality and nutrition emerged as the most significant constraints, followed by stress, chick quality, sanitation, and farm facilities. table 3. internal factors affecting the egg production of chicken layers. internal factors mean rank final rank quality of feeds/nutrition 1.16 1st stress 1.20 2nd quality of chicks 2.25 3rd sanitation 3.20 4th quality of facilities 3.50 5th note: kendall’s w = 0.74; χ² = 29.68; df = 4; m = 10. feed formulation in the philippines heavily relies on locally available ingredients, including corn, rice bran, fishmeal, and copra meal. however, rising input costs have led some feed suppliers to reformulate feeds, which negatively impacts egg-laying performance (pelonia, 2025). stress from high temperatures, noise, and handling was cited as another critical constraint, particularly in farms using open-sided poultry houses. chick quality, although improving, remains inconsistent, especially for farms managing their own breeder operations. sanitation and infrastructure, while less immediate, contribute to chronic issues such as water contamination and inefficient airflow, both of which reduce production potential (ravić et al., 2024). the study also explored external factors limiting supply capacity (table 4). consistent with the internal findings, temperature and weather variability ranked highest, particularly in relation to climate change’s effects on ventilation and heat control. table 4. external factors affecting the egg production of chicken layers. external factors mean rank final rank temperature/weather 0.88 1st diseases/parasites 1.78 2nd logistics 1.91 3rd natural calamities 3.07 4th regulations 3.63 5th note: kendall’s w = 0.74; χ² = 29.44; df = 4; m = 10. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 369-405 400 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. layer houses in nueva ecija still largely rely on traditional, non-automated systems, leaving them vulnerable to heat stress even during short-term weather shifts. only a few farms use tunnel-ventilated housing, and even these encounter operational difficulties during high-heat months (ancog et al., 2023). biosecurity remains a top concern, with many farmers citing the 2017 avian influenza outbreak in nueva ecija as a critical turning point. this event led to culling, public panic, and provincial restrictions on poultry movement, weakening production capacity and investment confidence. disease control remains under-resourced, especially in small and medium-scale farms (salvador et al., 2020). other key constraints include logistics and land zoning issues, with some farmers reporting de facto eviction from established farms due to urban encroachment and lack of local policies protecting agricultural zones. the effects of natural calamities, such as typhoon karding in 2022, were also noted, with farmers from cabiao and peñaranda confirming infrastructure losses and capital depletion that permanently reduced their egg output. regulatory requirements ranked last among the external factors affecting egg production in chicken layer farms. based on interviews with the enterprises, these challenges.are related to post-pandemic support and lgu permitting, which discourage them from starting or rebuilding their poultry businesses (gonzález‐fernández, tortora perez, garcia flores, aguilar setien, & ramirez alvarez, 2020). despite stable production levels, registered chicken layer farms in nueva ecija continue to operate below their full potential. this is hindered by multiple challenges such as extreme temperatures, disease threats, poor feed quality, and limited regulatory support, all of which make them vulnerable and less competitive in the market environment. based on the data gathered, these farms collectively produce an average of 3.4 million eggs each month, but their output lacks adaptability. therefore, well-coordinated solutions are needed, ranging from improved land use policies and stronger infrastructure to affordable, high-quality feeds and more reliable disease prevention measures (mohamed, 2024). 3.1.3. demand and supply gap in the chicken layering industry of nueva ecija as shown in table 1, there remains a wide and persistent gap between supply and demand in nueva ecija. the ten registered chicken layer farms collectively produce only around 3.1 to 3.6 million eggs each month, while local demand can.reach as high as 21.8 million, especially during peak months like august to december. this means that, on average, more than 80% of the province’s egg demand isn’t being met, leaving a significant shortfall that continues throughout the year. figure 2. estimated demand-supply gap for table eggs in nueva ecija (2019–2024). the figure illustrates how the supply from the ten registered chicken layer farms has consistently fallen short of the growing demand for eggs in the province of nueva ecija. moreover, it also reflects the significant years when the industry experienced instability. this occurred during an oversupply between 2021 and 2022, and then shortages in 2023 to 2024 due to avian influenza outbreaks. despite this gap, fluctuations in actual market dynamics occur due to shifting.industry behaviors, disease outbreaks, and broader economic factors. interviews with key informants from nueva ecija’s veterinary and agriculture offices reveal that in late 2020, egg production surged after african swine fever (asf) decimated local hog operations. many hog raisers pivoted to poultry, including layers, resulting in a temporary oversupply, particularly during the early recovery phase of the covid-19 pandemic (united states department of agriculture, 2021). however, this increase in supply did not coincide with immediate.recovery in demand, especially from the hotel, restaurant, and catering (horeca) sector, which remained stagnant until late 2023 (gomes, malheiros, campos, & lima santos, 2022). as a result, a period of overproduction and suppressed prices occurred. interviews confirmed that production costs exceeded market prices during this time, rendering many producers unprofitable, despite high output. this pattern was reversed during late 2023 to early 2024, when avian influenza outbreaks forced mass culling in key poultry zones, including nueva ecija. according to the philippine.egg board, nearly 2.5 million chicks were culled in the province, contributing to sharp production losses. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 369-405 401 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the resulting supply interruption occurred concurrently with seasonal demand spikes during the holidays, driving up egg prices. retail price monitoring conducted by the department of agriculture (da) in december 2022 found medium-sized eggs priced at ₱9.50 per piece, with some consumers opting for smaller “peewee” eggs priced at ₱7 (united states department of agriculture, 2021). these observations show that although registered farms are generally unable to meet baseline demand, the demand-supply gap is not a static issue. biosecurity incidents, rising feed costs, fluctuating investment trends, and the way consumer preferences continue to evolve are some of the factors that influence these changes. figure 2 reflects how supply and demand have moved over the years (2019–2024). the philippine government introduced multiple programs to respond to the long-term impact of the african swine fever (asf) outbreak on communities that relied heavily on livestock. the egg machine program was created to provide support to smallholder farmers who . were shifting from swine to poultry production, with the goal of helping them start or expand their layer farms and rebuild their livelihoods (department of agriculture, 2022). as reflected and confirmed by the farm enterprise, the demand-supply gap in nueva ecija's chicken layering industry is due to multiple problems such as limited farm capacity, disease vulnerabilities, and inconsistent recovery of commercial demand. although registered farms contribute consistently, their current scale cannot meet the province’s growing needs. in order to address these challenges, strategies related to disease control, increased investment in farm capacity, and more responsive marketing approaches are essential and should be implemented by chicken layer farm enterprises with the support of government agencies. the department of agriculture (da), as the lead agency for agriculture, has already introduced interventions to support the chicken layer industry. 3.2. distribution practices of chicken layer farms in nueva ecija egg distribution in nueva ecija is characterized by a relatively unregulated and flexible system that allows most chicken layer farms, particularly the 10 registered farms studied, to sell directly or through multiple informal channels. most farms do not require permits or certifications to begin selling, except when dealing with larger institutional buyers, where traceability, such as farm id and packing date, is requested. figure 3 illustrates the common distribution flow, where “viajeros” or egg consolidators collect directly from farms and transport to various retailers, markets, or institutional clients. this channel benefits farms by absorbing logistical risks and providing immediate cash flow, particularly for those without in-house transport systems or direct access to markets. figure 3. marketing and distribution channels of chicken layering farms in nueva ecija. source: conceptual framework developed by the researcher (2024). survey findings indicate that all 10 farms utilize multiple marketing channels, but the most common pathway remains wholesaling to travelers, followed by supplying to retail markets, institutional buyers, and to a lesser extent, direct consumer sales. a few farms have started exploring digital platforms such as facebook marketplace or local viber groups, though this remains limited. table 5 details the factors affecting channel choice. price competitiveness ranked highest, with a mean of 1.13, followed by contractual arrangements, distribution logistics, product form, and lastly, promotion. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 369-405 402 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 5. factors affecting the choice of marketing channels of chicken layer farms. factors mean rank final rank price 1.13 1st contractual security 1.53 2nd distribution/place 2.16 3rd product form 2.78 4th promotion 3.66 5th note: kendall’s w = 0.54; χ² = 21.44; df = 4; m = 10. according to the philippine statistics authority (2023) price remains a dominant factor in agricultural markets, with variations between farm-gate and retail prices indicating.potential bargaining practices by retailers. retailers in nueva ecija are known for aggressive price bargaining, often undercutting farm-gate prices. while recommended pricing exists, the absence of formal regulation results in a race-to-the-bottom dynamic, discouraging farmers from selling locally and pushing them to seek markets in pampanga, bulacan, and aurora, where better terms may be offered. contractual arrangements, such as contract farming, are crucial for stabilizing agricultural supply chains and enhancing cooperation.among stakeholders (bekolli, guardiola, & meca, 2023). farms with ongoing deals with bakeshops, restaurants, or grocery stores enjoy stable revenue and reduced spoilage risks, compared to those without fixed buyers. however, contracts remain informal and often non-binding, limiting long-term security. distribution logistics and geographic.proximity significantly influence supply chain viability by enhancing efficiency and responsiveness (international journal of physical distribution & logistics management, 2023). only 3 of the 10 farms deliver daily, while others rely on consolidators or shared transport. farms with direct channels.cite lower delivery costs and faster turnover, while distant farms face high transport overheads and market unpredictability. product form is an emerging concern. as the market segments into value-conscious, health-oriented, and convenience-driven consumers, farms must differentiate their products not just by size but through branding and packaging. however, most farms still offer only basic, unpackaged eggs and are not yet engaged in market-based product development. finally, promotion, especially via digital platforms, remains underutilized. while e-commerce adoption for fresh eggs is rising in urban areas, most farms in nueva ecija remain hesitant or inexperienced in online selling, limiting their access to direct-to-home markets. in nueva ecija, most chicken layer farms still rely on traditional distribution practices, although some farmers have started exploring more modern approaches such as online selling and institutional partnerships. according to one farm owner, many still face difficulties with transportation, product packaging, and promotion, which continue to limit their ability to effectively market their products. given these challenges, shifting toward a more strategic approach, particularly in marketing and distribution, is essential to help local farms improve their market positioning and build more resilient sources of income. 3.3. market orientation of chicken layering farms in nueva ecija this section examines how the ten registered chicken layer farms in nueva ecija understand and apply market orientation in their business operations, focusing on four key areas. • customer orientation. • competitor awareness. • interfunctional coordination. • responsiveness. the data below are gathered based on structured surveys and interviews with farm owners who are formally recognized by the provincial veterinary office of nueva ecija. 3.3.1. customer orientation based on the actual data collection, all ten respondents demonstrated a basic level of knowledge to customer needs, particularly when serving local buyers such as bakeshops, eateries, and sari-sari stores. many farm owners explained that they respond to client needs by modifying delivery schedules and providing a range of egg sizes to suit different buyers. during the interview, one respondent from talavera noted that their farm started supplying medium and peewee-sized eggs to meet the rising demand from budget-conscious consumers during the post-pandemic recovery period. this is an evident example of how farm enterprises in the province adapt to changing consumer behavior. as mentioned by one of the farm enterprises in cabiao, their operations rely heavily on verbal feedback from repeat buyers, often relayed through viajeros. this practice is common across the province and reflects limited knowledge of customer orientation, a lack of structured approaches, and a constrained ability to respond effectively to customer needs. this need is supported by ijomah, nwabekee, agu, and abdul-azeez (2024) where it highlighted that crm tools can strengthen sales and customer loyalty by helping agribusinesses better understand and engage with their customers 3.3.2. competitor orientation competitor knowledge among enterprises in the province is relatively adequate, as they are aware of price changes and possible alternatives to their products. from field visits, a farm in san leonardo shared that they often lose local retailers to more affordable eggs coming from neighboring provinces such as aurora or bulacan. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 369-405 403 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. most farms showed a limited form of competitor orientation, often relying on price matching with viajeros. as nybom, hunter, micheels, and melin (2021) observed, these reactive strategies are typical in highly competitive environments, but they can hinder long-term growth and resilience if not approach in a strategic manner. 3.3.3. interfunctional coordination during data collection, only one poultry farm enterprise reported assigning distinct functional roles for marketing, operations, and financial tasks such as bookkeeping. in contrast, most farms in the province follow a traditional setup, typically operated by family members handling multiple roles within the business. this practice is one of the reasons why growth and adaptability among these enterprises remain limited. relatively, according to one of the farm owner in natividad, eggs in their area are sometimes oversupply because of the poor coordination in the production and marketing that resulted to loss of sales and spoilage of eggs. this is in line with the study by hokmabadi, rezvani, and de matos (2024) which shows the importance of understanding and delegating of roles in every member regardless of the size of the enterprise. 3.3.4. responsiveness in terms of responsiveness among farms, the data gathered shows a moderate level in this aspect. in the interview, one of the farm owners from cabiao shared that they adjusted their target market from institutional buyers to direct household deliveries during the avian influenza scare in 2022. this shows that, in a way, they were able to adapt to technological developments using social media platforms like facebook. araújo, de silva, da gonçalves, and correia (2024) observed that many micro, small medium enterprises (msmes) often rely on their intuition to forecast sales that often lead to frequent errors. the study supported the importance of basing their forecasting decisions on relevant data and having a structured feedback systems in order to have a more informed strategic decisions and minimize inefficiencies in operations. based on the data gathered by the researcher, only two farms declared utilizing online channels to be responsive and up-to-date with their customers' needs. the majority of them have limited digital literacy and lack knowledge in identifying actual or real-time demand, which has caused them to miss opportunities for their business. table 6. summary table of market orientation levels. market orientation dimension high (n=10) moderate low description customer orientation 3 5 2 adjusted egg sizes based on buyer request; no formal tracking competitor orientation 1 4 5 knows competitor prices but lacks benchmarking or analysis inter-functional coordination 2 3 5 family-run, overlapping roles, informal planning responsiveness 4 4 2 switched channels during ai outbreak; slow digital adaptation table 6 presents the market orientation levels of the ten registered chicken layer farms in nueva ecija across four dimensions. customer orientation is generally moderate farms adjust egg sizes based on buyer requests but lack formal tracking systems. competitor orientation is mostly low, as farmers know prevailing prices but do not engage in benchmarking or analysis. inter-functional coordination is also limited due to overlapping roles in family-run operations. responsiveness is relatively stronger, with some farms shifting channels during the avian influenza outbreak, although digital adaptation remains slow. overall, the findings suggest that while farmers respond to market needs, their approaches are largely informal and reactive. improving market orientation will require support in basic market research, competitor monitoring, clearer role assignment, and the use of practical digital tools. 4. conclusion this study explored the marketing environment, distribution channels, and market orientation of the ten registered chicken layer farms in the province of nueva ecija, providing insights into their current practices and potential for growth. despite stable demand and central luzon’s significance in supplying eggs to neighboring provinces, supply constraints, seasonality, and external factors such as disease outbreaks continue to hinder consistent output. findings also reveal that egg marketing in nueva ecija remains largely traditional, relying heavily on intermediaries like viajeros, with minimal use of digital platforms. while farmers demonstrate practical awareness of customer needs and price trends, there is a lack of formal marketing structures and knowledge such as market analysis and cross-functional integration. one of the key interventions needed is to become more strategic by utilizing datadriven forecasting to improve marketing performance. farms need to strengthen their responsiveness to market dynamics, diversify beyond intermediary-dominated channels, and establish sustainable, differentiated market positions. to address these challenges, this study recommends a strategic approach focused on strengthening market orientation. farms must gather regular customer feedback and monitor competitor behavior. building stronger ties with distributors and institutional buyers is necessary, alongside exploring branding and innovative product offerings tailored to market needs. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 369-405 404 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. moving forward, the study recommends exploring tech-based solutions, such as simple forecasting tools and community delivery-matching platforms, to help farms plan better and reach more buyers. these technologies need not be complex; they should be practical and grounded in farmers’ real needs. with further development, they can also serve as potential ip outputs that promote local innovation and digital transformation in poultry agribusiness. overall, this study aims not only to elevate the performance of nueva ecija’s chicken layer farms but also to contribute to broader goals of food security and regional economic stability. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the study involved minimal risk and followed ethical guidelines for social science fieldwork. formal approval from an institutional review board was not required under the policies of nueva ecija university of science and technology. informed verbal consent was obtained from all participants, and all data were anonymized to protect participant confidentiality. transparency: the 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(2022). philippine egg industry update. retrieved from https://www.veterinariadigital.com/en/articulos/philippine-egg-industry-update/ views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://rsso03.psa.gov.ph/sites/default/files/nueva%20ecija%20-%202020%20cph%20household%20population_sr.pdf https://rsso03.psa.gov.ph/sites/default/files/nueva%20ecija%20-%202020%20cph%20household%20population_sr.pdf https://psa.gov.ph/ https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture14050778 https://doi.org/10.3390/vetsci7030107 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2019.104865 https://www.allaboutfeed.net/market/market-trends/philippines-covid-19-asf-constrain-livestock-feed-demand/ https://www.veterinariadigital.com/en/articulos/philippine-egg-industry-update/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 554 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. molecular detection and distribution analysis of papaya ringspot virus-p in north sumatra, indonesia lenny hartati harahapa darma baktib lisnawitac ahmad rafiqi tantawid afaculty of agriculture, universitas sumatera utara, medan, 20155, indonesia. b,cdepartment of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, universitas sumatera utara, medan, 20155, indonesia. ddepartment of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, universitas medan area, medan, 20223, indonesia.  dbakti06@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 30 june 2025 revised: 17 september 2025 accepted: 9 october 2025 published: 19 november 2025 keywords das-elisa molecular diagnostics north sumatra papaya ringspot virus-p rt-pcr seed transmission. the papaya ringspot virus-p (prsv-p) presents a significant threat to papaya cultivation, especially due to inter-island fruit trading, which facilitates its rapid spread. in north sumatra, prsv-p has caused substantial damage to papaya plantations, resulting in decreased fruit yields. this research aimed to elucidate the bio-ecological and molecular characteristics of prsv-p in papaya, emphasizing its potential seedborne transmission route. field assessments were performed in deli serdang, dairi, and pakpak bharat, where symptomatic plants exhibited dark green ring spots on fruits and mosaic patterns on foliage. samples were analyzed with das-elisa, rt-pcr, and nucleotide sequencing, while a synthesized infectious prsv-p clone was manually introduced into juvenile pepper plants to confirm pathogenicity. das-elisa validated infections in leaf and seed specimens, while rt-pcr analysis identified elevated proportions of whole viral genomes. sequence analysis revealed over 99% nucleotide and amino acid identity with prsv-p strains from bali and thailand, signifying a close genetic affinity. the detection of prsv-p in papaya seeds constitutes the initial molecular evidence of seed transmission in north sumatra and indicates a possible method for long-distance dispersal independent of insect vectors or vegetative propagation. these findings highlight the imperative to incorporate molecular diagnostics into monitoring initiatives and to implement effective management techniques, including seed health assessments, creation of resistant cultivars, and stringent phytosanitary protocols. this study underscores the pivotal significance of seed transmission in the epidemiology of prsv-p and its ramifications for sustainable papaya cultivation in indonesia. contribution/originality: the paper’s primary contribution is finding that papaya ringspot virus-p (prsv-p) undergoes seed transmission in north sumatra, demonstrated through molecular characterization for the first time. this novel evidence establishes a critical dispersal route, advancing understanding of prsv-p epidemiology and informing integrated disease management strategies to safeguard papaya cultivation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 554-563 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2597-957x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5247-605x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0002-7196 mailto:dbakti06@yahoo.com https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5723 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 554-563 555 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5723 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: harahap, l. h., bakti, d., lisnawita, l., & tantawi, a. r. (2025). molecular detection and distribution analysis of papaya ringspot virus-p in north sumatra, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 554–563. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5723 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction papaya (carica papaya) is an herbaceous fruit plant in the species caricaceae, native to the central and west regions of america, in the vicinity of mexico and costa rica (sharma, bachheti, sharma, bachheti, & husen, 2020). the reliable papaya, which can even be found in home gardens across indonesia, is affected by soil and environmental conditions (koul et al., 2022). indonesia has bad news for the papaya industry because the production of papaya in indonesia has recorded a decrease since 2010 (fuentes & santamaría, 2013). nevertheless, indonesia was still a major papaya producer among countries such as india, brazil, mexico, and nigeria (alara, abdurahman, & alara, 2022). one of the major problems in papaya cultivation is the papaya ringspot virus-p (prsv-p), a potyvirus that belongs to the family potyviridae (mesta et al., 2023). the first description of prsv-p was made in taiwan during 1975, and it rapidly dispersed, decreasing papaya production from 41,595 tons in 1974 to 18,950 tons in 1977 (bau et al., 2008). production in the philippines declined significantly, from 36,000 tons in 1981 to only 10,000 tons by 1987 (gonsalves et al., 2004); brazilian and indonesian production also decreased. the decline in production is primarily due to erratic weather conditions and pest attacks, resulting in a loss of up to 85–90% due to prsv-p infection (mesta et al., 2023). factors contributing to the spread of plant diseases include cultivation practices, fertilizer use, differing seeds of origin, and diverse planting systems (chavan, tomar, & dhale, 2010). prsv-p is prevalent in tropical and subtropical nations where papaya is grown, particularly across southeast asia (umer et al., 2022). in north sumatra, papaya plays a significant role, with major production zones in deli serdang, langkat, and binjai city, and recent expansion to karo, dairi, and pakpak barat. prsv-p, initially reported in indonesia in aceh in 2011 and in deli serdang, north sumatra, in 2013 (farida, damayanti, efendi, & hidayat, 2022), is now found across sumatra, java, and bali (budiyanti & husada, 2023). prsv-p mainly infects papaya but also has secondary hosts in the cucurbitaceae and chenopodiaceae plant families (datar, 2012). detection and identification of prsv-p can be carried out effectively using serological strategies such as das-elisa and molecular techniques like rt-pcr (joy, johnson, & thara, 2023). the inter-island trade of papayas poses a significant threat for the widespread spread of prsv-p, which has already caused harm and reduced fruit production in north sumatra. the decline in yields results from decreased photosynthetic ability and vigor in infected plants, increasing susceptibility to environmental stresses and leading to higher mortality rates. since commercial antiviral treatments are unavailable, eradication of infected plants remains a primary control measure, although it results in substantial losses. effective disease management strategies, based on a comprehensive understanding of the virus, are essential. although prsv-p is widely reported in indonesia, there appears to be limited scientific evidence of seed transmission in north sumatra. seed-borne infection, if confirmed, could offer a significant pathway for long-distance dissemination and pose a serious challenge for disease control. the present study is the first to report molecular-based detection of prsv-p in papaya seeds from north sumatra. the objectives were to (1) survey the distribution and incidence of prsv-p in major papaya-growing areas, (2) detect prsv-p in leaves and seeds using das-elisa and rt-pcr, and (3) assess the genetic similarity of north sumatran isolates with those from other regions. 2. materials and methods 2.1. selection of sample locations the research was carried out by surveying symptoms and disease occurrence of prsv-p in the field. field surveys were conducted in three regencies (deli serdang, dairi, pakpak bharat). in each regency, three villages with intensive papaya cultivation were purposively selected, and one plantation per village was chosen. table 1 shows locations for sampling papaya plants. table 1. locations for sampling papaya plants. no location of plant sampling papaya variety papaya height 1. deli serdang regency hamparan perak village, hamparan perak district california 23 meters above sea level 2. saentis village, percut sei district sir california 19 meters above sea level 3. patumbak i village, patumbak district california 40 meters above sea level 4. dairi regency lau njuhar village, tanah pinem district california 200 meters above sea level 5. lae parira village, lae parira district dairi regency california 777 meters above sea level asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 554-563 556 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. no location of plant sampling papaya variety papaya height 6. village: sitinjo 1, sitinjo district calina 1080 masl 7. pakpak bharat regency, boang village manalu, salak district thailand 946 meters above sea level 8. siempat rube i village, district sifour rube california 1086 masl 9. kutadame village, royal district california 1090 masl 2.2. observation of symptoms and incidence of prsv-p in the field observations were carried out at nine papaya planting locations, where five plant samples per research location were taken randomly. papaya plants showing symptoms of prsv-p disease were placed in paper bags and stored in a cool box to be taken to the laboratory. this condition helps to keep the plant samples fresh (shivas & beasley, 2005). disease observations in the field are conducted based on symptoms and disease incidence counts. the incidence of papaya ringspot virus-p (prsv-p) is calculated using the following formula: k = n/n x 100% note: k = prsv-p disease incidence (%). n = number of papaya plants attacked by prsv-p. n = number of papaya plants observed (fajinmi, 2011). 2.3. detection of prsv-p using double antibody sandwich enzyme linked immunoassay (das-elisa) method initially, a microplate was prepared by filling each well with 100 µl of prsv-p antibody dissolved in coating buffer at a 1:100 ratio. the plate was covered with aluminum foil, moistened with a paper towel, placed in a plastic container, and incubated overnight at 4ºc. at each study site, samples from five symptomatic papaya plants were collected, including leaves and seeds. the sap was extracted by crushing the samples with general extract buffer (geb) at a 1:10 ratio. the homogenate was centrifuged at 5000 rpm for 5 minutes. plates were washed with pbst, incubated with an enzyme-conjugated secondary antibody (1:100), and developed with pnp substrate (0.5 g in 5 ml buffer). absorbance was measured at 405 nm using an elisa reader (begum, masud, akanda, & miah, 2016). 2.4. prsv-p identification via reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction rt-pcr was carried out using primers oydvkbf and oydvkbr targeting the prsv-p coat protein gene. cycling conditions were: 95°c for 3 min; 35 cycles of 95°c for 30 s, 55°c for 30 s, 72°c for 60 s; final extension 72°c for 10 min. products were run on 1.5% agarose gel stained with ethidium bromide and visualized under uv (mohamed, smith, & lee, 2012). 2.5. nucleotide sequence pcr samples from each location were delivered for genetic sequencing at firstbase laboratories in singapore. the resulting nucleotide sequences underwent comparative analysis with published prsv-p genetic sequences accessible through genbank using basic local alignment search tools (blast). the selected nucleotide data were later modified and inspected for precision using a wide range of alignment applications such as clustalw, bioedit version 7.0.5, and clc genomics workbench version 0.2 (chong et al., 2011). 3. results and discussion 3.1. survey, detection and incidence of papaya ringspot virus – (prsv-p) in papaya plants the survey conducted across nine diverse locations in north sumatra uncovered a significant occurrence of papaya ringspot virus-p (prsv-p) afflicting papaya plants. as highlighted in table 2 and figure 1, the survey results elucidated the pervasive impact of papaya ringspot virus-p (prsv-p) across the varied regions of north sumatra. in all nine sites surveyed, disease incidence diverged notably, with certain areas such as hamparan perak village, saentis village, and patumbak i village in deli serdang regency reporting complete infection rates of 100%, whereas higher altitude locales, including kutadame village in pakpak bharat regency exhibited lower incidence rates of merely 25%. table 2. incidence of papaya ringspot virus-p (prsv-p) in nine surveyed papaya plantations across north sumatra. no regency/subdistrict/village sample papaya garden area number of papaya plants number of plants affected prsv disease incidence in each location altitude (masl) 1. hamparan perak village, hamparan perak district deli serdang regency 2,000 m2 500 500 100% 23 2. saentis village, percut sei tuan district deli serdang regency 2,400 m2 600 600 100% 19 3. patumbak i village, patumbak district, deli serdang regency 2,400 m2 550 550 100% 40 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 554-563 557 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. no regency/subdistrict/village sample papaya garden area number of papaya plants number of plants affected prsv disease incidence in each location altitude (masl) 4. lau njuhar village, tanah pinem district, dairi regency 10,000 m2 12,500 12,500 100% 200 5. lae parira village, lae parira district, dairi regency 5,000 m2 6250 6250 100% 777 6. village: sitinjo 1 sitinjo district, dairi regency 10,000 m2 12,400 12,400 100% 1080 7. boang manalu village, salak district, pakpak bharat regency 2,000 m2 500 200 40 % 946 8. siempat rube i village, siempat rube district, pakpak bharat regency 4,000 m2 1000 500 50 % 1086 9. kutadame village, royal district, pakpak bharat regency 2,000 m2 500 125 25 % 1090 figure 1. symptoms and incidence of prsv-p. a. hamparan perak village, hamparan perak subdistrict (deli serdang regency); b. saentis village, percut sei tuan subdistrict (deli serdang regency); c. patumbak i village, patumbak subdistrict (deli serdang regency); d. lau njuhar village, tanah pinem subdistrict (dairi regency); e. lae parira village, lae parira subdistrict (dairi regency); f. sitinjo 1 village, sitinjo subdistrict (dairi regency); g. boang manalu village, salak subdistrict (pakpak bharat regency); h. siempat rube i village, siempat rube subdistrict (pakpak bharat regency); i. kutadame village, kerajaan subdistrict (pakpak bharat regency). figure 1 and table 2 revealed that the entire surveyed papaya plants in deli serdang regency and dairi regency displayed prsv-p symptoms, with every location sampled showing 100% infection rates, including ring blotches on fruits and mosaic patterns on leaves. this aligns with global reports of rampant prsv-p outbreaks, in which the virus can rapidly permeate regions, ultimately causing total crop failure without proper control measures in place. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 554-563 558 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the highest infection rates were observed in lowland areas (below 50 m a.s.l.), where all surveyed plantations showed 100% incidence. in contrast, highland areas above 900 m a.s.l. showed significantly lower incidence (25–50%), such as 40% in boang manalu village and 25% in kutadame village. these variances suggest that altitude may play a role in mitigating the spread and impact of prsv-p, despite further investigation being necessary to validate this observation. the complete devastation of crops in areas like lau njuhar village and lae parira village, where massive commercial farms experienced infection rates of one hundred percent, underscores the urgent need for improved strategies for disease management. the lack of commercially available antiviral treatments for prsv-p exacerbates this issue, leaving farmers to resort solely to the costly and labor-intensive removal of contaminated plants to prevent further dissemination. moreover, the prospect of seed transmission of prsv-p, as evidenced through rt-pcr outcomes in this analysis, raises concerns regarding the efficacy of current standards of quarantine and sanitation. the profound genetic similarity between prsv-p strains in north sumatra and those elsewhere in southeast asia, such as bali and thailand, emphasizes the regional connectivity related to the distribution of this virus. these discoveries emphasize the necessity for an integrated approach to managing prsv-p, encompassing the employment of virus-free seed stock, consistent field surveillance, and the advancement of papaya varieties resistant to prsv. without such measures, the virus will persist in jeopardizing papaya production in north sumatra and beyond, resulting in significant financial losses for local farmers and the regional agricultural sector. 3.2. detection results of prsv-p using das elisa test detection of prsv-p was performed using the double antibody sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (das-elisa) method. the elisa method is one technique; serology is the most popular because it is not only sensitive but also easy to carry out, accurate, simple, and does not require high costs (ma et al., 2011). test results das-elisa can also be measured in a quantitative manner using an elisa reader with a spectrophotometer at a wavelength of 405 nm (table 3). table 3. results of the watershed test elisa on papaya plants. no. location leaf rind seed 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1. hamparan perak village, hamparan perak district, deli serdang regency + + + + + + + + + + 2. kolam village, percut sei tuan district, deli serdang regency + + + + + + + + + + 3. patumbak village two patumbak district deli serdang regency + + + + + + + + + + 4. lau njuhar village, tanah pinem district, dairi regency + + + + + + + + + + 5. lau baleng village, lau baleng district, dairi regency + + + + + + + + + + 6. village: sitinjo 1, sitinjo district, dairi regency + + + + + + + + + + 7. boang manalu village, salak district, pakpak bharat regency + + + + + + + + + + 8. siempat rube village, siempat rube i district, pakpak bharat regency + + + + + + + + + + 9. kutadame village, royal district, pakpak bharat regency + + + + + + + + + + seed samples at all research locations showed negative results for prsv-p (table 3). based on research conducted by bayot et al. (1990) in the philippines, it showed that only 2 out of 1,335 seeds (0.15%) of cavite papaya grown from seeds infected with prsv-p exhibited symptoms similar to prsv-p. in another study, no seed-borne viruses were asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 554-563 559 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. detected in papaya (joy, manoranjitham, karthiba, meenakshisundaram, & suganthy, 2022). the virus will spread easily because these fleas can fly and move from place to place easily. in addition, its light body will easily follow the direction of the wind. therefore, it is not surprising that the attack power and spread of this virus are very fast. if one plant has been attacked by a virus, its transmission to other plants will not take long, even though the distance between the plants is quite far (sá antunes et al., 2020). 3.3. detection of prsv-p in papaya leaves using rt-pcr and nucleotide sequence analysis leaf samples from deli serdang, dairi, and pakpak bharat showed symptoms of malformation, yellowish mosaic, and dark green mosaic. rt-pcr detection successfully amplified a 475 bp dna band using the primer pair prsv-326: 5'-tcg tgc cac tca atc aca at-3' and prsv-800: 5'-gtt act gac act gcc gtc ca-3'. the visualization of the dna amplification is shown in figure 2 and table 4. figure 2. dna amplification of papaya leaves samples using rt-pcr: s1: deli serdang regency; s2: dairi regency; s3: pakpak bharat regency; c+: positive control; c-: negative control. table 4. rt-pcr testing data of papaya leaf samples. no. papaya leaf sample target/method testing results 1. s1 leaf prsv-p/rt-pcr positive 2. s2 leaf prsv-p/rt-pcr positive 3. s3 leaf prsv-p/rt-pcr positive note: s1: deli serdang regency; s2: dairi regency; s3: pakpak bharat regency. the rt-pcr analysis successfully detected papaya ringspot virus type p (prsv-p) in leaf samples from deli serdang, dairi, and pakpak bharat regencies, as indicated by the amplification of a 475 bp fragment. this result confirms the presence of prsv-p in these regions, correlating with the typical symptoms of malformation, yellowish mosaic, and dark green mosaic observed in infected papaya leaves. the positive control (c+) showed a distinct band at 475 bp, confirming the specificity of the primers used, while the negative control (c−) did not show any amplification, verifying the accuracy of the results. this finding is consistent with previous studies, such as mesta et al. (2023), which also reported successful prsv-p detection using rt-pcr in infected papaya plants, amplifying similar fragment sizes. the slight size variations may result from differences in viral strains or primers. early detection like this is critical for disease management strategies in papaya cultivation. both studies underscore the effectiveness of rt-pcr in the early and accurate detection of prsv-p in papaya plants, which is crucial for disease management and control strategies. 3.4. detection of prsv-p in papaya seeds the rt-pcr results in figure 3 and table 5 confirmed the presence of prsv-p in all tested samples (s1: deli serdang, s2: dairi, and s3: pakpak bharat), as indicated by the 475 bp dna bands. these results contrast with the negative outcomes from das-elisa serology tests, suggesting that rt-pcr is a more sensitive method for detecting prsv-p in seeds. the amplification pattern is consistent with prior findings in leaf samples, supporting rt-pcr as a reliable tool for early detection of prsv-p in both seeds and leaves. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 554-563 560 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 3. dna amplification of papaya seed samples using rt-pcr, s1: deli serdang regency; s2: dairi regency; s3: pakpak bharat regency; c+: positive control; c-: negative control. table 5. rt-pcr testing data of papaya seed samples. no. papaya seed sample target/method testing results 1. s1 seed prsv-p/rt-pcr positive 2. s2 seed prsv-p/rt-pcr positive 3. s3 seed prsv-p/rt-pcr positive note: s1: deli serdang regency; s2: dairi regency; s3: pakpak bharat regency. 3.5. nucleotide sequence analysis nucleotide sequence analysis revealed high similarity between prsv-p isolates from north sumatra and other regions, indicating potential common origins. the sequences were highly homologous (98-99%) with isolates from bali, kps, thp-14, chiang mai, and ratchaburi, as shown in tables 6-7. table 6. similarity level of nucleotide cycles of coat protein gene partial cds prsv-p isolate on leaf samples. sample accession no. origin of isolate similarity rate (%) s1 lc223115.1 bali 98 af374862.1 kps 98 af506898.1 thp-14 98 pq85856.1 chiangmai 98 ay010721.1 ratchaburi 98 s2 lc223115.1 bali 98 af374862.1 kps 98 u14743.1 thailand 98 af506898.1 thp-14 98 pq85856.1 chiangmai 98 s3 lc223115.1 bali 99 af374862.1 kps 99 u14743.1 thailand 98 af506898.1 thp-14 98 pq85856.1 chiangmai 98 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 554-563 561 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 7 presents the nucleotide sequence similarity of prsv-p isolates derived from papaya seeds in north sumatra in comparison to reference isolates from bali, thailand, and chiang mai. the findings indicate that the seed isolates exhibit 98–99% sequence identity with the regional strains, reflecting a significant degree of genetic homology. the observed similarity indicates that the viral populations in north sumatra are closely related to those in other southeast asian areas, thereby reinforcing the hypothesis of regional connectivity and potential seed-mediated dissemination. table 7. level of similarity of nucleotide cycles of coat protein gene partial cds prsv-p isolate on seed samples. samples accession no. origin of isolate similarity rate (%) s1 lc223115.1 bali 99 af374862.1 kps 99 u14743.1 thailand 98 af506898.1 thp-14 98 pq85856.1 chiangmai 98 s2 lc223115.1 bali 99 af374862.1 kps 99 u14743.1 thailand 98 af506898.1 thp-14 98 pq85856.1 chiangmai 98 s3 lc223115.1 bali 99 af374862.1 kps 99 u14743.1 thailand 98 af506898.1 thp-14 98 pq85856.1 chiangmai 98 the nucleotide sequence analysis using clustal w revealed a high level of homology between prsv-p isolates from north sumatra and those from other countries such as thailand, vietnam, japan, philippines, india, brazil, bali, nganjuk, jatim, brebes, subang, chiangmai, and ratchaburi. this high similarity, ranging from 98% to 99%, suggests a potential common origin or recent divergence among these isolates. the detection of prsv-p in both papaya leaves and seeds from deli serdang, dairi, and pakpak bharat indicates that the virus is widespread in these regions. the study's finding that isolates from various locations shared a high degree of nucleotide similarity supports the hypothesis that regional transmission and related viral lineages account for the distribution. the rt-pcr method employing specific primers for prsv-p has proven to be a crucial technique for early identification and management of infections, effectively detecting even low concentrations of the virus. as highlighted by the research conducted by babu, sreenivasulu, and nayak (2012), this molecular detection process relies on conserved regions within the envelope protein gene, aligning with the outcomes of the current analysis. interestingly, whereas previous work by tripathi et al. in 2008 suggested that prsv-p does not transmit through seeds, our results, along with those from laney et al. in 2012 and mederos et al. in 2020, indicate that the pathogen can indeed be conveyed via seeds. this discrepancy may stem from differences in detection techniques or strains of the virus. the extensive nucleotide sequence homology between isolates from north sumatra and other regions underscores the need for coordinated management policies across geographical boundaries. as demonstrated in this study, molecular characterization and phylogenetic examination are essential tools for understanding the spread and development of prsv-p. the detection of prsv-p in papaya seeds from deli serdang, dairi, and pakpak bharat presents compelling evidence for the potential seed transmission of prsv-p. the nearly identical nucleotide sequence at 99% with isolates from bali and kps strongly indicates that these seeds likely harbor the same viral strain prevalent in those areas. contradicting earlier assumptions that prsv-p is not seed-borne, this finding aligns with more recent research supporting the possibility of seed transmission. the implications of seed transmission are profoundly consequential for controlling and managing prsv-p. seeds potentially serving as carriers could aid the virus's dissemination over vast distances, rendering quarantine and sanitary measures increasingly difficult. this underscores the necessity of exclusively employing certified virus-free seeds for cultivation and rigorously screening seed producers through stringent testing protocols. furthermore, the high similarity rates between 98-99% for papaya seed isolates and leaf isolates from an identical region suggest local seed stocks may act as a reservoir perpetuating the virus's presence in the area. this highlights the need for integrated pest management strategies encompassing regular testing of seeds, plants, and soil to identify and remove sources of infection. future studies should focus on exploring the mechanisms of seed transmission as well as developing resistant papaya cultivars. advanced biotechnological approaches, comprising genetic engineering and selective breeding, could potentially offer long-term solutions for managing prsv-p infections. 4. conclusion this study presents the inaugural molecular evidence of prsv-p detection in papaya seeds in north sumatra, thereby affirming seed transmission as a new mode of dissemination. field surveys indicated a significant prevalence in lowland areas, whereas molecular analysis demonstrated 98–99% similarity with isolates from bali and thailand, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 554-563 562 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. suggesting regional interconnectivity. the results underscore the necessity for verified virus-free seeds, molecular screening, stringent quarantine measures, and integrated management techniques. future studies must elucidate seed transmission mechanisms, enhance molecular epidemiology, and cultivate resistant varieties to ensure the sustainability of papaya production in indonesia. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the research ethics committee of universitas sumatera utara, indonesia, has granted approval for this study on 28 january 2019 (ref. no. 45/ke/kt.210/k.9.a/01/19). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. disclosure of ai use: the author used openai’s chatgpt (gpt-4) to edit and refine the wording of the introduction and literature review. 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(2022). papaya ring spot virus: an understanding of a severe positive-sense single stranded rna viral disease and its management. phyton, 91(10), 20992110. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2022.022013 views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crbiot.2020.11.001 https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2022.022013 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 419 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. comparison of added value received by actors in the rice agro-industry supply chain system in lampung province: is it fair enough for smallholder farmers? irmayani noera sri handayanib henry kurniawanc aapplied food security study program, politeknik negeri lampung, lampung province, jl. soekarno hatta rajabasa bandar lampung, 35141, indonesia. bagribusiness management study program, politeknik negeri lampung, lampung province, jl. soekarno hatta rajabasa bandar lampung, 35141, indonesia. cinformatics management study program, politeknik negeri lampung, lampung province, jl. soekarno hatta rajabasa bandar lampung, 35141, indonesia.  irmayani_noer@polinela.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 10 june 2025 revised: 4 august 2025 accepted: 19 august 2025 published: 8 september 2025 keywords added value farmer group rice agroindustry rice miller smallholder farmer supply chain. the objectives of the research were to identify the rice supply chain system and the actors involved from the producer to the consumer, to identify valueadded activities carried out by each actor, and to calculate the added value obtained by each actor. the research was conducted using a survey method with questionnaires to gather the necessary data and information. the study respondents included farmers, farmer groups, traders, collectors, rice millers, wholesalers, retailers, and consumers. a value chain analysis was performed to obtain an overview of the rice supply chain system. the method used to analyze added value in the rice supply chain system was a participatory analysis approach. the analysis model employed was economic value added analysis, which determines the economic value added of a product. the results of the research indicated that there are four supply chain channels within the rice supply system. several actors are directly involved, including farmers, collectors, inter-regional grain traders, rice millers, local rice traders, interregional rice traders, retailers, and consumers. the value-added activities performed by each actor include threshing, drying, transportation, milling, bleaching, sieving, weighing, packaging, and storage. the highest added value received by actors was in supply channel 3, which accounted for 80.3%. in this channel, the distribution of added value among actors was as follows: farmers (24.2%), collectors (1.5%), rice millers (35.4%), inter-regional rice traders (13.1%), and retailers (6.2%). the largest recipients of added value are rice millers, while collectors receive the smallest share. contribution/originality: this study is one of the few investigations that have examined the description and comparison of all existing rice supply chains, all involved actors, all value-added activities, and all added value created within a specific study area. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5567 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: noer, i., handayani, s., & kurniawan, h. (2025). comparison of added value received by actors in the rice agro-industry supply chain system in lampung province: is it fair enough for smallholder farmers?. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 419–427. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5567 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction food security is an important issue at the international, national, and household levels. food security is also closely related to the rice commodity as the main source of food. rice is one of the most important staple foods in the world (mgbanya, aze, & obiora, 2018) because it is consumed by more than half of the world's population (center for agricultural data and information systems, 2021; onoja & herbert, 2012). asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 419-427 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4509-7999 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0119-8453 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0499-591x mailto:irmayani_noer@polinela.ac.id https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5567 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 419-427 420 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the amount of rice consumption in indonesia occupies the fourth position in the world after china, india, and bangladesh, which is around 36.6 million tons per year or equivalent to 79.08 kilograms per capita per year. in 2024, rice production in indonesia was about 30.3 million tons (bps, 2024). the high level of production and consumption indicates that rice is a strategic food commodity in indonesia. as a country with diverse natural resources, indonesia should be able to meet the food needs of its people in a sovereign manner. however, until now, indonesia has not been able to guarantee the fulfillment of food supply for its population (widada, masyhuri, & mulyo, 2017). the development of food security should be carried out by paying attention to three main components (ariani & suryana, 2023; saliem & ariani, 2002; sutrisno, 2022), namely: 1) sufficient and equitable food availability; 2) effective and equitable food affordability in all regions; and 3) consumption of nutritious and balanced food. in order to accommodate the achievement of those three components, the aspect of the food supply chain must be considered and studied in depth. supply chain analysis is considered one of the key factors for competitive strategy to help improve organizations (stadtler, 2015), including businesses. an increase in rice demand that is not offset by sufficient supply will lead to an increase in rice prices and trigger inflation. one of the essential aspects of rice production is the distribution of rice products or marketing. rice production increase programs, such as crop intensification programs, will not be effective if the rice marketing system is inefficient (saragih, tinaprilla, & rifin, 2017; sultana, 2012). in addition, it is also necessary to carry out market reform, price control, and segmentation of regional and domestic rice markets as policies to optimize market strength and supply chain effectiveness. the food supply chain system, including rice, still faces several problems, including quality risks that occur along the supply chain (purwandoko, seminar, sutrisno, & sugiyanta, 2022) as well as problems of integration and communication between actors in the supply chain. the supply chain is a series of activities to transform various resources in order to produce final products that have added value, as well as activities related to material flows, information flows, and financial flows (hadiguna, 2017). the principle of supply chain is the integration of activities from upstream to downstream in the production process of goods, which involves various actors directly or indirectly (purwandoko et al., 2022). the supply of rice for the needs of the community is highly dependent on the flow of the rice supply chain from the level of producer farmers to the final consumer. the rice supply chain system plays a role in connecting each actor, both internal actors who are directly involved and external actors. the rice agro-industry must be supported by an innovative, competitive, and sustainable supply chain system to provide alternatives for farmers in choosing a supply chain that can provide decent margins. price disparities that tend to increase for actors in the supply chain system have implications for increasing marketing margins. larger margins indicate weak market integration and low marketing efficiency among the actors involved (aryani, 2015). the process of changing the form of rice production at the farmer level from harvested dry grain (gkp) to rice involves a number of actors and a series of agro-industrial activities. the number of actors involved in the production supply chain system will affect the amount of costs in the rice supply chain channel and ultimately have an impact on rice prices. according to the food corporation of india (fci), an average of 20-30% of products are lost during transportation from farmers to factories (bhardwaj & palaparthy, 2008). poor road conditions and storage facilities, as well as high transportation costs, are obstacles to realizing an efficient rice supply chain system. in addition to internal actors who are directly involved in the supply chain system, there are external actors (e.g., transportation services) that contribute to the addition of activities and influence the added value received by internal actors. the pressure from external actors significantly affects the amount of added value that farmers obtain (arshad, moazzam, raziq, & ahmed, 2024). lampung province is one of the centers of rice production in indonesia. most of the rice supply chain flow for the needs of the main market of the country's capital city (jakarta) comes from lampung province (nazilah, noer, & kurniawan, 2024). based on the results of the research of noer and unteawati (2022) it is known that the problem with rice in indonesia, especially lampung province, is the low actual capacity of both rice production input flows and rice production output flows, namely rice, which causes a relatively small production response. efforts to improve the rice supply chain system that are able to increase added value play an important role in improving the welfare of rice farmers. in the current situation, the rice supply chain has not provided meaningful added value for farmers. this problem must be studied by mapping the added value obtained by actors in the supply chain. business relationships that successfully create bonds between farmers and business partners in the rice supply chain can reduce costs, increase efficiency, increase profits, and enhance competitive advantage, thereby increasing added value for farmers. the increase in added value received by farmers will motivate them to improve their farming performance. the results of tey et al. (2020) research suggest that the involvement of smallholders in direct marketing within the rice value chain system can provide clear benefits. this research focuses on the output flow of rice production because the development of the economic aspects of rice commodities is highly dependent on a smooth supply chain system. the problem raised in this study is: "how is the rice supply chain system able to provide the best added value for farmers?" and "does every actor directly involved in the rice supply chain system receive fair economic added value in accordance with the value-added activities carried out?" the objectives of the research are: 1) to identify the supply chain system and the actors involved from the producer farmer level to the end consumer; 2) to identify added value activities carried out by each actor in the rice supply chain system; and 3) to calculate the added value obtained at each node in the rice supply chain system. 2. methods the research was carried out by survey method, to obtain facts from existing symptoms and seek factual information from a region (nazir, 2011). the focus of the research is to identify the flow of the supply chain, as well as the actors and value-added activities carried out, from the level of rice farmers to end consumers. the method used to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 419-427 421 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. analyze added value in the rice supply chain system is a participatory analysis method. the study respondents were producer farmers (56 rice farmers), producer organizations (4 rice farmer groups), traders (3), collectors (3), rice millers (5), wholesalers (3), retailers (8), and consumers (16). the research unit comprises producer farmers, rice collectors, and rice millers (small, medium, and large scale) in gading rejo district, pringsewu regency. additionally, other research units include rice wholesalers at the subdistrict and district market levels, as well as wholesalers and retailers at the rice market centers of bandar lampung city, namely rajabasa, kedaton, way halim, sukarame, tugu, tamin, kangkung, and sukaraja panjang markets. the selection of the location for retailers and final consumers is in the market of bandar lampung city, as the provincial capital. this decision is based on the results of previous research indicating that the structure of rice flows in lampung moves from the rice production center area to the city of bandar lampung (noer, 2013). data were collected through observation and interviews with selected respondents using a prepared set of questions. sampling of farmers was carried out using key informants, namely village heads, heads of farmer groups, heads of joint farmer groups, and community leaders. the determination of the trader sample was deliberately based on tracing information from the rice mill that was the biggest collector or buyer of rice, then traced based on value chain mapping where the rice flowed. value chain analysis was carried out to obtain an overview of the upstream to downstream rice agroindustry supply chain system. financial indicators for each actor in the supply chain include production input costs, labor, procurement, storage, and margin calculation, as well as value added. added value is the result of receipts minus input costs as a financial indicator that shows the amount of welfare rewards for labor and management sacrifices in producing added value for rice. profit is net income (revenue minus total costs) from the business results carried out by each actor in the rice supply chain. the revenue or sales value (price x volume) obtained by a value chain is the sum of the added value obtained by the actors and the purchase value of the product (mid-level goods) (perdana & noor, 2009). the components of the total value generated by an actor from the value chain are: (added value)= (total revenue value) (value of mid-level goods) the principle of adding value calculation can be applied to each actor in the supply chain network as seen in figure 1, which shows how added value is distributed to each part of the supply chain network and between actors in the supply chain network, as well as external actors. figure 1. analysis of the distribution of added value in the rice agro-industry supply chain system. source: adopted from noor (2011) and perdana and noor (2009). the analysis model used is economic value added (eva), which is an analysis to determine the economic added value of a product after processing. this analysis examines how the value of an agricultural product increases through various processing, transportation, or storage processes. grain value-added economics refers to efforts to increase the economic value of grain through various processing and marketing processes and to increase the selling value of grain through a more efficient supply chain. the value-added analysis in this study refers to (ashayeri & lemmes, 2006; noor, 2011; perdana & noor, 2009; sudiyono, 2002), as follows: value-added formula: va = np – ic. where: va: value added or added value in the rice production process (idr/kg). np: production value is the selling price of rice per kg (idr/kg). ic: intermediate cost, namely the costs derived from value-added activities per unit kilogram of rice (idr/kg). value-added economic analysis is carried out in the following stages. 1. identifying rice supply chain channels. 2. identify actors directly involved in the grain-rice supply chain system. 3. identify value-added activities carried out by each actor directly involved in the rice supply chain system. 4. collecting data on costs incurred from value-added activities, calculated in rupiah per kilogram. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 419-427 422 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 5. collecting rice price data on each actor in the rice supply chain system, in rupiah per kilogram. 6. calculating the costs incurred from rice value-adding activities for each actor involved in the rice supply chain system, calculated in rupiah per kilogram. 7. calculating added value, which is the difference between the selling value of rice and the costs arising from the activity of adding value to rice for each actor involved in the rice supply chain system, calculated in rupiah per kilogram. 8. calculate the value-added ratio between actors involved in the rice supply chain system, considering the valueadded and prices at the end-consumer level. 3. findings based on the results of the research, the value chain system of rice commodities was identified as shown in figure 2. the rice value chain system involves numerous economic actors, including producer farmers, collectors, rice millers, local rice traders, inter-regional rice traders, retailers, and consumers. although there are slight differences, the findings of this study align with those reported by primasatya, kalaba, and sulaeman (2020), which also identify producer farmers, distributors, rice millers, retailers, and consumers as key participants. a supply chain system is established when all actors in the chain collaborate effectively to maximize value creation along the entire chain. figure 2. rice value chain system. various internal and external actors are involved in value-added activities within the supply chain until the final product, rice, is produced. the supply chain encompasses various activities, including planting, maintenance, harvesting, threshing, drying, milling, packaging, and transportation, which must be carried out during rice production until it becomes rice. the structure of the rice flow is shown in figure 3. the grain to be sold flows entirely from farmers to collectors, then is distributed to rice mills. this aligns with the research of nurpalina, noer, and kurniawan (2022) that grain from farmers is sold to collectors, not slashers. furthermore, rice products (grains) flow from production centers to several rice milling industries. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 419-427 423 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 3. rice supply chain system and linkages between an actors. actors who are directly involved in the rice supply chain system in lampung province consist of farmers, collectors, rice millers, local rice traders, inter-regional rice traders, retailers, and consumers. this result slightly differs from the findings of previous research, which identified four actors in the food product supply chain system: farmers, wholesalers, retailers, and cross-border traders. the highest net marketing margin is earned by inter-regional rice traders, followed by wholesalers. the results of research identified five main actors involved in the rice supply chain: producers, rice millers, wholesalers, retailers, and consumers. the primary recipients of grain from farmers are rice collectors and rice millers. traders collect and mill rice, carrying out the procurement cycle, while rice mills perform the manufacturing cycle and play an important role in converting grain into rice that is ready for processing or storage as food reserves (nurmahdy, machfud, & syuaib, 2020). rice is distributed by collectors to rice mills to be dried, milled, and packaged, and then sold to retailers (wholesalers) or directly to end consumers in the form of rice. the rice milling unit (rmu) is a central point in the rice supply chain system (kusuma, widayanti, & pawana, 2023; primasatya et al., 2020; ridwan, mubassiran, & syafiq, 2015; sepang, mandei, & pakasi, 2017). there are four marketing channels in the rice agroindustry supply chain system that have been identified. in channel 4, rice is brought outside the region by inter-regional grain traders, so in this study, this rice is not tracked further. the relationship between actors in the supply chain can be seen in figure 3. activities in the rice agroindustry supply chain are divided into three main flows: the flow of goods, the flow of information, and the flow of finance. the comparison of added value and profit received by each actor in the rice supply chain (figure 3) serves as a reference to determine which channel provides the highest added value and profit to farmers and actors. added value analysis refers to the price and costs of each actor, including how long it takes to prepare or present goods for sale. the performance indicators chosen are financial indicators for each actor involved in the rice supply chain, from rice producers, rice millers, to end consumers, which include production costs, labor, procurement, storage, transportation, and margin calculation, as well as added value. the added value and added value structure of each channel identified in the rice supply chain system are listed in table 1. table 1. added value structure and added value of actors in the rice supply chain system. no. actors added value structure added value of actors (idr/kg) supply chain-channels 1 2 3 4 1. farmers harvest workforce 832.9 832.9 832.9 832.9 transport depreciation 7.7 7.7 7.7 7.7 threshing benefit 2.302.0 2.302.0 2.302.0 2.302.0 drying added value 3.142.6 3.142.6 3.142.6 3.142.6 packaging added value outside the farmers 1.557.4 1.557.4 1.557.4 1.557.4 storage output price 4.700 4.700 4.700 4.700 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 419-427 424 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. no. actors added value structure added value of actors (idr/kg) supply chain-channels 1 2 3 4 2. collectors/inter-regional grain traders 5.300 5.300 5.300 5.300 transport workforce 10.0 10.0 10.0 10.0 packaging depreciation 20.8 20.8 20.8 20.8 weighing 169.2 169.2 169.2 169.2 3. rice millers 10.000 transport workforce 985.0 985.0 985.0 985.0 drying depreciation 300.0 300.0 300.0 300.0 milling benefit 3.315.0 3.315.0 3.315.0 3.315.0 whitening styling weighing packaging storage 4. local traders 11.000 transport workforce 50.0 marketing commission benefit 650.0 5. inter-regional rice traders 12.000 transport workforce 210.0 weighing depreciation 100.0 packaging benefit 1.390.0 storage 6. retailers 13.000 packaging workforce 20.0 weighing depreciation 100.0 storage benefit 680.0 marketing commission 7. end consumers price 13.000 13.000 13.000 13.000 the analysis of the added value received by the actors in the rice supply chain was conducted by examining the supply chain channel. the unit used in the added value analysis is equivalent to one kilogram of rice. this means that the quantities of physical materials and raw materials are calculated and converted into an equivalent value to produce one kilogram of rice. the added value activities carried out by each actor in the rice agro-industry supply chain system include threshing, drying, transportation, milling, bleaching, sieving, weighing, packaging, and storage. it was found that the added value activities include cleaning, peeling, drying, grinding, transportation, and storage. the cost of the rice supply chain at the farmer level includes the costs of harvesting, threshing, drying, packaging, and storage, with a total cost of idr 840.6/kg. in rice milling, the costs encompass transportation, drying, milling, sieving, weighing, packaging, and storage, totaling idr 1,285/kg. at the trader level, the costs involve transportation, packaging, weighing, and sales commissions, with the highest total cost among interregional rice traders, amounting to idr 310/kg. sima and simamora (2023) found that rice milling is the actor that incurs the highest supply chain costs, with a total cost of idr 756,-/kg, consisting of labor costs (transportation and drying) and transportation costs. based on the results of the added value analysis, it was found that most of the added value from the rice supply chain channel was accepted by actors who were directly involved in the supply chain channel (61.1%-80.3%), while the rest (19.7%-38.9%) was accepted by actors from outside the rice supply chain channel. the order of the actors receiving the margin, from the highest to the lowest, is rice millers, farmers, interregional rice traders, retailers, and collectors. the results of this study align with research indicating that rice production and marketing are profitable businesses, with rice milling generating a relatively large profit margin, followed by producers, wholesalers, and retailers. rahman et al. (2021) found that the rice market behaves uncompetitively between wholesalers and rice millers, with retail traders holding substantial market power and playing a major role in the rice value chain. the percentage of added value contributed by actors to rice prices can be observed in table 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 419-427 425 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 2. percentage of added value (av) received by the actors on the price of rice in lampung province. actors supply chain channels 1 2 3 4 farmers (idr) (% of rice prices) 3.142.6 (24.2%) 3.142.6 (24.2%) 3.142.6 (24.2%) 3.142.6 collectors (idr) (% of rice prices) 200.0 (1.5%) 200.0 (1.5%) 200.0 (1.5%) interregional grain traders (idr) 200.0 rice millers (idr) (% of rice prices) 4.600.0 (35.4%) 4.600.0 (35.4%) 4.600.0 (35.4%) local rice traders (idr) (% of rice prices) 700.0 (5.4%) interregional rice traders (idr) (% of rice prices) 1.700.0 (13.1%) retailers (idr) (% of rice prices) 800.0 (6.2%) total av actors (idr) (% of rice prices) 7.942.6 (61.1%) 8.642.6 (66.5%) 10.442.6 (80.3%) total av outside actors (idr) (% of rice prices) 5.057.4 (38.9%) 4.357.4 (35.5%) 2.557.4 (19.7%) rice prices 13.000.0 13.000.0 13.000.0 the results of this study show that the largest added value obtained by the actors on channel 3 is idr 10,442.6 per kilogram of rice. the lowest added value was in channel 1, which was idr 7,942.6 per kilogram of rice. the analysis indicates that the largest recipient of added value among the actors involved in the rice supply chain channel is rice millers, accounting for about 35.4% of the selling price of rice. the smallest recipients of added value are collectors across all channels, with an added value of 1.5% of the rice price. the low added value for collectors is because these actors do not engage in many value-added activities and do not hold rice for extended periods. the added value received by the actors on the rice price can be seen in figure 4. figure 4. added value received by actors. rice farmers are the backbone of food security. connecting farmers to the rice value chain and involving smallholders at various stages will significantly benefit farmers. farmers are often marginalized actors in the rice value chain (vc), participating primarily as paddy producers and presumed to receive a smaller share of the total value added (mataia et al., 2018). tey et al. (2020) explored the potential for increased smallholder involvement in the rice value chain, finding that direct marketing opportunities could offer clear benefits for smallholders. on the other hand, it is also worth noting that after harvesting, rice generally has a fairly high moisture content, which is around 20-23% in the dry season and around 24-27% in the rainy season (sinaga, tamrin, asmara, & kuncoro, 2023). rice drying by farmers usually uses sunlight. therefore, quite a lot of farmers are overwhelmed with drying their rice and choose to sell their rice with high moisture content, although at a low price. the government can be asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 419-427 426 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. advised to introduce and open farmers' access to grain drying equipment and/or machines so that collectors can receive rice of better quality when selling to rice millers. in addition, it can be seen in figure 4 that rice millers receive the largest portion of added value across all channels. to increase farmers' income, it is necessary to consider expanding farmers' access and involvement in the rice milling industry. to facilitate this, farmers should be organized into farmer groups. this approach is worth considering because (cavite & suwanmaneepong, 2022) reported that farmers consolidated into community enterprises play a significant role in the rice supply chain in thailand. 4. conclusion based on the results of the research that has been carried out, conclusions can be drawn: 1. there are several actors who are directly involved in the grain/rice supply chain system, starting from the producer farmer level to the final consumer, namely farmers, collectors, rice millers, local rice traders, intercity rice traders, local consumers, and foreign consumers region. 2. the value-added activities carried out by each actor in the grain/rice supply chain system consist of threshing, drying, milling, bleaching, sieving, weighing, packaging, storage, and transportation. 3. the added value of the entire supply chain by actors directly involved in the rice supply chain system is 85.1 percent. the largest recipients of added value are rice mills, and the smallest are collectors. the added value of each actor is as follows: farmers (24.2%), collectors (1.5%), rice millers (35.4%), local rice traders (5.4%), interregional traders (13.1%), and retailers (6.2%). 4. in order to improve the quality of farmers' grain, the government can be advised to introduce and open farmers' access to grain drying equipment and/or machines so that the collectors can benefit from the impact of improving the quality of the rice they sell to rice millers with better quality and better prices. 5. to increase farmers' income, it is necessary to expand farmers' access and work in the rice milling industry. the government can be advised to strengthen organizational institutions at the farmer level so that they have the competitiveness to partner with the rice processing industry. funding: this research is supported by lampung state polytechnic, indonesia (grant number: 208.35/pl15.8/pp/2023). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the state polytechnic of lampung, indonesia has granted approval for this study on 15 july 2025 (ref. no. 3098/pl15/al.04/2025). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references ariani, m., & suryana, a. 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(2017). determinant factors of food security in indonesia. agro ekonomi, 28(2), 205219. https://doi.org/10.22146/jae.26245 views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.32535/apjme.v5i2.1636 https://doi.org/10.17358/jabm.6.2.325 https://doi.org/10.32535/jcda.v5i2.1501 https://doi.org/10.33964/jp.v31i1.557 https://doi.org/10.1108/jadee-04-2018-0053 https://doi.org/10.35791/agrsosek.13.1a.2017.15638 https://doi.org/10.23960/jabe.v2i2.7501 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-55309-7_1 https://doi.org/10.23969/kebijakan.v13i1.4862 https://doi.org/10.1108/bfj-08-2019-0632 https://doi.org/10.22146/jae.26245 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 309 the interplay and correlates of agricultural (farm) and non-agricultural activities to food diversity – linkages to health expenditure katiso ramaleboa retius chifurirab temesgen zewotirc knowledge chinhamud a,b,c,duniversity school of mathematics, statistics computer science, university of kwazulunatal, westville campus, durban, south africa.  ramalebok@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 14 march 2025 revised: 5 june 2025 accepted: 17 june 2025 published: 19 june 2025 keywords agricultural participation composite reliability consumption expenditure health expenditure partial least squares –sem simpson’s index. literature suggests that a varied and high-quality diet is essential for adequate nutrient intake and improved health outcomes. despite this knowledge, and considering that agricultural participation can enhance food availability and diversity, populations continue to face challenges in achieving dietary diversity due to socioeconomic constraints among a plethora of factors. understanding this relationship becomes particularly important for lesotho, where such insights can inform strategies to promote dietary diversity, improve public health, and reduce healthcare costs. this study utilized data from the household budget survey to examine how household food consumption patterns, socioeconomic factors, and agricultural participation influence food diversity and health-related costs. using partial least squaresstructural equation modeling (pls-sem), we analyzed the relationships between these variables to gain a nuanced understanding of their interplay. results reveal that food diversity is shaped by multiple factors, including agricultural participation, which directly affects health outcomes. household characteristics, such as income, household size, and education level of the household head, significantly predict both food diversity and health expenditure. these findings underscore that supporting agricultural engagement and promoting dietary diversity can be cost-effective strategies to improve nutrition and reduce healthcare costs in lesotho. policymakers should focus interventions in these areas. contribution/originality: this paper examines the overlooked relationships between food diversity, socioeconomic factors, and health outcomes in lesotho. it reveals how household characteristics influence food patterns and expenditures, showing that promoting dietary diversity can improve health and reduce costs in a developing context. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5419 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ramalebo, k., chifurira, r., zewotir, t., & chinhamud, k. (2025). the interplay and correlates of agricultural (farm) and non-agricultural activities to food diversity – linkages to health expenditure. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 309–338. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 309-338 mailto:ramalebok@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7465-8943 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7889-3417 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1503-8055 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4296-7677 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5419 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 310 1. introduction food composition, dietary diversity, and individual consumption patterns exhibit variability over time, with household dynamics playing a significant role in this fluctuation. research indicates that factors encompassing sociodemographic and socioeconomic dynamics affect the decisions regarding food choices within households, suggesting a complex interplay of determinants (jackson, 1984; mazenda & mushayanyama, 2022; shonkwiler, lee, & taylor, 1987; thiele & weiss, 2003). extending on this, the availability and demand for specific food items can be shaped by diverse factors such as climate conditions, cultural norms, and economic circumstances, impacting the variety of foods consumed across different demographic groups. as household dynamics evolve, variations in income, wealth, and household size can significantly influence consumption patterns and outcomes related to food variety and dietary preferences. the ability of diverse diets to adapt to socioeconomic shifts and external influences reflects a nuanced relationship between lifestyle factors and dietary choices. this association aligns with existing literature that emphasizes the importance of product variety on nutritional intake and overall health outcomes, highlighting the potential role of diverse diets in mitigating chronic diseases (vadiveloo, dixon, mijanovich, elbel, & parekh, 2014). however, it is important to note that increased food variety can stimulate appetite and potentially lead to excess energy intake and adiposity, particularly if the food choices primarily come from related food groups. on a positive note, research by murphy et al. (2006) underscores the potential health benefits of a varied diet rich in low-energy-dense and nutrient-packed foods, thereby promoting healthy living and the overall well-being of individuals. despite the promising prospects of diverse dietary patterns, concerns raised by vadiveloo et al. (2014) emphasize the need for caution when incorporating less healthy items within varied diets, particularly in relation to hygiene practices. nevertheless, the wealth of evidence supports the notion that embracing a diverse range of food groups offers substantial benefits, with household socioeconomic factors serving as crucial indicators in predicting dietary changes. the implications of food diversity extend beyond individual health, potentially influencing productivity levels, lifestyle choices, and consumer behaviors within the marketing landscape. building on a plethora of benefits linked to food diversity, a critical inquiry arises regarding the potential influence of consuming a range of foods on healthcare expenditure and the interplay of agricultural and non-agricultural activities in shaping this dynamic. this discussion holds particular significance in developing economies such as lesotho, where healthcare spending has consistently accounted for almost 10 percent of the gross domestic product over a five-year period, underscoring the weighty burden of healthcare costs. this ties in with the unique population dynamics in lesotho, characterized by an average household size of four persons, a predominantly young population, a strong reliance on agriculture as a primary livelihood, and moderate levels of inequality. at the same time, the provision of healthcare in lesotho is predominantly government-driven, with additional support from donors for specific programs. this reliance on governmental and donor funding could signal the challenges faced in achieving universal health coverage, which could be exacerbated by competing financial demands, tight budget constraints, and the uncertainty of donor support, which ultimately exposes the health system of the country to vulnerabilities. a potential alternative that could warrant scientific investigation is the relationship between food consumption diversity (towards meeting basic nutrition) as well as healthcare costs further linking these with socioeconomic factors and agricultural participation. by examining this connection, we may uncover evidence that supports a more sustainable approach to healthcare financing, one that leverages household food diversity as a cost-effective strategy to reduce healthcare expenditure. producing scientific evidence on this potential relationship is crucial for informing policy decisions and developing targeted interventions that can improve healthcare outcomes in lesotho. to investigate this relationship, this study aims to evaluate the levels of food diversity in lesotho and its influencing factors. specifically, we will examine whether a higher food variety, quantified using simpson’s index or berry’s index, correlates with reduced health expenditure. building on previous research conducted by thiele and weiss (2003) and mazenda and mushayanyama (2022), among others, this study aims to contribute to the existing body of knowledge by evaluating the influence of food diversity on healthcare costs as part of a comprehensive investigation into strategies to enhance healthcare sustainability in lesotho. 2. food composition in lesotho and its relevance to this study the food basket of lesotho households exhibits characteristics typical of other developing economies. to gain a deeper understanding of the basket and its diversity within households, we rely on the food composition and grouping data from the household budget surveys (hbs). hbs provides valuable information on household spending patterns, including food consumption, and offers a nuanced understanding of the living conditions of the study population. the survey, which is typically conducted by countries every five years, has been validated as a reliable proxy for dietary measures (dary & jariseta, 2012; engle-stone & brown, 2015). in lesotho, the hbs employs a seven-day recall questionnaire, also known as a diary, to gather detailed information on household food purchases among other consumption expenditures. this approach allows for a comprehensive analysis of food consumption patterns and habits within households. in particular, households self-record their daily consumption of purchased goods, their own produce, and services and these include food items as outlined in table 1. due to its broad scope in measuring household consumption, the survey is considered a reliable and key source of information on food acquisition and food consumption (kristo, sikalidis, & uzun, 2021; naska, vasdekis, & trichopoulou, 2001). as such, we argue that the hbs, with its robustness in measuring food consumption expenditure, is a reliable proxy for measuring food diversity, even in the lesotho setting. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 311 table 1. food groups in lesotho as per the hbs grouping. sn. food group food products 1 bread and cereals bread, breakfast cereals, cake flour, wheat meal/grain, bread flour, maize meal/grain, macaroni and noodles, rice, samp, meal rice, sorghum meal/grain, malt, others. 2 meat beef, mutton, offal, pork, dried, salted or smoked meat and edible meat offal, other preserved or processed meat and meat preparations, others. 3 fish fish, seafood, dried, smoked or salted fish and seafood, other preserved/processed fish and seafood products, others. 4 milk, cheese and eggs whole milk, low-fat milk, preserved milk, sour milk, yogurt, cheese and curd, eggs, others. 5 fruits apples, bananas, oranges, peaches, pears, grapes, apricots, pineapples, mangoes, watermelons, other citrus fruits, berries, dried fruits, others. 6 vegetables dried beans, green beans, green peas, cabbage, spinach, lettuce, other leaf and stem vegetables, beetroot, carrots, tomatoes, onions, pumpkins, others. the 2017/18 hbs in lesotho provides valuable insights into the food consumption patterns in the country. the survey reveals that household spending tends to gravitate towards bread and cereals, meat, vegetables, milk, cheese, and eggs, which are the dominant food groups in the country. notably, despite this concentration, the hbs list of food groups is comprehensive, covering a wide range of categories including fish and fruits (see table 1). furthermore, the hbs provides valuable insights into health expenditure, revealing the average monthly health spending of entire households. this information enables the identification of recurring health spending patterns, including frequent visits to healthcare providers, medication purchases, and other healthcare-related expenses. regular monitoring of household expenditures is essential in highlighting potential financial hardships in meeting healthcare costs and identifying areas where households may require support to manage their expenses. the hbs in lesotho, for example, measured health expenditures by considering various costs, including travel to seek health services, medication costs, payments for healthcare visits and medicines, laboratory tests, transportation, hospitalization, and overnight stays. these costs are a key aspect of health expenditures, as defined by the world health organization, which comprises formal and informal payments made at the time of receiving care, including preventive, curative, rehabilitative, palliative, or long-term care. 3. conceptual framework household consumption expenditure patterns provide a comprehensive snapshot of national consumption habits; nonetheless, a nuanced examination reveals that food composition patterns and variety exhibit significant variation within households. this heterogeneity is influenced by a complex interplay of factors, including food preferences, demographic and socioeconomic factors, as well as coping mechanisms for poor households. in lesotho, this complexity is particularly relevant, given the rural-urban divide that defines the country and the struggles of some households to access nutritious food. the literature suggests that this variation is not limited to national contexts, but rather extends to regional contexts, as studies have observed similar patterns of diversity and skewness in food consumption in other jurisdictions (mazenda & mushayanyama, 2022) low-income consumers in developed economies (binkley, eales, & jekanowski, 2000) and even households in different regions of developed economies (thiele & weiss, 2003). this conceptual framework argues that food consumption and variety patterns are shaped by a constellation of factors, including agricultural participation, which may link well with nutrition and thereby lower health expenditures. figure 1. relationship between agriculture, food purchases and dietary diversity. source: bellon, ntandou-bouzitou, and caracciolo (2016) and kumar, harris, and rawat (2015). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 312 in figure 1, we illustrate the observed relationship between household activities, including agricultural participation, and their impact on food consumption, food variety, nutrition, and health outcomes (adopted from bellon, ntandou-bouzitou, and caracciolo (2016) and kumar, harris, and rawat (2015). the figure highlights the connections between household activities, food variety, nutrition, and health outcomes, demonstrating that agricultural participation can also have a direct influence on food diversity and, subsequently, on health outcomes. notably, some of these connections occur outside the household setting, such as agricultural interventions that can take the form of input subsidies from government and development partners. additionally, environmental and climatic conditions, social atmosphere, political conditions, and economic contexts can also influence food variety (warren, hawkesworth, & knai, 2015). these factors suggest a plausible ripple effect on food diversity, nutrition, and ultimately, health outcomes. for instance, by increasing food diversity through agricultural participation, households can reduce their reliance on processed and unhealthy foods, leading to improved nutritional outcomes and decreased health expenditures. to better understand these relationships, it is crucial to quantify the direction and magnitude of these interplay relationships to identify the most effective leverage points for policymakers. 4. study area and context to the data collection the interplay between agricultural and non-agricultural participation among households and their impact on food diversity and health expenditure has not been extensively explored within the context of lesotho; this paper assesses this connection. the analysis utilizes three hbs rounds for 2002/03, 2010/11, and 2017/18, covering sample sizes of 5,992, 5,318, and 4,295 households, respectively. the analysis examines the consumption expenditure of these households relying on hbs food groupings, such as bread and cereals, meat, and fish, as well as sociodemographic characteristics like income, household size, and education of the household head. the paper then connects the related consumption expenditure to household food diversity and household expenditure on health to assess the differentials in their movements. 5. instrumental study variables through an examination of demographic, socioeconomic, and agricultural participation variables, we aim to understand how they impact food consumption expenditure and healthcare spending. the inclusion of these variables in the variable selection allows us to explore their underlying relationships, which have been overlooked in the lesotho context. previous studies have shown that certain household characteristics, such as income, household size, and educational status, are important predictors of food diversity (matita et al., 2021; thiele & weiss, 2003). for instance, educated individuals are likely to understand the benefits of consuming a variety of foods (moon et al., 2002). these factors can influence household participation in agricultural and non-agricultural activities, which can, in turn, affect household spending on varied diets and health. extending this plausible connection, similar studies have found that higher parental education levels are associated with diverse diets (abdollahi et al., 2014). this could be explained by the notion that higher education levels are often linked to more favorable career prospects and remuneration, which can translate into more disposable income and better dietary understanding. at the same time, research further suggests that the economic status of the household head plays a significant role in shaping dietary patterns and health expenditure decisions. households with economically active heads have greater access to a variety of nutritious foods, as shown by research (kristo et al., 2021; madzorera et al., 2021). the ability of the household to finance its needs, including spending on the right resources, is crucial for ensuring food diversity and enhancing diet quality. this is often the case because households with the necessary resources are more likely to have access to a wide range of nutrient-dense foods, which can improve health outcomes. household size is another important instrumental variable that influences food diversity. research has shown that as household size increases, there is a corresponding increase in the demand for a variety of foods (leschewski, weatherspoon, & kuhns, 2017; thiele & weiss, 2003). larger households may face resource scarcity challenges, which can drive the demand for a wider range of food options. in addition to these factors, geographical settings can also influence food diversity. to provide context, certain areas may encounter obstacles in food production and accessibility due to constraints such as limited water availability for irrigation, specific climatic conditions, various soil types, and geographical features that may hinder agricultural productivity. these challenges can be further exacerbated by insufficient infrastructure, transportation facilities, and social amenities. the importance of considering local context in understanding and addressing issues related to dietary diversity and health expenditure is underscored by the findings of different studies. while research has shown that consumption patterns are converging in developed economies (thiele & weiss, 2003), significant differences in dietary diversity consumption have been observed across regions in developing countries (anane, nie, & huang, 2021). understanding the intricate structural relationships between household activities in agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, while also taking into account factors such as food diversity, health outcomes, and various contextual elements, is crucial for the development of effective strategies and targeted interventions designed to address the specific needs of diverse regions. these needs may involve implementing deliberate and aggressive measures to promote sustainable agricultural participation and practices, thereby enhancing access to diverse and nutritious food options. these could work towards improving overall well-being and quality of life in households in lesotho. 6. methods the study employs partial least squares structural equation modeling (pls-sem) to explore the relationships between variables in the dataset and the underlying structural connections in the model. furthermore, within the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 313 context of scrutinizing the food dietary diversity of the study population, we incorporated simpson’s index as a rigorous means of evaluating the extent of food diversity inherent in the diets within households in lesotho. 6.1. simpson’s index simpson’s index is commonly used in ecological studies to measure diversity among species he and hu (2005) and morris et al. (2014) and has, in recent years, been crucial in profiling the food diversity status of households. in particular, in nutrition-related studies, the index captures the richness and evenness of food items consumed by foodinsecure households. one such example of an application of this index is seen in li (2012), applying the constant elasticity of substitution approach to analyze household consumption and welfare implications in india. in a slightly different context, theil and finke (1983) assessed food diversity relative to per capita real income in 30 countries using the herfindahl index and the entropy index. this approach was further explored by thiele and weiss (2003), who utilised the berry index and the entropy index to assess the determinants of consumer demand for food diversity in germany. building on these methodologies, mazenda and mushayanyama (2022) recently used simpson’s index to profile the dietary diversity status of food-insecure households living in the city of tshwane in south africa. this paper aligns with these approaches by using simpson’s index to profile food diversity in households in lesotho. the index floats between 0 and 1–1/n, with a limit value that approaches 1 as n (the number of foods) increases. the model: simpson’s index is expressed mathematically as follows: (𝑆) = 1 – (𝑤𝑖)2 where wi is the weight of the ith food group. the value of the index returns "0" if only one single food group is consumed, while "1" suggests the consumption of all food groups. 6.2. partial least squares structural equation modelling the pls-sem, the choice for this paper, examines the relationships among observed and latent variables. the selection of pls-sem is based on its capacity to estimate intricate models with numerous constructs and structural paths without imposing distributional assumptions on the data, as highlighted by hair, risher, sarstedt, and ringle (2019). the variables under study include a combination of categorical and continuous variables, rendering pls-sem a suitable methodological approach. specifically, the observed variables consist of the historical engagement of households in selling agricultural items, household spending on agricultural products, and the household possession of agricultural items, collectively contributing to the latent variable of agricultural participation. furthermore, health costs or spending is an observed variable, while health expenditure is its corresponding latent variable. similarly, simpson’s index is an observed variable connected to the latent variable of food diversity. in terms of socioeconomic variables, education level, economic activity, and household income are observed variables included in the model, with their respective latent variable being socioeconomic status. the model path diagram, as displayed in figure 2, illustrates the connections among agricultural participation, socioeconomic status, health expenditure, and food diversity. these linkages outline the hypothesized interplay and relationships between these key variables and latent constructs, shedding light on the dynamics at play within the model. figure 2. postulated model connecting agricultural participation, socioeconomic status and health expenditure with food diversity. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 314 7. results the findings of this study are presented in this section. these findings stem from the data exploration conducted on consumption expenditure relative to the hbs food grouping, agricultural participation, demographic and sociodemographic characteristics, as well as health spending. the results reflect a combined outcome of descriptive statistics and pls-sem. 7.1. descriptive statistics table 2 shows the descriptive statistics for household consumption expenditure on food groups, including the expenditure on health over the three hbs cycles. across the three measurements, the consumption expenditure was commonly high for a group of vegetables and the group of bread and cereals, while remaining low for a group of fruits and fish products, and modest for meats, milk, cheese, and eggs. the pattern could be indicative of a case where households prioritize their consumption expenditure on other food or non-food items deemed accessible or more essential to the household, such as vegetables, clothing, or health, relative to household purchasing power, as observed by blisard, stewart, and jolliffe (2004). to provide context, during the hbs 2002/03, the household consumption expenditure on a group of vegetables in the month of assessment averaged (�̅�) = 3.4 of diverse vegetable products with a standard deviation, σ = 2.3, increasing to an average, �̅� = 3.6 of diverse vegetables in 2017/18 with standard deviation, σ = 2.2. inversely, the consumption expenditure on vegetables remained low in 2010/11, averaging, �̅� = 1.2 of diverse products within the referenced hbs month, and this was the lowest across the three measurements. table 2. descriptive statistics for household consumption expenditure on food groups and food diversity, participation in agriculture, socioeconomic variables and expenditure on health. food group 2002/03 2010/11 2017/18 mean (sd) mean (sd) mean (sd) bread and cereals 2.8 (1.5) 0.8 (1.1) 2.8 (1.6) meat 1.1 (1.1) 0.4 (0.9) 1.2 (1.2) fish 0.1 (0.4) 0.1 (0.3) 0.3 (0.5) milk, cheese and eggs 1.1 (1.1) 0.5 (0.8) 1.3 (1.2) fruit 0.8 (1.1) 0.1 (0.4) 0.7 (1.0) vegetables 3.4 (2.3) 1.2 (1.7) 3.6 (2.2) simpsons index 0.78 (0.12) 0.37 (0.41) 0.77 (0.14) agricultural participation sold agric product (yes in %) 13.4 6.7 3.7 spent on agric item (yes in %) 8.2 3.3 17.3 possess agric item (yes in %) 67.7 35.5 69.1 socioeconomic status education level (mode) 1 3 2 economic activity (mode) 3 1 1 income (mean, lsl) 1,273 681 16,355 health expenditure spent (yes in %) 28.9 7.8 24.3 source: lsl/m = lesotho currency. the registered decrease in consumption expenditure on vegetables in 2010/11 could have coincided with the aftereffects of the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis, which could have potentially escalated inflationary pressures on the production and pricing of agricultural products, leaving many households with less money to spend on vegetables. in the same period, relatively low consumption expenditure on health is notable (i.e., 7.9% of households confirming that they spent on health-related costs) against 28.9% registered in 2002/03 and 24.3% registered in 2017/18. this could further reflect the financial difficulties experienced by households, with many left to make difficult choices on where to spend (i.e., the average income in 2010/11 was at m681, down from m1,273 in the past 7 years, hbs 2002/03). nonetheless, the effect of government intervention in the form of health subsidies is a possible confounding variable and thus may not be downplayed in the differentials of household spending on health. at the same time, the involvement of households in agricultural activities was variable across the survey years, with households participating by selling agricultural products having accounted for 13.4% in 2002/03, declining to 6.7% and 3.7% in 2010/11 and 2017/18, respectively. the decrease in households selling agricultural products could indicate various factors such as changes in market dynamics, shifts in consumer preferences, or challenges faced by agricultural producers, without ruling out the effects of climate change. conversely, the data also suggest that households might have been involved in agricultural activities through other means, such as direct consumption or possession of agricultural items, with notable fluctuations in participation levels across the survey years. the lowest involvement in agricultural activities was recorded in 2010/11, showing a downward trend until a peak in participation was observed in 2017/18, emphasizing the changing dynamics of household involvement in agriculture. 7.1.1. assessing the composition of different food groups among households ― consumption expenditure 7.1.1.1. bread and cereals the consumption expenditure on bread and cereals has remained consistently high across the three hbs rounds. this can be attributed to the global popularity of this food group, as it is considered a staple food for many, providing a significant source of dietary energy and nutrients in various human diets (kushi, meyer, & jacobs jr, 1999; mcintosh, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 315 2001; mckevith, 2004). the consumption expenditure of this food group has also been connected to household sociodemographics that include the level of education and the occupation of the household head, as discussed by abdollahi et al. (2014). this association is likely applicable in the context of lesotho as well (see figure 3). in line with the figure, the consumption expenditure on bread and cereals in 2002/03 was concentrated among households with primary education or lower, followed by a notable spread across households with secondary and vocational education. interestingly, regardless of the education level of the household heads, a common trend was their involvement in various economic activities other than subsistence farming. this pattern suggests that the consumption of bread and cereals is widespread across different educational backgrounds, indicating its significance within the household food basket. figure 3. consumption expenditure of bread and cereals by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2002/03. in 2010/11, a similar trend is noted in the consumption expenditure on bread and cereals, although there is a distinct contrast with the patterns observed in 2002/03. during this period, the consumption expenditure on bread and cereals is largely concentrated below five product types within the group for all households, regardless of their education level, as depicted in figure 4. this deviation from the earlier observations could suggest a shift in consumption behavior or market dynamics influencing the purchasing patterns of households in lesotho. it is interesting to note that, in general, the variations in the distribution of consumption expenditure are minimal for subsistence farmers with higher levels of education, specifically tertiary education. figure 4. consumption expenditure of bread and cereals by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2010/11. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 316 in 2017/18, a slight deviation from previous trends is observed in the consumption expenditure on bread and cereals in lesotho. during this period, a higher concentration of consumption expenditure on bread and cereal products is notable among households with secondary education and non-graduates, irrespective of their economic activity. this pattern extends further to include households with tertiary education levels, particularly those engaged in economic activities other than subsistence farming. figure 5 illustrates this potential shift in consumption behavior, with a notable emphasis on households with secondary education and non-graduates as the primary consumers of bread and cereal products. this trend suggests that educational attainment continues to play a significant role in shaping consumption patterns, with households at different education levels exhibiting varying preferences and spending behavior on food items. figure 5. consumption expenditure of bread and cereals by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2017/18. 7.1.1.2. meat over time, the consumption expenditure on meat products in lesotho remained relatively low, despite meat being among the top consumer foods. a different view and interpretation of this observation could mean that meat food groups were potentially compensated for by a higher intake of food products such as vegetables and other protein-rich foods while still maintaining a balanced overall diet. in contrast, factors such as affordability likely played a significant role in influencing these consumption patterns. as illustrated in figure 6 for the year 2002/03, the consumption expenditure on meat products was generally low for household heads with primary education or lower, with the concentration of spending remaining below four product types per month. however, the spread of expenditure increased with higher levels of education among household heads. this pattern suggests that education may have an influence on the consumption of meat products, with individuals with higher education levels potentially allocating more of their food budget toward meat consumption. the skewed distribution of consumption expenditure on meat, as well as other food groups, is a common occurrence in many developing economies, as noted by ndubueze-ogaraku, oyita, and anyanwu (2016), and may be exacerbated by socioeconomic characteristics such as the economic activity of the household head. a comparison between households whose main economic activity is subsistence farming and those engaged in other activities can reveal the potential impact of income sources as determinants of meat consumption patterns. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 317 figure 6. consumption expenditure of meat by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2002/03. further decreases in the consumption expenditure of meat products are observed in 2010/11 and the concentration clusters below two product types a month, irrespective of the education level and economic activity of the household head see figure 7. this trend suggests that households were faced with difficult choices during this period, likely prioritizing a macronutrient-balanced food basket within the constraints of their disposable income. this is in line with a further observation by ndubueze-ogaraku et al. (2016) that household income is among the major determinants of household expenditure patterns, and any changes due to time, economics, or market dynamics, among other factors will predict movements in household expenditure patterns among household groups or individual households. figure 7. consumption expenditure of meat by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2010/11. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 318 in 2017/18, there was a rebound in household consumption expenditure on meat products in lesotho, with the spread for the month increasing to levels reaching up to eight product types across all levels of education and economic activities of household heads other than subsistence farming, as shown in figure 8. despite this rebound, the largest concentration of spending remained below five product types per month for most households. this suggests that meat diversity could have been perceived more as a luxury rather than a staple, and in times of economic difficulties, households may have limited their meat consumption to a few selected products. the observed dynamics in meat consumption expenditure align with the findings of bereżnicka and pawlonka (2018), who studied the response of households in poland (a developed economy) to changes in household economy or income levels. they noted that fluctuations in income levels were predictive of households either including or excluding certain meat products in their food basket. this highlights the sensitivity of meat consumption patterns to economic conditions and household incomes. the increase in meat consumption expenditure in 2017/18 could be attributed to improvements in the overall economic situation or changes in household incomes, prompting households to slightly increase their spending on meat products. however, the fact that the majority of households still kept their meat consumption within a limited range suggests that meat was not a fundamental component of their diet but rather a discretionary item that may be adjusted based on financial constraints. it is important to understand these dynamics in meat consumption expenditure to enable the promotion of dietary diversity, address food security issues, and improve overall nutrition outcomes towards developing targeted interventions for informed choices about food consumption. figure 8. consumption expenditure of meat by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2017/18. 7.1.1.3. milk, cheese and eggs the household consumption expenditure for a group of milk, cheese, and eggs generally compares with that of meat products, as observed in 2002/03. despite variations in the education levels of the household heads, the expenditure on this particular food group generally stayed below four different types of products per month. this pattern remained consistent even among households with subsistence farmers, with little disparity in expenditure, even as education levels increased; see figure 9, providing an illustrative representation of this trend. the similarity in the consumption expenditure on these protein-rich food products may be attributed to their shared importance in household diets and their status as viable alternatives to one another. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 319 figure 9. consumption expenditure of milk, cheese and eggs by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2002/03. conversely, there was a marginal consumption expenditure on milk, cheese, and egg products in 2010/11, coinciding with a general decrease in household consumption expenditure on other food groups during the same period (i.e., modest consumption expenditure on bread, cereals, and meat). this trend could have been indicative of a shift in consumer preferences or economic circumstances within households. as illustrated in figure 10, household consumption expenditure on milk, cheese, and egg products rarely exceeded four different product types in a given month of the hbs year. this pattern was consistent across households where the household heads had primary education or lower levels of schooling. however, there were slight increases to around eight product types for households where the heads had secondary or non-graduate education levels. households with tertiary education, regardless of their economic activity, exhibited even more varied consumption patterns, with some consuming up to five different types of milk, cheese, and egg products in a single month. this diversity in consumption might indicate a higher level of disposable income or different dietary preferences among households with higher education levels. figure 10. consumption expenditure of milk, cheese and eggs by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2010/11. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 320 in 2017/18, similar to other food groups, household consumption expenditure on milk, cheese, and egg products increased, surpassing four product types for most households regardless of their education level and economic activity (refer to figure 11). this pattern appears to be in line with the general poverty dynamics or gap in lesotho, where there was a modest reduction in the population below the national poverty line, decreasing to 49.7% in 2017/18 from 56.6% in 2002/03 and 57.1% in 2010/11, according to the warren et al. (2015). various factors may have influenced this upward trend in consumption. one plausible explanation could be a sense of consumer relief or optimism towards spending. this suggests that households may be feeling more financially secure, leading to an increase in discretionary spending on goods and services, potentially indicating an improvement in their overall purchasing power and economic well-being. another possible factor contributing to this trend could be the rising education levels in lesotho. as education levels increase, so does awareness of the importance of nutrition and the role that dairy and egg products play in a balanced diet. this increased awareness may have led to a higher demand for these products, driving up consumption expenditure, further coinciding with the launch of the lesotho food and nutrition policy, 2016-2025, which could have seen several programs in place aimed at increasing nutrition awareness in the country. figure 11. consumption expenditure of milk, cheese and eggs by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2017/18. 7.1.1.4. fish household consumption expenditure on fish remained relatively low across all the survey rounds. the observation is consistent with the generally low levels of food-fish consumption in sub-saharan africa, with the food group observed to be more prominent in the diets of people near coastal areas and large inland water bodies (delgado & mckenna, 1997). in the context of lesotho, this is despite the fact that the country is surrounded by south africa, which boasts seas that make it a hotspot for fishing activities. at the same time, lesotho is producing fish (trout) from its freshwater ecosystems (dams, rivers, etc.). nonetheless, an observation by speedy (2003) is that the consumption of fish, similar to meat products, relies on other aspects: household wealth or the rapidly increasing per capita gdpa of a country are some of those key factors, which is likely inverse for many developing countries such as lesotho, corroborating the fact that this food group is characteristic of luxury food. as illustrated in figure 12, the household consumption expenditure on fish in lesotho in 2002/03 was relatively low, with consumption levels averaging around two product types per month, regardless of the education level or economic activity of the household head. this suggests that fish consumption may not be a high priority in the household budget, possibly due to factors such as availability, cost, cultural preferences, and perceptions of fish as a luxury food item. despite the fact that lesotho is already producing fish, particularly trout from its freshwater ecosystems, it appears that fish consumption has not been widely adopted as a significant component of household diets in the country. this disconnect between fish production, fish importation, and consumption levels may indicate barriers such as logistical challenges in distribution, lack of awareness or promotion of locally sourced fish, and entrenched dietary habits that favor other protein sources. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 321 figure 12. consumption expenditure of fish by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2002/03. similar to the observation in 2002/03, household expenditure on fish remained low in 2010/11, with some households going a month without recording any consumption expenditure on this food group, as shown in figure 13. this trend persisted even when taking into account the education level and economic activity of the household head. figure 13. consumption expenditure of fish by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2010/11. slight increases in the consumption expenditure on fish were observed in 2017/18, possibly correlating with the rising household income, which averaged m16,355 in 2017/18 compared to m1,273 in 2002/03. as illustrated in figure 14, some households recorded consumption expenditure on up to six different types of fish products in a month (recall the fish composition in table 1 on food groups). however, for the majority of households, the concentration of consumption expenditure remained below four product types per month. this trend persisted regardless of the education level and economic activity of the households. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 322 figure 14. consumption expenditure of fish by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2017/18. 7.1.1.5. fruits the household consumption expenditure on fruits remained fairly high across the three survey measurements. fruits were categorized into various groups, including berries (i.e., blackberries and blueberries), core fruits (i.e., apples and pears), citrus fruits (i.e., oranges and lemons), pit fruits (i.e., pears and plums), and melons (i.e., watermelon). this wide grouping of types of fruits in the measurement increased the household's choice towards consuming fruits in a given time period. some fruits could have been from their household produce, while others are easily accessible from the market. this accessibility and variety in fruit options may contribute to the sustained high consumption expenditure on fruits among households. for example, in 2002/03, household consumption expenditure on fruits approximated levels as high as 10 different types of fruits per month for households where the household heads had achieved primary education or lower. increased levels of consumption were also observed for households with higher levels of education, with variations depending on the economic activities of the household heads, as shown in figure 15. further associations were noted for increased consumption expenditure on fruits among families with children. this could be due to fruits being part of the recommended diet for children and adolescents in some schools, leading to a higher incentive for families with children to include fruits in their diet. the consumption of fruits may also be recommended for pregnant mothers and lactating women for their nutritional benefits, as suggested by shokrvash et al. (2013). this recommendation for a healthy diet for pregnant and lactating women may further contribute to the overall household consumption expenditure on fruits. figure 15. consumption expenditure of fruits by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2002/03. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 323 while household consumption expenditure on fruits was relatively high in 2002/03, a notable reduction was observed in 2010/11, with the concentration of consumption expenditure hovering below two types of fruits in the month under review. as illustrated in figure 16, even after accounting for the education level and economic activity of the household heads, the pattern remains largely the same, with a few households registering consumption expenditure levels above four types of fruits per month. figure 16. consumption expenditure of fruits by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2010/11. in 2017/18, there was a slight rebound in household consumption expenditure on fruits, as shown in figure 17. the concentration of household consumption expenditure was evident among households where the household heads had attained primary education or lower, as well as among household heads with secondary education and no graduate education. this pattern held true for both demographic groups, regardless of their economic activities. figure 17. consumption expenditure of fruits by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2017/18. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 324 7.1.1.6. vegetables the consumption expenditure on vegetable products by households in lesotho remained relatively high across the three hbs measurements (from 2002/03 to 2017/18, a 16-year gap), despite potential changes in economic growth, market integration, diversification, urbanization, changing lifestyles, and advancements in modern supply chains that are believed to impact transformations in food systems (mergenthaler, weinberger, & qaim, 2009). leafy vegetables, in particular, are known to significantly contribute to household food security and provide variety to cereal-based staple diets (uusiku, oelofse, duodu, bester, & faber, 2010), hence their high consumption. in lesotho, some of these vegetable products are indigenous and have been part of household diets for generations. figure 18. consumption expenditure of vegetables by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2002/03. for example, in 2002/03, household consumption expenditure on vegetable products could reach levels as high as 15 vegetable types per month for households regardless of their education level (see figure 18). this notable consumption of diverse vegetable products was more prevalent in households engaged in activities other than subsistence farming. similar observations were made regarding other food groups, as household consumption expenditure on vegetables saw a slight decrease in 2010/11 compared to the diversity recorded in 2002/03. for instance, as illustrated in figure 19, the concentration of consumption expenditure was found to be below 10 vegetable types per month in households where the household heads had primary education or lower, as well as in households with secondary education and non-graduates. the diversity of vegetables consumed notably decreased with higher levels of education, such as at the tertiary education level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 325 figure 19. consumption expenditure of vegetables by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2010/11. in 2017/18, household expenditure on vegetable products remained steady at around 10 product types within the same food group as in 2010/11. however, there was a significant increase in consumption observed in households where the household head had a tertiary qualification and was also engaged in other economic activities besides subsistence farming, as shown in figure 20. figure 20. consumption expenditure of vegetables by product count in a month for households, assessed on the education level and economic activity of the household heads, 2017/18. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 326 7.1.2. assessing food diversity among households by their socio-demographic characteristics several studies have posited differences in the consumption behavior of households regarding product types and household dynamics (i.e., socio-demographic characteristics of the household). the dynamism of this behavior has been argued to extend to other dimensions, such as the number of diverse products a household consumes in a specific time period. factors such as the age structure of household members, the income of household members, and household size are among the predictors of changes in consumption patterns (lee & brown, 1989; thiele & weiss, 2003). similarly, the determination of consumption expenditure on a variety of food products by lesotho households reflects variations over time, influenced by the education level and economic activity of the household head. simpson’s index or the related berry index (or entropy index, and/or herfindahl index) has been featured among a plethora of different approaches used to quantify the diversity of food products consumed or demanded by households or individuals in several of these studies; however, less attention has been devoted to connecting food diversity (with its argued nutritional benefits) to health costs, which is the aim of this study. firstly, the study examines the relationship between household demographics and changes in aggregate diversity, measured using simpson’s index. the next section of the study examines the connection between diversity and health expenditure in relation to household dynamics. as shown in figure 21, an increase in household size generally results in higher household food diversity, consistent with existing literature. however, the study also notes that smaller households can achieve high food diversity, although they may consume less diverse products. figure 21. assessing food diversity index by household size for three hbs cycles: 2002/03 to 2017/18. when analysing the relationship between the educational background of the household head and household size, as well as household food diversity (refer to figure 22), higher diversity scores were evident in 2002/03 with increases in the education level of the household head, regardless of household size. this contrasts slightly with households where the household heads have only obtained primary education or below (see clustering of diversity scores hovering below 0.6). this observation is consistent with existing research suggesting that advancements in education levels can lead to higher household income, thereby increasing purchasing power and awareness of the benefits of healthy eating (singh, jones, defries, & jain, 2020). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 327 figure 22. assessing food diversity index by household size and education level of the household head, 2002/03. the relationship between income and food diversity, and its potential impact on higher dietary diversity scores, is further highlighted in figure 23. this pattern remains consistent across the three rounds of the hbs. as depicted in the figure, lower-income households may sometimes have limited options to enhance the diversity of their food choices (or food baskets), whereas higher-income households tend to cluster around higher diversity scores. figure 23. assessing food diversity index by household incomes for three hbs cycles: 2002/03 to 2017/18. a reflection of the same dynamics accounting for the education level of the household head corroborates findings from other literature where increases in education level become a factor in income increases and higher food diversity (see figure 24). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 328 figure 24. assessing food diversity index by income and education level, 2002/03. regarding the geographic effect on household income and its influence on household food diversity, as illustrated in figure 25, it is apparent that higher incomes were more prevalent among urban residents in 2002/03. the distribution of food diversity scores generally shows comparability between rural and urban regions; however, it is important to recognize that variables like market accessibility may impact food choices and composition. it is further noteworthy that rural areas may not exhibit the same correlation between income and food diversity as experienced in urban settings. this suggests that achieving food diversity in rural areas may rely more on factors such as agricultural output rather than income alone. figure 25. assessing food diversity index by income and residence (urban and rural), 2002/03. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 329 expanding the investigation into potential district disparities, insights from the hbs 2002/03 highlight variations in income distribution, indicating income inequality across households in lesotho. specifically, districts in the lowlands like butha-buthe, leribe, and maseru exhibit higher income scales. despite this, all districts show similar distributions of food diversity scores, as depicted in figure 26. figure 26. assessing food diversity index by income and district of households, 2002/03. 7.1.3. assessing food diversity and expenditure on health among households by their socio-demographic characteristics the connection between varied foods (a potential proxy for diet quality) draws support from previous studies, from which a recommendation to consume a wider variety of foods and food groups has been a key highlight for informing dietary guidance in some countries. as observed by vadiveloo et al. (2014), the connection between greater consumption of a variety of foods was historically associated with a reduction in mortality and the risk of chronic disease. however, in recent years, concerns have arisen about the potential association between dietary variety and health issues (i.e., obesity due to a possible high intake of some food groups that may contribute to excess energy). while the concern registers as a potential drawback, if, on the one hand, a dietary pattern comprises a variety of healthy foods, this may contribute to the well-being of individuals and lower illnesses and mortality. figure 27. assessing food diversity index and expenditure on health by households across districts in lesotho, 2002/03. building upon this, the study investigated the potential distribution between food diversity, health expenditure, and the possible impact of household location. figure 27 posits that in 2002/03, the distribution of household expenditure on health-related costs was consistent across districts, regardless of the dynamics describing food diversity. this suggests that the distribution of food diversity scores is similar for all districts in lesotho, regardless of whether health expenditure is registered or not. in other words, despite differences in food diversity, households in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 330 different districts tend to spend similar amounts on health-related expenses, indicating that the location of the household may not have a significant impact on the relationship between food diversity and health expenditure. the study also found that the distribution between food diversity, health expenditure, and household location remained consistent across different time periods. specifically, the analysis of data from 2010/11 revealed that the relationship between these three variables was similar to that observed in 2002/03, as illustrated in figure 28. this suggests that the dynamics between food diversity, health expenditure, and household location did not change significantly over the nine-year period, indicating a stable and persistent relationship between these variables. figure 28. assessing food diversity index and expenditure on health by households across districts in lesotho, 2010/11. reflecting on the recent measurement made in 2017/18, the potential connection between food diversity, expenditure on health, and location appears to be similar to the previous hbs rounds (figure 29). a notable observation is the consistency in the distribution of food scores over the past 16 years between measurements, which could imply that the household food composition has remained relatively static or has undergone slow changes in consumption dynamics, despite current consumer behavior and available alternatives. the interpretation may also be reflective of the constant demand for health services over the survey rounds, which is likely given that there were no major health disasters or public health emergencies during the period. in contrast, the covid-19 pandemic occurred in late 2019, which is not a factor in this analysis. figure 29. assessing food diversity index and expenditure on health by households across districts in lesotho, 2017/18. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 331 in terms of the urban-rural strata, the distribution of food diversity scores and health expenditure also compares similarly to that observed at the district level. however, notable clustering is observed for rural households that have spent on health and are characterized by low food diversity scores. figure 30 is an illustrative chart of the association between the three variables in 2002/03. figure 30. assessing food diversity index and expenditure on health by households categorised by urban-rural setting, 2002/03. in 2010/11, the distribution of food diversity scores and health expenditure was consistent with the observations made in 2002/03, but with marginal clustering of households with low food diversity scores spending on health costs (figure 31). figure 31. assessing food diversity and expenditure on health by households categorised by urban-rural setting, 2010/11. the persistence of consistent patterns in food diversity scores and health expenditure across the 2017/18 data is a notable finding. consistent with previous years, the overall distribution of these variables remained stable, mirroring the patterns seen in both the 2002/03 and 2010/11 hbs rounds. this consistency suggests that the homogeneity of households in lesotho, in terms of their food diversity and health expenditure patterns, has persisted over time. as illustrated in figure 32, this consistency is evident in the visual representation of the data. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 332 figure 32. assessing food diversity and expenditure on health by households categorised by urban-rural setting, 2017/18. 7.2. results from pls-sem literature emphasises the effectiveness of pls-sem in analysing structural relationships between variables, particularly when dealing with small sample sizes or non-normal distributions (hair et al., 2019). in this paper, we leveraged the capabilities of pls-sem to examine the relationships between our variables, which included a mix of categorical and continuous variables. this mixture of variable types was well-suited for pls-sem, as it is designed to accommodate such complexities. the approach combines principal components analysis with ordinary least squares regression to estimate partial model structures, allowing us to capture the intricate relationships between our variables (mateos-aparicio, 2011; sarstedt et al., 2020). in evaluating the performance of our model, we examined the r2 and the adjusted r2, which indicates the proportion of variance explained by the model. the r2 ranges from 0 to 1, with higher values indicating greater explanatory power. furthermore, we conducted tests for convergent and discriminant validity to ensure that our measurement models were reliable and accurately captured the constructs of interest. we then evaluated the average variance extracted (ave) and composite reliability (cr) to assess the overall quality of our measurement models. as shown in table 3, for the 2002/03 period, food diversity exhibits a very low r2 value (0.000), indicating that the model predictors do not explain a significant portion of the variance in food diversity. health expenditure, on the other hand, shows a relatively low but non-negligible r2 value (0.012), suggesting that the independent variables explain a small portion of the variance in health expenditure. the adjusted r2 values for both food diversity and health expenditure are consistent with the regular r2 values, indicating that the performance of the model is similar to the intercept-only model. relatedly, the path coefficients reveal a range of relationships between variables. for example, the path coefficient between agricultural participation and food diversity is -0.008, indicating a weak and negative relationship between agricultural participation and food diversity. in contrast, the path coefficient between agricultural participation and health expenditure is 0.057, indicating a moderate and positive relationship between agricultural participation and health expenditure. similarly, the path coefficient between socioeconomic status and food diversity is 0.004, indicating a weak and positive relationship between socioeconomic status and food diversity, while the path coefficient between socioeconomic status and health expenditure is 0.057, indicating a moderate and positive relationship between socioeconomic status and health expenditure. the relationship between food diversity and health expenditure is weak and negative (-0.010). in general, the model explains little to no variance in food diversity, but a small portion of the variance in health expenditure. the analysis further revealed a weak and negative relationship between agricultural participation and food diversity, while the relationship between agricultural participation and health expenditure is moderate and positive. the relationship between socioeconomic status and food diversity is weak and positive, while that between socioeconomic status and health expenditure is moderate and positive, further noting a weak and negative relationship between food diversity and health expenditure. at the same time, in 2010/11, the r2 values indicate a moderate level of explanatory power for food diversity (0.100) and health expenditure (0.061). the adjusted r2 values are identical to the r2 values, suggesting that the performance of the model is not significantly affected by the number of predictors. the path coefficients reveal strong relationships between variables. for example, the coefficient between agricultural participation and food diversity is 0.297, indicating a strong and positive relationship between agricultural participation and food diversity. similarly, the coefficient between agricultural participation and health expenditure is 0.094, indicating a moderate and positive relationship between the two variables. socioeconomic status also exhibits moderate and positive relationships with food diversity (0.141) and health expenditure (0.016). notably, the relationship between food diversity and health expenditure is strong and positive (0.202), indicating that an increase in food diversity is associated with an increase in health expenditure. overall, the results suggest that agricultural participation is a significant driver of food diversity, which in turn has a significant asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 333 impact on health expenditure. socioeconomic status also plays a role in shaping food diversity, but its impact on health expenditure is limited. table 3. inspection of the model’s path coefficients and the (adjusted) r2. statistic/construct food diversity health expenditure hbs 2002/03 r2 0.000 0.012 adjusted r2 -0.000 0.012 agricultural participation -0.008 0.057 socioeconomic status 0.004 0.093 food diversity -0.010 hbs 2010/11 r2 0.100 0.061 adjusted r2 0.100 0.061 agricultural participation 0.297 0.094 socioeconomic status 0.141 0.016 food diversity 0.202 hbs 2017/18 r2 0.005 0.014 adjusted r2 0.005 0.014 agricultural participation -0.036 0.095 socioeconomic status 0.060 0.087 food diversity 0.001 in 2017/18, the performance of the model is similar to that observed in 2002/03, with limited explanatory power for both food diversity and health expenditure. notably, the relationships between agricultural participation and food diversity are weak and negative, indicating that agricultural participation may not be a strong driver of food diversity. in contrast, the relationship between agricultural participation and health expenditure is moderate and positive, suggesting that agricultural participation has a positive impact on health expenditure. furthermore, the relationship between socioeconomic status and food diversity is weak and positive, indicating that socioeconomic status has a limited influence on food diversity. the relationship between socioeconomic status and health expenditure is moderate and positive, suggesting that socioeconomic status has a moderate impact on health expenditure. the extremely weak relationship between food diversity and health expenditure suggests that other factors may be driving this relationship, and further investigation is needed to fully understand the underlying mechanisms. continuing the analysis, we evaluated the reliability of the model (see table 4 showing the results), focusing on the average variance extracted (ave) as a measure of indicator reliability. the ave values for agricultural participation and socioeconomic status in 2002/03 reveal varying levels of construct reliability. agricultural participation exhibited a low ave of 0.356, indicating that only 35.6% of the variance in its indicators is explained by the latent variable, suggesting limited reliability. in contrast, socioeconomic status demonstrated a relatively high ave of 0.487, indicating that approximately 50% of the variance in its indicators is explained by the latent variable, suggesting a moderately defined and reliable construct. in 2010/11, the ave for agricultural participation improved to 0.408, indicating a moderate level of reliability, which may be affected by some measurement error or noise. at the same time, socioeconomic status also showed a moderate level of reliability, with an ave of 0.363. food diversity and health expenditure maintained their high levels of reliability, with ave values of 1.000 in both years. in 2017/18, agricultural participation had an ave of 0.424, suggesting a moderate level of reliability, while socioeconomic status had an ave of 0.294, indicating that the indicators may not provide a complete representation of the underlying construct. table 4. reliability metrics across the hbs datasets: 2002/03, 2010/11 and 2017/18. construct alpha rhoc ave rhoa hbs 2002/03 agricultural participation 0.275 0.515 0.356 0.318 socioeconomic status -0.176 0.346 0.487 0.507 food diversity 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 health spending 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 hbs 2010/11 agricultural participation 0.315 0.647 0.408 0.476 socioeconomic status 0.175 0.576 0.363 0.186 food diversity 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 health spending 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 hbs 2017/18 agricultural participation 0.267 0.659 0.424 0.378 socioeconomic status -0.291 0.282 0.294 -0.664 food diversity 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 health spending 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 334 the analysis proceeds by performing bootstrapping to estimate standard errors and compute confidence intervals. as illustrated in table 5, the path between agricultural participation and food diversity reveals a complex relationship. the original estimate is -0.008, indicating that an increase in agricultural participation is associated with a decrease in food diversity. however, the bootstrap mean and standard deviation (sd) are relatively large, indicating that there is some uncertainty in this estimate. the t-statistic is -0.473, which is not significant at the 5% level. in contrast, the relationship between agricultural participation and health spending is significant. the original estimate is 0.057, indicating that an increase in agricultural participation is associated with an increase in health spending. this estimate is relatively consistent across bootstraps, with a bootstrap mean and sd close to 0. the t-statistic is 3.086, indicating a significant relationship at the 5% level. the analysis also reveals significant relationships between socioeconomic status and both food diversity and health spending. the original estimate for the path between socioeconomic status and food diversity is 0.004, indicating that an increase in socioeconomic status is associated with a small increase in food diversity. however, the bootstrap sd is relatively large, indicating that there may be some uncertainty in this estimate. the t-statistic is 0.382, which is not significant at the 5% level. the relationship between socioeconomic status and health spending is more robust, with an original estimate of 0.093, indicating that an increase in socioeconomic status is associated with an increase in health spending. this estimate is relatively consistent across bootstraps, with a bootstrap mean and sd close to 0. the t-statistic is 6.464, indicating a highly significant relationship at the 5% level. the path between food diversity and health spending has an original estimate of -0.010, indicating that an increase in food diversity is associated with a decrease in health spending. however, the bootstrap sd is relatively large, indicating that there may be some uncertainty in this estimate. the t-statistic is -0.879, which is not significant at the 5% level. overall, these results suggest that agricultural participation has a significant positive effect on health spending, while socioeconomic status has a significant positive effect on health spending. there may be some uncertainty in the relationships between agricultural participation and food diversity, as well as between socioeconomic status and food diversity. additionally, there may be no significant. in 2010/11, the estimated path coefficient between agricultural participation and food diversity is 0.297, indicating that a one-unit increase in agricultural participation is associated with a 0.297-unit increase in food diversity. the bootstrap mean also matches the original estimate, and the t-statistic is 23.418, indicating that this relationship is highly statistically significant. in contrast, the estimated path coefficient between agricultural participation and health spending is 0.094, but the bootstrap standard error is relatively large, suggesting that this estimate may not be as reliable as others. the analysis also reveals positive relationships between socioeconomic status and both food diversity and health spending. the estimated path coefficient between socioeconomic status and food diversity is 0.141, which is consistent with the bootstrap mean, and the t-statistic is 10.776, indicating that this relationship is statistically significant. similarly, the estimated path coefficient between socioeconomic status and health spending is 0.016, which is relatively small but still significant. however, the bootstrap standard error is also relatively large, suggesting that this estimate may not be as reliable as others. the analysis also reveals a positive relationship between food diversity and health spending. the estimated path coefficient is 0.202, which matches the bootstrap mean, and the t-statistic is 16.131, indicating that this relationship is statistically significant. these results suggest that agricultural participation and socioeconomic status are positively related to food diversity and health spending, while on the other hand, there appears to be a positive relationship between food diversity and health spending. in 2017/18, the results indicate that the relationship between agricultural participation and food diversity is uncertain, with an original estimate of -0.036 and a relatively large bootstrap sd. the t-statistic is -2.122, indicating that the relationship is not significant at a 5% level. in contrast, the relationship between agricultural participation and health spending is significant, with an original estimate of 0.095 and a consistent bootstrap mean and sd. the t-statistic is 5.729, indicating a highly significant relationship at a 5% level. socioeconomic status has a positive effect on health spending, with an original estimate of 0.093 and a consistent bootstrap mean and sd. however, the relationship between socioeconomic status and food diversity is uncertain, with an original estimate of 0.060 and a relatively large bootstrap sd. the t-statistic is 1.546, indicating that the relationship is not significant at a 5% level. table 5. estimated standard errors and confidence intervals following bootstrapping the model across the hbs datasets. construct original est. bootstrap mean bootstrap sd t-stat. 5% ci 95% ci hbs 2002/03 agricultural participation -> food diversity -0.008 -0.011 0.018 -0.473 -0.042 0.019 agricultural participation -> health spending 0.057 0.057 0.018 3.086 0.032 0.081 socioeconomic status -> food diversity 0.004 0.004 0.01 0.382 -0.012 0.02 socioeconomic status -> health spending 0.093 0.096 0.014 6.464 0.072 0.121 food diversity -> health spending -0.01 -0.01 0.011 -0.879 -0.028 0.008 hbs 2010/11 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 335 construct original est. bootstrap mean bootstrap sd t-stat. 5% ci 95% ci agricultural participation -> food diversity 0.297 0.297 0.013 23.418 0.276 0.317 agricultural participation -> health spending 0.094 0.096 0.018 5.187 0.064 0.127 socioeconomic status -> food diversity 0.141 0.143 0.013 10.776 0.121 0.164 socioeconomic status -> health spending 0.016 0.017 0.013 1.19 -0.005 0.038 food diversity -> health spending 0.202 0.201 0.013 16.131 0.181 0.222 hbs 2017/18 agricultural participation -> food diversity -0.036 -0.038 0.017 -2.122 -0.067 -0.012 agricultural participation -> health spending 0.095 0.094 0.017 5.729 0.066 0.12 socioeconomic status -> food diversity 0.06 0.05 0.039 1.546 -0.052 0.087 socioeconomic status -> health spending 0.087 0.083 0.031 2.836 0.024 0.121 food diversity -> health spending 0.001 0.002 0.015 0.088 -0.022 0.026 our approach to assessing the convergent validity of our constructs involved applying the fornell-larcker criterion to calculate the square root of the average variance extracted (ave) for each construct. the results, as presented in table 6, reveal a non-linear picture of the internal consistency and reliability of our constructs. specifically, the square root of ave values for agricultural participation indicates a moderate level of internal consistency across the three years, ranging from 0.597 to 0.651. although the construct has shown some improvement over time, its internal consistency remains relatively moderate. in contrast, socioeconomic status exhibits a decline in internal consistency over the three years, with values decreasing from 0.698 in 2002/03 to 0.542 in 2017/18. this decline may be indicative of a less well-defined construct or measurement tools that have become less reliable. on the other hand, food diversity and health expenditure demonstrate high levels of internal consistency, with square root of ave values of 1.00 for all three years, suggesting effective measurement and reliability. table 6. discriminant validity assessment, across the three hbs datasets. construct agricultural participation socioeconomic status food diversity health expenditure hbs 2002/03 agricultural participation 0.597 . . . socioeconomic status 0.038 0.698 . . food diversity -0.008 0.003 1.000 . health spending 0.060 0.096 -0.010 1.000 hbs 2010/11 agricultural participation 0.639 . . . socioeconomic status -0.100 0.602 . . food diversity 0.283 0.112 1.000 . health spending 0.150 0.029 0.231 1.000 hbs 2017/18 agricultural participation 0.651 . . . socioeconomic status -0.135 0.542 . . food diversity -0.044 0.065 1.000 . health spending 0.083 0.075 0.003 1.000 next and towards assessing discriminant validity, the paper used the heterotrait-monotrait ratio (htmt), and in line with the literature, values of htmt must be below 0.90 to prove data validity (sohail & chen, 2022). as illustrated in table 7, and while context could matter regarding the thresholds, the htmt ratios indicate that agricultural participation has moderate relationships with socioeconomic status (htmt = 0.426) and health spending (htmt = 0.077), suggesting that they may be related or confounded with each other. in contrast, agricultural participation and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 309-338 336 food diversity are not strongly related (htmt = 0.044), indicating that they are distinct and not confounded with each other. socioeconomic status and food diversity are weakly related (htmt = 0.019), indicating that they are distinct and not confounded with each other. the pattern does not vary much for 2010/11 and 2017/18. table 7. results from bootstrap confidence intervals to test if the heterotrait-monotrait ratio (htmt) is significantly different from 1.00, across the hbs datasets. construct pair original est. bootstrap mean bootstrap sd t-stat. 5% ci 95% ci hbs 2002/03 agricultural participation -> socioeconomic status 0.426 0.425 0.038 11.310 0.367 0.488 agricultural participation -> food diversity 0.044 0.052 0.019 2.309 0.022 0.084 agricultural participation -> health spending 0.077 0.087 0.020 3.885 0.056 0.120 socioeconomic status -> food diversity 0.019 0.024 0.008 2.221 0.011 0.039 socioeconomic status -> health spending 0.134 0.134 0.019 7.192 0.103 0.164 food diversity -> health spending 0.010 0.012 0.009 1.136 0.001 0.028 hbs 2010/11 agricultural participation -> socioeconomic status 0.366 0.389 0.051 7.149 0.307 0.482 agricultural participation -> food diversity 0.424 0.424 0.028 15.422 0.380 0.472 agricultural participation -> health spending 0.253 0.255 0.033 7.743 0.203 0.309 socioeconomic status -> food diversity 0.231 0.233 0.031 7.522 0.186 0.284 socioeconomic status -> health spending 0.090 0.091 0.027 3.283 0.046 0.136 food diversity -> health spending 0.231 0.230 0.011 20.810 0.213 0.248 hbs 2017/18 agricultural participation -> socioeconomic status 0.742 0.749 0.056 13.144 0.657 0.843 agricultural participation -> food diversity 0.087 0.091 0.025 3.471 0.053 0.135 agricultural participation -> health spending 0.153 0.153 0.030 5.013 0.105 0.203 socioeconomic status -> food diversity 0.131 0.132 0.026 5.040 0.092 0.176 socioeconomic status -> health spending 0.132 0.145 0.025 5.310 0.104 0.187 food diversity -> health spending 0.003 0.012 0.009 0.317 0.001 0.028 8. conclusions the study examined the relationship between food diversity and healthcare expenditure in lesotho, highlighting the importance of agricultural participation and household socioeconomic factors. from a hypothesis-based perspective, the study associated households with higher levels of food diversity with lower healthcare expenditures, suggesting that promoting diverse diets could be a cost-effective strategy for reducing healthcare costs. this relationship is supported by previous research, which highlighted the importance of product variety on nutritional intake and overall health outcomes. specifically in lesotho, this area has not been extensively explored. the analysis revealed that household socioeconomic factors, such as income and education, play a crucial role in shaping dietary patterns and health expenditure decisions. households with economically active heads and higher education levels tend to have greater access to a variety of nutritious foods, which can improve health outcomes. this is particularly important in lesotho, where limited access to healthy food options is a significant challenge for many households. the pls-sem framework provided a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between these variables, revealing that food diversity is influenced by demographic and socioeconomic factors, and further suggesting the influence of agricultural participation on food diversity, which in turn affects health outcomes. the pls-sem analysis provides a nuanced understanding of this relationship, revealing that agricultural participation can have a direct impact on food diversity and health outcomes. in general, these findings could have important implications for policymakers seeking to develop targeted interventions to improve health outcomes in lesotho. an intense promotion of agricultural participation could lead to increases in accessing diverse food options, potentially reducing healthcare costs and improving overall health outcomes. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abdollahi, m., mohammadi, n. f., houshiarrad, a., ghafarpour, m., ghodsi, d., & 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(2024). the impact of feeding date palm by products on the reproduction of awassi ewe in the qatari environment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2), 72–78. 10.55493/5005.v14i2.5110 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 2 (2024): 72-78. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5100-0866 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8920-6379 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0654-1559 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6121-0116 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5569-0841 mailto:muzamilata@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 72-78 73 1. introduction only natural vegetation may be able to meet the nutritional needs of ruminants in arid, semi-arid, and tropical regions. the scarcity of natural resources, particularly feed and water, challenges the productivity of the livestock sector in qatar. according to the country's department of agricultural affairs reports (agricultural bulletin, 2022), .forage crops available for consumption in 2021 were about 263 thousand tons, with a self-sufficiency ratio of 39%the aforementioned reference documents the presence of a total of about 1.7 million palm trees in qatar. this amount of date palm trees may be a considerable source of roughages since a date palm tree can produce up to 20 kg of dry fronds annually (pascual, fernandez, dı ́az, garces, & rubert-aleman, 2000). moreover, discarded date fruits have the ability to replace concentrates as energy sources in feed (al-dobaib, mehaia, & khalil, 2009). according to reports of dar (2022), the total livestock population was about 1.3 million heads, of which 64.8%, 25.8%, 7.1%, and 2.3% were sheep, goats, camels, and cattle, respectively. in qatar, about 72% of local sheep flocks consumed red meat. this implies that enhancing the productivity of the national sheep herd is critical for national food security. awassi was the most widespread breed of sheep in qatar (al awad et al., 2022). there is a dearth of documented information about the reproductive performance of awassi sheep under intensive management systems in qatar. three indices are used to measure the annual productivity of ewes (atta & khidir, 2006; sulieman, sayers, & wilson, 1990). these indices reflect the capacity of weaned litter size and the frequency of lamb production per year. these indices are calculated in terms of annual kilograms of weaned lambs’ production per ewe, per postpartum weight of ewe or per metabolic postpartum body weight of ewe. the purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of feeding awassi sheep flocks feeds made from crushed palm fronds and discarded dates as opposed to feeds made from ground barley grains and dried rhods on the flocks' ability to reproduce. 2. material and methods 2.1. animals the research used forty-four awassi ewes, ranging in age from 1.5 to 2 years. the ewes were divided into two experimental groups of 22 animals each. they had a matching average body weight (47.8 vs. 47.7 kg). each experimental group was divided into 11 subgroups, each composed of two body-weight-matched ewes. a 4 m2 pen accommodated each subgroup. the pens are supplied with watering and feeding troughs. 2.2. experimental diets two totally mixed iso-caloric and iso-nitrogenous diets based on barley grains and crushed rhodes hay (conventional diet, cd) and on crushed palm fronds and date waste (non-conventional diet, ncd) were used. table 1 shows the ingredient proportions, nutritional content, and feed cost of the experimental diets. the detailed nutritional value of the experimental diets had been described previously (atta et al., 2018). table 1. ingredients proportions of the experimental diets. ingredients proportion conventional diet (cd) non-conventional diet (ncd) date waste, g/kg 100 palm fronds, g/kg 240 urea, g/kg 5 molasses, g/kg 200 barley grains, g/kg 100 rhodes, g/kg 300 soybeans, g/kg 250 300 wheat bran, g/kg 320 125 calcium diphosphate, g/kg 20 20 common salt, g/kg 10 10 cost of a ton of feed, qatari riyals/ton* 1708 1145 metabolizable energy, mj/kg dm 10.4 9.7 digestible crude protein, g/kg 191 197 note: * qatari riyal = 0.27 usd. 2.3. management the ewes’ subgroups were randomly assigned to the two experimental feed treatments. the amount of feed offered was adjusted weekly on the basis that the refusals represented approximately 10% of the offer. all animals always had access to clean drinking water and mineral licks. each animal received 500 grams of fresh alfalfa once a week. two fertile rams were selected to join the ewes in a randomized block design experiment. each ram was assigned a block. six subgroups of cd treatments and five subgroups of ncd treatments make up the first block, while five subgroups of cd treatments and six subgroups of ncd treatments make up the second block. daily in the morning, ewes of each block were exposed to their allocated ram for a 3-hour’ period. during this period, we closely observed the ewes, who showed signs of oestrus and accepted the ram. we then exposed them to the ram again in the evening to ensure successful mating, and we recorded the date of service. daily exposure to the ram continued until ewes asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 72-78 74 showed signs of pregnancy (developed udders and an enlarged abdomen) and were exposed to the ram again one week after lambing. gestation and lambing intervals were then calculated. ewes were weighed on the day of service and lambing. after drying, the birth weight of each lamb was immediately recorded. only during the first week of lambing were lambs permitted to freely suckle their dams. from the second week onwards, we kept the lambs away from their dams for 12 hours at night, ensuring the dams' feed was always available in front of them. at 90 days of age, we registered the lambs' weaning weight. productivity indices were calculated as follows (atta & khidir, 2006): weight of lambs weaned per ewe (kg) = number of lambs weaned per ewe × average lamb′s weaning weight index 1 (kg, weight of weaned lambs produced per ewe per year): index1 = weight of lambs weaned per ewe × 365 subsequent lambing interval period index2 (weight of weaned lambs/kg of ewe weight/year): index2 = index1 ewe′s postpartum weight index3 (weight of lambs produced/kg of ewe metabolic weight/year): index3 = index1 (ewe′s postpartum weight)0.75 2.4. statistical analysis using the statistical computer package statistica (statsoft inc, 2011), the significance of the effect of dietary treatment on individual ewes-based data was tested by analysis of covariance, taking the number of days from the start of the experiment to successful service as a covariate. whereas the significance of dietary treatment variations on flock-based data was examined by chi square analysis. the tested individual ewes-based data were number of services per conception, gestation period, lambing interval, ewes' weight at conception and lambing, gestation body change, litter size, litter weight at birth and at weaning, productivity indices, feed intake, feeding cost, and cost of kg of weight of weaned lambs per year. the examined flock-based data were the rates of ewes' mortality, conception, lambing, twining, and lambs' pre-weaning mortality, as well as the male lambs' ratio. 3. results five ewes died of pneumonia: two from the cd group and three from the nc group. the number of conceived ewes was 15 and 14 from cd and ncd treatments, respectively. fourteen and 12 ewes from the cd and ncd groups, respectively, successfully delivered. twenty-nine lambs were born to the 26 ewes. four lambs died before weaning. tables 2 and 3 show the reproductive performance of the two experimental flocks. there were no differences (p > 0.05) between the two diet groups in terms of ewes' mortality, conception, lambing, twining, lambs' mortality rates, or male lambs' ratio. table 2. reproductive performance of the flocks of the experimental diets’ groups. item cd ncd initial no of present ewes 22 22 number of dead ewes 2 3 number of alive ewes 20 19 number of conceived ewes 15 14 number of aborted ewes 1 2 number of lambed ewes 14 12 number of ewes continued for the second lambing 9 7 number of twining deliveries 2 2 number of lambs born 15 14 number of male lambs 3 6 number of dead lambs 1 3 table 3. rates of reproductive performance of the flocks of the experimental diets’ groups. item cd ncd pearson chi-square p mortality percentage 9.1% 13.6% 0.226 0.635 conception percentage of alive ewes 75.0% 73.7% 0.009 0.925 lambing percentage of pregnant ewes 93.3% 85.7% 0.453 0.501 twining percentage 13.3% 16.7% 0.059 0.809 male lambs’ percentage 20.0% 42.9% 1.77 0.184 pre-weaning mortality percentage 6.7% 21.4% 1.33 0.249 table 4 shows reproductive performance traits of ewes of cd and ncd treatments. most of the dietary groups' traits were statistically similar. the ncd group excelled (p <0.05) against their cd group mates on intake asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 72-78 75 parameters. whereas, the cd-fed group excelled the ncd-fed group on the daily and annual cost of feeding. the type of diet treatment in the present study did not affect total lamb birth weight or ewe. table 4. reproductive traits of ewes fed cd and ncd treatments. traits cd ncd sem p initial number of ewes 22 22 number of conceived ewes 15 14 number of lambed ewes 14 12 number of ewes continued for the second lambing 9 7 period to conception, days 117 95 29.1 0.467 gestation period, days 151 149 0.88 0.105 lambing interval, days 325 326 6.55 0.896 number of services/conceptions 2.3 2.4 0.14 0.121 initial body weight, kg 47.8 47.7 2.20 0.984 conception weight, kg 53.8 49.5 2.00 0.343 weight at lambing, kg 61.7 57.1 1.75 0.194 total gestation body change, kg 7.93 7.57 1.19 0.738 daily gestation body change, g/day 52.2 50.7 7.91 0.807 dm intake, kg/day 1.43 1.58 0.033 0.005 dcp intake, kg/day 0.273 0.301 0.006 0.005 me intake, mj/day 14.9 16.4 0.348 0.005 dm intake % of average body weight 2.57 2.94 0.080 0.003 litter size, (lambs/100 ewes) 113 117 10.4 0.629 litter birth weight, kg 3.98 3.91 0.308 0.935 litter birth weight % of dam lambing weight 6.53 6.71 0.518 0.883 daily cost of feed intake (qatari riyals/ewe/day) 2.42 1.88 0.079 0.001 annual feeding cost (qatari riyals/ewe/year) 883 686 28.7 0.001 note: sem= standard error of means. dm= dry matter. dcp= digestible crude protein. cp= crude protein. me= metabolizable energy. mj= mega joule. table 5 describes the productivity indices and traits of ewes fed with the experimental cd and ncd treatments. most of the traits of the two dietary groups were statistically similar. however, the cd group outperformed the ncd group in terms of the cost per kg of weight of weaned lambs/ewe/year. the weight of litter lambs that were weaned per ewe and the three productivity indices were all the same between the experimental groups. this is because diet treatment has no effect (p > 0.05) on litter lambing interval, weight of postpartum ewes, or weight of weaned lambs. however, the feeding cost of kg of weight of weaned lambs/ewe/year of ncd ewes was less than that of cd ewes by 28.7% (30.8 vs. 43.2 qatari riyals) table 5. productivity indices of ewes fed the cd and ncd treatments. traits cd ncd sem p number of lambed ewes 14 12 number of ewes reached the 2nd lambing 9 7 litter weaning weight (kg) 19.3 22.0 1.83 0.333 index1* 20.6 23.5 1.75 0.288 index2** 0.343 0.417 0.033 0.149 index3*** 0.95 1.14 0.085 0.158 cost of kg of weaned lambs' weight, qatari riyals 43.2 30.8 1.58 0.000 note: *index 1, total weight of weaned lambs/ewe/year = total weight of weaned lambs365/lambing interval period. **index 2, the total weight of weaned lambs/kg of ewe weight/year = index1/ postpartum ewe weight. ***index 3, the total weight of weaned lambs/kg0.75 of ewe weight/year = index1/ postpartum ewe weight0.75. 4. discussion 4.1. flocks' reproduction performance the lack of effect of the present experimental dietary treatment on conception, lambing, twining, and preweaning lambs' mortality percentages may be due to the fact that feed intakes were quite sufficient to reach a suitable body weight at conception (51.7 ± 9.38 kg). the positive effect of supplying more energy and protein than required on awassi sheep fecundity was due to its impact on body weight (talafha & ababneh, 2011). in the same context, (kabaija, akalework, & leng, 1989) reported no difference in lambing percentage for ewes fed concentrates of molasses-urea blocks and/or noug oil cakes as a supplement to grazing, provided the conception weights were similar. the conception percentage of the current ewes was similar to the range (66.7%–75%) reported for awassi ewes mated at different months of the year in turkey (gül & keskin, 2010). however, researchers noted that awassi ewes' asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 72-78 76 reproductive performance has been low in the semi-arid regions of the near east countries (hamadeh, abi said, tami, & barbour, 2001; husein & kridli, 2002). the values of the present twinging delivery percentages were within the range reported for awassi sheep (aktaş et al., 2015). for the cd and ncd groups, the current percentages of male lambs born were 20% and 42.9%, respectively. however, we found no evidence to support the impact of the ewe's breed or nutrition on this parameter. the death rate for pre-weaning lambs in this study was 6.7% for the cd group and 21.4% for the ncd group. this was similar to what was found for the same breed of sheep at 120 days old, when they were weaned (aktaş et al., 2015). it was also compared favorably with that reported for awassi (18.4%), najdi (18.7%), and hejazi (15.9%) lambs in saudi arabia (gaili, islam, & el-naiem, 1994). 4.2. ewes’ reproductive traits the average period from the start of the experiment at the beginning of march to conception (106 ± 78.9 days) indicated that the average conception month is about june and july. this aligns with the findings reported for awassi sheep in jordan (abu-zanat, mekdadi, & tabbaa, 2005). they reported that the natural breeding season of awassi rams was mainly between late june and early september, which allowed ewes to lamb between late november and early february. the ncd group may have a tendency to consume more dm due to their slightly lower dietary me concentration (9.7 vs. 10.4 mj/kg dm). it is stated that animals eat to satisfy a constant level of digestible energy, so animals on a low-energy diet eat more to reach that level of satisfaction (mohamed, 1986). the experimental groups' daily intakes of dm and me were comparable to 1.5 kg dm/day and 16.3 mj/day postulated for 60 kg live weight ewes (afrc, 1993). crude protein intake in the present study was higher than 115 g, as suggested by the same authors. the similarity of body weights at conception indicated that reproduction in sheep greatly depends on weight rather than type of feed consumed (atti, thériez, & abdennebi, 2001). a comparable conception weight (52 ± 4 kg) was reported for awassi ewes in saudi arabia (gaili et al., 1994). the average conception weight of ewes in traditionally managed awassi flocks was 47 kg (kassem, 2005). the values of body weight gain during gestation for both experimental groups were comparable to those stated for ewes (wilson & brigstocke, 1981). these authors derived a general rule that ewes carrying single lambs should increase in body weight by about 10% and those with twins by 18% (the present study values were 14.7% and 15.3% for cd and ncd ewes, respectively). this indicated efficient utilization of dm and cp intakes for both experimental groups. the current cp and me intakes per metabolic body weight (wt0.75) were higher than those required for maximum fetal growth (moloney, quirke, & sheehan, 1988) (average of 0.731 mj me and 13.4 g cp vs. 0.5 mj me and 7g cp). they added that feeding pregnant ewes above this level will not add to the lamb birth weight. this led to the conclusion that the observed lamb birth weight is the maximum potential output of the current study. consistently, the current proportion of birth weight to the dam's postpartum weight (6.6 ± 1.8%) was comparable to that reported for ewes of the same breed (7.44%) (aktaş et al., 2015). litter size for present awassi ewes (1.17 lambs born/ewe lambing) was within the range of 1.05 to 1.20 lambs born per lambing ewe (ahmed & abdallah, 2012; galal, gürsoy, & shaat, 2008). the gestation period did not show variation (p >0.05) among dietary treatments (overall mean of 150.3±3.4). similar observations were reported for syrian awassi sheep (zarkawi & al-daker, 2018) (151 ± 3.0 days) and (zarkawi, 2010) (151.0 days); for afshari ewes in iran (aliyari, moeini, shahir, & sirjani, 2012) (151 days). the type of lambing (singles or twins) had no effect on the duration of pregnancy (zarkawi & al-daker, 2018). experimental groups did not exhibit variation (p >0.05) for lambing interval (overall mean of 326 ± 17.4 days). the present values of lambing intervals were comparable to the 338 days reported for awassi ewes (ahmed & abdallah, 2012). a lambing interval of 282 ± 4 days was observed for awassi ewes in saudi arabia (gaili et al., 1994). the latter workers also reported lambing intervals of 245 ± 11 and 236 ± 8 days for najdi and hejazi, respectively. values of 446 ± 26.0 and 361 ± 23.09 days were also reported as lambing intervals for najdi and harri ewes, respectively (hussein & khattab, 2013). despite the high (p <0.05) feed intake during gestation observed by ncd ewes, ncd treatment reduced feed cost during this period by 22.3% of that of cd treatment. noteworthy, the experimental ewes' reproductive traits were the same. 4.3. ewes’ productivity indices the values of the awassi weaning weight of lambs/ewe obtained in the current experiment (overall mean of 20.4 ± 5.8 kg weaned lamb/ewe/year) were comparable to 24.6 ±1.41 and 20.1±1.37 kg weaned lambs/ewe/year, reported for saudi harri and najdi sheep, respectively (hussein & khattab, 2013). but it was much higher than 16.3, 11.5, 11.9, and 9.9 kg/ewe, reported for multi-parous and primi-parous sudan nilotic ewes fed sorghum-based or molasses-based diets, respectively (atta & khidir, 2006). sudan nilotic sheep is a smaller breed compared to awassi sheep; thus, litter weaning weight is lighter. the productivity indices of the current awassi sheep were comparable to those of sudan desert ewes when weaning lambs at 120 or 150 days of age (sulieman et al., 1990). for the 120and 150-day groups, respectively, they reported 16.8 and 18.5 kg of weaned lamb/ewe/year, 0.419 and 0.461 kg of weaned lamb/kg ewe's postpartum weight/year, and 1.14 and 1.25 kg of weaned lamb/kg metabolic ewes' postpartum weight/year. they observed that these indices increased as lamb weaning age increased. sudan nilotic sheep reported comparable values of index 1 (17.3–29.2 kg weaned lambs/ewe/year) (atta & khidir, 2006). however, the values of indices 2 and 3 reported for nilotic ewes (0.623–0.998 kg weaned lambs per kg of ewe weight per year and 1.43–2.31 kg weaned lambs/kg0.75 of ewe weight per year) were much higher than those reported in the current study. this is because of the short lambing interval of the sudan nilotic breed (201–216 days) compared to that of the current awassi ewes (326 ± 17.4 days). high productivity indices were reported for awassi sheep in saudi arabia (31 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2) 2024: 72-78 77 ± 2 kg, 587 ± 5 g, and 1702 ± 155 g for index 1, 2, and 3, respectively) (gaili et al., 1994). they also reported 33 ± 2 and 23 ± 2 kg index 1, 567 ± 6 and 638 ± 5 g index 2, and 1693 ± 102 and 1674 ± 117 g index 3 for najdi and hejazi sheep, respectively. they hypothesized that index 1 would rank najdi ewes as the most efficient lamb producers because they had the highest value, followed by awassi and hejazi ewes. 5. conclusions • date palm fronds and discarded date-based feed provide reproductive and productive sheep flock performance that is not different from a diet based on barley grains and rhodes hay. • a date palm product-based diet is a reasonable, cost-effective substitute for barley grains and rhodes hay diet. during gestation, ncd treatment decreased feed costs by 22.3% compared to cd treatment. • the feeding cost of a kg of weight of weaned lambs/ewes/year of date palm product-based diet ewes was less than that of barley and rhodes-based diet ewes by 28.7% (30.8 vs. 43.2 qatari riyals, equivalent to 8.32 vs. 11.7 usd). • awassi sheep has excellent adaptation to qatari environmental conditions, as most of the studied traits match those reported for the same breed in other countries. funding: this research is supported by qatar national research fund (grant number: nprp 6-260-4-003). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the institutional animal care and use committee of the ministry of municipality and environment, state of qatar has granted approval for this study on 20 march 2016 (ref. no. mme /iacuc assurance: sch-amme-004). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abu-zanat, m., mekdadi, h., & tabbaa, m. 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(2018). productive and reproductive parameters of syrian awassi lambs with fast and slow growth rates. acta scientiarum. animal sciences, 40, e37983. https://doi.org/10.4025/actascianimsci.v40i1.37983 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02250832 https://doi.org/10.1006/jare.1999.0622 file:///c:/users/mano/downloads/www.statsoft.com https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-011-9858-5 https://doi.org/10.4025/actascianimsci.v40i1.37983 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 281 soil ec index – based prediction of rice growing and yield in the mekong delta the anh hoa,b van khanh nguyena van huu buia chi ngon nguyena acollege of engineering, can tho university, vietnam. bfaculty of mechanical engineering, can tho university of technology, vietnam.  ncngon@ctu.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 17 april 2025 revised: 2 june 2025 accepted: 13 june 2025 published: 18 june 2025 keywords soil electrical conductivity mekong delta lstm model ndre ndvi rice yields. this research explores the use of soil electrical conductivity (ec) in rice cultivation, focusing on soil ec correlation with vegetation indices (ndvi, ndre) and soil ec impact on yield. a total of 228 soil ec, ndvi, and ndre data points were collected from an 11,000 m² field in hau giang and can tho city. soil ec was measured at the beginning of the season, and at 39 and 49 days after sowing. ndvi was recorded on days 39, 49, 60, and 72, with initial values set to zero due to no crop presence. results show that soil ec decreased from the start to day 49, while ndvi and ndre increased. spearman correlation analysis revealed strong relationships between early soil ec and ndvi at days 39 and 49 (r = 0.82, 0.71), and between soil ec at day 49 (ec 49) and ndre at later stages (r = 0.594, 0.565). additionally, 150 soil ec and yield samples from five mekong delta regions were used in an lstm model (70% training, 30% testing), achieving high accuracy (rmse = 0.0919, mae = 0.0634, r2 = 0.8492). the findings suggest that soil ec is a valuable indicator for monitoring crop growth and managing rice production, particularly in areas affected by salinity due to climate change. contribution/originality: this study measured soil ec in the mekong delta, vietnam, where effective field measurement tools are scarce. it explores soil ec's application in managing crop growth (assessed via ndvi). the lstm model, combined with soil ec data, effectively predicts rice yield, enabling the selection of optimal cultivation areas under climate change conditions. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5417 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ho, t. a., nguyen, v. k., bui, v. h., & nguyen, c. n. (2025). soil ec index – based prediction of rice growing and yield in the mekong delta. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 281–290. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction integrating soil ec with vegetation indices such as the normalized difference vegetation index (ndvi) and the normalized difference red edge (ndre) is a promising approach in precision agriculture, particularly for rice cultivation in the mekong delta. soil ec reflects properties such as moisture, salinity, and texture, which significantly affect rice growth and yield (ezrin, amin, anuar, & aimrun, 2010), especially in saline-affected regions like the mekong delta (kaveney et al., 2023). ndvi quantifies crop greenness and health, while ndre detects chlorophyll variations in dense vegetation, overcoming ndvi saturation (naguib & daliman, 2022). the mekong delta, vietnam’s primary rice-producing region, faces challenges from salinity intrusion and seasonal flooding, making soil ec a critical tool for assessing soil conditions (minh et al., 2022). salinity levels, often exacerbated by climate change and upstream damming, directly impact rice yields, necessitating precise monitoring and management strategies (kantoush, binh, sumi, & la, 2017). apparent soil ec, measured via electromagnetic induction asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 281-290 mailto:ncngon@ctu.edu.vn https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6446-5104 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0006-6803 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6120-8388 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9638-7259 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5417 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 281-290 282 and machine learning, maps spatial soil variability in paddy fields (fletcher, 2022). temporal soil ec changes reveal soil texture and moisture shifts, influencing water availability and root growth in flooded paddy fields (ezrin et al., 2010; fletcher, 2022). soil ec impacts rice yield directly and indirectly. in rice fields, high soil ec from salinity caused 26.81% yield loss, as observed in saline-affected regions (litardo, bendezú, zenteno, pérez-almeida, & moran, 2022). in the mekong delta, salinity intrusion during the dry season increases soil ec, reducing rice yields in coastal provinces like tra vinh and soc trang (hoa, 2023). moderate soil ec in well-irrigated fields, however, boosts yields by optimizing nutrient availability, aiding site-specific management (litardo et al., 2022). proximal soil ec mapping, combined with evapotranspiration data, identifies water-limited yield gaps, supporting sustainable irrigation in the delta (nocco et al., 2019). soil ec monitoring in the mekong delta helps farmers identify saline zones and adjust planting schedules or select salt-tolerant rice varieties. for instance, combining soil ec data with ndvi and ndre from unmanned aerial vehicle (uav) imagery allows real-time assessment of rice health during critical growth stages, such as tillering and flowering (zhang et al., 2025). this approach supports precision agriculture by optimizing water and fertilizer use, reducing losses from salinity stress (xing & wang, 2024). long short-term memory (lstm) models enhance yield predictions by capturing temporal dynamics in rice fields. lstm models integrating satellite imagery, weather, and soil data provide accurate forecasts for rice production (prakash et al., 2025). a (convolutional neural network) cnn-attention-lstm model fusing ndvi, ndre, and meteorological data improves field-scale predictions, adaptable to the delta’s variable climate (zhou et al., 2023). in conclusion, soil ec and vegetation indices (ndvi, ndre) reveal soil-rice yield relationships in the mekong delta. high ec from salinity reduces yields, while optimal soil ec enhances productivity (litardo et al., 2022; naguib & daliman, 2022). lstm in yield prediction supports precision agriculture. this study applies ec and ndvi to assess rice growth in the mekong delta, using lstm to predict yields from soil ec data. separate experiments were conducted: in can tho, where soils are non-saline, soil ec and ndvi data were collected at tillering and flowering stages to monitor rice growth; in can tho, hau giang, dong thap, and soc trang, where soils in soc trang are saline-affected, soil ec and yield data were collected. these findings optimize farming practices by guiding irrigation, fertilization, and variety selection, enhancing resilience in saline-affected regions. 2. materials and methods 2.1. materials the study was conducted across five regions as follows: region 1 – (th_lai) located at coordinates 10.024103, 105.579156 with an area of 14,000 m² in thoi lai district, can tho city; region 2 – (ch_th) located at coordinates 9.956722, 105.561388 with an area of 11,000 m² in chau thanh district, hau giang province; region 3 – (c_lanh) located at coordinates 10.573382, 105.674949 with an area of 8,000 m² in cao lanh district, dong thap province; region 4 – (l_phu) located at coordinates 9.716630, 105.937126 with an area of 11,000 m² in long phu district; and region 5 – (tr_de) located at coordinates 9.512352, 106.147022 with an area of 7,500 m² in tran de district, soc trang province, vietnam (figure 1). figure 1. study area for soil ec and yield data collection. ec data was collected using the wenner electrode method with electrode spacings of 10 cm (ec 10) and 30 cm (ec 30), as applied in previous experiments (ho, bui, nguyen, nguyen, & nguyen, 2024; ho, bui, nguyen, nguyen, & nguyen, 2024). additionally, soil ec was measured using the hanna hi98331 soil ec meter, with a measurement range of 0–4 ms/cm, to collect data from the surface soil layer within the device’s depth limit of approximately 5 cm. soil ec was recorded at the beginning of the season and during various rice growth stages, specifically when water was drained from the fields. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 281-290 283 in addition to data collected at the start of the season, soil ec data was continuously gathered at different rice growth stages. a sentera double 4k camera, mounted on a dji phantom 4 rtk uav (figure 2), was used to capture rgb color images and spectral images (including ndvi and ndre images). the uav-collected ndvi and ndre images were processed and stitched using agisoft metashape software, and the indices were subsequently calculated using qgis software. figure 2. uav and camera – a) dji phantom 4 rtk uav (source: authors) – b) sentera double 4k camera. source: senterra sensors, https://senterasensors.com/hardware/sensors/double-4k/. the ndvi index is calculated using formula (1), with the red and nir coefficients determined by formulas (2) and (3), provided by the manufacturer sentera according to the device’s attached documentation. 𝑁𝐷𝑉𝐼 = (𝑁𝐼𝑅 − 𝑅𝐸𝐷)/(𝑁𝐼𝑅 + 𝑅𝐸𝐷) (1) where: 𝑅𝐸𝐷 = −0.966 ∗ 𝐶ℎ𝑁𝑖𝑟 + 1.000 ∗ 𝐶ℎ𝑅𝑒𝑑 (2) 𝑁𝐼𝑅 = 4.35 ∗ 𝐶ℎ𝑁𝑖𝑟 − 0.286 ∗ 𝐶ℎ𝑅𝑒𝑑 (3) the ndvi index is calculated using formula (4), with the rededge and nir coefficients determined by formulas (5) and (6). 𝑁𝐷𝑅𝐸 = (𝑁𝐼𝑅 − 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐸𝐷𝐺𝐸)/(𝑁𝐼𝑅 + 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐸𝐷𝐺𝐸) (4) where: 𝑅𝐸𝐷𝐸𝐷𝐺𝐸 = −0.956 ∗ 𝐶ℎ𝑁𝑖𝑟 + 1.000 ∗ 𝐶ℎ𝑅𝑒𝑑 (5) 𝑁𝐼𝑅 = 2.426 ∗ 𝐶ℎ𝑁𝑖𝑟 − 0.341 ∗ 𝐶ℎ𝑅𝑒𝑑 (6) here, 𝐶ℎ𝑁𝑖𝑟, 𝐶ℎ𝑅𝑒𝑑 the values represent the infrared and red channel indices in the images obtained from the unmanned aerial vehicle.. 2.2. data collection 2.2.1. collection of soil ec, ndvi and ndre depending on the rice variety, cultivation duration, and different farming techniques, the timing of data sampling was adjusted to suit specific conditions. in c_lanh, during the cultivation process, water was drained at 32 and 49 days after sowing (das). at other times, the water level in the field remained stable, preventing soil ec sampling. in th_lai, water drainage was carried out at the beginning of the season, and at 39 and 49 das (figure 3). https://senterasensors.com/hardware/sensors/double-4k/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 281-290 284 figure 3. soil ec collection – a) at the beginning of the season – b) at 49 das. image data from the uav was collected at 39, 49, 60, and 72 das. the image data includes rgb images captured by the camera pre-installed on the uav, as well as multispectral image data consisting of ndvi (figure 4-a) and ndre images. fixed points were established to precisely determine the locations of points in the images (figure 4b,c) and in the field during the data collection process. the soil ec, ndvi, and ndre indices were calculated as the average of 6 points in each horizontal row to serve as a basis for comparison. the ndvi and ndre values were collected using a cluster sampling method in qgis software (via the zonal statistics extension) for each data point in the images. figure 4. method for determining positioning points – a) ndvi image at 39 das – b) positioning points in ndvi image – c) positioning points in rgb image 2.2.2. soil ec and yield collection the study was conducted at five locations, including th_lai, ch_th, ch_th, l_phu, and tr_de, to evaluate rice yield and soil ec at the beginning of the season. data was collected during the main season of 2025, from october 2024 to february 2025, a period less affected by weather. at each location, 30 positions were randomly selected for surveying. rice yield was directly measured at each position's harvested 50 x 50 cm area, then standardized to tons/ha for comparison. soil ec samples were collected in the morning (from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.) to ensure consistency in environmental conditions. the data were then analyzed using descriptive statistical methods with excel software to calculate median values, minimum, maximum, and variation range. box plots were used to visualize the distribution of yield and ec at each location. 2.3. lstm application for predicting rice yield based on soil ec lstm is a special type of recurrent neural network (rnn) designed to effectively handle long sequence data by addressing the vanishing gradient problem commonly encountered in traditional networks (chollet, 2021; patil, 2022). this network is designed to overcome this issue by using a cell state and gates to regulate the flow of information. an a) b) c) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 281-290 285 lstm unit has three main gates: the forget gate, the input gate, and the output gate, along with a cell state to store long-term information (figure 5). figure 5. the cell state of the 𝑡 − 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑙 in the lstm model. where: 𝑐𝑡 is the cell state, ℎ𝑡is the hidden state, 𝑥𝑡is the input with the soil ec value at the 𝑡𝑡ℎ state of the model. 𝑐𝑡−1, ℎ𝑡−1is the output of the previous layer, initially initialized and typically set to 0 for the initial state. forget gate: determines which information from the previous cell state will be forgotten. 𝑓𝑡 = 𝜎(𝑊𝑡 . [ℎ𝑡−1, 𝑥𝑡] + 𝑏𝑓) (7) 𝑓𝑡 the forget gate value at time t (in the range [0, 1]). 𝜎 the sigmoid function. 𝑊𝑡 the weight matrix of the forget gate. ℎ𝑡−1 the hidden state from the previous time step. 𝑥𝑡 the input at time 𝑡. 𝑏𝑓 the bias of the forget gate. input gate: determines which information from the current input will be updated into the cell state. 𝑖𝑡 = 𝜎(𝑊𝑖 . [ℎ𝑡−1, 𝑥𝑡] + 𝑏𝑖) (8) 𝑖𝑡 the input gate value at time t . 𝑊𝑖 the weight matrix of the input gate. 𝑏𝑖 the bias of the input gate. candidate cell state: �̃�𝑡 = 𝑡𝑎𝑛ℎ(𝑊𝐶 . [ℎ𝑡−1, 𝑥𝑡] + 𝑏𝐶) (9) �̃�𝑡 the candidate cell state. tanh the hyperbolic tangent function. 𝑊𝐶 the weight matrix for estimating the cell state. 𝑏𝐶 the corresponding bias. cell state update: combines old and new information to update the cell state. 𝑐𝑡 = 𝑓𝑡 . 𝑐𝑡−1 + 𝑖𝑡 . �̃�𝑡 (10) 𝑐𝑡 the cell state at time 𝑡. �̃�𝑡 the cell state from the previous time step. output gate: determines the output of the lstm unit based on the current cell state. 𝑜𝑡 = 𝜎(𝑊𝑜 . [ℎ𝑡−1, 𝑥𝑡] + 𝑏𝑜) (11) 𝑜𝑡 the output gate value at time t . 𝑊𝑜 the weight matrix of the output gate. 𝑏𝑜 the bias of the output gate. hidden state: ℎ𝑡 = 𝑜𝑡 . 𝑡𝑎𝑛ℎ(𝑐𝑡) (12) ℎ𝑡the hidden state at time 𝑡, which is also the output of the lstm unit. the lstm model was implemented using python (version 3.9) with the tensorflow library (version 2.10). the model architecture comprised one lstm layer with 100 units, followed by a dense output layer, totaling 41,701 trainable parameters. input features were normalized to a 0-1 scale using min-max scaling. the model was trained for 290 epochs with a batch size of 10, employing the relu activation function and the adam optimizer (learning rate = 0.001). performance was evaluated using root mean square error (rmse), mean absolute error (mae), and the coefficient of determination (r²) on 30% of the test data. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 281-290 286 3. results and discussion 3.1. results for soil ec, ndvi, and ndre the soil ec 10 value (ms/cm) reached its highest level of approximately 0.52 during land preparation and sowing stages. subsequently, the soil ec value gradually decreased to 0.38 by the 49-day stage. since the period after 49 days corresponds to the flowering and grain-filling stages of rice, soil ec measurements could not be conducted during this phase. the continuous decline in soil ec from sowing to around 49 days suggests that changes in soil ec over time may be related to root system development or other factors affecting soil ec during rice growth (figure 6). the initial ndvi value increased to a peak of about 0.77 at 39 das. the ndvi value continued to rise more slowly, reaching its maximum of 0.88 at 49 das. thereafter, it decreased to 0.84 at 60 das and further dropped to 0.67 by 72 das. the highest ndvi at the mid-stage (49 das) indicates that this is the period of the most vigorous rice growth, with the densest leaf and canopy coverage, as reflected by the plant’s light absorption and reflection capabilities. soil ec values were measured using the hanna hi98331 device at a depth of approximately 5 cm. at the beginning of the season (6 das), the recorded value was 0.76 ms/cm. by day 32, the value increased to 0.86 ms/cm, the highest recorded across all stages. subsequently, by day 48, it slightly decreased to 0.84 ms/cm. this variation suggests that surface soil ec tends to rise rapidly in the early stages before slightly declining as the rice matures, possibly due to changes in water and ion content in the soil (figure 7). figure 6. variations of soil ec, ndvi and ndre by das. figure 7. soil ec fluctuations over das. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 281-290 287 soil ec measurements at a 10 cm depth using the wenner method showed a soil ec 10 value of 1.07 ms/cm on 6 das. by 32 das, this value decreased to 0.95 ms/cm, and further dropped to 0.65 ms/cm by 48 das. this indicates that at a 10 cm depth, soil ec gradually decreases over time, possibly due to nutrient and water uptake by the roots, altering the soil ec of the surface soil layer. at a depth of 30 cm, ec measurements using the wenner method recorded a value of 0.68 ms/cm on 6 das. this value sharply declined to 0.42 ms/cm by 32 das and continued to decrease to 0.34 ms/cm by 48 das. at this 30 cm depth, soil ec shows a clear and consistent decline over time, potentially due to the depletion of water and ions in deeper soil layers during plant development or drainage from upper soil layers. 3.2. result correlation analysis this study focuses on evaluating the relationship between soil electrical conductivity (ec) and rice growth through the ndvi and ndre indices. soil ec was measured using the wenner method at two time points: at the beginning of the season (ec 1, before sowing) and at 49 days after sowing (das) (ec 49). the ndvi and ndre indices were collected using a multispectral camera at the following stages: 39 das (ndvi 39, ndre 39), 49 das (ndvi 49, ndre 49), 60 das (ndvi 60, ndre 60), and 72 das (ndvi 72, ndre 72). the correlation matrix below presents the correlation coefficients (r) between these parameters, with * and ** indicating statistical significance levels (p < 0.05 and p < 0.01, respectively), and "ns" denoting no statistical significance (figure 8). figure 8. correlation analysis graph of ec, ndvi and ndre. the correlation coefficient between ec 1 and ec 49 is 0.656 (statistically significant **). this suggests that at locations where soil ec is high at the beginning of the season, it tends to remain high after 49 das. initial ec (ec 1) has a strong influence on ndvi 39 (r = 0.821) and ndvi 49 (r = 0.714), but its influence diminishes at ndvi 60 (r = 0.579) and becomes statistically insignificant at ndvi 72 (r = 0.354). this indicates that initial soil conditions significantly impact biomass in the early growth stages, but their effect weakens in later stages. soil ec at 49 das (ec 49) has a moderate influence on ndvi 49 (r = 0.543), ndvi 60 (r = 0.53), ndre 49 (r = 0.462), ndre 60 (r = 0.594), and ndre 72 (r = 0.565). this shows that ec 49 has a certain impact on plant health, particularly from 49 das onward. however, measuring ec data during this period is more challenging due to the increased height of the rice plants. 3.3. results of soil ec and yield collection the study results reveal significant variations in rice yield across the surveyed locations (table 1). l_phu recorded the highest yield, with an average of 0.98 tons/ha and a wide variation range from 0.89 to 1.25 tons/ha. this indicates that l_phu has the greatest potential for rice production among the surveyed sites. in contrast, tr_de exhibited the lowest yield, averaging only 0.36 tons/ha with a narrow variation range from 0.26 to 0.46 tons/ha. this result reflects not only the low yield in tr_de but also suggests that this area faces significant challenges in rice production, such as more severe saltwater intrusion. table 1. soil ec and rice yield at research locations. region soil ec max (ms/cm) soil ec average (ms/cm) soil ec min (ms/cm) yield max (tons/ha) yield average (tons/ha) yield min (tons/ha) th_lai 0.66 0.52 0.40 6.9 6.1 5.5 c_lanh 1.23 1.07 1.00 10.1 9.0 8.3 ch_th 0.96 0.86 0.76 9.0 8.1 6.6 l_phu 1.56 1.41 1.29 12.5 9.8 8.9 tr_đe 2.26 2.11 2.02 4.6 3.6 2.6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 281-290 288 at c_lanh and ch_th, the average rice yields were 9.0 tons/ha and 8.1 tons/ha, respectively. the yield variation ranges were from 8.3 to 10.1 tons/ha in c_lanh and from 6.6 to 9.0 tons/ha in ch_th. this indicates that the yields in c_lanh and ch_th are relatively consistent with each other. meanwhile, th_lai exhibited a lower yield compared to c_lanh and ch_th, with an average of 0.61 tons/ha and a narrower variation range, from 5.5 to 6.9 tons/ha (figure 9). figure 9. graph of soil ec and rice yield. the initial soil ec at the beginning of the season also showed significant differences across the surveyed locations. tr_de recorded the highest soil ec, with an average of 2.11 ms/cm and a variation range from 2.02 to 2.26 ms/cm. this ec level indicates that salinity in tr_de is a serious issue, likely having a substantial impact on rice yield in this area. l_phu had the second-highest ec, with an average of 1.41 ms/cm and a variation range from 1.29 to 1.56 ms/cm, although its salinity is relatively high compared to areas like ch_th and c_lanh. c_lanh and ch_th exhibited moderate soil ec, with median values of 1.07 ms/cm and 0.86 ms/cm, respectively. the soil ec variation ranges were from 1.00 to 1.23 ms/cm in c_lanh and from 0.76 to 0.96 ms/cm in ch_th, indicating moderate soil ec levels with minimal fluctuation. meanwhile, th_lai had the lowest soil ec, with a median of 0.52 ms/cm and a variation range from 0.40 to 0.66 ms/cm. this ec level suggests that salinity is not a significant issue in th_lai; however, the yield in this area is notably lower compared to c_lanh and ch_th. the study results reveal an inverse correlation between soil ec and rice yield in certain areas. in tr_de, the highest ec (average 2.11 ms/cm) corresponded to the lowest yield (median 3.6 tons/ha), indicating that salinity is a primary factor limiting rice yield in this region. conversely, l_phu, with the second-highest ec (median 1.41 ms/cm), achieved the highest yield (median 9.8 tons/ha). this suggests that in l_phu, adaptive measures such as the use of salt-tolerant rice varieties or effective water management may have been successfully implemented. on the other hand, in an area with minimal salinity like th_lai, which has the lowest soil ec (average 0.52 ms/cm), the yield was relatively low (average 6.1 tons/ha). as soil ec increases, such as in c_lanh and ch_th with moderate soil ec levels (1.07 ms/cm and 0.86 ms/cm), the corresponding yields were higher (averages of 9.0 tons/ha and 8.1 tons/ha, respectively), aligning with the expectation that moderate soil ec levels may contribute to increased yields in these areas. 3.4. results of lstm application for predicting rice yield based on soil ec the research results when using the lstm model to predict rice yield based on soil ec indices at the beginning of the season, with a total of 150 datasets collected from th_lai, ch_th, ch_th, l_phu, and tr_de regions. the lstm model was designed with one lstm layer consisting of 100 units and one dense output layer, with a total of 41,701 trainable parameters. the model was trained for 270 epochs with a batch size of 10, using the relu activation function and optimized with adam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 281-290 289 for the model using the tanh activation function, the r² value ranged from 0.68 to 0.71 (table 2), with the highest value at 260 epochs (0.71) and a slight decrease at 280 epochs (0.69). this indicates that the tanh model explains approximately 68-71% of the data variance. for the model using the relu activation function, the r² value ranged from 0.83 to 0.85, with the highest value at 270 epochs (0.85) and a slight decrease at 280 epochs (0.83). this shows that the relu model explains approximately 83-85% of the data variance. table 2. performance of different activation functions. epochs tanh relu r2 mae rmse r2 mae rmse 250 0.68 0.09 0.13 0.83 0.06 0.09 260 0.71 0.09 0.13 0.84 0.06 0.09 270 0.70 0.09 0.13 0.85 0.06 0.09 280 0.69 0.09 0.13 0.83 0.06 0.1 regarding the performance of the model using relu as the activation function: the test set loss value was 0.0083, and the rmse was 0.09, indicating a relatively low average error between predicted and actual values. the mae value of 0.06 reflects a low average absolute error between predicted and actual values, demonstrating the model’s high reliability. the r² coefficient of 0.85 indicates that the model explains approximately 85% of the variance in rice yield based on soil ec (figure 10). figure 10. predicted vs actual rice yield (test data) using lstm. 4. discussions the strong inverse correlation between soil ec 1 and yield in tr_de (r = -0.82, inferred from the data) underscores salinity as a limiting factor, while the high yield in l_phu despite a high soil ec 1 (1.41 ms/cm) suggests successful adaptation strategies, such as salt-tolerant varieties or improved irrigation systems. however, several limitations should be considered. first, the model does not account for external variables such as rainfall, temperature, or pest pressure, which may contribute to the 15% of yield variation not explained (r² = 0.849). second, the study was conducted during a period of low salinity (october 2024 to january 2025), potentially underestimating soil ec impact during the peak saltwater intrusion season (february to april). third, the generalizability of the lstm model to other rice-growing regions with different soil types or climates remains untested. therefore, future studies should integrate meteorological data, crop variety-specific responses, and seasonal soil ec measurements to enhance prediction accuracy and broaden applicability. 5. conclusions soil ec 1 can be used to predict the growth potential of rice in early stages (39 and 49 das). if soil ec 1 is excessively high, soil improvement measures should be applied before sowing. soil ec at 49 das affects plant health (ndre) in later stages, necessitating monitoring and management of soil conditions at 49 das to ensure optimal rice development during the flowering and grain-filling stages (60-72 das). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 281-290 290 with an r² value of 0.8492, the results demonstrate that soil ec indices at the beginning of the season can be effectively used to predict rice yield through the lstm model. this aligns with the fact that soil ec reflects factors such as salinity, moisture, and nutrient content, all of which directly influence rice growth and yield. however, the r² value reaching 85% indicates that approximately 15% of the variation in rice yield remains unexplained by soil ec indices. this could be attributed to other factors such as weather conditions, farming techniques, or additional physiological indicators of the season. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references chollet, f. 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(2023). inland dry season saline intrusion in the vietnamese mekong river delta is driving the identification and implementation of alternative crops to rice. agricultural systems, 207, 103632. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2023.103632 litardo, r. c. m., bendezú, s. j. g., zenteno, m. d. c., pérez-almeida, i. b., & moran, e. s. h. (2022). salinity of soil and irrigation water on rice productivity in the canton of san jacinto de yaguachi, ecuador. agrociencia. https://doi.org/10.47163/agrociencia.v56i7.2602 minh, h. v. t., lavane, k., ty, t. v., downes, n. k., hong, t. t. k., & kumar, p. (2022). evaluation of the impact of drought and saline water intrusion on rice yields in the mekong delta, vietnam. water, 14(21), 3499. https://doi.org/10.3390/w14213499 naguib, n., & daliman, s. 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(2024). precise application of water and fertilizer to crops: challenges and opportunities. frontiers in plant science, 15, 1444560. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2024.1444560 zhang, d., qi, h., guo, x., sun, h., min, j., li, s., . . . lv, l. (2025). integration of uav multispectral remote sensing and random forest for full-growth stage monitoring of wheat dynamics. agriculture, 15(3), 353. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture15030353 zhou, w., song, c., liu, c., fu, q., an, t., wang, y., . . . wang, q. (2023). a prediction model of maize field yield based on the fusion of multitemporal and multimodal uav data: a case study in northeast china. remote sensing, 15(14), 3483. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15143483 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.11591/ijaas.v13.i2.pp389-400 https://doi.org/10.14445/22315381/ijett-v72i2p107 https://doi.org/10.19044/esj.2023.v19n22p27 https://doi.org/10.2208/jscejhe.73.i_109 https://doi.org/10.47163/agrociencia.v56i7.2602 https://doi.org/10.3390/w14213499 https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/1102/1/012054 https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11212460 https://doi.org/10.36676/irt.v8.i4.1508 https://doi.org/10.14719/pst.5976 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2024.1444560 https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture15030353 https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15143483 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 73 palm sugar business development model through mold-making yuli purbaningsiha helvianib la sinainic nursalamd muh. obi kasmine a,b,d,eagribusiness study program, faculty of agriculture, fisheries and animal husbandry, universitas sembilanbelas november kolaka, southeast sulawesi, indonesia. cnational research and inovation agency, central jakarta, indonesia.  yulipurbaningsih.usnkolaka@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 15 january 2025 revised: 6 march 2025 accepted: 21 march 2025 published: 3 april 2025 keywords business development effectivelly efficiently hygienic process increase consumer palm sugar palm sugar mold. this research aims to develop a palm sugar business model through the engineering of palm sugar molds. the study was conducted using qualitative research methods, based on social phenomena and issues occurring in the development of the palm sugar business. the result of this research is a design for a modern palm sugar molding unit based on a stainless-steel machine, which will serve as a role model for palm sugar business actors to ensure that the production process is carried out more safely and hygienically (efficiently), as well as more quickly (effectively). the practical implication of this research is that the development of a stainless steel-based palm sugar molding unit can significantly enhance cleanliness and safety standards in the palm sugar production process. by adopting this modern design, palm sugar business operators can produce sugar more efficiently and effectively, reducing production time and improving the quality of the final product. additionally, with a more standardized and hygienic process, businesses can meet higher health standards, open new market opportunities, and increase consumer trust. the implementation of this molding machine can also encourage overall improvements in production practices and enable larger-scale production without compromising quality. contribution/originality: the originality of this research lies in the development of a palm sugar molding unit based on a stainless-steel machine, designed to enhance efficiency and cleanliness in the production process. this innovative approach offers practical solutions for palm sugar businesses to meet higher health standards and improve overall product quality. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i1.5322 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: purbaningsih, y., helviani, sinaini, l., nursalam, & kasmin, m. o. (2025). palm sugar business development model through mold-making. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1), 73–81. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the palm tree (arenga pinnata merr) is one of the plants that maintains the balance of ecological and rural ecosystems. the use of palm oil plants starts from the roots, stems, leaves, flowers, stalks, and fruit. the sap can be extracted from palm flower stalks, which have high economic value. fresh sap is the main raw material for palm sugar processing. several factors need to be considered when processing palm sugar, including the color of the brown sugar, the taste of the brown sugar, and its water absorption capacity. on the market, palm sugar is available in various forms characterized by nutritional content, micronutrients, antioxidants, glycemic index, fiber, and health benefits. to increase added value and commercialize sap products, better cooling, heating, fermentation, and storage techniques are asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 1 (2025): 73-81 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5055-0882 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8189-420x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7176-6682 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4945-7824 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9936-4335 mailto:yulipurbaningsih.usnkolaka@gmail.com https://www.doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i1.5322 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 73-81 74 used to produce products in different packaging that can be developed by small and medium enterprises (smes) and home industries (heryani, 2016; prihantini, purbaningsih, et al., 2022; purbaningsih, helviani, karim, & sejati, 2022). the continuing development of science and technology means that there is a need to increase the added value of a product by creating and engineering the production process. process engineering is the result of research that aims to create standard production process work procedures and product forms that can provide added value. palm sugar product development strategies must be implemented to gain market share and loyal consumers. the palm sugar business development model is the application of a business development model through a technical production technology model, in this case, palm sugar molds, which can be utilized by palm sugar farming industry players. polinggona village, polinggona district, kolaka regency, is one of the traditional palm sugar-producing centers in southeast sulawesi province. the object of this research activity is the home industry guren enah in polinggona village, polinggona district, kolaka regency. this industry is a palm sugar household industry whose production runs continuously and is the main work carried out to earn income. one of the obstacles or problems experienced by this home industry is that the brown sugar mold used in the palm sugar processing process is still traditional, namely, using coconut shells. this is an unhygienic and ineffective production process (prihantini, rizqy, nursalam, purbaningsih, & onuigbo, 2022). the palm sugar home industry has the power to carry out business development. the business development strategy is implemented to support aggressive economic growth. optimizing the expertise and skills of processors to innovate palm sugar products, along with maximizing government support in introducing palm sugar products and product development through local or national events and exhibitions (agus, saleh, & harjito, 2020). the business development model used so far is still simple, maintaining the same market segmentation without making any efforts to acquire new customers. the right choice of strategy for the palm sugar business is a change in direction or strategy that requires the company to increase its value proposition and take advantage of market opportunities by expanding its market network (rizaldy & mahbub, 2019). processing sap water into palm sugar provides an increase in added value from the relatively high output value produced. every expense incurred will be able to produce or obtain revenue equal to the relative profit value or the ratio between total revenue and total costs. this means that the palm sugar agro-industry being carried out is feasible to be developed (purbaningsih et al., 2023). the novelty of this research is to carry out a palm sugar business development model by creating a design engineering and palm sugar molding unit, which is used as a role model for the palm sugar household industry so that the palm sugar production process is carried out more safely and hygienically (efficiently), as well as more quickly (effectively). previous research that has been presented only examines the improvement of palm sugar quality, optimization of product introduction, general and simple business development strategies based on several factors and added value, as well as the feasibility of palm sugar processing businesses. this research aims to carry out a palm sugar business development model through engineering palm sugar molds, which will have an impact on increasing production and income of palm sugar household industry players. additionally, the palm sugar can be developed into a village featured product (pud) in kolaka regency, southeast sulawesi province. 2. methods the research object was determined using purposive sampling, namely the home industry guren enah in polinggona village, polinggona district, kolaka regency, southeast sulawesi province, based on the consideration that this object has special characteristics that align with the research objectives to address and answer problems or obstacles in the palm sugar production process, which is still traditional and unhygienic. this research was conducted using a qualitative research method with a case study model, employing data collection techniques such as observation and interviews. this research focuses on the interpretation process and events (focusing on interactive processes and events) as they relate to reality in the field. the results of the interviews are analyzed by completing and adjusting them based on the results of observations that have been carried out specifically on the research object, which are then verified or conclusions drawn from the research results (murdiyanto, 2020). the stages of research carried out start from introducing and identifying needs, initial observations of phenomena and problems that occur based on the research objectives, pilot surveys in the home industry enah, and pilot surveys to other palm sugar industries (temon palm sugar and banjar palm sugar), discussion activities/meetings with team leaders and research members in the context of data validation and verification processes, or drawing conclusions related to research on palm sugar business development models through mold engineering. 3. results and discussion one of the palm sugar business development models is through engineering palm sugar molds. the palm sugar mold was initially designed in the form of a picture and then made using stainless steel to address the problems that occurred in the guren enah home industry, so the mold was used as a role model for carrying out the palm sugar production process. the mold is formed in two shapes, namely round and square. the palm sugar mold technique consists of one molding table measuring 2000 mm long, 872 mm wide, and 800 mm high. palm sugar molds come in two shapes and four sizes, namely round mold with a diameter of 30 mm, round mold with a diameter of 52 mm, square mold with a diameter of 52 mm, and square mold with a diameter of 30 mm. the design of the palm sugar mold can be seen in figure 1, figure 2, and figure 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 73-81 75 figure 1. palm sugar mold design from above. figure 2. palm sugar mold design from side view. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 73-81 76 figure 3. palm sugar mold design in round and square shapes. the palm sugar mould that has been made is then tested, so the result is that the mould has an effect on the palm sugar production process, especially the production process that occurs is cleaner, more hygienic, and safer than before which used traditional moulds from coconut shells, as well as the moulding process. done more quickly. this has an impact on increasing the amount of palm sugar production in one production process. images of the moulds that have been made can be seen in figure 4 and figure 5. figure 4. box and round shape mold. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 73-81 77 figure 5. palm sugar molding table. before determining the desired mold engineering model, researchers also conducted a pilot survey of several palm sugar industries whose production and sales volumes occur continuously and in quite large quantities, and which have exported palm sugar. these industries are the temon palm sugar home industry, which is located in temon village, pacitan district, pacitan regency, east java province, and the banjar home industry, which is located in banjar village, banyuwangi regency, east java province. this was done to conduct interviews and obtain technical data on the palm sugar industry regarding comparisons in terms of production for the palm sugar molding process. from the results of the pilot survey that has been carried out, the two industries still carry out the process of molding palm sugar traditionally and simply, not using machine-based molds or modern molding equipment, which are engineering results from research or community service activities in the form of innovation and technology. samples of palm sugar molds and products from the pilot survey results can be seen in figure 6 and figure 7. figure 6. temon pacitan palm sugar molds and products. figure 7. banjar banyuwangi palm sugar molds and products. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 73-81 78 the sugar palm is the most important plant in humid tropical areas. this plant not only produces sugar but also offers many products and benefits to its users and is one of the most diverse and versatile tree species in cultivation (mogea, seibert, & smits, 1991). gluttony has interesting benefits and nutritional content (victor & orsat, 2018). palm sugar is used as a sweetener in traditional alternatives in southeast asia and south asia. one of these is indonesia, the world's largest producer of palm sugar. this sugar is often used as a sweetener in drinks and foods. this not only gives the product a sweet taste but also develops color, aroma, and taste (saputro, van de walle, & dewettinck, 2019). palm sugar has better nutritional value than processed cane sugar (srikaeo, sangkhiaw, & likittrakulwong, 2019). palm sugar is a product that is highly valued by locals and foreigners for its virtues and has become a culinary tourism destination (elfriede, fransisca, dewi, & widiastuti, 2023). the palm sugar processing company is a palm-based agribusiness whose main raw material is juice, and the main product is palm sugar. palm sugar has the potential to replace domestic sugar and help reduce dependence on imported sugar. brown sugar juice made from sugar materials has great economic potential (simbolon, supriana, & lindawati, 2021). agribusiness encompasses any business related to agriculture, forming a complex system of interactions that includes the production, distribution, and consumption of food, clothing, and shelter. it also involves all economic activities within the food and fiber system. this system aims to deliver food to consumers and includes utilities, agricultural production, post-harvest activities, and value-added processes such as raw material processing, food manufacturing, and food distribution (imbiri, rameezdeen, chileshe, & statsenko, 2021). palm sugar is the most important alternative to cane sugar. a modern palm sugar processing system needs to be developed so that the product can become a leading village product (pud), which can create and improve the economic conditions for palm sugar processing in rural communities. business development is carried out with support and collaboration between the government, scientists, and researchers through technological innovation to achieve product-market objectives. this is in line with a study by isnaini (2011), which states that due to the important role of the palm sugar business as a source of livelihood, the strategy to be implemented is fundamentally very important for the development of the palm sugar business. for this reason, regional governments should implement this strategy comprehensively for all parties involved, paying attention to the synergistic allocation of resources, including financial, technological, and human resource capabilities. the business development model for palm sugar is briefly shown in figure 8. figure 8. palm sugar business development model. the palm sugar business is promising because many people are interested in the product. however, the majority of these companies continue to operate traditionally due to a lack of knowledge and skills, as well as a lack of government interest in improving this business sector. maintaining good customer relationships is the key to success. however, it is important to offer a unique value proposition that matches actual consumer needs. the weakness of palm sugar products is that the size produced is too large, making the product less attractive, and the equipment used is still very simple. the palm sugar business currently has a simple business model. the company continues to maintain the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 73-81 79 same market segment for a long period without making any efforts to acquire new customers. therefore, the business model strategy implemented so far needs to be changed. choosing the right strategy is the pivot this company needs to take advantage of market opportunities by increasing its value proposition and expanding its market network (rizaldy & mahbub, 2019). the palm sugar agricultural business is an effort to diversify palm sugar, expand its economic use, and encourage rural communities to actively participate in small-scale or cottage industries. the palm sugar sector is also a way to earn or increase family income, even if the processing (process and equipment) remains very simple. the revenue of the domestic palm sugar industry will lead to a more balanced income distribution within the domestic palm sugar industry, contributing to the total income of the domestic palm sugar industry. palm sugar and the revenues of the domestic palm sugar industry will be more balanced. domestic palm sugar industries play an important role in the well-being of palm sugar-producing households in kolaka district (rianse et al., 2018). palm sugar offers market opportunities that can be tapped. the actionable palm sugar business development strategy supports aggressive growth. the advice is to maintain the characteristics and taste of the product and improve the quality of the product through innovations in product packaging and diversify product types to provide high added value (syahid & syahwiah, 2021). the low competitiveness of msmes in the palm sugar sector in entering the modern market and exporting is one of the causes of low product quality. the low quality of the product is due to the low technology used in the production of palm sugar. the results of technical innovations have a positive impact on competitive advantages and marketing performance. competitive advantage mediates the relationship between technical innovation and marketing performance. msmes in the palm sugar sector need to implement technical innovations across various stages, including the collection, processing, and packaging of palm sugar. traditionally, bamboo molds, bowl-shaped molds, and concaveshaped wooden molds were used in production. however, these molds result in palm sugar sizes that do not meet market demand or standards. the proposed technical innovation is to design aluminum molds with standard dimensions tailored to the needs of modern and export markets. additionally, aluminum molds are easier to clean and more hygienic. the limited ability of palm sugar producers to penetrate international and modern markets is attributed to the poor quality of palm sugar, which stems from inadequate production processes, particularly at the production stage. to enhance the quality of palm sugar, it is essential to provide training and support to palm sugar producers. this will enable them to consistently produce high-quality palm sugar that meets international and modern market standards. such efforts should be regular and sustainable, involving collaboration with local governments, universities, associations, or groups of palm sugar producers, and non-governmental organizations (ngos) (suliyanto, novandari, & suwaryo, 2019). many scholars view agribusiness not as a descriptor but rather as an approach to the increasingly close relationship between business and agriculture, emphasizing in particular the relationships involving both businesses that provide farmers with the inputs they need to farm and businesses that process and distribute agricultural products. strategies for increasing the income and diverse work patterns of farmers deserve more attention (coclanis, 2022). integrated management strategies to address the increasing pressure on agricultural production, ecosystem conservation, and rural livelihoods need to be implemented (salvini, dentoni, ligtenberg, herold, & bregt, 2018). the agribusiness sector represents a very important economic sector and has the highest employment rate. this sector is very complex due to the characteristics of the organizations that are part of it and the need to base their competitive advantage on innovation, which is often obtained by sharing knowledge (awan, nauman, & sroufe, 2021; vesperi, melina, ventura, coppolino, & reina, 2021). to date, and throughout the world, most business activities in the agribusiness sector focus on increasing productive efficiency without sacrificing the environmental impact of these activities, despite the close relationship between agribusiness and natural resources. this paper argues that knowledge and innovation management (kim) can play a key role in cultivating and managing creativity in the agribusiness sector (ureña‐espaillat, briones‐peñalver, bernal‐conesa, & córdoba‐pachón, 2023). agribusiness also makes a major contribution to the sustainability of food supplies, conservation of biodiversity, and protection of economically viable agriculture, not least for small farmers in developing countries. the demand for sustainable agricultural products will ensure the profitable growth of agribusiness in the future, which plays an important role in enabling farmers to significantly increase production output and thereby secure the world's supply of food and agricultural products (giovannucci, 2001; pragnell & berendes, 2005). 4. conclusion the palm sugar mold technique was created and used as a role model by the palm sugar home industry for business development. this mold affects the production process, namely that production is carried out more safely and hygienically (efficiently), as well as faster (effectively), which has an impact on increasing the amount of production in the palm sugar industry. the recommendation that can be given is to further implement a palm sugar business development model through product packaging engineering and implementing digital marketing strategies to increase the income of the rural palm sugar household industry. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 73-81 80 funding: this work is supported by education fund management institute of the ministry of finance of the republic of indonesia and indonesian national research and innovation agency(grant number: 75/iv/ks/05/2023) and kolaka university (grant number: 567/un56.d.01/pn.03.00/2023). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the deputy of facilities research and innovation agency, indonesia has granted approval for this study on 8 february 2023 (ref. no. b-191/ii.7/fr/2/2023). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references agus, s., saleh, m., & harjito. 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(2018). characterization of arenga pinnata (palm) sugar. sugar tech, 20(1), 105-109. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12355-017-0537-3 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/255/1/012054 https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/255/1/012054 https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/886/1/012074 https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.1002/bse.3233 https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.1002/sres.2785 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12355-017-0537-3 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 113 functionality of extension activities among rice farmers’ cooperatives in delta state, nigeria okpara, o.a atoma, c.nb doroh, a.u.c ovharhe, o.j.d adepartment of animal science, delta state university, abraka, delta state, nigeria. bdepartment of agricultural extension and management, delta state university of science and technology, ozoro, delta state, nigeria. cdepartment of agricultural extension and rural development, dennis osadebay university, asaba, delta state, nigeria. ddepartment of agricultural economics and extension, delta state university, abraka, delta state, nigeria.  nwacharity1211@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 10 february 2022 revised: 25 march 2022 accepted: 8 april 2022 published: 22 april 2022 keywords cooperatives extension activities extension workers rice farmers self-help techniques. this study appraises the functionality of extension activities among rice farmers in delta state, nigeria. both purposive and random sampling techniques were used to generate a sample size of 140 respondents. results revealed that the majority of respondents (> 90%) got information from fellow farmers and cooperative members. it was also discovered that members were satisfied with annual meetings (x̄ = 3.50), monthly contributions (x̄ = 3.47), interest rate (x̄ = 3.21), loan payback (x̄ = 3.21), partnerships with other cooperatives (x̄ = 3.20), training sessions (x̄ = 3.19) and joint farm maintenance (x̄ = 2.90). the chi-square test revealed that significant differences occurred between age and constraints (x̄ = 12.76; p < 0.05). it was concluded that majority of the perceived limitations confronting extension activities must have dwindled their efforts and resulted in their poor functionalities. it is recommended that there should be sustainable practice of extension workers’ capacity building, particularly in rice production. contribution/originality: the study was able to assess how cooperative members organize periodic training sessions for themselves instead of depending on the extension workers from the government. commendable self-help efforts by farmers and cooperative management techniques. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4472 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: okpara, o. --atoma, c.n --doroh, a.u. --ovharhe, o.j. (2022). functionality of extension activities among rice farmers’ cooperatives in delta state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2), 113-122. 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4472 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction agriculture is a vital sector of the nigerian economy but it has been developing at a very low rate. this is because 80% of the farming activities are done on a small scale (world bank, 2018). farmers use obsolete technology and are themselves unskilled. arable farmland in the niger delta area of nigeria range between 0.1 and 2.0 hectares (ovharhe, 2019) and includes rice cultivation. rice grown worldwide contributes to income generation and food security (chaubey, prakash, yadav, & singh, 2018). nigeria currently produces the highest quantity of rice in west africa, with an average of over 3.2 million tons and ranked is ranked between 1– 15 worldwide (warda, 2019). attah (2012) reported that nigerian's rice consumption jumped from 2.9 kg from 1970 – 74 to 24.7kg from 1995 – 2000. rice farming in nigeria rose from 2.4 million metric tons in 1994 to 3.8 million metric tons in 2007 (ajala & gana, 2015). this is below the average nigerian asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 2 (2022): 113-122. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6751-1639 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9032-4193 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6193-4796 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 113-122 114 rice demand of 7 million tons of rice per year representing 9% of caloric intake (russon, 2019). across the african continent, according to the african development bank, about $35 billion is expended on rice imports per annum (russon, 2019). rice is an increasingly imperative crop in nigeria. it is easy to harvest and prepare for sale, and for household consumption. to meet the increasing demand, milled rice was introduced to bridge the gap between the domestic demand and supply with various implications on the nigerian economy (usda, 2019; warda, 2019). ajala and gana (2015) reported that the country has five different rice environments or ecologies and potential land space for rice farming of between 4.6 and 4.9 million hectares. only 1.8 million hectares (37%) of the 4.9 million hectares of nigeria's total land mass of 120 million hectares is cropped by rice farmers. the sustainability of rice farming is being endangered by a combination of deteriorating soil fertility and increasing difficulties caused by pestrelated diseases and weeds. lack of knowledge on how to add value through appropriate storage processing and marketing also impedes rice production (longtau, 2003; tonukari, 2004). bello (2010) stated that the goal of increased output can be attained by establishing functional cooperative societies in different areas of the community. paddy rice is very also useful in animal feed production (okpara, 2020). cooperatives can provide an economic boost to the community; however, they remain unpopular in nigeria. recently, employee cooperatives have started to gain momentum among the employed populace, who are unable to save portion of their income for future expenses. until now, a cooperative society is seen to be an association for farmers, small traders and other very low-income earners. this drives home the issue of why quite a number of cooperative farmers are located in the southern part of nigeria. few farmers have knowledge of what a cooperative is, and its modals and functions in economic growth as a driving force for both large businesses and a robust government (zopounidis, kalogeras, mattas, van dijk, & baourakis, 2014). cooperatives epitomize a strong, lively and economic alternative designed to meet people's common needs. they are based on the powerful idea that groups and individuals can achieve targets together that none of them could achieve alone. over a century, it has remained a means for people to exercise a level of control over their standard of living. they enable the attainment of grassroots and economic targets in a progressively competitive economy (rural finance and investment (rfi), 2019). the support of credit associations in nigeria is essential due to the increased rate of poverty and lack of loanable finance (ewubare, aiie, & akekere, 2008). according to nigeria’s most recent living standards survey published in 2006 by nigeria’s national bureau of statistics, the poverty situation is serious and unemployment increasing steadily. todaro and smith (2003) opined that poor people’s marginal savings, when observed from a holistic point of view, are not small; this high volume of savings poor people who usually constitute the target group of co-operatives can be overhauled and empowered into greater productivity. extension activities to rice are primarily concerned with imparting agricultural know-how to farmers who apply this knowledge gained from agriculture-related research as well as speaking about their difficulties to researchers or government agencies (erie, 2009). erie also noted that agricultural extension is an educational procedure designed for farmers to allow them to accept enhanced practices and by so doing increase their standard of living through their own efforts and using their own resources. extension agents are described as major tools in the implementation of various projects designed by the delta state agricultural rural development association (darda) in nigeria to expand agricultural production and revenue for rural farmers (agumagu & nwaogwugwu, 2006). attah (2012) emphasized that good quantity and quality of rice production is critical to ensuring food security. he further stated that rice is a significant crop whose surplus production would lead to export and thus attract foreign exchange earnings and consequently play a fundamental role in economic growth. farmers' cooperatives are instituted by people in agreement to attain specific targets in business and are guided by extension workers (khan, 2017). cooperatives also offer cost effective services to one other and the general public and prevent exploitation of members through self-help projects and agricultural development. daokinal (2005) mentioned many agro-allied challenges associated with rice farmers, such as the high cost of improved varieties (mostly for rice), the high cost of inorganic fertilizer, and the high cost of agrochemicals. again, a positive return to extension services arises because an extension system supports farm investors to be resilient in agribusiness regardless of business success or failure (nguyen, 2020; ovharhe, 2020). sadly, the ecology is not being harnessed to its fullest potential, hence the need to offer various self-help resources for rice farmers. the challenge is that many people do not participate in cooperative activities. to this end, perceived gaps existing between extension activities and rice farmers will be bridged using the following questions to gather data: what are the socioeconomic characteristics of rice farmers? what are the prevailing extension activities among rice farmers? do rice farmers avail of self-help resources? what are the management techniques used by cooperatives? what are the problems facing the extension agents? these research questions guided the specific objectives to: i. describe the socioeconomic characteristics of rice farmers. ii. appraise the extension activities among rice farmers. iii. introduce various self-help resources for rice farmers. iv. examine the various cooperative management techniques. v. determine the constraints facing extension activities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 113-122 115 1.1. conceptual framework for the study the conceptual mechanism for extension activities among rice farmers is typified in a tripartite model. on the first side are the basic agricultural extension activities, which are summarized into extension visits, distribution of farm inputs/assets, and capacity building. on the second side is cooperative management techniques that comprise members’ mobilization, participation in rice farm project decision making, designing, planning, implementation, supervision and leadership directions. on the third side there are environmental components embracing the natural, social, capital, financial and governmental resources. these three pillars make up the tripartite paradigm for rice farmer cooperatives and extension activities (see figure 1). the nucleus of these three pillars is the rice farmer, who is the central player and consequently affected by the positive or negative actions as indicated by three in-flow arrows separately. if a farmer is positively impacted by these tripartite pillars, they will potentially bring positive behavioral change, which will lead to an increase in productivity in rice farming among cooperative members and vice versa. thus, behavioral changes of rice farmers (b) is a function of agricultural extension activities (e), cooperative management techniques (c) and environmental components (en). mathematically, this could be expressed as: b = f (e + c + en) any slight changes in the respective attributes of the entities in parentheses must affect the farmers’ behavior (b) in terms of an increase or decrease in productivity. figure 1. tripartite paradigm for farmers’ cooperative and extension activities. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study area the study was conducted in delta state between october 2018 and may 2019. delta state is positioned within longitudes 5º 50` and 6º 45` east of the greenwich meridian and latitudes 5º 25` and 6º 30` north of the equator (cgidd, 2016). it is an agrarian and oil mineral state. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 113-122 116 2.2. sampling procedure a two-stage sampling procedure was used for sample selection. purposive sampling was used in the selection of the six available rice farmers’ cooperative societies from the delta north agricultural zone across six local government areas (lgas) (oshimili north, aniocha north, ika northeast, ndokwa east, ndokwa west and ukwani) where rice is mostly grown. next, simple random sampling was used to select a minimum range of 20–25 respondents from each cooperative society per lga. this brought a total useable sample size of 140 respondents (see table 1). data collected for this study was obtained with the use of a semi-structured and validated questionnaire designed with stated objectives and interview schedule. table 1. a two-stage sampling procedure for a sample size of 140 respondents. s/n lga rice farmers 1 oshimili north 25 2 aniocha north 24 3 ika northeast 22 4 ndokwa east 25 5 ndokwa west 21 6 ukwani 23 totals 6 140 source: field survey. 2.3. instrument validation and reliability the instrument for data collection was subjected to face and content validity, which accounts for the degree of accuracy of the instrument items. the reliability test was designed with test-retest reliability, which accounts for the degree of consistency of the instrument items using a micro test sample of 60 questionnaires distributed to the same respondents twice with an interval of two weeks (odili & ajua, 1995). the pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r) was used, and the correlation formula used for the test-retest is as follows: n ∑xy – (∑x) (∑y) n∑x2 – (∑x)2] [n∑y2 – (∑y)2] where: r = correlation coefficient. x = first administration. y = second administration. n = sampled number of respondents. ∑ = summation. note: the external reliability of the sampled result using the test-retest is in table 2. 2.3.1. correlation results there was a positive and significant correlation between the two variables (x and y), where r = 0.719, p ≤ .001, and n = 60 (see table 2). there is a high degree of relationship between the first administration of the questionnaire (x) and the second administration of the questionnaire (y) after an interval of two weeks. table 2. correlation results on external validity of sampled result using test retest (n = 60). variable x y x pearson correlation 1 0.719 sig. (2-tailed) 0.000* n 60 60 y pearson correlation 0.719 1 sig. (2-tailed) 0.000* n 60 60 note: correlation is significant at *p < .001. 2.4. measurement of variables the socioeconomic variables measured are gender, marital status, and income in naira. to gather further information, farmers were asked about relevant issues based on ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses. if yes, the respondents were asked to state the number of extension contacts in the last month, quarter or year (measured by the number of times they had contact using a range of responses: 0–1 time, 2–3 times, 4–5 times, or others as applicable). regarding training activities for rice farmers by extension agents, respondents were asked to indicate whether they had received training in the last two years, and this was recorded at a nominal level as ‘yes’ or ‘no’. again, ‘yes’ and ‘no’ were used for the distribution of farm inputs/assets, establishment of demo-plots, project monitoring and evaluation, and self-help efforts by rice farmers with relevant questions (where 1 = yes, and 0 = no). to examine the strength of various cooperative management techniques applied by farmers, data collected were analyzed using a four-point likert type scale (4 = strongly agree, 3 = agree, 2 = disagree, 1 = strongly disagree, r= asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 113-122 117 with a cut-off point of 2.5 for decision making). values greater than or equal to 2.5 were considered strong cooperative management techniques and values less than 2.5 were considered invariably weak cooperative management techniques. similarly, regarding constraints related to extension activities perceived by the farmers, respondents were asked to state perceived limitations in conducting extension activities using a three-range scale (where 1 = not serious, 2 = serious, and 3 = very serious, with a cut-off point of 2.0 for decision making). values greater than or equal to 2.0 were considered serious constraints and values less than 2.0 were considered invariably weak constraints. the index value (x) of constraints was also determined, where 0 < x ≤ 1. 2.5. hypothesis testing ho: there is no relationship between constraints experienced by rice farmers and some selected socioeconomic traits. this was addressed using a chi-square test based on the formula below (as applied by tudor, mihai, and condei (2014)). the formula for chi square is: the stated methodology guided the research meaningfully. 3. results and discussion 3.1. socioeconomic characteristics of respondents table 3 presents the frequency distribution of the socioeconomic characteristics of rice farmers. the mean age of the respondents is 47 years, which suggests that majority of rice farmers in the study area are of a relatively energetic age. however, the youth category (< 40 years) comprised relatively few people.ovharhe, emaziye, yarhere, and enegesele (2021) lamented the poor attitude of youths towards agriculture as a result of migration. about 65.7% of the respondents were male, while 34.3% represented the female farmers. according to imolehin and wada (2000), the male dominance in this particular occupation might be due to the laborious nature of rice farming operations from tillage through to management, which their female counterparts cannot easily undertake. regarding marital status, the majority (93.6%) of the respondents were married, which suggests that there may be high demand for food and additional income as family size increases. based on the number of years spent in school, 57.1% of the respondents had 11–16 years of education. this implies that most rice farmers are educated and can understand and apply agricultural extension. this is confirmed by the findings of ovharhe (2019), who ascertained that the more educated farmers are, the more receptive they are to agricultural information and applicability. the majority (79.3%) of the respondents had 2–3 hectares of farmland, while 10.0% of the respondents had 4–5 hectares. the average farm size of rice farmers in the study area was 2.3 hectares, which reflected upon their average annual farm income (n 175, 000.00). this implies that they are small-scale farmers. achoja and nwokolo (2021) opined that small-scale farmers need credit support from financial institutions to expand their farming activities. this discovery is also in agreement with ovharhe (2019), who asserted that the average farm size of farmers in some niger delta states is between 2–3 hectares. as indicated in table 3, the primary sources of information were through fellow farmers (97.9%), friends and neighbors (97.1%), and cooperative societies (92.9%). this result is in agreement with the findings of yahaya and omokhafe (2001), who reported that social interaction will enhance diffusion of information among farmers. 3.2. extension activities to farmers the results in table 4 show the various extension activities of farmers over the past year. they reveal that 24.29% of the farmers were visited by extension agents. this implies that about 75% were not visited. about 15.00%, 13.57%, 11.43% and 10% of the farmers had received training, farm input support, demo plot establishment, and focus group discussions, respectively. in the same vein, 7.86% and 0% of farmers attended monthly extension meetings and agricultural exhibitions, respectively. these are indicators of very poor agricultural extension activities among rice farmers. agbamu (2005) suggested that the ratio of extension agents for farmers is insufficient in nigeria. this was confirmed by the values in table 3, which indicate that only 25.7% of respondents obtained information from extension workers. the summarized average for extension activities in the past year was 11.74%, which is very poor. on the contrary, ovharhe (2016) reported that cassava farmers (52%) benefited from the activities of extension workers in delta state. this is true to reality since the volume of cassava production is far higher than rice in the same state. okpara (2020) reported the need for frequent training of extension agents in delta state to improve the quality of extension advice given to farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 113-122 118 table 3. respondents’ socioeconomic characteristics of rice farmers (pooled n = 140) variable frequency percent mean/mode age (years) 25–34 16 11.4 47 years 35–44 35 25.0 45–54 49 35.0 55–64 36 25.7 65–74 4 2.9 sex female 48 34.3 male male 92 65.7 marital status single 8 5.7 married married 131 93.6 single again 1 0.7 number of years spent in school less than 5 15 10.7 16 years 5–10 42 30.0 11–16 80 57.1 above 16 3 2.2 farm size (hectares) less than 2 15 10.7 2.3 hectares 2–3 111 79.3 4–5 14 10.0 farm income per annum (₦) 50,000–150,000 38 27.1 ₦175,000.00 151,000–200,000 80 57.1 201,000–250,000 22 15.7 sources of information (multiple responses recorded) extension agents 36 25.7 fellow farmers research institutes 2 1.4 friends and neighbors 136 97.1 radio 14 10.0 television 3 2.1 fellow farmers 137 97.9 town criers 0 0.0 newspapers/magazines 24 17.1 internet 8 5.7 cooperative societies 130 92.9 source: field survey. table 4. responses according to extension activities rendered to farmers (n = 140). extension activities (in the past year) frequency* percentage (%) extension agent visits 34 24.29 farm inputs/asset supply 21 15.00 extension training 19 13.57 demo plot establishment 16 11.43 focus group discussions 14 10.00 extension farmers’ monthly meetings 11 7.86 agricultural exhibitions 00 0.00 percentage mean = 11.74% source: field survey. note: * multiple responses recorded. 3.3. self-help efforts by rice farmers table 5 presents the various self-help efforts made by rice farmers. the results indicate that almost all respondents (99.3%) carried out sourcing and procurement of planting materials follow by a majority of 97.9% who were involved in land preparation, processing and market strategies. combined pest/disease management strategies were used by 86.4% of farmers, 90.0% took local training courses on rice productivity, and 84.3% used self-help resources through cooperatives. respondents’ involvement in combined pest/disease management strategies, cooperative funding, and land ownership were positive through a group approach. the high percentage of self-help efforts made by farmers in all areas except land lease confirms that the majority of the farmers’ success stories were not tied to the functionality asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 113-122 119 of agricultural extension activities. the overall self-help efforts mean percentage of 82.87% is encouraging. ovharhe and gbigbi (2017) reported positive performance among water yam farmers through self-help group activities. table 5. rice farmers’ self-help efforts. self-help efforts frequency* percent procurement of planting materials 139 99.3 land preparation 137 97.9 processing 137 97.9 market strategies 137 97.9 local training 126 90.0 combined pest/disease management strategies 121 86.4 cooperative funding 118 84.3 land ownership 107 76.4 percentage mean = 82.87% source: field survey. note: * multiple responses recorded. 3.4. cooperative management techniques engaged by farmers table 6 shows the various cooperative management techniques used by farmers who took part in the study. out of the 12 cooperative management techniques that were examined in the study, nine of them were agreed to be important and satisfactory (regular annual general meetings (�̅� = 3.50), regular monthly meetings (�̅� = 3.49), monthly contributions (�̅� = 3.47), satisfaction with the interest rate (�̅� = 3.21), prompt loan payback (�̅� = 3.21), partnerships with other cooperatives (�̅� = 3.20), periodic member training sessions (�̅� = 3.19), joint farm maintenance (�̅� = 2.90), and penalty on late payment of loans (�̅� = 2.62). regular annual general meetings (�̅� = 3.50) was agreed to be the most important cooperative management technique, while annual leadership tenure ( �̅� = 1.57), partnership with the government (�̅� = 1.49), and insurance schemes (�̅� = 1.27) were the least important. these results are in line with those of ajayi, muhammed, tsado, jibrin, and olorunshola (2015), who stated that annual leadership tenure was not an important cooperative management technique among famers. there is a need to increase partnerships with the government to develop various incentives, such as encouraging farmers to partake in insurance schemes and training on the value of by-products from rice production for use in livestock feed production on a small scale, which will help to increase food security (okpara, 2020). ovharhe, oyibo, and alakpa (2016) reported how farmers partnered with the government through participation in the fadama iii project through which farmers were trained on the use of rice byproducts for livestock feed. table 6. respondents’ cooperative management techniques engaged by farmers. cooperative management techniques sd (1) d (2) a (3) sa (4) total score mean remark regular annual general meetings 7 (7) 14 (28) 18 (54) 101 (401) 490 3.50 satisfactory regular monthly meetings 2 (2) 11 (22) 44 (132) 83 (332) 488 3.49 satisfactory monthly contributions 10 (10) 15 (30) 42 (126) 73 (292) 485 3.47 satisfactory satisfaction with the interest rate 12 (12) 10 (20) 54 (162) 64 (256) 450 3.21 satisfactory prompt loan payback 10 (10) 16 (32) 49 (147) 65 (260) 449 3.21 satisfactory partnerships with other cooperatives 7 (7) 18 (36) 55 (165) 60 (240) 448 3.20 satisfactory periodic member training sessions 13 (13) 17 (34) 41 (123) 69 (276) 446 3.19 satisfactory joint farm maintenance 23 (23) 27 (54) 31 (93) 59 (236) 406 2.90 satisfactory penalties for late payment of loans 28 (28) 29 (58) 51 (153) 32 (128) 367 2.62 satisfactory annual leadership tenure (two years) 92 (92) 26 (52) 12 (36) 10 (40) 220 1.57 not satisfactory partnership with the government 57 (13) 63 (126) 11 (33) 9 (36) 208 1.49 not satisfactory insurance schemes 102 (102) 38 (76) 0 (0) 0 (0) 178 1.27 not satisfactory grand mean = 2.76 source: field survey. note: mean ≥ 2.5 = strong techniques; mean < 2.5 = weak techniques. cooperative management technique index = 0.69 (high impact). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 113-122 120 3.5. constraints facing extension activities the various constraints facing extension activities perceived by the farmers in the study area are presented in table 7. out of the 12 constraints examined in the study, the farmers perceived ten to be serious. they include poor training sessions by extension agents (�̅� = 2.70), insufficient training kit (�̅� = 2.62), insufficient field allowance (�̅� = 2.53), absence of mobility (�̅� = 2.49), poor linkage with research bodies (�̅� = 2.45), slow response to identified problems (�̅� = 2.41), weak continuity of projects by new staff (�̅� = 2.39), inadequate current farm technology dissemination (�̅� = 2.30), absence of field accommodation (�̅� = 2.25), and inadequate communication equipment and technologies (�̅� = 2.21). the two less serious constraints were language barrier (�̅� = 1.57) and embezzlement of funds (�̅� = 1.13). the use of vernacular in communities has eliminated the language barrier. adequate empowerment and mobilization of the extension workers is of paramount importance if he/she is to perform effectively since constraints seriously limit agricultural advancement (gbigbi & ovharhe, 2016; gbıgbı, 2021). adeniji, ega, adeniyi, ugwu, and balogun (2006) reported that inefficiency in extension service delivery is caused by irregular payment of travel claims, unmotivated field staff, reduced training sessions for village extension workers, and reduced technology review meetings. table 7. responses to constraints facing extension activities. constraint ns (1) s (2) vs (3) total score mean remark poor training sessions by extension agents 0 (0) 42 (84) 98 (294) 378 2.70 serious insufficient training kit 0 (0) 52 (104) 88 (264) 368 2.62 serious insufficient field allowance 8 (8) 50 (100) 82 (246) 354 2.53 serious absence of mobility 0 (0) 71 (142) 69 (207) 349 2.49 serious poor linkage with research bodies 12 (12) 56 (112) 73 (219) 343 2.45 serious slow response to identified problems 0 (0) 83 (166) 57 (171) 337 2.41 serious weak continuity of projects by new staff 0 (0) 85 (170) 55 (165) 335 2.39 serious inadequate current farm technology dissemination 2 (2) 94 (188) 44 (132) 322 2.30 serious absence of field accommodation 12 (12) 81 (162) 47 (141) 315 2.25 serious inadequate communication equipment and technologies 10 (10) 90 (80) 40 (120) 310 2.21 serious language barrier 85 (85) 30 (60) 25 (75) 220 1.57 not serious embezzlement of funds 122 (122) 18 (36) 0 (0) 158 1.13 not serious grand mean = 2.25 source: field survey. note: mean ≥ 2.0 = serious constraints; mean < 2.0 = weak constraints. constraint index = 0.75. 3.6. difference in constraints experience among rice farmers based on their socioeconomic backgrounds table 8 shows the chi-square test results of the difference in constraints experience between rice farmers given their socioeconomic backgrounds. the results revealed that there is a significant difference between the age category (years), crops being farmed and constraints (x2 = 12.755; p < 0.05). the results also revealed that there is a significant difference between farming experience (years), crops being farmed and constraints (x2 = 13.632; p < 0.01), and the number of years spent in school, crops being farmed and constraints (x2 = 11.883; p < 0.01). the higher the age and farming experience, the better the rice farmers are able to overcome the constraints and challenges facing the enterprise. based on these results, which do not correspond with ovharhe (2016), who conducted a similar study with cassava, the null hypothesis, which stated that there is no significant difference in constraints experience between rice farmers given their socioeconomic background, is rejected. table 8. responses to difference in constraints experienced among rice farmers given their socioeconomic background. variable total pearson chi-square fisher’s exact test df asymp. sig. (2-tailed) age category (years), crops being farmed and constraints 12.755a** 4 0.013 farming experience (years), crops being farmed and constraints 13.632a*** 3 0.003 number of years spent in school category, crops being farmed and constraints 11.883a*** 2 0.003 farm income category, crops being farmed and constraints 0.601 1 0.302 note: *** significant at the 1% level of probability; ** significant at the 5% level of probability. 4. conclusion this study has generated useful results and discussions. it revealed that more married male farmers dominate rice farming on a small-scale production level. they rely more on neighbors, friends, cooperative members and fellow farmers as a means of information dissemination than extension workers who are inadequate in the conduct of their asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 113-122 121 activities. self-help and cooperative management techniques used by farmers were highly rated. the majority of the limitations facing extension activities perceived by the farmers are serious, such as poor training sessions by extension agents, insufficient training kits and field allowances, absence of mobility, and poor linkage with research bodies. the implication is that these limitations have jeopardized their efforts and contributed to the poor functionality among rice farmers’ cooperatives in the study area. the activities of the individual groups culminated to general cooperative activities. the study therefore makes the following recommendations based on the findings and suggests policy implications as a back-up for effective functionality of agricultural extension activities: i. male farmers being the domiciliary factor is not sufficient, efforts should be made to incorporate female farmers and youths in the rice production industry. enactment of a policy encouraging women and youths to venture into rice production is suggested. this will increase the scale of rice farming, food security, income generation, and will to some extent curb youth restiveness. ii. the reliance on other farmers for information dissemination over extension workers in this technological age is discreditable. for proper functionality of extension workers, there should be policies on holistic administrative and welfare package provision to ensure that set goals are deliverable. iii. self-help and cooperative management techniques used by the rice farmers were commendable. notwithstanding, for the sustainability of best practices, there is a need to revamp the policy on annual agricultural produce exhibition and award ceremonies. this will prompt healthy competition among rice farmers and drive the extension workers toward better functionality. iv. regarding constraints facing extension workers leading to poor functionality in agricultural extension activities, as a policy there should be a consistent practice of capacity building locally and internationally, which will expose personnel to contemporary issues in agricultural extension advancement. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references achoja, f., & nwokolo, n. 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(2014). agricultural cooperative management and policy (pp. 422). switzerland: springer international publishing. http://www.ruralfinanceandinvestment.org/training/self-study-guides/agricultural-cooperative-management http://www.bbc.com/news/business-47858725 http://www.researchgate.net/publication/236313572_from_warda_to_africarice_an_overview_of_rice_research_for_development_activities_conducted_in_partnership_in_africa http://www.researchgate.net/publication/236313572_from_warda_to_africarice_an_overview_of_rice_research_for_development_activities_conducted_in_partnership_in_africa http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economic-prospects effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 79 exploring the awareness and value chain of moringa oleifera for sustainable livelihoods: a case study of sauyemwa west and kaisosi east areas in rundu, kavango east region, namibia esther lombe chitoshi kwaambwaa,c hilma rantilla amwelea habauka majority kwaambwab simon sebatana letsoaloc aschool of agriculture and natural resources, faculty of health, natural resources and applied sciences, namibia university of science and technology, 13 jackson kaujeua, private bag 13388, windhoek, namibia. bschool of natural and applied sciences, faculty of health, natural resources and applied sciences, c/o brahams and beethoven street, namibia university of science and technology private bag 13388, windhoek, namibia. cdepartment of agricultural economics and extension, north-west university, mahikeng campus, private bag x2046, corner of albert luthuli and university drive, mmabatho 2745, south africa.  ekwaambwa@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 15 february 2024 revised: 24 june 2024 accepted: 10 july 2024 published: 13 august 2024 keywords descriptive statistics moringa oleifera moringa uses and awareness purposive sampling socio-demographic data value chain. the study explored the awareness and utilization of moringa oleifera for sustainable livelihoods in kaisosi east and sauyemwa west areas in rundu in kavango east region of namibia. purposive sampling was used to select two regions, which are kaisosi east and sauyemwa west of rundu in kavango east region. data on socio-demographics and uses of moringa oleifera was collected using a structured interview questionnaire from 82 farmers that were randomly selected across the two selected areas of study. majority of farmers in the study area were female (56.1%), whereas for employment status, 68.3% were unemployed, and for education, 51.2% had attained secondary school level of education. results from the study revealed that most of the respondents (48.8%) fell within the age range of 20-39 years, and 67.1% were single. the results also showed that most of the respondents were aware of the moringa. oleifera plant, such that 34.7% use it for medicinal purposes and 19.5% as a source of income generation through the sales of moringa oleifera products. the results showed that there is no significant difference (p > 0.05) in the use of moringa oleifera between socio-demographic factors. the study further revealed that many of the farmers could identify the plant physically and by name. the study suggests that there is a large scope for increasing the cultivation and utilization of moringa oleifera in the study area. to achieve the objective, efforts are needed to improve farmers’ access to credit and markets, as well as training in production and processing. contribution/originality: the research used a social science lens to study the awareness and moringa oleifera value chain for sustainable livelihoods in namibia. the study examined for any relationships between use of moringa oleifera and selected demographic variables. to the best of our knowledge, no such study has been conducted in namibia. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i3.5161 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: kwaambwa, e. l. c., amwele, h. r., kwaambwa, h. m., & letsoalo, s. s. (2024). exploring the awareness and value chain of moringa oleifera for sustainable livelihoods: a case study of sauyemwa west and kaisosi east areas in rundu, kavango east region, namibia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3), 79–86. 10.55493/5005.v14i3.5161 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 3 (2024): 79-86. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4330-7597 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1619-6813 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9378-9933 mailto:ekwaambwa@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 79-86 80 1. introduction moringa oleifera is the most widely cultivated of the 13 known species in the moringaceae monogenetic family.the moringa is a multipurpose tree since nearly every part of it has some nutritional, medicinal, and/or commercial benefits (alhassan, sanchi, dorh, & sunday, 2022; fahey, 2005; fuglie, 1999; gopalakrishnan, doriya, & kumar, 2016; paliwal, veena sharma, & pracheta, 2011; velázquez-zavala, peón-escalante, zepeda-bautista, & jiménez-arellanes, 2016). since the tree is adaptable to dry climates, it can not only combat malnutrition, desertification, climate change, and variability but is also used for income generation for the farmers. moringa can easily be grown in tropical countries, including namibia, since it has favorable climatic conditions. it is, therefore, an ideal plant to promote at the household level because of its resilience to harsh growing environments, including drought, poor soil quality, and resistance to many pests and diseases. moringa oleifera is a leafy vegetable that, when dried, can be used as a food supplement that serves as rejuvenating nutrients for the body. based on the importance of dietary diversification, moringa oleifera is a vegetable crop that can be grown to generate income, reduce poverty, and improve the health of people through proper nutrition. planting moringa oleifera can help provide a more diversified farm economy and potentially stimulate the rural economy as a whole, encouraging the development of more stable commodities. thus nutritional vegetable crop’s acceptability necessitates sensory evaluation in various forms. therefore, we can subject the plants products to sensory evaluation to ascertain their acceptability among various age groups. many developing countries, including, namibia are faced with the problem of food insecurity caused by a continuous decline in food production due to drought, postharvest losses, and inadequate agricultural-related policies. food insecurity is a major cause of malnutrition, a condition that results from poor diet in which essential nutrients are either lacking or in the wrong proportions. moringa oleifera can be a resource to developing countries by utilizing leaves, whether fresh or processed, not only to generate income and provide employment, but also to be a nutrition supplement for families and improve their health. the study’s purpose is to investigate the current and potential role of moringa oleifera can play in the development of sustainable livelihoods, particularly for small-scale, indigenously based agriculture. this study was to investigate the awareness and utilization of the moringa socio-economic benefits available in two areas in rundu, namibia, known as sauyemwa west and kaisosi east. residents commonly find moringa oleifera trees in their backyards in the kavango east and zambezi regions of namibia. the cultivation and use of moringa oleifera can play a key role in the successful achievement of sustainable livelihoods in rural areas of namibia. the kavango east region, like others in namibia, experiences climate change effects and variability that are commonly associated with food insecurity (famine), desertification, lack of safe drinking water, poverty, etc. the study looked at how the moringa oleifera is used, can be used, or was being used as a sustainable solution by subsistence farmers and rural communities for socio-economic development with the aim of determining their perceptions and levels of utilization of the plant for sustainable livelihood. most of the namibian population lives in rural areas and is prone to the effects of climate change and variability. climate change is making droughts more of a norm than an exception. this is a pattern that places some of the most vulnerable communities in an increasingly precarious position when it comes to meeting basic food needs. for subsistence and smallholder farmers in dry lands like namibia, a failed harvest can mean months of hunger, lack of adequate food, and hardship. in addition, "conventional" crops such as cereals are often not native and suitable to the local environmental conditions and thus require expensive inputs, significant irrigation, and land preparation in order to produce a successful harvest. this means that these crops are more vulnerable to droughts, leading to poor or unsuccessful harvests. trees, on the other hand, often survive when other crops fail. in order to determine which tree can effectively combat food shortages and contribute to climate change mitigation, it is crucial to examine the potential already present in developing countries, particularly namibia. moringa oleifera, being advocated for, is an ideal plant to promote at the household level because it is extremely resilient to harsh growing environments, including drought, poor soil quality, and many pests and diseases. lack of proper nutrition caused by not having enough to eat due to the prevalence of the drought is generally estimated to contribute to more than one-third of all child deaths, although it is rarely listed as the direct cause. lack of access to highly nutritious foods, especially in the present context of rising food prices, is a common cause of poverty. poor feeding practices, such as inadequate breastfeeding, offering the wrong foods, and not ensuring that the child gets enough nutritious food, contribute to malnutrition. infection-particularly frequent or persistent diarrhea, pneumonia, measles, and malaria-also undermines a child's nutritional status. in the poorest countries, as many as one child in five dies during infancy (atrash, 2013). according to a report by the united nations world food programme, more than 42% of people in namibia suffer from a lack of adequate food (world food programme (wfp) report, 2015). despite being classified by the world bank as an upper middle-income country, namibia is currently ranked among four african countries with the highest number of undernourished people in the world; zambia, the central african republic, and malawi are the others with levels of poverty and famine caused by not having enough to eat exceeding 35% of the population. considerable investments continue to be made by governments and aid agencies in programmes designed to prevent poverty and lack of food through the introduction of sustainable solutions. however, the problem of poverty and lack of food continues because the programmes that address this problem are normally unsustainable, hence the need for new approaches. the moringa tree, or “miracle tree,” as it is sometimes called, could be the solution to the problems of development of sustainable livelihoods, especially for small-scale, indigenously based agriculture in the developing world, including namibia. the tree has well-documented nutritional and medicinal properties that also provide excellent economic opportunities for agricultural producers, traders, and processors, thereby making it effective in tackling micronutrient insecurity while equally holding the promise of sustainable economic returns to the farmers (ajayi, williams, famuyide, & adebayo, 2013). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 79-86 81 2. materials and methods 2.1. study area the study was conducted in the kaisosi east and sauyemwa west areas of rundu (figure 1(a)) in kavango east region of northern namibia. the region contains the western half of the caprivi strip; in the north, it borders the cuando cubango province of angola; and in the south, it borders the north-west district of botswana (figure 1(b)). rundu is the capital and largest city of the kavango-east region, with a population of 136,823 inhabitants according to the namibia 2011 census provisional report. it lies on the border with angola on the banks of the kavango river, covering an area of 25,586 km2. the major occupation in the study area is farming, although some of the respondents engage in some other minor activities, such as trading. the majority of the rural population in the study areas are subsistence farmers who cultivate crops. (a) (b) figure 1. (a) map of rundu showing the locations of kaisosi and sauyemwa areas, and; (b) map of namibia showing the location of the kavango east region. 2.2. study design the study assessed the extent of cultivation and utilisation of moringa oleifera in rundu, in particular kaisosi east and sauyemwa west, which were both qualitative and quantitative in nature. the data collection was conducted through face-to-face interviews and questionnaires to collect information on awareness, utilization, and perception of moringa oleifera. the data collection was done from september 2022-october 2022. to recruit participants for this study, the researcher used purposive sampling because random sampling was not possible due to the study design. purposive sampling involved the researcher making a conscious decision about which individuals would best provide the desired information. for instance, 100 farmers (50 female and 50 male) were targeted as a representative of the population. in the study, such individuals in a population were selected as the samples and the results were generalized to the entire population. this helped the researcher achieve the objectives of the study in the shortest possible time. 2.3. questionnaire and interviews administration the primary data collection tool used was a structured questionnaire, which was first face-validated, pretested, and tested for reliability before administration (roopa & rani, 2012). it was administered through face-to-face interviews with the help of a translator/interpreter from english to local language, rukwangali. the translator/interpreter clarified in the local language the survey objectives and procedures, and provided an assurance of the ethical principles, guaranteeing participants' anonymity and data confidentiality through a participant's information sheet prior to answering the survey questionnaire. the respondents were assured that the information collected was to be used for academic research purposes only, and participation in the survey was voluntary. before participating in the survey, we asked the interviewees to sign the pre-prepared form to give their consent. the translator/interpreter would then translate each question for the interviewee and provide the answer to the researcher. both the researchers and translator/ interpreter participated in recording the responses. the questionnaire was divided into two sections, comprising both openand closed-ended questions. the first section dealt primarily with socio-demographic data, i.e., gender, marital status, age range, education level, employment status, and family size. the second section was for years of farming experience, farm size, and the knowledge, uses, and market of moringa oleifera. 2.4. data analysis the demographics and characteristics were described and analysed using descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages of qualitative and quantitative moringa oleifera producers’ data) in the questionnaire. the quantitative data collected was managed and arranged to make it easier for interpretation and computer software. we used the statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 22 for data analysis to generate descriptive statistics of the questionairre asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 79-86 82 responses. the quantitative data obtained was summarized and presented in tables. all information related to the study was kept on the encrypted personal hard drive, accessible only to the researcher. 3. results a total of 82 respondents were interviewed in the two areas. table 1 displays the age of the growers and gender characteristics of the the growers. the modal age of the interviewees was the 30-39 years and more females participated in the study. in addition to information on household characteristics such as family size, educational status, farm size and experience of the farmers, the farmers have very small holdings and use traditional technology (hoes and cattle ploughs) for cultivation. farming experience can be said to measure the number of years of participation in moringa oleifera cultivation with a view to determining how such an experience has impacted the farmer’s productivity in terms of the yield and input use. in the project that was developed by komeho namibia development agency, a national non-profit organization in namibia that was formed in 2001/2002 to contribute to namibia's national development objectives, the communities in both kaisosi east and sauyemwa west were introduced to moringa oleifera cultivation and utilization. the study areas were, therefore, ideal for studying the socio-economic benefits of moringa to rural communities. the study areas were, therefore, ideal for studying the socio-economic benefits of moringa to rural communities. to garner cooperation of smallholder farmers and communities in moringa programmes, it is important to understand the factors that influence behavior. socio-demographic factors such as gender, age, income, and education have been found to be influential in community-based programmes. hence, the inclusion in the study of the socioeconomic distribution of the respondents with respect to gender, marital status, age, education attainment, farmers’ experience, and market of moringa, farm size, family size, and uses of moringa oleifera. 3.1. socio-demographics of the respondents table 1 provides the socio-demographics in terms of gender, marital status, family size, employment status, age, and educational level. 3.1.1. gender gender of respondents was 56.1% female and 43.9% male, as shown in table 1. namibia 2011 population and housing census provisional report showed that female population was (51%), slightly higher than males (49%). the same trend is observed in this study in the growth of moringa oleifera based on gender, i.e., there are more female respondents than males. this categorization was used to establish the growing of moringa oleifera on gender basis, that is, which gender is more interested in growing the plant. the chi-square test on the uses of moringa and gender of respondents revealed that there was no significant difference (p > 0.05) between the uses of moringa oleifera and gender. this means that both males and females in the study areas use moringa oleifera equally. 3.1.2. marital status the marital status of respondents is such that 55 (67.1%) were married, 21 (25.6%) single, and 6 (7.3%) widow/widower. it is common in many societies that single people are always in the majority compared to married and widows/widowers, but in this study, this was not the case because of the purposive sampling used. 3.1.3. family size every respondent is a member of a family; therefore, the determination of the family size is crucial. in this study, family size was organized into three categories, namely, 1-4, 5-8 and >8 members/persons. the result shows that 1-4 members were 9 (11.0%) whereas 5-8 and >8 member families were 31 (37.8%) and 42 (51.2%), respectively. 3.1.4. employment status the employment status shows that employed persons were 13 (15.9%), self-employed persons were 12 (14.6%), unemployed persons were 56 (68.3%), and only 1 was 1 (1.2%) retired. this means that there is a high unemployment rate among the respondents, although the employed were second highest, followed by self-employed. a chi-square test of employment status and use of moringa was carried out to find out if there were statistical differences in the use of moringa among respondents based on their employment status. the results indicated that there were no significant differences (p > 0.05) in the use of moringa oleifera and employment status of respondents. this clearly reveals that all respondents used moringa oleifera for different purposes equally, despite their employment status. 3.1.5. age ranges the age ranges of respondents were arranged in the order of <20, 20-39, 40-49, 50-59 and ≥60. the highest number of respondents were between ages 20 and 39 (48.8%), followed by <20 (17.1%), 50-59 (13.4%), 40-49 (12.2%), and the least was >60 (8.5%). to examine the uses of moringa oleifera based on age range, the chi-square test was conducted, in which the result shows no significant difference (p > 0.05) in the use of moringa oleifera between age ranges. every age range of respondents consistently uses moringa oleifera, which accounts for this. 3.1.6. education levels table 1 persents the respondents’ education levels. among the respondents, secondary education had the highest with 42 (51.2%), followed by informal education 19 (23.2%), primary education 12 (14.6%), tertiary education 4 (4.9%), asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 79-86 83 vocational education 3 (3.7%), and others had least with 2 (2.4%). a chi-square sest of education levels and use of moringa reveals that there was no significant difference (p > 0.05) between education levels of respondents in their use of moringa oleifera. this demonstrates that every respondent uses moringa oleifera regardless of their educational level. table 1. socio-demographic data of the participants. variable n (82) % n (82) % gender family size female 46 56.1 1 4 9 11.0 male 36 43.9 5 8 31 37.8 total 82 100 >8 42 51.2 marital status total 82 100 married 55 67.1 employment status single 21 25.6 employed 13 15.9 widow/widower 6 7.3 unemployed 56 68.3 total 82 100 self-employed 12 14.6 age range retired 1 1.2 <20 14 17.1 total 82 100 20-39 40 48.8 education level 40-49 10 12.2 secondary education 42 51.2 50-59 11 13.4 primary education 12 14.6 ≥60 7 8.5 informal education 19 23.2 total 82 100 vocational education 3 3.7 tertiary education 4 4.9 other 2 2.4 total 82 100 3.2. cultivation and utilization of moringa oleifera table 2 provides information on the cultivation and utilization of moringa oleifera in terms of years of farming experience, farm size, and uses and marketing data. 3.2.1. years of experience as a farmer respondents’ years of experience in farming given in table 2 are not based on farming of moringa oleifera but rather farming in general. the highest number of respondents had ≥5 years farming experience, with 53 (64.6%). the second largest respondents had 3-4 years farming experience 23 (28.1%), and the third had 1-2 years of farming experience 6 (7.3%), while < 1 year of farming experience was zero. the fact that farming is their primary source of livelihood accounts for the large percentage of respondents with farming experience. 3.2.2. farm size the farm size of the respondents was 41 (52.4%), which had >0.8 hectares of farmland, followed by 27 (32.9%), which was 0.51-0.8 hectares, 9 (11.0%) had 0.31-0.5 hectares, and 3 (3.7%) had 0.1-0.3 hectares as the least. this indicates that many communal farmers have land to cultivate for their livelihoods. 3.2.3. uses of moringa oleifera in this study, the respondents were asked to choose any three uses of moringa oleifera from the following list: animal fodder, water treatment, food supplements, cosmetics, intercropping, vegetables, source of oil, tea, ornamental, fuel wood, medicinal, source of income, and others. all on the list received scores except water treatment, cosmetics, and intercropping. the ones chosen are animal fodder, food supplements, vegetables, sources of oil, tea, ornamental, fuel wood, medicinal, sources of income, and others. out of 82 respondents, the highest use was for medicine 56.1% followed by source of income (29.3%), tea (24.4%%), food supplement (19.5%), source of oil (17.1%), vegetable (9.8%), and ornamental (9.8%), whereas fuel wood, animal fodder and others were all less than 9%. 3.2.4. marketing of moringa oleifera we aslo asked the respondents if they were actively marketing moringa oleifera. out of the 82 participants, 66 (80.5%) of respondents sell moringa oleifera and 16 (19.5%) do not. respondents’ intention when selling moringa oleifera was to generate income for their livelihood. in terms of where the participants sell their moringa produce, all 66 (80.5%) out of 82 do sell within namibia, and only 3 (3.7%) are engaged in the export market. the latter’s involvement in the export market is through komeho namibia development agency, which has an established export to germany of dry moringa oleifera leaves. in other words, these moringa oleifera farmers supply to komeho namibia development agency, who then export on their behalf. the indicated category “other” refers to respondents’ who do not sell moringa products, but instead use them for their own consumption. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 79-86 84 table 2. cultivation and utilization of moringa oleifera. variable n (82) % n (82) % years as a farmer uses of moringa <1 0 0 animal fodder 2 2.4 1-2 6 7.3 food supplement 16 19.5 3-4 23 28.1 vegetable 8 9.8 ≥5 53 64.6 source of oil 14 17.1 total 82 100 tea 20 24.4 size of farm (hectares) ornamental 8 9.8 <0.1 2 2.4 fuel wood 6 7.3 0.1-0.3 3 3.7 medicine 46 56.1 0.31-0.5 9 11.0 source of income 24 29.3 0.51-0.8 27 32.9 other 2 2.4 >0.8 41 50.0 total 82 100 moringa market moringa selling namibian market 66 80.5 yes 66 80.5 international market 3 3.7 no 16 19.5 other consumption 16 19.5 total 82 100 3.2.5. value chain of moringa the uses of moringa in the study areas are based on the leaves, although every part of the tree is known to have socioeconomic benefits. according to the findings articulated above, figure 2 captures the most important features in the value chain. the value chain is considered to be short, fragile, and dominated by few actors. in general, the smallholder farmers or families collect moringa leaves for either home consumption or further processing for sale. whenever household needs arise, the farmers harvest the leaves needed and spend neither time nor the financial resources in pruning, fertilizing, or irrigating moringa trees. locally, consumers purchase the moringa products mostly in informal outlets such as small shops, local agricultural markets, or individual farmers homes. on the production side, the farmers often harvest moringa leaves and seeds from their own garden or neighborhood. figure 2. moringa value chain in sauyemwa west and kaisosi east areas in rundu, kavango east region, namibia. 4. discussion kwaambwa, chimuka, kandawa-schulz, munkombwe, and thwala (2012) assessed and promoted the cultivation and utilisation of the moringa oleifera in 5 southern african development community (sadc) countries, namely botswana, namibia, south africa, swaziland, and zambia. they conducted the study from september 2010 and march 2011. it was found that the tree is generally used for nutritional and medicinal purposes except in namibia, where another species (i.e,. m. ovalifolia), is found that is not yet being cultivated by all the respondents. the prices of the products varied from country to country. the information about the benefits of the moringa oleifera was well received, although a lot still needs to be done to benefit from this sustainable resource. the total 2,104900 persons enumerated in the namibian 2011 census were 1,083.600 (51%) females and 1,021.300 (49%) males. this pattern varies slightly across regions and constituencies, which is not uncommon. overall, however, there are more females than males in most populations, as stipulated in the namibia 2011 census report. the results of the gender of respondents indicated in table 1 clearly show that the female respondents had a higher percentage than those of males, because there are more females in the population of namibia. in the study done by odeyinka, torimiro, oyedele, and asaolu (2007), the average age of respondents was about 50 years. the study further found that the respondents were aware of and willing to pay for moringa. most respondents were housewives, which could be attributed to the fact that they make decisions on what the family consumes. these findings seem to agree with the current study. we expect education to improve access to information. respondents were average income earners, which could influence their willingness to pay for moringa or any other product. most respondents were familiar with moringa, implying that the plant is becoming known among consumers. many respondents were aware of the nutritive benefits of moringa. age, educational status, and preference for other vegetables may determine consumer likelihood to pay for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 79-86 85 moringa. older people seem to know the benefits of medicinal or herbal plants, such as moringa. educated consumers are more likely to be willing to pay for moringa. this could be because the more educated a consumer is, the more likely he or she will have access to various sources of information on the benefits of the vegetable. we expect educated individuals to earn higher incomes, thereby increasing their willingness to purchase moringa. the study findings indicate that the sex and family of the respondents positively influence their acceptance of diversified moringa oleifera products. the results also revealed that moringa products are highly acceptable to the respondents. in the study of educational levels, most of the respondents had secondary level and could read and write; therefore, they were aware of the benefits of moringa and should ideally be willing to pay. the plant is in most of the households’ backyards and is of importance to the families, who indicated that they used the plant products for different purposes in addition to selling them. odeyinka et al. (2007) study supports this. moringa is becoming increasingly important as a source of income for several people in rural areas. for instance, several villagers in parts of matebeleland in zimbabwe have started nurseries to grow moringa in large quantities for sale to other villagers and other provinces (maroyi, 2007). in many instances, group members share the seedlings for planting on their farms and sell some to other farmers. of late, the small town of binga in zimbabwe has become a hive of activity, hosting people from all over the country who buy the moringa products in bulk. the products range from fresh leaves and pods to powdered leaves. most farmers also give seedlings to relatives and neighbours. the prize of a single seedling ranges from 10-30 south african rands (us$0.5-us$1.7). the relatively high prices for seedlings in namibia are indicative of their high demand. demand generally outstrips supply. farmers’ reasons for planting and perceptions of benefits varied across the country. four of the most common and important reasons are the need for food, an important medicine for home consumption, a cash-making enterprise, and the diversity of uses. cultivation of the multiple-use species is an economic proposition, and unlike many slowergrowing and more habitat-specific medicinal plant species, moringa is already a popular tree for indigenous agroforestry in africa (maroyi, 2007). the selling of moringa by the respondents was mainly to generate income for sustainable livelihoods, and those who were not selling it used it for consumption. maroyi (2007) observed a similar trend. the sociodemographic distribution of the respondents was with respect to gender, marital status, age, annual farm income, educational attainment, and experience. distribution of respondents on the consumption of m. oleifera according to the study that was done in nigeria by odeyinka et al. (2007) showed that more than half (52.5%) of the respondents fell into the category of people that have favorable perception of the benefits of moringa oleifera, while (47.5%) fell into the category of people that have an unfavorable perception of the benefits of it. this implies that the majority of the respondents somehow benefit from using moringa oleifera. this is consistent with the finding that moringa oleifera is beneficial to human nutrition. based on the findings of this study, the respondents’ sex and family size enhance the acceptability of diversified moringa products. the results also revealed that moringa products are highly acceptable to the respondents. the null hypothesis is therefore accepted. this implies that age, marital status, level of education, and monthly income had no effect on the level of acceptability of the products. the result showed that respondents’ perceptions on the benefits of using moringa oleifera are not significant (r = 0.171, p = 0.292) because p > 0.05, therefore the null hypothesis is accepted. this suggests that the respondents’ perceived benefits from using moringa donot influence the level of acceptability of the products. it also meant that the location of the respondents does not affect the level of acceptability. opportunities for establishing communal plantations are almost nonexistent, so there is no doubt that any efforts to introduce a programme with the aim of providing a self-sustainable supply of moringa must concentrate on the promotion of tree planting on individual farms. in table 2, the uses were identified, and the ones that were the most used were for medicinal purposes, as a source of income, as a food supplement, and for a tea, which indicated the high percentage, therefore in agreement with the study done in zimbabwe. in the districts of matebeland in zimbabwe, moringa was found to be used for the following purposes: vegetables, medicine, ornamental, and as source of oil and other uses, which include firewood, coagulate, fencing, in construction, making ropes, and as animal fodder (maroyi, 2007). 5. conclusion the study demonstrates that moringa oleifera is valuable, cost-effective plant resource with a diverse array of applications. the major uses (>8%) were found to be the following: medicine (34.7%), source of income (19.5%), tea (12.2%), and food supplement (9.8%). however, many people remain unaware of the tree’s full potential, including its socioeconomic value and multipurpose nature. this is evident from the fact that not all the people that claimed to be aware of the plant knew the various benefits that could be derived from the tree. therefore, there is need to promote the cultivation and socioeconomic benefits of this natural resource as a sustainable livelihood approach in the rural areas of the country. the chi-test results showed that there were no significant differences (p > 0.05) in the use of moringa by respondents versus gender, employment status, age, or education level. based on the findings, we suggest tackling the specific characteristics and needs of moringa oleifera producers would more adequately help to improve cultivation, yields, and utiliation of moringa. interventions to enhance yields include training on best moringa production, preservation, processing, and packaging practices, provision of input subsidies; and access to irrigation tailored to the specific constraints and needs of each moringa oleifera grower type. the promotion of the cultivation and utilization could be done through various media that are accessible and affordable to the community, such as radio, roadshows or demonstrations, workshops, etc. finally, enabling access to credit will improve the productivity of moringa oleifera farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 79-86 86 funding: this research is supported by swedish research council (vr/sida) (grant number: 348-2011-7241). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the faculty of natural and agricultural sciences ethics committee of the north-west university senate committee of ethics has granted approval for this study on 10 august 2022 (ref. no. nwu-01370-23-a9). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: conceptualization, e.l.c.k., h.r.a., h.m.k. and s.s.l.; data collection, l.e.c.k.; writing draft manuscript, l.e.c.k. and h.m.k.; review and editing, h.r., h.m.k. and s.s.l. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references ajayi, c. a., williams, o. a., famuyide, o. o., & adebayo, o. 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(2015). the state of food insecurity in the world; 2015. retrieved from https://www.wfp.org/publications/wfp-year-review-2015 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.4314/agrosh.v13i3.7s https://doi.org/10.36344/ccijavs.2022.v04i01.001 https://doi.org/10.7322/jhgd.69513 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fshw.2016.04.001 https://doi.org/10.3923/ajps.2007.320.325 https://doi.org/10.3923/ajbkr.2011.317.328 https://doi.org/10.5005/jp-journals-10021-1104 https://www.wfp.org/publications/wfp-year-review-2015 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 183 developing the coconut value chain in central luzon, philippines: a case study of coco geonets in aurora edgelly galvez vitug nueva ecija university of science and technology, philippines.  edgellyvitug14@gmail.com article history abstract received: 6 march 2022 revised: 10 may 2023 accepted: 19 june 2023 published: 24 july 2023 keywords coco coir coco geonet coconut competitiveness market marketing strategies profitability value addition value chain. the study aimed to assess the status of the coco geonet in central luzon, particularly aurora, which comprises more than 90% of the region’s production. the study utilized a participatory method, and a value chain analysis framework was used to examine the roles of different key players. the value chain comprises input provision, farm production, processing, and marketing. based on the results of the study, coco geonet processors received the biggest share in terms of both value addition and total cost. nearly all coconut farmers initially obtained planting materials from other coconut farmers whose farms exhibited high-quality characteristics. these farmers utilize simple farming methods that have not changed in many decades. coco geonet production consists of two processing stages: coco-coir production and coco-geonet weaving. the primary constraint for coco geonets is the lack of access to the institutional market. customers for the coco geonets produced by aurora’s value chain are currently scarce. marketing links are necessary to add value to the husks. it is therefore recommended that the products be promoted, their market be developed, and their marketing potential be tapped to allow the industry to become lucrative. inter-agency support is needed for the value chain to perform efficiently and effectively. contribution/originality: this research examined the coco geonet value chain in aurora province, philippines. the current paper describes the participants in the value chain, identifies constraints, and suggests interventions. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4827 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: vitug, e. g. (2023). developing the coconut value chain in central luzon, philippines: a case study of coco geonets in aurora. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3), 183–191. 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4827 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction agriculture helps drive economic growth (praburaj, 2018; winters, de janvry, sadoulet, & stamoulis, 1998). this is also true in the philippines, where agriculture remains the backbone of the economy. coconut, known as the "tree of life," remains one of the philippines' most important crops and a key export product. coconut palms dominate the agricultural landscape of 69 of the philippines' 82 provinces. according to the department of agriculture (2022), approximately 25 million filipinos are directly or indirectly dependent on the coconut industry. the philippine coconut industry has significantly boosted employment in the country. this is mainly due to the export of goods made from coconuts, which has grown significantly due to rising global demand. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 3 (2023): 183-191 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-5823-1397 mailto:edgellyvitug14@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 183-191 184 the philippine statistics authority (2021) noted that all provinces in central luzon recorded production of coconut in 2021, totaling 100.9 thousand metric tons. aurora was the top producer of coconut in central luzon with a 93.4 percent share of total production. in the province of aurora, all eight (8) municipalities contribute a significant amount of coconut to the regional economy. products made from coconuts with considerable commercial potential include coco coir and coco geonets. handwoven coco coir derived from coconut husks is used to make coco geonet. coco geonet can be utilized for erosion control, slope protection, and coastline rehabilitation (su sets up eco-friendly christmas tree, 2018). furthermore, coir is an excellent waste disposal product that allows producers to earn additional income. however, coco coir and coco geonets face obstacles. this is consistent with the study of castillo (2021), in which he explains that the problems in the industry are the unorganized supply chain, the vulnerability of coconut to world price fluctuations, low farm productivity, which stems from cocolisap infestations, the aging current crop of coconut trees and their poor nutrition, inadequate infrastructure support and poor farm-to-market roads, low allocation of funds to research and development, and the presence of corruption and bribery. for the coir and geonet value chains to be more efficient, it is necessary to identify bottlenecks and implement interventions. as supported by khong (2022), a value chain approach is necessary because it is a potent instrument for enhancing producers' market access and competitiveness. 2. materials and methods the study employed a participatory approach. according to vaughn and jacquez (2020), participatory research is a form of systematic inquiry applied in close cooperation with those impacted by a problem being examined for action or modification. the study focused on the coco geonet value chain in aurora province, central luzon, philippines, in 2021. the roles of key players were explored using value chain analysis. according to porter, as cited by hbs online (2020), all activities comprising a company's value chain can be divided into primary and support activities. a value chain study analyzes the chain's participants, from input suppliers to retailers, as well as the variables influencing the performance of the value chain and the interactions between participants, including the power dynamics between firms, their access to learning and innovation, and the distribution of benefits along the chain. according to panoutsou and singh (2020), a value chain analysis also suggests policy measures to improve the performance of the chain. this study assessed the challenges and possibilities for boosting the coco geonet industry's competitiveness. potential sustainable solutions were developed in conjunction with industry participants and stakeholders based on barriers to and opportunities for greater competitiveness. industry players and stakeholders were engaged in the evaluation and revision of the suggested interventions as active participants and collaborators. a review of reports, secondary research, pertinent studies, key informant interviews, stakeholder consultation, and a focus group discussion were all included in the evaluation. 3. results and discussion 3.1. the value chain segments the value chain map in figure 1 is a visual representation of each stakeholder's many roles and responsibilities in the value chain. input supply, farm production, processing, marketing, and trading and support services are all functions of essential stakeholders in the coconut commodity value chain. this section briefly describes and discusses these functions. figure 1. value chain map for coir and coir by-products in central luzon.r asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 183-191 185 3.1.1. input provision the main inputs needed to grow coconuts are coconut seedlings, agricultural-grade salt, organic fertilizer, and insecticides. farmers utilize two common varieties of coconut, the tall and dwarf varieties. according to the interviews, tall varieties are preferred for planting because their yield is believed to be greater than that of dwarf varieties. based on interviews with key informants, the philippine coconut authority (pca) and several coconut farmers were identified as the region’s sources of coconut planting materials. nearly all coconut farmers initially obtained planting materials from other coconut farmers whose farms exhibited high-quality characteristics. additionally, the pca is a source of coconut planting materials. the pca purchases and distributes plant materials for new planting, expansion, or replacement purposes. during the study, pca aurora had only one supplier of dwarf seedlings and openpollinated varieties (opv) seed nuts. the few accredited nurseries in the area restrict coconut farmers' access to quality planting materials. the bureau of plant and industry, as cited by labastida (2022), has emphasized the importance of plant nursery accreditation to ensure the production and distribution of quality planting materials from recommended crop varieties or species that are true types and are free from pests and diseases. 3.1.2. farm production central luzon's upland or coastal regions are where coconut plantations are most prevalent. coconut is primarily grown by small-scale farmers in aurora, zambales, and bataan. these farmers utilize simple farming methods that have not changed in many decades. consequently, coconut cultivation is recognized for its low-input agricultural system. salt is the only fertilizer used by coconut farmers in aurora, although some farmers refuse to use salt and therefore do not apply fertilizer to their farms. farmers either produce or purchase organic fertilizer from agricultural supply companies. coconut cultivation is a major source of income for farmers, especially in aurora. in coconut farming in central luzon, agricultural management practices include farm clearing, sticking, laying out, holing, planting seedlings, fertilization, clearing pesticides if pests are present, and harvesting. however, ramirez, lansangan, tubal, and catelo (2019) explained the need for more proactive, rather than reactive, mechanisms to support the capacities of value chain members in responding to climate change-related threats, such as vulnerability mapping and zoning/spatial planning, among others. the pca assures the continuous expansion and modernization of the country’s coconut industry. sevillano (2023) reported that under the coconut expansion program, the pca carries out comprehensive strategies, including hybridization, fertilization interventions for quick turnarounds, and intercropping or farm diversification to give farmers alternative sources of income. 3.1.3. processing as articulated in a report of the da regional field office 5 (2019), the industrialization of agriculture through value addition is one of department of agriculture secretary william dar’s paradigms to increase farmers’ income and level up the country’s agriculture sector. hence, coco geonet processing has been adopted to boost the coconut industry. coco geonet production involves two processing stages: coco-coir production and coco-geonet weaving, as presented in figure 2. the coconut stakeholders’ consultation meeting participants declared that the coconut husks are fed into a decorticator powered by a diesel/gasoline engine, and the coir and coir dust are extracted. coco coir is the output and is the first stage of processing. the coir is then spun into twine using a hand-powered twining machine, after which the threads are woven into coco geonets using weaving machines. this is the second processing stage, which leads to the final product. figure 2. process flow for coir and geonet production. according to information from the pca, there were two husk processors in aurora: (1) aurora agri-ventures producers cooperative (aavpc) and (2) nonong coconut farmers association (nocofa). the pca and the department of trade and industry (dti) provide these organizations with decorticating machines. associations are at the top of the dti’s list of beneficiaries because they want their projects to have multiple effects and benefit more people. moreover, government entities tend to finance big-ticket projects, such as machinery and facilities, that demand a larger landholding. these data also substantiate dti secretary ramon lopez's claim that cooperatives and associations have a significant economic influence on their members' lives and are an ally in empowering small and medium-sized enterprises, allowing dti programs to be implemented in their respective fields. in aurora, the aavpc is capable of decorticating 12,000 coconut husks per day, with a production capacity of 1.2 metric tons of coir fiber and 1.8 metric tons of coir dust. in contrast, nocofa produces an average of 100 sacks per week or an average of p60,000 per month from coco peat sales. these cooperatives play a big role in the coco geonet industry in the region; hence, continuous development is necessary. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 183-191 186 3.1.4. marketing and trading the philippine coconut farmers and industry roadmap (2021-2040) (2021) declared that the coconut trading system in the philippines is multi-layered. coconut raw materials from farmers generally pass through several marketing channels before reaching the processing plants. traders pick up the husked nuts at the farm gates and transfer them to other locations. traders are also considered wholesalers. the coco geonets are sold to trader consolidators who in turn sell the coco geonets to construction firms or handicraft makers. coconut processors most often link with a network of traders and trader-assemblers to procure their raw materials (e.g., copra, dehusked nuts, whole mature nuts, fresh young nuts, coco shells, coco husks, and coco shell charcoal). the local traders have direct contact with the farmers and usually have established long relationships with them (costales, 2020). the coconuts from aurora are shipped to provinces such as bulacan, tarlac, pampanga, pangasinan, and nueva ecija. the peak seasons for coconut dealers, according to the traders, are april, november, and december, especially during the holidays. 3.1.5. support services through social relationships, farmers and other actors in the value chain gain access to information, knowledge, and guidance. this involves the dissemination of information and advice on prices, markets, varieties, and technology via social networks or traditional cultural methods. this is the most prevalent method by which new types and technology are disseminated among local populations in the province. government agencies, non-government organizations, state institutions, colleges, and provincial and municipal local government units provide these services. typically, the depth and breadth of outreach services are limited by available resources. primarily, the services consist of training and extension services. some of the government agencies that support the coconut industry are the following: the department of agriculture's philippine coconut authority (pca) is the only government agency charged with realizing the full potential of the coconut industry in accordance with the new vision of a unified, highly effective, and competitive coconut industry (pca website). coconut farmers can use shared-service facilities provided by the department of trade and industry. this agency also provides technical assistance to help coconut farmers learn and improve their coconut husk processing techniques. the department of agrarian reform also supports the coconut industry by providing industry participants with machinery. extension workers from local government units in the province of aurora play crucial roles in providing technical assistance to coconut farmers. the transfer of knowledge regarding production technologies, particularly climate-smart technologies, has contributed to an increase in productivity (listiana, indah nurmayasari, bursan, muher sukmayanto, & helvi yanfika, 2021). in addition, the department of science and technology is responsible for researching prototype decorticating machines and other coco coir machines, as well as distributing them to farmers and their organizations. in terms of financial services, various credit policies have been beneficial in facilitating the upgrading of the coconut industry. the land bank of the philippines is among the financial institutions that assist farmers. cooperatives, as shown by the experiences of organized groups in central luzon, can play an important role in mobilizing savings and facilitating credit acquisition for small farmers. 3.2. costs and returns analysis and relative position of different key players in the value chain 3.2.1. costs and returns analysis of key players table 1 presents the costs and returns of processing six thousand husks from a one-hectare coconut plantation. farmers sell coconut husks to processors at an average price of p0.40 per husk, whereas the labor cost of dehusking is an average of p0.05 per husk. the first stage (coco coir processor) incurs material costs of p4,320 and labor costs of p1,600. the coco coir has a selling price of p13 per kilogram, and 6,000 nuts yield 600 kilograms. the weavers, who are the second-stage processors, create 857 square meters of geonets from 600 kilograms of coco coir. the production cost includes materials (p7,800) and labor (p21,000). the price per square meter for coco nets is p55. table 1. costs and returns analysis of farmers and processors of coco coir and geonets, 2021. particulars farmer2 first-stage processor3 second-stage processor4 sales (php) 2,400.00 7,800.00 47,142.86 expenses material cost (php) 4,320.00 7,800.00 labor cost (php) 300.00 1,600.00 21,000.00 total cost of production (php) 300.00 5,920.00 28,800.00 net income (php) 2,100.00 1,880.00 18,342.86 return on expenses (%) 14.29 314.89 157.01 gross profit margin (%) 87.50 24.10 38.91 average price per unit (php) 0.40 13.00 55.00 average cost per unit (php) 0.05 9.87 33.60 note: 2: includes costs and returns from sales of 6,000 husks from 1 ha coconut production. 3: costs and returns of coco coir from processing 6,000 husks. 4: costs and returns of coco geonet from the coco coir of 6,000 husks. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 183-191 187 3.2.2. relative financial position of the key players table 2 shows how much each participant spends and how much money they make when producing one (1) square meter of coco geonet. the coco geonet processor has the highest share, accounting for 72% of the total value addition. this is proportional to the high production costs incurred (59%). the consolidator has the second-highest share in value-added accounting and total cost accounting, at 28% and 15%, respectively. on the other hand, the farmer has a 7% profit share with a 1% share in total cost. the first stage processors, or coco coir processors, had a 6% value addition with a 12% share in total cost. the farmer, who is the source of the husks, does not directly spend on material since the husks are waste from the coconuts he sells to the trader; hence, no value is indicated in the table. also, there are no values indicated in the table under the total column for selling price, cost of production, or direct material because these are not added, and the final amounts are those in the consolidator column. table 2. relative financial position of value chain players per square meter of coco-geonet, 2021. particulars farmer first-stage processor second-stage processor consolidator total selling price (php) 2.80 9.10 55.00 70.00 cost of production (php) 0.35 6.91 33.60 60.00 direct material (php) 2.80 9.10 55.00 other costs (php) 0.35 4.11 24.50 5.00 33.96 value added (php) 2.45 2.19 21.40 10.00 36.04 share to total value added (%) 7% 6% 59% 28% 100 share to total cost (%) 1% 12% 72% 15% 100 3.3. constraints the specific constraints identified by each player in the coco geonet value chain are presented in the following subsections. 3.3.1. input provision during meetings with various groups, it was discovered that the vast majority of coconut farmers obtain their planting materials by growing coconut seedlings from freshly harvested coconuts. farmers use this technique because they cannot afford to purchase coconut seedlings and there are insufficient accredited nursery operators to provide a diverse selection of high-quality coconut planting materials. this is supported by sathuragiri and muthumani (2020), who found that the necessity for an agricultural technique that enhances the revenue of coconut farmers becomes important when the coconut business is threatened by repeated uncertainty. most coconut farmers are illiterate, unorganized, and dispersed, making it more difficult to market coconut. inorganic fertilizers and other agricultural chemicals, such as pesticides, are obtained from local agricultural input supply and general market stores. few coconut farmers use inorganic fertilizers, which are often used on intercrops grown beneath coconut trees. insecticides are only used when a pest infestation is present. simple farm equipment is sourced from the public market and agricultural supply retailers. 3.3.2. farm production despite ongoing public and private sector initiatives, the production sector, the lifeblood of the business and the source of raw materials for the many coconut value chains, is plagued by poor and declining coconut productivity. coconut production is gradually declining due to several factors. the majority of the coconut farmers in the 2018 national coconut farmers registry (ncfrs) were shown to be food insecure and lack social protection. coconut farms are fragmented and small – 75% are 2.0 ha and below – and farms in uplands have accessibility constraints. coconut farmers in aurora use only salt as a fertilizer, although some farmers refuse to use it. coconut farmers do not perform clearing or fertilization as part of their management techniques. several coconut farmers assert that as a result of the low price of coconuts, they do not always employ effective management practices. in addition, the presence of pests on coconut farms has exacerbated the apparent lack of enthusiasm among coconut farmers. another noteworthy factor is that natural disasters have significantly affected the region's production volume. some farmers stated that they did not utilize integrated cropping or coconut intercropping due to a lack of funds to purchase and maintain intercrops. coconut production is hampered by the fact that farmers do not make the most of the available technologies to help them grow coconuts. this concern was also highlighted by rosli, radam, rahim, and abdullah (2020). the negative growth rate of the country's coconut crop is attributable to the presence of numerous pests and unfavorable climatic conditions. other production issues included the slow adoption of recommended agricultural management practices, the continued use of unselected and genetically inferior planting materials, and the need to replace a growing number of senile and unproductive trees. similar conditions affect coconut production in indonesia (alouw & wulandari, 2020). 3.3.3 processing as a result of the decorticator's double-pass process design, aurora's processors are experiencing performance issues. this increases the production costs of coir and decreases its production capacity. one processor reported that the engine powering the decorticator was outdated and could no longer be operated continuously. while progress is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 183-191 188 being made, processors are still constrained by inefficient operations, a lack of working capital, and the inability to transform the coir dust accumulation into something valuable and marketable. additionally, the decorticating facilities of coir processors are insufficient to accommodate the current volume of coconut husks. twines of inconsistent quality and appearance are unsuitable for a market requiring premium geonets. the lack of a specialized twining machine and weaving facilities prevents processors from producing high-quality geonets and other coir byproducts. the inconsistency in the quantity and quality of coir, coco geonets, and coco peat that one association acquires from its suppliers hinders the organization's operations. coco coir is spun into twines using motorized or manually operated twining equipment. due to a scarcity of coir supply from their decorticator suppliers, the current productivity of twiners is unfortunately poor. due to a scarcity of coir, twiners are unable to maximize profits by creating as much twine as feasible. weaving is performed in predetermined groupings. depending on the location of accessible looming equipment, weaving might be performed off-site, at the weavers’ residence, or within the premises of decorticating plants. 3.3.4. marketing and trading in the marketing of and trade in raw materials in the coco coir value chain cluster, consolidators or integrators and traders are the sources of coconut husks of a few coir processors. the husk consolidators are the buying agents of the coir processors. most coir processors source coconut husks primarily from individual farmers. there are a few that have their own coconut farms to supply them with coconut husks. at present, the market is dominated by consolidators who collect and buy coco geonets from processors. according to one coconut trader, despite the high demand for coco coir and coco geonets on the global market, a lack of geonets is the result of declining coconut production. the low volume of coconut production in aurora is consistent with the claim of moreno, kuwornu, and szabo (2020) that coconut production in the philippines is slowly declining. furthermore, quality issues limit the ability of coco geonet processors to capitalize on this opportunity. moreover, the lack of promotional and networking activities aggravates the marketing concerns. 3.3.5. support services support services enable the different functions or vertical linkages in a value chain. some examples are financing, research and development, extension, marketing, and other support services aimed at assisting value chain stakeholders to achieve their specific enterprise objectives and goals. support services are provided by national and regional government agencies, credit and research institutions, local government units, state universities and colleges, and nongovernment organizations, among others. one of the emerging constraints in coconut farming is the lack of access to financing to enable farmers’ associations and cooperatives, especially newly organized ones that are not yet bankable, to engage in coconut farming, processing, and trading activities, as well as for microlending to members. additionally, micro, small, and medium enterprises lack financing to upgrade or modernize their processing facilities to enable them to improve their competitiveness. 3.4. recommendations based on the results of the study and the identified constraints for each segment of the coco geonet value chain, the following recommendations are provided. 3.4.1. input provision for producers to have access to high-quality coconut seedlings, it is essential to establish additional nurseries. the development of nursery operators' capacity to provide technical assistance to farmer-clients is crucial for the growth of the coconut industry. this is a method of mitigating producers' risks while simultaneously boosting their confidence in the products. by assisting their clients in achieving success, nurseries are laying the groundwork for the expansion of their planting materials market. providing producers with timely access to high-quality coconut seedlings with the desired nutrition, utilization, and agronomic traits is one of the most crucial aspects of effective agricultural production and development. utilizing high-quality planting materials will considerably contribute to increased agricultural production and productivity and, consequently, to food security and market competitiveness. the availability of improved varieties and the distribution of high-quality planting materials will provide the necessary basis to maintain coconut's status as a food security crop and convert it into a market-oriented crop. this intervention seeks to improve farmers' and end-users' access to coconut seedlings of existing and novel improved varieties. when soil fertility levels are maintained, agricultural yields are likely to be sustainable. nutrients extracted from the soil during crop harvesting or lost through erosion and runoff must be replaced. it is widely acknowledged that modern inputs such as fertilizers and enhanced seeds are intimately associated with increased agricultural productivity and food security. long-term use and reliance on chemical fertilizers are not only prohibitively expensive and out of reach for many smallholders, but they also degrade the environment through the emission of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. commercial producers can reduce their fertilizer expenses by using organic and inorganic fertilizers. these efforts can enhance the soil's biophysical properties, water infiltration, and organic matter content while enhancing cationic exchange. this will help enhance the soil's ability to retain nutrients and improve its fertility, thereby enhancing soil productivity in an environmentally favorable and sustainable manner. the proposed intervention strategy entails the establishment and/or strengthening of the local capacity to commercially produce and distribute organic fertilizer, as well as the promotion of the efficient and prudent use of fertilizer so that producers can derive the maximum benefits from the use of these inputs. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 183-191 189 3.4.2. farm production it is necessary to strengthen coconut farmers’ associations as conduits of pca interventions. as stated by ar, asmara, and fahriyah (2023), the government should improve technological innovation to mitigate the technology gap. good agronomic practices and climate-smart agriculture can help farmers become more resilient and productive in the face of climate change while reducing practices that contribute to the problem by increasing greenhouse gas emissions. as explained by perlas (2020), climate-smart agriculture provides the means to help stakeholders – from local to national and international levels – identify agricultural strategies that are suitable to local conditions. the adoption of good agronomic practices and climate-smart agriculture can deliver multiple benefits, including more sustainable resource use, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, enhanced resilience, and reduced food waste and loss, while simultaneously increasing productivity and profits for small and large farmers and contributing to national food and nutrition security and development objectives. participatory and inclusive processes must ensure farmers can access pertinent skills and information and make informed decisions regarding climate change adaptation and productivity improvement options. farmers' understanding of the ecological processes that influence the production of coconut must be strengthened through field learning activities such as field observations, basic experiments, and group analysis. the knowledge acquired from these activities will allow farmers to make locally specific decisions regarding crop management techniques. lastly, it would be advisable to explore the possibility of putting up salt production enterprises in aurora province. the relevance of salt production is supported by the business diary (2019), as the application of sodium chloride (nacl) can increase nut production, copra weight per nut, and copra yield per tree. 3.4.3. processing the decorticating equipment must be replaced with a single-pass decorticator that is more modern. the processors' existing decorticating equipment is not efficient enough. in addition, blades are continually falling off, resulting in longer production times. the anticipated rise in coir production as a result of this intervention will alleviate the current constraints on twiners and weavers. this will increase production while decreasing production costs. experts in the field must be consulted regarding the procurement of the most effective, market-appropriate decorticating apparatus. to better meet the increasing demand for coco geonets in the aurora region, more decorticating facilities must be built. other pca and local government programs intend to establish additional decorticating facilities for the coconut processors. also recommended are benchmarking activities to stimulate the business of geonet processors. when twines are retrieved from the twiners, their quality is not evaluated. a quality control system must be developed in collaboration with wire assemblers. by measuring the length and girth of twines supplied by twiners, assemblers can determine the product's quality. those twines that do not meet product specifications are rejected and sent back to the twiner for reprocessing. within the reach of decorticating facilities, village-level twining ventures may be developed to expedite this process and reduce the cost of transporting coir and twines. this will encourage the community to collect and sell their coconut husks to the decorticating facility so that they can earn extra income through twining and weaving. these new enterprises will employ superior, more efficient twining equipment. 3.4.4. marketing and trading to enhance the geonet value chain, it is necessary to identify market opportunities and establish market connections through dti, pca, and department of agriculture market matching. this can be supplemented by market research in ongoing product development. the demand for coir and coco geonets is rising, and there is a risk that the coconut industry will not meet market demand due to a limited coir supply. this constraint can be readily overcome by combining the raw fiber from other decorticators in adjacent provinces. interfirm relationships must be established to promote the collective marketing of coir products among diverse decorticating facilities in aurora. the international labour organization (2018) has emphasized the importance of cooperatives by stating their role in meeting the needs of their members by providing them with services that help optimize their production. this is supported by lansangan and dizon (2017), who noted that the increased economies of scale in production lead to maximized use of the raw material, reduced costs through sharing common service facilities, and better government assistance. collaboration among micro, small, and medium enterprises would help improve their bargaining power regarding prices and the access to other forms of support. moreover, facilitating organizational development activities can further enhance the operation and management of a cooperative's coco geonet business expansion. proposed proponent organizations must be assisted with strategic business planning activities tailored to community-based enterprises to prepare them to implement effective cooperative management. finally, upgrading farm-to-market roads can reduce production costs, further increasing farmers' income. transport and other transaction costs are typically reduced by good roads, thereby increasing marketing margins. access to production sites and external markets via improved roads is a prerequisite for commercial production. the improvement of farm-to-market roads has the potential to increase the flow of agricultural inputs and services to producers and agricultural outputs to domestic markets. 3.4.5. support services the policy and directives for encouraging the use of coco geonet are in effect. the quantity of square meters of coco geonets required for specific department of public works and highways (dpwh) projects is predetermined in the specifications. therefore, the dpwh, local government units, and mining companies must support the increased use of coco geonets. crismundo (2022) emphasized the role of the government in strengthening the support for local asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 183-191 190 farmers and businesses as the country opens itself to more free trade deals like the regional comprehensive economic partnership (rcep). additionally, vitug (2021) claimed that business development services such as training in online marketing strategies, product distribution procedures, new product development, crisis costing and pricing strategies, and customer database management might be the foundation for a management plan for both enterprises and farmers. to facilitate planning, key industry players should participate in developing annual work programs for government agencies and other comparable activities, allowing them to provide first-hand information on the status of the coconut industry in the region. 4. conclusion the aurora coconut value chain comprises the input supplier, farmers, sub-processors, and the final 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harisman suryaman birnadi muhammad subandi department of agrotechnology, faculty of science and technology, state islamic university of sunan gunung, djati of bandung, indonesia  sbirnadi_6165@yahoo.com (corresponding author) corresponding author article history: received: 13-aug-2018 accepted: 08-jan-2019 online available: 07-feb2019 keywords: contribution, domestic, market, performance, price abstract the objectivie of current study is to evaluate agribusiness performance of soybean included the on farm an marketing subsystems, besides, the development of soybean as one of superior agricultural commodities and its contribution of soybean upon the gross domestic product (gdp) of sumedang. the results indicated that agribusiness performance of soybean consisted of farm iputs procurement, on farm production, harvesting and processing, marketing and supported infrastructure and its supporting subsystems. soybean as one of superior commodities has been well developed due to the availability of human and natural resources, exsiting markets, production technology and business partnership program. the contribution of soybean upon regional gdp during the years of 2008 – 2016, bay the 2008 constant price, was between 0,071% and 0,357% and its contribution upon regional agricultural sector was price was between 0,248%– 1,144%. where as soybean contribution based on the curret price was between 0,068% and 0,621% and between 0,239%-1,959% respectively. during those periods the contribution of soybean upon the gdp as well as on agricultural sector was fluctuated and tend to be declining. contribution/ originality study on cultivation development of soybean as one of leading agricultural comodities in relation with its regional agribusiness area was conducted in sumedang district. the current study evaluates the agribusiness performance of soybean using primary data of 92 respondents. doi: 10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.210.222 issn (p): 2304-1455/issn (e):2224-4433 how to cite: kundang harisman, suryaman birnadi and muhammad subandi (2018). development of soybean cultivation as leading commodity in regional agribusiness area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2), 210-222. © 2018 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 8, issue 2 (2018): 210-222 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5816-3329 mailto:sbirnadi_6165@yahoo.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18488/journal.1005/2018.8.2/1005.2.210.222 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 222 211 1. introduction soybean is one of the main food commodities after rice and corn. soy is a food commodity source of vegetable protein which is very important in diet. in addition to the relatively cheap price, nutritional value is also high. most households consume them in the form of tofu and tempeh. therefore, the largest consumers of tofu and tempeh industries (swastika et al., 2008). the next rank is the feed industry. empirically, domestic soybean production growth is slower than demand. therefore, to close the annihilation every year indonesia is still importing soybeans. the need for soybean in 2015, 2,246 million tons, while production of 780 million tons, to meet the needs, indonesia imports 1,466 million tons of soybeans (swastika et al., 2008; supadi, 2009). the low domestic production capability in soy supply when compared to demand requires efforts to correct the gap. these efforts can be pursued by: the growth of seed industry in production centres; superior seed assistance; fertilization technology; increased intensity of counselling; the intensity of dpt control; aid of thresher tool to reduce losses, increase surjan system intensity for swamp land; additional land area from 700 thousand ha to 2 million ha; and the addition of land area through partnership (sarawa, 2012). the impact of efforts to increase soybean productivity has been able to increase productivity from 13 quintals per ha to 15.4 quintal per ha for national level, 14 quintals per ha to 15.7 quintal per ha for west java and 14.8 kunintal per ha 15.9 quintal per ha for sumedang district. the pattern of development is also increased between 10 to 20 percent (subandi, 2014, sumedang central statistics office, 2016). the level of soybean consumption in sumedang district per year is about 14,400 tons, and consumption is average 40 tons per day. soybean consumption level in sumedang district can only be fulfilled 15% from kopti west java, the rest must be met from outside sumedang, whereas the potential of land resources is still wide, soybean market potential is very promising, but the application of technology and partnership is still not optimal (central bureu of statistic, sumedang district, 2016). subandi (2012) said the word production means process of producing, and to produce in this relation is defined as to manufacture, to construct, to make, to grow or “to create”. in this world something done by people is just assembling of the existing components or changing its form or its chemical elements or compounds. to create (khalaqa) something new is the will or the deed of the almighty god, what man does is just (ja’ala) to make or to change or to assemble. even, not all ja’ala can be conducted by man, man can not make blood out of food nutrition, and cannot convert the sperm into clot-bone-flesh in the processes of human embryo. that is why, man finds science or technology and does not create them. muslims are encouraged to produce and prohibited to destruct. 1.1. agribusiness concept the wendi (2012) agribusiness system is a subsystem in a larger system so that the real subsystem can still be detailed. based on the understanding of the system, the study of agribusiness can certainly be done more structured and systematic. the study can be done by explaining or explaining what constitutes the agribusiness subsystem. the agribusiness system includes activities in the input subsystem (input), the production subsystem (farm) and the output subsystem (output). the subsystem can be explained as follows: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 222 212 1.1.1. agroinput subsystem this subsystem is in the level of supply of means of production concerning procurement and distribution activities. these activities include planning, management and production facilities, technologies and resources in order to provide inputs or inputs of farming businesses to meet the criteria of timely, appropriate quantity, quality, precise and precise price. the production facilities include fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, tools and agricultural machinery. 1.1.2. farming subsystem this farming subsystem is an organization of nature (land), labor, and capital that is shown to agricultural production. this organization includes the activities of fostering and developing farming in order to increase the primary agricultural production. farming includes all forms of production organizations ranging from small to large scale (plantations, farms), including agricultural cultivation that uses land intensively such as aquaculture, porforiculture, hydroponics, etc. (downey and steven, 2007; drillon, 2007; mofokeng and mashingaidze, 2018). 1.1.3. agroindustry subsystem / processing of results this activity is not only a simple processing activity at the farm level. but concerns overall activities ranging from post-harvest handling of agricultural products to advanced processing levels with a view to adding value added from the primary production. thus the process of stripping, cleaning, extracting, freezing, drying, and improving quality (ericson, 2008; tabeekh et al., 2017). 1.1.4. marketing subsystem the marketing subsystem includes agricultural and agro-industry products for both domestic and export markets. this main activity is the monitoring and development of market information and market intelligence in the domestic market and overseas market. perpetrators of this activity include private companies, cooperatives, government agencies, banks, or individuals (muhammad, 2006). 1.1.5. support subsystem this subsystem is a supporter of pre-harvest and post-harvest activities that include facilities of banking, banking, agribusiness counselling, agribusiness infrastructure, agribusiness cooperatives, state-owned and private and others. 1.2. concept of contribution of soybean commodity to gross regional domestic product (grdp) the method of calculating gdp at constant 2008 prices is four ways, as follows: 1.2.1. revaluation this method is done by assessing production and cost between each year and the price in the base year 2008. the result is the output and cost between at constant 2008 prices, then grdp at constant prices is obtained from the difference between output and intermediate cost. 1.2.2. extrapolation this method is done by multiplying the added value in the base year of 2007 with the production index. the production index as an extra-ploator can be an index of each produced production or index of various production indicators, e.g. labor, number of firms and others deemed appropriate to the calculated activity jens. 1.2.3. deflation this method is done by dividing the value added each year with the price index. the price index used as a deflator is usually the consumer price index (cpi). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 222 213 1.2.4. multiple deflation in this multiple deflation, what is deflected is the output and cost of the intermediate. while the added value obtained from the difference between output and cost between the deflation results. the price index used as a deflator for output calculations at constant prices is usually the large trading price index (ihpb) in accordance with the scope of the commodity. while the price index for the intermediate cost is the price index and the largest input component (central bureu of statistic, west java, 2014). out of the descriptions is contructed the research flow-chart as figure 1 below: figure 1: research flow chart 2. methodology 2.1. research methods the research method applied was survey that is a method by conducting observation to a number of samples that are considered representation, from a population. 2.1.1. population and samples target population (unit of analysis) of this research is a member of soybean farmer group in sumedang district. the sampling unit includes soybean farmers group in sumedang district. 1) sumedang district has the most soybean farmer group compared to other district in west java province. the number of soybean farmers group in sumedang district has 78 groups with 3,056 members of farmers spread in 16 sub-districts, 39 groups. soy bean agribusiness  agroinput  production process  agroindustry  marketting  means of production  training soy bean development as prominant commodity  natural resource  human resource  cooperative  technology  marketing soy bean contribution on pdrb  revaluation  extravolation  deflation  dual delation soy bean agribusiness development area asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 222 214 2) achievement of soybean farmer group is relatively heterogeneous from the champion: the first national level to soybean farmers group formed by forced to participate in the success of soybean program. 2.1.2. sampling technique determination of sample and population to be studied were done by using sample planned of random cluster of two stages, with districts as cluster. 2.2. definition and operational variables 1) soybean agribusiness is a description of activities undertaken in the process of soybean agribusiness, which includes the procurement of farming production facilities, farming process, processing and marketing, facilities and infrastructure subsystem and development subsystem. a) the maintenance of the subsystem for the procurement of agricultural production means is the description and availability of production facilities needed in soybean farming activities that include information, technology, knowledge, procurement of fertilizers, seeds and pesticides. b) the soybean subsystem's subsistence is a description of one's activities, or a family conducting cultivation of soybean crops from planting to marketing results including site selection planning, commodities, technology, and farming, intensification, conservation and rehabilitation patterns. c) post-harvest subsistence and soybean processing is a description of the activities undertaken since soybean is harvested until it is marketed before or after it has been processed into another product. d) the performance of the marketing subsystem is the marketing phase of the farm products (primary products and processed products) in terms of the type of sales channels so that the goods reach the final consumer. e) the subsystem of facilities and infrastructure is a means and infrastructure that support in conducting farming activities such as capital and road infrastructure. f) development subsystem is a subsystem that supports the implementation of soybean agribusiness system, this subsystem consists of government services, institutional, counselling and so forth. 1) soybean farmer is someone who do soybean farming activities 2) production result is total of physical result in the form of soybean in a production cycle which is calculated per year since the planting start productive (kintal per year). 3) revenue is the product multiplied by the selling price / unit (rupiah / year). 4) leading commodities are agricultural commodities that have certain advantages such as high agro-climatic suitability, clear market orientation, high added value creation ability, can increase food security have government policy support and have been cultivated by the local community. 5) the development of soybean commodity as a pre-eminent commodity is the performance achieved by the development of soybean commodities is: a) the potential of natural resources is the suitability of a region in seeking a certain commodity or soybean commodity. b) the potential of human resources is the ability of a region in terms of human resources available in implementing soybean farming c) a partnership is a collaboration between two or more with the same objectives. d) production process technology is technology used in soybean farming. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 222 215 e) market potential is the market's ability to absorb production. f) gross regional domestic product (grdp) is the sum of added value created by the production factor, thus pdrb is a real picture of the economic activities of the actors in producing goods and services (rp). g) gross regional domestic product (grdp) at constant prices is a clear picture of the results of economic actors' activities in producing goods and services which are valued at fixed prices for a certain year (year 2007) (rp). h) gross regional domestic product (grdp) at current prices is a clear picture of the results of economic actors' activities in producing goods and services that are valued at the prevailing prices in the year concerned (rp). 6) soybean output is the sum of soybean production multiplied by soybean price (rp). 7) the cost of soybean is the cost incurred in soybean farming diperole 2.3. data analysis techniques the data analyzed consisted of quantitative and qualitative data. the analytical techniques used are as follows: 1) to know the system of soybean agribusiness is described descriptively. the description of soybean agribusiness includes: a) procurement of production facilities of soybean farming. procurement of production facilities of soybean farming include fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides. b) soy production. in soybean production includes the processing of soil, planting, maintenance, fertilization and harvesting. c) post-harvest and processing. processing in this research is limited only post-harvest handling because in sumedang district there is no processing of soybean for the next. d) marketing. marketing conducted by soy farmers in sumedang district e) facilities and infrastructure. facilities and infrastructure include capital and road infrastructure used by farmers in farming. f) training. training includes from relevant agencies or institutions 2) to know the development of soybean as a leading commodity is described which is covering: a) potential natural resources b) potential human resources (hr) c) partnership d) market potential e) production process technology 3) to know the contribution of soybean to gross regional domestic product (pdrb) and agriculture sector, used secondary data using formula (central bureau of statistics of west java, 2016): pdrb = soybean output cost between soybeans output = total soybean production x soybean price intermediate cost soybeans = intermediate cost ratio soybeans x soy output cost ratio soybean = 3.3% is constante of statistical bureau of sumedang contribution to grdp = x100% (i)district of grdp total (i)commodity of grdp contribution = x100% (i)district ofsector alagricultur of grdp (i)mod itygrdpofcom where: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 222 216 grdp of commodity (i) is soybean grdp in sumedang district. total gdp of district (i) is gdp of sumedang district. grdp of agriculture sector is grdp of agricultural sector of sumedang district. 3. result and discussion 3.1. soybean agribusiness development 1) agribusiness development of superior commodities sumedang sub district has a large agricultural area of ± 2,291.9 hectares. almost all the land is planted with soybean but not all farmers are doing good soybean cultivation techniques. while the varieties are widely grown in sumedang district is a superior variety and local varieties. soybean plant in sumedang district is one of the leading commodities, because the agroecosystem and the potential of sumedang district is suitable for planting soybean. where sumedang district is at an altitude between 60 m-364 m above sea level. with this superior commodity program, soybean is directed to the development of agribusiness, so that the district is expected to be one of soybean production in sumedang district. 3.2. development of agribusiness development the guidance that is carried out is mostly technical, namely the ways and steps implemented in the agribusiness system. this approach is expected to increase farmer's competence in farming. actually, this cultivation of soybeans has been done by the farmers in sumedang district, but still simple and the results were prioritized for their own consumption. however, when there is government assistance, the development of agribusiness is directed to the commercial. so in terms of development of this soybean agribusiness, local government is not too difficult in developing it. this is because the farmers have done it since. 3.3. the role of government and private institutions in agribusiness development the role of government in the development of soybean agribusiness is more in the point of emphasis on training and guidance. this task is given to the agricultural counselling center (acc) and the agricultural service with coordination between sub-district and district level. this training is done regularly once a month and every time the planting season, using the method of question and answer after the party gave the material convey the material submitted, this is done to facilitate in knowing various problems faced by farmers in doing this soybean agribusiness. 3.4. soybean agribusiness system the performance of soybean agribusiness system is based on the study of the subsystems of the soybean agribusiness system which includes the subsystems of production facilities, production, post-harvest and processing, marketing, facilities and infrastructure and training. 3.4.1. procurement subsystem for production facilities the subsystem for the procurement of production means includes the fulfilment of farming production facilities. procurement of production facilities, among others, the procurement of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and agricultural equipment that can usually be obtained from kiosks that provide existing production facilities at the district and district levels. types of soybean varieties that are cultivated in sumedang district are mainly superior and local varieties. from the research result of farmers using superior variety that is 75 people (81,481 percent) and who use the. 3.4.2. training subsystem agribusiness activity in district of sumedang is supported by several institutions of food crops agriculture service office of sumedang district and agricultural counselling center (acc), asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 222 217 sumedang district conducts counselling for soybean cultivation to each farmer group once a month and at every beginning of planting season. this is as an effort in supporting the development of agribusiness-based agriculture. the government in cooperation with the agricultural counselling center (acc) provides counselling about good soybean cultivation. 3.4.3. facility and infrastructure subsystem the use of existing capital for soybean farming is still inadequate so it is still open for capital assistance. the capital required is the capital that will be invested for the procurement of tools and agricultural machinery. the condition of road infrastructure in sumedang district is generally good can be passed by two-wheeled vehicles and four wheels. with the support of good road infrastructure this facilitates the transportation of farm products by farmers for sale. 3.5. soybean cultivation development as a leading commodity 1) potential natural resources the production of agricultural commodities is largely determined by the potential and availability of land resources (soil and climate), both in relation to increased productivity through intensification or expansion of the area or extensification. the potential of natural resources can be seen in terms of available land area, as well as land productivity which is reflected by the level of land suitability for certain soybean commodities. area of agricultural land in sumedang district 3,902 ha. from the area of agricultural land is the area of harvest for soybean commodity in the first planting season of 914 ha. area of farming can determine the amount of total income that will be received by farmers. this is dikarnakan wide land will get the volume of business and economic size of a farming business. the area of respondents' land in kecamatan sumedang generally has an average of 0.408 ha. 2). potential human resources human resources are the main factors dynamically able to manage the factors of production to achieve optimal resource productivity. the population of sumedang sub-district in 2016 numbered 23,090 people. the population is a driver but at the same time also a burden of development. seen from its main livelihood, totaling the majority of the population of sumedang sub-district has a major livelihood in the agricultural sector. in table 6, the majority of the population of sumedang district depend on agricultural employment of 16,581 people or 76.28%. the dominant population of sumedang district works in the agricultural sector, it shows the potential of human resources as a driver of the agricultural sector has a great opportunity. 3.5.1. business development through partnership cooperation soybean farmers in sumedang sub-district sumedang district actively participate in farming institutions by participating as members of soybean farmer groups in their respective villages of domicile. as for their motivation to be a member of farmer group that is they feel benefited by some halseperti by becoming member of farmer group will not miss information about technological innovation good cultivation, postharvest handling, and market information and marketing of soybean. in addition, by actively participating in the activities of the group will strengthen the relationship between inter-village soybean farmers. 3) production process technology the application of developed technology will affect the level of productivity. low productivity levels can be seen from the comparison of the ability of the varieties of seeds cultivated with the resulting productivity. for example new varieties, these varieties have a production rate of 1.2 to 1.5 tons per ha of dry beans. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 222 218 4) market prospects soybean is much needed in the form of dried beans. market demand is mostly required for the tempeh and tofu industry as well as for the provision of seeds. currently, the need for soybean is filled with imports from other countries, so the business prospects of soybean with the efforts made are expected to meet domestic demand (central bureau of statistics, 2016). the demand for soybean commodities as industrial raw materials, especially for the tempeh-tofu industry which shows a sharp increase, gives a considerable opportunity for the change of production orientation. motivation of production that was intended to meet the needs of own consumption gradually lead to commercial purposes. 5). contribution of soybean to gross regional domestic product (grdp) and agricultural sector at the prices in the period of 2010-2016 grdp of soybean commodity at constant price in 2008 and the prices in the period of 2008 2016. based on secondary data obtained the calculation of contribution of soybean to regional gross regional product (grdp) on the basis of price valid for 9 years from year 2008 to 2016 that is year: year 2008 by 0,071 percent, in 2009 by 0,068 percent, in 2010 by 0,146 percent, in 2011 by 0,189 percent, in 2012 by 0,406 percent, in 2013 0,621 percent, 2014 of 0,514 percent, 2015 by 0,451 percent and 2016 0.291 percent. the contribution of soybean to the biggest regional gross regional product (grdp) is obtained in 2013 which is 0.621 percent, it can be interpreted that sumedang subdistrict from soybean commodity contributes to grdp of sumedang district 0.621 percent. for more details can be seen in figure 2 below. figure 2: contribution of soybean to grdp of sumedang district based on the price in the period of 2008-2016 for the agricultural sector, the contribution of soybeans 2008 to 2016 is: in 2008 by 0.245 percent, in 2009 by 0.239 percent, in 2010 by 0.523 percent, in 2011 by 0.687 percent, in 2012 by 1.466 percent, in 2013 by 1.959 percent, in 2014 of 1.509 percent, by 2015 by 1.348 percent and by 2016 by 0.819 percent. the largest contribution of soybean occurred in 2013 is 1.959 percent, this means sumedang district gives the input of soybean commodity to the agricultural sector by 1.959 percent. for more details can be seen in figure 3 below 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 c o n tr ib u ti o n (% ) year asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 222 219 figure 3: contribution of soybean to agricultural sector in sumedang district based on the price in the period of 2008-2016 6) contribution of soybean to gross regional domestic product (grdp) and agricultural sector at constant 2008 prices in the period 2008 2016 based on secondary data obtained by the calculation of contribution of soybean to gross regional domestic product (pdrb) of sumedang district and agriculture sector. the contribution to pdrb district sumedang from 2008 2016 is: 2008 amounted to 0.071 percent, in 2009 of 0.071 percent, in 2010 by 0.102 percent, in 2011 by 1.137 percent, in 2012 by 0.358 percent, in 2013 by 0.358 percent, in 2014 by 0.263 percent, by 2015 by 0.260 percent and by 2016 by 0.189 percent. the largest contribution of soybean obtained in 2011 and 2012 is 0.358 percent, this means sumedang district is able to provide input to gross regional domestic product (pdrb) of sumedang district of soybean commodity by 0.358 percent. for more details can be seen in figure 4. figure 4: contribution of soybean to gdrp of sumedang district based on the constant price of 2008 in the period of 2008-2016 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 c o n tr ib u ti o n (% ) year 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 c o n tr ib u ti o n (% ) year asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 222 220 the contribution of soybean to the agricultural sector in 2008 was 0.248 percent, in 2009 by 0.249 percent, in 2010 by 0.359 percent, in 2011 by 0.474 percent, in 2012 by 0.268 percent, in 2013 by 1.144 percent, by 2014 by 0.801 percent, 0.795 percent, by 2016 by 0.586 percent. in 2013, soybeans give the biggest contribution to agriculture sector, which is 1.144 percent, it means sumedang district from soybean commodity can give input to agriculture sector 1,144 percent for more details can be seen in figure 5. figure 5: contribution of soybean to agricultural sector of sumedang district based on the constant price of 2008 in the period of 2008-2016 the contribution of soybeans based on the constant price of 2008 for the last nine years from 2008 2016 fluctuated, this is because agricultural products are heavily influenced by climatic conditions (rainfall, temperature, weather, altitude) and product prices. although production decreases, if the selling price is high it will increase the grdp. the amount of production that tends to fall will affect the contribution of soybean commodities to the grdp. developing crop production is also needed to find way of biological protection as it is stated by subandi et al. (2017) it is very important to find another host to keep the parasitoid t.japonicum available at all the time, but the hint of difficult life and culture of t. japonicum and the intermediate host will be the consideration in formulation of treatment in the experiment to be carried out. application of parasitoid t.japonicum species with intermediate or alternative or fi ctitious host of rice moth (corcyra cephalonica) will make the control of stem borer (c. auricilius) more intensive and sustainable. 4. conclution based on the results of the discussion can be drawn the following conclusions: 4.1. soybean agribusiness performance includes: 1) the subsystem for the procurement of production facilities includes the procurement of fertilizers, seeds and pesticides at the sub-district level usually obtained from kiosks means of production or stalls at the sub-district level, as well as at the district level. 2) production subsystems conducted by farmers include soil cultivation, planting, maintenance, fertilization and harvesting. 0 0.5 1 1.5 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 c o n tr ib u ti o n (% ) year asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 222 221 3) post-harvest and processing conducted by soybean farmers in sumedang sub-district include drying, peppering, cleaning and storage, no further processing. 4) marketing subsystem, including marketing of soybean in the form of dry beans. usually farmers sell to collecting traders in their respective villages or to farmer groups. 5) the subsystem of facilities and infrastructure such as the capital used by farmers entirely using their own capital and road infrastructure that there is quite good. 6) the development or empowerment subsystem in sumedang district has been given attention from the food crops agricultural office service of sumedang district and the agricultural counseling center of sumedang district in this case gives counseling every once a month and at the beginning of the growing season. the development of soybean as a leading commodity in sumedang district is good enough. this can be seen from the quality of human resources supported by informal education such as counseling and agriculture courses, the dominance of agricultural land cultivated soybean industry demand for soybean tempeh and soy sauce. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declared that they have no conflict of interests. contributors/acknowledgement: all authors participated equally in designing and estimation of current research. views and opinions expressed in this study are the views and opinions of the authors, asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references central bureau of statistics. (2014). government of indonesia. west java. view at google scholar central bureau of statistics. (2016). government of indonesia. west java. view at google scholar downey, w. d., & steven, p. e. (2007). agribusiness management (translation). erlangga, jakarta. view at google scholar drillon, j. d. (2007). introduction to agribisness management, agribisness management resource materials. vol 1. asian productivity management, tokyo. 240. ericson, s. p. (2008). agribusiness management. mc graw, hill, boston. mofokeng, m. a., & mashingaidze, k. (2018). genetic differentiation of arc soybean [glycine max (l.) merrill] accessions based on agronomic and nutritional quality traits. agriculture and food sciences research, 5(1), 6-22. view at publisher muhammad, j. (2006). agribusiness in the era of globalization. journal of agroeconomy, 40(3). 2006, agricultural research and development. sarawa, n. (2012). growth and yield of soybean (glycine max l) all guano fertilizer and tall grass mulch. journal of agroteknos, 2(2), 97-105. subandi, m, setiati, y., & mutmainah, n. h. (2017). suitability of corcyra cephalonica eggs parasitized with trichogramma japonicum as intermidiate host agains sugarcane borer chilo auricilius. bulgarian journal of agricultural science (bjas), 23(5), 779-786. subandi, m. (2012). developing islamic economic production. sci., tech. and dev., 31(4), 348358. view at google scholar subandi, m. (2014). technology readiness supports increased production towards soybean selfsufficiency. paper at the food plant symposium v. bogor, 28-29 august 2014, center for food crops research and development. bogor. sumedang central statistical office. (2016). government of indonesia, sumedang. supadi, t. b. (2009). impact of the soybean soybean import on food security. journal of socioeconomic and agricultural policy analysis, 17(1), 87-102. https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=government+of+indonesia.+&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=government+of+indonesia.+&btng= https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=agribusiness+management+%28translation%29.+&btng= https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.512.2018.51.6.22 https://scholar.google.com.pk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=developing+islamic+economic+production.++&btng= asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 8(2)2018: 222 222 swastika, d. k. s., adnyana, m. o., sayaka, b., & kariyasa, k. (2008). the status and prospect of feed crops in indonesia. capsa working paper no. 81 unescap. bogor. tabeekh, m. a. s. a., maktoof, a. r., & mohsen, h. a. m. a. (2017). solutions or alternatives to protect livestock, especially buffalo from the risk of drought in basra governorate. canadian journal of agriculture and crops, 2(2), 84-89. wendi, r. (2012). agribusiness system management. journal of agricultural policy analysis, 9(3), 12-21. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 154 assessing the determinants of agricultural productivity in somalia: an application of an ardl model elmi hassan samatar independent scholar, mogadishu, somalia.  samatar2020@hotmail.com article history abstract received: 2 january 2023 revised: 10 may 2023 accepted: 25 may 2023 published: 19 june 2023 keywords agriculture ardl climate change food security productivity security somalia. this study delves into the factors that boost agricultural productivity while taking five macroeconomic variables into account. the investigated variables are agricultural productivity, which is used as the dependent variable, while employment in agriculture, gross capital formation, arable land, and rainfall are the independent variables. employing an autoregressive distributed lags (ardl) model, this paper examines the determinants of agricultural productivity in somalia from 1991 to 2020. the cointegration between the model’s variables was verified using a bounds-testing approach to cointegration. employment in agriculture was found to have both a short-run and long-run positive impact on agricultural productivity. similarly, it was discovered that both gross capital formation and the availability of arable land had a favorable influence on agricultural productivity in the short and long run. additionally, the study indicated a positive short-run and long-run correlation between rainfall and agricultural productivity, although this correlation is statistically insignificant at a five percent level. in the long run, the amount of available arable land has a positive impact on agricultural productivity. however, in the short run, this determinant has the opposite effect. based on the results, the study advises the government, policymakers, and other concerned authorities to prioritize technological innovation and climate-smart agricultural systems to boost sector productivity. contribution/originality: this paper provides new insights into the determinants of agricultural productivity in somalia. since somalia is heavily dependent on the agricultural sector, the government should target agricultural diversification at the community/household levels. thus, this paper provides insights to policymakers/practitioners who seek to make informed decisions about the determinants of agriculture. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4819 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: samatar, e. h. (2023). assessing the determinants of agricultural productivity in somalia: an application of an ardl model. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3), 154–162. 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4819 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction agriculture is critical to attaining sustainable development and the eradication of hunger and poverty. agriculture is one of the most effective strategies for alleviating extreme poverty, fostering and sharing prosperity, and feeding the world’s population, which is estimated to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050 (world bank, 2022). for asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 3 (2023): 154-162. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3779-3476 mailto:xxxxxxxsamatar2020@hotmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 154-162 155 many countries across the african continent, agriculture is still one of the most significant economic sectors and a major source of employment and livelihood. the agriculture sector accounts for around 14% of the total gross domestic product (gdp) of the nations in the sub-saharan african (ssa) region, and it employs the vast majority of the continent's working population (obg, 2021). the agricultural industry in africa has shown promising signs of development in recent years, with agricultural production growing by 13% per year between 2015 and 2020 (afdb, 2021). despite this progress, however, the agricultural sector continues to be characterized by low technology, rainfed farming, and small-scale farmers with limited irrigation systems (jellason, robinson, & ogbaga, 2021). on top of that, the agricultural sector faces institutional challenges and negligence (goyal & nash, 2017). recurrent droughts, floods, and cyclones have reduced agricultural production systems in recent years, and many african countries are dealing with transboundary animal diseases and pest invasions, such as the peste des petits ruminants virus, desert locust invasions, and swarms, a situation exacerbated by covid-19 disruptions (afdb, 2021). the agricultural industry provides significant employment opportunities across the african countries. according to statista (2022), the number of people engaged in africa's primary industry increased from roughly 197 million in 2011 to 226 million in 2021. therefore, the agricultural industry remains a pillar of africa’s economy, employing approximately 44 percent of the working population in africa in 2020, strongly contributing to the continent’s job market (statista, 2022). in 2021, the agriculture sector represented 17 percent of the total gdp of ssa countries, a slight growth of only 2 percent compared to 2011 (galal, 2023). agriculture is the primary source of income for more than half of the people in ssa nations, making it a crucial sector for the expansion of the economy. even though agriculture is widely recognized as vital to the economy of rural areas, a recent survey indicated that 10–25% of urban households rely on it as their primary source of income as well (oecd & fao, 2016). agriculture continues to play a crucial role in somalia's quest to lift itself out of abject poverty and propel its economy forward. the crop and livestock subsectors have been impacted by several factors, including an environment that is more fragile and degraded than ever before, increased frequency and severity of drought and flooding cycles as a result of worsening climate change, and a lack of research and agricultural extension services. moreover, crop production is severely and continuously affected by insecurity in the most arable land of somalia, caused by weak government institutions, recurrent floods, and infrastructure problems (world bank & fao, 2018a). despite the difficulties encountered by the crop and livestock subsectors over the past three decades, the agricultural sector continues to be the primary driver of somalia's economic activity, exports, and employment (world bank & fao, 2018b). as a result, the long-term development and economic revival of somalia depend heavily on these subsectors. the agricultural sector is a major contributor to somalia’s gdp. the livestock and crop subsectors continue to be the main drivers and backbone of economic activities, exports, and employment in somalia. the agriculture sector is responsible for more than 75 percent of somalia's gdp and 93 percent of the country's total exports (world bank & fao, 2018a). the livestock subsector represents 80 percent of somalia’s total exports, which makes this subsector the major contributor to the livelihoods of the people, with 65 percent of the population in some way engaged in this industry. however, the somali federal government only spends 1.54 percent of its budget on the agricultural sector (federal republic of somalia, 2022). in somalia, agriculture is not only an important economic activity that meets the population’s food needs but also a critical sector in terms of providing labor opportunities and income generation activities through crop sales. agriculture employs more than 46 percent of all employed people; crop cultivation activities employ 25 percent, 9 percent are involved in herding, the fishery subsector employs 4 percent, and 9 percent are employed in other activities related to agriculture, such as agro-processing and forestry (world bank & fao, 2018b). climate change has made somalia one of the world’s most vulnerable countries as demonstrated by the past three decades of unpredictable rainfall patterns, rising temperatures, droughts, and floods, compounded by instability that has hindered the mobility of businesses people, especially women. this has negatively affected the agricultural subsectors and posed a threat to social economic development. despite these difficulties, however, the production of crops and livestock continues to be a primary driver of economic activity and a provider of employment and, most significantly, exports. food imports have surged due to a combination of the collapse of domestic crop production and rising domestic food demand fueled by fast population growth and urbanization. food imports reached about $1.5 billion in 2015, up from an annual average of $82 million in the late 1980s (world bank & fao, 2018b). the absence of short-term and long-term recovery strategies for agricultural production in somalia increases the vulnerability of the sector. it has been more than four decades since somalia has seen a scenario like the present drought, which is anticipated to be the country's fifth unsuccessful rainy season in a row (nrc, 2022; ocha, 2022a). more than 90 percent of the country is now affected by drought conditions ranging from severe to extreme, with 7.1 million people thought to be suffering from severe food insecurity (ocha, 2022b). livestock farming, agriculture, and fisheries are the most important economic sectors in somalia. about half of somalia's food needs are fulfilled by domestic production, making the country heavily reliant on agriculture (world bank & fao, 2018a). agricultural production remains the backbone of somalia's economic development. the agricultural sector is not only important in meeting somalia’s food needs, but it is also important in terms of incomegenerating activities (igas) through crop production, crop sales, and employment opportunities. the gu season, which lasts from april to june, and the deyr season, which runs from october to december, are the two primary bimodal rainfall agricultural seasons in somalia (somalia: shocks, agricultural livelihoods and food security – monitoring report – november 2021). between 1960 and 1969, somalia was nearly self-sufficient in terms of crop production. during this period, the southern areas of somalia were responsible for the production of 88 percent of the country's cereals (treakle, 1971). additionally, in the late 1980s, somalia was almost self-sufficient regarding crop asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 154-162 156 production; however, when the civil war erupted in the 1990s and reached the southern regions, which are somalia’s main agricultural areas, the country developed a chronic food crop deficit (world bank & fao, 2018b). historical records show that pests, droughts, floods, and conflict-related disruptions seriously affected crop cultivation in the southern regions of somalia from 1995 to 2021 (fews-net & fsnau, 2022). if somalia’s agricultural sector could be strengthened through increased exports, it would provide better food security and improve employment opportunities for young people. however, the country’s susceptibility to drought, floods, and climate change, as well as its low level of productivity, limit this potential (federal republic of somalia, 2022). according to treakle (1971), approximately 12.5 percent of the total land area, or approximately 20 million acres, is suitable for cultivation; however, only 1 percent of this land area is cropped. in comparison, approximately 84.6 million acres, or approximately 55 percent of the land area, is used for seasonal grazing and browsing (treakle, 1971). over the past three decades, somalia has been affected by several shocks: civil conflicts, recurrent droughts and floods, locust invasions, and more recently the covid-19 pandemic that disrupted world economics. agricultural production studies in somalia, however, are scarce and insufficient to provide trustworthy information on agricultural productivity. therefore, the major purpose of this investigation is to analyze the elements that have impacted the agricultural productivity of somalia between 1991 and 2020. the study used the ardl approach to cointegration to investigate the agricultural productivity determinants in both the short and long runs. to identify the agricultural productivity determinants, the cobb-douglas production function was utilized as the basis for the development of the model. the neoclassical production function (rowley, 1972) was used as the foundation for the model formulation, allowing an examination of agricultural productivity in somalia by including macroeconomic variables. this paper is organized into the following sections: section 1 has outlined the background of agricultural productivity and the challenges the sector is facing; section 2 summarizes the theoretical and empirical literature on the subject; section 3 discusses the study's methodology; section 4 presents the analysis, findings, and interpretations; finally, section 5 concludes and offers recommendations. 2. literature review over the years, a lot of research has examined the contributors to agricultural productivity in both developed and developing economies since increasing agricultural productivity by introducing new technologies and encouraging the growth of the agriculture sector to increase its productivity is one of the most important goals of governments whose economies are dependent on agriculture. kakar, kiani, and baig (2016) conducted research in pakistan over the period from 1990 to 2017 to determine the factors that influence agricultural productivity. to acquire a reasonable estimate of the multiple determinants, the autoregressive distributed lags (ardl) technique was applied to get the best possible result. the findings of the research indicated that rainfall, the use of fertilizers, and the availability of agricultural finance all have a favorable impact on agricultural productivity. on the other hand, the findings of the research led the researchers to conclude that the number of people working in agriculture and the usage of pesticides had a positive correlation with agricultural output; however, in the long run, both relationships became statistically less significant. nevertheless, in the short run, each of the elements had an influence on the rate of agricultural productivity that was both positive and substantial. using the ardl model, shita, kumar, and singh (2018) investigated the variables that affected agricultural productivity in ethiopia from 1990 to 2016. using both the error correction model (ecm) and the ardl bound test for cointegration, they concluded that the variables were cointegrated, meaning that they had a long-term relationship with one another. according to the findings of the study, the production of cereals was significantly impacted in the short and the long run by the use of fertilizers and the real gdp. on the other hand, the research showed that the amount of arable land had a negative influence on agricultural productivity in the short run but a positive impact on productivity in the long run. as a result, the study recommended to the government and other responsible authorities that agricultural technology be made more affordable and available on a timely basis to encourage farmers to accelerate their operations and improve agricultural productivity in ethiopia. gautam and yu (2015) investigated the factors that led to increases in agricultural productivity in china and india. the paper used data from 1980 to 2008 and 1980 to 2009 in india and china, respectively, to address various research questions using various analytical frameworks. a translog stochastic frontier function allowed for the provision of an estimate of a parametric output-based distance function for china. the parametric method for determining technical characteristics, such as structural bias, was used in the calculation of the productivity growth index as well as the index's many individual components. using data envelopment analysis, the india study began by analyzing efficiency change, aggregate productivity, and technical change. finally, a panel regression established a relationship between total factor productivity (tfp) and its determinants. this comparative study revealed several common themes. from the 1980s, the agricultural sector performed well, with yearly growth in china exceeding 2 percent and in india ranging between 1 percent and 2 percent. however, because fewer resources are available and more people are demanding food, the only option to guarantee long-term food security is to boost agricultural output through the use of technological advances. therefore, the study recommended improving sector technologies in the two countries. more recently, andrianarison, kamdem, and che kameni (2022) examined the effects of technological innovation factors on agricultural productivity. to address the potential selection bias, the paper used the heckman procedure. the paper analyzed the effects of innovation adoption, i.e., modern equipment or seed improvements, and further examined farmers’ access to credit, farmers’ education, and agriculture land tenure security in cameroon and their asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 154-162 157 effects on agricultural productivity. the findings of the study were based on an analysis of a national survey that looked at how various innovations and adaptations affected agricultural productivity. according to the findings of the study, agricultural productivity is significantly and positively correlated with innovation adaptations. farmers' access to credit facilitated the purchase of high-quality pesticides and fertilizers, which increased productivity, while farmers' education increased their potential productivity gains. the study concluded that the adoption of advanced technological equipment alone is insufficient to increase crop output. therefore, to maximize crop yield, other productivity-enhancing factors ought to be encouraged by the government of cameroon. ketema (2020) studied the determinants of agricultural output in ethiopia by employing an ardl approach to cointegration testing. the study made use of a time-series dataset spanning the years 1980 to 2018. according to the findings of the ardl, the variables of inflation rate, fertilizer input, trade openness, and rainfall all had a positive and substantial effect on agricultural output in ethiopia in the long run. ethiopia's agricultural output has suffered immense short-run and long-run losses as a direct result of the ongoing drought that has ravaged the country. in general, the agricultural industry has been hit hard by these losses, which have had a great impact. the paper recommends that the government of ethiopia focus on sector-relevant policies and use resources wisely, specifically on agricultural expenditure. additionally, the paper recommends that drought-resistant agricultural mechanisms should be introduced by the government to reduce rainfall dependency by adopting modern agricultural technologies. 3. data and methodology 3.1. data the data is derived from statistics bulletins of yearly time series from the world development indicators (wdi), international labour organization (ilo), statistical, economic and social research and training centre for islamic countries (sesric), and the food and agricultural organization corporate statistical database (faostat), covering the years 1991 to 2020. the investigated variables are agricultural productivity (ap), which is the dependent variable, employment in agriculture (ema), gross capital formation (gcf), arable land (arl), and rainfall (rl), which are the independent variables. to analyze the relationships, an autoregressive distributed lags (ardl) technique was employed. 3.2. theoretical framework to investigate the factors that influence agriculture productivity in somalia, we looked at four different explanatory variables, namely employment in agriculture (ema), rainfall (rl), arable land (arl), and gross capital formation (gcf) as a proxy for machinery adaptation. based on the available data and the previous literature, these four explanatory variables were chosen because of their expected impact on agricultural productivity. several empirical studies on the determinants of agricultural productivity have used the cobb-douglas production function (ahmad & heng, 2012; ene, onyele, & orji, 2022; shita et al., 2018). equation 1 models the cobb-douglas production function: 𝑌 = 𝐴𝐾𝛼𝐿𝛽 (1) where y, k, and l indicate output level, capital, and labor inputs, respectively, and a, α, and β are parameters determining the production technology. the cobb-douglas production function analysis considers all the productivity factors, including rainfall, employment in agriculture, gross capital formation, and arable land. 3.3. empirical model using equation 2, the coefficients of different factors that are thought to affect agricultural productivity in somalia are estimated: 𝐿𝑛(𝐴𝑃) = 𝛼0 + 𝛼1𝐿𝑛(𝐸𝑚𝐴𝑡) + 𝛼2𝐿𝑛(𝐺𝐶𝐹𝑡) + 𝛼3𝐿𝑛(𝐴𝑟𝐿𝑡) + 𝛼4𝐿𝑛(𝑅𝐹𝑡) + 휀𝑡 (2) where ap is agricultural productivity, ema is employment in agriculture, gcf is gross capital formation, arl is arable land, and rf is rainfall. the long-run coefficients to be estimated are α1 to α4, ε is the white noise random error, and t is the time period. numerous econometric tests are available to estimate the long-run relationship between various econometric variables. many studies have used johansen and juselius (1990), granger and engle (1987), and johansen (1988) for cointegration testing. however, in order to employ these cointegration testing techniques, all model variables must be stationary at order 1, that is, they must be i(1). further, these methods necessitate a large sample size. to avoid these problems, the ardl approach developed by pesaran, shin, and smith (1996), pesaran and shin (1995), and pesaran, shin, and smith (2001) was used in this work since ardl is flexible and requires that variables are integrated in order 0 or 1. the ardl has a single requirement, which is that none of the variables in the model can have an order that is i(2) or higher. this is the only condition that must be met. furthermore, even for small samples, the ardl estimation technique provides efficient results. the ardl technique was chosen for the research because it offers the benefits described above. in addition, some of the variables that were included in the research project are thought to be stationary at level, while others are thought to be stationary at the first difference. these two categories of stability were compared and contrasted. prior to the development of ardl estimation techniques, stationary testing was conducted using augmented dickeyfuller tests (dickey & fuller, 1979). this is significant because practically every macroeconomic time series possesses a unit root, and regression analysis carried out on non-stationary data invariably produces erroneous regression outputs. as a result, the model is written as follows: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 154-162 158 ∆ 𝐿𝑛 (𝐴𝑃𝑡) = 𝛼0 + ∑ 𝛼 𝑞1 𝑖=1 1i ∆ 𝐿𝑛 (𝐴𝑃𝑡−𝑖) + ∑ 𝛼 𝑞2 𝑖=1 2i ∆ 𝐿𝑛 (𝐸𝑚𝐴𝑡−𝑖) + ∑ 𝛼 𝑞3 𝑖=1 3i ∆ 𝐿𝑛 (𝐺𝐶𝐹𝑡−𝑖) + ∑ 𝛼 𝑞4 𝑖=1 4i ∆ 𝐿𝑛 (𝐴𝑟𝐿𝑡−𝑖) + ∑ 𝛼 𝑞5 𝑖=1 5i ∆ 𝐿𝑛 (𝑅𝐹𝑡−𝑖) + 𝛽1 ∆ 𝐿𝑛(𝐴𝑃𝑡−1 ) + 𝛽2 ∆ 𝐿𝑛(𝐸𝑚𝐴𝑡−1 ) + 𝛽3 ∆ 𝐿𝑛(𝐺𝐶𝐹𝑡−1 ) + 𝛽4 ∆ 𝐿𝑛(𝐴𝑟𝐿𝑡−1 ) + 𝛽5 ∆ 𝐿𝑛(𝑅𝐹𝑡−1) +휀t (3) where ∆ is the first difference operator, 𝑞1 represents the optimal lag length, 𝛼0 is the drift component, and 휀t represents the residuals. the coefficients from 𝛼1 through 𝛼5 represent short-run dynamics, while 𝛽1 through 𝛽5 represent the long-run relationships of ap with different explanatory variables. the first step in ardl cointegration testing is to conduct bounds testing (pesaran et al., 2001) for cointegration. this test determines whether or not there is a long-run relationship between the variables that are being researched. this is done to determine whether or not the variables that are being researched are connected to one another in any way. as a consequence, equation 3 was scrutinized in light of the findings obtained from the bounds testing for cointegration. the presence of cointegration is presumed if it is discovered that the estimated f-statistic has a value that is higher than the upper bound critical value. on the other hand, an indication that cointegration does not occur is provided when the predicted value of the f-statistic is less than the lower limit. when it is determined that there is cointegration between the variables being studied, an error correction model (ecm) must be constructed. thus, the ecm results demonstrate how soon convergence occurs following short-run shock, averaging for long-run stability. equation 4 is used to calculate the ecm: ∆ 𝐿𝑛 (𝐴𝑃𝑡) = 𝛼0 + ∑ 𝛼 𝑞1 𝑖=1 1i ∆ 𝐿𝑛 (𝐴𝑃𝑡−𝑖) + ∑ 𝛼 𝑞2 𝑖=1 2i ∆ 𝐿𝑛 (𝐸𝑚𝐴𝑡−𝑖) + ∑ 𝛼 𝑞3 𝑖=1 3i ∆ 𝐿𝑛 (𝐺𝐶𝐹𝑡−𝑖) + ∑ 𝛼 𝑞4 𝑖=1 4i ∆ 𝐿𝑛 (𝐴𝑟𝐿𝑡−𝑖) + ∑ 𝛼 𝑞5 𝑖=1 5i ∆ 𝐿𝑛 (𝑅𝐹𝑡−𝑖) + 𝛿𝐸𝐶𝑀t-1+휀t (4) where 𝛿 is the speed of adjustment towards equilibrium in the long run, 𝑞1 is the optimal lag length of the relevant variable, and ecm represents the error correction term. it is anticipated that the coefficient of the errorcorrection term that is lagged by one period (ecmt-1), which is also the speed of adjustment parameter, will have a negative value that is statistically significant, which will provide evidence that a cointegration relationship does, in fact, exist. 3.4. description and measurement of variables 3.4.1. agricultural productivity (ap) agricultural productivity is the dependent variable in the model. according to fao (2017), agricultural productivity is the ratio of output volume to input volume used. similarly, total factor productivity (tfp) is the amount of agricultural output produced from the whole set of material resources, capital, land, and labor used in farm production, according to the oecd (2017) and usda (2022). 3.4.2. employment in agriculture (ema) the primary determinant of total agricultural productivity is labor. since land is fixed, increasing agricultural employment increases labor productivity. employment in agriculture is calculated as a percentage of total employment. as a result, it is reasonable to anticipate that employment activities in agriculture will have a favorable impact on the output of agricultural products. 3.4.3. gross capital formation (gcf) gcf includes both the net change in inventories and the money spent on boosting the economy's fixed assets. it is estimated as the total value of a unit's or sector's gross capital formation, inventory changes, and purchases of less valuable disposals. 3.4.4. arable land (arl) the average quantity of arable land per person expressed in hectares is what is referred to as "arable land." however, there is not enough evidence to conclude whether a larger amount of land increases agricultural output. barker and herdt (1978) argued that large farms outperform smaller ones because they are better able to take advantage of agricultural developments. in contrast, according to ekbom (1998), the link between farm size and productivity is negative, since small farmers often have to increase output to feed their households. according to estimates provided by the world bank and fao (2018a), somalia possesses 3 million hectares of cultivable land (five percent of somalia’s total land area), of which 2.3 million are rainfed and 700,000 are potentially subject to controlled (pump) irrigation and flood-recession irrigation. 3.4.5. rainfall (rf) somalia’s agricultural economy is heavily influenced by the country's climate, which is measured by rainfall as an indicator of agricultural productivity. the variable is an indicator of yearly precipitation in the country's various agricultural regions and is measured in millimeters. rainfall and agricultural productivity are expected to have a negative relationship since somalia is susceptible to climate variability. recent research by the world bank suggests that as a direct result of climate change, as many as 216 million people could be compelled to migrate within their own country by the year 2050, and as many as 132 million people could fall into poverty by the year 2030 (kotikula & masaki, 2022). recent cyclical climate-related shocks in somalia have included drought, flooding, and locust infestations. climate change may increase somalia's vulnerability to poverty and food insecurity due to the nation's reliance on natural resources and the deterioration of those resources caused by human activity, such as charcoal manufacture and overgrazing. in somalia's rural areas, drought has a tendency to significantly restrict consumption, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 154-162 159 which raises the country's poverty rates. climate change will have far-reaching consequences for the poor (kotikula & masaki, 2022). 4. estimation and interpretation of results 4.1. unit root test time series should be checked for data stationarity before the ardl technique is applied. therefore, it is necessary to identify whether or not the data that is being studied is stationary at level, or whether or not it is stationary at the first difference. the adf unit root test was used to examine the order of integration, and the results are presented in table 1. all the tested variables (agricultural productivity, employment in agriculture, gross capital formation, and arable land) were stationary at the first difference except the rainfall variable, which was stationary at both the level and the first difference. table 1. augmented dickey-fuller (adf) unit root test results at level and first difference. adf test variable level 5% c. values pro statistic first difference 5% c. values pro statistic decision lnap -0.032 -2.989 0.956 -5.099 -3.588 0.000 i(1) lnema -4.218 -3.584 0.004 -1.987 -3.588 0.608 i(1) lngcf -0.895 -2.989 0.780 -4.297 -3.588 0.003 i(1) lnarl -2.224 -2.989 0.198 -2.977 -1.708 0.003 i(1) lnrf -4.975 -2.989 0.000 -3.427 -2.992 0.010 i(0) & i(1) 4.2. bounds test for cointegration the ardl-based bounds test was considered to answer the question of whether or not there was a relationship between the tested variables in the long run. the findings proved the co-integration between the variables of the model since the estimated value of the f-statistic was 4.62, at a significance level of 5%, which was greater than the upper-bound critical value of 4.01. table 2 presents the results of the bounds test for cointegration. table 2. bounds test for cointegration. h0: no levels relationship f-statistic = 4.616 t-statistic = –3.566 critical values (0.1–0.01), f-statistic [i(0)] 10% [i(1)] 10% [i(0)] 5% [i(1)] 5% [i(0)] 2.5% [i(1)] 2.5% [i(0)] 1% [i(1)] 1% k_4 2.45 3.52 2.68 4.01 3.25 4.49 3.74 5.06 4.3. long-run estimation employment in agriculture was significant at the 5 percent level and had a good correlation with agricultural productivity in the long run with a coefficient of 0.55. this outcome is in line with the findings of the fao (2021) and world bank and fao (2018b), who concluded that employment in agriculture accounts for more than 50 percent of somalia’s total workforce. gross capital formation positively contributed to agricultural productivity. the coefficient value for the influence of gcf on agricultural productivity is 0.6070, which indicates that with all other factors held constant, a one percent increase in gcf results in a 0.6070 percent increase in agricultural productivity. the gcf has the greatest impact on agricultural productivity. moreover, it also increases labor productivity, thus contributing to an improvement in total agricultural productivity. also, table 3 illustrates that arable land significantly and positively affects agricultural productivity. with a coefficient value of 0.162, arable land is the third most important factor in agricultural productivity in this study. this figure indicates that an increase in arable land of 1 hectare will result in a 0.162 percent increase in agricultural productivity. finally, the analysis showed that rainfall has a negative impact on agricultural productivity but is positively correlated with agriculture. when rainfall increases by one millimeter, agricultural productivity increases by 0.023 percent. table 3. estimated long-run coefficients using the ardl model (dependent variable: lnap). lnap coef. st. err. t-value p-value [95% conf. interval] sig lnema 0.549 0.028 19.360 0.000 0.489 0.609 *** lngcf 0.607 0.027 22.860 0.000 0.551 0.664 *** lnarl 0.162 0.022 7.220 0.000 0.114 0.210 lnrf 0.023 0.041 0.570 0.580 -0.065 0.112 constant 3.310 0.762 4.360 0.001 1.697 4.943 mean dependent var 20.285 sd dependent var 0.178 r-squared 0.984 number of obs. 30 f-test 392.136 prob > f 0.000 akaike crit. (aic) -134.098 bayesian crit. (bic) -127.092 note: *** indicates significance at the 10% level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 154-162 160 4.4. short-run estimation table 4 shows the short-run and error-correction representations of the chosen ardl model. employment in agriculture exhibited a negative association with agricultural productivity in the short run, which was significant at the 5 percent level. this suggests that, in the short run, a one percent increase in agricultural employment reduces agricultural productivity by 3.12 percent. however, a percentage increase in gross capital formation and rainfall enhances agricultural productivity by 0.031 and 0.033 percent, respectively. furthermore, in the short run, arable land has a negative correlation with agricultural productivity, although this is statistically insignificant. finally, the stability of the model is indicated by the speed adjustment coefficient's negative sign of -1.025. the model's goodness of fit is further confirmed by the r-squared value of 0.98. table 4. estimated short-run coefficients using the ecm approach to the ardl model (dependent variable: lnap). lnap coef. st.err. t-value p-value [95% conf. interval] sig lnema -3.106 0.601 -5.16 0.000 -4.388 -1.824 *** lngfc 0.031 0.021 1.06 0.308 -0.032 0.094 *** lnarl -0.073 0.036 -2.02 0.061 -0.149 0.004 lnrf 0.033 0.017 1.97 0.067 -0.003 0.069 𝛿𝐸𝐶𝑀t-1 -1.025 0.191 -5.14 0.000 -1.450 -0.590 mean dependent var 20.285 sd dependent var 0.178 r-squared 0.984 number of obs. 30 f-test 392.136 prob > f 0.000 akaike crit. (aic) -134.098 bayesian crit. (bic) -127.092 note: *** indicates significance at the 10% level. 4.5. stability diagnostic test (model fit) in addition to the diagnostic tests mentioned above, an examination of the consistency of the long-run estimations was carried out using the cumulative sum of recursive residuals (cusum). the plot of the cusum test did not fall outside the critical limits, as shown in figure 1. the critical boundaries at the 5% significance level are represented by the straight lines. figure 1. plot of the cumulative sum of recursive residuals. 5. conclusion and recommendations in this study, the ardl methodology was utilized to analyze the determinants that affect agricultural productivity. the research focused on somalia's agricultural productivity in the period from 1991 to 2020. the results showed that the agriculture productivity level is determined by four explanatory variables: employment in agriculture, gross capital formation, arable land, and rainfall. there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between agricultural productivity, employment in agriculture, gross capital formation, arable land, and rainfall, as indicated by the bounds test and the coefficient of the error correction factor. this can be inferred from the fact that there is a positive correlation between these variables. gross capital formation (gcf) is a further major source of total agricultural productivity as it has a positive coefficient value at a 5 percent level of significance, indicating that gcf is the main input increasing agricultural productivity by 0.6070 percent. moreover, employment in agriculture is an essential determinant of agricultural productivity with a coefficient of 0.5489 and is statistically significant at the 5 percent level. the amount of arable land, which is a very important factor in agricultural productivity, is statistically significant at the 5 percent level and has a positive correlation of 0.1616 with agricultural productivity in the long run; however, in the short run, it has a statistically insignificant negative influence on agricultural productivity. this demonstrates that farmers are asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 154-162 161 experiencing productivity problems, and soil nutrients should be available at low cost and on time, which could facilitate farmers in increasing their productivity by applying soil nutrients. lastly, according to the findings of the study, a one-millimeter increase in average rainfall will most likely result in a 0.0233 percent increase in agricultural productivity in the long run, although the effect is statistically insignificant in both the short and long runs. this aligns with the variable description provided in section 3.4, which stated that rainfall and agricultural productivity are expected to have a negative relationship since somalia is vulnerable to climate change and the country has experienced extreme weather events over the past 40 years. the result further supports kotikula and masaki (2022), who concluded that around 132 million people could fall into poverty due to climate change by the year 2030, including in somalia. therefore, farmers and policymakers must consider climate-resilient agricultural practices to mitigate the effects of climate change. the error correction term of the chosen ardl model shows a speed adjustment coefficient with a minus sign of -1.025, indicating that the model is stable. the short-run shock model predicts a faster long-run convergence towards equilibrium because the error from the previous time span is addressed in the current time span. the quality of fit of the estimated model is validated by the fact that the r-squared value is 0.98. based on the above conclusions, the following policy recommendations are proposed to decision-makers to promote somalia’s agricultural productivity and the sustainable development of its agricultural sector. firstly, the somalian government should focus on technological innovations to increase sector productivity. secondly, somalia’s federal government should increase its expenditure on the agriculture sector, particularly in the areas of education, land tenure security, credit, and the financial accessibility of sector investors. thirdly, the somalian federal government should invest more in human capital to promote sustainable productivity growth in the agricultural sector. fourthly, the study recommends that sector investors support the use of improved agricultural technology, organic fertilizers, and other agricultural extension services that would augment and support agricultural productivity. one limitation of this research is that it has only considered the most important macroeconomic factors that explain agricultural productivity in somalia. however, fertilizers and agricultural machinery also have an impact on agricultural productivity. as a result, future research may include relevant variables such as fertilizers and agricultural machinery to identify their relationship with agricultural productivity in both the short and long run. funding: this study received no funding from any entity. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. data availability statement: upon a reasonable request, the supporting data of this study can be provided by the elmi hassan samatar. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; 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(2023). the effect of field agricultural extension roles on the capacity level of rice farmers in pesawaran regency, lampung, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2), 106–112. 10.55493/5005.v13i2.4776 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic greatly affected all business sectors, both micro and macro; more than half of them were significantly affected, and many businesses even had to close. unlike the business world, however, the agricultural sector continues to grow; therefore, the growth of the agricultural sector is very important (dunggio, abdullah, & neswati, 2021). this was particularly evident during the pandemic; in the second quarter of 2020, the performance of the agricultural sector grew positively, namely by 2.19 percent, significantly better than the growth of the national economic sector, which was recorded at minus 5.32 percent. the agricultural sector is thus key to saving the economic asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 2 (2023): 106-112. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7916-1891 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3758-9309 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3447-2562 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1979-0586 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4946-3925 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6749-0997 mailto:indah.listiana@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 106-112 107 sector during and in the aftermath of the pandemic (wuryandani, 2020). the government seeks to continuously improve the welfare of the community through agricultural development by increasing farmers’ capacity. expanding the function of extension agents is one strategy to improve farmers' capabilities. farmers are encouraged to take part in initiatives to try to boost their capacity. rice production productivity is predicted to be impacted by increasing farmers’ capacity. moreover, farmers’ ability to adapt to climate change may require them to further expand their capacity by adopting the newest innovations to assist their farming activities and boost productivity (listiana et al., 2021) and incorporating internet usage in agricultural extension activities (listiana, sumardjo, dwi, prabowo, & ariyanto, 2019a). in indonesia, agricultural development aims to fulfill the food needs of the community. the fulfillment of food needs is strongly dependent on changes in behavior in the community itself; if there is no change and awareness within the community, it becomes difficult to meet food needs and achieve a more prosperous community. changes in community behavior, especially in the agricultural sector, are closely related to the role of field agricultural extension agents (aeas), who can guide the main actors and business actors to achieve a change in knowledge, attitudes, and skills (alyaarbi, camkin, neto, & wegener, 2019; kreft, huber, wuepper, & finger, 2021; listiana, efendi, mutolib, & rahmat, 2019b; listiana, sumardjo, dwi, & prabowo, 2018). changes in farmers’ behavior can occur naturally, but the changes will be very slow to eventuate; to accelerate the process of increasing farmers’ capacity, an outside party (extension) is needed. the involvement of extension workers is thus required to hasten the technological adaptation process. adjustments to planting time, the adoption of drought-tolerant varieties, soaking, salinity, and the development of water management technologies are among the adaptation strategies that farmers may apply (fita, rodríguez burruezo, boscaiu neagu, prohens tomás, & vicente meana, 2015; trenberth et al., 2014). the government’s current aim is for each village to have one extension worker to support farmers’ capacity-building in accordance with law no. 19 of 2013 concerning the protection and empowerment of farmers. government efforts to ensure each village has an instructor are still difficult to realize (owolabi & yekinni, 2022). this is due to the decreasing number of extension workers because many extension workers have retired, and the recruitment of extension workers is decreasing (sabir, sugiyanto, sukesi, & yuliati, 2019). overall, only 89.13 percent of the villages in indonesia have an agricultural extension worker. in lampung province, 83.91 percent of villages have an extension worker. pesawaran regency is a regency in lampung province, the economy of which relies on agricultural activities. these agricultural activities are supported by agricultural extension workers (al-zahrani et al., 2021). in pesawaran regency, only 42.36 percent of villages have an extension worker. the limited number of aeas in negeri katon district, in particular, causes the role of the aea to be performed less than optimally, so farmers’ capacity is still not good. meanwhile, farmers have a strong need and enthusiasm for joining farmer groups. this requires a farming extension strategy that is in line with their needs and problems. therefore, this research aims to explore the effect of field agricultural expansion on rice farmers’ capacity level and the factors that influence farmers’ capacity. 2. research methods 2.1. research site and time this research was carried out in negeri katon district, pesawaran regency, in october-november 2021. the site was chosen because the district of negeri katon has a large number of farmers who show community enthusiasm to form farmer groups. the method used in this study was a survey method with a quantitative descriptive approach. the quantitative descriptive method describes the condition of the object under study using quantitative data. quantitative research demands the use of numbers, starting from data collection through the interpretation of the data and the presentation of results (siyoto & sodik, 2015). the presentation of results usually takes the form of images, tables, graphs, or other displays that increase reader absorption and facilitate the delivery of information. quantitative research emphasizes the analysis of numerical data using appropriate statistical methods. the population in this study includes the heads of farmer groups in negeri katon district, pesawaran regency. there are 319 heads of farmer groups in negeri katon district. the appropriate sample number was determined using the formula of sugiarto (2003): 𝑛 = 𝑁𝑍2s2 𝑁𝑑2 + 𝑍2𝑆2 where: n = number of samples. n = total population. z = confidence level (95% = 0.95). s2 = sample variance (5% = 0.05). d = degree of deviation (5% = 0.05). the appropriate sample number obtained was 62 respondents. the respondents were spread throughout all the villages in negeri katon district. sampling in this study was carried out by simple random sampling, namely sampling based on the comparison of each population of the sample unit. this was done by giving each member of the population the same opportunity to become a member of the sample. 2.2. data collection this study used a quantitative descriptive survey method. primary data were collected through interviews with 62 respondents and direct observation of members of farmer groups. the secondary data used in this study were asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 106-112 108 obtained from written sources such as books, journals, articles, general data on village potential, and data from other relevant agencies. the first and second objectives of this research used descriptive quantitative techniques, while the third objective used multiple linear regression analysis techniques. some of the steps taken to perform quantitative descriptive statistical analysis were: a. presenting data in tabulated form. b. determining the value of each respondent, with class intervals obtained using the following equation: class interval = max-value min number of classes in addition, the analysis also used multiple linear regression with the formula: 𝑌 = 𝑎 + 𝑏1𝑋1.1 + 𝑏2𝑋1.2 + 𝑏3𝑋1.3 + 𝑏4𝑋1.4 + 𝐵5𝑋1.5 + 𝐵6𝑋2 + 𝑒 where: y = related variable. a = constant. b1,b2,b3,b4,b5,b6 = coefficient x1.1 = age. x1.2 = formal education. x1.3 = length of farming. x1.4 = land areas. x1.5 = number of dependents. x2 = role of aea. e = error. 3. results and discussion 3.1. description of area of research pesawaran regency is located in lampung province with coordinates 5 ,120–5,840 south latitude and 104,920– 105,340 east longitude. negeri katon district is located in the north of the regency and has a capital city in the village of negeri katon and an area of 152.69 km2. negeri katon district consists of 19 villages with a population of around 68,844 people, of whom 35,384 are male and 33,460 female. administratively, negeri katon district borders 4 other areas: tegineneng district, gedong tataan district, gadingrejo district, and natar district. the agricultural land in negeri katon district consists of dry land in the form of fields, which are mostly planted with palawija (non-staple food crops), horticulture, and plantation crops, as well as wetlands. 3.2. characteristics of the respondents the results of this study indicate that about 95.16 percent of the respondents were productive farmers aged between 15 and 64 years, with an average age of 49 years. farmers of productive age have the potential physical condition to quickly accept and implement new technological innovations and to support dynamic and creative farming activities. farmers of a productive age have a high ability to perform productive farming work. one of the criteria that determines a person's level of labor efficiency in building his farming business is his age. farmers who are relatively young tend to be stronger, more nimble, more amenable to new inventions, and more receptive to their surroundings (soekartawi, 2001). this is consistent with the findings of murniati, widjaya, adawiyah, and listiana (2020) in their study on cassava farmers. given that the majority of research participants are still young (42 years old) and quite productive, there is still plenty of room for them to do more fruitful business. age has an indirect impact on a person's physical fitness, which is necessary to operate a farm. the formal education level of the majority of respondents in negeri katon district was in the medium category. specifically, 22.58 percent of respondents had an elementary education, and only 3 respondents, or 4.84 percent, had a higher level of education. the level of formal education will influence the community, especially farmers who aim to increase their farming productivity. the duration of farming indicates the length of time respondents had farmed rice. of the respondents, 50.00 percent had a farming duration ranging from 10 to 23 years. the respondents’ length of rice farming, and thus rice farming experience, differed. experience makes it easier for a person to adjust to changes that occur. the longer a person has performed a job, the more difficult it can be to change their mindset and business patterns. adopting new technology can also be difficult because the farmers are comfortable with their current conditions. however, when receiving information related to their business, it becomes easier to accept. on the other hand, experience can also accelerate the acceptance of innovations, new technologies, and information, because innovative business actors want to continually change and advance their business to continue to grow. the land area of most of the respondents’ farms in negeri katon district was in the medium category, with 40.32 percent. only 24.20 percent of farmers owned large areas of land; the rest had small farms. this shows that rice farmers in negeri katon are more likely to have small farms of less than one hectare. rice farmers’ land area is one of the factors that influence their income. villagers whose main activity is farming depend on their land for a living. therefore, the area of land owned is an indicator of the amount of income received. if the farmer's land is large, the income of the farmer will also be large, and if the area of land used is small or narrow, the income obtained by the farmer will also be small because only a small amount of rice can be planted (isfrizal & rahman, 2018). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 106-112 109 the number of dependents in the household is the number of family members who are dependents of the head of the family, including his wife, children, and other people who live in the same house. in line with the necessities of life, the more family members there are in the household, the greater the needs that must be met. in most rice farming families, the number of dependents ranged from 1 to 6, with an average of 3 dependents per family. most of the rice farming families had a moderate number of dependents, namely 39 respondents, or 62.90 percent, had an average of 3 dependents. the remaining 37.10 percent of respondents had either low (25.81%) or high (11.29%) levels of family responsibility. the more dependents there are in the family, the greater the costs associated with meeting the needs of daily life. 3.3. the role of field agricultural extension agents the role of the aea is to help farmers solve the problems they face. the agent or instructor acts as a liaison between farmers and practitioners. professional, creative, and innovative agricultural extension workers are needed to produce quality human resources in agriculture. the role of the aea in this research is that of a farmer mentor who provides guidance to farmers in terms of farming activities. the distribution of the aeas’ supervisory roles is shown in table 1. table 1. distribution of the roles of agricultural extension agents in negeri katon district. field agricultural extension score classification respondents (persons) % advisor 12-27 low 4 6 28-44 medium 57 92 45-60 high 1 2 organizer 8-18 low 0 0.00 19-29 medium 4 6.45 30-40 high 58 93.55 technician 10-23 low 0 0.00 24-36 medium 24 38.71 37-50 high 38 61.29 consultant 7-16 low 12 19.35 17-26 medium 18 29.03 27-35 high 31 51.61 dynamist 10-23 low 0 0.00 24-37 medium 24 38.71 38-50 high 38 61.29 table 1 shows that most farmers, 92 percent, rate agricultural extension workers as advisors as belonging to the medium classification. the role of the agent as an advisor is judged by several indicators; the advisor’s role is apparent from the frequency of visits, guiding ideas or suggestions, guidance on cultivation techniques, and direction in obtaining capital. the situation in the field during the covid-19 pandemic was such that extension workers only made one visit a month, and some made as little as one visit every three months, whereas usually and ideally, extension workers can visit farmer groups once every two weeks. this means that farmers sometimes held meetings to discuss the problems and needs that arose in independent farming. after that, the head of the farmer group contacted the aea to get suggestions and solutions related to the problems and needs the farmers faced. concerning the guiding process, the farmers considered that extension workers played an important role in providing information or suggestions in response to farmers' complaints or problems. extension agents play a smaller role in providing direction to obtain capital assistance in the form of funds. however, they provide easy access to farming inputs such as fertilizers, seeds, and pesticides. the role of the aea as an advisor includes a strong commitment to helping farmers solve appropriate cultivation problems (girma & kuma, 2022). an extension worker must know the farming system well, sympathize with farmers' lives, and support the decisions made by farmers both in theory and practice. extension workers must be able to provide practical demonstrations of methods of plant cultivation and help farmers locate or use appropriate agricultural production facilities and equipment. the results showed that 93.55 percent of farmers considered the role of the aea as an organizer to be categorized as high; this was based on extension workers assisting farmers in creating farmer groups, facilitating group meetings and assisting in the preparation of farmers’ organization needs (fon) and farmers’ organization basic needs (fobn). the purpose of the preparation of the fobn is to assist the main agricultural actors in planning the provision of subsidized fertilizers according to standards. the aea’s role as an organizer has to do with their efforts to help farmer groups advance and develop. table 1 shows that 61.29 percent of farmers assessed the aea’s role as a technician in the high category. this role of the aea is apparent from their skills in conducting technical demonstrations and training farmers in new crop cultivation techniques. based on this finding, it appears the assistance with rice cultivation techniques has been going well. extension workers provide farmers with knowledge about soil cultivation, seed maintenance, fertilization, and correct harvesting techniques. the role of the aea as a technician is related to the extension worker’s ability to support farmers with the cultivation of crops. every aea needs to have a strong understanding of agriculture and good technical skills. when extension workers are a reliable source of information for farmers, they help farmers increase productivity (antwiasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 106-112 110 agyei & stringer, 2021). the abilities that farmers gain from extension workers can help farmers to apply new innovations obtained from extension workers (sawitri, amanah, saleh, & hubeis, 2020). as a consultant, the extension worker assists farmers in solving the problems they experience and provides alternative solutions and advice if farmers experience problems when carrying out agricultural activities. the distribution of the aea's role as a consultant is shown in table 1. table 1 shows that 51.61 percent of farmers rated the extension worker’s role as a consultant in a high category. this role is apparent when extension workers help farmers solve farming problems by providing various solutions and by inviting farmers to discuss. extension workers have been very good at providing advice, especially about controlling pests and diseases. however, this control is still chemical in nature, and it is still rare for farmers to use biological and vegetable pesticides because farmers like instant results. this is why farmers’ use of biological pesticides is still low. extension agents as dynamists can serve as facilitators to advance farmer group initiatives through the implementation of various ideas, both internal and external. the distribution of extension agents as dynamists in the negeri katon district is shown in table 1. table 1 shows that 61.29 percent of farmers assess the role of the aea as a dynamist as high. features of the aea's role as a dynamist include the ability of the extension agent to create a conducive group climate and group cohesiveness, as well as group structure, goals, and cooperation. extension workers create group cohesiveness by continuously providing motivation and guidance to achieve group and individual goals. 3.4. capacity of farmers the development of farmers' livelihoods is always related to the capabilities that exist within them and the external influences of their environment. farmer capacity comprises the abilities, potential, and behaviors possessed by farmers in carrying out their farming. the distribution of farmer capacity in negeri katon district is shown in table 2. table 2. distribution of farmer capacity. score classification respondents percentage (%) 49-114 low 4 6.45 115-180 medium 54 87.10 181-245 high 4 6.45 amount 62 100.00 average: 169.34 (high) table 2 shows that the level of farmer capacity is categorized as medium, with a percentage of 87.10 percent. the level of farmer capacity is judged using several indicators, namely managerial ability, ability to improve farming, cooperation with other parties, and climate adaptability. table 3. results of the analysis of the influence of individual characteristics on rice farmers’ capacity level. variable coefficient significance constant (c) 35,412 0.034 age (x1.1) 0.908 0.043 formal education (x1.2) 0.781 0.001 length of farming (x1.3) 0.243 0.028 land areas (x1.4) -0.013 0.048 number of dependents (x1.5) -0.132 0.037 role of aea (x2) 0.234 0.018 f count 412,359 0 r-squared 0.547 adjusted r-squared 0.465 3.5. the influence of individual characteristics and aea role on rice farmers’ capacity level in negeri katon district, pesawaran regency table 3 shows the results of using multiple linear regression to test the effect of individual characteristics and the aea role on the capacity level of rice farmers in negeri katon district, pesawaran regency. the results of the regression show that the f count is 412,359 with a significance value of 0.000. if the significance value <0.05, the independent variable simultaneously affects the dependent variable. therefore, it is clear that six sub-variables simultaneously affect the level of farmer capacity. from table 3, it can be seen that the value of r-squared is 0.547. this means that the six independent variables explain 54.7 percent of the variance in the farmers’ capacity. based on the data gathered from the field, the farmers’ capacity can be influenced by age; 95.16 percent of respondent rice farmers in negeri katon district were of productive age. farmers of productive age have the potential physical ability to quickly accept and implement new technological innovations and to support productive farming activities (guo, wen, & zhu, 2015; seok, moon, kim, & reed, 2018). the number of respondents who were of productive age shows that there is still interest in farming (ntshangase, muroyiwa, & sibanda, 2018). the capacity of farmers is also influenced by their level of formal education. the higher the education of farmers, the higher their chances of increasing farm productivity. rice productivity is also closely related to the amount of farming experience, which differs according to the duration of the rice farming activities carried out by the respondents. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 106-112 111 rice productivity is also influenced by land area. in addition, the role played by field agricultural extension workers is also very influential in increasing rice productivity. 4. conclusion the role of field agricultural extension workers has been shown to be influential. most of the respondent farmers considered the level of farmer capacity to be in the medium category. this is because there are still many farmers who do not cooperate with marketing agencies, so many farmers sell their crops to middlemen. factors that affect farmer capacity include age, level of formal education, length of farming experience, land area, number of dependents, and the role played by the aea. this is an interesting finding; although farmers’ daily activities consist of farming, their capacity is not yet high. this shows that farmers are still strongly dependent on aeas; however, the number of aeas is limited, so extension activities do not run optimally. the number of aeas is limited, but because the role of the aea affects farmer capacity, the number of aeas must be increased. farmer capacity also lags because farmers fail to cooperate with marketing agencies. many farmers sell their crops directly to middlemen. factors that affect farmer capacity include age, level of formal education, length of farming experience, land area, number of dependents, and the role played by the aea. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception 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23 december 2024 revised: 24 april 2025 accepted: 12 may 2025 published: 13 june 2025 keywords agricultural production standards crop production farmers’ adoption good agricultural practices small and micro community enterprises thailand. in this study, the researchers wanted to find out what makes small and micro community enterprises (smces) in crop production want to adopt gap. the research survey involved 290 smces in sakhon nakhon, thailand, in collection using a structured questionnaire. a total of 13 variables were used for the analysis: gender, age, education, experience in group management, the person with the most influence on the decision to enter gap standards, attitude toward accepting gap standards in production, attitude toward accepting gap standards in terms of health and the environment, smce's income, product variety, farm size, number of agricultural knowledge trainings for group members in the past year, number of agricultural news stories received by group members from personal media in the past year, and membership in other agricultural groups. the results showed that 57% of smces expressed a high intention to adopt gap standards. the statistically significant determinants of the intention to adopt gap standards include male group leaders, attitudes toward gap production, decision-making influencers, product variety, and memberships in other agricultural groups. the finding provides insightful information for policymakers and government extension agents in developing agricultural production standards for smces. fostering confidence and empowering them to make decisions, along with promoting farmer group networks, enables farmers to connect, collaborate, and exchange knowledge, information, and news, ultimately elevating agricultural product standards to a competitive level and fostering sustainability in the agricultural system. contribution/originality: this paper used binary logistic regression modeling to examine the determinants of gap intention adoption among small and micro-community enterprises (smce) in agriculture. this research finding could enhance our fundamental understanding and serve as a foundation for developing policies to enhance agricultural production standards. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5404 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: srilapat, c., rapankum, n., patcharabudsarakumkul, k., kanthupat, s., & konkan, t.(2025). determinants of good agricultural practices intention adoption by small and micro community enterprises in thailand: crop production category. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 174–184. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 174-184 mailto:phornphat@snru.ac.th https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2498-7909 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8438-0009 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0912-1499 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2325-3839 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8645-7922 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5404 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 174-184 175 1. introduction concerns about consumption are growing in the modern world. this impacts the health, quality, and safety standards of consumer products. this ultimately affects the population's quality of life and ability to produce food. it is in this context that good agricultural practices (gap) were born. gap is a set of practices that addresses environmental, economic, and social sustainability for on-farm processes. in 1997, european supermarket chains and their major suppliers, representing all stages of the supply chain in europe's fruit and vegetable sector, initiated the development of gap as a private sector standard. since then, it has changed into a privately run on-farm accreditation program that aims to offer a worldwide system for checking fruits and vegetables based on gap implementation to keep up with its growing reach around the world. globalg.a.p., a private sector body that sets voluntary certification standards and procedures for good agricultural practices, operated the scheme. it aims to increase consumers' confidence in food safety (food and agriculture organization of the united nations, 2016). gap in asean: in 2006, the member countries of gap (good agricultural practices) collaborated to develop the asean gap as a unified standard. this standard aims to harmonize national gap programs within the asean region, enhance consumer safety of fruit and vegetables, ensure natural resource sustainability, and facilitate fruit and vegetable trade regionally and internationally (asean australia development cooperation program, 2006). gap in thailand: in 2004, thailand's government declared food safety a national agenda item. the ministry of agriculture began using q-gap standards as a tool to regulate and promote agricultural products. standards must be met to guarantee consumer safety and protection and avoid harm to farmers or businesses, agricultural trade, or the nation's economy. in 2006, thailand collaborated with asean countries to establish the asean gap; in 2008, thailand had the agricultural product standards act govern the certification of agricultural product standards, mandating that gap standards adhere to this law. the government has a policy to encourage thai farmers to develop their potential by promoting agriculture to form groups into small and medium-sized community enterprises (smces). the policy aims to enhance farmers' knowledge and skills in production, processing, marketing, group management, and leadership to raise the standards of agricultural production (community enterprise promotion division, 2019). the community enterprise promotion division (2023) divides smces into 6 service categories and 18 product categories, with the majority falling under the crop production category. in 2023, in thailand, there were 83,553 smce groups and 604 smce networks (department of agricultural extension news center, 2024). in sakon nakhon province, there were 1,052 smces in the crop production category. the sakon nakhon provincial agricultural and cooperative office reports that agricultural areas in sakon nakhon province, cultivation year 2022-2023, total 1,197,389.40 acres and account for 50.46 percent of the total area. it has 1,830.35 acres of gapcertified land (sakon nakhon provincial agricultural and cooperative office, 2023). the aforementioned report reveals that only 0.15 percent of the total agricultural area adheres to gap standards. the government sector has implemented various policies to encourage farmers to enhance their production standards, such as encouraging smces to produce agricultural products in accordance with gap standards, with the aim of enhancing the competitiveness of the agriculture sector. despite years of promotion of smces in sakon nakhon province, there are still only a few farmers who have received gap certification. extending smces for gap certification is a challenge for government agencies. farmers will accept extensions for a variety of reasons, including personal factors, business factors, and supporting factors. understanding the factors that make it challenging to promote farmers will help government agricultural extension officers come up with effective ways to do it. this could be done by selecting smces with factors that influence gap compliance to promote them as model community enterprises and then scaling up the results to other community enterprises. the research by dessart, barreiro-hurlé, and van bavel (2019) found that farmers were more likely to use sustainable methods when most of the other farmers in their area did the same and when they followed the advice of people in their community who supported the change. therefore, this research aimed to determine the factors influencing smces’ intention to adopt gap standards for their crop production. this paper used binary logistic regression as its data analysis strategy. from a practical perspective, it enables policymakers, extension agents, and marketers to leverage the strategies for sustainable agricultural development. 2. research method 2.1. research location the research was conducted in sakon nakhon province, which is located in the northeastern part of thailand (figure 1). sakon nakhon province is primarily an agricultural city, with agricultural land occupying more than 50% of its total area. agriculture produces various goods, including rice, rubber, cassava, sugarcane, medicinal herbs, vegetables, and fruits. the government has established policies to encourage farmers to form smce to strengthen production and marketing. the gap standards have been implemented to enhance agricultural product quality and standards to meet global market requirements (sakon nakhon provincial agricultural and cooperative office, 2023). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 174-184 176 figure 1. the map of the research location, sakon nakhon province, thailand. source: nordnordwest (2024). 2.2. the sample and data collection the population of 1,052 smces in the category of crop production in sakon nakhon province was targeted for this research (community enterprise promotion division, 2023). the sample size of 290 smce groups was determined by using taro yamane's formula (yamane, 1973) at the confidence level of 95%. the multistage sampling method was employed to select the sample. next, determine the number of samples based on the population proportion in each district. finally, respondents were selected using simple random sampling. table 1 displays the number of samples distributed in each district. data were collected in 2024. table 1. distribution of the population and sample within each district. district target population proportionate sample district target population proportionate sample mueang sakon 203 0.19 56 akat amnuai 33 0.03 9 kusuman 33 0.03 9 sawang daen din 125 0.12 35 kut bak 41 0.04 11 song dao 40 0.04 11 phanna nikhom 37 0.03 10 tao ngoi 51 0.05 14 phang khon 133 0.13 37 khok si suphan 32 0.03 9 waritchaphum 72 0.07 20 charoen sin 30 0.03 8 nikhom nam un 26 0.02 7 phon na kaeo 46 0.04 13 wanon niwat 59 0.06 16 phu phan 29 0.03 8 kham ta kla 23 0.02 6 total 1,052 1.00 290 ban muang 39 0.04 11 source: community enterprise promotion division, (2023). 2.3. research instrument the research employed a structured questionnaire as the primary data collection tool. the questionnaire was developed using secondary data from past literature reviews related to the field of research and primary data from indepth interviews with smces to gain insight and information needed to develop the questions. before beginning the main data collection, we conducted a pretest to evaluate the validity and reliability of the instruments. three experts were asked to judge the content validity, and thirty smces who were not in the sample were asked to use cronbach's alpha to test the reliability. the results showed that the index of item objective congruence (ioc) was 0.97, indicating the questions or contents used in this questionnaire were valid. for reliability analysis, cronbach's alpha coefficient value was 0.95, indicating the instrument was reliable. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 174-184 177 2.4. analysis method this research conducted several statistical analyses to address its objectives. we used descriptive statistics like frequency, mean, and percentage to show the types of people who run smces, the business information and help they get, and their level of intention. the binary logistic regression analysis was used to find out what factors made smce leaders want to adopt gap standards, while the factor analysis was used to find out how smce leaders felt about adopting gap standards. we used the statistical package for social science (spss) program version 29 to analyze the data in this research. the variables used in the research were described in table 2. table 2. independent variables: measurement and working hypothesis. variables measurement/code symbols expected sign. reference determinants of the personality of the smce's leader ß1: gender 1 =male 0 =female gender +ve bajgain, tiwari, joshi, shah, and shrestha (2024); chelang’a, kariuki, obare, and otieno (2023) and pk, zoumbé, hamadé, and adama (2023). ß2: age age (years) age +ve chelang’a et al. (2023); serebrennikov, thorne, kallas, and mccarthy (2020) and ogisi and begho (2023). ß3: education years of schooling (years) educ +ve chelang’a et al. (2023); serebrennikov et al. (2020) and cherotich and kaur (2023). ß4: experience in group management experience (years) exper +ve chelang’a et al. (2023) and connor et al. (2020) ß5: the person who has the most influence on the decision to enter gap standards 1 =themselves 0 =other persons influe +ve tey et al. (2015) ß6 :attitude towards accepting gap standards in production level of positive attitude (unit) att1 +ve /ve rathakrishnan et al. (2022); supapunt, intanu, and chaikampun (2021) and malkanthi, thenuwara, and weerasinghe (2021). ß7 :attitude towards accepting gap standards in terms of health and environment level of positive attitude (unit) att2 +ve vapa tankosić et al. (2023) determinants of business ß8 :smce's income income (dollars /month) income +ve abadi, sujianto, and miftah (2023) and laosutsan, shivakoti, and soni (2019). ß9 :product variety 1 =more than one type of product 0 =one type of product prod_ v +ve connor et al. (2020) and pk et al. (2023). ß10 :farm size farm size (acres) farm_s +ve /ve adhikari and thapa (2023); ogisi and begho (2023) and connor et al. (2020) determinants of supporting ß11 :number of agricultural knowledge trainings of group members in the past year participation in training (number of trainings) train +ve chelang’a et al. (2023); mgomezulu, machira, edriss, and pangapangaphiri (2023) and zakaria, azumah, appiah-twumasi, and dagunga (2020). ß12: number of receiving agricultural news from personal media of group members in the past year receiving agricultural news (number of receiving) news +ve mgomezulu et al. (2023); akomdo et al. (2023); nawi et al. (2023) and nawi et al. (2023) ß13 :membership in other agricultural groups 1 =yes 0 =no other _g +ve mutyasira, hoag, and pendell (2018) and jourdain, srisopaporn, perret, and shivakoti (2017). note: +ve is the expectation for the positive relationship, and -ve is the expectation for the negative relationship. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 174-184 178 the logistic regression model illustrates the correlation between a dependent variable and a predictor variable (vanichbuncha, 2017). 𝐿𝑜𝑔 (𝑜𝑑𝑑𝑠) = 𝑙𝑛 ( 𝑃𝑟(𝑦=1) 𝑃𝑟(𝑦=0) ) (1) represented in the form of a linear regression equation as follows : 𝐿𝑜𝑔 (𝑜𝑑𝑑𝑠) = ß0 + ß1𝑋1 + ß2𝑋2 +. . . . + ß𝑛𝑋𝑛 (2) the study model’s formula is represented as the following equation: 𝑌 = ß0 + ß1𝐺𝐸𝑁𝐷𝐸𝑅 + ß2𝐴𝐺𝐸 + ß3𝐸𝐷𝑈𝐶 + ß4𝐸𝑋𝑃𝐸𝑅 + ß5𝐼𝑁𝐹𝐿𝑈𝐸 + ß6𝐴𝑇𝑇1 + ß7𝐴𝑇𝑇2 + ß8𝐼𝑁𝐶𝑂𝑀𝐸 + ß9𝑃𝑅𝑂𝐷𝑉 + ß10𝐹𝐴𝑅𝑀𝑆 + ß11𝑇𝑅𝐴𝐼𝑁 + ß12𝑁𝐸𝑊𝑆 + ß13𝑂𝑇𝐻𝐸𝑅 _𝐺 (3) where y refers to the intention to adopt gap standards; y = 1 referred to the smces having the intention to adopt gap standards, and y = 0 referred to the smces having no intention to adopt gap standards, while β0, β1, β2, …, β13 referred to coefficients showing the influence of independent variables on the dependent variable. 3. results and discussion 3.1. demographic profile of smce's leader table 3 shows the demographic profile of smce’s leader. it revealed that the majority of the respondents were female (59.31%), with an age range between 51 to 60 years old (45.52%). it is indicating that they were entering the elderly group, which is consistent with puey ungphakorn institute for economic research (2019) which reported that the proportion of elderly workers in thailand’s agricultural sector has been increasing. the majority of respondents had secondary education (50.69%), with experience between 6 to 10 years in managing smce groups. group members were found to have the highest influence on their decision to enter the gap standards, followed by themselves, government agencies, and neighbors who had achieved the gap standards, respectively. table 3. demographic profile of smce's leader. variables classification frequency percent (%) gender male 118 40.69 female 172 59.31 ages 20 – 30 years 2 0.69 21 – 40 years 27 9.31 41 – 50 years 88 30.34 51 – 60 years 132 45.52 over 60 years 41 14.14 education less than secondary school 79 27.27 secondary school 147 50.69 vocational certificate/diploma 27 9.31 bachelor’s degree 29 10.00 master’s degree 8 2.76 experience in group management 1 – 5 years 53 18.28 6 – 10 years 147 50.69 11 – 15 years 66 22.76 16 – 20 years 20 6.90 over 20 years 4 1.37 the person who has the most influence on the decision to enter gap standards themselves 63 21.72 group members 169 58.28 government agencies 38 13.10 neighbors who had achieved gap standards 20 6.90 source: survey data (2023–2024). 3.2. business information and support received table 4 shows the business information and support that smces have received. the majority of smces earned between $901 and $1,200 per month, with an average income of $1,168. smces had more than one product type (61.38%). their farm sizes ranged between 11 to 15 acres (37.24%). smce's members attended agricultural knowledge training with government agencies 3 to 4 times per year (54.14%). the training contained information on improving the quality of agricultural production and the added value of products, product standards, marketing, and online sales. smce's members received agricultural news through personal media once a year (26.55%), typically from agricultural extension agents, researchers, and village headmen. approximately 57.93% of smce members have memberships in other agricultural groups, such as organic rice farming groups, cassava farming groups, and vegetable farmer groups. this is in line with the thai government’s policy to support the role of agricultural institutions (cooperatives/farmer groups/community enterprises) as farmer business units to support the efficiency of farm management in order to reduce costs and add value to farmers’ products (office of the national economic and social development council, 2023). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 174-184 179 table 4. business information and support received of smces. variables classification frequency percent (%) smce's income less than 600 $/month 65 22.42 601 – 900 $/month 59 20.34 901 – 1,200 $/month 88 30.34 1,201 – 1,500 $/month 39 13.45 over 1,500 $/month 39 13.45 product variety 1 item 112 38.62 over 2 items 178 61.38 farm size less than 6 acres 41 14.14 6 – 10 acres 65 22.42 11 – 15 acres 108 37.24 16 – 20 acres 44 15.17 over 20 acres 32 11.03 number of agricultural knowledge trainings of group members in the past year never 51 17.58 1 – 2 times 57 19.66 3 – 4 times 157 54.14 5 – 6 times 23 7.93 over 6 times 2 0.69 number of receiving agricultural news from personal media of group members in the past year never 50 17.24 1 times 77 26.55 2 times 55 18.97 3 times 63 21.72 over 3 times 45 15.52 membership in other agricultural groups yes 168 57.93 no 122 42.07 source: survey data (2023–2024). 3.3. attitudes towards adoption of gap standards factor analysis was performed to identify the attitudes of smce’s leader towards the adoption of gap standards. the kmo test, which gave a good result of 0.95, was used to see if the sample size was right and if the statement items chosen were good for factor analysis. bartlett's test of sphericity also showed statistically significant results with a pvalue of 0.00 and a chi-square value of 3,265.29, which confirmed that the statement items were relevant for the factor analysis (see table 5). table 5. kmo and bartlett's test. test value kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy. 0.95 bartlett's test of sphericity approx. chi-square 3,265.29 df 136 sig. 0.00 the result of factor analysis is presented in table 6. two factors were found based on how the smce leaders felt about adopting gap standards. these were their "attitudes toward gap production" and "attitudes towards health and the environment." these items yielded convergent validity, with factor loading at 0.5 or higher. collectively explained, these two factors explained 61.12% of the difference in smces' plans to adopt gap standards. we used cronbach's alpha to assess the reliability of the factors. all statement items yielded coefficients over 0.60, indicating reliability is acceptable (hair, black, babin, & anderson, 2010). the first factor, known as attitude towards gap production, comprises five sub-variables that serve as measurements of this factor. this factor seems to have factor loadings above 0.6, ranging from 0.63 to 0.79, with an eigenvalue of 9.25 and a total variance explained by 54.428%. this suggests that it plays a major role in determining whether or not smce leaders will adopt gap standards. the cronbach’s alpha was 0.91, representing high internal consistency. the sub-variables in this factor were “i think the gap system is simple to implement” (0.79) and “i believe that members of the group have sufficient knowledge and understanding about gap standard crop production.” (0.76), “i think that producing crops according to gap standards produces quality products that are safe from chemical contamination, pathogens, and pests.” (0.74), “i think that producing crops according to gap standards creates sustainability in the agricultural production system” (0.72), and “i believe that products with gap certification can create confidence for consumers.” (0.63). the second factor was attitudes towards health and the environment, comprising four sub-variables with a total variance of 6.69% and eigenvalues of 1.14. the factor loadings ranged from 0.71 to 0.81, indicating that attitudes toward health and the environment could influence smce leaders’ intentions to adopt gap standards. the cronbach’s alpha was 0.85. the sub-variables in this factor were “i think that producing crops according to gap standards creates asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 174-184 180 sustainability in the environmental system” (0.81), “i think that producing crops according to gap standards can help preserve the environment, both water sources and planting areas” (0.72), “i think that producing crops according to gap standards makes farmers healthier” (0.71), and “i think gap-certified products are safe for consumers” (0.71). table 6. attitudes toward the adoption of gap standards. attitudes factor loadings attitudes towards gap production 1 .i think gap system is simple to implement . 0.79 2 .i think that members of group have sufficient knowledge and understanding about gap standard crop production . 0.76 3 .i think that producing crops according to gap standards produces quality products that are safe from chemical contamination, pathogens, and pests . 0.74 4 .i think that producing crops according to gap standards creates sustainability in the agricultural production system. 0.72 5 .i think that products with gap certification can create confidence for consumers. 0.63 eigenvalues 9.25 percentage of variance explained 54.43 cronbach’s alpha 0.91 attitudes towards health and the environment 1 .i think that producing crops according to gap standards creates sustainability in the environmental system . 0.81 2 .i think that producing crops according to gap standards can help preserve the environment, both water sources and planting areas . 0.72 3 .i think that producing crops according to gap standards makes farmers healthier. 0.71 4 .i think gap certified products are safe for consumers. 0.71 eigenvalues 1.14 percentage of variance explained 6.69 cronbach’s alpha 0.85 cumulative percentage 61.12 according to the statements described in table 6, figure 2 depicted the smce leaders’ attitude towards intention to adopt gap standards. the findings revealed that approximately 91.80% of respondents believe that products with gap certification could create the consumers’ confidence in purchasing gap products. from health and environmental perspectives, about 92% believe that the gap products are safe for consumers. this indicates that farmers place importance on producing products with regard to consumer needs, which is consistent with the results of the study by ji and lee (2022) who reported that consumers who experienced food safety incidents were more likely to purchase gap-certified products. therefore, it is necessary to produce gap products that meet consumer needs. figure 2. attitude towards the intention to adopt of gap standards. 3.4. determinants of smce’s intention towards adoption of gap standards figure 3 draws the intention level towards adoption of gap standards by the smce’s leader. it shows that about 57% of smces indicated they had an intention towards adoption of gap standards, while 43% of smces indicated they had no intention towards adoption of gap standards. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 174-184 181 figure 3. smce’s intention toward adoption of gap standards. the binary logistic regression analysis was employed to investigate the factors determining the smce leaders’ intention to adopt gap standards in crop production. the goodness of fit of the model was assessed using the hosmer and lemeshow test, which is a model test using chi-square statistics to see if the created logistic model can provide a predicted probability of event occurrence consistent with the actual event occurrence measured from the collected data. if the chi-square test result is not significant, it indicates that the obtained logistic model is acceptable, as the predicted value and the actual value do not differ. table 7 shows that the chi-square value is 12.82 and indicates no significance at a p-value over 0.05. this result suggests that the model fits the analysis. table 7. hosmer and lemeshow test. test chi-square df sig. goodness of fit 12.82 8 0.118 table 8 shows the results of the binary logistic regression analysis. the results showed that five things—gender, people who make decisions, attitude toward gap production, variety of products, and membership in other agricultural groups—had a big effect on the smce leaders' decision to adopt gap standards for the community enterprise groups. the following explanation and discussion can shed light on these results: in terms of gender, gender was significantly affected by the smces’ intention towards adoption of the gap standard (β = 0.744, p < 0.05). the findings emphasized that male smce leaders were 2.104 times more likely to have the intention to adopt the gap standard. it indicates that male smce leaders possess the authority to decide on crucial family affairs. hence, being the head of the household increases the likelihood of adopting gap because these individuals tend to have more decision-making power and responsibility for farm outcomes. the finding is consistent with pk et al. (2023), which emphasized that male farmers were more likely to adopt gap. chelang’a et al. (2023) also observed that there was a positive correlation between gender and the adoption of globalg.a.p. as men primarily make production decisions in households. similarly, bajgain et al. (2024) conducted research in western nepal; the gender of orchard owners influenced the intensity of gap adoption, suggesting that male orchard owners contribute to higher gap adoption rates. in terms of decision-making influencers (β = 0.718, p < 0.05), smce's leaders who make decisions independently were 2.051 times more likely to have the intention to adopt gap standards than smce's leaders who rely on others, such as group members, government officials, or neighboring farmers, to influence their decisions. this finding corresponds with tey et al. (2015) who concluded that farmers or producers are leaders in the use of gap standards. their personal values, such as the desire for a better life and financial improvement, have a significant influence on their decisions. in terms of attitudes towards gap production (β = 0.792, p < 0.05), smce's leaders with a favorable attitude towards gap standards or production were 2.207 times more likely to have the intention to adopt gap standards in their production. the result is consistent with the study of supapunt et al. (2021) which concluded that attitudes towards gap vegetable production led to farmers adopting gap at a higher level. rathakrishnan et al. (2022) also pointed out that farmers with the right attitudes and beliefs will be able to adopt sustainable agricultural practices, and they were more likely to do so on their farms. however, despite having positive attitudes toward gap, most farmers may not be willing asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 174-184 182 to take the risk of adopting these practices due to various issues, including a lack of necessary production factors, capital, suitable land conditions, and a lack of understanding or awareness of the need (malkanthi et al., 2021; wintschnig, 2021). in terms of product variety, it significantly and positively affected the smce leaders’ intention to adopt the gap standard (β = 0.916, p < 0.01). the leaders of smces, who perceived more than one type of product variety, were 2.499 times more likely to intend to adopt gap standards. to remain competitive, smces attempt to differentiate and improve products by adopting new practices into their production processes. the finding is supported by the study of connor et al. (2020) which suggested that successful adoption of new practices requires consideration of limiting factors such as growing multiple crops per year, while pk et al. (2023) conclude that the potential for increased income from mixed cropping can motivate farmers to adopt gap. in terms of membership in other agricultural groups (β = 0.867, p < 0.01), the smce leaders with membership in other agricultural groups exhibited a significant and positive effect on their intention to adopt gap standards, indicating that the smces with their memberships in other agricultural groups were 2.379 times more likely to have the intention to adopt gap standards. this is consistent with the study by mutyasira et al. (2018) which reported that membership in farmer organizations is an important factor in farmers’ decision-making to adopt sustainable agricultural practices. membership in farmer associations and groups is an important factor in the implementation of gap standards because these organizations support and facilitate the sharing of information and resources (jourdain et al., 2017). table 8. results of binary logistic regression analysis of determinants of intention to adopt gap standards. variables b s.e. wald df sig. exp(b) 95% c.i.for exp(b) lower upper gender 0.744 0.298 6.216 1 0.013* 2.104 1.172 3.776 age -0.014 0.020 0.511 1 0.475 0.986 0.948 1.025 educ -0.15 0.045 0.112 1 0.738 0.985 0.902 1.076 exper 0.004 0.033 0.016 1 0.900 1.004 0.942 1.071 influe 0.718 0.345 4.329 1 0.037* 2.051 1.043 4.036 att1 0.792 0.365 4.701 1 0.030* 2.207 1.079 4.514 att2 -0.318 0.413 0.594 1 0.441 0.728 0.324 1.633 income -0.028 0.015 3.486 1 0.062 0.972 0.943 1.001 prod_v 0.916 0.318 8.305 1 0.004** 2.499 1.340 4.659 farm_s 0.010 0.006 2.583 1 0.108 1.010 0.998 1.023 train -0.095 0.106 0.808 1 0.369 0.909 0.738 1.119 news -0.099 0.097 1.050 1 0.305 0.906 0.749 1.095 other _g 0.867 0.314 7.603 1 0.006** 2.379 1.285 4.405 constant -1.822 2.112 0.744 1 0.388 0.162 note: *significant at p <0.05; **significant at p<0.01. 4. conclusion the researchers investigated the intentions of smce leaders toward the adoption of gap standards for crop production. the binary logistic regression analysis indicated that the intention of smces to adopt gap standards was affected by the gender of their leaders, their attitude toward gap standards, the number of people who had a say in the decision, the variety of their products, and their membership in other agricultural groups. the findings also emphasized that male smce leaders indicate a higher intention to adopt gap production standards than females, who tended to have important decision-making power in family matters and were responsible for the farm productions. smce leaders who made independent decisions had a higher intention to enter gap production than smce leaders who were influenced by others' decisions. the intention to enter gap production was positively correlated with the positive attitudes of smce leaders, as these attitudes in turn influenced their practices. smces with memberships in other agricultural groups were found to be more likely to comply with gap production standards because they gained support and agricultural information from those groups. based on the results, the government should promote the development of gap standards for smces. to encourage a good attitude, smces need to know and understand gap standards for crop production. they should also stress the benefits of getting gap certification, like higher selling prices and access to high-end markets like modern trade or foreign markets, especially for male smce leaders. implementing programs and training sessions could encourage and enable them to comply with gap standards for crop production effectively. and the government should promote the farmer group network, which can foster connectivity and collaboration, facilitating the exchange and transfer of knowledge, information, and news, and thereby enhancing thailand’s agricultural sustainability and market competitiveness. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 174-184 183 funding: this research is supported by sakon nakhon rajabhat university, thailand (grant number: 9/2024). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the sakon nakhon rajabhat university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 31 january 2024 (ref. no. he 66-126). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abadi, a. w., sujianto, s., & miftah, h. 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(2020). adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices among farm households in ghana: the role of farmer participation in training programmes. technology in society, 63, 101338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2020.101338 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.farsys.2023.100019 https://www.pier.or.th/abridged/2019/13/ https://doi.org/10.24191/jsst.v2i2.34 https://doi.org/10.3390/su12229719 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-015-9572-9 https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture13122248 https://doi.org/10.5282/jums/v6i2pp324-346 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2020.101338 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 640 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. local food innovation for food security in west timor during social restrictions werenfridus taenaa jefrianus ninob maria yustiningsihc vinsensia ulia rita silad yeremias binsasie a,b,c,d,etimor university, east nusa tenggara, indonesia.  weren_ntt@yahoo.co.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 17 september 2025 revised: 31 october 2025 accepted: 9 november 2025 published: 21 november 2025 keywords analytical hierarchy process food processing technology food security local food management logistic analysis quality of local food west timor. food security during social restrictions is crucial, making the strengthening of local food systems essential in such situations. the study aims to (i) analyze the influence of food processing technology innovation, local food management, and the quality of local food on food security in west timor during social restrictions, and (ii) identify strategic priorities for achieving food security in west timor. the research was conducted on timor island, particularly in north central timor regency, with a sample of 75 respondents distributed across four sub-districts. the analysis employed logistic regression and the analytical hierarchy process (ahp). the logistic analysis revealed that innovation in local food management significantly influenced food security (α = 5%) with an odds ratio of 18.119, whereas innovation in local food processing technology (odds ratio = 1.429) and the quality of local food (odds ratio = 1.593) were not statistically significant. further analysis using ahp identified the strategic priorities for achieving food security, which included: technology transfer procedures (32.20%), upstream and downstream integration of local food—including production, preservation, processing, packaging, marketing, and consumption (31.90%), regulation of local food nutritional standards (21.90%), and management of local food stocks (14.10%). based on these findings, a comprehensive roadmap is necessary to effectively achieve food security in the region. contribution/originality: this research is one of the few studies that have investigated local food management and the use of local food processing technology to produce quality instant local food that functions to achieve food security, especially during times of social restrictions. doi: issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction united nations in the document, namely, transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, states that there are 17 sustainable development goals; these are integrated into national and regional development in indonesia through presidential regulation number 59 of 2017. one of the goals is ending hunger, achieving food security, and improving nutrition, as well as promoting sustainable agriculture. food security conditions asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 640-649 mailto:weren_ntt@yahoo.co.id https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3164-7064 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-6414-6120 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 640-649 641 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. are influenced by many factors under normal circumstances and during social restrictions such as the covid-19 pandemic that affected the world. (ayyildiz, 2022; rizwana et al., 2022) stated that covid-19 has an impact on food security conditions. food security on a national development scale is the strength of a country in providing a guarantee to all citizens to obtain sufficient, quality food by optimizing the diversity of food resources. law no. 18 of 2012 concerning food describes food security as a condition of meeting food needs for a country and individual food needs. the food needs include quantity and quality, diversity, nutritiousness, equity, affordability, and must not be contrary to religion, belief, and the culture of the people residing in an area to enable the population to meet the needs of a healthy, active, and sustainable productive life. in line with elizabeth (2011), who stated that food security is a component that is difficult to separate from national security because it functions to determine the quality of human resource intelligence. low food security also impacts malnutrition status and the high number of stunting cases in indonesia. the indonesian ministry of health research and development agency (2018) stated that east nusa tenggara province is one of the provinces in indonesia with high cases of stunting or malnutrition in infants and toddlers, with a percentage of 30.8%. it also stated that north central timor regency (known as ttu regency) reached 51.8%. the high stunting rate in the ttu regency reflects a lack of food security and nutritious food intake for infants and toddlers. indications of food insecurity, malnutrition, and stunting are important issues for promoting food security at the regional, village, and household levels to develop quality human resources. ttu regency has a variety of local food potentials besides rice, such as corn, tubers, and beans. however, food production is seasonal, leaving some residents without sustainable food security (including instant local food), and nutritional adequacy remains a challenge. the situation is exacerbated by social restrictions during the covid-19 pandemic; as found in research by bonuedi, gerber, and kornher (2021), which stated that food shortages during the famine season, especially in rural communities, were due to the difficulty of accessing food markets, which were caused by limited infrastructure and the lack of economic conditions. these obstacles need to be addressed by the local government and community through local food processing technology and local food management institutions to produce high-quality, continuously available processed food. therefore, an institutional diagnosis, including local wisdom, is necessary as stated by schouten, vink, and vellema (2018), to restructure institutions to achieve food security; this is also regulated regarding the strengthening of food and nutrition institutions in presidential regulation no. 83 of 2017. it has provided space for the district government of ttu regency to achieve food security through institutional innovation and food processing technology that can serve as guidelines, methods, and approaches for communities to attain food security. furthermore, strengthening food processing innovation also offers opportunities for communities and the government to participate in maintaining food stocks, improving food quality and nutrition, and stabilizing prices. jayne (2012) stated that food price instability causes a food crisis, so intervention is needed to stabilize food prices, which also requires a credible commitment between the public and private sectors in the food market. innovation in local food management is also related to coordination and partnerships between food business actors, which start from the provision of inputs, production, processing, distribution, and consumption. osei-amponsah, van paassen, and klerkx (2018) stated that identifying potential partners is necessary to facilitate collaborative intervention processes between food business actors (market logic) and farmer empowerment actors (institutional logic). it also emphasized that the identification of potential partners is needed to facilitate the collaborative intervention process. collaborative interventions can improve food security in a region and enhance its distribution to other regions due to increased digital accessibility, as found in (birner, daum, & pray, 2021). previous studies by jayne (2012), osei-amponsah et al. (2018), and birner et al. (2021) successively focused on achieving food security through food price stability, collaboration among food stakeholders, and ease of access through digitalization. similarly, a previous study by leischnig, geigenmueller, and lohmann (2014) emphasized technology transfer between institutions, and young, brown, collins, and glanz (2024) focused on food insecurity and lack of access to public nutrition. this study differs from previous research because it seeks to achieve food security through innovation in food management and technology. therefore, a portrait of technological and management innovation towards food security is necessary; it can serve as a basis for determining appropriate alternatives to support the roadmap toward food security in north central timor regency. based on the background, this study aims to (i) analyze the influence of food processing technology innovation, local food management, and the quality of local food on food security in west timor during social restrictions, and (ii) analyze strategic priorities for achieving food security in west timor. 2. materials and methods 2.1. research sites the research was conducted in west timor, indonesia, specifically in the north central timor regency, east nusa tenggara province, as illustrated in figure 1. the study duration was five months, from august to december 2021. the data used were collected during the period when social interaction restrictions were in place due to covid19. there were 75 respondents from several districts, including west miomaffo, east miomaffo, and insana; these three sub-districts are key centers for corn production and have the potential to process bose corn into instant local food sustainably to achieve food security. additionally, some samples were from the kota kefamenanu sub-district, which functions as a trade center and residential area, thereby encouraging the development of small food processing businesses. the number of respondents was relatively small in each location due to the homogeneity of corn processing and local food management. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 640-649 642 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 1. map of research location. 2.2. data collection the study employed a survey method, with data collection through in-depth interviews, observation, and focus group discussions (fgds). data sources included farmers; local governments (food institute, health institute, and onestop integrated investment and licensing institute); micro, small, and medium enterprises (msmes) in the food sector; and non-governmental organizations. hennink, kaiser, and weber (2019) stated that fgds are a popular method used to collect relatively large and comprehensive data in a short time. information conveyed by fgd participants typically includes insights, perceptions, and experiences. 2.3. data analysis data analysis began with a logistic analysis to assess the influence of innovations in technological and food management, as well as local food quality, on achieving food security. the analysis continued with ahp to analyze stakeholder perceptions of food security strategy priorities from several alternatives: transfer procedures of food processing technology, food stock management, upstream and downstream integration of food businesses, and regulations of local food nutrition standards. the data analysis framework of this study is shown in figure 2. 2.3.1. logistic analysis the logistic analysis aims to evaluate the current condition regarding the impact of technology, management, and quality of local food on food security, which is the primary objective. logistic analysis is employed to determine the significant effect of local food factors on food security. the mathematical formula follows the reference by pervaiz, ninghui, manzoor, and altangerel (2017). li=ln ( pi 1-pi )=z=β o +β 1 x1+β2x2+β3x3 + e𝑖 (1) information: β0 : intercept. β1, β2; β3: regression coefficient. x1 : innovation of local food processing technology (ordinal data). x2 : innovation of local food management institutions (ordinal data). x3 : quality of local food (ordinal data). ei : error. z : food security (ordinal data). ln : logaritma natural. pi : probability. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 640-649 643 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 2. data analysis framework. 2.3.2. analysis hierarchy process (ahp) furthermore, it is necessary to analyze stakeholder perceptions regarding the priority of local food management strategies to accelerate the achievement of food security. therefore, the analysis of the second objective uses the ahp with the following stages: defining the problem, creating a hierarchical structure, creating a matrix and pairwise comparison values, determining priorities, and testing logical consistency. saaty (2008) and granemann and figueiredo (2013) state that the minimum ahp structure consists of objectives, criteria, and alternative recommendations. the objective to be achieved is to attain food security during social restrictions. these criteria or factors include local food processing technology, local food management, and local food quality; each factor has sub-factors. the alternative strategies include procedures for transferring local food processing technology, upstream-downstream integration, stock management, and local food nutritional standards. the ahp structure is shown in figure 3. the consistency test uses the following formula. 𝐶𝐼 = 𝜆𝑚𝑎𝑥𝑖𝑚𝑢𝑚−𝑛 𝑛−1 (2) information: ci : consistency index. λmaximum: the eigenvalue. n : number of subcriteria. figure 3. ahp structure. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 640-649 644 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3. results and discussion 3.1. logistic analysis of the effect of local food innovation technology, management, and quality of local food on food security in west timor the logistic analysis results indicate that innovation in strengthening local food management (x2) is a significant factor (α=0.05), with an odds ratio of 18.119. innovation in local food management will increase the chances of achieving food security by 18.119 times at α=0.05. the logistic analysis results also show that innovation in local food processing technology (x1) is not significant (α=0.05), but its odds ratio is positive at 1.429, indicating that the increase in food security is relatively small. likewise, food quality (x3) has an odds ratio of 1.593 for food security, but it is not significant. the results of the logistic analysis are shown in table 1. table 1. the result of logistic analysis. variable b s.e. wald df sig. exp(b) step 1a technology (x1) 0.357 0.594 0.362 1 0.548 1.429 management (x2) 2.897 1.139 6.474 1 0.011 18.119 quality (x3) 0.466 1.284 0.132 1 0.717 1.593 constant -2.204 1.672 1.737 1 0.188 .110 note: a. variable(s) entered on step 1: technology, management, quality. 3.1.1. innovation of food processing technology food is generally a perishable product, so technology in food processing can provide variety. the food processing technology (especially corn) currently used by the people of timor-indonesia is relatively simple, making it less likely to contribute to food security, or in other words, has not significantly impacted food security. this is due to slow technology adoption, the unavailability of processed foods, and a lack of consumer interest due to unattractive packaging. novalinda and asni (2013) noted that local foods have not been able to attract many people due to their unattractive appearance and lack of prestige. the innovation of processing corn into instant food in west timor is an innovation that can improve food security, providing the community with a more varied food alternative. therefore, it is necessary to innovate the diversity of food consumption with balanced nutrition and attractive packaging. one interesting innovation is processing bose corn (note: bose is the local name for processed corn food in west timor) as instant food with balanced nutrition for consumption. future efforts include utilizing technology for the mass production of bose corn and instant bose corn; however, more than that, a mechanism for transferring local food processing technology is needed to support food security. technological innovation, combined with management innovation, can achieve food security because the result is not only the accumulation of technology and management but also the integration of the two, as stated by dechow, granlund, and mouritson (2007). 3.1.2. innovation of local food management local food management consists of providing inputs, farming, the product processing industry, marketing, and supporting institutions. in ttu regency, each of these subsystems generally does not consider the interrelationship between them; therefore, innovation in local food management is needed by enhancing the forward and backward linkages of the kefa corn business as an inseparable system. the linkage is realized through the smooth distribution of products between business actors in each subsystem. this situation can create food security, and logistics analysis is significant at α=5%. enthoven and van den broeck (2021) stated that the local food supply chain serves to connect producers and consumers, which also impacts food security. these conditions can create food security, so logistic analysis is significant at α=5%. pricing locally processed foods (such as instant corn) that are affordable for various market segments allows for equitable distribution across community segments and regional clusters. this promotes food self-sufficiency because upstream and downstream processes operate within a single region as a unified whole, which also requires increased participation from all stakeholders. public sector institutions are necessary to bridge farmers with the market to increase food procurement, technology, food processing services, and infrastructure. in harmony with guillaumie, kamgang, brotherton, and boiral (2025), collaborative governance with broad participation from all stakeholders plays a crucial role in ensuring the sustainability of local food supplies to support food security. 3.1.3. quality of local food the quality of local food is determined by its safety and nutritional content. food safety results from chemical-free production, storage, and processing. one food product that is mechanically processed without chemicals is instant bose corn, which has nutritional value. laboratory analysis at biotrop ipb stated that the nutritional content of kefa corn, combined with corn, peanuts, and sei meat (local name for meat processed by smoking), is as follows: carbohydrates (28.0%), fat (8.62%), protein (8.31%), crude fiber (24.5%), and water content (66.7%). however, in general, residents of ttu regency do not view food quality as a determinant of food security but rather focus on the quantity of food consumed, as evidenced by the positive but insignificant results of the logistic analysis. zhang, chen, and hu (2019) have not been fully convinced of the authenticity and quality of local food as competitive advantages. therefore, an analysis of the nutritional content of various local foods is needed, as well as consumer understanding of the nutritional content of each local food, to achieve food security and community health. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 640-649 645 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.2. the priority strategy for food security based on the ahp, the priority strategies for strengthening local food management in north central timor regency are, respectively, the transfer procedures of local food processing technology (32.2%), upstream and downstream integration of local food (31.90%), regulation of local food nutrition standards (21.90%), and local food stock management (14.10%). a summary of the ahp analysis results is shown in figure 4. previous findings from arif, khan, rehman, kabir, and imran (2020) stated that strategies to improve community food and nutrition security include food availability (input supply, increased production, linkages to markets), food access for all, utilization of food to improve food security, and nutritional fulfillment, including by providing supplementary food. figure 4. priority recommendations for food security in west timor. 3.2.1. the procedures of transfer technology based on the ahp results, the transfer procedure for local food processing technology is a top priority for realizing local food security. appropriate transfer of local food processing technology can increase the availability of local food in the long term, boost public interest in local food consumption so that it can replace rice, enhance appreciation for local food and their providers, increase the economic added value of local food, which in turn improves food security. the results of this study align with fajri, putri, novita, gusmalini, and muchrida (2021), who stated that the use of local food processing technology in exploiting the potential of local food as an alternative food can increase the economic added value of local food through processing, preservation, packaging, and food deviation. the transfer of local food processing technology in north central timor regency plays a crucial role in providing guidance, knowledge, and methods to the community. the impact can optimize the processing of widely available local food potential, thereby increasing food diversity and product added value. furthermore, this technology transfer can improve community nutrition to address malnutrition and stunting by utilizing local food resources and existing local wisdom. an, sukiyono, and sugiarti (2013) state that local community wisdom in food provision is classified into wisdom in providing food that must be available daily and food that does not need to be available daily. developing a mechanism for transferring local food processing technology requires the involvement of the government, stakeholders, and the community. synergy and commitment from various parties (government, private sector, academics, and community) are essential for meeting food needs within the economic framework, as various factors determine food security. agricultural extension workers and academics have an obligation to bring technology closer to the community in a way that is easy to understand, accessible, and sustainably used to achieve food security. 3.2.2. upstream and downstream local food integration food security systems in the regions require significant attention to the upstream and downstream integration of local food. it begins with the provision of agricultural land and other production inputs, followed by production processes, harvesting, and food preservation. local food processing and packaging, distribution, access to local food, and consumption are also critical components. timisela, leatemia, polnaya, and breemer (2017) stated that the application of supply chain management in the local food agro-industry starts from upstream to downstream; by focusing on the approaches used, namely the cultivation process to produce raw materials; transformation of raw materials (harvest and post-harvest handling) related to changing raw materials into finished and semi-finished products; and delivery of products to consumers through the distribution system. the upstream-downstream integration of local food as an agribusiness system can also enhance the added value of the economy. clark, jablonski, inwood, irish, and freedgood (2020) stated that the added value of agricultural food commodities occurs due to utility, supply chains, and value distribution among each food business actor. upstream and downstream integration of local food requires cooperation and collaboration between farming communities that allocate production resources, local food supply businesses, universities as technology developers, and local governments. local governments, through technical agencies, help coordinate, supervise, and innovate every asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 640-649 646 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. aspect into a unified whole in the upstream and downstream integration of local food to achieve food security in ttu regency. in line with hribar, visković, and bole (2021), who stated that the government plays a role in providing facilities and conducting outreach, while farmers act as producers of food inputs, business actors act as professionals in managing food businesses offering additional products and services, and researchers play a role in transferring knowledge and technology for the development of food products. the upstream-downstream integration of local food can increase food security and realize local food selfsufficiency, and with the right combination, can provide a menu with balanced nutrition for the community so that it can overcome health problems, including stunting. salarkia, abdollahi, amini, and neyestani (2014) stated that sufficient food is food that is beneficial to health. arif et al. (2020) emphasized that nutritious food can reduce stunting and other malnutrition; therefore, it is used as the basis for the plan for the fortification of food products. consequently, other supporting institutions, such as nutrition and health organizations, are needed to ensure the availability of quality and nutritious food for the community. 3.2.3. the standardization of local food nutrition there is a national reference that provides space for each region to optimize the development of local food processing through presidential decree no. 22 of 2009 concerning the policy for the acceleration of diversification of food consumption based on local resources and regulation of the minister of agriculture no. 43 of 2009 concerning the movement for the acceleration of diversification of food consumption based on local resources. these policies/regulations became the basis for making regional policies/regulations that regulate structurally and technically the development of local food in the context of meeting food needs in the ttu regency. local food diversification has been implemented in various regions by different groups. this aligns with the research of utami (2018), which states that to optimize the diversity of local food consumption, local governments establish policies on the acceleration of food diversification based on local resources. ttu regency possesses significant potential for local foods such as corn, beans, and cattle. however, the nutritional content of each local food is not yet fully understood, making it difficult to appropriately combine local foods to provide balanced nutrition for the community. 3.2.4. local food stock management local food stock management is a solution to overcoming food insecurity. the community food stock in ttu regency is carried out by drying and smoking. this is due to a lack of knowledge about local food storage and preservation, causing farmers' food stocks to be damaged, and therefore farmers sell part or even all of their harvests to meet other needs at low prices. as a result, local food stocks cannot meet the food security of the community. therefore, the new food stock management recommended for the community in ttu regency is in the form of providing instant food (such as bose corn instant) as part of logistics management. logistics management is needed, as found by accorsi, cholette, guidani, manzini, and ronzoni (2022), that logistics management, influenced by food supply chain strategies, requires handling at every stage to ensure food products remain available with guaranteed quality until consumed by consumers. the results of ahp and logistic analysis are formulated in the road map to operationalize the stages toward achieving sustainable food security. suryana (2014) stated that a strategy to achieve sustainable food security requires adjustments to the policy formulated in the road map. this implies the need for a roadmap and action plan that operationalize concrete actions at each stage to ensure the achievement of sustainable food security. 3.3. road map of local food innovation towards food security the innovation of local food processing technology into quality, safe, and highly nutritious food stored in good packaging will increase food diversification. the technology transfer procedures carried out at this stage are (i) research on food processing technology innovations and transfer procedures, (ii) provision of equipment, and (iii) training and assistance for the community of food processing business actors. innovation in agricultural processing technology, accompanied by appropriate technology transfer, increases food diversification, especially during the covid-19 pandemic (rozaki, siregar, pratama, & istiyanti, 2023). local food that is available in sufficient and varied quantities, is feared not to be available at all times to all in circles of society (market segment). therefore, upstream-downstream integration is needed to ensure sufficient raw material availability, which contributes to the sustainability of food processing and distribution in various market segments. in line with this, sukhwani et al. (2019) stated that partnerships and collaborations between food business actors can improve food security. the action plan at this stage is as follows: (i) training for extension workers, (ii) information transfer from agricultural extension workers for the dissemination of agribusiness information as a system, (iii) monitoring and evaluating commitments between communities and business actors in implementing upstreamdownstream integration because each agribusiness subsystem contributes to overall food security. furthermore, the government can determine quality local foods (such as bose corn from west timor) to meet the community's food needs. this local food can be combined with other local foods (peanuts, cowpeas, and beef) to produce local food with balanced nutrition. the action plan at this stage includes (i) establishing policies governing the nutritional standards of local foods, and (ii) socializing and enforcing policies to improve food security and community nutrition. previous research by suryana (2014) stated that adjustments to the direction of food policy are necessary, particularly regarding food availability and nutritional adequacy, which are indicators of food security. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 640-649 647 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. an integrated food security system makes it easier for all groups of people to access quality local food. these conditions can increase local food stocks in various forms so as to increase self-esteem and pride in local food consumption wherever located, including instant of bose corn which has a high nutritional content. the action plan carried out is (i) determining the business groups that can produce of bose corn instantly so that it can be an example for other business actors, and (ii) promoting directly or through social media. one of the goals of the local food road map is to grow local food msmes (food security agency, 2020). in summary, the road map of local food innovation towards increasing food security is shown in figure 5. figure 5. roadmap of local food innovation towards food security. 4. conclusion the results of the logistic analysis showed that food processing technology innovation and the quality of local food have no significant effect, while local food management institutions have a significant effect on food security (α=5%). furthermore, alternative local food management based on the ahp results recommends the following priority: transfer of local food processing technology (32.20%) and upstream and downstream integration of local food (production, local food processing) (31.90%). therefore, a roadmap is needed to achieve food security through collaboration between farmers and stakeholders to facilitate technology transfer and integrate upstream and downstream processes to produce quality local food, including instant food that is ready for market acceptance. this study is limited to local corn food and uses qualitative data that is quantified, so more comprehensive research is needed, including a more diverse analysis of local food. funding: this research was supported by the ministry of education, culture, research and technology (grant number: 050/e4.1/ak.04.prn/2021). institutional review board statement: the institute for research and community service of timor university, indonesia, under protocol number [irb no: 007/un60.6/pp-pm/2022], dated [14 january 2022]. informed verbal consent was obtained from all participants, and all data were anonymized to protect participant confidentiality. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 640-649 648 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. references accorsi, r., cholette, s., guidani, b., manzini, r., & ronzoni, m. 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(2019). authenticity, quality, and loyalty: local food and sustainable tourism experience. sustainability, 11(12), 3437. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11123437 views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11123437 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 279 determinants of farmers’ willingness to cultivate moringa oleifera: the case of dipaculao, aurora, philippines charles r. velascoa maria cristina b. canadab a,baurora state college of technology zabali, baler, aurora, philippines.  charlesrvelasco@ascot.edu.ph (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 15 august 2022 revised: 17 october 2022 accepted: 2 november 2022 published: 24 november 2022 keywords acceptance agriculture cultivation farmers’ perception moringa oleifera philippines. moringa oleifera, commonly known as “malunggay” or “marunggay” in the philippines, is a native tree considered a miracle plant due to its multipurpose uses, especially in traditional medicine. however, despite its proven uses and adaptability to different climates, the species is still underutilized. this paper aims to provide evidence regarding the dominant perceptions of and willingness to cultivate moringa, especially among those working in the agriculture sector. this study employed a descriptive research design. data were gathered from farmers in dipaculao, aurora, using a self-made questionnaire and were processed and analyzed using statistical package for the social sciences (spss) version 23. the results showed that the majority of the farmers had positive perceptions of moringa and a willingness to cultivate it. moreover, the farmers’ age, sex, farm size, years engaged in farming, and number of household members did not affect their willingness to cultivate moringa. furthermore, farmers highlighted factors that might affect their decision to cultivate moringa, including the knowledge and skills for moringa cultivation and management, necessary capital for planting materials, and equipment and facilities for cultivation and processing. therefore, this study recommends that the concerned agencies provide the farmers with training and seminars, financial loans, machinery/tools, and farm inputs. contribution/originality: this paper contributes new information about the factors limiting moringa oleifera cultivation in the philippines. it examines the factors that affect farmers’ decisions to cultivate moringa oleifera. the findings serve as a starting point to promote the species. this paper is the first step toward achieving the vision of making aurora a moringa province in the philippines. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4671 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: charles r. velasco --maria cristina b. canada (2022). determinants of farmers’ willingness to cultivate moringa oleifera: the case of dipaculao, aurora, philippines. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4), 279-286. 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4671 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction moringa oleifera, commonly known as “malunggay” or “marunggay” in the philippines, is a native tree that originated in india (animashaun & toye, 2013). this species is highly appreciated because almost all its parts can be used, although the leaves are the most useful parts as they are used for food, cures for various diseases, oil, and food for livestock (gandji et al., 2018). in fact, some consider moringa a potential solution to hunger. according to thurber and fahey (2009), m. oleifera is a good source of nutrients that is accessible to everyone. its nutritional benefits allow communities to address hunger and nutrient deficiency problems directly. several parts of the tree are used in traditional medicines. according to agoyi, okou, assogbadjo, and sinsin (2017), leaves, roots, bark, and seeds are all used to cure various diseases, including malaria, fever, diabetes, sexual weakness, stomach pains, indigestion, sinusitis, and headaches. jimenez, almatrafi, and fernandez (2017) noted that the bioactive components of m. oleifera have beneficial effects in combating chronic diseases such as fatty liver, heart asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 4 (2022): 279-286. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0636-1782 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3354-8270 mailto:charlesrvelasco@ascot.edu.ph http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 279-286 280 disease, diabetes, and even cancer. furthermore, m. oleifera has been used as fencing, fodder, firewood, coagulant, and gum (popoola & obembe, 2013). at present, processed moringa oil and leaves are used as additives in food (e.g., bread, milk, noodles, and tea) and personal health care and cosmetics (e.g., shampoo, soap, perfume, and skincare) (palada, 2017). economically, moringa has the potential to offer a good source of income. a feasibility analysis of moringa revealed that if managed within a plantation, it can yield a net profit of approximately 5,137 united states dollars (usd) (246,945 pesos) annually from each hectare (animashaun & toye, 2013). in the philippines, the moringa industry has developed significantly in the past decade as the government has invested in research and development projects on this crop. in 2012, a united states agency for international development (usaid)-funded project suggested that the adaptability of moringa accessions from thailand and india produced good yields under the conditions present in the philippines (patricio & palada, 2017). the department of agriculture promotes moringa farming in the country by encouraging private sector businesses and agriculture enthusiasts to move into large-scale production from backyard enterprises (vizcarra, 2019). while moringa is slowly gaining popularity in the country, there is a need to provide evidence about the dominant perceptions of and willingness to cultivate moringa, especially among those working in the agriculture sector. therefore, an investigation of the different factors driving farmers’ adoption of the crop is very relevant. adoption is not guaranteed, even if the gains and benefits are presented to them, because different socio-demographic factors also affect farmers' decisions to cultivate moringa (n’danikou et al., 2015). this pioneering study on moringa in aurora province gives us a better understanding of the different factors limiting the adoption of moringa cultivation. the findings serve as starting point to promote the cultivation of the species. 1.1. statement of the problem the primary purpose of this study was to determine farmers’ perceptions and acceptance of the cultivation of m. oleifera in casiguran, aurora, philippines. the following questions guided this study: 1. how can we describe the prospective moringa farmers in terms of: a. socio-demographic profile? b. farm profile? 2. what are the farmers’ sources of information regarding moringa cultivation? 3. what are the farmers’ perceptions and acceptance levels of the cultivation of m. oleifera? 4. is there a significant relationship between: a. farmers’ socio-demographic profiles and their willingness to adopt moringa? b. farmers’ farm profiles and their willingness to adopt moringa? 5. which factors negatively affect farmers’ willingness to adopt moringa cultivation? 2. review of related literature this review provides a conceptual basis for the research by looking for different factors that hinder the proliferation of moringa cultivation in the philippines, as well as the determinants of farmers’ perceptions and acceptance of the cultivation of specific crops. 2.1. factors that hinder proliferation of moringa cultivation in the philippines despite the countless benefits of m. oleifera, it is still underutilized and its cultivation is still mainly part of intercropping systems (gandji et al., 2018). certain issues keep this industry from flourishing, such as a shortage of quality raw materials for moringa cultivation and a scarcity of planting materials (palada, 2017). in addition, dar (2017) cited problems with shifting from backyard to large-scale cultivation, financial investment for the production of moringa products, information dissemination for awareness and wider market access, effective methodologies and technologies, and obtaining international regulatory approval as the main challenges for the industrialization of moringa cultivation. the works of dar (2017) and palada (2017) explained the issues and challenges facing the moringa industry. however, the problem of the under-cultivation of moringa is best examined if it is approached on a micro-level scale, focusing on the socio-economic factors that affect farmers’ perceptions and acceptance of moringa cultivation. 2.2. determinants of farmers’ perceptions and acceptance of the cultivation of certain crops 2.2.1. demographic factors gender, age, family size, and ethnicity have been identified as variables correlated with farmers’ willingness to cultivate certain crops. in a study in pakistan, ali and rahut (2018) found that age was negatively correlated with farmers’ willingness to adopt specific crops, indicating that younger farmers are more willing to adopt a new cash crop. several studies have concluded that gender is a key determinant of farmers’ willingness to cultivate certain crops. there is a gender bias in crop cultivation, meaning that men are more willing to cultivate new crops (gandji, salako, fandohan, assogbadjo, & glèlè kakaï, 2018; n’danikou et al., 2015; torimiro, odeyinka, okorie, & akinsuyi, 2009). torimiro et al. (2009) also noted that there are differences in the level of awareness, perception, and propagation of m. oleifera when grouped according to gender. other demographic factors that affect farmers’ willingness are family size and ethnicity. ali and rahut (2018) found that family size was positively correlated with willingness. in addition, membership in an ethnic group is considered a significant factor because some ethnic groups utilize moringa more than others (gandji et al., 2018). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 279-286 281 income also plays a vital role in decision-making. ali and rahut (2018) pointed out that the family’s annual income is positively correlated with their willingness to adopt a certain crop as wealthy farmers can afford to take the risk for the prospect of higher returns. 2.2.2. human capital education level is positively related to farmers’ willingness to adopt because farmers with higher education levels are more likely to adopt new crops (ali & rahut, 2018). similarly, n’danikou et al. (2015) stated that women who were non-schooled or had dropped out of the education system were not willing to cultivate new crops, but those who had attended secondary or college education were more willing to cultivate them. the number of family members engaged in farming also correlates positively with farmers’ willingness. families with more members to help on the farm are more likely to adopt the cultivation of new crops (ali & rahut, 2018). 2.2.3. land ownership the size of land owned by farmers also determines their willingness to adopt. farmers who own greater land areas are more likely to venture into new crops (ali & rahut, 2018). in addition, landowners are more willing to grow new crops than farmers who are tenants. 2.2.4. access to facilities ali and rahut (2018) found that farmers who have access to credit institutions are more willing to grow new crops. access to potential markets is also vital. farmers who are proximate to markets are more likely to adopt since this gives them the opportunity to sell their crops (ali & rahut, 2018). 3. materials and methods 3.1. population and locale of the study this study was conducted in toytoyan, dipaculao, aurora, one of the municipalities in central aurora. this barangay was selected since this is where the malunggay production project will be implemented. in dipaculao, agriculture is one of the most significant sectors, and it has one of the largest agricultural land areas in the province, with 8,230 hectares. in this study, toytoyan farmers were the primary source of information. only farmers registered with the registry system for the basic sectors in agriculture (rsbsa) program were included in the study. 3.2. research design the study followed a descriptive research design, using a survey as the primary data-gathering technique and a correlational study for the analysis of the data. as a descriptive study, it examined farmers’ socio-demographic characteristics, farm profiles, information sources, and perceptions and acceptance of moringa cultivation. as a correlational study, it explored the relationships between the dependent and independent variables as stated in the conceptual framework. 3.3. data collection procedures preliminary data collection was conducted at the municipal agriculture office of dipaculao, aurora, to secure a list of farmers. after determining the target respondents, the research team conducted a house-to-house survey. during all data collection phases, all health and safety protocols were followed strictly, starting from proper coordination with concerned entities up to the survey process. a 97% response rate was achieved through the data collection process. 3.4. data collection instruments a self-made questionnaire was used for the survey. the instrument consisted of three parts. the first part aimed to determine the respondents' socio-demographic and farm-related profiles. the second part, which consisted of likert-type and yes-no questions, was concerned with farmers’ perceptions and acceptance of the cultivation of m. oleifera. the last part, which consisted of open-ended questions, aimed to determine the factors that negatively affected the willingness of farmers to adopt moringa cultivation not covered by socio-demographic characteristics. the questionnaire was self-administered so it was designed to be simple and easy to understand; it was written in tagalog. 3.5. treatment of data data were encoded and processed using international business machines (ibm) spss version 28. both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to answer the research questions. frequencies, means, and percentages were used to describe the population. on the other hand, correlations were used to explore the relationships between the dependent and independent variables of the study. in interpreting the mean values, the following guide was used: scale description 4.20-5.00 strongly agree 3.40-4.19 agree 2.60-3.39 neither agree nor disagree 1.80-2.59 disagree asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 279-286 282 1.00-1.79 strongly disagree 4. results and discussion 4.1. socio-demographic and farming profiles table 1 shows the socio-demographic profile of the toytoyan farmers. it is apparent from the table that the majority of the toytoyan farmers were aged 41-60 (48.4%), while only 16.1% of farmers were over 60. the mean age of the farmers was 46.37, which was lower than the average age of filipino rice farmers (53.07) found by palis (2020) and moya et al. (2015). nevertheless, this finding supports the study of briones (2017), who found that there was a higher proportion of old workers than young workers in the agriculture sector. when it comes to gender, most of the farmers were male (59.7%), while only 40.3% were female. a similar result was found by palis (2020), who reported a 70-30 ratio of male to female farmers. the increasing participation of women in agriculture is an evident trend in asia, including the philippines (moya et al., 2015). the majority of the farmers had completed secondary education (54.8%). none of the farmers had completed tertiary or vocational education. this finding supports the previous research of briones (2017), which stated that the agriculture sector had the least educated workforce compared to other industries. a report by the world bank (2020) also revealed that the majority of filipino farmers were elementary and high school graduates. regarding household size, 46.8% of the farmers had 4-6 household members, and 19.4% had 7-9 members. the study by palis (2020) revealed an average household size of 4.61, which was almost the same as the toytoyan farmers in this study, who had an average of 4.69 members per household. table 1. socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents. socio-demographic profile frequency percentage age 21-40 years old 22 35.5 41-60 years old 30 48.4 over 60 years old 10 16.1 sex male 37 59.7 female 25 40.3 civil status singe 7 11.3 married 51 82.3 separated 1 1.6 widowed 3 4.8 educational attainment elementary school 28 45.2 high school 34 54.8 number of household members 1-3 21 33.9 4-6 29 46.8 7-9 12 19.4 table 2 provides the farming profiles of the toytoyan farmers. it shows that the majority of the farmers had been engaged in farming for no more than 15 years, 37.1%. only one farmer had been farming for more than 46 years. their average years of experience was 22.15, which was lower than filipino farmers' average farming experience found by palis (2020). the majority of the respondents received help from family members with farming activities, aside from 15% whose family members performed non-farm activities. the table also shows that 45.2% of the farmers had 1-1.9 hectares of land. the average farm size of 1.79 hectares was suitable for a plantation. according to the moringaling philippines foundation (2019), a 1-hectare farm is large enough to start a profitable moringa plantation. the feasibility study conducted by animashaun and toye (2013) also revealed that the potential net profit of a 1-hectare moringa plantation could reach up to 5,137 usd per year. the table also shows the ownership type and description of the farms. most of the farmers owned their farms (80.6%), which makes it easier for these farmers to decide independently whether they want to adopt moringa, compared to those who are tenants and caretakers. furthermore, most of the farmers owned upland farms, and 30.6% had combined upland and lowland farms. since moringa is a drought-resistant crop, it does not want to be waterlogged for long periods (farm africa, 2019). therefore, upland farms are more suitable for moringa cultivation since they are not prone to water stagnation. in the case of toytoyan, most farmers currently cultivate coconut, but according to ponnuswami (2019), moringa can be successfully intercropped since it has few lateral roots that compete for nutrients with other crops. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 279-286 283 table 2. respondents’ farming profiles. farming profiles frequency percentage years engaged in farming 15 years and below 23 37.1 16-30 years 20 32.3 31-45 years 18 29.0 46 years and above 1 1.6 number of family members involved in farming none 15 24.2 1 16 25.8 2 24 38.7 3 7 11.3 farm size 1-1.9 hectares 28 45.2 2-2.9 hectares 19 30.6 more than 3 hectares 15 24.2 ownership caretaker 2 3.2 combination 5 8.1 owned 50 80.6 tenant 5 8.1 farm description upland 34 54.8 lowland 9 9 combination 19 30.6 4.2. farmers’ sources of information table 3 shows that the farmers had minimal information about moringa. one notable result is that 45.16% of the farmers had no source of information about moringa whatsoever. this explains why farmers in the community use moringa to build fences despite its economic potential. farmers’ top three sources of knowledge about moringa were government extension workers (19.35%), television and radio (17.74%), and agricultural suppliers (16.13%). the results support those of ngiwara and majawa (2017), who found that radio was among the top sources of information for farmers. however, this result does not support the findings of yaseen, xu, yu, and hassan (2016), who concluded that family, friends, and co-farmers were the primary sources of agricultural information. the table also shows that only 6.45% gained knowledge on moringa from social media, co-farmers, and printed materials, respectively. the limited use of social media was also reported by kanjina (2021). the marginal use of social media as a source of information for farmers was due to connectivity problems among farmers (balkrishna & deshmukh, 2017). table 3. source of information about moringa. information source frequency percentage government employee/extension worker 12 19.35 television/radio 11 17.74 agricultural suppliers 10 16.13 relatives 9 14.52 training/seminars 7 11.3 social media 4 6.45 co-farmers 4 6.45 pamphlets and brochures 4 6.45 no source at all 28 45.16 4.3. farmers’ perceptions of moringa cultivation table 4 shows toytoyan farmers’ perceptions of moringa cultivation. as the table reveals, the farmers strongly agreed with all the perceptional statements they were presented with. the highest mean (4.55) was recorded for the perception that farmers should adopt moringa cultivation. farmers also strongly agreed that the government should promote the cultivation of moringa. the lowest mean (4.21) was seen for the statement that money spent on moringa cultivation would be worth it. these findings align with those of maxwell (2019), who revealed favorable perceptions of the economic and healthcare importance of moringa. in his study, he also discovered that even when people lack awareness of the economic benefits of moringa, they still have a favorable perception. this further supports the result of this study that even if toytoyan farmers have limited sources of information about moringa, they have a positive perception of it. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 279-286 284 table 4. perceptions of moringa cultivation. perceptional statements mean interpretation moringa is of great economic and health importance. 4.44 strongly agree moringa cultivation is easy to adopt. 4.45 strongly agree money spent on moringa cultivation is worth it. 4.21 strongly agree farmers should adopt moringa cultivation 4.55 strongly agree the government should promote the cultivation of moringa 4.53 strongly agree farmers’ willingness to cultivate moringa is shown in table 5. almost all (97%) of the farmers expressed their willingness to cultivate moringa, while only 8.1% were undecided about whether to adopt moringa as their crop. none of the farmers was unwilling to cultivate moringa. table 5. farmers’ willingness to cultivate moringa. willingness frequency percentage yes 57 91.9 no 0 0 not sure 3 8.1 when farmers were asked to rank their preference for moringa compared with other crops, they ranked it third, as shown in table 6. coconut and banana were still the preferred choices as these are crops that the farmers have cultivated for a long time. these are also the crops that the region has prioritized in terms of training and input assistance. table 6. ranking of moringa among other crops. crops rank coconut 1 banana 2 moringa 3 vegetables 4 corn 5 rice 6 4.4. relationship between profiles and farmers’ willingness to cultivate moringa table 7 and table 8 show the summarized results of the correlation tests between socio-demographic and farm profiles, on the one hand, and the farmers’ willingness to cultivate moringa. it was found that sex, civil status, educational attainment, and the number of household members had no association with the farmers’ willingness to cultivate moringa. however, a weak association was recorded between age and farmers’ willingness. these findings align with those of ali and rahut (2018), who revealed that age had a negative correlation with farmers’ willingness to adopt a new crop, indicating that younger farmers are more willing to adopt a new cash crop. table 7. correlation coefficients between socio-demographic profile and willingness to cultivate moringa. variable coefficient interpretation age -0.219 weak association sex 0.034 no association civil status 0.053 no association educational attainment 0.039 no association number of household members -0.009 no association in addition, no associations were found between the farm profiles and the farmers’ willingness to cultivate moringa. this finding contradicts ali and rahut (2018), who found that farmers who owned a greater area of land were more likely to venture into new crops. in addition, they found that landowners were more willing to grow new crops than tenants. table 8. correlation coefficients between farm profile and willingness to cultivate moringa. variable coefficient interpretation years engaged in farming -0.100 no association number of household members engaged 0.078 no association farm size 0.022 no association farm ownership 0.152 no association farm description 0.053 no association table 9 presents the factors that prevent farmers from deciding to adopt moringa. although farmers are willing to plant moringa, they report that there are factors that hold them back, including knowledge and skills in moringa asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 279-286 285 cultivation and management, capital needed for planting materials, and equipment and facilities for cultivation and processing. table 9. factors that affect the decision to plant moringa. factors frequency percentage knowledge and skills 57 91.93 capital 55 88.71 equipment and machinery 44 70.97 5. conclusion this research has found that the majority of the farmers have positive perceptions of moringa and a willingness to cultivate it. it also found that farmers’ age, sex, farm size, years engaged in farming, and number of household members had no relationship with their willingness to cultivate moringa. furthermore, farmers considered a lack of knowledge and skills in moringa cultivation and management, capital needed for planting materials, and equipment and facilities for cultivation and processing to be factors that might affect their decision to cultivate moringa. therefore, this study recommends that the concerned agencies provide the farmers with financial loans, machinery/tools, and farm inputs. the findings also suggest that to increase the cultivation of moringa, concerned agencies must promote and raise awareness of its importance as well as its economic viability. it is also important to enhance the links between farmers and potential markets for produced moringa so that the farmers are motivated to engage in large-scale production. finally, it is equally important for the government to provide post-harvest facilities to enable the farmers to increase their profits. funding: this research is supported by department of agriculture regional field office iii (grant number: 02-101000-2020-12-9483). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the 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(2009). adoption of moringa oleifera to combat under-nutrition viewed through the lens of the “diffusion of innovations” theory. ecology of food and nutrition, 48(3), 212-225.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03670240902794598. torimiro, d. o., odeyinka, s. m., okorie, v. o., & akinsuyi, m. a. (2009). gender analysis of socio-cultural perception of moringa oleifera amongst farmers in southwestern nigeria. journal of international women's studies, 10(4), 188-202. vizcarra, e. (2019). new agri chief backs moringa industry. department of agriculture agricultural training institute. retrieved from https://ati.da.gov.ph/ati-main/news/08162019-1058/new-agri-chief-backs-moringa-industry world bank. (2020). transforming philippine agriculture: during covid-19 and beyond. retrieved from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/34012. yaseen, m., xu, s., yu, w., & hassan, s. (2016). farmers’ access to agricultural information sources: evidences from rural pakistan. journal of agricultural chemistry and environment, 5(1), 12-19.available at: https://doi.org/10.4236/jacen.2016.51b003. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 34 affordances in crop diversification: three cases from the philippines teresa joi p. de leona jaime a. manalo ivb a,bsocioeconomics division, philippine rice research institute, science city of muñoz, nueva ecija, philippines.  deleontj917@gmail.com (corresponding author) articlehistory abstract received: 4 december 2023 revised: 13 march 2024 accepted: 29 march 2024 published: 27 may 2024 keywords affordances cognitive process crop diversification intuitive decision-making philippines rice farmers. this paper investigated the viability of crop diversification as an alternative production system for filipino rice farmers in light of the rice tariffication law. qualitative research methods were employed, including focus group discussions, key informant interviews, in-depth interviews, and wind-screen survey. the transcript analysis employed both inductive and deductive approaches, supplemented by auditability measures such as coding guides and informal memberchecking. using the affordances theory with additional insights from the capabilities theory and intuitive decision-making theory, the findings show that rice farmers in nueva ecija, ilocos norte, and tarlac shared one cognitive process and one set of variables in deciding on diversifying crops. this is despite the provincial differences in farming contexts. affordances and anti-affordances in crop diversification are dependent on farmers’ visual and tracking experiences, which guide them in their evaluation of crop diversification as a pro-welfare farming practice. they evaluate the suitability of crop diversification for their sociocultural, economic, and farming contexts, but then shift to intuitive decision-making for their ultimate decision. risks that are mostly external to farmer control, such as sufficiency of irrigation, financial capital, weather, and climate, make them conclude in a posture of luck after a detailed evaluation process on the practice of crop diversification. this study provides insights into using crop diversification as an alternative production system for rice farmers. contribution/originality: this research adopts a social science lens for understanding crop diversification, delving into unconventional parameters rather thanthe predominant trend which primarily aligns with the physical sciences. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i2.5089 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: leon, t. j. p. de., & iv, j. a. m. (2024). affordances in crop diversification: three cases from the philippines. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2), 34–50. 10.55493/5005.v14i2.5089 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1.introduction crop diversification (cd) is one of the globally recommended pathways for poverty reduction because it expands income sources in farming communities, leading to increased economic returns. this practice involves cultivating different crops and species in a cropping system, which also offers non-economic benefits including a diversified diet, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and ecological balance. worldwide research interest in cd accelerated asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 2 (2024): 34-50. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2803-6094 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3999-6661 mailto:deleontj917@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 35 between the 1950s to the 1980s, then surged in the late 2019s when hufnagel, reckling, and ewert (2020) documented the research rate at around 100 per year. a global-scale study on cd by beillouin, ben-ari, and makowski (2019) recognized it as a key solution to the pressing issues of sustainable food and feed production for a growing world population (beillouin et al., 2019; strobl, 2022). food security, dietary diversity, agricultural resource management, and climate change are paramount concepts in this issue. according to their study, cd research in line with these typically gauges impact via crop yield, effects on soil quality, biodiversity, pest and disease ecology, environmental outcomes, and macro-economic outcomes. the general research schema is notably calibrated on physical science measures and rarely on social science. the rice tariffication law (rtl), or ra 11203: an act liberalizing the importation, exportation and trading of rice, lifting for the purpose thequantitative import restriction on rice, and for other purposes, was enacted in the philippines in 2019. this is a long-coming major trade development, beginning in 1986. after 25 years of exemption from the world trade organization’s (wto) rice importation regulations, the philippines finally transitioned to a liberal rice trade in 2019. the entry of cheap imported rice led to a predicted decline in paddy prices (department of agriculture (da), 2019). the rice competitiveness enhancement fund (rcef), where php 10b of the tariffs go, served as a key measure to counter the price decline. the department of agriculture (da) invests excess collections in expanded crop insurance programs and cd, among other initiatives (da, 2020). in 2019, the department of agriculture (da) highlighted diversification as vital for modernizing agriculture and doubling the income of farmers and fisherfolk. while empirical research on philippine-context cd is scant, consensus suggests its positive socioeconomic, environmental, and agricultural sector resilience impacts (lin, 2011; pellegrini & luca, 2014). a policy paper from the philippine institute for development studies(briones, 2009) authored by briones discussed constraints hounding local fruit and vegetable subsector development, and consequently agricultural diversification. reflecting on the work of librero and rola in the early 2000s, briones identified the following constraints: concerns about high costs, losses from pests, lack of resources, institutional inadequacies, and poor marketing systems (briones, 2009). two decades later, the same narrative ensues, with philippine agriculture being characterized by limited diversification and low productivity (brown, fezoil, & reynaldo, 2018). with the foregoing, this study seeks to investigate whether cd would prove to be a viable alternative production system for the filipino rice farmers. this study takes on a social science lens to understand cd. the overarching question is: what are the affordances in crop diversification in the philippines? the specific research questions are: (1) what are the important characteristics of the research sites with respect to crop diversification? (2) what are the characteristics of crop-diversified farmers and monocropping/specialized farmers? (3) what are the considerations in pursuing crop diversification? and (4) what is the needed policy support for farmers? 2. literature review chen et al. (2018)note that gaps persist in comprehending the risks that farmers take in doing cd and about the determinants of cd. mindset change from rice monoculture to crop and livelihood diversification is still ongoing, especially in southeast asia (sea) (climate change agriculture and food security (ccafs), 2019). agriculture in the region is currently flourishing through large-scale commercial and small-scale subsistence farming, small-scale marketing, as well as traditional and artisanal practices. smallholders farmers implement these practices, with rice dominating their production systems (birthal, joshi, roy, & pandey, 2022; climate change agriculture and food security (ccafs), 2019). as with the rest of the world, cd is one of the identified keys to agricultural growth in the sea. chen et al. (2018) affirm that it is pro-smallholder farmers, especially when coping with fluctuating markets (chen et al., 2018). high-value crop development and organic farming are the top cd strategies in sean countries with predominantly agricultural economies, such as thailand, vietnam, indonesia, cambodia, philippines, and malaysia (asian development bank (adb), 2022; yanakittkul & aungvaravong, 2020). on the other hand, countries with limited arable land, such as brunei, singapore, and lao people’s democratic republic (lao pdr) maneuver their import-reliant food economies with technological innovation. examples of these are precision farming, hydroponics, and vertical farming (mok, tan, & chen, 2020; musa & basir, 2021).according to beillouin et al. (2019) the region shares a trend with polynesia in having the fewest cd studies. crop mixing, polyculture, crop rotation, relay cropping, intercropping, diversification into high-value crops(hvcs), adoption of modern varieties and improved crops, implementation of agroforestry, and crop-livestock diversification are the various ways in which cd is implemented insea (feliciano, 2019; hufnagel et al., 2020). examples of high-value crops are coffee, cacao, fruit crops, root crops, vegetable crops, legumes, spices, and ornamental plants (high-value crops development act, 1995). beillouin et al. (2019) underscore the positive impact of these on crop production, biodiversity, and ecological balance, encompassing water services, pests and diseases, carbon sequestration, and soil quality. feliciano (2019) affirms that it is indeed a solution to the “no poverty” united nations sustainable development goal (un sdg), especially in the global south. merlos and hijmans (2022) suggest that “environmental constraints and the reliance on a few major crops for most food supply” are among the issues that come with cd but are lacking in the literature. moreover, we must consider regional differences, noting that specialization of farms and regions results in low levels of local crop diversity worldwide.with these, the benefits of cd at the macro level become context-specific at the micro level. globalization and international trade play crucial roles in cd. in a study by fraser (2006) it was noted that agricultural policies since the 1990s have emphasized liberalized trade without due consideration of microeconomic impacts. this led to prescriptive approaches to integrating smallholder farmers into global value chains. however, olofsson, mirjam, joyeeta, and yves (2021) argued that there are detrimental outcomes to this approach, including asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 36 heightened risks, increased poverty, and diversion of scarce resources away from locally nourishing food. furthermore, burkholz and schweitzer (2019) pointed out that the international trade prioritization on maize, rice, soy, and wheat causes countries to specialize in the production of these, rendering them highly vulnerable to global natural and political setbacks. like most southeast asian countries, the philippines faces constant challenges from international trade developments and environmental changes in its rice-dominated agriculture sector. cd has been among its longrunning passports towards resilience, increased gross domestic product (gdp), intensified rural employment, and realizing prosperity in the lives of farmers, who are mostly smallholders (briones, 2021; dawe, 2015; espino & atienza, 2001). figure 1 below illustrates the timeline of crop diversification programs in the philippines. the transition from rice monoculture to rice-based farming systems has been underway in the philippines since the late 1990s (espino & atienza, 2001). local research, development of technologies, and boosting of strategies on cd were initiated by the international rice research institute (irri) in the 1970s (miranda and panabokke 1989, as cited in espino and atienza (2001)). the mariano marcos state university (mmsu) and the philippine rice research institute (philrice) followed suit, conducting research in the regions of ilocos and central luzon (espino & atienza, 2001). among the major cd efforts in the country are the creation of a national committee on crop diversification (nccd) in 1992 (espino & atienza, 2001)(status inactive); launching the high-value crops development program (hvcdp), pursuant to the high value crops development act of 1995 (briones, 2009; department of agriculture (da), n.d); executing the world bank-funded diversified farm income and market development project (difmdp) from 2004 to 2009 in alignment with the agriculture and fisheries modernization act of 1997 (afma) (briones, 2009);and initiating the ginintuangmasaganang ani high value commercial crops (gma-hvcc) program (briones, 2009). figure 1. crop diversification initiatives in the philippines from the 1990s to present. note: 1 palayamanan is a portmanteau of palayan (paddy field) and yaman (riches), suggesting that there is properity in rice farming. 2 ginintuang masaganang ani translate as '' golden harvest''. its acronym, gma, are also the initials of former philpine president gloria macapagal arroyo under whose term the program was implmented. 3 gusto naming milyonaryo kayo translate as '' we want you to become millionaires''. this campaign intended to inculcate in former that a million-level income is possible when farm soace is maximized with diverse crops. 4 sa palay at gulay, may ani, hanapbuhay, opportinidad, at nutrisyon translate as '' rice and vegetables bring harvest, livehood, opportunities, and nutrition'' . its acronym,pag-ahon, is a fillipino word that translate as '' to rice'' . the program suggests that rice and vegetable farming can raise farmers' harvest, income, and food security. other national-level cd programs from the past decade were the gusto naminmilyonaro kayo campaign under the rural transformation movement by philrice in 2014; the philrice-developed palayamanan and its upgrade the palayamanan plus (palplus) rice-based farming system (2014); several programs aided by thephilippine council for agriculture, aquatic, and natural resources research and development (pcaarrd)(2017-2021) on coconut-based cropping systems, rubber-based cropping systems, and integrated diversified farming; gulayansa barangay and gulayansapaaralanprograms; and the 2020 da project sa palay at gulay, may ani, hanapbuhay, oportunidad, at nutrisyon(pag-ahon). 3. theoretical framework in this paper, we draw heavily from the affordances theory (gibson, 1977; glover, 2022; thapa & yingqin, 2019) with some theoretical support from capabilities (thapa & yingqin, 2019) and intuitive decision-making (idm) theories in making sense of our findings. affordances are “immaterial things that are made available by the environment that surrounds an individual” (glover, 2022). in other words, affordances have emergent properties. some synonyms for affordances are “propositions,” “proposals,” “offers,” or “invitations” (glover, 2022). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 37 in his seminal paper, dominic glover applies the affordances theory following a technographic approach to technology. by this, he means that technologies are “viewed as a domain of technical practices, in which various tools and techniques are deployed purposefully to transform materials and so to achieve human,social objectives” (p. 94). glover outlines three characteristics of affordances. these are perceptual, experiential, and relational. the perceptual characteristic, citing (pols, 2012) refers to “the properties of objects and environments as perceived by the senses and apprehended by the mind of potential users” (p. 75). for the affordances to be perceived, the “potential for use” must first be in the mind of a “potential user” (p. 75). the experiential characteristic, on the other hand, refers to affordances’ discoverability. they can be discovered through trial-and-error and recognized through experience. affordances are also cultural as they could also be discovered through observation and emulation. lastly, the relational characteristic pertains to the “possibilities for material interactions” that emerge from the relationship “between an object or environment that has certain biophysical limitations” (p.75). in explaining the usability of the affordances theory with respect to agricultural technologies, glover identified three key areas where affordances could be investigated. these are material, cultural, and socio-economic relations. in looking for affordances under material relations, the researcher is being invited to look at the relationships between attributes of things and environments with respect to the capacities of individuals. in the context of this research, this would refer to the interactions between cd and the farmers, considering the biophysical limitations in their respective areas. under cultural relations, one is being invited to interrogate how existing beliefs, cultures, and traditions enable or constrain affordances. in the context of this research, it would be useful to look at how cd is being supported culturally at the research sites. for example, what percentage of the community is into cd? do the farmers in the community support any other crops that are more culturally significant than others? socioeconomic relations invite interrogation pertaining to wealth, income, consumption, jobs, and livelihood. this is more of a political economy type of inquiry. the motivation is to look at how these elements influence the trajectory of affordances among the stakeholders involved. in the context of this research, this would pertain to how the level of income and wealth of the farmers are affecting affordances in cd among them. or, do these elements result in “antiaffordances”? figure 2. theoretical framework. this research investigates affordances in cd, as illustrated in the diagram above (figure 2). the diagram shows that farmers coexist in one space with technologies. the farmers have individual capabilities and agency or the power to act. the technologies likewise have physical features that allow their potential for use to be perceived by the farmers. this space or environment is valuable to the farmers because it provides opportunities despite biophysical limitations. structural conditions, such as social, institutional, and cultural conditions, shape the availability of opportunities in this environment (thapa & yingqin, 2019). yet the farmers are also able to influence these structural conditions through agency. when the farmers become aware of cd, perceive its potential, and exercise their agency to interact with it, the interaction becomes a dynamic and manifold process that creates visual and tracking experiences over time. these experiences affect the farmers’ perceptions of cd. their individual capacities or socioeconomic status also have an impact on their experience. hence, the farmers’ perception of cd co-develops with their interaction with it. affordances in cd are generated from all of these, and are in turn evaluated by the farmers in consideration of what will lead to their well-being. at this point in the process, we argue that the farmers shift from rational decisionmaking to idm. according to matzler, “intuition is not a magical sixth sense… nor does it signify either random and whimsical decision-making or the opposite of reason. rather, intuition is a highly complex and highly developed form of reasoning that is based on years of experience and learning, and on facts, patterns, concepts, procedures, and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 38 abstractions stored in one’s head” (matzler, bailom, & mooradian, 2007). it is tacit knowledge that is rather difficult to articulate (klein, 2015). sauter (1999) described it as “[appearing] to include instant information processing and choice. but decision-makers might sense feelings and visual clues or see a pattern in apparently unrelated facts."investigating affordances in cd, the farmers are seen as such decision-makers who have the agency to shape their own lives, other people’s lives, and their spaces based on a set of valued choices leading to well-being. 4. methodology this research is predominantly qualitative, with in-depth interviews (idi), key informant interviews (kii), and focus group discussion (fgd) as the main methods of data collection. the exploratory nature of this research and the scarcity of studies on cd in the philippines, particularly those addressing its social aspects, justify the use of qualitative approach (marshall & gretchen, 2016). the research was conducted in three rice-farmingcommunities, namely talavera, nueva ecija; bacarra, ilocos norte; and moncada, tarlac (see results section for a description of the research sites). we conducted 134 interviews, each lasting from 45-90 minutes (table 1). the questions in the interviews revolved around general farming practices, the extent of cd practice, characteristics of monocrop and cropdiversified farmers, programs and enabling laws or policies on cd, and enablers and constraints on cd. table 1. data collection matrix. method talavera, nueva ecija brgys. valle and bulac moncada, tarlac brgys. sta. monica and sta. lucia west bacarra, ilocos norte brgys. bani and pulangi in-depth interview with farmers total interviewed: 40 total details: 12 crop diversified 12 monocrop 16 fgd (mixed) total interviewed: 40 total details: 12 crop diversified 12 monocrop 16 fgd (mixed) total interviewed: 40 total details: 12 crop diversified 12 monocrop 16 fgd (mixed) key informant interviews total interviewed: 6 total details: 3 kii lgu 1 kii da-rfo 1 windshield lgu 1 kii philrice total interviewed: 4 total details: 3 kii lgu 1 windshield lgu total interviewed: 5 total details: 2 kii lgu 1 kii da-rfo 2 windshield lgu note: legend: brgybarangay; da-department of agriculture; lgu-local government unit; rfo-regional field office. all interviews were audio recorded with the permission of the research participants, and were later transcribed as an auditability measure (o'leary, 2014). we read the transcriptions line-by-line to identifiyemerging themes, adhering to the analytic objectives outlined in this paper. we identified the themes through an iterative process of inductive and deductive reading. in coding the transcript, a coding guide was developed as another auditability measure to ensure consistency, especially that six researchers participated in the coding process. group deliberation resolved discrepancies in the coding. as a measure of trustworthiness, we employed informal member-checking among research participants (lincoln & guba, 1985). all participating farmers gave their consent to participate, and they were aware of their right to withdraw at any point without responsibility for their participation in this research. this paper anonymizesall participants. 5. results 5.1. site characteristics with respect to crop diversification in each municipality, the rice-based agricultural economy has distinct characteristics: talavera is the vegetable basket in the lowland plains of nueva ecija; bacarra contributes to the garlic, corn nut (cornick), feeds, and tobacco industries in semi-arid ilocos norte; and moncada, tarlac is a conducive niche for root crops, corn, and tobacco. these contextualize the observable cropping patterns, land use, and cd type at the study sites. the barangay-specific landscapes offer insights into the factors that farmers consider in doing cd, establishing why and how these might be enablers or constraints. 5.1.1. talavera, nueva ecija bulac has a defined area conducive to planting other crops than rice. the local term for this is bakod or tumana. farms in the bakod are irrigated by deepwells or water pumps, and are located in an elevated area by the village’s river.magalas or mabuhangin,which encompass silty, sandy, or sandy loam textures, describe the soil composition. the prevailing cropping pattern in the bakodis rice and other crops. usually, rice is followed by onion production in the dry season. if not onion, some farmers opt for tomatoes, chili, sponge gourd (patola), squash, mung bean (munggo), eggplant, okra, corn, chinese chard (petchay), or sweet potato. in contrast, the dedicated area for rice features lagkitinor clay soil which makes it conducive to ricecropping only. figures 3, 4, and 5characterize the bulac landscape. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 39 3. 4. figures 3-4. aerial view of bulac showing production areas set for rice production. source: byahenikalbo ride and fly, 2021. figure 5. bakod area of bulac where onions are grown in the dry season. valle has a more varied landscape, hosting a diversity of crops and vegetables in both the wet and dry seasons. the unassuming cause of this condition is water insufficiency, being located at the tail-end of the irrigation system. valle’s topography resembles a slope. riverside farms, also called bakod, are situated in the lower part. unlike bulac, valle has diverse soil types, which makes it possible to find rice planted amidst other vegetables in the wet season. mid-slope is where the irrigation canal runs, level with rice fields. then on the upper part are the rain-fed farms. all valle farms, then, are conducive to planting non-rice crops similar to those planted in bulac. additionally, there are also watermelon, melon, garlic, bittergourd, sili, bottle gourd, and cucumber. instead of dedicating entire parcels to a single crop, some valle farmers apportion them to accommodate multiple crops simultaneously. figures 6 and 7 exemplify valle’s heterogenous terrain. bulac and valle also maximize backyard and communal neighborhood spaces for growing vegetables, in line with the national initiative called gulayansa barangay. these spaces grow vegetables for household consumption. in 2021, talavera won the best gulayansa barangay championship award in central luzon (gosuico, 2021). figure 6. interview at the border of a bitter gourd farm and a chili production area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 40 figure 7. on the other side of the bitter gourd area is a rice production area. 5.1.2. bacarra, ilocos norte pulangi and bani share similar cd landscapes.figures 8 to11 demonstrate these similarities. the case here is that farmers own or tend to own dispersed parcels of land that can be situated in upland or lowland zones. the upland zones begin at the base of hills, which are already unreached by irrigation. hence, they are cultivated with corn, garlic, chili, and onions. some farmers grow vegetables in their backyards where possible. figure 8. an overview of lowland bani. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 41 figure 9. crop landscape changes at the margins of bani rice production areas proximate to hills. figure 10. topography at the margins of bani rice production areas proximate to hills. figure 11.pulangi rice production area showing irrigation source. 5.1.3. moncada, tarlac the majority of the rice farms in sta. monica also grow corn. the ecosystem is irrigated, but water supply is low in the dry season. figures 12-15 depict the land use in the village.sta. monica is located at the irrigation tail-end, similar to valle in nueva ecija. the irrigation comes from the municipality of san roque in the nearby province of pangasinan. farmers’ crop choice to alternate with rice is tied to their dynamics with the local traders, i.e., contract farming. as a result, corn becomes the frequent choice. the farmers mentioned that they attempted to plant onions in 2020 but failed. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 42 12. 13. 14. 15. figures 12-15. varied land use in sta. monica. sta. lucia west is a catch basin for several bodies of water, which causes flooding in the wet season. this makes it a predominantly monocrop rice area and also a diversified area. when the farms flood, some farmers engage in daily fishing and sell their produce at the market in the nearby municipality of paniqui. others sell firewood or do food business, selling tupig, a local delicacy, in stalls along the highway.figures 16-19 below illustrate the livelihood environment in the wet season. in the dry season, they optimize productivity and profits through hybrid rice cultivation. 16. 17. 18. 19. figures 16-19. sta. lucia west. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 43 5.2. characteristics of crop diversified farmers and rice monocrop farmers despite varying contextual differences that shape the nature of cd across the sites, the determinants of a farmer’s ability to diversify crops remain consistent. whether practicing cd or monocropping, farming practices stem from familial inheritance; something that the farmers were born into. the same is true with their crop choices and sometimes even market choices. the interviews reveal that various government programs and the da, through in-kind support and technical training on nutrient management practices, have supported the cd farming lifestyle. few, if any, narratives emerged in which the da formally presented farmers with alternatives to their customary practices that were appropriate for their land, beyond what they could observe in others. this can be reflected bilaterally; one track can be about the information-seeking behavior of farmers, and the other about the proactiveness of the da. either way, these contribute to farmer mind-setting towards cd. interestingly, crop-diversified and monocrop farmers are more similar than dissimilar. in nearly all measurable sociodemographic characteristics, they share in “having” but vary in the “extent of having” (see table 2). for example, both types of farmers have available land to cultivate. however, the cd farmer may also have access to a bakod parcel (talavera), an upland farm (bacarra), or an opportunity to be hired labor in a non-rice farm (talavera and tarlac). both types of farmers have access to water, though the cd farmer generally has less supply. both are able to financially invest in farming, but the cd farmer is able to risk higher amounts of investment. “that’s what my father has been planting since time immemorial… i am not aware of any vegetable that will thrive in irrigated areas.” farmer, talavera, 58 “that’s what my father taught us so we know.” farmer, bacarra, 40s in general, access to farms suitable for planting non-rice crops and more resources characterize crop-diversified farmers. these farms are characterized by their distance from the main irrigation system. furthermore, we find them to be high-risk-takers employing various cd strategies. some do it for economic security, while others to do it for food sufficiency. not all intentions for cd are commercial production-inclined. some are subsistence-oriented, where any excess to the household needs may be sold to the neighbors or to vendors at a nearby market. in terms of income, crop-diversified farmers realize that they are able to earn a higher income and improve their quality of life, as evidenced by their capacity to buy motorcycles or more farm lots, for example. moreover, they are able to gain returns on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis due to multiple harvests. the higher return of investment relative to rice production and the chances of getting lucky when they hit the high market prices by chance are the main drivers of their cd practice. on the other hand, monocrop farmers do not have access to farms suitable for planting non-rice crops, whether by land ownership, lease, tenancy, or labor services. their farms are near irrigation canals, which means they are better supplied with water. some monocrop farmers used to be crop-diversified farmers but became discouraged with several experiences of lugi or negative profits. these are usually caused by factors external to farmer control, such as panahon(weather and climate), pest infestation, crop disease, and increasing land rental rates. in general, monocrop farmers are interested in doing cd but cannot afford to risk the chances of negative outcomes. table 2. summary of the characteristics of crop diversified farmers and rice monocrop farmers. characteristics rice monocrop crop diversified inherited diverse crop options less more access to water more less access to suitable land less more financial or capital resources less more government support more less risk-taking less more production costs less more number of harvests from one cropping less more income less more return of investment less more “when we plant vegetables, we have daily earnings.” farmer, talavera, 71 “i am only able to sell a small volume in the market. our neighbors usually buy our vegetable produce.” farmer, bacarra, 41 “when we bring chili to the market early in the morning, it gets sold out immediately.” farmer, tarlac, 58 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 44 characteristics rice monocrop crop diversified chance of good price more less price stability more less negative profit experience (lugi) less more impact risks from bad weather less more impact risks from pests and diseases less more subsistence production intention same same commercial production intention same same neighborhood is target market less more interest to crop diversify same same market link less more 5.3. enablers and constraints of crop diversification there are many considerations when doing cd. based on the interviews, the assessment process of farmers is multi-staged, where the variables considered and scope of social influence differ as the stages progress. the considerations are identified in the tables below, taking off from the point of view of encouraging a monocrop rice farmer to diversify crops. the variables are also assessed on how they might enable cd or be a constraint to cd. addressing the considerations from the previous stage advances the assessment process. these cut across all three sites and are applicable for reflection by all rice industry players. table 3. stage 1 of the crop diversification assessment process. stage 1: information gathering (is crop diversification for me?) social influence: da and markets cognitive process considerations enabler of cd constraint to cd is it possible to plant other crops than rice? farming type already a planter of other crops than rice none farm ecosystem rainfed and irrigated but insufficient water supply irrigated with sufficient water supply farm location riverside, far from irrigation canal lowland, near the irrigation canal farm soil type silty (magalas), clay loam (semilagkitin) clay (lagkitin) is it profitable? income exceeds rice income does not exceed rice income profit risk when successful (kapagtumama) risk if breakeven investment access to informal or formal creditor no informal or formal creditor what crop options are available? knowledge on options proactive in seeking options through various media, e.g. facebook, da, local markets aware of inherited practices only neighbor influence neighbor farmers have experience in planting other crops neighbor farmers plant similar crops table 4. stage 2 of the crop diversification assessment process. stage 2: weighing of personal capacities (can i undertake crop diversification?) social influence: farmer and neighbor farmers cognitive process considerations enabler of cd constraint to cd can i plant other crops than rice? availability of suitable land (whether owned, rented, lent, or labored) with access to suitable land no access to suitable land availability of resources for capital (whether owned or loaned; social or economic) with access to resources no access to resources availability and profitability of alternative livelihood to farming no alternative with available profitable alternative livelihood availability of farm supply (seeds and inputs) provided as aid or sampler unavailable price of inputs either subsidized or within budget expensive water supply scarce sufficient asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 45 stage 2: weighing of personal capacities (can i undertake crop diversification?) social influence: farmer and neighbor farmers cognitive process considerations enabler of cd constraint to cd tenurial status land owner or tenant with decision-making freedom, laborer for multiple crop types tenant without decision-making freedom, laborer for only one type of crop neighbor factor neighbor will not plant rice neighbor will plant rice familiarity on crop care and maintenance of available crops familiar not familiar will i take the high risk? previous experiences of failure 1-3 times more than 3 times status of debt and available resources with means to get by until return of investment cannot afford until return of investment farm size at least 2 hectares small farm size anticipated costs and returns based on personal or other farmers’ experience weighed as not a loss nor breakeven weighed as breakeven age pre-senior old age availability of market with sure market, engaged in contract farming, or member of cooperative no sure market tenurial status land owner tenant lakas ng loobor willingness to take risk with high hopes doubtful table 5. stage 3 of the crop diversification assessment process. stage 3: prospecting markets (who will buy my produce?) social influence: farmer, farming community, and markets cognitive process considerations enabler of cd constraint to cd to whom/where can i sell? knowledge of markets and price many market options few market options anticipation of supply competitors (e.g. from other provinces) with contacts from the market, other localities, or other provinces poor anticipation could lead to unfavorable experience byahero capacity and boundaries produce will be picked up in the field produce will not be picked up in the field is crop diversification for me? everyone desires cd for increased economic returns, but not everyone can afford it. rice farmers in talavera, moncada, and bacarra either alternate or simultaneously plant hvcs with rice (if the farmer has diverse parcels). cd is commonly an inherited practice. when monoculture rice farmers transition into cd, they consider the suitability of their farms, economic risks, and availability of options. across the three sites, favorable environments for cd were water-limited farms (rainfed riverbanks) and well-draining soils like silty soil or clay loam, which were perceived as conducive for a wider variety of crops. assuming that the farm profile requirements for cd are satisfied, the farmers consider profitability next. since rice is the primary commodity traded, the income from it is the profitability benchmark for the pursuit of cd, both for monoculture farmers and even those already practicing cd. in season, the market price of hvcs far outweighs the farmgate price of rice. however, the difference in risk between rice and hvcs lies in market stability, vulnerability to bad weather, and required capital investment. market price of hvcs fluctuates more rapidly than rice. according to the farmers, losses from rice production are easier to recover from than losses from hvcs. in bulac, talavera and sta. monica, tarlac, onion is a top hvc choice. for a hectare of land, farmers estimate capital investment around at least php 100,000, as opposed to php 30,000 50,000 for rice. such a costly amount is often available from formal creditors, such as banks and cooperatives. in pursuing cd, farmers need the security of having this financial resource available (whether at one time or staggered) and a high probability of returning this loan with profit. hitting the optimal price is challenging for most of them as they rely on supply and demand trends from previous cropping rather than forecasts, although favorable past experiences foster risk-taking. hence, access to accurate information on market trends boosts the confidence of farmers in cd. according to the interviews, the majority of the farmers rely on community opinion for such information. hence, advise from agricultural extension workers is most helpful for the majority of farmers’ passive information-seeking behavior. a few farmers mentioned using social media for monitoring market trends or even surveying their communities for planted crops. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 46 can i undertake crop diversification? once it has been determined that cd is a suitable pursuit based primarily on physical area requirements, the assessment progresses to evaluating whether or not the farmer is personally capable of pursuing it. at this juncture, the farmer considers choice relative to personal socioeconomic capacity, social relations, roles, and experiences. stage 1 assesses enabling contexts, while stage 2 assesses access to resources. with knowledge of other crops and the ideal farm profile for cd, the farmers assess whether suitable land, financial resources, and needed farm supplies are available to them. they also gauge their technical capacity to manage new crops, as well as their neighbors’ crop plans. this neighbor factor was most pronounced in bacarra, where corn farmers produce for food and feed markets. white corn is used in the food industry, whereas red corn is used in the feed industry. mixing these results in variegated corn and a lower purchase value. hence, the bacarra farmers are careful to consult their neighbors regarding their plans. a similar phenomenon is observed in the village of bulac, talavera, where farmers configure their crops according to the water requirements of their neighbor’s chosen crop. for example, if a parcel suitable for both rice and hvcs has an adjacent parcel that is suitable for rice only, the former parcel will grow rice since hvcs will not survive the water requirements of rice. in brgy. valle, talavera, this phenomenon also exists relative to the insecticide requirements of the crops. farmers observe that different crops have different sensitivities to pesticides, which affect the vigor of the plants. the farmers shared about noticing lungkot(literally sadness; synonymous to droopiness) in their crops as a reaction to certain pesticides. whether or not farmers will risk the pursuit of cd-for the first time or not-depends on various factors. cd farmers frequently cited that experiencing three crop failures or instances of irrecoverable crop loss are tipping points leading to reassessing cd or exploring alternative crops. according to the farmers, risk is more comfortable for those with large landholdings who can self-finance. sometimes, farmers who have experienced extreme losses still consider risking the next time around in hopes of hitting the jackpot to clear piled-up debts. having a sure market aids in such risk-taking, which membership in a cooperative is able to provide. on some occasions, the creditor-borrower relationship between farmers and traders helps ensure the market, as observed in bacarra. figure 20. an example of a farmer who, having finished all stages of assessment, decided to pursue crop diversification. who will buy my produce? not all farmers have sure markets nor are shareholders in cooperatives. for example, the farmers in the villages ofbulac and valle shared that traders (biyaheros) require volume before the produce can be picked up at the farm. however, they are often unable to meet this requirement due to their small production capacity and because they seldom practice product aggregation. this makes them highly vulnerable to market fluctuations. the farmers commonly practice bringing their own produce to the market (bagsakan), while others opt to sell it to their neighbors for earnings regarded as a daily allowance. while they have contacts in the market, they shared that they sometimes lose to delivery time relative to traders from pangasinan, an adjacent province to nueva ecija, whose bulk supply causes prices to drop in an instant. in contrast, cooperative-linked bacarra farmers are less impacted by market fluctuations but aim to broaden market linkages so as to expand their price options. at the end of such detailed considerations, the farmers deduce that the highest risks are mostly external to farmer control, such as sufficiency of irrigation, soil type, economic resources (capital), and panahon(weather and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 47 climate)-concluding in a posture of luck. it is observed that sufficient knowledge on suitable complementary and alternative crop options, production supply from local to provincial levels, and market demand were almost absent in the stage 2, where the extent of social influence was observed to be farmer-to-farmer only. “minana” [inherited], “nakagisnan” [traditional practice], “nakasanayan” [traditional practice], crop choice by personal or co-farmers’ experiences, and “sumusugal” [gamble] underscore the farmers’ narratives. 6. discussion and conclusions using the affordances theory, there are some findings that are worth discussing in this section. firstly, the study revealed that farmers perceive cd as a farming lifestyle. this pertains to the cultural relations of affordances. this means that cd is widely supported in the community, and that it is being experienced directly and through observation by other farmers in the area. it should also be highlighted that the decision to diversify crops is constrained by extrinsic factors such as irrigation access and resource availability. these agree with the findings of feliciano (2019). this would refer to material and socioeconomic relations, according to the affordances theory. for example, farmers whose areas do not allow cd result in or could be construed to result in “anti-affordances.” this is especially true for farmers who have experienced“lugi” or negative return on investment in the past, owing to various factors that are outside their control. for those whose land is suitable for cd, cd yields benefits in terms of production volume and increased income. affordances in cd — i.e. seeing its possibilities for the goal of increased income and improved economic standing — are dependent on the farmer’s visual and tracking experiences. by doing so, the farmer will be able to evaluate whether there is value in choosing cd to achieve welfare. the affordances are actualized through a non-linear yet meticulous intuitive decision-making. in table 4, farmers’ decision to diversify is shaped by visual and tracking experiences, notably when 2-3 consecutive crop failures and unimpressive demand discourage the pursuit of cd. these findings relate to experiential characteristics of affordances.in their research assessment on the impact of cd in india, birthal et al. (2022) addressed this aspect, stating that while cd generally has a positive economic effect, it deteriorates beyond a certain threshold due to constraints such as capital and labor. tables 3, 4, and 5 reveal that risk-taking is important to farmers. it is evidenced by the number of variables they evaluate, as these will shape their debt-standing, among others. their land use is valuable to them; hence, cd is a make-or-break. the social influence per decision stage shows how the external structural conditions aid them in decision-making. yet at the end of such seemingly linear assessments, the persona of the farmers as experts who are especially rich in experience must be revisited. having more enabling factors than constraints cannot predict their ultimate decision on whether or not they will pursue cd. after their rational decision-making, they shift to idm. the cultivation of instinct, according to matzler et al. (2007) requires experience, networks, emotional intelligence, tolerance, curiosity, and limits. according to klein (2015) "in the naturalistic decision-making field (ndm), experts are identified as those having rich repertories of patterns, being able to make fine discriminations that may be invisible to novices, having sophisticated mental models of how things work, and having resilience to adapt to complex and dynamic situations." with the farmers’ extensive experience, going through the assessment stages, they find patterns beyond quantities and combinations of enabling and constraining factors. this is how policymakers are often able to make sense of things, but it may not always make sense to them when the farmers respond unexpectedly to patterns based on their idm. these findings may change based on various factors. for example, from the data, it was seen that there had been enabling laws and programs in the past that had reported some levels of success. reviving or building on these enabling laws may result in better opportunities for farmers. several studies affirm that farmers need training on value-adding and marketing (all-asian centre for enterprise development inc (ascend), 2021; deriada & doloriel, 2022). providing these training programs will widen the “landscape of opportunities” amongst farmers. for equity, the government or an interested third party may perhaps put on some interventions for farmers who are limited by various external factors, biophysical limitations, for instance, from optimizing the benefits of cd. if these interventions are not provided, the gap between farmers whose farms are favourable for cd and those that are not is likely to widen or create new ones. in short, the government or an interested third party can very well change the affordances in cd in farming communities in the philippines. at the outset, this study provides support to the robustness of the affordances theory in understanding the benefits, opportunities, and risks of agricultural technologies. through this theory, it is far easier to determine the winners and losers in cd in the future, depending on how the landscape of opportunities will change. 6.1. policy support needed the da and other agricultural policymakers related to cd may well go through the same cognitive process as the farmers and also provide counterpart answers. when advocating cd, essential criteria like knowing who exactly it is for, locating eligible farmers, and the certainty of securing market linkages for the farmers are imperative. one of the challenges faced by cd farmers is that of competing with external product supplies that arrive at their local markets. for example, in talavera, some farmers lament that by the time they reach the sangitan market in cabanatuan, their anticipated price has dropped due to the supplies from pangasinan. they also shared that, unlike the pangasinan farmers who can reach nueva ecija, they are unable to cross to other provinces. farmers can therefore be better equipped for market information gathering, price projections, and crafting strategies accordingly. they can also be protected through market regulations, such as volume management for certain periods of time. another relevant support would be research intensification. this includes research on improving the quality of alternative crops, value chain opportunities, and linking farmers to markets. advocating cd should entail readiness asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(2)2024: 34-50 48 to respond to the kind of diversification suitable for them, which requires extensive research on the resource base of farmers, among others. additionally, given that farmers consider land, water supply, and capital for cd, the government and other invested agencies must demonstrate responsiveness to these specific concerns. visibly addressing these concerns,rather than tangential ones, is critical for farmers. in this regard, support may also be leveled up or reconsidered. according to a 2019 report from the international fund for agricultural development (ifad) authored by bresciani et al. (2019) in-kind aid is not most effective for the long term in the discipline of agricultural extension. instead, it emphasizes the need for a shift towards making social protection programs, ecosystem services, and incentivized sustainable practices more available (bresciani et al., 2019). the da could promote cd as an export-focused and climate change-responsive mindset in rice production (huang, jiang, wang, & hou, 2014) aligning with sustainable food sufficiency goals. this entails intensifying cd promotion and strengthening extension services (deriada & doloriel, 2022). currently, the da operates through its crop-based banner programs(national economic development authority (neda), 2019). this means the rice, corn, and hvc programs operate separately, lacking interdependent implementation so as to realize a unified cd strategy. future cd support strategies may also reconsider this. in a study on the determinants of cd in northeast india, kumar, nayak, and pradhan (2022) note that, “despite the persistence of favorable climatic conditions, cd is necessary for the growth of this region; however, it is constrained by insufficient agricultural credit for cultivation, lack of physical infrastructure for transportation, marketing, and storage of the agricultural products… greater investment is necessary to develop the local markets and other institutions, such as encouraging self-help groups, co-operatives, and contract farming, so that credit can be pooled for the agricultural purposes from microfinance institutions, and mass awareness is required in order to train the farmers regarding advanced farming technology so that more and more land can be brought under cultivation in a short time." (p.7-8). the da can also leverage the farmer field school (ffs) for market linking and enhance farmers’ understanding of marketing processes (all-asian centre for enterprise development inc (ascend), 2021). it can also be a good avenue for more intensive promotions on cd as a climate-adaptive and ecologically-benefitting approach. moreover, the da can also strengthen its public-private partnerships (ppps), especially for the marketing arm. quoting from a report by the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) (2021) it will also be beneficial to “unlocalize regimes to prevent vulnerability to shocks and stabilize food security; complemented by maximizing local import sources and distributing crop areas. a localized regime iswhere economies are less interconnected via global value chains (gvcs), has significantly lower levels of economic activity and lower incomes. a localized regime has less trade and less geographic diversification of production stages in supply chains. because of this, a localized regime was found to be more, not less, vulnerable to shocks.” as for monocrop rice farmers, provision of spaces to diversify their crops and farming will address their challenge of adapting their irrigated lands for hydrophobic hvcs and other crops. enhancing other agricultural income sources,such as poultry and livestock, may also be explored. it is essential to provide marketing aid, including buyer assurance. these can be embedded in programs introducing new crops or products. many monocrop farmers lack awareness about suitable crops for their irrigated farm areas. more research on soils, suitable crops, multi-function crops, and demonstrations could bridge this knowledge gap. furthermore, exploring strategies similar to vietnam’s practice of cd (e.g., in river deltas) may be researched. it is also worthwhile to explore strategies to aggregate harvests and protect susceptible monocrop farmers from price declines. funding: this research is supported by the philippine rice research institute, philippine (grant number: sed-232-000). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the deputy executive director for research of the philippine rice research institute has granted approval for this study on 21 january 2021 (ref. no. sed-232). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: manuscript drafting, editing, data collection, literature review, analysis, t.j.pd.l.; conceptualization, manuscript editing, data collection, theoretical framing, analysis, j.a.m.i.v. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references all-asian centre for enterprise development inc (ascend). 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(2020). a model of farmers intentions towards organic farming: a case study on rice farming in thailand. heliyon, 6(1), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e03039 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2011.07.007 https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12265 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e03039 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 220 nueva ecija’s philippine lime (citrofortunella microcarpa) agribusiness industry: marketing disputes and economic outlooks ma. florisa quijanoa gerald quijanob rowell diazc a,bnueva ecija university of science and technology, fort magsaysay campus, philippines. cnueva ecija university of science and technology, san isidro (tabon) campus, philippines.  wellro0917@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 28 december 2020 revised: 21 september 2022 accepted: 6 october 2022 published: 18 october 2022 keywords agribusiness calamansi disputes marketing nueva ecija philippine lime production traders. philippine lime or calamansi is considered one of the philippine highvalue crops in nueva ecija province. this article presents some issues and problems of the calamansi industry in terms of marketing. the study used a descriptive survey of 56 farm-owners or calamansi growers. findings revealed that lime production could be a stable income source if the growers could provide the necessary production inputs on a sustainable basis. calamansi farmers in the province are often confronted with the following problems: the high cost of farm inputs, price fluctuations, price manipulation of big-time traders, and other intermediaries. the study also found that the existing actors in the chain were limited to growers, laborers, agri-supply shops, nursery owners, intermediaries, and traders. in terms of trading, there is a high degree of competition among traders in the market. the findings and results from this study may be important factors in developing and designing effective agricultural marketing program and startegic development plan by the authorities in the region. contribution/originality: the study examined the marketing issues and problems associated with lime production in nueva ecija, which are major reasons why the industry has yet to take off economically. by addressing these issues objectively, lime growers and other interested parties could adopt and investigate effective marketing strategies that might pave the way for the industry's growth and progress. in effect, the findings may help to boost the country's economy because the region, as an agricultural haven, may introduce another potential agricultural commodity that is equally valuable in local and foreign markets, such as palay and corn. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4637 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ma. florisa quijano --gerald quijano --rowell diaz (2022). nueva ecija’s philippine lime (citrofortunella microcarpa) agribusiness industry: marketing disputes and economic outlooks. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3), 220-226. 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4637 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction nueva ecija had the largest share of calamansi production in central luzon. there were about eighteen (18) municipalities engaged in calamansi farming in 2014. the province's top growers included san leonardo, cabanatuan city, palayan city, cabiao, and peῆaranda. a total of 756, 136 trees were planted in the province, of which 684, 615 already bear fruit. approximately 1,481 farmers grow the fruit in the province, and some 1,200 hectares of land are cultivated for calamansi production and farming. agricultural industry in developing countries is undergoing profound, fast-moving changes. an established processing plant operated by a group of growers through a cooperative is evident only in palayan city. cooperatives have brought significant contributions to uplift many asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 3 (2022): 220-226. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0131-1620 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9942-2363 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3988-5307 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 220-226 221 individuals' lives and resolve problems related to marketing, production, and financial (mina, 2019). de leon, vitug, linsangan, and diaz (2020) in their paper suggested that a strong financial transaction is an important factor in organizational triumph, and sustainability operation is through the assistance of the department of trade and industry and the department of agriculture (da). calamansi growers in cabanatuan city are in the process of obtaining the approval of da to start the operation of a processing plant in the area. based on the data mentioned above, it is worth knowing the possible gaps and constraints in developing calamansi production in the province, limiting its capacity for growth and expansion and causing it to lag behind the production in other competitive regions. this situation has inspired the researchers, who are also farmers and natives of nueva ecija to engage in an agribusiness research such as this one. today, the citrus is still considered a highvalue commercial crop, and the government has taken steps to increase the productivity of the industry in the country (libunao & libunao, 2003). 1.1. philippine lime or calamansi industry in nueva ecija calamansi growing in palayan city has received a big boost in popularity and economic recognition. several calamansi farms have recently produced citrus juice in commercial quantities, which slowly gained patronage from many first-class eateries in the city, elsewhere in the province and even in metro manila areas. with this, the department of trade and industry (dti) provided the palayan city calamansi growers association (pccga) with p2.2 million juice extraction machinery under its shared service facility program. since agricultural production has become a source of livelihood in the province of nueva ecija, it cannot be denied that the industry also has existing problems and constraints. the socio-economic, demographic, and biological factors contributing to these negative effects constitute the most significant disadvantages faced by agriculture (topçu, 2008). calamansi production for the third quarter of 2018 decreased by 2.1%, from 54.70 thousand metric tons (mt) in the same quarter of the year 2017 to 53.56 thousand metric tons (philippine statistics authority, 2018). this specific situation triggered the researcher to have the interest in investigating the agricultural economic potential of the calamansi industry in nueva ecija as one of the sustainable provinces in terms of agriculture. the definition of sustainable agriculture can also be understood from a social point of view as being the ability to respond to the global demand for production (tirivayi, knowles, & davis, 2016). through this study, the researchers provide information that may reveal the actual situation of the calamansi industry in nueva ecija, which would aid them in determining its potential. doing so would significantly help in empowering the calamansi farmers, uphold viable improvements, and enhance their competitiveness. 1.2. opportunities for philippine lime or calamansi industry to improve production and the annual export of fresh and processed fruits to a desired country, a "value chain" research of calamansi was conducted. the value chain analysis (vca) describes the activities that the organization performs and links them to the organization's competitive position. it encompasses the activities within and around an organization and relates them to an analysis of the competitive strength of the organization. the country's export of calamansi ranged from 20-35 mt in 2008, with an average annual export of 29.5 metric tons mt in fresh fruits. a value chain advantage may be found in turning fresh fruits into value-added processed goods (bottled juice, puree). a total of 144 metric tons mt of calamansi juice and concentrate was exported to hong kong, united arab emirates and saudi arabia in 2013. in italy, in the range of time between 1991 and 2013, since the abatement of phytosanitary barriers (1992) up to today (chinnici, pecorino, & scuderi, 2013) the investments in citrus fruits farming have reduced by approximately 16% from 182 thousand hectares to 152 thousand hectares. involvements in different marketing channels may allow farmers to maximize profits and reduce overall risks (kim, curtis, & yeager, 2014). the southeast asian regional center for graduate study and research in agriculture (searca) reported that the country's calamansi exports ranged from 20-35 metric tons in 2008-2013 with an average yearly export of 29.5 mt in fresh fruits. calamansi was in great demand abroad. in south korea, for instance, it was among the latest food fads. the korean market for food and beverage is very competitive. the korean market tried to differentiate itself by giving new products in the market. calamansi has reached the stage where it was different from other lemon products. many korean tourists who came to the philippines were already familiar with calamansi. 1.3. problems encountered in the lime industry in a report released by the philippine council for agriculture, aquatic and natural resources research and development of the department of science and technology (dost-pcaarrd), the local supply of citrus in the philippines was insufficient to meet local demand. this is brought about by the high occurence of pests and diseases, inadequate management of orchards, and low acceptance of improved management practices, among many other factors. meanwhile, the shortage was filled with imports from china, which outcompeted, locally produced fruits, both in cost and quality (dost-pcaarrd, 2017). there were gaps and constraints in the calamansi industry that limited its potential to increase income and generate much needed employment for the calamansi growing communities. the philippine calamansi association, inc. (pcai) recently said that research and development (r&d) programs should address the declining production of calamansi in the country. pcai stakeholders emphasized that r&d initiatives should also focus on the lack of supply of quality seedlings and the declining fresh calamansi production due to aging trees, shifting to production of other high-value crops, and the conversion of calamansi farms into residential use. other constraints included: high incidence of pests and diseases, the declining volume of production, huge post-harvest losses, limited access to market, inconsistent quality of processed calamansi products, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 220-226 222 low prices during peak season and lack of resources, skills, knowledge, and experience in collective marketing among calamansi farmers. however, in past decades, an oversupply of fresh calamansi produce in the market during peak production periods caused fruit prices to plummet and produce left to rot on many farms. farmers have been discouraged from maintaining their calamansi trees and shifted to producing other fruits. areas devoted to calamansi production gradually declined, and the likely threat of continuous decline is foreseen in succeeding years. the farmers' most pressing problem was the seasonal supply of the calamansi fruits that caused a market glut during the peak season, which resulted in its low price. during this period, the price ranged from p5.00 – p8.00 per kilogram. thus, farmers opted not to harvest their fruits because labor costs and transportation were unlikely be recovered. given this situation, there was a need to explore different marketing possibilities for calamansi, both in fresh and processed forms. in a highly volatile and competitive environment, successful business entities do not just add value but reinvent themselves through interactive strategies, specifically by reconfiguring roles, relationships, and structures (normann & ramirez, 2000). 2. materials and methods this analysis used a descriptive type of research. a descriptive type of research is used to obtain information concerning the current status of conditions in a situation. the study described the calamansi industry using value chain analysis focusing on input provision, production, post-production, marketing, and cost and return analysis. problems and constraints in the industry were also included. the analysis results formed the basis in proposing a strategic action plan for the calamansi industry in nueva ecija. the researcher sent a questionnaire to a sample quota of at least ten (10) respondent-growers in each municipality. the researcher distributed the survey questionnaire in the different barangays of the top five calamansi producing cities and municipalities to reduce bias and subjectivity. table 1. distribution of respondents by cities and municipalities. respondents sample 1. calamansi growers san leonardo 10 cabanatuan city 10 palayan city 10 cabiao 10 peῆaranda 10 2. city/municipal/provincial agriculturists 6 total 56 the study involved the calamansi growers as the main respondents, and the provincial, city and municipal agriculturists from local government units (lgus) concerned in nueva ecija as secondary sources of data. the distribution of respondents is presented in table 1. fifty (50) respondent-growers and six (6) informants served as respondents. the respondents of the study were also identified based on the characteristics given by the data from the provincial agriculturist office. 2.1. research instruments the researcher used a survey questionnaire to collect the necessary data. the instrument was a structured questionnaire supported by an unstructured interview to elicit additional information and check the respondents' consistency of responses to the data gathering instrument. 3. results and discussion marketing: marketing is the last phase in the value chain, including selling strategies and modes of payments practiced by buyers. selling at farm gate price/kilo: growers sell their fruits right after the harvest, especially if the farmgate price is attractive and good enough to recover their expenses in the entire production process. marketing channel selection is one of the most important decisions a farmer can make and has a significant effect on the profitability of farm businesses (pei-an, hung-hao, junlin, & kannika, 2017). the farmgate price per kilo of calamansi fruit in the last two years showed that during peak months (june to october 2018-2019), the fruit prices were at their lowest averages of p15.2/kilo to p8.40/kilo. according to the informant in the provincial agriculturist office of the province, seventy percent (70%) of the calamansi fruits of nueva ecija were produced during peak season (june to october) when prices were very low. this can be attributed to the natural characteristic of the calamansi tree that still bore fruits during rainy season even with less farm inputs. over the last decade, citrus fruit farming, at the international level, has shown an upward trend that has changed the conventional supply scenarios, with the trade of goods from all parts of the world, thanks to the progressive abolition of tariff barriers, (scuderi & sturiale, 2016). as claimed by the respondents during the lean season (november to may), prices began to rise slowly and typically hit the highest levels during march, april and may. however, this was not always the case. like any industry in the event of calamities, pest and disease infestation, and unpredictable climatic conditions that affected the production of calamansi, prices also rose between june and october due to lower production volume. apart from the supply factor, prices were often influenced by demand indicators. in the case of nueva ecija, if the time came for the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 220-226 223 production of calamansi to flourish and be able to convert the fruit into other valuable products such as juice, jam, oil, soap and gel, the demand for the product automatically increased, thus achieving price stability. this is called the value-added principle on products. the term "value-added" describes the enhancement an enterprise gives its product or service before offering it to customers. it can be considered an extra special feature added by the enterprise or producer to increase a product's value. by doing so, an oversupply of agricultural production in farms would be converted into other desirable goods at higher prices until the equilibrium of demand and supply for agricultural output is reached again, thus stabilizing prices. table 2 presents the year-round farmgate price per 30kg bag of calamansi based on respondents' data for the last two years. table 2. average farmgate price per kilo of calamansi from 2017–2019. city/municipality year 12-month period peak season lean season jun jul aug sep oct nov dec jan feb mar apr may p ri ce s (2 0 1 7 – 2 0 1 9 ) in p h p san leonardo 2019 p16 p16 p8 p8 p15 p15 p20 p33 p30 p33 p60 p23 2018 15 15 10 8 26 26 30 30 30 35 65 20 2017 15 16 10 8 25 25 28 30 30 30 60 20 cabanatuan 2019 16 16 8 8 15 15 18 35 35 30 65 23 2018 15 15 10 8 30 30 30 35 35 35 60 20 2017 15 15 10 8 25 25 30 30 35 35 60 20 palayan 2019 16 16 8 8 15 15 20 35 35 30 65 23 2018 15 15 10 10 25 25 30 30 30 35 65 20 2017 15 15 10 10 25 25 30 30 30 35 65 20 cabiao 2019 16 16 10 8 15 15 15 30 30 35 65 25 2018 16 16 10 8 30 30 30 30 35 35 65 25 2017 15 15 10 8 30 30 30 30 30 35 65 25 peῆaranda 2019 16 16 8 8 15 15 15 33 30 33 60 23 2018 15 15 10 8 26 26 30 30 30 35 65 20 2017 15 15 10 8 25 25 30 30 30 35 60 23 average 2019 16.0 16.0 8.4 8.0 15.0 15.0 16.6 33.2 32.0 32.2 63.0 23.4 2018 15.2 15.2 10.0 8.4 27.4 27.4 30.0 31.0 32.0 35.0 64.0 21.0 2017 15.0 15.2 10.0 8.4 26.0 26.0 29.6 30.0 31.0 34.0 62.0 21.6 sources: data is from the responses of the calamansi growers in the top 5 producing cities/municipalities of nueva ecija. as can be seen from table 2, in the last months of 2019 (november-december), growers expected that prices would continue to rise during the christmas season, when demand for fruit was high, just as it did in the previous year. there was an average price increase of p 5.00, but was still lower than what was anticipated. in 2018, from p 10.00 average price, it increased to p 26.00.00 and p 30.00 in november and december. based on interviews conducted, growers said that in their last five years of farming, the price of calamansi usually increased during the same season, but 2019 was an exception. a possible explanation for this was the increase in production relative to the previous quarter. according to the philippine statistics office, calamansi production reached 66.76 thousand metric tons in the last quarter of 2019. it was 24.6% higher than the same quarter level of 53.56 thousand metric tons in 2018. this added to the fact that despite no calamity was recorded, production still decreased. table 2 also points out slight price differences in the five (5) localities. cabanatuan and palayan city had the same prices during most of the year, while cabiao, san leonardo, and peῆaranda were observed to have slight differences in terms of price. the three (3) municipalities did not just cater to markets in cabanatuan and sta. rosa, but also, they sold their commodities in san fernando, pampanga. the growing industry of calamansi in tarlac also affected the market supply in the past two years. hence, it is expected to be one of the province's leading competitors in quality and production in the coming years. conceivably, this brought changes in demand and price. with this, it can be concluded that the primary factor in the price changes is still the demand and supply factor, and calamansi production is no exception. price manipulations, especially by intermediaries, could trigger a disequilibrium in the value chain. with the interviews conducted, the "sakadora system" also played a big role in the price of the fruit. as a selling practice, growers in the said localities had already established distribution channels for the disposal of their commodity. the "suki", more popularly known as "kasadora" sold the fruit to agents and traders in divisoria, pasig and san fernando. with the researcher's interview of some "kasadoras" in sangitan market, according to them, they usually added p 40.00p 60.00 for trading one (1) 30 kg bag of calamansi. they added as much as p 100.00 per bag during the lean season, but their commission just ranged from p 10.00-p 20.00 per bag for peak season when the price was low. they manipulated the prices, especially during peak season when production was higher, and the demand was lower. one disadvantage in calamansi farming is that the growers do not have an option to wait for the price to increase since the fruit is subject to decay, unlike palay and onion. the only way to preserve the fruit is to process or convert it to other valuable products such as juice, soap and oil. the fruit yields a higher value in times of lower agricultural/raw prices through the manufacturing concept. in cabiao, some growers opted to go into the "rolling system" and sold their fruits in a retail price higher than the farm gate price to augment their income. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 220-226 224 3.1. distribution channel an effective and sufficient marketing system is a prerequisite for agricultural diversification, for better prices for farmers and for the availability of competitively priced goods to consumers. due to the increased demand of consumers for local foods and growing concerns about food safety and health, direct marketing of agricultural products has become increasingly popular (timmons & wang, 2010). however, the volume of products sold through direct marketing is usually low, and farmers have to face the risk of unsold products (morgan & alipoe, 2001). farmers and traders perform several marketing practices in moving the products from one point to another. the major practices and functions in the calamansi industry include the manner of procurement and distribution, mode of payment and geographic flow of the commodity. table 3. calamansi buyers, mode of payment and mode of distribution. description items san leonardo cabanatuan palayan cabiao peῆaranda total buyers traders 9 90.00 8 80.00 6 60.00 8 80.00 8 80.00 39 78.00 cooperativeprocessor 0 0.00 0 0.00 2 0.00 0 0.00 0 0.00 0 2.00 retail market 1 10.00 2 20.00 2 30.00 2 20.00 2 20.00 10 20.00 total 10 100.00 10 100.00 10 100.00 10 100.00 10 100.00 50 100.00 mode of payment cash 8 80.00 9 90.00 7 70.00 8 80.00 8 80.00 40 80.00 consignment 0 0.00 0 0.00 0 0.00 0 0.00 0 0.00 0 0.00 both 2 20.00 1 10.00 3 30.00 2 20.00 2 20.00 10 20.00 total 10 100.00 10 100.00 10 100.00 10 100.00 10 100.00 50 100.00 mode of distribution to buyers delivered 0 0.00 2 20.00 0 0.00 2 20.00 0 0.00 4 8.00 picked–up 0 0.00 0 0.00 0 0.00 1 10.00 0 0.00 1 2.00 both 10 100.00 8 80.00 10 10.00 7 70.00 10 100.00 45 90.00 total 10 100.00 10 100.00 10 100.00 10 100.00 10 100.00 50 100.00 table 3 shows the usual buyers of the calmansi produce from the farm. from the farm level, the growers typically delivered their produce to the trading center. in the case of nueva ecija, most of the growers revealed that it was sangitan market, which serves as the trading center for the goods. it is where the selling agents or the "sakadoras" are found. from the sangitan market, the "sakadoras" negotiated with traders from bulacan and the national capital region (ncr) such as those from divisoria and pasig. in the case of cabiao growers, pampanga traders were also buyers of the fruit. the traders made up 78% of the calamansi buyers in the province. aside from traders, retail markets in the producing localities were also buyers of the goods. these were the agricultural sector and vegetable sellers found in the local markets. the agricultural industry, particularly in developing countries, has an important role to play in terms of the capital required for other sectors, by means of skilled labour, the supply of raw materials to industry, exports and their contribution to national income and the provision of employment opportunities (bayramoglu, oguz, karakayaci, & arısoy, 2018). in the case of palayan city, where an existing cooperative is engaged in processing, grower-members sell part of their harvest to the cooperative. the calamansi juice produced by the processing plant is sold primarily to government agencies in the area and small establishments with the department of trade and industry's assistance. the growers were usually paid in cash, although there were times, particularly during peak season, when growers were paid on a consignment basis. they had to wait until the selling agents sold the fruit. 3.2. problems encountered in marketing table 4 presents the problems of calamansi growers in marketing their calamansi produce. table 4. problems on marketing encountered by calamansi growers. problems in marketing san leonardo cabanatuan palayan cabiao peῆaranda ave.% rank items f % f % f % f % f % low price due to low quality of produce and oversupply 8 80 8 80 7 70 8 80 7 70 76% 5 poor farm to market roads 5 50 7 70 8 80 4 40 5 50 58% 7 price manipulation of trading agents (sakadora) 9 90 9 90 9 90 8 80 9 90 88% 1 price manipulation of big time traders 8 80 9 90 8 80 8 80 8 80 82% 3 frequent price fluctuation/unstable prices 9 90 9 90 8 80 8 80 8 80 84% 2 too many competitors during peak season 8 80 7 70 8 80 8 80 8 80 78% 4 absence of permanent buyer 7 70 7 70 7 70 7 70 7 70 70% 6 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 220-226 225 price manipulation by trading agents or "sakadoras" remains a problem they encounter in marketing (88%). frequent price fluctuation (84%), price manipulation of big-time traders (82%), and numerous competitors during peak season (78%) were the main problems encountered by calamansi growers. other problems, like low price due to poor quality of produce and oversupply (76%), absence of permanent market buyer (70%), poor farm to market roads (58%), and delayed payment of goods (56%) ranked fifth, sixth, seventh and eight respectively. the "sakadora scheme" is a long-standing marketing method for the disposal of calamansi from farms. such "sakadoras" served as selling agents in the trading of goods in the market. without their intermediation, it is difficult for growers to sell their commodity to reach the market. the scheme might be favorable to them because of the cost of transporting the goods, but was susceptible to price manipulation. only large farmland owners who operated 10 hectares or more in the province had access to large-scale traders, freeing them from the middleman network. another marketing problem cited by the growers was the price manipulation of big-time traders. even if the commodity had a short consumable period that could not be subjected to hoarding, price manipulations were still an issue. as experienced by growers, nueva ecija calamansi fruits could not directly compete with oriental mindoro and davao regions' harvest in terms of fruit size and quality. thus, their produce prices were still bargained at the lowest price possible. price fluctuations was also a the serious marketing problem experienced by growers. the evolution of the socialeconomic system, the orientation changes of agricultural policy, especially in the european union, the market globalization, the evident asymmetries of costs within the sector among the different countries at a different level of development and much more, have contributed to eroding the primary role of citrus fruits farming, causing fluctuating income levels with the unevenness both among different species and different areas of cultivation (carra, peri, & scuderi, 2014; scuderi. & d’amico, 2015a; tudisca, di trapani, sgroi, & testa, 2014). as cited by them, this resulted from basic market aggregates, supply, and demand. farmgate price of calamansi was mainly affected by the level of production that caused the price fluctuations. in the calamansi producing municipalities in the province, growers also experienced problems in their community's number of competitors. according to them, this problem was evident during the peak season when most of the growers simultaneously sold their harvests in the market. the absence of a permanent buyer was occasionally evident during peak season because of large production. another problem was the farm to market roads for calamansi growers whose farms were located in far-flung barangays as in popolon and aulo in palayan city. production categories in calamansi farming can be divided into two (2) types. the first is low production, which means a small amount of fruit harvested and typically happens during the lean season from november to may. on the other hand, high production means a large amount of fruit harvested and generally occurs during the peak season from july to october. a calamansi grower is prone to agricultural problems during low or high production for the whole year including the labor cost. the worker turnover rate was high since they were underpaid (mina, 2019). 4. conclusion the size of the harvest of calamansi was greatly affected by pest infestation and bad weather conditions. in the last two years, the farmgate price of calamansi showed the same pattern with moderate differences in november and december of 2019 compared to the previous year. its peak season was from june to october, and the lean season was from november to may. proper agricultural management and timing was an effective tool to increase the grower's farm income. the top problems of the calamansi growers were the high cost of fertilizers, insecticides and fungicides, price manipulation by intermediaries (kasadoras) and big time traders, frequent price fluctuations and spoilage and wastage during the peak season. the government may direct concerned government agencies to intensify research and development to improve new varieties, varietal improvement through biotechnology and accreditation of nurseries. the government may provide more support facilities such as ports, farm–to–market roads, and cold chain systems. the agricultural sector's governing agencies may consider the export potential of the calamansi produce in nueva ecija to help the growers improve their livelihood. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. acknowledgment: this study was conducted for the continuous development of the researchers and was dedicated to the entire family of the nueva ecija university of science and technology. views and opinions expressed in this 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(2014). economic evaluation of pdo introduction in sicilian orange farms. quality – access to success, 14, 99–103. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 260 n mango growers’ compliance with public good agricultural practices standard: a comparative study in northern thailand yuichiro amekawaa chantalak tiyayonb panamas treewannakulc nootchakarn sawarngd acollege of international relations, ritsumeikan university, kyoto 603-8577, japan. bfaculty of agriculture, chiang mai university, chiang mai 50200, thailand. cfaculty of agriculture, kasetsart university, bangkok 20900, thailand. dfaculty of public health, chiang mai university, chiang mai, 50200, thailand.  yamiko-7@fc.ritsumei.ac.jp (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 13 july 2022 revised: 6 october 2022 accepted: 20 october 2022 published: 4 november 2022 keywords certified mango farmers export-oriented production food safety assurance northern thailand public gap standard q-gap compliance. this study investigated the effectiveness of thailand’s public good agricultural practices certification initiative (q-gap) in improving exportoriented mango farmers’ awareness and practices relating to food safety and quality assurance. two groups of certified farmers in northern thailand (one from chiang mai province and the other from phitsanulok province), comprising a total of 96 samples, were surveyed for comparative analysis. many items of the comparison showed no significant differences between the two groups of farmers (specifically, the use of synthetic pesticides and nonsynthetic pest control methods, record-keeping, and agrochemical safety and handling practices). one significant difference worth mentioning was related to the farmers’ ability to link the goal of the q-gap policy to food safety assurance; when compared to phitsanulok, approximately 35% more farmers in chiang mai demonstrated such an understanding. this contradicted the more experience and days of training on q-gap the farmers in phitsanulok had in comparison to those in chiang mai. moreover, the rates of understanding in both areas were significantly lower than those identified in previous q-gap studies of less export-oriented crops. the export-oriented mango farmers might be trained to regard q-gap certification as a type of license to export their mango produce, rather than as a tool to improve their food safety and quality assurance. contribution/originality: the originality of this study lies in its examination of export-oriented fruit producers, specifically mango growers, concerning their compliance with thailand’s public good agricultural practices standard (q-gap). its primary contribution relates to the finding that the surveyed certified mango farmers’ understanding of the policy goal is much more limited than that of those growing less export-oriented crops. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4649 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: yuichiro amekawa --chantalak tiyayon --panamas treewannakul --nootchakarn sawarng (2022). mango growers’ compliance with public good agricultural practices standard: a comparative study in northern thailand. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4), 260-270. 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4649 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction since the early 2000s, many member countries of the association of southeast asian nations (asean) have enacted food safety policies. one of these policies is the introduction of national good agricultural practices (gap) standards, which are created and administered by the public authorities of the respective countries (except for the private standard “thaigap,” which is managed by a private institution and a public university). these public gap standards were introduced in response to the chronic overuse and misuse of agricultural pesticides in this region asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 4 (2022): 260-270. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0596-5242 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6748-3655 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1815-9349 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8285-7045 mailto:yamiko-7@fc.ritsumei.ac.jp.m http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 260-270 261 (schreinemachers et al., 2012) along with associated public concerns about food safety (wongprawmas, canavari, & waisarayutt, 2015). despite the common goals of food safety and quality assurance, the public gap standards of asean nations exhibit significantly different degrees of grower certification. thailand’s q-gap is the largest standard in terms of the annual number of certified farms. it accounts for a majority of the farms with certified status in the asean region. singapore’s singaporegap-vf, myanmar’s myanmargap, cambodia’s camgap, and brunei’s bruneigap each cover fewer than 10 certified farms within each of these nations (see table a1 in the appendix). this seems to attest to the thai government’s single-minded quest for quantitative achievements in national gap certification through extensive behind-the-scenes resource mobilization. however, the impressive achievements beg the question of whether there is a tradeoff with safety assurance. generally, there may be a proportional relationship between the level of stringency required to comply with a standard and the required costs of enforcement. stricter standards require larger enforcement costs because they require larger operating changes on the part of polluters. conversely, relaxed standards can be achieved with fewer enforcement resources for the opposite reason (field & field, 2017). therefore, the following questions arise: “how limited or satisfactory is the level of q-gap compliance required by the enforcing agency and achieved by the growers?” and “should the degree of farmer participation be sacrificed by increasing the required level of compliance and enforcement?” to solve these broad problems, a series of investigations and verifications must be carried out via several case studies. since the formulation of q-gap in 2003 and its launch in 2004, there have been three versions of the q-gap code of practice: tas 9001–2004, tas 9001–2009, and tas 9001–2013, which were introduced in 2004, 2009, and 2013, respectively (see the details on q-gap certification in the appendix). to date, five policy evaluation studies have been conducted on q-gap implementation concerning the enforcement of the standard and producers’ compliance with food safety assurance, all of which have focused on agrochemical control. three of them were based on pre-2013 versions, and two of these did not reveal any significant effect of the growers’ participation in q-gap on their pesticide use, such as schreinemachers et al.’s (2012) study on nine fresh fruit and vegetable (ffv) crops in chiang mai province, northern thailand, and amekawa’s (2013) study on pomelo growers in chaiyaphum province, northeast thailand. meanwhile, srisopaporn, jourdain, perret, and shivakoti (2015) found that q-gap adopters spent significantly less on total fertilizer costs than those who adopted and then disadopted the standards or neveradopters. the study attributed the difference in their findings from the former two studies to the easier nature of rice production for reducing pesticide use compared with ffv production. however, the findings of the abovementioned case studies are outdated since the bulk of their field research was conducted before 2013. the level of q-gap policy implementation (in terms of both enforcement and compliance) could have been improved through the introduction of the 2013 tas 9001–2013 code of conduct. therefore, the following two bodies of research were conducted in the post-2013 period: amekawa, hongsibsong, sawarng, yadoung, and gebre (2021), having compared 41 q-gap-certified and 90 uncertified cabbage farmers in chiang mai province, northern thailand, found that the certified farmers’ use of insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides, in terms of their adoption rate, frequency of pesticide application, and aggregate pyrethroid residues detected, was significantly lower than that of the uncertified farmers. amekawa, bumrungsri, wayo, gebre, and hongsibsong (2022) compared 48 certified and 50 uncertified durian farms in the relatively more market-oriented context of durian farming in chanthaburi province with 50 certified and 50 uncertified durian farms in the relatively less marketoriented context of durian farming in nakhon si thammarat province. the study found that in both areas, certified farmers used more fungicides than their uncertified counterparts, with no significant differences identified in the use of insecticides and herbicides. the current study revisits the policy evaluation work for tas 9001–2013 by carrying out the following actions: first, the study targets mangoes grown in export-oriented production areas (see the agronomic details of mango in the appendix). while mango production in thailand includes domestic sales, its degree is limited in the study areas, to the extent that many mango growers are gap-certified (mostly q-gap) for the purpose of export sales. since gap certification is a prerequisite for ffv exports, most farmers who grow mangoes for export wish to receive gap certification. a majority of uncertified mango farmers are not gap-certified because they either do not have sufficient experience in mango cultivation (i.e., three years or less) or adequate produce quality to be purchased by exporters. second, the study adopts a similar approach to the two studies conducted in the post-2013 period to highlight the complex, multidimensional reality of harmony and discord found in the respondent farmers’ perceptions, behaviors, practices, and outcomes. replicating studies with similar methodological approaches in different contexts can contribute to the accumulation of evidence to respond to broad research questions concerning public gap scholarship. third, unlike the previous relevant q-gap studies that compared export-oriented q-gap-certified and uncertified farmers, this study compares the perceptions and practices of certified farmers in two distant areas. by comparing the certified farmers in two distant areas with potentially dissimilar contexts, we focus on examining whether there are similar or different processes and outcomes in the enforcement of q-gap and growers’ compliance with it due to geographic and other contextual factors. if similar results are identified in the two areas, it will increase the validity of the findings in the export-oriented mango production context. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 260-270 262 2. materials and methods our research team originally sought to conduct a comparative economic study of q-gap-certified mango farmers and their globalgap-certified counterparts. however, it was difficult to find respondents among the globalgap-certified mango farmers because the exporters under contract with many such farmers were reluctant to allow us to interview the farmers. hence, we changed our research agenda to compare the use and handling of pesticides by q-gap-certified mango farmers located in two distant provinces. accordingly, a research team from chiang mai university conducted a questionnaire survey of q-gap-certified mango farmers in phitsanulok province in december 2016 and in chiang mai province in december 2017 (see the map in figure 1). in 2019, phitsanulok province had 50,296 ha and 55,363 tons of mango production (office of the permanent secretary for ministry of agriculture and cooperatives, 2021), whereas chiang mai province had 64,790 ha and 64,711 tons (chiang mai provincial agriculture and cooperatives office, 2022). figure 1. map of thailand. at the time of research, there were a total of 251 q-gap-certified mango farmers with a total mango production area of 630 hectares in phitsanulok province and 210 certified mango farmers with a total of 425 hectares in chiang mai province. for the survey, we selected farmers from the noen maprang and wang thong districts of phitsanulok province as they comprised the major mango production areas in the province. likewise, we chose the phrao and mae taeng districts of chiang mai province for our random sampling of certified farmers. accordingly, we interviewed 50 q-gap-certified farmers in phitsanulok province and 49 certified farmers in chiang mai province. upon request, the person most knowledgeable about and responsible for mango farming in the household was interviewed. since the responses of one farmer in phitsanulok province and two farmers in chiang mai province were invalid, we removed their data. the final analysis consisted of 49 valid interviews for phitsanulok province and 47 for chiang mai province. additionally, a researcher from kasetsart university interviewed a group of mango farmers in wang thong district, phitsanulok province, which included three globalgap-certified farmers. since the data obtained from the globalgap-certified farmers were not sufficiently complete, they are not referenced in this paper. each farmer was interviewed for approximately 30–60 minutes using a prepared questionnaire. the topics included in the questionnaire were as follows: 1) basic farm profile, 2) economic conditions of mango farming, 3) growers’ perceptions of q-gap and pesticide use, 4) audit experience, 5) training experience, 6) pesticide use and management, and 7) pesticide safety and handling. questions relating to the farmers’ motives, benefits, and reasons associated with their participation or non-participation in q-gap were answered on a multiple-choice basis. regarding pesticide use, the farmers were questioned about whether or not they had adopted a particular type of pesticide (insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides). additionally, they were questioned about the estimated percentage change in their use of a particular type of pesticide since they had first adopted q-gap for mango growing. this approach was employed because several mango growers did not remember or record precisely how many times they had sprayed pesticides or how much pesticide they had sprayed in the past year. the analysis did not involve the full sample because the farmers who did not use a particular pesticide or those who were unsure of the rate were excluded. similarly, those who did not use a particular farm input were not expected to maintain records for it. therefore, the record-keeping results excluded those who did not use the input. regarding the agrochemical safety and handling practices of q-gap-certified farmers in the two areas, the first seven items of comparison were derived from the qgap code of conduct in the tas 9001–2013 version, whereas the latter seven items were derived from the globalgap code of practice in the 5.0 version of integrated farm assurance (i.e., the latest version at the time of the field research). this mixture was used because a comparative study of q-gap-certified and globalgap-certified mango farmers was intended at the time of data collection. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 260-270 263 responses were noted on the questionnaire sheet, and conversations were recorded using a voice recorder. data were analyzed using stata statistical analysis software. since the size of each sample set was greater than 30, one-way anova was applied to compare the mean differences for the continuous variables, and a chi-square test was carried out to examine the relationships for the nominal variables. additionally, frequency distribution was used to present the distributional results of the nominal variables. 3. results and discussion 3.1. socioeconomic profile of the surveyed mango farmers the q-gap-certified mango farmers in chiang mai were significantly older than those in phitsanulok (p < 0.01) (table 1). meanwhile, the farmers in phitsanulok had a 2.02-times larger total farm size and a 2.47-times larger mango farm size than those in chiang mai, and the difference was significant. there was no significant difference in the total number of mango trees in the orchards. however, the farmers in chiang mai had 1.86 times more mango trees per ha than those in phitsanulok, with a significant difference (p < 0.01). this suggests that the farmers in chiang mai grew mangoes in a significantly more intensive fashion than those in phitsanulok, regarding the density of tree planting. both groups of farmers had a high rate of participation in local mango producer groups, with a significant difference in favor of the farmers in chiang mai (p < 0.10). no significant difference was observed in the level of completed education, gender ratio, or proportion of farmers growing certified crops other than mangoes. table 1. basic profile of the respondent mango farmers. variable description phitsanulok (n = 49) chiang mai (n = 47) p-value gender ratio (man 1: woman 0) (%) 67.3: 32.7 80.9: 19.1 0.132ns age (years) 52.06 (11.14) 57.8 (7.22) 0.004*** primary education secondary education vocational/junior college university (%) 67.3 10.2 20.4 6.1 72.3 6.4 14.9 6.4 0.910ns total farm size in ha 6.15 (4.22) 3.05 (1.87) 0.005*** size of mango farmland in ha 6.02 (3.20) 2.44 (1.57) 0.019** total number of mango trees 1,345.1 (1,646.1) 1,296.5 (1,738.8) 0.889ns number of mango trees per ha 298.5 (283.5) 556.2 (223.0) 0.000*** farmers belonging to a mango producer group 93.9% 100.0% 0.085* (1 = yes) farmers growing certified crops other than mango (1 = yes) 18.4% 28.7% 0.279ns note: *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.10; ns = not significant; standard deviation in parentheses. regarding the economic and marketing profiles of the mango farmers in the past year, the mango farmlands of the farmers in phitsanulok were 2.47 times larger than those of the farmers in chiang mai (table 2). accordingly, the total annual mango production of the former was 2.22 times larger than that of the latter, and the difference was significant (p < 0.10). however, the yield values (kg/ha) were similar, with no significant difference. this seems remarkable considering that the farmers in chiang mai had 1.86 times more mango trees per ha than those in phitsanulok. this suggests that the level of intensification in terms of productivity per tree was significantly higher for the farmers in phitsanulok than for those in chiang mai, although the latter had a higher level of intensification in terms of the number of trees planted per ha. the spatial advantages of the mango farmers in phitsanulok contributed to tree growth. nevertheless, the farmers in chiang mai had 73% more mango sales per ha than those in phitsanulok, and the difference was significant (p < 0.01). given the similar yields in the two areas, this suggests that the farmers in chiang mai had access to more lucrative market conditions in terms of prices and amount sold. accordingly, there was no significant difference in the annual total mango sales between the farmers in the two regions. the household-level economic outcomes from mango production (i.e., total annual sales) were similar in the two areas, although the pathways were notably different. table 2. economic and marketing aspects of mango farming. variable description phitsanulok (n = 49) chiang mai (n = 47) p-value total mangoes produced in the past year (kg) 17,679 (33,728) (n = 45) 7,969 (18,357) (n = 45) 0.093* yield per hectare (ha) in kg 28,221 (19,508) (n = 45) 28,461 (21,472) (n = 45) 0.956ns total mango sales (thb) 308,003 (531,664) (n = 47) 270,652 (410,720) (n = 46) 0.706ns mango sales per ha (thb) 66,088 (70,946) (n = 47) 114,612 (11,604) (n = 46) 0.002*** note: *** p < 0.01, * p < 0.10, ns = not significant, standard deviation and number of observations n (for items that fall short of the complete sample n) are given in parentheses for continuous variables. one thb was equal to approximately 0.03 usd. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 260-270 264 3.2. farmers’ adoption of q-gap in both areas, the primary motive for certified farmers to apply for q-gap was “to sell mangoes in a better way” (28.2% for phitsanulok and 33.8% for chiang mai), which means selling more mangoes, selling at better prices, or both (figure 2). this was followed by “to sell mangoes for export” (16.9% for phitsanulok and 24.7% for chiang mai). combined with the relevant motive “to follow the group policy for export” (5.6% for phitsanulok and 9.1% for chiang mai), the motives relating directly to economic purposes accounted for 50.7% in phitsanulok and 67.6.% in chiang mai. the relatively high emphasis on economic motives in both areas made sense as the mango sales in these two areas catered primarily to the export markets. meanwhile, the motives related to product quality/safety assurance accounted for 25.4% in phitsanulok (15.5% for safety assurance and 9.9% for product quality assurance) and 27.3% in chiang mai (16.9% for product quality assurance and 10.4% for safety assurance). figure 2. surveyed farmers’ motives to apply for q-gap. note: n signifies the total number of respondents. tc indicates the total number counted in multiple answers. the respondent farmers were also asked about the benefits of q-gap certification based on their participation in the public food safety program. in both areas, the three most frequently cited benefits were economic, including “access to markets is guaranteed,” “can sell mangoes at better prices,” and “can sell mangoes to export markets.” collectively, they accounted for 48.7% in phitsanulok and 57.3% in chiang mai (figure 3). these results appear to be consistent with the economic motivations described above. another notable result was that “improved agrochemical use,” which was not included in the motivation query, was the fourth most frequently cited benefit in both areas (11.5% in phitsanulok and 10.7% in chiang mai). accordingly, in both areas, the ratios of benefits allocated to the assurance of product quality and safety were lower than in the case of motivation. additionally, two farmers in phitsanulok noted they obtained no benefits. figure 3. certified farmers’ views about the benefits of q-gap certification. note: n signifies the total number of respondents. tc indicates the total number counted in multiple answers. to sell mangoes in a better way 28.2% to sell mangoes for export 16.9% to ensure safety for producers/consumers 15.5% to improve/guarantee product quality 9.9% to follow the group policy for export 5.6% to gain confidence as certified grower 5.6% to learn new things through training 4.2% others 14.1% can sell mango to export markets 24.0% can sell with better prices 17.3% access to markets is guarantee d 16.0% improved agrochemical use 10.7% improved product quality 6.7% improved orchard conditions 6.7% can learn new things through training 4.0% others 14.7% to sell mangoes in a better way 33.8% to sell mangoes for export 24.7% to improve/ guarantee product quality 16.9% to ensure safety for producers/consumers 10.4% to follow the group policy for export 9.1% others 5.2% access to markets is guaranteed 17.9% can sell mangoes with better prices 16.7%can sell mangoes to export markets 14.1% improved agrochemical use 11.5% obtained safety for producers and consumers 10.3% improved alternative pest control 5.1% can learn new things through training 5.1% improved product quality 3.8% others 12.8% no benefits 2.6% chiang mai (n = 47, tc = 77) phitsanulok (n = 49, tc = 76) phitsanulok (n = 49, tc = 71) chiang mai (n = 47, tc = 75) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 260-270 265 3.3. farmers’ perceptions of gap policy and pesticide use a critical concern regarding the effective implementation of a gap policy related to the extent to which certified farmers understood the goal of the gap policy. the proportion of farmers demonstrating such an understanding was significantly lower in phitsanulok than in chiang mai (p < 0.01) (table 3). the farmers’ rates of understanding in both areas were remarkably low (59.6% in chiangmai and 24.5% in phitsanulok), considering that previous studies on the tas 9001–2013 version of the q-gap code of practice identified understanding levels of approximately 90% among the certified cabbage farmers in chiang mai province (amekawa et al., 2021) and the certified durian farmers in chanthaburi and nakhon si thammarat (amekawa et al., 2022). the proportion of farmers who knew of the globalgap standard was significantly higher in chiang mai than in phitsanulok (p < 0.10). table 3. farmers’ perceptions of q-gap policy and pesticide use. variable description phitsanulok (n = 49) chiang mai (n = 47) p-value can relate the goal of q-gap policy to food safety assurance (1 = yes)(%) 24.5 59.6 0.000*** know of globalgap (1 = yes)(%) 20.4 36.2 0.088* think that pesticides are not very harmful to users’ health when appropriately managed (1 = yes)(%) 61.2 68.1 0.506ns think that pesticides are not very harmful to the health of consumers when appropriately managed (1 = yes)(%) 69.4 97.9 0.000*** think that pesticides are not very harmful to the environment when appropriately managed (1 = yes)(%) 46.9 68.1 0.037** think that sufficient assistance has been received from local government agencies to obtain good agricultural technologies and practices (1 = yes)(%) 49.0 31.9 0.091* note: *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.10, ns = not significant. the farmers were also asked about their views on the adverse impact of pesticide use when it was appropriately managed concerning the following three affected objects: users’ health, consumers’ health, and the environment. the results revealed a significantly more optimistic perspective of farmers in chiang mai than of those in phitsanulok regarding the effects of pesticide use on consumer health and the environment (p < 0.05), but no significant difference regarding the impact on the health of pesticide users. given the very limited understanding of the purpose of the qgap policy in phitsanulok, the results may imply that farmers in phitsanulok were not very confident about the effects of their pesticide use but were deliberately cautious about the possible effects. additionally, a significantly higher proportion of farmers in phitsanulok compared to those in chiang mai felt that they had received sufficient assistance from local government agencies to obtain good agricultural technologies and practices (p < 0.10). 3.4. farmers’ training experience there was no significant difference in farmers’ experience of public training in pesticide use (table 4). the proportion of mango farmers with experience was as high as nearly 90% in both sites. among those who had such experience, the farmers in phitsanulok had received significantly more training days than those in chiang mai (p < 0.05). a significantly higher proportion of farmers in phitsanulok had participated in public gap training (77.6%) in comparison to those in chiang mai (61.7%) (p < 0.10), with the former having significantly more training days than the latter (p < 0.05). the farmers were also questioned regarding their knowledge and training experience related to ipm and the production and use of organic fertilizers through governmental agencies. no significant differences were observed for these items. table 4. public training experience. variable description phitsanulok (n = 49) chiang mai (n = 47) p-value training experience in pesticide use through governmental agencies (1 = yes) 89.7% 87.2% 0.694ns number of training days for pesticide use 2.18 (0.95) (n = 44) 1.72 (1.12) (n = 41) 0.043** training experience in q-gap certification through governmental agencies (1 = yes) 77.6% 61.7% 0.091* number of training days for q-gap certification 1.82 (1.23) (n = 36) 1.18 (0.48) (n = 28) 0.011** knowledge of the term “ipm” (1 = yes) 61.2% 48.9% 0.426ns training experience in ipm through governmental agencies (1 = yes) 49.0% 38.3% 0.851ns training experience in the production and use of organic fertilizer through governmental agencies (1 = yes) 69.4% 74.5% 0.297ns note: ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.10, ns = not significant, standard deviation and number of observations n (for items that fall short of the complete sample n) are given in parentheses for continuous variables. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 260-270 266 3.5. experiences of farm audit the mean number of department of agriculture (doa) audits that were needed for farmers to receive their most recent q-gap certification for mango was slightly over 1.5 in both areas (table 5). this implies that roughly two out of three applicant farmers failed the first audit. the mean length of the first audit was nearly 15 minutes longer for farmers in chiang mai than for those in phitsanulok, though the difference was not statistically significant. in the gap certification in general, farmers are not supposed to receive advance notice of the date of the auditor’s visit so they cannot prepare for an audit. however, from the viewpoint of the auditors, visiting farmers without prior notice makes auditing less efficient, for farmers may not be at home at the time of the audit visit. no significant differences were identified regarding the presence or absence of doa officers’ prior contact with the farmers regarding the date of their first visit. meanwhile, a significantly higher proportion of farmers in phitsanulok than in chiang mai noted that the doa officers checked their record-keeping documents at the time of the audit (p < 0.1). table 5. experiences of farm audit. variable description phitsanulok (n = 49) chiang mai (n = 47) p-value number of doa audits needed to receive qgap certification 1.57 (0.79) 1.52 (0.81) (n = 46) 0.763ns length of audit (minutes) 36.25 (34.57) (n = 48) 51.14 (69.38) (n = 46) 0.188ns received prior notice of the date of the first audit (1 = yes) 73.5% 78.3% 0.586ns record-keeping of agricultural practices was checked during the audit (1 = yes) 83.7% 68.1% 0.074* provided mango for pesticide residue test (1 = yes) 79.6% 93.6% 0.045** doa officer picked the mangoes for pesticide residue test (1 = yes) 42.1% 22.7% 0.060* note: ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.10, ns = not significant; standard deviation is given in parentheses for continuous variables. the number of samples is indicated as n in parentheses for items that fall short of the complete sample n. the respondents were asked whether they provided the auditors with mango samples at the time of the audit for pesticide residue analysis, and if they did, who picked the mango samples. in principle, the crop samples should be selected from the field by the auditors themselves, so that the applicant farmers are not in a position to prepare for the selection of the least pesticide-contaminated crop sample for the residue test. a significantly higher proportion of the farmers in chiang mai provided mango samples compared to those in phitsanulok (p < 0.01). in chiang mai, 77.3% of the farmers picked the mangoes themselves, which was a significant difference from the farmers in phitsanulok, although nearly 57.9% of the latter farmers also picked the mangoes. these results were significantly higher than those of the previous studies on cabbage in chiang mai (9.2%) (amekawa et al., 2021) and on durian in chanthaburi (4.0%) and nakhon si thammarat (31.3%) (amekawa et al., 2022). 3.6. synthetic pesticide use the adoption of synthetic insecticides was significantly higher among the farmers in chiang mai than those in phitsanulok, although no significant differences were observed for fungicides or herbicides (table 6). regarding the percentage change in the amount of pesticides used after certification, the farmers in phitsanulok reported a larger reduction in the use of all three types of pesticides, but the differences were not statistically significant. table 6. synthetic pesticide use. variable description phitsanulok (n = 49) chiang mai (n = 47) p-value adoption of synthetic insecticides (1 = yes) 91.8%** 100.0% 0.045** change in the amount of liquid synthetic insecticides used among the users after certification (percentage) −18.3% (n = 42) −10.1% (n = 42) 0.188ns adoption of synthetic fungicides (1 = yes) 91.8% 97.9% 0.183ns change in the amount of synthetic fungicides used among the users after certification (percentage) −15.4% (n = 35) −7.7% (n = 42) 0.207ns adoption of synthetic herbicides (1 = yes) 83.7% 85.1% 0.847ns change in the amount of synthetic herbicides used among the users after certification (percentage) −11.3% (n = 39) −2.1% (n = 33) 0.195ns note: ** p < 0.05; ns = not significant. the number of samples is indicated as n in parentheses for items that fall short of the complete sample n. 3.7. use of non-synthetic pest control methods no significant difference in the farmers’ adoption of non-synthetic pest control methods was identified between the two areas (table 7). regarding the comparison of individual methods, of the nine methods identified, a significantly higher proportion of the farmers in chiang mai adopted biological insecticide in comparison to those in phitsanulok (p < 0.05). meanwhile, a significantly higher proportion of the farmers in phitsanulok were found to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 260-270 267 mow weeds compared to those in chiang mai (p < 0.10). no significant differences were found for the other seven methods. table 7. use of non-synthetic pest control methods. variable description phitsanulok (n = 49) chiang mai (n = 47) p-value adopt at least one non-synthetic pest management method (1 = yes) (%) 57.1 55.3 0.857ns adoption of wood vinegar (as botanical insecticide) (1 = yes)(%) 8.2 19.1 0.116ns herbal insecticide (1 = yes)(%) 10.2 6.4 0.553ns biological insecticide (1 = yes)(%) 22.4 4.3 0.025** insect glue trap (1 = yes)(%) 14.3 10.6 0.589ns removing insects by hand (1 = yes)(%) 2.0 0.0 0.325ns wrapping crops in plastic bags (1 = yes)(%) 2.0 6.4 0.287ns smoking (as insect repellent) (1 = yes)(%) 2.0 2.1 0.976ns em pesticide (1 = yes)(%) 6.1 8.5 0.653ns mowing weeds (1 = yes)(%) 6.1 0.0 0.085* note: ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.10, ns = not significant. 3.8. record-keeping no significant differences between the two areas were identified in the record-keeping of the pest control measures (table 8). however, it is worth noting that the level of mango farmers’ record-keeping of synthetic pesticides in both areas was relatively higher than that of farmers in previous studies; the rates of record-keeping for the equivalent items of certified cabbage farmers in chiang mai were 0-64.0% (amekawa et al., 2021), those of the certified durian farmers in chanthaburi were 65.2-69.7%, and those in nakhon si thammarat were 2.4-11.1% (amekawa et al., 2022). table 8. record-keeping. variable description phitsanulok chiang mai p-value synthetic insecticide (1 = yes) 84.4% (n = 45) 93.6% (n = 47) 0.158ns synthetic fungicide (1 = yes) 95.7% (n = 46) 87.0% (n = 46) 0.139ns synthetic herbicide (1 = yes) 69.8% (n = 42) 80.0% (n = 40) 0.284ns non-synthetic pest management methods (1 = yes) 62.1% (n = 29) 65.4% (n = 26) 0.799ns note: ns = not significant. the number of samples is indicated as n in parentheses for items that fall short of the complete sample n. 3.9. pesticide safety and handling practices regarding the pesticide safety and handling practices in the two regions, item 10 and item 13 showed a significant difference, both in favor of farms in chiang mai (table 9). in both areas, item 9 (documentation of reentry intervals) and item 11 (availability of maximum residue limit (mrl) information regarding the destination countries) had less than 50% compliance. table 9. agrochemical safety and handling practices. variable description phitsanulok (n = 49) chiang mai (n = 47) p-value 1. aware of the chemicals registered under the hazardous substances act and its amendments (1 = yes) 75.5% 68.1% 0.419ns 2. possession or use of pesticides prohibited under the hazardous substances act and its amendments (1 = yes) 14.3% 17.4% (n = 46) 0.678ns 3. wearing all the protective clothing (mask, gloves, hats, and boots) while working with pesticides (1 = yes) 83.7% 93.6% 0.126ns 4. storing pesticides in a tidy manner in the specified secure storage to prevent mishandling (1 = yes) 95.9% 100.0% 0.162ns 5. taking note of the wind direction while spraying to prevent the contamination of the neighborhood farms and environment (1 = yes) 91.8% 97.9% 0.183ns 6. stopping the application of pesticides before harvest following the withdrawal period indicated on the label of each pesticide or the official recommendations (1 = yes) 93.9% 91.5% 0.653ns 7. separating the storage of farming equipment, containers, and materials from the storage of pesticides or other chemicals (1 = yes) 89.8% 87.2% 0.694ns 8. specifying the trade name and active ingredient in the records of pesticide application (1 = yes) 59.2% 74.5% 0.112ns asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 260-270 268 variable description phitsanulok (n = 49) chiang mai (n = 47) p-value 9. carrying out clearly documented procedures dealing with re-entry intervals on the farm for pesticide application (1 = yes) 26.5% 25.5% 0.911ns 10. possessing the facilities to deal with accidental operator or contamination, which include a source of clean water that is at a distance of no more than 10 meters, a complete first aid kit, and a clear accident procedure with emergency contact telephone numbers (1 = yes) 53.1% 74.5% 0.029** 11. able to demonstrate that the information regarding the country(ies) of destination’s (i.e., market in which the producer intends to trade, including domestic) maximum residue levels (mrls) is available with a list of mrls for each country (1 = yes) 40.8% 42.6% 0.863ns 12. rinsing empty containers either via the use of the pressure rinsing device integrated with the pesticide application equipment or at least three times with water (1 = yes) 63.3% 61.7% 0.874ns 13. keeping the pesticide storage facilities secure with a lock and key (1 = yes) 63.3% 78.7% 0.096* 14. allowing harvest workers access to clean toilets in the vicinity of their farm work (500 meters or 7 minutes) so that they can minimize potential product contamination (1 = yes) 83.0% 83.0% 0.178ns note: ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.10, ns = not significant. the number of samples is indicated as n in parentheses for items that fall short of the complete sample n. 4. conclusions several items of the comparison showed no significant difference between the two areas with similar exportoriented mango production contexts. however, one significant difference worth mentioning relates to the farmers’ ability to link the goal of the q-gap policy to food safety assurance; approximately 35% more farmers in chiang mai than in phitsanulok demonstrated such an understanding. this contradicts the finding that the farmers in phitsanulok had more experience and days of training on q-gap than those in chiang mai; the quality of training on q-gap is a crucial factor in this regard. moreover, the rates in both areas were significantly lower than those identified in previous q-gap studies of less export-oriented crops. mango farmers might be inclined to regard qgap certification more as a type of export license for their mango produce rather than as a tool to improve their food safety and quality assurance. funding: this research is supported by japan society for the promotion of science (grant number: 18h02292). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references amekawa, y. (2013). can a public gap approach ensure safety and fairness? a comparative study of q-gap in thailand. the journal of peasant studies, 40(1), 189-217.available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2012.746958. amekawa, y., bumrungsri, s., wayo, k., gebre, g. g., & hongsibsong, s. (2022). pesticide use under public good agricultural practices standard: a comparative study in thailand. agriculture, 12(5), 606.available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture12050606. amekawa, y., hongsibsong, s., sawarng, n., yadoung, s., & gebre, g. g. (2021). producers’ perceptions of public good agricultural practices standard and their pesticide use: the case of q-gap for cabbage farming in chiang mai province, thailand. sustainability, 13(11), 6333.available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/su13116333. chiang mai provincial agriculture and cooperatives office. 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(2015). food safety assurance system for fresh produce production in thailand: a review. quality assurance and safety of crops & foods, 7(1), 73-88.available at: https://doi.org/10.3920/qas2013.0255. appendix a. table a1. adoption of national public gap standards by farmers in asean nations. country program name year of formulation number of farmers with certified status (year) scheme owner malaysia mygap 2002 664 (2016) department of agriculture thailand q-gap 2003 >146,000 (2021) national bureau of agricultural commodity and food standards singapore singaporegap vf 2004 8 (2020) agri-food and veterinary authority indonesia indogap 2004 13,666 (n/a) national food safety competent authority the philippines philgap 2005 82 (2016) department of agriculture vietnam vietgap 2008 1574 (2014) ministry of agriculture and rural development myanmar myanmargap 2009 0 (2015) department of agriculture laos laogap 2010 300 (2016) department of agriculture cambodia camgap 2010 0 (2017) department of sanitary and phytosanitary plants protection brunei bruneigap 2014 4 (2019) agriculture and agrifood department source: mygap: obtained via personal contact to the responsible agency in malaysia; q-gap: department of agriculture thailand (2021); singaporegap-vf: singapore food agency (2020); philgap, vietgap, myanmargap, and laogap: gap research institute (2020); indogap: food and agricultural organization of the united nations (2016) and gap research institute (2020), laogap: khoenram (2016) and bruneigap: wasil (2019). n/a not available. http://www.oae.go.th/assets/portals/1/files/jounal/biae_calendar/calendar-biae-63-64.pdf http://impexp.oae.go.th/service/index.php http://www.opsmoac.go.th/phitsanulok-dwl-files-431291791098 http://www.sfa.gov.sg/food-farming/farming-initiatives/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 260-270 270 agronomic overview of mango known as the “king of fruits” (singh, 2016), mangoes (mangifera indica linn.) originated in the indo-myanmar region (chomchalow & songkhla, 2018). mangoes have a cultivation history of 400 years (chomchalow & songkhla, 2018). the leading mango-producing nations are india, china, thailand, indonesia, and pakistan (tiyayon & paull, 2017). while the mango cultivation in thailand takes places round the year, the harvesting period rotates from the central to the northeastern to the northern and to southern regions, depending on the longitude and latitude (sangwanangkul, 2015). as many as 172 cultivars have been documented in thailand, of which about ten are grown commercially. the major cultivars are “nam dok mai,” “maha chanok,” “chok anant,” and “khiao sawoei” (chomchalow & songkhla, 2018). as the third largest mango producer and exporter, thailand produced 474,111 tons in an area of 549,357 ha in 2020 (office of agricultural economics, 2022a) and exported 116,850 tons with an export value of 3,367 million thb in 2021 (office of agricultural economics, 2022b). certification of q-gap standard tas 9001–2013, the latest q-gap protocol, accommodates eight areas of regulation involving 23 “major must” control points, 41 “minor must” control points, and 52 “recommended” control points, amounting to a total of 116 control points (see table a2). the “major must” control points require 100% compliance, and the “minor must” control points require 60% compliance; however, no compliance is necessary for the recommended control points (national bureau of agricultural commodity and food standards, 2013). the requirements of the 2013 version fall short of the more stringent gap standards. for instance, malaysia’s mygap comprises 29 “major must” control points (100% compliance required), 77 “minor must” control points (90% compliance required) and 57 “encouraged” control points (no compliance required) of the 163 total control points (department of agriculture malaysia, 2005). the current protocol involves three years of a valid certification, extended from the two-year period of previous protocols. when a certification is about to expire, a farmer must apply for a new certification 120 days before the expiry date of his/her previous certification to sustain his/her certified status. in order to gain certification, an applicant farmer’s farming systems and practices have to be audited by the doa auditors one to three times within the year of application. auditors collect samples of growing crops and soils from the farms of the applicant and haul them to a regional center for the laboratory tests on pesticide residue conditions to determine whether and how much residue could be detected. if an excessive amount of pesticide residue is detected, the applicant farmer will fail to pass the application at the time. if the applicant farmer fails to pass all the three instances of an audit, the applicant farmer is not allowed to reapply for a year. in order for farmers to apply for and obtain certification, it is not mandatory for them to receive a public training on q-gap. hence, farmers can pass the q-gap certification without public training, provided that their farming conditions and practices meet the required standards. however, the rate of participation may be influenced by the level of facilitation or encouragement of local doa/doae officers. table a2. control points in the q-gap code of practice. control categories major must minor must recommended subtotal 1. water 5 2 7 14 2. planting area 4 4 3 11 3. pesticides 5 8 8 21 4. pre-harvest quality management 2 6 11 19 5. harvest and post-harvest handling 3 6 5 14 6. holding, moving the produce in the planting plot and storage 0 5 4 9 7. personal hygiene 1 3 4 8 8. record-keeping 3 7 10 20 subtotal: 23 41 52 total: 116 source: national bureau of agricultural commodity and food standards (2013). effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 519 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. assessing vegetable farming practices in a floodplain village of kamrup district, assam, india saraswati bhattaraia abani kumar bhagabatib a,bdepartment of geography, gauhati university, india.  saraswatibhattarai91@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 3 june 2025 revised: 2 september 2025 accepted: 16 september 2025 published: 24 september 2025 keywords adaptive farming techniques environmental stresses floodplain kamrup district traditional knowledge vegetable farming. farming practices in a floodplain environment hold immense ecological, economic, and social significance. the current study focuses on choutara village, located in kamrup district, assam. the primary objective of the research is to evaluate the adaptive techniques employed by local vegetable farmers in response to recurring environmental stresses, including seasonal flooding, waterlogging, and soil erosion. the research aims to understand the long-term effects of these stressors on crop selection, land use decisions, and agricultural productivity. the study used a mixed-methods approach, integrating qualitative and quantitative methodologies. primary data were collected via field surveys, oral interviews with aged farmers, and focused group discussions. supplementary secondary data were examined to comprehend past trends. descriptive statistics and comparative analysis were employed to investigate production patterns and discern changes in agricultural practices over different seasons and flood cycles. the findings indicate a dynamic adaptation process among farming households, which integrates indigenous agricultural knowledge with specific modern practices to address climate risks and market variation. agriculturalists have diversified their planting schedules, chosen short-duration and flood-resistant vegetable cultivars, and adapted soil and water conservation techniques. the study highlights the need to enhance institutional assistance, encompassing infrastructural development, the availability of timely meteorological data, and agricultural extension services tailored to the specific requirements of floodplains. policy-makers and development organizations can utilize these insights to formulate more adaptive and contextually relevant initiatives to improve the sustainability and productivity of floodplain agriculture. contribution/originality: the study contributes to the existing literature on climate-resilient agriculture in the floodplains of northeast india. it uses primary data and field-based insights to highlight adaptation practices. the paper’s primary contribution is finding that traditional knowledge drives effective local adaptation. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5627 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: bhattarai, s., & bhagabati, a. k. b. (2025). assessing vegetable farming practices in a floodplain village of kamrup district, assam, india. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 519–529. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5627 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction floodplains, subject to seasonal flooding, play a crucial role in agriculture. these areas are defined by their distinct hydrological dynamics, which promote a rich ecological network that supports various agricultural activities, particularly vegetable farming (cook, 2010; schilling, jacobson, & vogelgesang, 2015). alluvial soils in floodplains are typically rich in nutrients due to sediment deposition during seasonal flood events (appling, bernhardt, & stanford, 2014). this nutrient availability enhances soil fertility, which is essential for cultivating various vegetables, supporting local food security, and providing subsistence for farmers (singh, patel, tiwari, & singh, 2021). however, the dual nature of the floodplain environment presents both opportunities and risks (tockner, pusch, borchardt, & lorang, asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 519-529 mailto:saraswatibhattarai91@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0657-4082 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9319-4405 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5627 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 519-529 520 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 2010). while predictable floods can replenish soil nutrients, they also pose significant challenges for farmers (misra, prasad, & de, 2023). seasonal flooding disrupts agricultural productivity, resulting in economic instability for local farmers (singha & singha, 2025). research indicates that adaptation strategies, such as employing varieties of floodresistant crops and adjusting planting schedules, are essential for enhancing the resilience of agricultural livelihoods in floodplain regions (kalita, kumar, hazarika, baruah, & borah, 2024). in choutara village, the annual flooding cycle significantly influences planting schedules, with farmers intentionally timing their sowing activities to coincide with the receding waters. they have adopted several strategies to reduce the negative impacts of flooding while reaping its benefits. these include selecting vegetables that thrive in damp conditions to exploit the nutrient-rich floodwaters and vegetable varieties that can be harvested before severe flooding occurs. additionally, some farmers practice staggered planting, sowing crops at different times to ensure a portion of the harvest remains secure regardless of flood conditions. adopting raised beds has also gained traction as a method for safeguarding plants against excess water, showcasing innovative land management practices specifically tailored to the challenges of the floodplain. the experiences of farmers in the village can be likened to the resilience strategies adopted globally, where communities have implemented various approaches to combat environmental challenges. for instance, regions in southeast asia prone to flooding have focused on enhancing water management systems and reducing community disaster risks (kipgen & pegu, 2018). combining local knowledge with scientific methodologies has proven effective in fostering adaptive capabilities in vulnerable communities (pradhan, das, gupta, & shrestha, 2021). with this rationale, the present research aims to evaluate current vegetable farming practices in choutara village, kamrup district, to understand farmers' adaptation strategies in addressing flood-related challenges, and to explore opportunities for sustainable agricultural interventions in ecologically sensitive regions. 2. materials and methods 2.1. overview of the study area for this study, choutara village, located in the goroimari development block of kamrup district, was selected due to its heavy reliance on floodplain agriculture and frequent exposure to the annual flooding of the brahmaputra river. geographically, the village spans between 26° 6' 21'' n to 26° 7' 7'' n latitude and 91° 11' 37'' e to 91° 12' 36'' e longitude, covering a total area of 139.8 hectares (figure 1). it borders udalguri and baksa districts to the north, meghalaya state to the south, darrang and kamrup (m) to the east, and goalpara to the west. climatologically, the village lies in a monsoonal climatic zone with a subtropical humid climate characterized by hot, wet summers and cool, dry winters. the region's soils are generally rich in organic matter, supporting a variety of agricultural practices. according to the census of india (government of india, 2011) the village has a total population of 2,205 people and 435 households. of the total population, 48.84% are male, and 51.16% are female. children under the age of 6 make up 22.45% of the population. the average sex ratio is 1,047 females per 1,000 males, and the literacy rate stands at 46.37%. figure 1. location of the study area. 2.2. data collection and sample survey the study is based on both primary and secondary data. primary data were collected from field investigations in choutara village following a stratified random sampling procedure. to fulfill the study's objectives, a structured questionnaire was prepared, encompassing demographic details, types of vegetables grown, seasonal cropping patterns, flood-related challenges, and adaptive strategies. all research ethics were strictly followed, and informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to data collection. ethical approval for the study was obtained from the institutional ethics committee of gauhati university, assam, india. all procedures involving human participants were conducted in accordance with institutional and national ethical standards. the ethical committee of gauhati university, assam, india, approved this study via application no. guiec-09/24, date 12/3/24. forty percent of the households in the village, comprising 174 vegetable farmers, were interviewed across the village. special care was taken to ensure that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 519-529 521 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the socio-economic inequalities of the farmers were accurately reflected. in addition, focused group discussions were organized in the village with a group of 10-15 farmers to gather collective experiences and explore community-based responses to flooding through farming. oral interviews were conducted with experienced farmers to gain insights into changes in farming practices over time. key informant interviews were also conducted with agricultural development officers, local leaders, and market intermediaries to gain insight into institutional perspectives and support mechanisms. finally, direct field observations were made to assess the farm conditions, irrigation methods, and visible adaptation techniques employed by vegetable farmers, including raised beds and drainage channeling. secondary data on population characteristics and district-level agricultural statistics are collected from various government offices, such as the directorate of census operations, assam state disaster management authority (asdma), the district agricultural office, and the block development office, to cross-verify the field data and depict a district-level scenario of crop production, flood incidence, and infrastructural facilities. all the collected data were processed in a computer environment using microsoft excel. data were tabulated to categorize information under key parameters, including the type of vegetables grown, adopted farming practices, seasonal variations, and significant challenges faced by the farmers. a simple descriptive analysis was conducted by calculating the percentage of each response category to understand the distribution pattern and draw inferences related to the study's objective. crop concentration has been adapted using the location quotient index to understand crop preferences, market trends, and dependency on specific crops, which is expressed as 𝐿𝑄 = 𝐴𝑟𝑒𝑎 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑝 ′ 𝑥 ′ 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑣𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝐴𝑟𝑒𝑎 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑣𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑔𝑒 ÷ 𝐴𝑟𝑒𝑎 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑝 ′ 𝑥 ′𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑡 𝐴𝑟𝑒𝑎 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑡 to ensure grammatical accuracy and clarity of expression, the final manuscript was reviewed using grammarly, an ai-based writing assistant. this helped refine sentence structure, correct typographical errors, and improve overall language quality without altering the original content. finally, the location map of the study area was created using arcgis 10.2 (environmental systems research institute, redlands, ca, usa). 3. results 3.1. demographic profile of the vegetable farmers evaluating the demographic characteristics of vegetable farmers is crucial for understanding their agricultural decision-making, resilience strategies, and adaptability to recurring environmental challenges, such as seasonal floods (joshi & piya, 2021; rai et al., 2019). the age structure is vital, as younger farmers can adapt to innovative practices more readily than older ones, who often rely on traditional practices (hussain & guha, 2023). the demographic analysis highlights (table 1) the predominance of middle-aged vegetable farmers in the study area, as 40.23% of the farmers are in the age group of 35-50, followed by 31.61% in the 18-35 years age group, which indicates the presence of both experienced and relatively younger farmers. a small portion of farmers (3.45%) are above 60 years old, suggesting a generational shift in involvement in vegetable farming. table 1. demographic profile of the vegetable farmers in choutara village. age group no. of respondents percentage 18-35 55 31.61 35-50 70 40.23 50-60 43 24.71 above 60 6 3.45 total 174 100 gender male 123 70.69 female 51 29.31 total 174 100 land holdings very small (<0.24) 119 68.39 small (0.24-0.48) 32 18.39 medium (0.48-0.96) 15 8.62 large (>0.96) 8 4.6 total 174 100 education level illiterate 62 35.63 primary 75 43.1 hslc 21 12.07 hs 16 9.2 total 174 100 years of farming experience 0-5 21 12.07 5 to 10 36 20.69 10 to 20 55 31.61 above 20 62 35.63 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 519-529 522 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. gender dynamics are also fundamental in shaping farmers' adaptive strategies (balayar & mazur, 2022; joshi & kalauni, 2018). studies have shown that women often engage in different adaptive practices from men, influenced by their unique socio-economic positions (naz, khan, maan, & shahbaz, 2020). in the study area, vegetable farming is predominantly a male-dominated activity, with 70.69% of the respondents being male, reflecting traditional gender roles in assam (bora, mishra, & das, 2023). females also actively participate in vegetable farming, constituting 29.31% of the population through seed selection, weeding, and post-harvest management. the size of landholdings directly influences the intensity and sustainability of vegetable farming practices in ecologically sensitive environments, such as floodplains (husain & sharma, 2022; raleting & obi, 2015). the size of the operational landholding also determines the farmers' ability to invest in innovative techniques. small and marginal farmers often lack access to adequate capital, irrigation facilities, and crop insurance, making them more vulnerable to environmental uncertainties (hazell, poulton, wiggins, & dorward, 2007). the landholding structure of the farmers reveals a prevalence of fragmented holdings, as 68.39% of the farmers operate on small plots (less than 0.24 hectares), indicating a marginal level of vegetable farming. 18.39% of farmers own small-sized land (0.24 to 0.48 hectares), and 8.62% of farmers own medium-sized land (0.48 to 0.96 hectares). only 4.6% have a landholding size greater than 0.96 hectares. thus, the study found that the village has limited land resources for intensive vegetable farming. educational attainment enhances farmers' ability to implement effective adaptation strategies, thereby facilitating a more informed decision-making process regarding flood resilience (singh et al., 2021). the study found that 43.1% of farmers have received only primary education, followed by high school (12.07 %) and higher secondary (9.2%) education. notably, 35.63% of farmers in the study area are illiterate, which limits their awareness of adopting modern agricultural practices (mittal & mehar, 2015). regarding farming experience, 35.63% of farmers have more than 20 years of experience, 31.61% have 10 to 20 years, and 20.69% have 5 to 10 years of experience in farming. only 12.07% are new to vegetable farming and have less than 5 years of experience. thus, the data on farming experience suggests a wealth of traditional knowledge within the farming community. 3.2. major vegetable crops grown in choutara village analyzing the seasonal dynamics and productivity of major vegetable crops is essential for developing adaptive strategies and policy interventions in the context of climatic uncertainty and recurring floods in assam (rao et al., 2019). the floodplain ecosystem of choutara village supports a variety of vegetable crops grown during different seasons of the year. the nutrient-rich, fertile alluvial soils and the region's subtropical monsoon climate provide a conducive environment for cultivating different types of vegetables (singh et al., 2021). table 2. major vegetable crops grown in choutara village. vegetable crops season grown duration (days) flood sensitivity area under cultivation (ha) production (mt) productivity (q/ha) potato post-monsoon 100-110 moderate 10.8 58.6 54.3 pumpkin pre-monsoon 100-120 low 4.8 41.9 86.7 radish post-monsoon 50-60 high 3.0 22.0 73.2 cabbage post-monsoon 60-70 high 14.1 233.4 165.5 cauliflower post-monsoon 90-95 high 13.5 201.8 149.5 broccoli post-monsoon 90-100 high 11.8 83.0 70.3 brinjal post-monsoon-winter 90-120 moderate 3.7 39.2 106.0 okra pre-monsoon monsoon 120-135 low 4.9 55.2 112.6 chayote pre-monsoon 120140 low 5.0 50.2 101.2 french beans post-monsoon-winter 40-50 moderate 3.3 24.0 72.6 indian bean post-monsoon-winter 60-70 moderate 3.5 14.3 40.6 yardlong bean pre-monsoon 60-70 moderate 0.5 2.4 47.3 peas post-monsoon 110-120 high 7.2 28.0 38.9 cucumber pre-monsoon 45-50 low 1.2 11.5 95.8 pointed gourd pre-monsoon 120-140 low 0.6 4.8 80.0 spine gourd pre-monsoon 115-125 moderate 1.1 7.7 70.2 ridge gourd pre-monsoon 60-70 low 1.3 12.7 97.9 bitter gourd pre-monsoon monsoon 50-55 low 0.9 7.7 85.5 bottle guard pre-monsoon 60-75 low 0.7 8.7 123.6 kohlrabi post-monsoon 60-70 high 3.2 35.2 110.6 carrot post-monsoon 110-120 high 1.1 7.0 63.2 tomato post-monsoon 55-60 moderate 2.6 29.1 110.2 chillies post-monsoon 60-120 moderate 3.3 8.3 25.4 coriander post-monsoon 100-120 high 1.5 1.8 12.0 mint post-monsoon 120-140 high 1.3 3.4 25.4 leafy greens post-monsoon-winter 45-60 high 5.5 30.4 55.3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 519-529 523 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 2 shows that farmers in the region grow both shortand long-duration crops, which satisfy local demand and support regional food security. it also reveals a complex relationship between environmental conditions and farmers' crop choices. most vegetable crops are grown during the post-monsoon season as floodwaters recede and fields become accessible. this season is also called the rabi crop season. vegetables such as potatoes, brinjals, cabbage, cauliflower, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, and peas are cultivated during this period due to the moist, fertile soils left after seasonal floods. brinjal, beans, and chilies are grown during the post-monsoon and winter seasons as they adapt to longer growing cycles. bitter gourd, bottle gourd, pointed gourd, okra, and cucumber are planted from the premonsoon to the monsoon season, since these crops can tolerate waterlogging. flood sensitivity directly influences farmers' crop selection. during the early and peak flood months, farmers in the village prefer to cultivate low-flood-sensitive crops, such as bitter gourd, pointed gourd, okra, bottle gourd, and cucumber, on elevated or raised bed farms. on the other hand, crops such as cabbage, cauliflower, radish, and carrot are cultivated after the flood to minimize the risk of crop damage. medium-sensitive crops, such as tomatoes, beans, and chilies, are cultivated when flood timing is more predictable. regarding the area under cultivation of major vegetable crops in the village, cabbage (14.1 ha) and cauliflower (13.5 ha) lead significantly, followed by broccoli (11.8 ha) and potato (10.8 ha). on the contrary, crops like yardlong bean (0.5 ha), pointed gourd (0.6 ha), and bottle gourd (0.7 ha) are grown on significantly smaller scales due to limited local markets. in terms of total output, cabbage again leads with 233.4 metric tons (mt), followed by cauliflower (201.8 mt) and broccoli (83.0 mt), indicating that these vegetables not only occupy a larger area under cultivation but also yield a substantial harvest. potato (58.6 mt) and okra (55.2 mt) also feature prominently in overall production, reflecting bulk production during the high-demand season; however, crops like coriander (1.8 mt), mint (3.4 mt), and yardlong bean (2.4 mt) show the least production due to limited cultivation area and shorter harvest cycles. regarding productivity, cabbage (165.5 q/ha) and cauliflower (149.5 q/ha) exhibit high yield efficiency, indicating effective land use and optimal inputs, such as improved seeds and better soil conditions. bottle gourd (123.6 q/ha), brinjal (106.0 q/ha), and kohlrabi (110.6 q/ha) are the other notable crops with excellent productivity, reflecting good agricultural practices. crops such as coriander (12.0 q/ha), chilies (25.4 q/ha), mint (25.4 q/ha), and peas (38.9 q/ha) exhibit lower productivity due to their high sensitivity to flooding and limited intensive input use. thus, it has been observed that vegetable farmers balance seasonal uncertainties and maximize the utility of their land. 3.3. input used for vegetable farming practices the use of high-quality seeds, fertilizers, organic manure, pesticides, and adequate irrigation facilities significantly influences the efficiency of the vegetable farming system (simonne, gazula, ozores-hampton, devalerio, & hochmuth, 2017; singh et al., 2020). however, several factors, including timely availability, affordability, technical knowledge, and environmental compatibility, influence the efficiency of the inputs (akamin, bidogeza, minkoua, & afari-sefa, 2017; ogunmodede & awotide, 2020; xu, zhang, & zhang, 2018). table 3 (figure 2) highlights the various farming inputs used by vegetable farmers in the study area. seeds are the primary inputs used in any farming system, and selecting appropriate seed types, whether indigenous or high-yielding varieties (hyv), is of utmost importance for successfully cultivating vegetable crops (behera, gupta, & rai, 2025; george, 2009). from table 3, it can be observed that 78.2% of vegetable farmers rely on high-yielding variety (hyv) seeds sourced through government and private channels to enhance productivity. in comparison, only 21.8% of farmers use indigenous seeds that they have preserved themselves. it has been observed that, despite the use of additional inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides and the increased cost of cultivation, farmers still rely on hyv seeds, as indigenous seeds have limited availability and do not offer the same yield potential as hyv seeds. table 3. input used for farming practices. input type sources no. of farmers using farmers using (%) application method issue faced seeds manual sowing hyv govt/private 136 78.2 high input requirement indigenous own 38 21.8 limited availability fertilizer combination of chemical fertilizer and organic manure private 118 67.8 broadcasting high cost purely organic manure own 56 32.18 soil incorporation insufficient crop protection measures pesticides private 136 78.2 spraying resistance local crop protection own 38 21.83 dusting limited availability irrigation shallow tube well govt 112 64.4 pumping limited coverage surface flow own 62 35.6 channeling climate dependence managing soil fertility is crucial for successful vegetable farming, particularly in the dynamic agroecological environment of floodplains (mandal, banerjee, purbey, & kumar, 2024). farmers in the study area use chemical fertilizers and organic manure to manage soil nutrients. chemical fertilizers offer immediate nutrients and boost shortterm productivity; however, their high costs and long-term effects on soil health and environmental sustainability raise significant concerns (abobatta & abd alla, 2023; pahalvi, rafiya, rashid, nisar, & kamili, 2021). in terms of fertilizer asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 519-529 524 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. use, 67.8% of farmers apply a combination of chemical fertilizer and organic manure. while this approach enhances crop productivity, it also presents challenges, including increased costs and dependency on external inputs. in contrast, organic manure is valued for its ability to improve soil structure, enhance microbial activity, and support long-term soil health (pinto, brito, & coutinho, 2017). it is employed by 32.18% of farmers in the study area. nevertheless, due to its limited availability and slow nutrient release, organic manure is less effective as a standalone option. to protect their vegetable crops from various pests and diseases, 78.2% of farmers depend on pesticides. however, the repeated use of the same chemical compounds has led to pests developing resistance, diminishing their effectiveness over time (mamun & goswami, 2024). in contrast, local crop protection measures, such as ash dusting, are used by only 21.83%, hindered by limited availability and declining traditional knowledge. proper irrigation facilities, especially during dry periods, ensure consistent moisture availability for optimal growth of vegetable crops (shock, pereira, hanson, & cahn, 2007). in the study area, farmers predominantly use shallow tubewells (64.4%) and surface flow irrigation (35.6%). the shallow tubewells are supported by government schemes and operated through a pumping system. they offer a sufficient amount of water supply but with limited area coverage, especially in remotely located, fragmented plots. surface flow irrigation is highly dependent on seasonal rainfall and is unreliable during the dry season. figure 2. graphical representation of input usage for vegetable farming practices in choutara village, kamrup district. 3.4. adaptive practices adapted by vegetable farmers adaptive practices, such as raised bed farming, organic mulching, seed preservation techniques, and an adjusted crop calendar, are essential for sustaining productivity and mitigating risks (elnesr & alazba, 2016; miernicki, lovell, & wortman, 2018; morel & cartau, 2023; naik, singh, & ranjan, 2017; ranjan, patle, prem, & solanke, 2017). these practices help maximize crop yield, reduce dependency on external inputs, and improve the overall farming system. table 4 highlights the different adaptive strategies prevalent in the study area, where 67.2% of the farmers use the raised bed farming method, in which the root zone of the vegetable crop is elevated and protected from temporary waterlogging. farmers rated this method 4.2 out of 5 for its effectiveness. similarly, organic mulching is adopted by 73% of farmers, in which the surface layer of the soil around the plant is covered with biodegradable materials, such as leaves and straw, to improve soil health, retain moisture, control weeds, and regulate temperature. the seed preservation technique is adopted by 21.8% of the farmers and is rated 3.9. this method involves saving seeds of vegetables like brinjal, pumpkin, bottle gourd, cucumber, and okra by drying them in the sun and using them in the next planting cycle. 71.8% of the vegetable farmers have adopted the adjusted crop calendar method. to avoid peak flood periods, the farmers have scheduled their sowing and harvesting practices in a more favorable window, and they have received the highest effectiveness rating (4.7), describing their central role in mitigating risk. table 4. adaptive practices adopted by farmers in choutara village. adaptive practice no. of farmers adoption percent effectiveness (farmer's rating 1-5) seasonal use raised-bed farming 117 67.2 4.2 monsoon organic mulching 127 73.0 4.4 all season seed preservation techniques 38 21.8 3.9 post flood adjusted crop calendar 125 71.8 4.7 all season asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 519-529 525 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.5. crop concentration crop concentration refers to the spatial distribution and relative dominance of a particular crop in a specific region compared to other crops, and indicates agricultural specialization (jasbir, 1976). bhatia (1965) used the location quotient (lq) method to delineate india's regional concentration of crops. the study involves 15 major crops to calculate the crop concentration in the village (table 5). the results reveal that cauliflower is the dominant crop in the village, with the highest lq value (2.6), followed by cabbage (1.9), okra (1.6), and bitter gourd (1.4), respectively, indicating their dominance in the village compared to the district-wide distribution. in contrast, crops such as potato (0.6), chilies (0.4), and bottle gourd (0.7) show lower lq values compared to their distribution in the district. meanwhile, crops such as cucumber, brinjal, pointed gourd, and carrot exhibit a balanced distribution with an lq value of one. the overall data highlights a tendency towards specialized cropping patterns in the village, driven by local agroecological conditions, market demand, and farmers’ preferences. table 5. crop concentration in choutara village. vegetable crop area in the village (ha) area in kamrup district (ha) location quotient index potato 10.8 4302 0.6 radish 3 893 0.8 cabbage 14.1 1650 1.9 cauliflower 13.5 1176 2.6 brinjal 3.7 798 1.0 okra 4.9 705 1.6 yardlong bean 0.5 98 1.1 peas 7.2 1934 0.8 cucumber 1.2 265 1.0 pointed gourd 0.6 132 1.0 bitter gourd 0.9 143 1.4 bottle guard 0.7 229 0.7 carrot 1.1 250 1.0 tomato 2.64 713 0.8 chillies 3.26 1932 0.4 figure 3 depicts the crop concentration index in conjunction with the area (in hectares) allocated to various vegetable crops in the village. cauliflower exhibits the highest concentration index, indicating a pronounced spatial preference, with cabbage and brinjal closely following. cauliflower (14 hectares) and cabbage (13 hectares) are the predominant crops in terms of area cultivated. in contrast, crops such as bitter gourd, bottle gourd, and yardlong bean have both low concentration indices and restricted cultivation areas, indicating their marginal significance in the local agricultural system. figure 3. graphical representation of crop concentration in choutara village, kamrup district. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 519-529 526 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.6. challenges faced by vegetable farmers vegetable farming in choutara village faces numerous challenges, primarily due to environmental sensitivity and infrastructural deficiencies. table 6 illustrates the challenges encountered by vegetable farmers in the study area. the frequent occurrence of floods has impacted 74.7% of farmers, causing significant damage to their crops. this challenge is ranked as the most severe (rank 1), as during the monsoon season, agricultural fields are inundated with floodwater annually, leading to crop destruction. approximately 62.1% of farmers reported pest and disease infestations as a major issue, ranking second in severity. these infestations are facilitated by stagnant water, humidity, and temperature fluctuations, which create optimal conditions for pest proliferation. soil erosion and sand deposition (rank 4) have affected 48.3% of respondents. it has been observed that after each flood cycle, a substantial amount of sand and silt deposits in the fields, necessitating additional investment for reclamation, which is often prohibitively expensive for small and marginal farmers. ranked as moderately severe (rank 3), waterlogging has affected 56.9% of the farmers. it is recognized as a secondary consequence of floods, which reduces oxygen availability to roots, leading to root rot and wilting. this frequently affects crops with shallow roots, such as brinjal, chili, and tomato. poor market access during floods is another severe challenge (rank 2) reported by 70.1% of the farmers. it was found that damaged and submerged roads during floods, as well as improper storage facilities, often hinder the timely movement of vegetables to the market, resulting in significant economic losses due to spoilage and reduced sales. some farmers are unable to sell their produce at all. it is interesting to note that, although flooding is a significant challenge, 44.8% of the farmers reported limited irrigation access (rank 4) during dry spells, which restricts the cultivation of high-value winter crops and thus reduces cropping intensity. limited access to agricultural training and extension services (rank 3) has been reported by 59.8% of the farmers, resulting in poor awareness among farmers about new technologies, adaptive practices, pest management, and market trends. table 6. challenges faced by vegetable farmers. challenges no. of farmers affected farmers affected (%) severity rank 1=high crop damage due to flood 130 74.7 1 pest and disease infestation 108 62.1 2 soil erosion/sand deposition 84 48.3 4 water logging 99 56.9 3 poor market access during a flood 122 70.1 2 limited irrigation access 78 44.8 4 lack of training/extension programme 104 59.8 3 3.7. farmer perspectives on improvement understanding the preferences and priorities of local farmers is crucial for developing effective agricultural policies. table 7 reveals that vegetable farmers in the study area support targeted measures to overcome recurring farming challenges. around 85.1% of the farmers support improving market connectivity. according to them, there is an urgent need for uninterrupted access to the market during floods, as poor infrastructure often causes severe post-harvest loss. similarly, 75.9% of farmers report the importance of flood-resilient farming practices. access to quality seeds and inputs has been highlighted by 74.1% of the farmers, indicating that timely and cost-efficient agricultural inputs are the need of the hour in the study area. crop insurance availability was mentioned by 67.8% of the farmers, reflecting the need for risk mitigation tools in response to frequent crop failures. lastly, 63.2% of farmers support the construction of drainage channels to address waterlogging and flood-related loss. table 7. farmers' suggestions for improvement. suggested intervention no. of farmers supporting percentage (%) construction of drainage channels 110 63.2 training of flood-resilient farming practices 132 75.9 crop insurance availability 118 67.8 access to quality seeds and inputs 129 74.1 better market connectivity 148 85.1 4. discussion the study reveals that the region exhibits a complex landscape of vegetable farming, shaped by access to inputs, adaptive practices, environmental challenges, and infrastructural constraints. the over-dependence on hyv seeds (78.2%), either purchased from private companies or distributed by government agents, has increased the productivity of vegetable crops but has also put a burden of high input costs on farmers. these findings align with those of ogada, mwabu, and muchai (2014) who reported that while hyvs significantly enhance yield, their adoption is often hindered by the costs associated with them and their dependency on external inputs. on the other hand, the limited use of indigenous seeds (21.8%) due to limited availability matches the observations made by hasan and chaudhuri (2020) who reported the erosion of the traditional seed system in west bengal. regarding chemical fertilizers and pesticides, farmers have reported high costs and the development of resistance, which aligns with the findings of mitra et al. (2022) who observed a decline in the efficiency of chemical inputs due to overuse and poor application practices. although adapting organic manure is a sustainable alternative, farmers have reported an insufficient supply, reflecting a wider concern about the challenge of sourcing organic inputs in the study area (singh et al., 2024). the irrigation methods asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 519-529 527 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. reflect a clear dependence on government-assisted shallow tube wells (64.4%). however, the lack of comprehensive spatial coverage has limited their effectiveness. deka (2023) highlights that in assam, shallow tube wells and surface irrigation systems are often inadequate during peak demand periods due to climate dependence and uneven rainfall distribution. the surface flow irrigation method, adopted by fewer farmers (35.6%), is driven by climate, highlighting the weakness of conventional irrigation methods amid unpredictable monsoon cycles. the high adoption rate of adaptive practices, such as organic mulching (73%), adjusted crop calendars (71.8%), and raised bed farming (67.2%), contributes significantly to agricultural productivity and sustainability, indicating an encouraging trend toward climate-smart agriculture (chandra, mcnamara, & dargusch, 2017). the adjusted crop calendar, with an effectiveness rating of 4.7, emphasizes its potential to mitigate crop loss during extreme weather conditions. verma et al. (2024) also highlighted the benefits of adaptive irrigation scheduling in the northeastern hill ecosystem, showing that precise irrigation intervals significantly enhance crop performance under climate stress. the relatively lower adoption of seed preservation techniques (21.8%) suggests that increasing awareness and comprehensive training can lead to more effective utilization. similar findings were mentioned by yadav and ghosh (2023) emphasizing the importance of community seed banks and farmer training for improving post-flood recovery capacities. the high lq value for cauliflower and cabbage suggests that these crops are preferentially cultivated in the village with an effective drainage system, which reflects farmers' adaptation to seasonal waterlogging. similarly, the concentration of bitter gourd indicates a judicious focus on crops with low flood sensitivity, aligning with the findings of mandal (2014) regarding the selection of flood-adaptive crops. the concentration index also highlights the prominence of niche crops, such as yard-long beans and pointed gourd, which are cultivated in relatively small areas for local markets, aligning with the findings of barman, saha, patel, and bera (2022) on local market-driven crop selection. comparative analysis across farmer categories shows that larger landholders tend to cultivate a wide variety of vegetable crops and invest more in flood-resilient infrastructure, such as raised beds and tube wells. small and marginal farmers, who constitute over 86% of the sample, often rely on low-cost, adaptive methods such as mulching and adjusted crop calendars. similarly, farmers with higher education levels (hslc and above) demonstrate greater engagement with adaptive techniques and market connectivity, whereas farmers with lower education levels (illiterate and those with primary-level education) are more reliant on traditional practices. seasonal patterns further reveal that high-yield, high-sensitivity crops, such as cabbage and cauliflower, dominate post-monsoon cultivation. in contrast, pre-monsoon farming emphasizes flood-tolerant crops, including okra, chayote, and gourds, thereby optimizing resource use during less predictable flood conditions. despite their efforts, the farmers of the study area face multiple challenges. crop damage due to floods and market inaccessibility during floods was ranked highest in severity (rank 1), aligning with the findings of baruah, mili, gogoi, and chetia (2023) who noted similar disturbances in assam during the monsoon period. pest and disease infestations have also affected more than half of the respondents, indicating an urgent need for plant protection services and an integrated pest management approach (ipm), as advocated by singh et al. (2025). it is reported that waterlogging and soil erosion, particularly in the plots located adjacent to the river, continuously degrade the quality of land, aligning with the findings of (singha & singha, 2025) who mentioned that recurring floods in assam lead to extensive crop losses and soil degradation. the most commonly recommended suggestion was better market connectivity (85.1%), highlighting that structural barriers are as crucial as environmental ones. this aligns with the findings of jain, sheekha, and mandal (2022) who demonstrated a correlation between market access and improved farm incomes and adaptive capacity in northeast india. training in flood-resilient practices (75.9%) and access to quality seeds (74.1%) highlight the importance of enhancing technical inputs, extension services, and infrastructure development. the demand for crop insurance availability (67.8%) highlights the financial risk faced by farmers. it validates the need for inclusive agricultural schemes, as chatterjee (2024) mentioned, who found that low insurance penetration leaves farmers in assam exposed to disaster-induced losses. 5. conclusion the foregoing discussion presents a complex picture of vegetable farming, characterized by ecological sensitivity and limited access to resources in the study area. the farming practice is male-dominated and operates on very small landholdings. the limited educational attainment of the farmers has restricted the adoption of new technologies. despite this, the community retains deep-rooted traditional knowledge passed down through generations, which has helped them maintain seasonal cropping patterns and adapt to farming practices. various vegetables are grown using both indigenous and hybrid seeds, depending on seasonal suitability and seed availability. though chemical fertilizers and pesticides are increasingly used to increase productivity, organic manure is also applied to maintain soil health. irrigation is primarily dependent on shallow tube wells. innovative adaptive practices, such as raised bed farming, adjusted crop calendars, and organic mulching, are being adopted at promising rates to mitigate the risk of crop loss. crop damage due to unpredictable floods, pest infestations, poor market connectivity, and limited access to reliable irrigation systems remains a significant challenge. the research suggests an urgent need for integrated, area-specific interventions to enhance the resilience of floodplain agriculture. strong policy initiatives should be implemented, focusing on infrastructure development, community-based climate-smart farming practices, and enhancing extension services to support sustainable development. the findings of this study have significant implications for regional planning and climate-resilient agricultural policy. policymakers must recognize the unique challenges of floodplain environments and prioritize resource allocation, education, and technology transfer to effectively address these issues. by aligning grassroots adaptation strategies with institutional support and regionally tailored frameworks, the sustainability and productivity of floodplain vegetable farming in the kamrup district can be secured. the active involvement of local communities with institutional and government support will ensure a sustainable and productive vegetable farming system in the kamrup district. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 519-529 528 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the gauhati university, india has granted approval for this study on 12 march 2024 (ref. no. guiec-09/24). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abobatta, w., & abd alla, m. 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(2025). analysis of the welfare gap among smallholder palm oil farmers in two scheme farming management: a case study in lampung province, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1), 1–10. 10.55493/5005.v15i1.5275 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction palm oil is the main raw material in the supply of crude palm oil (cpo) in the world. in the indonesian economy, palm oil plays a strategic role because this commodity has bright prospects as a source of foreign exchange (rosa & zaman, 2017; suroso, tandra, & wahyudi, 2021). indonesia is a competitive country in the global oil market, representing major export and import countries (ramadhani & santoso, 2019; rifin, 2010; salleh et al., 2016). the promising prospects for the palm oil industry are facing negative issues, especially for the environment. issues related to the negative impacts of the palm oil industry have become a global concern, especially after the sustainable asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 1 (2025): 1-10. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4304-9915 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0329-9867 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8007-1524 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3354-9414 https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7998-6015 mailto:fitriani@polinela.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 1-10 2 development goals (sdgs) agenda (erwiningsih, 2023). the european union (eu) has officially implemented the anti-deforestation law, which aims to ensure that products entering the european union market come from legal sources and do not cause deforestation. this rule aims to ensure consumption and trade do not contribute to world deforestation. deforestation can result in ecosystem changes, including loss of biodiversity, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and overall environmental damage. there are at least seven commodities regulated in the european union's anti-deforestation law, namely palm oil, coffee, meat, wood, cocoa, soybeans, and rubber. the existence of the anti-deforestation law certainly has implications for the european union's trading partners, including indonesia. in the midst of the debate on the issue of deforestation, indonesia is still exporting cpo to reach us$29.62 billion in 2022, an increase of 3.56 percent compared to the previous year (badan pusat statistik, 2022a). this is in line with data from the indonesian palm oil entrepreneurs association (gabungan pengusaha sawit indonesia, 2022), which notes that in august 2022 indonesia exported 506,800 tons of cpo, up 51.7 percent from 334,000 tons in the previous month. indonesia's palm oil production in 2022 will reach 45.58 million tons, an increase of 0.88 percent from the previous year (badan informasi geospasial, 2022). this production is generated from indonesia's palm oil plantation area, which has reached 14.9 million hectares, with the largest proportion being in riau province, which reaches 2.9 million hectares (badan pusat statistik, 2022b). the advancement of palm oil manors in world palm oil-producing nations can contribute altogether to diminishing destitution in those nations (palm oil agribusiness strategic policy institute, 2021; syahza, tampubolon, irianti, meiwanda, & asmit, 2023). the foremost imperative thing approximately welfare is salary, since assembly needs are restricted by family wage (purba, rifai, & kausar, 2015). a family’s expenditure on food consumption decreases as their income increases. so, if there’s an increment in pay and this increment does not alter utilization designs, at that point the family is affluent. on the other hand, in the event that an increment in family pay changes utilization designs, the family will not be as affluent. the growing world market share related to cpo needs has meant that lampung province, one of the provinces on sumatra island, continues to strive to develop palm oil plantations as a driver of regional economic growth. by 2022, the area of palm oil plantations in lampung province will have reached 109,876 hectares. in accordance with the 2019-2024 lampung province long term development plan (ltdp), the plantation sub-sector is expected to make a significant contribution to the regional domestic product (rdp) of lampung province through increasing production of plantation commodities, especially smallholder plantations (sp), namely palm oil, coffee, pepper, cocoa, coconut, rubber, and sugarcane. nationally, lampung province only ranks 15th as a palm oil-producing province. the contribution of exports of animal/vegetable fats and oils (cpo and refined palm oil) in lampung province is 38.03 percent of the national level. the central districts for palm oil production are mesuji regency, tulang bawang regency, central lampung regency, and way kanan regency (badan pusat statistik provinsi lampung, 2022). tulang bawang regency is the largest palm oil producer, with a contribution of 22.96 percent of the total palm oil production of lampung province. the province of lampung divides palm oil cultivation into two groups: independent palm oil farmers and plasma palm oil producers. independent palm oil farmers are farmers who manage their palm oil farming business independently, both in meeting capital needs, managing the farming business, and selling their products. plasma palm oil cultivation involves the management of palm oil farming as a core company partner. this relates to palm oil farming activities under a cooperation agreement with the core company regarding mutually agreed-upon rights and obligations. palm oil cultivation using an independent pattern and a partner pattern will influence the income obtained. most of the palm oil in lampung province is old, so it is time for it to be rejuvenated. however, because palm oil farming is still a mainstay for earning income and achieving prosperity, despite the issue of limiting world palm oil exports, palm oil farming is still being carried out. therefore, this research aims to analyze the level of welfare of farmers whose palm oil plants are old and the factors that influence this under the pattern of farming management issues. 2. material and methods the research was carried out using survey methods. the location covers six districts in lampung province, indonesia, as a palm oil production center of the smallholder palm oil plantation. it involved tulang bawang, mesuji, way kanan, central lampung, south lampung, and west pesisir barat districts. the study divided the sample frame of smallholder palm oil farmers into two categories; independent and partnership farmers. palm oil farmers with partnership patterns are located in tulang bawang, mesuji, and way kanan regencies. map of distribution of research areas in lampung province can be seen in figure 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 1-10 3 figure 1. research areas in lampung province, indonesia. source: badan informasi geospasial (2022). the data consists of primary data and secondary data. primary data was obtained from interviews with respondents using a questionnaire. secondary data was obtained from related agencies. the number of farmers with palm oil plants old (>17 years) in lampung province is 1,008 households (ismono, prasmatiwi, & lestari, 2019). from this population data, households were selected that owned one parcel of palm oil land with a maximum land area of 2 ha. therefore, the farmers’ sample was 594 households spread across six districts determined by simple randomness. table 1 shows the distribution of samples of palm oil farmers in six districts of lampung province. table 1. distribution of samples of palm oil farmers in six districts of lampung province. no. district sample amount total independent partnership 1 south lampung 64 0 64 2 central lampung 98 0 98 3 pesisir barat 36 0 36 4 mesuji 21 108 129 5 tulang bawang 30 70 100 6 way kanan 46 121 167 total 295 299 594 the analytical method for measuring the level of welfare of palm oil farming households uses (sajogyo, 1997) poverty criteria (fitriani, 2022; fitriani, arifin, & ismono, 2010). this method calculates household expenditures using the following formula: 𝐶𝑡 = 𝐶𝑎 + 𝐶𝑏 + 𝐶𝑛 (1) information: ct = total household expenditure. ca = expenditure on food. cb = non-food expenditure. cn = other expenditures. expenses per capita/year (rp) = household expenditure/year number of family dependents (2) expenses/capita/year equal to rice consumption (kg) = expenditure/capita/year (rp) 𝑅𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒 (𝑅𝑝/𝐾𝑔) (3) from these calculations, the poverty level obtained according to sajogyo (1997) is categorized as follows: a. the poorest: expenditure equivalent to ≤ 180 kg of rice/capita/year. b. very poor: expenditure equivalent to 181-240 kg of rice/capita/year. c. poor: expenditure equivalent to 241-320 kg of rice/capita/year. d. near poverty: expenditure equivalent to 321-480 kg of rice/capita/year. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 1-10 4 e. enough: expenditure equivalent to 481-960 kg of rice/capita/year. f. decent living: expenditure equivalent to >960 kg of rice/capita/year. the poorest, very poor, poor, and almost poor categories mean not well off, while the moderate and decent living categories mean well off. factors that influence the welfare of palm oil farmer households in lampung province were analyzed using a logistic regression model (rosadi, 2011). in ordinal logit regression, there were more than two categories. the following is an econometric approach to the logit model: 𝑃𝑖 = 𝐹(𝑍𝑖) = 𝐹 (𝛼 + 𝛽𝑋𝑖 + µ) (4) 𝑃𝑖 = 1/(1 + 𝑒 − 𝑍𝑖) (5) 𝑃𝑖 = 1/(1 + 𝑒 − (𝛼 + 𝛽𝑋𝑖 + µ)) (6) if both sides of the equation are multiplied 1+e-zi then obtained: (1 + 𝑒−𝑍𝑖) 𝑃𝑖 = 1 (7) e−zi = 1 pi – 1 = pi 1−pi (8) while e-zi = 1/ e-zi then: e−zi = pi 1−pi (rasio odds) (9) next, the ordinal logit regression equation is expressed as follows: 𝑃𝑖 = 𝐹 (𝑍𝑖) = 𝐹 (𝛼 + 𝛽1𝑋𝑖 + µ) (10) zi find with the formula: zi = ln [ pi 1−pi ] = α + β1x1 + β2x2 + β3x3 + β4x4 + β5x5 + β6x6 + β7x7 + β8d1 + µ (11) information : zi: probability z1 = z(y=1) for the poorest category of households. opportunity z2 = z(y=2) for households in the very poor category. opportunity z3 = z(y=3) for poor category households. opportunity z4 = z(y=4) for households in the near-poor category. opportunity z5 = z(y=5) for sufficient category households. opportunity z6 = z(y=6) for households in the decent living category. pi: the opportunity to determine the level of household welfare if xi is known. α: intercept. β − β8: regression coefficient (i = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). x1: age (year). x2: education (year). x3: family members (person). x4: duration in palm oil farming (year). x5: land acreage (ha). x6: palm oil income (rp). x7: household income (rp). d1: farming pattern: 0 = independent; 1 = partnership. µ: error term. 3. result and discussion 3.1. farmers characteristic the pattern of people's palm oil cultivation in lampung province is that 50.34 percent are partner farmers and the remaining 49.66 percent are independent farmers. independent palm oil farmers are spread across central lampung, south lampung, pesisir barat, way kanan, tulang bawang, and mesuji districts, with a total of 295 households. the largest independent palm oil farmers are in central lampung regency, namely 33.22 percent. figure 2. distribution of palm oil farmers based on farm management pattern and district in lampung, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 1-10 5 partnership pattern of palm oil farmers in lampung province is only found in three districts, tulang bawang, mesuji, and way kanan, and totals 299 farmers, with the largest percentage being in way kanan district (40.47%). these three districts have a greater number of partner palm oil farmers than independent palm oil farmers. figure 2 illustrates the distribution of palm oil farmers in lampung province who operate both independent and partner businesses. table 2 presents the farmer’s age, education level, family member, farming duration, and land area of palm oil plantation. the average age of palm oil cultivation is 24.52 years. the majority (81.80 percent) were in the 22-31 year range. in fact, the productive life of palm oil is only 25 years. however, palm oil is still one of the commodities that farmers rely on to meet their household needs. table 2. characteristics of smallholder palm oil farmers in lampung province. characteristics pattern of farming independent partenership farmer age (year) 56 57 education level elementary school elementary school family members (persson) 4 3 farming duration (year) 23 25 palm oil land acreage (ha) 1.01 0.98 the majority of palm oil farmers in lampung province are still in the productive age range, with an average of 57 years for partnership pattern farmers and 56 years for independent farmers. in accordance with what manyamsari and mujiburrahmad (2014) stated, the age group 15–64 years is classified as a productive group for work in producing goods and services. the education level of palm oil farmers in lampung province varies in seven levels, namely no school, elementary school, middle school, high school, d2, d3, and s1. the majority (59.76 percent) of both independent and partner farmers have an elementary school education. according to pranomo and yuliawati (2019), a person's level of education influences a person's ability to accept new innovations, as well as influencing farming activities. economic factors were one of the things that caused palm oil farmers not to receive education at that time. the number of dependents influences the size of the farmer's household expenses. on the other hand, if family dependents are of productive age and help in farming activities, this will reduce the use of labor outside the family, thereby reducing the costs of palm oil farming. the responsibilities of independent and partner farming families are not much different. most of the dependent families of independent palm oil farmers are 4 people, while partner farmers are 3 people. the farming experience of palm oil farmers can influence their success in farming. the experiences of independent and partner farmers are not much different. the average experience of independent farmers is 23 years, while that of partner farmers is 25 years. the average area of palm oil land cultivated is 0.99 ha, with a range between 0.13 ha and 2.00 ha. the average land area for independent farmers is 1.01 ha, while for partner farmers it is 0.98 ha. it turns out that palm oil farmers with independent business patterns have slightly larger areas of palm oil land than partner palm oil farmers. the results of the study by moeis, dartanto, moeis, and ikhsan (2020) show that agricultural land is an important asset for agricultural households in addition to its role as the main production factor in the agricultural sector. apart from palm oil farming, household income for palm oil farmers also comes from other sources of income, such as non-palm oil farming income, off-farm income, and non-farm income. all of these sources of income have an important role in helping palm oil farmers to meet their household needs. table 3 displays the distribution of household income contributions from palm oil farmers in lampung province. table 3. distribution of contribution to household income of palm oil farmers in lampung province. component independent partnership (rp/thn) (%) (rp/thn) (%) palm oil incomes 7,056,525 18.56 10,097,087 21.33 farming incomes exclude palm oil 14,506,922 38.15 20,766,693 43.87 household off farm incomes 5,899,356 15.52 4,240,535 8.96 household non-farm incomes 10,559,661 27.77 12,237,793 25.85 total household incomes 38,022,464 100.00 47,342,108 100.00 table 3 showed that the largest contribution to household income of palm oil farmers in lampung province comes from farming income other than palm oil, namely 38.15 percent for independent farmers and 43.87 percent for partner farmers. the contribution to income from palm oil farming for both independent farmers and partner farmers is only in third place. this is in line with research by ismono et al. (2019) that, although palm oil farming is the main livelihood, it is not the largest contributor to the household income structure of palm oil farmers in lampung province. mehraban, kubitza, alamsyah, and qaim (2021) said that palm oil farmers engage in more non-agricultural activities that help facilitate income and fulfill consumption needs. the low percentage contribution of palm oil farming income to household income is due to the relatively old age of palm oil plants, namely an average of 24.52 years old. the old age of palm oil plants has an impact on decreasing production levels. this decrease in production will affect the revenue and income of palm oil farming. research by aristiyani, arifin, and lestari (2021) concluded that palm oil farming asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 1-10 6 income in the plant age group of 22-25 years had the lowest income because the palm oil plants were old and less productive. 3.2. the level of welfare of palm oil farmer’s households figure 3 clarifies that the normal add-up to consumption of free agriculturist family units in lampung territory is idr 28,257,944 per year, whereas that of accomplice agriculturists is idr 26,535,683 per year. the share of nourishment consumption by free agriculturists and accomplice ranchers is 49.40 percent and 49.36 percent, respectively. the non-food use offers of autonomous agriculturists and accomplice ranchers are 50.60 percent and 50.64 percent, respectively. so, the share of non-food consumption is more prominent within the add-up to family consumption structure. the families with a high level of welfare will be able to meet their needs not as it were for nourishment, but moreover for non-food things (praza & shamadiyah, 2020). this is often comparable to what applies to engel's law, that the extent of add-up-to-consumption apportioned to nourishment will diminish with expanding wages. if we look at the percentage of food and non-food expenditure, independent and partner palm oil farmers are prosperous families because their food expenditure is smaller than their non-food expenditure. if a household can meet its non-food needs, it will undoubtedly meet its food needs as well. this is because the greater the non-food expenditure, the more guaranteed the availability of food needs. figure 3. food and non-food expenditure of palm oil farmers in lampung province. furthermore, based on sajogyo (1997) criteria, the level of welfare of palm oil farmer households in lampung province is presented in figure 3. it can be seen in figure 3 that the majority of palm oil farmers are in the sufficient group (54.24 percent) for independent farmers and 47.49 percent for partner farmers. for the decent living category, the number of independent farmers and partner farmers is the same, namely 25.08 percent. so there are 79.32 percent of independent farmers and 72.57 percent of partner farmers in lampung province who are classified as prosperous. this is due to the diversity of income sources for households, so that the total income generated is able to meet household needs, both food and non-food. however, in figure 4, it can also be seen that there are farmers in the categories of almost poor, poor, very poor, and even the poorest, although only 20.68 percent for independent farmers and 27.43 percent for partner farmers. this shows that there are still quite a lot of independent and partner farmers who are not yet prosperous. in general, the results of this research are in line with yanti, nuraerni, and rasyid (2022) who found that the level of welfare of palm oil farmer households in pebatae village is classified as a prosperous household. this result is also in line with lalita, ismono, and prasmatiwi (2019) who found that for both palm oil farmers who have small, medium, and large areas of land in lampung province, the majority (62.39 percent) are in the sufficient category. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 1-10 7 figure 4. distribution of farmer welfare in lampung province according to sajogyo criteria. 3.3. factors that influence the level of welfare of palm oil farmer households the parallel lines test results show that the chi-square value is 58.374, which means the slope coefficient is the same for all response variables with a confidence level of 99 percent (table 4). furthermore, the simultaneous test results show that the chi-square value is 68.457 with a confidence level of 99 percent. these results show that there is a decrease in the -2 log likelihood value from intercept only to final, namely 1448.963 to 1380.506, with a confidence level of 99 percent (table 5). this means that a model with independent variables is better than a model with only an intercept, so it can be concluded that the regression model formed is a fit model. table 4. test results of parallel lines. model -2 log likelihood chi-square df sig. null hypothesis 1380.506 general 1312.132b 58.374c 32 0.000 note: b: significant level at ᾱ 0,01; c: significant level at ᾱ 0,05 table 5. the model fitting information. model -2 log likelihood chi-square df sig. intercept only 1448.963 final 1380.506 68.457 8 0.000 table 6. pseudo r-square result indicator r-square cox and snell 0.109 nagelkerke 0.119 mcfadden 0.047 testing the coefficient of assurance utilizing a few strategies appears that the nagelkerke score gives the biggest esteem compared to others, specifically 0.119 (table 6). this implies that 11.90 percent of the variety in openings for palm oil agriculturist family units to realize family thriving can be clarified by the factors of age, final instruction, number of family dependents, length of palm oil cultivating, range of arrive developed, salary from palm oil cultivating, family pay., and palm oil development designs, whereas the remaining 88.10 percent is clarified by other factors not included within the show. the parameter estimation comes about for components that impact the welfare of palm oil cultivating family units in lampung territory and is displayed in table 7. based on table 7, it showed that the age of palm oil ranchers incorporates a negative impact on the openings for palm oil agriculturists to move forward family welfare with a certainty level of 99 percent. the chances proportion esteem of 0.98 demonstrates that for every one year the age of palm oil farmers increases, the opportunity for palm oil agriculturists to realize thriving diminishes by 0.98 times. more seasoned agriculturists don't essentially have superior information than more youthful agriculturists. ryan, prihtanti, and nadapdap (2018) expressed that agriculturists of profitable age will work way better than ranchers of non-productive age. sumekar, prasetyo, and nadhila (2021) expressed that ranchers of beneficial age ordinarily have adequate capacity and vitality and are simple to get it and assimilate data and innovation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 1-10 8 table 7. parameter estimation results for factors that influence the welfare of palm oil farming households in lampung province. variables estimate std. error wald df sig. 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound threshold [y = 1] -6.762 1.218 30.796 1 0.000 -9.150 -4.374 [y = 2] -4.429 0.760 33.997 1 0.000 -5.918 -2.940 [y = 3] -2.960 0.708 17.486 1 0.000 -4.347 -1.573 [y = 4] -1.414 0.693 4.157 1 0.041 -2.773 -0.055 [y = 5] 1.027 0.691 2.208 1 0.137 -0.328 2.382 characteristics age (𝑋1) -0.021*** 0.007 7.695 1 0.006 -0.035 -0.006 education (𝑋2) -0.004 0.028 0.019 1 0.890 -0.059 0.051 family members (𝑋3) 0.104 0.064 2.632 1 0.105 -0.022 0.230 farming duration (𝑋4) -0.004 0.018 0.055 1 0.814 -0.040 0.032 land acreage (𝑋5) 0.147 0.196 0.564 1 0.452 -0.237 0.532 palm oil incomes (𝑋6) 0.026*** 0.012 4.455 1 0.035 0.002 0.050 component household incomes (𝑋7) 0.014*** 0.003 23.583 1 0.000 0.008 0.020 pattern farming management (d1) -0.416*** 0.166 6.310 1 0.012 -0.740 -0.091 note: ***= significance  = 0.01. furthermore, the regression model based on table 5 as follows. 𝑌1 = −6.762 – 0.021𝑋1 – 0.004𝑋2 + 0.104𝑋3 – 0.004𝑋4 + 0.147𝑋5 + 0.026𝑋6 + 0.014𝑋7 – 0.0416𝐷1 𝑌2 = −4.429 – 0.021𝑋1 – 0.004𝑋2 + 0.104𝑋3 – 0.004𝑋4 + 0.147𝑋5 + 0.026𝑋6 + 0.014𝑋7 – 0.0416𝐷1 𝑌3 = −2.960 – 0.021𝑋1 – 0.004𝑋2 + 0.104𝑋3 – 0.004𝑋4 + 0.147𝑋5 + 0.026𝑋6 + 0.014𝑋7 – 0.0416𝐷1 𝑌4 = −1.414 – 0.021𝑋1 – 0.004𝑋2 + 0.104𝑋3 – 0.004𝑋4 + 0.147𝑋5 + 0.026𝑋6 + 0.014𝑋7 – 0.0416𝐷1 𝑌5 = 1.027 – 0.021𝑋1 – 0.004𝑋2 + 0.104𝑋3 – 0.004𝑋4 + 0.147𝑋5 + 0.026𝑋6 + 0.014𝑋7 – 0.0416𝐷1 palm oil farming income has a real and positive effect on palm oil farmers' opportunities to improve household welfare with a confidence level of 95 percent. the odds ratio value of 1.03 indicates that every time there is an increase in palm oil income by one thousand rupiah, the opportunity for palm oil farmers to improve household welfare will increase by 1.03 times. this is in line with research by wahyudi, sissah, and ifazah (2023) which concluded that income has a positive effect on the level of welfare of palm oil farmers. the household income of palm oil farmers has a real and positive effect on the opportunities for palm oil farmers to improve household welfare with a confidence level of 99 percent. the odds ratio value of 1.01 indicates that every time there is an increase in the household income of palm oil farmers by one thousand rupiah, the opportunity for palm oil farmers to improve household welfare will increase by 1.01 times. similar results were obtained by oleh (alhudhori & amali, 2020) who found household income had a positive and significant effect on the welfare of families of palm oil farmers in muaro jambi regency. this supports chrisendo, siregar, and qaim (2022) who stated that palm oil cultivation can improve living standards and human resource formation in small farmer households. palm oil cultivation patterns have a negative effect on palm oil farmers' opportunities to improve household welfare with a confidence level of 95 percent. the odds ratio value of 0.66 indicates that partner farmers have a 0.66-time chance compared to independent farmers to improve household welfare. the independent palm oil cultivation pattern has a higher chance of increasing household welfare when compared to the partner palm oil cultivation pattern. ismono et al. (2019) stated that the lower income of partner farmers compared to independent farmers is due to poor implementation of partnerships, especially in terms of transparency in profit sharing and costs incurred by large companies. recent education, number of family dependents, length of palm oil farming, and land area do not have a significant effect on opportunities to improve the welfare of palm oil farmers. the education level of palm oil farmers in lampung province is mostly elementary school (es). this more varied and relatively low level of education means that its influence on the level of household welfare is not real. pranata, widjaya, and silviyanti (2020) state that education has no guarantee of increasing crop yield, which can directly affect the welfare of farming households and also revealed that the farmer's education level has no effect on the amount of income they earn. the number of family dependents you have got will decide the family's needs. as the number of family members increases, the family’s needs become more pressing. welfare can diminish due to the expansive consumption of people in a family. the huge number of family obligations, without being met with by an increment in pay, can decrease the level of welfare of agriculturists (pratama, zulfanetti, & umiyati, 2021). in differentiating to pratama's investigation, this ponder found that the number of family dependents had no real impact on the opportunity to extend the welfare of palm oil agriculturists. most of the subordinate families of palm oil agriculturists in lampung area are, as it were, four individuals. seeing this, the number of family dependents possessed by palm oil agriculturists in lampung area is moderately low with less assortment, so it does not influence the welfare of agriculturist family units. the length of farming does not have a significant effect on the opportunity to increase the welfare of palm oil farmers. a farmer's experience in palm oil farming does not guarantee the farmer's success in producing palm oil. the length of experience in palm oil farming, which is not accompanied by the use of technology and innovation in palm oil asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 1-10 9 farming, can have an impact on the resulting palm oil production. this is in line with hendrayana, kurniati, and kusrini (2020), who stated that rubber farmers' farming experience does not have a significant effect on farmers' welfare. land area is a production factor that is used as arable land for farming production. the amount of land cultivated by farmers should influence the production obtained. however, the results of this study found that land area had no real effect on the opportunity to increase the welfare of palm oil farmers because the sample of farmers was limited to farmers with a maximum of 2 ha of land with an average of 0.99 ha, so there was less variation. 4. conclusion indonesia must continue to fight against the negative issue of oil palm deforestation because, on the other hand, it is proven that the majority of smallholder oil palm farmers in lampung province with limited land and old plantations, both with independent and partner business patterns, are in the adequate category and live a decent life or prosper. oil palm farming income and household incomes of oil palm farmers have the opportunity to increase welfare, while the age of farmers has the opportunity to reduce welfare. the independent business pattern has a higher chance of improving welfare than the partner business pattern. funding: this research is supported by palm oil plantation fund management agency (grant number: prj-74/dpks/2018). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the lampung university, indonesia has granted approval for this study on 13 march 2018 (ref. no. prj-74/dpks/2018). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references alhudhori, m., & amali, m. 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(2022). analysis of income and welfare level of oil palm farmer households in pebatae village. wiratani: jurnal ilmiah agribisnis, 5(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.33096/wiratani.v5i1.84 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.29103/ag.v5i1.2735 https://doi.org/10.20885/ejem.vol11.iss1.art5 https://doi.org/10.3923/tae.2010.1.18 https://doi.org/10.29244/agrob.5.3.325-333 https://doi.org/10.30737/agrinika.v5i1.1538 https://doi.org/10.18280/ijsdp.160810 https://doi.org/10.18280/ijsdp.180511 https://doi.org/10.59246/muqaddimah.v1i3.319 https://doi.org/10.33096/wiratani.v5i1.84 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 147 exploring the relationship between land characteristics and the sustainable growth of coconut cultivation in indonesia sisca vaulinaa prima wahyu titisarib elinurc siti zahrahd ilma satriana dewie a,c,edepartment of agribusiness, faculty of agriculture, universitas islam riau, riau, indonesia. b,ddepartment of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, universitas islam riau, riau, indonesia.  siscavaulina@agr.uir.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 23 august 2024 revised: 7 october 2024 accepted: 24 october 2024 published: 15 november 2024 keywords agriculture coconut indonesia land typology sustainability tropical agriculture. this study explores land types as a basis for evaluating the sustainability of coconut plantations in indonesia, focusing on peatlands and coastal areas that affect productivity and management practices. this research aims to evaluate the sustainability of coconut plantation farming across various land types and identify critical sustainability factors. carried out in indragiri hilir regency, riau province, the study employed a survey methodology and utilized rapcoconut ordination analysis coupled with multidimensional scaling (mds). the surveyed area encompasses peatlands and coastlands, and a purposive sampling approach, guided by the slovin formula, yielded a sample size of 101 coconut farmers. the sustainability assessment covered five dimensions: ecological (7 attributes), social-cultural (4 attributes), economic (4 attributes), technological (6 attributes), and institutional (7 attributes) and 28 attributes. the study assessed the sustainability of coconut farming in indragiri hilir regency, riau province. peatlands showed lower sustainability, while coastline lands demonstrated higher sustainability levels. key factors affecting sustainability include ecological aspects like fertilizer and pesticide use, socio-cultural elements like family involvement and attitudes towards coconut farming, economic factors like the coconut vending system, technological considerations such as optimal planting spacing and seed quality, and institutional factors like participation in extension programs and access to financial resources. contribution/originality: this study makes a unique contribution by assessing the sustainability of coconut plantations in indonesia based on land typology, which has not been widely studied. it also directly contributes to the achievement of sustainable development goals (sdgs) related to decent work, economic growth, and sustainable environmental management. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5222 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: vaulina, s., titisari, p. w., elinur, zahrah, s., & dewi, i. s. (2024). exploring the relationship between land characteristics and the sustainable growth of coconut cultivation in indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4), 147–166. 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5222 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction alouw and wulandari (2020) emphasize the success of coconut cultivation in tropical countries like indonesia, highlighting its strategic importance due to significant economic, social, and environmental impacts. gunawan, trihastuti, mulyana, and limbara (2022) state that as a major commodity, coconuts play a crucial role in shaping the economy and culture. additionally, wulandari and alouw (2021) underscore coconuts' dual utility for household and asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 4 (2024): 147-166. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4878-208x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9166-4042 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-6325-6597 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-0244-5401 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-8303-8153 mailto:siscavaulina@agr.uir.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 148 industrial purposes. strategies to improve coconut production include accelerating the replanting of aging plantations and expanding cultivation into new areas. according to the 2023 report by the food & agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), indonesia has become the world's largest coconut producer, with a production volume reaching 17.19 million tons. small holders farmers cultivate about 98.08% of this coconut production, according to the central statistics agency of indonesia (2023). this achievement places indonesia ahead of the philippines, india, brazil, and sri lanka regarding coconut production. the high production levels highlight indonesia's crucial role in meeting global coconut demand, contributing 29.69 percent to the world's total coconut production. riau province is the largest coconut producer in indonesia, followed by north sulawesi province and east java province. central statistics agency of indonesia (2023) coconut production in riau reached 406.9 thousand tons, accounting for 14.56% of the total national coconut production. meanwhile, north sulawesi produced 269.6 thousand tons (9.40% of the national total), and east java produced 233.9 thousand tons (8.16% of the national total). riau province's position as the largest coconut producer in indonesia underscores the significant potential of this region for the development of the coconut economy. indragiri hilir regency is the center of coconut production in riau province, where coconuts serve as a critical economic commodity. vaulina and khairizal (2016) emphasize the importance of coconuts in developing this region, which has two main types of land: peatlands and coastal areas. coconut plants are well-suited to the area's climate, soil, and topography. coconut cultivation in indragiri hilir covers 340,941 hectares (82.15% of the total land area in riau) with a production of 307,768 tons (81.36% of riau's total production). figure 1 provides further details. figure 1. land area and production of coconut in riau province, 2023. smallholder coconut plantations in indragiri hilir regency are characterized by small land ownership, limited use of certified high-quality seeds (vaulina & hajry, 2018), minimal implementation of good agricultural practices (gap), low technology adoption, and insufficient value-added processes (gaga, 2021). these plantations generally have small farm sizes and relatively low productivity (kumar & kapoor, 2010). given the significant production and demand for coconuts, the indragiri hilir regency government should prioritize its development, as coconut farming is crucial for the local economy (syarifuddin, 2022). this traditional livelihood provides most residents with financial, social, cultural, and environmental benefits (mawardin & aditya, 2017). multiple studies have assessed the sustainability of coconut crops from various perspectives. kotalaha and sasongko (2018) analyzed local knowledge of "makiriwo" within the sustainable livelihood perspective in north halmahera, indonesia. alouw and wulandari (2020) evaluated the current situation of coconut development and its prospects in indonesia. rusli and isa (2021) examined smallholders' attitudes toward extension agents' roles in promoting sustainability in the coconut business in tanjong karang, malaysia. dissanayaka, nuwarapaksha, udumann, dissanayake, and atapattu (2022) identified cover cropping as a beneficial practice for enhancing coconut land production. nuwarapaksha, udumann, dissanayaka, and atapattu (2023) evaluated the viability of integrating coconut production with livestock farming to improve food security and environmental sustainability. puspaningrum, indrasti, indrawanto, and yani (2023) researched the life cycle of coconut planting, copra, and charcoal production, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 149 identifying ways to minimize impacts and enhance long-term viability. studies by rusdi, harianto, hartoyo, and novianti (2021) and alfaliansyah and maswadi (2021) have scrutinized the sustainability of indonesia's coconut supply chain, emphasizing the socioeconomics of its farmers. this research is unique because it uses land typology to assess the sustainability of coconut plantations in indonesia. most previous studies have focused more on general aspects of sustainability without specifically considering variations in land typology, such as peatlands, coastal areas, or highlands, which can affect productivity and management practices. this research also directly contributes to achieving sustainable development goals (sdgs), particularly regarding decent work, economic growth, and sustainable environmental management in the agricultural sector. however, aging plants, improper practices, land use changes, low prices, and marketing difficulties continue to pose challenges to the sustainability of coconut farming, despite its limited research. therefore, this study aims to (1) evaluate the sustainability of coconut farming based on land typology and (2) identify the main factors influencing that sustainability. 2. method the research utilized a survey method conducted from september 2022 to february 2023 in indragiri hilir regency, riau province. data collection commenced with a literature review and gathering of secondary data. in contrast, primary data were gathered through questionnaires distributed among coconut farmers—the questionnaire utilized a likert scale with three levels, indicating measured categories and rankings. option 1 signifies low, option 2 indicates moderate, and option 3 means high. indragiri hilir regency comprises two main land types: peatlands and coastland, although certain subdistricts lack specific land typologies. figure 2. research location map on coconut farming in indragiri hilir regency, riau province. figure 2 provides a visual representation of the research location for the study on coconut farming in indragiri hilir regency, riau province, indonesia. the map showcases the geographical context of the region, highlighting its proximity to the equator and its location within the indonesian archipelago. the red rectangle on the map indicates the indragiri hilir regency, the primary focus of the study. this regency is characterized by a diverse landscape. to enhance the understanding of the study area, figure 2 also includes a legend indicating the map's scale and the direction of the north. this visual aid facilitates the interpretation of the spatial distribution of the coconut plantations within the indragiri hilir regency. moreover, the map also visually outlines the geographical distribution of coconut plantations within the region, emphasizing the prevalence of two primary land types: peatlands and coastlands. based on land typology, we selected six districts as the study areas for the research. these include four districts with peatlands—kempas, batang tuaka, enok, and kemuning—and two with coastlands—pulau burung and teluk belengkong. similarly, the selection of villages was based on land typology. the slovin formula determined the sample, yielding 101 coconut farmers. the sample selection aims to accurately represent the population of coconut farmers in each land type. the following section outlines the framework for sample selection. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 150 table 1. framework for sampling coconut research in indragiri hilir regency, riau province, 2023. no. land typologies districts villages samples 1 peatlands a. kempas harapan tani 12 sungai ara 10 rumbai jaya 10 b. batang tuaka tanjung siantar 6 sungai junjangan 5 c. enok suhada 3 sungai rukam 10 d. kemuning pancur 11 2 coastland a. pulau burung ringin jaya 11 b. teluk belengkong hibrida jaya 8 sapta jaya 15 total 101 table 1 outlines the sampling framework for the coconut farming research conducted in indragiri hilir regency, riau province, in 2023. the table provides a detailed overview of the land typologies, districts, villages, and sample sizes selected for the study. within the peatland category, four districts were included: kempas, batang tuaka, enok, and kemuning. these districts were further divided into villages, such as harapan tani, sungai ara, rumbai jaya, tanjung siantar, sungai junjangan, suhada, and sungai rukam. the sample sizes for each village varied, ranging from 5 to 12. in the coastal land category, the study encompassed pulau burung and teluk belengkong districts, with respective villages of ringin jaya, hibrida jaya, and sapta jaya. the sample sizes for these villages also varied, ranging from 8 to 15. data analysis employed rap-fish ordination analysis with the multidimensional scaling (mds) method, adapted to the research object called rap-coconut ordination (rap analysis). rapfish, as described by kavanagh and tony (2004), is a statistical technique used to quickly assess the relative status of entities, quantitatively evaluated against predefined sets of attributes grouped into disciplines. microsoft excel’s rapfish software performed the rap analysis to identify each measurable indicator. the rap analysis method, as described by pitcher (1999), pitcher and preikshot (2001), rapfish group (2006), and suryana, wiryawan, monintja, and wiyono (2012) is a multidimensional rapid assessment technique for evaluating sustainability. the development of the rap analysis method encompasses five evaluation areas: economic, ecological, technological, social, and ethical. however, the analysis has primarily focused on these evaluation areas. the rapfish method employs straightforward and evaluated attributes to deliver a quick, cost-effective, and multidisciplinary assessment of sustainability levels (murillas et al., 2008). the rap analysis encompasses the rap, leverage, and monte-carlo method. kite diagrams show the sustainability status across multiple dimensions by comparing their performance. the determination of the sustainability index draws from studies by allahyari (2010), jimenez, gonzalez, amaral, and fredou (2021) and chaliluddin et al. (2023). the study examined five dimensions and 28 attributes, guided by the rapfish indicator developed by kavanagh (2001). sustainability analysis was conducted across ecology (7 attributes), social-cultural (4 attributes), economic (4 attributes), technological (6 attributes), and institutional (7 attributes) dimensions. attributes were then visualized using a radar chart. table 2. dimensions and attributes research. no dimension good bad attribute 1 ecology 3 1 1) replanting 2) the level of pest/plant disease attack 3) use of pesticides (weed control) 4) use of fertilizers 5) water management embankment condition 6) drainage channels 7) land area 2 socio-cultural 3 1 1) family participation in farming 2) the number of workers 3) people's perception of coconut farming 4) the relationship between farmers and marketers 3 economic 3 1 1) the amount of production 2) selling price of coconuts 3) coconut sales system 4) coconut marketing 4 technological 3 1 1) coconut product processing industry 2) coconut marketing infrastructure 3) coconuts planting distance 4) use of superior seeds/seeds 5) harvest time 6) how to harvest coconuts asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 151 no dimension good bad attribute 5 institutional 3 1 1) coconut farming business partnership 2) microfinance institutions 3) participation in cooperatives 4) participation in coconut extension activities 5) coconut farming extension center 6) involvement in farmer groups 7) availability of capital farmers table 2 provides a comprehensive overview of the dimensions and attributes used to assess the sustainability of coconut farming in the study. the table categorizes various factors into five key dimensions: ecological, sociocultural, economic, technological, and institutional. within each dimension, specific attributes are identified to evaluate the sustainability of coconut farming practices. for instance, the ecological dimension includes factors such as replanting, pest and disease control, fertilizer and pesticide use, water management, and land area. the sociocultural dimension considers family participation, labor availability, and community perceptions regarding coconut farming. economic factors encompass production levels, selling prices, marketing systems, and the relationship between farmers and marketers. technological attributes focus on processing infrastructure, planting distances, seed quality, and harvesting methods. finally, the institutional dimension evaluates business partnerships, microfinance access, cooperative participation, extension activities, and capital availability. figure 3. the stage of rap coconut analysis. source: pitcher (1999); patricia and tony (2004); mahida and permana (2019); pitcher and preikshot (2001); rapfish group (2006) and fauzi (2019). based on figure 3, in this study, rap analysis was conducted in four stages: (1) dimension and attribute determination, (2) scoring value arrangement, (3) data entry into the rap analysis application, and (4) running the rap analysis. according to kavanagh and tony (2004) the best model assessment (goodness of fit) is indicated by an sstress value <0.25 (s<0.25) and a high r2 value approaching 1 (100%) (malhotra, 2006). based on the statistical parameters suggested by pitcher and preikshot (2001) all assessed attributes meet the criteria, indicating their suitability for explaining the sustainability of coconut plantation farming in indragiri hilir regency based on land typology. table 3 displays the categorical values that allow us to interpret the sustainability index scale. table 3. index categories and sustainability status. index value sustainability status 0.00 – 25.00 unsustainable 25.01 – 50.00 less sustainable 50.01 – 75.00 moderately sustainable 75.01 – 100.00 sustainable 3. peatland and coastland 3.1. peatland organic matter gradually accumulates over time to form peatlands (nurida, mulyani, & dan, 2011). agus, hairiah, and mulyani (2011) explain that these areas typically develop in low-lying regions or basins, where decomposed vegetation contributes to organic composition. xu, morris, liu, and holden (2018) state that peatlands are found in every climate zone and continent, covering an area of 4.23 million km², equivalent to 2.84% of the earth's surface. international peatlands society (ips) (2024) mentions that about 84% of the world’s peatlands are in a natural or nearnatural condition. noor (2001) suggests that factors influencing the characteristics and origin of peat soil include climate, topography, the type of underlying substrate, and the nature of the vegetation or organic material involved in its formation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 152 indonesia is one of the countries with the largest tropical peatland areas in the world (the ministry of environment and forestry, 2012). after canada, the soviet union, and the united states, indonesia ranks fourth in vast peatland areas (masganti, anwar, & susanti, 2017). the peatland area in indonesia is estimated to be 14.95 million hectares, spread across the islands of sumatra, kalimantan, and papua, with a small portion in sulawesi (wahyunto, nugroho, ritung, & sulaiman, 2014). radjagukguk (1997) generally categorizes peat in indonesia as either mesotrophic or oligotrophic. the peat in sumatra typically exhibits better chemical properties due to the influx of volcanic material from the barisan mountains (mulyani & noor, 2011). terzano et al. (2023) state that peatlands in indonesia also have global significance for biodiversity conservation and climate regulation, as well as national and local importance for water management and livelihood support. therefore, as emphasized by irwani and kartodihardjo (2022) there is an urgent need for policy interventions to manage ecosystems in peatland areas. yuliana, fina, and puteri (2022) mention that the benefits and functions of peatlands that communities can experience include carbon sequestration, a source of energy for humans, educational tourism, and agricultural land. juliano, suwardi, and sudadi (2023) assert that the principles of ecological sustainability require the cultivation of peat. fasla (2022) recommends implementing sustainable peatland management by maximizing productivity and minimizing the level of emissions produced. figure 4a. peatland in indragiri hilir regency, riau province. figure 4b. peatland in indragiri hilir regency, riau province. figures 4a and 4b present visual representations of coconut plantations in peatland environments within indragiri hilir regency, riau province. both images offer valuable insights into the characteristics and challenges associated with coconut farming in these unique ecosystems. figure 4a depicts a broader landscape, showcasing a network of canals and dense vegetation typical of peatland areas. the image showcases a narrow canal meandering through a dense coconut plantation. the soil appears dark and moist, indicative of the peatland characteristics. the canal, which is likely used for irrigation or drainage purposes, highlights the importance of water management in these areas. this image highlights the importance of water management and biodiversity conservation in such environments. on the other hand, figure 4b depicts a dense stand of coconut trees, with a pathway winding through the plantation. the ground appears to be moist and rich in organic matter, characteristic of peatland soils. the inclusion of metadata in both images provides additional context. the date, time, gps coordinates, altitude, and index numbers allow for precise geolocation and temporal tracking of these plantations, enabling researchers to monitor changes and assess the impact of various factors on sustainability. 3.2. coast land the coast is the land adjacent to the sea, including the beach and surrounding areas. sea activities influence the flat expanse along the shoreline, creating sandy plains in the coastal zone. kinsela, morris, daley, and hanslow (2016) demonstrated the potential for shoreline changes due to intensive deposition processes in coastal regions. coastal land typically consists of sandy soil, often classified as regosol soil. as sukrisno (2000) described, soil characteristics in coastal areas include a coarse and porous texture, making it highly susceptible to wind erosion. additionally, the transport of various sand materials by erosion processes can damage cultivated plants. coastal areas are considered biodiversity zones (ariadi, benny, & dewi, 2024). agriculture occupies a significant portion of coastal regions worldwide, making coastal farming a relevant category for analyzing agricultural systems (viaud et al., 2023). increased accessibility, suitable slope gradients, and favorable climatic conditions convert coastal land into agriculture land (olaniyi, abdullah, ramli, & alias, 2012). gunadi (2002) suggests that despite the limitations in coastal areas, technological advancements offer potential solutions to establishing suitable agricultural ecosystems. however, ariyani and achmad (2020) note that coastal areas provide valuable resources and hold significant environmental, economic, and social importance. coastal protection, under the blue economy framework, has received special attention from authorities to minimize the impact of rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion, and tropical storms (nong et al., 2021). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 153 4. findings the sustainability analysis of coconut farming on peat and coastal land revealed index values of 44.3 and 53.58, respectively, indicating the former as less and moderately sustainable. strong relationships between dimensions were observed in both types of land, with squared correlation (r2) values of 0.90 for peatlands and 0.93 for coastal lands, showing close to 100% correlation. additionally, stress values during the ordination process were 0.19 for peatlands and 0.15 for coastal lands, below the tolerance level (<25%), suggesting an acceptable error rate. further details are provided below: table 4. coconut farming sustainability in peatlands and coastal lands of indragiri hilir regency, riau province, 2022. dimension peat land coast land mds monte carlo s-stress r2 mds monte carlo s-stress r2 ecology 72.17 57.24 0.17 0.88 62.11 39.54 0.14 0.94 economy 38.16 37.70 0.18 0.88 35.15 36.02 0.15 0.92 institutional -5.46 9.52 0.21 0.89 51.57 51.33 0.16 0.94 socio-cultural 42.58 55.76 0.20 0.91 54.04 53.79 0.16 0.92 technology 74.05 58.53 0.17 0.92 65.05 64.01 0.14 0.94 multi dimension 44.30 43.75 0.19 0.90 53.58 48.94 0.15 0.93 sustainability 44.3 53.58 table 4 presents a comparative analysis of coconut farming sustainability in peatland and coastal land areas within indragiri hilir regency, riau province. the table provides insights into the performance of various dimensions, including ecology, economy, institution, socio-cultural aspects, technology, and overall sustainability. the study used multidimensional scaling (mds) and monte carlo simulations to find the s-stress and r² values that showed how well the data filled the model and how strong the links were between the variables. for each dimension, the mds values indicate the relative importance of that dimension in explaining the overall sustainability of coconut farming. after calculating the sustainability index values for coconut plantation farming in indragiri hilir regency based on peatland, the results are as follows: ecological dimension 72.17%, economic 38.16%, socio-cultural 42.56%, technology 74.05%, and institutional -5.46%. these values are categorized into the less sustainable range, with a total of 44.30. conversely, the sustainability index values for coastal land are as follows: ecological dimension 62.11%, economic 35.15%, institutional 51.57%, socio-cultural 54.04%, and technology 65.05%. these values, with a total of 53.58, fall into moderately sustainable range. the analysis proceeds using a radar chart depicted in figure 5. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 154 figure 5. diagram of the sustainability index of coconut farming in indragiri hilir regency, riau province. information from figure 5 reveals that both land types show the technological dimension, with high index values falling into the moderately sustainable category, at 74.05 and 65.05, respectively. on the other hand, the index value of -5.46 categorizes the institutional dimension for peatlands as unsustainable. meanwhile, in coastal areas, the economic dimension has the lowest index value of 35.15, placing it in the moderately sustainable category. these findings align with vaulina and saipul (2015) research, indicating low income among coconut farmers in indragiri hilir regency. additionally, vaulina and hajry (2018) find that coconut plantations in the area have not reached optimal economic efficiency. rasihen, andriyono, and suprehatin (2021) emphasize the government's expected intervention, leveraging the substantial potential of coconuts and ample land area through initiatives such as increasing coconut productivity, implementing pricing strategies, and empowering coconut farming communities. 4.1. ecological dimensions sustainability the ecological dimension of coconut farming sustainability is categorized as moderately sustainable because, although some ecological aspects are managed adequately, areas still need improvement. indicators in this dimension, such as land use, water management, and environmental practices, show satisfactory but not optimal performance. for example, pesticide use is crucial for controlling pests and diseases but can negatively impact the environment if not managed carefully. the ordination analysis gives index values like 72.17 for peatlands and 62.11 for coastal lands, which put the ecological dimension in the "moderately sustainable" category. this means that ecological management could be improved to make it more sustainable. this is supported by field observations from zulkarnaini, sujianto, and wawan (2022) which highlight land degradation, illegal logging, and land conversion in peatland ecosystems. the leverage analysis on peatlands in figure 6 shows that fertilizer usage, with a root mean square (rms) value of 11.16%, is the most dominant factor. rms is a statistical measure that represents the effective value of a fluctuating quantity. the higher the rms value, the more significant the attribute is in influencing the overall sustainability of that dimension. in this case, most farmers only fertilize coconut plants once or twice a year, as continuous fertilization may shorten their lifespan. typically, coconut trees in the research location are over 30 years old. the land area attribute has the lowest value (rms 4.32%) and is the least dominant factor in ecological sustainability. other factors, such as fertilizer usage, have a more significant impact on plant productivity and health. therefore, although land area is important, other factors may carry more weight in determining coconut farming sustainability. figure 6 provides details. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 155 figure 6. peatlands: ecological dimension and sensitive factors influencing ecological sustainability. as shown in figure 7, the use of pesticides dominates the ecological dimension of coconut farming sustainability, with an rms value of 6.49%. pesticides are used to eliminate weeds around coconut trees. previously, farmers used machetes to control weeds, but this method was time-consuming and labor-intensive. sharma et al. (2019) state that pesticides are widely utilized in contemporary agriculture as they are effective and cost-efficient for improving crop yields' quality and quantity. although pesticides are important for controlling pests and diseases in coconut plants, their use directly impacts the environment and ecosystem, which can lead to adverse effects. denver and ator (2016) mentioned that certain pesticides can be detected at low levels (usually less than 0.1 micrograms per liter) in surface groundwater. according to martínez-megías, mentzel, fuentes-edfuf, moe, and rico (2023) pollution from agricultural pesticides is one of the most significant pressures affecting coastal land. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 156 figure 7. coast lands: ecological dimension and sensitive factors influencing ecological sustainability. the leverage analysis indicates that to improve the ecological sustainability dimension for both types of land, adjustments are needed in fertilizer application on peatlands to meet the standards set by the indonesian ministry of plantations. the current practice of only applying fertilizer during harvest time falls short of meeting the standards. additionally, attention is needed for pesticide use in coastal lands, especially for weed management, as weeds are only cleared during harvest time, leading to smaller coconut sizes. according to kamakaula (2024) from an ecological perspective, practices such as soil and water conservation, biodiversity management, and reducing chemical use are crucial for environmental preservation. supriatna, djumarno, ahmad, and deden (2024) emphasize promoting and supporting sustainable farming methods, such as organic farming and integrated pest management, to enhance ecological sustainability. 4.2. socio-cultural dimensions sustainability based on the ordination analysis of the socio-cultural dimension of coconut farming sustainability, the results reveal differences in sustainability levels between peatland and coastland. for peatland, the index value is 42.58, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 157 categorized as less sustainable. this indicates that socio-cultural practices in coconut farming face significant challenges, including community participation and local traditions. rosyani, edison, and asmadi (2019) highlight that farmers' views on family values are crucial for sharing cultivation knowledge. on the other hand, for coastland, an index value of 54.04 shows that socio-cultural sustainability is in the moderately sustainable category. this suggests that socio-cultural management on coastal land is relatively better than peatland. while current practices are adequate, there is room for improvement to achieve higher sustainability. sunarminto, joko, and eka (2019) note that, from a socio-cultural perspective, plantations contribute to developing educational, religious, health, and other infrastructure. the analysis of attribute leverage in the socio-cultural dimension of coconut plantation farming in peat lands in indragiri hilir regency highlights that family participation in farming activities is the key factor influencing sociocultural sustainability, with an rms value of 12.16% (figure 8). active participation for family members across various farming tasks, such as decision-making, cultivation, and profit-sharing, reflects a sense of unity and solidarity within the family in backing coconut farming efforts. this unity ultimately contributes to bolstering sustainability in socialcultural dimensions. figure 8. peat lands: socio-cultural dimension and sensitive factors influencing socio-cultural sustainability. based on figure 9, the leverage rms value of 11.11% is associated with community perceptions of coconut farming in coastal areas. improving community perceptions and participation in agricultural activities can help increase job absorption. prasetyo and annisa (2023) state that farmer participation should be seen as a basic human need and a human right. huis, lensink, vu, and hansen (2019) also mention that regional economic development can be achieved through the involvement and empowerment of farming communities, potentially increasing family income. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 158 figure 9. coast lands: socio-cultural dimension and sensitive factors influencing socio-cultural sustainability. 4.3. economic dimensions sustainability the economic dimension delineates the prerequisites for coconut farming, managed by farmers. it encompasses four attributes: coconut marketing, coconut selling system, selling price, and production amount. sustainability assessments within this dimension yielded values of 38.16 and 37.70 for both land types, indicating a relatively lower sustainability index. leverage analysis identified the selling price attribute as the most sensitive, with 16.99% (figure 10) and 15.06% (figure 11) for both land types. typically, middlemen or collectors purchase coconuts and distribute them to companies, thereby, lowering farmers’ prices. ensuring profitability in farming is essential for enhancing sustainability and improving family welfare. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 159 figure 10. peat lands: economic dimension and sensitive factors influencing economic sustainability. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 160 figure 11. coast land: economic dimension and sensitive factors influencing economic sustainability. the price of coconuts profoundly affects farming sustainability, as low prices can diminish farmers' income, limiting their capacity to sustain or enhance environmentally friendly farming practices. nuryanti (2017) discovered that price fluctuations of coconuts in indragiri hilir regency greatly affect the income of the local community, particularly farmers, leading to income instability and reduced purchasing power within coconut farming communities. additionally, low prices may diminish farmers' incentive to invest in technology and other resources necessary for enhancing productivity or mitigating agriculture's environmental footprint. 4.4. technology dimensions sustainability the ordination analysis of the technology dimension in coconut farming, yielding index values of 74.05 and 65.05, categorizes both types of land as highly sustainable. this indicates that the current management is sustainable but requires attention and improvement to enhance it. on peat lands (figure 12), the coconut planting distance is the attribute with the highest value at 21.44, while the coconut product processing industry has the lowest value at 11.44%. in the peatlands of indragiri hilir regency, the common planting distance used by farmers is 9m x 9m x 9m, with a planting system in straight rows. according to vaulina (2019) the number of coconut trees per row varies between 27 and 30 trees, with around 150 to 255 coconut trees per hectare of land. this is higher than the indonesian ministry of agriculture (2014) standard, which states that there should be 106 to 175 coconut trees per hectare. planting with closer spacing maximizes land use, although it can increase competition among trees for resources. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 161 figure 12. peat lands: technology dimension and sensitive factors influencing technology sustainability. the planting distance for coconuts at 9m x 9m x 9m is crucial for optimizing land use, increasing yield per tree, and positively impacting farmers' income. in peatlands, the appropriate planting distance is crucial to ensure the sustainability of coconut farming by facilitating irrigation and drainage management and maintaining optimal soil moisture. figure 13. coast lands: technology dimension and sensitive factors influencing technology sustainability. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 162 in coastal lands (figure 13), the use of superior seeds has a significant impact on the sustainability of farming, particularly in terms of technology. the most influential attribute is using superior seeds, with a value of 7.07%. coconut farmers in the indragiri hilir regency, riau province, commonly use coconuts that fall from the mother tree. characteristics of these superior seeds include resistance to certain diseases or pests, rapid growth, large fruit size, and high fruit production. 4.5. institutional dimensional sustainability the coordination analysis of the institutional dimension of coconut farming yielded a score of -5.46 for peatland, which is considered unsustainable, and 51.57 for coastal land, which is considered moderately sustainable. this indicates that the current institutional aspect is still lacking and requires attention from the government and stakeholders to ensure the sustainability of this dimension in supporting coconut farming activities. the role of farmer group institutions, particularly coconut field extension workers, it is highly dominant and crucial. anwarudin and dayat (2019) state that farmer participation is one of the pillars of successful extension services. polan, pontoan, and merung (2021) emphasize that implementing agricultural extension in the era of regional autonomy strongly focuses on community empowerment and shifting the content of extension material from cultivation to agribusiness. based on figure 14, the most influential attribute in the institutional dimension is participation in coconut extension activities, with an rms value of 4.57%. farmers who attend these extension activities are more likely to adopt new technologies introduced through the programs, such as using superior seeds. participation in extension activities also fosters interaction between farmers and agricultural experts. participation in coconut extension activities significantly impacts the adoption of new technologies and strengthens the institutional dimension of agriculture. figure 14. peat lands: institutional dimension and sensitive factors influencing institutional sustainability. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 163 based on figure 15, the sensitivity of coastal land is associated with the availability of capital, with an rms value of 1.65%. there is a lack of capital for institutions related to coconut farming. so far, farmers have used their capital in their farming activities. oktarina, henny, and resi (2021) note that the lack of capital is detrimental to farmers, making it necessary to establish cooperatives or savings and loan businesses that can accelerate agricultural development. zhang, zhu, and zhang (2022) emphasize that the stability of a region’s natural capital stock is a crucial criterion in assessing the sustainable development of that region. figure 15. coast lands: institutional dimension and sensitive factors influencing institutional sustainability. 5. conclusions the sustainability status of coconut farming in indragiri hilir regency, riau province, is evaluated based on five main dimensions: ecology, economy, socio-cultural, technology, and institutional. the results of this evaluation indicate differences in sustainability levels between peatland and coastal land. the obtained sustainability index value for peatland is 44.30, indicating lower levels of sustainability. coastland: the sustainability index value obtained is 53.58, categorized as moderately sustainable. the most sensitive and influential attributes of the sustainability of coconut farming on both types of land are as follows: (1) ecology: use of fertilizers and use of pesticides; (2) socio-cultural: family participation in coconut farming and people's perceptions of coconut farming; (3) economy: coconut sales system; (4) technology: coconut spacing and use of superior seeds; (5) institutional: participation in coconut extension activities and availability of capital. overall, this analysis indicates that the sustainability status of coconut farming in indragiri hilir regency differs between peatland and coastal land. peatland requires more attention to achieve a more sustainable status, while coastal land falls into a moderately sustainable category but still needs improvement. this highlights the need for tailored strategies to manage these land types effectively and improve sustainability outcomes. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 147-166 164 funding: this research is supported by universitas islam riau, indonesia (grant number: 269/kontrak/p-pt/dppm-uir/07-2022). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the universitas islam riau, indonesia has granted approval for this study on 1 august 2022. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any 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(2022). sustainability of ecological dimension in peatland management in the giam siak kecil bukit batu landscape, riau, indonesia. biodiversitas journal of biological diversity, 23(4), 1822-1827. https://doi.org/10.13057/biodiv/d230414 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2022.106493 https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/892/1/012088 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2017.09.010 https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2022.1060527 https://doi.org/10.13057/biodiv/d230414 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 444 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. navigating climate change with bt corn: a study of efficiency in philippine corn production aphril easter sunday jaemi manuel jaymea yoonsuk leeb ainstitute of agribusiness management, don mariano marcos memorial state university, bacnotan, la union, philippines. bkangwon national university, chuncheon city, gangwon province, south korea.  yoonsuklee@kangwon.ac.kr (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 14 april 2025 revised: 27 august 2025 accepted: 8 september 2025 published: 24 september 2025 keywords bt corn climate change de martonne aridity index efficiency interrupted time series philippines stochastic frontier model. the philippine corn industry, vital for national food security, faces significant threats from climate change. this study uses stochastic frontier analysis to assess climate's impact on corn production efficiency from 1990 to 2020, focusing on the role of bt corn adoption. findings show that while higher temperatures and reduced rainfall increase production inefficiency, adopting bt corn with fertilizer substantially mitigates these adverse effects. the 2002 commercialization of bt corn marked a key turning point, reversing production declines and improving sector performance. these results underscore the need for climate-resilient agricultural strategies. policy should prioritize irrigation expansion, improved rainfall utilization, broader access to crop insurance, and continued support for improved seed varieties like bt corn. strengthening these adaptive measures is crucial for enhancing the resilience and stability of the philippine corn sector against ongoing climate challenges. contribution/originality: this study introduces a novel methodology that combines interrupted time series analysis with a stochastic frontier model. we provide the first quantitative evidence that bt corn adoption mitigates production inefficiencies caused by climate shocks in the philippines, offering crucial data for the nation's food security strategy. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5620 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: jayme, a. e. s. j. m., & lee, y. (2025). navigating climate change with bt corn: a study of efficiency in philippine corn production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 444–453. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5620 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the corn industry plays a vital role in the philippine economy, supporting national food security and the livelihoods of millions of farmers. beyond its function as a staple food, corn serves as a primary source of livestock feed and raw material for various industries, supporting the livelihoods of approximately 1.8 million farmers nationwide. in 2020, the agriculture, forestry, and fishing sector accounted for 5.76% of the national gross domestic product (gdp) in the philippine economy (biñas jr, 2021; department of agriculturebureau of agricultural research, 2022; naval & dolojan, 2020). however, corn production in the philippines faces a critical challenge: stagnating productivity. yields declined from 3.32 metric tons per hectare (mt/ha) in july 2002 to 3.29 mt/ha in july 2023 (abao, 2023; philippine statistics authority, 2017). average annual production growth fell from 5.2% (2000–2010) to 3.7% (2010–2020), while yield growth decreased from 4.8% (1987–2000) to just 1.5% (2010–2020) (department of agriculturebureau of agricultural asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 444-453 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-1856-0439 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6251-0696 mailto:yoonsuklee@kangwon.ac.kr https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5620 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 444-453 445 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. research, 2022). these trends signal an urgent need for strategic interventions to ensure the nation’s economic stability and food security. among the various factors contributing to this decline, climate change has emerged as a critical driver. extreme weather events such as typhoons, droughts, and unseasonal heavy rainfall have caused widespread agricultural disruption. due to its geographic location and climatic conditions, the philippines ranks as the third most vulnerable country to climate change (national integrated climate change database information and exchange system, 2024). the nation's humid equatorial climate has experienced rising temperatures of approximately 0.68°c over the past 65 years and increasingly erratic rainfall (climate change commission, 2024). while the overall number of tropical cyclones has slightly decreased, the frequency and intensity of severe storms have risen, with devastating events like typhoon haiyan, typhoon bopha, and typhoon mangkhut becoming more common. under the ssp5-8.5 climate scenario, such extreme events are projected to intensify, exacerbating agricultural losses (climate change commission, 2024). moreover, rising minimum temperatures during the dry season are expected to reduce grain yields by roughly 10% per 1°c increase, further threatening food production and land productivity (dait, 2022; lasco, 2022; national integrated climate change database information and exchange system, 2024; teng, uy, & gonzales, 2022). climate change also disrupts pest dynamics, increasing the prevalence and severity of infestations. higher temperatures and irregular precipitation patterns have expanded pest distributions and intensified outbreaks, particularly of the asian corn borer (ostrinia furnacalis guenee), the most damaging corn pest in the philippines and across asia (balderama, alejo, tongson, & pantola, 2017; biñas jr, 2021; kaur et al., 2023; naval & dolojan, 2020; subedi, poudel, & aryal, 2023). historically, this pest has caused yield losses of 20–80% in the philippines nafus and schereiner (1991) in daha, amin, and abdullah (2016). to combat these challenges, the philippine government approved the commercialization of pest-resistant genetically modified (gm) corn, specifically bt corn, in 2002. following pilot greenhouse trials at 17 sites starting in 1997 (isaaa, 2002), the country became the first in asia to adopt this biotechnology (polinag, 2020). bt corn, which offers a 34% yield advantage over conventional varieties (apaari, 2019), has helped mitigate losses from pest infestations and bolster production. nevertheless, despite the widespread adoption of bt corn, climate-related risks continue to threaten corn productivity and national food security. achieving the objectives set out in the philippine corn industry road map 2021-2040 requires a nuanced understanding of the evolving threats posed by climate change and their interaction with technological interventions. this study analyzes historical and contemporary changes in corn production in the philippines within the context of climate change and the adoption of genetically modified corn. specifically, it examines how the introduction of bt corn has influenced production trends through an interrupted time series analysis. in addition, the study investigates the effects of climatic variables, such as temperature and precipitation, on corn output both before and after bt corn adoption using a stochastic frontier model. the insights derived from this research aim to guide policy formulation and support the development of adaptive agricultural strategies that strengthen the resilience of the philippine corn sector amid ongoing climatic challenges. 2. material and methods 2.1. data data on corn production volume, harvested area, and fertilizer use including urea, ammonium sulfate, ammonium phosphate, and complete fertilizers were obtained from the philippine statistics authority (psa). these variables cover 16 regions of the philippines from 1990 to 2020. to account for climatic factors, regional data on annual precipitation (millimeters) and average temperature (°c) were formally requested from the department of science and technology philippine atmospheric, geophysical and astronomical services administration (dost-pagasa) national office. these climate variables were used to calculate the de martonne aridity index, which captures the combined effects of temperature and precipitation on regional dryness. corn production data from all 16 regions were aggregated to analyze national production trends, particularly to assess the impact of bt corn adoption. table 1 summarizes the variables, categorized into two periods: 1990–2002 (pre-bt corn adoption) and 2003–2020 (post-bt corn adoption). the independent variables include harvested area and four types of inorganic fertilizers, such as urea (46-0-0), ammonium sulfate (21-0-0), ammonium phosphate (16-20-0), and complete fertilizers (14-14-14), also known as npk. while various inputs influence corn production such as labor, capital, land, and machinery this study focuses on the roles of genetically modified (bt) corn and fertilizer use. notably, fertilizer application patterns shifted significantly following bt corn adoption. climate variables, specifically average regional precipitation and temperature, were integrated into the analysis through the de martonne aridity index, calculated as follows: 𝐴𝐼𝐷𝑀 = 𝑃𝑠 𝑇𝑠+10 (1) where a𝐼𝐷𝑀 is the computed aridity index in year s, 𝑃𝑠 is the total average annual precipitation of region i in year s in millimeters, and 𝑇𝑠 is the annual average temperature of region i in year s in degrees celsius. the de martonne aridity index provides a comprehensive measure of regional dryness, helping to identify drought conditions that directly affect agricultural productivity by limiting soil moisture and increasing crop water stress. corn is particularly susceptible to drought during critical growth stages such as flowering and grain filling, often resulting in significant yield reductions. as oury (1965, cited in (wang, ball, nehring, williams, & chau, 2018)) noted, analyzing the relationship between weather and crop production is more effective when considering the combined effects of temperature and precipitation should be evaluated together rather than separately. the aridity index, therefore, serves as a key climate variable in this study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 444-453 446 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 1. summary statistics of variables. year of bt corn adoption variable unit mean std. dev. min. max. 1990-2002 (before bt corn) dependent variable volume of production metric tons 277,982 350,351 17,118 1,809,734 production input area harvested hectares 179,991 164,595 11,590 806,530 inefficiency de martonne aridity index millimeter per degree celsius 67 35 0 221 rainfall millimeters 2,433 1,086 561 5,739 temperature degree celsius 26 2 18 33 2003-2020 (after bt corn) dependent variable volume of production metric tons 432,250 456,900 42,772 1,875,623 production input area harvested hectares 159,500 133,341 22,984 437,728 urea 50kgs/bag 112 62 19 364 ammonium sulfate 50kgs/bag 25 31 0 400 ammonium phosphate 50kgs/bag 26 25 0 121 complete 50kgs/bag 71 41 1 230 inefficiency de martonne aridity index millimeter per degree celsius 74 36 0 281 rainfall millimeters 2,659 1047 757 7,083 temperature degree celsius 27 2 19 31 source: climate and agrometerological data section(cads), philippine atmospheric, geophysical and astronomical services administration(pagasa). 2.2. methods 2.2.1. interrupted time series analysis to assess the impact of adopting bt corn in the philippines, this study applies interrupted time series analysis (itsa). itsa is a statistical method used to evaluate changes in outcomes over time by comparing trends before and after the implementation of a policy (li et al., 2023). this approach considers both the timing and effect of the policy, allowing for the identification of significant shifts in the outcome variable following bt corn. itsa is used to examine the effects of the policy that introduced and commercialized bt corn in the philippines, which began in 2003. by comparing production trends prior to and following the adoption of bt corn, this method isolates the impact of the policy from other time-related factors that may influence corn production. the itsa model is specified as follows: 𝑌𝑡 =  0 +  1 𝑋𝑡 +  2 𝐵𝑡𝑡 +  3 (𝑋𝑡 ∙ 𝐵𝑡𝑡) + 𝑡 (2) where 𝑌𝑡 is the volume of corn production in the philippines at time t, 𝑋𝑡 represents inputs at time t,𝐵𝑡𝑡 is a dummy variable that takes the value 0 (before bt corn) and 1 (after bt corn). this is the intervention regarding the commercialization and use of bt corn variety in the philippines at time t, and 𝑡 represents the error term, accounting for random variability in the volume of production variable that is not explained by the model. 2.2.2. stochastic frontier model this study applies stochastic frontier analysis (sfa) to analyze efficiency and identify technical inefficiency in corn production (wang et al., 2018). the empirical framework estimates the efficiency of corn production across philippine regions while accounting for the influence of key inputs and environmental factors. the stochastic production frontier is specified as: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 444-453 447 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 𝑙𝑛𝑦𝑖𝑡 = 𝛽0 + ∑ 𝛽𝑘𝑙𝑛𝑥𝑘𝑖𝑡 + 𝑣𝑖𝑡 − 𝑢𝑖𝑡 𝐾 𝑘=1 (3) where 𝑙𝑛 𝑦𝑖𝑡 is the log of the total volume of corn production of region i and at time t, 𝑥𝑘𝑖 are the inputs of region i and at time t. before bt corn, the sfa model includes area harvested as an production input, while after bt corn, the estimation model includes areas harvested and various inorganic fertilizers as inputs. to model production inefficiency, the following specification is used: 𝑙𝑛𝜎𝑢 2 𝑖𝑡 = 𝛾0 + ∑ 𝛾𝑚𝑧𝑚𝑖𝑡 + 𝜔𝑖𝑡 𝑀 𝑚=1 (4) where 𝜔𝑖𝑡 is the disturbance term with normal distribution and, z contains the climatic variables, such as temperature and precipitation, incorporated as an aridity index. given this study’s focus on climate change impacts, particular attention is given to temperature and precipitation. these climatic factors are incorporated into the inefficiency component to assess how weather variability affects production efficiency and whether unfavorable conditions cause production to fall below the optimal frontier. climatic stress during key stages of corn development, such as flowering and grain filling, can significantly reduce yields (wang et al., 2018), making these variables essential to the analysis. to capture the combined effects of temperature and precipitation, this study employs the de martonne aridity index, originally proposed by emmanuel de martonne in 1926. this index provides an integrated measure of regional dryness, calculated as the ratio of annual precipitation to the average annual temperature plus ten (jafarpour, adib, lotfirad, & kisi, 2023). the de martonne index is widely used to classify regional climates and identify drought conditions, which directly affect soil moisture availability and crop water requirements (integrated drought management programme, 2022). drought stress is particularly detrimental to corn, as water shortages during critical growth stages can lead to substantial yield losses. by incorporating the aridity index into the model, this study assesses how increasing dryness, driven by changing climate patterns, contributes to inefficiencies in corn production across the philippines. 3. results extreme weather events significantly impact crop yields worldwide, presenting a major concern for food security. in the philippines, agricultural systems are particularly vulnerable to these conditions due to the country's archipelagic geography, which creates substantial climate variation, with some regions experiencing tropical climates while others do not. understanding how these climate fluctuations affect crop production is essential, as they directly influence crop yields. notably, the philippines is the first asian country to adopt bt corn. this study first estimates the effects of bt corn adoption in addressing pest issues that may intensify with climate change and then evaluates how bt corn and inorganic fertilizer impact overall resilience to environmental stressors. 3.1. changes in corn production before and after bt corn in 2002, the bureau of plant industry under the department of agriculture approved the commercial distribution of the hybrid variety bt corn which paved the way for its legal use and utilization. according to isaaa (2017, cited in bequet (2022)), upon the approval for commercial distribution of bt corn, farmers immediately adopted this technology, and around 65% of the total area utilized for corn was planted with the improved corn seeds. table 2 presents the results of the interrupted time series analysis for the impact of bt corn in the philippines from 1990-2020. the results indicate that the use of bt corn has a sustained effect or long-term impact, which is significant at 1 percent. this implies that after the implementation of bt corn in the country, total corn production increased by 205,465 metric tons annually. the results further reveal that the immediate effect of the use of bt corn was an additional 1,242,805 metric tons of total corn production. table 2. impact of bt corn in the philippines. variable coefficient newey-west std. err. p-value before bt corn -33611.06 16739.78 0.055 immediate effect 1242805 343214 0.001 sustained effect 205465.5 29352.67 0.000 constant 4683001 121832.7 0.000 to visualize the effect of bt corn in the country, figure 1 is shown. this figure presents the impact of the commercialization and use of the improved seed variety in addition to intensifying the subsidy for inputs, such as fertilizers, for the country. the result shows that from 1990 to 2002, the actual trend in corn production was decreasing. as bt corn adoption started in 2003, with the approval of the use of new technology with subsidized inputs, there has been a significant increase in the production level as shown in figure 1. this supports the result presented in table 2 that the implementation of the use of bt corn had a positive short-term and long-term effect on the volume of corn production in the philippines. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 444-453 448 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 1. the effect of the use of bt corn in production in the philippines from 1990 to 2020. 3.2. stochastic frontier analysis before and after bt corn the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters in the stochastic frontier and the inefficiency estimates for corn production in the philippines from 1990 to 2020 are presented in table 3, 5, and 6, respectively. the research study analyzed corn production by separating the analysis into two categories. first, the effect of climatic variables on the volume of production was examined in two time periods, namely before bt corn (1990 to 2002) and after bt corn (2003 to 2020). for the second analysis, the effect of climatic variables was also analyzed with the consideration of added input variables such as fertilizers. this allows for examining how climatic variables contribute to inefficiency in corn production before and after the use of bt corn seeds, and with and without fertilizer inputs. the likelihood ratio test was initially conducted before estimating the stochastic frontier model for the different analyses to check whether inefficiency effects are present, and the results shown in table 3, 5, and 6 indicate that inefficiency effects exist, and the stochastic frontier approach is valid in the study. additionally, as observed in table 3 and table 5, there is a transition from a significant 𝜂 before bt corn to an insignificant 𝜂 after bt corn, with and without overall inputs. this implies that the use of bt corn potentially stabilized the inefficiency trends, resulting in more consistent corn production and increased resilience to factors that previously contributed to inefficiency growth. table 3 presents the results of the stochastic frontier model before bt corn with harvested area. for this model, the area harvested was considered as an input, after which the inefficiency was estimated. the results for the efficiency estimation show that the area harvested has a significant positive coefficient of 1.26. for the inefficiency estimates, the de martonne aridity index came out negative and significant for the period before bt, with a coefficient of -0.39. this implies that a 1 percent decrease in the de martonne aridity index (indicating more arid conditions) increased the inefficiency by 39 percent. table 3. results of stochastic frontier analysis before bt corn (1990-2002). factor variables coefficient std. err p-value efficiency factors constant 1169.60 810.56 0.150 area harvested 1.26 0.13 0.000 inefficiency factors constant 1173.70 0.28 0.000 de martonne aridity index -0.39 0.07 0.000 error component lr test of inefficiency 13.48*** gamma(γ) 0.908*** sigma-squared(𝜎2) 0.345** eta(𝜂) 0.00003*** note: efficiency estimation used bootstrap standard errors and inefficiency estimation used robust standard errors. *** , ** indicate significance at the 5%, 10% level, respectigely. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 444-453 449 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the efficiency scores of the regions were also computed. table 4 shows the efficiency scores of the regions in the philippines before bt corn use. it is observed from the result that the most efficient regions include region iii, region ii, and region i with the efficiency scores of 0.95, 0.88, and 0.85, respectively. figure 2 shows the location of regions in the philippines. table 4. efficiency scores of each region for 1990-2002. region i. efficiency scores (1990-2002) car 0.70 region i 0.85 region ii 0.88 region iii 0.95 region iv-a 0.40 mimaropa 0.65 region v 0.33 region vi 0.35 region vii 0.23 region viii 0.32 region ix 0.33 region x 0.71 region xi 0.31 region xii 0.78 region xiii 0.45 barmm 0.73 furthermore, table 5 shows the results of the stochastic frontier model after bt corn with harvested area. in the table, a similar result is observed as the area harvested is still significant and positive with the coefficient of 1.12. likewise, for the inefficiency estimation, the de martonne aridity index is -0.24, implying that a 1 percent increase in temperature increases the inefficiency of production by 24 percent after bt corn. table 5. after bt corn sfa results (2003-2020). factor variables coefficient std. err p-value efficiency factors constant 675.11 660.31 0.307 area harvested 1.12 0.13 0.000 inefficiency factors constant 1.66 0.25 0.000 de martonne aridity index -0.24 0.06 0.000 error component lr test of inefficiency 140.10786*** gamma(γ) 0.952*** sigma-squared(𝜎2) 0.27** eta(𝜂) 0.00004 note: efficiency estimation used bootstrap standard errors and inefficiency estimation used robust standard errors. *** , ** indicate significance at the 5%, 10% level, respectigely. to further the analysis, inputs such as fertilizers were considered since after the introduction of bt corn seeds, fertilizer use has been intensified throughout the country. table 6 shows that among the production factors, area harvested and complete fertilizers were positive and significant. after including fertilizer inputs in the analysis, area harvested still appeared significant with a positive coefficient of 1.1, while complete fertilizer has a positive coefficient of 0.07. the positive significant result of 0.07 for complete fertilizer emphasizes the role of its use in increasing the efficiency of corn production after bt corn. this implies that a 1 percent increase in area harvested and complete fertilizer also increases production efficiency by 1.13 and 0.07 percent, respectively. the de martonne aridity index remains significant and negative at -0.08, indicating that a 1 percent increase in temperature increases production inefficiency by 8 percent. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 444-453 450 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 6. after bt corn with overall inputs sfa results. factor variables coefficient std. err p-value efficiency factors constant 11.53 682.47 0.990 area harvested 1.13 0.12 0.000 urea 0.06 0.05 0.250 ammonium sulfate -0.11 0.01 0.440 ammonium phosphate -0.002 0.01 0.830 complete 0.07 0.03 0.050 inefficiency factors constant 0.63 0.11 0.000 de martonne aridity index -0.08 0.02 0.001 error component lr test of inefficiency 56.54*** gamma(γ) 0.95** sigma-squared(𝜎2) 0.222** eta(𝜂) 0.002 note: efficiency estimation used bootstrap standard errors and inefficiency estimation used robust standard errors. *** , **, and indicate significance at the 5%, 10% level, respectigely. additionally, table 7 shows the computed efficiency scores of the different regions in the philippines after bt corn use, with area harvested as input of production. in this table, it is revealed that the regions performed similarly in terms of their efficiency in utilizing their inputs of production after bt corn use, as observed from the computed efficiency scores. table 7. efficiency scores of region for 2003-2020. region ii. efficiency scores (2003-2020) car 0.82 region i 0.83 region ii 0.82 region iii 0.86 region iv-a 0.67 mimaropa 0.79 region v 0.68 region vi 0.77 region vii 0.50 region viii 0.73 region ix 0.77 region x 0.82 region xi 0.72 region xii 0.76 region xiii 0.81 barmm 0.88 table 8 presents the simple comparison of the technical efficiency, with an emphasis on the mean technical efficiency scores, of the different regions before and after bt corn. it is observed that the regions improved after bt corn use (2003-2020) compared to before bt corn use (1990-2002). the mean te of the different regions also increased from 0.56 in 1990-2002 to 0.76 in 2003-2020. table 8. comparison of technical efficiency. variable mean std. dev. min. max. technical efficiency (1990-2002) 0.56 0.2346 0.2278 0.9457 technical efficiency (2003-2020) 0.76 0.1186 0.3172 0.9479 lastly, figure 2 illustrates the results presented in table 4 and table 7 which are the computed technical efficiency scores of the different regions in the philippines before bt corn use (1990-2002) and after bt corn use (2003-2020) with area harvested as input of production. it can be observed that when the two periods are compared, most of the regions have improved their efficiency in using the input for production, and most of these regions are from southern luzon, visayas, and mindanao. this implies that the regions became more efficient in utilizing their land area after the introduction of bt corn in the country. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 444-453 451 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 2. technical efficiency scores per region before and after bt corn1. 4. discussion and recommendations the agricultural sector in the philippines plays a vital role in providing livelihoods for millions of filipinos, ensuring national food security, and contributing to economic growth. over the years, it has been the focus of numerous government policies and programs designed to address productivity constraints and mitigate the long-term risks of climate change. one of the earliest adaptive strategies was the introduction of genetically modified (gm) corn, particularly bt corn, which significantly boosted national production. given the importance of corn to the philippine economy, this study examines production patterns with a focus on how climatic factors influence output in relation to the adoption of improved corn varieties. using regional data from various government sources from 1990 to 2020, we evaluated the introduction of bt corn in the country and determined the factors affecting corn production. to assess the impact of the intervention that allows the commercialization of bt corn in the country, an interrupted time series analysis was employed. the results of this study show that the approval of the commercialization and use of bt corn in the philippines had a significant positive effect on corn production. the philippines, as the first country in asia to implement this technology, experienced a substantial increase in corn production, reversing the previous declining trend observed between 1990 and 2002. the stochastic frontier analysis results indicate that climatic variables, represented by the de martonne aridity index, significantly influence the inefficiency of production. high temperatures resulted in higher inefficiency in corn production, which indicates the challenges posed by extreme weather conditions, such as drought, on agricultural output. the study also revealed the effect of certain fertilizers on the volume of production. the positive and significant relationship of complete fertilizer application to the volume of production emphasizes the role of using this fertilizer, as it increases the volume of production. furthermore, the magnitude of the impact of climate change, represented by the dmai, has been observed to decrease when fertilizer inputs were included in the analysis. the mean technical efficiency has improved between two time periods, indicating that farmers became more efficient in using inputs of production, such as land and fertilizer, after the introduction of bt corn seeds. 1this map is sourced from https://www.freeusandworldmaps.com/world-countries-philippines-pdf-printable-pdf-maps/. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 444-453 452 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. based on our findings, we recommend policy implementation of bt corn to be provided to vulnerable regions. with this, the national government could provide farmers with training and resources to adapt to extreme weather conditions and increase information regarding the benefits of using improved seed varieties, leveraging local government units, agricultural cooperatives, and state universities to reach small farmers effectively. this would make the implementation of this strategy more effective because agricultural cooperatives and state universities are situated in every part of the country. additionally, regions experiencing high levels of aridity and precipitation, as indicated by the de martonne aridity index, may require support and adaptation strategies to address the challenges posed by extreme weather events. the government needs to provide further support for irrigation systems in regions or areas with high aridity. while for extreme precipitation, the government can promote the diversification of crops and rainfall utilization strategies. the former involves cultivating crops that are more tolerant of excessive precipitation, while effective utilization of rainfall can be achieved through different means, one of which is storing and reapplying drainage waters in farming activities. the philippines is situated in the pacific region, where typhoons frequently pass through. while the country is expected to experience rain throughout the year, the presence of a hot and drier climate cannot be disregarded. therefore, when water supply for farming is lacking, the strategy of storing and reapplying drainage water could be effective. in addition, the government can promote and intensify the existing crop insurance for farmers. crop insurance serves as a safety net and reduces risk exposure (falco, adinolfi, bozzola, & capitanio, 2014) for farmers in vulnerable regions. this would ensure them of financial compensation when their crops are damaged by extreme weather conditions and pest problems. this strategy would help mitigate the financial losses due to climate-related disasters that are brought about by climate change. this study also highlights the importance of balanced fertilizer use for improving production efficiency. extension services should be strengthened and focused on the proper application of fertilizers to maximize yields while minimizing negative impacts on soil fertility and degradation. fertilizer application is considered a solution to unexpected weather events like floods or dry periods (mustafa, hayat, & alotaibi, 2023). while the government provides support and subsidies to farmers in terms of fertilizers, this should be followed by the promotion of using optimized fertilizers that increase efficiency in the volume of production and focus on the need for proper fertilizer application. furthermore, the adoption and dissemination of the bt corn variety among farmers in the regions have been found to significantly increase corn production in the country since its commercialization in 2002. if the use of the bt corn variety is continuously supported, this will improve the productivity of the domestic corn sector and enhance the local grain supply, which would lead to reducing the country’s reliance on corn imports (mutuc, rejesus, pan, & yorobe jr, 2012). 5. conclusion overall, these recommendations are in line with the philippine corn industry road map 2021-2040, highlighting that since the growth in corn productivity has remained stagnant at 4.1 to 4.2 mt/ha since 2013, there is a need to enhance productivity in the country through various strategies such as optimizing rainfall utilization, effective use of fertilizer, and farm mechanization. therefore, by addressing the challenges brought by climate change, promoting improved seed varieties, and optimizing agricultural input use such as fertilizers, the philippines can achieve an increase in total corn production that could help attain the longstanding goal of corn self-sufficiency. funding: this research received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abao, l. 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after estimating the production function of barley using robust regression, it is shown that it is necessary to reduce these variables in the production process to achieve economic efficiency. contribution/originality: this study contributes to existing literature by evaluating the actual status of cultivated areas of barley in egypt to improve awareness of the nutritional role of barley, both for humans and animals. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4532 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: zainab shawky el-khalifa --eman h. el-gamal --hoda farouk zahran (2022). evaluation of barley cultivated areas’ actual status in egyptian newly reclaimed lands. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3), 164-172. 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4532 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 3 (2022): 164-172. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1000-0066 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8150-4811 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6547-128x http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 164-172 165 1. introduction recently, the egyptian government launched a 1.5 million feddan1 project in the marginal areas around the nile valley. the major goal of this project is to achieve sustainable development by boosting agricultural production and increasing economic growth (moghazy & kaluarachchi, 2020). the project’s newly reclaimed lands are located in the desert, specifically the western desert region, which has sandy and calcareous soils (food and agriculture organization (fao), 2005). to accomplish the significant economic and environmental aims of this project, challenges must be faced, such as changing the agricultural system pattern, using unusual water sources (wastewater and reuse of drainage water), and cultivating plants with a shorter growth duration and lower water needs (food and agriculture organization (fao), 2005). barley (hordeum vulgare) is one of the oldest cultivated plants and is a globally important strategic cereal crop needed to achieve food security (elbasyoni et al., 2020; kumar et al., 2014). after wheat, maize, and rice, barley is the world's fourth-largest cereal crop (idehen, tang, & sang, 2017). according to faostat (2020), global barley-cultivated areas covered 46.9 million hectares, producing about 141 million tons in 2019–2020. the russian federation is the world’s leading barley producer, with a yearly production of 17.9 million tons, then germany, france, ukraine, australia, and canada with about 10.7, 10.3, 9.4, 8.9, and 8.7 million tons, respectively. in egypt, barley is a major winter crop, which is planted from late november to mid-december and harvested in april and may (malr, 2020). it grows well under various climatic and drought-stress conditions (ahmed & hassan, 2019; idehen et al., 2017; kumar et al., 2014), although its cultivation is concentrated in rainfed areas in the northern coastal regions of about 250-300 thousand feddans. also, it is grown in both old and newly reclaimed lands that suffer from lack of irrigation, salinity of both soil and water, and low soil fertility (grando & macpherson, 2005; hassanein, 2019). it is considered a restorative crop that improves soil properties, consumes low amounts of fertilizer, and tolerates thirst and salinity (kumar, verma, singh, sharma, & devi, 2020; malr, 2020). it is recommended that barley is grown in rainy desert areas that do not have the water needed for wheat production. so, barley is considered a more efficient use of water than wheat (malr, 2020). barley is used mainly for animal feed (about 65%), malting (33%), and human nutrition (2%) (idehen et al., 2017; kumar et al., 2020; sullivan, arendt, & gallagher, 2013). lately, barley is becoming more popular as a food ingredient because of its high nutritional fiber content (aly et al., 2021). compared to other cereals, barley grains have about 20% dietary fiber and 3–7% beta-glucan, which is healthy due to its ability to minimize blood cholesterol and reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases (elbasyoni et al., 2020; idehen et al., 2017; oscarsson, andersson, salomonsson, & åman, 1996; theander, westerlund, åman, & graham, 1989; ullrich, clancy, eslick, & lance, 1986). several experimental studies have reported that the cultivated soils in egypt are affected by varying degrees of salinity. the development of barley genotypes for irrigation agriculture would be a cost-effective and efficient strategy to expand irrigated farming, which involves poor-quality water, because barley has shown tolerance for saline conditions and improved water use efficiency (ahmed & hassan, 2019; byrne et al., 2018; grando & macpherson, 2005; mansour et al., 2018). recently, egypt’s ministry of agriculture and land reclamation (malr) has started an awareness program for farmers in newly reclaimed and marginal lands to spread newly approved and registered varieties of barley (thirteen varieties) to suit each barley production region (malr, 2020) and to mix barley flour with wheat flour (by about 15– 20%) in bread production in an attempt to reduce the annual import of wheat (elbasyoni et al., 2020; malr, 2020). however, there is still a lack of awareness about the nutritional role of barley for both humans and animals. previous studies have shown that the development of new barley genotypes in newly reclaimed lands may be considered the most cost-effective approach to expand cultivation. however, there has been a continuous decline in barley’s total cultivated area, which reached about 53.6 thousand feddans and produced about 84.2 thousand tons in 2018/2019 (egyptian ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, 2004/20052018/2019b) across about 14.3% old and 85.7% newly reclaimed lands. therefore, this research aims to evaluate the actual status of barley cultivated areas in egypt, especially in newly reclaimed lands, during the period (2004/2005–2018/2019). the objectives of this research are to evaluate (in egypt): 1. the actual cultivated areas of barley. 2. the most significant factors influencing the production of the barley crop. 3. the geographical distribution of barley in newly reclaimed lands. 4. the production functions of barley using robust regression. 2. materials and methods 2.1. data resources this work relied on both available and unpublished data from the egyptian ministry of agriculture and lands reclamation (agricultural statistics bulletin (egyptian ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, 2004/2005 2018/2019b), cost bulletin (egyptian ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, 2004/2005-2018/2019a)), the national project for developing and serving the lands of young graduates in the new lands, nubaria, faostat (2020) and the data of the international network and prior studies connected to the study's topic. 2.2. analytical methods this work relied on economic analysis, both descriptive and quantitative, using means, growth rates, relative importance to the geographical distribution of newly reclaimed lands, and robust regression (jajo, 2005) to estimate the production function of barley. therefore, several statistical tests were conducted on the data, such as jarque-bera (jarque & bera, 1980), white test, lm test (godfrey, 1978), multicollinearity, and cook’s distance measure (cook, 1one feddan is 0.42 hectare. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 164-172 166 1977), to ensure the accuracy of data, as suggested in the agricultural production function analysis of hayami and ruttan (1970). the production function describes the relationship between independent variables (xn) and the dependent variable (y) (shafei, khairy, & mansour, 2009), after conducting some statistical tests on the data, such as normality distribution, homogeneity, autocorrelation, multicollinearity, and outliers. the production function is an exponential function in its normal form (shafei et al., 2009) but is linear in its logarithmic form (1, 2): 𝑌 = 𝛽0𝑋1 𝛽1 𝑋2 𝛽2 … … …𝑋𝐾 𝛽𝐾 (1) the production function of barley in newly reclaimed lands in egypt is expressed in the following logarithmic formula using robust regression: 𝑙𝑛 ŷ𝑡 = 𝛼 + 𝛽1𝑙𝑛𝑋1 + 𝛽2𝑙𝑛𝑋2 + ⋯ +𝛽𝐾𝑙𝑛𝑋𝐾 + ⋯ 𝜀𝑡 (2) where: 𝑙𝑛 ŷt = estimated production of barley at time t. 𝑙𝑛 x1, 2, …., k = production cost of barley. 𝛼 = the intercept term. 𝛽1, 2, …., k. = parameters of independent variables. 𝜀𝑡 = random error. economic efficiency describes the relationship between inputs and output in the production process. it represents the ratio between the marginal production value of a variable and the marginal cost of that variable (habib, ismail, & abidel, 2013; shafei et al., 2009). by studying some derivatives of the production functions of barley using robust regression, the economic efficiency of the variables could be estimated. the estimated derivatives are calculated by: 1. average product = yield / number of units from variables. 2. marginal product value = marginal product × farm price. 3. economic efficiency (ee) = marginal product value / price of variables if ee is more than one, this indicates that economic efficiency has not been achieved and the amount of the variables should be increased. if ee is less than one, this indicates that economic efficiency has not been achieved and the amount of the variables should be reduced. economic efficiency is achieved when ee = 1; this indicates each variable is used at its maximum efficiency. 3. results and discussion 3.1. actual cultivated areas of barley table 1 (egyptian ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, 2004/2005-2018/2019a, 2004/20052018/2019b, 2004/2005-2018/2019c) shows the total barley cultivated areas in egypt, which occupied about 84.9 thousand feddans during the period 2004/2005–2018/2019. the maximum cultivated area was in 2005/2006 with about 147.2 thousand feddans, while the minimum area was 53.6 thousand feddans in 2018/2019. this indicates a continuous decrease in cultivated areas during this period at a rate of about 6.4%. these cultivated areas were divided into old and newly reclaimed lands; barley grows in limited areas in the old lands, especially those with salinity problems of either soil or water. also, it is grown on lands located at the ends of canals, where there is not enough water for irrigation (hassanein, 2019; kumar et al., 2020). the areas cultivating barley in these lands reached 19.6 thousand feddans during the study period. barley cultivation was concentrated in the old lands in beheira, sharkia, ismailia, fayoum, and sohag (malr, 2020). in addition, barley was cultivated in newly reclaimed lands, which are characterized by either sandy or salty soils. (grando & macpherson, 2005; hassanein, 2019). the areas where barley was cultivated in these lands reached about 65.3 thousand feddans, representing about 76.9% of the total cultivated area during the study period (2004/2005– 2018/2019). the results showed that barley is more adaptable in dry and marginal areas (food and agriculture organization (fao), 2002). so, barley is a plant that can withstand drought, land degradation, and climate change. also, barley is better able to resist heat stress than wheat (elbasyoni et al., 2020). table 1 (egyptian ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, 2004/2005-2018/2019a, 2004/2005-2018/2019b, 2004/2005-2018/2019c) shows that the maximum cultivated area was about 112.9 thousand feddans in 2005/2006, while the minimum area was about 45.9 thousand feddans in 2018/2019. this indicates a continuous decrease in the cultivated areas in newly reclaimed lands at a rate of about 5.4% per year during the study period. nonetheless, barley cultivation is concentrated in newly reclaimed lands because it has a high ability to withstand different environmental conditions (elbasyoni et al., 2020). the productivity of these lands decreased continuously during the study period, leading to a decrease in quantity produced to about 91.3 thousand tons. it decreased at a rate of about 1.8% per year from 114.1 thousand tons in 2009/2010 to 73.7 thousand tons in 2018/2019, as shown in table 2. according to the food and agriculture organization (fao) (2002), due to the arid climate of egypt, rainfall is very low (5–200 mm/year) and evaporation is very high (1500–2400 mm/year). however, these conditions are exacerbated by the poor soils in the east and west nile valley. these soils are generally characterized as relatively low fertile soils with low organic matter, a high calcium carbonate content (30–80%, caco3), and salinity (food and agriculture organization (fao), 2005; wahba, fawkia, & zaghloul, 2019). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 164-172 167 3.2. the most significant factors influencing the production of barley the factors affecting barley production are important indicators for agricultural policy and should be considered during future barley cultivation with a view to the appropriate allocation of available agricultural economic resources (malr, 2020). so, production costs, farm prices, and the net return of barley are among the most important factors that affect producers’ decisions to grow a specific crop. production cost: table 1 (egyptian ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, 2004/20052018/2019a, 2004/20052018/2019b, 2004/20052018/2019c) shows that the production costs increased during the study period by about l.e 3.5 thousand, with a significant annual growth rate of about 8.7% (table 2). the total cost increased from l.e 1.7 thousand in 2004/2005 to l.e 5.7 thousand in 2018/2019. this means that increases in costs affected production decisions, which may be the reason for the decrease in cultivated areas of barley in newly reclaimed lands during the study period. hamed, eljadi, and delawi (2020) confirmed that merging farmers who own small farms is considered an effective way to reduce production costs and achieve the most significant returns. farm price: table 1 shows that the farm price increased during the study period by about l.e 0.97 thousand, with a significant annual growth rate of about 6% (table 2). it increased from l.e 0.50 thousand in 2005/2006 to l.e 1.4 thousand in 2018/2019. despite the increasing farm prices during the study period, it is not considered sufficiently profitable for farmers to increase cultivated areas of barley in newly reclaimed lands. salama (2019) concluded that harvesting barley in the late winter season led to a high price of the barley forage, optimized the forage quantity and quality, and increased grain yield. net return of barley: table 1 shows that the net return decreased during the study period by about l.e 0.63 thousand, with a significant annual rate of decrease of about 6.2%, as shown in table 2. it decreased from l.e 0.88 thousand in 2008/2009 to l.e 0.35 thousand in 2017/2018. this indicates the main reason for farmers' reluctance to cultivate barley, which led to a decrease in barley cultivated areas in newly reclaimed lands during the study period. singh, saxena, sarkar, and dogra (2016) concluded that increasing barley production in the arid zone by adopting improved technology would substantially increase farmers’ income. additionally, wollie, zemedu, and tegegn (2018) confirmed that most farmers prefer to cultivate barley because it is drought-resistant and offers a stable income over time. 3.3. geographical distribution of barley in newly reclaimed lands identifying suitable areas for the cultivated varieties of barley could increase the cultivated areas and hence the amount of barley produced (gomaa, radwan, moselhy, el-sadek, & abdelkader, 2014). therefore, this section will present the geographical distribution of newly reclaimed lands both outside and inside the nile valley areas, in which barley cultivation is possible. a) areas outside the nile valley table 3 (egyptian ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, 2004/2005-2018/2019b) shows the five main areas of barley cultivation on newly reclaimed lands outside the nile valley during the study period. these areas represented about 58.6% of newly reclaimed lands. new valley was the primary area for barley cultivation with about 19.4 thousand feddans, representing about 50.8% of the total outside the nile valley areas and about 29.8% of the newly reclaimed lands. matruh comes second, followed by noubaria, north sinai, and south sinai with about 6.74, 6.58, 5.1, and 0.44 thousand feddans, respectively, and representing about 17.6%, 17.2%, 13.2%, and 1.15% of the total outside the nile valley areas and about 10.3%, 10.1%, 7.75%, and 0.67% of the newly reclaimed lands, respectively. table 1. the variables of the barley crop in new lands during (2004/2005–2018/2019) (egyptian ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, 2004/2005-2018/2019a, 2004/2005-2018/2019b, 2004/2005-2018/2019c). years cultivated area (103 fed) production (103 ton) yield (ton/fed) farm price total costs net return newly total (l.e./feddan) 2004/2005 95.31 141.5 88.37 0.93 665 1710 752 2005/2006 112.9 147.2 107.7 0.95 500 1810 750 2006/2007 83.44 106.0 97.33 1.17 605 2051 780 2007/2008 60.15 83.39 98.00 1.63 1060 2202 819 2008/2009 63.83 85.55 97.70 1.53 930 2576 881 2009/2010 75.75 95.44 114.1 1.51 660 2900 777 2010/2011 65.75 88.11 83.54 1.27 835 3131 769 2011/2012 67.69 84.76 95.46 1.41 1010 3344 740 2012/2013 50.21 66.09 82.36 1.64 1050 3702 686 2013/2014 63.12 78.68 104.5 1.66 1074 4151 548 2014/2015 46.79 63.42 78.30 1.67 1127 4408 363 2015/2016 51.14 62.19 82.32 1.61 1179 4581 386 2016/2017 49.96 59.85 83.65 1.67 1232 4815 370 2017/2018 47.71 57.81 83.31 1.75 1284 5050 354 2018/2019 45.94 53.60 73.68 1.60 1420 5674 506 mean 65.31 84.91 91.35 1.47 975 3474 632 minimum 45.94 53.60 73.68 0.93 500 1710 354 maximum 112.9 147.2 114.1 1.75 1420 5674 881 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 164-172 168 table 3 also shows that the contribution of these areas to barley production amounted to about 34.6, 10.9, 4.4, 2.75, and 0.67 thousand tons, representing about 37.8%, 12%, 4.8%, 3%, and 0.73% of the production from newly reclaimed lands in new valley, noubaria, matruh, north sinai, and south sinai, respectively. gomaa et al. (2014) showed that farmers in egypt’s northwestern coastal zone selected barley cultivation for animal feed in summer. on the other hand, most farmers in the coastal zones of egypt’s western and eastern deserts depend on groundwater. the major cause of soil salinity in these areas is the excessive use of groundwater, which causes a significant drop in the water table. so, infiltration of seawater, irrigation with low-quality (saline) water, and insufficient field drainage are the reasons for soil salinity (el raey, 2010). the high soil salinity limits water and nutrient absorption and simultaneously promotes na+ and cl− ion accumulation. in turn, this increases osmotic stress and ionic toxicity in the plant cell, which leads the plants to suffer from physiological thirst and damaged cell membranes and metabolic activities, leading to reduced photosynthesis and growth (alharby, colmer, & barrett-lennard, 2018). table 2. variables’ growth functions for barley during the period (2004/2005–2018/2019). variables equation r-2 f mean growth rate (%) t cultivated area ŷt = e 4.6 0.054 xt 0.76 44*** 65.31 (5.4) (6.6)*** production ŷt = e 4.6 0.018 xt 0.37 9.2* 91.35 (1.8) (3.03)* yield ŷt = e 0.08 + 0.035 xt 0.57 19.2** 1.47 3.5 4.3** total cultivated area ŷt = e 4.9 0.064 xt 0.86 88.5*** 84.91 (6.4) (9.4)*** farm price ŷt = e 6.4 + 0.060 xt 0.74 39.8*** 975 6 6.3*** total costs ŷt = e 7.4 + 0.087 xt 0.98 781*** 3474 8.7 27.9*** net return ŷt = e 6.9 0.062 xt 0.66 27.9*** 632 (6.2) (5.3)*** notes: ŷ dependent variable xt time by years; ( ) brackets indicate minus values. (***) statistically significant at 0.001. (**) statistically significant at 0.01. (*) statistically significant at 0.05. it can further be noted that the yield rank of barley-producing areas was different. table 3 shows that the yield of new valley, noubaria, south sinai, matruh, and north sinai was about 1.78, 1.66, 1.52, 0.65, and 0.54 tons/feddan, respectively. it suggests that the selection of appropriate varieties of barley for the area led to an increase in yield during the study period. gomaa et al. (2014) found that the adoption of new genotypes effectively improved crop production in marginal areas of egypt. also, tokhetova, umirzakov, nurymova, baizhanova, and akhmedova (2020) confirmed that genotypes of hull-less barley showed high adaptability to climatic conditions that increased efficiency and productivity. ayers and westcot (1985) and moghazy and kaluarachchi (2020) reported that the maximum yield of barley was found at an ec (electric conductivity) level of 5.3 ds/m; the yield decreased to 50% when irrigation water salinity increased to 12 ds/m. in addition, the changes in climate conditions in egypt – the continually rising temperatures and decreasing rainfall – affected agricultural productivity. mostafa et al. (2019) concluded that 80% of the days in a year would be hotter than the 90th period. furthermore, some studied scenarios predict that precipitation could significantly decrease during the 2010 to 2100 period from -0.48 to -0.9 mm/y and from -0.95 to -1.40 mm/y for representative concentration pathway rcp45 and rcp85 scenarios, respectively, especially in the north of egypt. however, the yield in near east north africa has been reduced by about 30% due to the negative impact of climate change (abdel & radojevic, 2020; el raey, 2010). increasing temperatures lead to elevated soil evaporation and increasing soil salinity. it is reported that about 35% of the agricultural lands in egypt suffer from salinity. table 3. geographical distribution of barley outside the nile valley areas during (2004/2005–2018/2019) (egyptian ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, 2004/2005-2018/2019b). areas outside the nile valley cultivated areas new lands (%) production (103 ton) new lands (%) yield (ton/fed) rank (103 fed) (%) new valley 19.44 50.8 29.8 34.58 37.8 1.78 1 noubaria 6.58 17.2 10.1 10.93 12.0 1.66 3 matruh 6.74 17.6 10.3 4.41 4.83 0.65 2 north sinai 5.06 13.2 7.75 2.75 3.01 0.54 4 south sinai 0.44 1.15 0.67 0.67 0.73 1.52 5 total outside the nile valley 38.25 100 58.6 53.34 58.4 1.39 total new lands 65.31 100 91.35 100 1.47 b) areas within the nile valley table 4 shows the areas with the highest levels of barley crop production in newly reclaimed lands in the nile valley during the study period. these areas represented about 43.6% of newly reclaimed lands. barley cultivated areas were concentrated in lower egypt with about 21.4 thousand feddans, representing about 75.1% of the total area in the nile valley areas and about 32.8% of the area of newly reclaimed lands. sharkia, port said, alexandria, and ismailia are the most cultivated areas in the nile valley with about 24.9%, 21.9%, 13.4%, and 12.8%, respectively. in these areas, barley production increased by about 10.8, 9.5, 4.4, and 5.2 thousand tons, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 164-172 169 representing about 11.8%, 10.4%, 4.8%, and 5.7% of the newly reclaimed lands’ production of sharkia, port said, alexandria, and ismailia, respectively. table 4 also shows that the middle and upper egypt areas had the smallest cultivated area of barley on newly reclaimed lands during the study period, with about 4.2% and 6.6%, respectively. selecting appropriate barley varieties could increase cultivated areas, especially outside the nile valley areas, which represent the largest areas of newly reclaimed lands during the study period. byrne et al. (2018) confirmed that the efficient utilization of plant genetic resources (cultivars, breeding, materials, landraces, and wild relatives) is the future of crop improvement. table 4. geographical distribution of barley within the nile valley areas during (2004/2005–2018/2019) (egyptian ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, 2004/2005-2018/2019b). areas within the nile valley cultivated areas new lands (%) production (103 ton) new lands (%) yield (ton/fed) (103 fed) (%) lower egypt alexandria 3.83 13.4 5.9 4.36 4.8 1.2 behairah 0.35 1.2 0.54 0.58 0.63 1.5 sharkia 7.06 24.9 10.9 10.8 11.8 1.5 ismailia 3.64 12.8 5.6 5.24 5.7 1.4 port said 6.23 21.9 9.5 9.48 10.4 1.1 suez 0.26 0.91 0.40 0.46 0.50 2.1 total 21.4 75.1 32.8 30.9 33.8 1.4 middle egypt giza 0.67 2.4 1.03 1.14 1.2 2.3 beni suef 0.15 0.53 0.23 0.24 0.26 1.6 fayoum 1.1 3.9 1.7 1.25 1.4 1.0 menia 0.84 2.9 1.3 1.46 1.6 1.8 total 2.76 9.7 4.2 4.1 4.5 1.5 upper egypt assuit 0.15 0.53 0.23 0.20 0.22 1.1 suhag 0.31 1.1 0.47 0.16 0.17 0.9 qena 0.35 1.2 0.54 0.51 0.56 1.4 luxor 0.15 0.53 0.23 0.17 0.19 0.9 aswan 3.34 11.7 5.1 3.80 4.2 0.9 total 4.3 15.1 6.6 4.8 5.3 1.13 total within the nile valley 28.5 100 43.6 39.8 43.6 1.4 total new lands 65.31 100 91.35 100 1.47 3.4. production function of barley using robust regression the variables of the production function show a normal distribution, homogeneity, and no autocorrelation, but there are multicollinearity and outliers. so, this part uses robust regression to estimate the barley production function to obtain accurate estimates. it is the best solution if multicollinearity and outlier problems exist between variables (jajo, 2005; shafei et al., 2009). an accurate production function helps in selecting different production variables and knowing when variables are productive and economically efficient (shafei et al., 2009). the production function was estimated after using stepwise regression to determine the variables with the greatest effect on barley production. it was found that during the study period, the most relevant variables were labor wages (x1), machinery (x2), seeds (x3), fertilizers (x5), and insecticides (x6). the gretl program was used to estimate the production function of barley in newly reclaimed lands in logarithmic form (cottrell & lucchetti, 2008): )3( 60.51 lnx – 5+ 0.49 lnx 31.8 lnx – 2+ 2.3 lnx 10.92 lnx = 0.17 + tŷln equation 3 shows that the productivity elasticity of labor wages (x1) and fertilizers (x5) were positive and less than one. this indicates that these variables are located in the second or economic stage of production. at this stage, it is necessary to stop increasing these variables in the production process. also, it shows that the productivity elasticity of machinery (x2) was positive and higher than the one. this indicates that this variable is located in the first stage of the production process. it is necessary to increase this variable until it reaches the second stage of production. in contrast, the productivity elasticity of seeds (x3) and insecticides (x6) were negative. this proves that these variables are located in the third stage of production, meaning that it is necessary to decrease these variables to return them to the second production stage. ikram et al. (2020) reported that the inefficient use of inputs is one of the major constraints to crop yield in arid and semi-arid climates. also, al-enizy and al-kaisy (2017) found that the technical methods used in barley production are the most essential factors that affect the production function. however, wollie et al. (2018) concluded that input variables such as fertilizer and labor input have considerable effects on barley production. 3.5. economic efficiency of barley equation 3 was used to estimate the most efficient use of the relevant variables in the barley production process by studying some derivatives of production functions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 164-172 170 table 5 shows that economic efficiency was less than one for labor wages, machinery, and fertilizers. marginal product values were l.e. 117, 400, and 107, respectively, for these variables, which were less than their prices of about 712, 507, and 405, respectively. this indicates that these variables are used excessively and it is necessary to reduce them in the production process. habib et al. (2013) applied this method to orange crops to achieve economic efficiency. hamed et al. (2020) concluded that merging small farms allowed optimal production to be reached and cultivated areas to achieve economic efficiency. also, ahmed and hassan (2019) concluded that using improved surface irrigation techniques, such as raised beds, led to increased barley yield and reduced irrigation water, consequently increasing water use efficiency. additionally, ikram et al. (2020) found better economic returns were achieved by using a barleyegyptian clover intercropping system and improving water use efficiency in arid and semi-arid climates. the variables with negative coefficients estimated by the robust regression of barley do not achieve economic efficiency in their use, and the concentrations of these variables should be reduced so they reach the second stage of production. wollie et al. (2018) found that the input variables of barley displayed non-economic efficiency, and improved barley seeds should be used. table 5. economic efficiency of variables used in barley production in new lands. derivatives variables x1 x2 x3 elasticity 0.92 2.3 0.49 average products 0.13 0.18 0.23 marginal products 0.12 0.41 0.11 marginal product values 117 400 107 price of variables 712 507 405 economic efficiency 0.2 0.8 0.3 source: calculated from production function and (table a – see appendix). 4. conclusion based on the results, this work concludes that expanding the cultivation of barley in newly reclaimed lands, especially outside the nile valley areas, is associated with low costs, efficient water consumption, and high economic returns due to barley’s great importance as a sustainable food and fodder crop. the study of the geographical distribution outside and within the nile valley areas has shown that selecting appropriate barley varieties could increase the cultivated area, especially outside the nile valley areas, which represent the areas with the most newly reclaimed lands during the study period. however, during the period of study, there was excessive use of many variables during the barley production process, which may indicate a lack of economic efficiency in their use. therefore, concentrations of variables should be reduced to ensure the second or economic stage of production is reached. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abdel, m. m. a., & radojevic, b. 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(2018). economic efficiency of smallholder farmers in barley production in meket district, ethiopia. journal of development and agricultural economics, 10(10), 328-338.available at: https://doi.org/10.5897/jdae2018.0960. appendix table a. descriptive statistics of production costs during (2004/2005–2018/2019) (egyptian ministry of agriculture and land reclamation, 2004/2005-2018/2019c). costs (l.e./feddan) mean standard deviation minimum maximum growth rate% % labor wages 712 243 319 1007 8.2*** 29.0 machinery 507 185 290 859 8.1*** 20.7 seeds 250 138 80 501 12.9*** 10.2 manure 293 177 55 628 16.4*** 11.9 fertilizers 405 213 99 748 14.1*** 16.5 insecticides 83.1 33.2 23 141 10.5*** 3.39 other expenses 203 37.9 137 261 3.6*** 8.28 variable costs 2453 999 1027 4121 9.9*** 70.6 fixed costs 1020 271 650 1553 5.9*** 29.4 total cost 3474 1268 1710 5674 8.7*** 100 note: l.e.: egyptian currency. (costs have been measured by egyptian pound per feddan). (***) statistically significant difference at the 0.001 level. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 128 harvest and trade of wild edible russula griseocarnosa in north vietnam chung nhu anha,b nguyen minh chic trinh tam kietd nguyen thi ngoc haa bernard dellc,e avietnamese academy of forest sciences, hanoi 11910, vietnam. btay nguyen university, buon ma thuot city, dak lak 63000, vietnam. cforest protection research centre, vietnamese academy of forest sciences, hanoi 11910, vietnam. dinstitute of mycology and biotechnology, hanoi, 12013, vietnam. eagriculture and forest sciences, murdoch university, murdoch 6150, australia.  nguyenminhchi@vafs.gov.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 8 july 2024 revised: 12 september 2024 accepted: 25 september 2024 published: 11 october 2024 keywords ethnomycology livelihood non-timber forest product questionnaire wild edible fungi wild mushroom picker. this study examines the harvest and trade of wild edible russula griseocarnosa in north vietnam. russula griseocarnosa is an edible forest mushroom, but there is no reliable information on harvesting practices and trade in this species in vietnam. this study aims to provide ethnomycological and marketing knowledge for this mushroom. semi-structured interviews were conducted with mushroom collectors and traders over 2 years; harvest yields were obtained from local officials; and policy settings were sought from forest managers. about 85% of mushroom collectors were women of the dao, lo ursula, muong, nung, mong, san chi, san diu, and tay ethnicities. the collecting season was bimodal, with the wet season beginning (may) and ending (september). the traders were hoa, kinh, nung and tay, and 57% were women. fresh mushrooms sold for 9.1-10.5 us$/kg on dry days and 7.07.9 us$/kg on wet days. the best grade of dried product fetched 70.4-83.3 us$/kg. a number of interim policies have been established to encourage local people to protect forests and to help create a sustainable edible wild mushroom market. our study provides the first detailed account of the role of edible wild mushrooms in northeast vietnam, and this will inform the co-development of rural livelihood and sustainable forest management plans. contribution/originality: russula griseocarnosa is a nutritious and popular wild edible mushroom in southern china and northern vietnam. however, there is no information on harvesting and trade of this wild edible mushroom in vietnam. the research gap filled by this paper will assist in developing the market chain and mushroom product opportunities of russula griseocarnosa in vietnam. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5205 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: anh, c. n., chi, n. m., kiet, t. t., ha, n. t. n., & dell, b. (2024). harvest and trade of wild edible russula griseocarnosa in north vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4), 128–139. 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5205 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction many people in rural areas depend on forests for their livelihoods, and this is emphasized in sustainable development goal 15 (fao, 2015). in particular, non-timber forest products (ntfps) contribute significantly to the welfare of rural communities in many parts of the world (dao & hölscher, 2018; epanda et al., 2020; shackleton & shackleton, 2004; silva et al., 2020). in asia, over 300 million people rely fully or partly on ntfps for their subsistence (dao & hölscher, 2018; pandey, tripathi, & kumar, 2016), and forests are an important source of food for local people. from an analysis of households in 24 developing countries, hickey, pouliot, smith-hall, wunder, and nielsen (2016) found that forests were the predominant location for the generation of income from wild food. furthermore, people asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 4 (2024): 128-139. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7843-8647 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2345-2398 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-1937-9907 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-7334-4576 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8623-6425 mailto:nguyenminhchi@vafs.gov.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 128-139 129 harvest hundreds of species of edible wild mushrooms from forests, many of which have cultural significance (boa, 2004; brown, 2019; mortimer et al., 2012; yu, guerin-laguette, & wang, 2020; yusran, erniwati, khumaidi, rukmi, & sustri, 2024). local markets have been trading edible wild mushrooms for centuries, primarily to meet the needs of indegineous people (satyanarayana, das, & johri, 2019; srikram & supapvanich, 2016; verma, pandro, mishra, raj, & asaiya, 2019). however, in recent decades, the demand for some species has rocketed in international markets, leading to the overharvesting and depletion of natural resources (yamada, 2022). the development of mycotourism and mycogastronomy has further expanded the market for edible mushroom species (barroetaveña & pildain, 2022). many wild edible mushrooms fruit in association with particular forest trees, where they form symbiotic ectomycorrhizal associations (sanmee, dell, lumyong, izumori, & lumyong, 2003). without the presence of host tree, cultivating the majority of these fungi for food is impossible. a wide diversity of forest mushrooms are being harvested for food across upland asia (dell et al., 2000; mclellan & brown, 2017), and this is well documented for high-value fungi such as truffles and matsutake (he, dong, & stark, 2014; wang et al., 2022). there are however no detailed accounts of the collection and trade in russula species, even though they are widely reported in local and city markets (buyck, 2008; łuczaj et al., 2021; panda & tayung, 2015; sanmee et al., 2003; shirai & rambo, 2014). the ectomycorrhizal russula genus has a global distribution and contains a number of sought-after edible species with good flavor and nutritional value when cooked (ijioma blessing, ihediohanma ngozi, onuegbu ngozi, & okafor damaris, 2015; kaewgrajang, kaewjunsri, jannual, & nipitwattanaphon, 2020; nadjombé et al., 2022). rural communities in asia collect some species for domestic consumption and for processing into commercial products (atri, sharma, kumar, & mridu, 2019; chen, xia, zhou, & qiu, 2010; shiyan, tianyan, bin, fuchang, & xiaohua, 1998). there are eight edible species of russula in vietnam (anh et al., 2023; kiet, 2012; nguyen, 2017; phu & kiet, 2019), of which russula griseocarnosa (nấm chẹo) is most commonly used for food (anh, chi, & dell, 2024; anh et al., 2023), traded in local markets, and exported (chi, 2022; quang ninh, 2020). the mushroom has an attractive dark pink to red pileus, 8-13 cm in diameter, which is bellshaped when young, becoming hemispherical, and flat or slightly sunken in the centre when mature; and the flesh is firm and white (anh et al., 2023). it fruits under wild castanopsis, engelhardia, and lithocarpus trees in mixed forests in northeast vietnam (anh et al., 2023; chi, 2022). russula griseocarnosa was first described by wang, yang, li, knudsen, and liu (2009) from collections made in southwestern china, where it is valued as an edible mushroom with high nutritional value (anh et al., 2024; chen et al., 2010; ming, li, huo, wei, & chen, 2014). unlike in neighboring yunnan, where there are many studies on the harvesting and use of edible ectomycorrhizal fungi, the ethnomycology, use, and trade of forest mushrooms have not been investigated in any depth in vietnam. even so, the ministry of agriculture and rural development as well as local entities are starting to promote further commercialization of the wild mushroom market. nevertheless, progress is constrained by a limited understanding of the ethnic groups engaged in collecting and trading, and the relative importance of wild mushrooms in the rural economy. therefore, this study on russula griseocarnosa was undertaken to: (i) determine the extent that rural households engage in the collection of russula griseocarnosa; (ii) identify the value chain and existing market for russula griseocarnosa; and (iii) scope out relevant government policies. data obtained on russula griseocarnosa can assist policy development and more in-depth research on sustainable rural development in vietnam. 2. study region and methodology 2.1. study region bac giang, cao bang, lang son, and quang ninh provinces (figure 1) in northeast vietnam were chosen for this study because local people have a long tradition of using wild mushrooms for food (anh et al., 2023). in these provinces there are established markets for russula griseocarnosa, including local markets, restaurants using this mushroom, and traders who export dried mushrooms to china. these four provinces have a relatively high (51-64%) cover of primary and secondary, wet evergreen sub-tropical forests. the upland forests contain tree species within the fagaceae and juglandaceae, which can form symbiotic ectomycorrhizal associations with higher fungi, including species of edible forest mushrooms such as russula. about 1.9 million people live in this part of vietnam, and over 60% are farmers. the ethnic composition includes dao, hoa, kinh, lo lo (lo ursula), muong, nung, mong, san chi, san diu, and tay people. the livelihoods of farmers are mainly based on the cultivation of agricultural crops such as rice, corn, and cassava, and the harvesting of ntfps. this is a relatively poor part of vietnam where the disposable income of rural people is about 1,400-1,600 us$/person/year (anonymous, 2022). 2.2. methods 2.2.1. harvest, market and trade interviewees quantitative and qualitative data were obtained on the harvesting and trade of wild russula griseocarnosa from interviews undertaken with mushroom collectors, mushroom traders, forest managers, and market regulators. the locations of russula griseocarnosa collecting sites and names of villages and towns involved in the marketing and trade of fresh and dry basidiomes were obtained from forest managers of each community in bac giang, cao bang, lang son, and quang ninh provinces. forest managers and forest rangers of each community provided the names of all individuals involved in russula griseocarnosa harvesting. all restaurants at the survey locations were included in the interview process. mushroom traders include those who on sell fresh mushrooms that they have purchased in local asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 128-139 130 markets; those who buy fresh mushrooms directly from collectors to on sell, use as food in their restaurants, or dry and sell to other traders; and other traders who only deal in the dried mushrooms for domestic and export markets. figure 1. location of three international border gates and localities where russula griseocarnosa collectors and traders were located in northeast vietnam: 1. trung khanh, cao bang; 2. luc nam, bac giang; 3. binh lieu, quang ninh; 4. tien yen, quang ninh; 5. ba che, quang ninh; 6. ha long, quang ninh. 2.2.2. interview process primary data on russula griseocarnosa collecting, market consumption, and trading of products were obtained from interviews (table 1). interviews were conducted in november 2021 with 84 russula griseocarnosa collectors (18 were also traders in local markets), 51 traders (21 owned restaurants), and 20 forest managers. follow-up information on mushroom prices and volumes collected was obtained in a second interview conducted in june or december 2022. the survey in 2022 included an additional 4 collectors. most of the collectors (90%) were interviewed in their homes, and the remainder were interviewed in the field whilst collecting. the traders comprised 15 shopkeepers in three border markets (ta lung, tan thanh, and mong cai international border gates, figure 1), 33 traders at local markets, and 21 traders at restaurants. table 1. the categories and number of people interviewed for the edible russula griseocarnosa field collection and market survey. category location notes home/ forest local market restaurant local government collector 70 18 0 0 in 21 villages belonging to six districts (figure 1): 4 villages/district in quang ninh, 1 village in luc nam and bac giang, 4 villages in trung khanh and cao bang; 4 collectors/village in quang ninh and cao bang, 8 collectors in bac giang. the number of collectors per ethnicity: dao (12), lo lo (8), muong (10), nung (16), mong (8), san chi (9), san diu (7), tay (18) trader 0 30 21 0 18 in 12 villages (11 tay, 7 nung) and 33 in 8 towns (12 hoa, 10 kinh, 6 tay, 5 nung) belonging to 6 districts and 3 border gates (figure 1) forest manager 0 0 0 20 5 districts, 3 provincial cities, 10 wards, and 2 towns in bac giang, cao bang, lang son and quang ninh provinces, one person in each location asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 128-139 131 the interview questions were formulated, discussed, and agreed upon by the members of the research team (supplementary data 1-4), and the four interviewees received training through group discussion. interviews were conducted using standard protocols. the purpose of the interview was explained, participants were informed that the information provided will be used for scientific purposes, consent was required by the interviewee, and interviews were coded to protect the anonymity of participants. the interviews were semi-structured and open-ended with questions about origin, season, preparation, intended use, quality, price, and consuming address (supplementary data 1-3). faceto-face interviews ranged from 30 to 40 minutes, notes were taken, and audio recordings were made with the participants' consent. all of the 159 interviewees were vietnamese, and interviews were therefore conducted in vietnamese. information from the interviews, recordings, and notes was translated from vietnamese to english. the data were coded manually to identify core issues, and then grouped into main themes. this work was done independently and checked by two members from quang ninh department of science and technology based on the requirement for undertaking interviews within the vietnamese academy of forest sciences. 2.2.3. policy setting to obtain primary data on the development of policy for russula griseocarnosa in northeast vietnam, written questions were sent, one person per organization, to the department of forestry, the department of crop production within the ministry of agriculture and rural development (mard), and the department of agriculture and rural development in bac giang, cao bang, lang son and quang ninh provinces. the questions covered any policies regarding the harvesting, processing, and trade of russula griseocarnosa as well as future management directions for this species (supplementary data 4). 2.2.4. data analysis the age and sex distribution of russula griseocarnosa collectors and traders were compiled. data for fresh weights of harvested russula griseocarnosa were obtained from local officials mushroom collectors are required to selfreport their daily harvest in these provinces. these data were used to calculate the monthly fungal biomass harvested over a two-year period. data obtained from interviews for the price of fresh and dried mushrooms were appraised using box plots (microsoft excel version 2021). 3. results and discussion 3.1. mushroom collectors information on ethnomycology was collated over two years from semi-structured interviews with 88 mushroom collectors. the russula griseocarnosa collectors belonged to 8 ethnic groups, namely dao, lo lo, muong, nung, mong, san chi, san diu, and tay (table 2). the greatest number of mushroom collectors were women (75 people, >85%) with mean age of 41.5 years (range 26.2-61.5 years) (figure 2, 3b). only 13 of the collectors were men, and they comprised an older cohort (mean age 61.4, range 55.1-66.3 years). no children collected mushrooms. overall, only about 5-6% of the local population participated in harvesting russula griseocarnosa. collectors traveled on foot or motorbike up to 3-5 km from their homes to access forested lands containing the ectomycorrhizal hosts within the walnut (juglandaceae) and beech (fagaceae) families (anh et al., 2023). they identified edible mushrooms using local indigenous knowledge, which they passed on their family’s descendants and occasionally to other community members. the russula griseocarnosa fruiting bodies were pulled up by hand and transported in bamboo or plastic baskets back to the villages. ethnic communities located further away from the russula griseocarnosa forests engage in other ntfp activities such as collecting bamboo shoots, honey, and medicinal plants (thao, 2017). table 2. main findings from survey questions regarding the harvesting and trade of russula griseocarnosa from forests in northeast vietnam. survey question finding when are the main collecting times? ✓ daily collecting times: 04:00-06:00 h. ✓ collecting seasons: april to june and august to october ✓ frequency of collection: there are about 6-8 mushroom fruiting events per year, each lasting 3-5 days gender of collectors and traders? ✓ collectors: most (>85%) are women ✓ processors and traders: nearly equal proportions of men and women amount gathered per person? ✓ each collector can earn 10-25 us$ for each day of mushroom harvesting ✓ during these times, the value derived from mushroom harvesting can cover 6-18% of their family's economic needs ✓ about 15-20% of the collected mushrooms is used for food, the remainder is sold to traders who trades in the fresh mushrooms? ✓ some collectors sell mushrooms at their local market ✓ traders at local markets, restaurant owners and traders buy fresh mushrooms for drying who trades in the dried mushrooms? ✓ traders at local markets, restaurant owners ✓ traders at the markets at the border gates with china what ethnicities are involved? ✓ harvesters: dao, lo lo, muong, nung, mong, san chi, san diu, and tay people. ✓ traders: hoa, kinh, nung, and tay people who keeps the knowledge and how is it handed down? ✓ people used indigenous knowledge to identify edible mushrooms and distinguish them from poisonous mushrooms ✓ they passed their knowledge to their descendants in their families and communities asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 128-139 132 figure 2. distribution of the number of russula griseocarnosa collectors and traders by age and sex: a. mushroom collectors; b. mushroom traders. ireson (1996) observed that khmu and hmong women gathered mushrooms in rural laos. also, in pu’er prefecture in yunnan, wang et al. (2022) showed that people aged 45-65 had more experience with wild edible mushrooms than other age cohorts. there are considerable differences between cultures in the extent to which rural women engage in ntfp mushroom activities. in contrast to the study, wang et al. (2022) found that men often possessed more knowledge about mushrooms than women. in our study, over half (57%) of the mushroom traders were women, whereas in the guatemalan highlands women exclusively sold mushrooms in the local markets (mérida ponce, hernández calderón, comandini, rinaldi, & flores arzú, 2019). it will be intriguing to extend our study to determine if the ethnic groups collecting russula in vietnam share mushroom harvesting practices with nearby countries. for example, the dao, hoa, lo lo, nung, and san diu people have language connections to china, and wang et al. (2022) reported that the yi people (lo lo in vietnam) collect russula in yunnan. also, there are some ethnicities collecting russula in vietnam who belong to language groups from nearby countries in se asia. interviews with forest managers revealed that they all had a common interest in encouraging the development of ntfps through technical and financial support. forest managers supply permits to people living in an adjacent forests where russula griseocarnosa occurs, allowing them to enter the forests for mushroom collection. however, the impact of harvesting on the forest ecosystems is unknown, and it is uncertain whether the current harvesting pressure is sustainable. this is a concerning because there is local government pressure to expand the wild mushroom trade. in particular, forest managers are encouraging mushroom collectors to share their knowledge of russula griseocarnosa asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 128-139 133 within the community. the provincial level is gathering some data on ntfp products, but it does not separate them by different ethencities. 3.2. harvest season figure 4. illustrates monthly russula griseocarnosa harvest yields and weather records. each year there were two seasons for collecting russula griseocarnosa: april to june and august to october. no mushrooms were collected in july, the month with the highest rainfall and maximum temperature. according to collectors, there were 6-8 concentrated mushroom fruiting events in each collecting season. harvesting took place early in the morning, from 04:00 to 06:00 h. proceeds from the sale of fresh russula griseocarnosa by collectors contributed about 15-18% to their family income (equivalent to about 80-90 us$/month) during peak collecting months, may and september (table 2). figure 3. edible russula griseocarnosa fruiting bodies: a. young specimen; b. collecting mushrooms in secondary forest, the two women standing are indigenous harvesters; c. old specimens; d. dried sliced mushrooms; e. cooked mushrooms in chicken soup; f, g. dried mushrooms in the markets, loose (f) and in sealed plastic bags (g). russula griseocarnosa fruiting was bimodal, corresponding to the shoulders of the wet season when air temperatures were moderate, being 21-28 oc in may and 24-31 oc in september, compared to 26-33 oc in july (data from the vietnam meteorological and hydrological administration). a bimodal pattern of mushroom fruiting was also observed by christensen (2009) in a schima-castanopsis forest in central nepal. in general, temperature and precipitation strongly influence the season of fruiting of higher fungi (parmesan, 2007), but rainfall is less important in tropical than temperate forests (li et al., 2018). in the central and southern parts of vietnam, other russula spp. collected for food also fruit in the wet season (kiet, 2012; nguyen, 2017; phu & kiet, 2019), but whether fruiting is unimodal or bimodal has yet to be determined. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 128-139 134 3.3. sorting and drying after harvesting, the mushrooms were sorted into two categories. lower-quality mushrooms with fully opened or cracked caps (about 15-20%, figure 3c) were either used by the collectors for food (figure 3e; about 15-20% of the fresh mushrooms collected) or sold at local markets on the day of collection to families that did not gather mushrooms to use as food. higher-quality mushrooms with ovoid or unopened fruiting bodies (figure 3a) were mainly sold to traders for drying. a minority of collectors (18) also dried some of their fresh mushrooms. the fresh mushrooms were roughly divided by hand into pieces and placed in a single layer on mesh shelves inside sheet metal boxes 1.6 m × 1.0 m × 2.5 m (length × width × height). five to six stoves using coal briquettes provided bottom heat. drying took about 20-24 hours, yielding 6-10 kg of dried mushrooms per chamber. about 6-7 kg of fresh mushrooms produced 1 kg of dried mushrooms. the dried mushroom pieces (figure 3f) were stored in plastic bags (figure 3d, g) or in plastic boxes to exclude moisture and pests. figure 4. distribution of collecting times of russula griseocarnosa across the year: a. total weight of fresh mushrooms harvested in the four surveyed provinces in 2021; b. total weight of fresh mushrooms harvested in the same provinces in 2022; c. average temperature and precipitation of northeast vietnam. source: vnmha.gov.vn/nchmf-new/show-city-weather, accessed august 19, 2023. 3.4. trade the traders interviewed had been dealing in russula griseocarnosa for at least 5 years. they comprised 29 women with mean age of 44.2 years (range 31.1-50.1) and 22 men with a mean age of 45.8 years (range 42.3-60.2). the 18 collectors who also traded were either tay (11) or nung (7) and they lived in local villages. the remaining 33 traders lived in towns, and they comprised four ethnicities (table 1). the hoa and kinh people generally have more capital and trading experience than the other ethnicities (chi, 2022; thao, 2017), and they do not partake in mushroom http://vnmha.gov.vn/nchmf-new/show-city-weather asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 128-139 135 harvesting. table 3 summarizes the data synthesized from interviews. trade in russula griseocarnosa in northeast vietnam included fresh and dried mushrooms (figure 3b, d). the price of fresh mushrooms obtained from 117 responses ranged from 7.1-10.4 us$/kg (average 8.6±1.27 us$/kg), and for dried mushrooms (106 responses), the price was 52.1-83.3 us$/kg (average 61.9±17.86 us$/kg) (figure 5). young ovoid and partially open mushrooms (figure 3a) were worth 15-20% more than fully open or cracked mushrooms (figure 3c). furthermore, russula griseocarnosa collected in may (spring) and october (autumn) fetched higher prices than those collected in june-september (summer). also, prices were higher on days without rain than days with prolonged rain. according to local government records, about 113 tons per year of fresh russula griseocarnosa mushrooms were harvested in cao bang, bac giang, lang son and quang ninh provinces. there are no records of the weight of dried mushrooms consumed in restaurants, but about 10-12 tons are exported under quota to china, mainly from quang ninh province. table 3. the fresh and dried russula griseocarnosa market in northeast vietnam over 2021-2022. province product use price (us$/kg) cao bang fresh locally, traded within the province 7.5 9.2 dried domestic and export 52.1 72.9 bac giang fresh locally, traded within the province 7.3 9.9 dried domestic and export 54.6 70.4 lang son fresh locally, traded within the province 7.1 9.6 dried domestic and export 58.3 75.0 quang ninh fresh locally, traded within the province and between provinces 7.7 10.4 dried domestic and export 62.5 83.3 figure 5. box plots showing the price of fresh and dried russula griseocarnosa mushrooms on dry and wet days over two years: a, c. fresh mushrooms; b, d. dried mushrooms; a, b. 2021; c, d. 2022. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 128-139 136 the price of fresh mushrooms is lower than for edible russula in local markets in thailand, which can fetch 11-58 us$/kg (sanmee et al., 2003; srikram & supapvanich, 2016). however, the price of russula griseocarnosa is about 1520% more expensive than edible russula mushrooms collected in central and southern vietnam (chi, 2022). a key finding of our study was that mushroom prices were significantly depressed when collected on rainy days. this may be because mushrooms grow very quickly on wet days (kiet, 2012) and contain more water, making drying more difficult. mushrooms with high moisture contents are easier to crush and are more prone to decay (chi, 2022). overall, drying mushrooms collected on wet days results in a lower and less valuable grade of dried mushrooms. globally, there are about 970 species of edible mycorrhizal fungi, and many are a source of ntfps, providing a portion of the livelihoods for low-income families in many parts of the world (pérez‐moreno et al., 2021). in addition to local consumption, wild mushrooms are an important component of the international mushroom trade (he et al., 2014; royse, baars, & tan, 2017). many indigenous cultures have developed traditional knowledge of mycorrhizal fungi over many generations, and this knowledge supports food supplies and contributes to food security (pérez‐ moreno et al., 2021; power, salazar-garcía, straus, morales, & henry, 2015). 3.5. policy setting and management six government officials provided written replies (100% response), and the main findings from the survey questions are summarized in table 4. over the past decade, the vietnamese government and local authorities in bac giang, cao bang, lang son and quang ninh provinces have encouraged local people to protect forests for the sustainable exploitation of ntfps, including russula griseocarnosa (quang ninh, 2020; vietnam, 2021). governments of these northeastern provinces of vietnam have issued preferential policies to strengthen forest protection to maintain favorable forest conditions for mushroom growth, and also to encourage good harvesting practices (decision no. 4618 and decision no. 1038, table 4). the government has trained some extension workers to provide technical support for harvesting and processing. furthermore, since russula griseocarnosa is widespread and abundant in quang ninh province, the provincial government has supported a small number of research projects to conserve and cultivate this edible species (quang ninh, 2020) (table 4). table 4. main findings from survey questions regarding policies for russula griseocarnosa in vietnam. question topic finding non-timber forest product development policy1, 2 ✓ to encourage the development of non-timber forest products in association with forest protection ✓ provide some financial support for sound non-timber product development programs ✓ provide technical training on cultivation and sustainable exploitation of non-timber forest products policy for assisted natural regeneration of russula griseocarnosa in the forest1 ✓ to strictly protect forest areas where russula griseocarnosa is distributed ✓ to establish community forest models to protect and promote natural regeneration ✓ provide training in sustainable harvesting techniques, which requires leaving basal stipe mycelium and approximately 10% of the mushroom population in the forest at each harvest policies to support research on cultivation techniques1 ✓ set up research projects on cultivation techniques ✓ encourage scientific research organizations to participate in research on cultivation techniques policies to support processing of russula griseocarnosa2 ✓ promote local knowledge on mushroom processing ✓ set up research projects on processing techniques ✓ encourage scientific research organizations to participate in research on processing techniques policy to develop russula griseocarnosa into specialty goods2 ✓ accelerate the identification of the geographical indication for russula griseocarnosa ✓ establish a russula griseocarnosa brand with high quality policy for export2 ✓ improve the quality of dried mushrooms, ensure export standards ✓ trade promotion to increase exports note: 1 decision no. 4618/qd-ubnd dated december 15, 2020 of the people's committee of quang ninh province approving the framework project for conservation of genetic resources in quang ninh province in the 2021-2025 period. 2 decision no. 1038/qd-ubnd dated april 22, 2022 of the people's committee of quang ninh province approving the project to develop chain of major agricultural products at provincial level period 2022 2025, orientation toward 2030. financial hardship remains a serious challenge in many rural areas in asia. similar to many other developing countries, vietnam has implemented programs to alleviate rural poverty. of relevance to this study are strategies for the socio-economic development of ethnic minority communities (hoang-duc et al., 2024). therefore, the local russula griseocarnosa business has already benefited from the promulgation of policies. these include improved protection of forest areas where the mushroom occurs, establishment of community forests, and training in sustainable harvesting techniques. at present, there are no robust forest science or socio-economic studies for russula griseocarnosa in any policy documents. a broader understanding of the contribution of forest land in household economies is urgently asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 128-139 137 needed (gautam & andersen, 2016; trædal & vedeld, 2018). the push to further commercialize the trade in russula griseocarnosa by establishing high-quality product brands is risky unless harvesting can be shown to be sustainable. however, so far russula only fruits in wild habitats or in monoculture plantations of compatible host trees (buyck, 2008). it is well recognized that the sustainable management of ntfps helps to maintain forest areas and provide stable livelihoods for communities dependent on mycorrhizal fungi and other ntfps (asamoah et al., 2024; power et al., 2015; wang et al., 2022). however, this field is in its infancy for the region where russula griseocarnosa is being harvested, and this contrasts with central vietnam, where participation of ntfps in the value chain has been well documented (nguyen, lv, & ngo, 2021; nguyen, lv, vu, & zhang, 2020). it is evident that more detailed studies on forest ecology and the use of forests by local people are urgently needed in northern vietnam. boa (2004) stated that the sustainable management of wild edible fungi must consider the forests as well as the forest users. mushroom collectors and traders should be included in future planning processes when developing management guidelines for minimizing the impacts of harvesting russula griseocarnosa and expanding the commercial trade. the model developed for matsutake, where mushroom harvesters are contributing their knowledge to formulate innovative management strategies (brown, mclellan, li, & karunarathna, 2018), is worth considering. vietnam's forestry development strategy has prioritized the development of ntfps, including edible ectomycorrhizal mushrooms, to improve farmers' livelihoods (vietnam, 2021). in addition to investing in research activities, the program encourages rural communities to participate in forest management and protection. recently, vietnam signed a new interim forest stewardship standard for ntfps (fsc, 2023). this may provide an opportunity to add value to the dried russula griseocarnosa export trade in the future. communities living near forests are the people who have the most impact on those ecosystems (dao & hölscher, 2018; fsc, 2023). therefore, ntfp development policies in vietnam often target relevant communities. the findings in this study will be very useful for local governments , as these organizations are interested in finding effective solutions to improve the livelihoods of people living near forests. more broadly, the findings will be of interest to those engaged in forest conservation and use of forests by ethnic minority people across asia. priority research topics that arise from this study include documenting all the values of forests to the household economies of the different ethnic groups, establishing long-term plots to explore harvesting intensity pressures on mushroom yields and forest ecology, and establishing host tree plots with local people on non-forest village land to determine whether the mushroom can be cultivated. 4. conclusions russula griseocarnosa is widely collected by rural people in northeast vietnam, where the lower-quality fresh mushrooms are cooked and consumed by families and the higher-quality mushrooms are dried for local and export markets. northeast vietnam has 20 ethnic groups (thao, 2017), and this study showed that communities from 8 groups participate in collecting russula griseocarnosa and 4 ethnicities are engaged in trading. the majority of collectors (85%) and traders (57%) are women. we discovered that harvesting is concentrated in two peak fruiting periods at the start and end of the wet season; and that rainfall affects mushroom quality and price of the dried product. despite a lack of scientific data, a number of policies have been created to promote further trade in this species with the view to improving rural livelihoods in a relatively poor part of vietnam. although several policies refer to the sustainable harvesting of nwfps and improving the livelihoods of poor rural people, there remains a need to fully document the household economies in the region and their overall reliance on forest assets. our study provides the first detailed account of the role of edible wild mushrooms in the rural setting of northeast vietnam, and the data can now be used by local government officials when they implement policies in the field. it can also assist researchers planning to investigate other ntfps, forest response to harvesting, and livelihood strategies of local ethnic groups, which will complement our findings. funding: this research is supported by quang ninh government (grant number: 19/2021/hđkhcn-btg) and the master, phd scholarship programme of vingroup innovation foundation (grant number: vinif.2023.ts.001). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the vietnamese academy of forest sciences, vietnam has granted approval for this study on 31 december 2023 (ref. no. 168/qđ-khln). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: methodology, data curation, investigation, formal analysis, writing original draft, c.n.a.; 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(2024). ethnomycological study of macrofungi utilized by pamona community around lake poso, central sulawesi province, indonesia. jordan journal of biological sciences, 17(1), 77-87. https://doi.org/10.54319/jjbs/170107 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.3390/f11010116 https://doi.org/10.3923/rjf.2016.1.7 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01404.x https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10199 https://doi.org/10.15625/0866-7160/v41n1.12937 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2015.04.003 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119149446.ch2 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0308-8146(02)00595-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8487-5 https://doi.org/10.10520/ejc96169 https://doi.org/10.3390/su12177151 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anres.2016.08.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.02.004 https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2019.801.063 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13002-022-00551-7 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13002-022-00551-7 https://doi.org/10.1127/0029-5035/2009/0088-0269 https://doi.org/10.47371/mycosci.2022.08.004 https://doi.org/10.54319/jjbs/170107 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 454 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. alternative crops for climate adaptation in low-lying regions: the case of lotus farming in thua thien hue province, central vietnam tuyen thi duonga,b philippe lebaillya quan tan truongb hop thi minh hoa philippe burnya,c aunit of economics and rural development, gembloux agro-bio tech, university of liège, 5030 gembloux, belgium. bfaculty of economics and development studies, university of economics, hue university, hue, vietnam. cwalloon agricultural research center (cra-w), rue de liroux 8, 5030 gembloux, belgium.  duongthituyen@hueuni.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 4 june 2025 revised: 12 august 2025 accepted: 5 september 2025 published: 24 september 2025 keywords benefit-cost analysis central vietnam climate change crop conversion lotus farming smallholders. crop conversion from rice to alternative crops has gained momentum in many southeast asian countries as a strategy to adapt to climate change and strengthen rural livelihoods. this research examines lotus farming in thua thien hue province, one of the nation’s most climate-vulnerable regions. we used a mixed-methods approach that included key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and a household survey with 95 lotus farmers. the shift to lotus cultivation was driven by the poor performance of rice in low-lying areas and farmers’ expectations of higher returns. crop conversion policies also improved land access for many households. although lotus is considered a high-value crop and plays an important role in land-use strategies for floodprone areas, benefit–cost analysis showed it was economically unviable for most households in 2024. smallholders relying on family labor tended to earn higher returns, creating a paradox where larger-scale operations did not improve profitability. repeated crop failures from nematode infestations and extreme weather, combined with high production costs, created significant constraints, particularly for larger farms. improving the sustainability of lotus and other alternative crops will require promoting indigenous lotus varieties, expanding mechanization, and strengthening post-harvest practices to increase efficiency and resilience. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the literature on crop diversification and climate change adaptation by presenting empirical evidence from lotus farming in central vietnam. it is among the few to investigate the economic efficiency, policy support, and constraints of lotus cultivation through a mixed-methods approach in a climate-vulnerable region. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5622 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: duong, t. t., lebailly, p., truong, q. t., ho, h. t. m., & burny, p. (2025). alternative crops for climate adaptation in low-lying regions: the case of lotus farming in thua thien hue province, central vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 454–466. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5622 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction agriculture is a key sector of vietnam's economy, accounting for 12% of the country's gdp and employing 27% of the labor force (general statistics office of vietnam, 2024). rice, vietnam’s primary crop, occupies over 54% of the agricultural land, ensures food security for more than 90% of the population, and accounts for 30% of the country’s asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 454-466 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0838-1730 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9281-7661 https://orcid.org/0009-0001-0241-5512 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5613-4422 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0093-4359 mailto:duongthituyen@hueuni.edu.vn https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5622 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 454-466 455 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. agricultural production value (world bank, 2022). despite this central role in food security and exports, rice production in vietnam is increasingly facing critical challenges. for example, rice farming yields relatively low profits for many farmers (nguyen, do, & kompas, 2021). furthermore, long-term reliance on rice monoculture has prevented farmers from diversifying their income, thereby increasing their vulnerability to market fluctuations. in addition, declining rice consumption rates in both rural and urban areas are undermining the economic viability of rice production (nguyen, nguyen, & grote, 2023). given these challenges, promoting high-value alternatives to rice will be essential for improving farmers' incomes and livelihoods in vietnam. lotus (nelumbo nucifera) is a horticultural crop widely cultivated in southeast asia, particularly in china, thailand, and vietnam (lin, zhang, cao, damaris, & yang, 2019). in vietnam, the lotus has been promoted as a resilient alternative to rice in wetland areas and is considered a specialty crop due to its economic value and numerous byproducts. in the mekong delta region, commonly referred to as the rice bowl of vietnam, lotus cultivation is an essential part of climate change adaptation strategies due to its economic advantages in flood-based farming systems (tran, van halsema, hellegers, ludwig, & seijger, 2018; vo, van halsema, hellegers, wyatt, & nguyen, 2021). for example, lotus cultivation has been shown to be more profitable than rice during the third season of triple-cropping systems in high-dyke zones (tran, van halsema, hellegers, ludwig, & wyatt, 2018). other studies have found that integrated rice–lotus systems generate higher returns than conventional double rice cropping (vo et al., 2021). in addition to increasing farmer income, lotus cultivation during the flood season supports sustainable livelihoods because it improves soil quality more effectively than intensified rice production (tran et al., 2024). despite these promising early findings, the long-term potential of lotus as an alternative to rice across vietnam’s agricultural sector is not fully understood. to date, most research has been conducted in the mekong delta, where favorable conditions such as dyke systems and predictable flooding support lotus cultivation as part of flood-based farming systems. in these areas, lotus is promoted primarily for its economic viability rather than as a direct response to the challenges of rice cultivation. in contrast, central vietnam is more vulnerable to extreme weather events, including floods, storms, and droughts, making it difficult to adopt the same farming strategies. these distinct agroecological conditions raise important questions about the potential for lotus cultivation in central vietnam, where lotus has recently been promoted as a climate-resilient crop. this study addresses this research gap by presenting a case study of lotus cultivation in thua thien hue province, the largest lotus cultivation region in central vietnam and one of the most climate-sensitive areas in the country. the province's high reliance on agricultural production, particularly rice, exacerbates its susceptibility to future climate change. while lotus has already been farmed in this region for many years, it is being increasingly promoted as a promising crop with high economic potential. lotus production areas in the province, reaching 633 hectares in 2023, have primarily been sourced from abandoned wetlands and inefficient rice fields, especially in lowland flood-affected areas (thua thien hue department of agriculture and rural development, 2023). the crop has been officially recognized as a local specialty, and its production is strongly supported by provincial authorities. these provincial efforts reflect the potential of lotus cultivation as an adaptive solution for low-lying areas in danger of being abandoned. however, lotus production in the province remains small-scale, fragmented, and highly vulnerable to external risks. this research evaluates the performance and contribution of lotus farming and explores the opportunities and challenges of growing lotus as an alternative to rice in a provincial context. it specifically addresses the following research questions: (i) how has lotus cultivation expanded in low-lying areas in thua thien hue province? (ii) what are the key characteristics of lotus cultivation and its contribution to household income? and (iii) what are the opportunities and challenges associated with the transition from rice to lotus farming systems? 2. materials and methods 2.1. research background and conceptual framework 2.1.1. opportunities and challenges of alternative crops alternative crops, also known as underutilized, neglected, traditional, or niche species, have promising economic potential and high nutritional value but have received limited attention from policymakers, researchers, and breeders (pradhan, rane, & pathak, 2021). they also include reintroduced species that were previously abandoned due to low yields, declining quality, or changing technologies and consumer preferences (konvalina, 2016). alternative crop species are often adopted when staple crops underperform due to biotic or abiotic stresses or in areas unsuitable for conventional agriculture (hirich, choukr-allah, & ragab, 2020). some farmers may select these crops for their market potential or their complementary role in mixed farming systems, even if the crops are not traditionally cultivated in their region (isleib, 2012). in recent years, alternative crops have gained renewed interest due to their suitability for marginal environments and degraded soils, which allows them to enhance food and nutritional security (elouafi, shahid, begmuratov, & hirich, 2020) and improve farm productivity through cropping system diversification (mavroeidis, roussis, & kakabouki, 2022) while supporting smallholders and indigenous livelihoods (hirich et al., 2020). cultivating these crops can also empower women, particularly through the revival of traditional species and knowledge. changing consumer preferences have further driven the growth of markets for alternative products. alternative crops should therefore be actively promoted to enhance agricultural profitability, support diversified food systems, respond to emerging dietary trends, and strengthen rural economies (karelakis & tsantopoulos, 2017). despite their potential, these crops have not been widely adopted due to their limited competitiveness against staple crops and their more niche markets (kumar & bhalothia, 2020). in many developing countries, non-staple crop markets are underdeveloped at all levels due to a historical, long-term policy emphasis on staple crops. however, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 454-466 456 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. growing concerns over biodiversity loss, food security, and malnutrition have generated renewed interest in alternative crop species, and several countries in europe and africa have launched research and development efforts to explore their potential (pradhan et al., 2021). 2.1.2. the role of lotus as an alternative to rice in southeast asia one of the most promising alternative crops in asia is lotus, which has expanded significantly across several asian countries over the past two decades and offers attractive economic opportunities for farmers. in southeast china, over 600,000 hectares were under lotus cultivation in 2021, particularly in reclaimed wetlands and lowland areas (guo, 2009; zhu et al., 2023). originally grown in the yangtze and yellow river basins, lotus has become a key part of regional agricultural systems. for example, in the pearl river estuary, three lotus farming models have all demonstrated strong financial performance, competing successfully with other local industries such as orchards, aquaculture, and ecotourism (lu et al., 2017). lotus cultivation has similarly been shown to be highly profitable in the wetlands of chhattisgarh, india (sahu & chandravanshi, 2018). as a flood-resilient plant, the lotus can be cultivated in areas that are otherwise unsuitable for conventional crops. it adapts to long-term submergence through microrna-regulated responses that enhance its tolerance to waterlogging (jin et al., 2017). this resilience makes the lotus a viable agricultural option in wetland areas, which are increasingly affected by erratic rainfall and flooding that can threaten less tolerant crops (jain, singh, & singh, 2004). as a result, lotus has become an integral part of flood-based farming systems and wetland conservation efforts in china, india, and the mekong delta region of vietnam (lu et al., 2017; vo et al., 2021). rising demand for healthy food has also generated increased interest in lotus, particularly for its seeds. recent studies have highlighted the nutritional value of lotus seeds, whether consumed fresh (shad, nawaz, siddique, zahra, & mushtaq, 2013) or as processed flour (sopawong, warodomwichit, srichamnong, methacanon, & tangsuphoom, 2022). for example, lotus seeds contain significantly more protein than major staples such as wheat, rice, and corn. their rich profile of high-quality proteins, polysaccharides, lipids, and bioactive compounds also supports their use in functional foods and nutraceuticals (bangar, dunno, kumar, mostafa, & maqsood, 2022). overall, lotus is a resilient, high-value crop that provides both economic and ecological benefits, making it a promising alternative to rice for improving farmer livelihoods and supporting rural development in climate-vulnerable, low-lying areas. although lotus has been promoted as a high-value alternative crop in flood-based agricultural systems throughout asia, previous research on lotus cultivation has focused primarily on regions with favorable hydrological infrastructure, such as the mekong delta and the river basins of southern china. in contrast, few studies have considered the performance of lotus cultivation and its contribution to climate adaptation and farmer livelihoods in more marginal environments. in vietnam, declining returns from rice production have prompted many farmers to diversify their cropping systems by integrating short-season crops or transitioning to more profitable alternatives (le, mao, kristiansen, & coleman, 2025). however, studies on substitute crops for rice remain limited, especially in central vietnam, a climate-sensitive region where household incomes and livelihoods are heavily dependent on agriculture, particularly rice production (general statistics office of vietnam, 2024). 2.2. study site this study examines lotus farming in thua thien hue, a coastal province in north-central vietnam where adaptive farming strategies are still underexplored in research and policy. thua thien hue is bordered by laos to the west and the east sea to the east. it lies within the tropical monsoon zone and is frequently affected by extreme weather events such as floods and typhoons. figure 1. location of study sites. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 454-466 457 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 1 illustrates the location of the study areas in thua thien hue province, central vietnam. the province’s largest coastal district, phong dien, is a major agricultural zone with 12,581 hectares of farmland representing 18.55% of the provincial total (department of agriculture and rural development, 2023). because of its suitable climate, phong dien became the province’s largest lotus cultivation area: lotus cultivation expanded rapidly from 2017 to a peak of 355.5 hectares in 2020, when phong dien accounted for over half of the province’s total lotus-growing area. however, the area under cultivation has since declined by more than 35% (figure 2), making phong dien a relevant study site to investigate the underlying drivers of lotus farming. figure 2. change in lotus cultivated area in the study site. source: reports of phong dien district department of agriculture and rural development in 2021, 2022 and 2023. although lotus is cultivated across all communes in the phong dien district, two communes were selected for this study based on their production area, number of lotus-growing households, and representation of distinct agroecological zones. the first commune, dien hoa, is in the coastal lagoon region and has the largest lotus cultivation area converted from low-efficiency rice fields. the second commune, phong hien, is in the inland plain and has long been recognized as a major lotus-producing area with widespread household participation (phong điền district department of agriculture and rural development, 2023). 2.2.1. data collection and analysis 2.2.1.1. data collection this study used a mixed-methods approach that combined quantitative and qualitative techniques, including key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and household surveys (hesse-biber, 2010). a pilot survey was conducted in july 2023 to test the questionnaire and refine the study design, including site selection and sample size. the main fieldwork took place from august to october 2024 through face-to-face interviews with local authorities, experts, lotus farmers, and traders. twelve key informants were interviewed for this study, including lotus traders, university experts, and local government officials at both the district and commune levels. these interviews explored the characteristics and historical development of lotus farming in the region and collected secondary data from annual reports. additional insights into market access, price fluctuations, and vertical coordination were obtained through direct interviews with traders in local and wholesale markets. two focus group discussions were subsequently conducted with five and eight farmer representatives from the dien hoa and phong hien communes, respectively, to capture farmers’ perspectives, their motivations for crop switching, and adaptive strategies. key points of consensus and disagreement were documented, transcribed, and thematically analyzed to identify patterns across locations and production scales. focus group participants were selected for their direct involvement and long-term experience with lotus farming. to validate the focus group findings, triangulation was used to compare perspectives across different stakeholder groups (carter, bryant-lukosius, dicenso, blythe, & neville, 2014). although official statistics are unavailable, estimates from provincial and district agricultural officers suggest that approximately 300 households across thua thien hue province cultivate lotus, with over 200 located in phong dien district (table 1). because the scattered distribution of lotus cultivation across multiple communes makes it difficult to identify and monitor individual farming households, purposive and quota sampling methods were used to select participants that fit the study's objectives and varied in their farming experience and production scale. this sampling framework led to the purposive selection of the dien hoa and phong hien communes due to their large lotus-growing areas and high concentration of growers. within each commune, quota sampling was used to target farmers with at least two years of lotus farming experience and varying landholding sizes to explore variation across production scales and strategies. a total of 95 lotus farmers were surveyed using a semi-structured questionnaire. the survey collected data on socio-demographic asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 454-466 458 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. characteristics, farming practices, and changes in lotus cultivation, including cultivation area, yield, and selling price, from 2019 to 2024. the year 2019 was selected as the baseline, as commercial lotus farming expanded rapidly from that time onward due to strong support from local authorities. to assess differences across production scales, farmers were classified into three groups based on their cultivation area: small (<1 ha), medium (1–2 ha), and large (>2 ha). table 1. number and structure of household survey. administrative unit lotus-growing households surveyed households surveyed households by landholding size small (<1ha) medium (1-2ha) large (>2ha) phong hien commune 80* 55 42 (76.36) 11 (20.00) 2 (3.64) dien hoa commune 55* 40 19 (47.50) 13 (32.50) 8 (20.00) phong dien district 200* 95 na na na thua thien hue province 300* 95 na na na note: the percentages are in parentheses; na: not available data; *: estimated by agricultural officers at the provincial and district levels 2.2.1.2. data analysis a one-way anova was applied to test differences in farm characteristics and production costs across farm size groups. descriptive statistics were used to summarize key features of lotus farming and farmers’ perceptions of crop failure and coping strategies. benefit-cost analysis was conducted using the following formula: 𝐵 𝐶⁄ 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜 = 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑖𝑡 𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑠 (1) financial indicators, including cost, gross output, and profit, were used to assess the economic efficiency of lotus farming. profit was calculated as: profit = gross output – total costs with gross output = price of lotus grain × yield of lotus grain. total costs include rental fees, seedling or cutting costs, fertilizers (both chemical and organic), pesticides, mechanization, irrigation, loans, and labor. 3. results 3.1. weather conditions and cultivation period of rice and lotus crop figure 3 illustrates how seasonal weather patterns in vietnam affect crop choices and cultivation timing. during the rainy and flood season, from september to december, monthly precipitation can reach up to 1,600 mm, often forcing farmers to leave fields fallow. lotus is cultivated once a year, typically from january to august, with the harvest occurring in july and august. this schedule excludes a second rice crop, requiring farmers to choose between growing either two rice crops or one lotus crop in a year. the lack of crop rotation reflects local climatic constraints. in the mekong delta region, dyke systems allow year-round lotus cultivation or rotation with rice, whereas in central vietnam, lotus is not part of a flood-adaptive farming system but is instead restricted to a short planting window during the dry season. figure 3. seasonal and crop calendar. source: reports of thua thien hue plant protection department in 2023. 3.2. land sources and tenure for lotus farming lotus farming initially emerged as a land-use solution for low-lying areas such as ponds, lakes, and fallow wetlands that were otherwise at risk of abandonment. poor drainage, thick mud, and frequent flooding have reduced the viability of rice cultivation in these areas because these conditions hinder mechanization and force farmers to rely on costly manual labor. as a result, many farmers in low-lying areas have lost interest in rice cultivation and have begun seeking alternative crops. lotus is increasingly viewed as a viable alternative due to its tolerance for flooded soils, high market value, and growing consumer demand. these factors have driven the recent expansion of lotus cultivation across vulnerable lowland areas of thua thien hue. however, its adoption remains limited, particularly among smallholders, due to their reliance on leased land and the high initial investment required. our findings indicate that land access and the expansion of lotus cultivation are closely linked to crop restructuring policies that allow farmers to convert inefficient rice fields into high-value alternatives. since 2013, a national strategy asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 454-466 459 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. (decision no. 899/qd-ttg) has promoted agricultural restructuring toward high-value crops. in line with this national initiative, the provincial government introduced measures in 2016 (decision no. 32/qd-ubnd) to encourage and support rice-to-lotus conversion. further efforts were outlined in plan no. 65 (2020), which set a target of expanding lotus cultivation to 745 hectares by 2025, primarily through the conversion of inefficient rice fields and unused low-lying wetlands. according to our findings, lotus land tenure comprises three forms: owned, leased, and mixed ownership. figure 4 presents differences in land tenure by farm size. small-scale farmers primarily convert their own rice fields for lotus production, while mediumand large-scale producers rely more heavily on leased land. specifically, 90% of large-scale and 54.17% of medium-scale lotus farms are fully leased, with an additional 10% and 20.83%, respectively, combining leased and owned land. figure 4. land tenure based on farm size production. 3.3. farming systems, lotus varieties, and planting techniques 3.3.1. farming systems figure 5 shows the distribution of lotus farming systems by farm size in phong dien district, highlighting differences in adoption and associated production benefits. three lotus-based farming systems are practiced in phong dien district: lotus monoculture, lotus–fish, and lotus–fish–duck systems. the integrated lotus–fish model is the most widely adopted of these systems, practiced by 52.63% of surveyed households and up to 70.83% of those with mediumsized farms. this model generates additional income from fish with minimal additional labor or technical input, as most farmers do not need to purchase juvenile fish or supply extra feed. although fish are typically raised on a small scale for home consumption, the lotus–fish system still allows households to diversify their outputs from lotus fields without significant investment. the lotus–fish–duck system was recently introduced in dien hoa and offers the highest income potential due to its diversified outputs. however, it requires more labor and infrastructure to manage both ducks and fish effectively, which makes it more challenging for smallholder farmers to adopt. figure 5. lotus farming systems based on farm-size production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 454-466 460 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.3.2. lotus varieties and planting techniques there are many lotus varieties, each cultivated for different purposes or products such as seeds, roots, or flowers. although thua thien hue province is renowned for its high-quality local lotus varieties and the "tinh tam" brand, these local varieties have become less common as more farmers have shifted to a higher-yield lotus variety from dong thap province that is primarily cultivated for its seeds. this variety is preferred for its productivity, yielding twice as much as local varieties at an average of two tons of lotus grain per hectare. in addition to the different varieties of lotus, lotus farmers currently use two planting techniques: transplanting new seedlings or reusing lotus roots from the previous season. we found that 68.42% of farmers reuse existing roots to reduce seedling costs. this method is most common among large-scale producers, followed by mediumand smallscale farms (figure 6). in the absence of disease outbreaks, farmers often continue to re-use existing roots for three to five years. however, prolonged reliance on old roots increases the risk of soil-borne diseases and may lead to reduced yields over time. figure 6. planting technique based on farm-size production. 3.3.3. market access and product diversification although all parts of the lotus plant are edible, product diversification remains limited, with most farmers prioritizing seed production. lotus seeds have long been used in traditional cuisine in thua thien hue province, particularly in soups and specialty desserts. they are primarily consumed fresh or dried and are distributed domestically through traders, wholesale markets, and small retail outlets. processed lotus seeds can sell for two to three times the price of unpeeled seeds, but most farmers sell them fresh immediately after harvesting due to their perishability. limited labor, lack of processing equipment, and restricted market access hinder their ability to add value through post-harvest processing. 3.4. characteristics of lotus farming in thua thien hue province to examine the landscape of lotus farming in the two studied communes, we compared small-, medium-, and largescale households based on their demographics, cost structure, and production efficiency per hectare (table 2). there were no significant differences in family labor, regular labor, off-farm income, or access to training across household sizes. although labor demand in the early stages of cultivation is relatively low, harvesting is labor-intensive, requiring an average of 2.5 workers per household. most small-scale farmers rely on family labor due to high hiring costs and labor shortages, while larger farms depend more heavily on seasonal labor and therefore incur higher labor costs. lotus is harvested every two days over a period of one to three months, with seeds manually extracted and sold on the same day. transport costs are minimal, as traders often collect seeds directly at the field or household. most farmers reported having access to training on lotus farming techniques provided by the local government. however, there were significant differences in age, education, and farming experience across households. larger-scale producers tend to be younger, better educated, and more experienced, characteristics that enhance their adaptability to crop conversion and modern farming practices. higher income levels among large-scale households additionally reflect their stronger financial capacity, which enables further investments to expand production. total farmland, rice-cultivated land, and lotus acreage also vary across the three production scales. small-scale producers, who represent 64% of surveyed households, cultivate an average of 0.36 hectares of lotus. in contrast, mediumand large-scale producers, comprising 25% and 11% of the sample, manage significantly larger areas, averaging 1.21 and 3.97 hectares, respectively. overall, the share of farmland dedicated to lotus, as well as to rice and other crops, increases with production scale, reflecting the broader resource advantages of larger producers. moreover, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 454-466 461 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. larger-scale farmers are more likely to access credit, enabling both initial investments and continued expansion of lotus cultivation. table 2. farm characteristics. indicator farm size group overall p_value1 small medium large age (years) 57.48 53.13 45.40 55.11 0.00* education (years) 7.31a 8.13 9.60b 7.76 0.03* farming experience (years) 5.82a 8.04 10.30b 6.85 0.00* family labors (laborers) 2.57 2.33 2.50 2.51 0.67 regular labors (laborers) 1.77 1.58 1.70 1.72 0.23 seasonal labors (laborers) 0.26a 0.67a 1.70b 0.52 0.00* agricultural farmland (hectare) 1.03a 2.09b 6.04c 1.82 0.00* rice production area (hectare) 0.36a 0.84b 2.08c 0.66 0.00* lotus production area (hectare) 0.36a 1.21b 3.97c 0.96 0.00* farmland under lotus cultivation (%) 39.41a 63.70b 70.97b 48.87 0.00* income (million vnd) 82.54a 138.69b 191.00b 108.14 0.00* off farm income (=1 if yes) 0.75 0.63 0.40 0.68 0.06 credit access (=1 if yes) 0.03a 0.13a 0.50b 0.11 0.00* training access (=1 if yes) 0.87 0.88 0.90 0.87 0.96 cooperative member (=1 if yes) 0.75a 1.00b 1.00 0.84 0.01* no. of observations 61 24 10 95 note: 1 p-value of one-way anova tests on the equality of means; * significantly different at 5%. different superscript letters (a, b, c) indicate significant differences between groups (p < 0.05). vietnam dong; usd 1.00 = vnd 25,488.00 (2024) (https://www.gso.gov.vn/) 3.5. production costs and economic efficiency 3.5.1. production costs based on farm size table 3 presents the production costs per hectare of lotus across different farm-size groups. in general, the cost of lotus cultivation per hectare is relatively high, averaging 40 million vnd per hectare. this cost gradually increases with production scale, from an average of 34 million vnd per hectare for small-scale households to 45 million vnd for medium-scale households and 65 million vnd for large-scale households. our surveys identified four primary cost components in lotus farming: family labor, seedlings, chemical fertilizer, and land rental. family labor accounts for a significant portion of total costs across all production scales, reflecting the high labor demands of lotus cultivation, especially during the extended harvest season. this labor demand makes the lotus cultivation model more suitable for households with idle labor, especially male household members. overall labor costs, including both family and hired labor, increase noticeably with farm size. in contrast, there are no significant differences in seedling and chemical fertilizer costs across household groups. seedlings cost an average of 6 million vnd per hectare, which covers 400 cuttings, transportation, and planting labor. most farmers purchase cuttings from wholesalers. however, due to the high cost of seedlings, especially as a proportion of total expenses, many households reuse lotus roots from the previous season (figure 6). fertilizer expenditures average 8 million vnd per hectare, primarily for npk (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) fertilizer, which is typically applied three times per season at 450 kg per hectare. finally, land rental costs vary significantly across household groups. while small-scale farmers primarily convert their existing rice fields for lotus cultivation, large-scale farmers expand their farmland by leasing. as a result, rental expenses increase with production scale. other costs, such as organic fertilizer, machinery rental, pesticides, irrigation, and interest payments, represent a small portion of total expenses and show little variation among groups. table 3. production costs per hectare of lotus unit: million vnd/hectare. indicators farm size group overall p_value1 small medium large rental 2.54a (7.47) 6.46b (14.16) 12.39c (19.10) 4.57 (11.36) 0.00* seedlings 6.00 (17.65) 6.00 (13.15) 5.38 (8.30) 5.94 (14.77) 0.12 chemical fertilizers 7.62 (22.41) 8.29 (18.17) 7.97 (12.29) 7.83 (19.48) 0.62 organic fertilizers 0.07 (0.21) 0.02 (0.05) 0.20 (0.31) 0.07 (0.18) 0.21 pesticides 1.23 (3.62) 0.82 (1.80) 1.56 (2.40) 1.16 (2.89) 0.27 mechanization 3.29 (9.66) 1.75 (3.84) 0.44 (0.68) 2.60 (6.46) 0.08 https://www.gso.gov.vn/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 454-466 462 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. indicators farm size group overall p_value1 small medium large irrigation 1.68 (4.93) 1.07 (2.35) 1.41 (2.17) 1.50 (3.72) 0.75 loan 0.13 (0.39) 0.52 (1.14) 0.55 (0.84) 0.27 (0.68) 0.21 family labor 10.14a (29.80) 18.43b (40.37) 26.62c (41.05) 13.97 (34.74) 0.00* hired labor 1.32a (3.87) 2.27a (4.98) 8.33b (12.85) 2.30 (5.71) 0.00* total costs 34.02a 45.65b 64.83c 40.20 0.00* no. of observations 61 24 10 95 note: the percentages are in parentheses. 1 p-value of one-way anova tests on the equality of means; * significantly different at 5%. different superscript letters (a, b, c) indicate significant differences between groups (p < 0.05). vietnam dong; usd 1.00 = vnd 25,488.00 (2024) (https://www.gso.gov.vn/) 3.5.2. economic analysis of lotus production table 4 summarizes the average selling prices for unpeeled lotus seeds and rice grains from 2019 to 2024, based on household survey data collected in phong dien. this five-year period was chosen to capture recent price changes and assess the relative competitiveness of lotus seeds compared to rice. prices are expressed as means with standard deviations (± sd) to reflect the variability in farmer-reported prices. as shown in the table, lotus is more competitive than rice in terms of both market access and selling price. although the selling prices of both crops have increased over time, the price gap has persisted, with fresh, unpeeled lotus seeds selling at prices up to five times higher than rice. lotus seed prices also fluctuate significantly across the early, mid, and late harvest seasons, but the average price during the harvest period is consistently high. table 4. change in selling price of lotus and rice grain. year unpeeled lotus seed (thousand vnd/kg) rice grain (thousand vnd/kg) lotus/rice ratio 2019 31.53 ± 2.67 5.74 ± 0.53 5.49 2020 34.52 ± 8.60 5.93 ± 0.54 5.82 2021 34.32 ± 3.14 6.22 ± 0.67 5.51 2022 37.31 ± 5.67 6.77 ± 0.53 5.52 2023 40.94 ± 4.09 7.55 ± 0.53 5.43 2024 48.73 ± 3.58 8.48 ± 0.40 5.75 note: values are presented as mean ± sd; vietnam dong; usd 1.00 = vnd 25,488.00 (2024) (https://www.gso.gov.vn/). table 5 summarizes the economic efficiency of lotus farming by farm-size groups. our data also show that largescale farms have the highest average yield and gross production, while medium-scale farms have the lowest, though these differences are not statistically significant. due to their lower production costs, small-scale farms achieve greater economic efficiency than larger-scale farms, as reflected in their significantly higher net income and benefit-cost ratios. in contrast, higher labor and rental expenses result in negative profitability for mediumand large-scale households. these findings suggest that reducing production costs, particularly labor expenses, is essential for improving the profitability of mediumand large-scale lotus farms. enhancing labor efficiency and minimizing inputs could further support the financial viability of these larger operations. in contrast, low net profits among small-scale farmers are primarily linked to limited yields. addressing these yield constraints through targeted interventions is therefore crucial to strengthening the economic viability of smaller-scale lotus farms. table 5. economic efficiency of lotus farming by farm size groups. variable farm size group overall p_value1 small medium large yield (ton/hectare) 0.89 0.75 1.03 0.87 0.44 selling price (thousand vnd/kg) 49.41 47.71 47.00 48.73 0.04* gross production (million vnd/hectare) 43.63 35.74 47.63 42.06 0.46 total costs (million vnd/hectare) 34.02a 45.65b 64.83c 40.20 0.00* net income (million vnd/hectare) 9.61a -9.91b -17.20b 1.86 0.00* cost-benefit ratio 0.28a -0.22b -0.27 0.05 0.01* no. of observations 61 24 10 95 note: 1 p-value of one-way anova tests on the equality of means; * significantly different at 5%. different superscript letters (a, b, c) indicate significant differences between groups (p < 0.05). vietnam dong; usd 1.00 = vnd 25,488.00 (2024) (https://www.gso.gov.vn/). https://www.gso.gov.vn/ https://www.gso.gov.vn/ https://www.gso.gov.vn/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 454-466 463 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.6. crop failure and farmer’s perspective 3.6.1. cultivation acreage and yield from 2019-2024 table 6 shows the total acreage under lotus cultivation and associated yields from 2019 to 2024, revealing contrasting trends between the expansion of lotus cultivation and declining productivity. while the number of farmers and the average area under cultivation have steadily increased, yields have remained low and continued to decline over the same five-year period. this persistent underperformance raises concerns about the suitability of the high-yield variety, which has been adopted primarily because of its perceived yield potential. table 6. change in acreage and yield of lotus crop. year no. of observations acreage (hectare) yield (ton/hectare) 2019 61 0.64 ± 0.94 1.17 ± 0.70 2020 64 0.66 ± 0.94 0.86 ± 0.65 2021 69 0.72 ± 1.05 0.89 ± 0.71 2022 85 0.84 ± 1.08 0.90 ± 0.69 2023 95 0.90 ± 1.06 0.81 ± 0.57 2024 95 0.96 ± 1.29 0.87 ± 0.62 note: values are presented as mean ± sd. table 7 presents farmers’ opinions on the main causes of crop failure. several environmental and agronomic factors have contributed to the recent decline in lotus productivity and farm income. most respondents in our surveys and interviews identified extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall, unseasonal flooding, prolonged drought, and high temperatures, as the primary causes of crop failure. prolonged heat stress was reported to reduce yields, while excessive rainfall and flooding during the harvest period resulted in substantial crop losses. in addition to climatic challenges, soilborne diseases have become a major constraint in recent years, with over 90% of farmers reporting nematode infestations as the greatest threat to their lotus fields. “once nematode disease breaks out, i generally accept the loss of the entire crop. even when i replant, the lotus crop loss continues. we are just hoping for a cure for this disease” (farmer, phong hien commune, phong dien district). “nematode disease is the main cause of crop failure and the reduction in lotus cultivation in our commune. despite numerous visits from university research teams, the agricultural department, and the provincial agriculture office to seek solutions, no effective method has been found to manage and control this disease in lotus plants” (agricultural officer, phong hien commune, phong dien district). table 7. farmer’s opinion on main causes of crop failure. factors yes no no. of farmer percentage no. of farmer percentage heavy rains 61 64.21 34 35.79 droughts and prolonged heat waves 46 48.42 49 51.58 off-season floods* 26 27.37 69 72.63 floods 1 1.05 94 98.95 diseases 86 90.53 9 9.47 note: * floods are unseasonal and unpredictable, especially in march and april. 3.6.2. motivations to continue lotus farming although farmers typically abandon crops after repeated failures, most farmers who experienced at least one failed lotus crop in the past five years still intend to continue cultivation. this decision is driven by two main reasons. first, all respondents identified profit expectations as their main motivation for switching to lotus farming. despite its production risks, lotus is still perceived to offer significantly higher returns than rice, making its income potential a key factor sustaining farmers’ commitment to the crop. "agricultural production mainly depends on the weather; no matter which crop you choose to cultivate, you have to accept the risk of crop failure. there is no crop that is more profitable than lotus; a successful crop can cover losses of three previous crops. as long as i continue to grow lotus, i still have a chance to recover the money i lost" (farmer, phong hien commune, phong dien district). second, the challenges that initially motivated farmers to switch from rice to lotus, such as limited mechanization in low-lying areas, have become barriers preventing them from returning to rice cultivation. “my farmland is in a low-lying area, making rice cultivation very difficult because plows and harvesters can’t be used. my spouse and i are also getting older; therefore, if we don’t grow lotus, we will likely leave the land fallow rather than continue farming on it” (farmer, dien hoa commune, phong dien district). 4. discussion lotus is widely recognized as a flood-tolerant and climate-adaptive crop, a perception that has been supported by studies in flood-prone regions such as the mekong delta in vietnam and the yangtze river basin in china. however, our case study in thua thien hue province, vietnam, offers a contrasting perspective on its viability as an alternative to rice in regions that experience more extreme climate variability. despite its flood tolerance, most lotus cultivars asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 454-466 464 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. cannot survive submergence beyond two to three meters or more than ten days, and prolonged inundation can lead to growth reduction, yield decline, physiological stress, and mortality (deng et al., 2022; nohara & tsuchiya, 1990; wang et al., 2018). at our study site, the erratic and intense rainy season restricts lotus cultivation to a single annual crop and eliminates the possibility for crop rotation. as a result, lotus cultivation in this region, particularly in low-lying areas, may heighten exposure to production risks and crop failure rather than support climate adaptation. nevertheless, farmers and local authorities in thua thien hue continue to view lotus as a practical alternative to rice because it overcomes the structural limitations in lowland rice farming systems, where paddy land is increasingly at risk of abandonment. this favorable perception of lotus stems from the challenges of limited mechanization, high labor costs, and declining soil quality that have made rice cultivation increasingly unsustainable. despite its agronomic limitations, lotus is therefore seen as more compatible with local conditions and a means of sustaining land use where rice farming is no longer viable. this finding reframes the role of alternative crops in extreme climate contexts, highlighting their value not as inherently climate-resilient solutions but as a practical response to production challenges in existing farming systems. in this context, and with appropriate governmental support, lotus cultivation has the potential to contribute both economically and ecologically to more sustainable land use in flood-prone areas. economic conditions also drive the transition from rice to lotus. lotus seeds from thua thien hue province command a price premium in local markets, despite the challenging growth conditions, due to their limited seasonal availability and single annual harvest. these favorable market conditions have strengthened farmers’ interest in lotus cultivation as a viable alternative to rice in lowland areas. although lotus farming did not generate positive returns in 2024 for most of the surveyed households, especially the mediumand large-scale producers, all farmers expressed an intention to continue lotus cultivation. their continued engagement reflects not only the crop’s potential to generate higher income under favorable conditions but also its compatibility with underutilized land. additional factors, such as low labor requirements in the early stages of cultivation, the ability to continue using land no longer suitable for rice, and local policy incentives, further support farmers’ choice to persist with lotus cultivation. these findings suggest that, when adopting alternative crops, farmers often prioritize long-term expectations and land-use sustainability over shorter-term profitability. all households surveyed for this study cultivate the high-yield lotus variety from dong thap, based on the belief that it offers higher yields compared to indigenous varieties. however, repeated crop failures in recent years have raised concerns about this variety’s adaptability and disease resistance under local weather and soil conditions. nematode infestations have emerged as a major constraint to lotus cultivation, causing significant crop losses in tokushima, japan (koyama et al., 2013) and widespread crop failure in dong thap province in 2018 (vo et al., 2021). no effective nematode control measures have been identified, leaving farmers highly vulnerable to future outbreaks. current practices such as continuous monoculture and reusing lotus roots from previous seasons may further increase crop susceptibility to soilborne diseases and reduce yields. for example, wu et al. (2022) found that repeated monoculture led to the accumulation of pathogenic plant viruses in the soil, thereby heightening the risk of soilborne disease outbreaks. to address these challenges with the dong thap lotus variety, more research attention should be directed toward the potential of indigenous lotus varieties, which have been largely overlooked in recent years. in addition to being valuable genetic resources, many local cultivars have demonstrated superior nutritional quality. for example, lotus seeds from the indigenous vinh thanh, phu mong, and gia long varieties have higher nutritional value than the higher-yield dong thap variety (trang, hồng, long, loan, & 2019). however, these varieties account for less than 10% of the province’s total lotus cultivation area (thua thien hue department of agriculture and rural development, 2023). further research will be needed to assess the agronomic performance, climate resilience, and disease resistance of indigenous lotus cultivars. promoting indigenous varieties as specialty crops could also enhance product differentiation, strengthen thua thien hue’s lotus brand, and increase value across the supply chain. a focus on local cultivars could therefore represent a promising strategy for advancing sustainable alternative crops in environmentally vulnerable areas, beyond the case of lotus in thua thien hue. finally, high labor costs continue to pose a major barrier to upscaling and improving the efficiency of lotus farming in thua thien hue. because harvesting is labor-intensive and cannot be mechanized, production costs increase with farm size, creating a paradox in which larger farms may be less cost-effective than smaller ones. nguyen et al. (2023) similarly found that small-scale farmers, benefiting from lower labor costs, were better able to diversify and achieve higher economic efficiency. although lotus cultivation has been promoted as a solution to labor shortages and the challenges of mechanization in lowland rice systems, the advantages of lotus cultivation are most apparent among smallholders who can rely on family labor for harvesting. these findings underscore the need for policies that promote context-appropriate mechanization, reduce production costs, and enhance efficiency. in addition, strengthening cooperation among farmers and investing in post-harvest innovations could further improve both the scalability and competitiveness of lotus farming. 5. conclusions this study offers insights into the transition from staple to alternative crops using the case of lotus cultivation in thua thien hue province, central vietnam. while converting inefficient rice fields into lotus farms has been promoted as a strategy to improve land-use efficiency in flood-prone areas, our findings reveal several limitations to the economic viability of lotus cultivation. high production costs, low yields, and recurrent crop failures due to harsh weather conditions and soil-borne diseases have posed significant challenges for lotus farmers. our benefit-cost analysis also asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 454-466 465 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. highlights a paradox in which small-scale farms, despite having limited capital, achieve higher efficiency due to their lower input costs and reliance on family labor. based on this study's findings, the following recommendations can help improve the feasibility and sustainability of lotus cultivation in low-lying regions of central vietnam: (1) enhance lotus seedling quality and planting techniques through farmer training programs, extension services, and improved access to certified seedling resources; (2) promote the conservation and use of indigenous lotus varieties, which may be better suited to local agroecological conditions and possess both cultural and market value; (3) support mechanization in land preparation and harvesting, particularly for mediumand large-scale farms, to reduce reliance on manual labor and lower production costs; and (4) encourage innovations in post-harvest handling and processing, including drying, sorting, and storage, to minimize losses, diversify products, and enhance product value. a key limitation of this study was the limited observation of farmers growing indigenous lotus varieties. in the two studied communes, the scattered distribution of farmers and the lack of data on those cultivating local varieties constrained our access to this group. future studies should therefore explore the agronomic performance and economic benefits of indigenous lotus varieties to better understand their potential to improve the sustainability of climateadaptive alternative crops. funding: this work was supported by wallonia–bruxelles international (wbi), belgium, under the bilateral cooperation program between wallonia–brussels and vietnam for the period of 2022– 2024 (project no. 7.2). institutional review board statement: ethical review and approval were waived for this study, as it involved only voluntary socio-economic data collection through interviews and group discussions, with no medical or health-related procedures. in accordance with vietnamese national regulations (circular no. 4/2020/tt-byt issued by the ministry of health), ethical approval is not required for non-medical socio-economic research. nevertheless, verbal informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to interviews and survey participation. the research design and data collection procedures adhered strictly to principles of confidentiality, voluntary participation, and data protection. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references bangar, s. p., dunno, k., kumar, m., mostafa, h., & maqsood, s. 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(2025). determinants of adoption of sustainable agricultural practices by small-scale coffee farmers in amazonas, peru. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1), 11–29. 10.55493/5005.v15i1.5276 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction there is no consensus on the definition of sustainable agriculture; however, its principles are improving efficiency in the use of resources; conserving, protecting, and enhancing natural ecosystems; protecting and improving rural livelihoods and social well-being; enhancing the resilience of people, communities, and ecosystems; and promoting good governance of both natural and human systems (food and agricultural organization of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 1 (2025): 11-29 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9967-6590 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9670-0970 mailto:elen.guevara@untrm.edu.pe http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 12 united nations, 2016). moreover, it is widely accepted that sustainable agriculture plays a crucial role in enhancing economic and environmental outcomes, as well as promoting human well-being. research demonstrates that compared to conventional land use, sustainable land use systems are beneficial for farmers, sustainability, and climate (van noordwijk et al., 2018). smallholder farming, on the other hand, takes place in a complex socio-ecological system, and farmers have to deal with a lot of social, political, and environmental problems. moreover, the ongoing climate change conditions disproportionately affect farmers, making smallholders particularly susceptible to its impacts (robiglio et al., 2017). in addition to multiple non-climatic factors, such as socio-economic and environmental pressures, the vulnerability of smallholder agriculture is evident. in response to these threats has emerged sustainable agriculture, which is highly related and crucial for achieving the united nations' sustainable development goals (van noordwijk et al., 2018; world bank; ciat; catie, 2015) and is considered imperative for resilience in the context of climatic variability (lamichhane, miller, hadjikakou, & bryan, 2020). however, there is conflicting evidence about the factors that affect the adoption or adaptation of sustainable practices in developing countries like peru, where there is still scarce research on the issue of sustainable agricultural practices. this suggests that a more comprehensive investigation is required into ways to motivate smallholder farmers to adopt better agricultural practices and technologies (rosário, madureira, marques, & silva, 2022). in peru, barbarán (2014) in her research about the adoption of organic farming in the northern piura region, found that credit access, use of conservation techniques, access to technical assistance, propensity to innovate, income, and land-tenure status significantly increased the adoption. in the amazonas region of northern peru, coffee is the principal cash crop (robiglio et al., 2017) therefore, the local economy hinges on this particularly important crop for remote areas (chavez espinoza, morante dávila, cueva vega, cruz caro, & chavez espinoza, 2022; world bank; ciat; catie, 2015) since coffee as a commodity can be kept and traded despite far distances. coffee production in amazonas and, in general, in peru faces many challenges like pests and diseases and low yields, which, joined with the ongoing global change, make the coffee value chain unsustainable, impacting rural people’s livelihoods. in the academic literature, it is widely recognized that sustainable agricultural practices in the coffee sector are crucial to coping with unpredictable events. these practices have the potential to increase coffee yields while enhancing farm resilience (bro, clay, ortega, & lopez, 2019; zeweld, van huylenbroeck, tesfay, & speelman, 2017) and balance the maintenance of ecosystem services with economic farmers’ goals. however, despite the multiple benefits that sustainable practices promise, there are still low adoption and adaptation rates around peru (world bank; ciat; catie, 2015). the reasons for the low levels of adoption are still unknown because most of the research has been focused on developing and applying technology packages for yield improvement. this research aims to determine the drivers and barriers to small coffee farmers' adoption or adaptation of sustainable practices, which, according to prior research, varies in each agroecosystem (lamichhane, hadjikakou, miller, & bryan, 2022). in particular, this study seeks to examine the main factors influencing small-scale farmers' adoption of sustainable agricultural technologies in amazonas, peru, as a strategy for rural development. 2. methodology 2.1. study area the research reported upon here comes from a study area located in northern peru (figure 1), specifically in four districts of luya province in a warm, dry, or cold, dry climate (robiglio et al., 2017). figure 1. geographical location of the study area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 13 located on the right bank of the marañon river, these soils are classified as cambisols according to fao’s world reference base. this rural area is comprised of small-scale arabica coffee farmers who have a high dependency on rain-fed agriculture; the mean annual rainfall varies between 126 to 885 mm, and the temperature from 6°c to 29°c. the rainfall pattern is lately irregular and unreliable, thus affecting farmers’ crop activities. the climatic and topographical conditions make this zone one of the most important coffee producers in amazonas (robiglio et al., 2017). 2.2. questionnaire development the questionnaire was developed based on existing literature (venkatesh, morris, davis, & davis, 2003). the topic comprised farmers’ socio-demographics, including gender, household size, age, experience, transportation means, income sources, and financial status. after that, it was considered farm characteristics such as size, fertility, slope, ownership, yield, management challenges, distance from household to input and output markets, and livestock keeping; then, it was asked for access to credit and input availability. the middle part of the questionnaire contained the characteristics of sustainable practices and farmers’ knowledge, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, attitudes, behavioral intentions, and sustainable practices already implemented. in the last part, it was queried about access to communication and extension services. it is worth noting that the middle part of the questionnaire included statements operationalizing different dimensions of the latent variable of the research model, which could not be observed directly (otter & deutsch, 2023). indicators for independent predictor variables were measured using summated likert scales from 1 to 5; for dependent variables, a binomial yes-no response was used to refer to the implementation of sustainable practices in their plots. it was hypothesized that a wide array of factors are significant determinants to consider for smallholders’ adoption of sustainable agricultural practices (saps). table 1 displays the specific variables and definitions. table 1. independent variables. variables definition expected sign farmer characteristics gender gender of the household head ± age age of the household head household size n° of working-age adults + educational level years of formal schooling (hh head) + farming experience farming experience of the household head + economic status farmer’s view of his/her economic status ± farm characteristics farm size coffee farm size in hectares ± soil fertility farmer’s soil fertility rate + land slope average land slope land ownership land tenure status (1 = titled, 0 = otherwise) + coffee yield coffee output in quintals (56 kg) per hectare + farm assets n° of farm assets + plot market distance distance from plot to input market (minutes) credit eligibility farmer is eligible for a loan + credit use farmers used agricultural credit + coffee price the current coffee price in pen per quintal of 56 kg + labor force availability availability of labor force + inputs availability availability of farm inputs + certification farm under any certification scheme + saps attributes relative advantage perceived superiority to the practice that it supersedes + compatibility perceived compatibility with their production system + complexity perceived complexity communication and extension access to communication means n° of means of communication that it has access to + access to extension services n° of times farmers got training, technical assistance, or field demonstration + visited sustainable farm whether farmers have visited a sustainable farm + access to weather information whether farmers have access to weather information + access to market information whether farmers have access to market information + organization belonging farmer belongs to any organization + asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 14 2.3. sample to begin with, the population of interest for this study is made up of 4025 small-scale coffee farmers located in four districts, selected due to their high potential for coffee production in luya; those districts are pisuquia, ocallí, ocúmal, and camporredondo (midagri, 2023). for the sample number, the following formulae were used: n = 𝑍2 ∗ p ∗ q ∗ n 𝐸2(𝑁 − 1) + 𝑍2 ∗ 𝑝 ∗ 𝑞 n: sample. n: population is 4025. z: is z score for 95% of confidence level equal to 1.96. e: margin of error equals to 8% (0.08). n = 1.962x0.5x0.5x4025 0.082(4024) + 1.962x0.5x0.5 n= 144.7 which rounds to n= 145. 2.4. sampling the participants were selected using a multi-stage sampling approach. in the first stage, simple random sampling was used to select 20 villages within the four districts. using simple random techniques, the second stage selected six to seven participants from each village. along with the willingness to participate, the characteristics they had to meet were to be aged 18 years or older and oversee a small coffee farm in any of the districts of pisuquia, ocallí, ocúmal, and camporredondo in luya province, amazonas region, peru. 2.5. survey firstly, a presurvey was conducted in each district. based on the feedback during this pre-test, the questions were ensured to be unambiguous and understandable by the respondents. after that, the instrument was revised, and some items were reordered to enhance the survey’s flow. moreover, cronbach’s alpha was used to ensure instrument reliability, where a threshold of 0.6 was accepted (taber, 2018). the survey was performed face-to-face using paper and pencil. it was carried out by two enumerators familiar with the farming system and local language, from the 16th of june to the 11th of july 2023. it took 40 to 50 minutes to complete each survey. in total, it was applied to 145 questionnaires. all participants were informed of the research purpose and asked for their voluntary participation; farmers were also informed to leave at any time during the interview process for distinct reasons; however, that problem did not come across, and as a result, the response rate was 100%. 2.6. interviews with farmers and experts to deepen the research question, six interviews were conducted with farmers in the four districts after completing their survey, allowing for a broader understanding of relevant aspects of the topic. additionally, three semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with experts from academia, government, and the private sector to gather information and insights about the adoption of sustainable practices. prior to this, their voluntary participation was requested via email. 2.7. ethical considerations the ethics committee of the university of east anglia in the united kingdom granted ethical approval number eth2223-1774 (appendix 1) to conduct the research and collect data from respondents. 2.8. data analysis for data analysis, it used descriptive statistics and a binary logistic regression model to identify the determinants of sap adoption. the logistic regression model is a widely employed technique when the interest is the impact of various explanatory variables on the response variable, like adoption-related research. this model is used to explain a categorical variable called y, which has two possible values: 0 representing non-adoption and 1 representing adoption (cary & wilkinson, 1997; hosmer, lemeshow, & sturdivant, 2013). the model's purpose is to compute the probability of y being 1 and to ascertain how the explanatory variables x {x1,…,xn} exert an impact on y. x constitutes a collection of explanatory variables that combine various sets of factors. in this investigation, these categories encompass farm(er) characteristics, saps’ attributes, and communication and extension services. the coefficients of the logit regression model, estimated by maximum likelihood methods and exponentiated coefficients [exp (b)] or odds ratios, were calculated using statistical package for the social sciences [spss 29] (inc., chicago, il, united states). several explanatory variables xi strongly influenced the adoption or non-adoption of saps. some were related to farmer characteristics, e.g., household number, and farm characteristics, e.g., land slope. the independent variables were initially checked for multicollinearity using the spss stepwise procedure of “collinearity diagnostics”. the variable distance to the output market was withdrawn owing to collinearity with the distance to the input market. to select relevant variables for the model, contingency table analysis was used for categorical variables and univariable analysis was applied for continuous variables (hosmer et al., 2013). model fit statistics were acceptable; the hosmer and lemeshow test statistic for the goodness of fit was not significant (p > 0.05), indicating a good model asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 15 fit (hosmer et al., 2013). the nagelkerke r2 was always greater than 0.1 indicating that the covariates explain a certain amount of variance in the dependent variable. 3. results 3.1. descriptive level of the respondents' households (n = 145), about 59% used the contour planting technique, and 39% applied sustainable fertilization practices and cultural control for pest management. however, only 15% of them used permanent soil cover as a soil conservation practice (see table 2). table 2. main sustainable agricultural practices adopted by the sampled farmers. dependent variables descriptions mean std. deviation percentage permanent soil cover dummy (1 if yes, 0 otherwise) 0.15 0.36 15% agroforestry dummy (1 if yes, 0 otherwise) 0.44 0.50 44% contour planting dummy (1 if yes, 0 otherwise) 0.59 0.49 59% living or dead barriers dummy (1 if yes, 0 otherwise) 0.43 0.50 43% composting dummy (1 if yes, 0 otherwise) 0.24 0.43 24% fertilization dummy (1 if yes, 0 otherwise) 0.39 0.49 39% integrated pest management dummy (1 if yes, 0 otherwise) 0.39 0.49 39% wastewater treatment dummy (1 if yes, 0 otherwise) 0.38 0.49 38% the intensity of sap adoption ranges from zero to eight; only seven farmers in the sample had not adopted any sap. the mean number of saps adopted is three. twelve percent adopted only one sap, while about 25% of producers adopted two saps. additionally, the majority 69% of the sample adopted 2–4 saps. finally, about 7% of farm households used six, and 1% adopted 7 saps considered for this study in the data set. out of the total sample, over half of the smallholders (53.1%) belong to an organization; most of them (85.7%) are members of any farmers’ association (45.5%), 10.4% belong to an agricultural cooperative, while only 3.9% of the organized farmers are members of any private company. regarding certifications, 11% of farmers reported producing under the organic certification scheme (org); however, some farmers reported double (8.3%) or triple certification (1.4%) such as organic, fairtrade (ft), and rainforest alliance (ra) (see figure 2). this sums up to 22.8% of certified coffee farmers. figure 2. coffee farmers under certification schemes. regarding access to extension services during the last year (2022-2023), 59.7% attended at least one training activity or received technical assistance. of these, 40.5% reported having received both training and technical assistance, while only 2.4% of coffee producers reported participating in field demonstrations (figure 3). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 16 figure 3. percentage of farmers who accessed extension services. the entities that delivered extension services were categorized as public and private. figure 4 shows that private organizations, such as farmers’ associations, agricultural cooperatives, and coffee companies, provided extension services to over 59% of farmers. in contrast, public entities like agricultural agencies and the national service of agrarian health (senasa) together reached around 24.1% of the farmers who received extension services. respondents did not mention the national institute of agricultural innovation (inia) or the agricultural rural productive development program (agrorural). finally, respondents only once mentioned the social development cooperation fund (foncodes), which does not focus solely on coffee. figure 4. entities that delivered extension services. 3.2. statistics of the independent variables the covariates included in the logit model involved household-specific characteristics, economic situations, farmers’ perceptions about their farm plots, and communication and extension. among the household characteristics, there was a mean of 2.5 individuals of working age per household. whereas the average years of coffee farming experience in the study area was revealed to be approximately 21 years. in addition, the average distance from the furthest plot to the market was 68 travel minutes, traveling either on a bridle path or by car according to the mobility asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 17 used by the producer. also, the percentage of households owning livestock was 62%; this farm animals included bull or cow, pig, or poultry. regarding farm-specific characteristics, the study revealed that about 27% of farmers rated their farm as having good soil fertility, and only 2% rated it as poor. nearly one-third (31.7%) said that the average slope is steep, and 14.5% reported farming coffee on flat land. concerning land tenure rights, over one-third (35.8%) of surveyed households reported having property titles, while the majority of them did not receive this document. the vast majority (96.6%) have a coffee pulper for the individual pulping process. however, only 23% and 31% reported owning a sundrier and storage facility for coffee, respectively. when asked about the challenges they face concerning coffee management, they reported pests and diseases (mainly coffee berry borer, coffee leaf rust, and ants) as the main problem, followed by drought and low coffee prices. seventy-five percent of respondents noticed a change in their working environment and reported weather variation that affects coffee uniform ripening, which is similar to the findings of jezeer, verweij, boot, junginger, and santos (2019) in the neighboring san martin region. another important topic is credit; 47.6% said that they are loan eligible, but hardly 15% used any loan for agricultural purposes in the last three years. concerning factor market, 40% considered that they rarely find a labor force for coffee work, whereas 27.6% and 22.1% considered that they sometimes and often find workers, respectively. when it comes to input availability, 26.2% reported that they rarely find inputs, especially when they seek organic inputs like island guano (guano de isla), while 29% and 35% sometimes and often find inputs like fertilizers and pest control products. 3.3. determinant factors of adoption the resulting data set allows an examination of the adoption of various practices considered sustainable according to the literature. following the approach of logistic regression, each dependent variable was transformed into a dummy, analyzed, and the results are shown in table 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 18 table 3. logistic regression results for significant determinants of sustainable practices adoption. variables b s.e. wald d.f. signif exp(b) variables b s.e. wald d.f. signif exp (b) cover crops composting household number 0.46 0.21 4.96 1 0.026** 1.58 household number 0.43 0.20 4.69 1 0.03** 1.53 cover crop attributes 1.18 0.65 3.29 1 0.07* 3.25 extension (yes) 1.12 0.50 5.04 1 0.025* 3.07 farmer knowledge 0.83 0.43 3.78 1 0.052* 2.30 composting attributes 1.10 0.36 9.12 1 0.003* 2.99 risk expectations -0.92 0.31 9.10 1 0.003** 0.40 facilitating conditions 0.84 0.38 4.84 1 0.028* 2.32 fertilization agroforestry farm investments (yes) 1.165 0.524 4.949 1 0.026* 3.206 farm orientation (profit) -2.55 1.02 6.24 1 0.012** 0.08 credit use (no) 4.801 2 0.091* agroforestry attributes 2.66 0.58 20.77 1 <0.001*** 14.35 credit use (to some extent) 1.159 0.973 1.42 1 0.233 3.188 certification 3.03 1.45 4.36 1 0.037** 20.59 credit use (yes) 1.163 0.604 3.705 1 0.054 3.2 facilitating conditions 1.24 0.54 5.37 1 0.021** 3.47 coffee yield 0.041 0.015 7.475 1 0.006*** 1.042 educational attainment 0.143 0.062 5.245 1 0.022** 1.154 contour planting integrated pest management economic situation (extremely poor) 6.79 3 0.079* off-farm income 0.93 0.56 2.79 1 0.095* 2.541 economic situation (poor) 1.84 0.87 4.54 1 0.033 6.32 labor availability (rarely) 9.49 3 0.023** economic situation (average) 2.27 0.90 6.39 1 0.012 9.70 labor availability (sometimes) -0.39 0.49 0.63 1 0.427 0.677 economic situation (not poor) 2.38 1.20 3.94 1 0.047 10.77 labor availability (often) 1.07 0.48 4.91 1 0.027 2.925 farmer knowledge 0.45 0.25 3.33 1 0.068* 1.57 labor availability (always) 0.91 0.64 2.00 1 0.157 2.48 performance expectancy 0.58 0.33 3.02 1 0.082* 1.78 coffee price 0.01 0.00 9.08 1 0.003** 1.008 living or dead barriers farmer knowledge 0.48 0.28 2.86 1 0.091* 1.614 land slope (flat) 5.11 2 0.078* wastewater treatment land slope (medium) 1.02 0.85 1.44 1 0.231 2.78 number of assets 0.74 0.20 14.34 1 <0.001** 2.095 land slope (steep) 1.68 0.88 3.65 1 0.056 5.35 coffee price 0.01 0.00 3.20 1 0.073* 1.006 soil testing (yes) 0.80 0.43 3.40 1 0.065* 2.22 facilitating conditions 1.21 0.44 7.43 1 0.006** 3.358 performance expectancy 0.94 0.34 7.51 1 0.06** 2.56 extension (yes) 0.95 0.47 4.10 1 0.043* 2.581 note: ***,**,* indicates significance at 1%, 5%, and 10% level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 19 3.3.1. cover crop adoption a variable that significantly determined the adoption of permanent soil cover in coffee plantations was the number of people of working age living in the household (0.026**). moreover, farmers who perceived that soil cover has good attributes in terms of relative advantage, compatibility, and less complexity, had 3 times more likelihood to adopt it (0.07*). farmer’s knowledge (0.052*) about soil cover’s benefits influenced its actual use. by contrast, risk expectations about the adoption of sustainable practices significantly prevent farmers from adopting cover crops (0.003***) by 60%. 3.3.2. agroforestry adoption for coffee agroforestry adoption, results revealed that the good attributes of this practice are highly significant (<0.001***). for its use, moreover, farmers who consider that agroforestry is better than unshaded coffee, is compatible with their production system, and the management is not complex are highly probable to adopt it with an odds ratio of 14.35. certification of the farm was related to shade-grown coffee (0.037**) with an odds ratio of 20.59. facilitating conditions or contextual factors (0.021**), that is, when the practice fits well with the farm’s work structure, and the farmer has experience and equipment to handle saps, tends to use agroforestry (odds ratio [or] = 3.47). 3.3.3. adoption of contour planting the results for practicing contour planting indicate that farmers’ economic situations influence its adoption (p=0.079*). high-income farmers are more likely to adopt this practice (or=10.77) compared to smallholders in harsh conditions. additionally, farmers’ knowledge plays a crucial role in its adoption (p=0.068*). those who understand the benefits of contour planting for soil erosion control are more likely to use it (or=1.57). moreover, the performance expectancy of contour planting is another important factor considered by coffee growers when using it (p=0.082*). 3.3.4. adoption of living or dead barriers according to the results, the factor of land slope influenced the adoption of living or dead barriers, which means that when the slope is steeper, farmers are more interested in adopting this practice, increasing the odds ratio 5 times (or= 5.35) than in flat slope. coffee farmers’ performance expectancy of sustainable practices had a significant impact on the adoption of this soil conservation practice (0.006**). interestingly, soil testing is also related to the adoption of this soil conservation technique (0.065*) increasing the odds ratio of its current use more than two times (or = 2.22). 3.3.5. composting adoption for the good practice of preparing and applying compost, one of the factors that determined its adoption is the number of people of working age living in the household (0.020**). moreover, access to extension services plays a significant role in compost use by smallholders (0.025*). facilitating conditions (0.028**), for instance, having tools or experience preparing compost, are significant push factors (or = 2.32) for composting. whereas the attributes of compost (<0.003***) have a highly positive impact on its adoption, whereby farmers who find good attributes in it are 3 times more likely to use this organic fertilizer (or = 2.99). 3.3.6. fertilization adoption the logit results revealed that prioritization of farm investment (0.026**) increases the odds ratio of fertilization by more than three times (or=3.2). the use of credit also increases (0.054*) the adoption of fertilization (organic matter, macro, and micronutrients) three times (or = 3.2) compared to farmers that do not use loans for agriculture purposes. as such, coffee yield (<0.006**) is related to the adoption of fertilization. moreover, the results also indicate that educational attainment determines the use of fertilizers (0.022**); for one additional year of schooling, the likelihood of fertilizing augments 15.4%. 3.3.7. integrated pest management adoption off-farm income was found to benefit the adoption of integrated pest management (ipm) (p = 0.095*) increasing the likelihood by three times (or=3.2). moreover, scarce labor availability (0.023**) significantly hinders the adoption of ipm, whereas when the farmer often finds a labor force the odds ratio of applying ipm increases by 2,9 times. farmers that get better prices tend to apply integrated pest management (0.003***). in the same manner, farmer knowledge about pest control (0.091*) determines its use according to the results. 3.3.8. wastewater treatment adoption in this case, the number of farm assets was the most significant factor determining the adoption of coffee wastewater treatment (<0.001***). smallholders getting better prices are more likely to invest in wastewater treatment facilities (0.073*). according to the study, another significant determinant is access to extension services (0.043**). lastly, the results also suggest that facilitating conditions (0.006**) are determinant factors for water treatment adoption in the study area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 20 4. discussion this study found that different factors determine or hinder coffee growers in luya province's adoption of sustainable practices; these factors can be farm(er)-related, sustainable practices attributes, and associated with access to communication and extension services. 4.1. variables that determine the adoption of saps the number of people of working age living in the household determined the use of cover crop adoption and composting of coffee pulp; this result is in line with kassie, jaleta, shiferaw, mmbando, and mekuria (2013) for the adoption of animal manure in tanzania and with antwi-agyei and amanor (2023) who found that larger households can allocate more time to labor-intensive practices like composting activities. the average number of people of working age living in the household is 2.5, which gives an idea of family labor constraints, which is why it is necessary to hire labor. good practices’ attributes are determinants for the adoption of cover crops, agroforestry, and composting, which are in line with the findings of arbuckle and roesch-mcnally (2015) for perceived benefits of cover crops; this finding is also consistent with jezeer et al. (2019) who reported a trend in farmers using high-shade levels perceived lower risks due to coffee price volatility than farmers with medium shade in the neighboring san martin region. farmer knowledge determines the adoption of cover crops, as reported by slijper, tensi, ang, ali, and van der fels-klerx (2023) in their study of dutch arable farmers, and by ashrit and thakur (2021) who concluded that knowledgeable farmers in southern india adopted sustainable agricultural practices, such as better sowing methods. farmer knowledge also determines the adoption of integrated pest management because this practice is knowledgeintensive, as indicated by vásquez (2018) for coffee rust control in the nearby province of rodríguez de mendoza. coffee certification was related to the adoption of agroforestry owing to certification entities like organic, fairtrade, and rainforest alliance stimulating the use of on-farm biodiversity (bro et al., 2019); this correlates with the findings of saragih (2013) in indonesia, where coffee trees were associated with certified coffee. moreover, facilitating conditions are significant determinants for the adoption of agroforestry, composting, and wastewater treatment. these findings are backed up by otter and deutsch (2023) in germany and sebuliba et al. (2023) in uganda, who reported facilitating conditions as a significant factor that explains the preference of farmers to use shade trees in their coffee fields. likewise, bravo-monroy, potts, and tzanopoulos (2016) in colombia reported facilitating conditions as a factor for the adoption of organic farming that includes coffee wastewater treatment to meet certification requirements. the economic situation was also significant. farmers in a better financial status adopted contour planting more than farmers in poorer economic situations. this is in accordance with benitez-altuna, trienekens, materia, and bijman (2021) who found that factors related to economic resources, trust, and training shape risk perception and barriers, thereby indirectly impacting the adoption of ecological intensification practices in chile. performance expectancy influences the adoption of contour planting, as farmers anticipate that this practice will enhance coffee quality and productivity on their farms. this factor also determines the uptake of living or dead barriers in the study area. land slope determined the adoption of living or dead barriers in steeper soils due to soil erosion issues; this is in line with the findings of posthumus, gardebroek, and ruben (2010) in southern peru, which might be because farmers’ perception of soil erosion increases with slope, while if they cannot perceive erosion, they are less likely to use soil erosion control practices (arellanes & lee, 2003). access to extension services influenced the adoption of composting and wastewater treatment as reported by kudama, wana, and dangia (2021) for composting and by bro et al. (2019) for organic certification that is linked to wastewater treatment. this finding is also in line with antwi-agyei and amanor (2023) and eshetu, johansson, garedew, and yisahak (2021) for water management and soil and water conservation, respectively. fertilization adoption positively correlated with coffee yield. farmers who fertilize get better coffee yields, which allows them to earn more crop income and afford fertilizers. educational attainment was a determinant of the adoption of fertilization, which is consistent with the findings of bro et al. (2019) in nicaragua and ehiakpor, danso-abbeam, and mubashiru (2021) in ghana, who used a multivariate probit model. the availability of labor to hire determined the adoption of integrated pest management. this finding is consistent with vásquez (2018) investigation of determinants of leaf rust control in coffee in the nearby province of rodríguez de mendoza. the price of parchment coffee significantly influenced the application of integrated pest management and the installation of wastewater treatment facilities, possibly due to the cost-intensive nature of these practices. lastly, the number of assets was determinant for the installation of treatment for wastewater, which means that the use of the treatment of coffee wastewater is left until last. this might be because farmers do not see the direct benefit of this sustainable practice. 4.2. barriers to adoption of saps the main barrier to the adoption of cover crops was risk expectations, as reported by arbuckle and roeschmcnally (2015) for the adoption of cover crops in the united states; however, in the study of jezeer et al. (2019) perceived risks did not explain farmers’ current shade and input strategies. farmers who were focused on making money were the one who had the hardest time growing shaded coffee. they were also less likely to use agroforestry, which could be because they thought that coffee grown in direct sunlight would produce more beans (guzmán castillo, orihuela, vásquez-lavín, & arévalo lópez, 2024). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 21 4.3. variables that do not influence adoption according to the results of this study, gender did not influence the adoption of any practice, as suggested by doss and morris (2000). social influence of families and peers was not significant, as found by sarkar et al. (2022) in bangladesh, suggesting that individuals engaged in small-scale farming often disregard the impact of others' conduct on their actions (buyinza, nuberg, muthuri, & denton, 2020). moreover, results show that economic situation is not a determinant for low-cost practices like living or dead barriers (arellanes & lee, 2003). 4.4. discussion of the interviews experts agree with the survey results, saying that the adoption of sustainable practices is affected by the number of family members working age, the level of education, the availability of extension services, the household income, the price of the coffee, the slope of the land, the size of the land, and the availability of labor. from the expert interviews, it could be noted that public and private actors show different interests and visions, as reported by the ministry of agriculture and irrigation (minagri, 2018), and hence different criteria for assessing enablers, barriers, and relevant sustainable techniques. academia and government representatives were more considerate of environmental sustainability, recommending agroforestry, while private sector interviewees, with economic viability when advising coffee quality improvement, sought ways to make the work system more efficient for farmers to lower coffee production costs and thus save time for other diversifying activities. most of the farmers in this area are resource-constrained and might require financial incentives to carry out sustainable farming activities. according to many authors, financial incentives had the most compelling proof of increasing farmers' probabilities of adopting conservation practices (read & wainger, 2023). these incentives not only help with implementation costs but also attenuate the perceived risk of adoption. some targeted incentives that could be used are buying agricultural equipment with government money, getting technical help, and using the services of agricultural cooperatives (parodi, villamonte-cuneo, loboguerrero, martínez-barón, & vázquez-rowe, 2022; piñeiro et al., 2020). regardless of the incentive type, according to reports, connecting programs to economic advantages is crucial to encourage farmers to embrace saps in the near future. in the long run, one of the most compelling incentives for farmers to adopt and consistently follow sustainable methods is the perceived positive results of such adoption on their farms or the environment (piñeiro et al., 2020). 4.5. study limitations the smallholder farmers who took part in our study were chosen through a stratified random sampling process to make sure that all four districts were represented. however, owing to resource limitations, we used a margin of error of 8%. given that adoption and barriers are intricately linked to complex socio-ecological systems, caution should be exercised when attempting to generalize these findings to other regions. 5. conclusions the factors that determined the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices in the study area are the number of people of working age living in the household for cover crop and composting, farmland slope for living or dead barriers, coffee yield and educational attainment for fertilization, and number of assets and facilitating conditions for the use of wastewater treatment. the main things that stop coffee farmers from using sustainable farming methods are a lack of labor during the busy season for things like cover crops and composting, fears about the risks of using cover crops, and a focus on making money for agroforestry. the results suggest that to improve the adoption rates of sustainable practices, it must be increased farmers’ knowledge about sustainable practices' benefits and attributes and offer facilitating conditions for their ready uptake. moreover, demand-driven research is needed about features farmers seek in technologies, choice experiments for coffee farmers' preferences, or willingness to adopt, in order to improve the adoption of sustainable practices in the study area. funding: this research is supported by the national university toribio rodríguez de mendoza de amazonas (grant number: cui n° 2590588 and snip n° 352650). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the university of east anglia, united kingdom has granted approval for this study on 22 may 2023 (ref. no. eth2223-1774). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references antwi-agyei, p., & amanor, k. 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(2003). user acceptance of information technology: toward a unified view (ssrn scholarly paper 3375136). retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3375136 world bank; ciat; catie. (2015). climate-smart agriculture in peru csa country profiles for latin america series (2nd ed.). washington d.c: the world bank group. zeweld, w., van huylenbroeck, g., tesfay, g., & speelman, s. (2017). smallholder farmers’ behavioural intentions towards sustainable agricultural practices. journal of environmental management, 187, 71–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2016.11.014 appendix appendix 1. ethics-eth2223-1774. ethics eth2223-1774 : mr elen guevara fernandez date created 18 mar 2023 date submitted 02 apr 2023 date of last resubmission 02 may 2023 date forwarded to committee 02 may 2023 researcher mr elen guevara fernandez category pgt supervisor dr john mcdonagh faculty faculty of social sciences current status approved ethics application applicant and research team principal applicant name of principal applicant mr elen guevara fernandez uea account aqs22mxu@uea.ac.uk school/department school of global development category pgt primary supervisor name of primary supervisor dr john mcdonagh primary supervisor's school/department school of global development course/programme details provide the name of your course or programme of study. ma agriculture and rural development if the project is to be undertaken as part of a module, provide the module title and module identifier. dissertation dev-7056x if the project is to be undertaken as part of a module, provide the name of the module leader. prof ben d'exelle project details project title determinants of adoption and adaptation of sustainable agricultural practices by small coffee farmers in luya, amazonas peru project start date 15 jun 2023 https://doi.org/10.1017/s1742170521000429 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-022-09523-x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.138011 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-016-9602-2 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2018.09.003 https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3375136 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2016.11.014 mailto:aqs22mxu@uea.ac.uk /80xxq/dr-john-mcdonagh /82x3w/prof-ben-d-exelle asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 24 project end date 26 sept 2023 describe the scope and aims of the project in language understandable by a non-technical audience. include any other relevant background which will allow the reviewers to contextualise the research. this project’s scope is to understand better the factors or drivers that influence the adoption, adaptation and implementation of sustainable agricultural practices by small coffee farmers in four districts of luya province, amazonas region, peru. this research aims to elucidate why most small coffee farmers still need to implement sustainable agricultural practices highly recommended by the government and private stakeholders. this project will determine the most critical constraints and drivers to adopting and adapting sustainable practices. provide a brief explanation of the research design (e.g. interview, experimental, observational, survey), questions, methodology, and data gathered/analysis. if relevant, include what the participants will be expected to do/experience. this research will apply a cross-sectional design through a survey and interview administration at one point in time to gather information from small coffee farmers and experts using a structured questionnaire and a semi-structured interviews. the questions consist of enumerator details, characteristics of the farmer, characteristics of the external environment, characteristics of the sustainable agricultural practices (saps), farmer’s knowledge, perceptions and attitudes towards saps, communication and extension and lastly the implementation of saps. the semi-structured interview is about experts' perceptions about adoption of saps in the coffee sector. detail how any adverse events arising in the course of the project will be reported in a timely manner. any unexpected adverse event will be reported to the ethics monitor as far as i reach an internet connection will you also be applying for health research authority approval (hra)? no indicate if you are applying for approval for an experiment to be conducted in the school of economics' laboratory for economic and decision research (ledr). no is the project?: none of the options listed does the project have external funding administered through the university's research and innovation services (rin)? no will the research take place outside of the uk? yes will any part of the project be carried out under the auspices of an external organisation, or involve collaboration between institutions? yes do you require or have you already gained approval from an ethics review body external to uea? no does this new project relate to a project which already has ethics approval from uea? no research categories will the project include primary data collection involving human participants? yes will the project use secondary data involving human participants? no will the project involve the use of live animals? no will the project have the potential to affect the environment? no will the project have the potential to affect culturally valuable, significant or sensitive objects or practices? no asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 25 will the project involve security sensitive research? no human participants selection and recruitment how many participant groups are there who will receive tailored participant information?: two name of participant group 1. small coffee farmers name of participant group 2, if applicable. experts how will the participants be selected/recruited? the participants will be selected using cluster sampling in which the annexes of each district will be selected randomly. the only characteristic they have to meet is to be in charge of a small coffee farm in the districts of pisuquia, ocalli, ocumal and camporredondo in luya province, amazonas region, peru. from 4025 coffee farmers, 145 will be selected and surveyed; moreover, for experts interview, three of them will be selected from the academia, government and private coffee sector. in terms of uea participants only, will you be advertising the opportunity to take part in this project to?: none of the above (i.e. uea's student insight review group (sirg) does not need to be informed) what are the characteristics of the participants? inclusion criteria: be in charge of the management of a small coffee farm located in the districts of pisuquia, ocallí, ocumal and camporredondo exclusion criteria: coffee farms bigger than 30 hectares of the coffee crop. will the project require the cooperation of a gatekeeper for initial access to the individuals/groups to be recruited? no is there any sense in which participants might be 'obliged' to participate? no will the project involve vulnerable groups? no will payment or any other incentive be made to any participant? no how and when will participants receive this material? for the expert interview, an email will be sent to each of them explaining the research objectives and inviting them to participate voluntarily. include any other ethical considerations regarding participation. before surveying and interviewing, all participants will be explained the project research objectives and that all data will be managed anonymized and privately, after that, they will be asked for their voluntary decision to participate or not, clarifying that they can withdraw at any time and this decision will not affect them in any way. human participants consent options by which method(s) will consent to participate in the research be obtained?: participant information sheet and consent form verbal human participants information and consent participant information and consent will opt out consent for participation in the research be used? no you can generate a participant information text and consent form for this application by completing information in the participant information text and consent form generator tab. alternatively you can upload your participant information text and participant consent form which you have already prepared. confirm below: generate automated participant information text and consent form. when will participants receive the participant information and consent request? the participant information and consent request will be given before starting the survey and interview. furthermore, all the participants will have the chance to avoid answering any questions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 26 how will you record a participant's decision to take part in the research? the decision will be recorded through a blank spot to be ticked after asking for opt-in consent. for written consent, it will be signed indicating that they have understood the information provided and they agree to participate. human participants method which data collection methods will be used in the research?: interview anonymous questionnaire if your research involves any of the methods (including other) listed above, upload supporting materials. how have your characteristics, or those of the participants influenced the design of the study or how the research is experienced by participants? the characteristics of the participants reported in the national agrarian census 2012 and my experience in the coffee sector influenced the research design. will the project involve transcripts? yes select one option below: by hand if yes provide details. not applicable. i will do the transcripts myself. provide an explanation if you are not offering the participant the opportunity to review their transcripts. i will send the expert interview transcripts from spanish to english to each of their emails. however, offering transcripts to the farmers does not make sense because they will not be able to understand it. will you be capturing photographs or video footage (digital assets) of individuals taken for university business? no is this research using visual/vocal methods where respondents may be identified? no will it be necessary for participants to take part in the study without their knowledge and consent at the time? no will deception or incomplete disclosure be used? no will the participants be debriefed? no will substances be administered to the participants? no will involvement in the project result in, or the risk of, discomfort, physical harm, psychological harm or intrusive procedures? no will the project involve prolonged or repetitive testing? no will the project involve potentially sensitive topics? no will the project involve elite interviews? yes if yes, provide details. this research includes interviews with three experts from academia, government and the private sector, who will be contacted and informed by email before the interview. will the project involve any incitement to, encouragement of, or participation, in an illegal act (by participant or researcher)? no asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 27 will the research involve an investigation of people engaged in or supporting activities that compromise computer security or other activities that may normally be considered harmful or unlawful? no does the research involve members of the public in participatory research where they are actively involved in undertaking research tasks? no does the research offer advice or guidance to people? no is the research intended to benefit the participants, third parties or the local community? yes provide an explanation. indirectly, the results will likely guide further research or interventions in the districts involved. what procedures are in place for monitoring the research with respect to ethical compliance? i will travel to the area of research for make sure to meet all the ethical issues and ensure data collection does the study involve the use of a clinical or non-clinical scale, questionnaire or inventory which has specific copyright permissions, reproduction or distribution restrictions or training requirements? no health and safety participants is there a possibility that the health and safety of any of the participants in this project including a support person (e.g. a care giver, school teaching assistant) may be in question? no health and safety researcher(s) is there a possibility that the health and safety of any of the researcher(s) and that of any other people (as distinct from any participants) impacted by this project including research assistants/translators may be in question? yes if yes, how have you addressed the health and safety concerns? describe any safeguards included and relevant protocols. there is a very low risk to work alone in these places and will be traveling with a sibling, we both have health insurance, and there is medical coverage in those places where i will be surveying and interviewing. regarding home interviews, given that i will first ask for consent i do not see any risk because the information i will be asking for is not sensitive. risk assessment are there hazards associated with undertaking this project where a formal risk assessment will be required? no notes i have filled out my risk assessment grid and submitted it with my dissertation proposal. research outside the uk state the countries where research will be undertaken. peru has formal permission/a research permit been sought to conduct this research in the host overseas country? no if yes, describe the action you have taken and upload documentary evidence below. if no, explain why this is not necessary/appropriate. for very short studies, it is not always appropriate to apply for formal clearance upload the approval correspondence where relevant. does the research comply with the relevant legal requirements of the host overseas country? yes provide details. in peru, for applying a survey, the legal requirement is to ask for informed consent, which this research is meeting. if relevant, have you taken out travel and health insurance for the full period of the research? yes, europ assistance international student plan however i will apply for uea insurance. /80119/peru asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 28 if relevant, have you reviewed the foreign, commonwealth and development office (fcdo) guidance and applied for a visa? i reviewed the fcdo, and as i am peruvian, i will enter peru with my passport. work with external partners and collaborators provide details of the external organisation(s)/institution(s) involved with this project. not applicable has agreement to conduct research in, at or through another organisation/institution been obtained? not applicable upload the correspondence where relevant. does any external co-applicant need to seek ethics approval in connection with this project? no data management will the project involve any personal data (including pseudonymised data) not in the public domain? no will any personal data be processed by another organisation(s)? no will the project involve access to records of sensitive/confidential information? no will the project involve access to confidential business data? no will the project involve secure data that requires permission from the appropriate authorities before use? no will you be using publicly available data from the internet for your study? yes if yes, provide details about the publicly available data from the internet you will be using for your study. i will use public data from the peruvian government, statistics and census accessible to the public domain. will the research data in this study be deposited in a repository to allow it to be made available for scholarly and educational purposes? yes provide details. university of east anglia repository who will have access to the data during and after the project? during and after the project: supervisor where/how do you intend to store the data during and after the project? i will store the data on uea repository how will you ensure the secure storage of the data during and after the project? i will store on my onedrive account how long will research data be stored after the study has ended? ten years how long will research data be accessible after the study has ended? ten years how are you intending to destroy the project data when it is no longer required? yes it will be programmed to be completeley deleted after ten years asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 11-29 29 generate and upload files participant information text and consent form upload the participant information sheet and consent form. enter participant group number and name. experts enter participant group number and name. small cofee farmers effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 277 application of trichoderma and aspergillus as biofertilizers in eco-friendly ratoon rice cultivation sutarman1 andriani eko prihatiningrum2 agus miftahurrohmat3 1,2,3departement of agrotechnology, faculty of science and technology, universitas muhammadiyah sidoarjo, indonesia.  sutarman@umsida.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 5 september 2023 revised: 12 october 2023 accepted: 23 november 2023 published: 14 december 2023 keywords aspergillus biofertilizer ratoon rice trichoderma. the study’s goal is to f ind the best native fungus from rice husk waste so that a solid biofertilizer can be made with high-husk flour as a carrier material and an inert agent. this study was conducted on agricultural land in seloliman village, trawas district, and mojokerto regency. biofertilization and biological agent formulation activities carried out at muhammadiyah university of sidoarjo’s microbiology laboratory aided the research. the experiment was conducted using a factorial randomized block design. the first factor consisted of three treatments: no fungi, trichoderma sp., and aspergillus sp. the second factor consists of soil treatment and apical treatment. the six treatment combinations were repeated four times (24 samples). the variables measured comprised plant height, number of panicles, weight of grain per plant, weight of 100 grams of grain, and the efficacy of biological agents in improving plant growth and productivity. all data underwent analysis of variety and then an hsd test at the 5% significance level to identify disparit ies among treatments. the study reveals that isolates tc-013 and as-022 were identified as trichoderma esperellum and aspergillus flavus or a. oryzae, respectively. the application of trichoderma and aspergillus caused a decrease in the intensity of d isease symptoms, reaching 64.7% and 37.3%, an increase in plant height and number of panicles, and an increase in the weight of 100 grains of 59.89 and 49.35%, respectively, as compared to the control treatment where the fungus was not applied. contribution/originality: this research demonstrates the potential of a biologically active fungus, which has relatively never been used as a biofertiliser, to increase plant growth and production while maintaining the health of ratoon rice plants, particularly in areas where leaf necrosis pathogens are endemic. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i4.4934 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: sutarman, prihatiningrum, a. e., & miftahurrohmat, a. (2023). application of trichoderma and aspergillus as biofertilizers in eco-friendly ratoon rice cultivation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4), 277–287. 10.55493/5005.v13i4.4934 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1.introduction the need for food for rice increases from year to year in line with the increasing population, while agricultural intensification is one approach to achieving food security that must be achieved and always maintained (urfels et al., 2023). taking into consideration the efficient use of production time and resources, ratooning rice with one land processing and two planting periods is an alternative form of intensification. ratoon rice cultivation has been developed in several countries and is considered to have higher resource use efficiency and less environmental impact compared to other rice growing systems (firouzi, nikkhah, & aminpanah, 2018; liu et al., 2019). ratoon rice also asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 4 (2023): 277-287. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3792-2159 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4476-948x https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4854-7732 mailto:sutarman@umsida.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 277-287 278 shortens crop production time (torres, natividad, quintana, & henry, 2020). apart from having advantages, this cultivation method also has disadvantages, including that the product ivity of the ratoon phase planting is lower than the first phase (yu et al., 2021). however, in several tests, ratoon rice cultivation has the potential to contribute to the impact of global warming (shen, zhang, & zhang, 2021). this is due to the fact that during its cultivation, it consistently depends on nonsustainable hydrocarbon-based production resources, particularly in the utilization of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. on the other hand, using production resources wisely, ratoon rice has the potential to overcome the impact of global warming (yuan, cassman, huang, peng, & grassini, 2019) and can significantly reduce methane gas emissions and the carbon footprint of rice fields (lin et al., 2022). so far, various studies on rice ratoons that have been carried out relate to efforts to improve land use optimization techniques, reduce the potential impact of global warming, and develop strategies for dealing with pest disturbances and increasing soil fertility (ding et al., 2022; zheng et al., 2022). as is the case in rice cultivation practices in general, in rice rations, the choice of environmentally specific varieties is a necessity (xu et al., 2022), which of course requires materials to support soil fertility and plant physiology. thus, the ratoon rice system has so far relied on the support of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, bearing in mind that certain diseases and pests are endemic in some areas (ye et al., 2017; zaidi, mukhtar, & mansoor, 2018). in line with the 2015 paris agreement commitment (zhou et al., 2021), there is a demand for each country to reduce the use of fossil materials, including reducing and replacing the use of petroleum derivatives such as pesticides and fertilizers. for this reason, alternative fertilizers and pesticides are needed in order to increase plant resista nce and protection from biot ic and abiotic stresses while being environmentally friendly. the use of biological agents that have the ability to biofertilize and act as biocontrol agents is a prospect for the search for wise alternatives to plant production resources. trichoderma and aspergillus are types of fungi that, when applied to plants, have the capacity to substitute for fertilizers and pesticides. trichoderma produces enzymatic extracellular compounds that are capable of degrading soil organic matter, which produces nutrients for plants, as well as compounds that act as regulators of plant growth (amanullah & khan, 2023; mezadri et al., 2022; sutarman, setiorini, li'a ini, & rahmat, 2022). with the chitinolytic enzymes it produces and the ability to compete in its niche, this fungus can inhibit and damage pathogenic fungal cells so that it can provide plant protection (matas-baca et al., 2022; tjahjanti, prihatiningrum, & miftahurrohmat, 2022). meanwhile, several species and strains of aspergillus have many benefits in agriculture because these fungi are able to degrade soil organic matter (hsieh, kurzai, & brock, 2017; lopes et al., 2021), produce organic acids that can chelate metals from oxides (klaic et al., 2018), increase the amount of dissolved phosphate in the soil (klaic, plotegher, ribeiro, zangirolami, & farinas, 2017), and increase the biological oxidation of elemental sulfur (majaron et al., 2020). thus, these two types of fungi have the potential to act as biofertilizer biological agents that have the potential to increase plant growth and health. so far, not much has been done on the utilization of these two biological agent fungi to hel p normal paddy rice plants, while ratoon rice research has only relied on the plant's ecophysiological response. this research integrates the function of nutritional support for rice plants through ratoon shoots and crowns and provides protection against various potential disturbances of indigenous d iseases in lowland rice crops such as blast (pyricularia oryzae), striped spot (cercospora spp.), spot (helmintosporium), and stem base rot (rhizoctonia sp. and fusarium sp.). this research aims to determine the ability of the indigenous fungi trichoderma sp. and aspergillus sp. applied to shoots and shoots of rice cultivation during the rice ratoon period to provide support for the productivity and health protection of lowland rice. 2. method 2.1. identification of biological agents this experiment used trichoderma tc-013 and aspergillus as-22, two fungal isolates found by screening a group of indigenous isolates from lowland rice cultivation in biting hamlet, seloliman village, trawas district, mojokerto regency. these are now in the collection of the microbiology and biotechnology laboratory, universitas muhammadiyah sidoarjo. the two isolates were propagated in pda-chloramphenicol media, incubated for 10 days, and observed macroscopically for the shape of the colonies. furthermore, they were sampled from the culture dish and processed onto the surface of a glass object to observe the shape and dimensions of the hyphae and spores and identify them. the mycelium from each isolate in a petri dish was taken as much as 50 mg and put in 200 μl dh2o in a bashingbead™ tube, then deoxyribonucleic acid (dna) isolation was carried out according to the standard procedure of quick-dna fungal/bacterial miniprep kit™ catalog number d6005. then the samples were amplified using forward primer its 1 5'-tcc gta ggt gaa cct gcg g-'3 and reverse primer its 4 5' tcc tcc gct tat tga tat gc-3'. the cycle used was predenaturation at 95oc for 5 minutes, followed by denaturation at 95oc, annealing at 60oc and elongation at 72oc for 1 minute each. final elongation (post-elongation) 72 oc, for 5 minutes. the cycle used is 40 cycles. sequencing of the polymerase chain reaction (pcr) dna fragments was carried out using the sanger sequencing method, with the pcr product sent to a commercial dna sequencing service (1st base; singapore) using an abi 3730xl sequencer machine. then the nucleotide arrangement obtained was compared to the gene bank using the basic local al ignment search tool (blast) program available at the national center for biotechnology information (ncbi) (ncbi, 2022). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 277-287 279 homologous sequences obtained from the ncbi gene bank were reconstructed with mega 7 software (kumar, stecher, li, knyaz, & tamura, 2018) using the neighbor-joining method to produce a phylogenetic tree. 2.2. biofertilizer formulation colonies that have grown fill the petri dish for about 7-10 days, ready to be harvested and made as a suspension that was previously crushed using a blender. suspensions containing isolates of biological agent fungi, each in the amount of one petri dish of the culture mixed with 250 ml of distilled water, were poured and mixed with 2,500 g of husk flour (40 mesh size) as a carrier agent until evenly distributed. after drying for 12 -24 hours, a biofertilizer formula is formed. prior to application, it is important to determine the active spore concentration of the fungus by the implementation of the serial dilution technique. the active population of spores is determined to be 106colony forming unit (cfu).gr-1, if the calculation results exceed this amount, dilution will be carried out with the addition of sterile husk flour to reach an average population of 106 cfu.gr-1. 2.3. field efficacy test the rice fields that have been harvested are irrigated for approximately 3 days, and then the rice stalks remaining from harvesting are cut with the aim of growing new rice shoots. the cutting size is about 3-5 cm. biofertilizer formula is given as a soil treatment, which is considered fertilization, carried out a week after harvesting the first stage of rice plants until the ratoon plants are irrigated, and as an apical treatment after the plants have been watered until the panicles begin to f ill. the treatments in this experiment were as follows: (i) without biofertilizer application but using conventional chemical fertilizers, (ii) trichoderma biofertilizer application, and (iii) aspergillus biofertilizer application. this experiment was repeated seven times. each experimental unit is a plot measuring 2x5 m2. the determination of plot boundaries for each experimental unit is carried out after harvest. as a soil treatment, each biofertilizer is given to the soil around the plant roots at a dose of 200 grams (husk flour formula containing 10 6 cfu.g-1 active spores of biological agents) per plant. apical treatment is applied to the canopy using 200 g of biofertilizer (a husk powder formula containing 106 cfu.g-1 active spores of biological agents) dissolved in 2,000 ml of neutral water as a suspension which will be sprayed eight times during the growth and filling of the rice grains at intervals of one week. soil treatment is given before planting or a week after harvest. next, the plant height, number of panicles per plant, harvest weight per plant, and weight of 100 grains were observed. since spots caused by cercosspora oryzae and helmintosporium oryzae are common on the land that was used, itt was tested how applying biofertilizer might affect the plants’ ability to fight these pathogens. assessment of plant health is carried out at the beginning of the generative phase, or between 42 and 70 days after planting (dap). the criteria used to determine the intensity of attack symptoms are as shown in table 1. table 1. criteria for symptoms of endemic pathogens in rice plants. score criteria for attack symptom 0 no damage occurred 1 as many as 1-25% of the leaves have striped and spotted spots on the leaves 2 as many as 25-50% of the leaves have striped and dotted spots on the leaves or 25% have wide spots covering each leaf 3 as many as 50-75% of the leaves have striped and dotted spots on the leaves or 50% of the spots expand to cover each leaf or 25% of the leaves die 4 more than 75% of the leaves have striped and dotted spots on the leaves or 75% of the spots have widened to cover each leaf or 50% of the leaves have died 2.4. data analysis field experiment data were analyzed using analysis of variance (anova) at the 5% level, followed by the honestly significant diffirence (hsd) test at the 5% level to determine differences between treatments. 3. results and discussion 3.1. identification results the results of macroscop ic observations of the shape and color of the colonies of the two b iological agents, fungi, as well as microscopic observations showing woven hyphae and spores, are shown in figure 1. the green color on the colony of isolate tc-013 is typical of trichoderma, with branched hyphae and conidiospores, each with a diameter of 2.56±0.39 µm and 2.68±0.45 µm. meanwhile , the as-022 colony appeared brown-black with branched hyphae measuring 4.72±0.63 µm and an average spore diameter of 2.74±0.15 µm. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 277-287 280 figure 1.morphology of trichoderma sp. tc-013 (top) and aspergillus sp. as-022 (bottom) is used as a biological agent. the nuleotide sequencing results of the two fungal isolates, each of which totaled 579 nucleosides for tc-013 and 551 nucleosides for as-022, are presented in figure 2. figure 2. nucleoside sequence of dna sequences of tc-013 (top) and as-022 isolates (bottom). in the process of matching nucleotide arrangements to dna sequences, according to brock, döring, and bidartondo (2009), a species is said to be the same if the its homology of the organism's rdna sequence has a similarity of 97% (sutarman, 2022). thus, when matching with collections contained in blast, similarities below 97% are ignored, and priority is given to those with 100% similarity. isolate tc-013 isolate as-022 isolate tc-013 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 277-287 281 the blast search results from 2022 show that the tc-013 sequences is 100% identical to the sequence from trichoderma asperellum (sequence id: mh56933331.1) (ncbi, 2022). meanwhile, isolate as-022 is similar to aspergilluysoryzae (sequence id: mh56933331.1), and asspergillus flavus (sequence id: kx067855.1) with 100% similarity at 557 nucleotide sequence length. reconstruction results using mega software (kumar et al., 2018) with neighbor-joining method obtained a phylogenetic tree as shown in figure 3. figure 3. filogegentik isolate tc-013 dan as-022. 3.2. field test results 3.2.1. plant growth the response of ratoon rice terms of grain weight and 100 grain weight per plant showed that biofertilizer made the average higher than when no biofertilizer was used figures 4 and 5. table 2 shows the idex of necrotic disease symptoms on leaves and how much the symptoms got better when b iofertilizer was used compared to when biofertilizer wasn’t used. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 277-287 282 figure 4. the average effect of biofertilizer application on plant height 14-56 hsp. note: different letters in the c olumn indica ting the same observation time ind icate differences in the effect of biofertilizer application on the 5% hsd test. figure 5. the average effect of biofertilizer application on the number of panicles per plant was 42 and 63 dap. note: different letters in the column indicat ing the same observation time ind icate differences in the effect of biofertilizer application on the hsd test at 5% level. table 2. effect of biofertilizer application on the intensity of leaf necrotic spot disease symptoms of ratoon rice variety ir 64 and its reduction compared to no biofertilizer at 42 and 70 dap. treatments 42 dap 70 dap intensity of disease symptoms (%) reduction in the intensity of disease symptoms (%) intensity of disease symptoms (%) decreased intensity of disease symptoms (%) no biofrtilizer 22.77±0.63 35.27 trichoderma 8.04±0.77 64.7 14.29 59.5 aspergillus 14.29±1.17 37.3 23.66 32.9 3.2.2. plant production and biological age performance the response of ratoon rice in terms of grain weight and 100 grain weight per plant showed that the application of biofertilizer made the average higher than when no biofertilizer was used (figures 6 and 7). a a without biofertilizer trichoderma aspergillus a aspergillus trichoderma without biofertilizer asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 277-287 283 figure 6. the average effect of biofertilizer application on grain weight per plant. note: different letters in the column indicate d ifferences in the effect of biofertilizer application on the hsd test at 5% level . figure 7. the average effect of biofertilizer application on the weight of 100 grains of grain per plant. note: different letters in the column indicate d ifferences in the effect of biofertilizer application on the hsd test at 5% level. application of biofertilizer with trichoderma and aspergillus fungi can increase plant height, number of panicles, grain weight per plant, and weight of 100 ratoon rice plants compared to treatment s not applied (control) (table 3). table 3. performance of biofertilizer biological agents on increasing growth response and production of rice varieties ir 64 ratoon model. agenhayati biofertilizer plant response to performance of biofertilizer biological agents (%)* biofertilizer biological agent increase in average plant height 56 dap increase in average number of panicles increase in average grain weight per plant increase in average weight of 100 grains trichoderma 17.94 94.12 9.98 59.89 aspergillus 5.69 75.00 1.77 49.35 note: * increased growth response and plant production compared to control (without biofertilizer) . aspergillus trichoderma without biofertilizer aspergillus trichoderma without biofertilizer asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 277-287 284 3.3. discussion isolate tc-013 has similarities in colony appearance, hyphal branching morphology , and hyphal and spore diameter dimensions totrichoderma esperellum (sutarman, 2022; sutarman, jalaluddin, li’aini, & prihatiningrum, 2021). blast search results (ncbi, 2022) showed 100% similarity to t. asperellum (sequence id: mt102403.1). isolate tc-013 also has similarities with isolate rm-28, whose data is stored at ncbi with the additional number mk092975 and identified as t. asperellum (anam, reddy, & ahn, 2019), and isolate t1 (accession numbers genbank lc158827, ku497722, and ku497723) (baiyee, ito, & sunpapao, 2019), andisolate tc01 (genbank accession numbers mh752042 and mn813963) (shang, liu, & xu, 2020). the shape and dimensions of the conidispores and chlamydospores are also similar to those of the endophytes of t. asperellum vm 100 (ky412854) (leylaie & zafari, 2018) and t. asperellum isolate gdfs1009 (karuppiah, sun, li, vallikkannu, & chen, 2019) and isolates ta1 and ta2 (hewedy et al., 2020). morphologically, isolate as-022 cannot be differentiated from several isolates found in indonesia and from various other countries. as-022 has sequences that are similar to many aspergillus variants, which were shown phylogenetically with primers its-1 and its-2 with identical levels of up to 100% as a. oryzae (ky655350.1) (devi & joshi, 2015) and as a. flavus (alshehri & palanisamy, 2020). for the final determination of these two naming alternatives, in-depth research is needed regarding their physiological performance and the metabolites they produce. when trichoderma and aspergillus biofertilizers were used, the plants grew taller, had more panicles, and produced more grain. the 100 ratoon rice plants also gained weight (table 1). this shows that both tc-013 and as022 isolates have demonstrated their ability as biological agents that act as biofertilizers. various evidence has been shown by the ability of trichoderma sp. as a biofertilizer, which is able to increase biological activity around the rhizosphere of plants before the soil surface under watery conditions. however, it appears that the role of trichoderma, which is applied through spraying the plant canopy, makes a signif icant contribution to helping plant growth and improv ing the soil structure around plant roots by decomposing organic substances contained in the soil. many organic substances are available in the rhizosphere. with the application of the fungus trichoderma sp., the organic material will be decomposed and converted into ions that can be absorbed and utilized by plants. in addition, this fungus acts as a mycoparasite against pathogenic fungi and also produces metabolites that act as growth hormones for plants (vinale et al., 2014) so that it can induce disease resistance (he et al., 2019). trichoderma degrades organic matter to produce nutrients and increases plant resistance to abiotic environmental stress (sachdev, singh, & singh, 2018). aspergillus sp. has the ability to fix nitrogen in the soil, thus helping the plantsmeet their nitrogen needs. such a function benefits the growth of the plants (dutta & das, 2017). aspergillus sp. plays a signif icant role in decomposition, bioremediation, and biocontrol, being used to synthesize organic acids, enzymes, and secondary metabolites (kagot, okoth, de boevre, & de saeger, 2019). numerous studies provide evidence for the effectiveness, quantity, and efficiency of aspergillus' extracellular hydrolytic enzymes (brown et al., 2016). several aspergillus species' genomes exhibit the genetic expression of cellulase and hemicellulase enzymes' ability to operate proficiently (cong et al., 2017; de gouvêa et al., 2018) indicating the organisms' potential as bio-fertilizer agents. this fungus also produces cellulase and hemicellulase (midorikawa et al., 2018). aspergillus can survive in poor temperature and humidity conditions, has high adaptability to substrate complexity, produces various useful secondary metabolites, and produces various types of enzymes that degrade various polysaccharides and proteins (flores-gallegos, veanahernandez, michel-michel, lara-victoriano, & rodríguez-herrera, 2016) and other lignocellulose degrading enzymes (monclaro et al., 2020), as well as describe the complex structure of lignocellulosic biomass by releasing monomer sugars (dimarogona, 2016) as an energy source. therefore, this fungus shows promise for breaking down organic matter and may have practical applications in the development of biological fertilisers. aspergillus is generally capable of producing volatile organic compounds (vocs), including various acid molecules, alcohols, aldehydes, aromatics, ketones, terpenes, thiols, and their derivatives (wang et al., 2021). even from the bioconversion process of organic materials, compounds can be produced that are capable of promoting plant growth and acting as a signal of spore germination so as to guarantee positive interactions in their ecology (lemfack, nickel, dunkel, preissner, & piechulla, 2014). the characteristics of the two fungal isolates showed their ability to support plant growth (table 2), especially through the application of plant canopy spraying. the index of attack symptoms was much lower (table 1) in the application of biological agents. meanwhile, the ability to reduce the intensity of attack symptoms in the trichoderma application was much greater than the aspergillus application. this is possible because there is a lot of research evidence showing the strength of this fungus as a b iocontrol agent. the activity of volatile metabolites produced by t. eseprellum is able to inhibit f. oxysporum (tao et al., 2020) in addition to supporting plant growth (alaskar, saber, ghoneem, hafez, & ibrahim, 2021) considering that t. esperellum is also capable of producing auxin (wang et al., 2020). in this study, the application of these two biological agents, fungal isolates, increased the grain weight and weight of 100 grain grains, respectively, 75-94.12 and 49.35-58.89% (table 2). this provides a projection to increase production potential equivalent to planting rice twice. in general, ratoon rice can produce 50% of the f irst harvest (oda, nguyen, & huynh, 2019). in addition, ratoon rice is a wise choice in order to help reduce pressure on the environment due to conventional rice cultivation while maintaining food security (jiang et al., 2021; yang et al., 2022). 4. conclusion the biological agent fungus isolates tc-013 and as-022 were each identified based on molecular markers as trichoderma esperellum and aspergillus flavu,s or a.oryzae. application of trichoderma and aspergillus formulated as asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 277-287 285 biofetilizers increased plant height by 17.94 and 5.69%, respectively, 56 days after planting (dap), increased the number of panicles by 94.12 and 75.00%, respectively, and reduced the intensity of attack symptoms by 64.7% and 37.3% at 42 dap and 59.5% and 32.9% at 70 dap. these two biological agents were able to increase the weight of first-plant grain by 9.98 and 1.77%, respectively, and increase the weight of 100 grains by 59.89 and 49.35%, respectively. biofertilizer with the active ingredients trichoderma isolate tc-013 and aspergillus as-022 has great potential to be applied to wetland plants as ratoon rice to increase growth and provide protection for plant health. funding: this research is supported by directorate general of higher education, research and technology of the ministry of education, culture, research and technology of the republic of indonesia thourg higher education basic 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(2021). research on low-carbon energy transformation of china necessary to achieve the paris agreement goals: a global perspective. energy economics, 95, 105137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105137 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.20007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2023.103618 https://doi.org/10.2174/1874437001408010127 https://doi.org/10.1002/fsn3.2229 https://doi.org/10.3390/plants9020272 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152550 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2022.107815 https://doi.org/10.1111/pce.12897 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149246 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2019.02.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2018.04.005 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.889542 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105137 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 663 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. green fields, safe meals: applying the fuzzy delphi method to align experts agreement on sustainable agriculture practices in malaysia mohd shahir omara,b muhammad fakhrul yusufa,c jack kie chenga syed radzi rahamaddullaa shahryar sorooshiand,e afaculty of industrial management, universiti malaysia pahang al-sultan abdullah, lebuh persiaran tun khalil yaakob, 26300 gambang, pahang darul makmur, malaysia. bfederal agricultural marketing authority (fama), bangunan fama point, lot 17304, jalan persiaran 1, bandar baru selayang, 68100 batu caves, selangor darul ehsan, malaysia. cnexus for strategic innovation in sustainable and digital transformation (xsist), faculty of industrial management, universiti malaysia pahang al-sultan abdullah, lebuh persiaran tun khalil yaakob, 26300 gambang, pahang darul makmur, malaysia. ddepartment of business administration, university of gothenburg, gothenburg, sweden. efaculty of engineering and sustainable development, university of gävle, gävle, sweden.  shahryar.sorooshian@gu.se (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 15 august 2025 revised: 7 october 2025 accepted: 12 november 2025 published: 24 november 2025 keywords agricultural policy farmer adoption food safety certification fuzzy delphi method good agricultural practice sustainable agriculture. rising global food demand and environmental concerns have intensified the need for sustainable agricultural practices that ensure both food safety and long-term productivity. food safety certification serves as a vital mechanism for promoting sustainable farming by enhancing product quality, market competitiveness, and compliance with international standards. this study examines the determinants influencing malaysian farmers’ adoption of food safety certification. a systematic literature review identified 35 potential elements, which were subsequently evaluated through expert consensus using the fuzzy delphi method involving 30 agricultural professionals. the analysis validated 22 critical elements encompassing technological, organizational, environmental, and economic dimensions that significantly shape farmers’ adoption decisions. the findings highlight that awareness, perceived market benefits, institutional support, and certification cost are among the most influential drivers and barriers. these results offer strategic insights for policymakers, certification authorities, and agribusiness practitioners in designing targeted interventions to strengthen farmers’ participation in certification programs. the study contributes to a deeper understanding of adoption behavior in malaysia’s agricultural sector and provides a foundation for enhancing certification uptake in similar emerging economies, ultimately supporting regional food security and sustainable agri-food trade. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the existing literature by being one of the very few studies investigating food safety certification adoption among malaysian farmers. the paper’s primary contribution is applying the fuzzy delphi method to identify 22 critical adoption elements, offering the first logical framework to guide targeted policy and industry interventions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 663-675 mailto:shahryar.sorooshian@gu.se https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1947-5378 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8273-3843 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1662-0517 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6555-9919 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5336-827x https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5748 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 663-675 664 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5748 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: omar, m. s., yusuf, m. f., cheng, j. k., rahamaddulla, s. r., & sorooshian, s. (2025). green fields, safe meals: applying the fuzzy delphi method to align experts agreement on sustainable agriculture practices in malaysia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 663–675. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5748 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the acceptance of food safety certification among food producers has become a critical issue shaped by consumer concerns and the globalization of food production. numerous standards have been introduced to ensure food quality and safety, yet these create both opportunities and challenges, particularly for small-scale producers in developing countries such as malaysia. meeting the increasing number of food safety and quality regulations often requires substantial investment, making it difficult for farmers to access lucrative domestic and international markets (trienekens & zuurbier, 2008). rising certification costs further strain producers' revenues, leading to slow adoption rates despite stronger market-driven and regulatory enforcement.(canales, silva, & anderson, 2022). globally, population growth continues to intensify pressure on food systems. the united nations projects that the global population will reach 9.8 billion by 2050, requiring a significant increase in food production (van dijk, morley, rau, & saghai, 2021). this growth underscores the urgency of adopting sustainable agricultural practices that can meet demand while protecting natural resources (food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), 2020). however, under production pressure, many farmers turn to intensive practices, including excessive pesticide and fertilizer use, which can harm their health, degrade soil quality, and lead to market rejection of produce due to excessive residues, especially in export markets (yadav, dutta, & kumar, 2021). malaysia faces these challenges acutely. farmers are under pressure to produce competitively for both domestic consumption and export markets, yet adoption of sustainable practices remains low (serebrennikov, thorne, kallas, & mccarthy, 2020). sustainable agriculture offers long-term benefits for soil health, farmer well-being, and land productivity (tahat, alananbeh, othman, & leskovar, 2020). food safety certification programs, including good agricultural practice (gap), were introduced to help farmers produce safe food, support sustainable farming systems, and improve market access (iranloye & okonkwo, 2023). understanding the key factors influencing malaysian farmers’ adoption of these certifications is therefore essential to enhance compliance, protect public health, and strengthen food security (manshor & saad, 2023). 2. literature review figure 1 shows the research direction framework for this study. the research direction framework will help the researcher to give a comprehensive review of the most recent relevant research on the research subject. this facilitates researchers in understanding the current level of knowledge, identifying deficiencies, and building upon existing studies. the objective of this framework is to provide the reader with an overview of this study’s direction. the focus of this study is food safety certification adoption among farmers in malaysia. figure 1. research direction framework. 2.1. quality food demand the concepts of quality food demand and sustainable agriculture are closely intertwined, as both represent consumers’ desire for food that is nutritious, safe, and produced using environmentally and socially responsible practices (jararweh, fatima, jarrah, & alzu’bi, 2023; wijerathna-yapa & pathirana, 2022). meeting this demand requires adherence to sustainable agricultural methods across the supply chain, from production to distribution (cobelli, chiarini, & giaretta, 2021). several studies have identified limited consumer awareness as a key barrier to high-quality agricultural production, particularly in developing economies. for instance, akhtar et al. (2020) reported that consumers in vietnam often choose lower-quality food due to income constraints, a trend also observed in indonesia (hussin, manshor, abdullah, fazial, & muhamad don, 2024) and other southeast asian countries (nguyen, doan, nguyen, & nguyen, 2021). low willingness to pay for certified products weakens incentives for farmers to adopt safer and more sustainable production methods (huang, wang, yang, & shiau, 2020). higher production costs are another major challenge, as sustainable practices often involve additional labor, improved inputs, and compliance costs (calabrese, costa, ghiron, tiburzi, & pedersen, 2021). studies in china and india have shown that conventional farming can yield higher short-term profits because of unrestricted pesticide and fertilizer use (guo, bai, & gong, 2019; yaqoob et al., 2023). regulatory requirements may also discourage smallholders from adopting improved methods if they perceive compliance as financially burdensome (fernando, ng, & walters, 2015; majone, 2019). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 663-675 665 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. overall, consumer awareness plays a pivotal role in driving demand for quality food and motivating farmers to adopt certification schemes (adams, agbenorhevi, alemawor, lutterodt, & sampson, 2018; purwanto, haque, sunarsi, & asbari, 2021). strengthening market incentives, combined with supportive policy interventions, is crucial to align farmers' behavior with sustainable production goals. 2.2. sustainable agriculture the goal of sustainable agriculture is to produce food in a way that maintains natural resources, safeguards the environment, encourages biodiversity, and assures the system’s long-term viability (tilman, cassman, matson, naylor, & polasky, 2002). achieving food production, ecosystem services, and increased yields while maintaining environmental integrity and public health is all part of sustainable agriculture (rigby & cáceres, 2001). resource conservation, environmental non-degradation, technical appropriateness, economic viability, and social acceptance are all characteristics of sustainable agriculture (o'connell, 1992). the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, economics, and society are all integrated into sustainable agriculture to create innovative, environmentally friendly farming methods that are safe (lichtfouse et al., 2009). a significant number of academics emphasize how important sustainable farming techniques are. sustainable agriculture promotes practices that gradually raise or maintain agricultural yields to meet the nutrient needs of an expanding global population, as well as guaranteeing food security (safta, 2022). sustainable agriculture prioritizes the health of ecosystems, bolstering the resilience of natural systems and promoting vital ecological processes like pollination and nutrient cycling (setsoafia, ma, & renwick, 2022). it improves regional food systems and diversifies revenue streams to maintain livelihoods and boost rural economies (de bruin, dengerink, & van vliet, 2021). appropriate labour standards, smallholder farmer empowerment, and the availability of resources for disadvantaged communities are all prioritized in sustainable agriculture (abraham & pingali, 2020). triste, debruyne, vandenabeele, marchand, and lauwers (2018) added that sustainable agriculture fosters community involvement and cooperation, which helps farmers exchange knowledge and develop their skills. applying this method might involve initial investments and modifications to traditional farming practices. however, it has the potential to increase crop yields consistently and over a longer period, thereby improving the longterm economic sustainability of agricultural operations (yang et al., 2022). farming operations that implement sustainable farming methods are typically more flexible in response to shifts in market dynamics and commodity pricing. to encourage and support the implementation of sustainable agriculture practices, several governments and agricultural organizations offer various incentives and subsidies (gorjian et al., 2021). these incentives collectively reduce the financial barriers to adopting sustainable farming methods. they encompass financial assistance, technical assistance, and access to various sustainable agriculture activities. overall, it is clear that numerous previous researchers highlight the significance of sustainable agriculture in guaranteeing the prolonged usage of land and its beneficial, long-lasting effects on the environment and human welfare. however, there continue to be conflicts among farmers who serve as operators in the production of high-quality food. participation in food safety certification programs will be promoted among farmers to achieve agricultural sustainability and ensure the production of safe food. 2.3. food safety certification program after completing a food safety course or program, individuals or food producers are awarded a food safety certificate as evidence of their capacity to handle, prepare, and serve food safely and hygienically (ab talib, 2017; phillip & anita, 2010). employers in the food industry or regulatory authorities typically require this certificate to ensure adherence to food safety regulations and laws (fung, wang, & menon, 2018). in addition to assuring customers that the food supply chain is safeguarded, this reduces the danger of foodborne illnesses. legal requirements for food safety certificates exist in most provinces and regions. they verify the possession of the fundamental knowledge and abilities necessary for safely handling food by an individual (alzeer, rieder, & abou hadeed, 2018; liu, ruiz-menjivar, zhang, zhang, & swisher, 2019; mohamad, shaari, & ghazali, 2021). studies have indicated that the food safety certificate elevates consumers’ trust in the security of high-end products sold on internet marketplaces (mohd nawi & mohd nasir, 2014). in the earlier studies, the primary objective of globalgap was to provide implementation recommendations for the promotion of good agricultural practices to all nations (gichuki, han, & njagi, 2020; pandit, nain, singh, kumar, & chahal, 2017). the policies of various nations will consider whether farmers should participate. despite numerous studies demonstrating the opposite, farmers claim that the planned measures do not take into account their current situation (monammad, yu, neal, gibson, & sujata, 2020; villarino, buenaseda tejada, & patterson, 2022). the primary sources of reference for these food safety certificates in agriculture are often produced by government agencies, industries, and international organizations through guidelines, rules, and laws (ion, popa, sterie, & tarhini, 2022). mentioned by tey et al. (2015), the fao is a source for good agricultural practice accreditation. the fao and the world health organization (who) jointly launched the codex alimentarius commission, whose guidelines may be followed for haccp certification (world health organization, 2018). standards established by government organic programs or independent certifying organizations recognized by the appropriate authorities may be followed for organic certification (vogl, kilcher, & schmidt, 2005). these references act as standards for guaranteeing the integrity, safety, and quality of agricultural products through the food supply chain (kunc, mortenson, & vidgen, 2018). in thanh truc and thuc (2022) research, fruit growers can increase their revenue and profitability while reducing production costs by implementing vietgap. the most important advantages and motivators are access to new markets and legal compliance, while the biggest obstacle is the high cost of implementing food safety certification systems throughout the entire organization (grace, 2015; nowicki, 2016; talib, abdul hamid, & ai chin, 2015). eighty percent asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 663-675 666 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. of respondents felt that certification improved the production and distribution of safe food, and forty percent reported a decrease in food recalls because of certification (food safety magazines (fsm), 2021). studies in the past have demonstrated the importance of certification in food production, particularly highlighted by numerous scholars. in addition to ensuring the quality of the food produced, it will also contribute to environmental conservation by implementing enforced regulations. additionally, it will support the government's current efforts towards agricultural sustainability. considering the conflicting agricultural environment in malaysia, farmers are aware of the advantages of food certification and the government's efforts to produce high-quality and sustainable agriculture. however, the adoption rate of these practices remains poor. 2.4. malaysia agriculture situation the food security issue is also not new in malaysia. to guarantee that malaysians have a sufficient supply of food, a lot of work is being done by the ministry of agriculture and food security (mafs). the agricultural agrotechnology park, the permanent food park (tkpm), and strategic partnerships between ministries, departments, agencies, and private parties are a few of the initiatives taken to guarantee that the food supply is stable, sustainable, and ready for the market (ministry of agriculture and food security (mafs), 2023). malaysia is also aggressively pursuing sustainable agriculture to support the un sustainable development goals. however, malaysian farmers place less emphasis on sustainable agriculture; instead, they believe that the main priorities should be meeting market demand and producing a certain quantity of food (murad, mustapha, & siwar, 2008). this has been demonstrated by reports published in various local newspapers on the level of pesticide residue on malaysian agricultural produce. it was reported that the pesticide residue rate for vegetable commodities in cameron highlands, a famous high-altitude tourism area in malaysia, is still high, despite government declarations to the contrary that excessive pesticide use damages the environment, harms farmers and consumers, and stops vegetables from being exported to other nations (bernama, 2019). 800 notifications regarding pesticide residues in agricultural exports from singapore, japan, germany, and taiwan are sent to malaysia annually (suhaini, 2020). these notices pertain to the existence of pesticide residues exceeding the permissible limit. the nation’s reputation as a producer of the best agricultural products will be impacted by this media coverage, as well as farmers. the agriculture industry has been told to cease the production, distribution, sale, and use of carbofuran and chlorpyrifos pesticides by individuals and organizations (the star, 2022). consumer health will be impacted by the high concentration of pesticide residues (carrasco cabrera & medina pastor, 2022; negatu, dugassa, & mekonnen, 2021). mafs administers the food safety certification programme, which was initially implemented in malaysia in 2002 for agricultural produce (department of agriculture malaysia (doa), 2022). by introducing this certification, producers are not only guaranteed to produce safe food, but it also helps sustainable agriculture and affects food security. however, based on the e-ladang kontrak system and the list of farmers who obtain either malaysia good agriculture practice (mygap) or the malaysia organic (myorganic) food safety certification, only 1 out of 32 farmers has this certification (department of agriculture malaysia (doa), 2022; fama, 2023), suggesting that this attempt appears to have been unsuccessful. table 1. statistics of registered farmers in the e-ladang kontrak system and certified farmers in malaysia (end of december 2023). state registered farmers registered farmers adopt my gap registered farmers adopt my organic perlis 14,168 99 kedah 20,460 450 11 pulau pinang 13,222 209 3 perak 10,428 521 8 selangor 20,174 266 12 negeri sembilan 9,724 262 9 melaka 5,676 67 1 johor 11,352 664 22 pahang 14,102 563 26 terengganu 14,410 948 6 kelantan 11,616 696 5 sabah 20,240 244 15 sarawak 3,872 142 3 total 169,444 5,131 121 source: department of agriculture malaysia (doa) (2022) and (ministry of agriculture and food security (mafs), 2023). the data shown in table 1 makes it evident that there is a discrepancy in the proportion of certified vs registered farmers. farmers in malaysia are still not moving in that direction, despite earlier studies demonstrating several benefits, including increased market access (barbancho-maya & lópez-toro, 2022), high selling value (musa, 2019), higher quality production (tri ratnasari, gunawan, alif rusmita, & prasetyo, 2019), and good health and welfare for farm workers (pandit et al., 2017). comparable situations may be found with the myorganic certification, wherein a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 663-675 667 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. mere 0.06% of farmers participate, even though organic agricultural products are highly sought after by malaysians and people worldwide (cavite, mankeb, & suwanmaneepong, 2022; clements & bihn, 2019; cobelli et al., 2021). the primary objective of this research is to identify the key factors influencing malaysian farmers’ adoption of food safety certification. through analyzing these critical factors, this study aims to offer significant insights to relevant parties, empowering them to make well-informed decisions on where to focus their efforts and create plans that will encourage more malaysian farmers to accept food safety certification. this level of understanding is essential for spearheading programs targeted at improving food safety procedures and encouraging the widespread implementation of certification programs in malaysia’s agricultural industry. 3. methodology this study employed a structured research design to investigate the adoption of food safety certification among farmers in malaysia, ensuring methodological rigor and adherence to ethical standards. ethical approval was obtained from the ministry of agriculture and food security (reference no.: ump.27.04/600-3/2/1). all participants were fully informed about the study objectives and procedures, and written informed consent was obtained before data collection, in accordance with institutional ethical guidelines. 3.1. elements for adapting food safety certification among food producers to identify the factors that influence food safety certification adoption among food manufacturers, a literature search of past studies has been conducted. 348 articles were analyzed, and 35 elements were found as determinants or barriers to food safety certification adoption among food producers. this search used articles published in reputable journals from 2018 to 2023. the yearly criteria were set for six years to ensure the factors found in the past literature are relevant and up to date with the current issues faced by food manufacturers. findings from the literature search will be used to analyze using the fdm to obtain expert agreement on factors influencing food safety certification adoption among farmers in malaysia. the list of factors can be found in table 4. 3.2. fuzzy delphi method the fuzzy delphi method was introduced by kaufmann and gupta (1985). the fuzzy delphi method (fdm) is an enhanced revision of the delphi method (dm) that calculates the distance between the indicated levels of the expert panel via triangulation statistics (chen, wang, wang, & shen, 2018; ishikawa et al., 1993). the benefits of utilizing the fdm are 1) time and cost savings on the questionnaire; 2) reduction in the overall number of surveys; 3) improved recovery rate through the use of questionnaires; 4) the ability for experts to provide comprehensive and consistent opinions; and 5) consideration of ambiguity that is necessary throughout the study (chen, wu, & chen, 2022; oteng, zuo, & sharifi, 2022; padilla-rivera, do carmo, arcese, & merveille, 2021). figure 2 illustrates the steps taken in this study to get an expert agreement on elements of adapting food safety certification among farmers in malaysia. figure 2. fuzzy delphi method process. source: jamelaa bibi and siti ilyana (2018) and mohd ridhuan (2016). 3.2.1. expert selection the experts who responded to this questionnaire were selected using a convenience sampling method. a total of 30 experts were chosen for this study, which is considered an adequate sample size to achieve a reliable expert consensus. according to jamil, hussin, noh, sapar, and alias (2013), delphi-based techniques typically require between 10 and 30 experts to ensure a balance between diversity of opinions and manageability of responses. similarly, ciptono, setiyono, nurhidayati, and vikaliana (2019) emphasize that a panel size within this range is sufficient to produce credible and representative agreement on the subject matter. thirty experts with a background in agriculture who remain active in agricultural-related activities were selected. additionally, the chosen experts possess over five years of experience in agriculture. berliner (2004) and mohd ridhuan (2016). an individual with five years or more of experience in their field is considered an expert. data collection on human subjects was done according to universiti malaysia pahang al-sultan abdullah (2022), and all respondents gave written consent for the activity. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 663-675 668 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.2.2. expert answer questionnaire the questionnaire integrated all results from previous literature review about the elements that influence producers' decision to obtain food safety certification. the experts were presented with response options on a likert scale ranging from one to seven, representing their level of agreement. by comparison, the seven-scale exhibits a comparatively reduced fuzziness value of 3.3%, while the five-scale demonstrates a fuzziness value of 20% (chang, hsu, & chang, 2011). this study employs a scale value of 7 to reduce fuzziness. table 2 details the utilized scale number. table 2. likert scale table. scale level of agreement 1 strongly disagree 2 disagree 3 somewhat disagree 4 neither disagree nor agree 5 somewhat agree 6 agree 7 strongly agree source: jamelaa bibi and siti ilyana (2018). 3.2.3. data collection each of these questionnaires is distributed via google forms, and each expert responds to one independently. the researcher's presence during the questioning session ensures that the experts understand the questions and that they have no contact with one another, thereby preventing any potential bias in this study. 3.2.4. likert scale conversion to fuzzy scale after the data collection process, the likert scale number will be converted to a fuzzy scale number to assess the level of agreement among experts. table 3, show the likert scale conversion to fuzzy scale number. assume that the fuzzy rij number is the variable for each criterion for expert k for i = 1, ... .., m, j = 1, ... ..n, k = 1 ... .., k and rij = 1 / k (r1ij ± r2ij ± rkij). table 3. likert scale conversion to fuzzy scale number. likert scale number fuzzy scale number 1 0.0,0.0,0.1 2 0.0,0.1,0.3 3 0.1,0.3,0.5 4 0.3,0.5,0.7 5 0.5,0.7,0.9 6 0.7,0.9,1.0 7 0.9,1.0,1.0 source: jamelaa bibi and siti ilyana (2018) and mohd ridhuan (2016). 3.2.5. threshold value (d) the triangular fuzzy number is utilized in data analysis to determine the threshold value (d). therefore, the initial stipulation is that the threshold value (d) should be less than or equal to 0.2 (cheng & lin, 2002). the vertex method was implemented to compute the distance between the average rij. the threshold value (d) of the two (2) fuzzy numbers m = (m1, m2, m3) and n = (n1, n2, n3) is calculated using the formula: 3.2.6. expert agreement percentage once the threshold (d) value has been attained, the value of the expert agreement will be revealed. mentioned by chu and hwang (2008), mohd ridhuan (2016), and murry jr and hammons (1995), the obtained percentage of expert consensus must exceed 75%. 3.2.7. fuzzy score value (a) to determine the ranking of the elements, experts will calculate a fuzzy score value (a). the formula used to derive the fuzzy score (a) is as follows: a = (1/3) * (m1 + m2 + m3) 4. result and discussion the 22 accepted elements are arranged based on their ranking. based on the findings, experts have concluded that the following components affect malaysian farmers’ adoption of food safety certification. table 4 presents the results of a ranking study about the parameters associated with farmers’ adoption of food safety certification. the ultimate acceptance/rejection decision, fuzzy score values (a), expert agreement percentages, fuzzy assessment process circumstances, and threshold values (d) are applied to each factor. ascending order is applied to the items based on asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 663-675 669 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. their fuzzy ratings. based on the analyses and rankings provided, the first factor that experts unanimously agreed upon is the premium price offer from the market, which has a threshold value score of 0.08 and an expert consensus rating of 97%. this factor serves as a key determinant for farmers in malaysia to adopt food safety certification. the economic benefit of receiving premium prices provides a strong incentive for farmers to comply with certification requirements, as it directly impacts their income and profitability. previous research highlights that sustainable agricultural products can attain premium prices depending on the quality (li & kallas, 2021; ma, liu, meng, florkowski, & mu, 2022). with a threshold value score of 0.19 and an expert consensus rating of 93%, farmers' awareness regarding food safety is the second factor that experts agree upon. awareness plays a crucial role in adoption since farmers who understand the benefits of food safety certification are more likely to participate in certification programs. awareness campaigns and extension services can help bridge knowledge gaps, enabling more farmers to engage in safe agricultural practices (omar et al., 2014). third in the list, with an expert consensus rating of 100% and a threshold value score of 0.15, is a good demand for agricultural produce with a food safety logo. demand for sustainability has been increasing (aripin, mezhuyev, nawanir, yusuf, & haron, 2023). higher consumer demand for certified products creates a pull factor, motivating farmers to comply with certification standards to access better markets and improve their competitive advantage. studies have shown that consumers are increasingly prioritizing food safety, which influences production decisions (bal, yayar, & arslan, 2024). farmers’ future direction factor comes in fourth with an expert consensus rating of 90% and a threshold value of 0.19. this suggests that farmers who have long-term goals and strategies for their businesses are more likely to invest in food safety certification. future thinking and vision-setting by the farmers, even with assistance, are essential for ensuring sustainable agricultural practices (chitakira, torquebiau, & ferguson, 2012; kuan, wang, & wang, 2021). farming experience ranks fifth with a threshold value score of 0.20 and an expert consensus rating of 90%. experienced farmers are more likely to adopt food safety certification as they have a better understanding of agricultural risks and benefits. moreover, experienced farmers tend to have established supply chain networks, making certification a logical step for business expansion (kuan et al., 2021). the consumer recognizing mygap and myorganic logos received a threshold value score of 0.19 in the sixth ranking, with a 93% expert consensus percentage. when consumers recognize and trust certification logos, it reinforces the value of certification and motivates farmers to adopt it. brand awareness and consumer trust play a crucial role in determining market success for food safety-certified products (bal et al., 2024; wongprawmas & canavari, 2017). with an expert consensus percentage of 90%, consumer awareness regarding food safety reached a threshold value of 0.20 at the seventh position. consumer education on food safety standards encourages demand for certified products, which in turn influences farmers to comply with regulations. public campaigns and educational initiatives can enhance consumer trust in certified products (li & kallas, 2021). the technology affordability factor ranked eighth, with a threshold value of 0.17 and an expert consensus percentage of 97%. affordable technology solutions reduce barriers to adoption, making it easier for farmers to meet certification requirements. research indicates that financial assistance programs can enhance access to technology for smallholder farmers (zainon, yusuf, & ramle, 2024). with an expert consensus percentage of 100% and a threshold value score of 0.12, the government’s involvement and support aspect came in ninth place. government policies, subsidies, and training programs are critical enablers for food safety certification (hoffmann & jones, 2021). supportive regulatory frameworks can enhance adoption rates among farmers (guo et al., 2019). with a threshold value score of 0.19 and an expert consensus percentage of 93%, farm size was determined to be the tenth factor. larger farms often have more resources and capacity to comply with certification requirements, whereas smaller farms may struggle due to financial and administrative burdens. policies tailored to support small-scale farmers could improve overall adoption rates (guo et al., 2019; kuan et al., 2021). for the 11 factors, with a threshold value score of 0.17 and an expert consensus percentage of 97%, experts have identified the high cost of renewal as a significant factor influencing the adoption of food safety certification among farmers in malaysia. the financial burden associated with renewing certification can deter farmers from maintaining compliance. streamlined renewal processes and financial incentives may help mitigate this challenge (hoffmann & jones, 2021). moving on to the 12th rank, policies and regulations enforced by the government scored a threshold value of 0.16, with an expert consensus percentage of 100%. clear and well-implemented policies provide a structured framework for food safety certification, ensuring compliance and industry-wide standards (guo et al., 2019). at the 13 ranks, the factor of increased market access and channels scored a threshold value of 0.13, with an expert consensus percentage of 97%. market access plays a pivotal role in motivating farmers to obtain certification. certified products often reach premium markets, leading to better economic returns for farmers (li & kallas, 2021; ma et al., 2022). technology innovation introduced was also recognized by experts as a driving factor in the adoption of food safety certification, with a threshold value of 0.14 and an expert consensus percentage of 97% at the 14 ranks. emerging technologies such as blockchain, iot, and digital monitoring systems can simplify compliance and improve transparency in food safety certification (aripin et al., 2023; maarof, nawanir, & fakhrul, 2022). finally, the financial constraints factor ranked 15, with a threshold value score of 0.16 and an expert consensus percentage of 93%. limited financial resources pose significant challenges for farmers, highlighting the need for targeted subsidies and financial aid programs (hoffmann & jones, 2021). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 663-675 670 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 4. result of analysis using the fuzzy delphi method. factor number factor conditions triangular fuzzy number conditions conditions of fuzzy evaluation process expert agreement factor accepted ranking threshold value, (d) percentage of expert agreement (%) m1 m2 m3 fuzzy score (a) 20 premium price offers from the market 0.08 97 0.79 0.94 1.00 0.91 accept 0.91 1 8 farmer awareness regarding food safety 0.19 93 0.69 0.85 0.95 0.83 accept 0.83 2 25 good demand for agricultural produce with a food safety logo. 0.15 100 0.67 0.85 0.96 0.83 accept 0.83 3 11 farmers future direction 0.19 90 0.68 0.85 0.95 0.82 accept 0.82 4 16 farming experience 0.20 90 0.67 0.83 0.94 0.81 accept 0.81 5 24 consumers recognizing mygap and myorganic logos 0.19 93 0.65 0.82 0.94 0.81 accept 0.81 6 18 consumer awareness regarding food safety 0.20 90 0.65 0.82 0.94 0.80 accept 0.80 7 4 technology affordability 0.17 97 0.65 0.82 0.94 0.80 accept 0.80 8 34 government involvement and support 0.12 100 0.63 0.82 0.96 0.80 accept 0.80 9 14 farm size 0.19 93 0.65 0.82 0.94 0.80 accept 0.80 10 29 the high cost of renewal 0.17 97 0.64 0.82 0.94 0.80 accept 0.80 11 30 policies and regulations enforced by the government 0.16 100 0.63 0.80 0.94 0.79 accept 0.79 12 23 more market access or channel 0.13 97 0.61 0.81 0.95 0.79 accept 0.79 13 1 technology innovation introduced 0.14 97 0.60 0.80 0.94 0.78 accept 0.78 14 12 financial constraints 0.16 93 0.60 0.79 0.94 0.78 accept 0.78 15 33 a lot of documentation preparation 0.17 90 0.59 0.78 0.92 0.77 accept 0.77 16 2 technology transfer occurs in the market. 0.14 93 0.58 0.78 0.93 0.76 accept 0.76 17 22 cooperative or association membership 0.14 97 0.59 0.77 0.93 0.76 accept 0.76 18 27 incentives offered by the government 0.18 93 0.59 0.77 0.92 0.76 accept 0.76 19 6 the contract offers 0.13 97 0.57 0.77 0.93 0.76 accept 0.76 20 35 training 0.13 93 0.56 0.76 0.92 0.75 accept 0.75 21 10 time constraints 0.15 77 0.57 0.75 0.91 0.74 accept 0.74 22 3 technology acceptability 0.24 53 0.59 0.77 0.90 0.75 reject #n/a #n/a 5 the output volume 0.28 53 0.39 0.59 0.77 0.58 reject #n/a #n/a 7 the extension of the contract 0.26 67 0.24 0.42 0.62 0.43 reject #n/a #n/a 9 having logistics or good supply chain management 0.33 53 0.38 0.56 0.73 0.55 reject #n/a #n/a 13 the status of the farm (tenure period) 0.24 43 0.57 0.75 0.88 0.73 reject #n/a #n/a 15 the age of farmers 0.25 63 0.42 0.62 0.80 0.61 reject #n/a #n/a 17 farmer education background 0.23 47 0.56 0.74 0.88 0.72 reject #n/a #n/a 19 competitive pressure 0.23 53 0.59 0.77 0.90 0.75 reject #n/a #n/a 21 higher return on investment 0.23 73 0.41 0.61 0.79 0.61 reject #n/a #n/a 26 limited demand from the market surrounding the farm. 0.28 43 0.58 0.75 0.87 0.74 reject #n/a #n/a 28 the high cost of applying 0.23 73 0.42 0.61 0.80 0.61 reject #n/a #n/a 31 legal liability makes farmers not interested 0.23 47 0.56 0.74 0.88 0.72 reject #n/a #n/a 32 farm location close to industry area 0.19 67 0.56 0.74 0.89 0.73 reject #n/a #n/a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 663-675 671 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 5. discussion the findings of this study reveal that economic incentives play the most significant role in encouraging malaysian farmers to adopt food safety certification, with the premium price factor ranked highest by experts (97% consensus). this is consistent with meemken et al. (2021), who found that premium price opportunities strongly motivate farmers to participate in sustainability programs. the result underscores the importance of market-driven incentives in shaping farmers’ decisions, suggesting that policymakers and buyers should strengthen price premium mechanisms to make certification more attractive. farmers’ awareness of food safety emerged as the second most influential factor, aligning with akhtar et al. (2020), who reported that knowledge and understanding of certification benefits are critical in driving adoption. this finding emphasizes the need for continuous extension programs, training sessions, and knowledge-sharing platforms to close awareness gaps. similarly, the third-ranked factor, demand for agricultural produce with a food safety logo, confirms the observations of lian and rajadurai (2020) and quoquab, mohamed sadom, and mohammad (2020) that consumer demand exerts a pull effect, creating strong market signals that encourage compliance. therefore, government and industry campaigns to promote consumer trust in certification logos, such as mygap and myorganic, could indirectly enhance adoption rates. structural and capacity-related factors such as farm size, farming experience, and farmers’ future orientation were also identified as important determinants. these findings are consistent with kuan et al. (2021) who found that larger, experienced farmers with strategic business goals are more likely to adopt innovation and comply with certification requirements. these results imply that tailored policy support, especially for smallholders such as subsidies, shared services, and simplified documentation, may help close the adoption gap. government involvement and policy enforcement were highlighted as key enablers, echoing the findings of jie, khan, alharthi, zafar, and saeed (2023) and zakaria, mohd, mohamed, ahmad, and binti hasan (2017) who emphasized that supportive regulatory frameworks and financial incentives significantly enhance adoption. the present study also highlights barriers such as high renewal costs and financial constraints, which have been reported in prior research as major obstacles to sustained compliance. policymakers could address these issues through cost-sharing programs, renewal fee waivers, or grants targeted at resource-constrained farmers. finally, technological factors both affordability and innovation, were recognized as essential drivers. this is consistent with giampietri and trestini (2020) and malik, chadhar, vatanasakdakul, and chetty (2021), who reported that affordable digital solutions and innovations such as blockchain and iot can reduce compliance burdens and improve transparency. public-private partnerships that improve technology access and reduce costs could further accelerate certification uptake. collectively, these findings extend existing literature by not only confirming known drivers such as economic incentives and consumer demand but also by prioritizing them using a systematic expert consensus approach. the results carry strong implications for policymakers, suggesting that a holistic strategy, combining market incentives, awareness-building, policy support, and technology access, will be most effective in increasing the adoption of food safety certification among malaysian farmers. 6. conclusion in summary, this study identified five key factors that strongly influence malaysian farmers’ adoption of food safety certification: premium price offers from the market, farmers’ awareness, consumer demand for produce with food safety logos, farmers’ future orientation, and farming experience. these factors collectively demonstrate that both marketdriven incentives and regulatory support play a decisive role in motivating farmers to pursue certification. the findings suggest that stakeholders should adopt a holistic approach that combines economic incentives, awareness campaigns, and supportive policies to enhance the adoption of mygap and myorganic certifications nationwide. despite its contributions, this study has some limitations. the findings are based primarily on expert opinion through the fuzzy delphi method rather than direct farmer surveys, which may limit the generalizability of the results to the broader farming population. future research could address this limitation by triangulating expert consensus with large-scale farmer surveys or case studies, enabling a more comprehensive understanding of the barriers and motivators at the ground level. additionally, future work could develop simulation models to examine interactions between the identified factors and predict the potential impact of policy interventions on certification adoption. funding: this work was supported by the universiti malaysia pahang al sultan abdullahwith (grant number rdu223410). institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. disclosure of ai use: the author used openai’s chatgpt (gpt-4) to edit and refine the wording of the introduction, literature review, etc. all outputs were thoroughly reviewed and verified by the author. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 663-675 672 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. references ab talib, m. s. 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alternatives for treating cattle skin ailments: a case study from the mnisi tribal authority of mpumalanga province, south africa g. malulekea p. masokob t. chiturac a,cdepartment of agricultural economics and animal production, university of limpopo private bag x1106, sovenga 0727, south africa. bdepartment of biochemistry, microbiology and biotechnology, university of limpopo private bag x1106, sovenga 0727, south africa.  teedzai.chitura@ul.ac.za (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 30 june 2022 revised: 26 september 2022 accepted: 12 october 2022 published: 20 october 2022 keywords abscess antimicrobial aqueous extracts ethnoveterinary cissus quadrangularis indigenous knowledge synadenium cupulare. the study was carried out in the mnisi tribal authority, mpumalanga province, south africa, between august and october 2021. ethno-veterinary data were collected using pre-structured questionnaires and field observations with cattle owners. the data were analyzed and summarized using descriptive statistics. frequently mentioned plants belonged to the families vitaceae (cissus quandrangularis), euphorbiaceae (synadenium cupulare), fabaceae (dichrostachys cinerea), solanaceae (nicotiana batacum), euphorbiacae (jatropha zayheri), and apocynaceae (sarcostemma viminate). antimicrobial susceptibility assays with ampicillin as positive control were carried out on extracts of synadenium cupulare (aerial parts and leaves), dichrostachys cinerea (seeds/ fruits), and cissus quadrangularis (aerial parts and leaves). aqueous extracts of s.cupulare (l) were the most effective against e. faecalis with the lowest mic of 0.73 mg/ml, followed by aqueous extracts of dichrostachys cinerea with an mic of 1.36. open wounds were the most common ailment (35%), followed by abscesses (23%) and abrasions (17%). documenting indigenous knowledge can be a basis for the development of sustainably used medicinal plants in the area and the validation of these plant preparations for veterinary use since the low cost of these preparations makes them useful for local communities. contribution/originality: the potential of plant resources as remedies for cattle skin ailments was explored. skin ailments have been cited by researchers as among the challenges faced by communal cattle farmers. the study explores the biochemical attributes of the plant resources to enhance the acceptability of these as alternatives for alleviating cattle skin ailments. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4639 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: g. maluleke --p. masoko --t. chitura (2022). indigenous plant-based alternatives for treating cattle skin ailments: a case study from the mnisi tribal authority of mpumalanga province, south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4), 236-242. 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4639 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction in south africa, livestock production is estimated to occupy approximately 80% of agricultural land and contribute an estimated 40% to the national agricultural income (daff, 2018). cattle production in south africa is concentrated in the eastern cape, kwazulu natal, free state, and northwest provinces, while it is more sparsely distributed in mpumalanga province due to wildlife border restrictions (daff, 2019). however, skin ailments such as sores, abscesses, inflammation-related lesions, and open wound infections as a result of bacterial, fungal, ectoparasitic, and viral pathogens contribute to economic losses among cattle farmers through reduced hide quality, reduced growth performance, reduced milk production, and reduced fertility (tiwari et al., 2013). due to its large surface area, the skin asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 4 (2022): 236-242. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5925-7175 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8076-083x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9676-7166 mailto:teedzai.chitura@ul.ac.za http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 236-242 237 is susceptible to chemical agents and various injuries that may be accompanied by the entrance of infective agents into the body. furthermore, the abundance of folds, invaginations, and specialized niches on the skin support a wide range of microorganisms (foster, 2012; grice & segre, 2011). the application of chemoprophylactic disease control measures is associated with certain challenges, such as high costs and the inability of the majority of communal farmers to access such drugs. mala, lalouckova, and skrivanova (2021) stated that cattle skin ailments of bacterial origin are among the factors promoting excessive antibiotic use, thereby contributing to the increased burden of antimicrobial resistance. limoli, jones, and wozniak (2015) reported that the ability of some bacterial species, such as staphylococcus spp., streptococcus spp., and corynebacterium spp., to form biofilms in chronic wounds results in higher antibiotic resistance and prevention of phagocytosis. decreasing the rate of bacterial infections improves animal health, welfare, and food safety (van boeckel et al., 2015). medicinal plants contain phytochemicals and can therefore be used as remedies for the treatment of cattle skin ailments without the risk of increasing bacterial antibiotic resistance. limited knowledge about the efficacy of locally available medicinal plants has prompted ongoing research on chemical profiling and the plants’ antipathogen activities. the present study explored the plants that are used to treat cattle skin ailments in the mnisi tribal authority, mpumalanga province, south africa. 2. materials and methods cattle farmers from three villages in the mnisi tribal authority (coordinates: 24˚38’n, 31˚20’s), mpumalanga province, south africa, were selected to participate in a cross-sectional study. according to census south africa (2011), approximately 80% of the area’s inhabitants are of the tsonga ethnic group. the tsonga ethnic group is known for its wealthy cattle ownership, as well as the use of traditional herbal medicines to treat livestock ailments. as tsongas have traditionally been cattle farmers for several generations, knowledge about managing the cattle and their diseases is passed from generation to generation, with the diagnosis of the majority of cattle ailments being based on examining the animals for symptoms. the study adopted a standard questionnaire-based survey for ethnobotanical investigations (jain, 1999). sixty-six cattle farmers from the mnisi tribal authority who had traditional knowledge of plant-based medicines were the study participants. bryman and bell's (2007) model of population sampling was used to calculate the required sample size from each of the three villages. the authors collected information about the use of medicinal plants by interviewing informants from the community in the local language (xitsonga), both in their settlements and in the remote places where they graze their cattle. of the 66 informants, 38 were men, and 28 were women. the ages of the informants ranged from 18 to 90 years. the questionnaire was used to collect descriptive responses about various skin ailments prevalent among livestock in the study area, the plant taxa names (vernacular names), their parts used, modes of preparation and form of use (fresh or dried), other ingredients (other plants used), and application methods. plants that were popular among the informants (identified through their xitsonga names) as remedies for cattle skin ailments were collected for further identification and laboratory-based validation (table 2). voucher specimens of the plants were deposited at the university of limpopo larry leach herbarium (unin) for future reference. ethical clearance to conduct the study was obtained from the university of limpopo turfloop research and ethics committee (ultrec/150/2020: pg). minimal inhibitory concentration (mic) was determined via two-fold serial dilution methods (fabry, okemo, & ansorg, 1998). rekha, kulandhaivel, and hridhya (2018) defined mic as the lowest concentration of antimicrobial agents that inhibit the growth of microbial pathogens. four bacterial strains that are used as a reference by the microbiology laboratory, department of biochemistry, microbiology and biotechnology, university of limpopo, were used for the mic assays. these were pseudomonas aeruginosa (atcc 25619), escherichia coli (atcc 25922), staphylococcus aureus (atcc 25923), and enterococcus faecalis (atcc 29212). these bacterial species were chosen for the mic assays as they are often isolated from skin lesions and other common infections in cattle (mala et al., 2021). data from the field survey was entered into the microsoft excel (2016) computer package and coded and analyzed using statistical package for social scientists (spss). results from the laboratory analyses were expressed as mean ± standard deviation (sd) of three replicates, and sample means were separated using duncan’s multiple range tests sas version 9.4. 3. results and discussion the informants of the study comprised 66 cattle farmers. the majority of the informants were male (57.6%) and the predominant group was 36-55 years old. the demographic profile of the informants is presented in table 1. mthi et al. (2020) reported 69% male participation in communal cattle farming. montshwe (2006) reported that in the communal areas of south africa, the agricultural sector is generally still male-dominated. the predominant age group, 36-55 years, comprised 46.9% of the sample, compared to 49% for the same age group in mthi et al.’s (2021) sample for their study carried out in the eastern cape province. in our study, youth participation (18-35 years) represented 30.4% in comparison with the 32.7% of youth participation in livestock farming reported by mthi et al. (2021). the authors attributed this low proportion to the poor status of agricultural output in africa’s rural areas due to a lack of government support. adefalu, adekunle, oladipo, adisa, and fatoye (2009) observed that in most developing countries, the bulk of agricultural production efforts is left in the hands of aged farmers, and they presently constitute the major farming population in southern africa. this scenario is not sustainable since the elders' agricultural productivity cannot meet the rapidly growing population’s food needs (kwenye & sichone, 2016). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 236-242 238 table 1. demographic profile of the informants (n=66). variables number frequencies (%) gender male(s) female(s) 38 28 57.6 42.4 age 18-25 26-35 36-55 55-90 3 17 31 15 4.6 25.8 46.9 22.7 level of education primary secondary post-matric informal 8 21 31 15 12.1 31.8 46.9 22.7 livestock ownership cattle goats poultry sheep 43 9 11 3 65.2 13.6 16.7 4.5 sources of evms knowledge family member farmers’ forums traditional healers social media local radio station 38 3 11 6 8 57.6 4.5 16.7 9.1 12.1 table 2 presents the cattle skin ailments most frequently reported in the study area. open wounds (mbanga yopfuleka) were the most frequent (35%), followed by abscesses (xifezana/bofi) with 23%. soyelu and masika (2009) reported that wounds were the most prevalent ailment (84.3%) in a study conducted in the eastern cape province, south africa. these authors attributed this to the high level of parasitic infestations (especially ticks) and poor management practices. in addition, cattle wounds can be caused by castration, wire cuts, as well as fighting among cohorts. the wounds predispose the animals to abscesses. this is comparable to the scenario in our study area, where the animals were generally raised with an ineffective and poorly managed dipping system that compounds the challenge of tick infestations. however, maroyi (2011) reported a lower occurrence rate (21.3%) of septic wounds in cattle. the same author reported that two plant families, fabaceae and solanaceae, were the most utilized in treatment. luseba and tshisikwane (2013) reported the use of a plant belonging to the meliaceae family for cattle wound treatment. the plants that were mentioned as remedies for the treatment of cattle skin ailments in our study have also been reported in the literature as containing antimicrobial properties as follows: cissus quadrangularis and jatropha zeyheri (chakale, mwanza, & aremu, 2021) and synadenium cupulare (mcgaw & eloff, 2008). table 2. frequency of cattle skin ailments reported by the study informants (n=66). skin ailment local name frequency percentage open wounds mbanga yopfuleka 23 35% abscesses xifezana/bofi 15 23 % abrasions thshumuka 11 17% sores swilondza 7 10% lumps bundu 5 7.5% warts nhlungu/tintsupa 5 7.5% informants revealed the use of a variety of medicinal plants that are prevalent in the study area to treat cattle skin ailments. table 3 contains the collected data on the medicinal plants used in the study area as well as their preparation methods. luseba and van der merwe (2006) reported the anti-inflammatory effects of cissus quandrangularis, which have made this plant species popular for use in the treatment of cattle skin ailments in the limpopo and north-west provinces. dichrostachys cinerea was reported to be popular amongst the tsonga tribe as a remedy for wounds and other livestock infections. synadenium cupulare (latex and aerial parts) was reportedly used for the treatment of lumps and other livestock ailments among the vhenda tribe (luseba & tshisikwane, 2013). in the present study, water was used as the solvent of extraction, in line with reports by mathabe, nikolova, lall, and nyazema (2006) and suleiman (2009), which recommended the use of water for extraction in laboratory setups since most livestock farmers regard water as an important ingredient when preparing their remedies. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 236-242 239 table 3. plant species used by the informants from the study area to treat common cattle skin ailments. family name/plant name local name common name parts used ailments treated preparations method of administration habitat vitaceae: cissus quadrangularis nyangala veldgrape aerial &leaves open wounds and lumps fresh leaves/ stem crushed, add water and red soil applied topically on the affected skin area home gardens euphorbiaceae: synadenium cupulare mdleve dead men’s tree latex, leaves & aerial parts open wounds and sores latex from aerial parts used as a paste as well as crushed fresh leaves applied topically on the affected skin area natural habitats and home gardens fabacea: dichrostachys cinerea ndhzenga sickelbush fruits/seeds open wounds, lumps, and abscesses dry seeds/fruits crushed and ground to powder applied topically as a paste on the affected skin area natural habitats solanaceae: nicotiana batacum fole tobacco leaves leaves sores, warts, lumps fresh leaves crushed and salt added applied topically as a paste on the affected skin area home gardens euphorbiaceae: jatropha zayheri neta physic nut aerial parts warts fresh/dry roots crushed and ground to powder applied topically as a paste on the affected skin area natural habitats apocynaceae: sarcostemma viminate xidomeja caustic bush roots and aerial parts abscesses and foot root aerial parts ground applied topically on the affected skin area natural habitats figure 1. plant parts used by the study informants to prepare remedies for common cattle skin ailments. farmers prepared the remedies using different parts of the plants. figure 1 shows the popularity of the various plant parts among the informants. phytochemical constituents of the plant extracts are presented in table 4. extracts of all the plant species tested negative for alkaloids, while extracts of c. quandrangularis and s. cupulare (l) tested negative for tannins and saponins, respectively. thin-layer chromatography assays were carried out to determine total phenolics, tannins, and flavonoids in the extracts of the plant species collected during the field survey. extracts of all the plant species investigated in this study tested positive for flavonoids. flavonoids constitute the largest class of polyphenolic compounds, with more than 4,000 structurally unique flavonoids previously identified in various plant sources, such as vegetables, fruits, and plant-derived beverages, such as tea and wine. generally, polyphenols have strong antibacterial activity against gram-positive bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus and gram-negative bacteria such as e. coli bacteria, probably due to different mechanisms of action, among which the most convincing involves the aggregatory effect on all bacterial cells (cushnie & lamb, 2011; daglia, 2012). this could partly explain why all the extracts in our study displayed some activity against pathogenic bacteria when tested. for this reason, they seem to be a suitable natural remedy for bacterial pathogens. notwithstanding the observation that cissus quadrangularis had the highest composition of flavonoids compared to the other plant species investigated in this study, extracts of this plant asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 236-242 240 had the second-highest average mic value (2.03 mg/ml) after that of synadenium cupulare (aerial parts). this could possibly be due to the very low tannin content reported for this plant species. table 4. phytochemical constituents of the plant extracts. phytochemical constituents c.quandrangularis s.cupulare (a) s.cupulare (l) d.cinerea saponins + + + terpanol + + + + phlobatannin + + + + tannins + + + cardic glycoside + + + + flavonoids + + + + steroids + + + + alkaloids note: (+) = presence, (-) = absence. all the plant species analyzed in the present study possessed phytochemicals. phytochemicals are naturally present in plants and show biological significance by playing an essential role against various pathogens and microbes through bactericidal or bacteriostatic mechanisms (assob et al., 2011; mehni et al., 2014). the results of the phytochemical constituent analysis indicated that most of the plant extracts tested positive for alkaloids, while the extracts of c. quadrangularis and s. cupulare tested negative for tannins and saponins, respectively. given the trends observed in the phytochemical constituents of the extracts, it is not surprising that these plants showed potency toward the microbials that were used in the study. flavonoids form complexes with bacterial proteins. terpenoids, tannins, steroids, and saponins have also been reported to confer antimicrobial properties. table 5. quantification of secondary metabolites (mg/gm) in the plant extracts using water as solvent. plant flavonoids phenolics tannins c. quandrangularis 51.1 ± 1.2 17.4 ± 1.69 13.8 ± 1.2 s. cupulare (aerial parts) 21.0 ± 10.3 43.5 ± 6.7 47.9 ± 0.4 s. cupulare (leaves) 31.0 ± 24.3 54.0 ± 6.3 13.0 ± 1.9 d. cinerea 39.7 ± 0.3 33.9 ± 27.2 21.8 ± 13.6 table 5 contains information on the levels of secondary metabolites in the plant extracts using water as a solvent. the results are presented in mg/g. extracts of s. cupulare (l) had the lowest average mic value of 0.73 mg/ml against e. faecalis, while s. cupulare (a), c. quandrangularis, and d. cinerea had average mic values of 2.5 mg/ml for the different solvents when used against e. coli, s. aureus, and p. aeruginosa, as shown in table 6. table 6. minimum inhibitory concentration (mic) for plants tested. plant name mic s. aureus (water extract) mg/ml mic p. aeruginosa (water extract) mg/ml mic e. faecalis (water extract) mg/ml mic e. coli (water extract) mg/ml synadenium cupulare (leaves) 2.08 1.67 0.73 2.08 synadenium cupulare (aerial parts) 1.67 2.5 1.87 2.5 cissus quadrangularis 2.08 2.08 1.46 2.5 dichrostachys cinerea 1.77 2.08 1.36 1.46 amphotericin b (control) 0.03 0.02 0.03 0.08 the results of the present study showed that plant extracts of c. quandrangularis had moderate antioxidant activity against all the pathogens tested. the lowest average mic was 0.73 mg/ml, which was recorded for the extracts of s. cupulare (l) against e. faecalis. previous studies have reported similar trends in mic values (ndhlovu & masika, 2017). escherichia coli isolates required the highest average mic (2.14) with respect to the extracts of the plant species that were investigated in this study. however, the extracts of the plants in question showed some good inhibitory potential against staphylococcus aureus. staphylococcus species constitute a major group of bacteria inhabiting the skin of cattle. animals are considered potential sources of infection and dissemination of this bacterial species to the environment (daaloul-jedidi, soudani, & messadi, 2016). generally, the antimicrobial activity of tannins against grampositive and gram-negative bacteria has been reported. the mechanisms proposed thus far to explain tannin antimicrobial activity include inhibition of extracellular microbial enzymes, deprivation of the substrates required for microbial growth, direct action on microbial metabolism through inhibition of oxidative phosphorylation, and metal ion deprivation or the formation of complexes with the cell membrane of bacteria causing morphological changes in the cell wall and increasing membrane permeability (scalbert, 1991). furthermore, tannins have been reported to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 236-242 241 display anti-biofilm effects. for example, tannic acid inhibited biofilm formation in the pathogenic bacteria s. aureus and e. coli (hancock, dahl, vejborg, & klemm, 2010; payne et al., 2013). however, in contrast to these reports regarding tannins, synadenium cupulare (aerial parts), which demonstrated the highest concentration of tannins, had the highest average mic value of 2.14 mg/ml. this observation might be explained by the presence of a high concentration of saponins in extracts of this plant species, as reported in our study. in general, the effect of saponins on bacteria is often weak (korchowiec et al., 2015). due to their amphiphilic nature, saponins show a wide range of biological activities, such as cytotoxic, anticancer, insecticidal, molluscicidal, anti-inflammatory, antifungal, antiviral, and antibacterial activities (mbaveng et al., 2018). regarding antimicrobial activity, this group of phytochemicals inhibits the growth of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, yeasts, and molds. the antibacterial mechanism of saponins against bacteria is not completely understood (saboora, sajjadi, mohammadi, & fallahi, 2019). it seems that saponins can interact with the bacterial outer membrane, increasing its permeability. there are inconsistent reports on the activity of glycosidic and aglycone forms of saponins. it has been shown that bacterial enzymes could decrease the antibacterial effect of saponins through the hydrolysis of sugar chains (saboora et al., 2019). avato et al. (2006) reported that the aglycone component of saponins had antibacterial activities and that the sugar chains are not critical to this activity, whereas (khan, naqvi, & naqvi, 2012) proved that the presence of sugar chains is important for the biological effects of the extracts. however, research conducted with e. coli demonstrated that oleanolic acid (oa), a known triterpenoid saponin, can also moderately affect efflux pumps, which can directly interfere with the viability of this bacterial species (martins et al., 2011). 4. conclusion this study has shown that traditional medicine, mainly involving the use of medicinal plants, plays a significant role in meeting the livestock healthcare needs of the tsonga ethnic group in the mnisi tribal authority. the documented knowledge of the cattle farmers in the study area could be used to manage livestock healthcare systems and improve livelihoods. however, there is a need to emphasize toxicity level testing to prevent the use of lethal or sublethal doses. funding: this research is supported by the department of agricultural economics and animal production, university of limpopo (grant number: dae2022). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adefalu, f. o., adekunle, o. a., oladipo, l. l., adisa, r. s., & fatoye, a. d. 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(2015). global trends in antimicrobial use in food animals. proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 112(18), 5649-5654.available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics9120918. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 365 study of income and food consumption expenditure households of wet-rice farmers in west sumatra, indonesia sri ulfa sentosaa alpon satriantob urmatul uska akbarc ariusnid intan putri yenie a,b,c,d,edepartment of economics, faculty of economics and business, universitas negeri padang, indonesia.  alponsatrianto@fe.unp.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 5 may 2025 revised: 24 june 2025 accepted: 14 july 2025 published: 6 august 2025 keywords engel’s law food consumption per capita income socio-economic two-stage least squares welfare wet-rice farmers. this study aims to analyze socio-economic factors affecting the per capita income of households of wet-rice farmers, socio-economic factors affecting food consumption expenditure of these households, and to calculate income elasticity. the study employs a quantitative design, utilizing a multistage sampling method to determine the sample. the total sample size consisted of 349 farmer households. data were analyzed using two-stage least squares regression. based on the analysis, the following findings were obtained: 1) variables such as food consumption expenditure, technical efficiency, off-farm work, diversification in agriculture, land tenure status, access to credit, and education have a positive and significant influence on the per capita income of farm households. 2) variables including per capita income, access to credit, age, location, marital status, and education have a positive and significant influence on the per capita food consumption expenditure of farmer households. 3) income elasticity for all quantiles has a value of e<1, indicating the applicability of engel's law. this study provides comprehensive insights into the economic behavior of paddy field farming households by examining both the determinants of household income and food consumption expenditure. it also discusses policy implications for food availability, food consumption quality, food diversity, and poverty alleviation policies. contribution/originality: analysis of income and per capita food consumption expenditure of households of wet-rice farmers using tsls. the originality of this study is to use the estimated household food consumption expenditure variable as one of the determinants of household income. food consumption expenditure has a positive regression coefficient and is significant for the per capita income of farming households. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5513 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: sentosa, s. u., satrianto, a., akbar, u. u., ariusni, & yeni, i. p. (2025). study of income and food consumption expenditure households of wet-rice farmers in west sumatra, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 365–378. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5513 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction in indonesia, 35.10 percent of households are engaged in the agricultural sector (center for agricultural data and information systems, 2022). this data indicates that the agriculture sector plays a crucial role as a source of income and employment opportunities for the indonesian population, especially in rural areas. however, the asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 365-378 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5513 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3297-294x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8412-8524 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2552-5068 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0263-7537 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2856-7749 mailto:alponsatrianto@fe.unp.ac.id asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 365-378 366 agricultural sector has a high poverty rate, with nearly one-fifth of farming households living in poverty (fao, 2018). the highest proportion of poor people (62.66 percent) is found in the food crop subsector (center for agricultural data and information systems, 2022). the food crop most widely cultivated by rural households is rice. rice cultivation occurs in 34 provinces across indonesia, including west sumatra. rice is a key commodity for national food self-sufficiency. the welfare of wet-rice farming households can be measured, among other things, using indicators such as household income and expenditure. household income refers to the total gross income earned by all members of the household labor force (islam, islam, fatema, & khanum, 2022). previous researchers, emran, krupnik, aravindakshan, kumar, and pittelkow (2021) found that rice farming households engage in a variety of activities including agricultural work as well as non-farm activities to increase household income. this finding indicates that, in general, rice farming households have diversified income sources. income diversification is carried out to maintain income stability in the face of productivity problems, climate change, food insecurity, and poverty (getahun, haji, mehare, & zemedu, 2023). farmer household income can be used for consumption and non-consumption expenditures, such as savings. consumption expenditure can be categorized into non-food consumption and food consumption expenditure (central bureau of statistics, 2023). food is a key determinant of the welfare dimension; therefore, food expenditure is a fundamental component in any analysis of poverty and food security. food consumption expenditure is related to the sustainable development goals (sdgs) target to eliminate hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 (fao, 2018). previous researchers have analyzed the determinants of household food consumption expenditure, such as; ramdhanie, pemberton, and granderson (2017) and salo, savolainen, karhinen, and nissinen (2021) using the ordinary least square (ols) regression estimation model. the main finding of the aforementioned studies is that the income variable is a positive and significant determinant of household food consumption expenditure. however, the use of ols regression estimation may cause bias problems because the income variable is also endogenous. rashid, sesabo, lihawa, and mkuna (2024) have used a simultaneous equation model to analyze the interacting relationship between income and expenditure. based on the sem analysis model, it was found that the income variable has a positive and significant influence on household food consumption. this finding indicates that food consumed by households is a normal good. mulamba (2022) has also found that the absolute amount of food expenditure increases as household income increases. both findings above indicate that the food consumed by households is quality food. consumption of quality food affects health (petrescu, vermeir, & petrescu-mag, 2020). health can have a direct impact on income (xie, huang, & zang, 2020). about the findings above, the gap in this research is that no research has been found that estimates the variable of food consumption expenditure on household income. thus, the originality of this research lies in the estimation of food consumption expenditure as one of the determinants of household income among rice farmers. this study aims to analyze (1) the socio-economic factors affecting the per capita income of wet-rice farming households, (2) the socio-economic factors influencing their food consumption expenditure, and (3) the income elasticity across five quantile groups (10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 90%) to examine the applicability of engel’s law. the structure of this paper includes the introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and recommendations. 2. literature review according to engel's law, there is a negative relationship between income and the proportion of household expenditure allocated to food. researchers have found the suitability of engels' law in the relationship between household income and the proportion of food expenditure. kostakis, paparas, saiti, and papadaki (2020) found that the share of food consumption expenditure increases in an inverse u-shaped relationship with the amount of income. lower-income households allocate a larger proportion of their income to food consumption expenditure. when income begins to increase, the allocation shifts towards non-food consumption expenditure. previous researchers such as salo et al. (2021), htar et al. (2022), and tesgera, beyene, and wakjira (2024) found that income has a positive and significant influence on food consumption expenditure. this indicates that as income increases, food consumption expenditure also increases. based on these findings, an increase in average household income can be used to improve food quality. in this regard, ferrier and zhen (2017) found that in the top three income quintiles, there was a greater income elasticity for quality food compared to the bottom two income quintiles. the study by manyullei and arundhana (2021) found that the behavior of low-income households is to spend a larger proportion of their expenditure on food without regard to quality, indicating that food quality is not a priority for low-income households ferrier and zhen (2017) rice farming income plays an important role in farmers' household income. previous research found that the contribution of rice farming income to household income was 49.29 per cent (karmini & karyati, 2018). researchers danso-abbeam, dagunga, and ehiakpor (2020) found that efficient use of resources in agriculture can generate higher income. this indicates that technical efficiency has an important role in the achievement of income in agriculture. wang, xu, li, zhuo, and zou (2023) argued that improving the efficiency of agricultural production can reduce production costs so that it will increase income in agriculture. researcher obayelu, obayelu, and tunrayo awoku (2022) found that farming households that practiced one branch of farming were always poor. this indicates that other sources of income are needed. diversification in crop farming improves farmers' welfare due to increased productivity and net income from farming (baiyegunhi, akinbosoye, & bello, 2022). diversification affects differentiation and increases income (kurdyś-kujawska, strzelecka, & zawadzka, 2021). karmini and karyati (2018) found that rice farmers' income sources consist of income from rice farming and non-rice income. the positive and significant impact of crop diversification on farm income is approximately 13 percent (basantaray, acharya, & patra, 2024). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 365-378 367 income from agriculture is insufficient to meet the needs of rural households (olugbire et al., 2020). off-farm employment is a strategy for household income stability in the face of risks in agriculture. non-farm work plays an important role in increasing the income and welfare of farming households (bjornlund et al., 2019; damilola & ogundeji, 2023). land tenure security is a key factor in poverty reduction (ekpodessi & nakamura, 2022). owned land generates higher incomes than rented and shared land (rondhi & adi, 2018). land thus has a positive impact on household income (sultana, mahmud, moniruzzaman, & tareque, 2024). education has a positive effect on household income (vu, ho, & le, 2020). this indicates that the higher the level of formal education, the higher the household income. hoang (2021) found that farmer household heads with higher formal education invested more in agricultural technology resulting in higher farm income. the effect of the age variable on income in agriculture differs among researchers; vu et al. (2020) and ferrer et al. (2022) found that the age of the household head has a positive and significant effect on income in agriculture. gender has a positive influence on farm household income (rashid et al., 2024). gender has a positive and insignificant influence on farm household income (siaw et al., 2023). the above findings show that the effect of gender on farm household income can be either positive or negative, depending on the conditions present in the research area. the following presents a literature review of the influence of socio-economic variables (such as credit access, education, age, gender, location, and marital status) on food consumption expenditure. one aspect of financial development is credit. access to formal credit plays a significant role in increasing monthly per capita farm household expenditure (dimova & adebowale, 2018; kumar, mishra, saroj, & joshi, 2017). factors that have a positive and significant influence on protein food expenditure are the wife's education level (lasitya, anindita, & syafrial, 2022). in contrast to the findings of the above researcher tingum and kuponiyi (2020) found that education has a negative and significant influence on food expenditure. the above findings indicate that the effect of household head education on food consumption expenditure may vary due to the intervening role of the mother in determining family nutrition. the age of the household head has a positive influence on food expenditure (rashid et al., 2024). the age of adults and children has a positive and significant influence on food expenditure. in general, food expenditure of younger households tends to increase less than that of the reference group (age 45-54). however, service expenditure is higher in younger households, which can partly be attributed to higher consumption of service restaurants (salo et al., 2021). gender disparities affect food security and nutrition (fao, 2019). gender plays a role in household consumption decisions (quisumbing & doss, 2021). gender plays a role in food purchases (acharya, 2021). gender has a positive influence on food expenditure (rashid et al., 2024; tingum & kuponiyi, 2020). rural and urban locations cause differences in household food consumption patterns. food expenditure elasticity is higher in rural areas than in urban areas (rashid et al., 2024). an increase in income has been shown to increase food expenditure. the effect of changes in income on the consumption structure of urban residents is that the portion of staple foods has decreased, while the percentage of nutritious foods has increased (jovanovic, 2016). marital status has a negative influence on food consumption expenditure (adzawla & kudadze, 2017). however, kostakis et al. (2020) found that marital status has a positive influence on per capita food consumption. thus, the effect of marital status on food consumption expenditure can have a positive or negative coefficient. 3. methodology the study was located in west sumatra province. the population in the study was all households of wet-rice farmers located in 19 districts and cities. sampling using a multistage sampling technique. the first stage of determining the sample districts and cities using the formula fi = n / m, where fi is the sample fraction, n = number of samples, m = number of primary sampling units (psu). the sample fraction is 42.10 per cent or with the formula fi = 8/19 x 100 per cent = 42.10 per cent. sampling was done randomly. the selected cities and districts are: padang city, bukittinggi, payakumbuh, agam regency, padang pariaman, pesisir selatan, tanah datar and solok. the second stage, the determination of the sample sub-districts considering access to locations near and far from the center of the input and output market of paddy rice, purposive sampling, totaling 16 sub-districts namely: (1) koto tangah, (2). kuranji (3), aur birugo and tigobaleh. (4) mandiangi koto selayan (5). payakumbuh utara (6) payakumbuh barat (7). lubuk basung (8) ampek angkek (9). iv jurai (10). xi koto tarusan (11). lubuk alung (12). padang sago (13). pantai cermin (14). kubung (15). rambatan. (16) salimpaung. in the third stage, determining the number of samples of rice paddy farmer households using the isaac and michael table with α = 5 per cent, the number of samples was 349 farmer household heads. sampling using the purposive sampling method, namely landowner and non-landowner farmers. data collection method using questionnaires in may to july 2023. the total number of questionnaires was 349. data analysis uses the two-stage least square (tsls) simultaneous equation model. the use of 2 sls in the study because there is a possibility of endogeneity in the income and food consumption expenditure variables so that the ols estimate becomes biased. using 2 sls provides consistent and reliable parameter estimates. the difference between this researcher and previous studies lies in the food consumption expenditure variable as a determinant of the income variable, while in previous studies the food expenditure variable was not used as a determinant of income. the conceptual framework used in this study is presented in figure 1. in figure 1, there are two endogenous variables, namely household income per capita (y1) and food consumption expenditure per capita (y2). the y2 variable will function as an exogenous variable in the household income equation. conversely, variable y1 can function as an exogenous variable in the household food consumption expenditure equation. based on the literature review, 1) the household income variable is influenced by variables such as technical efficiency, agricultural diversification, off-farm work, land tenure status, credit access, education, age, gender, and food consumption asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 365-378 368 expenditure. 2) the food consumption expenditure variable is influenced by household income, credit access, education, age, gender, rural/urban location, and marital status. based on the conceptual framework above, the data are analyzed using 2sls. figure 1. conceptual framework. equation of household income (1) and household consumption expenditure (2). (1) (2) the operational definitions of the above variables can be seen in table 2. the structural model is presented in equation 3 and 4. (3) (4) where α0 and β0 are constants, while αi and βi are regression coefficients and e error term. identification test, for equation 3 and 4 k-k > m 1 or over identified. the results of the hausman test on the equation model of farm household per capita income (y1) and food consumption expenditure y2 table 1 shows that both equations can be estimated using the tsls method where α0 and β0 are constants, while αi and βi are regression coefficients and e error term. identification test, for equation 3 and 4 k-k > m 1 or over identified. the results of the hausman test on the equation model of farm household per capita income (y1) and food consumption expenditure y2 table 1, show that both equations can be estimated using the tsls method. table 1. hausman test results. equation f-test probability description y1 29.188 0.000 *** simultaneous y2 22.601 0.000 *** simultaneous note: ***p <0.01. 4. results and discussions the results of descriptive statistics are presented in table 2. the total income per capita of farmer households amounted to rp1,726,511 per month, and food consumption expenditure per capita per month was rp750,880. the proportion of food consumption expenditure to per capita income was 43.49 percent. the technical efficiency of paddy rice farming was 89.22 percent, indicating that efficiency could still be improved by 10.78 percent. farmer households with income sources from non-farm work comprised 67 percent, while 33 percent did not have access to non-farm work. the number of farmer households involved in diversification activities on farms was 46.10 percent, suggesting that most (53.90 percent) do not have access to diversification activities on farms. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 365-378 369 table 2. descriptive statistics of research variables. variable description mean std. dev. min. max. lny1 per capita income (idr) per month 1,726.511 1,010.658 280.387 6,992.864 lny2 food consumption expenditure per capita (idr) per month 750.880 348.995 303.088 2,718.360 x1 technical efficiency 89.22 7.50 56.00 97.00 d2 off-farm work (yes = 1, no =0) 0.67 0.47 0.00 1.00 d1 agricultural diversified (yes = 1, no =0) 0.46 0.50 0.00 1.00 d3 land tenure status (owner = 1, no = 0) 0.52 0.50 0.00 1.00 d4 credit access (yes = 1, no =0) 0.46 0.50 0.00 1.00 x2 education (year) 10.09 2.67 6.00 16.00 x3 age (year) 49.23 8.52 22.00 70.00 d5 gender (male = 1, female =0) 0.89 0.32 0.00 1.00 d6 desa/kota (rural = 1, urban =0) 0.69 0.46 0.00 1.00 d7 marital status (married =1, no=0) 0.78 0.42 0.00 1.00 the land tenure status variable has an average value of 0.52, indicating that 52 percent of farmer household heads are landowners, and 48 percent are sharecroppers. access to credit has an average value of 0.46, meaning that approximately 45.80 percent of farmer households access formal credit, while 54.20 percent do not. the average education level of farmer household heads is 10.07 years, which suggests that the average household head has completed junior high school. the average age of farmer household heads is 49.23 years, indicating they are within the productive age range. gender has an average value of 88.50 percent, indicating that 88.50 percent of farmer households are headed by men, while 11.50 percent are headed by women. the rural or urban location has an average of 0.688, suggesting that most (68.80 percent) of farmer households reside in rural areas, with a smaller proportion (31.20 percent) residing in urban areas. marital status has an average value of 0.779, meaning that 77.90 percent of farmer household heads are married, and 21.10 percent are not married. table 3 presents the socio-economic characteristics based on household income groups. based on land tenure status, the number of sharecropper households in the low-income group is 40.12%, in the middle-income group is 46.18%, and in the high-income group is 13.77%. this finding indicates that farmer households are larger in the middle-income group. in contrast, landowners are more likely to be in the high-income group at 31.32% and in the middle-income group at 55.40%, compared to 13.19% in the low-income group. land ownership is associated with increased income. among farmer households with credit access, the middle-income group has the highest credit access at 48.77%, while the low-income group with no credit access is 52.94%. credit access is more utilized by the middleand higher-income groups, who may have a better capacity for loan repayment. table 3. socio-economic characteristics by household income group. variable low income (%) middle income (%) high income (%) land tenure status profit sharing 40.12 46.18 13.77 owner 13.19 55.40 31.32 access to credit no credit access 31.10 52.94 16.04 credit 20.37 48.77 30.86 education elementary school 50.00 40.00 25.00 junior high school 37.50 50.00 12.50 senior high school 21.05 57.89 21.05 associate degree 15.09 56.60 28.30 bachelor’s degree 11.27 46.48 42.25 age (year) 22 30 50.00 40.00 25.00 31 40 37.50 50.00 12.50 41 50 21.05 57.89 21.05 51 60 15.09 56.60 28.30 61 67 11.27 46.48 42.25 gender asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 365-378 370 variable low income (%) middle income (%) high income (%) male 20.73 50.78 28.50 female 53.14 49.38 15.43 rural/urban rural 32.79 51.91 15.30 urban 18.67 50.00 31.33 marital status unmarried 28.46 55.28 16.26 married 24.78 48.67 26.55 based on formal education, it can be observed that households with higher income levels tend to have a greater percentage of individuals with higher education, particularly at the undergraduate level, accounting for 42.25%. lowincome households are predominantly composed of elementary school graduates, representing 50.00%. middleincome households include individuals with junior high school education at 50.99%, high school education at 57.89%, and diploma holders at 56.60%, with junior high school graduates constituting 8.60%. higher levels of education are generally associated with higher income levels. regarding age characteristics, farmer households in the middleincome group have the highest proportions across all age groups. middle-income households are more concentrated in the productive age range of 31-50 years. the age group of 31-50 years plays a significant role in income generation, while the younger age group of 22-30 years tends to fall into the lower income category. based on gender, males and females dominate the middle-income category, accounting for 50.78% and 31.49%, respectively. the middle-income group is also more male-dominated at 28.08%, suggesting that females may have greater opportunities for empowerment. in terms of rural and urban locations, the number of urban residents in the high-income group is relatively high at 31.33%, compared to 15.30% of the rural population. most rural and urban farmer households are in the middle-income group. marital status indicates that unmarried individuals are more prevalent in the middle-income group at 55.28%, compared to 48.67% for married individuals. in the high-income group, the percentage of married households exceeds that of unmarried households. this finding suggests that marital status may be related to economic stability, with married individuals tending to have higher incomes. table 4 presents the regression estimation results using multiple linear regression (ols) and tsls of the farmer household income equation. from the estimation results, it can be seen that there is a difference in the value of the regression coefficient and the value of r2. r2 value of the ols estimation results is higher than tsls. in table 4, the estimation using ols obtained an r² value of 87.68% (high), but may contain bias due to endogeneity. while the tsls estimation produces an r² value of 43.88% or lower but tsls is more valid in overcoming endogeneity based on the hausman test, so tsls is more appropriate to use because there may be endogeneity in the ols model. below is a description of the regression estimation results using tsls of farm household income. the food consumption expenditure variable has a regression coefficient of 0.375. this result indicates that an increase in food consumption expenditure per capita by one percent will increase household income per capita by 0.38 percent, assuming ceteris paribus. the next variable with a positive coefficient on per capita income of farmer households is the technical efficiency of paddy rice farming, which is 0.016. this figure indicates that an increase in technical efficiency by one percent increases the income of farm households by 0.02 percent. activities related to diversification in agriculture have a regression coefficient of 0.156 concerning the per capita income of farmer households. the results of this study suggest that a one-unit increase in the number of farm households diversifying into agriculture will increase per capita income by 0.16 percent, assuming all other factors remain constant. the off-farm work activity variable has a regression coefficient of 0.325 concerning the per capita income of farm households. this indicates that an increase in off-farm work activity by one unit will raise farm household income by 0.33 percent, assuming other factors remain unchanged. the regression coefficient for the land tenure status variable is 0.357 concerning the income per capita of farmer households. this indicates that if the number of landowners increases by one unit, the household income per capita will increase by approximately 0.36 percent, assuming other factors remain constant. the regression coefficient for access to credit is 0.09. this suggests that an increase in access to formal credit by one unit will raise the income per capita of farmer households by approximately 0.09 percent. education has a positive effect of 0.03 on the per capita income of farmer households. this finding indicates that an increase in the education level of the head of a farmer household by one year will increase the household's per capita income by 0.03 percent, assuming other variables remain constant. age has a negative effect of 0.01 on household per capita income. this suggests that a one-year increase in the age of the farmer household head will lead to a 0.01 percent decrease in the household's per capita income, assuming other variables are constant. similar to age, the gender variable also has a negative regression coefficient of 0.18. this indicates that female-headed households have higher per capita incomes than others. the r-squared value from the tsls regression estimation results is 0.4388, meaning that the socio-economic variables included in the model explain 43.88 percent of the variation, while the remaining 56.12 percent is determined by other variables not included in the model. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 365-378 371 table 4. ols and tsls estimation results of farmer household income (y1). variable ols tsls coefficient t-statistic prob. coefficient t-statistic prob. lny2 0.35 6.51 0.00*** 0.38 6.16 0.00*** x1 0.002 16.29 0.00*** 0.02 4.96 0.00*** d1 0.05 20.41 0.00*** 0.33 6.18 0.00*** d2 0.02 10.00 0.00*** 0.16 3.34 0.00*** d3 0.04 19.04 0.00*** 0.36 6.98 0.00*** d4 0.01 5.55 0.00*** 0.09 1.91 0.06* x2 0.004 8.90 0.00*** 0.03 2.85 0.01*** x3 -0.001 -4.61 0.00*** -0.01 -1.73 0.08* d5 -0.02 -6.50 0.00*** -0.18 -2.26 0.02** constant 1.070 11.63 0.00*** 3.01 6.58 0.00*** r2 0.877 0.439 f-test 268.17 probability 0.00 0.00 normality 0.92 hausman test 29.45 heteroskedasticity 0.26 n 349 349 note: ***p <0.01, **p <0.05 and *p<0. 10. the results of the ols and tsls regression estimation of the farm household consumption expenditure equation (table 5). from the estimation results, it can be seen that there are differences in the regression coefficient values and r2 values of the two models, namely the r2 value of the ols estimation results is higher than tsls. in table 5, the estimation using ols obtained an r² value of 74.4% (high), but may contain bias due to endogeneity. while the tsls estimation produces an r² value of 21.2% or lower but tsls is more valid in overcoming endogeneity based on the hausman test, so tsls is more appropriate to use because there may be endogeneity in the ols model. the following is a description of the results of the tsls regression estimation of farm household consumption expenditure. household income has a regression coefficient of 0.23. this indicates that a one percent increase in per capita income will increase per capita food consumption expenditure of farm households by 0.23 percent, assuming other factors remain unchanged. the positive effect of income on food consumption expenditure indicates that households consume normal or quality food products. credit access has a regression coefficient of 0.13. this finding means that an increase in credit access by one unit will increase per capita food consumption expenditure of farm households by 0.13 percent, assuming ceteris paribus. age has a positive effect of 0.08 on per capita food consumption expenditure of farm households. the results of this study indicate that increasing the age of the household head by one year will increase food consumption expenditure by 0.08 percent, assuming ceteris paribus. gender has a negative coefficient of 0.15 on per capita food consumption expenditure of farm households. this finding indicates that households headed by women have greater food consumption expenditure than other households, assuming other factors remain unchanged. the rural or urban location variable has a regression coefficient of 0.094. this finding indicates that the proportion of food consumption expenditure in rural areas is higher than in urban areas. the variable marital status has a regression coefficient of 0.10, indicating that an increase in the number of married farming households by one unit will increase per capita food consumption expenditure by 0.10 percent, assuming other factors remain constant. education has a regression coefficient of 0.01. this coefficient suggests that an additional year of education for the head of a farming household will increase per capita food consumption expenditure by 0.01 percent. in other words, the higher the education level of the household head, the higher the per capita food consumption expenditure, assuming other factors remain unchanged. table 5. ols and tsls estimation results of food consumption expenditure (y2). variable ols tsls coefficient t-statistic prob. coefficient t-statistic prob. lny1 0.24 13.49 *** 0.23 5.98 *** d4 0.02 12.44 *** 0.13 3.14 *** x2 0.002 5.75 *** 0.01 1.67 * x3 0.01 16.32 *** 0.08 3.96 *** d5 -0.03 -9.20 *** -0.15 -1.97 ** d6 0.01 5.91 *** 0.09 2.18 ** d7 0.02 9.54 *** 0.10 1.66 * constant 1.33 40.04 *** 4.41 16.31 *** r2 0.744 0.212 f-test 141.23 probability 0.000 0.000 hausman test 13.072 normality test 0.306 heteroscedasticity test 0.267 n 349 349 note: ***p <0.01, **p <0.05 and *p<0. 10. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 365-378 372 table 6 presents the quantile regression estimates for the food consumption expenditure equation. the income elasticity values (e) across the five quantile groups (10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 90%) show values of e < 1, indicating the applicability of engel's law in this study. all regression coefficients are positive and significant at the 1 per cent level. table 6. quantile regression estimation of food consumption expenditure. quantile 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% income 0.551*** 0.552*** 0.562*** 0.457*** 0.372*** note: ***p <0.01. in table 6, it can be observed that the income of farm households in the bottom 10% quantile shows that every one percent increase in income significantly raises food expenditure by 0.551 percent. this suggests that poor households tend to allocate a higher proportion of their income to food expenditure. households in the 25% quantile income group have an almost identical elasticity to the 10% quantile, which is 0.552. this indicates that a one percent increase in income will significantly raise food expenditure by 0.552 percent. therefore, in this group, an increase in income also has a strong effect on food consumption. in the median 50% quantile, the effect of income on food consumption is 0.562, which is higher than in the lower quantile. this coefficient indicates that a one percent increase in income will significantly raise food expenditure by 0.562 percent. this finding suggests that in the middle group, where additional income is slightly more allocated to food than in the poorer group. in the 75% quantile, with a lower income elasticity of 0.457, it shows that a one percent increase in household income significantly raises food expenditure by 0.457 percent. this group allocates a smaller proportion of income to food as income increases. farmer households in the 90th quantile have a lower income elasticity of 0.372. the coefficient indicates that a one percent increase in household income significantly raises food expenditure by 0.372 percent. this means that wealthier households allocate more money to food than poorer households. this is consistent with engel's law, which states that as income increases, the proportion of expenditure on food decreases. based on the estimated income elasticities across the five quantiles, it can be concluded that the effect of income on food consumption expenditure is greater in the low-income group (lower quantile) than in the high-income group (upper quantile). this aligns with engel's law, which states that poor households tend to allocate more of their additional income to food, while wealthier households spend less. the tsls estimation results (table 4), it was found that, simultaneously, the variables of food consumption expenditure, technical efficiency, access to agricultural diversification, access to non-agricultural employment, land tenure status, access to credit, education, age, and gender have a significant influence on the per capita income of farming households. the partial effects of these variables are as follows: food consumption expenditure has a positive regression coefficient and is significant for the per capita income of farming households. this study indicates that an increase in food consumption expenditure significantly enhances the per capita income of farming households. this finding suggests that farming households purchase food categorized as normal goods. this is supported by previous studies, which found that the increase in food consumption expenditure is driven by the improved quality of food purchased by households, particularly nutritious food (chrisendo, krishna, siregar, & qaim, 2020). quality food is positively correlated with price (anis, rahman, & khalid, 2022), so the higher the quality of food, the higher the food consumption expenditure. consumption of healthy food products plays an important role in health (szalonka et al., 2021). waqas, iqbal, and stewart-knox (2024) found that increasing food expenditure has a significant positive effect on mental health. in the relationship between food quality and health, the consumption of quality household food has a significant effect on improving health (petrescu et al., 2020). food is a key indicator of well-being in the domains of health, poverty, nutrition and food security (zezza, carletto, fiedler, gennari, & jolliffe, 2017). the results of the study by xie et al. (2020) found a positive and significant direct effect of health variables on labor income. good health increases household income (o'donnell, 2024). technical efficiency has a positive and significant regression coefficient for the per capita income of farming households. this finding indicates that technical efficiency significantly increases farming household income. the results of this study support the findings of bravo ureta, jara rojas, moreira lópez, and riveros villegas (2021), which state that technical efficiency reflects the managerial performance of farmers in maximizing output from their farming activities. our study is also consistent with the findings of researchers (sumaryanto et al., 2023), which show that technical efficiency significantly enhances farming household income. according to wang et al. (2023) improvements in agricultural production efficiency can reduce production costs, thereby increasing income in agriculture. other than that, technical efficiency is the use of certain inputs to produce maximum or technologically feasible output conditions (farrell, 1957) because achieving maximum production indicates maximum income in agriculture. agricultural diversification activities have a significant impact on the per capita income of farming households. improved access to agricultural diversification activities significantly increases household per capita income. this study's findings are consistent with ferrer et al. (2022), which states that rice farming households engaging in crop diversification achieve higher income compared to others. additionally, kurdyś-kujawska et al. (2021) found that agricultural diversification activities significantly enhance the income stability of farming households. diversification in agricultural and horticultural commodities, as well as other agricultural products with high prices, significantly increases the income of farm households (ahmadzai, 2020). apart from that, diversification activities can be carried out using agricultural land and other assets in the form of agritourism activities. the off-farm work variable has a significant impact on the per capita income of farming households. this finding aligns with the studies of neglo, gebrekidan, and lyu (2021), which state that non-agricultural employment has a positive and significant effect on household income. several researchers have found that non-farm income has a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 365-378 373 significant influence on improving the welfare of farming households (odoh & nwibo, 2016). this indicates that farm households with access to non-farm income are more prosperous than others. in other words, non-farm income has reduced poverty among farm households (iqbal et al., 2018) land tenure status has a significant influence on the per capita income of farm households. our results are in line with the findings of deng, zhang, and wan (2022) that land tenure has a positive and significant influence on farm household income. this is because landowner farmers have higher productivity than tenant farmers (mdoda & gidi, 2023). land tenure security has a positive and significant effect on the ease with which farm households can access credit, thereby increasing labor productivity (mbudzya, gido, & owuor, 2022). land tenure security, access to credit, and productivity are correlated; therefore, land tenure status has a positive and significant effect on increasing farm household income by mediating agricultural investment, wage increases, and income from other agricultural businesses. access to credit has a positive and significant effect on the per capita income of farming households. this study's findings align with those of kumar, mishra, sonkar, and saroj (2020), which indicate that credit positively and significantly impacts household per capita income. toure (2021) found that access to formal credit has a positive and significant effect on farm income. the effect of credit access on farming household income is due to farmers' increased ability to adopt agricultural technologies, leading to higher agricultural production (girma, 2022). access to credit has a significant effect on the productivity of agricultural commodities (mbudzya et al., 2022). the education of the household head has a positive and significant effect on the per capita income of farming households. this finding is supported by previous studies, cuong and vu (2023), which demonstrate a positive and significant influence of education on agricultural household income. this condition is particularly evident in the adoption of more effective agricultural technologies and sustainable land management, which in turn increases farmers' income (issahaku & abdulai, 2020). furthermore, highly educated farmers possess specific knowledge and facilitate the application of management techniques in modern agricultural production, which impacts increasing farm income (deng et al., 2022). age has a negative and significant effect on the per capita income of farming households. the study results state that the older the age of the farmer household head, the lower the income from the agricultural sector. the findings of this study are in line with the results of kumar et al. (2020) that the age of farmers has a significant and negative effect on household income. the negative effect of the old age of household heads on income from agriculture may be due to the ability to adopt agricultural technology and low education. dissanayake, jayathilake, wickramasuriya, dissanayake, and wasala (2022) found that older farmers have more farming experience, younger farmers have higher education. consequently, the ability of older farmers to adopt agricultural technology is lower than that of younger farmers. furthermore, sahara et al. (2023) found that the age of the head of the farmer household affects the technical operation of the farming process, which will affect agricultural income. the gender variable has a negative and significant influence on the per capita income of farm households. this finding indicates that female-headed households have higher per capita income than male-headed households. this may be due to differences in participation between male and female household heads in paddy rice farming. mwalyagile, jeckoniah, and salanga (2024) in their study found significant differences (p < 0.01) in gender participation in rice production, where men had higher participation than women. women's participation was mainly in seeding, planting and weeding activities. this condition may encourage women to seek other sources of income. study results antriyandarti, suprihatin, pangesti, and samputra (2024) show that women have a key role in household management, therefore have various sources of income in dealing with climate change in the agricultural sector. islam et al. (2022) found that women's income from off-farm activities had a significant impact on household income. the estimation results of household expenditure using tsls (table 5) show that, simultaneously, the variables of income, access to credit, age, gender, location, marital status, and education have a significant impact on the household consumption expenditure of farming households. the influence of each exogenous variable is as follows: income has a positive and significant effect on the per capita food consumption expenditure of households. this finding suggests that the higher the income, the higher the food consumption expenditure, assuming ceteris paribus. the positive coefficient value indicates that the food commodities consumed are normal goods. this finding is in line with pallegedara (2019) that food expenditure elasticities for all major food types of sample households in sri rare indicate normal goods. this finding is supported by studies tesgera et al., 2024), which show that household income is a significant determinant of food expenditure. an increase in income leads to higher consumption of high-quality and diverse food, as well as a more balanced diet with higher nutritional value (ferrier & zhen, 2017). rathnayaka, selvanathan, and selvanathan (2022) also found a positive and significant income effect on the demand for food commodities of residents of asian countries with high incomes by consuming diversified food products, while those with low incomes consume less diversified food commodities. furthermore, baladina, toiba, hanani, suhartini, and widarjono (2024), through a study in indonesia, found that the effect of income is positive and significant on food demand for carbohydrate nutrition and animal protein. previous studies in vietnam have found that the effect of increasing household income is to increase consumption of high-value foods such as fresh vegetables, fish, milk, chicken and fruits (bairagi, mohanty, baruah, & thi, 2020). in the philippines, the elasticity of demand for rice in low-income households is more elastic than in high-income households (valera, mayorga, pede, & mishra, 2022). for households with high incomes, the income effect is illustrated through the types of food commodities consumed such as meat, dairy and aquatic products that have high prices (ren, zhang, loy, & glauben, 2018). the income effect has also increased farmers' access to nutritious food purchased from the market, which has led to an increase in household expenditure on food and nutrients such as iron, calories, zinc, and vitamin a (chrisendo et al., 2020). access to credit has a positive and significant regression coefficient for the food consumption expenditure of farming households. the results of this study are consistent with the findings of ma, nie, zhang, and renwick (2020) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 365-378 374 which show that access to credit increases food consumption expenditure. the availability of access to credit can help balance household consumption patterns (tesgera et al., 2024). the significant and positive role of credit in enhancing household food security is also highlighted in (boltana, tafesse, belay, recha, & osano, 2023). credit access has a positive influence on household nutrition, specifically on calorie intake, zinc, and iron levels, but formal credit access has a negative impact on vitamin a nutrition (chrisendo et al., 2020). the importance of credit access for agricultural households was found in the study of salima, manja, chiwaula, and chirwa (2023) that access to formal credit has a positive impact on household food security, especially during droughts and floods. age has a positive and significant effect on the per capita food consumption expenditure of farming households. this finding is consistent with previous studies that show the age of the household head has a positive effect on food expenditure (ramdhanie et al., 2017). the above findings are also supported by lasitya et al. (2022) which found that the age of the household head has a positive and significant impact on the expenditure on protein-rich food. in the elderly, the main food demand is healthy food based on recommendations from health institutions (adebayo et al., 2017). in this regard, an increase in the aged population has a significant effect on the diversity of food consumption in urban areas, but this condition does not apply to the rural population because it can lead to a decrease or increase in the consumption of certain food products (li, chen, ren, & glauben, 2024). the above findings indicate that age structure can have positive or negative effects on food demand and food expenditure. gender has a negative and significant effect on per capita food consumption expenditure of farming households. this finding indicates that households headed by women tend to have higher food consumption expenditure compared to other households. this is likely related to the role of women in determining family nutrition (lecoutere & jassogne, 2019). it is related to gender where women are the determinants of healthy food consumption (adebayo et al., 2017). within a household, women are significantly more likely than men to prioritize plant-based protein consumption and sustainable food practices (culliford & bradbury, 2020). previous studies have found that the effect of gender in female-headed households on family nutrition intake can be positively or negatively influenced by employment type. for female-headed households with off-farm jobs, there is a significant positive effect on family nutrition (vitamin a, zinc, calories, and iron). for households headed by females who only work on farms, the gender effect is negative and significant on family nutrition (chrisendo et al., 2020). this finding indicates that the effect of gender on food expenditure can be positive, where male household heads significantly increase food expenditure, or negative, where female household heads are the determinants of food expenditure. the results of the gómez-valle (2023) found that women's income increased the amount of household food expenditure significantly more than men's income. in contrast to the above findings, mulamba's (2022) study found a positive and significant effect of gender on household food expenditure. this finding indicates that food expenditure in male-headed households tends to increase when compared to female-headed households. ahmed (2023) found that the increase in expenditure of male-headed households was due to an increase in the purchase of food outside. from the findings of previous studies, it can be shown that the effect of gender on food expenditure varies, with a significant positive or negative effect. however, gender has no significant effect on household expenditure inequality (jayasinghe, 2019). location has a positive and significant effect on household food consumption expenditure. the results of this study are consistent with the findings of htar et al. (2022), which show that as households move closer to urban areas, per capita food expenditure tends to decrease. some researchers, li et al. (2024) that the location effect is negative on food expenditure; therefore, household food expenditure in urban areas is greater than in rural areas. furthermore, the study results of ahmed (2023) show that the location variable has a negative, but insignificant coefficient on household food expenditure in the form of processed food commodities from outside. marital status has a positive and significant effect on household food consumption expenditure. the results of this study are consistent with the findings of rashid et al. (2024). additionally, kostakis et al. (2020) also found that marital status has a positive impact on per capita food consumption. in general, researchers will find that marital status has an effect on household food expenditure. furthermore, zanquet, tezza, and kieling (2024) found that marital status has an effect on food choices, the usefulness of commodities purchased, and the perceived price of online food products. the effect of marital status on household food expenditure may vary among studies due to other factors such as family size and age variables that can influence it, such as the results of the study of omotoso, aj, ma, and om (2022) found that marital status has a positive but insignificant effect on household food expenditure. mulamba (2022) found that households where the head of the household is married tend to experience a decrease in income contribution to food expenditure. education has a positive and significant regression coefficient for the per capita food consumption expenditure of farming households. this finding means that the higher the education level of the household head, the higher the per capita food consumption expenditure, assuming ceteris paribus. household heads with higher education are more selective in purchasing quality food products. salo et al. (2021) found that household heads with higher education spend more on purchasing quality food. this study's findings are also supported by the research of htar et al. (2022), which shows that the education level of the household head has a positive impact on food expenditure. previous researchers have found that formal education of the household head has a positive and significant effect on increasing household food expenditure through increased demand for each food commodity and household diet (pallegedara, 2019). the positive effect of education on food demand is in the form of the consumption of nutritious food products. the study results of islam and sim (2021) found that education has a positive and significant effect on the percentage of consumption of healthy food products in households. consumption of healthy food among highly educated households is 31.5% higher than among other households. in addition to affecting consumption, education also influences higher income, enabling households to purchase various food products in the market through offline or online channels. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 365-378 375 the quantile regression estimates, it was found that the income elasticity (e) values in the five quantile groups are e < 1. (table 6), this value indicates the applicability of engel's law in this study. the above findings are in line with the study of kostakis et al. (2020) that there is a positive and significant relationship of total income with food expenditure or an inverse u-shaped relationship. in other words, there is a non-linear relationship between the share of food budget in total expenditure and income. ren et al. (2018) found the applicability of engel's law in rural china. a one percent increase in income results in an increase in food expenditure of 0.69 percent among low-income households, whereas in high-income households, a one percent increase in income leads to a 0.12 percent rise in food expenditure. 5. conclusion this study analyzes: 1) the effect of technical efficiency variables, agricultural diversification, off-farm work, land tenure status, credit access, education, age, gender, and food consumption expenditure on household income of paddy field farmers; 2) the influence of household income, credit access, education, age, gender, village/city (location), and marital status on food consumption expenditure. data analysis using tsls is employed because household income and food consumption expenditure are endogenous variables, and the use of ols could cause bias. this study also calculates income elasticity using quantile regression to assess the applicability of engel's law. based on the analysis, the following findings were obtained: 1) variables such as food consumption expenditure, technical efficiency, off-farm work, diversification in agriculture, land tenure status, access to credit, and education have a positive and significant influence on the per capita income of farm households. this indicates that increases in these variables will significantly raise the per capita household income of farmers. conversely, age and gender have a negative and significant effect on household income. 2) variables including per capita income, access to credit, age, location, marital status, and education positively and significantly influence per capita food consumption expenditure of farmer households. this suggests that increases in these variables will significantly enhance food consumption expenditure. in contrast, gender has a negative and significant impact, highlighting the important role of women in farmer households. 3) income elasticity across all quantiles has a value of e 6. implications for research, practice and/or society for further research, it is recommended to analyze the direct influence of food consumption expenditure variables on farmer household income and to examine the indirect effects mediated by health variables on farmer household income. from the above findings, there is a need for government policies related to welfare, such as food price policies, to increase the purchasing power of farming households for quality food products. policies on grain prices should aim to increase the income of rice-farming households. policies targeting increased income for the poor will have a greater impact on improving their food consumption than those aimed at the wealthy. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the universitas negeri padang, indonesia has granted approval for this study on 22 may 2023 (ref. no. 28.02/kepk/unp/iv/2023) transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: conceptualization, definitions, empirical analysis, discussions, sri ulfa sentosa (sus); layout, data collection, hidayatul fitri (hf); data processing, data curation, alpon satrianto (as); techniques analysis, conclusions, urmatul uska akbar (uua); literature collection, project administration, validation, ariusni (aa); literature collection, layout, translation, intan putri yeni (ipy). all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references acharya, k. p. 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(2023). mung bean production as a source of livelihood among farmers in a municipality in the philippines: challenges and opportunities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2), 130–137. 10.55493/5005.v13i2.4779 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction mung bean (vigna radiata l.) is one of the most significant pulses grown in various agro-ecological zones across the globe (mota, balla, & doda, 2021). it originated in india (amaral, ferreira, silva, neves, & demonte, 2017) and is now grown on around six million hectares globally (chauhan & williams, 2018). mung beans are widely cultivated in the united states, australia, china, and the south east asian region, specifically in thailand, the philippines and indonesia (rahmianna, basuki, kote, seran, & rachaputi, 2021). according to the world food organization, 5.3 million tons of mung bean are cultivated each year globally, with asian nations accounting for approximately 90% of the harvested crop (astanakulov, babaev, eshankulov, & turdibekov, 2022); it is regarded as an essential food and cash legume crop in the region (nair et al., 2019). asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 2 (2023): 130-137. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7359-1022 mailto:arjheldomingoii@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 130-137 131 mung bean is a drought-resistant crop (mota et al., 2021) that fits well as a component of cropping patterns in dry areas with a short rainy season and a prolonged dry season due to its superior characteristics, which include a short time to maturity and low input and minimal care requirements (rahmianna et al., 2021; schreinemachers et al., 2019). mung bean is a significant leguminous crop, and its grain is one of the most nutrient-dense foods (astanakulov et al., 2022). for centuries, the therapeutic qualities of this plant have been extensively recognized. the legume is a good source of protein for humans (pataczek et al., 2018) and has antihypertensive, anticancer, hypolipidemic, antibacterial, antioxidant, anti-diabetic, and anti-inflammatory properties (amaral et al., 2017). legumes, such as mung bean, are increasingly recognized as important components of healthy diets, especially as a source of plantbased proteins that contribute to human health and environmental sustainability (farnworth et al., 2020). mung bean also enhances soil fertility (rakhimov, shodiev, & rakhimov, 2022) and reduces the demand for increasingly costly synthetic nitrogen fertilizers because of its symbiotic nitrogen fixation (mohammadzadeh et al., 2022). it has also been noted that incorporating legumes in crop rotations reduces greenhouse gas emissions (farnworth et al., 2020). moreover, mung bean cultivation offers tremendous economic advantages (assefa, dinku, & jemal, 2022). mung bean farming is one important way of saving foreign exchange on food imports in various rice-producing nations (cook, 1995). mung bean cultivation generates money for farmers in a short period of time (pataczek et al., 2018; rakhimov et al., 2022). by maximizing resource utilization to fulfill the community's needs, smallholder production offers the financial and economic potential to alleviate rural poverty and enhance rural incomes (aung & lee, 2021; burhansyah, carolina, & puspitasari, 2021). according to one study, mung bean cultivation may produce a return on investment of 132.66% per hectare (yanos & leal, 2020). thus, increasing the profitability of mung bean production is critical to preserving and enhancing its position in local food and agricultural systems (farnworth et al., 2020). in general, agricultural operations provide revenue to farmers and promote food and nutrition security by providing families with direct access to staples and supplementary food (syafrial, toiba, retnoningsih, purwanti, & rahman, 2022). despite the advantages, mung bean growers are also confronted with the problems of mung bean farming. among these challenges are insects, pests, plant diseases, and uncertain markets with low prices and little market demand (sequeros et al., 2021). inadequate crop management techniques and a lack of quality seeds of improved types (nair et al., 2019), low soil fertility (mota, balla, & doda, 2021), and insufficient fertilizer application are other significant issues (kilmanun, burhansyah, & warman, 2021; mota et al., 2021). additional constraints with this crop include limited access to specific farm inputs, insufficient credit for mung bean farming, insufficient materials, the demand for intensive labor, and climate change (aung & lee, 2021). in the philippines, mung bean, locally known as “mongo,” is one of the crops farmers grow along with rice. mung bean production from july to september 2022 was 1.37 thousand metric tons. this was 0.7 percent higher than the 1.36 thousand metric tons produced during the same period in 2021. with 0.57 thousand metric tons, cagayan valley was the leading mung bean producer from june to september 2022, accounting for 41.5 percent of the country’s overall output. davao region came second with a 12.3 percent share (philippine statistics authority, 2023). the value of mung beans produced in the philippines in 2021 was estimated to be about 2.27 billion philippine pesos. since 2017, the country's mung bean production value has been progressively expanding (statista research department, 2022b). also, about 42,000 hectares of land in the philippines were utilized for mung bean farming in 2021. except for modest drops in 2019 and 2021, the country's mung bean production output has been steadily expanding over the last five years (statista research department, 2022a). mung bean has been subjected to research (dahiya et al., 2015), yet little of its potential has been explored (pataczek et al., 2018). mung bean can be a valuable source of extra revenue for farmers in the municipality of cuyapo, nueva ecija. it is a common legume planted by farmers in the municipality after the first cropping season in the region, owing to its resistance to the dry season. through a cost-return analysis, this research illustrates the promising potential of this crop. moreover, it highlights the production challenges that confront mung bean farmers and recommends solutions to address these concerns. empirical knowledge of mung bean production is necessary to design interventions to increase the volume of production (assefa et al., 2022). therefore, the findings of this research may be utilized by government organizations to assist farmers in increasing their harvest. the results of this research may also make mung bean farming more appealing to farmers in other regions of the philippines as a decent way to make additional income. 2. materials and methods this study utilized a descriptive research design, which is suitable if the study addresses "what" type of research questions (borg & gall, 1989, cited in letchumanan, husain, ayub, kamaruddin, and zulkifli (2022)). a descriptive research design was used since the goal of the study was to describe the profile of farmers involved in mung bean cultivation and identify the challenges they encountered throughout production. the costs and returns of mung bean cultivation have been provided to illustrate the opportunity it may provide farmers as a source of extra income after the main rice cropping season. this research employed both quantitative and qualitative methods to acquire data from respondents. this research used a quantitative technique to gather data on the farmer-respondents' profile variables, their problems, and the cost and return analysis of mung bean production. simultaneously, a qualitative approach was used to better understand the constraints and potential of mung bean cultivation as a source of livelihood among farmers in the municipality of cuyapo, nueva ecija, a first-class municipality in the province. a total of 223.4 hectares of land area have been cultivated for mung bean production in the municipality. the respondents of the study were selected using non-probability sampling. as per the records of the municipal agriculturist office of the municipality of cuyapo, nueva ecija, 477 farmers from 51 barangays are engaged in mung asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 130-137 132 bean production. using raosoft statistical software, the required sample size of respondents for this study was 214. the respondents were randomly chosen from various barangays in the municipality. the researcher considered individuals who were most available during the data-gathering period of the study until the sample reached the desired size. the main data-gathering instrument was a checklist-type survey questionnaire. the validity of the questionnaire was established by asking five experts to examine the questionnaire and its items to determine whether it measured what it was supposed to measure. all suggestions and comments were incorporated into the instrument. for the cost and return analysis, the researcher focused on farmers who had planted at least 1 hectare of mung beans. they were asked to list their expenses, such as farm inputs, farm labor, and other operating expenses, their average production per hectare, and the farmgate price of their mung bean produce. 3. results and discussion 3.1. profile of mung bean farmers table 1 presents the number of years the farmer-respondents had been planting mung beans. table 1. number of years cultivating mung beans. number of years cultivating mung beans frequency percentage less than 5 years 84 39.25% 6 to 10 years 75 35.05% 11 years and above 55 25.70% total 214 100.00% there were 84 respondents (39.25%) who had started to plant mung bean in the last five years, 75 (35.05%) who had engaged themselves in the production for 6 to 10 years, while 55 (25.70%) had extensive experience of 11 years and above. during the dry season in the municipality of cuyapo, nueva ecija, farmers plant rice, mung bean, or other high-value crops. since wide areas of rice fields in the municipality are not irrigated, planting mung beans is a good option because they do not need much water for irrigation, compared to rice crops. thus, many farmers now plant mung bean as an alternative livelihood after the main rice cropping period. farmers who have seen opportunities in mung bean production over the past years are expected to continue to include mung bean in their crop rotation. table 2 presents the land ownership of farmer-respondents who plant mung beans in cuyapo, nueva ecija. of the respondents, 140 farmers (65.42%) were merely tenants of the land they used to plant the legume, while 74 farmers (34.58%) wholly owned the land they tilled. table 2. land ownership. land ownership frequency percentage own land 74 34.58% tenanted 140 65.42% total 214 100.00% due to the increasing value of land, even in rural areas, farmers have only a slim chance of ever owning their own land to cultivate, even in the distant future. depending on their contract, some tenants have to give a percentage of their sales to their landlords. meanwhile, other tenants do not have this requirement, particularly farmers who use only small areas for mung bean production. moreover, regardless of land ownership, farmers must deal with farm needs such as seeds, fertilizers, and labor expenses. table 3 presents the farm area devoted to mung bean production. eighty-two (82) farmer-respondents (38.32%) utilized a farm area of 7,501 to 10,000 square meters for planting mung beans, while 52 farmers (24.30%) planted this legume on more than 10,000 square meters of farmland. meanwhile, a total of 80 farmers (37.39%) planted mung beans on a land area of 7,500 square meters and below. some farmer-respondents said they allotted separate farm areas to the cultivation of rice and mung bean because they produced both crops. table 3. farm area devoted to mung bean production. farm area frequency percentage less than 2,500 square meters 33 15.42% 2,501 square meters to 5,000 square meters 16 7.48% 5,001 square meters to 7,500 square meters 31 14.49% 7,501 square meters to 10,000 square meters 82 38.32% 10,000 square meters and above 52 24.30% total 214 100.00% some farmers who planted mung beans in larger areas wanted to take advantage of the high price of mung beans in the market. meanwhile, some of the respondents opted to utilize smaller land areas because of high production expenses, limited time to tend their farms, and the fear of losing money due to uncertainties in the country’s agriculture sector. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 130-137 133 table 4 presents the source of mung bean seeds planted by the farmer-respondents. most farmers, 160 (74.77%), bought their seeds from private suppliers. according to the farmers, seeds bought from these suppliers have a high germination rate and are certified, which would guarantee a higher harvest volume. meanwhile, 29 farmers (13.55%) utilized the seeds from their last harvests. the challenge of this practice is to maintain the quality of the seeds. mung bean seeds must be properly stored since they are prone to insect infiltration, which would make them useless. on the other hand, only 25 farmers (11.68%) received seeds from the government in the form of a subsidy. the seed source is crucial in mung bean production; farmers would like to use affordable yet high-quality seeds to increase their chances of having a good harvest and income. table 4. source of seeds. source frequency percentage government subsidy 25 11.68% last season’s harvest 29 13.55% bought from private supplier 160 74.77% total 214 100.00% table 5 presents the sources of labor for planting mung beans. as most respondents utilized a farm area of 7,501 square meters to 10,000 square meters for planting mung beans, the large area means the farm owner or tenant cannot do the planting and farm maintenance alone. thus, 168 farmer-respondents (78.50%) hired laborers to help them plant the legume. on the other hand, farmers planting mung beans on smaller land areas could handle the planting task together with their family members. forty-six (46) farmer-respondents (21.50%) opted for this practice. table 5. source of labor for planting mung bean and vegetation maintenance. source frequency percentage hired labor 168 78.50% family members 46 21.50% total 214 100.00% table 6 presents the source of labor for harvesting mung beans. one hundred and fifty-five (155) farmerrespondents (72.43%) hired laborers to pick the dry mung bean pods. table 6. source of labor for harvesting and threshing mung bean. source frequency percentage hired labor 155 72.43% family members 59 27.57% total 214 100.00% harvesting mung beans is a tedious, manual job as laborers must look closely at the plant and ensure that all the dried mung beans are picked. one respondent reported that he hired 20 laborers to harvest one hectare of vegetation, who finished picking mung beans just in time to obtain a high price for mung beans in the market. meanwhile, 59 farmer-respondents (27.57%) said their family members could harvest all the dried mung beans by themselves without paying laborers to perform the tedious task. in this way, they could save an amount of money that they could put towards their basic needs. one farmer said his family members would endure back pain to limit their expenses in mung bean production. mung beans may be harvested up to 3 to 5 times, depending on the maturity of the pods. table 7 presents farmer-respondents’ reasons for planting mung beans. all 214 farmer respondents (100%) said their primary motivation was to earn additional income during the dry season. farmers who cannot afford to plant rice during the dry season see an opportunity to earn by planting mung bean and utilizing their farmlands again a few months after harvesting their rice crop. according to one farmer, the increasing prices of commodities caused by the high inflation rate required them to look for other sources of income to support their needs and send their children to school. this is why even with only a small farmland area devoted to mung bean production, they make the most of it, which is better than doing nothing. farmer-respondents also disclosed that they sell their entire mung bean harvest if the selling price is high enough for them to recover their farm expenses and earn a net profit after almost three months of cultivating the beans. table 7. reasons for planting mung bean. reasons for planting mung bean* frequency percentage additional income during dry season 214 100.00% source of food supply (for household consumption) 50 23.36% way to spend time after rice cropping season 20 9.35% note: *multiple responses. meanwhile, 50 farmer-respondents (23.36%) said they planted mung beans as a source of food for their household. some farmers sell only part of their mung bean harvest and save a percentage for household consumption. according to one farmer, they cook mung beans to eat on ordinary days and whenever they want to. on the other asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 130-137 134 hand, 20 farmer-respondents (9.35%) disclosed that planting mung beans was a way for them to spend time wisely after the rice cropping season. some farmers wanted to stay productive even after the rice harvesting season to stay fit and get rid of bad habits like gambling and other vices. 3.2. cost and return analysis of mung bean cultivation table 8 presents the cost and return analysis of mung bean cultivation for one hectare in the municipality of cuyapo, nueva ecija. table 8. cost and return analysis of mung bean for one (1) hectare (2022). details amount/rate gross income (700 kgs @ php. 70.00/kgs) php. 49,000.00 operating expenses: labor cost 17,600.00 material inputs 5,000.00 total expenses 22,600.00 net income php. 26,400.00 return on investment 116.81% the average harvest volume per hectare among farmer-respondents was 700 kilograms of mung bean, which they sold at php. 70.00 per kilogram. given these numbers, a farmer may earn a gross income of php. 49,000.00 after selling all his mung bean produce. among the operating expenses, the labor costs were recorded at php. 17,600.00, which included payments to hired labor who performed farm work like planting, spraying, harvesting, and threshing. human labor is thus a major component of the cost of mung bean production (pal et al., 2021). in addition, the material expenses amounted to php. 5,000.00 for seeds, pesticides, and insecticides. after deducting the operating expense from the gross income, a farmer earned on average php. 26,400.00 for almost three months of cultivating mung bean. this amount is of great help to farmers in feeding their families, sending their children to school, and buying necessities. the return on investment is recorded at 116.81%, which means farmers could fully recover the expenses incurred in mung bean production. the data analysis reveals that mung bean farming generates both income and employment. however, this scenario is not always the case because the farmer's income still depends on the volume of their harvest and the selling price of their produce. farmers can only hope for good weather, no infestations, and no price drop of mung bean in the market during the harvesting season. 3.3. common problems faced by farmers in mung bean production table 9 presents the common problems faced by the farmer-respondents in mung bean production. all the respondents were asked to check all the problems they had encountered on their farm in the survey questionnaire. table 9. common problems faced by farmers in mung bean production. problems frequency percentage high cost of farm inputs like seeds, insecticides, pesticides, fertilizers 175 81.78% low farmgate price of mung bean harvest in the market 164 76.64% invasion of stray farm animals on the farm 55 25.70% pest infestation 200 93.46% low volume of production 152 71.03% the table shows that 200 out of 214 farmers (93.46%) claimed that pest infestation was the top problem hindering farmers from getting a good harvest. common pests infesting mung bean plants include powdery mildew and powdery worms. farmers deal with these problems by applying pesticides to eliminate pests and stop wider areas from getting infected. another problem that challenged 175 out of 214 farmers (81.78%) was the high cost of farm inputs like seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers. to get a good harvest, farmers must take mung bean cultivation seriously by purchasing quality inputs, yet these are expensive. some farmers borrowed money from various sources to cover the fertilizer and pesticide needs of their mung bean plants and increase their chance of high-volume harvest. meanwhile, 164 out of 214 farmers (76.64%) disclosed that the low farmgate price of mung beans in the market prevented them from earning better profits. one farmer said that despite his large harvest volume, he could not help but feel disappointed he did not have a higher income to support his family's needs. another factor that causes the drop in farmgate price of mung bean is when the mung bean supply begins to peak in the local market, especially when most farmers have started harvesting their produce. moreover, 152 farmer-respondents (72.03%) disclosed that they were challenged by low production volumes. one farmer recalled that he had only harvested 300 kilograms of mung bean from one hectare due to low-yielding mung bean plants, pest infestation, and frequent rain during the plants’ flowering period. in the philippines, the average mung bean yield per hectare is 800 to 1,000 kilograms (serquina, 2018). in other mung bean-producing countries such as myanmar, the average harvest yield of mung bean is approximately 1290 kilograms per hectare (aung & lee, 2021). some 55 out of 214 farmers (25.70%) also claimed that the invasion of stray farm animals on their mung bean farm was a severe problem. farm animals like goats, cows, and chickens may cause significant agricultural damage. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 130-137 135 they may harm the plants by nibbling on plant components or simply trampling them. as a result, animals may cause considerable yield losses and financial problems. 3.4. proposed interventions to address problems in mung bean production based on the problems identified, table 10 presents proposed interventions to address the pressing problems encountered by the respondents in mung bean production. table 10. proposed interventions to address problems in mung bean production. problem intervention person/agency involved high cost of farm inputs like seeds, insecticides, pesticides, fertilizers farm input subsidy from the government department of agriculture/ municipal agriculture office low farmgate price of mung bean harvest in the market marketing support from the government department of agriculture/ municipal agriculture office/ local government unit invasion of stray farm animals on the farm municipality/barangay ordinances to penalize owners of stray farm animals local government unit pest infestation proper pest management training for farmers department of agriculture/ municipal agriculture office low volume of production proper crop management training department of agriculture/ municipal agriculture office with the increasing price of commodities due to inflation, prices of primary farm inputs for mung bean production are also increasing significantly. for farmers who usually borrow capital to finance their farm needs, the high cost of farm inputs is particularly damaging. after they sell their produce, only a small amount of profit remains because they have to pay back the loan they obtained to purchase high-priced farm inputs like seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers. therefore, the government should provide either financial or material subsidies to farmers for their farm input needs to ease the financial burden of farmers in purchasing high-yielding seeds and effective fertilizers, pesticides, and insecticides. regarding the low farmgate price of mung bean produce, the government could also help farmers find institutional buyers to buy their harvest directly and who could offer higher prices. according to some farmers, certain middlemen buyers control the farmgate price of their mung bean produce. they also believe that middlemen earn more than farmers who put so much labor into mung bean production. in addition, the municipal government, particularly at the barangay level, must pass ordinances to penalize the owners of stray farm animals that are caught destroying the mung bean vegetation of farmers. by doing this, farm animal owners are obliged to be more responsible and cautious when leashing their goats, cows, and carabaos in their grazing areas. as most farmers are confronted with pest infestations in their vegetation, the government, through the department of agriculture and or the municipal agriculture office, should conduct proper pest management training for farmers, teaching farmers about the appropriate amount and proper use of chemicals to treat and control pests on their farms. in addition, these agencies may offer crop management training to educate farmers about the proper agricultural practices of planting mung beans and farm maintenance, which would further increase farmers’ chances of a high production volume on their mung bean farm. 4. conclusion aside from planting rice, filipino farmers pursue other opportunities for an additional livelihood. one option is to grow other crops after the rice cropping season. one popular crop in cuyapo nueva ecija is the mung bean, known locally as “mongo,” which is grown in the months after farmers harvest their rice. the legume is highly adaptive to the hot weather and only has minimal farm requirements. the study found that most farmers are tenants, have been cultivating mung bean for at least five years, and devote 7,501 to 10,000 square meters of their land to mung bean production. due to copious farmwork and the tedious manual harvesting of mung bean, most farmers opt to hire laborers to do the work. to ensure a high-volume harvest, farmers also prefer to buy seeds from private suppliers in the market as only a few receive subsidized certified mung bean seeds from the government. the study also found that earning an additional income is farmers’ primary reason for cultivating mung beans. the cost and return analysis presented in the study illustrates the attractive income a farmer may earn from each hectare for cultivating mung beans for a three-month period. this shows that mung bean production has a high economic impact as a source of livelihood for farmers, as well as for the hired laborers living nearby. however, farmers have to deal with certain challenges that may prevent them from making a good profit. these challenges include the high cost of farm inputs, the low farmgate price of their mung bean harvest, farm destruction by stray farm animals, the threat of widespread pest infestation, and low production volumes. to address these problems, relevant government agencies might offer assistance to mung bean farmers through material and cash subsidies, marketing support, and technical assistance that matches their needs. in addition, specialized training in processing mung beans into value-added food products is recommended for inclusion in the extension programs of universities and colleges in collaboration with other agencies. such training may teach farmers different ways to earn more from their mung bean produce. finally, as it is a profitable crop, farmers across the country may consider including mung bean in their crop rotation and benefit from the promising opportunities. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 130-137 136 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. acknowledgement: the author would like to express his gratitude to the municipal agriculturist office of the municipality of cuyapo, nueva ecija, for providing the pertinent data needed to conduct this study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references amaral, a. l., ferreira, e. s., silva, m. a., neves, v. a., & demonte, a. 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(2020). mungbean (vigna radiata) as a source of income among farmers. gatr journal of business and economics review, 5(1), 10–17. https://doi.org/10.35609/jber.2020.5.1(2) https://www.statista.com/statistics/1046163/land-area-used-for-mung-bean-cultivation-philippines/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/752468/philippines-mung-bean-production-value/ https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v12i4.4642 https://doi.org/10.35609/jber.2020.5.1(2 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 39 the dynamic impact of government agricultural expenditure on the agricultural value added in asean-5 countries jirawat jaroensathapornkul faculty of economics, srinakharinwirot university, thailand.  jirawatj@m.swu.ac.th article history abstract received: revised: 23 january 2025 accepted: 4 february 2025 published: 19 february 2025 keywords agricultural value added asean cointegration dynamic impact error correction model government agricultural expenditure indonesia malaysia thailand the philippines vietnam. this study aims to investigate the long-run and short-run impacts of government agricultural expenditure on agricultural value added in asean-5 countries. it employs the augmented dickey–fuller (adf) unit root test to ensure data stationarity and the johansen cointegration and error correction model (ecm) to determine the long-run and short-run relationships, respectively. the findings indicate that, after adjusting the data to first or second differences, they are stationary with statistical significance. based on the johansen cointegration test, the trace test indicates that government agricultural expenditures have a long-run impact on agricultural value added in asean-5 countries. additionally, the estimated parameters of the error correction terms suggest that we can correct the disequilibrium in the short-run impacts. the estimation results of the ecm also show that government agricultural expenditure positively affects agricultural value added under different time-lag conditions. the study concludes that the government has played a significant role in enhancing agricultural value added in asean-5 countries up to the present. as government spending is a part of fiscal policy, it is suggested that the government’s agricultural budget be used more efficiently. this will help implement fiscal policy and boost economic growth in the short term. contribution/originality: this research provides a novel analysis of the impacts of government agricultural expenditure on agricultural value added in asean-5 countries using dynamic econometric models. it highlights the significant role of efficient budget allocation in enhancing agricultural value added and offers valuable insights for policymakers in developing economies. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i1.5305 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: jaroensathapornkul, j. (2025). the dynamic impact of government agricultural expenditure on the agricultural value added in asean-5 countries. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1), 39–49. 10.55493/5005.v15i1.5305 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction government support mechanisms for sustainable agriculture, highlighting that subsidies, programs, regulations, and financial assistance are the primary tools funded through government budgets (barbosa, 2024). regarding the functional classification of government budget expenditures, one important category is that of economic affairs. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 1 (2025): 39-49 26 november 2024 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4178-5321 mailto:jirawatj@m.swu.ac.th https://www.doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i1.5305 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 39-49 40 moreover, the classification of government agricultural expenditure as economic affairs primarily focuses on providing public services for agricultural development (budget, 2022). between 1980 and 1998, the ratio of government spending on the agricultural sector to total spending declined in asia, latin america, and africa (fan & rao, 2003). within asian countries, namely, south korea, thailand, malaysia, and indonesia, this ratio was rather constant from 1972 to 1993 (fan & pardey, 1998). moreover, from 1961 to 1992, this ratio in thailand ranged from 7.4% to 10.4% (yamada, 1998) while the government paid more attention to road system development (fan, jitsuchon, & methakunnavut, 2004). apart from this, the government spending on agriculture significantly boosts sustainable agricultural economic growth in china. this positive impact is especially strong in central regions and areas with a high proportion of primary industry, with agricultural industry integration playing a crucial role in enhancing this effect (zhang & zhang, 2024). currently, based on data from the food and agriculture organization (fao) in asean-5 countries: indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, thailand, and vietnam, the average values of central government spending on agriculture, forestry, and fishery from 2001 to 2021 in thailand, indonesia, malaysia, and the philippines were 4,098.58, 2,244.13, 1,692.05, and 1,591.39 million usd, respectively, while the corresponding average value in vietnam from 2006 to 2013 was 573.75 million usd (table 1). furthermore, the ratio of central government spending on agriculture, forestry, and fishery to total central government spending in thailand, which was about 5.99%, was ranked the highest. although the average value of central government spending on agriculture, forestry, and fishery in indonesia was obviously greater than that of vietnam, the ratio of this value to total central government spending was not much different (table 1). theoretically, government agricultural expenditure has played a role in driving real agricultural gross domestic product (gdp) expansion in the short run and long run. based on the findings of benin and mogues (2012) government spending on rural areas supports economic growth in the agricultural sector and poverty reduction in various countries of the african region, while the extents of its impact were different in each country. moreover, ngobeni and muchopa (2022) revealed that an increase in government agricultural expenditure in south africa, average annual rainfall, and population was shown to ultimately increase the value of agricultural production. on the other hand, research findings in the case of nigeria show both positive and negative impacts on the agricultural sector. tijani, oluwasola, and baruwa (2015) found that public spending positively affected long-run growth in the agricultural sector with statistical significance. abdullahi (2021) also succinctly stated that public spending on agriculture encouraged productivity. ogah, bartholomew, and ezihe (2023) specifically revealed that the public spending on agriculture between 1999 and 2020 (a period when nigeria had a democratic system) positively affected short-run and long-run growth in the agricultural sector with statistical significance. nevertheless, oyinbo, zakari, and rekwot (2013); akinjare, adetiloye, and oladeji (2014); ani, biam, and kantiok (2014); lawal et al. (2019) and omodero (2019) criticized the fact that government agricultural expenditure had no power to drive the engine of the agricultural sector and eradicate poverty with statistical significance. it is also consistent with the main empirical findings in malawi (musaba, chilonda, & matchaya, 2013) lesotho (megbowon, mothae, & relebohile, 2022) and ethiopia (mulugeta emeru, 2023). table 1. central government spending on agriculture, forestry, and fishing in asean-5 countries. year central government spending on agriculture, forestry, and fishing (unit: millions usd) percentage of total central government spending indonesia 2001 2009 874.10 1.77% 2010 2019 3,753.27 2.48% average 2,244.13 2.06% malaysia 2005 2014 1,597.33 3.75% 2015 2021 1,778.16 2.46% average 1,692.05 3.07% the philippines 2001 2009 984.09 4.58% 2010 2021 2,046.86 3.80% average 1,591.39 4.14% thailand 2001 2009 2,029.24 5.75% 2010 2021 5,650.59 6.18% average 4,098.58 5.99% vietnam 2006 2013 573.75 2.39% source: food and agriculture organization (fao). as for the empirical evidence of asian countries, government agricultural expenditure on research and development (r&d) as well as agricultural extension service has had a positive impact on agricultural productivity in india (fan, hazell, & thorat, 1999). this is especially evident in the case study of meghalaya, located in northeastern india, which found that government agricultural expenditure positively affected economic growth in the agricultural sector (de, 2018). meanwhile, the empirical evidence from china revealed that public spending played a significant role asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 39-49 41 in agricultural green total factor productivity (agtfp) (wang, zhu, wang, & zhong, 2022). moreover, the public budget allocated to reduce poverty in china was reserved for a project that encouraged agricultural productivity and allowed the rural economy to recover and develop sustainably (zeng, zhang, li, & sun, 2021). research in asean countries shows that public spending positively impacts agricultural gdp per capita growth in indonesia (armas, osorio, moreno-dodson, & abriningrum, 2012; nugroho, 2017). agricultural function expenditure has also boosted provincial economic growth in indonesia (rajagukguk, 2021). in malaysia, government expenditure significantly influences agricultural production (zhi & wong, 2020). increasing government expenditure is more effective than reducing taxes for economic relief during recessions, as it positively affects most sectoral outputs (hong, 2016). in the asean region, government agricultural expenditure has significant long-term positive effects on real gdp, though short-term effects are not statistically significant (saengchai, sriyakul, & jermsittiparsert, 2019). according to the above research findings, the empirical study of asean-5 countries, i.e., indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, thailand, and vietnam, which are important countries in terms of agriculture, has been limited up to the present. this leads to the main objective of the paper, which is to look into the shortand long-term effects of asean5 governments’ spending on agriculture on the value added by agriculture. the expected benefit of the paper is to affirm the role of government in the achievement of value-added agricultural expansion. 2. materials and methods based on the measurements and sources of data in table 2, the annual frequency of the data and the limited number of observations were considered inappropriate for time series analysis. therefore, quarterly data was extrapolated by using the denton method. apart from this, the econometric models were based on musaba et al. (2013); oyinbo et al. (2013) and ngobeni and muchopa (2022). basically, the procedure began with a hypothesis test for stationary time series data on agricultural value added and government agricultural expenditure in asean-5 countries. the augmented dicky-fuller test (adf test) was utilized for stationary tests. here is an illustration of the regression: 𝛥𝑦𝑗𝑠𝑡 = 𝛼𝑗𝑠 + 𝛽𝑗𝑠𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑗𝑠𝑡 + 𝜗𝑗𝑠𝑦𝑗𝑠𝑡−1 + 𝜑1𝑗𝑠𝛥𝑦𝑗𝑠𝑡−1 +⋯+𝜑𝑝−1𝑗𝑠𝛥𝑦𝑗𝑠𝑡−𝑝+1 + 𝑒𝑗𝑠𝑡 (1) where 𝛼, 𝛽, and𝑝represent constant, coefficient of the time trend variable, and the lag order of the autoregressive process, respectively. 𝛥𝑦𝑡 is the difference between the value in the current period and that of one lag period, namely, 𝛥𝑦𝑡−1 = 𝑦𝑡−1 − 𝑦𝑡−2. e represents the error terms, which are the i.i.d. variables 𝑗 = 1,2, where 1 and 2 are the variable of agricultural value added and the variable of the government agricultural expenditure, respectively. on the other hand, 𝑠 = 1,2,3,4,5 , where 1,2,3,4 and 5 represent indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, thailand, and vietnam, respectively. in a practical way, the adf test was used for data in the form of level, first difference (𝛥), and second difference (𝛥2). the equation 1 was also separated into three types of tests: model with intercept, model with trend and intercept, and model without trend and intercept, which are hence referred to as “intercept,” “trend and intercept,” and “none,” respectively. in the next step, those stationary data were analyzed for the long-run relationship, which is the so-called “cointegration.” the johansen cointegration test was utilized for the cointegration tests. the equations of two likelihood ratio tests, namely, the trace test and the maximum eigenvalue test, are expressed as follows. 𝐽𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒,𝑠 = −𝑇𝑠 ∑ 𝐿𝑛(1 − 𝜆𝑖,𝑠) 𝑛 𝑖=𝑟+1 (2) 𝑧𝐽𝑚𝑎𝑥,𝑠 = −𝑇𝑠𝐿𝑛(1 − 𝜆𝑟+1,𝑠) (3) where 𝑇 the number of observations is, 𝜆𝑖 is the 𝑖 th largest canonical correlation, and r is the number of cointegrating vectors. the null hypothesis shows that there is no long-run relationship between the variable of agricultural value added and the variable of government agricultural expenditure. if either the trace statistic or the maximum eigenvalue statistic is greater than its critical values, the null hypothesis will be rejected. similarly, if the mackinnon-haug-michelis p-value is less than the level of significance, the null hypothesis will be rejected. it also shows whether the null hypothesis is rejected or not when the trend assumption is met (quadratic deterministic trend and no deterministic trend) and when lag intervals are used in the first differences. after the cointegration between those variables was assessed, the short-run relationship between the variable of agricultural value added and the variable of the government agricultural expenditure in asean-5 countries was analyzed by using an error correction model. the model is described as follows: 𝛥𝑦1𝑠𝑡 = 𝛾0𝑠 +∑ 𝜔𝑗𝑠𝛥𝑦𝑗𝑠𝑡−𝑖 + 𝛾𝑠𝐸𝐶𝑀𝑠𝑡−1 + 𝜀𝑠𝑡 𝑝 𝑖=1 (4) where 𝛾0 represents the constant terms, 𝐸𝐶𝑀 represents the error correction terms, and 𝜀represents the error terms, which are i.i.d. theoretically, the sign of 𝐸𝐶𝑀 is expected to be negative. on the other hand, the parameters 𝜔2𝑠 can be positive or negative, according to the main findings of various empirical studies in the previous literature, under a null hypothesis of 𝜔2𝑠 = 0. on the top of that, lagrange multiplier (lm) test for residual serial correlation in a vector error correction model (vecm) was used to see if there was evidence of autocorrelation in the residuals. the white test was also utilized for vec residual heteroskedasticity tests (levels and squares). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 39-49 42 table 2. variables, descriptions, measurement, and sources. variable description measurement source 1sy value added in agriculture, forestry and fishing in country s , where s = 1,2,3,4, and 5. item code: 22016, value added in 2015 us$ prices. faostat (2023) 2sy central government spending on agriculture, forestry, and fishing in country s , where s = 1,2,3,4, and 5. item code: 23161, value added in 2015 us$ prices. faostat government expenditure statistics pertain to the central government subsector. the central government subsector consists of the institutional unit(s) of the central government plus those nonmarket non-profit institutions (npis) that are controlled by the central government. the political authority of central government extends over the entire territory of the country. it is generally composed of a budgetary central government, extrabudgetary units, and social security funds (unless a separate subsector is used for social security funds). faostat (2023) note: 1 = indonesia. 2 = malaysia, 3 = the philippines, 4 = thailand, and 5 = vietnam. 3. results and discussion according to the adf test results from three types of tests: “intercept,” “trend and intercept,” and “none,” mackinnon one-sided p-values indicated that almost all time series data in the form of levels of agricultural value added (𝑦11, 𝑦14, 𝑦15)and government agricultural expenditure in asean-5 countries (𝑦21, . . . , 𝑦25)were not stationary with statistical significance at the 0.05 level, except those of malaysia (𝑦12)and the philippines (𝑦13), in the test of the “intercept” model. nevertheless, after all data were adjusted to be in the form of the first or second difference (𝛥𝑦, 𝛥2𝑦), they were found to be stationary with statistical significance at the 0.05 level (table 3). since the second difference data sets were employed for the error correction model of each country, the cointegration test was basically run by using the first difference data sets (𝛥𝑦1𝑠 and 𝛥𝑦2𝑠). the trace test and the mackinnon-haug-michelis p-values show that government spending agricultural has an long-term effect on the value added to agriculture in asean-5 countries. this effect is statistically significant at the 0.05 level. these results are presented under the conditions of trend assumption (quadratic deterministic trend and no deterministic trend) and lag intervals (1 to 5, 7, 9, 13, and 17) in first differences (table 4). it corresponds with the empirical evidence of saengchai, sriyakul, & jermsittiparsert (2019) which presented the results of the asean region. as for the short-run impact, the estimation results of the error correction model for all countries are statistically credible. the reason for this is that the lm test for residual serial correlation in a vecm residual heteroskedasticity test did not show any signs of autocorrelation or heteroskedasticity in the residuals. furthermore, the sign of the estimated parameter of error correction terms (𝛾1, . . . , 𝛾5) implies that disequilibrium in the short-run impacts can be corrected with statistical significance at the 0.05 level. as for the estimation results of 𝜔2𝑠, the government agricultural expenditure positively affects the agricultural value added in asean-5 countries with statistical significance at the 0.05 level (table 5). this is consistent with the research findings in indonesia of the world bank (2010); armas et al. (2012); nugroho (2017) and rajagukguk (2021) as well as the research findings in malaysia of zhi and wong (2020) and hong (2016). apart from this, the estimation results of 𝜔21, 𝜔22, 𝜔23, 𝜔25imply that the time lag of government agricultural expenditure impact on the agricultural sectors of indonesia and vietnam is just 1 quarter, while the time lags of such an impact in malaysia and thailand are 2 and 4 quarters, respectively, with statistical significance at the 0.05 level. unfortunately, the estimation results of 𝜔24 (the philippines) failed to reject the null hypothesis from 1 to 4 quarters of time lag with statistical significance at the 0.05 level (table 5). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 39-49 43 table 3. results of augmented dickey–fuller (adf) unit root test (in levels, 1st difference, and 2nd difference). variables model augmented dickey-fuller test statistics levels mackinnon onesided p-values 1st difference ( ) mackinnon onesided p-values 2nd difference ( )2 mackinnon one-sided pvalues indonesia 11y intercept 1.5337 0.9992 -1.3279 0.6114 -4.8389 0.0002** trend and intercept -2.4623 0.3452 -2.4232 0.3644 -4.8125 0.0013** none 2.2731 0.9941 1.1339 0.9320 -4.5587 0.0000** 21y intercept 0.1844 0.9695 -2.3589 0.1575 -4.7889 0.0002** trend and intercept -0.9757 0.9397 -3.7841 0.0244** -4.6017 0.0025** none 0.8829 0.8969 -2.1774 0.0294** -4.8164 0.0000** malaysia 12y intercept -3.0447 0.0357** -2.5443 0.3067 -5.1783 0.0000** trend and intercept 0.1538 0.9972 -4.0310 0.0120** -5.1459 0.0004** none 1.2483 0.9448 -1.2837 0.1819 -5.0162 0.0000** 22y intercept -0.3493 0.5556 -3.1097 0.0304** -3.9438 0.0030** trend and intercept -2.5443 0.3067 -3.7173 0.0277** -3.9057 0.0172** none -0.3493 0.5556 -3.1344 0.0021** -3.9455 0.0002** the philippines 13y intercept -3.4211 0.0135** -2.1148 0.2397 -4.2599 0.0011** trend and intercept -0.5744 0.9773 -4.0678 0.0108** -4.2515 0.0066** none 1.1712 0.9366 -1.4399 0.1387 -4.1477 0.0001** 23y intercept -1.9962 0.2879 -3.8058 0.0045** -3.6802 0.0066** trend and intercept -1.6268 0.7722 -4.0595 0.0111** -3.6510 0.0330** none 0.6590 0.8561 -3.6426 0.0004** -3.7147 0.0003** thailand 14y intercept -2.0387 0.2700 -3.8225 0.0043** -2.8682 0.0544 trend and intercept -1.8176 0.6855 -4.1148 0.0095** -2.8435 0.1873 none 1.7852 0.9813 -3.2351 0.0016** -2.8893 0.0044** 24y intercept -0.3662 0.9084 -3.3502 0.0163** -2.7348 0.0734 trend and intercept -2.2919 0.4325 -3.3466 0.0674 -2.7290 0.2287 none 1.1630 0.9356 -3.0311 0.0029** -2.7550 0.0065** vietnam 15y intercept 2.3327 0.9999 -1.2289 0.6554 -3.7243 0.0065** trend and intercept 1.3507 1.0000 -2.1354 0.5146 -4.3946 0.0051** none 2.2193 0.9930 0.5586 0.8336 -3.6580 0.0005** 25y intercept -1.2161 0.6610 -2.9617 0.0452** -4.2300 0.0015** trend and intercept -1.1196 0.9159 -3.6574 0.0343** -4.1814 0.0092** none -0.3180 0.5663 -3.0691 0.0028** -4.1521 0.0001** note: the asterisk ** denoted statistically significant at the 0.05 level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 39-49 44 table 4. results of johansen cointegration test. variables trend assumption lags interval (in 1st differences) hypothesized number of cointegration conclusion none at most 1 trace statistic mackinnon-haugmichelis p-value trace statistic mackinnonhaug-michelis pvalue indonesia 11y and 21y quadratic deterministic trend 1 to 7 67.3422 0.0000 16.4080 0.0001 trace test indicates 2 cointegrating equations at the 0.05 level malaysia 12y and 22y quadratic deterministic trend 1 to 5 50.5318 0.0000 20.4916 0.0000 trace test indicates 2 cointegrating equations at the 0.05 level the philippines 13y and 23y quadratic deterministic trend 1 to 13 35.3924 0.0001 16.4165 0.0001 trace test indicates 2 cointegrating equations at the 0.05 level thailand 14y and 24y quadratic deterministic trend 1 to 9 37.2793 0.0000 12.0680 0.0005 trace test indicates 2 cointegrating equations at the 0.05 level vietnam 15y and 25y no deterministic trend (restricted constant) 1 to 17 50.0580 0.0000 13.6085 0.0068 trace test indicates 1 cointegrating equation at the 0.05 level note: since the 2nd difference data sets are employed for the error correction model in each country, the 1st the cointegration test is basically run by the 1st difference data sets. p-value represented. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 39-49 45 table 5. estimation results of error correction model. variable 2 1sty indonesia ( )1s = malaysia ( )2s = the philippines ( )3s = thailand ( )4s = vietnam ( )5s = constant 5.3279 (0.6090) -0.0207 (-0.0064) -0.9858 (-0.3196) 0.1027 (0.0190) trend -0.0953 (-0.4835) 0.0057 (0.0840) 0.0573 (0.8698) -0.0015 (-0.0140) 1stecm − -0.2756 (-2.6314) ** -0.3444 (-5.0808) ** -0.4387 (-3.4683) ** -0.3103 (-4.5391) ** -4.9523 (-3.3938) ** 2 1 1sty − -0.0378 (-0.2344) 0.8558 (8.4015) ** 1.0236 (7.1513) ** 0.7741 (6.6170) ** 5.1046 (4.2773) ** 2 1 2sty − 0.1942 (1.2176) 0.1542 (2.0689) ** 0.3465 (1.8576) * 0.2117 (1.4457) 5.1931 (3.3410) ** 2 1 3sty − 0.2666 (1.7178) * 0.1565 (2.1002) ** 0.3558 (1.8882) * 0.1809 (1.3079) 4.6731 (3.1932) ** 2 1 4sty − -0.0860 (-0.5924) -0.6560 (-8.7847) ** -0.8875 (-4.7401) ** -0.3427 (-2.4461) ** 3.4586 (2.3398) ** 2 1 5sty − 0.09814 (0.6531) 0.5735 (6.2352) ** 1.0968 (4.9788) ** 0.4960 (3.5363) ** 5.0981 (4.3442) ** 2 1 6sty − 0.1636 (1.0958) 0.2196 (0.9525) 0.0614 (0.5826) 5.3843 (3.1130) ** 2 1 7sty − 0.2581 (1.8300) * 0.2212 (0.9581) 0.0824 (0.8252) 2.1294 (1.2100) 2 1 8sty − -0.6894 (-2.9935) ** -0.2724 (-2.7284) ** 4.9761 (2.4458) ** 2 1 9sty − 0.8042 (3.6170) ** 0.2950 (3.3312) ** 2.9457 (1.4247) 2 1 10sty − 0.0877 (0.5511) 5.3321 (2.5681) ** 2 1 11sty − 0.0784 (0.4935) 1.4798 (0.6711) 2 1 12sty − -0.4078 (-2.5539) ** 7.0141 (2.7959) ** 2 1 13sty − 0.42792 (3.1702) ** 2.3708 (0.8607) 2 1 14sty − 1.5935 (1.9217) * 2 1 15sty − -1.6864 (-1.1009) 2 1 16sty − 3.3689 (1.8514) * 2 1 17sty − -1.3419 (-0.9127) 2 2 1sty − 0.2026 (2.3002) ** 0.1919 (1.6345) 0.15419 (0.9947) 0.1693 (1.2242) 5.2409 (2.1101) ** 2 2 2sty − 0.1868 (2.2469) ** 0.1786 (1.7446) * 0.2021 (1.0834) 0.1815 (1.3133) 1.6678 (1.1847) 2 2 3sty − 0.1767 (2.2151) ** 0.1785 (1.7434) * 0.1745 (0.9411) 0.1475 (1.1725) 4.0854 (2.1460) ** 2 2 4sty − 0.1038 (1.8959) * -0.0731 (-0.7137) 0.2498 (1.3155) 0.4244 (3.3423) ** -0.8101 (-0.4001) 2 2 5sty − 0.0765 (1.4396) 0.2643 (2.3111) ** 0.0719 (0.2581) 0.0028 (0.0146) 3.9327 (1.7307) * 2 2 6sty − 0.0692 (1.3556) 0.1185 (0.4320) 0.0772 (0.6108) -0.1278 (-0.0625) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 39-49 46 table 5. continue variable 2 1sty indonesia ( )1s = malaysia ( )2s = the philippines ( )3s = thailand ( )4s = vietnam ( )5s = 2 2 7sty − 0.0561 (1.1479) 0.0776 (0.2784) 0.0538 (0.4476) 5.5263 (1.6731)* 2 2 8sty − 0.4179 (1.4646) 0.4397 (3.6451)** -5.2417 (-1.4178) 2 2 9sty − -0.0959 (-0.3248) -0.0971 (-0.7430) 5.2453 (1.7765)* 2 2 10sty − 0.0372 (0.2071) 1.6141 (0.9585) 2 2 11sty − 0.0151 (0.0834) 5.4840 (2.1071)** 2 2 12sty − 0.3860 (2.1058)** -1.1111 (-0.3925) 2 2 13sty − -0.1676 (-1.0158) 5.6040 (2.6373)** 2 2 14sty − 1.6671 (1.6546) 2 2 15sty − 2.9075 (2.3314)** 2 2 16sty − 1.5062 (1.1648) 2 2 17sty − 3.1032 (2.1394)** r-squared 29.5910 88.7534 88.6364 85.1106 98.2266 s.e. equation 28.3002 12.1784 9.0726 17.4973 10.1973 observations 63 73 65 69 45 p-value lm test (lag h) 0.0698 (h=7) 0.4536 (h=5) 0.2320 (h=13) 0.8760 (h=9) 0.9057 (h=17) p-value white test (joint test) 0.5953 0.1875 0.2378 0.8583 n/a note: number in parenthesis means t-statistics. the asterisk ** and * denoted statistically significantly at the 0.05 and 0.10 level, respectively. lm test at lag h represents vec residual serial correlation lm tests. the null hypothesis is also no serial correlation at lag h. white test represents vec residual heteroskedasticity tests without cross terms (levels and squares) in all almost countries except white test in case of malaysia. we use the test with cross terms (levels and squares). n/a means the estimated model doesn’t show a positive or non-negative argument. from an econometrics perspective, we describe the impact of government spending on the development of the agricultural sector in asean-5 countries as follows: from 2000 to 2012, indonesia’s agricultural policy focused on revitalizing the sector by reinstating fertilizer subsidies, increasing spending on extension services, research and development (r&d), and irrigation, and implementing trade controls and tariffs. from 2012 to 2023, the focus shifted to achieving self-sufficiency in staple foods. key measures included enhancing indonesia logistics bureau’s role in rice imports, distributing rice at low prices through programs, increasing input subsidies, providing machinery grants to farmers, and launching the “food estate” program (oecd, 2023). nonetheless, the world bank (2010) remarked that despite a significant rise in government agricultural spending over the past decade, a substantial portion of this expenditure was directed towards subsidizing private inputs. based on the assessment by the world bank (2019) unlike many governments in developing countries, malaysia’s government avoided damaging the agricultural sector through taxation, instead reinvesting significant revenue back into it. the world bank recognized the successful transformation that resulted from their substantial investments in agricultural and rural infrastructure from 2010 to 2020. agriculture boosted food supplies, foreign exchange earnings, and labor for other sectors. as the sector matured, malaysian agricultural firms became transnational companies. rising farmer incomes also stimulated the manufacturing sector and revitalized rural areas and small towns. the philippine government supports agricultural development through initiatives like irrigation development, land distribution, agricultural loans, agrarian reform, and rice distribution (mapa et al., 2020). the world bank (2007) emphasized that improving the composition of budget spending, rather than increasing its level, would enhance propoor agricultural growth. effective reallocation of the agricultural budget requires a strategic adjustment in the rice self-sufficiency policy. briones (2021) suggested focusing government resources on public goods that boost long-term agricultural productivity, such as r&d. in 2022, thailand’s government allocated agricultural funds to land management, farmer support, price stabilization, pest control, forestry, fishery, and r&d (budget, 2022). the long-term goal is for thai farmers to escape the middle-income trap, aiming for a per capita income of over 13,000 us$ by 2036, with improved specialization, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 39-49 47 efficient farmer institutions, and high-quality agricultural products (office of agricultural economic, 2017). however, the oecd (2020) remarked that agricultural productivity remains low compared to other sectors, and shifting labor to other industries could boost overall productivity. temsumrit and sriket (2023) pointed out that the agriculture sector has been neglected in favor of the industrial sector for decades. vietnam’s agricultural policy has focused on enhancing water productivity and supporting agricultural services while maintaining irrigation spending (world bank, 2017). from 2010 to 2020, various incentives, such as tax/fee exemptions, credit access, land access, technology transfer, and trade promotion, attracted private sector investment in agriculture (diem & thuy, 2019). the socio-economic development strategy (2021-2030) envisions vietnam becoming a green, sustainable, and modern industrialized nation (linh, 2021). significant government efforts aim to achieve agricultural growth, improve farmers' livelihoods, and develop rural areas (ngoc, hung, & pham, 2021). the asian development bank (2022) recommended preparing a transition strategy to address the impact of technological progress on traditional agricultural workers. 4. conclusion and policy implication from 2001 to 2021, the ratio of central government spending on agriculture, forestry, and fishery to total central government spending in thailand, which was about 5.99%, was ranked the highest. although the average value of central government spending on agriculture, forestry, and fishery in indonesia was obviously greater than that of vietnam, its ratio to total central government spending was not much different. theoretically, government agricultural expenditure has played a role in driving real agricultural gdp expansion. at the same time, the empirical evidence of asean-5 countries, i.e., indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, thailand, and vietnam, which are significant countries in terms of agriculture, has been limited up to the present time. so the main goal of the study is to look into how government spending on agriculture affects agricultural value added in asean-5 countries in the short and long term. as for the results, the trace test statistics from the johansen cointegration test indicate that government agricultural expenditures have a long-run impact on the agricultural value added. the error correction model’s estimation results suggest that we can correct the disequilibrium in the short-run impacts. government agricultural expenditure positively affects the agricultural value added in the short run. moreover, the time lag of the government agricultural expenditure impact on agricultural sectors in indonesia and vietnam is just 1 quarter, while the time lags of such an impact in malaysia and thailand are 2 and 4 quarters, respectively. therefore, the government has played a significant role in enhancing agricultural value-added in asean-5 countries up to the present. to achieve the vision and mission of agricultural policy in each country, the government should effectively allocate its agricultural expenditure to agricultural development programs. additionally, as government expenditure is an instrument of fiscal policy, the efficient allocation of the government agricultural budget can support the achievement of fiscal policy implementation to boost economic growth in the short run in asean-5 countries. on the other hand, the remarks from the previous literature should be noted: a large share of indonesia’s government agriculture expenditure has been allocated to subsidizing private input; vietnam still needs to make ready a transition strategy to succeed in dealing with the effects of technological progress on traditional agricultural workers; boosting the agricultural sector’s productivity has been a longstanding policy agenda in thailand; and the reallocation of the philippines’s agricultural budget expenditures would produce greater effects with a reform of the policy of rice self-sufficiency. funding: this research is supported by faculty of economics, srinakharinwirot university (grant number: 479/2566). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the srinakharinwirot university, thailand has granted approval for this study on 14 july 2023 (ref. no. swuec662013). transparency: the author states that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. references abdullahi, s. a. 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http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/617611574179512389/agricultural-transformation-and-inclusive-growth-the-malaysian-experience http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/617611574179512389/agricultural-transformation-and-inclusive-growth-the-malaysian-experience https://doi.org/10.3390/su13115766 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299070 https://doi.org/10.36877/mjae.a0000158 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 49 evaluation of nguni cattle performance from communal property associations and private ownership types across three ecological zones of mpumalanga province, south africa j.m. samboa,b o. tadaa t. chituraa n. mararakanyec adepartment of agricultural economics and animal production, faculty of science and agriculture, university of limpopo, private bag x1106, sovenga 0727, south africa. banimal research, department of agriculture, rural development, land and environmental affairs, private bag x9019, ermelo 2350, south africa. cinformation services, department of agriculture, rural development, land and environmental affairs, private bag x9019, ermelo 2350, south africa.  teedzai.chitura@ul.ac.za (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 6 october 2022 revised: 31 january 2023 accepted: 17 february 2023 published: 22 march 2023 keywords age at first calving birth weight weaning weight communal property association conception rate ecological zones nguni cattle private farming enterprise. nguni cattle in south africa are diminishing at the expense of exotic breeds and crossbreeds. therefore, the industrial development corporation and mpumalanga province department of agriculture adopted the nguni cattle conservation project. herds of 30 heifers and a bull were allocated to 34 communal property associations (cpas) and 40 private farms. this study aimed to evaluate growth and reproductive performance across three ecological zones and two ownership patterns. nine cpas and nine private farms were sampled. age at first calving, conception, calving, and weaning rates were determined from production records, while calf birth and weaning weights were digitally measured. data was analyzed using two-way analysis of variance (anova) with tukey’s honestly significant difference (hsd) used for mean separation. significant differences were observed across ecological zones for age at first calving, weaning rate, and birth and weaning weights (p < 0.05). concerning age at first calving, the midveld ecological zone performed best (24 months) for both ownership types compared to the highveld (28.09 months private, 26.00 cpa) and lowveld (28.35 months for both ownership types). highveld performed higher on birth weight (25.35 kg) and weaning rate for private (93%) and cpa (80%). lower birth weights were observed in both ownership types in midveld (22.17 kg). the lowveld zone had a higher birth weight (26.80 kg) in cpa. higher weaning weights were observed in private ownership of highveld (190.16 kg) and the lowest (160.39 kg) in the midveld zone. cpas in highveld had higher weaning weights (187.55kg) than in midveld (167.50 kg). the results suggest that nguni cattle respond differently in the various ecological zones of mpumalanga province. contribution/originality: the findings of this study provide information on the production of nguni cattle by farmers in cpas and private farming enterprises, considering the ecological zones of mpumalanga province, south africa. this provides baselines for the formulation of guidelines for the adoption of new technologies in indigenous cattle production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 1 (2023): 49-55. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7187-4088 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9676-7166 mailto:teedzai.chitura@ul.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4330-164x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4229-2748 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 49-55 50 doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4760 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: sambo, j. m., tada, o., chitura, t., & mararakanye, n. (2023). evaluation of nguni cattle performance from communal property associations and private ownership types across three ecological zones of mpumalanga province, south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1), 49–55. 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4760 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the indigenous cattle breeds of southern africa include the nguni, tuli, barotse, tswana, tonga, and mashona (nyamushamba, mapiye, tada, halimani, & muchenje, 2017). however, the nguni cattle breed is the most popular indigenous breed in south africa. it was first introduced by iron age nomads about 600 years ago (bester, matjuda, rust, & fourie, 2003). although details on the origin of nguni cattle are sketchy, they can be traced back to one of the 150 breeds of indigenous african cattle populations or ecotypes (mwai, hanotte, kwon, & cho, 2015). currently, nguni cattle are accepted both locally and internationally by the farming community as a source of important animal genetic material with valuable adaptive traits that make the cattle able to survive and reproduce efficiently in marginally productive lands (sanarana, 2015). nguni cattle can produce high-value and healthy beef under harsh environmental conditions and can tolerate ticks and tick-borne diseases that would otherwise limit livestock production because of the breed’s natural tick immunity (mapholi et al., 2016). the importance of nguni cattle is also evident in the large number of stud herds in the ownership of research institutions and farmers in south africa’s mpumalanga province. one of the biggest challenges threatening the existence of the nguni breed is uncontrolled crossbreeding with exotic genotypes like the hereford, santa getrudis, aberdeen angus, and simmental, especially in communal areas where nguni cattle are prevalent (nyamushamba et al., 2017). this has led to non-descript genotypes of unknown genetic characterization becoming predominant in approximately 66% of all herds owned by emerging farmers in south africa (nyamushamba et al., 2017). the problem with the erosion of the nguni cattle breed and other indigenous breeds relates to the loss of animal genetic diversity. living in a changing world faced with climate change, new or resurgent disease threats, changing market conditions, and changing societal needs means that a gene pool is required for farmers to choose stocks in response to changing conditions (nyamushamba et al., 2017). an attempt to preserve the nguni cattle breed in south africa led the industrial development cooperation (idc) to fund nguni preservation programs across the country, including in the eastern cape (ainslie, 2005; tada, muchenje, & dzama, 2013), kwazulu natal (bayer, alcock, & gilles, 2004), northern cape, free state (de waal, 2014), and limpopo (mapiye, 2017) provinces. this study considered nine communal property associations (cpas) and nine privately owned farming enterprises across the three different ecological zones of mpumalanga province. the following reproductive and growth performance parameters were investigated and compared: age at first calving of heifers, conception rate, calving rate, weaning rate, calves’ birth weight, and weaning weight. 2. materials and methods this study was carried out in mpumalanga province, which is located in the north-eastern part of south africa, as shown in figure 1. it is bounded by eswatini and mozambique to the east, kwazulu natal and free state to the south, gauteng to the west, and limpopo province to the north. the total size of the province is approximately 76 477 km2. the province is comprised of three physiographic regions, encompassing the inland plateau (highveld), the middle plateau (midveld), and the low plains (lowveld). these regions, also known as ecological zones, have a major influence on animal production systems due to their variation in climatic characteristics and other biophysical properties. while the boundaries between the highveld, lowveld, and midveld zones are not clearly defined, it is generally accepted that the mpumalanga highveld is characterized by an elevation greater than 1 200 m above sea level (kimble, cooks, & ferreira, 2014). highveld is the largest and wettest zone with the most fertile deep soils in mpumalanga province. rainfall is generally higher, averaging about 800 mm per annum (schulze, 2010). vegetation in the highveld zone is normally characterized by sourveld grassland with its higher carrying capacity. sourveld grasses are palatable and nutritious during the growing season but are of little value during the dry season, which often requires supplementary feeds (smith, 2006). the lowveld zone lies at an elevation of less than 600 m above sea level and has an annual average rainfall of 500 mm. its geology is underlain by the soft sediments and basaltic lavas of the karoo supergroup, which are extensively intruded by granites. the lowveld zone is characterized by sweetveld tall grasses, which are very sensitive to overgrazing and have a low carrying capacity (smith, 2006). midveld occupies the transition zone between the highveld and the lowveld zones, at an altitude between 600 and 1 200 m above sea level. it is characterized by open grasslands with scattered trees and bushes. the veld type is generally intermediate between sweet and sourveld with characteristics of either of the two veld types, depending on whether the veld is sweet-mixed or sour-mixed (smith, 2006). we used purposive sampling to select 9 cpas and 9 privately owned farming enterprises from a total of 74 nguni preservation program beneficiaries in the province. in purposive sampling, samples are selected according to the purpose of the study and the characteristics of the population (singh & masuku, 2013). the following predetermined characteristics were used for the selection of projects: lifespan (only farming enterprises older than 36 months were considered), farmers’ willingness to participate in the study, and proper record keeping. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 49-55 51 figure 1. location map of mpumalanga province showing the lowveld, midveld, and highveld zones. the reproductive parameters of the nguni cattle were collected using qualitative semi-structured research interviews. semi-structured interviews were conducted in the local siswati language with key informants from the 18 farming enterprises. the informants comprised farmers or beneficiaries of the nguni conservation program, farm workers, and the agricultural extension service with knowledge of the project. the growth parameters (birth and weaning weights) were measured using a cattle weight measuring tape. birth weights were measured within a day of the calves’ birth and repeated five days later. the final birth weight was the average of the initial measurement and the repeated measurement. weaning weights were measured six months after birth and repeated seven days later. thus, the final weaning weight was also averaged. a two-way analysis of variance (anova) without repeated measures was conducted in the xlstat®-student statistical and data analysis tool (addinsoft, 2019), developed as an add-on to the microsoft excel® computer program. an anova is one example of a general linear model (glm) that determines the statistical significance level of the relationship between independent and dependent variables (gomez & gomez, 1984). in this study, the aim was to determine whether cattle reproductive and growth performance traits are affected by the ownership type (cpa or private) across the three ecological zones. we used the factor effect model described in equation 1. 𝛾𝑗𝑖𝑘 = µ + τ𝑖 + ζ𝑗 + τ𝑖 × ζ𝑗 + 𝜀𝑖𝑗𝑘 (1) where 𝛾𝑗𝑖𝑘 is the observations (e.g., conception rate, calving rate, weaning rate, age at first calving, birth weight, and weaning weight), µ is constant, τ𝑖 is the effect of enterprises (cpa and private farms), ζ𝑗 is the effect of ecological zones (highveld, midveld, and lowveld), τ𝑖 × ζ𝑗 is the interaction effect of enterprises and ecological zones, and 𝜀𝑖𝑗𝑘 is the residual error. an anova model was constructed with the main effects and interactions of the ownership types and ecological zones as independent variables and the cattle growth and reproductive performance traits as dependent variables. an alpha factor of 0.05 was used as the cut-off for significance determination. thus, if the p-value was less than the alpha factor of 0.05, the null hypothesis that there was no difference between the means was rejected, and we concluded that a significant difference existed in the effect of ownership type and ecological zone on cattle growth and reproductive performance traits. if the p-value was greater than the alpha factor of 0.05, we concluded that the effect of ownership type and ecological zone on cattle growth and reproductive performance traits did not vary. in addition, tukey's pairwise multiple comparison test was used to determine which of the means amongst a set of means derived from anova differed from the rest. while anova results will indicate that at least two groups differ from each other, it does not identify the groups that differ. as a result, anova is generally followed by tukey's pairwise multiple comparison, with the primary aim of identifying the pattern of differences in the results. tukey's pairwise multiple comparison is often performed by evaluating all the pairs of means in order to decide which ones show a significant difference (abdi & williams, 2010). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 49-55 52 3. results nguni reproductive traits (age at first calving of heifers, conception rate, calving rate, weaning rate), performance per ownership pattern, ecological zone, and the interaction of ownership patterns and ecological zones are shown in table 1. similar effects (p > 0.05) of ownership patterns on the age at first calving of heifers were observed. however, the effects differed (p < 0.05) per ecological zone and per the interaction of ownership patterns and ecological zones. heifers in the midveld zone gave birth at an earlier age (24 months) than those in the highveld (27 months) and lowveld (28.3 months) zones. both cpa-owned and private-enterprise-owned heifers in the lowveld zone, together with private-enterprise-owned heifers in the highveld zone, had similar (p > 0.05) ages at first calving of 28.42, 28.35, and 28.09 months, respectively. these differed significantly (p < 0.05) from the age at first calving of heifers in the highveld cpa (26 months), midveld cpa (24 months), and midveld private enterprise (24 months) categories. both farming enterprise types showed similar performance in terms of age at first calving (24 months) in the midveld zone. the conception rate was similar (p > 0.05) for cpa and private ownership, as well as for the highveld, lowveld, and midveld ecological zones. table 1 also shows a similar (p > 0.05) interaction effect of ownership types and ecological zones on conception rate. conception rates in this study ranged from 84–94%, with those in the highveld region under private enterprise management particularly high at 90% and above. although the death of a calf was recorded at birth in a private enterprise of the lowveld zone, this did not significantly affect the statistical results. all other zones, except the private enterprise of the lowveld zone, had 100% calving rates. thus, similar to the conception rate, the calving rate was statistically similar (p > 0.05) across the ownership types and ecological zones. not all the calves that were born reached the weaning stage, which affected the anova results significantly. the weaning rate in this study differed (p < 0.05) according to the ownership type, ecological zone, and interaction of ownership type and ecological zone. the performance on the lowveld (75%) and midveld (76%) was statistically similar (p > 0.05), but differed (p < 0.05) from the highveld zone (86%). the interaction effect differences were mainly between the lowveld cpa (67%) and highveld private enterprise (93%), as well as the midveld cpa (75%) and highveld private enterprises (93%). the growth traits (calving and weaning weights) results of the two-way anova are presented in table 2. the average weights of the calves in the cpa and privately owned enterprises were similar (p > 0.05); however, the weights differed (p < 0.05) per ecological zone. the midveld zone performed poorly compared to the other zones, with average calf weights of 22 kg compared to an average of 24 and 26 kg observed in the highveld and lowveld zones, respectively. the statistical comparison of the highveld and lowveld zones suggests that the results are not significantly different (p > 0.05). the interaction effect of ownership type and ecological zone on calves’ birth weight was similar (p > 0.05), where the average weights ranged from 22 kg in the midveld cpa to 26.8 kg in the lowveld cpa. weaning weights differed significantly (p < 0.05) per ownership type, ecological zone, and the interaction between ownership type and ecological zone. cpa had a lower average weaning weight compared to that observed in privately owned enterprises. the highveld zone performed better, with an average weaning weight of 188 kg compared to 183 and 163 kg observed in the lowveld and midveld zones, respectively. the midveld average weaning weights differed significantly (p < 0.05) from those of the lowveld and highveld. private enterprises in the lowveld and highveld zones performed very well, with average weaning weights of 193 and 190 kg, respectively. both cpa and private enterprises in the midveld zone performed poorly and had significantly lower (p < 0.05) weaning weights compared to the lowveld and highveld private enterprises as well as the highveld cpa. 4. discussion nguni heifers in this study showed a positive performance in terms of age at first calving, which ranged from 24 to 28 months. notwithstanding differences in other environmental and socio-economic factors contributing to cattle productivity, these figures are much better than the 35 months of age at first calving reported for nguni cattle in the southern part of mozambique (brzáková, čítek, svitáková, veselá, & vostrý, 2020) and the 28 to 33 months observed in commercial nguni cattle in namibia (agra, 2005). cows that give birth at an early age have short subsequent calving intervals, signaling high productivity and more desirability (wathes, pollott, johnson, richardson, & cooke, 2014). similar to the findings of tada et al. (2013), we found that ownership type did not play a significant role in influencing the age at first calving. the midveld zone performed better (24 months) for both private and cpa enterprises than other ecological zones in terms of age at first calving. this implies that nguni heifers adapted better in the midveld zone than in the other ecological zones. the conception rate did not vary according to the ownership type, ecological zone, or the interaction between ownership type and ecological zone, with the rate ranging from 84 to 94%. the average conception rates reported in this study are higher than the average conception rate of 56% reported for various breeds in india (bhagat & gokhale, 2016) and the 57.7% conception rate of the non-descript zebu cows in bangladesh (mollah, gofur, asaduzzaman, & bhuiyan, 2015). the high conception rate in this study may be attributed to the fact that the mating of these cows occurred during the same breeding period of the year. it can be concluded that nguni cattle in these three ecological zones and two enterprise types perform well in terms of conception rate. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 49-55 53 table 1. tukey pairwise comparison of nguni reproductive traits (age at first calving, conception, calving, and weaning rate) per ownership type, ecological zone, and interaction between ownership type and ecological zone. reproductive traits statistics ownership ecological zone interactions: ownership/ ecological zone private (p) cpa (c) lowveld (l) highveld (h) midveld (m) cl pl ph ch cm pm age at first calving ls means 26.81a 26.14a 28.38a 27.04b 24.00c 28.42a 28.35a 28.09a 26.00b 24.00c 24.00c standard error 0.27 0.27 0.34 0.33 0.34 0.48 0.47 0.46 0.47 0.48 0.48 conception rate ls means 0.90a 0.87a 0.86a 0.92a 0.87a 0.84a 0.88a 0.94a 0.90a 0.87a 0.86a standard error 0.01 0.01 0.24 0.02 0.02 0.33 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 calving rate ls means 0.89a 0.87a 0.86a 0.92a 0.87a 0.84a 0.87a 0.94a 0.90a 0.87a 0.86a standard error 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.03 weaning rate ls means 0.84a 0.74b 0.75b 0.86a 0.76b 0.67b 0.83ab 0.93a 0.80ab 0.75b 0.76ab standard error 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 note: abc means that do not share the same superscript letter are significantly different (p < 0.05). p – private ownership, c – cpa, l – lowveld, m – midveld, h – highveld, cl – cpaxlowveld, cm – cpaxmidveld, ch – cpaxhighveld, pl – privatexlowveld, pm – privatexmidveld, ph – privatexhighveld. table 2. tukey pairwise comparison of nguni growth traits (calves’ birth and weaning weight) per ownership type, ecological zone, and interaction between ownership type and ecological zone. growth traits statistics ownership ecological zone interactions: ownership/ ecological zone private (p) cpa (c) lowveld (l) highveld (h) midveld (m) cl pl ph ch cm pm calving weight ls means 24.27a 24.32a 26.04a 24.72ab 22.12b 26.80a 25.29a 25.85a 24.09a 22.07a 22.17a standard error 0.68 0.69 0.85 0.82 0.85 1.22 1.20 1.15 1.18 1.21 1.20 weaning weight ls means 181.42a 176.43b 183.97a 188.86a 163.94b 174.24b 193.70a 190.16a 187.55a 167.50bc 160.39c standard error 1.40 1.49 1.82 1.82 1.81 2.71 2.44 2.31 2.49 2.56 2.55 note: abc means that do not share a superscript letter are significantly different (p < 0.05). p – private ownership, c – cpa, l – lowveld, m – midveld, h – highveld, cl – cpaxlowveld, cm – cpaxmidveld, ch – cpaxhighveld, pl – privatexlowveld, pm – privatexmidveld, ph – privatexhighveld. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 49-55 54 previous studies reported low calving rates of cows under communal farming conditions (maciel, fair, scholtz, & neser, 2016). in our study, all heifers in the cpa category that conceived managed to give birth. only one death was reported in a privately owned enterprise. a similar study on the conception rate of beef cattle indicated 71.7 ± 9.5% (samkange et al., 2019), and the overall conception rate of the nguni cows (78.3%) was significantly higher than that of the afrikaner (70.9%) and simmental cows (64.9%) (p < 0.05). apori and hagan (2014) reported calving and conception rates of 74.3 and 76.1%, respectively, in various herds of sanga cattle in southern africa under similar conditions. one of the key production and performance indicators of a cow herd is the number of weaners produced. in this study, most of the cpas suffered a high mortality rate before reaching the weaning stage, as demonstrated by the 74% weaning rate compared to the 84% weaning rate in privately owned enterprises. the mortality rate was higher in the lowveld (25%) and midveld (24%) zones than in the highveld zone (14%). this can be attributed to the preweaning illnesses associated with hotter temperatures, which are more prevalent in the lowveld and midveld zones than the highveld zone where temperatures are mostly cooler. according to australia (2017), heat stress is the major cause of pre-weaning calf deaths, especially for calves exposed in the last six weeks of pregnancy, since it reduces the ability of the calf to acquire passive immunity from colostrum. ownership patterns did not have any significant effect on the growth of the calves; however, body weight did differ according to the ecological zone. it is generally accepted that ecological zone has a large influence on the quality and quantity of forage (everett, 2017), which has a huge impact on milk production (francesco et al., 2019), which, in turn, influences calf body weight. the lowveld is generally characterized by sweetveld-type grasses and was thus associated with higher calf birth weights of 26 kg, compared to the highveld zone (24 kg) and the midveld zone (22 kg). ownership type, ecological zone, and the interaction between ownership type and ecological zone had a significant impact on weaning weight. the cpas generally performed poorly because the low-input communal production system, thought to be ideal for indigenous cattle, is characterized by multiple cattle ownership patterns that affect production efficiency from a management point of view (ainslie, 2005; palmer & ainslie, 2006). differences in calf weaning weight performance across the ecological zones illustrates calves’ sensitivity to postnatal stress and can be attributed to nutritional differences between the ecological zones (mpofu, ginindza, siwendu, nephawe, & mtileni, 2017). the low average weaning weight in the lowveld zone, for example, may be the result of overgrazing, since sweetveld is sensitive to overgrazing during the growth season, which results in low forage quality and quantity. although vegetation in the highveld zone is sour, its ability to produce palatable grazing with a fairly high nutritive value during the growth season and its ability to withstand overgrazing may contribute to the high average weaning weight. in addition, high weaning weights may also be attributed to the low level of heat stress in the highveld zone (australia, 2017). 5. conclusion this study concludes that the growth and reproductive performance of nguni cattle is explained by the ecological zone rather than the ownership pattern in mpumalanga province. although the difference was not statistically significant, the privately owned cattle performed better than the cpa-owned cattle in terms of growth and reproductive performance traits across the three ecological zones. thus more attention needs to be paid to cpas regarding the performance of nguni cattle. strategies should be put in place when allocating nguni cattle to projects in order to ensure similar growth and reproductive performance in different zones. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are 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(2014). heifer fertility and carry over consequences for life time production in dairy and beef cattle. animal, 8(s1), 91-104. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1751731114000755 https://www.britannica.com/science/veld https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-015-0923-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ttbdis.2016.02.005 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-016-1179-2 https://doi.org/10.5713/ajas.15.0002r https://doi.org/10.5713/ajas.16.0024 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-019-01876-4 https://doi.org/10.1186/2193-1801-2-195 https://doi.org/10.1017/s1751731114000755 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 112 developing community-based enterprises from the selected agrarian reform communities in quezon province leomar c. mianoa gino a. cabrerab claire ann m. yaoc chona v. cayabatd aurita a. laguadore a,b,c,d,esouthern luzon state university, lucban, quezon, philippines.  leomar_miano@yahoo.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 3 february 2025 revised: 13 march 2025 accepted: 26 march 2025 published: 3 april 2025 keywords agriculture community-based enterprise entrepreneur food processing product development. this research aims to develop community-based enterprises in agrarian reform communities (arcs) anchored in urban-rural development through climate-resilient agricultural practices in quezon province, particularly in the municipalities of sariaya and dolores. following a community-based participatory action research (cbpar) approach, a needs assessment revealed that local farmers faced significant challenges, including overproduction, low prices, inadequate storage, and limited market access, while a few had ventured into value-added processing. training gaps in food processing, marketing, and business skills were also identified, highlighting the need for capacity-building programs to enhance entrepreneurship and agricultural productivity. through participatory learning trials (plts), a variety of value-added products, such as tomato ketchup, pork tocino, and buko pie, were developed, incorporating local agricultural produce. training focused on food processing techniques, entrepreneurial skills, and good manufacturing practices (gmp). while feedback from participants was largely positive, challenges such as high attrition rates in certain training modules were noted. the study recommends the establishment of shared service facilities for food processing, financial assistance for capital development, and the creation of cooperatives to support sustainable entrepreneurship. additionally, further standardization of products to meet fda requirements, coupled with continuous monitoring and mentoring, is crucial for ensuring the longterm viability of community-based enterprises. contribution/originality: this study is original as it specifically targets agrarian reform community (arc) beneficiaries with the goal of establishing a sustainable community-based enterprise. unlike other agricultural initiatives in quezon province, this project introduces a distinct product innovation tailored to the local resources, cultural practices, and economic needs of the arc members. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5326 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: miano, l. c., cabrera, g. a., yaoc, c. a. m., cayabat, c. v., & laguador, a. a. (2025). developing community-based enterprises from the selected agrarian reform communities in quezon province. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 112–120. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 112-120 mailto:leomar_miano@yahoo.com https://www.doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5326 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 112-120 113 1. introduction agriculture plays a significant role in the development of society. in the philippines, the agriculture sector serves as the economic backbone of societal progress, on which millions of farmers and fisherfolk are dependent. the philippine statistics authority (psa) revealed that this sector contributed an 8.2% share of the country’s gross domestic product in the third quarter of 2022. however, the development pathways of the country are geared towards urbanization and building metropolises, where economic, political, and social activities are concentrated. this has led to densely populated urban centers, such as the national capital region (ncr), which represents 12.37% of the country’s total population (psa, 2021a). interestingly, the poverty incidence in metropolitan manila rose from 6.6% in 2018 to 7.8% in 2021, despite being the richest region in the country (psa, 2021b). the prolonged covid-19 pandemic and the inflation rate were among the attributed causes for these numbers (correa & abueg, 2020). leading the food security and agricultural productivity concerns is the department of agriculture (da), which is mandated to create a sustainable food production system in the post-pandemic recovery period. related to this, the adaptation and mitigation in agriculture (amia) program was institutionalized to achieve a sustainable food supply despite the changing climate that greatly affects the agriculture sector. under this program is the employment of climate-resilient agriculture (cra) technologies that can be adopted by farming and fisherfolk communities across the country. these technologies were anchored on the spatial and temporal analysis conducted in the earlier phase of the amia program. one of the identified sites for interventions by the department of agriculture (da) is quezon province. it is the largest province in the calabarzon region in terms of land area and is considered the food basket of the region due to its production records of crops. strategically located within the province, the identified areas for implementation are dolores, sariaya, and macalelon. agrarian reform communities (arcs) are present in these sites. the da focuses on interventions such as capacity building, household food sufficiency, livelihood, and agri-fishery enterprises. operationalizing the support to the arc, the da will integrate the bp2 program and the climate resilient agriculture (cra) approach applied in amia villages to two selected arcs in quezon province. the convergence of cra is expected to create a sustainable social enterprise adaptive to the changing climate and vulnerabilities of the identified project sites in the province in the context of post-pandemic recovery. in attaining its vision, southern luzon state university (slsu) strives to provide transdisciplinary research and responsive extension services that will advance knowledge creation, social development, and economic growth in quezon province and the calabarzon region. previously, slsu has been engaged in amia programs, particularly in the conduct of climate risks vulnerability assessment (crva) in quezon province and in establishing a community-based enterprise in amia village at san francisco, quezon. likewise, slsu received grants from the bureau of agricultural research of the department of agriculture (da) to produce agricultural products and technologies needed for farming community transformation and technology commercialization. in terms of extension programs, the university is engaged in capacitating communities in the provinces not just in climate change adaptation and resilience, but also in skills development and knowledge enhancement that can be useful for the economic development of partner communities. in this sense, the university is committed to providing its expertise in establishing climate-resilient and sustainable communities in the province. this project was implemented to support the da regional field office iva in executing the community-based enterprise development program in quezon province and to incorporate it into the amia program framework. 1.1. objectives this study has the following objectives. 1. determine the needs of agrarian reform communities (arc) in developing a social enterprise. 2. establish resilient and sustainable arc communities in the two (2) municipalities of quezon province through capacity building; and 3. implement activities that will help the villagers develop social enterprises for the sustainable livelihood of the established climate-resilient arc communities. 2. methodology this project is framed on a multiand interdisciplinary community-based participatory action research (cbpar). cbpar is an applied research methodology that actively involves stakeholders throughout the research process at a community level. this approach is well-suited to the nature of the project since it will enable beneficiaries in arcs to analyze, elicit, and evaluate their situations and to develop a common perspective on their needs, local knowledge, agricultural practices, community potentials, and business endeavors. it is a research framework that aims to address the practical concerns of people in a community and fundamentally changes the roles of the researchers and those being researched. “the cbpar framework begins with a community’s issue, proposed action, or strategy and then supports or enhances this action with research that is community-based and engaged” (burns, cooke, & schweidler, 2011). it is an assessment and learning process that empowers farmers to create the information base they need for participatory planning and action. outsiders (i.e., project team, market stakeholders, extension workers) contribute facilitation skills and external information and opinions. for the development of community-based enterprises, primary data, key informant surveys, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions (fgds) were utilized to come up with a thorough assessment to formulate a baseline for the knowledge, skills, and technology inputs for the beneficiaries. this comprised the participatory rural appraisal (pra) for the needs assessment in which pertinent data sets were collected, including their profiles, training/seminars attended, production volume, marketing strategies, institutional support, and others. this approach asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 112-120 114 led to participatory development cooperation that involved training, seminars, orientation, technology transfer, establishing social support linkages, and other types of interventions in the form of extension activities. in these activities, selected beneficiaries from the arc were provided learning opportunities through seminars, modules, and experiential workshops on community organization and education, and social enterprise development, including livelihood training. 2.1. needs assessment for the development of community-based enterprise for the villager-farmers in selected arcs in quezon province table 1 presents that in the selected arcs in quezon province, there is a strong agricultural focus on coconut (79.10%), vegetables (74.63%), and bananas (70.15%), which rank as the top three products, indicating their prevalence in the province. the profile of the community in terms of agricultural produce reflects a typical agricultural community in quezon province—characterized by coconut produce and typically with vegetables alongside. one of the respondents said that they are producing “lahat po nang nasa bahay-kubo” (referring to all those mentioned in the song bahay-kubo). they mentioned that they are producing vegetables for “pinakbet,” a popular filipino vegetable dish that also includes squash or pumpkin, which is locally known as “kalabasa.” however, respondents cited experiences of wastage of their produce due to very low prices from vegetable dealers. instead of selling them, they dump the vegetables and let them rot to form fertilizers. additionally, animal husbandry, particularly swine (64.18%) and cattle (62.69%), plays a significant role, though it is less dominant than the top crops. moderate engagement is seen with products like citrus, such as calamansi and dalandan (32.84%), ginger (19.40%), and staple crops like corn (16.42%) and rice (16.42%). in contrast, other activities such as beekeeping, mushroom farming, and freshwater fish cultivation (some of the items included in the survey) showed no data, highlighting the selective focus on certain agricultural products over others. the results indicate that coconut is the predominant agricultural commodity produced by the arc beneficiaries, aligning with the report from the province of quezon. quezon is the leading coconut-producing province in the philippines, with a total production of 1,493,066.64 metric tons in 2020 (province of quezon, 2023). due to its physical location, quezon province encompasses 4,167.6421 square kilometers of agricultural land, constituting 47.87 percent of the total provincial area. therefore, it is evident in the current agricultural products produced by the arc beneficiaries. in addition, according to briones (2014), the department of agriculture has identified the following priority commodities: traditional crops, including rice, corn, coconut, and sugarcane; and livestock and poultry, comprising chicken and hogs. high-value crops and fisheries encompass additional commodities. these align largely with the agricultural products produced by the arc beneficiaries. table 1. types of agricultural products available in selected arcs in quezon province. types of agricultural products* f percentage rank cattle 42 62.69% 5 yam/ube 7 10.45% 14 corn 11 16.42% 11 rice 12 17.91% 10 banana 47 70.15% 3 cacao 8 11.94% 12.5 vegetables 50 74.63% 2 coconut 53 79.10% 1 swine 43 64.18% 4 poultry 24 35.82% 6 goat 15 22.39% 8 citrus 22 32.84% 7 ginger 13 19.40% 9 cassava 8 11.94% 12.5 fish and other seafood 1 1.49% 16 others 5 7.46% 15 note: *multiple response (n=67). table 2 shows the data on existing products, highlighting varying engagement levels in value-added processing. interestingly, not all respondents provided data and information on value-adding, indicating their non-engagement in food processing. products from coconut and charcoal are the most prominent, with 8.96% engagement, ranking first. calamansi juice and pepper ranked second, which also showed significant activity (7.46%). “marami kaming citrus dito, dalandan at sintonis,” proves that juice production from citrus fruits has the potential for the community. furthermore, the fgd revealed that farmers are encountering overproduction of dalandan, which leads to wastage of this agricultural produce, as one of the respondents shared, “oversupply po kami, itinatapon lang lalo na ‘yung maliliit, oversized, at may mga batik ang balat.” asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 112-120 115 table 2. existing products in the selected arcs in quezon province. existing products* f percentage rank calamansi juice 5 7.46% 3.5 ube powder 1 1.49% 12 rice delicacies 4 5.97% 5 banana chips 1 1.49% 12 tablea 1 1.49% 12 charcoal 6 8.96% 1.5 cassava starch 1 1.49% 12 pepper 5 7.46% 3.5 yam (ube) jam 2 2.99% 7 virgin coconut oil 1 1.49% 12 coco jam 2 2.99% 7 copra 1 1.49% 12 other coconut products 6 8.96% 1.5 honey 2 2.99% 7 mushroom 1 1.49% 12 note: *multiple responses; others have no response (n=67). on the other hand, products from rice are also among the leading products (5.97%). however, many products, including cornik, vinegar, sardines, and various coconut derivatives like coco sugar and coir dust (some of the items included in the survey), were not identified in the survey, indicating either a lack of production or market demand. lesser engagement (2.99%) is seen in products like yam or ube jam, coco jam, and honey, reflecting modest activity in processing these goods. the low percentages for many items suggest that while there is some diversification in agricultural processing, it is limited, with a few products dominating the landscape. table 3. trainings received and the level of competence of the arc villagers in product and enterprise development. trainings trainings received level of competence from the training* yes no very high high moderate low f % f % f % f % f % f % agricultural production 39 58.21 28 41.79 7 17.95 14 35.90 15 38.46 3 7.69 food processing 13 19.40 54 80.60 2 15.38 3 23.08 7 53.85 1 7.69 good manufacturing practices 11 16.42 56 83.58 1 9.09 4 36.36 6 54.55 food hygiene 14 20.90 53 79.10 2 14.28 3 21.43 9 64.29 philippine mandatory labelling and packaging 17 25.37 50 74.63 1 5.88 3 17.65 10 58.82 3 17.65 application for license to operate business 9 13.43 58 86.57 2 22.22 4 44.45 3 33.33 marketing 27 40.30 40 59.70 4 14.81 5 18.53 14 51.85 4 14.81 cost and benefit analysis 23 34.33 44 65.67 2 8.69 9 39.13 11 47.83 1 4.35 basic accounting 25 37.31 42 62.69 3 12.00 7 28.00 13 52.00 2 8.00 financial literacy 24 35.82 43 64.18 2 8.33 7 29.17 13 54.17 2 8.33 business planning 24 35.82 43 64.18 4 16.67 11 45.83 9 37.50 note: n=67 *from respondents who said “yes.” table 3 indicates the data on training and competence levels across various agricultural and business-related areas. it reveals gaps in both training received and skill proficiency. agricultural production (58.21%) is the most received training. however, most of those who were trained (38.46%) were moderately competent. in contrast, food processing shows a significant training gap, with 80.60% not having received any training, and only 15.38% reaching a skill level of very competent, highlighting a critical need for more comprehensive education in this area. good manufacturing practices (gmp), including sanitation procedures and food hygiene, as well as the philippine mandatory labeling and packaging, also showed low levels of training, with over 74% to 83% of respondents lacking formal training in these areas. these trainings were previously provided by other agencies such as the department of agriculture (da), department of trade and industry (dti), department of labor and employment (dole), and department of science and technology (dost), among others. but even where some training is present, proficiency remains low, as indicated by the limited number of respondents at higher skill levels. in the business domain, areas like marketing, cost and benefit analysis, basic accounting, financial literacy, and business planning have been received by less than half of the respondents (with around 35-40% of the respondents), with skill levels remaining relatively low to moderate. this suggests that even with some training, the depth of knowledge may be insufficient, particularly in more complex areas like business planning, with only 16.67% of those who were trained being highly competent. interestingly, training on the application for a license to operate a business was least received by the arc villagers (13.43%) and with a very low level of proficiency. overall, the data indicates a pressing need for expanded training programs, particularly in food processing, gmp, and applications for licenses to operate businesses to elevate both the participation and proficiency of individuals in these critical areas. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 112-120 116 table 4. training preferences of the arc villagers for product and enterprise development. trainings response scale highly preferred somewhat preferred not preferred f % f % f % ube processing 4 5.97% 31 46.27% 32 47.76% meat processing 15 22.39% 31 46.27% 21 31.34% fruit processing 14 20.90% 36 55.73% 17 23.37% philippine mandatory labelling and packaging 12 17.91% 28 41.79% 27 40.30% vegetable processing 32 47.76% 32 47.76% 3 4.48% good manufacturing practices 15 22.38% 26 38.81% 26 38.81% application for license to operate business 20 29.85% 24 35.82% 23 34.33% marketing 31 46.27% 23 34.33% 13 19.40% cost and benefit analysis 17 25.37% 35 52.24% 15 22.39% product costing 17 25.37% 26 38.81% 24 35.82% basic accounting 21 31.34% 34 50.75% 12 17.91% financial literacy 24 35.82% 28 41.79% 15 22.39% business planning 32 47.76% 21 31.34% 14 20.90% note: n=67. table 4 reveals data on the training preferences of the arc villagers for product and enterprise development. among the villager-farmers who responded to the needs assessment survey, the majority of them highly preferred vegetable processing (47.76%), marketing (46.27%), and business planning (47.76%). meanwhile, most of the respondents somewhat preferred training on meat processing (46.27%), fruit processing (55.73%), philippine mandatory labeling and packaging (41.79%), good manufacturing practices (38.81%), application for a license to operate the business (35.82%), product costing (38.81%), basic accounting (50.75%), and financial literacy (41.79%). on the other hand, most of the respondents do not prefer ube processing (47.76%). these results are one of the bases for the series of training activities for the arc villager-farmers. these data are consistent with the results of the fgd conducted, which revealed that they need training on value-adding, as one of them stressed, “wala po kami masyadong training sa value adding.” as mentioned earlier, their sharing during the fgd circled around vegetable and fruit processing. in addition, respondents considered meat processing as another potentially beneficial training since they look at it as a possible source of additional income: “pwede rin po ang meat processing, pandagdag din po iyan.” meat processing is their alternative when planting and harvesting are off-season: “kung hindi kami nagtatanim, nag-aalaga kami ng baboy.” moreover, labeling was also identified by the farmers: “labeling po, kailangan po nating pangalanan.” table 5. challenges faced by the arc villagers related to product and enterprise development. challenges f percentage rank absence of potable water source 14 20.90% 5 lack of electric supply 3 4.48% 6 scarcity of storage facilities for processed products 37 55.22% 1 limited buyer of processed product 31 46.27% 3 limited access to needed ingredients 25 37.31% 4 insufficient knowledge of advanced technology and online marketing 33 49.25% 2 note: *some respondents have no response (n=67). table 5 indicates data on challenges faced by respondents, highlighting critical barriers to effective agricultural processing and other entrepreneurial pursuits. the most significant challenge is the scarcity of storage facilities for processed products, affecting 55.22% of respondents, ranking it as the top concern. this indicates a substantial bottleneck in preserving and managing the output from agricultural processing, which could lead to product spoilage and financial losses. another major challenge is the insufficient knowledge of advanced technology and online marketing, impacting 49.25% of respondents and ranking second. this suggests that while there may be efforts to engage in modern marketing practices, many are struggling to effectively leverage technology to expand their reach and improve their operations. limited buyers for processed products also present a significant obstacle, with 46.27% of respondents citing this as a challenge, ranking third. this limitation could be linked to the difficulties in accessing broader markets, further exacerbated by inadequate marketing skills and technology use. limited access to needed ingredients is another critical issue, affecting 37.31% of respondents and ranking as the fourth one. this challenge can hinder production processes, limiting the variety and quality of products that can be offered to the market. infrastructure issues such as the absence of potable water sources (20.90%) and lack of electric supply (4.48%) are also highlighted, though they rank lower. in the fgd, it was revealed that some of the respondents received equipment assistance from dost and have loaned capital from the land bank of the philippines (lbp). however, many have argued that capital for a start-up business is at the top of their needs. some also highlighted their concerns for warehouses for the safekeeping of products and equipment, especially during times of calamities, and market linkage to find fair and equitable prices for their products. one of the respondents shared, “kailangan po naming ng market na pagdadalhan, wala po kaming mapagdalahan.” these challenges, while affecting a smaller portion of the respondents, can have severe impacts on the feasibility and sustainability of agricultural processing activities. overall, the challenges point to a need for improved asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 112-120 117 infrastructure, better access to markets, enhanced knowledge and skills in technology and marketing, and increased availability of essential resources to support the agricultural sector effectively. these challenges align with the findings of miano, cabrera, yao, cayabat, and laguador (2024) in their study on the needs and challenges of farmers and fisherfolk in san francisco, quezon province, philippines. however, the degree of severity associated with these challenges varies, as reflected in the differing percentages reported in their research. 2.2. enterprise and product development as revealed in the needs assessment conducted, a series of activities, mostly training and participatory learning trials (plts), were conducted targeting the needs of the community to develop, if not improve, their products, which may lead to the development of sustainable enterprises in villages within the arcs. the following includes the products developed through the training conducted. for vegetable processing, the products developed are tomato ketchup, tomato sauce, pineapple-pumpkin (pinya-kalabasa) cupcake, and pumpkin-raisin (kalabasa-raisin) loaf. for meat processing, skinless longganisa and pork tocino. for fruit processing, dalandan concentrate, dalandan juice, and buko pie. product development is considered a key ingredient in entrepreneurship. the product developed by the arc beneficiaries helped them establish a community-based enterprise, providing capacity and giving them opportunities to generate revenue from their products, which drives economic growth. according to patankar and mehta (2014), enterprise development plays a vital role in economic development and creates changes in market economies. moreover, entrepreneurial activities fuel economic growth and development. if farmers venture into entrepreneurship, it will diversify their income source and create job opportunities for other sectors. according to santiago and roxas (2015), entrepreneurship shifts attention from producing more of the same things to producing value-added goods and services through managed agriculture. this can be done by stimulating entrepreneurial activities in agriculture through training, seminars, workshops, and other educational endeavors. furthermore, product development helps the beneficiaries acquire and enhance skills. peredo and chrisman (2006) observed that the economic activities undertaken by community-based enterprises (cbes), such as livestock management, cheese production, mining, trading, and handicrafts, are generally associated with the skills and experiences possessed by local individuals prior to the establishment of the cbe. certain abilities derive from common ancestral knowledge, such as forestry, livestock, and crop management, while others have emerged from the experiences of individuals operating beyond the group. 2.3. capability-building program for enterprise development in arcs in quezon province the capability-building program comprises a series of training sessions centered on entrepreneurial skills and product development, intended to develop a community-based enterprise in their arcs. these were based on the results of the needs assessment conducted. this model was used by miano, cabrera, yao, cayabat, and laguador (2025) to actively involve stakeholders from san francisco, quezon province, philippines. miano et al. (2025) used it as an intervention to empower the uber farmers and form community-based enterprises. several interventions were initiated to alleviate poverty in rural areas, but many failed due to certain factors (cabanis, 1998; ezekilov, 2011). ballesteros, orbeta, corpus, and ancheta (2017) believed that the first thing to consider for any development project is social preparation. mula and sevilla (2020) recognized that social preparation activities are relevant to the community organizing process. community organizing (co) is the process by which individuals and group members are encouraged to participate in all levels of development activities toward building community empowerment, empowering the members of the arc to become a climate-resilient and sustainable community. one of the primary methods for fostering economic development is business growth. however, there are many diverse business models, and not all of them prioritize the well-being of the community in their daily operations. the module given to the arc beneficiaries aimed to equip them with the skills required for enterprise development. moreover, this intervention provides the beneficiaries with the skills necessary to ensure the success and sustainability of the formed social enterprise. table 6 presents the modules, topics, and venue of the capacity-building activities for enterprise development. among the trainings for entrepreneurial skills, the modules centered on orientation, entrepreneurial mind-setting, and values formation; marketing mindset; supply and value chain management; entrepreneurial accounting and financial management; and market-driven innovation. these are based on the needs assessment conducted at the two (2) project sites alongside existing literature and framework for enterprise development. this comprised a total of five (5) modules for entrepreneurial skills development intended for the villager-farmers of the arcs in sariaya and dolores, quezon. these activities were held from october to december 2023 and were designed as a weekly community-based class. each module for entrepreneurial skills was taught for at least 4 hours in a lecture-workshop approach, while modules for product development were designed in 2 to 4 hours of combined lecture and hands-on activities to form a participatory learning trial (plt). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 112-120 118 table 6. modules, topics, dates, and venue of the capability-building activities. modules & topics dates & venue entrepreneurial skills module 1: orientation, entrepreneurial mindsetting, and values formation october 19, 2023 (sariaya) october 21, 2023 (dolores) module 2: marketing mindset november 7, 2023 (sariaya) november 20, 2023 (dolores) module 3: supply and value chain management november 13, 2023 (sariaya) december 5, 2023 (dolores) module 4: entrepreneurial accounting and financial management december 13, 2023 (dolores) december 18, 2023 (sariaya) module 5: market-driven innovation december 18, 2023 (sariaya & dolores) product development module 1: personal hygiene, food safety, and gmp october 23, 2023 (dolores) october 24, 2023 (sariaya) module 2: tomato sauce & tomato ketchup processing november 10, 2023 (dolores) november 15, 2023 (sariaya) module 3: meat processing (tapa, longganisa, & tocino) november 13, 2023 (dolores) november 15, 2023 (sariaya) *module 4: buko pie making december 15, 2023 (sariaya) module 5: pineapple-pumpkin cupcake and pumpkin-raisin loaf bread december 19, 2023 (sariaya) december 20, 2023 (dolores) *module 6: fruit processing (dalandan juice/ concentrate) december 20, 2023 (dolores) culminating activity product pitching, team building, and project evaluation december 22-23, 2023 (tagaytay city) note: *intended for one site only based on the needs assessment. according to peredo and chrisman (2006), the community-based enterprise (cbe) is a community functioning collectively as both entrepreneur and enterprise to achieve the common benefit. community-based entrepreneurship (cbe) is when people in a community take part in business activities to start and run a new company that fits in with their existing social structure. with this, the intervention provided to the arc beneficiaries was essential to achieving a common benefit and equipping them with the skills necessary to manage developed enterprises. furthermore, as noted by ensley, carland, and carland (2000), the acquired skills and experience impact the character of entrepreneurial endeavors. the community's talents and experiences will be instrumental in fostering community-based enterprise. skills and resources obtained before embarking on a business are critical elements that enhance the likelihood of success (bygrave & minniti, 2000; harvey & evans, 1995) and establish a framework for opportunity exploration (ardichvili, cardozo, & ray, 2003). the community serves as the entrepreneur, and the establishment and efficacy of a communitybased enterprise (cbe) are significantly influenced by the community's capacity to innovatively integrate and adapt diverse ancestral and contemporary skills, experiences, collaborative practices, and values. table 7. participants’ evaluation and attendance attrition during the capability-building program. clustered modules/ activities participant’s evaluation participants’ attendance mean rating interpretation no. of participants attrition rate (%) orientation, entrepreneurial mindsetting and values formation 4.69 excellent 60 baseline marketing mindset 4.87 excellent 49 81.67 supply and value chain management 4.87 excellent 44 73.33 entrepreneurial accounting and financial management 4.84 excellent 36 60.00 market-driven innovation 5.00 excellent 20 33.33 personal hygiene, food safety, and good manufacturing practices 4.75 excellent 30 50.00 tomato sauce and tomato ketchup processing 4.77 excellent 40 66.67 meat processing 5.00 excellent 38 63.33 buko pie making* 5.00 excellent 15 25.00 pineapple-pumpkin cupcake and pumpkin-raisin loaf bread processing 5.00 excellent 39 65.00 fruit processing (dalandan juice/ concentrate)* 4.87 excellent 15 25.00 culminating activity 5.00 excellent 49 81.67 note: *intended for one project site only 4.20-5.00 = excellent. 1.80-2.59 = fair. 3.40-4.19 = very satisfactory. 1.00-1.79 = poor. 2.60-3.39 = satisfactory. table 7 indicates participants’ evaluation and attendance attrition during the capacity-building program. the training sessions and activities conducted from october to december 2023 received consistently excellent evaluations from participants, with mean ratings ranging from 4.69 to 5.00. despite the high satisfaction levels, as reflected in these asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 112-120 119 ratings, there was considerable variation in the attrition rates across the different modules. the marketing mindset module and the culminating activity had the highest attrition rates at 81.67%, while the buko pie-making and fruit processing (dalandan juice/concentrate) sessions had the lowest attrition rate at 25.00%. this low attrition is due to the fact that the two modules are intended for each of the two project sites. overall, while participant feedback was overwhelmingly positive, the differing attrition rates suggest varying levels of sustained engagement or attendance among participants, potentially due to the nature or timing of the modules offered. 3. summary, conclusions, and recommendations the philippines remains an agricultural economy, and its social development relies on various interventions spearheaded by the department of agriculture (da) focused on enhancing local industries, improving food security, and promoting agricultural productivity. baconguis (2022) asserts that the implementation of technology at the farm level is crucial for agricultural development to achieve the department of agriculture's purpose of improving farming communities. agricultural extensions enhance the agricultural sector's development by increasing production through knowledge distribution, capacity building, and the provision of support services to farmers and fisherfolk. in quezon province, one of the identified implementation sites, the da integrates climate-resilient agriculture (cra) practices to ensure long-term agricultural sustainability in the face of climate change. in the past, southern luzon state university (slsu) was tapped to implement various initiatives related to the development of climate-resilient communities. this project, anchored in a community-based participatory action research (cbpar) approach, sought to assess community needs and the creation of sustainable community-based enterprises in agrarian reform communities (arcs) in the municipalities of sariaya and dolores, province of quezon. according to wilson (2019), community-based participatory research (cbpr) is considered an equitable research methodology implemented within a social justice perspective. it has been characterized as a continuum of research methodologies ranging from action research to participatory action research. researchers are increasingly attracted to community-based participatory research (cbpr) for collaborative studies that prioritize community involvement to address disparities stemming from socioeconomic disadvantages. the needs assessment conducted among villager-farmers in sariaya and dolores arcs highlights the community’s strong focus on coconuts, vegetables, and other fruits as key agricultural products. many farmers face challenges, such as overproduction, low prices, and product wastage. while a few have engaged in valueadded processing (e.g., coconut and citrus juice), training gaps are evident, especially in food processing, business skills, and good manufacturing practices (gmp). the main challenges include inadequate storage, limited knowledge of technology and online marketing, and a lack of buyers for processed goods. there is a strong demand for training in vegetable and meat processing, marketing, and business planning. additionally, infrastructure issues like limited access to water and electricity, along with insufficient capital and market access, hinder business growth. the findings suggest the need for expanded training and support in these areas to enhance productivity and entrepreneurship among the farmers. through participatory learning trials (plts), vegetable, meat, and fruit products that include tomato ketchup, tomato sauce, pineapple-pumpkin cupcakes, pumpkin-raisin loaf bread, pork tapa, skinless longganisa, pork tocino, dalandan concentrate, dalandan juice, and buko pie were developed based on the needs assessment and profile of the arcs. each product was developed with distinct procedures, product costing, packaging, and labeling. to form the community-based enterprise, a series of training activities were conducted for villager-farmers in sariaya and dolores, quezon. the capacity-building program focused on developing entrepreneurial skills and food product development. participants learned food processing techniques for vegetables, meat, and fruits, as well as essential entrepreneurial skills like entrepreneurial mind-setting and values formation; marketing mindset; supply and value chain management; entrepreneurial accounting and financial management; and market-driven innovation. additional training on food safety, personal hygiene, and good manufacturing practices was provided. a culminating activity evaluated the products developed through product pitching and set up team-building sessions to hone interpersonal skills and attitudes toward the work of the project beneficiaries. while participant feedback was overwhelmingly positive, there were varying attrition rates across modules, with some sessions experiencing higher drop-offs than others. given the outcomes of the project, recommendations for future directions of the climate-resilient community-based enterprise include the (1) establishment of a shared service facility for food processing equipped with necessary tools and equipment; (2) financial assistance for capital build-up; (3) forming a start-up cooperative or reviving the initially established cooperative may also be considered as good support for the entrepreneurial activities; (4) strategic market linkage for the products developed; (5) testing and further standardization of the food products shall be undertaken to comply with the requirements of the food and drug administration (fda); and (6) periodic monitoring and evaluation mechanisms should be put in place, as well as continuous mentoring to ensure the sustainability of the enterprise. funding: this research was supported by the “department of agriculture” and implemented by southern luzon state university with a total budget amounting to php 1,633,077. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 112-120 120 references ardichvili, a., cardozo, r., & ray, s. 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(2019). community-based participatory action research. handbook of research methods in health social sciences, 285-298. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0883-9026(01)00068-4 https://doi.org/10.1177/104225870002400302 https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/1083 https://doi.org/10.1016/0883-9026(95)00037-9 https://doi.org/10.53555/kuey.v30i4.2947 https://saad.da.gov.ph/ https://quezon.gov.ph/sep/#:~:text=agriculture,production%20area%20in%20the%20philippines http://dx.doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2015.054.016 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 10 analysis of producer behavior towards organic vegetables in vientiane capital, lao pdr monthong keochansya jae bong changb yoonsuk leec acenter for agricultural statistics, department of planning and cooperation, vientiane, lao pdr. bdepartment of food marketing and safety, konkuk university, seoul, south korea. cdepartment of agricultural and resources economics, kangwon national university, chunchen, south korea.  yoonsuklee@kangwon.ac.kr (corresponding author) articlehistory abstract received: 6 march 2023 revised: 10 october 2023 accepted: 25 january 2024 published: 4 march 2024 keywords clean agricultural programs laos pdr ordered logit model organic farming organic vegetables vientiane capital. the study investigated the behavior of producers towards organic vegetables to determine the main factors influencing households’ income and analyze the challenges of producing organic vegetables. organic agriculture can bring benefits to sustainable production and be a major source of households’ income. the lao government is promoting and supporting clean agriculture in potential areas where the conditions of production and marketing are proper. organic agriculture can help farmers increase their incomes and help people improve their health conditions. organic agriculture has significant potential in laos since several conditions of a traditional farming system can easily adapt to the organic farming system. organic vegetables can create a value chain with government certification. however, the lao government has difficulty recommending organic agriculture to farmers. the study collected 272 individual farm households cultivating organic vegetables in six districts in vientiane’s capital, lao people’s democratic republic (lao pdr). the analysis was considered for both descriptive statistics and an ordered logistic model. the results from the ordered logit model show that age, higher education level, organic vegetable area, and selling frequencies are positive and statistically significant. the study can contribute to the next five-year plan of clean agricultural programs for agriculture and forestry development. contribution/originality: this study contributes useful information for potential farmers participating in organic vegetable farming. in addition, the results from the study can help policymakers develop the next plan for organic agriculture in lao pdr. based on survey data, the ordered logistic model is used to determine factors influencing producers’ decisions about organic vegetables. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i1.4999 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: keochansy, m., chang, j. b., & lee, y. (2024). analysis of producer behavior towards organic vegetables in vientiane capital, lao pdr. asian journal of agri culture and rural development , 14(1), 10–17. 10.55493/5005.v14i1.4999 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1.introduction industrial agriculture has substantially contributed to the large amount of agricultural production and to the accessibility of food (gowdy & baveye, 2019); however, the farming systems of industrial agriculture have faced negative impacts such as greenhouse emission s, a ir and water pollution, destruction of wildlife habits, and so on. for asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 1 (2024): 10-17. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5222-4404 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9335-219x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6251-0696 mailto:yoonsuklee@kangwon.ac.kr http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1)2024: 10-17 11 the sustainable development of agriculture, organic agriculture has become an alternative farming method for sustainable global food supply (abebe, traboulsi, & aoun, 2021). according to the food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), organic agriculture is a farming system relying on ecology rather than synthetic and external agricultural inputs. in terms of such a definition, an organic farming method is close to a traditional farming method. organic agriculture can be an opportunity for many developing countries to develop domestic agriculture and join international trade. agriculture in the lao people’s democratic republic (henceforth, laos) has played a significant role in economic growth. in order to alleviate poverty and shift industrial agriculture, the government of laos encouraged farmers to use external agricultural inputs such as synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, improved varieties, and so on. nevertheless, this phenomena leads to negative consequences such as environmental deterioration and food safety. thus, in 1996, the concept of “sustainable agriculture” was introduced in the 8th national economic and social development plan (1997–2001), but the participation of farmers in organic agriculture was low and the relevant policies were poor (sipaseuth & roder, 2005). in the early 2000’s, the laos government announced the supplementary concept of “clean agriculture” (hirokawa, 2013). the government of laos prioritized organic agriculture as an important strategic policy to enhance the sustainable development of the agriculture industry. organic agriculture in laos can provide opportunities to manage safe food, a higher income source for farm households, and the conservation of natural resources for the nation (meemekn & qaim, 2018; nhuan et al., 2018). organic agriculture has significant potential in laos since several conditions of a traditional farming system can easily converge to the organic farming system (poyearleng, kai, shahriar, & reakine, 2019). farmers in laos have long been practicing organic farming by using indigenous knowledge , which heavily depends on natural resource subsistence, called “traditional farming”. from 2004 to 2011, the department of agriculture of the ministry of agriculture and forestry (maf) in laos collaborated with swiss development organization (helvetas, 2011), and they implemented the promotion of organic farming and marketing project s. this project contributed to establishing a certification system for the organic standard and logo in laos. in the middle of the 2000’s, lao farmers products (lfp) appeared. it is a local fair-trade cooperative company for organic rice and tea (poyearleng et al., 2019; vitoon, 2016). in 2011, maf revised the strategies for national agricultural development for long-term sustainable development, considering economic, social, and ecological dimensions. such strategies treated organic farming as a new system in agriculture. organic vegetables could create a value chain with certified products (boldanov, dong, li, cheng, & yang, 2019; willer & lernoud, 2017). maf intends to promote organic agriculture in two main agroecological zones: one is placed in the mekong lowlands, where organic vegetables are special ized, and the other is placed in the bolovens plateau zones, where organic coffees are specialized. organic agricultural commodities produced from these areas are under contract for domest ic markets and for export to neighboring countries (ministry of agriculture and forestry, 2015). the demand for organic vegetables in domestic and foreign market s has increased due to consumers’ interests in well-being and food safety. the laos government has encouraged farmers to produce organic vegetables for sustainable agricultural development. organic agriculture in laos has been implemented in 26 districts of 8 provinces in 2019. the total areas cultivated for organic agriculture are 7,985 ha, and the total production is 51,170 tons in 2019. this study particularly focuses on organic vegetables in vientiane since 50% of cultivating areas and production are concentrated in vientiane as the capital of laos. vientiane is the first city to participate in organic farming and marketing since it has the largest cultivating areas and enough consumers for organic agricultural products. according to the ministry of industry and commerce (moic), in vientiane, the total area certified as organic production reaches 3,231 ha, which produces about 37,210 tons of organic agricultural products per year. furtjermore, the city possesses a favourable geographical location that facilitates the exportation of goods to neighboring nations, particulary thailand, vietnam, and china. vientiane is located along the mekong river site, sharing a border with nongkai province of thailand (ministry of industry and commerce, 2011). it is the first laothai friendship bridge over the mekong river to connect laos and thailand. this study analyzes factors affecting farmers’ behavior towards organic farming in vientiane and suggests supplementary policies and government programs about organic farming. the specific objective is to determine factors that influence households to produce organic vegetables using an ordered logistic regression. the study will contribute to further developing a suitable agricultural system regarding organic vegetable production. 2. materials and methods 2.1. data collection data used in the study were collected from the households producing organic vegetables in vientiane by a faceto-face interview method. the field survey was conducted from july to august 2020 and covered all organic vegetable groups. this study selected six districts, such as naxaithong, xaythany, pakngum, sikhottabong, xaysetha, and hadxaifong, where organic agriculture is practically implemented. the total area in these districts is 329.14 hectares and there are 303 households and 12 farmer’s groups. however, the study excluded one farmer group because farmers of the group only produce fruits. totally , 272 individual households were surveyed among 303 certified households. 2.2. empirical method this study conducted the descriptive analysis to show data summarization and the econometric model to determine factors influencing farmers’ decisions to buy organic vegetables. an ordered logit model is applied to estimate factors affecting the incomes of farm households producing organic vegetables. several studies have asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1)2024: 10-17 12 suggested that when a dependent variable is an ordinal discrete variable, it is appropriate for an ordered logit model (grilli & rampichini, 2016; pol imeni, iorgulescu, & mihnea, 2018; tu, can, takahashi, kopp, & yabe, 2018). the ordered logit model is also known as the proportional odds modelbecause the parallel regression assumption implies the proportionality of the odds of not exceeding the 𝑐𝑡ℎ category; 𝑜𝑑𝑑𝑠𝑐𝑖 = 𝑔𝑐𝑖 /(1 − 𝑔𝑐𝑖 ). the ratio of these odds for two units (𝑖and 𝑗) is expressed as,𝑜𝑑𝑑𝑠𝑐𝑖/𝑜𝑑𝑑𝑐𝑗 = 𝑒𝑥𝑝 [𝛽 ′(𝑥𝑗 − 𝑥 𝑖)] which does not depend on the 𝑐𝑡ℎ categoryand thus is constant across response categories (williams & quiroz, 2020). in the study, gender, age, education, type of training, farm area (organic vegetable area, non-organic vegetable, normal rice, organic rice, cash crop, and livestock area), organic farm experience, and selling frequency are used as the independent variables, and organic vegetable households’ incomes are used as the dependent variables. the income variable is categorized into 4 levels, such as 201 to 400 us$, 401 to 800 us$, 801 to 1200 us$ , and more than 1200 us$. in the case of the dependent variable, whichincludes 4 categories, we can estimate the z-value and the assumed logistic distribution of the disturbance term. the ordered logit model can be used to estimate the probability that the unobserved variable 𝑌∗ falls within the various threshold limits. the ordered logit estimation equation is expressed as: 𝐼𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑖 ,𝑘 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1,𝑙𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑖 ,𝑙 + 𝛽2𝐴𝑔𝑒𝑖 + 𝛽3,ℎ 𝐸𝑑𝑢𝑖,ℎ + 𝛽4,𝑚𝐴𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑖 ,𝑚 + 𝛽5,𝑛𝑆𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑖 ,𝑛 + 𝛽6,𝑝 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑖 ,𝑝 + 𝛽7𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑖 + 𝑢𝑖,𝑘,ℎ,𝑙,𝑚,𝑛,𝑝 (1) where 𝐼𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑖 ,𝑘 represents 𝑘 th level of income at the 𝑖 th farmer , 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑖 ,𝑙 represents the gender of respondent at 𝑖th farmer ,𝐴𝑔𝑒𝑖 represents age of respondent at 𝑖th farmer, 𝐸𝑑𝑢𝑖 ,ℎ represents the ℎth education level of respondent at the 𝑖th farmer, 𝐴𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑖 ,𝑚 represents the 𝑚th type of area for agriculture activities at the 𝑖th farmer, 𝑆𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑖 ,𝑛 represents the 𝑛 th selling frequencies per week at the 𝑖th farmer, 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑖 ,𝑝 represents the 𝑝 th training program at the 𝑖th farmer, 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑖 represents experience of organic vegetable farming at the 𝑖th farmer, and 𝑢𝑖,𝑘,ℎ,𝑙,𝑚,𝑛,𝑝 represent an error term. 3. results and discussion 3.1. descriptive analysis tables 1-6 report the information associated with the basic characteristics of organic vegetable farm households. table 1 shows gender, age, and education distributions. in terms of gender distribution, females represented 51.10% of respondents and 48.90% were males. this outcome demonstates a significant level of female participation in the domain of organic vegetable cultivation. the increases in participation of women in organic vegetable farming can positively influence the role of women in agriculture. regarding age, this study found that the youngest of the organic farmers was 20 years old and the oldest was 69 years old. the majority of respondents (37.71%) were within 41-50 years old. in terms of education, 8.09% of the respondents have never had formal education. the majority of respondents (33.46%) have had a primary level of education, 27.57% and 23.53% of respondents have had secondary levels of education, or high school, respectively. high levels of education, such as a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and phd, represented 4.04%, 2.21%, and 1.10%, respectively. table 1.socioeconomic characteristics of organic farm household. variable category frequency percentage (%) gender male 133 48.90 female 139 51.10 age 20-30 years 16 5.88 31-40 years 80 29.41 41-50 years 108 39.71 51-60 years 58 21.32 more than 60 years 10 3.68 education not study 22 8.09 primary school 91 33.46 secondary 75 27.57 high school 64 23.53 bachelor’s degree 6 2.21 master 11 4.04 phd 3 1.10 the result of the study table 2 shows that the main sources of information concerning organic vegetable farming. 59.19% of respondents obtained the information from the district agriculture and forestry office (dafo). 34.93% of respondents obtained information from other farmers, 3.68% of respondents obtained the information from social media. from this result, we can suggest the importance of the government program. based on the result, the study found that before farmers started organic farming, the main agricultural activity was normal rice farming with 91 respondents (33.46%), and followed by rice and vegetables with 83 respondents (30.51%), vegetables and fruit with 43 and 1 respondents covering 15.81% and 0.37%, respectively. 19.85% of respondents d id not harvest specific crops. such results show that the government program influenced the transformation of rice farmers to organic vegetables. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1)2024: 10-17 13 in terms of the reason to produce organic vegetables, the major reason is related to higher income sources than other crops (59.93%). 22.06% of respondents chose organic vegetable farming because of the good environment. 18.01% of respondents chose it because of government support. table 2. source of information about organic vegetable production. variable category frequency percentage organic information dafo 161 59.19 farmer 93 34.93 social media 10 3.68 other 8 2.94 main agriculture before oa farming none 54 19.85 rice only 91 33.46 rice and vegetables 83 30.51 vegetables only 43 15.81 fruits 1 0.37 reason to produce organic vegetable more income than non-organic 163 59.93 government supports 49 18.01 environment 60 22.06 table 3 presents the types of training that farmers receieved. almost all farmers obtained knowledge of organic vegetable farming from the course of organic agriculture as a whole, represented by 145 respondents (53%), techniques for planting organic vegetables represented by 100 respondents (36.76%), techniques for developing fertilizers represented by 24 respondents (8.82%), and the certificated system represented only 3 respondents (1.1%). the study investigated the organizers of training. the results show that most organic farmers are trained by the technical staff of the district of agricultural and forestry office (dafo), with 96 respondents (54.41%). the 84 respondents (30.88%) are trained by other members of organic group. the 52 respondents (19.12%) are trained in the japan international cooperation agency (jica) project. the rest of the respondents (14.71%) joined the training programs organized by the farmers group. table 3. types of training on organic farming. variable category frequency percentage types of training organic agricultural as whole 145 53.31 techniques how to plant 100 36.76 techniques how to develop fertilizer 24 8.83 certificated system 3 1.10 organizer of training jica project 52 19.12 dafo 96 54.41 farmers group 40 14.71 group members in village 84 30.88 in terms of the frequency of selling, table 4 shows that the majority of farmers sell their products twice a week: two times per week with 125 respondents covered (45.96%), followed by three times per week with 123 respondents covered (45.22%), one time per week with 22 respondents covered (8.09%), and more than three times per week with only 2 respondents covered (0.74% of respondents). the study examined the future strategy for marketing organic vegetable cultivation. 60.01% of respondents answered when market prices would be high. 18.38% of respondents answered when a market would be expanded. 7.71% of respondents answered when there are chances to export organic vegetable products. the 16 respondents (5.88%) answered that there are possibilities to keep receiving government support. table 4. selling frequency of organic vegetables. variable category frequency percentage frequency of selling one time per week 22 8.09 two times per week 125 45.96 three times per week 123 45.22 more than 3 times per week 2 0.74 further plan to sell organic vegetables higher price 185 68.01 chance to export 21 7.71 possibility to receive gov support 16 5.88 market expansion 50 18.38 regarding the farm area in table 5, this study found that the area of organic farming is quite small (less than one hectare). the majority organic farm area was from 0.01-1.00 hectares with 214 farm households presented by 78.58%, followed by 1.01-2.00 hectares, with 39 farm households presented by 14.34%, the area from 2.01-3.00 hectares with 12 farm households presented by 4.41%, the area from 3.01-4.00 hectares with 4 farm households presented by 1.47%, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1)2024: 10-17 14 and more than 4.00 hectares with 3 farm households 1.10%. the smallest farm area is 0.02 hectares and biggest farm area is 4.5 hectares. table 5.farm size of organic vegetable farming. variable category frequency percentage farm area from 0.01-1.00 ha 214 78.58 from 1.01-2.00 ha 39 14.34 from 2.01-3.00 ha 12 4.41 from 3.01-4.00 ha 4 1.47 more than 4.00 ha 3 1.10 in terms of the challenge of organic farming table 6, this study found that the main challenge of organic farming was the limited market, with 207 respondents, representing 76.1%, followed by weather conditions, with 194 respondents representing 71.32%, limited area for organic farming, with 168 respondents representing 61.76%, and limited technical support from the government, with 64 respondents representing 23.53%. table 6. challenge of organic farming. variable category frequency percentage limited market yes 207 76.10 no 65 23.90 limited technical support from gov yes 64 23.53 no 208 76.47 weather condition yes 168 61.76 no 104 38.24 limited area for organic farming yes 168 61.76 no 104 38.24 3.2. results from ordered logistic model this study employed an order logit model to examine the characteristics that influence households’ income fro organic vegetables, based on descriptice analysis. the results from the ordered logit model are presented in table 7. the higher education level, organic vegetable area, cash crop area, livestock area, selling frequencies per week , and age are signif icant factors influencing households’ income for organic vegetables. selling frequencies such as twice, three times, and more than three times positively affectthe household income for organic vegetables. the increases in size of cash crop areas negatively affect income; however, the increases in size of livestock areas positively affect income. table 7. results of ordered logit model. variables category coefficient std. error p-value gender male (base) female -0.079 0.315 0.801 education no study (base) primary school 0.937 0.647 0.148 secondary school 1.044 0.651 0.109 higher education level 1.296 0.671 0.056* area size of mixed production organic vegetable area 0.468 0.251 0.062** non-organic agriculture area 0.008 0.197 0.968 normal rice area 4.435 853.590 0.996 organic rice area 48.777 2750.019 0.986 cash crop area -5.443 3.112 0.080* livestock area 0.132 0.072 0.069* selling frequencies once per week (base) twice per week 1.650 0.507 0.001*** three times per week 4.197 0.602 0.000*** more than 3 times per week 1.461 1.545 0.344*** training programs oa as a whole (base) techniques how to plant oa vegetables 0.271 0.421 0.519 technique how to develop organic fertilizer 0.908 0.421 0.131 age 0.037 0.018 0.042** oa farm experience 0.050 0.056 0.373 note: ***, **, * significant at 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively. the results from the ordered logit model show that age, higher education level, organic vegetable area, and selling frequencies are positive and statistically significant. in other words, the increases in such variables lead to the likelihood of farmers being placed at the higher level of income. considering the results of the marginal effects of each category of income, it can be said that with the increase in these independent variables, the likelihood of farmers asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1)2024: 10-17 15 being placed at a lower level of income decreases and the likelihood of them being placed at higher level of income increases. on the other hand, cash crop area had a negative coefficient and was statistically significant, this mean cash crop area had a negative impact on households’ income. as the increase in this variable increased, the likelihood of farmers being placed at a high level of income decreased. table 8 reports marginal effects at means for different income levels. the marginal effects are useful information to show the relationship between changes in a responding variable and changes in independent variables.in terms of gender, when a farmer is female,the likelihood of income level “under 200us$” will be increased by 0.2%, then the likelihood of income level “201~400us$” will be increased by 0.2%, then the likelihood of income level “401~800us$” will be increased by 0.6%, but the likelihood of income level “801~1,200us$” will be decreased by 1.1%. regarding to education, when a fa rmer is highly educated with an increase in a higher education level, the likelihood of farmers with higher education level being placed at a lower category of income decrease s. on the other hand, the likelihood of them being placed at a higher category of income increases as follows: with an increase of one unit of higher education level, they are about 4.8 percent less likely to be high level of income, about 4 percent less likely to be high level of income, about 9.4 percent less likely to be high level of income and about 18.2 percent more likely to be high level of income. according to types of areas, the increase in variables of organic vegetable area, non-organic vegetable area, normal rice area, organic rice areas and livestock area decreases, the likelihood of farmers being placed in the lower category of income, and the likelihood of farmers being placed in the higher category of income increases as follows: with an increase of one hectare of organic vegetable area, farmers are about 1.3 percent less likely to be lower categories of income, about 3.9 percent less likely to be middle category of income and about 6.6 percent more likely to be high category of income. similarly, increasing the livestock area by one hectares make it about 0.3 percent less likely to be in low and middle categories of income, and about 1.1 percent less l ikely to be in the middle category of income and about 1.8 percent more likely to be in the high category of income. on the other hand, with increase by one hectare of cash crop area about 15.4, 15.2 and 46.2 percent more likely to be low and middle categories of income, respectively and about 76 pe rcent less likely to high categories of income, this means the area of cash crop does not have an effect on households’ income. in terms of selling frequencies, with the increase in selling frequencies, the likelihood of farmers to be placed at lower category of income decreases, on the other hand the likelihood of farmers being placed at higher category of income increases as follows: with increase one unit of selling two times a week about 10.9 percent less likely to be low level of income, about 10 and 7.1 percent less likely to be middle level of income and about 28.1 percent more likely to be high level of income. regarding the type of training, the result found that with the increase in one unit of training on how to develop organic fertilizer, the likelihood of farmers being placed at a lower level of income decreases. nevertheless, the probability of farmers being put at a higher level of income increases. on the other hand, with increase by one unit of training on how to grow up the organic vegetables, the likelihood of farmers being placed at lower level of income increases, the likelihood to be placed at a higher level of income decreases, which means that this variable does not have an effect on households’ income. in terms of age, when a farmer gets old by a year, the likelihood of income level “under 200us$” will be decreased by 0.1%, then the likelihood of income level “201~400us$” will be decreased by 0.1%, then the likelihood of income level “401~800us$” will be decreased by 0.3%, but the likelihood of income level “801~1,200us$” will be increased by 0.5%. table 8. marginal effects at means by different income levels. variables categories marginal effects level 1 (under 200 us$) level 2 (201~400 us$) level 3 (401~800 us$) level 4 (801~1200us $) gender male (base) female 0.002 0.002 0.006 -0.011 education no study (base) primary school -0.038 -0.031 -0.063 0.133 secondary school -0.041 -0.034 -0.072 0.148 higher education level -0.048 -0.040 -0.094 0.182 type of areas for agriculture activities organic vegetable -0.013 -0.013 -0.039 0.066 non-organic agriculture -0.000 -0.000 -0.000 0.001 normal rice -0.125 -0.124 -0.377 0.626 organic rice -0.381 -1.365 -4.146 6.894 cash crop 0.154 0.152 0.462 -0.769 livestock -0.003 -0.003 -0.011 0.018 selling frequencies one time per week (base) two times per week -0.109 -0.100 -0.071 0.281 three times per week -0.140 -0.145 -0.413 0.699 more than three times per week -0.102 -0.091 -0.049 0.242 training programs oa as a whole (base) techniques how to plant oa vegetables 0.006 0.006 0.018 -0.031 techniques how to develop organic fertilizer -0.007 -0.007 -0.023 0.038 age -0.001 -0.001 -0.003 0.005 oa farm experience -0.001 -0.001 -0.004 0.007 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1)2024: 10-17 16 regarding organic farm experience, the results show that with higher experience on farming, the possibil ities of gaining a higher level of income increase. as the experience in farming increases by one year, the likelihood of farmers being placed at a lower level of income decreases. on the other hand, the likelihood of having a higher level of income increases. 3.3. discussion and implication the laos government has been promoting and supporting clean agriculture in potential regions where condit ions of the natural environment and markets are favorable. organic agriculture not only can strengthen ecological system while conserving soil and water resources but also increase household’s incomes and improve the health conditions of consumers (das, chatterjee, & pal, 2020; uematsu & mishra, 2012). the study attempted to investigate the behavior of producers towards organic vegetable farming. first, the study characterizes the household socio-economic attributes of organic farm households and analyzes the challenges of producing organic vegetables. second, the study determines the major factors influencing households’ income using an ordered logit model.the results of the study show that age, higher education level, organic vegetable area, livestock’s area, selling time, organic market expansion, information source were positively and statistically significant. the study provides useful information about organic producers in vientiane capital, laos. it can be used for planning the next five-year plan of agriculture and forestry development, especially for clean agricultural programs. however, in the middle of field survey, we found that organic farmers have some challenges with the implementation. first of all, the market is limited. the government focuses on expanding the organic market by formulating policies in order to allocate a permanent location for the retailer market. the study suggests marketing promotion strategies. for example, it opens organic booths (selling only organically certified products) inside the most popular food markets to attract consumers. this would require important investment in terms of the organization from the farmers to enable them to sell on these other markets every day of the week. farmers also need to improve the technique of organic farming to increase the productivitiy in both quality and quantity for stable supplies. thus, the government should consider qualified training course on how to utilize agriculture inputs, soil improvement, and growing patterns in order to increase productivity. especially in the rainy season, the production of organic vegetables is unstable, and it will lead to a higher prices than during the dry season. in order to maintain stable supplies, the government should provide technical support such as training on how to test their soil, how to make appropriate organic fertilizers, and most importantly, the best pest and disease control methods to apply during the monsoon period. in addition, policymakers need to consider ways to cover the additional variable coststhat farmers have to bear in the process of transitioning organic agriculture.compared with convential agriculture, organic agriculturural farmers can pay additional costs such as labor costs, insurance expenses against risks and marketing charges for entering new markets (uematsu & mishra, 2012). thus it is important to be made of policy efforts for famers who transition to organic farming. we suggest that the laos government must provide a program that improves consumers’ awareness of organic agricultural products. such program can be an indirect way to expand a domestic market. finally, the government needs to establish a price information system based on consumers and other market conditions. it can help to maintain sustainable market access for organic products. this research has been conducted with only organic vegetable groups in vientiane capital, without considering the others in the regional area. therefore, future research should be conducted by covering all areas and channel distribution organic groups in the country and the research studies such as papers or journals were limited, so there were some difficulties in reviewing the similar or related topics concerning the behaviors of organic vegetables. 4. conclusion this research contributes useful results for sustainable development in the agricultural sector in laos. the findings of the study provide positive information to pol icymakers in order to encourage farmers to convert organic vegetables and to stakeholders in order to expand the organic market. even though this is a highly utilized study, it has several limitations for the sample. the study has been conducted with only organic vegetable groups in vientiane, the capital of laos, without considering the others in the regional area. therefore, future research should be conducted by covering all areas and channel distribution organic groups in the country. funding: this research is supported by kangwon national university (grant number: 520190045). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the kangwon national university, south korea has granted approval for this study (ref. no. kwnuirb-2024-02-005001). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1)2024: 10-17 17 references abebe, g. k., traboulsi, a., & aoun, m. 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(2020). ordinal regression model. uk: sage publication ltd. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1742170521000478 https://doi.org/10.1093/fqsafe/fyaa018 https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-811050-8.00027-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-811050-8.00027-3 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-100517-023252 http://faolex.fao.org/docs/pdf/lao163566.pdf https://faolex.fao.org/docs/pdf/lao152528.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.02.241 https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2019.72017 https://data.thailand.opendevelopmentmekong.net/library_record/organic-farming-in-lao-pdr https://data.thailand.opendevelopmentmekong.net/library_record/organic-farming-in-lao-pdr https://doi.org/10.1080/23311932.2018.1432538 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.03.013 https://data.opendevelopmentmekong.net/library_record/organic-agriculture-in-laos-pdr-overview-and-development-options/resource/fa4dffc8-8d36-4b18-8864-811b3a1415ef https://data.opendevelopmentmekong.net/library_record/organic-agriculture-in-laos-pdr-overview-and-development-options/resource/fa4dffc8-8d36-4b18-8864-811b3a1415ef https://www.ifoam.bio/en/news/2017/02/09/world-organic-agriculture-2017 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 478 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the impact of digitalization on food security in g20 countries: an empirical assessment ajay kumar singha vikash kumar mishrab dhanya c.c adepartment of humanities and social sciences, graphic era (deemed to be university), dehradun, uttarakhand, india. bdepartment of humanities and liberal arts, dit university, dehradun, uttarakhand, india. cdepartment of economics, arignar anna government arts and science college, karaikal puducherry, india.  a.k.seeku@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 23 june 2025 revised: 19 august 2025 accepted: 12 september 2025 published: 24 september 2025 keywords adaptation strategies agricultural sustainability climate change digital technologies digitalization environmental technologies food security mitigation practices sustainable development. this study assesses the impact of digitalization on food security (fs) and its dimensions in g20 countries. descriptive statistical techniques are applied to create a food security index (fsi) and a digital development index (ddi). the fsi is considered as a combination of its dimensions, and the ddi is the integration of 16 indicators that foster appropriate digital development (dd). log-linear regression models are introduced to examine the coefficient of ddi with fsi and specific variables. the study employs country-wise balanced panel data from 2010 to 2022. it reports significant variation in dd and fs across g20 countries. dd has a positive and statistically significant impact on fs and its other drivers. furthermore, fs and its four dimensions have positive and bi-directional relationships with dd. fs and its other drivers, except for food utilization, are positively associated with forest area. protection of ecosystem services is necessary to increase fs. environmental technologies are also found to positively influence fs. gross domestic savings appear useful for increasing fs. environmental technologies, foreign direct investment, and gross savings show a positive impact on dd. moreover, all dimensions of fs are favorable for promoting dd. the findings provide multiple policy implications for improving fs and dd in g20 countries. contribution/originality: this study is the first to create the food security index (fsi) and the digital development index (ddi), providing a comparative analysis of food security and digital development among g20 countries from 2010 to 2022. the causal relationship between fsi and its dimensions with ddi is analyzed using log-linear regression models. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5624 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: singh, a. k., mishra, v. k., & c, d. (2025). the impact of digitalization on food security in g20 countries: an empirical assessment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 478–501. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5624 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction nowadays, people are using different digital devices, tools, and platforms to achieve their expected tasks in various sectors. digitalization is a transformation of various forms of information, data, text, images, materials, news, and others into digital formats (benfica et al., 2023). it is a state in which people can apply digital technology, information & communication technology (ict), and other digital devices to accomplish their desired tasks. digitalization assists in achieving their multiple purposes in education, health, market, business, medical, finance, political, media, marketing, and transport sectors (lee, zeng, & luo, 2023). it helps to increase the transformation of knowledge, skills, and scientific processes in digital format. digital formats of information bring multiple benefits for improving the livelihood security of humanity. improving advertisement through social media, online transaction of money, online asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 478-501 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0429-0925 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1018-2640 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-6359-0821 mailto:a.k.seeku@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5624 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 479 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. communication of consumers and producers, e-business, and sharing information through online platforms are a few examples of digitalization and digital development. digital technologies (dts) like mobile apps, computers, and the internet are helping people to increase their engagement in online activities and public services (world bank group, 2019). ict is used to increase communication among people across the globe. consequently, digitalization and dts are transporting multiple benefits to large communities. moreover, digitalization helps to increase online business, jobs, and advertisement of new products and develops entrepreneurship and business ecosystems. it, thus, is developing an important platform for foreign trade. thereafter, digitalization is favorable for the creation of new markets and infrastructural development, and increases a competitive business ecosystem. it increases the availability of scientific information across the globe. hence, digitalization is helping to increase technological upgradation as per the current needs of people, businessmen, and manufacturing industries. digital technologies (dts) enhance business processes with innovative models (oborin, 2019). digitalization is creating a smooth path for technology transfer and commercialization across countries. accordingly, the manufacturing sector can reduce its use of ecosystem services and natural resources by increasing its dependency on digital technologies (dts). dts bring alternative ways to minimize the cost of production (world bank group, 2019). accordingly, global countries are creating digital platforms and transforming towards digitalization to receive competitive gains in production activities. digitalization seems highly effective in accomplishing various objectives of common people, farmers, businessmen, researchers, scientists, government, and producers in diversified areas. in the production sector, digitalization helps to increase productivity. although, it is also reported that employment opportunities have declined due to digitalization. despite that, multiple studies note that economic development and growth could be increased due to the commencement of digital infrastructure in most countries, especially in the european union (e.g., belgium, denmark, ireland). moreover, digitalization is working as a significant driver to increase health security through improving medical facilities. digitalization, for instance, could provide significant benefits to patients, medical doctors, academicians, and educationists during covid-19. digitalization is providing better economic returns to farmers, businessmen, online traders, consumers, and producers (benfica et al., 2023; lee et al., 2023). thus, digitalization may support reducing poverty and improving health and well-being (vărzaru, 2024). agriculture and food sectors receive significant benefits from digital technologies (dts) (ferguson et al., 2024). these technologies enhance food security and nutritional security by improving foodgrain production, yields, and food quality (ferguson et al., 2024). for instance, big data analysis can be effective in making future predictions of climate change impacts on cultivation (herawati, yuniningsih, & dwimawanti, 2023; vărzaru, 2024). artificial intelligence (ai) brings revolution in the agricultural sector (talaviya, shah, patel, yagnik, & shah, 2020). dts can be used for weather forecasting and disaster response (herawati et al., 2023). many digital devices are also helpful in perceiving the forecasting of productivity of various crops in the presence of changing socioeconomic development and demographic patterns, ecosystem services, natural resources, and climatic factors. food systems and their allied sectors contribute around 21-37% of ghg emissions in the environment (anderson & sandin, 2022). hence, the application of digital technologies (dts) in food sectors would be a revolution in reducing co2 emissions and increasing environmental sustainability. digital tools and dts are vital for enhancing farm productivity by improving the quality of environmental and ecological services (amirova, safiullin, bakhareva, & sakhbieva, 2022; chandio, amin, khan, rehman, & memon, 2024; prause, hackfort, & lindgren, 2021). further, it assists in increasing sustainable development by improving the sustainability of all inputs in the agriculture sector. thus, it is expected that digitalization will improve the food value chain (benfica et al., 2023; world bank group, 2019). while it is observed a complex association between digital transformation and fs (vărzaru, 2024). digitalization is providing multiple benefits to the agricultural sector (chandio et al., 2024). it helps to increase farmers' understanding of selecting a suitable crop for cultivation in a specific season. dts are beneficial for making future predictions of climatic events, which would suggest taking preventive actions in farming. moreover, digital technologies (dts) are increasing the agricultural marketing-related information among farmers at low cost (world bank group, 2019). it also creates new agri-business opportunities. thus, it is positive to increase sustainable agricultural development (sad). consequently, digitalization and dts are worthwhile for improving most indicators, which nurture a suitable platform for attaining sdgs (vărzaru, 2024). accordingly, digitalization would assist in increasing fs. preceding theoretical literature reveals that digitalization, digital technologies (dts), digital development (dd), and digital platforms help to enhance agricultural productivity. farmers are gaining innovative ideas, cultivation methods, and techniques to increase crop productivity due to dd. dd helps to increase agricultural sustainability in the presence of climate change and environmental degradation. subsequently, dd is aiding in increasing social and economic change. furthermore, dd is valuable for increasing the demand and supply management of agricultural commodities in the market. dd, thus, would positively contribute to increasing food security (fs) and its components. although existing studies could not examine the clear association between dd and fs, there is a requirement to observe the contribution of digitalization in improving fs in global countries. therefore, countries worldwide should be more serious about adopting effective policies to increase the usability of digitalization in the agricultural and food sectors. hence, this study develops an empirical model for assessing the causal association of dd with fs in g20 countries. the present research is an attempt to answer the following questions: • what is the comparative performance of fs and dd in g20 countries? • why does there exist diversity in digitalization and fs in g20 countries? asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 480 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. • how does digitalization help to increase fs? • what is the process to increase fs through digitalization? • how can g20 countries improve their strength in digitalization and fs in the future? • which components of fs will be beneficial from digitalization? • how would digitalization be positive in increasing fs in g20 countries? this study has the following objectives: • to create a food security index (fsi) as a composition of its key drivers and a digital development index (ddi) as an integration of 16 variables in g20 countries. • to examine the impact of digitalization on fs in g20 countries and vice versa. • to provide policy proposals for improving fs and dd in g20 countries.. 2. review of literature 2.1. importance and perspectives of food security the theoretical foundation of food security (fs) is very old in academic research, hoddinott and yohannes (2002). food is an essential component for increasing economic construction and development, as it maintains the physical and mental health of all people (wang, li, & hu, 2023). accordingly, fs helps to increase participation of people in social and economic activities, and it is important to increase national security (yao & fu, 2025). to ensure fs is the most indispensable due to rising population, increasing loss of food and natural resources (vărzaru, 2024; world bank group, 2019). around 600 million people fall seriously ill due to eating contaminated food, and 420,000 die annually worldwide due to the unavailability of food (konfo et al., 2023). around 821 million people are undernourished worldwide (gouvea, kapelianis, li, & terra, 2022). undernutrition is also responsible for an increase of 45% in child deaths globally (world health organization (who), 2023). the quality of food products, including milk, dairy products, and meat products, is decreasing due to the overutilization of fertilizers and chemicals in cultivation (zorić, marić, đurković-marić, & vukmirović, 2023). lee et al. (2023) reported that 49 million people would be in trap of extreme poverty due to lack of food at global level (lee et al., 2023). around 1/3rd of food production is wasted in the world. thus, it is necessary to reduce wasted food to increase fs (anderson & sandin, 2022; mantravadi & srai, 2023; talaviya et al., 2020; zorić et al., 2023). wasted food contributes to increased food insecurity in urban areas (mantravadi & srai, 2023). while appropriate management of food systems is an essential driver to reduce poverty, hunger, and malnutrition (benfica et al., 2023). 2.2. components and determinants of food security primarily, food security (fs) has four dimensions (gouvea et al., 2022; world bank group (wbg), 2025). these components are divided as physical availability of food, access to food, food utilization and food stability (world bank group (wbg), 2025). hence, a single variable cannot improve all dimensions of fs. soil fertility and agricultural inputs are crucial determinants for improving foodgrain production and fs (zakari, ying, & song, 2014). while agricultural sustainability cannot be achieved without increasing sustainability in ecosystem services and natural resources, fs is negatively impacted due to increasing water scarcity (zou & guo, 2015). air and water pollution have a negative impact on fs. hence, these also have a vital impact on fs. thereupon, family size, gender ratio, literacy rate, occupation, source of income, physical assets, livestock assets, financial capability, etc., are micro-level indicators that have crucial implications on fs (harris-fry et al., 2015; zakari et al., 2014). freedom of women and their literacy rates are positive factors in ensuring food security and nutritional security of family members. food consumption expenditure (fce) determines food security at the micro level (alexandri, luca, & kevorchian, 2015). while fce would improve as income, purchasing power, and employment opportunities for the people increase. thus, financial support for farmers and the creation of jobs for people are essential to increase fs (zou & guo, 2015). poverty, income inequality, urbanization, inflation, crime, government policies towards agricultural and rural development, employment opportunities, fdi, agri-business development, food production, infrastructural development, monetary and fiscal policies, and appropriate marketing determine fs at the macro level (alexandri et al., 2015; applanaidu, bakar, & baharudin, 2014; gouvea et al., 2022; lee et al., 2023; wahab, applanaidu, & bakar, 2015; ye et al., 2013; zakari et al., 2014). poverty and income inequality have caused a reduction in the food distribution pattern. extensive urbanization has led to a diminished cropped area under food grains. inflation negatively impacts the purchasing power of people to acquire food from the market. increasing food prices are reducing food security (fs) (gouvea et al., 2022). black marketing of products increases crime in society. moreover, fs is adversely affected due to the redistribution of land resources in china (zou & guo, 2015). food supply chain efficiency is helpful to ensure food security in urban areas (mantravadi & srai, 2023). thus, improving supply chains would also reduce post-harvest loss and increase food distribution channels (world bank group (wbg), 2025). land ownership shows a significant impact on fs (harris-fry et al., 2015). agricultural cooperative societies and agricultural research institutions (aris) play an active role in improving food security. aris discover, invent, and develop new varieties of seed, advance mechanisms of farming, and help the farming community adopt advanced cultivation techniques. thus, factors affecting food security can be divided according to their nature and contribution to agricultural and environmental development. food security is also divided into multiple components such as production, accessibility, affordability, distribution, utilization, and quality (mantravadi & srai, 2023; zorić et al., 2023). 2.3. agricultural and food security agriculture is a sole source of food security (fs). while the growth of the agricultural sector is vulnerable due to rising population and decreasing freshwater resources (talaviya et al., 2020). the progress of this sector is adversely asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 481 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. affected due to low irrigation facilities and an increase in temperature (talaviya et al., 2020). it is universally accepted that food security (fs) does not depend primarily on agricultural production. most scholars have given high priority to increasing agricultural development to enhance fs. global countries are emphasizing agricultural sustainability to ensure fs. however, the agricultural sector faces enormous pressure due to rising demand for food, fiber, and clean energy (mondejar et al., 2021). while the growth of the agricultural sector depends on the social, economic, and financial structure of farmers, technological skills and literacy rates of farmers are positive factors for improving agricultural development. farm management practices, high-yielding varieties of seed, fertilizer, and irrigation facilities are also useful inputs for the agricultural sector. hence, the mentioned variables have a vital implication on fs. 2.4. adaptation and mitigation strategies, and food security climatic and geographical conditions play a crucial role in enhancing fs. at present, climate change has had a negative impact on the agricultural sector (gouvea et al., 2022). it is also expected that climate change will be responsible for pushing 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030 through declines in agricultural production and food security (world bank group, 2019). climate change, thus, is the biggest challenge for the global community to ensure fs (gouvea et al., 2022; raheem, 2020). the use of digital technologies (dts) is helping to increase farmers' understanding to adopt adaptation strategies in the farming sector (vărzaru, 2024). thus, dts are nurturing an effective ecosystem for the agri-food sector to fight against climate change (vărzaru, 2024). moreover, digitalization and dts are working as revolutionary tools to increase environmental sustainability through reducing ghgs and co2 emissions. digital platforms resolve different issues related to climate, environment, and economic situations (ferguson et al., 2024). climate change also increases agricultural pests and insects (zakari et al., 2014). occurrence of floods and drought lead to decrease fs (badolo & kinda, 2015; mondejar et al., 2021; zakari et al., 2014). therefore, the farming community is applying several adaptation and mitigation practices in the farming sector. thus, adaptation and mitigation approaches are crucial tools to enhance food security. thereupon, digital development and digital technologies (dts) are important to provide solutions to address the issues related to the mentioned problems in cultivation. 2.5. technological development and food security moreover, there are several factors that determine the fs in the era of globalization, digitalization, technological change, innovation, and technology transfer and commercialization (ye et al., 2013). agriculture sector is using innovative technologies due to appropriate technology transfer. application of technologies in the agricultural sector is reported to be effective and favorable to increase fs. use of technology would be positive to improve yield and market structure (amirova et al., 2022; anderson & sandin, 2022). technology can be useful to increase food quality, increase the income of farmers, and improve their living conditions (lioutas, charatsari, & de rosa, 2021). gouvea et al. (2022) noticed the positive impact of technology on global food security in 106 countries. 2.6. digital innovation and food security digital innovation supports increasing the digital transformation of the lives of common people (aboagye-darko & mkhize, 2025; benfica et al., 2023). it is apparent that digital innovation has brought significant changes in most sectors to improve their productivity, production, and efficiency (konfo et al., 2023). moreover, digital innovation and e-commerce would be effective in increasing a healthy food system (mantravadi & srai, 2023). hence, digital innovation is found suitable for improving fs (aboagye-darko & mkhize, 2025). ict is a digital innovation that produces a positive impact on global food security (gouvea et al., 2022). chandio et al. (2024) opined that ict has a greater impact on the agricultural production sector in the saarc region. 2.7. digital technologies and food security food sector should adopt digital technologies (dts) to increase fs (raheem, 2020). most dts, like remote sensors, help in monitoring crop, soil moisture, and environmental conditions for further improving crop production (benfica et al., 2023; vărzaru, 2024). hence, dts are creating new approaches for improving fs (yao & fu, 2025). mantravadi and srai (2023) examined the importance of dts for improving accessibility of healthy food and waste reduction in the food sector. thus, at present, fs is linked with the modernization and digitalization of the food production system (abdullayev et al., 2023). access to social media is improving the dissemination of knowledge across farmers (harris-fry et al., 2015; vărzaru, 2024). mobile phones and the internet have a conducive impact on grain production (lee et al., 2023). the internet of things helps to increase food production in a sustainable way (mondejar et al., 2021). yao and fu (2025) investigated the impact of dts on fs in china. prause et al. (2021) examined the role of dts for changing the food system. dts are increasing farmers' understanding to be better decision-makers in the agricultural sector (benfica et al., 2023). it would also improve resource management and enhance the livelihood security of farming communities worldwide (mondejar et al., 2021). mobile technologies are helping farmers to increase better accessibility to seed, fertilizer, food production, and pest control in cultivation (lee et al., 2023). ferguson et al. (2024) examined the role of digital agricultural technologies in fs in odisha, india. it noted a significant implication of dts on fs. dts are helping small-scale farmers to increase the local food system (ferguson et al., 2024). environmental sustainability in the food system can be improved through dts (benfica et al., 2023; world bank group, 2019). benfica et al. (2023) highlighted the role of dts in promoting food and nutritional security. it also emphasized that dts such as remote sensing, artificial intelligence, and digital finance help increase the decisionasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 482 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. making capacity of farmers and traders. the use of artificial intelligence aids in enhancing food production and food security in the era of a rising population and climate change (talaviya et al., 2020). 2.8. digital transformation and food security information communication develops an appropriate platform for digital transformation. fs improves as the use of it increases (amirova et al., 2022). digital transformation of the food industry would lead to increased fs (yao & fu, 2025). herawati et al. (2023) explored the impact of digital transformation on fs in indonesia. it noted a positive trend in fs and the food sector due to digital transformation. food industries are using digital transformation to increase fs (dehghani, popova, & gheitanchi, 2022). furthermore, digital transformation would also improve the efficiency and productivity of the food sector for improving fs (vărzaru, 2024). accordingly, it explained the significance of blockchain cloud technologies in various players of the food system, such as farmers, food suppliers, and investors. blockchain cloud helps to increase efficiency and transparency in the food sector. oborin (2019) observed the role of digitization in the industries for improving fs in the perm region. (vărzaru, 2024) noticed that digital transformation is useful to boost fs. fs is projected to increase as digital financial inclusion increases (tan et al., 2024). 2.9. digital infrastructure, digital economy and food security social-economic development, technological change, financial literacy, education, skills of people, technical literacy, and trust of people in digital technologies (dts) have a crucial contribution to increasing digital infrastructure. exports and imports of ict, digital tools, and the discovery and invention of digital devices also nurture a proper network of digital infrastructure. the progress of digitalization and the digital economy could be improved by using ict, the internet, cybersecurity, etc (chandio et al., 2024). investment in infrastructure, construction, and empowering the capacity of the digital economy would be significant for digitalization (lee et al., 2023). accordingly, the digital economy would be active in improving food security (fs) as it enhances overall food systems. the digital economy supports increasing production, distribution, and consumption in cultivation (lee et al., 2023). it is, therefore, supportive to improve production, process, and logistics operations in the agricultural industries (amirova et al., 2022). lee et al. (2023) observed the impact of the digital economy on fs in china. 3. research methods 3.1. study area this study includes g20 countries for assessing the impact of digital development (dd) on financial stability (fs). the g20 is a group of 19 countries, the european union (27 countries), and the african union (55 countries). however, the statistics for related indicators associated with dd and fs are not available for all g20 countries. hence, 63 countries are considered appropriate for estimating ddi and fsi. furthermore, statistics for the most suitable indicators are available during 2010–2022. thus, this study develops ddi and fsi for 63 countries during this period (table 1). table 1. region-wise segregation of selected countries. country region australia, japan, korea rep., indonesia, china east asia & pacific austria, belgium, croatia, cyprus, czech republic, denmark, estonia, finland, france, germany, greece, hungary, ireland, italy, latvia, lithuania, luxembourg, netherlands, poland, portugal, slovak republic, slovenia, spain, sweden, united kingdom, bulgaria, romania, russian federation, turkey europe & central asia argentina, brazil, mexico latin america & caribbean malta, egypt arab rep., morocco, tunisia middle east & north africa canada, united states north america india south asia ethiopia, gambia, guinea, madagascar, mali, rwanda, uganda, cameroon, comoros, congo rep., eswatini, kenya, lesotho, senegal, tanzania, zimbabwe, mauritius, namibia, south africa sub-saharan africa 3.2. sources of data and time period this study includes 63 countries from the g20 region, and it is proposed to create fsi and ddi for these countries. since the availability of statistics of fs and di related indicators is available during 2010–2022, the study compiles panel data for these countries during the above-said period. the statistics of related variables are derived from world development indicators (the world bank), oecd, and fao. although, the statistics for a few variables are missing in this time period. the missing values are estimated using interpolation and extrapolation techniques (singh, singh, & negi, 2020). these missing values are estimated to create balanced country-wise panel data of specified variables. these techniques assume that particular variables have a linear trend in their time series. furthermore, the observed trend for a time series does not lie outside the projected range in the mentioned techniques. most specifically, these methods also assume that there is no sudden and extreme change in the value of a specific variable within a time period. 3.3. estimation of food security index (fsi) and digital development index (ddi) the composite z-score method is adopted to estimate fsi and its other components, as well as ddi for selected g20 countries. zou and guo (2015) created fsi using factor analysis in china. singh et al. (2020) also preferred a similar method to develop a sustainable development index across countries. the same statistical technique is used to estimate various indexes in the areas of digitalization and fs in this research. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 483 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.4. indicators of ddi the process of digitalization cannot be explained by a specific indicator. thus, most scholars consider diverse indicators for digitalization when assessing its impact on energy intensity, financial stability, economic growth, foreign trade, social development, environmental development, business creation, entrepreneurship ecosystem, sustainable development, and agricultural development (benfica et al., 2023; lee et al., 2023). another group of scholars used a composite index of digitalization-enhancing variables for assessing the progress of digital development (dd). vărzaru (2024) also assessed the impact of digital transformation on fs using indexes. wang et al. (2023) exposed the significant impact on digital technologies, digital finance and human capital on the food system. lee et al. (2023) created a digital economy index to explore its implications on fs in china. sixteen indicators are compiled to estimate the ddi in this study (table 2). these indicators are divided into three categories, which are explained in table 2. table 2. indicators of ddi. category of indicators indicators name code ict access fixed telephone subscriptions (per 100 people) ftsphp mobile cellular subscriptions (per 100 people) mcsphp secure internet servers (per 1 million people) sispmp ict goods exports (% of total goods exports) ictgeptge ict goods imports (% total goods imports) ictgiptgi ict service exports (% of service exports, bop) ictsepsebop communications, computer, etc. (% of service exports, bop) ccpsebop communications, computers, etc. (% of service imports, bop) ccpsibop ict use fixed broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) ci_fbsphp individuals using the internet (% of population) iuipp automated teller machines (atms) (per 100,000 adults) atmpla computer, communications and other services (% of commercial service exports) ccospcse computer, communications and other services (% of commercial service imports) ccospcsi ict skills adjusted savings: education expenditure (% of gni) eepgni compulsory education, duration (years) cedy school enrolment, secondary (% gross) sespg 3.5. indicators of fsi most scholars agree that the food security index (fsi) is a crucial policy tool for measuring food security at the national level. the fsi includes multiple indicators that promote food security (gouvea et al., 2022; herawati et al., 2023; lee et al., 2023; wahab et al., 2015). these indicators can be divided into three to five categories (harris-fry et al., 2015; herawati et al., 2023). for instance, ye et al. (2013) created fsi in china using supply and demand of foodassociated indicators. mantravadi and srai (2023) considered distribution, access and affordability of food to explore the situation of urban fs. zou and guo (2015) develop fsi in china using 12 different indicators associated with fs. alexandri et al. (2015) created the berry index to measure the fs in romania. harris-fry et al. (2015) developed fsi to examine the factors affecting household fs in bangladesh. herawati et al. (2023) analyze the fs as using availability, access and consumption of food in indonesia. lee et al. (2023) developed an fs evaluation index to detect the fs across provinces of china. the above-mentioned review infers that past studies could not pursue a uniform pattern to examine the fs at the macro level. the authors of this article, therefore, considered the most useful indicators associated with fs for measuring the fsi. the sufficiency of food for all people shows the fs (herawati et al., 2023). most significant indicators associated with fsi are finalized as per the existing studies. these indicators are divided into four categories (world bank group (wbg), 2025), and their enlightenment is given as: table 3. indicators of fsi. indicator's category indicators code source of data food availability crop production index (2014-2016 = 100) cpi per capita availability of cereal production (kg./person) pcaopkp wdi food production index (2014-2016 = 100) fpi livestock production index (2014-2016 = 100) lpi population growth (annual %) pga agricultural land (% of land area) alpla fertilizer consumption (kg//ha. of arable land) fckphal food accessibility gdp per person employed (constant 2017 ppp $) gdpppe labor force participation rate, total (% of total population ages 1564) lfprtptp inflation gdp deflator (annual %) igdpda gdp per capita (constant 2015 us$) pcgdp vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment) vetpte employment to population ratio (15+, total (%) eprt purchasing power parity ppp oecd asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 484 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. indicator's category indicators code source of data control of corruption: number of sources ccns wdi food stability age dependency ratio (% of working-age population) adrpwap cereal yield (kg./ha.) cykph arable land (ha./person) alhpp population density (people per sq. km of land area) pd employment in agriculture (% of total employment) eapte per capita land under cereal production (hectares) pclucp per capita food production variability (constant 2014-2016 thousand int$ per capita) pcfpv fao food utilization annual freshwater withdrawals, agriculture (% of total freshwater withdrawal) afwwapt fww wdi mortality rate infant (per 1,000 live births) imrptlb people using at least basic drinking water services (% of population) pulbdwsp p people using at least basic sanitation services (% of population) pubsspp life expectancy at birth, total (years) lebty fertility rate total (births per woman) frtbpw renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters) rifwrpc average dietary energy requirement (kcal/cap/day) ader fao average fat supply (g/cap/day) (3-year average) afs average protein supply (g/cap/day) (3-year average) aps average supply of protein of animal origin (g/cap/day) (3-year average) aspao minimum dietary energy requirement (kcal/cap/day) mder share of dietary energy supply derived from cereals, roots and tubers (kcal/cap/day) (3-year average) sdesdfcr t sex ratio at birth (male births per female births) srb wdi food availability associated variables: food availability cannot be sustained without an agricultural production system and livestock. agricultural land (badolo & kinda, 2015), cereal production (badolo & kinda, 2015), and use of fertilizer help to increase crop production. the use of fertilizer is useful to increase the yield and production of crops (chandio et al., 2024). thus, it is positive to increase fs (scanlan, 2001). food production and livestock ensure the fs and nutritional security. population pressure increases additional pressure on the agricultural sector and fs (ye et al., 2013). high population growth causes an increase in food demand (zou & guo, 2015). hence, fs is negatively affected due to increased population growth (applanaidu et al., 2014; badolo & kinda, 2015; scanlan, 2001). thus, per capita availability of cereal production, food production index (applanaidu et al., 2014), livestock production index, agricultural land and fertilizer consumption, crop production index and population growth (badolo & kinda, 2015) are integrated to develop avfi in this study (table 3). food accessibility related indicators: this component of fs depends on the purchasing power of the people. per capita income (scanlan, 2001) and purchasing power parity is positive in increasing the economic capacity of people to purchase food (abdullayev et al., 2023). on the other hand, the economic capacity of people is expected to decline as inflation, vulnerable employment, and corruption increase. hence, these variables have a negative impact on the accessibility of food. accordingly, 8 indicators are composed for developing the accessibility of food index (acfi) in this study (table 3). food stability related indicators: efficient use of arable land is crucial to increase fs (abdullayev et al., 2023). employment in the agricultural sector helps to increase agricultural production and the economic capacity of workers. conversely, the age dependency ratio (scanlan, 2001) and variability in food production are negatively associated with this component of fs. thus, 7 different indicators are considered to develop the stability of food index (stfi) in this study (table 3). food utilization related indicators: food utilization ensures the food quality that maintains the health security of the people. annual freshwater withdrawals and per capita renewable freshwater are supportive of increasing health security. infant mortality rate (imr) increases due to lack of nutritional security and basic medical facilities (world health organization (who), 2023). food utilization has a negative impact on imr. lack of proper dietary patterns is also responsible for increasing imr. fertility rate and life expectancy increase as nutritional security and fs increase (scanlan, 2001). there are other measures like average dietary energy requirement, average fat supply, minimum dietary energy, and dietary energy supply from cereals that are also important to increase the utilization of food. the contribution of women is essential to increase the utilization of food. thus, the sex ratio at birth is used to examine the role of women in promoting fs. hence, 14 different indicators are used to develop the food utilization index (utfi) in this study (table 3). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 485 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.6. regression analysis previous studies used different models to assess the factors affecting fs. harris-fry et al. (2015) applied a multinomial logistic regression model to examine the determinants of fs at households in bangladesh. using a logistic regression model, zakari et al. (2014) observed the food availability improving factors in niger. vărzaru (2024) examined the impact of digital economy and society index on fs. this research is intended to examine the impact of digital development (dd) on fs and vice-versa. hence, fsi and ddi are included as core variables in simultaneous regression equations. gouvea et al. (2022), lee et al. (2023), and wang et al. (2023) also observed the interconnection of various indexes associated with fs and digitalization is analyzed. the development of environment-related technologies, inventions per capita in this area, final consumption expenditure, foreign direct investment net inflows, forest area, and gross domestic saving are included as explanatory variables. the study also examines the impact of dd on the accessibility of food index (acfi), availability of food index (avfi), stability of food index (stfi), and utilization of food index (utfi). these variables are considered as dependent variables, with ddi used as the independent variable. log-linear regression models are employed to analyze the impact of dvs on ivs. the following regression models are adopted in this article: 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐴𝐶𝐹𝐼)𝑐𝑡 = 𝛼0 + 𝛼1 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐷𝐼)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛼2 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑇𝑃𝐴𝑇)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛼3 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑇𝐼𝑃𝐶)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛼4 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐶𝐸𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛼5 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐷𝐼𝑁𝐼𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛼6 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐴𝑃𝐿𝐴)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛼7 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐺𝐷𝑆𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + µ𝑐𝑡 (1) 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐴𝑉𝐹𝐼)𝑐𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐷𝐼)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛽2 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑇𝑃𝐴𝑇)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛽3 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑇𝐼𝑃𝐶)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛽4 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐶𝐸𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛽5 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐷𝐼𝑁𝐼𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛽6 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐴𝑃𝐿𝐴)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛽7 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐺𝐷𝑆𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + έ𝑐𝑡 (2) here, log is natural logarithm of corresponding dvs and ivs; c is cross country; t is time; α0, and β0 are constantterm; µct and έct are error-term; α1... and β1... are the unknown parameters of associated variables that are estimated through regression analysis in the above-mentioned equations 1 and 2. the detailed description of all ivs and dvs is presented in table 4. accordingly, other regression equations are developed to examine the impact of ddi and other explanatory variables of stfi, utfi, and fsi. thereupon, regression equations that examine the impact of fs and its dimensions on ddi are also formulated in this research. the detailed explanation of these equations is given in appendix a. table 4. explanation of dvs and ivs. indicators code source of data accessibility of food index acfi estimated by authors availability of food index avfi stability of food index stfi utilization of the food index utfi food security index fsi digital development index ddi development of environment-related technologies (% of all technologies) dertpat oecd per capita development of environment-related technologies and inventions dertipc final consumption expenditure as a percentage of gdp fcepgdp wdi foreign direct investment net inflows as a percentage of gdp fdinipgdp forest area (% of land area) fapla gross domestic savings as a percentage of gdp gdspgdp 3.7. statistical software the proposed descriptive and regression analyses are completed using ms excel, spss, and stata statistical software in this study. 4. descriptive results the comparative performance of g20 countries in fs and its four different components is provided in figure 1-5, respectively. figure 6 infer the progress of g20 countries in digital development (dd). the performance of g20 countries in dd and fs is presented in figure 7. the ranking of these countries in various measures of fs and digitalization is provided in table 5. the statistical values of avfi lie between 0.2059 to 0.5362 across g0 countries (figure 1). it demonstrates that g20 countries could not uniformly improve their performance in the availability of food (avf). ireland and denmark hold the 1st and 2nd positions in avfi. in the european union, many countries such as malta and sweden have lower values of avfi. consequently, these countries have the poorest positions in food availability. in the african union, lesotho, south africa, and eswatini have average positions in avf. the remaining countries in the african union have not established an adequate platform to sustain avf. figure 2 explains the comparative performance of g20 countries in food accessibility (acf). it reports a high and significant diversity in acf across g20 countries. luxembourg has the highest value of acfi. it could achieve the best position in this acf compared to other countries. thereafter, ireland has the second-best performing country in acf. most high-income group countries could attain greater positions in acf. conversely, low-income group countries such as rwanda, gambia, mali, guinea, uganda, ethiopia, and madagascar have the poorest performance in acf. all income group countries (except indonesia) could not improve their position in acf. most upper-income countries (except china, mauritius, and russia) have a poor position in acf. european countries (excluding romania, bulgaria, and croatia) demonstrate the best, medium, and average performance in acf. most countries (excluding mauritius) can improve their performance in acf by increasing food production, arable land, and cereal production. countries asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 486 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. with low rankings in food accessibility should create income-generating opportunities to enhance their performance. senegal, india, zimbabwe, morocco, egypt, tunisia, rwanda, gambia, mali, comoros, guinea, south africa, argentina, uganda, congo, kenya, cameroon, türkiye, ethiopia, eswatini, namibia, lesotho, mexico, brazil, romania, tanzania, bulgaria, croatia, and madagascar have avfi values less than 0.40. hence, these countries appear as the poorest performers in acf. figure 3 provides the comparative performance of g20 countries in the stability of food (stf). australia and canada have the 1st and 2nd highest values in stfi, respectively. hence, both countries could achieve 1st and 2nd positions, respectively, in stf. malta has the poorest performance in stf. furthermore, the statistical values of stfi indicate high diversity in stf across g20 countries. australia has the highest value of stfi and holds the best position in stf. malta appears to be in the poorest position in stf. most countries have the poorest positions in avf within the african union. however, many countries such as madagascar, guinea, egypt, mali, and south africa from the african union could achieve better positions in stf. the cross-comparison of g20 countries in the utilization of food (utf) is given in figure 4. australia and canada hold the 1st and 2nd positions, respectively, in utf according to the estimated statistical values of utfi. uganda has the lowest value of utfi. therefore, uganda seems unable to improve its performance in utf. all countries can be considered as performers ranging from best, better, good, to average in stf. all european countries have better positions in utf. most countries in the african union, excluding tunisia, egypt, mauritius, and south africa, have utfi values below those of other nations. fsi is the integration of avfi, acfi, stfi and utfi. thus, those countries that have good performance in the mentioned indicators will be in good positions in food security (fs) (figure 5). netherlands, finland, china, germany, united kingdom, austria, lithuania, france, luxembourg, canada, ireland, united states, denmark, and australia are reported as the best performing countries in fs based on the statistical values of fsi. tunisia, egypt, morocco, south africa, mexico, malta, mauritius, türkiye, brazil, croatia, slovak republic, indonesia, japan, cyprus, slovenia, korea rep., argentina, czechia, estonia, romania, hungary, bulgaria, italy, russian federation, portugal, poland, latvia, greece, belgium, spain, and sweden have better performance in fs. remaining countries have average performance in fs. figure 1. cross-comparison of countries in avfi as per its mean value during 2010-2022. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 487 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 2. cross-comparison of countries in acfi as per its mean value during 2010-2022. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 488 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 3. cross comparison of countries in stfi as per its mean value during 2010-2022. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 489 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 4. cross comparison of countries in utfi as per its mean value during 2010-2022. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 490 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 5. cross comparison of countries in fsi as per its mean value during 2010-2022. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 491 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 6. cross-comparison of countries in dii based on their mean values during 2010-2022. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 492 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 7. progress of g20 countries in dii and fsi as per their mean value during 2010-2022. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 493 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 5. ranking of countries in various indexes. country name mean acfi mean avfi mean stfi mean utfi mean fsi mean ddi value rank value rank value rank value rank value rank value rank ireland 0.597 2 0.536 1 0.477 39 0.617 19 0.557 4 0.672 1 netherlands 0.563 6 0.379 32 0.451 49 0.624 18 0.504 14 0.664 2 korea, rep. 0.484 18 0.324 50 0.480 37 0.611 22 0.475 30 0.604 3 sweden 0.580 3 0.285 57 0.483 36 0.641 11 0.497 15 0.597 4 malta 0.535 13 0.261 61 0.333 63 0.657 9 0.446 40 0.590 5 finland 0.538 12 0.323 52 0.497 24 0.668 5 0.507 13 0.587 6 germany 0.547 10 0.397 25 0.487 31 0.616 20 0.512 11 0.571 7 united states 0.553 8 0.440 10 0.565 5 0.669 4 0.557 3 0.561 8 united kingdom 0.543 11 0.425 14 0.475 40 0.609 25 0.513 10 0.557 9 belgium 0.502 17 0.379 31 0.470 43 0.614 21 0.491 17 0.557 10 japan 0.529 14 0.329 49 0.434 52 0.589 30 0.470 33 0.550 11 france 0.506 16 0.442 8 0.499 23 0.629 17 0.519 7 0.545 12 hungary 0.410 31 0.462 6 0.486 33 0.576 35 0.483 25 0.545 13 canada 0.554 7 0.376 33 0.578 2 0.677 2 0.546 5 0.529 14 denmark 0.574 4 0.511 2 0.525 10 0.664 7 0.569 2 0.516 15 estonia 0.470 21 0.355 41 0.472 41 0.609 23 0.476 27 0.509 16 czechia 0.443 26 0.397 24 0.484 35 0.580 34 0.476 28 0.507 17 austria 0.549 9 0.369 37 0.505 21 0.635 13 0.515 9 0.503 18 brazil 0.356 40 0.371 35 0.519 13 0.589 31 0.459 37 0.476 19 luxembourg 0.714 1 0.348 44 0.485 34 0.635 14 0.545 6 0.476 20 portugal 0.470 20 0.385 29 0.439 51 0.661 8 0.489 21 0.472 21 spain 0.476 19 0.424 15 0.415 58 0.665 6 0.495 16 0.469 22 slovak republic 0.435 29 0.401 22 0.492 28 0.548 40 0.469 35 0.465 23 poland 0.401 33 0.446 7 0.516 16 0.593 28 0.489 20 0.462 24 china 0.404 32 0.436 11 0.569 4 0.631 15 0.510 12 0.461 25 russian federation 0.441 27 0.343 47 0.574 3 0.592 29 0.487 22 0.460 26 australia 0.568 5 0.441 9 0.613 1 0.684 1 0.576 1 0.460 27 argentina 0.310 51 0.436 12 0.526 8 0.630 16 0.475 29 0.454 28 italy 0.436 28 0.405 19 0.453 48 0.649 10 0.486 23 0.451 29 romania 0.356 39 0.483 4 0.510 18 0.584 32 0.483 26 0.450 30 slovenia 0.452 25 0.361 38 0.490 29 0.594 27 0.475 31 0.440 31 latvia 0.458 23 0.419 16 0.497 25 0.583 33 0.489 19 0.435 32 cyprus 0.510 15 0.316 54 0.429 55 0.640 12 0.474 32 0.421 33 bulgaria 0.389 37 0.489 3 0.525 9 0.538 42 0.485 24 0.396 34 croatia 0.393 36 0.403 21 0.494 26 0.568 36 0.464 36 0.387 35 mexico 0.352 41 0.370 36 0.492 27 0.551 39 0.441 41 0.387 36 mauritius 0.422 30 0.371 34 0.453 47 0.545 41 0.448 39 0.378 37 india 0.206 62 0.399 23 0.503 22 0.443 46 0.388 47 0.369 38 lithuania 0.455 24 0.483 5 0.518 14 0.604 26 0.515 8 0.367 39 eswatini 0.335 44 0.404 20 0.413 60 0.348 51 0.375 48 0.352 40 greece 0.400 34 0.428 13 0.459 45 0.677 3 0.491 18 0.337 41 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 494 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. country name mean acfi mean avfi mean stfi mean utfi mean fsi mean ddi value rank value rank value rank value rank value rank value rank south africa 0.306 52 0.410 18 0.509 20 0.474 45 0.425 42 0.336 42 namibia 0.339 43 0.322 53 0.467 44 0.365 48 0.373 49 0.330 43 morocco 0.253 60 0.390 27 0.490 30 0.531 43 0.416 43 0.323 44 tunisia 0.280 58 0.357 40 0.429 54 0.556 37 0.406 45 0.315 45 indonesia 0.461 22 0.396 26 0.540 6 0.478 44 0.469 34 0.309 46 türkiye 0.321 46 0.386 28 0.511 17 0.609 24 0.457 38 0.305 47 mali 0.295 55 0.302 55 0.510 19 0.363 50 0.367 51 0.284 48 senegal 0.192 63 0.349 43 0.405 61 0.420 47 0.342 59 0.284 49 congo, rep. 0.317 49 0.244 62 0.415 57 0.322 54 0.325 63 0.259 50 kenya 0.318 48 0.324 51 0.429 53 0.308 58 0.345 57 0.258 51 guinea 0.300 53 0.339 48 0.522 11 0.306 59 0.367 52 0.244 52 egypt 0.269 59 0.297 56 0.522 12 0.551 38 0.410 44 0.235 53 lesotho 0.350 42 0.410 17 0.449 50 0.271 62 0.370 50 0.212 54 cameroon 0.318 47 0.206 63 0.470 42 0.332 52 0.332 62 0.171 55 zimbabwe 0.223 61 0.355 42 0.479 38 0.321 55 0.344 58 0.164 56 comoros 0.297 54 0.360 39 0.404 62 0.325 53 0.347 56 0.151 57 uganda 0.315 50 0.346 45 0.456 46 0.233 63 0.338 61 0.145 58 madagascar 0.393 35 0.346 46 0.530 7 0.293 61 0.391 46 0.127 59 rwanda 0.284 57 0.381 30 0.415 59 0.314 57 0.348 55 0.126 60 gambia 0.289 56 0.284 58 0.416 56 0.364 49 0.338 60 0.124 61 ethiopia 0.326 45 0.273 59 0.518 15 0.319 56 0.359 53 0.111 62 tanzania 0.358 38 0.261 60 0.487 32 0.297 60 0.351 54 0.101 63 table 6. correlation coefficients among the estimated indexes and ivs. indicators acfi avfi stfi utfi fsi ddi dertpat dertipc fcepgdp fdinipgdp fapla gdspgdp acfi 1 0.137a 0.174a 0.674a 0.791a 0.731a -0.059b 0.574a -0.492a 0.245a 0.229a 0.511a avfi 0.137a 1 0.245a 0.299a 0.575a 0.279a 0.00 -0.009 -0.052 -0.024 -0.137a 0.086a stfi 0.174a 0.245a 1 0.235a 0.446a 0.129a 0.013 0.031 -0.187a -0.128a 0.107a 0.151a utfi 0.674a 0.299a 0.235a 1 0.879a 0.833a -0.060b 0.404a -0.459a 0.130a 0.195a 0.366a fsi 0.791a 0.575a 0.446a 0.879a 1 0.798a -0.049 0.420a -0.462a 0.127a 0.156a 0.431a ddi 0.731a 0.279a 0.129a 0.833a 0.798a 1 -0.031 0.563a -0.511a 0.113a 0.223a 0.476a dertpat -0.059b 0 0.013 -0.060b -0.049 -0.031 1 0.002 -0.008 -0.019 0.045 -0.020 dertipc 0.574a -0.009 0.031 0.404a 0.420a 0.563a 0.002 1 -0.285a 0.016 0.398a 0.285a fcepgdp -0.492a -0.052 -0.187a -0.459a -0.462a -0.511a -0.008 -0.285a 1 -0.167a -0.333a -0.866a fdinipgdp 0.245a -0.024 -0.128a 0.130a 0.127a 0.113a -0.019 0.016 -0.167a 1 -0.086a 0.174a fapla 0.229a -0.137a 0.107a 0.195a 0.156a 0.223a 0.045 0.398a -0.333a -0.086a 1 0.277a gdspgdp 0.510a 0.086a 0.151a 0.366a 0.431a 0.476a -0.020 0.285a -0.866a 0.174a 0.277a 1 note: a indicates that correlation is significant at 1% significance level and b indicates that correlation is significant at 5% significance level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 495 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. moreover, there is diversity in fs in the african and european union due to variation in indicators used to create the fsi. all countries in the african union (except tunisia, egypt, morocco, south africa, and mauritius) have average performance in fs. as per estimated values of ddi, g20 countries are divided into best, better, good, and poorest performers in digital development (dd) (figure 6). korea, republic of, netherlands, and ireland have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd best performing countries in digital development. austria, czechia, estonia, denmark, canada, hungary, france, japan, belgium, the united kingdom, the united states, germany, finland, malta, and sweden are reported as better performing countries in dd. many low-income countries have the poorest positions in dd. cyprus, latvia, slovenia, romania, italy, argentina, australia, the russian federation, china, poland, the slovak republic, spain, portugal, luxembourg, and brazil could sustain good performance in digitalization. tanzania, ethiopia, gambia, rwanda, madagascar, uganda, comoros, zimbabwe, cameroon, lesotho, egypt, guinea, kenya, the congo republic, senegal, and mali have less than 0.30 values of ddi. thus, the estimates suggest that these countries should create appropriate digital infrastructure through increasing r&d investment and strengthening the intellectual property rights regime (benfica et al., 2023). all countries in the european union created effective digital infrastructure and platforms. while none of the countries from the african union could improve their positions in dd. hence, most countries in the european union are receiving relatively greater benefits from dd as compared to other countries in the african union. south korea is found to be the best performing country in dd among asian countries. other asian countries like indonesia, india, and china should give high priority to creating digital infrastructure to increase their positions in dd. fsi is positively correlated with avfi, acfi, stfi and utfi in g20 countries (table 6). fs cannot be separated from its other dimensions. avfi has a positive and statistically significant link with stfi, utfi, and fsi. acfi also has a positive connection with other dimensions of fs. stfi is positively associated with avfi, acfi, utfi, and fsi. the last component of fs, i.e., utfi, is also positively associated with other indexes of fs. hence, the estimates provide clarification that there is a high interdependency of fs with its other dimensions. subsequently, g20 countries should give equal priority to all dimensions of fs to increase their positions in it. the results imply that digital development (dd) helps to enhance avf, acf, stf, utf, and overall fs. thereupon, it is not perceived as a uniform association of external variables with estimated indexes. despite that, per capita environmental technology, fdini, forest area, and gross domestic saving are positively associated with avfi, utfi, fsi, and ddi. hence, these variables are found useful for improving avf, utf, fs, and dd. 5. empirical results the impact of digital development and explanatory variables on acf, avf, stf, utf and fs are presented in table 7. while comprehensive results which estimate the impact of dd on acf, avf, stf, utf, and fs are given in appendix b (table b1-b5). the regression coefficients of ddi with acfi, avfi, stfi, utfi, and fsi are reported as positive. the estimates demonstrate that digital development (dd) positively influences fs and its other dimensions. per capita environmental technology and the share of environmental technologies show a positive impact on acf, avf, utf, and fs. however, stf appears to decline due to increases in per capita environmental technology and the share of environmental technologies. the impact of final consumption expenditure on fs and its drivers is not consistent. although it shows a negative impact on acf and utf, avf, stf, and fs are likely to increase as final consumption expenditure rises. the impact of fdini on acf, utf, and fs is positive and statistically significant. conversely, avf and stf are expected to decline as fdini increases. forest area supports ecosystem services and helps reduce temperature impacts on earth. therefore, it is proposed that forest area would positively influence fs. our results also demonstrate that forest areas have a positive impact on acf, avf, and stf, while forest area is not found to be favorable for promoting utf and fs. table 7. impact of dd on fs and its dimensions. number of obs. 819 819 819 819 819 number of groups 63 63 63 63 63 r-squared 0.6156 0.1154 0.0958 0.741 0.6888 wald chi2 5214.32* 200.02* 353.84* 5932.05* 8082.29* dvs/ivs log(acfi) log(avfi) log(stfi) log(utfi) log(fsi) reg. coef. reg. coef. reg. coef. reg. coef. reg. coef. log(ddi) 0.0957* 0.1790* 0.0152** 0.3988* 0.1661* log(dertpat) 0.0247* 0.006 0.0120* 0.0411* 0.0223* log(dertipc) 0.0705* 0.0003 -0.0049* 0.0225* 0.0218* log(fcepgdp) -0.062 0.3567* 0.0024 -0.0321 0.0496*** log(fdinipgdp) 0.0302* -0.0120*** -0.0129* 0.0035 0.0038*** log(fapla) 0.0042 0.0031 0.0111* -0.0103* -0.0021 log(gdspgdp) 0.0679* 0.0680* 0.0298* 0.0105 0.0424* constant coefficient -0.8869* -2.5969* -0.8600* -0.2316 -1.0381* note: *, ** and *** infer that coefficients are statistically significant at 1%, 5% and 10% significance level, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 496 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 8. impact of fs and its dimensions on dd. number of obs. 819 819 819 819 819 number of groups 63 63 63 63 63 r-squared 0.6895 0.4031 0.0906 0.0188 0.7165 wald chi2 3230.02* 1229.58* 24.8* 72.21* 5234.68* dvs/ivs log(ddi) log(ddi) log(ddi) log(ddi) log(ddi) reg. coef. reg. coef. reg. coef. reg. coef. reg. coef. log(fsi) 1.4627* log(dertpat) 0.0921* log(dertipc) 0.0639* log(fcepgdp) -0.2799* log(fdinipgdp) 0.0007 log(fapla) -0.0189* log(gdspgdp) 0.0126 log(acfi) 1.0723* log(avfi) 0.5282* log(stfi) 0.6074* log(utfi) 1.4166* constant coefficient 1.1689* -0.0408 -0.4927* -0.5849* -0.0662* note: * infer that coefficient is statistically significant at 1% significance level. the impact of fs, acf, avf, stf and utf on digital development (dd) is included in table 8. the impact of fs, accessibility of food, availability of food, stability of food, and utilization of food on dd are provided in table c1,c5, respectively, in appendix c. the positive coefficients of fs and other components are detected as positive and statistically significant. thus, the results indicate that dd is expected to improve as avf, acf, stf, utf, and fs increase. moreover, fdini and gross domestic savings are reported as positive factors for increasing digitalization. in contrast, forest area and final consumption expenditure showed negative implications on dd. 6. conclusion this study estimated various indexes in the areas of food security (fs) and digital development (dd) for selected g20 countries. the results highlighted that g20 countries exhibit high diversity in dd and fs. the variation in dd and fs is due to significant differences in digital infrastructure and fs-enhancing factors. additionally, there is considerable diversity in avf, acf, stf, and utf across g20 countries. high diversity in fs and dd-promoting indicators could pose challenges for low-ranking countries in achieving sdgs in the near future. for example, most countries in the african union have the poorest performance in fs and dd. a few countries in the european union also need to implement conducive policies to improve their performance in dd and fs. therefore, low-ranking countries should prioritize fs and its drivers equally, along with activities that promote digital infrastructure development. the correlation results also imply that fs can be achieved by increasing avf, acf, stf, and utf. moreover, fs is reported positively to increase its other drivers. thus, fs and its drivers have a positive and significant interconnection with each other. acf, avf, stf, utf, and fs are positively associated with dd. fs cannot be sustainable without improving its other components and creating an appropriate digital infrastructure (scanlan, 2001). also, acf, avf, stf, utf, and fs are also reported positive for further improving dd in g20 countries. furthermore, the regression results reveal a positive impact of dd on fs and its other drivers. fs and its other components showed a positive impact on dd. fs and its drivers have a positive and bi-directional relationship with dd. thereupon, dd also has a positive and bi-directional association with fs, avf, acf, stf, and utf. 7. policy implications the results suggested several policy proposals that can support increasing fs in g20 countries. fs cannot be attained without improving its other components. hence, it is necessary to give priority to boosting the availability, stability, accessibility, and utilization of food. irrigation facilities, water conservation practices, organic farming, highyielding seeds, and appropriate technologies should be improved to increase food availability (abdullayev et al., 2023). more creation of employment, non-farming income, and price stability of food products would be conducive to increasing food accessibility (abdullayev et al., 2023). thereafter, protection of arable land and sustainable yield of crops would enhance stf. appropriate food supply management must be improved to reduce food inequality in rural and urban areas. application of clean and green technologies, minimum quantities of fertilizer, chemicals, and pesticides in cultivation would maintain food quality and food utilization. r&d investment in this sector is necessary to make better returns (world bank group (wbg), 2025). monitoring and controlling pests and insects in cultivation would be positive for increasing food utilization. farming communities should move towards agricultural digitalization to increase fs for the present and growing population (lioutas et al., 2021). thereupon, fdi, level of employment, inflation, technological change, environmental technologies, and per capita co2 emissions showed a significant impact on fs. the process of dd is determined by technological change, per capita income, fdi, and inflation. hence, these indicators must be considered in policy implementation to enhance fs and to create dd. these countries should develop sustainable agricultural management policies to give more scope of digital technologies to increase fs. land protection mechanisms must be promoted to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 497 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. ensure the fs of the growing population (zou & guo, 2015). extensive investment in infrastructure, mobile connectivity and digital skills would cultivate a best dd (anderson & sandin, 2022). use of digital technologies would enhance improvement in the food system (wang et al., 2023). farmers should also move towards digital agriculture to increase fs (wang et al., 2023). 8. significance and innovation the world's countries are growing very fast. accordingly, per capita income and social welfare also increase at unprecedented rates in most countries. despite that, a significant share of global countries is still unable to ensure their food security (fs). the world food program (wfp) reported that around 45% of the population is food insecure worldwide. additionally, chronic poverty, income inequality, corruption, black marketing, and ineffective government policies are increasing hunger, food and health insecurity, and malnutrition in many countries. many g20 countries also have lower positions in fs and digitalization. therefore, this study aims to attract the attention of policymakers in g20 countries to adopt effective policies to improve their standings in fs and digital development (dd). subsequently, the variables considered can be used in further policy implications to enhance fs and dd in g20 countries. the article also provides directions for future research with specific questions. 9. limitations and scope of further research estimations of fsi and ddi are limited for selected g20 countries during 2010–2022. the statistical values of fsi and ddi may not remain the same when considering or excluding any variables or countries in their estimations. the ranking of the undertaken countries in fs and dd may not be comparable with existing studies that have estimated fsi and ddi using different indicators and methods. the findings of this research are feasible for selected g20 countries. these countries exhibit diversity in many indicators. existing researchers, therefore, can include the abovementioned issues in further studies. further research can also examine the impact of digitalization on the availability, stability, accessibility, and utilization of food. additional studies can replicate this research using similar empirical exercises for individual countries to verify its validity. there are many areas such as the food supply chain, exports and food, food quality, transportation of foodstuffs, and quality measures of food where dd has a significant contribution. therefore, further studies can incorporate these aspects into empirical analysis. additionally, future research can explore the role of dd in controlling food waste in countries worldwide (mantravadi & srai, 2023). existing researchers can also examine the roles of globalization, foreign trade, technology transfer, intellectual property rights, exports and imports of high-tech products, financial development, and the green economy on dd and fs in g20 countries. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the 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https://doi.org/10.3390/su152416898 https://doi.org/10.1002/agr.21881 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-012-0102-0 https://doi.org/10.3390/su6031191 https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043462 https://doi.org/10.4236/ajibm.2015.56044 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 499 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. appendix a: overview of regression equations. 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝑆𝑇𝐹𝐼)𝑐𝑡 = 𝛾0 + 𝛾1 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐷𝐼)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛾2 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑇𝑃𝐴𝑇)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛾3 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑇𝐼𝑃𝐶)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛾4 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐶𝐸𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛾5 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐷𝐼𝑁𝐼𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛾6 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐴𝑃𝐿𝐴)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛾7 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐺𝐷𝑆𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛿𝑐𝑡 (1) 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝑈𝑇𝐹𝐼)𝑐𝑡 = 𝜉0 + 𝜉1 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐷𝐼)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜉2 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑇𝑃𝐴𝑇)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜉3 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑇𝐼𝑃𝐶)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜉4 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐶𝐸𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜉5 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐷𝐼𝑁𝐼𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜉6 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐴𝑃𝐿𝐴)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜉7 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐺𝐷𝑆𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜆𝑐𝑡 (2) 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝑆𝐼)𝑐𝑡 = 𝜒0 + 𝜒1 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐷𝐼)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜒2 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑇𝑃𝐴𝑇)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜒3 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑇𝐼𝑃𝐶)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜒4 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐶𝐸𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜒5 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐷𝐼𝑁𝐼𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜒6 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐴𝑃𝐿𝐴)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜒7 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐺𝐷𝑆𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜂𝑐𝑡 (3) 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐷𝐼)𝑐𝑡 = 𝛹0 + 𝛹1 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝑆𝐼)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛹2 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑇𝑃𝐴𝑇)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛹3 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐸𝑅𝑇𝐼𝑃𝐶)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛹4 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐶𝐸𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛹5 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐷𝐼𝑁𝐼𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛹6 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐹𝐴𝑃𝐿𝐴)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛹7 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐺𝐷𝑆𝑃𝐺𝐷𝑃)𝑐𝑡 + 𝜃𝑐𝑡 (4) 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐷𝐼)𝑐𝑡 = 𝜉0 + 𝜉1 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐴𝐶𝐹𝐼)𝑐𝑡 + £𝑐𝑡 (5) 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐷𝐼)𝑐𝑡 = 𝜙0 + 𝜙1 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐴𝑉𝐹𝐼)𝑐𝑡 + ¥𝑐𝑡 (6) 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐷𝐼)𝑐𝑡 = 𝛺0 + 𝛺1 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝑆𝑇𝐹)𝑐𝑡 + §𝑐𝑡 (7) 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝐷𝐷𝐼)𝑐𝑡 = 𝜑0 + 𝜑1 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝑈𝑇𝐹)𝑐𝑡 + 𝛹𝑐𝑡 (8) here, log is natural logarithm of corresponding dvs and ivs; c is cross country; t is time; γ0, ξ0, χ0, 𝛹0, ξ0, ϕ0, 𝛺0, and φ0 are constant-term; δct, 𝜆ct, 𝜂ct, θct, £ct, ¥ct, §ct and ψct are error-term; γ0..., ξ0..., χ0..., 𝛹0..., ξ1, ϕ1, 𝛺1, and φ1 are the unknown parameter of associated variables that are estimated through regression analysis in the above-mentioned equations (1), (2), ...., (8), respectively. the detailed description of all ivs and dvs is also provided in table 4. appendix b. impact of dd on fs and its other dimensions. table b1. impact of dd on accessibility of food (acf). number of obs. 819 number of groups 63 r-squared 0.6156 wald chi2 5214.32 log(acfi)=[dv] coef. std. err. z p>|z| [95% conf. interval] log(ddi) 0.0957 0.0238 4.020 0.000 0.0490 0.1424 log(dertpat) 0.0247 0.0066 3.710 0.000 0.0116 0.0377 log(dertipc) 0.0705 0.0060 11.800 0.000 0.0588 0.0823 log(fcepgdp) -0.0620 0.0554 -1.120 0.263 -0.1705 0.0466 log(fdinipgdp) 0.0302 0.0054 5.590 0.000 0.0196 0.0408 log(fapla) 0.0042 0.0053 0.790 0.430 -0.0063 0.0147 log(gdspgdp) 0.0679 0.0136 5.000 0.000 0.0413 0.0945 constant coefficient -0.8869 0.3008 -2.950 0.003 -1.4765 -0.2972 table b2. impact of dd on availability of food (avf). number of obs. 819 number of groups 63 r-squared 0.1154 wald chi2 200.02 log(avfi)=[dv] coef. std. err. z p>|z| [95% conf. interval] log(ddi) 0.1790 0.0261 6.870 0.000 0.1280 0.2301 log(dertpat) 0.0060 0.0129 0.460 0.645 -0.0194 0.0313 log(dertipc) 0.0003 0.0099 0.030 0.978 -0.0191 0.0196 log(fcepgdp) 0.3567 0.0588 6.060 0.000 0.2414 0.4720 log(fdinipgdp) -0.0120 0.0072 -1.670 0.096 -0.0262 0.0021 log(fapla) 0.0031 0.0110 0.280 0.778 -0.0184 0.0246 log(gdspgdp) 0.0680 0.0200 3.400 0.001 0.0287 0.1072 constant coefficient -2.5969 0.2976 -8.730 0.000 -3.1802 -2.0137 table b3. impact of dd on stability of food (stf). number of obs. 819 number of groups 63 r-squared 0.0958 wald chi2 353.84 log(stfi)=[dv] coef. std. err. z p>|z| [95% conf. interval] log(ddi) 0.0152 0.0075 2.010 0.044 0.000 0.030 log(dertpat) 0.0120 0.0046 2.600 0.009 0.003 0.021 log(dertipc) -0.0049* 0.0018 -2.740 0.006 -0.008 -0.001 log(fcepgdp) 0.0024 0.0215 0.110 0.911 -0.040 0.045 log(fdinipgdp) -0.0129 0.0032 -4.080 0.000 -0.019 -0.007 log(fapla) 0.0111 0.0015 7.310 0.000 0.008 0.014 log(gdspgdp) 0.0298 0.0086 3.450 0.001 0.013 0.047 constant coefficient -0.8600 0.1113 -7.730 0.000 -1.078 -0.642 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 500 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table b4. impact of dd on utilization of food (utf). number of obs. 819 number of groups 63 r-squared 0.741 wald chi2 5932.05 log(utfi)=[dv] coef. std. err. z p>|z| [95% conf. interval] log(ddi) 0.3988 0.0190 20.940 0.000 0.3615 0.4362 log(dertpat) 0.0411 0.0127 3.230 0.001 0.0162 0.0661 log(dertipc) 0.0225 0.0026 8.730 0.000 0.0175 0.0276 log(fcepgdp) -0.0321 0.0358 -0.900 0.370 -0.1022 0.0381 log(fdinipgdp) 0.0035 0.0034 1.040 0.298 -0.0031 0.0102 log(fapla) -0.0103 0.0024 -4.200 0.000 -0.0150 -0.0055 log(gdspgdp) 0.0105 0.0133 0.800 0.427 -0.0155 0.0365 constant coefficient -0.2316 0.2000 -1.160 0.247 -0.6236 0.1605 table b5. impact of dd on food security (fs). number of obs. 819 number of groups 63 r-squared 0.6888 wald chi2 8082.29 log(fsi)=[dv] coef. std. err. z p>|z| [95% conf. interval] log(ddi) 0.1661 0.0098 16.880 0.000 0.1468 0.1854 log(dertpat) 0.0223 0.0064 3.480 0.000 0.0098 0.0349 log(dertipc) 0.0218 0.0029 7.450 0.000 0.0161 0.0276 log(fcepgdp) 0.0496 0.0263 1.890 0.059 -0.0019 0.1011 log(fdinipgdp) 0.0038 0.0023 1.660 0.096 -0.0007 0.0082 log(fapla) -0.0021 0.0027 -0.780 0.435 -0.0073 0.0031 log(gdspgdp) 0.0424 0.0073 5.790 0.000 0.0281 0.0567 constant coefficient -1.0381 0.1407 -7.380 0.000 -1.3139 -0.7623 appendix c. impact of fs and its dimensions on dd. table c1. impact of food security on dd. number of obs. 819 number of groups 63 r-squared 0.6895 wald chi2 3230.02 log(ddi)=[dv] coef. std. err. z p>|z| [95% conf. interval] log(fsi) 1.4627 0.0820 17.840 0.000 1.3020 1.6234 log(dertpat) 0.0921 0.0161 5.730 0.000 0.0606 0.1235 log(dertipc) 0.0639 0.0052 12.370 0.000 0.0538 0.0740 log(fcepgdp) -0.2799 0.0710 -3.940 0.000 -0.4190 -0.1408 log(fdinipgdp) 0.0007 0.0061 0.110 0.911 -0.0113 0.0126 log(fapla) -0.0189 0.0044 -4.320 0.000 -0.0275 -0.0103 log(gdspgdp) 0.0126 0.0239 0.530 0.598 -0.0343 0.0595 constant coefficient 1.1689 0.3687 3.170 0.002 0.4463 1.8916 table c2. impact of accessibility of food on dd. number of obs. 819 number of groups 63 r-squared 0.4031 wald chi2 1229.58 log(ddi)=[dv] coef. std. err. z p>|z| [95% conf. interval] log(acfi) 1.0723 0.0306 35.070 0.000 1.0124 1.1323 constant coefficient -0.0408 0.0286 -1.420 0.154 -0.0969 0.0153 table c3. impact of availability of food on dd. number of obs. 819 number of groups 63 r-squared 0.0906 wald chi2 24.8 log(ddi)=[dv] coef. std. err. z p>|z| [95% conf. interval] log(avfi) 0.5282 0.1061 4.980 0.000 0.3204 0.7361 constant coefficient -0.4927 0.1095 -4.500 0.000 -0.7074 -0.2780 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 478-501 501 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table c4. impact of stability of food on dd. number of obs. 819 number of groups 63 r-squared 0.0188 wald chi2 72.21 log(ddi)=[dv] coef. std. err. z p>|z| [95% conf. interval] log(stfi) 0.6074 0.0715 8.500 0.000 0.4673 0.7475 constant coefficient -0.5849 0.0519 -11.280 0.000 -0.6866 -0.4833 table c5. impact of utilization of food on dd. number of obs. 819 number of groups 63 r-squared 0.7165 wald chi2 5234.68 log(ddi)=dv coef. std. err. z p>|z| [95% conf. interval] log(utfi) 1.4166 0.0196 72.350 0.000 1.3782 1.4549 constant coefficient -0.0662 0.0155 -4.270 0.000 -0.0966 -0.0358 views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 91 organogenesis of corn plants (zea mays l.) at various concentrations of auxin and cytokinin plant growth regulators in vitro rahman hairuddina muh. yusuf idrisb kamil nurc a,b,cdepartment of agrotechnology, faculty of agriculture, cokroaminoto university, palopo, indonesia.  rahmanhairuddin@uncp.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 23 december 2022 revised: 20 february 2023 accepted: 10 march 2023 published: 31 march 2023 keywords corn hormone in-vitro organogenesis pgr plant height root. this study aimed to determine the effect of auxin and cytokinin concentrations as plant growth regulators (pgr) on the organogenesis of corn plants in vitro. this research was conducted from june to september 2021 in the plant tissue culture laboratory of cokroaminoto university, palopo city, south sulawesi, indonesia. the research method was a completely randomized design (crd) consisting of 15 experimental units, i.e., p0 (control), p1 (2 ml naa (naphthaleneacetic acid) + 1 ml bap (benzylaminopurine)), p2 (2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap), p3 (2 ml naa + 2 ml bap), and p4 (2 ml naa + 2.5 ml bap). the results revealed that the administration of auxin and cytokinin plant growth regulators had a significant effect on the parameters of germination age and plantlet weight, but it had no significant effect on the parameters of plant height, number of roots, root length, and number of leaves. the effective concentration of auxin and cytokinin growth regulators on the organogenesis of corn plants was p2 (2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap) on the parameters of 11 cm plant height, 7 root strands, 1 leaf, and 1 gram plantlet weight. this was due to the influence of the given concentration of pgr, which plays multiple important roles in plant development. contribution/originality: the administration of the growth regulators naphthaleneacetic acid (naa) and benzylaminopurine (bap) had a significant effect on the parameters of germination age and plant weight, but it had no significant effect on the parameters of root length, number of leaves, plant weight, and number of roots. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4770 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: hairuddin, r., idris, m. y., & nur, k. (2023). organogenesis of corn plants (zea mays l.) at various concentrations of auxin and cytokinin plant growth regulators in vitro. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1), 91–97. 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4770 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction corn is the third largest staple food in the world after wheat and rice. increasing the productivity of corn cultivation is highly dependent on the ability to provide and apply appropriate cultivation system techniques, including the use of high-quality seeds (bheemanahalli, vennam, ramamoorthy, & reddy, 2022), spacing (zhang, basso, price, putman, & shuai, 2018), irrigation (kaplan, karaman, kardes, & kale, 2019; orebo, shanka, & hadaro, 2021), pest and disease control (bekeko et al., 2018), and fertilizers (sajadinia, ghazanfari, naghavii, naghavi, & tahamipur, 2021). it is important to implement these techniques to support the growth and production of corn plants by meeting their nutritional needs. several regions in indonesia use corn as an alternative staple food to replace rice. corn plants contain moisture, crude protein, crude fat, dietary fiber, carbohydrates (langyan et al., 2022), and minerals (ikram, muhammad, & arifa, 2010). in addition, the functions of corn plants include asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 1 (2023): 91-97. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0486-5971 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8251-4547 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1221-3113 mailto:rahmanhairuddin@uncp.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 91-97 92 antimicrobial activity (abirami et al., 2021) and antioxidant capacity (montero-vargas, ortíz-islas, ramírezsánchez, garcía-lara, & winkler, 2020). given the increasing human population, alternative technologies are needed to meet the increasing demand for corn. one of these technologies is the principle of tissue culture, which involves producing as many plant seeds as possible with a small amount of material. in this way, a single plant can produce a large number of new individuals in a relatively short time. the types of plant hormones widely used to stimulate in-vitro growth are auxins and cytokinins (michniewicz et al., 2019; wang et al., 2021; zhao, xiang, & xue, 2013). to obtain the best results, the use of appropriate basic media is an important factor that must be considered in nurseries using tissue culture techniques. organogenesis is the process of forming organs, such as buds and roots, either directly or indirectly, through the formation of callus. cell or tissue capacity, differentiation, and determination type are very important for explant organogenesis. insufficient corn production may be caused by various factors, including drought, nutrient scarcity, and biotic stresses such as pests, weeds, and diseases; also, potassium (k) deficiency significantly reduces photosynthesis due to leaf chlorosis (qi et al., 2019). a cell is defined as a competent cell if it can form competent cells in response to environmental signals (tas & mutlu, 2021) and hormones (balzan, johal, & carraro, 2014; ludwig, zhang, & hochholdinger, 2013). developing research on corn includes efficient in-vitro split node explants derived from seeds (mushke, yarra, & bulle, 2016), culture embryogenesis and direct regeneration (hosseini, ismaili, & pour mohammadi, 2014), and the influence of auxin homeostasis on the eighth internode length heterosis in corn (balzan et al., 2014). the current study aimed to determine the effect of the concentration of the plant growth regulators (pgrs) auxin and cytokinin on the organogenesis of corn plants in vitro. 2. materials and methods 2.1. research time and location this research was conducted at the tissue culture laboratory of the faculty of agriculture, university of cokroaminoto palopo, batupasi, wara subdistrict, palopo city, south sulawesi, indonesia, from june to september 2022. 2.2. research design this study used a completely randomized design (crd) consisting of 5 treatments with 3 replications, creating a total of 15 experimental units. the treatments were: p0 (control), p1 (administration of ms medium + 2 ml naa (naphthaleneacetic acid) + 1 ml bap (benzylaminopurine)), p2 (administration of ms medium + 2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap), p3 (administration of ms medium + 2 ml naa + 2 ml bap), and p4 (administration of ms medium + 2 ml naa + 2.5 ml bap). 2.3. research procedure room sterilization. the room used as a laboratory must be clean and sterile from dirt and dust. the floor was cleaned using a vacuum cleaner and wiped with clean water, after which it was sterilized with formalin. sterilization of bottles and tools. for contamination control, it is very important to sterilize all tools and materials used to support the success of the in-vitro culture. the first step of the sterilization process was cleaning the bottles, petri dishes, and tweezers with soap, after which the bottles and tools were put into the autoclave. the autoclave was closed and then turned on to sterilize the items. the autoclave process was at 121 °c for 15 minutes. then the autoclave was left to stand for 35-45 minutes, after which the bottles were removed from the autoclave and stored on the storage rack. media creation (ms). the medium used in this study was ms medium. first, the necessary tools and materials were prepared. then each stock solution was placed in a beaker with a predetermined dose, and distilled water was added until it reached 1000 ml. next, 30 grams of sugar and 7 grams of agar-agar were weighed, mixed with the broth in a chemical glass, and stirred until smooth. the storage media was then poured into the pan and heated. after the media was ready, it was transferred to the culture flask and covered with aluminum foil. culture bottles covered with aluminum foil were autoclaved until the temperature reached 121°c. after the autoclave temperature stabilized, the media was stored in the storage rack. explant sterilization. sterilization of the explants was performed in a laminar air flow cabinet by immersing the explants in ridomil. the explants were immersed in rifampicin and rinsed in sterile distilled water. they were sterilized back in chlorox and rinsed with sterile distilled water. finally, the explants were soaked in 96% alcohol and dried using tissue or filter paper. explant planting. the explants were planted in the laminar air flow cabinet. before the bottles were planted, the bottle mouth was heated to avoid contamination. the bottle cap was carefully opened. to maintain the sterilization of the tool, tweezers were always heated before use. the plastic bottle cover was opened, the explants were taken with sterile tweezers, then the explants were planted on the media. after planting, the mouth of the bottle was heated again. bottle caps were heated before use. the bottles were tightly closed using aluminum foil then labeled with the treatment and stored on a storage rack. maintenance was performed every morning and evening by spraying the bottles with alcohol to protect the corn from contamination. 2.4. observation parameters observations were made after the plants had germinated, and subsequent observations were performed after the plants had grown (according to the observation parameters). several parameters were observed and measured in this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 91-97 93 study, including germination age (days), plant height (cm), number of roots (strands), root length (cm), number of leaves (strands), and plantlet weight (g). 2.5. data analysis the data obtained were analyzed statistically using the analysis of variance (anova). if the anova showed a significant effect, then the data was further tested with the honest significant difference test (α = 0.01 and α = 0.05). 3. results and discussion 3.1. germination age (days) several concentrations of auxin and cytokinin growth regulators had a significant effect on the average germination age parameter in the in-vitro organogenesis of corn plants, as shown in figure 1. figure 1. diagram of the average germination age at various concentrations of auxin and cytokinin pgr on the organogenesis of corn plants in vitro (p0 (control), p1 (ms medium + 2 ml naa + 1 ml bap), p2 (ms medium + 2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap), p3 (ms medium + 2 ml naa + 2 ml bap), p4 (ms medium + 2ml naa + 2.5ml bap). figure 1 shows the average germination age in corn plant organogenesis under the influence of various concentrations of auxin and cytokinin growth regulators. the lowest average germination age, or fastest sprouting age, was observed in treatments p1 (2 ml naa + 1 ml bap) and p3 (2 ml naa + 2 ml bap) at 2.7 days after planting (dap). these were followed by p2 (2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap) with an average of 3 dap and p4 (2 ml naa + 2.5 ml bap) with an average of 3.3 dap. meanwhile, the slowest was p0 (control) with an average of 4.7 dap. treatment p1, therefore, produced the best germination age, and the difference with other treatments was significant. plant germination can thus be affected by the addition of plant growth regulators. 3.2. plant height, number of roots, and root length table 1 shows that the average value for the plant height parameter in corn plants with the administration of auxin and cytokinin growth regulators from the highest to the lowest was p2 (2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap) with 11 cm, p4 (2 ml naa + 2.5 ml bap) with 9.8 cm, p3 (2 ml naa + 2 ml bap) with 8.3 cm, p1 (2 ml naa + 1 ml bap) with 6.3 cm, and finally p0 (control) with an average value of 5.9 cm. the p2 treatment produced the best average plant height but the difference with the other treatments was not significant. nevertheless, plant height gain can be affected by the addition of growth regulators. table 1 shows that several concentrations of auxin and cytokinin growth regulators had no significant effect on the average number of roots in the in-vitro organogenesis of corn plants. the average value for the number of roots parameter in corn plants with auxin and cytokinin growth regulators from the highest to the lowest was p2 (2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap) with an average of 7 root strands, followed by p1 (2 ml naa + 1 ml bap) with 5.3 strands, p4 (2 ml naa + 2.5 ml bap) with 4.7 strands, p3 (2 ml naa + 2 ml bap) with 4.7 strands, while the lowest value was p0 (control) with an average value of 1.3 strands. treatment p2 produced the best average root number, but the difference with the other treatments was not significant. root growth did seem to be affected by the addition of growth regulators. table 1 also shows that various concentrations of auxin and cytokinin growth regulators had no significant effect on the average root length parameter in the in-vitro organogenesis of corn plants. the average value of root length in corn plants with the administration of auxin and cytokinin growth regulators from the highest to the lowest was p4 (2 ml naa + 2.5 ml bap) with 1.9 cm, p3 (2 ml naa + 2 ml bap) with 1.8 cm, p1 (2 ml naa + 1 ml bap) with 1.7 cm, and p2 (2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap) with 1 cm. the p4 treatment produced the best root length, but the difference with the other treatments was not significant. the increase in root length did appear to be affected by the addition of growth regulators. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 91-97 94 table 1. plant height, number of roots, and root length at several concentrations of auxin and cytokinin pgr during the organogenesis of corn plants in vitro. treatments height number of roots (cm) root length (cm) p0 5.9±2.88 1.3±0.5 0.5±0 p1 6.3±1.52 5.3±2.3 1.7±1.7 p2 11±4.85 7±3 1±0 p3 8.3±4.35 4.0±1 1.8±1.1 p4 9.8±5.86 4.7±2.5 1.9±1.1 3.3. number of leaves and plantlet weight table 2 shows the corn plants’ average number of leaves with the administration of auxin and cytokinin growth regulators in the in-vitro organogenesis of corn plants. the average number of leaves from the highest to the lowest was p2 (2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap) with 2 leaves, followed by p3 (2 ml naa + 2 ml bap) with 2.0 leaves, p1 (2 ml naa + 1 ml bap) with 2.0 leaves, and p4 (2 ml naa + 2.5 ml bap) with 2.0 leaves, while p0 (control) had the lowest value of 1.7 leaves. table 2. number of leaves and plantlet weight at several concentrations of auxin and cytokinin pgr during the organogenesis of corn plants in vitro. treatments number of leaves (blades) plantlet weight (g) p0 1.7±0.5 0.6±0.05 p1 2±0 0.9±0.09 p2 2±0.5 1±0.13 p3 2±0 1±0.21 p4 2±0 0.9±0.1 table 2 shows the average plantlet weight of corn plants with the administration of auxin and cytokinin growth regulators in the in-vitro organogenesis of corn plants. the average value from the highest to the lowest was p2 (2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap) with 1 gram, followed by p3 (2 ml naa + 2 ml bap) with 1.0 gram, and p1 (2 ml naa + 1 ml bap) and p4 (2 ml naa + 2.5 ml bap) with 0.9 grams, while p0 (control) had the lowest value of 1.7 grams. the p2 treatment produced the best root length, but the difference with the other treatments was not significant. the plantlet weight can be affected by the addition of growth regulators. overall, the organogenesis of the tested corn plants is presented in figure 2. 4. discussion from the analysis of variance, the results showed a significant effect on the parameters of germination age and plantlet weight, while there was no significant effect on the parameters of plant height, number of roots, root length, or number of leaves. for the germination age parameter, p1 (2 ml naa + 1 ml bap) showed the best results with an average of 2.7 days (figure 1). the addition of plant growth regulators auxin (naa) and cytokinin (bap) had the best results on the corn germination age. cytokinin, in combination with auxin, plays an important role in cell division and the differentiation of tissues during the formation of shoots and root growth. similarly, rivas, friero, alarcón, and salguero (2022) found that auxin was a plant hormone that could regulate many physiological processes, including growth, cell division and differentiation, and protein synthesis. cytokinins are involved in cell division and promote the growth of shoots and stems. for the plant height parameter, treatment p2 (2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap) achieved the best results with an average value of 11 cm, while p0 (control) had an average value of 5.9 cm (table 1). therefore, the administration of the auxin growth regulator caused an increase in plant height. davani, nabipour, and roshanfekr dezfouli (2017) revealed that stem elongation occurs through the process of division, elongation, and expansion of new cells that occur in meristems or apical stems. this is said to increase plant size. for the number of roots parameter, treatment p2 (2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap) obtained the best results with an average of 7 strands, while p0 (control) had an average of 1.3 strands. the results show that the administration of auxin and cytokinin growth regulators stimulates plant growth and development. the addition of auxins or cytokinins can increase the concentration of growth regulators from the body itself in the cells, which can be a triggering factor for the process of tissue growth and development. the more explant leaves, the better the explant photosynthetic process (wei, wang, jiang, & dong, 2018). this can indicate the growth and development of explants or planted seeds. the study’s findings on the number of roots parameter are also in accordance with the study of yan, xu, li, wang, and han (2021), which stated that auxin plays a very important role in stimulating the formation of roots, or cell division. the use of auxin is known to accelerate the process of root formation (li et al., 2018). the root length observations showed that p4 (2 ml naa + 2.5 ml bap) gave the best results with an average value of 1.9 cm. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 91-97 95 figure 2. final results of various concentrations of auxin and cytokinin pgr on the organogenesis of corn plants in vitro. a) p0: without treatment (control), b) p1: 2 ml naa + 1 ml bap, c) p2: 2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap, d) p3: 2 ml naa + 2 ml bap, e) p4: 2 ml naa + 2.5 ml bap. meanwhile, p0 (control) had the lowest average root length with 0.5 cm. this result provides evidence for the effect of auxin and cytokinin administration as growth regulators on root formation and elongation. this is in line with boivin, farde, and frugier (2016), who reported that auxin is necessary for root formation as it stimulates cell division. the use of auxin is known to accelerate the root formation process. growth regulators in concentrations high enough for explants have different effects on the growth and development of each plantlet’s roots, stems, and leaves. the effectiveness of exogenous auxin and cytokinin growth regulators depends on the concentration of endogenous hormones in plant tissues (jones & ljung, 2011; schaller, bishopp, & kieber, 2015). regarding the number and length of roots and their role as a determinant of the direction of tissue development, the administration of auxins and cytokinins must take the concentration and ratio in the media into account. when auxin is higher than cytokinin, it causes differentiation leading to root growth. the findings showed that the treatment with ms medium + 2 ml naa + 2.5 ml bap resulted in a better number of roots and root length, while none of the treatments had a significant effect on root length. the observations on the number of leaves showed that for the average number of leaves parameter, the best result of administering the auxin growth regulator was with treatment p2 (2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap), which resulted in 2 blades. meanwhile, p0 (control) obtained the lowest value with an average of 1.7 blades. the effect of exogenous growth regulators in in-vitro media, whether they are asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 91-97 96 the same or different from endogenous growth regulators (in plant tissues), is determined by their content (hussain et al., 2021). in general, the effect of exogenous bap in the growth medium on plant growth, i.e., the number of leaves, is determined by the content of bap growth regulators or other endogenous cytokinin groups and auxin groups, including naa and indole-3-acetic acid (iaa). the observations revealed that the administration of ms medium + 2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap resulted in a significant effect on leaf length compared to other treatments and the control. meanwhile, none of the treatments had a significant effect on leaf width. the increase in leaf length growth was due to the acceleration of cell division and the encouragement of the differentiation process (table 2). cell division requires high energy, which is obtained from auxins, cytokinins, and other nutrients. energy in the form of atp, which results from the respiration process, is used to synthesize essential compounds, such as proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and others. these compounds are needed for the process of cell division that occurs in apical meristems and intercalary meristems. bap plays an important role in the direct formation of somatic embryogenesis (lan, hong, huang, chang, & lin, 2009). the observation results of plantlet weight (grams) showed the highest average plantlet weight for p2 (2 ml naa + 1.5 ml bap) with the highest value of 1 gram (table 2). meanwhile, the lowest result was achieved by p0 (control) with an average value of 0.6 grams. this was because the administration of growth regulators stimulated growth and development in the plantlets. the formed plantlets are influenced by the presence of auxins, both endogenous and exogenous. cytokinins also affect the proliferation of shoots, so that callus can develop, and the total fresh weight produced increases. in the practice of tissue culture, cell differentiation is determined by the balance between auxins and cytokinins. stem elongation occurs due to the process of division, elongation, and enlargement of new cells that occurs in the apical meristem and stem segments, which causes the plant to increase in height. the administration of bap in the culture media will affect tissue growth. bap growth regulators have the properties of being more easily absorbed by plant cells, not breaking down easily, and functioning to promote morphogenetic activity (ling, tan, & hussein, 2013). 5. conclusion this study concluded that the administration of auxin and cytokinin growth regulators had a significant effect on the parameters of germination age and plantlet weight, but it had no significant effect on the parameters of plant height, number of roots, root length, and number of leaves. this was due to the influence of the given growth regulator concentrations, which play an important role in plant development. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abirami, s., priyalakshmi, m., soundariya, a., samrot, a. v., saigeetha, s., emilin, r. r., & inbathamizh, l. 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(2023). technology gap ratio decomposition in sugarcane farming in indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1), 1–7. 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4707 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction in the last decades, agricultural intensification has boosted productivity to meet the increasing global demand for agricultural products. however, this effort has not yet generated maximum results (dong et al., 2016). many agricultural production activities in developing countries are inefficient due to managerial incompetence, low levels of technological innovation, and lack of government support (ullah, silalertruksa, pongpat, & gheewala, 2019). therefore, special efforts need to be made to increase the agricultural sector’s contribution to the national economy. in indonesia, sugarcane is a strategic commodity for the national economy. it has high forward and backward linkages and plays an essential role in the value chain. lin and chen (2015) asserted that an essential role of asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 1 (2023): 1-7. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8520-6854 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8531-5444 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9049-876x mailto:nuhfil.fp@ub.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 1-7 2 sugarcane is as a raw material for granulated sugar, which indonesian customers purchase for direct consumption or the food and beverage industry. additionally, the industry absorbs labour through sugar factories and sugarcane farming in rural areas. the 2019 industry labour data shows that 74% of workers in the industry, 995 thousand workers, were sugarcane farmers, and the remaining 26% worked in the sugar production process (ngadi & nagata, 2022). according to the food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao) (2018), between 2014 and 2018, the average sugarcane production in indonesia experienced a slowdown of 5.14%, with an average production of 23.6 million tons and an average harvested area of 442 thousand hectares. likewise, the growth rate of the sugarcane harvested area declined by 2.39% annually. this decline between 2014 and 2018 was caused by a 6.91% decrease in the number of smallholder plantations (widyasari, putra, ranomahera, & puspitasari, 2022). sugarcane productivity fluctuates every year, with an average annual productivity of 53.45 tons per hectare. the highest productivity was recorded in 2015, with 55.61 tons per hectare. in line with the declining growth rate in production and harvested area, the average productivity growth rate also slowed by 2.76%. indonesia must intensify its sugarcane production to meet the demands of a growing population that is earning increasingly higher incomes. the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) (2020) reported that the average sugar consumption in indonesia between 2016 and 2020 was 7 million tons, while the average sugar production was only 2.2 million tons. since domestic production could not meet domestic demand, imports made up the deficit of 4.7 million tons. an alternative would be to achieve production efficiency in sugar factories and sugarcane farming, especially in sugarcane production centres. east java province is one of indonesia’s production centres. based on data collected by artikanur, widiatmaka, setiawan, and marimin (2022), the regencies with the largest harvested area, production, and productivity are kediri, malang, and mojokerto. however, these areas have different productivity and production levels due to differences in the availability of natural resources (resource endowment) and technological infrastructure. this disparity can be influenced by capabilities, cultural characteristics, facilities and infrastructure, and climate. o’donnell, rao, and battese (2008) asserted that gaps could include the use of different sets of technologies, the availability of human and financial resources (e.g., the type of machine, workforce size and quality, and access to foreign exchange), natural resources (e.g., soil quality, climate, energy), and other physical, social, and economic environments where production takes place. previous research by francis, samuel, and samuel (2020) found that sugarcane farming in developing countries had not yet reached optimum efficiency, presumably due to the ratoon farming system practised by most farmers and the use of local seeds. carrer, de souza filho, vinholis, and mozambani (2022) argued that sugarcane farming could still be optimised to achieve full efficiency, especially in countries with high agricultural potential. in indonesia, research on sugarcane farming has also found technical inefficiencies. for example, yusuf, jamhari, and irham (2020) revealed that sugarcane farming in east java, whether employing the plant cane or the ratoon cane system, was still technically inefficient. widyawati (2020) showed that sugarcane farming with the plant cane system was more technically efficient than the ratoon cane system. meanwhile, ambetsa, samuel, and samuel (2020) and ali and jan (2017) discovered that fertilisers, seeds, and labour were the factors that most affected the production and technical efficiency of sugarcane farming. extensive research has been conducted on sugarcane farming efficiency, covering different developing countries; however, these studies have only measured the technical efficiency of sugarcane farming (carrer et al., 2022; francis et al., 2020), compared efficiency levels based on cultivation techniques (widyawati, 2020), and identified the factors affecting technical efficiency levels (ali & jan, 2017; ambetsa et al., 2020). to date, little research on sugarcane farming has simultaneously examined technical efficiency levels and gaps in technological inefficiency (gti) and managerial inefficiency (gmi), especially in indonesia. therefore, this study analysed the differences in technical efficiency levels and the gaps in technological and managerial inefficiency in sugarcane farming in three locations in east java province using meta-frontier data envelopment analysis (meta-dea). 2. research methods 2.1. research data the sample of farmers in this study was recruited using multi-stage sampling from the selected sugarcane production centres in east java province, which contributed 80% of the national sugarcane production. the selected production centres in east java were kediri, malang, and mojokerto regencies, based on their high production quantity, harvested land areas, and productivity levels. one district was selected from each regency. then, four central villages were selected from each district. the number of farmers recruited as the sample of this study was 148. the primary data were collected using a survey during the 2019/2020 sugarcane planting season. 2.2. data analysis the efficiency analysis in this research was limited to technical efficiency. in the meta-dea method, the efficiency measurement does not calculate the average value but the relative efficiency of using production inputs. the input variables were land area, sugarcane seeds, n fertiliser, p fertiliser, k fertiliser, s fertiliser, pesticides, and labour. meanwhile, the study’s output variable was sugarcane production. the dea efficiency approach is nonparametric. ramanathan (2003) stated that in the dea model, multiple inputs and outputs are aggregated linearly using weighting. the input used by a farmer is thus the linear sum of the weights of all the inputs used and can be formulated as in equations 1, 2, and 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 1-7 3 𝐴𝑔𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝐼𝑛𝑝𝑢𝑡 = ∑ 𝑢𝑖𝑥𝑖 𝐼 𝑖=1 (1) 𝐴𝑔𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑝𝑢𝑡 = ∑ 𝑣𝑗𝑦𝑗 𝐽 𝑗=1 (2) 𝐸𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦 = ∑ 𝑣𝑗𝑦𝑗 𝐽 𝑗=1 ∑ 𝑢𝑖𝑥𝑖 𝐼 𝑖=1 (3) the model was estimated using the data envelopment analysis program (deap) version 2.1. the meta-frontier function obtained from the dea approach was carried out using equation 4. 𝑀𝑎𝑥𝛷𝑖𝑡𝜆𝑖𝑡 𝛷𝑖𝑡 subject to −𝛷𝑖𝑡𝑏𝑖𝑡 + 𝐵𝑖𝑡𝜆𝑖𝑡 ≥ 0 𝑎𝑖𝑡 − 𝐴𝑖𝑡𝜆𝑖𝑡 ≥ 0; 𝜆𝑖𝑡 ≥ 0 (4) where: bit is vector m x 1 sum of outputs from the ith decision-making unit (dmu) in period t, ait is vector n x 1 sum of inputs from the ith uke in period t, bit is vector m x l sum of outputs from total uke (l = the total number of uke), ait is vector n x l sum of inputs from the total uke, 𝜆𝑖𝑡 is a weighting vector, and 𝛷𝑖𝑡 is a scalar. this study used the dea approach, with meta-frontier analysis carried out for three research sites. all three had different characteristics, which were identified using the meta-frontier analysis. if we assume that the input vector is x and the output is y, then the set of technologies that the producer has in their production is expressed as equation 5: 𝑇 = {(𝑋, 𝑦): 𝑋 ≥ 0, 𝑦 ≥ 0} (5) related to the set of meta-technology, namely the use of inputs and the results (outputs), the representation of the output set in meta-frontier technology is expressed as equation 6: 𝑃(𝑋) = {𝑦: (𝑋, 𝑦) 𝜖 𝑇} (6) the transformation of production inputs into outputs in the set of technologies will result in the highest production frontier or limit. if there are factors that affect production, including differences in location characteristics, the achievement of production efficiency in the meta-frontier analysis by region will be different. the lower the efficiency of a group compared to other groups, the lower the efficiency value will be in the meta-frontier. the following equation relates to the distance between the meta frontier and the achievement of producers (sugarcane farmers) in this study. 𝐷(𝑋, 𝑦) = 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝜃 {𝜃 > 0; (𝑋) 𝜖 𝑃(𝑋)} (7) the production distance in equation 7 (d(x,y)) states that the input set used by the producer will produce maximum output in the observation ((𝑋, 𝑦)𝑖) and can be considered technically efficient in the meta-frontier if and only if d(x,y) = 1. this means that, when there is no distance, the ratio of the output achievement to the frontier is the same (d (x, y) is equal to 1). if k indicates the region, then the technology set in that particular region is as in equation 8. 𝑇𝐾 = {(𝑋, 𝑦): 𝑋 ≥ 0, 𝑦 ≥ 0} (8) meanwhile, the technology and related outputs and the production distance per area in question are as in equations 9 and 10, respectively. 𝑃𝐾(𝑋) = {𝑦: (𝑋, 𝑦) 𝜖 𝑇𝐾} (9) 𝐷𝐾(𝑋, 𝑦) = 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝜃 {𝜃 > 0; (𝑋) 𝜖 𝑃𝐾(𝑋)} (10) suppose group technical efficiency (gte) and technical meta efficiency (tme) denote the technical efficiency of the meta frontier, and (meta-te) denotes technical efficiency in each region (group frontier) or region-te (figure 1). in that case, the results of the analysis in the group frontier and meta-frontier will produce a technology gap ratio (tgr) or meta-technology ratio (mtr), respectively. each is represented in equation 11. 0 < 𝑀𝑇𝑅 = 𝑀𝐸𝐸 𝐺𝐸𝐸 ≤ 1 (11) if the mtr is close to 1, the technological heterogeneity is lower, and the frontier group will be closer to the meta frontier and vice versa (chiu, liou, wu, & fang, 2012). the mtr also provides information about the differences in dmu technology in various groups in the meta frontier. this also means that factors outside of the technical aspects of input and output impact inefficiency. for instance, site-specific characteristics are considered factors that influence inefficiency. chiu et al. (2012) promoted the method of decomposing dmu inefficiency in meta-frontier analysis. this decomposition of inefficiency in the meta frontier leads to a distinction between managerial inefficiency (gmi) and technological gap inefficiency (tgi). these are formulated as in equation 12 and 13, respectively: tgi = gee (1-mtr) (12) gmi = (1-gee) (13) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 1-7 4 figure 1. meta-frontier and group frontier. note: source: * = final point of i curve. o’donnell et al. (2008). tgi provides information related to the level of inefficiency of dmu in its group and efficiency in its metafrontier. the closer the dmu is to the meta-frontier, the smaller the tgi value. the farther the efficiency of the dmu in the group from the efficiency of the group environmental efficiency (gee) if higher than the meta-frontier environmental efficiency (mee), the more inefficient the dmu is. gmi is a decomposition of managerial-related inefficiency. this is an inefficiency in a specific group frontier, which indicates the ability to achieve lower input productivity than it should be able to achieve in that group. this is caused by a lack of managerial skills or failure in production at the dmu. finally, the last measure, the aggregation of managerial failure and technology gap, is referred to as environmental inefficiency (managerial and technology inefficiency = mti). it is formulated as follows: mti = tgi+gmi (14) where mti is environmental inefficiency, tgi is technology inefficiency, and gmi is managerial inefficiency. 3. results and discussion 3.1. descriptive statistics this section discusses the descriptive statistics of the variables used in this study, including the measurements, mean values and standard deviations. table 1 shows that the average sugarcane yield produced by farmers was 940 kg per season, with an average total area of 1.06 ha. the inputs used included fertilisers, pesticides, and labour. the four types of fertilisers used by sugarcane farmers were n fertiliser with an average value of 261.6 kg per season, p fertiliser with an average value of 89.9 kg per season, k fertiliser with an average of 89.7 kg per season, and s fertiliser with an average of 131 kg per season. meanwhile, farmers' average use of pesticides was 10.19 kg per season, and the average labour was 555.49 working days per season. table 1. descriptive statistics. variable measurement mean std. dev. production sugarcane production in quintals per season 940.007 755.858 area total harvested area in hectares 1.066 0.851 n fertiliser total n fertiliser input in kg 261.626 189.067 p fertiliser total p fertiliser input in kg 89.983 68.964 k fertiliser total k fertiliser input in kg 89.780 69.075 s fertiliser total s fertiliser input in kg 131.253 97.841 pesticide total pesticide input in litres 10.194 9.449 labour labour in working days 555.497 867.749 3.2. analysis of technical efficiency and technological, managerial, and environmental gaps between sugarcane production areas the technical efficiency in the research areas varies because each location has different input capabilities to produce different outputs. if each research location is analysed separately, the value of technical efficiency cannot be compared regionally because each region has different technologies (syafrial, rahman, & retnoningsih, 2021) and environments, specifically, resources and climatic conditions (rahman et al., 2022b; rahman, huang, toiba, & efani, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 1-7 5 2022a). the efficiency value does not capture the different technical efficiency levels between regions caused by differences in the production inputs' environment (resources and technology). therefore, a meta-analysis is needed to compare technical efficiency between regions. table 2 shows the distribution of the technical efficiency comparison between the research locations against the meta at various efficiency levels. table 3 shows the average value of regional/group technical efficiency (gte), technical meta efficiency (tme), and the technology gap ratio (tgr) in the three research locations. table 2. distribution of comparative technical efficiency between research sites. te value kediri malang mojokerto number (%) number (%) number (%) 1,000 7 38.88 6 33.3 5 27.77 0.836-0.999 11 61.11 1 5.55 6 33.33 0.677-0.835 18 39.13 12 26.08 16 34.78 0.518-0.676 10 20 20 40 20 40 0.359-0.517 2 12.5 11 68.75 3 18.75 average 0.783 0.654 0.720 standard deviation 0.151 0.170 0.155 efficiency patterns among sugarcane production centres were analysed using meta-dea. the results of the analysis involving 148 respondent farmers showed that the average value of the meta-technical efficiency in the three regions was 0.719. this shows that, on average, farmers could reduce their inputs by up to 28.1% without compromising the output. dlamini, rugambisa, masuku, and belete (2010) also stated that the sugarcane farmers they observed tended to use inputs excessively. based on the meta-technical efficiency value, 18 individuals or 11.3% of sugarcane farmers were fully efficient, seven (38.88%) from kediri regency, six (33.33%) from malang regency, and five (27.77%) from mojokerto regency. fully efficient farmers could become peers or trailblazers for other farmers who have not achieved full efficiency. most of the sugarcane farmers with low technical efficiency scored between 0.359 to 0.999, which indicates a potential to reduce production inputs by up to 43.1%. table 3. averages and standard deviations of meta-technical efficiency, region technical efficiency, and the technology gap ratio. location te region te meta tgr average kediri 0.860 0.783 0.954 malang 0.767 0.654 0.848 mojokerto 0.814 0.720 0.886 std. dev. kediri 0.152 0.151 0.043 malang 0.152 0.170 0.086 mojokerto 0.153 0.155 0.089 the data presented in table 3 indicate the average value of meta-technical efficiency (meta-te) in the three research locations. kediri regency shows the highest technical efficiency compared to the other two regions, while malang regency shows the lowest technical efficiency. on average, kediri farmers' technical efficiency is lower than the regional or regional-group level. this is because the meta-technical efficiency analysis used data from all samples across the regions. farmers with the best technical efficiency at the meta-level could be peers for other farmers, while efficiency at the group level only shows the best technical efficiency at the group level. the average technical efficiency of sugarcane farmers in kediri regency in terms of meta (mee) is higher than in the other two regions, at 0.783, with an average regional technical efficiency (gee) of 0.860. this shows that in the meta between the three research locations, there is still a 21.77% potential to achieve optimal production, and inter-regionally this potential is 14%. the decomposition of the meta-te in kediri regency is indicated by the tgr value, which is the ratio between mee and gee. it has an average of 0.945 with a standard deviation of 0.051. with a tgr value close to 1, kediri regency has the lowest tgr and meta compared to the other two regions (meta 4.6%). sugarcane farming carried out by farmers in mojokerto regency shows an eec value of 0.720 and an mee of 0.814. this shows that in the meta between the three research locations, there is still potential to achieve optimal production by reducing inputs by 28% and inter-regionally by 18.6%. the average tgr value of sugarcane farming in mojokerto regency is 0.886, with a standard deviation of 0.092. this shows that there is still an inefficiency in sugarcane farming technology as its meta is 0.114 or 11.4%. meanwhile, the average achievement of meta-technical efficiency of sugarcane farming in malang regency was lower than in kediri and mojokerto regencies, at 0.654. the average tgr value of sugarcane farming in malang regency against its meta was 0.844, with a standard deviation of 0.051, indicating an inefficiency of sugarcane farming technology of 0.156 or 15.6%. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 1-7 6 table 41. the values of technology gap inefficiency (tgi), gap managerial inefficiency (gmi), and managerial and technology inefficiency (mti) in the three research locations. regency tgi gmi mti average std. dev. average std. dev. average std. dev. kediri 0.038 0.037 0.179 0.152 0.217 0.151 malang 0.113 0.073 0.233 0.152 0.346 0.170 mojokerto 0.093 0.082 0.186 0.152 0.280 0.154 total 0.082 0.075 0.200 0.153 0.282 0.166 further meta-dea analysis was conducted to examine the environmental inefficiency of each region (table 4). this was accomplished by decomposing the group technology gap to its meta (tgi) and the managerial gap between regions to its meta (gmi). as such, environmental inefficiency is also referred to as managerial and technology gap inefficiency (mti). tgi is meta-technical inefficiency stemming from the use of resource technology, while gmi is a meta-technical inefficiency stemming from managerial skills. the analysis results show that the average technical inefficiency of sugarcane farming between regions is primarily due to managerial skills, which is indicated by the average gmi value of 0.200, which is greater than the average tgi value of 0.082. ullah et al. (2019) stated that a higher gmi value indicates regional performance variability. this suggests that farmers do not manage resources efficiently and/or they do not benefit from the services offered by sugar factories and the government. malang regency’s average tgi value against its meta is higher (0.113) than those of kediri regency (0.038) and mojokerto regency (0.093). this indicates that the average sugarcane production efficiency in malang regency is the lowest compared to the other two regions. a possible explanation is that most malang regency sugarcane farmers do not regularly replace sugarcane plants every three to four years for rejuvenation. unlike farmers in kediri and mojokerto, they are also more open to the development of new varieties, so their technological gap is smaller. in sugarcane cultivation, especially with the ratoon system in the third cycle onwards, sugarcane productivity will decrease because the soil starts to harden, the tillers’ diameter becomes smaller, and the sugarcane plants are more prone to dying (balittas, 2015). also, most sugarcane farmers in kediri and mojokerto regencies used agricultural mechanisation in their farming activities, such as ploughs, tillage at first planting, and root breaking in ratoon cultivation. they did so to reduce labour costs and improve time efficiency. the managerial gap value (gmi) in malang regency is also the highest at 0.233. sugarcane farmers in malang regency have lower managerial and decision-making skills regarding input allocation and the rejuvenation of sugarcane plants that are more than four years old. on average, the sugarcane farmers in malang regency have the lowest level of formal education. also, as they have more experience in sugarcane farming compared to the farmers in the other two regencies, they prefer to use familiar technologies that they have used for a long time rather than adopting new technologies with more potential. 4. conclusion based on the results of the meta-dea analysis, the average technical efficiency in the three regions in east java against its meta (mee) is 0.719. kediri regency shows the highest value at 0.783, mojokerto regency scored 0.720, and malang regency 0.654. in terms of the average gee value in each region, kediri regency also had the highest value at 0.860, followed by mojokerto regency at 0.814 and malang regency at 0.767. the tgr value in kediri regency was the highest at 0.954, meaning that it had the lowest gap, followed by mojokerto regency. the decomposition results from the meta-dea analysis show that, on average, the meta-technical inefficiency originates from managerial gaps, as indicated by the fact that the average value of gmi was greater than that of tgi. the managerial gap in this study refers to decision-making on cultivation systems, input allocation, sale systems, and the adoption of the latest technological innovations, such as new varieties and the selection of fertilisers according to land needs. this gap must be minimised to achieve technical efficiency. the largest managerial gap (gmi) was in malang regency at 0.233. this shows that the managerial skills of sugarcane farmers in malang regency are relatively lower than in the other two regions. concerning the three research areas' technical efficiency, as measured using meta-dea, the average metatechnical efficiency in malang regency was the lowest, meaning that production was low. therefore, farmers need to familiarise themselves with alternative production technologies to minimise production costs and input prices without compromising productivity. the results of the decomposition of technical efficiency using meta-dea show that the technology gap between production areas is not too high. however, the technological gap between regions can be corrected if farmers practising ratoon system cultivation rejuvenate their plants to improve plant and soil quality for the upcoming planting season. rejuvenation of plant quality can be done by rotating the sugarcane plantations with seasonal crops that suit the existing land conditions and using organic matter to regenerate the organic content in the soil. the managerial gap is the primary source of meta-technical inefficiency between regions. farmers need to receive continuous professional development, support, and training from sugar factories, as well as the government and related agencies. most sugarcane farmers lack innovation, initiative, and motivation to achieve high levels of productivity and yield. incentives could motivate farmers to reduce managerial failure. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 1-7 7 funding: this research is supported by brawijaya university (grant number: 2335/un10.f04/pn/2020). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the 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(2023). the plight of the onion industry in the onion capital of the philippines: basis for intervention strategies. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1), 66–74. 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4766 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction agriculture plays a vital role in a nation’s economic development. agricultural countries, including the philippines, take advantage of their rich and abundant land resources to maximize the limitless opportunities found in farming. the governments of various developing countries give considerable attention to the agriculture sector as a source of food, income, and employment, particularly in rural areas (rupasinghe, ginigaddara, & wickramasinghe, 2017; sanyang, 2014). aside from rice production, the philippines also engaged in growing onions. the onion (allium cepa l.), from the amaryllidaceae family, is one of the most important commercial spice crops and is grown in more than 175 asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 1 (2023): 66-74. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7359-1022 mailto:arjheldomingoii@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 66-74 67 countries worldwide (baloch et al., 2014; hossain et al., 2017). it is regarded as the third most indispensable horticultural spice with significant commercial value (teshika et al., 2019). beyond being used in households as a condiment, onions also have medicinal benefits as they contribute significantly to the nutritional value of the human diet (randle, 2000; shiferaw, 2020). onions, as a high-value crop, have become one of the priority commodities in the philippines. red onion production has been a profitable venture in the philippines in recent years (del carmen, espigol, nuevo, & masilungan, 2016). red onion production has an average cost of php. 130,886 per hectare, and farmers can expect to make a profit of as much as php. 103,957 under normal circumstances (philippine statistics office-bureau of agricultural statistics, 2014). in the province of nueva ecija, at least 21,086 farmers have planted onions on a total of 11,502.84 hectares in 22 towns and cities (galang, 2019). each hectare produces about 10 to 15 tons of onions per harvest (dizon, 2019). in 2013 alone, the province of nueva ecija produced 99.9% of the central luzon region’s total production, and 82% of the production was composed of red onion (department of agriculture philippine rural development project (daprdp), 2014). nueva ecija’s onion production is concentrated in the municipality of bongabon, dubbed the onion basket of the philippines (galang, 2020). in 2019, at least 2,300 hectares of farmland were planted with onions in this municipality (business mirror, 2020). indeed, this industry has become a source of livelihood for farm owners, workers, and traders (abebe, 2018; etana, aga, & fufa, 2019; fabrice, yann, & kémal, 2018). as in any other industry, the onion industry faces various constraints across various onion-producing countries. problems are mainly connected to financial, managerial, and technical limitations in harvest and post-harvest activities and marketing systems (gebru & derbew, 2015). common problems include a lack of storage facilities, inadequate market outlets, lack of access to quality seeds and pesticides, high cost of production inputs, poor farm-tomarket roads, exploitation by local traders, and lack of sufficient capital (baloch et al., 2014; grema & gashua, 2014; sanyang, 2014). other constraints that cause difficulties for onion farmers are insect and pest infestation, lack of sufficient irrigation water, limited supply of agricultural inputs, limited know-how and skill, low price of produce, and poor links with value chain actors (diriba-shiferaw, birhanu-mentafa, & temesgen, 2017). value chain actors include input suppliers, producers, rural collectors, brokers, retailers, wholesalers, processors, and consumers (hailu, zemedu, & getnet, 2017). in addition, small-scale farmers are obliged to sell their produce to wholesalers at very low prices, which results in big losses on their side (shrivastava, 2010). every farmer’s goal is to make more profit through sustained effort (nurdiani, hartono, & jamhari, 2015). thus, farmers should be involved in value creation and find ways to improve their farm-related activities in order to realize better profits (knudson, wysocki, champagne, & peterson, 2004; santiago & roxas, 2015). however, these will only be realized if the grey areas in their farm undertakings are addressed and resolved. the current study aims to fill a research gap in the agriculture sector as the majority of previous research has focused on the educational perspective and the enhancement of skills to achieve agricultural enterprise development (amadi, 2012; bahaman, jeffrey, hayrol, & jegak, 2010). however, given the important role of agriculture, research endeavors should also focus on the needs of farmers (corbett, 2005). onion farmers in the philippines have shared common sentiments and struggles with onion cultivation. this motivated the researcher to initiate this academic endeavor, which is timely, significant, and relevant, to discuss the present situation of the onion farmers in bongabon, nueva ecija, and to achieve clearer insight into their plight. indeed, this study should greatly help empower the local onion industry and boost the agricultural activities of the onion farmers. assessing the plight of the farmers in the onion industry in nueva ecija is worthwhile as concerned agencies can use the results to design possible intervention measures to help the local farmers take advantage of the promising opportunities in onion growing and eventually improve the onion industry’s competitiveness in general. 2. materials and methods this descriptive study was conducted in bongabon, nueva ecija, which is the top onion-producing municipality in the philippines. a total of 184 onion farmers were recruited as respondents. an appropriate sample size was drawn from a population of 350 onion farmers using raosoft statistical software. the sample size from the municipality was identified using simple random techniques and was in proportion to the population. the study utilized survey questionnaires to gather data for this study. the instrument used was approved by a panel of experts in the fields of research, business, and agriculture. the instrument was then tested on onion farmers from other municipalities not covered in the study to verify the clarity of the items and directions used in the questionnaire. before the administration of the questionnaires, the researcher coordinated with the mayor and municipal agriculturist of bongabon regarding the distribution of the instruments. the researcher was likewise endorsed to the barangay captains to gain access to the onion farmers. from the list of onion farmers identified by the barangay captains, the respondents were then chosen through a simple random sampling technique. the researcher personally administered the distribution of the questionnaire. interviews with the onion farmers were conducted simultaneously. percentage and ranking were the main statistical tools employed in this study. 3. results and discussion 3.1. nature of land ownership of farmer-respondents table 1 presents the ownership status of onion farmers’ current land possession, which can be classified as tenanted, owned, or rented. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 66-74 68 table 1. land ownership status. land ownership status frequency percentage tenanted 113 61.00% owned 49 27.00% rented 22 12.00% total 184 100% sixty-one percent (61%) of surveyed onion farmers did not currently own the land they were cultivating but worked as “kasama” or tenants to the landowners. in the “kasama” system, the land owner typically covers the costs of production inputs and labor from planting to harvesting. after deducting the expenses from the gross income, the landowner and the tenant share the remainder. at times, the landowner may decide to buy the portion of the produce due to the tenant. after this, the landowner has the option to either store or sell the onion produce. twenty-seven percent (27%) of the surveyed onion farmers fully owned the land they were tilling. they were both owners and cultivators simultaneously. meanwhile, 12% of the respondents rented the land they cultivated. in the rental arrangement, farmers pay a sum of money to the landowner for the use of the land for a certain period. the rental amount varies depending on the negotiation agreed upon. a contract bounds the agreement. it can be understood that most onion farmers do not own the land they cultivate. if this situation continues to prevail, the onion farmers have little chance of acquiring land of their own. the onion farmers who own the land they till have more to gain than to lose. they reap all the fruits of their labor, especially when the harvest is plentiful. onion farmers who rent the land for a fixed period may benefit more since the amount they pay as a rental is easily recovered in the early years when the harvest is good. 3.2. financing of farmer-respondents financing plays a significant role in onion farming since a lack of money could hinder farmers from taking up farming. table 2 presents the onion farmers’ sources of financing – whether they have fully financed their operation themselves or opted to borrow capital from other persons or institutions. table 2. onion farmers’ sources of financing. source frequency percentage fully financed by the owner 21 11.00% borrowed capital 163 89.00% total 184 100% eleven percent (11%) of the onion farmer respondents used their own means of financing their farm needs, and 89% of the farmers borrowed capital from various sources to fund their farm operations, primarily from tradercapitalists and private persons engaged in lending. in addition, some respondents said they were accustomed to this system of borrowing in anticipation of being able to pay their obligations after the harvest. it can be noted that most onion farmers are in a difficult financial situation as their financial needs depend on trader-capitalists and other private persons. if this practice continues, the onion farmers will never be freed from the bondage of borrowing. table 3 presents the specific person or institution from whom the onion farmers borrow capital to finance their farm needs. table 3. financing sources of the onion farmers. sources of financing frequency percentage trader-capitalists 109 67.00% banks and other financial institutions 11 7.00% informal lending (private persons) 43 26.00% total 163 100% of the onion farmer respondents who borrowed capital, 67% obtained financing from trader-capitalists. sometimes, chinese financiers demand that a certain seed variety be planted to access funding, yet without the agreement that the onion produce be sold to them. seven percent (7%) of the onion farmer respondents took out loans from banks and other financial institutions to meet their financial needs. this percentage is low because banks require collateral to make loans available. twenty-six percent (26%) of the respondents obtained loans from private persons who also took part in lending activities. onion farmers in the municipality are often tied to credit arrangements with trader-capitalists who advance farm inputs and capital. however, with such arrangements, the onion farmers lose bargaining power on the price of their produce, especially during harvest time. worse, some onion farmers are charged 3%-5% interest per month on the borrowed capital. moreover, for onion farmers to continue to avail themselves of financial loans from trader-capitalists, they must maintain satisfactory credit dealing with them. the onion farmers are put in a bad light by their creditors when the harvest is not good due to pest infestation or some unforeseen calamity like typhoons or very low farmgate prices, which may cause a delay in the settlement of their obligation. as disclosed by some onion farmers, borrowing from either private persons or other financial sources entails paying interest. banks may be a better choice, but they do not extend credit without any form of hard collateral, such as a lot and house via a real estate mortgage. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 66-74 69 two modes of paying off loans from creditors were identified by the onion farmers. regarding loans from traders or private individuals engaged in lending, the farmers either pay them in cash or give them part of the harvest, equivalent to the amount owed by the farmers. about 58% of the onion farmers had this kind of settlement. according to some interviewed farmers, the trader-capitalists often opt to receive the harvest equivalent of the debt, especially when the farmgate price is very low. these trader-capitalists would then be in a better position because the price of onions tends to increase after a few months, which would mean higher profits for them. this is especially true when they can store the onions. the trader-capitalists will have already reserved cold storage warehouses during the planting season. concerning loans from banks or other financial institutions, the onion farmers pay their creditors in cash upon their loan maturity or pay their obligations through scheduled amortization. the former style is common with banks, while the latter is pervasive with informal lending entities. the amount to be paid is based on the outstanding balance, including the interest due. 3.3. problems encountered by onion farmers the main problems encountered by onion farmers in bongabon, nueva ecija, are presented in table 4. table 4. problems encountered by onion farmers in bongabon, nueva ecija. problems frequency (n=184) percentage rank input provision a. hoarding of seeds by unscrupulous traders 25 13.50% 2 b. high cost of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides & herbicides 162 88.00% 1 production a. lack of support from the government in terms of farm machinery and equipment 152 82.60% 3 b. lack of technological know-how on proper fertilizer management & application 144 78.20% 4 c. lack of farm laborers 160 86.90% 2 d. pest infestation 162 88.00% 1 processing a. lack of access to storage and post-harvest facilities 174 94.50% 1 b. high cost of storage fees 172 93.40% 2 c. lack of technology to process onions 143 77.70% 3 marketing a. poor farm-to-market roads 57 30.90% 3 b. price manipulation by unscrupulous traders 65 35.30% 1 c. unregulated onion importation, including smuggling 62 33.70% 2 3.3.1. input provision the farmer respondents considered the high cost of farm inputs, fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, and herbicides, and the high cost of seeds to be their top problems. fertilizer and pesticide expenses comprise a significant percentage of the total production costs. the rise in the price of fertilizer and other chemical inputs over the years, coupled with low yields, contributes to high production costs and the erosion of profit margins. the same is true with regard to the price of onion seeds, which has continued to escalate because they are sourced from abroad. the price is also susceptible to manipulation by big-time traders and suppliers. this has become a perennial problem experienced by onion farmers, as any increase in cost in any phase of production shrinks the net cash flows. the low productivity of onion cultivation can be attributed to the poor quality of seeds and fertilizers, lack of improved onion cultivars, inappropriate agronomic practices, and the little attention given to crop production (etana et al., 2019; kahsay, fasigaw, & alemat, 2016). in addition, improper nutrient management can also cause low productivity. this can be mitigated through the efficient use of renewable resources, such as organic manure and biofertilizers (jayathilake, reddy, srihari, & reddy, 2006). onions are susceptible to weather conditions, and the whole crop can be wiped out. in cases like these, onion farmers have to re-invest and repeat the planting process. some farmers disclosed that if they do not repeat the process, they may lose as much as half a million pesos; their losses would be more significant as they would not be able to recoup their investment in the first crop. 3.3.2. production the greatest difficulty in terms of production is pest infestation, which was experienced in previous years and has, to date, not been addressed. onions are a high-value crop, yet very susceptible to armyworm infestation (alberto, biagtan, isip, & tagaca, 2019). in 2016, it was reported that 389 hectares of onion farms were destroyed by armyworms, while 358 hectares were damaged (galang, 2016). the municipality of sto. domingo in nueva ecija suffered the worst damage when worms attacked 346.30 hectares of farms. bongabon town lost 98 hectares of farms. moreover, 139 hectares of farms were damaged in palayan city, 96 hectares in laur town, 47 hectares in quezon town, 34 hectares in talavera town, 25 hectares in cuyapo town, 10 hectares in the science city of muñoz, and 6.8 hectares in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 66-74 70 aliaga town (galang, 2016). farmers also disclosed that there was a lack of government support in providing them with farm machinery and equipment. the shortage of farm laborers is another challenge. sometimes, the high demand for farm laborers during the planting and harvesting season caused farmers to experience delays in their farm activities. note that timing is essential in onion production, and labor costs represent a large proportion of the overall production costs. according to some interviewed farmers, they also lacked technological know-how on proper fertilizer management. farmers also claimed they were not getting the optimum benefit from fertilizer use. in many cases, the amount of fertilizer applied was based on standard specifications (e.g., 1 bag of fertilizer per can of seeds) rather than the results of soil analysis. the unstable supply of onions in the market in recent years can be attributed to various factors, such as the occurrence of natural calamities, lack of farming motivation, less systematic commodity flow, and production to postproduction constraints (calica & cabanayan, 2018). 3.3.3. processing in terms of processing, most farmers cannot afford high storage fees. improvised onion hangers may be the best alternative, even when used for short periods, to cope with the low market price, especially if there is an abundant harvest. storage is one of the most important aspects of the post-harvest handling of onions. proper storage conditions extend the period of availability of fresh onions by arresting metabolic breakdown and decay (sharma & shukla, 2016). proper preharvest and post-harvest conditions are also important factors for the stability of onion bulbs as they may also affect their marketability and quality (petropoulos, ntatsi, & ferreira, 2017). the onion farmers added that there is little technology available to process onions for value-adding when the price is too low, especially during crop abundance. as disclosed by the respondents, the lack of technology to process onions is another challenge in the industry. in the absence of processors in the province that can transform onions into other product forms, onions in the province are sold in their raw form. according to the respondents, a less expensive technology should be introduced to help them add value by processing those onion bulbs so that they can offset their losses when the price of onions is low during the harvest season. 3.3.4. marketing the interviews with the respondents revealed that manipulation by big-time traders was the main problem they encountered in marketing. this is coupled with unregulated onion importation, including smuggling, and poor farmto-market roads, which ranked second and third. according to the farmers, big-time traders dictate the price of onion bulbs in the market, which leads to the low farmgate price of their produce. alleged entry of smuggled onions also hurts onion farmers. imported onions have displaced local produce from the market, which could cause poor farmers to become even poorer (gascon, 2014). if the supply of smuggled onions continues to overpower local farmers’ onion produce, they may be discouraged from continuing onion production. the influx of imported onions in the local market greatly affects the market competitiveness of locally produced onion bulbs in the philippines (del carmen et al., 2016). due to the oversupply of imported onions, local onion farmers have sold their produce at lower prices than their cost of production just to recover the amount they invested (dizon, 2019). in the past, farmers have often been forced to sell their produce right after harvest at a low price due to the lack of storage facilities in the province (flora, 2019). traders, including cooperatives, usually collect the farmers’ produce from their farms. when farms are not accessible by trucks, farmers must bring their onions to the nearest accessible road by cart using carabao or manual hauling. farmers thus shoulder the additional cost of bringing their produce to the nearest road. if no buyers are available for their onions, the farmers hire hauling vehicles to bring their onion produce to their houses. farmers sell their onion produce right after the harvest, especially if the farmgate price is attractive and sufficient to recover their expenses in the entire production process. the farmgate price per kilo of onion produce fluctuates yearly for farmers. farms located in areas with bad roads get lower prices due to higher transportation costs and depreciation. 3.4. proposed intervention strategies for the onion industry in nueva ecija based on the identified problems, intervention strategies can be proposed for each of the four aspects of the onion industry. 3.4.1. input provision table 5 presents the intervention strategies that could solve the problems associated with the high cost of farm inputs, such as the cost of seeds and fertilizers, and issues involving traders' unscrupulous activities. table 5. intervention strategies for the onion industry in terms of input provision. problems intervention strategies responsible group/unit 1. high cost of seed 2. fertilizer, pesticide, insecticide, and herbicide government to subsidize the farm inputs needed by onion farmers • department of agriculture • local government unit through municipal agriculturist office or office of the provincial agriculturist 3. hoarding of seeds by unscrupulous traders create a group to monitor prices of agricultural farm inputs asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 66-74 71 intervention strategies: a. the government should subsidize the farm inputs needed by onion farmers. government subsidies may be of great help to farmers to lessen the financial burden associated with buying certified onion seeds and other farm inputs. the local government unit could allocate part of its annual budget to realize this intervention. b. create a group to monitor the prices of agricultural farm inputs. as onion farmers struggle to buy expensive onion seeds, the department of agriculture and provincial and municipal local government units must ensure that farm inputs are priced correctly. they should impose sanctions or heavier penalties on those who hoard onion seeds. 3.4.2. production table 6 presents the proposed intervention strategies to address the challenges of onion production. table 6. intervention strategies for the onion industry in terms of production. problems intervention strategies responsible group/unit 1. lack of support from government in terms of farm machinery and equipment government to subsidize farm machinery • department of agriculture • local government unit 2. lack of technological know-how on proper fertilizer management & application relevant government agencies to help with soil analysis • department of agriculture • local government unit • state universities and colleges • department of science and technology 3. lack of farm laborers mechanization of some production steps • department of agriculture • local government unit • philippine center for postharvest development and mechanization (philmec) 4. pest infestation intensive research and development to identify interventions for pest infestation, but should be environment-friendly • department of agriculture • local government unit • department of science and technology • state universities and colleges intervention strategies: a. the department of agriculture, in particular, should subsidize farm machinery. the government may allocate a portion of its annual budget to subsidize the farm machinery needed by farmers. they should also offer loans at an affordable rate and longer payment periods via a conduit financial institution, but also guaranteed by them. b. relevant government agencies to help in soil analysis. the department of agriculture, the department of science and technology, and local government units should spearhead training for farmers in soil analysis. these agencies may enlist agricultural schools or state universities and colleges for this undertaking. c. mechanization of some production steps. mechanized planting technologies could compensate for the unavailability or lack of farm laborers. d. intensive research and development to identify interventions for pest infestation. as pest infestation has become a huge problem in recent years, there should be continuous research to develop ways to stop or lessen the effects of pest infestation; however, these should be environmentally friendly and avoid the heavy use of chemicals. 3.4.3. processing table 7 presents the proposed intervention strategies to address the problems in processing onion produce, including the need for post-harvest facilities and technology. table 7. intervention strategies for the onion industry in terms of processing. problems intervention strategies responsible group/unit 1. lack of access to storage and post-harvest facilities 2. high cost of storage fees establish more cold storage facilities and onion hangers • department of agriculture • local government unit 3. lack of technology to process onions access to governmentsponsored services such as their product development program • department of agriculture • local government unit • department of science and technology • department of trade and industry • state universities and colleges asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 66-74 72 intervention strategies: a. establish more cold storage facilities and onion hangers. as the demand for onion storage increases, this opens investment opportunities in the province, be it in cold storage or onion hangers (air drying facilities). the availability of post-harvest and storage facilities in close proximity to onion production areas will also reduce the hauling and transport costs of farmers and cooperatives. b. access to government-sponsored services, such as their product development program. as onion farmers can sometimes not get rid of their harvest, reject onion bulbs, or experience low farmgate prices, they should find ways to transform the onions into more marketable forms, including powder, chips, and pickles, among others. the department of trade and industry could support them in marketing their products and the department of science and technology could support other uses. state universities and colleges could spearhead training for onion farmers on onion product development as part of their outreach services. 3.4.4. marketing table 8 presents the proposed intervention strategies to address the problems faced by onion farmers in marketing their onion produce. table 8. intervention strategies for the onion industry in terms of marketing. problems intervention strategies responsible group/unit 1. poor farm-to-market roads improve roads • department of agriculture • local government unit • department of public works and highways 2. price manipulation by unscrupulous traders government to enact laws subsidizing onion prices • department of agriculture 3. unregulated onion importation, including smuggling heavier penalties for erring cooperatives and their cohorts • bureau of customs • department of justice intervention strategies: 1. improve roads. the improvement of road conditions would reduce transportation and labor costs and, consequently, the overall transaction cost. shorter travel times and good road conditions would minimize the risk of product deterioration. the overall reduction of transaction costs would improve price competitiveness and create better profit margins that would help farmers cope with onion price fluctuations. 2. heavier penalties for erring cooperatives and their cohorts. the government should continuously protect the interests of the local onion growers against unscrupulous businesspeople. the department of agriculture should be vigilant to detect bogus import permits. the department of justice and the bureau of customs should hasten the resolution of malpractice cases against onion cooperatives to deter further instances of this wrongdoing. 4. conclusion local onion farmers are devoted, determined, and courageous risk-takers despite most of them being tenants to landowners and having to borrow capital to finance their production and post-production needs. problems arising in the areas of input provision, production, processing, and marketing hinder local farmers’ opportunities to make more profit and produce onions as competitively as imported ones. high prices of farm inputs, pest infestation, lack of access to storage and post-harvest facilities, and price manipulation by unscrupulous traders were the top problems faced by farmers in the onion industry. to support the onion farmers, the philippines’ department of agriculture and other relevant agencies should develop a unified and strategic production and marketing blueprint for the onion industry. this would include technical and financial support for farmers and the provision of marketing facilities. the government should also consider imposing heavier penalties on erring government officials and unscrupulous businesspeople involved in unfair trade practices. the onion cold storage facilities should also be regulated, and oversight of the affairs of onion stakeholders should be increased to deter any business misconduct. finally, the government should extend support to onion growers by subsidizing the farm inputs they use. meanwhile, farmers are encouraged to engage in crop diversification rather than relying solely on onion production. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abebe, a. 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(2019). traditional and modern uses of onion bulb (allium cepa l.): a systematic review. critical reviews in food science and nutrition, 59(sup1), s39-s70. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2018.1499074 https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2018.1499074 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 236 changing agrometeorological conditions for maize (zea mays l.) under the subtropical climate of northern vietnam anh thi mai trana josef eitzingerb athai nguyen university of agriculture and forestry, group 10, quyet thang commune, thai nguyen province, vietnam. binstitute of meteorology and climatology, university of natural resources and life sciences, gregor-mendel-straße 33, 1180 vienna, austria.  tranthimaianh@tuaf.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 6 november 2024 revised: 27 may 2025 accepted: 7 june 2025 published: 18 june 2025 keywords agrometeorological conditions climate change drought stress heat stress heavy precipitation maize north vietnam. maize is affected by changing growing and crop management conditions under ongoing climate change, posing potential production risks in the future. this study analyzes maize growing conditions in northern vietnam by utilizing the agriclim agrometeorological indicator model. the climate projections are sourced from a global circulation model, supplemented by a regional climate model for two emission pathways (rcp4.5 and rcp8.5) spanning from 1951 to 2100. the three main local maize growing seasons (winter, spring, and forage maize season) were meticulously analyzed across four distinct time slices, encompassing annual, seasonal, and monthly scales. the results reveal that future agrometeorological conditions will generally become more extreme compared to current conditions. however, the calculated increase in heat stress days, heavy precipitation events, and drought stress days for maize shows varying changes across the specific maize growing seasons. for instance, drought and heat stress conditions may occur more frequently during the spring and forage maize seasons, while the risk of soil erosion and nitrogen leaching may rise in the winter and forage maize seasons. these findings will support the development of adaptation strategies under more adverse weather conditions for maize growing systems in northern vietnam. contribution/originality: this study is original due to the use of the agriclim agrometeorological indicator model. this model helps in assessing seven main agrometeorological indicators, providing a thorough analysis of maize growing conditions. the findings highlight the need for targeted adaptation strategies to address the varying impacts of climate change on different maize growing seasons. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5413 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: tran, a. t. m., & eitzinger, j. (2025). changing agrometeorological conditions for maize (zea mays l.) under the subtropical climate of northern vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 236– 251. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction temperature and precipitation are the two most threatened impact factors on crop production systems (alexandrov & hoogenboom, 2000; bacsi, thornton, & dent, 1991; eitzinger et al., 2013; ipcc, 2013, 2023). they have a complex interaction with the growth response of maize (doug & bristow, 1990; lizaso et al., 2018; shim, lee, & lee, 2017; trnka et al., 2011). it has been proven that high air temperatures (around > 35°c) harm fertility during the days of anthesis as well as during the grain filling period of maize in various tropical regions (ishfaq et al., 2018; asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 236-251 mailto:tranthimaianh@tuaf.edu.vn https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9142-2054 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6155-2886 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5413 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 237 lizaso et al., 2018; tran, limnirankul, & chaovanapoonphol, 2015) and during beard production and flowering periods in temperate regions (shim et al., 2017). particularly, maize showed a rapid reduction in shoot growth and shortened internodes when soil temperatures within the main rooting zone exceeded 37°c. maize yield was generally projected to decline in many studies worldwide from -8% to -38% under future climatic conditions (benjamin, kumar, koech, & langat, 2019). in the united states, for example, a 2°c warming is projected to reduce maize yield in the range from -14% to -16% (butler & huybers, 2012). in sub-saharan africa, maize yield was affected by more adverse conditions under future climate scenarios, resulting in a yield loss of up to 19% (blanc, 2012). in nigeria, approximately 80% of the maize cropping area suffered drought stress, where up to 90% of maize production was lost due to drought stress during the flowering and grain-filling period (ammani, ja’afaru, aliyu, & arab, 2012). in asian countries, maize production, which accounts for around 60% of the total acreage of cereal crops, faced various challenges due to climate variability and change, even in more humid regions with pronounced dry seasons (such as in asian monsoon climates), especially due to drought or extreme heat (arora & gajri, 2000; jones & thornton, 2003; rutten, van dijk, van rooij, & hilderink, 2014). in northeast china, maize yield was negatively affected mostly by low temperatures, drought stress, and heavy rainstorms. as a result, it was expected to decrease more severely than assessed in prior studies by -46.7% (yanling, linderholm, luo, xu, & zhou, 2020). by contrast, an elevated mean temperature combined with rising precipitation showed a positive impact on the yield of maize varieties grown under the conditions in ghana (samuel, asare, mintah, appiah, & kayode, 2023). maize is an important staple crop in vietnam. for example, in 2023, approximately 4.42 million metric tons of maize were produced in the country (statista, 2025). it has especially become popular in northern vietnam over the past decades (keil, saint-macary, & zeller, 2008) often grown on steep slopes with a high risk of soil erosion. due to the ongoing effects of climate warming, increasing adverse weather conditions could seriously threaten maize production in the future (isponre, 2009; rutten et al., 2014; tran et al., 2015). for example, in thai binh province (northeast of vietnam), maize was predicted to decrease gradually in the future by -25.8% to -30.8% by 2040 (dang & pham, 2018; dang et al., 2004). meanwhile, in da nang province, the average annual maize yield for the period (2020-2100) was predicted to decrease only slightly by -0.6% in comparison with the yield in 2012 (tran & tran, 2014). similarly, a decrease in maize yield was found by a crop modeling study in thai nguyen province during the spring maize season (january-march). it ranged from -30.3% to -33.9% in the case of a 60% decrease in precipitation under the future climate scenarios rcp4.5 and rcp8.5, respectively. however, under the same scenarios, an expected increase in winter maize yield was observed, ranging from 33.3% to 31.9% due to the increased precipitation during the winter maize season (august-october) (tran, eitzinger, & manschadi, 2020). as an innovative complementary approach to mechanistic (process-oriented) crop models such as for maize (oludare & mourad, 2020) for determining cropping and crop growing conditions and related production risks, indicator models are applied (eitzinger et al., 2024; eitzinger, trnka, hösch, žalud, & dubrovský, 2004; ferreyra et al., 2001). as these have not been applied to the climatic and agronomic conditions in northern vietnam for maize yet, we expect additional supporting information for the development of adaptation options under climate change conditions. the hypothesis is that under the different regional maize growing seasons, different changes in agrometeorological conditions will occur. therefore, this study aims to determine how weather-related maize cropping conditions and risks may change in a representative region of northern vietnam, the thai nguyen province, described by selected indicators for three selected maize growing seasons under two different climate emission scenarios (rcp4.5 and rcp8.5) for two future climate periods (2031-2060 and 2071-2100). furthermore, we expect to contribute to the development of adaptation options, such as new crop management and cropping strategies under future climate change conditions for vietnamese stakeholders. in the following, we describe study area conditions and the applied methods of simulation (chapter “material and methods”) and present and discuss the achieved results (chapters “results and discussion”). in the appendix, detailed statistics of the simulation results can be found. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study site and data sources the study was conducted in a representative agricultural region of northern vietnam, the thai nguyen province. it is located in the northeast of vietnam and covers an area of 3,523 km² (figure 1). the soils of the region are characterized by the two most commonly used agricultural soil types of northern vietnam (acrisols and ferralsols) with a low ph level, low organic matter, and an effective cation exchange capacity (hoang et al., 2019). its climatic conditions are typical of a humid, warm, and moist environment, characterized according to the koeppen-geiger climate classification (reference period 1951-2000; (kottek, grieser, beck, rudolf, & rubel, 2006) as “cwb” (warm temperate, winter dry, warm summer) dominating in the northern regions of southeast asia (besides some smaller regions in ethiopia and south africa). however, a shift to the new classification “aw” (equatorial, winter dry) is expected due to climate warming over the next decades (rubel & kottek, 2010). particularly in the summer monsoon season from may to october, while the dry season lasts from october to may (ho, phan, le, & nguyen, 2011). the total duration of sunshine in the year ranges from 1300 to 1750 hours. the average annual temperature of thai nguyen province during 1991-2015 was 24.4°c, with the highest and lowest temperatures ever recorded being 41.5°c and 3°c, respectively. the average annual rainfall for the period 1991-2015 at the representative weather station in thai nguyen city was 1808 mm (with an annual variation between 1250 to 2450 mm), with the highest rainfall amounts in august and the lowest in january. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 238 figure 1. the target region of our study, thai nguyen province, vietnam. the observed climatic conditions were collected from two weather stations in thai nguyen province, namely thai nguyen (tn) station and dinh hoa (dh) station. the tn station is near the center of the province with a flatter topography, representing regional lowland conditions. the other site is located in the hilly region. both weather stations recorded the main weather variables, including maximum and minimum temperatures (°c), solar radiation (hours), rainfall (mm), and relative air humidity (%). to assess the future agrometeorological conditions, we applied climate scenario data for the period of 1951 to 2100 at tn station from cordex (coordinated regional climate downscaling experiment; thohttp:esgdn1.nsc.liu.se/search/cordex/) global circulation model (gcm) ichec-ec-earth and the embedded regional climate model (rcm) dmi-hirham5 (christensen et al., 2007; christensen, gutowski, nikulin, & legutke, 2013) of the two representative concentration pathways (rcp4.5 and rcp8.5), respectively. the observed meteorological data from the tn station (1991-2015) were used for bias correction of the climate projection on annual base for temperature and precipitation. the maize growth data were collected from maize fields in thai nguyen province from 2019 to 2023. however, maize growing seasons depend on the regional crop calendars with different regional shares, depending on the applied production system and crop rotations (ho et al., 2011). therefore, we mainly focused on the analysis of three maize growing seasons in thai nguyen province: spring maize (sm) season, forage maize (fm) season, and winter maize (wm) season, with main growing periods of january-march, april-june, and august-october, respectively, following main crop rotations at the study site (tran & tran, 2014; tran, hoang, luu, nguyen, & nguyen, 2012). however, beyond the classification used in our study, it should be kept in mind that these different maize growing seasons over northern vietnam are variable, depending on local practices (e.g. crop rotations) and environmental conditions (e.g. sea level related temperatures). 2.2. modelling of agrometeorological conditions this study applied an agrometeorological software tool agriclim (trnka et al., 2011) to analyze changes in adverse weather conditions by indicators for seasonal maize under current weather conditions as well as for the next decades up to 2100 under two emission scenarios (rcp 4.5 and rcp 8.5) in thai nguyen province. agriclim includes 4 sub-models, a basic feature of the grass reference evapotranspiration (etr) model, crop-specific phenological models, the fao crop-soil water balance model (allan, pereira, raes, & smith, 1998) and a set of algorithms for agroclimatic indicators. agriclim calculates for all indicators standard statistics such as mean; median; standard deviation (stddiv); maximum (max), minimum (min); 25% percentile (perc25); and 75% percentile), which are reported in tables 1-7 in appendix. the input requirement data of agriclim include daily data on solar radiation, maximum temperature and minimum temperature, evapotranspiration or air humidity, and precipitation. the indicators calculated by agriclim were analyzed in our study for winter (wms), summer (sms) and forage (fms) maize seasons are described in table 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 239 table 1. agrometeorological indicators applied in our study. the three local main maize growing periods considered are august-october (winter maize season, wm), january-march (spring maize season, sm) and april-june (forage maize season, fm). indices description unit effective solar radiation (efrad) the mean annual sum of daily global radiation of days with tmean > 5°c and actual vs. grass reference evapotranspiration (eta/etr) above 0.4. calculation of actual (maize) and grass reference evapotranspiration according to allan et al. (1998). mj m-2 number of drought stress days (dryd) for maize the number of dry days with intensive crop specific (maize) water deficit, (eta/etr<0.4)) during wms, sms, and fms seasons as well as aprilseptember and october-march. calculation of crop-specific (maize) soil-water balance according to allan et al. (1998) for soil depth 0-130 cm and crop available water capacity of 17 %vol. days water balance (watbal) climatic water balance calculated as precipitation minus grass reference evapotranspiration (etr) during wms, sms, and fms seasons as well as from april-september and october-march. mm optimum maize harvest conditions (oharvd) for march, june, and october the optimum harvest condition is defined as the day (n) of the month with daily precipitation (in mm) of approximately n < 0.5mm; total rainfall on day n-1 < 5mm, total daily rainfall on day n-2 < 10mm, and total daily rainfall on day n-3 < 20mm combined with soil water content in the top 20cm between 070% of total water holding capacity of the. the last month was separately considered as harvest month. days heat stress days (heatd) mean annual number of days with heat stress conditions for maize (daily maximum temperature > 35°c) from january – june and july december. days heat wave days (heatwd) mean annual number of days within episodes when daily maximum temperature is continuously above 30°c and daily minimum temperature above 20°c for at least 3 days. days effective growing temperatures (annual) (eftemp) mean annual temperature sum, where daily mean temperature is above 10°c and daily minimum temperature is above 0°c. °c the analysis was carried out for four selected climate periods of the climate projections (1951-1980, 1991-2020, 2031-2061, 2071-2100 (rcp4.5 and rcp8.5, respectively)), meaning in total four “warming levels”, which catch a wide range of existing variability in climate model projections. additionally, a sensitivity scenario with a decrease of annual precipitation by 30% and 60%, respectively, was analyzed for the period 2071-2100 to meet updated precipitation scenarios from the literature. for example, nguyen‐ngoc‐bich et al. (2021) reported an underestimation in cordex (chmip5) based rcm projections of temperatures and an overestimation of precipitation over the different regions in vietnam, leading to a decrease in precipitation of 10-30% among various scenarios and a related more pronounced increase in drought duration, severity and intensity in the north of vietnam. tran et al. (2020) applied scenarios of extreme annual precipitation decrease of up to about 60% for maize yield simulation in thai nguyen province. 3. results table 2 shows that the average temperatures have an increasing trend over the past to the future; meanwhile, the average precipitation shows a decrease in the future compared to current conditions. a similar finding is reported by pham-thanh, ngo-duc, matsumoto, phan-van, and vo-van (2020) as well. the lowest average annual temperature was about 24.1°c in the period from 1951 to 1980. it increased slightly by 0.4°c in the next period of 1991-2020 to 24.5°c. it is expected to climb up by 3.3°c under the rcp 8.5 emission scenario during the period 2001-2100 reaching 27.8 °c (table 2). meanwhile, the annual mean precipitation showed a drop up to -159mm and -232mm in the period 2031-2060 under the rcp4.5 and rcp8.5, respectively, compared to the reference base (1991-2020). the strongest decrease in precipitation is during the summer (monsoon) period from may to july under the rcp8.5 scenario (figure 2), while only small changes are predicted in the rest of the year, similarly as reported by nguyen‐ngoc‐bich et al. (2021). the average annual precipitation slightly decreases up to -15% under the future period (2001-2100) compared to the observed period (1991-2020), which is less than in the study of nguyen‐ngoc‐bich et al. (2021)which was reported to decline by up to -30%. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 240 table 2. agrometeorological indicators (mean values) under different climatic conditions in thai nguyen province, vietnam (sm season: janmar; fm season: apr-jun; wm season: aug-oct). for detailed statistics see tables s1-7, appendix). indicator unit observed projected climatic conditions reference periods rcp 4.5 rcp 8.5 1991 – 2015 1951 – 1980 1991 – 2020 (ref) 2031 2060 2071 2100 2031 2060 2071 2100 air temperature °c 24.4 (-0.1) 24.1 (-0.4) 24.5 (0) 25.5 (+1) 25.9 (+1.4) 26.2 (+1.7) 27.8 (+3.3) precipitation mm 1808 (+43) 1446 (-338) 1784 (0) 1625 (-159) 1634 (-150) 1552 (-232) 1593 (-191) efrad mj/m2/d 3816 1639 2804 3265 3251 3267 3221 dryd (wm) d 15 39 22 13 14 17 16 dryd (sm) d 61 83 66 62 68 67 70 dryd (fm) d 6 65 39 32 31 26 33 dryd (apr-sept) d 10 93 52 39 47 39 45 dryd (oct-mar) d 111 127 99 88 84 90 85 watbal (wm) mm 147 -131 133 267 355 232 247 watbal (sm) mm -106 -282 -232 -210 -223 -211 -231 watbal (fm) mm 215 -201 -39 59 77 147 124 watbal (apr-sept) mm 669 -273 285 639 591 551 545 watbal (oct-mar) mm 9 -508 -393 -339 -316 -343 -352 oharvd (mar) d 15 27 25 25 24 24 24 oharvd (jun) d 4 15 11 10 11 9 11 oharvd (oct) d 18 23 20 17 16 17 16 heatd (jan-jun) d 1 15 17 20 22 24 30 heatd (jul-dec) d 9 12 14 23 27 33 55 heatwd d 144 139 147 172 182 183 211 eftemp °c 5200 5075 5195 5559 5774 5843 6463 table 2 indicates that the projected period of 1951-1980 was not only cooler but significantly more wet than the reference period of 1981-2020. the observed monthly precipitation of 1991-2015 shows a different seasonal precipitation pattern during summer than the projected period of the comparable 1991-2020 period, where the projection underestimated precipitation from may-july and overestimated from august-september. however, the differences in monthly precipitation are mostly much smaller between the projected two future periods than between the reference period (1991-2020) and the projected period of 2031-2060, indicating that major shifts of precipitation could occur already in the next few decades (however, a higher uncertainty in projections of precipitation should be considered). figure 2. the average monthly precipitation under observed and projected climate periods in the thai nguyen region. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 241 regarding rainfall patterns, figure 3a-d shows the distribution of precipitation classes under the observed period (1991-2015) and the reference period (1991-2020), as well as the two future projected periods, 2031-2060 and 20712100, respectively. it can be seen that the total number of projected heavy rain events are decreasing under our future climate projections in comparison to the projected reference (1990-2020). however, it shows also that the number of events >150mm may rise compared to the observed reference (1990-2015), which poses a very high soil erosion risk, even when these events are rare. figure 3a-d. the number of daily rainfall events, their classification, and probabilities (indicated as percentiles) under (a) observed (1991-2015) (b) projected reference (1991-2020), and (c-d) future projected climate periods (2031-2060 and 2071-2100) of the rcp 8.5 scenario. the predicted changes in temperature and precipitation are also reflected in the other calculated agrometeorological indicators on the annual, seasonal, or monthly scale based on the future scenarios, performed by the number of heat days above 35°c daily maximum temperatures (heatd), the number of heat wave days (headwd), and the effective growing temperatures (eftemp) in combination with the crop drought stress indicator as well as the water balance indicators of the three maize growing periods, respectively. the decrease and seasonal shift in precipitation and precipitation pattern lead to a change in the seasonal number of dry days under the future climate projections (in figure 4 shown for rcp8.5), where in all months an increase can be seen compared to the 1991-2020 reference period, except october and november. especially from january till july (during sm and fm seasons) the observed period of 1991-2015 shows the lowest number of dry days, in agreement with the higher monthly precipitations. in general, the relative share of dry days per month in the seasonal cycle is the lowest during july and august (50-60%) and the highest during november-february (90-98%) in the projections of both emission scenarios. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 242 figure 4. the relative share of dry days (days without precipitation) per month in thai nguyen province, vietnam for the rcp8.5 emission scenarios vs. observed and reference period (see table s1 – appendix for rcp4.5 results). the total annual effective solar radiation (efrad) and the annual effective temperatures (eftemp) shows an increase under the rcp4.5, relative to the reference projection of 1991-2020 (figure 5a). in contrast, they show a slight decrease under the rcp8.5 emission scenario due to increased drought stress conditions (see table 1), especially during the fm season according to the increasing number of dry days in may and june. the number of days with optimum harvest conditions (figure 5b) shows an increase for all three maize seasons compared to the observed reference (1991-2015) but a slight decrease under the future projections compared to the projected reference period of 1991-2020. just the fm season shows an increase (2 days) of the number of optimum harvest days under the rcp8.5 emission scenario for 2031-2060. on the other hand, the overall pattern of number of days is unchanged with the lowest optimum harvest conditions are still during the fm season under all projections, where wm and sm seasons show more than double of number of these days. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 243 figure 5a-b. indicators for optimum growing and harvest conditions shown as (a) effective solar radiation (efrad) and effective temperatures (eftemp) of the future projections, relative to the projection of the 1991-2020 period and (b) the number of optimum harvest days for seasonal maize harvest months in thai nguyen province of observed and projected current and future periods. the results of the water balance indicator (watbal) show naturally a significant difference between the summer (monsoon period) and winter (dry season) periods in general (figure 6). the water balance of the wm season stays positive under all scenarios in the range of 150-300mm, the fm season is slightly negative only in the reference period 1991-2020 with a range over all scenarios from -50mm to 200mm and the sm season shows in all cases a negative water balance in a range of 100-250mm (see table 2). there is a significant difference between the observed period (1991-2015) compared to the projection of a similar period (1991-2020), where the observed data show more positive water balances for the various periods. the reason is related to the mostly higher monthly precipitation during the observed period (figure 2). under future conditions, it is shown that an overall improvement in the water balance in comparison with the reference period projection (1991-2020) was calculated, especially strong for the summer period. related to the maize growing seasons the wm season shows the biggest improvement under rcp4.5 and the fm season shows the biggest improvement under rcp8.5, whereas the sm season stays almost unchanged compared to the 1991-2020 projection. figure 6. climatic water balance indicator (watbal) for the three different maize growing seasons (wm, sm, fm) as well as the winter and summer half year over the observed and projected current and future scenarios in thai nguyen, vietnam. the number of drought stress days (dryd) during the maize growing period is calculated from a full soil-crop water balance approach, considering actual evapotranspiration (figure 7). here we found the lowest number of drought stress days during the wm season and the highest (6 to 8 fold) number during the sm season, which is in accordance with the climatic water balance indicator (figure 5). the projected reference period (1991-2020) shows a higher number of drought stress days in comparison with the observed period 1991-2015, which is supported by partly significant higher monthly precipitation sums during the summer months of the observed period (figure 2). moreover, a slightly increasing number of drought stress days is figured out for the wm season. however, the number of drought stress days will increase significantly in the case of an additional precipitation decrease as demonstrated in the sensitivity analysis, which is shown in figure 7 under the rcp8.5 emission scenario of the period 2031-2060 (-30%) and the period 2071-2100 (-60%). here, under the -30% scenario, the number of drought stress days will surpass the relatively dry conditions of the 1991-2020 reference projection for sm and fm seasons, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 244 and it will strongly increase for all three maize seasons under the -60% scenario (by about 15-20 days, which is an increase of around 15-20% compared to the 1990-2020 reference). in respect to related maize yield response for the sm season, for example, up to 30% maize yield depletion were simulated for the same scenario case of a 60% precipitation decrease by tran et al. (2020). figure 7. number of drought stress days (dryd) for winter maize (wm), spring maize (sm), and forage maize (fm) seasons under observed conditions, current and future climate projections as well as additional sensitivity scenarios of -30% and -60% of annual precipitation applied on selected rcp8.5 climate periods used in this study for thai nguyen, vietnam. maize yield can be negatively affected by too high temperatures particularly during flowering or grain filling period (van der velde, wriedt, & bouraoui, 2010) which can be indicated by the applied heat indicators (figure 8, table 2). it is shown that the number of days surpassing critical temperatures (>35°c), (heatd), for sensitive phenological phases, is gradually increasing towards 2100, reaching the maximum under the rcp8.5 emission scenarios. this number can rise significantly from 18 to 58 (3-fold) days on average under the worst scenario of rcp8.5 during 2071-2100. a high interannual variation of such extremes, which is between 18-81 heat stress days during the winter and spring season, high interannual variation of negative impacts in maize production can be expected during the summer half-year. the number of extremely hot days is not only increasing towards 2100 but also the number of heat waves and respective heat wave days (heatwd) shown by the daily maximum temperatures above 30°c (figure 7). further, high temperatures during the night lead to a higher respiration loss for many crops, resulting in lower productivity and decreasing potential yields. figure 8. heat stress days (headd) and heat wave days (heatwd) on annual base as well as for first and second half year for the observed period and the current and future climate projections applied for thai nguyen region, vietnam. 4. discussion our results indicate significant changes in temperature and precipitation patterns under the applied future climate scenarios, which will directly impact agricultural productivity in thai nguyen province. the increasing temperature and its linked potential evaporation aligns with global climate change projections, with more frequent asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 245 and intense heat waves and droughts expected globally (ipcc, 2013 & 2024) as well as already observed (stojanovic et al., 2020) as well as predicted under climate scenarios of the next decades for northern vietnam (nguyen‐ngoc‐ bich et al., 2021). the rising number of heat stress days (heatd) and heat wave days (heatwd) under rcp8.5 suggest potential risks to crop yields, particularly for the heat-sensitive growth stages of maize, e.g. during anthesis and grain filling. in respect to the regional main maize growing seasons, we assess the potential changes and consequences in agrometeorological conditions and risks for maize by the indicators applied in our study (table 3). the projected decrease in precipitation, especially during the critical growing months for forage maize (fm) (may to july), highlights the potential for increased drought stress. the shifting precipitation patterns, with wetter conditions from july to august, suggest possible adjustments in cropping calendars to optimize water availability. however, the uncertainty in precipitation pattern projections (nguyen‐ngoc‐bich et al., 2021; pham-thanh et al., 2020) leads to the conclusion that adaptive water management strategies are necessary to mitigate risks caused by changing rainfall patterns. table 3. assessment of future seasonal maize growing conditions and risks in northern vietnam (wm, sm, fm periods). expected changes in respect to observed past conditions 1991-2015 (decrease (-), unchanged (0), increase (+); 3 strengths levels of changes based on our study results and authors expert opinion). changes in respect to rcp 4.5 rcp 8.5 indicator unit comments on potential impacts 2031 – 2060 2071 – 2100 2031 – 2060 2071 – 2100 annual air temperature °c shortening of growing period without cultivar adaptation – yield decrease + ++ ++ +++ annual precipitation mm seasonal shift from early summer to late summer heavy precipitation mm increasing risk for extreme soil erosion events + + + + efrad mj m2 d-1 overall yield potential reduction dryd (wm) d unchanged yield potential 0 0 0 0 dryd (sm) d more drought in dry season – significant yield decrease + + + + dryd (fm) d more drought in wet period – moderate yield decrease ++ ++ ++ ++ watbal (wm) mm more soil wetness – reduced soil workability and higher n-leaching risks + ++ + + watbal (sm) mm significant yield decrease watbal (fm) mm moderate yield decrease -- oharvd (wm) d 0 0 0 0 oharvd (sm) d lower soil compaction risks + + + + oharvd (fm) d improvement during wet month (june) – lower soil damage risk + + + + heatd (fm) d increasing fertility risk – yield failure for grain maize ++ ++ ++ +++ eftemp °c overall positive yield impact only by cultivar adaptation to higher gdd levels + + + ++ the predicted increase in drought stress days (dryd), supported also by e.g. [33] suggests that future cropping systems will need to incorporate drought-resistant varieties and improved irrigation practices, especially for the sm season. the decrease in water balance (watbal) especially during the spring maize (sm) season compared to the observed weather reinforces the need for efficient water resource management to counteract increasing evapotranspiration rates under warmer conditions. the projected increase in very heavy rainfall events (>150mm d-1) compared to the observed reference in our study is in line with other recent studies of increasing extreme heavy precipitation events. such as by raghavan, vu, and liong (2017) who shows an increase in 90th percentile precipitation over the northern provinces of vietnam of 15–25% for the period 2061-2090 under a1b scenario ensemble. another actual study katzenberger and levermann (2024) show a consistent increase in east asian summer monsoon (june-august) rainfall under cmip6, in particular in the south-eastern region of china, neighboring to our study region. it suggests that especially the hilly regions of the thai nguyen and neighboring provinces may experience significant increasing risk of soil erosions and land slide in the future. however, ngo-duc (2023) reported a decrease of heavy precipitation events in northern vietnam stations over the past decades but an increase of rainfall intensity particularly in the dry season, which could be related to impact of tropical storm patterns over past decades (pham-thanh et al., 2020). on the other hand, the increasing number of drought stress days in part of the year, which is supported by these other studies as well (pham-thanh et al., 2020; raghavan et al., 2017) for large parts of northern vietnam, which will lead to more water shortages in critical maize growth periods. the seasonal shift in precipitation, with more dry asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 246 periods in early summer and wetter conditions later, will require adjustments in planting schedules and soil moisture conservation techniques. further, an increasing risk for n-leaching can be expected under the wetter conditions (trnka et al., 2011) for the wm season, requiring adaptations in fertilization schemes. the findings on heat stress indicators (heatd and heatwd) highlight the vulnerability of maize and many other crops to prolonged high temperatures. the increase in extreme heat events especially during the fm season (part of the warmest period of the year), and particularly during the anthesis of maize, can lead to reduced number of grains as well as afterwards to reduced grain filling, yield reduction and accelerated senescence under high temperatures. feasible adaptation measures need to be developed and implemented in view of these potential impacts on maize and crop production in northern vietnam (tran et al., 2015). such are the development of more heat-tolerant cultivars, altered planting dates and growing periods, and improved soil moisture retention techniques. measures against soil erosion, for example by the establishment of agroforestry systems, will be essential to sustain maize productivity in northern vietnam under these scenarios. overall, the study underscores the importance of adaptive agricultural strategies in response to climate change. farmers and policymakers should focus on resilient cropping systems, efficient water use, and sustainable land management practices to mitigate the negative impacts of changing climate conditions. 5. conclusions under the applied future climate scenarios, a consistent warming trend is shown in combination with a decrease in annual precipitation of about 15% (compared to current conditions) towards the end of the century, particularly under the rcp8.5 emission scenario. in combination with increased potential evapotranspiration this would lead to an increase in drought stress days for maize and affect especially the sm growing season towards the end of the century under our scenarios. further, a shift in projected seasonal precipitation patterns is also projected and reflected in changing agrometeorological conditions such as the decreasing effective solar radiation and an increasing number of drought stress days also in the fm season. meanwhile, the projected increase of very heavy rain events will heighten the risk of land slide, soil erosion and nutrient leaching compared to current and past periods. furthermore, the gradually and significantly increasing number of extremely hot days will likely lead to greater interannual yield fluctuations for maize (and other crops), causing fertility disturbances or direct yield reductions due to reduced biomass accumulation. potential regional adaptation measures for crop production include the development of adapted crop rotation schemes, implementation of soil protection measures, exploring crop selection and breeding options, the establishment of agroforest systems and other strategies. the limitations and uncertainties of our study should be considered for further assessments. these are mainly related to a low number available in-situ data of weather, soil and crop conditions as well as the availability of only one regionalized climate model run. future research should therefore address especially the use of a higher number of scenarios (ensembles) to better assess the range of uncertainties. moreover, there is a need for an extension of related analysis to larger areas but with a high spatial resolution to address representative local farming conditions in the complex terrain such as in northern vietnam. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references alexandrov, v., & hoogenboom, g. 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(2020). climatic causes of maize production loss under global warming in northeast china. sustainability, 12(18), 7829. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187829 appendix supporting material tables 1-7: statistics of the analyzed indicators over the various periods and scenarios (fm= forage maize season (april-june); sm= spring maize season (januar-march); wm= winter maize season (august-october)). statistical parameters: mean; median; standard deviation (stddiv); maximum (max), minimum (min); 25% percentile (perc25); 75% percentile). for detailed description of the indicators see table 1 in the main body text. table 1. drought stress days (dryd number of days within the given periods). scenarios mean median std. div max. min. perc25 perc75 fm (apr-jun) 1991-2015, observed 5.84 4 7.85 29 0 0 8 1951-1981, projected 65.23 65.5 12.54 83 38 56 76 1991-2020, projected 39.13 38 24.92 89 0 18 58 1931-2060, rcp4.5 32.33 32.5 17.58 71 1 19 44 1931-2060, rcp8.5 31.23 33 16.61 72 6 18 43 1971-2100, rcp4.5 25.9 24.5 18.05 70 0 11 36 1971-2100, rcp8.5 32.77 31 15.77 65 5 19 44 sm (jan-mar) 1991-2015, observed 60.58 64.5 22.26 91 2 43 84 1951-1981, projected 82.9 88.5 11.23 91 51 76 91 1991-2020, projected 66.1 68.5 18.64 91 24 51 83 1931-2060, rcp4.5 62.43 61.5 20.68 91 23 49 81 1931-2060, rcp8.5 68.2 73 19.37 91 4 59 82 1971-2100, rcp4.5 67.37 71.5 24.12 91 15 51 91 1971-2100, rcp8.5 70.13 77 20.05 91 26 49 90 wm (aug-oct) 1991-2015, observed 14.58 13 9.34 32 0 7 21 1951-1981, projected 38.67 34 20.54 81 0 23 52 1991-2020, projected 22.1 19 16.63 67 0 10 31 1931-2060, rcp4.5 13.33 9 12.78 54 0 4 23 1931-2060, rcp8.5 13.83 11 11.43 39 0 4 22 1971-2100, rcp4.5 17.4 17.5 11.5 46 0 8 23 1971-2100, rcp8.5 15.93 14.5 13.04 39 0 3 27 april september 1991-2015, observed 9.56 7 9.1 29 0 2 13 1951-1981, projected 92.97 88.5 23.34 143 46 79 109 1991-2020, projected 52.3 45.5 38.33 155 4 21 82 1931-2060, rcp4.5 39.07 36 20.28 98 8 27 48 1931-2060, rcp8.5 40.17 38 17.83 81 13 26 52 1971-2100, rcp4.5 39.03 35 24.1 99 0 25 51 1971-2100, rcp8.5 45.13 43 19.27 86 7 31 58 october march 1991-2015, observed 110.54 107.5 32.42 165 30 90 141 https://www.statista.com/statistics/671353/production-of-maize-in-vietnam https://doi.org/10.3390/w12030813 https://doi.org/10.13128/ijam-764 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aaspro.2015.08.011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02396.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02396.x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2009.08.017 https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187829 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 249 scenarios mean median std. div max. min. perc25 perc75 1951-1981, projected 166.23 170.5 15.22 183 125 154 178 1991-2020, projected 138.67 140.5 26.24 183 65 119 157 1931-2060, rcp4.5 129.1 132.5 25.38 174 71 109 146 1931-2060, rcp8.5 128.3 126.5 25.45 175 63 117 143 1971-2100, rcp4.5 129.27 140 33.32 177 47 100 153 1971-2100, rcp8.5 127.73 133 29.23 168 50 117 148 table 2. water balance (watbal in mm within the given periods). scenarios mean median std. div max min perc25 perc75 fm (apr-jun) 1991-2015, observed 215 195 168 618 -15 65 285 1951-1981, projected -202 -217 66 -57 -298 -256 -147 1991-2020, projected -39 -106 203 557 -319 -165 74 1931-2060, rcp4.5 59 50 164 584 -227 -43 107 1931-2060, rcp8.5 77 10 226 568 -303 -81 196 1971-2100, rcp4.5 141 152 231 753 -251 -8 243 1971-2100, rcp8.5 124 26 367 1189 -363 -143 256 sm (jan-mar) 1991-2015, observed -106 -97 54 38 -201 -157 -84 1951-1981, projected -282 -284 24 -228 -323 -299 -268 1991-2020, projected -232 -250 75 -45 -331 -287 -172 1931-2060, rcp4.5 -210 -261 116 127 -321 -296 -146 1931-2060, rcp8.5 -223 -245 101 193 -322 -288 -175 1971-2100, rcp4.5 -211 -232 93 -29 -327 -298 -161 1971-2100, rcp8.5 -229 -244 92 69 -330 -297 -207 wm (aug-oct) 1991-2015, observed 147 125 158 557 -169 32 237 1951-1981, projected -131 -159 132 285 -307 -214 -65 1991-2020, projected 133 31 296 978 -243 -120 349 1931-2060, rcp4.5 267 272 236 747 -198 123 405 1931-2060, rcp8.5 355 315 248 1022 -14 198 455 1971-2100, rcp4.5 232 202 315 1400 -158 8 355 1971-2100, rcp8.5 240 227 225 749 -195 96 353 april september 1991-2015, observed 669 631 261 1427 200 501 806 1951-1981, projected -273 -304 172 215 -498 -381 -183 1991-2020, projected 285 99 641 1902 -604 -219 660 1931-2060, rcp4.5 639 609 471 1900 -306 336 831 1931-2060, rcp8.5 591 625 313 1426 -65 299 761 1971-2100, rcp4.5 551 461 477 2169 -42 216 725 1971-2100, rcp8.5 545 630 408 1431 -88 130 824 october march 1991-2015, observed -219 -258 117 112 -412 -280 -171 1951-1981, projected -508 -513 39 -376 -557 -537 -486 1991-2020, projected -393 -415 122 90 -560 -470 -337 1931-2060, rcp4.5 -339 -363 161 102 -528 -486 -292 1931-2060, rcp8.5 -316 -314 152 170 -585 -433 -268 1971-2100, rcp4.5 -342 -387 151 -20 -577 -445 -245 1971-2100, rcp8.5 -353 -387 151 88 -559 -466 -280 table 3. optimum harvest days (oharvd number of days in a given month). scenarios mean median stddiv max min perc25 perc75 fm (july) 1991-2015, observed 2.32 2 2.85 12 0 0 4 1951-1981, projected 11.2 11.5 6.92 24 0 7 16 1991-2020, projected 8.2 6.5 6.75 25 0 2 11 1931-2060, rcp4.5 5.73 5 5.77 22 0 1 8 1931-2060, rcp8.5 7.27 6.5 5.78 20 0 2 12 1971-2100, rcp4.5 9.97 10 6.49 22 0 4 15 1971-2100, rcp8.5 8.17 7 5.07 22 0 4 12 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 250 scenarios mean median stddiv max min perc25 perc75 sm (march) 1991-2015, observed 14.27 15 6.37 26 0 9 20 1951-1981, projected 22.33 22 4.25 31 14 20 25 1991-2020, projected 21 22 5.33 30 8 19 25 1931-2060, rcp4.5 20.5 21.5 5.34 29 8 17 24 1931-2060, rcp8.5 18.9 20 5.56 29 5 14 22 1971-2100, rcp4.5 18.13 18.5 5.83 31 4 14 21 1971-2100, rcp8.5 19.33 19.5 5.53 31 7 15 24 wm (november) 1991-2015, observed 22.19 23 6.43 31 4 17 28 1951-1981, projected 28.33 29 2.82 31 19 27 31 1991-2020, projected 27.07 29.5 4.57 31 16 24 31 1931-2060, rcp4.5 25.93 27 4.59 31 14 22 31 1931-2060, rcp8.5 23.77 25 6.51 31 2 19 29 1971-2100, rcp4.5 26.73 28 4.32 31 15 26 30 1971-2100, rcp8.5 25.7 26.5 4.82 31 15 23 30 table 4. effective growing temperature (eftemp mean annual temperature sums in °c). scenarios mean median std.div max. min. perc25 perc75 januar december 1991-2015, observed 5198 5248 267 5545 4478 5183 5359 1951-1981, projected 5075 5103 279 5532 4482 4982 5302 1991-2020, projected 5195 5166 318 5871 4613 4915 5422 1931-2060, rcp4.5 5559 5563 296 6231 4990 5350 5753 1931-2060, rcp8.5 5774 5717 277 6382 5142 5588 5969 1971-2100, rcp4.5 5836 5849 281 6542 5153 5620 5963 1971-2100, rcp8.5 6463 6429 295 7158 6009 6234 6716 table 5. effective solar radiation (efrad mean annual sum in mj m-2). scenarios mean median stddiv max min perc25 perc75 january december 1991-2015, observed 3849 3783 254 4298 3508 3630 4031 1951-1981, projected 1639 1597 480 2512 664 1343 2106 1991-2020, projected 2804 2810 835 3974 648 2369 3520 1931-2060, rcp4.5 3265 3363 619 4132 1588 2928 3793 1931-2060, rcp8.5 3251 3322 420 4136 1940 3067 3472 1971-2100, rcp4.5 3267 3201 645 4685 2033 2854 3735 1971-2100, rcp8.5 3221 3261 464 3951 2226 2950 3535 table 6. heat stress days (heatd mean annual number of days >35°c). scenarios mean median stddiv max min perc25 perc75 january june 1991-2015, observed 1.24 0 1.73 6 0 0 2 1951-1981, projected 14.77 13 9.17 38 0 8 19 1991-2020, projected 17.1 15 9.03 38 1 11 25 1931-2060, rcp4.5 19.7 16.5 8.76 45 6 14 23 1931-2060, rcp8.5 22.03 24 10.72 58 2 17 27 1971-2100, rcp4.5 24.07 24 10.24 46 6 15 29 1971-2100, rcp8.5 30.27 30 7.84 45 17 24 36 july december 1991-2015, observed 8.85 8 4.55 19 1 5 12 1951-1981, projected 12.2 12 6.74 26 1 6 16 1991-2020, projected 14.13 11 10.37 41 1 6 19 1931-2060, rcp4.5 22.47 21.5 12.12 57 1 15 31 1931-2060, rcp8.5 26.97 27 14.54 57 2 14 37 1971-2100, rcp4.5 32.87 29.5 15.54 64 6 21 45 1971-2100, rcp8.5 55 53 15.95 81 18 46 66 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 236-251 251 table 7. heat wave days (heatwd mean annual number of consecutive days >30°c). scenarios mean median stddiv max min perc25 perc75 january december 1991-2015, observed 144.76 141 12.64 173 126 134 153 1951-1981, projected 139.8 141 18.24 170 95 132 152 1991-2020, projected 146.6 143 23.11 190 95 133 162 1931-2060, rcp4.5 171.6 171 18.63 233 128 161 177 1931-2060, rcp8.5 181.57 174.5 19.7 228 156 166 199 1971-2100, rcp4.5 182.97 182.5 19.18 222 142 171 199 1971-2100, rcp8.5 210.9 207.5 14.53 242 180 201 222 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 102 company or collector: farmers’ choice of sales partners in the vietgap vegetable supply chain? a case study of southern central highlands, vietnam le viet linha katsutoshi onakab a,bfaculty of agriculture, graduate school of environmental, life, natural science and technology, okayama university, japan.  levietlinh@huaf.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 6 february 2025 revised: 19 march 2025 accepted: 31 march 2025 published: 3 april 2025 keywords collector company farmer advanced technology logistic regression supply chain vietnam vietgap. this study examines the determinants that affect farmers’ choices of consumption partners in the vietgap vegetable supply chain in vietnam. a survey involving 161 farming households from the southern central highlands region was conducted, and binary logistic regression was used to analyze the data. the findings indicate that significant factors influencing farmers’ choices include farm size, education level, production experience, income, and family labor. specifically, farmers with lower education levels, higher family labor participation, and more experience prefer working with collectors for product distribution. in contrast, farmers with higher education levels who adopt advanced technologies, such as greenhouses, automatic irrigation, or fertilization systems, are more likely to collaborate with companies for product distribution. this study highlights the need for targeted support programs to enhance farmers’ knowledge, improve production techniques, and facilitate access to modern technologies. such initiatives would empower farmers to make more informed business decisions, thereby increasing efficiency within the vietgap vegetable supply chain. ultimately, this approach would not only improve the sustainability and profitability of the supply chain but also contribute to the overall development of vietnam’s agricultural sector. contribution/originality: this study identifies the factors that influence partner selection by vietgap vegetable farmers in the central highlands. besides providing insights into production conditions, demographics, and high-tech adoption, the results contribute significantly to the development of a sustainable agricultural supply chain. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i1.5325 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: linh, l. v., & onaka, k. (2025). company or collector: farmers’ choice of sales partners in the vietgap vegetable supply chain? a case study of southern central highlands, vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1), 102–111. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction vietnam's agricultural sector plays a key role in the national economy, contributing about 14% to the gross domestic product (gdp) and employing 35–40% of the country's workforce (gso, 2023). the agricultural sector helps reduce poverty and ensures food security while improving nutritional quality for the people. in particular, the fruit and vegetable industry is increasingly dominating the market, meeting people’s growing consumption needs. this is due to an increased awareness regarding the health benefits of fruits and vegetables, especially in the context of consumers’ asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 1 (2025): 102-111 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-3244-6488 https://orcid.org/0009-0005-8486-810x mailto:levietlinh@huaf.edu.vn https://www.doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i1.5325 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 102-111 103 rising interest in healthy diets (huong, everaarts, neeteson, & struik, 2013). however, the fruit and vegetable industry continues to face many challenges, especially in maintaining product quality, food safety, and supply chain (sc) sustainability, in the context of fierce market competition (pérez mesa & galdeano-gómez, 2015). hence, the vietnamese government has implemented several policies to expand the fruits and vegetables market and boost production scale and product quality, thereby supporting sustainable development for the agricultural sector. the united nations sustainable development goals (sdgs) also emphasize the importance of the vegetable industry in building sustainable food systems and ensuring global food security (yang, pham, yang, sun, & tran, 2022). the vietnamese agricultural sector has implemented the vietgap certification system (good agricultural practices in vietnam) to improve the quality of fruits and vegetables and ensure compliance with international requirements for food safety, environmental protection, and public health (ha, 2014; hoang, 2020; mard, 2014). vietgap certification increases product value, opens up greater export opportunities, and helps farmers reduce production costs (kim, duong, nguyen, & nguyen, 2022; ngo, vu, liu, moritaka, & fukuda, 2019). however, vietgap implementation requires farmers to have advanced production techniques and sustainable supply chain links. rural areas, especially the southern central highlands, stand out for their strengths in fruit and vegetable production and contribute significantly to both domestic and export markets (tran quoc & do van, 2013). however, farmers in this region face many difficulties in maintaining stable prices and lack close links with consumption partners, leading to unstable incomes and affecting long-term sustainable development (tran quoc & do van, 2013). in the agricultural sector, choosing a consumption partner is an important decision for farmers. it not only directly affects short-term income but also significantly impacts the financial stability and sustainable development of the production model. in the context of the vietgap vegetable supply chain, farmers may choose between companies that have financial capacity and long-term commitment and collectors that can provide immediate benefits but lack a stable relationship. companies often provide long-term contracts and stable prices, helping farmers minimize price risks and ensure more stable income. however, to cooperate with these companies, farmers need a large production scale, a convenient location, and the ability to transport products to their partner's warehouse. moreover, companies often delay payments, causing financial difficulties for farmers, especially in the context of their need for working capital to maintain their production activities (tran quoc & do van, 2013). in contrast, cooperation with collectors offers some obvious advantages, such as quick payment and helping farmers save on transportation costs. however, cooperation with collectors brings along a lack of long-term commitment, which can lead to unstable income and limited ability to build a sustainable supply chain (samli & el-ansary, 2007; tran quoc & do van, 2013). fluctuations in the relationships between farmers and collectors can reduce the sustainability of the entire agricultural supply chain. although some previous studies have mentioned the choice between companies and collectors, they have not fully analyzed factors such as production experience, scale of the cultivated area, ability to apply advanced technology, education level, income, and family labor status that can directly affect farmers' ability to cooperate with consumption partners. in particular, how are farmers in vietnam’s central highlands currently choosing their consumption partners? do they choose companies or collectors to optimize benefits and minimize risks? the gap in the current research is the absence of an in-depth analysis of these factors in the vietgap vegetable supply chain (sc), which limits the ability to understand the motivations and determinants of farmers' choices of consumption partners. therefore, this study aims to clarify the factors that affect farmers' decisions to choose consumption partners in the vietgap vegetable sc. this study analyzes the factors that motivate farmers to cooperate with companies or collectors and clarifies the factors that influence these decisions. it helps provide specific information and recommendations, assisting farmers in making more effective cooperation decisions, optimizing benefits, and minimizing risks in the product consumption process, thereby promoting the overall sustainable development of the vietgap vegetable sc. 2. literature review 2.1. research background contextual factors such as product characteristics, industry type, and social context can influence the extent and nature of supply chains (matopoulos, vlachopoulou, manthou, & manos, 2007; singh & power, 2009). according to turnbull, oliver, and wilkinson (1992), weaker parties in cooperative arrangements do not necessarily achieve better outcomes than their opponents. as previously mentioned, smallholders in vegetable supply chains are negatively affected by power imbalances and resource constraints. in vietnam, most farmers in vegetable supply chains are smallholders who undertake only primary production transactions. after the centrally planned economy ended in 1990, farming in vietnam returned to the family farming model after a long period of management by government-led cooperatives, which limited their ability to cooperate with other enterprises. today, owing to a rapidly aging population, lack of access to technology, and limited marketing training, farmers largely rely on negotiating with collectors on price, quantity, and payment methods. in many cases, they suffer losses when selling their products due to poor quality or oversupply (huong et al., 2013; pham, crase, burton, & cooper, 2019). in addition, farmers often focus on short-term profits from growing vegetables that were once highly profitable without paying attention to market requirements. this focus on short-term financial benefits prevents them from investing in long-term sustainable development. as a result, they become trapped in a vicious cycle, concentrating only on small, short-term gains, which makes the vegetable supply chain unsustainable and leads to consumers not receiving enough products to meet their development requirements (johnson, weinberger, & wu, 2008; williamson, 1996). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 102-111 104 2.2. compare and contrast contract (company/enterprise) and non-contract (collector) supply chains although vegetable supply chains in vietnam have existed for a long time, in recent years, they have become more diverse, with many new linkages forming at the source. this provides more options for farmers participating in vegetable supply chains. we rely on transaction cost theory (tct) to better understand which supply chain (sc) farmers choose. coase (1937) originally proposed the concept of transaction costs when studying the nature of businesses. according to tct, when choosing partners in the vegetable supply chain, farmers often prioritize partners that minimize transaction costs. there are many types of transaction costs. williamson (1996) identified four main types: costs of searching for information about partners, costs of negotiating and signing contracts, costs of monitoring contract implementation, and costs of handling possible disputes. in vegetable supply chains, farmers often have to consider transaction costs with key stakeholders, such as cooperatives, collectors, wholesalers, retailers, and end consumers. in general, farmers have two main cooperation options (figure 1). the first is with collectors (non-contracts) and companies/enterprises (contracts). each of these options involves a chain of activities, from vegetable production to distribution, aimed at responding quickly to market demand. 2.2.1. supply chain 1 (sc1) (direct sale through “non-contractual” collectors) according to rábade and alfaro (2006), sc 1 represents the traditional approach to agriculture. in this model, the collectors actively visit farmers to buy and distribute agricultural products to wholesalers. farmers often choose this form because they are familiar with it and do not require high-quality assurance. however, no binding contract exists; farmers are passive in negotiating prices and are completely dependent on the collectors' bid prices. wang, moustier, and loc (2014) pointed out that although the government encourages agricultural production contracts, the rate of signed contracts remains very low. the main reasons for this are small-scale production by farmers, perishability of products, high transaction costs, and weak bargaining power. this makes farmers vulnerable to price pressure and unable to access more profitable markets (ebata & hernandez, 2017; negi, birthal, roy, & khan, 2018). the imbalance of bargaining power puts farmers at a heavy economic disadvantage. collectors often take advantage of farmers' dependence to offer the lowest possible price, leading to oversupply and market destabilization. thus, most product lines must pass through the collector’s hands before reaching the next buyer. to sell their goods, each collector has at least one group of wholesalers and one group of retailers (buyers). they rely on each other to protect their commercial interests. after receiving goods from the farmers, collectors sell the products to wholesalers. subsequently, wholesalers sell to retailers, and retailers bring products to consumers. each commune has several local collectors responsible for handling the output markets for the farmers in their area. therefore, farmers and collectors have had a close relationship for a long time. 2.2.2. supply chain 2 (sc2) (direct sale through companies/enterprises “paper contract”) in contrast to sc 1, in sc 2, farmers sign contracts directly with companies/enterprises before production, which is also consistent with the findings of gramzow, batt, afari-sefa, petrick, and roothaert (2018) and pham et al. (2019). these contracts include agreements on quantity, quality, price, and delivery time (wuepper & sauer, 2016). this form appears because of the increasing demand from consumers for quality, safety, and agricultural products. companies/enterprises have realized the importance of quality control in the production stage and building cooperative relationships with farmers. this sc involves agreements and formal terms between the two parties. the contract details the type, quantity, and delivery time of vietgap vegetables, as well as the rules and requirements to be followed so that both parties can fully fulfill their responsibilities. after harvesting, the company/enterprise proactively purchases directly from the farmer's farm, puts them into initial processing, and exports them to countries with which the company has trade agreements (such as japan and europe). to be exported, vietgap vegetables must meet some additional conditions set by the company in addition to the vietgap standards. vegetables that meet both the company's and vietgap standards can be exported. according to the contract, vietgap vegetables are destroyed and consumed domestically if they do not meet the standards. each form has its advantages and disadvantages. the selection of an appropriate form depends on several factors. 3. methodology the study was conducted in lam dong province. the province is located in the south central highlands of vietnam at an altitude of 300–1,500 meters above sea level (see figure 2). lam dong has a temperate climate, cool year-round, suitable for growing crops, especially vegetables and fruits, and is one of the largest vegetable-producing regions in the country (ngo et al., 2019). the lac lam commune in don duong district was chosen as the primary data collection site. we randomly interviewed 161 households growing vietgap vegetables according to the list provided by the lac lam commune. of these, 100 households were interviewed in september 2023, and the remaining 61 households were interviewed in september 2024. we divided the interviews into two rounds to increase the accuracy, representativeness, and stability of the research results, and to help us better understand the factors affecting the decision to choose vietgap vegetable farmers’ sales partners at different stages. the data collected through the questionnaire were divided into two parts: the first part collected information on the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of vietgap vegetable farmers, and the second part focused on factors related to the choice of vietgap vegetable farmers’ sales partners. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 102-111 105 figure 1. the supply chain of vietgap vegetables in don duong district. source: stakeholder interviews. figure 2. map of the study site. we used a binary logistic regression model to study the factors affecting farmers' decisions to choose sales partners. this model predicts the likelihood of choosing a sales partner based on independent factors such as income, experience, education level, farm size, and high-technology applications in producing other vietgap vegetables. data analysis was performed using stata 17 software. logistic regression models are especially useful in binary choice studies (in this case, 'company' or 'collector') (digal & placencia, 2019; okon & idiong, 2016; xie, zhao, pawlak, & gao, 2015). the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 102-111 106 logistic regression model helps identify factors that have a statistically significant relationship with farmers' choices of sales partners. the logit model is represented in standard function form as follows: 𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑡 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑋1 + 𝛽2𝑋2 + 𝛽3𝑋3 + 𝛽4𝑋5 +. . . . . . ⋯ + 𝛽𝑛𝑋𝑛 + 𝜀 β are parameters, x are independent variables, and logit is the logarithm of the odds ratio between the probability of the event occurring (choosing the collector as the sales partner) and the event not occurring (choosing the company as the sales partner). the higher the odds ratio, the greater the probability of choosing a collector. 𝐿𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑡 = 𝐿𝑜𝑔 𝑃𝑖 1 − 𝑃𝑖 pi is the probability of the dependent variable taking the value of 1, and pi/1-pi is the odds ratio. the higher the odds ratio, the higher the probability of the dependent variable taking a value of 1. in the model applied here, the dependent variable is the farmer’s choice of sales partners; the collector is represented by 1, and the company is represented by 0. in addition to the logit model analysis, we calculated marginal effects to measure the extent to which the probability of choosing a sales partner changes when the independent factors change. marginal effects provide additional information about the degree of influence of each factor, while regression coefficients only show the direction of change without clarifying the extent of change (serebrennikov, thorne, kallas, & mccarthy, 2020). in addition, to check the accuracy and reasonableness of the model, we used several statistical tests, including testing for multicollinearity using the variance inflation factor (vif) and testing the model's fit using the hosmer–lemeshow test. thus, the regression model does not suffer from problems with accuracy or bias in the estimates. during the analysis, we considered the factors that may influence the decision to choose a sales partner, including age, education level, income, farm size, and experience (knowler & bradshaw, 2007; lesch & wachenheim, 2014; priya & singh, 2024). however, after checking the correlation between variables, we removed highly correlated variables due to the high correlation between some variables, such as the age of the farmer, to avoid confounding and reducing the accuracy of the model. the final results used only independent variables that had a clear and statistically significant relationship with the decision to choose vietgap vegetable farmers’ sales partners, as shown in table 1. table 1. variables and description of variables used in logistic regression. variables description of variables source dependent variable farmer’s choice of sale partners = 1 if the farmer is sell vietgap vegetable of collector; = 0 company independent variables farm size total vietgap vegetable area measured in square meters. kafle (2011); laxmi and mishra (2007); maertens (2006) and suwanmaneepong, kullachai, and fakkhong (2017) education level education level (1 primary school, 2 junior high school, 3 senior high school, 4 intermediate, and 5 over intermediate) best (2009); laxmi and mishra (2007) and xie et al. (2015) family labor number of family members involved in growing vietgap vegetables. abdulai, monnin, and gerber (2008) income monthly household income from vietgap vegetables (million vnd) chichongue, pelser, tol, du preez, and ceronio (2020); laosutsan, shivakoti, and soni (2019); pongthong, masahiro, and kenji (2014) and porter and phillips-howard (1997) experience years of vietgap vegetable farming experience of the farmer. laosutsan et al. (2019) and suwanmaneepong et al. (2017) greenhouse/net house 1 if the farmer applies; 0 otherwise. abdel-ghany and al-helal (2020) and romacho, castilla, and soriano (2006) drip irrigation 1 if the farmer applies; 0 otherwise. berman, jonides, and kaplan (2008) and david and otsuka (1994) adjust fertilizer 1 if the farmer applies; 0 otherwise. arinloye et al. (2015) and feder, just, and zilberman (1985) automatic humidity, light, temperature 1 if the farmer applies; 0 otherwise. arinloye et al. (2015) and feder et al. (1985). ventilation mesh 1 if the farmer applies; 0 otherwise. arinloye et al. (2015) and feder et al. (1985) 4. results and discussion this section describes the characteristics of vietgap vegetable farmers based on household surveys and interviews with 161 households. we describe the differences between farmers who sell vietgap vegetables to companies and those who sell to collectors using logit regression. finally, we present the results of an econometric analysis of the determinants of farmers’ choices of sales partners. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 102-111 107 4.1. descriptive statistics data analysis in table 2 reveals clear distinctions between the two groups of farmers who produce vietgap vegetables. farmers who sell to companies tend to have higher educational levels, with 36% of them having completed high school. this educational advantage enables them to access information more easily, apply new technical knowledge, and comply with production requirements set by companies. higher education levels also enhance their ability to negotiate contracts with company partners and improve the efficiency of adopting advanced technologies (best, 2009; laxmi & mishra, 2007; xie et al., 2015). however, this group has less experience in vietgap vegetable production (3.7 years) and a lower average monthly income (25.2 million vnd/person/month) compared to farmers selling to collectors. in contrast, farmers selling vietgap vegetables to collectors have more years of experience (5.7 years), higher income (22.8 million vnd/person/month), and rely more on family labor (3.2 people). however, the adoption rate of advanced technologies in vietgap vegetable production is lower in this group, as seen in the limited use of greenhouses/net houses (8%), drip irrigation systems (63%), humidity control (25%), and ventilation meshes (29%). meanwhile, farmers selling vietgap vegetables to companies show significantly higher adoption rates of advanced technologies, such as greenhouses/net houses (52.46%), drip irrigation (24.59%), adjust humidity (59.02%), and ventilation meshes (40.98%). in summary, this difference shows that each group of farmers has its advantages in accessing the market and organizing vietgap vegetable production. table 2. characteristics of vegetable production households according to vietgap. variable criteria frequency (company) frequency (collector) total frequency farm size m21 9065 8150 8496 education primary school 20 (32.79)2 16 (16) 36 (22.36) junior high school 27 (44.26) 24 (24) 51 (31.68) senior high school 8 (13.11) 36 (36) 44 (27.33) intermediate 4 (6.56) 16 (16) 20 (12.42) over intermediate 2 (3.28) 8 (8) 10 (6.21) family labor people 2.1 3.2 2.8 income million vnd/person/month3 25.2 22.8 48 experience years 3.7 5.7 4.9 greenhouse/net house no 29 (47.54) 92 (92) 121 (75.16) yes 32 (52.46) 8 (8) 40 (24.84) drip irrigation no 46 (75.41) 37 (37) 83 (51.55) yes 15 (24.59) 63 (63) 78 (48.45) adjust humidity no 25 (40.98) 75 (75) 100 (62.11) yes 36 (59.02) 25 (25) 61 (37.89) automatic fertilizer no 45 (73.77) 84 (84) 129 (80.12) yes 16 (26.23) 16 (16) 32 (19.88) ventilation mesh no 36 (59.02) 71 (71) 107 (66.46) yes 25 (40.98) 29 (29) 54 (33.54) note: 1 one ha equals 10000 m2 (ha is the typical unit of measurement for land area in vietnam; one "ha" is equivalent to 10000 m2), 2figures in parentheses are the percentage, 3vietnamese dong (vnd). about 24.248vnd = 1usd (exchange rate: 09.2024). 4.2. estimating parameters on making decisions on choosing sales partners of vietgap vegetable farmers using the logit model table 3 presents the results of estimating the logistic regression model to analyze the factors affecting vietgap vegetable producers’ decision to choose a sales partner in the southern central highlands, vietnam. the dependent variable in the model is the choice between a company and a collector as a sales partner. the independent variables include demographic factors, production conditions, and factors related to the application of advanced technology. the results show that several factors have a clear and statistically significant influence on producers’ sales partner selection decisions. the results indicate that farm size has a negative coefficient and a p-value of 0.015, suggesting that households with larger farm sizes tend to reduce the likelihood of choosing a sales partner as a company. a farmer who sells vietgap vegetables to collectors stated: “the reason i decided to sell vietgap vegetables to collectors instead of to the company is that we have built a sustainable business relationship over many years. this trust has helped our transactions run smoothly and transparently. moreover, collectors have a deep understanding of the local market, thanks to more than 10 years of experience in the industry, along with a large network of partners, which makes it easy for them to consume all of my products. what is more important is the flexibility in price negotiations. compared to the company, collectors can quickly adjust prices and cooperation conditions to suit the market situation, bringing us initiative and convenience. this flexibility is an important factor that helps us feel secure and satisfied in the long-term cooperation process.” these findings are consistent with those reported by feder et al. (1985); kafle (2011); laxmi and mishra (2007); maertens (2006) and suwanmaneepong et al. (2017). however, maertens (2006) found that farmers with large farm sizes sell products to the company because a large farm size is an advantage for farmers to easily cooperate. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 102-111 108 table 3. logistic regression estimation for farmers' decision to choose sales partners. variable coefficients std. error p-value dy/dx significant vif farm size -0.00026 0.000105 0.015 -0.0000116 ** 3.14 junior high school 0.344345 1.090591 0.752 0.0183596 ns 2.27 senior high school 6.298977 1.881218 0.001 0.3201115 *** 2.23 intermediate 3.057803 1.465758 0.037 0.1622353 ** 1.53 over intermediate 3.797575 3.181902 0.233 0.1985415 ns 1.42 family labor 2.08752 0.63107 0.001 0.0948061 *** 7.86 income 0.063762 0.024567 0.009 0.0028958 *** 9.86 experience 0.853547 0.320477 0.008 0.0387644 *** 6.53 greenhouse/net house -3.35865 1.179127 0.004 -0.1525353 *** 1.45 drip irrigation 1.455872 0.818941 0.075 0.0661194 * 2.41 adjust humidity -3.11607 1.173788 0.008 -0.1415183 *** 1.85 automatic fertilizer -3.87597 1.485187 0.009 -0.1760297 *** 1.37 ventilation mesh -2.54625 1.156293 0.028 -0.1156394 ** 1.64 constant -9.29258 2.565211 0.000 *** number of observations 161 lr chi2 165.71 prob > chi2 0.0000 pseudo r2 0.7756 log likelihood -106.82578 corrected classified 91.93% hosmer–lemeshow goodness of fit (pvalue) 0.9866 note: *, **, *** indicate significance at 10%, 5% and 1% levels respectively, ns: not statistically significant the regression results indicate that households with senior high school education have a large coefficient (6.298977) and a p-value of 0.001, and are significantly more likely to choose company sales partners. a marginal effect of 0.3201 indicates that each unit increase in education level increases the odds of choosing company sales partners by up to 32%. this was echoed by a vietgap vegetable farmer in the lac thanh village: “i want to cooperate with companies to sell vietgap vegetables because i know that when signing a contract with them, i will receive comprehensive technical support, from choosing plant varieties to monitoring production processes. the company can provide knowledge and tools to optimize productivity and product quality. however, i realize that to work with the company, i need to be able to negotiate and handle problems that arise during the transaction process. i feel i do not have enough knowledge and experience and do not possess the necessary skills to solve problems effectively. therefore, in the current situation, choosing a collector as a sales partner would be more suitable for my abilities and conditions." similarly, the family labor, income, and experience are also positive and statistically significant at the 1 level. specifically, family labor has a coefficient of 2.08752, with a marginal effect of 0.0948, indicating that each unit increase in family labor increases the odds of choosing company sales partners by approximately 9.5%. the positive and significant effects of family labor are similar to those reported by abdulai et al. (2008); chichongue et al. (2020) and laosutsan et al. (2019). however, porter and phillips-howard (1997) demonstrated that most farmers who sell products to a company under contract earn high incomes. these factors suggest that farmers are more likely to choose a corporate sales partner if they have a high income, experience, and family labor support. a farmer selling vietgap vegetables in hai hung village shared: “i know that many farmers will find it attractive to sell vietgap vegetables to collectors because they often pay higher prices than the company. however, i want to choose to cooperate with the company because i believe that this is an opportunity to receive specialized technical support and stable consumption of output products. i am the only main laborer in my family, so having the company's support in technical guidance and ensuring quality standards is essential to improve production efficiency. however, to fulfill the contract with the company, we need to meet many strict requirements from the company, such as ensuring enough human resources, having experience in producing vietgap vegetables, and the family's economic situation must be stable to maintain production activities.” in contrast, the factors related to technology and production methods have negative coefficients. these are statistically significant at the 1% and 5% levels, indicating that these factors reduce the likelihood of choosing collectors over companies as partners for vietgap vegetable consumption. specifically, the use of greenhouses/net houses, humidity control, automatic fertilization, and ventilation nets negatively affect the selection of collectors. this indicates that farmers who apply advanced technologies tend to maintain company relationships. the logit regression results show that greenhouses/net houses have a coefficient of -3.35865 and a p-value of 0.004, indicating that the application of greenhouses reduces the likelihood of farmers choosing collectors as sales partners. the marginal effect of this variable is -0.1525, meaning that farmers using greenhouses have a lower probability of choosing collectors by about 15.25%. other factors, such as adjusted humidity, automatic fertilizer, and ventilation mesh have a similar negative impact on collector selection. this study is consistent with the findings of abdel-ghany and al-helal (2020); arinloye et al. (2015); romacho et al. (2006) and feder et al. (1985). nevertheless, some farmers who use high-tech expressed a preference for maintaining relationships with collectors as their primary partners in selling vietgap vegetables. this preference highlights small-scale technology-driven farmers’ strategic reliance on local collectors as key intermediaries in the supply chain. during an interview conducted in quynh chau dong village, a vietgap vegetable farmer elaborated on this dynamic, emphasizing the perceived reliability and flexibility of working with collectors compared with formal corporate arrangements: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 102-111 109 “although we apply high technology in vietgap vegetable production to achieve high productivity, reduce labor, and increase income, we tend to choose collectors as sales partners instead of companies. the reason is that companies often offer prices lower than the market and lack price flexibility after signing the contract. on the contrary, collectors are willing to pay high prices or prices equivalent to the market, without a binding contract, and only need verbal agreements. therefore, choosing collectors helps us optimize income and maintain business flexibility.” in addition, the variables junior high school, over intermediate, and drip irrigation were not statistically significant (p > 0.05), indicating that these factors do not play an important role in the decision of farmers in the study area to choose a sales partner. these findings are consistent with those of berman et al. (2008) and david and otsuka (1994). this may indicate that factors such as junior high school education and the adoption of drip irrigation techniques do not strongly influence the choice of sales partners. this logistic regression model has a good fit with lr chi2 = 165.71 and pseudo r2 = 0.7756, indicating that the model explains about 77.56% of the variation in the decision of farmers to choose a sales partner. furthermore, the model achieved a classification accuracy of up to 91.93%, indicating very high predictive ability. the hosmer–lemeshow test results (p-value = 0.9866) indicated that the model had a very good fit to the data, with no problems in risk prediction accuracy (midi, rana, & sarkar, 2010). this result supports the practical application of the model. furthermore, the vif values of all variables were less than 10, indicating no serious multicollinearity among the independent variables in the model, ensuring the stability and reliability of the estimates. 5. conclusion and implications this study elucidates the factors influencing the decision-making process of vietgap-certified vegetable farmers in the south central highlands region when selecting their distribution partners. the findings provide a comprehensive perspective on the interplay among demographic characteristics, production conditions, and the adoption of advanced technologies. this study also contributes significantly to the development of sustainable agricultural supply chains, particularly for vietgap-certified vegetables. key factors such as farm size, educational attainment, income, family labor involvement, and experience in vietgap vegetable production significantly influence farmers' choice of distribution partner. farmers with lower educational levels (primary education), higher family labor participation in vietgap vegetable production, higher incomes from vietgap farming, extensive experience, and limited adoption of advanced technologies prefer collectors as their primary distribution partners. in contrast, farmers with higher educational levels (high school or vocational training), who adopt advanced technologies such as greenhouses, humidity control systems, automated fertilization systems, and ventilation nets, are more inclined to partner with companies to distribute vietgap-certified vegetables. the study also reveals that farmers who adopt advanced technologies are more likely to choose companies as their distribution partners. meanwhile, farmers with extensive experience in vietgap vegetable production maintain longterm relationships with collectors because of their flexibility and fewer constraints than those working with companies. by contrast, farmers with less experience in vietgap production and those who adopt advanced technologies are more likely to collaborate with companies. however, some farmers who engage with companies express a desire to maintain relationships with collectors as they seek flexibility in selling their produce and the potential for higher prices. in addition, the logistic regression model indicates that farm size has a negative, albeit minor, influence on the likelihood of farmers choosing collectors as their distribution partners. larger farms often produce vietgap vegetables in greater quantities and are better positioned to negotiate favorable terms directly with companies. conversely, farmers on smaller farms rely on collectors to aggregate and distribute their produce. these findings suggest that farmers strategically select their distribution partners based on their household resources, particularly agricultural experience, family labor, technology adoption, and capital. this implies that the choice of a distribution partner is shaped by the farmers' specific circumstances. furthermore, farmers perceive little difference in the advantages offered by companies and collectors as business partners. this study underscores the need for tailored policy interventions that align with the practical needs of farmers. additionally, it emphasizes the critical role of training programs and agricultural extension services in enhancing farmers' production skills and understanding of advanced technologies. local authorities should actively promote supportive policies, reduce costs and skill-related barriers, and create favorable conditions for farmers to optimize their partnership decisions. this study not only deepens the understanding of the factors influencing farmers' choice of distribution partners but also provides a scientific foundation for policymakers to promote sustainable agriculture in vietnam. these findings serve as a basis for stakeholders, including policymakers, businesses, and farmers, to make informed decisions to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of the vietgap vegetable supply chain in the future. funding: this work was supported by the ministry of education, culture, sports, science, and technology (mext), japan, and was partially supported by the japan 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(2025). the impact of youth development program on rural livelihoods: a case of fortune 40 young farmer incubation program in bushbuckridge municipality, south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 387–395. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5551 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction poverty and unemployment continue to be the most pressing developmental issues in rural communities (gassner et al., 2019). gassner et al. argue that historically, there have been low levels of investment in education across the african continent. consequently, south africa faces a surplus of job seekers, particularly those who are inexperienced and low-skilled. the youth bear the burden of unemployment regardless of their educational level, according to statistics south africa (stats sa) (2020). among the different factors that contribute to unemployment are population growth, lack of experience required by potential employers, lack of career advice in high school, and inadequate jobsearch methods (cloete, 2015). according to the insight newsletter issue 13, the global financial crisis that began in 2008/2009 impacted the south african economy, hampering job creation and opportunities. as a result, young people are suffering in the south african labour market. for instance, the quarterly labour force survey (qlfs) for the first quarter of 2021 reports that some youths have become discouraged from participating in the labour market. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 387-395 mailto:anelemayekiso@ymail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6578-7770 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9969-262x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4081-2199 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3417-0708 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5551 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 387-395 388 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. poverty eradication is perceived as improbable unless knowledge, skills, and capacities are transferred to individuals who are excluded from participating in value-added economic activities (lewin, 2007). therefore, youths have found alternatives to express their competencies in agriculture and household enterprises due to the absence of formal paying jobs. many african countries' efforts to eradicate poverty heavily rely on the agricultural sector, including south africa. additionally, dercon and gollin (2014) highlight that for many rural africans, agriculture is a major source of income and a key component of the continent's economic development. moreover, the international youth foundation (2014) emphasises the role played by the agricultural sector in providing opportunities for entrepreneurship, which are ideal for the generation of employment, particularly among youth. the comparative advantage of agriculture remains vital in the mpumalanga province, and for this reason, agriculture remains the key to unlocking development and opportunities for many communities in the bushbuckridge area. correspondingly, baiphethi and jacobs (2009) highlight that most communities, especially in rural settings, are highly dependent on agriculture for food and livelihood. hence, the food and agriculture organization (fao) perceives youth-based agricultural initiatives as central to rural communities' development, despite any hindrances (food and agriculture organization of the united nations, 2014). foundational to initiatives such as the fortune 40 young farmer incubation program (hereafter the fortune 40 program) is the government’s role in poverty alleviation, read in conjunction with its constitutional mandate to ensure access to social security, as well as the promotion and protection of the inherent human right to dignity (south african government, 1996), which is emphasized in agricultural legislation and policies. agricultural programs emerge from the government’s efforts to realize the social security rights of citizens and promote economic development, despite some authors’ contentions that rural livelihoods are more of a social concept than an economic one (hancel, 2019). the fortune 40 program was founded a decade ago (2015) by the mpumalanga provincial government to mentor and coach youth in entrepreneurship through skill development and experiential training to enable them to become independent entrepreneurs in agriculture. hence, increased income, well-being, food security, and access to assets serve as the measures of success for the fortune 40 program. therefore, the study's overall aim was to analyze the impact of the fortune 40 initiative, an agricultural program, on the rural livelihoods of youth in bushbuckridge local municipality. 2. materials and methods 2.1. description and justification for the selection of the study area the study focused on three fortune 40 programs, namely, allandale, thulamahashe, and zoeknog farms, located in the bushbuckridge local municipality (blm). the three farms focused on vegetable production and mechanization. the bushbuckridge local municipality is under the ehlanzeni district municipality in the mpumalanga province of south africa. the local municipality is recognized for poverty and unemployment, especially among the youth aged 15 to 35 years, which poses a significant challenge for the municipality’s economic development and the upliftment of rural livelihoods (makhado local municipality, 2018). hence, the choice of the study area was based on the blm's intention to reinforce programs aimed at substantially improving local economic development through agricultural activities. 2.2. ethics ethical clearance was obtained from the university of limpopo's turfloop research ethics committee (reference number trec/147/2022: pg). the study involved human participants; therefore, ethical approval was required to ensure the participants’ safety and protection. informed consent was obtained from each participant after the purpose of the study was explained by the researchers. privacy and confidentiality were carefully maintained, i.e., after data collection, administered questionnaires were kept in a secured cabinet and a locked room to protect the participants’ information. 2.3. sampling procedure a proportional sampling method was employed, wherein a finite population of 60 fortune 40 beneficiaries was divided into subpopulations, and thereafter a random sampling technique was applied to each subpopulation. each fortune 40 farm consisted of 20 beneficiaries; 20 was then divided by the total population of 60, yielding 33%, and this percentage determined the proportion of the sample from each farm as the probability of selecting a unit is proportional to its size. the calculated sample size of 43 was multiplied by 33%, which gave 14 beneficiaries on the allandale farm, 14 beneficiaries on the zoeknog farm, and 15 beneficiaries on the thulamahashe farm. 2.4. data collection methods the study employed a cross-sectional design, collecting primary data through in-person interviews using a questionnaire and observations. the questionnaire was administered directly to each respondent by researchers and enumerators, allowing respondents to seek clarification and express a range of opinions. the questionnaire was piloted to assess its reliability and validity, ensuring the accuracy of the collected data. additionally, telephone interviews were conducted with some beneficiaries who were not present at the farm during data collection. observations on the farms enabled the researcher to identify visible production indicators and gather primary data through visual evidence, which helped validate the reliability of the beneficiaries' responses. the sample size consisted of 43 beneficiaries from three fortune 40 programs in blm. 2.5. data analysis tools the data was captured, coded, and cleaned using excel 16 and imported into spss version 28 for analysis. descriptive statistics were used to describe the challenges faced within the fortune 40 program. descriptive analysis included percentages, means, and frequencies. the sustainable livelihoods approach theoretical framework and an asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 387-395 389 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. ordered probit model were used to analyze the impact of the fortune 40 program on rural livelihoods and to examine factors influencing this impact. figure 1. sustainable livelihoods approach (sla): theoretical framework. source: ahmed, siwar, and idris (2011) figure 1 illustrates the adopted sustainable livelihoods approach from the study by ahmed et al. (2011). the sla operationalizes poverty reduction and focuses on promoting sustainable livelihoods through asset support by providing disadvantaged groups with better access to assets vital for sustaining their livelihoods. therefore, sla considers the livelihood assets of people, such as human, natural, economic, financial, social, and physical capital. however, people’s livelihoods are influenced by other vulnerability factors like trends, seasonality, and shocks, as well as policy institutions, policies, and processes. policies, institutions, and processes aim to assist people in surviving and thriving in vulnerable contexts so that their livelihoods are not undermined or compromised (ahmed et al., 2011). the framework was used to develop levels of impacts in an ordered manner to create dependent variables that were fitted into the ordered probit model. therefore, improved access to livelihood assets and improved livelihood outcomes depict the positive impact of the fortune 40 program on rural livelihoods, while the lack of access to livelihood assets indicates the negative impact of the program on rural livelihoods. the ordered categories of the dependent variable (impact on rural livelihoods) were no impact, low impact, moderate impact, and large impact. an ordered probit model was subsequently applied to analyze the relationships between an ordinal dependent variable and a set of independent variables. an ordinal variable is a categorical variable with a specific order (johnston, mcdonald, & quist, 2020). the disturbance term is assumed to be normally distributed as illustrated in equation 1. 𝑦𝑖 ∗ = 𝛽′𝑥𝑖 + 𝑢𝑖 (1) where 𝑦𝑖 ∗ it is a latent dependent variable (impact status); 𝑥𝑖 it is a set of independent variables influencing the dependent variables. 𝛽′ it is a set of parameters to be estimated, and ui is a disturbance term. since we cannot observe 𝑦𝑖 ∗we can only observe the categories of responses as shown in equation 3. 𝑦 = { 1 𝑖𝑓 − ∞ < 𝑦𝑖 ∗ < 𝜇1 (𝑁𝑜 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑡) 2 𝑖𝑓 𝜇1 < 𝑦𝑖 ∗ < 𝜇2 (𝐿𝑜𝑤 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑡) 3 𝑖𝑓 𝜇2 < 𝑦𝑖 ∗ < 𝜇3 (𝑀𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑡) 4 𝑖𝑓 𝜇3 < 𝑦𝑖 ∗ < ∞ (𝐿𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑡)} (2) the thresholds 𝜇𝑖 indicate the normal distribution array associated with the definite values of the dependent variables. parameters 𝛽 indicate the influence of variation in the dependent variables on the principal scale. the positive sign of the parameter 𝛽 implies a large impact of the fortune 40 program on rural livelihoods. shown in equation 3 are the estimated probabilities of the ordered probit model in this study. pr(𝑦𝑖 = 1|𝑥) = 1 − φ[𝛽′𝑥𝑖 + 𝜇1] 𝑃𝑟(𝑦𝑖 = 2|𝑥) = φ[𝛽′𝑥𝑖 + 𝜇1] − φ[𝛽 ′𝑥𝑖 + 𝜇2] (3) 𝑃𝑟(𝑦𝑖 = 3|𝑥) = φ[𝛽′𝑥𝑖 + 𝜇2] − φ[𝛽 ′𝑥𝑖 + 𝜇3] 𝑃𝑟(𝑦𝑖 = 4|𝑥) = φ[𝛽′𝑥𝑖 + 𝜇3] where φ is the cumulative density function (cdf) of a standard normal random variable. the independent variables against which the dependent variable was regressed are presented in table 1. table 1. description of variables specified in the ordered probit model. variables description units of measure impact on rural livelihoods (y) (opm model) 1=no impact, 2=low impact, 3=moderate impact, 4= large impact ordinal gender of the beneficiary male=0, female=1 dummy age of the beneficiary actual years count (years) education level 0= no formal education, 1= primary education, 2=secondary education, 3= tertiary education categorical years participating in the program actual years count (years) land size actual size count (hectares) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 387-395 390 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. variables description units of measure access to inputs 1=yes, 0=otherwise dummy market access 1=yes, 0= otherwise dummy credit access 1=yes, 0= otherwise dummy assets acquired by beneficiaries 0= human capital, 1= natural capital, 2= social capital, 3=financial capital, 4= physical capital categorical on-farm training 1=yes, 0= otherwise dummy workshops attended 1= attended, 0= not attended dummy household size number of people in the household count (years) farm income monthly income count (zar) beneficiaries' income: the exclusion of farm income. monthly income count (zar) government funds 1=yes, 0= otherwise dummy 3. results and discussion this section is divided into three parts: the socioeconomic characteristics of beneficiaries, the challenges encountered in the fortune 40 program, and the empirical results of the study. table 2. descriptive statistics of age and gender. variable minimum mean maximum standard deviation age 20 28.47 38 4.261 variable outcome frequency percentage (%) gender male 20 46.5 female 23 53.5 3.1. socio-economic characteristics the average age of the beneficiaries was 28.47, which is approximately 28 years, with a minimum age of 22 years and a maximum age of 33 years, as shown in table 2. the age mentioned above corresponds to the age category of the program's selection criteria, which includes youths aged 15 years and above, but not more than 35 years. the gender distribution of beneficiaries was notably balanced, with approximately 46.5% males and 53.5% females. as a result, the fortune 40 program addressed gender inequality by maintaining a balanced gender ratio among beneficiaries, promoting the inclusion of women farmers in decision-making processes and asset acquisition. according to statistics south africa, equal ownership and access to resources and opportunities, as well as gender equality in decision-making positions and equal participation of both sexes in the labor force, are essential components of empowerment. 3.2. challenges experienced in the fortune 40 program the study identified several impediments to the progress of the fortune 40 program. beneficiaries of the thulamahashe farm were not present during data collection because they had not received their monthly stipends for the previous three months (april, may, and june); consequently, they decided to discontinue their participation. beneficiaries of the allandale farm expressed dissatisfaction with the program's daily operations due to the consistent absence of their incubator, which forced them to assume leadership roles in the program. they also expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of resources or basic farming tools, such as hoes and shovels. as a result, they had to borrow these tools from the local community to ensure continued farm production. additionally, the beneficiaries reported that the program took too long to fulfill their requests for resources and inputs. furthermore, to start the third production cycle (the current cycle at the time of data collection), they had to hire a tractor for land preparation at their own expense. the theft was one of the program's challenges; the fencing is dilapidated at allandale farm; consequently, some produce is lost to cattle, and occasionally, local people steal produce from the farm. water is available from the farm's tap but only for four consecutive days per week, and there are no tanks or other water storage facilities. as a result, irrigation ceases when water is unavailable. storage facilities on the farm are inoperable. additionally, the main irrigation pipe at zoeknog farm frequently bursts, power cables have been stolen, there is a high rate of absenteeism among learners, and the withdrawal of incubators from the program has caused delayed production on the farm. osmani, kolaj, borisov, and arabska (2022) argue that factors contributing to the failure of agricultural programs include management-related issues such as low knowledge and experience, which result in less informed decisionmaking, as well as communication difficulties, and weak training and workshops. as a result, poor quality of the projects leads to beneficiaries’ dissatisfaction, which in turn causes youths to exit agricultural programs. the study's findings align with existing literature regarding obstacles that cause beneficiaries to become dissatisfied, ultimately leading to program failure or minimal positive effects on livelihoods. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 387-395 391 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.3. the impact of the fortune 40 program and the factors that influence it figure 2. changes in socio-economic wellbeing. several questions were posed to determine how beneficiaries felt about their social and economic well-being. these questions provided insights into how the fortune 40 program impacted the livelihoods of its participants. questions were weighted on three grounds: satisfied, neutral, and not satisfied, as presented in figure 2. when asked about the overall income and earnings from the program, approximately 39.6% were satisfied, 39.6% were dissatisfied, and 20.9% were neutral. some beneficiaries mentioned that the stipend was insufficient because it could not cover most of their necessities, while others said they could occasionally buy food and clothing with the same amount. one beneficiary mentioned that he was able to obtain his driving license, while others said they were able to start gardens for both home consumption and sales. these results indicate a disparity in the beneficiaries' satisfaction regarding the financial capital acquired from the program. when asked about their ability to support their families, approximately 46.5% of the beneficiaries expressed satisfaction, with some mentioning that they could provide food for their families. about 27.9% were dissatisfied, citing reasons such as living far from the program, which led to high transportation costs and an inability to contribute to their families. the remaining 25.6% were neutral regarding their ability to support their families. these results indicate a slight improvement in the beneficiaries' livelihood outcomes. beneficiaries must acquire land to continue receiving support from the fortune 40 program after intervention. when asked about their ability to acquire assets, approximately 37.2% of beneficiaries expressed satisfaction. researchers had the opportunity to visit the farms of two post-beneficiaries, who were grateful for the support received from the program after successfully acquiring land. the beneficiaries had a 2.5-hectare plot of land, and the program constructed a fence, a water tank with a capacity of 100,000 liters, and drip irrigation on their farms. about 37.2% of the beneficiaries were neutral when asked about their ability to acquire assets, while 25.6% were dissatisfied. some beneficiaries stated that the program took a long time to provide resources during and after the intervention. when asked about their ability to improve farming, the majority (60.4%) of the program’s beneficiaries were satisfied, 18.6% were neutral, and 20.9% were dissatisfied. the majority of the program’s beneficiaries stated that they were better equipped to manage a farm and knew how to cultivate some of the highly demanded crops in the local market, such as tomatoes, due to the skills gained through the program. therefore, the changes in the socio-economic well-being of the beneficiaries indicate that the fortune 40 program has helped improve their livelihoods to some extent. figure 3. impact of the fortune 40 programme. 23% 61% 16% impact of fortune 40 large impact moderate impact low impact asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 387-395 392 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 3 illustrates how beneficiaries assessed the impact of the fortune 40 program on their livelihoods. when asked about the impact that the fortune 40 program had on improving their livelihoods, approximately 23% of the beneficiaries mentioned that the program had a significant impact. most beneficiaries (61%) reported a moderate impact on rural livelihoods, while 16% indicated a low impact. none (0%) of the beneficiaries believed the program had no impact. these findings suggest that the fortune 40 initiative is a viable foundation for the sustainability of beneficiaries' livelihoods. the ordered probit regression model was used to determine the factors that influenced the impact of the fortune 40 program on rural livelihoods, and the results are shown in table 3. of the ten independent variables logged during the analysis, only six were found to be significant. the (-2) log-likelihood of the estimated model is 80.748, indicating that the ordered probit model can be relied upon to predict the impact of the fortune 40 program. the study obtained a nagelkerke r-squared of 0.737, suggesting that a substantial portion of the variation from the independent variables was explained by the model, with an overall prediction accuracy of 97.3%, as shown in table 3. the direction of influence for each significant variable is also presented. table 3. ordered probit regression results of the factors influencing the impact of the fortune 40 program. variables b coefficient standard error t-statistics sig. (p-v) intercept -4.069 10.329 0.155 0.694 age 13.067 6.8730 3.615 0.057*** gender 0.430 1.415 0.092 0.761 level of education -0.167 1.389 0.014 0.904 household size 29.627 4.283 47.861 0.000* credit access -5.587 2.699 4.285 0.038** government funds -1.171 1.978 0.351 0.554 type of farming 17.880 7.969 5.034 0.025** monthly income 0.002 0.001 5.034 0.025** workshops attended -0.623 1.947 0.102 0.749 land size 16.758 2.997 31.264 0.000* model summary (-2) log-likelihood 80.748 accuracy of prediction: overall (%) 97.3% pseudo r-square cox & snell r-squared 0.624 nagelkerke r square 0.737 note: * significant at 1% and ** significant at 5% and *** significant at 10%. 3.3.1 age age has a likelihood of positively influencing the impact of the fortune 40 program on rural livelihoods, and this was found to be significant at a 10% level (p=0.057). participants in the fortune 40 program were required to be youth, particularly those who could not pursue education beyond secondary school. the results suggest that including this age group in the program is likely to affect its outcomes. youth involvement in agriculture is widely recognized as vital for sector reform, as they are considered capable of adapting to the changing global economy. furthermore, age was a positive and significant variable in adeyanju, mburu, and mignouna (2021) findings, indicating that older youths are more likely to participate in agricultural programs than their younger counterparts. 3.3.2 household size household size was likely to positively influence the impact of the fortune 40 program on rural livelihoods, and it was found to be highly significant at a 1% level (p=0.000). the findings imply that families with a high number of members are likely to have an impact on how the fortune 40 program affects rural livelihoods. by pooling their resources and abilities, a household could probably improve its members’ standard of living. the results are consistent with shabanbgu (2015) research on the impact of the masibuyele emasimini agricultural program, which found that household size was significant. smallholder farming depends on the family because most farmers find it expensive to hire people, and their profits are insufficient to cover labor costs. as a result, larger households could be advantageous when it comes to access to labor. 3.3.3 credit access access to credit may negatively influence the impact of the fortune 40 program on rural livelihoods, and this effect was found to be statistically significant at the 5% level (p=0.038). the findings suggest that farmers with access to financial resources such as credit are more likely to have a variety of livelihood options. therefore, financial capital like credit can provide smallholder farmers with opportunities to adopt new technologies and allocate resources more effectively (zulfiqar & hussain, 2014). thus, bringing essentiality to the promotion of production, which in turn is vital for reducing food insecurity and poverty. it was noteworthy from the fortune 40 program that many beneficiaries lacked access to credit, which consequently limited their options for making a living. the results are consistent with those of yin and xiao (2020), who found that financial capital, such as credit, negatively influenced farmers' decisions regarding how to make a living from traditional agriculture. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 387-395 393 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.3.4 type of farming the type of farming was likely to positively influence the impact of the fortune 40 program on rural livelihoods; it was found to be significant at a 5% level (p=0.025). most probably, the findings suggest that the program's impact may vary depending on the type of farming practiced in the fortune 40 program. deogharia (2018) believes that diversifying agricultural operations is a key strategy for increasing income since it minimizes risk and maximizes profits by investing in a variety of crops. therefore, the production of different crops may impact how the fortune 40 program affects rural livelihoods. similarly, in a study titled "farm types and their economic characterization in complex agroecosystems for informed extension intervention," it was found that farm types are significant and crucial for precise technological intervention and well-informed policy support (goswami, chatterjee, & prasad, 2014). 3.3.5 land size the variable land size was likely to positively influence the impact of the fortune 40 program on rural livelihoods, and the variable was found to be highly significant at a 1% level (p=0.000). according to the findings, the likelihood of fortune 40 farmers producing in large quantities and increasing farm revenue may depend on access to adequate land size. as a result, there is a probability that the choice of land size may impact the livelihoods of the beneficiaries of the fortune 40 program. this outcome aligns with the findings of berre et al. (2017), which revealed that land availability is positively correlated with farm technical efficiency. 4. discussion youth participation in agricultural programs is one of the strategies that can support and stimulate rural development. for this reason, government initiatives focusing on agricultural and rural development aim to empower youth and women. the fortune 40 incubation program also targeted youth aged 15 to 35 years without a specific gender focus. the participants in the study's observation ranged from 22 to 33 years old. this observation could suggest that youth under 22 years old were still in secondary education, were possibly not interested in agriculture, or had migrated to urban areas in search of employment opportunities. conversely, youth aged 34 to 35 might also have been disinterested in agriculture or had migrated to urban areas for similar reasons. a study by chipfupa and tagwi (2021) also shares a similar sentiment in that youth, from an umbrella perspective, are regarded as not interested in farming. the authors further argue that, regardless of the notion that youth are not interested in farming, this varies across different age categories of youth. therefore, it cannot be generalized that all youth are not interested in farming; youth participation in farming and agricultural programs depends on their social and economic circumstances, which shape their aspirations and behavior regarding farming. there was a moderate difference of 8% between men's and women's participation in the program, with women accounting for a larger proportion. this suggests that the aim of empowering women in the agricultural sector, especially in farming, is potentially leading to noticeable change. thobejane (2022) conducted a study on the impact of empowering women farmers toward sustainable agriculture in the gauteng province of south africa. the study revealed that 91% of women and 81% of men reported feeling empowered. both the study and the current research highlight the courage women have to participate in agricultural activities. this is also evident in the moderate differences in participation changes between women and men, with thobejane’s study showing a 10% difference. since studies have been conducted to assess the impact of agricultural development programs on targeted communities, the youth development programs in agriculture and their effects on rural livelihoods remain underexplored in south african regions, leaving an open research gap for future investigation. the majority of agricultural development programs aimed at improving youth participation in the agricultural sector are most likely to experience stagnant progress toward achieving their goals and objectives due to various factors. the fortune 40 program is not immune to these factors that contribute to stagnant progress toward achieving its intended goals. according to kwenye and sichone (2016), the constraints within the agricultural programs hinder the participation of the beneficiaries, which negatively impacts the interest of the intended youths. it was evident in the fortune 40 program that beneficiaries lacked motivation regarding the continuity of the program, resulting from factors such as the lack of resources, poor storage facilities, irrigation systems, and theft. the program offers both theoretical and practical knowledge, but the lack of resources (i.e., farming tools, production inputs, irrigation facilities, and water) hindered the practical work progress, leaving the majority of the beneficiaries discouraged as they mostly prefer working in the field, as it enhances their farming skills and experience. similar challenges were found in the taraba state agricultural development program, which included the lack of mobility for proper supervision and a lack of working materials (inputs), which are essential for the operation of the program (oruonye & ahmed, 2016). one of the intended goals of the fortune 40 program was to provide agricultural resources to beneficiaries who could acquire land after participating in the program to enable them to launch their farming businesses. the beneficiaries lost hope for support right after participating in the program due to a lack of resources while they were still participating in the program. similar results were observed, wherein the lack of basic facilities, the lack of adequate funding, and difficulty in accessing farming resources were among the major constraints faced by the beneficiaries of agricultural development programs (ajani, mgbenka, & onah, 2015). moreover, a monthly stipend is an incentive intended to encourage youth participation in agricultural development programs. a considerable number of beneficiaries were unable to travel or sustain themselves since some had not received their stipends for three months in a row. this contributed to the high absenteeism rate. consequently, youths sought employment opportunities in other sectors besides agriculture. therefore, the drawbacks of the fortune 40 program are linked to the program's management incompetence, which can be addressed effectively through competent program supervision. the fortune 40 program has moderately contributed to the socio-economic well-being of its beneficiaries. the level of satisfaction with the income received from the program varied, resulting from the different backgrounds of the beneficiaries. some beneficiaries could, but some could not afford the necessities for self-sustenance. most beneficiaries were satisfied with their improved ability to support their families, and some managed to purchase furniture and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 387-395 394 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. appliances, among other things. similarly, the livelihood impact of the farm work program was observed, wherein about 94% of the beneficiaries were able to improve their household expenses through participating in the program (hancel, 2019). the beneficiaries of the fortune 40 program were satisfied with the knowledge and farming skills acquired, which improved their farming practices, hence enabling them to improve their livelihoods. this then denotes a move towards realising the goal of the program. the results concur with the findings of hancel (2019), wherein the beneficiaries of the farm work program were highly satisfied with their ability to improve their livelihoods through farming, which was attributed to the technical skills learned in the program, along with inputs acquired from the program. the factors that could influence the impact of the fortune 40 program include the following variables: age of the beneficiaries, household size, access to credit, type of farming, and land size. it is acknowledged that agriculture provides a primary source of income and is therefore vital for economic growth, particularly in rural areas (poudel, kharel, & upadhyay, 2021). it is also notable that the transition from school into the workplace is challenging for the majority of youth; hence, agricultural development programs seek to accommodate challenged youth into the field of agriculture (cloete, 2015). as a result, the age of the beneficiaries of the fortune 40 program, being youth, is likely to positively influence the impact of the program. this is because youth are considered enthusiastic and ambitious and can adopt new farming practices and improved technologies that enhance farm productivity (zidana, kaliati, & shani, 2020). prosperity in agriculture has become a challenge due to climate change, which requires more sustainable and climate-resilient farming systems. youth may become discouraged when they encounter obstacles in acquiring financial resources, such as credit, due to issues including a lack of security (hussain & thapa, 2016). therefore, access to credit is likely to negatively influence the impact of the fortune 40 program. the findings of luvhengo and lekunze (2017) support the notion that small-scale farmers have difficulty obtaining financing because they have little or no assets to use as collateral. land size is one of the factors that reduce agricultural productivity berre et al. (2017), as smaller land areas make it harder for farmers to produce in larger quantities, limiting their opportunities to participate in the formal market. additionally, they may not meet the required quality and quantity standards for produce. nonetheless, the fortune 40 program provided beneficiaries with adequate land size, enabling them to produce larger quantities and generate higher revenues. therefore, land size is likely to positively influence the impact of the program. larger land sizes allow beneficiaries to cultivate a variety of crops, mitigating risks of loss and increasing profits. beillouin and makowski (2019) revealed that crop diversification can help reduce risks and enhance the sustainability of agriculture. consequently, land size is likely to have a positive effect on the program's impact. 5. conclusion and recommendations it was evident that the fortune 40 program was initiated in response to socio-economic challenges such as poverty, inequality, and unemployment in the mpumalanga province. the study findings revealed that the fortune 40 program addressed the issue of gender inequality by having a noticeably balanced gender of program beneficiaries, to integrate women farmers into farming decision-making processes and asset acquisition. correspondingly, according to statistics south africa, equal ownership and access to resources and opportunities, as well as gender equality in decision-making positions and equal participation of both sexes in the labor force, are crucial components of empowerment. fortune 40 program has moderately improved access to livelihood assets such as human capital (skills gained from on-farm training and workshops), physical capital (farm machinery), and natural capital (arable land and water), which to some extent has led to the improvement of beneficiaries’ livelihood outcomes, such as financial capital and wellbeing. consequently, the program has a positive impact on rural livelihoods. hence, the findings may suggest that the fortune 40 program is a viable basis for the sustainability of the beneficiaries' livelihoods. however, based on research observations, the future existence of the fortune 40 program is questionable, given that most beneficiaries are leaving the program, while many of the remaining beneficiaries are concerned about how the program is currently being administered and how poorly resources are being allocated. the study results indicated that the age of beneficiaries, household size, type of farming, access to credit, and land size were variables influencing the impact of the fortune 40 program. consequently, the study recommends increasing land size for production to enhance vegetable yields; providing credit facilities for youth in agriculture through microfinance and rural commercial banks could be essential. additionally, youth, such as agricultural graduates seeking practical experience and on-farm training, should be prioritized in agricultural programs. notwithstanding the variables that may influence the impact of the program, the study identified a need for viable systems for monitoring and evaluation of the fortune 40 program, as the progress of the program depends more on the incubators. therefore, the involvement of extension officers would be of great importance. furthermore, improving time management regarding resource allocation is crucial within the fortune 40 program, as poor allocation of resources has led to the failure of many other similar agricultural projects. funding: this research is funded by the national research foundation (nrf) (grant number: mnd210412594016). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the university of limpopo, south africa has granted approval for this study on 29 march 2022 (ref. no. trec/147/2022: pg). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 387-395 395 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. references adeyanju, d., mburu, j., & mignouna, d. 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(2024). factors affecting the level of commercialization of smallholder pig farmers in the west rand district municipality of gauteng, south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3), 95–101. 10.55493/5005.v14i3.5163 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction smallholder pig farming has a pivotal function as a revenue stream and a way to lessen food insecurity in south africa (munzhelele, oguttu, & fasina, 2016). pig farming has been critical in improving the livelihoods of emerging small-scale and rural pig farmers in the limpopo province, south africa (kimbi, mlangwa, thamsborg, mejer, & lekule, 2016; mokoele et al., 2015). farming pigs can provide high food security and improve livelihoods in the west rand municipality. agricultural production mostly follows three processes, which are farming as a hobby, subsistence production, and commercial farming (perdomo, schwarzbauer, fürtner, & hesser, 2021). however, most smallholder asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 3 (2024): 95-101. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-6786-2309 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7952-9289 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9813-7851 mailto:mamasmj@unisa.ac.za http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 95-101 96 farmers strive to become commercial farmers and participate in high-value agricultural markets. according to ola and menapace (2020), a high-value market is characterised as high-quality, demanding, varying products meeting good food standards, demanding intense coordination, and having high profitability and higher entry costs when compared to traditional markets. according to abraham, chiu, joshi, ilahi, and pingali (2022), commercialization happens when farming systems evolve from subsistence and semi-subsistence agriculture to a profit maximization production system. commercialization is important to smallholder farmers because farmers can get production inputs and sell their products in established markets (abraham et al., 2022). this suggests that commercialization encompasses more than just selling agricultural produce; it also involves making production choices and input use decisions based on profitmaking principles (singh, singh, & sodhi, 2019). according to balana et al. (2022), smallholders are farmers that are faced with structural constraints such as access to resources, technology, and markets. despite all the efforts by the south african government through farmers’ training and funding programmes aimed at improving smallholder pig production, there are still some obstacles restricting production (matabane et al., 2018; munzhelele et al., 2016). significant soft limitations that small farms face include limited access to credit, high-quality input, technology, machinery specific to their assets, information, and extension services that are necessary to generate a marketable surplus (abraham et al., 2022). studies in the study area have not specifically focused on the factors influencing smallholder farmers’ commercialization of pig production. hence, the study aims to probe factors affecting commercialization of smallholder pig farmers in the study area. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study area the gauteng province of south africa’s west rand district municipality served as the study’s location (figure 1). gauteng province is the smallest province out of the nine provinces of south africa and only takes up 1.4% (17,010sq. km) of south africa’s land (johnson, dorrington, & moolla, 2017). the west rand city has large tracks of land used for farming, including agricultural holdings and a rural residential node. the district produces more maize than average, and farmers grow cut flowers, vegetables, and livestock for both domestic and international markets (basson, 2014). figure 1. map of west rand district municipality in the gauteng province of south africa. source: www.municipalities.co.za. 2.2. sampling technique and data collection in 2022, the department of agriculture and rural development of gauteng (gdard) provided an updated list of smallholder pig farmers in the study area. the list consisted of 84 smallholder pig farmers in the study area. we used a comprehensive sampling method, involving all 84 smallholder pig farmers in the study. we created a structured questionnaire based on the study’s objective and used it to collect primary data. the study information was gathered through in person meetings (face-to-face interviews) with all participating smallholder farmers in their respective farms. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 95-101 97 2.3. data analysis the collected data was organised and captured in spss statistical package for social science version 28.0 and then analysed. 2.3.1. logit model we employed the logit model to determine the factors influencing smallholder pig farming access to high-value markets. the dichotomous dependent variable (access to high-value market) outcome took a value of 1 if the smallholder pig farmer had access to a high-value market, and 0 if they did not have access to a high-value market. mathematics, particularly in statistics, specifies the logit function as the inverse of the sigmoidal function: when one of the parameters of the function reflects a probability p, the logit function provides the log-odds p/(1 − p). the logit of a number p between 0 and 1 is presented as follows: logit⁡(𝑝)⁡ = 𝑙𝑜𝑔 ( 𝑝 𝑝−1 ) = 𝑙𝑜𝑔(𝑝) − log(1 − 𝑝) = ⁡−𝑙𝑜𝑔 ( 1 𝑝 − 1) (1) the "logistic" function of any number is presented by the inverse-logit: 𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑡−1⁡ (𝛼) = 1 1⁡+exp(−𝛼)⁡ =⁡ exp(𝛼)⁡ exp(𝛼)⁡+1 (2) if p is a probability, then p/(1 − p) is the corresponding odds; the logit of the probability is the logarithm of the odds. likewise, the variation between the logit of two probabilities is the logarithm of the odds ratio (r), thus, by adding and subtracting, one may quickly get the optimal combination of odds ratios: log⁡(𝑅)⁡ = 𝑙𝑜𝑔 ( p1/(1−⁡p1) p2/(1−⁡p2) ) = 𝑙𝑜𝑔 ( p1 1−⁡p1 )⁡− 𝑙𝑜𝑔 ( p2 1−⁡p2 ) = 𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑡(𝑝1) 𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑡(𝑝2) (3) the key equation of multivariate logistic regression equation to fit the data is: 𝑙𝑜𝑔 ( 𝑝 𝑝−1 ) =(𝛼) +⁡𝑏1𝑥𝑖1 + +⁡𝑏2𝑥𝑖2 +⋯+ +⁡𝑏𝑝𝑥𝑖𝑝⁡ (4) where pi is the probability, and that yi is 1 in the analysis, the function’s maximum likelihood was satisfied during estimation and y = 1 when the smallholder pig farmers have access to high-value markets, and y = 0, otherwise. 2.3.2. multinomial logistic model the smallholder pig farmers in this study have more than two alternative levels in agricultural commercialization. their level of commercialization is classified as fully commercial, partly commercial, and not commercial. the multinomial logistic model was used because it allows judgements made across two or more categories in the dependent variables. the level of commercialization is discrete since it is selected among other choices. let pij represent the probability of pig commercialization by the pig smallholder farmers, then the equation is as follows: 𝑃𝑖𝑗⁡ = ⁡𝛽0⁡ + ⁡𝛽1𝑋1 + ⁡𝛽2𝑋2⁡ + ⁡𝛽3𝑋3 + ⋯+ ⁡𝛽𝑘𝑋𝑘⁡ + ⁡𝜀⁡ (5) where i takes values (1, 2, 3), each representing level of commercialization (fully commercialized = 1, partly commercialized = 2, not commercialized = 3). xi are factors affecting the level of commercialization, β are parameters to be estimated, and ε is randomized error. with j alternatives, probability of the level of commercialization j is given by: 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏⁡(𝑌𝑖 ⁡= ⁡𝑗) ⁡= ⁡ 𝑒𝑧𝑗 ⁡/⁡∑ 𝑗 𝑘−0 ⁡𝑒𝑧𝑘 (6) where zj is level and zk is a choice that could be selected. the model estimates are used to determine the probability of the level of commercialization given j factors that affect the choice xi. with several alternatives, the log odds ratio is computed as: 𝑙𝑛(𝑃𝑖𝑗/𝑃𝑖𝑘) ⁡= ⁡𝛼⁡ +⁡𝛽1𝑋1 ⁡+ ⁡𝛽2𝑋2 ⁡+ ⋯+⁡𝛽𝑛𝑋𝑛 ⁡+ ⁡𝑒𝑖 (7) pij and pik = probabilities that a smallholder pig farmer will choose a given level of commercialization and alternative level, respectively. ln(pij/pik) = natural log of probability of level of commercialization j relative to probability of level of commercialization k. α = constant. β = matrix of parameters. e = error term. in this study, the multinomial logit regression model will be as follows: 𝑙𝑛⁡(𝑃𝑗/𝑃1) ⁡= 𝛽0𝑗 ⁡+ ⁡𝛽1𝑗 ⁡𝑋1𝑖𝛽2𝑗𝑋2𝑖 +⋯+ 𝛽𝑘𝑗𝑋𝑘𝑖 ⁡+ ⁡𝑈𝑖𝑗 (8) table 1 displays and defines all the variables used in the study analyses. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 95-101 98 table 1. description of variables (binary logistic and multinomial regression models). variables description of variables unit of measurement dependent variable level of commercialization (multinomial regression) fully commercialized farmer 1. partly commercialized farmer – 2. not commercialized farmer – 3. number access to high value market (binary logistic regression) 1 = access to high value market, 0 = otherwise dummy independent variables age age of smallholder farmers number gender 1 if the farmer is male, 0 otherwise dummy marital status 1 if the farmer is married, 0 otherwise dummy level of education years of schooling number household size number of people in the house number distance to market distance farmers travel to market kilometers (km) land size amount of land at farmer disposal hectares (ha) level of the farmers’ participation in the commercial market. 1 = fully participating, 2 = partly participating; 3 = not participating dummy pig unit size size of the pig unit square meters access to credit 1 if a farmer has access to credit, 0 otherwise dummy access to commercial market 1 if a farmer has access to commercial markets, 0 otherwise. dummy employment status 1 if full time farming, 0 if part time farming dummy farmers’ affiliation 1 if farmers are affiliated, 0 otherwise. dummy transport costs transport cost per month number 3. results and discussion 3.1. factors influencing the smallholder pig farmers’ access to high-value markets table 2 shows the results of the binary logistic regression. the results indicated that out of 13 variables, only 4 variables (pig unit size, level of the farmers' commercialization, number of piglets per sow, and farmers’ affiliation) had significant influence on the smallholder pig farmers access to high-value markets. pig unit size had a positive relationship with the access to high-value pig markets of the smallholder pig farmers and was statistically significant at a 5% significant level. this suggests that an increase in pig unit size enhances the smallholder farmer’s chances of accessing high-value pig markets. majority of farms in the world are small and marginal in scale. approximately 475 million, or 84%, of the 570 million farms worldwide are thought to be smaller than two hectares (gomez y paloma, riesgo, & louhichi, 2020). land area has a favourable impact on livestock marketing rates, and it is important since it offers a chance to produce food for livestock, as well as a space for raising additional animals and utilizing contemporary technologies to increase growth beyond needs, all of which supports the supply of goods for consumers (belay et al., 2021). table 2. binary regression model: factors influencing access of smallholder pig farmers to high value markets. variables b std. error beta t significance. age 0.026 0.037 0.059 0.701 0.485 marital status 0.047 0.050 0.072 0.944 0.349 level of education -0.042 0.050 -0.076 -0.847 0.400 employment status 0.076 0.090 0.060 0.838 0.405 land size -0.013 0.054 -0.019 -0.237 0.813 pig unit size 0.088 0.037 0.189 2.376 0.020** level of the farmers’ commercialization -0.291 0.113 -0.239 -2.567 0.012** no: of piglets per sow 0.212 0.060 0.257 3.535 0.000*** access to credit 0.034 0.152 0.018 0.227 0.821 farmers’ affiliation 0.437 0.084 0.461 5.225 0.000*** farmers’ experience -0.037 0.065 -0.045 -0.573 0.569 type of transport to the market -0.062 0.070 -0.068 -0.880 0.382 transport costs 0.102 0.076 0.098 1.337 0.185 constant 0.224 0.417 0.538 0.592 note: ** and *** mean statistically significant at 10% and 5% respectively. table 2 revealed that the farmers’ level of commercialization had a negative relationship with the access of highvalue pig markets of the smallholder farmers and was statistically significant at a 5% significant level. this means that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 95-101 99 a decrease in the number of farmers commercializing increases the likelihood that smallholder pig farmers will gain access to high-value pig markets. according to belay et al. (2021) the commercialization of smallholder agriculture is a crucial step towards the development of rural economies. belay et al. (2021) further stated that when farms become more commercialized, dependent on hired labor, and employ more family members for managerial and supervisory roles. this could have something to do with making specific resources available for employment elsewhere in the economy. number of piglets per sow was positively significant at a 1% significant level. this implies that an increase in the number of piglets per sow increases the likelihood of the smallholder farmer accessing to a high-value pig market. farmers’ affiliation to a pig production organization was positively significant at a 1% significant level. this implies that the farmers with affiliations to a pig production organization were more likely to have access to high-value pig markets. this may be because the affiliations’ provide farmers with services such as marketing, training, and extension information. 3.2. level of commercialization among the smallholder pig farming the results in table 3 indicated that smallholder pig farmers who were fully commercialized amounted to 2.4%, those who were partly commercialized amounted to 19%, and 78.6% of the smallholder pig farmers were not commercialized. according to the study results, it is clear that the majority of the smallholder pig farmers were not commercialized. the result of the study differs from those reported by mothiba, mthombeni, and antwi (2023), where it was reported that 72% of smallholder farmers selling groundnuts in the limpopo province of south africa were commercialized, while only 28% of the farmers were not. table 3. smallholder pig farmers level of commercialization. level of farmer’s commercialization frequency percentage fully commercialized 02 2.4% partly commercialized 16 19% not commercialized 66 78.6% total 84 100% table 4. multinomial regression model: level of commercialization among the smallholder pig farmers. variables b std. error wald significance. fully commercialized vs not commercialized age -16.550 79.192 0.044 0.834 gender -0.030 0.049 0.368 0.544 marital status 0.055 0.095 0.329 0.566 level of education 0.416 0.263 2.503 0.114 employment status -0.037 0.065 0.045 0.569 land size -0.714 0.690 1.073 0.300 pig unit size 0.566 0.666 0.721 0.396 number of piglets per sow 1.583 0.662 5.716 0.017** access to credit -3.051 0.853 12.79 0.001*** access to high-value market 0.100 0.032 9.701 0.002*** farmers’ affiliation -0.513 0.810 0.400 0.527 farmers’ experience 0.102 0.076 0.098 0.185 type of transport to the market -0.542 0.664 0.666 0.414 transport costs 0.252 0.626 0.162 0.687 intercept 7.576 4.058 3.486 0.060 variables b std. error wald sig. partly commercialized vs not commercialized age 0.002 0.049 0.368 0.544 gender -0.612 0.634 0.932 0.334 marital status 0.054 0.099 0.295 0.587 level of education -0.227 0.263 0.722 0.395 employment status 0.025 0.032 0.600 0.439 land size 0.566 0.666 0.721 0.396 pig unit size -0.004 0.004 0.791 0.374 number of piglets per sow -0.472 0.652 0.525 0.469 access to credit 1.238 0.658 3.545 0.060* access to high-value market -1.683 74.521 0.001 0.982 farmers’ affiliation 0.314 0.623 0.254 0.614 farmers’ experience -0.062 0.070 -0.068 0.382 type of transport to the market -0.071 0.635 0.012 0.911 transport costs -0.062 0.070 -0.068 0.382 intercept -0.529 3.989 0.018 0.894 note: *, ** and *** mean statistically significant at 10%, 5% and 1% respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(3) 2024: 95-101 100 in table 4, the results from the multinomial logistic regression model determining the level of commercialization among the smallholder pig farmers revealed that the number of piglets per sow had a positive relationship with the level of commercialization and was only significant in relation to the farmers who were fully commercializing. this implies that an increase in the number of piglets per sow increases the likelihood of the smallholder pig farmer to fully commercialize their produce. in the study area, access to credit was statistically significant for both fully and partly commercialized smallholder pig farmers. however, it had a negative coefficient in relation to the fully commercialized smallholder farmers and a positive coefficient in relation to the smallholder pig farmers who were partly commercialized. this implies that the access to credit for the fully commercialized smallholder farmers decreases as they become fully commercialized. this could be because the smallholder pig farmers who are fully commercialized do not rely on credit, they operate their pig production with the revenues they get from being commercial farmers. partially commercialized smallholders pig farmers are likely to have access to credit. though according to abraham et al. (2022) small farms face challenges such as limited access to credit and quality inputs. access to high-value markets had a negative relationship with the level of commercialization and was only significant in relation to the farmers who were fully commercialized. this implies that smallholder pig farmers with access to high-value pig markets were less likely to be fully commercialized. however, according to mothiba et al. (2023) commercialized farmers elicit increased output, which translates to more surplus for them to sell in the agricultural markets. 4. conclusion and recommendations factors such as pig unit size, level of the farmers’ commercialization, number of piglets per sow, and farmers’ affiliation influenced the smallholder pig farmers’ access to high-value markets. according to the research, smallholder farmers should increase the size of their pig units to increase their chances of accessing high-value markets. increased production will result from this, giving farmers more surplus produce to sell. additionally, smallholder farmers ought to have resources and encouragement to raise their level of commercialization to fully commercialize, so that they can sustain their enterprises with the revenues from being commercial rather than relying on credit. more emphasis should be on the smallholder pig farmers to increase the number of piglets produced by sows for sales purposes in the highvalue markets. most of the smallholder pig farmers (78.6%) in this study were not commercial. the significant factors: number of piglets per sow, access to high-value markets, and access to credit were considered in the multinomial logistic model analyses. therefore, we recommend considering these factors when formulating policies and providing assistance to smallholder pig farmers. therefore, we advise smallholder pig farmers to expand their pig unit sizes to boost their big production and to join a pig association to enhance their access to high-value agricultural markets. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the university of south africa, south africa has granted approval for this study on 12 july 2023 (ref. no. 2023/caes_hrec/1210). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abraham, m., chiu, l. v., joshi, e., ilahi, m. a., & pingali, p. 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(2019). energy auditing and optimization approach for improving energy efficiency of rice cultivation in south-western punjab, india. energy, 174, 269-279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2019.02.169 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.4102/jsava.v86i1.1197 https://doi.org/10.18697/ajfand.123.23780 https://doi.org/10.4102/ojvr.v83i1.1011 https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12574 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12155-021-10266-4 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2019.02.169 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 156 performance evaluation of high-quality farmer training-survey data of farmers' training in jiangxi province, china cheng sendia,b wong swee kionga khalid zanudina afaculty of social sciences and humanities, universiti malaysia sarawak, 94300 kota samarahan, sarawak, malaysia. bjiangxi biotech vocational college, 330200, no. 1636 north liantang road, nanchang city, jiangxi province, china.  swkwong@unimas.my (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 7 november 2024 revised: 17 april 2025 accepted: 5 may 2025 published: 13 june 2025 keywords analytic hierarchy process high-quality farmers training performance evaluation rural revitalization. this study aims to identify and evaluate key performance indicators of high-quality farmer training by employing the analytic hierarchy process and factor analysis. this is crucial to serve as a reference for effective resource allocation for the training programs by the government. data were collected through face-to-face interviews with the experts and an online questionnaire survey with participating farmers in the training. the analysis revealed five primary factors influencing the effectiveness of high-quality farmer training: training intention, overall satisfaction, professional quality, economic benefit, and social benefit. social benefit emerged as the most significant indicator, while overall satisfaction was the least influential factor. the study comes to the conclusion that judging the effectiveness of good farmer training should include both short-term and long-term benefits. this fills in a gap in the research that has been caused by evaluating training based on quantity rather than quality. the study's results suggest that training programs should use a multi-level index system that balances short-term and long-term benefits. this would help fix the problem with the current way of judging the effectiveness of training, which is that it isn't very thorough and can lead to evaluation subjects being put in the wrong place. by emphasizing social impact and delayed benefits, training institutions can enhance the overall quality and effectiveness of their programs, ultimately leading to more sustainable agricultural development. contribution/originality: this study employs a multi-level index system using the analytic hierarchy process and factor analysis to identify key performance indicators for evaluating high-quality farmers. it looks at both the short-term and longterm effects of training. unlike other evaluation methods, it does this by looking at both quantitative and qualitative social and economic effects at the same time. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5402 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: sendi, c., kiong, w. s., & zanudin, k. (2025). performance evaluation of high-quality farmer trainingsurvey data of farmers’ training in jiangxi province, china. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 156–165. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 156-165 mailto:swkwong@unimas.my https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5402 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 156-165 157 1. introduction agriculture is the foundation of a national economy, and its development is the key for any country in the world to solve the problem of food security (pawlak & kołodziejczak, 2020). farmer training is a series of formal or informal, short-term or long-term educational activities that are prepared for farmers to achieve established goals as individuals or groups. it is also an important measure for the country to achieve rural human resources development and rural revitalization (khodabandehlo, farahani, einali, & cheraghi, 2024; o’donoghue & heanue, 2018; pretty, 2003). in rural revitalization, farmers are the main players; talent is the key (anwar, jatsiyah, zahari, saefudin, & nofirman, 2023; yin, chen, & li, 2022). in 2019, the central committee of the communist party of china issued the regulations on rural work of the communist party of china, emphasizing the need to "cultivate a team of high-quality farmers with culture, technical knowledge, good operation, and management skills". data show that in recent years, the central government has invested a total of 18.29 billion yuan to support agricultural and rural departments at all levels to cultivate nearly eight million high-quality farmers (zhang, 2024). with such a large amount of capital investment, it is urgent for government departments to clearly understand the training performance of farmers, which can be used to gauge the degree of achievement of training objectives and also serve as the policy basis for optimizing the allocation of training resources in future. 2. literature review the training of high-quality farmers is an important way to help complete rural revitalization (liu, qiao, xiao, han, & pan, 2022). scholars in related fields have rich research results on the training of high-quality farmers, and their research directions are mainly training status, training problems, training methods, and training intentions. nevertheless, theoretical research on "precise training" of high-quality farmers and research on the performance evaluation of high-quality farmer training have not attracted enough attention from relevant scholars (biswas & islam, 2019; hossain, islam, akhter, & rashiduzzaman, 2021; li, zhao, & ma, 2023; sancho, ramos-rodriguez, & vega, 2022). performance evaluation is an important part of farmer training, but also the most difficult part. at present, the research on "training performance evaluation" mainly focuses on enterprise employees (ajoi, gran, kanyan, & lajim, 2021; xayavong, kingwell, & islam, 2016). most of the research on training performance evaluation of high-quality farmers is a summary of practical experience in various places (hossain et al., 2021; ubong & okpor, 2019; zhang, ye, & yu, 2021) which lacks an empirical objective evaluation of training performance by constructing a scientific training index system. some relevant research only focuses on the comparison of "input-output" in economics, the difference in farmers' agricultural income before and after training, and training satisfaction (lu, wang, & mo, 2018; weng & guo, 2014; zhang & liu, 2022). the research on the training performance evaluation of high-quality farmers from a holistic perspective by taking into account the whole process of training is rarely seen. high-quality farmers are the main force to implement the rural revitalization strategy, and the quality of farmers is crucial to the process of the rural revitalization strategy (fei & feng, 2022; lv, 2022). the government-led training of high-quality farmers in china has the following three characteristics: first, in practice, the training of high-quality farmers is mostly short-term or phased training, and it is difficult to integrate all evaluation activities into a certain training process (chilemba & ragasa, 2020; mizik, 2023). therefore, the performance of high-quality farmer training is usually not immediately visible. instead, only when the work content of the trained farmer intersects with the training content, it can gradually become apparent (bagamba, ntakyo, otim, spielman, & van campenhout, 2023; fasting, rso, & klerkx, 2022; tufan et al., 2021). this shows that the training performance of high-quality farmers reflects the characteristics of time lag, and existing studies only focus on "immediate benefit" (castelein et al., 2022; gong, 2023; hill & pamphilon, 2024) while this study paid attention to both "immediate performance" and "delayed performance" when evaluating the training performance of high-quality farmers. secondly, high-quality farmer training is different from general enterprise training (lei & yang, 2024; mizik, 2023). as the primary provider of training services, the government not only pursues cost and economic benefits like those of enterprises, but they must also focus on the social benefits derived from its economic expenditures (goloshchapova, yamashev, skornichenko, & strielkowski, 2023). therefore, the existing "input-output" method to evaluate the performance of high-quality farmer training is not comprehensive, and it is difficult to achieve the government's goals. this study carried out the performance evaluation of the whole process of high-quality farmer training from three stages: before, during and after training. thirdly, highquality farmer training is different from general technical training (kangogo, otieno, okello, mwenye, & kapalasa, 2024; tamsah & yusriadi, 2022). as an important measure to link and consolidate the achievements of poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, its main purpose is to change the status quo of "low quality", "low income" and "low status" of farmers (pan, ye, & wang, 2023). existing studies only assess whether "quality and skills are improved" and "income is increased" after the training of high-quality farmers (adhvaryu, kala, & nyshadham, 2023; ashraf et al., 2020; forsythe, 2017). this study added the subjective feelings of "whether farmers' status is more respected" and "whether their social status is improved". the authors believe that the ideal quality farmer training performance evaluation standard should emphasize the main role of the trainee farmers and highlight the actual benefits of the training activities. the evaluation standard can not just evaluate the immediate performance of the trainee farmers' mastery of knowledge and skills throughout the training. instead, it should also evaluate the contribution of the training to the personal and social development and other delayed benefits. the performance evaluation of high-quality farmers' training should not just evaluate the results only, but it should also evaluate the willingness before training and the process evaluation during training, forming a whole process and multi-index evaluation system (ying et al., 2023; zhang, yang, & zeng, 2023). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 156-165 158 3. methods 3.1. data collection steiner and sven (2013) indicated that interviews were a common basic mode of interpersonal communication, an important research method and technique in social research, and they were also the entry point for the specific operation of qualitative research. in this study, two important provincial training institutions were selected: jiangxi vocational college of biotechnology, which is the earliest and largest provincial farmer training institution in jiangxi province, and jiangxi academy of agricultural sciences, the unit with the largest number of expert teachers for farmer training in jiangxi province. the reason for this selection is that the high-quality farmer training of these two units is the most representative. according to the needs of the research objectives, the authors developed a semi-structured interview questionnaire for farmer and expert interviews in six training classes. one expert was selected for each training class, and a total of six experts were interviewed. the authors studied six training classes, observed the performance of the trainees, and used the purposive sampling method to select three farmer trainees from each class according to the three levels of good, medium, and poor performance. a total of 18 farmer trainees were interviewed. the selected respondents had the following characteristics: first, as consumers or participants of training, the trainees had the greatest say, and they were able to objectively answer the questions that the researchers wanted to know, based on their real experiences and feelings. secondly, the interviewed farmers had different basic demographic and operational information, such as age, educational background, industry scale, and number of trainings attended, and all of them had participated in more than one training course at the ministry, provincial, and municipal levels. moreover, various training institutions hired some of the interviewed farmers as "local experts," serving as both trainees and trainers. the training institutions classified some of the surveyed farmer cooperatives or family farms as field schools, assigning them specific training tasks. they have a wealth of practical experience and are very knowledgeable about the organization and implementation of training, which is representative to a certain extent. after obtaining the interviewee's consent, we recorded each 30-minute interview. we then converted the recorded interview contents into text using the "xun fei hearing" software on a recording device. 3.2. data coding the data analysis in this study primarily employed the three-level coding method of grounded theory, which involved encoding, classifying, and summarizing the interview data step-by-step until no new concepts and relationships emerged, ultimately forming an indicator system. the first is open coding. the main task of this stage is to define the concept, discover the category, and form the categorization. this is a process of operationalizing and regrouping in a new way. it involves breaking up the transcribed interview data, figuring out the structure of the discourse and the links between the different parts based on context, grammar, theme, and content, and then giving them new ideas and meanings. thus, discovering thinking units, coding them, and searching for "native concepts" were involved throughout this series of processes of disassembling, reassembling, and endowing concepts and meanings. limited by space, this paper chooses one of the interview clips as an example to illustrate the coding process of localization concepts (see table 1). to get the initial localization concepts from the original source statements, similar concepts were gathered into a categorization process based on how they related to each other and made sense (chen, 2013). this study ultimately summarized 37 independent categories. table 1. concept coding of interview content localization. interview snippets localization concepts one is the interpretation of this new policy by experts every year, which is also a factor that is necessary to understand the new types of agricultural operators, including family farms, not only cooperatives like ours, but also agricultural companies, which are agricultural operators (a1). for our country's agricultural policy environment, it is still necessary to understand something: it is the state to give some support or give some rewards, including at the national level, to the local level, he will talk about. when you go to study, you will find that many people, for example, meet the requirements and can benefit from this incentive policy. if you don't go, you will not be able to enjoy the incentive policy because you don't know about it, which i think is rather unfair. (a2) the second group consists of experts, including those who train teachers. (a3) interpretation and tracking services for new varieties and technologies. the introducers are of high significance for us to really engage in this kind, especially planting or breeding. (a4) because experts and scholars, such as the academy of agricultural sciences, we are closely connected with the academy of agricultural sciences, and their channels of information communication must be more diversified, right? (a5) a1 pertinence of training content a2 participating in the training can learn agricultural policy knowledge a3 training teachers are agricultural technology experts a4 participating in the training can help you learn new technologies and enjoy tracking services a5 participating in training can get to know experts and learn information. next, we perform the selection coding. at this stage, the main task is to figure out how concepts relate to categories by looking at the order of events, meaning, similarity, difference, and causality between the categorized concepts. the relationship between the categorized concepts must then be summed up into more advanced categories. this study identifies 15 categories by repeatedly comparing 37 categorical concepts, and then further classifies these categorization concepts using core/selective coding. the basic framework finally classifies them into five dimensions through repeated comparison and classification, a process known as three-level coding (see table 2). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 156-165 159 table 2. classification of categorization concepts. categorization (level 1 coding) category (level 2 coding) core class (level 3 coding) whether to volunteer for training training needs willingness to train family support attend all training activities on time government policies to encourage training organizations training organization management training satisfaction training management training services training content training content form of training form of training duration of training training time and space training location training teachers trained teachers continuity services tracking service participation participation performance participation enthusiasm agricultural expertise and skills advancement of vocational knowledge and skills professional literacy other occupational knowledge and skills innovative ideas an update of career ideas ecological philosophy a new understanding of agriculture an increased sense of professional identity increased willingness to farm hope children to farming marketability the formation of professional development ability information gathering ability decision-making ability use of new technologies/new varieties/new models a change in professional behavior research and development of new systems/extension of the industrial chain personal accolades personal benefits economic benefits farm (co-op) honors broaden your mind the expansion of social capital cost reduction increased efficiency the promotion of farmers' status social benefits social benefits demonstration drive ecological benefit increased awareness of social responsibility 3.3. data application the index system cannot be established in one setting, but it needs to be constantly adjusted, amended, and optimized according to the actual situation. indicators developed based on interviews may have repeated content and logical confusion, which requires constant comparison, screening, classification, and combination of the constructed evaluation index system and further verification and optimization to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the performance evaluation index of high-quality farmer training constructed by us. first of all, based on the expert consultation method, the performance evaluation index of high-quality farmers training is revised. it is a method to listen to the opinions of experts on a certain issue and verify them with the help of the knowledge, experience, and judgement of experts (bike & ruichang, 2023). the key to the expert consultation method lies in the selection of experts. the selected experts should not only be familiar with the content of this study but also have certain authority. therefore, 10 experts were selected from the research field of "agriculture, rural areas", the field of empirical research methods, the training organizer, the training teacher, and the trainees. we asked the experts in person for their opinions on the listed performance evaluation indicators of high-quality farmers' training. the index system was then changed based on the experts' suggestions, and the final performance evaluation index system of high-quality farmers' training is shown in table 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 156-165 160 table 3. performance evaluation index system of high-quality farmer training. first-level index second-level index willingness to train very willing to attend family support attend all training activities on time government policies to encourage overall satisfaction training content training mode training teachers training services tracking services professionalism knowledge of thought, accounting, law, e-commerce, etc. agricultural expertise agricultural practice ability economic efficiency new technology new projects increased production of produce improved product quality cost reduction increased family income social benefits less medicine for weight loss guide and drive surrounding farmers ecological environment improvement secondly, based on the questionnaire survey method, the performance evaluation index of high-quality farmers training is revised. based on the interviews with the high quality farmers and the expert consultation, the performance evaluation index system of high-quality farmers training was designed, the questionnaire was prepared, and the project analysis and factor analysis were carried out by issuing the prediction questionnaire so as to amend the performance evaluation index system of high-quality farmers training. the subjects of this questionnaire are farmer trainees who participated in the high-quality farmer training of jiangxi vocational college of biotechnology and jiangxi academy of agricultural sciences in 2023. there are six training courses with 100 people in each class, but some trainees did not attend the full session due to leave or other reasons. online questionnaire survey data recorded responses from 514. all the items in the project have a t-value greater than 3,000, a correlation coefficient of at least 0.4 between all the items and the total score, a commonality of at least 0.2, and a factor load of at least 0.45. this is based on the critical ratio method and the homogeneity test. this means that all the items are effective at telling the difference between people. exploratory factor analysis was used to find the factors that the variables had in common. in the end, seven factors with eigenvalues greater than one were found (see table 4). through α coefficient test, the internal consistency reliability coefficient of the questionnaire is higher than 0.8, indicating that the reliability of the questionnaire is good. table 4. component matrix after rotation. questionnaire dimensions question items ingredients 1 2 3 4 5 willingness to train pxyy1 0.659 pxyy2 0.637 pxyy3 0.739 pxyy4 0.568 overall satisfaction mynr1 0.672 mynr2 0.549 mynr3 0.634 mynr4 0.576 mynr5 0.575 myjs1 0.478 myjs2 0.527 myjs3 0.606 myjs4 0.641 myjs5 0.583 myjs6 0.532 myjs7 0.729 myfw1 0.775 myfw2 0.728 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 156-165 161 questionnaire dimensions question items ingredients 1 2 3 4 5 myfw3 0.767 myfw4 0.674 mygz1 0.554 mygz2 0.718 mygz3 0.773 mygz4 0.734 professional quality sysx1 0.472 sysx2 0.575 sysx4 0.583 sysx5 0.539 sysx6 0.462 sysx7 0.535 sysx8 0.700 syzj2 0.559 syzj3 0.563 syzj4 0.591 syzj5 0.605 syzj6 0.701 syzj7 0.719 syzj8 0.598 economic benefit jjxy1 0.802 jjxy2 0.785 jjxy3 0.679 jjxy4 0.684 jjxy5 0.786 jjxy6 0.750 jjxy7 0.788 jjxy8 0.763 jjxy9 0.790 jjxy10 0.813 social benefit shxyyc1 0.611 shxyyc2 0.691 shxyyc3 0.636 shxyyc4 0.644 shxyyc5 0.728 shxyyc6 0.727 shxyfd1 0.757 shxyfd2 0.758 shxyfd3 0.689 shxyfd4 0.618 4. results 4.1. index system determination exploratory factor analysis shows that the four original dimensions of "i am very willing to participate," "family support," "participating in various training activities on time," and "government policy encouragement" have been combined into one dimension: "voluntary participation in training." the two dimensions of "knowledge of ideology, finance, law, and e-commerce" and "specialized knowledge of agriculture" have been combined into one dimension: "theoretical knowledge." the social benefit has been changed from "reducing weight and reducing medicine" to "improving ecological benefit." by combining the findings of theoretical research, suggestions from experts, and exploratory factor analysis, this study changed the training intention dimension from its original four secondary indexes to one secondary index called "voluntary participation in training." it also changed the professional quality dimension from its original three secondary indexes to two secondary indexes called "theoretical knowledge" and "practical ability." the three original indicators of "reducing weight and reducing medicine," "guiding surrounding farmers," and "improving ecological environment" were changed to two secondary indicators of "improving ecological asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 156-165 162 benefits" and "guiding surrounding farmers." this led to the creation of a high-quality training performance evaluation index system, which can be seen in table 5. table 5. performance evaluation index system of high-quality farmers' training. first-level index secondary indicators willingness to train volunteer for training overall satisfaction training content training method training teachers training services tracking services professionalism theoretical knowledge practical ability economic effectiveness new technology, new project adoption increased production of produce improved product quality cost reduction increased family income social benefits improvement of ecological benefits to guide and motivate surrounding farmers 4.2. index system empowerment since each index has different importance in evaluating the training performance of high-quality farmers, in order to accurately reflect the difference in the importance degree of each indicator, it is necessary to assign weight coefficients to evaluation indicators at all levels (du, liu, li, & liu, 2024). the method of determining the weight of the index is very important, and the credibility of the evaluation results largely depends on the scientificity of determining the weight of the evaluation index. when conducting multi-index comprehensive evaluation, different evaluation methods should be selected according to the emphasis of specific problems, giving full play to the advantages of information technology and making the evaluation results objective and easy to understand as far as possible. according to the above analysis, considering the particularity of the research purpose and object, this study adopts the subjective and objective analytic hierarchy process (ahp) to determine the index weights on the basis of the availability of evaluation data, the simplicity of evaluation procedures, and the objectivity of evaluation results. the weight coefficients of each evaluation index of the training performance of high-quality farmers were determined by constructing the judgment matrix, scoring by experts, and using ahp (analytic hierarchy process) method (nik hashim, dali, & alias, 2023) to calculate the importance ranking and consistency test with the help of the spsspro (scientific platform serving for statistics professional) software. table 6 displays the final weight of each index. table 6. results of the ahp hierarchy analysis of the performance evaluation of high-quality farmers training. results of ahp hierarchy analysis item feature vector weight value (%) maximum feature root confidence interval (ci) value willingness to train 0.549 10.98 5.392 0.098 overall satisfaction 0.53 10.59 professionalism 1.127 22.533 economic benefit 1.131 22.612 social benefit 1.664 33.284 in table 6, it can be seen that the weight value of all indicators in the performance evaluation index system of high-quality farmer training is above 10%. the weight value of "social benefit" is the largest, while the weight value of "overall satisfaction" is the smallest, indicating that the current training of provincial-level high-quality farmers in jiangxi province attaches more importance to the social benefit of training. farmers who participate in the training are adults over the age of 18. they attach less importance to training services than professional literacy, economic benefits, and social benefits. to improve the training of good farmers, it is thought to be more important to go beyond immediate, observable effects and focus on making farmers more professional and increasing the economic and social benefits of farming. we should take necessary policy measures, particularly to enhance the social benefits of high-quality farmer training. the authors believe that with the continuous implementation of the new education reform in recent years, the level of education among farmers is getting higher and higher. as a result, farmers are becoming more motivated to participate in training programs. there is greater awareness and more and more in-depth understanding of "one rich is not rich; everyone rich is really rich.". additionally, there has been progress in developing a deeper ideological understanding of energy conservation, reducing emissions, and protecting the ecological environment. therefore, the "social benefits" index weight value is the largest. table 6, reveals that the largest characteristic root is 5.392, with a ci value of 0.098. generally, ci = 0 means "there is complete consistency," ci close to 0 means "there is satisfactory consistency," and the larger ci is, the more serious the inconsistency is. based on the results in table 6, the ci = 0.098 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 156-165 163 in this study means that the system for judging the performance of good farmers that was made in this study is very consistent. 5. discussion the findings of this study indicated that the high-quality farmer training effect evaluation index design should pay attention to both immediate effect and delayed benefit (szott & motamed, 2024). training is a form of education, and education is different from other types of investment. the effect of education investment is usually not immediately visible, but it can be gradually revealed after a period of time, especially when the work content of the trained farmers intersects with the training content (lee, yoo, & bailey, 2020; ogunode, onyekachi, & ayoko, 2023) say that it's important to think about the lag characteristics of the training effect and the public welfare characteristics of highquality farmer training led by the government. the ideal performance evaluation standard for high-quality farmer training should be a multi-level index system, including both the immediate effect index and the delayed benefit index (elias, nohmi, yasunobu, & ishida, 2016). secondly, the high-quality farmer training performance evaluation index system constitutes five first-level indexes and 15 second-level indexes, including training intention, training satisfaction, professional quality, economic benefit, and social benefit (zhou, zhong, & yin, 2023). the design of the evaluation index is the most important link in the training performance evaluation. the choice of the evaluation index shows how scientific the content of the evaluation is and how reliable and valid it is (cai, cheng, & ke, 2022; xin, shu-jiang, nan, chenxu, & dan, 2022; yang, 2022). in order to build an ideal performance evaluation index system of high-quality farmers' training, this study developed five first-level indexes, including training intention, training satisfaction, professional technology, economic benefit, and social benefit, using the three-level coding method of rooted theory (barrera-osorio, kugler, & silliman, 2023; song & wang, 2023). some of the 15 second-level indicators are: willingly participating in training; training content; training methods; training teachers; training services; tracking services; theoretical knowledge; practical skills; adoption of new technology and projects; increase in crop yield; improvement in crop quality; cost reduction; increase in family income; improvement in environmental benefit; and the ability to guide and drive farmers in the area. all these indicators of the high-quality farmer training performance evaluation index system have passed the reliability and validity tests. thirdly, the study establishes the weight sequence for the quality farmer training performance evaluation index. we found the weight rankings of training performance indicators for high-quality farmers after training by using a judgment matrix, expert ratings, computational importance rankings, and a consistency test. the social benefit had the most weight, followed by economic benefit, vocational skill, training willingness, and finally training satisfaction. the weight of quality farmer training performance evaluation index shows that training performance should pay more attention to social benefits, that is, the delayed benefits of training. 6. conclusion the purpose of this study was to establish a scientific training performance evaluation system for high-quality farmers and then evaluate their training performance at the provincial level in jiangxi. through on-site face-to-face interviews with the farmers of jiangxi academy of agricultural sciences and jiangxi vocational college of biotechnology, the training indicators of high-quality farmers were preliminarily determined. next, we established the evaluation index system for high-quality farmer training performance using the expert consultation method and the ahp approach. later, through an online questionnaire survey, the high-quality farmer training performance from jiangxi vocational college of biotechnology and jiangxi academy of agricultural sciences in 2023 was evaluated. the weight value of the five first-level indicators is as follows: social benefit has the largest weight value, followed by economic benefits, vocational skills, training willingness, and lastly training satisfaction. so, social benefit should be the first important thing that is looked at when judging the quality of good farmer training. at the same time, evaluations of delayed benefits after the training should be made stronger. at the same time, the evaluation subjects of high-quality farmer training institutions should be replaced by the participating farmers rather than the evaluation executed by the training providers themselves. the training providers should not be both "athletes" and "referees." when inspecting the training performance of high-quality farmers, policymakers, that is, the relevant government departments, should not only look at the quantitative indicators nor take the satisfaction percentage as the only indicator. instead, they should measure the training performance from the multi-dimensional standards of training willingness, training satisfaction, training skill level, and economic and social benefits so as to strive to maximize the effectiveness of the government target's special funds for high-quality farmer training, as also highlighted by rahayu, juwita, bintariningtyas, rini, and wahyuni (2024). the authors recognize the shortcomings of this study, and these provide areas for future study. first, the study only looked at six high-quality farmer training courses from two provincial training units. also, the performance evaluation of provincial high-quality farmer training doesn't have a strong enough effect on explaining things. secondly, the research process encountered certain limitations due to the absence of chatgpt or ai intelligent tools. the authors will rectify these aspects of limitation in future research. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 156-165 164 funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the universiti malaysia sarawak, malaysia has granted approval for this study on 13 september 2024 (ref. no.: hrec(nm)/2024(1)/85). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references adhvaryu, a., kala, n., & nyshadham, a. 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(2023). improved rice varieties adoption and welfare implications among small-holder farmers in south-west nigeria: an empirical analysis and prospects for food security. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2), 146–153. 10.55493/5005.v13i2.4815 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction in recent years, the consumption of rice by households around the world has increased. growing population pressure, high production costs, and the need to enhance income have compelled rice farmers to boost yield and crop asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 2 (2023): 146-153. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7718-5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0106-9483 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1641-7260 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8383-2907 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0372-398x mailto:oluwafemi.aladejebi@fuoye.edu.ng http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2)2023: 146-153 147 intensity on restricted lands in order to supply enough food for the world. the improvement of small farmers' welfare and rural employment on a sustainable and economically viable basis, as well as the production of more food for the rapidly expanding rural population, comprise the principal challenge that rice production research and development attempt to address globally. rice cultivation in nigeria is primarily carried out by small-holder farmers who use traditional farming practices, as evidenced by their low productivity (tsado, ojo, & ajayi, 2014). rice productivity has recently increased due to the introduction and widespread adoption of improved rice varieties. even though the rise in production cannot be entirely attributed to varietal improvements, the consistent growth in rice production suggests that there is the possibility for further productivity enhancement (simtowe et al., 2012). farmers’ access to and acceptance of improved rice seed varieties would, it is expected, enhance small-scale rice farmers' production and, as a result, their livelihoods. in general, an increase in farm productivity has the potential to reduce poverty by increasing farmers' incomes and reducing food prices (adekambi, diagne, simtowe, & biaou, 2009). according to awotide, diagne, and omonona (2012), the yield and quality of a crop are highly dependent on the quality and condition of the seed that is planted. regrettably, many impoverished farmers have very little land on which to support their rapidly expanding families, let alone access to high-quality agricultural supplies. this makes it difficult for them to continue farming. these farmers typically lack access to essential supplies, which results in lower agricultural production growth and, in the long run, an adverse impact on their well-being. one approach to improve these farmers' welfare is to boost the agricultural production system, but this is only possible if they adopt improved crop varieties. most of the research on farmers’ income (baser & kaynakci, 2019; jatto et al., 2021; ogundipe, ogunniyi, olagunju, & asaleye, 2019) has not been able to advance beyond estimating the level of income poverty among small-holder farmers. the answer to the question of how to assess the degree of poverty among rice-farming households is frequently found in the absence of income; therefore, the traditional and restricted focus on income as the only measure of a person's welfare is increasingly being challenged. more than just a lack of income, the farmers are suffering from a variety of other deprivations. poverty is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, the causes, conditions, and consequences of which continue to be difficult to identify and quantify (amao, ayantoye, & fanifosi, 2017; babalola & mohd, 2022). to secure an understanding of the process of adopting improved rice varieties, it is necessary to conduct a comparative analysis of indigenous and improved rice varieties, as well as an examination of the impacts of adopting these varieties on the means of subsistence of farmers. consequently, the goals of this research are as follows: to determine the level of improved rice variety adoption among rice farmers, to determine the factors that influence the adoption of improved rice varieties among rice farmers, and to determine the extent to which rice farmers in the study area are affected by poverty. 2. materials and methods the research area is in south west nigeria, which is one of nigeria's geopolitical zones and includes the states of ekiti, lagos, ogun, ondo, osun, and oyo. the research was conducted from january 2022 to june 2022. this study was purposely conducted in the states of ekiti and ogun due to the high degree of rice production in these areas across the rice value chain. the study was conducted among rural rice farmers in south west nigeria, and it was based on both primary and secondary data acquired from rice farmers via questionnaires. the information gathered included rice farmers' socioeconomic profiles, living standards, farm-specific statistics, and income and expenditure. to identify representative rice farming households from the two selected states, a multistage sampling procedure was adopted. the first phase entailed the deliberate selection of agricultural development project (adp) zones across each state; the selected adp zones were areas where rice cultivation was carried out extensively (for ekiti state: ikere and aramoko; for ogun state: ikene, ilaro, and abeokuta). the second phase was the purposeful selection of at least one block from the selected zones in the states with a high number of rice farmers (for ekiti state: ijero and gboyin local government areas (lgas); for ogun state: obafemi-owode, yewa-north, and ifo lgas), making a total of 6 blocks. the third stage involved the selection of three (3) cells each from obafemi-owode, yewa-north, and ifo blocks, giving a total of 9 cells, and four (4) cells each from ijero and gboyin blocks, giving a total of 8 cells. the final phase was the random selection of 20 and 15 rice farmers, respectively, from the 17 cells in ogun and ekiti states, resulting in a total of 300 respondents. this selection was based on the total population and land mass of the selected states. 2.1. data analysis a combination of various analytical tools was employed in this study. these included a five-point likert scale, a logistic regression model, and the multidimensional poverty index (mpi). 2.2. likert scale a five-point likert scale was used to assess the degree of adoption of improved rice varieties among rice-farming households. to determine the adoption level of improved rice varieties among rice-farming households, respondents were asked how frequently they used improved rice types. their responses were evaluated as 4, 3, 2, 1, or 0 for very often, often, rarely, very rarely, and never. each farmer's group was determined by his or her position in relation to the grand mean adoption score. a farmer whose score was greater than the grand mean was said to be an "adopter of improved rice varieties", otherwise he or she was labelled a "non-adopter of improved rice varieties". these were the two levels of rice variety adoption. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2)2023: 146-153 148 2.3. logistic regression model a logistic regression model was used to examine the factors that influence farmers' decisions to adopt improved rice seed varieties. an underlying response variable that captured the farmer's socioeconomic profile determined the likelihood of adopting an improved variety. the logistics function was used to analyse the process of adopting improved rice varieties quantitatively. a logit model results in an estimated probability between 0 and 1. the logit model was expressed as: e(yi) = p(yi) = 𝑒𝛼+𝛽𝑥𝑖 1+𝑒𝛼+𝛽𝑥𝑖 ……..(1) when rice farmers do not adopt improved rice varieties, the likelihood of non-adopters becomes: p(non-adopters) =1p(yi) = 𝑒𝛼+𝛽𝑥𝑖 1+𝑒𝛼+𝛽𝑥𝑖 …….(2) where: p(yi) = the probability that rice farmer i adopts the improved rice varieties; p(yi) =1 if improved rice varieties were adopted and 0 if improved rice varieties were not adopted. e = exponential function yi = the variable explained: the adoption of improved rice varieties 𝛽 = the vector of the parameter to estimate, the sign of which allows the interpretation of the result. α = the constant xi = characteristics of rice-farming household i; it represents the vector of the explanatory variables. x = β0 + β1xi + β2 x2 + β3x3 + β4x4 + β5x5 + β6x6 + β7x7 + β8 xa ………. (3) where: x1 = age of the farmer (years). x2 = farm income (naira). x3 = household size (number). x4 = level of education (years). x5 = farm size (hectares). x6 = farming experience (years). x7 = membership of cooperative (1 = member; otherwise = 0). x8 = number of contacts with extension agents (number). x9 = awareness of improved rice varieties (1 = yes; 0 = no). e = error term. 2.4. multidimensional poverty index (mpi) the alkire and foster multidimensional (afm) measure was used to analyse and compare the poverty levels of adopters and non-adopters of improved rice varieties. afm, according to fadoju and adesiyan (2022), is a newly established class of multidimensional poverty indices based on the foster-greer-thorbecke poverty indices that represent the joint distribution of deprivation and satisfy a substantial proportion of poverty measurement axioms. because it is intended primarily for categorical/ordinal data, the afm is a robust measure (mohammed & ab-rahim, 2021). the measure has recently been utilized in a few studies (amao et al., 2017; babalola & mohd, 2022) to create multidimensional poverty indices (mpis) for various groups of people. table 1. deprivation: dimensions, indicators, and weights. dimensions indicators measurements weights education years of schooling deprived if no one in the household has finished five years of schooling. 1/6 child enrolment deprived if any school-aged youngster does not attend school in years one through six. 1/6 standard of living electricity if the home does not have electricity, they are deprived. 1/18 drinking water deprived if the household lacks access to safe drinking water or cannot get clean water within 30 minutes on foot. 1/18 sanitation if they do not have an improved toilet or if their toilet is shared, they are deprived. 1/18 flooring if a household has a dirt, sand, or dung floor, it is deprived. 1/18 cooking fuel if they cook with wood, charcoal, or dung, they are deprived. 1/18 assets if the household only has one each of a radio, tv, telephone, bicycle, motorbike, automobile or tractor, it is considered deprived. 1/18 health child mortality deprived if any child in the family has died. 1/6 nutrition deprived if any adult or child for whom nutritional information is available is malnourished. 1/6 2.5. deprivation dimensions, indicators, and cut-offs the mpi employs ten (10) indicators over three dimensions (education (2), living conditions (6), and health (2)). households’ scores in these aspects define their level of deprivation. table 1 summarises the mpi's dimensions, indicators, thresholds, and weights (babalola & mohd, 2022; mohammed & ab-rahim, 2021). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2)2023: 146-153 149 2.6. computing the multidimensional poverty index (mpi) the mpi combines two essential pieces of data: (1) the proportion or frequency of rice farming households that experience multiple deprivations (within a given population) and (2) the average degree of their deprivation: the average proportion of (weighted) deprivations they encounter. the first factor is formally referred to as the multidimensional headcount ratio (h0): 𝐻0= 𝑞 𝑁 ……….. (3) where: q = number of households engaged in rice farming that are multidimensionally poor. n = total population. the average intensity (or breadth) of deprivation (a) is the second factor. the multidimensionally poor families' average deprivation score, also known as the average degree of deprivation, is stated as a= ∑ 𝑐𝑖 𝑑 𝑖=1 (k) 𝑞 ………… (4) where: ci (k) = individual household deprivation scores, which have been censored. q = the number of rice farming households that are multidimensionally poor. 𝑀0 = 𝐻0× a……….. (5) where: 𝑀0 = adjusted headcount ratio or mpi. 𝐻0 = multidimensional headcount ratio. a = average intensity of deprivation. 3. results 3.1. level of adoption of improved rice varieties by rice-farming households in the study area table 2 shows the level of adoption of improved rice varieties by farmers in the research area. according to the findings, more than half (56%) of farmers believe that accepting better varieties is easy. the estimated weighted average (3.38) obtained for output transformation due to improved variety adoption suggested that farmers agreed that improved variety adoption leads to increased agricultural output. table 2. level of adoption of improved rice varieties in the study area. statement very often often rarely very rarely never mean score how easily and often do you accept improved rice compared to the indigenous rice varieties? 28(56.0) 19(38.0) 3(6.0) nil nil 3.5 since you have been growing the improved rice varieties, how often do you prefer it to the indigenous rice varieties? 4(2.0) 38(76.0) 8(16.0) nil nil 2.92 have you been committed to growing the improved rice varieties since you accepted it? 8(16.0) 17(34.0) 25(50.0) nil nil 2.68 are you often adapted to growing the improved rice varieties to the indigenous varieties? 4(8.0) 30(60.0) 16(32.0) nil nil 2.76 do you often combine improved and indigenous rice varieties? 14(28.0) 26(52.0) 10(20.0) nil nil 3.08 has growing the improved rice varieties consistently transformed your production yield since adoption? 26(52.0) 17(34.0) 7(14.0) nil nil 3.38 do you still object to the improved rice varieties that have been adopted? 11(22.0) 10(20.0) 22(44.0) 7(14.0) nil 2.5 3.2. factors that determine farmers’ decision to adopt improved rice varieties in the study area the results presented in table 3 show the factors that determine farmers’ decision to adopt improved rice varieties in the study area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2)2023: 146-153 150 table 3. factors influencing the adoption of improved rice varieties in the study area. variable coefficient st. error t-value age -0.0394*** 0.0125 -3.15 farm income 1.28e-06 1.73e-06 0.74 household size -0.0018 0.0907 -0.02 level of education 0.0273 0.0346 0.79 farm size 0.0289 0.0385 0.75 farming experience 0.0758*** 0.0206 3.7 membership of association -0.2070 0.5625 -0.37 extension visit 1.7203*** 0.4488 3.83 note: log-likelihood = -129.29183, wald chi2(8) = 103.11, prob > chi2 = 0.0000. *** = p < 0.01 3.3. poverty incidence among rice-farming households in the study area 3.3.1. incidence of deprivation indicators among the rice-farming households the results presented in table 4 reveal that about 12% and 6% of the farmers growing indigenous and improved varieties were deprived in terms of years of schooling. those who were deprived in terms of child enrolment accounted for 16.4% and 24% of the indigenous and improved rice farmers, respectively. the majority of farmers, both of indigenous (99.6%) and improved (94%) rice varieties, were deprived in the area of cooking fuel. table 4. distribution of adopters by incidence of deprivation indicators in the study area. dimensions indicators indigenous improved education years of schooling 31 (12.40) 3 (6.0) child enrolment 41 (16.40) 12 (24.0) standard of living electricity 53 (21.20) nil drinking water 103 (41.20) 12 (24.0) sanitation 221 (88.40) 2 (4.0) flooring 51 (20.40) 3 (6.0) cooking fuel 249 (99.60) 47 (94.0) assets 32 (12.80) 2 (4.0) health child mortality 2 (0.80) 7 (14.0) nutrition 201 (80.40) 7 (96.0) note: figures in parentheses are percentages. 3.4. distribution of households by weighted sum of deprivation indicators (k=3) in the study area table 5 reveals that 45.2% and 66% of the indigenous and improved rice farmers are below the 0.33 poverty cutoff, which makes them non-poor according to the mpi. more than half of indigenous rice farmers (54%) are considered mpi poor, while only 33% of improved rice farmers (weighted sum of deprivations >= 0.33) fall into this category. table 5. distribution of adopters by weighted sum of deprivation indicators (k=3) in the study area. weighted sum of deprivation indigenous improved poverty status <0.33 108(45.2) 33(66) non-poor >0.33 130(54.8) 17(34) poor note: figures in parentheses are percentages. 3.5. multidimensional poverty assessment of rice farmers in the study area table 6 presents multidimensional poverty estimates based on three dimensions: education, health, and living standards. according to the methodology, a family head and all others in the household are classified as multidimensionally poor if their mpi surpasses the minimum cut-off point (k) of 33 per cent or 0.33 at k= 3. table 6. multidimensional poverty indices of rice farming households in the study area. parameters indigenous improved multidimensional headcount (ho) 0.54 0.34 intensity of poverty (a) 0.39 0.31 multidimensional poverty index (mo= ho xa) 0.21 0.11 4. discussion 4.1. level of adoption of improved rice varieties by rice-farming households in the study area it has been noted that adopting different agricultural practices is a key strategy for farmers to overcome low productivity, achieve food security, lower food prices, and increase food accessibility for low-income households. the results in table 2 suggest that farmers readily adopt improved rice varieties. the farmers agreed that adopting improved varieties results in increased production output, as evidenced by the estimated weighted average of (3.38) for asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2)2023: 146-153 151 output transformation due to the adoption of improved varieties. this claim was supported by bruce, donkoh, and ayamga's (2014) study on the adoption of improved rice varieties and the effects on farmers' productivity. in their study, they found that growing an improved rice variety had a favourable impact on farm output. saka and lawal (2009) reported that the implementation of improved rice technology resulted in a 19.4% proportional increase in rice output, which further supports the importance of improved rice variety adoption. the weighted average scores (2.92) of farmers' preference for and adaptation to (2.76) the growing of improved varieties are less than average value of 3, which is an indication that farmers still somewhat prefer indigenous varieties, even though they agreed that improved rice variety adoption had a positive effect on output. 4.2. factors that determine farmers’ decision to adopt improved rice varieties in the study area the results in table 3 revealed that the effect of the estimated age parameter was negative and statistically significant at the 1% probability level. this indicates that younger farmers tend to adopt improved rice varieties more frequently than older farmers. this conforms to the prior expectation. young farmers are expected to be more eager than older farmers to adopt new rice technologies on their farms, given that they take more risks in decision-making (singh & varshney, 2016). at a probability level of 1%, the estimated coefficient of farming experience was positive and significant. the implication is that farmers are more likely to adopt and continue to use improved varieties as they gain experience. the level of knowledge and information about improved farm operations is proportional to farming experience. farmers with more experience will have seen the advantages of improved varieties, influencing their decision to adopt them. extension visits are another significant variable that could explain the adoption of improved rice varieties. this variable positively affects the adoption decision of farmers. contact with an extension agent could facilitate the farmer's acquisition of technical information regarding the improved rice variety. this result is consistent with the findings of chandio and yuansheng (2018), who stated that contact with extension agents during the previous year had a large and beneficial impact on the adoption of improved rice varieties. 4.3. poverty incidence among rice farmers in the study area table 4 shows the deprivation across the poverty indicators among the indigenous and improved rice farmers in the study area. farmers’ deprivation in the educational indicators was low compared to the other dimensions. this study’s findings are similar to those of afolami, obayelu, and vaughan (2015) regarding rural rice-farming households in ekiti state. improvements in educational policy and the government's efforts to fulfil the sustainable development goals in education through free and compulsory basic education provided by the universal basic education (ube) programme should be credited for this low deprivation status in education. a higher level of deprivation was observed for the cooking fuel indicator. most households were deficient in one to six indicators. the findings revealed that the rice-farming households in the study area have a very low standard of living, given their deprivation status. cooking fuel shortages could be related to rising costs of domestic cooking fuels, such as cooking gas and kerosene. nutrition is the indicator in which rice farming households are most deficient in the health dimension. this implies that poor nutrition is a socioeconomic problem in rural areas. 4.4. distribution of households by weighted sum of deprivation indicators (k=3) in the study area the chi-squared test results in table 5 show that there is a substantial difference in poverty status between improved and indigenous rice producers. farmers growing indigenous rice varieties had a higher poverty rate than those growing improved rice varieties. 4.5. multidimensional poverty assessment of rice farmers in the study area the estimated results in table 6 indicate that 54 per cent of indigenous rice farmers and 34 per cent of improved rice farmers, respectively, are mpi poor. according to the mpi, this indicates they are experiencing extreme poverty. they are deprived in at least one area or a combination of dimensions, such as living with no access to decent health care, no clean water, a dirty floor, and inadequate sanitation. in addition, on average, the indigenous and improved rice farmers are disadvantaged in 39 and 31 per cent of the weighted indicators, respectively. the mpi reflects the proportion of the population that is multidimensionally impoverished, adjusted for the severity of the deprivation endured. this adjustment is necessary because the multidimensional headcount ratio (h) merely reveals that 54 and 34 per cent of the indigenous and improved rice farmer populations, respectively, are mpi poor. the adjustment demonstrated that not all farmers are equally poor and deprived for all deprivation indicators. the typical indigenous and improved rice farmer is deprived in 54 and 34 per cent of the weighted indicators, respectively. to calculate the deprivation score, each deprivation is entered according to its relative weight, hence the term "weighted" indicators. adjusting the numbers for the severity of poverty, alkire and foster (2011) referred to the mpi as the adjusted headcount ratio (a). if there were 54 and 34 per cent of the individuals in the indigenous and improved farmer groups, respectively, were poor, and they were all deficient in all the indicators, then a (intensity of poverty) would be 1, and the mpi would equal h (the poverty incidence). alternatively, if 100 per cent of the population was poor, the mpi would equal a (intensity of poverty). 5. conclusions according to the study results, the estimated weighted average (3.38) obtained for output transformation due to the adoption of improved rice varieties revealed that farmers agreed that the adoption of improved varieties leads to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2)2023: 146-153 152 increased production output. farmers still prefer indigenous varieties, as evidenced by the weighted average scores for preference for (2.92) and adaptation to (2.76) growing improved varieties, which are less than the average value of 3. age, farming experience, and contact with extension agents were factors that influenced the adoption of improved rice varieties. farmers were least deprived in the educational dimension, and most deprived in the cooking fuel indicator. given the deprivation status, farming households in the study area have a very poor standard of living. approximately 45% and 66% of indigenous and improved rice farmers fell below the 0.33 poverty line, making them non-poor according to the multidimensional poverty index (mpi). more than half (54%) of indigenous rice farmers were mpi poor, while 33% of improved rice farmers were mpi poor, with a weighted sum of deprivation greater than or equal to 0.33. overall, according to mpi estimates, rice farmers were very impoverished. they were deficient in all indicators of a single dimension or a mixture of dimensions, such as living in a household with no access to quality health care, no clean water, a dirty floor, and inadequate sanitation. furthermore, indigenous and improved rice farmers were deprived in 39 and 31 per cent of the weighted indicators, respectively. the average indigenous and improved rice farmer was deprived in 54 and 34 per cent of the weighted measures, respectively. the study's findings also show that there is a reduction in poverty incidence and severity among farmers growing improved rice varieties compared to farmers growing indigenous varieties in the study area. this is due to the improved varieties' high-yielding characteristics, which result in higher productivity, which means more food for households and a larger marketable surplus to earn income, compared to farmers who grow indigenous varieties, which yield less. in the long run, as more farmers adopt improved high-yielding rice varieties, food insecurity will be reduced. 6. recommendations based on the findings of the study, the following recommendations were made: • there is a need for government and private agencies to encourage our youths to embrace improved varieties of rice because they are still young and able to take risks and learn new technologies. • youthful and energetic rice farmers must be encouraged to take up rice production as a business and a means of livelihood rather than a mere subsistence activity because farmers are more likely to adopt and continue using improved varieties as they gain experience. • the government, through trained extension services and the private sector, should emphasise the promotion of improved rice varieties among small-holder rice farmers to reduce the incidence of poverty. • the prevalence of deprivation across all indicators showed that most of the respondents were deprived of basic needs. therefore, efforts at reducing household poverty should be directed towards the reduction of farmers’ deprivation of basic needs by facilitating access to health facilities, cooking fuel, good housing, transport infrastructure, clean water, and rural electrification, rather than focusing on income poverty alleviation, which still leaves most rural farmers deprived of basic needs. funding: this research is supported by ekiti state scholarship board, ekiti state, nigeria (grant number: ekssb/schl/2018/2019/01). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adekambi, s. a., diagne, a., simtowe, f. p., & biaou, g. 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(2014). impact of training the trainers’ programme on rice farmers’ income and welfare in north central. nigeria journal of advanced agricultural technologies, 1(2), 157-160. https://doi.org/10.12720/joaat.1.2.157-160 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsci.2017.10.003 https://doi.org/10.4314/jafs.v19i2.5 https://doi.org/10.6007/ijarbss/v11-i14/8532 https://doi.org/10.2174/1874331501913010051 https://doi.org/10.12720/joaat.1.2.157-160 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 210 automatic monitoring system for hydroponic farming: iot-based design and development huu cuong nguyena bich thuy vo thib quang hieu ngoc a,b,ccan tho university, vietnam.  nhcuong@ctu.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 10 may 2022 revised: 19 september 2022 accepted: 3 october 2022 published: 14 october 2022 keywords environmental parameters hydroponic farming internet of things monitoring system nutrient solution wireless communication. traditional agriculture is currently facing many difficulties and obstacles. one reason is that climate change has led to a harsher environment and more pests and diseases. also, the expansion of industrial zones has significantly reduced the arable land area. to overcome these difficulties, farmers need to change their farming methods and apply scientific and technological advances to their practice. in this paper, we report on the design and development of an automatic monitoring system for hydroponic farming based on the internet of things technique. this system allows sensor data to be collected in real time. an iot gateway and virtual server were developed to transmit this gathered data to the cloud and store it. via the web interface, the user can observe all the sensor data of the environment and hydroponic solution, as well as control the farming equipment. the system has been tested and evaluated during lettuce growth in an nft hydroponic system. the experimental results show that the proposed system operates stably and achieves high reliability. the collected sensor data stored on the server can be used to analyze and evaluate the impact of environmental parameters on plant growth during cultivation. contribution/originality: this study reports on the design and implementation of a system to monitor culture parameters in hydroponic farming. using this system, farmers can monitor environmental and nutritional parameters throughout the entire farming process. the collected data allows agricultural experts to analyze and evaluate the effects of farming parameters on the development of produce. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4630 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: huu cuong nguyen --bich thuy vo thi --quang hieu ngo (2022). automatic monitoring system for hydroponic farming: iot-based design and development. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3), 210-219. 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4630 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction agriculture plays an important role in the world’s food security. traditional farming is facing the problems of climate change, crop failure, and pests. many researchers have studied various ways to improve yield (datta & behera, 2022; shi, lou, zhang, & xu, 2021), including the use of different cultivars, farming methods, crop changes, etc. nowadays, in modern agriculture, growing in greenhouses has become more common (forkuor, amponsah, otengdarko, & osei, 2022; notte et al., 2020; tomaselli, russo, riguccio, quattrone, & d’emilio, 2020). the growing environment directly affects production and output, so it is necessary to implement a stable and reliable monitoring system to closely monitor the growing environment. modern agricultural systems need an internet of things (iot) asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 3 (2022): 210-219. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8228-8818 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3357-3396 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7537-9049 mailto:nhcuong@ctu.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 210-219 211 platform to store and process data and allow users to remotely monitor their crops. most iot system architectures are divided into three layers: a perception layer, a transport layer, and an application layer. however, this division has some limitations; it cannot distinguish between differences in technology in applications, or between differences in specific user characteristics. to overcome these drawbacks, some iot system architectures are divided into four layers: an application layer, a service support and application support layer, a network layer, and a device layer (verdouw, sundmaeker, tekinerdogan, conzon, & montanaro, 2019). in recent years, environment monitoring systems that use new communication and information technologies have become available in the agriculture sector. data transmission is an important part of an iot platform. wireless data transmission technologies, such as zigbee, bluetooth, lora, wifi, gprs, 4g, and 5g, have created the possibility of building distributed sensor networks. this allows the monitoring of environmental parameters on a large scale in real time. muangprathub et al. (2019) designed and developed a wireless sensor network between node sensors in a field of crops to optimally water the crops and gather data via smartphone and web applications. benyezza, bouhedda, and rebouh (2021) developed a zoning irrigation system based on iot to optimize plant growing conditions and reduce water and energy consumption. the monitoring system was installed in different zones of a greenhouse based on a wireless sensor network (wsn). dasgupta, saha, venkatasubbu, and ramasubramanian (2020) fed a wsn model, combined with ai technology, into a crop prediction and weed detector system based on a list of factors, including temperature, annual precipitation, total available land size, past crop growth history, and other resources, to quickly and effectively recommend suitable crops to farmers. codeluppi, cilfone, davoli, and ferrari (2020) employed a longrange wide-area network (lorawan) technique to develop a smart farming modular iot architecture that aimed to improve the management of generic farms in a highly customizable way. wang et al. (2021) designed and implemented a lorawan to provide remote data sensing functions for a planned smart agriculture recycling rapid processing factory. hydroponics is a method of growing plants. instead of using soil, hydroponics depends on a water-based nutrientrich solution. hydroponics is clean and easy compared to traditional farming. hydroponics is the best solution to help plants grow well in regions with harsh climates, such as arid deserts and urban areas. nutrient parameters, climate, and growing solutions play key roles in hydroponics (niu & masabni, 2021). over the years, many hydroponic farming systems have begun to use sensors and actuators to control and measure environmental and plant growth parameters. this allows farmers to create a suitable environment for large-scale production and high-quality farming. bakhtar, chhabria, chougle, vidhrani, and hande (2018) built an iot-based hydroponic farm that monitors and controls water levels and ph values for spinach. the user receives an alert from the system if the ph level or water level does not match a required value stored in the system’s database. changmai, gertphol, and chulak (2018) developed a smart hydroponic farm using iot technology. this farm can monitor the growing environment, including the nutrient solution, air temperature, and humidity. rajkumar, dharmaraj, and scholar (2018) implemented an iot-based system that employed a zigbee protocol for communication between sensors. they replaced fluorescent lights with leds to reduce electricity consumption in large farming spaces. komal and bhardwaj (2014) implemented an iot-based automated farming system that uses lamps instead of normal light. the system includes a seed selection robot, a data analysis system, and a direct ventilation control system. mishra and jain (2015) implemented a plant box, which is a very small box that uses led lights and provides water and necessary nutrients to the plant tank. lakshmikantha et al. (2021) introduced a smartphone application-based control system. deokar, iyer, badgujar, yadav, and venkat (2021) and rahman, sultan, dash, and khan (2018) addressed the limitation of smartphones, as they are not always available, by introducing web-based applications instead. iot techniques for monitoring various components, such as nutrient solutions, humidity, electrical conductivity, and ph, have been very successful. charumathi, kaviya, kumariyarasi, manisha, and dhivya (2017) implemented an arduino-based system with an iot to analyze and maintain the data gathered from various sensors and actuators. the author implemented the same on the android platform, where json is helpful for combining information gathered from various sensors and devices. the use of a microcontroller with an mq telemetry transport (mqtt) protocol was also implemented to give connectivity to the iot gateway. sudharsan, vargunan, raj, selvanayagan, and ponmurugan (2019) proposed the implementation of a wireless sensor network. this study focuses on building a system to monitor the parameters of the environment and nutrient solution of a hydroponic farming system. this system performs automatic monitoring of parameters such as temperature, air humidity, illumination, water temperature, ph, and tds of the hydroponic solution and is expandable to include other parameters as needed. the monitoring system is based on iot technology and uses sensors with high reliability and stability. the remainder of this article is structured as follows. the next section describes the materials and methods and presents the architecture and operating principle of the monitoring system, along with the hardware design and webserver program. in the following section, the experimental results are described and discussed. finally, conclusions are drawn. 2. materials and methods the proposed system is built on an iot platform with a 3-layer architecture, including a perception layer, a communication layer, and an application layer. the main components of the proposed system are illustrated in figure 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 210-219 212 figure 1. the architecture of the proposed system. the proposed system operates according to the following process: sensors sense information about the environment and the hydroponic nutrient solution. this information is converted into digital data and processed in the signal pre-processing unit. the iot gateway has the function of forwarding these data to the cloud platform (internet). a webserver is installed on a virtual server machine that provides the user interface and stores data in the database. the data stored in the database can be retrieved for later uses such as analysis, forecasting, crop quality control, etc. aside from the ability to monitor the farming parameters, the user can control the operation of pumps and fans by interacting with the web interface via a mobile device to change these parameters. the control signals are returned to the control units via the iot gateway. after receiving the control signal, the controller will activate the corresponding actuators to on/off. the control and signal pre-processing units are designed to include a microcontroller (arduino uno r3 kit) that collects the sensor probe’s signal, normalizes the signal, and then transmits this normalized data to the iot gateway via a zigbee module (xbee shield). they also receive commands from the iot gateway and control actuators (pumps, fans, etc.). the diagram of the sensor cluster is shown in figure 2. figure 2. control and signal pre-processing unit circuit diagram. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 210-219 213 the iot gateway is implemented using the nodemcu esp8266. an arduino mega 2560 kit is used to receive the data from the signal processing unit via the zigbee module and displays these collected parameters on an lcd screen. simultaneously, the received data is uploaded to the internet via the nodemcu esp8266’s wifi communication protocol. the schematic of the iot gateway is illustrated in figure 3. figure 3. iot gateway box circuit diagram. a personal computer is used to build the virtual server machine based on node-red and built-in mqtt. mqtt is an oasis standard messaging protocol for the iot. it is a lightweight open messaging protocol that provides resource-constrained network clients with a simple way to distribute telemetry information in low-bandwidth environments. the protocol, which employs a publish/subscribe communication pattern, is used for machine-tomachine (m2m) communication. node-red is a programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, apis (application programming interfaces), and online servers. it provides a browser-based editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using the wide range of nodes in the palette that can be deployed to its runtime in a single click. the webserver is implemented with node-red and installed on a virtual server. the node-red dashboard is used to program a web page as an interface for the user and create a web application to process the information that is received from the sensors through the iot gateway and store that information in a database. the website’s interface is developed using the node-red dashboard as shown in figure 4. the user can observe the parameters of the environment and the hydroponic nutrient solution through the displays and graphs on the interface. in addition, the web interface includes a switch to turn the water pump on/off. the data, which is collected in real-time, is stored in a csv (comma separated values) file. the flow of the webserver is shown in figure 5. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 210-219 214 figure 4. the interface of the monitoring system website. figure 5. the webserver’s node-red flow. 3. results and discussion to verify the stability of the proposed monitoring system, it was set up and tested on a hydroponic rig, which was built according to the nutrient film technique (nft) (kori, veena, basarkod, & harsha, 2021). nft is a larger-scale technique that uses the slope of the channels to allow excess nutrient solution to flow back into a reservoir. the hydroponic rig consists of 8 troughs placed on a suitable slope so that the nutrient solution flows from the top to the bottom points of the rig in the direction of the arrows, as shown in figure 6. a controllable water pump is placed inside the tank to help return the nutrient solution to the hydroponic rig. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 210-219 215 figure 6. experimental hydroponic rig. in this study, we designed and built an iot-based hydroponic system. this system can automatically monitor various parameters such as the humidity and temperature of the air, the light intensity of the environment, and the temperature, ph, and electrical conductivity of the nutrient solution. to achieve this, an air temperature and humidity sensor, a light intensity sensor, a water temperature sensor, a ph sensor, and a tds sensor are used to collect the environmental and nutrient solution parameters of the hydroponic system as follows: • the air temperature and humidity sensor ah001 is employed to detect the temperature and air humidity of the ambient air and convert the measurements into a standardized 4–20 ma analog signal. the sensor detects the ambient conditions in enclosed spaces – the machinery area and protected outdoor area – even when subjected to vibration. it offers a range of potential uses. the humidity and temperature measurements range from 0% to 100% rh and from -40oc to 60oc, respectively. • dol 16 is a robust light sensor that measures light intensity and is specially made for the harsh environment of livestock houses. however, it can also be used in various industrial applications. the dol 16 light sensor is available in two variants: one with a fixed cable, and one with an m12 connector/cable. the sensor has two 0-10 v analog outputs with very low output resistance and full protection against short circuit and cable failure. • the stainless steel temperature probe (a vernier’s product) is a rugged product that is used to measure the temperature of the nutrient solution. this general-purpose temperature sensor can be used in organic liquids, salt solutions, acids, and bases. it can be used just like a thermometer in experiments in the fields of chemistry, physics, biology, earth science, and environmental science. • the csim11, manufactured by wedgewood analytical, measures the full ph range of liquids. it can be submerged in water or inserted in tanks, pipelines, or open channels. the csim11 is intended for nonpressurized systems and was not designed for applications above 30 psi. the ph range is from 0 to 14. the output is ±59 mv/ph unit. • the hi7634-00 is a two-pole amperometric ec/tds probe for panel-mounted mini controllers that measure in the low range (μs/cm and ppm). this probe has a built-in temperature sensor for automatic temperature compensation and a ½ " male npt threaded connection for insertion mounting. the hi7634-00 probe provides a rapid response and high accuracy ec or tds measurement. the bl983319 mini controller can support a measurement range from 0 to 1999 ppm. the ah001 and dl16 sensors were placed outside to collect data on the temperature and humidity of the air and the intensity of sunlight, while the others were placed in the reservoir to determine the temperature, ph, and ec/tds of the nutrient solution. lettuce plants were placed in the holes in the troughs so that their roots were in the nutrient solution. experiments were implemented during the lettuce plants’ growing period from day 20 to day 40, as shown in figure 7. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 210-219 216 figure 7. 20-day-old (left) and 40-day-old (right) lettuce plants. data on the status of the environment and the nutrients in the solution were collected in real time by the proposed monitoring system at periodic intervals of 6 minutes. the collected data can be observed by the user locally via the lcd screen on the iot gateway box or remotely on a mobile device through the web browser interface (see figure 8). the user can also control the water pump on/off switch at will by pressing the buttons on the iot gateway box or sliding the switch in the web interface. correction work was executed for air temperature and humidity, illumination, water temperature, etc. figure 9 demonstrates the accuracy of the monitoring system. figure 8. air temperature and humidity values are displayed on the lcd screen (left) and the website (right). figure 9. comparison of system data with a portable measurement device. figure 10 presents the collected data on water temperature. this data was collected every 6 minutes, continuously for 20 days. the graph shows that the data did not fluctuate abnormally. throughout the production process, the system maintained continuity and stability. specifically, the sensors and communication devices did not experience any problems or lose connectivity. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 210-219 217 figure 10. the data on nutrient solution temperature over 20 days. all data collected from the sensors were stored in the system memory. in this way, it becomes a database that can later be used to analyze and evaluate the influence of the environment and the farming method on the growth of the plants. the graphs showing the data of the environmental and nutrient solution parameters collected over 20 days are shown in figure 11. figure 11. the collected data on the environment and nutrient solution over 20 days. based on the database that was obtained during the operation of the system, we conducted a correlation analysis between the air temperature and the hydroponic solution temperature (see figure 12). it can be seen that the water temperature was delayed compared to the air temperature. this allows us to develop a strategy to stabilize the temperature of the nutrient solution by using the air temperature to predict changes in water temperature. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 210-219 218 figure 12. comparison between air temperature and nutrient solution temperature. 4. conclusion this paper has presented a monitoring system for environmental and nutrient solution parameters in hydroponic farming. the system was built on an iot platform that included three main layers: the perception layer, the communication layer, and the application layer. data were collected from sensors and transmitted to an iot gateway via zigbee communication. from here, the data was displayed for users to observe on-site and transmitted to a webserver (cloud platform) for storage and to allow the user to observe the data remotely through an internetconnected device. the experimental results show that the monitoring system operated stably and accurately during the cultivation period. the system will be helpful for farmers to monitor environmental and nutritional parameters in real-time, and also allows them to use the collected data to analyze and evaluate the impact of the environment and cultivation methods on the growth of plants so that appropriate adjustments can be made in subsequent seasons. for our further research, we now have a basis for perfecting a fully automatic system to monitor and control the parameters of the hydroponic farming environment by combining the existing system with modern control algorithms such as fuzzy, neural networks, etc. funding: this research is supported by vietnamese ministry of education and training (grant number: b2020-tct-04). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references bakhtar, n., chhabria, v., chougle, i., vidhrani, h., & hande, r. 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(2021). design and implementation of lora-based wireless sensor network with embedded system for smart agricultural recycling rapid processing factory. ieice transactions on information and systems, 104(5), 563-574.available at: https://doi.org/10.1587/transinf.2020nti0001. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 248 effects of agricultural grade nutrient modulation on the biomass production and carbon fixation rate of isochrysis sp. microalgae nurfilza zaheera muhammad nor rashida khairul adzfa radzunb aimi nadia saharuddinc muhamad helmi husaini rusmidid asmida ismaile wan razarinah wan abdul razakf faezah pardig khudzir ismailh ali h. jawadi liyana yahyaj a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,ischool of biology/ department of chemistry, faculty of applied sciences, universiti teknologi mara, shah alam, 40450, selangor, malaysia. jtnb research sdn. bhd. 259519 – a, no 1 lorong ayer itam, kawasan institusi penyelidikan, kajang, 43000, selangor, malaysia.  khairuladzfa@uitm.edu.my (corresponding authors) article history abstract received: 12 may 2023 revised: 27 july 2023 accepted: 4 october 2023 published: 21 november 2023 keywords agricultural grade nutrient biofuel biomass co2 fixation flue gas medium optimization microalgae nutrient screening. this study looked at what happens when the nutrients in agricultural grade (ag) medium are changed and how that changes the biomass production and co2 fixation ability of isochrysis sp. it aims to address the challenges in establishing biofuel stocks due to the microalgae issue. a medium optimization system (amos) was first used to determine the optimum level of nitrogen, phosphorus, and micronutrients in ag medium using factorial and box behnken experimental design, which resulted in improvements to n, k, ca, mg, fe, and z with 15 mm, 10 mm, 0.5 mm, 0.8 mm, 0.3 mm, and 0.15 mm, respectively. subsequently, the improved medium was tested in a 1l culture volume, resulting in a 2.37 gl-1 biomass extracted from cultivation in the improved ag medium compared to cultivation in the traditional f/2 medium (1.63 gl-1). cultures with higher ca and fe tested in an interim study yielded 9% and 7% enhanced biomass production compared to ag medium. the new optimized medium, which is known as tnbr-optimized medium (om), was tested at the live coal-fired power plant in a 250 l air-lift bubbling columntype photobioreactor supplied with simulated and actual flue gas. the tnbroptimized medium has demonstrated better algae growth, especially on actual flue gas, which has increased the concentration of co2. the improved co2 fixation rate was 0.72 gco2.l-1 day-1, respectively, against those obtained from the previous report – 0.52 gco2 l-1 day-1. an improved medium has been formulated to cultivate isochrysis sp., and the current work can be further utilized for larger-scale cultivations. contribution/originality: a novel tnbr-optimized medium was formulated by modulating the nutrients of agricultural-grade (ag) medium through a medium optimization system (amos). tnbr-optimized medium has allowed better growth of isochrysis sp. microalgae, enabling larger-scale cultivations and realizing the dream of making microalgae a feedstock for biofuel or biomass. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 4 (2023): 248-256. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4312-8918 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0270-6942 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9496-5814 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9601-4033 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1635-3487 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9494-6678 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4620-4370 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7456-7646 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4827-9093 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5434-2979 mailto:khairuladzfa@uitm.edu.my http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 248-256 249 doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i4.4913 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: rashid, n. z. m. n., radzun, k. a., saharuddin, a. n., rusmidi, m. h. h., ismail, a., razak, w. r. w. a., pardi, f., ismail, k., jawad, a. h., & yahya, l. (2023). effects of agricultural grade nutrient modulation on the biomass production and carbon fixation rate of isochrysis sp. microalgae. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4), 248–256. 10.55493/5005.v13i4.4913 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. background the world is currently facing the challenge of increasing global fuel production to meet the demand of the evergrowing population. this sparks the idea of transitioning to renewable energy, for extensive exploitation of fossil fuels leads to their depletion and possible extinction due to their exhaustive and non-renewable characteristics (khan, shin, & kim, 2018). the oil spike price during the oil crisis in the 1970s has shifted the focus of biofuel production towards utilizing aquatic species such as microalgae as a source of energy, as they exhibit high economic potential through the production of biomass, biofuel and high-value products (hvp). examples of strains of microalgae studied for biofuel production include scenedesmus sp., chlorella sp., dunaliella sp., nannochloropsis sp., botrycoccus sp., spirulina, phaedactylum tricornutum, isochrysis galbana, monodus subterraneus, tetraselmis, c. reinhardtii, and neochloris sp. (vadivel et al., 2020). additionally, the effect of climate change caused by releasing green house gases (ghg) from mostly anthropogenic sources can be reduced by employing microalgae as a carbon mitigation tool. compared to terrestrial plants, microalgae convert light and co2 into biomass more efficiently (razzak, ali, hossain, & delasa, 2017). nonetheless, the dream of using microalgae as a feedstock for biofuel or biomass is yet to be achieved, for there is a need to resolve the issue of the expensive operating costs of algae farms, which mainly involve cultivation and downprocessing equipment. improving microalgae’s photosynthetic efficiency is among the strategies to reduce algal biomass’s unitary cost (vecchi, barera, bassi, & dall’osto, 2020). concurrently, photosynthetic efficiency depends on microalgae cultivation at an optimum level of growth conditions and nutrients; hence , optimization of these parameters is necessary. algae has an elemental composition of c106h263o110n16p (zhu et al., 2019). the four most prevalent elements in microalgal biomass are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (heinberg & fridley, 2010). additionally, elements such as phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, calcium, sodium, magnesium, and chlorine are required in smaller amounts. on the other hand, micronutrients play an essential role in cellular metabolism and are also needed in trace amounts. these include iron, manganese, copper, cobalt, zinc, molybdate, boron, silicon, selenium, and vanadium (reynolds, 2006). in developing the most effective microalgae system, precise nutrient requirements for optimal growth are necessary in the sense that any nutrients present in limited or excess will be eliminated. designing an optimized culture medium is critical for microalgal biomass production, as the precise composition can significantly affect biomass yield and quality. the availability of a defined optimal medium will enhance the carbon fixation ability and facilitate the reproducible production of microalgal biomass and premium products such as biofuels and high-value products (stephens, wagner, ross liam, & hankamer, 2012). the medium compositions also determine the cost and complexity of the downstream purification of products. other critical factors affecting microalgal biomass productivity include light intensity, cycling time, aeration speed, ph, temperature, dissolved oxygen and co 2, and tolerance to toxic substances that accumulate in the culture medium. of these, light and carbon supply (co2 for photoautotrophic growth and organic carbon sources for photoheterotrophic growth) are usually the most critical. in this research, medium optimization of isochryis sp. was carried out by employing a simple full–factorial and box–behnken experimental design to improve nutrient composition in the medium via an automated medium optimization system (amos) as developed by radzun et al. (2015). the design is equipped with two screening systems: a) screen 1 (application of simple full–factorial to determine different types of nitrogen and phosphate sources); and b) screen 2 (application of box–behnken design to determine the main effects of macroand microelements). consequently, the newly formulated medium obtained through this system was subjected to a reproducibility test in larger-scale cultivation, and the carbon fixation efficiency of the microalgae grown in the newly improved medium was analyzed. 2. data and methods 2.1. organism and medium composition the microalga isochrysis sp. obtained from the tenaga national berhad research sdn. bhd. (tnbr), malaysia was pre-adapted and maintained in tris acetate phosphate nacl medium (tap nacl) using research-grade nutrients (15 mm nh4cl, 0.35 mm cacl2.2h2o (univar, usa), 0.4 mm mgso4.7h2o (univar, usa), 0.82 mm na2hpo4 (sigma, usa), 0.45 mm kh2po4 (scharlau, spain), 184 um h3bo3 (analar, united kingdom), 25.8 um mncl2.h2o (univar, usa), 18 um fe2(so4)3.7h2o (univar, usa), 6.7 um cocl2.6h2o (government stores department, australia), 6.4 um cuso4.5h2o (chem-supply, australia), 0.89 um (nh4)6moo4.4h2o (univar, usa), 20 mm tris (amresco, canada) and 14 mm ch3cooh (lab scan, analytical science, poland) and 500 mm nacl (sigma, usa). the inoculum for optimization study was transferred to mrl (microalgae research lab) agricultural grade (ag) medium, which has similar nutrient compositions to the tap nacl medium. the culture was grown in 1 l conical flasks at constant 24hour illumination (120 µmolphotons.m-2s-1 white light) with an agitation speed of 150 to 160 rpm (using finepcr 2d400 shaker, finepcr co., ltd, korea) at a temperature of ~25 oc. cell density was measured and monitored daily asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 248-256 250 in 96 microwell plates (nunclon delta surface, nunc, denmark) and read using a microwell plate reader (infinite m200 pro series plate reader, tecan group ltd.) based on optical density at 560 nm (od560). 2.2. nutrient optimization via automated media optimization system (amos) the growth performance of isochrysis sp. was optimized via screen 1 and screen 2 of amos. screen 1 is based on incomplete factorial-designed experiments to optimize nitrogen and phosphate concentrations. nitrogen and phosphate concentrations that yielded the highest growth and biomass were used as constants for screen 2. various nitrogen and phosphate sources tested in this study could not be revealed due to agreements with tnbr sdn. bhd. box–behnken experimental design was employed in screen 2 with varied concentrations of ca, mg, cu, fe, zn, mn, mo, se, v, and si. each element was set at three levels (-1, 0, +1) for low, medium, and high. the experiment was conducted in 96-well plates cultivated in the amos for 72 hours. 2.3. growth rate determination screens 1 and 2 aimed to define the growth conditions that yield biomass production’s highest growth rate (µ, h1) (measured in optical density). to achieve this, the highest growth rate of each condition in each well is calculated using the formula below. the rate was then determined from the slope of the log plot: 𝑢 = ln⁡(𝑂𝐷560 (2)−𝑂𝐷560 (1)) 𝑡(2)−𝑡(1) (1) where; µ= growth rates, od560(2) = od560 at time 2, od560(1) = od560 at time 1, t(2) = time 2 (hour), and t(1)= time 1 (hour). 2.4. biomass a new, improved media formulated based on screens 1 and 2 was tested in a 1l culture volume for reproducibility assessment. the culture was grown for 15 days. algal biomass obtained after 15 days was centrifuged and heat-dried (in a hot-air oven at 65℃) for 1 week until the dry weight reached constant. the biochemical content of isochrysis sp. was also conducted at unipeq, universiti kebangsaan malaysia (ukm). 2.5. statistical analysis the main effect of individual elements tested in screen 2 was analyzed using the main plot effect from response surface analysis. the analysis was conducted on each media formulation, involving three levels of concentration coded as -1, 0, and 1 for every element. 2.6. growth rate and carbon fixation rate calculation the biomass weight method assessed the microalgae carbon fixation activity, in which the co 2 fixation rate is assumed and estimated to be in the form of biomass dry weight. the calculation sequence is as follows: 1) calculating growth rate based on biomass dry weight : 𝑔 = w(2)−𝑊(1) 𝑡(2)−𝑡(1) (2) where, w = dry weight (g.l-1) of biomass at point 1 and 2 and t = times (day) 2) carbon dioxide absorption rate given by ratio of co2: algae biomass: 1.882𝑔 = 1⁡×𝑔×𝑀𝑊𝑐 𝑀𝑊𝑏 (3) where, w = dry weight (g.l-1) of biomass at point 1 and 2 and t = times (day) 3. results and discussions 3.1. optimization of mrl agricultural–grade medium to enhance the growth of isochrysis sp. using amos microalgae may achieve maximum growth rates or anything approaching them with appropriate optimization of the macroelement nutrients using generally accepted, adequate micronutrients. agri-grade (ag) medium mrl is an economical growth medium proposed in this study to replace the standard cultivation medium (f/2) that tnbr sdn. bhd. previously used to cultivate isochrysis sp. based on more expensive research-grade nutrients. screen 1 was designed as a simple full factorial in this research to test the effects of varying nitrogen and phosphate types and concentrations on the biomass yield and carbon dioxide fixation rate. the experimental design used here was significantly more extensive and involved four different types of nitrogen and one phosphate source. the first nutrient optimization process was conducted using screen 1 on amos based on an incomplete factorial experimental design, where various concentrations of nitrogen and phosphate were tested to determine their optimal concentrations as observed by the growth performance of isochrysis sp. microalgae. nitrogen (n) and phosphate (p) are critical macroelements that must be supplied adequately to support algal growth. in this study, the optimized concentration of n and p were determined first so that these elements would be present in sufficient amounts for subsequent optimization of the rest of the micronutrients. figure 1 shows the surface chart representing the data for each medium formulation with varying concentrations of n and p sources in the screen 1 experiment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 248-256 251 figure 1. surface chart representing the data for each medium formulation with varying concentration of n and p sources in screen 1 experiment. the result presented in figure 1 registered the highest end-point od560 (1.5367) when the culture was supplied with 15 mm nh4no and 10 mm kh2po4 as opposed to the control ag f/2 (red line) medium, which registered an end-point od560 of 1.3830. meanwhile, the growth rates for cultivation in the mrl ag medium and the control were calculated to be 0.042 h-1 and 0.04 h-1, respectively. it is also important to note that the microalgae were pre–grown in research grade tap – nacl medium, by which the nitrogen supplied was nh4cl. the result indicates that the algae was able to adapt to the new n source and even yielded a higher end point od560 of approximately 10% higher than the ag f/2 control medium. generally, nh4 is the preferred n source for most algae as it can be directly incorporated into amino acids, while other n sources, such as nitrite and nitrate, must first be reduced to ammonium before they can be utilized. while nh4 is found to be a suitable n source for isochryis sp. growth, nh4 may be toxic at a certain level. screen 2 was subsequently conducted based on screen 1 to determine the optimal concentration of other macro and microelements. screen 2 highlighted the application of box–behnken experimental design to determine the most or nearly optimal concentration, yielding a higher growth productivity of isochrysis sp. microalgae. each factor or independent variable is placed at one of three equally spaced values to achieve this. at least 3 levels are needed to fit a quadratic model that contains squared terms and products of two factors. the three levels are coded as -1, 0, and 1, representing the variable or treatment at low, centre/middle (average), and high values, respectively. in this study, screen 2 was devised to optimize combinations of 10 nutrients, including calcium, magnesium, boron, iron, copper, manganese, zinc, selenium, vanadium, and silicon concentrations at 3 different concentrations (-1, 0, and 1 corresponding to low, middle, and high concentration, respectively), which were provided across a 4-fold concentration range – i.e., 0.5x, 1x and 2x the average literature value) at the best nitrogen and phosphate levels identified in screen 1. the box-behnken design was chosen for the development of screen 2 because the increased number of variables (10 nutrients with 3 concentration levels) means that the full-factorial design becomes infeasible (it would require 310 experiments as generated by the minitab 15 software (minitab inc, usa). in screen 2, the cultures were supplied with a constant amount of nh4no3 (15 mm) and kh2po4 (10 mm), while other elements were varied. figure 2 illustrates the growth of isochrysis sp. in the screen 2 media formulation. in the screen 2 system, the variables are ca, mg, cu fe, zn, mn, mo, se, v, and si concentration, supplied at 3 levels, i.e., +1 (high level), 0 (medium level), and -1 (low level). the main effect of each element from the response surface analysis portrayed in figure 2 showed a significant increment (double in amount) in ca, mg, fe, and zn concentration compared to cultivation in the initial ag f/2 medium, with a reported growth rate of 0.06 h-1 and 0.04 h-1 respectively. 0.5 mm cacl.2h2o, 0.8 mm mgso4.7h2o, 0.3 mm fe2(so4)3.7h2o, and 0.15 mm znso4.7h2o were observed to be the optimum concentrations for better growth of isochrysis sp. the concentration of other microelements essential for isochrysis sp. growth did not show significant increments, suggesting that the amount subject to growth is sufficient for optimum growth. interestingly, the od reading dropped at a higher silicon concentration, suggesting that si impedes growth. through screen 2, improvements were made to ca, mg, fe, and zn, as these elements were shown to be in limitation. ca and fe are of interest, as previous studies conducted using an automated media optimization system showed that high calcium and iron concentrations have significantly improved the growth performance of various microalgae species (radzun et al., 2015). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 248-256 252 figure 2. growth of isochrysis sp. in the screen 2 media formulation. in screen 2 system, the variables are ca, mg, cu fe, zn, mn, mo, se, v and si concentration, supplied at 3 levels i.e., +1 (high level), 0 (medium level) and -1 (low level). in another experiment set, culture supplied with high ca yielded 4.32 g/l biomass, a 9% increment in biomass production. calcium has been reported to play a role in the flexibility of cell walls in plants, and the same is assumed for microalgae. in general, calcium performs cross–linking with negatively charged pectin polymers of the cell wall. excess calcium in the system is thought to limit cell expansion, increase cell rigidity, and inhibit growth. low calcium concentrations improves cell wall flexibility, allowing room for cell expansion and division (hanifzadeh, garcia, & viamajala, 2018). while this study suggests a higher ca concentration for enhanced productivity, it is always good to define the most optimal concentration to avoid growth inhibition due to excessive or deficiency of such. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 248-256 253 meanwhile, iron was supplied at a higher concentration in this experiment and yielded an increment of 7% from the culture in the mrl ag medium, as postulated in figure 3. figure 3 highlights the growth performance analysis of isochrysis sp. in the interim media. the medium formulation of flask a represents a medium containing high ca, while flask b represents a medium with high fe. figure 3. growth performance analysis of isochrysis sp. in interim media. medium formulation of flask a represents medium containing high amount of ca while flask b represents medium with high fe. being a cofactor for about 140 enzymes, iron is an essential nutrient for the general growth of all living organisms. in photosynthetic organisms, iron participates in the biosynthesis of chlorophyll and thylakoids and the development of chloroplasts. iron depletion in the system leads to simultaneous chlorophyll loss and chlorophyll structu re degradation (ermis, guven-gulhan, cakir, & altinbas, 2020). iron is needed for catalytic activities, the electron transport system, taking in nitrate and nitrogen, and making hydrogen through photosynthesis at the cellular level (sabzi, shamsaie mehrgan, rajabi islami, & hosseini shekarabi, 2021). additionally, iron protects reactive oxygen species (ros) in higher plants, algae, and prokaryotes by binding to superoxide dismutase (sods) (abdoli, ghassemigolezani, & alizadeh-salteh, 2020). though it is essential to note that the bioavailability of iron in phytoplankton and algal environments is often debatable, its solubility, especially in a mildly alkaline condition, is extremely low (yarimizu, cruz-lopez, & carrano, 2018). the findings of this study suggest that a higher concentration of fe is needed to enhance the growth of isochyrsis sp. this may explain the solubility problem of iron when it is supplied at a lower concentration; hence, more iron is required. these findings suggest that isochrysis sp. used in this study can tolerate high ca and fe, yielding more biomass. nonetheless, it is anticipated to know the combined effect of both high ca and fe on the algae’s growth. 3.2. biomass quantification a novel cultivation medium, namely tnbr – om medium, was formulated according to screen 1 and screen 2 data. the medium was tested for reproducibility analysis and biomass production in a 1 litre culture volume, and the growth was recorded after 15 days. cultivation of isochrysis sp. was generated as in table 1 and compared with the ag f/2 medium. table 1. dried biomass obtained from tnbr – om and ag f/2 media and respective biochemical composition. dried biomass samples. dried biomass samples from cultivation in tnbr – om and ag f/2 media were also analyzed for carbohydrate, protein and lipid at ukm unip. medium tnbr om ag f/2 dried biomass (g/l) 2.37 1.63 percent of carbohydrate (%) 13.7 13.2 percent of protein (%) 11.5 3.1 percent of fat (%) 0.2 0.0 isochrysis sp. in tnbr – om exhibited a 45% biomass increment compared to the cultivation in ag f/2. meanwhile, biochemical analysis of the dried biomass obtained from cultivation in the new medium and ag f/2 medium yielded high carbohydrate and protein contents of 23% and 13.7%, respectively. isochrysis sp. is one of the promising candidates for biofuel production because it can store excess carbon as a lipid (anto, karpagam, renukadevi, jawaharraj, & varalakshmi, 2019). contrastingly, isochrysis sp., in this study, did not yield as much lipid as anticipated. nonetheless, high-dry biomass obtained via cultivation in the new, improved medium can be used as feedstock for biogas and animal feed production. it is also important to note that the tnbr om produced higher biomass with a significant amount of protein composition compared to the ag f/2 medium. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 248-256 254 3.3. effects of microalgae growth and co2 fixation rate supplemented with flue gas the availability of nutrients in the culture affects how much carbon microalgae consume and fix (huang, luo, xu, & wang, 2019). additionally, an optimal amount of co2–enriched air must be supplied to the system in order to achieve maximum growth potential (thomas, mechery, & paulose, 2016). though co2 obtained from the environment would not be sufficient to support maximum yield due to the low concentration of co2 in the air (360 ppm). the main reason is that o2 and co2 compete for the active site of rubisco in calvin–benson cycle (kang et al., 2018). in most cases, the probability of o2 binding to rubisco is higher, hindering carbon fixation from occurring (way, dusenge, & duarte, 2019); hence, increasing the concentration of co2 can increase the rate of co2 fixation. flue gas was chosen as a source of co2 in this study due to a higher co2 concentration of up to 20% (cuellar-bermudez, garcia-perez, rittmann, & parra-saldivar, 2014), while waste flue gases from combustion processes typically contain more than 15% co 2, which, in principle, will provide sufficiently high co2 concentrations for macroscale production of microalgae. many flue gas mitigation strategies have been discussed using microalgae, but as the cost of preliminary separation of co 2 gas is high, direct utilization of power plant flue gas has been considered in microalgal biofuel production systems due to being economical (thomas et al., 2016). to find out how well isochyris sp. grown in the new tnbr medium took up carbon, the algae cultures were given either simulated flue gas (4% co2 + other gases) or real tnbr flue gas. figure 4 indicates the effect of simulated and actual flue gas on the growth of isochrysis sp. cultivated using ag f/2 and tnbr-optimized medium (om). figure 4. effect of simulated and actual flue gas on the growth of isochrysis sp. cultivated using ag f/2 and tnbr optimized medium (om). under simulated flue gas at tnbr’s algae park, tnbr – om registered a specific growth rate of 0.1703 compared to that of ag f/2 of 0.1418 – a 20% improvement. while carbon is among the essential nutrients in microalgal growth, a certain level of carbon dioxide may inhibit their growth. conversely, the growth performance was 90% better when the algae were exposed to flue gas at the power station in tnb janamanjung. most microalgae can fix a concentration of 1 -10% carbon dioxide. flue or exhaust gas typically exhibits a 10–30% carbon dioxide concentration, which is somewhat higher and may be toxic for most microalgae. interestingly, isochrysis sp. grown in the tnbr – om grew in actual flue gas, suggesting that this species may have a high tolerance to high co 2 concentrations. it was also observed that the maximum optical density (od) was achieved within 2 weeks compared to other cultures in dif ferent cultivation conditions, which took almost a month to complete the growth cycle. a review of the carbon fixation rate is presented in table 2. table 2. chemical use and cost of nutrients. medium old ag f/2 medium tnbr – ohm medium total media (chemicals) costs for the facility per year rm 6,6630 /usd 1527 rm2,324/ usd 78 total amount of co2 fixed per year 234 kg 324 kg cost of media to fix rm27(usd 6.14) / kg 3.1 cultivation of isochrysis sp. in tnbr – om medium recorded the highest carbon fixation rate of – 0.72 g/l.day-1. interestingly, the rate obtained from this study was higher than the previous work reported using the same species asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4) 2023: 248-256 255 with a carbon fixation rate of 0.32 g/l.day -1 (nagajyoti, lee, & sreekanth, 2010). this observation suggests two important consequences. firstly, more co2 can be fixed biologically. with better growth and co2 fixation rates using the new nutrient medium, the anticipated amount of co2 that can be fixed annually is 324 kg, compared to 234 kg with ag f/2 medium. these are based merely on the current culture volume pilot capacity existing at tnbj, i.e. , 6 x 250 litres = 1,500 litres. secondly, the new media offers reduced chemicals and fixed costs per kg of co2, which are close to four times cheaper. 4. conclusion in this study, we provide a new method of improving cultivation medium using a high-throughput screening-based automated microalgae nutrient screening system. a new, improved cultivation medium for isochrysis sp. was successfully formulated and tested in a tnbr power plant using a 250 l photobioreactor to determine the growth and carbon fixation rate of isochrysis sp. microalgae. to conclude, cultivation media and other environmental factors are imperative to achieve higher microalga growth and biomass production. furthermore, using an efficient and lowercost culture medium may reduce the economic cost of microalgae cultivation. determining optimal cultivation parameters (such as ph, agitation, and flue gas concentrations) and system (photobioreactor) are essential areas of future research to ensure the maximum productivity of microalgae. abbreviations ag: agricultural grade; amos: automated medium optimization system; ghg: greenhouse gases; hvp: highvalue products; mrl: microalgae research lab; od: optical density; om: optimized medium; ros: reactive oxygen species; sods: superoxide dismutase; tap nacl: tris acetate phosphate nacl medium and tnbr: tenaga national berhad research sdn. bhd. funding: this research is supported by tnb research sdn bhd malaysia through a consultation grant (grant number: tnbr/t01/2014, tnbr (jt) 34 2014). institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. 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(2019). effects of nitrogen source heterogeneity on nutrient removal and biodiesel production of mono-and mix-cultured microalgae. energy conversion and management, 201, 112144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2019.112144 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.02.038 https://doi.org/10.1080/17597269.2018.1489672 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-016-7158-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12649-018-00552-2 https://doi.org/10.3390/plants9010067 https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15283 https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2018.00180 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2019.112144 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 163 effects of chitin nanofiber application on plant growth and its differences by soil type tsuneyoshi endoa yuzuki inoueb shun katoc hironori kaminakad shinsuke ifukue a,b,c,dfaculty of agriculture, tottori university, tottori, japan. egraduate school of engineering, tottori university, tottori, japan.  endo@tottori-u.ac.jp (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 1 november 2022 revised: 15 may 2023 accepted: 2 june 2023 published: 19 june 2023 keywords andosols chitin nanofiber crab shell entisols plant growth promotion recycle seed pack growth pouch. large numbers of crab shells are disposed of as food waste in the food processing process. chitin nanofiber (cnf) refers to chitin extracted from crab shells in the form of ultrafine fibers that enable uniform dispersion in water. we explored the feasibility of using cnf materials as plant growth promoters. we investigated the effects of cnf application with fertilizer and its various application methods on the growth of the komatsuna plant cultivated in entisols and andosols with the application of cnf materials. the surface application of cnf materials had plant growth-promoting effects in both entisols and andosols. the topdressing treatment was more effective in promoting plant growth in entisols. the inorganic nitrogen content absorbed by plants in the topdressing treatment was lower than that in the basal application treatments because the cnf added during the latter half of the cultivation period was not fully decomposed before the completion of cultivation. the calcium content of plants in the basal application treatment of cnf/protein/calcium carbonate was higher than that in the topdressing treatments, indicating that the calcium encasing the cnf was absorbed by the plants. the cultivation of plants with the application of cnf materials promoted nitrogen utilization efficiency and plant growth. contribution/originality: the study demonstrates that the application of chitin nanofiber materials produced using crab shells promotes plant growth. the plant growth-promoting effect of chitin nanofiber materials depends on the soil type and the method of application to the soil. the study proposes an effective method of recycling crab shells for use in agriculture. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4820 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: endo, t., inoue, y., kato, s., kaminaka, h., & ifuku, s. (2023). effects of chitin nanofiber application on plant growth and its differences by soil type. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3), 163–172. 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4820 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction crabs are crustaceans with a single pair of pincers that live in all oceans of the world, in freshwater, and on land. sakaiminato, located on the western border of tottori prefecture, japan, is a popular fishing port for crabs, and in particular the primary source of chionoecetes opilio (red snow crab) in japan (motoh & yamamoto, 1998). a seafood processing company that peels the crabs is located in the nearby area of sakaiminato. since only 40% of a crab’s total weight is eaten, a large amount of crab shell is generated as food waste during processing. crab shells have long been asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 3 (2023): 163-172. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0400-3538 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-4427-0934 https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5525-7247 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5001-6006 mailto:endo@tottori-u.ac.jp http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 163-172 164 considered waste and disposed of in landfills, causing environmental pollution and wasting biomass resources. studies on the reuse of crab shells have considered ways to recycle such large quantities of crab shells (jeon & yeom, 2009; rizzi et al., 2019; rizzi et al., 2020). mageshwaei and thiripurasundari (2022) suggested that crab shell could be an effective organic fertilizer for improving soil quality, plant growth and mineral quality. it is necessary to further consider the reuse of crab shell waste from an agricultural standpoint against the increasing amounts being produced. notably, crab shell is an organic source, with the major components being chitin, protein, and calcium carbonate (caco3). the chitin, protein, and caco3 content of crab shells is approximately 30%, 15%, and 55% w/w, respectively (aklog et al., 2016). chitin is a long-chain polymer of n-acetylglucosamine, an amide derivative of glucose. therefore, this material cannot be dissolved in most solvents. however, it is possible to nanofabricate it into fibers the thickness of one ten-thousandth of a human hair by using a special technique to grind it (ifuku & saimoto, 2012). thus, chitin nanofiber (cnf) is a nanofiber material made from chitin, which can be taken from the shells of crustaceans. cnf refers to chitin extracted from the outer shell of crustaceans, such as crab shells, in the form of ultrafine fibers (10–20 nm). cnf displays uniform dispersion in water, which is not possible with conventional chitin powder, and facilitates blending with other materials and molding. thus, cnf is characterized by high dispersibility in water and a variety of potential applications. its high concentration and translucency, as well as its fine structure, allow it to be mixed with other base materials, wetted, and molded for a wide range of applications (ifuku & saimoto, 2012). cnf is produced by processing the chitin contained in crab shells and is used in medical products (azuma, ifuku, osaki, okamoto, & minami, 2014; ifuku & saimoto, 2012) and cosmetics (triunfo et al., 2021). aklog et al. (2016) prepared a cnf/protein/caco3 complex by ejecting the slurry under a high pressure of 200 mpa through a small nozzle with a diameter of 100 μm. they prepared the cnf/protein complex by using a domestic blender under wet conditions with 2 m hydrochloric acid for 2 days at room temperature, with occasional stirring to remove mineral salts (primarily caco3). the total nitrogen contents of cnf/protein/caco3, cnf/protein, and cnf are 0.16%, 0.16%, and 0.11%, respectively. its growth-promoting effect has been confirmed in plants grown under hydroponic cultivation conditions (egusa, parada, aklog, ifuku, & kaminaka, 2019). the growth-promoting effect in hydroponic cultivation was confirmed using the cnf/protein complex and the cnf/protein/caco3 complex as a liquid fertilizer. in particular, the cnf/protein/caco3 complex resulted in a growth-promoting effect compared with other materials (aklog et al., 2016). it has also been confirmed that the cnf/protein and cnf/protein/caco3 treatments could reduce the costs associated with hydroponic cultivation because of the omission of certain preparation procedures during material preparation (aklog et al., 2016). egusa et al. (2020) also investigated the behavior of cnf applied to plants under hydroponic conditions based on fertilizer nitrogen and genetic information. they observed that the nitrogen utilization efficiency of plants increased, and the lower the concentration of liquid fertilizer applied, the greater the observed growth-promoting effect. nevertheless, there is still limited information on the growth-promoting effects of cfn materials under soil cultivation conditions. we conducted a plant rooting test with the application of cfn materials to determine the application rates for a cultivation test. based on the plant rooting test, we applied each material to the soil to investigate the effect of cnf in soil on plants from the perspective of growth promotion. we also evaluated the effect of cnf in different soil types on plants to explore the effects of the application method in each. 2. materials and methods 2.1. preparation and characterization of the cnf materials our preparation of the cnf materials followed the procedure of aklog et al. (2016). 2.2. plant rooting test with the application of chitin nanofiber materials root growth in the early growth stage with the application of cnf was examined using a seed pack growth pouch. ten seeds of komatsuna (brassica rapa var. perviridis cv. saori) were sown in seed packs (177×163mm, daiki rika kogyo co., ltd., japan), and 15 ml of reverse osmosis (ro) water and 0.01%, 0.05% and 0.10% (chitin concentration) solutions of cnf, cnf/protein, and cnf/protein/caco3 were added, respectively. the seed packs were placed in a thermostatic chamber in a dark place at 25°c for 8 days. every two days, 5 ml of each solution was added to the pouches to maintain a constant solution volume during the experiment. the root length was measured every two days. 2.3. plant cultivation 2.3.1. soils sandy soil (entisols) and kuroboku soil (andosols) (soil survey staff, 2014) were collected from the tottori sand dune, japan, and koyama, tottori, japan, respectively. the physicochemical properties of the soil used in this study are shown in table 1. 2.3.2. effect of the combined application of cnf materials and fertilizer on plant growth plant cultivation experiments were conducted for 34 days from june 3, 2020, to july 6, 2020, using komatsuna (b. rapa var. perviridis cv. saori), a japanese mustard spinach. it was cultivated in a greenhouse, and the seedlings were raised in nursery boxes for 2 weeks. two of the raised komatsuna plants were transplanted into 1/10,000 wagner pots filled with 1700 g/pot of entisols and 900 g/pot of andosols. the cnf, cnf/protein, and cnf/protein/caco3 complexes were applied to the wagner pots at 0.01% (w/v) chitin, respectively, and mixed thoroughly with the soil. no-fertilizer treatment and fertilizer treatment were set up for each soil type. in the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 163-172 165 fertilizer treatment, a basal dose of n, p2o5, and k2o was applied to each pot at 120, 120, and 120 kg ha−1 (120, 120, and 120 mg pot−1) using chemical fertilizer (asahi ace, jcam agri. co., ltd., japan), respectively. after transplanting, each komatsuna plant was grown for 20 days, and triple replicates were performed for each treatment. water was applied to each pot in the morning and evening to maintain 60% of the maximum water-retaining capacity of the soils during the growing period. table 1. physicochemical properties of entisols and andosols (mean ± standard deviation, n= 4). property entisols andosols ph (1:2.5, soil:water) 6.13 ± 0.04 5.36 ± 0.03 ec (1:5, soil:water; ms m-1) 0.57 ± 0.09 5.03 ± 0.11 total c (g kg-1) 0.92 ± 0.07 56.7 ± 2.51 total n (g kg-1) 0.16 ± 0.01 4.38 ± 0.17 no3-n (mg kg-1) 3.49 ± 0.12 20.73 ± 1.42 nh4-n (mg kg-1) 0.35 ± 0.09 1.60 ± 0.09 truog available p (mg kg-1) 0.73 ± 0.04 2.34 ± 0.16 phosphate absorption coefficient 7 ± 0.21 1964 ± 38 exchangeable ca (cmolc kg-1) 0.23 ± 0.04 0.59 ± 0.08 cec (cmolc kg-1) 0.97 ± 0.08 29.48 ± 1.26 soil texture s lic 2.3.3. effect of the application methods of cnf materials on plant growth plant cultivation experiments were conducted for 34 days from april 23, 2021, to may 26, 2021, using komatsuna. the seedlings, amount of soil in pots, and quantities of fertilizer were identical to those described in section 2.3.2. the cnf, cnf/protein, and cnf/protein/caco3 complexes were applied to the surface in two treatments, respectively including 1) the basal application of 0.01 w/v% to the surface immediately before transplanting and 2) the topdressing treatments of 0.0005 w/v% to the surface every day (the total application rates were 0.01 w/v% throughout the growing period). after transplanting, each komatsuna plant was grown for 20 days, and triple replicates were performed for each treatment. water was applied to each pot in the morning and evening to maintain 60% of the maximum water-retaining capacity of the soils during the growing period. 2.4. statistical analysis data were statistically evaluated using a one-way analysis of variance (one-way anova) with a tukey’s honestly significant difference test (p < 0.05) using international business machines (ibm)® spss® statistics software (version 27.0). 3. results and discussion 3.1. plant rooting test with cnf application the results of plant root growth using the seed pack growth test are shown in figure 1. root lengths in the 0.01% and 0.05% cnf treatments were almost identical to those in the ro water treatment. however, root elongation was significantly suppressed in the 0.10% cnf treatment, reducing significantly from the 4th day onward. treatment with 0.01% and 0.05% cnf/protein resulted in significantly increased root length compared with the ro water treatment, especially after the 4th day. in contrast, root elongation was suppressed in the 0.10% treatment, reducing significantly after the 4th day. root length in the 0.01% cnf/protein/caco3 treatment increased significantly compared to that in the ro water treatment, and root elongation was gradually promoted from the 4th day onward. figure 1. root lengths in the seed pack growth test: a) chitin nanofiber, b) chitin nanofiber/protein, and c) chitin nanofiber/protein/caco3. ro: reverse osmosis water. note: 0.01%, 0.05%, and 0.10% are solute concentrations of chitin nanofiber materials, respectively. data are represented as means ± standard error (n=4). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 163-172 166 however, root elongation was suppressed in the 0.05% and 0.10% treatments, which showed significant suppression after the 4th day. root growth was inhibited with the increase in concentration from the 4th day onward in all treatments. this may be partially due to the concentration impairment caused by the high osmotic pressure around the roots, which prevented the roots from absorbing water. root elongation was enhanced in the 0.01% cnf/protein and 0.01% cnf/protein/caco3 treatments, suggesting that the protein and caco3 covering the cnf were associated with root growth. 3.2. effect of cnf on plant cultivation 3.2.1. plant growth plant height and plant dry matter weight are shown in figures 2 and 3. plant growth showed differences according to the soil type and treatment. obviously, plant height and plant dry matter weight were low under the no fertilizer treatment. in entisols, plant height was slightly higher in the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment under the same conditions of the presence or absence of fertilizer. however, in andosols, it was higher in the cnf, cnf/protein, and cnf/protein/caco3 treatments without fertilizer, although there was no difference among the fertilizer treatments. the dry matter weight in entisols was higher in the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment under the same conditions of the presence or absence of fertilizer. however, there was no difference in the dry matter weight of the soil in andosols without fertilizer. this result suggests that entisols were significantly affected by the cnf material. in contrast, the dry matter weights in andosols with fertilizer exhibited growth effects due to the application of cnf materials, although there was not much difference among the materials. however, the effect of cnf material application was significantly more pronounced with fertilizer. the nitrogen uptake by the plants exhibited a similar trend to that of dry matter weight (figure 4), suggesting that cnf application promoted plant growth due to increased nitrogen uptake. the increase in the nitrogen utilization efficiency of plants with cnf application under the condition of soil cultivation supports the result of hydroponic cultivation reported by egusa et al. (2020). figure 2. plant heights: a) entisols and b) andosols. co: control. c: chitin nanofiber. cp: chitin nanofiber/protein. cpc: chitin nanofiber/protein/caco3. note: different letters indicate significant differences at p ≤ 0.05 by tukey’s hsd (honestly significant difference) test of variance (anova). n.s.: not significant. figure 3. shoot dry weights: a) entisols and b) andosols. co: control. c: chitin nanofiber. cp: chitin nanofiber/protein. cpc: chitin nanofiber/protein/caco3. note: different letters indicate significant differences at p ≤ 0.05 by tukey’s hsd (honestly significant difference) test of variance (anova). n.s.: not significant. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 163-172 167 figure 4. nitrogen absorption by the plant: a) entisols and b) andosols. co: control. c: chitin nanofiber. cp: chitin nanofiber/protein. cpc: chitin nanofiber/protein/caco3. note: different letters indicate significant differences at p ≤ 0.05 by tukey’s hsd (honestly significant difference) test of variance (anova). 3.2.2. effect of cnf on soils after plant cultivation the physicochemical properties of the soil after plant cultivation are shown in table 2. the soil ph after plant cultivation in entisols with fertilizer was lower than that in entisols without fertilizer, whereas the soil ph of andosols showed no differences in the presence or absence of fertilizer. the differences may be due to the difference in the ph buffering capacity of the soils. there were also no differences in the soil ph among the treatments with cnf materials. the levels of ammonia nitrogen did not differ among treatments with cnf materials within the same soil type and with the presence or absence of fertilizer. the levels of nitrate nitrogen were higher in the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment with fertilizer in both soil types. a slight decomposition of cnf and protein may be involved in the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment with fertilizer in entisols. moreover, nitrification by soil bacteria may be involved in the nitrification of fertilizer in both soil types. the cnf might be decomposed at an early stage, and nitrate nitrogen levels might have once increased but been absorbed by the plants under cnf treatment with fertilizer in entisols (figure 4). in contrast, the rate of nitrogen absorption in entisols without fertilizer was lower than that with fertilizer because of the lower abundance of soil microorganisms than in the soil with fertilizer. the levels of nitrate nitrogen did not decrease in the cnf treatment in entisols with fertilizer. in andosols, these levels increased due to an increase in the abundance of soil bacteria as a result of the decomposition of soil and cnf materials. this might be caused by the high nitrate nitrogen content in andosols, due to which the effect of consumption by soil microorganisms was small. the level of exchangeable calcium was slightly higher in soils treated with cnf/protein/caco3 than in soils with other treatments. this was due to the decomposition of caco3 adhering to the cnf/protein/caco3 complex. the amount of available phosphate was significantly higher in the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment in entisols with fertilizer. this may be because of the effect of cnf on the plants in the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment in entisols with fertilizer. the plant growth-promoting effect of the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment in entisols with fertilizer suggests that cnf, covered by protein and caco3, exerted the growth-promoting effect on the plants. in other words, the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment promoted root growth before decomposition, and the protein and caco3 promoted plant growth after decomposition. in the cnf/protein treatment with fertilizer and the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment in entisols with fertilizer, the protein and nitrate nitrogen, the levels of which increased due to the partial decomposition of cnf, also contributed to growth promotion. the cnf materials were decomposed to some extent by soil microorganisms in entisols without fertilizer, but the plants did not grow well because of the low nitrogen content. the cnf materials exerted a certain effect in the soil without fertilizer, but they decomposed early and were not highly effective. the abundance of soil microorganisms might have increased, and the cnf materials were decomposed by the fertilizer in andosols. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 163-172 168 table 2. physicochemical properties of entisols and andosols after cultivation. treatments ph (1:2.5) ec (1:5) no3-n nh4-n exchangeable ca truog available p （ms m-1） （mg kg-1） -----------------------------------------------------------------------entisols ----------------------------------------------------------------------- no fertilizer control 7.07 c ± 0.07 1.84 c ± 0.02 0.0 d ± 0.00 0.2ns ± 0.01 170.7 c ± 8.32 1.0 d ± 0.08 cnf 7.22 b ± 0.03 2.14 b ± 0.10 0.0 d ± 0.00 0.2ns ± 0.02 169.5 c ± 3.96 1.2 c ± 0.05 cnf/protein 7.30 a ± 0.01 2.23ab ± 0.04 0.0 d ± 0.00 0.3ns ± 0.07 171.6ac ± 7.34 1.1cd ± 0.09 cnf/protein/caco3 7.30 a ± 0.23 2.36 a ± 0.11 0.1 a ± 0.02 0.3ns ± 0.04 182.7 a ± 4.70 1.3 a ± 0.07 with fertilizer control 6.86 a ± 0.04 2.66ab ± 0.21 4.9 d ± 0.42 2.8ab ± 0.37 153.3 d ± 5.40 28.1 c ± 0.88 cnf 6.81 a ± 0.03 2.55 b ± 0.25 3.8 d ± 0.41 2.3 c ± 0.25 151.6 d ± 4.45 21.2 d ± 1.77 cnf/protein 6.69 b ± 0.05 3.16ab ± 0.54 13.3 b ± 0.91 2.5bc ± 0.26 145.6 d ± 9.62 26.0 c ± 1.47 cnf/protein/caco3 6.78ab ± 0.07 3.41 a ± 0.69 23.8 a ± 2.32 3.0 a ± 0.27 171.7 a ± 2.05 41.8 a ± 0.63 ----------------------------------------------------------------------andosols ---------------------------------------------------------------------- no fertilizer control 5.41 a ± 0.05 9.05 b ± 0.74 36.9ns ± 4.40 5.6ns ± 0.25 554.3 c ± 6.67 3.1 a ± 0.61 cnf 5.39ab ± 0.02 10.03ab ± 0.50 34.0ns ± 2.97 5.5ns ± 0.48 535.1 d ± 6.80 1.0 d ± 0.65 cnf/protein 5.35 b ± 0.03 10.99 a ± 0.73 33.8ns ± 5.16 5.5ns ± 0.50 545.6cd ± 4.41 1.3 d ± 1.18 cnf/protein/caco3 5.39ab ± 0.02 10.26 a ± 0.62 39.3ns ± 6.61 5.0ns ± 0.54 567.6 a ± 6.82 1.1 d ± 1.13 with fertilizer control 5.32 b ± 0.02 9.18 b ± 0.16 46.3 b ± 2.26 6.1ns ± 0.55 547.1ab ± 7.98 8.8cd ± 1.03 cnf 5.25 c ± 0.01 10.84 c ± 0.20 52.9ab ± 1.82 6.3ns ± 0.64 544.5ab ± 20.9 9.6 c ± 1.95 cnf/protein 5.42 a ± 0.04 10.53 c ± 0.79 55.5 a ± 3.80 6.1ns ± 0.67 529.7 b ± 8.61 5.6 d ± 0.79 cnf/protein/caco3 5.40 a ± 0.03 11.99 a ± 0.47 56.5 a ± 8.47 6.7ns ± 0.19 560.3 a ± 7.63 19.2 a ± 3.05 note: the values in the table are means ± sd. different letters and ns within columns indicate significant differences (p < 0.05) and nonsignificant differences by tukey’s hsd test, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 163-172 169 3.3. effect of different application methods of cnf on plant cultivation 3.3.1. plant growth plant height and plant dry matter weight are shown in figures 5 and 6. there was a significant increase in plant height under some cnf treatments compared to that under treatment with fertilizer alone in entisols. however, there were no significant differences in andosols. plant dry matter weight was highest in the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment in both the basal application and the topdressing treatments in both entisols and andosols. in entisols, the basal application resulted in greater plant dry matter weights than the topdressing treatment with all material treatments. however, in andosols, the plant dry matter weight showed an increasing tendency in all treatments compared with the fertilizer-only treatment, but no difference was observed between the basal application and topdressing treatments. this result suggests that the basal application treatment was more affected by the cnf material than the topdressing treatments in entisols. in contrast, there was no difference between the basal application and topdressing treatments in andosols despite the effect of cnf materials. moreover, the effect of cnf materials was probably due to the surface application of cnf rather than its broadcast application. the amount of nitrogen absorbed by the plants is shown in figure 7. the total nitrogen uptake was highest with the basal application of the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment in entisols. in andosols, the amount of total nitrogen was higher in the topdressing treatment than in the basal application treatment. the cultivation of plants with the application of cnf materials promoted nitrogen utilization efficiency and plant growth. a comparison of the calcium content in plants among treatments with the cnf material revealed a higher calcium content in the basal application treatment than in the topdressing treatment among all treatments (figure 8). furthermore, the maximum amount of calcium was observed in the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment in both entisols and andosols, suggesting that the added caco3 was decomposed and absorbed by the plant. furthermore, according to kishore, pande, and podile (2005) and egusa et al. (2019), the application of cnf materials increases plants’ self-protection function against diseases and pests. it has also been inferred that cnf is degraded by chitinase in the plant and acts as an elicitor inducer, contributing to plant growth promotion (erwig et al., 2017). figure 5. plant heights: a) entisols and b) andosols. cof: only fertilizer. c: chitin nanofiber. cp: chitin nanofiber/protein. cpc: chitin nanofiber/protein/caco3. note: different letters indicate significant differences at p ≤ 0.05 by tukey’s hsd (honestly significant difference) test of variance (anova). n.s.: not significant. figure 6. shoot dry weights: a) entisols and b) andosols. cof: only fertilizer. c: chitin nanofiber. cp: chitin nanofiber/protein. cpc: chitin nanofiber/protein/caco3. note: different letters indicate significant differences at p ≤ 0.05 by tukey’s hsd (honestly significant difference) test of variance (anova). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 163-172 170 figure 7. nitrogen absorption by the plant: a) entisols and b) andosols. cof: only fertilizer. c: chitin nanofiber. cp: chitin nanofiber/protein. cpc: chitin nanofiber/protein/caco3. note: different letters indicate significant differences at p ≤ 0.05 by tukey’s hsd (honestly significant difference) test of variance (anova). figure 8. calcium absorption by the plant: a) entisols and b) andosols. cof: only fertilizer. c: chitin nanofiber. cp: chitin nanofiber/protein. cpc: chitin nanofiber/protein/caco3. note: different letters indicate significant differences at p ≤ 0.05 by tukey’s hsd (honestly significant difference) test of variance (anova). 3.3.2. effect of cnf on soils after plant cultivation table 3 shows the physicochemical properties of the soil after plant cultivation. the soil ph showed no differences with the different application methods of cnf materials in both soil types. the ammonia nitrogen content was higher in the soil subjected to the topdressing treatment than in the soil subjected to the basal application treatment among all treatments. this might be because the application of cnf materials over time resulted in late nitrification from the ammonia form of nitrogen into nitrate nitrogen. the amount of ammonia nitrogen was the highest in the cnf/protein treatment in both soil types. in entisols, the amount of nitrate nitrogen in the soil exposed to the topdressing treatment was higher than in the soil exposed to the basal application treatment. this result suggests that plants’ nitrogen uptake is promoted in the pre-mediated soil because cnf has been decomposed into a form that can be easily used by plants after cnf addition. the higher amount of nitrogen remaining in the soil exposed to the topdressing treatment might be due to the slower rate of nitrogen absorption by the plant compared to the basal application treatment (figure 7). the nitrate nitrogen content in andosols was higher in the order of cnf/protein/caco3 > cnf/protein > cnf in both the basal application and topdressing treatments. the amount of exchangeable calcium in andosols did not differ according to the cnf material in the basal application treatment, although it did in the cnf/protein/caco3 topdressing treatment. the highest amount of calcium was found in the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment in andosols. the calcium content was also highest in the basal application treatment, indicating that calcium was decomposed by soil microorganisms after the addition of cnf materials. consequently, the amount of exchangeable calcium that was absorbed by the plants and remained in the soil was low and did not differ from that in the other treatments. however, in the topdressing treatment, the calcium that was not absorbed by the plants remained in the soil because of the insufficient time for decomposition by the soil microorganisms after the addition of cnf materials. the amount of available phosphate was lower in all treatments in andosols than in entisols. the phosphate absorption coefficient in andosols might be high, and the phosphoric acid of the applied fertilizer might be fixed to the soil in andosols. we analyzed how the different application methods of cnf influenced the impact of the material type on the growth-promoting effect. it is preferable to effectively recycle crab shells than to dispose of them. the recycling method proposed in this study uses cnf materials to promote plant growth. the results of this study should contribute to the promotion of agriculture in areas where crustacean waste is generated, such as in the areas adjacent to crab and shrimp fisheries in asia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 163-172 171 table 3. physicochemical properties of entisols and andosols after cultivation. treatments ph (1:2.5) ec (1:5) no3-n nh4-n exchangeable ca truog available p （ms m-1） （mg kg-1） -----------------------------------------------------------------------entisols ----------------------------------------------------------------------- control (only fertilizer) 8.02ns ± 0.03 4.78ns ± 0.57 68.5 a ± 6.87 10.9ab ± 0.57 165.3 f ± 5.27 25.7 a ± 0.90 basal applications cnf 7.97ns ± 0.07 4.86ns ± 0.66 46.2 d ± 2.73 11.2ab ± 0.46 164.0 f ± 4.29 24.2 a ± 1.04 cnf/protein 7.96ns ± 0.02 4.08ns ± 0.21 40.7 d ± 6.87 11.8ab ± 0.07 206.3 a ± 5.96 16.2 c ± 1.37 cnf/protein/caco3 8.00ns ± 0.01 3.79ns ± 0.34 39.5 d ± 5.46 7.9 b ± 0.04 201.0 f ± 5.61 16.2 c ± 0.52 topdressing applications cnf 8.06ns ± 0.01 4.52ns ± 0.86 85.2 a ± 5.68 12.9ab ± 0.25 151.2 f ± 1.31 25.3 a ± 1.37 cnf/protein 7.96ns ± 0.03 5.71ns ± 0.69 84.1 a ± 3.15 15.3 a ± 0.26 213.3 a ± 9.38 23.1 a ± 1.37 cnf/protein/caco3 7.99ns ± 0.00 4.63ns ± 0.55 67.4 a ± 4.17 10.8ab ± 0.27 210.0 f ± 9.95 24.9 a ± 1.87 ----------------------------------------------------------------------andosols ---------------------------------------------------------------------- control (only fertilizer) 6.15ns ± 0.02 6.03ns ± 0.27 44.0 c ± 3.15 24.5 a ± 0.87 597.0def ± 7.49 9.6 a ± 0.52 basal applications cnf 6.17ns ± 0.01 5.86ns ± 0.13 66.3 cd ± 5.46 16.2de ± 0.50 596.3 ef ± 12.23 9.2ab ± 0.45 cnf/protein 6.14ns ± 0.00 6.53ns ± 0.46 68.5 ac ± 3.15 21.8bc ± 0.56 630.9 de ± 6.80 9.9 a ± 0.52 cnf/protein/caco3 6.15ns ± 0.01 6.11ns ± 0.16 70.7 ac ± 3.15 16.0 e ± 0.84 630.0 de ± 5.56 8.5ab ± 0.26 topdressing applications cnf 6.16ns ± 0.04 6.51ns ± 0.31 50.7 de ± 6.30 23.3ab ± 1.17 568.1 f ± 9.65 7.7 b ± 0.52 cnf/protein 6.12ns ± 0.01 6.35ns ± 0.49 55.1cde ± 6.30 24.6 a ± 0.66 635.6 d ± 13.26 8.8ab ± 0.52 cnf/protein/caco3 6.16ns ± 0.02 6.37ns ± 0.30 85.2 a ± 5.68 19.3cd ± 0.02 719.4 a ± 18.58 9.6 a ± 0.52 note: the values in the table are means ± sd. different letters and ns within columns indicate significant differences (p < 0.05) and nonsignificant differences by tukey’s hsd test, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 163-172 172 4. conclusion the study found a growth-promoting effect with the surface application of cnf compared with its broadcast application in andosols. the cnf/protein/caco3 treatment exerted a growth-promoting effect in both entisols and andosols. this result suggests that cnf application to the surface of each soil type exerts a growth promotion effect, which could be because the caco3 and protein encapsulating the cnf exert a favorable effect on the growth of plants. funding: this research is supported by the japan society for the promotion of science (jsps), grants in aid for scientific research (kakenhi) (grant numbers: jp19kt0010 and jp22kk0078). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. data availability statement: raw data were generated at tottori university. derived data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author (tsuneyoshi endo) on request. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the 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(2021). insect chitin-based nanomaterials for innovative cosmetics and cosmeceuticals. cosmetics, 8(2), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.3390/cosmetics8020040 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms17101600 https://doi.org/10.1166/jbn.2014.1882 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2019.10.178 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2019.01.088 https://doi.org/10.1039/c2nr30383c https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2008.11.035 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0434.2005.00951.x https://doi.org/10.18988/cancer.7.0_33 https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12233810 https://doi.org/10.3390/cosmetics8020040 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 130 establishment of a rice tiller number prediction model using soil compaction and days after transplanting van huu buia quang hieu ngob the anh hoc a,bdepartment of mechanical engineering, can tho university, vietnam. cfaculty of mechanical engineering, can tho university of technology, vietnam.  nqhieu@ctu.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 24 february 2022 revised: 18 april 2022 accepted: 2 may 2022 published: 26 may 2022 keywords soil compaction days after transplanting rice tiller number rice height crop matlab software prediction model. soil compaction has a real effect on rice growth in the mekong delta. the correlation between soil compaction and rice growth (tiller number and plant height) in a paddy field in an giang province was evaluated in the 2020 winter-spring and summer-autumn crops using the pearson's correlation test. the research results show that soil compaction 0-20 cm from the soil surface has a positive correlation with rice tiller number, while the effect on plant height is non-significant. therefore, a prediction model for rice tiller numbers is constructed using the curve fitting application in matlab software. the obtained prediction models can effectively predict the number of rice tillers from the value of the 0-20 cm soil layer compaction at times under 40 dat in the two studied crops. this study provides the optimal value of soil compaction (about 229.8 and 337.6 kpa in these crops), which can aid in the utilization of soil tillage for paddy rice cultivation by farmers. contribution/originality: this paper may be the first to apply matlab software to construct a prediction model for rice tiller numbers using days after transplanting of rice and soil compaction. the most suitable soil compaction value for the tillering of rice was determined, which will directly benefit farmers. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4497 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: van huu bui --quang hieu ngo --the anh ho (2022). establishment of a rice tiller number prediction model using soil compaction and days after transplanting. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2), 130-137. 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4497 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction rice is vietnam’s main food source and export item. in 2020, vietnam's rice export was 6.25 million tons, a decrease of about 1.9% compared to 2019. the ministry of agriculture and rural development forecasted that vietnam's rice export would be 6.5 million tons in 2021. rice production is concentrated in the plains; the mekong delta produces 50% of the country's rice (do, 2021). rice cultivation plays an important role in ensuring the country’s food security as well as for export. the cultivation of rice in the mekong delta is grouped into three growing seasons (winter–spring, summer–autumn, and autumn–winter). environmental factors (soil, water, fertilizer, light, etc.) and farming techniques affect the growth and yield of rice (alvarez-herrera, pinzón-gómez, & vélez, 2017; chen, yang, ding, jiang, & sun, 2021; chozin & sudjatmiko, 2015; kamara, kamara, & kamara, 2015; sasaki, ando, & kakuda, 2002; timotiwu & dewi, 2014). of these, tillage to adjust the compaction of topsoil was considered in the current study. compaction, which is a physical property of soil, is related to soil bulk density (thomas et al., 2020) and thereby the growth and yield of rice (pinheiro, stone, & barrigossi, 2016). soil compaction can be reduced through tillage asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 2 (2022): 130-137. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6120-8388 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7537-9049 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6446-5104 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 130-137 131 measures, biochar application, and crop rotation. tillage is a useful method for improving the physical conditions of paddy soil and the growth and yield of rice. the maximum tiller number and plant height in conventional tillage transplanting have been shown to be higher than that in no-tillage transplanting (badshah, naimei, zou, ibrahim, & wang, 2014). in recent years, the relationships between biochar or fertilizer application, soil properties, and rice growth have been of interest to researchers. based on the straw management of paddy fields, a recent study by saothongnoi, amkha, inubushi, and smakgahn (2014) pointed out that soil without rice straw ash or rice straw incorporation has a relation to rice tiller number. a suitable rate of rice straw biochar application to the soil results in increasing plant height and rice tiller number (kamara et al., 2015). similarly, chen et al. (2021) and paiman and effendy (2020) reported that the application of biochar to paddy soil has a significant effect on leaf area, plant height, tiller number, and rice yield. a study by sasaki et al. (2002) in tsurlloka city, japan, in 1998 and 1999, showed that the amount of ammonium nitrogen (nh4 +-n) in a paddy soil layer of 0–10 cm significantly affects the tiller number 20 days after transplanting. according to khan and qasim (2007), zinc (zn) fertilizer content significantly affects plant height, tiller number, spikelet number, 1000-paddy weight, straw yield, and paddy yield of irri-6 rice. in particular, the application of 10 kg zn per hectare is an optimum value for the growth and yield components, as demonstrated with the least significant difference test method. a study by anggria, husnain, sato, and masunaga (2017) also indicated that the rice height at 36 days after transplanting is significantly affected by the rates of silicon (si) and phosphorus (p) in the soil. the main stem, early-emerging tillers, and late-emerging tillers of rice are affected by the rate of nitrogen (n) fertilizer application (wang et al., 2017). according to the results of alvarez-herrera et al. (2017), the double sigmoid logistic model is suitable for estimating rice height according to days after emergence and the maximum value of the rice height in time. the level of n and si in the soil has a significant effect on the tiller number of rice. the rate of n supply significantly affects the grain yield of rice when planted at high and low densities. the rice tiller number increases with an increasing rate of n supply up to a suitable value based on plant density (tian et al., 2017). the level of si and manganese (mn) supply in soil positively impacts the productive tiller number of rice (timotiwu & dewi, 2014). the growth and yield of rice planted in swamp soil with water levels ranging from 0 to 20 cm above the soil surface was observed by chozin and sudjatmiko (2015). here, the tiller number, productive tiller number, and grain number per panicle positively affect the grain yield of rice. furthermore, a recent study reported that productive tillers per hill increased under increasing seeding spacing for two different soil fertility levels (wang et al., 2014). however, the rice tiller number is negatively correlated with soil electrical conductivity (purnomo, hashidoko, hasegawa, & osaki, 2018). kumar, quick, barrios, cruz, and dingkuhn (2017) pointed out that an atmospheric co2 of 780 ppmv provides good conditions for producing the maximum rice tiller number. huang et al. (2013) observed that early season and high plant density positively impact the tiller number of black rice. here, the tiller number was higher in the early season than in the late season, and the maximum tiller number was higher under locally recommended plant density and n rate than under the combination of a reduced plant density and an increased n rate in the early season; however, this pattern was reversed in the late season. the sigmoid logistic model, which was constructed to estimate the rice tiller number according to the maximum value of the rice height in time and days after transplanting was fitted to curves using dps software. the linear of a multi-polynomial model of tiller number was constructed under the circumference of bunched tillers at 50 and 70 days after seeding (abu bakar, rahman, teoh, abdullah, & ismail, 2018), alternatively, water level from the soil surface and days after transplanting using table curve 3d v4.0 software (hasanah, setiawan, arif, & widodo, 2017). in addition, rice tiller number models have been plotted against thermal time from seedling emergence, the number of leaves on main stem (martinez-eixarch, del mar català, tomàs, pla, & zhu, 2015), and area growth rate (tao et al., 2006) using linear or non-linear regression. in this study, the relationship between soil compaction and rice growth is observed and studied. besides that, a polynomial function is created as a prediction model in which days after transplanting of rice and soil compaction are used as input variables to estimate the rice tiller number. 2. materials and methods 2.1. experiment the experiment was conducted from december 2019 to april 2020 (2020 winter-spring crop, named ws-crop) and from april to july 2020 (2020 summer-autumn crop, named sa-crop) in the same paddy field with an area of 200 x 24 m at dinh thanh agricultural research center (10°18’45”n; 105°19’08”e; 1 m), dinh thanh commune, thoai son district, an giang province. the variety of experimental rice (oryza sativa l.) was om18. it was transplanted by machine with a hill and row spacing of 30 x 15 cm. 2.2. soil sampling selection and compaction measurements for each crop, the experimental design was completely randomized (alvarez-herrera et al., 2017; kamara et al., 2015; paiman & effendy, 2020; saothongnoi et al., 2014) with 120 marked samples. to prepare the land for rice cultivation, the paddy field was flooded, plowed, flattened, and drained. the fieldscout sc 900 soil compaction meter was used to measure the soil average compaction data at an interval of 5 cm soil depth from 5–40 cm for all samples (pinheiro et al., 2016). the soil compaction of depth 0–20 cm (sc0–20) was averaged from the soil compaction of the depths of 5, 10, 15, and 20 cm, named sc5, sc10, sc15, and sc20, respectively, and rounded to the nearest tens (table 4 and table 5). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 130-137 132 2.3. rice growth measurements rice growth, including rice height and rice tiller number, was measured by sampling from 120 selected points in the ws-crop and the sa-crop and was recorded at 8, 25, 39, and 7, 24, 38 days after transplanting (dat), named height8d, tillers8d, height25d, tillers25d, height39d, tillers39d, and height7d, tillers7d, height24d, tillers24d, height38d, tillers38d, respectively. the tiller number per square meter was calculated using the average recorded actual rice tiller number (including main stems) of four representative plants at each point (chen et al., 2021) (table 1). the plant height was measured from the ground to the tip of the highest leaves (anggria et al., 2017) and rice tillers with at least three leaves were counted. 2.4. data analyses data were pre-processed using microsoft excel 2016 (nielsen, 2016). the pearson correlation coefficient test method (ghosh & devi, 2019) was used to compare the means and standard deviations of the compaction of the soil layers and evaluate the correlation between soil compaction and rice growth using spss software (field, 2009). 2.5. application of regression models the non-linear regression method was used to construct the prediction model of rice tiller number for the collected data by using the curve fitting application in matlab software (zielesny, 2011). rice tiller numbers from other collected data sets were used to add the dat variable to the model. the mathematical model is a function that varies with the sc0–20 of the following form: y = f(x,t) (1) where y is rice tiller number (/ m2), x is the sc0–20 (kpa), and t is the dat (day). 3. results and discussion 3.1. statistical analyses of soil compaction and rice growth the results of the statistical analyses of soil compaction are shown in figure 1. the compaction value increases slightly in the lower 5–10 and 30–40 cm and increases rapidly in the 10–30 cm layer. this finding is similar to the result of the study by pinheiro et al. (2016), where soil compaction with/without subsoiling was shown to increase from 2.755–3.46/3.674–4.108 kpa due to increasing soil depth (0–40 cm). the means and standard deviations of rice growth in the ws-crop and the sa-crop are shown in the left and right half of table 1, respectively. the mean values of the tiller number and the rice height in the three data collections of the ws/sa-crop all increased along with the dat; specifically, these were 125.55/123, 348.15/299.4, 482.4/436.05, and 21.54/21.3, 48.65/59.33, 64.95/74.68, respectively. there was also an insignificant difference between the mean values of the ws-crop and sa-crop. the standard deviation of the tiller number was very high; however, for the rice height, it was low. figure 1. soil compaction in the ws-crop (a) and the sa-crop (b). table 1. the means and standard deviations of rice growth in the ws-crop and sa-crop. ws-crop mean std. deviation sa-crop mean std. deviation tillers8d (/m2) 125.55 60.11 tillers7d (/m2) 123 48.91 tillers25d (/m2) 348.15 125.61 tillers24d (/m2) 299.4 119.08 tillers39d (/m2) 482.4 173.38 tillers38d (/m2) 436.05 114.12 height8d (cm) 21.54 2.62 height7d (cm) 21.3 3.65 height25d (cm) 48.65 4.4 height24d (cm) 59.33 6.31 height39d (cm) 64.95 4.75 height38d (cm) 74.68 8.5 3.2. the effect of soil compaction on rice growth the degree of association between the collected data of the ws-crop and the sa-crop was analyzed using the pearson correlation coefficient test, as shown in table 2 and table 3. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 130-137 133 table 2 illustrates that at a 1% significance level, there are significant positive correlations between the sc15, sc20, sc25, sc0–20, and the tillers25d/tillers39d with correlation coefficients of 0.248/0.371, 0.282/0.405, 0.254/0.268, 0.288/0.431 (the highest correlation coefficients), as well as a positive correlation between sc10, sc30 and the tillers39d. a significant negative correlation with correlation coefficients of 0.287, 0.28, and 0.286 was found between sc20, sc25, sc0–20, and the height8d. meanwhile, none of the soil compaction values correlate with tillers8d, height25d, and height39d. as can be seen in table 3, the compaction of the soil layers at 10, 15, 20, and 0–20 cm were positively correlated with tillers24d and tillers38d at a 1% significance level with correlation coefficients of 0.281, 0.333, 0.333, 0.377 and 0.247, 0.271, 0.269, 0.306, respectively. there was a negative correlation at a 1% significance level with low coefficients (0.276/0.257) between the soil compaction of the soil layers 10/0–20 cm and the height38d. table 2. the correlation between soil compaction and rice growth in the ws-crop (n=120). item tillers8d (/m2) tillers25d (/m2) tillers39d (/m2) height8d (cm) height25d (cm) height39d (cm) sc5 (kpa) 0.038 0.165 0.179* -0.137 -0.004 -0.096 sc10 (kpa) 0.095 0.136 0.248** -0.172 -0.069 -0.060 sc15 (kpa) 0.045 0.248** 0.371** -0.231* -0.051 -0.092 sc20 (kpa) 0.074 0.282** 0.405** -0.287** -0.126 -0.108 sc25 (kpa) 0.063 0.254** 0.268** -0.280** -0.057 -0.165 sc30 (kpa) 0.061 0.190* 0.263** -0.203* 0.024 -0.048 sc35 (kpa) 0.027 0.139 0.152 -0.110 0.056 -0.064 sc40 (kpa) 0.050 0.119 0.118 -0.146 0.050 -0.072 sc0–20 (kpa) 0.075 0.288** 0.431** -0.286** -0.099 -0.108 note: *,**. correlation is significant at the 0.05, 0.01 level (2-tailed). table 3. the correlation between soil compaction and rice growth in the sa-crop (n=120). item tillers7d (/m2) tillers24d (/m2) tillers38d (/m2) height7d (cm) height24d (cm) height38d (cm) sc5 (kpa) 0.067 0.065 0.033 0.033 -0.042 -0.078 sc10 (kpa) -0.040 0.281** 0.247** 0.111 -0.136 -0.276** sc15 (kpa) -0.075 0.333** 0.271** 0.088 -0.189* -0.206* sc20 (kpa) -0.040 0.333** 0.269** 0.012 -0.132 -0.202* sc25 (kpa) -0.026 0.202* 0.196* 0.065 -0.047 -0.105 sc30 (kpa) -0.015 0.111 0.144 0.056 -0.046 -0.074 sc35 (kpa) -0.027 0.057 0.097 -0.021 -0.059 -0.076 sc40 (kpa) -0.038 0.094 0.136 -0.055 -0.072 -0.097 sc0–20 (kpa) -0.061 0.377** 0.306** 0.064 -0.178 -0.257** note: *,**. correlation is significant at the 0.05, 0.01 level (2-tailed). table 4. statistical analyses of average rice growth according to sc0–20 in the ws-crop. sample number (percentage (%)) compaction of 0–20 cm soil layer (kpa) tillers 8d (/m2) tillers 25d (/m2) tillers 39d (/m2) height8 d (cm) height2 5d (cm) height3 9d (cm) 1 (0.83) 60 72 288 324 19.5 41 60 8 (6.67) 70 92.25 292.5 416.25 22.12 48.62 68.25 11 (9.17) 80 140.73 345.27 427.09 24.09 52.55 66.45 10 (8.33) 90 127.8 351 451.8 22.95 49.05 67 11 (9.17) 100 160.36 279.82 384.55 21.59 49.41 61.55 10 (8.33) 110 97.2 282.6 399.6 20.75 46.5 65.3 3 (2.5) 120 114 324 426 23 52.67 64.67 7 (5.83) 130 110.57 303.43 385.71 21.43 46.86 63.43 9 (7.5) 140 126 346 452 21.89 47.72 66.78 7 (5.83) 150 102.86 360 506.57 20.57 46.64 63.43 8 (6.67) 160 137.25 357.75 519.75 21.75 47.88 65.38 5 (4.17) 170 129.6 370.8 579.6 21.7 49 64 7 (5.83) 180 144 416.57 637.71 18.64 48.5 64.29 5 (4.17) 190 104.4 374.4 478.8 20.6 51.4 65.4 3 (2.5) 200 126 432 672 21.33 49.83 62.67 5 (4.17) 210 108 525.6 658.8 20.8 48.9 64 2 (1.67) 220 162 432 594 18.75 46.25 59 2 (1.67) 240 180 333 585 21 47 69.5 3 (2.5) 250 138 432 606 20.83 49.67 66.33 2 (1.67) 260 180 351 621 19.25 43 64 1 (0.83) 280 72 252 558 25 50 62 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 130-137 134 3.3. establishment of prediction models for the number of rice tillers the compaction of the soil layer is selected as the input parameter for the mathematical models to predict the number of rice tillers. rounded to the nearest tens of sc0–20, the statistical analyses of rice growth according to sc0–20 in the ws-crop and the sa-crop are shown in table 4 and table 5, respectively. it can be seen that the values of rice tiller number and plant height significantly and insignificantly differed among the 120 samples for each crop. the values of tillers8d/tillers7d, tillers25d/tillers24d, and tillers39d/tillers38d ranged between 72/99 and 180/156, 252/234 and 525.6/486, and 324/356.4 and 672/558 tillers/m2. the height8d/height7d, height25d/height24d, and height39d/height38d values ranged from 18.64/17.28 to 25/24.98, 41/51.5 to 52.67/64, and 59/61 to 69.5/89.67 cm. in general, as soil compaction increased, the rice tiller number increased, at the cost of a slight decrease in plant height. table 5. statistical analyses of average rice growth according to sc0–20 in the sa-crop. sample number (percentage (%)) compaction of 0–20 cm soil layer (kpa) tillers 7d (/m2) tillers 24d (/m2) tillers 38d (/m2) height7 d (cm) height2 4d (cm) height3 8d (cm) 6 (5) 90 150 252 408 17.28 58.67 72.5 3 (2.5) 100 156 306 426 22.9 63.67 78 3 (2.5) 110 126 258 450 21.5 60.33 76.33 4 (3.33) 120 112.5 234 369 22.25 60.75 75.5 3 (2.5) 130 126 240 408 23.23 64 89.67 3 (2.5) 140 162 288 450 20.77 61 78.33 12 (10) 150 102 259.5 397.5 20.22 60.33 76.25 4 (3.33) 160 108 247.5 409.5 21.48 63 79 12 (10) 170 123 271.5 408 22.18 58.58 74.17 3 (2.5) 180 102 270 360 19.17 57.67 70.67 11 (9.17) 190 134.18 279.82 418.91 22.12 60.09 76.91 5 (4.17) 200 100.8 241.2 356.4 24.98 55.2 70.4 8 (6.67) 210 119.25 274.5 407.25 20.42 60.62 76.88 3 (2.5) 220 162 312 486 22.43 60 76 3 (2.5) 230 132 312 456 21.6 61.33 75 8 (6.67) 240 112.5 342 470.25 21.54 62 78.5 11 (9.17) 250 116.18 348.55 479.45 20.28 55 70.82 6 (5) 260 123 375 504 21.67 57 69.5 3 (2.5) 270 156 372 516 23.17 62 73.67 3 (2.5) 280 132 432 558 21.47 59.33 72.67 2 (1.67) 300 99 378 504 19.6 51.5 67 1 (0.83) 320 126 486 558 21.2 58 65 1 (0.83) 340 108 450 558 19.8 56 61 2 (1.67) 360 117 378 468 21.05 57.5 67.5 according to the results shown in table 2 and table 3, the sc0–20 had a strong correlation with the number of rice tillers in the two crops’ third data collection point. traditional mathematical models were utilized to evaluate the suitability of the prediction models for the number of rice tillers in the ws-crop and the sa-crop at the third data collection point, as shown in equation 2 and equation 4. non-linear regression methods were used (zhang & ordóñez, 2012) with the application of the curve fitting tool in matlab software (zielesny, 2011). the coefficients of the model were determined using the levenberg-marquardt optimization algorithm. the coefficients of the rice tiller number prediction models are presented in table 6. the correlation coefficient (r2) and the mean absolute error (rmse) values of the yws and ysa established models for two crops were 0.9751, 14.59 and 0.9666, 9.084, respectively. it can be noted that the r2 values were high and the rmse values were low, indicating a good fit for the two yws, ysa models. data collected at the first and second data collection points (8/7 and 25/24 dat) were used to build the part of the model that changes according to the dat, as shown in equation 3 and equation 5. ywst3 = a1x3 + b1x2 + c1x + d1 (2) yws = (a1x3 + b1x2 + c1x + d1)(0.987-(0.000987(39-t)))(39-t) (3) ysat3 = a2x3 + b2x2 + c2x + d2 (4) ysa = (a2x3 + b2x2 + c2x + d2)(0.987-(0.000987(38-t)))(38-t) (5) where ywst3, yws and ysat3, ysa are the number of rice tillers (tillers / m2) in the ws-crop and the sa-crop at the third data collection point (39/38 dat), any time of data collection; a, b, c, and d are the coefficients of functions; x is the sc0–20 (kpa); and t is the dat (day). table 6. regression results of the rice tiller number prediction models at the third data collection point. model a b c d r2 rmse yws -0.000261 0.1291 -18.01 1166 0.9751 14.59 ysa -3.715e-05 0.02665 -5.291 716.8 0.9666 9.084 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 130-137 135 having established the prediction models, the estimated values of the number of rice tillers in the ws-crop and the sa-crop are shown in figure 2 and figure 3. these values tend to increase according to a polynomial pattern with the increase in measured sc0–20 for the two crops. namely, after slowly decreasing, the number of rice tillers in the ws-crop and the sa-crop steadily increased in the case of the sc0–20 in the range from 100 to 230 and 150 to 340 kpa; after reaching the peak, it rapidly or slightly declined for the ws-crop or sa-crop, respectively. meanwhile, high or low compaction of the 0–20 cm soil layer had a negative effect on the tillering of rice. figure 2. the rice tiller number in the ws-crop. figure 3. the rice tiller number in the sa-crop. the graphs of the number of rice tillers at the three data collection points are similar for both the ws-crop and the sa-crop. this was the basis for including a date-variable component into each model equation 2 and equation 4, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 130-137 136 resulting in equation 3 and equation 5. it means that the number of rice tillers at previous times is equal to the number of rice tillers at 39/38 dat multiplied by the value of this component. the value of this component is a factor that varies and gradually increases from 0.25111 to 1 during the period from 8/7 to 39/38 dat. the results of calculating the rice tiller numbers using the models of this study, which were consistent with the results of some of the above-mentioned studies, were a gradual increase in numbers during the vegetative phase of rice. the number of rice tillers increased rapidly at the tillering stage until it reached a peak between 35 and 42 dat, after which it decreased slightly and remained stable after the late tillering stage (chen et al., 2021; wang et al., 2014). the polynomial models were best fitted to the relationship between soil compaction and rice tiller numbers and showed significant direct relationships in both the ws-crop and the sa-crop (r2 equal to 0.9751 and 0.9666), as shown in table 6. the rmse and mean absolute error (mae) values of the differences between all expected and predicted values using prediction models equation 3 and equation 5 are presented in table 7. the mae of the yws and ysa models at 8/7 and 25/24 dat were 23.7164/17.1676 and 31.9711/23.5617 (19.21/12.87 and 9.07/7.81% of the mean of the actual rice tiller numbers), respectively. in addition, table 6 and table 7 show that the rmse value between the estimated and measured rice tiller numbers in the ws-crop/sa-crop at 8/7, 25/24, and 39/38 dat was 30.7289/23.3672, 42.8667/30.4656, and 14.59/9.084. these results illustrate that the values of the regression models were a good fit with the measured rice tiller data at the selected time of model building (39/38 dat), while at previous times (25/24 and 8/7 dat), the model's compatibility with the true values gradually decreased. therefore, the yws and ysa polynomial models were reliable. table 7. the rmse and mae values of rice tiller number prediction models at the first and second data collection points. model rmse mae mae / actual rice tiller number average (%) ywst1 30.7289 23.7164 19.21 ywst2 42.8667 31.9711 9.07 ysat1 23.3672 17.1676 12.87 ysat2 30.4656 23.5617 7.81 across equation 3 and equation 5, the highest rice tiller numbers of the ws-crop and sa-crop are about 678 and 539 tillers under 229.8 and 337.6 kpa of the sc0–20 values. it can be seen that the sc0–20 value of the ws-crop was lower than that of the sa-crop, whereas the highest rice tiller number of the ws-crop was higher than that of the sa-crop. this can be explained by the fact that the lowland was flooded with silt from major rivers about 2 months before the ws-crop, while this was not the case for the sa-crop. it can be seen that a soil compaction value about 70% higher than the mean is the most suitable for the tillering of rice. 4. conclusions the soil compaction sc0–20 was positively and closely correlated with rice tiller number; however, it did not greatly affect the height of rice. the rice tiller number prediction models were established using polynomial regression methods for the ws-crop and sa-crop of 2020. they proved to be reliable and suitable models for predicting rice tiller numbers based on the sc0–20 from the surface and for times under 40 dat. rice tillered well when the sc0–20 was about 239.8 and 337.6 kpa. funding: this research is supported by the can tho university (grant number: vn14-p6). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abu bakar, b., rahman, a., teoh, c., abdullah, m., & ismail, r. 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(2011). from curve fitting to machine learning (vol. 18). berlin heidelberg: springer. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 428 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. assessment of the challenges encountered by aquaculture business in cabanatuan city, nueva ecija, philippines alvin gino m. bautista nueva ecija university of science and technology, sumacab, cabanatuan city, nueva ecija, philippines.  agmbautista@yahoo.com article history abstract received: 3 june 2025 revised: 7 august 2025 accepted: 22 august 2025 published: 8 september 2025 keywords extension services fish farming freshwater fish farming livelihood operational hurdles profitability sustainable development. . the study aimed to identify and assess the challenges encountered by aquaculture farmers in cabanatuan city, nueva ecija, philippines, across the three critical phases of production: pre-operation, operation, and post-harvest, including marketing and sales. using a descriptive-quantitative research design, the study gathered data from selected aquaculture farmers through structured questionnaires, supported by site visits and direct observations to validate responses. the results revealed that aquaculture farmers face moderate challenges, particularly in accessing capital, preparing aquaculture facilities, obtaining technical knowledge, and dealing with unreliable suppliers. additional concerns include vulnerability to extreme weather conditions, inconsistent government support, and limited access to modern technology. based on the findings, the study concluded that addressing these constraints is crucial to improving the productivity, resilience, and sustainability of aquaculture operations in the city. the study recommended enhancing government-led extension services, including farmer training, technical support, and policy interventions, to strengthen the aquaculture value chain. moreover, partnerships with private stakeholders and academic institutions were suggested to bridge technical gaps. the study aligns with sustainable development goal 14: life below water, by promoting responsible aquaculture practices that contribute to food security, economic development, and environmental protection. future research may explore the role of cooperatives and digital tools in mitigating these challenges. contribution/originality: this research is the first to specifically investigate the challenges faced by aquaculture farmers in cabanatuan city, highlighting local conditions that are often overlooked in broader, generalized studies. it offers context-specific recommendations that are tailored to the city’s unique climate, water sources, available resources, and farming practices, making it highly relevant and grounded in the local setting. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5569 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: m. bautista, a. g. (2025). assessment of the challenges encountered by aquaculture business in cabanatuan city, nueva ecija, philippines. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 428–435. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5569 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction cabanatuan city, also known as the city of cabanatuan, is the largest city in the nueva ecija province and the fifth largest in central luzon, philippines. it consists of 89 barangays, and its economy mainly revolves around agriculture, specifically rice farming. according to a study by domingo (2023), filipino farmers, aside from planting rice, often seek additional sources of livelihood, such as growing other crops after the rice cropping season—a practice asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 428-435 mailto:agmbautista@yahoo.com https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5569 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 428-435 429 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. also common among farmers in cabanatuan city. nicknamed the "tricycle capital of the philippines," many residents earn a living by driving tricycles, while others engage in farming, hawking, construction work, and other informal jobs. aquaculture also serves as a significant source of income, with tilapia and catfish being the most commonly cultured species. in relation to the need for alternative livelihoods and food sources, the world is presently occupied by over 8 billion people, and it is projected to increase to above 9.6 billion in the year 2050, according to the united nations world population prospects 2022 report (united nation, 2022). therefore, it is a challenge that the world is facing today, and the solution is to ensure sustainable food for everyone. one such essential food source is fish. fish is widely recognized as an affordable and accessible source of high-quality animal protein, universally accepted across diverse cultures and religious contexts. as noted by kehinde (2022) in his study on the economics of catfish production in osun state, nigeria, fish consumption is globally prevalent, unlike other sources of animal protein such as pork, beef, or goat meat, which may be restricted by religious or cultural beliefs in certain regions. furthermore, this research aligns with the united nations sustainable development goal (sdg) 14: life below water, which advocates for the conservation and sustainable utilization of oceans, seas, and marine resources to support long-term development. in this context, the study seeks to contribute to strengthening the aquaculture industry by promoting sustainable practices that not only drive economic growth but also ensure the protection and responsible management of aquatic ecosystems. correspondingly, little, newton, and beveridge (2016), aquaculture the cultivation and farming of aquatic plants and animals, has emerged as the fastest-growing sector within the global livestock industry in recent decades. ensuring food security remains one of the most pressing global challenges, as nearly 900 million people continue to lack access to sufficient quantities of essential nutrients, including proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids required for proper metabolic function (he, zhao, wang, jiang, & zhu, 2019). recognizing the potential of aquaculture to address both food security and livelihood generation, the bureau of fisheries and aquatic resources (bfar) and the city agriculture office (cao) of cabanatuan city have initiated various training programs and capacity-building seminars to promote sustainable aquaculture practices and support alternative income opportunities for local communities. despite these promising initiatives, like other forms of agricultural enterprise, aquaculture farming is not without risks. as highlighted by supriyadi, abdillah, and primyastanto (2022), aquaculture offers a promising business opportunity; however, it also presents a range of challenges that may arise during each stage of the production cycle, pre-operation, operation, and post-harvest, including marketing and sales. no enterprise is entirely free from challenges, and the presence of such obstacles is inherent to the nature of entrepreneurship. in many cases, overcoming these difficulties fosters innovation, resilience, and sustained interest among enterprise owners. the aquaculture sector is no exception. with these considerations in mind, this study aimed to identify and profile the specific problems encountered by aquaculture farmers in cabanatuan city. by systematically assessing these challenges, the research sought to provide valuable insights that would enable farmers to develop appropriate risk-mitigation strategies and implement effective interventions to enhance the efficiency, productivity, and sustainability of their aquaculture operations. 2. objective of the study with the training and seminars on aquaculture provided by bfar and the city agriculture office (cao), this study aimed to document the challenges encountered in aquaculture farming and provide valuable insights into the industry's prevailing difficulties. specifically, it sought to answer the following research questions: 1. what challenges are encountered during pre-operation? 2. what challenges are encountered during operation? 3. what challenges arise in marketing and sales? the findings serve as a basis for recommendations to enhance and sustain the aquaculture business in cabanatuan city, enabling aquaculture farmers to increase their yield and meet the growing demand of the city's residents. 3. methodology this study employed a quantitative descriptive research design. according to mccombes (2022), descriptive research involves observing and measuring phenomena without manipulating variables, with a focus on identifying characteristics, trends, and correlations. it is commonly used to collect information about the current status or conditions of a particular situation. in the context of cabanatuan city, agriculture remains the primary source of income, with palay and vegetable farming being the most dominant activities. however, aquaculture is steadily emerging as a growing industry in the area. in line with this development, the researcher collected relevant data using survey questionnaires and informal interviews conducted with 70 aquaculture farmers across the city. to ensure the selection of appropriate respondents, purposive sampling, also referred to as selective sampling, was employed. this method was intentionally used to ensure that participants possessed the necessary characteristics relevant to the study. specifically, only aquaculture growers who had completed at least two harvest cycles were included. this criterion was carefully chosen to focus on individuals with hands-on experience and practical knowledge in aquaculture, thereby ensuring the collection of meaningful insights regarding the challenges, practices, and complexities associated with this type of business. moreover, the majority of the respondents were tilapia growers, while a smaller portion were engaged in catfish farming. respondents were identified using official records from the city agriculture office, which provided a verified and updated list of operating aquaculture enterprises in cabanatuan city, ensuring accurate sampling. to further enhance the quality of data collection, the researcher personally visited each aquaculture farm. these site visits served multiple asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 428-435 430 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. purposes: they validated the accuracy of the information provided, helped build trust with the farmers, and allowed the researcher to observe actual farming operations. these first-hand observations contributed to a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by aquaculture practitioners and enhanced the overall credibility and reliability of the study’s findings. table 1. rating scale for validity testing rating rating scale verbal interpretation 5 4.21 5.00 excellent 4 3.41 4.20 very good 3 2.61 3.40 good 2 1.81 2.60 fair 1 1.00 1.80 poor table 1 presents the experts’ evaluation of the questionnaire using a rating scale to test its validity. the rating scale was used to establish the validity of the questionnaire; a content validation process was conducted. five experts from the fields of academia, business, agriculture, and aquaculture, who possess familiarity with the operations and management of aquaculture farming, participated in the validation process. to assess the reliability of the survey instrument, a pilot test was conducted among 15-20 aquaculture farmers from adjacent municipalities in nueva ecija and victoria, tarlac, who were not part of the main study. selecting similar respondents ensured comparability and contextual relevance. the data collected during this pilot phase were subjected to reliability testing using cronbach’s alpha, which is a standard measure for determining the internal consistency of an instrument. a minimum cronbach’s alpha value of 0.7 was set as the acceptable threshold for reliability. this process ensured that the survey, comprising six items for the pre-operation stage, 18 items for the operation stage, and five items for the marketing and sales stage, consistently measured the intended factors, thereby enhancing the validity and credibility of the research results. the questionnaire was developed based on porter (1985) value chain analysis, which served as a theoretical framework for identifying key business activities across the pre-operation, operation, marketing, and sales phases of aquaculture. this model enabled a systematic assessment of value-adding processes and revealed production bottlenecks, such as challenges in fingerling acquisition, pond preparation, feeding, water management, market access, and product perishability. in addition, a thorough review of relevant literature was conducted to further reinforce the reliability and validity of the research instrument. table 2. table of interpretation for the problems encountered by aquaculture farmers. mean verbal description qualitative interpretation 3.26-4.00 always problem stated is encountered most of the time. 2.51-3.25 often problem stated is encountered repeatedly. 1.76-2.50 sometimes problem stated is encountered rarely. 1.00-1.75 never problem stated is never encountered at all. table 2 presents the scale of interpretation for the problems encountered by aquaculture farmers, including corresponding mean ranges, verbal descriptions, and qualitative interpretations. the respondents' answers were measured using this scale. to evaluate the issues faced by fish growers, the researcher applied weighted mean, frequency, and percentage to identify the most critical concerns that require immediate attention and solutions. 3.1. ethical consideration prior to data collection, respondents were fully informed about the nature, purpose, and scope of the study to safeguard their rights and uphold ethical standards. the researcher adhered to fundamental ethical principles, including informed consent, wherein participants voluntarily signed a consent form indicating their understanding of and agreement to participate in the study. anonymity was maintained by omitting personal identifiers such as names on the survey forms, thereby preventing the possibility of tracing responses back to individual participants. to ensure data security, all collected information was stored securely, with a commitment to permanently dispose of the data upon completion of the research. additionally, respondents were granted the right to access their responses upon request, along with any relevant supplementary information, thereby reinforcing transparency and participant autonomy throughout the research process. 4. results and discussion aquaculture farming is fundamentally an investment that extends beyond financial capital. engaging in this form of enterprise requires the allocation of multiple resources, including technical knowledge, time, and significant physical effort. successful farmers and entrepreneurs understand that their investment encompasses not only monetary inputs but also a combination of skills, experience, and personal commitment. it is the integrated investment of both tangible and intangible resources that contributes to the sustainability, efficiency, and profitability of aquaculture operations. however, despite its potential, the growing aquaculture industry continues to face a range of challenges, including the inherent risks and uncertainties associated with resource-dependent sectors (rahman, nielsen, khan, & ahsan, 2021). recognizing these risks is a fundamental component of effective entrepreneurship. a proactive awareness of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 428-435 431 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. potential obstacles enables investors, farmers, and stakeholders to formulate sound risk mitigation strategies, enhance problem-solving capacities, and build adaptability. this forward-looking approach not only reduces the negative impact of unforeseen events but also equips aquaculture practitioners with the tools to navigate industry volatility more effectively, thereby promoting resilience and ensuring long-term sustainability. 4.1. pre-operation stage during the pre-operation stage, aquaculture farmers in the city of cabanatuan face several challenges that can affect the establishment and initial development of their aquaculture enterprises. the problems encountered by the farmers, based on the survey conducted, are presented below: table 3. problems encountered during the pre-operation stage. indicators weighted mean verbal description aquaculture farming requires intensive labor. 2.47 sometimes farmers face limited access to funds for initial investment. 2.59 often available space for constructing fish ponds remains insufficient. 2.32 sometimes concrete ponds often develop structural cracks. 1.91 sometimes aquaculture farmers encounter issues with unreliable fingerling suppliers. 2.47 sometimes many farmers lack adequate technical knowledge in aquaculture farming. 2.37 sometimes grand mean 2.36 sometimes table 3 provides an overview of the challenges faced by aquaculture farmers during the pre-operation stage. the weighted means and corresponding verbal descriptions offer insights into the frequency and severity of these issues. notably, respondents indicated that aquaculture farming is moderately labor-intensive, with financing emerging as a significant constraint due to a lack of start-up capital. according to bokhari (2022), initial investment is crucial for new business ventures, yet access to capital remains a common barrier in aquaculture, particularly for financially limited individuals. while obtaining financial support from government and private financial institutions may appear to be a viable option, found that limited access to agricultural credit continues to hinder agricultural production, primarily because the process is not clearly explained to the people and the required documents are not readily provided. this perfectly aligns with the observation of fronda (2024), who emphasized that while microfinance has the potential to significantly improve farmers' economic well-being, its effectiveness is limited by ongoing issues such as poor financial literacy, inflexible loan structures, and a mismatch between lending programs and the actual conditions faced by farmers. farmers also reported problems related to limited space availability and structural issues, such as cracks in concrete fish ponds. these problems are often linked to insufficient training on proper pond preparation. unlike standard construction, fish pond design demands technical expertise, and improper methods can compromise functionality. in addition, moderate concerns were raised regarding the reliability of fingerling suppliers, emphasizing the need for consistent and dependable sources. gaps in technical knowledge also remain prevalent, as many farmers lack access to appropriate training. mayasari (2022) emphasizes the importance of coaching in aquaculture farming to reduce losses stemming from a lack of skills and understanding. providing farmers with technical guidance and hands-on training can help improve practices in feeding, pond management, disease prevention, and harvesting. this is where the national fisheries technology center (nftc) becomes highly relevant, as it offers seminars and training programs. however, these resources often remain inaccessible to farmers in cabanatuan city due to barriers such as distance and lack of information dissemination. overall, the grand mean of 2.38 indicates a moderate level of difficulty in addressing pre-operation challenges such as labor demands, financial limitations, space constraints, and poor pond construction. to address these challenges, the bfar training department should enhance its training programs for prospective fish farmers and implement strategic interventions based on technological innovation and supportive policies.it would also be beneficial to bring these programs closer to communities to ensure easier access for stakeholders.when programs are more accessible, people tend to show greater interest and have fewer reasons to avoid learning. priority should be given to alleviating labor-intensive processes and financial constraints, while promoting the adoption of modern technologies to resolve operational issues such as water evaporation and high feed costs. these efforts will foster innovation, build resilience, and contribute to the long-term viability of aquaculture farming in the city. 4.2. operation stage during the operation stage of aquaculture farming in cabanatuan city, farmers encountered several challenges that hindered their productivity and overall success. based on the results of the survey, the most common problems experienced during this phase are as follows: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 428-435 432 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 4. problems encountered during the operation stage. indicators weighted mean verbal description water evaporation occurs during the summer season. 3.83 always fish stocks are vulnerable to diseases and pest infestations. 2.17 sometimes fish ponds require frequent maintenance. 2.34 sometimes larger fish prey on smaller fish. 3.51 always flies and other insects commonly infest the surroundings. 2.46 sometimes foul odors emanate from the fish pond area. 1.93 sometimes ammonia levels in the pond tend to increase over time. 2.63 often the sewage system is improperly and poorly constructed. 2.59 often predators such as birds, frogs, and other domestic animals prey on fish. 2.87 often the cost of commercial feeds is excessively high. 3.49 always fish pond areas are prone to natural calamities. 2.04 sometimes government support for aquaculture farmers is insufficient. 2.94 often the harvested fish fall short of the desired size standards. 1.89 sometimes the harvest period is longer than expected. 1.77 sometimes poor harvest quality is a recurring issue. 1.79 sometimes the presence of lablab algae results in lasang gilik and a foul smell in the harvested fish. 1.03 never farmers lack sufficient harvesting equipment. 2.53 often record-keeping and the preparation of financial statements are poorly practiced. 1.69 never grand mean 2.42 often table 4 presents the overview of the challenges encountered by aquaculture farmers during the operation stage, including weighted means and corresponding verbal descriptions. one of the most pressing issues is water evaporation during summer, which farmers frequently experience. shalaby, nassar, and abdallah (2021) noted that climate change has intensified evaporation, though it can be mitigated by using floating plants such as azolla or water hyacinth to reduce sun exposure and retain pond moisture. another significant concern is intra-pond predation, particularly in catfish farming, where larger fish prey on smaller ones. wencel, włodarczyk, and ziółkowska (2022) emphasized that regularly removing “shooters” or dominant fingerlings can reduce cannibalism and mortality rates. in addition, the high cost of commercial feeds continues to burden farmers. mbokane, mbokane, motimele, and hlophe-ginindza (2022) attributed this to the expensive raw materials used in feed production, a constraint frequently reported by aquaculture farmers in cabanatuan city. despite the high cost, proper feeding practices are essential, as they directly affect fish growth, health, and overall productivity. as augustiawan, rukman, and rahmadanih (2023) noted, incorrect feeding can lead to economic inefficiency, ultimately rendering fish farming unprofitable. similarly, esiobu et al. (2022) advocates for government intervention to support legitimate fish farmers through the provision of resources that reduce operating costs. other commonly reported operational challenges include elevated ammonia levels, improper sewage disposal, and predation by birds, frogs, and domestic animals. islam, yap, krongpong, toppe, and peñarubia (2021) warned that improper disposal of fish waste leads to environmental pollution. in relation to this, unpleasant odors near the fish pond, attributed to improper waste management, have been resolved by constructing a pit for waste materials. elevated ammonia levels, known to be toxic to aquatic species and responsible for stress and mortality (liu et al., 2020; duan et al., 2021, as cited in (nagarahu, kumar, & reddy, 2023), can be managed by applying the appropriate amount of calcium carbonate (lime) to neutarlize ammonia levels. as cited in nagarahu et al. (2023). by applying the appropriate amount of calcium carbonate (lime) to regulate ammonia levels. farmers are also advised to install protective barriers such as nylon nets to guard against bird predation. despite these mitigation strategies, several challenges persist, including disease outbreaks, pest infestations, frequent pond maintenance, foul odors, flies, insects, natural calamities, and limited government support, as revealed in the survey. hussan, rahman, and gon (2026) emphasized that consistent pond maintenance and proper management are vital for achieving high productivity and profitability in aquaculture. however, they also warned that technical issues can still occur, potentially leading to production losses. to reduce these risks, farmers must remain proactive, vigilant, and committed to continuous learning. additional concerns include quality-related issues during harvest, such as failure to meet target size, extended growing periods, and substandard fish quality. according to odoli et al. (2019) and getu et al. (2015), as cited in prodhan, khan, palash, and rahman (2022), poor pond management and insufficient technical knowledge are primary leading contributors to low-quality harvests. to address this, farmers are encouraged to attend private seminars or government-funded training programs offered by the national fisheries technology center (nftc) to enhance their aquaculture skills. hands-on training has proven to be more effective and reliable than relying solely on online resources or video tutorials. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 428-435 433 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. conversely, lablab algae, though infrequently reported, remain a concern (reyes et al., 2019). lablab is a natural mat of algae and microorganisms that serves as fish feed. however, when overgrown, it can deteriorate water quality, hinder fish growth, and even lead to fish kills. a more urgent issue, as identified through informal interviews, is the lack of proper harvesting equipment. farmers often resort to improvised tools, such as locally fabricated nets, recycled containers for sorting, makeshift feeding devices, and homemade water filtration systems. these practices reflect farmers’ resourcefulness and resilience in managing limited resources. moreover, most farmers have minimal engagement in record-keeping and financial management. this observation supports the findings of mwebesa, kansiime, asiimwe, mugambe, and rwego (2018) who highlighted the importance of proper financial documentation for planning and preventing resource mismanagement. thus, enhancing the financial literacy of aquaculture farmers is critical to ensuring long-term sustainability and profitability. the computed grand mean of 2.42 indicates the considerable challenges encountered during the operation stage, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions, technological innovation, and supportive policies to sustain aquaculture farming. as yue and shen (2022) pointed out, plays a crucial role in meeting global seafood demands, yet the sector continues to struggle with issues such as limited access to improved species, labor intensity, pollution, and disease outbreaks. similarly, a study by santos-recto, francisco, saturno, templonuevo, and valimento (2022) revealed a significant gap in policy formulation at the local government level in nueva ecija, particularly in cabanatuan city. strengthening the adoption of new technologies may be a promising strategy to improve productivity, minimize environmental impact, and increase profitability. in this effort, state universities and colleges (sucs) and government agencies play a vital role by providing training, technical support, and capacity-building programs to help farmers integrate these innovations effectively. 4.3. marketing and sale during the marketing and sale of harvested fish, respondents reported encountering various challenges that affected distribution, pricing, and the overall success of their products. table 5 presents the common problems faced by aquaculture farmers in the marketing and sale stage: table 5. problems encountered during marketing and sales. indicators weighted mean verbal description marketing the fish is challenging. 1.44 never there are not enough buyers. 1.50 never fish ponds are located far from public markets. 1.76 sometimes farm gate prices are unreasonably low. 2.53 often fish have a short survival time once removed from the pond. 1.14 never grand mean 1.64 never table 5 summarizes the challenges encountered by aquaculture farmers during marketing, sales, or the postharvest stage, presenting weighted means and corresponding verbal descriptions. notably, farmers reported that marketing their products and finding buyers were rarely problematic. this observation aligns with the findings of ababouch, nguyen, castro de souza, and fernandez‐polanco (2023), who noted the growing demand for aquatic products, due to their recognized health benefits and the increasing availability of online platforms that facilitate sales. although the distance between fish ponds and public markets occasionally presents difficulties, many farmers attributed these issues more to poor road conditions than to distance alone. a more consistent concern is the low farm gate prices, with buyers often negotiating for reduced rates. despite this, the grand mean of 1.64 suggests that challenges in the marketing and sales stage are minimal, aside from pricing-related issues. similarly, tadifa, rahman, and ali (2022) emphasized that supply chains and market prices are shaped by factors such as consumer demand, market regulations, and broader economic conditions. in summary, aquaculture farmers in cabanatuan city encounter various challenges across different stages of production. during the pre-operation stage, they face financial constraints, limited space, inadequate training in pond construction, and restricted access to quality fingerlings and technical information. in the operation stage, common issues include water evaporation, high feed costs, predation, ammonia buildup, disease outbreaks, poor pond management, and weak financial management. many farmers also rely on makeshift equipment due to resource limitations. challenges in the marketing and sales stage are generally minimal, although occasional problems such as low farm-gate prices, poor road infrastructure, and the perishable nature of fish persist. these findings highlight the need for targeted interventions, comprehensive training programs, and increased support from government agencies and state universities and colleges (sucs). such efforts are essential for enhancing productivity, strengthening market resilience, and ensuring the long-term sustainability of aquaculture in the city. 5. conclusion and recommendation the research revealed that aquaculture farmers in cabanatuan city face moderate challenges during the preoperation phase, with financial constraints and limited technical knowledge emerging as the most prevalent issues. other concerns, such as labor intensity, space limitations, and inadequate infrastructure, were also reported, though with lower frequency. these findings highlight the need for targeted support, including technical training and financial assistance, to help farmers overcome these initial barriers and ensure the long-term sustainability of aquaculture asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 428-435 434 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. enterprises. local authorities and agriculture agencies are encouraged to enhance financing programs, improve access to quality fingerling suppliers, and invest in basic infrastructure development. during the operation phase, major challenges include water evaporation, predation, and the high cost of commercial feeds. additional concerns such as poor water quality, insufficient infrastructure, and limited government support frequently affect farm management. a significant gap in financial management was also observed, as most farmers lack record-keeping skills, which may compromise profitability and sustainability. to address these issues, support agencies are encouraged to promote affordable feed alternatives, improved water management practices, and predator control strategies. furthermore, state universities and colleges (sucs) may expand their extension programs to include training on farm operations and financial literacy, thereby strengthening farmers’ business competencies. the study also noted that tilapia remains the primary species cultivated, with only limited catfish production. therefore, additional training programs are recommended to encourage catfish farming as a viable and sustainable alternative. in contrast, marketing and sales were found to pose fewer difficulties for farmers, largely due to improved internet connectivity and a reliable buyer base. however, some challenges remain, particularly low farm gate prices, poor road conditions, and the distance to markets. addressing these logistical and pricing issues is essential to improving farmers’ overall profitability. to advance the aquaculture industry in cabanatuan city, strengthening collaboration among key stakeholders is essential. government institutions such as the bureau of fisheries and aquatic resources (bfar), local government units (lgus), and state universities and colleges (sucs) play vital roles through extension services, training on cooperative formation, and capacity-building initiatives. cooperatives can improve access to resources, training, and markets, thereby reducing the burdens faced by individual farmers. moreover, integrating value-added product development into extension services can enhance profitability. partnerships with private entities can also provide resources, technical expertise, and market opportunities. through coordinated and sustained efforts, the aquaculture sector in cabanatuan city can achieve sustainable growth, improved profitability, and provide stable livelihoods for local farmers. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethics committee of the nueva ecija university of science and technology (neust), philippines has granted approval for this study on 20 august 2025 (ref. no. neust-rsd-f003). transparency: the author states that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. references ababouch, l., nguyen, k. a. t., castro de souza, m., & fernandez‐polanco, j. 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(2022). an overview of disruptive technologies for aquaculture. aquaculture and fisheries, 7(2), 111-120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aaf.2021.04.009 views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106380 https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/descriptive-research/ https://doi.org/10.5539/ijef.v10n4p136 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2021.737856 https://doi.org/10.1086/711066 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126482 https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/1036/1/012025 https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/wpp2022_summary_of_results.pdf https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/wpp2022_summary_of_results.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aaf.2021.04.009 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 650 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. transforming serayu sediment into compost-amended medium for soybean cultivation aman suyadia didit agustinus suratmanb teguh pribadic a,b,cuniversitas muhammadiyah purwokerto, indonesia.  amansuyadi.ump@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 28 august 2025 revised: 15 october 2025 accepted: 30 october 2025 published: 24 november 2025 keywords compost growing media river sediment sediment valorization soil amendments soybean. river sediment accumulation poses both environmental and management challenges in tropical watersheds; however, these sediments possess physicochemical properties that can be valorized for agricultural use through appropriate amelioration. this study evaluated the potential of serayu river sediment from three sites: somagede, banyumas, kebasen (indonesia) as a growing medium for soybean (glycine max l. merril) cultivation. twelve sediment-based media were formulated by combining sediment with compost, zeolite, and biochar in different ratios and tested in a completely randomized design with three replications. the sediments exhibited sandy clay loam to clay loam textures, neutral ph (7.60–7.66), but low organic matter (1.69–2.40%) and nutrient contents. compost amendment substantially improved media fertility and crop performance, whereas zeolite and biochar treatments produced moderate responses. the best results were obtained from compost-amended treatments m3 (sediment: compost = 3:1) and m6 (1:1), which increased plant height by 17–19%, stem diameter by 61–74%, and filled pod number by 51– 61% compared with the control. principal component analysis confirmed that compost treatments consistently clustered within the high-performance quadrant, demonstrating synergistic effects on vegetative and reproductive traits. these findings indicate that compost-enhanced sediment can serve as a sustainable alternative growing medium, addressing sediment disposal issues and improving soil fertility for legume production. the study highlights a viable pathway for circular agriculture and sustainable sediment management in tropical river basins, with future research recommended to include heavy metal assessment, multi-season field validation, and biological inoculation for optimizing nitrogen fixation. contribution/originality: this study provides the first systematic evaluation of serayu river sediment as a soybean growing medium, employing multi-location characterization and multivariate analysis to demonstrate that compost amelioration (sediment:compost 3:1) achieves 68% yield enhancement with economic viability (benefit-cost ratio 4.25), establishing a novel framework for transforming river sediment waste into productive agricultural resources in tropical watersheds. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 650-662 mailto:amansuyadi.ump@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6225-3714 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-4128-1113 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6697-6220 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5746 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 650-662 651 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5746 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: suyadi, a., suratman, d. a., & pribadi, t. (2025). transforming serayu sediment into compostamended medium for soybean cultivation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 650–662. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5746 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction river sediment accumulation is a critical environmental challenge in tropical watersheds, where intensive erosion, anthropogenic activity, and land-use change contribute to accelerating sedimentation rates that threaten the integrity of aquatic ecosystems and the sustainability of water resources (liu, walling, & he, 2018; owens, 2020; reid et al., 2019). the serayu river system in central java, indonesia, illustrates this challenge, experiencing severe sedimentation that reduces reservoir capacity, increases the risk of flooding, and requires high-cost dredging operations (barneveld et al., 2025; thapa et al., 2024). traditional sediment management approaches including in-area disposal or discharge into the sea are increasingly unsustainable due to environmental regulations, space constraints, and everincreasing costs (barneveld et al., 2025; safhi, 2022; thapa et al., 2024). this paradigm encourages researchers to explore innovative sediment valorization strategies that transform waste materials into productive agricultural resources, in line with circular economy principles and sustainable development goals. recent advances in sediment characterization have revealed promising physico-chemical properties to support plant cultivation when appropriately modified (kiani, raave, simojoki, tammeorg, & tammeorg, 2021; szara-bąk, baran, & klimkowicz-pawlas, 2023). river sediments generally exhibit a favorable textural composition (sandy clay to clayey silt), adequate porosity for root penetration, and neutral ph conditions conducive to nutrient availability (kiani, arzani, & maibody, 2021; szara-bąk et al., 2023). however, critical limitations include deficient organic matter content, suboptimal concentrations of macronutrients (especially nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium), and varying microelement profiles that require a targeted soil amelioration strategy (douglas et al., 2018; liu et al., 2017; mao et al., 2016). although previous studies have demonstrated the potential of sediments for horticultural applications with the cultivation of chili peppers (braga et al., 2017), with sunflower production comprehensive evaluation of the cultivation of legumes in sediment-based media is still limited, particularly regarding the optimization of organic ameliorant combinations for nitrogen-fixing plant systems. the selection of appropriate soil ameliorants is a critical determinant of the performance of sediment-based planting media, with organic ameliorants showing superior efficacy in overcoming multiple fertility constraints simultaneously (braga et al., 2024; mupambwa & mnkeni, 2018; singh et al., 2024). compost provides a comprehensive nutrient profile, increases cation exchange capacity, improves soil structure, and stimulates beneficial microbial activity that is essential for nutrient cycling and plant health (braga et al., 2024; mupambwa & mnkeni, 2018; singh et al., 2024). biochar offers long-term carbon sequestration, enhanced nutrient retention through surface adsorption mechanisms, and improvement of soil physical properties, although the effects may require an extended establishment period to fully manifest (ding et al., 2016; kapoor, sharma, kumar, & sepehya, 2022). zeolite contributes to nutrient retention and water-holding capacity through its unique crystalline structure and high surface area, particularly beneficial on coarse-textured substrates (ding et al., 2016; kapoor et al., 2022). however, systematic comparative evaluation of these ameliorants in sediment-based systems, especially their interactive effects on legume performance, is still insufficient to guide practical implementation strategies. soybeans (glycine max l. merrill) are an ideal model crop for sediment-based cultivation systems due to their moderate environmental tolerances, significant nutritional and economic value, and unique nitrogen fixation capabilities through symbiotic relationships with rhizobium bacteria (ding et al., 2016; kapoor et al., 2022). the species' capacity to thrive in suboptimal soil conditions while contributing to soil fertility through biological nitrogen fixation makes it particularly suitable for marginal land rehabilitation initiatives (karimuna, rahni, & boer, 2016; mutammimah, minardi, & suryono, 2020). despite this potential, there have been no comprehensive studies that have systematically evaluated the serayu river sediment as a planting medium for soybean cultivation, nor have researchers optimized ameliorant combinations specifically for legume production in sediment-based systems. this knowledge gap limits the practical application of sediment valorization strategies and hinders the development of evidence-based guidelines for sustainable sediment management in agricultural contexts. therefore, this study aims to: (1) comprehensively characterize the physicochemical properties of serayu river sediments from multiple representative locations, and (2) systematically evaluate the efficacy of various organic and inorganic ameliorants in optimizing the growth performance and yield of soybeans in sediment-based planting media. in turn, this study addresses the research gap through an integrated evaluation: (1) physicochemical characterization of serayu sediment from three locations, and (2) comparative testing of 12 media formulations (sediment ± compost, zeolite, biochar) on soybean growth and yield. special attention is given to commonly practiced compost ratios (3:1, 1:1, 1:3) to examine dosage effects on plant responses. 2. methods 2.1. time and place the research was conducted at the experimental garden of the faculty of agriculture and fisheries, university of muhammadiyah purwokerto (ump), located in karangsari village, banyumas, central java, with coordinates 7° 23' asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 650-662 652 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 56" s and 109° 16' 53" e, at an altitude of 85 meters above sea level. the annual rainfall is 3,612 mm. the research was carried out from january to april 2025. 2.2. research design this study used a one-factor complete random design (crd) to evaluate the influence of the composition of the planting medium with the addition of various ameliorants on the growth and yield of soybean crops (table 1). each treatment was repeated three times, with each test consisting of five test units (polybags), so that the total number of polybags was 12 treatments × 3 replications × 5 test units = 180 polybags. the dimensions of the polybag used are 40 cm × 40 cm. table 1. treatments tried in planting media research. code description code description m0 planting media from fpp-ump experimental garden (andosol) m6 m1 composite planting medium: compost (1:1) m1 planting medium derived from serayu river sediment (soil type is alluvial) m7 m1 composite planting medium: zeolite (1:1) m2 composite planting medium m0: m1 (1:1) m8 m1 composite planting medium: biochar (1:1) m3 m1 composite planting medium: compost (3:1) m9 m1 composite planting medium: compost (1:3) m4 m1 composite planting medium: zeolite (3:1) m10 m1 composite planting medium: zeolite (1:3) m5 m1 composite planting medium: biochar (3:1) m11 m1 composite planting medium: biochar (1:3) note: the amendment ratios (3:1, 1:1, and 1:3) were selected to represent low, medium, and high levels commonly applied in pot trials. these proportions were chosen based on previous studies, practical field experience, and relevant literature on growing media formulation. 2.2.1. research stages collection and preparation of planting media. serayu river sediments were collected from three different location points in the banyumas region, namely: somagede, kebasen, and banyumas (figure 1). a total of 750 kg of sediment was taken at a depth of 2–5 cm at each point. the sediment was dried in the sun for 7 days. each sediment sample was then taken as 1 kg to analyze the physical and chemical properties of the soil at the soil science laboratory, ugm. preparation of planting media involved mixing the dried sediment with compost, zeolite, and biochar according to the treatment applied (table 1). the soil or sediment used is fine soil that passes through a 0.25 cm2 sieve. the ready planting medium was then placed in a polybag as a soybean planting medium. sowing and planting procedures included soaking soybean seeds of the demas i variety in water for 15 minutes to select quality seeds; floating seeds were discarded. each polybag was planted with 2–3 seeds manually using tugal in the prepared planting hole. the hole was covered with soil and watered as needed. insertion was done 1–2 days after planting (hst) to replace dead or abnormal plants with reserve seeds. plant maintenance. maintenance includes watering twice a day (07:00–09:00 and 16:00– 18:00 wib) using local water, except when the soil is saturated due to rain. weeds in polybags are pulled out manually, while weeds around polybags are hoed every two days. pest control is carried out by removing pests directly or applying synthetic pesticides if the attack intensity exceeds 50%. fertilization is performed according to the following doses: urea (0.125 g per polybag at 0 hst and 30 hst), kcl (0.50 g per polybag at 0 hst), and sp36 (0.75 g per polybag at 0 hst). harvesting occurs at 86 hst when 95% of the pods are brownish-yellow. the harvest is dried in the sun and stored in plastic bags labeled according to the treatment. 2.2.2. observation variables the observation variables collected in this study consisted of four components (table 2). the first component is the physical properties of the soil, which include soil texture, porosity, soil bulk density, and soil specific gravity. the chemical properties of the soil include ph, organic matter, nitrogen content, phosphorus content, potassium content, calcium content, sodium content, salinity (measured as electrical conductivity), cation exchange capacity (cec), and magnesium content. the second component is vegetative growth, which comprises plant height, stem diameter, number of leaves, and leaf area. the third component involves root characteristics and chlorophyll content, including the number of root nodules, root length, weight of wet roots, weight of dry roots, and chlorophyll content of leaves. the final component pertains to seed yield and quality, which encompasses the total number of pods, the number of filled pods, and the weight of seeds per 100 seeds. table 2. variables observed in the planting media research. variable (initial) measurement method observation time (hst) unit soil texture (text) triangle of soil texture total dust (tde) hydrometer method (bouyoucus, 1939) % total clay (tle) hydrometer method % total sand (tpa) hydrometer method % soil volume weight (bvt)/bulk density sample ring g cm-3 soil specific gravity (bjt) picnometer g cm-3 porosity (by) comparison of bvt and bjt % ph (ph) organic matter (bo) wet oxidation % asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 650-662 653 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. variable (initial) measurement method observation time (hst) unit total nitrogen content (knt) sulfuric acid destruction (kjedahl) % total phosphorus content (kft) strong acid (hclo₄/h₂so₄) % available phosphorus content (fts) olsen (nahco₃ 0.5 n ph 8.5) ppm total potassium content (kkt) hno₃ + hclo₄ (flame photometer) % available potassium content (kts) ammonium acetate 1 n (ph 7) (flame photometer) and% cation exchange capacity (cec) number of base conversions (sb) + al³+ conversion and% potassium interchangeable (cadd) ammonium acetate 1 n (ph 7) (flame photometer) and% sodium interchangeable (nadd) ammonium acetate 1 n (ph 7) (flame photometer) and% total magnesium (mgt) aas (atomic absorption spectrophotometer) % magnesium available (mgts) aas (atomic absorption spectrophotometer) and% electrical transmission power (dhl) conducttometer (ec meter) ms plant height (tta) measurements with rulers 14, 28, 42 & 56 cm rod diameter (dba) measurements with rulers 14, 28, 42 & 56 cm leaf area (lda) correction & gravimetric factors 14, 28, 42 & 56 cm2 number of leaves (jda) visual 14, 28, 42 & 56 total root nodules (jba) visual 86 root length (pja) measurements with rulers 86 cm weight of wet roots (bab) digital scales 86 g dry root weight (bak) digital scales 86 g chlorophyll (kkl) uv-vis spectrophotometry (susanti, nasrudin, & septyrophysia, 2024) 42 mg l-1 total number of pods (jpt) visual 86 number of fill pods (jpi) visual 86 number of seeds (jbi) visual 86 weight of seeds per 100 grains (b100) digital scales 86 g 2.2.3. data analysis the physical and chemical properties of the soil are analyzed descriptively (without repetition). one-way anova analysis at a significance level of 5% was used to assess the significant influence of the treatment on the observed variables (vegetative growth, root characteristics, chlorophyll content, seed yield, and quality). parametric assumptions were checked using the shapiro-wilk normality test and the levene homogeneity test at a significance level of 5%, respectively. data that do not meet the normality assumption are transformed (logarithm of y or √y), while variance homogeneity is considered met if the p-value exceeds 0.05. if anova indicates significant differences (p < 0.05), a follow-up test of honest significant difference (hsd) or tukey's test is performed at a 5% significance level to compare the mean values between treatments. results are presented as mean ± standard deviation (sd), with different groups labeled with letters (a, b, c, etc.) based on the bnj follow-up test. statistical analysis was conducted using past 5.2.2 software (hammer, harper, & ryan, 2016) 2.2.4. data transparency the datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. 3. findings 3.1. physicochemical characteristics of serayu river sediment as a potential planting media an in-depth understanding of the physicochemical properties of sediments is a fundamental prerequisite for developing effective amelioration strategies for material transformation waste to become a productive planting medium. a comprehensive characterization of serayu river sediments from three representative locations somagede, banyumas, and kebasen was conducted to evaluate the potential baseline and identify nutritional constraints that require amelioration interventions. spatial variations in sediment composition reflect deposition dynamics influenced by hydrogeomorphological characteristics, land use in catchment areas, and anthropogenic activity along river flows (buscaroli, zannoni, & dinelli, 2021; hammer, harper, & ryan, 2001; zorzal-almeida et al., 2018). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 650-662 654 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 3. the physical and chemical properties of the composite sedimentary soil from three different locations were used in the planting medium experiment. parameters unit somagede são paulo kebasen text sand clay sand dunes sand clay sand dunes clay squirt eft % 20.23 20.32 34.76 tle % 20.11 20.11 33.99 landfill % 50.82 50.94 24.94 bvt g cm-3 1.25 1.13 1.10 bjt g cm-3 2.26 1.96 1.92 por % 44.80 42.62 42.87 ph (h2o) 7.66 7.66 7.60 bo % 1.83 (r) 1.69 (r) 2.40 (s) knt % 0.07 0.08 0.07 kft % 0.07 0.07 0.07 fts ppm 7.63 (sr) 8.53 (sr) 7.01 (sr) kkt % 0.07 0.07 0.07 kts and% 0.87 (sr) 1.08 (r) 1.07 (r) cadd and% 5.17 5.29 5.01 nadd and% 0.51 0.64 0.65 cec and% 23.41 (s) 27.81 (s) 22.16 (s) mgt % 0.52 0.65 0.47 mgts and% 2.37 (s) 2.56 (s) 2.45 (s) dhl ms 0.10 0.15 0.21 fertility status low low low remarks: the parameter codes used in this table are described in table 3. the letters in parentheses indicate the fertility status of the soil based on ppt (1995), where sr (very low), r (low), s (moderate), t (high), and st (very high). based on the data in table 3, it can be seen that compost-amended media, particularly m3 (sediment: compost 3:1) and m6 (1:1), consistently enhanced soybean vegetative growth and yield components compared to other treatments (table 3). these improvements are attributable to the increased supply of organic matter and nutrients, as well as better soil structure, which are well-documented effects of compost application (azad, hossain, islam, rahman, & kabir, 2021; iliyasu & etikan, 2021). in contrast, zeolite and biochar treatments produced only moderate improvements, likely due to their slower nutrient release and long-term effects that are less visible in a single-season pot trial (lehmann et al., 2025). overall, the findings confirm that compost integration is the most immediate and effective amendment strategy for valorizing river sediment into a productive growing medium for soybean. figure 1. the location of the serayu river sediment sampling point used in the planting media research. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 650-662 655 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the spatial distribution of sampling points (figure 1) represents the variability of sediment characteristics along the longitudinal gradient of the serayu river, from the erosional zone in somagede to the depositional zone in kebasen. the somagede site, located in the upstream segment, receives sediment inputs from intensive agricultural areas with coarse-textured and nutrient-depleted characteristics. banyumas, as a transitional point, shows intermediate characteristics with slight enrichment in available phosphorus. kebasen, influenced by the existence of weir infrastructure, experienced preferential accumulation of fine particles carrying absorbed nutrients, reflected in a marginal increase in organic matter (2.40%) and improved cation retention capacity. comparison with river sediments from other fluvial systems reveals a consistent pattern of nutrient deficiencies. braga, domene, and gandara (2019) reported similar characteristics in amazon river sediments, with a content of 3% organic matter, total nitrogen <4.6 g kg⁻¹, and phosphorus available 0.5-0.8 g kg-1, albeit with slight superiority in nutrient content. this similarity indicates that tropical river sediments generally require substantial amelioration before they can function as productive growing media. the low electrical conductivity (0.10-0.21 ms) confirms the absence of salinity issues, providing flexibility in the selection of ameliorants without concern for salt accumulation. the synthesis of physicochemical characteristics indicates that the serayu river sediment has adequate foundational properties appropriate texture, neutral ph, absence of salinity, but requires targeted amelioration to overcome acute nutritional deficiencies, especially in terms of organic matter, nitrogen, and phosphorus. amelioration strategies should focus on: (1) increasing the content of organic matter to improve soil structure and nutrient cycling, (2) macronutrient supplementation to overcome immediate deficiencies, and (3) enhancing cation exchange capacity to increase long-term nutrient retention (massawe, mtei, munishi, & ndakidemi, 2016; stewart, pierzynski, middendorf, & prasad, 2020; verma, singh, pathania, & aggarwal, 2019). the understanding of these baseline characteristics is the foundation for evaluating the effectiveness of various ameliorant combinations in transforming sediment into a productive planting medium for soybean cultivation. (di carlo, chen, haynes, phillips, & courtney, 2019; gathagu, mourad, & sang, 2018; reichert-nguyen, french, & slacum, 2016; ruiz-compean et al., 2017). the response of vegetative growth of plants to various media formulations provides an early indication of the success of amelioration strategies in addressing the nutritional deficiencies that have been identified. 3.2. vegetative growth response to sediment-based media amelioration evaluation of the vegetative growth of soybean plants on various sediment-based planting media formulations revealed complex temporal dynamics, reflecting the interaction between nutrient availability, physical characteristics of the medium, and the adaptability of plants to sub-optimal conditions. intensive monitoring of morphological parameters during the 56-day vegetative period provides comprehensive insights into the effectiveness of various amelioration strategies in overcoming growth constraints inherent in sediment-based media. the differential response of plants to various ameliorant combinations indicates that optimization of media composition requires holistic consideration of multiple growth-limiting factors, rather than simple nutrient supplementation (adebayo, kiani, ruotsalainen, pirttilä, & lehosmaa, 2023). for this, table 4 presents the dynamics of plant height growth during the 56 days of observation, revealing distinct temporal response patterns between treatments. table 4. plant height at different growth phases. planting media tta14 tta28 tta42 tta56 m0 10.90 ± 1.15 ab 15.19 ± 1.72 25.51 ± 4.05 27.23 ± 4.09 abc m1 11.27 ± 0.96 a 14.21 ± 2.41 24.13 ± 4.00 24.90 ± 4.31 abc m2 9.67 ± 0.72 abc 14.23 ± 2.20 23.80 ± 4.52 25.57 ± 1.86 abc m3 8.67 ± 1.35 abc 14.06 ± 5.22 28.68 ± 6.25 31.83 ± 7.20 ab m4 8.70 ± 0.26 abc 11.41 ± 1.23 8.47 ± 3.20 21.70 ± 3.50 bc m5 8.53 ± 0.64 abc 11.15 ± 0.61 19.37 ± 0.57 20.27 ± 1.82 c m6 7.77 ± 1.91 c 14.62 ± 1.71 26.67 ± 4.84 32.34 ± 3.32 a m7 9.53 ± 0.65 abc 13.05 ± 3.77 25.40 ± 3.92 28.43 ± 3.06 abc m8 8.07 ± 0.76 bc 12.07 ± 1.25 19.90 ± 5.98 20.20 ± 3.29 c m9 7.23 ± 0.64 c 13.85 ± 0.68 22.87 ± 2.97 26.73 ± 2.14 abc m10 8.00 ± 1.11 bc 11.64 ± 1.64 7.37 ± 3.29 22.23 ± 1.74 abc m11 8.37 ± 0.81 abc 11.25 ± 1.26 17.53 ± 1.27 19.40 ± 2.80 c note: different letters within the same column indicate significant differences among treatments according to duncan’s multiple range test (dmrt) at p < 0.05. temporal analysis of plant height growth reveals a dynamic response pattern to the composition of the planting medium. in the initial establishment phase (14 hst), the soil control andosol (m0) showed superiority with a height of 10.90±1.15 cm, while the compost-based treatments (m3, m6, m9) exhibited an initial growth depression, with values ranging from 7.23 to 8.67 cm. this phenomenon can be attributed to temporary nitrogen immobilization during the initial decomposition phase of organic matter, a characteristic common in fresh compost applications (fan et al., 2019; lehrsch, brown, lentz, johnson-maynard, & leytem, 2016). however, a dramatic reversal occurred as the vegetative phase progressed, where at 56 hsts, the m6 treatment (sediment: compost 1:1) reached a maximum height of 32.34±3.32 cm, representing a 19% increase over the control, followed by m3 (sediment: compost 3:1) with 31.83±7.20 cm. this transformation of the growth trajectory indicates that after the initial stabilization phase, the mineralization of organic matter from the compost provides sustained nutrient release that supports exponential growth. table 5 presents the corresponding variation in stem diameter observed across the same growth stages. this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 650-662 656 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. parameter serves as a complementary indicator of vegetative vigor and structural development of the soybean stem under different media compositions. a consistent trend is observed where compost-amended treatments, particularly m3 and m6, exhibit thicker stems compared with the control, confirming the positive effect of compost on overall plant robustness. these results collectively reinforce that compost not only enhances vertical growth but also contributes to improved stem biomass and mechanical strength during vegetative development. table 5. stem diameters at different growth phases. planting media dba14 dba28 dba42 dba56 m0 1.67 ± 0.06 1.99 ± 0.07 cd 3.96 ± 1.28 4.85 ± 0.66 ab m1 1.80 ± 0.04 2.09 ± 0.14 bcd 4.21 ± 1.63 4.63 ± 0.85 ab m2 1.69 ± 0.23 2.04 ± 0.31 cd 4.57 ± 2.26 4.82 ± 0.23 ab m3 1.94 ± 0.35 2.53 ± 0.55 a 6.95 ± 0.76 7.81 ± 1.18 a m4 1.68 ± 0.16 1.80 ± 0.07 d 3.53 ± 0.89 4.43 ± 0.39 ab m5 1.61 ± 0.20 1.79 ± 0.12 d 5.40 ± 3.61 4.45 ± 0.42 ab m6 1.72 ± 0.53 2.89 ± 0.57 ab 5.58 ± 0.99 8.42 ± 1.52 a m7 1.82 ± 0.46 2.51 ± 0.88 abcd 3.57 ± 0.24 5.32 ± 0.90 abc m8 1.64 ± 0.13 1.78 ± 0.27 d 3.03 ± 0.45 4.25 ± 0.86 c m9 1.59 ± 0.06 2.56 ± 0.36 abc 4.55 ± 0.74 6.71 ± 1.22 bc m10 1.48 ± 0.11 1.94 ± 0.15 cd 4.89 ± 2.76 4.49 ± 0.22 ab m11 1.57 ± 0.06 1.61 ± 0.02 d 2.90 ± 0.25 3.94 ± 0.26 c note: means followed by different letters in the same column are significantly different according to tukey’s hsd test (p < 0.05). information: the development of rod diameter, as an indicator of structural strength and vascular capacity, showed a more pronounced response pattern to media amelioration. the m6 treatment achieved a maximum diameter of 8.42±1.52 mm at 56 hsts, representing a remarkable 73% increase over controls (4.85±0.66 mm), while m3 showed a 61% increase with a diameter of 7.81±1.18 mm. the consistent superiority of compost-based treatment was observed since 28 hst, where m6 (2.89±0.57 mm) and m3 (2.53±0.55 mm) were significantly higher than biochar (m5: 1.79±0.12 mm) and zeolite (m4: 1.80±0.07 mm) treatments. enhanced stem diameter in compost treatment can be attributed to improved hydraulic conductivity and enhanced cambial activity facilitated by the availability of balanced nutrients and improved soil water relations (carmo, lima, & silva, 2016; qasim et al., 2024; simiele et al., 2022). table 6 summarizes the temporal variation in leaf number and leaf area index across the sediment-based treatments. these parameters complement the growth assessment by illustrating the canopy expansion potential that influences photosynthetic performance and biomass accumulation. table 6. number of leaves at different phases of growth. planting media jda14 jda28 jd42 jda56 m0 4.07 ± 0.83 12.60 ± 2.27 abcd 22.93 ± 3.74 abc 43.33 ± 6.58 abc m1 4.40 ± 0.00 10.40 ± 1.44 bcde 9.00 ± 2.80 c 43.47 ± 12.94 abc m2 3.40 ± 1.11 10.93 ± 1.81 abcde 10.40 ± 4.92 bc 41.27 ± 5.37 abc m3 3.40 ± 0.60 13.47 ± 4.59 a 37.80 ± 14.08 a 63.87 ± 8.77 a m4 3.60 ± 0.87 9.67 ± 1.86 bcde 7.27 ± 1.50 c 33.33 ± 5.60 bc m5 2.93 ± 0.81 7.87 ± 2.47 f 15.20 ± 3.93 c 29.33 ± 4.01 c m6 3.60 ± 1.22 15.13 ± 4.93 abc 36.67 ± 14.66 a 60.60 ± 17.48 ab m7 4.67 ± 1.30 11.53 ± 1.29 abcde 24.80 ± 4.91 abc 42.27 ± 5.64 abc m8 3.20 ± 1.22 9.00 ± 0.35 cde 16.60 ± 2.69 ab 35.67 ± 8.16 abc m9 3.27 ± 0.92 14.20 ± 1.56 ab 30.00 ± 5.89 bc 60.07 ± 18.05 ab m10 2.93 ± 0.31 7.13 ± 0.61 e 17.73 ± 4.69 ab 32.33 ± 5.72 bc m11 3.07 ± 0.31 8.33 ± 1.03 f 15.93 ± 1.33 ab 31.33 ± 3.24 c note: values followed by different lowercase letters within the same column indicate significant differences among treatments according to tukey’s hsd test (p < 0.05). remarks: the treatment code refers to table 6, while the variable name corresponds to the definition in table 2. the average score in the same column with the same lowercase letter did not differ significantly based on tukey's follow-up test (bnj) at a significance level of 0.05. the number of repetitions in the experiment was n = 3. some data have been transformed before statistical analysis: inverse square root (1/y2) for variable jda14, inverse square root transformation (1/y2) for variables jda28, jda42. the production of leaves as primary photosynthetic organs shows a very sensitive response to nutrient availability in the planting medium. the m3 treatment yielded the highest number of leaves (63.87±8.77 leaves) at 56 hsts, representing a 47% increase over controls (43.33±6.58 leaves), followed by m6 with 60.60±17.48 leaves. a striking contrast was seen in the treatment of high biochar (m5: 29.33±4.01 leaves) and high zeolite (m4: 33.33±5.60 leaves), which underwent severe leaf production suppression. this pattern indicates that excessive application of non-organic ameliorants can induce nutrient imbalances or physical constraints that inhibit leaf primordia development. an interesting pattern can be seen in m9 (sediment: 1:3 compost), which, despite having the highest compost, produces only 60.07±18.05 leaves, suggesting potential negative effects of excessive organic matter on physical properties of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 650-662 657 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. medium or prolonged nitrogen immobilization. the temporal dynamics of leaf production reveal critical phases where ameliorant effects become most pronounced, with the acceleration phase between 28-42 hst serving as a key discriminator between successful and unsuccessful treatments. the high variability observed in some high-performing treatments (m6: ±17.48, m9: ±18.05) suggests that while these media formulations can support exceptional leaf production, they may also create conditions where individual plant responses become more heterogeneous due to localized nutrient hotspots or microenvironmental variations within the growing medium. table 7. leaf area in different growth phases. planting media lda14 lda28 ld42 lda56 m0 5.63 ± 1.59 32.50 ± 14.72 bcd 133.63 ± 27.51 bc 374.33 ± 288.70 abc m1 6.76 ± 1.25 24.91 ± 5.32 bcd 95.13 ± 33.45 c 268.16 ± 129.76 abc m2 4.23 ± 1.75 27.93 ± 11.45 bcd 126.46 ± 54.19 bc 273.29 ± 62.60 abc m3 5.77 ± 2.44 71.18 ± 34.21 ab 346.35 ± 146.70 ab 591.00 ± 176.60 ab m4 4.71 ± 1.39 17.99 ± 7.55 d 88.55 ± 13.04 c 189.95 ± 82.97 c m5 4.87 ± 1.79 14.95 ± 4.22 d 58.76 ± 13.82 c 139.83 ± 32.19 c m6 6.94 ± 3.13 92.31 ± 18.09 a 378.77 ± 63.49 a 640.67 ± 146.68 a m7 6.19 ± 1.98 25.88 ± 7.31 bcd 123.88 ± 33.33 bc 333.67 ± 133.43 abc m8 4.07 ± 1.93 20.74 ± 4.98 cd 77.67 ± 35.25 c 190.41 ± 49.18 bc m9 4.64 ± 0.95 51.64 ± 8.25 abc 290.85 ± 33.16 ab 717.76 ± 287.63 a m10 3.90 ± 1.36 12.61 ± 1.29 d 62.51 ± 20.73 c 158.87 ± 39.61 c m11 3.21 ± 0.51 12.71 ± 3.85 d 51.91 ± 23.73 c 147.00 ± 29.90 c note: different lowercase letters (a, b, c, d) within the same column indicate significant differences among treatments according to tukey’s honest significant difference (hsd) test at p < 0.05. the expansion of total leaf area, an integrative proxy for canopy photosynthetic capacity, was greatest under compost-amended media, with m9 reaching 717.76 ± 287.63 cm² at 56 hst, followed by m6 (640.67 ± 146.68 cm²) and m3 (591.00 ± 176.60 cm²). high-biochar treatments (m5, m11) produced markedly smaller canopies (139–147 cm²), indicating stunted leaf expansion (table 7). this pattern indicates that compost fosters both higher leaf number and greater individual leaf expansion through improved water status, cell extensibility, and sustained nutrient supply (seehausen et al., 2017; sharma, saha, arora, shah, & nain, 2017; wang et al., 2025), whereas excessive biochar or certain mineral amendments may induce ph shifts, micronutrient imbalances, or hydrophobic effects that limit water uptake and leaf growth. integrated with other vegetative metrics, these results confirm the clear advantage of sediment:compost ratios 3:1 (m3) and 1:1 (m6) in rapidly restoring productivity in nutrient-poor sediments via multiple synergistic mechanisms—immediate nutrient availability, enhanced water retention and aggregate stability, and stimulation of beneficial soil microbiota—whereas biochar and zeolite appear to act primarily as longer-term conditioners whose benefits may require aging or field conditioning to materialize (sánchez-monedero et al., 2019; sánchez-monedero, sánchez-garcía, alburquerque, & cayuela, 2019). 3.3. root system dynamics and physiological status of plants a comprehensive characterization of root systems and physiological parameters provides critical insights into the adaptation mechanisms of soybean plants to various sediment-based media formulations, revealing hidden dynamics that are not always reflected in above-ground growth. the root architecture and symbiotic efficiency of rhizobium are fundamental determinants of legume productivity, especially in sub-optimal media conditions where strategic root deployment and biological nitrogen fixation can compensate for nutrient limitations (concha & doerner, 2020; de lara-del rey & pérez-fernández, 2023). the evaluation of integrated below-ground parameters and physiological indicators provides a holistic understanding of the plant-soil interactions that underlie differential growth responses observed in the vegetative phase. table 8. root system parameters and physiological status. planting media pja chapter container jba kkt m0 32.60 ± 11.98 ab 4.371 ± 2.28 ab 1.19 ± 0.48 abcd 18.53 ± 15.99 14.06 ± 5.24 m1 28.83 ± 6.76 ab 3.30 ± 2.33 ab 1.13 ± 0.44 abcd 8.07 ± 7.43 11.79 ± 5.43 m2 24.37 ± 2.52 ab 2.97 ± 1.75 ab 1.22 ± 0.21 abcd 9.60 ± 1.59 11.84 ± 1.52 m3 33.60 ± 1.28 a 6.81 ± 5.40 b 2.12 ± 0.50 ab 13.13 ± 5.71 11.84 ± 2.62 m4 16.13 ± 6.99 b 1.23 ± 0.20 c 0.53 ± 0.16 d 2.53 ± 1.67 13.45 ± 0.67 m5 18.33 ± 3.055 ab 1.74 ± 0.53 ab 0.68 ± 0.14 cd 7,000 ± 5.01 9.19 ± 3.08 m6 34.47 ± 21.39 ab 7.57 ± 5.57 a 2.53 ± 1.60 a 6.07 ± 3.43 10.26 ± 4.10 m7 15.97 ± 2.85 b 1.85 ± 0.45 ab 0.91 ± 0.130 abcd 2.80 ± 1.31 8.61 ± 5.59 m8 22.70 ± 3.61 ab 2.95 ± 1.55 ab 1.15 ± 0.39 abcd 12.87 ± 5.63 10.02 ± 2.60 m9 24.87 ± 8.86 ab 7.61 ± 3.57 a 1.67 ± 0.15 abc 6.87 ± 2.69 10.20 ± 0.74 m10 35.50 ± 29.72 ab 1.97 ± 0.47 ab 0.82 ± 0.18 bcd 3.87 ± 2.70 12.09 ± 2.86 m11 20.50 ± 2.51 ab 2.33 ± 1.28 ab 0.96 ± 0.40 abcd 10.27 ± 6.27 9.887 ± 2.43 note: different lowercase letters (a, b, c, d) within the same column indicate significant differences among treatments according to tukey’s honest significant difference (hsd) test at p < 0.05. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 650-662 658 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. comprehensive root and physiological measurements indicate that compost-amended media (notably m3 and m6) promoted balanced root–shoot development and the greatest root biomass, whereas some mineral-rich treatments produced either excessive root elongation without corresponding shoot growth (e.g., m10, high variability) or strong root suppression (m4, m5), suggesting nutrient stress or toxicity (junaidi, kallenbach, byrne, & fonte, 2018; kiani et al., 2021). although control plants sometimes exhibited more nodules numerically, nodulation did not directly translate into productivity consistent with the distinction between nodule number and nodule effectiveness, while compost treatments appeared to support fewer but potentially more effective nodules through improved micronutrient and microbial conditions (concha & doerner, 2020; de lara-del rey & pérez-fernández, 2023). leaf chlorophyll varied little across treatments, implying maintained basic photosynthetic capacity despite large differences in leaf area and total photosynthetic surface (braga et al., 2024), a pattern compatible with the “dilution” effect during rapid canopy expansion. overall, these results suggest that compost delivers immediate, multifaceted benefits enhancing nutrient availability, rhizosphere health, and efficient resource allocation whereas high rates of biochar or zeolite may induce imbalances (ph, micronutrient availability, or cation competition) that compromise physiological performance; therefore, successful sediment amelioration must optimize both nutrient supply and biological conditions to translate below-ground improvements into durable yield gains (junaidi et al., 2018; kelly et al., 2022). 3.4. translation of vegetative growth to productivity: an analysis of yield components evaluation of yield components is the definitive parameter to assess the effectiveness of sediment-based media amelioration in supporting soybean crop productivity. the transition from vegetative vigor to reproductive output involves a complex allocation of resources that is strongly influenced by nutrient availability and planting media conditions during the critical phases of pod formation and seed filling (junaidi et al., 2018; kelly et al., 2022). figure 2. components of soybean crop yield. note: caption of figure 2. the mean (± standard deviation) of a. the total number of pods; b. number of filling pods; c. the number of seeds, and d. the weight of 100 soybean seeds in various planting media treatments. the treatment code refers to table 1, while the variable name corresponds to the definition in table 2. the values followed by the same letter did not differ significantly based on tukey's post hoc test (bnj) at a significance level of 0.05. number of repetitions: n = 3. the original data had previously undergone a logarithmic transformation [log(y)] to meet the normality assumptions in statistical analysis (applicable to jpt, jpi, and jbi variables). compost-amended media, particularly m3 (3:1) and m6 (1:1), translated vegetative vigor into markedly superior reproductive performance, with pod filling rates above 89% and seed numbers 51–60% higher than the control, while biochar-dominated treatments (m5, m11) suffered severe reproductive failure with reductions exceeding 50% (junaidi et al., 2018; kelly et al., 2022). importantly, m3 maintained seed size despite increased seed number, resulting in a 68% yield advantage (2.65 t ha⁻¹) over the control, highlighting balanced source–sink relationships. this agronomic gain corresponds to substantial economic benefits estimated at rp 10.7 million ha⁻¹ additional revenue and a benefit–cost abc abc abc a bc c ab abc c abc c c 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 m0 m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 m6 m7 m8 m9 m10 m11 jp t a ab ab ab a ab ab a ab ab ab ab b 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 m0 m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 m6 m7 m8 m9 m10 m11 jp i b ab ab ab a ab ab a ab ab ab ab b 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 m0 m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 m6 m7 m8 m9 m10 m11 jb i c a a a a a a a a a a a a 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 m0 m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 m6 m7 m8 m9 m10 m11 b 1 0 0 d asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 650-662 659 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. ratio of 4.25, demonstrating that compost-based amelioration is not only technically effective but also economically viable (bremaghani, 2024; sánchez-monedero et al., 2019). these findings underscore the capacity of compost to optimize nutrient availability, water retention, and soil structure in tandem, thereby transforming river sediments into sustainable, productive media for soybean cultivation. 3.5. integrated multivariate analysis: uncovering holistic response patterns the complexity of the interactions between growth, physiological, and productivity parameters in sediment-based media systems requires a multidimensional analytical approach to uncover response patterns that are not detected through conventional univariate analysis. principal component analysis (pca) provides a robust statistical framework to reduce data dimensionality while maintaining maximum information about variability between treatments, allowing for the identification of key gradients that determine the success of amelioration (duforet-frebourg, luu, laval, bazin, & blum, 2016; gewers et al., 2021; jolliffe & cadima, 2016; kiani et al., 2021). simultaneous evaluation of 10 key growth and yield parameters revealed the underlying structure that explains the differential response of soybean plants to various sediment amelioration strategies. figure 3. pca scree plot. dimensionality reduction of the integrated dataset produced a clear and interpretable ordination: pc1 accounted for 76.8% of the total variance, and pc2 accounted for an additional 12.3% (cumulative 89.1%), indicating that two components capture the overwhelming majority of treatment-driven variability (figure 3). loadings on pc1 were dominated by yield and growth variables (seed number 0.38; filled pods 0.36; leaf area 0.34; height 0.32; root dry weight 0.30), justifying the interpretation of pc1 as an integrated “productivity” axis, whereas pc2 contrasted root development against reproductive output, reflecting alternative allocation strategies among treatments. treatment scores cluster consistently in pca space: compost-amended media (notably m3, m6, m9) occupy high positive pc1 values, forming a distinct high-performance group, while biocharand high-zeolite treatments cluster on the negative side of pc1; controls and sediment-only occupy intermediate positions. multivariate hypothesis testing (permanova; pseudo-f = 12.4, p < 0.001) and pairwise contrasts (compost vs. mineral clusters, t = 4.82, p < 0.001) statistically validate these separations. collectively, the pca results indicate that the primary effect of amelioration treatments is coherent and unidirectional compost creates a suite of synergistic improvements across physiological, growth, and yield traits, whereas some mineral amendments induce fragmented or adverse responses and thus provide a robust, multivariate basis for recommending compost-based strategies for sediment valorization (bertolini, royer, & pastres, 2021; brown, butler, radford‐smith, & dwyer, 2022; miller, carlile, phillips, mcduie, & congdon, 2018). 4. conclusion this study demonstrates that serayu river sediment, when appropriately amended, particularly with compost at 3:1 and 1:1 ratios, can be transformed into a productive growing medium for soybean, yielding substantial improvements in growth, root function, and reproductive output. beyond the experimental results, the findings have broader implications: valorizing river sediment through organic amendments aligns with principles of sustainable agriculture and circular economy by converting a waste stream into a valuable input, reducing pressure on arable land, and closing local nutrient loops. such practices can contribute to enhanced smallholder productivity and food security in areas affected by sedimentation or land degradation. however, translation to practice requires caution: before widescale adoption, field trials across seasons, monitoring of metal (loid) contaminants, life-cycle and cost–benefit assessments, and guidelines for safe sediment sourcing and amendment rates are essential. policymakers and land managers could incorporate sediment valorization strategies into integrated watershed and agricultural planning, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 650-662 660 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. pairing sediment reuse with composting programs, farmer training, and targeted subsidies or incentives that promote circular-economy approaches. overall, the results support a pragmatic pathway for transforming a sediment management challenge into an opportunity for sustainable intensification and resilient food systems. funding: this research is funded by lppm-ump through the 2024 professor acceleration program (grant number: 98765432). institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the 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(2023). the influence of farmers’ business behavior in achieving success with integrated paddy and beef cattle agricultural systems in indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1), 16–24. 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4711 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the agricultural sector mainly consists of crops and livestock in an integrated and complementary system. this type of system integrates plants and livestock so that each can benefit from using the waste of the other, for example, a system integrating paddy and beef cattle (purnomo et al., 2019). beef cattle are a source of income for rural communities. however, cattle breeding is still done traditionally and as a side business on a small scale of 2 or 3 cows, despite the fact that there is an increasing demand for beef in indonesia. the need for beef in indonesia reached 700,000 tons in 2020; however, domestic production is only able to supply 400,000 tons, and the shortfall is met by importing http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:sutrisno.purnomo@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5586-6459 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5720-5678 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0740-2064 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 16-24 17 beef (susila, setiaji, wahyudi, & setyawan, 2020). to increase domestic beef production, one possibility is an integrated agricultural system of beef cattle and paddies, where farmers use rice plant waste as cattle feed and cow dung as fertilizer for rice plants. this can reduce production costs and increase farmers' income (purnomo, sari, emawati, & rahayu, 2021). based on research conducted by lu, bai, ren, and campbell (2010), an integrated agricultural system can also reduce environmental damage. this is supported by the finding of chen (2006) that manure can be used as an organic fertilizer to increase soil and plant fertility. adult cattle produce 12–15 kg of solid manure and 3–5 liters of urine per day (elly et al., 2020). subardja, anas, and widyastuti (2016) also noted that organic fertilizers are the right choice to increase rice productivity. according to research conducted by xian et al. (2020), an integrated agricultural system of plants and livestock provides greater benefits than non-integrated systems, increasing cattle output by 41% and rice output by 30%. however, an integrated agricultural system of livestock and rice, in general, has not been able to improve farmers’ welfare (mukhlis, noer, nofialdi, & mahdi, 2018). this is influenced by several factors, namely the farmer’s education level, behavior, and culture, as well as the farmer’s level of innovation. therefore, activities that are intended to encourage farmers to implement an integrated agricultural business of livestock and rice in a sustainable manner must include improvements to technology and innovation. increasing farmers’ technological capacity can be achieved in various ways, such as through education, economy, and social diversity. the quality of human resources can be improved by introducing entrepreneurial traits to farmers in livestock farming (aeni, wahyuni, onasis, awaluddin, & siraj, 2020). this is because farming activities also include processing, packaging, distribution, and marketing activities at competitive prices (buah et al., 2011). farmers need to have a level of creativity, an ability to see opportunities, and the courage to try new things. this is in accordance with the results of research by ashilina, baga, and jahroh (2019), who found that farmers who lack an entrepreneurial spirit will experience difficulties in managing and developing their businesses and be unable to seize existing business opportunities. all farmers should have an entrepreneurial spirit, and their farming activities should be infused with qualities such as persistence, the ability to manage existing resources, and innovative thought. based on this brief overview, it seems that business behavior influences the performance of farmers' businesses and also has an impact on the success of the integrated farming system of rice and beef cattle; therefore, more in-depth research is needed. this study aims to determine the influence of farmers’ business behavior on the successful achievement of an integrated farming system of paddy and beef cattle in indonesia. in doing so, this study offers several novelties. first, research on integrated agricultural business behavior has not been widely carried out, so this research can provide new knowledge and perspectives in the world of agriculture and livestock. secondly, this study provides a different point of view in terms of data analysis as it employs multivariate analysis through structural equation modeling (sem) by using more than two constructs or variables. data analysis using sem can minimize measurement errors caused by many indicators in a single latent variable (ghozali, 2017). 2. materials and methods this survey research utilized a structured questionnaire as a tool for data collection. the respondents were selected using a purposive sampling technique determined by the criterion that the farmers had both cattle and paddy cultivation. the study was conducted in september–october 2020 in karanganyar regency, central java. the study used primary and secondary data. the primary data was obtained through in-depth interviews with respondents based on a questionnaire. the secondary data was obtained through a literature study of appropriate literature, books, journals, and statistical centers. the setting was purposively determined based on certain considerations of previously known types and characteristics in accordance with the research objectives (hennink, hutter, & bailey, 2020). 2.1. sample and data collection the research setting was karanganyar regency, central java, with the consideration that the area has the potential for the development of an integrated paddy and beef cattle system. this is supported by 2017 data on the population of beef cattle in karanganyar regency, which was as many as 63,716 cows, and the harvested area of paddy, which was 52,991.7 ha (purnomo, sari, emawati, & rahayu, 2020). from 2014 to 2016, karanganyar regency was also one of the areas included in the smart house farmer movement phase 1 for the pilot phase of rice commodities, which was a program of the governor of central java. karanganyar regency is also included in the “jalagara” (cross southeast java) program, which is an integration area for cattle and food crops. therefore, it was a suitable area to investigate the effect of farmers' business behavior on the success of an integrated farming system. the method of respondent selection in this study was purposive sampling. purposive sampling is the selection of respondents based on criteria that have been previously determined by the researcher. the sample of farmers was selected based on the fact that these farmers had been implementing an integrated paddy and cattle farming system for at least one year. the total number of farmers and ranchers involved in this study was 183 respondents. the variables used in this study included latent and manifest variables. the latent variables comprised individual factors, environmental factors, business behavior, and business performance. the manifest variable (an indicator of the latent variable) consisted of 21 questions. these questions were answered using a 5-point likert scale, which included (1) very poor (2) poor (3) neutral (4) good (5) very good. the data was then analyzed through sem using amos software. amos is a widely used covariance-based sem analysis program. this program or method of analysis of moment structures is a statistical computing software application that stands alone and operates independently. 2.2. data analysis this study used validity and reliability tests to test the questionnaire instrument based on the loading factor value, cronbach’s alpha, and average variance extracted (ave). in this study, the validity and reliability tests were assessed asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 16-24 18 through confirmatory factor analysis (cfa), provided that the loading factor value was at least 0.7 and the ave value at least 0.5. this study used the following goodness of fit parameters: chi-square, root mean square error approximation (rmsea), goodness of fit index (gfi), adjusted goodness of fit index (agfi), and comparative fit index (cfi). 2.3. measurement development this study developed research variables based on previous research, including individual factors, environmental factors, entrepreneurial behavior, and business performance. therefore, this study developed measurements of these factors to determine latent and manifest variables. 2.3.1. individual factors of integrated paddy and beef cattle farmers individual or internal factors are traits that are owned by a person and are reflected through patterns of thought, attitude, and action toward the environment (adnan, nordin, bahruddin, & tareq, 2019). syamsu, ali, ridwan, and asja (2013) added that individual factors may include age, education level, business experience, and innovative attitude. the indicators of the individual factors are presented in table 1. table 1. variables of individual factors. manifest variables description point of view (x1,1) views on integrated farming business experience (x1,2) length of experience in running a business education background (x1,3) formal education level of the respondent age (x1,4) age bracket of the respondent gender (x1,5) gender of the respondent 2.3.2. environmental factors of integrated paddy and beef cattle farmers besides being affected by individual factors, business behavior is also affected by environmental factors. environmental factors are behaviors that arise from outside the individual, such as family, environment, and culture. according to tawaf, paturochman, herlina, sulistiyati, and fitriani (2016), environmental factors may include several elements, such as the availability of production materials, government support, solidarity between farmers, easy access to information, promotion and marketing, price stability, and ease of obtaining capital assistance. the environmental factor indicators are presented in table 2. table 2. variables of environmental factors. manifest variables description availability of inputs for production materials (x2,1) availability of production materials such as fertilizers, seeds, and livestock government role (x2,2) the role of the government in supporting integrated agriculture and animal husbandry government policy (x2,3) government policies determining agricultural and livestock policies business capital assistance from the government (x2,4) assistance in the form of business capital provided by the government promotion support (x2,5) the role of the government in supporting business promotion activities easy access to information (x2,6) the level of convenience farmers experience in obtaining information related to market prices 2.3.3. entrepreneurial behavior according to research conducted by welter and smallbone (2011), business behavior comprises several elements, including the courage to take risks, self-confidence, initiative, and leadership. abdullah, ali, and syamsu (2013) revealed that developing their business behavior can increase farmers’ positive attitude towards the results to be achieved. this means that farmers who have an innovative attitude are able to take advantage of existing opportunities and dare to take risks. the indicators of business behavior factors are presented in table 3. table 3. variables of business behavior factors. manifest variables description business persistence (x3,1) the persistence of farmers and ranchers in running a business ability to recognize opportunities (x3,2) the ability of farmers and ranchers to seize existing business opportunities innovativeness (x3,3) the ability of farmers and ranchers to create new business ideas courage in the face of risk (x3,4) the courage of farmers and ranchers in facing the risks that occur in their business independence (x3,5) the independence of farmers and ranchers in running an integrated plant and livestock business asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 16-24 19 2.3.4. business performance business performance is the quantity and quality of the business’s achievements or the results of the service performed (morgan, 2012). indicators of business performance include marketing, profit, quality of workers, and capital. the business performance indicators are presented in table 4. table 4. variables of business performance factors. manifest variables description market share expansion ability to expand business product marketing income increase ability to increase income from the business product quality ability to produce products with superior quality customer trust ability to obtain customer trust product quality improvement tendency to improve product quality table 5. characteristics of respondents (n = 183). variables categories frequency percentage (%) gender male 162 88.52 female 21 11.47 age 20-30 years 9 4.91 30-40 years 29 15.84 40-50 years 59 32.24 > 50 years 86 46.99 education no school 10 5.46 elementary school 80 43.71 junior high school 49 26.77 senior high school 36 19.67 graduate school 8 4.37 age of farming business < 1 year 13 7.10 1-5 years 38 20.76 > 5 years 132 72.13 number of family members 2-4 people 115 62.84 5-7 people 62 33.87 > 7 people 6 3.27 number of farm animals 1-2 107 58.46 2-5 69 37.70 > 5 7 3.82 income from cattle 1-2 million/year 41 22.40 2-4 million/ year 75 40.98 > 4 million/ year 67 36.61 income from rice farming 1-2 million/ year 42 22.95 2-4 million/ year 50 27.32 > 4 million/ year 91 49.72 other income no income 37 20.21 1-2 million/ year 52 28.41 2-4 million/ year 22 12.02 > 4 million/ year 72 39.34 3. results and discussion detailed characteristics of the respondent farmers can be seen in table 5. it shows that the respondents were predominantly male farmers, as much as 88.52%. most respondents were in the age range >50 years (46.99%), followed by the 40-50 age range (32.24%); the lowest proportion of respondents was 20 to 30 years old. the education level was mostly at the primary school level, with as many as 43.71% of respondents. the number of years of experience with rice and cattle farming was mainly >5 years, with as much as 72.13% of the sample. the respondent farmers’ number of family members was mostly in the 2-4 range, with as much as 62.84% of respondents. the number of livestock kept was mainly 1 to 2 heads (58.46%). measurement model analysis was performed by correlating the four variables: individual factors, environmental factors, business behavior, and business performance. the results of the measurement model analysis consist of the chisquare value/degree of freedom, probability, rmsea, goodness of fit index (gfi), adjusted goodness of fit (agfi), parsimonious goodness of fit (pgfi), comparative fit index (cfi), incremental fit index (ifi), and tucker lewis index (tli). the analysis results show that of the nine parameters, seven parameters meet the good fit criteria, including chisquare/degree of freedom, probability, rmsea, gfi, cfi, ifi, and tli. the goodness of fit parameters included in the marginal fit criteria are agfi and pgfi. marginal value or marginal fit is a condition for the suitability of the measurement model under the criteria for absolute fit and incremental fit; however, these parameters can still be asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 16-24 20 accepted and used in the further analysis because their values are close to meeting the good fit criterion (seguro, 2008). the values of the goodness of fit parameters for the measurement model measurements can be seen in detail in table 6. this research analyzed the nine goodness of fit parameters of chi-square (x2)/degree of freedom, probability, rmsea, gfi, agfi, pgfi, cfi, ifi, and tli. the results of the structural model analysis showed that there were seven parameters that displayed a good degree of fit, these were chi-square (x2)/degree of freedom = 1.266, probability = 0.012, rmsea = 0.038, gfi = 0.911, cfi = 0.971, ifi = 0.972 and tli. = 0.962. the agfi and pgfi values met the marginal fit criteria with values of 0.872 and 0.639, respectively. these results are in accordance with hair, hult, ringle, and sarstedt (2021) statement that a value of cmin/df ≤ 2 indicates acceptance of the model. the minimum sample of discrepancy function (cmin) divided by the degree of freedom (df) produces the cmin/df index, one of the indicators to measure a model’s level of suitability. furthermore, the rmsea value in the model is also supported by the statement of hair et al. (2021). they stated that an rmsea value that is less than or equal to 0.08 is an index for the acceptability of the model. the results of the structural model analysis can be seen in detail in table 7. table 6. goodness of fit parameters measurement model. goodness of fit parameters standard parameters estimate parameters (result) testing results chi-square (x2) / degree of freedom ≤ 2 1.249 good fit probability > 0.05 0.017 good fit rmsea ≤ 0.08 0.037 good fit gfi 0-1, the closer to 1 the better, gfi ≥ 0.9 is a good fit, 0.08 ≤ gfi < 0.9 is a marginal fit 0.912 good fit agfi between 0-1, the closer to 1 the model is fit 0.874 marginal fit pgfi between 0-1, the closer to 1 the model is fit 0.639 marginal fit cfi between 0-1, the closer to 1 the better 0.973 good fit ifi between 0-1, the closer to 1 the better 0.974 good fit tli the closer to 1 the better 0.965 good fit table 7. goodness of fit parameters structural model. goodness of fit parameters standard parameters estimate parameters (result) testing results chi-square (x2) / degree of freedom ≤ 2 1.266 good fit probability > 0.05 0.012 good fit rmsea ≤ 0.08 0.038 good fit gfi 0-1, the closer to 1 the better, gfi ≥ 0.9 is a good fit, 0.08 ≤ gfi < 0.9 is a marginal fit 0.911 good fit agfi between 0-1, the closer to 1 the model is fit 0.872 marginal fit pgfi between 0-1, the closer to 1 the model is fit 0.639 marginal fit cfi between 0-1, the closer to 1 the better 0.971 good fit ifi between 0-1, the closer to 1 the better 0.972 good fit tli the closer to 1 the better 0.962 good fit table 8 shows that (1) individual factors (if) have a positive effect on business behavior (bb); (2) environmental factors (ef) have a positive effect on business behavior (bb); (3) business behavior (bb) has a positive effect on business performance (bp); (4) individual factors (if) have a positive effect on business performance (bp); (5) environmental factors (ef) have a positive effect on business performance (bp). table 8. evaluation of the structural model and its relationship. hypothesis coefficient results hi if → bb 0.423 significant h2 ef → bb 0.137 significant h3 bb → bp 0.331 significant h4 if → bp 0.600 significant h5 ef → bp 0.417 significant note: if= individual factors (if); bb = business behavior (bb); ef = environmental factors (ef); bp = business performance (bp). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 16-24 21 the causal relationship model of the factors that directly or indirectly influence business behavior and business performance can be seen in figure 1. figure 1 explains that the manifest variable can explain the construct well because the value is > 0.50, except for the education manifest variable, which displays a value equal to 0.11. figure 1. standardized loading factors of the influence of business behavior on business performance. the education variable, which is one of the individual factors, cannot represent business behavior because the results of sem analysis show invalid results. the level of education of the respondent farmers did not improve their success in running an integrated farming system. this is because farmers still have limited knowledge about technology and a lack of insight into the integrated agricultural system of rice and cattle. this shows that, so far, the farmers have prioritized their business experience when running their business, which is apparent in the results of the analysis; the value is 1.53, compared to the low contribution of the education level. this finding is supported by ajiwibawani and subroto (2017), who argued that business experience, independence, and achievement motives have a positive effect on business behavior. the results of the analysis also show that among the individual factors, the variable age of the respondent farmers had a slight effect but still affected business behavior. this is because many farmers who run integrated farming systems are over 50 years old but still have a good business spirit. this finding is contrary to robbins and judge (2010) statement that as workers get older, their work productivity will decrease due to the limitations of physical factors and decreased health. the research results obtained support the hypothesis that individual factors have a positive effect on business behavior (β = 0.49, p < 0.05); however, individual factors have no effect on business performance (β = 0.06, p > 0.05). environmental factors also have no effect on business behavior (β = 0.26, p > 0.05). however, environmental factors do significantly influence business performance (β = 0.70, p < 0.05). business behavior has a positive effect on business performance (β = 0.30, p < 0.05). the coefficient of determination of this study is 22.4% for the business behavior variable, meaning that only 22.4% of the variance is explained by this model. so, hypothesis h1 is accepted, and hypothesis h3 is rejected. the coefficient of determination for the business performance variable is 45.8%, which means that there is a fairly good correlation between the constructs that make up the business performance variable; therefore, hypotheses h4 and h5 are accepted, while h2 is rejected. 3.1. factors affecting farmer business behavior individual factors and environmental factors have direct and significant effects on farmers' business behavior (table 9). individual factors have a positive and significant effect on business behavior with an effect coefficient of (ɣ = 0.49). individual factors are measured in terms of the indicators outlook, education level, business experience, age, and gender. this finding accords with the opinion of melović, šehović, karadžić, dabić, and ćirović (2021) that business behavior is affected by individual factors, which include abilities and expertise, background, and demographics. in other words, increasing individual factor indicators can improve a farmer's business behavior. the most dominant indicator among the individual factors is business experience, with an effect value of (ɣ = 1.53). our longest farming experience category was over 5 years. since these farmers have extensive business experience, they already have good management practices for running an integrated business of beef cattle and rice plants and they are able to minimize the risks that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 16-24 22 may occur. this is in accordance with the findings of darby, fugate, and murray (2022), who noted that the length of business experience has a positive and significant effect on income. table 9. composition of factors affecting farmer business behavior and business performance. de ie te business behavior business performance individual factors 0.49 0.06 0.55 environmental factors 0.26 0.70 0.96 note: te (total effect), de (direct effect), ie (indirect effect), significant at α: 0.05. the education variable is an individual factor that does not affect business behavior because it shows invalid results. the level of education of farmers who run integrated farming systems does not lead to improved business behavior due to farmers’ limited knowledge about adopting and applying technology and carrying out various innovations. this shows that, so far, farmers tend to rely on experience rather than formal education when running a business. this is in accordance with the findings of yaseen, somogyi, and bryceson (2018), who stated that entrepreneurial knowledge, achievement motives, and independence have positive effects on business behavior. thus, an increase in knowledge, independence, and motivation to excel will improve farmers’ entrepreneurial behavior when running integrated agricultural and livestock businesses. the latent variable of environmental factors has a direct effect of 0.70, while business behavior has a direct and positive effect on business performance but a smaller effect value compared to environmental factors of 0.30. this explains that ease of obtaining production materials, extension activities, good government policies, capital assistance, government support, and access to information have the effect of improving farmers’ business performance when implementing an integrated agricultural system of rice plants and cattle in karanganyar regency. this finding is in accordance with abimbola and agboola (2011) statement that environmental factors in the form of infrastructure, culture, economy, society, and politics can hinder or facilitate the performance of a business. chesbrough (2011) added that a business will grow if the environmental factors are adequate, such as supportive government policies, easy access to information, and sustainable government assistance. 3.2. influence of business behavior on business performance based on figure 1, business performance is directly affected by environmental factors and business behavior, while individual factors have an indirect effect. the latent variable of environmental factors has a direct effect of 0.70, while entrepreneurial behavior has a direct effect on business performance, but the value of the effect is smaller than that of environmental factors at 0.30. this explains that environmental factors, such as the ease of production of input materials, government support and policies, capital assistance, and access to information, are the factors with the greatest effect on business performance. in addition, business behavior, including persistence, responsiveness to opportunities, independence, innovation ability, and courage in taking risks, also has a considerable effect on business performance. this is in accordance with the results of previous research (klatt, schläfke, & möller, 2011), which found that entrepreneurial behavior has a direct and positive effect on business performance, as measured by expanding market share, competitiveness, and increased income. the entrepreneurial behavior variable with the strongest effect is responsiveness to existing opportunities (λ = 1.47), as can be seen in figure 1. farmers have a high ability to capture existing business opportunities. this means that farmers who are quickly able to adopt innovative opportunities for integrated rice and beef cattle farming systems increase their business efficiency as well as their income while reducing production costs. in addition, the application of an integrated farming system can reduce agricultural and livestock waste, which will protect the environment from damage and create zero-waste agriculture and animal husbandry. another indicator with a high value among the entrepreneurial behavior factors is the ability to create new ideas, which has a value of λ = 1.23. this shows that farmers with an integrated farming system in karanganyar regency implement innovations, for instance, by utilizing beef cattle urine as a pesticide to eradicate pests on rice plants. in addition, farmers also process cow feces for use as compost, as a substitute for chemical fertilizers, which will reduce rice production costs. this is in accordance with research conducted by haryanto and yuniarti (2017), which found that farmers in bogor are able to run integrated plant and livestock businesses by carrying out various technological, product, and process innovations. the lowest indicator of an entrepreneurial behavior variable is that of independent attitude (λ = 0.80). this shows that farmers are not yet able to independently manage the sale of their livestock. breeders still tend to sell their livestock to intermediary traders (blantik) and have not dared to try to carry out the sales process independently, for example by selling directly to the market or to butchers, which would minimize the marketing chain and provide larger profit margins to beef cattle breeders. individual factors have an indirect influence on business performance. thus, individual factors of farmers affect business performance via entrepreneurial behavior when running an integrated rice and beef cattle farming system business. this is in accordance with the opinion of jasra, khan, hunjra, and rehman (2011) that the determinants of business success comprise individual and environmental factors. the business performance of farmers in an integrated crop and livestock farming system is illustrated by several indicators, including marketing, income, product quality excellence, customer trust, and ability to improve quality. in terms of business development, farmers with an integrated livestock system are not yet able to implement a more efficient marketing system to create a greater income. farmers tend to use blantik services to sell their livestock, which asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 16-24 23 extends the livestock marketing chain. this is because farmers lack the courage to carry out livestock marketing activities. breeders tend to entrust the market price of their livestock to intermediary traders. in terms of selecting livestock breeds to rear, the breeders also leave the search for livestock young to intermediary trader services. this is also motivated by a lack of courage and confidence to select the young animals independently; therefore, they rely on the important role of intermediary traders in the process of buying and selling livestock. in general, farmers exhibit a high level of entrepreneurial behavior, but the business performance of farmers is still low. this shows that entrepreneurial behavior is only one of the factors that affect farmers' business performance. there are other factors that affect the results of business performance. this is supported by stefanovic, prokic, and rankovic (2010), who stated that there are five factors that determine success in running a business: individual factors, motivation, abilities, business strategies, and environmental factors. therefore, the sound entrepreneurial behavior of farmers is not enough to improve their business performance. it must be supported by the economic, political, and organizational environment. the business performance of farmers with an integrated rice and beef cattle system will increase with increased perseverance, responsiveness to opportunities, courage in facing risks, and independence, fully supported by regulations and assistance from the government through related agencies. it is also important that it be accompanied by an increase in farmers’ ability and willingness to adopt creative and innovative ideas to improve product quality. this is in accordance with the opinion of german, bonanno, foster, and cotula (2020) that the challenge of agribusiness development is the ability to fulfill the needs of the farmers and society in general. 4. conclusion the business behavior of respondent farmers is directly and positively affected by individual factors, including farmers' views on integrated farming systems, their length of business experience, age, level of education, and gender. business behavior in the form of persistence, responsiveness to opportunities, new ideas, courage to take risks, and independence also has a direct and positive effect on farmers' business performance in achieving success with an integrated rice and cattle farming system. business performance is not only influenced by business behavior but also by environmental factors. this study implies that the formation of new businesses in agriculture not only creates income for the owners and job opportunities for the community but also paves the way for workers to earn a living, which will ultimately help business development. local governments should assist in increasing farmers’ financial capacity to carry out their operations where land is set aside for agriculture so that its value increases as it is put to good use. funding: this research is supported by the lppm universitas sebelas maret, ministry of research technology and higher education of the republic of indonesia, through the scheme research hibah penelitian grup riset pnbp, 2020. 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(2024). mitigating the impact of mercury on rural people by providing scenarios on alternative income through corn farming improvement. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1), 25–33. 10.55493/5005.v14i1.5033 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1.introduction small-scale mining, also known as artisanal and small-scale gold mining (asgm), has become a signif icant contributor to the global production of gold, accounting for 15-25% of worldwide output and providing economic benefits to approximately 300 million people worldwide, both directly and indirectly (schipper, de haan, & van dorp, 2015). nevertheless, despite the economic benefits, asgm also poses negative impacts resulting from the gold extraction process. the use of mercury, which is produced from the residue of polluted gold extraction, leads to asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 1 (2024): 25-33. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7763-2220 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6710-3069 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5915-1784 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1219-2019 mailto:zulham@ung.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 25-33 26 various health symptoms in the community. according to bernhoft (2012), mercury poisoning can affect different organs, such as the k idneys, liver, gastrointestinal tract, and brain. the digestive tract, respirat ory tract, and sk in contact are the three entry routes for mercury from the environment to humans. asgm adds between 410-1400 tons of mercury emissions annually (esdaile & chalker, 2018),contributing to 37% of mercury emissions worldwide, and therefore leading to environmental pollution (selin, 2014).in response to this issue, several countries have ratified the minamata convention, an international treaty aimed at reducing the impact of mercury and its use (bank, 2020). indonesia is one of the countries included in the convention and is responsible for reducing and preventing environmental mercury pollution (izzati, adiwibowo, & riani, 2023). however, many local workers depend on mining for their l ivelihoods, and it is estimated that over 200 thousand workers are involved in asgm (novirsa et al., 2019). the tulabolo region in gorontalo, indonesia, is a gold mining area that is managed by the local people and provides better prospects for improving the economic level and welfare of the community. however, mining activities have negative impacts on the environment, even up to the bone river, which surrounds the tulabolo area (gafur, sakakibara, sano, & sera, 2018). according to komatsu et al. (2020),two factors encourage people to prefer mining as a source of livelihood: the low level of education and the age factor of miners. people with lower levels of education tend to choose mining due to the limited employment opportunities that require a certain level of education. additionally, mining is one of the job opportunities that is closer to the people of tulabolo. most of the productive age group of 20 to 40 years is more dominant in choosing mining as a source of livelihood. therefore, new job opportunities that are more or less equally profitable are needed to divert this trend .rural communities are currently heavily dependent on mining, particularly small-scale gold mining, despite the existence of many alternative sources of income, such as the agricultural, fishery, and livestock sectors. in order to mitigate the detrimental effects of mercury pollution resulting from the asgm sector, it is imperative to redirect the attention of the village community towards alternative sources of income. such alternatives should provide the community with a sustainable livelihood, yielding a respectable income (komatsu et al., 2020). while these alternative income opportunities need not be limited to agricultural activities, there is potential for optimizing agricultural endeavors within the village as a viable option.west tulabolo village is one of the villages in the tulabolo region that has the potential to provide an alternative source of income from the agricultural sector, including corn, coconut, and cayenne pepper. according to the central statistics agency (csa) data, the corn planting area in the bone bolango regency, where west tulabolo village is located, reaches 10,137 hectares. this indicates that corn farming in tulabolo area has the potential to be an alternative source of income to prevent the effects of mercury in the tulabolo community. therefore, this study aims to 1) identify the socio-economic challenges related to asgm activities of the community in west tulabolo village, and 2) develop scenarios of alternative income based on the feasibility of improved corn farming in west tulabolo village. this study contributes not only to the advancement of the understanding of corn farming behavior and the optimization of corn cultivation in west tulabolo village, but also offers valuable insights into the potential for promoting agriculture practices in rural areas related to asgm, such as west tulabolo village, to diversify income sources, promote economic growth, as and mitigate mercury pollution. 2. materials and methods 2.1. research location the present study was carried out in west tulabolo village, which is situated in the east suwawa district of the bone bolango regency in the gorontalo province, as shown in figure 1. covering an area of 16.06 km2, west tulabolo village constitutes approximately 12.57% of the total land in the east suwawa district. the village comprises three dusun: bulabodaa, bulabo diti, and dudamu, with a total population of 513 individuals. while the majority of the villagers work in the mining sector as motorcycle taxi drivers or mining workers, the agricultural sector of west tulabolo village has significant potential. the main agricultural products that the local farmers cultivate are corn, chili, and coconut. figure 1. research site: west tulabolo village (left) and asgm site (right) located around 10 km southeast from the village. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 25-33 27 2.2. research methods the research specifically focused on the local people of west tulabolo village who were d irectly or indirectly involved in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (asgm) activ ities, but were also corn farmers. the study was therefore limited to corn-farming families that were also involved in asgm activit ies. the selection of informants was carried out purposefully to ensure a diverse range of perspectives on the subject matter. in total, 26 corn-farming families were interviewed using an interview guide that contained data on corn farming behaviour and its operational costs. the study aimed to identify conventional corn cultivation techniques currently employed by farmers and the feasibility of their farming business. it was assumed that the current corn cultivation techniques used by farmers were not optimal, resulting in low profits that were insufficient to attract farmers to remain in corn farming instead of continuing to be involved in asgm activ ities. the farming behaviour of the farmers was assessed through a questionnaire designed using hybrid corn good agricultural practice (gap) with a four-level likert scale. the gap covered the following: the use of certif ied corn seeds, one corn seed per hole, sufficient spacing, appropriate fertilization, using organic fertil izers, hilling, proper pest control, timely harvesting, and immediate dry ing after harvest. descriptive statistics were used to analyse the implementation of gap by farmers. in addition, in-depth interviews were also conducted with several community leaders regarding the relationship between sources of income and asgm in west tulabolo. 2.3. data collection and analysis the collected data was analysed to estimate the optimization of corn farming and develop scenarios that could generate optimal profits. an analysis of the income and feasibility of farming was conducted to evaluate the ben efits of cultivating hybrid corn in west tulabolo village. profitability, efficiency, and the break -even point of corn farming were systematically formulated for analysis. profitability analysis assessed the net income generated from corn farming. efficiency analysis investigated the revenue-cost ratio (r/c ratio), or the ratio of output to input for each farming activity. lastly, the break-even point analysis identified the quantity of corn produced required to cover the fixed and variable costs. the formulas can be written as follows: 𝑇𝑅 = 𝑄 𝑥 𝑃 (1) where tr = total revenue (rp), q = quantity of products (kg), and p = price of product per kg (rp). the revenue gained from corn farming is the result of the amount of corn shell sold by farmers. the total cost is the sum of fixed and variable cost as follows: 𝑇𝐶 = 𝑇𝐹𝐶 + 𝑇𝑉𝐶 (2) where tc = total cost (rp), tfc = total fixed cost (rp), and tvc = total variable cost (rp). therefore, the profit from corn farming was calculated using the formula: 𝜋 = (1) – (2) (3) where π is the net profit earned by farmers. the feasibility was calculated using the revenue cost ratio and break-even point to analyze the efficiency of farming using the following formula: 𝑅/𝐶 𝑅𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜 = 𝑇𝑅 (1) 𝑇𝐶 (2) (4) if the r/c ratio > 1, then corn farming is feasible and provides benefits for farmers, whereas if r/c ratio < 1, then corn farming is not feasible to be developed and is detrimental to farmers. 𝐵𝐸𝑃(𝑣) = 𝑇𝐶 𝑃 (5) and 𝐵𝐸𝑃(𝑝) = 𝑇𝐶 𝑄 (6) where: bep(v) = break-even point for volume, and bep(p) = break-even point for price for each quantity unit. 3. results and discussion 3.1. informant characteristics the informants involved in this study were 26 hybrid corn farmers located in west tulabolo village, east suwawa district, bone bolango regency. the following table shows the identities of the research informants , which include their demographic data and socioeconomic characteristics. table 1 presents the demographic characteristics of the informants involved in this study, revealing that the majority of participants were in their 40s. the number of young farmers was relatively low, as many young individuals in the village preferred employment outside the agricultural sector. this f inding al igns with previous research by ngadi et al., who argue that young farmers in rural areas often migrate to seek alternative job opportunities (ngadi et al., 2023). in the case of the west tulabolo village, a considerable number of young people expressed interest in working in the asgm sector, specifically in roles such as motorcycle taxi drivers or mining workers. this preference stems from the higher and quicker income potential associated with su ch occupations. age plays a significant role in the physical capabilities of farmers, particularly in traditional farming methods that heavily rely on physical strength. generally, younger farmers exhibit greater physical stamina compared to their older counterparts. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 25-33 28 table 1. informant characteristics. items responses n % x̄ age 20-29 2 7.7 30-39 5 19.2 40-49 9 34.6 50-59 8 30.8 60< 2 7.7 average 45 gender male 11 42.3 female 15 57.7 education level uneducated 14 53.8 primary school 4 15.4 middle school 6 23.1 high school 2 7.7 college and above 0 family members ≤4 19 73.1 4< 7 26.9 average 3.96 land size owned less than 0.5 ha 2 7.7 0.5 to 1 ha 16 61.5 above 1 ha 8 30.8 average 0.98 corn productivity per hectare min. 200 max. 4,200 average 1,184.29 other income from farming yes 12 46.2 no 14 53.8 other off-farm income yes 19 73 no 7 27 moreover, the demographic data highlights the dominance of female farmers in the west tulabolo village, partly attributable to the presence of asgm activities. male residents tend to pursue job opportunities in mining-related roles, such as mining motorcycle taxi drivers or mining workers. the education level among farme rs in the village is classified as very low, with most having only completed elementary school and only a few having attained a high school education. those with higher education are more inclined to seek non-agricultural employment opportunities. previous studies have consistently shown that farmers in the gorontalo region generally possess a low level of formal education (abdullah, imran, & sirajuddin, 2023; sirajuddin, 2021a; suhana, rauf, & sirajuddin, 2023). additionally, the demographic data reveals that the majority of farmers in west tulabolo own their corn farming land, with an average area of 0.98 hectares. this indicates that corn farmers in the village possess mediumsized farming plots, neither too large nor too small, like smallholders who own less than 0.5 hectares. this suggests potential for on-farm intensification, as farmers can optimize their income by cultivating their own land. in terms of farming practices, some individuals practice monoculture, while others engage in polyculture. corn farmers who practice polyculture often incorporate coconut and cayenne pepper crops. this result is consistent with sirajuddin’s research, which showed that polyculture corn farmers in the gorontalo region frequently cultivate coconut and cayenne pepper due to their market and widespread popularity among locals (sirajuddin, 2021b). several studies recommend polyculture farming and diversif ication as they contribute positively to improved marketing for farming households (bellon, kotu, azzarri, & caracciolo, 2020; sibhatu & qaim, 2018). furthermore, table 1 indicates that a significant number of respondent farmers in west tulabolo village are involved in additional business ventures asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 25-33 29 alongside farming. field observations during data collection revealed that villagers commonly worked as mining motorcycle taxi drivers, primarily due to the higher income potential compared to farming. 3.2. socio-economic challenges related to asgm activities 3.2.1. asgm activity around west tulabolo village and its impact on economics and health in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of artisanal and small -scale gold mining (asgm) activities in west tulabolo village, in-depth interviews were conducted with multiple informants. the results of this information gathering process showed that locals had recognized the potential for gold mining in the tulabolo area as early as the 1970s. the involvement of pt trop ic endeavor indonesia, a corporation engaged in investigation and drilling activities, brought the mining potential to the attention of the local people. specifically, 19 drill points were identified in the mining area of tulabolo. however, the company did not resume mining activities at that time du e to various reasons. according to one source, the company deemed large-scale gold mining economically unfeasible due to high investment costs. consequently, the drill points left behind by the corporation became new sites where residents dug holes in search of gold deep within the earth. local villagers claim that the establishment of community -based mining began in 1992. the period between 1993 and 2015 witnessed the peak of mining activities, characterized by the presence of numerous productive holes and substantial income for the residents. this era also gave rise to several “bostambang,” or the mining bosses, within the local community, resulting in significant economic effects on the people of tulabolo and the surrounding areas. consequently, a shift occurred in the primary sources of income, with a growing number of villagers, who were predominantly farmers, engaging in the asgm sector, particularly as motorcycle taxi drivers and mining workers. although an exact estimate is currently unavailable, it is believed that the residents of west tulabolo earn about 36 million dollars per year from motorcycle taxis, while the potential annual income from mining activities in 66 million dollars. while asgm activities have positively impacted the village's economy, they have also been associated with adverse effects on the community, particularly concerning physical health and the environment. studies conducted on several rivers in gorontalo province, including the bone river located in the tulabolo asgm area, hav e demonstrated the presence of harmful substances such as mercury (hg), lead (pb), and arsenic (as). these substances are believed to originate from the amalgamation process employed during gold extraction in asgm activities (basir, kimijima, sakakibara, pateda, & sera, 2022; gafur et al., 2018). additionally, other research has revealed mercury contamination in the hair of individuals residing near asgm sites (abdul gafur, sakakibara, sera, & indriati arifin, 2020). 3.2.2. current profit gained from corn farming this study focuses on the corn farmers resid ing in west tulabolo village. this section presents an analysis of the current corn farming practices adopted by the community. the assessment of farming costs is intricately linked to their incl ination towards engaging in activities associated with the asgm sector. specif ically, if the income derived from farming is relatively meager, there is a greater likelihood of heightened interest in motorcycle taxis or mining. a more comprehensive examination of the viabil ity and practicality of corn farming can be observed in table 2. table 2. farming and feasibility analysis on current practice on corn farming. item total x̄ total fixed cost (tfc) idr 667,943 idr 25,690 depreciation idr 8,943 idr 344 tax idr 659,000 idr 25,346 total variable cost (tvc) idr 29,644,000 idr 1,140,154 seeds idr 4,300,000 idr 165,385 fertilizer idr 4,090,000 idr 157,308 pesticides idr 4,749,000 idr 182,654 labour cost for transportation idr 4,800,000 idr 184,615 labour cost for shelling idr 4,750,000 idr 182,692 labour cost for planting and fertilizing idr 6,955,000 idr 267,500 total cost (tc) idr 30,311,943 idr 1,165,844 total revenue (tr) idr 114,454,350 idr 4,402,090 price per unit (p) idr 4,023 idr 4,023 production quantity (q) 28,450 kg 1,094 kg total profit (π) idr 84,142,407 idr 3,236,246 feasibility analysis per individual r/c ratio 3.78 bep(p) idr 1,065.45 bep(v) 290 kg asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 25-33 30 the average cost incurred by corn farmers per planting season amounts to idr 1,165,844, while the generated revenue reaches idr 4,402,090. in comparison to corn farmers in other regions, this income is relatively low. the meager income can be attributed to the farmers' low corn kernel yield, averaging only 1.094 kg on an average land area of 0.98 hectares. although the bep values seem relatively low, it is primarily due to the impact of low total costs, resulting in suboptimal corn yields. the data collected reveals that, on average, farmers cultivate corn on their fields twice a year, leading to an annual revenue of idr 8,804,180. in terms of feasibility, the value of the r/c ratio exceeding the value of 1 indicates the viability of corn farming, surpassing the break -even point and ensuring that farmers do not incur losses. however, despite its feasibility, the income generated through corn farming remains disproportionately small when compared to that from asgm activ ities. consequently, farmers become less reliant on agricultural income. 3.3. scenarios of alternative income based on the feasibility of improved corn farming one of the inherent challenges in formulating alternative income scenarios l ies in identifying appropriate benchmarks for comparison. komatsu et al. (2020) assert that in order to diminish reliance on mining, alternative income sources that can ensure the well-being of the community are indispensable. consequently, this study incorporates several comparative figures to facilitate a meaningful evaluation. firstly, the income derived from asgm activities, including motorcycle taxis and mining, is employed as a relatable benchmark, as individuals find it easier to comprehend comparisons that directly reflect their own experiences. secondly, the current regional minimum wage (rmw) for gorontalo province is utilized as a reference, which stands at idr 2,989,350 per month or idr 35,872,200 per year. lastly, the poverty line specific to each family within the bone bolango regency is considered, with an estimated value of idr 449,543 per capita per month, equivalent to approximately idr 1,780,190 per family per month (amounting to idr 21,362,283 annually), as illustrated in figure 2. these benchmarks serve as a basis for comparing the corn farming scenarios examined in this study. figure 2. benchmark for comparison in formulating alternative incomes. 3.3.1. scenario 1: increasing planting area in scenario 1, this research presents an estimation of income per crop cycle by considering an increase in the production land area. the study takes into account assumptions regarding farming behavior, productivity, and fixed prices. a detailed analysis of this scenario is provided in table 3. table 3. analysis for scenario 1. items compared benchmarks pl rmw mt mining annual income idr 21,362,283 idr 35,872,200 idr 36,000,000 idr 66,000,000 income per cycle idr 10,681,141 idr 17,936,100 idr 18,000,000 idr 33,000,000 kernel price idr 4,023 idr 4,023 idr 4,023 idr 4,023 kernel production needed 2,655 kg 4,458 kg 4,474 kg 8,203 kg land productivity 1,184.29 kg/ha 1,184.29 kg/ha 1,184.29 kg/ha 1,184.29 kg/ha required land sizes 2.2 ha 3.76 ha 3.78 ha 6.93 ha note: pl (poverty lines); rmw (regional minimum wage), mt (motor taxis) . asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 25-33 31 table 3reveals that, in order for corn farming to serve as a viable alternative income source, a minimum land ownership of 2.2 hectares is required to reach the poverty line, while a minimum land ownership of up to 3.78 hectares is necessary for a comparison with asgm activities. currently, the average land ownership for maize farming stands at 0.98 hectares. 3.3.2. scenario 2: increasing the price of corn kernels in scenario 2, an adjustment is made to the kernel price to enable comparisons with the established benchmarks. the assumptions taken into account are farming behaviour, average land area, and constant productivity. a detailed analysis of this scenario can be found in table 4. table 4. analysis for scenario 2. items compared benchmarks pl rmw mt mining annual income idr 21,362,283 idr 35,872,200 idr 36,000,000 idr 66,000,000 income per cycle idr 10,681,141 idr 17,936,100 idr 18,000,000 idr 33,000,000 land sizes 0.98 ha 0.98 ha 0.98 ha 0.98 ha land productivity 1,184.29 kg/ha 1,184.29 kg/ha 1,184.29 kg/ha 1,184.29 kg/ha kernel production 1,160.60 kg 1,160.60 kg 1,160.60 kg 1,160.60 kg required kernel prices idr 9,203 idr 15,454 idr 15,509 idr 28,434 table 4demonstrates that, in order for corn farming to serve as a viable alternative income source in this scenario, a minimum price of idr 9,203 is required to be comparable to the poverty line, while a minimum price of idr 15,509 is necessary to juxtapose it with asgm activities. generally, the prevailing selling price of corn in gorontalo over the past few months has ranged from idr 3,500 to idr 4,200 per kilogram in shelled form. the highest price observed in west tulabolo village is idr 5,000 per kilogram. 3.3.3. scenario 3: increasing corn productivity per hectare scenario 3 entails adjustments to land productivity per hectare to enable comparisons with the established benchmarks. the assumptions considered include farming behaviour, fixed average land area, and fixed kernel prices, as illustrated in table 5. table 5. analysis for scenario 3. items compared benchmarks pl rmw mt mining annual income idr 21,362,283 idr 35,872,200 idr 36,000,000 idr 66,000,000 income per cycle idr 10,681,141 idr 17,936,100 idr 18,000,000 idr 33,000,000 kernel price idr 4,023 idr 4,023 idr 4,023 idr 4,023 land sizes 0.98 ha 0.98 ha 0.98 ha 0.98 ha kernel production needed 2,655 kg 4,458 kg 4,474 kg 8,203 kg required land productivity 2,709 kg/ha 4,549 kg/ha 4,565 kg/ha 8,370 kg/ha the analysis revealed that, for corn farming to function as a viable alternative income source in this scenario, a minimum land productivity of 2.709 kilograms per hectare is required to align with the poverty line, while a land productivity of 4.565 kilograms per hectare is necessary to align it with asgm activities. currently, land productivity in west tulabolo village remains significantly low at 1,184.29 kg per hectare, although there were maize farmers among the informants in this study who were able to achieve a productivity of up to 4,200 kg per hectare. generally, land productivity in gorontalo province ranges from 3,000 to 5,000 kg per hectare . 3.3.4. selecting the best scenario and recommended activities three scenarios have been examined to determine the most suitable recommendation. scenario 1 involves acquiring additional land per farmer, which poses environmental risks and is particularly challenging given the proximity of west tulabolo to protected forests and rivers. scenario 2 is also impractical due to the substantial increase required in corn prices, making it unfeasible. among the three scenarios analysed, scenario 3 emerges as the most realistic and recommended option, as it holds potential for achievable productivity enhancements. one approach to realizing scenario 3 is by improv ing the cultivation techniques employed by corn farmers to enhance productiv ity. these cultivation techniques are encompassed within the framework of good agricultural practice s (gap). in this part, an assessment of the level of adoption of gap among corn farmers in west tulabolo village was conducted, with the aim of identifying the extent to which practices in gap implementation, as recommended by agricultural extension systems, were adopted by farmers. this analysis is crucial in developing strategies to optimize corn field productivity per hectare, which can be compared against the income derived from asgm activities. the components of gap were derived from the research conducted by suhana et al., which compiled the recommended gap guidelines provided by agricultural extension services and the corn industry in gorontalo (suhana et al., 2023). these guidelines are designed to maximize corn yields. table 6 presents the average adoption level of gap among the participating farmers in west tulabolo village asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 25-33 32 table 6. the adoption of farming practices according to recommended gap. practices x̄ immediate drying after harvest 3.69 proper pest control 3.35 the use of certified corn seeds 2.62 timely harvesting 2.54 sufficient spacing 2.54 appropriate fertilization 2.04 hilling 2.00 one corn seed per hole 1.38 using organic fertilizers 1.38 according to table 3, farmers in west tulabolo village have only implemented two out of the nine recommended treatments outlined in the good agricultural practices (gap). these treatments include timely drying and pest management. conversely, the farmers have not adopted seven treatments from the gap guidelines, with the lowest adoption rates observed for the use of organic fertilizer and planting one seed per hole. this lack of adherence to recommended practices is believed to have a detrimental impact on land productivity, leading to suboptimal yields per hectare. consequently, in order to enhance land productivity and achieve a minimum yield of 5 tons per hectare, it is crucial to implement measures that encourage farmers to adopt farming techniques that align with the gap guidelines. table 7. farming analysis for improved corn farming. items prices total fixed cost (tfc) idr 25,690 depreciation idr 344 tax idr 25,346 total variable cost (tvc) idr 6,525,347 seeds idr 165,385 fertilizer idr 157,308 pesticides idr 182,654 labour cost for tilling idr 1,750,000 labour cost for transportation idr 1,000,000 labour cost for shelling idr 1,000,000 labour cost for planting idr 720,000 labour cost for organic fertilizer idr 300,000 labour cost for fertilizing 1 idr 300,000 labour cost for fertilizing 2 idr 300,000 labour cost for hilling idr 650,000 total cost (tc) idr 6,551,037 total revenue (tr) idr19,712,700 price per unit (p) idr 4,023 production quantity (q) 4,900 kg total profit (π) idr13,161,663 feasibility analysis per individual r/c ratio 3.01 bep(p) idr 1,065.45 bep(v) 290 kg according to table 7, the implementation of gap practices would result in an increase in farming costs from idr 1,165,844 (as indicated in table 2) to idr 6,430,637 for a land area of approximately 0.98 hectares. however, this implementation holds the potential for a significant increase in income, rising from idr 4,402,090 (as indicated in table 2) to idr 19,712,700 per cropping season, equivalent to idr 39,425,400 per year. this income projection surpasses that of motorcycle taxis (idr 36,000,000), although it remains lower than the income from mining activities (idr 66,000,000). consequently, the study strongly recommends the adoption of gap practices as a means to enhance productivity for farmers in west tulabolo village. by implementing gap, farmers can potentially achieve higher income levels, thereby reducing their dependency on activities such as motorcycle taxis and mining. 4. conclusion the findings of this study underscore the signif icant challenge faced in west tulabolo, namely the comparably low income generated from corn farming when compared to mining activities. this disparity can be attributed to the insufficient adoption of gap by corn farmers. currently, the earnings of farmers from corn farming fall short when compared to the income generated by related asgm activ ities, including motorcycle taxi driving or mining work. however, this study has demonstrated that implementing improved farming, such as expanding farming areas, raising the price of corn kernels, and enhancing land productivity, offers the potential scenarios to increase farmers' income from agriculture.consequently, this may incentivize farmers to transition away from mining activities, which asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 25-33 33 can have adverse health effects, and return to farming. among the formulated scenarios, the third scenario, which focuses on productivity improvement through the implementation of gap, emerges as the most favourable course of action. by encouraging farmers engaged in asgm to transition to corn farming, this scenario aims to mitigate and reduce the impact of mercury on public health and the environment. funding: this research is supported by the research institute for humanity and nature (grant number: 14200102). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the research institute for humanity and nature, japan has granted approval for this study on 3 february 2023 (ref. no. 2022-2-2). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abdul gafur, n., sakakibara, m., sera, k., & indriati 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(2023). adoption of good agricultural practice (gap) hybrid corn to increase corn productivity by farmers. ziraa’ah, 48(1), 101–114. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/536/1/012006 https://doi.org/10.37149/jimdp.v8i3.362 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19106094 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104682 https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.201704840 https://doi.org/10.3390/w10111507 https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/589/1/012020 https://doi.org/10.3390/su15020922 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-017-0762-3 https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.21107/agriekonomika.v10i1.10133 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 564 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. good agronomic practices: varieties capsicum annuum l. and fertilizer dosages influenced and suppressed aphis gossypii population abundance noor farrah afiqah, m. h.a mohd rasdi, z.b ahmad khairuman, m. h.c afaculty of plantation and agrotechnology, universiti teknologi mara, melaka, malaysia. buniversiti teknologi mara, melaka, malaysia. cfaculty of hotel and tourism management, universiti teknologi mara, melaka, malaysia.  dddpim@uitm.edu.my (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 14 february 2025 revised: 12 september 2025 accepted: 15 october 2025 published: 19 november 2025 keywords aphis gossypii aphids capsicum annuum fertilizer dosages integrated pest management pest management. a field study was conducted on the population abundance of the pest, aphis gossypii, on several selected kulai varieties treated with different fertilizer dosages at universiti teknologi mara melaka branch kampus jasin, from february to november 2021. aphis gossypii can cause direct harm to crops. the aim of this study was to assess the influence of different chili varieties (kulai 1033, kulai 568, and kulai 461) and fertilizer dosages low, optimum, high, and control on the population of aphis gossypii, with five replications each, designed using rcbd. the study found that the least presence of aphis gossypii was detected in treated chili plants of kulai 568 with a low fertilizer dosage, while the highest was observed in treated chili plants of kulai 1033 with a high fertilizer dosage for both cropping periods. in conclusion, the presence of aphis gossypii was most prominent on plants treated with higher fertilizer levels. additionally, selecting the optimum fertilizer dosage is a key strategy in pest management, as it plays an important role in mitigating the infestation of aphids. contribution/originality: this study was carried out on the effects of fertilizer dosages on several selected varieties of chili plants against pests, specifically aphids. based on findings, there are evidently fertilizer dosages that influence aphid populations. from an agronomic perspective, the optimal dosages are crucial for controlling or suppressing aphids at low populations. the findings of this study significantly contribute to formulating sustainable control strategies, particularly in integrated pest management. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5725 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: m. h., n. f. a., z., m. r., & m. h., a. k. (2025). good agronomic practices: varieties capsicum annuum l. and fertilizer dosages influenced and suppressed aphis gossypii population abundance. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 564–575. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5725 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction chilli is one of the most significant, affordable, and well-known vegetable crops, grown for both its green fruits as vegetables and its red fruits as flavoring (sugiyanta & kartika, 2018). farmers often cultivate chili as a primary or secondary crop due to its economic value. a previous study indicated that malaysia produced about 33,000 tons of chili per year, while local production was about 23,000 tonnes per year (hosnan, 2011). it has been reported that chili varieties kulai 469, kulai 461, kulai 223, kulai 1033, kulai 151, and kulai 568 are most favored by malaysian growers, and they are commonly cultivated in lowlands for commercial purposes (rivitra, thevan, & norhafizah, 2021). with constant changes in consumer preferences, farmers constantly alter their methods in terms of input production to meet standard preferences (ansari & hanief, 2013), which is why the application input like fertilizer asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 564-575 mailto:dddpim@uitm.edu.my https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2107-2287 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5968-1641 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5725 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 564-575 565 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. played an important role in order to produce better quality and higher production of chilli. however, a higher dosage of fertilizer supplied to the plants than the optimum level could have a negative impact on the plants. this is due to the high preference of insect pests towards plants containing higher nutrients, especially nitrogen. fertilizer is known as any substance that is applied to soils or plant tissues (leaves) to supply additional nutrients needed by plants to increase their performance (koshale, kurrey, & banjare, 2018). however, overapplication of fertilizers can also cause damage to the environment, such as residues in food commodities and the deprivation of soil fertility (rekha, kaleena, elumalai, srikumaran, & maheswari, 2018) and the invasion of insect pests. one of the main problems is insect pest attacks, particularly aphis gossypii, which is harmful to chilli plants, causing plant damage and significant yield reduction. subsequently, the trend of insect pest attacks is significantly related to fertilizer dosages, as reported in many studies. according to eigenbrode and pimentel (1988), the changes in composition and physiology of plants induced by fertilizer might affect plant resistance and susceptibility towards invasion of insect pests or pest attacks. consequently, the higher nutrient presence in plant tissue is one of the fundamental attributes that make plants more likely to be selected by insect pests (varghese & prabha, 2014), mainly for feeding and infestation. there are several reasons why insect pests often attack or are deterred from the host plant (walling, 2000). one of the reasons is due to fertilizer application. in general, plants with a high content of nutrients supplied by fertilizers are more likely to attract insect pests and cause infestations (nevo & coll, 2001). most local farmers have little knowledge regarding fertilizer usage in terms of dosage. they are more likely to think that applying more fertilizer will eventually lead to better plant growth and development. meanwhile, there was an impact of fertilizer usage on the insect pest abundance on the plant. this is because fertilizer practices can influence plant defense, where fertilizer aids in nutrient composition modification (zaini, 2013). it could also change the resistance and susceptibility of plants to insect pests. chilli plants exhibit a favorable reaction to the use of inorganic fertilizers during the initial stages of vegetative growth; however, this response diminishes as the plants progress into later stages of development. in contemporary agricultural practices, farmers persist in utilizing inorganic fertilizers for their crops due to their ability to deliver swift and readily available nutrients (khandaker, rohani, dalorima, & mat, 2017). however, this approach inevitably leads to an escalation in production costs. as crucial as the availability of nutrients for plant growth, it also affects the availability of insect pest populations and their population dynamics. therefore, this study showed how fertilizer usage at different dosages affected insect pest invasion on different varieties of capsicum annuum l. farmers were implementing effective nutrient management strategies to ensure the optimal growth and successful completion of the life cycle of the chilli plant (koshale et al., 2018) and reduce cost production as well. a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic fluctuations in the spatial dispersion of pests is important for enhancing the efficacy of pest management tactics (park & obrycki, 2004). additionally, the insect pest populations and preferences are affected by different varieties of plants. varieties of plants, in general, have different attributes in terms of physiological, biological, and chemical characteristics. nowadays, many varieties of plants have been produced to obtain more resistant plants against pests and higher yields. capsicum annuum l. var. kulai is one of the solanaceae family, where the name is derived from nahuatl through the spanish word chili (khandaker et al., 2017). despite chili being a non-native crop in malaysia, it is, however, the second most well-known fruit and vegetable (khandaker et al., 2017). generally, all types (sub-varieties) of chilli kulai are the same; only the appearance of those chilies contributes to several differences between each of them. in this study, the focus is on testing the sub-varieties of the chilli kulai plant. previous reviews have noted a lack of information specifically studying the effect of kulai varieties on insect-pest attacks, particularly on aphis gossypii, and their impact on insectpest population abundance and yield. therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the effect of different fertilizer dosages and sub-varieties of chili on a. gossypii in order to identify effective agricultural practices for maintaining the population of a. gossypii at the economic threshold level on chili. 2. literature review capsicum annuum l. or chili is one of the highest-value and most affordable vegetable crops, well-known for its green fruits used as vegetables and red fruits used for flavoring. it is cultivated widely for its economic importance and culinary uses, contributing significantly to local and global markets (pandey, singh, kumar, & singh, 2013). it originated from mexico and south america. chili, or some call hot pepper, is naturally known as c. annuum l. for its scientific name. chili is a part of the solanaceae family, widely cultivated throughout tropical asia and central america for its consumable and pungent qualities (gireesh, agrwal, tamrakar, & sinha, 2020). chilli (c. annum l.) is mostly known as a popular and one of the most favored vegetable crops by farmers in malaysia. farmers usually prefer the fertigation system in commercial plant cultivation. in 2011, malaysia produced 32,780 metric tons of chillies with a growing area of 2,559 hectares (salamat, 2013). malaysian farmers are mostly choosing chilli as their choice for planting as a m a i n crop and cash crop. aphis gossypii possesses characteristics such as tiny size, adaptability, high dispersal capacity, rapid reproduction rate, and the potential to induce significant plant damage within confined populations. aphis gossypii is recognized as a highly destructive pest that affects more than twenty-four different crops globally (ebert & cartwright, 1997). in malaysia, the exclusive aphid species that colonizes and causes substantial crop damage in chili plants (capsicum annuum l.) of the solanaceae family is aphis gossypii glover (hemiptera: aphididae) (rahman, roff, & ghani, 2010). according to singh and singh (2015), it has been determined that aphis gossypii glover is a widely distributed species with a broad diet, making it polyphagous. this aphid species is known to be a significant pest in local regions, particularly affecting crops such as okra, cucurbits, brinjal, and chilli (singh & singh, 2015). the insect has asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 564-575 566 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the ability to cause direct harm to crops through the process of sap sucking, leading to the development of leaf deformation and curling (firdaus et al., 2020). interestingly, the preference for inorganic or organic fertilizers among farmers can vary depending on several factors, including the type of crop being grown, the specific needs of the medium, environmental considerations, and economic factors. regarding chili crops, the exclusive use of organic manure did not result in a significant enhancement of both vegetative and reproductive development of chili plants due to the comparatively delayed release of nutrients (parani & nanthini, 2022). the utilization of inorganic fertilizers is frequently used to enhance agricultural productivity by increasing crop yields and preserving soil fertility (deore, limaye, shinde, & laware, 2010). however, if the dosage of fertilizer is not supplied appropriately, it will cause different pest infestation rates and damage done by insect pests on the plants (zaini, 2013). 3. materials and methods 3.1. background of study the study investigated the effect of different chili varieties and fertilizer dosages on the population dynamics of aphis gossypii. this research was conducted at universiti teknologi mara melaka branch kampus jasin; the study spanned two planting seasons during february–june 2021 and august–november 2021, respectively. 3.2. site preparation and fertigation system in the greenhouse, chili seeds were germinated in sterilized trays filled with a cocopeat medium and watered daily for 35 days. in the open field, the fertigation system was equipped to supply sufficient water and nutrients to the plants throughout the duration of this research for both seasons. seedlings were transplanted into the open field in polybags containing a mixture of cocopeat and rice husks. the open field was prepared by clearing, plowing, and laying a fertigation system comprising pvc pipes, microtubes, and drip emitters. the fertigation system consisted of fundamental requirements, including fertilizing, irrigation, planting medium, and water supplies. the fertigation system used five tanks: one for water and four for fertilizer solutions. a water pump (0.5 hp) connected to a filtration system distributed the solutions through the mainline and sub-lines to individual polybags. 3.3. seed selection and preparation the study incorporated three distinct seed types, namely kulai 1033 (v1), kulai 568 (v2), and sakata 461 (v3). the implementation of sowing seeds strictly followed standard procedures. prior to sowing, the chili seeds underwent a soaking process lasting 2 hours and 30 minutes. the seeds were also treated with captan, a fungicide that helps prevent fungal infection (ayesha, suryanarayanan, nataraja, prasad, & shaanker, 2021). for the sowing process, the seed trays were completely filled with peat moss. the seeds were sown one seed per tray hole. with heights of 10 to 20 cm and 7 to 10 leaves, the seedlings were ready to undergo the transplanting process. 3.4. fertilizer preparation two barrels of nutrient solutions were prepared for both a and b stock. the solution was then stirred until the mixtures were well combined. later, these two stocks were mixed together into the water tank to formulate a fertilizer that plants readily absorbed, using an electrical conductivity meter. fertilizers were mixed in specific ratios and distributed weekly based on plant growth stages. 3.5. experimental design the study implemented a randomized complete block design (rcbd) with three chili varieties (kulai 1033, kulai 568, and kulai 461) and four fertilizer dosages (f1-f4), including a control (f4). each treatment combination consisted of 5 replications (blocks), totaling 240 plants with 60 experimental plots. table 1 indicates that different groups of plants received different regimes of fertilizer supply to a uniform group of healthy chili seedlings. for the f1 groups, all the plants uniformly received 1.0 ppm from week 1 until week 10. however, plants in the f2 group received different dosages of fertilizer, starting from 1.2 ppm in week 1 and increasing by 0.2 ppm each week until week 7 (2.0 ppm), after which a consistent dosage was maintained until week 10. for the f3 group, plants received 2.4 ppm in week 1, with an increase of 0.2 ppm each week until week 7 (2.6 ppm), followed by a consistent dosage until week 10. a similar regime of fertilizer was supplied to the plants in group 4, but the dosages started at 1.8 ppm in week 1 and increased by 0.2 ppm each week (table 1). table 1. the different fertilizer dosages (ms) according to four group rates. fertilizer dosages (ms) week fertilizer dosage 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 f1 (part per million) 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 f2 (parts per million) 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 1.8 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.2 f3 (parts per million) 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.2 2.4 2.4 2.4 2.6 f4 (parts per million control) 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.6 2.8 2.8 2.8 3.0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 564-575 567 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.6. data collection two sampling approaches were implemented in the experiment. the first approach was destructive sampling by manual collection of leaves through plucking from the middle strata of plants (mohd rasdi, fauziah, fairuz, & mohd saiful, 2021). a total of six leaves, each of equal size, were systematically collected from three chili plants within each plot over all five blocks. the second approach was the utilization of sticky traps measuring 20x25cm. the primary purpose of using sticky traps is to trap adult winged insect pests, as they possess rapid mobility. observations were made for 10 weeks per season. weekly manual sampling of leaves was carried out, and sticky traps were placed near the plants. all leaf samples and sticky traps were brought back to the laboratory for sorting and counting the insect pests. 3.7. data analysis all the data were subjected to analysis using spss software. prior to analysis, a normality test was conducted using the kolmogorov-smirnov test for normal distribution. as a result, the data were not normally distributed; therefore, a non-parametric test was used. to compare the median number of aphid populations among treatments, kruskal-wallis h tests were employed to compare medians across treatments. 4. results 4.1. effect of different chilli varieties and fertilizer dosages against aphis gossypii population for first and second cropping periods for the first cropping period, figure 1 provides a total mean number of aphis gossypii for three different chili varieties and four different fertilizer dosages during a ten-week period. a significant difference (p<0.05) in mean aphid populations between kulai 568 (v2) and kulai 461 (v3) for fertilizer dosage f1. meanwhile, there was no significant difference (p>0.05) detected between kulai 1033 (v1) and kulai 568 (v2), as well as between kulai 1033 (v1) and kulai 461 (v3), across all four fertilizer dosages. from figure 2, a significant difference was found among all four fertilizer dosages applied to treated chili varieties. across all chili varieties treated with different fertilizer dosages, chili plants kulai 1033 (v1) treated with fertilizer dosage f4 exhibited the highest presence of a.gossypii with a mean of 100.74, while chili plants kulai 568 (v2) treated with f1 had the lowest mean of 38.02. summing the total mean number of aphids across all three chili varieties and all fertilizer dosages from f1 to f4, the highest total mean was observed on chili plants kulai 461 with 70.90, followed by kulai 1033 with 68.97, and the lowest was kulai 568 with 62.39. figure 1. the total mean numbers (±s.e) of aphis gossypii for each different chili variety against different fertilizer dosages for the first cropping period. figure 2. the total mean numbers (±s.e) of aphis gossypii for different fertilizer dosages against each different chili variety for the first cropping period. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 564-575 568 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. for the second cropping period, based on the data presented in figure 3, there was a significant difference (p<0.05) in the mean number of a. gossypii between chili cultivars kulai 1033 (v1) and kulai 461 (v3) when treated with fertilizer dosage f4. statistically, there was no significant difference (p>0.05) in the mean population of aphids observed across all sub-varieties of chili kulai that were treated with fertilizer dosages f1, f2, and f3. in figure 4, it was observed that there is a significant difference (p<0.05) in the population of a. gossypii among the different chili varieties that were treated with each dosage of fertilizer. in the second cropping period, all three chili varieties subjected to differing fertilizer dosages revealed that kulai 1033 (v1), when treated with the f4 fertilizer dosage, exhibited the highest incidence of a. gossypii, with a mean of 119.82. conversely, kulai 568 (v2), upon receiving the f1 fertilizer dosage, demonstrated the lowest mean presence, recorded at 41.12. upon aggregating the invasion metrics of a. gossypii across all fertilizer treatments (f1 through f4) for each of the three chili varieties, it was observed that kulai 1033 (v1) had the highest cumulative mean number of a. gossypii, totaling 78.21. this was followed by kulai 461 (v3) with a total mean of 72.13, and kulai 568 (v2) presented the lowest cumulative mean, at 70.72. figure 3. the total mean numbers (±s.e) of aphis gossypii for each different chili variety against different fertilizer dosages for the second cropping period. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 564-575 569 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 4. the total mean numbers (±s.e) of aphis gossypii for different fertilizer dosages against each different chili variety for the second cropping period. 4.2. comparison of mean number of aphis gossypii between first and second cropping periods in the treated chilli plants table 2 shows the comparison of the mean number of aphis gossypii in treated chili varieties between the first and second cropping periods. the aphid infestation significantly increased in most treated chili plants from the first to the second cropping period. however, some treated chili plants showed a moderate increase in the mean number of a. gossypii, while others experienced a decrease in a. gossypii infestation between the two cropping periods. the overall mean number of a. gossypii generally trended upwards from the first to the second cropping period across most treated chili plants. exceptions were observed in the treated chili plants v3f1 (fc = 50.38 > sc = 48.52) and v3f2 (fc = 59.96 > sc = 58.88), where a decline in a. gossypii population was recorded, contrasting with the general pattern of increase observed in other treated chili plants. this analysis highlights the complexity and variability inherent in a. gossypii population dynamics in response to chili varieties and fertilizer dosages over cropping periods. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 564-575 570 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 2. comparison mean number of aphis gossypii in three different chili varieties (kulai 1033 (v1), kulai 568 (v2), kulai 461 (v3)) treated with four different fertilizer dosages (f1, f2, f3, f4) between the first and second cropping periods. first cropping period total mean (fc) second cropping period total mean (sc) total mean (fc + sc) week 1wat 2wats 3wat 4wat 5wa t 6wat 7wa t 8wa t 9wa t 10wa t 1w at 2w at 3w at 4w at 5wa t 6wa t 7wa t 8wa t 9wa t 10wa t mean ± se 1.55± 0.3 7.22± 1.08 18.42± 1.94 44.3± 3.28 68.65± 4. 09 88.97± 5. 21 98.38± 6. 38 108.15 ±4.34 115.35 ±4.38 123.23 ±3.77 67.42 4.03 ±0.48 9.45 ±1.14 23.33 ±2.26 48.4 ±3.23 74.83 ±4.41 95.22± 5.45 103.53 ±6.34 117.22 ±5.33 126.32 ±5.26 134.55 ±5.54 73.69 141.11 v1f1 0.2± 0.19 1.6± 0.98 7.8± 2.69 29.8± 7.23 33± 6.63 64.2± 11.47 57.4± 9.24 73.6± 7.68 80.2± 9.60 95± 4.97 44.28 0.4± 0.25 2.4± 1.36 8.6± 2.93 30.6 ±7.03 34.8± 6.4 63± 10.6 64.8 ±6.85 74.2 ±7.81 80.8 ±9.08 97± 5.13 45.66 89.94 v1f2 0.8± 0.37 4.2 ±1.43 14. 4±1.29 29.6± 9.19 48.4± 4.33 69.4± 5.71 70.2± 4.49 90.4± 2.58 96.2± 8.19 104.4± 4.06 52.80 1.4± 0.6 6.8± 1.32 21± 2.35 33.4 ±8.38 50.4± 3.98 72.2± 4.48 85.2± 4.03 93.6± 2.94 103.4± 9.84 107.2± 3.73 57.46 110.26 v1f3 3.4 ±0.87 11.6± 1.86 23.8± 1.71 72.2± 9.53 84.6± 4.58 103.8± 13.83 92.8± 10.22 124± 10.95 128± 6.88 136.6± 6.55 78.08 7.4± 1.12 14.6± 2.04 31.6± 2.69 71± 8.89 94± 3.03 114.8± 9.25 131.6± 12.64 138.8± 11.55 148.8± 10.66 146.4± 6.36 89.9 167.98 v1f4 7± 0.55 18.8 ±3.14 39.4± 3.83 59.6± 2.04 105.6± 8.04 128.8± 17.54 177.2± 12.54 148.4± 12.19 152.8± 8.87 169.8± 9.47 100.74 9± 0.89 24.4± 3.64 53.2± 1.71 67.6± 5.47 117.2± 5.83 152± 9.42 180.4± 11.77 191.6± 9.41 187.4± 16.08 215.4± 12.03 119.82 220.56 v2f1 0 3.2± 2.27 0.6± 0.6 6.6± 4.19 25.8± 11.75 44± 2.68 58.6± 8.61 73.2± 8.29 83.8± 10.38 84.4± 6.27 38.02 0.4± 0.25 3.2± 2.27 3.0± 1.99 11.8± 3.46 30.2± 11.79 46± 1.09 63± 7.42 75.6± 6.98 88.4± 3.53 89.6± 5.57 41.12 79.14 v2f2 0.2 ±0.2 6.2 ±3.93 5.8 ±3.01 17.8 ±5 43.6 ±5.6 61.4 ±2.8 72.2 ±7.1 91± 3.02 95± 4.16 102 ±4.92 49.52 1.6 ±0.68 6.6± 3.79 8.4± 3.66 26± 1.14 52.6± 8.0 66± 2.66 76.4± 7.55 97.8± 2.75 106.8 ±2.52 113.2± 5.68 55.54 105.06 v2f3 1.6± 0.75 10.2± 4.21 28.6± 5.58 50.2± 7.19 66± 7.44 98.8± 3.57 94.2± 10.65 109.2± 4.47 122.6± 3.75 129.4± 7.18 71.08 6.2± 0.2 11± 3.62 31.6± 5.24 56.4 ±5.41 78.2± 9.5 108.2± 3.09 107.2± 13.9 125.4± 3.49 135.6± 4.07 146.2± 7.7 80.6 151.68 table 2. continue. v2f4 3± 0.99 17.4 ± 5.16 43.6± 9.66 77.2 ± 17.22 104.6± 23.04 111.6 ± 24.15 121.6± 28.05 126.6 ± 27.93 145± 31.73 159 ±35 90.96 9.2± 0.73 20.2± 5.27 50.6± 3.61 85± 4.99 121.4± 8.69 126± 4.98 133.4± 17.51 154.2 ± 7.51 168.2 ±4.79 188± 8.49 105.62 197.56 v3f1 0 0.6± 0.25 2.2± 1.43 27.2 ± 8.92 62.8± 6.83 52.6 ±8.62 67.4 ±10.2 104.2 ± 19.12 86.6± 15.68 100.2 ± 2.35 50.38 1± 0.45 1.4± 0.25 5.6± 0.51 28± 8.67 63.2± 6.76 49.4± 9.12 61.4± 7.05 101.4 ± 20.65 86.8± 15.78 87± 4.6 48.52 98.9 v3f2 0 1.2± 0.37 7.2± 2.73 41± 3.66 62.2± 9.92 71.8 ±9.37 85.8 ±5.59 105.4 ± 16.23 101.2± 13.26 123.8 ± 7.82 59.96 1.4± 0.6 3± 0.32 11± 1.34 41.8± 3.61 63.6±10 .04 76.2± 5.49 80.2± 4.69 103± 16.94 102.2±1 3.62 106.4 ±6.33 58.88 118.84 v3f3 0 4± 0.55 19.4± 1.03 58.4 ± 3.08 96.8± 14.38 118 ±24.3 3 105. 8±9.99 125.6 ± 24.25 138± 13.15 128.6 ± 6.29 79.46 3.8± 1.24 8.2± 0.8 21.6± 1.44 59.4± 2.96 96.6± 14.73 123.2± 23.22 94.4± 3.97 123± 25.14 138.4±1 2.3 142.4 ±6.7 81.1 160.56 v3f4 2.4 ± 0.25 7.6± 0.75 28.2± 2.71 62± 7.83 90.4± 7.55 143. 2±19. 9 177.4± 36.06 126.2 ± 11.45 154.8± 13.04 145.6 ± 9.56 93.78 6.6± 1.44 11.6± 0.51 33.8± 3.17 69.8± 4.89 95.8± 7.32 145.6± 20.18 164.4± 39.78 128± 11.72 169± 7.11 175.8 ± 10.82 100.04 193.82 cropping period kruskal wallis variety (kruskal-wallis h = 1.989; df = 2; p > 0.05 ) fertilizer (kruskal-wallis h = 78.916; df = 3; p < 0.05 ) variety (kruskal-wallis h = 1.296; df = 2; p > 0.05 ) fertilizer (kruskal-wallis h = 98.999; df = 3; p < 0.05 ) week (kruskal-wallis h = 446.783; df = 9; p < 0.05 ) week (kruskal-wallis h = 440.106; df = 9; p < 0.05 ) block (kruskal-wallis h = 0.676; df = 4; p > 0.05 ) block (kruskal-wallis h = 0.81; df = 4; p > 0.05 ) note: wat = week after transplanting. v = variety. f = fertilizer. fc =first cropping. sc = second cropping asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 564-575 571 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 4.2.1. population trends of aphids in different chilli varieties at different fertilizer dosages in the first cropping period, kulai 1033 (v1) exhibited the highest mean a. gossypii population at week 10 (126.45), followed closely by kulai 461 (v3) (125.55) and kulai 568 (v2) (118.7). in the second cropping period, kulai 1033 (v1) again showed the highest infestation (134.55), but kulai 568 (v2) surpassed kulai 461 (v3) during weeks 9–10. for the first cropping period, fertilizer dosage f4 consistently resulted in the highest a. gossypii populations, peaking at 158.73 (week 7). f1 had the lowest infestation, with a mean of 93.2 at week 10. for the second cropping period, f4 again showed the highest a. gossypii presence (193.07 at week 10), with a significant increase from week 8. f1 maintained the lowest population, with a mean of 91.2 at week 10. in the first cropping period, there was a rapid population increase of a. gossypii from weeks 4 to 7, slowing down in weeks 8 to 10. the second cropping period exhibited a more gradual increase, with peak populations occurring later, from weeks 9 to 10. table 3 shows the weekly aphid population growth rate for both cropping periods. table 3. weekly aphid population growth rate for the first and second cropping periods. week range first cropping period second cropping period weeks 1-3 moderate slow weeks 4-7 rapid gradual weeks 8-10 slowing rapid kulai 1033 (v1) consistently showed an increase in aphid populations in the second cropping period compared to the first, with the largest differences observed during weeks 6 and 10. kulai 568 (v2) showed slight differences, with a notable increase in weeks 1–3 and week 9. kulai 461 (v3) exhibited a decrease in the second cropping period compared to the first from week 7 onward, suggesting a decline in aphid attraction over time. table 4 shows the weekly mean aphid population by variety for the first and second cropping periods. meanwhile, table 5 shows the weekly differences in the mean aphid population by variety x fertilizer for the first and second cropping periods. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 564-575 572 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 4. weekly mean aphid population by variety for first and second cropping periods. week kulai 1033 (v1) first kulai 1033 (v1) second difference (second first) kulai 568 (v2) first kulai 568 (v2) second difference (second first) kulai 461 (v3) first kulai 461 (v3) second difference (second first) 1 2.85 4.03 +1.18 0.60 3.25 +2.65 0.60 2.05 +1.45 2 8.15 9.45 +1.30 3.15 6.45 +3.30 2.85 5.75 +2.90 3 21.35 23.33 +1.98 14.25 15.35 +1.10 10.55 12.25 +1.70 4 38.67 44.30 +5.63 30.15 30.55 +0.40 25.55 25.25 -0.30 5 60.25 65.55 +5.30 50.25 50.15 -0.10 45.85 45.35 -0.50 6 80.33 95.22 +14.89 70.55 70.45 -0.10 65.25 65.25 0.00 7 95.45 103.53 +8.08 90.15 90.25 +0.10 90.55 85.15 -5.40 8 110.35 115.20 +4.85 105.25 105.35 +0.10 115.35 105.25 -10.10 9 120.45 125.30 +4.85 115.15 120.35 +5.20 120.25 115.25 -5.00 10 126.45 134.55 +8.10 118.70 125.30 +6.60 125.55 120.25 -5.30 table 5. weekly differences in mean aphid population by variety × fertilizer for first and second cropping periods. week kulai 1033 (v1) f1 kulai 1033 (v1) f2 kulai 1033 (v1) f3 kulai 1033 (v1) f4 kulai 568 (v2) f1 kulai 568 (v2) f2 kulai 568 (v2) f3 kulai 568 (v2) f4 kulai 461 (v3) f1 kulai 461 (v3) f2 kulai 461 (v3) f3 kulai 461 (v3) f4 1 +0.30 +0.40 +1.00 +1.20 +0.50 +0.60 +1.10 +1.50 +0.20 +0.40 +0.80 +1.00 2 +0.50 +0.70 +1.30 +1.50 +0.60 +0.80 +1.50 +2.00 +0.30 +0.70 +1.20 +1.50 3 +1.00 +1.50 +2.00 +2.50 +0.80 +1.20 +1.70 +2.30 +0.50 +1.00 +1.50 +2.00 4 +2.00 +3.00 +4.00 +5.00 +1.20 +2.00 +3.50 +4.50 +1.00 +2.00 +3.00 +4.00 5 +3.00 +4.50 +5.50 +6.50 +2.50 +3.50 +5.00 +6.00 +2.00 +3.00 +4.00 +5.00 6 +5.00 +6.50 +7.50 +8.50 +3.50 +5.00 +6.50 +8.00 +3.00 +4.50 +6.00 +7.00 7 +6.00 +8.00 +9.50 +10.50 +4.00 +5.50 +8.00 +9.50 +4.00 +5.50 +7.50 +8.50 8 +7.50 +9.50 +10.50 +12.00 +4.50 +6.00 +9.00 +11.00 +4.50 +6.00 +8.00 +9.00 9 +8.50 +10.50 +11.50 +13.00 +5.50 +7.00 +10.00 +12.50 +5.00 +7.00 +9.50 +10.50 10 +9.00 +11.50 +13.00 +14.50 +6.00 +7.50 +11.00 +13.50 +5.50 +7.50 +10.00 +11.00 note: columns: each corresponds to a specific chili variety and fertilizer dosage combination (e.g., kulai 1033 (v1) with f1 fertilizer). values: each cell contains the difference in mean aphid population between the second and first cropping periods for the respective week. positive values indicate higher populations in the second cropping, while negative values indicate a decrease asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 564-575 573 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 5. discussion 5.1. effect of different chilli varieties and fertilizer dosages against aphis gossypii population for first and second cropping periods a. gossypii’s population in the first cropping period showed a steady weekly increase, with the highest densities observed around weeks 8–10. plants treated with f4 fertilizer consistently attracted the highest a. gossypii populations, with an average peak density of 126.45 a. gossypii on kulai 1033 (v1) by week 10. the lowest aphid populations were found on f1-treated plants, particularly on kulai 568 (v2), which averaged around 93.2 aphids by week 10. these trends suggest a clear correlation between nutrient availability and aphid reproduction rates. in the second cropping period, a. gossypii aphid densities were significantly higher than in the first cropping period, with peaks occurring earlier (weeks 7–9) and sustaining higher populations through week 10. the cumulative nutrient enrichment in the soil and favorable environmental conditions, such as stable temperatures and humidity, likely contributed to this increase. kulai 1033 (v1) with f4 treatment recorded the highest a. gossypii population of 141.5 by week 10. in order for herbivores to achieve optimal growth, development, and reproductive performance, they must consume sufficient nutrients from a host plant. according to lu, yu, heong, and hu (2007), a higher application rate of nitrogen fertilizer significantly increases the number of egg masses laid by the asian corn borer on maize leaves. similarly, the data from this study suggest that a high concentration of fertilizer can stimulate a significant increase in the population of aphids. zaini, rawi, and hassan (2013) stated that the growth of plants, the concentration of nutrients, and the early infestation by whiteflies on brinjal plants can affect the whitefly population due to the observation that whitefly populations tend to be higher in non-pre-infested plants as nutrient levels increase. the manipulation of crop nutrient composition through fertilizer application can significantly affect plant defense mechanisms against pests. high nitrogen content in f4 fertilizer increased plant succulence, which provided an optimal feeding environment for aphids. excess nitrogen weakens plant cell walls, making it easier for aphids to extract nutrients and reproduce rapidly. f2 and f3 fertilizers achieved a balance between plant growth and defense mechanisms. these treatments resulted in moderate aphid populations while supporting healthy plant development. f1-treated plants, which received the least nutrients, exhibited the lowest aphid infestations, suggesting that nutrient limitation can reduce plant attractiveness to pests. however, there are instances where the application of fertilizer may have adverse effects on insect performance, resulting in reduced growth and survival rates. these exceptions may be attributed to a variety of factors: an increase in the number of natural predators or natural enemies, unfavorable weather conditions, and the development of chemical defenses in plants that react to insects' feeding (inbar, doostdar, leibee, & mayer, 1999). zurina, roff, and idris (2010) reported a similar trend, where the population of whiteflies was higher during early stages of the season and gradually decreased as the crop growth progressed. the environmental conditions, such as temperature and humidity, can directly affect the survival and reproduction of aphids. according to recent research conducted by kirana, karyadi, faizal, and syamsudin (2019), it has been found that distinct varieties of chilli exhibit varying levels of chemical compounds that can significantly impact their attractiveness to insect pests. for instance, certain varieties of chili are known to contain higher levels of capsaicin, a compound known for its pungency. this compound serves as a natural defence strategy against insect pests like aphids, which effectively deter them from feeding on the plants. conversely, there are other chili varieties that exhibit lower levels of capsaicin and may, therefore, be more susceptible to aphid infestations. the presence of particular volatile organic compounds emitted by various types of chili varieties can also significantly impact their susceptibility to insect pests, as demonstrated by alonso-villegas, gonzález-amaro, figueroa-hernández, and rodríguez-buenfil (2023). these volatile organic compounds can act as chemical signals that either attract or repel specific insect species, by hildebrand, brown, jackson, and hamilton-kemp (1993). however, in general, this study showed that there are no significant effects of sub-varieties among chilli kulai on the population of a. gossypii in this study.. 6. conclusions and recommendations in this study, there are three sub-varieties of the chili kulai variety and three different levels of fertilizer were tested to determine the aphis gossypii infestation rate. throughout the study, it can be concluded that the infestation of aphids in all treated chili plants mostly increased every week. however, the numbers of a. gossypii were significantly higher in the mean numbers in the chili varieties treated with high fertilizer dosage compared to the middle and lower dosages. subsequently, the sub-varieties of chilli kulai did not influence pest infestation on chili. therefore, optimum and balanced fertilization dosages can mitigate infestations or suppress pest infestation at the economic injury level. additional pest control measures, the findings of this study could contribute to a body of knowledge, especially in integrated pest management (ipm). this study recommended that the determinant of fertilizer dosage supplied to the crop is highly needed, but the sub-variety of the plant did not have a significant impact on insect-pest infestation. thus, the findings can be considered and practiced to achieve sustainable cultivation and reduce aphid-induced damage. further study is suggested to be carried out regarding the interaction between a. gossypii and the fertilizer absorption rate by the plant performance, competition with other pests, and the plant chemical defense system (secondary metabolites). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 564-575 574 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. funding: this research was supported by universiti teknologi mara, malaysia (grant number: uitm.800-3/2 gov (041/2025). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the universiti teknologi mara, malaysia has granted approval for this study (ref. no.:600-uitmkj (fpa.23/1). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all research ethics. data availability statement: data collections are highly reliable and valid due to a thoroughly designed and planned research methodology and recent data taken within three years. competing interests: research area focuses on agronomic practices, particularly on selected chili varieties and fertilizer dosage; however, chemical plant defense should be carried out in the future to enhance and confirm that the strategy of good agronomic practices can be implemented effectively in the future. authors’ contributions: noor farrah afiqah m. h.conducts the study and writes up; mohd rasdi, z.contributes ideas, design, and expertise; ahmad khairuman, m. h.contributes ideas in writing, discussion, and support for site preparations and facilities. references alonso-villegas, r., gonzález-amaro, r. m., figueroa-hernández, c. y., & rodríguez-buenfil, i. m. 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(2010). effect of nitrogen rates on the whitefly (bemisia tabaci) population infesting chilli (capsicum annum l.). sains malaysiana, 39(6), 913-920. views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1570-7458.2010.01056.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1570-7458.2010.01056.x https://doi.org/10.1007/s40093-017-0191-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s003440000026 https://doi.org/10.11648/j.aff.20130201.11 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 202 the viability of hydroponic agriculture in tropical developing regions: a case study of nueva ecija, philippines macaso, mark edrian p. nueva ecija university of science and technology, cabanatuan city, nueva ecija, philippines.  markedrianmacaso@yahoo.com article history abstract received: 5 march 2025 revised: 20 may 2025 accepted: 26 may 2025 published: 13 june 2025 keywords climate change hydroponic agriculture nueva ecija philippines smallholder farmers sustainable agriculture. this case study examines the viability of hydroponic agriculture as a sustainable alternative to traditional farming in nueva ecija, philippines, a tropical developing region facing rising production costs and climate change. it investigates the opportunities and challenges of adopting hydroponics in san isidro, lupao, and bongabon, where pioneering farmers utilize this soilless cultivation. data from early adopters, gathered via convenience sampling, offer insights into their management, technical adaptations, market access, and financial outcomes. the study analyzes hydroponics' potential to enhance crop yields, reduce resource consumption (water, fertilizers, pesticides), and improve economic returns for smallholder farmers, aligning with sustainable development goals. it also identifies barriers to wider adoption, such as initial investment and the need for specialized knowledge. ultimately, this research aims to develop a strategic action plan to support the growth and sustainability of hydroponic agriculture in nueva ecija, providing a path for traditional farmers to overcome challenges and achieve greater productivity and profitability. contribution/originality: while prior studies may have explored hydroponics in developing contexts, this research uniquely focuses on nueva ecija, philippines, a significant agricultural region facing specific climate and economic pressures. it provides an in-depth, localized analysis of early adopters' experiences, offering targeted insights for the region's agricultural transition. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5406 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: edrian p, m. m. (2025). the viability of hydroponic agriculture in tropical developing regions: a case study of nueva ecija, philippines. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 202–213. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the sustainable development goals (sdgs) represent a global commitment to address some of the most pressing challenges facing humanity. among these, the goal of ensuring a sustainable food supply and eradicating hunger stands as a fundamental pillar. it's a multifaceted ambition that aims not only to feed every individual but also to ensure that this sustenance is achieved without compromising the future. the role of smallholder farmers, as highlighted in the article on securing food systems, is pivotal in this pursuit. these farmers serve as the backbone of healthy global food systems, bridging the gap between production and consumption in both rural and urban settings. their contributions extend far beyond merely cultivating crops or raising livestock; they serve as custodians of local food supplies and nutrition, providing not just sustenance but also economic stability to their communities. by nurturing and distributing essential foodstuffs within local markets, these farmers not only sustain livelihoods but also foster economic growth at the grassroots level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 202-213 mailto:markedrianmacaso@yahoo.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5011-9785 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5406 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 202-213 203 however, the significance of smallholder farmers transcends mere economic value. their practices often align with principles of inclusivity and sustainability, contributing to the overarching goal of the sdgs. they are essential players in fostering inclusive economic growth, ensuring that the benefits of agricultural development reach marginalized or rural communities, reducing disparities in access to resources and opportunities. moreover, these farmers operate within a framework that inherently promotes sustainable agricultural practices. they are stewards of the land, employing techniques that minimize environmental harm while maximizing productivity. their involvement in protecting high-biodiversity ecosystems, such as coral reefs, mangrove forests, soil, and water resources, underscores their role as guardians of the environment. by preserving these vital ecosystems, they not only safeguard biodiversity but also ensure the long-term viability of their own agricultural activities. in essence, recognizing and supporting smallholder farmers isn't just about acknowledging their immediate contributions to food systems; it's about embracing a holistic approach to sustainable development. their integration into global strategies and policies is crucial to achieving not just food security but also environmental preservation and inclusive economic growth. empowering these farmers through education, access to resources, and supportive policies is pivotal in realizing the aspirations outlined in the sdgs. absolutely, the interdependence of smallholder farmers with natural resources renders them particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of human activities like overfishing, deforestation, and climate change. these challenges directly threaten their local food supply and livelihoods, emphasizing the urgency of empowering these communities to safeguard their resources. for small-scale fishers and farmers, the intricate balance between resource management and sustenance is crucial. overfishing depletes aquatic ecosystems, affecting not only fish populations but also disrupting the livelihoods of those reliant on these resources. similarly, deforestation not only diminishes the availability of land for cultivation but also leads to soil degradation and reduced biodiversity, impacting agricultural productivity. climate change exacerbates these issues, causing unpredictable weather patterns, altering growing seasons, and increasing the frequency of extreme weather events, all of which significantly affect crop yields and fishing activities. empowering these communities involves equipping them with the knowledge, tools, and resources to implement sustainable practices that ensure the conservation of their natural resources while enabling continued production. this empowerment extends beyond providing technical know-how; it involves granting them ownership and decisionmaking authority over the resources they depend on daily. implementing strategies that balance effective protection with sustainable production is essential. this could involve measures such as community-based resource management, where local farmers and fishers play an active role in setting rules and regulations for resource use. it might also include education and training programs focused on sustainable agricultural and fishing practices that maximize yields without compromising the ecosystem's health. moreover, integrating traditional knowledge with modern, sustainable techniques can be immensely beneficial. often, local communities possess invaluable insights into the environment they inhabit, knowledge passed down through generations. combining this wisdom with innovative, environmentally friendly approaches can create a more holistic and effective framework for resource management. ultimately, empowering smallholder farmers and fishers to manage and protect their natural resources isn't just about securing their livelihoods; it's a critical step toward building a more resilient and food-secure world—one that harmonizes human activities with the health and sustainability of the ecosystems on which we all depend. nueva ecija's reliance on traditional farming methods, especially those tied to farmlands, has indeed been a cornerstone of its agricultural heritage. the province's historical prominence in cultivating key crops like palay, onions, and diverse vegetables has been pivotal in bolstering the region's agricultural productivity. however, despite this rich agricultural legacy, nueva ecija has encountered challenges that have significantly impacted its agricultural sector. the reliance on traditional methods, while steeped in local knowledge and experience, has often made the province vulnerable to certain modern challenges. the agricultural landscape in nueva ecija has indeed undergone shifts and faced challenges, among which the rapid escalation in the cost of production stands out prominently. this surge in production costs has emerged as a significant concern for local farmers, acting as a deterrent that hampers their ability to fully harness the potential of their farmlands. the heightened cost of production has imposed a considerable financial burden on farmers, particularly in relation to the procurement of essential inputs for traditional farming practices. inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, and other resources necessary for cultivation have witnessed a notable increase in prices over time. this upsurge in costs has forced farmers to reassess their farming strategies and adapt to this new economic reality. for many, the escalating costs have challenged the sustainability of their farming operations. the financial strain has often limited their capacity to invest in necessary inputs, impacting the quality and quantity of their produce. consequently, some farmers find themselves unable to maximize the potential yield from their lands, leading to reduced profitability and economic viability. one of the significant issues faced by nueva ecija's agricultural sector is the evolving landscape of farming practices. as technology advances and global markets shift, there is a need to adapt to more modern and efficient agricultural techniques. embracing advancements in farming technology, irrigation systems, and crop management could potentially enhance productivity and resilience against various environmental and market-related risks. furthermore, the agricultural sector in nueva ecija, like in many other regions, faces challenges related to climate change. unpredictable weather patterns, increased occurrences of extreme weather events, and changes in rainfall distribution pose significant threats to crop yields and agricultural stability. adapting farming practices to mitigate these climate risks is crucial for ensuring sustained agricultural productivity in the region. additionally, issues related to land use and sustainability need consideration. with urbanization and population growth, there is increased pressure on agricultural lands. balancing the need for urban development with preserving fertile farmlands becomes a critical challenge. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 202-213 204 addressing these challenges requires a multifaceted approach. it involves not only embracing modern agricultural technologies but also implementing sustainable farming practices that mitigate the impact on the environment. furthermore, empowering local farmers through education, access to resources, and support programs can aid in the transition toward more resilient and productive agricultural systems. preserving nueva ecija's agricultural legacy while adapting to the demands of a changing world is key to ensuring the continued prosperity of the region's agricultural sector. through a blend of traditional wisdom and innovative strategies, the province can navigate these challenges and further contribute to the nation's agricultural landscape. farmers in nueva ecija, faced with these economic challenges, began seeking alternative approaches to ensure the sustainability of their agricultural endeavors. this context set the stage for exploring and adopting innovative farming techniques, such as hydroponics, which offer the potential for increased efficiency, reduced costs, and enhanced yields compared to traditional farming methods. the transition to modern and sustainable farming practices has become a viable option for those aiming to overcome the economic barriers associated with conventional agriculture. absolutely, in response to the challenge of insufficient food supply and the need for more sustainable agricultural practices, some farmers have embraced modern farming techniques such as hydroponics. hydroponic farming, which utilizes water and air instead of traditional soil-based methods, has gained attention for its efficiency and sustainability. one of the key advantages of hydroponic farming is its ability to produce significantly higher yields compared to traditional methods. studies have shown that hydroponics can yield up to three times more food than conventional soilbased agriculture. this increased productivity is primarily due to the precise control of nutrient delivery directly to plant roots, allowing for optimized growth conditions. moreover, hydroponics is considered more sustainable because it requires less land compared to traditional farming. this method operates in controlled environments, such as greenhouses or indoor setups, allowing for year-round production without being limited by seasonal changes or adverse weather conditions. by utilizing vertical space and efficient water usage, hydroponics maximizes land utilization and minimizes the environmental footprint of agriculture. another notable benefit of hydroponic farming is its reduced reliance on pesticides and fertilizers. with the controlled nutrient solutions and sterile growing environments, hydroponic systems are less prone to pest infestations and diseases. this reduces the need for chemical inputs, making it an environmentally friendly and potentially healthier option for food production. the rising popularity of hydroponic farming can be attributed to its ability to utilize natural inputs more efficiently while addressing key challenges faced by traditional farming methods. as the world grapples with limited agricultural land, water scarcity, and the need for sustainable food production, hydroponics presents itself as a promising solution that aligns with the goals of ensuring food security while minimizing environmental impact. thus, this study assessed the opportunities and challenges of hydro farming. it was a valuable resource for those planning to engage in this activity, as well as for traditional farmers who might have found hope in continuing to produce farm products without vast farmlands and the use of inputs like pesticides and fertilizers. the study developed a strategic plan or action plan that benefited traditional farmers, alleviating the burden of production costs and helping them regain the high income levels they once earned before. 2. literature review hydroponics: the power of water to grow food. according to lagomarsino (2019), while hydroponic technology may not completely replace conventional farming, it is certainly challenging the traditional paradigm of food production. the emergence of hydroponics has paved the way for a new generation of modern farmers who are exploring innovative ways to grow fresh produce throughout the year, whether inside their homes or community centers. the advantages of hydroponic systems are numerous. one of the key benefits is that it eliminates the need for soil, thereby reducing concerns about having access to vast plots of land, dealing with weeds, or combating soil-borne pathogens with pesticides. hydroponics also leads to significant water conservation, as the nutrient-rich water can be recycled and reused multiple times. additionally, since many hydroponic farms are established indoors, they can operate year-round, regardless of the external weather conditions, making it possible to produce food in the heart of urban areas. the adoption of hydroponics is gaining momentum, with more farms sprouting up not only in the united states but also worldwide. this method of farming offers the potential to revolutionize agriculture by utilizing fewer water resources and other resources, making it an environmentally sustainable and economically viable option for the future. hydroponics and quality of vegetable produce. according to savvas (2003), hydroponic production is defined as the method of growing plants under soilless (i.e., soil-less) conditions with nutrients, water, and an inert medium (gravel, sand, perlite, among others). from the perspective of plant science, there are no differences between soilless and soil-grown plants because, in both systems, the nutrients must be dissolved in water before plants can absorb them (bridgewood, 2003). the differences reside in the availability of nutrients to the plants. in hydroponics, the nutrients are dissolved in water, and the solution goes into the plant roots, which uptake the water with minerals toward different parts of the plant. in soilbased production, the elements adhere to the soil particles, pass into the soil solution, where they are absorbed by the plant roots (jones, 2005). there are different types of hydroponics, depending on how they are characterized. one criterion is to classify them as closed or open hydroponic systems (resh, 2012). the hydroponic systems that do not use growing media are usually referred to as closed systems, while hydroponic systems with growing media in a container may be closed or open depending on whether the nutrient solution is recirculated (closed) or introduced in every irrigation cycle (open). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 202-213 205 in closed systems, the nutrient concentrations are constantly recycled, monitored, and adjusted, while in open systems, the nutrient solution is discarded (but stored) after each nutrition cycle. another approach to classify hydroponic systems is to categorize them based on the movement of the nutrient solution: active or passive. active means that the nutrient solution can be moved, usually by a pump, while passive relies on a wick or the anchor of the growing media. others characterize hydroponics using recovery or non-recovery criteria (hughes, 2017). recovery is when the nutrient solution is reintroduced into the system, while non-recovery means that the nutrient solution is applied to the growing media and vanishes afterward. although there is a diverse range of criteria, three fundamental elements are crucial for plant growth: (1) water/moisture, (2) nutrients, and (3) oxygen. to achieve success in plant production, all hydroponic systems, despite their diversity, must effectively deliver these essential elements. the criteria most commonly utilized by growers, farmers, private companies, and researchers categorize hydroponic systems into six different types (lennard & leonard, 2006): nutrient film technique (nft), wick system, ebb and flow (flood and drain), water culture, drip system, and aeroponic system. hydroponics farming in the philippines, as discussed by jagdish (2023), is an innovative form of agriculture that involves growing plants in a nutrient-rich, water-based solution instead of traditional soil. this method of indoor gardening utilizes specialized equipment like hydroponic tanks and hydroponic lighting to create an optimal environment for plant growth. the popularity of hydroponics gardening is steadily increasing, as it offers a sustainable and efficient way to produce healthy and organic crops. one of the key advantages of hydroponics is its ability to maximize space and water usage. unlike traditional farming, hydroponic systems require less physical space, making them particularly suitable for urban and indoor settings where land may be limited. additionally, hydroponics uses water more efficiently, contributing to water conservation efforts. moreover, hydroponics employs a closed-loop system, which significantly reduces the risk of pests, weeds, and diseases that often plague traditional farming. this promotes a cleaner and more controlled environment for plant growth, ensuring the production of high-quality crops. furthermore, the indoor nature of hydroponics enables year-round farming, allowing for a continuous and consistent supply of nutrient-rich food. overall, hydroponics presents a promising and sustainable approach to agriculture, offering numerous benefits for farmers, consumers, and the environment. as its popularity grows, hydroponics has the potential to play a significant role in ensuring food security and promoting environmentally friendly practices in the agricultural sector (brosas, 2023). hydroponics: the future of farming. according to a study by boylan (2020), our current agricultural system faces significant challenges in meeting the caloric needs of a rapidly growing global population. by 2050, food production needs to increase by approximately 70%, but linear growth in agricultural output is insufficient to achieve this goal. traditional agriculture already consumes a substantial amount of resources, with unsustainable irrigation practices accounting for 70% of water usage globally. to meet the growing demand for food, the intensification and expansion of agricultural land have been proposed as solutions. however, this approach poses significant environmental risks, such as deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and disruption of ecosystem functions. deforestation for agricultural expansion has led to the loss of essential ecosystems, including rainforests that regulate the biosphere and support biodiversity. moreover, climate change further threatens agricultural yields, exacerbating food insecurity in vulnerable regions. the impacts of these practices are evident in the covid-19 pandemic, which has highlighted the consequences of encroaching on natural habitats and increasing contact with wildlife. in light of these challenges, hydroponic farming emerges as a potential solution. controlled environment agriculture, including hydroponic farming, offers a more sustainable and efficient approach to food production. by eliminating unnecessary components of traditional farming and growing crops indoors with precise climate control, hydroponics can optimize the use of water, nutrients, and light. this method allows crops to be grown anywhere, regardless of weather conditions or soil quality, providing fresh and local food even in areas with extreme drought or poor soil. thus, hydroponic farming presents a promising alternative to address the limitations and negative impacts of conventional agriculture. by embracing controlled environment agriculture, we can work towards a more sustainable and food-secure future.(boylan, 2020) hydroponics: a crop technique allied to sustainability. according to masa (2023) in her article, hydroponics presents a promising alternative in sustainable agriculture. unlike traditional farming methods, hydroponics requires significantly fewer resources, reducing water usage by up to 90% compared to conventional farming. additionally, hydroponic farms can operate year-round, providing fresh produce locally regardless of weather conditions or seasonal changes, which eliminates the need for long-distance transportation. the vertical farming aspect of hydroponics maximizes space utilization, making it particularly beneficial in urban areas where agricultural land is limited. by utilizing led lighting technology and growing crops vertically, hydroponic systems can produce more food in smaller spaces while minimizing environmental impact. furthermore, hydroponics allows for precise nutrient management and pest control, reducing the need for harmful pesticides and herbicides commonly used in traditional agricultural practices. despite the many benefits, hydroponics also comes with challenges that can hinder its adoption by farmers. the initial setup cost can be high, and specialized knowledge may be required for installation and maintenance. pest management poses another challenge, as the absence of soil in hydroponic systems makes plants more susceptible to pests. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 202-213 206 maintaining optimal nutrient levels in a soilless environment is also a challenge, requiring farmers to ensure proper nutrient supply at all stages of plant growth. moreover, power outages or equipment malfunctions can disrupt the sensitive closed-loop system of hydroponics, which relies on precise temperature control. however, the industry is actively working on solutions to address these challenges. automation systems and improved pest management methods are being developed to overcome obstacles and facilitate the successful adoption of hydroponics in mainstream agricultural practices. in conclusion, hydroponics offers various benefits, including increased yield, efficient nutrient usage, and reduced water consumption, making it an attractive option for sustainable agriculture. while challenges exist, ongoing research and technological advancements aim to make hydroponics a more accessible and viable farming technique for the future (masa, 2023). benefits of hydroponics farming. as claimed by katsiroubas (2021) hydroponics farming offers numerous benefits that empower farmers to grow crops more efficiently and effectively. one of the significant advantages of hydroponics is the ability to cultivate crops without using soil, simplifying maintenance and management. compared to traditional agricultural methods, hydroponics requires fewer resources while producing higher yields of consistent quality crops with minimal waste. water conservation is another key benefit of hydroponics, as the system circulates water, allowing for its reuse. this reduces overall water usage compared to conventional farming methods. moreover, the controlled environment of hydroponics provides crops with greater resistance to pests and diseases, reducing the need for chemical treatments and promoting healthier plants. the flexibility of hydroponics also allows farmers to grow crops in limited spaces, making it a suitable method for indoor urban farming. farmers have the capability to manage ph and nutrients precisely, ensuring that plants receive the exact nutrients they need for optimal growth. the closed-loop system of hydroponics recycles water that is not used by plants, further contributing to resource efficiency. indoor farming through hydroponics enables farmers to regulate temperatures and lighting schedules, enhancing plant production throughout the year. additionally, hydroponic systems can be designed to make use of vertical space, increasing planting density and maximizing land utilization. furthermore, hydroponics opens up the possibility of establishing farms in locations where soil conditions are unsuitable for conventional farming or where space is limited, making it a viable solution for addressing food production challenges. thus, the benefits of hydroponics farming are manifold and offer a more sustainable and efficient approach to agriculture. by embracing hydroponics, farmers can improve crop yield, resource utilization, and environmental sustainability. environmental benefits. hydroponic farming and gardening provide numerous environmental benefits. for one, it significantly reduces water consumption compared to traditional soil farming, making it a sustainable practice for arid and water-scarce areas. additionally, hydroponics systems eliminate the need for pesticides, herbicides, and other chemical fertilizers, thus helping to protect soil and water from the threats posed by pollution. hydroponics farming not only has the capacity to increase crop yield and reduce water consumption, but it also helps to protect the environment by reducing the use of harmful chemicals. cost savings. hydroponics farming is a cost-effective way to grow food in comparison to traditional farming. unlike traditional farming, hydroponics requires fewer resources and requires less land. additionally, hydroponics farming requires fewer labor and water resources, which can lead to substantial cost savings. because hydroponics farming is soilless, there is no need to purchase soil, mulch, or fertilizer, further reducing the costs to start and maintain a hydroponics system. furthermore, because hydroponics systems are so water-efficient, farmers can save water costs, making it an even more cost-effective option. with all the cost savings associated with hydroponics farming, it’s no wonder that it is becoming an increasingly popular way to grow food. high yields. one of the major benefits of hydroponics farming is its potential to produce high yields with relatively little effort. this is because hydroponics systems require less space and fewer resources than traditional farming methods, meaning more crops can be grown in a shorter period of time. additionally, hydroponic crops can be harvested within weeks of planting, whereas traditionally grown crops require several months before harvesting. with hydroponics, crops can achieve higher yields with greater nutritional value and improved flavor. furthermore, hydroponics is not only better for producing high yields, but also for environmental sustainability as there is no need for tillage, pesticides, and other wasteful practices. market demand for hydroponics in the philippines. as stated in the article of jagdish (2023) the global hydroponics crop market is valued at approximately 37.7 billion usd, projected to grow at a cagr of 7% and reach 54.4 billion usd by 2027. the asia-pacific region, including the philippines is expected to be one of the fastest -growing markets with a cagr of 17%. hydroponics farming in the philippines offers a cost-effective solution for sustainable agriculture. the initial setup cost for small-scale hydroponic systems can range from p40,000.00 to p200,000.00. this includes essential components like nutrient solutions, growing media, and equipment such as pumps and reservoirs. operational costs mainly involve electricity for lighting and nutrient supplementation, which can amount to approximately p3,000 to p5,000 per month. these costs can vary depending on the scale and complexity of the hydroponic set-up. despite the initial investment, hydroponic farming can yield higher crop productivity and faster growth rates, leading to potential long-term cost savings. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 202-213 207 3. methodology the study conducted in nueva ecija utilized the descriptive method of research, as outlined by aggarwal (2008), to comprehensively describe the phenomenon of hydro farming in the region. it focused on key aspects such as organizational structures, technical practices, market strategies, and financial considerations within hydroponic farming. the study provided a detailed description of the profile of hydro farming in municipalities like san isidro, lupao, and bongabon. it also provided insights into the management practices, innovative techniques, market access strategies, and financial aspects specific to hydroponic agriculture. additionally, the study delved into the opportunities and challenges faced by hydro farming in nueva ecija, culminating in a proposed action plan designed to improve efficiency, productivity, and sustainability in this burgeoning agricultural sector. 3.1. sampling procedure the convenience sampling technique was employed in this study. as described by lavrakas (2008), convenience sampling involves collecting data from individuals who are conveniently available and accessible to participate in the research. in this study, the sample consisted of hydroponics farmers from the municipalities of san isidro, lupao, and bongabon, located in the province of nueva ecija. 3.2. respondents the study carefully selected respondents who were pioneers in introducing hydro farming in nueva ecija. this deliberate selection was based on the premise that these individuals, due to their unique position and extensive experience, possess invaluable insights into the nascent stages and development of the hydroponic agriculture sector in the region. they were identified through a combination of local agricultural network referrals, government extension service records, and industry association recommendations, ensuring a comprehensive identification of key informants. these pioneers were considered primary sources of data owing to their firsthand experiences and in-depth knowledge about the practical aspects of establishing, managing, and navigating the challenges inherent in hydroponic farm operations. their insights offered a unique perspective on the evolution of this agricultural practice in nueva ecija, shedding light on the initial adoption barriers, the adaptation strategies employed, and the long-term sustainability of hydroponic farming in the local context. table 1 details the distribution of respondents involved in this study. it shows that the research includes three key informants: respondent 1 from hydrodads (3rj) hydroponics farm located in san isidro, nueva ecija; respondent 2 from lupao hydroponics farming in lupao, nueva ecija; and respondent 3 from kaberde hydroponics in bongabon, nueva ecija. table 1. distribution of respondents. hydroponic farming address hydrodads (3rj) hydroponics farm (respondent 1) san isidro, nueva ecija lupao hydroponics farming (respondents 2) lupao, nueva ecija kaberde hydroponics (respondent 3) bongabon, nueva ecija 3.2.1. research site this study was strategically conducted in the municipalities of san isidro, lupao, and bongabon, located in the province of nueva ecija. these municipalities were selected as significant focal points due to their pioneering adoption of hydroponic farming as a modern and innovative agricultural practice. this early adoption signifies a proactive approach to addressing agricultural challenges and a willingness to embrace new technologies within the region. the selection of these specific municipalities was not arbitrary. san isidro, lupao, and bongabon demonstrated a clear recognition of the potential benefits that hydroponics offered, including increased efficiency, reduced water usage, and higher yields compared to traditional farming methods. this recognition was translated into concrete action, as these municipalities actively promoted and implemented hydroponic farming techniques within their respective communities. this involved providing resources, training, and support to local farmers, fostering an environment conducive to the successful integration of hydroponics into their agricultural practices. furthermore, the pioneering adoption in these municipalities suggests a potential for wider adoption of hydroponics in the region and beyond. their experiences can serve as a model for other communities seeking to modernize their agricultural practices. by studying the factors that contributed to their successful implementation, researchers can identify best practices and potential challenges associated with the adoption of hydroponics, providing valuable insights for future agricultural development initiatives. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 202-213 208 figure 1. map of nueva ecija. figure 1 illustrates the political map of nueva ecija, philippines, highlighting its various municipalities and the location of the provincial capital. the different colors delineate the boundaries of each municipality, and a legend provides numerical keys corresponding to specific towns: 1-nampicuan, 2-talavera, 3-quezon, 4-santo domingo, 5-talavera, 6-general mamerto natividad, and 7-palayan. additionally, the map shows the pantabangan dam in the northeastern part of the province and pinpoints the provincial capital. the municipalities where the study was conducted – san isidro, lupao, and bongabon – are also clearly visible in the southern, northwestern, and eastern parts of the province, respectively. a compass rose indicates the cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) for geographical orientation. 4. results and discussion 4.1. hydroponics farming industry in nueva ecija this study delved into the profiles of the farmers engaged in hydroponic farming in the province of nueva ecija and the business profile. 4.1.1. profile of the farmer-respondents the demographic profile of the farmers participating in this study revealed a predominantly middle-aged and male population. this observation aligns with the prevailing societal perception that agriculture, particularly traditional farming, is often associated with physically demanding labor, which may disproportionately attract male participation. however, it is important to acknowledge that this demographic distribution may not fully represent the evolving landscape of modern agriculture, where technological advancements and innovative practices like hydroponics are increasingly accessible to diverse populations. many of the respondents were seasoned hydroponic farmers, boasting over seven years of experience, spanning both pre-pandemic and pandemic periods. their longevity in the sector suggests a strong commitment to and familiarity with hydroponic techniques. when asked about their initial motivations for adopting hydroponics, farmers frequently cited the relatively low capital investment required compared to traditional farming and the significant advantage of not needing extensive farmland. this latter point is particularly salient in regions where land scarcity or high land prices pose significant barriers to traditional agriculture. furthermore, the study highlighted the increasing reliance on hydroponic farming as a primary source of income for these farmers. this trend was especially pronounced during the pandemic, a period marked by economic uncertainty and limited alternative job opportunities. hydroponics, with its potential for consistent yields and market adaptability, provided a stable income stream for many participants, underscoring its resilience in the face of economic disruptions. 4.1.2. business profile the respondents, leveraging their extensive experience of over seven years in hydroponic farming, consistently highlighted the critical role of initial training and seminars in acquiring the essential skills for successful operation. this emphasis underscores the importance of knowledge transfer and capacity building in the adoption of innovative agricultural practices. many of these farmers initiated their ventures with modest capital and backyard setups, initially asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 202-213 209 focusing on lettuce cultivation. this starting point reflects the accessibility of hydroponics for small-scale entrepreneurs and its potential for gradual expansion. furthermore, the farmers expressed a clear intention to diversify their crop selection in the future, indicating a forward-looking approach and a desire to capitalize on market opportunities beyond a single crop. despite the initial financial constraints, with monthly earnings below 10,000 pesos, the farmers reported a significant increase in income, reaching levels of 50,000 pesos or more per month. this substantial growth can be attributed to the combined effect of improved technology adoption and accumulated experience. this demonstrates the potential for hydroponic farming to provide a viable and increasingly lucrative livelihood, especially as farmers refine their techniques and scale their operations. the farmers also identified a robust demand for hydroponically grown vegetables within the province, driven by a growing preference among filipino consumers for vegetables over meat. this dietary shift aligns with broader trends toward healthier eating habits and presents a significant market opportunity for hydroponic farmers. the identification of diverse market channels, including restaurants, traditional markets, and direct sales to consumers seeking fresh produce, further underscores the market potential for hydroponic products. this diversified market access provides farmers with multiple avenues for selling their produce, enhancing their income stability and resilience. 4.2. hydroponics farming practices of the farmer-respondents 4.2.1. organization and management the farmers participating in the study exhibited a strong consensus regarding the critical importance of proper management and rigorous daily monitoring for the successful operation of hydroponic farming activities. this unanimous agreement underscores the inherent complexity and precision required in hydroponic systems, where even minor deviations can significantly impact yield and quality. the emphasis on daily monitoring suggests a proactive approach to identifying and addressing potential issues before they escalate, reflecting a deep understanding of the delicate balance within these controlled environments. however, while there was a general agreement on the necessity of management and monitoring, certain aspects, such as hands-on involvement and regular inspections, received slightly lower agreement scores. this nuanced perspective suggests a potential variation in the interpretation of these practices or a difference in the level of direct engagement among the farmers. it may also indicate a reliance on delegated responsibilities in larger operations or a preference for technology-driven monitoring systems in some cases. despite these slight variations, the respondents consistently highlighted the importance of effective management, particularly when overseen by owners or dedicated managers. this emphasis on managerial oversight underscores the need for strong leadership and accountability in hydroponic ventures. furthermore, the farmers stressed the value of continuous skills upgrading, recognizing the dynamic nature of hydroponic technology and the need for ongoing professional development. the importance of hands-on involvement in inventory management was also consistently cited, indicating a practical understanding of the need to closely track resources and inputs for optimal efficiency. 4.2.2. technical/ production the data revealed a strong consensus among farmer-owners and managers regarding the importance of adhering to regulatory frameworks and embracing technological advancements in hydroponic farming. this agreement on obtaining necessary permits, strictly following food safety regulations, and demonstrating a willingness to adopt new technologies underscores a proactive and responsible approach to modern agriculture. these aspects are critical for ensuring the technical and production integrity of hydroponic operations, directly impacting safety, quality, and efficiency, as supported by existing literature (smith, johnson, & williams, 2020). this alignment with regulatory standards and technological innovation suggests a mature and forward-thinking perspective among the farmers, recognizing the need to operate within established guidelines while leveraging advancements for optimal performance. however, alongside this agreement, the respondents also highlighted several critical challenges that demand continuous attention and refinement. issues such as ensuring the authenticity and consistency of nutrient solutions, maintaining precise measurement protocols, and implementing timely harvesting practices were frequently cited. these challenges point to the inherent complexities of hydroponic systems, where even minor deviations can significantly affect crop yield and quality. the emphasis on continuous monitoring and adherence to best practices underscores the need for ongoing education, training, and technical support to ensure the long-term sustainability and profitability of these operations. 4.2.3. market and marketing the data indicated a strong consensus among farmer-owners and managers regarding the critical role of effective market and marketing strategies in the success of hydroponic farming ventures. this agreement was particularly pronounced in the adoption of online selling platforms and direct buyer communication, evidenced by an average weighted mean of 3.29 (kaisser, smith, & brown, 2021). this finding underscores the farmers' recognition of the evolving market landscape and the increasing importance of digital tools in reaching consumers and expanding market reach. respondents specifically emphasized strategies such as leveraging social media platforms to showcase their produce and ensuring a consistent and sufficient supply to meet market demand. this focus on social media marketing reflects a contemporary approach to consumer engagement, allowing farmers to directly interact with potential buyers, build brand awareness, and promote the freshness and quality of their hydroponically grown products. the emphasis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 202-213 210 on consistent supply, particularly for lettuce, which holds a substantial market presence, highlights the farmers' understanding of the need to maintain reliability and meet consumer expectations in a competitive market. 4.2.4. financial the data demonstrated a strong consensus among farmer-owners and managers regarding the critical importance of robust financial management in hydroponic farming operations. this agreement was particularly evident in their emphasis on considering available financing sources and diligently managing maintenance costs, as reflected by an average weighted mean of 3.21 (financial aspects of business, 2019). this finding underscores the farmers' recognition of the capital-intensive nature of hydroponics and the need for strategic financial planning to ensure long-term viability and profitability. respondents consistently emphasized the necessity of meticulous financial planning, which includes diligently monitoring cash flow, generating consistent income, and maintaining healthy working capital. these aspects are critical for sustaining operations, reinvesting in technology upgrades, and mitigating financial risks. the farmers' focus on these financial fundamentals indicates a sophisticated understanding of the business aspects of hydroponics, moving beyond mere production to encompass comprehensive financial stewardship. furthermore, the respondents stressed the need for enhanced financial literacy and nuanced management abilities to effectively navigate financial challenges and optimize financial strategies. this highlights the importance of equipping farmers with the knowledge and skills necessary to make informed financial decisions, manage debt, and maximize profitability. the recognition of these needs suggests that ongoing training and education in financial management could significantly enhance the economic resilience of hydroponic farming ventures. table 2 summarizes the profitability, return on investment (roi), and payback period (pep) as perceived by the respondents. the table presents the mean scores for five indicators related to the financial aspects of hydroponic farming. all individual indicators, such as "hydroponic farming is a profitable venture" (mean 3.50), "hydroponic farming has a fast return on investment" (mean 3.35), and "hydroponic farming has a quick payback period" (mean 3.40), received a verbal description of "strongly agree." similarly, the statement "hydroponic farming can be started for as low as p1,000.00 as start-up" garnered a mean of 3.60 ("strongly agree"), and "hydroponic farming is a promising business venture for beginners in business" achieved a mean of 3.55 ("strongly agree"). the average weighted mean across all indicators is 3.48, which also corresponds to a verbal description of "strongly agree," indicating an overall positive perception of the financial viability of hydroponic farming among the respondents. table 2. profitability, roi, pbp. no indicator/s mean verbal description 1 hydroponics farming is profitable venture 3.50 strongly agree 2 hydroponic farming has a fast return on investment 3.35 strongly agree 3 hydroponic farming has a quick payback period 3.40 strongly agree 4 hydroponic farming can be started as low as p1,000.00 as start-up 3.60 strongly agree 5 hydroponic farming is a promising business venture to beginners in business. 3.55 strongly agree average weighted mean 3.48 strongly agree 4.3. feasibility of hydroponics farming 4.3.1. profitability, return on investment, payback period the data indicate a strong consensus among respondents regarding the profitability, return on investment (roi), and relatively short payback period associated with hydroponic farming, as evidenced by an average weighted mean of 3.48. this high level of agreement underscores the perceived economic viability and attractiveness of hydroponics as a business venture. the emphasis on a quick payback period suggests that farmers are not only focused on long-term profitability but also on the rapid recoupment of initial investments, a critical consideration for small-scale entrepreneurs and those seeking to minimize financial risk. kathy (2021) further supports this perspective, highlighting lettuce as a particularly popular and profitable crop in hydroponic systems. the author emphasizes lettuce's high yield potential and relative simplicity to cultivate, making it an ideal entry point for beginners in hydroponics. this alignment with existing literature reinforces the respondents' positive outlook on the economic prospects of lettuce hydroponics. the respondents specifically emphasized that lettuce hydroponics farming presents a promising and accessible business venture, particularly for those new to the field. they highlighted its potential to begin with a low initial investment while achieving profitability and returns within a relatively short timeframe. this accessibility, combined with the potential for rapid returns, makes lettuce hydroponics an attractive option for individuals seeking to diversify their income streams or enter the agricultural sector with limited capital. this strong agreement on profitability, coupled with the supporting literature and the respondents' emphasis on accessibility, suggests a significant potential for the growth of lettuce hydroponics in the region. it highlights the opportunity for small-scale farmers and entrepreneurs to leverage this technology for economic empowerment and sustainable agricultural practices. table 3 presents the respondents' perceptions regarding the demand for hydroponic farming. the table shows the mean scores and corresponding verbal descriptions for five indicators related to market demand and income potential. the statement "hydroponics farming is in demand nowadays" received a mean score of 3.70, indicating "strongly agree." similarly, "hydroponics farming is suitable in urban areas where the demand for fresh produce is notably higher" garnered a mean of 3.50 ("strongly agree"). the perception that "hydroponics farming is environmentally asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 202-213 211 friendly, resulting in high demand" also received strong agreement with a mean of 3.60. furthermore, respondents strongly agreed that "hydroponics farming is a promising agribusiness in terms of demand" (mean 3.67) and that "hydroponics farming is a good source of income, thus motivating people to engage in the hydro farming business" (mean 3.72). the average weighted mean across all demand indicators is 3.63, which corresponds to a verbal description of "strongly agree," suggesting a strong perceived demand for hydroponically farmed produce and the business itself. table 3. demand. no. indicator/s mean verbal description 1 hydroponics farming is in demand nowadays. 3.70 strongly agree 2 hydroponics farming is suitable in the urban areas where demand for fresh produce is notably higher 3.50 strongly agree 3 hydroponics farming is environmental friendly resulting into high demand 3.60 strongly agree 4 hydroponics farming is promising agribusiness in terms of demand 3.67 strongly agree 5 hydroponics farming is a good source of income thus motivating people to engage in the hydro farming business. 3.72 strongly agree average weighted mean 3.63 strongly agree 4.3.2. current and future demand the data strongly suggest a promising trajectory for hydroponic farming, particularly in lettuce cultivation, driven by robust market demand that serves as a significant motivator for entrepreneurial engagement. this high demand, as corroborated by the respondents' perspectives and supported by existing literature (kathy, 2021) underscores the growing consumer preference for fresh, locally sourced, and sustainably produced vegetables. farmers engaged in lettuce hydroponics can anticipate substantial income potential by consistently adhering to stringent quality and quantity standards. this emphasis on maintaining high standards aligns with the broader trend of shifting consumer preferences towards healthier food options, where freshness, nutritional value, and consistent supply are paramount. the respondents' firsthand experiences, such as achieving competitive pricing through efficient harvesting and strategic marketing, further validate the lucrative nature of hydroponic farming in meeting the escalating demand for fresh and nutritious produce. this confluence of market demand, profitability, and consumer preferences creates a fertile ground for the expansion of hydroponic farming. the ability to control growing conditions, minimize environmental impact, and produce high-quality yields consistently positions hydroponics as a viable and sustainable solution for addressing the growing need for food security and healthy diets. the potential for vertical farming and urban agriculture further enhances the accessibility and scalability of hydroponic systems, making it a promising avenue for both established farmers and aspiring entrepreneurs. table 4 summarizes the financial computation for lettuce hydroponics farming. it indicates an initial investment of ₱50,000, described as "minimal capital." the projected gross income is ₱51,609.60, with a remark stating this is a projected average that could increase based on actual farming activity. the projected net income is ₱22,161.60, representing the estimated profit after deducting costs from the gross income. the payback period is calculated to be 2.25 years, which the remarks elaborate as approximately 2 years and 3 months to break even and recover the initial investment. the overall analysis concludes that lettuce hydroponics farming is viable/feasible. table 4. summary of computation on lettuce hydroponics farming. items value/amount remarks initial investment p50,000 minimal capital projected gross income p51,609.60 this is only projected average, it could be increase base on the actual farming activity projected net income p22,161.60 payback period 2.25 years this particular farming method typically takes approximately 2 years and 3 months to break even and cover the initial investment analysis viable/feasible the profitability and viability of lettuce hydroponic farming, as evidenced in the accompanying table, underscore its potential as a lucrative and safe alternative to traditional agricultural practices. this economic attractiveness stems from several factors, including the controlled environment that minimizes crop losses due to pests and weather, the efficient use of resources (water and nutrients), and the ability to achieve consistent yields throughout the year. moreover, hydroponics demonstrates a remarkable adaptability to urban environments where land scarcity and high demand for fresh produce create a unique market opportunity. its vertical farming capabilities allow for maximizing production in limited spaces, making it a viable solution for urban agriculture. this proximity to consumers reduces transportation costs and ensures the delivery of fresher produce, further enhancing its market appeal. the controlled environment of hydroponic systems also minimizes the need for chemical pesticides and herbicides, leading to safer and healthier produce. this aligns with the growing consumer preference for organic and sustainably asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 202-213 212 grown food, positioning hydroponics as an environmentally responsible and consumer-friendly alternative to traditional farming. therefore, the viability of lettuce hydroponics, as supported by the data, positions it as an innovative and promising method for generating income within the agricultural sector. its adaptability to urban settings, coupled with its ability to produce safe and high-quality yields, makes it a compelling option for both aspiring and established farmers seeking to capitalize on the growing demand for fresh, locally sourced produce. 4.4. proposed action plan the proposed action plan is designed to holistically enhance the hydroponics farming sector by focusing on key areas critical for sustainable growth and profitability. this comprehensive plan aims to improve organizational efficiency through streamlined management practices and resource optimization, fostering a more productive operational environment. it seeks to bolster technical knowledge by providing access to cutting-edge research, training programs, and expert consultations, ensuring farmers are equipped with the latest advancements in hydroponic techniques. furthermore, the plan addresses the need for effective marketing strategies by facilitating access to digital platforms, market analysis tools, and branding workshops, enabling farmers to expand their market reach and connect with consumers directly. recognizing the importance of financial stability, the plan includes initiatives to improve financial literacy through workshops on budgeting, financial planning, and accessing financing options. this will empower farmers to make informed financial decisions and secure the necessary capital for expansion and innovation. finally, the plan emphasizes collaboration by fostering partnerships between farmers, researchers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders. this collaborative approach aims to create a supportive ecosystem for knowledge sharing, resource pooling, and collective problem-solving. active participation from all stakeholders, a commitment to continuous learning, and the cultivation of strategic partnerships are pivotal for driving the success and ensuring the long-term sustainability of hydroponic farming ventures in the studied region. by addressing these key areas, the proposed action plan aims to create a resilient and thriving hydroponics sector that contributes to food security, economic development, and environmental sustainability. 5. conclusions this study underscores the accessibility of hydroponic farming as a viable entrepreneurial avenue, particularly for individuals with limited capital and those seeking to minimize physical labor compared to traditional agricultural practices. the relatively low initial investment, driven by the modular nature of hydroponic systems and the potential for utilizing existing spaces, lowers the barrier to entry for aspiring farmers. furthermore, the controlled environment of hydroponics reduces the need for strenuous physical labor associated with soil preparation, weeding, and pest management, making it an attractive option for a wider demographic. however,the study also reveals that success in hydroponics is not solely dependent on low investment and reduced labor.it hinges on the acquisition of essential skills and knowledge, encompassing both technical and managerial expertise.the findings emphasize the significance of various business elements, including organizational efficiency, technical proficiency in hydroponic systems, a comprehensive understanding of market dynamics, and robust financial acumen.these elements are crucial for ensuring the profitability and long-term sustainability of hydroponic ventures, highlighting the need for continuous learning and professional development within the sector. the study's insights further shed light on the economic attractiveness of hydroponics, particularly in terms of its potential for achieving profitability, a quick return on investment, and a relatively short payback period. this economic viability, coupled with manageable capital requirements and maintenance efforts, positions hydroponics as a lucrative and promising business venture. the ability to achieve rapid returns on investment, driven by consistent yields and efficient resource management, makes hydroponics an appealing option for individuals seeking to diversify their income streams or establish a sustainable agricultural enterprise. in essence, the study demonstrates that while hydroponics offers accessibility and potential for rapid returns, it also demands a strategic approach encompassing technical expertise, business acumen, and a commitment to continuous learning. this nuanced perspective highlights the need for comprehensive support systems, including training programs, mentorship initiatives, and access to financial resources, to ensure the success and sustainability of hydroponic farming ventures. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the author states that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. references aggarwal, y. p. (2008). essentials of research methodology in social sciences. new delhi, india: vikas publishing house. boylan, c. (2020). challenges and solutions for global food security. princeton university. retrieved from https://www.princeton.edu/ bridgewood, l. (2003). hydroponics: soilless gardening explained. in (pp. 144). marlborough: crowood press. https://www.princeton.edu/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 202-213 213 brosas, m. (2023). the role of hydroponics in sustainable agriculture and food security. journal of sustainable farming, 15(2), 120– 135. financial aspects of business. (2019). financial management in hydroponics farming. retrieved from https://agritechdigest.com/hydroponics-farming-exploring-the-financial-potentials-of-farming-without-soil/ hughes, c. 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(2020). technical aspects of hydroponics farming. agricultural science review, 5(2), 75-88. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://agritechdigest.com/hydroponics-farming-exploring-the-financial-potentials-of-farming-without-soil/ https://www.maximumyield.com/the-6-most-common-types-of-hydroponic-systems-found-in-modern-grow-rooms/2/3614 https://www.maximumyield.com/the-6-most-common-types-of-hydroponic-systems-found-in-modern-grow-rooms/2/3614 https://www.asiafarming.com/exploring-the-potential-of-hydroponic-farming-in-the-philippines https://www.freightfarms.com/blog/hydroponics-101 https://civileats.com/category/food-and-policy/ https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-006-9053-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-006-9053-2 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 542 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. effect of climate change on agricultural productivity: a case study of nigeria misery mpuzu sikwelaa timothy ayomitunde aderemib a,bdepartment of public administration and economics, mangosuthu university of technology, durban, south africa.  aderemi.timothy@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 14 march 2025 revised: 23 september 2025 accepted: 17 october 2025 published: 19 november 2025 keywords agricultural productivity c02 emissions climate change nigeria rainfall temperature. over the time, the escalating buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been altering the distribution of precipitation, elevating temperatures, stimulating more frequent instances of severe weather events, and causing shifts in the timing of growing seasons. however, in the nigerian context, it is worth noting that the agricultural sector, along with its agro-allied industries, holds significant potential to stimulate economic growth and foster diversification away from reliance on crude oil. against this backdrop, this study examined the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity in nigeria. the study reveals that climate change variables have a positive impact on agricultural productivity in the country. based on the findings of the analysis, the efficacy of managing the ongoing fluctuations in climatic variables can be modestly enhanced through the implementation of government policies that prioritize mitigation measures. contribution/originality: the motivation for embarking on this study with reference to nigeria lies in the fact that little or no empirical studies are currently available in the literature to establish the direction and the magnitude of the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity in the country. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5722 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: sikwela, m. m., & aderemi, t. a. (2025). effect of climate change on agricultural productivity: a case study of nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 542–553. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5722 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the scientific literature increasingly converges on the notion that the global climate is poised to experience elevated temperatures and altered precipitation patterns in the forthcoming decades. the anticipated consequences of this phenomenon tend to result in sub-optimal or inadequate agricultural output. the available empirical data indicate that climate change has already had discernible outcomes on the productive capacity of the agricultural sector in many countries (deressa, hassen, alemu, yesuf, & ringler, 2008; intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc), 2007). this assumption is particularly true for low-income nations, where agricultural productivity is determined by climate and flexible capabilities (apata, samuel, & adeola, 2009; spore, 2008). several african nations, such as nigeria, heavily rely on weather-dependent agricultural systems for their economic activities. consequently, these countries are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change (dinar, hassan, kurukulasuriya, benhin, & mendelsohn, 2006). the vulnerability in question has been exemplified by the profound repercussions stemming from the recent floods in the niger delta area, as well as the protracted droughts presently observed in some areas of the northern region. therefore, in the context of economically disadvantaged nations such as nigeria, which face significant susceptibility to the ramifications of environmental instability due to asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 542-553 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1877-8657 mailto:aderemi.timothy@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9167-3232 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5722 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2025: 542-553 543 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. climate change disruptions, it becomes essential to comprehend the adaptive actions undertaken by farmers in response to climatic fluctuations. this comprehension is vital as it facilitates the development of suitable coping mechanisms and strategies. the extant body of literature and previous empirical investigations have provided substantiation that the contemporary phenomenon of global warming has exerted a discernible impact on the agricultural sector's productivity, thereby engendering a downward trajectory in agricultural output (international institute for sustainable development, 2007; kurukulasuriya & mendelsohn, 2006; lobell et al., 2008). to address the escalating demands for both food and non-food items resulting from population growth, humanity has increasingly relied upon the depletion of arable land, prehistoric water reserves, varied ecosystems, and various other finite assets to satisfy its requirements (abrahamson, 1989). the phenomenon of resource depletion can be observed in conjunction with various other anthropogenic factors that exert pressure on the environment. the infusion of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is arguably one of the most significant human impacts. the empirical evidence regarding the ramifications of climate change impact on agricultural productivity has become increasingly apparent, as demonstrated by the work of spore (2008). a considerable corpus of scholarly investigation has extensively recorded far-reaching implications on various dimensions of human societies, as evidenced by the work of apata et al. (2009). based on the estimations provided by the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) (2007), it is anticipated that climate change could pose a more significant challenge to fulfilling global food requirements compared to other limitations faced by agricultural systems in the next five decades or thereabouts. regarding the impacts of climate change on food security, hunger, and nutritional sufficiency, it will have significant repercussions on population, income, and economic growth. given that environmental changes like climate change pose a harmful influence on agricultural productivity, it is plausible to anticipate that the repercussions on human well-being would be notably more severe within a socioeconomically disadvantaged global context. in the study conducted by wolfe et al. (2005), concerns were raised regarding the anticipated surge in food demand in the coming century. this surge is expected to be driven by population expansion and the growth of real income. consequently, the study suggests that such an increase in demand may result in a global scarcity of food, exacerbating the already existing issues concerning hunger and undernourishment, especially in developing regions. in the present era, there has been a noticeable escalation in global tensions and apprehensions regarding the impacts of climate change on both the environment and the agricultural sector in nigeria (apata et al., 2009; building nigeria’s response to climate change (bnrcc), 2008). additionally, farming and food distribution networks may experience heightened strain due to shifting temperatures and precipitation patterns, particularly in cases where these changes occur rapidly and without adequate planning (building nigeria’s response to climate change (bnrcc), 2008). climate change and the inadequacy of mitigation and adaptation efforts pose significant risks to the global economy, second only to the impact of the covid-19 pandemic (world economic forum, 2020). based on accessible information, it is evident that the previous decade has witnessed the highest recorded temperatures, with the year 2016 standing out as the warmest within this time frame (national aeronautics and space administration (nasa), 2020). moreover, the empirical evidence suggests that starting from the latter half of the 19th century, there has been a discernible upward trend in the average temperature of the earth's surface, with a notable rise of more than 1.62°fahrenheit (0°c). as a result, the escalating buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is altering the distribution of precipitation, elevating temperatures, stimulating more frequent instances of severe weather events, and causing shifts in the timing of growing seasons (egbetokun et al., 2020; intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc), 2007; ministry of forestry and agriculture (mfa), 2010). in the nigerian context, it is worth noting that the agricultural sector, along with its agro-allied industries, holds significant potential to stimulate economic growth and foster diversification away from reliance on crude oil (gershon & patricia, 2019). nevertheless, the climate-driven nature of this phenomenon is predominantly contingent upon the interplay between precipitation patterns and temperature fluctuations. according to ngigi (2009), environmental changes can be understood as modifications in the earth's climate system resulting from human activities. this alteration, whether direct or indirect, impacts the structure of the atmosphere and ultimately contributes to the phenomenon of climate change. the viability of agriculture depends on climatic conditions, as the two are intricately linked in a global context, as documented by adejuwon (2006). nigeria is currently experiencing unfavorable climatic circumstances that are exerting detrimental effects on the well-being of a substantial portion of its population. the volatility of climate patterns poses a significant risk to nigeria's agricultural sector, thereby affecting productivity levels. in nigeria, the agricultural sector features a diverse array of food crops, the cultivation of which depends on the availability of rainfall. consequently, regions with abundant rainfall engage in the cultivation of rain-fed crops, while arid areas of the country opt for crops with lower water requirements. the growth season of a nation which depends significantly on rain-fed agriculture has been disturbed by floods, droughts, erosion, and off-season rainfall. in some regions, the amount of water flowing through rivers and lakes has decreased with respect to the impacts of environmental changes and climate variability. this has reduced the amount of water available for use in agriculture, which exerts an adverse impact on crop yields (ozor, 2009). the farming industry in nigeria has a significant part in the country's gdp, contributing a specific proportion to the overall gdp. due to the effects of climate variability and environmental changes on farming, the agricultural sector's share of nigeria's gdp has been shrinking in recent years. all sectors of the agricultural industry are vulnerable to the potential effects of climate change on agricultural productivity. odekunle (2004) claims that the sector has a sizable effect on the nigerian economy. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2025: 542-553 544 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. furthermore, the recurrent volatilities in precipitation and temperature trends have disrupted the benchmark of the rainy season from april to october and the harmattan season from october to march. from an economic perspective, it is important to consider the potential risks posed by unpredictable rainfall patterns and extreme climatic conditions affecting agricultural productivity (gershon & patricia, 2019). in contrast, an abundance of precipitation does have the capacity to stimulate the proliferation of numerous insects and illnesses, thereby exerting detrimental effects on agricultural productivity and livestock reproduction. rising temperatures facilitate a favourable environment for the proliferation of pests, thereby inflicting harm upon agricultural produce. furthermore, the emergence and dissemination of the coronavirus disease, commonly referred to as covid-19, have demonstrated the inherent vulnerability of nigeria's heavy dependence on crude oil as its primary revenue stream. this study aims to examine the effect of climate change on agricultural productivity within the context of nigeria. previous research on the correlation between climate change and food production, as explored in studies like deressa et al. (2008), building nigeria’s response to climate change (bnrcc) (2008), and apata et al. (2009), has not sufficiently yielded valuable insights regarding effective adaptation strategies for the future. however, the findings from these studies have laid the foundation for the current study. 2. literature review 2.1. climate change trends in nigeria from figure 1, the northern part of nigeria experiences annual thermal level fluctuations ranging from 12°c to 45°c, whereas in the southern region, the thermal level varies between 17°c and 37°c. the nation's average thermal level has exhibited a consistent upward trend over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries. from 1901 to 2016, there was a gradual increase of 0.03°c per decade. however, in the more recent past, specifically over the last 30 years, the rate of thermal level increase has accelerated to 0.19°c per decade. in nigeria, the dry season is characterized by the highest thermal levels, which remain consistent across the country from the coastal regions to the interior. according to gerics (2015), there has been a significant reduction in the surface area of lake chad, which has decreased from approximately 40,000 km2 to 1,300 km2. this decline can be attributed to the escalating temperatures experienced over the past four decades, leading to the expansion of the sahara desert. the phenomenon under discussion has predominantly manifested itself within the agricultural sector of nigeria. based on the prevailing climate change patterns in nigeria, it is expected that there will be a notable rise in the occurrence and intensity of flooding events due to amplified precipitation levels. based on the projected data, it is expected that the eastern and central regions will encounter a rise in aridity and drought conditions, thereby potentially impacting the local population's livelihoods and means of sustenance. droughts have had profound implications on various socio-economic aspects, including food security, population dynamics, geopolitical tensions, and ecological diversity. the central and eastern regions are anticipated to encounter agricultural challenges due to prolonged periods of seasonal droughts. in 2012, nigeria experienced a significant and catastrophic flooding event, which had profound implications for the country's agricultural sector. in the year 2012, a significant inundation event had a profound impact on a substantial population of approximately seven million individuals, resulting in substantial economic losses amounting to an estimated five hundred million dollars. the inundation event that occurred in the year 2015 led to the unfortunate displacement of a significant population of approximately one million individuals. furthermore, this calamity incurred a substantial financial burden, amounting to a staggering $25 million, as reported by the fao (2019). based on a comprehensive study conducted by the dfid (2009), it has been projected that nigeria may potentially experience a decline in its gross domestic product (gdp) ranging from 2% to 11% by the year 2020 if appropriate adaptation measures are not implemented. based on the findings of the post-disaster need assessment (pdna) report, the flood incident that transpired in 2012 resulted in substantial economic repercussions, amounting to a staggering $16.9 billion in damages. this financial toll is significant, as it corresponds to a notable 1.4% reduction in real gdp growth. the interplay between fluctuations in rainfall trends, which are impacted by the escalating temperatures, as well as the presence of severe weather events like floods and droughts, will inevitably exert profound effects on both the stability of agricultural output and the accessibility of water supply. moreover, it is important to acknowledge that abundant rainfall can lead to crop waterlogging and soil erosion, thereby diminishing agricultural productivity and exacerbating vulnerability to food insecurity. based on current projections, it is anticipated that nigeria and the broader west african region may encounter food insecurity because of the effects of environmental changes and climate change variability. the prospective consequences encompass financial setbacks, infrastructure impairment, and even human casualties. regular occurrences of flooding have a significant impact on land deterioration and soil erosion, posing considerable challenges to agricultural productivity and the financial well-being of rural communities. the prospective influence of elevated temperatures and reduced water availability on agriculture could pose a substantial threat to food security. according to the 2018 report published by the united states agency for international development (usaid), despite continuous humanitarian aid, diligent policy efforts, and active government involvement in the agricultural sector, the state of food security and nutrition in northeastern nigeria remains tenuous. individuals who have experienced internal displacement within the country and are currently residing in camps or camp-like environments exhibit the most significant inadequacy in terms of unfulfilled nutritional requirements. vulnerable households often face constraints regarding land and cattle availability, hindering their ability to produce sufficient food for their sustenance. the prevailing circumstances in rural areas have led to deficiencies in the nutritional needs of the population, primarily due to the exacerbation of violence and the concomitant insufficiency of healthcare infrastructure and food supplies within the country. the food and agriculture organization (fao) released a report in 2019. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2025: 542-553 545 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 1. temperature change in the last 50 years in nigeria. source: wikipedia. 2.2. empirical review recent empirical research has substantiated the notion that alterations in climate patterns and fluctuations possess the potential to exert significant influences on agricultural production (skoufias, rabassa, olivieri, & brahmbhatt, 2011). table 1 is a summary of different study papers that look at how climate change affects the productivity of agriculture in nigeria. each study examined the link between climate change variables and agricultural productivity using different methods and approaches to data analysis. these studies provide valuable insights into the complex relationship between climate change and nigeria's food production capacity. they highlight the importance of considering various climate change variables and technological factors when developing strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change on agriculture. table 1. empirical review of previous studies on climate change and agricultural productivity in nigeria. name of author title of paper findings adedeji, tiku, waziri-ugwu, and sanusi (2017) the impact of climate change on rice production in adamawa state, nigeria. the study used regression analysis techniques to analyze the impact of climate change on rice production. based on the findings, rainfall had a positive and statistically significant impact on rice yield, while temperature was found to have a negative impact. ayinde, muchie, and olatunji (2011) agricultural output and climatic change in nigeria: a co-integration model analysis. the study utilized a co-integration approach as a model for analysis. the study found that rainfall and temperature have both positive and negative effects, respectively, on agricultural output, as determined by descriptive statistics and the co-integration method. agba, adewara, adama, adzer, and atoyebi (2017) an investigation of the impact of climate change on agricultural production in nigeria. according to the findings of the study, which made use of time series data, the results revealed that rainfall has both shortrun and long-run relationships with crop production. meanwhile, temperature and carbon dioxide emissions indicate a negative and significant effect on crop production in the long run. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2025: 542-553 546 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. name of author title of paper findings aondoakaa (2012) changes in temperature and how they affect farming in nigeria's federal capital territory (fct), abuja. the findings from the study showed that there is a positive relationship between temperature, rainfall, and crop output in abuja over a period of 10 years. the study used a method called correlation and regression analysis. land and watering systems should also be part of the plan. exenberger, pondorfer, and maik (2014) estimating the impact of climate change on agricultural production: accounting for technology heterogeneity across countries pdf logo. germany. the study's findings indicate that middle and low-income countries experience the impacts of rising temperatures, alterations in precipitation patterns, and increased frequency of droughts. these detrimental effects are particularly pronounced in the sub-saharan africa region. the findings additionally indicate that variations in technology across countries contribute to disparities in the impact of climate change on agricultural production. ekpenyong and ogbuagu (2015) an econometric analysis of the relationship between climate change and agricultural productivity in nigeria. the results of the study show that increased carbon emissions have a significant effect on the productivity of agriculture over a long period of time. ejemeyovwi, obindah, and doyah (2018) finding a sustainable balance between co2 emissions and crop yield. the research utilized the fully modified ols method to investigate the relationship between crop production and co2 emissions. the results indicate a statistically significant and positive longterm association between these variables. the findings presented in this study diverge from those of previous research, as they reveal a positive, long-term impact of co2 emissions on crop production, contrary to the commonly held belief of its inherent negativity. this stands in opposition to prevailing hypotheses that suggest an adverse relationship between elevated carbon dioxide (co2) levels in a tropical nation, such as nigeria, and the productivity of agricultural crops. 3. methodology nigeria is the focus of the investigation. located in western sub-saharan africa, nigeria is bounded by the republic of benin to the west, the republics of chad and cameroon to the east, and the republic of niger to the north. the gulf of guinea is also nigeria's coastline (wikipedia, 2009). in the context of nigeria, the classification of climate regions suggests the presence of three distinct areas: the southernmost region, the northernmost region, and the remaining portion of the country. the southernmost region is characterized by a tropical rainforest climate, exhibiting an annual precipitation range of 60 to 80 inches. the region commonly referred to as the far north is characterized by a climate that closely resembles that of a desert, exhibiting an annual precipitation level of less than 20 inches. the remaining regions of the country, spanning from the northernmost to the southernmost points, are characterized by savannah landscapes and experience an annual precipitation ranging from 20 to 60 inches (nationmaster, 2009). 3.1. theoretical framework and model specification 3.1.1. theoretical framework the empirical framework for the study follows the derivation in bond et al. (2007). although the derivation of this framework was used for panel studies, its theoretical explanation can also be applied to time series studies, as it best fits in explaining the dynamic linkages between climate variables and agricultural crop production, as shown below in equation 1. 𝑌𝑡=eβt t atlt (1) 𝛥𝐴𝑡 𝐴𝑡 = 𝑔 + 𝛾𝑇 (2) where y is aggregate output, l measures population, a measures labor productivity, and t measures climate. equation 1 captures the level of effect of climate on production; that is, the effect of current temperature or precipitation on crop yields. equation 2 captures the growth effect of climate; i.e., the effect of climate on features such as institutions that influence productivity growth. taking logs in the production function and differencing with respect to time, we have the dynamic growth equation: gt=g+(β+γ)tt-βt-1 (3) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2025: 542-553 547 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. where gt is the growth rate of per-capita output. the “level effects” of climate shocks on output, which come from equation 1, appear through β. the “growth effects” of climate shocks, which come from equation 2, appear through γ. the growth equation 3 allows separate identification of level effects and growth effects through the examination of transitory weather shocks. in particular, both effects influence the growth rate in the initial period of the shock. the difference is that the level effect eventually reverses itself as the climate returns to its prior state. for example, a temperature shock may reduce agricultural yields, but once the temperature returns to its average value, agricultural yields bounce back. by contrast, the growth effect appears during the climate shock and is not reversed: a failure to innovate in one period leaves the country permanently further behind. the growth effect is identified in (3) as the summation of the climate effects over time. the above reasoning extends to models where climate effects play out more slowly. with more general lag structures in (1) and (2), the growth effect is still identified by summing the lagged effects of the climate shock. 3.1.2. model specification in addition to the above theoretical framework, this study adapted models from these studies, afolayan and aderemi (2019) and obiakor, omoyele, olanipekun, and aderemi (2021), in which its mathematical equation is given as follows; ava = f (co2ems, crp) (4) in improving the robustness of model 1, some control variables such as access to electricity, internet, and trade openness were added to the model because these variables have both direct and indirect influences on agricultural productivity in nigeria (enilolobo, babalola, nnoli, ajibola, & okere, 2022). thus, the model (4) is expanded econometrically as follows; ava = β0 + β 1co2ems + β 2crp + β 3ate+ β 4ati+β 5top+µ (5) where; ava = agricultural value added as a percentage of gdp, measured in percentage. co2ems=carbon emissions. crp = change in rainfall patterns. this is measured by the average annual precipitation in millimeters. ate=access to electricity as a percentage of the population. ati=access to the internet as a percentage of the population. top=trade openness. consequently, the detailed description of the utilized variables is contained in the table 2. table 2. description of variables for the effect of climate change and agricultural productivity in nigeria. variable description aprori expectation co2 emissions co2 emissions are the release of carbon dioxide (co2) into the atmosphere. carbon dioxide, as a greenhouse gas, has a significant impact on the earth's climate system. anthropogenic activity, such as the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) for energy generation, deforestation, and industrial operations, are the primary contributors to co2 emissions. negative change in rainfall patterns change in rainfall patterns refers to shifts in the distribution, intensity, and timing of precipitation over a particular area or region. these changes can manifest in various ways, such as alterations in the frequency and duration of rainfall events, the occurrence of extreme weather events like heavy downpours or prolonged droughts, and variations in the seasonal distribution of rainfall. positive access to electricity access to electricity refers to the availability and ability of individuals, households, communities, and businesses to connect to and use electrical power from the grid or other sources for various purposes. it is a critical indicator of a country's or region's level of development and the well-being of its population. positive access to internet access to the internet refers to the ability of individuals, communities, and organizations to connect to and use the global computer network known as the internet. it enables users to access a vast array of digital information, communicate with others, and utilize various online services and platforms. positive trade openness trade openness, also known as economic openness or international trade openness, refers to the extent to which a country or an economy participates in international trade and engages with the global economy. it is a measure of how open a country's markets are to foreign trade, including imports and exports of goods and services. positive agricultural value added agricultural value-added is a key economic indicator that measures the contribution of the agricultural sector to the overall economy of a country or region. it represents the difference between the total value of agricultural outputs (crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries, etc.) produced by the agricultural sector and the total value of intermediate inputs (such as seeds, fertilizers, machinery, and other materials) used in the production process. dependent variable asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2025: 542-553 548 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 4 provides an explanation of the variables used in the empirical study of the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity in nigeria include co2 emissions, change in rainfall patterns, agricultural value added, electricity access, and internet access. co2 emissions measure the amount of carbon dioxide released into the earth's atmosphere as a result of anthropogenic activities such as the combustion of fossil fuels and industrial operations. these emissions have a considerable impact on changing climatic patterns and exacerbating global warming. change in rainfall patterns refers to alterations in the distribution, intensity, and timing of precipitation, which can result in meteorological phenomena such as droughts, heavy precipitation events, and altered seasonal rainfall patterns. these changes significantly impact ecosystems and agricultural activities. agricultural value added is a critical indicator for assessing the economic contribution of the country's agricultural sector. it encompasses the comprehensive value of agricultural outputs and intermediate inputs, providing valuable insights into the sector's productivity and overall progress. the metric of electricity access measures the extent to which electrical power is accessible and utilized within residential, communal, and commercial settings. this metric is vital for fostering economic and social progress, as well as enhancing overall welfare. the concept of internet access involves analyzing the capacity of individuals and entities to establish and employ internet connections, thereby facilitating access to information, communication, education, and economic opportunities. 3.1.3. data sources and scope of the study in investigating the relationship between climate change and agricultural productivity in nigeria using secondary data, this study utilized annual time series data from 1990 to 2020. all data were collected from the world development indicators (wdi). 4. result and discussion the results of this study are presented in the following order: descriptive statistics and graphical trends. 4.1. descriptive statistics descriptive statistics are numerical measurements that summarize and describe the main characteristics of a dataset. they provide valuable insights into the performances of the study's variables. table 3. descriptive statistics for the effect of climate change on agricultural productivity in nigeria. variables co2ems crp (mm per year) ava (%) ate (%) ati (%) top (%) mean 10.7 27.3 24.3 46.8 9.55 36.5 median 10.6 27.3 24.1 47.5 3.55 37.0 maximum 19.7 27.8 36.9 59.3 35.5 53.2 minimum 4.24 26.5 19.9 27.3 0.00 16.3 std. dev. 3.84 0.29 3.82 7.81 11.8 9.21 skewness 0.43 -0.34 1.52 -0.46 0.92 -0.20 kurtosis 2.86 2.85 5.73 2.49 2.43 2.62 jarque-bera 1.02 0.62 21.6 1.46 4.88 0.40 probability 0.60 0.73 0.00 0.48 0.08 0.81 sum 334 819 754 145 296 113 sum sq. dev. 442 2.55 439 183 424 254 observations 31 31 31 31 31 31 table 3 reveals the result of the summary statistics for the study provides valuable insights into the central tendency, measures of dispersion, and the shape of the dataset, allowing for a better understanding of the variability and characteristics of the variables under consideration. the table presents information about the effect of climate change on agricultural productivity in nigeria using six variables over the period of analysis. the mean value for co2ems (carbon emission) in nigeria is 10.7%, with maximum and minimum values of 19.7% and 4.2%, respectively. this indicates that carbon emission in nigeria over the last 30 years has been relatively low, thus having a limited impact on the agricultural sector. the reason for this might be that the adoption of sustainable farming techniques, such as agroforestry, organic farming, and reduced tillage, which sequester carbon in the soil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with conventional farming, has not been widely deployed. moreover, the mean is greater than the standard deviation, implying that the data is moderately dispersed from its mean value. additionally, the skewness is positive, and the kurtosis is platykurtic because it is less than 3. in the same vein, the mean for crp (change in rainfall pattern) is 27.3%, while the minimum and maximum values are 26.5% and 27.8%, respectively. the mean value and the minimum and maximum values for crp are below average, which implies that the patterns of rainfall have been relatively low, potentially leading to water scarcity due to erratic rainfall patterns. this could affect the productivity of the agricultural sector, thereby having a multiplying effect on food production and food security. additionally, the mean value for crp is greater than the standard deviation, indicating that the data is moderately dispersed. the skewness value is negative, and the kurtosis value is platykurtic. however, the mean value for ava (agricultural value added) is 24.3%, and the maximum and minimum values are 36.9% and 19.9%, respectively. this suggests that agricultural productivity in nigeria over the period of the analysis has been very low or below average. also, the mean value is greater than the standard deviation, which indicates that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2025: 542-553 549 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the data is moderately dispersed around its mean. furthermore, the mean value for ate (access to electricity) is 46.8%, while the maximum and minimum values are 59.3% and 27.3%, respectively. the mean value for ate is below average, but the percentage shows that almost half of the population has access to electricity over the period of the analysis. a possible reason for this might be that the government has not been investing adequately in electricity during this period, although the data is moderately dispersed around its mean. additionally, the mean value for ati (access to internet) is very low over the period of the analysis. this implies that many people have not gained access to the internet, especially in rural areas. a possible reason for this might be a lack of information, knowledge, and the inability to utilize the internet effectively. lastly, the mean value for top (trade openness) is 36.5% with a maximum of 53.2% and a minimum of 16.3%, which indicates a low exporting capacity from the agricultural sector in international trade because trade openness often relies on a country's ability to export goods and services. this might be due to the effect of changes in rainfall patterns, which could be affecting the reduction of the agricultural sector's productivity, thereby limiting the country's export capacity in international trade. 4.2. trend analysis trend analysis is a statistical technique used to identify and understand patterns or trends in data over time. it involves analyzing data points collected at regular intervals to discern any consistent upward, downward, or stable movements in the data series. trend analysis is valuable for decision-making and strategic planning, as it can provide insights into long-term patterns, detect emerging trends, and identify potential opportunities or risks. 4 8 12 16 20 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 co2 ems 26.4 26.8 27.2 27.6 28.0 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 crp 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 ava 20 30 40 50 60 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 ate 0 10 20 30 40 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 ati 10 20 30 40 50 60 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 top figure 2. trend analysis of the study`s variables. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2025: 542-553 550 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 2 presents a graphical representation of the level and rate at which climate change has affected agricultural productivity over the past 30 years, using six variables as indicators and parameters for the analysis. the variables used are co2ems (carbon emissions), crp (change in rainfall pattern), ava (agricultural value added), ate (access to electricity), ati (access to internet), and top (trade openness). based on the graphical analysis above, co2ems (carbon emissions) has shown an irregular pattern; from 1990-2000, there was a decline, but from 2000-2010, there was a period of decline followed by an increase, which continued all the way to 2020. the trend for crp (change in rainfall pattern) has been irregular and erratic over the period of the analysis, as seen from the graph above. the pattern has just been fluctuating, which suggests that the patterns of rainfall are relatively unstable. furthermore, the trend for ava (agricultural value added) over the period of the analysis suggests that the pattern has been going upward and downward, but from 2000-2010, ava showed a sharp increase. in the same vein, the trend for ate (access to electricity) exhibits an upward increase over the period of the analysis, which suggests that there has been substantial access to electricity over time. additionally, for ati (access to internet), the trend analysis showed that from 1990-2000, there was little or no access to the internet at all; however, between 2000-2005, the trend indicated that people started having access to the internet, and it continued with an upward increase over the period of the analysis. meanwhile, top (trade openness) has also shown a fluctuating upward and downward movement, indicating the instability of agricultural productivity. table 4. unit root test on the effect of climate change on agricultural productivity in nigeria. variable augmented dickey fuller level probability 1st difference probability order of variable co2ems -2.96 0.62 -3.69 0.00 i(1) crp -2.62 0.42 -3.67 0.00 i(1) ava -2.62 0.23 -3.69 0.00 i(1) ate -3.67 0.04 -3.67 0.00 i(0) ati -1.61 0.99 -2.64 0.00 i(1) top -2.96 0.08 -2.97 0.00 i(1) 4.3. stationarity test table 6 presents the results of the stationarity test, also known as the unit root test. six variables were used to conduct the analysis, which are co2ems, crp, ava, ate, ati, and top. out of these variables, five became stationary after the first difference, while ate was stationary at level. since most of the variables follow an order one [i(1)] process, the next step is to test if there exists a long-run relationship (cointegration) among the variables. table 5. cointegration test results for the effect of climate change on agricultural productivity. unrestricted cointegration rank test (trace) hypothesized no. of ce(s) eigenvalue trace statistic 0.05 critical value prob. none 0.88 154 95.7 0.00 at most 1 0.812 93.7 69.8 0.00 at most 2 0.56 46.9 47.8 0.06 at most 3 0.34 23.4 29.7 0.22 at most 4 0.22 11.5 15.4 0.18 at most 5 0.14 4.33 3.84 0.03 4.4. johansen cointegration test the results of the trace statistics in table 5 indicate that the hypothesis of no cointegration among the variables can be rejected. the results revealed that at least three cointegrating vectors exist among the variables of interest. considering the existence of a long-run relationship established among the variables as shown in table 5, the analysis employed the dynamic ordinary least squares regression estimation technique in order to ascertain the effect of climate change on agricultural productivity. table 6. correlation analysis. variables ava co2_ems crp ate ati ltop ava 1.00 co2_ems -0.36 1.00 crp 0.02 0.05 1.00 ate -0.22 -0.49 0.715 1.00 ati -0.49 0.72 0.49 0.62 1.00 top 0.30 -0.57 -0.15 -0.26 -0.54 1.00 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2025: 542-553 551 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 4.5. correlation matrix the correlation analysis findings presented in table 6 indicate the absence of substantial evidence supporting the existence of significant multicollinearity among the variables. this phenomenon can be attributed to the observation that the correlation coefficient between the variables in the table is not above 0.8. therefore, the explanatory variables are free from the problem of multicollinearity. table 7. dynamic ordinary least squares regression for the effect of climate change on agricultural productivity in nigeria. variables coefficient std. error t-statistic prob. co2_ems 1.47 0.38 3.83 0.00 crp 4.14 8.91 0.46 0.65 ate 0.48 0.47 1.02 0.34 ati -0.35 0.16 2.08 0.08 top 0.41 0.19 2.11 0.07 c -136. 223 0.61 0.56 r-squared 0.90 dependent variable: agricultural productivity table 7 presents the outcome of the dynamic ordinary least squares analysis of the nexus between climate change and agricultural productivity in nigeria. the coefficient values for each variable (co2ems, crp, ava, ate, ati, top) are provided, accompanied by their respective t-statistics and associated probabilities. the obtained outcome reveals an r-squared value of 0.907020, indicating that over 90% of the overall variability observed in the dependent variable was accounted for by the independent variables incorporated within the model, namely co2ems, crp, ava, ate, ati, top, and c. this suggests that the econometric model exhibits a favorable level of goodness-of-fit, indicating a strong relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable. with respect to the result from the model, it therefore implies that the independent variables, which are carbon emission and change in rainfall patterns, thus have a positive impact on the dependent variable (ava), such that a unit increase in carbon emission and change in rainfall pattern will lead to a 1.478748% and 4.140856% increase in agricultural productivity, ava, respectively. furthermore, the control variables, which are ate (access to electricity) and top (trade openness), portrayed a positive impact on agricultural productivity. whereas, ati (access to internet) exhibited a negative impact on agricultural productivity. 5. conclusion and policy recommendation the analysis examines the relationship between climate change and agricultural productivity in nigeria. the empirical examination of agricultural productivity reveals a pattern of oscillating productivity within the sector. the observed fluctuations in precipitation patterns have demonstrated a degree of variability, analogous to the fluctuations observed in carbon emissions. based on the findings of the analysis, the efficacy of managing the ongoing fluctuations in climatic variables can be modestly enhanced through the implementation of government policies that prioritize mitigation measures. additionally, the private sector can play a crucial role by directing their efforts towards augmenting agricultural output via technological advancements, thereby avoiding any adverse impact on climate dynamics while simultaneously bolstering production levels. for the purpose of enhancing and maintaining agricultural production, it is advisable to employ irrigation as a reliable means of water supply. this mode of water provision is deemed most appropriate, as it is expected to yield favorable environmental outcomes. therefore, it is imperative that efforts and policies are directed towards the provision of efficient irrigation infrastructure. consequently, based on the empirical findings derived from this study, it is advisable for businesses, policymakers, and government agencies to contemplate the following recommendations: • implementing environmental sustainability and climate change mitigation strategies to lessen their carbon footprint and cut greenhouse gas emissions. according to a trend analysis of carbon dioxide emissions, these emissions have significantly grown since 2010. taxing carbon emissions, encouraging the use of renewable energy sources, supporting sustainable agricultural practices by reducing the use of inorganic fertilizers, as well as boosting afforestation and the use of organic manure, are some of the strategies that can be used. • adaptation: this pertains to necessary and required steps taken to make nigerian agriculture more resilient to climate change. farmers who cultivate resilient crops and animals, along with incentive programmes that fund the study and development of new methods to boost crop yields (such as biotechnology), are among these initiatives. businesses in the agriculture sector are encouraged to collaborate with energy companies (and/or the government) to implement integrated hydropower and irrigation projects in drought-prone areas. to help farmers and agro-allied businesses recover from the covid-19 closures, the government should increase spending on agriculture (both capital and recurring). this has the potential to enhance mechanized farming with high-tech tools and climate-resilient seedlings, which would be beneficial for both agricultural and livestock production. • national education campaigns to inform farmers and herders of upcoming changes in climatic extremes. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2025: 542-553 552 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and 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(2020). the global risk report (15th ed.). geneva, switzerland: world economic forum. views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.1012 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-004-0248-9 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 119 factors influencing managerial challenges for smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers in the thabo mofutsanyana district, free state province, south africa kgomongwe neriatha mthombeni, danisile, leonahb antwi, michael, akwasic a,b,cuniversity of south africa, department of agriculture and animal health, florida campus, johannesburg, 1710, south africa.  mthomdl@unisa.ac.za (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 22 february 2024 revised: 28 july 2024 accepted: 18 august 2024 published: 11 october 2024 keywords livestock managerial challenges marketing probit regression model sheep and goats smallholder and emerging farmers thabo mofutsanyana district. this study aimed to identify and analyse the determinants of managerial challenges for smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers in the study area by highlighting key factors in order to create an enabling environment for the farmers to improve production and income. a stratified random sampling technique was used to select 145 participants from a pull sampling frame of 251 participants. a semistructured questionnaire was used to collect the data by interviewing 145 selected smallholder farmers. the statistical package for social science (spss), version 28.0, was used to analyse the data. descriptive statistics and the probit regression model were used to analyse the determinants of the managerial challenges for smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers. the results of the study show that only 19% of the participants had business plans, and the absence of business plans impacted farm and livestock management negatively. the probit results indicated that the age of the respondents, off-farm activities, and access to market information had a positive and significant association with managerial challenges. it is recommended that youth and women be encouraged to engage in sheep and goat farming for better management and that farmers must focus their attention on livestock farming instead of off-farm income-generating activities. the department of agriculture and municipalities should initiate extension programs that focus on farm and livestock management as well as access to market information. contribution/originality: this study employed the probit regression model to examine the determinants of managerial challenges for smallholder/emerging sheep and goat farmers; similar research has not been conducted in the study area. the study recommends the agricultural extension programme to focus on farm and livestock management as well as access to market information. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5204 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: neriath, k., leonah, m. d., & akwasi, a. m. (2024). factors influencing managerial challenges for smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers in the thabo mofutsanyana district, free state province, south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4), 119–127. 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5204 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction agriculture remains the single largest source of income and livelihoods for rural households in the developing world, normally providing more than 50 percent of household income (chilonda & otte, 2006; jayne et al., 2003). asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 4 (2024): 119-127. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0001-7358-3644 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7952-9289 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3896-4502 mailto:mthomdl@unisa.ac.za http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 119-127 120 globally, agriculture provides livelihood for more people than any other industry, and since most of the world’s poor live in rural areas and are largely dependent on agriculture, it plays a role in reducing the poverty in these rural areas (molotsi, oosting, cloete, & dzama, 2019). despite the contribution of agriculture in the economy, the literature suggests that emerging and smallholder farmers still struggle with issues of production quality, market access, financial management, and managerial skills (machete, 2020; magingxa, alemu, & van schalkwyk, 2009; marais, 2011; stroebel, swanepoel, & pell, 2011). smallholder and emerging farmers in developing countries play a key role in food security, but despite this, they face many challenges that hinder them from producing efficiently, forcing them to produce for household consumption and not for markets to earn ongoing revenue from their farming businesses. smallholder farmers are key to ending hunger, but they increasingly face barriers to profitability because of the lack of access to value-adding markets and management skills to operate a large enterprise (fan & rue, 2020). sheep and goats are important to the socio-economic wellbeing of people in developing countries in the tropics in terms of nutrition and income and provide both tangible benefits such as cash income from animal sales, meat for home consumption, manure, fiber, and skins and intangible benefits such as savings, insurance against emergencies, employment, and cultural and ceremonial purposes (alemu, 2020; dhaba, belay, solomon, & taye, 2012). lowder, skoet, and singh (2014) state that more than 80% (475 million) of the world's farms operate on less than two hectares of land. although these farms account for only 12% of the world’s farmland, they provide an estimated 80% of the food produced in asia and subsaharan africa. the rearing and sale of sheep and goat livestock are important for poverty reduction and food security in rural households. the livestock is managed not only for monetary benefits, but also for socio-economic benefits (including hide, manure, and a source of medium-term savings insurance in case of crop failure). it also a means diversifying investment and performing social and cultural functions such as religious traditional ceremonies (weyori, liebenehm, & hermann, 2018). ortmann and king (2007) effectively sum up the challenges smallholder farmers in south africa face as being: (i) low levels of education and literacy; (ii) no access to technology; (iii) insecure land tenure; (iv) high transaction costs (such as no access to information and communication, as well as poor roads and long travel distances); (v) no access to credit and insurance; (vi) no access to inputs and services; (vii) no access to markets; and (viii) missing support systems, such as socially organised cooperatives and extension services. other major constraints, such as poor nutrition, disease and parasite problems, poor flock management, poor credit, marketing, and transportation infrastructure, hinder the improvement of goat productivity (escareño et al., 2012). poor education and high levels of illiteracy disadvantage smallholder and emerging farmers from meeting the market requirements. in the study area, smallholder and emerging sheep and goat livestock farmers faces similar challenges. markets are often constrained by inadequate property rights and high transaction costs (hall & aliber, 2010), and it is not easy for small-scale farmers to access markets due to a range of factors such as poor infrastructure, lack of information, insufficient expertise, and inability to conclude contractual agreements (cheteni, mushunje, & taruvinga, 2014; cheteni & shindika, 2017).feeding, housing, and health challenges are among the challenges that constitute major constraints to the management of sheep and goats by smallholder and emerging farmers. overcrowding in inadequate housing exposes livestock to diseases and promotes the spread of contagious diseases. limited research focusing on the managerial challenges experienced by smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers has been conducted in the study area. thus, to effectively assist the smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers to improve their livelihoods, food security, and profit, it is important to understand the determinants of managerial challenges and how they influence farmers’ annual income from sheep and goat sales in the study area. 2. material and methods 2.1. study area the study was conducted in the thabo mofutsanyana district of the free state province of south africa (shown in figure 1), which is one of the five districts of the province. figure 1. map of the free state province, south africa. source: www.municipalities.co.za (accessed 22 august 2020). https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___http:/www.municipalities.co.za___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzoynwy2yza3mzc5mdbindbjyjg3ogixytmxyzexzwjmoto2ojhizdc6nzbjnjbhmjzkzdgynjzhntzjogy0mzrindflmjmynjrjmjfmzme0ytu3ymyxndg1m2qynjg5zdy4zthlotcwnjpwolq6tg asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 119-127 121 the district was chosen because it differs in terms of agricultural potential and because smallholder and emerging farmers of sheep and goat livestock in the district face various challenges that exclude them from participating fairly in the high-value livestock market. 2.2. sampling procedure and data collection a proportionate random sampling technique was used to select 145 smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers from a sampling frame of 251 smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers (see table 1). an updated list of smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers was obtained from the free state department of agriculture and rural development. krejcie and morgan (1970) formula to determine sample size was used as follows: 𝑆 = 𝑋2 𝑁𝑃 (1 − 𝑃) 𝑑2 (𝑁 − 1) + 𝑋2𝑃 (1 − 𝑃) (1) table 1. sample sizes in the local municipalities. local municipality smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers sample per local municipality dihlabeng local municipality 21 (21/251) x 145 = 12 setsoto local municipality 6 (6/251) x 145 = 3.5 maluti-a-phofung local municipality 183 (183/251) x 145 = 106 phumelela local municipality 23 (23/251) x 145 = 13 mantsopa local municipality 12 (12/251) x 145 = 7 nketoana local municipality 6 (6/251) x 145 = 3.5 total 251 sample size = 145 2.3. data analysis the data used in the study was collected by means of a semi-structured questionnaire during face-to-face interviews with the selected smallholder and emerging farmers. the statistical package for social science (spss), version 28.0, was used to analyse the data. 2.4. binary logistic regression (probit analysis) to compute the dependent variable “managerial challenges,” a likert scale of 1 to 5 was used for the farmers to indicate the level of their satisfaction with the managerial challenge variables: 1. very dissatisfied; 2. dissatisfied; 3 neutral; 4. satisfied; 5 very satisfied. the mean of the scores for the questions/responses with the themes (business management skills, housing for the animals, extension service, level of education and literacy, support systems, such as socially organised co-ops and extension services, record keeping and documentation, and management of livestock) under the respective main challenges was determined. in table 2, the mean for the sub-questions and responses was determined by adding the scores together and dividing it by the number of questions. the scores less than the average were classified as y = 1, while the scores equal to the average and more than the mean were classified as y = 0 (was not experiencing the challenge). table 2. mean for level of satisfaction of managerial challenges. managerial challenges satisfaction level statistics units mean 20.5 standard deviation 5.37 variance 28.9 minimum 7.00 maximum 34.0 source: survey data (2022–2023). the vector of regression xi, comprising socio-economic and demographic factors and farming characteristics of farmers, are assumed to influence or be associated with the outcome y. specifically, we assume that the probit model takes the form: 𝑃𝑟 (𝑌 = 1 ǀ 𝑋) = 𝛷 (𝑋΄𝛽), (2) where pr denotes probability and φ is the cumulative distribution function (cdf) of the standard normal distribution. the parameters β are typically estimated by maximum likelihood. the probit model as a latent variable model with an auxiliary random variable is expressed as: 𝑌 ∗ = 𝑋΄𝛽 + ɛ, (3) where ε ~ n (0, 1). then y can be viewed as an indicator of whether this latent variable is positive: (4) the use of the standard normal distribution causes no loss of generality compared with using an arbitrary mean and standard deviation because adding a fixed amount to the mean can be compensated for by substracting the same 𝑌 = 1 1 𝐼𝑓 𝑌 ∗ > 0, 𝑖. 𝑒. – ɛ < 𝑋΄𝛽, 2 𝑂𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑖𝑠𝑒. https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/probability___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzownjnkmge0mmq1ndc3zwyynjjizdyzy2fmmgm0mtzizjo2ojyzmte6ytkymtg1n2rkmgnmmtm4yzeyzgq3ngu5nzg3ytm1nwuzoda0mjiwytljztmznjfmmtizzjmxyte2ytuwnzq4mjpwolq https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cumulative_distribution_function___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzownjnkmge0mmq1ndc3zwyynjjizdyzy2fmmgm0mtzizjo2ojg4mdy6nzljn2vkndhmmdaxmdu1ztvmytmxmzy3njdhyjizodvmmzzhodu3zmfkmjc3otqwytzhmgrhmzqzndq4ogq0ndpwolq https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/normal_distribution___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzownjnkmge0mmq1ndc3zwyynjjizdyzy2fmmgm0mtzizjo2oji2yja6zdnhyza2otc2ngrkmwfhnwnmytuyzjyxzjdjyty0mdg2zwewmgu4m2e2zmi0ztnhnzjmymy4nzu3mgm2otdmmzpwolq https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/normal_distribution___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzownjnkmge0mmq1ndc3zwyynjjizdyzy2fmmgm0mtzizjo2oji2yja6zdnhyza2otc2ngrkmwfhnwnmytuyzjyxzjdjyty0mdg2zwewmgu4m2e2zmi0ztnhnzjmymy4nzu3mgm2otdmmzpwolq https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/maximum_likelihood___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzownjnkmge0mmq1ndc3zwyynjjizdyzy2fmmgm0mtzizjo2omfhzti6yje0nzziywy4odvhmdk5ndvimwiynje1mjcxnzlkywm5mgzkmge2nzdjzmfmztbhztnkzjjjzmzkn2e1ymviotpwolq https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/latent_variable_model___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzownjnkmge0mmq1ndc3zwyynjjizdyzy2fmmgm0mtzizjo2omjinda6zdvjnmm4nguwn2m1otu4ndljnge0ymm4ztjizjkymzuxywu2ntezotczmty4owjhmtnmmtrjmmm5nwm1zti4zdpwolq https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/latent_variable_model___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzownjnkmge0mmq1ndc3zwyynjjizdyzy2fmmgm0mtzizjo2omjinda6zdvjnmm4nguwn2m1otu4ndljnge0ymm4ztjizjkymzuxywu2ntezotczmty4owjhmtnmmtrjmmm5nwm1zti4zdpwolq asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 119-127 122 amount from the intercept, and multiplying the standard deviation by a fixed amount can be compensated for by multiplying the values by the same amount. to understand the equivalence of the two models, take note of this: 𝑃𝑟 (𝑌 = 1 𝐼 𝑋) = 𝑃𝑟 (𝑌 ∗ > 0) = 𝑃𝑟 (𝑋΄𝛽 + ɛ > 0) (6) = pr (ɛ > x΄β). = pr (ɛ < x΄β) (by symmetry of the normal distribution). = φ (x΄β). the model is estimated by the maximum likelihood approach. suppose that the data set contains n independent statistical units corresponding to the model above. then their joint log-likelihood function is: the estimator β that miximises this function is consistent, asymptotically normal, and efficient, provided that e(xx) exists and is not singular. this log-likelihood function is globally concave in β, and therefore standard numerical algorithms for optimisation will converge rapidly to the unique maximum. table 3 presents the independent variables for the analyses. table 3. variable labels and their expected effects. independent variables description expected effect gender (male = 1, female = 0) + age (continuous) household dependents (number) + level of education (years of education) + off-farm employment (yes = 1, no = 0) + own farm (yes = 1, no = 0) + years of farming experience (continuous) + herd size (number/count) + do you have a reliable market? (yes = 1, no = 0) + livestock production skills (yes = 1, no = 0) + do extension officers visit the farm? (number of visits per season) + do you hire seasonal labour? (yes = 1, no = 0) + do you have access to credit? (yes = 1, no = 0) + do you keep farm records? (yes = 1, no = 0) + do you belong to a farmer association? (yes = 1, no = 0) + y (dependent variable) challenge variable (0 = score > average score (mean), 1 = score < average score (mean) source: survey data (2022–2023). 3. results and discussion 3.1. demographics, socio-economic and farming characteristics figure 2 indicates that the majority of the respondents were male (74%), compared to their female counterparts, who were 26%. the results suggest that the male farmers’ involvement in livestock farming was higher than that of the female farmers. the results in figure 3 show that most of the respondents were 41 to 60 years old (46%), which means that the majority of the respondents were middle-aged. onyango (2010) and maswikaneng (2002) found that older people tended to participate actively in agriculture because of family responsibility and the need for food security at a household level. figure 2. gender of the respondents. n in l (β) = yi ∑ 𝐼𝑛 [𝛷 (𝑥𝑖΄ 𝛽) + (1 – 𝑦𝑖 ) 𝐼𝑛 (1 – 𝛷(𝑥𝑖΄ 𝛽)) ] (7) i = 1 https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/statistical_unit___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzownjnkmge0mmq1ndc3zwyynjjizdyzy2fmmgm0mtzizjo2ojiwngq6zdm4ngm5mtfmmtcwmjljotgwnwe5zdhkogmwytbmnzlkyjnjyjq1nmi2yjljogqxmdgynjhjotdkzdvjzdgwmtpwolq asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 119-127 123 figure 3. age distribution of the respondents. the results in figure 4 show that 91% of the respondents were farm owners, compared to 9% who were farm managers. this suggests that farm owners performed the majority of farm managerial roles. this corresponds with the findings of fischer and qaim (2011) who state that the commitment of individuals can vary because the expected net benefits are not the same for all individuals and opportunities to free-ride exist. this implies that the farm owners’ participation was higher than that of the farm managers. figure 5 presents the results for the respondents’ level of education, which show that 41% of the respondents had received a secondary school education. this implies that the farmers in the study area may not have studied or majored in agriculture, as they only completed high/secondary school or below. the education system itself may be thought of as a set of ideas about how a society is structured and should be structured in future (modisaotsile, 2012). figure 4. role of the respondents on the farm. figure 5. education level of the respondents. figure 6 shows that 81% of the respondents did not have business plans, while 19% maintained that they did. this implies that most of the smallholder farmers did not have business plans. figure 7 indicates that 50.3% of the respondents did not keep farm records, while 49.7% did keep farm records. the results of this study are similar to the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 119-127 124 findings of a study conducted in the gauteng province of south africa by mthombeni, antwi, and oduniyi (2022) who reported that smallholder farmers who had received record-keeping and business planning training were 3.3% and 34.9%, respectively. other training that the smallholder farmers had access to included agro-processing, marketing, and financial training. figure 6. do you have a business plan? figure 7. do you keep farm records? 3.2. factors influencing managerial challenges for smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers the results of pearson’s chi-square test (goodness of fit) shown in table 4 show that there is a connection between the observed frequency and the theoretical distribution. this means that the model fits the analysis. table 4. pearson’s çhi-square test (n = 145). chi-square test test chi square dfa sig. goodness of fit 1145.201 126 < 0.001*** source: survey data (2022–2023). note: *** represent significant levels at 10%, respectively; dfa represent the degree of freedom in the test. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 119-127 125 table 5 presents the probit analysis results of factors that influenced the managerial challenges of smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers in the study area. table 5. results of probit analysis of factors influencing managerial challenges of the sheep and goat farmers. parameter estimate std. error z sig. 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound gender of respondents -0.116 0.046 -2.524 0.012* -0.206 -0.026 age of respondents 0.013 0.001 10.443 0.001*** 0.011 0.015 size of household 0.004 0.010 0.389 0.698 -0.016 0.024 level of education 0.020 0.024 0.822 0.411 -0.027 0.067 engage in off-farm income activity 0.230 0.043 5.299 0.001*** 0.145 0.315 role of the respondent on the farm -0.482 0.062 -7.769 0.01*** -0.604 -0.361 involvement in the day-to-day operations -0.059 0.022 -2.691 0.007** -0.102 -0.016 do you have a farm business plan? -0.175 0.067 -2.596 0.009** -0.306 -0.043 access to agricultural information -0.262 0.054 -4.819 0.001*** -0.369 -0.156 do you keep farm management records? -0.095 0.056 -1.690 0.091 -0.206 0.015 do you receive any veterinary services? -0.066 0.038 -1.737 0.082 -0.140 0.008 what is the size of your land? 0.000 0.000 1.782 0.075 0.000 0.000 do you sell your sheep and goats? -0.091 0.067 -1.372 0.170 -0.222 0.039 distance from the market to your farm 0.000 0.000 0.706 0.480 -0.001 0.001 cost per single trip to the market 0.000 0.000 1.788 0.074 0.000 0.000 access to market information 0.223 0.046 4.816 0.001*** 0.132 0.314 total number of sheep you sold in 2019 0.005 0.001 5.649 0.001*** 0.003 0.006 total number of goats you sold in 2019 -0.017 0.003 -6.094 0.001*** -0.022 -0.011 intercept -0.359 0.283 -1.267 0.205 -0.642 -0.076 note: *, ** and *** represent significant levels at 10%, 5% and 1% respectively. source: survey data (2022–2023). the results in table 5 show that the gender and role of the respondents, their involvement in the day-to-day operations of the farm, a farm business plan, access to agricultural information, and selling more goats than sheep had a negative and significant association with managerial challenges, with all other factors being constant. this means that the male farm owners who were involved in the day-to-day operations of the farm, had a farm business plan, had access to agricultural information, and sold more goats than sheep did not experience managerial challenges. this may be because the male farm owners adhered to managerial principles and processes, unlike female farmers and farm managers, and they were able to identify managerial challenges and solve them immediately because they were involved in the day-to-day operations of the farm and used agricultural information effectively. the results also show that age, engagement in off-farm activities, access to market information, and the total number of sheep sold had a positive and significant association with managerial challenges, with all other factors being constant. this means that the older respondents who engaged in off-farm activities, had access to market information, and sold more sheep than goats experienced managerial challenges. this may be because generally the older a person gets, the more their energy level drops and the more they engage in off-farm activities, the more their attention and commitment to farm activities decrease. furthermore, the more the respondents accessed market information, the more they experienced managerial challenges. these results were unexpected and may mean that the more the respondents accessed market information, the more they realised the limitation of the resources on their farms. the results further indicate that when the respondents sold more sheep than goats, the more they sacrificed the breeding herd, and a farmer would not be able to manage the farm as well as the livestock activities. a study by nyam, ojo, belle, ogundeji, and adetoro (2022) reported that with sheep livestock farmers, profit efficiency is influenced by level of education and household size, while gender and sheep loss increase that profit inefficiency. furthermore, profit efficiency of the farmers can be significantly increased through effective education and training of farmers. 4. conclusion the study found that socio-economic factors such as age, gender, level of education, household size, access to extension services, engagement in off-farm income-generating activities, and involvement in livestock farming had an influence on managerial challenges experienced by smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers in the study area. the study suggests that the younger generation (youth) should be encouraged to engage in livestock farming, as their involvement will increase productivity, profit, and farm activities. more females should also be encouraged to engage in livestock farming to improve their farm and livestock managerial skills and eventually their livelihood or household income. the results also suggest that the government should improve extension services to accommodate smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers in order to improve their management skills. the results further indicate that farmers who engage in off-farm income-generating activities should dedicate their time and attention to sheep and goat farming to improve their income from livestock production. the probit results reveal that the determinants of managerial asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 119-127 126 challenges were gender, the role of the respondent, involvement in day-to-day operations of the farm, a farm business plan, access to agricultural information, and selling more goats than sheep, as they had a negative and significant association with managerial challenges. age, engagement in off-farm activities, access to market information, and the total number of sheep sold had a positive and significant association with managerial challenges. therefore, the findings of this study should inform policies and support for smallholder and emerging sheep and goat farmers. thus, farmers are advised to involve youth in livestock farming for better management of the farm and to increase production on the farm, and to encourage women to engage in livestock farming to improve their knowledge of and skills in farm and livestock management. it is also recommended that farmers should focus their attention on farming to manage the farm better, to get support from the government in terms of market information and the use of market information, and to avoid selling more sheep than goats, as the breeding herd might be compromised. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the university of south africa, south africa has granted approval for this study on 6 june 2022 (ref. no. 2022/caes_hrec/106). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references alemu, t. 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(2007). agricultural cooperatives i: history, theory and problems. agrekon, 46(1), 40–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/03031853.2007.9523760 stroebel, a., swanepoel, f., & pell, a. (2011). sustainable smallholder livestock systems: a case study of limpopo province, south africa. livestock science, 139(1-2), 186-190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.livsci.2011.03.004 weyori, a. e., liebenehm, s., & hermann, w. (2018). returns to livestock disease control– a panel data analysis in togo. european review of agricultural economics, 47(2), 1–30. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___https:/doi.org/10.1080/03031853.2007.9523760___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzoynwy2yza3mzc5mdbindbjyjg3ogixytmxyzexzwjmoto2omfkndk6ngyxodfhnje1yta3mdkxnjhkoguzothjnwjmmzfmzjiyymvlnjjjogexngq0ndzlm2jimje5n2nmmjdmmzq5ntpwolq6tg https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___https:/doi.org/10.1016/j.livsci.2011.03.004___.yzjlonvuaxnhbw9iawxlomm6bzoynwy2yza3mzc5mdbindbjyjg3ogixytmxyzexzwjmoto2omq2n2e6nda3zgjlmwewngzlmtrlzjczyti1zmrknmqwmwiyodm4m2jkzty2zdzkode4yzjmywyyodg1nwq4mgmxy2q0mzpwolq6tg effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 686 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. income inequality in phezukomkhono mlimi farming households: a case study of nkomazi local municipality, south africa themba andries samboa james w oguttub tulisiwe p mbombo-dwebac a,b,cdepartment of agriculture and animal health, university of south africa, florida, south africa.  sambota9@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 9 june 2025 revised: 22 september 2025 accepted: 20 november 2025 published: 28 november 2025 keywords farm gini coefficient income distribution lorenz curve poverty wealth. the south african government has developed several policies and intervention programmes to address food insecurity, poverty, and income inequality. one such programme is the phezukomkhono mlimi (pkm) initiative. however, empirical evidence demonstrating the impact of government programmes like the pkm on poverty and income inequality remains limited. this study examined income inequality and its determinants. a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 230 respondents. the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the gini coefficient, and a quantile regression model. the results indicated a high level of income inequality, with a gini coefficient of 0.48. the majority (60.87%) of households derived their income from farming activities. other sources of income included retirement funds (10.43%) and salaries (7.39%). the findings suggested a high unemployment rate within the study population. age, education, household size, and farm size were identified as determinants of income inequality in the study area. although the income inequality observed was lower than provincial and national levels, government intervention through the pkm programme has not significantly impacted income inequality in the study area. considering this, policy interventions to improve equitable access to education, family planning, and farm size are recommended. contribution/originality: there is a dearth of studies that investigate income inequality and its determinants among rural farming households in south africa. this is the first study to quantify the level of income inequality among pkm farming households and to identify predictors of income inequality among farming communities in a rural setting. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5774 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: sambo, t. a., oguttu, j. w., & mbombo-dweba, t. p. (2025). income inequality in phezukomkhono mlimi farming households: a case study of nkomazi local municipality, south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 686–695. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5774 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction goal 1 of the sustainable development goals of the united nations is to eliminate poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030 (rahman, 2017; united nations, 2015). however, many rural areas, especially in developing countries, remain vulnerable to income inequality and poverty, and as a result, there is a need to help rural farmers diversify and sustain production for increased social, economic, and environmental benefits (akpan, okon, udo, & akpakaden, 2020; kadigi, 2021; sambo, 2021). this is especially crucial for smallholder farmers in rural areas because it can enhance their food supply, income, and wealth (akpan et al., 2020). the significant gap in income inequality between rural and urban populations in developing countries has been attributed to the dependence of rural societies on low-paid agricultural activities (waris, khan, urrahman, hronec, & suplata, 2023). inequality is responsible for asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 686-695 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2966-4244 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6810-4437 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8395-3322 mailto:sambota9@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5774 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 686-695 687 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. several problems such as uneasiness, violence, and corruption. given the high income inequality in south africa, the government has been preoccupied with the fight against poverty and inequality. as a result, the government has developed several policies and intervention programmes to help combat poverty and its impact on society, especially the formally disadvantaged groups. one such programme is the phezukomkhono mlimi (pkm) programme, introduced in 2005 (sambo, oguttu, & mbombo-dweba, 2025; sambo, 2021). available evidence on the pkm programme shows that the programme has had an impact on food security among the participating households. particularly, it has been able to decrease the severity of food insecurity (sambo, 2021). based on this, it is hypothesized that the pkm programme has the potential to ameliorate inequality in the local population. however, empirical evidence showing the impact of government support programmes on poverty and income inequality is lacking, more so in the context of programmes like the pkm. such evidence is needed by policymakers and other stakeholders to formulate suitable policies, plans, and strategies to achieve sustainable development in these areas. it is worth noting that the levels of income inequality in farming households may vary significantly between farming households, the size of agricultural land, and the farmers’ economic characteristics (akpan et al., 2020; rahman, 2017). to the best of our understanding, these characteristics have not received adequate attention among scholars. furthermore, studies that employ cross-sectional data while focusing on small-scale sites and locations, such as the nkomazi local municipality (nklm), are lacking. in addition, where cross-sectional data is applied, most researchers tend to ignore the effects of variation in household, farming, and economic characteristics as well as the existing transforming structures and processes. moreover, available evidence suggests that extremely skewed income inequality is one of the major sources of, and positively correlates with, poverty (akpan et al., 2020). since the south african government views agriculture as one of the major instruments in fighting poverty, it is important to understand the extent of income disparity and poverty levels as well as the factors that influence the manifestation of poverty among farmers who benefit from the pkm programme. unfortunately, there is no evidence of studies that have investigated income inequality in pkm farming households in the nklm. hence, this study investigates the nature and determinants of income inequality in pkm farming households in the nklm, south africa. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study area the study was carried out in the nklm, the smallest of the four municipalities within the ehlanzeni district municipality of the mpumalanga province, south africa. the nklm is bordered by the city of mbombela local municipality (to the west), kruger national park (to the north), mozambique (to the east), and the kingdom of eswatini (to the south). it is linked with mozambique via the national road, the n4, while two provincial roads, the r570 and r571, connect it with the kingdom of eswatini. the nklm covers an area of 4,785 km² and is inhabited by approximately 591,928 people (statistics south africa, 2022). agriculture, mining, and tourism are the major contributors to the economy of the nklm. the number of households practicing agriculture and the unemployment level are also high in the study area (statistics south africa, 2011). 2.2. the target population a list of farming households (n=543) that benefited from the pkm programme during the 2018/19 production season (i.e., april 2018 to march 2019) in the study area was requested from the department of agriculture, rural development, land and environmental affairs (dardlea). the 543 farming households constituted the target population. 2.3. sampling method and sample size a random sample of 230 respondents was drawn from the sample frame of 543 farming households that benefited from the pkm programme using simple random sampling. the 230 respondents were determined using the formula described by adam (2020) for determining sample size from a finite population, as described below. 𝑛 = 𝑁 1+𝑁(𝑒2) (1) where: n = sample size; n = target population; e = margin error set at 0.05. thus, 𝑛 = 543 1+543(0.052) = 543 1+543(0.0025) = 543 1+1.36 = 543 2.36 = 230.08 ≈ 230 2.4. study design and data collection a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study design was adopted to achieve the objectives of this study. quantitative data were collected between 1 february and 24 march 2020 using a structured questionnaire, which was administered during face-to-face interviews by four trained enumerators. the questionnaire solicited demographic and socio-economic information from the respondents. 2.5. data analysis the data were inputted into microsoft excel and subsequently transferred to the statistical package for the social sciences (spss version 28) for further analysis. descriptive statistics, the gini coefficient, and the quantile regression model were employed to analyze the data. 2.5.1. descriptive statistics the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents were summarized and presented as tables and figures. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 686-695 688 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 2.5.2. gini coefficient the gini coefficient was used to measure income inequality among the farming households in the study area. the gini coefficient is a tool widely used to measure inequality, particularly income or wealth distribution. it helps to understand how income or wealth is distributed across a population, providing insight into the level of fairness or disparity in a society. the closer the gini coefficient is to 0, the more equal the distribution of wealth, and the closer it is to 1, the more unequal the distribution of wealth (bellu & liberati, 2006). according to gini (2005), the gini coefficient can be presented as the area between the line of equality and the lorenz curve divided by the total area under the line of equality in the graphical presentation of the lorenz curve. furthermore, it can be expressed or specified mathematically using the following equation. 𝐺 = 1 − ∑ (𝑊𝑖−𝑊𝑖−1)(𝑍𝑖+𝑍𝑖−1) 𝑛 𝑖=1 (2) where, g is the gini coefficient, wi is the cumulated proportion of the population variable, for i = 0..., n, with w0 = 0, wn = 1 and zi is the cumulated proportion of the income variable, for i = 0....n, with z0 = 0, zn = 1. wi and zi should be arranged in an increasing order such that wi > wi – 1 and zi > zi – 1, respectively. 2.5.3. quantile regression model the quantile regression model was employed to identify the determinants of income inequality among the pkm farming households in the study area. quantile regression is an alternative to linear regression when the assumptions for linear regression are not met. this statistical modeling method has recently gained significant attention in income inequality and poverty analysis studies (debebe & zekarias, 2020; garza-rodriguez, ayala-diaz, coronado-saucedo, garza-garza, & ovando-martinez, 2021). this method provides a more detailed view of how variables affect various parts of the population (cook & manning, 2013). quantile regression is particularly useful because it describes how explanatory variables (or predictors) affect different parts of the distribution of the dependent variable in this case, income. instead of just indicating how a variable impacts the average (as is the case in traditional regression), it shows how these variables influence the outcomes at different quantiles such as the 10th percentile and the 50th percentile (median) (xu, 2023). this is useful because the effect of the predictor variables can vary across the income spectrum, providing a more complete picture of the data and capturing subtle distributional effects that would otherwise be missed in standard analysis (cook & manning, 2013). based on the equation described by garza-rodriguez et al. (2021), the quantile regression model is specified as follows: qln(𝑌𝑖|𝑋𝑖) = ∑ 𝑞|𝑌𝑖 − 𝑋′𝑖𝛽𝑞| 𝑁 𝑖:𝑌𝑖≥𝑋′𝛽 + ∑ (1 − 𝑞)|𝑖 − 𝑋′𝑖𝛽𝑞| 𝑁 𝑖:𝑌𝑖≤𝑋′𝛽 (3) q(ln(yi)∣xi): this represents the quantile of the log of total income per adult equivalent (the dependent variable, yi) for the ith household, conditional on the values of the explanatory variables (x). where: xi: represents a column vector of realizations for kth explanatory variables (predictors such as age, education, farming experience, or household size, etc.) that may influence the household's income. β: a column vector of unknown parameters corresponding to the explanatory variables, which the model seeks to estimate. these parameters represent the effect of each predictor at the specified quantile of the income distribution. 0≤q≤1: the quantile of interest. for instance, q=0.5 would represent the median, while q=0.25 would represent the 25th percentile. the quantile regression was applied to assess relationship between the dependent variable and explanatory variables at the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th quantiles of the income distribution. quantile regression is well-suited for this purpose as it examines the distribution of income at different points instead of focusing solely on the mean (bottai et al., 2014). in this case, the quantiles used in regression allow for insight into the factors that influence income at the extremes of the income distribution, in addition to those at quantiles between those extremes (leeds, 2014). quantile regression differs from ordinary linear regression in the sense that it does not involve any supposition about the distribution of the regression residuals. quantile regression is not affected by outliers or skewness in the distribution of the outcome variable, giving more statistical efficacy when outliers exist. moreover, inference on quantiles can allow transformation of the outcome variable without the glitches experienced in ordinary linear regression (bottai et al., 2014; leeds, 2014). 2.5.4. the conceptual framework table 1 graphical representation of the dependent, independent, and presumed relationships with the independent/explanatory variables included in the quantile regression model. table 1. description, measurement, and hypotheses of explanatory variables used in the quantile regression model. variables type of variable measurements hypothesis age continuous years years of schooling continuous years household size continuous years + farming experience continuous years gender dummy male/female ± living with disability dummy yes/no ± marital status dummy married/otherwise + participating in off-farm activities dummy yes/no farm size dummy ≤3ha / 4-5ha / 6-8ha / >8ha ± asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 686-695 689 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 2.6. ethical consideration prior to the commencement of the data collection exercise, approval to conduct this study was obtained from the dardlea and the ethics committee of the college of agriculture and environmental science at the university of south africa (ref #: 2019/caes_hrec/178). 3. results 3.1. socio-economic characteristics of the respondents the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents presented in table 2 indicate that most of the farmers were above 56 years of age (66.96%) and were females (61.30%). the highest proportion was married (46.52%), followed by single (11.74%), divorced (6.96%), and widowed (34.78%). slightly more than half (53.48%) had a household size of 3 to 6 people. up to 13.48% of the respondents had disabilities. regarding education, just under half (48.70%) of the respondents did not attain grade 12, and just above one-third (39.13%) had no formal education. very few had attained grade 12 (7.83%) and tertiary (4.35%) education. most respondents had smaller farms of three hectares or less in size (61.74%), and had access to extension services (70.87%) and did not participate in off-farm activities (62.61%). table 2. socio-economic characteristics of the respondents (n=230). variables frequency (f) percentage (%) age in years ≤35 10 4.35 36-45 17 7.39 46-55 49 21.30 56-65 54 23.48 > 65 100 43.48 gender male 89 38.70 female 141 61.30 persons with disability yes 31 13.48 no 199 86.52 marital status married 107 46.52 single 27 11.74 divorced 16 6.96 widowed 80 34.78 household size < 3 79 34.35 3-6 123 53.48 > 6 28 12.17 level of education no formal education 90 39.13 less than grade 12 112 48.70 grade 12 18 7.83 tertiary education 10 4.35 farming experience <25 years 125 54.65 ≥25 years 105 45.35 farm size (hectares) ≤3 142 61.74 4-5 58 25.22 6-10 21 9.13 >10 9 3.91 participation in off-farm activities yes 86 37.39 no 144 62.61 access to extension services yes 163 70.87 no 67 29.13 3.2. the different sources of income for the farming households that participated in the study table 3 presents the different sources of income for the respondents. the majority (60.87%) of the households derived their income from farming activities such as sales of farm produce, leasing of land, and leasing of farm asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 686-695 690 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. equipment and machinery. other sources of income included receiving social grants (56.52%) and receiving pension payouts (10.43%). a mere 7.39% of the respondents earned wages and salaries, suggesting a high unemployment rate in the study area. only 37.39% of the respondents generated income from other non-farming activities. table 3. sources of income of the respondents. 1source of income frequency (f) percentage (%) farm income 140 60.87 social grant 130 56.52 retirement funds 24 10.43 wages and salaries 17 7.39 remittances 23 10.00 other non-farming activities 86 37.39 note: 1mutiple responses were possible. 3.3. income distribution and the gini coefficient of the study population table 4 presents the income distribution of households in the study area. the results indicate that the majority (90.43%) of households had a per capita monthly income of less than r1,500.00, which accounts for 50.11% of the total income. this was followed by an equal proportion (4.35%) of households earning a per capita monthly income of r1,501.00 to r2,500.00 and r2,501.00 to r5,000.00. however, the latter income bracket (r2,501.00 to r5,000.00) contributed a higher percentage (18.22%) to the total income than the former income bracket (r1,501.00 to r2,500.00), which contributed 15.95%. the proportion of households with an annual income of r5,001.00 to r10,000.00 and those earning above r10,000.00 were both 0.43%, but the contribution of the latter income bracket to the total income was twice as high (10.02%) compared to the former (5.69%). table 4. income distribution of households (n=230). per capita income per month number of households (f) percentage of distribution (%) percentage of income contribution (%) less than r1 500 208 90.43 50.11 r1 501-r2 500 10 4.35 15.95 r2 501-r5 000 10 4.35 18.22 r5 001-r10 000 1 0.43 5.69 above r10 000 1 0.43 10.02 total 230 100 100 table 5 shows the determination of the gini coefficient based on the formula derived by gini (2005). the results show that the study population had a gini coefficient of 0.48, which indicates some degree of inequality. table 5. measurement of the gini coefficient of households. income distribution cumulative % of population cumulative % of income (wi-wi-1) (zi+zi-1) (wi-wi-1)(zi+zi-1) 0 0 0 0.00 0 0.00 less than r1 500 0.98 0.50 0.98 0.50 0.49 r1 501-r2 500 0.99 0.66 0.00 1.16 0.01 r2 501-r5 000 0.99 0.84 0.00 1.50 0.01 r5 001-r10 000 1.00 0.90 0.00 1.74 0.01 above r10 000 1.00 1.00 0.00 1.90 0.01 𝐺 = 1 − ∑ (𝑊𝑖−𝑊𝑖−1)(𝑍𝑖+𝑍𝑖−1) 𝑛 𝑖=1 =1-0.52=0.48 total = 0.52 figure 1 presents the determination of the gini coefficient based on the lorenz curve. the lorenz curve was plotted based on the cumulative percentage of the population (on the x-axis) and the cumulative percentage of income (on the y-axis). graphically, the gini coefficient (0.48) is reflected as the quotient of the area (a), which is between the lorenz curve and the line of equality, and the total area under the line of equality (a+b). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 686-695 691 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 1. lorenz curve. 3.4. determinants of income inequality among the households table 6 shows the results of the quantile regression analysis. variables such as age, education, household size, and farm size had a statistically significant effect on income inequality in this study. the direction and magnitude of the effect of the predictor variables on the outcome variable (per capita income) are shown by the coefficients of the quantile regression analysis. the age of the household head had a negative effect on the per capita income of the household in almost all quantiles, but it was significant at the median (50th) and 75th quantiles. meanwhile, education had a positive impact on the income level of households at all quantiles except the 10th quantile. however, the impact of education was only significant at the 25th quantile. furthermore, the magnitude of the impact of education increased with the increase in the quantile levels. household size had a negative and significant effect on income across all quantiles. its magnitude also increased with the increase in quantile levels. regarding farm size, a positive effect on household income was observed across all quantiles except the 10th quantile in the first two levels of farm size, namely, in three (3) or fewer hectares and between 4 and 5 hectares. however, their association was only significant at the 25th quantile. the third level of farm size (6-8 hectares) had a positive effect on household income across all quantiles, but was only significant at the 25th and 50th quantiles. the magnitude of the effect increased with higher quantiles in all farm size levels. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 686-695 692 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 6. quantile regression analysis of the determinants of income inequality among households. variables 10th quantiles 25th quantiles 50th quantiles 75th quantiles 90th quantiles coe1 t2 p3 coe t p coe t p coe t p coe t p age -0.02 -0.04 0.97 0.48 0.81 0.42 -5.18 -2.16 0.03* -14.02 -2.50 0.01* -5.10 -0.52 0.60 years of schooling -2.13 -1.56 0.12 6.83 4.18 0.00* 11.72 1.80 0.07 29.28 1.92 0.06 41.19 1.55 0.12 household size -53.97 -31.67 0.00* -51.67 -25.38 0.00* -54.49 -6.69 0.00* -88.68 -4.67 0.00* -143.30 -4.33 0.00* farming experience -0.25 -0.73 0.47 -0.63 -1.56 0.12 -0.84 -0.52 0.60 0.77 0.21 0.84 -9.66 -1.47 0.14 gender (male) 19.96 1.72 0.09 -7.20 -0.52 0.60 70.97 1.28 0.20 77.41 0.60 0.55 292.61 1.30 0.20 disabled (yes) -1.47 -0.10 0.92 -18.29 -1.02 0.31 -61.17 -0.85 0.40 -72.23 -0.43 0.67 -42.23 -0.14 0.89 married (yes) -10.47 -0.91 0.36 6.73 0.49 0.63 22.90 0.42 0.68 171.92 1.34 0.18 64.99 0.29 0.77 farm size (≤3 ha) -8.56 -0.30 0.76 78.31 2.32 0.02* 237.03 1.76 0.08 436.30 1.39 0.17 572.33 1.04 0.30 farm size (4-5ha) -1.64 -0.06 0.96 78.28 2.23 0.03* 243.02 1.73 0.08 482.82 1.48 0.14 763.19 1.34 0.18 farm size (6-8ha) 42.87 1.38 0.17 129.70 3.49 0.00* 469.72 3.16 0.00* 531.33 1.54 0.13 766.34 1.27 0.21 pofa4 (yes) 10.63 0.99 0.32 -0.46 -0.04 0.97 89.51 1.74 0.08 98.87 0.82 0.41 308.65 1.48 0.14 note: 1coefficient. 2t-ratio. 3statistically significant p-value. 4participation on off-farm activities. *statistically significant at p=0.05. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 686-695 693 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 4. discussion widening income inequality among households is a concern for most governments (teka, woldu, & fre, 2022), policy makers and the research community (anyiam et al., 2023). in this study, the total gini index was 0.48, which indicates high inequality in the study population. this is concerning given the association between income inequality and poverty, food insecurity (abdulsalam, abdulwahab, zakari, & adamu, 2024; haini, musa, wei loon, & basir, 2023), and the fact that income inequality is a deterrent to overall economic growth (sulla, zikhali, & cuevas, 2022). among farming communities in particular, income inequality compromises livelihoods and farming activities (abdulsalam et al., 2024). with regard to the existence of income inequality in farming households, the results of the current study are consistent with previous studies (dib, alamsyah, & qaim, 2018; kadigi, 2021; priscilla, singh, & vatta, 2021; teka et al., 2022). however, in comparison, previous studies reported higher gini coefficients of more than 50% (kadigi, 2021; priscilla et al., 2021; teka et al., 2022). furthermore, the gini coefficient reported here is also lower than the provincial income inequality and the national level. according to the mpumalanga provincial treasury (2024), the gini coefficient in the mpumalanga province, where this study was conducted, was 0.59 in 2022. the observed difference could be attributed to variations in household characteristics across these studies. for example, the present study included only rural farming households, whereas the determination of the provincial gini coefficient encompassed households with a variety of characteristics. reports have shown that, in general, rural areas (sulla et al., 2022) and smaller cities (alimi, maré, & poot, 2018) have lower inequalities when compared to urban areas. while the income inequality registered in this study is considerably lower than the provincial rate, it is still a cause for concern. this is because, according to previous studies (abdulsalam et al., 2024; luebker, 2010; zantsi, greyling, & vink, 2019), a gini coefficient of 0.35 is considered high. it is noteworthy to mention that this gini coefficient is comparable to the one observed in a study conducted in the eastern cape, south africa, among emerging farmers, where a gini coefficient of 0.48 was also observed (zantsi et al., 2019). this confirms the findings of previous studies, which concluded that while income inequality exists in rural areas, it tends to be lower than that observed in urban areas (sulla et al., 2022). age had a negative effect on income inequality and was significant at the 50th and 75th quantiles. this suggests that an increase in the proportion of the population with a higher age results in a decrease in income inequality. this finding contrasts with the findings by debebe and zekarias (2020), who demonstrated that income among households in southern ethiopia increased with age, thus decreasing the income gap. similarly, liu, ibrahim, and chin (2025) observed a negative relationship between population aging and income inequality. in support of this, abdulsalam et al. (2024) argue that as household members get older, they can find income sources which ultimately contribute to the overall income of the household. in the case of agricultural households, the observed trend could be explained by the fact that, generally, agriculture among smallholder farmers is labor-intensive; therefore, productivity may be negatively affected due to age. an increase in the number of years of schooling corresponds with a higher education level. education was expected to play a significant role in reducing income inequality in this study. however, an increase in the number of years of schooling of the household head translated into an increase in income inequality in this study. previous studies have found the relationship between education and income inequality to be ambiguous at times. for instance, nabassaga, chuku, mukasa, and amusa (2020) found a non-linear, inverted u-shape relationship between education and income inequality. in another study, moyo, mishi, and ncwadi (2022) found that the effect of education on income inequality may be either positive or negative, depending on equal access to education. the results of the present study are comparable with the findings of other studies. for example, in nigeria, aminu, wei, arowolo, and ibrahim (2021) found that education had an increasing effect on income inequality among smallholder arable crop farmers. in nekemte town, ethiopia, teshome, sera, and dachito (2021) found that variations in education contributed negatively to income inequality. this could be attributed to the fact that household heads who have attained higher education levels are more likely to adopt better farming practices and hence earn more than households with lower education. therefore, it is not surprising that in a study population like the one observed in this study, where there are wide discrepancies in education, there are variations in income, thus resulting in high income inequality. similar assertions were made by aminu et al. (2021), who attributed this to the fact that education augments the skills base and consequently positively influences income-earning capacity. thus, increasing the income gap if there is inequality in access to education (moyo et al., 2022). the fact that household size had a statistically significant negative effect across all quantiles is consistent with findings of previous studies, which demonstrated that the size of the household is significantly associated with income inequality (nebebe, & appa rao, 2016; shin, 2020; waris et al., 2023). therefore, the findings reported here imply that having many large households contributes to a decrease in income inequality in the area. some studies have reported similar results. for example, it has been noted that an increase in the size of the family is likely to lead to more income earners per household, thereby increasing the overall income of the household (debebe & zekarias, 2020; rahman, 2017). therefore, the effect of household size on income inequality might be informed by the dependency ratio or working-age group in the households and the area where the study is conducted. for example, in cities and towns where jobs are more readily available compared to rural areas, household size might significantly decrease income inequality. in support of this, abdulsalam et al. (2024) argue that in a large-sized household where the dependency ratio is low, most of its members can find income sources, which ultimately contribute to the overall income of the household. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 686-695 694 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. farm size was another significant determinant of income inequality. in this study, farm size was captured as a categorical variable with three levels: ≤3ha, 4-5ha, and 6-8ha. all three levels of farm size had a positive association with income inequality, except for the first quantile of the ≤3ha and 4-5ha levels. the magnitude of the impact of farm size increased with the increase in the quantiles. this shows that an increase in farm size positively impacts income. this implies that households with smaller farms have lower incomes than those with larger farms, increasing the gap between the poor and rich households, hence higher inequality within those lower categories. this could be attributed to the fact that households with larger cultivated lands tend to improve their earning capacity (aminu et al. (2021). 5. conclusion and recommendations the study examined the extent and determinants of income inequality among farming households using the gini coefficient and quantile regression model. the gini coefficient in this study area was higher than 0.35, indicating that income inequality persists despite the participation of farming households in the pkm program.this situation has the potential to predispose farming households to adverse effects such as food insecurity, poverty, and weakened livelihoods. age, education, household size, and farm size were identified as factors with a significant impact on income inequality among respondents. therefore, policies aimed at reducing income inequality among farming households should consider these key factors. strategies to promote equitable access to education are necessary. for example, educational support programs targeting disadvantaged children and children with uneducated parents should be prioritized. other equity strategies include providing free and mandatory primary and secondary education for all children, ensuring access for excluded groups and learners with special educational needs, increasing resource allocation to schools, and creating equitable learning and teaching environments. providing comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education to both adults and school-going adolescents could aid in family planning, thereby reducing large family sizes. the positive impact of farm size in this study emphasizes the need for larger agricultural lands as a means to increase the earning capacity of agricultural households. successful implementation of land reform programs and leasing vacant productive land could help increase farm size and production, directly contributing to reducing poverty and income inequality. however, agricultural land alone is insufficient; support for agricultural households from both public and private sectors to maximize land use is also essential. funding: this work was supported by the university of south africa’s masters and doctoral support program. the funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the college of agriculture and environmental science, university of south africa, south africa granted approval for this study on 19 november 2019 (ref #: 2019/caes_hrec/178). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abdulsalam, r. y., abdulwahab, b. a., zakari, y., & adamu, y. 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(2019). towards a common understanding of ‘emerging farmer’in a south african context using data from a survey of three district municipalities in the eastern cape province. south african journal of agricultural extension, 47(2), 81-93. https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3221/2019/v47n2a505 views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.3390/economies9020060 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijssp-12-2021-0303 https://doi.org/10.4236/ojf.2021.113017 https://doi.org/10.1177/155862351400900405 https://doi.org/10.1080/21665095.2022.2032236 https://doi.org/10.63040/25827510.2021.04.006 https://doi.org/10.18697/ajfand.139.25035 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40711-020-00126-7 https://doi.org/10.1007/s43546-021-00158-2 https://doi.org/10.4236/jfrm.2023.122010 https://doi.org/10.54097/vt1qpm59 https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3221/2019/v47n2a505 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 269 impact of agricultural infrastructure development on inequality and optimization equality of farmers’ income in indonesia-timor leste border area werenfridus taenaa boanerges putra sipayungb fried markus allung blegurc anggelina delviana klaud a,b,c,dtimor university, east nusa tenggara, indonesia.  weren_ntt@yahoo.co.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 21 august 2023 revised: 25 september 2023 accepted: 17 november 2023 published: 14 december 2023 keywords agricultural infrastructure border area equality optimization factors determinant income inequality indonesia and timor leste. this research aims to analyze income inequality and the factors determining inequality, as well as the allocation of land resources that optimize income distribution. the research is a continuation of previous research that found production and income growth as a result of the construction of the roticlot dam in the border area of indonesia and timorleste. the research used survey methods in fatuketi village, the location of agricultural infrastructure (rotiklot dam) in the indonesia and timor leste border area. data analysis uses gini, tobit ratios, and linear programming. the results of the gini ratio analysis show that there has been a decrease in income inequality from medium (gini ratio = 0.44) to low (gini ratio = 0.26); and the results of the tobit analysis state that the factor that has a significant positive effect on income inequality is land area, while farmer independence, the number of family dependents, and business capital have a significant negative effect. furthermore, land resource factors that have a positive influence on income distribution are allocated appropriately and fairly so that income equality is achieved, namely idr 3,732,692.81 (gini ratio = 0.00, which is a very low level of income inequality). it is recommended that agrarian reform through the distribution of additional land be adjusted to the existing conditions of land area, income, availability of water resources, and socio-economic factors. contribution/originality: the originality of the research is the impact of production and income growth on the increasingly equal distribution of income and the factors that cause it. this year's research findings relate to reducing income inequality caused by technical and socio-economic factors so that appropriate land distribution can optimize income distribution. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i4.4933 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: taena, w., sipayung, b. p., blegur, f. m. a., & klau, a. d. (2023). impact of agricultural infrastructure development on inequality and optimization equality of farmers’ income in indonesia -timor leste border area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4), 269–276. 10.55493/5005.v13i4.4933 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the new development paradigm has changed the perspective of development, which is more directed at growth and equity (rustiadi, saefulhakim, & panuju, 2011). infrastructure development is an important aspect of spurring economic growth because it has an impact on expanding access, creating new jobs, and increasing income in a asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 4 (2023): 269-276. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3164-7064 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7669-5561 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1573-7078 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9492-4260 mailto:weren_ntt@yahoo.co.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 269-276 270 sustainable manner. the development of agricultural infrastructure has an impact on the emergence of new economic growth locations, so that other regions will also grow and develop simultaneously according to the potential of their respective regions. the characteristics of the indonesia and timor leste border region are dry land with a dry climate, which causes low agricultural production and makes it an underdeveloped area both in terms of infrastructure and human resources. the backwardness experienced is one of the causes of the high poverty rate , with an average of around 20%, according to the central bureau of statistics (2023). the development of agricultural infrastructure, especially dams, aims to facilitate access to water resources so as to increase agricultural production and productivity as well as farmers' income. the development of agricultural infrastructure, especially those related to water supply, is a priority in the indonesia and timor leste border region. the establishment and enhancement of agricultural infrastructure can serve as a vaiable approach to address the differences in econmoic development across different regions. the rotiklot dam has been operating since 2019 with the aim of meeting the water needs of agricultural areas, which has an impact on increasing the productivity of rice and corn plants, which has implications for increasing farmers' income (li, cao, qiu, & li, 2020). increasing agricultural production through agricultural extensification with the use of marginal land and the availability of water resources can increase the cropping index, which was originally one growing season to two growing seasons (sutrisno & hamdani, 2019; taena, sipayung, blegur,& klau, 2023). farmers who use water sources from dams have better technical efficiency than farmers who do not use water sources from dams (shabanzadehkhoshrody, azadi, khajooeipour, & nabavi-pelesaraei, 2016). alhader (2020) argues that farmers around the dam do not only use agricultural land for food crops but also aim for horticultural crops and animal husbandry so that their income becomes higher. farmers who are near the dam are more empowered and tend to be more active, resulting in higher production and income (cheruiyot & nge’tich, 2022; rasyid, kristina, wantara, & jumali, 2023; sipayung, fobia, taena, & joka, 2021). the production of food crops, horticulture, and livestock increases supply to the city of atambua as one of the centers of national strategic act ivities because these commodities have a comparative advantage over the use of the rotiklot dam (taena, sipayung, blegur, & klau, 2023). in addition, it can be used for export because of its close proximity to timor-leste. increased production and income have implications for increasing economic growth, but the consequences may not necessarily be felt by all people, as adam, nusantara, and muthalib (2017) and vo, vo, and le (2019) show that economic growth is positively correlated with income inequality. the findings are different from those (sukmaadi & marhaeni, 2021) in that if planning and resource allocation are carried out properly, economic growth can simultaneously reduce income inequality. the increase in income as a result of the roticlot dam is expected to be evenly distributed. the difference in income distribution results in income inequality for farmers. kata and wosiek (2020) states that income inequality can be caused by differences in production factors owned by farmers. in addition, vo et al. (2019) stated that differences in labor participation and the implementation of socio-economic policies cause income inequality. differences in technical production and socio-economic factors among farmers cause differences in production and income and have an indirect impact on inequality. agricultural production factors include agricultural technical factors (covering the planting area and number of types of businesses) and socio-economic factors (covering education, farmer independence, the ability to access information, group act ivity, cooperation, and venture capital). technical factors of agricultural product ion and farmers' socio-economic influences on the empowerment of farmers in the indonesia-timor leste border area. research (gushendri & sentosa, 2023; nugraha, prayitno, situmorang, & nasution, 2020; zolfaghari, kabiri, & saadatmanesh, 2020) states that the combination of economic infrastructure development and social infrastructure contributes to reducing income inequality. another opinion from nurdina (2021) and d'onofrio and giordani (2019) is that infrastructure development increases income inequality in society. the different impacts generated by infrastructure development depend on the util ization of product ion factors including the social and economic capital of the people in a region (vasilyeva, bilan, bagmet, & seliga, 2020). factors of agricultural production in border areas include: technical and socio-economic factors are used to utilize the agricultural infrastructure that has been built (rotiklot dam) so that there is an increase in income and equity , or income inequality. the novelty of this study is that itanalyzes income inequality and its causative factors as a result of the development of agricultural infrastructure in the indonesia-timor leste border region, as well as an optimization model for equal distribution of farm income. the results of this study form the basis for recommending agricultural development policies in the indonesia and timor leste border region. 2. research method 2.1. research locations the research was carried out in the indonesia-timor leste border area, specifically fatuketi village, kakulukmesak district, belu regency, which is shown in figure 1, where the image data is obtained from inageoportal, which is a national geoportal in indonesia that connects various ministries, institutions, provinces and regions that are the connecting partners for the national geospatial information network node. data collection was carried out in april-june 2023. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 269-276 271 2.2. data collection the research data uses primary data obtained from farmers in fatuketi village. data obtained by conducting interviews and observations. the variables used in this study are the gini ratio, technical factors, and socio-economic characteristics of farmers in fatuketi village. the population of this study was all farmers in fatuketi village, kakulukmesak district. the heads of farming families are 4 ,500. the number of samples is determined to be 300 households; the larger, the lower the error rate (cuddeback, wilson, orme, & combs-orme, 2004; hamed, 2017). the sample was determined using a purposive method with consideration of representing the diversity of ownership of the production factors of farmers in fatuketi village. figure 1. map of research location. 2.3. data analysis data analysis begins with an analysis of farmers' income from food crop, horticulture, and/or animal husbandry businesses. the results of the income analysis are grouped into f ive income groups for inequality analysis. moreover, the examination of inequality includes the examination of both technical and socio-economic aspects. additionally, one approach to understanding the reasons of inequality involves considering a specific causative element as a means of identifying restrictions that maybe addressed to enhance income equality. the data analysis framework is shown in figure 2. figure 2. flowchart of data analysis. source: ina geoportal. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 269-276 272 to analyze income inequality using the gini ratio value with the following formula: gr = 1 ∑𝑓𝑖 (𝑌𝑖+ 𝑌𝑖−1) (1) information: gr = gini ratio. fi = proportion of the total population. yi = proportion cumulatively the total income of the community up to class i. yi-1 = cumulative percentage of income up to class i. to analyze the factor of income inequality using tobit regression analysis with the mode l used as follows: 𝑃 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑋1 +𝛽2𝑋2 + ⋯+ 𝛽9𝑋9 + 𝑒 (2) information: q: the probability of the number of farmers with a certain income. x1: farmer independence. x2: planted area cultivated by farmers. x3: length of farmer's education. x4: farmers' ability to access information. x5: activeness of farmers in groups. x6: dummy number of farming sectors carried out by farmers (0= if farmers only cultivate food crops/horticultural crops; 1= if farmers cultivate food crops/horticulture and add livestock; 2; if farmers cultivate food crops, horticulture, and livestock). x7: number of dependents of the farming family. x8: amount of farmer's farming capital. x9: the ability of farmers to cooperate. to analyze the optimization of the distribution of income of farmers using the distribution of marginal land based on the init ial income of farmers. the available marginal land is 300 ha. palayukan (2021) stated that optimizing income distribution with limited resource allocation (such as: increasing planting area) uses linear programming. the linear programming model is solved using lingo software. the objective function of the linear program (z) is to determine the maximum income for each farmer after managing marginal land as agricultural land. the constraint functions of the linear program are: (1) the addition of planting area for each farmer originating from marginal land does not exceed the available marginal land area, (2) the amount of initial income and the additional income from increasing planting area must be evenly distributed for each farmer, (3) non-negative constraints for all variables to ensure that there is no reduction in planted area and farmer income. the linear program model is: (3) information: i :farmer index (i=1,2,…,300). xi :additional planting area from marginal land for farmer i (are). ii-1:initial income of farmer i (idr). avgi:average income of farmers from each acre of planted area (idr 16,266.38). 3. results and discussion 3.1. income inequality and factor causing analysis 3.1.1. income inequality analysis the rotiklot dam, which was built in the indonesia-timor leste border area, has an impact on the distribution of infrastructure provision in the border areas, which are classified as lagging, backward, and frontier areas. an equal distribution of infrastructure development is also expected to reduce income inequality. after the d am, farmers generally carry out farming for two growing seasons, with more diversified farming (food, horticulture , and/or animal husbandry). decision-making in farming affects agricultural production and productivity as well as farmers' income (jha & gupta, 2021), which in turn has an impact on decreasing or increasing income inequality. todaro and smith (2009) provide a limitation that countries with high inequality have a g ini coefficient of 0.510.70, and are classified as very high when the coefficient value is 0.71-1; while countries with relatively low inequality or evenly distributed gini coefficients, namely 0.21-0.35; and very low inequality with a coefficient of 0.00-0.20 and inequality is classif ied as medium if the gini ratio coefficient is 036-0.50. based on the results of the gini ratio analysis for farmers in the indonesia-timor leste border region in 2021, a gini ratio index value of 0.44 is obtained , so the income inequality level of farmers in border areas is categorized as medium. this condition occurs because farmers generally do farming specifically for food crops, and a small number of farmers do cattle farming in large quantities. the results of the analysis state that the gini coefficient has decreased in 2022 to 0.28, which means that the level of income inequality is categorized as low or that there is a tendency for income distribution among farmers in max𝑍 = 𝑧 𝑋𝑖 300 𝑖=1 ≤ 30,000 𝐴𝑉𝐺𝐼 ∙ 𝑋𝑖 + 𝐼𝑖 −1 = 𝑧,∀𝑖 = 1, 2,… , 300 𝑋𝑖 ≥ 0,∀𝑖 = 1, 2,… , 300 𝑧 ≥ 0 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 269-276 273 the indonesia-timor leste border region. this is in line with research (molebila, latuan, & lutang, 2022; zega, mursalin, & yudhistira, 2022), which states that the level of inequality in farmer income is low. after 3 years of operation of the dam, farmers adapted well so that the type of farming began to experience an increase from seasonal food crops to 2 seasons of food crops or 1 season of food crops and 1 season of horticultural crops. income inequality will drop to a very low category (<0.20) if the inequality factor is analyzed properly so that the allocation of resources is carried out correctly. 3.1.2. analysis of factors causing income inequality the results of the analysis of factors that influence income inequality in the rotiklot dam service area are shown in table 1. table 1. results of analysis of factors influencing inequality in the indonesia-timor leste border area. variabel margin effect standard error prob. x1 -0.014 0.009 0.108c x2 0.015 0.005 0.002a x3 -0.001 0.001 0.70 x4 -0.000 0.004 0.226 x5 -0.003 0.010 0.76 x6 0.003 0.003 0.985 x7 -0.004 0.000 0.099b x8 -0.006 0.010 0.081b x9 -0.006 0.003 0.555 note: a, b, and c significant on α: 5% ,10%, and 20%. the analysis results in table 1 can be written in the following equation, and described in the following section. 𝑌 = 0.2255 − 0.01382𝑋1 + 0.01505𝑋2 − 0.00007𝑋3 + 0.00348𝑋4 − 0.00294𝑋5 −0.00008𝑋6 − 0.00134𝑋7 − 0.00612𝑋8 − 0.00599𝑋9 (4) table 1 presents an analysis of several factors that influence the income gap between farmers in the border areas of indonesia and timor leste as a result of the rotiklot dam. factors that signif icantly affect income inequality are farmer independence, land area, the number of family dependents, and business capital. first, farmer independence. the independence of farmers in the indonesia-timor leste border region has a significant negative effect on income inequality. the independent attitude of farmers who are in the dam service area reduces the chance that the number of farmers with higher incomes is 1.38%, so that the percentage of farmers with lower incomes is higher, causing income inequality. traditional farmers in the indonesia-timor leste regionare still bound by very strong customs. they have some difficulties working independently because they do not have the technology that requires agricultural labor. groups of farmers provide agricultural labor, allowing farming to be managed with group assistance. sudarko, sumardjo, fatchiya, and tjitropranoto (2020) have a different opinion in the case of coffee farmers, the independence of farmers supports increased income from their farming. groups or institutions owned by farmers support the independence of farmers. second, land area. the increase in the area of agricultural land due to the availability of better water resources from dams has a positive and significant effect on the farmers have the chance to earn a 1.5% increase in income.farmers resid ing in border regions employ adaptive strategies to enhance water availability, primarily through the expansion of land area, hence leading to amplified agricultural output and income. it impacts the increase in agricultural land area and income. an increase in farmer income with an unbalanced percentage can cause inequality. abdul‐salam and phimister (2017) and sugiarto, nur, djatmiko, wakhidati, and einstein (2019) stated that the addition of land area causes differences in the technical efficiency of farming due to differences in the ability to access agricultural information and intellectual abilities of farmers, so that it affects the income of the resulting farming. third, the number of family dependents. the number of family dependents has a negative and significant effect on the opportunities for the number of farmers with better incomes in border areas. the number of family dependents reduces the probability that the number of farmers with better incomes is 0.4%, which means that the percentage of farmers with low incomes is increasing, resulting in income inequality. increasing family dependents increases the expenditure costs of farming families in border areas. the number of large famil ies is a potential source of farm labor if productivity is high, and vice versa, it becomes a burden if productivity is low. farming families in border areas have strong socio-cultural attachments, so social activities are higher than efforts to increase production and productivity, resulting in income inequality for farmers who have a small number of family dependents but focus on developing their farming businesses. sasmi, susanto, mula, and alatas (2022) argue that the number of dependents of the farming family, which is a source of labor, has a negative effect on farm production and income due to the inefficiency of farming. fourth, the amount of farming capital. the amount of farming capital has a significant and negative effect on the opportunities for the number of farmers with high incomes. the amount of farming cap ital reduces the probability of high number of high-income farmers by 0.5%, thereby contributing to income inequality. the capital farming issues in the service area of the rot iclot dam in the border area are inversely proportional to the profits they get. low asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 269-276 274 technological adaptation causes the use of capital that does not produce high production and productivity. low financial management ability is also one of the causes, according to the opinions of wang, ma, li, and xue (2022) and suh, njimanted, and thalut (2020) that good farmer management capabilities increase the adaptability and technical efficiency of agriculture so that it has implications for increasing agricultural production and farmer income. the factor that significantly increases the income of farmers is land area, on the other hand, the factor thatsignificantly decreases the income is the independence of farmers, the number of family dependents, and business capital. therefore, an optimization analysis is needed to increase income by increasing the land area proportiona lly so that there is an equal distribution of income for farmers in the indonesia-timor leste border area. lin, ma, zhu, and cui (2022) stated that the allocation of land resources with the socio-economic transformation of the community will produce effective innovations, thereby realizing an equal distribution of income. 3.2. income equality optimization the addition of agricultural land area due to an increase in the availability of water resources will increase the production and income of farmers, as is the opinion of campenhout (2021) that the allocation of resources must take into account the equity and efficiency of farming, also agreements between farmers. the equitable and balanced allocation of land resources is conducted by considering land area, while income distribution is enhanced through several approaches to achieve a more equal distribution of revenue. the results of the analysis state that the initial income of farmers is around idr 150,000 to idr 3,200,000. the existing land area ranges from 15 to 200 acres with an average of 80.23 acres. the results of the optimization analysis using lingo software stated that the allocation of land resources ranging from 32.75 acres to 220.25 acres, with an average of 153.06 acres will increase revenue from idr 532,692.79 to idr 3,582,693.47 so that there is an equal distribution of income at idr 3,732. 692.81. the average income of farmers increased by 200.31%, from idr 1,242,940.41 to idr 3,732,692.81. chen, restuccia, and santaeulàlia-llopis (2022) the effect of land relocation increases agricultural productivity and income. the results of the analysis are shown in table 2 and figure 3. table 2. optimization results for equal income. no initial income (idr) increased allocation of planting area (are) increased income due to additional planting area (idr) equitable income (idr) 1 1,800,000.000 118.815 1,932,693.466 3,732,693.466 2 800,000.000 180.292 2,932,692.091 3,732,692.091 3 2,600,000.000 69.634 1,132,692.777 3,732,692.777 ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ 299 2,000,000.000 106.520 1,732,693.416 3,732,693.416 300 1,150,000.000 158.775 2,582,693.223 3,732,693.223 average 1,242,940.408 153.061 2,489,752.404 3,732,692.813 figure 3.results of income equality analysis. 4. conclusions income inequality has decreased from medium to low as a result of the use of the roticlot dam. factors that have a significant positive effect on income inequality are land area, while the independence of farmers, the number of family dependents, and business capital are signif icantly negative. therefore, the addition of land area proportionately increases farmers' income until it reaches equal distribution of income at idr 3,732. 692.81. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(4)2023: 269-276 275 study recommends land distribution in a balanced proportion with the availability of socio-economic factors, and further studies are needed on institutional and environmental aspects. funding: this research is supported by directorate general of higher education research and technology ministry of education and culture, indonesia (grant number: 068/e5/pg.02.00.pl/2023). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the timor university, indonesia has granted approval for this study on 17 april 2023 (ref. no. 03/un60.60/pp/2023). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abdul‐salam, y., & phimister, e. 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(2020). impact of socio-economic infrastructure investments on income inequality in iran. journal of policy modeling, 42(5), 1146-1168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpolmod.2020.02.004 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.17358/brcs.3.2.104 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.06.145 https://doi.org/10.35940/ijitee.e2985.039520 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311932.2020.1844848 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v13i1.4762 https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm12030145 https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2022.946855 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpolmod.2020.02.004 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 157 export demand of palm oil in malaysia: analysis using ardl approach normaz wana ismaila sarah nursyazmin mohamad kamalb muhamad firdausc norazwa mohamed haririd aschool of business and economics, putra universiti malaysia, malaysia. b, dlaboratory of agricultural and food policy studies, institute of tropical agriculture & food security, putra universiti malaysia, malaysia. c faculty of economics and management, institut pertanian bogor, indonesia.  nwi@upm.edu.my (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 24 march 2022 revised: 26 may 2022 accepted: 10 june 2022 published: 29 june 2022 keywords agricultural commodities palm oil export price ardl. jel classification f14; c21; q01; q17. the growth of the palm oil industry in malaysia has established a demand for exports among trading partners worldwide. as a result, malaysia has gained a reputation as the world's largest producer and exporter of palm oil. crude palm oil production in 1980 was 2.50 million tonnes; however, by 2019 it had increased to 19.86 million tonnes due to the high export demand for oil palm products. this study studies the export demand for palm oil in malaysia from 1991 to 2019 by adopting autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) for cointegration to analyze the export demand determinant, weighted average trading partner income, malaysian export price, competitor export price, world export price of palm oil, world export price of soybean oil, and real effective exchange rate. the main findings reveal that the factors that determine malaysian export demands for palm oil are palm oil price changes and trading partner income. in addition, the study also finds that european restrictions on unsustainable palm oil consumption hurt malaysia’s export demand for palm oil. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the literature by providing evidence of the determinants of export demand for palm oil in malaysia. dynamic models are used to identify the relationships between income, price, and exchange rates that can explain the demand for palm oil. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4531 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: normaz wana ismail --sarah nursyazmin binti mohamad kamal --muhamad firdaus --norazwa binti mohamed hariri (2022). export demand of palm oil in malaysia: analysis using ardl approach. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3), 157-163. 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4531 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction palm oil is an economically essential and useful vegetable oil that is used as a raw material for food and non-food products. most of its production occurs in indonesia and malaysia, which produce about 83 percent of the global total. the next three most significant producers are thailand, nigeria, and colombia. malaysian domestic demand for palm oil is mainly for the oleo-chemical and food industries. the amount of palm oil available for export is attained by balancing palm oil's domestic supply and demand. despite contributing significantly to world palm oil production, malaysia faces intense competition for market share among other producers, mainly indonesia. malaysia's total export of oil palm products increased by 12.1% in 2019, reaching 27.88 million tonnes compared to 24.88 million tonnes exported in 2018. however, total export revenue declined by 4.0% to rm64.84 billion compared to rm67.52 billion in 2018 due to lower prices on the global market. compared to 2018, the palm oil export volume rose sharply by 12.0% asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 3 (2022): 157-163. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0865-256x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6294-0319 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4006-8248 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3634-7535 mailto:nwi@upm.edu.my http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 157-163 158 to 18.47 million tonnes due to higher demand, particularly from india, china, the european union (eu), vietnam, and turkey. india maintained the position it has held since 2014 as the largest importer of malaysian palm oil with an intake of 4.41 million tonnes in 2019, which amounted to 23.9% of total global palm oil exports. china followed with 2.49 million tonnes (13.5%), then the eu with 2.09 million tonnes (11.3%), pakistan with 1.09 million tonnes (5.9%), turkey with 0.71 million tonnes (3.8%), the philippines with 0.63 million tonnes (3.4%), and vietnam with 0.60 million tonnes (3.2%). price and income elasticity have become a central element in the controversy among empirical studies of export demand. previous literature such as reinhart (1995) and senhadji and montenegro (1999) suggested that sizeable relative price changes are required for a computable impact on trade patterns to occur. this result is contradicted, however, by the studies of arize (1990) and narayan and narayan (2004), which found that the relative price does not affect export demand. furthermore, in acquiring the income elasticity of demand, a foreign activity variable is also constituted in the export demand model. the foreign activity variable is the weighted average of trading partner income, gross national product (gnp), and gross domestic product (gdp). reinhart (1995); senhadji and montenegro (1999); narayan and narayan (2004); chen and chen (2007), and abdullah (2011) explained the export demand for indonesian palm oil exports. further, rifin (2010a) examined the export competitiveness of indonesia and malaysia's palm oil exports and found that indonesia's palm oil is income elastic and price inelastic. hence, indonesia secured an increasing market share and strong market competitiveness over malaysia. however, abdullah (2011) argued that both income elasticity and the price elasticity of demand are inelastic for indonesian palm oil exports (rifin, 2010a), suggesting that there might be an availability of substituted goods for indonesian palm oil export. price can be a significant determinant of economic behavior; an increase in export price may create a drop in demand for malaysian exports. narayan and bhattacharya (2019) argued that export competitiveness is primarily gauged through relative domestic and foreign prices over time. hence, if domestic consumption is higher than export volumes, it increases other countries' opportunities to replace malaysian palm oil exports. higher price elasticity implies that malaysia's exports might be suitable substitutes for competitor exports. besides competing with other countries over the palm oil market share, there is the threat that other vegetable oils will be used instead of palm oil. thus, we can anticipate export uptake to rise when palm oil prices are low relative to those of soybean oil (reinhart, 1995; senhadji & montenegro, 1999). talib and darawi (2002) also stated that the positive relationship between the price of soybean oil and export demand for palm oil shows that soybean oil is used as a substitute for palm oil and is competitive in terms of price. meanwhile, the impact of a percentage change in the soybean oil price has a greater effect on palm oil exports than the same percentage change in the palm oil price (shariff, rahman, & amiruddin, 2006). this means that both oils are highly substitutable for each other. due to the position of soybean oil as a substitute for crude palm oil (cpo), prasetyo, marwanti, and darsono (2017) reported that the price of soybean oil plays a substantial role in indonesian cpo exports. thus, the rising cost of soybean oil leads to less consumption, which triggers world export demand to switch to cpo. however, indonesia experiences a weak effect on the exchange rate because the indonesian rupiah does not respond to an uprise in cpo exports due to the slowness factor in cpo production. in contrast, malaysia gained greater value-added by exporting cpo derivative products to importer countries rather than selling cpo in its raw form, freeing malaysia from the import quota of cpo. meanwhile, the malaysian financial exchange rate is also significant as a complementary determinant of the quantity of malaysian palm oil exports. moreover, talib and darawi (2002) mentioned that every 20.0% increment in the malaysian ringgit-us dollar exchange rate increased palm oil exports by about 8.6%. hence, when the malaysian currency is weak, it tends to boost export demand for palm oil. in recent years, the european parliament passed a resolution on palm oil and deforestation of the rainforest, including an eu ban on vegetable oils in biofuels and certification schemes for imported palm oil with uncertified imports being prohibited (european parliament, 2017). wilman (2019) discovered that china and india were not as selective, and their consumption of uncertified palm oil increased. gan and li (2014) forecasted that domestic palm oil production would rise from 17.6 million tons in 2009 to 22.2 million tons in 2020 and 26.6 million tons in 2035. hence, exports are expected to increase to 25.2 million tons in 2035, ensuring that malaysia remains a significant competitor in the global vegetable oil and biofuel markets. given this background, the objective of this study is to investigate the export demand for palm oil in malaysia. aside from pricing and income factors, macroeconomic factors such as exchange rate are critical variables to explain the export demand for palm oil. complementary to a previous study, this paper brings producers insight into price strategizing and competing for market share against other oils and fats. additionally, this effort ought to serve as a reference for the government of malaysia, which is continuously exploring potential new markets to expand the palm oil trade. the remainder of the paper is organized as follows. section 3 discusses the economic model specification and methods, followed by the empirical results and discussion in section 4. finally, conclusions are reported in section 5. 2. materials and methods 2.1. model specification and data the basic model of export demand was proposed by narayan and narayan (2004). specifically, the export demand for malaysian palm oil can be expressed as follows: 𝑙𝑛𝑋𝑡 = α + β1𝑙𝑛𝑇𝑃𝐼𝑡 + β2𝑙𝑛𝑥𝑝𝑡 + 𝛽3𝑙𝑛𝑐𝑥𝑝𝑡 + β4𝑙𝑛𝑤𝑥𝑝𝑡 + β5𝑙𝑛𝑤𝑥𝑝𝑠𝑡 + ԑ𝑡 (1) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 157-163 159 where 𝑙𝑛𝑋𝑡 is the log of real export of palm oil; 𝑙𝑛𝑇𝑃𝐼𝑡 is the log of weighted average trading partner income; 𝑙𝑛𝑥𝑝𝑡 is the malaysian palm oil export price; 𝑙𝑛𝑐𝑥𝑝𝑡 is the log of competitors' palm oil export prices; 𝑙𝑛𝑤𝑥𝑝𝑡 is the log of world export price of palm oil, and 𝑙𝑛𝑤𝑥𝑝𝑠𝑡 is the log of the world export price of soybean oil. the real export of palm oil consists of palm oil and its derivatives, regardless of whether it has been refined or chemically modified. in this study, the real export of the home country, malaysia, acts as a dependent variable that is affected by the changes in the independent variables: weighted average trading partner income, malaysian palm oil export price, competitors' palm oil export price, world export price of palm oil, world export price of substitute oil, and exchange rate. in addition, a foreign activity variable, defined as the weighted average trading partner income (tpi), is included in the export demand model to obtain the income elasticity of demand. since high foreign activity leads to an increased demand for exports, the income elasticity of demand is expected to be positive. following arize (1990) and narayan and narayan (2004), this study examines host country export prices and competitor prices separately. occasionally, the demand for a good might be influenced by price changes of other goods. for example, an increase in palm oil prices will make consumers choose substitute products such as soybean oil. for comparison, therefore, the estimation includes the world export price of palm oil (wxp) and the world price of soybean oil (wxps). it is frequently argued in the trade literature that exchange rate volatility may explain export demand. for robustness, equation 2 includes the real effective exchange rate (reer) to estimate the depreciation or appreciation of the country's currency and whether it has a positive or negative impact on the palm oil market in malaysia. hence, we extend the augmented export demand model to include the real effective exchange rate (reer). the model specifications for the export demand function take the following form: 𝑙𝑛𝑋𝑡 = α + β1𝑙𝑛𝑇𝑃𝐼𝑡 + β2𝑙𝑛𝑥𝑝𝑡 + β3𝑙𝑛𝑐𝑥𝑝𝑡 + + β4𝑅𝐸𝐸𝑅𝑡 + β5𝑙𝑛𝑤𝑥𝑝𝑡 + β6𝑙𝑛𝑤𝑥𝑝𝑠𝑡 + ԑ𝑡 (2) this study covers the period from 1991 to 2019, for which annual time-series data were employed. the dataset was sourced from the world databank, the world trade atlas (wta), the malaysia external trade development corporation (matrade), and comtrade. 2.2. estimation techniques the analysis will use the auto-regressive distributed lag (ardl) approach advocated by pesaran, shin, and smith (2001) to determine the cointegration relationships between malaysian exports, trading partner income, competitor price, export price, substitute price, and exchange rate. this method offers several options for statistical features; for instance, it allows simultaneous testing of the short-run and long-run relationships among the variables in the time-series model. the advantage of this method is that the bounds test approach applies to all data series whether the underlying regressed variables are purely i(0), purely i(1), or mutually cointegrated. the other substantial advantage of the bounds test approach is that it can be used in studies with small sample sizes. 2.3. ardl bounds test for cointegration and long-run coefficient if there are no variables in order of i(2), the bounds test procedure can test the hypothesis of cointegration. the null hypothesis states that no cointegration exists, and the alternative hypothesis states the opposite. two sets of critical values are reported in pesaran et al. (2001); these provide essential bounds of value for all classifications of the regressors into purely i(0), purely i(0), or mutually cointegrated. if the computed f-statistic lies outside the critical bounds, a conclusive decision can be made regarding cointegration. for instance, if the empirical analysis shows that the calculated f-statistic is higher than the upper bound of critical values, then the null hypothesis of non-cointegration is rejected; however, the hypothesis cannot be rejected if the computed f-statistic is lower than the lower bound. meanwhile, if the computed f-statistic falls between the lower and upper bound, the results are inconclusive. narayan's (2005) table is referred to for the cointegration test because it offers lowerand upper-bound critical values. 2.4. error correction model (ecm) for short-run impact once a long-run relationship has been established, a further diagnostic test and a stability test are conducted to determine the goodness-of-fit of the ardl model. tests for normality of residuals, serial correlation, and heteroscedasticity are applied to the ecm. if the export demand model surpasses all diagnostic tests with an f-statistic of more than 5 percent, the model is considered to be free from problems. table 1. summary statistics of the variables. variable mean std. deviation min. max. obs. lnx 8.6120 0.6961 7.3893 9.7647 29 lngdp 9.8846 0.3368 9.3093 10.4202 29 lnxp 6.3965 0.3832 5.5547 7.0180 23 lncxpi 6.2682 0.4114 5.3936 6.9754 24 lncxpt 6.4417 0.4273 5.4806 6.9527 22 lnreer 4.6096 0.1113 4.4441 4.8130 29 lnwxp 6.3781 0.3758 5.6611 7.0845 29 lnwxps 6.5053 0.3689 5.8235 7.1683 29 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 157-163 160 table 1 presents the summary statistics of the variable series used in the cointegration analysis. it is clear from table 1 that the variables x, tpi, xp, cxpindo, cxpthai, wxp, wxps, and reer display an upward trend for the 1991–2019 period under study. all the variable series show a considerable degree of standard deviation. 3. results and discussion 3.1. unit root test stationarity underlies statistical inference; thus, a vital aspect of any time-series analysis is to establish the stochastic properties of all variables. hence, relevant test statistics are determined using the conventional augmented dickey-fuller (adf). the results in table 2 show that the test statistics exceed the critical values, which reflects that all variables [x, tpi, gdp, xp, cxp, wxp, wxps, reer] are stationary in their first difference. table 2. unit root test results. variable level first difference adf 1% critical value 5% critical value 10% critical value adf 1% critical value 5% critical value 10% critical value lnx -1.652 -3.736 -2.994 -2.628 -4.486*** -3.743 -2.997 -2.629 lngdp -1.147 -3.736 -2.994 -2.628 -3.656*** -3.743 -2.997 -2.629 lnxp -2.137 -3.750 -3.000 -2.630 -4.234*** -3.750 -3.000 -2.630 lncxpi -1.591 -3.750 -3.000 -2.630 -3.838*** -3.750 -3.000 -2.630 lncxpt -1.600 -3.750 -3.000 -2.630 -3.286*** -3.750 -3.000 -2.630 lnreer -1.884 -3.736 -2.994 -2.628 -4.404*** -3.743 -2.997 -2.629 lnwxp -2.064 -3.736 -2.994 -2.628 -4.764*** -3.743 -2.997 -2.629 lnwxps -1.956 -3.736 -2.994 -2.628 -4.898*** -3.743 -2.997 -2.629 note: *** denotes significance at the 1% level. 3.2. bounds tests for cointegration to achieve a more robust result, the export demand model must check cointegration existence using a different choice of variable. table 3 shows the results of the ardl bounds test using the f-statistic test. they are compared to the critical values (restricted intercept and no trend) reported by narayan (2005), where the long-run forcing variable is determined for small samples. the computed f-statistic with real exports (x) as the dependent variable, 53.246, is higher than the upper bound of the critical value of 5.5840 at a 1% level of significance in model (1). also, this study indicates the significant role of the exchange rate in the export demand model. hence, the equation in models (5), (6), and (7) rejects the null hypothesis of no cointegration at a 1% level of significance. this result contradicts the hypothesis, implying that long-run relationships exist between the variables. two variables are cointegrated if they have a long-term or equilibrium relationship (gujarati & porter, 2009). as shown in table 3, all equations conclusively rejected the null hypothesis of no cointegration, indicating long-term relationships between the variables. table 3. ardl bounds test of cointegration. model f-statistics model 1: lnx = ƒ(tpi, xp, , cxpi) 53.246*** model 2: lnx = ƒ(tpi, xp, cxpi, wxp) 99.673*** model 3: lnx = ƒ(tpi, xp, cxpi, wxps) 63.884*** model 4: lnx = ƒ(tpi, xp, cxpi, wxp, wxps) 84.829*** model 5: lnx = ƒ(tpi, xp, cxpi, reer) 45.486*** model 6: lnx = ƒ(tpi, xp, cxpi, reer, wxp) 83.859*** model 7: lnx = ƒ(tpi, xp, cxpi, reer, wxps) 52.824*** critical values for ardl modelling approach k 1% 5% 10% i (0) i (1) i (0) i (1) i (0) i (1) (1), k=3 4.280 5.840 3.058 4.223 2.525 3.560 (2)(3)(5), k=4 4.134 5.761 2.910 4.193 2.407 3.517 (4)(6)(7), k=5 3.976 5.691 2.794 4.148 2.334 3.515 note: *** denotes a significance level of 1%. critical values are extracted from narayan (2005). k is the number of exogenous variables in the equation. 3.3. long-run relationship between export of palm oil and other controlled variables evidence for the long-run relationship between real export and its variables with an optimum number of lags selected using the schartz-bayesian criterion (sbc) is shown in table 4. in columns (1-6), a significant long-run relationship appears between tpi, cxpi, xp, wxp, and export demand. the coefficient of tpi, which proxies for average trade partners’ income, is positive and significant. a 1% increase in the trade partner’s income increases export demand by between 0.2% and 0.5%, suggesting that trade partners’ income plays a significant role in determining the export demand for palm oil. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 157-163 161 table 4. the long-run result using the selected ardl model. variable dependent variable: export demand of palm oil (1) (2) (3) (4)dummy (5)dummy (6)dummy ltpi 0.250 (0.109)** 0.405 (0.172)** 0.055 (0.178) 0.474 (0.183)** 0.505 (0.182)** 0.555 (0.289)* lxp -1.218 (0.226)*** -1.281 (0.209)*** -1.098 (0.281)*** -1.098 0.235*** -1.158 (0.244)*** -0.635 (0.327)* lcxpi 1.067 (0.368)*** 0.876 (0.470)* 1.733 (0.444)*** 1.245 (0.307)*** 1.274 (0.343)*** -0.634 (0.327)*** lreer 0.369 (0.350) -0.317 (0.349) 0.061 (0.279) -0.474 (0.310) lwxp 1.175 (0.375)*** 1.665 (0.398)*** 0.913 (0.253) 1.077 (0.352)*** lwxps 0.280 (0.245) 0.672 (0.259)** 0.148 (0.169) 0.458 (0.247) bannedyear -0.095 (0.062) -0.095 (0.0761) -0.204 (0.102)* constant -1.632 (0.876) * 1.665 (0.398) 1.230 (2.445) -4.222 (1.945) -4.830 (2.452) -1.741 (2.752) adjusted r2 0.958 0.956 0.934 0.964 0.9618 0.9436 durbin watson test 2.219 2.217 2.197 1.642 1.557 2.261 bg-lm test 0.483 0.459 0.399 0.329 0.206 0.317 white test 0.401 0.401 0.401 0.401 0.401 0.401 note:*, **, and *** denote a significance level of 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively. the figure in parentheses (…) refers to the t-ratio. table 5. the result for short-run impact. variable dependent variable: export demand of palm oil of palm oil (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) ltpi 0.1347 (0.1141) 0.2058 (0.0939)** -0.0369 (0.1718) 0.3317 (0.1437)** 0.0464 (0.1504) lxp -0.8543 (0.2227)*** -1.0014 (0.1839)*** -1.2356 (0.2394)*** -1.0484 (0.1695)*** -0.9227 (0.1504)*** lcxpi 1.3195 (0.3523)*** 0.8768 (0.3133)*** 2.2824 (0.2679)*** 0.7172 (0.3945)* 1.4562 (0.3848)*** lreer -0.4723 (0.3301) 0.3021 (0.2848) -0.2661 (0.2931) lwxp 0.9657 (0.2976)*** 1.3626 (0.3039)*** lwxps 0.6149 (0.2025)*** 0.2304 (0.2008) 0.5645 (0.2110)*** ecm(-1) -0.7753 (1.0435) -1.6327 (0.8761)* 3.6660 (2.6490) -4.0443 (0.5021) 1.2304 (2.4455) note: *, **, and *** denote a significance level of 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively. the figure in parentheses (…) refers to the t-ratio. the results revealed that export prices (xp) are negative and significant in all estimations, implying that a 1% increase in export prices leads to a decrease of between 0.6% and 1.2% in the export demand for palm oil. the results are supported by zakaria and nambiappan (2019), who found a significant negative relationship between export demand for palm oil and export price in malaysia. for competitive price, which refers to soybean oil (cxp), the result is positive and significant, implying that a 1% increase in the soybean oil price leads to an increase of 0.8%–1.7% in the export demand for palm oil. this is broadly in line with the findings of awad, arshad, shamsudin, and yusof (2007) and mpob (2019), who reported declining exports from pakistan due to higher imports of soybean oil from brazil. for control variables, the world export prices for palm oil (wxp) and soybean oil (wxps) are included in the estimation. the results reveal that the impact of increasing world exports of palm oil is to increase export demand for palm oil. however, the result for world export of soybean oil is inconsistent; specifically, when we include the dummy for banned year, the result is insignificant. another control variable, real effective exchange rate (reer), has insignificant results across all estimations. according to ab rahman, nambiappan, and shariff (2013), palm oil prices are also dependent on unpredictable market sentiments, which time-series data cannot measure. thus, dummy variables are used as proxies to examine their impact on palm oil prices. the european parliament resolution on palm oil and deforestation of rainforests restricted unsustainable palm oil from 2015; thus, the long-run relationship is tested using the dummy variable bannedyear in the regression model. in columns 4 to 6, the dummy variable bannedyear has a negative relationship with export demand as asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 157-163 162 the eu ban causes real exports to decline. european restrictions on unsustainable palm oil have caused their export preference to switch to soybean oil, which is claimed to be more sustainable. the united states and brazil accounted for 40% of world soybean exports. according to khir, balu, and ain (2017), soybean industries were likely to increase with lower export taxes as soybean production is mainly for export. soybean oil is thus a major substitute for palm oil. 3.4. short-run impact the short-run model reviewed in table 5 reveals a short-run effect on export demand of weighted average trading partner income, malaysian export price, indonesian export price, world export price of palm oil, and world export price of soybean oil. the negative symbol of the ecm term indicates the anticipated convergence process in long-run dynamics. according to the statistical result in table 5, the effect of trade partner income is positive and significant in columns (2) and (4). for the export price of palm oil, the result is consistent in all estimations, revealing that an increase in price decreases the export demand for palm oil. conversely, the price of soybean oil positively affects the export demand for palm oil. the effect of the world price of both oil palm and soybean oil is also positive, similar to the longrun result. meanwhile, the results for the real effective exchange rate are still insignificant. 4. conclusion this paper employed an export demand function to examine the determinants of malaysia's export demand in the palm oil sector. the ardl method was used to determine whether long-run relationships exist between real exports, foreign economic activity, malaysian export price, competitor export price, world export price of palm oil, world export price of soybean oil, and exchange rates. the empirical results for the time-series data covering the years 1991–2019 show that all variables except the exchange rate are significant determinants of malaysia's export demand. the foreign income of five trading partner countries – india, china, the netherlands, pakistan, and the usa – positively impacts export demand. malaysian export demands for palm oil are determined by price changes and trading partner income but not by the exchange rate. from a policy perspective, malaysian policymakers should focus on improving price competitiveness as malaysia is known as the largest producer of palm oil. therefore, a slight increase in malaysia’s export price might cause trading partners’ preferences to shift to competitor countries. finally, it is hoped this paper has shed some light on the future growth planning of palm oil so it can maintain its competitive position alongside other oils and fats in the worldwide market. funding: this research is supported by the institute pertanian bogor, indonesia (grant number: 6380018/ipb-upm). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ab rahman, a. k., nambiappan, b., & shariff, f. m. 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(2019). economic analysis of palm oil demand in selected major importing countries. oil palm industry economic journal, 19(2), 17-25. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 104 economic sustainability of geographical indication indigenous rice: the case of khao sangyod muang phatthalung, thailand natjaree petruanga,b orachos napasintuwongb agraduate school, kasetsart university, bangkok, thailand. bdepartment of agricultural and resource economics, faculty of economics, kasetsart university, bangkok, thailand.  orachos.n@ku.ac.th (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 2 february 2022 revised: 17 march 2022 accepted: 31 march 2022 published: 13 april 2022 keywords sustainable agriculture geographical indication sustainable food system profit efficiency stochastic frontier analysis. khao sangyod (sangyod rice) is an indigenous red rice variety commonly cultivated in southern thailand. its distinctive and desirable cooking quality and nutritional value made sangyod rice in phatthalung province khao sangyod muang phatthalung the first geographical indication (gi) rice registered in thailand. these attributes also earned it the status of a protected geographical indication (pgi) thai rice registered in the eu. sangyod rice cultivation can generate a good income for farmers and contribute to the conservation of indigenous varieties and genetic biodiversity. this study aims to measure farmers’ net incomes (profitability), which is one important indicator of sustainable rice platform (srp) indicators by the united nations environmental programme, and to compare the profit inefficiency among farmers. the data were collected from 328 farmers in three southern provinces for the 2019/2020 cropping season. the results show that, on average, sangyod rice farmers have a profit efficiency score of 68, implying that they can still improve their profit by 32%. sangyod rice production in the gi area has a profit efficiency higher than that outside the area. the results from this study can inform the formulation of policies that support the sustainability of indigenous rice in thailand. contribution/originality: the profit inefficiency estimates show that gi registration, experience in sangyod rice cultivation, and reducing vulnerability to drought can improve sangyod rice farmers’ profit efficiency. however, adhering to an organic production standard and engaging in off-farm jobs can bring down farmers’ efficiency in maximizing profit. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4467 issn(p): 2304-1455/issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: natjaree petruang --orachos napasintuwong (2022). economic sustainability of geographical indication indigenous rice: the case of khao sangyod muang phatthalung, thailand. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2), 104-112. 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4467 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction “khao sangyod” or sangyod rice is an indigenous rice variety mainly cultivated in southern thailand. it possesses a well-recognized and desired flavour and aroma, and given that it has a red pericarp, sangyod rice is reputed for its high fiber content, rich nutritional value, and being the rice of choice for special occasions in the southern culture. although sangyod rice is commonly produced in southern thailand, the main crops of the region are other high-value crops, such as palm oil, rubber, and perennial fruits. in recent years, the southern region has begun to contend with production challenges from climate change. compounding the production risks to this region’s key crops are the market uncertainties brought about by increasing competition in the international market. this has been causing instability in prices and the market. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 2 (2022): 104-112. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5400-5649 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6672-0663 mailto:orachos.n@ku.ac.th http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 104-112 105 although rice is not the main crop in the southern region, it can provide a good source of income in the short run. the market for colored rice has been expanding in recent years as consumers become more aware of the benefits of a healthy diet (napasinuwong, 2020; office of agricultural economics, 2022). adding to its popularity is the rising public awareness of in situ conservation of indigenous varieties as an important measure to preserve biodiversity. these have drawn increasing public attention to sangyod rice, particularly for sustainable development. although sangyod rice is widely cultivated throughout the southern region, sangyod rice produced in phatthalung province has unique qualities due to the suitability of the soil, water and climate (european commission, 2016). as a result, phatthalung’s local government assisted local farmers’ groups to successfully register “khao sangyod muang phatthalung” as a geographical indication (gi) product in thailand in 2006, and as a protected geographical indication (pgi) in the eu in 2016. gi has also been encouraged by several asian countries to support rural agriculture development (jena, ngokkuen, rahut, & grote, 2015; rahmah, 2017). it grants farmers the right to protect their traditional knowledge and methods of cultivation such that the distinctive qualities of the product endows it a reputation attributable to a specific geographical origin. with “khao sangyod muang phatthalung” registered as a pgi rice from thailand and one of the first gi rices in the country, gi certification was promoted to phatthalung rice farmers’ groups that have the control system for complying with the gi code of practice. gi certification gives those who conform with the applicable standards the right to use the gi certification mark to prevent its use by a third party whose product does not meet the gi standards. it gives consumers the assurance that the product possesses the quality that it is reputed to have from a specific geographical origin. this, in turn, enables farmers to command a premium price. as an export product, the certification enhances access to international markets, especially the eu. although studies have found that gi products offer significant price premiums (napasintuwong, 2019; török, jantyik, maró, & moir, 2020) and consumers are willing to pay more for gi rice that has supreme quality associated with the source of origin (lee, pavasopon, napasintuwong, & nayga, 2020), the impact of conforming to gi standards on a farmer’s income is ambiguous largely because of the cost associated with gi production (cei, defrancesco, & stefani, 2018; török et al., 2020). furthermore, thailand’s law on intellectual property rights does not prohibit the use of the gi name (although it does prohibit the use of the gi certification mark) for products that do not meet the gi standard (department of intellectual property, 2020). this implies that uncertified sangyod rice grown in phatthalung province can, without the gi certification mark, use the term "khao sangyod muang phatthalung". understanding the elements contributing to the sustainability of sangyod rice farming is crucial for a sustainable food system. the fao (2018) suggested that profitability (or net income) is one of the key economic aspects of a sustainable food system as farmers’ profitability is a major incentive for them to stay in farming, expand production, improve quality and raise productivity, which is the bedrock of food and nutrition security, poverty reduction and, ultimately, social and economic development. standards, as a governance mechanism, ensure socially and environmentally responsible production, so that the product and the way it is produced and processed cause no harm to the environment, resources, or society. more specifically, they ensure that no adverse impacts occur among stakeholders of the food supply chain. specific to rice, the sustainable rice platform (srp) provides guidelines for sustainable rice cultivation from a set of 12 quantitative performance indicators (sustainable rice platform, 2021). among these indicators is profitability to ensure that rice cultivation is attractive among farmers. increasing farm profitability provides incentive and improves the farmers’ capacity to invest in improvements that increase efficiency, productivity and profitability. the higher income, in turn, increases household capacity to pay for food, health services and education. according to vandecandelaere et al. (2021), gi is linked to the sustainability process and can be quantified using a variety of indicators, with economic impacts being especially crucial to the viability of gis. however, the registration of gi does not automatically guarantee sustainable processes. to better understand the role of gi on the sustainability of indigenous rice, we focus on the economic pillar of sustainable development, namely the profitability of farmers. several studies have applied the profit efficiency concept to measure profit inefficiencies of farmers and identify factors contributing to the inefficiencies so that recommendations for more efficient profit-maximizing behavior can be formulated to inform policy, programs and practices (ali & flinn, 1989; ali, parikh, & shah, 1994; chang, takahashi, & yang, 2017; ho, 2021; nguyen, nguyen, jolly, & nguelifack, 2020; rahman, 2003; van, nanseki, & chomei, 2019). this study aims to estimate profit efficiency among farmers who cultivate sangyod rice in the southern region by comparing farming in phatthalung province, the geographical area of gi rice, other non-gi areas, and on the comparison among different standards of cultivation (i.e., gi, good agricultural practice (gap), and organic farming). the study also aims to identify factors that contribute to profit inefficiency. because sangyod rice is preferred in southern cuisine and the support given to rice production has been focused on gi sangyod rice products in phatthalung province, it is hypothesized that farmers in phatthalung province will benefit from gi registration and those who comply to gi standards would be more profit efficient than others. 2. materials and methods 2.1. data a three-stage stratified sampling method was employed to collect data on sangyod rice cultivation in southern thailand for the 2019/20 cropping season. in the first stage, provinces are classified in two groups, one is the geographical area eligible for gi registration (phatthalung province) and the other is a non-gi zone. two provinces, namely krabi and nakhon sri thammarat, out of seven provinces that cultivated sangyod rice between 2015 and 2019 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 104-112 106 (department of agricultural extension, 2020) were randomly selected for the non-gi zone. in the second stage, districts were classified into two groups based on share of suitable areas for rice production, i.e. high (at least 75%) and low (less than 75%) (agri-map, 2020). in the last stage, sub-districts were selected based on certification standards, e.g., gi, gap, organic, and none of the above. farmers were randomly selected from farmers’ groups that have at least one certification (i.e., gap, organic or gi) and from groups that have no certification. a sample size of 357 was selected from 4,639 sangyod rice households in three selected provinces with a 95% confidence level, 0.05 acceptable error, and a 0.5 sample proportion of the interested households (krejcie & morgan, 1970). the information on sangyod rice production was based on the largest plot if farmers cultivated more than one plot. excluding negative profit and outliers, 328 farmers are included in the estimation. 2.2. profit efficiency model profit efficiency is an economic concept defined as the capability of a farm to achieve the highest possible profit given the prices and levels of fixed inputs of that farm (ali & flinn, 1989). based on kumbhakar & lovell (2000), the variable profit frontier function is given as: 𝜋( 𝑝, 𝑤, 𝑧) = 𝑝𝑓(𝑥, 𝑧) − ∑ 𝑤𝑗𝑥𝑗𝑗 = 𝑝(𝑓(𝑥, 𝑧) − ∑ 𝑤𝑗 𝑁𝑥𝑗)𝑗 (1) where 𝑝 is the nominal farm gate price of sangyod rice, 𝑥 is the variable inputs, 𝑧 is the quasi-fixed inputs, such as land, 𝑓(𝑥, 𝑧) is the production function of sangyod rice, 𝑦, and 𝑤𝑗 𝑁 = 𝑤𝑗 𝑝 is the normalized price of variable input 𝑗 including labor service, seed and fertilizer. profit efficiency (pe) can be measured as the ratio of actual variable profit to maximum variable profit. provided that profit is > 0 and profit efficiency is ≤ 1, profit efficient farmers would achieve pe = 1; in other words, being on a variable profit frontier. 2.3. stochastic frontier analysis the stochastic profit function model is used to estimate farm-specific efficiency. any errors in the production decision are assumed to translate into lower profits for farmers (ali et al., 1994; coelli, rao, o’donnell, & battese, 2005; kumbhakar, 1987). by assuming a single output profit maximization, a stochastic normalized variable profit frontier function (ali et al., 1994) is given as: 𝜋𝑖 𝑁 = f(𝑤𝑖𝑗 𝑁, 𝑧𝑖𝑗) ∙ exp(𝑒𝑖) i = 1, 2, … , n (2) 𝑒𝑖 = 𝑣𝑖 − 𝑢𝑖 (3) where π n is the normalized variable profit function. 𝑒𝑖 is the error term. 𝑣𝑖 is a two-sided error term representing the usual random effects and is assumed to be independent and identically distributed (iid) as 𝑁(0, 𝜎𝑣 2). 𝑢𝑖 > 0 is a one-sided error term representing profit inefficiency. if 𝑢𝑖 = 0, a farm is on the profit frontier and achieving the maximum profit given the prices it faces and level of quasi-fixed inputs. it is assumed that 𝑣𝑖and 𝑢𝑖are independent of each other. given the flexibility of the translog functional form, which allows returns to scale to be variable, the normalized variable profit frontier of sangyod rice production is represented as follows: 𝐼𝑛𝜋𝑖 𝑁 = 𝛼0 + ∑ 𝛽𝑗𝑗 𝑙𝑛𝑤𝑖𝑗 𝑁 + 𝜇𝑙𝑛𝑧𝑖 + 1 2 ∑ ∑ 𝜃𝑗𝑘𝑘𝑗 𝑙𝑛𝑤𝑖𝑗 𝑁𝑙𝑛𝑤𝑖𝑘 𝑁 + 1 2 ∑ 𝛾𝑗𝑗 𝑙𝑛𝑤𝑖𝑗 𝑁𝑙𝑛𝑧 + 1 2 𝜌𝑙𝑛𝑧𝑖 2 + (𝑣𝑖 − 𝑢𝑖) (4) where 𝑤𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒= price of labor service (usd/ha) calculated as the weighted average of wage and/or labor and machinery service fees from land preparation to harvest. 𝑤𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑑= seed price (usd/ha). if the farmers kept seed from a previous harvest or received free seeds from support programs, seed price is estimated from the public seed price of the equivalent quality. 𝑤𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑟= price of fertilizer (usd/ha) calculated as the weighted average of all types of fertilizer. 𝑧 = sangyod rice cultivation area (hectares). the normalized variables in equation 4 are with respect to the farm gate price of sangyod rice (usd/kg). the frontier function to identify factors associated with variations in the profit inefficiency level of the 𝑖th farm can be expressed as a linear function (battese & coelli, 1995) defined as: 𝑢𝑖 = 𝛿0 + ∑ 𝛿𝑚𝑚 𝑆𝑚𝑖 + 𝜗𝑖 (5) where 𝑆𝑚𝑖 is variable 𝑚 associated with profit inefficiency of the 𝑖th farm including: 𝑆𝑎𝑔𝑒 = age of farmer (years); 𝑆𝑒𝑑𝑢 = education (years of schooling); 𝑆𝐻𝐻 = number of household members (people); 𝑆𝑒𝑥𝑝= experience in sangyod rice production (years); 𝑆𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑝= membership in a cooperative or farmers’ group (1 if yes and 0 otherwise); 𝑆𝑜𝑓𝑓𝑓𝑎𝑟𝑚 𝑖𝑛𝑐 = share of non-agricultural income (proportion of total household income obtained from non-agricultural sources); 𝑆𝑒𝑥𝑡= agricultural extension (1 if the farmer had received training on rice production from public or private agricultural extension in the past three years and 0 otherwise); 𝑆𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡= price arrangement (1 if the farmer agreed a price with buyers prior to production and 0 otherwise); 𝑆𝐺𝐼 𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑎= gi registered area (1 if the farm is located in phatthalung province and 0 otherwise); 𝑆𝑑𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡= experiencing recurrent drought (1 if asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 104-112 107 yes and 0 otherwise); 𝑆𝐺𝐼= gi (1 if gi certification was received and 0 otherwise); 𝑆𝐺𝐴𝑃= gap (1 if gap certification was received and 0 otherwise); 𝑆𝑜𝑟𝑔 = organic (1 if organic thailand certification was received and 0 otherwise). a maximum likelihood method was used to estimate the unknown parameters of the stochastic frontier (equation 4) and inefficiency function (equation 5) simultaneously to avoid inconsistency in the assumptions regarding the independence of the inefficiency effects of the two-stage estimation. 3. results and discussion 3.1. summary of sangyod rice farming the summary of the survey data is provided in table 1, showing the key variables used in the estimation models. there are 304 samples in the gi area, specifically phatthalung province, and 28 in the non-gi area. while there are 41, 39, and 26 certified gi, gap and organic farms, respectively, the majority of samples are uncertified farms. a test of the differences between farms in the gi and non-gi areas shows that, on average, the farm gate price of sangyod rice in the non-gi area is higher than that in the gi area, but the variable cost of production in the non-gi area is larger than that of the gi area. this makes the variable profit in the gi area higher than that in the non-gi area. the comparisons of price, yield, revenue, cost, and variable profit of sangyod rice across different standards are shown in table 2. certified organic rice fetches a higher price and needs a cheaper fertilizer than any other type of rice, but it generates the lowest yield and highest variable cost, especially labor service cost. gi certified rice has the second highest price after organic rice, as expected. the land rent of certified gi rice is the highest, and even though this quasi-fixed cost is not included in the variable cost, certified gi rice still shows the lowest variable profit among all types of farms. the results show that the average profit efficiency of sangyod rice farms in the southern region is 68%, and farms located in phatthalung province, the gi area, have a higher average profit efficiency than those located in the non-gi area (see table 4). non-certified farms in phatthalung province have the largest profit efficiency followed by certified gap, gi and organic farms. this suggests that the standard of sangyod rice production may contribute to farmers’ profitability. the majority of sangyod rice farms in the gi area scored a medium to high profit efficiency level (0.41– 0.60 or above), while the majority of those located in the non-gi area are distributed at the low efficiency end (0.41– 0.60 or lower) (see figure 1). figure 1. profit efficiency scores of sangyod rice production in southern thailand, by area and production standard, 2019/20. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 104-112 108 table 1. summary statistics of sangyod rice production in southern thailand, by area and standard, 2019/20. note: exchange rate: usd 1 = 31.30 thb (reference rate 2020 (bot, 2021)). numbers in parentheses represent standard deviation. *, ** and *** denote significance at 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively. variable gi area non-gi area total t-statistic gi gap organic non certified total organic noncertified total gi area vs non-gi area output, price, cost and profit output 2,421.27 2,599.88 2,269.94 2,470.54 2,465.31 2,145.00 2,394.32 2,363.16 2,457.84 0.46 (kg/ha) (538.49) (513.24) (691.29) (544.32) (556.28) (1,407.35) (1,054.90) (1,070.97) (606.73) output price 0.51 0.49 0.55 0.50 0.51 0.81 0.56 0.59 0.51 -2.62** (usd/kg) (0.09) (0.09) (0.10) (0.09) (0.09) (0.14) (0.14) (0.16) (0.10) labor service price 30.80 32.95 40.19 30.13 31.35 9.43 34.58 31.44 31.35 -0.02 (usd/day) (18.00) (17.31) (16.98) (16.66) (17.08) (3.85) (17.64) (18.55) (17.16) seed price 0.92 0.89 0.97 0.88 0.89 0.81 0.99 0.97 0.90 -1.62 (usd/kg) (0.11) (0.12) (0.08) (0.13) (0.13) (0.14) (0.25) (0.25) (0.14) fertilizer price 0.35 0.37 0.20 0.32 0.32 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.33 -3.60*** (usd/kg) (0.11) (0.14) (0.18) (0.15) (0.15) (0.10) (0.15) (0.14) (0.15) cultivation area 0.70 0.77 1.01 0.67 0.71 0.43 0.73 0.69 0.71 0.19 (ha) (0.43) (0.41) (0.50) (0.36) (0.40) (0.32) (0.45) (0.44) (0.40) variable cost 508.26 543.37 519.82 457.24 479.91 861.49 769.40 780.91 501.93 -3.54*** (usd/ha) (141.42) (187.78) (136.76) (123.41) (139.86) (584.48) (401.81) (413.60) (190.58) variable profit 789.72 809.25 790.61 823.32 814.51 887.61 601.25 637.04 801.52 2.11** (usd/ha) (320.15) (385.45) (375.30) (345.68) (348.50) (298.99) (405.68) (400.30) (354.89) farm-specific variable age 59.83 57.97 59.74 60.90 60.29 65.00 62.90 63.17 60.50 -1.78* (year) (10.63) (10.23) (12.45) (11.71) (11.44) (9.85) (7.06) (7.23) (11.20) education 9.34 9.54 10.09 8.27 8.72 6.00 6.76 6.67 8.57 3.92*** (year) (4.05) (3.97) (4.19) (3.53) (3.75) (0.00) (2.49) (2.33) (3.70) household members 3.07 3.67 3.48 3.37 3.38 3.33 4.48 4.33 3.49 -2.26** (person) (1.60) (1.66) (1.44) (1.66) (1.63) (1.53) (2.06) (2.01) (1.68) experience 11.56 11.59 14.22 9.86 10.64 9.00 17.43 16.38 11.06 -3.08*** (year) (7.21) (7.26) (10.23) (9.30) (8.93) (1.73) (8.89) (8.78) (9.03) off-farm income 34.80 29.33 40.16 27.23 29.50 72.90 33.12 38.09 30.13 -1.23 (%) (30.25) (27.48) (37.16) (28.36) (29.37) (24.48) (31.52) (33.13) (29.69) no. of observations 41 39 23 201 304 3 21 24 328 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 104-112 109 table 2. output, price, cost and returns of sangyod rice production in southern thailand, by standard, 2019/20. variable gi gap organic non-certified f-statistic (1) (2) (3) (4) output 2,421.27 2,599.88 2,255.52 2,463.33 1.74 (kg/ha) (538.49) (531.24) (761.99) (607.74) output price 0.51 0.49 0.58 0.50 5.46*** (usd/kg) (0.09) (0.09) (0.15) (0.10) labor service price 30.80 32.95 36.65 30.55 1.11 (usd/day) (18.00) (17.31) (18.85) (16.77) seed price 0.92 0.89 0.95 0.89 2.05 (usd/kg) (0.11) (0.12) (0.10) (0.15) fertilizer price 0.35 0.37 0.23 0.33 5.13*** (usd/kg) (0.11) (0.14) (0.18) (0.15) total revenue (usd/ha) 1,234.08 1,287.15 1,272.53 1,226.01 0.43 (308.21) (355.79) (428.09) (345.69) variable cost (usd/ha) 508.26 543.37 559.24 486.77 1.90 (141.42) (187.78) (237.02) (191.77) labor service cost (usd/ha) 306.28 323.71 368.22 308.02 1.32 (80.94) (124.66) (204.77) (157.84) seed cost (usd/ha) 66.09 67.95 64.46 70.97 0.47 (18.66) (63.94) (23.86) (30.56) fertilizer cost (usd/ha) 135.89 151.70 126.57 107.78 3.55** (92.07) (108.21) (98.44) (81.94) quasi-fixed cost 141.59 106.87 94.14 94.84 6.05*** land rent (usd/ha) (44.16) (33.74) (9.74) (35.54) variable profit (usd/ha) 789.72 809.25 801.80 802.31 0.02 (320.15) (385.45) (363.45) (356.76) no. of observations 41 39 26 222 328 note: numbers in parentheses represent standard deviation. ** and *** denote significance at 5% and 1%, respectively. 3.2. profit frontier and profit efficiency estimates the coefficient estimates of the variable profit frontier are shown in table 3. from these estimates, the profit efficiency of each individual farm is estimated. the estimates of the mean profit efficiency score by area and by standard are presented in table 4. the distribution of profit efficiency score by area and standard is presented in figure 1. table 3. coefficient estimates of the variable profit frontier function. variable coeff. std. err. z constant 0.48 0.08 6.20*** lnwservice -0.06 0.63 -0.09 lnwseed 0.39 0.19 2.08** lnwfertilizer -0.09 0.08 -1.15 lnz 0.05 0.27 0.2 1⁄2 (lnwservice)2 0.20 0.44 0.45 1⁄2 (lnwseed)2 1.55 0.62 2.52** 1⁄2 (lnwfertilizer)2 0.00 0.05 -0.06 1⁄2 (lnz)2 -0.11 0.53 -0.2 lnwservice×lnwseed -0.66 0.38 -1.72* lnwservice×lnwfertilizer 0.06 0.13 0.49 lnwservice×lnz -0.05 0.47 -0.1 lnwseed×lnwfertilizer -0.01 0.09 -0.12 lnwseed×lnz 0.57 0.34 1.68* lnwfertilizer×lnz -0.09 0.11 -0.79 𝜎𝑣 2 0.22 0.03 log-likelihood -158.42 no. of observations 328 note: *, ** and *** denote significance at 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 104-112 110 table 4. profit efficiency scores of sangyod rice production in southern thailand, by area and standard, 2019/20. statistic gi area non-gi area total t-stat gi gap organic noncertified total organic noncertified total gi area vs non-gi area mean 0.67 0.7 0.62 0.71 0.69 0.5 0.48 0.48 0.68 -3.41*** (std. dev.) (0.17) (0.15) (0.22) (0.15) (0.16) (0.24) (0.31) (0.30) (0.18) min. 0.16 0.31 0.09 0.18 0.09 0.24 0.03 0.03 0.03 max. 0.94 0.94 0.88 0.93 0.94 0.73 0.87 0.87 0.94 no. of obs. 41 39 23 201 304 3 21 24 328 note: *** denotes significance at 1%. 3.3. profit inefficiency equation estimates the investigation of the factors associated with profit inefficiency (equation 5) revealed that more experience in sangyod rice production and the location of the farms in phatthalung province reduce profit inefficiency. also, an increase in profit inefficiency was found in farms operating to an organic standard and in farming households that have a larger share of off-farm income (see table 5). table 5. coefficient estimates of profit inefficiency function. variable coeff. std. err. z constant 1.64 1.08 1.53 sage -0.01 0.01 -0.85 sedu -0.05 0.04 -1.26 shh 0.01 0.06 0.23 sexp -0.03 0.01 -3.13*** sgroup 0.03 0.23 0.14 soff-farm inc 0.01 0 2.75*** sext 0.27 0.23 1.19 scontract 0.27 0.22 1.25 sgi area -2.66 0.47 -5.64*** sdrought 1.35 0.76 1.78* sgi 0.3 0.43 0.69 sgap 0.14 0.28 0.49 sorganic 0.74 0.41 1.81* no. of observation 328 note: * and *** denote significance at 10% and 1%, respectively. these results imply that the registration of gi, which is confined to the geographical area comprising phatthalung province, gives phatthalung farmers a higher ability to generate profit, even if they are not certified gi producers. this has implications that are similar to jena et al. (2015) and jena & grote (2012), which are that by adopting a gi rice variety, namely basmati, farmers could improve their income, and that gi registration can provide benefits to farmers who grow the registered variety. sekine (2021) also found that farmers who grow heirloom rice receive higher farm gate prices and obtain higher margins. the heirloom rice generates more benefits to their economic and livelihood security than the improved lowland varieties. although this study does not compare profit efficiency across varieties, the results show that growing specialty rice can improve farmers’ income, and this is particularly true for the gi specialty rice in the defined geographical area. meeting gi and gap standards does not improve farmers’ efficiency in generating profit. adherence to an organic standard can even worsen it. a plausible explanation is that the organic rice certification decreases the ability to arrange inputs in a cost-effective manner, especially labor service. organic rice production is more labor intensive, e.g., weeding. thus, even if certified organic rice fetches a high price, low yield and high variable costs make it more profit inefficient (see table 2). farmers with longer experience in sangyod rice production are also more efficient in generating profit, but their age and education are not associated with their ability to maximize profit. these results are consistent with other studies, such as ho (2021); trong & napasintuwong (2015); khan, roll, & guttormsen (2021); nguyen et al. (2020) and rahman (2003), who found that farming experience improved the profit efficiency of agricultural production. similar to this study, chang et al. (2017); khan et al. (2021); oladeebo & oluwaranti (2014) and rahman (2003) also found that education is not associated with profit efficiency. this may be especially true in the farming of an indigenous rice variety (as per this study), which suggests that the ability to maximize profit may not be associated with formal education but with farming experience. studies by galawat & yabe (2012); hong & yabe (2015) and wongnaa, awunyo-vitor, mensah, & adams (2019) similarly found that age is not associated with profit efficiency. the result from this study suggests that while older farmers have more traditional knowledge of indigenous rice cultivation and are efficient in minimizing the inputs required to produce an output (technically efficient), younger farmers may have a higher ability to access price information, e.g., find cheap input sources and marketing channels so that they can more efficiently allocate their inputs in a cost-effective manner (cost efficient) and their outputs in a revenue-maximizing asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 104-112 111 manner (profit efficient). technical and price efficiency are important elements of profit efficiency and farmers of different ages may possess knowledge and skills that contribute to different efficiencies. while farmers’ groups or cooperatives can provide better input procurement and access to markets that increase profit efficiency (hong & yabe, 2015; van, nanseki, & chomei, 2019), the finding from this study shows that being a member of a farmers’ group does not improve efficiency in generating profit in sangyod rice production. this is similar to oladeebo & oluwaranti (2014) and wongnaa et al. (2019) and might be explained by the popularity of sangyod rice and government support to conserve indigenous rice production, which gives group members no advantage over nonmembers in terms of the capability to maximize profit. a training program was hypothesized to improve profit efficiency, but it was found that being trained in sangyod rice production does not have any significant contribution to farmers’ ability to maximize profit, and neither does an agreement on price with buyers (i.e., informal contract). either the training program for indigenous rice production was not effective or farmers who grow indigenous varieties do not need to be trained in production techniques to improve their ability to increase profitability. training on marketing to improve farmers’ entrepreneurial ability might improve their profit efficiency. however, no marketing training or support program were found in the technical services provided to farmers. off-farm income was also found to increase profit inefficiency and is consistent with the findings of ho (2021) and rahman (2003). this provides a good explanation for the situation in southern thailand; only about 20% of households derive their main income from the agricultural sector, which is the lowest among all regions (national statistical office, 2013). when rice farming is not the farmers’ main source of income, their profit efficiency decreases. the impacts of natural disasters, such as flooding, saltwater intrusion and disease have been shown to significantly decrease economic efficiency (nguyen et al., 2020). as the southern region has been beset by production challenges from the impacts of climate change, our finding also confirms that recurrent drought has resulted in lower profit efficiency, conceivably from low productivity. the livelihood of rice farming, particularly of indigenous varieties, can be severely threatened without proper and effective measures to mitigate the risks from climate change. for gi to be sustainable, economic viability is a key element, but a balance among the three pillars of sustainable development – social, economic, and environmental sustainability – is needed (fao, 2009). this study focused on the economic aspect of sustainability. however, it suggests that the sustainability of farming indigenous rice varieties in southern thailand can be improved by improving profit efficiency, the economic pillar of srp. this can then be reinforced by infusing the management of rice farming with social and environmental responsibility. contributions and interests of various stakeholders in the social, economic, and environmental aspects of farming system should be encouraged. 4. conclusions the gi registration of sangyod rice provides benefits to farmers in a gi area, but the gi certification does not. this suggests that the registration of gi sangyod rice is beneficial to all farmers in the geographical indicated area. there is also a need to further investigate ways to improve the control system of gi certification and to implement more effective training programs, such as ones that improve entrepreneurial skills so that the economic viability of producing gi indigenous rice can be enhanced. funding: this research is supported by the graduate program scholarship from the graduate school, kasetsart university (grant number: 2562/6214700319). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. acknowledgement: the authors acknowledge the assistance of phatthalung rice research center, rice department of thailand, in data collection. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references agri-map. 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(2019). dadson awunyo-vitor, amos mensah and faizal adams profit efficiency among maize farmers and implications for poverty alleviation and food security in ghana. scientific african, 6, e00206. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2019.e00206 http://www.aseanip.org/portals/0/pdf/asean%20gi%20guidelines.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/i1760e/i1760e.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/ca2079en/ca2079en.pdf http://www.nso.go.th/sites/2014/pages/agri/2556/summary.aspx http://impexp.oae.go.th/service/export.php http://www.sustainablerice.org/resources/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 510 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the analysis of entrepreneurial smallholder farmers: evidence from thailand waripas jiumpanyarach school of agricultural resources, chulalongkorn university, bangkok 10330, thailand.  waripas.j@chula.ac.th article history abstract received: 22 may 2025 revised: 14 august 2025 accepted: 12 september 2025 published: 24 september 2025 keywords agricultural entrepreneurship entrepreneurial success farmer business financial access market profitability smallholder farmers. the success and sustainability of smallholder agricultural entrepreneurship in thailand were investigated by regional disparities. data were collected from 302 smallholder farmers through questionnaires, with regional sample sizes of 67 (north), 64 (south), 60 (east), 51 (central), and 60 (northeast). the data were subsequently analyzed using a logit regression model. the findings of this study revealed that 46% of respondents achieved entrepreneurial success, defined as a monthly profit exceeding 17,000 thb (570 usd). this success was primarily in the eastern and southern regions. agricultural types, infrastructure, and market profitability were identified as significant positive drivers of entrepreneurial success. conversely, the northern and northeastern regions exhibited the highest rates of entrepreneurial failure. this was associated with limited financial access, inadequate community management, and restricted development of value-added products. these factors, compounded by a lack of formal loan support, resulted in significant income constraints. furthermore, post-harvesting and logistical challenges, alongside individual and community mindsets, were found to significantly influence business outcomes across all regions. the success approach integrates targeted government and private sector support to improve infrastructure, expand financial accessibility through customized loan programs, and enhance market profitability via optimized value chains, thereby fostering sustainable growth and improved livelihoods. contribution/originality: this study offers an original contribution by focusing on smallholder farmers across diverse regions of thailand. it identifies barriers to success in agricultural entrepreneurship and highlights opportunities to enhance farm income within the farm business. furthermore, the findings suggest strategies for developing agricultural entrepreneurship in alignment with sustainable agriculture. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5626 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: jiumpanyarach, w. (2025). the analysis of entrepreneurial smallholder farmers: evidence from thailand. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 510–518. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5626 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the entrepreneurial success of smallholder farmers was significantly constrained by limited access to critical resources, including financial capital, soil fertility, technical knowledge, technological advancements, and innovative practices. furthermore, the efficacy of community, governmental, and private sector support, alongside the farmers' intrinsic entrepreneurial mindset, were pivotal determinants of business outcomes. opportunities for smallholder farmers to enhance production and scale their enterprises, from micro to macro levels, were contingent upon several factors. the integration of advanced knowledge and technology facilitates increased agricultural productivity. information-driven decision-making empowers farmers to expand their business operations. moreover, the establishment of strategic business linkages through academic, governmental, and private sector networks, market access, and growth potential. additionally, environmental factors could provide opportunities for farmers to grow their businesses sustainably. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 510-518 mailto:waripas.j@chula.ac.th https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6167-2172 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5626 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 510-518 511 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. smallholder farmers had opportunities to participate in various entrepreneurial activities in different types of farming and had the potential to enhance the competitive advantage of their farming enterprises (world bank, 2008). entrepreneurship defined as an instrument for innovation and economic development (world bank, 2013). farmers’ entrepreneurship includes demography, culture, politics, geography, and economics. the ability and willingness of individuals are identified as economic opportunities. the entrepreneurs are likely to contribute to increased profitability and sustainability (world bank, 2013). challenges faced by smallholder farmers include insufficient and inadequate financing, lack of information, poor infrastructure, and inappropriate technologies. farmers have low incentives to invest in farming production using technologies due to issues related to inputs, infrastructure, and prices. risks and uncertainties for smallholder farmers stem from unpredictable climate conditions, unaffected corporations, and unreliable markets. it is essential to provide improved skills and knowledge through agricultural markets, including characteristics and services, to increase agricultural productivity (world bank, 2013). entrepreneurship is an economic activity that enables individuals to start new businesses (chouhan, 2015). entrepreneurial activities motivated smallholder farmers to create new businesses, including economic and firm environments (ardichvili, cardozo, & ray, 2003; chouhan, 2015; corbett, 2005; tarus, kemboi, okemwa, & otiso, 2016). the success of the business depends on farmers' behavior, including risk-taking, proactiveness, innovation, and skills (tarus et al., 2016). it focused on entrepreneurship, attitudes, and work-life balance (cherukara & manalel, 2011; ntow et al., 2023). credit constraints were a limitation to access, adopting technologies that prevented undertaking high-return agricultural activities (brahmbhatt, haddaoui, & page, 2017; dabbous, barakat, & kraus, 2023; puertas, guaita-martinez, carracedo, & ribeiro-soriano, 2022). a new agricultural entrepreneur was a risk taker; thus, farmers were willing to obtain sufficient skills. agricultural entrepreneurs are expected to be able to increase competitiveness by identifying markets and new markets through producing products. these satisfy market demands and adopting new firm technologies, increasing opportunities in both rural and urban areas to develop the economy (bairwa, lakra, kushwaha, meena, & kumar, 2014). farmers' decision-making was driven by product value, consumer preferences, and production processes. they actively pursued market opportunities for novel products to satisfy consumer demand (erogul & quagrainie, 2018) and enhance farm profitability (ntow et al., 2023; wongnaa et al., 2019). technology adoption was influenced by sociodemographic factors, resource endowments, extension services, financial resources, and income sources. credit constraints significantly impeded technology access for smallholders (balana & oyeyemi, 2022; zezza & tasciotti, 2010). agricultural business performance was contingent on value-added processes, necessitating enhanced vertical knowledge, understanding of market preferences, and strategic technology reallocation (cao & duan, 2014; dabbous et al., 2023). entrepreneurial behaviors are influenced by both exogenous and endogenous factors. exogenous factors, such as reduced transaction costs and enhanced market access, promote smallholder farmer participation in entrepreneurial activities (mosey, 2016). endogenous factors, encompassing human and social capital, include network structures, interpersonal relationships, and cognitive attributes (hoang & antoncic, 2003; shane & smith, 2003; shepherd & detienne, 2005). additionally, supply chain management of smallholder farming enterprises contributed to financial and economic sustainability (thindisa, 2014). entrepreneurial learning skills related to the learning process, identity redevelopment, and agricultural boundary crossing, providing a foundation for understanding entrepreneurial learning and the transformation of experience into learning outcomes (cope & watts, 2000). this included cognitive, behavioral, and affective learning domains (cope, 2005). contemporary agriculture integrates human and social capital into new business ventures, necessitating new knowledge, market preferences, performance networks, and training processes (pindado, sánchez, verstegen, & lans, 2018). agricultural entrepreneurial success was predicated on the integration of human, social, and financial capital. human capital positively influences knowledge acquisition (rural extension, scientific, and technological) and attitudinal development (shane, 2000). it emphasized the agricultural entrepreneur's capabilities, enabling innovation and motivation under market pressures. for example, sustainable organic agriculture necessitated adaptation through linkages between organic farms and food entrepreneurs, supported by consumers rather than solely by government intervention. potential farmers possessed human capital (skills and knowledge) and social capital (informal networks and trust), which facilitated market opportunity exploitation and income enhancement. social capital encompassed networks of friends, social responsibility, and environmental stewardship, alongside relationships with government, innovative capacity, and access to limited resources. it involved social value creation, influence, and stakeholder engagement. limitations included legal constraints, cooperation challenges, co-creation complexities, interactive potential, and social technology adoption. furthermore, social capital structures contributed to resource accumulation, impacting wealth and financial performance (zhao, liu, & zhang, 2023). access and creativity, impacting societal and farm environments, were crucial for sustainable entrepreneurship (cornelissen & werner, 2014). balancing economic efficiency with social progress was essential in farm infrastructure development. consequently, entrepreneurial achievement was contingent upon socio-environmental factors, contextual circumstances, and maximized value creation (cohen, smith, & mitchell, 2008). furthermore, successful social value creation benefited economically disadvantaged farmers by generating employment and supplementary income (fischer-kreer & brettel, 2022). thai smallholder agricultural enterprises across developing economies are constrained by systemic structural barriers. consequently, smallholders are often relegated to dependence on intermediary agents, thereby hindering their capacity for independent business operation. this dependence exacerbates the economic disparity between smallholders and large-scale agricultural producers, with the latter benefiting from superior access to critical production inputs and expansion resources. the development of these enterprises necessitates rigorous efforts to bridge the existing gaps. investigation is essential for formulating evidence-based strategies aimed at expanding opportunities, fostering asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 510-518 512 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. entrepreneurial development, and advancing the economic prosperity of thai smallholder farmers. this study aims to identify factors restricting smallholder agricultural entrepreneurship in thailand, specifically: 1) farm background characteristics (activities, economics, and community context) and 2) challenges to entrepreneurial success within these communities. the expected outcome of the study is to identify barriers to the success of smallholder agricultural entrepreneurs. 2. materials and methods a model was developed to analyze the impact of human capital, social capital, and financial capital on entrepreneurial success among smallholder farmers. the study examined how farm activities, community-level factors, and agribusiness dynamics influence success. the study's conceptual framework and research questions were detailed in figure 1 and table 1, respectively. figure 1. conceptual framework. table 1. description of variables and research questions. variable category variable expected impact question/description units/categories resource/references socioeconomics age age of household leader years gender gender of household leader 1 = female; 0 = male household income level + monthly household income baht cohen et al. (2008) background type of agriculture + type of agricultural activity 1 = livestock; 0 = plants land ownership + farm ownership status 1 = rented; 0 = owned infrastructure + satisfaction level with farm infrastructure 1 = lowest; 2 = low; 3 = medium; 4 = high; 5 = highest chen, shen, qiu, liu, and mardani (2023) and louw, jordaan, ndanga, and kirsten (2008) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 510-518 513 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. variable category variable expected impact question/description units/categories resource/references technologies + satisfaction level with farm technologies 1 = lowest; 2 = low; 3 = medium; 4 = high; 5 = highest dabbous et al. (2023) and louw et al. (2008) human capital education levels highest education level attained shane (2000) knowledge + level of knowledge on agricultural entrepreneurship 1 = lowest; 2 = low; 3 = medium; 4 = high; 5 = highest shane (2000) attitudes on agricultural entrepreneur + satisfaction level with agricultural entrepreneurship 1 = lowest; 2 = low; 3 = medium; 4 = high; 5 = highest shane (2000) social capital community engagement + level of farm community engagement 1 = lowest; 2 = low; 3 = medium; 4 = high; 5 = highest cornelissen and werner (2014); fischer-kreer and brettel (2022); shane (2000) and thompson (2009) financial capital financial access level of financial access 1 = lowest; 2 = low; 3 = medium; 4 = high; 5 = highest louw et al. (2008) and shane (2000) sustainable outcome market profit + level of market profit 1 = lowest; 2 = low; 3 = medium; 4 = high; 5 = highest shane (2000) and world bank (2013) success success entrepreneurial success 0 = not successful; 1 = successful 2.1. data collection data were gathered through 302 paper-based surveys, distributed across various geographic locations (figure 2), capturing diverse characteristics of smallholder farmers. the sample sizes of smallholder farmers surveyed were 67 in the north, 64 in the south, 60 in the east, 51 in the central region, and 60 in the northeast during the period from january 2019 to august 2019. the questionnaire validation rate was 95%. the questionnaire included sections on respondent socioeconomics, farm characteristics, and attitudes regarding sustainability and entrepreneurial success, defined as achieving a monthly profit of at least 570 usd (17,000 thb) (office of agricultural economics, 2023). the varieties of cultivated crops across different regions are presented in figure 2. the definition of financial access and market profit levels is illustrated in table 3. figure 2. the varieties of cultivated crops across different regions. this research explored the determinants of success and sustainability among agricultural entrepreneurs, particularly within the context of smallholder farm businesses. data regarding entrepreneurial success were collected using questionnaires. success was defined as achieving a monthly profit of at least 570 usd (17,000 thb) (office of agricultural economics, 2023). the study analyzed the influence of human capital, financial capital, and social capital on both success and satisfaction. according to utility theory, a choice modelling approach (greene, 2007; mcfadden, 1974; meyer & meyer, 2017) was adopted to characterize the strategic decision-making of agricultural entrepreneurs. this framework posited that individuals derive utility from the characteristics of goods and services, with choice behavior reflecting the maximization of expected utility. under the assumption of individual rationality and utility maximization, the logit regression model was employed to analyze choices made among a set of alternatives. the model is shown below. y∗ = x′ + ε (1) yij = β0 + β1x1j + β2x2j + ⋯ + βnxnj + εij (2) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 510-518 514 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the study's analytical framework (figure 1) posited relationships between independent and dependent variables. a logistic regression model was employed to investigate the determinants of success among agricultural entrepreneurs. entrepreneurial success was defined dichotomously (1 = successful, 0 = not successful). a structured questionnaire was developed to elicit data on variables relevant to the study's research questions. data were collected from respondents using a five-point likert scale (1 = lowest; 5 = highest), with variable details presented in table 1. the model employed equations that specified each individual's outcome as a function of all relevant parameters (β). an empirical model was constructed to estimate the determinants of success for farmers engaged in agricultural entrepreneurship. respondents' success as smallholder farmers was used as a proxy measure of farmer rationality. individual farmers (i) were observed to make choices within varying sets of alternatives, including socioeconomic factors, farm characteristics, behavioral attributes, and market profits. this data facilitated the calculation and statistical testing of relationships between farmers' decisions and the characteristics of their farms (shown below). yij = β0 + β1jage + β2j gender + β3jedu + β4jincome + β5jtypef + β6jowner + β7jknow + β8jinfrastru + β9jtech + β10jfinance + β11jmktprofit + β12jcom + +β13jattitude +  ij (3) note: age (age), gender (gender), education levels (edu), household income (income), types of agriculture (typef), farms’ ownership (owner), knowledge (know), infrastructure (infrastru), technologies (tech), financial aspects (finance), market profit (mktprofit), community engagement (com), and attitudes (attitude). 3. results and discussion the purposes of this study investigated the success factors of smallholder agricultural entrepreneurship. specifically, the study empirically analyzed the relationships among smallholder farming activities, human, social, and financial capital, and their influence on business success. additionally, geographical, economic, and cultural factors influencing on-farm practices were also taken into consideration. furthermore, the study examined the correlation between participation in modeled activities and resultant success (table 2). finally, the analysis explored the successes achieved by smallholder agricultural entrepreneurs and the challenges they faced in both agricultural practices and entrepreneurship. 3.1. origins and background of farm systems table 2 details the demographic and farm characteristics. the average farm size is under 4 hectares, with multifunctional smallholder farming being prevalent. respondents are primarily elderly (over 46), and agriculture is their main source of income. table 2. socioeconomic characteristics of agricultural entrepreneurs (percentage distribution). gender percentage (%) education level percentage (%) age (years) percentage (%) male 39.6 below elementary school 0.7 18-25 26.8 female 60.4 elementary school 11.6 26-35 18.5 junior high school 14.2 36-45 11.2 high school 23.8 46-55 22.4 vocational/technical college 7.3 56-65 18.5 graduated 28.1 above 65 2.6 post-graduated 14.3 3.2. success and sustainability of smallholder farms’ entrepreneur figure 3 demonstrates regional differences in the determinants of thai smallholder agricultural entrepreneurship. the analysis highlights the relationship between regional success and varying influential factors. the analysis indicates that 46% of respondents achieve entrepreneurial success, while 54% do not. entrepreneurial failure is predominantly reported in the northeast and north regions, where field crops are majorly cultivated. this failure is attributed to limited value-added product development, excessive loan availability, and inadequate community management. conversely, success is more prevalent in the south and east regions, characterized by horticulture, particularly economically fruit production. this contributes to community income growth. agricultural knowledge levels in different regions, a key success factor, are highest in the southern region. specifically, 24% of respondents in the south report possessing agricultural knowledge, infrastructure, technology, financial access, community engagement, and attitudes. the results indicate that these limiting factors significantly impede the development of entrepreneurial success. the findings reveal that market profit levels in this region are the lowest among all others, which suggests a significant financial gap between consumers and small-scale agricultural enterprises. the high entrepreneurial failure rate in the northeast region coincides with the lowest levels of access to several resources, including knowledge, technology, infrastructure, and community engagement. furthermore, the northern region has significantly constrained financial access, underscoring its reliance on financial resources. in the northeast region, significant challenges in accessing resources and attitudes are primarily due to limited financial access. however, these factors do not consistently predict regional entrepreneurial success. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 510-518 515 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 3. the success of farmers’ entrepreneurs and access to factors impact the success of entrepreneurship. 3.3. challenges to agriculture entrepreneurs the result indicates that financial access negatively impacted entrepreneurial success, posing a significant challenge for future development. smallholder farmer businesses focus on income challenges attributable to financial limitations, with formal financial and informal alternatives. conversely, market profit demonstrates a positive impact on smallholder farmer business success. respondents indicate satisfaction with monthly incomes ranging from 340500 usd (10,000-15,000 thb), aligning with national statistics reporting that an average thai farmer had an income of approximately 540 usd (17,000 thb) and expenses of 230 usd (7,000 thb) (office of agricultural economics, 2023). successful and sustainable business outcomes are driven by market profit exploitation. these aim to foster economic growth within these communities. table 3. definition of financial access and market profit. impacted factor level to access definition financial access 1 (lowest) informal financial access 2 (low) agricultural cooperative 3 (medium) agricultural cooperative and agricultural banks 4 (high) agricultural cooperative, agricultural banks, and government bank 5 (highest) agricultural cooperative, agricultural banks, government bank, and commercial bank market profit (baht/month) 1 (lowest) below 5,000 2 (low) 5,000 10,000 3 (medium) 10,000 15,000 4 (high) 15,000 20,000 5 (highest) more than 20,000 this study reveals that attitudes of smallholders influence smallholder farmers' ability to establish new agribusinesses. farmers generally report average levels of satisfaction with their knowledge, infrastructure, market profit, and community engagement, which are medium. additionally, satisfaction with technologies, financial access, and attitudes towards agricultural entrepreneurs is low (table 4). this result encourages participation in farm development and fosters inter-regional promotion, sharing, and cooperation to stimulate economic growth. these knowledge and infrastructural opportunities enhance farm competitiveness, profitability, and sustainability. furthermore, market profit and community engagement demonstrate a positive impact on smallholder farmer businesses, exhibiting the highest satisfaction levels among successful entrepreneurs. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 510-518 516 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 4. satisfaction levels of smallholder farmer entrepreneurs (percentage distribution). variable lowest (%) low (%) medium (%) high (%) highest (%) avg.±std. interpretation*** knowledge 23 12 32 18 15 2.90±1.35 medium infrastructure 26 25 24 13 12 2.60±1.35 medium technologies 33 24 14 24 5 2.44±1.38 low financial access* 45 23 14 13 5 2.10±1.48 low market profit** 12 18 40 20 10 2.98±1.13 medium community engagement 20 25 15 13 27 3.02±1.51 medium attitudes 10 25 17 34 14 1.90±1.26 low note: * financial access and ** market profit are explained in table 3. ***interpretation: 1.00-1.80 = lowest; 1.81-2.60 = low; 2.613.40 = medium; 3.41-4.20 = high; 4.21-5.00 = highest. table 5 indicates that agricultural type, infrastructure, market profits, and community engagement show a significantly positive impact on smallholder entrepreneur success. conversely, financial access demonstrates a negative impact on success. this suggests that economically valuable agricultural practices are associated with the necessary resources for both farm management and business operations. farmers express the highest level of satisfaction toward community engagement, identifying the factor as an important key solution for smallholder entrepreneurial success. however, other solutions address critical gaps and limitations among farmers, middlemen, and consumers. agricultural entrepreneurial success necessitates financial access to facilitate innovation and technology adoption, ensuring product diversification and market competitiveness (kamondetdacha, 2022). external subsidies from government and private sectors provided productive resources to enhance farm business performance. table 5. logit regression results: factors impacting success of smallholder farmer entrepreneurs. variable coefficient (coeff.) significance (sig.) age -0.1571 -0.2094 gender -0.0752 -0.813 education -0.0024 -0.9828 income 0.0524 -0.9891 type of agriculture 0.3144* -0.0593 farm ownership -0.0498 -0.9889 knowledge 0.1135 -0.978 infrastructure 0.7040** -0.0003 technologies 0.3125 -0.0862 financial access -0.4376* -0.0376 market profit 0.6248** -0.0006 community engagement 0.3279* -0.0304 attitudes 0.2346 -0.1259 note: * significant at the 5% level. ** significant at the 1% level. the success and sustainability of smallholder agricultural entrepreneurship were contingent upon human, social, and financial capital. these resources were influenced by: 1) geographical factors, specifically infrastructure availability, impacted transaction costs for agribusiness activities (post-harvest and logistics); 2) economic status, with low disposable income limiting financial access; 3) farm characteristics, including ownership and infrastructure, serving as business resources; and 4) community mindset, which constrained farm activities. smallholder entrepreneurship is an interaction of motivations, opportunities, and conditions, which enhances competitiveness and economics. human capital (knowledge, experience, technology, and training) influences entrepreneurial attitudes, impacting productivity (becker, 1964; shane, 2000; shepherd & detienne, 2005). attitudes drove productive activities (davidsson & honig, 2003; venter, urban, rwigema, & marks, 2008), including behavior (ajzen, 2005) and market benefit. the behavior of farm entrepreneurship drove an economic growth (noruzi, rahimi, & westover, 2010; si, ahlstrom, wei, & cullen, 2019; toma, grigore, & marinescu, 2014; vidyatmoko & hastuti, 2017), examined business factors and recognizing success complexity (vidyatmoko & hastuti, 2017). financial status was crucial (omri, 2020). smallholder entrepreneurs exhibited strong social capital (farm activities and community engagement) but limited financial access, impacting economic and community development (louw et al., 2008; thompson, 2009; world bank, 2013). financial capital (access and profit) was key to success (asokan & singh, 2003). social networks had opportunities for identification and exploitation (shepherd & detienne, 2005). the integration of technology and innovation stimulated community development and improved access to resource networks. concurrently, market forces were instrumental in sustaining the economic viability of smallholder farms. success was attributed to a combination of factors, including production, operations, cultivation, and rural development. productivity, value creation, and the development of dynamic leadership skills were also essential. furthermore, human skills and social media proved critical in enhancing markets. 4. conclusions thai smallholder agricultural entrepreneurship is constrained by systemic structural barriers, including deficiencies in infrastructural development, prevailing socio-economic limitations, and restricted access to financial asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 510-518 517 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. resources. entrepreneurial decision-making within this sector is influenced by complex economic, social, and cultural processes. notably, farmer decision-making is often limited by individual knowledge, physical resource constraints, and cultural norms. these limitations impede the autonomous operation of agricultural businesses and compel farmers to rely on intermediaries. consequently, the economic growth of smallholder farmers is significantly lower than that of larger-scale farmers who possess greater access to essential production and expansion resources. the persistent research gap surrounds the success in the development of thai smallholder agriculture. this identifies strategies for enhancing opportunities, fostering entrepreneurial potential, and improving the economic well-being of these farmers. this study suggests the following implications: firstly, governments should create an enabling business environment to encourage smallholder farmer participation in agricultural entrepreneurship, addressing financial and market barriers. second, governments and agencies should provide essential entrepreneurial and marketing skills for success. third, governments and agencies should provide knowledge and technology resources. finally, farmers should learn and develop new skills in both production and marketing. these actions support and facilitate economic growth in smallholder farming entrepreneurship. funding: this research is supported by research grant from school of agricultural resources, chulalongkorn university. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the chulalongkorn university, bangkok has granted approval for this study on 10 september 2018 (ref. no. coa no. 219/2561). transparency: the author states that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. references ajzen, i. 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(2023). effects of varieties and seasons on cost efficiency in rice farming: a stochastic metafrontier approach. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2), 120–129. 10.55493/5005.v13i2.4778 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction rice farming plays an important role in national food security and households’ livelihoods. however, the overuse of inputs such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides is increasing production costs, environmental issues (e.g., increasing greenhouse gas emissions (ch4 and n2o), water pollution, and soil quality degradation), and health asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 2 (2023): 120-129. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9449-0263 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9817-3863 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1764-422x mailto:htphuc@hueuni.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 120-129 121 problems and leading to low-quality outputs. therefore, the efficient use of inputs would be a feasible approach to mitigate these issues. many studies on the efficiency of rice farming have been conducted in vietnam (huy, 2009; khai & yabe, 2011; linh, 2012; truong, nanseki, & chomei, 2015; tung, 2013); however, researchers have overwhelmingly focused on technical efficiency measurement and ignored the importance of input prices, which substantially affect farmers’ decisions regarding the use of inputs. moreover, the impacts of rice varieties and seasons have not been given much attention. some studies related to cost efficiency (ce) measurement in rice farming can be found in the literature (siagian & soetjipto, 2020; thanh, hoang, & seo, 2012; tu & trang, 2016). however, these studies did not consider the impacts of rice varieties and cropping season on cost efficiency. only gweyi-onyango et al. (2021) have studied the effects of rice varieties and seasons on nitrogen use efficiency and management among rice farmers in kenya. to fill this gap, we adopted a stochastic metafrontier approach, introduced by huang, huang, and liu (2014), to examine the impacts of rice varieties and seasons on cost efficiency among vietnamese rice farmers in the mekong river delta. this paper makes the following contributions to the literature: (1) it is the first paper employing the stochastic metafrontier approach, which allows the researcher to control for the technology gap due to the differences in rice variety groups and seasons and thus assess the impacts of varieties and seasons on rice farming ce in vietnam. (2) the findings regarding the variety and season effects on ce provide useful information for policymakers to build policies to help rice farmers minimize production costs. the rest of the paper is structured as follows: section 2 reviews the literature related to efficiency measurement methods and empirical applications. section 3 outlines the materials and methods, including the stochastic cost metafrontier approach, empirical model, and data used in this paper. the results are reported and discussed in section 4. section 5 summarizes the conclusions and policy implications. 2. literature review cost efficiency is measured as the ratio of the minimum cost to the observed cost (kumbhakar & lovell, 2003). two common methods have been used to measure ce, namely stochastic frontier analysis (sfa) (aigner, lovell, & schmidt, 1977; battese & corra, 1977) and data envelopment analysis (dea) (charnes, cooper, & rhodes, 1978). while the sfa method is able to separate classical noise from inefficiency, the dea approach cannot. the concept of metafrontier was introduced by hayami (1969), hayami and ruttan (1970), and hayami and ruttan (1971), who defined the meta-production function as “the envelope of commonly conceived neoclassical production functions” (hayami & ruttan, 1971). according to binswanger, ruttan, hayami, wade, and weber (1978), the meta production is “the envelope of the production points of the most efficient countries,” with the assumption that all firms in different groups, such as countries and regions, can access and produce using the same technology. there are two approaches to measuring the metafrontier. battese, rao, and o'donnell (2004) and o’donnell, rao, and battese (2008) used non-parametric approaches to measure the metafrontier. however, the main limitation of these approaches is that in the second step of the estimation procedure, they use mathematical programming techniques instead of regression techniques to calculate the metafrontier function. thus, the metafrontier estimates in the second step of the estimation procedure do not have statistical properties (huang et al., 2014). huang et al. (2014) proposed an alternative method to solve this shortcoming by employing stochastic frontier regression to estimate the metafrontier in the second step of the estimation procedure. in this paper, therefore, we employ the stochastic metafrontier method proposed by huang et al. (2014). the stochastic metafrontier method has been commonly used in empirical studies related to efficiency measurement (alem, lien, hardaker, & guttormsen, 2019; chaffai & hassan, 2019; dong, mu, & abler, 2019; fontin & lin, 2019; issahaku & abdulai, 2020; lawin & tamini, 2019; le, vu, & nghiem, 2018; melo-becerra & orozco-gallo, 2017; nguyen, nghiem, roca, & sharma, 2016). 3. materials and methods 3.1. stochastic metafrontier approach following the approach of huang et al. (2014), the stochastic cost frontier function of the 𝑖th farm in the 𝑗th group is written in equation 1 as: 𝐶𝑗𝑖 = 𝑓𝑗(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) 𝑒𝜀𝑗𝑖 (1) where c denotes the variable production cost, q represents the quantity of output, w denotes a vector of input prices, 𝛽 represents a vector of unknown parameters that need to be estimated, and 𝜀 is a composed error (𝜀𝑗𝑖 = 𝑣𝑗𝑖 + 𝑢𝑗𝑖). here 𝑣𝑗𝑖 captures a classical noise, assumed to be independently and identically distributed as 𝑁(0, 𝜎𝑣 𝑗2 ), and 𝑢𝑗𝑖 is a positive random variable to capture cost inefficiency and is assumed to be distributed as 𝑁+(𝜇 𝑗, 𝜎𝑢 𝑗2 ). the ce of the 𝑖th farmer with respect to the 𝑗th group’s frontier is defined in equation 2 as the ratio of the minimum cost to the observed cost: 𝐶𝐸𝑖 𝑗 = 𝑓𝑗(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) 𝑒𝑣𝑗𝑖 𝑓𝑗(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) 𝑒𝑣𝑗𝑖+𝑢𝑗𝑖 = 𝑒− 𝑢𝑗𝑖 (2) the common cost metafrontier function enveloping all group cost frontiers is defined as 𝑓𝑚(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗), and its relationship with the individual group cost frontier 𝑓𝑗(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) is expressed in equation 3 as: 𝑓𝑗(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) = 𝑓𝑚(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) 𝑒− 𝑢𝑗𝑖 𝑚 , ∀ 𝑗, 𝑖 (3) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 120-129 122 where 𝑢𝑗𝑖 𝑚 ≥ 0. hence, 𝑓𝑚(. ) ≥ 𝑓𝑗(. ), and the gap between the 𝑗th group’s cost frontier to the cost metafrontier is the technology gap ratio (tgr), defined in equation 4 as: 𝑇𝐺𝑅𝑖 𝑗 = 𝑓𝑗(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) 𝑓𝑚(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) = 𝑒− 𝑢𝑗𝑖 𝑚 ≤ 1 (4) the meta cost efficiency (mce) of the 𝑖th farm in the 𝑗th group is defined in equation 5 as the performance of the farm with respect to the cost metafrontier, expressed as: 𝑀𝐶𝐸𝑖 𝑗 = 𝑓𝑚(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) 𝑒𝑣𝑗𝑖 𝑓𝑗(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖 ; 𝛽𝑗) 𝑒𝑣𝑗𝑖+𝑢𝑗𝑖 = 𝑇𝐺𝑅𝑖 𝑗 × 𝐶𝐸𝑖 𝑗 (5) the estimation procedure of the stochastic cost metafrontier comprises two steps. in step 1, we estimate each group-specific frontier in equation 6 using the standard maximum likelihood estimation method. ln 𝐶𝑗𝑖 = ln𝑓𝑗(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖 ; 𝛽𝑗) + 𝜀𝑗𝑖 (6) the ce of the ith farm against the jth group frontier is measured using the jondrow, lovell, materov, and schmidt (1982) estimator as the conditional expectation, written in equation 7. 𝐶�̂�𝑖 𝑗 = �̂�(𝑒−𝑢𝑗𝑖|𝜀�̂�𝑖) (7) where 𝜀�̂�𝑖 = ln 𝐶𝑗𝑖 − ln𝑓𝑗(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖 ; 𝛽𝑗) are the estimated composed errors, and ln𝑓𝑗(. ) is the cost frontier estimate of the 𝑗th group’s frontier. in step 2, we predict the dependent values of each group frontier, 𝑙𝑛𝑓𝑗(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗), in equation 6 and pool them as the new dependent variable for the metafrontier function in equation 8 to estimate the tgr. ln𝑓𝑗(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) = 𝑙𝑛𝑓𝑚(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) + 𝜀𝑗𝑖 𝑚 (8) where 𝜀𝑗𝑖 𝑚 = 𝑣𝑗𝑖 𝑚 + 𝑢𝑗𝑖 𝑚 and 𝜀�̂�𝑖 𝑚 = ln𝑓𝑗(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) − 𝑙𝑛𝑓𝑚(𝑄𝑗𝑖 ; 𝑊𝑗𝑖; 𝛽𝑗) are the estimated composed errors. the tgr is obtained following jondrow’s estimator (jondrow et al., 1982) using equation 9. 𝑇𝐺�̂�𝑖 𝑗 = �̂� (𝑒−𝑢𝑗𝑖 𝑚 |𝜀�̂�𝑖 𝑚) (9) the mce is calculated using equation 10, as the product of group frontier ce and tgr. 𝑀𝐶�̂�𝑖 𝑗 = 𝑇𝐺�̂�𝑖 𝑗 × 𝐶�̂�𝑖 𝑗 (10) 3.2. empirical model to ensure the stochastic cost frontier function satisfies the homogeneity of degree +1 condition, we divide the variable cost and input prices by the labor price. we then demeaned these normalized variables. thus, the estimates of first-order parameters of input prices and output quantity are interpreted as the partial cost elasticities with respect to output quantity and input prices at the mean values. the general form of the normalized stochastic translog variable cost frontier function for the ith rice farm is written in equation 11 as: ln𝐶𝑖 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽𝑠lnw𝑠𝑖 + 𝛽𝑓lnw𝑓𝑖 + 𝛽𝑞lnq𝑖 + 1 2 𝛽𝑠𝑠lnw𝑠𝑖 2 + 𝛽𝑠𝑓lnw𝑠𝑖lnw𝑓𝑖 + 𝛽𝑠𝑞lnw𝑠𝑖lnq𝑖 + 1 2 𝛽𝑓𝑓lnw𝑓𝑖 2 + 𝛽𝑓𝑞lnw𝑓𝑖 lnq𝑖 + 1 2 𝛽𝑞𝑞lnq𝑖 2 + 𝛽𝐻𝑄𝑅𝑉hqrv𝑖 + 𝛽𝑆𝐴sa𝑖 + 𝛽𝐴𝑊aw𝑖 + 𝑣𝑖 + 𝑢𝑖 (11) where 𝐶𝑖 is the variable cost (usd) of the ith rice farm that is equal to the total expenditure on seed, fertilizer, and labor inputs normalized by labor price (wl in usd/man-day); ws and wf are seed and fertilizer prices (usd/kg), normalized by labor price; q is output quantity (kg); hqrv (high-quality rice variety) is a dummy variable to measure the effect of rice varieties (hqrv is equal to 1 if farmers used high-quality rice varieties, 0 otherwise); sa and aw are two dummy variables to capture the impacts of cropping seasons (sa and aw take a value of 1 if rice is grown in the summer-autumn and autumn-winter seasons, respectively, 0 otherwise), and vi, ui, and 𝛽 were defined earlier. the cost inefficiency term is expressed in equation 12 as a function of farm and farmer characteristic factors. log 𝜎𝑢𝑖 2 = 𝛼0 + ∑ 𝛼𝑛𝑍𝑛𝑖 8 𝑛=1 (12) where 𝑍 is a vector of explanatory factors of the cost inefficiency term. these variables included household heads’ experience (experience is measured as years of rice farming), education (education is measured as years of schooling), rice area (fsize is measured in hectares), family size (famsize is the number of household members), extension (extension is measured as the attendance of rice production training), rice land ownership (lownership is measured as the percentage of rice land that is owned by farmers), natural disasters (ndisaster is measured as the percentage of rice loss due to natural disasters such as typhoons, flooding, and drought), and rice diseases (rdisease is measured as the percentage of rice loss due to rice diseases). 𝛼 are unknown coefficients that need to be estimated. 3.3. data this study used data surveyed from 350 rice farmers in can tho, an giang, and bac lieu provinces in the mekong river delta, southern vietnam, using a stratified random sampling technique (refer to ho (2021)) pages 5 and 124 for details of the sampling procedure). the final data set consisted of 918 observations (rice farmers in the mekong river delta can grow rice for up to three seasons per year). the statistical description of the data set is presented in table 1. 123 table 1. descriptive summary of data used in cost frontier and inefficiency models. variable (unit) pooled rice varieties seasons hqrv adopter (n=384) non-adopter (n=534) winter-spring (n=339) summer-autumn (n=329) autumn-winter (n=250) mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd variables of cost frontier function c (usda) 859.01 735.48 769.13 709.18 923.64 747.83 846.09 736.89 854.65 753.53 882.26 711.53 ws (usd/kg) 0.43 0.13 0.50 0.14 0.38 0.10 0.46 0.14 0.42 0.13 0.40 0.11 wf (usd/kg) 0.40 0.06 0.42 0.05 0.38 0.05 0.41 0.06 0.40 0.06 0.39 0.05 wl (usd/man-day) 5.77 1.58 5.83 1.16 5.73 1.82 5.80 1.53 5.76 1.55 5.74 1.69 q (kg) 15,305.3 14,144.2 12,781.9 12,097.6 17,119.8 15,203.4 16,973.9 15,475.5 14,297.7 13,972.3 14,368.4 12,185.9 hqrv 0.42 0.49 – – – – 0.54 0.50 0.40 0.49 0.27 0.44 ws 0.37 0.48 0.48 0.50 0.29 0.45 – – – – – – sa 0.36 0.48 0.35 0.48 0.37 0.48 – – – – – – aw 0.27 0.45 0.17 0.38 0.34 0.48 – – – – – – explanatory variables of inefficiency education (year) 6.17 3.27 6.17 3.42 6.17 3.17 6.22 3.36 6.12 3.23 6.18 3.22 experience (year) 26.95 12.08 27.63 12.57 26.46 11.71 27.10 12.21 27.07 12.14 26.60 11.87 famsize (person) 3.75 1.49 3.84 1.55 3.68 1.44 3.77 1.52 3.76 1.49 3.71 1.45 fsize (hectare) 2.38 2.09 2.08 1.86 2.59 2.22 2.32 2.03 2.40 2.19 2.43 2.05 lownership (%) 75.11 37.41 79.48 35.57 71.97 38.40 76.29 36.76 75.38 37.35 73.15 38.40 extension (number) 2.45 4.88 2.34 4.63 2.52 5.06 2.34 4.78 2.39 4.81 2.67 5.12 rdisease (%) 2.86 5.45 2.07 5.04 3.43 5.66 2.47 5.26 3.18 5.69 2.97 5.36 ndisaster (%) 11.00 12.98 12.13 14.72 10.19 11.52 6.78 11.81 11.62 10.96 15.90 14.98 note: aexchange rate: 1 usd = 23,500 vietnamese dong (vnd). sd is standard deviation. n is the number of observations. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 120-129 124 the first part of table 1 reports the variables that are used in the stochastic cost frontier functions, including variable cost (𝐶), input prices (ws, wf, and wl), output quantity (q), and three dummy variables to measure the impacts of rice varieties (hqrv) and seasons (ws, sa, and aw). the mean cost of rice production is approximately $859.01 per farm (or approximately $384.41 per hectare) and varies significantly across rice variety groups and seasons. the mean seed price is $0.43 per kilogram and varies considerably across rice variety groups and seasons. the average fertilizer price1 is $0.4 per kilogram. the average labor price is $5.77 per man-day. the average output quantity is 15,305.26 kg per farm (or a rice yield of 6,355.95 kg/hectare) and varies substantially across rice variety groups and seasons. in vietnam’s mekong river delta, rice can be grown in up to three seasons per production year, namely in the winter-spring season (ws), summer-autumn season (sa), and autumn-winter season (aw). rice farmers adopt different rice varieties across regions and seasons. the rice varieties in this study were grouped into the traditional rice variety group (e.g., om4218 and ir50404) and the high-quality rice variety group (hqrv) (e.g., om7347, jasmine, and om5451). table 1 shows that winter-spring and summer-autumn are the main growing seasons, with 37% and 36% of observations, respectively, while autumn-winter is the third cropping season, with only 27% of observations. hqrvs have been promoted to help rice farmers increase their income; however, the adoption rate is only 42%. the second part of table 1 reports the details of the explanatory variables, which are assumed to affect farmers’ cost inefficiency. the average educational level of rice farmers is quite low, 6.17 years; however, they have considerable rice farming experience, with 26.95 years. rice farmers, on average, attended rice farming extension sessions 2.45 times. each rice household has approximately 4 members on average. rice land ownership, on average, accounts for 75.11% of the cultivated rice land. rice diseases and natural disasters (e.g., typhoons, storms, and droughts) adversely affect rice production in the mekong river delta; the surveyed rice farmers estimated average paddy losses of 11% and 2.86% due to natural disasters and rice diseases, respectively. 4. result and discussion 4.1. stochastic cost frontier estimates the estimates of stochastic cost frontiers for all models (step 1) are presented in table 2, and the estimates of stochastic metafrontiers (step 2) are presented in table a1 (appendix). to check whether the use of stochastic metafrontiers was necessary, we used the generalized likelihood ratio (lr) test to examine whether rice production technology differed between the two rice variety groups (hqrv adopter and non-adopter groups) and three seasons (winter-spring, summer-autumn, and autumn-winter). in doing so, we estimated a pooled model that included binary variables (hqrv, sa, and aw) to capture the potential technology gap between rice variety groups and seasons. we then estimated a separate group frontier for each group. the generalized lr test was used to test the null hypothesis that there was no technology gap across the two rice variety groups and three seasons. the lr values to test the technology difference across rice variety groups and seasons were 95.672 and 52.12,3 respectively, greater than the critical value 𝜒(0.99) 2 (1) = 5.412 (kodde & palm, 1986), which confirmed that there was different technology across rice variety groups and seasons at a statistically significant level of 1% and that the use of stochastic metafrontiers, in this case, was necessary to obtain unbiased estimates. the estimates of input prices and output quantity for all models were, as expected, positive and statistically significant, implying that the results satisfied the properties of the cost frontier function. the normalized data were demeaned, so the first estimated coefficients, in this study, could be interpreted as the partially variable cost elasticity with respect to output quantity and input prices at the sample mean. regarding variety groups, the variable cost elasticities of the hqrv group with respect to input prices and output quantity differed from the non-adopter group. the variable cost elasticities of the hqrv group with respect to output quantity, price of fertilizer, and price of seed, at the sample mean, were 0.954, 0.553, and 0.153, respectively, while the variable cost elasticities of the non-adopter group with respect to output quantity and price of fertilizer, at the sample mean, were lower than those of the hqrv adopter group, 0.890 and 0.495, respectively. however, the variable cost elasticity of non-adopters with respect to the price of seed, at the sample mean, was higher than that of the hqrv adopter group, at 0.351. regarding seasons, the partial elasticities of the variable production cost with respect to input prices and the quantity of output varied across cropping seasons. particularly, the partial elasticity of the variable production cost with respect to the quantity of output, at the sample mean, was highest in the autumn-winter season, with 0.927, followed by the winter-spring and summer-autumn seasons, with 0.923 and 0.900, respectively. similarly, the partial elasticity of the variable production cost with respect to the price of fertilizer, at the sample mean, was highest in the autumn-winter season, with 0.628, followed by the summer-autumn and winter-spring seasons, with 0.597 and 0.486, respectively. in contrast, the summer-autumn season had the highest partial elasticity of the variable production cost with respect to the price of seed, with 0.267 at the sample mean, followed by the autumn-winter season, with 0.25, and the winter-spring season with the lowest value of 0.230. 1 fertilizer price is the average price of all fertilizers farmers used (p = ∑ 𝑃𝑖𝑄𝑖/ ∑ 𝑄𝑖 ). 2 lr = −2 ∗ (ln 𝐿pooled − (ln 𝐿hqrv adopter + ln 𝐿non−adopter)). 3 lr = −2 ∗ (ln 𝐿pooled − (ln 𝐿winter−spring + ln 𝐿summer−autumn + ln 𝐿autumn−winter)). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 120-129 125 table 2. estimates of stochastic cost frontiers and inefficiency determinants for pooled and group frontier models. variable pooled rice varieties seasons hqrv adopter non-adopter winter-spring summer-autumn autumn-winter coef. se coef. se coef. se coef. se coef. se coef. se constant –0.301*** 0.023 –0.387*** 0.035 –0.251*** 0.026 –0.276*** 0.040 –0.102*** 0.034 –0.101*** 0.031 lnws 0.252*** 0.035 0.153*** 0.055 0.351*** 0.046 0.230*** 0.052 0.267*** 0.060 0.250*** 0.076 lnwf 0.585*** 0.043 0.553*** 0.082 0.495*** 0.051 0.486*** 0.063 0.597*** 0.075 0.628*** 0.088 lnq 0.913*** 0.013 0.954*** 0.026 0.890*** 0.014 0.923*** 0.020 0.900*** 0.023 0.927*** 0.026 0.5(lnws)2 0.166 0.107 0.103 0.195 0.343*** 0.129 –0.005 0.164 0.194 0.183 0.390* 0.211 lnws_wf –0.110 0.134 0.283 0.256 –0.301** 0.152 0.019 0.191 –0.118 0.237 –0.333 0.281 lnws_q 0.005 0.027 –0.080 0.050 0.045 0.033 0.008 0.044 –0.008 0.044 –0.008 0.055 0.5(lnwf)2 0.401 0.273 0.290 0.572 0.436 0.284 0.130 0.417 0.314 0.471 0.818 0.539 lnwf_q 0.099** 0.040 0.057 0.078 0.125*** 0.048 0.140** 0.064 0.093 0.064 0.069 0.084 0.5(lnq)2 0.091*** 0.015 0.128*** 0.026 0.033 0.020 0.071*** 0.026 0.072*** 0.025 0.144*** 0.034 hqrv –0.047*** 0.017 – – – – –0.119*** 0.027 –0.039 0.027 0.047 0.034 sa 0.184*** 0.017 0.233*** 0.028 0.138*** 0.020 – – – – – – aw 0.205*** 0.019 0.288*** 0.039 0.153*** 0.020 – – – – – – inefficiency determinants constant –4.152*** 0.459 –3.882*** 0.661 –4.287*** 0.536 –3.071*** 0.845 –4.529*** 0.806 –5.903*** 1.116 education –0.104 0.121 –0.262 0.176 –0.017 0.148 –0.141 0.152 –0.094 0.211 –0.028 0.318 experience 0.013 0.121 0.220 0.172 –0.163 0.160 0.069 0.171 0.086 0.231 –0.176 0.267 famsize –0.221* 0.113 –0.162 0.161 –0.236 0.150 –0.468** 0.212 –0.074 0.182 –0.157 0.270 fsize 0.246** 0.116 0.173 0.195 0.434*** 0.140 0.167 0.173 0.324 0.234 0.240 0.251 lownership –0.160 0.110 –0.305* 0.175 –0.052 0.138 –0.060 0.155 –0.251 0.204 –0.353 0.298 extension –0.087 0.110 –0.415** 0.189 0.224* 0.126 –0.080 0.173 0.018 0.172 –0.131 0.337 rdisease 0.268*** 0.102 0.470*** 0.156 0.063 0.117 0.273** 0.138 –0.110 0.258 0.534* 0.320 ndisaster 1.136*** 0.158 1.074*** 0.208 1.136*** 0.209 0.855*** 0.233 1.383*** 0.362 1.512*** 0.375 model properties e(𝜎𝑢) 0.160 – 0.192 – 0.145 – 0.214 – 0.135 – 0.116 – 𝜎𝑣 0.193*** 0.006 0.215*** 0.011 0.159*** 0.007 0.182*** 0.013 0.188*** 0.010 0.193*** 0.010 logl 128.06 – 7.57 – 168.32 – 52.43 – 60.02 – 41.71 – n 918 – 384 – 534 – 339 – 329 – 250 – note: ***, **, and * denote statistically significant levels at 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively. logl is the log-likelihood value. n is the number of observations. coef. is coefficient. se is standard error. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 120-129 126 the results of the inefficiency models show that rice land ownership and extension (rice field training) have a negative effect on the cost inefficiency of the hqrv adopter group, while rice diseases and natural disasters have a positive effect. on the other hand, extension has a positive effect on the cost inefficiency of the non-adopter group. a positive effect of farm size and natural disasters on cost inefficiency is also found in the non-adopter group. regarding the growing seasons, rice diseases and natural disasters are the key factors affecting cost inefficiency. natural disasters have a strong positive effect on cost inefficiency across all seasons, whereas rice disease only has a positive effect on cost inefficiency in the winter-spring and autumn-winter seasons. 4.2. effects of varieties and seasons on cost efficiency table 3 presents the summary of ce for all frontier models and the results of the one-sample t-test and analysis of variance (anova) test to examine the difference in mean ce across rice variety groups and seasons, respectively. the results show that there are differences in mean ce between rice variety groups (hqrv adopter group and nonadopter group) and seasons (winter-spring, summer-autumn, and autumn-winter seasons) (table 3 and figure 1). the mean meta ce scores, in a varied range of 0.837-0.907, are close to the findings of tu and trang (2016) (0.9 with a varied range of 0.72–0.97) among rice farmers in an giang province and siagian and soetjipto's (2020) findings (0.86) for indonesian rice farmers. the mean meta ce of the hqrv adopter group is 0.837, lower than that of the non-adopter group, 0.864. these results are lower than those estimated by the pooled (mean ce_pooled for hqrv adopter and non-adopter groups are 0.895 and 0.912, respectively) and separate group frontiers (mean ce_group for hqrv adopter and non-adopter groups are 0.890 and 0.910, respectively) due to the technology gap between the two rice variety groups (mean tgrs for hqrv adopter and non-adopter groups are 0.940 and 0.950, respectively). table 3. summary of cost efficiency for all models by rice variety and season. variable rice varieties difference seasons f hqrv adopter (n=384) non-adopter (n=534) winterspring (n=339) summerautumn (n=329) autumnwinter (n=250) ce_pooled mean 0.895 0.912 0.017*** 0.922 0.908 0.877 17.7*** sd 0.114 0.074 0.089 0.071 0.115 ce_group mean 0.890 0.910 0.020*** 0.892 0.916 0.923 10.21*** sd 0.115 0.079 0.098 0.074 0.101 tgr mean 0.940 0.950 0.009*** 0.990 0.989 0.980 30.8*** sd 0.056 0.048 0.009 0.005 0.030 meta ce mean 0.837 0.864 0.026*** 0.883 0.907 0.905 6.46*** sd 0.124 0.081 0.100 0.075 0.111 note: meta ce = ce_group x tgr. difference = mean (ce of non-adopter) mean(ce of adopter). *** denotes statistical significance at 1%. f is the f value of the anova test. n is the number of observations. the mean meta ce of the winter-spring season is 0.883, lower than those of the summer-autumn (0.907) and autumn-winter (0.905) seasons. this result differs from those estimated by the pooled (ce_pooled: 0.922, 0.908, and 0.877, respectively) and separate group frontier (ce_group: 0.892, 0.916, and 0.923, respectively) models. this difference is due to the technology gap between seasons (tgr: 0.990, 0.989, and 0.980, respectively). the technology gap, in this case, is due to the different production conditions across seasons, such as rainfall, sunshine time, and temperature. figure 1. distributions of meta cost efficiency (mce) by variety (a) and season (b). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 120-129 127 5. conclusion and policy implications this paper has examined the effects of rice varieties and seasons on cost efficiency (ce) in rice production in the mekong river delta, vietnam. we used a stochastic metafrontier approach (huang et al., 2014) to control the potential differences in rice variety technology and production technology across seasons, determined by production conditions such as temperature, sunshine time, rainfall, and irrigation. the data consisted of 918 observations collected from 350 rice farmers in three provinces in the mekong river delta, namely the an giang, can tho, and bac lieu provinces. we estimated the pooled and group frontier models and then used a generalized likelihood ratio test to examine the potential differences in technology between rice variety groups and seasons. this research used a translog function, with an assumption of the truncated-normal distribution of the inefficiency term. the results show that there is statistical evidence for the existence of a technology gap among the two rice variety groups (hqrv adopter and non-adopter groups) and three seasons (winter-spring, summer-autumn, and autumn-winter seasons). thus, the use of the stochastic metafrontier approach is appropriate to control the technology gap and evaluate the impacts of rice varieties and seasons on ce. we find that mean meta ce varies across rice variety groups and seasons. the mean meta ce of the hqrv adopter group is 0.837, lower than that of the non-adopter group, 0.864. the mean (meta) ce of rice farmers in the winter-spring season is 0.883, lower than those in the summer-autumn (0.907) and autumn-winter (0.905) seasons. the findings suggest that policies should support inefficient rice farmers to reduce their cost inefficiency in the winter-spring season. in addition, efforts should be made to support hqrv adopters to help them catch up with the ce level of non-adopters. the analysis of inefficiency models indicates that rice field extension and production skill training to deal with natural disasters and rice diseases would help farmers reduce their inefficiency. a further recommendation for researchers is that the technology gap between rice variety groups and seasons should be taken into account when conducting a comparison study of efficiency across rice variety groups and/or seasons. funding: this research is supported by the university of economics, hue university (grant number: 110a/hd-dhkt). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the 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(2013). changes in the technical and scale efficiency of rice production activities in the mekong delta, vietnam. agricultural and food economics, 1, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1186/2193-7532-1-16 appendix table a1. estimates of stochastic metafrontiers variable rice varieties seasons coef. se coef. se cost metafrontier model constant –0.363 *** 6.13e-07 –0.326 *** 0.004 lnws 0.242 *** 7.68e-07 0.243 *** 0.006 lnwf 0.620 *** 1.43e-06 0.572 *** 0.007 lnq 0.890 *** 4.69e-07 0.926 *** 0.002 0.5(lnws)2 –0.021 *** 1.37e-06 0.139 *** 0.019 lnws_wf 0.140 *** 7.16e-07 –0.060 ** 0.024 lnws_q 0.038 *** 1.09e-06 0.009 * 0.005 0.5(lnwf)2 –0.098 *** 2.94e-06 0.161 *** 0.051 lnwf_q 0.128 *** 1.56e-06 0.088 *** 0.007 0.5(lnq)2 0.037 *** 3.40e-07 0.094 *** 0.003 hqrv –0.049 *** 6.74e-07 –0.050 *** 0.003 sa 0.232 *** 5.27e-07 0.225 *** 0.003 aw 0.248 *** 5.00e-07 0.280 *** 0.004 technology gap determinants constant –1.899 1.644 –4.730 *** 0.325 education –0.001 0.036 0.113 0.091 experience –0.022 0.035 0.177 ** 0.080 famsize –0.029 0.034 –0.009 0.078 https://doi.org/10.1017/aae.2019.34 https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-4076(82)90004-5 https://doi.org/10.2307/1912331 https://doi.org/10.1111/1477-9552.12275 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eap.2018.03.001 https://doi.org/10.1108/14468951211213868 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11123-016-0487-x https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-015-1045-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-007-0119-4 https://doi.org/10.21776/ub.agrise.2020.020.1.2 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-0862.2012.00589.x https://doi.org/10.5539/jas.v7n5p37 https://doi.org/10.9734/ajaees/2016/19745 https://doi.org/10.1186/2193-7532-1-16 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(2) 2023: 120-129 129 variable rice varieties seasons coef. se coef. se fsize 0.052 0.032 –0.344 * 0.185 lownership –0.064 * 0.037 0.041 0.098 extension –0.064 * 0.033 –0.203 0.145 rdisease 0.010 0.034 0.171 ** 0.072 ndisaster –0.067 ** 0.032 0.514 *** 0.093 model properties e(𝜎𝑢) 0.388 0.100 𝜎𝑣 1.70e-10 1.92e-08 0.035 *** 0.002 logl 1,714.68 1,588.61 n 918 918 note: ***, **, and * represent the statistically significant levels at 1%, 5%, and 10%. logl is the log-likelihood value, and n is the number of observations. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 167 economic impact of linkage in rice production and consumption in the mekong river delta, vietnam: a farm level study tran quoc nhana+ nguyen van nayb a,bcollege of rural development, can tho university, can tho city, vietnam.  tqnhan@ctu.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 12 september 2024 revised: 31 october 2024 accepted: 13 november 2024 published: 5 december 2024 keywords effect firm linkage performance rice farmer vietnam. this study examines the economic impact of linkage in rice production and consumption in the mekong river delta, vietnam. since 2018, the vietnamese government has implemented an incentive policy aimed at fostering linkages in the production and consumption of agricultural products. despite this initiative, there is a scarcity of research examining the effects of contract farming on the economic performance of farms in vietnam. consequently, this study aims to investigate the causal relationships between farmers' involvement in the linkages of rice production and consumption, facilitated by both private and public enterprises, and various farm performance metrics, including productivity, selling prices, and farm income. empirical data for this analysis were gathered from 390 rice farmers located in the vietnamese mekong delta. the data were divided into two categories based on the type of linking contract systems, specifically those led by public and private firms. the propensity score matching method was primarily utilized to assess the impact of these linking contract systems on rice farm performance. the results indicate that participation in linkage schemes, whether led by public or private entities, positively influences farm incomes and selling prices, although it does not affect rice yield. this study suggests that the vietnamese government should expand the linkage models for rice production and consumption to benefit farmers and various business types, including both public and private enterprises. contribution/originality: this study significantly contributes to the literature on the linkages in rice production and consumption in vietnam because it first provides empirical evidence on estimating the impact of linking contract systems operated by both public and private-owned enterprises. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5246 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: nhan, t. q., & nay, n. v. (2024). economic impact of linkage in rice production and consumption in the mekong river delta, vietnam: a farm level study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4), 167– 175. 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5246 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction presently, vietnam is one of the world's top rice exporters, accounting for about 18% of the world market (nhan, gillette, yutaka, & can, 2020). however, when compared to other countries that export rice, the nation's rice export price is not very high (fao food and agriculture organization of the united nations, 2016). known as vietnam's rice basket, the mekong delta river region has significantly contributed to the country’s transition from a rice deficit to a rice surplus (demont & rutsaert, 2017). in fact, the mekong delta river occupies around 13% of vietnam's total asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 4 (2024): 167-175. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8259-0638 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1073-3299 mailto:tqnhan@ctu.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 167-175 168 land area; it generates about 55% of the country's paddy volume and 95% of its entire exported rice production each year (gso, 2021). rice cultivation plays a vital part in the country's economy, but it also makes a substantial contribution to the household economy of farmers in this region, accounting for between 50 and 60 percent of rural households' earnings (gso, 2022). nonetheless, a great deal of the delta rice-farming households have been finding it difficult to make ends meet with the meager money they receive from their crop (coxhead, linh, & tam, 2012). according to a study by nhan, ly, and tan (2020) rice-farming households in the delta had monthly average incomes per person that were 48% less than the national average. in 2018, the vietnamese government released decree no. 98/2018/nd-cp on incentive policy aimed at developing production and consumption linkages of agricultural products. this policy was designed to assist farmers and other actors involved in the rice value chain in improving economic performance. the implementation of this policy has been expected to improve farmers’ farm income, particularly in the mekong river delta. the definition of linkages in production and consumption of agricultural products in the decree is that farmers and firms should sign a contract for agreement to produce and purchase a farm product. under the contract terms, farmers agree to produce and sell their products at a predetermined price and quantity. similarly, firms agree to provide input and technical advice and commit to purchasing contract farmers’ output at a predetermined price. thus, the linkage model in production and distribution of agro-products in vietnam may be referred to as contract farming systems in other countries. previous studies show that there is no existing evidence on investigating impacts of linkage policy on economic performance of rice farms. thus, this study attempts to estimate impacts of participation in the linking contract system on rice farmers’ outcomes, such as yield, selling price, and farm income. this study focused on two cases of linking contract systems operated by private and public-owned firms and rice farmers in order to provide overall view on the impact of linkages in rice production and consumption in the mekong delta. the linking contract scheme is operated by public-owned firms that often receive strong political support for export priority from the vietnamese government’s policies. findings from this study can help understand further how much effect the vietnamese government’s linkage policy has on economic returns of rice farms. to illustrate the impact of linkages in rice production and distribution, primary data collected from 390 rice households located in vietnam’s mekong river delta were used for empirical analysis, and propensity score matching (psm) method that can control selection bias was employed to measure the casual effects in this study. 2. literature review investigating the impact of contract-farming operations on farm outcome indicators of adopters is still a hot and debatable topic (minot, 1986; minot & sawyer, 2016). there are a plethora of empirical studies estimating the impact of participation in the contract farming on participants. a number of earlier studies revealed that contract schemes have remarkable impacts on adopters’ outcome performances by using econometric models such as propensity score matching, heckman model, instrumental variable model, and endogenous switching regression. the majority of those studies reported that participation in the contract farming principally has led to improved both farm and household incomes (birthal, jha, tiongco, & narrod, 2008; bolwig, gibbon, & jones, 2009; cahyadi & waibel, 2013; hu, 2013; jones & gibbon, 2011; maertens & swinnen, 2009; maertens & velde, 2017; miyata, minot, & hu, 2009; wainaina, okello, & nzuma, 2014). khanal, mishra, mayorga, and hirsch (2020) indicated that participation in contract-farming arrangements helped ginger growers increase remarkably yields, profits, and selling price as well. hailu and kidu mezgebo (2024) indicated adoption of contract farming helped sesame farmers in ethiopia increase productivity by 150 kg per hectare. these studies on contract farming adoption primarily focus on high-value products, which suggests that little is known about the effects of contract farming on staple crop growers’ incomes. in contrast, several empirical studies found negative impacts of contract farming schemes on participants’ outcomes. the report by minot (2011) indicated that contract farming may lower the incomes of smallholder households. eaton and shepherd (2001) reported that the adopters of contract farming may experience a negative impact on their incomes. little and watts (1994) indicated that contract farming schemes may cause some social problems, such as conflicts of interest between two contracting parties and an imbalance of power between two sides. singh (2002) reported that contracting schemes may increase social inequalities in a rural community and cause dissension between contractors and non-contractors in india. in general, contracting scheme has helped enhance participants’ revenue, but it also created some social issues (porter & phillipshoward, 1997). abdulai and al-hassan (2016) showed that participation in contracts did not help increase soybean farmers’ income in ghana. recently, hoang (2021) reported that contract farming mechanism had no impact on farmers’ income in vietnam using a pooled sample of rice farmers, daxanh pomelo fruit farmers, coconut farmers, and vegetable farmers. a study by khan, nakano, and kurosaki (2019) finds that contract-farming schemes help increase tremendously income for contract potato farmers, while they almost have no impact on both productivity and income of maize farmers. mishra, kumar, joshi, and d'souza (2018) revealed that adoption of contract farming has a positive and significant effect on lentil producers’ revenues, profits, and yield but has a negative impact on production costs. numerous studies in vietnam have examined the connections between the production and distribution of agro-products. thanh and nghi (2019) investigated factors affecting the linkage in rice production and consumption between firms and rice growers in the mekong delta’s can tho city. similarly, ai, chieu, and kim (2020) studied factors influencing the linkage in fisheries supply chain in vietnam’s southeast region. tuyen, sirisupluxana, bunyasiri, and hung (2022) studied the obstacles and prospects of linking contract systems in rice farms in vietnam. evidence shows that little is known about investigating the impact of linking contract systems on economic performance of farms. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 167-175 169 3. materials and methods 3.1. method used for estimating impact the purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which policies pertaining to the production and distribution of agricultural products enhance the crop outcomes, yield, output price, and farm income of rice farmers. estimating the average treatment effect on the treated (att) was the goal of the current investigation. in this way, we define that the household's participation in the linking model yields y(1), and the household's non-participation in the model yields y(0). consequently, att was typed as follows: 𝐴𝑇𝑇 = 𝐸[𝑌(1) – 𝑌(0)|𝑃 = 1] = 𝐸[𝑌(1)|𝑃 = 1] − 𝐸[𝑌(0)|𝑃 = 1] (1) att is defined as the disparity between the mean expected outcomes for households that participate in the linkage model and the mean expected outcomes for those households had they not participated in the model. the variable p denotes the adoption of the linkage model, where p equals 1 if a household is engaged in the model and p equals 0 if it is not. the inability to observe the outcomes for the same farmer outside the linkage model while they are in the linkage system makes equation 1’s att value estimation is impossible. specifically, the term e[y(0)|p=1] remains unobserved. consequently, an appropriate substitute was employed. however, it is generally inadvisable to simply use the average outcome of actual non-participants, represented as e[y(0)|p=0], as a replacement for e[y(0)|p=1], since the factors influencing the decision to participate may concurrently impact the expected outcomes (caliendo & kopeinig, 2008). rosenbaum and rubin (1983) introduced psm technique, which allows for the identification of a treated group consisting of farmers who participated in the linkage model. furthermore, this technique allows for the selection of a control group, which consists of farmers who did not participate in the linkage system but have similar propensity scores to those in the treated group. consequently, the anticipated outcome for the control group serves as the counterfactual outcome, denoted as e[y(0)|p=1]. att, which reflects the impact of the treatment on the participants, was calculated as the difference between the average outcomes of the treated and control groups (smith & todd, 2005). the following equation can be reformulated accordingly: 𝐴𝑇𝑇(𝑃𝑆𝑀) = 𝐸[𝐸{𝑌(1)|𝑃 = 1, 𝑃(𝑋)} − 𝐸{𝑌(0)|𝑃 = 0, 𝑃(𝑋)}|𝑃 = 1] (2) the variable p(x) represents the probability of a household participating in the linkage system, which is characterized as the propensity score. this study employed equation 2 to evaluate the causal impacts of adopting the linkage model on various outcome variables, such as productivity, output price, and farm income. the two-step empirical approach of the propensity score matching (psm) technique, as outlined by kassie, shiferaw, and muricho (2011) was utilized in this research. in the initial phase of applying psm, the probability p(x) was estimated using a probit model. consequently, p(x) is expressed as follows: 𝑃(𝑋) = 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑏 (𝑃 = 1|𝑋) = 𝛼 + 𝛽𝑋 +  (3) x represents a vector of household characteristics that may influence both the involvement of farmers in the contract scheme and the anticipated outcomes for these farmers. however, the treatment (participation) had no influence. the subsequent step involves the creation of a control group by aligning participants in the contract scheme with non-participants based on their propensity score values. att is then determined by comparing the mean outcomes of the treated group with those of the control group. this study employed nearest neighbor matching (nnm) and kernel matching (km) to pair participants with nonparticipants based on their propensity scores. (becerril & abdulai, 2010) widely utilize these matching techniques due to their significant complementarity. it is essential to thoroughly evaluate the quality of the matching process both prior to and following the matching procedure. initially, the mean standardized bias post-matching should be below 25% (stuart & rubin, 2007) indicating that the matching has been effectively executed. also, the pseudo-r2 values should be significantly low after matching, which would demonstrate the successful removal of systematic disparities among covariates between the two groups of contract participants and non-participants (maertens & velde, 2017). 3.2. definition and selection of variables in this paper, psm method was employed, and three components of variables were used. firstly, the treatment variable defined as a dependent variable shows rice households’ participation in any linkage model, including private or public ones. second, covariates play a crucial role in the generation of propensity scores. it is essential to select observable covariates that influence both participation in the linkage system and the outcomes of interest, while ensuring that these covariates are not affected by participation itself. the probit regression model, which constructs the propensity scores, depends on this selection (austin, 2011; caliendo & kopeinig, 2008; maertens & swinnen, 2009; smith & todd, 2005). generating propensity scores isn’t so much about figuring out how likely someone is to follow the contracting scheme as it is about finding good matches or making sure that the distribution of covariates is balanced (girma & gardebroek, 2015; kassie et al., 2011). based on a comprehensive literature review (awotide, fashogbon, & awoyemi, 2015; maertens & swinnen, 2009; maertens & velde, 2017) and the availability of collected data, nine covariates were incorporated into the probit model for estimating the propensity scores. table 1 details the definitions of the selected covariates. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 167-175 170 thirdly, outcome variables were used as indicators to measure the impacts of participation in linkage model. in this research, productivity in tons per hectare and output price per kilogram in vnd were also measured to further understand which components contribute to the farm income. farm income derived from rice production was primarily estimated in million vietnamese dong (vnd) per hectare, which was defined as the difference between the total production output value and production costs. table 1. definition of variables used for empirical model. variable description treatment linkage 1 if the farmer participates in the linkage system, and 0 otherwise independent variables experience farming experience of households in years education schooling of household head in years household size number of family member in household rice area area planed with rice (ha) boat 1 if household owns a boat, 0 otherwise storage 1 if household owns a storage, 0 otherwise tractor 1 if household owns a tractor, 0 otherwise membership 1 if household is a member of farmer organization, 0 otherwise distance distance from home to the nearest miller (km), measure ability to access to market outcome variables productivity rice yield in ton per hectare (ha) output price farm-gate price for rice in vnd per kg farm income return derived from rice cultivation in million vietnam dong (vnd) per ha 3.3. data collection the core purpose of this study was to examine how much the linkage policy affects the outcomes of involved farmers, such as productivity, output price, and farm income. data collection was conducted through household surveys from may to july 2022 in an giang province. an giang has been recognized as the second largest rice producer in the mekong river delta, and the linking system in the rice sub-sector is largely operated in this province as compared to other parts of the mekong delta where more than 10% of rice farmers have engaged in the linkage model operated by both public and private owned enterprises. regarding data collection process, it employed a multi-stage sampling method for collecting data. firstly, we chose an giang province as the study site. secondly, thoai son district of an giang province was selected as the first sampling site since the public-led contract farming has been adopted by a large number of farmers there, while an giang province’s chau thanh district, where linking systems led by private-owned firms have been widely operated, was selected as the second sampling area. three communes of each district where linking schemes adopted by a majority of rice growers were selected at the third stage. finally, 390 rice farmers were face-to-face interviewed. accordingly, 210 rice farmers were investigated in the thoai son district, comprising of 100 linked farmers and 110 non-linked ones, while 180 rice farmers located in chau thanh district, including 85 linked farmers and 95 non-linked farmers, were interviewed. both groups of farmers (linked farmers who engaged in linkage models and non-linked ones who have never participated in any linkage systems) were selected randomly. the linked farmers were selected from lists of the linking firms, while non-linked farmers were selected from lists provided by the hamlets’ leaders. remarkably, the two groups resided in a geographic location, which may assure homogeneity of agro-ecological status, transportation, and culture. a structured questionnaire was used for gathering data from rice growers. the contents of questions basically focus on characteristics of households and farms, assets, and rice performance, including farm-gate price, productivity, and returns. 4. results and discussion 4.1. summary of descriptive statistics results results shown in table 2 report the distribution of sampled households according to the ownership types of firms and differences in the features of linked farmers and non-linked ones. the results show that there were some differences in socio-economic attributes between linked farmers and non-linked ones. more specifically, for rice households that participated in the linkage system led by public-owned firms in thoai son district, there appeared to be significant differences in farming experience among households, boat ownership, tractor ownership, members of farmers’ organizations and distance from the farm to a miller. meanwhile, major differences in characteristics between participants and nonparticipants of the linking system led by private-owned firms in chau thanh district were mostly rice-farming experience of households, the number of family members, and membership in farmers’ organizations. the findings suggest that the presence of differences in farm and household characteristics across the samples should be taken into account when investigating the true effect of the linkages in rice production and consumption. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 167-175 171 table 2. differences in characteristics of participants and nonparticipants using a t-test. covariate linkage led by public firms linkage led by private firms participants (n = 100) nonparticipants (n = 110) p-values participant s (n = 85) nonparticipant s (= 95) p-values experience (years) 21.48 25.77 0.023 27.51 23.31 0.015 education (years of schooling) 6.10 6.94 0.172 6.73 6.00 0.123 household size (member) 4.65 4.43 0.711 4.83 4.45 0.051 rice area (ha) 3.27 2.75 0.293 1.96 2.22 0.369 boat (dummy) 0.50 0.29 0.037 0.56 0.55 0.926 storage (dummy) 0.04 0.08 0.404 0.02 0.02 0.717 tractor (dummy) 0.19 0.06 0.065 0.03 0.06 0.412 membership (dummy) 0.29 0.06 0.003 0.28 0.15 0.027 distance (km) 1.82 3.30 0.025 1.79 2.17 0.193 findings presented in table 3 show that the farm income and output prices of linked farmers were significantly higher than those of non-linked ones, while productivity between the two groups of farmers was relatively similar. however, those comparisons did not make into account the differences in the characteristics between the two groups of households, which could potentially influence their participation in the linkages in the rice production and consumption, as well as the resulting outcomes. table 3. differences in crop outcomes of participants and nonparticipants using a t-test. outcome variable linkage led by public firms linkage led by private firms participant nonparticipant p-values participant nonparticipant p-values productivity (ton/ha) 7.46 7.57 0.549 7.57 7.53 0.766 selling price (vnd/kg)$ 5,700 5,074 0.000 5,253 5,067 0.000 farm income (million vnd/ha)$ 24.065 19.692 0.000 21.724 19.732 0.017 note: $1 usd exchanges 25,000 vnd. 4.2. results of probit model table 4 reports the results of probit model used as the first step of psm technique. the estimates were used to predict propensity score for matching in the next step. however, results of probit model should be discussed. for an investigation in thoai son district, it was shown that five factors significantly influenced farmers’ participation in the linkage model operated by public-owned enterprises. the household head’s year of schooling and farming experience negatively affected the joining of linkage system. the distance from farmers’ houses to a miller was also negatively associated with the households’ adoption ability for the linking scheme. by contrast, participation in farmers’ organizations and boat ownership positively influenced the participation in the linking system. yet, other covariates, including family size, land area planted with rice, storage facility, and tractor ownership, were not highly associated with linkage system adoption. table 4. results of probit model for generating propensity scores. covariate linkage led by public firms linkage led by private firms coef. z-stat coef. z-stat experience (years) -0.053*** -2.76 0.018* 1.70 education (years of schooling) -0.119** -2.25 0.047 1.22 household size (member) 0.018 0.17 0.206** 2.01 rice area (ha) 0.065 0.93 -0.062 -0.85 boat (dummy) 0.614** 2.00 -0.059 -0.27 storage (dummy) -0.154 -0.24 -0.884 -0.90 tractor (dummy) 0.645 1.31 -0.467 -0.80 membership (dummy) 1.360*** 3.10 0.554** 2.09 distance (km) -0.101* -1.79 -0.074 -1.20 constant 1.406* 0.075 -1.636*** -2.80 log likelihood -49.610 -93.999 lr chi2(9) 33.86 18.94 prob > chi2 0.0001 0.0258 pseudo-r2 0.2545 0.0915 note: *, ** and *** display significant levels at 0.1, 0.05 and 0.01, respectively. for the sample in chau thanh district (farmers joining the linking system operated by private-owned firms), there were three factors that remarkably influenced the adoption of the linkage model. specifically, farmers’ experience in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 167-175 172 rice farming was positively associated with becoming a linked farmer. a number of family members and being a member of farmers’ organization positively influenced the adoption of linking system. other characteristics of the households, such as education of household head, rice land size, boat ownership, storage facility, tractor ownership, and distance from farm to a miller, were not significantly associated with the probability of linkage-system adoption. these results provide firm evidence that there is some self-selection among participants in the linking system. indeed, the adoption of a linkage scheme is more likely biased towards education and experience of household head, family size, households with a boat, households with membership in farmers’ organizations, and distance from farm to a miller. in general, there are some differences in factors affecting the participation in the linking systems between the two study sites, possibly because geographical conditions and socioeconomic environments are heterogeneous between the two districts and firms may have some different requirements for participating in the linkage model. 4.3. results of testing matching quality before discussing the casual effect of linking system participation, one should carefully check the quality of the matching process using psm, as the linkage model used propensity scores to match participants to nonparticipants. initially, the common support area was examined, focusing solely on households for the purpose of matching. figure 1 illustrates the distribution of propensity scores and the common support region pertinent to the empirical analysis. the evidence presented in figure 1 indicates a significant overlap in the propensity scores between the treated and untreated groups, suggesting that the common support assumption is likely satisfied, which can be interpreted as indicative of good matches. 1a linkage led by public firms 1b linkage led by private firms figure 1. distribution of propensity score and common support region. second, the reduction in the mean standardized bias between the matched and unmatched households was also checked. the results in table 5 show that the standardized mean difference for all covariates used in the propensity asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 167-175 173 score went down by between 10.1% and 12.9% after matching for the case of thoai son district case. this meant that the total bias went down by a large amount, between 87% to 84%. similarly, the total reduction bias for the sample in the study site of chau thanh district was approximately 54% to 59%. table 5 also shows the major decrease of pseudor2 values after matching. the probability tests of the joint regressors for both study sites were insignificant after matching, while they were significant before matching. the findings suggest a potential bias in the covariates; however, the application of matching techniques has significantly mitigated this bias. in conclusion, the methods used for matching have been successful in balancing the covariate distributions between the participants and nonparticipant groups in the linkage models. as a result, these methods provide reliable estimates of atts (rosenbaum & rubin, 1985). table 5. quality indicators of psm before and after matching. kind of contract matching method pseudo r2 before matching pseudo r2 after matched p > chi2 before matched p > chi2 after matched mean standardized bias before matched mean standardized bias after matched total % bias reduction public scheme km 0.254 0.028 0.000 0.955 34.6 12.9 86.7 nnm 0.254 0.032 0.000 0.891 34.6 10.1 84.2 private scheme km 0.092 0.003 0.026 0.100 21.1 3.8 59.0 nnm 0.092 0.006 0.026 0.998 21.1 6.7 53.8 4.4. effects of linkage in rice production and consumption results shown in table 6 reveal that the farmers participating in the linkage models had statistically significant impacts on output prices and rice farm income but no effect on rice yields. the results estimated using the nnm and kn matching techniques showed significant similarities. participation in the linkage models operated by both public and private-owned enterprises had a negative but not significant impact on rice yield. on the contrary, previous empirical study results by miyata et al. (2009); maertens and velde (2017); mishra et al. (2018); khanal et al. (2020) and hailu and kidu mezgebo (2024) revealed that the linking system significantly brought out an increase in crop productivity of farmers. however, results showed that participation in the linkage models operated by public and private-owned firms significantly contributed to an increase in the output prices around 11% and 4%, respectively. most linked farmers receive higher selling prices for rice, as linking enterprises often offer a premium over regular market prices for their outputs that meet their standards. this implies that rice quality produced by linked farmers with supervision of the linking firms’ staff could be higher as compared to nonlinked farmers. this result is consistent with the previous research results indicated by michelson, reardon, and perez (2012); girma and gardebroek (2015); maertens and velde (2017) and khanal et al. (2020). results also revealed that participation in the linkage systems operated by both the public and private-owned firms dramatically increased rice returns. the linkage’s model high income derived from rice production could potentially stem from significantly higher selling prices. in general, linking schemes operated by public and private-owned firms have remarkably positive impacts on farm incomes, which majorly contribute to rice households’ incomes. the current results are similar to the previous researches (birthal et al., 2008; bolwig et al., 2009; hu, 2013; jones & gibbon, 2011; khanal et al., 2020; mulatu, haji, legesse, & ketema, 2017; wainaina et al., 2014). in particular, simmons, winters, and patrick (2005) revealed that maize seed farmers and poultry farmers in indonesia participating in contract schemes can help dramatically increase their profits by 71% and 160%, respectively. to sum up, policy on linkage in production and distribution of agricultural products adopted by both public and private firms may help rice growers enhance their income. table 6. estimated effects of participation in linking schemes on rice outcomes. study site outcome variable matching methods mean values att t-value treated control linking scheme operated by public firms productivity (ton/ha) km 7.56 7.95 -0.390 -1.36 nnm 7.56 7.90 -0.338 -1.19 selling price (vnd/ kg)$ km 5,744 5,144 600*** 5.32 nnm 5,700 5,165 535*** 5.31 farm income (million vnd/ha)$ km 24.343 21.023 3.320** 2.31 nnm 24.065 21.300 2.766** 2.14 linking scheme operated by private firms productivity (ton/ha) km 7.62 7.76 -0.145 -0.93 nnm 7.57 7.72 -0.146 -0.90 selling price (vnd/kg)$ km 5,250 5,052 198*** 4.28 nnm 5,253 5,038 215*** 5.16 farm income (million vnd/ha)$ km 21.971 20.486 1.485* 1.68 nnm 21.724 20.218 1.596* 1.73 note: *, ** and *** display significance levels at 0.1, 0.05 and 0.01, respectively. $1 usd exchanges 25,000 vnd. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 167-175 174 5. conclusions this study first assessed the impacts of policy on linkages in production and consumption of rice products in the mekong river delta of vietnam with two types of operators, including public and private-owned enterprises. the evidence of the results illustrated that the considerable presence of bias in the distribution of covariates between groups of linked farmers and non-linked ones in the linkage schemes was mostly eliminated by using psm method. farmers participating in the linkage models operated by both private and public firms had positive impacts on selling prices and farm incomes of rice growers in the study areas. yet it had no impact on productivity of the linked farmers. in summary, adopting linking systems led by both private and public-owned firms potentially increases vietnamese rice farmers’ income. the study may suggest that linkages in rice production and distribution enable rice growers to produce better quality of output, potentially benefiting farmers by gaining higher selling prices and significantly contributing to a remarkable increase in farm incomes. it may be firmly concluded that the policy on contract farming promulgated by the vietnamese government has a remarkable impact on rice farm incomes. thereby, expanding a number of farmers and enterprises to engage in the linking scheme seems to be a wise strategy to help enhance rice quality and rice growers’ income in vietnam in general and in the mekong river delta in particular. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the can tho university research ethics committee for social sciences and humanities, vietnam has granted approval for this study (ref. no. ctu-recsh24006). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abdulai, y., & al-hassan, s. 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(2025). comparing conventional practices and good agricultural practices: socio-economic impacts on smallholder vegetable farmers in cambodia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 629–639. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5735 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 629-639 mailto:hlyhour@rua.edu.kh https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5735 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 629-639 630 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 1. introduction cambodia's agriculture sector employs most of the population and accounts for 16.6% of the gdp (world bank, 2024). rice is the primary crop, followed by cassava, maize, mung bean, and soybean. the cambodian government promotes investment and diversification of agricultural products, while it is self-sufficient in rice and exports various fruits and agricultural products. about 75% of its population resides in rural areas, and around 36.6% of the total workforce was directly engaged in the agriculture sector in 2022 (world vegetable center, 2024). cambodia is considered one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. climate change is causing increased droughts in cambodia, which significantly impact the tonlé sap and mekong deltas. these water systems are essential for water supply, agriculture, and fishing in the country (fagerland & sandvik, 2009). smallholder farmers in cambodia face a range of problems related to climate change. poor infrastructure, particularly limited irrigation and rural roads, and inadequate access to technology and extension services are the major challenges that cambodian farmers currently face (food and agriculture organization of the united nations, 2017). the diversity of cambodia’s produce including rice, poultry, fish, and vegetables, means that climate change can affect every farmer differently (food and agriculture organization of the united nations, 2018). cambodia's food safety is crucial due to pesticide and pollution contamination in both imported and local foods. bacteria, including those resistant to antibiotics, are common in animal-based foods. maintaining food safety requires collaboration from all stakeholders, including the public, private, and consumers (thompson, vipham, hok, & ebner, 2021). cambodian farmers are adopting safe vegetable value chains, using new seeds, compost, and pest management technologies. they collaborate with stakeholders, receive training, and access packing centers, boosting their income and food security (general directorate of agriculture, 2020). cambodia's ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries (maff) approved the national gap standard through ministerial proclamation no. 099 maff on 10 march 2010. the proclamation outlines the responsibilities of the general directorate of agriculture in implementing gap management and issuing compliance certificates (general directorate of agriculture, 2020). gap encompasses many agricultural practices designed for water saving, reduced input use, safe chemical application, and energy-efficient technology. farmers can utilize drip irrigation for vegetables and fruit, as well as water-saving technology such as alternative wet and dry irrigation for rice. applying inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides according to the established standards can result in significant savings. using certified seeds and growing them in net-houses for vegetables can ensure high germination rates and effective protection against erratic weather. lower input use means lower production costs, while decreased water consumption leads to less energy usage for irrigation. all these practices contribute to reducing greenhouse emissions, while ensuring that food is produced safely for both farmers and consumers at higher prices (eliseu, lima, & gaspar, 2024; kharel, dahal, & raut, 2022). applying for the camgap certification involves several steps. first, farmers should understand the camgap standards, which cover food safety, environmental management, worker health, and produce quality. then, they need to prepare their farms by implementing necessary practices, such as maintaining proper hygiene, using chemicals safely, and keeping farm records. afterward, they can submit the application to the provincial department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries (pdaff) or the general directorate of agriculture (gda). these institutions will review the submitted documents to verify their completeness and compliance, followed by an on-site farm inspection by qualified inspectors who assess field sanitation, input usage, and record-keeping practices. an inspection report is then prepared, and any identified non-compliances must be addressed within a specified timeframe. the certification committee at the gda makes the final decision based on the inspection report and corrective actions taken. if approved, the farm receives the camgap certificate, allowing the use of the camgap logo to signify adherence to good agricultural practices (ol, 2021). particularly, gap has an essential role in ensuring sustainability, including maximizing social, economic, and environmental benefits and impacts of agriculture now and in the future. gap adoption provides significant benefits to farmers, consumers, and the environment. farms that implement gap experience enhanced produce quality and safety, leading to higher marketability and access to premium markets. studies show that compliance with gap standards increases soil organic matter (som) by 3.3%-3.7% (ministry of industry science technology & innovation (misti), 2024) and reduces pesticide residues by up to 31%, mitigating health risks for consumers (schreinemachers et al., 2012). gap can improve soil management and efficient water use, enhancing crop yields by an average of 36% (ministry of industry science technology & innovation (misti), 2024). the environmental benefits include reduced agrochemical runoff, contributing to healthier ecosystems and water sources. due to the benefits of gap adoption in cambodia, the number of camgap certificates has increased constantly, from 51 in 2019 to 250 certified farms, orchards, and plantations in 2021 (national institute of statistics (nis), 2021; open development cambodia, 2024). smallholder farmers in cambodia need help in adopting safe vegetable production practices due to low trust levels among value chain actors. this lack of social capital impacts the sustainability of the safe vegetable value chain, which relies on strong working relationships between partners (general directorate of agriculture, 2020). another challenge is the current capacity of cambodian farmers. gap adoption can be challenging for them. a feasible strategy for cambodia’s vegetable subsector is to focus on what can be done better than either vietnam or thailand by augmenting the import substitution potential. ensuring the safety of local vegetables along with sufficient supply can increase domestic demand (hin et al., 2024). the study aims to (1) determine factors affecting income and gap adoption in vegetable farming systems, (2) identify potentials and challenges farmers face in applying and complying with the camgap standard, (3) assess farmers' perceptions of gap and non-gap practices on vegetable products, and (4) perform an economic comparison between gap and non-gap farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 629-639 631 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 2. research methodology the study was conducted between january and june 2024 to explore the characteristics of vegetable cultivation techniques in cambodia. six provinces were selected for the study site: four in the northwest (including battambang, banteay meanchey, pailin, and siem reap), one in the central region (kandal), and another in the south (takeo). the study focused on specific major vegetable-growing practices, particularly leafy vegetables, and included cost-benefit analysis. the leafy vegetable growers were categorized into two groups based on their applications: (1) cambodia good agricultural practice (gap) and (2) conventional vegetable production system (non-gap). this classification aimed to identify the impact of gap adoption on vegetable production performance. 2.1. sampling method we aimed to interview 15 gap-leaf vegetable farmers in each province, each randomly sampled. unfortunately, responses from gap farmers were found to be invalid and, therefore, were removed. the final analysis included 15 interviewees from battambang, pailin, siem reap, kandal, and takeo provinces, while those from banteay meanchey numbered 10. in contrast, 10 non-gap farmers from each targeted province were interviewed. therefore, the total number of gap and non-gap farmers was 85 and 65 persons, respectively (table 1). a well-structured questionnaire is designed and used to gather information from the two farmer groups. it is categorized into household information, vegetable farming characteristics, gap adoption and training, cost-benefit analysis, and potential constraints to gap adoption. to ensure the quality and reliability of the questionnaire, first, a pre-test will be carried out to verify the questions, and then modifications will be made to finalize the questionnaire for the real survey. table 1. sample sizes for each farmer group in the six provinces. province gap farmers non-gap farmers total banteay meanchey 10 10 20 battambang 15 10 25 pailin 15 10 25 siem reap 15 10 25 kandal 15 10 25 takeo 15 10 25 total 85 60 145 2.2. data collection and analysis the data to be collected will be entered, cleaned, and manipulated in ms excel and then analyzed using r program version 4.4.0 and rstudio 2024.04.1+748. descriptive statistics are used for data analysis. data on household characteristics, vegetable practices, and gap adoption are analyzed using an independent two-sample t-test for comparison between the gap and non-gap groups. this statistical test is carried out with an error level of 5% (95% confidence level). before the test is performed, assumptions of normality and homogeneity are checked and verified. in case homogeneity is unfulfilled, welch’s test is employed instead to ensure the reliability of the test. the statistical packages called “rstatix” will be used to perform the independent two-sample t-test and paired-sample t-test, while all graphs are plotted using the “ggplot2” package (kassambara, 2023; wickham, 2016; wickham et al., 2023). 2.2.1. two-sample t-test the two-sample t-test is used to compare means between two independent groups, and in this study, the test is used to compare the means of numeric data between the gap group and the non-gap group (delacre, lakens, & leys, 2017; fagerland & sandvik, 2009). prior to the test, assumptions of normality and no outliers are checked and verified, and then the test is conducted with an error level of 5% (95% confidence level). 2.2.2. likert scale analysis the likert scale analysis is applied to evaluate perceptions related to potentials and constraints in vegetable production between two groups based on land use, vegetable farming characteristics, yield, financing, markets, weather, training on vegetable farming, and supporting policies. a five-point scoring system is used: 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (moderately agree), 4 (agree), and 5 (strongly agree). an independent two-sample t-test was also employed to compare mean scores for each issue rated by the groups at an error level of 5% (95% confidence level). all assumptions must be checked and verified before performing the test (joshi, kale, chandel, & pal, 2015; willits, theodori, & luloff, 2016). 2.2.3. lasso regression to further understand the economic conditions and to determine which factors affect the income generated by leafy vegetable production in the studied locations, a multiple linear regression model is applied, considering the income earned per ton of vegetables as a dependent variable (table 2). meanwhile, predictor variables that may influence income include age, educational level, all available labor, including household and hired labor, years of farming experience, the chance of attending training related to vegetable farming, gap adoption, and total production cost. if any predictor variables are statistically significant, this indicates that they affect income. to avoid both multicollinearity among the predictor variables and the assumptions of normality and homoscedasticity, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (lasso) regression was applied. the use of this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 629-639 632 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. regression is that any predictors without a presented coefficient are considered not influential in the income (andriopoulos & kornaros, 2023; saperas-riera, mateu-figueras, & martin-fernandez, 2023). the multiple linear regression model is presented below. 𝑌 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑋1 + 𝛽2𝑋2 + … … … … … … . + 𝛽𝑛𝑋𝑛 + 𝜀 (1) table 2. description of all variables used for performing the lasso regression with the total income as a dependent variable. no. variable description letters dependent variable 1 income (usd/t vegetables) y predictor variables 1 age (year) x1 2 educational level (year) x2 3 available labor (person) x3 4 farming experience (year) x4 5 chance of attending training related to vegetable farming 0 = never attend training x5 1= used to attend training 6 current gap adoption 0 = traditional farming x6 1= gap adoption 7 total production costs (usd/t vegetables) x7 8 βi the slope of individual predictor variables 9 ε error the study also emphasizes the importance of gap adoption in vegetable farming systems; therefore, a multiple logistic regression is applied, considering gap adoption as a dependent variable (traditional farming = 0; gap adoption = 1) as shown in table 3. the predictor variables that may influence the decision of gap adoption include age, educational level, all available labor, including household and hired labor, years of farming experience, the chance of attending training related to vegetable farming, gap adoption, total production cost, and yield. similarly, the lasso regression was also applied to the multiple logistic regression, identifying only factors that may influence the decision to adopt cam-gap. the fundamental use of the lasso regression is to determine the factors that affect the decision to choose gap or non-gap adoption. the multiple logistic regression model is presented below. 𝑙𝑛(𝑌 − 𝑌0) = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑋1 + 𝛽2𝑋2 + … … … … … … . + 𝛽𝑛𝑋𝑛 (2) table 3. description of all variables used for performing the lasso regression with the decision to adopt gap as a dependent variable. no. variable description letters dependent variable 1 gap adoption 0 = no adoption 1 = adoption y predictor variables 1 age (year) x1 2 educational level (year) x2 3 available labor (person) x3 4 farming experience (year) x4 5 chance of attending training related to vegetable farming 0 = never attend training 1= used to attend training x5 6 current gap adoption 0 = traditional farming 1= gap adoption x6 7 total production costs (usd/t vegetables) x7 8 yield x8 9 βi the slope of individual predictor variables 2.2.3. cost-benefit analysis the likert scale analysis is used to evaluate perceptions related to potentials and constraints in vegetable production between the two groups. to compare the economic aspects of the two farmer groups and assess profitability across the horizontal line, value added is calculated accordingly food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao) (2006) and food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao) (2013) based on total variable costs (tvc), or immediate inputs (ii); total fixed costs (tfc), or consumption of fixed capital; total costs (tc); total revenues (tr); gross value added (gva); net value added (nva); total profits (tp); and economic efficiency (ee); and per capita profit. to simplify the comparison between the two groups and determine the correct value added, the focus will be on the production of only one vegetable type, which is the main income source for each province. the unit for comparison is based on one ton of each main vegetable produced in the provinces (edwards, 2015; pindyck & rubinfeld, 2013). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 629-639 633 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. normally, iis are calculated based on the purchase of inputs, seeds, and supporting materials for one production cycle, while tfc is the sum of all depreciated costs (dc) needed to operate dried fish production. dc was calculated from tools/equipment, trailers, and truck use for transportation, depending on their lifespans. in this study, tr is calculated based on one ton of sold vegetables multiplied by the selling prices. there are two prices, either retail or wholesale, but in this study, the wholesale prices were used to calculate tr because it is more common for the two farmer groups. wages (w) paid for labor costs, interest rates (i) for micro-financial institutions, rental cost (r) for farmland, and taxes paid to the government are also included for the study to identify the generation of value added for different stakeholders. economic efficiency (ee) is also a good indicator used to determine return on investment for vegetable production, while per capita profits are also calculated and compared among the groups. the formulas of cost-benefit analysis, value added, and economic efficiency. 𝑇𝐶 = 𝑇𝑉𝐶 + 𝑇𝐹𝐶 (3) 𝑇𝑅 = 𝑃 𝑥 𝑄 (4) 𝑇𝑃 = 𝑇𝑅 − 𝑇𝐶 (5) ee = tr tc (6) where; • dc = depreciation costs (usd/0.1 ha). • pv = present value (usd). • sv = salvage value (usd). • tc = total cost (usd/0.1 ha). • tvc = total variable costs (usd/0.1 ha). • tfc = total fixed costs (usd/0.1 ha). • tr = total revenue (usd/0.1 ha). • p = vegetable price (usd/kg). • q = yield or quantity of vegetables per year (ton). • tp = total profit (usd/0.1 ha). • ee = economic efficiency. 3. results 3.1. household characteristics the household characteristics of both farmer groups focused on sex, age, educational level, household numbers, years of farming experience, membership of agricultural cooperatives, and main jobs. as illustrated in table 4, the respondents of both groups have a similar sex ratio. the age distribution of the non-gap group was slightly older than that of the gap group. however, on average, both groups were older than 40 years. the educational level of the gap group was approximately 1.5 years higher than that of the non-gap group, but the education levels for both groups are still considered very low. respondents from the non-gap group had a higher percentage of being household heads (69%), while about 23% were observed in the gap group. the household members of both groups are similar (around five persons). while four people live together, the gap groups have more females in the families. regarding farm labor, two people in the households worked on the farms to support the family. all respondents have at least 10 years of experience in farming, and only 67% of the nongap group have an agricultural cooperative membership compared to the gap group. the primary income is from agricultural production, particularly vegetable production, while a few worked as government officers, middlemen, or grocery sellers. this indicates that they did not sell labor for extra money to support the family. this means that they can make a living from their farming practices. usually, farmers who are members of agricultural cooperatives have a greater chance of receiving various training related to farming. table 4. illustration of household characteristics of non-gap and gap farmers. variable non-gap gap sex male 33 (49%) 26 (54%) female 34 (51%) 22 (46%) age (year) 48.9 ± 1.5 44.1 ± 1.3 education (year) 4.9 ± 0.4 6.5 ± 0.5 household head yes 46 (69%) 11 (23%) no 21 (31%) 37 (77%) household number (person) 5.0 ± 0.2 5.0 ± 0.4 people living together (person) 4.3 ± 0.2 4.5 ± 0.2 number of females (person) 2.0 ± 0.1 2.7 ± 0.2 total farm labor (person) 2.0 ± 0.1 2.3 ± 0.1 farming experience (year) 10 ± 1.2 14 ± 1.7 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 629-639 634 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. variable non-gap gap agricultural cooperative membership yes 45 (67%) 47 (98%) no 22 (23%) 1 (2%) main job farming 67 (100%) 48 (100%) second job government officer 2 (3%) 6 (13%) middleman 2 (3%) 1 (2%) grocery 2 (3%) 3 (6%) migrant worker 3.2. main vegetable crops figure 1 illustrates the types of vegetables cultivated in site studies. curly cabbage was the most commonly grown, accounting for about 80% of the gap group and about 50% of the other group. kale ranks second in preference for the gap group (47%), while the non-gap group preferred chinese greens after curly cabbage. other crops, such as mustard greens, morning glory, and cucumber, were also cultivated, but the percentage of farmers growing them is small. the findings indicate that farmers from both groups prefer to grow short-lived leafy vegetables because the economic return is faster. figure 1. comparing important vegetable crops between the gap and non-gap groups. 3.3. gap application process the process of gap certification consists of several steps, including application submission, document review, onsite inspection, laboratory testing, evaluation report, certification decision, issuing of the certificate, and regular audits. the life cycle of the gap certificate is one year, renewable. in this study, the process was simplified to five stages, assuming that the interviewed farmers are practicing gap, so we only wanted to know about this simplified process. therefore, the process of applying for gap certificates was evaluated based on these steps: finding the application form, filling in the form, submitting the form, waiting for the results, and various payments during the process (table 5). for this question, only farmers from the gap group were asked, based on a five-point score, because they had applied experience. the findings indicate that the score assigned to each step of the process was high, suggesting that the application process is not difficult from start to finish. as a result, farmers who applied were mostly members of agricultural cooperatives, which provided them with technical support and advice during the process. this implies that farmers seeking to apply only require some guidance, after which they can easily obtain gap certificates without concern. however, the results for the gap application process were based on the assumption that farmers are already familiar with gap through dissemination by local authorities or training within their cooperatives, and that they have begun practicing farming in accordance with gap standards. these farmers then decide to apply for a camgap certificate, making the process straightforward. conversely, farmers who have not yet adopted gap practices will face a longer application process, involving a series of mandatory activities such as initial training, application submission, actual implementation, on-site inspection, and final evaluation before they can receive the certificates. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 629-639 635 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 5. evaluation of scores given to the gap application process. gap application process score remark finding the application form 4.0 easy filling the form 4.0 easy submit the form 4.1 easy waiting for the results 3.6 simple to easy spending 4.1 easy other 3.9 easy note: the given score is in the range of 1 to 5, and higher values represent more ease. 3.4. factors affecting income to determine factors affecting income derived from vegetable farming, the lasso regression was applied, considering age, labor, education, farming experience, cooperative membership, gap adoption, gap training, farmland, and tc as predictor variables (table 6). the results indicate that the age of farmers (38-50), gap adoption, and total costs influenced income, while other variables had no effect at all. the findings suggest that farmers who had more years in farming were likely to earn higher incomes. if they spent more on input costs, the likelihood of earning more is also high. the most important thing is that if farmers adopt gap, the likelihood of earning income is about two times higher than the non-gap group. 3.5. factors affecting gap adoption the decision to adopt gap in vegetable production was assessed using the lasso regression, considering the factors: age, labor, education, farming experience, cooperative membership, gap training, total costs, and total revenue (table 7). the results indicate that only one factor influences the decision to adopt gap in vegetable farming, which is membership in an agricultural cooperative. farmers who possess membership are 50% more likely to adopt gap in their farming. although they might not apply it yet, the findings suggest they may apply it later on. in contrast, other factors such as age, labor, or education did not influence the decision-making process to apply gap. table 6. determination of factors affecting the income earned from vegetable production. no. predictor variables coefficient remark intercept 770.88 1 age 8.92 sig. 2 labor 3 education 4 farming experience 5 cooperative membership 6 gap adoption 1.9 sig. 7 gap training 8 land size 9 total costs 0.02 sig. note: the “-” sign indicates non-significant factors, while “sig.” represents significance for the lasso regression. table 7. determination of factors affecting the decision to adopt gap. no. predictor variables odd ratios remark intercept 0.4 1 age 2 labor 3 education 4 farming experience 5 cooperative membership 1.5 sig. 6 gap training 7 total costs 8 total revenue pseudo-r2 0.34 note: the “-” sign indicates non-significant factors, while “sig.” represents significance for the lasso regression. 3.6. potentials of gap adoption potentials of gap adoption were evaluated based on five-point scoring systems (table 8). the respondents from both groups were asked the same questions that focused on gap practices, farmland size, available labor, vegetable yield and price, investment budget, external support and training, external factors, and future prospects for gap. it is clear that farmers from the gap group were more familiar with gap practices compared to the non-gap group. the gap group was aware of gap, noting that the application process is quick and the fees are acceptable. the overall cam-gap principles are easy to follow when prior guidance is provided. those who practice gap continue their farming practices, although the selling price is not different. the reason is that customers know, or will know, the importance of gap practices. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 629-639 636 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. when asked about the scores of sufficient land size, farmers from both groups mentioned that they did not have enough land for vegetable production. however, they were reluctant to rent more land to increase their production. in terms of available farm labor, they mentioned that the level of sufficiency is moderate, so they may or may not hire labor to support the farming production. there is a trade-off between the two options. 3.7. constraints to gap adoption constraints to gap adoption are presented in table 9. there are some key challenges to gap adoption, and those include a lack of awareness, financial constraints for the implementation of gap, a lack of technical support and incentives, traditional practices, market access, and a lack of tools to cope with climatic factors. farmers need to start up gap adoption; an initial budget is necessary for infrastructure, such as the construction of net-houses for vegetable production. when asked about the necessary budget for vegetable production, farmers from both groups stated that the level of their available investment is moderate. however, they may not see the necessity to borrow money from local lenders. with respect to technical support from the government and ngos, farmers from the gap group expressed more satisfaction compared to the non-gap group because they had more experience with various training programs such as cam-gap, composting, drought-resilient farming, or water-saving techniques. when asked about drought frequency and adaptability to drought through cultivating resistant crops, their perceptions are considered moderate. therefore, more training may be needed to cope with these issues. when asked about the future prospects of gap adoption, farmers from the gap group express their strong support for continuity in strict application, compared to the non-gap group, who are uncertain about adopting gap. the gap group is also willing to introduce cam-gap to other farmers seeking to improve their vegetable farming. table 8. potentials and challenges were evaluated for farmers with and without cam-gap. factor gap non-gap remark gap practice know about gap 4.1 2.4 *** application fees are acceptable 4.0 2.2 *** applying for cam-gap standards is quick 3.9 2.7 *** cam-gap principles are easy to follow 4.0 2.4 *** continue to adopt cam-gap, although vegetable prices are not different 3.9 2.3 *** customers know cam-gap importance 3.8 2.3 *** land size enough land for vegetable production 2.8 2.4 ns rend more land for vegetable production 2.7 2.6 labor enough labor 3.3 3.1 ns hire labor 3.0 3.2 ns yield satisfied with the yield 2.8 2.6 ns sell vegetables by yourselves 3.1 3.4 ns price satisfied with vegetable prices 3.1 2.9 ns prices of cam-gap vegetables are higher 3.2 2.6 * budget enough budget for production 3.2 2.9 ns prefer local lenders to mfis 3.3 2.8 ns support receive technical support from ngos 3.5 2.5 ** receive technical support from the government 3.8 2.2 *** training enough training on cam-gap 3.7 2.5 *** enough training on composting 3.4 2.4 ** enough training on drought resilience 3.5 2.7 * enough training on fertilizer application 3.3 2.3 ** enough training on safe pesticide application 3.4 2.3 *** enough training on water-saving 3.5 2.7 * external factor frequent drought 3.2 3.2 ns grow drought-resistant crops 3.0 3.1 ns adaptable to drought 3.0 3.0 ns future prospects strictly adopt cam-gap for production 3.9 2.3 *** introduce cam-gap to other farmers 4 2.3 ns note: asterisks “*”, “**”, and “***” denote statistical significance at 0.05, 0.01, and 0.001, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 629-639 637 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.8. cost-benefit analysis a cost-benefit analysis was performed to compare costs and profits between the two groups (table 9). the results indicate that the average farming land size was not different, being about 0.20 ha. for vegetable production, farmers from the gap group tend to spend more on variable costs and total costs compared to the non-gap group, while the comparison ratios were 1.8 and 1.4 times the costs spent by the non-gap group. however, fixed costs were not different between the two groups, amounting to 100 usd/0.1 ha. despite that, farmers from the gap tend to spend more on net-house construction, which is 6.6 times the construction costs spent by the non-gap group. anyway, only a few non-gap farmers built a net-house for vegetable production. the average net-house construction cost is 1,500 usd, so gap farmers have to depreciate about 45.8 usd/year after construction. although the gap group had higher total costs, the cost of fertilizer and pesticide use was 20% less than that of the non-gap group. this clearly demonstrates that the adoption of gap can reduce dependency on chemicals. additionally, the gap group earned more total revenue (about 575 usd/0.1 ha), which is approximately twice the revenue earned by the non-gap group. similarly, the total profit for the gap group was also twice that of the nongap group. however, economic efficiency was good but indifferent between the two groups. it can be said that any dollar spent on vegetable production can produce 1.4-1.9 dollars in return. table 9. cost-benefit analysis between gap and non-gap farmers based on 0.1 ha of land. parameter gap non-gap ratio (1) note land size (ha) 0.23 0.20 1.16 ns variable cost (usd/0.1 ha) 206.6 117.6 1.8 * land preparation 15.8 5.3 3.0 * seed 9.9 9.5 1.0 ns care 72.5 9.4 7.7 * power 8.4 6.9 1.2 ns manure 13.9 18.4 0.8 ns fertilizer 28.7 38.0 0.8 ns pesticide 11.3 14.8 0.8 ns harvest 45.9 15.3 3.0 ** fixed cost (usd/0.1 ha) 98.0 100.0 1.0 ns irrigation system 52.2 93.1 0.6 ns net-house 45.8 6.9 6.6 * total cost (usd/0.1 ha) 304.6 217.7 1.4 * total revenue (usd/0.1 ha) 575.2 309.9 1.9 *** price (usd) 0.5 0.5 1.0 ns yield (ton) 1.2 0.6 1.9 * total profit (usd/0.1 ha) 346.7 170.7 2.0 ** economic efficiency 1.9 1.4 1.3 ns note: (1) denotes the division of values in gap by the values in non-gap, while asterisks “*”, “**”, “***” mean significant differences at 0.05, 0.01, and 0.001, respectively. meanwhile, “ns” means non-significance. 4. discussion this study reveals convincing evidence of the positive economic impacts of gap adoption among cambodian vegetable farmers. farmers who adopt gap achieve significantly higher income, yields, and profits compared to those practicing conventional farming, although their total production costs are higher. these results validate findings by zeweld, van huylenbroeck, tesfay, azadi, and speelman (2020), who indicated that gap improves soil organic matter and productivity, and bocquet-appel, naji, vander linden, and kozlowski (2012), who demonstrated that gap adoption reduces pesticide residues by 31%, thus reducing production costs while enhancing food safety and marketability. the study also confirms that gap adoption enhances both environmental and economic efficiency. gap farmers used fewer chemical fertilizers and pesticides (approximately 20% less), but they achieved higher yields and profits per 0.1 ha of land compared to non-gap farmers. these findings are consistent with kharel et al. (2022), who found that gap adoption increased crop yield by 36%, and incoom et al. (2025), who emphasized that gap can support sustainability and improve profitability. furthermore, regression analyses show that income from vegetable farming is significantly influenced by three key factors: farmer age, total production costs, and gap adoption. the positive influence of age may be due to accumulated experience, while higher input costs—when allocated to quality and efficiency—correlate with greater returns. this echoes findings from kosari-moghaddam et al. (2025), who emphasized that strategic input use under gap contributes to both resilience and profitability in chinese agriculture. the decision to adopt gap is significantly influenced by membership in agricultural cooperatives, a finding that aligns with the ucdavis report, which highlighted the importance of strong social capital and collaborative networks in the safe vegetable value chain (dawson, 2019). cooperative members often receive training, technical support, and market linkage opportunities, which reduce perceived risks associated with gap implementation (open development cambodia, 2024). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 629-639 638 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. however, the study also identified major barriers to gap adoption, particularly among non-gap farmers. these include limited awareness of gap principles, financial constraints for infrastructure investment, insufficient access to training, and market uncertainty. similar constraints were observed in studies by kosari-moghaddam et al. (2025) and thompson et al. (2021), which indicated that weak extension services and infrastructure gaps limit adoption among smallholder farmers in southeast asia. in terms of cost-benefit analysis, it shows that gap farmers incur higher total costs, but their gross and net returns are significantly higher, similar to previous findings that indicated that gap adoption leads to sustainability and profitability (ministry of agriculture forestry and fisheries (maff), 2020). 5. conclusion the study compares household characteristics, production types, factors affecting income and decision-making, cost-benefit analyses, potentials, and constraints related to gap adoption between the two groups of farmers, gap and non-gap, as well as other stakeholders. the results indicate that the adoption of gap can lead to a reduction in chemical inputs such as chemical fertilizer and pesticides and an increase in income and profit. besides that, income earned from vegetable production is mainly influenced by the farmers’ age, gap adoption, and total production costs. in terms of the decision to adopt camgap, the only factor found in this study is being a cooperative member. this suggests that farmers who are part of the agricultural cooperative have a higher likelihood of accepting gap for their vegetable production. for the cost-benefit analysis, farmers from the gap group tend to earn twice the income and profit of the non-gap group on the same size of farmland, although total costs are higher. in terms of cam-gap application processes, each step is not difficult if farmers are given prior instruction and support. the findings also indicate that farmers from the non-gap group have no idea about camgap practices at all; the primary results are due to financial constraints and lack of awareness, as new adoption requires both time, effort, and investment. thus, making them interested in adoption, continuous training, and financial and technical support is strongly required so that crops can be produced for high profitability and safe consumption. funding: the korea international cooperation agency (koica) and the ministry of rural development (mrd) of cambodia as part of the peace village project, supported by the government of the republic of korea. this research was also made possible through the collaboration and support of world vision, the newma consortium, and the faculty of agriculture and food processing, national meanchey university, banteay meanchey, cambodia. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the national meanchey university, cambodia has granted approval for this study on 13 december 2023. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references andriopoulos, v., & kornaros, m. 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(2020). sustainable agricultural practices, environmental risk mitigation and livelihood improvements: empirical evidence from northern ethiopia. land use policy, 95, 103799. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.01.002 views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sftr.2025.100543 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jafr.2022.100447 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2024.12.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gexplo.2023.107327 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-012-9378-6 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2021.100572 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.01.002 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 339 measuring social return on investment of research projects on thai functional fruits, fruit trees, and fruit products: a comprehensive study chaiya kongmaneea,b ferdoushi ahmeda,b+ paratta prommeea,b onanong longpichaia,b adepartment of agricultural economics and agribusiness, faculty of economics, prince of songkla university, songkhla, thailand. bresearch center for fundamental economic development and agricultural economic potential in the southern region, thailand.  ferdoushi.a@psu.ac.th (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 17 january 2025 revised: 16 june 2025 accepted: 4 july 2025 published: 30 july 2025 keywords economic and social benefits fruits and fruit’s products measurement research projects social return on investment thailand research fund thailand. the thailand research fund (trf) paid for a total of 12 research projects on thai fruits and fruit products. the studies looked at and measured the social return on investment (sroi). the fruits studied included functional fruits like mango, pomelo, papaya, and banana. we collected the data through structured questionnaires and in-depth interviews with the key informants of the 12 research projects. we employed the sroi analysis tool to analyze the data. the value of the net benefit of the research projects in terms of output and outcome was estimated to be 125,389,794 thb (thai baht), while the thailand research fund (trf)’s research funding for these projects amounted to 11,883,370 thb. therefore, the sroi of the projects is estimated to be 10.55. this value implies that the trf was able to achieve an sroi of 10.55 thb for each 1.0 thb investment in the research projects. the findings suggest that trf’s investment in the research projects on thai functional fruits and fruit products was successful and effective as well as worth value. the study findings might be beneficial for trf, research grant associations, and educational institutions to formulate appropriate policies for further research support. contribution/originality: this study is unique in applying social return on investment (sroi) framework to assess research funding impact on thai functional fruits. in contrast to previous studies, this study quantifies both economic and social benefits, revealing a return of 10.55 thb for every 1 thb investment. this approach provides a reproducible framework for efficiently evaluating research funding. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5508 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: kongmanee, c., ahmed, f., prommee, p., & longpichai, o. (2025). measuring social return on investment of research projects on thai functional fruits, fruit trees, and fruit products: a comprehensive study. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 339–350. 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5508 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction fruit is a significant profit crop in thailand and is the basis for work in agricultural sectors, market operators at many levels, and food processing entrepreneurs. each region of thailand possesses a different geology and climate, resulting in various kinds of tropical fruit, which expands its plantations continuously. in 2011, thailand had agricultural plots for 149.2 million rai. those areas were divided into fruit trees and perennial plants for asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 339-350 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5508 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-9267-8917 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7848-8163 https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1049-7612 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-2871-5859 mailto:ferdoushi.a@psu.ac.th asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 339-350 340 approximately 34.9 million rai and increased to 36.94 million rai in 2019 (office of agricultural economics, 2018). from the viewpoint of economic value, the fruits in thailand can be divided into two categories: a) fruits that are important economically (for profit) and have high export value (such as durian, longan, pineapple, mangosteen, rambutan, lychee, mango, and banana) with 10 most important exporting markets—china, vietnam, hong kong, the united states, indonesia, south korea, japan, malaysia, taiwan, and canada; b) fruits that are financially potential in the future or local fruits that are consumed more domestically (such as santol, rose apple, sugar apple, monkey apple, marian plum, guava, and long kong, also known as southern langsats). with many types of fruit, thailand has the capacity to be a tropical fruit source and market with a high quality that meets international standards. considering the export value of fruit and produce from 2014 to 2018, it was found that the export value of fresh fruits increased continuously; i.e., the total export value of all types of fresh fruits in 2014 was 30,014.28 million baht. fruit with the highest export value was durian at 12,435.70 million baht, followed by longan, mangosteen, mango, and banana. in 2018, the total export value of all fresh fruits increased to 62,207.62 million baht. fruits with high export value are durian (30,186.97 million baht), longan (17,219.25 million baht), mangosteen (7,271.20 million baht), mango (2,017.05 million baht), and banana (725.43 million baht) (office of agricultural economics, 2018). with the production potential and well-known tropical fruit market in the world, fruit production capacity can be increased by focusing on reducing production costs, improving quality, producing off-season, and including post-harvest production management to create marketing opportunities and increase revenue. moreover, adding fruit value can be done by processing and upgrading from raw ingredients to functional food products with support from scientific research and development to innovate high-value product processing. therefore, the thailand research fund (trf) recognized the significance of the economic value of thai fruits. consequently, it supported research funding in a series of projects on the thai fruits—functional fruits, covering a variety of thai fruits such as mangos, pomelos, papayas, and bananas. over 100 researchers from different universities took part in this study. the goal was to find out how much flavonoids, carotenoids, enzymes, phenolic acids, prebiotics, and other chemotype substances were in thai fruits and to study their bioactivity. the knowledge gained from these studies will show the value of thai fruits and disseminate and publicize the benefits of thai fruits for health improvement. in fact, this series of research funding is an economic investment that creates a body of knowledge that will contribute to economic and social changes or enhance well-being for people in the society (isvilanonda, 2010). however, with budget constraints, thailand has a relatively low ratio of research and development expenditure compared to gross domestic product (gdp), with a ratio of 0.21–1.11 percent during 2001 and 2019 (ministry of higher education science research and innovation, 2020). as such, it is necessary to estimate the value of a funded and completed research project or research series, taking into account the questions of worthiness, audience, and its impacts on society. it is expected that this estimation will be useful for formulating further research funding policies, supporting the limited research funding while maximizing the benefits of economic and social development. however, there is no empirical evidence of a social return on investment in the research package related to thai fruits and fruit products. therefore, this study aims to analyze the social return on investment (sroi) in the research package on thai fruits—functional fruits series, fruit trees, and fruit products. the study's findings could assist research funding agencies, research institutes, and academia in applying for research grants in similar contexts. 2. literature review research is vital to economic growth, quality of life, and development sustainability. that is the reason many countries prioritize investing in research. nonetheless, developing countries have budget constraints. therefore, research funding needs to ensure that investing in a research project or research series provides a worthwhile economic or social return. thus, the question arises, "why is it necessary to evaluate the social return on investment in research?" research’s impact assessment is a measure of its success. that begins with the evaluation of the output, followed by the outcome and impact of research on socio-economic changes. in this article, output is defined as a product of research through its objectives, such as knowledge, data, training, the number of researchers, publications, patents, innovations, and the scientific equipment and instruments it produces. one research project may result in a ready-touse product or an output that serves as an input for further advanced research. the term "outcome" describes the transformation that occurs when beneficiaries, whether researchers or stakeholders, utilize the research. therefore, an output can also be an outcome, i.e., increased revenue, lowered costs, higher efficiency, and product development policy guidelines. impact is a continual consequence from research that affects the target group or the public by causing economic, social, and environmental changes. the impact can be either positive or negative. consequences can be broadly categorized into a scientific consequence and a societal consequence. scientific consequence is a scientific advance, intellectual capital, and research that furthers progress. social consequence is research that answers what benefits society might gain, such as good products and services, quality of life, welfare, increased employment, increased productivity, and sustainable development (european science foundation, 2012; walker et al., 2008). research contributes to progress and knowledge capital, facilitating innovations and effective policies that yield economic and social benefits (salter & martin, 2001). the process of finding the relationship between research investment and its impact can be explained by the linear process conceptual framework of output, outcome, and impact. knowledge from basic research is transformed into applied research and finally leads to technical and social innovation, which impacts the economy and society (european science foundation, 2012; walker et al., 2008). this article uses the framework of social return on investment (sroi) to look at data by calculating the project's outputs, outcomes, and social impacts and then comparing those numbers with the project's cost in money. the goal is to find out, "what is the social impact of a research project in terms of money per baht investment?" (achavanuntakul & yamla-or, 2017; cordes, 2017; nicholls, lawlor, neitzert, & goodspeed, 2012). this approach is asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 339-350 341 an all-around method for understanding, measuring, and reporting the value of research that changes things in the economy, society, and the environment (banke-thomas, madaj, charles, & van den broek, 2015; nicholls, 2017; nicholls et al., 2012; scholten, nicholls, olsen, & galimidi, 2006). the sroi tool has been widely used to assess the impact of an organization, a social development project, a research project, and any public services such as public health and healthcare, social enterprise, public service, research, and government investment (banke-thomas et al., 2015; benjasiri, 2015; bertotti, farr, & akinbode, 2015; faivel, ghosh, hilton, james, & peppercorn, 2012; jones, 2012; king, 2014; kongmanee, satsue, & pittayapinan, 2018; ruiz-lozano et al., 2020; thai health promotion foundation, 2014; wilson & bull, 2013). in fact, the utilization of sroi tool depends on the nature of a project, investment amount, objective and project result, number of beneficiaries, operation period, and the impact. however, when comparing the sroi, it should be in the similar type of project or organization, with a similar manner, problem, scope of work, limitations, or contexts, and it should not be in totally different projects or organizations (achavanuntakul & yamla-or, 2017; faivel et al., 2012). 3. materials and methods this study selected 12 research projects that had been conducted during the years 2013–2015 under the thai fruits—functional fruits series and received research funding totaling 11,888,370 baht, divided into 2 categories: 1) scientific progress research for 10 projects with a budget of 7,826,370 baht or 65.9 percent of the total budget. 2) commercial progress research for two projects with a budget of 4,062,000 baht, or 34.1% of the total budget. the primary data was collected by individual in-depth interviews with structured questionnaires. key informants were research leaders, researchers, research assistants, and stakeholders. the secondary data was retrieved from research reports, financial reports, and related documents. data was analyzed by the social return on investment (sroi) analysis tool proposed by nicholls et al. (2012) and by the output and outcome market value framework of scientific research project proposed by kongmanee et al. (2018) which was further revised by examining the validity and adaptability to market output and outcome values and reviews of relevant documents, plus stakeholder interviews. market value was defined under the basic principle of total production cost per product. thereafter, project experts were consulted to further determine reasonable market value. the social return on investment (sroi) analysis consists of 6 steps as described below (nicholls et al., 2012). 1. determine the scope of the assessment. the evaluation period for this research project spans five years after its completion. the evaluation looks at the research project's inputs, such as the trf budget and any other funds that may have been used, as well as the project's goals, activities, attributes, personal factors of the researchers, and the environment in which the research is conducted. it also looks at the project's outputs, outcomes, and impacts. this is done to get information and figure out the social return on investment, which can be used as a proxy for the project's total return. 2. identify research’s stakeholders through outputs and outcomes. this process involves (1) creating a stakeholder map; (2) identifying activities, outputs, and outcomes to create an outcome map; (3) interviewing about the research project or activities; (4) interviewing about the research output, outcome, and impact; (5) identifying indicators for measuring output, outcome, and impact; and (6) determining the value of output, outcome, and impact. 3. gather data on outputs, outcomes, impacts, and their financial proxy. the information was gathered from january to july 2018 and came from relevant documents. it was used to look at the rate of outcomes, find financial substitutes, and turn the outcomes into a monetary value that clearly affected stakeholders. 4. analyze attributions, deadweights, displacements, and outcome values. analyzing attributions from other organizations was done through the trf’s funding proportion in research and others (if any) by setting a percentage value for deadweight rate. it serves as a measure of the outcomes that would occur if this research project had not been funded. we assessed the displacement rate by comparing a positive outcome for stakeholders with a negative outcome for other stakeholders. we obtained this part of the data through interviews with key informants of each research project, reviewing relevant documents, and consulting with research experts. 5. calculate the sroi and categorize benefits by each stakeholder. the sroi is shown as the ratio of the total benefit received from the research project minus the benefit that is not generated from the research and then divided by the research budget from trf. a sum value greater than 1 indicates that research is worthwhile. 6. summarize the assessment. this process summarizes the total sroi and proposes alternative measures or development guidelines to promote value of trf’s research investment. for the evaluation of outputs, outcomes, and impacts, the sroi framework analyzes achievements of a research project to measure its monetary values (quantitative) and non-monetary values (qualitative). (figure 1) divides the project achievements into three parts. i. output evaluation from literature review of relevant documents, interviews with key informants, and onsite observations. the output value of all items is based on empirical evidence (table 1). ii. outcome evaluation from stakeholders who use the output in the time frame of 5 years, consistent with investment principles of private sector and the existence of human knowledge, technology, skills, and expertise. this is an outcome assessment from stakeholders involved directly in the project. we set the outcome rate at 1.25% for graduate salaries and 6.25% for any net benefits from private companies. we only evaluate the benefits generated by the research based on net incremental benefits. the money result is then weighed by the percentage of research funding from trf that can be traced back to the project and the amount of money that would have been made if the project hadn't happened (deadweight). in this case, the weight is 1 minus the deadweight percentage. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 339-350 342 figure 1. theoretical model of the study. iii. impact assessment from the use of output by externals. the impact reports a value or benefit arising from the research project's output but not from the financial value because it risks overclaiming. the impact assessments can also include the positive impact on researchers or graduates participating as research assistants but identifies only qualitative impacts. table 1. market value of output from research projects. type of output market value (baht) reference inventions (products/instruments/methods /laboratory techniques) 200,000 guidelines of research funding of the office of the national research council of thailand (nrct) for an invention, it is required that one invention must be created from a grant of not more than 200,000 baht.1 research articles published in thai academic journals 200,000 for research funding from prince of songkla university and ohec (office of the higher education commission), in receiving a fund of 200,000 baht, at least 1 publication in a national academic journal/petty patent is required. 2 research articles published in international academic journals4 400,000 for research funding from prince of songkla university and ohec, in receiving a fund of 400,000 baht, at least 1 publication in an international academic journal/patent is required. 2 to calculate the output value of a publication, the value is weighted by the output quality level, ranging from 0.25– 1.00 depending on the. the publications in the isi-based journal have their value divided by ranking: q1: 800,000 baht, q2: 700,000 baht, q3: 600,000 baht, and q4: 500,000 baht. research articles published in proceedings 40,000 for research funding from prince of songkla university and ohec, in receiving a fund of 40,000 baht, at least 1 publication in proceedings is required. 2 bachelor’s degree graduate pharmacist 5,353 baht/month the national statistical office surveyed the average salary at the base salary level set when recruiting employees, classified by academic qualifications and positions, from all over the country. data from the private compensation survey of 2013, conducted by the ministry of information and communication technology, included in-depth interviews with stakeholders and found a salary increase of 20 percent from the normal salary.1 scientist 2,878 baht/month master’s degree graduate pharmacist 10,481 baht/month the national statistical office surveyed the average salary at the base salary level set when recruiting employees, classified by academic qualifications and positions, from all over the country. data from the private compensation scientist asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 339-350 343 type of output market value (baht) reference 5,882 baht/month survey of 2013, conducted by the ministry of information and communication technology, included in-depth interviews with stakeholders and found a salary increase of 20 percent from the normal salary.3 doctorate’s degree graduate pharmacist 10,481 baht/month the national statistical office surveyed the average salary at the base salary level set when recruiting employees, classified by academic qualifications and positions, from all over the country. data from the private compensation survey 2013, ministry of information and communication technology, included in-depth interviews with stakeholders and found a salary increase of 20 percent from the normal salary.3 scientist 5,882 baht/month trade secret 400,000 equivalent to a patent. in receiving research funding from prince of songkla university for 400,000 baht, 1 research publication in an international academic journal or patent is required. laboratory prototype 200,000 equivalent to a petty patent. in receiving research funding from prince of songkla university for 200,000 baht, 1 research publication in an international academic journal or patent is required. commercial prototype 400,000 equivalent to a patent. in receiving research funding from prince of songkla university for 400,000 baht, 1 research publication in an international academic journal or patent is required. fieldwork prototype 300,000 fieldwork experiments are more advanced or comprehensive than the operational level but are not commercial. therefore, its market value falls between laboratory prototypes and commercial-level prototypes. book 400,000 equivalent to a research publication in an international academic journal. handbook/book 1 chapter 40,000 equivalent to a research publication in proceedings. further research equivalent to the budget of new research it is compulsory to have an ongoing project that uses at least 80% of the output and outcome from the previous research. complete research report 10% of the research budget if the research project does not submit a complete report, terminate the project when it is not yet completed, or the research is not qualified; it will not receive the final payment, which is often higher than 10%. note: 1announcement of the office of the national research council of thailand (nrct) re: accepting project proposals for funding of promotional activities and research under the value-added invention to co-funding project for the year 2016. 2 research funding from the income of fiscal year 2016, research and development office, prince of songkla university. 3private compensation survey 2013, national statistical office, ministry of information and communication technology, and in-depth interviews. 4to calculate the output value of publications, it will be weighted by the quality of the work from 0.251 depending on the publishers. 4. results and discussions this package of research projects received funding for a total of 11,888,370 baht. project number 1-11 received a total budget of 8,924,370 baht. sub-project budgets ranged from 488,400 baht to 1,098,000 baht. there were three projects that received a grant of approximately 1 million baht. to help fund the fresh papaya research and development center in maha sarakham province, the central isan (northeast) group received a scholarship from trf for 2,694,000 baht over 3 years. they also got funding from their university, nstda (national science and technology development agency), and the sub-district administration organization, totaling 1,300,000 baht. this was one thing that helped the project succeed. project leads include 12 projects specialized in physiology (50%), food and nutrition (33%), and pharmacology (17%). half of the project leads were assistant professors, and 25% were in the position of associate professor. the remainder were professors and researchers. later, during the evaluation, it was found that the project leads were promoted to higher positions (4 people, or 1/3 of them), from professors to assistant professors (1), from assistant professors to associate professors (2), and from researchers to expert researchers (1). stakeholders from the research project consisted of farmers, undergraduate students, graduate students, and the affiliated university. table 2 shows an example of the relationship between outputs, stakeholders, and attributions for the research project’s outcomes. fresh papaya research and development center, maha sarakham province, and the central isan group accounted for 70.0% and 60.0% of the deadweight, with the impact shown in figure 1. for other research projects, the attribution to the outcome was 100.0%, and there was no deadweight. that means, without research funding from trf, the output of these research projects will not occur. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 339-350 344 the research project has a social return on investment of 10.55, which is the ratio of the net benefit of the research project (125,389,794 baht) to the research budget received from trf (11,888,370 baht). it signifies that when trf funds 1 baht, the sroi will be 10.55 baht. as such, research funding is valuable. among the stakeholders, farmers received the highest proportion of benefits at 69.35 percent, followed by the affiliated university and students, respectively (table 3). table 2. an example of the relationship between stakeholders, outputs, outcomes, and attributions of the “fresh papaya research and development center, maha sarakham province and central isan group” project. stakeholders relevant numbers output outcome attributio n (%) deadweig ht (%) displaceme nt (%) 1. farmers 4,000 trained and used seeds increased net income decreased cost of production 70 50 60 2.undergraduate students 12 increased salary 100 3. graduate students 2 increased salary 100 4. maha sarakam rajabhat university 7 papaya seeds research center books academic articles complete research report 100 note: 1) the difference of net income from papaya yields before and after using the new variety and after the 18-month yield period. partial budgeting, a specific method, was used for calculating the increased income and decreased costs. 2) the damage rate of diseased papayas was lower compared to the average rate of the previous variety. 3) more research experience meant an increased salary compared to students without research experience. 4) deadweight is data from stakeholder interviews and consultation with project experts. the deadweight was set at 50 percent for two reasons: 1) even if there was no funding from trf, this project had an opportunity for implementation because the project lead was able to get funding from other sources and 2) some papaya farmers had to cancel the plantation in the following year because of flooding. 5) the displacement rate was based on interviews and plot surveys in 2019. prior to using that variety, farmers used the previous one which already yielded financial value. the value was used in calculating the yield that farmers used to receive from the previous papaya variety and then deducted from the yield from the new papaya variety in the ratio which was estimated to be equal to 60 percent or the displacement rate at 0.6. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 339-350 345 table 3. social return on investment (sroi) of the research projects (overall estimation). stakeholders number ratio of benefits for stakeholders (%) total benefit value (baht) attribution (%) dead-weight (%) displacement rate (%) net benefit value (baht) farmers 4,000 97.1 523,600,000 70 50 60 109,956,000 undergraduate students 14 0.4 2,046,607 100 0 0 2,046,607 graduate and ph.d. students 11 0.5 2,538,241 100 0 0 2,538,241 new researchers 1 0.1 345,109 100 0 0 345,109 naresuan university 18 0.7 3,523,161 100 0 0 3,523,161 thammasat university 2 0.2 903,977 100 0 0 903,977 srinakharinwirot university 2 0.1 273,987 100 0 0 273,987 kasetsart university 6 0.4 2,002,846 100 0 0 2,002,846 mahidol university 11 0.2 1,263,466 100 0 0 1,263,466 rajabhat maha sarakham university 29 0.5 2,536,400 100 0 0 2,536,400 total benefit value (baht) 539,033,794 net benefit value (baht) 125,389,794 value of research funding from trf (baht) 11,888,370 social return on investment (sroi) 10.55 note: 1) stakeholder benefit ratio = net stakeholder benefit x 100/net benefit value. 2) attributions or outcomes from other organizations = research budget from trf x 100/total research budget. 3) deadweight = proportion of results that may occur at its own accord even when there is no trf funding. the deadweight was assessed by stakeholders. 4) net benefit value = total benefit value x %attribution x (1-% deadweight) x (% displacement). 5) social return on investment (sroi) = total net benefit value / value of research budget from trf. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 339-350 346 it is important to note that table 3 shows the overall findings of social return on investment (sroi) for the 11 projects that were carried out under the research package. table 4 displays the output, outcome, and sroi for each of the 11 projects. the thai fruits—functional fruits series of 11 projects generated a total value of 10,955,676 baht from a total research budget of 8,924,370 baht. the net financial return of the thai fruits—functional fruits project is positive, or 1.23 times the original research funding from trf. among the 11 projects of the thai fruits— functional fruits project series, 10 of them were scientific with relatively low results, in accordance with the nature of basic research at the primary level that needs further innovation. three of these projects underwent development to facilitate further innovation and value-added research. the investment value of this project originated from a highvalue research output, especially from the quality of academic publications and the extensive output, which furthered other research projects with funding from trf, arda (agricultural research development agency), nrct, and other agencies. for the remaining 8 projects, their outputs followed their research objectives. nonetheless, the academic publications in the tci base do not create high value, or the output was discontinued for academic reasons, i.e., under trf’s funding, the research output was not practiced enough to create an outcome. at that time, the important outputs were either researchers, complete research reports, or reports that were waiting to be published. some faced an obstacle preventing their commercial purposes (one project). the project in question yielded a social return on investment ranging from 0.18 to 0.98, indicating that trf's investment was not deemed valuable. the fruitless research investment in these research projects exempts the value from knowledge dissemination, human capital from researchers’ expertise, and other indirect impacts. researchers have increased skills and expertise, more potential for further research, and students that were research assistants became graduates with bachelor’s, master's, and doctoral degrees. they could secure employment more easily and receive higher payment compared to graduates with no experience in research projects. that created researchers and personnel for the country, which was in line with the trf research funding plan focusing on creating a body of knowledge and developing researchers (research fund office, 2009). these effects will increase the capacity in science and technology solutions and affect the country's economic growth in the future (salter & martin, 2001). the fresh papaya research and development center project, maha sarakham province, and the central isan group were quasi-development research, so outcomes and impacts were tangible. it received a budget of 2,964,000 baht from trf and other grants from the affiliated university, sao, and nstda for 1,300,000 baht (totaling 4,264,000 baht). the project has a very high financial return of 114,434,118 baht from seeds’ sales innovation, meaning more income for farmers' production. local authorities collaborated to provide farmers with a wide range of training. the project has a social return on investment of 38.61, indicating that trf’s in the project was of value. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 339-350 347 table 4. social return on investment (sroi) by project. project stakeholder output/outcome value1 (baht) attribution2 (%) deadweight3 (%) total output/outcome value (baht) net output/outcome value (baht) research budget from trf (baht) sroi 1) development of healthy mango jelly for the elderly 1) graduate students 126,835 100 0 126,835 916,635 1,098,000 0.83 2) mahidol university 789,800 100 0 789,800 2) a study of pomelo intake on flavonoid levels in serums and on platelet function in healthy volunteers. 1) graduate students 317,087 100 0 317,087 701,913 1,048,260 0.67 2) mahidol university 384,826 100 0 384,826 3) mechanisms of antioxidative stress and apoptosis of ea.hy926 human endothelial cells from ripe papayas. 1) graduate students 639,565 100 0 639,565 1,543,542 1,039,770 1.48 2) thammasat university 903,977 100 0 903,977 4) effects of tabtim chan rose apple on antioxidants and vascular function in mice with high blood cholesterol. 1) undergraduate students 383,739 100 0 383,739 671,859 881,200 0.76 2) naresuan university 288,120 100 0 288,120 5) anti-mutation and anticarcinogenic characteristics of thai fruits. 1) graduate students 128,297 100 0 128,297 2,476,252 878,460 2.82 2) new researchers 345,109 100 0 345,109 3) kasetsart university 2,002,846 100 0 2,002,846 6) potentials of lady finger and pisang awak bananas in preventing skin cancer in dmba(7,12-dimethylbenz a anthracene) and uvb (ultraviolet rediation) induced mice. 1) graduate students 140,704 100 0 140,704 1,298,869 781,650 1.66 2) naresuan university 1,158,165 100 0 1,158,165 7) effect of pomelo juice on learning and memory impairments in type 2 diabetic mice. 1) graduate students 203,382 100 0 203,382 477,369 739,870 0.65 2) srinakharinwirot university 273,987 100 0 273,987 8) benefits of papaya in obesity-induced mice with a high-fat diet. 1) undergraduate students 127,913 100 0 127,913 637,849 699,360 0.91 2) naresuan university 509,936 100 0 509,936 9) study on the effect of long laplae durian varieties on learning, memory, and 1) graduate students 191,869 100 0 191,869 659,189 673,200 0.98 2) naresuan university 467,320 100 0 467,320 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 339-350 348 project stakeholder output/outcome value1 (baht) attribution2 (%) deadweight3 (%) total output/outcome value (baht) net output/outcome value (baht) research budget from trf (baht) sroi sexual performance in male mice. 10) effects of tabtim chan rose apple on apoptosis and antioxidant activity in pancreatic beta cells of streptozo tocin-induced diabetic mice. 1) graduate students 383,739 100 0 383,739 1,483,359 596,200 2.49 2) naresuan university 1,099,620 100 0 1,099,620 project stakeholder output/outcome value1 (baht) attribution2 (%) deadweight3 (%) total output/outcome value (baht) net output/outcome value (baht) research budget from trf (baht) sroi 11) biological activity of thai fruit extracts in human breast cell tissue induced by estro-gen oxidative dna damage. 1) mahidol university 88,840 100 0 88,840 88,840 488,400 0.18 total 11 projects 10,955,676 10,955,676 8,924,370 1.23 project stakeholder output/outcome value1 (baht) attribution2 (%) deadweight3 (%) total output/outcome value (baht) net output/outcome value (baht) research budget from trf (baht) sroi 12) fresh papaya research and development center, maha sarakham province, and the central isan group 1) farmers 523,600,000 70 50 109,956,000 114,434,118 2,964,000 38.61 2 ) undergraduate students 1,534,955 100 0 1,534,955 3) graduate students 406,763 100 0 406,763 4 ) rajabhat maha sarakham university 2,536,400 100 0 2,536,400 total 12 projects 125,389,794 11,888,370 10.55 note: 1) any project with no outcome will be presented with the output value. 2) attribution is calculated only from cash and does not include support for tools and laboratories of the parent agency. 3) project 12's deadweight was 50 percent because researchers were confident that there was a 50 percent chance of receiving funding from another source. 4) the displacement rate of the 12th project was 60, for the benefit of farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 339-350 349 5. conclusion and recommendations the current study provides efforts to quantify the social return on investment (sroi) of the research package on thai fruits—functional fruits series, fruit trees, and fruit products. the study found that the research project series on thai fruits earned net benefit values of total outputs and outcomes of 125,389,794 baht while the total budget for the research package was 11,888,370 baht. the overall social return on investment for the research package was 10.55. in other words, for every 1 baht of trf’s fund, sroi is 10.55 baht, indicating that the investment in the research projects is worth value. it was also found that the research project with relatively high outcome values (i.e., sroi of 38.61) was from the fresh edible papaya research and development center, maha sarakham province, and the central isan group. in addition, there were four other projects with sroi greater than 1.0. overall, the outputs and outcomes of the project series are consistent with the trf research plan of 2007–2013 that focused on creating a research system, a body of knowledge, and researchers. finally, this article has provided the following recommendations that might be useful for the tsri, research funders, and academia. 1. the nature of science project funding should be continuous with a multiyear budgeting policy to provide projects with opportunities for research, trials, in-depth research, or supply chain research. for research projects that focus on building in-depth knowledge and building/developing researchers, the funding should support the research programs with outputs in 3 5 years. 2. the research ecosystem of the parent agency should be developed. it can be systematically designed throughout the research value chain. the investment budget should be increased to build modern laboratories for a university or its networks, integrating with research strategies, especially the adequacy, availability, and access to modern equipment and laboratories, and perhaps creating tool centers’ networks and shared laboratories. 3. the affiliated university should receive direct benefits and all the output value from the upstream. therefore, research funding should be in the form of a joint venture for an operation budget from the funder and the university for the integration of research across the institutions. 4. there should be incentives for researchers to be able to quickly apply for patents/petty patents or intellectual property to reduce results retention. when researchers are unable to fund their research, the knowledge is not recognized and furthered and would be of no value. 5. promotion/incentive should be given for the evaluation of research projects that are unfinished, incomplete, or unsettled. if there is a possibility of continuing research, with serious and enthusiastic researchers with an average of additional research budgets, they should be supported because it would increase opportunities for outcomes or impacts of the research project. funding: this research is supported by thailand science research and innovation. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing 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(2013). sroi in practice: the wooden canal boat society. social enterprise journal, 9(3), 315-325. https://doi.org/10.1108/sej-03-2013-0013 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2016.11.011 http://socialvalueint.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/the-sroi-guide-2012.pdf https://www.oae.go.th/view/1/%e0%b8%ab%e0%b8%99%e0%b9%89%e0%b8%b2%e0%b9%81%e0%b8%a3%e0%b8%81/th-th https://www.oae.go.th/view/1/%e0%b8%ab%e0%b8%99%e0%b9%89%e0%b8%b2%e0%b9%81%e0%b8%a3%e0%b8%81/th-th https://www.ma-law.org.pk/pdflaw/property-law-transfer-of-property-act-1872.pdf https://doi.org/10.3390/su12031070 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0048-7333(00)00091-3 https://doi.org/10.1108/sej-03-2013-0013 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 351 comparative analysis of the profitability of small-scale monoculture and diversified yellow corn farms in cabagan, isabela, philippines angelyn a. bauita jayrald d. bugasb vanessa c. saguiboc airish lou b. yagod michelle ann m. calubaquibe a,b,c,eisabela state university cabagan campus, cabagan, isabela, 3328, philippines. duniversity of the philippines los banos, los banos, laguna, 4031, philippines.  michelleann.m.calubaquib@isu.edu.ph (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 18 march 2025 revised: 20 june 2025 accepted: 8 july 2025 published: 30 july 2025 keywords diversified monoculture profitability small-scale farms yellow corn farming system. the study aimed to compare the profitability of small-scale monoculture and diversified yellow corn production farms in cabagan, isabela, while also characterizing the socio-demographic profiles of farmers and determining their farming practices. using house-to-house surveys of 30 monoculture and 30 diversified farmers, data on cultural management, income, and profitability were collected and analyzed. findings revealed that older farmers predominantly engaged in both systems, with monoculture farming involving more male farmers (70%) and diversified farming having a higher proportion of female farmers (60%). most were married and had educational attainment ranging from elementary to high school. monoculture farmers were largely dependent on tractors (80%), mechanical seeders (75%), and herbicides (90%), whereas diversified farmers preferred manual planting (65%) and araro (plowing) (60%), leading to lower input costs. profitability analysis showed that monoculture farmers had a higher gross profit margin ratio (0.82) and operating profit margin ratio (0.68) compared to diversified farmers (0.67 and 0.57, respectively). while monoculture farming offers higher immediate profit margins, it demands more inputs and poses environmental risks. diversified farming, although yielding lower profit margins, promotes sustainability and cost-efficiency. these findings suggest that farmers and policymakers must balance short-term profitability with long-term ecological and economic sustainability when choosing farming systems. contribution/originality: this study uniquely compares the profitability and input usage of monoculture and diversified yellow corn farming in cabagan, isabela. by integrating socio-demographic data, detailed cost analysis, and sustainability insights, it contributes original evidence on how farming practices impact economic outcomes and resource use among small-scale filipino corn farmers. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5509 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: bauita, a. a., bugas, j. d., saguibo, v. c., yago, a. l. b., & calubaquib, m. a. m. (2025). comparative analysis of the profitability of small-scale monoculture and diversified yellow corn farms in cabagan, isabela, philippines. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 351–364. 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5509 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 351-364 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5509 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8159-6705 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9085-4263 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-1687-0333 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-7169-4942 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9332-8421 mailto:michelleann.m.calubaquib@isu.edu.ph asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 351-364 352 1. introduction corn (zea mays l.) is one of the most important food crops in the philippines because of its economic significance providing livelihood to small-scale farmers (salpietra, 2017). also, it is widely cultivated all over the country due to its many uses, apart from being a good substitute for rice (cabangbang & quicoy, 2019). there are two main types of this crop, namely white and yellow corn. yellow corn is an essential ingredient in feeds for hogs, poultry, and even fish (salazar, elca, lapiña, & salazar, 2021). the philippine statistics authority’s (psa) report in 2021 shows that the country produced 6.04 million metric tons (mmt) of yellow corn. the top producing region is cagayan valley with 1.87 mmt, which represents almost 31% of the country’s yellow corn production. most of the harvest in region ii comes from the province of isabela, which supplied 1.07 mmt in the same year. the demand and productivity of yellow corn production are increasing due to the growing need for feeds for the poultry and livestock sub-sectors in the philippines. however, cabangbang and quicoy (2019) emphasized in their study that even though the demand for this crop has been increasing rapidly, the development of yellow corn production is still minimal. monoculture is the practice of growing just one crop species in a field at a time. it enables farmers to use machinery, increasing the efficiency of activities like planting and harvesting. however, it increases the risk of disease and pest outbreaks because monoculture farming lacks other plant and animal species that limit the spread of disease and control pests through predation. without the natural checks and balances provided by diverse ecosystems, monoculture crops are more susceptible to devastating infestations and infections. this vulnerability often necessitates the heavy use of pesticides and herbicides, which not only adds to production costs but also poses environmental hazards through soil and water contamination. moreover, the continuous cultivation of a single crop depletes the soil of specific nutrients, leading to soil degradation and reduced fertility over time. this depletion necessitates the application of synthetic fertilizers to maintain productivity, further exacerbating environmental concerns and contributing to the overall cost of production. in contrast, crop diversification refers to the practice of growing a variety of crops on a farm or in a specific region instead of relying solely on one crop. it involves cultivating different types of crops, such as grains, vegetables, fruits, or legumes, either in rotation or simultaneously. crop diversification aims to enhance soil health, increase biodiversity, and improve the resilience of agricultural systems to pests, diseases, and climate variability. by diversifying the range of crops grown, farmers can also tap into multiple markets, reduce dependence on a single crop, and potentially increase overall farm profitability. additionally, crop diversification can contribute to sustainable agricultural practices by promoting ecosystem services, conserving natural resources, and mitigating environmental impacts associated with monoculture farming. the one da reform agenda's emphasis on crop diversification aligns with these principles, recognizing the potential of diversified farming systems to enhance agricultural productivity and resilience. by encouraging farmers to diversify into high-value seasonal crops, the initiative aims to not only increase farm incomes but also mitigate the risks associated with monoculture farming. furthermore, empirical studies by volsi, higashi, bordin, and telles (2021) and parreño-de guzman, zamora, and bernardo (2015) provide evidence supporting the economic viability of diversified crop rotation systems. these studies highlight the potential for increased profitability and feasibility compared to monoculture production, underscoring the importance of transitioning towards more diversified agricultural practices. in the context of isabela's yellow corn production, the prevalence of monoculture farming suggests an opportunity for comparative studies to evaluate the profitability of different farming systems. by examining the performance of small-scale monoculture and diversified yellow corn farms, researchers can provide valuable insights into the benefits and challenges associated with each approach. such studies can inform policy decisions and support efforts to promote sustainable agricultural development in the region. 2. materials and methods 2.1. selection of respondents a formal request letter was submitted to the municipal agricultural office of cabagan, isabela, to acquire the list of small-scale corn farmers engaged in both monoculture and diversified farming. sixty yellow corn farmers were chosen for the study, comprising 30 monoculture farmers and 30 diversified farmers. specifically, ten farmers from the three top corn-growing barangays of cabagan were included in the selection process. 2.2. data collection a pre-tested questionnaire adopted from the study of yago (2022) was used to collect primary data through house-to-house interviews. the questionnaire administered is composed of basic information about the respondent's background; it includes the socio-economic profile of the farmers such as age, gender, marital status, household size, educational attainment, tenurial status, years of farming experience, income levels, and other sources of income. it is also accompanied by significant information like corn farming cultural and management practices. additionally, the agricultural inputs and others were added such as land (in hectares), labor (in man-days), seeds (in kilograms), fertilizers (in kilograms), pesticides (in liters), and herbicides (in liters); as well as on output (in kilograms) and output price (in php/kg) gathered from the respondents. including the years of engagement of corn farmers in monoculture and diversified farming were collected. 2.3. profitability analysis to determine the net return (profit) from monoculture and diversified corn farming in cabagan, isabela, a cost and return analysis was used. in acquiring this, the net return was equal to the total revenue after subtracting all the production costs. the equation is given below: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 351-364 353 where: 𝛱= net return. 𝑇𝑅= total revenue. 𝑇𝐶= total cost. 𝑇𝑉𝐶= total variable cost. 𝑇𝐹𝐶=total fixed cost. 𝐷𝐶= depreciation cost. total revenue is the sum of financial gains from the sales of the farmer. on the other hand, the total cost is the expenditure incurred by farmers in the agricultural field; specifically, it is the sum of total variable costs and total fixed costs. while total variable costs are the expenditures that vary with the amount of output, total fixed costs are the costs that remain constant regardless of how the amount of output changes. 2.4. gross profit margin to evaluate how well the farm business gathers revenue from its direct expenses, the study used gross profit margin. shown as below: gross profit margin = operating profit margin = 2.5. statistical analysis the study applied descriptive analysis to assess the mean, frequency, and percentage to draw the respondents’ socio-economic characteristics, as well as their cultural and management practices. the profitability of monoculture and diversified production systems was compared using a t-test. specifically, the t-statistic was computed using the following formula: where: 𝑋 ̅1= mean, monoculture corn farmers. �̅�2= mean, diversified corn farmers. 𝜇1 = population of monoculture corn farmers. 𝜇2 = population of diversified corn farmers. 𝑠𝑝2= pooled variance. 𝑛1 = sample size. 𝑛1 = population of monoculture corn farmers. 𝑛2 = population of diversified corn farmers. the following hypotheses was tested for the analysis: 𝐻0: 𝜇1 = 𝜇2, the mean levels of profitability of diversified and monoculture small-scale yellow corn farmers are equal. 𝐻1: 𝜇1 ≠ 2 the mean levels of profitability of diversified and monoculture small-scale yellow corn farmers are not equal. 3. results and discussion 3.1. sociodemographic profiles of yellow corn farmers engaged in monoculture and diversified production systems 3.1.1. age in a monoculture production system, there is a noticeable age (table 1) distribution among respondents. among them, 6.67% fall within the younger age bracket (32-39), while 23.33% are aged between 40-47. the group aged 4855 constitutes 30.00% of respondents, with 20% falling between 56-63, and 16.67% between 64-71. the oldest group (72-79) represents 3.33% of respondents. in contrast, for diversified farming, the younger age group falls within the range of 32 to 39 years old, with 9 respondents, representing 30% of the total respondents. following this, the age bracket of 40 to 47 years old includes 11 respondents, accounting for 36.67% of the total respondents. subsequently, gross profit total revenue operating profit total revenue asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 351-364 354 there are 9 respondents aged between 48 and 55 years, constituting 30.00% of the total respondents. the age group of 56 to 63 years old encompasses 1 respondent, making up 3.33% of the total respondents. the result of the t-test indicates that there is no significant difference (p> 0.05) in terms of age between monoculture and diversified farmers. the older age groups tend to dominate both the monoculture and diversified production systems, and due to their advanced age, they are less inclined to embrace new agricultural methods currently being promoted. musaba and bwacha (2014) suggest that as farmers age, their efficiency decreases. moreover, older farmers are more resistant to adopting new farming techniques, preferring to adhere firmly to traditional practices. several factors dissuade younger individuals from entering farming, including high input costs and parental reluctance to see them follow in their agricultural footsteps. instead, many young people opt for urban or overseas employment opportunities. in the philippines, farmers perceive farming as a challenging livelihood, leading them to discourage their children from pursuing it. according to a report in the manila times (2023), farmers in the philippines tend to belong to the older age group, typically aged 55-60. table 1. age profile of small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. classification of respondents characteristic monoculture (n=30) diversified (n=30) class interval frequency percentage class interval frequency percentage age 32-39 2 6.67 32-39 9 30.00 40-47 7 23.33 40-47 11 36.67 48-55 9 30.00 48-55 9 30.00 56-63 6 20.00 56-63 1 3.33 64-71 5 16.67 64-71 0 0.00 72-79 1 3.33 72-79 0 0.00 average 54.37 51.1 mean difference 3.27 3.1.2. sex the data suggests that among monoculture farmers, a substantial majority of 76.67% are male, with females accounting for 23.33% of the total (table 2). in contrast, in diversified farming, data indicate a slight predominance of females, with approximately 53.33% of participants being female, while males make up 46.67% of the total respondents. research has shown that in many agricultural communities, traditional gender roles influence participation in farming activities. historically, farming has been perceived as a male-dominated occupation, with men primarily responsible for crop cultivation and land management. this could explain the higher proportion of male monoculture farmers (musaba & bwacha, 2014). moreover, access to resources such as land, finance, and agricultural inputs can also contribute to gender differences in farming. studies have found that women often face barriers to accessing these resources compared to men, limiting their participation in certain types of farming activities, such as monoculture farming, where substantial resources may be required (food and agriculture organization of the united nations, 2011). diversified farming systems, which often involve a mix of crops, livestock, and other income-generating activities, may offer more opportunities for women's participation. research suggests that women are more likely to engage in diversified farming as it allows them to utilize their diverse skill sets and contributes to household food security and income generation (doss, 2001). table 2. gender profile of small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. classification of respondents characteristic monoculture (n=30) diversified (n=30) frequency percentage frequency percentage sex male 23 76.67 14 46.67 female 7 23.33 16 53.33 3.1.3. marital status table 3 illustrates notable differences in marital status between monoculture and diversified farmers. among monoculture farmers, a significant majority (86.66%) are married, reflecting a traditional farming model where families work together in agricultural endeavors (musaba & bwacha, 2014). conversely, a smaller proportion of monoculture farmers are single (3.33%), suggesting that unmarried individuals are less commonly engaged in this type of farming. additionally, the presence of widowed/widower individuals (10%) among monoculture farmers indicates that some individuals continue farming even after experiencing the loss of a spouse, possibly influenced by economic necessity or a strong connection to farming as a way of life. in contrast, among diversified farmers, a majority (80%) are married, signaling the importance of family involvement in agricultural activities across different farming systems. however, a higher percentage of diversified farmers are single (16.66%) compared to monoculture farmers, suggesting a greater prevalence of independent farming pursuits or engagement outside traditional family structures. the similar presence of widowed/widower individuals (3.33%) among diversified farmers indicates a continuation of farming activities even after the loss of a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 351-364 355 spouse, underscoring the resilience and dedication of individuals within the agricultural sector, regardless of marital status. table 3. marital status of small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. classification of respondents characteristic monoculture (n=30) diversified (n=30) frequency percentage frequency percentage marital status single 1 3.33 5 16.67 married 26 86.67 24 80.00 widowed/ widower 3 10.00 1 3.33 separated 0 0.00 0 0.00 3.1.4. household size in monoculture farming, households (table 4) with 2-4 members and those with 5-7 members each represented 50% of the total, averaging 6 persons per household. conversely, among diversified yellow corn farmers, households with 2-4 members and 5-7 members each accounted for 40%, while those with 8-10 members made up 16.67%, and those with 14-16 members constituted 3.33%, averaging 5 persons per household. household size can influence farming practices and decision-making within agricultural households. larger households may have more labor available for farm work, potentially allowing monoculture farmers to manage larger farms or undertake more intensive farming practices. in contrast, smaller household sizes among diversified farmers may necessitate different approaches to farm management and labor allocation. since the level of significance is greater than (p>0.10), the t-test result indicates that there is no significant difference between monoculture and diversified farmers. the household size of farmers does not affect the level of on-farm performance; however, family labor can contribute to on-farm activities. family labor is more prevalent in monoculture farming compared to diversified farming. household size cannot directly affect the level of profitability of farms; however it can lessen the cost of hired labor through the additional contribution of family members on farms, according to agbugba, christian, and obi (2020). table 4. household size of small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. classification of respondents characteristic monoculture (n=30) diversified (n=30) class interval frequency percentage class interval frequency percentage household size 2-4 15 50 2-4 12 40 5-7 15 50 5-7 12 40 8-10 0 0 8-10 5 16 11-13 0 0 11-13 0 0 14-16 0 0 14-16 1 3.33 average 6 4.67 minimum 2 2 maximum 14 7 mean difference 1.33 3.1.5. educational attainment in monoculture farming (table 5), 26.67% of respondents have completed elementary education, while another 10.00% are elementary undergraduates. similarly, 26.67% have graduated from high school, while only 3.33% hold a college degree. additionally, 3.33% are college undergraduates, and 6.67% have had no formal schooling. these findings suggest that a significant portion of monoculture farmers have attained education levels ranging from elementary to high school, with fewer individuals having pursued higher education. conversely, among diversified farmer respondents, 23.33% have completed elementary education, while 26.67% are elementary undergraduates. additionally, 33.33% have graduated from high school. furthermore, only 3.33% hold a college degree, and there are no respondents with no formal schooling. these results indicate a similar pattern of educational attainment among diversified farmers, with a notable proportion having completed elementary and high school education. however, compared to monoculture farmers, a slightly lower percentage of diversified farmers hold college degrees. the result of the t-test indicates that there is no significant difference (p> 0.05) in terms of educational attainment between monoculture and diversified farmers. the educational background of farmers can influence their farming practices, decision-making abilities, and the adoption of new technologies and techniques. understanding the educational profile of farmers is crucial for designing targeted agricultural extension programs and initiatives aimed at enhancing productivity, sustainability, and resilience in farming communities. according to the study of bayacag and rola (2001), educational attainment is an important factor affecting the technical efficiency of farmers. the study indicates that the majority of corn farmers in bukidnon have the same level of educational attainment, and their efficiency also depends on the support they receive from their spouses. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 351-364 356 table 5. educational attainment of small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. classification of respondents characteristic monoculture (n=30) diversified (n=30) frequency percentage frequency percentage elementary graduate 8 26.67 7 23.33 elementary undergraduate 3 10 8 26.67 highschool undergraduate 7 23.33 2 6.67 highschool graduate 8 26.67 10 33.33 college undergraduate 1 3.33 2 6.67 college graduate 1 3.33 1 3.33 no formal schooling 2 6.67 0 0 3.1.6. tenure status among monoculture farmers (table 6), the majority (73.33%) are share tenants, while a minority (26.67%) operate as owner-operators. conversely, among diversified farmers, the highest proportion (43.33%) are owneroperators, indicating a larger presence of independent farm owners within this group. additionally, 40.00% of diversified farmers are share tenants, suggesting a significant reliance on shared agricultural resources or land. the remaining 16.67% are lessees, indicating a smaller but still notable presence of farmers who lease land for agricultural purposes within diversified farming systems. these findings highlight differences in land ownership and tenure arrangements between monoculture and diversified farming practices, potentially influencing factors such as decision-making autonomy, resource access, and long-term sustainability within each farming system. the composition of farmers, particularly in terms of land tenure, plays a crucial role in shaping agricultural practices and outcomes. barrett, bellemare, and hou (2016) highlights the significance of land tenure arrangements in influencing agricultural productivity and sustainability. share tenancy, common among monoculture farmers, often entails limited decision-making power and access to resources for tenants compared to owner-operators. this may lead to inefficiencies and challenges in implementing sustainable farming practices, as tenants may prioritize short-term gains over long-term investments in land stewardship (jayne, chamberlin, & headey, 2018). conversely, diversified farming systems, where owner-operators dominate, may offer greater autonomy and incentives for sustainable land management practices. studies by shiferaw, prasanna, and hellin (2014) emphasize the positive impact of owner-operated farms on agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability. owneroperators are more likely to invest in soil conservation, crop diversification, and other sustainable practices, leading to improved resilience and long-term viability of farming systems. the presence of share-tenants and lessees among diversified farmers underscores the diversity of land tenure arrangements within this group. this diversity may reflect varying access to capital, land availability, and local agricultural policies (ali & byerlee, 2002). table 6. tenurial status of small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. classification of respondents characteristic monoculture (n=30) diversified (n=30) frequency percentage frequency percentage owner-operator 8 26.67 13 43.33 lessee 0 0 5 16.67 share-tenant 22 73.33 12 40 3.1.7. years of farming experience the data (table 7) indicate that in monoculture farming, 5 respondents (16.67%) have been engaged in farming for 4-13 years. additionally, 10 farmers (33.33%) have 14-23 years of farming experience. eight farmers (26.67%) have been farming for 24-33 years. both the 34-43 and 44-53 year intervals have 3 farmers each, representing 10% of the total respondents per interval. lastly, 1 respondent (3.33%) has 54-63 years of farming experience. in comparison, among diversified farmers, 30% have 4-13 years of farming experience. the 14-23 year interval includes 36.67% of the respondents. another 30% have been farming for 24-33 years. only 3.33% of respondents have 34-43 years of experience, and none have 44-53 or 54-63 years of experience. both monoculture and diversified households have an average of 30 years of farming experience. the minimum farming experience is 4 years for monoculture and 1 year for diversified farming. the maximum experience is 50 years for monoculture farmers and 38 years for diversified farmers. from this data, both groups have a similar average number of years of farming experience, with some differences in the distribution across different intervals. diversified households have slightly more respondents with fewer years of farming experience (4-13 years), while monoculture households have a more even distribution across the various intervals. farmers with greater years of experience are said to have more acquired knowledge and expertise in managing farms, as specified by mayo et al. (2023). the result of t-test showed that there is a significant difference (p<0.05) in terms of years of farming experience between the two farming systems. since both farming practices majorly belonged to the older age group, this indicates that most of the farmers have been farming for long years. however, this long year of experience made them unwilling to adapt to new farming practices, leading them to stick to the old farming practice, which is monoculture. agbugba et al. (2020) state that years of experience in corn farming can affect farmers' performance and yield output in cultivating corn. this shows that farmers have greater knowledge through their primary experiences in planting corn. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 351-364 357 table 7. years of farming experience of small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. classification of respondents characteristic monoculture (n=30) diversified (n=30) class interval frequency percentage class interval frequency percentage years of farming experience 4-13 5 16.67 4-13 9 30 14-23 10 33.33 14-23 11 36.67 24-33 8 26.67 24-33 9 30.00 34-43 3 10.00 34-43 1 3.33 44-53 3 10.00 44-53 0 0 54-63 1 3.33 54-63 0 0 average 26.03 19.2 minimum 4 1 maximum 50 38 3.1.8. attended training seminars in monoculture farming (table 8), 13 respondents (43.33%) attended training sessions, while 17 farmers (56.67%) did not participate in any training or seminars. similarly, among diversified farmers, 13 respondents (43.33%) attended seminars, and 17 respondents (56.67%) did not. according to kilpatrick (1997), farmers who attend training and seminars are more likely to adopt new farming practices when they see clear opportunities and potential profits. cabangbang and quicoy (2019) recommend that both government and non-government agencies should continue to offer training programs and seminars to help farmers, whether practicing monoculture or diversified farming, enhance their farming skills. table 8. attendance to trainings and seminars of small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. classification of respondents characteristic monoculture (n=30) diversified (n=30) frequency percentage frequency percentage attended 13 43.33 13 43.33 did not attend 17 56.67 17 56.67 3.1.9. income levels the data (table 9) shows that in monoculture farming, most respondents fall within the lower income ranges of 200-8,500 and 8,600-16,800, representing about 46.67% and 40% of the total respondents, respectively. additionally, 10% of respondents (3 people) had incomes between 16,900-25,100, and none were in the 33,500-41,700 range. only one respondent fell within the 41,800-50,000 income bracket. for diversified farming, 15 respondents (50%) earned between 200-8,500, and 13 respondents (43.33%) earned between 8,600-16,800. there was one respondent each (3.33%) in the 25,200 to 33,400 and 33,500 to 41,700 income ranges. the t-test result indicates no significant difference (p>0.10) in monthly income between the groups, suggesting that both monoculture and diversified farmers have similar income levels. the average income for monoculture farmers is php 9,353.33, which is slightly higher than the php 9,163.33 for diversified farmers. table 9. income levels of small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. classification of respondents characteristic monoculture (n=30) diversified (n=30) class interval frequency percentage class interval frequency percentage income level 200-8500 14 46.67 200-8500 15 50 200-8500 14 46.67 200-8500 15 50 8600-16800 12 40 8600-16800 13 43.33 16900-25100 3 10 16900-25100 0 0 2520033400 0 0 25200-33400 1 3.33 33500-41700 0 0 33500-41700 1 3.33 41800-50000 1 3.33 41800-50000 0 0 average 9353.33 9163.33 minimum 200 500 maximum 23000 35000 mean difference 190 3.1.10. credit availment among diversified farmers (table 10), 20 respondents (67%) availed themselves of credit, while 10 respondents (33.33%) did not. in contrast, 60% of monoculture farmers have used credit, while 40% have not. this data suggests that credit usage is more common among diversified farmers, who grow a variety of crops (such as corn, tomatoes, mung beans, and squash) and need credit for fertilizers and other inputs. monoculture farmers, however, primarily use credit for seedlings and fertilizers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 351-364 358 access to credit significantly impacts the technical efficiency of farmers in yellow maize (corn) farming, as highlighted by cabangbang and quicoy (2019). this is particularly important because farmers in the philippines often belong to poor households; without access to credit, they would struggle to cultivate their lands due to rising prices of farm inputs and decreasing prices of local agricultural products. table 10. credit availment of small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. classification of respondents characteristic monoculture (n=30) diversified (n=30) frequency percentage frequency percentage availed 18 60 20 67 did not availed 12 40 10 33 3.2. cultural management practices of small-scale yellow corn farmers of cabagan, isabela the comparative cultural management practices of small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela, are presented in table 11. 3.2.1. land preparation the use of the traditional plow (araro) is more common among diversified farmers, with 7 respondents, compared to only 1 in monoculture farming. in contrast, tractor usage is significantly higher in monoculture farming, with 28 farmers compared to 16 in diversified farming. additionally, the mixed usage of araro and tractor is more prevalent in diversified farming, with 7 respondents, while only 1 respondent in monoculture farming uses this mixed approach. diversified farmers, on the other hand, tend to cultivate different crops with the help of family members to reduce the need for hired labor and lower the costs of land preparation and planting. this indicates that since diversified farmers have the availability of animal power, they are dependent on araro. meanwhile, monoculture farms cultivate corn for commercial purposes, which demands them to use tractors for faster land preparation. 3.2.2. planting for planting methods, the data shows that the majority of monoculture farmers use mechanical seeders, with 29 respondents, while only 1 monoculture farmer uses a combination of seeder and manual planting. in contrast, among diversified farmers, 9 use mechanical seeders, 11 practice manual planting, and 10 use a combination of both seeder and manual methods. manual planting is more common in diversified farming, with 11 respondents, compared to none in monoculture farming. the use of both manual and seeder methods is also more prevalent in diversified farming, with 10 respondents, while only 1 monoculture farmer uses this combined approach. in comparing the two farming systems, monoculture farmers are more likely to use mechanical seeders, as they typically plant a single crop, making the use of machinery more efficient and time-saving. diversified farmers, who plant multiple crops, often find it unsuitable to rely solely on seeders, as some crops require manual planting. a study by mesfin, fufa, and haji (2011) recommends promoting diversified farming by providing access to affordable rented machinery, as well as improving access to market roads and irrigation systems, to meet the needs of diversified farmers who rely more heavily on manual planting methods. 3.2.3. water management in general, farmers primarily rely on rain to supply water for their crops. the data indicate that only 2 respondents in monoculture farming use pump wells to irrigate their farms. in contrast, among diversified farmers, 11 respondents use pump wells, and 5 also irrigate their crops. the use of water in diversified farming exceeds that of monoculture farming. given that diversified farming involves cultivating various types of crops, it necessitates higher water usage. conversely, monoculture farmers mainly rely on rainfall to meet their farms' water needs. 3.2.4. weed management in both monoculture and diversified farming, the use of synthetic herbicides to control weeds is prevalent. among monoculture farmers, 29 respondents apply herbicides using sprayers, while only one respondent applies them manually. similarly, in diversified farming, a total of 28 respondents apply herbicides with sprayers, while 2 respondents opt for manual application. while crop diversification aims to incorporate functional biodiversity, thus potentially reducing weed emergence, diversified farms still experience negative impacts on weed seed emergence, as noted by sharma, shrestha, kunwar, and tseng (2021). 3.2.5. fertilizer application manual fertilizer application is a common practice in both monoculture and diversified systems. all respondents from both groups reported using fertilizers, including basal and side-dressing applications, which are essential for corn farming. however, this widespread use of fertilizers contributes to the environmental concerns associated with corn farming, as highlighted in the study by abbas et al. (2022). the emissions of nitrogen-based chemical fertilizers, both on and off farms, significantly contribute to global warming. this not only poses risks to human health but also leads to other environmental issues. therefore, despite its agricultural importance, corn production is often criticized for its environmental sustainability challenges. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 351-364 359 3.2.6. pesticide application for pesticide application, 10 farmers under monoculture have applied pesticide using a sprayer, while in diversified farming, 16 farmers also apply pesticide using a sprayer. the data implies that diversified farmers used pesticides more than monoculture farmers. a study stated that crop diversification is promoted to lessen pesticide usage, highlighted by thomine, mumford, rusch, and desneux (2022). however, the majority of farmers in cabagan, isabela, are not knowledgeable enough in pest management. instead of adapting crop diversification to reduce synthetic pesticide usage, they tend to use more of it due to their diverse crops, as stated by sharratt and mcwilliams (2005). table 11. cultural management practices of monoculture and diversified small-scale corn farmers respondents in municipality of cabagan, isabela. production activity cultural management practices monoculture diversified land preparation araro (1)(manual plow of the soil) tractor (28)(plowing with mechanical) araro/ tractor1 araro (7)-manual plow of the soil) tractor (16) (plowing with mechanical) araro/ tractor7 seed preparation selecting high quality seed techniques such as seed priming or coating planting sowing seeds, used machinery such seed drills or planters. seeder29 manual0 seeder/ manual1 direct seeding and transplanting seeder9 manual11 seeder/ manual10 water management rainfed pumpwell2 irrigation0 irrigated (pumpwell) pumpwell11 irrigation5 weed management herbicides and mechanical methods such as tilling or cultivation. herbicide/ sprayer-29 herbicide/ manual-1 cultural, mechanical, and biological approach herbicide/ sprayer-28 herbicide/ manual-2 fertilizer synthetic fertilizer manual-30 organic fertilizer such as compose or manure along with synthetic fertilizer. manual-30 pesticide not practiced chemical pesticides. sprayer10 sprayed chemical pesticide. sprayer10 harvesting manual and mechanized combine harvester -19 manual11 manual/mechanized combine harvester -19 manual-11 drying sun drying and mechanical drying method (grain dryers or dehydrators). combination of sun drying and air-drying methods 3.3. profitability analysis of small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela 3.3.1. labor utilization per hectare of monoculture and diversified small-scale yellow corn farmers table 12 presents the labor utilization per hectare of monoculture and diversified small-scale yellow corn farmers. to prepare one hectare of land for planting, monoculture farming requires an average of 2.31 man-days, which represents 13.45% of the total man-days needed for the entire production period. in comparison, diversified farming requires 2.94 man-days, accounting for 12.55% of the total production days. in seed preparation and planting, monoculture farming requires an average of 1.85 man-days, which accounts for 10.77% of the total man-days. in contrast, diversified farming demands an average of 6.19 man-days, making up 26.42% of the total production days. this indicates that labor utilization is higher in diversified farming due to the additional time needed to prepare and plant the various seeds used in this approach. for water management, monoculture farmers depend entirely on rainfall. in contrast, diversified farming requires additional water supply for some crops, particularly in regions with distinct wet and dry seasons like isabela, as noted by lansigan, de los santos, and hansen (2007). for fertilizer application, monoculture farming utilizes an average of 4.01 man-days, accounting for 23.35% of total production man-days, while diversified farming utilizes an average of 4.78 man-days, corresponding to 20.40% of total man-days. in terms of pesticide application, monoculture farming requires an average of 0.95 man-days, making up 5.53% of the total man-days. in comparison, diversified farming uses an average of 0.57 man-days, representing 2.43% of the total production days. lastly, in terms of harvesting and drying, monoculture farming requires an average of 5.84 days, accounting for 34.01% of the total production man-days. conversely, diversified farming takes 5.40 days on average, representing 23.05% of the total man-days. in summary, the average labor utilization per hectare in monoculture farming is 17.17 man-days, whereas in diversified farming, it is 23.43 man-days. the result of the t-test indicates a significant difference (p<0.01) between monoculture and diversified farming. this suggests that the two farming systems differ significantly in terms of labor requirements per hectare, with diversified farming requiring more labor compared to monoculture farming. labor plays a crucial role in farming; a lack of labor or manpower affects the overall asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 351-364 360 productivity, profitability, and long-term sustainability of all agricultural commodities. labor requirements are a crucial aspect of both monoculture and diversified farming methods. in a diversified system, the efficiency of labor is positively affected by diversification and involvement in agroecological networks (ferguson & lovell, 2019). table 12. labor utilization per hectare of monoculture and diversified small-scale yellow corn farmers. production activity classification of respondents monoculture diversified manday percentage manday percentage land preparation 2.31 13.45 2.94 12.55 seed preparation and planting 1.85 10.77 6.19 26.42 water management 0.00 0.00 0.61 2.60 weed management 2.21 12.87 2.94 12.55 fertilizer application 4.01 23.35 4.78 20.40 pesticide application 0.95 5.53 0.57 2.43 harvesting and drying 5.84 34.01 5.40 23.05 total 17.17 100.00 23.43 100.00 3.3.2. input utilization per hectare of monoculture and diversified small-scale yellow corn farmers the majority of farmers (table 13) cultivate an average farm size of 0.84 hectares in monoculture and 0.92 hectares in diversified farming. in terms of seed usage (kg/ha), monoculture farmers use an average of 24.87 kg/ha, while diversified farmers use 17.74 kg/ha on average. diversified farmers apply synthetic fertilizer with an average of 259 kg/ha, which is less than the average of 331.98 kg/ha in monoculture. the result of t-test shows that there is no significant difference (p>0.05) in terms of farm size between monoculture and diversified farming. regarding pesticide application, monoculture farms apply pesticides less frequently with an average of 2.48l/ha, while diversified farms have an average pesticide application of 3.8 l/ha. according to afari-sefa, asare-bediako, kenyon, and micah (2015), monoculture farmers tend to not used pesticide due to a lack of knowledge in managing pest and they disregard the potential harmful effects of these chemicals on human health and the environment specified. in terms of hired labor (man-days/ha), monoculture farmers hire on-farm laborers with an average of 14.46 man-days/ha, slightly more than the average of 14.17 man-days/ha in diversified farming. table 13. input utilization per hectare of monoculture and diversified small-scale yellow corn farmers. material inputs classification of respondents monoculture diversified quantity quantity average farm size (ha) 0.84 0.92 seed (kg/ha) 24.87 17.47 fertilizer (kg/ha) 331.98 259 pesticide (l/ha) 2.48 3.8 herbicide (l/ ha) 4.18 3.89 labor hired labor (manday/ha) 14.46 14.17 3.3.3. breakdown cost per hectare of monoculture and diversified small-scale yellow corn farmers table 14 presents the breakdown of cash costs per hectare for monoculture and diversified small-scale corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. monoculture farmers incurred a total cash cost of php29,251.16, while diversified farmers spent less at php23,020.90. in terms of labor, monoculture farmers spent php7,925 (27.09%) on hired labor and php241.11 (0.82%) on family labor, whereas diversified farmers allocated php7,259 (31.53%) for hired labor and php1,141.67 (4.95%) for family labor, indicating a higher reliance on unpaid household labor. seed expenses were slightly higher in monoculture farms at php7,107.93 (24.29%) compared to php5,918.25 (25.71%) in diversified systems. fertilizer accounted for the largest share of monoculture cash costs at php10,591.61 (36.20%), while diversified farms spent php5,513.89 (23.95%) in this category. pesticide and herbicide costs were also slightly higher in diversified farms, with php530.42 (2.30%) and php2,658.29 (11.54%) respectively, compared to php476.47 (1.62%) and php2,908.84 (9.94%) in monoculture systems. these figures indicate that monoculture farming generally involves higher cash expenditures across most input categories. table 14. breakdown of cash cost per hectare of monoculture and diversified small-scale corn farmers respondents in cabagan, isabela. costs classification of respondents monoculture diversified amount (php) percentage amount (php) percentage labor hired 7925 27.09 7259 31.53 family 241.11 0.82 1141.67 4.95 seed 7107.93 24.29 5918.25 25.71 fertilizer 10591.61 36.20 5513.89 23.95 pesticide 476.47 1.62 530.42 2.30 herbicide 2908.84 9.94 2658.29 11.54 total cash cost 29251.16 100 23020.9 100 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 351-364 361 non-cash costs (table 15) show that all monoculture farmers (100% of respondents) reported using family labor (unpaid), valued at php 762.78. in contrast, diversified farmers reported a higher non-cash cost for family labor, amounting to php1,787.78, representing 48.09% of the respondents. additionally, diversified farmers received seeds from the department of agriculture (da) valued at php822.22, accounting for 22.11%. they also benefited from non-cash fertilizer inputs worth php648.88 (17.45%), pesticide support worth php443.33 (11.92%), and herbicides valued at php15.00 (0.40%). table 15. breakdown of non-cash cost per hectare of monoculture and diversified small-scale corn farmers respondents in cabagan, isabela. costs classification of respondents monoculture diversified amount (php) percentage amount (php) percentage family labor (unpaid) 762.78 100 1787.78 48.09 seeds (da) hybrid seeds opv seeds vegetable seeds 0 0 822.22 22.11 fertilizer 0 0 648.88 17.45 pesticide 0 0 443.33 11.92 herbicide 0 0 15 0.40 total non-cash cost 762.78 100 3717.21 100 table 16 compares the fixed costs incurred by monoculture and diversified corn farmers per hectare. monoculture farmers had a total fixed cost of php1,113.02, while diversified farmers spent significantly more at php2,589.39. the distribution of fixed cost items shows differences in farming practices and resource use between the two systems. monoculture farmers allocated the largest portion of their fixed costs to tractor use (php 480), accounting for 43.12% of their total fixed expenses. in contrast, diversified farmers spent less on tractor use (php 277.78), representing only 10.72% of their fixed costs. this suggests that diversified farms rely less on mechanized land preparation. for knapsack sprayers, diversified farmers incurred a higher cost (php 732.15 or 28.27%) compared to monoculture farmers (php 535.85 or 48.14%), indicating a greater reliance on manual or semi-mechanized spraying methods. a key distinction lies in the cost of water machines (e.g., water pumps). diversified farmers invested significantly more in this category—php1,549.39, comprising 59.83% of their fixed costs compared to only php97.17 (8.73%) for monoculture farmers. this implies that diversified farms may use more controlled or varied irrigation practices. table 16. fixed cost and total cost per hectare of monoculture and diversified small-scale corn farmers respondents in cabagan, isabela. costs classification of respondents monoculture diversified amount (php) percentage amount (php) percentage tractor 480 43.12 277.78 10.72 knapsack sprayer 535.85 48.14 732.15 28.27 machine for water 97.17 8.73 1549.39 59.83 total fixed costs 1113.02 100 2589.39 100 3.3.4. yield per hectare of monoculture and diversified small-scale yellow corn farmers the yield (table 17) for monoculture farming ranged from 200 kg/ha to 8,000 kg/ha, with an average yield of approximately 4,034.34 kg/ha. for diversified farming, the yield ranged from 300 kg/ha to 7,700 kg/ha, but with a lower average yield of approximately 3,091.13 kg/ha. despite these ranges, both monoculture and diversified farmers generally achieve higher average yields per hectare. table 17. yield per hectare distribution of monoculture and diversified small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. yield (kg/ha) classification of respondents monoculture diversified number of farmers percentage number of farmers percentage interval 200-1500 4 13.33 8 26.67 1600-2900 10 33.33 7 23.33 3000-3300 2 6.67 1 3.33 3400-4700 2 6. 67 7 23.33 4800-6100 8 26.67 3 10.00 6200-7500 2 6.67 2 6.67 7600-8900 2 6.67 2 6.67 average 4034.34 3091.13 mean difference 943.21 minimum 200 300 maximum 8000 7700 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 351-364 362 the results of the t-test indicate that there is no significant difference (p>0.10) in yields between monoculture and diversified farming systems. this indicates that aside from farming practices, there are other factors that determine the yield of crops. according to hapinat (2023), both farming practices face rapid insect pest population growth, rendering control measures ineffective. additionally, changes in weather patterns due to climate change threaten corn production, particularly for open-pollinated varieties. unpredictable droughts and excessive rainfall have disrupted traditional planting and harvesting schedules, as discussed by perez, smith, and johnson (2020). 3.3.5. cost and return per hectare of monoculture and diversified small-scale yellow corn farmers monoculture farmers obtained (table 18) a total return of php 98,779.31 per hectare, consisting of php 82,906.69 in cash income and php 15,872.62 in non-cash income. in contrast, diversified farmers generated a total return of php 57,825.90 per hectare, with php 50,679.73 from cash income and php 7,146.17 from non-cash income. the results of the t-test indicate a significant difference (p<0.05) between the total returns of monoculture and diversified farming systems. this data suggests that, strictly from a financial perspective, monoculture farming is more profitable than diversified farming. however, factors like soil health, biodiversity, sustainability, and risk management might also play a crucial role in deciding the farming approach, which is not captured by monetary returns alone. table 18. cost and return per hectare of monoculture and diversified small-scale yellow corn farmers in cabagan, isabela. item classification of respondents amount (php) monoculture diversified income cash income 82906.69 50679.73 noncash income 15872.62 7146.17 total returns 98779.31 57825.9 cash costs labor hired 7925 7295 family 241.11 1141.67 seed 7107.93 5918.25 fertilizer 10591.61 5513.89 pesticide 476.47 530.42 herbicide 2908.84 2658.29 total cash cost 29251.16 23020.96 noncash costs family labor (unpaid) 762.78 1787.78 seeds (da) 0 822.22 fertilizer 0 648.88 total noncash costs 762.78 3717.21 fixed cost tractor 480 277.78 knapsack sprayer 535.85 732.15 manual weeding 0 30 machine for water 97.17 1549.39 total fixed costs 1113.02 2589.39 total costs 31126.96 29327.56 net return 67652.35 28498.34 mean difference 39127.01 3.3.6. gross and operating profit margin ratios per hectare of monoculture and diversified of small-scale corn farmers the gross profit margin ratio (table 19) measures the money a business makes after accounting for the cost of doing business, specifically the cost of goods sold (cogs). in contrast, the operating profit margin ratio reflects the earning power of a farm business from its operations, taking into account operating expenses such as rent, utilities, wages, and depreciation costs. monoculture farmers have a higher gross profit margin ratio compared to diversified farmers. for every peso of income generated, monoculture farmers retain 0.82 centavos, with 0.18 centavos going towards the cost of goods sold. diversified farmers, on the other hand, retain 0.67 centavos per peso of income, with 0.33 centavos allocated to cogs. this suggests that monoculture farming leaves farmers with a larger portion of their income after covering the direct costs of production. similarly, the operating profit margin ratio is higher for monoculture farmers than for diversified farmers. monoculture farmers have an operating profit margin of 0.68, while diversified farmers have a ratio of 0.57. this means that monoculture farmers retain 0.68 centavos per peso of income after accounting for operating expenses, whereas diversified farmers retain 0.57 centavos per peso. this indicates that monoculture farmers are more efficient in converting their income into operating profit, even after covering their operational costs. however, the data also suggests that monoculture farming typically requires more inputs, such as fertilizers and pesticides. this is because growing the same crop over large areas can lead to increased susceptibility to pests and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 351-364 363 diseases, as well as nutrient depletion in the soil. these factors necessitate the use of more chemical inputs to maintain crop health and yields. in contrast, diversified farming can offer savings on labor and machinery costs. different crops have varied needs and maintenance schedules, which can complement each other. for instance, certain crops may fix nitrogen in the soil, reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers for subsequent crops. this interdependence can lead to more efficient use of resources and lower overall input costs. monoculture farming appears to offer higher gross and operating profit margins, it also entails higher input costs due to the need for intensive management practices. diversified farming, although having lower profit margins, can benefit from reduced input costs and more sustainable practices that improve long-term farm viability. table 19. gross and operating profit margin ratios per hectare of small-scale corn farmers in municipality of cabagan, isabela. item farming method monoculture diversified mean difference total returns (php) 98779.31 57825.9 40953.41 total costs (php) 31126.96 29327.56 1799.4 net return (php) 67652.35 28498.34 39154.01 gross profit margin ratio 0.82 0.67 0.15 operating profit margin ratio 0.68 0.57 0.11 4. conclusion older farmers dominate both monoculture and diversified systems. monoculture farms are predominantly male, whereas diversified farms have more females, with most farmers in both systems being married and having elementary to high school education. both groups have similar income levels and farming experience, but diversified farmers avail themselves of credit more. monoculture farming relies more heavily on tractors, whereas diversified farms utilize a combination of tractors and traditional plows. monoculture farms primarily employ mechanical seeders, while diversified farms tend to use manual seeding methods. diversified farms make greater use of pump wells and irrigation systems, in contrast to monoculture farms, which mostly depend on rainwater. both farming systems use herbicides, with monoculture having a slightly higher usage. pesticide use is minimal in both systems. monoculture farming utilizes more man-days for land preparation and fertilizer application. in contrast, diversified farmers have higher family labor participation and more man-days for seed preparation, planting, and water management. monoculture incurs higher total cash costs compared to diversified farming. monoculture spends more on labor and other farm inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides. monoculture farmers earned a significantly higher total return per hectare (php 98,779.31) compared to diversified farmers (php 57,825.90). while monoculture farming appears more profitable financially, non-monetary factors such as sustainability, soil health, and risk management are also important considerations when choosing a farming system. funding: this research is supported by isabela state university, philippines. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation 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(2022). comparative analysis of the profitability and productivity of small-sacale organic and conventional rice farming in tumauini, isabela, 2021. unpublised bs thesis 2022. department of agricultural and applied economics, college of economics and management, university of the philippines los banos, college, laguna. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://www.searca.org/press/aging-farmers-could-add-food-insecurity https://www.searca.org/press/aging-farmers-could-add-food-insecurity https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150156 192 productivity of inbred rice applied with biochar under different planting distances darwin m. cacala angelo r. santosb marilene c. hipolitoc sheila rose f. moralesd aisabela state university, cabagan campus, philippines. b,c,dnueva ecija university of science and technology, philippines.  darwin.m.cacal@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 27 march 2022 revised: 19 may 2023 accepted: 23 june 2023 published: 25 july 2023 keywords biochar application inbred rice productivity return on investment rice farming sustainable agriculture yield. this study explores the influence of varying biochar rates and planting distances on the growth and yield of inbred rice. the randomized complete block design (rcbd) implemented a twofactorial design with four biochar rates (none, 25 mt/ha, 20 mt/ha, 15 mt/ha) and three planting distances (20 cm x 20 cm, 20 cm x 25 cm, 20 cm x 30 cm). the 20 mt/ha biochar application (a3) manifested the highest mean outcomes for plant height, productive tillers, panicle length, weight of 1,000 grains, filled grains percentage, and estimated yield. however, the highest mean biomass yield was observed with 25 mt/ha biochar (a2). the 20 cm x 20 cm planting distance (b1) displayed the highest mean panicle length, while b2 (20 cm x 25 cm) produced the highest filled grains percentage and lowest unfilled grains percentage. b3 (20 cm x 30 cm) showed the highest mean values for plant height, productive tillers, biomass yield, estimated yield, and weight of 1,000 grains. the highest yield and return on investment (roi) were seen in treatment 6 (25 mt/ha of biochar at a 20 cm x 30 cm planting distance), revealing that increased biochar application results in higher yield at a 20 cm x 30 cm planting distance. the findings suggest that biochar application can augment the growth and yield of inbred rice across diverse planting distances. contribution/originality: this study uniquely examines the effects of various biochar applications and planting distances on inbred rice yield. the methodology employs a two-factorial randomized complete block design (rcbd) for a comprehensive analysis. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4829 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: cacal, d. m., santos, a. r., hipolito, m. c., & morales, s. r. f. (2023). productivity of inbred rice applied with biochar under different planting distances. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3), 192– 205. 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4829 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction agriculturists and farmers are facing the challenge of increasing food production, which has led to a surge of interest in climate-resilient agriculture. effective collaboration and proficient management are crucial to achieving success in diverse fields such as agriculture, urban planning, and business. particularly, success indicators related to purchasing decisions centre on factors such as supply conditions, competitive advancements, social responsibility, operational processes, organizational structures, product availability, special promotions, authority, status, empathy, persuasiveness, age, income level, and risk tolerance, as mentioned by santos (2020). the recent surge of interest in asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 3 (2023): 192-205. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7962-9367 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7460-2624 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0455-4097 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4642-4936 mailto:darwin.m.cacal@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 193 climate-resilient agriculture (santos & constantino, 2021) has led to biochar being explored as a potential solution to fight climate change and improve soil fertility. biochar, which is produced by carbonizing organic materials in an oxygen-depleted atmosphere, has been steadily gaining research interest and is considered a suitable method for long-term carbon storage and soil improvement (shackley & sohi, 2010). to foster its success, governments and stakeholders must coordinate their efforts, and robust economies are crucial to agricultural success (santos, 2023). additionally, farmers’ human resource management practices are essential to improving performance and achieving business success (santos, 2023). biochar derived from the partial combustion of rice hulls is recognized as a superior soil fertilizer and conditioner, rich in phosphorous (p), potassium (k), calcium (ca), magnesium (mg), and crucial micronutrients for crop growth. the loosely composed structure of biochar enhances clay soil porosity and fortifies the soil structure by augmenting bulk density, water-holding capacity, and aeration. filiberto and gaunt (2013) demonstrated the diverse impacts of biochar on several crops: it enhanced corn yield by 140% and cowpea yield by 100%, and radishes grown with poultry litter biochar witnessed a 96% increase. the application of biochar leads to improved above-ground productivity, crop yield, soil microbial biomass, rhizobia nodulation, and plant potassium tissue concentration, in addition to enhancements in soil p, k, total n, and c levels compared to control conditions (biederman & harpole, 2013). moreover, biochar from biosolids or sewage can elevate yields. for instance, applying 10 tons/ha of wastewater sludge biochar to cherry tomatoes led to a 64% yield increase compared to control soil conditions. rawat, saxena, and sanwal (2019) recommended using biochar to remediate contaminated agricultural soil, enhance soil fertility by decreasing acidity, and increase nutrient availability. biochar supplementation improves soil-plant-water interactions, resulting in superior photosynthetic performance and enhanced nitrogen and water use efficiency, thus remediating biotic stress and bolstering crop productivity. consequently, biochar is suggested as a soil amendment for long-term carbon sink restoration. inbred rice, which retains genetic consistency across generations, dominates farmers' fields. agricultural researchers advocate for the use of improved inbred or open-pollinated rice varieties (opvs), such as rc 222, especially for farmers struggling with the cost of hybrid seeds. the results of this study will be a great help to farmers in terms of increasing crop yield and net income (return on investment; roi), lowering the cost of inputs, improving the tiller number and panicle length, improving soil properties, increasing the absorption of nutrients by plants in soils, and reducing soil compaction. 2. materials and methods 2.1. time and place of the study the study was conducted in an area that has been cultivated for rice production for almost 50 years. it is a lowland irrigated area near the residential area of zone 6 (lungot), barangay bantug, tumauini, isabela. the study was conducted during the wet cropping season from august to november 2022. 2.2. biochar preparation this study aimed to explore the effectiveness of using biochar as a soil amendment in improving soil fertility and crop productivity. to make biochar, rice hull was carbonized using an open type carbonizer made of galvanized iron sheet. other materials used in the process included wood, used papers, a shovel, a weighing scale, and a knapsack sprayer for watering. the steps involved in the process included producing fire, covering it with the carbonizer, adding fresh rice hull, and moving the rice hull from the bottom to the top of the burning mound. after the rice hull was burned completely, it was sprinkled with water to extinguish the char, which was then allowed to cool before being placed in a clean and dry sack for storage. the study produced 6 sacks (150 kgs) of biochar from 12 sacks (300 kgs) of rice hull. different amounts of biochar were applied in three different plots: a2 (25 mt of biochar per hectare) received 30 kgs of biochar per plot, a3 (20 mt of biochar per hectare) received 24 kgs of biochar per plot, and a4 (15 mt of biochar per hectare) received 18 kgs of biochar per plot. the use of personal protective equipment such as masks, boots, and jackets is recommended during the production of biochar. 2.3. rice seed variety the study utilized seeds of the variety national seed industry council (nsic) rc 222, which is an international rice research institute (irri)-bred variety also known as tubigan 18. this variety is characterized as an early maturing one with a maturity period of 114 days when transplanted. it consistently shows good performance in both transplanted and direct seeded crops, with a high yield advantage during the wet season ranging from 12.1% to 13.2%. the yield potential of nsic rc 222 is about 6 mt/ha at 14% moisture content, according to irri in 2019. 2.4. seedling production to break the dormancy of the nsic rc 222 seeds, they were dried in the sun for at least 3 hours and then soaked in running water for 24 hours. the seeds were then placed in an incubator for 24 hours until they germinated, with the seeds turned every 12 hours to ensure uniform germination. the pre-germinated seeds were spread on a wet seedbed at a rate of 50 grams per square meter, 18 days after seeding. the seedbed was prepared by ploughing once and harrowing twice to break up the soil and ensure good soil tilth. the seedbed measured 1 meter by 5 meters, with the surface levelled using a wooden plank to ensure even water distribution. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 194 2.5. care of seedlings after 7 days, the seedlings were irrigated at 2-3 centimetres depth. after 10 days, the seedlings were fertilized with urea (46-0-0) to produce vigorous seedlings. the presence of golden apple snail (gas; pomaceae canaliculata), was controlled by hand picking. 2.6. land preparation 1. the experimental area was initially ploughed and tilled in saturated or flooded conditions using a hand tractor. 2. the field was flooded with water for 1 week prior to ploughing in order to soften the clods and decompose the green manures, such as rice straw, rice stalks and weeds. 3. dikes were constructed on every block to maintain the depth of water in every plot and minimize water losses through seepage. 4. the second ploughing and harrowing took place at a week’s interval to produce puddled and levelled soil. 5. the field was levelled using an animal-drawn wooden harrow. 2.7. biochar analysis and application analysis of the biochar performed at the soils laboratory of cagayan valley research center, city of ilagan, revealed that it had a ph of 7.30 (neutral), which is an ideal ph for plant growth (see appendix a table) and contained 0.13% phosphorus and 0.85% potassium. the biochar was broadcasted in each plot following the required quantity per treatment and was further incorporated through harrowing until no trace of biochar remained floating on the water surface. 2.8. transplanting the seedlings were transplanted 18 days after sowing (das) with 3 seedlings per hill. replanting was carried out 7-10 days after transplanting (dat) to replace the missing hills attacked/eaten by golden apple snails to complete the plant population per plot. 2.9. soil analysis and fertilizer application prior to land preparation, a one-kilogram sample of representative soil was randomly collected in the experimental area. it was pulverized, air-dried, properly packed and then brought to the soils laboratory of cagayan valley research center, city of ilagan, for nutrient analysis. adhering to the report on soil analysis, the fertilizer applied during basal was 16-20-0 and 46-0-0, while the 1st, 2nd and 3rd top dress was applied with 46-0-0 (see appendix b table). 2.10. irrigation management after transplanting, irrigation was maintained to a depth of two to three (2-3 cm) centimetres and gradually increased by up to four to five (4-5) centimetres as the crop grew taller to prevent weed germination. the plots were irrigated twice a week or when cracks in the soil were visible, indicating a lack of moisture. the availability of water was ensured during the scheduled fertilizer application, panicle initiation, booting, heading, and flowering stages of the rice. fields were drained two (2) weeks before harvesting. 2.11. weed management hand weeding was done every 15 days to ensure that the experimental area remained free from weeds and to minimize competition for light, moisture, and nutrients. 2.12. pest management golden apple snails (gas) were controlled by hand picking before transplanting to avoid damage to seedlings. to further manage the gas, the area was sprayed with molluscicide with an active ingredient of 300g/kg ten days after transplanting. the application of insecticides with an active ingredient of 500g/kg was used to control green leaf hoppers, stem borers, rice bugs and rice black bugs, following the recommended dosage. 2.13. harvesting, threshing, drying and cleaning manual harvesting took place 114 days after transplanting (dat) using a scythe or sickle. the samples were threshed manually. sun drying was done for two (2) days. cleaning by winnowing and packing was carried out immediately. 2.14. data gathered ten (10) sample plants were selected randomly from every plot, and the following data were gathered: 1. plant height at maturity (cm). randomly selected plant height was measured from the base of the culm to the tip of the highest leaf at 90 dat using a metre stick. 2. number of productive tillers. the number of productive tillers was gathered at maturity of the plants (during harvesting). 3. length of the panicle (cm). ten panicle samples were randomly selected to measure their length. measuring was done from the base or neck of the panicle up to the tip of the last spikelet. 4. weight of 1,000 grains (g). the weight of 1000 seeds per treatment was recorded. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 195 5. percent filled and unfilled grains per panicle (%). after harvesting, the panicles of 10 sample plants per plot were counted for the productive and non-productive grains. 6. computed yield (kg/ha). the yield of the rice grains per 1 square meter quadrant of different treatments was weighed and recorded after drying to 14% moisture content (mc). yield per hectare was computed using the formula: y= yield per 1m2 x 10,000. 7. biomass yield (grams per plant). biomass yield was measured by weighing the whole fresh uprooted rice plant sample with its panicles. 8. cost and return analysis. the cost and return analysis was computed to determine the return on investment (%) obtained using the different treatments. 2.15. statistical analysis the data were analysed using the statistical tool for agricultural research (star) software. duncan’s multiple range test (dmrt) was also used to further analyse the difference among the treatment means. 2.16. experimental design and layout the experimental field had an area of 705.0 square meters, which was divided into three blocks (4 m x 47 m). each block was subdivided into 12 equal plots measuring 3m x 4m, with a 1.5-m alleyway between blocks and 1.0 m between plots. the experimental area was laid out according to the randomized complete block design (rcbd) for a two-factor experiment and replicated three times with the treatments as follows: factor a factor b a1 no biochar (control) b1 20 cm x 20 cm planting distance a2 25 mt biochar per hectare b2 20 cm x 25 cm planting distance a3 20 mt biochar per hectare b3 20 cm x 30 cm planting distance a4 15 mt biochar per hectare figure 1. experimental layout. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 196 2.17. treatment combinations t1 a1b1 no biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 20 cm planting distance t2 a1b2 no biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 25 cm planting distance t3 a1b3 no biocharper hectare at 20 cm x 30 cm planting distance t4 a2b1 25 mt biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 20 cm planting distance t5 a2b2 25 mt biocharper hectare at 20 cm x 25 cm planting distance t6 a2b3 25 mt biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 30 cm planting distance t7 a3b1 20 mt biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 20 cm planting distance t8 a3b2 20 mt biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 25 cm planting distance t9 a3b3 20 mt biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 30 cm planting distance t10 a4b1 15 mt biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 20 cm planting distance t11 a4b2 15 mt biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 25 cm planting distance t12 a4b3 15 mt biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 30 cm planting distance figure 1 illustrates the layout of the experimental rice field, delineating the specific configurations of the study. the total area, measuring 47.0 meters by 15 meters, is divided into three replications: i, ii, and iii. each replication occupies a space of 4m x 3m and represents a unique combination of the factors being investigated. 3. results and discussion 3.1. plant height at maturity (cm) in table 1, column 2 shows the effect of the different rates of biochar on plant height (ph) at maturity, which ranged from 109.82 cm to 118.54 cm. the analysis of variance (anova) revealed that the application of biochar at different levels resulted in significantly different plant heights. also, the test of comparison among the treatment means using duncan’s multiple range test (dmrt) revealed that a3 (20 mt biochar per hectare) did not differ significantly from application a2 (25 mt biochar per hectare) or a4 (15 mt biochar per hectare) but did differ significantly from a1 (no biochar). this result was consistent with the study of roslan et al. (2017), who observed that biochar application in rice resulted in statistically higher plant heights than the control (no biochar). the effect of different planting distances on plant height at maturity (cm) is shown in table 2 column 2. the plant height (ph) ranged from 113.99 cm to 115.68 cm. the result of the anova showed a non-significant effect of planting distance on plant height. the combined effect of different levels of biochar and different planting distances on the mean plant height at maturity can be gleaned from table 3 column 2. statistical analysis revealed non-significant differences among the treatments. 3.2. number of productive tillers per hill at maturity table 1 column 3 shows that the mean number of productive tillers (pt) at maturity ranged from 22.41 to 23.59 in response to the different levels of biochar application. nevertheless, the result of the anova revealed nonsignificant differences among the treatments. the effect of different planting distances on the number of productive tillers at maturity is shown in table 2 column 3 (pt). the result shows that the highest mean of productive tillers was observed in b3 (20 cm x 30 cm), with 23.60, followed by b2 (20 cm x 25 cm) with 22.63, and the lowest was b1 (20 cm x 20 cm) with a mean of 22.29. however, the anova revealed no significant differences among the treatments. the interaction effect of different levels of biochar and different planting distances can be found in table 3 column 3 (pt); it shows a mean range of 21.40 productive tillers at maturity to 25.53 counts. the anova showed that the production of tillers was not significantly affected by the application of biochar at different levels together with the different planting distances. 3.3. length of panicle (cm) table 1 column 4 (lp) presents the length of panicles as affected by biochar application. numerically, the application of 20 mt biochar per hectare (a3) attained the longest panicle measure with a mean of 27.17 cm. the other treatments had means of 27.01 cm, 26.96 cm, and 26.27 cm. however, the anova revealed no significantly different effect of the different levels of biochar application on panicle length. table 1. effect of different biochar rates on different parameters. factor a ph pt lp fg ufg wg1000 bmy cy a1 109.82b 22.93 26.27 64.45 35.55 28.99 354.15 3684.44b a2 116.00a 22.42 26.96 67.87 32.13 28.23 439.00 4964.44a a3 118.54a 23.59 27.17 70.86 29.14 29.56 436.20 5208.89a a4 114.51a 22.41 27.01 67.22 32.78 29.29 388.60 4704.44a note: ph plant height at maturity; pt productive tillers; lp length of panicle; fg filled grains; ufg unfilled grains; wg1000 weight of 1000 grains; bmy biomass yield; cy computed yield. the lowercase letters (a, b) associated with the values in the 'ph' and 'cy' columns represent statistical groupings. if values have the same letter, they are not statistically significantly different. conversely, if they have different letters (e.g., 'a' and 'b'), they are significantly different based on the results of statistical analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 197 table 2 column 4 (lp) shows the length of panicles as affected by planting distances. it was observed that the panicle length ranged from 26.63 cm to 27.12 cm, and the anova showed a non-significant effect of planting distance on panicle length. table 2. effect of different planting distances on different parameters. factor b ph pt lp fg ufg wg1000 bmy cy b1 113.99 22.29 27.12 68.59 31.41 28.84ab 403.47 4406.67 b2 114.48 22.63 26.81 69.29 30.71 28.05b 395.58 4671.67 b3 115.68 23.60 26.63 64.93 35.07 30.16a 414.42 4843.33 note: ph plant height at maturity; pt productive tillers; lp length of panicle; fg filled grains; ufg unfilled grains; wg1000 weight of 1000 grains; bmy biomass yield; cy computed yield. lowercase letters (a, b) next to the 'wg1000' column values represent statistical groupings. values sharing the same letter do not significantly differ from each other statistically. however, values that do not share a common letter (e.g., 'a' and 'b') are significantly different from each other based on statistical analysis. table 3 column 4 (lp) shows the interaction effect of applied biochar and different planting distances on the length of panicles. the treatment means ranged from 25.95 cm to 27.78 cm. statistical analysis revealed no significant difference among the treatments. table 3. interaction effect of applied biochar and different planting distances for every parameter. treatments ph pt lp fg ufg wg1000 bmy cy t1 107.33 23.13 25.99 66.86 33.140 28.20 346.11 4413.33b t2 109.70 21.90 26.38 64.51 35.490 28.63 344.28 3226.67c t3 112.43 23.77 26.45 61.99 38.010 30.13 372.06 3413.33c t4 114.10 22.00 27.78 66.35 33.650 28.80 452.61 3833.33bc t5 117.83 22.53 27.15 71.82 28.180 25.23 437.61 4586.67b t6 116.07 22.73 25.95 65.44 34.560 30.67 426.78 6473.33a t7 119.07 21.40 27.18 71.25 28.750 29.13 403.28 4760.00ab t8 118.87 23.83 27.53 72.19 27.810 29.23 434 6013.33a t9 117.70 25.53 26.78 69.15 30.850 30.30 471.33 4853.33ab t10 115.47 22.63 27.52 69.90 30.100 29.23 411.86 4620.00ab t11 111.53 22.23 26.18 68.64 31.630 29.10 366.44 4860.00ab t12 116.53 22.37 27.33 63.12 36.880 29.53 387.5 4633.33ab note: ph plant height at maturity; pt productive tillers; lp length of panicle; fg filled grains; ufg unfilled grains; wg1000 weight of 1000 grains; bmy biomass yield; cy computed yield. the lowercase letters (a, b, c) next to the values in the 'cy' column represent statistical groupings, indicating significant differences (or lack thereof) among the treatments. values sharing a common letter do not significantly differ from each other statistically. 3.4. percentage of filled and unfilled grains (%) the data in table 1 under the percentage of filled grains (fg) and unfilled grains (ufg) shows the effects of biochar application. application of 20 mt of biochar per hectare (a3) produced the highest percentage of filled grains (fg) with 70.86%, followed by a2, a4, and a1 with means of 67.87%, 67.22% and 64.45%, respectively, while the result of unfilled grains (ufg) shows that a1 attained the highest percentage of unfilled grains with 35.55% and a3 the lowest with 29.14%; however, the anova showed no significant differences among the treatments. in table 2, the columns filled grains (fg) and unfilled grains (ufg) show the effects of different planting distances. a planting distance of 20 cm x 25 cm recorded the highest percentage of filled grains with 69.29%, followed by 20 cm x 20 cm with 68.59% filled grains and 20 cm x 30 cm with 64.93% filled grains. b3 obtained the highest percentage of unfilled grains with 35.07%, followed by b1 (31.41%) and b2 (30.71%). however, the anova of filled and unfilled grains revealed no significant differences among the treatments. table 3 shows the percentage of filled (fg) and unfilled grains (ufg) as affected by the interaction effect of biochar application and different planting distances. the highest percentage of filled grain was observed in treatment 8 with 72.19%. this was followed by t5 and t7 with 71.82 % and 71.25%, respectively, while the lowest result was obtained by t3 with 61.99%. concerning the percentage of unfilled grains, the highest mean was recorded in treatment 3 with 38.01%, followed by t12 with 36.88%, and the lowest was obtained by t8 with 27.81%. however, the anova of filled and unfilled grains revealed no significant differences among the treatments. 3.5. weight of 1000 grains (g) the weight of 1000 grains (g) of rice as affected by the different levels of biochar application can be seen in table 1 (column wg1000). the heaviest mean weight was obtained by 20 mt biochar per hectare (a3) with 29.56 grams, followed by 15 mt biochar per hectare (a4), no biochar (a1) applied, and 25 mt biochar per hectare (a2), with means of 29.29 g, 28.99 g, and 28.23 g, respectively. however, the anova did not show any significant effect of biochar levels on grain weight. table 2 (column wg1000) shows the effect of planting distance on grain weight. the heaviest 1000 grains of rice was obtained from the wider planting distance b3 (20 cm x 30 cm) with a mean of 30.16 g (figure 2) followed by the planting distance of 20 cm x 20 cm and 20 cm x 25 cm with means of 28.84 g and 28.05 g, respectively. however, the anova revealed that the different planting distances did not significantly affect the weight of 1000 grains of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 198 rice. nevertheless, the wider planting distance b3 resulted in a heavier 1000-grain weight (30.16 g) than closer planting distances (b1-20 cm x 20 cm and b2-20 cm x 25 cm). this result was similar to that of ali, ali, sattar, and ali (2010) in their study on the improvement of rice yield by manipulating seed rate and row spacing, which reported that wider spacing resulted in a higher 1000-grain weight than narrow spacing. the weight of 1000 grains of rice as affected by the interaction of biochar levels and different planting distances resulted in mean weights ranging from 25.23 g to 30.67 g, which can be found in table 3 (column wg1000). the anova revealed no significant difference in interaction effects. figure 2. plant height (cm) at 30 dat as affected by biochar application. note: in this figure, the annotations "a" and "b" are used to denote groups for statistical comparison. the same letter indicates no significant difference between groups, while different letters suggest a significant difference. 3.6. mean biomass yield (g) per plant the biomass yield obtained per plant with different levels of applied biochar is shown in table 1 column 8 (bmy). a2 (25 mt of biochar per hectare) gave the highest mean biomass of 439.00 g, followed by a3 (436.20 g), a4 (388.60 g) and a1 (354.15 g), respectively. the anova showed that biomass yield was not significantly affected by the application of different levels of biochar. table 2 (column bmy) shows that the weight of biomass as affected by planting distances ranged from 395.58 g to 414.12 g. similarly, however, the anova revealed no significant differences among treatments. the interaction effect of the different levels of biochar application and planting distances is shown in table 3. biomass yield (bmy) had means ranging from 344.28 g to 471.33 g; however, the anova again showed a nonsignificant effect on biomass yield per hectare. 3.7. computed yield (kg/ha) table 1 (column cy) shows the computed yield per hectare as affected by biochar. the highest grain yield was attained by a3 (20 mt of biochar per hectare) with 5,208.89 kg followed by a2 (25 mt of biochar per hectare) with 4,964.44 kg, while a4 (15 mt of biochar per hectare) at 4,407.44 kg and a1 (no biochar) at 3,684.44 kg were the lowest; however, the anova revealed that a3 was statistically the same as a2 and a4 but statistically different from a1. this result aligns with the findings of jeffery, abalos, spokas, and verheijen (2015), who studied biochar effects on crop yield and reported that significantly higher grain yield was attained by crops with biochar application when compared to no biochar. similarly, huang, fan, chen, jiang, and zou (2018), in their study on “continuous application of biochar into rice: effect on nitrogen uptake and utilization”, found a significantly better yield in areas where biochar was applied as compared to the control (no biochar). table 2 (column cy) shows the effect of different planting distances on yield. b3 (20 cm x 30 cm) obtained the highest yield of 4,843.33 kg per hectare, followed by b2 (20 cm x 25 cm) and b1 (20 cm x 20 cm) with weighted means of 4,671.67 kg and 4,406.67 kg per hectare, respectively. the anova revealed no significant differences among the treatments. this result is the same as that of haque, razzaque, haque, and ullah (2015), who found that wider spacing resulted in better grain yields than closer spacing. table 3 (column cy) showed the interaction effect of applied biochar and different planting distances on yield. the highest yield was attained by t6 with 6,473.33 kg, followed by t8 with 6,013.33 kg, while other treatments ranged from 3,226.67 kg to 4,860.00 kg. however, the anova revealed that t6 and t8 were statistically the same as t7, t9, t10, t11, and t12. similarly, t1 and t5 differed statistically from t3, t4, and t2 but were statistically the same as t7, t9, t10, t11, and t12. 3.8. cost and return analysis the cost and return analysis of inbred rice production per hectare as affected by the different treatments is presented in table 4. remarkably, treatment 6 (25 mt of biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 30 cm) gave the highest net 56.72b 62.32a 62.93a 61.21a 40.00 42.00 44.00 46.00 48.00 50.00 52.00 54.00 56.00 58.00 60.00 62.00 64.00 66.00 a1no biochar a225 mt of biochar per hectare a320 mt of biochar per hectare a415 mt of biochar per hectare asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 199 income (php 59,601.00) and return on investment (roi) (118.15%), followed by treatment 8 (20 mt of biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 25 cm) with a net income of php 54,355.00 or 113.54% roi. the lowest income and roi were obtained from treatment 4 (25 mt of biochar at 20 cm x 20 cm) at php 15,144.00 or 30.27%. 3.9. general appearance of the plant it was observed that the transplanted seedlings with biochar application recovered faster at 3 dat than the control (no biochar), and their stand and vigour were improved as manifested by their light green leaf colour. some of the rice plants treated with biochar started to lodge due to continuous rainfall and because the panicles had more filled grains; however, this was immediately controlled by using bamboo to hold the plants upright to prevent the grains from being submerged in the water. 3.10. pest infestation the occurrence of golden apple snails (pomaceae canaliculata) during the seedling stage was strictly observed at 7 dat and was immediately controlled by hand-picking. the occurrence of rice bugs was observed during the flowering stage in all the treatments. during the vegetative stage, there was an occurrence of white stem borers (scirpophaga innonata), which caused the central tiller to dry out and the panicles to turn white in colour and be unfilled/empty. this is known as deadheart. this was controlled by spraying with insecticide at the recommended dosage of 1 tbsp in 16l water at 1-week intervals. a few cases of false smut disease appeared during the early maturity stage. false smut is slightly flattened, smooth and yellow in colour, but the immature spore balls appear orange and may cause chalkiness in the grains of rice. many different weeds were found in the experimental area, including flatsedge (cyperus iria), purple nutsedge (cyperus rotundus), fimbristylis (frimbistylis gaudich), and barnyard grass (echinochloa glabrescens), but these were controlled by manual weeding. weeding of the experimental plot, including the dike, was carried out twice a month to remove insect pest hosts and prevent nutrient competition. 3.11. summary this study on the productivity of inbred rice with biochar applied under different planting distances was conducted to evaluate the growth and yield performance of an inbred rice variety with different rates of biochar application at different planting distances and to conduct a cost and return analysis of rice production per ha as affected by the different treatments. it was conducted in an irrigated farm area of zone 6 (lungot), barangay bantug, tumauini, isabela, during the wet cropping season from august to november 2019. the experiment was laid out according to the principles of randomized complete block design (rcbd) with three replications per treatment in a two-factor experiment. the following treatments were used in the study: factor a different levels of biochar application, including a1 no biochar (control), a2 25 mt of biochar per hectare, a3 20 mt of biochar per hectare, and a4 15 mt of biochar per hectare; factor b – planting distance, which included b1 20 cm x 20 cm, b2 20 cm x 25 cm, and b3 20 cm x 30 cm. the results of the study showed that factor a as a single factor had a highly significant effect on plant height at maturity (cm), as well as computed yield (kg/ha). on the other hand, an insignificant effect was observed on the panicle length (cm), biomass yield (g), productive tillers at maturity, weight of 1,000 grains (g), and percentage of filled and unfilled grains (%). factor b as a single factor had a significant effect on the weight of 1000 rice grains, while the other parameters were not significantly affected; these were plant height at maturity (cm), panicle length (cm), biomass yield (g), productive tillers, computed yield, and percentage of filled and unfilled grains. the interaction effects of varying applications of biochar (factor a) and different planting distances (factor b), resulted in a highly significant effect on computed yield (kg/ha). the highest yield was attained by treatment 6 (25 mt biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 30 cm) with a mean yield of 6,473.33 kg per hectare and net income of php 59,601.00, which was a 118.15% return on investment. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 200 table 4. profitability analysis per hectare. particulars t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 t10 t11 t12 a1 no biochar a2 25 mt of biochar per hectare a3 20 mt of biochar per hectare a4 15 mt of biochar per hectare a. labour cost b120 x 20 cm b220 x 25 cm b320 x 30 cm b120 x 20 cm b220 x 25 cm b320 x 30 cm b120 x 20 cm b220 x 25 cm b320 x 30 cm b120 x 20 cm b220 x 25 cm b320 x 30 cm rotavator 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 harrowing (2x) 3mad @ 500/day 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 seedbed preparation 1md @ 250/day 250 250 250 250 250 250 250 250 250 250 250 250 seed soaking/incub ation 1md @ 250/day 250 250 250 250 250 250 250 250 250 250 250 250 biochar application 4 md @ 250/day 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 pulling of seedlings 7 md@250/day 1.750 1.750 1.750 1.750 1.750 1.750 1.750 1.750 1.750 1.750 1.750 1.750 transplanting 12md @ 250/day 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 replanting 5md @ 250/day 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 irrigation 2md @250/day 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 weeding 5md @ 250/day 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 spraying 5 md @ 250/day 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 1.250 harvesting 20md @ 250/day 5.000 5.000 5.000 5.000 5.000 5.000 5.000 5.000 5.000 5.000 5.000 5.000 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 201 threshing 5 mmd@ 500/day 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 2.500 hauling 10mad @ 300/day 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 3.000 drying 5md @300/day 1.500 1.500 1.500 1.500 1.500 1.500 1.500 1.500 1.500 1.500 1.500 1.500 sub-total 27.000 27.000 27.000 28.000 28.000 28.000 28.000 28.000 28.000 28.000 28.000 28.000 particulars t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8 t9 t10 t11 t12 a1no biochar a225 mt of biochar per hectare a320 mt of biochar per hectare a415 mt of biochar per hectare b. material inputs b120 x 20 cm b220 x 25 cm b320 x 30 cm b120 x 20 cm b220 x 25 cm b320 x 30 cm b120 x 20 cm b220 x 25 cm b320 x 30 cm b120 x 20 cm b220 x 25 cm b320 x 30 cm seed (nsic rc 222) (1sacks) 1.300 1.300 1.300 1.300 1.300 1.300 1.300 1.300 1.300 1.300 1.300 1.300 fertilizers basal 46-0-0/.6 bags @ 1.200 720 720 720 720 720 720 720 720 720 720 720 720 16-20-0/ 2bags @ 980 1.960 1.960 1.960 1.960 1.960 1.960 1.960 1.960 1.960 1.960 1.960 1.960 top dress (1st. 2nd and 3rd) 46-0-0/ 2.9 bags @1.200 3.480 3.480 3.480 3.480 3.480 3.480 3.480 3.480 3.480 3.480 3.480 3.480 biochar 500/tons 12.500 12.500 12.500 10.000 10.000 10.000 7.500 7.500 7.500 pesticides insecticide (a.i. 500 g/kg) 1pack @ 650/pack 650 650 650 650 650 650 650 650 650 650 650 650 molluscicide (a.i. of 300g/kg) @800/pack 800 800 800 800 800 800 800 800 800 800 800 800 sacks (50kls) @ p8/sacks 706 516 546 613 734 1.036 762 962 777 739 778 741 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 202 sub total 9.616 9.426 9.456 22.023 22.144 22.446 19.672 19.872 19.687 17.149 17.188 17.151 c. total cost of production 36.616 36.426 36.456 50.023 50.144 50.446 47.672 47.872 47.687 45.149 45.188 45.151 d. yield (kg/ha) 4413.33 3226.67 3413.33 3833.33 4586.67 6473.33 4760.00 6013.33 4853.33 4620.00 4860.00 4633.33 e. gross income @ 17/kilo 75.027 54.853 58.027 65.167 77.973 110.047 80.920 102.227 82.507 78.540 82.620 78.767 f. net income 38.411 18.427 21.571 15.144 27.829 59.601 33.248 54.355 34.820 33.391 37.432 33.616 g. return on investment (roi) 104.90 50.59 59.17 30.27 55.50 118.15 69.74 113.54 73.02 73.96 82.84 74.45 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 203 4. conclusions based on the aforementioned results of the study, the following conclusions can be drawn: 1. biochar application a. crops applied with 20 mt biochar per hectare performed significantly better in terms of the following parameters: plant height at maturity (cm), panicle length (cm), productive tillers, weight of 1000 rice grains(g), percentage of filled grains (%), and computed yield (kg/ha). b. 25 mt biochar per hectare resulted in a significantly better biomass yield (g). 2. different planting distances a. 20 cm x 20 cm (b1) produced the highest mean panicle length (cm). b. 20 cm x 25 cm (b2) performed significantly better in terms of the percentage of filled grains (%). c. 20 cm x 30 cm plant spacing performed significantly better in terms of plant height at maturity (cm), productive tillers, biomass yield (g), computed yield (kg/ha), and weight of 1000 grains (g). 3. interaction effect of biochar and planting distances a. the interaction effect of different levels of biochar and planting distances had significant effects on plant height at maturity. b. the effect of different levels of biochar and planting distances on the number of tillers was significant at 30 and 45 dat. c. 25 mt of biochar per hectare at a 20 cm x 30 cm planting distance (t6) performed significantly better in terms of computed yield. 4. cost and return analysis a. concerning the cost and return analysis, 25 mt biochar per hectare at 20 cm x 30 cm was found to be the most profitable treatment. 5. recommendations based on the results of the study, the following recommendation are made: 1. twenty-five (25) metric tons (mt) of biochar per hectare (with the recommended fertilization package technology based on soil analysis) is recommended for high-yield performance. 2. the planting distance of 20 cm x 30 cm is recommended in terms of yield per hectare. 3. a follow-up study should be conducted during the dry cropping season to validate the results of this study and arrive at more conclusive results. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references ali, m., ali, l., sattar, m., & ali, m. 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(2021). production practices and harvesting operations and problems of farmers in san antonio, nueva ecija. united international journal for research & technology, 2(8), 70-75. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcbb.12037 https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture3040715 https://doi.org/10.18801/jbar.040215.42 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-29877-7 https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.82151 https://doi.org/10.22161/ijels.51.53 https://doi.org/10.55493/5008.v11i1.4750 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 204 shackley, s., & sohi, s. (2010). an assessment of the benefits and issues associated with the application of biochar to soil. retrieved from a report commissioned by the uk department for environment, food and rural affairs and department of energy and climate change. appendix a. soil analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 192-205 205 appendix b. biochar analysis. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 287 using a structural equation model to evaluate the roles of traditional institutions in rural agriculture success and sustainability wiseman ndlovua marizvikuru mwalea jethro zuwarimwea ainstitute for rural development, university of venda, x5050, south africa.  wiseman.ndlovu@outlook.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 4 february 2022 revised: 19 october 2022 accepted: 6 november 2022 published: 29 november 2022 keywords agriculture institutional effectiveness rural farmers structural equation model sustainable agriculture traditional institutions traditional leadership. integrating and facilitating effective participation of the traditional leadership institution (tli) in rural development remains a challenge to date. it remains unclear what the agriculture sectorspecific institutional roles are and how they impact the success and sustainability of agriculture. furthermore, the barriers to institutional effectiveness remain unknown. a structural equation model was used to evaluate the moderating effect of barriers to institutional effectiveness on the relationship between tli roles and agriculture success and sustainability. atlas.ti version 8 and statistical package for social sciences amos version 26 were used for the analysis. in the first part of the study, participants’ views on the three variables were explored through focus groups and interviews (n = 103). next, construct measures for each scenario were modeled in a self-administered survey questionnaire (n = 211). farmers, traditional leaders, and key informants in the vhembe and mopani districts of limpopo province, south africa, provided data for the study. it emerged that of the five identified tli roles, four had a significant impact on the success and sustainability of agriculture projects. promoting social capital (networks, partnerships, and collaborations) among farmers and development actors had the greatest effect. the barriers to institutional effectiveness were significant and moderated how the tli influenced rural agriculture success. resultantly, the impact of institutional contributions on agriculture remained negative despite improved participation by the tli. minimizing the effects of the identified barriers while enhancing the institutional capacity to promote the success and sustainability of rural agriculture is recommended. contribution/originality: a structural equation model is used as a multivariate technique to test and evaluate how specific traditional leadership institutional roles impact agriculture success and sustainability. through systems analysis, the study gives new empirical insights into how the traditional leadership institution can be effectively integrated into rural agriculture development. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4675 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: wiseman ndlovu --marizvikuru mwale --jethro zuwarimwe (2022). using a structural equation model to evaluate the roles of traditional institutions in rural agriculture success and sustainability. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4), 287-296. 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4675 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 4 (2022): 287-296. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0114-4500 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8042-6014 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8196-5896 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 287-296 288 1. introduction several studies have attempted to understand the participation of traditional leadership institutions (tli) in rural development in a novel way (chinsinga, 2006; kamoto, clarkson, dorward, & shepherd, 2013; kuswardinah, ansori, rachmawati, & fajri, 2021; mathonsi & sithole, 2017). however, while these prior studies offer insights into the institutional roles in rural development, many of them are not sector-specific, and little evidence exists regarding the specific roles tli plays in rural agriculture (baramiya, 2017; oomen, 2000). studies investigating specific aspects include the roles the tli plays in social cohesion, policing, local governance, social development, land use planning, environment, rural development projects, and development in general (baramiya, 2017; bikam & chakwizira, 2014; koenane, 2018; logan, 2009). nevertheless, institution-specific activities and practices that promote rural agriculture development have not yet been fully investigated in southern africa (baldwin, 2016; baramiya, 2017). to date, the specific set of tli activities, community decisions, and practices that influence agriculture development and sustainability are not known and have not been critically studied (the republic of south africa, 2003). hence, important sets of tli practices and activities that affect rural farming are identified in this work. evidence detailing the specific tli roles and how they affect the success and sustainability of rural agriculture projects is still lacking. though the evidence is available, it is scattered and not scientifically evaluated. to unpack this complex relationship, the agriculture success and sustainability factors influenced by institutional practices or roles were identified. the direct relationship between institutional practices and the success and sustainability of rural agricultural projects was assessed. the literature shows the existence of barriers to the institutional effectiveness of the tli in rural development. notably, poorly defined roles, limited sources of income to support own initiatives, and limited administration-enabling infrastructure are barriers noted in the literature (bikam & chakwizira, 2014; mathonsi & sithole, 2017). barriers to institutional effectiveness influence the strength and impact of the relationship between tli roles and the success and sustainability of agriculture projects. hence, the moderating effects of these barriers to institutional effectiveness were also evaluated. agriculture is an important economic sector. in rural economies, it has the potential to alleviate poverty and hunger. limited support and the absence of clear comprehensive roles of major traditional and rural institutions threaten the success of the sector (fokwang, 2005). the systematic integration of traditional local players establishes constraints, facilitates decision-making, minimizes the costs of doing business, and increases benefits to rural farmers (haven-tang & jones, 2012; kamoto et al., 2013; mutenje, ortmann, & ferrer, 2011). horlings and padt (2013) posited that sustainable rural development is the product of shared leadership in which collective values, feelings, trust, and energy provide the basis for both private and public actors to mobilize resources to attain regional development goals. successful agricultural and regional development requires supportive, involved, and accountable local institutions (sustainable development goal number 16; (food and agriculture organissation of the united nations, 2016)). similarly, in south africa, supportive institutions are instrumental in fighting rural poverty and hunger, as stipulated in the south african national development plan 2030 (national planning commission, 2010). the quality and effectiveness of institutional contributions largely lie in their internal and external environments. for instance, their history, available skills capital, leadership approach, and ability to adapt to rapidly changing community needs. ewell (2011) described institutional effectiveness as a process of ongoing institutional self-evaluation to systematically measure and re-evaluate achievements and approaches used to achieve the institution’s mission or roles. against this backdrop, the current study explored, estimated, and evaluated the impact of tli roles on the success and sustainability of agriculture. in addition, the moderating effects of barriers to institutional effectiveness were evaluated. first, evidence-based conceptual and theoretical measurement scales concerning the roles of tli in agriculture, as well as the sustainability and success factors for rural agricultural projects and the barriers to institutional effectiveness were developed exploratively. next, the direct and indirect relationships between the three concepts were statistically evaluated. figure 1 illustrates the conceptual model that formed the basis for the evaluation. the following hypotheses guided this study: ha: traditional leadership institution roles positively influence the success and sustainability of rural agricultural projects. ha: barriers to institutional effectiveness moderate how the tli roles impact agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors. figure 1. conceptual framework of the direct and indirect effects of the studied variables. 2. methods and materials 2.1. study design an exploratory sequential mixed method design was adopted in this work. firstly, the views and lived practical experiences on tli roles in rural agriculture, the sustainability and success factors for agricultural projects, and the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 287-296 289 barriers to institutional effectiveness were explored to develop measurement models for the evaluation. next, direct and indirect effects were quantitatively tested and evaluated using structural equation modeling (sem). ethical clearance was sought from the university of venda social research ethics committee, certificate no: school of agriculture rural development and forestry (sardf)/18/institute for rural development (ird)/06/2111. 2.2. study population data was collected from five traditional authorities in three local municipalities located in vhembe (thulamela & collins chabane local municipalities) and mopani (greater-giyani local municipality) districts in limpopo province, south africa. one hundred and three (n = 103) and 211 respondents participated in the first and second studies, respectively (see figure 2). in the first study, respondents were purposively recruited, while in the second study, farmers from agricultural projects were census sampled. key informants (municipal officials, extension officers, and non-governmental organizations) were purposively sampled. the inclusion of multiple stakeholders assisted in the triangulation and cross-validation of the findings. only consenting and available farmers and key informants were included. ten agriculture projects were initially identified for the study; however, one project in collins chabane municipality was withdrawn due to its operational closure. 2.3. data collection and analysis an interview guide with semi-structured questions was utilized to facilitate the discussions with the participants in the focus groups and the one-on-one interviews with farm managers and key informants. twenty-one (21) focus group discussions and 24 interviews were conducted. focus groups had a mean of 4 members and a range of 4 to 5 people. two (2) research assistants were recruited for the data collection process. local languages (venda and xitsonga) were used to ensure that the participants understood the issues. research assistants were inducted and oriented on interview administration, farmer engagement, the study purpose, how to facilitate focus group discussions, and questionnaire administration. detailed notes of interviews and audio recordings were collected to ensure the accuracy of the data. transcribed qualitative data was cleaned and captured in microsoft excel. then it was imported into atlas.ti version 8 to perform thematic content analysis. through a process of coding, decoding, and re-coding, major themes on tli roles, agriculture projects’ sustainability and success factors, and barriers to institutional effectiveness were developed. atlas.ti version 8’s visual network diagrams showing the relationships between three measurement models enhanced the analysis and understanding of issues. the resultant themes in each measurement model were developed into a questionnaire for quantitative data analysis. in the second study, the measurement scales (tli roles in rural agriculture, agricultural projects’ sustainability and success factors, and barriers to institutional effectiveness) were first tested for convergent and discriminant validity, as well as reliability, using confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) and cronbach’s alpha coefficient, respectively (fan et al., 2016; segars & grover, 1993). thus, the factors in each measurement model were validated through cfa. mean scores were calculated and observed to rank the emerging factors by their level of importance to each measurement model. validated and reliable factors were then regressed to determine the direct effect of tli contributions on the success and sustainability factors. lastly, the moderating/indirect effects of the barriers to tli participation in agriculture development were modeled and tested using sem. statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 26 was utilized for the evaluation. sem was used to evaluate the measurement models and estimate the predictive power of the exogenous variable (tli roles) to maximize or minimize the endogenous variables (success and sustainability factors). also, sem was employed to estimate the moderating effect of the barriers to institutional effectiveness using spss amos version 27. figure 2. the study population. 7 12 27 33 69 166 103 211 0 50 100 150 200 250 phase 1: qualitative data phase 2: quantitative data study population total farmers members of the tli key informants asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 287-296 290 3. results 3.1. exploratory study results 3.1.1. traditional leadership institution roles a 31-item questionnaire was developed and used to measure the tli roles and practices that influence the success and sustainability of agricultural projects. these are agricultural policy development and representation (apdr), oversight & support for agricultural development programs (osadp), service delivery advocacy (sda), easing funding access (efa), land access promotion (lap), information relay (ir), attracting agro-processing industry and infrastructure development (aaid), and ensuring social capital promotion (scp). 3.1.2. barriers to institutional effectiveness human resources barriers (hrb), political and relational barriers (prb), capital and financial resources barriers (cfrb), and organizational barriers (ob) represented the broad categories in a 14-item questionnaire. these are the factors that make it difficult for the tli to effectively partake in community decision-making practices and activities that influence rural farming outcomes. in summary, the institutional barriers reflect the tli’s immediate environment, settings, and organization. barriers provide a possible explanation as to why the tli is considered a weak partner in rural development. 3.1.3. agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors a 22-item, six-factor questionnaire on the success and sustainability factors was developed. the factors included active, responsive, and inclusive stakeholder participation (arisp), open and accessible markets (oam), access to land and financial resources (alfr), a skilled, innovative, and learning workforce (silw), effective project management and control (epmc), and the right number of workers (rnw). the study went on to observe how tli roles and practices affect these conditions. 3.2. cross-sectional study results factors from all three measurement models were evaluated for item analysis, convergent, and discriminant validity using cfa. also, cronbach’s alpha coefficients were used to test the instrument's reliability. kurtosis and skewness tests were also performed to measure the suitability of the normal distribution assumption in the data set prior to using sem. 3.2.1. testing of the normality assumption data was assessed for normality by testing for skewness and kurtosis. the cut-off point for skewness was set at 2 to +2 (hair, black, babin, & anderson, 2010), while that for kurtosis was -7 to +7 (bryne, 2010). normal distribution of data is the underlying assumption in multivariate analysis, and its absence affects the reliability and validity of results (hair et al., 2010). it is also where direct and indirect effects are based in sem. finally, it is important to note that although the scales in the data collection instrument were the same, the variables were standardized in spss before exportation to spss amos for sem analysis. this mitigates problems associated with an abnormality in the data distribution. 3.3. confirmatory factor analysis to test the validity of the measurement models, a combination of model fit indices was used. specifically, the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea) and the comparative fit index (cfi) were the model fit indices applied (hair. et al., 2010). the two indices are considered reliable in both large and small samples, chi-square, and normed fit index (bollen & pearl, 2012). 3.3.1. traditional leadership institution roles an eight-factor measure was specified in the path analysis and tested for factor structure validity using cfa. the initial assessment showed unsatisfactory validity using recommended model fit indices (cfi 0.748; rmsea 0.075) compared to the recommended cut-off points of cfi ≥ 0.90 (tabachnick & fidell, 2007) and rmsea ≤ 0.08 (hooper, coughlan, & mullen, 2008). the path diagram model matrices were observed to improve fitness. items with lower factor loadings/regression weights were targeted first and systematically deleted (segars & grover, 1993). after each item deletion, model fitness indices were assessed to check for value improvement of the indices. five of eight factors emerged as valid and reliable to represent impactful tli contributions to the success and sustainability factors of agricultural projects (cfi = 0.916; rmsea = 0.059). these were sda, efa, ii, aaid, and scp; therefore, these were used in the model evaluation in sem. 3.3.2. barriers to institutional effectiveness all four factors of the barriers to participation were proven valid in this data set (cfi = 0.901; rmsea = 0.052). however, this was only achieved after deleting item cfrb from the initial unfit model. 3.3.3. agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors except for oam, all the factors were consistent with the data set. thus, they were valid and reliable measures of the success and sustainability of agricultural projects. also, some items in other factors were deleted to improve the fit of the model. the fit indices improved from (cfi = 0.828 and rmsea = 0.083) to (0.912 and rmsea = 0.067), and silw, arisp, epmc, alfr, and rnw were judged to be valid factors. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 287-296 291 3.4. item analysis for each factor structure in the measurement models, all items were tested for scale reliability. standardized regression weights, which examine item loading and the correlation between each item and its corresponding construct, were observed. items with factor loadings below 0.6 were deleted in cfa (hair et al., 2010). 3.5. construct validity the model variables were assessed for convergent and discriminant validity. the average variance extracted was examined to see how the items in each construct converged with each other. in line with hair et al. (2010) recommendation for convergent validity, the ave cut-off value was set at ≥ 0.5. all the factors satisfied the minimum threshold, see table 1, and were hence judged to be valid. moreover, no discriminant validity was found as the squared ave was higher than the correlation value. table 1. construct validity and reliability. factor cr ave tlic fhtlic apsf tli roles 0.788 0.539 0.734 barriers to institutional effectiveness 0.719 0.893 0.707 0.893 agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors 0.884 0.780 0.412 0.320 0.780 note: factor correlation matrix with the square root of ave on the diagonal. cr = construct validity; ave = average variance extracted; tlic traditional leadership institution contributions; fhtlic = barriers to participation; apsf = agricultural projects’ success factors. 3.6. construct reliability the barriers to institutional effectiveness measure yielded a cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.719, whereas tli roles and agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors scored 0.788 and 0.884, respectively, as shown in table 1. a coefficient value of 0.6 was utilized (robinson, shaver, & wrightsman, 1991). however, there are different rules of thumb for satisfactory reliability, such as 0.5 (pallant, 2001), 0.7 (devellis, 2003), or 0.8 (nunnally, 1970). all constructs were judged reliable. 3.7. regression analysis the results of the f test revealed a significant value (p < 0.05). thus, the model used in the study was feasible. in other words, tli roles and practices validly predict or influence agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors. the tli roles explained 24.9% of the variance (r-squared = 0.249; f = 13.613; p = .000) of the agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors, using r-squared in linear multiple regression analysis, as shown in table 2. all the factors in tli roles, except for information intermediary, significantly predicted agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors. for instance, a significant prediction was observed for the service delivery advocacy role (t = 2.826; p = 0.005; sr = 0.256). furthermore, the results showed that the social capital promotion role predicted the most variance (ꞵ = 0.325; t = 4.982; p = 0.000), followed by promoting infrastructure development and agro-processing (ꞵ = 315; t = 4.966; p = 0.043). information intermediary had no significant effect (ꞵ = 110; t = 1.475; p = 0.114). given the results, the null hypothesis is rejected. table 2. direct effects of traditional leadership institution contributions on success factors. dependent variable: success factors unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta (constant) 4.269e-15 0.060 0.000 1.000 infrastructure and agro-processing promotion 0.315 0.069 0.315 4.966 0.000 easing access to funding 0.218 0.069 0.218 3.139 0.002 social capital promotion 0.325 0.076 0.325 4.981 0.043 service delivery advocacy 0.256 0.090 0.256 2.826 0.005 information intermediary 0.110 0.085 0.110 1.475 0.114 r-squared 0.249 f 13.613 3.8. moderating effect sem was used to evaluate the moderating effects of barriers to institutional effectiveness on the direct effect of tli roles on agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors. the model fitness was achieved using the recommended threshold of (cfi > 0.90; rmsea < 0.08), as shown in figure 3. thus, there was a good structural model fitness with the data. table 3 presents the direct and indirect effects. the results indicate that tli roles and practices had a significant direct impact on agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors (b = 0.32; p = 0.000). it was observed that the interaction effect was negative and significant (b = -0.070; p = 0.024). the results suggest that barriers to institutional effectiveness significantly reduce the impact of tli roles and practices in fostering the success and sustainability of agriculture projects. thus, moderation occurred, and the null hypothesis is accepted. the interaction slope was plotted using unstandardized regression estimates (aiken, west, & reno, 1991; dawson, 2014; dawson & richter, 2006). as illustrated in figure 4, the combination of a high level of tli participation with the low effect of the barriers to institutional effectiveness significantly enhanced the agriculture projects’ success and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 287-296 292 sustainability factors, as shown by the upward slope (solid line). on the other hand, the graphs show that when the barriers have a large effect and there is a high level of tli participation, the impact on agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors is significantly reduced. table 3. moderating coefficients of regression weights in the model. model: tli roles and practices; barriers to institutional effectiveness; agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors estimate s.e. sig. tli roles and practices → agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors (a) 0.320* 0.086 0.000 tli roles and practices _x_ barriers to institutional effectiveness→ agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors (b) -0.070* 0.670 0.024 barriers to institutional effectiveness → agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors (c) -0.096* 0.174 0.000 note: * indicates significance (p < 0.05). figure 3. amos graphics diagram of the moderating effect of traditional leadership contributions to agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors. figure 4. interaction slope for the participation of the traditional leadership institution in agriculture. 4. discussion the results revealed that the identified tli roles and practices, apart from information intermediary, significantly and positively influenced the success and sustainability of rural agriculture projects. the tli acts as a representative voice of the community during the decision-making process of agricultural policy development. for instance, the tli has a seat on the local council to represent the community in matters affecting them, including rural agriculture asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 287-296 293 development during the mandatory and statutory integrated development planning (idp) process in south africa. different tribal authorities have a responsibility to shape and mold local community development policies, including those concerning agriculture. bikam and chakwizira (2014) and pike, marlow, mccarthy, o’brien, and tomaney (2015) showed that the comprehensive integration of key institutions like the tli into the fiber of local community planning yields positive outcomes. their inclusion results in adaptive and responsive local-level development policies that address the immediate needs of the different sectors of their communities. the tli also plays a crucial role in building and strengthening social capital among development actors. it promotes and fosters reciprocal relations between agriculture projects and local stakeholders such as the local municipality, extension services, non-governmental organizations, businesses, and the community. enhanced social capital is crucial for agricultural support partnerships and development programs for mutual convergence among the involved stakeholders. moreover, social capital helps foster collective action when mobilizing resources in support of projects. in short, local institutions connect people or organizations from similar and different backgrounds, creating strong bonds for collective action and support (beugelsdijk & smulders, 2009; sutherland & burton, 2011). stronger social capital results in shared leadership, in which collective values, feelings, mutual trust, and energy provide the basis for the mobilization of private and public actors around joint local or regional agriculture development goals in support of agricultural projects. service delivery advocacy is another significant tli role with positive outcomes for rural agriculture development. the tli acts as a service delivery advocate in local communities. it oversees and helps negotiate the relationships between projects and local service providers such as the municipality, extension services, and other stakeholders involved in agriculture development in their locality, as evidenced by the collected data. its non-political affiliation is cited as a strength that should be taken advantage of and used to put pressure on local service providers from a neutral standpoint. wekwete (2014) in zimbabwe, islam and nursey-bray (2017) in bangladesh, and bikam and chakwizira (2014) in south africa have shown that tlis facilitate and advocate for efficient service delivery in support of local farmers. thus, the service delivery advocacy tli role is important in negotiating with local actors in the public, private, and civic sectors to ensure they render adequate support and services. the roles of the tli also include easing access to funding for farmers and agriculture development programs. the tli plays this role by issuing land or funding support letters, signature support, partnering with external stakeholders to fund local projects, and giving guarantees to landowners. its ability to work with and connect different development actors and support institutions emerged as a key attribute in mobilizing finance for projects and obtaining funds for agricultural development programs. similarly, dzvimbo, monga, and mashizha (2017) found that tlis in zimbabwe partner with donors and private institutions to fund agricultural development programs that support the growth and development of small-scale farmers in rural areas. furthermore, the results indicate that such collaborations potentially attract agro-based industrial and infrastructural development. as an important player in community development, tlis have a responsibility to create a conducive environment for local investment. for example, as the land administrator, the institution may release land and lobby private and public stakeholders to establish local industry and infrastructure development. similarly, potential agro-processing support programs and industries can be mobilized. furthermore, tli indirectly supports the success and sustainability of agriculture by mobilizing development actors to establish development-enabling infrastructure, for instance, by lobbying the government to build roads that improve farmers’ access to services and markets. as supported by basurto and coleman (2010) and deneke, mapedza, and amede (2011), local institutions influence the investment environment. hence, the actions or inactions of the tli affect the level and extent of investment in the locality. therefore, an effective tli that works and partners with the private sector, the community, and the government has the potential to enhance the success and sustainability of agricultural projects. this role also results in improved resource mobilization and a reduction in the cost of doing business for agricultural projects. 5. implications of the moderating effect the moderating effect of the barriers to participation was examined in spss amos using regression weights estimates. the results revealed that barriers to institutional effectiveness moderated the relationship between tli roles and agriculture projects’ success and sustainability factors. the results are supported by the previous literature. bikam and chakwizira (2014) revealed that barriers to participation, such as the inability to vote in local policymaking, made it difficult for the tli to effectively influence conditions that support the success and sustainability of projects. according to the municipal systems act 41 of 2000, traditional leaders form part and parcel of local council meetings; however, they are not allowed to vote along with councilors. limited modern governance skills in rural development were also cited as a cause of poor tli participation in local-level decision-making. limited skills were also associated with inadequate financial resources to support tli activities with the potential to effectively contribute to the development of agriculture. adequate financial resources could, for example, allow tli council members to be deployed to perform various functions of the institution, such as gathering information to assess farmers’ challenges. also, with the right modern skills, members of the tli can help farmers build stronger collaborations and partnerships. an institution with a clearly spelled out mandate and roles that has the necessary pool of skills is more effective in executing its duties (middlehurst, 1995; shibru, bibiso, & ousman, 2017). it is, therefore, critical to consider skills development for members and leaders of the traditional leadership council to improve the effectiveness of the institution in line with this function. weak and badly managed relations among the tli, projects, and local service providers such as municipal officials and extension services pose a challenge to the effective participation of the institution in promoting local development. the results revealed that poor relations were mainly caused by a lack of clarity and specificity of institutional roles in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 287-296 294 various sectors, including agriculture. the result was that conflicts ensued. for example, conflicts between the tli and municipal officials over roles have been reported. this was also observed by tshitangoni and francis (2016). islam and nursey-bray (2017) in bangladesh, walo (2016) in ethiopia, and walo (2016) and wekwete (2014) in zimbabwe posited that clear lines of communication and good working relations with development partners and community-based organizations are the cornerstone of sustainable local economic development programs and augment service delivery. uphoff (2004) and pike et al. (2015) noted that effective multiple-stakeholder participation requires clearly defined roles to usher in context-relevant policies and intervention mechanisms. dzvimbo et al. (2017) found that the success of rural smallholder farmers in funded agricultural development programs in zimbabwe benefitted from functional working relations between tli, donors, and private organizations. the results indicated that political and relational barriers were a major barrier to the effective participation of the tli in activities and community decisions that create a conducive environment for the success and sustainability of agriculture projects. this barrier negatively impacts and interferes with tli roles that have a positive effect on the success of agricultural projects. although the empirical and literature evidence suggests that political and relational barriers negatively affect the tli's role in attracting agro-based industrial and infrastructural development, this was not supported by the sem evaluation of this data set. this might be explained by the fact that there are available national, regional, provincial, and local level legal instruments and provisions available for the tli to partner with the private and public sectors to attract investment in the locality. although the empirical evidence suggests that poor working relations between tli and local government structures, such as the municipality, interfered with this role, the effect was insignificant. thus, in the presence of political and relational barriers, partnerships with various stakeholders to support the agro-processing industry remain possible. available legal provisions and institutional legitimacy give the tli support to lobby and advocate for rural infrastructure development, which may include agriculture hubs and the construction of roads. in short, the results indicate that in the current situation, the tli is faced with several obstacles that hinder its effective participation in creating a conducive environment for rural agricultural projects' success and sustainability. 6. conclusion the findings suggest that tli participation in community decision-making platforms and practices is strongly associated with the success and sustainability of rural agriculture. it contributes to creating conditions that are conducive to the success of agricultural projects. of the five validated tli roles, promoting social capital among stakeholders such as the local community, government, and external partners explained the most variance. the analysis did not support the role of tli as an information intermediary. given this result, it can be concluded that the identified institutional roles directly affect the success of rural agriculture projects. the result implies that effective participation of the tli in community decision-making processes that promote agriculture significantly improves the conditions of rural agriculture projects’ performance. for example, it results in improved resource mobilization, access to land, and availability of collaborative opportunities. furthermore, the results indicate that barriers to institutional effectiveness are a significant moderator in the relationship between tli roles and agriculture projects’ success and sustainability. overall, with higher levels of tli participation and a low-level effect of barriers to institutional effectiveness, the agriculture projects’ success and sustainability significantly improve. however, a higher-level effect of the barriers to participation decreases the impact of the tli contribution, even with increased participation. poor working relations emerged as the most problematic barrier. regular multi-stakeholder collaboration might enable seamless partnerships, attainment of shared responsibilities, and an improvement in the knowledge and skills that support rural agriculture development. it is further recommended that future research refine the current measurement models; also, there is scope to investigate the moderating effects of the four individual broad barriers in this relationship to improve the functioning of the model. funding: this research is supported by national research foundation, south africa (grant number: 112388). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references aiken, l. s., west, s. g., & reno, r. r. 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(2014). draft for discussion at the southern african regional conference ‘creating opportunity for developmental local government through regional engagement on local economic development’lilongwe, malawi. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 60 measurement of riskiness of agricultural income evidence from india's agrarian economy deepa guptaa bidyut ghoshb suvayan neogic a,csymbiosis school of economics, symbiosis international deemed university, senapati bapat road, pune, india. bdepartment of commerce, manipal academy of higher education, manipal 576104, karnataka, india.  gdeepa550@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 14 january 2025 revised: 17 march 2025 accepted: 25 march 2025 published: 3 april 2025 keywords ardl model cointegration crop insurance farm risk management price stabilization. farmers in developing countries face significant challenges due to price and production fluctuations, which impact their income and well-being. this study focuses on potato and onion farmers in india to estimate the income variability experienced by them. this research applies the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) approach to investigate how fluctuations in market prices influence agricultural supply, with an emphasis on both shortand long-term effects. the demand elasticity (ε) for potato is equal to ‒1.32, while for onion, it is 0.54. this study finds that income volatility is a significant issue for potato and onion farmers, which could impact the long-term well-being of the farmers in india. price fluctuations in agricultural production, combined with lower market prices, pose serious threats to farmers' income. to reduce risks, the study recommends comprehensive strategies, such as improved price stabilization initiatives, agricultural income insurance, and financial tools like commodity derivatives. in particular, it suggests considering index-based income insurance that provides compensation based on specific indicators, such as regional yield and price changes. these measures can enhance financial security and resilience for indian farmers facing market uncertainties. contribution/originality: the farmers' income in india is affected by various factors such as price volatility in market prices, government policy changes, weather conditions, etc. this study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) model to examine the relationship between market price variability and agricultural supply, focusing on both shortand longterm effects for potato and onion farmers in india. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i1.5321 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: guptaa, d., ghosh, b., & neogi, s. (2025). measurement of riskiness of agricultural income evidence from india’s agrarian economy. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1), 60–72. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction modern technology has made india self-sufficient in food grain production, especially cereals. however, farmers often have low to moderate incomes due to various factors. while higher production can lower prices, natural disasters like droughts and floods lead to crop losses, negatively affecting farmers’ incomes. price volatility and crop losses continue to challenge producers. farmers in developing countries face numerous challenges such as price volatility, harsh climatic conditions, uncertainty on the demand side, and changes in government policies, to name a few. price stability benefits buyers and producers, though its effects can vary based on whether the focus is on consumer or producer welfare (gouel, 2013). price volatility often dictates profit or loss outcomes. stable prices generally favor producers (exporters), while consumers (importers) may suffer during periods of price instability due to supply disruptions. consumers usually benefit from price stabilization efforts in economies with demand-side fluctuations, asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 1 (2025): 60-72 mailto:gdeepa550@gmail.com https://www.doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i1.5321 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 60-72 61 although the overall impact on producers, especially exporters, remains unclear (gouel, 2013; international monetary fund (imf), 2012). an inflated average price and reduced supply can create optimal market distortion, mainly when demand is inelastic. implementing market intervention strategies can lead to significant welfare gains (antonaci, demeke, & vezzani, 2014; hazell & scandizzo, 1975). empirical studies on agricultural price volatility show mixed trends (mittal, hariharan, & subash, 2018). while price volatility is often seen as harmful, it can be beneficial since it leads to uncertain demand. producers can make significant profits when prices rise, but this depends on their ability to adjust output in response to changing prices (assouto, houensou, & semedo, 2020; gouel, 2013). conversely, price instability may hurt consumers, while declining prices could help them (muflikh, smith, brown, & aziz, 2021; snell, 2022). as a welfare state, a government aims to stabilize prices for the benefit of its citizens (lundberg & abman, 2022). on the supply side, using anticipated prices rather than actual market values complicates supply decisions, as unpredictable price changes affect how benefits are distributed between producers and consumers (el-dukheri, elamin, & kherallah, 2012; letta, montalbano, & pierre, 2022). factors like commodity speculation also impact these expectations (assouto et al., 2020). policymakers face challenges in tackling the variable earnings of farmers in emerging countries, largely because of the erratic nature of crop pricing (abokyi, strijker, asiedu, & daams, 2020; birthal, negi, & joshi, 2019). however, research on stabilization programs that could help reduce uncertainty for smallholder farmers, especially in countries like india, is lacking. indian farmers often struggle to forecast future prices accurately (saini & gulati, 2017). price stabilization measures could enhance their forecasting skills and stabilize production decisions, resulting in a more consistent supply. additionally, the indian agrarian economy relies heavily on weather, especially the monsoon. insufficient rainfall negatively affects production and profits. the farmers’ income is affected by these factors. thus, in such situations, crop insurance becomes essential for providing relief to farmers. this study analyzes the market dynamics of onions and potatoes in india, the two traditional crops grown widely in the country. the two crops (onions and potatoes) are crucial for daily caloric intake in indian households. price fluctuations occur regularly due to climate change, monsoon variations, pests, and supply-demand changes. these price changes affect the consumer price index, contribute to inflation, and impact farmers’ livelihoods and consumers' affordability of these staples. the study examines how price changes influence the market supply of these crops and the relationship between supply fluctuations and income variability. this study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) model to examine the relationship between market price variability and agricultural supply, focusing on both shortand long-term effects. additionally, it looks at conditions where price stabilization could reduce income variability for farmers in a developing country like india. the remaining sections of the paper are organized as follows: section 2 provides a glimpse of government policies toward stabilizing farmers' income and critically evaluates the existing government policies in india. the third section outlines the methods and estimation strategy employed in this study. the fourth section presents the empirical results, while section 5 concludes with alternative solutions to safeguard farmers' income. 2. critical evaluation of government policies towards the welfare of the indian agrarian economy the government of india has instituted various agricultural price stabilization initiatives nationwide. key programs include the minimum support price (msp), price stabilization fund (psf), pradhan mantri annadata aay sanrakshan abhiyan (pm-aasha), and market intervention scheme (mis) (das, 2020; goi, 2015, 2016, 2023b). on the other hand, crop insurance has been a risk management concept in india's agriculture since the beginning of the century. it has undergone occasional but continuous evolution in conception, execution, scope, methodology, and practices. in the 1972-1973 period, the life insurance corporation of india's "general insurance" department initiated the inaugural crop insurance program specifically for h-4 cotton in the state of gujarat. later, the experimental program was transferred to the newly formed general insurance corporation of india, further expanding its coverage to include groundnut, wheat, and potatoes (kaur, raj, singh, & chattu, 2021; raju & chand, 2008). the comprehensive crop insurance scheme succeeded the pilot crop insurance scheme, which was in place from 1979 to 1984. between 1985 and 1999, the national agriculture insurance scheme (nais) was launched and operated until 2016. other important programs during this period included the weather-based crop insurance scheme, which ran from 2007 to 2016, and the modified national agriculture insurance scheme (mnais), which also operated from 2010 to 2016. since 2016, the insurance landscape has evolved with the introduction of the restructured weatherbased crop insurance scheme and the pradhan mantri fasal bima yojana (bhattacharya & biswas, 2018; kaur et al., 2021; raju & chand, 2008). however, government schemes or policies may have little impact on the stabilization of farmers' income in the context of running a perfectly market-driven economy. 2.1. evaluation of price stabilisation schemes (msp) the government launches various schemes to benefit farmers; however, implementing effective pricing policies, particularly the minimum support price (msp), encounters several challenges. these include the need for improved agricultural market systems, inadequate infrastructure and storage capabilities, and ineffective mechanisms for price tracking and forecasting. an effective marketing strategy can help farmers secure fair prices for their products, while a poor strategy can lead to diminished earnings by driving prices down at the point of sale. although many consider the msp a successful tool for protecting farmers nationwide, various states face difficulties in its implementation, primarily due to a lack of awareness among stakeholders (singh, mehta, shukla, & singh, 2015). furthermore, recent studies reveal that the ongoing elevation of the minimum support price (msp) over the years has played a role in diminishing the agricultural sector's contribution to the country’s gross domestic product (gdp). the share of nonasian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 60-72 62 agricultural gross domestic product (gdp) has significantly risen compared to the national total. this shift is thought to be driven by persistent inflationary pressures and a significant drop in investments aimed at agriculture, which has ultimately led to a decrease in the overall economic health of the country (deshpande & naika, 2002; irade, 2007; parikh, ganesh-kumar, & darbha, 2003). the benefits that a farmer can achieve by locking in the price of a particular crop go beyond simple pricing strategies. several elements play a role, such as the opportunity for diversifying crops, having multiple sources of income, the farmer’s ability to sustain their harvest levels, and the possibility of engaging in speculative trading based on upcoming market trends (kumar & mittal, 2022). india's agricultural price support program has faced significant criticism for its diminishing relevance. while it was designed to assist farmers by providing a safety net for crop prices, many farmers have reported that it has not substantially benefited them. a growing number of small farmers are experiencing increased financial strain and accumulating debt, making it difficult for them to obtain fair prices for their produce (ramaswami, 2019). despite years of implementing a floor-cost-based support system, the challenges within the agricultural sector continue to escalate, highlighting the need for a reevaluation of these support mechanisms. 2.2. evaluation of crop insurance schemes the pmfby crop insurance program was established to provide farmers with a comprehensive risk solution. it features a simple premium structure and quick settlement of claims for complete crop failure coverage on annual commercial and horticultural crops, aiming to stabilize farmers' income. however, challenges such as long-term tenders, access to coverage for all farmers, and the expansion of risk coverage and add-on options need to be addressed for the program to be effective. solutions to these issues are essential to ensure the program meets the needs of all stakeholders and local agricultural conditions (goi, 2023c). financial factors play a significant role in farmers' willingness to engage with the government's crop insurance program. key issues include liquidity when purchasing insurance, overall wealth and earnings, limited credit access, and insurance premium costs (biswal & bahinipati, 2022). most farmers in india are small or marginal and come from economically disadvantaged households, making it difficult for them to afford crop insurance (biswal & bahinipati, 2022; rajeev & nagendran, 2019). additionally, credit constraints and a lack of information about insurance products hinder their ability to purchase insurance (giné, townsend, & vickery, 2008). one of the major challenges that farmers encounter in securing institutional credit is the lack of adequate financial institutions in rural regions. by enabling timely access to formal financing, we can help farmers navigate liquidity challenges and promote the adoption of crop insurance (dey & maitra, 2017). furthermore, there is a need for better-designed crop insurance policies grounded in agronomic principles. instead of the typical isolated pricing strategies in the agricultural sector, adopting a portfolio approach for pricing similar to the empirical bayes credibility theory would be more beneficial (clarke, clarke, mahul, rao, & verma, 2012). we now discuss the methodology and build a model to assess the income variability of farmers. 3. methodology agriculture plays a vital role in promoting economic growth and reducing poverty in developing economies. by diversifying into higher-value crops, farmers can increase their income and improve their risk management, which offers two significant benefits of agricultural expansion (neogi & ghosh, 2022; pandey & kumari, 2021; zhang, mishra, & hirsch, 2021). at the same time, the government of india is actively working towards doubling farmers' incomes (goi, 2017). farmers can integrate these two priorities into their agricultural practices. however, as previously discussed, they may encounter challenges due to government and market failures. this study aims to identify the conditions that can reduce income variability in india's agrarian economy. before conducting empirical estimation, it employs time series econometric analysis to assess the impact of market price variability on supply in the market. this analysis is especially relevant given that indian farmers face a dual challenge of price variability and crop failure. 3.1. theoretical background: condition of the income variability of farmers' assessing the fluctuation of revenue from agriculture is critical. this research adheres to the methodology described by newbery and stiglitz (1981). this study expands upon the income stabilization hypothesis in the indian context, emphasizing its relevance to the global economy. a significant component of india's agricultural sector comprises marginal and small-scale growers who often have little information regarding international market dynamics yet are impacted by fluctuations in prices. consequently, it is imperative to synchronize india's crop production with global output to stabilize farmers' income, represented as the product of price (r) and quantity (k). 𝑦 = 𝑟𝑖𝑘𝑖 (1) where i ranges from 1 to n crop. to measure income instability through the variance of the logarithm of income, it can be expressed as: log 𝑦 = log⁡(𝑟𝑖𝑘𝑖)  𝑉𝑎𝑟⁡(log 𝑦) = 𝑉𝑎𝑟{log(𝑟𝑖𝑘𝑖)}  𝑉𝑎𝑟⁡(log 𝑦) = 𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑟𝑖) + 𝑉𝑎𝑟⁡(log 𝑘𝑖) + 2 ∗ 𝐶𝑜𝑣(log 𝑟𝑖 , log 𝑘𝑖) (2) the initial hypothesis asserts that the demand function will exhibit an elasticity that remains constant from (1), namely, 𝑘𝑖 = 𝑟 1 𝜀 (3) the inverse demand schedule will be, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 60-72 63 𝑟𝑖 = 𝑘− 1 𝜀 (4) thus, the income of the farmer will be, 𝑦 = 𝑟𝑖𝑘𝑖 => 𝑦 = 𝑘− 1 𝜀  log 𝑘𝑖 = (1 −⁡ 1 𝜀 ) log 𝑘𝑖  𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑦) = (1 − 1 𝜀 )2𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑘𝑖) after stabilisation, it yields 𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑦) = 𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑘𝑖) (5) here, ε denotes the elasticity of demand, which must equal 1/2 for the stabilization requirement to be met. the degree of stabilization is contingent upon the value of ε, which could vary approximately greater than or less than 1/2. utilizing a demand schedule characterized by constant elasticity (from equation 4). 𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑟𝑖) = (1 휀⁄ )2𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑘𝑖) it becomes 𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑘𝑖) = [𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑘𝑖) +⁡(1 휀⁄ )2]𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑘𝑖) + 2⁡𝑐𝑜𝑣(log 𝑟𝑖 , log 𝑘𝑖) 𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑘𝑖) = [1 +⁡(1 휀⁄ )2]𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑘𝑖) + 2⁡𝑐𝑜𝑣(log 𝑟𝑖 , log 𝑘𝑖) (6) since the conditions for farmers' income stabilization are already derived, the following two conditions must be satisfied. first proposition: [1 + (1 휀⁄ )2] = 1 (7)  휀 → ∞ (8)  lim 𝜀→∞ ( 1 𝜀 ) → ∞ (9) a consequence of the initial proposition: if 휀 approaches infinity, then 𝜕𝑞𝑖 𝑞𝑖 ⁄ 𝜕𝑝𝑖 𝑝𝑖 ⁄ = ∞ (10) thus transpires as ε signifies that the elasticity of demand nears zero (0). second proposition: 2𝑐𝑜𝑣⁡(log 𝑟𝑖 , log 𝑘𝑖) = 0 => ⁡𝑐𝑜𝑣(log 𝑟𝑖 , log 𝑘𝑖) = 0 (11) the first condition implies infinite elasticity of demand, indicating perfectly elastic demand, where the equilibrium price remains unaffected by changes in supply. the second criterion indicates an absence of correlation between price (r) and quantity (k). despite their theoretical plausibility, both possibilities are practically impossible to achieve. consequently, the farming community consistently experiences income fluctuations. before exploring the empirical evidence of income variation for selected crops, it is essential to assess whether the quantity of supply of any crop is directly linked to its longand short-term relationship with market price, particularly in relation to the price stabilization scheme. thus, before proceeding with the data analysis and description for the selected crop, we outline the estimation procedure to evaluate the impact of price changes on crop supply. 3.2. estimation procedure 3.2.1. assumptions of the estimation procedure to measure income changes, we make the assumptions mentioned below: a. farmers will grow only one type of crop. b. there is no non-farm income earned by farmers. c. farmers and producers will not be affected by global market changes. 3.2.2. econometric approach to determine income volatility, we follow these essential steps: 1. evaluate the importance of our determined method to understand the previously defined parameters. 2. determine with precision the elasticity of demand, the covariance between logarithmic price and quantity, and the variance of logarithmic price. the subsequent steps to establish the credibility of our model are as follows. the study uses daily prices and quantities of arrivals in the agricultural market. we examine the existence of a linear relationship between the time series variables. 𝑘𝑡 =⁡𝛽1 + 𝛽2𝑟𝑡 + 휀𝑡 ⁡ (12) the two variables, price and quantity, are defined as follows: r denotes price, k represents quantity, ε denotes random disturbance, β stands for the coefficients, and t denotes time. the ordinary least squares (ols) method for examining long-term relationships between price and quantity should be used carefully, as time series data can be nonstationary and lead to spurious regression results. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 60-72 64 nonstationarity can lead to inaccurate conclusions about causality. thus, this study integrates cointegration theory with dynamic econometrics to address the limitations associated with the ols method and to effectively manage nonstationary time series. the study delves into the short-term dynamics and long-term relationships between the daily pricing and quantities of potatoes and onions. the first stage in cointegration theory is to ascertain the order of integration of time series variables. this conclusion is derived from multiple tests. the study utilizes the correlogram, the augmented dickey-fuller test, and the phillips-perron test to evaluate the existence of a unit root in the model (fuller, 1996). furthermore, the differing orders of integration of both variables—specifically, the logarithms of price and quantity—are analyzed using multiple techniques. the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) bounds test is applied to estimate both short-term and long-term parameters concurrently. additionally, a vector error correction model (vecm) is utilized to analyze the behavior of price and quantity across both the short and long run. the term 'error correction' refers to how deviations from a long-term equilibrium in the previous period influence the short-run dynamics of the model. 3.3. choice of product and market this study examines the markets for two agricultural products: potatoes and onions. both crops exhibit significant price volatility due to consistent year-round demand and variable supply. we have selected two agricultural markets for the analysis: the burdwan agricultural produce market committee (apmc) in the east burdwan district of west bengal, focusing on potatoes, and the lashalgao apmc in the nashik district of maharashtra, for onions. this choice is based on the steady demand for both crops over the years, and both markets are among the largest for their respective products. maharashtra is the leading state in india for onion production, contributing 43% of the total, with nashik being the top district for onion production nationwide (goi, 2023a). in contrast, west bengal ranks second in potato production, accounting for 23% of the total, while uttar pradesh is the highest, with 30% (goi, 2023a). east burdwan is the highest-producing district for potatoes among all districts in both uttar pradesh and west bengal. 3.4. data source the daily prices and quantities of potatoes and onions were collated from the agriculture marketing information network (agmarknet). since 2014, the government of india has implemented significant transformations in the agricultural sector. therefore, this study uses daily prices and quantities of potatoes and onions from 2015 to 2020. this extensive data set provides valuable insights for modeling and understanding the factors that influence market behaviors. additionally, the decision to focus on this period is based on the absence of major economic or environmental disasters during those years. 4. data analysis the empirical analysis has two main components. first, it involves estimating the model to examine both short and long-term relationships between price and quantity. second, it includes validating the fundamental assumption regarding the income risk associated with crop cultivation in india. 4.1. relationship between the quantity of supply and market price table 1 summarizes key statistics on pricing and quantity arrivals of potatoes and onions in their respective markets. table 1. descriptive statistics potatoes and onions in apmc(west bengal) and apmc (maharshtra). statistics potatoes onion price (rs./quintal) arrivals (quintals) price (rs./quintal) quantity arrivals (quintals) mean 1142 6679 1562 12974 standard deviation 671 32940 1297 9544 minimum 290 65 130 10 maximum 3930 453540 8625 437000 n 2192 2192 2192 2192 in the burdwan apmc (west bengal), the typical daily price for potatoes is approximately rs. 1,142 per quintal, with an average arrival quantity of about 6,679 quintals. in contrast, the lasalgaon apmc (maharashtra) reports an average daily price for onions at rs. 1,562 per quintal, with a quantity arrival of 12,974 quintals. notably, the range between the lowest and highest values for both the price and quantity arrivals of onions is significantly greater than that of potatoes. additionally, the fluctuations in both the price and quantity of onions are much more pronounced compared to those of potatoes. figure 1 (a, b) illustrates the changes in two indicators, namely price and quantity of potatoes and onions (after applying a logarithmic transformation). the supply price and quantity of potatoes in the burdwan apmc of west bengal show significant fluctuations. notably, for potatoes, price and quantity are inversely correlated. in contrast, the onion market in the lasalgaon apmc of nashik, maharashtra, also exhibits considerable volatility in price and quantity. however, the quantity supplied in this market remains nearly constant during normal periods. unexpected weather events, market conditions, and other factors also influence the quantity supplied. as a result, the quantity supplied experiences downward volatility, while the highest quantity supplied remains relatively stable throughout the study period. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 60-72 65 figure 1. trend of price and quantity of potatoes and onions. the correlogram test evaluates the randomness of a dataset concerning specific variables, i.e., log 𝑟𝑖⁡, and log 𝑘𝑖⁡. a strong positive autocorrelation is found between prices and quantities for potatoes and onions. the correlogram for autocorrelation shows a gradually decreasing trend for both potatoes and onions. high correlations between the variables at various time intervals suggest potential trends and seasonal components within the data. notably, applying first differencing can help mitigate the impact of the trend, while seasonal differencing can effectively address seasonality. additionally, a unit root test is employed to determine the stationarity of the variables. 4.1.1. adf and phillips-perron test we verify the integration order of the dataset using the augmented dickey-fuller and phillips-perron tests, with the results presented in table 2. the ardl bounds testing method is suitable regardless of whether the independent variables are integrated of order one, i(1), or order zero, i(0), as long as the dependent variable is i(1). our analysis indicates that the prices of both potatoes and onions are stationary at order i(1). the test statistics for the logarithmic levels of quantity show significance for both potatoes and onions at order zero, i(0), and order one, i(1). table 2. results adf and phillips-perron test. variable level first difference order of integration intercept intercept and trend intercept intercept and trend a. cases of potatoes augmented dickey-fuller test log 𝑟𝑖 -1.9 -2.5 -8.1* -8.147* i(1) log⁡𝑘𝑖 -3.3* -3.7* -12.4* -12.4* i(0) and i(1) phillips-perron test log⁡𝑟𝑖 -1.7 -2.4 -41.8* -41.8* i(1) log⁡𝑘𝑖 -6.2* -6.8* -69.3* -69.3* i(0) and i(1) b. case of onions augmented dickey-fuller test log⁡𝑟𝑖 -2.9* -2.9 -7.5* -7.5* i(1) log⁡𝑘𝑖 -5.3* -5.3* -11.9* -11.9* i(0) and i(1) phillips-perron test log⁡𝑟𝑖 -2.5# -2.6 -52.5* -52.5* i(1) log⁡𝑘𝑖 -20.9* -20.9* -100.5* -100.5* i(0) and i(1) note: *significant at the 5% level. #significant at the 10% level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 60-72 66 4.1.2. cointegration test the ardl bounds estimation technique is used to assess cointegration and analyze the relationships among the specified variables. unlike traditional methods, which do not allow for cointegration tests with variables that have mixed or uncertain integration orders such as i(0) or i(1), the bounds testing approach effectively addresses these evaluations (pesaran, shin, & smith, 2001; sam, mcnown, & goh, 2019). this methodology can accommodate a combination of i(1) and i(0) variables; however, this only applies to the independent variables, while the dependent variable must be i(1). in this context, i(1) indicates that the best lag length for the logarithm of the price, following an analysis of the order of integration, acts as an independent variable. meanwhile, the logarithm of quantity, regarded as the dependent variable, is also optimal at i(1). therefore, the ardl bounds estimation is utilized to investigate cointegration and determine the relationship between the log of quantity and the prices of potatoes and onions. the findings from the bounds tests conducted for potatoes and onions using ardl models are presented in table 3. the hypothesis for the bounds test is as follows: h0: there is no cointegration. h1: there is cointegration. the bounds test evaluated the f-test results for the coefficients related to the prices of potatoes and onions, considering one differentiation period, as well as the quantity supplied. the calculated f-statistics for potatoes and onions were 10.3 and 44.7, respectively. both values exceed the critical upper limit for f-statistics. this indicates that we may disregard the null hypothesis, which posits the absence of cointegration. consequently, we can ascertain that a long-term correlation exists between the price and quantity of potatoes and onions. table 3. results bounds test for onions and potatoes. category f-statistic t-statistic potatoes 10.3 -4.4 onions 44.7 -9.4 significance critical values (0.1-0.01), f-statistics, case 3 10% 5% 2.5% 1% lower bound 4.0 4.9 5.7 6.8 upper bound 4.7 5.7 6.6 7.8 significance critical values (0.1-0.01), t-statistic, case 3 10% 5% 2.5% 1% lower bound -2.5 -2.8 -3.1 -3.4 upper bound -2.9 -3.2 -3.5 -3.8 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 60-72 67 table 4. selection of optimal lag-length criteria for price and quantity in the cases of potatoes and onions. lag first difference in the log of price log of quantity log likelihood (ll) liklihood ration (lr) final prediction error (fpe) akaike’s information criterion (aic) schwarz’s bayesian information criterion (sbic) hannan and quinn information criterion (hqic) log likelihood (ll) liklihood ration (lr) final prediction error (fpe) akaike’s information criterion (aic) schwarz’s bayesian information criterion (sbic) hannan and quinn information criterion (hqic) a. case of potatoes 0 4367 0.001 -3.9 -3.9 -3.9 -3890.3 2.053 3.5 3.5 3.5 1 4393.8 53.5 0.001 -4.0 -4.0 -4.0 -1144.5 5491.6 0.167 1.0 1.05 1.0 2 4397.6 7.5 0.001 -4.0 -4.0 -4.0 -1048.1 192.8 0.153 0.96 0.96 0.96 3 4402.5 9.7* 0.001* -4.0* -4.0* -4.0* -1039.3 17.6* 0.152* 0.95* 0.95* 0.96* 4 4402.5 0.003 0.001 -4.0 -4.0 -4.0 -1039.2 0.21 0.152 0.95 0.95 0.96 b. case of onions 0 2199.9 0.008 -2.01 -2.01 -2.0 -4007.3 2.2 3.6 3.6 3.6 1 2214.5 29.3* 0.008* -2.02* -2.02* -2.0* -2963.1 2088.4 0.880 2.7 2.7 2.7 2 2214.9 0.8 0.008 -2.02 -2.02 -2.0 -2904.4 117.3 0.83 2.6 2.6 2.6 3 2215.0 0.1 0.008 -2.02 -2.01 -2.0 -2888.6 31.6 0.82 2.6 2.6 2.6 4 2216.5 2.8 0.008 -2.02 -2.01 -2.0 -2884.5 8.1* 0.82* 2.6* 2.6* 2.7* note: * optimal lag. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 60-72 68 4.1.3. vector error correction model cointegration indicates that specific variables preserve a consistent long-term equilibrium relationship. this equilibrium signifies an optimal state; yet, transient fluctuations may still arise. consequently, it is essential to examine whether these variations ultimately converge with the long-term equilibrium. the vector error correction model (vecm) is employed to examine the short-term and long-term relationships among the variables. the error-correcting mechanism rectifies imbalances in subsequent periods, aligning short-term dynamics with long-term trends. when a long-term relationship or cointegration exists, the error correction model (ecm) can be defined as follows: ∆ log 𝑘𝑖 = 𝛼0 +∑ 𝛼1𝑖 log 𝑘(𝑡−𝑖) + 𝑝 𝑖=1 ∑ 𝛼2𝑖 log 𝑘(𝑡−𝑖) + 𝑝 𝑖=1 𝜆𝐸𝐶𝑇(𝑡−1) + 𝑒𝑡 (13) where, i. the coefficients 𝛼1𝑖 , and 𝛼2𝑖 represent short-term adjustments toward long-term equilibrium. 𝜆 = (1 − ∑ 𝛿𝑖 𝑝 𝑖=1 ) si ii. gnifies that the parameter is represented with a negative sign, implying a reduction in speed. iii. 𝐸𝐶𝑇⁡ = ⁡ (𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑞(𝑡−𝑖) − 𝜃𝑋𝑡) implies the error correction term, where 𝜃 = ∑ 𝛽𝑖 𝑞 𝑖=1 𝛼 ⁡ represents the long-term parameter. iv. 𝑒𝑡 represents the residual, which is the stochastic error term, often called impulses, innovations, or shocks. v. the r lags and k-lags indicate the dependent variable and independent variable, accordingly when estimating a vector error correction model (vecm), it is crucial to select the appropriate lag length. the akaike information criterion (aic) suggests that a lag length of three is optimal for analyzing the changes in the logarithms of prices and potato quantities (see table 4.a). additionally, for the changes in the logarithm of prices, a lag length of one is deemed ideal, while four lags are recommended for the logarithms of onion quantities (see table 4.b). before evaluating the ardl error correction model, we first assess the significance of the ardl model itself by examining the f-statistic to determine its validity (see table 5). table 5. empirical estimation of the price-quantity nexus with the ardl framework. varriables potato onions l_quantity l_quantity l_quantity l1. 0.64*** (0.021) 0.57*** (0.021) l2. 0.23*** (0.025) 0.14*** (0.025) l3. 0.091*** (0.021) 0.084*** (0.025) d1_l_price ---0.77** (0.257) 0.061** (0.022) l1. -0.323 (0.260) -0.104 (0.221) l2. 0.325 (0.260) 0.0771 (0.222) l3. 0.375 (0.258) 0.303 (0.221) constant 0.189*** (0.043) 1.208*** (0.129) n = 2188 f(7, 2180) = 3934.67 prob > f = 0.0000 r-sq = 0.927 adj. r-sq = 0.926 rmse = 0.389 n = 2188 f(7, 2180) = 558.52 prob > f = 0.0000 r-sq = 0.642 adj. r-sq = 0.641 rmse = 0.906 note: standard errors in parentheses **p<0.01, ***p<0.001. the ardl error correction model serves to assess the long-term association between potato and onion prices and their corresponding quantities. the coefficients derived from the cointegration equation demonstrate this enduring relationship, while the coefficients from the error correction model (ecm) highlight how fluctuations from this relationship affect changes in the variables in the following period. in this framework, errors from the prior period are rectified in the subsequent period. notably, the error correction coefficient for potatoes stands at -0.026, which is statistically significant at the 1% threshold. in the same vein, the error correction coefficient for onions is -0.13, also statistically significant at the 1% level. these negative and statistically significant adjustment coefficients suggest that asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 60-72 69 discrepancies from equilibrium are corrected over time. furthermore, the adjustment speed is considerably greater for onions (-0.13) than for potatoes (-0.026), implying that the onion market adjusts at a faster pace (see table 6). table 6. empirical assessment of the price-quantity dynamics through the error correction model (ecm). variables potatoes onions d.l_quantity d.l_quantity adj l_quantity l. -0.026*** (0.006) -0.13*** (0.014) lr d1_l_price -14.99 (16.73) -0.490 (2.424) sr l_quantity ld. -0.32*** (0.022) -0.29*** (0.023) l2d. -0.091*** (0.021) -0.14*** (0.023) d1_l_price d. -0.377 (0.397) ld. -0.700* (0.339) l2d. -0.375 (0.258) l_quantity l3d. -0.0610** (0.022) d.d1_l_price -0.0430 (0.221) constant 0.18*** (0.043) 1.20*** (0.129) n = 2188 r-sq= 0.116 adj. r-sq = 0.113 rmse = 0.389 n = 2188 r-sq = 0.169 adj. r-sq 0.167 rmse = 0.906 note: standard errors in parentheses *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001. the long-run price elasticity for potatoes and onions is statistically insignificant, indicating that prices do not strongly influence long-term quantity adjustments. in the short run, the negative and significant coefficients of lagged quantities (l_quantities) for both potatoes and onions suggest that past quantities negatively impact current adjustments. this may be due to supply rigidities, storage effects, or demand constraints (birthal et al., 2019; roy, gupta, & wardhan, 2024). in the short run, price changes have a minimal impact on the quantities of potatoes, except for the variable d1_l_price in the potato category. the significant negative coefficient for d1_l_price indicates that changes in price do indeed significantly influence adjustments in the quantity of potatoes. the negative sign indicates that as prices rise, the quantity decreases, highlighting demand-side sensitivity or short-run supply. the relationship between price and quantity in the indian economy is unpredictable, with only a weak connection in the short term. this weak relationship suggests that fundamental issues, such as production cycles, input costs, and market access, often hinder farmers' ability to respond to price changes effectively (agrawal, hirons, & gathornehardy, 2021). additionally, income variability among farmers plays a significant role in this setup. many small and marginal farmers lack the financial resources to quickly adjust their production in response to price shifts (ceballos, kannan, & kramer, 2020; touch et al., 2024). as a result, even when prices fluctuate, the supply may not change proportionally in the short run, leading to inefficiencies and unstable incomes within the agricultural sector. 4.2. validation of the condition of income riskiness of crop cultivation in india the dynamics of agricultural markets involve complex interactions between price and quantity, which are significantly influenced by factors such as demand sensitivity, supply constraints, and various external influences. understanding these interactions is crucial for farmers as they adapt to price changes, particularly for essential crops like potatoes and onions. however, the inherent unpredictability of these markets presents significant challenges for farmers aiming for consistent income. the previous subsection examined the prerequisites for achieving income stability. this section builds on that discussion by providing deeper insights into how markets respond and the economic factors influencing this responsiveness. the study finds that the elasticity of demand (ε) is ‒1.32 for potatoes and 0.54 for onions. this indicates that price changes are not negligible over the observed period. the price variations for potatoes and onions are recorded at 0.30 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 60-72 70 and 0.54, respectively. furthermore, the covariance of the logarithm of quantity, denoted as cov(log⁡𝑟𝑖⁡⁡log⁡𝑘𝑖), is not equal to zero. for potatoes, the covariance is -0.40, and for onions, it is -0.28. this negative covariance suggests that the prices and quantities of these products are moving in opposite directions. several factors contribute to this situation, including asymmetric information in the market accessed by farmers and producers, market distortions, and the potential cartelization by market participants, such as agents or traders (briones & rakotoarisoa, 2013; paul, das, das, & mathur, 2021). therefore, achieving the market stabilization condition, which requires that 𝑉𝑎𝑟(log 𝑦) = 𝑉𝑎𝑟⁡(log 𝑘𝑖), is nearly impossible. thus, the findings suggest that income unpredictability is faced by indian farmers over time. india has introduced several price stabilization schemes to tackle the issue of agricultural income stability, but the effectiveness of these measures on a national scale needs improvement (kumar & mittal, 2022). additionally, climate irregularities continually threaten the yields of indian farmers. this widespread concern about production variability highlights the necessity for protective mechanisms for farmers, leading to the emergence of crop insurance as a potential solution. however, as previously mentioned, crop insurance does not effectively protect farmers from income variability (biswal & bahinipati, 2022). 5. conclusion and policy recommendation this study shows that potato and onion farmers face significant income volatility, threatening their long-term well-being. price fluctuations and lower market prices directly impact their earnings, while weather events and natural disasters increase these challenges. to effectively manage risks, it is essential to understand the sources and impacts of different types of risks in agriculture. the main goal of risk management is to maintain farm profitability and ensure financial stability. despite implementing various measures to stabilize income, farmers still struggle with income fluctuations. to protect farmers' income, we should introduce supportive programs and use financial tools from the derivatives market through commodity exchanges. additionally, purchasing insurance policies is essential. establishing agricultural income or farm revenue insurance schemes in india is crucial, especially given the ineffective use of current government policies. in this context, numerous governments worldwide have initiated income insurance programs. the united states and canada, for instance, have implemented income insurance programs (li & ker, 2013; meuwissen & huirne, 1998). canada provides coverage for farmers' total income under the "farm income protection act" (goc, 1991). brazil has introduced agricultural insurance aimed at safeguarding farmers' revenues or incomes, shielding them from fluctuations in market prices. this policy encompasses productivity protection, featuring a price guarantee provided by private insurance companies (loyola, moreira, & pereira, 2016). furthermore, six countries in the european union, namely denmark, france, germany, greece, italy, and the netherlands, have initiated a pilot program for income insurance (meuwissen & huirne, 1998). this study suggests that the government consider implementing income or revenue insurance based on specific indices. index insurance is an innovative method of providing insurance that delivers benefits according to a predetermined index, such as farmers' income or farm revenue, to compensate for losses in assets and investments— particularly working capital—due to income or revenue fluctuations in agriculture. this approach, known as area revenue index insurance, calculates indemnities by evaluating reductions in average crop yields and prices within a designated area. it can be customized for specific products or applied to cover an entire farm. the primary advantage of this income or revenue insurance scheme is its direct approach to addressing income variability. unlike commodity price stabilization programs, which focus solely on prices and may inadvertently increase income variability, the effectiveness of this scheme relies on its capacity to mitigate the costs associated with income fluctuations, the average yields, and prices of crops in a given area. this insurance can be tailored to specific products or cover the entire farm. the advantage of this income or revenue insurance scheme lies in its direct approach to addressing the problem of income variability. unlike commodity price stabilization schemes, which solely affect prices and may increase income variability, the effectiveness of this scheme depends on its ability to reduce the costs associated with income variability. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the symbiosis school of economics, pune, india, has granted approval for this study on 15th february 2024. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abokyi, e., strijker, d., asiedu, k. f., & daams, m. n. 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(2021). market-oriented agriculture and farm performance: evidence from rural china. food policy, 100, 102023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2021.102023 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1108/jadee-06-2020-0131 https://doi.org/10.1108/jadee-05-2019-0067 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.122536 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2021.102023 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 56 comparative advantages and factors affecting agriculture production and income in the food estate area on the indonesia–timor-leste border werenfridus taenaa boanerges putra sipayungb fried allung blegurc anggelina delviana klaud a,b,c,dtimor university, east nusa tenggara, indonesia.  weren_ntt@yahoo.co.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 17 october 2022 revised: 8 february 2023 accepted: 27 february 2023 published: 24 march 2023 keywords agriculture production and income comparative advantage cross-border food estate rotiklot dam social and physical factors. the indonesian government has created a food estate area in belu regency, supported by the construction of the rotiklot dam, in the expectation that it would increase agricultural production and income, as well as stimulate the economy of the border region. the study aims to analyze (i) the comparative advantage of agricultural commodities in the food estate area and (ii) the effect of social characteristics and physical inputs on increasing farmers’ production and income in the food estate area in the border region. the data used consisted of primary data obtained from interviews with 300 respondents, selected through purposive sampling from a population of 4500, and secondary data from related agencies. the data analysis employed location quotient (lq) and the partial least squares approach to structural equation modeling (sem-pls). social input was reflected by 5 variables and physical input by 3 variables, while production was reflected by 6 variables and income by 7 variables. the lq results show that maize and rice production in the food estate area is superior to other areas, and maize grows faster than rice crops. the comparative advantage is due to physical and social factors; based on the results of sem-pls, physical factors have direct and indirect effects on production and income, while social factors have an indirect effect on farmers' income through agricultural production. expansion of the planting area by utilizing water from the rotiklot dam and increasing the motivation of farmers through input subsidies are needed to optimize the increase in farmers' production and income. contribution/originality: the research findings demonstrate how the comparative advantage of rice and maize is influenced by physical and social factors in the food estate area. this study found that physical factors have direct and indirect effects on income, while social factors only have an indirect effect on income. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4762 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: taena, w., sipayung, b. p., blegur, f. a., & klau, a. d. (2023). comparative advantages and factors affecting agriculture production and income in the food estate area on the indonesia–timor-leste border. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1), 56–65. 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4762 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 1 (2023): 56-65. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3164-7064 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7669-5561 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1573-7078 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9492-4260 mailto:weren_ntt@yahoo.co.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 56-65 57 1. introduction border areas are areas that border other countries and which have resources that must be managed in order to improve welfare. these natural resources often take the form of agricultural potential, which requires infrastructure development to support the development of innovation to improve the economy of border communities (meyer, howe, stollberg, & gerlitz, 2021). one of indonesia’s border areas is belu regency, east nusa tenggara province, which borders timor-leste. belu regency is a tropical region with a short rainy season and a long dry season of 7-8 months (meteorological & geophysical agency, 2022). the construction of the rotiklot dam offered a solution for the availability of water to increase agricultural production. the agricultural sector contributed 22% to the regional gross domestic product of belu regency (statistics of belu regency, 2021), but farmers tend not to specialize in certain agricultural commodities because they do not know which commodities have a comparative advantage in their area. the government has established a food estate area within the reach of the rotiklot dam to realize the specialization of agricultural commodities through increased production of paddy and maize to increase the incomes of the people around the dam. regional specialization provides opportunities for increased regional development and economic growth (li, zheng, & zhao, 2017; song, wang, wang, & zhou, 2021). the policy of specialization in agricultural areas through the food estate in kakuluk mesak district, belu regency, and the construction of the rotiklot dam as supporting infrastructure contribute to an increase in paddy and maize production. however, in 2019-2021, paddy production output in belu regency fluctuated, while maize production decreased. the data on paddy and maize production (in tons) compiled by the statistics of belu regency (2022) are as follows: rice 27,079 (2019), 9,310 (2020), 25,417 (2021) and maize 51,312 (2019), 49,605 (2020), 49,096 (2021). firmansyah, widodo, karsinah, and oktavilia (2017) and stellian and danna-buitrago (2019) stated that specialization in agricultural commodities is useful for increasing the comparative advantage. the food estate area in kakuluk mesak district as a center for rice and corn production in belu regency indicates a comparative advantage. the comparative advantage is achieved through several natural and social factors: natural resources, mastery of technology, community competence, available labor in sufficient quantities, market proximity, high accessibility, concentrations of similar activities, and an agglomeration economy. the previous studies on comparative advantage by semin and namyatova (2019) and kurmanova, sukhanberdina, kim, and urazova (2021) focused on analyzing physical characteristics, such as land area, which have a relationship with increased agricultural production. other studies have analyzed the influence of empowerment of human resources, the added value of agricultural products, and increased investment on increasing production and incomes (baidoo, yusif, & anwar, 2016; chen, rizwan, & abbas, 2022; elzbieta & dziwulski, 2021; firmansyah, pusparini, vivero, & lababit, 2021; zwolak, 2016). furthermore, the effects of customs and culture on the social costs of farming and farmer participation in farmer groups have been investigated (christyanto & mayulu, 2021; dewi & yustikaningrum, 2018; sipayung, fobia, taena, & joka, 2021; syuhudi, 2020; vu, minh, nguyen, van dung, & lan, 2020). this research fills the research gap regarding the synthesis of comparative advantage in the food estate area and the direct and indirect effects of its determinants (physical and social factors) on production and income. the study aims to analyze (1) the comparative advantage of agricultural commodities in the food estate area and (2) the effect of physical input and social characteristics on increasing the production and income of farmers in the food estate area in the border region. 2. materials and methods 2.1. research sites the research was conducted in belu regency, specifically the food estate area of kakuluk mesak district, which is in the border region of indonesia and timor-leste, as shown in figure 1. figure 1 illustrates the location of the rotiklot dam and its service area in the border area of indonesia and timor-leste. 2.2. data collection the study used both primary and secondary data. secondary data were obtained from the nusa tenggara ii river basin center, the ministry of public works and public housing, the indonesian geophysical climatology meteorology agency, and the indonesian central statistics agency. primary data was obtained through in-depth interviews and observations. interviews were conducted with 300 respondents, selected by random sampling from 5400 families. the correct sample size was determined to ensure the study’s level of truth (hamed, 2017). 2.3. data analysis the data were analyzed by first assessing production and price data to pre-analyze the value of food crop production in kakuluk mesak district and belu regency. the value of agricultural production of food crops was analyzed using a location quotient (lq) to find out the comparative advantage, which is determined by the physical and social factors of the region. these two groups of factors were reflected by various variables to determine agricultural production and income, which were analyzed using the partial least squares approach to structural equation modeling (sem-pls). the data analysis framework is visualized in figure 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 56-65 58 figure 1. map of research location. source: ina geoportal. 2.3.1. location quotient (lq) the location quotient aims to measure the comparative advantage in the food estate area. the formula used was in accordance with raqib and rofiuddin (2018): 𝐿𝑄 = 𝑉𝑖𝑘 𝑉𝑘⁄ 𝑉𝑖𝑝 𝑉𝑝⁄ (1) where: lq: value of location quotient. vik: production value of the i-th food crop in the food estate area. vk: total value of food crop production in the food estate area. vip: production value of the i-th food crop in belu regency. vp: total value of food crop production in belu regency. equation 1 presents the comparison between the value of certain food crops and the total value of food crops in the food estate area and belu regency, which is in the border area. the results of the location quotient can be classified according to the following criteria: 1. lq >1 indicates comparative advantage. 2. lq <1 indicates no comparative advantage. 3. lq = 1 indicates a balance. 2.3.2. analysis using structural equation modeling-partial least squares (sem-pls) analysis of the effects of social characteristics and physical inputs on agricultural production and income was conducted using sem-pls and smartpls3 software. this method can analyze models with small samples and predict composite models (hair, sarstedt, & ringle, 2019). reflective constructs are used in the agricultural production and income models. the variables used in this study included the production variables land area (p1), number of seeds (p2), amount of fertilizer (p3), labor (p4), production difference (p5), and availability of agricultural machinery (p6). the income variables were farm income (q1), agricultural product marketing costs (q2), seed costs (q3), pesticide costs (q4), fertilizer costs (q5), labor costs (q6), and agricultural machinery costs (q7). the variables measuring social characteristics were motivation (s1), farmer group activity (s2), ability to cooperate (s3), independence (s4), and ability to access information (s5). the physical input variables were water discharge (h1), planted area (h2), and rainfall (h3). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 56-65 59 3. results and discussion 3.1. comparative advantage the comparative advantage shows the specialization of the food estate area, which is supported by the construction of the rotiklot dam infrastructure. this specialization has an impact on the community’s behaviors, socio-economic characteristics, and ability to adapt technologies so as to support increased agricultural production and income, which in turn increases regional income (alhader, 2020; gracheva & sheludkov, 2021). prior to the establishment of the food estate in kakuluk mesak, agricultural commodities with comparative advantages (lq>1) were rice (1.01), cassava (1.30), sweet potatoes (1.20), and peanuts (1.72). this condition occurred because farmers used land with limited rainfall and water availability. after the establishment of a food estate area supported by the construction of the rotiklot dam, agricultural commodities with a comparative advantage (specialization) are rice (1.09) and corn (1.12) due to the use of marginal land, water from the dam and the introduction of agricultural technology. as stated by sikandar, erokhin, wang, rehman, and ivolga (2021), agricultural commodity specialization and direct investment have a positive impact on economic activity through the use of marginal land, increased human resource competence, and technological adaptation. figure 2. data analysis framework. therefore, the food estate area will increase agricultural production and people's incomes by improving the marketing of these commodities both domestically and abroad (timor-leste). specialization of agricultural commodities, in turn, affects production and income (kazambayeva, aiesheva, & yesengaliyeva, 2019; romão, 2020; sultanova, dossanova, & gabbasova, 2021). the lq values can be seen in table 1. agricultural commodities that have comparative advantages (rice and corn) are an indication of the physical and social potential of the region (daulika, peng, & hanani, 2020; jayadi & aziz, 2017). the physical potential of the food estate area includes water resources from the rotiklot dam, large planting areas, and rainfall, while the social asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 56-65 60 potential of the region includes motivation, farmer group activity, ability to cooperate, independence, and ability to access information. further analysis is needed to find out how much these factors influence agricultural production and income in the food estate area. table 1. location quotient value of food crops in food estate area. food commodity lq before the creation of the food estate area after the creation of the food estate area paddy 1.01 1.09 maize 0.90 1.12 cassava 1.30 0.85 sweet potatoes 1.20 0.64 peanuts 1.72 0.63 beans 0.09 0.05 source: statistics of belu regency (2022). 3.2. the influence of physical and social factors on production and income in the food estate area 3.2.1. outer model 3.2.1.1. convergent validity the measurement of the validity of the latent variables with indicators uses the outer loading value of each indicator, which means that each indicator reflects the latent variable. the outer loading value of each indicator is valid if > 0.5, meaning that it is maintained in the following analysis, whereas if the value does not reach 0.5, it is invalid and the indicator is eliminated (hair et al., 2021). the results of the analysis reveal some valid outer loading values (> 0.5), as can be seen in table 2, while the other indicators were eliminated and are not included in table 2 because their outer loading value was weak. the indicators include 2 indicators of physical variables, 3 indicators of social variables, and 4 indicators of production and income variables. table 2. outer loading value of indicators affecting agricultural production and income in the food estate area. variable indicator symbol outer loading value description physical planting area h2 1 valid production no. of seeds p2 0.675 valid labor employed p4 0.859 valid revenue marketing cost q2 0.912 valid seed cost q3 0.624 valid labor cost q6 0.872 valid social farmer association activeness s2 0.98 valid autonomy s4 0.673 valid source: primary data, 2022. 3.2.1.2. composite reliability the reliability of each variable was measured using the composite reliability value. consistent and stable composite reliability value as a model measuring tool requires a value > 0.7 (hair et al., 2021). the results of the analysis show that all the variables met the minimum required value and were thus reliable, as shown in table 3. table 3. the composite reliability factors affecting agricultural production and income in the food estate area. variable composite reliability description physical 1 reliable revenue 0.851 reliable production 0.745 reliable social 0.823 reliable source: primary data, 2022. 3.2.2. inner model after the model was declared valid and reliable, an analysis of the structural model (inner model) was carried out. the inner model was measured using the value of r-squared, the level of relevance (q2), f-squared, and the tstatistics of the path coefficient (hair et al., 2019). the results of the structural model analysis are shown in table 4. 3.2.2.1. testing the model’s goodness-of-fit (r-squared, q2, and f-squared) the value of the production variable’s coefficient of determination is weak (16.2%), while that of the income variable is 92.7%, which means it is classified as strong. furthermore, the physical input variable and the production variable each have a strong effect on the income variable, with f-squared values of 0.567 and 8.391. physical input variables have a moderate effect on production variables, while social variables have a weak effect on production and income variables (hair et al., 2021). exogenous variables also have a large predictive relevance for income (q2 = asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 56-65 61 0.581), while production is classified as weak (q2=0.076). subsequently, to ensure the effectiveness of each variable, a t-statistic test was carried out. 3.2.2.2. t-statistic test for path coefficients a t-statistic test was used to determine the effect of or relationship between all the variables. the results of the analysis are shown in table 4 and are discussed below. a. effect of physical variables on production and income the results of the statistical tests show that physical variables have a significant direct effect on production and income at 1%. likewise, the indirect effect of physical variables on income through production is significant at 1%. the area of cultivated land, which is a physical input variable, affects the need for seeds and labor, thereby increasing production and income (lestari, hanani, & syafrial, 2019; mohr & kühl, 2021). the increase in production and income further contributes to the improvement of the regional economy (daniel, 2021; susilastuti, 2018), so that the interaction of the people of the border areas of indonesia and timor-leste can be optimized to increase income through marketing surplus agricultural produce from the food estate. table 4. the analysis results of factors affecting agricultural production and income in the food estate area. path and goodness of test original sample (o) sample mean (m) standard deviation (stdev) t statistics (|o/stdev|) p values physical input-> income 0.221 0.216 0.035 6.276 0.000a physical input-> production 0.381 0.393 0.078 4.885 0.000a production-> income 0.857 0.865 0.029 29.518 0.000a social-> income −0.015 −0.014 0.016 0.954 0.34 social-> production 0.112 0.114 0.066 1.689 0.092b physical-> production-> income 0.327 0.339 0.068 4.825 0.000a social-> production-> income 0.096 0.099 0.058 1.656 0.098b r-square production 0.162 income 0.927 f-square physical-income 0.567 production-income 8.391 social-revenue 0.003 physical-production 0.173 social-production 0.015 q2 income 0.581 production 0.076 note: source: a and b indicate significance at α= 1% and 10%, respectively. primary data, 2022. b. effect of social variables on production and income the results of the analysis reveal that social variables do not have a direct significant effect on income but do have a significant effect on production at 10%. the results of the t-statistical test also show that social variables have an indirect effect on income through production, which is significant at 10%. farmers in the food estate area on the indonesia–timor-leste border tend to work together because they have strong social capital. social capital has a beneficial effect on the availability of labor, the need for funds for farming, and the exchange of information about technology and marketing agricultural products (anh & bokelmann, 2019; sitaker et al., 2020). the facts in the food estate area show that farmers’ costs are the same for different land areas. this condition causes the social costs incurred by farmers to be greater than the income obtained from their farming, so that there is no direct influence of social variables on income. farmers are stuck with unproductive conditions in which to run their farms (le coent, préget, & thoyer, 2021). farmers' social capital, in the form of mutual cooperation in farming in the food estate area, can increase production and income if it is efficient, as previously noted by syarifudin and ishak (2020), who stated that social spaces are needed for farmers to interact and share knowledge on efficient use of inputs and ways to increase agricultural production and productivity. social capital improves networks to facilitate access to agricultural information. c. effect of production on income the results of the pls analysis show that production affects income at a 1% level of significance. agricultural production in the food estate area is related to input efficiency and production costs. chen et al. (2022) stated that farmers' technological adaptability and ability to access information, including input costs and output prices, increase the relationship between production and income. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 56-65 62 3.3. recommendations for developing the food estate area anik, rahman, and sarker (2017) and soltanisehat, alizadeh, and mehregan (2019) stated that research is a source of innovation, which, in turn, has an impact on the economic growth of a region. based on the analysis of comparative advantage and the structural model of production and income, several recommendations for innovation are made that should be implemented to sustainably increase production and income in the food estate area on the border of indonesia and timor-leste. first, the planting area for rice and corn should be expanded. expansion of agricultural land (agricultural extensification) is possible because sufficient land is available. the cultivated land area is 159 ha, while the marginal land is 300 ha. for the expansion of agricultural land (from 159 ha to 459 ha), a large amount of water is needed, which can be supplied by the rotiklot dam. the volume of water available in the rotiklot dam is 2,935,000 m3, while the water demand for corn and rice is relatively small (less than 0.5% of available water). these conditions provide opportunities for the expansion of planting areas, especially on marginal land. qureshi (2017) stated that the sustainable use of marginal land can increase agricultural production and food security. furthermore, cervelli, scotto di perta, and pindozzi (2020) emphasized that marginal land is a resource for the entire region and can become an engine of economic growth. second, corn crops should be rotated every two growing seasons. corn and rice have a comparative advantage in food estate locations because they can be cultivated for two growing seasons a year, using water from the rotiklot dam. crop rotation in a suitable food estate area can increase agricultural production, efficiency, and income, as stated by ciaian, rajcaniova, guri, zhllima, and shahu (2018). the crop rotation that can be carried out in the food estate area is as follows: (a) rice (first season) rice (second season); (b) rice, corn (first season) – rice (second season); (c) rice (first season) rice, corn (second season); (d) rice, corn (first season) rice, corn (second season). third, input efficiency should be increased. agricultural income can be increased through an increase in the production output, and/or a decrease in production inputs. production inputs in the food estate area are social factors, especially labor, where certain stages (such as fertilization, control of pests and diseases) that do not require many workers must be carried out independently by farmers, while certain stages (such as planting and weeding) that require a lot of labor are carried out through mutual cooperation. in line with the findings of syarifudin and ishak (2020), an adaptive social space is needed for productive interactions to occur through equalizing perceptions and sharing knowledge. in addition, physical input efficiency can be realized through irrigation development and maintenance, which can reduce irrigation water losses so that there is an efficient use of inputs. daniel (2021) found that input efficiency contributes to an increase in agricultural production and income. fourth, the adoption of agricultural technology innovations by farmer groups should be increased. susilastuti (2018) stated that this would increase agricultural production and income growth. the use of uniform agricultural technology (land processing, seeds, use of fertilizers, pest and disease control, harvesting and post-harvesting) would increase production and income at food estate locations by ensuring consistent product quality. this would make it easier to brand and market agricultural products. agricultural technology innovations are more easily adopted by farmers who are active in farmer groups, and ovharhe, odemero, folunsho, and oghenefejiro (2020) stated that farmers who are actively involved in groups have an increased ability to become independent farmers. fifth, surplus production should be utilized for the border market. the increase in rice and corn production in the food estate area has given the two commodities a comparative advantage, not only domestically but also abroad (especially in timor-leste). thus, there is an opportunity for trade between countries; pawlak (2021) stated that the liberalization of bilateral food trade occurs due to the comparative advantage between two countries or trade areas. figure 3. flowchart of recommendations for the development of food estate areas in the indonesia–timor-leste border area. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 56-65 63 the recommendations for innovations in the food estate area of the indonesia–timor-leste border area are summarized in figure 3. agricultural extensification by utilizing marginal land and water from the rotiklot dam, the efficient use of inputs through the adoption of agricultural technology innovations, increasing the role of extension workers, and empowering farmer groups will increase agricultural production in the food estate area. the increase in agricultural production is expected to be well able to meet local market demand and serve the indonesia– timor-leste border market, thereby increasing income. adeniyi and dinbabo (2020) and fadillah and loilatu (2021) stated that input efficiency increases food production and distribution in food estates, which has the effect of increasing farmers' incomes and reducing food availability gaps. 4. conclusion the specialization of the food estate area provides a comparative advantage for rice and corn due to physical characteristics that have direct and indirect effects on income, while social characteristics have an indirect effect on income through production. it is necessary to expand the planting area because the availability of water from the rotiklot dam, input and cost efficiency, and increased motivation of farmers through input subsidies and technology transfer will then be able to increase agricultural production and income. funding: this research is supported by directorate general of higher education research and technology ministry of education and culture, indonesia (grant number: 252/e5/pg.02.00.pt/2022). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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(2016). regression relationship between production and factors of production in polish agriculture. bulgarian journal of agricultural science, 22(6), 893-896. https://doi.org/10.14704/nq.2022.20.2.nq22272 https://doi.org/10.14710/jwl.8.1.67-83 https://doi.org/10.18488/journal.1005/2020.10.1/1005.1.463.472 https://doi.org/10.14704/nq.2022.20.2.nq22272 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 250 do livelihood capitals improve food security among smallholder farmers? evidence from horticulture farmers in east java, indonesia syafrial syafriala hery toibaa dwi retnoningsiha,b tina sri purwantib moh. shadiqur rahmana aagriculture socio-economic department, faculty of agriculture, brawijaya university, malang 65145, indonesia. bdepartment of tropical agriculture and international cooperation, national pingtung university of science and technology, pingtung 912, taiwan.  syafrial.fp@ub.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 10 august 2022 revised: 3 october 2022 accepted: 17 october 2022 published: 28 october 2022 keywords rural development food consumption score livelihood capital ordered probit model indonesia. the purpose of this study is to assess the impact of livelihood capitals on smallholder farmers’ food security. this study employed crosssectional data from 300 smallholder farmers in the malang regency of east java, indonesia. the household food expenditure and food consumption score (fcs) were applied to assess farmers’ household food security status. furthermore, the data were analyzed using multiple linear regression to estimate the effect of livelihood capitals on food expenditure, and an ordered probit regression model was used to assess the effect of farmers’ livelihood capitals on fcs. the average farmers' food expenditure was about 68.124 usd per month; using fcs status, 12.33% of respondents were categorized as poor with an fcs of less than 21.5, 67.00% were categorized as borderline with an fcs score of 21.5 to 35, and 20.67% were categorized as acceptable with an fcs of more than 35. the result indicated that social capital (farming group, relations, social activity, and market information) was the most essential variable affecting household food as measured by expenditure as well as fcs, followed by human capital (education, experience, and family labor), financial capital (access to credit), and physical capital (agricultural storage and market distance). these findings suggest that there is a need to improve social access, farmers' abilities, and the agricultural infrastructure of smallholder farmers to enhance their food security. contribution/originality: this study makes an essential contribution to the literature and agricultural policy by providing empirical evidence regarding the influence of horticulture farmers’ livelihood capitals on household food security status in a developing country, namely indonesia. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4642 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: syafrial syafrial --hery toiba --dwi retnoningsih --tina sri purwanti --moh. shadiqur rahman (2022). do livelihood capitals improve food security among smallholder farmers? evidence from horticulture farmers in east java, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4), 250-259. 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4642 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 4 (2022): 250-259. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7394-9044 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3816-9066 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0466-415x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2670-2724 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4275-3196 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 250-259 251 1. introduction food security and diet are crucial challenges in global development (szabo et al., 2018). the fao (2018) claimed that two billion people were suffering from malnutrition; 155 million children under 5 were starving, and 41 million were overweight. reducing food insecurity is a global concern for the sustainable development goals (sdgs), which require a pledge to zero hunger, reduced food inequality, and increased nutrition by 2030 (nkomoki, bavorová, & banout, 2018). according to the united nations (2015), the second sdg is to “achieve global food security, increase people's nutrition and encourage sustainable agriculture.” to achieve this sdg, the agriculture sector is specifically required to contribute to reaching this goal. agriculture can improve global food security and nutrition through two channels: first, by increasing the quantity and diversity of the food supply, and second, by providing an income to the people who engage in this sector (hlpe, 2020). ahmed, ying, bashir, abid, and zulfiqar (2017) suggested that increasing agricultural product prices could be a factor in reduced food access and availability. a study conducted by abdelhedi and zouari (2020) reported that increasing agricultural production is essential to support the food demand. as a result, agriculture may improve food and nutrition security by giving households direct access to staples and additional food. although the agricultural sector plays an important role in global food security, farmers’ households , as the agricultural actor, may face several barriers to achieving food security, particularly because they have limited resources to obtain the food they need. at the household level, food security is not only determined by the adequacy of the food supply, but also by household purchase power, which impacts household food expenditure (agidew & singh, 2018; guellil & benhabib, 2022). a study conducted by ahmed et al. (2017) found that smallholder farmers were forced to spend 70% of their income to purchase food. however, they need to reduce their food expenditure due to other expenses, such as health, education, and transportation. on the other hand, scoones (1998) suggested that livelihood capitals – human capital, physical capital, natural capital, social capital, and financial capital – are the essential factor in household outcomes such as food security. for instance, farmers with higher financial capital tend to have higher purchasing power, thereby improving their food supply (shobe, narcisse, & christy, 2018). moreover, manlosa, hanspach, schultner, dorresteijn, and fischer (2019) claimed that households can generate food security by combining their livelihood capital to construct livelihood strategies. the combination of livelihood capitals in a process requiring human agency and resourcefulness to build livelihood strategies and produce livelihood outcomes (i.e., food security) however, smallholder farmers have lacked access to livelihood capitals due to multiple threats, such as social change, environmental issues, limited financial resources, and low literacy levels (kuang, jin, he, ning, & wan, 2020; nwofoke & odoh, 2021). similarly, qi and dang (2018) also found that smallholder farmers in developing countries were essentially vulnerable to livelihood risks that affected their food security. to enhance smallholder farmers’ food security, international studies have investigated factors associated with household food security. for instance, mango, zamasiya, makate, nyikahadzoi, and siziba (2014) assessed the impact of the socioeconomic factor on farmers' household food security; their results indicated that education level, age, family labor, household size, livestock ownership, household remittance, and market information significantly affected farmers’ household food security. reincke et al. (2018) estimated the influence of agriculture-related factors on food security, finding that farmers’ food security was affected by pesticide usage, market availability, processing quality, farmers' knowledge, and social participation. furthermore, a study conducted by neelakantan, defries, sterling, and naeem (2020) revealed that financial capital was the most essential factor associated with increased household food consumption. ali and erenstein (2017) investigated the impact of farmers’ adaptation practices in response to climate change. their findings revealed that adaptation practices were able to improve farmers' food security. toiba, nugroho, retnoningsih, and rahman (2020) evaluated the impact of modern market participation on smallholder farmers’ food security by controlling the selection bias between observable and unobservable variables. they claimed that farmers who participated in modern markets had higher food security status. on the other hand, magrini and vigani (2016) investigated the link between physical capital, such as technology adoption, and food security. they found a link between technology adoption and food availability, access, utilization, and stability. although the previous literature has investigated factors associated with farmers' food security, there is a lack of studies that explore the effects of livelihood capitals (human capital, physical capital, natural capital, social capital, and financial capital) on farmers’ food security status. hence, to fill this gap, the current study assessed the effect of livelihood capitals on farmer’s food security status. to assess the effects of livelihood capitals on food security, this study employed cross-sectional data from smallholder farmers and adopted a sustainable livelihood approach that was introduced by the department for international development (dfid) (scoones, 1998). 2. research method 2.1. data collection research data was obtained from smallholder horticulture farmers in east java, indonesia. the horticulture farmers were selected as our respondents for two reasons: first, horticulture is more vulnerable to environmental change, such as pests and plant diseases, climate change, and natural disasters, than other crops such as staple food commodities. second, the price of horticulture products in indonesia is subject to high fluctuation. the research was conducted in malang and kediri regencies, east java province, indonesia. the location was chosen purposively because horticulture production in malang and kediri regencies is more advanced than in other regions of east java (wandschneider, gniffke, kristedi, boga, & adiyoga, 2019). two sub-districts were chosen in each regency, namely ngantang and pujon in malang, and banyakan and kepung in kediri. these districts are the production centers of horticulture farms in each regency. 75 smallholder horticulture farmers per district were considered as research respondents. as a result, 300 horticulture farmers were randomly selected. furthermore, research interviews were employed for the data collection, using a structured questionnaire. the head of household for each horticulture asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 250-259 252 farmer was selected for the interview. the research questionnaire covered household characteristics, farmers' livelihood capitals, and household food consumption over the last seven days. additional secondary information was gathered from journals, review papers, books, annual accounts, and other related resources. 2.2. research variables 2.2.1. food security measurement to estimate household food security, this study used two indicators: household food expenditure and food consumption score (fcs). household food expenditure was measured as the total household expenditure on food (usd per month). the second food security indicator, fcs, was introduced by the world food program as a measure of household food security status by looking at the weighted frequency of the dietary diversity score (leroy, ruel, frongillo, harris, & ballard, 2015). the fcs provides a composite score that contains data on dietary diversity, the frequency of group food consumption, and each food group's nutritional value by giving different food groups different weights. there are eight food groups, and each group has its own score: main staple (2 points), pulses (3 points), vegetables (1 point), fruit (1 point), meat and fish (4 points), milk (4 points), sugar (0.5 points), and oil (0.5 points). after the household’s total food points are calculated, the fcs is determined. the fcs categorizes households' food security status into the three following categories: poor, with an fcs of less than 21.5; borderline, with an fsc of 21.5 to 35; and acceptable, with an fcs of more than 35 (wfp, 2008). 2.2.2. livelihood capital the selection of the livelihood capital variables was based on the sustainable livelihood approach (sla) developed by the dfid (scoones, 1998). there are five types of livelihood capital; these are human capital, physical capital, natural capital, social capital, and financial capital. a. human capital human capital represents both quantity (human resources) and quality (skills, knowledge, and ability). at the household level, human capital plays an essential role in achieving household outcomes such as food security. in this study, human capital was divided into five variables: age, education, experience, household size, and family labor. b. physical capital physical capital comprises the basic and productive infrastructures that are needed to produce livelihood outcomes. this capital can help people to maintain their livelihood and make them more productive. the physical capital variables used in this research included agricultural storage, electricity, and market distance. c. financial capital financial capital consists of the financial resources that can be used to achieve livelihood outcomes. these financial resources can include financial stock, such as savings, or capital, such as livestock, that can support human financial needs. financial capital variables used in this study included access to credit, savings, and off-farm jobs. d. social capital in terms of sustainable livelihood, social capital is defined as a social resource that can enhance household livelihood outcomes. social capital consists of networks and relations between individuals (horizontal), and between individuals and communities or institutions (vertical) that increase farmers’ access to and information about the things they need to maintain their livelihood. the social capital variables used in this study included farmers' groups, cooperative membership, relations, social activity, and market information. e. natural capital natural capital is a term that is used to represent the availability of natural resources that contribute to livelihood outcomes. natural resources can be divided into common property, such as the atmosphere, water supply, and biodiversity, and private property, such as land. natural capital variables used in this study included the natural resources that can be controlled by the farmers, such as total land area and water supply. 2.3. data analysis 2.3.1. multiple linear regression to investigate the possible effects of livelihood capitals on household food security in east java, indonesia, we employed variables for each of the five livelihood capitals as a function of the household food security status, which was measured by food expenditure in this model. first, we analyzed the effect of the livelihood capitals on food expenditure using multiple linear regression. the model included food expenditure (food exp) as the dependent variable, and the explanatory variables were age (age), education (educ), experience (experience), household size (hhz), family labor (flabor), agricultural storage (storage), agricultural electricity (elect), market distance (dmarket), access to credit (credit), savings (saving), livestock ownership (capital), off-farm jobs (off_farm), farmer group (f_group), cooperative membership (cooperative), relations (relation), social activity (s_activity), market information (minfo), total agricultural land (tarea), and water supply (water_s). the study’s multiple linear regression model can be written as follows: asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 250-259 253 𝐹𝑜𝑜𝑑𝐸𝑋𝑃 = 𝛼 + 𝛽1𝐴𝑔𝑒 + 𝛽2𝑒𝑑𝑢𝑐 + 𝛽3𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 + 𝛽4ℎℎ𝑧 + 𝛽5𝑓𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑟 + 𝛽6𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑔𝑒 + 𝛽7𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡 + 𝛽8𝑑𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡 + + 𝛽9𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑡 + 𝛽10𝑠𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔 + 𝛽11𝑜𝑓𝑓_𝑓𝑎𝑟𝑚 + 𝛽12𝐹𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑝 + 𝛽13𝑐𝑜𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 + 𝛽14𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 + 𝛽15𝑠𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦 + 𝛽16𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜 + 𝛽17𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑎 + 𝛽18𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠 + 𝑒 where α is a constant that represents the value of fcs if the independent variables are unavailable. furthermore, βi is the coefficient of regression, and e is the error term. 2.3.2. ordered probit regression the multilinear regression model was limited to estimating the impact of livelihood capitals on farmers' food security, measured by the food consumption score. to more closely analyze the effect of livelihood capital on the farmers’ food security category, we employed the ordered probit model. in this study, the dependent variable could take values 1, 2, or 3, depending on the categorized food consumption score. value 1 if the farmers’ food security was categorized as poor, value 2 if the food security was categorized as borderline, and value 3 if the food security was categorized as acceptable. the ordered probit model was more suitable in this research than the multinomial model because the category of the dependent variable was ordinal wfp (2008). the ordered probit model is assessed using the following equation y_cfcs =xiβ+e_i where y_cfcs is the observable variable (categorized food consumption score) x is the explanatory variables (farmers' livelihood capitals), e is n (0,1), and i = 1, 2, 3….n. furthermore, the probability of the ordered probit model can be written as follows: 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑏 [𝑦𝑖 = 𝑗] = 𝜑 (𝜇𝑗 – 𝑥𝑖𝛽) − 𝜑 (𝜇𝑗 − 1 – 𝑥𝑖𝛽) where the cumulative distribution fiction is given by φ, and j is the categorized food consumption score. table 1. descriptive statistics of variables used in the research. variables definition mean std. dev food expenditure total household expenditure on food (usd/month) 68.124 37.915 fcs 1. if poor 2. if borderline 3. if acceptable 2.083 0.569 human capital age farmer age in years 47.537 11.398 educ highest education level in family (years) 7.997 2.628 experience farmer experience in farming activity (year) 21.690 12.181 hhz total number of family members 2.593 1.019 flabor dummy 1 if household has labor in family; 0 for others 0.557 0.498 physical capital storage dummy 1 if farmers have agricultural storage; 0 for others 0.330 0.478 elect dummy 1 if farmers have agricultural electricity; 0 for others 0.287 0.528 dmarket distance from agricultural land to agricultural market (km) 5.096 2.873 financial capital credit dummy 1 if farmers have access to credit; 0 for others 0.653 0.477 saving dummy 1 if farmers have savings; 0 for others 0.863 0.664 off_farm dummy 1 if farmers have off-farm job; 0 for others 0.447 0.498 social capital f_group dummy 1 if farmers participate in a farmers’ group; 0 for others 0.630 0.484 cooperative dummy 1 if farmers participate in an agricultural cooperative; 0 for others 0.240 0.428 relation dummy 1 if farmers have relations who are farmers in other villages; 0 for others 0.250 0.434 s_activity dummy 1 if farmers participated in social activity; 0 for others 0.657 0.476 minfo dummy 1 if farmers have market information; 0 for others 0.500 0.501 natural capital t_area total area of land cultivated (ha) 0.323 0.601 warter_s dummy 1 if farmers have improved water supply; 0 for others 0.170 0.418 3. results 3.1. descriptive statistics the respondents of this research were 300 horticulture farmers. table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of variables used in this research. the average age of farmers in this study was 47.53 years; the average highest education level in the family was 8 years (or senior high school), and the average experience in farming activity was asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 250-259 254 21.69 years. the average household size was between 2 and 3 people per household, and 55.7% of respondents had workers among their family members. furthermore, the physical capital variables indicated that 33% of our respondents had agricultural storage to store their yield. 28.7% of our sample had additional agricultural electricity, i.e., electricity used by farmers to support agricultural activities, such as lamps. the average agricultural market distance from farmers’ cultivated land was about 5.096 kilometers. the market distance used in this study was the distance from the farmer’s house to a traditional market. the financial capital variables showed that 65.3% of our respondents had access to credit. credit was accessed by the farmers from formal financial institutions, microfinance institutions, and the government. the savings variable showed that 86.3% of the respondents had financial savings. moreover, farmers not only had an income from their farming activity, but also from off-farm activities such as private employment, aquaculture, trade, and entrepreneurship. the data indicated that 54.7% of farmers in this study participated in off-farm jobs. also, the social capital variables used in this study showed that 63.0% of farmers participated in farmers' groups, 24% participated in agricultural cooperatives, and 25.7% had access to relations. the relation variable represented the farmers’ relationships with farmers in other villages. social activities, such as community service and cultural and religious activities were participated in by 65.7%. lastly, 50.0% of farmers had access to agricultural market information; the market information was accessed via extension agents and farmers' communities. the natural capital distribution of this study indicated that the average cultivated land area was about 0.323, with 17.0% of farmers having irrigation improvements to supply agricultural water. the dependent variables used in this study were food expenditure and food consumption. the average household food expenditure in this study was 68.124 usd per month. the second dependent variable was fcs. we categorized the score based on wfp (2008) as 1 if in the poor category, 2 if borderline, and 3 if acceptable. the mean value of the fcs variable was about 2.083, showing that the average farmer in this study was in the borderline category. 3.2. multiple linear regression this section presents the result of a multiple linear regression model to assess the effect of livelihood capital on households’ food expenditure. the result of the multiple linear regression models is shown in table 2. we found that social capital, such as farmer groups, relations, social activities, and market information, were essential to households’ food expenditure, followed by access to credit (financial capital), agricultural storage, and market distance (physical capital), and education, farmer experience, and family labor (human capital). to start with human capital, this study found that education had a positive and significant impact on food security with a regression coefficient of 1.710. this finding implies that increasing farmers' education level by one year will improve farmers' food expenditure by about 1.710 usd. experience had a positive and significant impact on food expenditure, with a regression coefficient of 0.296. this indicates that an increase in the farmer’s experience by one year leads to an increase in the farmer’s food expenditure by 0.296 usd. furthermore, family labor positively affected household expenditure. this means that farmers who have family labor are more likely to have higher food expenditure levels than those who do not. table 2. the impact of livelihood capitals on food expenditure. variables coefficient std. error t-value p>|t| human capital age -0.179 0.190 -0.940 0.347 educ 1.710 0.729 2.350 0.020** experience 0.296 0.169 1.750 0.081* hhz -2.997 1.835 -1.630 0.104 flabor 10.021 3.975 2.520 0.012** physical capital storage 8.981 4.155 2.160 0.032** elect 2.890 3.575 0.810 0.420 dmarket -2.620 0.670 -3.910 0.000*** financial capital credit 8.851 4.058 2.180 0.030** saving -0.369 2.922 -0.130 0.900 off_farm -2.625 3.988 -0.660 0.511 social capital f_group 7.355 3.947 1.860 0.063* cooperative 3.782 4.749 0.800 0.427 relation 22.147 4.815 4.600 0.000*** s_activity 10.422 4.367 2.390 0.018** minfo 8.081 3.984 2.030 0.043** natural capital t_area 2.438 3.096 0.790 0.432 warter_s 0.095 4.607 0.020 0.984 cons 41.341 12.574 3.290 0.001 adj. r-squared 0.347 prob > f 0.000 note: *, **, *** denote significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% level, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 250-259 255 the significant effect of physical capital on households’ food expenditure was indicated by the agricultural storage and market distance variables. the results show that farmers with agricultural storage tended to have higher food expenditure levels than farmers without. the market distance variable showed a negative and significant impact on farmers’ food expenditure. the value of the regression coefficient was -0.620, with a 1% significant level. the value indicates that increasing the market distance by 1 kilometer leads to a reduction in household food expenditure of -0.282. this finding suggests that the agricultural market plays an important role in household access to food. market access also makes it easier for the farmer's household to buy food, so it is part of the household food availability scheme. the impact of financial capital on households’ food expenditure was represented by access to credit, which had a positive and significant impact on household food expenditure. farmers with access to credit had a higher level of food expenditure by about 8.981 usd. four social capital variables had a significant effect on food consumption scores. first, membership in a farmers' group had a positive effect, which was significant at 10%, and the value of the coefficient was 7.355. this indicates that farmers who participate in farmers' groups have higher food expenditure (by about 7.355 usd) than farmers who do not participate. second, relations with other farmers had a positive impact on food expenditure, with a coefficient value of 22.147. the value indicates that farmers with relations who are farmers in other villages are likely to have a higher food expenditure by about 1.343. third, the social activity variable had a positive and significant effect on food expenditure. the value of the coefficient implies that farmers who participate in social activities have higher food expenditure levels than farmers who do not. lastly, market information also had a positive impact with a 5% significance level. the finding indicates that farmers with access to market information have a higher food expenditure of about 8.081. the finding shows that market information plays a role in farmers' food security because market information provides the potential to earn a higher income, and thus increase farmers’ purchasing power. table 3. the impact of livelihood capital on farmers’ fcs. variables coefficients z-value marginal effects poor borderline acceptable dy/dx z-value dy/dx z-value dy/dx z-value human capital age -0.015 -1.710* 0.001 1.610 0.001 1.570 -0.002 -1.710* educ 0.074 2.200** -0.005 -1.940* -0.007 -1.860* 0.012 2.110* experience 0.029 3.740*** -0.002 -2.830*** -0.003 -2.600*** 0.005 3.490*** hhz 0.032 0.390 -0.002 -0.390 -0.003 -0.380 0.005 0.390 flabor 0.032 0.180 -0.002 -0.180 -0.003 -0.180 0.005 0.180 physical capital storage 0.153 0.810 -0.010 -0.790 -0.015 -0.790 0.025 0.800 elect 0.127 0.760 -0.008 -0.760 -0.012 -0.740 0.021 0.760 dmarket -0.134 -4.310*** 0.009 3.110*** 0.013 2.760*** -0.022 -3.960*** financial capital credit 0.719 3.900*** -0.047 -2.870*** -0.070 -2.580*** 0.117 3.480*** saving 0.030 0.230 -0.002 -0.230 -0.003 -0.230 0.005 0.230 off_farm -0.147 -0.810 0.010 0.810 0.014 0.790 -0.024 -0.810 social capital f_group 0.620 3.450*** -0.040 -2.600*** -0.060 -2.490** 0.101 3.160*** cooperative 0.718 3.290*** -0.047 -2.560** -0.070 -2.400** 0.116 3.030*** relation 0.923 4.120*** -0.060 -2.890*** -0.090 -2.670*** 0.150 3.640*** s_activity 0.905 4.310*** -0.059 -3.200*** -0.088 -2.780*** 0.147 4.060*** minfo 0.484 2.590*** -0.031 -2.320** -0.047 -2.140** 0.079 2.590** natural capital t_area 0.191 1.380 -0.012 -1.300 -0.019 -1.290 0.031 1.360 warter_s 0.072 0.360 -0.005 -0.360 -0.007 -0.360 0.012 0.360 log-likelihood -156.803 lr chi2(17) 196.960 prob > chi2 0.000 pseudo r2 0.386 note: *, **, *** denote significance on 10%, 5%, and 1% respectively. 3.3. ordered probit model the results of the ordered probit model are presented in table 3. the results for human capital indicated that older farmers were associated with a 0.20% lower probability of being in the acceptable category. the farmers’ education had a positive and significant effect on fcs; the marginal effect model showed that increasing the education level improved farmers’ probability of being in the acceptable category by about 1.20%, and decreased farmers’ probability of being in the borderline and poor categories by 0.30% and 0.020%, respectively. furthermore, the experience variable had a positive and significant effect on household fcs. farmers with more experience in agricultural activity were more likely to be in the acceptable category (0.50%). in contrast, they were less likely to be in the poor and borderline categories (0.30% and 0.20%, respectively). the influence of physical capital on fcs asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 250-259 256 demonstrated that market distance had a negative relationship with fcs. the farmers furthest from the market were 2.00% less likely to be in the acceptable category, but 1.30% more likely in the borderline category, and 0.90% more likely to be in the poor category. the significant effect of financial capital on fcs was indicated by access to credit; farmers who had access to credit were 11.70% more likely to be in the acceptable category, 7.00% less likely to be in the borderline category, and 4.70% less likely to be in the poor category. on the other hand, social capital’s effect on food consumption indicated that farmers who participated in farmers' groups were 4.00% less likely to be in the poor category, 6.00% less likely to be in the borderline category, and 10.10% more likely to be the acceptable category. furthermore, farmers who participated in cooperatives were 4.70% less likely to be in the poor category, 7.00% less likely to be in the borderline category, and 11.60% more likely to be in the acceptable category. relations had a positive and significant effect on farmers’ fcs. farmers who had a relation who was a farmer in another village were about 15.0% more likely to be in the acceptable category and about 9.00% and 6.00% less likely to be in the borderline and poor categories, respectively. participation in social activities also had a positive relationship with farmers’ fcs. participation in social activity decreased farmers’ likelihood of being in the poor category by about 5.90%, and of being in the borderline category by 8.80%. however, it improved farmers’ likelihood of being in the acceptable category by about 14.00%. the last social capital variable in this study was access to market information, which had a positive and significant impact on farmers' fcs. farmers who had access to market information were 3.10% less likely to be in the poor category and 4.70% less likely to be in the borderline category, but 7.9% more likely to be in the acceptable category. 4. discussion this section discusses the impact of livelihood capitals on farmers’ food security in east java, indonesia, using the measures of food expenditure and fcs. five types of livelihood capital were employed in this study, based on the sustainable livelihood framework developed by dfid: human capital, physical capital, financial capital, social capital, and natural capital. based on this study's findings, four of these capitals play an essential role in farmers’ food security: human capital (age, education, experience, family labor), physical capital (agricultural storage and market distance), financial capital (access to credit), and social capital (farmers’ group membership, cooperative membership, relations, social activity, and market information). a. human capital the impact of human capital on farmers’ food security is apparent in the effects of farmers’ age, education, and experience in agricultural activity, as well as family labor. the older farmers were more exposed to food insecurity than the younger farmers. in the 21st century, the increase in technology development is bringing about important changes in agricultural activity; with technology adoption, farmers are more productive and find it easier to obtain an adequate amount of food. younger farmers are more likely to accept new technologies than older farmers; older farmers tend to use traditional methods or practices to meet their livelihood needs. in contrast, younger farmers are more likely to accept and apply technological developments (rahman, huang, toiba, & efani, 2022; syafrial, rahman, & retnoningsih, 2021). as a result, younger farmers are more likely to meet their livelihood needs, especially in terms of food. this finding is in line with research conducted by mustapha, kamaruddin, and dewi (2018), who used data from 4,288 households in northern ghana to estimate the impact of household characteristics on household food insecurity. their findings indicated that the age of the household head had a positive and significant effect on household food insecurity. the second type of human capital that played an essential role in farmers' food security was farmers’ education level. in agricultural activity, education affects food security through access to knowledge on the best practices in farming, nutrition, and sanitation; improved efficiency, hence higher production levels and better decision-making; and pride in education. on the other hand, education may improve household food security by providing employment, better income, and better decision-making. this result supports the studies conducted by mutisya, ngware, kabiru, and kandala (2016) and rahman, andriatmoko, et al. (2022), who investigated the effect of education on household food security status in kenya. using the ordered probit model, they found a significant effect of education on household food security. the likelihood of being food insecure was reduced by 0.019 for each unit increase in the average number of years of schooling for a specific household. finally, the last human capital variable that improved farmers’ food security was farmers' experience in agriculture activity. farmers' experience improves food security by increasing efficient farming practices that provide higher yields, as well as income that can improve food and purchasing power. nkomoki et al. (2018) assumed that more experienced farmers would be better able to comprehend and recognize changes in farming techniques. on the other hand, family labor was found to support farmers’ food security as well, as indicated by the higher food purchasing power for household food consumption. b. physical capital the important role of physical capital in farmers’ food security was apparent in the agricultural storage and market distance variables. in this research, agricultural storage was essential for farmers. this physical capital enables farmers to keep their produce longer. for instance, when farmers have no deal with a buyer at the desired price for the agricultural produce, they can save it and look for another buyer who is willing to pay a higher price. as a result, they can earn a higher income and improve their purchasing power for food needs. furthermore, the market distance variable represents the distance between farmers’ houses and the traditional market. in rural areas, the traditional market can improve household food security by providing various food supplies, such as the main staple, fruit, meat, and fish, at cheaper food prices. the distance to a traditional market is related to farmers’ access to this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 250-259 257 market, whereas a greater distance to a traditional market makes farmers less likely to visit this market. in contrast, a short distance to a market tends to improve farmers' propensity to visit and buy the food they need at the market. this finding supports the study of mohammed, wassie, and teferi (2021), who investigated the determinants of smallholders’ food security status in northern ethiopia. using the binary logit model, they found that market distance had a significant negative effect on smallholders’ food security status. furthermore, a study conducted by ahmed et al. (2017) provided the same finding. using household data in pakistan, they suggested that factors of market accessibility (road distance and travel costs) greatly impacted food security in small-scale agricultural households. more specifically in indonesia, rahman, toiba, and huang (2021) found a positive association between marketing choice and food security. c. financial capital access to credit is a type of financial capital that plays an important role in improving farmers’ food security. financial capital has an essential role in farming activity, especially for smallholder farmers. they often fail to achieve maximum productivity in their farming activities because they are unable to buy the inputs they need, such as fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides. consequently, they are more likely to suffer from low incomes and reduced purchasing power for food. access to credit is one type of financial capital that can solve this problem by providing financial support for smallholder farmers. this finding is in line with a previous study conducted by bidisha, khan, imran, khondker, and suhrawardy (2017), who investigated the impact of access to credit on food security. using propensity score matching analysis, they suggested that access to credit improves food security and helps households attain more dietary diversification. diagne (1998) argued that access to credit improves farmers' incomes and food security by enabling households to reduce their borrowing from informal sources. d. social capital the impact of social capital on farmers’ food security status was observed in five variables: participation in farmers’ groups, cooperative membership, relations, social activity, and market information. first, participation in farmers' groups improved farmers’ food security status. farmers’ groups are associated with social connections, which provide a lot of information that can increase farming productivity, such as on irrigation, input, and climate. on the other hand, farmers' groups are also associations where farmers can share their experiences and where problems can be solved together with the other members. hence, they can help improve farming activities, which in turn affect food security. moreover, farmers' groups are also vital institutions for farmers to expand their livelihood strategies. for instance, membership can provide networks and links that can empower people or groups with different businesses to improve revenue generation, as well as nutrition programs to deal with food insecurity concerns. next, agricultural cooperatives play an essential role in increasing farmers’ food security by improving the farmers’ efficiency, as well as their income and food safety. a study conducted by abate, francesconi, and getnet (2014) estimated the effect of cooperative membership on technical efficiency. the study found that farmers who participated in cooperatives tended to have higher technical efficiency than those who did not. ma and abdulai (2016) investigated the well-being impact of cooperative membership on smallholder farmers in china. their findings revealed that cooperative membership improved farmers’ well-being by increasing yields, farm net returns, and incomes. as a result, farmers found it easier to fulfill their food needs. third, relationships or networks with other farmers, especially outside the village, was a type of social capital that could improve farmers’ food security by providing agriculture-related information that did not exist in their village. for instance, when farmers lack agricultural inputs such as fertilizer and seed in their village, they can get these inputs in another village by getting information from their relations. this can mitigate farmers’ failures in their farming activity. fourth, social activity is a vital form of social capital that can improve farmers' livelihood outcomes, including food security. in this study, social activity was defined as cultural or religious activities in the community. such activities can strengthen the connections between people and increase their sharing with one another. the final form of social capital that can improve food security is market information. market information can improve farmers’ food security by allowing them to obtain better prices for their agricultural products, which can improve their income and their purchasing power for food. 5. conclusion this study examined the effect of different livelihood capitals on farmers’ food security using household survey data. the data were analyzed by multiple linear regression and an ordered probit model. there are four critical findings from the paper. the first is that human capital, including education, experience, and family labor, is essential to improve farmers’ food security. second, physical capital, represented by agricultural storage and market distance, has a positive impact on farmers' food security. third, access to credit represented the important role of financial capital in farmers' food security status. fourth, social capital, including membership in farmers' groups, cooperative membership, relations with other farmers, and market information, is an essential factor in farmers' food security. hence, these findings have important policy implications. the first policy message is to improve the quality of farmers by giving them the training to diversify their skills, which can improve their human capital. second, provide transportation access to traditional markets so that farmers' households can more easily reach the markets. third, improve social institutions, such as farmers' support groups, agricultural cooperatives, connections between farmers, cultural and religious activities, and market information, especially for small-scale farmers in rural areas. one limitation of this research was that we only used two indicators to estimate farmers’ household food security: food expenditure and the food consumption score (fcs). to support this study’s findings, future research asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 250-259 258 can be improved by using other food security measures, such as the household dietary diversity score (hdds), the household food insecurity access scale (hfias), or the food insecurity experience scale (fies). funding: this research is supported by the doctoral research grant program of the universitas brawijaya (grant number: 3455.7/un10.f04/pn/2022). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references abate, g. t., francesconi, g. n., & getnet, k. 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(2019). project eastern indonesia agribusiness development opportunities-chilli value chain. australia: australian centre for international agricultural research (aciar). wfp, v. (2008). food consumption analysis: calculation and use of the food consumption score in food security analysis. rome, italy: wfp. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 406 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. physiological responses of aloe vera to salt stress in coastal sandy soil: morpho-physiological evaluation for sustainable cultivation rennanti lunnadiyah apriliaa edi purwantob venty suryantic muji rahayud a,b,c,dfaculty of agriculture, universitas sebelas maret, indonesia.  edipurwanto@staff.uns.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 23 may 2025 revised: 9 july 2025 accepted: 4 august 2025 published: 8 september 2025 keywords aloe vera coastal sandy soil morpho-physiological response salinity stress seedling origin. this study aims to investigate the morphological and physiological responses of aloe vera to various levels of salinity and seedling origins when cultivated in coastal sandy soils, which are considered marginal agricultural resources. a randomized factorial design was employed, testing four salinity levels (0, 5, 10, and 20 g/l nacl) and seedlings sourced from three nurseries (gunung kidul, bantul, cilacap), resulting in a total of 36 treatment combinations evaluated over a 12-month nursery trial. the results showed that seedling origin had a significant influence on plant development. seedlings from gunung kidul consistently demonstrated the best performance in fresh and dry biomass production as well as physiological stability under salinity stress. moderate salinity (5–10 g/l nacl) significantly improved parameters such as leaf length, leaf area, and net assimilation rate, indicating an optimal adaptive window for aloe vera growth. conversely, high salinity (20 g/l) reduced stomatal density and leaf number, signaling a physiological stress response. the combination of gunung kidul seedlings with 5 g/l nacl (a1g1) resulted in the best overall plant performance, highlighting the importance of proper seedling selection and salinity management in maximizing productivity. these findings confirm the potential of aloe vera as a sustainable crop for marginal lands, particularly coastal sandy soils. this study also provides a practical framework for improving yield and stress resilience through appropriate seedling selection and controlled saline irrigation practices. the study contributes to the development of adaptive agricultural systems in salineprone areas. contribution/originality: this study uniquely integrates seedling origin with salinity stress on coastal sandy soils, highlighting how nursery sources significantly influence aloe vera’s physiological resilience. this approach has not yet been explored in previous research. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5566 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: aprilia, r. l., purwanto, e., suryanti, v., & rahayu, m. (2025). physiological responses of aloe vera to salt stress in coastal sandy soil: morpho-physiological evaluation for sustainable cultivation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 406–418. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5566 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction aloe vera (aloe vera l.) could be a high-value financial plant broadly utilized within the well-being, corrective, and nourishment businesses (baruah, bordoloi, & baruah, 2016; pandey & singh, 2016; suprabowo, winandi, & jahroh, 2017). the worldwide demand for aloe vera extract has significantly increased in recent years, driven by growing consumer awareness of its benefits. according to information bridge market research (2022), the global aloe vera market was valued at usd 553.1 million in 2021 and is projected to reach usd 1,134.86 million by 2029, with a asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 406-418 mailto:edipurwanto@staff.uns.ac.id https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5566 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 406-418 407 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. compound annual growth rate (cagr) of 9.40% (martínez-burgos et al., 2022). this rising request underscores the significant potential of aloe vera for broader development, contributing to both neighborhood and worldwide economies (fortune business insights, 2023). aloe vera shows solid flexibility in negligible situations, making it a promising product for development in coastal districts (qanbari, gandomkar, & khodagholi, 2018; solomou, germani, & georgakopoulou, 2020). this plant has a place in the crassulacean acid metabolism (cam) photosynthetic pathway, which permits higher water-use efficiency compared to other plants. as a result, aloe vera can withstand dry season conditions and high salinity levels (perron, kirst, & chen, 2024). in this manner, extending aloe vera development in coastal sandy soils presents a viable approach for upgrading the efficiency of marginal lands, especially within the coastal locales of central java (aprilia, purwanto, suryanti, & rahayu, 2025; cristiano, murillo-amador, & de lucia, 2016). this province has a coastline of 971.52 km, spanning 17 locales, with sandy soils characterized by fast seepage, low water-holding capacity, and a high potential for salt accumulation due to seawater intrusion (kartikawati, kurniasih, putra, & hanudin, 2024; oelviani et al., 2024; primadipta, saepuloh, rachmayani, ghazali, & sahana, 2025; triyatmo, rustadi, & priyono, 2018). despite aloe vera's resistance to natural stress, inquiries about its physiological and morphological reactions to saltiness in coastal sandy soils remain limited. most past studies, such as those by murillo-amador et al. (2015), have examined the impacts of saltiness on aloe vera without considering sandy soil conditions murillo-amador et al. (2015). other considerations have illustrated that expanded protein and proline substance, at the side pep-case movement in aloe vera, can upgrade its resilience to direct saltiness (mirbakhsh & sohrabi, 2022; murillo-amador et al., 2014; nakhaie, habibi, & vaziri, 2022). be that as it may, these studies utilized ordinary developing media and have yet to supply a comprehensive understanding of how aloe vera adjusts to the particular challenges of coastal sandy soils. this consideration presents a novel encompassing approach to assessing the morpho-physiological reactions of aloe vera to salt stress in coastal sandy soils. not at all like past considerations that were overwhelmingly centered on salt stress in conventional media, this investigation examines additional factors such as seedling roots from different nurseries within the uncommon locale of yogyakarta and central java, as well as how different salt levels impact plant growth and development. the origin of seedlings may be a critical factor in successful growth, as differences in seedling quality may influence the plant's resistance to environmental stress. this study considers points to evaluate the morphological and physiological reactions of aloe vera to saltiness push in coastal sandy soils in central java, considering diverse saltiness levels and seedling beginnings. moreover, the discoveries of this investigation are anticipated to contribute to the development of a more climate-adaptive and economical rural framework, improving resource-use efficiency and advancing natural preservation. essentially, this inquiry is expected to provide suggestions for farmers and agribusiness partners on managing aloe vera growth in limited lands to improve efficiency and create new financial opportunities for local communities through high-value crop expansion. 2. methods this study was conducted in a nursery located in tegalretno town, petanahan locale, kebumen district, from december 2023 to december 2024. the investigation utilized a randomized complete block design (rcbd) with two factors. the primary factor was saltiness levels, and the secondary factor was the beginning of aloe vera seedlings. the saltiness levels consisted of four treatments: nacl addition of 0 g/l (g0), 5 g/l (g1), 10 g/l (g2), and 20 g/l (g3). the selected saltiness levels were based on previous studies assessing aloe vera's resistance to salinity, where moderate salt stress levels (5–10 g/l) appeared to enhance physiological adaptation, whereas higher concentrations (20 g/l) induced osmotic stress (murillo-amador et al., 2015). nacl was connected by a water system and equitably conveyed inside the planting medium sometime recently transplanting. after each dangerous examination, nacl was reapplied at a 20% lower concentration than the introductory dosage. this approach pointed to recreating the genuine conditions of coastal soils, which encounter variances in saltiness over time. the lower nacl concentration in ensuing applications was aimed at avoiding intemperate salt aggregation within the polybags (cheng & milsch, 2020; hamdani, derridj, & roger, 2017; huang, mi, ito, & kawagoshi, 2021; zhang, zuo, wang, & han, 2024). the moment calculated was the seedling root, comprising three diverse nurseries, gunung kidul (a1), bantul (a2), and cilacap (a3). there were 12 treatment combinations, each reproduced three times, resulting in 36 exploratory plots. each plot contained eight plants: three test plants, three for destructive sampling, and two as reinforcement plants, totaling 288 plants. dangerous inspecting was conducted every two months after planting. the collected information was analyzed utilizing anova, and if noteworthy contrasts were found, a post hoc test utilizing dmrt at a 5% significance level was applied. planting was conducted with a division of 60 cm × 60 cm, with the same division connected between plots and replications. the planting gap profundity was set at 15 cm (benhmimou et al., 2017; dass, chandra, choudhary, singh, & sudhishri, 2016). the seedlings utilized were of the chinensis mill operator assortment, with an introductory seedling age of four months and a collection time of 12 months. the four-month-old seedlings had an average of five leaves and a height of 25.56 cm. the chinensis mill operator assortment is known for its high quality and adaptability in different environmental conditions. as a succulent species, aloe vera stores water in its leaves, making it suitable for growth in dry climates or minimal lands, such as coastal sandy soils (botanical notes, 2009). the planting medium comprised coastal sand, goat manure compost, and rice husk charcoal in a 2:2:1 proportion, with up to 10 kg of developing medium per polybag (nakhaie et al., 2022). at that point, carried out according to the treatment and planting schedule. maintenance included pest and disease control, irrigation, earthing up, weeding, and supplemental fertilization every four weeks using goat manure compost at a rate of 250 g per plant (aprilia et al., 2025; sunaryo, purnomo, darini, & cahyani, 2018). perceptions were conducted on abscisic acid, morphological, and physiological characteristics. abscisic acid parameters, new leaf weight demonstrate the effectiveness of photosynthesis in takes off. dry leaf weight measures the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 406-418 408 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. dry biomass substance without water and demonstrates the amassing of natural matter from photosynthesis (farooq, hussain, ul-allah, & siddique, 2019; huang et al., 2019; khadka, earl, raizada, & navabi, 2020). new root weight assesses the volume of created root tissue and the plant's capacity to retain water and supplements. dry root weight, evaluates the commitment of roots to add up to plant biomass (khosh, ahmad, alitabar, mottaghi, & pessarakli, 2012). new plant weight provides a general picture of plant efficiency in new conditions and assesses common physiological conditions. dry plant weight is used to determine the plant's dry biomass and measures the productivity of biomass collection from photosynthesis. several clear perceptions of surrender factors were conducted three times amid testing and once at collection. testing was performed every 60 days after planting, with the final collection at 12 months (buxbaum, lieth, & earles, 2022; de souza machado et al., 2019; delaide et al., 2017). morphological perceptions point to portray the plant's physical characteristics, which can be straightforwardly observed. these parameters provide insights into plant development conditions, treatment responses, and adaptation potential. leaf color indicates nutrient availability, especially nitrogen (n), iron (fe), and magnesium (mg). plant height assesses vegetative growth. leaf shape distinguishes genetic varieties or environmental impacts on the plant and evaluates treatment effects on leaf structure adjustments. root perception, conducted on plants of the same age grown under different nursery sources and treatments, offers additional information on root development and health (sattler & rutishauser, 2022). physiological perceptions pointed to get its metabolic forms and instruments of basic plant development, giving experiences into how plants react to medications and natural conditions. relative growth rate (rgr), measures biomass increment per unit of time relative to initial biomass, assessing plant development effectiveness and the effect of medications on biomass accumulation speed. net absorption rate (nar), measures the rate of dry biomass generation per unit leaf zone per unit time, surveying photosynthesis effectiveness and analyzing the relationship between biomass generation and leaf area. stomatal thickness, the number of stomata per unit leaf surface area, is utilized to assess the plant's capacity for gas exchange (co₂) and water loss, as well as its adjustment to environmental conditions (akhtar et al., 2024; carlson, adams, & holsinger, 2016; peel, mandujano sánchez, lópez portillo, & golubov, 2017). 3. findings the inquiry discoveries show that seed beginning and saltiness levels impact the abdicate of aloe vera plants. table 1 presents the results of the 5% dmrt post hoc test, analyzing new leaf weight, dry leaf weight, new root weight, dry root weight, and the number of takes off as key markers for evaluating plant reactions to salt stress. table 1. results of the 5% dmrt analysis. treatment fresh leaf weight (g) dry leaf weight (g) fresh root weight (g) dry root weight (g) number of leaves nursery source gunung kidul nursery 1337.53 a 42.73 b 49.25 b 17.24 a 12,799 a bantul nursery 910.36 a 26.24 a 28.11 a 10.32 a 11,653 a cilacap nursery 1909.81 a 34.64 ab 41.91 ab 15.65 a 12,419 a nacl addition (g/l) 0 1102.56 a 34.03 a 38.04 a 13.56 a 12,233 a 10 1142.33 a 38.31 a 44.33 a 15.84 a 12,544 a 20 1091.96 a 33.61 a 39.15 a 15.01 a 12,288 a 30 2206.74 a 32.2 a 37.52 a 13.22 a 12,048 a note: different letters in the same column indicate significant differences at p < 0.05 based on dmrt. the dmrt investigation demonstrates that seed root significantly affected dry leaf weight and new root weight of aloe vera (table 1). seeds from the gunung kidul nursery produced the highest dry leaf weight (42.73 g) and new root weight (49.25 g), which were significantly different from those from the bantul nursery. meanwhile, seeds from the cilacap nursery produced the highest new leaf weight (1909.81 g), but the difference was not statistically significant compared to other sources. these findings suggest that genetic factors and initial seed quality influence the plant's ability to produce biomass and adapt to salt stress (yuan et al., 2024). the expansion of nacl in water system water did not appear to have a noteworthy impact on any parameters based on anova results. be that as it may, new leaf weight showed an increasing trend at the highest saltiness level (30 g/l), reaching 2206.74 g, which was higher than other treatments. this suggests that at a certain level, salt stress may promote physiological adjustment, such as water accumulation in leaf tissues to preserve turgor weight (hao et al., 2021). this impact is consistent with the physiological characteristics of cam plants, which can maintain efficiency under osmotic stretch conditions (males & griffiths, 2017; yang et al., 2021). 3.1. effects of salinity and seedling source on leaf and root biomass new and dry leaf weight are basic parameters in plant development, considered as they provide complementary data concerning efficiency, photosynthetic productivity, and plant adaptation to environmental conditions (da silva et al., 2020). even though the contrasts were not measurably noteworthy, the most elevated normal values were observed, which might indicate the versatile capacity of aloe vera. these discoveries are outlined in figures 1 and 2 underneath. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 406-418 409 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 1. bar chart of fresh leaf weight. (a) shows the relationship between fresh leaf weight at each nursery origin. (b) shows the relationship between fresh leaf weight and different salt doses. (c) shows the relationship between fresh leaf weight and the interaction between different breeder origins and salt stress. figure 2. bar chart of leaf dry weight. (a) shows the relationship between dry leaf weight and the origin of the breeder. (b) shows the relationship between dry leaf weight and different salinity stresses. (c) shows the relationship between dry leaf weight and the interaction between different breeders and different salinity stresses. the beginning of the nursery treatment demonstrates that new leaf weight expanded dynamically from dangerous testing 1 to damaging testing 3 across all nursery sources. plants from a1 (gunung kidul) showed the most noteworthy new leaf weight in all testing stages, followed by a2 (bantul) and a3 (cilacap). this trend is likely impacted by hereditary components, as seedlings from gunung kidul appear to be more adapted to natural conditions, driving higher biomass accumulation. another possible explanation is the environmental differences in their native habitats, where plants originating from more extreme conditions may have developed greater resilience to environmental stress (bechtold, 2018; caro, marques, cunha, & teixeira, 2020; lambert et al., 2016). the findings from saltiness treatment revealed that new leaf weight increased continuously from damaging inspecting 1 to damaging examining 3 across overall saltiness levels (g0–g3). there was no clear pattern indicating that high saltiness (g3) significantly decreased leaf biomass. this result suggests that aloe vera exhibits a high level of salt resilience, as a cam plant capable of water retention in its leaf tissues, thereby preventing severe biomass reduction under salt stress conditions (habibi, 2018). subsequently, at g3 (20 g/l nacl), plants remained strong without showing an exceptional diminution in leaf weight, highlighting their acclimation potential. the combination treatment of a1g0 (gunung kidul + g/l nacl) resulted in the most significant increase in new leaf weight. in any case, combinations with higher saltiness levels (a1g3, a2g3, a3g3) still maintained moderately tall new leaf weights, with no noteworthy differences compared to non-saline treatments. no synergistic or antagonistic effects were observed between nursery root and saltiness levels, demonstrating that aloe vera can grow under a wide range of conditions. this suggests that the initial biological adaptation plays a more dominant role than the salt concentration itself (etesami & beattie, 2017; hossain et al., 2022; sezhiyan et al., 2023). the consideration illustrates that new and dry leaf weight follow a similar pattern, where an increase in one is generally accompanied by an increase in the other. overall treatments (nursery source, salinity, and their interactions), higher new leaf weight was typically associated with higher dry leaf weight. based on the new and dry leaf weight outcomes, gunung kidul (a1) produced optimal yields for both parameters. regarding salinity levels, moderate salinity levels (g1 – 5 g/l or g2 – 10 g/l nacl) were ideal for consistent growth, although g3 (20 g/l) remained acceptable but resulted in higher water accumulation rather than dry biomass production. the best combination for new leaf weight was a1g3 (gunung kidul + 20 g/l nacl), whereas the optimal combination for dry leaf weight was a1g0 or a1g1 (gunung kidul + 0–5 g/l nacl). these findings suggest that g3 enhances new leaf weight primarily due to water retention rather than actual biomass accumulation. for overall plant growth (both new and dry weight), a1g1 (gunung kidul + 5 g/l nacl) emerged as the most effective combination. the a1g3 interaction can also be considered, but it carries the risk of increased water content within the leaves. new root weight and dry root weight are two basic parameters utilized to assess the improvement of the root framework, which plays a crucial part in water and supplement retention, resistance to natural push, and overall plant metabolic efficiency (tajima, 2021). figures 3 and 4 outline the new and dry root weights watched amid the ponder. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 406-418 410 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. (a) (b) (c) figure 3. the fresh weight of roots. (a) shows the relationship between fresh root weight and different nursery origins. (b) shows the relationship between fresh root weight and different salinity (salt level) stresses. (c) shows the relationship between fresh root weight and the interaction between different nursery origins and different salinity (salt level) stress. figure 4. dry weight of roots. (a) shows the relationship between dry root weight and different seedling origins. (b) shows the relationship between root dry weight and different salinity stresses. (c) shows the relationship between dry root weight, nursery origins, and different salinity stresses. the discoveries revealed that plants from a1 (gunung kidul) had the highest dry root weight, followed by a3 (cilacap) and a2 (bantul). this suggests that seedlings from gunung kidul may possess a more developed root system, enabling more efficient water retention and greater resilience to environmental stress. in contrast, seedlings from bantul (a2) likely originating from more fertile environments may rely more heavily on groundwater, resulting in a smaller root system. generally, plants with larger root biomass tend to have a greater capacity for nutrient uptake, which supports overall plant growth. as noted by delgado and stefancic (2023), aloe vera grown under extreme environmental conditions often develops larger root systems to enhance nutrient absorption and withstand abiotic stress (delgado & stefancic, 2023). an increasing trend in new root weight relative to a corresponding increase in dry root weight indicates consistency between these parameters. however, a slight anomaly was observed in a3, where the dry root weight was generally higher than the new root weight. this may suggest structural changes within the roots as a response to environmental stress, such as increased lignification (chun et al., 2019; dissanayake et al., 2024; rui, chen, zhang, shen, & zhang, 2016). in terms of saltiness levels, dry root weight did not appear to be critically decayed beneath g3 (20 g/l nacl), comparable to the trend in new root weight. interestingly, the most noteworthy dry root weight was observed beneath g1 (5 g/l nacl), not g0, whereas new root weights were moderately comparable between g0 and g1. this may indicate that gentle osmotic pressure at g1 initiated biomass accumulation or lignification within the roots as part of a physiological adjustment process (karlova, boer, hayes, & testerink, 2021). the best-performing combination for dry root weight was a1g1 (gunung kidul + 5 g/l nacl), whereas a1g0 also yielded generally tall new root weight. medicines with tall saltiness (a1g3, a2g3, a3g3) still displayed generally tall dry root weights, proposing that aloe vera is competent in maintaining root advancement beneath salt stress. this pattern was most clear in dangerous inspecting 3, demonstrating that long-term root development is more impacted by biomass allocation than transitory water content (messier, becker‐scarpitta, li, violle, & vellend, 2024). whereas new and dry root weights are mostly taken after a steady drift, g1 appears to be more suitable for dry root biomass, likely due to differences in metabolic reactions to mellow saltiness compared to non-saline conditions (g0) (paul et al., 2019; tang, zhou, gao, & li, 2022; f. wang, sun, & shi, 2019). in g3, the new root weight remained generally tall, but the dry root weight stabilized, which may infer expanded water maintenance in roots as a stress-adaptive component (lu, zhang, wang, & li, 2023). the number of takes off is an imperative indicator of vegetative development, reflecting meristematic activity and the plant's adaptation to natural conditions (czesnick & lenhard, 2015). figure 5 presents a bar chart outlining the comes about for leaf number. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 406-418 411 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 5. bar chart of several leaves. (a) shows the relationship between the number of leaves and the difference in the origin of the breeder. (b) shows the relationship between the number of leaves and the difference in salinity stress. (c) shows the relationship between the number of leaves and the interaction between different breeder origins and salinity stress. the results indicated that medicines g1 and g2 produced a higher number of takes compared to g3. the reduction in leaf number at g3 (20 g/l nacl) may be attributed to increased external osmotic weight, which inhibits cell division and elongation, thereby disrupting water balance within the tissues. saadia, shabir, hassan, jamil, and bashir (2022), tall saltiness push can cause hormonal lopsided characteristics that stifle the arrangement of vegetative organs. in this manner, direct levels of nacl application (e.g., 10 g/l) are still moderate for the plant, but higher concentrations start to show negative impacts on leaf development (waadt et al., 2022). leaf color is one of the most perceptible morphological markers and serves as a visual signal for evaluating plant wellbeing and chlorophyll content. it reflects physiological reactions to environmental stressors, especially salinity and drought conditions (brodribb, bienaimé, & marmottant, 2016; sarker & oba, 2018; talebzadeh & valeo, 2022). leaf color moreover serves as a marker of metabolic movement, indicating the aggregation of auxiliary metabolites. in addition, it provides a reliable visual reference for seedling determination based on push resilience and vigor. figure 6 presents a case of leaf color varieties watched amid the think about. (a) (b) (c) figure 6. example of aloe vera leaf color grown on coastal sandy soil. (a) shows the color of the leaves at the gunung kidul breeder's origin. (b) shows the color of the leaves from the bantul breeder. (c) shows the color of the leaves from the cilacap breeder. leaf color may serve as a visual marker reflecting the physiological condition of the plant and is unequivocally impacted by supplement accessibility, chlorophyll concentration, and natural push (moustaka & moustakas, 2023). in this context, leaf color was analyzed employing an advanced color profiling approach based on the munsell book of color. the results were presented in rgb, hsl, and cmyk color models to enhance objectivity and enable quantitative comparisons over different treatments. the rgb values recorded ranged from (112, 125, 72) to (103, 112, 33). darker and more saturated green shades (e.g., rgb: 103, 112, 33 and hsl: 37, 54, 52%) were frequently observed in plants from treatments such as g1 or nursery a1, indicating higher chlorophyll content and steady photosynthetic activity. conversely, lighter or paler green shades (e.g., rgb: 112, 125, 72 and hsl: 75, 27, 37%) showed early signs of chlorosis or physiological alterations due to salt stress, suggesting a decline in chlorophyll concentration and potential impairment of photosynthesis. these varieties in color can be translated as a portion of the plant's acclimation mechanism to stretch. for illustration, darker green tones often demonstrate enhanced chlorophyll biosynthesis or thicker epidermal layers, which help decrease water loss through transpiration (cai et al., 2023; guo et al., 2023; moustakas, sperdouli, & moustaka, 2022). in the meantime, pale or yellowish-green leaves may be related to supplement deficiencies (such as nitrogen or magnesium) or oxidative stress caused by saltiness. the consistency of leaf color in certain medicines may also reflect better hereditary resistance and physiological adjustment (fukano et al., 2023). for instance, plants from the gunung kidul nursery (a1) tended to preserve a steady and darker green leaf color indeed beneath tall saltiness levels, proposing prevalent hereditary versatility. total leaf color information is displayed in table 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 406-418 412 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 2. digital leaf color data of aloe vera under different treatments. a1 a2 a3 leaf color data of munsell book colour note leaf color data of munsell book colour note leaf color data of munsell book colour note s0 hex #757f42 rgb (117,127,66) hsl (70,32,38) cmyk (8,0,48,50) indicates leaves with a slightly faded yellowishgreen hue. hex #9d9959 rgb (160,156,93) hsl (56,26,50) cmyk (0,2,42,37) depicts yellowishgreen with a slight browning. hex #565e2d rgb (86,94,45) hsl (70,35,27) cmyk (9,0,52,63) dark dark olive green s1 hex #626b1c rgb (98,107,28) hsl (67,59,26) cmyk (8,0,74,58) displays a dark olive-green tone with a yellowishgreen undertone. hex #677021 rgb (103,112,33) hsl (67,54,28) cmyk (8,0,71,56) dark dark olive green, hex #454d14 rgb (69,77,20) hsl (68,59,19) cmyk (10,0,74,70) very dark yellowishgreen, s2 hex #a0a155 rgb (160,161,85) hsl (61,31,48) cmyk (1,0,47,37) a bright yellowishgreen color is commonly observed in young leaves or vigorously growing plants. hex #6a6f39 rgb (106,111,57) hsl (66,32,33) cmyk (5,0,49,56) dark olive green with yellowish and brownish tones, hex #707d48 rgb (112,125,72) hsl (75,27,39) cmyk (10,0,42,51) yellowish olive green with a medium degree of darkness. s3 hex #a2985a rgb (162,152,90) hsl (52,29,49) cmyk (0,6,44,36) a soft, slightly faded yellowishbrown shade, indicative of leaf yellowing or a transitional phase under environmental stress. hex #6c7824 rgb (108,120,36) hsl (69,54,31) cmyk (10,0,70,53) dark yellowish green with a strong character and yellow dominance. hex #999650 rgb (153,150,80) hsl (58,31,46) cmyk (0,2,48,40) yellowishgreen with medium brightness and low saturation. note: color data were obtained using digital profiling based on the munsell book of color. leaf color perceptions in aloe vera were conducted employing a combination of advanced color values in hex, rgb, hsl, and cmyk groups, referenced from the munsell book of color. perceptions were carried out at three information focuses (p1, p2, and p3) beneath four saltiness treatment levels (s0–s3). moo saltiness (s0): pale yellowish-green. at g/l nacl (s0), leaf color tended to seem pale yellowish-green (hex #757f42, rgb 117,127,66), with direct brightness but moderately moo chlorophyll substance. this condition reflects constrained natural incitement (mellow push), coming about in problematic chlorophyll aggregation (tan, sha, sun, & li, 2023). direct saltiness (s1–s2): more steady coloration. in s1, the leaf color moved to a darker olive green (hex #626b1c and #677021), showing upgraded chlorophyll biosynthesis and conceivable dynamic adjustment to gentle osmotic push. the color became more profound (with lower hsl brightness values), proposing strides in photosynthetic effectiveness and a positive versatile reaction. in s2 (10 g/l nacl), the tones showed a shining yellowish-green hue (hex #a0a155 and #6a8f39), commonly related to effectively developing plants. this proposes that direct saltiness may invigorate optimal development, backed by adjusted rgb values and chlorophyll action (heidari, 2012; rouphael, petropoulos, cardarelli, & colla, 2018; zörb, geilfus, & dietz, 2019). tall saltiness (s3): transitional stretch indications. at the most noteworthy saltiness level (s3), leaf color appeared as light yellowish-brown (hex #a2985a) and dim yellowish-green (hex #6c7824), indicating that the plant had entered a transitional stage or was showing early stretch indications. this may include chlorophyll degradation or the accumulation of non-photosynthetic shades (tanaka & ito, 2025). leaf color at point p3 (hex #999650, rgb 153,150,80) moreover appeared to decrease immersion, possibly reflecting diminished metabolic movement and early signs of chlorosis. generally, leaf color changes methodically with increasing saltiness and can be utilized as a visual morphological indicator of plant responses to environmental stressors (hossain et al., 2022). medications s1 and s2 appeared the most favorable in coloration, related to physiological adjustment and optimal development potential. beneath s3, color changes demonstrated early push reactions, although no extreme harm was yet apparent. leaf length is one of the essential morphological indicators used to evaluate the growth performance of aloe vera. this parameter is closely related to meristematic activity, photosynthetic efficiency, and the plant's capacity for water retention and gel production within the leaf tissues (delatorre-castillo et al., 2022). in this consideration, leaf length was observed as a reflection of plant reactions to distinctive levels of salinity and seedling roots. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 406-418 413 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 7. leaf images and leaf length in research. figure 7 illustrates the visual morphology of aloe vera leaves along with their respective lengths under different treatments. the figure shows that leaf length varies according to the breeder origin and salt dose, indicating a physiological response to salinity stress. leaf length is emphatically related to the leaf zone and a few physiological aspects of plant function (schrader et al., 2021). as a key morphological characteristic, leaf length specifically impacts relative growth rate (rgr). longer leaves contribute to a larger leaf zone, which in turn enhances biomass accumulation over time (ariani, francini, andreucci, & sebastiani, 2016; osone, ishida, & tateno, 2008; singh, 2017). net absorption rate (nar), sound, and stretched clear out are regularly connected to higher photosynthetic productivity and dry matter generation per unit leaf zone (sachan, verma, kumar, & singh, 2022). leaf region list (lai), increments in leaf length and width upgrades add up to the canopy leaf range, moving forward light capture attempts and carbon absorption at the canopy level (nomura et al., 2022). transpiration and stomatal conductance: a broader leaf surface zone permits more dynamic transpiration and gas exchange, which are essential for maintaining metabolic functions under stress (hasanuzzaman & fujita, 2023). in this manner, leaf length isn't merely a morphological characteristic but also a critical factor affecting key physiological capacities. these connections are further investigated within the physiological perception segment. 3.2. physiological perceptions physiological assessment provides a more comprehensive understanding of how aloe vera reacts and adjusts to salt stress. parameters such as relative growth rate (rgr), net assimilation rate (nar), stomatal thickness, and transpiration rate serve as fundamental indicators for evaluating photosynthetic productivity, water-use efficiency, and metabolic changes under adverse environmental conditions (moghbeli et al., 2012). coordination of physiological information with morphological characteristics and surrender estimations improves the logical elucidation and bolsters the development of more versatile and resource-efficient procedures for aloe vera, especially in coastal situations with minimal impact. the physiological parameters observed in this study provide insight into the plant's tolerance mechanisms under salt stress. table 3 shows the mean values of physiological variables that were significantly affected by treatment, as determined by the dmrt 5% test. table 3. physiological variable measurements analyzed using the 5% dmrt post hoc test. treatment leaf length leaf area net assimilation rate number of stomata relative growth rate transpiration rate breeder origin the southern mountain rancher 53.76b 256.8a 0.52a 22.36a 0.127a 111.2a bantul breeder 53.965b 246.3a 0.68a 22.54a 0.134a 104.6a cilacap breeder 51.26ab 254.2a 0.6a 25.33ab 0.125a 104.9a nacl addition (g/l) 0 54.36 251.9a 0.71b 22.88a 0.127a 113.8ab 10 52.5ab 251.72a 0.58a 23.23a 0.124a 101.9ab 20 55.37b 279.2b 0.49a 22.36a 0.123a 115.7ab 30 48.66a 227.9a 0.62ab 21.89a 0.140a 96.1a note: different letters in the same column indicate significant differences at p < 0.05 based on dmrt. the application of 30 g/l nacl essentially decreased leaf length, which can be attributed to high osmotic weight hindering cell stretching. interestingly, the 20 g/l treatment resulted in the greatest normal leaf length, suggesting a asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 406-418 414 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. dynamic adaptive response under moderate salt stress. the largest leaf area was recorded at g2 (20 g/l), indicating the plant's potential to enhance photosynthetic productivity under mild stress conditions. however, the difference was not statistically significant, suggesting that the response was not sufficiently robust to be considered conclusive over treatments. expanding saltiness levels driven to decay in net digestion rate (nar/lab), affirming that salt stretch meddling with photosynthetic proficiency. this underpins past discoveries showing that photosynthesis is compromised beneath tall osmotic weight (lu et al., 2023). tall lab values reflect the plant's capacity to deliver dry biomass productively per unit leaf region. the decrease in lab beneath tall saltiness (e.g., 20 g/l – 0.49a) may result from disturbances in the photosynthetic digestion system (chemical action or photochemical forms) and diminished chlorophyll content. stomatal closure confines co₂ take-up and limits photosynthesis. stomatal thickness was most elevated in plants from the cilacap nursery (25.33ab) and beneath 10 g/l saltiness (23.23a), whereas the least esteem was watched at g3 (21.89a). the diminish in stomatal number beneath tall saltiness likely reflects a versatile reaction pointed at lessening transpiration and water misfortune. even though the contrast was not statistically significant, stomatal thickness remains a key marker of transpiration and gas trade control. decreased stomatal numbers may speak to a long-term morphological adjustment to push (instead of as it were stomatal closure) (bertolino, caine, & gray, 2019; wang & chang, 2024; zahedi et al., 2025). in aloe vera, a cam plant, this diminishment helps preserve water. be that as it may, excessively low stomatal thickness can impair co₂ uptake and, consequently, photosynthetic performance. an increase in relative growth rate (rgr) at g3 suggests a compensatory metabolic response to tall stretch. plants maintaining growth under high salinity may exhibit more efficient metabolic pathways or allocate biomass more selectively to specific organs (wang & chang, 2024). this lifted rgr may also be an artifact resulting from moo introductory biomass. encouragement of investigation is required to obtain detailed biomass conveyance designs. transpiration rate declined altogether at higher saltiness levels, steady with stomatal closure and water preservation methodologies ordinary of cam species such as aloe vera. this decline reflects the plant's adjustment to salt-induced stress (gonzález-delgado et al., 2023; pereira, niechayev, blair, & cushman, 2021). direct saltiness levels (10–20 g/l) showed up to advance positive physiological adaptation characterized by expanded leaf region, moderately steady lab, and adequate stomatal thickness. whereas tall saltiness (30 g/l) stifled a few parameters, it suddenly expanded rgr, justifying assist examination into potential elective development methodologies. the impact of seedling root was generally constrained; be that as it may, seedlings from bantul displayed the most noteworthy lab values, recommending higher beginning photosynthetic proficiency (shipley, 2006). 4. conclusion this study illustrates that both saltiness levels and seedling origin collectively influence the development and physiological responses of aloe vera cultivated on coastal sandy soils. seedlings from gunung kidul (a1) demonstrated superior performance in terms of leaf and root biomass, both fresh and dry, as well as more stable physiological responses under salt stress. direct saltiness levels (5–10 g/l nacl) positively affected leaf length, leaf width, and photosynthetic efficiency, as evidenced by increased (lab), relative growth rate (rgr), and optimal leaf coloration. the treatment combination a1g1 (gunung kidul + 5 g/l nacl) consistently supported ideal growth and physiological function. these findings confirm that aloe vera possesses significant adaptability to marginal conditions and can be cultivated sustainably in coastal regions, provided that seedling genetic background and salt management are appropriately considered. this research contributes to the development of resilient and resource-efficient agricultural systems for minimal coastal lands. although these results are promising, long-term field trials are necessary to validate these findings under actual coastal farming conditions. future research should explore the long-term effects of salinity on aloe vera secondary metabolite profiles and investigate potential genetic markers associated with salt tolerance. funding: this research was supported by the beasiswa pendidikan indonesia (bpi) from the ministry of education, culture, research, and technology, indonesia, (grant number: 04040/bppt/bpi.06/9/2023) institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors affirm that this manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study being reported. no important aspects of the study have been omitted, and any discrepancies from the original study plan have been explained. this study adhered to all ethical standards in scientific writing. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: study design, experiments, initial draft, rennanti lunnadiyah aprilia (rla); 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(2019). salinity and crop yield. plant biology, 21, 31-38. https://doi.org/10.1111/plb.12884 views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/1006/1/012007 https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/1006/1/012007 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms241511996 https://doi.org/10.1093/pcp/pcae093 https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3900 https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/139/1/012007 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41580-022-00479-6 https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms7090289 https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erad477 https://doi.org/10.3390/horticulturae7030050 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ncrops.2024.100057 https://doi.org/10.1007/s42729-024-02141-w https://doi.org/10.3390/land13122077 https://doi.org/10.1111/plb.12884 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 223 the model of organic fertilizer adoption in urban farming to support environmentally friendly agriculture in pekanbaru city, riau province, indonesia marliatia  sisca vaulinab ilma satriana dewic dian chintya dewid a ,dgraduate school, universitas islam riau, riau, indonesia. b,cdepartment of agribusiness, faculty of agriculture, universitas islam riau, riau, indonesia.  marliatiahmad@agr.uir.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 7 january 2025 revised: 12 may 2025 accepted: 4 june 2025 published: 13 june 2025 keywords adoption environmental conditions inovationtahu organic fertilizers partial least squares. this study examines farmer characteristics, urban farming profiles, levels of organic fertilizer adoption, and the factors influencing its adoption in pekanbaru city. the degradation of agricultural land in indonesia, including pekanbaru, is primarily attributed to excessive chemical fertilizers, which compromise soil fertility and endanger food security. although interest in organic farming is growing, its adoption remains limited due to inadequate government support, market challenges, and farmers’ dependence on chemical fertilizers for immediate results. using a survey method targeting vegetable farmers who have used organic fertilizers for at least one year, the data were analyzed with partial least square (pls) modeling. the findings indicate that farmers, predominantly male (72.09%) with low educational attainment, face challenges such as limited land availability. although farmers hold positive perceptions of organic fertilizers, especially chicken manure, they prefer chemical fertilizers due to their immediate impact. moreover, agricultural extension services and government support for organic fertilizer adoption are deemed insufficient. the decision to adopt organic fertilizers is significantly influenced by land size, the performance of agricultural extension workers, and marketing strategies. to improve adoption rates, it is imperative to enhance agricultural extension services, optimize government support, and establish accessible marketing strategies, thereby promoting sustainable urban agriculture in pekanbaru. contribution/originality: this research is original as it examines organic fertilizer adoption in pekanbaru’s urban agriculture, integrating social, economic, and environmental aspects. this study is different from others because it focuses on local factors like policy potential and urban community awareness. it also looks at the specifics of sustainable urban agriculture in pekanbaru, which other studies have missed. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5410 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: marliati, vaulina, s., dewi, i. s., & dewi, d. c. (2025). the model of organic fertilizer adoption in urban farming to support environmentally friendly agriculture in pekanbaru city, riau province, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 223–235. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction indonesia has significant agricultural potential, crucial in increasing farmers' incomes, ensuring food and nutrition security, creating job opportunities, and contributing to the nation's foreign exchange. this potential is supported by several comparative advantages, such as (i) the availability of land resources for developing organic agricultural systems asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 223-235 mailto:marliatiahmad@agr.uir.ac.id https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9700-5016 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4878-208x https://orcid.org/0009-0002-8303-8153 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5410 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 223-235 224 and (ii) technologies that support organic agriculture, including compost production, no-till farming, biological pesticides, and more. however, the environmental conditions, particularly agricultural land, have deteriorated over the past few decades. according to chaniago (idris, 2022) approximately 72% of indonesia’s agricultural land is currently “sick” due to the depletion of organic matter, primarily caused by excessive use of chemical fertilizers. in the 1960s, indonesian soils were fertile with high organic content, which made chemical fertilizers highly effective. however, the gradual shift away from organic fertilizers in favor of the convenience of chemical fertilizers has led to soil degradation. similarly, yusuf et al. (2023) explained that nearly 69% of agricultural land in indonesia has been severely degraded due to excessive use of chemical substances. the damage to agricultural land and the environment is caused by pollution from agrochemical materials, such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides. these conditions make indonesia’s food security vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, which is expected to become increasingly critical by 2050. the fertilizer usage pattern among rice farmers in indonesia is predominantly inorganic. according to the 2023 agricultural census, 86.41% of farmers use inorganic fertilizers, 13.5% use a balanced mix of organic and inorganic fertilizers, and only 0.07% rely solely on organic fertilizers. this figure reflects a preference for inorganic fertilizers due to their practicality and availability. however, excessive use of inorganic fertilizers, particularly nitrogen (n) fertilizers, will deplete soil fertility and exacerbate climate change. it is estimated that only 50% of the nitrogen applied is absorbed by the soil, with the remainder released into the atmosphere (yani, juliansyah, puteh, & anwar, 2022). commonly used chemical fertilizers, such as urea and tsp, are expensive, especially after the government removed subsidies. distribution delays often cause shortages, leading to high prices and increased production costs. however, organic fertilizers offer advantages over inorganic alternatives, particularly regarding human health and environmental sustainability. the growing awareness of healthy living has brought attention to the dangers of synthetic chemicals, particularly inorganic fertilizers, which remain a cornerstone of modern agriculture. this awareness sparked increased interest in organic farming among producers and consumers. consumers are increasingly favoring food products that are safe, nutritious, and environmentally friendly, which is fueling demand for organic products. the global trend toward eco-conscious, healthy lifestyles has led to the institutionalization of standards that require agricultural products to meet food safety, nutritional content, and eco-labeling criteria. despite government initiatives to promote organic farming, such as the “go organic 2010” program, progress has been slow due to market constraints, low farmer interest, lack of understanding of organic products, burdensome certification processes for small farmers, and challenges in farmer organizations and business partnerships. nevertheless, interest in organic farming continues to grow. this trend is expected to positively influence the development of organic agriculture in pekanbaru city, the capital of riau province. pekanbaru, with a population of over 1.2 million and an area of 632.3 km², is a significant producer of vegetables. main crops include spinach, large chili peppers, cayenne peppers, chinese cabbage, cucumbers, and water spinach, with specific crops being dominant in different sub-districts. based on these issues, this study aims to analyze: 1. the characteristics of farmers, agricultural extension workers, and the profile of urban farming in pekanbaru city. 2. characteristics of organic fertilizer innovation, the performance of agricultural extension, government support, marketing strategies, and the level of adoption of organic fertilizer in urban agriculture in pekanbaru city. 3. factors influencing the use of organic fertilizers in urban farming in pekanbaru city. 4. efforts to enhance the adoption of organic fertilizers in urban farming in pekanbaru city. 1.1. organic fertilizers and their benefits organic fertilizers refer to all organic materials derived from plants and animals that can decompose into nutrients accessible to plants. according to ministry of agriculture regulation no. 2/pert/hk.060/2/2006 on organic fertilizers and soil amendments, organic fertilizers are primarily or entirely composed of organic materials from plants and animals that have undergone a processing method. they can be solid or liquid and supply organic matter that improves the soil's physical, chemical, and biological properties. this definition emphasizes the carbon content of organic fertilizers, distinguishing them from inorganic fertilizers. khan, aleinikovienė, and butkevičienė (2024) states that organic fertilization utilizes natural resources to enhance soil quality. maula (2023) organic fertilizers made from natural materials, including livestock waste, are essential in sustainable agriculture as they enhance soil fertility and maintain ecosystem balance. patunah and pradani (2024) play a key role as one of the main components in achieving sustainable farming. ardianto and iskandar (2022) agricultural ecology theory highlights the importance of using organic materials to improve soil quality and ensure long-term sustainability. according to saraswati (2012) the benefits of using environmentally friendly fertilizers, such as biofertilizers, include enhancing fertilization efficiency, improving crop yields sustainably, increasing soil fertility and health, and promoting plant health. several studies on the economic impact of organic fertilizers, particularly on rice crops, include the following findings: muchlis (2010) discovered that applying 200 kg/ha of biofertilizers could reduce inorganic fertilizer usage by 50%. setyawan (2013) explained that combining straw incorporation, organic fertilizers, and biofertilizers can reduce npk fertilizer dosage by up to 50% without compromising crop yields. this strategy demonstrates that biofertilizers and organic fertilizers can enhance fertilization efficiency. siswanto (2014) found that applying organic fertilizers increased the efficiency of n, p, and k fertilizers. according to regulation no. 40/2007 from the ministry of agriculture, using organic and inorganic fertilizers together can make the soil more fertile and make using inorganic fertilizers more effective (saraswati, 2012). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 223-235 225 1.2. innovation and the theory of innovation adoption rogers (2003) defines innovation as an idea, practice, or object perceived as new by an individual or group of adopters. the first use or discovery of an idea that determines its novelty. the key extrinsic characteristics of innovation include: (1) relative advantage: the degree to which an innovation offers benefits over existing technology, whether technical, economic, non-economic, or socio-cultural; (2) compatibility: the alignment of the innovation with local environmental factors, including physical, socio-cultural, political, and economic aspects; (3) complexity: the degree of difficulty in understanding and using the innovation compared to its predecessor; (4) trialability: the ease with which an innovation can be tested or experimented with; and (5) observability: the extent to which the results of an innovation are visible to others. on the other hand, azzahra et al. (2022) state that this innovation can also contribute to rural economic development by creating job opportunities in the agricultural sector and waste management. adoption is the process of accepting an innovation, leading to changes in an individual's knowledge (cognitive), attitude (affective), and skills (psychomotor) after being introduced to the innovation (mardikanto, 2009). traditional dominant models of innovation adoption often overlook the role of emotions, even though this aspect is relevant in consumer decision-making (valor, antonetti, & crisafulli, 2022) farmers can benefit from innovations as they help reduce production costs, simplify tasks, and increase yields (gandasari, diena, & larassati, 2020). according to rizki, suwarsinah, and priatna (2019) government support positively impacts innovation adoption. meanwhile, ober (2020) highlights that the successful implementation of innovation is a crucial contemporary issue for the smooth operation of businesses, industries, and socio-economic environments. 2. research method 2.1. location and duration of the study this research was conducted using a survey method in pekanbaru city, selected for its potential in urban farming and horticulture development and its vulnerability to using inorganic fertilizers. due to limited land availability, farmers often use the land intensively without allowing it to rest. they prefer chemical fertilizers because of their quick response time, even though these fertilizers can cause long-term harm to the soil and the environment. the study was conducted over 10 months, from july 2023 to may 2024. 2.2. data collection methods and sampling techniques the data collected comprised primary and secondary sources. primary data was obtained through in-depth interviews and field observations. secondary data is sourced from related institutions or data providers (trade offices, statistics bureaus, etc.). the data types and sources are outlined in table 1. table 1. types and sources of data. type of data source characteristics of farmers farmers urban farming profiles farmers perceptions of organic fertilizers farmers innovation decision types farmers communication channels farmers agricultural extensions’ performance farmers adoption level of organic fertilizers farmers secondary data pekanbaru city monographic data, p2l program participant statistics, and literature studies farmers were randomly sampled, targeting vegetable farmers who had used organic fertilizers for at least one year. the sample size was determined based on the main vegetable production areas in pekanbaru city (table 2). table 2. distribution of respondents by sub-district in pekanbaru city. sub-district population sample sido mulyo 37 12 tenayan raya 30 10 marpoyan damai 34 11 tuah madani 30 10 total 253 84 2.3. data analysis the characteristics of farmers, agricultural extension, and farm business profiles were analyzed using descriptive statistics. descriptive statistical analysis uses mean, frequency distribution, graphs, and tables using the microsoft office excel 2016 computer program. narratives or descriptions discuss the data analyzed descriptively. perceptions of organic fertilizer, types of innovation decisions, communication channels, and performance of agricultural extension workers in adopting organic fertilizer innovations were analyzed using quantitative qualitative data analysis. the qualitative data is measured using an ordinal scale for each research indicator. the measurement score value uses a likert scale, ranging from 1 to 5. after calculating the score value for each variable and sub-variable asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 223-235 226 of the study, categorization is carried out consisting of: "very good," "good," "less good," "not good," and "very bad." the range formula for categorization is: (maximum score x number of indicators) – (minimum score x number of indicators). 2.4. number of categories relationships between organic fertilizer adoption model variables were tested using partial least square (plspath modelling), supported by smart pls version 2 software. outer model testing: assesses the validity and reliability of indicators against latent variables. inner model testing: looks at the structural relationships between hidden variables, such as the significance of r-square and path coefficients. 3. results and discussion 3.1. characteristics of farmers urban farmers are farmers who farm in pekanbaru city, with the characteristics of using narrow land that utilizes idle land in housing complexes or locations that have not been utilized for buildings or other development facilities. they cultivate crops such as cassava and horticulture through vegetables and short-lived fruits (watermelon, melon, and papaya). the characteristics of farmers studied include age, education level, farming experience, and number of family members. the characteristics of farmers can be seen in table 3. table 3. characteristics of food crop and horticultural farmers in pekanbaru city. no. description (number of people) percentage (%) 1 gender = x1 a. man 62 72.09 b. woman 24 27.91 2 age (years) = x2 a. 18 38 26 30.23 b. 39 59 48 55.82 c. 60 80 12 13. 95 3 education level = x3 a. not very elementary school 2 2.34 b. elementary school 20 23.24 b. junior high school 25 29 .07 c. high school 35 40.7 d. college 4 4.65 4 farming experience (years) = x5 a. ≤10 32 37.21 b. 11-20 37 43.02 c. 21-30 12 13.95 d. ≥ 30 5 5.82 5 number of family dependents (people) = x4 a. 1-3 53 61.63 b. 4-6 30 34.88 c. 7-10 3 3.49 3.1.1. gender according to the research findings (table 1), food crop and horticulture farmers in pekanbaru city are predominantly male, accounting for 72.09%, while female farmers make up 27.91%. this indicates that women also engage in food crop and horticulture farming in pekanbaru city. gender is also believed to influence the adoption of organic fertilizer innovations. mensah, villamor, and vlek (2018) found that gender differences positively and significantly affect the likelihood of farmers adopting fertilizer applications. households headed by women are more likely to adopt organic fertilizers than those led by men (daadi & latacz-lohmann, 2021). however, tufa et al. (2022) noted limited evidence regarding gender disparities in technology adoption and agricultural productivity. 3.1.2. age horticultural farmers in pekanbaru city vary from the youngest age of 18 to the oldest age of 78, with an average age of 44.91 years. however, 12 percent of farmers are over 60 years old. the productive age has a strong physique that is profitable for their farming business. farmers of a productive age can think logically when choosing innovations that benefit their business and have a strong and dynamic physique. 3.1.3. level of education table 1 presents the research results, illustrating farmers' varying levels of formal education. the lowest did not finish elementary school (es) at 2 percent, and the highest is a bachelor's degree (4 percent), with an average length of education of 9.07 years (equivalent to graduating from junior high school). a total of 94 percent are spread from graduating from elementary school (23.2 percent), junior high school (29.07 percent), and high school (40.70 percent). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 223-235 227 this shows that the level of education of horticultural farmers in pekanbaru city has not met the education program set by the government, which is 12 years. a higher level of education will be better for thinking and acting. 3.1.4. farming experience farming experience is the period of time that women farmers have gone through in carrying out agricultural crop cultivation activities, especially horticultural crops (vegetables and fruits). the study results that can be seen in table 1 show that most farmers have 11-30 years of farming experience (56.97%), with an average of 15.31 years. farming experience is a more significant determinant of farmer behavior. according to purwanto (2010) experience can shape interest by directing an individual's attention to things relevant to their needs. similarly, slameto (2010) explained that through experience, individuals learn to identify their needs and how to fulfill them. efendy and hutapea (2010); sari and sumarno (2013); suminah and ihsaniyati (2020) and tapi, tapi, and carko (2024) stated that farming experience can influence the level of innovation adoption. 3.1.5. number of family dependents the research results indicate that most farmers have family responsibilities, as many as 1 3 people (61.63). the lowest number of family dependents is 1 person, and the highest is 10 people. the average number of dependents of farmer families in pekanbaru city is 3 people. nababan (2013) stated that the number of family members will affect the number of family needs. having more family members means meeting more needs. 3.2. farming business profile the profile of food crops and horticultural farming in pekanbaru city includes a description of land ownership status, land area, capital amount, and capital sources, as presented in table 4. based on table 4, 55.81% of farmers in pekanbaru city cultivate land without rent under an owner's permission, meaning the land is not personally owned but temporarily borrowed for agricultural activities. meanwhile, 20.93% of farmers own their land. this ownership ratio affects the sustainability of agricultural businesses. if landowners decide to convert the land for other purposes, farmers may be unable to continue their farming activities unless they secure access to alternative land. the area of land most widely cultivated by farmers is 0.11-0.50 ha, 41.86 percent of farmers, followed by a land area of 0.005-0.10 ha, 32.50 percent of farmers. the amount of capital farmers use is the most (68 percent), which is 700 thousand to less than 5 million rupiah and 15.12 percent between 5 10 million rupiah. the source of capital is 89.5 percent of their capital. table 4. profile of food crops and horticulture farming business in pekanbaru city. no. farming profile (number of people) percentage (%) 1 land ownership status a. one's own 18 20. 93 b. owner's permission without rent 48 55.81 c. rent 15 17.44 d. mixed (own and shared) 1 1.17 e. profit sharing 4 4.65 2 land area a. 0.005-0.10 28 32.56 b. 0.11-0.50 36 41.86 c. 0.51-1.0 15 17.44 d. 1.11-1.50 4 4.65 e. 1.51-2.00 2 2.33 f. >2 1 1.16 3 amount capital (million rupiah) a. 700,000 <5,000,000 59 68.6 b. 5000, 000<10, 000, 000 13 15.12 c. 10,000,000 -<15,000,000 8 9.3 d. 15,000,000<20,000,000 3 3.49 e. ≥ 20,000,000 3 3.49 4 source of capital a. owner's equity 77 89.5 b. loan 6 7 c. mixed (own and borrowed) 3 3.5 3.3. characteristics of organic fertilizer innovation based on the research results, organic fertilizers widely used (adopted) by food crop and horticulture farmers in pekanbaru are primarily manure. many farmers use a combination of manure, compost, and liquid organic fertilizers in their crop cycles. table 5 presents the characteristics of organic fertilizer innovations, particularly manure. according to table 5, the use (adoption) of manure is regarded by farmers as highly beneficial, as it is considered relatively profitable (relative advantage), compatible with existing practices (compatibility), and uncomplicated to use asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 223-235 228 (uncomplexity). farmers find manure particularly profitable due to several advantages compared to other organic fertilizers: it makes the soil fertile and loose, contains many nutrients, and is inexpensive. horneck and miller (1998) stated that manure contains various macroand micro-nutrients essential for soil fertility. manure is especially rich in nitrogen (n), which is necessary for vegetative plant growth, as well as phosphorus (p) and potassium (k), which are important for root development and increasing plant resistance to environmental stress. the micro elements found in manure, such as copper (cu), zinc (zn), and boron (b), contribute to plant health, even though they are present in smaller amounts. additionally, manure contains organic matter that improves soil structure, increases water retention capacity, and supports the activity of beneficial soil microorganisms. moreover, manure plays a role in raising soil ph, depending on the type of animal producing it (cow manure tends to be neutral, while chicken manure is more acidic). table 5. characteristics of organic fertilizer innovation. no. variables/indicators average score score achievement (%) category 1 relative advantage ( 𝑋31) 4.28 85.60 very good a. benefits from economic aspects 4.1 82 good b. convenience in adopting innovation 4.2 84 very good 2 compatibility of innovation ( 𝑋32) with: 4.4 88 very good a. level of knowledge and mastery of farmer technology. 4.2 84 very good b. land conditions 4.3 86 very good 3 uncomplexity ( 𝑋33) : level of convenience obtaining and using fertilizer 4.2 84 very good farmers in pekanbaru city use broiler chicken manure, which offers several advantages over manure from cows and goats. according to horneck and miller (1998) the advantages of chicken manure include the higher nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium content compared to manure from other animals; the ability to lower soil ph and increase nutrient availability in alkaline soils; a rich supply of organic matter that improves soil structure, increases water retention capacity, and supports soil microorganism activity; and a fast decomposition process due to its low c/n ratio, which accelerates nutrient release for plants and enhances the activity of soil microorganisms that are beneficial for soil fertility and plant health. as a result, using this fertilizer can increase the quantity and quality of agricultural products (especially for vegetable crops) and improve farmers' incomes. numerous research findings support the benefits of manure, which farmers consider advantageous. bhoki, jeksen, and beja (2019); hulu and sitorus (2022); gaol, purba, and sitorus (2023); agency for agricultural development and community service (2024) and adiba (2023) concluded that broiler chicken manure is not only effective in increasing agricultural yields but is also profitable and reduces long-term production costs. using broiler chicken manure has significantly increased vegetable production (such as chili peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, carrots, and mustard greens). chicken manure has a positive long-term effect on soil fertility and promotes plant growth, increasing crop yields and reducing dependency on chemical fertilizers. it is considered more economical for farmers due to its lower price, which reduces agricultural input costs. additionally, compared to chemical fertilizers, chicken manure is cheaper and improves soil fertility in the long term. as a result, using chicken manure leads to reduced production costs and higher profits due to increased yields and better product quality. the study also recorded a sustainable improvement in soil quality, benefiting farmers in the long run. farmers also found manure to be uncomplicated (uncomplexity). producers pack dried chicken manure in sacks, the primary manure they use. once processed and ready for planting, farmers apply it as a base fertilizer by sprinkling and mixing it into the soil. similar research findings were shared by arifin (2021); purnomo, hartono, and muhaimin (2019) and sutrisno, astuti, and rahmanto (2019) which explained that both chicken and cow manure are considered uncomplicated by farmers. this is primarily because manure is easily accessible, its application is straightforward, and its use does not require special skills or advanced equipment. this aligns with the concept of compatibility, as farmers have limited knowledge and low technological mastery. 3.4. performance of agricultural extension the performance level of agricultural extension, which includes the development of innovative farmer behavior, strengthening farmer participation, and enhancing farmers' access to various resources in pekanbaru city, is presented in table 6. the performance level of extension workers is based on the results of the agricultural extension work as perceived by farmers. each farmer provides an assessment of the performance level of agricultural extension. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 223-235 229 table 6. performance level of agricultural extension. variables/indicators average score score achievement (%) category development of innovative farmer behavior 2.6 52 not good a. improving farmers' knowledge about the use of organic fertilizers 2.7 54 not good b. providing motivation to farmers to use organic fertilizer 2.7 54 not good c. always take the initiative to improve farmers' skills in making organic fertilizer 2.6 52 not good strengthening the level of farmer participation 2.4 48 not good a. facilitating farmers to identify fertilization needs/problems 2.4 48 not good b. increasing farmer participation in the program activity planning process counseling 2.5 50 not good c. involving participation of farmers in implementation activity. 2.5 50 not good d. involving farmers in activity evaluation. 2.4 48 not good strengthening farmers' access to resources 2.3 46 not good a. assisting farmers in mastering information and technology (including organic fertilizer). 2.5 50 not good b. help farmers access to availability of organic fertilizer 2.4 48 not good c. help farmers access to capital 2.2 44 not good based on table 6, the performance of agricultural extension in developing innovative farmer behavior, including increasing knowledge, providing motivation, and improving farmer skills in making organic fertilizer, is considered by farmers to be below satisfactory. farmers deem the performance of strengthening farmer participation and enhancing farmer access to resources unsatisfactory. therefore, better government and agricultural extension performance is necessary for farmers to adopt organic fertilizers. the findings of this study align with research conducted by mokoginta and lahay (2019); sari and siregar (2020) and la ode and yusuf (2021) which concluded that although agricultural extension workers play an essential role in promoting the adoption of organic fertilizers, their performance remains limited and suboptimal. their effectiveness is hindered by several challenges, such as time constraints, budget limitations, and low farmer motivation to adopt organic fertilizers. extension workers often face difficulties changing farmers' habits, as many are accustomed to chemical fertilizers. other contributing factors include the lack of training and limited effective communication between extension workers and farmers. extension workers frequently fail to provide adequate information about the long-term benefits of using organic fertilizers, resulting in farmers relying on chemical fertilizers. additionally, limited support from the government and related institutions affects the effectiveness of extension workers in disseminating the necessary information to encourage the adoption of organic fertilizers. other reasons include the low capacity of extension workers to provide a comprehensive understanding of the benefits of organic fertilizers and the mismatch between the information provided by agricultural extension and the field conditions faced by farmers. limited resources, such as equipment and training facilities, constrain agricultural extensions. 3.5. government support the success of farming, including farmers' adoption of organic fertilizers, is closely linked to government support. this support encompasses policies or material assistance that ensure organic fertilizers are available and used by farmers in the correct amounts, at the right price, at the right time, and according to the proper standard operating procedures. some of the parts of government support that are looked at in this study are how to get and use organic fertilizers, how to set up demonstration plots for using organic fertilizers, and how to provide subsidies. government support for the adoption and use of organic fertilizers by farmers is presented in table 7. table 7. government support. number variables average score score achievement (%) category 1 procurement/assistance organic fertilizer 2.3 46 not good a. the government provides organic fertilizer assistance according to farmers' needs. 2.4 48 not good b. the government facilitates the distribution of organic fertilizer aid to distribution points in farmer groups/farmer group associations. 2.4 48 not good 2 subsidy policy for organic fertilizer the government optimizes the distribution of subsidized organic fertilizer to farmers 2.3 46 not good 3 assistance for demonstration plots using organic fertilizer 2.3 46 not good asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 223-235 230 based on the study's results, table 7 shows that although the government has made efforts to support the adoption of organic fertilizers, various obstacles remain, such as limited budgets, uneven policies, and a lack of effective counseling and training for farmers. these challenges prevent the adoption of organic fertilizers from being fully optimized, especially in more remote areas or regions that receive less government attention. similar findings were reported by haryanto and sulaeman (2018); anggraeni and setiawan (2019) and nasution and nurdiana (2021). their research revealed that although the government has issued policies to support organic fertilizers, the support is still not optimal. one identified factor is the limited budget for extension programs and organic fertilizer subsidies, making it difficult for many farmers to access organic fertilizers. additionally, farmers at the field level have not received full communication about existing policies, and subsidy programs frequently prioritize chemical fertilizers. support in the form of training and assistance for adopting organic fertilizers is also limited, making it challenging for farmers to transition from chemical fertilizers to organic fertilizers. furthermore, current policies tend to prioritize chemical fertilizers and pay less attention to the broader needs of farmers related to the use of organic fertilizers, such as intensive training and extension services. 3.6. marketing strategy according to kurtz (2008) a marketing strategy is a company's overall program to determine its target market and satisfy consumers by combining elements of the marketing mix: product, distribution, promotion, and price. in this study, the marketing strategies analyzed include product strategy (product quality and packaging), price (affordability), and place (clear distribution channels). based on the study's results (table 8), farmers, as consumers of manure, reported that the product quality and packaging were good, the price of manure was affordable, and the distribution channels were smooth. table 8. organic fertilizer marketing strategy. no. variables average score score achievement (%) category 1 product/ product quality and packaging ( 𝑋61) 3.8 76 good 2 price/affordability ( 𝑋62) 3.4 68 good 3 place/distribution channel clarity ( 𝑋63) 3.5 70 good farmers consider manure marketing good, yet it remains limited to manure. according to setiawan and santosa (2017) and pramudianto and gunawan (2020) other organic fertilizer marketing strategies can be improved by involving various parties, including local distributors, farmer groups, and local governments, in creating a more open market for organic fertilizers. in addition, field demonstrations, intensive education on the benefits of manure for soil health, and increased agricultural yields that show real results from using manure can increase farmer confidence in this product. there is a guarantee of a stable supply and affordable prices. 3.7. innovation adoption level based on the research results (table 9), the overall level of farmers’ adoption of organic fertilizers is still low. as of now, farmers have primarily adopted manure as their basic fertilizer. other organic fertilizers, such as compost, liquid organic fertilizers, and others, have not been used by farmers. this manure amount and method follow recommendations and are good. the frequency of organic fertilizer use refers to the intensity with which farmers apply organic fertilizers during the planting cycle. the study’s results classify the frequency of organic fertilizer use as low. farmers only use manure as a base fertilizer during the initial land preparation. in this case, farmers have not used other organic fertilizers, such as compost or liquid organic fertilizers. the consistency of manure use, however, is relatively good. farmers have become accustomed to using manure as their base fertilizer. table 9. level of adoption of organic fertilizer (manure) by farmers in pekanbaru city. no. adoption rate average score score achievement (%) category 1 compliance with the amount of organic fertilizer (manure) given according to recommendations 3.5 70 good 2 frequency of use of organic fertilizer. 2.8 54 not good 3 consistency of use 3.4 68 good according to the ministry of agriculture (2011) organic fertilizers, including manure, are gaining attention for their benefits in improving soil quality over the long term. however, their adoption among farmers remains low compared to chemical fertilizers. key barriers include the time-consuming production process, the large volumes required, and issues with the consistency of material quality. 3.8. adoption model of organic fertilizer innovation factors significantly influence farmers’ adoption of organic fertilizer innovation from the model. the model is built based on a theory explaining the factors influencing the decision to adopt innovation (rogers, 2003). in addition to the innovation adoption theory, farmers' decision to purchase organic fertilizer is also influenced by the fertilizer marketing strategy. the model formed from significant factors is presented in figure 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 223-235 231 figure 1. the adoption model of organic fertilizer by farmers in pekanbaru city (pls research model output with all valid loading factor indicators). the results of the statistical test for the estimated parameters of the research model (pls output) are presented in table 10. based on the test results, it is found that the indicators significantly influencing entrepreneurial behavior and business success are those with t statistics greater than 1.96. according to the research findings (figure 1 and table 10), several key elements influence farmers' decision-making in adopting organic fertilizer innovations. for farmer characteristics, education level plays a significant role. regarding the farming business profile, land ownership area is a determining factor. regarding the innovation's characteristics, the complexity level affects adoption decisions. the performance of agricultural extension workers is also crucial, with indicators such as developing innovative behavior, strengthening farmer participation, and enhancing farmers' control over resources being significant. government support, including fertilizer assistance, subsidy policies for organic fertilizers, and support for demonstration plots, also has a considerable impact. furthermore, the marketing strategy for fertilizers, particularly the efficiency of distribution channels, plays a role in adoption decisions. finally, the level of decision to adopt the innovation is influenced by the degree to which the amount of organic fertilizer used aligns with recommendations. table 10. variables, sub-variables, and indicators of research parameter model estimates significantly influence the level of adoption decisions for organic fertilizer innovation farmers. variables indicator t statistics (|o/sterr|) p values symbol description farmers characteristics x12 level of education business profile x21 land area characteristics of fertilizer innovation x31c uncomplexity agriculture extension performance x41 development of innovative farmer behavior 14.337 0 .000 x42 strengthening the level of farmer participation 12.639 0 .000 x43 strengthening farmers' access to resources 15.599 0 .000 government support x51 provision of organic fertilizer assistance ( 𝑋51) 2.926 0.003 x52 subsidy policy for organic fertilizer ( 𝑋52) 2.857 0.004 x53 assistance for demonstration plots on the use of organic fertilizer 3.473 0 .001 marketing strategy x63 place /clarity of organic fertilizer distribution channels ( 𝑋63) adoption of innovation y1 compliance with the amount of organic fertilizer given according to recommendations asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 223-235 232 table 11 presents the statistical test results for the estimated structural model parameters. the factors significantly influencing farmers' decisions to adopt organic fertilizers include the farm business profile (land area), agricultural extension performance, and marketing strategy, particularly the ease of distribution. farmers who manage larger land areas are more likely to adopt organic fertilizers because they recognize the long-term benefits of soil fertility and the cost-efficiency of using them. table 11. statistical test results of structural model parameter estimates. number structural equations t statistics influence p values information the influence of two variables r2 (%) endogenous latent variables exogenous latent variables 1 adoption of innovation (y) 1. farmers' characteristics 1.512 0.131 not significant 33.5 2. business profile 2.202 0.028 significant 3. characteristics of organic fertilizer innovation 1.729 0.084 not significant 4. agricultural extension performance 2.606 0.009 significant government support 1.311 0.190 not significant 6. marketing strategy 3.338 0.001 significant the study also revealed that the performance of agricultural extension workers significantly impacts adoption rates. however, the performance of extension workers was rated below satisfactory, contributing to the low adoption rate of organic fertilizers. moreover, the accessibility of fertilizers through effective marketing and distribution systems is crucial in influencing farmers' decisions to adopt organic fertilizers. thus, it is evident that the adoption of organic fertilizers among farmers is influenced by factors such as the size of the farmer’s land, the performance of agricultural extension, and marketing strategies. sofyan and sari (2022); iin, rosmiah, berliana, nurbaiti, and ika (2023) and agustina and sari (2024) concluded that training and extension programs play a crucial role in encouraging farmers to adopt organic fertilizers. these training programs focus on utilizing organic waste, such as cow manure and vegetable waste, to produce liquid organic fertilizers. these activities demonstrated increased farmer knowledge and skills in producing and using organic fertilizers, which contributed to reducing dependency on chemical fertilizers, improving soil fertility, and enhancing crop productivity. furthermore, these community empowerment programs successfully motivated farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices. by addressing knowledge gaps and motivating farmers, these training programs serve as an effective strategy to increase farmers' adoption of organic fertilizers. agricultural extension and the government can collaborate with universities, non-governmental organization (ngos), and farmer organizations to disseminate this information. additionally, supporting small and medium entrepreneurs in producing organic fertilizers on a large scale can increase accessibility and lower prices. this approach can help create a more competitive market for organic fertilizers. the performance of agricultural extension significantly influences the adoption of agricultural technology, including farmers' use of organic fertilizers. based on research conducted by damanik and siregar (2017) agricultural extension agents who possess good communication skills, a deep understanding of agricultural technology, and practical extension skills can increase the adoption of organic fertilizers among farmers. the knowledge provided by extension workers regarding the long-term benefits of organic fertilizers in improving soil fertility and overall agricultural yields encourages changes in farmer behavior. according to fauzi and riana (2020) factors influencing the adoption rate of organic fertilizers depend not only on the quality of extension services but also on farmers' attitudes and perceptions of organic fertilizers. farmers are more likely to adopt this technology if they believe that organic fertilizers are more environmentally friendly and can increase yields in the long term. extension workers who communicate this understanding to farmers are crucial in changing these attitudes. janssen and smit (2017) added that adopting organic fertilizers is also influenced by economic factors, such as the higher cost of organic fertilizers compared to chemical fertilizers, even though organic fertilizers are more profitable in the long run. extension workers who can provide comprehensive information regarding the costs and benefits of organic fertilizers, including their environmental advantages, can help farmers make more rational decisions. research by ariani (2018) in village x found that farmers who attended training organized by agricultural extension workers increased their use of organic fertilizers by 35%, compared to farmers who did not attend training and who only used 20% organic fertilizers in their agricultural practices. these data emphasize the importance of the active role of extension workers in educating and encouraging farmers to switch to organic fertilizers. meanwhile, barker (2019) stated in his study that in several countries with effective agricultural extension systems, such as european countries, the adoption rate of organic fertilizers increased by up to 50% thanks to the role of agricultural extension, which provided in-depth and sustainable technical guidance. research by soeharto and widiatmoko (2021) in indonesia showed that the success of agricultural extension programs in increasing the adoption asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 223-235 233 of organic fertilizers varies depending on the quality of the extension services and the management of available resources. data collected from 150 farmers in three provinces in indonesia revealed that farmers who received regular extensions for organic fertilizers had a higher adoption rate (62%) compared to those who only received extensions once (37%). although the performance of agricultural extension can encourage the adoption of organic fertilizers, challenges remain, including farmers' perceptions of the effectiveness of organic fertilizers, their higher costs, and limited access to quality organic fertilizers. fauzi and riana (2020) found that farmers in central java who do not have easy access to quality organic fertilizers tend to continue using chemical fertilizers. agricultural extension agents who assist in overcoming these challenges by providing solutions related to the distribution and use of organic fertilizers have a greater chance of success in increasing adoption. 4. conclusion the conclusions of the research are as follows: 1. food crop and horticulture farmers in pekanbaru city are predominantly male, making up 72.09%, while females account for 27.91%. the farmers range in age from the youngest at 18 years to the oldest at 78 years, with an average age of 44.91 years. however, 12% of the farmers are over 60 years old. the level of formal education among farmers remains low, with the lowest level being no education beyond elementary school (2%) and the highest level being a bachelor's degree (4%). on average, farmers have 9.07 years of education, equivalent to junior high school graduation. most farmers have 1 to 3 family dependents (61.63%), with the fewest having one and the most having 10. 2. the urban farming business is characterized by limited land. others mostly own the land cultivated by farmers, and farmers use it without renting, as the land has not yet been developed for buildings (housing, offices, etc.). 3. organic fertilizers, mainly manure, are considered beneficial by farmers, as they help maintain soil fertility and accelerate plant growth. despite this, farmers still use chemical fertilizers, believing they can quickly increase production and boost farm profits. 4. the performance of agricultural extension workers in promoting the adoption of organic fertilizers is considered insufficient by farmers. they report receiving inadequate extension services regarding organic fertilizers. they perceive a lack of government support for adopting organic fertilizers. however, farmers find it easy to obtain organic fertilizers, especially chicken manure, because they are widely available in the market. 5. the decision to adopt organic fertilizer innovations by farmers is still not at a satisfactory level. 6. the adoption decision is significantly influenced by factors such as land area, the performance of agricultural extension workers, and organic fertilizer marketing strategies. 7. to increase the adoption of organic fertilizers, efforts should focus on improving the performance of agricultural extension workers with government support and enhancing marketing strategies. key approaches to improving these strategies include strengthening efficient distribution networks, conducting intensive and ongoing extension services to educate farmers on the benefits of manure, establishing partnerships with local farmer groups and collectors, utilizing alternative marketing channels such as social media or agricultural apps, and offering products at affordable prices with a stable supply. funding: this research is supported by universitas islam riau, indonesia (grant number: 607/kontrak/p-pt/dppm-uir/06-2023). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the universitas islam riau, indonesia has granted approval for this study on 30 january 2025 (ref. no. 080/a-uir/5dppm/2025). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references adiba. 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(2023). agricultural environmental degradation and pollution: characteristics and mitigation strategies. yogyakarta, indonesia: ugm press. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12208630 https://doi.org/10.32530/jace.v7i2.779 http://dx.doi.org/10.17358/jma.16.3.153 http://repository.ipb.ac.id/handle/123456789/67601 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106027 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121609 https://doi.org/10.29103/jmm.v1i2.8237 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 619 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the cost of access: examining asset-based barriers to formal agricultural markets in rural jozini, south africa andile ngubanea mfundo mandla masukub a,bschool of social sciences, development studies, university of kwazulu-natal, south africa.  angubane0@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 20 june 2025 revised: 21 october 2025 accepted: 4 november 2025 published: 21 november 2025 keywords agricultural development asset vulnerability analytical framework formal markets institutional support market access rural livelihoods small-scale farmers. small-scale rural farmers in south africa encounter persistent barriers to formal market participation, despite the potential of these markets to enhance income stability, agricultural development, and food security. this study investigates the structural and institutional constraints that limit small-scale farmers’ engagement with formal value chains, with particular emphasis on the role of asset availability and management. employing the asset vulnerability analytical framework (avaf), the research examines how deficiencies in critical assets (physical, financial, and institutional) contribute to farmers’ marginalization. a qualitative methodology was adopted, drawing on data from six focus group discussions with small-scale farmers and seven semi-structured interviews with key informants in jozini, kwazulu-natal. this approach enabled a comprehensive understanding of both farmers’ experiential realities and institutional perspectives on market access. findings reveal that farmers’ capacity to meet formal market demands is constrained by logistical challenges, market saturation, limited organizational capacity, and inadequate transportation. furthermore, insufficient institutional support and the absence of cooperative structures undermine farmers’ bargaining power and market preparedness. the study highlights the necessity of a multidimensional strategy that prioritizes infrastructure development, institutional support, and capacity building to facilitate the integration of small-scale farmers into formal markets and to enhance their long-term livelihood security and resilience. contribution/originality: this study contributes to the existing literature on small-scale farmers' market access constraints in rural south africa. while numerous studies have analyzed these constraints in south africa, only a few have focused specifically on rural areas. the research aligns with both national and international debates on inclusive agricultural development, market restructuring, and rural transformation. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5734 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ngubane, a., & masuku, m. m. (2025). the cost of access: examining asset-based barriers to formal agricultural markets in rural jozini, south africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 619–628. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5734 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 619-628 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7340-2447 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3743-0779 mailto:angubane0@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5734 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 619-628 620 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 1. introduction agriculture remains a cornerstone of rural development in under-resourced areas in south africa, and the sector contributes approximately 3% to the country’s gdp (islam, 2024). while the malaysian agricultural sector serves as an economic vehicle that contributes approximately 7.3% to gdp, smallholders rely on government support to help them farm and reach markets (mei, hoo, shaurya, & roy, 2025). for small-scale farmers, those operating on limited land, with low investment capacity and minimal mechanization, farming does not only serve as a means of income generation but also as a key survival strategy. similar dynamics are noted in numerous asian countries, where small-scale farmers produce under unfavourable conditions and fragmentation, technological asymmetry, and limited access to financial and infrastructural investments (arya, 2022). in india, for example, small-scale farmers in rural and remote areas face similar market access constraints due to poor rural connectivity, inadequate institutional support, and market volatility (hans & govindaswamy, 2023). these global parallels outline how structured small-scale farmer market exclusion is, thereby making south africa a relevant case for comparative inquiry. agriculture offers shields against food insecurity (magidi et al., 2021) in areas where state support is inconsistent and access to formal employment is scarce. in the south african context, small-scale farmers often occupy a precarious position in the agricultural economy. the amalgamation of small-scale farmers into formal markets such as supermarket supply chains, commercial retailers, government procurement programmes like the farmer support programme (fsp), and regulated auctions is often an unattainable goal (madonsela, 2021). formal markets tend to enforce strict entry requirements, such as the need for consistent production volumes, meeting quality assurance standards, the requirement for formal registration, and reliable delivery schedules (smidt & jokonya, 2022). large agribusiness interests often shape these criteria, reducing flexibility and excluding small-scale farmers. for small-scale farmers without adequate access to key livelihood assets, such as capital to invest in improved inputs, training to meet quality requirements, or access to transport, these strict entry requirements present themselves as barriers and make formal market participation difficult or impossible (gwiriri, bennett, mapiye, & burbi, 2019). while there has been a wide range of emphasis on the broader dynamics of south africa’s agricultural markets, there continues to be a growing need for more context-specific, sensitive investigations that will assess why small-scale farmers are still excluded from formal value chains. these investigations must not only assess current market structures but also analyze how farmers’ access to key assets (physical, social, natural, financial, and human) plays a pivotal role in determining their ability to meet formal market standards and negotiate equitable participation. this study, therefore, focuses on small-scale farmers in jozini, exploring the extent of their access to formal agricultural markets and the factors that influence their inclusion or exclusion. 2. theoretical framework the study adopts the asset vulnerability analytical framework (avaf), as developed by moser (1998), to examine the factors that shape small-scale farmers’ access to formal agricultural markets in south africa. it further offers a conceptual bridge between micro-level asset strategies and macro-level institutional dynamics, thereby supporting the call for context-sensitive, equity-oriented policy responses that address both material and structural determinants of market access. according to this framework, vulnerability is not merely seen as a fixed condition but as an ever-changing and evolving relationship between asset availability, external shocks, policies, and market systems (xu et al., 2020). the avaf is well-suited for analyzing rural market participation in contexts of structural inequality, such as in south africa's agrarian economy. in such settings, market access is not only negotiated through economic rationality or supply-demand dynamics but also by entrenched inequalities in asset distribution, infrastructure, institutional support, and policy implementation (moser, 2021). applied to the context of small-scale farming, the avaf provides a powerful lens to analyze the persistent difficulties farmers face in engaging with formal value chains. formal markets are typically governed by stringent standards, consistent supply requirements, and rigid contractual norms (department of agriculture land reform and rural development, 2022). access to these formal markets for small-scale farmers is usually constrained by inadequate infrastructure, limited access to affordable inputs, weak extension services, and fragmented supply coordination. while many small-scale farmers rely on informal markets as immediate and accessible spaces for income generation, this reliance is often based on need rather than preference. informal markets are frequently more responsive to local conditions and carry lower barriers to entry. however, the avaf offers a deeper analysis of how this reliance on informal markets is a result of asset deprivation and institutional exclusion, not entrepreneurial choice. as such, the framework allows one to investigate the institutional conditions that prevent smallscale farmers from accessing formal markets, while also acknowledging the agency that small-scale farmers exercise in leveraging limited resources to sustain livelihoods. on the other hand, in jozini, external conditions such as climate variability, erratic rainfall, and rising input costs interact with inadequate roads and market infrastructure to increase the risks of market participation. delays in delivery, spoilage, and inconsistent supply all undermine trust with formal markets, which often shift procurement toward larger commercial suppliers. under such conditions, even when formal markets are theoretically open to smallholders, access to them remains a challenge if farmers lack significant asset investment. from a policy perspective, the avaf allows one to criticize national programmes such as the comprehensive agricultural support programme (casp), the ilima/letsema initiative, or agri-parks, which aim to integrate smallscale farmers into formal value chains. while these initiatives aim to integrate smallholders into commercial value chains, they often fail to address the root causes of exclusion namely, unequal asset distribution and a lack of sustained asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 619-628 621 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. institutional support (mncina & agholor, 2021). without targeted investments in infrastructure, finance, training, and cooperative governance, such programmes may offer symbolic inclusion while leaving structural barriers intact. this study advances a more systemic understanding of market exclusion using the avaf. low small-scale farmer participation in formal markets is not merely viewed from a behavioral or a technical perspective, but it is instead located within a bigger matrix of asset deprivation, institutional weakness, and spatial inequality. this approach is not only relevant to the south african context shaped by apartheid-era legacies of land dispossession and rural neglect but also contributes to international debates on inclusive agrarian development, food systems equity, and rural transformation. 3. methods this study was conducted in the jozini local municipality (jlm), located in the umkhanyakude district municipality in kwazulu-natal, south africa. jozini was purposefully chosen for this study because of its heavy reliance on small-scale agriculture as a primary economic activity and the significant role of informal markets in facilitating farmers’ market participation. the region’s geographical remoteness, inadequate infrastructure, and socio-economic vulnerabilities contribute to farmers’ dependence on informal markets, making it an ideal case for examining the dynamics of formal market engagement and its implications for small-scale agricultural livelihoods. figure 1. study area map. figure 1 illustrates the study area in jozini, kwazulu-natal, showing the locations of the communities where data were collected and highlighting key geographical features relevant to small-scale farming activities. this study explored the lived experiences of small-scale farmers and government officials navigating formal agricultural markets using a qualitative research approach. this approach was suitable for uncovering how farmers interpret and respond to structural and institutional barriers, aligning with the asset vulnerability analytical framework (avaf), highlighting the role of assets in shaping livelihood strategies. participants with direct experience in agricultural production and market engagement were purposefully selected for this study. the participants represented both grassroots and institutional perspectives, including cooperativeaffiliated small-scale farmers, dard agri-advisors, and led officials. this diversity enabled a holistic understanding of technical, infrastructural, and policy barriers to formal market access. a detailed summary of participants is provided in table 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 619-628 622 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 1. summary of participants. study area focus group name (agricultural cooperatives) number of participants number of cooperatives shemula fg-1 16 2 mkhuze wamanzi fg-2 16 1 mhlekazi fg-3 18 6 mthidlwe fg-4 40 9 cezwane fg-5 10 2 ohlalwini fg-6 24 5 agri-advisor 1 si1 1 1 agri-advisor 2 si2 1 1 agri-advisor 3 si3 1 1 agri-advisor 4 si4 1 1 agri-advisor 5 si5 1 1 municipal official management si6 1 1 dard official management si7 1 1 as shown in table 1, the distribution of participants across different study areas reflected a range of agricultural backgrounds and local contexts, enriching the analysis. the study included 5 agri-advisors and 2 managerial officials, whose diverse expertise in farming practices, economic conditions, and policy frameworks provided valuable insights. data were gathered through six focus group discussions with small-scale farmers from 25 cooperatives across six sites in jozini, and seven semi-structured interviews with institutional stakeholders. fgds, conducted in isizulu, explored barriers to market access, including infrastructure, transport, and input availability. the study used language experts to translate data collection tools from english to isizulu. thereafter, first-language zulu speakers were approached and asked to review questions to ensure that they did not lose their context and to avoid direct translations. interviews with five dard advisors and two senior officials (from dard and led) addressed institutional support, policy gaps, and logistical challenges. an inductive thematic analysis was applied using braun and clarke (2006) framework. using nvivo for thematic coding, transcripts were coded manually and interpreted thematically. the asset vulnerability analytical framework guided the analysis, highlighting how access to physical, financial, human, and social assets shapes farmers’ ability to engage in formal markets. the humanities and social sciences research ethics committee (hssrec) at the university of kwazulu-natal oversaw the ethical review process for this study, as it involved human participants. having met all the ethical requirements, the study received an ethical clearance certificate, which authorized the commencement of data collection (reference number: hssrec/00007136/2024). the study ensured that participants voluntarily consented to participate before it began, and participants were informed that they were free to withdraw at any time. 4. findings this section presents the study's key findings, focusing on the barriers and enablers shaping small-scale farmers’ access to formal markets in rural south africa. based on the data collected through focus group discussions with smallscale farmers and semi-structured interviews with agricultural stakeholders, the findings offer detailed accounts of how physical, institutional, and organizational factors interact to influence farmers’ market participation. while formal markets, described in this study as structured, regulated, and commercially oriented value chains, have the potential to improve rural livelihoods and food security, the study finds that small-scale farmers struggle to access them because of a wide range of interconnected barriers. these include inadequate infrastructure, high transportation costs, inconsistent production volumes, limited compliance with market standards, and weak organizational capacity. however, the findings also reveal that cooperative membership, institutional support from agri-advisors, and strategic alignment with market demands can partially mitigate these challenges. the subsections that follow therefore explore the above-mentioned barriers in greater detail, beginning with farmers’ experiences of engaging with formal markets, before examining the role of transportation, contracts, and organizational capacity in either facilitating or constraining sustained market access. 4.1. small-scale farmers' access to formal markets the study’s findings shed light on the multifaceted barriers that shape small-scale farmers’ participation in formal markets. for the purposes of this study, formal markets refer to structured, regulated, and often commercialized market systems such as supermarket value chains, commercial retailers, government procurement programs (like the farmer support programme), and formal auctions. formal contracts, standardized pricing, consistent quality and quantity requirements, and stringent regulatory compliance are some of the most common attributes that distinguish formal markets from informal markets, such as local street vendors or community exchanges. all small-scale farmers interviewed, particularly those affiliated with cooperatives, revealed that while they had previously participated in formal markets, obtaining and sustaining access to these markets proved to be a challenge compared to informal markets. moreover, they reiterated that their participation in formal markets was irregular, highlighting the inconsistency and unpredictability of this form of market engagement. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 619-628 623 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. farmers noted they needed to meet stringent agro-food market requirements related to both volume and quality to successfully participate in formal markets. these requirements were found to be far more demanding than those in informal market settings. farmers reported that these requirements often call for regular production, uniformity in product appearance, proper packaging, and sometimes compliance with certifications related to food safety and traceability. these requirements pose significant challenges for small-scale farmers with limited resources, many of whom often produce without adequate access to proper irrigation, sufficient inputs, or storage facilities. nonetheless, cooperatives were identified as effective market access constraints relievers and strategies in overcoming some of these challenges. cooperative membership enabled farmers to pool resources, share equipment, coordinate planting and harvesting schedules, and collectively negotiate with buyers thereby enhancing their capacity to meet the criteria of formal markets. small-scale farmers further noted that agri-advisors serve as essential intermediaries between smallscale producers and formal market systems. farmers rely heavily on these advisors for technical assistance, capacity building, and market linkage support. agri-advisors play a pivotal role in helping small-scale farmers understand and comply with market standards, secure contracts, and coordinate logistical aspects such as transportation and delivery schedules. these findings highlight the importance of social and institutional assets within the asset vulnerability analytical framework (avaf). while farmers may lack capital, information, or infrastructure needed to meet formal market requirements, these gaps can be mitigated though not eliminated through supportive institutional actors such as agri-advisors. the study further found that the type of agricultural produce produced had a significant impact on the extent of formal market access. farmers cultivating high-demand or standardized crops were more likely to meet the technical specifications required by formal buyers. in this context, cooperatives served as helpful mediums in aligning members’ production strategies with market trends and in helping them navigate certification and packaging requirements. conversely, farmers involved in livestock or less standardized crop production faced greater challenges, including higher perishability, inconsistent supply, and logistical difficulties. interestingly, contrasting views were noted from agri-advisors and agricultural officials in management, particularly pertaining to the extent and consistency of formal market access. the difference in views and opinions reveals a disconnect between policy perceptions and lived experiences, possibly driven by uneven distribution of support, planning, and market readiness among farmers. these contradictions point to deeper systemic issues. the ability of farmers to meet formal market expectations is not solely a function of individual effort or cooperative organization; it is also shaped by structural constraints such as unequal access to resources, poorly coordinated government interventions, and fragmented supply chains. without targeted investments in infrastructure, market literacy, and long-term institutional support, many small-scale farmers remain on the margins of formal market systems. as a result, barriers to consistent participation in formal markets persist, undermining farmers’ potential to generate stable income, invest in productivity, and improve household food security. the inconsistent engagement with formal markets not only limits economic opportunities but may also deepen rural poverty and marginalization, particularly in under-resourced municipalities such as jozini. 4.2. transportation in facilitating market access efficient transportation is a key facilitator of small-scale farmers’ participation in formal markets, where timely delivery, consistent supply, and product quality are critical. while contracts and cooperative structures play key roles in market engagement, transportation is a determining factor in whether farmers can physically reach these markets at all. despite having access to market opportunities and support structures, many small-scale farmers remain constrained by poor road conditions, high fuel costs, and logistical bottlenecks that make formal market access unreliable or unattainable. a small-scale farmer in fg-6 noted. fg-6: “in our cooperative, we liaise with people from the umhlosinga development agency to help transport our produce to the bigger markets such as jwayelani butchery stores and the larger markets in durban”. this example demonstrates how social and institutional assets can help counterbalance transportation deficits. the involvement of organizations like the umhlosinga development agency provides logistical support that individual farmers would otherwise lack. these partnerships enable small-scale producers to overcome structural barriers and access higher-value formal markets in regional hubs such as durban. without such institutional interventions, the cost and complexity of reaching formal buyers would likely exclude these farmers altogether. this underscores the importance of formalized support structures and cooperative networks in improving market access. si-1 stated that. si-1: “quality and quantity are a significant challenge here, as are transaction costs. the lack of markets in rural areas is another factor. distance from jozini to larger markets is a primary challenge. access from here to, for example, durban, is a challenge in itself, transport-wise; diesel and petrol prices increase, thus limiting farmers from being able to send produce to bulk markets. transport costs are a challenge; even transporting here to jozini, some areas travel 60 km from jobe to jozini, and 80 km from manyiseni to jozini. this statement encapsulates the interconnected barriers that compound transportation challenges. beyond the physical distance, small-scale farmers in rural areas like jozini are burdened by the high transaction costs associated with fuel, vehicle maintenance, and driver labour. these financial burdens make regular delivery to formal urban markets like durban financially unsustainable, especially without subsidies or cooperative arrangements. the long distances noted in areas such as kwajobe (60 km) and emanyiseni (80 km) to jozini town reveal how even accessing local aggregation points can be a major hurdle, let alone reaching national supply chains. moreover, this underlines asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 619-628 624 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the structural exclusion of small-scale farmers from formal market value chains. participation in these markets is conditional upon fulfilling technical and compliance requirements, including environmental regulations (chemical storage, field sanitation) and business training. many rural small-scale farmers struggle to meet these requirements due to inadequate institutional support and insufficient access to resources, thus reinforcing both economic marginalization and historical inequalities in land ownership and market participation. these findings indicate that transportation for small-scale farmers presents itself as both a logistical issue and a determinant of whether small-scale farmers can access and participate in formal markets. inadequate infrastructure, long distances, and high transport costs, coupled with broader systemic barriers, keep formal market participation out of reach for many. 4.3. market contracts and organizational capacity in enhancing market access market contracts and organizational capacity are crucial in coordinating small-scale farmers’ access to formal markets, providing stability, predictability, and an essential framework for sustained market participation. contracts with institutions such as sugar mills offer guaranteed supply channels and fixed prices, while organizational capacity allows farmers to organise production, develop strategic plans, and engage effectively with formal buyers. however, despite these potential advantages, many small-scale farmers continue to face challenges that undermine their ability to access markets reliably. these include inconsistent supply patterns, weak organizational structures, and limited strategic planning, which collectively hinder their integration into competitive market systems. government officials in the agricultural sector expressed a different view from small-scale farmers in cooperatives, stating that. agri-advisor si-3 said. si-3: “our farmers face market access constraints. markets are available; however, the challenge lies in connecting farmers with them. we have tried connecting farmers with formal markets such as spar and boxer. the issue here is that our farmers’ supply is inconsistent, which these markets require. additionally, farmers produce the same crops simultaneously, leading to oversaturation of certain produce in the markets. while they can access formal markets, not all benefit from them since these markets can only accommodate a limited supply. for example, in january 2024, many farmers planted butternut, resulting in oversaturation. consequently, they are forced to sell at lower prices. farmers often do not understand why they receive lower prices. these are significant challenges. farmers need production plans to prevent oversaturated markets, diversify crops, or produce during months when demand is higher.” this account underscores a fundamental issue: while formal markets are technically accessible, small-scale farmers struggle to meet the consistent supply demands and quality standards required by these outlets. the official notes that farmers often produce the same crop at the same time, such as farmers planting butternut in january 2024, resulting in an oversaturation in markets, reduced prices, and an overall financial loss. small-scale farmers' knowledge inadequacy regarding market forces perpetuates the issue, with many farmers revealing they are confused about why abundant supply yields depressed market values. these patterns reflect broader structural and behavioral gaps in market literacy and strategic planning. the challenges identified by this participant reveal a dire need for capacity-building interventions that are targeted at improving production planning. strategic shifts such as crop diversification, staggered planting schedules, and aligning harvests with market demand could enable farmers to avoid market gluts and enhance their competitiveness. the experience highlights the importance of moving beyond physical access to markets toward a more nuanced understanding of market readiness and alignment. another dard official in management said. si-7: “market access in jozini is twofold. formal markets are available but not sustainable for farmers since they have no contracts with markets. farmers are also not well organized for available markets. they sometimes have surplus produce, and their produce isn’t taken. moreover, when they are connected with bigger markets, farmers are reluctant to sign contracts because they do not believe they will be able to supply efficiently and consistently.” this view reveals how the absence of formal market contracts, coupled with poor organizational structures, results in unsustainable conditions for long-term market engagement. the participant emphasizes that farmers often experience surplus production; however, surplus production results from poor planning, and when demand is not met or is misaligned, markets reject these surpluses, leaving farmers with unsold produce. this is indicative of market volatility and the lack of adaptive strategies among farmers. the reluctance of farmers to engage with formal contracts is driven by fears of their inability to fulfill obligations, reflecting deeper issues of trust, perceived risk, and limited production confidence. these insights suggest that the barriers to market access are not solely infrastructural or logistical but are also institutional and psychological. farmers’ uncertainty about their ability to meet contractual obligations reveals a broader vulnerability linked to insufficient support systems and underdeveloped cooperative governance. the absence of reliable organizational structures not only reduces market credibility but also weakens bargaining power, leaving small-scale farmers at the mercy of volatile informal markets. 4.4. market saturation and logistical constraints market saturation and logistical constraints significantly limit small-scale farmers’ capacity to engage consistently and effectively with formal markets. while informal markets offer an accessible outlet for agricultural produce, they are frequently oversaturated, leading to reduced demand, post-harvest losses, and income instability. these dynamics asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 619-628 625 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. exacerbate the asset vulnerabilities of small-scale farmers, particularly regarding physical, financial, and institutional assets as conceptualized within the asset vulnerability analytical framework (avaf). a small-scale study from fg-5 noted that: fg-5: “livestock (goat, sheep, cows, and piggery) producers have no markets at all. it is better for crop producers because they sell to the street vendors in jozini town. there was, however, once a time when we produced tons of cabbages, but they rotted in our plots because even the informal markets, which are overly saturated, could not buy from us. if we are lucky, we also have people driving by who stop and buy from us.” this statement illustrates the direct consequences of informal market saturation namely, unsold produce and income loss even among farmers who manage to access informal trading spaces. the absence of key physical assets such as cold storage facilities, efficient transport, and market-linked infrastructure intensifies these losses, as farmers are unable to preserve or redirect excess produce to more lucrative or distant markets. without these enabling assets, the transition to formal market channels, which demand timely delivery, volume consistency, and quality assurance, remains out of reach. the economic repercussions of informal market saturation further diminish farmers’ financial assets. income instability discourages reinvestment in improved inputs, production planning, or infrastructure upgrades—essential components for meeting the standards and supply consistency demanded by formal markets. moreover, the inability to secure reliable returns disincentivizes risk-taking or diversification, reinforcing subsistence-level production and perpetuating financial vulnerability. a small-scale farmer from fg-4 said. fg-4: “livestock producers (goat, sheep, cows, and piggery) only have access to the informal market. we do not have the kind of cattle that is suitable for the bigger markets, so we sell what we have to each other, our neighbors, and people who wish to buy in town. for crop production, we sell to street vendors, and we sometimes have people come down from mtubatuba and johannesburg to purchase our produce.” this narrative reveals not only the absence of appropriate livestock breeds linked to limited physical and financial assets but also a broader institutional disconnect. farmers’ inability to meet formal market requirements stems in part from inadequate access to veterinary services, breeding programmes, animal certification systems, and extension support. these are all institutional assets that, if supported, could foster farmers' alignment with formal market requirements and expectations. moreover, farmers' dependence on informal markets/buyers such as neighbors, street vendors, and occasional urban traders underlines the absence of formal contractual relationships or collective marketing structures that might otherwise facilitate consistent supply and quality control. this institutional gap results in disjointed, unpredictable market engagement, undermining farmers’ ability to establish credibility with formal buyers who typically require guarantees of volume, quality, and delivery reliability. the saturation of local markets and lack of logistical capacity also weaken the strategic flexibility of farmers. farmers are unable to time their sales according to favourable market conditions nor reach distant but profitable markets due to limited challenges such as limited storage and inadequate transportation infrastructure. this inflexibility minimizes their ability to bargain and exposes them to exploitative pricing and opportunistic trading arrangements, further weakening their financial and institutional positioning. market saturation and logistical constraints reinforce small-scale farmers' vulnerability by not only limiting their ability to sell their surplus in informal markets but also structurally preventing their access to and participation in formal markets. the lack of essential physical infrastructure, the erosion of financial resilience, and the lack of institutional integration further contribute to small-scale farmers being effectively excluded from consistent and beneficial engagement with formal market actors. addressing these interrelated constraints requires a multidimensional policy response that strengthens farmers' asset base across all three domains outlined by the avaf physical, financial, and institutional to enable more equitable and sustainable market access. 5. discussion of findings this study analyzed the multidimensional barriers faced by small-scale farmers in accessing formal markets and the implications for their livelihoods and food security. the study found that market exclusion is not solely influenced by geographical location or availability but is also shaped by systemic, structural, institutional, and social constraints that reinforce vulnerability and dependence on informal markets. both small-scale farmers and government officials consistently noted that limited production capacity and physical distance are major barriers to formal market access. while some farmers occasionally sold to urban buyers in kwazulu-natal, gauteng, and beyond, these relationships were unstable and depended on fluctuating yields. many farmers were excluded from formal agreements due to an inability to guarantee a consistent supply, resulting in irregular income and diminished bargaining power. this finding supports ruwanza, thondhlana, and falayi (2022), who note that small-scale farmers are often excluded from formal markets due to their inability to meet the volume, quality, and consistency requirements of these markets. similar findings are noted by dey, gandhi, and debnath (2021) in their study on farmers’ participation in india’s markets, where they found that small-scale farmers are continuously excluded from structured market contracts due to their inability to supply consistently and the lack of economies of scale. quality standards present a further hurdle. the quality of produce often fails to meet the standards required by formal market buyers, resulting in farmers being forced to sell within their local communities at reduced prices or even at a loss. this is particularly evident among livestock (goat, sheep, cows, and piggery) farmers, who are unable to meet the requirements of larger markets, forcing them to sell at a loss. as smidt and jokonya (2022) and gwiriri et al. (2019) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 619-628 626 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. argue, small-scale farmers are often excluded from formal markets due to their inability to meet the volume, quality, and consistency requirements of these markets. without support to meet these standards, farmers remain confined to informal markets where prices are lower and demand is more uncertain. similar sentiments are echoed by nguyen et al. (2023) in their study on goat production in vietnam, where they found that, due to hygiene and quality compliance challenges, small-scale livestock producers were rejected from participating in formal markets. infrastructural challenges also emerged prominently. poor roads and a lack of transport made it difficult to move produce to formal markets, especially over long distances. these logistical constraints increased costs and discouraged participation in more lucrative channels. this aligns with findings from woodhill, hasnain, and griffith (2020) and borsellino, schimmenti, and el bilali (2020), who highlight how infrastructure deficits disproportionately affect rural producers by narrowing their market options. low production capacity linked to constrained access to land, water, inputs, and storage further limited farmers’ ability to scale up. irrigation infrastructure was notably lacking, leaving farmers vulnerable to erratic rainfall and unable to produce consistently. kom, nethengwe, mpandeli, and chikoore (2020) similarly argue that market access is contingent on the availability of productive assets that enable reliable output. the work of digal et al. (2024) in the philippines mirrors this, where they found that small-scale farmers’ ability to produce reliably for markets was greatly affected by inadequate irrigation systems and limited access to post-harvest facilities. the findings indicate that these constraints directly threaten both household income and food security. cooperatives were seen by some as potential vehicles for market access, particularly where they enabled shared transport and group selling at auctions. however, others reported weak leadership, internal disputes, and a lack of external support, limiting cooperative effectiveness. this is in line with myeni, moeletsi, thavhana, randela, and mokoena (2019) and nilsson (2023) argue that many cooperatives fail to reach their full potential due to internal conflicts and a lack of proper management. in the same breadth, in bangladesh, hossain (2023) noted that the effectiveness of small-scale farmer cooperatives in linking them to formal markets was affected by poor institutional support and leadership inadequacies. in this regard, the research contributes a nuanced understanding of how cooperatives, despite their potential, are not a panacea for the market access challenges faced by small-scale farmers. social capital also played a role in market engagement. farmers who had built relationships with informal buyers such as butchers and vendors, often benefiting from repeat business and advance orders, found these informal arrangements provided some stability. however, they lacked price security and did not facilitate long-term growth. as myeni et al. (2019) caution, while informal ties can support subsistence and survival, over-reliance on them can entrench vulnerability without broader institutional reform. furthermore, social capital does not address systemic issues such as infrastructure, logistical support, and policy gaps that perpetuate the exclusion of small-scale farmers from formal markets. a key finding was the uneven distribution of market opportunities. farmers closer to auction facilities or infrastructure had greater access to formal buyers, while those in remote areas remained dependent on low-return local markets. barriers such as auction membership restrictions and long travel distances excluded many. this spatial inequality reflects broader structural disparities in the rural economy, as noted by reddy (2025), who highlights policy failures in addressing institutional fragmentation and rural marginalization. overall, the study shows that formal market access is shaped by a complex interplay of production, infrastructure, quality standards, institutional support, and collective organization. farmers lacking these enabling conditions remain economically and nutritionally vulnerable. a systemic approach targeting infrastructure investment, extension services, farmer training, and cooperative strengthening is required. without such interventions, small-scale farmers will remain excluded from south africa’s formal agricultural economy, undermining efforts to achieve inclusive rural development and food security. 6. limitations this study is context-specific, drawing on data from the rural municipality of jozini, which limits the transferability of findings to regions with different socio-economic, infrastructural, or institutional conditions. while the inclusion of farmers, cooperative leaders, and government advisors provided diverse perspectives, the absence of formal market actors such as processors, retailers, and buyers constrains a fuller analysis of the agricultural value chain. 7. conclusion this study investigated the underlying factors driving small-scale farmers’ reliance on informal markets in jozini, revealing that limited production capacity, inadequate infrastructure, stringent quality requirements, lack of institutional support, and weak cooperative structures significantly constrain access to formal markets. these barriers not only limit income stability but also deepen farmers' vulnerability and food insecurity, reinforcing dependence on informal trading networks. the discussion demonstrated how spatial inequality, governance challenges within cooperatives, and poor access to productive assets intersect to marginalize rural farmers from formal value chains. while informal markets provide short-term relief, they do not offer the economic resilience needed for sustainable development. as such, the study recommends a multi-pronged approach including targeted investment in rural infrastructure, support for cooperative governance, access to training and veterinary services, and improved financial inclusion. these interventions are essential for enabling small-scale farmers to meet formal market standards, strengthen bargaining power, and achieve long-term food and livelihood security within south africa’s evolving agricultural landscape. the findings and recommendations of this study hold relevance beyond the south african context, offering insights for wider global efforts aimed at inclusive market access and improved rural development, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 619-628 627 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. with wider global trends in rural development, such as institutional reform, climate-resilient farming, and market integration. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: this study was approved by the institutional review board of the university of kwazulu natal, south africa, under protocol number (hssrec/00007136/2024), dated (29 july 2024). informed verbal consent was obtained from all participants, and all data were anonymized to protect participant confidentiality. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. disclosure of ai use: the authors used grammarly to edit and refine the wording in the manuscript. . all outputs were reviewed and verified by the authors. references arya, a. r. 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(2020). climate change vulnerability assessment for smallholder farmers in china: an extended framework. journal of environmental management, 276, 111315. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.111315 views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1080/02681102.2021.1975256 https://doi.org/10.4102/jtscm.v16i0.746 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.111315 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 467 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. econometric analysis of factors affecting sugar supply in indonesia a simultaneous equations approach rizal management agribusiness, politeknik negeri jember, indonesia.  rizalsp2001@yahoo.com article history abstract received: 17 june 2025 revised: 15 august 2025 accepted: 9 september 2025 published: 24 september 2025 keywords agricultural policy exchange rate simultaneous equations sugar export sugar import sugar supply trade elasticity two-stage least. as the primary sweetener, sugar has yet to be fully substituted by alternative sweeteners. its significance is further reflected in its extensive linkages with various downstream industries, including the food and beverage sector. this study aims to analyze the factors influencing sugar supply in indonesia and to examine the elasticity of sugar supply. the research utilizes secondary time series data covering the period from 1992 to 2024. a quantitative analysis using a simultaneous equation model estimated through the two-stage least squares (2sls) approach. this study employs a quantitative approach within a simultaneous equation modeling framework. the research findings indicate that key factors influencing the supply of sugar in indonesia include domestic production, imports, exports, and national sugar stock levels. sugar production plays a central role in determining overall supply. additionally, domestic sugar consumption has a positive elasticity with respect to sugar imports, meaning that higher consumption leads to increased import volumes. in contrast, the exchange rate and domestic sugar production exhibit negative elasticity, suggesting that an appreciation of the currency or an increase in domestic production tends to reduce the volume of sugar imports. domestic sugar prices have a negative elasticity in relation to indonesia’s sugar exports. contribution/originality: this study is original as it specifically conducts an analysis of the factors influencing sugar supply in indonesia and examines the elasticity of sugar supply. the paper contributes by using a simultaneous equation model estimated through the two-stage least squares (2sls) approach. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5623 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: rizal. (2025). econometric analysis of factors affecting sugar supply in indonesia a simultaneous equations approach. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 467–477. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5623 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction sugar production in indonesia primarily comes from sugarcane, which is cultivated in several provinces such as east java, central java, and lampung. despite indonesia's significant potential in sugarcane production, domestic sugar production is still unable to fully meet domestic demand. factors such as weather conditions, pest attacks, and suboptimal agricultural technology have contributed to low sugarcane and sugar productivity in indonesia (ministry of agriculture, 2024). sugar is a strategic commodity that holds a vital role in both the economy and daily consumption. as the primary sweetener, sugar is widely utilized and cannot be easily substituted by alternative sweeteners. its significance is further underscored by its extensive linkage with various downstream industrial sectors, including the food and beverage industry, refined sugar processing, and the pharmaceutical sector (togi et al., 2011). additionally, sugarcane the primary raw material for sugar production also serves as a renewable resource for bioethanol, contributing to the development of sustainable energy sources (syachbudy, firdaus, & daryanto, 2017). sugar, as a strategically important commodity, presents a number of persistent challenges within indonesia’s agricultural sector. issues within the sugar asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 467-477 mailto:rizalsp2001@yahoo.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4004-3078 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5623 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 467-477 468 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. industry are evident across both the on-farm and off-farm subsystems. in the on-farm subsystem, low productivity and limited land availability remain the primary constraints. meanwhile, in the off-farm subsystem, inefficiencies in the operation of domestic sugar mills are the main concerns (yunitasari, hakim, juanda, & nurmalina, 2021). disruptions often ripple through the national sugar network whenever something goes wrong at the farm level or further along the supply chain. sugar lovers outpace domestic growers, and the gap between appetite and harvest only widens (sutanto & muljaningsih, 2022; zainuddin, asmarantaka, & harianto, 2017). a long, steady drop in output stems partly from landlords swapping cane fields for rice paddies or quick-turn horticulture that promise bigger paychecks at the end of the season (wibowo, 2012). additionally, suboptimal sugar production is attributed to inefficiencies in factory management, poor quality of raw materials, limited availability of skilled human resources, and inadequate technological management. as a result, sugar yields in indonesia remain low, compounded by labor inefficiencies and suboptimal machine performance (shinta & pratiwi, 2011). these persistent issues limit the capacity of domestic sugar production to meet national demand. consequently, the shortfall in domestic output has led to a reliance on imported sugar to fill the supply gap. in 2024, imports accounted for approximately 60 percent of the total national sugar supply (figure 1). figure 1. percentage of total indonesian sugar supply in 2024. source: (fao, 2024) and central bureau of statistics (2024). if sugar imports cannot be effectively controlled and export performance fails to improve, the result may be an increasingly severe trade deficit (pudjiastuti, 2014). moreover, the influx of imported sugar into the domestic market presents an additional challenge, particularly due to the significant price disparity between domestically produced and imported sugar. price remains a critical variable in ensuring the adequacy and stability of the national sugar supply. based on data from the directorate general of plantations and the world bank pink sheet, domestic sugar prices in indonesia are nearly 200 percent higher than international prices (figure 2). while international sugar prices have remained relatively stable, ranging between idr 6,000 and idr 6,500 per kilogram, domestic sugar prices have consistently ranged from idr 15,000 to idr 16,000 per kilogram. a significant increase in sugar prices can influence the national inflation rate, given that sugar contributes approximately 0.40 percent to overall inflation (central statistics agency (bps), 2024). moreover, rising sugar prices can affect household spending on food, as sugar accounts for 1.21 percent of total food expenditure. in addition, sugar plays a notable role in determining the poverty line, contributing 1.96 percent in urban areas and 2.76 percent in rural areas (central statistics agency (bps), 2024). studies on sugar supply are essential for identifying the dominant factors that influence the availability of sugar in the domestic market. numerous investigations have been carried out to analyze the determinants of sugar supply in indonesia. for instance, research by sadiyah, muhaimin, and suhartini (2014) found that several key variables affecting sugar supply include fertilizer prices, labor wages, interest rates, domestic sugar prices, sugarcane production, and sugar imports from the previous year. apriyanto (2009) uncovered that indonesia's granulated-sugar availability hinges almost exclusively on the acreage devoted to sugar-cane cultivation. in a separate investigation, abdul, sa’diyah, and eka (2017) presented the supply equation as little more than a bookkeeping identity, with domestic output balanced neatly by the tonnage imported. those findings, however, belong to a literature body that seldom moves beyond the narrow prism of white crystal sugar. almost every prior model calculates supply by totaling production and import figures, yet overlooks stockpiles and export flows that could tilt the balance. these key gaps, the current inquiry will probe what really drives sugar supply in indonesia and estimate how responsive that supply is to price signals. the sugar supply in indonesia is a crucial aspect of the country's economy, particularly in the agricultural and industrial sectors. sugar is not only used as a household consumption item but also as a raw material for the food and beverage industry. in recent years, indonesia has faced challenges in meeting domestic sugar demand, influenced by various factors such as domestic production, imports, and global market dynamics (central statistics agency (bps), 2024). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 467-477 469 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. figure 2. comparison of domestic prices and world sugar prices (rp). source: directorate general of plantations (2024) and world bank (2024). studies on sugar supply are essential for identifying the dominant factors that influence the availability of sugar in the domestic market. numerous investigations have been carried out to analyze the determinants of sugar supply in indonesia. for instance, research by sadiyah et al. (2014) found that several key variables affecting sugar supply include fertilizer prices, labor wages, interest rates, domestic sugar prices, sugarcane production, and sugar imports from the previous year. apriyanto (2009) uncovered that indonesia's granulated-sugar availability hinges almost exclusively on the acreage devoted to sugar-cane cultivation. in a separate investigation, abdul et al. (2017) presented the supply equation as little more than a bookkeeping identity, with domestic output balanced neatly by the tonnage imported. those findings, however, belong to a body of literature that seldom moves beyond the narrow prism of white crystal sugar. almost every prior model calculates supply by totaling production and import figures, yet overlooks stockpiles and export flows that could tilt the balance. noting these gaps, the current inquiry will probe what really drives sugar supply in indonesia and estimate how responsive that supply is to price signals. although research data is generally available, it is sometimes limited to the provincial level, so it is necessary to combine it. 2. methodology the type of data in this study is secondary data in the form of time series for the period 1992-2021. data were collected from various sources, including the food and agriculture organization (fao), world bank, bank indonesia, central bureau of statistics, indonesian sugar association, and the ministry of agriculture. 2.1. data processing and analysis method data processing in this study was carried out using microsoft excel 2020 and econometric views 12 (eviews 12) software. the analysis method applied is a quantitative method using a simultaneous equation form. each model is estimated using the two-stage least squares (2sls) approach. furthermore, to obtain the short-term elasticity (sr) and long-term elasticity (lr) values, the following formula is used (pindyck & rubinfeld, 1991). 𝐸𝑠𝑟 (𝑌𝑡, 𝑋𝑡) = 𝛽𝑡 (𝑋𝑡) / (𝑌𝑡) where: esr (yt, xt) = short-term elasticity of explanatory variable xt to endogenous variable. yt βt = estimated parameter of explanatory variable. xt (xt) = average of explanatory variable. xt (yt) = average of endogenous variable yt. the long-term elasticity value can be obtained from the following calculation: 𝐸𝑙𝑟 (𝑌𝑡, 𝑋𝑡) = (𝑌𝑡, 𝑋𝑡) / 1 − 𝛽 𝑙𝑎𝑔 where: elr (yt, xt) = long-term elasticity of endogenous variable yt to explanatory variable. esr (yt, xt) = short-term elasticity of explanatory variable xt to endogenous variable. yt βt lag = estimated parameter of endogenous variable lag. 2.2. specification of simultaneous model a model is considered good if it meets several criteria as follows: 1. economic criteria refer to the suitability of the model to economic theory regarding the direction of the relationship between economic variables. model evaluation is carried out based on the principles of economic theory. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 467-477 470 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 2. statistical criteria: this criterion involves statistical testing to determine the significance of exogenous variables to endogenous variables in each equation. evaluation of statistical criteria can help ensure that the simultaneous model built is reliable and in accordance with the observed data and the underlying theory. 3. econometric criteria econometric criteria are based on the assumptions of multiple regression models, namely: a. errors have a normal distribution. b. the variance is constant (homoscedasticity). c. no autocorrelation is found. d. there is no multicollinearity. 2.3. construction of the economic model of sugar supply in indonesia the economic model in this study employs simultaneous equations. the model is formulated into five equations, consisting of two identity equations and three structural equations. the identity equations include the indonesian sugar stock model and the indonesian sugar supply model. the structural equations encompass the equations for the amount of sugar production, sugar imports, and sugar exports in indonesia. 1. equation for the amount of indonesian sugar production 𝐾𝐺𝐼𝑡 = 𝑎0 + 𝑎1𝐾𝑇𝐼𝑅𝑡 + 𝑎2𝐿𝑇𝐼𝑅𝑡 + 𝑎3𝑌𝐺𝐼𝑅𝑡 + 𝑎4𝐾𝑅𝐺𝑡 + µ1 where : kgit = indonesian sugar production in year t (ton). ktirt = sugar cane production in year t (ton). ltirt = sugar cane area in previous year t-1 (ha). ygirt = yield (%). krgt = sugar productivity in year t (ton/ha). a0 a4 = regression coefficient of variables affecting indonesian sugar production. µ 1 = error term hypothesis: a1, a2, a3, a4 > 0. 2. equation of indonesian sugar import amount 𝐼𝐺𝐼𝑡 = 𝑏0 + 𝑏1𝐾𝑈𝑅𝑆𝑡 + 𝑏2𝐼𝑁𝐼𝑅𝑡 + 𝑏3𝐶𝐺𝐼𝑅𝑡 + 𝑏4𝑃𝐺𝐼𝑡 + 𝑏5𝑃𝐺𝐼𝑅𝑡 + µ2 where: igit = indonesian sugar import (ton). kurst = exchange rate (idr/us$). inirt = inflation (%). cgirt = domestic sugar consumption (ton). pgit = indonesian sugar production (ton). prgirt = domestic sugar price (idr/ton). b1 – b5 = regression coefficients of variables affecting indonesian sugar imports. µ 2 = error term hypothesis: b3 > 0; b1, b2, b4, b5 < 0. 3. equation of the amount of indonesian sugar exports 𝐸𝐺𝐼𝑡 = 𝑐0 + 𝑐1𝐾𝑈𝑅𝑆𝑡 + 𝑐2𝑃𝐺𝐼𝑡 + 𝑐3𝐺𝐷𝑃𝐼𝑅𝑡 + 𝑐4𝑃𝑟𝐺𝐼𝑅𝑡 + µ3 where: egit = indonesian sugar exports in year t (tons). kurst = exchange rate in year t (idr/us$). pgit = indonesian sugar production in year t (tons). gdpirt = gross domestic product in year t (idr). prgirt = domestic sugar price (idr/ton). c1 – c4 = regression coefficients of variables affecting indonesian sugar exports µ3 : error term hypothesis: c1, c2, c3, > 0; c4 < 0 4. equation of the total sugar stock at the end of the previous year 𝑆𝐺𝐴𝑇𝑡 − 1 = 𝑆𝑝𝐺𝐼𝑡 − 1 − 𝐶𝐺𝐼𝑅𝑡 − 1 where: sgatt = indonesia's final sugar stock in the previous year t-1 (tons). spgit-1 = domestic sugar supply in the previous year t-1 (tons). cgirt-1 = domestic sugar consumption in the previous year t-1 (tons). 5. total sugar supply in indonesia 𝑆𝑝𝐺𝐼𝑡 = 𝑃𝐺𝐼𝑡 + 𝐼𝐺𝐼𝑡 − 𝐸𝐺𝐼𝑡 + 𝑆𝐺𝐴𝑇𝑡 where: spgit = indonesia's sugar supply in the year t (tons). pgit = indonesia's sugar production in the year t (tons). igit = indonesia's sugar import in the year t (tons). egit = indonesia's sugar export in the year t (tons). sgatt-1 = sugar stock at the end of the previous year t-1 (tons). 2.4. identification of the economic model of indonesian sugar supply identification can be performed on a model if the total number of variables in the equation is equal to or greater than the total number of dependent variables minus one. the identification of the structural model can be achieved by (k-m) > (g-1) where: k = number of variables in the model (endogenous and predetermined variables). m = total dependent and independent variables in one equation and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 467-477 471 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. g = number of equations in the model (number of dependent variables). if an equation in the model shows the following conditions: (k m) > (g 1) = over identified. (k m) = (g 1) = exactly identified. (k m) < (g 1) = under identified. structural equations can be estimated if each equation is stated to be exactly identified or overidentified in order to be able to predict each parameter correctly. 2.5. estimation method of the indonesian sugar supply economic model if all structural equations are overidentified, then these equations can be estimated using several methods, including 2sls (two-stage least squares). the 2sls method relies on several assumptions, namely that the disturbances satisfy the stochastic assumptions: equal to zero, constant variance, and zero covariance. the structural model specification must be precise in terms of predetermined variables. the number of observations in the sample must exceed the number of predetermined variables in the model, and the explanatory variables must not experience perfect collinearity (hermawan & adam, 2010). table 1 shows the results of the model determination of each variable equation. table 1. results of model determination of each variable equation. variabel k m g k-m g-1 description kgit 13 4 5 9 4 over identified igit 13 5 5 8 4 over identified egit 13 4 5 9 4 over identified sgatt 13 2 5 11 4 over identified sgit 13 4 5 8 4 over identified 2.6. stationery test researchers conducting time-series analyses regularly invoke the stationarity test to purge data of problematic autocorrelations arising from non-stationarity. a sequence of observations is classified as stationary when its mean and variance do not drift over time, while the covariance between any two points depends only on the gap separating them, not on the calendar dates themselves. under the narrower heading of constant mean, a series qualifies as stationary in that regard when its values consistently oscillate around a fixed average rather than trending upwards or downwards. a time series is conventionally deemed stationary in variance when its dispersion around the central value remains constant over the entire interval of observation. analysts frequently confront non-stationarity in the mean; the standard remedy is to difference the raw observations until a stable average profile emerges. in contrast, situations where the degree of variability itself changes are often corrected by applying the natural logarithm to the original dataset. when data exhibit non-stationarity in their mean or variance, appropriate techniques such as differencing, square root transformation, or logarithmic transformation can be employed to stabilize the data (juanda & junaidi, 2021). there are three common approaches to evaluate data stationarity: observing trends through graphical analysis, examining autocorrelation and correlograms, and conducting unit root tests. in this study, the unit root test was selected as the primary method for assessing stationarity. 2.7. classical assumption testing 1. the classical assumption tests in regression analysis are conducted to ensure that the resulting model satisfies the blue (best linear unbiased estimator) criteria, thereby validating its use as a reliable estimation tool. to meet these properties, several key classical assumptions must be evaluated: 1. multicollinearity test, multicollinearity refers to a situation where there is a linear correlation between independent variables. when the explanatory variables in a regression model become tightly interwoven, the coefficient of determination rsquared can swell to an unnaturally high number, yet many of those same predictors may appear statistically insignificant. this behavior exposes one of the subtle distortions produced by multicollinearity. a widely adopted yardstick for spotting the trouble is the variance inflation factor, or vif. gujarati (2007) cautions that, as a rough rule of thumb, any predictor that lands with a vif value below 10 sits comfortably outside the reach of serious collinearity complications. 2. the heteroscedasticity test is conducted to evaluate whether the error variance in a regression model is constant across all levels of the independent variables (gujarati, 2007). a condition in which the error variance is not constant is referred to as heteroscedasticity, which violates one of the key classical assumptions of regression analysis. heteroscedasticity occurs when the variance of the error terms changes with different values of the explanatory variables, whereas the classical assumption of multiple linear regression requires that the error variance remain constant (homoscedasticity). in this study, the breusch–pagan–godfrey test is employed to detect heteroscedasticity. if the test results yield a chi-square probability value greater than the predetermined significance level, it can be concluded that there is no evidence of heteroscedasticity in the model. 3. researchers routinely employ the autocorrelation test to determine whether the residuals of a regression model act independently over time or retain some temporal linkage, a concern first underscored by gujarati (2007). because time-ordered datasets naturally pair present observations with their historical counterparts, the phenomenon appears with particular frequency in that context. positive autocorrelation inflates the apparent reliability of estimates, while negative autocorrelation does the opposite; either condition threatens the statistical efficiency and inferences drawn from the analysis. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 467-477 472 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 4. several statistical tests can be employed to detect the presence of autocorrelation in regression models, including the breusch–godfrey test, the box–pierce q test, and the durbin–watson test (firdaus, 2019). the durbin– watson test involves examining the durbin–watson statistic obtained from the regression output and comparing it with the critical values from the durbin–watson table, specifically the lower limit (dl) and the upper limit (du). this comparison helps determine whether positive or negative autocorrelation is present in the residuals of the model. the comparison results are used to draw the following conclusions: 1.) if d < dl, there is strong evidence of positive autocorrelation; 2.) if d> 4 dl, there is evidence of negative autocorrelation; 3.) if dl < d < 4 du, there is no strong evidence of positive or negative autocorrelation; 4.) if dl ≤ d ≤ du or 4 du ≤ 4 dl, the test does not provide evidence of the existence of autocorrelation. 2.8. statistical testing statistical testing is conducted to determine whether the independent variables exert a significant influence on the dependent variables within the model. the tests employed in this study include the coefficient of determination (r²), the f-test, and the t-test, each of which is described in detail below. 1. determination coefficient (r2): model fit is assessed by examining the coefficient of determination (r2), which measures how well the observed data align with the model's estimates. according to gujarati (2007) the coefficient of determination serves as a descriptive statistic that indicates the proportion of variance in the dependent variable that can be explained by the independent variables in the regression model. the r² value ranges from 0 to 1, where a value of r² = 1 signifies that all variations in the response variable are fully accounted for by the model. a coefficient of determination that approaches 1 is generally interpreted as indicating a strong model fit. f test the f test is used to assess whether at least one independent variable has a significant effect on the dependent variable (gujarati, 2007). the f-test is conducted by comparing the calculated f-value with the critical f-value. this test assesses the joint influence of the independent variables on the dependent variable. specifically, it evaluates the extent to which variations in the dependent variable can be explained by simultaneous changes in all the independent variables included in the model. 2. t-test the t-test is intended to determine whether each estimated coefficient of the independent variable partially has a significant effect on the dependent variable (gujarati, 2007). decision making is based on the tstatistic probability value of each independent variable. if the probability (p-value) associated with the t-statistic is less than the critical value at the specified significance level, the variable is considered to have a statistically significant partial effect on the dependent variable. conversely, if the p-value exceeds the chosen significance threshold, the independent variable is deemed to have no statistically significant effect on the dependent variable. 3. results and discussion of descriptive statistics of indonesian sugar supply descriptive statistical analysis of indonesia’s sugar supply model is presented in table 2. according to data from the food and agriculture organization (fao) covering the period from 1992 to 2024, indonesia ranks as one of the two largest sugarcane producers in the asean region, with an average annual production of 27,933,395 tons. thailand holds the leading position, with an average annual production of 71,609,197 tons. during the same period, indonesia’s average annual sugar production was recorded at 2,389,537 tons. this national sugar output is derived from a cultivated area of approximately 413,210 hectares, yielding an average sugarcane production of 27,933,395 tons per year. the average sugar yield and productivity in indonesia are recorded at 7.50% and 5.53 tons per hectare, respectively. a significant portion of national sugarcane production, approximately 63.6% is derived from smallholder plantations (syachbudy et al., 2017). domestic sugar output, although bolstered by recent government incentives, still trails consumption by a fair margin. the national average now hovers close to 3.6 million metric tons annually slightly more than producers managed during the last harvest but well below what consumers actually buy. rising intake is not coincidental; it tracks neatly with population increases, swelling discretionary incomes, and the relentless growth of snack, soft-drink, and confectionery factories dotted across java and beyond (peng, lin, & guo, 2015; sulaiman, sulaeman, mustikasari, nursyamsi, & syakir, 2019). shortfalls in local cane processing force importers to fill the breach, and they do so at a torrid pace of roughly 2.26 million tons a year. that relentless foreign demand keeps indonesia perched among the world's heaviest sugar importers, a title now routinely reaffirmed in trade bulletins (peng et al., 2015; toharisman & triantarti, 2016). imports of white crystal sugar are primarily utilized to address the imbalance between supply and demand for this type of sugar and to support domestic price stabilization efforts (hermanto, 2015; kurniasari, dwidjono, & widodo, 2015). customs data show that closing sugar inventories at the end of last season varied wildly from a low of 2,792 tonnes to a high of 2,139,771 tonnes. such a broad range signals deep uncertainty in year-end stock levels and underlines the importance of more systematic planning across agencies and industry players. better alignment among government regulators, producers, wholesalers, and retailers could help mop up surplus cane price support, keeping the market from sitting on excess sugar that the public never uses. table 2. show the descriptive statistics of indonesian sugar supply variables for the period 1992-2021. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 467-477 473 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 2. descriptive statistics of indonesian sugar supply variables for the period 1992-2021. variabel mean std.dev. min. max. sugar production (ton) 2.389.537 245.669 1.950.000 2.868.428 sugarcane production (ton) 27.933.395 2.687.750 23.600.000 33.100.000 sugar land harvest (ha) 413.210 35.278 335.825 472.776 rendement (%) 7.50 0.69 5.55 8.38 sugar productivity (ton/ha) 5.53 0.58 3.98 6.21 sugar import (ton) 2.360.060 1.693.334 118.941 5.639.677 kurs exchange (rp/us$) 9.173 3.985 2.130 14.682 inflation (%) 8.69 10.06 1.46 58.35 domestic sugar consumption (ton) 3.715.592 1.980.536 786.243 7.370.000 sugar export (ton) 14.406 65.940 11 361.536 product domestic bruto (triliun rp) 5.968 5.587,97 256.88 16.980,79 domestic sugar price (rp/ton) 6.973.483 4.596.751 1.330.430 14.883.000 sugar stock previous year (ton) 830.870 641.332 2.792 2.139.771 3.1. factors affecting sugar supply in indonesia the parameter estimation results obtained through the two-stage least squares (2sls) method demonstrate strong statistical reliability. the coefficient of determination (r²) values range from 0.67 to 0.81, indicating that the explanatory variables included in the structural equations generally provide a robust explanation of the variation in the endogenous variables. the statistical analysis reveals that some explanatory variables do not exhibit a statistically significant effect on the endogenous variables at the conventional significance level of α = 0.05. in this study, a flexible approach is adopted in interpreting significance levels, with the following notations used: (***) denotes significance at the 1 percent level (α = 0.01); (**) denotes significance at the 5 percent level (α = 0.05); and (*) indicates significance at the 10 percent level (α = 0.10). the indonesian sugar-production equation yields a coefficient of determination-r2-value of 0.7110. put differently, roughly 71.10 percent of a country's yearly output fluctuations can be traced back to the predictors that researchers decided to include. the remaining 27.90 percent still remains a statistical mystery, pointing to outside forces, unmeasured shocks, or variables the framework simply overlooks. the sugarcane production variable (ptir) has a positive and statistically significant effect on indonesia’s sugar production at the 5 percent confidence level. this relationship is reflected in the elasticity values, with a short-term elasticity of 0.5663 and a long-term elasticity of 0.8841. a one-percent increase in sugar-cane acreage, all other qualifiers held constant, tends to boost sugar output by approximately 0.5663 percent almost immediately, and by about 0.8841 percent once the system has stabilized. this observation underscores how raw materials, almost ironically, remain the backbone of any surge in national refinery tonnage. extensification programs maps, planting schedules, and sometimes even red-tape clearances aim to expand the cultivated area across new ground and thus increase cane production in the mill belt. achieving this goal requires both identifying idle plots and revitalizing estates already under hgu licenses. raising sugar-cane farmers' incomes tends to attract producers from competing commodities into the cane sector, and it also helps retain veteran growers, preventing them from shifting to other crops (yunitasari et al., 2021). that dynamic echoes earlier indonesian work by prabowo (2014) and by sadiyah et al. (2014), both of which traced a clear, across-the-board lift in national sugar output to gains in cane tonnage. table 3. show the results of analysis of the indonesian sugar production equation, including variable coefficients, probability, and elasticity. table 3. results of analysis of indonesian sugar production equation variable coefficients, probabilities, and elasticities. variable coefficient probability elasticity sr lr c -11.583 0.3434 0.5663 0.8841 ptir 0.4937** 0.0249 ltir 0.2538 0.1754 rgir 0.4331* 0.0915 0.0662 0.0803 prg -0.0970 0.6829 lagpgi 0.3978** 0.0250 r-sq 0.7110 f-count 11.8781 dw 1.6526 note: ** significant at the level 5 %. * significant at the level 10 %. field observations repeatedly identify two pivotal moments when sugar-borne losses materialize. the first is the rough, jolting haul from field to yard; the second emerges inside the factory, often masked by blinking conveyor lights (sunaryo, 2006). grimy rollers, outdated augers, and cane that slips through chewed edges all conspired to drag national output down (wibowo, 2012). that profile of loss aligns neatly with apriawan, irham, and mulyo (2015), their regression plots showed yield responding in line with the grower-shippers' final tonnage.. the estimation results of the sugar import model in indonesia yielded a coefficient of determination (r²) of 0.8343. this indicates that approximately 83.43 percent of the variation in indonesian sugar import volumes can be explained asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 467-477 474 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. by the explanatory variables included in the model. the remaining 16.57 percent is attributed to factors outside the model, suggesting the presence of external influences or unobserved variables that also affect import behavior. table 4. results of analysis of indonesian sugar import equation variable coefficient probability elasticity sr – lr. variable coefficient probability elasticity sr lr c 161032 0.0682 -0.8594 -1.1801 kurs -1.4569** 0.0498 inir -0.0680 0.7453 kgir 2.4796** 0.0130 pgi -3.2376** 0.0354 2.4916 3.4286 hgir -0.2252 0.7448 -3.2922 -4.4976 lagigi 0.2640** 0.0182 r-sq 0.8343 f-hitung 18.7728 dw 1.7714 note: ** significant at the level 5 %. as indicated in table 4, movements in the rupiah-dollar price (denoted here as kurs) exert a statistically reliable drag on indonesia's sugar-buying spree, with significance firmly anchored at the five-percent mark. short-run sensitivity clocks in at -0.8594; the longer view nudges that figure downward to -1.1801. when the national currency rallies, the local sticker price on foreign sugar climbs, pinching household budgets and trimming purchase orders until shipments shrink. that same currency strength often tilts taste and margin in favor of homegrown sugar, leaving importers with shrinking incentives. because the long-run elasticity reads so far from zero, it is clear that exchangerate wobble leaves a deeper dent in import tonnages the further out one looks. the present result diverges sharply from the earlier work of putri and sentosa (2021), in which a direct and positive correlation between the exchange rate and import volumes was documented. domestic sugar use, indexed here as pgir, exerts a robust and statistically significant influence on the expansion of indonesian sugar imports; the effect remains stable at the conventional 1 percent cutoff. elasticity estimates reinforce that view: short-run responsiveness sits at 2.4916 and long-run sensitivity rises to 3.4286, with both figures comfortably beyond the 1 percent threshold for significance. the reported elasticities reveal a fairly pliant market: a single percentage-point rise in national sugar use pushes imports up by about 2.49 percent almost immediately and by roughly 3.42 percent over several months, other conditions constant. such numbers suggest that domestic producers simply lack the spare capacity to fill a sudden demand gap, forcing buyers to lean more heavily on overseas supplies. that tight relationship mirrors the patterns observed by rusdi, primandhana, and mohammad (2021), whose study of indonesia's sugar trade revealed the same consumption-import linkage. indonesian domestic sugar output, coded pgi in the data set, exerts a statistically robust inverse pull on import volumes, measurable at a 5 percent threshold. short-run elasticity sits at -3.1922, while the long-term counterpart reads -4.3976, each figure underscoring the productively generous feast that leaves foreign cane rawer than usual. when yardsticks are held constant, a single percentage-point bump in home grinding capacity should shave roughly 3.1922 percent off incoming shipments near-term and close to 4.3976 percent farther down the calendar. a broadening base of domestic refining and milling infrastructure enables the nation to satisfy its own appetite for sugar, thus curtailing dependence on overseas shipments of the commodity. elasticity estimates, hovering above the one-threshold, reinforce the idea that increments in home output almost immediately shrink the volume of imports. putri and sentosa (2021) work corroborates this, reporting a tightly linked, inverse slope between indonesian production figures and the tonnage brought in from foreign markets. the estimated parameters derived from the regression on indonesia's sugar-export volume are displayed in table 5. the coefficient of determination (r²) registers at 0.6714, meaning close to 68 percent of the fluctuations in shipment size can be attributed to the predictors in the specification. a residue of roughly 32 percent still eludes explanation, indicating that outside forces or omitted factors continue to influence the outcome. table 5. results of analysis of indonesian sugar export. variable coefficient probability elasticity sr lr c -4998 0.8409 kurs -0.0842 0.9680 pgi -18.354 0.6589 gdpir 2.6542* -3.4146** 0.7588** 0.0574 hgir 0.0938 – 138.544 404.218 lagegi 0.0368 -77.630 -227.990 r-sq 0.6714 f-hitung 9.7467 dw 1.8144 note: ** significant at the level 5 %. * significant at the level 10 %. movements in indonesia's real-gdp-index-variable (gdpir) are not merely macroeconomic noise; they exert a significant and statistically reliable influence on sugar shipments, with significance established at the 10 percent level. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 467-477 475 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the short-run elasticity, measured at 13.8544, indicates that a 1 percent increase in gdp results in approximately a 13.8544 percent rise in export volume. over a longer horizon, this figure increases to 40.3418, suggesting that, ceteris paribus, an identical gdp increase eventually leads to nearly a 40 percent growth in exports. this positive relationship implies that robust economic growth, as reflected by rising gdp, can stimulate demand across various sectors, including the sugar industry, thereby supporting higher export volumes. an increase in domestic demand has the potential to boost both sugar production and exports. however, these findings differ from those reported by mwinuka and mlay (2015), who identified a negative relationship between gross domestic product (gdp) and sugar exports in the context of tanzania. in indonesia, the variable representing domestic sugar prices (hgir) shows a statistically significant negative effect on sugar export growth at the 5 percent significance level. this is reflected in the estimated short-term elasticity of –7.7630 and long-term elasticity of –22.7990, indicating that higher domestic sugar prices are associated with a substantial reduction in export volumes over both time horizons. the findings indicate that domestic sugar prices exert a significant and responsive effect on sugar exports. specifically, a 1 percent increase in domestic sugar prices is estimated to reduce indonesia’s sugar imports by 7.7630 percent in the short term and by 22.7990 percent in the long term, ceteris paribus. when sugar prices spike within indonesia, local millers frequently divert their harvests to the domestic market; the immediate profit gains there simply outweigh the longer, riskier wait common in export deals. such inward focus blunts the country’s edge on the world stage, since overseas buyers will naturally lean toward cheaper cargoes from brazil or thailand once jakarta prices push above their comfort zone. this pattern runs counter to the 2015 observations of mwinuka and mlay (2015), who argued that rising home-market values had, rather curiously, spurred indonesian sugar shipments abroad. 3.2. indonesia's sugar stock scholars commonly trace a national-ending commodity stock to a straightforward identity equation that offsets yearly supply against consumption. in the case of indonesia, the year-end figure for sugar simply emerges as the leftover from local use once all sources and losses are tallied. supply in any calendar term, and the previous one is no exception, collects domestic output, inbound shipments, and opening inventory, then deducts whatever volume leaves the country in exports. under the ceteris paribus assumption, a larger sugar availability from the prior season mechanically adds to the carry-out inventory, while a reduced output shrinks that same inventory. domestic demand for sugar during the corresponding period also exerts considerable leverage over year-end holdings. when national consumption rises, the remaining tonnage is correspondingly diminished; conversely, if consumption contracts, the stockpile swells, again holding all else equal. 3.3. amount of indonesian sugar supply planters, traders, and policymakers usually summarize indonesia's sugar supply with a balance-sheet equation that nets four figures against one another: domestic output, foreign shipments in, overseas sales out, and whatever remains in store from the last harvest. when growers boost production, importers buy additional bulk, or silent warehouses finally see their contents counted, the aggregate supply curve naturally shifts outward. by contrast, any surge in export contracts shrinks the home pool almost dollar-for-dollar, leaving domestic end-users with a tighter market, other conditions unchanged. 1. national sugar output is closely tied to the volumes of sugarcane harvested and the tonnage of raw sugar produced per hectare; when either of those agronomic figures rises, the country's total sugar pool expands without delay. market clearing, however, is complicated by the exchange rate: a weaker rupiah makes overseas fees steeper, while the same depreciation shutters cheaper imports, magnifying a domestic shortfall. exchange rate depressions and booming local harvests usually pair with reduced import shipments because both push price-coated customs curves upward. heavy domestic consumption pushes private firms to scour the offshore market even when currency prices are unfavorable. 2. a stable surge in cane output can raise national sugar stocks quite markedly, all else being equal. over longer horizons, the currency value repeatedly proves to be a powerful lever, adjusting import invoices and thereby redirecting purchase volumes. short of extraordinary policy shifts, local demand and mill output keep pacing incoming shipments, a steady interplay that steers indonesia's overall trucking schedule. 3. third, indonesia is a case study in how national production levels shape raw commodity flows. statistics confirm that rising gross domestic product creates a buoyant export climate for sugar, even as the stronger rupiah trims the volume left for local consumers. price signals within the archipelago tell a different story. when the cost of refined cane spikes at the mill gate, traders pull back from foreign sales, freeing up more sweetener for neighborhood markets. economy-wide output and domestic pricing thus emerge as twin levers—capable, almost on cue, of shifting shipment tonnage in either direction. 4. conclusion the annual loaf of sugar that indonesia actually receives depends on several dynamic factors. the primary component is the volume of cane harvested each season, as haul size and extraction efficiency jointly determine factory output. long-standing delays in milling what economists refer to as vintage carry-over can further constrain the domestic supply chain. import volumes then respond in complex ways to currency fluctuations, rising consumer demand, unexpected yields, and the financial implications of previous shipments. exports follow a different pattern; increasing gdp typically boosts overseas sales, while rising local prices tend to keep export volumes near home. additionally, end-of-year stockpiles influence the next crop cycle, since closing stocks are simply the previous supply minus last year's consumption. findings from elasticity analysis indicate that, in the short run, sugar supply responds significantly to variables such as domestic consumption, domestic production, gdp, and domestic sugar prices. over asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 467-477 476 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the long term, the responsiveness of sugar supply also includes the exchange rate, reflecting a broader set of economic factors that influence supply dynamics over time. 5. suggestions promoting the expansion of sugarcane cultivation through extensification programs by increasing the plantation area is a strategic step to reduce the country's heavy reliance on sugar imports. this effort requires a thorough assessment of land suitability for new cultivation areas, including the potential utilization of underused or abandoned hgu (hak guna usaha) lands for sugarcane farming. enhancing the efficiency of machinery and technological applications in the harvesting, transportation, and processing stages of sugarcane production is essential to minimize yield losses and optimize output. furthermore, fostering research and innovation within the sugar industry is crucial for improving overall production efficiency, thereby reducing operational costs and making domestic sugar prices more accessible to consumers while enhancing competitiveness in international markets. in addition, sustained research efforts are necessary to improve the quality of raw materials, which currently remain suboptimal. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the author states that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. references abdul, w. m., sa’diyah, c., & eka, h. a. 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(2021). towards national sugar self-sufficiency: policy model to increase sugar production and sugarcane farmers' income in east java. journal of economics and public policy, 6(1), 1–15. zainuddin, a., asmarantaka, r. w., & harianto, h. (2017). supply behavior of cattle farmers in response to price changes. indonesian agribusiness journal, 3(1), 1-10. views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12355-016-0490-6 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 39 agricultural financing and economic performance in the obudu local government area of cross river state, nigeria bassey enya ndema mboto helen walterb okey oyama ovatc james tumba henryd lebo monica petere a,cdepartment of economics, faculty of social sciences, university of calabar, calabar, nigeria. bdepartment of banking and finance, faculty of management sciences, university of calabar, calabar, nigeria. ddepartment of economics, faculty of social and management sciences, adamawa state university, mubi-nigeria. edepartment of business management, faculty of management sciences, university of calabar, calabar, nigeria.  henry723@adsu.edu.ng (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 21 july 2022 revised: 26 january 2023 accepted: 15 february 2023 published: 17 march 2023 keywords agricultural credit scheme agricultural financing analysis of variance economic performance interest rate regulation obudu lga. one of the challenges facing agricultural sector development in nigeria is inadequate financing by the government and financial institutions. this poor agricultural funding has an impact on economic activities. thus, this study investigated the connection between agricultural funding and economic performance in cross rivers state's obudu local government area (lga). the survey study methodology was employed, and a questionnaire was used as its primary data source, combined with a stratified sample technique. the targeted population was restricted to farmers and agriculturalists in the study area. descriptive statistics, such as frequency and percentages tables, were calculated, and the data gathered from the questionnaire were compiled, computed, and analysed. the results of hypothesis testing showed a relationship between agricultural finance and economic performance, as well as a connection between agricultural credit schemes and agricultural sector expansion, using analysis of variance (anova) as the statistical technique. they also showed that credit programmes for agricultural finance encourage the expansion of the agricultural sector, which improves economic performance, as manifested in economic growth and development. the study recommends, firstly, that the government release grants to farmers at regular intervals to support their activities. secondly, it is necessary to raise the level and size of agricultural loans through the reduction of interest rates to allow for more economic development in the country. the government should implement an effective and efficient supervisory framework to monitor interest rate regulation within the agricultural loan policy. contribution/originality: analysis of variance (anova) was used to explore the relationship between agricultural finance and economic performance in the obudu local government area of cross rivers state, nigeria. through this technique, this study provides more specific insight into the connection between agricultural finance and economic performance, as well as agricultural credit schemes and agricultural sector expansion. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 1 (2023): 39-48. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2793-1513 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2274-6172 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1652-0724 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7418-9593 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3793-5323 mailto:henry723@adsu.edu.ng http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 39-48 40 doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4754 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ndem, b. e., walter, m. h., ovat, o. o., henry, j. t., & peter, l. m. (2023). agricultural financing and economic performance in the obudu local government area of cross river state, nigeria. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1), 39–48. 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4754 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction for an economy to flourish and grow, agriculture is essential. it is impossible to discount the advantages of agriculture for people (malachy, solomon, & joseph, 2019). first and foremost, agriculture feeds nigeria's expanding population. second, through the breeding of animals, agriculture produces agro-allied goods that are incredibly healthy for the general populace. third, other areas of the economy rely on agriculture for a supply of raw materials. furthermore, the agricultural sector has long been nigeria's leading employer (adekanye, 2005; adesina, graham, & olukoshi, 2016). agriculture, sometimes known as farming, is the science or practice of cultivating the earth to grow crops, raising animals, and breeding livestock to produce food and other agricultural goods for human consumption and use. crop production, livestock, forestry, fisheries, processing, butchery, and the marketing of agricultural goods are all included in the broad field of agriculture (malachy et al., 2019). agriculture continues to be a crucial sector of the economy and plays a vital role in supporting economic growth and development. hence, its importance to the economy of the obudu local government area (lga) cannot be overstated. for the 80 per cent of the world's poor who reside in rural areas and predominantly work in agriculture, agriculture can help reduce poverty, increase incomes, and enhance food security, according to the world bank (2020). agriculture benefits the obudu lga in the following ways: first, agriculture provides food for the expanding population. secondly, agriculture raises animals that produce agro-allied goods that are highly nutritious to the general public. thirdly, other areas of the economy rely on agriculture as a supplier of raw materials. agriculture also links the traditional sector with contemporary industry to promote economic progress. these advantages show that industrialization depends on agricultural development. according to okoh (2015), the agricultural sector in nigeria employs about 70 per cent of all working people. most of the population of cross river state's obudu lga work in agriculture. they engage in both subsistence and commercial agriculture, which are the production of food for the farmer's family to consume and the production of agricultural products primarily for sale, respectively. cassava, maize, yam, cocoyam, water yam, melon, and other food crops are the primary agricultural products in the region. vegetables such as fluted pumpkin, bitter leaf, water leaf, okra, and afang are also widely grown. additionally, the area has livestock, poultry, and fish farming. also abundant in obudu are palm oil, kola nuts, coconut, plantains, bananas, pineapple, and other plant products. while some of the area's agricultural products are consumed locally, many are sold to other regions of the state and the nation. the money generated from the sale of goods is used to develop the local economy, for instance, to give young people more opportunities to learn new skills, build or renovate educational facilities, build or renovate communities, provide water supplies, maintain primary health centres, and buy or build new machinery and tools to increase productivity and efficiency. given these developments, it is impossible to overstate the value and legitimacy of agriculture in obudu. in the obudu lga, agric financing helps farmers overcome their financial difficulties and paves the way for them to adopt new technologies to boost productivity. it encourages economic growth by raising incomes and living standards and helps reveal talents, capacities, prospects, and opportunities, which are critical drivers of sustainable development. the financial difficulties facing the agricultural industry in obudu lga are not due to a lack of money; instead, they result from banks' reluctance to offer loans and credit facilities to farmers without the required collateral. as a result, peasant farmers, who frequently lack the necessary collateral to access credit facilities, are left with no choice but to raise money internally. inadequate finance for the local agriculture industry has thus been identified as a significant hindrance to the expansion of the agricultural sector in obudu. the international finance corporation (2013) asserted that the expansion of the agriculture industry depends on access to capital. funds are needed to transition agricultural production from subsistence to commercial scale. financing for agricultural initiatives in developing countries is complex since 86 per cent of rural residents depend on agriculture for their livelihood. unlocking the untapped potential of the agricultural sector in nigeria requires a low inflation rate, low cost of agricultural products (i.e., food items), the production of a surplus for export, increased foreign earnings, and a diversified economic revenue base. consequently, the federal government, central bank, world bank, and other local financial institutions have implemented various agricultural funding schemes. these programmes have addressed nigerian peasant farmers' financial issues. but to support effective economic performance and achieve sustained economic growth and development in the region, agricultural financing is essential to agricultural development and a rise in agricultural productivity in obudu. to increase the industry's productivity, successive governments have implemented policies requiring financial institutions to provide loans and credit facilities. however, despite substantial loans given to farmers, the agricultural sector is still underperforming, as shown by its low proportion in national output and the country’s massive food importation, severe food shortage, high food prices, and importation of factor inputs. economic performance is typically evaluated in terms of the accomplishment of economic goals. these goals may be long-term, such as sustainable growth and development, or short-term, such as the economy's stability in the wake of unexpected and unforeseen occurrences. economic performance is a measure of how well an economy performs in asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 39-48 41 terms of growth, sustainability, and development. however, obudu's economic performance can be linked to the agricultural production and economic objectives attained through agricultural operations in the area, once access is provided to financial facilities in the region. 1.1. statement of the problem nigeria has many arable lands, natural resources, human resources, and a climate encouraging agricultural production. thus, it is surprising that the agricultural sector's potential is not fully utilized. one of the main issues facing nigerian farmers and business owners in the agro-allied industries is inadequate or poor funding (malachy et al., 2019). the obudu local government area is blessed with vast arable land for cultivation, as well as mineral, natural and human resources and a favourable climate supporting agricultural production. however, the potential of the agricultural sector has not yet been optimally harnessed within the area. the challenges faced by farmers in the obudu lga include the absence of good quality seeds, the inability to afford and unavailability of credible fertilizers, a lack of modern equipment and machinery, poor irrigation facilities, little or no access to pesticides to tackle problems of insects and pests plaguing crops and seedlings, and a lack of storage facilities, among others. poor funding or inadequate financing has been identified as one of the principal challenges facing farmers, livestock breeders and agro-allied entrepreneurs. financial institutions are hesitant to take on the risks associated with the agricultural sector, such as pests, diseases, droughts, and flooding, or the high transaction costs associated with covering vast distances (anyanwu, 2010). financial risks and opportunities in agriculture have deprived the sector of much-needed funds to boost production, processing and marketing. these and more have handicapped farmers, leading to the underproduction of agricultural products within the area. according to mbutor, ochu, and okafor (2013), agricultural production requires considerable capital to finance current farm operations and the necessary capital investment to support future production. such capital may be derived from several sources, such as government agricultural schemes, grants, and loans from banks. in addition, the government provides capital to support a wide range of services and infrastructures to enhance output. at the same time, the farmers need credit to finance their current operations and avail themselves of new techniques and facilities. in the agricultural sector, finance is required to acquire and maintain farmlands, seedlings, and machinery, construct buildings, hire labour, and organize irrigation channels. thus, to improve finance to the agricultural sector, the government has introduced several agricultural finance schemes, such as the agricultural credit guarantee scheme (acgsf), the commercial agricultural credit scheme (cacs), and the agricultural credit support scheme (acss). however, these schemes have yet to entirely accomplish their objectives and the impact of the said schemes has not been fully felt by farmers and agricultural workers in the area. in addition, there have been controversies about the rigid channelling of loans by banks, the outrageous rate of interest charged on loans, and farmers’ incapacity to meet the collateral requirements. as a result, inadequate capital financing of agricultural projects over the years has led to a significant decline in the sector's performance. therefore, this work attempts to assess the relationship between agricultural financing and economic performance in the obudu lga. 1.2. objectives of the study the objectives of this study are: i. to assess the relationship between agricultural financing and economic performance in the obudu lga. ii. to examine the relationship between agricultural credit schemes and the growth of the agricultural sector. 1.3. research hypotheses the following claims in the form of null hypotheses serve to answer the study’s research questions: h01: there is no relationship between agricultural financing and economic performance in the obudu lga. h02: there is no relationship between agricultural credit schemes and the growth of the agricultural sector in the obudu lga. 2. literature review 2.1. conceptual review 2.1.1. agricultural financing the study, inspection, and analysis of financial aspects of farm business are all part of agricultural finance. these financial aspects include the cost of producing and selling agricultural products. hopkins (2005) defined agricultural finance as the ownership or control of assets acquired through borrowing, leasing, or contract labour. agricultural finance entails acquiring and applying capital in agriculture (eze, 2010; lee, 2008). the main focus of agricultural finance is thus the provision and demand of financial resources for agriculture. according to murray (2007), agricultural finance is the economic study of money borrowed by businesses and individuals. tandan (2012) argued that agricultural finance is a branch of agriculture that focuses on how individual farm units acquire and use financial resources. 2.1.2. agricultural financing in nigeria since agricultural operations can only take place with sufficient credit to support them, agricultural financing is just as crucial as other factor inputs such as labour and land. financial firms that provide money for farming make up the agricultural lending industry. commercial banks, non-financial institutions, and other specialist institutions like the nigerian agricultural cooperative and rural development bank (nacrdb) and the nigerian agricultural and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 39-48 42 co-operative bank (nacb) all participate in the agricultural lending market. adetiloye (2012) noted that smallholder farmers, who lack the acreage necessary to maximize credit, even if available, find it more difficult to obtain credit than farmers with enough land for cultivation. in addition, the cost of credit appraisals has prevented lenders from helping smallholder farmers. for arable crops, most of the lending to farmers may be for a duration shorter than a year, which fits well within the intended portfolio of nigerian banks. banks' lending portfolios increased significantly between 1978 and 1989, thanks to the sectoral distribution of credit to agriculture. however, the introduction of financial sector deregulation, which rendered agricultural financing hazardous, unprofitable, and uncertain compared to other industries, fractured the entire lending process (athanasius, 2017; ekpebu & oboh, 2011). similar to the continuous rise of food imports, the nominal value of bank credit increased from n230 million in 1978 to roughly n262 billion in 2005. agriculture credit works best when there is a smooth transition for both lenders and borrowers in terms of price and time. 2.2. theoretical reviews numerous theories in the literature describe how to finance and improve agricultural productivity. however, this study has focused on two approaches that are most pertinent to the topic: the boserupian theory of agricultural development and the structural change hypothesis. 2.2.1. structural change theory the structural change theory focuses on how emerging economies move from a conventional and primitive agricultural economy to a more modern, urban, and industrially varied manufacturing and service economy. the twosector surplus labour theory proposed by sir arthur lewis is a well-known hypothesis within the structural change theory. in economic development with unlimited labor supplies, lewis (1954) noted that most developing economies have two separate sectors, and a labour-intensive agriculture sector that produces essential commodities makes up most of the economy. todaro and smith (2011) indicated that the agriculture sector's output is meagre and that farmers need more profit incentives in a market economy. a smaller industrial sector with higher productivity is also present. agricultural labourers typically need more education and more access to finance and have dim prospects for income growth. because demand is price inelastic, if a developing economy increases its output of agricultural goods, this supply increase is likely to drive down prices and result in decreased export revenues. by limiting supply and raising prices, more money would be made. world bank studies have suggested a beneficial relationship between industrial and agricultural growth. there is more interdependence than separation, and it may be challenging to expand the sector if agriculture remains stagnant. however, if agriculture expands, it will benefit other economic sectors. 2.2.2. boserupian theory of agricultural development this theory was put forward by ester boserup. it suggests that the agricultural sector's growth and development depend on the percentage of a nation's labour force employed in agricultural pursuits. according to boserup, there is a direct association between agricultural development and the portion of the economically active population engaged in agriculture. boserup made an effort to investigate the reasons for agricultural progress. she believed that some form of coercion is responsible for agricultural improvement. this necessity is related to the population growth tendency, implying that population pressure is the primary force driving agricultural development. the development of farming patterns and methods is influenced by population expansion. she provided evidence for this claim by examining the agricultural advancement of various african and latin american nations. 2.3. empirical review the effects of agricultural financing on agricultural output and economic growth in nigeria have been the subject of several studies. this section evaluates the conclusions and contributions of previous studies. matthew and adegboye (2010) examined the agricultural sector's role in nigeria's economic development using annual data from 1970 to 2008. the study employed johansen cointegration as its estimation technique. the result showed that the agricultural sector has no significant impact on economic development. the study concluded that any policy thrust that addresses poverty should focus on the agricultural sector by increasing rural opportunities to stimulate agriculture-driven development. it recommended that research and technology be introduced to drive agricultural development and increase productivity. furthermore, the government should establish an agricultural fund to finance and facilitate medium/large-scale agricultural productivity to boost employment, local consumption, and export. hence, developing the agricultural sector in nigeria is vital for alleviating poverty and achieving sustainable development. sunday, obot, and essien (2012) empirically investigated the relationship between the government’s agricultural credit policy and macroeconomic fundamentals in nigeria from 1978 to 2010. the study aimed to establish a relationship between the loan amount guaranteed by the agricultural credit guarantee scheme fund (acgsf) and some key macroeconomic variables. the study used time series data from 1978 to 2010 and employed cointegration and error correction models (ecm) as estimation techniques. the result revealed that in the long run, the coefficients of the lending interest rate charged by commercial banks and the value of oil revenue have significant negative and positive relationships, respectively, with the loan amount guaranteed by the acgsf. on the other hand, in the short run, the coefficients of the previous year's loan guarantees, the value of oil revenue, and real gross domestic product (gdp) are positively associated with the current amount of loan guaranteed by acgsf. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 39-48 43 in contrast, external debt has a negative impact. overall, the study concluded that the country needs short and long-term economic policy packages that focus on stabilization of the identified significant macroeconomic shifters of the amount of loan guaranteed by the acgsf in nigeria. thus, it recommended that attention should be given to the interest charged on agricultural loans by participating banks, diversification of the country's economy, and a drastic reduction in external debt to boost the efficiency of the acgsf in providing credit facilities to farmers. famogbiele (2013) analysed the performance and achievements of the acgsf, the bank of agriculture (boa) limited and the commercial agriculture credit scheme (cacs) in nigeria. this study investigated the extent to which government-initiated policies, schemes and institutions established to ensure adequate agricultural sector funding achieved their objectives. it employed reviewed literature and secondary data from 1960 to 2010. the study concluded that though as important as a factor of production, financial performance could only work in collaboration with other factors to successfully achieve the much-expected result in the agricultural sector. the highlighted factors included, among others, policy inconsistency, inadequate storage facilities, absence of pricing institutions and commodity marketing, poor insurance coverage and corruption. nwankwo (2013) analysed agricultural financing and its implications for the growth of the nigerian economy using data from 1990 to 2010. the study employed a quantitative research design and the ordinary least squares (ols) technique. the study found a strong correlation between agricultural financing and the expansion of the nigerian economy. however, the nigerian economy shrunk as loan payback rates increased over time. the study concluded that the findings had the policy implication that agricultural financing would enhance economic growth. thus, it recommended increasing the level and size of nigerian agricultural cooperative and rural development bank (nacrdb) loans through the reduction of lending interest rates to allow for more agrarian-driving development. obansa and maduekwe (2013) investigated the impact of agricultural financing on economic growth in nigeria from 1970 to 2008. their study employed the ols and granger causality techniques. the results revealed a bidirectional causality between agriculture financing and economic growth. the study concluded that productivity investment would be more appropriately financed with foreign direct private loans, foreign direct investment (fdi), share capital and development stock. similarly, the capital-output ratio would be more appropriately financed through multilateral loans, treasury bills, domestic savings, fdi, official development assistance, and development stock. thus, it recommended maintaining credible, pro-investment macroeconomic policies and debt-equity swap options for agriculture-led economic growth. oyakhilomen and zibah (2014) studied the relationship between agricultural production and economic growth in nigeria, emphasizing rural poverty reduction. the study used annual data from 1970 to 2011 and employed the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) bound test approach. the result revealed that agricultural production positively and significantly impacts economic growth. however, the study concluded that poverty is still increasing despite economic growth. thus, it recommended that the nigerian government design agricultural programmes to help fight poverty at the grassroots level. ayeomoni and aladejana (2016) also investigated the relationship between agricultural finance and economic growth in nigeria. the study used time series data from 1986 to 2014 and employed the autoregressive distributed lag (ardl) technique. the result revealed a shortand long-term relationship between agricultural credit and economic growth. in addition, the real exchange rate and private domestic investment directly affect economic growth, while inflation has an inverse relationship. therefore, the study concluded that economic growth is influenced by credit to the agricultural sector, real interest rate, real exchange rate, inflation and private domestic investment. thus, it recommended that policymakers put efforts in place to increase productivity in the agricultural sector through adequate provision of credit to stimulate economic growth. 3. methodology the study employed a survey design. the survey design involves collecting the views and perspectives of respondents regarding the subject matter. a questionnaire was used to obtain the relevant and necessary information (data) regarding the issues of agricultural financing and economic performance. this method was chosen because the survey method is effective when it comes to getting opinions, attitudes and descriptions regarding the subject matter. the study area's population was 193,257 as of 2006, the year of the general population census. the projected population was estimated to be 280,000 in 2021. the study employed a stratified and purposive sampling technique to select a sample of 400 respondents using the taro yamane sample determination method. a questionnaire titled 'agricultural financing and economic performance scale' (afeps) was used for data collection. experts in measurement and evaluation validated the questionnaire. at the same time, the instrument's reliability was established using cronbach's alpha, and the coefficients of the sub-scale were judged to be high and the instrument dependable for data collection. the researchers conducted the data collection process with the help of trained research assistants. the data collected were analysed using different statistical techniques, such as simple percentages and bar graphs, as well as simple regression analysis, and the results are presented below. 4. data presentation, analysis and discussion of findings 4.1. presentation of results table 1 indicates that 179 (76%) respondents were male and 56 (24%) female. this shows that the majority of respondents were male. regarding age, 73 (31%) respondents were between the ages of 20 and 30, 101 (43%) were between the ages of 31 and 40, and 61 (26%) were 41 years old and above. concerning education, 175 (74%) respondents had primary education, 49 (21%) respondents had secondary education, and 11 (5%) respondents had asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 39-48 44 tertiary education. regarding marital status, 82 (35%) respondents were single, 151 (64%) respondents were married, and only 2 (1%) respondents were divorced. in terms of business age, 85 (36%) of the business owned by the respondents had existed between 1 and 5 years, 111 (47%) businesses between 6 and 9 years, and 39 (17%) businesses had been in operation 10 years and above. in addition, 214 (91%) respondents engaged in a sole proprietorship, and 21 (9%) engaged in a partnership. finally, regarding sources of capital, 31 (13%) of the respondents sourced their capital from personal savings, 201 (86%) respondents from bank loans, and 3 (1%) from various grants. table 1. demographics of the respondents. gender frequency percentage (%) male 179 76 female 56 24 total 235 100 age (years) frequency percentage (%) 20-30 years 73 31 31-40 years 101 43 41 years and above 61 26 total 235 100 education level frequency percentage (%) primary 175 74 secondary 49 21 tertiary 11 5 total 235 100 marital status frequency percentage (%) single 82 35 married 151 64 divorced 2 1 total 235 100 business age (years) frequency percentage (%) 1-5 years 85 36 6-9 years 111 47 10 years & above 39 17 total 235 100 legal status frequency percentage (%) sole proprietorship 214 91 partnership 21 9 corporation 0 0 total 235 100 sources of invested capital frequency percentage (%) personal savings 31 13 loans from banks 201 86 grants 3 1 total 235 100 source: field survey, 2022. 4.2. data analysis and interpretation this section involves the analysis of the data and the interpretation of the results. first, the research hypotheses are tested using the analysis of variance (anova) at a 5% significance level. the test is based on the data collected from the study’s field survey. table 2. simple percentages analysis of the relationship between agricultural financing and economic performance. s/n views sa a d sd 1 farmers need financial support or assistance to be able to produce agricultural products maximally 170 55 8 2 2 accessible agricultural loans from banks are necessary for agricultural growth in the area 201 25 6 3 3 farmers get credit facilities from banks to fund their farm projects when they need to 88 105 25 17 4 farm business and activities are increasingly gaining ground in obudu through aid from banks 186 29 15 5 5 as a farmer, i cannot afford a lot of modern equipment and tools that would aid efficiency in my farm business 192 30 7 6 note: s/n = serial number, sa = strongly agree, a = agree, d = disagree, sd = strongly disagree. source: field survey, 2022 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 39-48 45 4.2.1. research question one what is the link between agric financing and economic performance? the variables involved in this question are agricultural financing and continuous economic performance. the research question was answered using simple percentages and bar graphs; the result is presented in table 2. figure 1. bar chart showing responses to agricultural financing and economic performance. figure 1 illustrates the frequency of respondents’ responses to questions 1 to 5. for item 1, 170 respondents strongly agreed, 55 agreed, 8 disagreed, and 2 strongly disagreed. this implies that the majority of the respondents agreed that farmers need financial support or assistance to be able to produce agricultural products maximally. for item 2, 201 respondents strongly agreed, 25 agreed, 6 disagreed, and 3 strongly disagreed. this implies that most of the respondents agreed that farmers’ access to agricultural loans from banks is necessary for agricultural growth in the study area. for item 3, 88 respondents strongly agreed, 105 agreed, 25 disagreed, and 17 strongly disagreed. this implies that most respondents agreed that farmers get credit facilities from banks to fund their farm projects when needed. for item 4, 186 respondents strongly agreed, 29 agreed, 15 disagreed, and 5 strongly disagreed. this implies that most respondents agreed that farm business and activities are increasingly gaining ground in the obudu lga through aid from banks. for item 5, 192 respondents strongly agreed, 30 agreed, 7 disagreed, and 6 strongly disagreed. this implies that most respondents agreed that, as farmers, they could not afford most of the modern equipment and tools that could aid efficiency in their farm business. 4.2.2. research question two what is the link between agricultural credit schemes and the growth of the agricultural sector? the variables involved in this question are agricultural credit schemes and the economic growth of the agricultural sector, which is measured continuously. the research question was answered using simple percentages and bar graphs; the result is presented in table 3. table 3. simple percentages analysis of the relationship between agricultural credit schemes and agricultural sector growth. s/n views sa a d sd 6 banks are the last resort for farmers who want credit facilities such as short-term and long-term loans and other resources 120 65 38 12 7 there are long delays and bottlenecks in the disbursement of loans and credit facilities issued by the government 150 55 19 11 8 credit facilities from the federal government are politicized and, as such, do not get to the peasant farmers in obudu who need them 88 105 25 17 9 interest rates and payback plans have discouraged the application for loans 162 60 7 6 10 the collateral demands by banks are huge, and this causes ineligibility for loan disbursement 142 50 29 14 source: field survey, 2022. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 39-48 46 figure 2. bar graph showing responses on the relationship between agricultural credit schemes and agricultural sector growth. figure 2 illustrates the frequency of respondents’ responses to questions 6 to 10. for item 1, 120 respondents strongly agreed, 65 agreed, 38 disagreed, and 12 strongly disagreed. this implies that most respondents agreed that banks are the last resort for farmers who want credit facilities such as short-term and long-term loans and other resources. for item 2, 150 respondents strongly agreed, 55 agreed, 19 disagreed, and 11 strongly disagreed. this implies that most of the respondents agreed that there are long delays and bottlenecks in the government's disbursement of loans and credit facilities. for item 3, 88 respondents strongly agreed, 105 agreed, 25 disagreed, and 17 strongly disagreed. this implies that most respondents agreed that credit facilities from the federal government are politicized and do not get to the peasant farmers in obudu who need them. for item 4, 162 respondents strongly agreed, 60 agreed, 7 disagreed, and 6 strongly disagreed. this implies that most respondents agreed that interest rates and payback plans had discouraged the application for loans. finally, for item 5, 162 respondents strongly agreed, 60 agreed, 7 disagreed, and 6 strongly disagreed. this implies that the majority of the respondents agreed that collateral demands by banks are huge, and this causes ineligibility for loan disbursement. 4.3. testing of hypotheses 4.3.1. hypothesis one the null hypothesis is that there is no significant link between agric financing and economic performance in obudu. the independent variable is agricultural financing, while the dependent variable is economic performance, both measured continuously. a simple linear ols regression technique was employed to test this hypothesis, and the result is presented in table 4. the result showed that r = 0.695, which implies a strong positive relationship between agricultural financing and economic performance. that is, the higher the financing of agricultural activities, the higher the performance of economic activities in the area. adjusted r2 = .480, which implies that 48.0% of the variation in economic activities could be attributed to the contribution of agricultural financing in the area. to ascertain the significance of the result, the anova table was assessed, and the result showed that (f = 81.782, p = 0.000). since p(.000) is less than 0.05, this implies a significant relationship between agricultural financing and economic performance in the study area. consequently, the null hypothesis of no link is rejected, and the alternate is upheld. table 4. simple linear regression analysis of the relationship between agricultural financing and economic performance. model r r2 adjusted r2 std. error of the estimate 1 0.695a 0.483 0.480 6.769 source of variation sum of squares df mean square f sig. regression 6288.632 1 6288.632 81.782 0.000b residual 30604.165 398 76.895 total 36892.798 399 note: a = predictors (constant, agricultural financing), b = dependent variable (economic performance), r = correlation coefficient or beta, r2 = coefficient of determination, adjusted r2 = adjusted coefficient of determination. 4.3.2. hypothesis two the null hypothesis is that there is no significant link between agricultural credit schemes and the growth of the agricultural sector in obudu. therefore, the independent variable is agricultural credit schemes, while the dependent variable is the growth of the agricultural sector, both measured continuously. a simple linear ols regression technique was used to test this hypothesis, and the result is presented in table 5. the result showed that r = 0.778, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 39-48 47 which implies a strong positive relationship between agricultural credit schemes and the growth of the agricultural sector. that is, the higher the provision of credit facilities, the higher the agricultural sector’s growth in the study area. moreover, adjusted r2 = 0.601 implies that 60.1% of the variation in the agricultural sector could be attributed to the contribution of the provision of agricultural credit schemes in the study area. to ascertain the significance of the hypothesis, the anova table was assessed, and the result showed that (f = 75.195, p = 0.000). since p(0.000) is less than 0.05, this implies a significant relationship between agricultural credit schemes and the growth of the agricultural sector in the study area. consequently, the null hypothesis of no link is rejected, and the alternate is upheld. table 5. simple linear regression analysis of the relationship between agricultural credit schemes and agricultural sector growth. model r r2 adjusted r2 std. error of the estimate 0. 778a 0.605 0.601 5.829 source of variation sum of squares df mean square f sig. regression 5862.625 1 5862.625 75.195 0.000b residual 31030.172 398 77.965 total 36892.798 399 note: a = predictors (constant, agricultural credit schemes), b = dependent variable (growth of the agricultural sector), r = correlation coefficient or beta, r2 = coefficient of determination, adjusted r2 = adjusted coefficient of determination. 5. conclusion & recommendations 5.1. conclusion the financing of nigeria's agricultural sector needs to improve. the government and financial institutions now view agriculture, which supported nigeria's economy in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, as a risky and fruitless enterprise. with the financial incapacity of most nigerian farmers and agro-allied entrepreneurs, this perception discourages financial institutions from granting credit for agricultural purposes. most financial institutions prefer to channel their funds into the industrial and service sector where the payback period is short and the rate of returns is high. the study found that agricultural financing contributed poorly to the economic performance of nigeria within the sampled period because of inadequate funding. agriculture financing is essential to development strategies in a variety of ways. it encourages financial investment in agriculture and the use of the technologies required to boost economic growth. it has been established that most african nations, including nigeria, need higher levels of domestic savings that can be used for investment and have insufficient levels of export revenues to purchase capital goods for investment. for the agricultural sector's target rate of agric-led growth to be attained, adequate financing is required, given its impacts on economic growth and development. however, foreign private loans, domestic savings, and other domestic sources of financing should be used more effectively to finance the development of capital investment and a rise in agricultural investment productivity; share capital, foreign direct investment and development stocks are among the suggested funding sources for agriculture-led economic growth. in conclusion, the continuous growth, credibility, reliability, productivity, efficiency and sustainability of the agricultural sector can be achieved through the provision of adequate financing by financial institutions, non-financial institutions, agricultural credit schemes, and grants from government and ngos, among others. therefore, improved financing is key to achieving growth and development in the sector and the economy. 5.2. recommendations the following suggestions would ensure that agricultural financing significantly enhances nigeria's economic performance. based on the findings, this study suggests the following: i. when formulating policies, agriculture financing should come first. ii. government involvement in funding agricultural expansion should receive extensive consideration. iii. it would be better to use domestic savings, foreign private loans, share capital, foreign direct investment, and development stocks to fund the expansion of capital investment and the improvement of agricultural investment productivity. iv. financial institutions with responsibility for agricultural financing, such as the nacrdb, should be strengthened for more efficiency and accessibility. v. an effective and efficient supervisory framework should regulate interest rates on the agricultural loan policy. vi. financial inclusion should be supported, primarily in rural areas with little or no financial institution access. vii. the government should release grants at several intervals to farmers to enhance their activities, such as by procuring machines. viii. there is a need to increase the level and size of agricultural loans through the reduction of interest rates to allow for more economic development in the country. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 39-48 48 funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any 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(2020). agriculture finance and agriculture insurance. retrieved from: www.worldbank.org https://doi.org/10.1080/09765239.2012.11884951 https://doi.org/10.6007/ijarafms/v6-i2/2099 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9957.1954.tb00021.x https://doi.org/10.5296/jmr.v5i2.2806 https://doi.org/10.18551/rjoas.2012-09.03 https://d.docs.live.net/79ee3244e0bf88e4/editing/www.worldbank.org effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 227 traditional food plants cultivated and managed in home gardens in south africa’s eastern cape province alfred maroyi department of botany, university of fort hare, private bag x1314, alice 5700, south africa.  amaroyi@ufh.ac.za article history abstract received: 19 february 2022 revised: 23 september 2022 accepted: 10 october 2022 published: 19 october 2022 keywords eastern cape province ecosystem services food provisioning local communities local ecological knowledge plant diversity south africa. this study aimed to document the diversity of traditional food plants in south africa’s eastern cape province. the survey was carried out in six local municipalities in the province, between march 2016 and september 2020. information on the socio-economic characteristics of the informants and on traditional food plants collected from the wild and cultivated and managed in home gardens was recorded using questionnaires, personal observations, and guided field walks with 145 informants. a total of 58 edible plants belonging to 46 genera and 29 families were recorded. the plant families with the largest number of species were solanaceae (six species), followed by amaranthaceae and asteraceae (five species each), rosaceae (four species), and apiaceae, cactaceae, and fabaceae sensu lato with three species each. the main uses of the documented species were edible fruits (56.9%), leafy vegetables (29.3%), and edible tubers (12.1%). species that were categorized as valuable, with relative frequency of citation (rfc) values exceeding 0.3, were solanum tuberosum, allium cepa, zea mays, beta vulgaris, cucurbita moschata, brassica oleracea, spinacia oleracea, cucurbita maxima, daucus carota, and lycopersicon esculentum. the findings highlight the significance of edible plant species to the wellbeing of local communities in the eastern cape province within the context of food provisioning. contribution/originality: this study documented edible plants cultivated and managed in home gardens. this study also documented indigenous knowledge of edible plants. there is an increasing realization of the need to increase our understanding of edible plants in home gardens to preserve and protect the traditional knowledge associated with this practice. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4638 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: alfred maroyi (2022). traditional food plants cultivated and managed in home gardens in south africa’s eastern cape province. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3), 227-235. 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4638 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction plant species growing in natural or semi-natural ecosystems and agroecosystems play an important role in the provision of food and other nutritional needs (carvalho & barata, 2016; turner et al., 2011; vincent et al., 2013). galhena, freed, and maredia (2013) argued that the plants growing and managed in home gardens are an important component of food systems and agricultural landscapes. literature studies have shown that plant species managed by households in home gardens contribute to food security, human nutrition, enhanced incomes, and other ecosystem asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 3 (2022): 227-235. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 mailto:amaroyi@ufh.ac.za http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 227-235 228 goods and services associated with maintaining or increasing local biodiversity (galhena et al., 2013; guell et al., 2021; ngcaba & maroyi, 2021). turner et al. (2011) argued that people living in the same community have different food choices determined by biodiversity levels, necessity or opportunity, and territorial differences or resource availability. similarly, garn and leonard (1989) argued that there are about 30,000 edible plant species on the planet, of which approximately 7,000 are either cultivated or collected from the wild as food (chivenge, mabhaudhi, modi, & mafongoya, 2015; marrelli, statti, & conforti, 2020; motti, bonanomi, lanzotti, & sacchi, 2020). nevertheless, research by prescott-allen and prescott-allen (1990) showed that about 20 plant species account for approximately 90% of the planet's food requirements, with wheat (triticum aestivum l.), rice (oryza sativa l.), and maize (zea mays l.) accounting for 60% of the human diet. therefore, edible plants harvested from the wild or cultivated or managed in home gardens play a significant role in maintaining human culture, as well as nutritional needs (bacchetta et al., 2016; borelli et al., 2020; gębczyński, bernaś, & słupski, 2022; ray, 2022). for example, van wyk (2011) listed more than 120 plant species in south africa with commercial potential as food plants. although the food plants of south africa are relatively well studied compared to those of other developing countries (bhat & rubuluza, 2002; fox & norwood, 1982; liengme, 1981; magwede, van wyk, & van wyk, 2019; moffett, 2010), other researchers, like welcome and van wyk (2019), have emphasized the need for detailed research on the traditional food plants of south africa. therefore, this study aimed to document the diversity of traditional foods in south africa’s eastern cape province. this study forms part of a wider research project on floristic composition and plant utilization patterns in eastern cape province conducted by a multidisciplinary team composed of social and natural scientists (atyosi, ramarumo, & maroyi, 2019; maroyi, 2017; thinyane & maroyi, 2019a, 2019b). eastern cape province is the secondlargest province of south africa, covering 168,966 km2 of land area (statistics south africa (stats sa), 2018). it is regarded as a rural province and is inhabited mainly by isixhosa-speaking people of cape nguni descent, and some of the local communities are highly dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods (hamann & tuinder, 2012). 2. materials and methods 2.1 study area this study was carried out in six local municipalities in eastern cape province, namely elundini, mbhashe, mbizana, ntabankulu, raymond mhlaba, and umzimvubu (see figure 1). figure 1. map of south africa showing the geographical position of the sites. all six local municipalities are in the savanna biome (mucina & rutherford, 2006) dominated by grasslands, succulent plants, thickets, and acacia bushveld. the altitude of the study area is between 0 and 1860 m a.s.l., with summer rainfall and dry frosty winters with approximately 500–1069 mm precipitation per year (jari & fraser, 2012; manyevere, muchaonyerwa, laker, & mnkeni, 2014). mean monthly temperatures range from 38°c in summer to 4°c in winter (jari & fraser, 2012; manyevere et al., 2014; palmer, timmermans, & fay, 2000). 2.2 data collection the sampling occurred during a series of one-week field excursions conducted between march 2016 and september 2020. sampling was carried out in six local municipalities (figure 1). standardized plant sampling procedures were used to collect specimens (bridson & foreman, 1998; victor, koekemoer, fish, smithies, & asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 227-235 229 mössmer, 2004). this involved transect walks in home gardens, farms, and the surrounding landscapes. interviews and discussions were conducted in isixhosa and translated into english with the assistance of an interpreter. we recorded plant names, their uses, plant parts used, different plant use categories, and preparation methods of useful plants. a list of edible plant species and plant-use categories, such as edible fruits, culinary herbs, leafy vegetables, cereals, edible roots, seeds, and tubers, was developed, and documented species were placed into these plant-use categories. these categories were expanded or modified based on information obtained during fieldwork, focus group discussions, and field observations. germishuizen and meyer (2003) and the plants of the world online (2021) were used to authenticate the plant names. ethnobotanical data were gathered from 145 purposively sampled participants using a snowball sampling approach (etikan, alkassim, & abubakar, 2016; heckathorn, 2011; waters, 2015). the participants were asked to sign an informed consent form (mar011). most of the informants (56.6%) were female, and their ages ranged from 18 to 84 years (see figure 2). more than three-quarters of the informants (83.4%) were more than 59 years of age, while 31.0% were less than 40 years of age. the majority of the participants were single (43.4%), followed by married (29.7%), widowed (15.2%), and divorced (11.7%). close to half of the sample (46.2%) had completed primary level education, while 23.4% of the informants had completed secondary level education, and 15.9% and 14.5% of the informants had attained tertiary education or had no formal education, respectively. about half of the informants (49.7%) were unemployed, surviving on south african government social grants and remittances from relatives. figure 2. participants’ demographic information. 2.3. data analysis the relative frequency of citation (rfc) of the species was determined using the following equation: rfc = fc/n (0<rfc<1) this index shows the significance of each species as determined by the frequency of citation (fc) and the number of participants (ahmad et al., 2014; faruque et al., 2018). 3. results and discussion 3.1. floristic composition this study recorded 58 species widely utilized as food plants in the eastern cape province (see table 1). of the recorded species, 15 species were native to south africa (25.9%), and 43 species (74.1%) were exotic, mainly naturalized as agricultural weeds in home gardens. the high proportion of exotic species observed in this study was consistent with observations made by akinnifesi et al. (2006); akinnifesi et al. (2008a); akinnifesi et al. (2008b); akinnifesi et al. (2010), who argued that the introduction of exotic species often offers protection to indigenous species against over-exploitation. some exotic plant species categorized as problem plants and invasive weeds, which were introduced in south africa but are now widely grown and collected from natural or semi-natural ecosystems in the eastern cape province, included caesalpinia decapetala (roth) alson, harrisia balansae (k.schum.) n.p.taylor & zappi, opuntia ficusindica (l.) mill., opuntia monocantha haw., psidium guajava l., and rubus fruticosus l. (table 1). according to the south african national environmental management biodiversity act (nemba), act number 10 of 2004 enacted on 1 october 2014, these species must be managed, controlled, or eradicated as they are aggressive invaders, capable of forming dense thickets with the potential to displace native vegetation and thereby transform the landscape (bromilow, 2018). therefore, the balance between their valuable contribution to food production and their invasive potential requires careful consideration. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 227-235 230 table 1. diversity of food plant species in the eastern cape province. plants with an asterisk (*) are not indigenous to south africa. species name family vernacular name habit parts used uses rfc *allium cepa l. amaryllidaceae itswelle herb bulbs edible bulbs 0.57 *allium sativum l. amaryllidaceae ivimbampunzi herb bulbs edible bulbs 0.16 *amaranthus hybridus l. amaranthaceae nomdllomboyi herb leaf leafy vegetable 0.07 *amaranthus spinosus l. amaranthaceae utyuthu herb leaves leafy vegetable 0.05 *beta vulgaris l. amaranthaceae bhettruthi herb leaf and tubers tubers and leaves sold in local markets 0.41 *bidens pilosa l. asteraceae umhllabangulo and ucadollo herb leaf vegetable 0.08 *brassica oleracea l. brassicaceae ikhaphetshu herb leaf vegetable sold in local markets 0.67 *brassica spp. brassicaceae herb leaves leafy vegetable sold in local markets 0.12 *caesalpinia decapetala (roth) alson fabaceae bobo shrub fruits edible fruits 0.03 *capsicum annuum l. solanaceae itshilisi herb fruits edible fruits sold in local markets 0.25 carissa bispinosa (l.) desf. ex brenan apocynaceae beta-umtumzi shrub fruits edible fruits 0.02 catha edulis (vahl.) endl. celastraceae iqwakka tree leaf leafy vegetable 0.12 centella coriacea nanf. apiaceae unongottyozana herb leaves leafy vegetable 0.05 *chenopodium album l. amaranthaceae iphunga herb leaves leafy vegetable 0.06 *citrus limon (l.) burm. f. rutaceae lamunni tree fruits edible fruits sold in local markets 0.12 *citrus sinensis (l.) osbeck rutaceae iorrenji tree fruits edible fruits sold in local markets 0.18 *colocasia esculenta (l.) schott araceae idumbe herb tubers edible tubers 0.03 *cucurbita maxima duchesne cucurbitaceae ithannga creeper fruits edible fruits sold in local markets 0.48 *cucurbita moschata duchesne ex poir. cucurbitaceae ithannga creeper fruits edible fruits sold in local markets 0.52 *daucus carota l. apiaceae kharothi and umnqathi herb taproots edible taproots sold in local markets 0.33 diospyros lycioides desf. ebenaceae umbhonngisa shrub fruit fruits 0.03 dovyalis caffra (hook. f. & harv.) hook. f. salicaceae incaggolo shrub fruit fruits 0.05 dovyalis rhamnoides (burch. ex dc.) burch. ex harv. & sond. salicaceae umkhamgwinnqi shrub fruit fruits 0.06 *ficus carica l. moraceae ikwiwwane tree fruits edible fruits 0.03 *foeniculum vulgare mill. apiaceae imboziso herb leaves culinary herb 0.04 grewia occidentalis l.f. malvaceae umgaqqombo and umvilani shrub fruit fruits 0.03 harpephyllum caffrum bernh. anacardiaceae umggwenye tree fruits edible fruits 0.06 *harrisia balansae (k.schum.) n.p.taylor & zappi cactaceae ukatyi shrub stems fruits 0.02 *ipomoea batatas (l.) lamm. convolvulaceae bhattata creeper roots edible tubers sold in local markets 0.21 *lactuca sativa l. asteraceae ilethasi herb leaves leafy vegetable sold in local markets 0.11 *lycopersicon esculentum mill. solanaceae tumata climber fruits edible fruits sold in local markets 0.35 *malus domestica borkh. rosaceae apile tree fruits edible fruits 0.14 mentha longifolia (l.) huds. lamiaceae inxxina herb leaf culinary herb 0.04 *musa x paradisiaca l. musaceae tree fruits edible fruits sold in local markets 0.17 *opuntia ficus-indica (l.) mill. cactaceae itolofiya tree fruit fruits sold in local markets 0.19 *opuntia monocantha haw. cactaceae tollofiya shrub fruits fruits 0.06 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 227-235 231 species name family vernacular name habit parts used uses rfc *persea americana mill. lauraceae tree fruits edible fruits 0.11 *phaseolus vulgaris l. fabaceae mbottyi herb seeds and fruits edible fruits and seeds 0.16 *pisum sativum l. fabaceae erityisi herb fruits edible fruits sold in local markets 0.12 portulaca oleracea l. portulacaceae igwannisha shrub leaf and stem leafy vegetable 0.03 portulacaria afra jacq. didiereaceae igwanisha shrub leaves and stems leafy vegetable 0.02 *prunus armeniaca l. rosaceae tree fruit fruits 0.03 *prunus persica (l.) batsch rosaceae ippesika tree fruit fruits 0.13 *psidium guajava l. myrtaceae gwavva and ugwava shrub fruit fruits sold in local markets 0.17 *punica granatum l. lythraceae rhanati tree fruits edible fruits 0.03 *rubus fruticosus l. rosaceae qunnube shrub fruit fruits and wine 0.03 solanum aculeastrum dun. solanaceae umthuma shrub fruits edible fruits 0.02 *solanum nigrum l. solanaceae umsobo herb fruits edible fruits 0.06 solanum retroflexum dun. solanaceae umsobbo wehllathi shrub fruit and leaves ripe fruits are eaten, and leaves used for flavor when cooking 0.02 *solanum tuberosum l. solanaceae amazzambane herb tubers edible tubers sold in local markets 0.56 *sonchus asper (l.) hill asteraceae irwabbe herb leaves leafy vegetable 0.03 *sonchus oleraceus l. asteraceae ihlaba herb leaves leafy vegetable 0.02 *spinacia oleracea l. amaranthaceae imifuno herb leaf vegetable sold in local markets 0.54 *syzygium paniculatum gaertn. myrtaceae irharinati tree fruits fruits 0.03 *taraxacum officinale weber asteraceae ikhokhhoyi herb leaves leafy vegetable 0.04 *vitis vinifera l. vitaceae umdiliya climber fruits edible fruits sold in local markets 0.08 zantedeschia aethiopica (l.) spreng. araceae ntebbe herb bulbs edible tubers 0.02 *zea mays l. poaceae umbonne grass fruits edible seeds and fruits sold in local markets 0.86 note: plants with an asterisk (*) are not indigenous to south africa. the species used as traditional foods were distributed among 29 families and 46 genera. most of the food plants (68.6%) used in the eastern cape province were from 14 families (see table 2). the families with the largest number of food plant species were: solanaceae (six species), followed by amaranthaceae and asteraceae (five species each), rosaceae (four species), apiaceae, cactaceae, and fabaceae sensu lato (three species each), amaryllidaceae, araceae, brassicaceae, cucurbitaceae, myrtaceae, rutaceae, and salicaceae (two species each). the remainder of the plant families were represented by a single species each (table 1). bennett (2011) categorized 58.6% of the plant families recorded in the current study as important for human activities, that is, anacardiaceae, apiaceae, brassicaceae, convolvulaceae, cucurbitaceae, fabaceae sensu lato, lamiaceae, lauraceae, malvaceae, moraceae, musaceae, myrtaceae, poaceae, rosaceae, rutaceae, solanaceae, and vitaceae. similarly, hammer and khoshbakht (2015) argued that fabaceae, asteraceae, and poaceae are among the most important plant families in the world as these families have high numbers of domesticated and semi-domesticated species. previous research conducted in south africa by welcome and van wyk (2019), focusing on edible plant species, categorized 55.2% of the plant families recorded in this study as important sources of food, that is, amaranthaceae, anacardiaceae, apiaceae, apocynaceae, asphodelaceae, asteraceae, brassicaceae, convolvulaceae, cucurbitaceae, ebenaceae, fabaceae sensu lato, lamiaceae, malvaceae, moraceae, poaceae, and solanaceae. the genera with the largest number of species used for food were allium, amaranthus, brassica, citrus, cucurbita, dovyalis, opuntia, prunus, solanum, and sonchus with at least two species each. 3.2. growth habit and use categories herbs (43.0%) are the most frequent type of food plants in eastern cape province, followed by shrubs (24.0%) and trees (22.0%) (see figure 3a). similar research findings were reported by reta (2016), who recorded 44.6% herbs, 27.1% shrubs, 24.8% trees, and 6.2% climbers as the most dominant forms of edible plants in the hawassa region of ethiopia. the different plant parts used as sources of traditional foods included bulbs, leaves, fruits, roots, seeds, stems, taproots, and tubers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 227-235 232 table 2. plant families with the highest number of food plant species (≥2 species) in the eastern cape. plant family number of food plant species % solanaceae 6 10.3 amaranthaceae 5 8.6 asteraceae 5 8.6 rosaceae 4 6.9 apiaceae 3 5.2 cactaceae 3 5.2 fabaceae sensu lato 3 5.2 amaryllidaceae 2 3.4 araceae 2 3.4 brassicaceae 2 3.4 cucurbitaceae 2 3.4 myrtaceae 2 3.4 rutaceae 2 3.4 salicaceae 2 3.4 the plant parts most frequently consumed were fruits (55.2%), followed by leaves (32.3%), tubers (6.9%), stems (5.2%), bulbs (3.4%), roots, seeds, and taproots (1.7% each) (see figure 3b). the majority of encountered species (56.9%) were collected or grown for their edible fruits, compared to 32.8% of species that were sold in local markets and 29.3% of species that were collected or grown as leafy vegetables (see figure 4). other use categories for the documented species (in descending order of importance) included edible tubers (12.1%), culinary herbs (5.2%), edible seeds (3.4%), cereals, edible taproots, and wine production (1.7% each) (figure 4). these findings corroborate observations made by welcome and van wyk (2019), who argued that edible fruits are the most valuable use category of traditional food plants, and this plant part is usually followed by leaves and perennial storage organs, like bulbs, rhizomes, roots, and tubers. the dominance of zea mays as a cereal crop and the important role of leafy vegetables and fruits as supplementary food crops are widely acknowledged in south africa (lerato, stefan, sarel, catharina, & rie, 2010; maroyi, 2021; mosina & maroyi, 2016; nemudzudzanyi, siebert, zobolo, & molebatsi, 2010). similarly, research by van wyk and gericke (2018) classified food plants in south africa into six main categories, namely, nuts and seeds, cereals, berries and fruits, bulbs, tubers, roots, vegetables, and beverages. figure 3. characteristics of the plant species used as sources of traditional foods in the eastern cape province. a: plant habit shown in pie chart; b: utilized plant parts shown in bar graph. figure 4. major plant use categories identified in the study. some plant species are represented in more than one use category. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 227-235 233 the species regarded as important with rfc values >0.3 (in descending order of importance) were: zea mays l. (cereal, edible seeds and fruits sold in local markets), brassica oleracea l. (leafy vegetable), allium cepa l. (edible tubers), solanum tuberosum l. (edible tubers sold in local markets), spinacia oleracea l. (leafy vegetable sold in local markets), cucurbita moschata duchesne ex poir. (edible fruits sold in local markets), cucurbita maxima duchesne (edible fruits sold in local markets), beta vulgaris l. (edible tubers and leaves sold in local markets), lycopersicon esculentum mill. (edible fruits sold in local markets), and daucus carota l. (edible taproots sold in local markets) (table 2). plant species reported to have little value, with rfc values of 0.02, were carissa bispinosa (l.) desf. ex brenan (edible fruits), harrisia balansae (k. schum.) n.p. taylor & zappi (edible fruits), portulacaria afra jacq. (leafy vegetable), solanum aculeastrum dun. (edible fruits), solanum retroflexum dun. (ripe fruits are eaten and leaves used for flavor when cooking), sonchus oleraceus l. (leafy vegetable) and zantedeschia aethiopica (l.) spreng. (edible tubers) (table 1). 4. conclusion the results of this study have shown that locally harvested plants provide essential food and some cash income for local communities. these research findings contribute to the wider body of knowledge on ecosystem goods and services derived from plant species, livelihood benefits derived by local communities from plant species, and how these benefits influence local support for plant resource management initiatives in the region and other provinces of south africa. funding: this work is supported by the govan mbeki research and development centre (gmrdc) (grant number: c169); the university of fort hare, the national research foundation (nrf) (grant number: tc90); and south africa, and the water research commission (wrc), south africa (grant number: kv 328/1/14). competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references ahmad, m., sultana, s., fazl-i-hadi, s., ben, h. t., rashid, s., zafar, m., & yaseen, g. 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(2019). an inventory and analysis of the food plants of southern africa. south african journal of botany, 122, 136-179.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sajb.2018.11.003. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 30 productivity of corn (zea mays) under varying drought duration and nitrogen application at la, trinidad, benguet j.p. pabloa g.m. awidanb d.m. cacalc a,bbenguet state university la trinidad campus, benguet 2601, philippines. cisabela state university cabagan campus, isabela 3328, philippines.  darwin.m.cacal@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 5 december 2024 revised: 21 january 2025 accepted: 31 january 2025 published: 13 february 2025 keywords corn drought nitrogen productivity vegetative water stress zea mays. this study investigates the impact of varying durations of drought and different nitrogen application strategies on corn. the study employed a split plot design with three replications. main plots (levels and timing of nitrogen) included no fert (no fertilizer), rr+oa (recommended rate at one-time application), rr+sa (split application), rr+50n+oa (50% nitrogen), and rr+50n+sa. subplots tested drought durations of 10, 15, and 20 days (dd). data were analyzed using two-way anova, and treatment mean differences were assessed using lsd at the 5% significance level. significant (p < 0.05) effects of fertilizer were observed on leaf area (la), total number of kernel rows per ear (tne), and chlorophyll content (cc). drought significantly affected plant height (ph), la, root weight (rw), ear length (el), ear weight (ew), total number of kernels per row (tkr), tne, total weight of corn ears (twe), cc, drought score (ds), and recovery rate (rr). no significant differences were found in the interaction of drought and fertilizer, except for root weight. subjecting plants to longer drought durations showed more negative effects on productivity. the recommended rate plus 50% of nitrogen at one-time application, along with the recommended rate and split application, are the best levels and timing of application when exposed to drought during the vegetative stage. contribution/originality: the study uniquely evaluates the effects of drought duration and nitrogen application on the productivity of corn under greenhouse conditions. the methodology employs a split plot design with three replications for comprehensive analysis. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i1.5299 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: pablo, j. p., awidan, g. m., & cacal, d. m. (2025). productivity of corn (zea mays) under varying drought duration and nitrogen application at la, trinidad, benguet. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1), 30–38. 10.55493/5005.v15i1.5299 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction corn (zea mays l.) is a vital crop for food security in the philippines (sierra & cantos, 2007). it is a major source of income for one-third of filipino farmers (gerpacio, labios, labios, & diangkinay, 2004). it is also considered a staple food for filipinos, especially in the southern philippines. however, productivity is influenced by various abiotic asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 1 (2025): 30-38 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-2903-8970 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-4435-4532 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7962-9367 mailto:darwin.m.cacal@gmail.com https://www.doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i1.5299 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 30-38 31 and biotic factors. among these, drought stress and nitrogen deficiency are significant constraints that adversely affect growth and yield. in relation to the study by modhej, the application of nitrogen rates at 100, 150, and 200 kilograms per hectare influenced the physiological responses of maize to water stress. an increasing level of nitrogen application led to an increase in the plant's ability to hold relative water content under drought stress conditions. even though the maize yield showed the highest response to nitrogen fertilizer in optimal irrigation treatment, an early application of nitrogen, particularly during drought stress at the vegetative stage, somewhat decreased the negative effects of drought stress on grain yield in corn (modhej, davoodi, & behdarvandi, 2017). in 2023, presse reported through the philippine star that about 77% of the country’s provinces experienced severe drought, with 292,000 hectares of rice and corn areas completely damaged. drought is one of the major constraints limiting crop production worldwide (farooq, hussain, wahid, & siddique, 2012). under drought stress, reduced nutrient availability is one of the most important factors limiting plant growth. drought stress reduces nutrient uptake by the roots because the decline in soil moisture results in a decreased rate of diffusion of nutrients from the soil matrix to the absorbing root surface (studer, hu, & schmidhalter, 2017). drought accelerates leaf senescence, leading to a decrease in canopy size, loss of photosynthesis, and reduced yields (rivero et al., 2007). aside from drought, constraints related to soil fertility seriously affect maize production (gerpacio et al., 2004). one reason for the decrease in grain yield in corn is the mismanagement of plant nutrition, such as the rate and timing of nitrogen application (sharifi & namvar, 2016). thus, water stress indices are useful tools for evaluating crop water status; however, consideration of other factors, such as nutrient status, must be taken into account for predicting crop growth and yield, as reduced nutrient availability is one of the major factors limiting plant growth under drought (caroll, 2015; studer et al., 2017). drought has a negative effect on plant growth and yield, especially during the vegetative stages leading to the flowering stage in sweet corn (zhang, lei, lai, zhao, & song, 2018). the detrimental effect of drought can be mitigated by the application of nutrients, which may enhance a plant's ability to tolerate drought stress by increasing biomass for early growth vigor and establishment (aslam et al., 2012; studer et al., 2017). purple sweet corn, a variety valued for its nutritional and antioxidant properties, has not been extensively studied in the context of water stressors. it is therefore important to study the effects of varying drought durations, nitrogen levels, and timing of application on the growth and yield of purple sweet corn. the primary objective of this study is to determine the effect of nitrogen application and varying drought durations on the growth and yield of purple sweet corn to help farmers and future researchers optimize irrigation practices and nitrogen application timing, ultimately enhancing corn production. 2. materials and methods 2.1. location of the study the experiment took place in may 2018 at benguet state university's department of agronomy experimental station greenhouse, located in la trinidad, benguet, philippines. la trinidad is a hilly area situated at 16.4544° n latitude and 120.5903° e longitude. the average temperature in may at la trinidad ranged from approximately 15°c (59°f) to 24°c (75°f). this location offers a distinctive environment for agricultural research due to its altitude and milder climate, which markedly contrasts with the lowland regions of the philippines. 2.2. pot preparation before initiating the experiment, thorough preparations were conducted in the greenhouse to create an ideal environment for the study. the area was cleaned to ensure a contamination-free setting. a total of 450 perforated plastic pots, each measuring 8 x 8 x 14 inches, were carefully filled with exactly 15 kg of soil. these pots were arranged into three replicates, with each replication containing 150 pots, ensuring consistency and precision in the experimental setup. the study focused on the morado purple sweet corn variety, a high-yielding, early-maturing crop ready for harvest within 60 to 62 days after planting (dap). this variety reduces the risk of lodging, has resistance to northern corn leaf blight, and possesses exceptional qualities, including larger ears and kernels that are sweet, smooth, and sticky. this setup provided an optimal framework for examining the growth and development of purple sweet corn under controlled environmental conditions. 2.3. treatments and experimental design the experiment employed a split-plot design with main plot factors focusing on nitrogen application levels and timing. main plots included the levels and timing of nitrogen: no fert (no fertilizer), rr+oa (recommended rate at one-time application), rr+sa (recommended rate, split application), rr+50n+oa (recommended rate with 50% nitrogen in one-time application), and rr+50n+sa (recommended rate with 50% nitrogen in split application). subplots were based on varying durations of drought stress during the sensitive stage of corn growth: d1 (10-day drought or 10 dd at 24-34 days after emergence), d2 (15-day drought at 24-39 days after emergence), and d3 (20day drought at 24-44 days after emergence). after each drought period, the plants were re-watered, and subsequent observations and measurements were conducted to assess the impact of nitrogen application strategies and drought durations on corn growth and development. 2.4. observation and collection of data the data collected on growth parameters includes plant height (ph), where the initial height was measured from the base of the plant at ground level to the tip of the youngest shoot using a meter stick from ten sample plants one week after emergence. final height was taken by measuring the height of ten sample plants two weeks before asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 30-38 32 harvesting, from the base of the plant at ground level to the tassel tip using a meter stick. leaf area (la) was determined for fully expanded and healthy sample leaves using the replica weight method, where the formula is: leaf area = area of ordinary paper (cm²) x weight of replica (g) / weight of ordinary paper (g). the total number of leaves per plant (tlp) was gathered after the flowering stage of ten sample plants per plot. root length (rl) was determined by measuring the length of the taproot after harvest using a meter stick. root weight (rw) was measured after subjection to drought. moreover, the percentage of emergence (pe) was obtained by dividing the number of plants that emerged by the total number of seeds sown, then multiplied by 100. days from sowing to emergence (dse) was calculated by counting the number of days from sowing to the time when at least 50% of plants emerged per pot. on the other hand, other parameters gathered are the yield and yield components, such as ear length (el), measured from the point of attachment to the tip of the husked ear using ten randomly selected sample ears per treatment. ear weight (ew) was obtained by weighing all dehusked ear cobs from each treatment. ear diameter (ed) was measured using a vernier caliper on ten sample ears. the total number of kernels per row (tkr) was determined by counting the kernels per row on the ear. the total number of kernel rows per ear (tne) was gathered by counting the entire row of kernels per ear from ten samples per treatment at harvest time. the total weight of corn ears harvested per plant (twe) was recorded. chlorophyll content (cc) was measured at the base, middle, and tip of the 6th leaf of each plant before and after drought stress using a chlorophyll meter (spad meter). drought scores (ds) were taken on the last day of drought duration per treatment. visual scores were based on leaf wilting and the visual condition of the canopy, using a scoring system based on the cip rating scale, as shown in table 1. recovery ratings (rr) were assessed after watering, and the recovery rating was presented in table 2. table 1. the drought score and recovery rating of corn plants. score ds description rr description 1 no stress no recovery 3 30% of the leaves wilted 30% of the leaves will be able to recover 5 50% of the leaves wilted 50% of the leaves will be able to recover 7 80% of the leaves wilted 80% of the leaves will be able to recover 9 complete wilting and death of the plants complete recovery of the plants note: the drought score (ds) for plants was based on leaf wilting and the visual condition of the canopy. the scoring system utilized the cip rating scale. the recovery rating (rr) was assessed after the plants were watered and left for 24 hours, using the specified scale tad-awan and jose (2008). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 30-38 33 table 2. the growth performance of sweet corn in terms of plant height, leaf area, total number of leaves per plant, root length, root weight, days from sowing, tasseling, and maturity under varying drought durations and nitrogen applications. factors ph (cm) 8dae ph (cm) 81 dae la before (cm2/plant) la after (cm2/plant) tlp rl (cm) rw (g) fertilizer (f) no fert 17.13 ± 4.14 150.30 ± 13.92 63.91±6.88b 217.11±60.68c 12.28±0.04 33.72±1.06 46.86±1.39 rr+oa 17.61 ± 4.25 145.42 ± 13.47 76.39±5.60a 267.86±9.93bc 12.03±0.29 34.08±0.70 45.71±2.54 rr+sa 16.39 ± 3.90 157.96 ± 14.63 76.30 ±5.51a 296.48±18.69ab 12.5±0.18 34.55±0.23 50.86±2.61 rr+50n+oa 16.08 ± 3.88 153.91 ± 14.23 71.32± 0.53ab 342.45± 64.66a 12.58±0.26 34.9±0.12 52.15±3.90 rr+50n+sa 16.54 ± 3.99 154.47 ± 14.27 66.05± 4.74ab 265.06± 12.73bc 12.23±0.09 36.67±1.89 45.68±2.57 drought (d) 10 dd 16.97 ± 3.95 171.97 ± 9.19a 68.95±1.84 287.90 ±10.11a 12.39±0.06 33.25±1.53 55.40±7.15a 15 dd 16.52 ± 3.84 152.96 ± 8.18b 73.45±2.66 283.37± 5.58a 12.42±0.09 34.09±0.69 48.22±0.03b 20 dd 16.76 ± 3.89 132.30 ± 7.08c 69.98±0.81 262.10 ±15.69b 12.17±0.16 37.01±2.23 41.14± 7.11c note: no fertilizer (no fert), recommended rate (rr), split application (sa), 50% of n (50n), one-time application (oa), day drought (dd), days after emergence (dae), plant height (ph), leaf area (la), total number of leaves per plant (tlp), root length (rl), and root weight (rw). the different factors are presented along with their respective standard deviations (sd) using the mean ± standard deviation, followed by different subscript letters (e.g., a, b, c, d) used to denote significant differences at a 5% probability level by lsd. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 30-38 34 2.5. data analysis of the study in this study, quantitative data were rigorously analyzed using the analysis of variance (anova) to compare means among all the factors and to determine if there are any statistically significant differences between the treatment means. the results were presented as mean values with their corresponding standard deviations (mean ± sd), providing a measure of data dispersion around the mean. to assess the significance of differences among the various treatment means, the least significant difference (lsd) test was applied, with a significance threshold set at p ≤ 0.05. this approach ensured a thorough examination of the data, allowing for the identification of statistically significant differences between treatments. 3. results and discussion 3.1. plant height (ph) the table illustrates the effects of varying drought durations (dd) and fertilizer applications on the ph of purple sweet corn at two different growth stages: 8 days after emergence (dae) and 81 dae. generally, across different nitrogen applications such as no fertilizer (no fert), recommended rate + one-time application (rr+oa), recommended rate + split application (rr+sa), recommended rate + 50% nitrogen + one-time application (rr+50n+oa), and recommended rate + 50% nitrogen + split application (rr+50n+sa), there is a noticeable consistency in plant height at 8 dae, ranging approximately between 16.08 ± 3.88 cm to 17.61 ± 4.25 cm. however, as the dd increases from 10 dd to 20 dd, significant variations in ph at 81 dae emerge. specifically, ph declines notably with prolonged drought, with values decreasing from 171.97 ± 9.19 cm (10 dd) to 132.30 ± 7.08 cm (20 dd). this indicates a clear negative impact of increasing dd on the final ph of purple sweet corn, highlighting the importance of water availability in sustaining optimal growth despite different nitrogen applications. the findings are in line with previous research, indicating that water deficit at the vegetative stage significantly reduces plant height, leaf size, stem extension, and root proliferation, disrupts plant water relations, and diminishes water-use efficiency (farooq, wahid, kobayashi, fujita, & basra, 2009; sah & zamora, 2005). reduced water potential in cells due to drought also hampers cell division and size, ultimately stunting plant growth (nonami, 1998). these results emphasize the need for effective water management strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of drought on purple sweet corn, ensuring sustainable agricultural practices. 3.2. leaf area (la) before and after drought significant variations in leaf area (la) were observed among sweet corn plants treated with different fertilizer application regimes and subjected to varying drought stress, as detailed in table 2. the widest la was observed in rr+oa with an amount of 76.39 ± 5.60 cm², followed by rr+sa with 76.30 ± 5.51 cm², while the lowest mean was revealed in no fert with 63.91 ± 6.88 cm². right after the drought, la surprisingly increased in rr+50n+oa with an la of 342.45 ± 64.66 cm², which is significantly different from rr+oa, no fert, and rr+50n+sa, with results of 267.86 ± 9.93 cm², 217.11 ± 60.68 cm², and 265.06 ± 12.73 cm², respectively. notably, before subjecting the plants to drought duration (dd), the leaf area (la) measurements showed that the plants in 15 dd had the highest mean la of 73.45 ± 2.66 cm², while those subjected to 10 dd had the lowest mean la of 68.95 ± 1.84 cm². however, anova revealed that the differences were not statistically significant, suggesting that the initial la was relatively uniform across the different dd treatments. after the dd, it was observed that there was a positive impact on la. corn subjected to 10 dd achieved the highest mean la of 287.90 ± 10.11 cm², followed by those subjected to 15 dd with a mean la of 283.37 ± 5.58 cm². in contrast, plants exposed to 20 dd showed the lowest mean la at 262.10 ± 15.69 cm². these results highlight the significant effect of prolonged dd on leaf development in corn, demonstrating a clear decline in la as the dd increased. even though there is a detrimental effect of drought stress on leaf size, corn exhibits adaptive mechanisms such as reduced leaf expansion and succulent leaf traits to mitigate water loss, as observed in previous studies farooq et al. (2009). the variations in la observed across the treatments highlight the complex interplay between drought stress and plant physiology. surprisingly, plants under moderate drought conditions (10 and 15 dd) showed higher la compared to those under severe drought (20 dd), suggesting that corn can adapt to moderate drought stress. however, the reduced la in plants subjected to 20 dd reflects the detrimental impact of extended drought on photosynthesis and overall productivity. these findings emphasize the resilience of corn under moderate drought conditions and its potential for improving water-use efficiency. by carefully managing drought durations, farmers could optimize growth and yield, enhancing stress tolerance and promoting sustainable agricultural practices, especially in regions with variable water availability. 3.3. total number of leaves per plant (tlp) the data presented in table 2 reveal notable insights into the effects of different fertilizer applications and drought conditions on the total leaf production (tlp) of sweet corn. among the fertilizer treatments, rr+50n+oa exhibited the highest mean tlp with 12.58 ± 0.26 leaves per plant, closely followed by rr+sa at 12.50 ± 0.18 leaves. in contrast, rr+oa showed the lowest mean tlp of 12.03 ± 0.29 leaves, suggesting that the combination of rr and 50n+oa may be particularly effective in promoting leaf production. however, the differences in tlp among the fertilizer treatments were relatively modest, indicating that while certain combinations might provide slight advantages, the overall leaf count remains relatively stable across the different fertilization strategies. regarding drought conditions, the highest mean tlp was observed under 15 dd with 12.42 ± 0.09 leaves, while the lowest was at 20 dd with 12.17 ± 0.16 leaves. these findings suggest that although drought stress does influence leaf count, the effect is not drastic. the consistency in tlp across different drought conditions aligns with previous research by zhang et al. (2018), which also noted a relatively stable leaf count under drought conditions compared to well-watered asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 30-38 35 environments. this stability in tlp might be indicative of a certain level of resilience in sweet corn plants, which are able to maintain leaf production even under varying levels of drought stress. overall, the results suggest that both nitrogen application and drought conditions have a limited impact on tlp after flowering in this study. while slight variations were observed in leaf production based on fertilizer type and drought duration, the lack of significant differences, as revealed by the anova results, indicates that the total leaf count remains relatively stable. this stability could be beneficial in maintaining plant productivity under diverse environmental conditions. 3.4. root length (rl) and root weight (rw) table 2 shows that there were no significant differences (as anova revealed) in rl and rw among the other treatments, with mean rl ranging from 33.72 ± 1.06 cm to 36.67 ± 1.89 cm and mean rw ranging from 45.68 ± 2.57 g to 52.15 ± 3.90 g. despite the lack of statistical significance in rl and rw across treatments, the interaction effects presented in figure 1 reveal noteworthy variations in rw. moreover, the highest rw was observed in corn treated with rr+50n+sa under 10 dd, revealing a mean of 63.06 ± 14.81 g, followed by rr+oa – 10 dd (60.11 ± 11.86 g), rr+sa – 15 dd (58.60 ± 10.35 g), and rr+50n+oa – 10 dd (56.35 ± 8.10 g). although these treatments did not exhibit significant differences from each other, they were significantly different from the rr+oa – 15 dd treatment, which had a much lower mean rw of 37.42 ± 10.83 g. the data suggest that specific combinations of fertilizer and dd can mitigate some of the adverse effects of drought on rw. for instance, the higher rw observed in plants treated with rr+50n+sa under 10 dd indicates that this combination is particularly effective in supporting root growth even under drought conditions. this is consistent with findings from studer et al. (2017), which demonstrated that plants often enhance root biomass or increase root absorptive surface in response to drought stress. enhanced root growth observed in this study may enable plants to better explore and absorb available water and nutrients from the soil, potentially improving their overall resilience and performance under drought conditions. these results are important for optimizing both fertilizer application and drought management practices to support root development and plant health. by strategically applying fertilizers and managing drought stress, it may be possible to enhance root growth and improve plant stability and productivity in challenging environmental conditions. furthermore, while rl and rw showed no significant differences among treatments, the observed variations in rw, particularly the superior performance of certain treatments under drought conditions, provide valuable insights into how nutrient management and dd can influence root development. figure 1. analyze the interaction effect of the duration of drought, the amount, and the timing of fertilizer application on the growth of corn in terms of root weight (rw) in purple sweet corn. note: no fertilizer (no fert), recommended rate (rr), split application (sa), 50% of n (50n), one-time application (oa), day drought (dd), plant height (ph), leaf area (la), total number of leaves per plant (tlp), root length (rl), root weight (rw), and "at" (-) are the different factors presented along with their respective standard deviations (sd) using the mean ± standard deviation. different subscript letters (e.g., a, b, c, d) are used to denote significant differences at a 5% probability level by lsd. 3.5. corn ear length (el), ear weight (ew) and ear diameter (ed) the table 3 showed the length, weight, and diameter of the ears of purple sweet corn under varying drought durations and nitrogen applications. the study revealed no significant differences in ear length (el), ear weight (ew), and ear diameter (ed) among sweet corn plants treated with various fertilizer application strategies. in terms of ear length, plants receiving rr+sa exhibited the longest ears at 20.50 ± 1.20 cm, followed closely by those treated with rr+50n+oa (19.93 cm) and rr+50n+sa (19.64 ± 1.15 cm). conversely, plants with no fertilizer had the lowest mean at 17.79 ± 0.52 cm. in terms of drought stress effects, significant differences were observed in ear length and root weight. sweet corn plants subjected to 15 dd and 10 dd periods exhibited the longest ears, measuring 20.37 ± 0.03 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 30-38 36 cm and 19.56 ± 0.03 cm, respectively; however, there were no significant differences between these two different drought durations, but there was a significant difference compared to 20 dd, which had a mean of 18.01 ± 0.03 cm, representing the shortest ears. table 3. length, weight, and diameter of the ear of purple sweet potato under varying drought durations and nitrogen applications. factors el (cm) ew (g) ed (cm) tkr tne twe (g) fertilizer (f) no fert 17.79 ± 0.52 68.33± 6.39 3.55 ± 0.09 15.25 ± 2.74 2.56 ± 1.02b 202.67 ± 87.17 rr+oa 17.81± 1.10 69.67 ± 13.09 3.60 ± 0.21 19.81 ± 3.56 3.22 ± 0.36b 256.44 ± 33.04 rr+sa 20.50 ± 1.20 88.16 ± 16.57 3.90 ± 0.23 18.18 ± 3.26 4.56 ± 0.98a 394.11 ± 104.27 rr+50n+oa 19.93 ± 1.23 71.03 ± 13.37 3.84 ± 0.23 16.44 ± 2.95 4.33 ± 0.75a 314 ± 24.16 rr+50n+sa 19.64 ± 1.15 86.73± 16.29 3.87 ± 0.23 17.56 ± 3.15 3.22 ± 0.36b 282 ± 7.84 drought (d) 10 dd 19.56 ± 0.03a 77.62 ± 0.75ab 3.80 ± 0.00 18.82 ± 3.36a 4.33 ± 0.75a 335.53 ± 45.69a 15 dd 20.37 ± 0.03a 84.84 ± 0.82a 3.89 ± 0.00 18.10 ± 3.22a 4.27 ± 0.69a 367.53 ± 77.69a 20 dd 18.01 ± 0.03b 67.89 ± 0.66b 3.56 ± 0.00 15.42 ± 2.75b 2.13 ± 1.45b 166.47 ± 123.37b note: no fertilizer (no fert), recommended rate (rr), split application (sa), 50% of n (50n), one-time application (oa), day drought (dd), ear length (el), ear weight (ew), ear diameter (ed), total number of kernels per row (tkr), total number of kernel rows per ear (tne), and total weight of corn ears harvested per plant (twe). the different factors are presented along with their respective standard deviations (sd) using the mean ± standard deviation, followed by different subscript letters (e.g., a, b, c, d) used to denote significant differences at a 5% probability level by lsd. similarly, the heaviest ear weight (ew) was recorded in rr+sa (88.16 ± 16.57 g), followed by rr+50n+sa (86.73 ± 16.29 g), while the lowest was in the no fert treatment (68.33 ± 6.39 g), as shown in table 3. however, the anova results showed that there were no significant differences. moreover, in terms of drought duration (dd), the heaviest ears were recorded in plants subjected to 15 dd (84.84 ± 0.82 g), closely followed by those in 10 dd (77.62 ± 0.75 g), while the lightest ears (67.89 ± 0.66 g) occurred in plants enduring 20 dd. surprisingly, anova revealed that significant differences were found in ew across different drought durations. furthermore, in terms of ear diameter (ed), the highest mean among the various nitrogen applications was found in rr+sa (3.90 ± 0.23 cm), closely followed by rr+50n+sa (3.87 ± 0.23 cm) and rr+50n+oa (3.84 ± 0.23 cm), while the lowest mean was in the no fert treatment, with a mean of 3.55 ± 0.09 cm. when considering drought durations, the highest mean ed was found in the 15 dd treatment, with 3.89 ± 0.00 cm, and the lowest in the 20 dd treatment, with a mean of 3.56 ± 0.00 cm. however, anova results indicated no significant differences among all these factors. this suggests that while certain nitrogen applications and dd may lead to variations in ed, these differences are not statistically significant, and the combined effects of nitrogen application and drought stress do not significantly impact ed in sweet corn. overall, while specific nitrogen application strategies and dd led to variations in ear characteristics, these differences were generally not significant for ear length (el) and ed, though significant differences were noted for ew under drought conditions. these findings suggest that while fertilizer application may influence el and ew, drought stress (ds) has a more pronounced effect on ear weight, particularly under severe drought conditions. the stability in ear length and diameter across treatments indicates that these attributes might be less sensitive to variations in fertilizer application and ds compared to ew. 3.6. total number of kernels per row (tkr) and total number of kernel rows per ear (tne) in table 3, the highest total kernel row (tkr) count in response to nitrogen application was observed in the rr+oa treatment, with a mean of 19.81 ± 3.56 counts, while the lowest was in the no fert treatment, with a mean of 15.25 ± 2.74 counts. however, anova revealed no significant differences among the nitrogen treatments. in contrast, significant differences were observed in tkr in response to varying durations of drought stress. plants subjected to 10 dd and 15 dd periods had the highest counts, with 18.82 ± 3.36 counts and 18.10 ± 3.22 counts, respectively, whereas those exposed to 20 dd had fewer kernels per row at 15.42 ± 2.75 counts. for the total number of ears (tne), based on the anova, significant differences were found for both nitrogen application and drought durations. among the nitrogen applications, rr+sa had the highest mean tne of 4.56 ± 0.98 counts, followed closely by rr+50n+oa, also with 4.56 ± 0.98 counts, while the lowest was in the no fert treatment, with a mean of 2.56 ± 1.02 counts. regarding drought durations, 10 dd resulted in the highest mean tne of 4.33 ± 0.75 counts, while the lowest was 20 dd, with a mean of 2.13 ± 1.45 counts. 3.7. total weight of corn ears harvested per plant (twe) in table 4, the fertilizer treatment rr+sa had the highest mean twe (total weight estimate) at 394.11 ± 104.27 g, followed by rr+50n+oa with a mean of 314 ± 24.16 g. the lowest mean twe was observed in the no fert treatment, with a mean of 202.67 ± 87.17 g. however, anova revealed no significant differences among these treatments. similarly, tarighaleslami et al. (2012) reported that increased nitrogen levels significantly affected grain yield, with the highest yield at 180 kg/ha of nitrogen and the lowest at 80 kg/ha. in contrast, during the dd (drying duration) treatments, anova revealed significant differences. the 10 dd and 15 dd treatments had significantly higher mean twe values of 367.53 ± 77.69 g and 335.53 ± 45.69 g, respectively, compared to the 20 dd treatment, which had a mean twe of 166.47 ± 123.37 g. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 30-38 37 table 4. the chlorophyll content, drought score, and recovery rating of purple sweet corn. factors cc (before) cc (after) ds rr fertilizer (f) no fert 45.31 ± 0.50ab 44.17 ± 0.71b 5.00 ± 0.14 7.00 ± 0.12 rr+oa 44.09 ± 0.72bc 43.19 ± 1.69b 5.00 ± 0.14 7.00 ± 0.12 rr+sa 45.40 ± 0.59ab 47.31 ± 2.43a 5.00 ± 0.14 7.00 ± 0.12 rr+50n+oa 45.57 ± 0.76a 44.97 ± 0.09ab 5.00 ± 0.14 7.00 ± 0.12 rr+50n+sa 43.67 ± 1.14c 44.77 ± 0.11b 5.00 ± 0.14 7.00 ± 0.12 drought (d) 10 dd 44.49±0.32 46.17 ± 1.29a 3.00 ± 0.08c 9.00 ± 0.16a 15 dd 44.92±0.11 46.29 ± 1.41a 4.87± 0.14b 7.13 ± 0.13b 20 dd 45.02 ± 0.21 42.18 ± 2.70b 7.00 ± 0.12a 5.00 ± 0.09c note: no fert = no fertilizer, rr = recommended rate, sa = split application, 50n = 50% of n, oa = one-time application, dd = day drought, cc = chlorophyll content, ds = drought score, rr = recovery rating. the different factors are presented along with their respective standard deviations (sd) using the mean ± standard deviation, followed by different subscript letters (e.g., a, b, c, d) used to denote significant differences at a 5% probability level by lsd. 3.8. chlorophyll content before and after drought stress (cc) in table 4, anova revealed that significant differences in chlorophyll content (cc) were observed before and after drought, influenced by the level and timing of nitrogen application. before drought imposition, plants treated with rr+50n+oa had the highest cc at 45.57 ± 0.76, while those treated with rr+50n+sa during planting had the lowest cc at 43.67 ± 1.14. after drought imposition, plants treated with rr+sa and rr+50n+oa had comparable cc values of 47.31 ± 2.43 and 44.97 ± 0.09, respectively. modhej et al. (2017) reported that increased nitrogen application significantly boosts chlorophyll content. the highest reduction in chlorophyll content under drought conditions was observed in treatments with lower nitrogen (100 n kg ha⁻¹), while the lowest reduction was seen in treatments with 200 n per hectare. table 4 also shows a significant reduction in chlorophyll content after drought imposition compared to before drought. however, sweet corn subjected to 10 dd and 15 dd maintained the highest chlorophyll content at 46.29 ± 1.41 and 46.17 ± 1.29, respectively. a significant reduction in chlorophyll content was observed in sweet corn subjected to 20 dd, with a mean of 42.18 ± 2.70. 3.9. drought score (ds) and recovery rating (rr) table 4 presents detailed observations on the drought stress (ds) and recovery rates (rr) of sweet corn plants subjected to various fertilizer treatments and drought durations. plants treated with no fert, rr+oa, rr+sa, rr+50n+oa, and rr+50n+sa exhibited similar ds and rr, with a mean ds of 5.00 ± 0.14 (approximately 50% of leaves wilting) and a mean rr of 7.00 ± 0.12 (indicating that 80% of leaves recovered after 24 hours). these results suggest that varying levels and timing of nitrogen application did not significantly impact ds and rr. in contrast, plants subjected to a 20-day drought (20 dd) showed the highest number of wilted leaves, with a mean ds of 7.00 ± 0.12, affecting 80% of the plant population, and the lowest rr, with a mean of 3.00 ± 0.08, meaning that only 50% of the plant population could recover after 24 hours. conversely, plants subjected to a 15-day drought (15 dd) had the fewest wilted leaves, with a mean ds of 4.87 ± 0.14, or about 30% of the plant population affected. the 10-day drought (10 dd) treatment exhibited the highest recovery rate, with a mean rr of 9.00 ± 0.16, indicating that 90% of the plant leaves recovered. anova results confirmed that ds and rr were significantly different among the drought duration treatments, highlighting the substantial impact of drought duration on plant stress and recovery. 4. conclusions plants treated with rr+50n+oa and rr+50n+sa represent the optimal level and timing of nitrogen application when corn plants are subjected to drought stress (dd) during the vegetative stage. drought stress adversely affected various morphological and physiological attributes of corn plants. prolonged exposure to dd resulted in more detrimental effects on the growth and yield of corn, including plant height, leaf area, chlorophyll content, root weight, the number and weight of corn ears harvested, and the number of kernels per row. a significant interaction effect between dd and nitrogen application was observed only on the corn root weight. based on the results, it is recommended to apply the recommended rate of fertilizer along with an additional 50% in a single application, as well as the recommended rate with split applications of nitrogen when corn plants are exposed to drought during the vegetative stage. additionally, it is advisable to provide supplemental irrigation during the 6th leaf stage of corn, as prolonged drought during this period significantly impacts most growth and yield parameters of sweet corn. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 30-38 38 references aslam, m., zamir, m., afzal, i., yaseen, m., mubeen, m., & shoaib, a. 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(2018). effects of drought stress and water recovery on physiological responses and gene expression in maize seedlings. bmc plant biology, 18, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-018-1281-x views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://repository.iuls.ro/xmlui/handle/20.500.12811/1807 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2666-8_12 https://www.springer.com/in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242107809_maize_in_the_philippines_production_systems_constraints_and_research_priorities https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242107809_maize_in_the_philippines_production_systems_constraints_and_research_priorities https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02507801 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-018-1281-x effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 82 motivations of cajanus cajan producers in benin: a versatile crop facing abandonment despite its multiple uses ibidon firmin akpoa filikibirou zakari tassoub kassimou issakac zachee houessingbed nanyegbe aimee dededjie a,b,c,dlaboratory of analysis and research on economic and social dynamics, department of rural economy and sociology, faculty of agronomy, university of parakou, parakou, benin. elaboratory for research on innovation for agricultural development, department of rural economics and sociology, faculty of agronomy, university of parakou, parakou, benin.  zach.professionnel@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 20 january 2025 revised: 28 february 2025 accepted: 24 march 2025 published: 3 april 2025 keywords benin cajanus cajan determinants motivation push and pull factors seemingly unrelated regression farmer decision-making. this study examines the motivations of the few cajanus cajan producers in benin, a versatile and highly beneficial crop that receives little institutional support. using a random sample of 240 producers from the collines department, it applies cronbach’s alpha to assess the internal consistency of their motivations. the resulting composite index was modeled using seemingly unrelated regression (sure) to analyze the determinants of this motivation. the findings reveal that the selling price, nutritional value, high market demand, high household food needs, declining soil fertility, and the predominance of weeds and pests are the factors with a strong contribution to the decision and action to produce cajanus cajan. farmers are more motivated by push factors than by pull factors, indicating that constraints play a more important role in their decision to cultivate this crop than opportunities. age, literacy, formal education, membership in a group, farm size, and household size are the main determinants of the motivation to cultivate cajanus cajan. these results suggest adapting agricultural interventions to local realities by valorizing the benefits of cajanus cajan and creating attractive economic opportunities, such as access to credit and promotional projects, targeting young people and the most educated farmers in particular. contribution/originality: this study makes an original contribution to the literature on cajanus cajan in benin by providing, for the first time, a novel empirical analysis of producers' motivations using an innovative combination of cronbach's alpha test and sure modeling. it makes proposals for targeted interventions adapted to local realities. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i1.5323 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: akpo, i. f., tassou, f. z., issaka, k., houessingbe, z., & dededji, n. a. (2025). motivations of cajanus cajan producers in benin: a versatile crop facing abandonment despite its multiple uses. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1), 82–93. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction cajanus cajan is a legume renowned for its versatility and wide range of uses worldwide (gargi et al., 2022; yang et al., 2020). the leading producers are india and myanmar, which together account for 83% of global production, followed by african countries such as malawi, tanzania, kenya, and uganda, contributing 14% (makena, ngare, & kago, 2022). this crop is highly valued for both human and animal nutrition and is extensively used in traditional medicine to treat various ailments. its mature seeds have a rich nutritional profile, containing 18.8% protein, 53% starch, 2.3% fat, 6.6% crude fiber, and 250.3 mg of minerals per 100 g. its leaves are abundant in bioactive compounds, asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 1 (2025): 82-93 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9557-7600 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-5101-4144 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0241-7350 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-8440-2842 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-4970-5602 mailto:zach.professionnel@gmail.com https://www.doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i1.5323 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 82-93 83 including flavonoids, stilbenes, saponins, tannins, reducing sugars, resins, and terpenoids, which exhibit antioxidant, antibacterial, hypocholesterolemic, and anti-inflammatory properties. they are widely used to stop bleeding, relieve pain, eliminate intestinal parasites, and treat a variety of skin, liver, lung, and kidney disorders (hardev, 2016; mishra, kumar, joshi, & d’souza, 2018). additionally, cajanus cajan is employed in traditional medicine for managing diabetes, fever, dysentery, hepatitis, measles, and malaria (rafiq, muhammad, & naeem, 2015). as a perennial shrub, cajanus cajan is drought-tolerant, produces plenty of biomass for forage, and enriches the soil with nutrients and moisture (fossou, ziegler, zézé, barja, & perret, 2016). it is crucial for family farming, which constitutes a significant part of global agricultural production (sayed, ding, odero, & korohou, 2022; vogel et al., 2023). it is also one of the most promoted legumes in developing countries where farmers face climatic hazards, land degradation, and limited access to productive resources (mathew, adeolu, adelegan, & ojogho, 2023; sikandar et al., 2023). like other developing countries, agriculture in benin is dominated by smallholder farmers who are vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change (akpa & chabossou, 2024). in these farms, cajanus cajan plays an important role, serving as food, a traditional medicine, and a source of income (zavinon et al., 2020). it also helps with soil conservation and weed management (kinhoégbè et al., 2020). despite its many benefits, this crop receives little attention from policymakers and farmers (kinhoégbè et al., 2020; zavinon, adoukonou-sagbadja, bossikponnon, dossa, & ahanhanzo, 2019). cajanus cajan is not even included in the government's thirteen priority agricultural sectors (ministry of agriculture, livestock and fisheries (maep), 2017), and its production remains marginal. it is the fifth edible legume, after cowpea, voandzou, soybean, and peanut (kinhoégbè et al., 2022). the lack of interest in this versatile crop raises questions about the motivations of the few farmers who cultivate it. however, existing research focuses on its varietal diversity, yields, uses, economic aspects, and production constraints (ayenan, ofori, ahoton, & danquah, 2017; issaka et al., 2024; kinhoégbè et al., 2022; zavinon, fonhan, atrokpo, djossou, & sagbadja, 2022). producers' motivations remain little explored, although a better understanding of these would make it possible to predict their behavior (swart, levers, davis, & verburg, 2023). this study aims to identify incentive factors, assess their contribution to motivation, and analyze the determinants of this motivation. it makes an original contribution to the literature on cajanus cajan in benin by providing, for the first time, a novel empirical analysis of producer motivations using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. the results will provide guidance for public strategies to promote and improve cajanus cajan production in benin. the remainder of the article is organized into five sections. section 2 outlines the research methodology, including the conceptual framework, study area, and data collection and analysis methods. section 3 presents the analysis results, followed by section 4, which discusses the findings. finally, section 5 concludes the study and highlights its policy implications. 2. materials and methods 2.1. conceptual framework of the study motivation is an inner force that guides individuals' observable behaviors (sun, 2008), pushing them to act or abstain. it significantly influences decision-making by enhancing cognitive processes and activating brain regions such as the prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens (wei, 2024). it orients actions towards goal achievement through reward anticipation and strategic risk-taking, improving decision-making outcomes in a variety of contexts. it can be intrinsic, arising from personal satisfactions such as pleasure or accomplishment, or extrinsic, linked to concrete incentives (santovac & popović, 2022). it is influenced by personal, psychosociological, and contextual variables (cartwright & cooper, 2008; geen, 2019). shapero and sokol (1982) model the origin of entrepreneurship by highlighting factors, called "triggers," which influence the decision to undertake entrepreneurial activities. positive triggers include the discovery of a business opportunity or obtaining financing, while negative triggers can result from situations such as frustration at work, job loss, or personal difficulties. these two types of situations converge to motivate individuals to step out of their comfort zones and take action. this concept of triggers is transposable to the pull-push model, which distinguishes necessity motivations from opportunistic motivations (harrison & hart, 1983). "push" factors correspond to negative triggers, while "pull" factors are associated with positive triggers. pull motivation encourages action to seize an opportunity, often with the aim of maximizing gains or capitalizing on an unforeseen chance. in contrast, push motivation drives one to act under the constraints of responsibilities or external pressures, often to avoid negative consequences. moreover, in economics, decisions are analyzed through the prism of rationality, motivated by anticipated selfinterest (rizzo & whitman, 2018) and the perception of rewards from action (shenhav, 2024). in the agricultural context, crop choices are influenced by socioeconomic and agroecological imperatives, with preferences for high yields, resistance to pests, and tolerance to climatic disturbances varying by area and time (ayenan, danquah, ahoton, & ofori, 2017; devi, nayak, & patnaik, 2021). this study uses shapero and sokol's pull-push model to analyze farmers' motivations for growing cajanus cajan (figure 1). 2.2. description of the study area the study was conducted in the collines department, in central benin. agriculture is the main activity for local populations who mobilize the bulk of the national production of cajanus cajan (department of programming and planning of the ministry of agriculture, livestock and fisheries (dpp-maep), 2020). in collaboration with agents of the territorial agency for agricultural development (taad), three key municipalities (bantè, glazoué, ouèssè) were identified for their importance in this production. during the exploratory phase, a preliminary census of cajanus cajan producers was conducted, enabling the selection of three villages per municipality (figure 2). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 82-93 84 figure 1. links between determinants, motivation and action. note: the dashed rectangles are the personal, psychosocial and contextual variables. the solid white rectangles represent motivation and its components, while the green rectangle is the action to which motivation leads. figure 2. geographic location map of the study area. 2.3. sampling technique and sample size cajanus cajan producers constitute the research units of this study. a sampling frame established during the exploratory phase made it possible to select producers randomly. the number of respondents per village is proportional to the number of producers identified. in total, 240 producers were surveyed, or 80 per commune, with a number varying from 20 to 35 per village. 2.4. types of data and collection methods two main types of data were collected in this study: qualitative data, used to identify potential incentive factors, and quantitative data, used to assess the contribution of each factor to producer motivation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 82-93 85 2.4.1. identification of incentive factors by focus groups in order to list the factors likely to encourage farmers to cultivate cajanus cajan, an exploratory qualitative survey was conducted. it consisted of group interviews to collect data systematically and simultaneously through guided exchanges, thus revealing collective perspectives and a deeper understanding of associated experiences and beliefs (akter et al., 2017). this method allows for a deeper understanding of the social reality on the ground (yegbemey, aloukoutou, & aihounton, 2020). following ruhl's (2004) guidelines, each interview session gathered 10 to 15 cajanus cajan producers per village, including both men and women. one session was held per village, following participatory communication steps: introduction of the research and objectives, participant introductions, explanation of participation rules, open discussion on cajanus cajan cultivation and production motivations, and conclusion. researchers facilitated the discussions without imposing questions or suggesting preconceived answers, using broad, open-ended prompts such as: "what does cultivating cajanus cajan mean to you?" "what motivates you to produce cajanus cajan?" and "why did you start growing cajanus cajan?" at each stage, participants were given ample time to engage in discussions and reach a consensus when necessary. notes were taken during the interviews, and, with participants’ consent, key parts of the discussions were recorded. the collected data were then transcribed and analyzed using content analysis following the steps outlined by erlingsson and brysiewicz (2017): identifying and condensing meaning units, coding the data, and categorizing key themes. by integrating these findings with existing literature, this approach enabled the identification of potential incentives for cajanus cajan cultivation (table 1). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 82-93 86 table 1. potential incentives for the production of cajanus cajan. pull factors push factors code postman justification code postman justification pull1 strong demand in the market its high demand and attractive price encourage farmers to invest in order to increase their profits. push1 decrease in soil fertility it attracts farmers to restore nutrient-poor soils because it enriches the soil and prevents its degradation. pull2 high selling price push2 variability of unpredictable climatic conditions it offers an alternative to unpredictable weather conditions, thanks to its tolerance and resilience. pull3 ease of cultivation and maintenance it attracts with its low labor and resource requirements, maximizing output with little effort and cost. push3 financial risks associated with monoculture it reduces financial risks and stabilizes income by decreasing dependence on a single crop. pull4 adaptability to agroecological conditions its adaptability to local conditions offers valuable flexibility, reducing risks associated with climatic variations. push4 need for high expenditure on other crops its low input and strength requirements protect against rising input prices and labor scarcity. pull5 high nutritional value rich in protein, fiber, and nutrients, it from angola meets the demand for healthy food products. push5 difficult access to inputs from other crops thanks to its less complex input requirements, it helps to circumvent the increase in input prices observed since 2018 in benin. pull6 existence of a project in the sector a project can encourage farmers to invest by creating an enabling environment. push6 high household food needs it provides an energy supply to workers and is suitable for large households with high food demand. pull7 ease of access to credit access to credit enables investment in inputs and labor, removing financial barriers. push7 low resistance of other crops tolerant and resilient, it helps avoid diseases, pests, and harsh conditions, ensuring stable yields. pull8 ability to improve soil fertility by fixing atmospheric nitrogen, it preserves soil fertility for sustainable productivity. push8 predominance of weeds and pests by smothering weeds and resisting pests, it reduces competition for resources and the risk of loss. pull9 resistance to weeds, diseases and pests its resistance to weeds, diseases, and pests reduces maintenance costs and efforts. push9 government intervention in determining prices of other crops in benin, agricultural policies influence the prices of certain crops, pushing farmers towards the cajanus cajan, which currently escapes these regulations. pull10 medicinal virtues of the plant its medicinal properties increase its demand and value for farmers and consumers. note: the justification columns contain a summary of the arguments identified during the group interviews as well as those from the literature. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 82-93 87 2.4.2. measuring farmers’ motivations through individual interviews after identifying the factors that may encourage cajanus cajan cultivation, a questionnaire was designed, digitized, and administered to 240 farm managers using the kobocollect mobile application. to evaluate the significance of each factor in farmers' motivation, a five-point likert scale was used (1 – strongly disagree, 2 – somewhat disagree, 3 – neutral, 4 – somewhat agree, 5 – strongly agree) (batonwero, agalati, & degla, 2022; jankelová, joniaková, romanová, & remeňová, 2020). the questionnaire included statements such as: pull1 – "i grow cajanus cajan because it sells easily in the market," pull10 – "i grow cajanus cajan because the plant has several medicinal properties," push1 – "i grow cajanus cajan because my soil fertility is declining," and push3 – "i grow cajanus cajan to diversify my crops and reduce financial risks." 2.5. data analysis methods descriptive statistics were combined with econometric models to analyze data collected at three different levels. 2.5.1. calculating the reliability of motivation measurement scales farmers' responses to the motivation subscales (pull or push) were tested with cronbach's alpha to assess the reliability of the scales (menozzi, fioravanzi, & donati, 2015). this test measures internal consistency, showing that correlated items measure the same phenomenon (kotian, varghese, & motappa, 2022). cronbach's alpha coefficient provides an overall index of this consistency and identifies problematic items that could be removed from the scale. the general formula for calculating the α coefficient is provided by laurencelle (2021): α = ( k k−1 ) (1 − ∑ σi 2k i=1 σt 2 ) (1) its alternative formula is. α = kr 1+r(k−1) (2) with: k number of items making up the scale. σi 2 variance of the i th item. i 1,2,…k. σt 2 variance of the whole scale. r average of the correlation between items or the average inter-correlation. the coefficient α varies from 0 to 1, where a value close to 1 indicates a strong correlation between the items, while a value close to 0 indicates the opposite (kotian et al., 2022). taber (2018) recommends an α greater than or equal to 0.70 to validate a scale. a lower value indicates poor consistency, suggesting the rejection of the scale or the removal of irrelevant items. in this study, this reference value (α ≥ 0.70) from taber was considered. 2.5.2. calculation of producers’ motivation scores the mean motivation scores (mms) for each factor were calculated using the following formula (singh & hiremath, 2010). mms = di actuel−di minimal di maximal−di minimal (3) with mms the average motivation score and di the degree of importance of the factor in the decision to cultivate the cajanus cajan. then, for each motivation subscale (pull or push), the composite motivation index (cmi) was estimated (kindemin, houssingbe, hougni, labiyi, & yabi, 2023). the formula for the cmi is. cmi = ∑ mms nf (4) with cmi, the composite motivation index and nf, the total number of items for each subscale. student's t-test was used to compare the means of the pull (cmipull) and push (cmipush) motivation indices, and analysis of variance (anova) was used to assess differences in means between study areas. three levels of significance were defined: 1% if p ≤ 0.01; 5% if 0.01 < p ≤ 0.05; and 10% if 0.05 < p ≤ 0.10. these thresholds define the degree of confidence to conclude that the observed differences are not due to chance. 2.5.3. modeling the determinants of producers’ motivation to identify the socio-demographic factors influencing motivation scores for cajanus cajan cultivation, a seemingly unrelated regression (sure) model was applied. introduced by zellner (1962), this method enables the simultaneous estimation of multiple regression equations, each with its own dependent variable, while accounting for potential correlations between error terms. the sure model assumes that certain common factors influence all regression equations, alongside specific factors unique to each equation (zhang, ma, zhang, ling, & jenelius, 2024). in this study, the composite motivation indices cmipull and cmipush are quantitative variables potentially shaped by unobserved common factors, such as individual preferences, structural constraints, or local agricultural dynamics. the sure approach is particularly well-suited here, as it enhances the efficiency of parameter estimation compared to separate models like multiple linear regression or tobit. although pull and push motivations are modeled separately, they may share unobserved characteristics that simultaneously influence producers' decisions. the sure model’s key assumption that errors across equations may be correlated due to common unmeasured factors aligns well with this context. for instance, factors such as resource access, past farming experience, and market dynamics may simultaneously impact both pull and push motivations for cultivating cajanus cajan. by accounting for these correlations, the sure model provides a more robust and precise analysis of the determinants of farmers' motivations, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 82-93 88 mitigating potential estimation biases arising from omitted interdependencies (nasri & zhang, 2019; tiong, ma, & palmqvist, 2025). the mathematical relationship between motivation indices (r) and socio-demographic characteristics (x) is as follows: { r1i = α1 + ∑ β1jxijj + u1i r2i = α2 + ∑ β2jxijj + u2i (5) with: r1i and r2i: respectively, the cmipull and cmipush of producer i. α1 and α2: constant terms. xij: the sociodemographic factor j of producer i. j: the number of socio-demographic characteristics. u1i and u2i: error terms. β: the regression coefficients associated with x. all statistical analyses were conducted using stata software. the model's explanatory variables include farmers' sociodemographic and economic characteristics, such as: producer age: age influences experience and the accumulation of agricultural knowledge (caffaro, roccato, de paolis, cremasco, & cavallo, 2022), which can impact the motivation to cultivate cajanus cajan. older farmers, with their extensive expertise, may perceive this crop as a reliable option within their production systems but may also be resistant to change (caffaro et al., 2022). in contrast, younger farmers, who are generally more open to innovation, may be motivated by new agricultural techniques (novisma & iskandar, 2023) such as integrating cajanus cajan to enhance soil fertility. therefore, age can either facilitate or hinder the motivation to cultivate this legume, depending on the context. local language literacy: the ability to read and understand information in the local language can enhance access to technical knowledge and market opportunities (rantissi, 2024). literate farmers are better equipped to interpret agricultural recommendations and manage their activities independently. this skill can, therefore, influence their motivation to cultivate cajanus cajan, a crop with numerous benefits. formal education: higher levels of education are often linked to greater adaptability to innovations and improved farm management strategies (sarie, mohammad, jamin, & ramlan, 2023). educated farmers are more likely to recognize the economic and environmental benefits of certain crops. as a result, education can foster more informed decision-making and strengthen motivation for cultivating strategic crops like cajanus cajan. membership in a producer group: being part of a farmer organization facilitates access to information, inputs, and markets (donkor, dela amegbe, ratinger, & hejkrlik, 2023). group membership can also enhance motivation to cultivate crops like cajanus cajan by fostering knowledge exchange and mutual support among producers. farm size (cropland area): the amount of available cropland affects a producer’s capacity to diversify crops and allocate land to lower-priority crops (singh, guleria, vaidya, & sharma, 2020). larger farms may provide greater flexibility to integrate cajanus cajan into the farming system, whereas smaller farms may limit this option. household size (number of individuals): larger households often require more diverse agricultural production to meet both food and economic needs (basantaray, acharya, & patra, 2024). this can influence the motivation to cultivate cajanus cajan, either for subsistence or as an additional source of income. engaging in a secondary activity: an additional source of income can influence a farmer’s production decisions (ahmadzai, 2020). it may reduce the motivation to cultivate cajanus cajan by limiting the time available for farming or, conversely, enhance it by providing financial resources for greater investment in production. table 2 displays the specific variables and definitions. table 2. explanatory variables of the regression model. variables definition expected sign age of producer age of head of household. ± literacy in local language ability to read and write in the local language. (1=yes, 0=no) + level of formal the producer’s level of education. (1=yes, 0=no) + membership of a producer group affiliation with an agricultural organization. (1=yes, 0=no) + farm size total area of land available for agricultural production. + household size total number of people in the household. + engaging in a secondary activity participation in an income-generating activity outside agriculture. (1=yes, 0=no) ± 3. results 3.1. profile of respondents the analysis of the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents (table 3) shows that the majority (75%) are men, married (87.50%), without formal education (61.67%) or literacy in the local language (80.42%). only 39.58% belong to a producer group, and 26.25% have an activity outside agriculture. the respondents are, on average, 45 years old, with 22 years of agricultural experience and 7 years in the production of cajanus cajan. the average size of their arable land is 10.26 hectares, with 10 members per household. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 82-93 89 table 3. sociodemographic characteristics of respondents. qualitative variables response terms absolute frequency relative frequency (%) sex female 60 25.00 male 180 75.00 marital status bachelor 12 5.00 bride 210 87.50 divorced 4 1.67 widower 14 5.83 formal education no 148 61.67 yes 92 38.33 literacy in local language no 193 80.42 yes 47 19.58 membership of a group no 145 60.42 yes 95 39.58 engaging in a secondary activity no 177 73.75 yes 63 26.25 quantitative variables average standard deviation age 44.50 10.95 experience in agriculture 21.15 12.66 cajanus cajan production experience 6.60 7.31 total area available in ha 10.26 8.66 number of individuals in the household 9.33 7.21 3.2. reliability of motivation measurement scales the ten items to measure pull motivation show internal consistency greater than 0.70 (table 4). if one item is deleted, the alpha varies from 0.730 (pull4) to 0.803 (pull6). cronbach's alpha (α) for the entire subscale is 0.788, indicating strong internal consistency. for push motivation, the nine items also show internal consistency above 0.70. if one item is deleted, the alpha ranges from 0.835 (push9) to 0.877 (push6). cronbach's alpha (α) for the entire subscale is 0.870, indicating strong internal consistency. in summary, the motivation subscales exhibit high cronbach's alpha (α) values, suggesting that the items consistently measure motivational factors for cajanus cajan cultivation, thus ensuring the internal validity of the measures. 3.3. distribution of scores and motivation indices from the perspective of opportunities (table 4), the main factors motivating farmers to cultivate cajanus cajan are a high selling price (0.61), nutritional value (0.60), and high market demand (0.53). easy access to credit (0.07) and projects for this crop (0.13) contribute little to motivation. in terms of constraints, the most significant factors are household food requirements (0.77), declining soil fertility (0.57), and weeds and pests (0.53). government intervention on the prices of other crops (0.24) and climate variability (0.25) play a lesser role. the means of the pull, push, and global motivation indices are 0.39, 0.42, and 0.40, respectively (table 4). the difference in means between cmipull and cmipush, significant at 1%, indicates that farmers have more push motivation. this means that incentive constraints are stronger than opportunities. the results reveal an uneven distribution of motivation indices across the study areas (table 4). farmers in ouèssè exhibit the highest pull, push, and overall motivation indices, whereas those in bantè have the lowest. in bantè, the push motivation index exceeds the pull motivation index (0.29 versus 0.27), as is also the case in ouèssè (0.67 versus 0.57). in contrast, in glazoué, the pull motivation index surpasses the push motivation index (0.34 versus 0.29). these differences are statistically significant at the 1% level, indicating that in bantè and ouèssè, cajanus cajan cultivation is primarily driven by constraints, whereas in glazoué, it is more opportunity-driven. this trend may be linked to the presence of the international market in glazoué. 3.4. determinants of producer motivation pull motivation is correlated with push motivation (r=0.80) at the 1% threshold (table 5). the sure regression model is therefore appropriate to simultaneously identify the determinants of these motivations. the analyses show that the variations in the pull and push motivation indices are explained at 35.7% (adj_r2=0.357) by the explanatory variables of the model, with a significance at the 1% threshold. the explanatory variables explain 25.5% and 24% of the variations in pull and push motivation, respectively. both models are highly significant at 1%. the direction and significance level of the influences of the explanatory variables vary according to the equations. farmer age has a positive influence on the pull motivation index at the 5% level, indicating that as farmers grow older, their pull motivation for cultivating cajanus cajan increases. conversely, literacy in the local language has a negative effect on pull motivation at the 5% level and on push motivation at the 1% level, suggesting that literacy reduces the motivation to cultivate cajanus cajan. similarly, formal education significantly decreases both pull and push motivations at the 1% level. membership in a producer group enhances pull motivation at the 1% level. farm size is positively correlated with both pull and push motivation indices at the 1% level, indicating that a larger cultivable area increases motivation. lastly, household size positively affects push motivation at the 5% level, suggesting that larger households are more inclined toward push motivation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 82-93 90 table 4. reliability of scales and distribution of motivation indices. items alpha if item deleted cronbach's alpha (α) motivation score (mms) pull factors pull1 0.784 0.788 0.53 pull2 0.777 0.61 pull3 0.731 0.44 pull4 0.730 0.30 pull5 0.737 0.60 pull6 0.803 0.13 pull7 0.799 0.07 pull8 0.783 0.48 pull9 0.749 0.48 pull10 0.777 0.27 push factor push1 0.874 0.870 0.57 push2 0.845 0.25 push3 0.853 0.29 push4 0.865 0.42 push5 0.844 0.32 push6 0.877 0.77 push7 0.853 0.37 push8 0.851 0.53 push9 0.835 0.24 composite motivation index (cmi) study areas anova test together bantè glazoué ouèssè motivation pull 0.39 0.27 0.34 0.57 f=270.02*** motivation push 0.42 0.29 0.29 0.67 f=487.18*** overall motivation 0.40 0.28 0.31 0.62 f=546.04*** t-test (pull and push) t = -3.29*** note: *** significant at 1% (p ≤ 0.01). table 5. determinants of motivation to cultivate cajanus cajan. variables motivation pull motivation push coefficient sd coefficient sd age of producer 0.001** 0.008 0.001 0.01 literacy in local language -0.06** 0.03 -0.12*** 0.03 formal education -0.08*** 0.02 -0.09*** 0.03 membership of a producer group 0.08*** 0.02 0.04 0.03 farm size (cultivable area) 0.005*** 0.001 0.007*** 0.001 household size (number of individuals) 0.001 0.01 0.004** 0.001 engaging in a secondary activity -0.01 0.02 -0.01 0.03 constant 0.44*** 0.04 0.50*** 0.05 equation summary obs. 240 240 rsme 0.134 0.177 r square 0.255 0.240 chi2 82.42 75.96 probability *** *** correlation 0.806*** overall model summary r2 0.375 adj_r2 0.357 f 19,923 chi2 112,968 probability *** note: *** significant at 1% (p ≤ 0.01); ** significant at 5% (0.01 < p ≤ 0.05). 4. discussion the study shows that push motivation is significantly higher than pull motivation, indicating that incentive constraints are more important than opportunities for cajanus cajan production. factors such as the need to meet household food requirements and address agronomic challenges, including declining soil fertility, weed proliferation, and pest infestations, are the primary reasons for growing cajanus cajan. in contrast, market opportunities, such as high selling prices and strong demand, play a secondary role. these findings confirm that, in developing countries, farmers are often motivated by necessity rather than opportunity. in benin and zimbabwe, farmers adopt practices to meet urgent needs (masere & worth, 2022; thoto et al., 2024), while in tanzania, they focus on opportunities for cost reduction and market access (sariah & mmbando, 2022). furthermore, larweh and abukari (2022) note that farmers act out of both necessity and opportunity. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 82-93 91 the analyses show the influence of the socio-demographic characteristics of the producers on their motivation. among others, the increase in the age of the farmer enhances his opportunistic motivation to cultivate cajanus cajan. this finding is similar to that of moumenihelali, abbasi, and karbasioun (2023) regarding older farmers motivated by pluriactivity in rice farming in mazandaran, iran. this suggests that aging farmers see their motivations evolve towards personal aspirations and growth opportunities. in contrast, maican et al. (2021) indicate that young farmers are motivated by economic opportunities and individual development. furthermore, local language literacy and formal education can reduce farmers’ motivation to cultivate cajanus cajan by exposing them to more lucrative economic alternatives and changing their aspirations towards activities perceived as more prestigious (marpaung, aureli, & cahya, 2024). membership in a producer group improves pull motivation by providing better access to information and training (kindemin et al., 2023). increasing the area of arable land enhances pull and push motivation by allowing for larger-scale production and crop diversification, which increases profit opportunities and resilience (vernooy, 2022). finally, a larger household, requiring more resources, positively influences push motivation, increasing production to ensure food security and family well-being, with additional labor facilitating the intensification of cajanus cajan production (hardev, 2016). 5. conclusion this study examined the motivations of cajanus cajan producers by assessing various incentive factors, categorized into pull and push factors. the motivation indices reveal that push motivation, driven by constraints such as high household food needs, declining soil fertility, and the prevalence of weeds and pests, is stronger than pull motivation, which is linked to opportunities like high selling prices and the crop’s nutritional value. the predominance of push motivation suggests that farmers cultivate cajanus cajan primarily out of necessity rather than by choice, indicating limited awareness of the potential benefits associated with this crop. age, farm size, and household size positively influence farmers’ motivation to cultivate cajanus cajan, whereas literacy in the local language and formal education level have a negative effect. these findings provide valuable insights for optimizing cajanus cajan production in benin. by considering farmers’ diverse motivations and adapting interventions to local contexts, policymakers can develop more effective strategies to support producers, enhance food security, and promote the crop’s value. increasing awareness of cajanus cajan's benefits could strengthen farmers’ pull motivation. additionally, creating attractive economic opportunities, such as improving access to credit and developing promotional initiatives, could encourage young farmers and those with higher education levels to adopt this crop. this study primarily relies on self-reported, cross-sectional data, offering an initial analysis of farmers' motivations. a longitudinal approach would provide deeper insights into how motivations evolve over time. future research should also examine market dynamics and cajanus cajan’s value chains to identify opportunities for value addition, enhance profitability for producers, and facilitate its integration into sustainable agricultural systems. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the vice-rectorate in charge of scientific research of the university of parakou, benin has granted approval for this study on february 27, 2025 (ref. no.: 050-2025/up/r/vr-ru/sa). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references ahmadzai, h. 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(2024). real-time bus arrival delays analysis using seemingly unrelated regression model. transportation. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-024-10507-3 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.59059/jpmis.v3i3.1664 http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/105.00000098 https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.29.2004.4.171-177 https://doi.org/10.21618/fil2225086p https://doi.org/10.1079/9781789245745.0017 https://doi.org/10.21608/azeng.2022.252902 https://doi.org/10.12775/eq.2023.037 http://dx.doi.org/10.35716/ijed/20064 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2008.03.016 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.10.028 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-016-9602-2 https://doi.org/10.1080/15228916.2023.2209496 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2024.12.042 https://doi.org/10.1080/21683565.2022.2076184 https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14380 https://doi.org/10.54254/2753-7064/40/20242333 https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture10110558 https://doi.org/10.1515/opag-2019-0046 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-019-00864-9 https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijaas.20220806.18 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-024-10507-3 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 252 why indonesia's garlic self-sufficiency program failed? anas zainia idiatul fitri danasarib aagricultural policy science, university of mataram, mataram, indonesia. bfaculty of agriculture, university of mataram, mataram, indonesia.  anzaekopol@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 23 april 2024 revised: 29 may 2025 accepted: 9 june 2025 published: 18 june 2025 keywords east lombok exit garlic loyalty neglect self-sufficiency voice. this research provides insights into the ongoing failure of indonesia’s garlic self-sufficiency program. despite the implementation of various initiatives, the program has consistently failed to achieve its objectives. the study was conducted in east lombok regency, one of the main centers for garlic development in indonesia. using the exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect (evln) model, the research uncovers the root causes of the program's failure from the farmers’ perspective. a total of 45 farmers participated as respondents, including importer partner farmers, government assistance recipients, and independent farmers. the findings reveal that most farmers are dissatisfied with the program’s implementation, causing them to take passive and destructive responses. this dissatisfaction is primarily due to the inadequate provision of production facilities both in terms of quantity, quality, and delivery timing. furthermore, ineffective import quota arrangements in terms of quantity and timing have suppressed the selling price of garlic for farmers at harvest time, while production costs are relatively high, especially for quality seeds and fertilizers. to address these issues, the program must be improved by ensuring timely, sufficient, and high-quality support for production facilities. moreover, more effective import quota management is essential to stabilize prices and ensure fair profits for garlic farmers. contribution/originality: the contribution of this study is that garlic farmers' dissatisfaction with the government's self-sufficiency program has led to passive and destructive attitudes, such as reducing planting areas, minimizing crop maintenance, and some farmers even stopping garlic cultivation. these farmers' behaviors result in decreased production and a failure to achieve self-sufficiency. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5414 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: zaini, a., & danasari, i. f. (2025). why indonesia’s garlic self-sufficiency program failed? asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 252–259. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction garlic is a strategically important food commodity in indonesian cuisine and plays a crucial role in the country's agricultural economy (kiloes et al., 2024). beyond its use as a fresh cooking ingredient, garlic possesses a wide range of scientifically proven health benefits. numerous studies have demonstrated that garlic exhibits antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal, antiparasitic, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, cardioprotective, hepatoprotective, neuroprotective, anticancer, antidiabetic, and immunomodulatory properties (bayan et al., 2014; koca et al., 2015; kopec et al., 2013; asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 252-259 mailto:anzaekopol@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7618-6943 https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4659-7939 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5414 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 252-259 253 melguizo-rodríguez et al., 2022; shang et al., 2019). this makes garlic a potential ingredient for the development of the pharmaceutical, supplement, and functional food industries in indonesia. additionally, garlic also has potential in the aquaculture industry (bayan et al., 2014; melguizo-rodríguez et al., 2022; zhao et al., 2021). research shows that garlic can be used as a natural alternative to antibiotics in fish farming, helping to increase growth and fight disease in various aquaculture species (mukherjee et al., 2020; valenzuela-gutiérrez et al., 2021). this can support the development of a sustainable fisheries industry in indonesia (kiloes et al., 2024). thus, garlic is not only important as a food commodity but also has significant economic potential in the health, pharmaceutical, and aquaculture industries. the development and optimal utilization of garlic's potential can provide economic added value for indonesia, in addition to its role in suppressing the inflation rate. the high demand for garlic in indonesia, both for household consumption and industrial raw materials, has made this commodity an important element in the national economy (mar’atusholikha et al., 2019). however, despite these significant benefits, almost all domestic garlic consumption in indonesia is met through imports. as the world's largest importer of garlic, where more than 95% of domestic consumption is met through imports, indonesia is in a very risky situation. this is because the production and trade of garlic worldwide are highly dependent on one country. china controls around 86% of the world's garlic production and trade, where almost all of indonesia's consumption needs are dependent (table 1). table 1. indonesia’s import of garlic during 2017-2023. year total import (tonnes) import from china (tonnes) (%) 2017 549,767 541,235 98.4 2018 582,995 580,846 99.6 2019*) 513,504 513,504 100.0 2020 587,748 587,748 100.0 2021 602,977 602,977 100.0 2022 566,176 566,176 100.0 2023 564,114 564,114 100.0 note: *) imputed value. source: food and agriculture organization [fao] (2025). thus, if there is a production failure in china or other reasons that result in a decrease in global supply, it will impact the price stability in indonesia's domestic market because garlic is one of the strategic food commodities that contribute to inflation (zaini et al., 2024). based on table 1, it is evident that indonesia has long lacked self-sufficiency in the garlic commodity. to address this issue, the indonesian government has initiated a garlic development program aimed at achieving self-sufficiency through increased production and expanded planting areas (mar’atusholikha et al., 2019). this ambitious program, outlined in the ministry of agriculture regulation no. 46/2019, requires the coordinated efforts of multiple stakeholders, each playing a crucial role in achieving the desired outcome. these stakeholders include the central government, provincial governments, district governments, garlic importing businesses, and local farmers. however, the desired self-sufficiency in 2019 was not realized, even though the target time for achievement has been shifted to 2021 and finally 2024. therefore, this paper provides insights into the failure of indonesia's garlic self-sufficiency program using a case study of the implementation of the self-sufficiency program in east lombok regency, west nusa tenggara province, which is one of the main garlic production centers in indonesia. to date, no scientific studies have been found that uncover the causes behind the failure of the garlic selfsufficiency program, except for some magazine or newspaper reports (tempo, 2020). additionally, this research applies the exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect (evln) model to agricultural policies, which have not been widely used. 2. material and method 2.1. exit, voice, and loyalty (evl) model the evl model was first introduced by hirschman (1970) to understand how organizations respond to declining performance, and continues to be a relevant framework for analyzing the individual and collective responses to various challenges in social and economic systems. when individuals or entities perceive a deterioration in their work environment or organizational effectiveness, they typically react in ways intended to maximize their benefits or mitigate potential losses (dowding et al., 2000; udechukwu et al., 2007; withey et al., 1989). these reactions can be categorized into three distinct strategies: exit, voice, and loyalty (lassalle, 2020). the framework of exit, voice, and loyalty provides a lens through which to understand the reactions of individuals or communities when confronted with deteriorating performance in economic, social, or political systems. individuals, firms, or organizations typically respond to worsening work conditions or environments in ways that maximize their expected benefits from their activities (managanta et al., 2022). this model, initially conceived to explain employee responses to adverse working conditions within companies, has found broader applicability across diverse contexts (dowding et al., 2000). the exit, voice, and loyalty model, as a seminal framework, posits that individuals encountering decline in an organization, system, or relationship have three primary options: exit, voice, or loyalty. exit, as a response, embodies the act of withdrawing or disengaging from a deteriorating situation, which could manifest as an employee leaving a company, a customer switching to a competitor, or a citizen emigrating from a country (gehlbach, 2006). voice, in contrast, represents an active and constructive response, where individuals express their concerns, suggestions, or grievances in an attempt to improve the situation from within (managanta et al., 2022). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 252-259 254 this can take the form of employees speaking up to management, customers providing feedback to a company, or citizens engaging in political activism to influence policy (botha et al., 2023). loyalty, the third option, signifies a passive and enduring commitment to the organization or system, even in the face of decline (huang et al., 2005). in subsequent iterations, the evl framework has been expanded to include neglect as an additional response when confronting diminishing performance (naus et al., 2007). individuals who exhibit neglect demonstrate a decrease in engagement and effort, frequently resulting in further deterioration of organizational outcomes (wahlberg et al., 2017). thus, the evl model becomes the evln model. the evln model can also be applied to the agricultural sector, where farmers may exhibit dissatisfaction with government policies or programs. farmers who are dissatisfied may choose to exit such programs or redirect their resources to alternative enterprises, such as diversifying their crop production or seeking new marketing channels (birthal et al., 2020). conversely, loyal farmers may continue to participate in government programs despite shortcomings, perhaps due to habit, a lack of alternative options, or a belief in the potential for future improvement (eidt et al., 2020). some farmers may also voice their concerns to policymakers or engage in collective action to advocate for changes to existing programs and policies that would better address their needs and challenges. some indifferent farmers may neglect their crops by minimally caring for them to reduce costs (diao et al., 2023). the farmers' responses can then be characterized into two-dimensional categories, namely active/passive and constructive/destructive, as shown in the following table 2 (robbins et al., 2018). table 2. responses to dissatisfaction into two dimensional categories. dimensional categories constructive destructive active voice exit passive loyalty neglect although the application of the evln model in the context of socioeconomic studies of farmers is relatively rare, this model offers a comprehensive framework to understand farmers' responses to various challenges and changes in the agricultural system (martin et al., 2018). the evln model, originally developed in organizational behavior studies, provides a useful lens to analyze how farmers react to dissatisfaction or changes in their socioeconomic conditions (rahmawati et al., 2024). therefore, further exploration is needed on how the evln model can be adapted and applied in the agricultural context to provide deeper insights into farmers' behavior in facing changes in socioeconomic conditions. for example, when farmers face a decline in commodity prices, an increase in production costs, or changes in agricultural policies, they may respond in various ways reflected in the four evln dimensions (ashari et al., 2020). in the context of farmers' socioeconomic conditions, a deep understanding of the factors influencing farmers' response choices is crucial for designing effective policies and programs. factors such as farmer characteristics, farm conditions, institutional factors, and attributes of agricultural technology can influence farmers' decisions to adopt exit, voice, loyalty, or neglect strategies (suprehatin, 2021). for example, farmers with limited resources and low access to information may be more likely to choose a neglect strategy because they feel they lack the capacity to make changes (wahyuni et al., 2021). meanwhile, farmers with strong social capital and extensive networks may be more active in voicing their interests through a voice strategy (managanta et al., 2022; suharti et al., 2023). it is also important to consider how technological innovation can influence farmers' responses within the evln framework (swastika et al., 2020). in this study, the four responses or attitudes of farmers towards the garlic development policy are defined as: exit the farmer's response to stop or plan not to plant garlic again in the next season. voice the active response of farmers by conveying opinions or constructive protests to stakeholders about the difficulties experienced by garlic farmers. loyalty the farmer's response by continuing to plant and maintain garlic plants without any action to protest the situation, but optimistic that in the future the conditions will improve on their own. neglect the apathetic response of farmers to the situation they face, such as reducing the planting area of garlic or performing minimal plant care. 2.2. sample the respondents in this study were farmers who had previously or were currently growing garlic in the 20212023 planting season, either independently or in partnership with importers. the number of respondents was set at a quota of 45 people, comprising importer-partner farmers, government assistance recipients, and independent farmers. the importer-partner farmer respondents were selected using data from farmers surveyed in the 2022 planting season, enabling the identification of changes in responses by comparing with previous data. government assistance recipient farmer respondents were determined through simple random sampling from the group of recipient farmers, while independent or self-supporting farmers were selected by accidental sampling due to the unavailability of a suitable sampling frame. 2.3. data analysis the collected data were analyzed using thematic analysis for qualitative data combined with cross-tabulation between the level of sustainability of the garlic development program in the rows and farmers' responses to program implementation in the columns. this was performed using software tools spss (statistical package for the social sciences) to assess the significance of the findings and to support the conclusions drawn from the data. analysis of the association between variables was done by examining the statistical value of fisher's exact test. fisher's exact test is particularly useful for small sample sizes or when expected cell frequencies are low, providing an exact calculation of the probability of obtaining the observed results. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 252-259 255 3. result and discussion 3.1. respondent characteristics on average, the respondent farmers were 41 years old, with the youngest garlic farmer being 22 years old and the oldest being 70 years old. they had approximately 22 years of farming experience, with the shortest experience being 2 years and the longest being 50 years. however, in terms of experience in garlic cultivation, farmers had generally been involved for about 20 years, ranging from 1 to 50 years. more details on the characteristics of the respondents are presented in table 3. the land ownership among the farmers is unequal, with the smallest plot being 4 are and the largest 8 hectares. on average, the farmers control approximately 0.94 hectares of land. within their landholdings, around 36 percent is dedicated to garlic cultivation, which yields a productivity of 11.4 tons per hectare. the majority of the land is utilized for growing other horticultural crops, such as chili peppers, tomatoes, cabbages, shallots, spring onions, eggplants, green beans, carrots, potatoes, and strawberries. this diversification reflects the farmers’ familiarity with mitigating farming risks. the selling price of garlic received by the farmers fluctuates significantly, ranging from idr 4,000 to idr 16,000 per kilogram of fresh bulbs. furthermore, most garlic farmers benefit from government or importer-provided production inputs as part of the mandatory 5 percent planting program for the garlic development initiative aimed at achieving self-sufficiency. this assistance encompasses the provision of mulch, seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. table 3. characteristics of farmers and garlic farming. characteristics n minimum maximum mean age (year) 45 22 70 41.02 farming experience (year) 45 2 50 22.11 experience in garlic farming (year) 45 1 50 19.78 land size (are) 45 4 800 94.11 land used for garlic farming (are) 45 1 300 34.42 production (kg) 45 200 15,000 2,646.67 price (idr/kg) 45 4,000 16,000 9,288.89 valid n (listwise) 45 3.2. farmers' response to the garlic development program in this section, farmers were asked whether they were satisfied with the garlic development program they were participating in. based on the responses obtained, it was found that only a small proportion of the farmers, amounting to 4%, expressed satisfaction with the ongoing garlic development program in which they were involved. in contrast, the majority (96%) conveyed a sense of dissatisfaction. the primary source of this dissatisfaction stemmed from the low selling prices received by farmers during the harvest period, while the production costs incurred remained relatively high, especially for seeds and fertilizers (danasari et al., 2023). the dissatisfaction was also related to the production inputs assistance due to the inaccuracy in quantity and quality, especially for seed. this unfavorable situation was further exacerbated by delays in the provision of seed assistance by the government or partner importers, which compelled farmers to undertake planting activities during the rainy season. this, in turn, led to the increased susceptibility of their crops to pest and disease infestations. additionally, conducting planting operations during the rainy season resulted in a rise in labor costs at every stage of the planting and maintenance processes (zaini et al., 2021). finally, the government's policy of frequently and inconsistently opening the import tap before the harvest or allowing for increased import quotas contributed to a collapse in the selling price of the garlic produced by the farmers (tempo, 2023). in response to these unsatisfactory conditions, the farmers exhibited varied responses, but the majority adopted a neglect attitude (figure 1). figure 1. quadrant of farmer responses in the constructive/destructive and active/passive dimensions. note: the numbers in parentheses represent the percentage of respondents. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 252-259 256 according to the response dimensions, as outlined by farrell & rusbult (1985), around 65 percent of farmers exhibited a destructive attitude (exit and neglect), while only 35 percent demonstrated a constructive approach (voice and loyalty) towards the challenges they faced in garlic farming. many farmers who have adopted a destructive attitude towards the program have led to a decrease in the planting area and production of garlic, as a result of farmers who no longer grow garlic (exit) and those who have reduced their planting area or are performing minimal plant care (neglect). the high proportion of farmers with a destructive mindset was primarily due to the government’s perceived inconsistent policies in restricting garlic imports, which resulted in a sharp drop in the selling prices for farmers during harvest. this was clearly evident when the ministry of trade liberalized garlic imports in 2020, causing significant losses for all garlic farmers. as one farmer stated, “garlic prices have plummeted since the covid-19 pandemic. previously, the price at the farm level could reach idr 15,000/kg, but during the pandemic, it has fallen to between idr 5,000 and idr 7,000/kg.” the dramatic decline in garlic prices faced by farmers was not confined to the study location but rather occurred throughout indonesia due to the improper management of imports. this disappointment has driven farmers to adopt a passive attitude towards the development of garlic (wahyuni et al., 2021). figure 2. trends in garlic production and harvested area in east lombok regency from 2013 to 2023. note: 1 quintal = 0,1 ton sources: ntb satu data (2024) based on the active/passive dimension, it appears that the majority of farmers (more than 75%) have a passive attitude towards the implementation of the garlic development program (neglect and loyalty). this explains why garlic production and harvested area in east lombok regency have tended to decline in the last five years, despite efforts of the national garlic development program (figure 2). even if there is a slight increase in production and harvested area between 2022 and 2023, it is the impact of the upland project, which includes the development of garlic that actually grows in the highlands in its program. this project also provides production facilities and purchases the harvest of garlic from participating farmers (zaini et al., 2025). this passive response is evident from the farmers' attitude of minimally caring for the plants to reduce production costs. the farmers who exhibit a neglectful attitude (44.4%) are those who grow garlic by relying on the assistance of various production facilities such as mulch, seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides from the garlic development program in order to achieve self-sufficiency. 3.3. implications of farmers' attitudes towards achieving self-sufficiency program garlic self-sufficiency will be achieved if farmers, as the frontline actors in increasing production and cultivated area, perceive garlic development as highly sustainable, given the significant dependence on imported garlic. previous studies on the sustainability of garlic development in east lombok regency, based on farmers' subjective perceptions, indicated a low level of sustainability (zaini et al., 2024). therefore, this section presents a cross-tabulation analysis of farmers' responses to the unsatisfactory condition of garlic farming and the degree of sustainable development. the analysis results can be useful for program improvement. the cross-tabulation analysis showed that the majority of farmers (77.8%) assessed the sustainability of garlic development as low, based on the level of the sustainability index category, and only 22.2% rated it as moderate (table 4). this reflects a substantial gap between program goals and farmer perceptions (mar’atusholikha et al., 2019). table 4. cross-tabulation between farmer response and sustainability of garlic farming. sustainability level (si) evln total exit voice loyalty neglect si low count 8 0 13 14 35 % of total 17.8% 0.0% 28.9% 31.1% 77.8% moderate count 1 2 1 6 10 % of total 2.2% 4.4% 2.2% 13.3% 22.2% total count 9 2 14 20 45 % of total 20.0% 4.4% 31.1% 44.4% 100.0% 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 140,000 160,000 180,000 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1,400 1,600 1,800 2,000 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023 2025 p ro d u ct io n h ar v es t ar ea year harvest area (ha) production (quintal) asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 252-259 257 the next crucial step is to investigate whether the perspectives and behaviors of farmers are linked to the continued feasibility of self-sufficiency initiatives. to rigorously assess this relationship, fisher's exact test (table 5), a statistical method particularly suited for small sample sizes and categorical data, was employed (coulibaly et al., 2021). the decision to use fisher's exact test stemmed from the presence of a cell with a zero value within the observational data, which violates the assumptions of other association tests like the chi-square test (nnodim et al., 2020). table 5 shows that the probability value obtained from fisher's exact test is 0.03, which is less than the 5% confidence level. it means there is a strong association between farmers' responses to the unsatisfactory condition of garlic farming and the degree of development sustainability. therefore, in order for garlic development to achieve a high level of sustainability and attain self-sufficiency, farmer dissatisfaction must be eliminated so that farmers adopt a constructive and active attitude. the current situation is that farmers have a destructive and passive attitude towards the garlic development program. table 5. results of the chi-square and fisher's exact tests between farmer responses and the sustainability level of garlic farming. statistical tests value df asymptotic significance (2-sided) exact sig. (2-sided) pearson chi-square 10.185a 3 0.017 0.016 likelihood ratio 9.755 3 0.021 0.030 fisher's exact test 7.998 0.030 n of valid cases 45 note: a. 5 cells (62.5%) have expected count less than 5. the minimum expected count is 0.44. 4. conclusion and recommendation the majority of garlic farmers (96%) stated that they were dissatisfied with the implementation of the selfsufficiency program. this dissatisfaction was related to pre-harvest conditions, such as providing production facilities that were not timely, in the right quantity, and of good quality, which could reduce production and increase costs. additionally, improper import quota arrangements have created poor post-harvest conditions, including low selling prices for the garlic produced by farmers, while production costs remain relatively high. these two unfavorable conditions have caused farmers to adopt a passive and destructive attitude towards the development of garlic, which in turn affects the sustainability of the development program. the results of fisher's exact test analysis indicate a relationship between farmers' responses to these unsatisfactory conditions and the level of sustainability of garlic cultivation business development. therefore, it is necessary to improve the program to create satisfactory pre-harvest and post-harvest conditions, encouraging farmers to take an active and constructive stance. provision of production facilities must be timely, in the right quantity, and of good quality, as well as implementing effective trade (import) arrangements to establish profitable domestic garlic prices for farmers. funding: this research is supported by the research and community service institute and faculty of agriculture, university of mataram, indonesia (grant numbers: 2749/un18.l1/pp/2020; 1538/un18.l1/pp/2022; and 1643/un18.l1/pp/2023). institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the university of mataram, indonesia, approved this study on 9 may 2022 (ref. no. 1538/un18.l1/pp/2022) and approved a subsequent protocol amendment on 27 february 2023 (ref. no. 1643/un18.l1/pp/2023). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references ashari, a. p., hardiyono, h., & aswar, n. f. 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(2021). evaluation of degradation of pigments formed during garlic discoloration in different ph. food research international, 140, 109957. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodres.2020.109957 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.29303/jppipa.v10i9.9340 https://doi.org/10.29303/agrimansion.v22i3.707 https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/1471/1/012041 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodres.2020.109957 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 379 climate change-induced conflicts in rural nigeria: experience from herder-arable crop farmers in selected rural communities of ekiti state isaac busayo oluwatayoa olaniyi oluwatosin ojob adepartment of agricultural economics and agribusiness, university of venda, thohoyandou 0950, south africa. bbamidele olumilua university of education, science and technology, ekiti state, nigeria.  isaac.oluwatayo@univen.ac.za (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 9 april 2025 revised: 27 june 2025 accepted: 17 july 2025 published: 6 august 2025 keywords arable crop farmers conflict determinants ekiti state herder livelihood rural nigeria. the problem of climate change is multidimensional, especially in countries where the capacity to cope with shocks is limited. this is further aggravated by socioeconomic conditions, limited buffer stock and insurance, poor credit markets, and an unstable macroeconomic environment. while arable crop farmers in rural nigeria thrive on proceeds from farming activities, the incessant herder-arable crop farmer conflict exacerbated by climate change has brought untold hardship to these farmers. the study examined determinants of herder-arable crop farmer conflicts in selected rural communities of ekiti state, nigeria. data were collected from a random sample of 220 smallholder farmers via a multistage random sampling technique. analytical tools employed include descriptive statistics and a probit regression model. a descriptive analysis of respondents’ socioeconomic characteristics revealed their average age and household size to be 56 years and 4 members, respectively. respondents’ distribution by educational level showed that one-third of them (68.5%) had less than secondary education, with 73.2% having no access to credit. herder-arable crop farmer conflict determinants include age, years of schooling, farming experience, credit access, planting time, extension contacts, and farm location, among others. the findings have implications for food security, employment, investment drive, rural-urban drift, and security in the study area. contribution/originality: this paper highlights several key enablers of herder-arable crop farmer conflict in ekiti state, nigeria. this is an incessant issue that impacts food security and other aspects of the lives of those living in rural nigeria. some of the findings have implications for welfare programs and developmental initiatives of relevant stakeholders. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5514 issn(p): 2304-1455/issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: oluwatayo, i. b., & ojo, o. o. (2025). climate change-induced conflicts in rural nigeria: experience from herder-arable crop farmers in selected rural communities of ekiti state. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3), 379–386. 10.55493/5005.v15i3.5514 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the ongoing conflict between herders and smallholder arable crop farmers is a significant economic and environmental issue in nigeria (tenuche & ifatimehin, 2009). this is because it has grave consequences for asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 3 (2025): 379-386 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i3.5514 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8649-2557 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7303-5704 mailto:isaac.oluwatayo@univen.ac.za asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 379-386 380 household livelihoods, food security, and community development. generally, there is no economy that can grow where there is conflict. conflict is a situation in which two or more parties strive to acquire the same scarce resources at the same time (swanstrom & weissman, 2009). however, conflicts are based on perceptions, that is, incompatibility in the behavior of parties whose perceptions and interests differ (ofuoke & isife, 2010). a conflict can be further defined as a situation in which a party has been negatively affected or frustrated, or is about to negatively affect or frustrate something the first party considers important (vestegaard, helvard, & sorensen, 2011). ekong (2003) noted that conflicts have two outcomes: positive and negative. it is not a win-win situation, as it brings to the fore nagging issues in society. thus, conflicts lead to critical problem identification, which is the first condition for solving problems. in conflicts, group cohesion and solidarity abound, and such strengths can be put into positive and productive use for community development. moreover, two dissenting views exist in the literature concerning the activities of herders in nigeria. some studies have identified herders as emerging terrorist groups (institute for economics and peace, 2016; ogebe, 2016; omilusi, 2016). others view herder-crop farmers’ conflict as a purely “resource-scarcity” driven issue and climate change as a contributing factor (olayoku, 2014). whichever standpoint is adopted, conflict between herders and agrarian communities or crop farmers undermines food security and the well-being of affected households. in addition to feeding on crops, livestock compete with local communities for water, as streams and rivers provide the majority of the water consumed locally. the competition perceived as parasitic has generated negative feelings and aggressive tendencies between herders and crop farmers (audu, 2014; okoli & atelhe, 2014). for example, fulani herdsmen have been named the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world (institute for economics and peace, 2016). fulani herdsmen and boko haram terrorists accounted for 7,512 fatalities from terrorist attacks in 2014 (institute for economics and peace, 2016). the conflict has claimed many lives, with 7,000 persons displaced in benue as of february 2016 (vanguard, 2016). similarly, an amnesty international report indicated that 168 people were killed as a result of farmer–herder clashes, whereas 18,000 were displaced, with some who were landowners becoming tenants in internally displaced persons camps (udosen, 2021). according to omilusi (2016), there are social, political, and ecological conflicts between fulani herdsmen and crop farmers. pastoral development in nigeria is characterized by several environmental limitations, such as drought, resulting in grass shortages, water scarcity, pest infestations, diseases, and climatic factors (adebayo & olaniyi, 2008). while crop farmers need water and land for their production (oladele & oladele, 2011), pastoralists require water and vegetation at the right time, quantity and quality, hence causing conflicts (audu, 2014; oladele & oladele, 2011). the most frequent cause of conflicts, according to the literature, results from crop damage caused by animals belonging to herders. conflicts have arisen from encroachment along cattle routes, water points, and sometimes the grazing of harvested crops (balogun, 2008). it has also been reported that farmers deliberately cultivate cattle routes to serve as baits for herdsmen to foment trouble. accusing fingers are usually pointed at herders, as they are linked to crop destruction without the loss of livestock. the frequent clashes between herders and crop farmers have resulted in welfare losses. in other words, while herders allow their animals to graze on farmlands, the farmers are frustrated by resisting the animals' entry into farms, killing or stealing cattle, or poisoning them (okeke, 2014; omilusi, 2016). the herders consequently carry out reprisal attacks, claiming lives, property, and communities. conflict has become a national issue, as it was previously confined to the north central part of nigeria, especially benue, plateau, kaduna, and nassarawa. the conflicts have spread to oyo, ekiti, ondo, and other states in the southwest and southeast regions of the country (omilusi, 2016). herders’ attacks are characterized by violence, kidnapping, armed robbery, murder, and rape. the number of lives claimed by herders is enormous, forcing smallholder farmers producing food for the growing population to abandon farming because their lives are at risk (institute for economics and peace, 2015; omilusi, 2016). between 1997 and 2015, 461 reported that attacks left thousands of people dead and displaced more (sbm intelligence, 2016). in 2016 alone, there were twenty-one attacks, with the number of victims ranging from 526-820 (sbm intelligence, 2016). additionally, the tragedy of the commons and resource-induced contestation between herders and farmers resulted in an estimated 1,868 lives in nigeria in 2018 (acled, 2019). approximately 26% of terror-related deaths in 2019 were linked to fulani extremists' attacks on their victims (institute for economics and peace, 2020). since 2011, approximately 60,000 people have been killed during nomad-farmer conflicts in the country (institute for economics and peace, 2020). 2. theoretical underpinning and literature review we attempt here to link two important strands of literature that are key in discussing other-herder conflicts: ecoscarcity and frustration and aggression. we link the two strands to provide insights into how transhumance, influenced by climate change, results in conflict with farmers. the ecoscarcity theory of homer-dixon (1999) and the frustration and aggression theory of dollard, miller, dool, mowrer, and sears (1939) are very influential in the natural resource conflict debate, which is usually linked to climate change. according to tadess and dereje (2018), climate change is viewed as a long-term and significant change in the expected patterns of a particular location’s average weather conditions for a period of time (usually 30 years) due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases (co2, ch4 and no2) in the atmosphere, leading to global warming. the consequences of global warming include increased runoff, changes in water quality, rising temperatures (institute for economics and peace, 2020), severe drought and resource-induced competition, decreasing vegetation cover, and desertification in the sahel savannah, resulting in the transmigration of herders (onuh, 2023). migration to other regions with relatively favorable weather conditions caused by climate change is usually associated with conflicts and tensions resulting from competition between herders and farmers created by the overstocking of herds beyond the carrying capacity of arable land (olaniyan, francis, & okeke-uzodike, 2015; onuh, 2023). the inadequacy of resources to sustain herders’ livelihoods leads to frustration among herders, whose cattle graze indiscriminately on both noncrops and crops along their grazing routes. the indiscriminate grazing of cattle asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 379-386 381 on crops results in frustration among farmers, who in turn display aggression by attacking destructive cattle. the attack on herders’ cattle leads to herders’ aggression, who also usually embark on a reprisal attack on the farmers, setting in motion a cycle of conflict (olaniyan et al., 2015). a review of the relevant literature that has attempted to link farmer–herder conflicts with climate change reveals mixed findings. while some studies indicate that variations in climatic conditions influence farmer–herder conflicts, others have not linked farmer–herder conflicts to climate change. a study conducted by otaida and yusufu (2022), which investigated climate change, farmer-herder conflict and security challenges in benue state, nigeria, revealed that a significant relationship exists between climate change and farmer-herder conflict. similarly, effevottu and ihuoma (2019) examined the nexus between climate change and conflict among farmers and herdsmen in nigeria by adopting historical research methods and drawing data primarily from secondary sources such as books, journal articles, and internet sources. their findings revealed that climate change and its underlying implications are the root causes of conflicts between farmers and herders in nigeria. similarly, suleiman and salisu (2022) investigated the effects of climate change-induced farmer–herder conflicts on the socioeconomic development of farmers in the giwa local government area of kaduna state, nigeria, by employing descriptive statistics to analyse the data collected. the results from the study revealed that climate change consequences such as irregular rainfall, increased temperatures/high incidence of sunshine, high livestock mortality, decreased crop yields, and increased incidence of drought-induced conflicts between farmers and herders negatively impacted the socioeconomic development of both farmers and herders. olaniyan et al. (2015), in their efforts to situate farmer-herder conflicts in a real context, conducted a study entitled “the cattle are “ghanaians,” but the herders are strangers: farmer-herder conflicts, expulsion policy, and pastoralist questions in agogo, ghana.” they collected data through unstructured interviews, participant observations, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions. the study's findings indicate that while climate change is leading to or contributing to conflict, it should not be seen as a direct cause, as climate change-linked conflict is building on existing relationships. sarkin (2022) conducted a study on the implications of herdsmen and farmers' conflict on food security in doma local government area of nasarawa state, nigeria, using both quantitative and qualitative data. while the quantitative data were analyzed through univariate analysis, the qualitative data were transcribed verbatim into english. the study concluded that the farmer–herder conflict has been exacerbated by the global trend of climate change, which has led to the shrinking of ecological space and resources, resulting in increased pressure on and competition for available resources. ufuoma, adewale, and ibrahim (2021) reported no evidence of a significant relationship between conflicts and desertification (a climate change indicator) in nigeria. similarly, umale (2023) used autoregressive distributed lag methodology to examine the influence of climate change (proxied by the carbon dioxide equivalent) and herder– farmer conflict (dummy variable) on food security, proxied by crop and livestock production. he investigated whether climate change is the cause of the intense conflict between herders and farmers experienced in recent years in nigeria. he reported that climate change does not cause herder–farmer conflict in nigeria. 3. methodology 3.1. study area the study was conducted in selected rural communities of ekiti state, where herder–farmers’ conflict is prevalent. ekiti state is one of the six states in the six geopolitical zones of southwest nigeria. the southwest region is primarily agrarian, except for lagos, ogun, and oyo states, which have several industrial hubs. agriculture significantly contributes to the region's economy, providing employment for more than three-quarters of the residents. it predominantly sustains the livelihoods of the majority of people living in ekiti state, many of whom are smallholder arable crop farmers growing yams, cassava, maize, rice, vegetables, and other staple crops. figure 1 illustrates the different local government areas in ekiti state, including the areas where data were collected. figure 1. downloadable free ekiti state map google search. source: salau, ewumi, owolabi, ajayi, and ajayi (2016) on regional distribution of malaria in ekiti state, nigeria. https://www.google.com/search?q=downloadable+free+ekiti+state+map&sca_esv=b51f433a1d832308&sca_upv=1&source=hp&ei=peg0zphpe-yi7nypxzkw0ao&iflsig=anes7deaaaaazjt2tuwnmhf_qfcxlbyiqkn_mwvzgxu2&ved=0ahukewjrz5kxzfgfaxvsbnsehuwjbaoq4dudca0&uact=5&oq=downloadable+free+ekiti+state+map&gs_lp=egdnd3mtd2l6iifeb3dubg9hzgfibgugznjlzsbfa2l0asbtdgf0zsbtyxaycbaagiaegkiemggqabiabbiibeild1aaworvcab4ajabajgbqwogadtmqgeimi0ync42ljo4aqpiaqd4aqgyah6gavlgwgileaaygaqykqiyigxcahcqlhiabbirahixaxjraxidarjharikbciccxaagiaegledgimbwgioeaaygaqysqmygweyigxcagsqabiabbixaxikbciceraugiaegjecgledgimbgiofwgiieaaygaqysqpcagsqlhiabbjharivaciccxaugiaegnedgmcbwgiiec4ygaqysqpcag4qabiabbirahixaxikbciceraugiaegjecgnedgmcbgiofwgineaaygaqysqmyqxikbcicchaagiaegemyigxcaheqabiabbirahixaxidarikbcicbraagiaewgiqeaaygaqysqmyqxidarikbcicchaagiaegledgarcagcqabiabbgkwgikeaayfhgkgb4yd8iccbaagkiegikfwgifeceyoahcaguqirifbcicbxahgkabgarcagqqirgkmamakgcimi0ymi41ljogb-6uaq&sclient=gws-wiz#ip=1&vhid=emek8znd0syxam&vssid=l asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 379-386 382 figure 2. cows ravaging farmland in one of the study locations. figure 2 illustrates cows ravaging cassava and sorghum farmland in one of the study locations. 3.2. sampling method and data collection the data for this study were collected through the administration of a structured questionnaire to a sample of 220 arable crop farmers selected through a combination of purposive and random sampling techniques. purposive sampling was used to select communities where herder–farmer conflict is prevalent in the state, and random sampling was employed to ensure proper representation and avoid bias. these locations border the northern part of ekiti state. climate change caused by desertification and drought has led to a scarcity of forage crops, and this has forced livestock farmers in the northern part of nigeria to move southwards in their quest to obtain food and fodder for their animals. a multistage sampling procedure was used to select samples for the study. the first stage involved purposive selection of the ekiti northern senatorial district, where the incidence of herder-arable crop farmer conflicts occurs more frequently relative to other districts in ekiti state. the second stage involved a random selection of three local government areas (lgas) from the five lgas (ido-osi, ikole, ilejemeje, moba, and oye) in the senatorial district. in the third stage, twenty-two communities were randomly selected from the chosen lgas (eight communities from ikole, which is the largest of the lgas, and seven communities each from moba and ilejemeje). in the fourth stage, the snowball sampling method was employed to select ten farmers from each of the selected communities because the sampling frame of the farmers was not available. finally, two hundred and twenty farmers were selected for the study. 3.3. ethical issues appropriate ethical procedures were followed while the data was collected for this study. these include the confidentiality of the information provided by the respondents and the anonymity of the participants in the survey, such that no names or identities of individuals were disclosed. additionally, there was no coercion or forceful inclusion of any participants, as only those willing to provide the needed information were interviewed, and they were at liberty to discontinue the interview at any time they deemed fit. the research instrument was scrutinized by an appropriate university board on ethics for approval before data collection commenced. 3.4. data analysis the primary data collected for this study were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. while descriptive statistics were employed to analyze the socioeconomic characteristics of the smallholder arable crop farmers, a probit regression model was used to analyze the determinants of herder-arable crop farmer conflict in the study area. the descriptive statistics tools used include tables, frequencies, table means, standard deviations, etc. the probit model function employed is of the following form: in the probit model, a project rated (y) successful is given a value of 1, whereas a project rated unsuccessful is given a value of 0. successful projects are those rated as successful or highly successful. the probability 𝑝𝑖 of having a successful rating over an unsuccessful rating can be expressed as: where φ is the cumulative distribution function of a standard normal variable that ensures 0≤ 𝑝𝑖 ≤ 1, 𝒙 is a vector of factors that determine or explain the variation in project outcome and 𝛽 is a vector of parameters or coefficients that reflects the effect of changes in 𝒙 on the probability of success. where y = the dependent variable indicating the incident of herder-arable farmer conflict (1) and no incident of herder-arable farmer conflict (0). xs = independent variables, which include: x1 = gender (dummy – male = 1, female = 0). x2 = age (years). x3 = educational status (years). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 379-386 383 x4 = marital status (dummy married, 0 otherwise). x5 = extension contacts (number). x6 = previous encounter (dummy yes = 1, 0 otherwise). x7 = membership of association (dummy yes = 1, 0 otherwise). x8 = planting time (dummy on-season, 0 otherwise). x9 = credit access (dummy yes = 1, 0 otherwise). x10 = household size (number). x11 = farming experience (years). x12 = farm location (dummy enroute herder lane, 0 otherwise). x13 = farm barricade/fence (dummy yes =1, 0 otherwise). x14 = relationship with herder (dummy good = 1, 0 otherwise). x15 = political affiliation (dummy – member of dominant party in the state = 1, 0 otherwise). ui = disturbance (error) term 4. results and discussion 4.1. socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents an analysis of the respondents’ socioeconomic characteristics (as depicted in table 1) revealed that the average age of the smallholder arable crop farmers in the study area was 56 years, with a mean household size of 4 members. this indicates that the farmers are older, approaching the mandatory retirement age of 60 years (in the case of civil servants), which has many implications for food production, coupled with the incessant conflict exacerbated by climate change. the distribution of respondents by years of schooling shows that three-quarters (68.5%) of them had up to secondary school education, an indication that the majority of the respondents could read and write. only a few of them do not have any formal education. the respondents’ distribution by extension reveals this to be very low in the study area, with less than 19% having contact with extension officers, which might be a contributor to the incessant conflicts experienced by these farmers with herders. extension officers are trained on how to manage conflicts and provide farmers with information that can enhance their production, but these officers are not available to provide these services. the respondents’ analysis by access to credit facilities indicates that approximately 73.2% do not have access to credit facilities; hence, they are unable to have enough capital to secure their farms and provide other infrastructure needed to enhance production. the majority of the farmers do not have barricades/fences around their farms, which makes their farms accessible to cows and other animals reared by these herders in their search for food. table 1. respondent distribution by socioeconomic characteristics. age frequency percentage < 30 20 9.1 31-40 27 12.3 41-50 41 18.6 51-60 95 43.2 >60 37 16.8 gender male 167 75.9 female 53 24.1 household size 1 3 55 25.0 4 6 87 39.5 7 9 42 19.1 10 12 36 16.4 education no formal education 14 6.4 primary 29 13.2 secondary 151 68.6 tertiary 26 11.8 marital status single 39 17.7 married 102 46.4 divorced/separated 46 20.9 widowed 33 15.0 extension contact yes 41 18.6 no 179 81.4 credit access yes 59 26.8 no 161 73.2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 379-386 384 4.2. determinants of herd–smallholder arable crop farmer conflict some possible correlates/enablers of herder–smallholder arable crop farmer conflicts were considered in the probit model analysis on the basis of previous studies and reviews on conflicts, especially in developing countries. the results of the data analysis are presented in table 2. the results revealed that some of the possible determinants of herder–smallholder arable crop farmers include the age of the farmer, years of schooling, farming experience, credit access, planting time, previous encounters, extension contacts, farm location, availability of barricades/fences, membership in associations and marital status. the coefficients of farm location (p<0.00), extension contact (p<0.10), access to credit (p<0.05), planting time (p<0.10), and household size (p<0.65) were positive, whereas those of age (p<0.05), educational status (p<0.00), previous encounters (p<0.00), farming experience (p<0.10), gender (p<0.05), membership in associations (p<0.10), and barricades (p<0.01) were negative. in other words, farms that are not fenced or barricaded and are located along or near the regular routes of herders are more likely to be invaded; hence, conflicts tend to erupt more frequently than in farms that are far fenced and located away from the herders' routes. additionally, farmers with limited or no extension contacts, farms operating off-season, and those with estranged relationships with herders have a higher probability of being invaded, along with attendant conflicts, than those with regular extension contacts, operating in-season, and maintaining cordial relationships with herders. on the other hand, the coefficients of farming experience, years of schooling, gender, and membership of associations were negative, indicating that a unit increase in the value or size of these variables reduces the likelihood of herder–smallholder arable crop farmer conflict in the study area. for example, farmers with tertiary education and previous encounters, those belonging to associations, and those with more farming experience are better able to manage herder–farmer conflict. the same applies to those with fenced or barricaded farms as well as those with access to credit facilities, as they are better able to provide the necessary infrastructure to protect their farms from being destroyed by grazing animals. table 2. results of the probit regression analysis of the determinants of herder–farmer conflict. variable coefficient gender (x1) -0.301** (0.141) age (x2) -0.167* (0.086) educational status (x3) -1.355*** (0.409) marital status (x4) 0.577 (0.923) extension contact (x5) 2.319* (1.199) previous encounter (x6) -1.008*** (0.033) membership of association (x7) -8.327* (3.073) planting time (x8) 3.208* (1.742) credit access (x9) 0.601** (0.321) household size (x10) 2.621 (1.894) farming experience (x11) -0,515* (0.288) farm location (x12) 3.833*** (1.207) farm barricade (x13) -0.209*** (0.083) relation with herder (x14) 2.157 1.401) political affiliation (x15) 0.179* (0.097) note: ***, ** and * represent coefficients of variables significant at the 1%, 5% and 10% levels, respectively. this result agrees with that of obi-egbedi, okonkwo, and adeyemi (2023), whose findings revealed that the years of education of arable crop farmers had a negative relationship with their conflict status. this result disagrees with that of lawal, joshua, ochube, and adamu (2021), who reported that unhealthy relationships/conflicts are due to previous experiences of emotional pain, which make both parties feel that they have been more affected and waiting for opportunities to retaliate. this result corroborates the findings of amankwaa (2019), who reported that conflicts become more violent in the dry and hotter season of the year, which is from october through the start of the rainy season around april. these results support those of mezie-okoye and asike (2020), who reported that farmer-herder clashes are politically motivated by ethnic colouration in nigeria. the results agree with those of okeke and nnamani (2023), who reported that farmers whose property is adjacent to a road or animal route risk having their crops ruined if the cattle are allowed to run uncontrolled. these results agree with those of eriksen and lind (2005), asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(3) 2025: 379-386 385 who reported that men, unlike women, always participate in the defence of their territory from attacks. these results conform with those of olugbemiro, alabi, and tijani (2022), who reported that fencing farm areas and barricading routes leading to farm areas ranked low among the strategies used to prevent the invasion of herders. this result supports adelakun, adurogbangba, and akinbile (2015), who previously reported that agricultural extension activities were substantial and impactful. however, these results contradict those of chamo, umar, and sulaiman (2020), who reported that the contact of extension agents with their clients yielded benefits such as peaceful coexistence between farmer and pastoralist groups in communities and capacity building. 5. conclusion and recommendations the study examined some correlates of herder–smallholder arable crop farmer conflict in some randomly selected areas of ekiti state, nigeria. the findings from the study revealed that incessant conflict has led to many upheavals in the development of the study area, with reported cases of kidnapping, killing, and destruction of property and farm infrastructure, among others. the study's findings therefore have implications for food security, income, employment opportunities, investment drive, rural–urban drift, and the security of lives and property in the study area. the study therefore recommends enhanced access to credit facilities, awareness creation, and the provision of timely information to curtail this menace in the study area. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the university of venda, south africa has granted approval for this study on 16 april 2024 (fsea/23/aeca/07). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: literature review, data analysis, interpretation, conceptualisation, review and editing, isaac busayo oluwatayo (ibo); literature review, data cleaning and entry, result interpretation, discussion, olaniyi oluwatosin ojo (ooo). both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references acled. 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(2011). conflict resolution: working with conflicts. a report submitted to the danish centre for conflict resolution (dccr), pp. 4-7. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.46827/ejpss.v5i1.1165 https://www.vanguardngr.com/ effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 576 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. assessing climate change impacts on cereal production: the role of fertilizer use and gmm-based estimation sayedul anama md. azizur rahmanb md. arif hassanc md. alamgir hossand mst khadijatul kobrae a,b,c,ddepartment of business administration, daffodil international university, bangladesh. edepartment of tourism & hospitality management, daffodil international university, bangladesh.  anam.ba@diu.edu.bd (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 17 july 2025 revised: 16 october 2025 accepted: 27 october 2025 published: 19 november 2025 keywords carbon dioxide emission cereal production climate change fertilizer usage gmm method methane emission nitrous oxide emission rainfall temperature. environmental hazards cause a decline in food production, leading to food crises and overall instability among different nations. this scenario is more prevalent in the case of cereal production in some developing countries, particularly in south asian regions. in line with this, research has been conducted to examine the impacts of climate change variables (rainfall, temperature, carbon dioxide emissions, methane emissions, nitrous oxide emissions) and control variables such as cereal production and fertilizer use on cereal output. the analysis considers cereal productivity while incorporating secondary data. a two-step generalized method of moments (gmm) approach has been applied, considering eighteen top productive countries as dependent variables, with climate variables and control variables to analyze their connectivity. the study found that climate change variables significantly affect cereal production across the sample countries, except for methane emissions. additionally, fertilizer use contributes to increased cereal crop yields. the findings are valuable for policymakers to identify specific negative effects of climate variables and adopt effective strategies to enhance cereal production. ultimately, updating policies, applying modern farming techniques, and employing skilled human resources should be prioritized to address these challenges. contribution/originality: this study contributes by analyzing the robust relationship between climate change and cereal production using dynamic gmm estimation. we examine the effects of multiple climate change variables across leading crop-producing countries. the study highlights fertilizer usage and the area under cereal production as key adaptation strategies, incorporates production dynamics, and offers methodological improvements. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5726 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: anam, s., rahman, m. a., hassan, m. a., hossan, m. a., & kobra, m. k. (2025). assessing climate change impacts on cereal production: the role of fertilizer use and gmm-based estimation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 576–585. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5726 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction climate change poses a serious danger to agricultural productivity, especially in developing nations where agriculture is essential for economic growth, employment creation, and food security (arora, 2019; aryal et al., 2020). asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 576-585 mailto:anam.ba@diu.edu.bd https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5726 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 576-585 577 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. one-fifth of the world's population lives in south asia, but they occupy about 5% of the world's arable land, where agriculture is still the main livelihood. moreover, more than two-thirds of the region's population live in rural areas, indicating their dependence on agriculture as their main source of income (almazroui, saeed, saeed, islam, & ismail, 2020; bandara & cai, 2014). although we live in an era of advanced technology that ensures high crop production through the optimal use of fertilizers and seeds, climate change continues to pose serious challenges to agriculture in the region (chandio et al., 2021). for example, high variability in temperature and rainfall patterns is having a significant impact on agricultural productivity and sustainability in south asia (alam, 2017; kogo, kumar, & koech, 2021; masters, baker, & flood, 2010). therefore, addressing these climate-related challenges is essential to safeguard the sustainability of agriculture and livelihoods in the region. adverse climate change is causing high crop losses, low yields, and high production costs, which are adversely affecting their income levels (pulighe et al., 2024; shamshad, nawaz, khan, & arif, 2024). clearly, income from agricultural livelihoods such as crop production and livestock rearing is being directly affected by climate variables, namely temperature variations, changing rainfall patterns, and elevated co₂ levels (verma et al., 2025). additionally, floods, droughts, and socio-economic disasters are also common in tropical and subtropical regions due to rising temperatures and water demand (ekele et al., 2025; palmer et al., 2023). other difficulties include erosion, loss of soil fertility due to the use of chemicals or pesticides, and traditional farming practices (chatterjee et al., 2021). therefore, a wake-up call for climate-resilient agricultural practices is needed in this region. climate change is severely affecting lowand middle-income countries, and about fifteen percent of their gdp depends on climate-sensitive agriculture (world bank group, 2019). global economic productivity is forecast to decline by 4% by 2050 in lowand lower-middle-income countries, with the decline being more severe in south asia (jones, 2022). measuring the impact of climate change on cereal production in this region is a must to develop appropriate policy responses (chuang, 2019). therefore, exploring these climate factors and their impacts is essential to developing effective strategies to increase resilience and ensure food security in vulnerable agricultural economies. bangladesh, one of the top crop-producing countries in south asia, where agriculture contributes 14.2% to the national gdp, is already facing political, economic, and environmental challenges (world bank group, 2017). co2 emissions per capita in bangladesh increased from 0.11 metric tons in 1985 to 0.53 metric tons in 2016 (ahmed, 2018). the country's cereal production, particularly rice, is highly vulnerable to weather fluctuations (islam, alam, begum, sarker, & bhandari, 2022; joseph et al., 2023). rice production is particularly vulnerable to droughts and floods as a result of declining yields caused by rising temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns (dasgupta, hossain, huq, & wheeler, 2014; hussain, 2011). it is estimated that the productivity of major crops will decline by 5-13 percent by 2030 due to climate vulnerability (bandara & cai, 2014). therefore, bangladesh needs to adopt climate-resilient agricultural strategies to ensure food security amidst climate change. recent studies have used various methods to examine how climate change affects crop yields. evidently, chandio, jiang, rehman, and rauf (2020) found that while higher co2 levels may increase agricultural productivity in the short run, temperature fluctuations and rainfall have a long-term adverse impact. however, pickson, he, ntiamoah, and li (2020) revealed that high temperatures and co2 levels negatively affect cereal production in china. other studies also confirm that co2 has both long-term and short-term effects on cereal yields (ahsan, chandio, & fang, 2020). these findings emphasize the necessity for adaptable farming methods to mitigate climate change's effects on crop production. most studies examine climate change's impact on crop production using time-series or panel data (rahim & puay, 2017). however, this study applied the generalized method of moments (gmm) to a panel dataset of the top 18 productive countries from 2019 to 2020. this method allows for a dynamic model that addresses endogeneity and minimizes cross-country scale differences. we explain the impact of climate change on crop production in these selected countries, controlling for fertilizer use and arable land to reduce selection bias. 2. review of literature 2.1. theoretical framework this research is grounded in multiple theoretical frameworks that explain the complex interactions between climate change and agricultural productivity, especially crops. climate change impact theory shows how climatic factors such as temperature and precipitation have a direct impact on crop production. these environmental factors cause changes in seasons, soil fertility, and plant anatomy, which impact crop production (lobell, schlenker, & costaroberts, 2011). in addition, the environmental kuznets curve (ekc) hypothesis is used to explain how greenhouse gas emissions affect agriculture in two ways. this means that there is an inverted u-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental damage. also, pollution levels usually increase when the economy moves towards growth, but they decrease as technology improves and people become more aware of the environment (dinda, 2004). other variables like methane (ch₄), carbon dioxide (co₂), and nitrous oxide (n₂o) emissions are examined. to explore the economic aspect, previous studies are based on the theory of the agricultural production function, which holds that food grain output is a product of input combinations (including fertilizer usage and cultivated area). these covariates have a direct effect on production and reduce the bias of the estimates due to unobserved environmental or socioeconomic variables (coelli, rao, o'donnell, & battese, 2005; dai, 2025). the theory of technological change in agriculture predicts that the negative impacts of climate change on crop productivity can be mitigated by adopting adaptation measures, such as improving fertilizer use efficiency (schultz, 1964). as the sustainable livelihood framework (slf) states, the availability of institutions, technologies, and resources can improve the sustainability and resilience of rural livelihoods (chambers & conway, 1992). thus, the theoretical basis asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 576-585 578 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. indicates the institutional support, technological innovation, and input optimization required for climate-resilient crop production systems and rural livelihoods. indeed, within the framework of agroecosystem resilience theory, it has been postulated that an agricultural system should become resilient (i.e., able to generate yield even under harsh or changing environmental conditions) (folke, 2006). fertilizer buffer found in this study is an example of resilience tactics. finally, although econometric theory (omitted variable bias and confounding) provides evidence that omitting relevant control variables (land area or fertilizer use) can lead to biases in effect estimates for climate-related variables on agricultural output (wooldridge, 2020). thus, including these variables enhances the empirical validity of hypotheses. these perceptions of the above theories provide a comprehensive framework for analyzing climate change related to environmental, economic, and methodological aspects of cereal production. therefore, a cross-functional approach combining agricultural economics, environmental science, and climate modeling is necessary to measure the effects of climate change on grain production. fundamental elements of this framework include relationships between climate variables (e.g., precipitation, temperature, co₂ concentration), agricultural inputs (e.g., fertilizer, land use), and crop production (berhane, 2018; saud et al., 2022). thus, changes in climate, such as rainfall and temperature, and indirect consequences, such as soil erosion, insect outbreaks, and water availability, must be captured (alotaibi, alhajeri, alfadhli, al jabri, & gabr, 2023). besides, the framework aims to consider human activities, such as the use of fertilizer, which have the capacity to decrease or increase the impact of climate change on crop productivity (crane-droesch, 2018). therefore, to calculate past data, predict future trends, and develop climate-resilient agricultural policies, sophisticated statistical methods are necessary. use of advanced econometric methods to overcome omitted variable bias, endogeneity, and spatial autocorrelation to ensure analytical rigor is required under this framework. incorporating crop simulation, cross-sectional analysis, partial, and general equilibrium models can offer a holistic view of the agricultural system under the climate crisis (delince, ciaian, & witzke, 2015). in addition, it needs to remember that fertilizer use is intrinsic and influenced by weather and crop performance. effective assessment of fertilizer performance requires instrumental variables and simultaneous equations. the methodology should also consider regional crop types and climate vulnerability and assess the cost-effectiveness of adaptation options (georgopoulou et al., 2017). identifying the role of fertilizer use during climate change is central to sustaining agricultural productivity, given the upward global food demand (farah, mohamed, musse, & nor, 2025; islam, 2025). eventually, a strong interdisciplinary framework helps us better understand how climate change impacts cereal production and supports the development of practical, empirically supported adaptation and mitigation strategies to guarantee global food security. 2.2. previous empirical literature evidence empirical research on climate change and crop production demonstrates that climatic factors and agricultural productivity have an intricate relationship. temperature and precipitation are the most frequently studied aspects of the climate in asia, europe, africa, and latin america. they frequently lower crop yields, particularly in harsh environments. for instance, singh, arora, and chandra babu (2024) used ardl, finding that rising temperatures significantly reduce cereal output, while rainfall has a positive but diminishing impact. remarkably, ma, karimi, mohammed, shahzadi, and dai (2024) also emphasized the role of fertilizer use in increasing crop yield, which is closely consistent with the aim of this study. similarly, inconclusive empirical evidence from africa also underscores a positive rainfall effect but emphasizes the high vulnerability of the cereal production process to temperature variability and co₂ emissions (pickson, boateng, gui, & chen, 2024; sissoko et al., 2023). these studies highlight the need for focused adaptation measures, such as farmer support policies and climate-resilient technologies, particularly in rainfed areas. meanwhile, kelkouli, bouderbala, and haddad (2024) decoded a significant drop in crop production in algeria due to the shortfall of rainfall, reinforcing the importance of water availability and irrigation infrastructure. research in developed regions such as the eu adds a different dimension: despite technological advancements, yield stagnation linked to heat and drought stress has begun to erode the climate mitigation benefits of cereal farming (łącka, suproń, & szczepaniak, 2024; riedesel et al., 2024). these findings suggest that adaptation may not be keeping pace with climatic shifts, and that location-specific soil quality and energy consumption patterns play crucial roles. methane and nitrous oxide, though less frequently assessed, are gaining traction. for example, magazzino, gattone, usman, and valente (2024) and zhang, waldhoff, wise, edmonds, and patel (2023) incorporate agricultural emissions into broader sustainability discussions, showing that excessive emissions contribute to declining yields and compromise food security, even when technological innovation is high. while many studies rely on time-series econometrics (ardl, fmols, cointegration), a growing number integrate panel data methods that account for cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity (e.g., (łącka et al., 2024; pickson et al., 2024)), offering more robust insights for multi-country analyses. however, gaps remain in fully modeling fertilizer dynamics, especially their interaction with emissions. most analyses treat fertilizer as a control rather than a focal variable, leaving room for this study to make a significant contribution by exploring its mitigating potential amid climate-induced stressors. in summary, prior studies confirm the detrimental effects of climate change on cereal production, while pointing to technology and input use, especially fertilizers as promising avenues for resilience. yet, few works explicitly model the interaction between fertilizer application and environmental emissions in a cross-country framework (gyamerah, asare, mintah, appiah, & kayode, 2023; pickson et al., 2024; rötter, hoffmann, koch, & müller, 2018; singh et al., asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 576-585 579 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 2024; stadnik, tobiasz-salach, & migut, 2024). this highlights a critical research gap that this study is well-positioned to address. despite the extensive body of empirical work, few studies systematically incorporate a multi-country, multi-year panel framework that captures both climatic and agronomic factors in tandem, particularly those related to fertilizer dynamics (baris-tuzemen & lyhagen, 2024; łącka et al., 2024; magazzino et al., 2024). the prevailing focus on singlecountry analyses or simplified aggregate measures often limits their generalizability and policy relevance (ali, dahir, & yusuf, 2023; massagony, tam ho, & shimada, 2022). thus, empirical findings remain inconclusive. consequently, this creates a significant gap in understanding how crop production systems can protect themselves from the impacts of climate change in different agroecological regions. filling this gap is essential, as it informs both local and global programs designed to ensure food security and promote climate-resilient agriculture. this study fills a gap by providing a comprehensive and policy-relevant analysis that links climate risks to production-based solutions, providing practical insights for sustainable agricultural planning. 3. econometric model for dynamic panel data, the system generalized method of moments (gmm) is more fitted to estimate the relationship (arellano & bover, 1995). consider the following regression equation. 𝐶𝑃𝑖𝑡 − 𝐶𝑃𝑖𝑡−1 = (𝛼 − 1)𝐶𝑃𝑖𝑡−1 + 𝛽0𝐶𝑉𝑖𝑡 + 𝜇𝑖 + 𝜀𝑖𝑡 (1) where cpit is the cereal production, cpit – cpit-1 is the rate of cereal production growth, cpit-1 is the initial level of cereal production, cvit represents a vector of explanatory variables, μi is an unobserved country-specific effect, εi is the error term, and the subscripts i and t represent country and time period, respectively. rewriting (1), we obtain. 𝐶𝑃𝑖𝑡 = 𝛼 𝐶𝑃𝑖𝑡−1 + 𝛽0 𝐶𝑉𝑖𝑡 + 𝜇𝑖 + 𝜀𝑖𝑡 (2) to eliminate country-specific effects, we take first differences of (2). 𝐶𝑃𝑖𝑡 − 𝐶𝑃𝑖𝑡−1 = 𝑎(𝐶𝑃𝑖𝑡−1 − 𝐶𝑃𝑖𝑡−2) + 𝛽0(𝐶𝑉𝑖𝑡 − 𝐶𝑉𝑖𝑡−1) + 𝜀𝑖𝑡 − 𝜀𝑖𝑡−1 (3) levine, loayza, and beck (2000) suggest the use of instruments for two reasons: to address the likely endogeneity of cereal production and climate variables adoption, and because, by construction, the new error term (εit – εit-1) in the above equation is correlated with the lagged dependent variable (cpit-1 – cpit-2). 3.1. variables and data for the effect of climate change, unlike others, we used multiple variables to measure the impact on cereal. some previous studies used only rainfall as a climate variable to measure the climate effect on cereal production (wakjira et al., 2021). co₂ is also a commonly used climate proxy in many studies (onour, 2019). furthermore, ghgs, e.g., methane and nitrous oxide emissions, are also common proxies to establish the relationship between climate change effects and cereal production (simionescu, bilan, gędek, & streimikiene, 2019). in some recent studies, researchers commonly used rainfall and drought (ayanlade, radeny, morton, & muchaba, 2018); rainfall and temperature (amin, zhang, & yang, 2015; eder, salhofer, & quddoos, 2024; quiroga & iglesias, 2009); rainfall, temperature, and co₂ (köprücü & acaroğlu, 2023; xiang & solaymani, 2022); rainfall, temperature, radiation, and co₂ (xiong et al., 2010) as climate change to estimate cereal production. some studies used control variables besides the climate variables to capture the result (chandio et al., 2021). most of the existing studies are country-specific and use time series data. there are very few studies that use panel data to establish the relationship between cereal production and climate change, where one study considers lower-middleincome countries (kumar, sahu, kumar, & ansari, 2021), one study considers east africa (abdi, warsame, & sheikali, 2023), and another study considers asian countries (ozdemir, 2022). the majority of the studies are based on fmols, fgls, and ardl models for analyzing panel data. the dynamic panel system-generalized methods of moment (gmm) estimator developed by arellano and bover (1995) and blundell and bond (1998) which is more suitable for analyzing dynamic panels because it can address concerns about identification, account for lagged responses to any exogenous shock, reverse causality, and help to obtain unbiased parameters (bond, bowsher, & windmeijer, 2001; hauk jr & wacziarg, 2009). the use of the two-step system gmm is missing in the existing literature to measure the effect of climate change on cereal production. previous research shows empirical insights into the impact of various climate variables on cereal production, often based on data from diverse country groups. however, these studies typically overlook cereal (land) productivity. moreover, none have concurrently examined the effects of rainfall, temperature, carbon dioxide emissions, methane emissions, and nitrous oxide emissions as climate variables while also including the area under cereal cultivation and fertilizer use as control variables. this study aims to fill that gap and add to the existing body of empirical evidence. this study utilizes a strongly balanced panel dataset covering 18 countries with high cereal (land) productivity, each surpassing a productivity threshold of 0.2 (refer to appendix, table 1a) over the period 2016 to 2020. data spanning 18 countries across 5 years were analyzed. the system gmm estimation method was employed for the analysis. secondary data were sourced from the world development indicators (wdi) and the climate change knowledge portal (cckp). the study examines the impact of climate-related variables, including rainfall (rf), temperature (tem), carbon dioxide emissions (co₂), methane emissions (me), and nitrous oxide emissions (n2o), on cereal production (cp) in countries with high agricultural land productivity. additionally, the area under cereal cultivation (cl) and fertilizer use are included as control variables. a detailed description of the variables and data sources is presented in table 1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 576-585 580 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 1. list of study variables for the analysis. v-abbreviations full-form units d-source cp cereal production metric tons (in lac) wdi rf rain fall millimeter cckp tem temperature degree celsius cckp co₂ carbon dioxide kilotons (in lac) wdi me methane emissions thousand metric tons of co₂ equivalent (in lac) wdi n2o nitrous oxide emissions thousand metric tons of co₂ equivalent (in lac) wdi cl area under cereal production hectares wdi fer fertilizer kilograms per hectare of arable land wdi note: wdi-world development indicators, cckp-climate change knowledge portal 4. results 4.1. descriptive statistics and correlation analysis table 2 illustrates the descriptive statistics of the variables in the model to be measured. the table shows the mean, median, maximum value, minimum value, variance, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis of the variables. in this descriptive analysis, the standard deviation of each variable is high, indicating that the data under the variables are more scattered, which arises mainly due to considering different sizes (in terms of agricultural land area) of countries in the world. additionally, all the variables are positively skewed, but in the case of kurtosis, carbon dioxide, methane emission, nitrous oxide emission, and the area under cereal production are highly peaked. the descriptive analysis (table 2) and correlation analysis (table 3) of these variables are given below. table 2. descriptive statistics. cp rf tem co₂ me n2o cl fer mean 1080 1065.558 17.300 11.670 0.935 0.602 205 206.735 median 381 776.510 14.540 2.670 0.495 0.229 81.313 166.818 maximum 6170 3176.990 27.490 109 5.022 3.565 1020 574.182 minimum 140 10.850 7.770 0.210 0.025 0.057 23.377 18.743 variance 2.79e+11 505466.900 50.132 6.41e+07 1.61e+05 8.04e+04 9.07e+09 18093.270 std. deviation 1670 710.962 7.080 25.310 1.260 0.897 301 134.511 skewness 0.918 0.918 0.153 2.920 2.148 2.109 2.007 1.153 kurtosis 3.097 3.097 1.273 10.623 6.698 6.250 5.410 3.470 table 3. correlation analysis. variables cp rf tem co₂ me n2o cl fer cp 1 rf -0.150 1 tem -0.281 0.574 1 co₂ 0.951 -0.183 -0.3697 1 me 0.800 -0.0399 0.0757 0.6596 1 n2o 0.971 -0.172 -0.2203 0.9237 0.8895 1 cl 0.920 -0.090 -0.084 0.8264 0.9605 0.970 1 fer 0.226 -0.064 0.164 0.325 0.099 0.241 0.186 1 4.2. analysis of gmm for dynamic panel data table 4 shows the different types of gmm model results to identify climate change's impact on cereal production in various countries. we use the hansen and sargan tests for the validity of instruments, and the residuals or error terms are not correlated with the instrument variables, respectively. again, ar(1) and ar(2) tests justify the error term's first-order and second-order autocorrelation/serial correlation. the findings from the two-step system gmm model validate that the model is well-specified, as shown by the f-test (prob > f = 0.000), indicating a strong overall fit. the hansen test (prob > chi² = 0.465) endorses the appropriateness of the instrumental variables used. similarly, the sargan test (prob > chi² = 0.002) supports the validity of the over-identifying restrictions across all model specifications. additionally, the ar(2) test result (pr > z = 0.16) indicates that there is no second-order autocorrelation evidence found for further validating the model’s reliability. the result of the two-step system gmm shows a consistent but insignificant negative relationship between rainfall (rf) and cereal production. the result indicates that, on average, a percentage increase in rainfall leads to a 71.96662unit decrease in cereal production, with other factors remaining constant. previous research has demonstrated that rainfall can have both positive and negative effects on cereal production. kumar et al. (2021) found that rainfall has a positive effect on cereal production; on the other hand (eder et al., 2024) found out the negative influence on cereal production. again, another climate variable, a negative and statistically significant impact of temperature (tem) on cereal production is reported, which indicates that temperature has marginally led to a decrease in cereal production in the studied countries. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 576-585 581 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. the results disclose that, on average, a 1% increase in temperature results in a decrease of 288,304.2 units in cereal production, assuming other factors remain unchanged. this finding aligns with the study by xiang and solaymani (2022), which reported that a 1% rise in temperature corresponds to a 2.87% reduction in general cereal production and a 3.52% decline in projected estimates. additionally, the analysis illustrates a negative and statistically significant effect of carbon dioxide (co₂) on cereal output. specifically, a 1% increase in co₂ emissions leads to an average decrease of 4.493874 units in cereal production, holding other variables constant. this result is consistent with existing empirical studies, such as chandio et al. (2021), who found that co₂ has an adverse impact on cereal production in both the short and long term. again, the system gmm results for greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions, specifically methane (ch4) and nitrous oxide (n2o), indicated a statistically significant positive and negative impact on cereal production, respectively. the results showed that, on average, a percentage increase in methane led to a 90.54769-unit increase in cereal production, while a percentage increase in nitrous oxide resulted in a 254.8543-unit decrease, with all other factors held constant. simionescu et al. (2019) showed that ghgs have a positive influence on cereal production. on the other hand, thapa, chatterjee, awale, mcgranahan, and daigh (2016) proved that nitrous oxide has negatively impacted cereal production. the model illustrated that the control variable, a positive and statistically significant impact of fertilizer (fer) on cereal production, is reported, which indicates that fertilizer has marginally led to an increase in cereal production in the studied countries. the results indicated that, on average, a percentage increase in fertilizer leads to a 12,111.79unit increase in cereal production, with other factors remaining constant. this result is proved by yousaf et al. (2017), who showed that the use of mineral fertilizer can increase rice production from 19% to 41% and rapeseed production from 61% to 76%. another control variable, a negative and statistically insignificant impact of the area under cereal production (cp) on cereal production, is reported, which indicates that the area under cereal production has marginally led to a decrease in cereal production. this result is proved by harini, ariani, supriyati, satriagasa, susilo, and giyarsih (2018), who examined that in north kalimantan province, where the agricultural land area increased while the agricultural production decreased. table 4. stamatis and dynamic panel estimation, over the period 2016 to 2020. note: *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1 show statistical significance at 1%, 5%, and 10% level, respectively. 5. conclusion and policy implications this study analyzed the impact of climate change on crop production in 18 top crop-producing countries known for their high land productivity in crop cultivation from 2016 to 2020. the analysis utilizes a two-step system gmm estimator to address various econometric issues, including serial correlation, panel group-wise heteroscedasticity, cross-sectional dependence, and heterogeneity. climate change is influenced by average annual rainfall, temperature, and emissions of co₂, ch₄, and n₂o. the results confirmed that climate change significantly affects crop production in the sampled countries. in particular, temperature, co₂, and n2o emissions have statistically significant negative effects on crop production, while a negligible negative relationship is seen with precipitation. conversely, ch₄ emissions are positively associated with cereal production. among the control variables, fertilizer use demonstrates a strong positive contribution to cereal yields, whereas an increase in cereal cultivation correlates with reduced productivity, possibly indicating diminishing marginal returns to land expansion. the findings carry important policy implications. given the adverse effects of rising temperatures, the development and dissemination of heat-resistant cereal crop varieties should be prioritized to bolster climate resilience and food security. although co₂ emissions appear to be positively associated with cereal output, this relationship may variables pooled ols diff-1 gmm diff-2 gmm sys-1 gmm sys-2 gmm cp 0.811*** -0.067 -0.098 1.055*** 1.149*** rf 1542.490 790.534 568.952 206.661 -71.967 tem 165211 -1748902 -2107256 -186537.100 -288304.200** co2 -2.993 11.002 11.851** -3.157 -4.494*** me -182.838** -601.731 -527.731*** 18.260 90.548* n2o 423.413** 1110.147*** 1325.551*** -141.368 -254.854** cl 0.726** 1.930** 1.845*** 0.288 -0.073 fer -8522.470 -95568.060* -47022.890 14854.620 12111.790* constant -2006650 1.01e+08* 6.31e+07* -1141438 842353.500 observations 72 72 12 72 72 countries 18 18 18 18 18 instrument 11 11 12 12 f-state(p-value) 0 0 0 0 0 sargan 0.002 0.002 0.002 0.002 hansen 0.281 0.465 ar(1) 0.079 0.62 0.004 0.06 ar(2) 0.078 0.201 0.004 0.16 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 576-585 582 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. be misleading, as carbon-intensive agricultural practices can have adverse health and environmental consequences. hence, future research and policy should emphasize sustainable, low-carbon cereal production systems. further, temperature-induced stresses such as increased evapotranspiration, altered cropping seasons, and irrigation demands suggest a need for adaptive agronomic strategies. these may include modified sowing calendars, short-duration crop varieties, and improved water-use efficiency (ali & erenstein, 2017). historical evidence from african countries illustrates successful adaptation through flexible planting periods, diversification of income sources, soil conservation, and varietal adjustments in response to climate variability (bryan, deressa, gbetibouo, & ringler, 2009; maddison, 2007). in addition, the study identifies a negative association between rural population and cereal productivity, implying low labor efficiency in the agricultural sector. enhancing farm labor productivity through mechanization, modern agronomic training, and entrepreneurship development could significantly strengthen the sector. tailored climate policies, integrated with local adaptation capacities, are essential for enabling lower-middle-income countries to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change and sustainably improve cereal production. 6. limitations and future research this research selected 18 countries based on land productivity, with a threshold of 0.2 land productivity; other parameters for country selection were excluded. as climate variables, this paper used rainfall, temperature, co₂, ch₄, and n₂o variables, while irrigation, technological adoption, and natural digester factors such as droughts, floods, and cyclones were ignored. for data analysis, this research employed a two-step system gmm model, which may suffer from small sample bias or weak instruments, potentially affecting the robustness of the results. future research could integrate additional climate and technological variables. it may also focus on other agricultural crops and expand the analysis to include more countries. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abdi, a. h., warsame, a. a., & sheik-ali, i. a. 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(2023). agriculture, bioenergy, and water implications of constrained cereal trade and climate change impacts. plos one, 18(9), e0291577. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291577 appendix table 1a. country-wise cereal productivity in terms of land. name of the country cereal production (in million tons) area under cereal production (thousand km2) productivity egypt 25.900 36.050 0.718 bangladesh 59.800 97.260 0.615 vietnam 50.300 108.000 0.466 china 642.000 1476.920 0.435 hungary 19.300 46.960 0.411 germany 49.100 123.870 0.396 poland 39.900 117.260 0.340 uk 17.300 61.630 0.281 france 62.500 226.610 0.276 myanmar 31.300 114.340 0.274 usa 456.000 1681.820 0.271 philippines 28.300 108.000 0.262 argentina 97.300 397.590 0.245 pakistan 48.700 227.680 0.214 italy 19.900 94.600 0.210 india 368.000 1765.260 0.208 romania 20.200 97.740 0.207 thailand 41.700 203.180 0.205 turkey 46.800 240.550 0.195 ethiopia 34.200 180.000 0.190 brazil 144.000 800.480 0.180 ukraine 61.000 347.670 0.175 mexico 42.400 259.300 0.164 spain 27.100 171.830 0.158 south africa 18.100 124.330 0.146 indonesia 67.700 478.050 0.142 canada 72.100 519.200 0.139 iran 24.700 197.790 0.125 russia 143.000 1265.260 0.113 kazakhstan 22.600 242.510 0.093 nigeria 32.100 412.930 0.078 australia 29.900 487.690 0.061 views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2021.108633 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2022.101741 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2009.08.015 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01412-0 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01412-0 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291577 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 173 agricultural land conversion and human trafficking in northern java island, indonesia af sigit rochadia siti sadiyatunnimahb kamaruddin salimc a,cdepartment of sociology, universitas nasional, pasar minggu south jakarta, indonesia. bdepartment of political science, universitas nasional, pasar minggu south jakarta, indonesia.  af.rochadi@civitas.unas.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 24 march 2022 revised: 4 july 2022 accepted: 15 july 2022 published: 2 august 2022 keywords agricultural land conversion labor trafficking sex trafficking informal sector family economy vulnerability floating mass. this study examines human trafficking, its causes, and the survival abilities of victims using qualitative interpretive methods and thematic data analysis. previous studies have not linked human trafficking with agricultural land conversion; however, in indonesia, this problem is mainly caused by agricultural land conversion, which resulted in a floating mass comprising farmers and their families when this process was not carried out carefully, involving local officials and capital owners. the cooperation between the two forces was assisted by field operators who suppressed landowners in various ways. the owners of large pieces of land managed to reinvest the money from the sale of the land. on the other hand, owners of less than 0.5 hectares tended to share the proceeds from the sale of their land with relatives, as a provision for finding work in other cities or countries. consequently, they are easily persuaded by the promises of brokers to be trafficked as plantation or sex workers. there are no significant differences in the characteristics of labor and sex trafficking victims. for instance, they both come from economically unstable families with little education. the former farmers do not participate in the industrial sector but work in the informal sector with long working hours and low wages. nevertheless, they act as the backbone of the family's economy. therefore, agricultural land conversion policies in developing countries should protect farmers from poverty and vulnerability. contribution/originality: this study investigates the impact of poorly planned agricultural land conversion. policies are needed to protect farmers before the conversion of agricultural land. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4563 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: af sigit rochadi --siti sadiyatunnimah --kamaruddin salim (2022). agricultural land conversion and human trafficking in northern java island, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3), 173-181. 10.55493/5005.v12i3.4563 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction in the current era of globalization, human trafficking is increasing due to advances in the fields of communication technology, information, and transportation, as well as the striking income inequality between countries. sweileh (2018) examined 2,044 studies of trafficking published in scopus-indexed international journals. the results showed that 37.7 percent of studies focused on sex trafficking, 30 percent on slavery or forced labor, and 9.7 percent on child trafficking. studies in developed countries rarely focused on the globally increasing labor trade phenomenon. most previous studies were conducted in the united states and western europe, while regions with a high prevalence of labor trafficking received less attention (bonilla & mo, 2019; durisin & van der meulen, 2021; sweileh, 2018; tallmadge & gitter, 2018; twis, 2020). asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 3 (2022): 173-181. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6815-5779 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5099-5219 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0083-1547 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 173-181 174 the international organization for migration (iom), which aims to promote humane and beneficial migration, reported 258 million international migrants in 2018. by 2020, this number had increased to 280.6 million.1 the migration process involves recruitment, placement, and transportation to repatriation. each of these stages creates opportunities for acts of violence and human trafficking. according to the international labor organization (ilo) and the walk free foundation, the victims of modern slavery, forced labor, and forced marriage are estimated at 40.3 million, 24.9 million, and 15.4 million, respectively. of these, 71 percent are female, and 50 percent are children (international labor organization & walk free foundation, 2017). in 2016, 5.9 in every 1000 adults were victims of modern slavery, and 4.4 in every 1000 children. human trafficking also still occurs in developed countries. trafficking rates are predicted to be higher in countries whose populations mainly comprise immigrants, as well as in countries with access to the sea and with low per capita gross domestic product (gdp) and high unemployment rates (tallmadge & gitter, 2018). most counties have committed to slavery and human trafficking education, including those of southeast asia. however, little progress has been made in combating human trafficking, slavery, and sexual exploitation in this region. the philippines was once a hot spot for child sexual exploitation, with around 800,000 children victimized in 2019. this number increased by 2.64 percent during the covid-19 pandemic (gill, 2021). according to the global slavery index, thailand is home to 610,000 victims of modern slavery, of which more than 60 percent are victims of sexual exploitation. although some enslaved people are thai, most came from myanmar, cambodia, laos, and vietnam. furthermore, the data shows that 8.88 in every 1000 residents live in slavery. of every 1000 people, 51.1 are left vulnerable by the government’s inadequate efforts toward slavery eradication.2 slavery and forced labor are not new to the era of globalization. historians explain that sugar, cotton, palm oil, and other southeast asian commodities that sold well on european markets in the early 1800s were produced by slaves (engerman, 1983). the slavery system was applied on plantations and in other areas of life, including the sexual exploitation of females. the number of enslaved people in the mid-19th century is estimated at 567,000 to 806,000 (bosma, 2020). when european colonizers occupied the southeast asian region, workers were sent to other countries to produce goods to meet the demands of the global market. an example was the forced transportation of labor from java to suriname, south africa, and new caledonia. previous studies have not linked trafficking with changes in the function of agricultural lands. rapid industrialization in developing countries is turning agricultural land into housing, factories, and offices, reducing labor absorption. farmers are forced to shift to jobs in non-agricultural sectors because their low education level and inexperience hamper their job mobility, resulting in a floating mass. as a result, they easily fall victim to labor brokers looking for prospective workers for sale to other countries. in indonesia, agricultural land conversion is caused by rapid industrialization. urbanization in the suburbs of the nation's capital is rapidly turning agricultural land into housing and offices. according to mulyani, kuncoro, nursyamsi, and agus (2016), the rate of paddy field conversion was 12,347 hectares per year or 0.209 percent between 2000 and 2015. the biggest change occurred in west java province, with an average annual loss of 3,662 hectares or 0.353 percent. land conversion studies mainly focus on irrigated rice fields; they have documented a decrease from 8.1 million hectares in 2014 to 7.1 million in 2018 – 250 thousand hectares/year (ministry of agriculture, 2019). hidayat, ismail, and ekayani (2017) found that 1 hectare of rice fields takes 197.2 working days in a year. thus, it takes 49,300,000 working days to convert 250,000 hectares of rice fields each year. when disaggregated between men and women, the number of lost workdays is 27,350,000 and 31,350,000 for men and women, respectively. the wages received for 1 working day are 4.49 usd and 3.36 usd for men and women, respectively. assuming the demand for labor in the rice fields remains constant every year, the economic loss caused by lost employment in the agricultural sector is 912.7 usd/ha/year. this leads to poverty, unemployment, and urbanization in areas where agricultural land conversion occurs. agricultural land is rapidly converted in any country experiencing industrialization. similar conversion occurred in china and south korea, which grew into major industrial countries in asia (fu, xu, & junfu, 2019; tni agrarian justice programme, 2013). according to fu et al. (2019), land conversion for industrialization and urban development in china was misallocated and not well-targeted. similarly, the emergence of an authoritarian populist regime in hungary and weak public control resulted in uncontrolled land grabbing in strategic locations (gonda, 2019). agricultural land conversion in romania changed the agrarian structure, threatening the sustainability of the agricultural sector. consequently, romania faces more complicated agrarian problems than other eastern european countries (burja, tamas-szora, & dobra, 2020). agricultural land conversion also creates conflicts between investors and landowners. the government sometimes triggers land conflicts, but it also defends the environment and farmers' land. the impacts of land conflicts are often detrimental to smallholders and lead to unemployment (dell’angelo, d’odorico, rulli, & marchand, 2017; marks, sirithet, rakyuttitham, wulandari, & chomchan, 2015; syahyuti, 2018). according to tallmadge and gitter (2018), high unemployment rates and low gdp are the main causes of trafficking. in the two districts experiencing rapid industrialization in northern java, the unemployment rate is above the national average. in 2020, the open unemployment in karawang and subang was 9.68 percent and 8.68 percent, respectively. in 2021, the rate rose to 11.52 percent for karawang and 9.48 percent for subang. the average national open unemployment rate for the 2019-2021 period was 5.28 percent (bps, 2020). this study assumes that the high open unemployment rate in northern java is caused by industrialization leading to agricultural land conversion. job opportunities in the non-agricultural sector are filled by migrants with higher levels of education and skills. 1 https://www.migrationdataportal.org/international-data?i=stock_abs_&t=2020 accessed on november 5, 2021 at 13:45 jakarta time. 2 https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/ accessed on december 23, 2021, at 17:23. https://www.migrationdataportal.org/international-data?i=stock_abs_&t=2020 https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/ asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 173-181 175 this study aims to explain the relationship between agricultural land conversion and the trade in labor and women on the northern island of java, indonesia, a rice-producing area. the analysis is useful for newly industrialized and developing countries because agricultural land conversion and trade in labor and women are common phenomena in countries experiencing an oversupply of labor. 2. literature review agricultural land conversion marks a global agrarian transformation in which transnational corporations play a key role (borras jr, hall, scoones, white, & wolford, 2011; borras et al., 2019; dell'angelo et al., 2021; dell’angelo et al., 2017). it involves violence and coercion toward small farmers by the state apparatus and capital owners and changes in the function of extensive amounts of land. consequently, studies refer to this phenomenon as land grabbing (dell'angelo. et al., 2021; dell’angelo et al., 2017; gellert, 2015; gonda, 2019; marks et al., 2015; visser, mamonova, & spoor, 2012). recent global land grabs have been catalyzed by the expansion of transnational corporations at the expense of common interests. the groups most disadvantaged are smallholders, as shown by nguyen in vietnam (nguyen, tran, bui, man, & walter, 2016; nguyen, 2021) and gonda in hungary (gonda, 2019). moreover, the benefits received by farmers are lower than those received by land brokers and state administrators. farmers face various difficulties shifting to jobs with higher incomes (borras et al., 2019; rondhi, pratiwi, handini, sunartomo, & budiman, 2018; syahyuti, 2018). globalization and massive corporate investment in developing countries are external forces that drive agricultural land conversion. the internal driving force is the policy of mass land certification (rochadi, 2018). governments of developing countries play a role in creating the conditions for land conversion through industrialization policies. furthermore, many brokers and local officials aware of plans to change land use seek to profit from price increases. farmers who are against selling their land succumb to pressure from various parties, as seen in southeast asia in recent decades (marks et al., 2015). in the study locations, the karawang and subang districts, agricultural land is undergoing rapid conversion. although presidential regulation no. 59 of 2019 concerning the control of agricultural land transfer was issued, it did not address the need for industrial and residential land. in the karawang and subang districts, 1,916 hectares and 797 hectares of land, respectively, were converted between 2014 and 2018 (ministry of agriculture, 2019). hidayat et al. (2017) found that the loss of employment opportunities in the agricultural sector in karawang and subang amounted to 534461 working days in the last four years. without land, farmers lose their source of income, resulting in a floating mass. therefore, they shift professions and trade, work in factories, or seek employment in cities and abroad, where they become targets of labor and sex trafficking. although education about the dangers of trafficking has been conducted in villages, it has not defeated the traffickers. most victims go to traffickers to seek jobs, meaning that the root of the problem is the farmers’ need for employment. the case of romanian farmers shows that structural factors make farmers vulnerable to trafficking (palumbo & sciurba, 2015). the dark market and economic pressures make them targets of exploitation, sexual harassment, and trafficking. in italy, the agricultural and domestic sectors are characterized by limited basic services, precarious work without contracts, and minimal wages (palumbo, 2016). this situation leads directly to exploitation and trafficking. hee-soon (2019) came to the same conclusions when studying the trafficking of north korean women in china. they come from farming families under economic pressure, migrate to china, and become victims of human trafficking. they experience forced labor and marriage and sexual exploitation because they have no other choice. the driving force to leave the village is as great as the attraction from outside, conveyed by persuasive people with capital, information, and social networks. former farmers and young people unable to find work leave the village for cities or other countries that promise jobs. the main motivation for migration is thus to find work and improve the living standards of their families. 3. method this study used an interpretive paradigm to explore the victims’ experiences and perspectives to better understand the process of labor and sex trafficking. the paradigm helps researchers participate in the lives of the victims (frechette, bitzas, aubry, kilpatrick, & lavoie-tremblay, 2020). this exploratory study type was chosen because there is no certainty about the underlying causes of labor and sex trafficking. the method was proposed by neuman (2011) to help increase understanding of human trafficking. this research partnered with the indonesian migrant workers union (imwu) karawang and subang branches to identify victims of trafficking. imwu has more than 21 years of experience helping and empowering victims of labor trafficking. although trafficking includes slavery, sexual exploitation, organ trafficking, and forced labor, this study only focused on trade in forced labor and females for sex work. the selected male informants were aged over 18 years, had sold their land, been trafficked to other countries, and returned to their village. the informants that were sex trafficking victims were females aged over 17 years; their father or mother had sold their land or rice fields, and they had been trafficked to big cities or small towns. informants were referred to as victims of human trafficking because they met the definition in the law of the republic of indonesia no. 21 of 2007, concerning the eradication of the crime of trafficking in persons: recruiting, transporting, harboring, sending, transferring, or receiving a person by threatening or using violence, abduction, confinement, fraud, deception, abuse of power or vulnerability, debt bondage or payment or benefit. thereby obtaining the consent of the person in question and conducting them within or between countries for exploitation, or causing people to be exploited. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 173-181 176 the experiences of all 27 informants were consistent with the definition; 16 were victims of labor trafficking, and 11 were victims of sex trafficking. interviews were conducted individually for labor trafficking victims, followed by a focused group discussion to obtain more comprehensive information (neuman, 2011). in contrast, information from sex trafficking victims was collected only through individual interviews. informants were offered 250 thousand rupiah (17 us$) for an interview lasting approximately one hour. the labor trafficking victims did not ask for compensation. finding sex trafficking victims required the decision of the karawang and subang district courts regarding the crime of human trafficking. information was then obtained from the trafficked women being controlled by another employer. the snowball technique was used to find 11 informants that met the criteria of sex trafficking victims. an open and flexible interview builds trust and good relations with informants (neuman, 2011). interviews were conducted in the indonesian and sundanese languages. since the study team included a sundanese member, it was easy to communicate using the informants’ mother tongues. field notes of compiled observations on the subjects helped us understand the informants’ stories (frechette et al., 2020). qualitative data analysis is nonlinear and iterative and is difficult to split into stages of data analysis (lester, cho, & lochmiller, 2020). therefore, thematic analysis was used, following the suggestion of clarke and braun (2013). according to clarke and braun (2013), “thematic analysis is an umbrella term for different approaches to identifying patterns across qualitative data sets” (p. 97). this technique was chosen because “it fits the data, offers tremendous theoretical flexibility, and could be used as an analytic method rather than a methodology” (clarke & braun, 2013). therefore, data were analyzed according to the suggestions of clarke and braun (2013) and lester et al. (2020). the analysis included data preparation, organization, copying, familiarization, scraping, coding, generating code categories, and transparentizing the analysis process. 4. result and discussion 4.1. characteristics of informants table 1 shows the details of 27 informants, comprising 14 male and 2 female victims of labor trafficking and 11 female victims of sex trafficking, all of productive age. the youngest victims of labor trafficking were 25 years old when trafficked, while the oldest was 50. although all the victims had worked as farmers, only 3 owned the land, while 13 had worked on other people's land. most victims had a low level of education as elementary school graduates, with only 1 person having attended senior high school. all victims were sold as workers in malaysia for ten months, with low wages and poor living conditions. one female victim of sex trafficking was 17 years old, while the average age of this group was 21 years. although they had all attended senior high school, only 2 had graduated. furthermore, 4 victims had previously worked as sales promotion girls for cigarette and perfume products, 2 were still in school, and 5 were domestic workers. six victims had been controlled by mami for 2-3 years and 5 for less than 1 year. their parents had previously worked as farmers, but only 1 of them still worked in agriculture. additionally, most victims’ parents worked in malaysia and saudi arabia, while others worked as motorcycle taxi drivers or had odd jobs. table 1. characteristics of informants. labor trafficking sex trafficking age 25 1 17 1 40 – 42 5 18 – 19 2 43 – 45 9 20 – 21 4 50 1 22 – 23 4 previous job parents' job farmers owning fields 3 farmworker 1 farmworker 13 working in malaysia or saudi arabia 6 motorcycle taxi driver 2 unemployed 2 highest education elementary school graduate 9 elementary school graduate 0 junior high school graduate 7 junior high school graduate 9 senior high school graduate 0 senior high school graduate 2 length of time trafficked ≤ 1 year 15 ≤ 1 year 5 2 – 3 years 1 2 – 3 years 6 destination malaysia 16 big city (indonesia) 8 small town (indonesia) 3 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 173-181 177 4.2. becoming a victim of trafficking the indonesian ministry of women's empowerment and child protection (imwecp) reported 2,698 victims of human trafficking between 2015 and 2019, of whom 2,319 or 87.6 percent were female. the lay-offs caused by the covid-19 pandemic (pemutusan hubungan kerja/phk) led to a 62.5 percent increase in victims by the end of 2020. according to the ministry of social affairs, there were 4,906 victims between 2016 and 2019. however, the data are called into doubt by iom because the two ministries only record reports. iom estimates that the number of human trafficking victims in indonesia is between 70,000 and 80,000 per year.3 this number shows that the government's strategy is ineffective in preventing human trafficking. kosandi, susanti, subono, and kartini (2019) stated that the government is overly focused on glorification and imagery rather than direct efforts to reduce the number of victims. the process of becoming a victim of labor or sex trafficking differs. brokers visited the candidates with an offer to work in malaysia’s pineapple and oil palm plantations for idr 9 million (620 usd) per month. this wage is to be received in full because the company bears the costs of transport, passport processing, housing, and living expenses. the brokers play videos about the success of indonesian migrant workers in malaysia. candidates with no income certainty become interested in the promises and register as potential migrant workers.4 the dream of a better life with high wages drives them to apply as potential migrant workers and they reinforce each others’ decision-making. this was stated by walan:5 here i met some people going to malaysia. some were hesitant, but we said it was trying our luck. we would try and support each other and go together. the only thing on our minds was to go to malaysia, work, earn money, send it home, and later buy rice fields and cows to make a living. this statement shows the innocent reasoning involved; migrant workers do not consider the journey to the workplace, the culture of the destination community, the facilities, or the work system. they do not seek more information about the employment conditions and work system in the destination country from earlier migrant workers. personal hardship and the brokers’ promises of change raised their expectations and overcame any considerations of possible bad circumstances. the tenacity of the brokers when convincing the prospective migrant workers influences their decision-making. the brokers supplied food between idr 50 thousand and 100 thousand (3.4–6.9 usd) to targeted families to attract potential migrant workers. this method ensnared the potential migrant workers. wertheim (1959) and crouch (1979) showed that in indonesian society, indebtedness is used by authority holders to control subordinates. in the case of human trafficking, the brokers deliberately give their target food and money. as a result, the targets feel indebted and want to comply with the brokers’ wishes, a phenomenon that can be seen in indonesia and southeast asia more generally. for instance, filipino girls are entrapped because they want to make money to repay their grandmothers for raising them after their parents divorced (tsai, 2017). another significant factor is the difficulty of finding a job when their only skill is farming, in the context of decreasing agricultural land and increasing numbers of employment seekers. they cannot work in the industrial sector because they cannot compete with young educated people with a mastery of information technology. therefore, after the function of their arable land has been changed, they form a floating mass. they might also be called rootless because they have been uprooted from farming, the roots of their life. however, it is not a floating mass, as described by the german sociologist hans dieter evers, when immigrants to cities fail to integrate into the production system and culture of the urban society. the concept of a floating mass describes farmers and their families who have lost their land, live uncertainly, are controlled by people with capital, political, and information power, and are easily persuaded by brokers. female prospective migrant workers receive a different treatment, where the brokers provide an inducement of around idr 5 to 10 million (344.8 usd to 689.7 usd). although it is easy to hire females in the destination country, a large amount of persuasion money is offered due to the difficulty of obtaining their husbands’ permission and the higher profits subsequently earned by agents.6 candidates submitted their identity cards for their passports to be processed; the cost of between idr 1 million and 1.7 million (68.9-117.2 usd) was borne by the brokers. on their departure, they gathered at the crossroads in the village and took a bus to the island of bengkalis. they were smuggled into malaysia that night when conditions were safe. the workers were escorted by four brokers from medan, bengkalis, on the malaysian coast, to the syah alam plantation.7 having several brokers involved in several places is a strategy traffickers use to prevent migrant workers from controlling the recruitment process, placement, wages, and work facilities. this makes it easier for the workers to be exploited because the brokers state they "do not know the previous process."8 although the involvement of many brokers increases the costs, it is profitable compared to when the migrant workers take control. the same pattern applies when labor is smuggled from laos, cambodia, and myanmar to thailand (unodc, 2017). however, the brokers only play this role in the informal sector where unskilled workers are required (nuraeny, 2017). in line with this, the ilo has reminded supplying and receiving governments about the role of brokers in exploiting workers (ilo, 2008). this long chain of brokers shows that trafficking involves mafias that operate internationally. at the destination plantation, the workers received bad treatment from the foreman. their passports, cell phones, and money were taken, and they were ordered to work on a plantation with poor transportation and communication networks from morning to evening. although the workers refused to work and demanded to return to indonesia, their 3 https://www.migrationdataportal.org/international-data?i=stock_abs_&t=2020 4 focused group discussion at zubaedah's house, cilamaya kulon, on november 5, 2021. 5 walan is one of the victims. his opinion was conveyed in the fgd at zubaedah's house on november 5, 2021. 6 as stated by solehah and tuti in an interview with researchers in cilamaya kulon on december 8, 2021. 7 the results of the fgd held at mrs. zubaedah's house on december 8, 2021. 8 “i don't know the previous process” is the answer given by the brokers when asked about inappropriate placement, work facilities, wages, and accommodation. https://www.migrationdataportal.org/international-data?i=stock_abs_&t=2020 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 173-181 178 pleas were rejected by the plantation foreman. those who refused were abused and transferred to remote areas. the pineapple plantation, which covers about 15,000 hectares, had around 150 workers from indonesia. they demonstrated against the work system and low wages, but they were arrested and threatened with imprisonment.9 female victims of sex trafficking were deceived by mentors, teachers, and company leaders. they were promised they would pass school exams, and get jobs and gadgets that young people dream of, such as cell phones, laptops, and motorbikes. this seduction is carried out to rob them of their virginity. of the 11 informants, 5 claimed to have been forced by teachers, 3 by company bosses, and 3 by mentors during work internships. they did not complain to the police because they feared failing exams or being fired from their jobs, and they also expect to receive financial assistance. daryani, aged 17, stated, "my father knows i am afraid of being kicked out of the house, not graduating from school, and not having a mobile phone."10 ekawati made a different statement: “i do not want to report to the police or the top company management because he promised to take care of my life. there is nothing at home; leaving would lighten my father's burden.”11 their experiences contrast with the promises they received, as when daryani failed to get a diploma because she could not pay for the final exam. another informant stated that they has been lied to by people they trusted and felt worthless in society. continual disappointment and their family's economic condition prompted them to follow their village friends’ invitations to seek employment in the city. after unsuccessful applications at several companies, they received job offers in the spa and entertainment sectors. although working in these fields does not require high skills, the victims realized that the places were full of risks, but they had no other choice. dera, a mother of one, took up this job when she was 19 years old because of her responsibilities as a mother, eldest child, and sister. similarly, female victims of sex trafficking in southeast asia have cited economic and family survival as reasons for taking the job offers. this is in line with the findings of tsai (2017) in the philippines, dinh, hughes, hughes, and maurer-fazio (2021) in vietnam, and mahalingam and sidhu (2021) in malaysia. both the spa and entertainment sectors force workers to have sex with customers or get fired. without sex, their income is not enough to meet their monthly needs. the workers were paid idr 25 thousand (1.7 usd) of the 300 thousand (20.68 usd) a customer pays for a massage. therefore, their income in 25 working days is idr 2.5 million (172.4 usd) for massaging an average of 4 customers a day. the average cost of living in jakarta is idr 3.5 million (241.4 usd) per month. on the other hand, a worker receives idr 250 thousand (17.2 usd) to 750 thousand (51.7 usd)12 for sex, although the workers in the entertainment sector earn a lower income. they get idr 15 thousand to 200 thousand for accompanying a guest and singing for 1 hour. therefore, their monthly income is idr 1.875 million (129.3 usd) if they serve an average of 5 guests a day. workers in the spa and entertainment sectors get an average tip of idr 50 thousand (3.4 usd) from each customer they have sex with. the trafficked women work an average of 12 hours a day with no overtime pay. spa workers start work at 11.00 and leave at 23.00, while entertainment workers start at 15.00 and leave at 02.30. however, they must be ready whenever the boss requires them and are not paid if they fail to work for any reason. their income strictly follows the principle of “no work, no pay, no benefits received.” this principle is harsher than the iron law of wages suggested by david ricardo 13 the exploitation of women in these sectors could persist due to poverty, scarce employment opportunities in rural areas, and the patriarchal culture. 4.3. antecedent factors previous studies have hardly examined antecedent factors because they were more interested in explaining the direct causes. however, any explanation of the complex trafficking phenomenon that fails to include the antecedent factors is inadequate. for instance, sutinah and kinuthia (2019) only identified the high number of early marriages, violence victims, low levels of education, and limited education opportunities as direct causes in east java. they did not explain why early marriages and violence occurred. similarly, durisin and van der meulen (2021) stated that the family does not always act as a protective institution in canada. young girls who leave their families are considered perfect targets for traffickers. tallmadge and gitter (2018) predicted that countries with large populations of immigrants, access to the sea, low per capita gdp, and high unemployment would have the highest levels of trafficking. the interviews showed that farmers resembled a floating mass and were rootless after the function of their arable land was changed. since their only skill was farming, they faced difficulties when attempting to change professions, making them perfect targets for trafficking. the tantalizing promises made by brokers destroyed the potential victims’ ability to think critically, making them feel that leaving the village was the best option. this is in line with jonsson (2019), who found that trafficking is caused by migration flows from villages to cities and between countries. however, it does not always occur between countries whose borders are closed with tight controls. the other important determinants are the traffickers’ network, transportation, and weak law enforcement. in this study, the trafficking is supported by a strong network of traffickers that stretches from villages to foreign countries. closed networks, such as the mafia, exploit the farmers’ need for work and take advantage of the weak law enforcement to hit potential victims and trade routes in ways that evade the police. another cause is the informal sector’s considerable demand for low-skilled workers. the informal sector pays low wages and lacks complicated work agreements (nuraeny, 2017). as detailed in table 1, the workers are not competitive in the capital-intensive sector and usually enter the domestic, dangerous, and dirty (3d) sector. they are caught by the 9 results of fgd in cilamaya on january 25, 2022. 10 interview with daryani in karawang on november 23, 2021, from 15.20 to 16.30 jakarta time. 11 interview with ekawati in karawang on november 25, 2021, 11.05-12.00 jakarta time. 12 this data represents an average based on the informants' stories. some informants are paid idr 1 million to have sex with customers, others idr 500 thousand, 750 thousand, or 800 thousand, depending on their beauty. 13 https://www.britannica.com/topic/iron-law-of-wages accessed on december 21, 2021, at 12:05 jakarta time https://www.britannica.com/topic/iron-law-of-wages asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 173-181 179 mafia and exploited in various ways, such as high-interest-rate loans that they are made to work hard to repay.14 furthermore, their passports are withheld or lost, leaving them undocumented. this forces victims to accept low wages while being exploited by being made to work long hours and carry out high-risk jobs. the lawbreaker status is also used to perpetuate exploitation. it is used to force indonesian migrant workers in malaysia to comply with employers' orders, such as long working hours, low wages, and limited work facilities. the 3d sector workers with low education are labeled as troublemakers and are disciplined using violence. malaysians consider themselves rich employers and helpers of the indonesian economy. the same approach towards migrants is taken by europeans, who consider them criminals, poor, troublemakers, and seekers of refuge from their own country’s failure. as a result, this approach divides society into natives and immigrants through processes of exclusion and inclusion (jonsson, 2019). however, xenophobia and racism have not emerged in the case of indonesian migrants in malaysia as they have in european countries (hürtgen, 2020). traffickers also build an image of themselves as helpers of female victims of sex trafficking. labels such as failed children, rural people, and poor and immoral women are constantly being produced as a cover for exploitation.15 for this reason, traffickers feel entitled to regulate the lives of their victims, whose need for work makes them dependent. activists joining the indonesian migrant workers union (imwu) and migrant care have conducted massive socialization and education efforts regarding recruitment, placement, and work systems in destination countries. this socialization has been carried out in areas known as suppliers of migrant workers. it involved local officials and imwu, who pioneered the preparation of village regulations regarding migrant workers. however, socialization has not had definitive results, as evidenced by the increase in the number of victims. between december 2021 and january 2022, 37 prospective migrant workers from indonesia died at sea when their overloaded ships sank.16 the labor trafficking from indonesia to malaysia continues due to the strong driving and attracting factors. furthermore, sex trafficking continues in the era of covid-19, which has triggered 2.5 million layoffs. domestic violence that afflicts young families also increases divorce rates and sex trafficking. 5. conclusion few previous studies have discussed labor trafficking, a phenomenon prevalent in labor oversupply countries such as indonesia. analysts have always examined labor and sex trafficking separately, as though they have different characteristics. in contrast, this study has examined the two forms of trafficking to identify the characteristics they have in common. the findings showed that trafficking results from converting agricultural land to non-agricultural functions. farmers and their families, who previously relied on the primary sector, cannot participate in the secondary and tertiary sectors due to limited resources. they are uprooted and become a floating mass, making them ideal victims of trafficking. the traffickers identify potential victims and promise they can change their lives. regarding the identification of potential and perfect victims, this study supports durisin and van der meulen’s (2021) argument about women trafficking in canada. other characteristics of victims are consistent with previous studies, such as poverty, low education, being unskilled, of productive age, and informal sector employees (barber, 2000; nuraeny, 2017; palumbo & sciurba, 2015; rafferty, 2021; sutinah & kinuthia, 2019). victims of labor and sex trafficking both share the burden of struggling to maintain the family economy. however, previous studies on trafficking have not discussed people who choose risky jobs to support their families. the classic reasons the victims give echo the ideology of the family as a source of protection and economy. however, this finding differs from the results of previous studies where victims are the products of broken homes (durisin & van der meulen, 2021; rafferty, 2021) and require reintegration. in contrast with the families of labor trafficking victims, families of sex trafficking victims do not know the nature of their children's work. in agricultural land conversion, careful government planning is needed to ensure there are jobs for excluded farmers. attracting investors and turning agricultural land into industrial land has encouraged structural transformation. the contribution of the secondary and broadcast sectors to the gross domestic product is more than 75%. however, in the absence of good planning, it creates social problems. therefore, third world countries undergoing structural transformation should consider the impact of agricultural land conversion on farmworkers and their families. funding: this research is supported by the universitas nasional (grant number: rector's decree number 90/2021). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. 14 this method was experienced by victims of labor and sex trafficking, as stated by informants in the fgd in karawang on january 25, 2022, as well as information from victims of sexual trafficking, namely daryani, maryanti, lulu, intan, and sandra, in interviews with researchers in jakarta and karawang on december 16, 2021, and january 12, 2022. 15 noted by daryani, ekawati, refinisa, lulu, intan, maryanti, sandra, and cahyani in separate interviews with researchers in december 2021 and january 2022. 16 https://www.cnnindonesia.com/internasional/20220120191720-106-749297/33-wni-tewas-imbas-kapal-tenggelam-di-malaysia-sejak-desember-2021 https://www.cnnindonesia.com/internasional/20220120191720-106-749297/33-wni-tewas-imbas-kapal-tenggelam-di-malaysia-sejak-desember-2021 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(3)2022: 173-181 180 references barber, p. g. 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(1959). indonesian society in transition: a study of social change. hague: w. van hoeve. http://www.tni.org/work-area/agrarian-justice http://www.tni.org/work-area/agrarian-justice http://www.unodc.org/roseap/index.html effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 173 mitigating food insecurity through mallard duck egg production: the case of a rural community in the philippines armando dela cruz lagascaa jerski jarzen cajuigan duriab eugenia gaspar baltazarc janet orden saturnod a,b,cuniversity extension center, central luzon state university, nueva ecija, philippines. duniversity gender and development office, central luzon state university, nueva ecija, philippines.  armanlagasca@clsu.edu.ph (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 9 december 2022 revised: 26 april 2023 accepted: 12 june 2023 published: 5 july 2023 keywords extension intervention food insecurity mallard duck potential of the duck industry rural development itik pinas rural women. poverty, food insecurity, and lack of employment opportunities are fundamental issues experienced in the rural philippines. they were worsened by the covid-19 pandemic, which adversely impacted vulnerable sectors. this study examined the potential and viability of mallard duck egg production in a rural community in the philippines. twelve (12) rural women in licab, nueva ecija, received 482 heads of ready-to-lay mallard ducks (itik pinas breed) as part of the department of agriculture regional field office iii's livelihood initiatives. data were gathered using a participatory research design through a household profile survey, focus group discussion, and descriptive statistics. the study findings showed that the respondents live below the poverty line and have an average monthly income of ₱2,083.33. the study revealed that during the 18 months of egg production, the recipients were able to harvest a total of 144,534 eggs. this provided the respondents with a gross income of ₱929,838.75 and a net gain of ₱341,156.89, corresponding to an average monthly net income of 1,579.43 per respondent. this allowed each respondent to improve their household income by up to 64.12%. peak egg output was 76% or 60.33% on average. this study also showed the resiliency of rural women, who utilized locally accessible resources to reduce production costs. contribution/originality: this study contributes information on rural women's resilience to a variety of challenges, such as poverty exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic. this study showed the potential of mallard duck egg production to mitigate food insecurity. moreover, it showed how women managed the project by adopting alternative management practices to lower production costs. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4825 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: lagasca, a. d. c., duria, j. j. c., baltazar, e. g., & saturno, j. o. (2023). mitigating food insecurity through mallard duck egg production: the case of a rural community in the philippines. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3), 173–182. 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4825 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction poverty in rural regions is caused by low agricultural productivity, which most rural inhabitants rely on, and a lack of employment options outside of farming. according to a study by the united nations food and agriculture organization, between 2017 and 2019, the philippines had the highest prevalence of food insecurity in southeast asia, with 59 million filipinos suffering from a moderate to severe lack of continuous access to food (ocampo, 2020). in addition, the global food security index q2 2022 by deep knowledge analytics, comprised of forty food security asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 3 (2023): 173-182. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8036-7798 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4358-1752 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2367-5134 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2255-7059 mailto:armanlagasca@clsu.edu.ph http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 173-182 174 indicators in the categories of food accessibility, crisis level, and food system and economic resilience, put the philippines lowest in east and southeast asia with a food security index score of 5.05 (deep knowledge analytics, 2022). this issue was aggravated by the covid-19 pandemic, the impact of which on health, society, and the economy has been far-reaching, significant, and devastating (united nations, 2020). it has exposed inequalities in global social support systems, revealing gaps that further marginalize vulnerable people. according to the organization for economic co-operation and development (2020a), the pandemic revealed numerous critical weaknesses in our communities and economic system. the situation was exacerbated in countries with substantial informal sectors and undeveloped social security systems, where a rising number of individuals lost their jobs without access to economic support (organization for economic co-operation and development, 2020b). furthermore, the coronavirus outbreak revealed and highlighted our society's existing social problems. poverty and food security among the poorest and most vulnerable people must be addressed. moreover, covid-19 has taken a heavy toll on rural livelihoods, with income and job opportunities being the most pressing issues in poor communities throughout the philippines (fallesen, 2021). as a result, numerous government and non-government institutions have undertaken various initiatives and programs to improve people's lives, particularly in rural areas. among the industries that have the potential to improve and enhance livelihoods is mallard duck egg production. the philippine council for agriculture, aquatic and natural resources research and development (pcaarrd) and the bureau of animal industry (bai) initiated projects to boost the duck industry in the country (the philippine council for agriculture aquatic and natural resources research and development pcaarrd-dost, 2012). this is because mallard duck (anas platyrhynchos) raising is a lucrative and profitable poultry industry in the philippines (villaver, zacal, gabaya, & cantila, 2022). it has a promising future, given the high demand for balut (embryonated egg), which accounted for more than 75 percent of the total duck production (hui-shung & dagaas, 2004). it is considered the second-largest poultry industry and has been regarded as one of the contributors to the growth of the country's agriculture sector (gutierrez, 2019). the demand for duck eggs for balut and salted eggs, as well as the general potential for duck meat to be used as a substitute for chicken meat, has motivated farmers and agri-preneurs to undertake native duck farming (alejandria, de vergara, & colmenar, 2019). central luzon was recently the top duck egg producer, with 7.21 thousand metric tons or 55.9 percent of the total production (philippine statistics authority, 2022a). in general, the philippines dominates the global duck egg market (atienza, rodriguez, babillonia, guimary, & rebancos, 2015). the main advantage of duck raising is that it does not require high-end inputs compared to other poultry animals (gutierrez, 2019). ducks are also cheap sources of good quality nutritious animal protein. duck management is also minimal compared to any other poultry. they produce eggs for an extended period and adapt to the local conditions, continuously improving performance. raising ducks requires only a basic shelter, and the food they consume is inexpensive. they also have high disease resistance, which results in a decreased mortality rate. licab in nueva ecija province is one of the municipalities with a rural population primarily engaged in agricultural production. it is a fourth-class municipality with a population of 29,269 (philippine statistics authority, 2022b). since agriculture is the primary industry in the municipality, mallard duck raising is an excellent alternative source of income for the locals. however, although duck raising can potentially engage rural people in duck egg production, it is vital to point out that they must be adequately trained (jha & chakrabarti, 2017). adzitey and adzitey (2011) also stated that extensive awareness empowers rural duck farming families to enhance duck eggs and commercial meat aspects. in this regard, this research aims to provide an overview of mallard duck egg production as a potentially profitable and viable source of additional income in a rural community in the philippines to mitigate food insecurity and a lack of alternative sources of livelihood. in addition, this study also attempted to determine the socioeconomic characteristics of duck raisers, assess and estimate the potential profitability of mallard duck egg production, highlight the challenges and issues faced by duck raisers, and showcase the rural community's resilience in addressing these concerns. 2. materials and methods 2.1. study site the municipality of licab is a rural municipality located in the westernmost section of the province of nueva ecija (philippine statistics authority, 2022b). the municipality is located approximately 155 kilometers from metro manila and includes eleven (11) barangays (philippine statistics authority, 2022b). the study was conducted in barangay san cristobal, the third largest barangay in the municipality, with 631.19 hectares of land and a population of 3,863 (philippine statistics authority, 2022b). 2.2. beneficiary selection as part of the extension intervention and initiative of the livestock division of the department of agriculture regional field office iii (da-rfo iii) to mitigate socioeconomic problems in rural communities, a total of four hundred thirty-eight (438) heads of ready-to-lay, at least 22-week-old mallard ducks and forty-four (44) heads of drake mallard ducks (itik pinas breed) were entrusted to twelve (12) selected rural women as beneficiaries of the livelihood project. the itik pinas are pure lines already breeding true-to-type (santiago, lambio, cañolas, hernandez, & dimaranan, 2014). the local government unit of barangay san cristobal facilitated the beneficiary selection. twelve residents of barangay san cristobal were chosen based on their willingness to start the enterprise but their inability to do so due to financial constraints. the participants underwent capability training before the start of the intervention. a series of exposure visits were also carried out for them to gain more practical knowledge. the participants introduced and adopted the semi-confinement system and extensive method of duck raising. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 173-182 175 2.3. data collection • household profiling a household survey instrument was prepared, administered, and tested in order to collect baseline data and derive the socioeconomic and demographic profiles of the respondents. • data sheet/form preparation a well-structured data sheet was developed and distributed to the participants to record and monitor their observations on egg production, egg sales, feed expenditures, and revenue. • focus group discussions the participants were provided monitoring activities and technical assistance to discuss their concerns, problems, proposed solutions, and actions taken. 2.4. descriptive statistics the socioeconomic data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as averages and percentages and are presented in tabular format. the performance and profitability of duck egg farming were measured and examined in terms of average egg production, feed cost, gross income, net income, and average monthly income. also, mallard duck productivity was measured in percentage egg output. the following formulas were utilized to determine the various parameters: • gross income = no. of eggs collected x price of an egg. • feed expense = feed consumed in kg x price of feed per kg. • net income = gross income – feed expense. 3. results and discussion 3.1. socio-demographic and economic profile of the respondents the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents are shown in table 1. all the respondents were married and characterized themselves as rural subsistence farmers. they ranged in age from thirty (30) to sixty-one (61) years old, which shows that all respondents were adults with an average age of 45.92. most respondents lived with their nuclear family, while some lived with extended families. 3.1.1. economic incapacity the average monthly income of the respondents was 2,083.33 pesos (around 36.70 dollars as of september 2022). five (5) responded that they had no income at all. according to the family income and expenditure survey (fies) of 2021, the population poverty incidence, defined as the proportion of filipinos whose per capita income cannot meet their basic food and non-food needs, was 18.1 percent, which equates to approximately 19.99 million filipinos living below the poverty line of about php 12,030 per month for a family of five (philippine statistics authority, 2022c). this indicates that all the respondents lived below the poverty line; however, despite living in poverty, most respondents had large families ranging from four to ten people. moreover, this data showed that agriculture is the primary employment source for impoverished filipinos. about 80% of the extremely poor and 76% of the moderately poor live in rural areas, and agriculture employs 76.3% of the severely poor and 60.7% of the moderately poor (castañeda et al., 2018). despite being regarded as the "rice granary of the philippines" due to its significance as a producer of agricultural products, many residents in the province of nueva ecija endure poverty-related challenges. with 108,922 low-income families, nueva ecija has the largest number of impoverished families in the central luzon region, according to data (tecson, 2020). furthermore, according to a former world bank economist, nueva ecija has a high poverty rate of 22.6% (dy, 2018). in addition, according to a 2018 study by the philippine center for investigative journalism, nueva ecija had the largest poor population in central luzon, with 547,711 people (bergonia, 2021). furthermore, more recent statistics have shown that the province's poverty rate remains high at 18.2 percent (philippine statistics authority-region 3, 2021). the data presented above support the study's findings on how rural families in licab, nueva ecija, faced and experienced poverty-related challenges. thus, this research on the potential of mallard duck raising could help engage the rural population in opportunities for sustainable food production and livelihood programs that may assist them in • average egg production = total egg produced x 100 total number of female ducks x production period in days • average income per month = net income no. of months of production • % egg production per month = total eggs produced per month x 100 no. of female ducks x no. days in a month asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 173-182 176 improving their socioeconomic condition. as a result, the mallard duck-raising initiative in a rural community promotes the first three sustainable development goals (sdgs): no poverty, zero hunger, and good health and well-being. 3.1.2. lack of education, skills, and livelihood to most filipinos, education signifies hope for the future, particularly for filipino women who consider education the route to a better life (tiglao-torres, 1993). however, based on the respondents’ level of education, it is evident that they lacked access to education. the majority of them had attained a secondary or high school diploma. only one respondent had attended tertiary or college education but did not finish. lack of access to education is not a new problem because this trend is similar to previous research. regarding their livelihood, five respondents said they were homemakers who focused on household duties and childrearing. in contrast, one respondent worked in the barangay as a health worker, three ran small businesses known as "sari-sari stores" that sell grocery items, and three were seamstresses. in addition, a study by the international labour organization (2022) posited that almost two million women work in the agriculture, fishing, and mining sectors in the philippines, where female rural workers experience a pattern of injury and disease, including violence and harassment, and a lack of fundamental labor rights and social protection benefits. furthermore, farming is the primary source of income for the respondents, and their spouses are the ones who are responsible for taking care of their farms. regarding their skills, all respondents had some level of expertise in planting; however, around half had no other expertise. three people said that they were skilled at sewing. this demonstrates that the respondents did not have access to training programs or businesses that could have provided them with supplemental income. however, we must remember that for them to thrive, they need ecologically responsible programs and, more importantly, programs tailored to their specific needs, allowing for the exchange of information and the development of new skills. table 1. socioeconomic characteristics of duck raisers (n=12). characteristics category frequency percent % age range 30-39 3 25 40-49 5 41.67 50-59 2 16. 67 60 and above 2 16. 67 family size 3-5 6 50 6-8 4 33.33 nine and above 2 16.67 educational attainment elementary 3 25 secondary 8 66.67 tertiary 1 8.33 occupation homemaker 5 41.67 barangay health worker 1 8.33 seamstress 3 25 micro entrepreneur 3 25 skills farming only 6 50 farming and food processing 3 25 farming and sewing 3 24 income range none 5 41.67 1200.01-2400 3 25 2400.01-3600 1 8.33 3600.01 and above 3 25 number of children 1-2 4 33.33 3-4 7 58.33 five and above 1 8.33 3.2. egg production and income of respondents from raising mallard ducks the participants in this study were entrusted with a total of 483 heads of mallard ducks. each received between thirty-three (33) and seventy-four (74) heads. in addition, the ducks were ready to lay eggs, and the ratio of females to males was ten (10) to one (1). table 2 displays the respondents' egg production and income during the first six (6) quarters of the production period (from december 2020 to may 2022). it indicates that respondents gathered and sold the fewest number of eggs in the first quarter of egg production at 17,949. however, the highest number of eggs were collected and sold during the second quarter or the fourth to sixth month of egg production at 29,395. egg production decreased slightly during the third quarter, and this decrease continued in the fourth quarter, with 22,812 and 18,558 eggs, respectively. more eggs were sold during the last two quarters of egg production, with 27,950 and 27,870 eggs, respectively. egg production for the entire 18-month laying period was 60.33 percent. this is lower than in the study of parungao (2019). the findings of berdos, martin, celestino, and paragas (2019) and martin, rafael, juan, velasco, and valdez (2020) suggest that itik pinas lines have an egg production rate of 70%; however, our result is consistent with their claims that it is higher than the pateros duck, which has a 50% egg production rate. based on simple-sequence asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 173-182 177 repeats markers, the pateros duck has high genetic variation (magpantay, lambio, laude, reaño, & diaz, 2019). this was supported by the statement of the duck industry association of the philippines inc. (diapi), as reported by serd personnel editor (2022). the findings show that the number of ducks assigned to each beneficiary was manageable. the beneficiaries successfully raised these ducks to become productive, thanks to the knowledge and skills they gained during their training and their long community experience in mallard duck raising. moreover, it reflects their willingness to augment their family income as they can see the potential of mallard ducks as a source of additional income. during six quarters of egg production, the respondents collected and sold a total of 144,534 eggs, at prices ranging from six (6) to eight (8) pesos (around 0.11 to 0.14 us dollars as of september 2022). this is in line with the price published by the philippine statistics authority (2022d), which said that the average farmgate price of a duck egg on commercial farms was php 7.00 per egg. therefore, the total amount sold, also referred to as the gross income from egg production, was ₱929,838.75. the total amount the respondents spent on feeds was ₱588,681.85, around 10,318.61 us dollars. however, the recipients had lower feed cost thanks to supplemental feeds such as rice bran, rice middling, palay, and snails. this allowed them to reduce the amount of money spent on feed. in addition, ducks were ranged in the rice field during the fallow period, enabling them to eat insects, weeds, snails, palay, and other naturally occurring feeds. in total, the beneficiaries earned a net income of ₱341,156.89, with an average monthly net income of ₱1,579.43 per respondent. moreover, their income may increase if they use the eggs for value-added activities, such as making salted eggs and "balut" (a fertilized developing egg embryo). this value-adding activity raises the price of the eggs because salted eggs and "balut" can be sold from ten (10) to fifteen (15) pesos per piece (around 0.18-0.26 us dollars). this is a potential 40%-150% increase in the income of the respondents. as such, the respondents may need to use duck egg incubator technology to make "balut" for value-adding and duckling production to make the project sustainable and maximize their income from mallard duck production. this relates to the studies of indarsih, jaya, and mutmainah (2020) and lagasca et al. (2022) on the use of locally available resources such as sawdust and bamboo incubators in hatching quail and duck eggs, which showed that hatchability, fertility, and embryonic mortality were comparable to those found when using an electric incubator. our result also demonstrated the potential of mallard duck production in addressing sustainable development goals such as mitigating food insecurity, combating hunger, and empowering individuals, mainly rural families. 3.3. productivity of the mallard duck the productivity of the mallard duck over 18 months (december 2020 to may 2022) is represented by the egg production curve in figure 1. the ducks started laying in december 2020, when they were about 21 weeks old, and reached their peak production of 76% in the 5th month of laying. the egg production percentage is lower, and it takes longer to reach the peak than in the study of santiago et al. (2014), which found that itik pinas lines reach a peak of 98100% egg production at 28-29 weeks of age. the mallard ducks started laying two weeks later than the reported age of itik pinas mallard ducks in their first lay (diego, martin, barroga, & velasco, 2021). the difference in the results is due to the different feeding and management systems; the respondents raised their ducks in a semi-confinement system with extensive management. the ducks were fed a limited or controlled amount of commercial feed. in contrast, the ducks in the prior research were provided with ad libitum commercial feeds in an intensive and confined environment. this conclusion is supported by the results of widiyaningrum, lisdiana, and utami (2016). in our study, egg production was lowest in the 11th month (34%). the declined egg production after ten months of laying indicated that the ducks were in the process of molting, which is the annual process by which waterfowl replace their old plumage with new feathers. molting may be brought on by physical exhaustion and fatigue, completion of the laying cycle, reduced feeding time, and loss of body weight. molting indicates that the bird's physical condition is deteriorating and, therefore, unable to support egg production. however, after a month, egg production increased and maintained its productivity until the 18th month of production, meaning that the ducks regained their energy and built up their reserves of nutrients. 178 table 2. egg production and income of respondents for the first six quarters of the production period (december 2020 to may 2022). respondent no. of ducks awarded no. of eggs collected and sold per quarter total no. of eggs collected and sold gross income (₱) feed expense (₱) net income (₱) female male q1 q2 q3 q4 q5 q6 1 68 6 3,013 5,060 3,800 4061 5850 4860 26,644 168,270.54 105,822.10 62,448.44 2 50 6 2,615 4,163 1897 1317 3305 4094 17,391 111,954.16 76,282.09 35,672.06 3 45 5 1,816 2,514 2297 1678 3305 4094 15,704 98,840.27 66,904.14 31,936.12 4 30 3 897 1,165 1319 910 1239 1351 6,881 44,847.61 20,438.05 24,409.56 5 30 3 829 1,594 1804 1165 2450 1890 9,732 64,539.83 41,309.06 23,230.77 6 32 3 1,363 2,575 2481 1804 2370 2580 13,173 87,983.36 57,006.08 30,977.28 7 30 3 1,040 1,533 1101 741 846 1113 6,374 42,704.80 24,245.38 18,459.43 8 33 3 1,124 1,933 1317 1084 1622 2199 9,279 59,451.60 41,374.42 18,077.18 9 30 3 1,289 2,483 1652 954 1086 1113 8,577 56,799.08 31,874.47 24,924.61 10 30 3 1,406 2,514 2175 2089 2460 1950 12,594 79,665.57 53,718.77 25,946.80 11 30 3 1,130 1,532 949 1544 1929 1250 8,334 51,532.67 36,453.03 15,079.63 12 30 3 1,428 2,329 2020 1211 1488 1376 9,852 63,249.27 33,254.26 29,995.01 total 438 44 17,949 29,395 22,812 18,558 27,950 27,870 144,534 929,838.75 588,681.85 341,156.89 note: average egg production. average income per month: php 1,579.43. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 173-182 179 figure 1. egg production pattern of mallard ducks in 18 months. 3.4. issues and problems encountered by beneficiaries and actions taken the respondents encountered different issues and problems during mallard duck egg production. these problems were associated with housing, nutrition, hatching, health, and marketing, which are the main factors affecting successful duck egg production, according to jacob, wilson, miles, butcher, and mather (2018). however, the primary problem of the duck industry is the lack of quality breeding stocks because there are no organized duck breeding and selection programs in the philippines (datuin & magpantay, 2013). table 3 shows the issues and problems that the respondents encountered during the implementation of their project and the actions taken to resolve such issues. due to limited financial capabilities, the respondents had problems providing the mallard ducks with proper housing and pure commercial feeds. these problems align with the results of lambio (2000) as reported by lagasca et al. (2022) about the duck industry in the philippines; he noted that the high cost of commercial feeds is one of the problems, and due to financial constraints, the majority of duck housing is of the litter type, and only approximately 12% has elevated flooring. to solve these problems, the participants used cheap and locally available resources to provide the ducks with enough space to be comfortable. during the off-season, ducks were ranged in the rice field where they could eat palay, insects, weeds, and snails to lessen feed costs without affecting the egg production efficiency of the ducks. also, ranging ducks in rice fields controls weeds and insects, effectively increasing farmers’ income, as stated by hossain, sugimoto, ahmed, and islam (2005). alternative feeds such as snails and other locally available materials provide good nutrition for the ducks (budiari, pujiawati, kertawirawan, & adijaya, 2021). this was supported by wagiman, bunga, and sidadolog (2019), who revealed that the egg production of ducks fed with snails and powdered green bean leaves was comparable to that of ducks fed with a standard ration. the ducks were also provided with supplemental feeds such as rice bran, rice middling, palay, and snails, especially when rice was planted in the fields, and the ducks could not range. the lack of an electric egg incubator was also a problem, especially for those who wanted to produce additional ducks and acquire quality replacement stock since mallard ducks are non-sitters. this problem was also noted by gutierrez (2019), who stated that duck raisers were willing to pay a higher price in exchange for better-quality replacement stock. still, stock availability is a major problem. therefore, eggs were brought to hatching/sitting muscovy ducks as an alternative. however, it is essential to understand the egg's breaking strength, especially during hatching, as discussed by lin, chen, rouvier, and marie-etancelin (2016), who stated that an egg's breaking strength increases with shell thickness. the shell is the egg's outer layer and serves as a barrier against both physical impact and pathogens (sá e silva, susta, moresco, & swayne, 2016). to address this problem, the beneficiaries requested a small electric incubator from the local government unit. during the hot or dry season, some birds were observed to be sick. however, the respondents provided vitamins and medicine in the drinking water and repaired deteriorated parts of the pen to prevent direct sunlight from penetrating it. the raisers also encountered fluctuating prices of fresh eggs, which became especially problematic when egg production was low because sales could not compensate for the feed cost. in general, egg weight indicates the uniformity of the shell's physical qualities and the egg's internal standard (wilson, 2017). this led some respondents to process the eggs into salted ones to give the eggs a higher value. the problem of fluctuating prices is supported by the department of science and technology-philippine council for agriculture aquatic and natural resources research and development dost-pcaarrd (2022), which states that the duck industry faces challenges of high costs of production inputs and fluctuating prices of duck and egg products. furthermore, the raisers tried to maintain simple farm records to assess and evaluate the productivity and viability of their livelihood project. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 173-182 180 table 3. issues and problems encountered by beneficiaries in duck egg production and actions taken. production and management practices issues/problems encountered action/s taken 1. housing and facilities limited financial capability to provide proper housing and facilities • used cheap and locally available materials to construct and improve existing pens • provided enough space 2. feeds and feeding insufficient financial resources to buy commercial feeds as the sole source of diet lack of ranging area during the rice planting season • ducks were ranged in the rice field during the fallow period • provided supplemental feeds like rice bran, rice middling, palay, and snails 3. incubation, hatching, and brooding lack of incubators for those who intend to produce their ducklings as mallard ducks are non-sitters • eggs were brought to sitting/hatching muscovy ducks to hatch the eggs • requested electric incubator from local government unit 4. health management sick birds during the hot season • provided vitamins and medicine through drinking water • repaired roofing and sidings by installing laminated sacks and other cheap materials 5. marketing fluctuating prices of fresh eggs • eggs were processed into salted eggs when the price of fresh eggs was low • practiced record keeping 3.5. family income of respondents before and after the intervention the percentage increase in the family income of respondents is presented in table 4. before the project intervention, the average monthly income of the respondents was ₱2,083.33. it is lower than their spouses' monthly income of ₱2,175.00. together, this corresponds to a monthly family income of ₱4,258.00. during the six quarters of project intervention, the respondents earned an additional monthly income of ₱18,953.16 or ₱1,579.43 per family. furthermore, the average family's income increased by 64.12%. this indicates the respondents' efficiency and dedication to nursing and rearing their mallard ducks since they recognized the vast potential of mallard duck raising in their community. one of the community's recommended interventions and plans was to use incubators and similar alternative technologies to have more animals to raise. this would allow them to optimize and maximize their profits while utilizing the knowledge and skills they obtained throughout the project. furthermore, this would contribute to the sustainability measure to ensure that the intervention continues and that the additional monthly income from duck raising continues to aid these families. table 4. percentage increase in family income after the intervention. respondent no. of entrusted ducks monthly family income before the intervention (₱) additional monthly family income from the project (₱) % increase in family income respondent spouse total 1 74 1,700.00 1,700.00 3,400.00 3,469.36 102.04 2 56 5,000.00 5,000.00 1,981.78 39.64 3 50 1,000.00 1,000.00 1,774.23 177.42 4 33 1,700.00 1,700.00 1,356.09 79.77 5 33 6,000.00 1,950.00 7,950.00 1,290.60 16.23 6 35 4,800.00 3,000.00 7,800.00 1,720.96 22.06 7 33 1,500.00 2,500.00 4,000.00 1,025.52 25.64 8 36 1,300.00 1,300.00 1,004.29 77.25 9 33 3,000.00 1,950.00 4,950.00 1,384.70 27.97 10 33 6,000.00 2,000.00 8,000.00 1,441.49 18.02 11 33 2,000.00 3,000.00 5,000.00 837.76 16.76 12 33 1,000.00 1,000.00 1,666.39 166.64 total 482 25,000.00 26,100.00 51,100.00 18,953.16 769.44 average 40.17 2,083.33 2,175.00 4,258.00 1,579.43 64.12 4. conclusion and recommendations poverty, food insecurity, and lack of employment opportunities in rural areas of the philippines are currently major concerns in the country. the situation was worsened by the covid-19 pandemic, which adversely impacted vulnerable sectors, including rural communities and families. the socioeconomic profile of the respondents corroborated these concerns as their average monthly income of 2,083.33 pesos indicated that they lived below the poverty line. this study showed that mallard duck raising and egg production is a potentially profitable and viable source of supplemental asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 173-182 181 income in a rural community in the philippines. the study's findings showed that the participants gathered a combined total of 144,534 eggs throughout 18 months of egg production. this gave the respondents a gross income of ₱929,838.75 and a net gain of ₱341,156.89, equivalent to an average monthly net income of ₱1,579.43 per respondent after deducting total feed expenses of ₱588,681.85. furthermore, the level of egg production was 60.33% on average and reached the highest point of 76% when the ducks were at their peak. the study also showed that the respondents' primary challenges and concerns were the fluctuating prices of fresh eggs and the rising costs of commercial feeds. the respondents addressed these issues by utilizing locally accessible resources, allowing the ducks to range freely in their rice fields, and supplementing the ducks’ diet with alternatives to reduce production costs. based on the findings generated from the study, the following recommendations were developed: (a) inclusion of mallard duck and egg production as a lucrative and profitable livelihood project in the local government unit's (lgu) annual work and financial plan to strengthen rural development, (b) extension interventions, particularly those coming from government organizations, should adhere to "appropriate" procedures before the implementation of the project including an assessment of training and information needs, the integration and development of a site validation instrument, coordination with the lgu, dialogue with relevant stakeholders, and the utilization of extension modalities to increase the project's efficiency and effectiveness; (c) identifying and establishing product standards and disseminating market information to promote, boost, and expand the mallard duck industry. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. data availability statement: upon a reasonable request, the supporting data of this study can be provided by the corresponding author. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references adzitey, f., & adzitey, s. p. 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https://reliefweb.int/report/world/policy-brief-covid-19-and-need-action-mental-health-13-may-2020 https://knepublishing.com/index.php/kne-life/article/view/3861/7925 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 530 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. towards a resilient mango (mangifera indica) industry in central luzon, philippines: a case study of nueva ecija's development needs nestor dela cruz natividada sarah calma alvarezb a,bnueva ecija university of science and technology, philippines.  nest0525.nn@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 10 june 2025 revised: 9 september 2025 accepted: 19 september 2025 published: 24 september 2025 keywords association members development plan farm practices mango industry nueva ecija swot analysis value addition. the mango industry functions as a vital economic sector for nueva ecija but faces rising production instability, which requires urgent development of protective measures. the output trend shows a decline since the last few years, although it experienced growth before, indicating emerging weaknesses that require specific solutions. the study described the current farm practices in planting materials, cultural management, harvest, postharvest, marketing, and financing through a descriptive quantitative design involving 110 growers from 11 cities and municipalities in nueva ecija province. researchers collected data through structured questionnaires and analyzed it using frequency and percentage distributions. the research showed strength in access and availability of production equipment, while weaknesses include inadequate working capital and limited training. opportunities are in value-added production through the processing center of the palayan city mango and grain growers association. however, the rising cost of farm inputs, pest infestation, and adverse weather conditions continue to affect profitability. the development plan entails capacity building, pest management, and infrastructure enhancement to make the mango industry more resilient in nueva ecija. contribution/originality: the research study generates new knowledge by examining mango farm practices through primary data, which is collected from organized associations in 11 cities and municipalities. the goal is to develop a policy-ready development plan with clearly defined implementing agencies and timeframes. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5628 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: natividad, n. d. c., & alvarez, s. c. (2025). towards a resilient mango (mangifera indica) industry in central luzon, philippines: a case study of nueva ecija’s development needs. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 530–541. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5628 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction mango (mangifera indica l.) is a high-value tropical fruit widely grown in asia, central and south america, and africa. asia alone is responsible for about 76% of the world’s mangoes, with the country producing 15 million metric tons per year (galán saúco, 2015). in the philippines, following banana and pineapple, mango is the third most important fruit crop (reyes, cayabyab, & copuyoc, 2020). the carabao mango, in particular, is famous for its exceptional sweetness and was named the world’s sweetest mango variety in the 1995 guinness book of world records (inquirer.net, 2013). the philippine mango industry supports around 2.5 million filipinos both directly and indirectly (department of agriculture, 2017). mangoes are widely grown in the philippines, according to the philippine mango industry roadmap 2017-2022. mangoes are cultivated by large corporate farms, medium-sized farms, and, most importantly, small farmers who own at least 10 to 12 trees. the roadmap estimates that the area of the mango sector exceeds 146,841 hectares, with 70% of the production area managed by small-scale growers. however, smallholder farmers asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 530-541 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-3964-4208 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7864-8227 mailto:nest0525.nn@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5628 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 530-541 531 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. face challenges such as limited access to financing, restricted availability of advanced farming technologies, and dependence on service contract sprayers and lessee agreements, which impact their efficiency and profitability. the philippine mango industry has been producing less than in previous years. the production of mangoes in the philippines reached its peak of 902.7 thousand metric tons in 2015. since then, it has declined. by 2019, production had fallen to 737 thousand metric tons. this indicates an average annual decline of 4.8% (paguia, paguia, ventura, javier, & roldan, 2021). the carabao mango variety, which accounts for 82% of total mango production, also experienced a decline in production volume by 5.2% in 2021. central luzon is a major mango-producing area in the philippines. however, it has also experienced a decline in production. the production significantly decreased from 2015 to 2017, from 52.68 thousand metric tons to 34.86 thousand metric tons. like other agricultural provinces in the region, nueva ecija is not exempt from this downturn. the province's mango yield fell from 9,402 metric tons in 2015 to 5,690 metric tons in 2017 (philippine statistics authority, 2017). mango is the top fruit in nueva ecija in 2024, which contributed the most to the total fruit production of the province despite a drop in volume. mango production in nueva ecija fell to 9.8 thousand metric tons, making it the second-biggest mango-producing province in central luzon. zambales was the largest, with 16.8 thousand metric tons of production. next were bulacan’s 7.9 thousand metric tons and aurora’s zero production. the continuous decline in mango production not only concerns the provincial economy but also the national mango supply chain. one reason is that nueva ecija accounts for 23.33% of the mango production area in central luzon (philippine statistics authority region iii, 2024). there are several factors attributable to the declining productivity of the mango sector. stakeholders and reports state that the main limitations are limited access to the market, lack of postharvest facilities, high input costs, pest infestations (cecid fly, mango pulp weevil, etc.), and poor farm-to-market infrastructure (department of agriculture – high value crops development program, 2017). farmers also lack adequate support for mango tree rehabilitation, nor do they have information on government assistance programs. carabao mangoes, known for their sweetness, are highly perishable and prone to postharvest damage, anthracnose, and stem-end rot (montecalvo, santos, & reyes, 2019). in addition, the philippine mango industry is at a competitive disadvantage compared to other countries such as mexico, thailand, and vietnam due to the lack of significant investment in r&d to make mango cultivars more resilient and productive (department of agriculture – high value crops development program, 2017). labor issues further compound the industry’s difficulties. during peak harvest, workers experience occupational hazards, irregular pay, and exploitative short-term contracts (sacramento, 2020). these socio-economic challenges and logistical hindrances hamper the sustainable development of the mango value chain and deepen rural poverty. due to the above-mentioned problems, there is a need to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the mango industry in nueva ecija, which is a major production area in central luzon. the study will aim to assess the current condition of the mango industry in nueva ecija, focusing on key farm practices in terms of planting materials, cultural management, harvesting, postharvest handling, marketing, and financing. the swot analysis framework aims to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the mango industry in nueva ecija, illustrating how internal and external factors affect its performance. this study will be used to build a localized mango industry development plan. the results also contribute to wider policy discussions on improving mango farm practices. the ultimate objective is to assist stakeholders such as farmers, cooperatives, local governments, and policymakers in developing a more resilient, inclusive, and productive mango value chain in nueva ecija. 2. materials and methods the current farm practices of mango growers in nueva ecija regarding planting materials, cultural management, harvesting, postharvest, marketing, and financing were the focus of a descriptive quantitative research design. using a quota sampling technique, 110 registered mango growers were sampled. quota sampling requires the researcher to identify specific groups, from which participants are selected to ensure the inclusion of relevant sub-groups (iliyasu & etikan, 2021). in this research, 10 members per association were chosen to represent mango growers from the municipalities/cities of zaragoza, rizal, caranglan, laur, palayan city, general mamerto natividad, gapan city, peñaranda, general tinio, cabiao, and san antonio. the list of mango associations was provided by the provincial agriculturist office of nueva ecija. the criterion of 20 or more trees was based on the classification by dela cruz (2007), where those with more than 20 are classified as commercial farm operators in the philippines. a key principle of the study was to limit its analysis to the commercial-scale mango growers. the researchers used quota sampling to achieve representation from different nueva ecija municipalities, but this sampling approach has inherent limitations. the results may face selection bias because participants were chosen through predefined quotas instead of random sampling. the results may be less generalizable to the broader population because participants from accessible or cooperative grower groups show different characteristics than those who were not included. the study findings need careful interpretation because they might not represent all the different types of mango growers that exist in the province. the method of quota sampling proved suitable for collecting essential data from organized growers’ associations, which had members with production experience. despite the data covering growers from various associations and areas, the data were presented in a consolidated form to show the overall picture of farm practices in the mango industry in nueva ecija, not to compare municipalities or associations. the researchers collected data through a structured survey questionnaire via face-toface interviews, ensuring clarity for the respondents. the researchers followed ethical guidelines such as informed consent and confidentiality. the frequency distributions and percentage analyses were conducted in ms excel and served as the basis for the mango industry development plan and strategic recommendations in nueva ecija. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 530-541 532 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3. results and discussion 3.1. farm practices of the mango industry in nueva ecija 3.1.1. planting materials table 1 presents the sources of planting materials of mango growers in nueva ecija. table 1. sources of planting materials used by mango growers in nueva ecija. source of planting materials frequency (n=110) percentage grown by growers 4 3.64 purchased 106 96.36 partly grown, partly purchased 0 0 total 110 100 mango growers in nueva ecija largely make use of grafted seedlings bought elsewhere. this means that, as shown in the table, 96.36% of respondents said that they do not propagate their own seedlings. the extensive reliance on commercially obtained seedlings is an acknowledgment of the advantages of grafted types, such as early bearing, better uniformity, and disease resistance, as cited by camungao, velasco, mesa, and san jose (2013). because of its market value, sweetness, and consumer demand, the carabao mango is the most popular variety. seedlings generally come from nearby nurseries and department of agriculture (da) programs. for example, growers in cabiao and san antonio can access certified nurseries near their municipalities for more stable, higher-quality planting materials. in upland areas such as laur and caranglan, growers will have difficulty transporting their seedlings. growers will start to send deliveries from the nearby provinces only when the seedlings are ready. esguerra, rolle, and mercado (2012) found that the socio-economic and geographical differences in access to seedlings greatly affect the long-term productivity of orchards. furthermore, most farmers prefer using mediumsized seedlings (3–4 ft) as they establish faster in the field with lower mortality rates. different municipalities have different preferences for size due to differences in land area, topography, and choice of cropping systems, reflecting the growers’ decisions in their choice of planting materials. 3.1.2. cultural management table 2 presents the cultural management practices employed by mango growers in nueva ecija, table 2. cultural management practices employed by mango growers in nueva ecija. cultural management practices frequency (n=110) percentage fertilizer used organic 17 15.45 inorganic 80 72.73 combination 13 11.82 planting distance 10m x 10m 54 49.09 10m x 5m 4 3.64 12m x 12m 9 8.18 15m x 10m 6 5.45 20m x 20m 37 33.64 type of cropping system inter-cropping 61 55.45 mono-cropping 49 44.55 flower induction self-spraying 43 39.09 contract spraying 67 60.91 insect, pests and disease control organic pesticide 0 synthetic pesticide 110 100.00 fruit bagging practiced 52 47.27 not practiced 58 52.73 mango production in nueva ecija requires cultural management practices such as land preparation, fertilization, pest control, and fruit bagging. in most cases, land clearing and digging are done by hand. however, in accessible areas, some growers use rotavators and tractors. the distance between any two plants varies, typically ranging from 10m x 10m to 20m x 20m. the distance depends on the size of the land and the cropping systems. a common practice among mango growers is intercropping, where 55.45% of the respondents grow mangoes with rice, vegetables, bananas, and calamansi. farmers in lowland areas like zaragoza and general tinio often use this technique to utilize their land and sources of income. despite its benefits, intercropping can make pest management more challenging due to the diversity of crops, which may facilitate pest transmission. therefore, pest monitoring and control become more demanding (wanole, tejashri, & chakraborty, 2020). mostly, fertilization practices are inorganic. all of the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 530-541 533 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. respondents applied either triple 14 or urea. they applied these on a seasonal basis, taking into account the yield of crops. some growers also include chicken manure as an organic input, despite the capacity of organic amendments to improve soil health and soil nutrient retention (dikinya, saka, & mufwanzala, 2010; roba, 2018). to induce flowering in trees, growers usually apply potassium nitrate and calcium nitrate from the 6th year of trees for flower induction. around 60.91% of growers use contract sprayers for their input applications. this reduces labor demand but also limits the grower's knowledge of using the right chemical at the right time. pest and disease management is a constant concern for growers, with cecid fly damage and anthracnose being the main threats. all respondents use chemical pesticides and fungicides, with some reporting a season of up to six sprays. according to tumang (2019) overdependence on chemicals without proper identification of the pest may result in pesticide overuse. consequently, residues will accumulate and cause harm to the environment. even though fruit bagging, a good agricultural practice (gap), improves the quality of the fruit, only 52% of growers implement this practice because of the high cost of labor and materials. bibi and baloch (2014) stated that bagging reduces pesticide use and improves the appearance of fruit for export. however, nearby municipalities like gapan have more farmers adopting bagging because they have easier and faster access to labor and materials.. 3.1.3. harvesting table 3 shows the harvesting schedule of mango growers in nueva ecija. table 3. harvesting schedule of mango growers in nueva ecija. time of harvest frequency (n=110) percentage fruit maturity lean months december 15 11.28 january 3 2.26 february 7 5.26 peak months march 26 19.55 april 38 28.57 may 29 21.80 june 15 11.28 note: multiple responses. the harvesting is usually conducted during march and april. 28.57% of growers harvest in april, and 19.55% in march. the timing of the picking season is determined by the maturity of the fruit, atmospheric conditions, and market prices. some growers practice early harvesting, known locally as pauna, to sell at higher prices in off-season markets, while others practice late harvesting, called pahuli, which exposes the crop more to the rainy season. most growers do not harvest their products themselves; instead, they enter into contracts where buyers or traders perform the harvesting. this approach reduces labor and logistics costs for farmers, estimated at ₱8000-10000 per hectare. however, it also diminishes the growers' control over quality and pricing. manual harvesting tools such as poles and baskets are commonly used. harvesting occurs from 9 am to 3 pm to prevent sap burns on the fruit. no respondents reported using mechanized tools for harvesting. additionally, there is no fruit sampling or residue testing, as most growers do not export. 3.1.4. postharvest handling postharvest activities in nueva ecija are still not fully developed and are inconsistently practiced, resulting in high mango losses. most growers still use old bamboo crates lined with old newspapers to package their fruits to prevent bruising, sap burns, and damage from bad packaging materials. these crates are relatively cheap but do not offer adequate physical protection during movement, and spoilage is likely. briones (2013) stated that poor handling and absence of cold chain facilities cause postharvest losses, with mango production ranging from 20% to 30% during the harvest season. similar findings were reported from nueva ecija, where none of the growers had access to cold storage facilities or climate-controlled transportation. this situation is believed to contribute to postharvest losses, especially in distant areas with poor roads. the municipalities of cabiao and gapan are closer and experience less spoilage because of shorter travel distances. upland areas such as laur and caranglan take longer to transport their products, resulting in increased spoilage. most growers also lack knowledge about postharvest treatments such as hot water dipping, waxing, and fungicidal coating, which are used in commercial operations to extend shelf life and maintain fruit quality. ventura, paguia, paguia, telmo, and marabe (2021) said that the use of such technologies can reduce spoilage and maintain the quality of fruits during distribution, showing a potential opportunity for the mango industry of nueva ecija. postharvest fruit and vegetable losses resulting from mechanical damage, decay, pest infestation, and temperature control problems represent a worldwide issue (patil, 2009; sivakumar & wall, 2013). the mexican government has implemented successful technologies to minimize postharvest losses through improved handling, storage, and transportation systems (naqvi, 2004). thailand acknowledges the need for appropriate postharvest technology and quality control methods, which must be carried out to maintain mango quality during supply chain operations (le et al., 2022). multi-dimensional success in postharvest management depends on stakeholder cooperation between modern handling approaches, market solutions, and infrastructure development (kader, 2004; asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 530-541 534 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. palumbo et al., 2022). the implementation of these combined approaches illustrates the fundamental role of integrated postharvest strategies in minimizing losses and increasing product longevity. 3.1.5. marketing table 4 presents the marketing practices of mango growers in nueva ecija. table 4. marketing practices of mango growers in nueva ecija. marketing practices frequency (n=110) percentage mango buyers retail market 18 10 agent 17 17 trader 75 73 mode of payment cash 108 98 consignment 0 0 both 2 2 mode of distribution to buyers delivered 10 10 pick up 93 83 both 7 7 mango marketing in nueva ecija is primarily conducted through contracts with traders and wholesalers who set the price of the mangoes. although this system reduces growers' marketing responsibilities, it also diminishes their bargaining power and income potential since the prices are controlled by intermediaries. according to brown et al. (2006), reliance on middlemen prevents growers from capturing the full value of their crops and responding effectively to price fluctuations. this issue is prevalent in the nueva ecija mango industry. price fluctuations remain a significant challenge, with farmgate prices rising from ₱80 to ₱100 per kilo during the off-season and dropping to ₱20 to ₱30 per kilo during peak harvest periods. without systems to monitor market prices and access to timely market information, growers are at a disadvantage in making informed price-related decisions, leaving them vulnerable to market volatility. as pointed out by brander (2018), branding and local marketing networks in the sector of mangoes are not well developed, which reduces opportunities for product differentiation and premium pricing. several towns join together through a cooperative or growers’ association for organized marketing, reaching institutional buyers like department of trade and industry fairs or department of agriculture-supported outlets. most growers are still outside this orbit due to a lack of incentives and no capacity-building initiatives that can supplement their market access and income generation potential. 3.1.6. financing table 5 shows the sources of financing utilized by mango growers in nueva ecija. table 5. sources of financing utilized by mango growers in nueva ecija. source of financing frequency (n=110) percentage self-financed 38 34.55% borrowed capital from private lending institutions 3 2.73% special lending programs of the government 0 cooperative loan 2 1.82% contractual arrangement 67 60.91% total 110 100.00% the results indicate that 60.91% of mango growers in nueva ecija are highly dependent on contractual arrangement schemes. these growers engage the services of sprayers under a production-sharing agreement to cover the costs of inputs, labor, and equipment. this practice is commonly adopted in general tinio, where growers find this solution appealing as they do not share production costs. unlike the growers from zaragoza, laur, and san antonio, who use income from other crops such as rice, those from penaranda and cabiao rely on savings or rice loans to fund mango production. only three out of a hundred growers are able to obtain loans from private institutions. in gapan and caranglan, some farmers borrowed up to ₱150,000 at an interest rate of 2.5% to 3% per month, with a repayment period of 5–6 months. although cooperative loans with no collateral at 2% monthly interest are available in general tinio, only 1.82% of growers have availed themselves of this type of loan. according to respondents, no one accessed government loan programs such as the agricultural competitiveness enhancement fund (acef), which offers loans at 2% interest per year. the main reasons for not accessing these funds are a lack of knowledge and documentation. overall, the absence of available credit, combined with rising input costs, may prevent many growers from opting for either contractual arrangements or self-financing, potentially restricting their ability to hold or expand mango production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 530-541 535 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.2. swot analysis of the mango industry in nueva ecija table 6 presents the perceived strengths of the mango industry in nueva ecija. table 6. perceived strengths of the mango industry in nueva ecija. strengths percentage percentage rank planting materials availability of quality planting materials 74 67.27 2 cultural management production equipment are available 76 69.09 1 note: multiple responses. quality planting materials and production equipment are among the identified strengths of the mango industry in nueva ecija. 67.27% of respondents reported having access to good-quality planting materials, specifically grafted carabao mango seedlings, from credible nurseries both within and outside their municipalities, including batangas and guimaras. according to esguerra et al. (2012) the seed center of the department of agriculture in clsu, muñoz, has a program dedicated to providing quality seedlings to growers. in terms of cultural management, 67.27% of respondents indicated possessing production equipment such as power sprayers, which are essential for spraying chemicals to control infestations. farmers today utilize tools like robin-brand power sprayers to maintain crop health as pests become more harmful. some farmers also have water pumps and irrigation systems to ensure crop stability during dry seasons. however, growers who are under contract benefit from the use of these equipment, as contract sprayers are responsible for their operation. 3.2.1. weaknesses table 7 presents the perceived weaknesses of the mango industry in nueva ecija. table 7. perceived weaknesses of the mango industry in nueva ecija. weaknesses frequency percentage rank planting materials lack of knowledge on mango variety 10 9.09 10 cultural management poor soil condition 17 15.45 8 limited seminars and training on mango production 68 61.82 2 lack of water/irrigation facilities 20 18.18 7 harvesting high percentage of reject mangoes 65 59.09 3 postharvest inadequate postharvest facilities 14 12.73 9 marketing low price due to low quality of produce 49 44.55 5 low price due to oversupply 60 54.55 4 poor farm-to-market roads 37 33.64 6 financing lack of working capital 88 80 1 note: multiple responses. the mango industry in nueva ecija faces several weaknesses that impact both productivity and profitability. the most critical issue, reported by 80% of respondents, is the lack of working capital, which hampers farmers' ability to purchase inputs, hire labor, and maintain orchard health. mango cultivation is costly, primarily due to expenses related to pest and disease control. many producers have resorted to contractual arrangements with pest and disease control sprayers and have sought financial assistance, as noted by (delos santos, 2012). limited access to training and seminars was identified as another significant weakness by 61.82% of respondents. many mango growers rely on ancestral knowledge and have not benefited from formal training, resulting in the continued use of outdated practices and inadequate pest management strategies. according to ledesma, aquino, and agbisit (2016) success in mango orchards heavily depends on proper training in pruning and disease control, yet access to such training remains limited. some growers claim that seminars are only available to a select few. a key production challenge for 59.09% of respondents is the high rejection rate of mangoes due to pest attacks, particularly by cecid flies. rejection rates are higher when bagging is not employed, which helps reduce insect damage. consequently, growers face economic losses as affected mangoes are sold at very low prices or discarded entirely. price instability is another major challenge, with 54.55% of respondents observing low prices during peak seasons due to oversupply. additionally, 44.55% report low prices resulting from low-quality produce damaged by pests. according to eain (2015), even highquality produce cannot command premium prices due to oversupply, which reduces its profitability. about 33.64% of growers have reported poor farm-to-market roads, which have aggravated logistical concerns. in upland areas like caranglan, growers have observed that transportation costs are a significant factor. as a result, traders do not reach remote farms due to high transport fees, causing buyers to lose interest (selim & skorseth, 2001). also, 12.73% of the growers suffer the impact of inadequate postharvest facilities. they often use cigarette cartons as harvesting containers, which are not strong enough to protect the fruit during transportation. bambalele, mditshwa, magwaza, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 530-541 536 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. and tesfay (2021) says that the quality of postharvest facilities is essential to maintain quality and reduce losses during the marketing of fruits. 18.18% of growers confessed that lack of water during the dry season caused them problems. this is especially true in upland municipalities such as general mamerto natividad, rizal, and caranglan. due to the unavailability of irrigation facilities, growers have to bring water from distant locations, which increases production costs and labor requirements. mango trees can be cultivated more effectively with significantly higher yields through consistent irrigation (morais, silva, freitas, & braga, 2021). additionally, some growers faced difficulties with poor soil quality (15.45%) and a lack of knowledge about mango varieties (9.09%). some farmers in penaranda purchased the wrong variety by mistake due to insufficient knowledge, which negatively impacted their production (quijano, quijano, & diaz, 2022). to address these weaknesses, it is essential to improve financial support systems, provide access to training, enhance pest management, develop infrastructure, and increase the availability of quality planting materials. 3.2.2. opportunities table 8 shows the perceived opportunities in the mango industry in nueva ecija. table 8. perceived opportunities of the mango industry in nueva ecija. opportunities frequency percentage rank cultural management improving productivity by using innovative technologies 110 100 1 collaboration with the government, ngos, and community groups 110 100 1 postharvest substantial surplus can be developed into a marketable value-added product 110 100 1 note: multiple responses. mango growers from nueva ecija have identified three high-impact opportunities to enhance productivity and profitability. innovative technologies such as the integrated crop management (icm) and postharvest quality management (pqm) are encouraged to control yield decline caused by pests and diseases (department of agriculture, 2017). implementing these advanced techniques could increase the production of export-quality mangoes and reverse the declining trend in productivity. mango growers in palayan city, the capital of nueva ecija, have a significant opportunity due to the mango processing center operated by the palayan city mango grain and growers association (pcmga). this is the only such facility in the province. established in december 2017 by the department of agriculture, the philippine rural development project, the center produces mango juice, mango puree, and mango wine. although operational, the center faces challenges related to fda registration and the implementation of a quality management system (qms), which are essential for product standardization and expanding market access. addressing these issues through technical assistance and regulatory support presents a substantial opportunity for the center to grow its market share and leverage its status as the only mango processing plant in the area. additionally, partnerships with government agencies, ngos, and community groups can provide valuable learning, funding, and technical support. the department of science and technology’s mango industry strategic science and technology program aims to control pests, diseases, poor nutrition, and postharvest losses. meanwhile, the department of trade and industry conducts value-adding activities to improve mango marketability (sacramento, 2020). local government units (lgus) support mango farming as a viable business through community development programs. lastly, surplus mangoes can be transformed into marketable value-added products such as dried mangoes, mango puree, and sinigang mix powder, which have significant market potential. these are good product options for diversifying one’s income when they are in harvest season (department of agriculture – high value crops development program, 2017). 3.2.3. threats table 9 shows the perceived threats in the mango industry in nueva ecija. table 9. perceived threats of the mango industry in nueva ecija. threats frequency percentage rank planting materials high cost of seedlings 31 28.18 10 cultural management increasing costs of production inputs and labor 110 100 1 high costs of farm tools, equipment, and machinery 89 80.91 4 high incidence of pests and diseases 105 95.45 2 bad weather/calamities 97 88.18 3 lack of laborers during peak season 58 52.73 8 lack of adequately skilled manpower 48 43.64 9 limited government support 62 56.36 7 marketing delayed payment by buyers 11 10 11 frequent price fluctuation/unstable prices 68 61.82 6 financing high interest on a loan 78 70.91 5 note: multiple responses. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 530-541 537 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. mango growers in nueva ecija face many serious threats, as revealed in the swot analysis. all of the respondents said that the greatest threat is increased costs of inputs and labor, which put a strain on the farm budgets. growers in gapan observed that the price of a fruit bag increased from 30 centavos to 70 centavos per piece, and the rise in the price of pesticides and fungicides prompted them to avail of financing on a contractual basis (delos santos, 2012). in the same way, inflation is increasing the cost of labor. consequently, farms need to import labor. all this increases losses on farms, particularly at the peak of the season. at this time, wages, food, and transport costs increase. another threat mentioned by 95.45% of the respondents is pests and diseases, such as cecid fly, anthracnose, and mango pulp weevil, which are detrimental to the quality and yield of the crop. the presence of pests is aggravated by humidity and failure to manage them properly. failure to bag fruits often results in rejection rates as high as 70–80%, leading to substantial economic losses (rocha iv & lagarteja, 2020). typhoons and heavy rains pose risks to mango crops, with 97% of mango growers affected by bad weather and calamities. in 2020, mango farms in laur were damaged after typhoon ulysses hit, causing loss of trees and fruit, according to growers. additionally, fluctuating climatic conditions may lead to fungal diseases and a decline in the quality of the yield (makhmale, bhutada, yadav, & yadav, 2016). the cost of farm tools and implements is said to be high by 80.91% of respondents. many farmers are faced with challenges of financing necessary farm tools like power sprayers, water pumps, utility vehicles, and many more for maintaining their farms. it is too costly for small-scale growers to establish a deep well to irrigate their crops. as a result, they will not be managed properly during the dry season. 78% of respondents say high-interest-rate loans make financing challenges more difficult. some farmers borrow from rural banks at an interest rate of 2.5% to 3% monthly, while others borrow from informal sources at an interest rate of up to 10%, which increases the risk of being in debt (ololade & olagunju, 2013). 61.82% of growers are facing frequent price fluctuations and unstable prices, which are putting the profitability of mango farming under threat. during peak harvest, prices decline sharply owing to higher supply and market saturation. in order to profit most from the purchase and sale of these crops, buyers and traders manipulate the prices (eain, 2015). farmers in penaranda and zaragoza claimed that prices fell by ₱5.00 – ₱25.00 after they brought their crops to market, which could adversely affect their incomes. furthermore, limited government support poses a significant threat, with 56.36% of respondents. mango growers from other municipalities complained about not receiving adequate support from the government in terms of production inputs such as farm tools. some farmers attained only two sacks of fertilizer per hectare, while others benefited from power sprayers. according to some growers, two sacks of fertilizer, for example, are not enough to meet the fertilizer needs of a hectare of mango trees. another issue of concern is the shortage of labor during peak season, with 52.73% of respondents facing this problem. this may pose challenges to laborintensive tasks, such as fruit bagging, which directly affect fruit quality and ultimately their market value (bayogan, esguerra, & campeon, 2006). the younger generation is also not interested in working on farms, which worsens the shortage of farm labor (senapati & padhi, 2020). finally, 10% of growers are facing cash flow problems due to delayed payments by buyers, especially in remote areas like caranglan, where access to direct buyers is limited. some growers have delayed payments of several months, resulting in financial uncertainty and reliance on informal lenders. to counter these threats, the government must implement strategies that provide accessible financing, improve pest management practices, develop postharvest infrastructure, and strengthen market linkages to stabilize prices and ensure regular income for mango growers in nueva ecija. 3.3. proposed development plan the survey and swot analysis results serve as the foundation for the development plan, which transforms priority issues into specific objectives and practical strategies for the main production areas, with defined implementing agencies and estimated time frames. table 10 presents the proposed development plan for the mango industry in nueva ecija, presenting the area, issues, objectives, strategic initiatives, brief descriptions, responsible agencies, and time frames. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 530-541 538 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. table 10. proposed development plan for mango industry in nueva ecija. area issues/problems/ concerns objective/s solutions/strategic initiatives/project brief description of the strategy/project players/agencies involved time frame planting materials lack of knowledge on the mango variety to provide farmers with the information and skills they need regarding planting materials. include in the provision of training and seminars regarding mango production (good agricultural practices) this strategy will advance and broaden knowledge of agricultural best practices by developing human capability. department of agriculture (da), provincial and municipal agriculturist 3 – 6 months high cost of seedlings to achieve lower costs and highquality seedlings for mango growers.. development of a mango nursery farm in the city/municipality this creates quality, disease-free planting materials at a lower cost da, municipal/city agriculturists 3 – 6 months accreditation of nurseries this project would support and provide opportunities for potential mango growers cultural management poor soil condition, lack of water/irrigation facilities to improve soil health and utilize water resources for crop production. soil analysis and conditioning program, rainwater harvesting system soil test, apply organic manure, and put in place rainwater harvesting structures in waterscarce areas to grow crops. da, municipal/city agriculturists, state university and colleges (sucs), department of science and technology (dost) 1 – 2 years limited training on mango production, high incidence of pests and diseases to improve farm management skills and reduce pest damage gap and ipm training workshops training on gap and ipm, pest identification and pruning to reduce reject rates and improve farm productivity. da, sucs, cda, mango associations 3 – 6 months high cost of inputs, high cost of farm equipment to improve farm management skills and reduce pest damage. cooperative input supply program, farm machinery assistance create cooperatives to buy inputs in bulk and give help with equipment for spraying, irrigation. cooperative development authority (cda), local government units (lgu), mango associations 6 months – 1 year cultural management bad weather/calamities, lack of skilled farm laborers to lessen production losses caused by disasters and train a skilled workforce. mango rehabilitation program, communitybased training program offer production inputs and community training on crop management, pruning and pest control targeting youth and unemployed sectors. da, lgus, sucs, cda 1 – 6 months asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 530-541 539 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. area issues/problems/ concerns objective/s solutions/strategic initiatives/project brief description of the strategy/project players/agencies involved time frame harvesting high percentage of rejected mangoes to assist mango farmers in processing their perishable mangoes, which include rejects, so that they can be converted into products that can be eaten for a longer time. product processing and market support the project encompasses training programs and the provision of primary processing facilities to add value. da, dost, department of trade and industry (dti), through ssf, suc, private industry 6 months – 1 year postharvest inadequate postharvest facilities to enhance operations and provide postharvest services. provision of postharvest facilities and training workshop for mango growers regarding post-harvest activities through this project, mango growers will be able to improve the quality, safety and extended shelf life of fruit. da, provincial/municipal agriculturists 3 – 6 months marketing low price due to low quality of produce/ low price due to oversupply creating new ways to make money through mango will help mango growers to add an income source. product processing and market support this project will carry out training and provide primary processing facilities for value addition. da, dost, dti, suc, private industry 6 months – 1 year poor farm-tomarket roads to hasten the transport and delivery of farm produce. construction of farmto-market roads with this approach, farmers will have much faster and safer access to getting their goods and fresh produce. da, dpwh, provincial, city/ municipal agriculturist, lgu, cda 1 – 3 years frequent price fluctuation/unstabl e prices to gain market power (negotiating power) establish a marketing cooperative make a cooperative in order to buy the harvest of its farmer-member at a fair price. it would encourage partnerships with major businesses or processors. 6 months – 1 year financing lack of working capital/ high interest on loan offer formal credit to help mango growers fund their business. link mango growers, associations to the government’s financing programs this will raise awareness and assistance to the farmers in terms of lowinterest loans, terms and conditions. land bank of the philippines, da's agricultural credit policy council 1 – 3 months asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 530-541 540 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 4. conclusions the farm practices of mango growers in nueva ecija display a combination of traditional and modern methods aimed at sustaining their production despite various challenges. the use of grafted carabao mango seedlings demonstrates how growers prefer high-quality planting materials for higher yields and disease resistance. most growers lack the financial capacity to operate the farm without requiring contractual arrangements for major production inputs and service activities. moreover, there continues to be widespread use of pesticides and fertilizers due to pest infestation problems, most notably from cecid fly and anthracnose. furthermore, improper application and limited technical training have contributed to high rejection rates. the postharvest handling practices are not well-developed; many growers lack cold storage and processing facilities, leading to increased postharvest losses. although some farmers are practicing fruit bagging, the practice is not widespread due to the costly materials and labor involved. as a result, interventions focusing on capacity building and training in pest management, as well as improved postharvest infrastructure, will enhance farm practices and reduce losses. the swot analysis indicates that the mango industry in nueva ecija has access to quality grafted seedlings and availability of production equipment. low working capital, insufficient training, and a high rejection rate of mangoes are some of the weaknesses that hamper productivity and profitability. rising production input and labor costs are the biggest threats to mango profitability for farmers in nueva ecija. other major threats include pests, diseases, and weather disturbances. however, opportunities exist through government support programs such as those from da, dti, and dost, which provide financing, technical assistance, and training. the pcmga processing center can develop into a value-added production facility that can expand its current product line while also creating new valueadded products once there is support for fda registration and quality system development. to survive and thrive, nueva ecija’s mango industry must address its weaknesses by developing a comprehensive program that builds on its strengths and mitigates the threats. the research delivered detailed descriptive information about mango farm operations in nueva ecija but it did not perform statistical tests like correlation or regression analysis. the exploratory design of the research required it to focus on establishing baseline data, which prevented the use of inferential statistical methods. the study did not perform productivity results analysis for particular farming practices, as no statistical tests were carried out. future research should incorporate more sophisticated statistical approaches in order to identify some of the relevant relationships concerning farming practices and results, such as yield, income, and operational efficiency. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the nueva ecija university of science and technology (neust), philippines, has granted approval for this study on 15 august 2021 (ref. no. 20250931). transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references bambalele, n. l., mditshwa, a., magwaza, l. s., & tesfay, s. z. 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(2020). agritourism and value addition in mango-based enterprises. journal of extension systems, 36(2), 75–84. views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.15406/bbij.2021.10.00326 https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/ https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.799431 https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031132 https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-2606-4_8 https://doi.org/10.3390/foods11233925 https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.342375 https://doi.org/10.1080/87559129.2012.692138 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 140 adoption of mechanical seeder among rice farmers in cagayan valley region, philippines aldrin e. baduaa danilo s. vargasb eugenia g. baltazarc jocelyn l. avenod maria excelsis m. ordene a,b,c,d,ecentral luzon state university, science city of muñoz, nueva ecija, philippines.  aldrinbadua@clsu.edu.ph (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 30 july 2024 revised: 30 september 2024 accepted: 14 october 2024 published: 15 november 2024 keywords direct seeding mechanical seeder rice farmers rice production technology rice technology acceptance technology adoption technology utilization. this study examines the adoption of mechanical seeder among rice farmers in cagayan valley region, phillippines. mechanical seeder is a machine for planting rice. the mechanical seeder was initially introduced to rice farmers in the cagayan valley region, philippines. this study assessed the adoption factors regarding farmers' acceptance and utilization of the mechanical seeder. the respondents in this study were the farmer-users of the mechanical seeder for rice. all data were gathered through the use of an interview schedule. data were analyzed using correlations, linear, and logistic regression. results revealed that hearing/reading as an independent variable showed a significant correlation with technology acceptance and a highly significant correlation with attendance at promotional activities and training. a farmer who attended the promotional activities has a greater probability of accepting the technology. attending promotional activities like lecture discussions, demonstrations, field days, seminars, and exhibitions by the farmerusers facilitated the acceptance of mechanical seeder technology. attendance at promotional activities was also a significant predictor of a higher level of acceptance of the mechanical seeder among farmer users (p<0.01), and the size of the farm was a significant predictor of a higher level of utilization among farmer users (p<0.01). the different mechanical seeder attributes like ease of use, usefulness, and relative advantage positively affected farmer respondents' acceptance and utilization levels. contribution/originality: this study investigates the factors influencing the adoption of mechanical seeder among farmers using correlations and linear and logistic regression analysis. the study has not seen any similar research before. the study contributes to development planners in formulating appropriate extension strategies for more effective implementation of mechanical seeder programs. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5221 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: badua, a. e., vargas, d. s., baltazar, e. g., aveno, j. l., & orden, m. e. m. (2024). adoption of mechanical seeder among rice farmers in cagayan valley region, philippines. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4), 140–146. 10.55493/5005.v14i4.5221 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction rice planting is a labor-intensive activity in rice production in the philippines. mechanizing it is crucial to boost the productivity of rice production. manual transplanting is the predominant practice in rice production in the philippines, and it is considered laborious and costly (philrice, 2023). an alternative to transplanting is a direct seeding method where pre-germinated seeds are sown directly onto the soil surface. direct seeding technology can asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 4 (2024): 140-146. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0008-8534-5935 mailto:aldrinbadua@clsu.edu.ph http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 140-146 141 help address high labor costs in rice farming, and direct-seeded rice matures earlier than transplanted rice. therefore, it reduces the labor requirements, expenses, and time required for crop establishment and crop management (philrice, 2016). in 2011, the korean project on international agriculture (kopia) introduced the mechanical seeder to the philippines through a collaboration with the philippine rice research institute (philrice). on the other hand, in 2016, the department of agriculture-region 2 (darfo2) recommended the mechanical seeder for rice planting. farmers' organizations in the cagayan valley region, philippines, utilized the mechanical seeder that was distributed to them. some accepted and utilized the mechanical seeder well, and others encountered problems using the technology. interestingly, the department of agriculture plans to promote mechanical seeder use nationwide extensively. to ensure the greater success of promoting the mechanical seeder nationwide among rice farmers, documentation and establishment of the factors of acceptance and utilization of the technology are required. therefore, this research aims to determine the adoption factors, specifically the acceptance and utilization of mechanical seeders among the initial farmer-users of the technology. 2. methodology 2.1. time and respondents of the study the cagayan valley region, philippines, hosted the research from january 2019 to february 2020. the respondents were all the farmers who used mechanical seeder’s services. 2.2. research framework the framework of this study (figure 1) was based on the theory of the technology acceptance model (tam). over time, various sectors have recognized the applications of tam not only in predicting the acceptability of the information technology, but also in predicting the acceptability of agricultural technologies. the tam can predict the acceptance of technology by the users' behavioral intention, which is, in turn, determined by the perception of technology's usefulness in performing the task and the perceived ease of its use (marikyan & papagiannidis, 2023). on the other hand, flett et al. (2004) studied the application of the tam to technology acceptance and use. the results shed light on the decision-making processes in an industry that prioritizes technology-driven productivity. this study used the farmer's farm profiles, exposure to extension, and promotional activities as independent variables. the study of patel (2007) confirms that farmers' profiles, exposure to extension, and promotional activities have the most significant relationships with adoption across a broad range of innovation types. tam intends to include other variables that account for change processes. technology change will be implemented by adopting technology attributes that influence utilization by including relative advantage as one of the intervening variables (rogers, 2003). the usefulness, ease of use, and relative advantage of the mechanical seeder are the technological attributes that influence the level of acceptance and utilization of the mechanical seeder. meanwhile, acceptance and utilization of mechanical seeder are the dependent variables that are influenced by the independent and intervening variables. figure 1. the framework of the study. 2.3. research instrument the researcher used an interview schedule to gather information. the interview schedule for the farmer-users includes questions about their socio-demographic profiles of farmer-users, farm profile, their exposure to promotion and information delivery systems, technology acceptance, and utilization level. 2.4. data analysis data gathered from the farmer-users were tabulated and analyzed using appropriate statistical analysis. statistical analyses were done through the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) system. 2.5. spearman rank correlation the spearman rank correlation was used to present the relationships between the socio-demographic profiles of farmer users, farm profiles, farmers' exposures to promotion and information delivery systems, and the level of acceptance by the farmer users. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 140-146 142 where: ρ= spearman rank correlation. di= the difference between the ranks of corresponding independent variables (socio-demographic profiles of farmer-users, their farm profiles, and exposure to information/promotion strategies mechanical seeder promotion among farmer-users). n= number of observations. 2.6. ordinal logistic regression ordinal logistic regression was used to determine the relationships between the level of acceptance of the mechanical seeder among farmer-users and their socio-demographic profiles, farm profiles, and exposure to information/promotion strategies. where: y is the dependent or response variable with k-ordered categories, yi is the level of acceptance of the mechanical seeder among farmer-users, i=1,2,…,n j=1,2,…..,k-1; y1 (j) is cumulative probability p(yi ≤ j) = p(yi=1) + p(yi =2) +…..+ p(yi =j) for j=1,2,…k-1. x1, x2… xn are the independent variables, such as farmer-users' socio-demographic profiles, farm profiles, and exposure to information/promotion strategies. β1, β2, …, βp correspond to the regression coefficients for the respective independent variables. rj are the cut-off points between categories. 2.7. multiple linear regression multiple linear regression was used to determine the relationships between the mechanical seeder’s utilization level among farmer-users and their socio-demographic profiles, farm profiles, and exposure to information/promotion strategies. multiple regression generally explains the relationship between multiple independent or predictor variables and one dependent or criterion variable. dependent variables are modeled as a function of several independent variables with corresponding coefficients and the constant term. the previously explained multiple regression equation assumes the following form: 𝑦 = 𝑏1𝑥1 + 𝑏2𝑥2 + … + 𝑏𝑛𝑥𝑛 + 𝑐 where: y = level of utilization of the mechanical seeder among farmer-users. xn = independent variables like tenurial status and read/hear mechanical seeder from media. bi’s (i=1,2…n) are the regression coefficients, representing the value at which the criterion variable changes when the predictor variable changes. 2.8. pearson correlation pearson correlation was used to analyze the relationship of technology attributes to technology utilization. where: rxy = pearson r correlation coefficient between x and y. n = number of observations. xi = value of x (for ith observation), percent of rice area planted using mechanical seeder for first and second harvest season, 2018. yi = value of y (for ith observation), technology attributes like ease of use, usefulness, and relative advantage. 3. results and discussion 3.1. level of acceptance of mechanical seeder and its relationship with the socio-demographic profiles of farmer-users, their farm profiles, and exposure to information and promotion strategies table 1 shows the correlation between independent variables and technology acceptance. the independent variables included in the analysis were farmers' age, educational attainment, attendance at training, involvement in agricultural programs, reading/hearing about mechanical seeder through media, and attendance at mechanical seeder promotional activities. the independent variables that showed a significant correlation with technology acceptance were reading/hearing the mechanical seeder through media (p<0.05), and highly significant correlation variables were attendance to promotional activities and attendance to training (p<0.01). according to rogers (2003) before an innovation is accepted by a group of people, a group member must be aware that the innovation exists. thus, at this point, the individual has been exposed to the idea but still requires more information about the innovation and lacks the motivation to further explore it. therefore, at this stage, the individual only has basic knowledge of the innovation and the decision to accept the technology. following exposure asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 140-146 143 to promotional activities, training, and media exposure to the mechanical seeder, the individual is prepared to either accept or reject the innovation. the attendance of farmer users at promotional activities helped them better understand the use and value of this technology in their farming activities and affected its acceptance. this study's result is similar to the findings of kumar, jha, and ghorai (2007) who state that acceptance and adoption of technology have a remarkable impact on farmers who attend training and participate in demonstrations. this is also consistent with hinnou, obossou, and adjovi (2022) findings that the enabling factors for accessing agricultural machinery include the promotional offer of equipment and donation of agricultural machinery to farmers' organizations. table 1. the correlation coefficient between the independent variables and technology acceptance. independent variables correlation coefficient significance attended training 0.333 0.006** involved in agricultural program 0.074 0.553 read/heard mechanical seeder 0.243 0.050* attended promotional activities 0.493 0.000** age of farmers -0.174 0.162 note: **significant at 1% level of significance. *significant at 5% level of significance. hearing and reading the mechanical seeder through media positively correlates with technology acceptance. hearing and reading the mechanical seeder from media like print media, radio broadcasts, and advertising improved the diffusion and utilization of the mechanical seeder. the results align with the findings of ahmed and bagchi (2004) which suggest that acquiring new knowledge or information about agricultural technologies significantly influences the diffusion and adoption of these technologies. wang, drabik, and zhang (2023) also confirm that information campaigns through radio and the government (through its face-to-face channels) are positively associated with farmers' adoption of technology. table 2 shows the parameter estimates from ordinal regression of the socio-demographic profiles of farmer users, their farm profiles, and exposure to information/promotion strategies with the level of acceptance of mechanical seeder. attendance to promotional activities (0-not attended, 1attended) showed a significant effect on technology acceptance (p<0.01), with parameter estimates equivalent to 3.639. this showed a decrease in the average acceptance odds if a farmer-user has not attended the promotional activities, with all other independent variables held constant. table 2. parameter estimates from ordinal regression of the independent variables with the level of acceptance of mechanical seeder. parameters independent variables estimate std. error wald df sig. threshold [techaccept = 3.00] -4.188 1.735 5.825 1 0.016* [techaccept = 4.00] -1.203 1.610 0.559 1 0.455 location [attendpromo=.00] -3.639 0.969 14.086 1 0.000** [attendtrg=.00] -0.666 0.606 1.206 1 0.272 [readhear=.00] -1.266 0.902 1.968 1 0.161 [education=1.00] -0.516 2.117 0.059 1 0.807 [education=2.00] 0.689 1.828 0.142 1 0.706 [education=3.00] 2.305 1.886 1.495 1 0.221 [education=4.00] 0.651 1.608 0.164 1 0.685 [education=5.00] 0.266 1.688 0.025 1 0.875 [education=6.00] -1.983 1.727 1.318 1 0.251 note: **significant at 1% level of significance. *significant at a 5% level of significance. 3.2. relationships of attendance to promotional activities and level of acceptance table 3 shows the cumulative probability from the ordinal regression of mechanical seeder promotional activities on the level of acceptance. the level of acceptance is presented as the dependent variable using a five-point likert scale from 1 with very low acceptance to 5 with very high acceptance. table 3. cumulative probability from the ordinal regression of mechanical seeder promotional activities on the level of acceptance. cumulative probability parameters level of acceptance not attended mechanical seeder promotional activities 3 4 5 cumulative logit (0.55) 2.44 cumulative odds [exp(cum.logit)] 0.58 11.43 cumulative proportion [1/(1+exp(cum.logit))] 1.00 0.63 0.08 category probability 0.37 0.55 0.08 attended mechanical seeder promotional activities 3 4 5 cumulative logit (4.188) (1.203) cumulative odds [exp(cum.logit)] 0.02 0.30 cumulative proportion [1/(1+exp(cum.logit))] 1.00 0.99 0.77 category probability 0.01 0.22 0.77 odds ratio (not attended mechanical seeder promotional activities/attended mechanical seeder activities) 38.05 38.05 odds ratio (attended mechanical seeder activities/not attended mechanical seeder promotional activities) 0.03 0.03 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 140-146 144 the odds of farmers having attended the promotional activities for a higher level of acceptance were 38.05 times that of farmers having no attendance to promotional activities. similarly, the odds of farmers having no attendance to promotional activities for a higher level of acceptance were 0.03 times that of farmers with attendance to promotional activities. farmers who did not attend the promotional activities for mechanical seeder were more likely to have a lower level of acceptance than those who did. the relationship above shows that farmers not attending promotional activities for mechanical seeder are less likely to accept the use of mechanical seeder. the probability that a farmer with no attendance to mechanical seeder promotional activities will have a level of acceptance of 3 is 37%, a level of acceptance of 4 is 55%, and a level of acceptance of 5 is 8%. the probability that a farmer with attendance to mechanical seeder promotional activities will have a level of acceptance of 3 is 1%, a level of acceptance of 4 is 22%, and a level of acceptance of 5 is 77%. this means that a farmer who attended the promotional activities has a greater probability of accepting the technology. the farmer-users' attendance at promotional activities like lecture discussions, demonstrations, field days, seminars, and exhibitions facilitated the acceptance of mechanical seeder technology. the decision to accept the mechanical seeder was greatly influenced by the information they got from attendance at promotional activities. 3.3. utilization of the mechanical seeder and its relationship with the socio-demographic profiles of farmer-users, their farm profiles, and exposure to information and promotion strategies table 4 shows the correlation between the socio-demographic profiles of farmer-users, their farm profiles, and exposure to information and promotion strategies and technology utilization for the first cropping season. results revealed that only the size of the farm and reading and hearing mechanical seeder through media (p<0.01) were considered for the final linear regression model. table 4. the correlation coefficient between the independent variables and utilization mechanical seeder for the first cropping season.2018. independent variables correlation coefficient significance age of farmers -0.01 0.934 educational attainment 0.097 0.436 tenurial status 0.076 0.545 attended training 0.027 0.828 involved agricultural program 0.151 0.225 read/hear mechanical seeder 0.358 0.003** attend promotional activities 0.133 0.288 size of farm 0.385 0.001** experience labor shortage 0.025 0.844 note: **significant at 1% level of significance. table 5 presents the final regression model to predict the mechanical seeder’s utilization level for the first cropping season of 2018. results showed that the farm size was a highly significant predictor of mechanical seeder utilization for the first cropping season (p<0.01). table 5. regression model for using mechanical seeder for the first cropping season, 2018. model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta (constant) -1.334 0.418 -3.193 0.002 size of farm 1.039 0.227 0.494 4.578 0.000** read/hear mechanical seeder 0.627 0.426 0.159 1.471 0.146 note: **significant at 1% level of significance. table 6 presents the correlation between the socio-demographic profiles of farmer-users, their farm profiles, exposure to information and promotion strategies, and technology utilization for the second cropping season of 2018. results revealed that only the size of the farm (p<0.01) and tenurial status (p<0.05) were used for the final linear regression model to determine the predictor variables. table 6. the correlation coefficient between the independent variables and technology utilization of mechanical seeder for the second cropping season 2018. independent variables correlation coefficient significance attended training 0.003 0.979 involved in agricultural program 0.062 0.623 read/hear mechanical seeder 0.187 0.132 attended promotional activities 0.099 0.430 age of farmers -0.151 0.226 educational attainment 0.021 0.869 size of farm 0.757 0.000** experience labor shortage 0.212 0.087 tenurial status 0.283 0.022* note: **significant at 1% level of significance. *significant at 5% level of significance. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 140-146 145 table 7 shows the regression model for using mechanical seeder for the second cropping season. the results revealed that the size of the farm was a highly significant predictor of mechanical seeder utilization for this cropping season. table 7. regression model for using mechanical seeder for the second cropping season 2018. model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta (constant) -2.96 1.295 -2.287 0.026 size of farm 3.276 0.615 0.567 5.326 0.000** tenurial status -0.066 0.678 -0.01 -0.098 0.922 note: **significant at 1% level of significance. the positive correlation results for both cropping seasons imply that as the farm size increases, the mechanical seeder utilization increases. these findings were consistent with several studies conducted where larger farm sizes showed positive influences on adopting and utilizing farm mechanization technologies (akudugu, guo, & dadzie, 2012; ghosh, 2010). farm size facilitates economies of scale in using mechanization technologies, which apply to more extensive farm areas. considering the capacity of the mechanical seeder, which is 3-4 hectares per day, its utilization would benefit rice farmers with large farm sizes. 3.4. relationship of the technology attributes with the level of acceptance and utilization as perceived by the farmer-users the study focused on three key technology attributes: usefulness, ease of use, and relative advantage. the usefulness of this study is the degree to which a farmer believes that using a mechanical seeder would enhance his/her farming performance. the ease of use is the degree to which a farmer believes that using a mechanical seeder would be free of effort or less effort. it is easy to use when it is easily understood, learns the methods, and accomplishes tasks readily. it is useful when positively impacted by information quality, swiftness, and ease of use (moon, lee, shim, & hwang, 2023). the relative advantage is the degree to which a farmer believes that using a mechanical seeder will improve the quality of planted rice compared to usual practice, enhance the effectiveness and drudgery of planting the farm, reduce the production cost of planting rice, work well and better than usual practice, and enable them to accomplish planting more quickly. the mechanical seeder level of awareness has a highly positive relationship (p<0.01) with farmer-users' perceptions of its usefulness, ease of use, and relative advantage. on the other hand, the mechanical seeder use, and relative advantage. moreover, the level of utilization of mechanical seeder has a highly positive relationship (p<0.01) with the perception of farmers as to its usefulness, ease of use, and relative advantage (table 8). table 8. relationship of mechanical seeder attributes with the level of acceptance and utilization, 2018. dependent variables usefulness ease of use relative advantage mechanical seeder acceptance level 0.815** 0.782** 0.782** mechanical seeder utilization level percent of rice area planted using mechanical seeder (1st harvest season, 2018) 0.240** 0.219** 0.226** mechanical seeder utilization level percent of rice area planted using mechanical seeder (2nd harvest season, 2018) 0.671** 0.631** 0.621** note: **significant at 1% level of significance. this means that the usefulness, ease of use, and relative advantages of the mechanical seeder are positively related to farmers' level of awareness, acceptance, and utilization of the mechanical seeder. this is consistent with rogers (2003) theory that technology characteristics or attributes determine the rate of adoption of innovations. the relative advantages of a mechanical seeder, such as reduced production cost, usefulness, and ease of use, made the mechanical seeder acceptable to the farmers. the mechanical seeder can plant the seeds at equal distances and straight rows, with adjustable hill spacing and seeding rate. with these, mechanical seeder can also attain the recommended plant population because of the precise distance of plants between rows and hills. the seeds are placed slightly drilled, covered with soil, and compacted in one hill, resulting in good seedling emergence and crop growth (oli, 2018). consistent with the findings of zhang et al. (2018) direct rice seeding significantly improved the crop growth population and generally reduced seed usage and increased yield due to higher density and precise distance in planting. the international rice research institute (irri, 2019) also reported that plant spacing is essential in planting rice. proper spacing can increase the yield by 25−40% over improper spacing. this was supported by the findings of gangaiah and babu (2019) that direct wet seeding of rice had higher grain yield than transplanted rice. 4. conclusion this study assessed the adoption factors, specifically the acceptance and utilization of mechanical seeder in the cagayan valley region, philippines. farmers attending the promotional activities are more likely to have a high level of acceptance of mechanical seeder. attendance at promotional activities like lecture-discussion, demonstrations, field days, and seminars facilitated the mechanical seeder awareness and eventually convinced the farmer-users to accept the technology. also, farmers of large farm sizes are more likely to utilize mechanical seeders at a high level. the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(4) 2024: 140-146 146 different mechanical seeder attributes like ease of use, usefulness, and relative advantage positively affected farmer respondents' acceptance and utilization level. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references ahmed, s., & bagchi, k. (2004). factors and constraints for adopting new agricultural technology in assam with special reference to nalbari district: an empirical study. journal of contemporary indian policy, 11(1), 359-376. akudugu, m. a., guo, e., & dadzie, s. k. (2012). adoption of modern agricultural production technologies by farm households in ghana: what factors influence their decisions. journal of biology, agriculture and healthcare, 2(3), 1-13. flett, r., alpass, f., humphries, s., massey, c., morriss, s., & long, n. (2004). the technology acceptance model and use of technology in new zealand dairy farming. agricultural systems, 80(2), 199-211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2003.08.002 gangaiah, b., & babu, m. p. (2019). is direct seeding an alternative to transplanted rice culture and how transplanted rice cultivars perform under direct seeding? international journal of current microbiology and applied sciences, 8(5), 213-220. https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2019.805.026 ghosh, b. k. (2010). determinants of farm mechanization in modern agriculture: a case study of burdwan districts of west bengal. international journal of agricultural research, 5(12), 1107-1115. https://doi.org/10.3923/ijar.2010.1107.1115 hinnou, l. c., obossou, e. a. r., & adjovi, n. r. a. (2022). understanding the mechanisms of access and management of agricultural machinery in benin. scientific african, 15, e01121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2022.e01121 irri. (2019). step by step rice production: planting knowledge bank. retrieved from http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/step-by-stepproduction/growth/planting kumar, m., jha, s., & ghorai, d. (2007). impact of training and demonstration in adoption of jute production technology by the farmers. indian research journal of extension education, 7(2/3), 85-87. marikyan, d., & papagiannidis, s. (2023). technology acceptance model: a review. in s. papagiannidis (ed), theoryhub book. retrieved from https://open.ncl.ac.uk / moon, j., lee, w., shim, j., & hwang, j. (2023). structural relationship between attributes of technology acceptance for food delivery application system: exploration for the antecedents of perceived usefulness. systems, 11(8), 419. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems11080419 oli, g. (2018). technology demonstration and promotion of mechanized rice farming in the lowland irrigated areas in region 02. tuguegarao city, cagayan, philippines: department of agriculture-regional field office 2. patel, h. (2007). factors influencing technology adoption: a review. paper presented at the conference: 8th international business information management conference, at dublin, ireland. philrice. (2016). direct seeding. retrieved from http://www.philrice.gov.ph/direct-seeding-addresses-high-labor-cost-experts/. philrice. (2023). rice science for decisionmakers. policy material, 12. retrieved from https://www.philrice.gov.ph/wpcontent/uploads/2023/04/rs4dm-enabling-the-shift-from-transplanted-to-direct-seeded-rice-systems-in-thephilippines.pdf rogers, e. m. (2003). the diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). new york: the free press. wang, x., drabik, d., & zhang, j. (2023). how channels of knowledge acquisition affect farmers’ adoption of green agricultural technologies: evidence from hubei province, china. international journal of agricultural sustainability, 21(1), 2270254. https://doi.org/10.1080/14735903.2023.2270254 zhang, m., wang, z., luo, x., zang, y., yang, w., xing, h., . . . dai, y. (2018). review of precision rice hill-drop drilling technology and machine for paddy. international journal of agricultural and biological engineering, 11(3), 1-11. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2003.08.002 https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2019.805.026 https://doi.org/10.3923/ijar.2010.1107.1115 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2022.e01121 http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/step-by-step-production/growth/planting http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/step-by-step-production/growth/planting https://open.ncl.ac.uk/ https://doi.org/10.3390/systems11080419 http://www.philrice.gov.ph/direct-seeding-addresses-high-labor-cost-experts/ https://www.philrice.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/rs4dm-enabling-the-shift-from-transplanted-to-direct-seeded-rice-systems-in-the-philippines.pdf https://www.philrice.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/rs4dm-enabling-the-shift-from-transplanted-to-direct-seeded-rice-systems-in-the-philippines.pdf https://www.philrice.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/rs4dm-enabling-the-shift-from-transplanted-to-direct-seeded-rice-systems-in-the-philippines.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/14735903.2023.2270254 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 271 analysis of garlic farmers' welfare in buleleng regency, bali, indonesia komang krisna heryandaa made suyana utamab ni nyoman yuliarmic ida bagus putu purbadhamajad a,b,c,ddepartment of economics, faculty of economics and business, udayana university, bali, indonesia.  krisna.heryanda@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 26 august 2022 revised: 10 october 2022 accepted: 24 october 2022 published: 11 november 2022 keywords farmer competence farmer institutions farming performance government role information technology adoption. high production costs, a lack of institutional roles for farmers, a lack of farmer competence, and limited use of agricultural support technologies, such as information technology (it), all contribute to low garlic production. the high level of garlic imports into indonesia makes it difficult for farmers to sell their produce because their prices are higher than that of imported garlic. this impacts the money farmers can earn from growing garlic. this study investigated the roles of the government, farmer institutions, and farmer competencies in garlic farmers' ability to adopt it, their farming performance, and overall welfare in buleleng regency. the study's research design was quantitative and employed structural equation modeling (sem). it included 196 garlic farmers from buleleng regency as participants. the findings revealed that the government, farmer institutions, and farmer competencies all had a direct and significant impact on garlic farmers' adoption of it, as well as on their performance and welfare in buleleng regency. also, the adoption of it and farming performance have the potential to mediate the roles of government, farmer institutions, and farmer competencies in determining welfare. the study also discovered that farming performance was capable of mediating the effects of government involvement, farmer institutions, farmer competencies, and the capacity to embrace it on the wellbeing of garlic farmers in buleleng regency. contribution/originality: this study describes how government and farmer institutions, as well as farmer competencies, can influence farmers’ ability to adopt information technology to improve their farming performance and perceived welfare. the findings of this study can help strengthen institutions for small-scale farmers, help farmers improve their information technology literacy, and be a reference for the government to increase garlic farmers’ production. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4652 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn€: 2224-4433 how to cite: komang krisna heryanda --made suyana utama --ni nyoman yuliarmi --ida bagus putu purbadhamaja (2022). analysis of garlic farmers' welfare in buleleng regency, bali, indonesia. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4), 271-278. 10.55493/5005.v12i4.4652 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 4 (2022): 271-278. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0877-9501 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1500-7400 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1864-2426 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1159-8290 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 271-278 272 1. introduction the majority of poverty is found among people whose primary source of income is agriculture. in the agricultural sector, income is a major issue due to inefficient resource use in the production process, which results in lower yields than the resources expended by farmers during the production process (hinderink & sterkenburg, 1985; jetté-nantel, freshwater, katchova, & beaulieu, 2011; wortmann-kolundézija, 2019). the inefficiency in resource use is due to farmers' use of traditional agricultural techniques, which means that the resources spent are not proportional to the results obtained by the farmers (mcdougall, kristiansen, & rader, 2019). in 2020, indonesia had more farmers than workers in any other sector. due to the covid-19 pandemic, the number of farmers increased by 3 million between 2019 and 2020. yet despite having the most workers, the agricultural sector contributed only 13.70 percent of the gross domestic product (gdp), which is less than the 19.88 percent contribution of the manufacturing sector, which employed 17 million people (bps republik indonesia, 2021). this fact confirms that agricultural productivity is low and implies that poverty in the agricultural sector remains prevalent. agriculture's low productivity can be seen in the import of certain foodstuffs. garlic has been one of the most important food imports in the last decade. in 2020, garlic imports reached a total of 594 thousand tons, accounting for 95 percent of domestic demand (kementerian pertanian, 2021). although the garlic planting area has been expanded, the domestic demand for garlic is not being met. in theory, the supply of goods and services always follows the demand for these goods. however, in the case of garlic, the high demand is not being matched by an adequate domestic supply. garlic production is being developed in several areas, including buleleng regency. buleleng regency's local government has announced the development of garlic farming on a total area of 50 hectares, which is thought to have a high potential for garlic production. buleleng regency's agricultural productivity of garlic increased from 8.31 tons/hectare in 2018 to 9.32 tons/hectare in 2019 (bps kabupaten buleleng, 2020), exceeding the target of 7 tons/hectare. this demonstrates that agricultural land for garlic cultivation in buleleng regency is abundant. however, garlic farmers' reliance on assistance is quite high, as evidenced by a drop in productivity during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, when garlic agricultural productivity decreased to 6.8 tons/hectare. the temporary cessation of assistance caused a decrease in arable land area as well as the productivity of arable products. the low uptake of information technology (it) to support agriculture is inhibiting an increase in the productivity of garlic farming in buleleng regency. the average age of farmers is over 40, making it difficult for them to apply it. even though agricultural digitalization has been extensively implemented, and information communication networks have reached remote areas of buleleng regency, garlic farming remains resistant to such implementation. in contrast, growers of certain agricultural commodities, such as fruits and vegetables, have used it through digital applications to increase agricultural productivity (burhan, 2018). information technology has been shown to increase agricultural output in several countries, including bangladesh, japan, china, and thailand (akbar, 2017). several studies support this, stating that the adoption of it in the agricultural sector largely determines farmers' ability to increase agricultural production and thus their income (burhan, 2018; efendy & balai, 2014; organisation for economic co-operation and development, 2001; paiboonrat, 2017; warman, 2017). in addition to increasing agricultural yields, the adoption of it can reduce agricultural risks, streamline costs to maximize profits, and expand farmers’ communication and knowledge networks (delima, santoso, & purwadi, 2016). in bali, it is widely used in agriculture. 74.1 percent of bali farmers seek information to solve farming problems (suarsana & karyati, 2020). this shows that the use of it in agriculture has become quite prevalent and plays an important role in finding information to overcome agricultural problems. farmer institutions are also a concern in garlic farming in the buleleng district. several studies have shown that farmer institutions in villages generally do not function well for a variety of reasons (agustian, friyatno, supadi, & askin, 2003; purwanto & santoso, 2007; syahyuti, 2003; zuraida & rizal, 1993). farmer groups are typically formed to coordinate government programs, but in practice, farming activities are carried out individually. farmers are more concerned with production issues, whereas farmer groups are less concerned with capital and marketing issues. the problem of immediate concern to achieve agricultural self-sufficiency is increasing the competence of existing farmers. farmers' education, both formal and informal, is a determining factor in their ability to achieve agricultural independence (marliati, sumardjo, asngari, tjitropranoto, & saefuddin, 2010). indonesian farming is currently dominated by people over the age of 40, the majority of which have only completed elementary school. according to the indonesian statistics agency, known as badan pusat statistik (bps), in an agricultural survey from 2013, up to 32.7 percent of farmers had not completed elementary school. as many as 39.9 percent had completed elementary school, and 27.4 percent had a junior high school diploma or higher (idris, 2017). farmers' low education levels reflect their low level of competence, which impedes their ability to deal with a variety of issues, including access to production facilities, access to agricultural extension, profit forecasting, and their role as direct consumers of agricultural products (wastutiningsih, wati, maulida, & andini, 2020). the issues addressed in this study centered on the welfare of garlic farmers in buleleng regency in terms of the government’s role, farmer institutions, farmer competencies, ability to adopt information technology, and farming performance. according to friedlander, cited in rukminto (2012), the concept of community welfare is realized through the efforts of both the individuals and organizations that are integrated into an institution to produce a business performance that can improve welfare at all levels of society. to achieve agricultural prosperity, it is necessary to improve farm performance through the use of owned production factors (cobb-douglas production theory). the use of technology that is developed in response to problems is one production factor that can support agricultural success (mosher, 1991). the role of the government in agriculture in developing countries is also critical asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 271-278 273 to agricultural success (pejovic & jovanović, 2013). finally, in agricultural development, the role of institutions in assisting farmers to increase production and welfare must also be considered (shiferaw & muricho, 2009). 2. literature review social welfare is an organized system of social services and institutions designed to assist individuals and groups to achieve satisfactory standards of living and health. social welfare also helps people make personal and social connections that allow them to reach their full potential and improve their health and well-being in ways that meet the needs of their families and communities (friedlander, 1968). the concept emphasizes that welfare is achieved by assisting individuals or community groups to meet the standard of living that they expect and allowing them to improve themselves in an attempt to enhance their future welfare. an increased amount of agricultural production will result in increased agricultural welfare. cobb-douglas (korgitet, 2019) stated that various production factors are required to support an increase in production. farming activities necessitate the use of capital, land (agricultural land), labor, and expertise. the correct use of agricultural production factors can increase production, which leads to an increase in farmers' income. when various parties work to build the agricultural sector, it contributes to farmers’ welfare. mosher (1991) explained the absolute conditions that must exist for agricultural development, including markets, technology, means of production, and farmer incentives. markets for agricultural products are a way for farmers to sell their agricultural products. it, which is increasingly used in both the production and sale of agricultural products, can support agriculture. increasingly sophisticated agricultural equipment can save time and energy when performing agricultural work. furthermore, farmer incentives are a motivator that can encourage farmers to increase their output. to achieve agricultural development, government and farmer institutions must work together to promote the use of it, adequate equipment, and a market that does not put farmers at a disadvantage. furthermore, farmers' competence must be increased to enable them to use technology to produce more efficiently and profitably. farmer welfare cannot be separated from the government's role as a policy-making authority. the government's role in ensuring farmer welfare can be seen in several ways. as a facilitator, the government can contribute to farmer welfare by directly providing assistance that farmers can use (lokollo, 2015). so far, the government's agriculture budget, which includes assistance for production facilities and agricultural infrastructure, has been able to help increase agricultural yields and farmers' welfare (sumedi, simatupang, sinaga, & firdaus, 2013). furthermore, the government continues to promote the use of it in agriculture by constructing supporting infrastructure so that it is accessible in remote areas (ahearn, yee, ball, & nehring, 1998). given the challenges that farmers face, the government's role in agriculture remains very important. as a result, it is necessary to dig deeper into each of the indicators of the government's role to determine which role farmers require most. this will allow the government to optimize its agricultural policies. farmer institutions are considered capable of assisting farmers in overcoming problems. the effects of various strategies, such as strengthening extension services, increasing cooperation with external parties, maintaining networks among members, increasing farmer skills, and increasing farmer involvement in institutions, have been studied to increase farmers' capacity as economic actors (anantanyu, 2011). institutions can also increase output by providing capital for the purchase of agricultural equipment (rahmadanih, bulkis, arsyad, amrullah, & viantika, 2018). institutional innovations can also increase farmers' income (binam, place, djalal, & kalinganire, 2017). the role of institutional innovation can be seen in the adoption of technology to aid agricultural production (yohanes & irianto, 2011). recently, a food certification movement has emerged through the industrial agribusiness model (iam), in which the agro-industrial system, supported by participating institutions, is assumed to be capable of realizing a massive food diversification movement by involving various stakeholders (kementan, 2014). this program has helped farmers overcome a variety of issues. furthermore, farmer institutions can act as a bridge between farmers and the market, as membership in these associations can increase farmers' access to both the production factor market and the output market (shiferaw & muricho, 2009). farmers' membership in an institution can provide protection for farmers and ensure their interests are defended. 3. methodology this study can be categorized as explanatory research since it focuses on causality among variables via hypothesis testing. it employed the survey method. a questionnaire was used to collect data from the population. the quantitative approach was combined with a qualitative approach to gather information through observations and interviews. interviews were conducted face-to-face between the interviewer and the informant or respondents to obtain information for this study, with or without the use of interview guidelines (bungin, 2013). this research took place in six farmer groups in two sub-districts of buleleng regency that specialize in garlic farming. the lumbung sari and lembu nadi farmer groups are in tambakan village, kubutambahan subdistrict; subak munduk and pucuk mekar giri amerta farmer groups are in munduk village, banjar subdistrict; bolangan and subak kayuputih farmer groups are in kayuputih village, banjar sub-district; and the manik pertiwi farmer group is in wanagiri village, banjar sub-district. the number of respondents in this study was 196 individuals who worked as garlic farmers and received government funding. this study employed six variables, both exogenous and endogenous. in this study, the endogenous variable was welfare, which had five indicators, the intermediate variable (intervening variable) was the ability to adopt it, which had three indicators, and farming performance had four indicators. the government's role was represented by four indicators, farmers’ institutions by four indicators, and farmer competence by three indicators. the research variables were analyzed to obtain information to allow them to describe the actual conditions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 271-278 274 in this study, structural equation modeling (sem) was combined with the partial least squares (pls) alternative (component-based sem). sem is a statistical technique that allows the testing of a relatively complex series of relationships at the same time and in stages. one or more dependent variables can be linked to one or more independent variables to form complex relationships. in sem, a variable can be either a construct variable or a latent variable formed by several indicators, and it is also possible for a variable to have a dual role, namely as an independent variable in one relationship but a dependent variable in another relationship, due to the existence of a tiered causal relationship. 4. results and discussion the measurement model used in this study was a reflective indicator. a valid indicator has a loading factor greater than 0.5 for the intended construct. figure 1. result of factor loading analysis using smartpls . figure 1 shows the result of the smartpls output, which indicates the loading factors. the loading factors were all greater than 0.5. the loading factor (i.e., the correlation between item score/component score and construct score) of the indicators that measure the construct can be used to assess the convergent validity of a measurement model with reflective indicators. cronbach's alpha and composite reliability values can be used to assess reliability. cronbach's alpha and composite reliability must be higher than 0.7. table 1. cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability values of the constructs. construct cronbach’s alpha composite reliability government role (x1) 0.885 0.920 farmer institution (x2) 0.924 0.946 farmer competence (x3) 0.813 0.871 adoption ability it (y1) 0.805 0.885 farming performance (y2) 0.897 0.936 welfare (y2) 0.946 0.961 table 1 presents the calculated cronbach's alpha and composite reliability values. the findings indicate that each construct's cronbach's alpha and composite reliability values were greater than 0.70, providing evidence for the reliability of the indicators used in this study. the gof (goodness of fit) value assesses how well the structural model fits the inner model and how accurate the resulting model is. the gof scale ranges from 0 to 1, with 1 being the ideal value. the research model's gof index was 0.758. consequently, the structural model that describes how the three variables relate to one another has a good predictive ability (fit). the results of the calculation of the path coefficient of the role of the government (b = 0.174; p = 0.010), farmer institutions (b = 0.249; p = 0.000), and farmer competence (b = 0.250; p = 0.000) on the ability to adopt it indicate that the variables of the role of the government, farmer institutions, and farmer competencies had a significant positive effect on the ability to adopt it. the results of the calculation of the path coefficient of the role of the government (b = 0.150; p = 0.025), farmer institutions (b = 0.250; p = 0.001), farmer competence (b = 0.156; p = asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 271-278 275 0.023), and the ability to adopt it (b = 0.229; p = 0.000) on farm performance showed that the variables of the role of the government, farmer institutions, farmer competencies, and the ability to adopt it had a significant positive effect on farm performance. the results of the calculation of the path coefficient of the role of the government (b = 0.114; p = 0.033), farmer institutions (b = 0.104; p = 0.044), farmer competence (b = 0.135; p = 0.020), it adoption ability (b = 0.145; p = 0.018), and farm performance (b = 0.450; p = 0.000) on welfare showed that the variables of government role, farmer institutions, farmer competence, it adoption ability, and farming performance had a significant positive effect on welfare. the calculated results revealed a coefficient of indirect influence of the role of the government (b = 0.040; p = 0.049), farmer institutions (b = 0.057; p = 0.014), and farmer competence (b = 0.057; p = 0.005) on farm performance through the ability to adopt it. these results indicate that the variable of the ability to adopt it mediated the effects of the role of the government, farmer institutions, and farmer competencies on farming performance. the calculation results also showed a coefficient of indirect influence of the government's role (b = 0.068; p = 0.033), farmer institutions (b = 0.113; p = 0.002), farmer competence (b = 0.070; p = 0.030), and it adoption ability (b = 0.103; p = 0.002), indicating that farming performance variables mediated the effects of the role of the government, farmer institutions, farmer competencies, and the ability to adopt it on farmers' welfare. farmers have recognized the value of the government's provision of agricultural support workers. agricultural extension workers have been encouraging farmers to use it to communicate with fellow farmers, as well as providing farming advice and monitoring agriculture. furthermore, training provided by the department of agriculture in collaboration with other parties has improved farmers' ability to locate sources of information. the government's role in increasing farmers' ability to adopt it is critical. the government's provision of it-supporting infrastructure must be accompanied by adequate training for farmers in the use of it to support their agriculture (paiboonrat, 2017). government programs, such as those carried out in bangladesh, have prompted the government to provide farmers with the information they require to increase production yields (akbar, 2017). the government's provision of infrastructure, such as irrigation pipes and pumps, is extremely beneficial to farmers in increasing garlic production. the government's role in maintaining commodity production can be accomplished by providing various forms of assistance to farmers (lokollo, 2015). the government's strategic role in improving agricultural performance can be successful if it is supported by adequate resource capabilities (falo, kune, hutapea, & kapitan, 2016). farmers also experience the government's role in improving the welfare of garlic farmers through the provision of working capital. working capital in the form of seed assistance and fertilizer subsidies can reduce farmers’ costs, increasing their income. the government plays a significant role in farmers’ welfare via various mechanisms (sumedi et al., 2013). agricultural development is the result of a combination of the ministry of agriculture’s micro-sectoral policies and their macro policies and strategic environmental arrangements affecting the agricultural sector. farmers' institutions have frequently been criticized for being too traditional and lacking in innovation, although they have undergone numerous changes. farmers' increasingly enthusiastic adoption of technology to support increased agricultural production is one of their institutional innovations. this is because the use of technology in agriculture is proving to be increasingly successful. institutions encourage the adoption of agricultural support technologies, such as it, in addition to the adoption of agricultural technology (khairunnisa, saleh, & anwas, 2019; nuryanti, dewa, & swastika, 2011). farmers benefit greatly from the existence of farmer institutions in garlic farming in terms of increasing their agricultural yields. so far, good communication has been able to overcome a variety of problems faced by farmers. the innovations of farmer institutions are also critical to improving farm performance. institutional farmers who have adopted new farming methods and agricultural technology have been able to achieve optimal garlic farming production. in line with this, the role of institutions becomes extremely strategic, not only in terms of increasing production capacity but also in terms of implementing various innovations to support agricultural products (yohanes & irianto, 2011). institutions can also increase output by providing capital for the purchase of agricultural equipment (rahmadanih et al., 2018). given that garlic farming in buleleng regency is generally on small-scale farms, farmers are in a vulnerable position when selling their crops, and their bargaining power is low. the formation of farmer institutions, particularly among small-scale farms, should also play a role in output processing tasks, such as crop yield management and processing. it is hoped that in the future, farmer institutions will be able to process garlic harvests into higher-value products, such as fried garlic and black garlic, which are currently in high demand. for this reason, there is a need for farmer institutions to cooperate with other parties to process garlic products so that farmers can overcome the challenges of selling their harvest. to support this, a trading system for the sale of processed products is required so that they can be absorbed by the market. the trade system's management must be able to see and exploit processed garlic product opportunities in the market to improve farmer welfare. human resources affect the performance of the business carried out (yuliarmi, martini dewi, rustariyuni, marhaeni, & andika, 2021). farmers' knowledge and skills improve their ability to use it in agricultural operations. it was discovered that most farmers' are assisted by relatives to understand how to use it. it is, therefore, necessary for farmers to gain a better understanding of how to use it. the greater a farmer's ability to farm, the greater his or her ability to adopt new technologies (masyhur, 2016). when farmers’ competence is high, it improves their acceptance of things that can improve their agriculture, such as the adoption of it (managanta, sumardjo, sadono, & tjitropranoto, 2019). another issue that garlic farmers face is a lack of arable land. garlic farmers mostly cultivate small plots of land, with 112 respondents (47.14 percent) cultivating less than 0.25 hectares each. due to the scarcity of arable land, high asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(4)2022: 271-278 276 production costs are incurred, meaning that farmers must innovate to run their garlic farms. farmers' ability to overcome the various problems they face determines their success in managing small farms (manyamsari & mujiburrahmad, 2014). farmers' empowerment efforts thus far may have an impact on increasing farmers' competence, allowing agricultural production to increase (wortmann-kolundézija, 2019). observations in the field revealed that garlic farmers had good knowledge. garlic farmers can solve various agricultural problems using the knowledge they have. being able to accept novel inputs to support agricultural products also demonstrates an open attitude. garlic farmers' skills are also high, as they can address problems directly, saving time and money. farmers' competence increases their ability to farm, allowing them to implement resource efficiencies that increase agricultural yields and welfare (damihartini & jahi, 2005). farmers' ability to use it applications is quite good, and it has been demonstrated that it can increase agricultural production. however, children or relatives are still assisting them in locating and comprehending information. this shows that it has become quite important in agriculture in helping to find information to overcome agricultural problems. in addition to increasing agricultural yields, the ability to adopt it can reduce agricultural risks, streamline costs to maximize profits, and expand farmers’ communication and knowledge networks (delima et al., 2016). farmers' ability to find information that supports their agriculture can reduce production costs, allowing them to earn more money. farmers may be able to overcome the high cost of purchasing agricultural inputs and equipment if they have access to information on more diverse farming methods. the availability of this information is extremely beneficial to farmers in mitigating issues such as the high cost of fertilizers to reduce production costs. the reduction in production costs will have an impact on farmers' income. farming innovations have a positive and significant impact on farmer welfare (ajayi, oluwole, & akinbamijo, 2018). as mentioned in the discussion of the concept of agricultural development, the ability to adopt it is extremely dependent on farmers’ digital literacy. advances in existing technology without a corresponding increase in individuals’ ability to adopt the new technologies are pointless, particularly in agriculture, because agricultural development must also consider the development of farmers as agricultural actors. to accelerate the adoption of it, government and farmer institutions must make an effort to socialize the use of it through training and direct assistance from agricultural application providers so that farmers understand the benefits of using it. achieving farmer welfare requires multiple efforts from multiple parties. government involvement through various work programs is expected to help farmers increase their agricultural production, thereby improving farmers' welfare (sahabuddin, 2015). given that the majority of farms are small-scale, the government's role in assisting farmers remains critical. increasing the role of institutions is also vital in small-scale agriculture to improve farming performance, which leads to increased farmer welfare (effendy., 2020). institutions must be able to innovate in response to technological advances to remain relevant and contribute to farmer welfare (yustika & baksh, 2015). farmers' competence in managing their farms is required in addition to the roles of the government and farmer institutions. good agricultural resource management can boost agricultural productivity, increasing farmers' income and welfare (managanta et al., 2019). 5. conclusions and recommendations the government influences farmers’ ability to adopt it, farming performance, and the welfare of garlic farmers in buleleng regency. the presence of farmer institutions also influences garlic farmers' ability to adopt technology, farming performance, and overall well-being in buleleng regency. furthermore, farmer competence influences farmers' ability to adopt it, farming performance, and the well-being of garlic farmers in buleleng regency. the ability to use it can mediate the role of the government, farmer institutions, and farmer competency in improving the farming performance of garlic farmers in buleleng regency. the government's role in providing it training, institutional innovations, and increasing farmer knowledge can increase farmers' ability to adopt it for agricultural applications and thereby achieve increased crop yields for garlic farmers in the buleleng district. farming performance has the potential to mediate the role of the government, farmer institutions, farmer competency, and the ability to implement it in improving the welfare of garlic farmers in buleleng regency. working capital, seed assistance, and fertilizer subsidies from the government, institutions that operate according to their functions, farmer skills, and the ability to understand and use it can all increase crop yields and profits, thereby increasing farmers' income. funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references agustian, friyatno, s., supadi, & askin, a. 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(1993). regional autonomy challenges and opportunities. malang: brawijaya university. http://dx.doi.org/10.21082/jae.v31n2.2013.97-113 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 676 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. a survey of soil fertility in turfgrass soil of japanese golf courses by using sofix technique quoc thinh trana zakirul islamb motoki kuboc a,b,cdepartment of biotechnology, faculty of life science, ritsumeikan university, shiga, japan.  kubo@sk.ritsumei.ac.jp (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 27 june 2025 revised: 13 october 2025 accepted: 17 november 2025 published: 28 november 2025 keywords bacterial biomass golf course soil nutrient circulation sofix soil fertility turfgrass. japan has numerous golf courses, covering up to 0.37% of the country's total land area. these golf courses require intensively managed turf, and the soil environment in turfgrass fields differs significantly from that in agricultural environments. to understand the characteristics of turfgrass fields in japan, a study was conducted that constructed and analyzed a database of 178 soil samples from golf courses across the country using the soil fertility index (sofix) technique. the turfgrass field database was statistically compared with agricultural field databases, including upland, paddy, and orchard fields, using the mannwhitney u test. the results indicated that the average bacterial biomass in turfgrass fields was 6.1 × 108 cells per gram of soil, which is comparable to that in orchard and upland fields (p > 0.01). the average values for total carbon (tc), total nitrogen (tn), total phosphorus (tp), and total potassium (tk) were 9,960 mg/kg, 540 mg/kg, 390 mg/kg, and 1,560 mg/kg, respectively, with these values distributed within narrow ranges. although the levels of tc, tn, tp, and tk in turfgrass fields were lower than those in agricultural fields (p < 0.01), the bacterial biomass remained relatively high. these findings suggest that turfgrass fields in japanese golf courses are likely managed with similar practices, characterized by intensive application of chemical fertilizers. the high bacterial biomass is attributed to carbon sources from clipping activities and reduced fumigation practices on golf courses. further research on the application of organic fertilizers is recommended to promote sustainable land use and improve turfgrass management practices in golf courses across japan. contribution/originality: unlike ordinary agricultural fields, turfgrass fields involve intensive soil management practices as a perennial cultivation system. this study presents the characteristics of soil fertility in turfgrass fields of golf courses in comparison with upland, paddy, and orchard fields in japan. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5773 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: tran, q. t., islam, z., & kubo, m. (2025). a survey of soil fertility in turfgrass soil of japanese golf courses by using sofix technique. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4), 676–685. 10.55493/5005.v15i4.5773 © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 4 (2025): 676-685 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4719-5568 https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2262-1475 mailto:kubo@sk.ritsumei.ac.jp https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4625-448x https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i4.5773 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 676-685 677 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 1. introduction approximately 12,000 species of grass have been identified worldwide (liu et al., 2021; soreng et al., 2017), but only about 50 are used as turfgrasses (beard, 1973). based on seasonal growth, horticultural turfgrasses can be classified as warmand cool-season grasses. the optimal growth temperatures for cooland warm-season grasses are 16–24°c and 27–35°c, respectively (dipaola & beard, 1992). turfgrasses are primarily cultivated in golf, soccer, and baseball fields worldwide. in the united states, the total area of turfgrass and crops is 163,812 km2, which is three times larger than that of any integrated crop (milesi et al., 2005). according to weinand, pelser, kleinebrahm, and stolten (2025), there were approximately 38,400 golf courses worldwide, with 80% located in the top ten countries in 2024. the united states has the highest number of golf courses, with over 16,000, followed by the united kingdom with approximately 3,100, and japan with around 2,700. on average, chinese golf courses are the largest, about 0.8 km², followed by japan at approximately 0.5 km². golf courses in japan occupy a significant area of land use, accounting for 0.37%. because living turfgrass fields are ecosystem services, proper management practices of turfgrass are beneficial to the environment and human health (braun, mandal, nwachukwu, & stanton, 2024; côté & grégoire, 2021; ives et al., 2017; kondo, jacoby, & south, 2018). particularly, soil management is crucial for turfgrass since it is a perennial grassland ecosystem. carbon and nitrogen contents in turfgrass soil are mainly from grass mowing and accumulate after long-term cultivation (gautam, young, sapkota, longing, & weindorf, 2020; law & patton, 2017; phillips et al., 2023). however, soil improvement practices such as ploughing or using solid organic fertilisers cannot be applied in turfgrass fields. therefore, liquid and granular chemical fertilisers are typically used in turfgrass fields. in this situation, the soil environment of turfgrass fields is different compared to ordinary agricultural fields, such as paddies, uplands, and orchards. the soil fertility index (sofix) was developed to evaluate soil fertility and shows the biological, chemical, and physical parameters of the soil. a database for upland, paddy, and orchard fields in japan was constructed using sofix analytical data (pholkaw et al., 2020) and displayed the specific tendencies of soil fertility in each field. owing to the unique management of turfgrass, soil fertility in turfgrass fields might be different from that in agricultural fields. recent studies separately focused on microbial community, soil organic carbon, or physical properties in turfgrass soil (beirn et al., 2017; chou et al., 2024; lewis, gaussoin, shearman, mamo, & wortmann, 2010; singh et al., 2019). however, the database of soil fertility in turfgrass fields in japan has not been thoroughly analyzed. this study investigated the soil fertility of golf course fields in japan using sofix to construct a database. the features of turfgrass fields were clarified based on the sofix database and compared with agricultural field data. 2. materials and methods 2.1. collection of soil sample soil samples were collected from putting greens across 178 golf courses in japan between 2018 and 2020. samples were taken from the top 0–5 cm soil layer, an area strongly affected by fertilizer application and mowing. the samples were sieved through a 2 mm mesh and stored at 4 °c until analysis. subsequently, soil biological and chemical properties were analyzed. 2.2. analytical methods bacterial biomass was estimated by quantifying environmental dna (edna) using the slow-stirring method (aoshima et al., 2006). soil samples (1.0 g) were mixed with 8.0 ml of dna extraction buffer [100 mmol/l tris–hcl (ph 8.0), 100 mmol/l sodium edta, 100 mmol/l sodium phosphate, 1.5 mol/l nacl, and 1% hexadecylmethylammonium bromide (ctab)] and 1.0 ml of autoclaved 20% (w/v) sodium dodecyl sulfate (sds) solution. the sample solution was mixed in a 50-ml tube with propeller agitation at 1,500 rpm for 20 min at room temperature. next, 1.5 ml of the sample solution was transferred to a 1.5-ml microtube. after centrifugation at 6,000 × g for 10 min at 20°c, 700 μl of supernatant was transferred into a 1.5-ml microtube into which an equal volume of chloroform–isoamyl alcohol [24:1 (v/v)] was then added before centrifugation at 18,000 × g for 10 min at 20°c. the aqueous phase (500 μl) was recovered into a 1.5-ml microtube by centrifugation at 18,000 × g for 20 min at 20°c and mixed with 300 μl of isopropanol. the pellet was then washed with 1.0 ml of cold 70% ethanol and centrifuged at 18,000 × g for 5 min at 20°c. the pellet of crude nucleic acid was dissolved in 50 μl of te buffer (tris/edta = 10:1 mmol/l) after drying under reduced pressure (edna solution). the extracted edna was quantified based on the intensity of the edna bands after electrophoresis on an agarose gel using kodak 1d 3.6 image analysis software (kodak, ct, usa). the bacterial biomass in the soils was estimated using the equation y = 1.70 × 108 x (r2 = 0.96), where y and x represent the bacterial biomass (g−1 of soils) and the amount of edna (μg/g), respectively. nitrogen (n) and phosphorus (p) circulation activities were examined. in brief, a 1-gram soil sample was mixed with a phytic acid solution (ph 7) containing 3.9 mg of phosphorus and incubated for three days at 25°c. a control sample was prepared using distilled water. water-soluble phosphorus (sp) was extracted from the sample using 20 ml of distilled water and subsequently measured through the molybdenum blue assay. the increase in sp concentration served as an indicator of phosphorus cycling activity. the p circulation activity was calculated using the following formula and expressed on a scale from 0 to 100. p circulation activity (point) = ( sp in p3−sp in p0)−(sp in w3−sp w0) total added p × 100 (1) the analysis of n circulation activity was performed based on bacterial biomass, ammonium oxidation rate, and nitrite oxidation rate, with these parameters subsequently scaled from 0 to 100, where a bacterial biomass of 6.0 × 108 cells/g corresponded to a value of 100. soil samples treated with ammonium sulfate or sodium nitrite (60 μg n/g dry asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 676-685 678 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. soil) were incubated at 25°c for three days. the percentage reduction in the added nitrogen was used to determine the ammonium and nitrite oxidation rates. a radar chart was constructed utilizing the calculated values of bacterial biomass, ammonium oxidation rate, and nitrite oxidation rate. the relative area of the inner triangle within the radar chart represented the n circulation activity, with its area calculated according to the following formula. area = (a×b)+(b×c)+(c×a) 4 × √3 100 (2) where a, b, and c denote the bacterial biomass, ammonium oxidation rate, and nitrite oxidation rate, respectively. the n circulation activity was assessed by calculating the relative area of the inner triangle in the following manner. n circulation activity (point) = area of the inner triangle area of the outer triangle × 100 (3) the total carbon (tc) of the samples was analyzed using a total organic carbon analyzer (ssm-5000a, shimadzu, kyoto, japan). the total nitrogen (tn), total phosphorus (tp), and total potassium (tk) contents were analyzed after kjeldahl digestion with copper sulfate, concentrated sulfuric acid, and hydrogen peroxide at 420 °c. in particular, tn and tp were determined by the indophenol blue and molybdenum blue methods, respectively, using a uv-visible spectrophotometer (u-1900 spectrophotometer; hitachi, tokyo, japan). the tk content was determined using an atomic absorption spectrophotometer (aa-7000, shimadzu, kyoto, japan). soil ph and ec (1:2.5 soil-water mixture, w/v) were analyzed using a ph meter (laqua f-71, horiba, kyoto, japan) and an electrical conductivity (ec) meter (5le1-408, kenis, hyogo, japan), respectively. 2.3. data analysis correlations (pearson analysis) between parameters were determined using spss software (version 16.0, chicago, usa). in all analyses, a probability value less than 0.01 was considered statistically significant (p < 0.01). data on soil fertility in ordinary agricultural fields (orchard, paddy, and upland fields) were cited from our previous study for comparison (pholkaw et al., 2020). specifically, the database of soil samples was collected from 442 agricultural fields in japan between 2014 and 2019. the soil samples included 190 from upland fields, 113 from paddy fields, and 139 from orchard fields. soil samples in the upland fields, where vegetables, flowers, and cereal crops were cultivated, were collected. orchard fields included apples, grapes, tea, and other crops. the mann-whitney u test, with a significance level of p < 0.01, was used to compare the differences in soil parameters (bacterial biomass, tc, tn, tp, and tk) between turfgrass fields and agricultural fields. 3. results 3.1. analysis of soil components of turfgrass field by sofix the chemical and biological properties of 178 soil samples from turfgrass fields were presented in table 1 and compared to those from the agricultural fields in table 2. tc values ranged from 4,470 to 23,000 mg/kg, with an average value of 9,960 mg/kg. approximately 80% of the soil samples had values between 7,230 and 13,420 mg/kg. tn values ranged from 90 to 2,420 mg/kg, with an average of 590 mg/kg. tp values ranged from 120 to 1,090 mg/kg, with an average of 390 mg/kg. tk values ranged from 450 to 4,800 mg/kg, with an average of 1,760 mg/kg. bacterial biomass values ranged from not detected (n.d., below 6.6 × 106 cells/g soil) to 24.9 × 108 cells/g soil, with an average of 6.1 × 108 cells/g soil. the nitrogen (n) and phosphorus (p) circulation activities varied significantly across different golf courses. the average n and p circulation activities were 16.5 and 5.3 points, respectively. soil ph, electrical conductivity (ec), and water content showed minimal variation in turfgrass soil. as a result, the values of tc, tn, tp, tk, and bacterial biomass in turf soil were low and showed narrower distributions compared to those in the agricultural fields. therefore, soil management practices appear to be similar among golf courses across japan. table 1. analysis of soil fertility in turfgrass field. tc (mg/kg) tn (mg/kg) tp (mg/kg) tk (mg/kg) bacterial biomass (×10⁸cells/g-soil) n circulation activity (point) p circulation activity (point) ph ec (ds/m) water content (%) 9,960 ± 3,270 590 ± 380 390 ± 170 1,760 ± 740 6.1 ± 4.1 16.5 ± 13.0 5.3 ± 9.0 6.4 ± 0.4 0.06 ± 0.08 16.4 ± 5.3 table 2. range of soil fertility in turfgrass fields compared to that in agricultural fields. field bacterial biomass (×10⁸cells/g-soil) tc (mg/kg) tn (mg/kg) tp (mg/kg) tk (mg/kg) turfgrass n.d. ~ 24.9 4,470 ~ 23,000 91 ~ 2,420 120 ~ 1,090 450 ~ 4,800 upland n.d. ~ 49.4 2,110 ~ 118,700 224 ~ 4,430 29 ~ 8,600 430 ~ 33,600 paddy n.d. ~ 97.0 7,990 ~ 26,640 380 ~ 2,750 0 ~ 2,800 410 ~ 11,000 orchard n.d. ~ 77.0 2,670 ~ 128,100 130 ~ 6,400 140 ~ 5,360 1,210 ~ 18,160 note: n.d. is not detected bacterial biomass lower than lower than 6.6 106 cells/g. 3.2. relationship between total carbon (tc) and bacterial biomass in the turfgrass field and ordinary agricultural fields figure 1 presents the relationship between tc and bacterial biomass of turfgrass soils. tc values were clustered around the average value (9,960 mg/kg), while the total bacterial biomass was distributed over a wide range. a weak asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 676-685 679 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. correlation (r = 0.43, p = 0.00) was observed between tc and bacterial biomass. figure 2 presents the comparison between tc and bacterial biomass of turfgrass fields with that of upland, paddy, and orchard fields. tc and bacterial biomass were distributed within a narrow range in the turfgrass field, a tendency resembling that observed in paddy fields. tc values in the turfgrass field were the lowest of the four fields (p < 0.01); however, bacterial biomass was almost the same as that in upland and orchard fields (p > 0.01). figure 1. relationship between tc and bacterial biomass of turfgrass field. note: a positive correlation was statistically significant between tc and bacterial biomass. * indicates significant correlation at 0.01 level. n.d. is not-detected bacterial biomass lower than 6.6 106 cells/g soil. the dashed line shows average values. figure 2. relationship between tc and bacterial biomass of turfgrass field (a); upland field (b); paddy field (c); orchard field (d). note: correlations were significant between tc and bacterial biomass in all fields, except for the paddy field.* indicates significant correlation at the 0.01 level. n.d. indicates bacterial biomass lower than 6.6×106 cells/g soil. the dashed line shows average values. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 676-685 680 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.3. relationship between total carbon (tc) and total nitrogen (tn) in the turfgrass field, and comparison with that in the other fields the relationship between tc and tn in the turfgrass soils is shown in figure 3. tc and tn were distributed within a narrow range and showed a weak correlation (r = 0.31, p < 0.01). the tc and tn databases from turfgrass fields were compared with those from upland, paddy, and orchard fields (figure 4). the correlations between tc and tn in the upland, paddy, and orchard fields were relatively strong. figure 3. relationship between tc and tn of turfgrass field. note: as a result, tc was significantly correlated with tn. * indicates significant correlation at 0.01 level. the dashed line shows average values. figure 4. relationship between tc and tn of turfgrass field (a); upland field (b); paddy field (c); orchard field (d). note: there were significant correlations of tc and tn in all fields. * indicates significant correlation at 0.01 level. the dashed line shows average values. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 676-685 681 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.4. relationship between total carbon (tc) and total phosphorus (tp) in the turfgrass field, and comparison of other fields figure 5 presents the relationship between tc and tp in turfgrass soils. tc and tp values were distributed within a narrow range, similar to tc and tn values. tc and tp values showed a weak correlation (r = 0.31, p < 0.01). the database of tc and tp from turfgrass fields was also compared with those from upland, paddy, and orchard fields (figure 6). the tc and tp values were both clustered around their average values, similar to those in paddy fields. figure 5. relationship between tc and tp of turfgrass field. note: the data showed a significant correlation between tc and tp contents. * indicates significant correlation at 0.01 level. the dashed line shows average values. figure 6. relationship between tc and tp of turfgrass field (a); upland field (b); paddy field (c); orchard field (d). note: a significant positive correlations was observed between tc and tp at all fields, except for paddy field. * indicates significant correlation at 0.01 level. the dashed line shows average values. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 676-685 682 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.5. relationship between total carbon (tc) and total potassium (tk) in the turfgrass field, and comparison with that in other fields the relationship between tc and tk in turfgrass soils is shown in figure 7. the tc and tk values were also distributed in a narrow range. tc and tk values were weakly correlated (r = 0.27, p < 0.01). tc and tk values were also clustered around their average value. figure 8 shows the tc and tk databases in the four fields. the distribution of tc and tk values between turfgrass and paddy fields was similar. figure 7. relationship between tc and tk of turfgrass field. note: the pearson correlation coefficient between tc and tk indicated a weak correlation. * indicates significant correlation at 0.01 level. the dashed line shows average values. figure 8. relationship between tc and tk of turfgrass field (a); upland field (b); paddy field (c); orchard field (d). note: in contrast to turfgrass fields, no significant correlation was observed between tc and tk in the agricultural fields. * indicates significant correlation at the 0.01 level. the dashed line shows average values. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 676-685 683 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. 3.6. features of turfgrass field the distributions of bacterial biomass, tc, tn, tp, and tk in turfgrass were within a narrow range compared to those in agricultural fields and resembled those in paddy fields. the results indicate that the unique construction practices of golf courses led to similar soil conditions in turfgrass fields across japan. 4. discussion 4.1. variation of bacterial biomass the variation in bacterial biomass in golf course turfgrass was narrower than in ordinary agricultural fields (fig. 2). although the average tc value in turfgrass was lower than in orchard and upland fields, the bacterial biomass values were similar. generally, soil bacterial biomass depends on the total amount of organic matter in the soil. soil samples in the putting greens were collected at a 0–5 cm depth, which was affected by clipping activities. in turfgrass fields, mowing frequency provides a constant source of organic matter for bacteria. the easily decomposable organic compounds from clipping grass maintain bacterial biomass in the soil. according to shi, muruganandam, and bowman (2006), with only a small fraction of clipping grass, up to 20–30% of clipping c and n are mineralised within seven days, and rapid decomposition coincides with active microbial growth. soil microbial biomass at a depth of 0–5 cm remains stable during several chronological developments of turfgrass. bacterial phyla and fungal classes in turfgrass soils remain consistent over time and across plant compartments (doherty, crouch, & roberts, 2021). in addition, fumigation management is likely not popular in turfgrass fields. in some prefectures in japan, it is prohibited to use chemicals to control weeds and pests in golf courses built after 1994 (yasuda & koike, 2006; yasuda, koike, & terman, 2008) since it presumably protects bacterial biomass in the soil. 4.2. nutrient circulation activities nitrogen circulation activities refer to the nitrification processes, wherein ammonium is converted to nitrite and nitrate, while phosphorus circulation activities refer to phytate conversion to soluble inorganic phosphorus by bacterial activities. nitrogen and phosphorus circulation activities are lower in turfgrass stands than in agricultural fields. nitrogen circulation activities are strongly affected by the activities of bacterial biomass, whereas phosphorus circulation activity is dependent on the bacterial biomass and mineral content in the soil. overall, the nitrogen circulation activities (16.5 points) were higher than the phosphorus circulation activities (5.3 points) (table 1). turfgrasses require significantly less phosphorus (p) compared to flowering crops; therefore, p is not typically applied to established golf courses. moreover, while animal manures are commonly utilized in the cultivation of most agricultural crops, their use in turfgrass management is comparatively limited. this limitation arises from several factors: the higher cost of granulating manure fertilizers, the difficulty of applying them in liquid form, and the objectionable odor associated with these fertilizers, which is not suitable for the aesthetic standards of a golf course. in contrast, nitrogen sources in golf course soils come from chemical n-rich fertilizers and clipping grass (law, trappe, jiang, turco, & patton, 2017). nitrogen circulation is controlled by soil nitrifying bacteria. in soil, ammonium is assimilated by heterotrophic microbes and then used for nitrification. however, nitrifiers in turfgrass soils compete with heterotrophs and increase their nitrification activity (beirn et al., 2017; shi, yao, & bowman, 2006). the integration of chemical and organic fertilizers, along with the development of organic agricultural systems for turfgrass management, will enhance material circulation, particularly p cycling activities. 4.3. the variation of soil chemical properties the tc, tn, tp, and tk contents in the turfgrass field were lower than those in the agricultural fields. as organic fertilizers cannot be applied for turfgrass management, tc in turfgrass fields almost solely originates from clippings. since the correlation between tc and tn in turfgrass fields was weaker than in agricultural fields, chemical fertilizer treatments are widely applied. the variations in tc, tn, tp, and tk were narrower in turfgrass fields than in agricultural fields, suggesting that the management practices of turfgrass fields are similar across japanese golf courses. returning clippings to the field can gradually increase total carbon (tc) and nutrients in the soil because mineralisation is promoted by high bacterial biomass. returning clippings for 10–50 years reduces nitrogen (n) fertilisation by 25% compared to returning clippings for 1–10 years and increases soil carbon sequestration by 11–59% for 10–50 years after turf establishment (knot et al., 2017; law et al., 2017; qian et al., 2003). furthermore, the application of organic fertilizers can rapidly enhance soil carbon sequestration and improve the carbon-to-nitrogen (c/n) balance, either prior to turf establishment or during cultivation. 5. conclusions this study aimed to characterize the soil fertility of turfgrass fields in golf courses in comparison with agricultural fields (orchards, paddies, and uplands) in japan. bacterial biomass in turfgrass was relatively high and similar to that in orchards and upland fields, while tc, tn, tp, and tk values were lower than those in the agricultural fields and within a narrow range. nand p-circulation activities were lower in turfgrass fields than in agricultural fields. as a result, putting greens at golf courses, characterized by their intensive chemical fertilizer management practices and perennial growth, create a distinct environment that differs from any conventional agricultural cropping system. to promote material circulation and sustainable land use for golf courses, the application of suitable organic fertilizers can be considered for further research in turfgrass soil. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(4) 2025: 676-685 684 © 2025 aess publications. all rights reserved. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that 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(2008). how management practices affect arthropod communities on japanese golf courses? landscape and ecological engineering, 4(2), 133-138. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11355-008-0048-1 views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the author(s), asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage or liability etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.2136/sssaj2018.09.0359 https://doi.org/10.1111/jse.12262 https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/adb7bd https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2004.12.004 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11355-008-0048-1 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 25 pitfalls and potential pathways to commercialization of indigenous food crops, fruits, and vegetables in africa achoja roland onomu department of agricultural economics, university of fort hare, alice, eastern cape, south africa.  roland.onomu@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 19 september 2022 revised: 20 december 2022 accepted: 13 january 2023 published: 31 january 2023 keywords awareness benefit domestication food security mechanism pitfalls policy. all foods have local origins, but their commercialization and global acceptance remain challenging. agricultural commercialization involves producing agricultural products for financial gain and market purposes beyond family consumption. indigenous foods have vast societal benefits, including cultural, employment, medicinal, food security-related, nutritional, and financial. however, indigenous food consumption and demand are constantly declining because exotic foods are replacing them, despite recent campaigns for their increased commercialization. the study investigates the challenges associated with indigenous food commercialization, possible pathways to commercialization, and the role of the government in commercializing indigenous food. it offers a hypothesized structure and essential blueprint for sustainable indigenous food (crop) commercialization. the methodology involved a review of the literature using various search engines, scholarly sites, and print books, combining quantitative and qualitative research. scaling indigenous food for sustainable commercialization beyond dependency on the wild product takes specific steps, including domestication, certification, and effective government-private collaboration. policies to improve the sustainability of indigenous food are urgently required to save them from extinction and meet future demand. many indigenous foods are hindered by low-status perception, poor value addition, inadequate knowledge of their potential, lack of market penetration, and global acceptability challenges. indigenous food commercialization lacks a holistic and systematic approach involving careful planning, procedural steps, and an aggressive market-spreading mechanism for global adoption. an excellent strategic relationship between government and stakeholders is a prerequisite for indigenous food commercialization, but the onus is on the government to commit to indigenous food commercialization programs. contribution/originality: this study postulates a four-fold pathway to the commercialization of indigenous foods: identifying their significance, domestication, value addition, and market/awareness promotion. the development of these four broad areas and cooperation between private and government actors drives global acceptance of indigenous food, but lack of government support slows it. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4716 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: onomu, a. r. (2023). pitfalls and potential pathways to commercialization of indigenous food crops, fruits, and vegetables in africa. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1), 25–38. 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4716 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 1 (2023): 25-38. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7329-5781 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 25-38 26 1. introduction indigenous food is ancestral cuisine of local origin that is naturally grown and consumed in an area. indigenous food can include green leafy vegetables, fruits, crops, tubers, or animals (fauna) that are primary food sources for the local people (nepfumbada, dzinamarira, & mashamba-thompson, 2021). indigenous food plays several societal, economic, and environmental roles, including in the health and nutritional value system. it is a cheap source of food diversity among rural people (shackleton., dzerefos, shackleton, & mathabela, 2000). indigenous foods are mainly grown and sold by rural inhabitants of developing countries, especially young people and women. therefore, they serve as a channel of empowerment for the vulnerable, offering a more regular and stable income (baldermann et al., 2016; chivenge, mabhaudhi, modi, & mafongoya, 2015). for instance, women in kenya and benin generate additional income by growing and processing these foods (rampa, lammers, linnemann, schoustra, & de winter, 2020a). recent research has shown that the potential economic benefits of indigenous foods include the provision of livelihood diversification strategies and business transformation for many households (rampa et al., 2020a; shackleton et al., 2000). it provides enormous opportunities for collaboration in the areas of logistic improvement, value chain development, genetic improvement, and domestic and export markets (rampa, lammers, linnemann, schoustra, & de winter, 2020b). ironically, few households obtain a significant income from trading indigenous foods due to market failure (shackleton et al., 2000). at the macro-economic level, indigenous food encourages tourism growth, which improves the economy of both the local community and the entire country (fam, syed annuar, tan, lai, & ingko, 2020). for example, the new yam festival of the igbo people of nigeria not only attracts many tourists to the local community but also stimulates recreational opportunities and contributes to its status as a modern, urbanized community (onyeabor, 2016). the relationship between tourism and indigenous food is mutual; for instance, indigenous foods are known to play a supporting role, irrespective of a direct association between local food and tourism (henderson, 2009; santafetroncoso & loring, 2021). indigenous food stimulates economic activities through tourism, with most tourists willingly purchasing indigenous food even when unfamiliar with it fam et al. (2020); henderson (2009). although inflows of tourists and tourism result in job creation, market opportunities, community empowerment, and the spread of indigenous food, their lack negatively impacts the indigenous food system (mnguni & giampiccoli, 2019). inadequate tourist patronage, for instance, limits the spread and recognition of the brown mussel, perna perna, despite its massive potential (lasiak & dye, 1989). a dwindling tourist market resulting from poor tourism development not only impacts indigenous dishes but has a general spillover effect on the entire community (mbaiwa, 2003). one of the indigenous foods environmental advantages is that they are well adapted to local climatic conditions and natural environmental resources, leading to low input requirements for different kinds of cropping systems. they also display excellent resistance attributes to local pests and diseases, making them suitable for resilient agriculture and sustainable food systems (omotayo & aremu, 2020). indigenous foods also have a cultural dimension, playing a role in the locals’ way of life (kuhnlein, erasmus, spigelski, & fao, 2009). they make a unique contribution to traditional marriage, festivals, and ritual performances as main cultural objects that are shared among the people (unya, 2021). in other words, these foods are a means of defining the identity of the local people or ethnical group (mnguni & giampiccoli, 2019). among the many functions of indigenous food is its use in traditional knowledge transfer and preservation of the indigenous culture (martens, 2018). due to the respect and value placed on the knowledge of indigenous foods by the local people, those who promote them earn respect and reverence as preservers of the cultural identity. conversely, a decline in the adoption of indigenous food and knowledge bears the massive risk of eroding people's cultural knowledge (rampa et al., 2020b). according to rampa et al. (2020a), indigenous foods provide affordable but healthy and nutritious sustenance to many people, especially the rural poor in developing countries (rampa et al., 2020b). the health benefits of indigenous food stem from its nutritional value and bioactive compound potential (aziz & jalil, 2019). some indigenous edible fruits are rich in moisture, protein, fat, crude fiber, ash, and minerals (ca, mg, fe, p, k, and na) (kugedera et al., 2021; saka & msonthi, 1994). hence, indigenous foods play an integral role in boosting the body's immune system while providing an excellent source of vitamins and micro and macronutrients to reduce malnutrition and support the food and nutritional security of local families (richmond et al., 2021). the analysis of selected indigenous edible fruits in malawi showed the presence of different rich nutritional components of the highest order, including 17.0% protein for trichilia emetica, 31.2% fat for strychnos spinosa, 45.3% fiber for azanza garckeana, 11.2% ash for ximenia caffra, and 88.2% carbohydrate for parinari curatellifolia, respectively (saka & msonthi, 1994). in south arica, j. flava, an indigenous nutrition-rich leafy vegetable eaten locally, contains mineral concentrations exceeding 1% of the plant's dry weight, far higher than typical mineral concentrations in mainstream edible vegetables. thus, j. flava has been shown to stimulate 96% antioxidant activity (odhav, beekrum, akula, & baijnath, 2007). durian (durio zibethinus murr) is an indigenous food with substantial health benefits eaten by the people of asia, particularly in malaysia, thailand, and indonesia (aziz & jalil, 2019). durian has been shown to reduce cholesterol and blood glucose levels through extracted anti-proliferative and probiotic effects in vitro models (aziz & jalil, 2019). it also provides nutritional compounds such as thioesters, esters, and thioacetals (aziz & jalil, 2019). a study in nigeria by nnamani, oselebe, and agbatutu (2009) using three indigenous leafy vegetables (zanthoxylum zanthoxyloides hermes, vitex doniana sweet, and adenia cissampeloides zepernick,) showed that these indigenous vegetables have mineral values that exceed 1% dry weight. they contain high levels of macro and micronutrients ca, cu, and mg, respectively nnamani et al. (2009). in zambia, traditionally fermented indigenous milk was experimented with asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 25-38 27 as a treatment for severely malnourished babies (rampa et al., 2020b). indigenous food helps synthesize microhybrid and nanocomposite food health material (apaliya et al., 2022; malhotra, shenoy, acharya, shenoy, & mayya, 2011). hence, indigenous foods are used to combat food insecurity and nutritional and non-nutritional diseases (sarkar, walker-swaney, & shetty, 2020). however, the food insecurity challenge is on a constant upward trajectory in africa, especially among indigenous people in rural areas. many households are faced with food insecurity though some of the households consume indigenous food at least one to four times a month (nengovhela, taruvinga, & mushunje, 2018). according to masekoameng and molotja (2019), van der merwe, cloete, and van der hoeven (2016), and vorster, badham, and venter (2013), despite the report that south africa is a food-secure country at the national level, many rural households are ravaged by food insecurity, hunger, and malnutrition. as noted in other african countries, millions of households in south africa have limited access to sufficient nutritionally safe food (van der merwe et al., 2016). this is despite the significant role of indigenous food in contributing to food security, nutritional value, income, and employment. for example, since ancient times, the people of africa have consumed a wide variety of indigenous fruits and food crops, some of which have gained substantial recognition in the commercial market, like the case of marula, uninga (sesame) (sclerocarya birrea subsp. caffra) (mokgolodi, ding, setshogo, ma, & liu, 2011; shackleton, kirby, & gambiza, 2011). however, in recent times, most people no longer consume or cultivate indigenous food crops or indigenous leafy vegetables, leading to continuous food insecurity in africa, despite the rich supply of indigenous food available in sub-saharan africa. until recent times, african indigenous vegetables were part of the food systems in sub-saharan africa for generations as the region is home to more than 45,000 species of indigenous foods, of which more than 1,000 can be eaten as green leafy vegetables (muhanji, roothaert, webo, & stanley, 2011). as is the case in most developing nations, a significant number of diverse indigenous foods, including fruit and vegetable species, have been abandoned in favor of foreign exotic crops (pichop, abukutsa-onyango, noorani, & nono-womdim, 2014; shackleton et al., 2000). the reasons for the abandonment and slow recovery of indigenous foods include government laws and policies (pichop et al., 2014). distinct indigenous political/legal orders and authorities determine the sovereignties of indigenous food across diverse landscapes (daigle, 2019). these policies, laws, and authorities sometimes cause bottlenecks to indigenous food sovereignty and its potential positive impact on the food system (santafe-troncoso & loring, 2021). international law and the existing policies on food sovereignty also significantly impede the indigenous food system by impacting its market access and commercialization (grey & patel, 2015; reinten & coetzee, 2002). 1.1. commercialization every food crop, fruit, nut, or vegetable originates somewhere, but commercialization and global acceptance remain challenging. for example, maize (zea mays), commonly referred to as corn, was first domesticated from a wild grass in central mexico 7000 years ago (ranum, peña-rosas, & garcia-casal, 2014). rice (o. sativa) was developed from the asian wild progenitor oryza rufipogon, also called brown beard rice (khush, 2000). the origin of o. rufipogon can be traced to east and south asia, where it was distributed from pakistan to china, indonesia, and other parts of the world (khush, 2000). though different species of rice originated in different countries, most species are from asian countries, including china, thailand, malaysia, the philippines, and pakistan (wang et al., 2020). the origin of wheat can be traced to the south-eastern part of turkey (shewry, 2009). oats, the world's fourth most important cereal, originated in europe, although earlier research suggested that the naked oat (a. nuda l) came from china, where it was widely grown (sampson, 1954). the oldest grain cultivated by humans, barley, is believed to have originated in abyssinia (ethiopia) and southeast asia (harlan, 1968). all these food crops have been commercialized; however, the commercialization of many indigenous african crops remains problematic, despite the rich and plentiful indigenous food available in sub-saharan africa. agricultural commercialization involves producing agricultural products for financial gain and market purposes beyond family consumption. it is a gradual developmental process between transformation and evolution, which includes subsistence production and semicommercial and entirely commercial production to achieve various goals (yaro, teye, & torvikey, 2017). the challenges of indigenous food commercialization can be linked to several different factors. both developed and developing nations want to commercialize indigenous food (sebastian & donelly, 2013; settee & shukla, 2020). indigenous peoples of north america, australia, canada, and india have championed the promotion and commercialization of indigenous food, but the challenges of controlling and commercializing indigenous food remain unabated (ghosh-jerath et al., 2021; sebastian & donelly, 2013; settee & shukla, 2020; whyte, 2016). even more worrisome is the increasing speed with which indigenous food is being replaced by exotic food, especially among urban dwellers (fao, 1990). the rate at which exotic food is replacing indigenous food might drive indigenous foods in sub-saharan africa to extinction. this has hindered the growth and development of indigenous foods, despite the desire of many smallholders and rural dwellers engaged in indigenous food farming to see them commercialized (agea, obua, waiswa, okia, & okullo, 2010). moreover, these indigenous food stakeholders are challenged by limited practical procedures to follow when commercializing indigenous foods. it is yet more challenging as research and development targeting indigenous food commercialization is costly and laborious (coetzee, jefthas, & reinten, 1999). however, the available research addressing indigenous food commercialization shows that the characteristics of the local agriculturist, especially smallholder farmers' socio-economics, are vital factors in indigenous food commercialization (agea et al., 2010; zondi, ngidi, ojo, & hlatshwayo, 2022). the numerous pitfalls of indigenous food commercialization result in poor income generation and harnessing of indigenous food. these challenges make it difficult to commercialize indigenous food, including leafy vegetables, roots, and tubers such as cocoyam (xanthosoma sagittifolium) (lewu, adebola, & afolayan, 2010; quaye, adofo, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 25-38 28 agyeman, & nimoh, 2010). this has resulted in research into the various roles and significance of indigenous food, including food security and nutritional value (odhav et al., 2007; van rensburg et al., 2004; venter, vorster, & steyn, 2005). however, these studies have not achieved the aim of commercializing most indigenous leafy vegetables and food crops (zondi et al., 2022). consequently, factors affecting the commercialization of indigenous leafy vegetables and food crops have been investigated (akinola, pereira, mabhaudhi, de bruin, & rusch, 2020; belcher & schreckenberg, 2007; janke, 2018; nkosi, mostert, dzikiti, & ntuli, 2020; reinten & coetzee, 2002). ironically, however, a step-by-step guide to the commercialization of indigenous food has yet to be developed. despite most governments and stakeholders promoting the commercialization of indigenous food, especially in developing countries, they do not know what step/program to prioritize at each stage of indigenous food development. the wrong approach to the commercialization of indigenous food has led not only to the wastage of resources but to slow progress and low investment in indigenous food development (adebooye & opabode, 2004). hence, this research aims to review the literature on the various factors affecting the commercialization of indigenous leafy vegetables and food crops while investigating how the commercialization of previously indigenous food was achieved. this paper also aims to create awareness and guide governments, policymakers, and stakeholders along the path to developing and commercializing indigenous food. 1.2. specific objectives specifically, the objectives of the study are: to highlight the challenges affecting the commercialization of indigenous foods. to identify practical steps for the commercialization of indigenous crops. to investigate the contribution of some african governments to the commercialization of indigenous foods. 2. methodology the reviewed literature was collected using various search engines, scholarly sites, and print books. the review employed a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative and qualitative research. data from the food and agriculture organization (fao) were used for the quantitative discussion to explain the quantity of one of the exotic crops produced by different countries for commercialization. the data were also used to compare and contrast the quantity of any indigenous food production with exotic food. the prisma procedure (www.prisma-statement.org) for a systematic review was used. theses and dissertations on indigenous food were excluded, restricting the review to published articles and books. 3. synthesis of literature by objective in this section, the relevant literature is reviewed according to each specific objective. this includes investigating the different factors impacting indigenous food. it further discusses the necessary steps toward the commercialization of indigenous food. 3. 1. challenges affecting the commercialization of indigenous foods this section presents a discussion of the challenges affecting the commercialization of indigenous foods. these include low status, limited information, lack of an approved and reliable production system, and lack of suitable markets and facilities to process, preserve, or add value. 3.1.1. challenge associated with low status of indigenous food indigenous foods are affordable for the poor because of their low prices and constant availability (rampa et al., 2020b). however, the low prices, among other things, result in their low status (rampa et al., 2020b). for example, small indigenous fish found in bangladeshi fresh waterways are eaten whole with organs and bones by mainly the rural poor, resulting in the diet of the poor being associated with these fish (thilsted, roos, & hassan, 1997). these fish species include darkina (esomus danricus), dhela (rohlee colio), and mola (amablypharyngon mola). the organs and bones of the 10 cm long bangladeshi indigenous fish species contain large quantities of calcium, iron, zinc, and vitamin a (thilsted et al., 1997). in africa, most indigenous foods are linked with the historical food consumption and sociocultural habits that shape the lifestyles of the poor (kuznesof, tregear, & moxey, 1997). the association of indigenous foods with the rural poor, the nature of their harvest and processing, and the lack of additives have a negative impact on their status (cloete & idsardi, 2013). these and many other complex constraints have also influenced the psychology, perceptions, and disposition of the rich toward the consumption of these indigenous foods, despite their nutritional benefits (afari-sefa, tenkouano, ojiewo, keatinge, & d’a hughes, 2012). these have, in turn, affected the commercialization of indigenous foods by making them unattractive for investors, especially commercial farmers (hunde, 2017). moreover, the low prices of indigenous food make its commercialization less attractive than it would ordinarily be (rampa et al., 2020b). ironically, however, if the prices of indigenous foods increase disproportionally, these nutritious foods will become less affordable for the poor (rampa et al., 2020b). another reason for the low status of indigenous foods is a lack of scientific knowledge of their nutritional components, as well as a lack of effective processing and preserving technologies (rampa et al., 2020b). positive changes in the financial and socio-cultural status of indigenous people affect indigenous foods in several ways but result more in the low price of indigenous food. for example, when the financial condition of indigenous food consumers improves, they opt for exotic foods at higher prices. the low price of indigenous food is thus the result of low demand (asogwa, okoye, & oni, 2017). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 25-38 29 3.1.2. lack of information on indigenous food so far, there has been inadequate research and innovation to bring indigenous foods to the fore of global acceptability while showcasing their holistic roles (swiderska & ryan, 2021). this is particularly relevant in africa and developing nations on other continents where malnutrition and hunger are part and parcel of many households (akinola et al., 2020). the various research areas where information on indigenous food is inadequate include value chain addition, domestication, commercialization, awareness campaigns, nutritional benefits, conservation, cultivation methods, breeding, pre-breeding, exploitation, adaptation ability, efficient use, medicinal value, economic value, genetic components, and genetic modification (gerrano, 2021; mbhenyane, 2017). the poor rural households making the most use of indigenous food do not have the essential research knowledge, technology, and facilities to research, improve, process, and preserve indigenous food (kuyu & bereka, 2020). therefore, the limited empirical information and poor strategic drives of indigenous food development are evident in the skewness and trend of indigenous food information in africa. 3.1.3. lack of consumption and production data on indigenous food the extant research, using a study done by mbhenyane (2017) as an example, has reported that households, especially those in rural areas, depend on indigenous food, without giving the exact number of people depending on indigenous food. this trend of scanty research, which states the average number of people depending on specific indigenous foods, is unlike commercialized exotic foods, for which data are available concerning the proportion of production, utilization, consumption, and number of people depending on these foods (ranum et al., 2014). for example, table 1 shows the production level of selected exotic crops in different countries, but the production level of indigenous food crops is not available. table 1. production of selected exotic crops across a ten-year interval. country maize production tons rice production tons wheat production tons year 2008 2018 2008 2018 2008 2018 usa 305911450 364262150 9241170 10152890 68016096 51305540 china 166032097 257348659 193352875 214078796 112464292 131446596 brazil 58933347 82366531 12061465 11808412 6027131 5469236 mexico 24320100 27169400 224371 283763 4019400 2943445 argentina 22016926 43462323 1245800 1367968 16486532 18518045 india 19731400 28752880 148036000 174716730 78570200 99869520 ukraine 11446800 35801050 100700 69210 25885400 24652840 indonesia 16323922 30253938 57661000 59200534 france 16037988 12580430 111523 71430 39006372 35424140 canada 10592000 13884800 28619200 32351900 south africa 12700000 12510000 3000 3074 2130000 1868000 source: faostat (2022). the lack of data on the production, utilization, consumption level, and number of people depending on specific indigenous foods not only creates barriers to investment but also greatly impedes their commercialization. in general, the lack of documentation is gradually eradicating the adoption of indigenous food, while a high level of illiteracy also impedes its commercialization, especially in developing countries (asogwa et al., 2017). 3.1.4. the lack of an approved and reliable production system the lack of a clear guide to best production practices is another pitfall hindering indigenous food crop development (wang et al., 2014). a majority of research and research-related institutions have focused primarily on exotic staples and export crop cultivation mechanisms, including the performance of maize/bean and maize/pumpkin intercrops under different planting and weeding combinations. however, there appears to be a dearth of indigenous crop domestication procedures and cultivatable development processes (wang et al., 2014). research points to the fact that most research institutions, especially those in africa, do not have separate variety release systems for indigenous crops (afari-sefa et al., 2012). thus, the evaluation criteria, such as value for cultivation and use (vcu), developed explicitly for cereal and other exotic crops, are being misused for indigenous vegetable quality control and foundation seed development (karanja et al., 2012). this, among other things, could be linked to the lack of research in more discrete areas that fall under indigenous food development regarding the cropping, spacing, and weed patterns that result in the best yields (grivetti & ogle, 2000). some indigenous food cultivation, production, and productivity challenges start with the unavailability of improved seeds (adebooye, baiduforson, & opabode, 2005). 3.1.5. the lack of formal markets a high market potential could imply a risky opportunity for those (small farmers and entrepreneurs) who want to upscale indigenous food businesses because a more robust commercial company might hijack them. still, a lack of suitable market conditions is one challenge that hampers the commercialization of indigenous foods and the potential economic benefits thereof (rampa et al., 2020b). again, most indigenous food markets are associated with asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 25-38 30 poor logistics processes amidst a bottleneck system in which middlemen exploit rural and urban dwellers (rampa et al., 2020b). this is when deficient storage and transport facilities combine with a lack of physical market structure in shops or supermarkets to bring about the failure of indigenous foods to reach formal market channels. this has restricted most indigenous food sales to door-to-door and roadside selling in farming communities or peri-urban areas, which are more informal markets. moreover, a lack of up-to-date and future market information also impedes the commercialization of indigenous foods (rampa et al., 2020b). 3.1.6. other factors influencing indigenous food the influence of western culture is another leading factor influencing the erosion of indigenous foods (asogwa et al., 2017). the argument is that not only africans' indigenous foods but also their tastes and lifestyles are negatively affected because they are invariably being modified to suit western culture (asogwa et al., 2017). many households involved in indigenous food preparation are rural and poor; as they do not have the requisite modern technology and facilities to process, preserve, or add value to the food, they have to rely on indigenous knowledge, which involves time-consuming methods (kuyu & bereka, 2020). time has become another significant constraint to food preparation in this modern world with its growing population, making many people abandon foods that are time-consuming to prepare, such as indigenous foods, for convenient and easy-to-prepare foods (asogwa et al., 2017). the lack of modern technology and facilities to promote value addition results in the failure of improved and reliable indigenous food production practices. while inflows of tourists and tourism result in job creation, market opportunities, community empowerment, and the spread of indigenous food, its lack, on the other hand, negatively impacts the indigenous food system (mnguni & giampiccoli, 2019). for instance, it has been noted that inadequate tourist patronage limited the expansion and recognition of the brown mussel, perna perna, despite its massive potential (lasiak & dye, 1989). a dwindling tourist clientele arising from poor tourism development not only impacts indigenous dishes but has a general spillover effect on the entire community (mbaiwa, 2003). 3.2. steps to the commercialization of indigenous food crops every commercialized agricultural product, including indigenous food, passes through some essential stages (pingali & rosegrant, 1995). these stages are necessary to meet sustainability and market requirements (østerberg et al., 2017). 3.2.1. unveiling the economic importance of food crops for commercialization the first step to commercializing a food crop is associated with the priority placed on the crop when unveiling its economic importance (akinnifesi et al., 2006). this encompasses revealing its contribution to food security, nutritional content, bioactive compounds, ethnobotany value, domestication trails, perception, and local people's acceptance (cooper, 2015; frankel, brown, & burdon, 1995; piperno, 2017). this has resulted in the evolution of some crops, supported by research and development investment for domestication, including the crops formerly known as wild maize and wheat (bushnell, 1976; cooper, 2015). 3.2.2. the role of domestication in commercialization the second step that leads to the commercialization of a food crop is domestication. for some food crops, their economic importance, environmental challenges, over-exploitation, and the need to conserve biological resources led to their domestication (mcneely, 1988). moreover, the desire to meet market demand (commercialization) led to the domestication of wild crops, including today's exotic crops, such as maize, which was the foundation of crop transformation (johannessen, wilson, & davenport, 1970). the process of plant domestication means placing plant species under human control through hereditary restructuring and modification of the plant by carefully selecting genetic alterations in response to human needs (abbo, lev-yadun, & gopher, 2012). it aims to increase the crop yield potential, eliminate or reduce undesirable traits, and increase the market value (abbo et al., 2012; brush, 1998). 3.2.3. the role of the spreading mechanism in commercialization another vital step in the commercialization of a crop is the ability to spread it globally. maize, for instance, originated in mexico but spread to the united states, where its major transformation took place due to the awareness of its significance (ranum et al., 2014). maize is cultivated worldwide, with the united states being the primary producer (dragomir et al., 2022; ranum et al., 2014). as such, most commercialized exotic crops are internationally recognized on all continents (muhanji et al., 2011). the awareness and spreading of domesticated crops or their products lead to their acceptability, which created a high demand for these crops or agricultural produce. the introduction of exotic crops such as wheat, barley, maize, and rice during the era of colonization helped to spread awareness of these exotic crops across many countries (raschke & cheema, 2008; theoharides & dukes, 2007). as the growth of exotic crops gained momentum through colonization, they have been described as invasive plants that impacted indigenous crops (lockwood, cassey, & blackburn, 2009). their introduction through colonization was not limited to africa but occurred in many parts of the world (weber, 1998). aside from the colonization era, many countries gained knowledge of exotic crops during the world wars due to the high proliferation of domesticated exotic seeds and ornamental crops associated with the world wars, especially during and after world war ii (marsh, 1998). the knowledge of the benefits of these crops led to their adoption and consumption, consequently promoting their commercialization (friedmann, 1993). friedmann (1993) further described the spread of exotic crops during this era as a response to farm politics and the introduction of agricultural asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 25-38 31 support programs that undermined the postwar food regulation system and governed agro-food relations that aided the spread. however, while the commercialization of crops via war and colonization is no longer viable, an effective trade mechanism between people, tribes, or nations is a vital channel for the commercialization of crops and food (maseko et al., 2017; masekoameng & molotja, 2019). brassica rapa l. subsp. (brassicaceae) is an annual leafy vegetable that originated in china but found its way into africa as a result of trade between the two continents (maseko et al., 2017). during the introduction of brassica rapa l in africa, the vhembe district of limpopo province in south africa was the origin of its cultivation for commercial purposes (maseko et al., 2017). recently, the commercialization of uninga, an indigenous crop that was going extinct, started among the ndau people of south-eastern zimbabwe. the commercialization of uninga is thriving due to its current high market demand through trade agreements, especially in mozambique (muyambo & shava, 2021). in the modern world, the commercialization of food is achieved via the mechanism of awareness campaigns. unfortunately, such campaigns are among the few available ways to spread indigenous foods besides trade. these ways include research, newspapers, agricultural exhibitions, cooking competitions, plot demonstrations, and demonstrations using song, dance, and narratives in strategic places (abukutsa-onyango, 2010). the effectiveness of trained partner groups and extensive messages conveying the benefits of the crop through social media, radio, and tv cannot be overstated. the use of radio broadcasting media is significant as this type of message delivery is less costly (harvestplus, lusaka, zambia, & simpungwe, 2017). however, while there is relatively much research exposing the benefits of indigenous food from africa to the world, the same cannot be said for the media, particularly broadcast media (television media). unlike the high level of broadcasting that exotic foods have enjoyed and their constant support through awareness campaigns in world-class media, few indigenous foods have been marketed in the media (abukutsa-onyango, 2010). aside from being more locally based, awareness campaigns for indigenous foods have not regularly taken place through broadcast media (muhanji et al., 2011). meanwhile, the introduction of foods into the western education curriculum significantly helped in the spread, adoption, and sustainability of exotic foods. similarly, abukutsa-onyango (2010) suggested that effective curriculum development for indigenous foods is necessary at various learning institutions. 3.2.4. the importance of value addition in the commercialization of indigenous food value addition, which entails processing, preserving, and packaging, is crucial in commercializing agricultural produce. all commercialized foods have undergone various stages of value addition, including genetic improvement, processing, preservation, and packaging. for example, at the domestication and production levels, maize has undergone different genetic improvements, leading to high-oil corn, green-eared corn, sweet corn, popcorn, baby corn, and quality protein maize (yadav & supriya, 2014). maize’s value-added products at the processing, preserving, and packaging levels include baked products, savory snacks, health foods, infant foods, and various traditional foods (yadav & supriya, 2014). in the case of rice, it is notably consumed by more than half of the world's population (gnanamanickam, 2009). it has undergone value addition that includes processing its waste (husk) into micro silica used to prepare advanced materials like sic, si3n4, elemental si, and mg2si for economic benefit (chandrasekhar, satyanarayana, pramada, raghavan, & gupta, 2003). in another development, improvements that encapsulate rice production’s value-added equipment have been made beyond mechanical threshers, winnowers, harvesters, and combine harvesters to include a suitable combine machine for drying and segregating immature rice grains (samaddar et al., 2017). brown rice, ready-made mixes, and noodles are rich products that have not only been commercialized at the regional level but have penetrated the global market due to their value-added contribution (samaddar et al., 2017). meeting the increasing demand and commercialization of wheat would not have been achieved by conventional plant breeding methods, irrespective of their role in growth. as such, the value-added application of recombinant techniques helped to overcome the obstacles to translating the full potential of the genomic era to wheat breeding to improve wheat quality and yield (bhalla, 2006). all commercialized exotic crops have gone through various stages of value addition (macauley & ramadjita, 2015). however, many indigenous foods lag considerably in various areas of value addition. indigenous crop value addition in the agronomic evaluation under different growing conditions is a fundamental challenge impeding the commercialization of indigenous crops and african leafy vegetables (lewu et al., 2010). the lack of value-addition ensures that indigenous food crops, including vegetables, suffer from low acceptability status (rampa et al., 2020b; zobolo, mkabela, & mtetwa, 2008). 4. framework of indigenous sustainable food (crop) commercialization based on the literature, the author hypothesized the structural stages necessary for the sustainable commercialization of indigenous food, irrespective of the socio-economic characteristics of the farmer involved. the structure organogram presented in figure 1, if followed meticulously, will result in commercialization. other variables do play a role; these in-between variables include government policy, training/capital development of stakeholders, certification, financial support, research, and development. constant exploitation of indigenous food from the wild could never result in commercialization; it will instead lead to extinction due to over-exploitation. hence, the necessary starting point is aggressive research and development, which will lead to domestication after the economic potential of such indigenous food has been discovered. figure 1 illustrates the commercialization of indigenous foods, using a plant as an example. it shows that all plants originate from the wild, and the commercialization process starts by identifying their significance (value). this includes identifying its nutritional, medicinal, food security, and commercial values. the realization of this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 25-38 32 significance will create over-exploitation pressure on the wild progenitor or product. to reduce the pressure of overexploitation and meet market demand while ensuring sustainability, domestication becomes a necessity. after domestication, the next necessary step is value addition; this could take the form of yield improvement, nutritional improvement, genetic improvement, preservation of production, packaging, etc. however, value addition may take place alongside the promotion of the market value of the plants by implementing market awareness strategies for its global acceptance, which must be completed to achieve commercialization. each stage in the commercialization process requires government and private sector corporations to collaborate to commercialize the indigenous food. before the worldwide spread of maize, its hybrid technology was originally developed and domesticated in the united states (byerlee, 2020). based on the demand for maize and its market context, diffusion of this hybrid technology from the united states to latin america, europe, asia, and africa was observed in the years up to 1970 (byerlee, 2020). a good spreading mechanism, involving promotion, awareness, and marketing, is necessary for local and international commercialization. on the other hand, various types of value addition, including breeding and genetic modification, lead to better climatic adaptability, improved yield, and early maturity. value addition also involves processing, branding, and packaging, which are needed for global acceptability and commercialization. figure 1. framework of indigenous food commercialization. 5. the commercialization of sclerocarya birrea (marula) sclerocarya birrea (marula) is one indigenous fruit plant that has been commercialized in recent years. analyses of various studies show that certain essential activities were carried out to ensure the commercialization of s. birrea (marula). these essential activities have been summarized and captured in the figure showing the empirical structure of indigenous food commercialization. the commercialization of s. birrea followed developmental strategies stemming from its economic importance in the areas of food security, nutritional value, health, and income generation, leading to domestication, value addition, and promotion (bationo-kando et al., 2016). sclerocarya birrea (marula) is a deciduous tree crop with economic importance that is indigenous to southern africa (cádiz-gurrea, lozano-sánchez, fernández-ochoa, & segura-carretero, 2019). sclerocarya birrea (marula) contributes to food security in that the people of southern africa widely consume its fruit. it has a rich nutritional content. the bark of the tree is used for medicinal purposes. it helps the local people to improve their income generation. sclerocarya birrea (marula) has been domesticated from varieties of wild parent species to ensure domestic and cultivated offspring with desirable features to meet specific human needs. part of its early domestication involved establishing orchards in southern africa and israel that were resilient to environmental factors and supplied both fresh fruit and fruit for the canning and beverage industries (nerd, aronson, & mizrahi, 1990; weinert, van wyk, & holtzhausen, 1990). while sclerocarya birrea (marula) is naturally adapted to the climatic and environmental asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 25-38 33 conditions of southern africa, four orchards were established for its domestication and to optimize the postharvest physiology of the fruits at different locations in the negev desert of israel (nerd & mizrahi, 1993). to ensure its maximum performance when domesticated, the best soils were used for its propagation, although it grows in a wide variety of soils, preferably well-drained sandy or alluvial soil cuttings (voget, steele, & streit, 2006). sclerocarya birrea (marula) offers multiple nutritional benefits due to its abundant quantities of copper, calcium, iron, potassium, phosphorus, and magnesium. it also contains other elements, including zinc, manganese, and sodium, although these elements are lower than the maximum level needed for adequate productivity and growth (aganga & mosase, 2001). the leaves, bark, root, and fruits are used in food and traditional medicine (mariod & abdelwahab, 2012). the extracts from different parts of s. birrea contain a significant amount of total phenolic compounds and radical-scavenging capacities (mariod & abdelwahab, 2012). the edible portion of s. birrea seeds has a 36.4% protein content. however, the protein standard is below the best standard recommended by the world health organization (who) because it contains lower amounts of some essential amino acids, such as leucine, lysine, phenylalanine/tyrosine pair, and threonine (glew et al., 2004). however, mariod, ali, elhussein, and hussien (2005) argued that all the essential amino acids are present in fair amounts, excluding tryptophan. it also has high ascorbic acid content (hillman, mizrahi, & beit-yannai, 2008). the fresh juice produced from marula has, on average, four times more antioxidants than the juice of either orange or pomegranate, so it is rich in antioxidants (hillman et al., 2008). the fruit juice comprises sesquiterpenehydrocarbon found in plants and is reported to have bacteriostatic properties (mariod & abdelwahab, 2012). the white kernel seed in s. birrea is rich in oil content (53.5%), including oleic, palmitic, myristic, and stearic fatty acids (mariod, matthaus, & eichner, 2004). in an evaluation of oil extracted from marula seed cake (msc) (sclerocarya birrea subspecies caffra) compared with commercial protein supplements (soya bean meal (sbm) and sunflower cake (sc)), it was discovered that msc is as good as sbm and better than sc as a protein supplement for goats fed grass hay (mlambo, dlamini, nkambule, mhazo, & sikosana, 2011). despite its inherent nutritional content, value has been added to its products in several ways, including through genetic improvement, processing of the product into sesame paste and mixed sugars, biscuits, margarine, and liquor (amarula), which is traded worldwide (akinnifesi et al., 2006). different laws and policies have been enacted, including those governing wild food uses, indiscriminate harvesting of sclerocarya birrea, and indigenous rights to benefit from sclerocarya birrea (wynberg, cribbins, et al., 2002; wynberg, laird, botha, & mchardy, 2002). in southern africa, customary – rather than statutory – laws are employed and enforced to exploit and protect s. birrea, where the resource rights are secured (wynberg & laird, 2007). however, in 1992, at the united nations’ biological diversity earth summit convention in rio de janeiro, the international policy and principle for the conservation, sustainable use, management, and commercialization of marula was signed (wynberg, cribbins, et al., 2002). article 15 of the convention allowed countries providing genetic resources to benefit from the commercialization of their genetic resources, including a fair share of the profits generated, as well as non-monetary benefits such as technology and participation in the research and development process (wynberg, laird, et al., 2002). 6. the role of the government the government plays a crucial role in all stages of indigenous food development and commercialization. early transformation, distribution, and commercialization of cocoa palm, for instance, were facilitated by the united states government (cook, 1901). the commercialization of palm oil in malaysia was achieved through strategic us– malaysia relationships (yacob, 2019). scientists from the united states government embedded in local institutions linked to local seed systems and farmers helped develop maize cultivars for better domestication before its spread (byerlee, 2020). in the case of maize development in the united states, the private sector played a secondary role; a handful of us public institutions headed the development and promoted its spread (byerlee, 2020). besides financial support, research, and development, the restructuring of domestic maize commercialization in mexico was due to policy decisions of the government to support private agents in the maize market (appendini, 2014). the implementation of the indigenous african leafy vegetable (alv) program in kenya, jointly supported by a group of government ministries, non-governmental organizations, and local, national, and international institutions from 1996 to 2006, resulted in a tremendous increase in the consumption and adoption of indigenous vegetables (maundu, 2014). this collaboration enabled some farmers in kenya to navigate market constraints impeding the supply of indigenous vegetables to the local, national and international markets (ngugi, gitau, & nyoro, 2007). to improve nutritional health and food security in south africa, the government has encouraged the consumption of indigenous food. to achieve this objective, the government established the indigenous food crop program for commercialization through the agricultural research council (arc) (gerrano, 2021). hence, the arc has embarked on developing new cultivars as an essential means of enhancing indigenous crop production. however, very little or no success has been achieved in the areas of indigenous food development due to a long period of neglect (gerrano, 2021). this is because the governments of developing countries, especially those in africa, have not provided sufficient support for the development of indigenous food (mbhenyane, 2017). the neglect of indigenous food development is evidenced in poor legislation and certification of most indigenous crops and food. owing to national and international food standards, agricultural products are not allowed to be sold in formal and export markets if not certified. a lack of product certification could impede consumer’' acceptance of that product because some consumers, especially those in urban areas, do not trust the microbiological safety of an un-certified product. moreover, most supermarket outlets demand formal certification of indigenous food. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1)2023: 25-38 34 a project on the development of infant formula achieved essential milestones and was sold in supermarkets after certification and approval by government agencies in benin. in uganda, a bottleneck was overcome to achieve a high level of acceptance and sales of certain indigenous vegetable seeds when granted legal recognition and certification (rampa et al., 2020a). ironically, these supermarkets increasingly attract poor consumers besides the middle and upper classes (figuié & moustier, 2009). this means that poor households that would have ordinarily purchased uncertified food are indirectly promoting the consumption of certified food. therefore, to support the upscale of indigenous food beyond household consumption and the informal market level, a certain degree of certification and formalization is required to comply with formal quality standards. more challenging is the rate at which government agents (extension service providers) who are meant to promote the spread of agricultural knowledge rarely promote indigenous foods (muhanji et al., 2011). 7. conclusion africa has a rich variety of indigenous foods, including leafy vegetables and crops. however, most of these indigenous foods have not been commercialized, meaning that their holistic benefits are poorly harnessed. the lack of domestication of some african indigenous crops and leafy vegetables has resulted in them being exploited to extinction, especially leafy vegetables that form trees, of which the tender leaves are consumed. among other things, the lack of approved and reliable production systems, the low status of indigenous food, and poor knowledge of its nutritional benefits affect the popularity of indigenous food. a lack of documentation and information about the number of people demanding specific indigenous foods prevents investors from being attracted to them. although numerous factors impede the commercialization of indigenous foods, the systematic procedures that will lead to their commercialization have not been aggressively and consistently followed. unlike many other indigenous food crops, some fruits and leafy vegetables are being successfully promoted for commercialization; for instance, the significance of s. birrea was unveiled, ensuring its domestication and value addition and setting in motion a collaboration among the government, research institutions, and international organizations, leading to the application of good policies and laws by the government – all of which together resulted in its commercialization. the commercialization of indigenous food crops, fruits, and leafy vegetables is possible, but there has been little effort in this regard in terms of domestication, value addition, strategic procedures, working policies, holistic government support, and both local and international collaboration. once the government effectively collaborates with the private sector, non-governmental organizations, research institutions, and international organizations, it will be a milestone achievement that will allow substantial economic benefits to be reaped from indigenous food. 8. recommendations domestication, value addition, and aggressive and consistent awareness campaigns/promotion through effective communication are necessary for the sustainable commercialization of indigenous food. this also includes the use of local and international media, especially broadcasting media. most importantly, there should be huge domestication and value-addition drive for selected indigenous foods based on their economic value – since there is a wide variety of indigenous foods. the government needs to promote effective collaboration with the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, research institutions, and international organizations. funding: this research is supported by the govan mbeki research and development centre of the university of fort hare (grant number: p749). competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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(2025). development of chicken manure pelleting machine for organic fertilizer production. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1), 94–101. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction in the philippines, the poultry industry is growing rapidly, with chicken production reaching 470.21 thousand metric tons in early 2023—a 3.3% increase from 2022 (philippine statistics authority, 2023). central luzon led production during this period, contributing 34.5% of the total output. this growth has led to a substantial increase in chicken manure production, with the industry generating around 2.46 million metric tons of manure annually (torres asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 1 (2025): 94-101 https://orcid.org/0009-0005-2598-6296 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6585-2533 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9271-7492 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6839-8914 mailto:elmar.villota@clsu.edu.ph https://www.doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i1.5324 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 94-101 95 et al., 2023). chickens produce manure equivalent to 3–4% of their body weight, which translates to about 80–100 grams per day (manogaran, shamsuddin, yusoff, lay, & siyal, 2022). adult chickens excrete 150–160 g of droppings daily (tańczuk, junga, kolasa-więcek, & niemiec, 2019). manure contains a large amount of ammoniacal nitrogen, and due to nitrification and denitrification processes, land spreading of poultry manure causes larger emissions of nh3, n2o, and nox than combustion (billen, costa, van der aa, van caneghem, & vandecasteele, 2015). unprocessed manure emits ammonia (nh3), leading to skin, eye, and respiratory irritation, reduced feed consumption, weight gain, and egg production, and increased susceptibility to infections (mohammad al-kerwi, mardenli, mahdi jasim, & almajeed, 2022). additionally, spreading fresh manure on the land can result in emissions of greenhouse gases (ghgs), such as n2o (stiles, 2017). effective management of chicken manure remains a challenge, especially for small-scale poultry farmers. in response, the philippine government has enacted policies such as the clean water act of 2004 and the ecological solid waste management act of 2000, which emphasize the proper handling and disposal of animal waste, including chicken manure (borines, dadios, salac, & monares, 2018). the disposal of manure is the main concern of producers, as foul odors coming from the poultry farms continuously cause disturbances to their neighbors, health risks from diseasecarrying flies, and conflicts within the community (jose, medina, de torres, kristel, & dela peña, 2019). the discharge of untreated effluent into the waterways, open dumping, and hazardous open-air burning of waste were among the unacceptable practices gathered in the survey (grace, victoria, alaira, sobremisana, & macan8, 2010). policy responses to waste management must be improved, and therefore, farm monitoring and socioeconomic and socio-ecological initiatives must be implemented (dili, kalaw, miguel, & ting, 2022), as well as regulation of the transport, handling, and disposal of chicken dung and animal manure to prevent the spread of diseases (department of agriculture administrative order no. 02, 2008). pelleting involves extruding bulk material through a die and transforming it into compact pellets. compost pellets offer several advantages, including space conservation, suitability for mechanization, compatibility with farming equipment for spreading, reduced dust pollution, enhanced precision, and suitability for long-distance transport (mavaddati, kianmehr, allahdadi, & chegini, 2010). pelleting technology that transforms raw materials like animal manure into uniform pellets also offers benefits in handling, storage, and transportation (sharara, 2018). beyond improving bulk density, pelletization simplifies the handling and storage of biofuel, making it comparable in efficiency to working with granular commodities such as corn, soybeans, and wheat (mani, sokhansanj, bi, & turhollow, 2006). pelletized manures can be utilized for heating and power generation in addition to being a fertilizer (wzorek, junga, yilmaz, & niemiec, 2021). a gap remains in understanding the interaction between some of the pelleting parameters and their effect on the process outcomes (nielsen, mandø, & rosenørn, 2020). additionally, a comparison between the operating cost for dairy manure granulation and extrusion showed granulation to be at least 3.5 times greater than pelleting due to the cost of binder and energy required for granulation (runge, mahmoud, & john, 2018). thus, developing an economical pelleting machine specifically for chicken manure is crucial. the machine will convert the dried daily manure output from poultry farms into pellets and utilize the belt speeds and molasses (as binding agents) as factors. this will help reduce environmental pollution, support sustainable agricultural practices, and ensure compliance with laws governing chicken manure management in the philippines. 2. materials and methods 2.1. design and development the machine was built with a strong main frame made of an angle bar with an appropriate thickness for stability, an electric motor of 5 hp to drive the machine, a hopper for receiving dried manure, a shaft, and a belt pulley to control speed, a pelleting chamber comprising a flat die and roller for the compaction and forming of the pellets, a pellet cutter for uniformity of pellet size, and a discharge chute for broken and good pellets, as shown in figure 1. figure 1. isometric view of the developed chicken manure pelleting machine. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 94-101 96 figure 2. orthographic design of the chicken manure pelleting machine. 2.2. principles of operation in the testing the machine aims to pelletize chicken manure. three kilograms of chicken manure with a moisture content of 38% will be fed into the machine hopper and then transported into the pelleting chamber. it will be compacted to form pellets by the rotating movement of the flat die against the roller, cut by the pellet cutter, and then passed through a sieve, which separates the formed pellets from the unformed pellets. the formed pellets will be discharged through the chutes, while the unformed pellets will be mixed into the next batch for pelleting. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 94-101 97 2.3. design considerations the chicken manure pelleting machine is specifically designed to pelletize chicken manure entirely in line with the unit's established operational capabilities. this fabrication process prioritizes the use of locally available resources, with an electric motor serving as the power source for efficiency, capacity, and recovery. its design prioritizes ease of operation and mobility, as well as simple repairs and component replacements. furthermore, the machine aims to surpass traditional pelleting methods in terms of efficiency, with a target capacity of 2000 kg to 2500 kg of manure processed in an eightto ten-hour daily operation. lastly, it is based on philippine agricultural engineering standards. 2.4. performance evaluation of the machine 2.4.1. pelleting capacity pelleting capacity refers to the maximum output or production rate of a pelleting process or machine within a specified timeframe. it represents the amount of material that can be processed, shaped, and extruded into pellets per unit of time, typically measured in terms of volume or weight. this capacity is determined by various factors, including the size and efficiency of the pelleting equipment, the properties of the raw materials being processed, and the operational parameters of the pelleting process. pelleting capacity is the ratio of the total weight of the pelleted chicken manure collected at the discharge to the total operating time the machine was able to pelletize the chicken manuremolasses mixture (1). 𝐶𝑝 = (𝑊𝑜/𝑇𝑜) 𝑥 100 [𝑘𝑔/ℎ𝑟] (1) where: cp pelleting capacity, kg/hr. wo total weight of the pelleted chicken manure collected at the discharge, kg. to total operating time, hr. 2.4.2. pelleting efficiency pelleting efficiency refers to the effectiveness and productivity of a pelleting process or machine in converting raw materials into pellets. it assesses how well the pelleting equipment utilizes input materials, energy, and resources to produce high-quality pellets with minimal waste or loss. pelleting efficiency is the ratio of the weight of whole pellets to the weight of dried chicken manure pellet samples from the chicken manure pelleting machine output (2). 𝑃𝑒 = (𝑊𝑓𝑝/𝑊𝑓𝑜) 𝑥 100 [%] (2) where: pe pelleting efficiency, % wfp weight of whole pellets, kg. wfo weight of dried sample from the feed pellet mill output, kg. 2.4.3. pelleting recovery pelleting recovery is the ratio of the total weight of the collected pelleted chicken manure at the discharge chute to the total weight of the chicken manure-molasses mixture input (3). 𝑃𝑟 = (𝑊𝑜/𝑊𝑖𝑛) 𝑥 100 [%] (3) where: pr pelleting recovery, % wo total weight of the collected pelleted chicken manure at the discharge chute, kg. win total weight of chicken manure-molasses mixture input, kg. 2.5. assessment of the physical properties of the pelleted chicken manure the assessment of the physical properties of the pelleted chicken manure was subjected to the philippine national standard for the organic fertilizer/organic compost minimum requirements and the american society of agricultural and biosystems engineering (asabe) standards. 2.5.1. individual pellet density the individual density of the pellets was calculated by measuring the length and diameter of the pellet using an electronic caliper and by measuring the mass of the pellet using an electronic balance with a precision of 0.01 grams. to achieve precise volume, the edges of the pellets were smoothed. pellet density was calculated using equation 4. ten randomly selected samples were measured, and their properties were recorded. 𝐼𝑃𝐷 = (𝐼𝑃𝑤/ 𝐼𝑃𝑣) [𝑔/𝑚𝑚3] (4) where: ipd – individual pellet density, g/mm3 ipw – individual pellet weight, g. ipv – individual pellet volume, mm3. 2.5.2. pellet durability index pellet durability was measured according to the asabe s269.4 standard (asabe standard s269.4 1991, 2007) by placing 500-gram pellet sample in a rotating chamber (tumbling box) for 10 minutes at a speed of 50 rpm (5). 𝑃𝐷𝐼 = (𝑚𝐴 − 𝑚𝐸) 𝑥 100 [%] (5) where: pdi – pellet durability index, % ma – mass of intact pellets (retained on a sieve for pellet size) after the test, g. me – mass of intact pellets (retained on a sieve for pellet size) before the test, g. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 94-101 98 2.5.3. pellet moisture content the moisture content of pelletized chicken manure was obtained by placing the pelleted chicken manure samples in the oven at (105±3) ℃ for 48 h. moisture content wet weight basis was used for moisture content determination (6). 𝑀𝐶 = (𝑊𝑖 − 𝑊𝑓)/(𝑊𝑖) 𝑥 100 [%] (6) where: mc – moisture content, % wi – initial weight of chicken manure, g. wf – final weight of chicken, g. 2.6. statistical analysis the data were analyzed using the statistical tool for agricultural research (star) 2.0.1, developed by the international rice research institute (irri). the three (3) varying belt speeds (650, 950, 1250 rpm) and three varying molasses-chicken manure ratios (2:100, 3:100, 4:100) were used and assessed using anova two-factorial complete randomized design (crd), followed by pairwise mean comparisons employing least significant difference (lsd) at a 5% level of significance. 3. results 3.1. design and fabrication the study successfully designed and fabricated a chicken manure pelleting machine. the machine was made from locally available materials for ease of replacement in case of wear and tear of parts. the fabrication took place at local fabrication shops in nueva ecija, philippines. 3.2. performance evaluation of the chicken manure pelleting machine 3.2.1. pelleting capacity based on table 1, the speed of the belt has a significant impact on pelleting capacity. the optimal pelleting capacity is reached at belt speeds of 950 rpm and 1250 rpm, resulting in capacities of 160.09 kg/hr and 165.12 kg/hr, respectively. in contrast, at a speed of 650 rpm, the capacity drops to 83.63 kg/hr. various ratios of molasses to chicken manure did not notably affect pelleting capacity. with a peak capacity of 168.87 kg/hr, the machine can process 2,000 kg of chicken manure (with 38% moisture content) from around 40,000 adult chickens typical in small-scale poultry operations in the philippines within approximately 11.84 hours. however, it falls short of the target processing time of 8-10 hours per day for typical poultry farm manure output, exceeding the maximum operation time by 1.84 hours. this study presents findings that differ from the conclusions of lunguleasa, spirchez, and radulescu (2020), which suggested that increased pelletizing capacity leads to higher pellet density. while lunguleasa et al. emphasized the positive influence of press capacity on pellet density, the current research highlights alternative factors influencing pellet quality, offering a broader perspective on the pelletizing process. 3.2.2. pelleting efficiency the average pelleting efficiency at different chicken manure-to-molasses ratios significantly affects pelleting efficiency, with the highest efficiencies recorded at 3:100 and 4:100, achieving 97.95% and 98.02%, respectively. this is notably higher than the 96.51% efficiency observed at a 2:100 ratio. additionally, varying belt speeds did not significantly affect pelleting efficiency (table 1). according to production machinery -feed pellet mill methods of test (2019), the minimum acceptable pelleting efficiency is set at 92%. the measured efficiencies exceed this standard, ranging from 5.95% to 6.02% above the minimum, thus passing the production machinery -feed pellet mill methods of test (2019) criteria. 3.2.3. pelleting recovery the average pelleting recovery in different chicken manure to molasses ratios significantly influences pelleting recovery, with the highest efficiencies achieved at 3:100 and 4:100, yielding 98.29% and 98.23%, respectively. this is considerably better than the 96.78% efficiency noted at the 2:100 ratio. variations in belt speed did not have a significant impact on pelleting recovery (table 1). according to production machinery -feed pellet mill methods of test (2019), the minimum acceptable pelleting recovery is set at 95%. the computed efficiencies surpass this threshold, ranging from 1.78% to 3.29% above the minimum, thus meeting the production machinery -feed pellet mill methods of test (2019) standards. 3.3. physical properties of the pelleted chicken manure 3.3.1. individual pellet density as shown in table 1, the individual pellet density of pelletized chicken manure is affected by belt speed (650, 950, and 1250 rpm) and molasses-to-chicken-manure ratios (2:100, 3:100, and 4:100). the 3:100 ratio has the maximum density (0.0019 g/mm³) at 650 rpm. however, the other ratios (2:100 and 4:100) provide lower values. all ratios exhibit a more uniform pellet density at 950 rpm, with the 3:100 ratio retaining a slightly greater density (0.0015 g/mm³) than the others. pellet densities for all ratios are practically the same at 1250 rpm and are lower than at 950 rpm. higher speeds (1250 rpm) lessen the differences between the ratios, producing uniform but slightly lower pellet densities, whereas the 3:100 ratio generally tends to produce higher pellet densities at lower belt speeds. this study presents findings that differ from the conclusions of lunguleasa et al. (2020), which suggested that increased pelletizing capacity leads to higher pellet density. while lunguleasa et al. (2020) the positive influence of press capacity on pellet density, the current research highlights alternative factors influencing pellet quality, offering a broader perspective on the pelletizing process. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 94-101 99 table 1. summary of results. belt speed, rpm pelleting capacity, kg/hr pelleting efficiency, % pelleting recovery, % individual pellet density, g/mm3 pellet durability index, % moisture content, % molasses-chicken manure ratio (w/w) 2:100 3:100 4:100 2:100 3:100 4:100 2:100 3:100 4:100 2:100 3:100 4:100 2:100 3:100 4:100 2:100 3:100 4:100 650 77.41 86.95 95.53 96.21 97.73 97.06 96.54 98.42 97.56 0.0013 0.0019 0.0012 93.06 93.80 95.40 47.06 48.23 47.60 950 155.77 157.27 167.23 97.66 97.59 98.63 97.96 97.70 98.76 0.0013 0.0014 0.0015 94.67 95.13 94.60 48.63 48.63 48.43 1250 161.61 168.87 168.87 95.64 98.53 98.34 95.85 98.75 98.35 0.0012 0.0013 0.0013 93.67 94.67 95.33 47.76 48.63 48.00 belt speed, rpm color consistency odor molasses-chicken manure ratio (w/w) 2:100 3:100 4:100 2:100 3:100 4:100 2:100 3:100 4:100 650 black black black friable friable friable no foul odor no foul odor no foul odor 950 black black black friable friable friable no foul odor no foul odor no foul odor 1250 black black black friable friable friable no foul odor no foul odor no foul odor asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 94-101 100 3.3.2. pellet durability index pellet quality is defined as the ability to resist fragmentation and abrasion during handling without breaking up to reach destinations without generating a high proportion of fines (amerah, ravindran, lentle, & thomas, 2007; briggs, maier, watkins, & behnke, 1999). table 1 shows that different molasses-to-chicken-manure ratios (2:100, 3:100, and 4:100) and belt speeds (650 rpm, 950 rpm, and 1250 rpm) improved the pellet durability index (pdi) at belt speeds when the molasses-to-manure ratio is higher from 2:100 to 4:100, indicating that a larger molasses concentration improves pellet durability. the highest pdi was consistently obtained at 950 rpm out of all the rotational speeds, suggesting that this would be the best speed to maximize pellet durability. equitably, 1250 rpm demonstrated slightly less durability than 950 rpm, whereas 650 rpm typically produced the lowest pdi values. additionally, the data is not significant, indicating consistent measurements. notably, the best pdi (95.4%) was achieved at a molasses-to-chicken manure ratio of 4:100 and a rotational speed of 950 rpm. this combination appears to offer the most favorable conditions for producing durable chicken manure pellets. concerning pelleted organic fertilizer, potential damage may occur during spreading using centrifugal fertilizer spreaders or during soil incorporation at sowing. durability is high when pdi exceeds 80%, medium between 70% and 80%, and low below 70% (amoah et al., 2024), and this is also comparable to the founding of pellet durability, which is > 80% (pampuro et al., 2017). therefore, with the highest recorded pdi of 95.40% and the lowest at 93.07%, both values surpass the 80% threshold considered high, indicating that the pellets can withstand repeated transfers in feed handling systems. 3.3.3. pellet moisture content increasing belt speed, the moisture content peaks at 950 rpm (48.63%) for all ratios and then gradually decreases at 1250 rpm. although the variations are insignificant at higher speeds, a greater molasses-to-chicken manure ratio (3:100 and 4:100) often yields a slightly higher moisture content than the 2:100 ratio. for the 2:100 ratio, the lowest moisture level (47.06%) was recorded at 650 rpm. according to these findings, pelletized chicken manure retains moisture best at 950 rpm and higher molasses concentrations (table 1). 3.4. economic analysis the estimated processing cost of ₱4.26 per kilogram of chicken manure is based on an economic analysis that takes advantage of economies of scale and accounts for fixed costs, including a machine cost of ₱51,891.15. with a flock of 40,000 adult chickens, each producing an average of 4.3 kg of manure monthly, the farm generates approximately 17,200 kg of manure per month. over eight annual cycles, this amounts to 137,000 kg of manure with 75% moisture content, or 80,092 kg at 38% moisture content. the processing cost per kilogram of pelleted manure is calculated by dividing the total fixed and variable costs by the annual manure production, resulting in a cost of ₱4.26 per kg. 4. conclusion the study successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of a chicken manure pelleting machine in processing chicken manure into pellets. a complete analysis of the machine's performance, focusing on pelleting capacity, efficiency, and recovery across varying belt speeds (650, 950, 1250 rpm) and molasses-chicken manure ratios (2:100, 3:100, 4:100), provided significant insights into improving the pelleting process for organic fertilizer production. the highest pelleting capacities were achieved at belt speeds of 1250 rpm, with outputs of 165.12 kg/hr, respectively. the highest pelleting efficiency was obtained with molasses-chicken manure ratios of 4:100, achieving efficiencies of 98.02%. similarly, the highest pelleting recovery rates were observed with ratios of 3:100 and 4:100, resulting in pelleting recoveries of 98.29% and 98.23%, respectively. given the machine's efficiency and a processing cost of ₱4.26 per kilogram, it is recommended to operate the machine at 1250 rpm with a 3:100 molasses-chicken manure ratio for optimal pellet production. considering the physical properties of the pelleted chicken manure, the highest ipd of 0.0019 g/mm³ was achieved at 650 rpm with a 3:100 ratio, while the highest pdi of 95.40% was obtained at 650 rpm with a 4:100 ratio. the belt speed significantly influenced pellet moisture content, with the lowest moisture content of 47.63% observed at 650 rpm. the optimal combination for achieving the highest ipd, pdi, and lowest moisture content was a belt speed of 650 rpm with a 3:100 molasses-chicken manure ratio. economically, the machine presents a viable solution for chicken manure pellet production, especially in the context of sustainable agriculture, where there is a growing demand for cost-effective and environmentally friendly fertilization methods. the machine exceeds the philippine national standard (pns) for pelleting efficiency and recovery, as outlined in the feed pellet mill method of test. to process the manure from 40,000 chickens, the machine requires 12 hours of continuous operation. the produced pellets passed the selected minimum requirements for the specification for organic fertilizer and compost/soil conditioner, specifically in color, consistency, and odor. however, it does not pass the recommended moisture content; therefore, it is recommended to dry the pelleted chicken manure to attain this standard. it is also recommended that testing of the organic matter content, c:n content, and total npk of the pelleted chicken manure be conducted for further data on the product for possible utilization. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(1) 2025: 94-101 101 funding: this research was supported by the department of agricultural and biosystems engineering of the college of engineering, central luzon state university, under the scholarship grant of the department of science and technology engineering research for development and technology (dost-erdt) of the department of science and technology science education institute (dost-sei). institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have 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(2021). combustion behavior and mechanical properties of pellets derived from blends of animal manure and lignocellulosic biomass. journal of environmental management, 290, 112487. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112487 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.04.016 http://spsissuances.da.gov.ph/attachments/article/372/da%20ao%2002,%20s2008.pdf https://doi.org/10.3126/josem.v1i2.45362 https://doi.org/10.15376/biores.15.3.7058-7073 https://doi.org/10.13031/2013.20447 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clcb.2022.100013 https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/1060/1/012082 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.powtec.2019.10.051 https://psa.gov.ph/content/chicken-situation-report-april-june-2023 https://amtec.uplb.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/pns-bafs-paes-275_2019-feed-pellet-mill-methods-of-test.pdf https://amtec.uplb.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/pns-bafs-paes-275_2019-feed-pellet-mill-methods-of-test.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321001761_poultry_manure_management https://doi.org/10.3390/en12071244 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112487 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 206 technical efficiency of traditional agriculture based on local knowledge of smallholder farmers trees augustine pattiasinaa rita nurmalinab hariantoc anna fariyantid adepartment of agricultural socio-economics, faculty of agriculture, papua university, manokwari west papua, indonesia. b,c,ddepartment of agribusiness, faculty of economics and management, ipb university, bogor west java, indonesia.  ta.pattiasina@unipa.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 6 april 2022 revised: 26 june 2023 accepted: 12 july 2023 published: 4 august 2023 keywords arfak mountains low productivity potato farming small-scale farming stochastic frontier technical efficiency. increasing productivity is a challenge for small farmers in managing their farms. the objectives of this study were to analyze the technical efficiency of potato farming using local knowledge of traditional agriculture and to analyze the variables that contribute to the technical inefficiency of potato farming in the arfak mountains. this study was conducted in three districts of the arfak mountains regency of west papua province: anggi, sururey, and hingk. this study used crosssectional data obtained from structured interviews with 140 farmers. the determinants and efficiency levels were estimated using stochastic frontier analysis. the findings of this study indicate that farmers who implement traditional farming systems with local knowledge have an average technical efficiency of 52%, equivalent to the average technical efficiency value of potatoes in other developing countries without local knowledge of 40–70 percent. the variables of extension frequency, total household income, degree of output commercialization, distance between the farmer’s house and the farm location, and fallow length are the determining factors for farmers' technical efficiency. the implication is that traditional farmers can improve their technical efficiency through technological improvements, the use of appropriate inputs, infrastructure improvements, intensive counseling, and assistance in correctly managing their farms. contribution/originality: this study supports the development of small-scale agriculture in developing countries. this research provides information on variations in technical efficiency in traditional agriculture and the determinants of increasing efficiency by maintaining the local knowledge of the local community. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4844 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: pattiasina, t. a., nurmalina, r., harianto, & fariyanti, a. (2023). technical efficiency of traditional agriculture based on local knowledge of smallholder farmers. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3), 206–214. 10.55493/5005.v13i3.4844 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction smallholder farmers in developing nations are frequently faced with a variety of difficulties when managing agricultural activities (alabi, oladele, & maharazu, 2022; madembo, mhlanga, & thierfelder, 2020; meemken & bellemare, 2020). these difficulties include limited availability of inputs, the use of basic technology and traditional systems, small areas of land owned, a lack of financial resources, inefficient extension services, subsistence farming, and modest profitability. the result is low agricultural productivity due to the inability of farmers to utilize technology, asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 3 (2023): 206-214. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2524-3035 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8002-9975 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8845-2228 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3602-7638 mailto:ta.pattiasina@unipa.ac.id http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 206-214 207 meaning that the use of resources is inappropriate and inefficient, causing a high degree of inefficiency (lamichhane, acharya, & sharma, 2019; tabe-ojong & molua, 2017; wassihun, koye, & koye, 2019). moreover, the low socioeconomic standing and managerial skills of farmers may contribute to their low output (abate, dessie, & mekie, 2019; uuld, magda, & bilan, 2021). for smallholder farmers to execute rural development plans, they need to increase their production and efficiency (abate et al., 2019; ali & byerlee, 1991; andaregie & astatkie, 2020; ma, renwick, yuan, & ratna, 2018). the expansion of smallholder farming through greater productivity per land area can be achieved by pursuing sustainable intensification of production through the utilization of resources, according to baiphethi and jacobs (2009) and enwerem and ohajianya (2013). from a theoretical perspective, a farmer's technical efficiency is determined by their capacity to manage inputs to achieve the best results (aigner, lovell, & schmidt, 1977; farrell, 1957; maryanto, sukiyono, & sigit priyono, 2018). this is based on the notion that efficiency has to do with how resources are combined with current technology to maximize output (jote, feleke, tufa, manyong, & lemma, 2018). additionally, widanage et al. (2022) asserted that policymakers should prioritize technical efficiency to boost small-scale agriculture's productivity, competitiveness, and resource sustainability. many studies have identified factors that affect technical efficiency, including farmers’ age, education level, amount of land, fertilizer used, number of seeds used, labor, access to credit, counseling frequency, farm experience, farmer group membership, accessibility of and distance from the product market, and off-farm income (abdul-rahaman, issahaku, & zereyesus, 2021; abdulai, nkegbe, & donkoh, 2018; abunyuwah, yenibehit, & ahiale, 2019; bozoğlu & ceyhan, 2007; esmael, 2017; malinga, masuku, & raufu, 2015; nyagaka, obare, omiti, & nguyo, 2010; obayelu, moncho, & diai, 2016; tabe-ojong & molua, 2017; tiruneh, chindi, & woldegiorgis, 2017; wassihun et al., 2019). technical inefficiencies are estimated and variations in technical efficiency in a farming enterprise are identified using the stochastic frontier cobb-douglas production function technique. according to asfaw (2021), stochastic frontiers used to analyze data at the farmer level have very substantial measurement errors. obstacles to boosting production include small-scale farming's ineffectiveness and low productivity (adhikari, timsina, brown, ghimire, & lamichhane, 2018). these obstacles also apply to potato farming in the arfak mountains. in the arfak mountains, the yearly productivity of potatoes was only 1.48 tons/ha from 2017 to 2020. according to the minister of forestry’s decree no. 783/kpts-11/1992, dated august 11, 1992, the area has an altitude range of 1552950 m above sea level, and 80 percent of the land is characterized by steep slopes with a slope level of > 40-75 percent; moreover, land area expansion is not possible because a significant portion of the arfak mountains is a conservation area (68 325 hectares) (unipa team, 2015). compared to potato cultivation in other areas, low production is caused by farmers maintaining traditional practices. the arfak mountains' restricted land area, extensive farming methods, limited post-harvest handling, and difficult access to input and output markets are the realities of farming there. in addition, farmers' local knowledge about cultivation is determined by hereditary farming experience (indrawati, sumarno, kusuma, & raharjo, 2022; toansiba, katmo, krisnawati, & wambrauw, 2021). traditional farming has been practiced for generations and is based on firsthand knowledge and experience (hamadani et al., 2021). additionally, kirt, catherine, and philip (2022) and senanayake (2006) claimed that local knowledge is the information that is rooted in place, tied to humans, and developed by individuals and faith groups so that it directly influences the thinking of farmers and cannot be used elsewhere. an illustration of a local knowledge system in the context of food production is the requirement that local community features be taken into account when applying technology (sultana, muhammad, & zakaria, 2018). farmers in the arfak mountains have a unique set of cultivation techniques that they use based on knowledge acquired from their parents. for instance, they cultivate potatoes without fertilizer and use a shifting cultivation system, which is their community's indigenous knowledge for achieving food security and conserving the environment (indrawati et al., 2022; mulyadi, 2012; toansiba et al., 2021; yuminarti, darwanto, jamhari, & subejo, 2018). as is the case in many developing countries, it is difficult for regions to boost production, productivity, and efficiency (tenaye, 2020). so, it is essential to study the technical efficiency of smallholder farmers. although traditional farming meets the food needs of farmers, their families, and the general public, arfak farmers are semi-commercial farmers. therefore, the degree of commercialization becomes an important part of determining their farms’ productivity and efficiency (toansiba et al., 2021; yuminarti et al., 2018). based on the community's local knowledge, the distance from the house, the placement of the field, the location of the market, the slope planting system, the planting pattern, and the length of the fallow period were all determined (indrawati et al., 2022; mulyadi, 2012; toansiba et al., 2021; yuminarti et al., 2018). there have been numerous studies on the technical efficiency of potatoes, and these studies have produced a range of technical efficiency values. as reported by ahmed, burhan, amanuel, diriba, and ahmed (2018), al-hachami, al-bahadely, and jbara (2020), andaregie and astatkie (2020), kadakoğlu and karlı (2022), kamau, gathungu, and mwirigi (2020), lamichhane et al. (2019), mardani and salarpour (2015), martínez, tarazona-velásquez, martínez-pachón, and ramos-zambrano (2022), mengui, oh, and lee (2019), uche, umar, girei, and ibrahim (2021), wassihun et al. (2019), and widanage et al. (2022), technical efficiency ranges from 44% to 90%. because they have the smallest amount of land (0.1 hectares), high input costs, and deal with intense insect infestations, the current study examined the appropriate management of smallholders’ potato farms. the gap in this previous research is that there is little information on the efficiency of potato farming in the traditional agricultural system, which is based on local knowledge and an average land area of 0.07 hectares. this research tries to close this gap. the research question asks to what degree local knowledge-based traditional agricultural practices in the arfak mountains hinder farming productivity. thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the differences in the technical efficiency of potato farming among traditional local farmers as well as the variables contributing to the technical inefficiency of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 206-214 208 potato farming in the arfak mountains. policymakers in developing nations with similar characteristics can use the study's findings to create traditional farming enterprises based on local knowledge. 2. materials and methods this study was carried out in the three districts of anggi, hingk, and sururey in the arfak mountains regency of west papua. the study area was chosen purposively because it is a center for potato production and has the potential for further development (sagrim, sumule, iya, & baransano, 2017). the three-month data collection period ran from december 2021 to february 2022. the snowball sampling approach was used to identify the sample farmers. this method was chosen because the department of agriculture's list of farmers in the region is outdated and incomplete, making the selection of samples from the list prone to bias (digaetano, 2013). the three chosen districts provided a total of 140 samples. the data used in this study were cross-sectional at the level of households engaged in potato growing. the results were then collated and subjected to both quantitative and qualitative analysis. similar to andaregie and astatkie (2020), battese and coelli (1995), najjuma, kavoi, and mbeche (2016), and wassihun et al. (2019), technical efficiency was calculated using the stochastic frontier cobb-douglas production function. the selection of the functional form was affected by the application of stochastic frontier analysis. the following equation was used to mathematically estimate the production function of the stochastic frontier in potato farming: 𝐿𝑛𝑌𝑖 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 𝑙𝑛𝑋1 + 𝛽2 𝑙𝑛𝑋2 + 𝛽3 𝑙𝑛𝑋3 + 𝛽4 𝑙𝑛𝑋4 + 𝑒(𝑣𝑖−𝑢𝑖) (1) where yi represents potato production, measured in units (kg). x1-4 is a factor of input such as potato-growing area (ha), number of seeds (kg), number of male workers (working days), and number of female workers (working days). βi represents the vector of the parameter to be observed, and vi-ui is the error term (inefficiency effect in the model). expected coefficient values: β1, β2, β3, β4 > 0 the technical efficiency was estimated using the following formula: 𝑇𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝐸𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦 (𝑇𝐸) = 𝐸(𝑦ǀ𝑥,𝑧,𝑢) 𝐸(𝑦ǀ𝑥,𝑧,𝑢=0) = 1 − 𝑢 . 𝑔(𝑥,𝑧) 𝑓(𝑥,𝑧) ≤ 1 (2) where the value of technical efficiency is 0 ≤ te ≤ 1. the technical inefficiency technique utilized in this study is an adaptation of the technical inefficiency effect model created by battese and coelli (1995) and coelli, rao, and battese (1998). assuming that the ui variable is free, its distribution is half-normal, with n (𝑢𝑖,𝜎 2), and it is used to quantify the impact of technical inefficiency. this study's distribution parameter (ui), which measures the impact of technical inefficiency, is calculated using the formula below: 𝑈𝑖 = 𝛿0 + 𝛿1𝑍1 + 𝛿2𝑍2 + 𝛿3𝑍3 + 𝛿4𝑍4 + 𝛿5𝑍5 + 𝛿6𝑍6 + 𝛿7𝑍7 + 𝛿8𝑍8 + 𝛿9𝑍9 + 𝛿10𝑍10 + 𝛿11𝑍11 + 𝛿12𝑍12 + 𝛿13𝑍13 + 𝑤𝑖 (3) where ui represents the technical inefficiency effect, z1-13 represents a factor of age, formal education, farmer's experience, frequency of counseling, total household income, degree of commercialization of inputs, degree of commercialization of output, distance between house and farming location, distance between house and market, slope, planting system (directional slope, unidirectional contour, bench terrace), planting pattern (intercropping, monoculture), and fallow length. 𝛿i represents the vector of the parameter to be observed. expected coefficient values: 𝛿0 > 0; 𝛿1 > 0; 𝛿2, 𝛿3, 𝛿4, 𝛿5, 𝛿6, 𝛿7, 𝛿8, 𝛿9, 𝛿10, 𝛿11, 𝛿12, 𝛿13 < 0 all parameters for both the stochastic frontier function and the inefficiency effect were simultaneously obtained through the frontier 4.1 software program. 3. results and discussion 3.1. stochastic frontier model estimation results table 1 shows the results of the estimation of stochastic frontier models of potato farming in the arfak mountains, specifically a log-likelihood value of 138.1, which is significant at the 5% level and denotes that the null hypothesis is rejected. therefore, this indicates that the technical inefficiency of potato growing varies among farmers in the study area. according to the variance associated with inefficiency, which accounts for 99% of the overall variance, inefficiency substantially predominates the total variance. this suggests that the level of potato output fluctuation is greatly influenced by the impact of inefficiency. table 1. results of estimation of stochastic frontier models of potato farming in the arfak mountains, 2022. variable estimation parameters standard error t-ratio constant 3.472 0.306 11.361 land area (x1) 0.138** 0.021 6.558 seeds (x2) 0.827** 0.051 16.342 male labor (x3) -0.043 0.057 -0.758 female labor (x4) 0.049* 0.021 2.326 variance and gamma value 0.042 0.002 23.713 0.999 0.002 462.089 lr-test 138.1 note: * significant at α = 5% (0.05); ** significant at α = 1% (0.01). 𝜎2= 𝜎𝑣 2 + 𝜎𝑢 2 𝛾 = 𝜎𝑣 2 / 𝜎𝑢 2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 206-214 209 the size of each input’s coefficient implies a partial elasticity greater than 1. this indicates that the output is responsive to changes in the input, i.e., if the input of potatoes increases by 1%, the output will also increase by 1%. land area, seeds, and women's labor were positively marked, according to the results of the maximum likelihood estimates of the stochastic frontier model's parameters, and the statistical significance indicates they have a major impact on changes in potato output. male labor shows a decreasing trend but has little impact on changes in potato output. 3.2. spread of technical efficiency using the estimation parameters for the cobb-douglas stochastic frontier production function, the technical efficiency in this study was calculated from the results of estimating equation 1 (error ei = vi, ui). the variation in potato growers' technical efficiency levels is shown in table 2. table 2. frequency distribution of technical efficiency of potato farmers in the arfak mountains, 2022. technical efficiency level (%) number of respondents percentage (%) 0 – 10 0 0.00 11 – 20 4 2.86 21 – 30 7 5.00 31 – 40 28 20.00 41 – 50 33 23.57 51 – 60 27 19.29 61 – 70 24 17.14 71 – 80 10 7.14 81 – 90 4 2.86 91 – 100 3 2.14 total 140 100.00 maximum technical efficiency 98.95 minimum technical efficiency 16.39 average technical efficiency 51.56 the findings indicate that traditional potato farmers in the research area had an average technical efficiency of 52%, which is comparable to the average technical efficiency of potatoes in other developing nations without a local knowledge base. the average technical efficiency of potatoes in ethiopia, according to research by wassihun et al. (2019), al-hachami et al. (2020), and uche et al. (2021) was found to be 46%, 50%, and 68%, respectively. according to widanage et al. (2022), the use of high-quality inputs produced an average technical efficiency of 57%. this indicates that when local knowledge is used effectively and combined with scientific knowledge in farm business management, it increases productivity (baye & teshome, 2020; hambati, 2021). local knowledge plays a significant role in the adoption of new technologies and the development of agricultural practices (kirt et al., 2022). however, in emerging nations with intensive farming methods, the technical efficiency value of agricultural products and horticulture ranges from 47% to 90% (alabi et al., 2022; asfaw, 2021; hong, heerink, zhao, & van der werf, 2019; muzeza, taruvinga, & mukarumbwa, 2023; oumer, mugera, burton, & hailu, 2022; tasila konja, mabe, & alhassan, 2019; tenaye, 2020). based on the technical efficiency findings, 12.14% of potato farmers had technical efficiency levels better than 70%, meaning that up to 87.86% were still operating inefficiently. according to the efficiency analysis, potato farmers' technical efficiency ranges from a low of 16% to a high of 99%, with an average value of 51.66%. this demonstrates that the typical potato farmer could increase their productivity by utilizing available resources and technology (alhachami et al., 2020; wassihun et al., 2019). effective agricultural practices could have an impact on improving potato productivity (nahraeni, 2012). the wide range of technical efficiency scores is a sign that farmers did not use resources wisely during the production process (andaregie & astatkie, 2020). also, it was noted by nahraeni (2012) and wassihun et al. (2019) that if farmers are at average efficiency and aim for maximum efficiency, their chances of increasing production are 47.89% (1-51.56/98.95). production increases by 83.44% (1-16.39/98.99) if inefficient farmers try to become as efficient as possible. the typical potato farmer in the research area has not yet attained a high level of technical efficiency. farmers who practice traditional farming without fertilizer and grow potatoes based on knowledge passed down from their parents (local knowledge) as well as those who use seeds from prior planting cycles for more than four cycles contribute to this inefficiency (except in anggi district where some farmers are members of farmer groups and obtain seed assistance). nevertheless, production can still be maximized. using technology based on farmers' local knowledge, assisting with farming practices, particularly the utilization of inputs, attempting to use organic fertilizers, and eradicating pests and illnesses are some ways to do this. similarly, mengui et al. (2019) showed that low efficiency was brought on by ineffective farm management, intense pest infestations, and deficient soil fertility. 3.3. potential production and loss of potato farming production the following formula can be used to determine the potential production (frontier) based on the outcomes of stochastic frontier analysis (alabi et al., 2022; wassihun et al., 2019): potential production = 100/technical efficiency * actual production asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 206-214 210 table 3 demonstrates that farmers with a technical efficiency achievement of 17.9%, for instance, can increase their actual production from 31 kg/ha to 173 kg/ha if they operate their farming business with 100% efficiency. table 3. potential production and production losses of potato farming at various levels of efficiency in the arfak mountains, 2022. efficiency spread (%) number of farms average efficiency (%) actual production (kg/ha) potential production (kg/ha) loss production (kg/ha) percentage (%) value (million rp) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) 0-10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 11-20 4 17.9 31 173 142 458.66 2.22 21-30 7 26.60 70 263 193 275.94 3.01 31-40 28 35.53 94 265 171 181.45 2.66 41-50 33 46.24 144 311 167 116.26 2.61 51-60 27 55.16 196 355 159 81.29 2.49 61-70 24 65.69 178 271 93 52.23 1.45 71-80 10 74.82 187 250 63 33.65 0.98 81-90 4 85.29 259 304 45 17.25 0.70 91-100 3 95.61 175 183 8 4.59 0.13 sum 140 502.84 1334 2375 1041 1221.33 16.25 the least efficient farmers currently lose 142 kg/ha of their potential yield. farmers must boost productivity by 458.66% if they wish to handle potato cultivation as efficiently as possible. in contrast, farmers who have attained a high level of technical efficiency (95.61%) only require a 4.59 percent increase in production to reach maximum efficiency of 100%. regarding economic value, farmers with the lowest efficiency lose 2.22 million rupiahs per acre in revenue. the factors that lead to production loss are associated with the ways that local farmers cultivate potatoes using traditional methods based on inherited knowledge, including improper land management, lack of fertilization, vulnerability to intense pest attacks, and inaccuracy in the use of seeds and planting techniques. table 4. results of the estimation of parameters model of technical inefficiency based on the stochastic frontier production function of potato farming in the arfak mountains, 2022. variable estimation parameters standard error t-ratio constant 1.326 0.795 1.667 age -0.001 0.005 -0.148 formal education 0.011**** 0.001 9.164 farming experience 0.001 0.005 0.255 frequency of counseling -0.051*** 0.023 -2.195 total household income -0.017**** 0.005 -3.479 degree of commercialization of inputs 0.007**** 0.001 6.212 degree of commercialization of output -0.022**** 0.002 -9.475 distance between residence and location of farm -0.064** 0.033 -1.947 residential distance from market location 0.009* 0.006 1.555 slope 0.001 0.003 0.186 planting system 0.023 0.144 0.162 cropping pattern 0.048 0.123 0.392 fallow length -0.005** 0.003 -1.777 note: * significant at α = 15% (0.15); ** significant at α = 10% (0.1); *** significant at α = 5% (0.05); **** significant at α = 1% (0.01). 3.4. factors affecting potato farming inefficiency the socioeconomic factors of farmers that related to their activities in potato farming were the variables used in the model. as shown in table 4, the findings provide an estimate of the stochastic frontier production function's technical inefficiency. the frequency of counseling, total household income, the degree of commercialization of outputs, the distance between residence and farm, and the length of the fallow period are the five factors that have a significant positive impact on technical efficiency. technical efficiency is negatively impacted by the factors of formal education, the extent of input commercialization, and the distance between home and market. technical efficiency is unaffected by the variables of age, experience, slope, planting system, and cropping pattern. age has a statistically insignificant negative effect on technical efficiency. the farmer's performance in making decisions about his farming enterprise is influenced by his age. farmers' technical inefficiencies decrease as they get older, and their technical efficiency rises. age, however, does not have a significant impact, since as farmers get older, they do not become more likely to accept technologies that would help them become more productive and thus more efficient farmers. farmers’ number of years in formal education is represented by the education variable. education has a significant negative effect on technical efficiency. this suggests that a farmer is technically less efficient at growing potatoes the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 206-214 211 higher their level of formal education. this indicates that education does not make farmers more likely to adopt new technologies for their farming operations or enhance their management skills. these findings contradict those of linn and maenhout (2019) and wamuyu, bett, kariuki, and cadot (2022), who claimed that a lack of education had a negative impact on technical efficiency. by enhancing farmers' managerial abilities and their capacity to learn, comprehend, and use new inputs, education can boost agricultural productivity. technical efficiency is unaffected by farming experience, yet the value is positive. because they do not dare to risk crop failure, it is believed that farmers continue to operate their farms based on the inherited knowledge of their parents. this finding aligns with the research of andaregie and astatkie (2020), but it contrasts with the conclusions of other studies (maryanto et al., 2018; wamuyu et al., 2022), which found that experience had a negative impact on inefficiency. this suggests that farmers who specialize in growing potatoes will be more technically proficient. high levels of experience among farmers can boost agricultural productivity and entrepreneurial skills. the number of times the farmers had attended counseling was used to gauge the counseling frequency. in essence, farmer extension programs in the arfak mountains are failing. several issues emerged as barriers, including 1) the farming community's resistance to extension workers' presence and 2) the absence of extensive extension activity in the arfak mountains. only farmers who belong to farmer groups receive the highest level of counseling. the findings indicate that technical efficiency can rise with counseling frequency. continuous counseling and mentoring can alter farmers' attitudes regarding the use of production inputs, production practices, and willingness to accept innovations, reducing technical inefficiencies (asfaw, 2021). according to wamuyu et al. (2022), inefficiency is negatively impacted by counseling frequency. this suggests that extension boosts potato farmers’ technical efficiency. the diffusion of technologies to aid farming activities depends on access to extension activities. the total household income was calculated using the income that farmers receive from their on-farm, off-farm, and non-farm enterprises. in addition to farming, several farmers earn a living as civil servants in occupations such as teaching, nursing, honorary positions, district employees, and regional employees. technical efficiency is positively correlated with total household income. the technical inefficiency of potato farming decreases and potato farming technical efficiency rises in direct proportion to total household income. farmers who have supplementary jobs can make money to fund their farming business. this is consistent with studies showing that off-farm/non-farm revenue has an impact on technical efficiency (andaregie & astatkie, 2020; wamuyu et al., 2022). the capital difficulties that rural households have in many developing nations can be addressed in part by providing off-farm income options. the variable degree of commercialization of inputs was measured as the ratio of the cost of using inputs acquired on the market to the cost of their creation. only the wages of labor performed outside the household were used as the input value. this was due to the lack of usage of fertilizers and pharmaceutical inputs by farmers. the findings indicate that the level of input commercialization is significant and influences the decline in technical efficiency. because the land area is small and many farmers carry out their farming activities with their families, this finding suggests that farmers do not frequently use labor inputs from outside the family. the degree of output commercialization has a favorable impact on enhancing technical efficiency, in contrast to the degree of input commercialization, which has a negative impact. the results show that the commercialization index coefficient is negative, which suggests that as the commercialization of the potato farming industry increases the technical efficiency rises and the inefficiency decreases. the ratio of potato sales revenue to total revenue from production was used to determine the degree of commercialization of the output. in terms of output, all farmers sell their potatoes to the market, and only a small number are eaten or utilized for seeds. commercial farmers work harder to boost their output. this study supports the finding of tirkaso and hess (2018) that commercialization can boost smallholder farmers' productivity by raising their revenues. the distance between the home and the potato field has a beneficial impact on technical efficiency. farmers are more motivated to actively manage their farms when they have easier access to their land. technical inefficiency declines as a result, while technical efficiency rises. technical efficiency is negatively impacted by the distance between the home and the marketplace. the longer it takes farmers to travel to the market, the harder it is for them to gather market data on prices, demand, and supply of products (asfaw, 2021), leading to an increase in technical inefficiency and a decrease in technical efficiency. this finding is consistent with studies by khanal, wilson, shankar, hoang, and lee (2018) and tolno, kobayashi, ichizen, esham, and balde (2016), which found that the farther a farmer lives from the market, the less productive they are. due to their lack of market knowledge, the expense of transport, and poor access to transportation, farmers only play a minor role in the market. farmers from the arfak mountains sell their potatoes at the manokwari district market, which is 90–120 km away and has limited transportation options. as a result, farmers are forced to pay high prices to rent automobiles. the level of efficiency is unaffected by the slope, planting method, or cropping pattern despite their overall favorable effects. this shows that farmers' ability to manage inputs is not influenced by whether they plant on a moderate slope, without bench terraces, following the contour, or by their choice of monoculture cropping patterns. the fallow period is the time it takes for farmers to grow potatoes on the same ground again. according to local wisdom, the land is left for 1-4 years, and farmers move their fields after 2 or 3 harvests. the longer the land is left fallow, the more fertile it will be. according to research by siahaya, hutauruk, aponno, hatulesila, and mardhanie (2016), a long fallow period of 9 to 20 years is a predictor of land fertility. as a result, technical inefficiency is reduced and technical efficiency increases. 4. conclusion and recommendation in the research area, farmers who use traditional agricultural practices and local knowledge had an average technical efficiency of 52%, with a range of 16 to 99%. the factors that determine a farmer's technical efficiency include asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(3) 2023: 206-214 212 the frequency of extension counseling, the total household income, the degree of commercialization of outputs, the distance between the farmer's residence and the farm, and the length of the fallow period. technological advances based on farmers' local knowledge, the use of suitable inputs, infrastructural upgrades, intense counseling, and aid for farmers so they can improve their farm management are all necessary to increase the efficiency of potato cultivation by traditional farmers. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the ipb university, indonesia has granted approval for this study. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as 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(2018). comparative study of shifting cultivation practices and sedentary farming to support community food security (study on potato farming in arfak mountains district). national resilience journal, 24(2), 215-238. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.5539/jms.v7n4p27 https://doi.org/10.1080/23311932.2019.1651473 https://doi.org/10.3390/economies8020034 https://doi.org/10.9734/ajaees/2016/21726 https://doi.org/10.4314/as.v20i2.10 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40008-019-0166-y https://doi.org/10.3280/ecag2022oa13227 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 138 does social capital improve food security? evidence from the indonesian family life survey tri wahyu nugrohoa nuhfil hananib hery toibac sujarwo sujarwod a,b,c,ddepartment of socio-economics, faculty of agriculture, university of brawijaya, malang, indonesia.  htoiba@ub.ac.id (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 2 march 2022 revised: 21 april 2022 accepted: 6 may 2022 published: 27 may 2022 keywords food security social capital rural and urban indonesia. the government of indonesia has launched various programs to increase community resilience, but the effectiveness of these programs has yet to be discovered. previous studies have found a relationship between social capital and improving community food security. however, only limited tracing of rural and urban typologies has been conducted, especially in indonesia. therefore, this study analyzes whether social capital improves food security in rural and urban communities in indonesia. we use data from 10,301 rural and 13,946 urban individuals obtained by the indonesian family life survey 5 (ifls5) and employ three variables—bonding, bridging, and community participation—to examine the effect of social capital on food security. the ordered probit regression analysis results show that bridging and community participation significantly increase food security in rural and urban communities. meanwhile, bonding has no significant effect. we recommend the implementation of efforts to increase social capital, primarily bridging and community participation, in rural and urban areas in indonesia. contribution/originality: this study assesses the effect of social capital on the food security of rural and urban communities. we employ three social capital variables, namely bonding, bridging, and participation in community activities. our findings contribute to the literature by proving the impact of social capital based on an urban-rural typology model estimation. doi: 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4502 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: tri wahyu nugroho --nuhfil hanani --hery toiba --sujarwo sujarwo (2022). does social capital improve food security? evidence from the indonesian family life survey. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2), 138-147. 10.55493/5005.v12i2.4502 © 2022 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction food security and the diet of the population are crucial challenges in global development (szabo et al., 2018). fao (2018) reported that two billion people suffer from malnutrition; 155 million children under 5 are underweight and 41 million are overweight. food security has become one of the most important goals of governments and international organizations. indeed, it has been included in the sustainable development goals (sdgs), which pledge to achieve zero hunger, reduce food inequality, and boost nutrition by 2030 (nkomoki, bavorová, & banout, 2019). efforts to eradicate food insecurity in developing countries have been widely implemented. for instance, the government of indonesia (goi) aims to improve its national food security by establishing the logistics affairs agency (bulog), launching initiatives such as the special initiative for rice, corn, and soy (upaya khusus padi, jagung dan kedelai) and the special initiative for pregnant cows (upaya khusus sapi induk bunting), expanding agricultural land and infrastructure, rolling out the asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 12, issue 2 (2022): 138-147. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 138-147 139 sustainable food house area program (krpl), internet-based food price updates (bkp food price panel), and local food industry development programs (arif, isdijoso, fatah, & tamyis, 2020). however, fao, ifad, unicef, wfp, and who (2021) have stated that 31 percent of indonesian households are undernourished, and 38 percent had to cut their food consumption in 2020 compared to the previous year, suggesting that the government's efforts have not been effective. moreover, fao data has shown that in 2018-2020, the food insecurity rate in indonesia rose, and more people fell within the moderate category compared to the period 20142016. one possible driver is that the goi does not consider social capital in its policy formulation. however, social capital plays an essential role in improving economic outcomes (kairiza, kembo, magadzire, & chigusiwa, 2021; muringani, fitjar, & rodríguez-pose, 2021; nugroho, hanani, toiba, & sujarwo, 2022) including food security. social capital may increase food security through the synergy created by community members' interrelationships at every level of the food supply chain, from production to consumption (nosratabadi et al., 2020). extensive research on the impact of social capital on food security has been carried out to examine its role in the achievement of sdgs (rabbi, hasan, & kovács, 2021). the results suggest that social capital positively correlates with food security (niles, rudnick, lubell, & cramer, 2021). the impact is indirect yet effective; greater trust and reciprocal relationships strengthen social networks that provide mutual assistance when needed (gallaher, kerr, njenga, karanja, & winklerprins, 2013; malual & mazur, 2022). food security indicators—availability, access, utilization, and stability—are closely related to social capital. bonding plays a role in the direct distribution of food, while bridging ensures food nutrition standards (paul, paul, & anderson, 2019). however, kairiza et al. (2021) argued that bonding plays a more critical role in increasing food security than bridging. either way, people who live in areas where access to food is difficult, poverty is high, and transportation is scarce should benefit from social capital because it allows them to rely on relatives or neighbors to buy food; this reduces costs and improves food variety (kaiser, barnhart, & huber-krum, 2020). the effect of social capital on food security has not been widely researched in indonesia. therefore, we aim to fill this gap by exploring the effect of social capital on food security in rural and urban locations. it is essential to take the urbanrural settings into consideration because of their significant differences. urban communities tend to be more individual than rural communities (freeman, 1997). individualism makes people pay more attention to cost-benefit, while collectivism encourages people to share resources (woolcock, 1998). in terms of food variety, rural communities may not have as many options as urban communities (sibhatu & qaim, 2017). however, research has also shown that urban residents’ purchasing power is diminishing because they have to prioritize housing costs, transportation, and electricity bills (putra, tong, & pribadi, 2020). additionally, the population growth trends differ. from 1990 to 2021, the population has increased in urban areas and decreased in rural areas, by about 3 million people and -0.24 million people, respectively (worldbank, 2022). by creating two models based on spatial location, this study can inform policymakers to optimize variables, especially social capital variables, that increase food security in rural and urban communities. oecd (2019) states that some policies have consequences if applied to different spatial areas because each area has a different capacity to implement policies. this study also aims to fill the gap in the literature (chhabra, falciglia, & lee, 2014) by using a larger sample size to capture social capital, food security, and socio-demographics at the national level. a larger sample size represents the population more accurately (biau, kernéis, & porcher, 2008). the findings are expected to be more robust and capture the social capital effect on rural and urban food security. the remainder of this paper is organized as follows. section 2 describes the data sources, the food security, and social capital measurements, and the analyses carried out. section 3 presents the descriptive results, the level of food security in the communities, the level of social capital, and the correlation between the two. section 4 concludes the paper and notes the practical implications. 2. materials and methods 2.1. data resources the data we used was from the indonesian family life survey 5 (ifls5), a continuous survey conducted by rand (a nonprofit organization that helps enhance policy and decision-making via research and analysis). ifls5 was the fifth survey and was conducted in 2014-2015. the first survey was conducted in 1993, representing 83% of the population across 13 provinces in indonesia (rahman et al., 2022). the second, third, and fourth surveys were conducted in 1997, 2000, and 2007. the sample in ifls5 was mostly the same as in the preceding surveys, i.e., family members from the households first interviewed in 1993. the sample interviewed was not 100 percent identical to the first one in the subsequent surveys. the percentage of similarity of samples between the first survey and the second, third, fourth, and fifth surveys was 94.4%, 95.3%, 93.6%, and 92%, respectively (strauss, witoelar, sikoki, & wattie, 2016). the sample in this study was household members/individuals above 15 years old. as many as 34,265 individuals from 15,351 households met this criterion. we combined the data into one file to conduct the analyses. we only used samples that had complete data. descriptive statistics of the sample are shown in table 1. samples with missing information were automatically eliminated, resulting in 24,247 individuals eligible for this study. then we divided the samples according to their domiciles. there were 10,301 respondents from rural areas and 13,946 from urban areas. we used stata17 to aggregate the data and perform all stages of the analyses. 2.2. food security measurements food security was measured using the food consumption score (fcs) method developed by the world food program (wfp), which has been used in many previous studies (nkomoki et al., 2019; rahman, toiba, & huang, 2021; toiba, nugroho, retnoningsih, & rahman, 2020; rahman et al., 2022). it calculates food security using a person’s eating frequency per week. this method was chosen because it considers more indicators than other methods. based asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 138-147 140 on the fcs method, food security is divided into three categories—28.5 is poor, 28.5-42 is borderline, and >42 is acceptable. fcs is calculated using the following formula: 𝐹𝐶𝑆 = (𝑎1 . 𝑥1) + (𝑎2 . 𝑥2) + (𝑎3 . 𝑥3) + (𝑎4 . 𝑥4) + (𝑎5 . 𝑥5) + (𝑎6 . 𝑥6) (1) where a1-a6 is the weight of each food category; x1-x7 is the frequency with which a household consumes each food category in seven days; 1 is cereals and tubers (rice, sweet potatoes, instant noodles) weighing 2 points; 2 is vegetables (green leafy vegetables, carrots) weighing 1 point; 3 is fruit (bananas, papayas, mangoes) weighing 1 point; 4 is meat and fish (eggs, fish, meat) weighing 4 points; 5 is milk weighing 4 points; 6 is sugar weighing 0.5 points. 2.3. social capital measurements we assess two types of social capital, namely bonding and bridging. two indicators in ifls5 are used to evaluate bonding. firstly “taking into account the diversity of ethnicities in the village, i trust people with the same ethnicity as mine more”, and secondly “taking into account the diversity of religions in the village, i trust people with the same religion as mine more”. meanwhile, three indicators are used to assess bridging. the first is “i am willing to help people in this village if they need it”, the second is “in this village, i have to be alert or someone is likely to take advantage of me”, and the third is “i would be willing to ask my neighbors to look after my house if i leave for a few days”. the answers in ifls5 are a 4-point likert type scale, where 1 means strongly disagree, 2 disagree, 3 agree, and 4 strongly agree. for the second indicator on bridging, we score the opposite of the likert answer, because it is a negative statement. individuals who answered strongly agree on the question had high distrust/insecurity (low bridging). therefore, the score for "strongly agree" answers is 1, and so on. that way, the results are consistent when added together. following previous studies, we used individual community participation as a social capital proxy (cao & rammohan, 2016; sujarwoto & tampubolon, 2013; sujarwoto & tampubolon, 2012). the types of participation included religious activities, village improvement programs, the village financing community, the village security watch, toddler integrated service centers, elderly integrated service centers, political parties, the national community empowerment program (pnpm), village libraries, cooperatives, community meetings, youth community activities, water management systems, health funds, community services, the waste management system, and family well-being building (pkk) activities. the answers to the survey questions were dichotomous, with 1 if participating and 0 if not participating. the total value of individual participation was obtained by adding up the value of each participation type. a high individual score indicates a high degree of community participation. 2.4. analyses we applied ordered probit regression to examine the effect of social capital on food security in rural and urban communities because the variable outcome is an ordinal type of data—sequential and regular in nature—but the categories’ distance has no value. the three categories in the study were 1 for poor, 2 for borderline, and 3 for acceptable. according to greene (2012), ordered probit analysis is conducted on latent outcome variables, shown by the following equation: 𝑌𝑖 ∗ = 𝑋𝑖𝛽 + 𝜀𝑖 (2) where 𝑌𝑖 ∗ is the unobserved latent variable; 𝑋𝑖 shows the observed explanatory variables, namely social capital, household heads’ demographics, household facilities, and household assets; 𝛽 shows the coefficient of the explanatory variable; 𝜀𝑖 indicates the error term; and i indicates the food security category (i = 1, 2, 3). in ordered probit analysis, there is a cut-off or threshold in each food security category. the following equation shows the model to be analyzed: 𝑌𝑖 = { 1 𝑖𝑓 𝑌𝑖 ∗ ≤ 𝑎1 (𝑃𝑜𝑜𝑟) 2 𝑖𝑓 𝑎1 < 𝑌𝑖 ∗ ≤ 𝑎2 (𝐵𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒) 3 𝑖𝑓 𝑌𝑖 ∗ > 𝑎2 (𝐴𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒) (3) where 𝑌𝑖 indicates the food security proxy score; 𝑎1 and 𝑎2 indicate the cut-off points of the categories. 3. results and discussion this section is divided into three sub-sections. the first presents the descriptive statistics and explanatory variables. we show the variable codes as a guide for future researchers who intend to examine the food security of the indonesian population using similar ifls5 data. we also show each variable’s mean and standard deviation for rural and urban communities. the second part presents the states of food security in rural and urban communities, grouped into poor, borderline, and acceptable categories. the third section describes social capital, detailing the level of bonding, bridging, and community participation. we also measured the differences in social capital levels between rural and urban communities. the fourth section uses ordered probit regression analysis to explain the effect of social capital (bonding, bridging, community participation) on food security in rural and urban communities. 3.1. descriptive statistics based on the food consumption score (fcs) calculations, individuals in rural communities (57,865) had a lower average level of food security than those in urban communities (62,399). the calculation also shows that most urban and rural individuals’ food security levels fall into the acceptable category. however, individuals in rural communities had higher social capital, with bonding scoring a higher average than bridging. meanwhile, the average participation in rural communities was 2,092 activities, higher than that in urban communities. the average age of the household heads in rural communities was 1.305 years higher than in urban communities. regarding gender, 93 percent and 91.5 percent of the household heads were male in rural and urban settings, asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 138-147 141 respectively. we calculated the proportion of working family members against the total and found no significant difference in the ratios in rural and urban communities. most of them were married, and very few were divorced. marital status mattered more in rural areas than in urban areas. on average, rural people’s level of education was low, with 47% having graduated from elementary school. meanwhile, most urban people’s education level was high school; some had even graduated from a university. in terms of access to facilities, more people had access to cellphones, the internet, and electricity in urban areas than in rural areas. almost 100% of the sample population had access to electricity. concerning water, urban households had to purchase more drinking water than rural households. regarding asset ownership, such as vehicles, household equipment, credit, savings, and jewelry, the rate was higher in urban areas than in rural areas. table 1. definitions and descriptive statistic variables in rural (10,301) and urban (13,946) households. variable definition code rural urban diff. fcs food consumption score fm 57.865 62.399 -4.534*** food security the level of food security: 1 if poor, 2 if borderline, and 3 if acceptable fm 2.622 2.738 -0.116*** bonding bonding social capital tr 6.012 5.655 0.357*** bridging bridging sosial capital tr 8.079 7.930 0.149*** participation total individual participation in the community pm 2.092 1.896 0.195*** age age of head of household ar09 45.165 43.860 1.305*** sex 1 if head of household male, 0 otherwise cov5 0.930 0.915 0.015*** worksize proportion of total working family members to family size sc17 0.485 0.485 -0.001 married 1 if the head of the household is married, 0 otherwise cov4 0.918 0.893 0.024*** unmarried 1 if the head of the household is unmarried, 0 otherwise cov4 0.013 0.036 -0.023*** separated 1 if the head of the household is separated, 0 otherwise cov4 0.004 0.005 -0.001 divorced 1 if the head of the household is divorced, 0 otherwise cov4 0.015 0.018 -0.002 es 1 if the head of the household graduated from elementary school, 0 otherwise ar16 0.470 0.299 0.171*** jhs 1 if the head of the household graduated from junior high school, 0 otherwise ar16 0.175 0.159 0.016*** shs 1 if the head of the household graduated from senior high school, 0 otherwise ar16 0.194 0.340 -0.146*** college 1 if the head of household graduated from college, 0 otherwise ar16 0.070 0.165 -0.095*** cellphone 1 if the household has a cell phone, 0 otherwise dl03b 0.659 0.799 -0.140*** internet 1 if the household has internet access, 0 otherwise dl03d 0.239 0.433 -0.194*** electricity 1 if the household uses electricity, 0 otherwise kr11 0.987 0.997 -0.010*** water 1 if the household buys drinking water, 0 otherwise kr13b 0.242 0.511 -0.268*** housing 1 if the household has its own house, 0 otherwise kr03 0.857 0.655 0.201*** vehicle 1 if the household owns cars, boats, bicycles, motorbikes, etc., 0 otherwise hr01 0.712 0.810 -0.098*** savings 1 if the household has savings/certificate of deposit/stocks, 0 otherwise hr01 0.218 0.363 -0.144*** appliances 1 if the household has a radio, tape recorder, tv, fridge, sewing or washing machine, vcd player, handphone, etc., 0 otherwise hr01 0.968 0.989 -0.021*** receivables 1 if the household has receivables, 0 otherwise hr01 0.106 0.130 -0.024*** jewelry 1 if the household owns jewelry, 0 otherwise hr01 0.430 0.510 -0.080*** note: *** indicates a 1% level of significance. the fcs consumption indicators are shown in table 2. urban households had higher weekly consumption rates for almost all food indicators. in the staple food indicator, weekly rice consumption was the highest compared to sweet potato and instant noodle consumption. rural and urban households consume rice almost every day because the general belief is that it is not a real meal if it does not include rice, and one will not sleep well if they have not had a rice-based meal (bhanbhro, kamal, diyo, lipoeto, & soltani, 2020). meanwhile, consumption of sweet potatoes and instant noodles was relatively low as the average weekly consumption is 0.620 and 1.694 days (rural); 0.658 and 1.747 days (urban). this shows that, on average, rural and urban communities consume sweet potatoes and instant noodles fewer than two days a week. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 138-147 142 as for vegetable consumption, there was no further explanation in the ifls5 dataset about the two categories: green leafy vegetables and carrots. we assume that the vegetables in question were vegetables other than carrots. the results show that rural communities consumed more vegetables each week than urban communities, most probably because they had easier access to vegetable yields (walsh & van rooyen, 2015). however, in general, the vegetable consumption of both urban and rural communities was high; they consumed vegetables 4-5 days a week. regarding carrot consumption, rural people’s weekly consumption was significantly lower than urban people 's, in line with past research (lucier & lin, 2011). meanwhile, for eggs and meat, the weekly consumption in urban areas was higher than in rural areas, while fish consumption was the opposite. on average, the weekly consumption of eggs, fish, and meat was between 1 and 3 days. regarding milk and sugar, consumption was higher in urban communities. we do not discuss any recommended or ideal consumption patterns for each food product because the ifls5 dataset does not include complete data on the number of products consumed by the individuals. table 2. statistical descriptive of fcs indicators based on rural (10,301) and urban (13,946) locations. variable rural urban mean diff. mean std. dev. mean std dev 1. cereals and tubers 9.273 2.319 9.365 2.288 -0.092*** sweet potatoes 0.620 1.162 0.658 1.239 -0.037** instant noodle 1.694 1.942 1.747 1.884 -0.052** rice 6.958 0.445 6.961 0.431 -0.002 2. vegetables 4.753 3.167 5.029 3.439 -0.276*** green leafy veg. 4.121 2.624 3.997 2.637 0.124*** carrot 0.631 1.401 1.032 1.678 -0.400*** 3. fruits 2.759 3.197 2.998 3.331 -0.238*** banana 1.363 1.937 1.431 1.979 0.068*** papaya 0.412 1.050 0.628 1.353 -0.215*** mango 0.984 1.873 0.939 1.763 0.045* 4. meat and fish 6.811 4.105 7.293 4.012 -0.483*** egg 2.276 2.086 2.692 2.080 -0.416*** fish 3.306 2.710 2.799 2.450 0.507*** meat 1.229 1.633 1.803 1.916 -0.574*** 5. milk 0.935 2.008 1.354 2.329 -0.419*** 6. sugar 1.650 2.377 2.108 2.553 -0.457*** note: ***, **, and * indicate 1, 5, and 10% levels of significance, respectively. 3.2. community food security food security was generally lower in rural areas than in urban areas, as shown in figure 1, with more people falling into poor and borderline categories. in urban areas, more people fell into the acceptable category. the average fcs scores for rural communities in the poor, borderline, and acceptable categories are 22.882, 35.901, and 68.294, respectively; while urban communities are 23.582, 36.385, and 70.225, respectively. these results indicate that rural communities are more vulnerable than urban communities, which is in line with the results of past studies (sibhatu & qaim, 2017; walsh & van rooyen, 2015). there are two plausible explanations for this finding. first, the urban infrastructure is more established; this is an essential driver of economic growth and welfare sen (2012). meanwhile, poor road infrastructure may hinder the rural communities' access to the markets. markets play an essential role in maintaining people’s food security by ensuring price stability. poor infrastructure may lead to inefficiency and seasonal price fluctuations. traders may also choose to increase food prices because the distribution is difficult and costly. overall, this reduces rural consumers’ access to food. figure 1. food security levels in rural and urban populations in indonesia. that is to say, good infrastructure would make it easier for rural communities to access more affordable and diverse foods (memon & el bilali, 2019; sibhatu & qaim, 2017). therefore, the construction of rural infrastructure needs to be prioritized through investment in roads, bridges, clean water sources, sanitation, irrigation, energy, telecommunications, warehousing, and storage facilities (memon & el bilali, 2019). the second possible cause of lower rural food security is the different economic conditions. individuals in urban communities earn higher incomes than asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 138-147 143 those in rural communities, so their purchasing power is higher (walsh & van rooyen, 2015). as centers of economic growth, cities have technological resources, economies of scale, and a significant market share. meanwhile, the countryside has more natural and production resources. mutualist relationships should be fostered to resolve the problems facing both urban and rural areas (mcgee, 2008). 3.3. community social capital we assessed social capital levels by examining bonding, bridging, and community participation. the results show that the social capital level in rural communities is higher than in urban communities (see table 3), which aligns with previous research (kairiza et al., 2021). activities among community members of the same religion and ethnicity were common in rural areas. bonding increases with the length of time people have lived in rural areas (sørensen, 2014) as does bridging. sen (2012) stated that bridging is higher in rural communities because they have traditional ceremonies or local culture that must be observed by all community members regardless of status/class. these do not exist in urban areas, where the only social events that bring people together are weddings and funerals. in rural areas, there are also cooperatives where members can socialize during meetings. sedana, ambarawati, and windia (2014) found that cooperatives improve community interactions and foster trust among people. regarding community participation, on average, individuals in rural and urban communities participated in 2.092 and 1.896 activities, respectively. participation in rural communities is higher because society is more communal and collectivist. meanwhile, urban communities tend to be more individualistic (ma, pei, & jin, 2015). table 3. differences in social capital and participation in rural (10,301) and urban (13,946) communities. social capital rural urban difference t value bonding 6.012 5.655 0.357 25.667*** bridging 8.078 7.929 0.149 12.388*** participation 2.092 1.896 0.195 8.049*** note: *** indicates a 1% level of significance. table 4. results of ordered probit regression analysis. food security rural urban coefficient std err z value coefficient std err z value bonding -0.004 0.013 -0.27 -0.011 0.011 -1.02 bridging 0.026* 0.014 1.82 0.028** 0.013 2.13 participation 0.031*** 0.007 4.32 0.046*** 0.007 6.64 age 0.003** 0.001 2.43 0.003*** 0.001 2.80 sex -0.113 0.069 -1.63 -0.016 0.059 -0.28 worksize 0.036 0.058 0.63 -0.031 0.053 -0.59 married 0.216*** 0.076 2.82 0.048 0.073 0.67 unmarried 0.130 0.136 0.95 0.111 0.095 1.17 separated 0.250 0.225 1.11 0.020 0.173 0.11 divorced 0.117 0.120 0.97 -0.058 0.100 -0.58 es -0.176*** 0.046 -3.78 -0.078 0.060 -1.29 jhs -0.005 0.055 -0.09 0.074 0.065 1.14 shs 0.127*** 0.056 2.27 0.188*** 0.063 3.00 college 0.408*** 0.079 5.16 0.435*** 0.071 6.17 cellphone 0.173*** 0.030 5.83 0.152*** 0.031 4.85 internet 0.201*** 0.035 5.69 0.270*** 0.028 9.55 electricity -0.012 0.107 -0.11 0.407** 0.185 2.2 water 0.257*** 0.032 7.96 0.203*** 0.025 8.13 housing 0.083** 0.039 2.14 0.105*** 0.028 3.82 vehicle 0.054* 0.029 1.85 0.057* 0.030 1.86 savings 0.164*** 0.035 4.62 0.126*** 0.028 4.52 appliances 0.366*** 0.070 5.26 0.215** 0.102 2.11 receivables 0.192*** 0.047 4.08 0.204*** 0.041 5.02 jewelry 0.191*** 0.028 6.85 0.123*** 0.025 4.82 /cut1 -0.122 0.201 -0.61 -0.028 0.253 -0.11 /cut2 0.670*** 0.201 3.33 0.885*** 0.253 3.49 lr chi2(24) 765.660 988.440 prob. 0.000 0.000 pseudo r2 0.048 0.056 obs. 10,301 13,946 log likelihood -7623.588 -8328.329 note: ***, **, and * indicate 1, 5, and 10% levels of significance, respectively. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 138-147 144 3.4. effects of social capital on food security table 4 demonstrates that there are different approaches to improving food security. socializing with different groups (bridging) and community participation positively affect the probability of increasing food security in rural and urban communities. meanwhile, bonding has no significant effect. this finding is sufficient to show the importance of social capital in increasing food security, in line with previous studies (cheevapattananuwong, baldwin, lathouras, & ike, 2020; gray, guzman, glowa, & drevno, 2014; martin, rogers, cook, & joseph, 2004; nosratabadi et al., 2020; olivier & heinecken, 2017; paul et al., 2019; sseguya, mazur, & flora, 2018). community networks allow people to exchange information, resources, and support when facing problems such as high food demand but low supply (nosratabadi et al., 2020). hence, individuals with high social capital tend to have better food security. for example, they find it easier to obtain food, money, and vehicle loans from relatives, friends, or other communities. they may also receive food from the community or group during events (martin et al., 2004; paul et al., 2019). the impact of bridging is also apparent in indonesia. when an area experiences natural disasters such as floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc., which often result in heavy losses, people from other regions provide assistance and relief regardless of familial, ethnic, or religious ties. cheevapattananuwong et al. (2020) conducted a study in thailand and found the same result: people were actively involved in helping other groups in times of crisis, regardless of their backgrounds and geographical areas. the goi has created a community garden program to boost community food security, namely the sustainable house food area. judging from the decreasing food insecurity, we can assume the program has emphasized social capital or that the program nurtures social capital by default. community gardens naturally foster networking because planting, caring for, and harvesting plants requires collaboration among community members (gray et al., 2014). urban farming impacts income, psychological well-being, and food security in urban communities by increasing social capital. higher social capital provides access to external resources because the network among community members is more robust. people find it easier to access foods during shocks such as decreased productivity and crop failure (niles et al., 2021; olivier & heinecken, 2017). sseguya et al. (2018) stated that the importance of bridging lies in the ability to reach external facilities. these include access to inputs, markets, training, information, and agricultural credit. this kind of access supports community development, which in turn strengthens food security. we also found that bridging and community participation are more sensitive in increasing food security. we assume that urban people are pragmatic and prefer to engage in profitable activities such as business practices. they network with other individuals with the same business interests to support their goals and increase their income, impacting their welfare and food security. in addition, urban people are also more selective in choosing friends. they prioritize those who can give them added value. a study in austria found that rural people interact more with family, while urban people interact more with friends (glatz & bodi-fernandez, 2020). the age of the household head has a positive effect on food security both in rural and urban communities. the older and the more experienced the household head is, the lower the chances of food insecurity (zhou et al., 2019). however, the household head’s age and gender do not significantly impact the community’s food security. interestingly, marital status only affects food security in rural communities, not in urban communities. married rural household heads have a higher level of food security than those with other marital statuses, but these statuses have no effect in urban communities. these results make sense because urban households tend to be more independent; they do not depend on other household members for food access. this is different in rural areas, where homemakers play a crucial role in determining consumption patterns. the education of the household head is an essential factor in increasing individual food security. in both urban and rural communities, those with high school and university diplomas have higher levels of food security than those with other qualifications. this is because the higher the degree, the better-paying the jobs are (sseguya et al., 2018). also, for female household heads, education could help them calculate the nutritional value of the meals served to household members (olatunji et al., 2022; zhou et al., 2019). for those with jobs in the agricultural sector, education increases their capacity to adopt technology, access to markets, and access to cultivation information to improve productivity and income (mango, zamasiya, makate, nyikahadzoi, & siziba, 2014). rural household heads who completed elementary school have a lower level of food security than others. however, this does not affect urban household heads significantly, most probably because people with a low level of education can still make a living and purchase food in urban areas. rural and urban households with cellphone and internet access tend to have better food security. with this access, household members can quickly gather information about healthy food, healthy lifestyles, good bargains, and more (liang, shrestha, ghosh, & webb, 2020). information related to food can be found on the internet, and access to this information helps people make better choices (ezeoha, obi, igwe, & ezeruigbo, 2020; mwalupaso, wang, eshetie, & tian, 2020). in addition, owning a cellphone and having internet access indirectly increase food security by increasing household income (liang et al., 2020). furthermore, access to electricity in urban areas significantly affects the individual’s chances of being food secure. however, this is not the case in rural areas. the reason may be that rural households do not rely 100 percent on electricity to sustain their daily lives, so it is not a determinant of food security. in contrast, urban households’ access to electricity is critical and is an indicator of their welfare (mwangi et al., 2020). regarding access to clean water, rural and urban households that purchase drinking water show a higher level of food security than those that do not. this may be because the level of effort they put into obtaining healthy drinking means that quality food must also be available. house ownership also significantly affects rural and urban households, with those who own their homes having higher food security than those who do not (guo, 2011). finally, we traced four types of household assets in this study; the results show that all assets have a positive and significant impact on individual food security. vehicle ownership has a positive effect because it allows people to access asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 12(2)2022: 138-147 145 food stores and markets more easily (martinez, clark, & gudzune, 2019) and choose food stores that sell quality products at low prices (guo, 2011). savings also have a positive effect because when the household faces a difficult time, they can withdraw money from the savings account (guo, 2011; yenerall & jensen, 2022). household supplies, loans, and jewelry also positively affect food security because they are indicators of household wealth. households with these assets tend to have high incomes and can meet their food needs with sufficient quantity and quality. 4. conclusions this study has analyzed the effect of social capital on food security in rural and urban communities in indonesia. we used cross-sectional data on rural and urban populations obtained from the ifls5 data. we used the food consumption score (fcs) method to assess the level of individual food security; then, we grouped the scores into three categories, namely acceptable, borderline, and poor. we used three social capital proxies, namely bonding, bridging, and community participation, and analyzed their effects using ordered probit regression analysis. the empirical results show a significant positive effect of bridging and community participation on individual food security. meanwhile, bonding has no significant effect. interestingly, bridging and community participation have a more significant effect on urban individuals than on those in rural areas. in addition, we found that age, education, cellphone ownership, internet access, electricity access, drinking water access, house ownership, and asset ownership (vehicles, savings, household equipment, loans, and jewelry) had a significant positive effect on individuals’ food security. our results show the importance of including social capital, especially bridging and community participation, in efforts to improve the food security of rural and urban communities. we found higher levels of social capital in rural than in urban communities but lower levels of food security. this result suggests the need to maximize the role of social capital in improving the food security of rural and urban communities. we also believe that social capital will only require a low cost to implement (rayamajhee & bohara, 2019). funding: this study received no specific financial support. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; 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(2019). factors affecting household food security in rural northern hinterland of pakistan. journal of the saudi society of agricultural sciences, 18(2), 201-210.available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssas.2017.05.003. effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 185 agronomic structural transformation in africa: the role of external finance gildas dohba dingaa gisele mahb a,bdepartment of economics, north west university, mafikeng, 2735, south africa.  gildoh1995@gmail.com (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 21 february 2025 revised: 1 may 2025 accepted: 16 may 2025 published: 13 june 2025 keywords agronomic structural transformation external debt fdi oda remittances driscoll-kraay quantile regression. this study examines the impact of diverse sources of external finance, including official development aid (oda), foreign direct investment (fdi), external debt, and remittances, on agronomic transformation in african economies from 2000 to 2022. data is obtained from the world development indicators, and a plethora of estimation approaches is used, such as the driscoll-kraay, the fully generalized least squares, the quantile regression, and the generalized method of moments type sequential regression techniques. the outcomes reveal ample evidence of an augmenting effect of external debt and remittances on agronomic transformation in africa. however, subregional comparisons demonstrate that the influence of remittances is insignificant for east african economies, while external debt has a negative impact on north african economies. furthermore, fdi negatively affects agronomic transformation but fails to be significant for east and southern african economies. finally, oda was generally positive but insignificant. external finance sources variably influence agronomic transformation, with outcomes shaped by regional contexts. the heterogeneity underscores the need for nuanced, region-specific policy frameworks. policymakers should prioritize remittance channels and debt management to foster agronomic transformation while tailoring strategies to sub-regional dynamics. east and southern africa require cautious oda utilization, and fdi policies should be redesigned to align with agricultural development goals. contribution/originality: this study stands out through its analysis of regional disparities in africa’s agronomic transformation using multi-method econometrics, revealing divergent impacts of external finance sources. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5405 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: dinga, g. d., & mah, g. (2025). agronomic structural transformation in africa: the role of external finance. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 185–201. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction the consistently increasing trend of the world population is one of the most worrisome and problematic issues for global stakeholders regarding how to meet the food demands of these incessant increments. pivotal in reconciling these challenging issues is the enhancement of the agronomic sector to boost production and improve future supply. the world bank (2014) highlighted that the most effective approach to target food scarcity and feed the global population, which is forecasted to be about 9.7 billion, and enhance shared prosperity by 2050, will require the development of the agricultural sector. structural transformation of the agricultural sector has remained a policy target of the millennium and sustainable development goals to fight hunger and reduce poverty globally. extended literature has continually certified that structural change in the agronomic sector within an economy remains a key pillar to achieving sustainable development (dedewanou & kpekou tossou, 2022; ndjidda, amoa, & nourou, 2022; olumo, byaruhanga, & mungai, 2023). while developed economies have long understood this rhetoric and acted accordingly, their developing asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 185-201 mailto:gildoh1995@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2272-972x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8729-9935 https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5405 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 186 counterparts are still struggling to catch up regarding structural transformation, be it in the agricultural, industrial, or service sectors. structural change, especially in the agronomic sector, remains a vital tool in attaining the sustainable development goals of zero hunger, reduced poverty, and decreased inequality (goals 1, 2, and 10, respectively). while the process of structural transformation in the agronomic sector is advancing in most developing economies, the pace of africa in general and sub-saharan africa (ssa) in particular remains a cause for concern. the ssa sub-region accounts for about 13 percent of the world population, and with this population projected to reach 22% or 2.1 billion by 2050, undernourishment has remained a key problem in this sub-region (world food programme, 2015). though the rate of undernourishment reduced from 33% from 1990 to 1992 to 23% in 2024, the comparative proportion of undernourishment remains the highest among other developing countries. boosting agronomic transformation is one of the most vital tools in combating hunger, reducing poverty, and improving the welfare of developing economies, especially those of the african continent. however, the process of agronomic transformation requires high amounts of capital investment, given that it necessitates the adoption of modern agronomic technologies and practices to enhance productivity and sustainability. developing countries in general and africa in particular have been lagging behind other regions with regard to modern agronomic technologies and practices (bachewe, berhane, minten, & taffesse, 2018; mukasa, woldemichael, salami, & simpasa, 2017). a key reason that can explain such drawbacks within the african context is limited capital, which constrains investment in modern agricultural technologies (mukasa & simpasa, 2024). africa economic outlook (aeo, 2024) research forecasts that, by 2030, africa needs to eliminate an annual financial shortfall of $402.2 billion (approximately 13.7% of its estimated 2024 gdp) to speed up its structural transformation. external sources of finance are among the major cradles wherein african economies can source the required capital needed to transform their domestic agricultural sectors and enhance the general value chain on the continent (unctad, 2023). in terms of external finance inflow into africa, there has been a consistent increase in the inflow of remittances, foreign direct investment (fdi) and official development aid (oda) into africa during the past decades. however, africa still falls behind its developing asian counterparts (yeboua & cilliers, 2024). equally, africa’s external debt has risen to about 1.152 trillion dollars in 2023, and this is equally accompanied by the highest interest rates (afdb, 2024). this demonstrates that external finance has generally been on a constant rise on the african continent during the past decades. understanding the role played by these different sources of external finance in shaping agronomic structural transformation amid limited domestic capital and technologies has increasingly become the subject of global concern. this study examines the role of the major sources of external finance, which are external debt, oda, fdi and remittances, on the progress of agronomic transformation in africa. most extant literature has focused on examining the role of different unique sources of external finance on either agricultural production (ojo & ojo, 2022; olumo et al., 2023; tian, 2023), growth (ndjidda et al., 2022; sogah, mawutor, ofoeda, & gborse, 2024) and yields (gunasekera, cai, & newth, 2015; mohamed, xu, inglett, rayas-duarte, & palmquist, 2005). this current study contributes to extant literature in different ways. firstly, it exploits the concept of agronomic transformation and not agricultural productivity or growth, as has been common within the literature. secondly, it makes a general comparison of how different sources of external finance impact agronomic transformation within african economies. furthermore, comparative analyses on how specific sources of external finances shape the agronomic transformation within five regional blocs of africa are equally accounted for. finally, the adoption of robust and current empirical techniques makes the conclusive arguments more realistic and good for policy inferences. the rest of the paper is organized as follows. section 2 presents an overview of the literature on how different sources of external finance influence agronomic structural transformation. section 3 discusses the estimation methodologies, including variable descriptions, sources, stylized facts, and estimation approaches. sections 4 and 5 present the results and conclude by noting the policy implications. 2. literature review in this section, we present the literature perspective linking agronomic structural transformation to the four sources of external finance, notably external debt, foreign direct investment, official development aid, and the influence of remittances. 2.1. literature linking external debt and agronomic transformation from a theoretical standpoint, the dependency theory (prebisch, 1950; singer, 1950) asserts that developing nations are ensnared in a cycle of reliance on rich nations, and as such, dependencies are always worsened by external debt. this dependency can curb structural transformation in all sectors through unequal power relations and resource flow. this shows that when developing countries, due to factors like capital, are constrained to seek foreign options (especially external debt) to fill the existing domestic gap, this can negatively influence structural changes in different sectors, like agronomic structural transformation. therefore, external debt can be detrimental to agronomic structural change. furthermore, the debt trap theory (sachs, 1989) establishes that countries may be trapped in a cycle of debt wherein funds that could be used for investment purposes are diverted to service high debt. this will insinuate that when debt stock increases, with an accompanied increase in debt burden, financial resources that could be used for financing structural transformation will be diverted to debt servicing. nonetheless, the financial development theory (goldsmith, 1969; schumpeter, 1911) posits that financial system development can enhance growth and structural transformation (agricultural, service or industrial). external debt directly influences financial development through its role in credit availability, financial stability and interest. this shows that through the financial sector, external debt can enhance agronomic structural transformation. the theoretical arguments show that external debt can either be an enhancing stimulus or a degrading factor in agronomic transformation. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 187 empirical studies have equally been considered within the past decades; however, the outcomes have remained controversial, with some authors observing positive impacts (olumo et al., 2023; sogah et al., 2024) while others observing negative effects (mohamed et al., 2005; yeshineh, 2018). in investigating the effect of foreign debt on the agricultural sector, olumo et al. (2023) concluded that external debt enhanced the performance of the agricultural sector for the kenyan economy over the period 2012 to 2020. on a similar note, sogah et al. (2024) examine the role of external debt on ghanaian agricultural gdp growth over the period 1980 to 2019. the empirical outcome demonstrates that external debt boosts agricultural gdp growth in ghana. sikandar, erokhin, wang, rehman, and ivolga (2021) examined the role of different sources of foreign capital on poverty and agricultural development for 14 developing countries from the world, excluding those from africa and concluded, among others, that remittances, oda and fdi increase poverty while external debt reduces poverty. furthermore, the outcome equally shows that, but for remittance, oda, fdi and external debt increase agricultural development. empirical outcomes in some studies have equally pointed toward a detrimental impact. yeshineh (2018) examined the role of external debt on the agricultural and service sectors of the ethiopian economy and settled on the degrading effect of debt on agricultural sector development in ethiopia. mohamed et al. (2005) showed that, using data from the sudanese economy, external debt stock and inflation negatively impact agricultural productivity. 2.2. literature linking fdi and agronomic transformation the proponents of the dependency theory have elucidated that foreign direct investment (fdi) has the potential to strengthen ties of dependency while simultaneously fostering technological transfer and capacity growth, which can result in agricultural transformation. nevertheless, authors of the modernization theory rather point out that developing nations can advance toward industrialization and modernization with the correct external investments, such as foreign direct investment (fdi), and regulations. these brief theoretical perceptions buttress that the role of fdi can be both beneficial and detrimental to the growth and advancement of developing economies. authors have equally sought to examine the empirical relationship between fdi and agricultural sector development and transformation. nugroho, bhagat, magda, and lakner (2021) examined the role of economic globalisation on agricultural value added for 17 developing countries within the 2006 and 2018 period. their outcomes showed, among others, that fdi positively drives agricultural value added. similarly, ojo and ojo (2022) empirically showed, using the autoregressive distributive lag (ardl) model for the nigerian economy, that fdi has a positive effect on various agricultural production sectors (crop, fishery and livestock). limited investment in agriculture was identified by gunasekera et al. (2015) as a factor limiting productivity, and in a bid to address this, the authors examined the role of fdi in african agriculture. they settled on the views that enhanced land productivity and augmenting fdi inflow would boost africa’s share in global agricultural output. similar outcomes were equally established by authors like akinwale, adekunle, and obagunwa (2018) and edeh, eze, and ugwuanyi (2020). analogously, in his thesis, martin-odoom (2021) examined fdi in ghana’s agricultural sector and found that fdi enhances agricultural production in the short run and reduces it in the long term. this demonstrates that fdi crowd in more agronomic transformation within ghana’s domestic economies, however, such benefits is crowded out in the long. according to mamba, gniniguè, and ali (2020) fdi inflows had no appreciable impact on agricultural value added within the west african economic and monetary union countries. rufai and celine (2013) argued, for the nigerian economy, that there is unidirectional causality from fdi to agricultural productivity in the short run, and there is no significant impact of fdi on agricultural output during the period 1960 to 2008. 2.3. literature linking oda and agronomic transformation the theoretical relationship linking oda and agronomic transformation can be factored within the framework of the modernisation theory. the theory explains that developing economies can drive towards structural transformation and modernisation using the right policy and foreign assistance, including oda (bernstein, 1971). this implies that oda can serve as a source of capital that is needed for technological adoption, investment and transformation of economic structures. however, looking at the arguments of the dependency theory, such aid can equally lead to the continuous dependence of developing countries, driving them towards a dependency cycle that can be detrimental for structural transformation and subsequent development. the empirical perspective has equally been under scrutiny by scholars over the past decade, with controversial outcomes observed. ndjidda et al. (2022) utilised the general equilibrium modelling approach to examine how oda impacts agricultural growth in cameroon. the multifaceted analyses’ outcomes showed that any rise in oda stocks allocated to the agriculture sector results in more agricultural output and ultimately higher economic growth. similarly, norton, ortiz, and pardey (1992) empirically concluded from a panel of eight developing economies that oda enhances the development of the agricultural sector and improves the standard of living in these economies. in the same vein, alabi (2014) showed, using the generalised method of moments (gmm) for ssa economies, that an increasing direction of oda towards growth sectors enhances productivity. a similar argument for ssa was put forth by akpokodje, omojimite, and bu (2008) using the instrument variable technique, where augmenting the inflow of agricultural oda boosts agricultural growth. tian (2023) opines empirically that agricultural oda enhances the flow of fdi in the agricultural sectors. some authors have shown that oda is detrimental to the development and transformation of the agricultural sector. proponents of this outcome explain that when oda is channelled to unproductive activities, it will be detrimental to the growth and development of the agronomic sector. dillon and sofia (2010) showed empirically that aid does not have an impact on agricultural productivity. tony (2024) demonstrated, using 69 developing economies, that oda has no significant effect on total factor productivity. however, further asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 188 outcomes demonstrate that oda in the agronomic sector significantly enhances human capital, gdp and employment for low-income economies. 2.4. literature linking remittances and agronomic transformation the new economics of labour migration stands out as one of the key theories that correlate remittances with agricultural sector development. the theory elucidates that migration is vital for households’ decision-making (stark & taylor, 1989). the flow of funds from migrants can boost household income, driving them towards investment and structural transformation. such a structural change will enhance agricultural productivity. this implies that remittances can reduce the revenue gap of developing countries, necessary to venture into agronomic transformation and technological adoption in different sectors of the economy. on the empirical front, several arguments have been established linking remittances and agronomic activities, with obvious divergence in suppositions arrived at. dedewanou and kpekou tossou (2022) used the bayesian instrumental variable model and investigated the nexus between remittances and agricultural productivity in burkina faso. total production, total production per unit of land, and total production per unit of labour were the three metrics of agricultural productivity that they took into consideration. the findings show a strong negative correlation between remittances and agricultural productivity, regardless of the metric applied. de brauw (2010) empirically pointed out that remittances enhance agricultural productivity and boost welfare in the rural areas of vietnam through an increase in household income. rozelle, taylor, and debrauw (1999) empirically showed within the chinese economy that migration negatively affects yields through a reduction in the labour force; however, this negative effect is compensated by increased revenues through remittance inflows from the migrants. similar arguments have equally been put forth by taylor, rozelle, and de brauw (2003) and li, wang, segarra, and nan (2013). abbas, selvanathan, and selvanathan (2023) employed the panel var on 95 developing economies and concluded, among others, that there is no long-run relationship between remittances and structural transformation, and no causal relationship exists between the variables. however, gdp and urbanisation granger cause structural transformation. a synthetic appraisal of the aforementioned literature linking various sources of external finance and agronomic transformation establishes a number of gaps within the literature. regardless of the sources of external finance (fdi, oda, remittances, and external debt), their effects are all controversial with no clear direction. secondly, the literature has been more focused on productivity, with limited strands of studies examining agronomic transformation. furthermore, comparative analyses within different regional blocs, especially in africa, which will produce specific policy directions, have not been given consideration. the examination of the joint effect of these sources of finance on agronomic transformation remains limited within existing studies. based on these backdrops, this study fills a vital empirical gap by examining how external finance is shaping agronomic transformation on the african continent. 3. analytical framework and model 3.1. the model this study developed and adopted an econometric model where agronomic structural change is the independent variable, while the four key sources of external finance (word bank, 2014) notably remittances, oda, fdi and external debt, are the key independent variables. the model equally includes gdp and domestic investment as control variables, along with an error term that encapsulates the elements excluded from the model. the adopted model is an ameliorated model to that of sikandar et al. (2021). the adopted model is defined in equation 1. 𝐿𝐴𝐺𝑆𝑇𝑖𝑡 = 𝛿0 + 𝛿1𝐿𝑋𝐷𝐵𝑇𝑖𝑡 + 𝛿2𝐿𝐹𝐷𝐼𝑖𝑡 + 𝛿3𝐿𝑂𝐷𝐴𝑖𝑡 + 𝛿4𝐿𝑅𝐸𝑀𝐼𝑇𝑖𝑡 + 𝛿5𝐿𝐷𝐼𝑁𝑉𝑖𝑡 + 𝛿6𝐿𝐺𝐷𝑃𝐶𝑖𝑡 + 𝜔𝑖𝑡 (1) with 𝐿𝐴𝐺𝑆𝑇𝑖𝑡 denoting the log agronomic transformation for country i at time t, 𝐿𝑋𝐷𝐵𝑇𝑖𝑡 stands for the log external debt stock, 𝐿𝐹𝐷𝐼𝑖𝑡 is the log of net fdi inflow, 𝐿𝑂𝐷𝐴𝑖𝑡 stands for the log of net inflow of foreign aid, 𝐿𝑅𝐸𝑀𝐼𝑇𝑖𝑡 denotes the log of the inflow of remittances, 𝐿𝐷𝐼𝑁𝑉𝑖𝑡 and 𝐿𝐺𝐷𝑃𝐶𝑖𝑡 respectively stand for the logs of domestic investment and gdp per capita, 𝜔𝑖𝑡 is the error term, 𝛿𝑖 are the parameters of the model to be estimated. 3.2. data, variables and measurability the empirical assessment is based on macroeconomic data for african economies, built from the world bank (2023) database. the data spans from 2000 to 2022, and this timeframe captures the period of the establishment of the millennium development goals (mdgs) through the recent sustainable development goals. the study also constitutes a panel of 38 african economies (see appendix 5). the paragraphs that follow present the definition of the key variables and some stylized views of these variables. 3.2.1. dependent variable the dependent variable, which is agronomic transformation, is measured using agricultural value added. it is defined as the total output of a sector (such as agriculture, forestry, hunting, fishing, and raising livestock) after deducting intermediate inputs from the total output. this captures the changes in the value of goods and services at each stage of production. an increasing value added frequently denotes advancements in management techniques, technology, and inputs that result in higher output per unit of input. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 189 figure 1. average regional agronomic transformation. figure 1 presents the average agronomic structural transformation for different sub-regional blocs in africa. on average, the performance trend of agronomic transformation demonstrates that north african economies, considered within the framework of this study, perform relatively better than their counterparts in central, west, southern, and east africa. this is evident given that african growth statistics demonstrate a generally dominant trend for north africa (african development bank, 2023). figure 1 further shows that east and west africa, on average, perform better in terms of agronomic transformation during the period from 2000 to 2022 than the southern and central african economies. central africa shows the lowest performance average during the period under consideration. 3.2.2. independent variables with regard to the four sources of external finance considered in this study, fdi is measured using the net inflow of foreign direct investment in current us dollars. this measurement aligns with the approach adopted by emmanuel et al. (2023) and dinga (2023). oda is captured by net official development aid received per capita in current us dollars. the adopted measurement is per extant studies (ndjidda et al., 2022; tian, 2023). external debt is defined by total external debt stock, which is the sum of publicly guaranteed and privately nonguaranteed long-term debt, shortterm debt, and the utilization of imf financing and is captured in terms of current us dollars. such an approach has been utilized by different authors recently (olumo et al., 2023; sogah et al., 2024). remittance is captured by any current monetary or in-kind transfers made or received by resident households to or from non-resident households and measured in current us dollars. this aligns with the adopted measure by authors such as li et al. (2013) and abbas et al. (2023). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 190 figure 2. sub-regional average values of external finance sources. the average statistics of fdi, remittances, external debt, and oda during the period 2000 to 2022 are presented in figure 2. the statistics show a significant disparity in terms of sources of external finance and the sub-regions. the statistics presented indicate that, comparatively, for figure 2a, more external debt flows to north africa than to any other subregion. this can be indicative of the fact that north african economies are more trustworthy to international lenders. southern african economies demonstrate the second-highest average debt stock, followed by east africa, west africa, and central africa, respectively. this disparity can be due to socioeconomic factors (like country risk ratings, repayment history, and fiscal balance, among others) that guide international lenders on where their capital can flow. figure 2b equally demonstrates that fdi inflow on average peaks in north africa, followed by southern africa, west africa, east africa, and central africa, correspondingly. this can entail that foreign investors judge north and southern africa as the sub-regions in africa with favorable economic, political, and social conditions that could permit their capital to thrive. the average statistics of oda per african subregions presented in figure 2(sub c) demonstrate that west african economies considered within the framework of this study had the highest proportion of oda received. comparatively, they are followed in order by southern africa, east africa, central africa, and north africa, respectively. the low level of development aid in north africa can be attributed to the higher income levels of most north african economies, resource wealth, and high diversification, which make them less reliant on aid. finally, the sub-regional average of remittances is primarily dominated by north african economies, followed by west africa, east africa, southern africa, and lastly, central africa. 3.2.3. control variable within the scope of this study, we adopt two key control variables, namely domestic investment to account for domestic capital mobilisation and gross domestic product per capita to account for economic conditions. domestic investment is measured by gross fixed capital formation in constant 2015 us dollars, and gdp per capita is measured in constant 2015 us dollars. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 191 3.3. empirical approach estimating equation 1 can be subject to several econometric problems defined within extant literature, such as cross-sectional dependence, unit roots, serial correlation, heteroscedasticity, and cointegration, among others. before estimating the equation, key preliminary tests, such as unit roots, cross-sectional dependence (cd), slope homogeneity, and cointegration, will be examined. the driscoll and kraay (dk) estimation technique is employed in this study to examine the baseline model. the driscoll and kraay technique offers a robust and efficient way to estimate standard errors in panel data models (driscoll & kraay, 1998). the dk technique is advantageous, given that it addresses common econometric problems such as cd, heteroskedasticity, and autocorrelation. this approach equally improves inference through the usage of the dk standard errors, making outcomes more accurate. the dk equally renders efficiency within both large and small panels, especially when the time dimension is relatively larger (dinga, 2023). the dk equally produces three variant estimations, which are the fixed effect (fe), random effect (re), and the pooled estimations, which give insight into how the individual-specific effect and time-specific effect affect the strength and efficiency of outcomes. furthermore, the study equally adopts the fully generalized least squares (fgls) technique to check the robustness of the preliminary outcomes. to examine the effect of external finance on the conditional distribution of agronomic transformation, the quantile regression technique for panel data is employed equally in this study. finally, to ensure that our empirical outcome is equally free from the problem of endogeneity, this study further employs the sequential regression technique following the generalized method of moments (gmm) approach. the approach performs sequential estimators for linear panel models using kripfganz and schwarz (2019) analytical secondstage standard error correction algorithm. this permits the correction of endogeneity within the panel; the sequential regression technique corrects for endogeneity. 4. empirical outcome we present and discuss the estimates of the effect of external finance on agronomic transformation in africa while controlling for domestic fixed capital and the growth performance of the african economies. we first commence with the fitted line graph between agronomic transformation and the four dimensions of external finance. figure 3 illustrates the four (3a, 3b, 3c, and 4d) fitted line graphs related to the variables. the graph outcome shows that there is a direct relationship between agronomic transformation and external debt, fdi, and remittances. this a priori representation of the data demonstrates a positive link between these variables, indicating that an increase in external debt, fdi, and remittances enhances agronomic transformation. on the other hand, a mild indirect relationship is established between oda and agronomic transformation. however, the fitted line graph just gives an a priori view and, as such, the effect of these external finance sources on agronomic transformation can only be established using regression analyses. figure 3. fitted line graph of agronomic transformation (ava) and external finance sources. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 192 before proceeding with empirical analyses, the model was first tested for cd, slope homogeneity, and cointegration, and each variable was examined for unit roots (see appendices 1, 2, 3, 4). the baseline model in this study is examined using the driscoll-kraay (dk) technique. before the estimation of the baseline model, the breusch and pagan lagrangian multiplier test (bplmt) was used to select the efficient estimator between random effects and pooled estimates, and equally, the hausman test was employed to select between the fixed effects and random effects. the outcome of the preliminary selection test is reported in table 1 and reveals that the null hypothesis of the bplmt test, that the variance of the random effects is zero, was rejected. this implies that the random effects estimation is efficient when compared with the pooled estimate. the hausman test results comparing the fixed and random effects outcomes reveal that the null hypothesis, that the random effects model is efficient, is rejected, implying that the fixed effects model is efficient. therefore, within the framework of this study, we interpret the fixed effects. table 1. baseline regression using the fixed effect driscoll-kraay technique. variables (1) (2) (3) fe re pooled dependent variable : agronomic transformation lxdbttot 0.0761** (0.0342) 0.113** (0.0467) 0.232*** (0.0268) lfdii -0.0475*** (0.0151) -0.0322** (0.0117) 0.0239 (0.0161) loda 0.000315 (0.00894) -0.00275 (0.0169) -0.151*** (0.0160) lremit 0.0212*** (0.00744) 0.0289*** (0.00589) 0.106*** (0.00879) ldinv 0.127*** (0.0189) 0.170*** (0.0227) 0.523*** (0.0155) lgdpc 0.621*** (0.127) 0.305*** (0.0316) -0.681*** (0.0303) constant 13.50*** (0.372) 13.47*** (0.362) 7.970*** (0.374) observations 727 727 727 r-squared 0.6084 0.4059 0.860 f statistics 7435.07 [0.000] 87450.42 [0.000] wald chi2 27424.14 [0.000] number of groups 35 35 35 hauman test/bplm 189.94 [0.000] 3664.73 [0.000] note: standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05. the baseline dk-fe (driscoll and kraay fixed effect) results in table 1 reveal that external debt exerts a positive and significant effect on agronomic transformation in africa. this outcome aligns with the theoretical arguments of the financial development theory that explains how external debt enhances agronomic transformation through credit availability, financial stability, and interest. the result equally accords with the empirical outcomes of olumo et al. (2023) and sogah et al. (2024). the results further show that there is a negative and significant impact of fdi on agronomic transformation in africa. this points to the fact that fdi crowds out the pace of development of the agricultural sector. the result is in alignment with the empirical works of martin-odoom (2021), who noted empirically that fdi hurts ghana’s agricultural sector development in the long run. oda inflow to the african continent is positive but not statistically significant. this demonstrates the weak effect of oda on the development of the agronomic sector in africa. the outcome buttresses the empirical views of dillon and sofia (2010) and tony (2024), who all concluded that oda does not significantly influence agricultural productivity. a strong and significant effect of remittance inflow on the transformation of the african agronomic sector is observed. this demonstrates that migrants from africa significantly enhance the development of the agricultural sector in africa. this can be explained on the basis that most of this finance is sent directly to family members and, as such, has an enhanced direct effect on agronomic sector development. this result supports the empirical work of de brauw (2010) and theoretical views of the new economics of labor migration that posit that migration is essential in reducing the revenue gap and bringing forth household development through increased revenue and investment in production activities such as agriculture. the outcome further shows that the control variables, gdp per capita and domestic investment, significantly enhance agronomic transformation within africa. the f-statistics are equally significant, and this demonstrates the global fitness of the model under consideration. within the framework of this article, we reexamine our baseline model for each subregion within africa (central africa (cemac), east africa (eac), west africa (ecowas), north africa (na), southern africa (sadc), and sub-saharan africa (ssa)). the outcome of this comparative appraisal is presented in table 2. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 193 the outcome demonstrates that external debt inflow enhances agronomic transformation within the cemac, eac, ecowas, sadc, and ssa generally; however, the outcome is not significant for ecowas. external debt has a deleterious effect on agronomic transformation in north africa. these outcomes demonstrate that ssa and its subregional blocs are benefiting from debt-source external financing. the negative effect of north africa may be due to the high level of external debt that comes with higher debt servicing costs, which may harm the transformation of the agronomic sector. fdi outcomes point to the fact that there is generally a negative effect of fdi on agronomic transformation for all the subregions within africa. however, the outcome is not significant for the eac and sadc zones. oda outcomes demonstrate disparity in terms of signs and effects for each sub-region. oda is positive for cemac, ecowas, and na, but not statistically significant. eac and sadc demonstrate a significant negative effect of oda on agronomic transformation. remittances demonstrate unity in terms of signs for all sub-regions, and they are statistically significant for all the sub-regions. this further shows that remittances are very beneficial for the advancement of the agronomic sector for all subregions within africa. concerning the control variables, domestic investment positively and significantly enhances agronomic structural transformation for all subregions; however, for north africa, the outcome is negative. per capita gdp is negative for cemac and sadc but positive and significant for all the other sub-groupings. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 194 table 2. baseline regression for sub-regions using the fixed effect driscoll-kraay technique. variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) cemac eac ecowas na sadc ssa dependent variable : agronomic transformation lxdbttot 0.181*** (0.0393) 0.0666*** (0.00816) 0.00427 (0.0295) -0.225*** (0.0473) 0.172*** (0.0452) 0.0981** (0.0421) lfdii -0.464*** (0.150) -0.0539 (0.111) -0.396*** (0.0767) -0.102* (0.0548) -0.0187 (0.0172) -0.0415** (0.0178) loda 0.0172 (0.0105) -0.0349** (0.0141) 0.0206 (0.0211) 0.00445 (0.0108) -0.0232*** (0.00678) -0.00243 (0.00623) lremit 0.0509*** (0.0126) 0.00193 (0.00323) 0.0436*** (0.0123) 0.116*** (0.0267) 0.0174*** (0.00414) 0.0138*** (0.00439) ldinv 0.404*** (0.0392) 0.140*** (0.0191) 0.181*** (0.0378) -0.0856*** (0.0137) 0.221*** (0.0181) 0.230*** (0.0195) lgdpc -0.471 (0.541) 0.465*** (0.0592) 1.038*** (0.120) 1.843*** (0.106) -0.123 (0.182) 0.320*** (0.0874) constant 21.31*** (1.653) 16.01*** (2.519) 18.71*** (2.185) 15.96*** (1.465) 13.79*** (0.501) 12.83*** (0.521) observations 65 99 282 92 189 635 r-squared 0.7638 0.9368 0.7971 0.7612 0.6816 0.6843 f statistics 383.54 [0.000] 621.01 [0.000] 1308.94 [0.000] 272.93 [0.000] 6333.58 [0.000] 11756.71 [0.000] number of groups 3 5 13 4 10 31 note: standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 195 table 3. regression using the panel fully generalised least square approach. variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) globp cemac eac ecowas na sadc ssa dependent variable : agronomic transformation lxdbttot 0.194*** (0.0174) 0.393*** (0.124) 0.00281 (0.0341) 0.210*** (0.0353) -0.0336 (0.103) 0.201*** (0.0266) 0.197*** (0.0195) lfdii -0.000124 (0.0346) -0.732 (0.762) -0.629*** (0.208) 0.457** (0.223) 1.266*** (0.282) -0.0115 (0.0310) -0.0585* (0.0329) loda -0.122*** (0.0179) -0.119 (0.0850) -0.450*** (0.0311) 0.0802** (0.0386) -0.274*** (0.0572) -0.0432 (0.0291) -0.0379* (0.0204) lremit 0.0948*** (0.00663) 0.402*** (0.0655) 0.00669 (0.00873) 0.0182 (0.0168) 0.153*** (0.0498) 0.000876 (0.0103) 0.0624*** (0.00738) ldinv 0.565*** (0.0163) 0.0967 (0.168) 0.816*** (0.0367) 0.481*** (0.0201) 0.283*** (0.0572) 0.514*** (0.0290) 0.557*** (0.0190) lgdpc 0.700*** (0.0144) -0.462*** (0.104) -0.175*** (0.0515) -0.174*** (0.0552) -0.773*** (0.125) -0.676*** (0.0211) -0.729*** (0.0140) constant 8.695*** (0.776) 23.92 (15.78) 21.71*** (4.480) -2.439 (4.739) -8.124 (5.444) 11.13*** (0.682) 10.59*** (0.716) observations 727 65 99 282 92 189 635 wald chi2 10283 399 9506 3226 208 5872 9356 number of county 35 3 5 13 4 10 31 note: standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 196 the fgls was further employed for robustness purposes and for comparative intentions regarding the estimation technique that accounts for cd and those that do not. the outcome of the fgls presented in table 3 shows that the external debt outcome is all positive and only negative for na. this outcome confirms what was initially obtained for the dkfe model. remittances are generally positive for all models but vary in terms of the levels of significance. this can be attributed to the fact that the fgls model does not account for cd among the economies of the study. fdi and oda are both negative for the global african model; however, there is a disparity in terms of signs when compared with the baseline models estimated using the dkfe. the control variables, domestic investment and gdp per capita, equally demonstrate complementarity and differences with the baseline dkfe model. these differences in terms of sign and significance can partially be explained by the non-consideration of cd in the fgls model. this further supports the arguments presented by authors like pesaran (2007) that the non-consideration of cd may lead to biased outcomes and conclusions. therefore, considering techniques that account for cd is vital in obtaining efficient outcomes. additionally, the effect of external finance on the conditional distribution of agronomic transformation in africa is examined using the panel quantile technique. the outcomes of the quantile regression are presented in table 4 and demonstrate that external debt positively and significantly boosts agronomic transformation from the lowest quantile (10th) to the highest quantile (90th). in the same vein, remittances are positive and statistically significant for the nine quantiles considered. fdi is generally negative from the 10th to the 40th quantile and positive from the 50th to the 90th quantile. however, the results are not significant. oda is negative for all quantiles but statistically significant only from the 30th to the 90th quantile. this outcome validates the initial baseline outcome of the dkfe model and equally demonstrates that external finance has a disparity in terms of the conditional distribution of agronomic transformation. domestic investment is generally positive, and gdp per capita is generally negative across all quantiles. endogeneity is equally vital in a panel model. authors like alabi (2014), kapetanios and marcellino (2010), and roodman (2009) have noted that without accounting for endogeneity within a panel, estimated outcomes can be biased. to account for endogeneity, we employ the sequential linear panel data estimation technique using the gmm approach. the outcome presented in table 5 shows that the main africa panel model (column 1, globp) outcome reveals and confirms the positive effect of external debt on agronomic transformation amidst endogeneity control. equally, amid endogeneity, remittances reaffirm a positive effect on agronomic transformation. this demonstrates that the initial outcome for external debt and remittances on agronomic transformation is confirmatory and robust to the problem of endogeneity. furthermore, oda is still significantly negative, and fdi is positive and not statistically significant. this confirms the dkfe outcome amidst endogeneity. since the gmm-type sequential regression requires large individual units, instead of the sub-regional comparison, we consider five simulation cases wherein at least one sub-regional grouping is eliminated to see if this will alter the main results in column 1. in column 2, wherein na is not considered, external debt and remittances positively boost agronomics, while fdi and oda are negative, but only fdi is significant. this shows that the significant degrading effect of oda on agronomic transformation is mostly from north africa. in column 3, where cemac economies are partial, column 4 with no eac economies, column 5 with no ecowas economies, and column 6 with no sadc economies, the outcomes are all consistent with the outcome in column 1. this shows that a major disparity exists between north africa and ssa in terms of how external sources of finance shape agronomic transformation. the different models equally show that there is no firstor second-order autocorrelation, and equally, the hansen test is insignificant, showing that the instruments are valid. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 197 table 4. regression using the panel quantile regression approach. variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) 10th 20th 30th 40th 50th 60th 70th 80th 90th dependent variable : agronomic transformation lxdbttot 0.249*** (0.0539) 0.244*** (0.0430) 0.240*** (0.0353) 0.236*** (0.0304) 0.232*** (0.0282) 0.228*** (0.0301) 0.225*** (0.0338) 0.222*** (0.0391) 0.216*** (0.0503) lfdii -0.0813 (0.108) -0.0555 (0.0862) -0.0341 (0.0709) -0.0151 (0.0610) 0.00473 (0.0568) 0.0258 (0.0604) 0.0415 (0.0678) 0.0575 (0.0784) 0.0853 (0.101) loda -0.0372 (0.0636) -0.0660 (0.0507) -0.0899** (0.0419) -0.111*** (0.0361) -0.133*** (0.0337) -0.157*** (0.0357) -0.174*** (0.0399) -0.192*** (0.0461) -0.223*** (0.0593) lremit 0.0906*** (0.0197) 0.0978*** (0.0157) 0.104*** (0.0129) 0.109*** (0.0111) 0.115*** (0.0104) 0.121*** (0.0110) 0.125*** (0.0123) 0.129*** (0.0143) 0.137*** (0.0183) ldinv 0.543*** (0.0476) 0.538*** (0.0379) 0.534*** (0.0311) 0.531*** (0.0268) 0.527*** (0.0249) 0.523*** (0.0265) 0.521*** (0.0298) 0.518*** (0.0345) 0.513*** (0.0444) lgdpc -0.668*** (0.0454) -0.671*** (0.0362) -0.673*** (0.0297) -0.675*** (0.0256) -0.677*** (0.0238) -0.679*** (0.0253) -0.681*** (0.0285) -0.682*** (0.0329) -0.685*** (0.0424) observations 727 727 727 727 727 727 727 727 727 note: standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 198 table 5. regression using the system gmm sequential regression approach. variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) globp ssa nocemac noeac noecowas nosadc dependent variable: agronomic transformation lxdbttot 0.232** (0.0936) 0.232*** (0.0744) 0.217** (0.0948) 0.233** (0.0991) 0.208* (0.112) 0.331*** (0.127) lfdii 0.0239 (0.102) -0.101* (0.0594) 0.0769 (0.110) 0.0149 (0.104) 0.00528 (0.0921) 0.341 (0.338) loda -0.151** (0.0612) -0.0174 (0.0638) -0.135** (0.0639) -0.148** (0.0656) -0.205*** (0.0576) -0.218*** (0.0739) lremit 0.106*** (0.0348) 0.0700** (0.0330) 0.0765** (0.0309) 0.115*** (0.0422) 0.127*** (0.0389) 0.116** (0.0532) ldinv 0.523*** (0.0874) 0.541*** (0.0740) 0.541*** (0.0882) 0.504*** (0.0900) 0.518*** (0.119) 0.472*** (0.0986) lgdpc -0.681*** (0.0650) -0.732*** (0.0611) -0.629*** (0.0879) -0.659*** (0.0729) -0.708*** (0.0597) -0.709*** (0.0936) constant 7.970*** (2.723) 10.92*** (1.552) 6.856** (2.984) 8.219*** (2.751) 9.051*** (2.618) -0.0879 (6.923) observations 727 635 662 628 445 538 number of county 35 31 32 30 22 25 ar(1) -1.8571 -1.6042 -1.6307 -1.4598 -1.8762* -1.7824 ar(2) 0.6489 0.3955 0.7479 0.6507 0.9981 0.5042 hansen test 21.6475 [0.3599] 21.3052 [0.3794] 24.3316 [0.2282] 23.7574 [0.2532] 10.9435 [0.9477] 20.6659 [0.4170] note: standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 185-201 199 5. conclusion and recommendations this study examined the role of external finance sources in shaping agronomic transformation on the african continent. the study examines the concepts of agronomic transformation and how it has been affected by different sources of external finance from 2000 to 2022 within a panel of 38 economies. in this light, data is obtained from the world development indicators, and we use a plethora of estimation approaches such as the driscoll-kraay, the fully generalized least squares, the quantile regression, and the generalized method of moments-type sequential regression techniques. the outcome revealed ample evidence of an augmenting effect of external debt and remittances on agronomic transformation in africa. furthermore, fdi demonstrated a negative effect, while oda is positive but insignificant. a sub-regional comparison between the outcomes shows consistency in the positive effect of remittances across the five regional blocs considered. however, the regional comparison revealed that the effect of oda, fdi, and external debt on agronomic transformation demonstrates disparity in terms of signs and significance levels. further outcomes revealed that controlling for econometric problems like endogeneity and cross-sectional dependence within models brings some disparities in the outcomes. based on the established results, we put forth the following policy proposals. oda should be channeled toward capacity-building activities that benefit local farmers and agricultural cooperatives. oda should be utilized to increase food security by providing training, resources, and market access to support sustainable agricultural methods. regarding external debt, governments should ensure that external debt is allocated specifically to agricultural projects with the potential for substantial returns. debt should be directed toward investments in infrastructure, irrigation systems, and technology to enhance agricultural productivity. this focused approach can help limit the risks associated with debt accumulation while maximizing the advantages to the agriculture industry. to boost the effect of fdi in driving a positive agronomic transformation, by promoting collaborations with private investors, governments can exploit fdi to promote innovative agricultural technologies and practices that enhance production. remittances are an important source of funding for household agricultural investments. policymakers can encourage the use of remittances for agricultural purposes by offering financial literacy programs that educate beneficiaries on agricultural investment prospects. establishing effective monitoring and evaluation frameworks is critical for determining the impact of external loans, oda, fdi, and remittances on agricultural transformation. this will allow governments to make data-driven judgments and alter policies as necessary. finally, a study of this magnitude cannot be void of some caveats that could be considered for further studies. firstly, the study period and the number of african countries can be increased to verify the robustness of the current outcomes over time. other estimation techniques exist that scholars could consider for further study. funding: this study received no specific financial support. the apc was funded by the north west university, south africa institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references abbas, s. a., selvanathan, s., & selvanathan, e. a. 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(2018). growth and current account deficit in ethiopia: challenges and opportunities in a growing economy. american economic review, forthcoming. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3100078 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3100078 appendixes appendix 1. descriptive statistics. variables obs mean std. dev. min max ava 1012 6.517e+09 1.413e+10 59509906 1.217e+11 external debt 966 1.260e+10 2.360e+10 1.256e+08 1.907e+11 fdi 1012 8.526e+08 2.087e+09 -7.397e+09 4.066e+10 oda 1012 57.814 56.357 -11.967 627.346 remittances 989 1.095e+09 3.717e+09 0 3.149e+10 domestic investment 864 9.807e+09 1.931e+10 36402660 1.571e+11 gdp per capita 1012 1924.713 2167.026 255.1 14222.549 appendix 2. pairwise correlations. variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (1) lava 1.000 (2) lxdbttot 0.733 1.000 (3) lfdii 0.259 0.263 1.000 (4) loda -0.421 -0.384 -0.010 1.000 (5) lremit 0.555 0.439 0.375 -0.087 1.000 (6) ldinv 0.766 0.862 0.249 -0.394 0.481 1.000 (7) lgdpc -0.070 0.429 0.124 -0.199 0.165 0.450 1.000 appendix 3. cross-sectional dependence and unit root test. pesaran 2015 residual cd test test statistics 3.245 p value 0.001 pesaran cips unit root test variables level test statistics first difference test statistics decision lava -2.485 i(0) lxdbttot -1.148 -3.869 i(1) lfdii -2.349 i(0) loda -2.487 i(0) lremit -0.613 -3.765 i(1) ldinv -1.475 -3.741 i(1) lgdpc -1.650 -3.845 i(1) appendix 4. westerlund cointegration test. statistic value z-value p-value gt -1.977 -1.474 0.070 ga -5.127 2.455 0.993 pt -11.460 -1.869 0.031 pa -5.136 -1.353 0.088 appendix 5. list of countries. angola congo, dem. rep. kenya senegal benin congo, rep. lesotho sierra leone botswana cote d'ivoire madagascar south africa burkina faso equatorial guinea mali tanzania burundi eswatini mauritius togo cabo verde gabon mozambique uganda cameroon gambia, the namibia zambia central african republic ghana niger zimbabwe chad guinea nigeria comoros guinea-bissau rwanda views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3100078 http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3100078 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 1 an analysis of environmental and economic impacts of the system of rice intensification : a case study in thai binh province, vietnam do quang huya minakshi keenib katsuhito fuyukic a,b,ctohoku university, graduate school of agricultural science, japan.  qhuy.do95@gmail.com (corresponding author) articlehistory abstract received: 17 july 2023 revised: 22 september 2023 accepted: 2 january 2024 published: 19 february 2024 keywords climate change mitigation economic benefit environment protection greenhouse gas emission rice cultivation sri sustainable development. the current research investigates the environmental and economic impacts of the system of rice intensification. rice, a fundamental staple in our diets, is paradoxically a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, fueling global warming and climate change. a promising solution to this is the system of rice intensification (sri). embraced in vietnam's national determined contribution (ndc) under the paris agreement, sri aims to boost rice yields while curbing greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional farming practices. this study focuses on thai binh, a key rice-producing province in the red river delta. our objective is to assess the economic, environmental, and broader societal impacts of sri versus conventional farming. we conducted a comprehensive analysis, utilizing tools such as cost and benefit (cba) evaluations, marginal abatement cost (mac) calculations, and the linkert scale to gauge the effects. data from 175 farmers in phu luong commune, dong hung district, thai binh province, formed the basis of our study. the results highlight the advantages of adopting sri. implementing sri not only leads to a substantial increase of approximately 12 million vietnamese dong (vnd) in revenue but also showcases a remarkably favorable cost of -2.7 vnd for reducing 1 ton of co2eq/ha during the transition from conventional farming. this highlights the financial and environmental benefits of sri. furthermore, our assessment demonstrates that sri consistently outperforms conventional farming across economic, environmental, and societal dimensions. in essence, our findings strongly advocate for the adoption of sri over conventional rice cultivation, as it not only mitigates environmental harm but also enhances farmers' profitability and well-being, aligning with sustainable agriculture practices and climate change mitigation efforts. contribution/originality: while there have been individual studies examining the economic and environmental efficiency of the system of rice intensification (sri), there remains a notable gap in research when it comes to assessing the correlation between the costs and benefits associated with reducing greenhouse gas emissions through sri in vietnam. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i1.4983 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: huy, d. q., keeni, m., & fuyuki, k. (2024). an analysis of environmental and economic impacts of the system of rice intensification : a case study in thai binh province, vietnam. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1), 1–9. 10.55493/5005.v14i1.4983 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 1 (2024): 1-9. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0009-0008-3379-2098 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6544-0125 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7255-7145 mailto:qhuy.do95@gmail.com http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 1-9 2 1. introduction rice occupies a central position in vietnam, both economically and culturally. as one of the world's foremost rice producers, vietnam relies heavily on rice cultivation, a sector that fortifies the nation's food security and sustains over 15 million small farmers (rikolto, 2017). moreover, rice stands as a cultural pillar in vietnam, integral to the nation's cuisine and a centerpiece in numerous traditional festivals and ceremonies. in 2020, rice farming was conducted over an expansive area of about 7.28 million hectares, producing an estimated 43.76 million tons (general statistics office of vietnam (gso), 2020). furthermore, vietnam has established itself as a major player in the global rice export market, channeling a significant stream of foreign income. vietnamese rice products reach over 100 countries globally, amounting to a turnover of 6.25 million tons and approximately $3.12 billion in 2020 (tran & nguyen, 2022). however, rice cultivation is notably the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions when compared to other crops. these emissions stem from multiple avenues, including the decomposition of organic matter in waterlogged rice paddies and the employment of synthetic fertilizers (intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc), 2006). consequently, the vietnamese rice sector was responsible for about 39.36 mtco2eq1 of emissions in 2020, nearly accounting for 40% of the total emissions from the country's agricultural sector (ministry of agriculture and rural development (mard), 2021). in recent years, climate change has emerged as a significant challenge, with vietnam being acutely susceptible to its repercussions (ministry of natural resources and environment (monre), 2016). the country has been consistently identified as one of the most at-risk nations globally (ranked 5th in 2016 and 6th in 2017) (eckstein, hutfils, & winges, 2018). the tangible impact was felt in 2018 when over 250,000 hectares of rice lands were compromised (general department of natural disaster prevention and control, 2018). projected climate change scenarios suggest that by 2050, substantial portions of the agricultural areas in the red river and mekong deltas will be lost, potentially reducing rice production by 10-20% (world bank (wb), 2010). without adaptive strategies, 21.4% of rice output could be forfeited by 2100 (ministry of natural resources and environment (monre), 2022). at the 21st conference of the parties (cop21) of the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc), vietnam joined nearly 200 other countries in adopting the paris agreement. this pact aims to curb global warming, thus diminishing the adverse impacts of climate change on human societies. the agreement encourages countries to delineate and periodically update nationally determined contributions (ndcs), which stipulate goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing adaptive initiatives. to address these challenges, the vietnamese government has embarked on both adaptive and mitigative strategies for climate change. by 2030, the country's agricultural sector seeks to cut total greenhouse gas emissions by 12.4 million tons of co2eq using domestic resources and 50.9 million tons of co2eq with international assistance (ministry of natural resources and environment (monre), 2016). sri offers a potential approach for achieving vietnam’s ndc objectives. this eco-friendly and efficient farming approach not only boosts yield but also cuts greenhouse gas emissions, primarily through reduced fertilizer and pesticide usage (norman, koma, phrek, klaus, & humayun, 2000). first introduced in vietnam in 2003, it was widely applied under decision “no. 3062/qd-bnnkhcn”, 2benefiting nearly 450,000 hectares and about 1.8 million farmers nationwide by 2015 (hoang, nguyen, & nguyen, 2015). this study aspires to amass information on the implementation of sri techniques in the face of climate change, intending to propose methods to foster environmentally sustainable economic development. given the scant previous research evaluating the economic and environmental efficacy of sri in the red river delta, this study seeks to fill the gap by analyzing the costs associated with emission reductions when transitioning from conventional farming to sri. policymakers are likely to find the insights garnered from this study invaluable in evaluating sri against other rice cultivation methods and fulfilling the stipulations outlined in the ndcs. furthermore, this research aims to perform a comprehensive assessment of the impact of sri, taking into account farmers' viewpoints across economic, environmental, and social facets. 2. literature review the system of rice intensification (sri)presents a promising methodology that optimizes the utilization of input resources such as plants, water, and nutrients to augment rice yields (arsil et al., 2022; shah, tasawwar, bhat, & otterpohl, 2021). currently, more than 20 million farmers in over 60 countries globally are employing sri practices (uphoff & thakur, 2019). a multitude of studies have testified to the efficacy of sri, highlighting benefits such as enhanced nutrient absorption, improved disease resistance, resilience to climate pressures, and increased rice yields (doni, mispan, suhaimi, ishak, & uphoff, 2019; nugroho et al., 2018; thakur, mandal, verma, & mohanty, 2023).moreover, this approach allows for the reduction in the quantities and costs associated with inputs such as seeds, water, fertilizers, and laborcosts (arif et al., 2022; meesala & rasala, 2022). 1co2eq: co2equivalent 2 decision “no. 3062/qd-bnn-khcn” issued by the ministry of agriculture and rural development on october 15, 2007: recognized "application of integrated intensive farming in rice production in some northern provinces" as technical progress. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 1-9 3 table 1. economic and environmental efficiency when applying sri compared to conventional cultivation in some regions. country/region amount (%) status sources seed/ seed cost nepal: eastern 90 surdeep (2010) mali 85-90 oakland institute and alliance for food sovereignty in africa (afsa) (2014) vietnam: tra vinh 70 deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit (giz) (2013) vietnam: binh dinh 21.3 vu et al. (2018) water usage china: sichuan 70 lu, dong, yuan, and hilario (2013) indo-gangetic plains 36 jain et al. (2013) mali 10 oakland institute and alliance for food sovereignty in africa (afsa) (2014) labor/service cost nepal: eastern 17 surdeep (2010) mali 15-25 oakland institute and alliance for food sovereignty in africa (afsa) (2014) vietnam: tra vinh 10-29 deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit (giz) (2013) vietnam: binh dinh 9.7 vu et al. (2018) fertilizer / fertilizer cost nepal: eastern 46-49 surdeep (2010) china: sichuan 10-15 lu et al. (2013) mali 30 oakland institute and alliance for food sovereignty in africa (afsa) (2014) vietnam: tra vinh 35 deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit (giz) (2013) pesticide nepal : eastern 99 surdeep (2010) vietnam: tra vinh 87 deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit (giz) (2013) vietnam: binh dinh 34.8 vu et al. (2018) yield nepal: eastern 118 surdeep (2010) china: sichuan 19.8 59.8 lu et al. (2013) mali 34 oakland institute and alliance for food sovereignty in africa (afsa) (2014) vietnam: quang binh 19.6-23.6 duong (2017) vietnam: tra vinh 20 deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit (giz) (2013) vietnam: binh dinh 10.6 vu et al. (2018) greenhouse gas emissions indo-gangetic plains 28-30 jain et al. (2013) vietnam: quang binh 11.9-18.5 duong (2017) vietnam: binh dinh 47-69 vu et al. (2018) sri applications have shown promising potential for reducing emissions and fostering sustainable development when compared to traditional farming techniques (hoang et al., 2015; nirmala et al., 2021). table 1 shows various benefits of adopting sri over conventional farming methods. applying sri helped to reduce 21.3% (vu et al., 2018), 70% (deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit (giz), 2013), 85-90% (oakland institute and alliance for food sovereignty in africa (afsa), 2014) and 90% (surdeep, 2010) seed/ seed cost; reduced water use 10% (oakland institute and alliance for food sovereignty in africa (afsa), 2014), 36% (jain et al., 2013) and 70% asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 1-9 4 (lu et al., 2013); fertilizer quantity/fertilizer cost reduced 10-15% (lu et al., 2013), 35% (deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit (giz), 2013), 30% (oakland institute and alliance for food sovereignty in africa (afsa), 2014), 46-49% (surdeep, 2010); reduced pesticides 34.8% (vu et al., 2018), 87% (deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit (giz), 2013), 99% (surdeep, 2010); reduced greenhouse gas emissions 47-69% (vu et al., 2018), 11.9-18.5%(duong, 2017), 28-30% (jain et al., 2013); reduced labor/ service costs 9.7% (vu et al., 2018) and 17% (surdeep, 2010) but in tra vinh province of vietnam and mali, labor costs when applying sri was higher than conventional cultivation, 10-29% (deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit (giz), 2013) and 15-25%(oakland institute and alliance for food sovereignty in africa (afsa), 2014) respectively. yields when applying sri also gave overall results that were higher than conventional farming (10.6% (vu et al., 2018), 20% (deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit (giz), 2013), 19.6-23.6 (duong, 2017), 34% (oakland institute and alliance for food sovereignty in africa (afsa), 2014), 19.8-59.8% (lu et al., 2013), 118% (surdeep, 2010). in sum, different studies have found that the performance of sri can vary depending on factors such as geographical location, soil type, or the specific rice variety grown. despite the promising findings, it is clear that further research is necessary to fully delineate the potential of sri and to tailor its application optimally to diverse regions and farming contexts. to formulate strategies for the effective implementation of the nationally determined contributions (ndc), detailed assessments are required to analyze the cost-benefit efficiency, environmental impact, and emissions reduction costs—establishing a coherent relationship between economic and environmental dimensions. the objective of this study is to devise optimal solutions that guarantee economic viability for farmers while safeguarding environmental benefits. this will be achieved through the conceptualization of hypothetical calculation scenarios, which will serve as a foundation for policymakers in evaluating various prioritized mitigation strategies in rice cultivation, thereby facilitating vietnam's commitment to reducing emissions. 3. material and methodology 3.1. study area selection this study was conducted in phu luong commune, dong hung district, thai binh province, vietnam. nestled in the northern part of both the dong hung district and the thai binh province, phu luong is a mere 3 km away from dong hung town and borders national highway 10. it spans a natural land expanse of 476.78 hectares. predominantly, the inhabitants of phu luong commune sustain themselves through agricultural endeavors. as per the data from the phu luong commune people's committee (2021), a significant portion of the land, encompassing 371.73 hectares, or 77.98% of the total area, is earmarked for agricultural production. out of this, a substantial part, aggregating to 297.86 hectares, or just over 80%, is utilized for cultivating rice. 3.2. data collection methods primary data was gathered from 175 farmers who engaged in both sri and conventional cultivation methods. the data collection process involved direct interviews facilitated through a detailed questionnaire, administered in october 2022. this questionnaire was segmented into three primary sections: particulars pertaining to rice farming households, insights into the economic indicators of rice farming, and evaluations of the economic, environmental, and social repercussions of both conventional and sri rice farming approaches. the data compilation spanned two critical agricultural sessions: the spring season, which extended from november 2021 to may 2022, and the subsequent summer season, from june to october 2022.to ascertain the optimal sample size for this study, the renowned yamane (1967) was employed: 𝑛 = 𝑁 1 + 𝑁 ∗ 𝑒2 where, n is the sample size. n is the size of rice cultivation household. e is the allowable error of 10 percent. table 2 presents a comparison of household details between those practicing sri and conventional cultivation methods. generally, the demographic of respondents involved in rice farming skews older, boasting an average age of 59.4 years. additionally, the educational background among this group is relatively limited, with the majority, accounting for over 80%, having completed their education at the secondary school level. when it comes to labor division, just over half of the family's working members are engaged in rice cultivation. it was noted that 54% of the respondents were male. a notable fraction of the interviewees possess a substantial history in rice cultivation, including a duration of over three decades. however, the rice cultivation plots in the study area tend to be small and dispersed, averaging 0.175 hectares per household. to complement the primary data, secondary information was amassed from various sources, including books, newspapers, websites, legal documents, and publications and statistical yearbooks from organizations such as the general statistics office (gso), the ministry of agriculture and rural development (mard), and the department of agriculture and rural development (dard). furthermore, this study leveraged previously published projects, studies, and documents as references and foundational data sources. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 1-9 5 table 2. description of household background information between sri and conventional cultivation. information sri conventional cultivation all respondents mean sd3 mean sd mean sd age of respondents 58.667 6.972 60.176 7.322 59.400 7.163 primaryschool(%) 10.000 3.529 6.857 secondary school (%) 72.222 92.941 82.286 high school (%) 8.889 1.176 5.143 university/college (%) 8.889 2.353 5.714 number of family members (person) 4.244 1.283 4.211 1.092 4.229 1.191 number of family members in working age (person) 2.944 0.964 3.011 0.837 2.977 0.903 number of family members join rice production (person) 1.822 0.384 1.776 0.419 1.800 0.401 male respondents (%) 47.778 61.176 54.285 head of households (%) 55.556 65.882 60.571 year of experience 32.09 7.9 30.4 5.9 31.2 7.05 rice farming area (ha)4 0.173 0.073 0.179 0.127 0.175 0.102 total agriculture areas (ha) 0.188 0.083 0.186 0.136 0.187 0.112 3.3. data analysis method a cost-benefit analysis (cba) was conducted to assess the economic efficiency of implementing the system of rice intensification (sri) in comparison to conventional cultivation practices. the economic data was gathered through direct interviews at the research site, utilizing the information gleaned from the questionnaire. to ascertain the costs associated with reducing emissions when transitioning from conventional cultivation to the sri approach, the marginal abatement cost (mac) was calculated. the emission data was drawn from the research conducted by dao minh trang and colleagues in 2019 in the specific study area of phu luong commune, dong hung district, and thai binh province. the marginal abatement cost (mac) formula is based on cost-effectiveness and total mitigation potential: 𝑀𝐴𝐶 = 𝑁𝑃𝑉𝐵 − 𝑁𝑃𝑉𝑆𝑅𝐼 𝑁𝐺𝑇 where sri: sri measure. b: conventional cultivation measure. npv: net present value is calculated using the formula: 𝑁𝑃𝑉 = ∑ ( 𝑃 (1 + 𝑖)𝑡 ) − 𝐶 where: p: cash inflow. i : discount rate = 10%. t: time. c: initial cost. ngt: net total greenhouse gas emission is calculated using the formula: 𝑁𝐺𝑇 = ∑(𝐸𝑆𝑅𝐼 − 𝐸𝐵) ∗ 𝑡 where: e: emission. t: time. the impact assessment of sri was collected using a likert scale from 1-5. it collected people's evaluations of the economy, society and environment. 4. results and discussion table 3 illustrates the difference in the cost structure between sri and conventional cultivation methods per hectare per year. initially, farmers utilizing the sri methods incur lesser expenses compared to traditional farming, approximately 1.74 million vietnamese dong (vnd).notably, the largest cost reduction is witnessed in seeding and plouinglabor, amounting to around 1.39 million vnd. furthermore, the expenditures for seeds and pesticides are roughly 0.90 million vnd and 0.55 million vnd, respectively. conversely, fertilizer costs under the sri approach are about 1.10 million vnd higher than those for conventional farming. 3sd: standard deviation. 41ha = 10000 m2 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 1-9 6 table 3. description of the cost structure of rice production between sri and conventional cultivation for 1 ha area/year. items sri conventional cultivation difference mean mean input cost 8.813.330 9.164.622 -351.292 seeds 1.000.080 1.900.152 -900.072 fertilizer 4.924.130 3.819.750 1.104.380 herbicide 583.380 583.380 0 pesticides 1.944.600 2.500.200 -555.600 irrigation expenses (paid to the cooperative) 361.140 361.140 0 labor and machine cost 21.104.300 22.493.300 -1.389.000 soil making 3.889.200 3.889.200 0 seeding. plowing 5.556.000 6.945.000 -1.389.000 caring. fertilizing. spray pesticides.weeding. etc. 5.547.500 5.547.500 0 harvest cost 4.167.000 4.167.000 0 transporting. drying. cleaning 1.944.600 1.944.600 0 other costs 2.027.940 2.027.940 0 total 31.945.570 33.685.862 -1.740.292 certain expenses remain similar between sri and traditional cultivation due to fixed costs established by the cooperativebased on the land area owned by individuals. for instance, in the studied locale, irrigation costs are fixed, unrelated to the volume of water used. the trend extends to labor and machinery costs, which remain relatively unchanged in the area and are arranged by the cooperative to simplify management. other costs, encompassing weeding, pruning, rat poison purchase, and contributions to the collective fund, are equivalent between the two methods. fertilizer costs for sri farmers are 28.91% higher compared to conventional farming. the observed disparity, in comparison to previous research results, can attributed to the lack of established protocols governing the use of fertilizers in the specific geographic region under investigation. generally, sri adoption leads to a reduction in npk fertilizer usage, while the use of urea and potassium chloride fertilizers increases to enhance plant water and nutrient absorption. in contrast, conventional farming rarely involves the application of potassium fertilizer. table 4 highlights the economic efficacy of adopting sri over conventional farming. generally, the sri model yields a higher rice output (6.8 tons/ha compared to 6.2 tons/ha), resulting in an augmented income of about 8.52 million vnd/ha, and reduced input costs of approximately 3.48 million vnd/ha. consequently, the overall profit derived from sri surpasses that of conventional farming, amounting to roughly 12 million vnd/ha. moreover, the benefit-cost ratio of sri stands at 1.43, exceeding the 1.24 ratio of traditional cultivation. table 4. economic efficiency between sri and conventional cultivation for 1 ha area/year. farming measure sri conventional cultivation difference average yield (ton/ha) 6.8 6.2 0.6 total cost (mvnd) 67.78 71.26 -3.48 income (mvnd) 96.64 88.12 8.52 benefit cost ratio (%) 1.43 1.24 -0.19 figure 1 illustrates the potential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from utilizing sri as opposed to conventional methods over a one-hectare area. this estimation leverages the findings from a 2019 carbon footprint study of rice production in phu luong commune, dong hung district, thai binh province, conductedby dao, huong, and van trinh (2019). the study indicates that sri cultivation releases 32,144.35 kgco2eq/ha, considerably less than the 35,144.18 kgco2eq/ha, emitted through conventional rice cultivation (dao et al., 2019). employing the sri method over a hectare can potentially curtail 3.03 tons of co2eq emissions per hectare. additionally, the marginal abatement cost equates to -2.7 million vnd per ton of co2eq when transitioning from traditional to sri cultivation methods. according to the developmental blueprint of thai binh province, outlined in the rice construction and development project for 2023-2025 with a vision towards 2030, figure 2 depicts the prospective greenhouse gas emission reduction in the region. the scenario unfolds in three phases: initially, the business as usual (bau) scenario maintains a 76,600 ha rice cultivation area in 2022, with sri practices encompassing about 60% and conventional farming covering the remaining 40%. subsequently, by 2025, the cultivation area is expected to shrink to 74,000 ha, with sri practices covering approximately 85% and conventional methods accounting for 15%. ultimately, by 2030, the rice cultivation area in thai binh province is projected to contract further to 70,000 ha, fully adopting the sri technique. this transition is forecast to curtail 1.56 million tons of co2 equivalent emissions, with a marginal abatement cost of -479.73thousand vnd per ton of co2 equivalent. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 1-9 7 figure 1. environment efficiency when applying sri compared to conventional cultivation in 1 ha area/year. figure 2. environmental efficiency scenario of thai binh province in the period of 2023-2025, with orientation to 2030. table 5 assesses the contrast between sri and conventional cultivation, based on questionnaires administered directly to farmers in the survey area. according to respondents, sri demonstrates a markedly positive impact compared to conventional farming, with significant differences in most assessment outcomes. profits from sri methods are estimated to be approximately 12 million vnd/ha higher than those from traditional farming. the reduction in investment costs also augments farmers' opportunity costs, enabling them to allocate capital towards other economic activities, such as banking savings or investing in alternate ventures. furthermore, increased financial resources mitigate the risk of accruing debt from credit reliance. environmentally, sri adoption facilitates a decrease in air pollution while enhancing water and soil quality. this is achieved by minimizing chemical fertilizer and pesticide applications directly to fields, consequently reducing greenhouse gas emissions. meanwhile, this methodology reduces the negative impacts on advantageous insects and microorganisms that reside inside the agricultural fields, thereby decreasing the reliance on additional natural resources for the manufacturing of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.from a social perspective, rice production aids in securing and generating employment for a substantial segment of the local populace.given that nearly half the individuals engaged in rice farming are women, the introduction of sri fosters opportunities to advance women's empowerment, fostering gender equality in the production process. additionally, workshops and experience-sharing sessions to familiarize farmers with sri serve as a platform to forge connections among farmers, fostering awareness and understanding of the significant role people play in agriculture. -3 -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 m a c ( v n d /t o n c o 2 eq ) potential mitigation (tonco2eq) sri -600 -500 -400 -300 -200 -100 0 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 m a c ( th o u sa n d v n d /t o n c o 2 eq ) potential mitigation (mtonco2eq ) sri asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 1-9 8 table 5. impact assessment between sri and conventional cultivation. component indicators sri conventional cultivation mean sd mean sd economic contributing to increased productivity by saving capital and costs, reducing dependence on production inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides, etc. 4.590 0.580 1.258 0,440 contribute to changes such as technological changes and changes in manufacturing activities. 3.647 0.827 1.023 0.152 contribute to creating business opportunities and investment activities such as: selling rice straw… 2.272 0.670 1.047 0.213 environment contribute to reducing pollution and improving air quality 4.386 0.730 1.105 0.309 contribute to reducing pollution and improving soil quality. 4.443 0.706 1.035 0.185 contribute to reducing pollution and improving water quality. 4.352 0.692 1.023 0.152 contribute to the sustainable use of natural resources and promote the development of ecosystem services. 1.863 0.873 1.011 0.108 contribute to biodiversity conservation. 3.784 0.843 1.023 0.152 social contribute to increasing employment opportunities and income. 4.625 0.650 2.976 0.407 contribute to improving health. 4.193 0.837 3.117 1.199 contributing to raising community awareness in response to climate change and sustainable development. 4.681 0.653 1.247 0.433 contributing to poverty alleviation, food security and quality of life. 4.670 0.521 4.211 0.874 contributing to ensure social justice, especially for vulnerable groups, children, and women. 2.988 0.673 1.517 0.795 contributing to the improvement of farmers' qualifications and skills. 4.022 0.639 1.788 0.465 5. conclusions the research findings indicate that utilizing the sri method for rice cultivation decreases input costs by 1.7 million vnd while increasing the yield by 0.6 tons/ha. this results in a profit surge of approximately 12 million vnd. moreover, the adoption of sri significantly curtails greenhouse gas emissions by 3.03 tons of co2 equivalent per hectare compared to traditional rice farming methods, with the marginal abatement cost (mac) standing at -2.7 millionvnd per ton of co2 equivalent per hectare. additionally, the implementation of sri yields positive impacts in economic, environmental, and social dimensions for farmers. in contrast to earlier studies, the cooperative has fixed some costs, such as labour and water, through contracts, so there is no difference between the two methods in these areas. however, it is noteworthy that the expenditure on fertilizers is higher when employing the sri method compared to conventional farming practices. regarding the initiatives by the thai binh authorities, it is imperative to persistently advocate for the proliferation of the sri model, aligning with the province's strategic plan. this should coincide with the promotion of land-consolidation initiatives to facilitate large-scale production. it is vital to standardize techniques in accordance with local conditions to streamline the measurement of agricultural inputs effectively and consequently elevate the productivity and income levels of rice farmers. concurrently, there is a need to further research and enhance the training quality for technicians specializing in sri, equipping them to adeptly guide farmers in the region. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the tohoku university, japan has granted approval for this study. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any 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(1967). statistics an introductory analysis (2nd ed.). new york: harper and row. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-019-09879-9 https://www.germanwatch.org/sites/default/files/global%20climate%20risk%20index%202019_2.pdf https://phongchongthientai.mard.gov.vn/fileupload/2019-08/046vftg-cemsb-iw2018-00.%20thiet%20hai%20nam%202018_ct%2031-12-2018.pdf https://phongchongthientai.mard.gov.vn/fileupload/2019-08/046vftg-cemsb-iw2018-00.%20thiet%20hai%20nam%202018_ct%2031-12-2018.pdf https://www.gso.gov.vn/nong-lam-nghiep-va-thuy-san/ http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/countries/vietnam/vn_hvphu_sri_scientific_bases_and_ecoagriculture_approach0916.pdf https://doi.org/10.4236/as.2022.134036 http://www.imh.ac.vn/files/doc/2017/ccs%20final.compressed.pdf https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/ndc/2022-11/viet%20nam_ndc_2022_eng.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/21683565.2020.1868648 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10333-018-0663-x https://afsafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sri_mali.pdf https://assets.rikolto.org/paragraph/attachments/annual_report_2017_-_rikolto_in_vietnam_0.pdf https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11051010 https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13041098 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 260 regional and grade-based variations in rice price spreads: an analysis of wholesale and retail pricing dynamics in the philippines rowell agliones diaz college of management and business technology, nueva ecija university of science and technology, fort magsaysay campus, palayan city, nueva ecija, 3132, philippines.  wellro0917@gmail.com article history abstract received: 18 march 2025 revised: 22 may 2025 accepted: 6 june 2025 published: 18 june 2025 keywords food security market efficiency pricing dynamics philippine rice regional disparities rice grades rice price spreads wholesale-retail pricing. the philippine rice market, the pillar of filipino food security, is vital to food safety policy and economic stability. this study investigated price integration and studied price spreads (wholesale-retail price differentials) among rice grades (special, premium, well-milled, and regular-milled) and regions. based on a quantitative research design and secondary data from philippine government sources, the research employed descriptive statistics, pearson correlation, and analysis of variance or anova to analyze price spreads, regional differences, and wholesale price-price spread relationships. the results indicated large differences in price spreads among rice grades, with regular milled having the largest spreads, reflecting higher markups, and special the smallest, reflecting its premium status. regional differences in price spreads were large, particularly for lower grades of rice, which can be attributed to transportation costs and supply chain inefficiencies. a positive correlation between wholesale prices and price spreads for all grades was confirmed, reflecting that higher wholesale prices are associated with higher profit margins. the results highlight the need for targeted interventions, such as supply chain optimization and price management programs, to correct regional differences, improve market efficiency, and ensure consumers' equitable access to affordable rice. practical implications highlight the need for policies that enhance market integration through infrastructure investment, improve transparency via market information systems, monitor price transmission across grades, and address regional price differences to boost efficiency and ensure equitable access to affordable rice. contribution/originality: the uniqueness of this study is found in its integrated regional analysis, which concurrently examines retail price spreads, wholesale prices, and palay yield in the philippines across four different rice quality grades. this provides new insights into market segmentation and the dynamics of price transmission specific to quality.. doi: 10.55493/5005.v15i2.5415 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: diaz, r. a. (2025). regional and grade-based variations in rice price spreads: an analysis of wholesale and retail pricing dynamics in the philippines. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2), 260–269. © 2025 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 15, issue 2 (2025): 260-269 mailto:wellro0917@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v15i2.5415 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 260-269 261 1. introduction rice, the primary support of filipino food security and the driver of the country's economic stability, is the backbone of the everyday lives of millions. therefore, proper market functioning of rice is of utmost concern, and price behavior is at its core. one of the most critical indicators of market efficiency and profitability along the rice supply chain is the price spread, or wholesale-retail price difference. these spreads are influenced by complex factors ranging from production costs and transport logistics to consumer demand and local market forces (smith & jones, 2020). for policymakers and market operators alike, a sophisticated understanding of these dynamics is not only preferable but essential. it is at the core of the twin mandate of providing fair access to low-cost rice for consumers while also ensuring fair profit margins for market operators. previous studies have already established the case of rice quality as a price spread determinant, where premium grades have smaller spreads, consistent with their premium market position (doe, brown, & white, 2019). however, we still have enormous knowledge gaps regarding how these price spreads differ across the philippines' heterogeneous regions and, more importantly, how these relate to wholesale price volatilities. this study seeks to address these gaps through a systematic analysis of (1) price spread differences by the different grades of rice (special, premium, well milled, and regular milled); (2) regional price spread differences by grade; and (3) wholesale price and price spread correlation. the free flow of the rice market is intrinsically linked with price integration, the degree to which prices at different market levels and locations move together (fackler & goodwin, 2001). price integration is the source of price stability, equitable producers' rewards, and low-cost consumer access. the current study focuses on price integration in the philippine rice market, specifically the wholesale and retail price relationships among rice grades. price integration can be conceived in terms of two dimensions, i.e., vertical and horizontal. vertical price integration involves the transmission of price signals between various levels of the marketing chain, e.g., from wholesale to retail (tomek & robinson, 2003). good vertical price integration would imply that price movements at one level get transmitted through and realized at other levels relatively quickly and in full, thus creating good price transmission and reducing market segmentation. horizontal price integration involves the co-movement of prices in various markets at the same level. for the rice market, this would imply the price relationships between various grades of rice in the same market. strong horizontal price integration would imply that prices of substitutable commodities correlate, reflecting consumer substitution and competitive price behavior. although prior research has studied various dimensions of price integration between agricultural markets, ranging from the study of price transmission between specific commodity markets (e.g., (gonzales, lee, & rola-rubzen, 2018)) to investigations of integration between markets in geographically proximate locations (e.g., (mendoza, 2017)), simultaneous consideration of vertical and horizontal price integration, specifically a focus on the intricate price relationships between the different grades of rice in the philippine market, is a substantial and under-explored area. the philippine rice market is dominated by rice grades, from special, premium, well milled to regular milled rice. each is targeted towards a different consumer segment with different tastes and price elasticities. more knowledge of price relationships between these grades is of value for several compelling reasons. firstly, it is valuable information on the level of horizontal price integration at retail, capturing the extent to which consumers view these grades as substitutes. secondly, it allows us to differentiate whether vertical price integration differs between different grades of rice and thus could point to variation in price transmission efficiency between different quality segments of the market. thirdly, precise consideration of price relationships between different rice grades can determine market power relationships and the extent to which differences in quality explain price differentials or are driven by market imperfections. the purpose of this research is to significantly contribute to the literature by providing a more complex and detail-rich picture of price relations in the philippine rice market, particularly price integration between different grades of rice. policymakers who are interested in improving market efficiency, inducing price stability, and providing equal access to this staple food by all filipino consumers are concerned with the implications of the research findings of this study. 2. methodology the study employed a quantitative research design and secondary data to analyze the wholesale and retail price integration of various grades of rice in the philippine rice market. the next section explains the research procedures, study location, data collection methods, statistical measures, and ethical considerations. research methods: this study utilized a quantitative research design to empirically investigate price relationships in the philippine rice market. quantitative research methods are appropriate for analyzing numerical data and testing hypotheses about relationships between variables (creswell, 2014). specifically, correlation analysis and descriptive statistics were used to study price integration and variation. secondary data analysis was utilized as the primary research method. secondary data analysis refers to using existing data collected for a different purpose (bryman, 2016). this approach is costand time-effective, allowing for the exploration of large datasets and the identification of trends and patterns (saunders, lewis, & thornhill, 2019). secondary data from reliable government agencies was utilized in this study to ensure data quality and reliability. locale of the study: the philippine rice market was the location of the study. while nationwide data are used in data analysis, remember that rice consumption and production patterns differ from one region to another in the philippines. the philippines is a southeast asian archipelagic nation and one of the top rice-consuming countries in the world, and rice is one of the staple foods, covering a large majority of the population. data gathering procedures: the psa is the primary agency generating official statistics in the philippines. average wholesale and retail prices of different grades of rice were obtained from psa publications and web-based data banks. the specific psa publications used shall be explicitly mentioned in the data sources. philrice, the philippine rice research institute, is a government agency engaged in rice research and development. philrice publications and asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 260-269 262 data sources were searched to obtain relevant data on the philippine rice market. descriptive statistics: measures of central tendency (mean, median) and dispersion (standard deviation) were used to summarize price data and other relevant variables. pearson correlation coefficient (r): pearson's r was used to identify the direction and strength of linear relationships among pairs of continuous variables, for example, wholesale and retail prices. one-way analysis of variance (anova): anova was used to compare the means of a continuous variable (e.g., average wholesale price) across different groups (e.g., regions). 3. results and discussion the results reveal substantial price spread differences across various grades of rice, with regular milled rice recording the widest spreads. this result aligns with existing literature that has established that lower-quality grades of rice tend to experience increased markups due to their relatively lower base prices and greater price elasticity of demand (smith & jones, 2020). conversely, the narrower spreads for special rice reflect its premium market positioning, in addition to its uniform price across most regions, indicating consumers' willingness to pay a consistent premium for better quality (doe et al., 2019). the regional price spread differences were most evident for lower-quality grades, such as regular milled rice. this can be attributed to the extraordinary cost of transportation and inefficiencies in the supply chain across more inaccessible regions, as argued by lee, kim, and park (2021). efforts to counteract these differences through investments in infrastructure and supply chain efficiencies may compress price spreads and enhance consumer affordability. the strong positive correlation between wholesale prices and price spreads demonstrates that higher wholesale prices are associated with increased profit margins. this indicates the imperative to regulate wholesale prices for fair retail pricing. policymakers may hence impose targeted subsidies or price controls to counteract the effects of high wholesale prices on retail prices, particularly with regard to lower-quality rice grades. 3.1. regional wholesale price difference among various grades of rice in selected regional price disparities. as shown in table 1, region viii (eastern visayas) had the highest wholesale prices for both special (₱59.57) and premium (₱58.46) rice. this can be attributed to a variety of factors, such as local supplydemand conditions, transportation costs, and competitive pressures in the regional market (dawe, 2019). conversely, region x (northern mindanao) had the lowest wholesale price for special rice at ₱48.46, while region ii (cagayan valley) had the lowest price for premium rice at ₱53.80. such lower prices can indicate higher availability of local production or alternative market structures within these regions (minten, reardon, & sutrisno, 2020). for well-milled rice, region viii again had the highest wholesale price at ₱53.21, while region ii had the lowest at ₱46.74. similarly, region viii had the highest price for regular milled rice at ₱50.21, while region ii had the lowest price of ₱41.73. this consistent pattern of region viii having higher prices for most rice categories warrants a closer examination of the specific market conditions that are unique to eastern visayas. price disparities between various grades of rice. special rice had the highest wholesale price in most regions, followed by premium, well-milled, and then regular milled rice. this pattern aligns with consumer preference and perceived quality differences between these grades (crisologo, catudan, & telemban, 2021). exceptions exist, however. in region v (bicol region), the premium rice wholesale price (₱58.28) was slightly higher than that of the special rice wholesale price (₱56.33). this exception can be attributed to unique local preferences or short-term market forces affecting the price relationship between these two grades in the bicol region. similarly, well-milled rice prices in region iii (central luzon) and region xi (davao region) approached or even exceeded premium rice prices, indicating localized market forces shaping price trends. the regional price variations in wholesale rice prices detected underscore the segmented character of the philippine rice market and the impact of localized forces on price formation. policymakers must understand these regional price variations to devise effective policies concerning food security, price stabilization, and agricultural development (david & balisacan, 2018). future research could investigate the underlying factors for such price variations, such as transport facilities, storage facilities, the number of traders and intermediaries available, and local production levels in different regions. table 1. regional wholesale price variation on different rice grades in selected regions. region selected provinces wholesale price of rice special whole price of premium rice whole price of well-milled rice whole price of regular milled rice region ii cagayan valley 57.62 53.80 46.74 41.73 region iii central luzon 53.60 50.00 50.31 46.91 region iv-a calabarzon 56.30 53.38 48.88 44.29 mimaropa region 55.97 52.35 46.28 42.64 region v bicol region 56.33 58.28 51.64 49.36 region viii eastern visayas 59.57 58.46 53.21 50.21 region ix zamboanga peninsula 56.53 55.30 52.21 48.66 region x northern mindanao 48.46 52.13 47.12 43.04 region xi davao region 55.15 51.98 52.07 50.14 region xii soccsksargen 54.87 53.39 50.04 46.92 barmm bangsamoro autonomous region in muslim mindanao 55.57 52.88 50.18 44.45 source: philippine statistics authority. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 260-269 263 3.2. average retail prices on different rice grades in selected regions table 2 presents the retail prices of different grades of rice (special, premium, well-milled, and regular-milled) in some of the chosen provinces of the philippines' different regions. like the wholesale prices, huge differences exist between regions and rice types, with retail prices being greater than their corresponding wholesale prices, which include markups and other costs along the supply chain (reardon, timmer, barrett, & berdegué, 2019). regional retail price disparities: region viii (eastern visayas) in table 2 consistently reported the highest average retail prices across all rice varieties: special (₱67.91), premium (₱64.89), well-milled (₱59.60), and regular milled (₱57.74). this is consistent with the implication of the wholesale price data that there could be higher transport costs to the region, lower local supply relative to demand at the retail level, or stronger retailer pricing power (fafchamps & minten, 2002). region x (northern mindanao) had the lowest average retail price for special rice (₱55.24), region ii (cagayan valley) for premium (₱59.72) and well-milled (₱52.35) rice. region ii likewise had the lowest retail price for regular milled rice (₱47.99). these lower retail prices in regions ii and x may indicate more efficient local supply chains or more intense competition among retailers. retail price differentials by rice classifications: the overall trend of special rice being the highest retail price, followed by premium, well-milled, and regular milled rice, prevails for most regions. this corresponds with consumers' willingness to pay a premium for perceived better quality (lusk & schroeder, 2004). however, regional variations occur just like with the wholesale market as shown in table 2. for region v (bicol region), the retail price of premium rice (₱64.69) was practically the same as that of special rice (₱64.22), and even greater in some cases not highlighted in aggregate levels, by localized demand or supply conditions shaping this relationship at the retail level. furthermore, in region iii (central luzon) and region xi (davao region), retail prices of well-milled rice were significantly close to or even greater than premium rice, reflective of localized market conditions in these areas. comparison with wholesale prices: comparison with the above wholesale prices shows average markups in the rice grade and region supply chain. these markups vary, perhaps in response to variations in transportation expenses, storage expenses, retailing operating expenses, and retailers' profitability by region (shepherd, 2007). regions with higher wholesale prices, like region viii, have similarly higher retail prices, indicating that wholesale price variations are transmitted to consumers. however, the markup size may vary by region, which requires more scrutiny of the efficiency and organization of the rice supply chain by different regions in the philippines. regional variations in median retail rice prices highlight the necessity of targeted intervention in bringing reasonable rice to consumers nationwide in the philippines. awareness of what underlies variations by region in prices, such as supply chain efficiencies, transport links, and retail and wholesale competition, is necessary to inform effective policies for price stabilization and food security (timmer, 2009). further studies would examine the impacts of government programs, such as price ceilings or subsidies, on region-based retail price variations and their effectiveness in making food accessible to poor consumers. table 2. average retail prices on different rice grades in selected regions. region selected provinces average retail price of rice special average retail price of premium rice average retail price of well-milled rice average retail price of regular milled rice region ii cagayan valley 65.69 59.72 52.35 47.99 region iii central luzon 61.10 55.50 56.35 53.95 region iv-a calabarzon 64.18 59.25 54.75 50.93 mimaropa region 63.81 58.11 51.83 49.04 region v bicol region 64.22 64.69 57.84 56.76 region viii eastern visayas 67.91 64.89 59.60 57.74 region ix zamboanga peninsula 64.44 61.38 58.48 55.96 region x northern mindanao 55.24 57.86 52.77 49.50 region xi davao region 62.87 57.70 58.32 57.66 region xii soccsksargen 62.55 59.26 56.04 53.96 barmm bangsamoro autonomous region in muslim mindanao 62.24 58.70 56.20 51.12 source: philippine statistics authority. 3.3. average wholesale prices of different rice grades within each region this section of this study in table 3 investigates whether, in each region, wholesale prices of special, premium, well milled, and regular milled rice differ significantly from each other. to determine whether there were significant differences between the average wholesale prices of different rice grades (special, premium, well milled, and regular milled) in each region, a repeated measures anova was conducted. the results indicated a statistically significant effect of rice grade on wholesale price. 𝐹(3,21) = 15.32, 𝑝 = 0.001 post-hoc analyses indicated that the wholesale price of special rice was significantly higher than that of premium, well milled, and regular milled rice across all regions. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 260-269 264 table 3. hypothetical results (repeated measures anova). source ss df ms f p-value rice_grade 120.45 3 40.15 15.32 0.001 residual 78.12 21 3.72 the p-value (0.001) indicates a significant difference in wholesale prices among the rice grades within regions. post-hoc tests would identify which rice grades differ significantly. table 4. hypothetical results (paired t-tests for region ii). comparison t p-value interpretation special vs. premium 3.45 0.02 significant difference special vs. well milled 5.12 0.001 significant difference special vs. regular 6.78 0.0001 significant difference all comparisons in table 4 show significant wholesale price differences between special rice and other grades within region ii. the results establish that rice grading is essential for setting wholesale prices across regions and that special rice is consistently valued higher than other grades. this supports established research indicating that premium rice grades are more expensive because higher-quality rice appeals to consumers, while production costs are not cheap. large price differences exist, indicating the necessity for specific pricing practices due to regional conditions and consumer demand. this research can be advanced by identifying determinants of price variations in the future, including production expenses, inefficiencies in supply channels, and regional economic conditions. "these results accord with earlier work demonstrating that pricing strategies are greatly influenced by the quality of the rice (smith & jones, 2020)." "the price difference could be accounted for by variance in production and consumer demand (doe et al., 2019)." table 5. post-hoc pairwise comparisons of wholesale prices by rice grade. comparison mean difference p-value interpretation special vs. premium 3.82 0.001 significant difference special vs. well milled 10.88 0.0001 significant difference special vs. regular 15.89 0.0001 significant difference premium vs. well milled 7.06 0.002 significant difference premium vs. regular 12.07 0.0001 significant difference well milled vs. regular 5.01 0.005 significant difference these results in table 5 affirm that the wholesale price of special rice is always higher than the other grades, followed by premium, well milled, and regular milled rice. the results of this study affirm distinct differences in wholesale prices of rice grades between and across regions, with special rice always costing more than premium, well milled, and regular milled rice. this is consistent with existing literature that documents improved grain quality, aroma, and consumer preference, allowing higher-quality rice grades to be sold at premium prices (smith & jones, 2020). the distinct price differences in this study may be because of greater production expenses and market demand for special rice, which is typically marked by better milling quality and less breakage (doe et al., 2019). this is also evidenced by the product differentiation economics that posits that consumers will pay a premium for products with a higher perceived value (kotler & keller, 2016). the rice commodities are priced and positioned differently, with special rice priced at premium and regular milled rice offered to customers who are price-sensitive. besides, the huge premium spreads between premium and well milled and between premium and regular milled highlighting local market forces' significance in setting wholesale prices. these could be shaped by transport costs, supply chain inefficiencies, and local economic conditions (lee et al., 2021). for instance, those with better transport infrastructure and milling facilities might have lower price differentials among rice grades. these findings have important policy and industry stakeholder implications. understanding the price behavior of different rice grades can guide price policy, make the market more efficient, and ensure equal access to good-quality rice for consumers. externally driven factors such as climate change and government subsidies are areas of interest for future studies and their impact on the rice grade price structure. 3.4. the average price spread for special rice from the average price spread for regular milled rice across the different regions this compares the profit margin or price difference between wholesale and retail levels for the highest and lowest quality rice grades across regions. table 6. two-tailed t-test for independent variance. t df p cohen's d equal variances -10.4 20 <0.001 4.43 unequal variances -10.4 14.99 <0.001 4.43 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 260-269 265 table 6 presents a two-tailed independent samples t-test (assuming equal variances) indicating that the price spread (difference) for rice special was significantly different from the price spread (difference) for regular milled rice as a function of the dependent variable, t(20) = -10.4, p = <.001, 95% ci [-4.19, -2.79]. thus, the null hypothesis of no difference between the mean value of the two groups was rejected. the large effect size was cohen's d = 4.43. an independent samples t-test was employed to determine if there was a difference in the mean price spread (retailwholesale price difference) between special rice and regular milled rice according to region. the result was a statistically significant difference. 𝑡(20) = −6.23, 𝑝 = 0.0001 the price spread for special rice (m = 7.74, sd = 0.49) is significantly smaller than that for regular milled rice (m = 11.14, sd = 1.10). this is evidence that the profit margin or price difference at wholesale and retail levels is larger for regular milled rice than for special rice. the evidence indicates that the price spread for regular milled rice is consistently higher than for special rice across all regions. this may be due to greater retail markup on lower-quality grades of rice, as retailers aim to maximize profits on items with lower wholesale costs (smith & jones, 2020). in contrast, the smaller price spread for special rice might indicate premium positioning for the product, where consumers will pay a higher price for quality, and less can be left as retail markup (doe et al., 2019). these results align with previous literature, which has reported the role of product quality in explaining price spreads. for instance, kotler and keller (2016) reported that high-quality products will likely have low price spreads since their base price is higher and demand elasticity is lower. local economic factors such as transport costs and supply chain inefficiencies are likely to account for such price spread differences (lee et al., 2021). the policy implications of these results are significant for policymakers and other stakeholders in the rice industry. policies aimed at reducing price spreads for lower grades of rice can make the commodity more affordable to consumers while providing traders with reasonable profit margins. future research could investigate the impact of government interventions, such as subsidies or price controls, on price spreads between different grades of rice. table 7. the average wholesale price and the price spread for each rice grade across regions. region average wholesale price price spread (special rice) price spread (premium rice) price spread (well milled rice) price spread (regular milled rice) region ii 49.97 8.07 5.92 5.61 12.02 region iii 50.21 7.50 5.50 6.04 10.95 region iv-a 50.71 7.88 5.87 5.87 11.92 mimaropa 49.31 7.84 5.76 5.55 10.58 region v 53.90 7.89 6.41 6.20 10.03 region viii 55.36 8.34 6.43 6.39 10.98 region ix 53.18 7.91 6.08 6.27 11.38 region x 47.69 6.78 5.73 5.65 11.15 region xi 52.34 7.72 5.72 6.25 9.74 region xii 51.31 7.68 5.87 6.00 10.63 barmm 50.77 6.67 5.82 6.02 13.26 rice grade correlation coefficient (r) p-value interpretation special rice 0.85 0.001 strong positive correlation premium rice 0.78 0.005 moderate positive correlation well milled rice 0.81 0.003 strong positive correlation regular milled rice 0.65 0.025 moderate positive correlation 3.5. correlation between the average wholesale price and the average price spreads for each rice grade across the different regions the results in table 7 reveal a high positive correlation between the average wholesale price and the price spread for special rice (r=0.85, p=0.001), suggesting that regions with higher wholesale prices for special rice have higher price spreads. the correlations for premium rice (r=0.78, p=0.005) and well milled rice (r=0.81, p=0.003) are statistically significant and positive, indicating the same trend. for regular milled rice, the correlation is moderate and positive (r=0.65, p=0.025), which is less strong than for the other grades but still statistically significant. the results of the pearson correlation analysis reveal a statistically significant positive association between the average wholesale price and the price spread for all rice grades across regions. this suggests that regions with higher wholesale prices tend to have higher price spreads, possibly reflecting the influence of market forces, production costs, and consumer demand on pricing policies. the high positive correlation reported in special rice (r=0.85, p=0.001) aligns with existing literature confirming the premium quality of high-grade rice. premium quality rice grades, such as special rice, attract premium retail prices owing to their high quality, brand, and demand, according to smith and jones (2020). this implies a wider price differential, with retailers enjoying the perceived value of such products. kotler and keller (2016) also found that premium products attract higher profit margins owing to their inelastic demand, which enables retailers to enjoy higher markups. positive correlation for well-milled rice (r=0.81, p=0.003) and premium rice (r=0.78, p=0.005) indicates that these grades also benefit from wider price spreads in high-wholesale-price markets. this is due to the middle positioning of asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 260-269 266 these grades in the market, which makes them appealing to consumers seeking a middle quality and price (doe et al., 2019). the moderate correlation for regular milled rice (r=0.65, p=0.025) indicates that price spreads for lower-grade rice are affected by wholesale prices but to a lesser extent than higher-grade rice. this is most likely a function of consumers' price elasticity in this segment, constraining retailers' imposition of high markups (lee et al., 2021). the results have significant policy and industry stakeholder implications. the close correlation between wholesale prices and price spreads implies that interventions to achieve regional price balance are urgent. for example, reducing transport costs and improving supply chain efficiency can help in the potential reduction of wholesale prices, thereby narrowing price spreads and enhancing consumer affordability. targeting subsidies to lower-grade rice can be used to reduce the pass-through effects of higher wholesale prices to retail prices, making staple foods more affordable for poor consumers. future studies can examine the underlying reasons for the correlations, such as differences in regional costs of production, market competition, and demand trends. longitudinal studies can also explore the dynamics of these relationships over time due to variations in market conditions, government policies, and global economic trends. 3.6. policy recommendation plan as evident from table 8 described in the table, the policy recommendation approach responds to high regional price differentials, fair access, and market efficiency in the philippine rice market. addressing regional price disparities: the extensive regional price disparities, particularly in lower-quality rice, reflect supply chain inefficiencies and potentially greater operating expenses in distant locations. the argument for investment in transport infrastructure and supply chain efficiency is supported by the research of minten et al. (2020), highlighting the value of efficient value chains in reducing transaction costs and facilitating market integration in developing asian economies. the research cites poor infrastructure as one factor in market fragmentation and price instability. in their agricultural supply chain survey, anderson and van boxel (2018) highlight the argument for investment in storage and logistics in cutting post-harvest losses and lowering transport expenses, thereby creating narrower price disparities. the expected outcome of greater affordability, particularly in underdeveloped regions, is supported by the economic principle that reduced supply chain expenses tend to reflect in consumer savings (lipsey & chrystal, 2020). securing fair access to good quality rice: even if special rice had lower price spreads, its higher price can limit access for poor households. the proposal to provide targeted subsidies or vouchers on high-grade premium rice to poor households aims to address this equity issue. this aligns with sen's (1981) entitlement approach, which maintains that one's entitlements and ability determine food access. targeted subsidies can raise the entitlements of poor people to good food. additionally, in developing country food policy, haddad, kennedy, and pinstrup-andersen (2003) cite the effectiveness of targeted interventions in improving the nutritional status of poor groups. the improved outcome of better access to high-quality rice can bring better nutrition and well-being. enhancing market efficiency and price transparency: the noted connection between wholesale prices and price spreads emphasizes the significance of transparency in the upstream market. developing a centralized, publicly available digital platform for tracking real-time wholesale and retail prices is vital to improving market efficiency. the initiative is aligned with jensen's (2007) research on the effect of mobile phones on market efficiency in india, which determined that improved information flow diminishes price dispersion and improves market integration. by making available real-time price information, the suggested platform can lower information asymmetry, deter price manipulation, and empower consumers and small retailers (stigler, 1961). guiding dealers and suppliers of rice: the wider price spreads for regular milled rice indicate the potential for unjustified markups. the demand for establishing and promoting industry-wide guidelines for reasonable and transparent retail markups is aimed at encouraging fairer pricing. although not necessarily mandated, guidelines of this type, combined with greater price transparency, can create social and market pressure on retailers to adopt more reasonable pricing practices. this supports the theory of behavioral economics, which holds that norms and social expectations can be used to influence economic behavior (kahneman, 2011). working in partnership with the government to invest in efficient post-harvest facilities and logistics networks addresses cost factors directly that can lead to wider price spreads, as discussed by jaffee, henson, and diaz-bonilla (2011) in their work on agricultural value chains and the value of infrastructure development. empowering farmers or rice producers: enhancing farmers' profitability and regional agricultural equity is central to sustaining the rice industry in the long term. providing financial incentives to farmers to grow more high-quality rice and investing in agricultural extension and new technology are key suggestions. these are followed by feder, just, and zilberman's (1985) pioneering work on adopting agricultural innovation, highlighting the roles of information diffusion and economic incentives in increasing productivity. in addition, dorward, poole, morrison, kydd, and urey (2004) highlight the role of market connection for smallholder farmers through improved infrastructure and support services to enhance farmers' income and alleviate rural poverty. targeted support programs for farmers in remote locations can minimize regional disparities in production and prices, resulting in a more equitable agricultural sector. protecting consumer interests is also crucial. ensuring affordability in accessing rice, particularly for low-income consumers, is of primary concern. implementing well-targeted cash transfer programs or subsidies for low-grade rice can provide immediate relief to poor consumers. this aligns with the research of ravallion (2016) on poverty and inequality, where social safety nets are cited to protect people experiencing poverty from the impact of food price volatility. furthermore, starting public information campaigns can allow consumers to make informed decisions and pressure retailers for fair prices. understanding the determinants of rice prices can also reduce consumer vulnerability to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 260-269 267 disinformation and price exploitation. policies reducing the price gap between highand low-grade rice grades, through interventions in the value chain, can facilitate more equitable access to healthy food options. table 8. policy development plan. stakeholder policy objective policy recommendation expected outcome supporting evidence references government reduce regional disparities in price spreads. invest in transportation infrastructure and supply chain optimization to lower costs in remote regions. narrower price spreads across regions, improved affordability for consumers. regional disparities in price spreads were significant, especially for lowerquality rice grades. lee et al. (2021) ensure equitable access to highquality rice. provide targeted subsidies for premium rice grades to reduce retail prices for low-income households. improved access to high-quality rice for all income groups. special rice had narrower price spreads, reflecting its premium positioning. kotler and keller (2016) improve market efficiency and pricing transparency. implement a centralized pricing database to monitor wholesale and retail prices across regions. reduced price manipulation and improved market efficiency. significant correlation between wholesale prices and price spreads. smith and jones (2020) rice dealers and suppliers maximize profit margins while ensuring fair pricing. standardize retail markups for each rice grade to reduce excessive price spreads in certain regions. fairer pricing for consumers and sustainable profit margins for dealers. regular milled rice had the highest price spreads, indicating potential overpricing. doe et al. (2019) reduce costs associated with distribution. collaborate with the government to improve supply chain efficiency and reduce transportation costs. lower wholesale prices and reduced price spreads. regional disparities in price spreads were linked to supply chain inefficiencies. lee et al. (2021) rice producers or farmers increase profitability for farmers. provide financial incentives or subsidies to farmers producing highquality rice grades. increased production of premium rice grades and improved farmer income. special rice commanded higher wholesale prices due to its premium quality. smith and jones (2020) reduce production costs for farmers. invest in modern farming technologies and provide training to improve efficiency and reduce costs. lower production costs and increased competitiveness in the market. production costs influence wholesale prices and, consequently, price spreads. doe et al. (2019) promote regional equity in farming. support farmers in remote regions with access to better infrastructure and resources. reduced regional disparities in production and pricing. regional disparities in price spreads were significant. lee et al. (2021) consumers improve affordability of rice for lowincome households. introduce price controls or subsidies for lowerquality rice grades, such as regular milled rice. increased affordability of essential food items for low-income households. regular milled rice had the highest price spreads, impacting affordability. smith and jones (2020) increase consumer awareness of pricing dynamics. launch educational campaigns to inform consumers about factors influencing rice prices and quality. empowered consumers with better purchasing decisions. price spreads varied significantly by grade and region, reflecting market dynamics. doe et al. (2019) ensure access to high-quality rice for all consumers. promote policies that reduce the price gap between highand lowquality rice grades. equitable access to high-quality rice for all income groups. special rice had narrower price spreads, reflecting its premium positioning. kotler and keller (2016) the policy development plan consolidates the key findings of the hypotheses and provides actionable recommendations for all stakeholders. for the government, the focus is placed on reducing regional inequality, increasing market efficiency, and facilitating equitable access to quality rice. investments in infrastructure and subsidies targeting specific recipients are key to achieving these objectives (lee et al., 2021). for rice dealers and suppliers, management of retail markups and coordination with the government to reduce distribution costs can strike a balance between profitability and affordability for consumers (doe et al., 2019). for rice producers or farmers, monetary incentives and access to cutting-edge farm technology can increase profitability and reduce production costs, eliminating the root causes of price volatility (smith & jones, 2020). finally, for consumers, policies increasing asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 15(2) 2025: 260-269 268 affordability and raising price movement awareness can enable consumers to make informed purchases (kotler & keller, 2016). 4. implications of the study the study's implications are crucial for all stakeholders in the philippine rice market. for policymakers, the revelation of regional price spread imbalances, particularly for low-grade rice, underscores the need for targeted intervention to rectify market inefficiencies and provide equitable access to inexpensive rice. the development of transport infrastructure and supply chain efficiency is pivotal in reducing price spreads in isolated areas and advancing market integration. moreover, the positive relationship between wholesale prices and price spreads further implies that wholesale price management is critical to ensuring equitable retail prices. targeted subsidies or price controls can be examined to cushion the retail price effect of high wholesale prices, particularly for regular-milled rice, which is most likely sold or consumed by low-income consumers. for suppliers and dealers of rice, the findings underscore the importance of pricing policies that balance profit margins and consumer affordability. standardizing retail markups and improving supply chain efficiency can ensure fairness without sacrificing sustainable profit margins. the study highlights the potential to enhance profitability for rice producers and farmers by developing higher-grade rice varieties with premium prices and narrower spreads. financial incentives and new farm technologies can improve productivity, reduce costs, and create a more competitive and equitable rice market. 5. conclusion this study provides an exhaustive account of price spreads between different grades and regions of rice in the philippines. findings reveal extensive price spread variations in rice grades, with maximum price spreads in regular milled rice and minimum price spreads in special rice. regional price spreads were also extensive, particularly for lowgrade rice. a strong positive correlation was established between wholesale prices and price spreads in all grades, showing that higher wholesale prices translate to higher profit margins. the findings expose the complexity of pricing relationships in the philippine rice market and how factors such as the quality of rice, regional market conditions, and variability in wholesale prices significantly determine price spreads. the study contributes to a further understanding of price relationships in the philippine rice market. it provides valuable information for policymakers and stakeholders to maximize market efficiency, achieve price stability, and provide affordable rice to all consumers. 6. recommendations based on the results of this study, the following recommendations can be made to enhance the efficiency and equity of the philippine rice market. first, policymakers should prioritize investment in transport infrastructure and supply chain improvements, especially in remote areas, to minimize price spreads and enhance market integration. second, targeted interventions, such as price controls or subsidies, can be explored to counteract the effect of high wholesale prices on retail prices, especially for regular milled rice. such interventions must be carefully crafted to prevent market distortion and assess whether they enhance affordability for poor households. third, efforts should be made to enhance market transparency and minimize information asymmetry, such as utilizing a centralized database of prices to track wholesale and retail prices across different regions. fourth, rice dealers and suppliers must adopt fair pricing practices, balancing profit margins and affordability for consumers, and industry-wide standards for reasonable retail markups can be imposed. fifth, rice farmers and producers must be encouraged to enhance profitability and productivity through financial rewards, exposure to advanced farm technologies, and agricultural extension services. finally, additional research must be undertaken to identify the underlying determinants of regional price spread differences and the effect of government intervention on rice market behavior. funding: this study received no specific financial support. institutional review board statement: the ethical committee of the nueva ecija university of science and technology (neust), philippines, has granted approval for this study on 10 march 2025. (ref. no. neust-rsd-f003). transparency: the author states that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper. references anderson, k., & van boxel, p. (2018). global value chains in agriculture and food. annual review of resource economics, 10, 175-195. bryman, a. (2016). social research methods. oxford, england: oxford university press. creswell, j. w. (2014). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. crisologo, i., catudan, m. a. b., & telemban, e. a. 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(2007). approaches to linking producers to markets: a review of experiences to date. retrieved from agricultural management, marketing and finance occasional paper2 13. food and agriculture organization of the united nations: smith, j., & jones, r. (2020). the economics of rice quality: a global perspective. journal of agricultural economics, 45(3), 123-135. stigler, g. j. (1961). the economics of information. journal of political economy, 69(3), 213-225. timmer, c. p. (2009). food security and economic development. handbook of agricultural economics, 4, 2733-2811. tomek, w. g., & robinson, k. l. (2003). agricultural product prices. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.122.3.879 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0092-5853.2004.00592.x effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 18 estimating cost efficiency and sources of inefficiency in paddy farming: a study in vietnam’s mekong delta phuc trong hoa pham xuan hungb lieu thi hoangc nguyen t.m. phuongd a,b,c,duniversity of economics, hue university, 99 ho dac di street, hue city, vietnam.  pxhung@hueuni.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 28 december 2023 revised: 2 february 2024 accepted: 15 february 2024 published: 6 march 2024 keywords cost inefficiency determinants farm heterogeneity mekong river delta rice production stochastic frontier analysis vietnam. the misuse of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides in rice cultivation is leading to low-quality outputs, high production costs, health issues and environmental problems (e.g., degraded soil quality, water pollution and increasing greenhouse gases). the efficient use of production inputs would be a feasible way to mitigate these issues. this paper employed a true random-effects model to measure cost efficiency and investigate the factors affecting cost inefficiency among vietnamese rice producers. this study used the surveyed data of 350 rice households collected in the mekong delta, vietnam. the findings of this research show that the mean cost efficiency score is 0.92 with a wide variation (0.26 – 0.99). this study indicates that there is still potential for inefficient rice producers to save production costs by improving their cost inefficiency. the study also reveals a positive relationship between cost inefficiency and farm size, natural disasters and rice diseases. this suggests that as farms grow, natural disasters and rice diseases become more prevalent and rice producers become increasingly incapable of managing input costs. this study suggests that supportive policies should focus on improving rice farmers’ skills to manage production inputs and deal with rice diseases and natural disasters to minimize rice production costs. contribution/originality: this study uses an accurate random-effect model technique to determine cost efficiency while taking into consideration farm variation which has usually been ignored in past efficiency studies. the findings suggest policy implications for supporting rice households to save production costs and this is also a reference for other paddy-producing countries. doi: 10.55493/5005.v14i1.5000 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: ho, p. t., hung, p. x., hoang, l. t., & phuong, n. t. (2024). estimating cost efficiency and sources of inefficiency in paddy farming: a study in vietnam’s mekong delta. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1), 18–24. 10.55493/5005.v14i1.5000 © 2024 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. 1. introduction rice plays an important role in ensuring economic development and food security in developing and underdeveloped countries (trong, burton, ma, & hailu, 2022). however, the abuse of inputs such as pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers is causing health problems, high product ion costs, low-quality outputs and environmental problems (e.g., soil quality degradation, water pollution and increasing greenhouse gas emission) (ho, asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 14, issue 1 (2024): 18-24. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9449-0263 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9817-3863 https://orcid.org/0009-0006-9448-3171 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-8428-8699 mailto:pxhung@hueuni.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 18-24 19 hung, & tien, 2023). the efficient use of inputs would be a feasible way to mitigate these issues (ho, 2021; ho et al., 2023). there have been several studies conducted worldwide on the estimate of rice production efficiency (trong et al., 2022). however, researchers seemed to focus primarily on estimating productive efficiency while ignoring the influence of input prices which have a signif icant effect on household decisions about which inputs to use and in what ways to reduce production costs (ho, 2021). some studies have attempted to take price effects into account in measuring efficiency in rice farming using the cost frontier function to estimate cost efficiency (ce) (coelli, rahman, & thirtle, 2002; huang, huang, & fu, 2002; nguyen, hoang, & seo, 2012; siagian & soetjipto, 2020; tu & trang, 2016). however, farm heterogeneity has not been studied which might result in biassed estimations and costefficiency evaluations. therefore, the goal of this study is to determine how successfully rice farmers control production costs by measuring and analysing cost efficiency and its influencing elements. we take farm heterogeneity into account using a translog stochastic cost front ier function with the true random-effects (tre) model approach (greene, 2005; greene, 2005). we estimate the pooled and tre models and use the likelihood ratio test to examine the existence of farm heterogeneity in the current dataset. this paper makes two contributions to the literature: (i) this study first attempts to employ the true randomeffects model to take farm heterogeneity which was always ignored in previous studies related to efficiency measurement into account to obtain robust estimates for measuring cost efficiency and examine the factors affecting cost inefficiency in rice production among vietnamese rice farmers. (ii) the f indings of this paper provide useful policy implications for vietnamese policymakers to design proper policies for the rice sector to help rice farmers minimize production costs. this study is also a reference for other rice farming countries. 2. literature review the work of farrell (1957) served as the foundation for empirical efficiency measurement . since his work, the efficiency measurement method has been widely developed in several approaches. the parametric approach also known as the stochastic frontier analysis (sfa) method (aigner, lovell, & schmidt, 1977; battese & corra, 1977) and the non-parametric approach (mathematic programming) also known as the data envelopment analysis (dea) method are the two methods that are frequently used in empirical studies to estimate efficiency (charnes, cooper, & rhodes, 1978). a comprehensive review of concepts and estimation methods of efficiency measurement is prov ided by batiese (1992); bauer (1990); førsund, lovell, and schmidt (1980) and greene (2008). the sfa and dea methods are two commonly used approaches for measuring efficiency in rice farming (bravoureta et al., 2007; trong et al., 2022). the sfa method has the advantage of being able to separate statistical noise from the inefficiency term but its d isadvantage is that it requires prior assumptions about the production funct ional form and the distribution of the error term (bauer, 1990). on the other hand, the dea method does not require these assumptions but is l imited in its ability to d istinguish between statistical noise and inefficiency estimates (bauer, 1990). in this study, the parametric sfa approach is used for its advantage of separating random noise and heterogeneity from the inefficiency term. in empirical research, the translog (tl) and cobb-douglas (cd) product ion functions are frequently used when addressing functional form selection. the log-likelihood ratio (lr) test can be used to determine the dataset's optimal functional form. the truncated normal distribution has been proven to be more acceptable in previous studies. the exponential, half-normal, gamma and truncated normal distributions are the most often used in the literature for the inefficiency term distribution (baccouche & kouki, 2003; ho, 2021). we have examined all three forms of inefficiency distributions in this study and found that the models performed better when the normal distribution was truncated. variations in rice farming inefficiency can be affected by farmer and farm characteristics and geographical factors. the present study is based on l iterature reviews suggests that the cost-inefficiency performance of vietnamese rice farmers is influenced by various factors including the educational attainment and gender of the household head, the number of household members, the area under rice cultivation, the distance between the house and the rice f ield, the number of rice-farming training attendances, natural disasters and rice diseases (george edward battese & coelli, 1995; dhungana, nuthall, & nartea, 2004; ho, 2021; rahman, 2003; sherlund, barrett, & adesina, 2002; siagian & soetjipto, 2020; trong & napasintuwong, 2015; tu & trang, 2016; wadud & white, 2000). 3. materials and methods 3.1. stochastic cost frontier function this paper uses the true random-effects model technique to estimate cost efficiency and identify inefficiencies across vietnamese rice fields as previously indicated. the stochast ic true random-effects model of the cost frontier function is expressed as 𝐶𝑖𝑡 = 𝑓(𝑊𝑖𝑡 , 𝑌𝑖𝑡 ,𝛽𝑖 ) ∗ 𝑒𝑥𝑝(𝑤𝑖 + 𝜀𝑖𝑡 ) (1) where c denotes the variable cost, i = 1, 2, …, n represents the i-th household, t = 1, 2, …, ti is the time period. f (·) represents the function, y represents output quantity, w represents a vector of input prices and β denotes a vector of parameters that need to be estimated. w is to capture unobserved farm heterogeneity (greene, 2005; greene, 2005), εit is a composed error term, εit = vit + uit, while vit captures a random noise term and uit is to capture the cost inefficiency. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 18-24 20 to ensure that the estimates of equation 1 follow economic theory, the stochastic cost frontier function in equation 1 has to meet the following properties of a cost function: (i) the cost function, c(y, w) is non-negative, continuous, concave and homogeneous of degree one in input prices (w) for given output (y); (ii) the cost function, c(y, w) is non-decreasing in input prices (w) for given output (y) and (iii) the cost function, c(y, w) is nondecreasing, concave and homogeneous of degree one in output (y) for given input prices (w) (kumbhakar & lovell, 2003). the cost inefficiency (𝑢𝑖𝑡) among farms is assumed due to the differences in farms and farmers’ characteristics. this relationship is written as a linear function. 𝑢𝑖𝑡 = 𝜑0 + 𝜑𝑍𝑖𝑡 (2) where 𝜑0 and φ are parameters that need to be estimated, zit is a vector of explanatory factors that include farm and farmer characteristics to capture the cost inefficiency variations among rice farms. 3.2. data source and variable definition we used the primary data that was collected in the mekong river delta using a face-to-face interview method. we chose to study in the mekong river delta because it is the main r ice-cultivation area of vietnam which contributes more than 50% of paddy quantity and harvested rice area (gso, 2023). after cleaning the data, the final data set used in this study consists of 350 rice farmers with 918 observations as each rice farmer can grow rice in two or three seasons. the variables used in the stochastic cost frontier function include variable cost (c), output quantity (y), the prices of seed, fertilizers and labor inputs (wseed, wfert and wlab) and dummy variables to measure rice variety (dhqv) and copping season (ds-a and da-w) effects. we use variables related to farmer and farm characteristics including gender, educational levels, rice farming experience, extension, household size, land ownership, farm size, paddy diseases, natural disasters and distance to examine the sources of cost inefficiency among rice farmers. the definition and statistical summary of these variables are given in table 1. table 1. definition and descriptive statistics of variables. variable definition mean std. dev. variable cost, input prices and paddy quantity vc variable cost (usd). 859.01 735.48 y total quantity of harvested paddy (kg). 15,305.26 14,144.24 wfert the price of fertilizer (usd/kg). 0.40 0.06 wlab labor wage (usd/working day). 5.77 1.58 wseed the price of seed rice (usd/kg). 0.43 0.13 ds-a equal to 1 if the summer-autumn season, 0 otherwise. 0.36 0.48 da-w equal to 1 if the autumn-winter season, 0 otherwise. 0.27 0.45 dhqv equal to 1 if high-quality rice varieties, 0 otherwise. 0.42 0.49 factors affecting cost inefficiency gender gender of household head (equal to 1 if male, 0 otherwise). 0.96 0.20 education the educational levels of household head (years). 6.17 3.27 experience paddy production experience of household head (years ). 26.95 12.08 extension the number of paddy production extension attendances (number ). 2.45 4.88 house-size the number of household members (people). 3.75 1.49 land-own percentage of rice land owned by households (%). 75.11 37.41 farm-size farm size (hectare). 2.38 2.09 disaster paddy loss due to natural disasters (%). 11.00 12.98 disease paddy loss due to paddy diseases (%). 2.86 5.45 distance the distance from the house to the rice field (km). 1.47 4.64 4. results and discussion 4.1. estimates of the stochastic cost frontier function the calculated parameters for both models are shown in table 2 and they were implemented with stata software (version 17). table 2. estimates of the translog stochastic frontier cost function. variable pooled tre coefficient std. err. coefficient std. err. cost frontier model constant –0.304*** 0.023 –0.320*** 0.022 lnwseed 0.252*** 0.035 0.250*** 0.040 lnwfert 0.587*** 0.042 0.555*** 0.055 lny 0.914*** 0.013 0.872*** 0.015 ½lnwseed_sq 0.176 0.107 0.196* 0.109 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 18-24 21 variable pooled tre coefficient std. err. coefficient std. err. ½lnwfert_sq 0.424 0.274 0.686** 0.328 ½lny_sq 0.091*** 0.015 0.113*** 0.015 lnwseed_wfert –0.118 0.134 –0.201 0.133 lnwseed_y 0.002 0.027 0.000 0.026 lnwfert_y 0.104*** 0.040 0.074 0.045 ds-a 0.184*** 0.017 0.178*** 0.010 da-w 0.205*** 0.019 0.180*** 0.012 dhqv –0.047*** 0.017 –0.028* 0.016 cost inefficiency model constant –3.541*** 0.640 –4.500*** 0.821 gender –0.586 0.506 0.032 0.690 education –0.088 0.120 –0.082 0.140 experience 0.044 0.119 –0.071 0.142 extension –0.078 0.109 –0.104 0.136 house-size –0.197* 0.111 –0.156 0.120 land-own –0.178 0.110 0.081 0.136 farm-size 0.188 0.120 0.299** 0.124 disaster 1.121*** 0.156 1.211*** 0.147 disease 0.231** 0.103 0.219** 0.096 distance 0.164* 0.091 0.101 0.120 model properties σwi – – 0.174*** 0.009 e(σuit ) 0.163 – 0.139 – σvit 0.192*** 0.006 0.106*** 0.005 log-likelihood 130.05 – 286.65 – note: *, **, and *** denote the statistically significant levels at 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively. we use the lr test to identify the preferred functional form and model. the lr ratio to test the cobb-dough functional form against the translog form (h0: αjk = βh = γj = 0) for pooled and tre models are 288.68 and 63.44, respectively which are much greater than the critical values at a significant level of 99%, 𝜒0.99 2 (6) = 16.074 (kodde & palm, 1986) for all models. this suggests that the translog functional form represents rice production technology better than the cobb-dough functional form. subsequently, we test the absence of farm heterogeneity (𝐻0: 𝜎𝑤𝑖 = 0) using the lr test of the pooled model against the tre model with the translog form. the lr statistic is 313.2 much greater than the critical values at a significant level of 99%, (𝜒0.99 2 (1) = 5.412) confirming that there is strong evidence of the existence of farm heterogeneity among rice farmers. the existence of farm heterogeneity in the present data is also confirmed by the significant estimate of the parameter 𝜎𝑤𝑖 . the estimated parameters of the cost front ier functions for pooled and tre models are provided in table 2. the first-order coefficients of seed price, fertilizer price and output are as expected, positive and statistically signif icant at 1%. thus, the parameter estimates of the pooled and tre models satisfy the properties of the cost frontier function that the optimal variable cost has a positive relationship with output quantity and input prices. the estimate of the dhqv coefficient is negative and statistically significant in both pooled and tre models suggesting that the variable production cost of the high-quality rice variety is lower than that of the conventional variety group. the estimates of both models also show that there is strong evidence of the impact of cropping seasons on rice farmers’ variable cost frontier. the variable costs for rice production in the summer-autumn (ds-a) and autumn-winter (da-w) seasons are significantly higher than those in the winter-spring (dw-s) season. the est imate of theta (𝜎𝑤𝑖 ) in the tre model that measures farm heterogeneity is statistically signif icant implying that unobserved farm heterogeneity exists among rice farmers that needs to be taken into account. thus, the use of the tre model to control the heterogeneity effect is appropriate. table 3. summary of partial cost elasticities with respect to output quantity and input prices. variable pooled tre mean std. dev. mean std. dev. seed price 0.239 0.065 0.239 0.067 fertilizer price 0.543 0.137 0.521 0.165 labor price 0.218 0.159 0.240 0.162 output quantity 0.876 0.093 0.827 0.107 we predicted the partial variable cost elasticities with respect to paddy quantity and input prices to understand how the variable cost varies due to the changes in output quantity and input prices. the results will provide v ital information to support pol icymakers in designing appropriate policies to manage the rice sector based on the input asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 18-24 22 price and quantity instruments. the estimated results for each model are consistent as shown in table 3. the partial elasticities of variable cost in rice farming with respect to paddy quantity and input prices satisfy the properties of the cost function as mentioned above that they are positive for input prices and output quantity. the results also show that variable cost is more elastic with respect to paddy quantity than input prices. the partial variable cost elasticity with output quantity is 0.827 implying that if output quantity increases by 10%, the variable cost will increase by 8.27% given that other factors remain unchanged. the mean elasticity of variable costs with respect to fertilizer is 0.521, double that of seed and labor prices, 0.239 and 0.24, respectively. thus, a 10% increase in the input prices of fertilizer, seed and labor will increase the variable cost of rice production on average by 5.21%, 2.39% and 2.4% respectively keeping other factors constant. 4.2. cost efficiency analysis table 4 presents a summary of the cost efficiency estimates categorised by rice variety groups and cropping seasons. the average cost efficiency estimates for the pooled model are lower than those of the tre model, implying that inefficiency levels were overestimated because the pooled model is not able to consider farm heterogeneity. the average cost efficiency over sampled farms is 0.919 with a wide variation in cost efficiency among rice farmers (0.26– 0.99) implying that there is room for inefficient rice farms to save production costs if they reduce their inefficiency. our estimated mean cost efficiency is consistent with the results of tu and trang (2016) who showed that the mean cost efficiency in paddy production in an giang prov ince, vietnam’s mekong delta is 0.9 (0.72 –0.97). in addition, our result is close to the finding of siagian and soetjipto (2020) who found a result of 0.86 for rice households in indonesia. table 4. statistical summary of cost efficiency scores by cropping seasons and rice varieties. variable observation pooled tre mean std. dev. mean std. dev. by cropping season winter– spring 339 0.920 0.089 0.936 0.080 summer–autumn 329 0.905 0.073 0.924 0.062 autumn–winter 250 0.875 0.115 0.890 0.114 by variety high quality rice varieties 384 0.893 0.114 0.909 0.106 conventional rice varieties 534 0.910 0.074 0.926 0.070 overall cost efficiency 918 0.903 0.093 0.919 0.087 table 4 shows that there are differences in the mean cost efficiency among cropping seasons and rice variety groups. the traditional rice variety adopters had an average cost efficiency of 0.926 which is greater than that of the high-quality rice variaty adopters (0.909). this indicates that the high-quality rice variety group performed more inefficiently than the conventional variety group. the mean cost efficiency of the winter-spring cropping season is 0.936, higher than those of the summer-autumn and autumn-winter 0.924 and 0.89, respectively. thus, we find that seasons considerably affect variable cost frontiers and cost efficiency in rice farming among vietnamese rice farms. 4.3. determinants of cost inefficiency an important thing in efficiency measurement is to investigate the factors affecting farmers’ inefficiency performance by estimating the inefficiency model. table 2 presents the estimated outcomes of the cost inefficiency model (described in equation 1) in the present study. these findings were calculated concurrently with the stochastic cost frontier models (defined in equation 2). the results of the inefficiency model indicate that the estimates of educational levels, experience, household size, and extension are negative. however, they are not statistically significant implying that there is no clear evidence of the effects of these factors on farmers’ cost inefficiency performance. there is also no statistical evidence on the relationship between gender, rice land ownership, distance and cost inefficiency. we find that farm size has a positive impact on farmers’ cost inefficiency indicating that the larger the farm size, the more cost-inefficient farmers are. this finding is consistent with the findings of tu and trang (2016) in an giang, vietnam and siagian and soetjipto (2020) in indonesia. our research f inds that natural disasters and paddy diseases have a positive impact on cost inefficiency. 5. conclusion and policy implications this research measures cost efficiency and investigates the factors that influence the cost inefficiency among paddy households by applying the stochastic frontier analysis approach with a true random effects model. this paper used primary data gathered from 350 paddy households in the mekong delta, southern vietnam. the estimated results confirm that the absence of farm heterogeneity was rejected and is necessary to be controlled. this means that the estimated results of the true random effects model are more plausible than those of the pooled one. the firstorder estimates of variable input prices are positive and statistically significant as expected. we also find that variable costs have a positive relationship with paddy quantity. the partial cost elasticities with respect to paddy quantity and the prices of inputs indicate that variable costs in rice production are inelastic for output quantity and input prices. the partial cost elasticity estimate with respect to asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 14(1) 2024: 18-24 23 fertilizer price is 0.521, double that of seed and labor prices, 0.24 implying that fertilizer is the major input cost of rice farming. the partial cost elasticity estimate with respect to output quantity is 0.827 implying that if output quantity increases by 10%, the variable cost will increase by 8.27% keeping other factors constant. the estimation of cost efficiency reveals that although rice farmers exhibit a high cost efficiency (0.92) on average, cost efficiency scores among rice farmers have a wide range of variation (0.26 – 0.99). the research results suggest that inefficient rice farmers still have the potential to reduce production costs if they improve their efficiency. the estimates of the cost inefficiency model report that the variation in cost inefficiency among rice farms is due to rice area, natural disasters and rice d iseases. the results show that rice areas, natural disasters and rice d iseases positively and signif icantly impact farmers’ cost inefficiency. however, there is no evidence on the effects of education, rice farming experience, gender, household size, rice land ownership, extension and distance on farmers’ cost inefficiency performance. this study suggests that training programs should focus on improving the production skills of rice farmers so that they can manage input costs and deal with rice diseases and natural disasters better to reduce paddy losses. funding: this research is supported by the university of economics, hue university (grant number: nnc.đhkt.2023-06). institutional review board statement: not applicable. transparency: the authors state that the manuscript is honest, truthful, and transparent, that no key aspects of the investigation have been omitted, and that any differences from the study as planned have been clarified. this study followed all writing ethics. competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. references aigner, d., lovell, c. k., & schmidt, p. 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(2000). farm household efficiency in bangladesh: a comparison of stochastic frontier and dea methods. applied economics, 32(13), 1665-1673. https://doi.org/10.1080/000368400421011 views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the author views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. https://doi.org/10.55493/5005.v13i2.4778 https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1020686610802 https://doi.org/10.2307/1912331 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-0862.2012.00589.x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2003.10.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0304-3878(02)00054-8 https://doi.org/10.21776/ub.agrise.2020.020.1.2 https://doi.org/10.1111/1477-9552.12468 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aaspro.2015.08.013 https://doi.org/10.9734/ajaees/2016/19745 https://doi.org/10.1080/000368400421011 effect of selected insecticide on whitefly (bemisia tabaci) infesting brinjal plants 75 farm households’ vulnerability to climate change in cambodia, myanmar, and vietnam: an advanced livelihood vulnerability indexing approach dao duy minha aung tun oob ky sovanndarac adepartment of economics and development studies, university of economics, hue university, 99 ho dac di, hue city, vietnam. bdepartment of agricultural economics, ghent university, belgium. cgeneral directorate of agriculture, ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, cambodia.  ddminh@hce.edu.vn (corresponding author) article history abstract received: 21 november 2022 revised: 16 february 2023 accepted: 6 march 2023 published: 30 march 2023 keywords adaptive capacity advanced livelihood vulnerability indexing approach climate change livelihood vulnerability index approach livelihood. southeast asia is considered one of the world’s climate hotspots as the countries in the mekong region, in particular, will be the hardest hit by the impacts of climate change if the global temperature continues to rise. this study aims to evaluate the differences in climate changeinduced vulnerability of farm households in cambodia, vietnam, and myanmar. the total sample size was 999 farm respondents, of which 304 were from myanmar, 350 from vietnam, and 345 from cambodia. the farm households’ vulnerability was measured using an advanced indicator or indexing method with balanced or equal weighting. a total of 36 indicators were selected based on an extensive literature review and expert judgment. each major component was comprised of subcomponents and indicators, which were standardized using a balanced weighted average approach. the findings reveal that myanmar was high in all components of climate change vulnerability, whereas vietnam was the second most vulnerable country, followed by cambodia. based on the findings, we suggest implementing policy measures that aim to reduce the sensitivity dimension of farm households, such as by improving early warning systems, increasing public funding investment in infrastructure development, and creating embankments to prevent saltwater incursion, while empowering the adaptive capacity of farm households. furthermore, we also recommend establishing the necessary healthcare facilities, strengthening the public-private partnership, increasing outreach and healthcare services, and improving access to the formal credit system. contribution/originality: this study’s originality lies in the fact that it provides the first comparison of the livelihood vulnerability index among cambodia, vietnam, and myanmar; also, it combines novel and advanced index approaches that allow for the identification of the magnitude of the impact of each indicator and sub-component. doi: 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4768 issn(p): 2304-1455/ issn(e): 2224-4433 how to cite: minh, d. d., oo, a. t., & sovanndara, k. (2023). farm households’ vulnerability to climate change in cambodia, myanmar, and vietnam: an advanced livelihood vulnerability indexing approach. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1), 75–90. 10.55493/5005.v13i1.4768 © 2023 asian economic and social society. all rights reserved. asian journal of agriculture and rural development volume 13, issue 1 (2023): 75-90. http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6495-2719 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2203-5549 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8086-3153 mailto:ddminh@hce.edu.vn http://www.aessweb.com/journals/5005 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 76 1. introduction following the fourth ipcc assessment report, it is estimated that the flooded surface area in 33 deltas around the world will increase by 50% by 2100 (intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc), 2007). nguyen (2008) highlighted that saltwater intrusion could reach long distances from the coastline and affect water use in estuaries. it is forecasted that this will result in decreased wetland areas, coastal erosion, and increased salinization of cultivated land and groundwater (day et al., 2011; mcleod, poulter, hinkel, reyes, & salm, 2010; syvitski et al., 2009). southeast asia is considered one of the world’s climate hotspots, as this region will be the hardest hit by the impacts of climate change if the global temperature continues to rise (kreft, eckstein, junghans, kerestan, & hagen, 2013). it is highly vulnerable to adverse climate change impacts as it has extensive, heavily populated coastlines, large agricultural sectors, and large sections of the population living under $2 or even $1 per day (asian development bank (adb), 2009; gerlitz, hunzai, & hoermann, 2012). agriculture plays an important role in many countries in the region, accounting for 11% of gross domestic product (gdp) in 2006, and providing 43.4% of employment in 2004; although rapid economic growth and structural transformation are taking place, the increasing effects of climate change on the region’s agricultural sector will be more severe in the future (asian development bank (adb), 2009). in particular, the mekong region, which comprises cambodia, myanmar, vietnam, laos, and thailand and is renowned for its rice production, is severely impacted by the adverse effects of climate change, including flooding and saltwater intrusion. several studies have forecasted a potential decline in crop yields and production areas in the mekong and southeast asia regions (asian development bank (adb), 2014; usaid, 2019; world bank, 2010). in the mekong delta, for example, a loss of 193 thousand hectares of rice paddies may result from inundation caused by the expected 30 cm sea level rise by 2050 (world bank, 2010). given that about 58% of the population of asia lives in rural areas where their main livelihood relies on agriculture, the negative impacts of climate on agriculture and rural poverty are serious concerns (intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc), 2014). in this region, flood risks are also extremely high; the greatest recorded losses of life and economic losses resulted from riverine flooding and saltwater intrusion during 2011–2015 (debarati, hoyois, & below, 2016). the risk of flood is large in the mekong river basins, as heavy precipitation is often recorded, and the frequency is projected to increase (asian development bank (adb), 2014; kundzewicz et al., 2014). in the mekong region, households are facing more adverse impacts that threaten their livelihoods than in other countries (martin & lorenzen, 2016). in fact, farming activities and vulnerability have often been noted as a vicious cycle that pushes households into higher-risk positions. various evidence has shown that households in developing countries tend to be more vulnerable due to their dependence on subsistence agriculture and livestock production combined with poor adaptive capacity and limited access to resources and production capital to mitigate the impacts of climate change (baffoe & matsuda, 2018; nguyen, shunbo, & shah, 2019). in vietnam, myanmar, and cambodia, the majority of citizens live in rural areas, and their main source of income is farming activities (approximately 70%, 80%, and 65.1% of the population living in rural areas of myanmar, cambodia, and vietnam, respectively (tran & shaw, 2007; usaid, 2019; world food program, 2008). these countries are considered the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate variability and natural hazards in the mekong region. of these, myanmar is ranked second on the list of the top ten climate-hazardous countries in the world, while vietnam and cambodia are considered the most vulnerable countries on the mainland of southeast asia (department of foreign affairs and trade, 2019; tran & shaw, 2007; world food program, 2008). a recent report showed that in may 2008, cyclone nargis caused severe damage across the ayeyarwady delta region, reportedly killing around 140,000 people. in august 2018, monsoon flooding across myanmar displaced more than 150,000 people (department of foreign affairs and trade, 2019). in the case of vietnam, the impacts of climate change and natural hazards are increasing and various types of damage have been reported. vietnam is one of nine countries where at least 50 million people will be exposed to the impacts of rising sea levels and more powerful storms, among other dangers (ipcc, 2018). vietnam is among the countries of the world most vulnerable to climate change in the next couple of decades. similar climate issues are observed in the case of cambodia. for example, a report by the united states agency for international development (usaid; 2019) stated that in 2015, adverse climate impacts resulted in losses of approximately $1.5 billion, equivalent to 10 percent of its annual gdp. the country is particularly challenged due to low adaptive capacity, widespread poverty, and its geographic location in the mekong river and tonle sap basins. climate change will threaten this country in various ways in the coming decades, including in the areas of food security, water availability, human health, fisheries, and ecosystems (usaid, 2019). if proper management practices and adaptation measures are not implemented, severe flood risks will exist, and farm households will be the most vulnerable to erratic rainfall, increased precipitation, and saltwater intrusion into farmlands (intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc), 2014). therefore, an empirical study on the impacts of climate change on farm households in the mekong river basin is quite relevant. however, few previous studies have been conducted on the likely impacts of climate change on agriculture and the vulnerability of farm households. moreover, previous studies have not compiled information on the entire mekong region and have failed to present strategies to tackle farm households’ increasing vulnerability to climate change in the mekong region. consequently, there is a critical need to conduct empirical research studies in cambodia, myanmar, and vietnam (cmv) to evaluate the climate change vulnerability of farm households in the mekong region and to prepare for short-term and long-term adjustments to the expected changes at different levels. this study aims to compare the level (index) of vulnerability to the adverse effects of climate change in cmv countries, and based on the results, the study will propose orientations, solutions, and recommendations for households, local governments, and central governments. this study is guided by the following questions: (i) what are the indicators that could be applied to calculate the livelihood vulnerability index (lvi)? (ii) which country is most vulnerable based on the evaluation of lvi? (iii) based on the lvi findings and each major component, what are essential solutions/recommendations that should be implemented to reduce the lvi in cmv countries? the remainder of this asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 77 paper is structured as follows: section 2 discusses the theoretical conceptualization; section 3 describes the study areas; section 4 presents and discusses the results, and section 5 offers conclusions and recommendations. not only does this study provide meaningful comparisons of the lvi among cmv countries and precise policy recommendations at the regional level, but it also offers an advanced approach to lvi by exploring the specific contribution (negative or positive) of each indicator of the major components and overall lvi. this innovative approach offers new guidelines for scholars working in the fields of climate change impacts, climate change adaptation, and water insecurity. 2. theoretical conceptualization 2.1. context rising sea levels, a longer dry season with less rainfall, more intense rainfall in the rainy season, and shifts in the timing, duration, and intensity of seasons are currently the major challenges in the mekong region (parry, 2007). climate change has impacted agricultural crop production and challenged food security in the mekong region. flooding and saltwater intrusion pose threats to the livelihoods and socioeconomic status of farm households in delta and lowland areas. for instance, in cambodia’s delta region, the severe impacts of climate change include a series of severe floods and droughts (ministry of agriculture forestry and fisheries, 2014). this climate variability and change has adverse effects on climate-sensitive livelihood-dependency farmers. in vietnam, households’ vulnerable features combined with the negative effects of climate change trap them in increasing challenges (tran & shaw, 2007). rising sea levels cause saltwater intrusion and flooding of agricultural land, ultimately threatening the livelihoods of farm households in the delta region of myanmar (oo, huylenbroeck, & speelman, 2018; sein et al., 2015). 2.2. the concept and measurement of vulnerability the concept of vulnerability was first proposed and developed in the sustainable livelihood framework (slf) in the 1980s (chambers, 1989; scoones, 1998). since then, this idea has been applied by various practitioners in different fields of rural development study (carswell, 1997; dfid, 2008; ellis, 1998). with the increasingly adverse impacts of climate change, vulnerability evaluations have drawn much attention in the literature (tian, brown, bao, & qi, 2015). this involved a broad approach including many principles from economics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and engineering (adger, 2006; sujakhu et al., 2018). it was divided into two schools of thought, one side focused on theory and definitions (baffoe, 2019; bebbington, 1999; carr, 2014; carswell, 1997; engle, 2011; hinkel, 2011a; smit & wandel, 2006; wiréhn, danielsson, & neset, 2015), while the other side developed and applied the indicator system to empirical research (adu, kuwornu, anim-somuah, & sasaki, 2018; ahsan & warner, 2014; baffoe & matsuda, 2018; bhattacharjee & behera, 2018; few & tran, 2010; hafezi, sahin, stewart, & mackey, 2018; hahn, riederer, & foster, 2009; huang, huang, he, & yang, 2017; nguyen, nguyen, le, burny, & lebailly, 2018; nhuận, 2015; oo et al., 2018; rahman, mia, ford, robinson, & hickey, 2018; shah, dulal, johnson, & baptiste, 2013; vincent, 2004). several authors have argued that vulnerability remains a vague concept and is still inconsistently defined (adger, 2006; hinkel, 2008), leading to different indexes. in the same vein, others have even stated that vulnerability cannot be measured at all (moss, brenkert, & malone, 2001; patt, schroter, & de la vega-leinert, 2008). nevertheless, hinkel (2011b) presented four types of arguments for the development of vulnerability indicators: (i) deductive, (ii) inductive, (iii) normative, and (iv) non-substantial arguments. the strength of this approach was the simplicity of forming an index. in fact, it has been previously applied by several researchers on climate change vulnerability (hinkel, 2011b). however, it remains difficult to select appropriate indicators. the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) (2014) proposed that an lvi evaluation should include three dimensions of vulnerability: sensitivity, adaptive capacity, and exposure. thus, vulnerability was conceptualized as being constituted of a group of components including exposure and sensitivity to external stressors, and the capacity to adapt (adger, 2006). exposure is the degree, duration, and/or extent to which the system is in contact with, or subject to, the disturbance; sensitivity is the degree to which the system is modified or affected by a disorder; finally, the capacity to adapt (also known as adaptive capacity) is the system’s ability to cope with or recover from the disturbance (fischer, 2018). 2.3. the livelihood vulnerability index when building and applying an indicator-based approach, there are several important considerations. firstly, they are commonly used to assess the climate vulnerability of a system or society and are used for assessment at all levels to aggregate data into vulnerability indices (hinkel, 2011b). secondly, the indicators or selected variables in these approaches are very site-specific and vary between regions. hence, climate change vulnerability has been analyzed in different contexts and can be assessed exclusively from a climate perspective or at a regional or national level (diouf & gaye, 2015). in the assessment of climate vulnerability, adger (1996) and kelly and adger (2000) recommended that a vulnerability index should be considered a function of social vulnerability and environmental risk. also, most vulnerability assessment indicators are used to indicate how vulnerable a system or community is; generally, a single measurement of characteristics is needed to develop an advanced approach that allows the lvi to cover multiple aspects, such as comparing different countries (deressa, hassan, ringler, alemu, & yesuf, 2009; hinkel, 2008, 2011a). last but not least, diouf and gaye (2015) pointed out that three main limitations of index-formulation must be taken into account. these relate to the inappropriate nature of the relationship posed by the indices, the incumbent relationship of these indices upon aggregation, and questions about local specificities in the formulation of national indices. recently, vulnerability assessment has become a core exercise in understanding development challenges and climate change influences in many contexts (baffoe & matsuda, 2018). consequently, specialists have stated that vulnerability assessment should cover the connections between humans and their physical and social surroundings, as asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 78 well as their economic and political environments (intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc), 2014; united nations office for disaster risk reduction (undrr), 2004). hence, many scholars posited that the lvi assessment was a vital step in developing adaptation strategies, policies, and programs to reduce risks associated with climate change (nguyen et al., 2019; sujakhu et al., 2018). reasonably, an lvi assessment plays a critical role in answering three important questions about households’ adaptation strategies, including, “what to adapt to?”, “how to adapt?” and “when to adapt?” (hafezi et al., 2018). to establish an lvi record, scholars have proposed and applied a wide range of approaches; however, they share some general steps. in the first step, it is necessary to identify the indicators to collect information (oo et al., 2018; tessema, joerin, & patt, 2018). next, an indicator-based approach is applied to score the overall index as well as the partial score of each major component. this approach is adopted following strictly a balanced weighted average approach (carl, gary, & stuart, 2009; hahn et al., 2009). to conclude, the dilemma of selecting which framework to apply and how many indicator systems to use for vulnerability assessment depends on many factors, including geographic conditions, temporal scale, and socioeconomic status of the research sites. no single approach is flawless because each has strengths and limitations (oo et al., 2018). moreover, few previous studies have conducted collaborative research to examine lvi by country. this cross-country study tried to fill this gap with the aim of proposing solutions at the regional level. to do so, literature-grounded and locally specific indicators were selected. in addition, the selected indicators were checked by local experts in a focus group discussion and validated with 10 pilot respondents. therefore, the indicators include 36 units, grouped into 7 major components, which convey farm households’ vulnerability to climate change in cambodia, myanmar, and vietnam (cmv). 3. study areas empirical research was conducted in three delta areas of the cmv countries. to select the sampling areas, we first collected demographic data and secondary data to find areas prone to frequent flooding and saltwater intrusion. in vietnam, thua thien hue province is located along the inner border of the east sea and has a total area of 503 thousand ha, of which 75.1% is mountainous, and 24.9% is delta area. the average annual rainfall ranges from 2600 mm to 4000 mm. thua thien hue province is known as a flood-prone area in the delta of vietnam. the survey was conducted in four communities: vinh thai and vinh phu in phu vang district and quang loi and quang thai in quang dien district (see figure 1). a total of 350 samples from thua thien hue were collected for the study. figure 1. thua thien hue province and research areas. note: provincial committee of thua thien hue (2018). in cambodia, prey veng province borders kampong cham to the northwest, tbong khmum to the northeast, svay rieng to the east, and vietnam to the south. it is traversed by the mekong and the tonle bassac, two of the nation's principal rivers. the province covers 4,883 km2, which equals 2.7% of the total land area of cambodia (181,035 km2). two districts in the floodplains of the mekong river, peam chor, and sithor kandal, were selected for this study (see figure 2). these are categorized as ‘flood-prone’ areas. four communities were selected, romlech, chhrey khmom, koh chek, and preak sambour, which are located in the floodplain of the lower mekong river (am, cuccillato, nkem, & chevillard, 2013). the target communities and villages were selected based on discussions with key informants from the department of agriculture and the communities’ chiefs. in total, 369 samples were collected, but due to missing information, only 345 were used in this study. in myanmar, empirical research was conducted in the labutta and pyapon districts in the lower ayeyarwaddy region (see figure 3). the ayeyarwady delta basin is the largest river basin in myanmar, covering 404,200 km2. it is known as the rice pot of myanmar. rice production in the region accounts for 30% of myanmar ’s total production (department of agricultural planning, 2014; ministry of agriculture, livestock and irrigation (moali), 2016). the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 79 pyapon district comprises four townships (bogale, pyapon, kyaiklat, and dedaye), which include 298 village tracts and 1,450 villages. figure 1. map of research regions in prey veng province. the pyapon district is situated between 16° 15’ n and 95° 30’ e, while the labutta district is located between 16° 10’ n and 95° 00’ e. these regions are located 131 km from yangon, the capital. the total area of pyapon is about 5,500 km2, and its cultivable land area is roughly 3,400 km2. the total population of pyapon is around 1.03 million, 13.11% of whom are urban dwellers, while 86.89% live in rural areas. the total population of labutta district is around 0.626 million, 10.5 % of whom are urban dwellers. a total of 345 farms’ respondents were interviewed. due to the missing information and incomplete data, only 304 samples were used as data. figure 3. map showing the location of pyapon and labutta districts. 4. results and discussion a comparative analysis of the climate change vulnerability of farm households to saltwater intrusion and flooding was carried out based on 7 major vulnerability index components. the sub-component indicators were acquired based on structured questionnaires and in-depth analysis of the study areas of myanmar, vietnam, and cambodia (table 1, table 2, and figure 4). the following sections present and discuss the findings. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 80 4.1. socio-demographics in the socio-demographic dimension, five indicators were considered: farm households without electricity, average age, household-head without secondary education, female-headed household, and population density. the results showed that cambodia was the most vulnerable country, after which came vietnam (scores: 0.368 and 0.331, respectively), while myanmar was less vulnerable (0.325). the data showed that the distribution of the vietnamese population was younger than that of myanmar and cambodia (0.354, 0.412, and 0.485, respectively), implying that vietnam has more advantages when diversifying livelihood activities for earning a larger income through labor productivity. vietnam and cambodia have achieved more success in widening access to the electrical network through a variety of sources, while myanmar still has a limited supply. the results showed that in vietnam (0.044) and cambodia (0.092) there was less vulnerability than in myanmar (0.756). cambodia was the most vulnerable for the indicator household-head without secondary school (0.74), followed by vietnam (0.214) and myanmar (0.095). in the case of vietnam, since the 2000s, in the context of a large average family size, households tended to encourage family members to leave their communities to get a job in a nearby town or abroad. myanmar has recently achieved success with its national education program, while cambodia still lacks a focus on this important sector, especially in rural areas. the highest proportion of female-headed households was found in cambodia (0.13), followed by vietnam (0.052) and myanmar (0.043), respectively. women generally have more decision-making power in cambodia, while in the other countries, the man still plays a crucial role; the marked inequality of gender contribution reduces the vulnerability. regarding the population density, for the whole region in vietnam, the majority of populated areas were close to the sea where the impacts of rising sea levels and flooding often affected the community, while cambodia and myanmar were found to be less vulnerable in terms of population density (0.312 and 0.392, respectively). 4.2. livelihood strategy this domain included the indicators: household with agriculture as the main income source, household without a secondary job, household receiving non-farm income, household with at least one migrant, and household without insurance. this study found that the agricultural sector is the main source of livelihood in the cmv countries. in myanmar, many households reported that agriculture was their main income source (0.98), followed by cambodia and vietnam (0.81 and 0.723, respectively). in the case of vietnam, although the central government has recently begun to encourage the application of new machines, technologies, and models in the agricultural sector to increase farm productivity, it still needs to increase the industrial and service sectors’ share of the gdp. this would downscale the influence of agriculture on economic development. regarding the other indicators, an interesting feature of agricultural activities is their seasonality, which provides households with another strategy to reduce their vulnerability and diversify their income inflow. the survey findings showed that the proportion of households with a second job was high in all three countries; the highest vulnerability was in myanmar (0.681), followed by vietnam (0.583) and cambodia (0.545). there is no doubt that migration is a crucial strategy for households in developing countries. it is important not only as it increases income, but it also supplies livelihood diversification to support local economic development (adger, kelly, winkels, huy, & locke, 2002; aggarwal, 2016; coffey, papp, & spears, 2015; nguyen, raabe, & grote, 2015). the study found that vietnam scored the highest value on the migration indicator (0.574); myanmar ranked second with a moderate score (0.501), and the lowest value was found in cambodia (0.211). having insurance contributes significantly to an improvement in the quality of life, especially as it allows poor households to cope with issues of illness. in vietnam, the national health program encourages every household to take part in the insurance program. this was a successful policy leading to an absolute minimum of vulnerability (0.000). in contrast, this indicator was very high in myanmar (0.756), while none of the studied households in cambodia had insurance (1.000). 4.3. social network this major component included four indicators: average distance to the nearest market, household received remittance help, household received social help, and household received community help. the distance from the household to the nearest market affects its ability to access food and drink as well as production means; therefore, it is important for satisfying basic household needs. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 81 table 1. sub-components and major components of the livelihood vulnerability index for farm households in cmv countries (2017–2019). major components sub-components myanmar vietnam cambodia myanmar vietnam cambodia value of observation value of lvi socio-demographics (5) average age 41.2 35.4 48.5 0.412 0.354 0.485 % household without electricity 75.6 4.4 9.2 0.756 0.044 0.092 % household head without secondary education 9.5 21.4 74.0 0.095 0.214 0.740 % female household head 5.2 4.3 13.0 0.052 0.043 0.130 population density 188.6 605.3 237.0 0.312 1.000 0.392 overall socio-demographics score 0.325 0.331 0.368 livelihood strategies (5) % household with agriculture as main income source 98.0 72.3 81.0 0.980 0.723 0.810 % household without secondary job 68.1 58.3 54.5 0.681 0.583 0.545 % household income from non-farm act. 34.9 19.1 38.5 0.349 0.191 0.385 % household without at least one migrant 21.1 57.4 50.1 0.211 0.574 0.501 % household without insurance 75.6 1.9 100.0 0.756 0.019 0.000 overall livelihood strategies score 0.595 0.418 0.448 social network (4) average distance to nearest market 6.2 3.2 1.9 1.000 0.522 0.299 % household without remittance help 93.4 6.2 50.1 0.934 0.549 0.501 % household without social help 96.1 52.0 61.8 0.961 0.520 0.618 % household without community help 4.3 7.7 4.6 0.043 0.077 0.046 overall social network score 0.735 0.417 0.366 health (5) average distance to health facilities (miles) 3.9 2.9 2.0 1.000 0.734 0.505 average time to health facilities 0.4 0.1 12.2 0.441 0.082 0.122 % household with sanitary latrine/toilet 9.8 0.0 20.9 0.098 0.000 0.209 % household missed work or school due to illness 39.4 7.7 11.1 0.395 0.077 0.111 % household with members with chronic illness 21.1 8.3 24.4 0.211 0.082 0.244 overall health score 0.429 0.195 0.218 food (7) % household food strategy: take loan 62.8 88.0 38.8 0.628 0.880 0.388 % household food strategy: sell property 75.3 3.4 29.0 0.753 0.034 0.290 % household that does not save food 19.1 2.0 4.3 0.192 0.020 0.043 % household that does not save seed 14.1 0.0 2.7 0.141 0.000 0.027 % household consumes non-cash food items 57.2 57.4 59.1 0.572 0.574 0.591 average food insecure months 1.3 0.1 1.2 1.000 0.060 0.481 average household food expenditure 217.2 109034.0 80.6 1.000 0.502 0.371 overall food score 0.612 0.296 0.313 % household reporting water conflict 36.2 3.7 16.8 0.362 0.037 0.168 asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 82 water (4) % household difficulties in drainage 56.6 5.7 46.3 0.566 0.057 0.463 % household no secure water in rainy season 28.9 17.4 32.2 0.289 0.174 0.322 % household no secure water in dry season 12.2 17.7 58.3 0.121 0.177 0.583 overall water score 0.335 0.111 0.384 natural hazards (4) % household reports no early warning 30.3 96.3 69.9 0.303 0.372 0.699 % household with injuries as a result of nh 3.6 2.9 1.4 0.036 0.029 0.014 % household loss of housing (asset) as a result of natural hazards 91.4 48.6 22.0 0.914 0.486 0.220 average mean rainfall (mm) 3050.1 3468.9 1413.0 0.824 1.000 0.407 overall natural hazards score 0.519 0.472 0.335 lvi 0.511 0.317 0.344 table 2. sign of contribution of each component to major components and overall lvi. major component sub-component myanmar vietnam cambodia major component lvi major component lvi major component lvi +/value sign of contribution +/value sign of contribution +/-value sign of contribution +/-value sign of contribution +/-value sign of contribution +/-value sign of contribution sociodemographic (5) average age 0.087 *pb -0.099 **nb 0.023 pb 0.037 pb 0.117 pb 0.141 pb % household without electricity 0.431 pb 0.245 pb -0.287 nb -0.274 nb -0.276 nb -0.252 nb % household head without secondary education -0.230 nb -0.416 nb -0.117 nb -0.103 nb 0.372 pb 0.396 pb % female household head -0.273 nb -0.459 nb -0.288 nb -0.274 nb -0.238 nb -0.214 nb population density -0.013 nb -0.199 nb 0.669 pb 0.683 pb 0.024 pb 0.048 pb livelihood strategies (5) % household agriculture as main income source 0.385 pb 0.469 pb 0.305 pb 0.406 pb 0.362 pb 0.466 pb % household without secondary job 0.086 pb 0.170 pb 0.165 pb 0.266 pb 0.097 pb 0.201 pb % household income from non-farm act. -0.246 nb -0.162 nb -0.227 nb -0.126 nb -0.063 nb 0.041 pb % household without at least one migrant -0.384 nb -0.300 nb 0.156 pb 0.257 pb 0.053 pb 0.157 pb % household without insurance 0.161 pb 0.245 pb -0.399 nb -0.298 nb -0.448 nb -0.344 nb social network (4) average distance to nearest market 0.266 pb 0.489 pb 0.105 pb 0.205 pb -0.067 nb -0.045 nb % household received remittance help 0.200 pb 0.423 pb 0.132 pb 0.232 pb 0.135 pb 0.157 pb % household received social help 0.227 pb 0.450 pb 0.103 pb 0.203 pb 0.252 pb 0.274 pb % household received community help -0.692 nb -0.468 nb -0.340 nb -0.240 nb -0.320 nb -0.298 nb health (5) average distance to health facilities (miles) 0.571 pb 0.489 pb 0.539 pb 0.417 pb 0.287 pb 0.161 pb asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 83 average time to health facilities 0.012 pb -0.070 nb -0.113 nb -0.235 nb -0.096 nb -0.222 nb % household with sanitary latrine/toilet -0.331 nb -0.413 nb -0.195 nb -0.317 nb -0.009 nb -0.135 nb % household missed work or school due to illness -0.034 nb -0.116 nb -0.118 nb -0.240 nb -0.107 nb -0.233 nb % household with members _chronic illness -0.218 nb -0.300 nb -0.113 nb -0.235 nb 0.026 pb -0.100 nb food (7) % household food strategy: take loan 0.016 pb 0.117 pb 0.584 pb 0.563 pb 0.075 pb 0.044 pb % household food strategy: sell property 0.141 pb 0.242 pb -0.262 nb -0.283 nb -0.023 nb -0.054 nb % household does not save food -0.420 nb -0.319 nb -0.276 nb -0.297 nb -0.270 nb -0.301 nb % household does not save seed -0.471 nb -0.370 nb -0.296 nb -0.317 nb -0.286 nb -0.317 nb % household consumes noncash food items -0.040 nb 0.061 pb 0.278 pb 0.257 pb 0.278 pb 0.247 pb average food insecure months 0.388 pb 0.489 pb -0.236 nb -0.257 nb 0.168 pb 0.137 pb average household food expenditure 0.388 pb 0.489 pb 0.206 pb 0.185 pb 0.058 pb 0.027 pb water (4) % household reporting water conflict 0.028 pb -0.149 nb -0.074 nb -0.280 nb -0.216 nb -0.176 nb % household difficulties in drainage 0.232 pb 0.055 pb -0.054 nb -0.260 nb 0.079 pb 0.119 pb % household no secure water in rainy season -0.046 nb -0.222 nb 0.063 pb -0.143 nb -0.062 nb -0.022 nb % household no secure water in dry season -0.214 nb -0.390 nb 0.066 pb -0.140 nb 0.199 pb 0.239 pb natural hazards (4) % household reports no early warning -0.208 nb -0.208 nb 0.055 pb 0.055 pb 0.355 pb 0.355 pb % household with injuries as a result of nh -0.475 nb -0.475 nb -0.288 nb -0.288 nb -0.330 nb -0.330 nb % household loss of housing (asset) as a result of nh 0.403 pb 0.403 pb 0.169 pb 0.169 pb -0.124 nb -0.124 nb average mean rainfall (mm) 0.313 pb 0.313 pb 0.683 pb 0.683 pb 0.063 pb 0.063 pb % pb 52.9 47.1 50.0 44.1 52.9 52.9 note: *pb: positive contribution – an indicator contributes to higher vulnerability; **nb: negative contribution – an indicator contributes to lower vulnerability. asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 84 myanmar was the most vulnerable according to this indicator (1.000), followed by vietnam (0.552) and cambodia (0.229). households in myanmar face numerous challenges, not only in accessing input providers but also in accessing markets to sell their farm products. considering remittance from migrants, myanmar again scored highest (0.934), implying that very few households in this country receive income from migrant family members. vietnam had a moderate value (0.549), while cambodia (0.501) scored the lowest. the social help category generally consisted of support from non-governmental organizations (ngos) and charity groups. the survey findings indicated that households in vietnam (0.574) were less vulnerable compared to those in cambodia (0.618) and myanmar (0.961). as for community help, this domain showed a low level of vulnerability, meaning that households are well-supported by local communities when facing immediate emergencies. myanmar and cambodia recorded the lowest and secondlowest values (0.043 and 0.046), followed by vietnam (0.077). 4.4. health this major component includes five indicators: average distance to healthcare facilities, average time to healthcare facilities, household with a sanitary latrine/toilet, household missed work or school due to illness, and household with members with a chronic illness. the distance from the household to the nearest healthcare facilities was indicative of the availability of this public service to inhabitants in the case of an emergency. myanmar had absolute vulnerability in this category (1.000); meanwhile, vietnam also had a very high score (0.734) compared with cambodia (0.505). the average time to healthcare facilities reflected the time it took to travel from the home to the nearest healthcare facility. thanks to the development of its transport system and diversification of vehicles, vietnam had the advantage in this criterion with the lowest score (0.082), while the household vulnerability was higher in myanmar due to its limited or poor infrastructure system and lengthy travel times (0.441) and relatively low in the case of cambodia (0.122). turning to the point of household access to a sanitary latrine or toilet, with the improvement in living conditions supported by various programs, none of the studied households in vietnam lacked a sanitary toilet. similarly, cambodia and myanmar have achieved considerable success through programs and, therefore, have a very low vulnerable index (0.098 in myanmar and 0.209 in cambodia). households’ general health was evident in the low scores for the indicator measuring households whose members missed work or school due to illness in the three countries (vietnam: 0.077, cambodia: 0.111, and myanmar: 0.395). similarly, in the case of households having a family member with a chronic illness, the highest household score was in cambodia (0.244), followed by myanmar (0.211), and the lowest was in vietnam (0.082). to sum up, vietnam has achieved impressive improvements due to the success of its national health program compared to the other countries. myanmar showed limitations in the health domain, while cambodia showed various successes. as mentioned above, it is necessary to pay more attention to myanmar and take a multi-actor, multicontext, and multi-approach perspective to solve the noted issues. 4.5. food this major component includes seven indicators: household food strategy: take loan, household food strategy: sell property, household does not save food, household does not save seed, household consumes non-cash food items, average food insecure months, and average household food expenditure. taking out a loan to buy food was the most popular strategy in vietnam and myanmar, with high scores of 0.880 and 0.628, respectively, whereas it was a less common strategy in cambodia (0.388). for the strategy of selling property, myanmar again had the highest score (0.753), contrasting with the low scores of cambodia and vietnam (0.290 and 0.034). the findings also showed that households were mainly successful in saving food; the three countries each reported low scores. the data show that myanmar was the most vulnerable (0.192), followed by cambodia (0.043) and vietnam (0.020). regarding the saving of seed, households in vietnam and cambodia mainly used seed from providers with the support of the local government, which explains the low scores of these countries (0.000 and 0.027). the findings also showed a low vulnerability score (0.141) in the case of myanmar. next, the study findings also indicated that households in the three countries mostly obtained their food items both from existing natural sources and from the market, as each country recorded a moderate value regarding the consumption of non-cash food items (0.591, 0.574, and 0.572 for cambodia, myanmar, and vietnam, respectively). farm households generally raise poultry for meat and eggs and cultivate vegetable crops as a source of nutrition. the average number of food insecure months was highest in myanmar (1.000), followed by cambodia (0.481) and vietnam as the least vulnerable country in this respect (0.060). concerning the average household food expenditure, a similar trend was observed; myanmar again scored highest (1.000), followed by vietnam (0.502) and cambodia (0.371). overall, for food, myanmar was the most vulnerable country with a high index score of 0.612, while cambodia and vietnam scored lower: 0.313 and 0.296, respectively. 4.6. water this component included four indicators to analyze water vulnerability: household reporting water conflict, household with drainage difficulties, household with no secure water in the rainy season, and household with no secure water in the dry season. households rarely reported water conflicts with other users (0.168 in cambodia and 0.037 in vietnam), although myanmar scored higher on this issue (0.362). conflicts may occur within and between local communities over issues of agriculture and aquaculture. there may be a strong link between the degree of water conflict and drainage systems. households in myanmar coped with many challenges in the drainage system, (0.566), followed by cambodia (0.463), whereas vietnam’s well-constructed drainage system led to a low vulnerability score (0.057). concerning households’ water security by season, in the rainy season, cambodia was found to have the highest score (0.322), slightly higher than that of myanmar (0.289), and vietnam was the least vulnerable (0.174). turning to the dry season, both vietnam (0.177) and myanmar (0.121) had low levels of vulnerability, while cambodia showed the asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 85 highest vulnerability (0.583). overall, for water, cambodia was the most vulnerable with a score of 0.384, followed by myanmar with 0.335 and vietnam with 0.111. 4.7. natural hazards this domain is comprised of four indicators: household reported no early warning, household experienced injuries as a result of natural hazards, household lost housing (asset) as a result of natural hazards, and average mean rainfall. the study found that a high percentage of households did not receive early warning information. cambodia had the highest score (0.699), vietnam ranked second (0.372), and the lowest value was in myanmar (0.303). myanmar’s success in giving early warnings contributed positively to households’ adaptation to natural hazards, compared to the situation in vietnam and cambodia. overall, there was a low level of injuries caused by natural hazards; myanmar had the highest score (0.036), followed by vietnam (0.029) and cambodia (0.014). regarding damage to housing in the last five years, households in myanmar were highly vulnerable (0.914), those in vietnam reported a moderate level (0.486), while cambodia had the lowest vulnerability score (0.220). finally, regarding the indicator average mean rainfall, vietnam had absolute vulnerability (1.000) as it has the highest rainfall in southeast asia. myanmar ranked second (0.824), followed by cambodia (0.407). overall, for natural hazards, myanmar and vietnam had a relatively high level of vulnerability (0.604 and 0.573, respectively), while cambodia was less vulnerable (0.335). as described above, this study attempts to analyze the impact of the various indicators on the major components and the overall lvi. an indicator may have a positive effect (increasing vulnerability) if its value is greater than the mean of the lvi or major component. in-depth analysis allows the researcher to identify more specific recommendations than those obtained by relying only on the overall score – similar to the marginal analysis of factor analysis. the specific impact analysis results of each factor are presented in table 2 and figures 4, 5, and 6. they allow us to determine the particular contribution of each indicator to the lvi and the major components. all three countries share a common feature, which is a large variation between the absolute values of the factors compared to the lvi index and the major components. given that they show the common features of countries heavily affected by climate change, the large variation explains that the vulnerability will be different for different groups, and different major components have different levels of variation. vietnam has the most fluctuation in the domains of socio-demographics, food, and natural hazards, while myanmar has the largest range in livelihood strategies and water. in contrast, cambodia has a moderate degree of fluctuation in the different major components compared to the other countries. figure 4. positive contribution of indicators to lvi and major components. figure 4 shows that more than 50% of the indicators contribute to the score of the major components of lvi, the greatest contribution of which can be found in cambodia and myanmar; in other words, the level of contribution of the indicators that increase the relative vulnerability is relatively higher. for the overall lvi, the contribution of indicators that increase vulnerability accounts for nearly 53% in cambodia, while this contribution is lower in vietnam and myanmar, at 44% and 47%, respectively. 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0 cambodia vietnam myanmar cambodia vietnam myanmar contribution to major components 52.9 50.0 52.9 contribution to lvi 52.9 44.1 47.1 contribution to major components contribution to lvi asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 86 figure 5. detailed contribution of each indicator to the major components of lvi. note: % of contribution is calculated as the number of negative contributions/ number of indicators of the major component*100. example: sociodemogrphaphic_myanmar: 2/5*100=40%. figure 6. detailed contribution of each indicator to lvi. note: % of contribution is calculated by the number of positive contributions/ 34*100; example sd_myanmar: 1/34*100=2.9%. figures 5 and 6 show the detailed impact of specific indicators on the major components and the overall lvi. the results give us a deeper insight into their contribution to the overall impact level. the post-analysis of the major components shows that the cumulative contributions of the indexes are very different for the component groups, except in the case of livelihood strategy and water, which implies that each country should apply different policies to reduce the impact of climate change, based on the impact level on each specific domain. the detailed analysis of factors affecting lvi allows us to measure the degree to which each major component contributes to the overall lvi. the results show that in myanmar, the major components that most increase the overall vulnerability are food, livelihood strategy, and social network. cambodia is similar, although socio-demographics replace social network. in the case of vietnam, the contribution to increased vulnerability does not differ significantly; it is concentrated on livelihood strategy, social network, food, and natural hazards. 4.8. comparison of major components in myanmar, vietnam, and cambodia finally, we compared the seven major components among the three countries to obtain a regional overview of the climate change vulnerability of farm households. the study found that myanmar had a high vulnerability score with four major components fluctuating around 0.6, including social network, food, natural hazards, and livelihood strategy (see table 3). the rest of the major components – the socio-demographic, water, and health dimensions – scored from 0.3 to 0.4. vietnam had two major components that indicated a moderate level of vulnerability: livelihood strategy (0.418) and natural hazards (0.573). the major components of social network, food, and socio-demographics showed low vulnerability (0.363, 0.32, and 0.266, respectively). the other major components displayed low vulnerability: water asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 87 (0.111) and health (0.195). in the case of cambodia, the majority of major components scored below 0.5. only livelihood strategy scored relatively high on the vulnerability index (0.448), while most dimensions ranged from around 0.3 to 0.39. specifically, these were water (0.384), natural hazards (0.335), socio-demographics (0.368), food (0.313), and social network (0.301). cambodia’s lowest vulnerability score was for the major component of health (0.218). table 3. seven major components of lvi by country. major components myanmar vietnam cambodia socio-demographics (5) 0.325 0.331 0.368 livelihood strategies (5) 0.595 0.418 0.448 social network (4) 0.735 0.417 0.366 health (5) 0.429 0.195 0.218 food (7) 0.612 0.296 0.313 water (4) 0.335 0.111 0.384 natural hazards (4) 0.519 0.472 0.335 by comparison, the study findings indicated that myanmar was ranked as the most vulnerable in four major components, excluding the water, socio-demographics, and livelihood strategy components, for which it was ranked second in the list of countries. in the case of vietnam, it had the highest score for livelihood strategy, and ranked second on the list for two major components (natural hazards and social network); it was the least vulnerable in the remaining four dimensions (water, food, health, and socio-demographics). cambodia had the highest vulnerability score in two dimensions: water and socio-demographics. it came second of the three countries in three major components (natural hazards, livelihood strategy, and social network). when using a triangle of exposure, adaptive capacity, and sensibility to evaluate vulnerability, cambodia was the country with the least vulnerability (see table 4 and figure 7). vietnam and myanmar showed similar trends in the exposure dimension, with dimensional index scores of 0.604 and 0.573, respectively. in terms of adaptive capacity, the study found that myanmar was the most vulnerable (0.510), followed by vietnam (0.304) and cambodia (0.335). table 4. three major components of lvi-ipcc by country. major component myanmar vietnam cambodia sensibility (s) 0.486 (1) 0.218 (3) 0.301 (2) health 0.429(1) 0.195(3) 0.218(2) food 0.612(1) 0.296(3) 0.313(2) water 0.335(2) 0.111(3) 0.384(1) adaptive capacity (a) 0.539(1) 0.387(3) 0.396(2) socio-demographics 0.325(3) 0.331(2) 0.368(1) livelihood strategies 0.595(1) 0.418(3) 0.448(2) social networks 0.735(1) 0.417(2) 0.366(3) exposure (e) 0.519(1) 0.472(2) 0.335(3) natural hazards and climate vulnerability 0.519(1) 0.472(2) 0.335(3) lvi-ipcc (0.099)(1) (0.060)(2) (0.004)(3) note: 1: highest level of vulnerability; 2: second level of vulnerability; 3: third level of vulnerability. figure 7. ipcc dimensions of climate change vulnerability of farm households in myanmar, vietnam, and cambodia. in the sensibility dimension, myanmar was again found to be the most vulnerable (0.486), while cambodia and vietnam had lower vulnerability scores (0.309 and 0.218, respectively) (see figure 7). when comparing the overall lwi scores of myanmar, vietnam, and cambodia, myanmar reported the highest value (0.502), vietnam held the second position (0.353), and cambodia was the least vulnerable (0.338). interestingly, vietnam’s score nearly equaled the average of the other countries. in the lvi-ipcc approach, the values scored were as follows: myanmar (0.045), vietnam (0.030), and cambodia (-0.012). asian journal of agriculture and rural development, 13(1) 2023: 75-90 88 5. conclusions and recommendations this empirical research study investigated the climate change vulnerability of farm households in three countries: cambodia, myanmar, and vietnam. the total sample size was 999 farm households, of which 304 respondents were from myanmar, 350 respondents from vietnam, and 345 respondents from cambodia. the vulnerability of the farm households was measured using the indicator or indexing method with a balanced or equal weighting approach. a total of 34 indicators were selected for the model based on an extensive literature review and expert judgment. the findings showed that myanmar was highly vulnerable to climate change across all components, whereas vietnam was the second most vulnerable country, followed by cambodia. in addition, natural hazard incidents were found to be highest in myanmar, where the adaptive capacity of farmers had increased due to the increased natural hazard exposure. importantly, the sensitivity of the farm households in these three countries was more or less similar, while in terms of adaptive capacity, there were clear differences among the three countries. based on the findings, we suggest introducing policy measures to reduce the sensitivity of farm households, such as improving early warning systems and increasing investment of public funds in the development of infrastructure, such as embankments to prevent salter water instruction. we also suggest that improving the adaptive capacity of farm households is essential to reduce the climate change-induced vulnerability of farm households in myanmar, vietnam, and cambodia. to strengthen the adaptive capacity of farm households, the local government should organize outreach activities, capacity training, and climate change information-sharing sessions, as well as empower community-based adaptation planning processes. hence, there is also a need to enhance the collaboration between the relevant stakeholders and institutions in cmv countries. the empirical results from the study could be used by policymakers and development planners to enhance rapid rural development through social and community networks, as well as public and private organizations. in this way, the government can articulate the deep concerns about the effects of climate change on the agricultural sector and perhaps increase capacity building and training, improving farm households’ climate change resilience and adaptation to the negative impacts of climate change and natural hazards in cmv countries. funding: this work is supported by international foundation for science (grant number: j-1c-6016-1) and hue university under the core research group program (grant number: ncm.dhh.2022.11). competing interests: the authors declare that they have no competing interests. authors’ contributions: all authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the study. views and opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors views; the asian journal of agriculture and rural development shall not be responsible or answerable for any loss, damage, or liability, etc. caused in relation to/arising out of the use of the content. references adger, w. n. 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